Haku looked to his left and right as Steph and Haruka finally arrived. Steph took immediate notice that Haku was favoring his left hand and Haruka seemed oddly distant. Haku wiped the blood on the inside of his black kimono and straightened. His eyes crept to Haruka, who slowly looked away.
“How you doing?”
Haku looked back over to Steph, his eyes narrowing.
“Hungry, but fine.” He creaked. “But things are getting worse, all the time.”
“Something on your mind?” Steph asked, prying.
Haku secured Mayonaka Naru back into it’s sheath. “Yes. I already told you, I’m hungry.”
“This is serious, Ishikawa!” Haku looked over at Haruka with mild surprise and an expression one might characterize as ‘hurt;. Haku brushed it off and tore a patch from the elbow of his uwagi and wrapped it around the palm of his left hand, surreptitiously binding his wound.
“We’re staying in a group from this moment on out. I don’t want a single one of us away from the group.” There was a rumble that came from above. “We‘re not very far from being in over our heads, you know?” As if to validate this, a blast of reishi weighed down upon the room and closed in, until the skylight of the warehouse shattered.
Haku had to dodge to the right to avoid being crushed by the great lithe tangle that dropped from the ceiling. He quickly released Mayonaka in an artful swish. The thing hit the ground with a hissing thud and began to unfold. Two great serpent hollows, monolithic in stature, rose to full height and twisted in anticipation.
“The two of you, keep one of them away from me.” Haku had done the mental math. Taking the both on would be a chore, even handling one would be unpleasant. As he watched the bleached bone mask crack forward as if it were the tip of a whip, he could see they weren‘t terribly different from him in terms of power. Haku watched on, disenchanted as both beasts twisted and separated two sickle like arms each, from their sides.
He disappeared behind himself, attempting a difficult shunpo. He clumsily managed to move fast enough to visibly appear to still be standing from the starting point of the shunpo. So when his hollow’s two scythes were brought down, they lodged into the concrete. Haku was behind the hollow and began a drawshot only to have it caught in mid-performance. Yet another limb had birthed from the snake-like body and caught his zanpakuto, while a sword-esque appendage shot forth like a spear. Haku jumped over his sword and used the counter-leverage of his caught sword to yank himself down onto the newest limb. A blast of kido liberated his blade. He stopped for a split second to check on Haruka’s progress when the thing caught him in his shoulder. A newly added weapon-arm had slipped in the front and exited under his shoulder blade causing a sudden rush of red pain. Haku grunted and clove the newest limb off and flipped back from the beast.
It was adding more and more bodily features as it fought. It freed it's hands from the concrete floor and now looked like a snake that had grown limbs that had been systematically pruned. It was heaving itself around on it’s belly towards Haku in an obscene way. Haku had no way of knowing how fast it could generate weapons from it’s body, but as he lowered his center of gravity and raised his sword, he bet he was faster.
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