AOMR 27

One of my longer AOMR chapters, enjoy. Also, Poll at the end of this chapter, so I'll pin it for a few days.

Yamamoto walked.

Smoke veiled the air as plasma was vented into the surroundings. All that could be seen around him were destroyed and crumbled structures—buildings teetering on the edge of collapse, with many having already succumbed, rendering the already ruined roads borderline untraversable to anyone. But Yamamoto was not just anyone. He did not deign to move aside for any man, god, or thing.

When something was in his way, it moved.

His trailing footsteps led him past the carnage that was once the iron fortress of Beijing. The echoes of his cane tapping against the ground rang out like gunshots in the otherwise quiet area. Its only competition was the crackling of fire, the crumbling of bodies, and the groaning of tortured buildings.

Yamamoto walked, unhurried, as his footsteps carried him further away from the gates and deeper into the city. A city that was rapidly being evacuated, primarily in a straight line. That was only half the reason Yamamoto wasn’t in a hurry. This was his one last act of courtesy: allowing them to evacuate the civilians in his path. For everything else died in his wake, leaving behind a trail of magma and plasma.

His spiritual senses picked up on movement closing in—movements that had nothing to do with the frantic evacuation of civilians.

“You will send more to their deaths, then,” he whispered, turning his head toward the corner of a crumbled building that had once been a fast-food joint a few hours ago. Now, all that remained was a burnt-out, charred hulk of stone and steel.

His eyes were closed, but that didn’t matter. The only reason he turned his head to the corner was as a show of attention. Other than his attention, the corner of the building was nothing special—an entry into another alleyway that interconnected with others, while also providing workers access to the kitchen.

It was filled with combusted refuse that had proven more resilient to his fire, and the ashes of those who had been less resistant. Other than that, the figure standing there fooled every other human sense. There was no heartbeat for even Yamamoto’s ears to detect. No scent for the nose to decipher other than charred refuse and bodies. No shadow for any eyes to discern.

Unfortunately for the cape, Yamamoto saw with more than his eyes, smelled with more than his nose, and heard with more than his ears. For in the presence of his spiritual sense, the shard in the figure's head was all too distinctive.

It wove a web of nothingness, speaking of secrets. It obscured the figure's presence, removing them from any conceivable method of detection. But the shard had no reference for Yamamoto’s spiritual sense. In his sight, the figure was a veritable bonfire.

Yamamoto could feel the figure stiffen, unable to react at being seen for the first time, even while under the influence of their ability. Then, he could almost taste the confusion, followed by certainty that Yamamoto’s attention was a mistake. So, Yamamoto deprived them of that delusion as he spoke once more.

“Your comrades are coming. I do not believe their presence would slow or stop me, but they would come anyway. Then they would die, like all who have faced me.”

There was silence, but Yamamoto had already begun to pass the spot where the figure lay concealed. He had no plans of slowing or stopping for their sake. He refocused his attention on the road and took ten more steps. Ten more steps where his presence marred the world. His footsteps turned the road to slag, while his passage scorched the buildings black. If the hidden figure had not moved, Yamamoto’s spiritual pressure, combined with his flames, would have left them a charred corpse.

This time, the new incoming figures were buildings away, moving fast enough that Yamamoto concluded they were not traveling by locomotive or taking a path through the road. Instead, the six figures flew—moving in perfect unison, not a single one slower or faster.

“They’re not my comrades!” a squeaky voice finally called out. Yamamoto had noticed the figure had survived by quickly leaving his range, yet he was even more surprised that they would return to him just as swiftly. Did they have no love for their mortal shell?

The figure stepped out of a new alleyway, conveniently outside his range or reach, at least not unless he wanted to immediately drown the city and continent in death and flames. A decision he was slowly and steadily considering with every single false breath he took.

“I’m here to expose them. The Yangban and the CUI.”

Yamamoto’s reply was silence, other than a brief moment of attention he paid the figure. She was a whelp—perhaps two decades old, yet her features were worn, making her look older. Green eyes with heavy bags beneath them. Dirty blonde hair, loosely tied into a tail. Her clothes were ratty, and her gear was slipshod and ragged. She had something around her neck—a contraption Yamamoto recognized as a camera. Yet the most interesting thing about her was the emotion in her voice: hatred.

A foreign woman, stalking through the pride of the Yangban with nothing but her power to hide her, the clothes on her back, and the camera around her neck.

“They—”

“Silence, whelp,” Yamamoto cut her off as the six figures finally rounded the corner, and their eyes met. “If you are no foe, then leave. My flames of my soul know no alliance.”

A second later, the girl slinked back into the shadows of the alleyway. But Yamamoto could clearly see she now held the camera in her hands, a look of desperation on her face as she mouthed the words: Live. Please.

Yamamoto discarded the unintended insult she had given. The chaff the Yangban had sent before him were little more than gnats to swat.

The first and only interesting thing Yamamoto noticed about the flying figures was the chains that bound and connected the shards of the capes. Metaphorical chains that linked the shards superimposed with their heads, leading to each other, with the central figure as the main node. whose own chain extended further into the distance, connecting to something outside his range.

The figures hovered in formation, their movements unnaturally synchronized, their expressions blank behind their red masks. It didn't take him long to come to the rational conclusion. These were no humans. No warriors. Not even whelps. They were tools, nothing more and perhaps even less. Their shards pulsed with a dull, mechanical rhythm, bound by the will of a distant master due to the weakness of their owners. To Yamamoto, they were less than insects, they were puppets, their strings pulled by an unseen hand.

The central figure, a man clad in a uniform bearing the insignia of the Yangban, stepped forward. His voice was cold, devoid of emotion, as if stripped of all humanity. “Yamamoto. You have trespassed on the sovereign territory of the CUI. Surrender, and your death will be swift.”

Yamamoto’s expression remained as stone. He did not respond. Words were wasted on the dead. Instead, he reduced his grip on his spiritual preasure. The air around him shimmered with heat, distorting the ruins and the figures before him. The ground beneath his feet cracked and hissed, molten rock bubbling up as if the earth itself recoiled from his presence.

The Yangban operatives moved as one, their shards flaring to life. Beams of energy lanced toward Yamamoto, each one capable of vaporizing steel and stone. A single attack, yet fired from six hands at once, each from a different angle. Yamamoto vaguely noted the way the third man's shard pulsed hard before they had all fired the six beams of energy.

Once again, Yamamoto found himself in a situation where he would be attacked from multiple angles, and he was given two choices: to dodge, a feat that would take a single flash step, or to weather it, an act of overwhelming pride befitting a Shinigami of his stature.

In truth, there was only one real decision.

Yamamoto called out, his voice as gravelly as ever. “Bakudo #8: Seki.”

His reiatsu flexed in response, twisting over itself to create six balls of blue light positioned above his stooped form. The beams of light struck down at him with alacrity and speed, but wherever they were about to strike, the blue orbs of energy appeared in their path, deflecting the six attacks. The deflected beams flew away, slamming into whatever remained of the structures that had managed to survive his presence.

Before the six masked capes could react, Yamamoto took a heavy step forward—a step that was paradoxically slow and fast. In an instant, he appeared mid-air in front of the lead whelp who had initiated the charge against him. Without a single word, he tapped the knotted head of his cane against the man’s sternum and uttered a single word.

“Begone.”

The impact was catastrophic. The man’s upper body disintegrated in an explosion of blood, bone, and viscera, his organs scattering like gruesome confetti. The lower half of his body hung in the air for a moment, suspended in time, before collapsing to the ground in a lifeless heap. Yamamoto’s spiritual sense tracked the man’s shard as it flickered out, the chain connecting it to the others snapping with a force that sent ripples through whatever connection they shared

The remaining five capes faltered, their shared powers unraveling as they lost their ability to fly and plummeted to the ground. Yamamoto observed them with closed eyes, his expression one of detached indifference. He had no interest in the mechanics of their abilities, but centuries of battle had honed his instincts. Killing the prime had severed the link, leaving the rest vulnerable in their dependence of the borrowed power.

Someone further off had connected the six capes together, binding them through their shards. Six powers shared by six people, making them more than the sum of their parts. More powerful than they should have been. But the downside came with the loss of the true owner of the power mid-battle, as he had just demonstrated.

Yet, considering the distance the remaining five had fallen, they should have been dead. Yamamoto’s lips curled into a faint frown. Mundane humans were fragile, but these capes were unnaturally durable as shown by his soft tap—which should have obliterated the leader’s entire body but only destroyed everything from his chest upward. Which meant they must have had someone with great durability whose power was being shared among them. Yamamoto focused his spiritual sense and picked up the shard of the person whose energy flared the most when they landed.

This individual was slightly bulkier than the rest, even though the uniform red cloth they wore tried to hide it. He was the one who made it just the slightest bit harder to kill his partners, so Yamamoto rectified that. Without warning, Yamamoto dropped from the sky like a meteor, his feet slamming into the man’s skull with a force that shattered the ground beneath them. The sonic boom from his descent tore through the air, sending the remaining capes tumbling like ragdolls. Their screams of pain echoed as they skidded across the jagged terrain, their suddenly soft skin tearing against the broken granite.

Whatever had dampened their emotions and made them more machine than man weakened under the surge of pain, and Yamamoto could hear muttered curses. The fastest to recover struggled to his feet and tore off his mask, revealing scarred lips, dead brown eyes with the barest spark of life, and a shaved head.

He opened his mouth and spat out a voluminous wave of green cloud that melted everything it touched as it rolled across the landscape, turning everything in its path into a liquid substrate until it reached Yamamoto, who stood still and unmoving.

Another cape hastily threw out orbs from a sewn-in pocket. They rolled across the destroyed ground, surrounding Yamamoto and the poisonous fog. A click rang out, and a blue light enveloped the fog, trapping Yamamoto inside.

There was long silence.

Yet, unlike the men at the gate, these operatives were more trained, more experienced. There was no sigh of relief at his supposed demise, only shared, furtive glances between the remaining four capes. After all, they had lost their mover and brute in two seconds, faster than most of them could even react. They knew the only reason they had been able to land a hit was because of Number 015’s enhanced reflexes, which came with his power package.

“Gods…” Number 020 whispered through her mask, her slightly accented Mandarin the only sign she was not a true blood like the rest of them. Number 015 looked back at their resident Thinker and knew in his heart what had happened without even needing to tap into her power. He had known this was a suicide mission from the beginning, yet not a single one of them was weak. Not a single one was less than 020. Null had chosen them appropriately. They should have been able to stall for at least five minutes, yet the first five seconds had left two of them dead. He turned to face their opponent, and that was the last thing he knew, accompanied by a crack that deafened him.

The rest of the numbered Yagaban capes staggered back as a beam of light erupted. It carved its way through the air, displacing sound, air, and molecules as it slammed into Number 015, obliterating their second-in-command. The only sign a man had stood there a split second ago was the black, scorched ground marking where his feet had been.

“Now there are three,” a gravelly voice rang out as the old man walked out of the destroyed cage. The poisonous fog drifting with the wind, while what remained was burnt up by the passage of the lightning.

The next moment, the remaining three capes slammed into the ground hard enough for their screams to ring out in pain as muscles bruised, skin tore, organs ruptured, and bones broke. Number 015 had been the last person with a brute rating among them, and his death meant their proximity to the old man spelled certain doom. They struggled to look up at him, but the closer he walked, the more the pressure increased. Slowly, eyes bulged out of their sockets, skulls deformed, veins ruptured, and their hearts beat so hard they exploded, until all that remained were three messy bodies in craters.

“Now there are none,” Yamamoto judged as he looked down at the three craters. He could feel a stronger group flying toward him, but they were farther away. This group had been sent to slow and wear him down, and so would the next, and the next, and the next. Sacrifices sent forward in an act to tire him out.

He turned to continue his journey. He had learned all he needed about how their powers were shared, and while it was a curiosity, it was not something he thought would put him in danger.

“It’s you!” a hoarse voice called out from outside his range, and he remembered the girl. This time, her hands were holding her camera, and she stared at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. “The man who killed Behemoth.”

Yamamoto’s reply was silence, but the whelp spoke with a conviction that would not waver. “Why—why are you here?”

Yamamoto turned away and began to walk once more toward where he had pinpointed Mei Mei’s signature. “They have taken something of mine. I would see it returned.” Yet before he could take another step, the obstinate whelp spoke again, and this time, she said something that surprised him enough to freeze him for a second.

First, she laughed. A laugh that was as tortured as it was mad. “If the person they took has been with them for longer than five hours, I’m afraid you’ve lost them. That is Number 01’s power: to brainwash capes.” The girl's voice twisted, pure pain lacing through it as she finished. “I didn’t know until I came here to rescue my sister, and… she tried to kill me.”

Yamamoto’s eyes finally cracked open, and the sheer act forced the world to groan in response. The whelp stumbled back in surprise, and Yamamoto pinned her with a stare. He searched for the slightest hint that her words were a lie, using both his reiatsu and his physical eyes, yet they returned the same story. This was the whelp’s pain-laced truth.

He remebered her reason for staying.

"You are wasting your time." He began, "By the time I depart, not enough would remain for your story to matter."

Yamamoto turned back to face the path he was taking, his now open eyes looking straight ahead as his cane unfurled to reveal his sword. So, they had not simply planned to tire him out. His calloused palm gripped the well-worn hilt of Ryujin Jakka, and he could almost feel the sword’s eagerness to respond to him.

So far, he had been content to summon heat and flames without unsealing the sword, but now he would need something more. Something to deal with the dozens of gnats flying toward him while the rest created obstructions to hinder his path.

A single glance at the girl was enough to convey his intentions as she scrambled away, faster than humanly possible, yet her hands remained on her camera and her eyes on him. That was all the time he could spare her. Instead, he returned his attention to what lay ahead.

So far, he had ensured non-combatant casualties were nonexistent, but from this point onward, it would not matter. Every single being in his path, superpowered whelp or mundane yet uniformed one, It didn't matter. As long as they drew breathe, they were enemies, and he would treat them all the same.

He raised his sword and swung it in a single, devastating arc, uttering a single yet devastating sentence, “All things in the universe, turn to ashes.”

The world erupted in flames. Buildings, streets, and the very air itself combusted as an inferno swept across the city. The heat was unimaginable, the light blinding. And in the heart of it all stood Yamamoto, his sword hissing.

Beijing burned.

…

Kenta sat in a cross-legged meditation pose. His eyes opened as his power began to react to something, Something so far off, yet he could feel a heat in his chest as his skin began to coarse into small, fish-like scales. Something was happening. He could hear the screams, the calls for movement, feel the ridiculously rising heat, the smell of charred flesh and burnt bones. But most of all, Kenta could smell the delicious scent of opportunity.

Footsteps rang outside the darkness of his cell. The scent of cinnamon told him all he needed to know about the people that walked, the following voice cemented it.

“Where is she?!” The voice erupted like a snarl. Kenta could barely make out the language, but he had been here long enough to piece together fragments and extrapolate full sentences. Null was clearly not happy.

“She is kept deeper than the untamed dragon. Work on her is slow, but there is progress,” a silky voice replied to the snarl. It took all of Kenta’s willpower not to attempt breaking his bindings. His time in captivity had taught him patience. Instead, he focused on memorizing the voice. Number One. The Yangban’s brainwashing Thinker. The heavily made-up snake of a man had tried relentlessly to break Kenta, but he had proven too resistant to the man’s Tinker-tech.

“I do not care about your work on her. All that matters is that everything is in position, and our pla—”

A sudden, explosive blast in the distance shook the entire cell, nearly knocking Null and Number One off their feet. Kenta could hear their hearts pounding louder, as his own power reacted to something. The scales on his body grew larger and faster than ever before, his muscles swelling and surging with power. Enough to break his bindings. Instead, Kenta smiled.

Not yet.

AN: Idk, this chapter doesn't sit well with me. Got the broad strokes of what should happen, but i can't put my finger on what's wrong.Anyway I'll come back and give It another look in a couple of days with fresher eyes.

AN 2: Prefered Shikai Incantation? Don't have any true preference, personally feel they're equally badass, but i know some people prefer the second, so the choice is up to you guys. I'll try to re-edit and stick to whatever you guys decide going forward.