Chapter 18: Butterflies and Bait
"No! This…. This is impossible!"
"See, when a real fighter loses momentum in a fight, they try to change up the strategy. You're no fighter, you're an animal through and through."
In front of Chiaki stood Grand Fisher's "human" body, the one that served as a lure for those who could see Spiritual entities. However, it had definitely seen better days, what with the hole that had been blown through it's head. Grand Fisher had instinctively tried to reel it back to avoid damage, but even so, Chiaki's fist had gone clean through it with too much speed to be avoided. The hollow was now literally on the back foot, scrambling to put distance between the two of them. Chiaki on the other hand, looked entirely unconcerned.
|A few moments before|
With Ichigo too far away to help, and Yuzu and Karin paying their respects to their mother's grave, that left Chiaki as the only currently alert member of the Kurosaki siblings. While a part of her felt like she could let things continue on as normal, she'd already determined that her presence alone might throw a wrench into many established events; if she wasn't alert, there was a not insignificant chance that someone could get hurt or killed here. However, she still hasn't fully developed a countermeasure to Grand Fisher's nature: being in the right place at the right time could make the difference, but-
["Hold the phone, that's not entirely true. You can always try and lure him to you. You said before it might not work but… it's worth a shot?"]
Chiaki took a moment to gather her thoughts from Ayane's interruption, but she quickly frowned, still feeling skeptical about this method.
[All that would do is lure him to our general area, he can't distinguish individual reiatsu signatures… it might be good if we tried to look for him, but if he got the drop on us by getting to my sisters first… yeah I'm not letting that happen.]
["Yeah, I guess you've got a point. Wait, hold on…."]
Chiaki could have sworn that she heard the sound of rustling and shuffling objects as Ayane did… something within their shared mental space. Before she could object to anything though, her ally's voice interrupted her once again, this time with an excited and enthusiastic tone.
["Wait, wait, wait! Hear me out! You can do Reikaku! Visualize his spiritual pressure into a ribbon and search for it. It's even more accurate than normal sensing, and you've done it before. I can't believe I didn't think about it before."]
[Huh…. Ok, that's a good one.]
Chiaki had to give credit where credit was due. That was a incredible tool that she had failed to consider because of how it was completely underutilized in the series proper, but it really did solve all their problems. Perhaps she wasn't being as savvy as she thought she was… issues got later though. Chiaki began to rub her hands together together, her pressure compressing around her as she prepared her technique.
"Alright, here goes nothing!"
Since she'd done it before, the process felt a lot easier when done the second time. It was like riding a bike; Once you learned it, you never forgot it. Chiaki didn't even have to close her eyes to focus on the threads of trace reiatsu left in the area, with the one she was looking for being pretty obvious. Of all the souls in such an area, only one had a thread which flowed with such a vibrant, bloody red aura. Not wasting a single moment, Chiaki rushed in the direction of her target, her speed now at the level where she was nothing but a hazy blur to most people, and she pulled her momentum into a single blow that drove a kick into her enemy's stomach:
"GAH!"
|Back in the present|
Already battered and bruised through two kicks, Grand Fisher was running scared. Chiaki didn't bother to try and be intimidating or rush to finish him off, simply walking towards him nonchalantly, a action which scared the hollow even more.
"How are you so strong? A human shouldn't be capable of this?"
"What can I say? I eat my spinach."
Chiaki normally would have simply finished him off by this point, she actively withheld from trying to kill him too early. While she could have ended him at any time… she believed that Ichigo needed to see for himself who Grand Fisher was, in order to gain closure over Masaki's death. If he didn't fight him head on, he might never stop blaming himself, and who knows where that would lead him. It wasn't easy, but she would have to allow Grand Fisher the opportunity to survive, to even seemingly overpower her, all to make it look as real as possible.
"Come here, bitch."
Chiaki went to grab the mask of the hollow with her bare palm; however, she lowered her guard completely, and more importantly, held back her own reiatsu potency, in order to allow him to use the opportunity to take a cheap shot. Sure enough, hoping to ward off his impeding death with frantic strikes, a swipe of Grand Fisher's claws sliced across her clavicle; it wasn't nearly deep enough to reach the heart, but it would bleed everywhere, which was exactly the sort of flesh wound she needed. Chiaki proceeded to feign being an incredible amount of pain and fell to the ground.
"ARGH… you got me bad…"
"Heh, looks like you can dish it out, but not take it woman. Real tough ain't it?"
Chiaki would try and sell the charade by struggling more; however, before her assailant could capitalize on the matter, Chiaki heard a pair of footsteps rushing towards her location.
"Ichigo! That's the hollow!"
"Looks like nasty piece of work!"
Chiaki grinned internally at her brother's presence with Rukia, even as she herself played the part of the damsel in distress, and tried to get him to become emotionally invested in finishing off his enemy.
"Ichigo! Don't be fooled by his tricks, he disguises himself as the ghost of a young girl to lure people in! There's no way he's out of weapons!"
Ichigo nodded, his blade leaned on his shoulder as always. While Grand Fisher turned to face him, Ichigo simply studies his foe, looking at the lure with a hole in its chest and taking in the visage of the ghost that had once led him to be the cause of his mother's death. Then, without any hesitation, Ichigo swung the blade downwards, chopping off an arm from the hollow and eliciting a blood-curdling scream from the monster..
"I don't usually like shinigami work… today is an exception though."
Ichigo quickly rushed in, raining down blow after blow on the hollow, as it tried in vain to defend itself against the onslaught of blows that was his unbridled fury. Pretty soon, the hollow was reduced to nothing more than a barely alive pile of broken bones and monster blood straight out of a Goosebumps story. Looking down on his defeated prey, Ichigo simply frowned.
"Next life… choose a different family to stock."
With that, Ichigo cleaved the hollow's head in two, his soul dissipating in a flash of light. Chiaki knew there was almost certainly nothing but hell waiting for him. More importantly however, she was successful in maintaining the important parts of the timeline and keeping things from progressing wrong. From her point of view… everything was going according to plan.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone