Crows x Souls

"I wanna be cut so that my breath is gone before my body hits the ground. That's the kind of death I wanna have." — Nnoitra Gilga. 

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Nnoitra was many things. A Hollow being the most basic one. And with that as a foundation, the most vile things anyone could think of, anyone could do, were all part of his character trait. Mere attributes that made the Hollow who he is to the present day.

But one of the things Nnoitra wasn't was being afraid. Ironically, Hollows who were creatures of mass of negative emotions were the ones that were least afraid. So was fear not a bad thing… but a good one instead?

Yes they felt fear, but it wasn't an emotion that came quick and easy to them. Unless it strikes the core of their being, Hollows move without fear.

Then what about the Shinigami? Did Hollows fear them? Maybe. Except it was mostly hate. The only race they truly ever feared was the Quincies. 

For Shinigami, the act of killing a Hollow was no different than purifying all the mass of negative emotions that formed them, because that was what it was. As for the Quincies? They killed Hollows. Straight and simple.

Oh they hated Quincies too, but it was nowhere as close to how much they feared them. 

So in a way the only positive emotion that Hollows had was fear. The fear of death. That ultimate despair. 

And that was the core of Nnoitra Gilga's being. He took the despair of death all Hollows feared and fashioned it into a weapon. One that would protect him from death more than any other, and one that would bring down that greatest despair on his foes more than any other. 

And he vowed. He would show this Shinigami Captain the true meaning of despair. 

His Zanpakutō, Santa Teresa, unlike the standard form of most Zanpakutō had a very long hilt with two crescent moons joined together on their backs with a chain that extended from the end of its hilt to the tail of his back. 

He felt the Captain's eyes on his blade and it made him laugh even harder. He would soon be in for a rude awakening. The passive ability of his Zanpakutō was to increase the already unholy hardness of his Hierro, with his Resurrección easily being magnitudes higher than how it was now. 

'Oh yes! This is it! I can almost taste it. Sweet, oh sweet des-ʼ

His entire body function stopped working and it took a few seconds to understand what his body had just done. 

His body retreated… or was it his brain that forced his body to retreat. 

In the face of the Shinigami Captain and his mismatched sword, he, Nnoitra Gilga, had retreated. 

"Huh?" 

"What is it? Why are you avoiding my blade?" The Captain's words were akin to a loud bang jolting his brain out of its stunned stupor. 

He had retreated in front of the Shinigami and his single black blade. 

His brain forced his eyes to focus on the blade in the Captain's hands and the other empty hand as if trying to tell him that something was wrong but Nnoitra could not be bothered to listen.

Wildly, he jumped back into the fray, swinging his crescent moon blade at the Captain with the force of his unbridled hatred and forcing the Captain on the back foot. Yes, this was how it was supposed to be. 

As an Arrancar, and also an Espada at that, Lord Aizen's words that they were superior to both Hollow and Shinigami rang more truer than the telling of the dawn of creation. 

"And I had almost doubted those words because of you, Shinigami!"

He twirled his sword around him and sent his flying towards the Shinigami with renewed speed that would have rendered him unable to block or dodge, except the Captain had simply burst into crows when the crescent moon blade touched the hem of his clothes. 

"How do you like this, Shinigami? Do you feel it creeping in?" The difficult expression that the Captain tried to hide under his mask of nonchalance sent a tingling down his spine. It was something Nnoitra would kill to see. 

"Cero!!" Golden balls of condensed destructive Reiatsu homed in on the Captain who impressively managed to slice through both of them and began his run towards Nnoitra. 

'Fast!' Was Nnoitra's single thought as what was supposed to be a run in turned into a step in. One moment he was a distance away, the next moment he was half of that, and the next he was right in Nnoitra's face with his blade halfway through an upswing. 

Nnoitra smirked evilly and brought down his Zanpakutō in a vicious cleave. 

The Shinigami would try to block or retreat and Nnoitra would just follow. Block? Why would he? Nothing could pierce his Hierro. 

Black cold. 

Those were the only words he could use to describe the sensation he felt moments before his brain hijacked his body and forced him to retreat, albeit a moment too late. 

Whether it was his brain's way of coping but he swore he saw the same scene play out over a dozen times all in the span of an instant. 

"Huh?" 

The cold was still there. Starting from his abdomen to straight across his chest. An eerie coldness. 

He looked down and saw black flames stretching a diagonal line across his torso. His brain had yet to filter the information from the picture his eyes were receiving when Nnoitra got the message. 

This guy could cut him up… 

This guy had cut him up… 

Oh, that's right.. This guy could kill him… 

… No, it still felt wrong. 

'This guy… He's killing me, isn't he?'

And that was when it flowed in. That deep-rooted emotion that Nnoitra's abilities had dulled down until they were replaced by arrogance. 

Fear… and from that fear came the despair of death. 

"What is the matter? Why are you frozen up?" The man was already up in his face with hardly a few inches separating them from touching each other and yet, 'Since when were his eyes red?'

"…This feeling, I know it." It felt as if a demon from the darkest and deepest crevices of Hueco Mundo was staring deep into his soul. "Tell me… do you despair?"

A rage-filled shout (or was it a scream) and a violent burst of Reiatsu and his brain kicked in his ultimate defense system. Whether it was a conscious action or not, Nnoitra Gilga had manifested his Resurrección and when the dust settled he came to a grim realization: he had gone against Aizen's direct order of not releasing their Resurrección under any circumstances until he gave the word. 

"I'LL KILL YOU!" 

He roared in madness, the frantic warnings of his brain buried deep in the rage of his mind, and attacked his arch nemesis. 

Other than tremendously boosting the defenses of his Hierro and all the natural abilities he had as a Hollow, his Resurrección grew out two extra sets of arms and each of them held onto a giant scythe. His regeneration was so high that he could instantly grow out new limbs without any adverse effect to himself. 

Truly, his current visage was an embodiment of despair. 

His foe on the other hand, his most dangerous enemy of eons past, held up that wretched black blade of his and muttered some undecipherable words to himself. 

Nnoitra flew towards him, his speed so blindingly fast that his foe shouldn't have been able to react except that he did, with a pair of red eyes staring so intently at him with cold calmness. 

Enton: Sever and Swallow.

The blade sliced through two of his hands with jarring ease and when he regenerated them, they combusted into black flames that ate away at his body that he had to cut off both arms just to get rid of the black flames. 

"Your defenses are impressive, I'll admit that much, but not infallible." The Captain said but all Nnoitra heard was the apparent mockery and he saw red. 

'Red… like the clouds on his robes..?'

"In the end you will lose because of one thing…"

No matter what he did to stop it, the despair kept creeping in. 

He attacked wildly. Hurtling his Zanpakutōs anywhere he sensed the red-eyed devil and firing off his Cero and haphazardly. 

He could feel it now. 

How long has it been? Since when did his vision start dimming? Since when were his senses constricted to but a few meters? Since when did he forget the man held two blades?... Since when did this man become his lifelong enemy? Since when did he start fearing this man? Why did he even use his Resurrección? 

'So this is it huh? The Bankai of a Captain.. How fearsome indeed. If this is the end, I will at least take solace in the fact that I died to the Bankai of a Shinigami Captain, and not to some random Hollow.' He wanted to smirk at the thought. 

He felt a gaze looking down at him, those red eyes staring at him as if it could read his innermost thoughts, and then the man opened his mouth to speak. 

"At the end of the day you were not as strong as you thought."

He wanted to scoff. Of course his hated enemy would lie even in his death-

"If you were, my Shikai alone would not have been enough."

He could feel the darkness closing in faster than before. 'Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait…' 

At the precipice of death, Nnoitra Gilga felt true despair. 

. 

. 

. 

Maybe, just maybe, this was the death he truly wanted. 

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