Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 96 - The Deal

"Your Majesty, that Black Cero — can you use it?" Wayne turned his head and asked.

"This old one cannot." The Skull Emperor answered with complete candor, shaking his skull. "This old one is a Vasto Lorde. I would never stoop to learning such a Cero. The Cero of Annihilation is tempting, I'll grant that — but at the time, the Time Law was enough for me."

"In that case, the only way forward is through Ulquiorra." Wayne didn't much care whether the Black Cero had been created by some Ancient Hollow Beast or by a Vasto Lorde. Learning the Cero of Annihilation required the Black Cero as a prerequisite. Against any enemy down the road, it would be a decisive weapon.

His mind made up, Wayne had no intention of dragging things out. He activated his finishing move. "Your Majesty, lend me the Death Sigh for a moment."

"Hmph. This old one thought you had forgotten about that combination." Baraggan already understood Wayne's plan. He released the Death Sigh at once, letting it settle beside Wayne. Wayne casually drew a line through the air with one hand, and a spatial rift opened in an instant, along with several tiny spatial crystals that locked the Death Sigh firmly inside.

"Ulquiorra, stop now. We still have room to talk." Wayne controlled the spatial crystals and drew them into the rift.

"If you want to stop, then leave." Ulquiorra knew full well he couldn't hold out against both of them indefinitely. Through the fighting just now, he had mapped out their abilities well enough. Time and Spatial, powers that were particularly difficult for his Thunder to handle.

"We can leave. But you have to tell me how to use the Black Cero." Wayne raised his head and looked up at Ulquiorra hanging in the sky, fingers shifting as he quietly arranged the positions of his spatial crystals.

"I have nothing to say to you!" Ulquiorra was clearly unwilling to waste another word. He pressed his hands together, and another Thunder Spear materialized in his grip.

"We've been fighting long enough. You know what my ability is by now. Have you ever wondered why we both appeared here at the same time?"

"Not interested." With that, Ulquiorra raised his arm to hurl the Thunder Spear, but in the instant he lifted the tip, his body suddenly froze.

"Ngh!" Without knowing what had happened, violent pain erupted across every part of Ulquiorra's body. The Thunder Spear vanished. Ulquiorra slowly sank to his knees in midair.

"You — what did you do."

"Our abilities. Time and space. Together, there is nothing they cannot accomplish." Wayne's left index finger slid lightly through the air. One by one, tiny spatial rifts began surfacing around Ulquiorra's body.

"Each of these spatial rifts has dozens of spatial crystals deployed inside. From the moment I burned through your midsection with my Cero, I began channeling spatial force into your body. And just now, I replaced the Reiatsu inside you with Reiatsu carrying the Time Law's Decay Power. It has flowed through your blood and spread throughout your entire body. Right now, the inside of your body has already begun to decay."

Even as he spoke, Ulquiorra's arm began to wither. Within moments, his left arm lost all vitality, growing old, desiccated, and finally crumbling slowly down to bare bone.

Splat!

Ulquiorra raised his free arm and severed his own left arm. Then he used Ultra-Rapid Regeneration to grow a new one back.

"True, you have Ultra-Rapid Regeneration. But if that regeneration has to work on your internal organs, are you certain you can outpace the decay? The spatial crystals I injected are drifting throughout your entire body right now. The reason you haven't already rotted away is that we are still approaching this in good faith. Since you're unwilling to join us, we won't force you. But right now, I need to know how to use the Black Cero. A single lesson — that shouldn't take too much of your time, should it?"

"Despicable." His arm restored, Ulquiorra refused to yield. He launched toward Wayne with a Sonído, but an instant later, he crashed heavily to the ground.

The moment Ulquiorra moved, Wayne had released the spatial crystals embedded in his legs. The force of decay instantly consumed Ulquiorra's legs, stripping them of all mobility in a heartbeat. The searing pain of the rot caused him to lose his grip on his Reiatsu entirely, making it impossible to stay airborne. He plummeted headfirst.

Then a bolt of lightning descended from the sky, not aimed at Wayne, but at Ulquiorra himself.

Electricity surged across his entire body, scorching him black. The blast gouged a deep crater into the earth below. But Ulquiorra, with Ultra-Rapid Regeneration, showed no fear of his own lightning. In under three seconds, his body was completely renewed. He leaped out of the crater, ready to attack again.

"Clever. Using lightning to strike yourself — it shattered my spatial crystals and purged the decay inside you at the same time." Wayne couldn't help but offer a word of praise.

"Even so, judging by what just happened, how much longer can you hold out? As long as we're willing, we can drag this guerrilla fight on until you're completely spent." Wayne's voice was easy, unhurried. In truth, the only enemy who could effectively counter both his and Baraggan's abilities would have to be someone who outranked them both by a considerable margin. Someone like Starrk, he could probably shatter Wayne's spatial crystals and Baraggan's Death Sigh with raw Reiatsu alone, with no need to resort to striking himself the way Ulquiorra had.

"Think it over. We have no desire to fight you to the death. Tell me how to use the Black Cero, and we leave immediately."

"..." Ulquiorra was no fool. He knew he couldn't grind this out indefinitely. Still, this debt for disrupting his rest had to be settled. From the very beginning, these two had done nothing but harass him without pause. He had to vent that somehow.

"Take one strike from me. Then I'll teach you."

Tsundere. The word sprang into Wayne's mind immediately.

"Hmph." Baraggan scoffed. "Kid, why don't we just kill him? Maybe if you eat him, you'll get the Black Cero ability."

"I'd like to. But this one's temperament is too stubborn, if he decided to self-destruct, that would be a serious problem for us." Wayne weighed the situation. Ulquiorra was nearly at his limit; words were the better lever. And beyond that, Wayne needed to keep him alive. The Segunda Etapa from the anime was something he would still need to seek out in the days to come.

Even without the original plot playing out as written, Ulquiorra had already undergone Self-Arrancarification on his own. Given time, Wayne believed he could reach the same Arrancar level the Hōgyoku had once granted him, under his own power. When that day came, Wayne could obtain the intelligence on the Segunda Etapa. So right now, Ulquiorra could not die, and could not become a sworn enemy.

"Hmph. Then do as you wish." Baraggan had no desire to keep tangling with Ulquiorra either. The Thunder Law pressed on him to some degree, without Wayne here, he would have had no choice but to pull back. But with Wayne willing to take the hit, there was nothing more for him to do. A single Sonído carried him out of the fighting circle. He came to rest on Ulquiorra's flank, and should Ulquiorra make any unnecessary move, his Death Sigh would dive in without hesitation.

On the other side, Harribel Sonído'd to Ulquiorra's opposite flank. Her ability was countered by his, but in a critical moment she believed she could still contribute something.

"One strike from you, fine. But you keep your promise." Wayne was unhurried. With his current capabilities, taking a hit from Ulquiorra was manageable. And even if Ulquiorra went back on his word afterward, a single surprise attack wouldn't kill him instantly. With his survival secured, Wayne chose to push his luck and test his own defenses in the process.

"...Fine." With that, a dark emerald radiance surged across Ulquiorra's entire body. Dozens of lightning bolts began to gather and coil around him. A Thunder Spear of extraordinary length, wreathed in crackling electricity, slowly took shape in his hands.

"Releasing the Law's power in full, are we?" Watching that thunderous mass build with the weight of mountains behind it, Wayne let a smile touch the corner of his mouth. Mere thunder and lightning. As long as it wasn't something like the Black Cero, something that could break Laws, he wouldn't take a critical wound.

Sensing the pressure of that gathering force, Wayne's Pale Gold Reiatsu began to rise in answer. Finally, a pale-gold pillar of light shot into the sky, standing side by side with the dark emerald column.

Although Wayne was only a Low-Class Vasto Lorde, his dense and substantial Reiatsu pushed to its peak was not far behind Ulquiorra's. Suppressing Wayne through Reiatsu level or raw volume alone was beyond Ulquiorra right now.

Beyond raising his Reiatsu, Wayne used his Concealment and Spatial traits to enter the Nihility State. In that state, dealing Wayne a critical wound was nearly impossible, unless Ulquiorra used the Black Cero.

WHOOSH!

Ulquiorra hurled the Thunder Spear with blinding speed. The razor-sharp lance became a massive bolt in an instant, and with a thunderclap that cracked the sound barrier, it shot toward Wayne at tremendous speed.

BOOM!

The light from the blast lit up the entire pale-grey forest until the eyes burned. Blue-white radiance swallowed the ground beneath Wayne's feet, and the grove beside him was blasted into nothing. Even Baraggan and Harribel, standing at a distance, instinctively raised their Reiatsu and erected barriers to defend against the lightning scattering in every direction.

The explosion from the Thunder Spear ended. The enormous cloud of smoke and dust was slow to clear. Ulquiorra made no other move, he simply gazed down, quiet, at the crater still trailing smoke below.

"...Not a bad strike." Before long, Wayne's voice drifted up from within. Not as full-throated as before, but far from weak.

Wayne Sonído'd out of the crater and landed not far from Ulquiorra. A massive wound ran across his left shoulder below the collarbone. His entire left arm was gone. Blood flowed freely down his ragged body, and through the wound, internal organs and bone were visible. Yet nothing in his voice suggested someone critically hurt.

"The Thunder Law carries purifying and destructive force. It even triggered a spatial distortion, which is what managed to wound me through my Pseudo-Nihility State. Well done. Truly worthy of a Law's power." Wayne's Reiatsu circulated, and a wave of milky-white Reiatsu poured out from across his body, regenerating the lost arm. His Reiatsu had taken a hit, but fundamentally, the damage wasn't severe. As long as his internal organs were intact, it wouldn't be serious.

"You... are very strong." Watching Wayne recover from his wounds in under half a minute, Ulquiorra offered a grudging word of acknowledgment. Put plainly, he genuinely could not beat the enemy in front of him right now. Escape was still an option, but that was all.

"As agreed, tell me how to use the Black Cero. And I promise: the moment I have what I need, I will leave this place and never send a single soul to disturb you again."

"...I hope you mean that." Having already vented with that strike, Ulquiorra was silent for a moment. Then, finally, he raised his claws toward his own left eye.

"Shared Vision."

With that low murmur, he plucked out his own left eye and extended it toward Wayne. Then Ulquiorra crushed his own eyeball. It didn't splatter blood, instead it dissolved into a tide of Reishi particles that surged toward Wayne.

Sensing the flow of Reishi, Wayne opened his mind and received them. Quickly, the process by which Ulquiorra had learned the Black Cero imprinted itself into his thoughts.

It was a place of void darkness. At its very center was a pale, deathly white, and just beyond that white stood Ulquiorra. The Ulquiorra of that time had only one eye. His entire body was encased in white, like an embryo not yet hatched from its shell, something about it deeply, instinctively wrong. And within that pale expanse, Ulquiorra unearthed the skeleton of an Ancient Hollow Beast. He sensed the skeleton's Reiatsu, set it aside, and buried himself in the pale-white void.

The skeleton's Reiatsu began to seep into him. The power of a Law filled him from within. The white encasing his body receded, and the Hollow Mask over his face cracked and broke apart. It was in that emptiness that Ulquiorra became an Arrancar. And the Black Cero, carried on the current of his own evolution, imprinted itself into his mind.

The transformed Ulquiorra looked at what he had become with something close to joy. He thought about leaving, about seeing the world outside. But the memories came, one after another: his kin's contempt, their disgust. They stopped him cold. In the end, he buried himself once more in the heart of the void.

For a very long time.

"I never would have imagined Ulquiorra's birth held a story like that." Within the Shared Vision, Wayne had seen the greater part of Ulquiorra's past. The matter of being driven out by his own kind, he felt a genuine pang of sorrow for it. But there was nothing to be done about what Ulquiorra had endured. All Wayne could offer was a quiet sigh.

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