An End to Arrogance

"The mouse talks as though he is a lion... Didn't I tell you, espada? Your wings have melted... Whatever you do will be useless." Fukaku says, his face expressionless. "Accept your fate, espada..." Fukaku said, his black aura whipping around him.

Zommari simply glared at his adversary and took in a breath to calm his nerves, gently closing his eyes. He pinched his finger and thumb together and held them out near his waist, as though in a meditative pose, before clapping his hands together as in a prayer.

"Subside," he muttered, lifting his golden eyes open. His head then began to slowly twist itself horizontally like it had suddenly become independent from his neck; a rather sickening display to say the least. "Brujeria!"

With that word, the blade of his zanpakuto suddenly began to bend inward, forming into a bladed spiral. Then, from each corner, a white mist began to spew from the blade, coating over the Espada's entire form, then melting away like some kind of white wax.

Fukaku watches the Espada, as his head shifts with an audible crack. "Is he attempting suicide?... No.". Fukaku feels the reishi from the espada increase with his transformation, as his blade disappeared. "How interesting... my disgust for your outer appearance, now matches my disgust for your inner arrogance." Fukaku says, readying his bow.

The white residue slowly dripped away and revealed Zommari in a brand new, rather bizarre state of being: his once dark skin had become pale white, with multiple eyes encircling his entire upper body. The necklace of bone shards he once wore had now morphed into a giant neck collar, lined with teeth and several skeletal eye slots. Finally, his Arrancar hakama had transformed into a bloated pumpkin-like growth, with cyclopic faces identical to his own surrounding it.

His face, unlike the rest of him, retained it's dark complexion and the markings tattooing him had become more prominent as well.

Zommari stared at his heavily-cloaked adversary, pondering just how much longer he could keep fighting him after everything he had used trying to defeat him. He decided it didn't matter. He would control everything. Pulling his hands apart, he revealed they too had grown an eye in each palm. He held his right hand out to his blindfolded opponent and the pupil enlarged, then began to glow with a plum-colored light...

Fukaku, curious to his opponent's form in spite of himself, pulls his blindfold up. Seeing the eye open up, as it begins to glow, he immediately dodges to the right. "some sort of cero.. or?"

The Espada glanced at his enemy as he moves away from him.

"Were you expecting some sort of attack from me just now?" he asked him. "I suppose that is a logical response after noticing me in this form. But I'm afraid it won't make any difference."

Just then, a black sun tattoo formed over the Quincy's right arm...

"...What foolish trick is this." Fukaku said, an angered expression on his fingers as he saw the tattoo. "Can't move... my hand..." Fukaku thought to himself.

"You've noticed you can no longer move your right arm," said Zommari, staring casually at the Quincy. "That is because that limb is no longer under your control; it is now under mine. Like all things in this world, they are subject to control, which is where my powers derive from. Allow me to demonstrate...," The Espada then gestured with the same hand he had used previously and caused the Quincy's fingers to flex and bend until his entire right arm was forced to obey as he made him begin to reach for a seele schneider...

Fukaku didn't hesitate, pulling out what seemed to be a small pin. "...Urk." Fukaku says, sticking the needle into his arm, before it reached the schneider, the fingers brushing against the hilt. Glaring at Zommari, he doesn't drop his gaze the entire time.

Feeling his control release, Zommari gave a lax stare at his opponent.

"By numbing all feeling in that arm, I can no longer control," he admitted casually. "That was a wise move, though ultimately futile; for if that pin should be removed, then I shall regain control of the arm." A grin formed over his swollen lips, knowing that without the use of that particular arm, using his bow against him was out the window, and he had regained his foothold in the battle.

Now he felt it was time to toy with the hapless human. Two more eyes suddenly swelled and began to glow, plastering his mark against the faces of a pair of his deceased Quincy subordinates...

Fukaku checked himself, as he saw both eyes glow. However, he could find no eye marks on any of his own limbs. Looking behind him, he suddenly saw the mark appear on a pair of his subordinate's heads. while he said nothing outloud, his reishi seemed to become colder, the only outward sign of his anger.

Despite the fatal wounds that had ended their lives, the two Quincy stood to their feet and opened their glazed eyes.

"I sense you're wondering how it's possible for your subordinates to be standing," Zommari voiced. "It's true that since they are dead I cannot control any of their limbs individually, but if I control the head, I can control the entire body. Even their deaths are now under my control."

He sneered at his opponent, wondering how willing he would be to strike out at his own kind. Without the use of his bow, he imagined it would make things even more difficult. Suddenly, the two spellbound drones each drew a seele schneider...

"That's all, Espada?" Fukaku said, not even turning, as he threw a pair of capsules backwards at the quincy. "Is the extent of your power to annoy me by defiling the dead?" Fukaku asked, web coming from both capsules, as they came nearer, seeking to bind the pair, wide and lone enough to mummify their bodies. "You've lost your last chance to take control of this fight, then..."

As the capsule came at the two, Zommari attempted to use their seele schneiders to cut through the webbing; expecting their own weapons to be effective against their own devices.

"Once more, your arrogance blinds you to the fact that you have lost any edge you may have once had over me," replied the Espada, sensing the agitation in his enemy's voice. "It is no matter; empty words and deferment will not change the outcome of this battle."

The webbing was cut where the blades fell, but the cords bound around it, binding the hands and legs of the quincy together. "it is you who are blinded by your arrogance, hollow. As I've told you many times in this battle, a mere hollow will never be capable of besting a quincy. Yet it is obvious my words will not save you from your delusions. Perhaps you are stronger than those dogs around you, but you are a mere fallen spirit, against one of the purest bloodline. Imagining you could even comprehend my strength is the true arrogance, espada." Fukaku explained, in a calmer tone. "I pity you, for your arrogance will make your fall only more painful in the long run." Fukaku said, throwing a capsule towards Zommari, saying "Gritz!" As a sudden barrier appeared around where the hollow was, white and glimmering, adorned with a pentagonal quincy cross

The Espada surveyed his confinement, unable to detect any difference in either his powers, or the Quincy's. Was he trying to delay the inevitable by trapping him in such a pitiful barrier?

"You seem to make it part of your character to cloak your own weakness with asinine discourtesies," Zommari noted while gazing around the barrier. "I suppose to the less observant, such profanation makes for an efficient strategy. But against someone like me, who understands the true arrogance of personal pride, I'm afraid it is useless."

"Once again, you speak as though you could understand me, hollow. at one point in time, you creatures knew your place, and hid where we could not see - I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that one who would willingly combat a quincy, obviously his superior, would be so deluded as to believe he could understand me - Allow me to show you exactly how wrong you are." Fukaku said, snapping his fingers, as the black pillars suddenly dissolved, the energy becoming large black orbs, before racing back to him, surrounding him in a ball of darkness, before slowly disappearing, showing a Fukaku who was now uninjured, and filled with more reishi. "As I said, hollow, it was useless to struggle against me." Fukaku says.

Zommari kept a placid visage regardless of the Quincy's continued rant to cover his prideful arrogance. It wasn't worth his effort to become upset over a subject he could see plain as day. But listening to him continue on and on was starting to get tiresome.

But before he could properly devise a way to dispose of this loud-mouth menace, he was distracted at the sight of seeing each of the remaining black towers summoning to his enemy, regressing down into a tight, little orbs and phasing into his body.

The land suddenly erupted with intense spirit energy; more tense than any he could remember feeling before aside from their Lord and Master Aizen.

"What is this?" he wondered, staring up in awe at his healed adversary. He noticed that in spite of his healed body, his mark against his arm still remained intact, meaning he still would not be able to use his primary weapon. So what, he pondered, could he be planning to do with this new-found strength?

Fukaku continued glaring at his opponent, raising his weapon. "It's over, hollow. Curse yourself for the foolishnes that brought you to challenge me." Fukaku says, white cords appearing on his arm as he removes the pin. "Ransotengai..." Fukaku says, raising the weapon, as a white wing appears behind his back. "Licht.... Regen." Fukaku yells, firing an innumberable amount of arrows at Zommari, thousands and thousands, as he activates Ajiro's device, further increasing his fire rate.

The bizarre Espada watched as a string of reishi was suddenly severed from the Quincy's body as it exploded outwards and manifested into, what appeared to be, an entire wing of energy that was constantly being supplied with even more reishi.

"What?! His spirit energy--" he thought frantically. "It keeps climbing!"

He hadn't seen a technique like this before; it was remarkable. But that wasn't the worst of it as he came to another realization: he couldn't control the Quincy's right arm! The muscles still seemed dead, yet the limb was still able to move.

"How can this be?! Your arm should be under my control," he stated in shock and confusion. "It's not possible!"

No matter how hard he focused his own energy, the arm would not obey as the bow was created again, causing the Espada's eyes to swell in horror. The sky suddenly became luminescent as an entire volley of arrows barreled down on him in a battalion of numbers! Quickly, each and every eye on his body enlarged, glowing with the lavender hue of his reiatsu, and extended his hands up to the sky...

"It useless! Useless I tell you! I control everything," he announced as a few arrows halted in mid-air, yet the rest still raced toward him. "All things are under my control! I control it all - now OBEY ME!!!"

It was no use. He simply couldn't track how many of them were pouring out of the Quincy's bow in that very second. He couldn't stop them as they began shredding through the barrier surrounding him.

"No. No! NOOO!!! ARRRGGGGGHHHH!!!" His voice carried heavily on the wind as his entire body was engulfed in the storm of projectile reishi...

"As I said - a mere hollow like you could not comprehend my strength." Fukaku says, readying a capsule. "I only pity that which caused you to believe you could fight a quincy such as myself and win... It is saddening when a god must crush an ant." Fukaku says finally, shaking his head at Zommari. "To control everything? You weren't even close...."

A billowing cloud of dust hoisted into the air and the sounds of battle quieted. It seemed the Quincy had finally done it. However, the mark on his right arm still had not vanished. Though he spoke of himself as the clear victor; the battle, evidently, was not yet over...

As the cloud began to disperse, a large, bulky pink capsule, soaked in crimson blood was revealed. From a first glance, it seemed as though the Espada Zommari had folded his lower body over his upper body and head; giving him the appearance of a pink flower yet to bloom.

After several moments, the pod began to throb and an arm reached up from the top with a splash of liquid bile. Groaning in agony, Zommari pulled himself out of his own innards, stained in blood and now with each of his bodily eyes shut blind...

"you don't even have the good sense to allow yourself a quick death, then?" Fukaku asked, thumbing his capsule. "It's over. No one can survive those injuries. All you're doing is prolonging your own agony." Fukaku said, shaking his head. "It would have been better for you to die standing with some dignity, than to see you in such a pitiful state. It increases my disgust for you even more."

After taking a moment to catch his breath, Zommari snarled up at his foe.

"You say we Hollows disgust you? How arrogant can you be?! We have done nothing wrong; we do what is in our nature to do, same as anyone else in this world," he lectured to him. "Yet we are the ones regarded as evil and brutal, while you Quincy and Shinigami trot about as though you were gifts to your society; meant for the sole purpose of murdering us!"

His hands balled into tight fists as his rage escalated further.

"That is the arrogance you fail to see. You have no right to treat us this way, yet you do so thinking your motives are justified by some delusional god or tradition! We disgust you?! You could not even begin to understand the amount of disdain and putrefaction we share for all of your kind!!! You have no right to insult us as you do! You...you Quincy...you're even worse than the Shinigami! You don't even understand the consequences of your flawed justice! Your arrogance is absolutely nauseating!!!"

"...How.... embarassing." Fukaku says simply. "to see you rail against your fate like a child. I fight for the survival of my race, hollow, as I always have. I will never regret doing so, even as I feel no regret for exterminating you like the bug you are. I regret not doing something to kill you quicker, however - It is most disgusting to see someone fall under the weight of their own hubris as you have." Fukaku says, shaking his head. "Are you prepared for your final fate, hollow?"