The Hollow was too quick for me to stop it from pulling away, the loud noise of it launching its small frame away from me was almost deafening, but I didn’t let it distract me.

Now, the group of high-specs were getting themselves out of the way, and the Hollow was going to be too distracted with me to have time to chase after the easy prey now. I felt the deep growl in my throat rise into my mouth, ever sensation I had ever felt was amplified by so many times that it was almost overwhelming. I could feel the heat of my breath against my teeth, the blood from my abdomen wound leaking down my side and saturating my clothes with a deep, red stain.

“You think you’re a predator?” I taunted the surrounding buildings, giving the Hollow the illusion that I’d simply fluked it when I’d caught it last time. But the ribbon didn’t lie, not on something as weak as this. It was dancing from place to place, overthinking its plan of attack. I needed to make a move soon, or it would simply decide that I wasn’t worth the risk and run away.

I couldn’t have that.

“I’m a predator alright,” the Hollow’s voice rang out, somehow both masculine and feminine at the same time, “how many souls do you think I’ve eaten? Hundreds!” I scoffed, entertaining the self-aggrandising Hollow with attention.

“Only hundreds? Of the weakest prey you could find? Honestly, maybe I overestimated how strong you are. Are you sure you could have killed those high-specs back there?” I mocked, leading to a growl from the surroundings, a distinctly different spot than it’d been before. I turned my head towards the sound, staring directly at the Hollow’s ribbon. It’d gotten frustrated and fucked up.

I didn’t let the Hollow notice that I’d realised its position and I raced towards it, mirroring the Hollow’s own strange movement. It felt awkward and clunky in comparison to my normally flowing movements, but it certainly allowed me to move a great deal quicker than before, even if it did feel instinctually wrong.

I launched my hand out, wrapping around the small corner of the street and grabbing a hold of the unseen Hollow’s scruffy hair around its neck. With a loud growl I dragged the body out from behind the corner with all my might, throwing the small-bodied beast out into the open with more force than I thought I had in me.

The Hollow’s chitinous armour allowed it to skitter across the concrete and tarmac until it hit the wall on the other side of the street with the sound of concrete shattering. Driven by pure instinct, I lowered myself to the ground and moved again, using an edited version of the Hollow’s movement from before. With a cracking sound of the concrete breaking under my feet, I moved so quickly I only had time to raise my knee to plant it in the Hollow’s chest.

The small thing managed to scramble out of the way ever so slightly, making my knee crash into its shoulder instead. With the speed I was going, I was also suddenly embedded into the wall. It took me a moment, but I managed to struggle my way out of the wall. The Hollow hadn’t tried to be opportunistic and stab me while I was stuck, probably because it was hurting from its own injury and trying to recover.

“That was a good connection, no? You did a pretty good job of getting yourself out of the way there.” I said snidely, my eyes wandering the streets dramatically. Though, as I kept my mind on the Hollow’s location, I realised that it was starting to slowly move further away from me. It was running.

With a predatory grin, I let my legs push me forwards with blistering speed, climbing to the top of the buildings easily and vaulting over the ledge and making a beeline right towards the Hollow’s sneakily retreating form.

The wind whipped around my body as I cut through the air like a knife, and as I reached the Hollow’s form, I reached out a hand and grabbed a hold of the edge of its mask—yanking it to the ground as I decelerated.

“Thought you could run away, bug.” I snarled, pure violence finding its way into my voice. The Hollow replied with an ear-piercing scream before it turned, breaking my grip and launching it’s one good arm towards me, it’s lance-like point searching for my body. I couldn’t dodge something this fast at such a close range, but I could work around it.

I let the piercing blow fly through my spiritual shielding and glancing the side of my chest, sliding into my armpit while drawing a line of burning pain into my flesh. But, for whatever reason, the pain only compelled me further.

I pushed forwards, my hand formed in a facsimile of a spearpoint, trying my best to get a shot at its chest once again. This time, the Hollow didn’t have time to react to the attack, too focused on its own. I felt a small amount of blood within my mouth, a metallic taste on my breath. I must’ve injured something earlier and didn’t realise. As My hand broke through another part of it’s chitin, I spat bloody phlegm in its face.

It recoiled, despite having a mask and no way for it to really affect it. Must be a hold over from when it was human, once. I laughed with a ferocious glee at the reaction—the idea of it having leftover instincts from being human was laughable. For a being that seemed to be the antithesis of human, it sure was human.

The Hollow, now stuck with its only functioning arm clamped in my armpit and underneath my body, was running out of options. I didn’t have the strength to hold down its entire body, so instead I was left with the little runt screaming loudly and clawing at my chest with its clawed feet, tearing up the skin on my chest and making the droplets of blood fall onto its bone white carapace.

With a vengeful grunt I slammed a fist into the Hollow, over and over, letting it scratch at me futilely, even as pain lanced across my body. My fist beat into the Hollow’s carapace, cracking it further every time the flesh and bone of my hand connected.

“You know,” I growled in between the blows, “I thought,” slam, “a little,” slam, “harder,” slam, “to kill.” My fist broke through the carapace and exposed the black flesh underneath, a light smattering of the same course hair around its neck dusted it’s black chest. I grinned, my vision going a deep crimson as I grabbed a hold of the Hollow’s fat ribbon and pulled, taking its spiritual energy reserves as my own.

I yelled into its bone white mask with a primal rage. The Hollow recoiled from its sudden loss of spiritual energy, the only chance that it had at escaping me. I wrapped the wide ribbon around my knuckles with a flick of my hand and slammed the fist down into its black chest, releasing all the energy at once.

With a satisfying bang, the Hollow’s body now had hole in it that almost entirely disconnected the top half of the thing from its legs. With one last vicious grunt, I slammed my hand into it’s weakened mask and it cracked, leaving it totally incapacitated until a Soul Reaper managed to purify it, or whatever they did with a Hollow.

I rolled off the Hollow’s corpse, or de-animated body, and let myself breathe for a minute.

I could feel the pain all across my body, wounds that would easily land myself in the hospital littering my body like scrapes and bruises. My mind was so awake that I could feel every brush of air against my skin, the temperature of my flesh cooling as the blood receded from my muscles and back to my centre of mass, trying to circulate normally again.

Slowly, as I regained my ability to breathe normally again, the adrenalin faded, leaving me with a full gamut of pain—though it hardly bothered me as much as it should have. In fact, I’m the happiest that I’ve been in weeks, aside from moments with Suzumi.

Right now, I was on top of the world.

It was such a primal, instinctive emotion. It had nothing to do with morals. There was no justification for how I was feeling in a civilised world. But fuck, who cares. Why should I care what the civilised world thinks when I will be up against beings easily as strong as that one, little Hollow? When my competitors will be many times as strong as that?

No, I won’t let myself be dragged into the fallacy of ‘righteousness’ or ‘morals’. How could I possibly care about that when around every corner in Karakura, there was a fight like that waiting for me? No, I didn’t want to shy away from the challenge anymore. I wanted to walk right into the fire with a grin on my face so terrifying that the fire stepped away.

Why should I find a reason for my power when a reason like this existed? Where I could put everything on the line and come out stronger, faster, and smarter for it? Why shouldn’t I take victory as mine? Make their power all mine.

I laughed gleefully against the searing pain all over my body, the elation still too prominent in my brain to truly complain about my injuries. Painstakingly, I pulled myself from the ground with a concerted effort. I still had a little spiritual power left to go around, so I used it to jump from the building and reinforce my muscles just enough so I could walk along with minimal pain.

Each step was torture, but the elation still residing in my mind didn’t allow me to truly crumble under the pain. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience, but there was something about that time of pain and suffering that made me understand why warriors of old valued their scars so much. It was a symbol of suffering and pain, and the price that they’d paid to win. But also, the mark of victory, of ‘I won.’ The classic ‘You should see the other guy.’

My body roared with searing pain, but each step towards Kurosaki clinic was amazing.

It took me far more than an hour, but I managed to make it, following the main streets rather than dawdling like I had been beforehand. The exhaustion was starting to set in as I turned the corner to see the signage of Kurosaki clinic. It took me another minute of painful walking, the rest of my spiritual energy was spent by the time that I made it to the door, the last whisps of energy burning away as I stood at the front door.

I demurely pressed the doorbell and waited, the small chime playing throughout the house as I stood, bleeding on their doorstep. It took surprisingly little time for the door to open, revealing Karin, the woman with the black hair, now down running down her back rather than sitting atop her head in a wild ponytail.

“Who the hell–” her eyes widened comically as she raced around me and pulled me into a bridal carry. I just let her take control, and as soon as she closed the door behind us, she called out to the rest of the house in a loud yell.

It was only five minutes before the rest of the Kurosaki household was downstairs, rushing me into the conjoining emergency room that ran alongside their home. So many things happened in the span of only a few minutes that my tired mind could barely compute the order of events.

At some point, Suzumi showed up, which was nice. She held my hand. But funnily enough, the pain from the wounds had mostly dissipated, even without the use of any painkillers. Though, as I looked down at my body, I couldn’t see my wounds anymore. In fact, I they weren’t there at all anymore—just lots of drying blood where they used to be.

Oh, that’s right, Orihime had used her healing thing. For a fleeting moment, I was actually disappointed that the wounds were gone and that I wasn’t going to get scars out of them, but I also wasn’t stupid, so I wasn’t going to complain.

My mind slowly shut down over the next few hours. I was sure that I was speaking and conversing, but I couldn’t tell you what I was talking about. Things would be told to me and they would never quite make it to my brain, the words falling flat against my heavy head.

Over time it just became an exercise of keeping my head upright, though even that became an impossible task soon enough—the weight an ever-increasing burden. Soon enough the darkness took hold, even though my mind was still slowly whirring in the background. It was warm in the darkness, my senses slowly receding as only my mind was left to run on its own, slowly shutting down.

The only thing left, the only sensation that I could pull from the abyss of my mind, was a satisfaction. A satisfaction for finding a reason for my power.

So I could truly fight.