Chapter 42: A Wandering Soul - Spirit 3.14
Once I was out of the chamber I left Natsumi and Kiba in, I moved as fast as I could to reach the end of the corridor. Kanou was somewhere up ahead and while I was sure Natsumi could hold off Kiba until the doctor was dealt with, I wasn't confident Kimura could contain the rest of the experiments from getting out into the town.
And Kanou struck me as that type of asshole that would open the floodgates just to make sure he had an escape route. So my plan boiled down to find the doctor, kill him before he can do anything, wipe any data about me, head back to deal with the experiments.
Short, sweet, and uncomplicated. I can almost feel Murphy hovering over my shoulder waiting to screw me on this somehow.
Up ahead a large metal door comes into view. Unlike the others we came aross while exploring Kanou's hideout, this door has more in common with a bank vault than anything I'd come across so far.
A fireball raced down Tobiume and slammed into the metal bulwark. When the smoke cleared there was some blackened metal but no sign that the attack damaged the door.
I suppose a more powerful blast was needed.
Tobiume dispersed into motes of blue mana and another sword formed in my hand. The four foot monstrosity of a blade with a white bandage wrapping was not one that I had used much. I had played with it a couple times in the cavern Yoruichi took Ichigo for training.
I found out that while it was easily the most purely destructive sword I currently had access to, it was also the most draining. Yeah, Ichigo's Zangetsu really only worked for him because of his stupidly large reserves. For me, I would be lucky to get four Getsugas before I ran out of steam.
Hopefully I only needed the one.
I swung the oversized sword towards the door and poured mana into the blade. Zangetsu greedily sucked in everything I could throw at it, amplified it, and spat it out as a giant crescent of yellow energy.
Yes, yellow. It seemed any attack made of my personal energy was dyed that color.
The energy wave collided into the same spot the fireball had earlier, but rather than splash against the door, the beam cut through the tough metal before causing an explosion that covered the hall in a cloud of smoke.
When that finally cleared a few seconds later, the door had a massive gash in it.
Not wasting time standing around I ran through the hole and made my way towards a ledge overlooking a vast array of monitors. Looking down I quickly spotted Kanou looking over several of them, seemingly unconcerned that I had blown past his security wall.
I leapt down in front of him, tracing two weapons as I did so.
"Ah, I must say. You arrived here much fast-"
That was as far as he got before one of the longswords I projected went through his forehead and pinned him to his chair. Half a second later, the second found it's home generally where the heart would be in a normal person.
Evil scientist handled, I quickly moved to the main computer and started shifting through files. Not surprisingly, there was simply too much to shift through to find anything about me specifically. So I started checking timestamps for when data had been accessed or created, making sure to keep it restricted to the last few days or so.
That...was better. There were still hundreds of files, but I was able to find those related to me within a few minutes and move them to a storage drive. Once that was done I popped out the drive, deleted the local data, and moved other files to where that data used to be to overwrite the memory locations.
Not a guaranteed way that no one would be able to recover the data but without actually getting my hands on every physical storage device I couldn't guarantee that anyway.
Two out of my three main goals completed, I spun on my heel and started heading back the way I came. Once Kiba was taken care of, nothing stood in the way of dealing with the remaining experiments. Then this whole cursed mission could finally end.
"Leaving so soon? I'm disappointed."
I froze mid step at the unexpected voice. Quickly turning to where I had left Kanou's body to see that while one eye was staring sightlessly forward, the other had moved to track me. That was surely ending up in my nightmares later.
"I would have thought you were after my experiment data. The fools in the Seireitei never did manage to steal my process for making loyal tools. Yet you seem content to ignore that to secure your own information."
"Ignoring the whole wanting fucked up braindead slaves thing, how are you alive?" I asked incredulously. Seriously a sword through the head should not be a minor inconvenience.
"Naturally I made sure my second body would be superior. Did you think that I would be satisfied with merely creating a superior creature? I make sure to integrate any beneficial traits into myself once they have been thoroughly tested."
With that Kanou leaned forward. His skull parted around the sword in a series of wet crunches as his skull collapsed around the sharp blade. Rather than bleed profusely like a normal person I saw worm-like tendrils wiggling around in his head before reconnecting with each other once the blade was clear. Less disturbingly, he simply pulled the other blade from his chest. Other than the damage to his clothes there was no indication that he had been recently impaled.
"That is just really fucking unfair." I murmured under my breath.
Kanou rose from his chair, casually unbuttoning his shirt as he did so.
"Doc, I have no idea what gave you the thought I might be interested, but trust me you can keep your shirt on."
Kanou gave me a condescending smile.
"I assure you I rid myself of those base urges quite some time ago. This is merely to ensure I have some covering after I have dealt with you."
Torso now free from any covering, I saw that he had a patchwork of surgical scars all over his body. Unlike the many I had seen on the experiments on the way down these looked faded so it wasn't a last minute addition. Instead the scars seemed to quickly start secreting some sort of reddish slime that covered his entire body before solidifying into some sort of muscle-like suit.
I would have called him a cheap ripoff of Venom if it weren't for two things. First, Venom didn't exist in this universe (I checked) so the quip would be wasted on him if he even bothered to keep up with World of the Living pop culture. And two, he just, kept, growing.
Pretty soon he was fifteen feet tall and still growing, but I couldn't make a move to stop him since he grabbed a nearby desk and threw the whole thing at me.
By the time I dodged and faced him again he had easily doubled in size. Thankfully he also seemed to stop getting bigger so I was only facing a fifty foot man shaped flesh abomination. I grit my teeth at that thought. Yeah this wasn't going to be easy.
A giant fist smashed into the spot I had just been standing in. I rolled to my feet and started hurling swords at the creature as quickly as I could project them.
They cut through him easily enough but just as fast as a cut was made, the edges merged together as they did for his face and chest. Some of the more exotic blade enchantments I could mass produce on command seemed to slow his regeneration down a bit but not enough to make much of a dent.
I leaped over Kanou's arm as he swept it across the floor, destroying anything in its path. With barely a thought a spear appeared in my hand and I stabbed downward as hard as I could. Despite easily piercing through the weird muscle like tissue, Kanou barely seemed to notice the injury and I was forced to release the spear or get thrown across the room.
"What, not even a reaction?" I asked sarcastically as the spear was automatically ejected from Kanou's arm by some internal force. Naturally he seemed unbothered by the attack.
"Excessive pain response is unnecessary." Holy shit, I didn't think he could talk like that. "Knowing an injury has taken place is enough. There is no point in debilitating myself with potential sensory overload. Especially -" he held up the arm I had stabbed to let me take in the unmarred flesh. "-when it will regenerate."
Okay basic enchanted weapons are useless, I don't have my device prototype so bombardment spells would take too long to attempt, what does that leave me?
Well a lot actually.
Unfortunately not much of it was immediately useful. Most of my elemental abilities were on the same level as the enchanted weapons, just less focused, and quite a bit of the magecraft I studied revolved around utility creation which again I had no time for. I mentally ran over the few Zanpakuto I had collected and cursed as I realized only two or three would actually be useful. Who would have guessed not fighting more Soul Reapers would have been an issue. Finally, I could maybe force a Noble Phantasm. I had barely not been able to when I faced Aizen, and I had gotten a little more in tune with the UBW since then.
Let's leave that gamble as a last resort.
Tobiume was up first as I sent fireball after fireball into Kanou's face while I dodged out of the way of his arms trying to bat me into a wall or the floor. Even if the damage wasn't fatal, eyes tend to be fragile enough to disable with even a tiny bit of damage. As if to prove my point, one fireball must have hit something sensitive since Kanou quickly covered his face and let out a pained roar.
I guess eyes weren't covered in the 'unnecessary excessive pain' bullshit he had going on.
"AAH WORTHLESS WRETCH! I'LL ENJOY DISSECTING YOUR CORPSE!"
"What's wrong big guy? I thought you wanted me alive for your little study circle?" I taunted.
"Keeping you alive only made discovering your secrets easier! I can pull them from your degrading corpse with only slightly more effort and time!"
I ignored the way he said degrading as if that was supposed to mean something. I somewhat less successfully ignored the ball of ice that formed in my chest when he indirectly confirmed there was something wrong with me.
"Yeah, well fuck you too." I said lamely.
I dove out of the way of another hammer blow and swapped Tobiume for Zangetsu. The fire damage Tobiume was doing was simply not fast enough to do lasting damage. Benihime might work as well but it traded raw power for versatility and finesse.
And you didn't exactly need precision to hit a fifty foot giant.
Mana poured into the oversized blade and I mentally winced at the hit to my reserves.
"Getsuga Tensho!"
The crescent of energy surged towards Kanou. I had hoped to cut him in half, but the giant was quicker than I thought. Instead of splitting him vertically, he managed to move far enough to one side that I took an arm off instead.
"Hah! How'd you like that!"
"You've yet to realise the futility of your actions." Kanou boomed. And, because why not, tendrils reached out from his cut shoulder and eventually reconnected with the severed limb. Seconds later I was once again dodging both flailing arms as he attacked me.
I was really starting to hate fighting this prick.
Okay, fire kinda works but not fast enough and cutting him is pointless…
...or was it? If there was no danger he wouldn't have moved out of the way.
I sent another Getsuga Tenshou point blank into Kanou. This time there was no effort to dodge the attack and he was split from groin to head. More tendrils exploded from the left half to reconnect with the other side and he was healed up like nothing had happened.
"Do you understand now? Your struggle is pointless."
Bullshit. He took that hit on purpose. Which meant something changed between now and the last time.
Probably something internal. A core? Considering this entire behemoth had formed from the pink slime that came from Kanou's body I was willing to bet his human body was still inside and that was acting as his core.
I scowled.
Of course that also meant he could shift himself around inside of the construct so I would need to get lucky to hit him.
...or a different weapon.
Zangetsu disappeared in motes of mana as I retreated further away from Kanou.
I rapidly shifted through the weapons in the UBW trying to find something that might fit my needs. Anything too powerful might burn me out before I could even get an attack off. Anything too weak left me in the same position I was currently in and possibly worse if it was too mana intensive.
Hundreds of weapons were presented, considered, and rejected.
Finally I found one that I was confident I could actually summon and would potentially end Kanou.
Practically unbidden the first line of my refined Aria echoed in my mental plane.
My Body is Made of Stars
My mana surged in response. I felt my arms heat up as I forced more and more energy into the projection. Finally a sword took shape in my hands. A simple looking double edged sword with no markings on the blade, the crossguard was a simple bronze arc, and the hilt was half wrapped in leather. Despite the simple design, the entire blade seemed to glow with an inner fire.
Even if it wasn't the most visually impressive weapon I ever used, I still felt a rush of pride as I completed another step on my way to mastering my abilities. New sword in hand, I dashed under Kanou's swinging arm and hacked at his ankle. The blade easily cut through the giant limb and Kanou fell back as his balance was suddenly destroyed.
"A waste of time for both of us. Your simple attacks can't harm me." he growled, trying to regain his footing.
"Is that right? I think this one was a bit more effective."
Just then both sides of where I cut burst into flame. Kanou let out a shout of alarm and tried to douse the flames with a giant hand, but the fire continued to spread from the cut. In a desperate maneuver Kanou tore off his leg at the knee to remove the flames consuming it.
The removed portion, apparently removed from whatever regeneration effect he had, burned down to ash.
"Damn you! What kind of Zanpakuto was that?"
I glanced at the stump of his leg and saw it was still regenerating, but it was much slower than when he first transformed. My best guess was there was only so much he could produce which was why he reattached severed parts rather than regenerate them.
Excellent.
"Why Doctor" I mocked with a cheerful voice. "Its the one I'm going to kill you with!"
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