Nana would feel her hair flutter, a simple feeling, expected even, as high up in the sky as they were. From there, Amanda, and Nana, it seems, would notice the blades having moved at Shunpo speeds. However, the blades had manifested mere inches from Nana’s skin, how had they instantaneously arrived there? The answer is simple, they didn’t. The blade-equipped tendrils had already spread from Kassius behind the Quincy, and initiated an attack, before doubling back to then ensnare her. This means that the sensation Nana had felt, the one Amanda had witnessed, was not a gentle breeze through the Shinigami’s hair, but a strike, which moved through flesh uninterrupted.
Yet…Nana would feel nothing.
“Shisseki.” (叱責, "Rebuke")
“Hm.”
Nana would activate her shikai, transforming he small wakizashi into two hooked blades. The speed and reaction time of this shinigami would be impressive to a layman, having observed the secondary threat, activated shikai, and gone to block all in the amount of time a shunpo-level strike takes to land. What’s more, the Shinigami appears intelligent enough to know that she would not succeed in slicing through the density of the muscle, nor be strong enough to resist the force of the blow. Instead, she hopes to block the bladed edge, and be sent a safe distance away. In this regard, she is successful.
The moment Nana attempts to block Kassius’ strike, she is hit with the full momentum behind the swing. Even anticipating being launched back, it is clear she underestimated the strength of her opponent. Immediately, she is launched at neck breaking speeds into the ground below. Smacked down from the sky, she moves as if fired from a canon, unable to counteract the strength of her momentum to otherwise stabilize herself, even with shunpo. From Amanda’s perspective, Nana was simply there, and then she wasn't.
The Shinigami is flicked away like a booger, hurdled into the concrete below; she mimics Kassius’ own arrival. Plummeting through a building, which hardly serves to slow her momentum, she is fired like a bullet into the concrete, and through the street below. This initial impact would undoubtedly serve as sufficient enough to shatter the bones of her Shinigami body, and yet it would not end there. Moving at such speed, she would be unable to process the damage done to her nor see her surroundings. Plummeting into the subway system, she passes through the top and bottom of an oncoming train, then crashes through the ground below. Repeatedly her body is hit with the shock of being splattered on concrete, as she shoots through cement barriers, metal pipes, and pushes on down past the sewer system. It is only the bed rock, the very foundation of the small Karakura Town, that succeeds in halting her descent.
At this point, Nana’s body would have undergone layer after layer of impact, repeatedly colliding against the structures of the human world after having been swat away by Kassius blade. Though she succeeded in halting any additional cuts to her body, she instead replaced her fate with blunt damage. Even still, the end of his descent would not serve as a moment of peace or stillness. Even should she remain conscious at this point, and see through the blood that blinds her eyes, all she would witness is every structure, layer, and obstacle that she just crashed through, now collapse inward, falling down upon her and burying her in layers of sediment and debris. From above, the disappearance of Nana is replaced with the sudden emergence of a crater below.
What’s worse, neither party was given a chance to see her face. Well, except for Kassius of course, as one of his tendrils retracts, placing it directly into his open hand.
“You don’t look that strong…”
That initial breeze, which was not the wind, was in truth generated from one of Kassius' blades. Passing harmlessly upwards in front of her, it would serve to slice skin from muscle, quite literally wiping the serious expression from Nana’s face. Kassius had wanted to get a closer look at this Shinigami, not expecting to see one next to the new victim he had discovered. The last shinigami he encountered was the one responsible for sending him to Hueco Mundo, and so he decided a closer inspection might be worth it, if only for sentimental reasons.
Analyzing the fragile features of the shinigami he had just smacked from existence, Kassius fails to notice the transformation occurring at the end of one of his Tendrils. The silver hue of his organic-steel corrodes into a golden glimmer, slowly spreading downwards through the limb, increasing its weight and siphoning a noticeable amount of reiatsu from the appendage.
Taking advantage of this lapse in attention, his initial victim, the curious cowgirl possessing such unique abilities, launches a capsule of condensed spiritual energy into the air. The movement triggered from her action causes Kassius to instinctively respond, like a snapping dog. His jaws open and his neck snaps to bite off her head, only to close harmlessly in the air, encapsulating the thrown
Gintō (銀筒,
Silver Tube). It would seem the cowgirl performed a disappearing act of her own. Distracted by the face in his hands, Kassius had not followed her movement, nor seen her disappear. Before he could lament this fact however, the ginto explodes in his mouth, forming a
Gritz (五架縛 [グリツ],
Gurittsu; Japanese for "
Five Rack Ties"), which pushes against the ivory fortress of his teeth, and inflates the side of his cheek. The Gritz is incapable of expanding, meeting the end of its resistance within Kassius' mouth. While he himself appears only mild surprised for a moment, then begins to chew away at the material unbothered, as though it were merely a ball of gum.
His two victims had up and disappeared on him. Nana having been launched into the ground and buried, Amanda having run off in terror. This left Kassius standing alone in the air, chewing his gum, lost and bored. Of course, there was the arrival of the new shinigami, who had so wisely chosen to observe from a distance and not interfere. However, to Kassius, this young fly on the wall was exactly that, an insect unworthy of notice. Lacking any sensing ability, the Cero Espada is clueless towards the arrival of the low seated shinigami, who were as inconsequential it seems as the humans. Instead, he tosses the face over his shoulder, discarding it like a used wrapper littered onto the ground. His single eye slowly looks around as his eyelid begins to droop. The boredom encompassing him may seem like exhaustion, but fatigue is not in the Brute’s repertoire. No, the disinterest he is beginning to show is not a good sign for the people of Karakura, as it means he is begging to slip away into a catatonic state of mindless murder.
That is, until he sees a blue light streaking across the sky.
Like a child watching a shooting star, Kassius becomes fascinated by the twinkle in his eye. The blue light appears similar to the cowgirl he was hoping to consume, which causes the smile on his face to twist at the edges of his mouth. His eyelid opens wide, as his pupil begins to constrict. Focusing so intently on the small speck in the air, Kassius pupil begins to glow a faint red, reiatsu channeling into his eye. The legs of his muscles begin to constrict, hinting towards another devastating launch through the city. Yet just as both actions were about to reach their peak, just as the far away Quincy was about to be struck from the sky…
PEEEEEW
A beam of blue energy shoots through his skull, piercing through his lower jaw and exploding out the other side of his cranium. Should Kassius of had a brain, or regular organs, this hidden surprise attack might have been something of a feat. instead, it serves only to recapture the Cero’s attention. To Amanda’s surprise, Kassius would appear completely unbothered by the sudden hole in the side of his head. He had not even flinched when the beam struck him. The expression on his face was akin to an adult who had just been punched by a toddler, as his head turns towards the Quincy woman’s direction. From her scope, she would see the hole in his head close up on its own, returning him to pristine condition, as a bored expression forms on his face.
Unable to locate the woman at such a far away distance, as obscured by entire city districts, skyscrapers, rural homes, and construction sites, Kassius merely uses the trajectory of the blast to pinpoint her general direction. Looking now to the tendril which at this point had turned solid gold, easily weighing ten tons, Kassius thinks for only a split second. The very next, and the tendril is gone. Severed from his arm, it flies, launched as a projectile, towards Amanda’s location. Of course, it is not as accurate as the quincy’s shot, where she was a sniper, Kassius was artillery.
Launched with a superior strength to even that which would incapacitate Nana, The Golden Missile flies through the air with so much resistance that it increases its radius of destruction. Passing over the city at supersonic speeds, anything below it would explode a mere second after the projectile passes over. The gush of air destroys the city districts, collapses the skyscrapers, obliterates the homes, and decimates the construction site. How far away had Amanda run? To the outskirts of the city? It would not matter, as the force of the blunt missile would obliterate everything in that cardinal direction.
In this way, Kassius did not need to know Amanda’s location. Did not need to target her position. Even if she ran, even if she hid, there was nowhere for her to go. Instead, being so heavily concealed within the depths of a construction site, her hiding place would become her tomb. The golden missile passes harmlessly overhead, and in this moment, the entire site that Amanda hid in would fall on top of her. The resounding
woosh of the sound catching up to the projectile would be like that of a jet roaring through the air. The very ground would shake from the soundwaves alone, far after the missile had come and gone. While Amanda, buried under an entire structure of rubble, would be unable to see the missile pass by over head, fading into the distance as it runs out of city to destroy and ultimately collides with nothing.
Kassius, of course, witnesses none of it. Turning his rejuvenated head after firing off the tendril, he instead tries to search the sky for that speck one more time. Unable to find the new victim zipping about, the Cero instead tries to recall which direction he had been heading. It was clear from the power the speck emitted and the speed he moved that he too was searching for a fight. Kassius was starting to wish that the obnoxious cat had not left him alone after all. At least the idiot could have pointed him towards some victims before Kassius snapped his purple neck.
Releasing a disappointed sigh, his breath steams in the cold air of the night sky. The smoke that floats up from the flaming destruction below, fails to surround the Espada. Instead, it suddenly disperses, before the Brute himself disappears. The release of his constricted muscles recreates the sonic boom, in the skies above Kara, as the Espada launches himself in a similar manner to that of the golden missile. Flying overhead, his travel would leave a wake of destruction behind him, carving through Karakura on his way towards the Quincy's last seen location.
