-Arriving from Karakura Town-
Buried beneath the mountain, Kassius expects to open his eyes and see the destruction of the human world and evisceration of the energy-being. Instead, his single black beady eye bolts around a barren wasteland. Confused, he rises to his feet, his hands clenched into fists which emit a cracking noise like crushed marble. Biting his lip, his chest heaves, as he inhales so fiercely from his nose that the air surrounding him forms a current. Processing, his surroundings, the blood-red reiatsu that he now emits is like an open wound pouring from the body of whoever senses it. Pure malice, as he finally exhales, roaring with his all might:
“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
Throwing his arms back, the beast's roar echoes into the night sky, shaking the very ground on which he stands. Anything within a hundred meters of the brute would have their eardrums explode if their heads didn’t go first. Kassius screams as if he intends to shatter the very world with his voice alone. His Reiatsu bursts from his body, piercing like a blade into the heavens above, shining so bright that even the white sands around him now appear pure red. His jaw continues to extend, as his scream only grows louder, lips tearing and stretching, his bone dislocating so as to further facilitate the fearsome sound. The single white eye of the super-predator bulges from its socket, veins pumping blood to the point of bursting, as the miasma starts to pour down his eye socket like tears.
“WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK?!”
Lacing his fingers together, he braces a fist over his head, forming a hammer-grip which he brings with all of his might down upon the sand below. Like a rampaging ape, he strikes over and over again, repeating the brutish action with each explicative that he shouts. With every impact, the sand surrounding him is rendered a crater, spared only from the melting heat of his reiatsu by the propulsion of his fist's collision. He literally digs himself deeper into the desert, a dune freshly forming directly in front of him as crater forms under him. Yet this violent, repetitive, primal action is not enough to alleviate the rage he feels. Tendrils of bone lash around him, causing the very air to crack as they whip about and strike at barren sand. With this, his immediate area, an entire one hundred meters, becomes utterly uninhabitable, his disintegrating reiatsu raging, the impact of his pounding fists crushing his surroundings, the flailing of his bladed-tendrils acting like a blender that would eviscerate anything left, while his roaring scream of rage would explode anything capable of hearing it.
“DAAAAAAAAAMNIT!"
Eleven
still Kassius is not satisfied in his tantrum, giving in completely to his primal instincts and literally only seeing red. His head shakes about violently, slicked back hair now thrown about wildly, as he bites out like a dog at nothing. With each clench of his jaw a thunderous boom erupts through the air like a boulder tumbling down a mountain. Foam excretes from the corners of his mouth as drool is flung about the desert. Then in an instant his blood-shot eye looks upon the bone-sand of the desert and snaps down on the very ground. Burying his head in the sand, he gnashes and gnarls, ripping and shredding like a dog trying to tear meat from a carcass. His screams become muffled, before he throws his head back once more, sand cascading from open maw.
“YOU BASTAAAAAARD!”
He had been so close. After receiving nothing but disappointment and boredom from the World of the Living, he had finally found something of interest. While Marcos was enthralled by his curiosity surrounding the Quincy Empress, Kassius was consumed by his bloodlust in pursuit of her bodyguard. Witnessing the man turn from weakling to a literal god, Kassius had not been this excited since before his imprisonment, when he had struck fear into the God King’s eyes. Yet, just as the new victim had come within Kassius’ reach, somebody had torn him away.
With his tantrum at its end, Kassius can only breathe heavily, his chest laboring like a vicious animal. His Reiatsu is the first to die down, turning the crimson sky back into a clear black. The tendrils retract, returning once again to his body, no longer unraveling. Hunched over, his hands unclench, and his arms support his weight like a boar primed to charge. It is only due to the absolute barrenness of this desert that Kassius cannot find a target to focus his rage, nor an excuse to continue on his rampage. There is a trepidatious calm in the air, a moment of peace that would be shattered into unspeakable violence with only a single sound needed to trigger it.
“E-”
CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH
A small little…thing appears at the top of the crater, yet it is destroyed the moment it can emit its first vowel. Interrupting the silence, Kassius’ tendril moves on instinct, like a frog’s tongue shooting out to catch a fly. He does not even process as the little nugget of a creature is thrown into his mouth and then mashed between his teeth. Chewing only three times, he swallows the little morsel in a single bite. This interaction being too brief to fully distract him from his rage, and yet still unexpected, enough to confuse him for only a moment.
“Es-”
THUD
Another one appears from out of the sand, existing only enough to be smashed beneath Kassius’ fist. Yet this does not appear to be the end. Just as he smashes this one, two more pop out of the sand. A single tendril swipes so fast that it is but a flicker in the air, and decapitates the two creatures, throwing their little heads into his mouth like pieces of candy. Yet this too does not deter them, as increasing numbers start to show up not only out of the ground, but around the crater as well. En masse, they arrive, a proverbial war of information, as hundreds of them die in their suicidal charge to deliver a message to the Cero Espada. No amount of thrashing, slashing, or gnashing seems to deter the annoying messengers, their meaningless lives existing only for this moment. Their numbers continue to grow until they amass a swarm so large that they are able to buy just enough time to impart their message, before Kassisu’s flaring reiatsu incinerates them all.
“Es-wack-Pa-thwack-Da-crunch-Meet-crunch-ing,
God-King’s-Thud-Orders!”
With a mound of dead Millians around him, the aftermath of their great battle is akin to that of an exterminator in a nest of rats. The vermin lay splayed about the crater’s floor in a mound around Kassius, who pops them like shrimp into his mouth nonchalantly as he thinks. Espada Meeting? God King? The God King was that jackass Kassius had fought, the previous God he had encountered before missing out on this new one in the Human World. Well, that would certainly make up for the bullshit that he’s dealing with. After all, what difference does it make which God he brutalizes, so long as he get his hands around
one of them. Then there was the Espada. Though new to Hueco Mundo, Kassius was at least familiar with the concept of Espada. After all, he is one.
Lifting his tank-top, Kassius glares down at the number imprinted around his navel. Zero? So that means that he was the strongest of the ten correct? OR was he the weakest? Which means that there were ten weaker assholes for him brutalize, or stronger assholes for him to humble. After all, without him there they would all be accustomed to being the top ten strongest beings in this dimension. What arrogance that would grant them, what sweet terror they would exude when this ego is shattered. The obnoxious little nuggets died for a good cause, as they succeeded in providing the Cero Espada with ten new victims to tear apart, and the evisceration of one God. A smile returns to Kassius’ face, forgetting about the disappointing Humans for now, a plan developing as he sets out towards Las Noches, his
home.
It does not take the all-seeing such as Max and Elliseo to feel the incoming Cero Espada. His reiatsu signals his arrival far before his body carries him to the doors of Las Noches. Regardless of how brave one might feel, how secure in their power, Kassius crimson reiatsu would invoke a sense of terror, a familiar fear ringing out to the God-king, Second, and Fourth Espada. Like watching an infant’s stroller roll onto the tracks of an oncoming train, Kassius’ reiatsu carried within it an inescapable dread. Whether the one who senses it feels like the infant, or the bystander, it doesn’t change the fact that the train is coming.
”¡Sal del cuarto antes de que te arranque la columna por el hocico!”
(Now leave the room before I pull your spine out through your mouth!)
BOOOOOOM
“GAHAHAHA!”
The doors to the meeting hall explode off of their hinges. Shattering into pieces of stone, their debris goes flying into the air and scatters about the marble-like interior of the room. In the entryway, Kassius stands, devilish smile and malicious glare upon his face, his leg lifted in the air as though having just delivered a kick. This very same foot stomps down upon the ground and sends a crack heading straight down the meeting hall’s floor, splitting the table in two as it spreads directly towards the prone Hellidoro. Yet, all of this verboseness comes solely from Kassius’ innate actions, his entrance into the room flooded by his unabashed laughter.
“You better not leave, dumbasses! I want to see that!”
He licks his lips as he steps into the hall, casually walking down the right side of the table, he passes by the lesser seats, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, all inconsequential. It is only when he passes the fourth seat that his contracted black iris slides to look upon the child-form of Elliora, 4th.
The recollection of her broken body in his fist floods the Cero’s mind with ecstasy. She had been so unimpeded by fear, feeding the strange Vasto Lorde the crystalized Egg of the Soul King. Yet their encounter had left her with a broken body, her brain severed from its stem, rendering her nothing but a pez-dispenser in the hands of her usurper. It was Kassius who wrenched the title of Cero from the woman, it was his brutality that confined her to the body of a child, never able to fully recover, and it is his presence now that would invoke the same phantom pain upon the demoted Fourth Espada. Simply from the man’s cold black glance, she would feel as if her bones had been broken once more, her body squished in an iron grasp, her traumatized brain severed once more. That is, until his glance shifts away.
3rd, this seat means nothing to him. That is, besides the broken and decrepit body of the pathetic little man who lays hunched over in his chair. The hierarchy of the food chain seems to be in upset, as the young fourth espada smacks and berates the nearly-conscious
third espada. Though he was a stranger to Kassius, it mattered very little, as the brute savors the idea of beating someone who is already gravely injured. As such, while his glance shifts away from Elliora, and his body passes by the Third Espada chair, a tendril would lash out at sonido-speeds, colliding against the back of the chair. A small and simple flick, and yet it carried enough power to send the chair flying forward into the table, carving itself into the structure as it itself became embedded within. Naturally, should Elliseo not conjure the strength to move, or utilize some technique to negate the sheer force and sonido-speed, he would find the table and chair functioning like a guillotine. He would be sliced in half at the waist, the upper half of his torso sliding across the table, carried with the momentum, while the chair remains fixed into the table’s side, keeping his lower half pinned beneath it.
2nd, Hellidoro’s chair. Though the idiot is incapable of sitting in it, being perched on the cracked-table. Kassius’ toothed-grin and ecstatic eye now locks upon the embodiment of the sun.
The purple-haired buffoon had tasted delicious. The texture of his skull and brains mashed between Kassius’ teeth far exceeded whatever pathetic delight the Millian were capable of invoking. Surprisingly, it would seem that the fool had grown back the top part of his head, and somehow manage to survive his brain being chomped in half. Yet just like Elliora, a full recovery was impossible, the battle damage forever crippling the second espada. Already an imbecile, now the Segunda was quit literally a half-wit, lacking the parts of his brain associated with speech, understanding, and consciousness. Instead, Kassius could tell that the mentally-crippled espada is nothing more than a creature of instinct, acting on his every urge and desire, pursuing combat like a dog in heat. This is fine to the Cero Espada, who welcomes such simpleness compared to the ideocracies of his new friend Marcos.
1st. Where had that obnoxious idiot gone off to anyway? He had freed Kassius from his prison, directing him to the proverbial sandbox that was Karakura Town. Yet, the Human World was not the playground Kassius had anticipated. The two had split just as quickly as they had united, each setting out to find something worthy of their attention. Last Kassius recalls he had told the idiot to shut the fuck up, and so the Primera did. Setting his sights on the Quincy Empress, it was his clownish behavior that triggered the Quincy to go into literal God Mode. Yet just as Kassius was about to have fun, he had disappeared as suddenly as he arrived. The fact that Marcos isn’t here in his seat now makes it seem like the idiot is hiding. Could it be that the coward was the reason Kassius had been sent back here?! How dare he tease the Brute!
Finally, the cero espada approaches his seat, the closest one to the God King’s throne. Pulling the chair out, he looks up to the God King, his grin contracting to show the entirety of his gums, his smile seeming less like that of joy and more like that of a snarling predator. Yet his eyes show nothing but unfiltered ecstasy at the idea of brutalizing this deity yet again.
The last time the two had met, Kassius had no idea he was playing with a God. Max, for the first time in his existence, was pulled from the title of deity and felt what it was like to be mortal. Terror gripped the heart of the fearless, just as he had fallen to the grasp of the terrible. The great and untouchable God King had nearly been devoured by the Cero Espada, and for this crime, Kassius was forever imprisoned in a cell of his literal own making. Yet with fear comes respect, and Kassius had earned both that day in the God King’s eyes. Now, the Cero Espada does in fact serve Hueco Mundo, in his own way, as an inhumane weapon of war, to eradicate any enemy who the God King cannot allow to exist.
For just a moment, perceptible only to the God King, and perhaps the all seeing eye of the whale espada, an intensity flickers in Kassius’ own eye. For a moment, it seems that whatever plans Max intends to announce would be cut short, as the hierarchy of the Arrancar would be plunged once more into chaos. This moment was when Kassius’ instincts had shot like adrenaline through his body, every fiber of his being wishing to reach out and consume the pale-skinned jackass once again. Max too, would know that the means he had used to dispatch Kassius the first time would not work again, and should a battle break out, it was likely that nobody else in this room would come out a survivor. For this moment, the idea of invasion, the idea of the espada, was nearly relegated to idealistic fancy, not fact. However, for the first time perhaps ever, Kassius’ better judgment overcame his instincts.
Taking his seat, he plunges down into his chair, once again shaking the very ground. Throwing his feet up, his black boots strike against the top of the fractured table. He reclines backwards, throwing his hands behind his head, seemingly unbothered by the influx of Reiatsu coming from the God King, and completely unnoticing of the non-espada's. His grin does not falter, as a deep, deplorable, chuckle resonates from his gut and echoes, baritone, through the room. His eye looks upon those gathered around the espada table, combining with his posture and grin as though daring anyone to try anything. The three previous victims, which are currently some of the strongest beings in this room let alone this entire realm, would find it curious that the Brute was showing so much restraint.
Yet unlike Hellidoro, Kassius is not stupid. His mind is on what his hands should have been on, the glowing blue entity back in the human world. While those currently in this room would serve to satisfy Kassius for a brief moment, their entertainment factor was minimal, and they were easily and readily accessible anytime. No, Kassius needed the idiotic little Cat, or at least people like him. He knew that those in this room possess knowledge and abilities that he doesn’t. Knowledge of where to find more foes like the God he had just encountered, and the ability to send him to them. So, he had decided to hear out this God-King, and count himself among these Espada, for the duration of this meeting. Should the God-King not propose an enticing enough offer, reason enough to remain tame and shackled, then without a doubt, Kassius would rise from this chair and pursue the easy prey.
"Fuck am I glad to see you guys!"
