The Pursuit; The Hunt

"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.

Hayate’s latest scuffle hadn’t gone quite as well as he had hoped. Turned out that not all Shinigami were so useless as ‘Stan the Man’, but even still he had come out on top. He hadn’t bothered to clean up yet, seeing as this latest action was only going to make his life more hectic until he was either thrown in the Maggot’s Nest or executed on the spot, hard to say what the Gotei might do to someone like him. He’d found a decaying bar to rest in until that happened. Raiding the place for whatever he could, ending up with half a flask of what he could only assume was homemade alcohol. He managed to down most of it before he just discarded the swill to take his leave back into the open.

He briefly considered that he had been far too stubborn this time, but let the thought just drift away when he noticed… something nearby. His senses weren’t the best when it came to ‘spiritual pressure’ and all of that nonsense, but since his last fight he couldn’t help but notice the difference in a normal soul when compared to one that had trained as much as the Shinigami did.

Hayate figured this one was stronger by default, maybe. While every muscle ached for rest, and the fresh wounds still stinging across his body, Hayate couldn’t help but feel excited for what was to come. He took to vantage points, travelling across whatever standing structures he could find in search of this Shinigami with the hopes of another good fight, and let whatever happens afterwards happen.

It was minimal, as if haggard, but the bead was had on a foreign Pressure within the vicinity, greater than any ambience and miniscule signatures surrounding it; Iwamura still quietly bounded from branch to branch as an intense focus settled upon him. He identified the Pressure as being somewhere north-northwest of him, still within the confines of the settlement--and on a collision course straight towards him. Wind whipped around Iwamura in lashes as he picked up his pace, his surroundings melding together to greens and browns at his front, metal grays and drab neutrals to his left, the sun hammering through the foliage and through any sliver, his subconscious noting that the suspect may very well have sensed his Reiatsu all along, his unconscious barreling towards euphoria...

For a single instant Iwamura's world slowed to a crawl as he stared upon a silver-haired man below him, bruised and battered with a bloodied left eye, hopping across the rooftops opposite him with a plain sword in his hand.

He processed, blinked, and by the next instant Hyoroshi, who was mid-leap, was gone from the forest's edge--now mid-lunge in arm's reach at Hayate's right flank, courtesy of a well-aimed Shunpo, a balled fist rocketing for the assailant's chest. Should the hit land, Iwamura would drive Hayate and fist directly towards the dirt road below before leaping down himself; should he miss, Iwamura would immediately whirl around to reset his hands and posture while backing towards the opposite end of the rooftop to avoid a riposte, whereupon he lowered into a martial stance. In either case, Iwamura stared upon his foe with a searching yet lacking gaze, as if he were a surgeon examining an unfamiliar medical patient.

"There's no use hiding it, you're the one who fought Vice-Captain Senba," Iwamura called out. His eyes flitted to the Asauchi as a pinprick, only a pinprick, of deja-vu twinkled in the back of his mind. "I am Captain Hyoroshi Iwamura of the Seventh Division. It would be in your best interest to come quietly. Toss the sword."

There was hardly a moment to think about what to do about the spiritual pressure Hayate had felt, so his body reacted about as quickly as he could and it still wasn't enough. His half-hearted defence of bringing his arms up to block likely saved him from instantly biting the dust. He crashed from the rooftop down to the road below. He didn't bounce so good, managing only a single skip before colliding with a rickety old fence that fell apart at the first sign of trouble.

Hayate managed to recover about as gracefully as possible, pulling himself from the rubble with the sword drawn. "Sure am, so you guys are taking me seriously now huh?" He called back, a smirk etched on his features at the title behind this one. "Sorry. I don't do quiet. And this sword is mine." He declared defiantly, letting this new power he'd come to wield flow through the blade in a cascade of electrical arcs. Right now he had no idea that the Gotei hired dogs, but that didn't really matter. He'd -never- been hit that hard before. This was a real fight. Something to finally enjoy after years of languishing in this hellhole.

By now he didn't even care about the sword anymore, he wanted to see just what a Captain of the Gotei Thirteen was capable of. No more words were needed as far as Hayate was concerned. So he leapt right to it. A straightforward attack, which was certainly quick but nothing that Iwamura couldn't handle.

There was initially no movement from Iwamura as he watched the suspect, nothing apart from a silent pensiveness that discernably softened his on his facial features. From Hayate's perspective, it was clear: Iwamura was taking pity upon him, almost sorrowful for whatever decency may be laying incapacitated within the man. Indeed, without his own prompting, it was as if someone was flicking a light switch on and off in Hyoroshi's head, though painlessly, without a shadow of disquiet; the sky was blue, then pitch black, then blue; there was a ragged slum, then a decimated wasteland, then a ragged slum; and there was his ostentatious adversary approaching, then a lanky, older wolfman with a gray pelt, ostentatious, hideously familiar, and then there was the young man again.

Iwamura remained still as a glimmering realization dawned upon him, abrupt yet not wholly unexpected; balling his fists and raising his arms, it seemed more akin to a truth cementing itself as reality, a discovery rendered irrefutable from the outset.

'Perhaps I'm starting to comprehend it, Bashira.'

He was staring at Hayate with a conscious frown now. Combined with the persisting tenderness of his face Hyoroshi appeared on the verge of tears, even as he jolted rightwards, towards Hayate's left, in avoidance of the incoming swing. Only as Iwamura pivoted and whipped his left arm forward, careening it towards Hayate's gut with full intent to clothesline him, did his pity get supplanted by a hardened, almost cold intensity. Assuming Hyoroshi managed to catch Hayate upon his forearm, with a swift inward curl of his massive frame Iwamura thrust the man directly into the road in front of him, kicking up a cloud of soot and dust that enveloped both men.

"That's enough," Iwamura stated as he stared through the plume at Hayate's assumed position. A thought passed through his head that narrowed his eyes out of quiet revulsion; he shook his head, rejecting it in its entirety. "This is no game, only your life, yet you wish to throw it away as some mindless beast? Pathetic choice. I'm not going to give it the time of day. I will shatter all the bones in your limbs, if that means you cease this foolishness."

Hayate wasn’t near fast enough to properly defend against any of these attacks, that was clear enough. As much as he tried before he knew it, he was being flung unceremoniously back to the ground to find himself scrambling to return to his feet to once again fast the Shinigami, his stolen sword still held tightly as he wipes a fresh trail of blood from his lip. “What more is there? An endless afterlife in this hellhole?” Hayate’s grin grew, stained crimson “I’m having the time of my life right now, dyin’ wouldn’t be so bad.” He announced his defiance, using the moment of cover provided by the cloud of dust to hide an erratic approach.

His strategy shifted, trying to outpace an opponent so much faster just wasn’t going to happen. Hayate needed something to even the odds, and he figured he just needed to use -that- again. Whatever ability he had called forth against the girl he had been fighting. Just a moment of contact is all he needed.

So, his attacks became weaker individually but rained towards the wolfman in a barely contained flurry of attacks. Focused on simply putting a wall of steel between him and his new foe. His goal was simple, connect just once and try to recreate his attack.

If that could land Hayate might have a chance, but right now things were looking grim.

"No, young man, there isn't..."

Iwamura's voice drifted away--he had noticed his attacker's near-feral signature jolt out and away, curving from the settling dust towards his left flank. Hyoroshi lurched back out of the airborne soot with the push of a foot and his arms still raised; the man had donned reckless abandon, perhaps even ecstatic desperation, Hyoroshi deduced in a blink's time. The Captain needed full visibility, for he had assured himself that there must be more to what he was seeing from the man beyond wild swinging--most definitely an ability from the Asauchi, no doubt, but of a kind and strength Iwamura couldn't venture to guess. These thoughts and more flashed in and out as he observed the assailant burst from the cloud and swing about his flurry, one, two three, four, more and more, all while Iwamura continued his backpedaling down the street.

His eyes blinked again. One more thought lingered. A plan to end this parlor show.

Iwamura, mid-retreat and with his left foot hitting the ground, suddenly dug in and swerved his upper half towards the right, towards Hayate's left side, allowing the Asauchi to drive directly above Iwamura's left shoulder--and into the grip of his left hand, slicing deep into his palm as its trajectory was rapidly halted. The wet burn of the gushing wound tingled the entirety of his left arm, but Iwamura cared little; with the forward stomp of his right foot acting as a fulcrum, his right fist crossed inwards and connected with the elbow of Hayate's sword arm in an uppercut.

The crunching squelch of broken bone and sinew, alongside the sudden and unadulterated disfigurement of Hayate's arm, would have likely made any spectators vomit on the spot. Yet Iwamura didn't so much as flinch, his knowing gaze having returned to its pitying softness as he pried the Asauchi from the man's grip with his wounded own. He wielded the weapon just like that, his hand still gripping the blade, blood trailing and dripping from his wrist, as he stood over Hayate.

Hyoroshi pointed the index and middle fingers of his right hand at the assailant. "Bakudo number Nine, Hōrin," he commanded, and at once an orange tendril rapidly ballooned and extended out. While holding it like a rope the tendril snaked around and around Hayate, tightening until he was effectively bound. Iwamura sighed, crouched down and set the Asauchi down behind himself, not bothering with the open gash. Befalling him was a sudden and unshakable morose whose origins he couldn't place.

"A man once close to me said, 'death is counterfeit compensation for the good-natured and evidence favoring the beast'." Iwamura fell silent for a few seconds, his almost sullen gaze transfixed upon Hayate's face as if searching for something.

"What do you want right now? Truly. Death? Another chance at life? To continue to wallow in these sorrowful slums, forever a mindless beast, or to rise above that, to refine and bring purpose to your killing intent?"

The Captain fell silent again, still watching Hayate's face, awaiting and expecting a reply.