"Lift her up...alright, go, go!"
Iwamura had stared with solemnity at the stretcher whisking away a gravely wounded Chihiro Senba--this was in the hour preceding his arrival to the Rukongai, as he had reached her near the Fourth Division barracks on account of a distressed notification from one of his men. Not many of his questions had been answered by Chihiro, though her injuries were not solely to blame; she could not give much as she could not ascertain much.
'A stolen Asauchi wielded by a man with a bloody eye...'
All about him, here in the 80th District, had become pandemonium; the already-decrepit slums had devolved into a full-on warzone from where Iwamura was standing. Debris was strewn indiscriminately, holes and craters peppered the dirt road and outside walls, and not a soul could be visually discerned--yet no detail instilled as much biting trepidation in him as the blatant and haphazard gashes and slices in his surroundings.
'This was the site. With only an Asauchi, against a fighter of Senba's caliber, no less,' Hyoroshi thought as he narrowed his eyes. Instantly and by something unconscious, a warm, prickly wave of familiarity washed over his skin as he turned right, facing away from the Seireitei, towards the settlement and the surrounding forests, and he pursed his lips. His intuition discerned the relative safety of the slum's inhabitants; he was being watched. A pang of empathizing guilt always jabbed its fingers into his gut each time outskirts like these were brought up, whether casually or while on-duty. How similar it all seemed, how maddeningly depraved...
Iwamura silently drew a breath, then disappeared from the street; hopping onto an overhanging tree branch with Shunpo, the Captain flitted from branch to sturdy branch to the northeast of the settlement. Indeed, he did not need any of his rather average sensing abilities--not for what experience and instinct would brand a hunt.
Iwamura had stared with solemnity at the stretcher whisking away a gravely wounded Chihiro Senba--this was in the hour preceding his arrival to the Rukongai, as he had reached her near the Fourth Division barracks on account of a distressed notification from one of his men. Not many of his questions had been answered by Chihiro, though her injuries were not solely to blame; she could not give much as she could not ascertain much.
'A stolen Asauchi wielded by a man with a bloody eye...'
--===--
All about him, here in the 80th District, had become pandemonium; the already-decrepit slums had devolved into a full-on warzone from where Iwamura was standing. Debris was strewn indiscriminately, holes and craters peppered the dirt road and outside walls, and not a soul could be visually discerned--yet no detail instilled as much biting trepidation in him as the blatant and haphazard gashes and slices in his surroundings.
'This was the site. With only an Asauchi, against a fighter of Senba's caliber, no less,' Hyoroshi thought as he narrowed his eyes. Instantly and by something unconscious, a warm, prickly wave of familiarity washed over his skin as he turned right, facing away from the Seireitei, towards the settlement and the surrounding forests, and he pursed his lips. His intuition discerned the relative safety of the slum's inhabitants; he was being watched. A pang of empathizing guilt always jabbed its fingers into his gut each time outskirts like these were brought up, whether casually or while on-duty. How similar it all seemed, how maddeningly depraved...
Iwamura silently drew a breath, then disappeared from the street; hopping onto an overhanging tree branch with Shunpo, the Captain flitted from branch to sturdy branch to the northeast of the settlement. Indeed, he did not need any of his rather average sensing abilities--not for what experience and instinct would brand a hunt.