The air in the subterranean dome began to scream. The specialized mana-absorbent alloys in the walls hummed a low, discordant note as Kenzo and Kei synchronized their energy. This was "Formation Delta" the peak of their collaborative tactical training. Kenzo's aura flared like a forest fire, while Kei's cryo-mana bled into the atmosphere, turning the oxygen into a swirling, lethal mist of crystalline shards. Grimmjow stood in the center of the mounting storm, his blue hair whipping wildly around his face. A manic, toothy grin split his features as he felt the atmospheric pressure rise. "Now," he barked with his voice cutting through the howl of the wind, "this is getting…"
He didn't get to finish his sentence as Kenzo moved with a burst of speed that finally looked like an S-Ranker's true potential. He was a blur of light, closing the gap in a fraction of a second. Grimmjow's eyes widened with pure, unadulterated joy as he snapped his left forearm up.
CLANG!
The sound of Kenzo's mana-enforced fist striking Grimmjow's bare arm echoed like a hammer hitting an anvil. The shockwave blew the surrounding mist outward in a perfect circle. Grimmjow didn't budge an inch, but the floor beneath his boots spider-webbed from the sheer weight of the blow.
"Now that's fucking better!" Grimmjow laughed out loud, his voice rasping with excitement, "A hell of a lot better! Finally, someone's trying to actually hurt me!"
The confrontation instantly devolved into a display of relentless, high-velocity momentum, Kenzo was masterclass in close-quarters combat and he relied mostly on his extreme strength. He moved so fast and tried to strike at Grimmjow's vitals with a much more lethal punch that would crush anything below S-rank without resistance.
But Grimmjow was in his element. He immediately utilized Sonido, one moment he was in front of Kenzo, the next he was a static-charged shadow to the left. Grimmjow executed a high-velocity handstand kick, his palms slamming into the synthetic floor as he vaulted his entire body weight upward, his heel whistling through the air toward Kenzo's temple.
Kenzo ducked as the wind of the kick ruffling his hair, but Grimmjow didn't let up. As his feet touched the ground again, he spun on a dime, following up with a series of sweeping low kicks that forced Kenzo to leap into the air. While Kenzo was airborne, Grimmjow lunged with a mid-range claw like strike, the sheer physical force of the air displacement hitting was like a literal cannonball.
"Come on! Is that all the 'Elite' has to offer me?" Grimmjow roared, spinning into a high-roundhouse kick, "Show me what you've got! Show me why you're the king of this little hill!"
Suddenly, a massive formation of jagged ice spikes, each the size of a redwood tree, tore through the center of the arena. They weren't aimed at Grimmjow, but at Ulquiorra, who was navigating a separate, silent war with Kei.
Grimmjow had to cancel his follow-up mid-flight, twisting his body in the air as an ice pillar missed his ribs by an inch, not that it would have mattered but it had disrupted his flow. He landed on the side of one of the frozen constructs, his face darkening into a scowl.
"Hey!" Grimmjow yelled, looking over his shoulder at the ice mage. "Keep your damn fight away from mine! You're interrupting my fun, you masked freak!"
Ulquiorra ignored him completely. To Ulquiorra, the battlefield was a chessboard, and Grimmjow was merely a chaotic piece he had to avoid. Ulquiorra moved with a ghostly grace, jumping from one ice construct to another as if they were stepping stones. Kei was relentless, sending wave after wave of freezing death at the pale stranger, but Ulquiorra's movements were minimal and yet it was the absolute peak of efficiency.
A racing spike of ice, reinforced with Kei's "Absolute Zero" mana, shot toward Ulquiorra's head from a blind spot. Without even turning to look, Ulquiorra extended a single hand and punched the tip of the spike.
SHATTER!
The reinforced ice xploded into fine powder. The fight with Kei was dragging on. Of course even with the light show, they all could tell no one here was going all out and Ulquiorra seemed to be analyzing every ounce of the mage's output, his green eyes scanning the mana fluctuations like a scientist.
The Observation Deck
The heavy blast doors of the observation room hissed open, and Minoru let himself into the room, he had felt the mana spike from three floors up and came down running to see what exactly was happening and why did two S-Rankers unleash such mana inside the headquarters.
"What the heck is happening here?!" Minoru shouted, rushing to the railing. "I felt the sensors red-lining from the lobby! Did a monster break out of the—"
He stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping as he saw the chaos below. The three-hundred-meter dome was a disaster zone. Half of it was a frozen wasteland of white crystal, and the other half was being torn apart by the sonic booms of Grimmjow's movements.
"Shit," Minoru whispered, his eyes darting between Kenzo, who was barely holding his own against a laughing Grimmjow, and Kei, who looked like he was throwing everything he had at a man who wasn't even breathing hard, "They're going to level the building if that keeps on! We need to stop the match before it escalates!"
Akari, who was leaning over the railing with a bag of chips in one hand and a look of pure adoration on her face, didn't even look back at him, "Oh, relax, Minoru-chan. It's nothing serious. They're just getting to know each other."
"Nothing serious?!" Minoru pointed a finger at the aren, "Kenzo's is tearing apart the area trying to strike his opponent down! Kei is using his 'Glacier Fall' that's a city-block leveling spell! And those two... they haven't even used a skill yet! They're just... hitting things!"
"Exactly," Ippei added from where he was standing with his arms crossed, his voice sounding uncharacteristically grim. He hadn't moved from his spot since the fight had started, his eyes fixed on Ulquiorra, "Look at the pale one. He hasn't used a single drop of mana and somehow, he's breaking S-Rank ice with raw physical strength alone. Minoru... we aren't just here to watch a spar. We're watching to understand who these two really are and what they are capable of first hand."
—————-
The subterranean training dome groaned again as a mountain of ice, shimmering with a lethal blue hue, erupted from the center of the arena, nearly reaching the observation balcony.
Tatsumi adjusted his glasses, his calm demeanor finally cracking a bit, "Okay... that might be getting slightly out of hand."
Minoru whipped his head toward him, his eyes wide with disbelief, "You think?! The structural integrity sensors are screaming, Tatsumi! If they keep this up, we might just get buried under three hundred meters of concrete!"
Down on the white sands, the air was a chaotic blur of emerald green and electric blue. Kenzo was operating at a capacity he's only ever utilized against the boss. His reflexes were firing like high-voltage. He managed to duck under a spinning back-fist from Grimmjow that whistled through the air with the sound of a jet engine. Sensing a fractional opening, Kenzo lunged forward, closing the gap to neutralize Grimmjow's reach.
As they collided into a tight clinch, Grimmjow didn't struggle against the hold. Instead, he grinned, his eyes glowing with a manic light as he used the momentum of Kenzo's push to launch himself toward one of the few remaining vertical ice pillars. His boots hit the frozen surface with a crack, and using it as a springboard, he vaulted himself back down with a devastating overhead strike.
Kenzo crossed his forearms just in time to catch the blow.
'Heavy! It's like a mountain just fell on me!' Kenzo thought as his arm shook.
The force of the impact drove Kenzo into the ground, a massive crater spider-webbing out from beneath his feet. Dust and pulverized synthetic flooring filled the air again. As the cloud cleared, Grimmjow was standing on the edge of the pit, looking down with a feral smile.
"What's the matter, 'Elite'?" Grimmjow taunted the man, his voice dripping with adrenaline-fueled mockery, "You look like you're starting to realize that gravity is a lot heavier when I'm the one pushing it."
Before Kenzo could even retort, Grimmjow vanished in a burst of Sonido.
The battle shifted into a terrifyingly high-speed exchange that mirrored the brutal efficiency of a death match once more. One thing the observers and Kenzo realized was that Grimmjow's style was pure aggression; he didn't just want to hit Kenzo, he wanted to break through his very existence.
They traded a blur of rapid-fire punches. Grimmjow focused on linear strikes, his fists moving so fast they created miniature sonic booms.
'He's not even using a weapon, but every hit feels like a piercing blade! I can't find a rhythm. Every time I think I have a read on his movement, he changes the angle again. He's not just fast... he's damn chaotic.'
Kenzo attempted a desperate gambit. As Grimmjow swung a heavy lead leg in a devastating roundhouse kick, Kenzo dove in, attempting to catch the leg and take Grimmjow to the ground. It was a perfect execution of a counter-grapple, but Grimmjow didn't react like a human.
Instead of fighting the grab, Grimmjow used the momentum of Kenzo's grip as a fulcrum. He performed a mid-air aerial flip, his body twisting like a panther's. He narrowly avoided Kenzo's follow-up elbow strike, his free leg coming around in a blurred arc that forced Kenzo to disengage and leap backward.
Grimmjow landed in a low crouch, his fingers scraping the floor, "Nice try," Grimmjow hissed as his breath came in short, excited bursts, "But you're thinking too much. In a real fight, if you stop to think about your next move, you're already dead. All you need is the instinct and nothing more!"
He lunged again, this time utilizing a series of aggressive hooks that forced Kenzo into a purely defensive shell. Grimmjow was a whirlwind of white and blue, his strikes flowing into one another with a terrifying fluidity. He was enjoying this far more than he should, the "survivalist" mask slipping to reveal the battle-hungry King of Hueco Mundo. The spirit reincarnated in the body was melding with the instinct of its existence.
In the observation deck, Akari stopped chewing her chips. She watched Grimmjow's movements, the way he flipped, the way he laughed while being punched and countered.
"He's beautiful," she whispered, half-joking but mostly in awe, "Terrifying, but beautiful. It's like watching a storm that decided to learn martial arts."
The intensity in the dome reached a fever pitch as Kenzo charged forward, his aura flaring into a crown of energy. He threw a heavy, weight-shifted right-hand lead, a strike designed to shatter his opponent. Grimmjow didn't flinch as he parried the blow outward with a nonchalant flick of his wrist, the friction causing a spray of sparks to dance between them.
Immediately, Grimmjow transitioned into a low-crouched stance, his fingers grazing the floor like a sprinter at the blocks. But instead of a physical strike, he extended his index finger.
"Too slow," Grimmjow chuckled.
A flicker of red light ignited at his fingertip.
Bala.
The projectile hissed through the air, a hardened bolt of spiritual pressure. Kenzo's instincts screamed, and he jerked his head to the side just as the red blur whistled past his ear, cratering the wall behind him.
'That's fast! I could barely track the trajectory... but wait.' Kenzo glanced at the impact site. The crater was shallow. 'It doesn't pack that much punch compared to his physical kicks. It's a harrying tool.'
In the exact same moment he finished that thought, a second Bala was fired almost simultaneously from Grimmjow's other hand and it caught Kenzo squarely in the shoulder. The impact sent him stumbling back.
"It's called a Bala," Grimmjow explained, rising slowly from his crouch position with a mocking tilt of his head. "It lacks the raw 'oomph' of my heavier hits, sure, but it's twenty times faster than the standard heavier attacks. Hard to dodge what you can't see coming, isn't it?"
'Heh. And that wasn't even close to full power. If I actually put weight behind it, his shoulder would be in the next block.'
Up in the observation booth, Minoru slammed his hands against the glass, "He's using ranged attacks now?! That's the same one they both used in the Oni dungeon. It's a dense and compressed energy outburst."
Below, the fight resumed with a violent surge. Kenzo wiped a smudge of dust from his jaw, his breathing became heavy but his eyes were burning with a new fire, "I can feel it," Kenzo panted, clinching his fists tightly, "You're holding back. You're playing with me like I'm some E-Rank goblin in a beginner's dungeon. Get serious, Grimmjow! Show me what you're actually capable of!"
Grimmjow froze at that. A low, rumbling chuckle started in his chest and erupted into a full-blown laugh. "Now that... that sounds like real man talk! You want the real thing? Fine. Don't go crying to your Association when there's nothing left to bury!"
Grimmjow extended his palm toward Kenzo, and the air began to hum with a terrifying, low-pitched frequency. A sphere of crimson energy began to condense in his hand, pulling the ambient light out of the room.
Kenzo's eyes widened to the size of saucers, 'That's it. That's the beam from Minoru's report. The one that erased the Oni King.'
"Cero."
The light became increasingly brighter. The S-Rankers in the booth stood at alert and were about to rush down to restrain the espada and just as the world seemed ready to turn red, a blur of white appeared.
Shhh-tk.
In a burst of Sonido, Ulquiorra appeared directly in front of Grimmjow. Without a word, he reached out and placed his pale palm over Grimmjow's hand, physically snuffing out the Cero before it could discharge. The sudden vacuum of energy caused a massive "thump" of displaced air and spiritual pressure that destroyed the area around the two brothers.
"Hey! What gives?!" Grimmjow roared as his face contorted into fury, "I was just getting to the good part!"
"Enough brother," Ulquiorra said, his voice as cold and unchanging as the vacuum of space, "We have won. There is no benefit in destroying the facility or the people we are meant to collaborate with. Don't forget yourself brother."
"Huh?" Grimmjow blinked, finally looking past Ulquiorra.
In Ulquiorra's other hand, he was holding Kei by the back of his tactical collar. The massive ice mage was dangling like a kitten, his ice claymore was long gone, and his breathing mask looked crooked.
"Can you... please put me down now?" Kei wheezed.
Ulquiorra let go, and Kei crumpled to the sands, gasping for air. The spar was over, the "Elite" had lost spectacularly and the "Consultants" hadn't even broken a sweat.
The Guild Leader's Office
Goto Ryuji sat in his office, looking at the footage from the training room captured by various cameras all around the facility. He had watched the entire encounter from multiple angles, his fingers steepled in front of his face.
The recording of the Cero charging had caused the cameras to glitch, but he had seen enough. He had seen Ulquiorra stop an S-Rank mage with a single hand. He had seen Grimmjow treat Kenzo, one of Japan's fastest hunters like a toddler in a sandbox.
'Remarkable, their powers are much higher than I expected and they seem to have a full grasp of combat.' He leaned back as a small, dangerous smile played on his lips.
He tapped a key, deleting the high-definition footage and replacing it with a redacted version for the Association.
"Soon," Goto whispered to the empty room, "Japan truly will be the strongest in Asia."