From a distance, another soul reaper was surveying the battlefield with his lieutenant. He has brown eyes and jaw-length blonde hair with a straight cut and many of his facial expressions reveal his upper teeth. He wore the standard Shinigami shihakushō with a standard, long-sleeved, captain's haori.
His name is Shinji Hirako, one of the prominent members of the Gotei 13 and the 5th Division captain. Right now, he is visibly furious at the events that unraveled to this day; they were suddenly invaded from out of nowhere by quincies, and Head-Captain Genryusai Yamamoto is killed in the battle. All he could ever do from here is help out those who were injured in the battle and fend off any threats left here
"Ah… this is such a drag" he grumbled as they solemnly walked throughout the rubble, looking for any injured soul reapers
"They really got us good with this farce. Heck, they even killed the Head Captain, and here I was, running around like an idiot while everyone was fighting for their existence", he angrily cursed to himself as he slammed his fist on a wall, causing it to collapse.
"Captain Hirako, calm down. No one is at fault here. None of us were able to foresee that such powerful foe would be able to crush us" his lieutenant, Momo Hinamori, tried to console him over his guilt
They haven't finished surveying the damage when Shinji felt a familiar power from a distance
Isn't that Tachikaze? This must mean that Kensei needs help, and we're the only unit close to the battle.
"Momo, take over" Shinji immediately ordered his new lieutenant
"Understood, but where are you headed?" Momo confusingly asked
"Kensei's in a pinch over there, I'll go help him."
"Be careful"
And with that, Shinji vanishes with a Flash Step
If Kensei released his Shikai state, then that means another Quincy is still on the loose, and must be tough as hell for him to fight against. Maybe we can catch that bastard and squeeze out any kind of information from him. Shinji thought to himself
All of a sudden, he can see a blast of wind from where he's at, which can only mean one thing.
Kensei's Bankai? Shit, hasn't he heard that they can steal our Bankai? I need to get there as fa–
He still haven't processed his whole thought when he was suddenly pelleted with a huge blast of wind coming from where he's heading
Kensei Muguruma and his Bankai, Tekken Tachikaze traded a single blow with Alex Mercer's Hammerfist, their fists colliding with each other. The resulting blow generated a shockwave that sent rubble flying away. The whole area was also covered in dust as a result, throwing the approaching Shinji off his tracks for a moment
As the dust settled in, the battle had already seen its outcome; Kensei's right arm was full of gashes, nearly stripped clean of his skin while heavily stripped away of his knuckles. He kneels clutching his injured arm, struggling not to scream in pain as to not alert his fellow soul reapers. The same cannot be said for Mercer; he lost his right arm from the impact, clearly struggling to hold back from the full brunt of the latter's attack.
"I told you, I warned you" Mercer said to Kensei as he turned his back, completely disregarding his missing arm.
In an instant, biomass started to flow throughout the body and towards the stump, slowly growing by itself until it reached an arm's length. The mass then turned into a human flesh, perfectly recreating his lost arm as Kensei watches exasperatingly.
Meanwhile, Shinji groggily recovers from being hit by the heavy wind, wasting no time using Flash Step to reach the battlefield. From there, he sees the full extent of the battle between these two, as if the rubble from the invasion wasn't enough.
What the hell happened here?
He then spots Kensei clutching to his injured arm; the entire left portion of his Bankai was shredded off of him. As he comes to, he sees Mercer walking away from both of them.
"I'd rather not take a single step if I were you" Shinji warns him, pointing his katana at him from a distance
"Don't bother, unless you want to end up like your turd-haired friend over there" Mercer rebuts, pointing his insult towards Kensei
"Now tell me how can I get out of this battlefield?" he added
Shinji wasn't taking his undirected insult too nicely, neither did his actions nor his attitude as well. First, he attacked Kensei to the point of partially destroying his zanpakuto. Now he acts like a lost child, asking for directions out of Seireitei like he had completely forgotten what he did.
"You sure have a sharp tongue, oji-san. Let's see if you have a sharp sword hidden there as well" Shinji prepared his fighting stance.
Kensei suddenly grabbed Shinji's arm, catching his attention.
"Don't provoke him, Shinji. We can't beat him"
"Then I'll just wait til everyone arrives to pin this Quincy down"
"He's not a quincy!!"
Those four words definitely made him bring his katana down for a moment. What does he mean by 'not a quincy' ?. All of a sudden, a familiar image of a man with a hole in his torso and a tattooed '6' on his lower back suddenly came to mind
"Then…is he an Espada?"
"He's not a Hollow either"
What he said was a big surprise for Shinji either. If he's neither among those who had invaded the Seireitei, nor an Espada, then who is he?
Shinji is at a crossroads; Mercer had just assaulted a soul reaper captain, thus he needs to be taken down for good measure. That being said, one can't risk attacking someone whom they have no idea who he is; plus the fact that he never killed Kensei either, aside from breaking his Bankai. Looking back at Kensei, he has a look of anxiousness in his face, something he had never seen from him ever since they became exiled half a millennium ago.
"If it can't be helped, then…"
He has no choice but to stand down and let him go, sighing in defeat as he puts the blade back in its sheath.
"Good choice, I had just enough of nearly beating your kind to a bloody pulp" Mercer mockingly approved Shinji's decision to stand down
"Don't act like you're so remorseful after you just attacked Kensei. You're lucky I'm not the type of man who would strike down somebody without thinking unlike that big lug over here" Shinji harshly retorted, adding a dash of off-handed comment towards the latter.
"Oi, who're you callin' a big lug!!" Kensei reacts, hearing Shinji from an earshot
"And I wouldn't have to if it wasn't for him trying to provoke me. Now tell me how do I get out of this place"
Shinji let a wry, devious smile appear on his face.
"Not unless you know which is up, down, left, or right" He menacingly answered back while spinning his katana with a large, ring-like pommel in a circular motion
All of a sudden, Mercer suddenly felt ill for no reason. He collapsed on his knees, suddenly hit by a sense of nausea and headaches.
Kensei immediately recognized what he was doing. Shinji had already put Mercer in his Upside Down World; an effect from his shikai when spun by the user. It releases a peculiar scent from the sword's five holes; anyone who can smell it falls subject to an optical illusion. Up and down, left and right as well as forward and backward are reversed. However, it is not just the sense of direction that is changed; the opponent's eyesight, direction of incoming attacks, and injury locations are also inverted. Shinji claims that countering the damage from the inverted directions simply by processing it all within the mind is not possible. No matter how powerful the opponent, especially if one is accustomed to fighting, their body will not be able to adapt due to their reflexes preventing proper reaction, which causes them to continuously succumb to the power's effect.
And I thought he was very troublesome for an intruder
As Shinji approaches to finish his opponent off, he notices something strange; Mercer's biomass become visible, fluctuating in different intervals as he crouches from the effects of the former's ability.
What's with this guy? As if he's not human at all!
The biomass intervals suddenly became faster every second, as if it was like a shortening wavelength.
"SHINJI, GET AWAY FROM HIM" Kensei desperately yelled back at him
Shinji finally took a hint and retreated away from Mercer with a Flash Step. At the same time, barbs made of hardened tendons suddenly erupt from Alex's body in every direction, impaling everything around them for a fair distance. Shinji and Kensei swiftly dodged every tendon rushing at them with a series of successive Flash Steps, unknowingly deactivating the former's Upside Down World in the process. Unfortunately, a passing group of soul reapers were caught in the barrage and were impaled by the tendons in the process. The barrage doesn't end there, as anything that was caught by his tendons were vacuumed towards him; any living organism caught by his tendons were consumed, thereby recovering Alex in the process
"What the hell is that guy?" Shinji asked from a distance as he saw the extent of Mercer's Tendril Barrage
"I told you not to provoke him" Kensei retorted, berating the latter for failing to follow his warning
Mercer immediately stood up and leapt his way towards a gatelike structure. Shinji and Kensei immediately knew where he is headed;
The Senkaimon
Shinji and a wounded Kensei try to give chase, but they immediately stopped when they saw Alex doing something that astonished both captains
Mercer was wrapped again with tendrils, and in the next second, he immediately assumed the form of a shinigami. He gave both of them a devious smile before landing near a crowd and blending right through them
"What the? Damn it we lost him"
"One moment he runs away and the next, he becomes one of us. What a day for us Soul Reapers."
What a day indeed. First, they just got invaded by hostile quincies from under their noses, then the chain of command got broken with Captain-Commander Yamamoto's death. To top it all off, an unknown being has just infiltrated Seireitei, disguising as one of their own.
Most of the Soul Reapers in Seireitei were thrown into complete chaos.
This was their first time experiencing a full-scale invasion from the enemy.
At the Senkaimon, The whole Kido Squad were on guard. They are the ones responsible for maintaining the Senkaimon and opening a path between Soul Society and the Human World. Right now, they can't afford to slack off, as they may not know where on when the enemy will strike next. Still they're more than capable of handling themselves.
A few seconds later, a lone soul reaper hurriedly approaches them, heavily panting like he is catching up with his breath.
"Reports of quincies… appearing on the human world… Please open the gate… so I could confirm… if the reports are true"
"But we need the approval of-"
The soul reaper grabbed the other with the collar of his uniform, desperation in his eyes
"God damnit Commander Yamamoto is dead! There's no time for approval!"
"Ri-right away"
The two practitioners immediately opened the Senkaimon Gate in panic; a white light emanated from the door and extended upward into the sky of Soul Society. Before the soul reaper can pass through, one of the practitioners noticed something odd
"You don't have a Jigokucho in you"
A heavy silence wrapped around the Senkaimon.
...
"A what?"
It was common knowledge for every soul reaper to always have a Jigokucho in them in order to bypass Dangai (Parsing World). The fact that this soul reaper doesn't even know what a Jigakucho is can only mean one thing…
"Everyone, surround him"
The whole Kido Squad present in the Senkaimon begin surrounding the soul reaper in question from all directions, leaving him confused. One of the practitioners then muttered a Bakudo spell
"Bakudo #4: Hainawa"
A crackling yellow light surrounds both practitioner's hands as he calls the spell. It later generates into a long, crackling, energized rope that he uses to throw towards the soul reaper. The rope then wraps around the latter's body, effectively restraining his movements.
"Damn it, to think not having a butterfly gave me away" the soul reaper merely smirked at his own oversight as his biomass slowly emerged from his body.
The Kido Corps practitioners were taken by surprise at what they had seen. Black ooze was flowing from the sockets of the soul reaper's face and began surrounding the body. Everyone was thinking…
What the hell is that abomination?
The moment the ooze completely enveloped him, black and crimson-like tendrils suddenly sprouted from the figure, slowly transforming into a man with a hooded, grey jacket.
Mercer uses his reiatsu vision and inspects the rope binding him
"Such a great power… wouldn't want it to waste like this"
He wasn't doing anything, yet he wills his biomass to surround, or rather infect, the reiryoku rope, gradually spreading all the way to the practitioner who summoned it, turning them into his long, grotesque tendrils. The practitioner's hands now became restrained because of the tendrils that was formed like the way Bakudo #4 was used. He then spreads his arms, as if he was casually breaking free from the bindings, and grabs the tendrils, yanking the practitioner towards him.
The rest of the Kido Corps practitioners become horrified at what they're about to witness: Mercer transforms his right hand into claws as he digs it right into the approaching practitioner's abdomen. He then sinks his hand deeper into his stomach, causing him to cough out so much blood. To show them how brutal he can be, he transforms his left claw and digs it right through all three sockets of his face, pushing it deeper until his head caves in through his chest. Tendrils then slowly wrapped around the corpse until it became one with Alex Mercer
Still not letting their guard down, everyone begins to chant their attacks in unison
"Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who beard the name of-"
Before they could even fire a single attack, Mercer decides to stop toying with them and leave
"I've had enough of your little tricks"
He slams his claws deep into the ground. In an instant, massive spikes of biomass erupt from the ground, creating a deadly circle of spikes in close proximity to Alex. Almost all of the Kido Corps trying to attack him with a Medium-Ranked Hado spell were impaled from the bottom, not being able to finish their incantation in time.