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tyhier_uchiha Vice Captain
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 Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:11 pm
This thread is for the basic explaining of what will go on in the events of the latest Arc. There will be no miscellaneous posting, if you have questions or concerns place them in another thread or if your a mod bring them up in the Arc's thread located in Stairway to Moderation. Without further ado, I announce this open.
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Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2010 3:14 pm
Arc: Ragnarok, Sword of the Ancients
There once was a Shinigami named Tomomi. Tomomi lived his life as a noble in one of the Four Great Noble Houses of the Seireitei. It was a time when the Shinigami Academy had just been established, and Genryūsai Shigekuni Yamamoto had been a teacher there for only 200 years.
Tomomi's family, unlike the others, did not have a reputation in serving in the Gotei 13. Instead, they played a role in the governmental side of the Seireitei, having several members and associates inside of Central 46 itself. However, even as Tomomi was being tailored to one day join the Central 46, he was found to eat more than even the average Captain-level Shinigami at the time, the obvious makings of a truly powerful soul. It was decided that he would train personally under Yamamoto as one of his few elite students.
Time went on. Tomomi was a prodigy who excelled in each aspect of the Shinigami's tactics and skills, all except for Zanjutsu. He was unable to attain Shikai. So, after a significant amount of time, Yamamoto finally decided to place Tomomi as captain of a Patrol Corps squad, a subdivision of the Omnitsukido. In this way, he'd get plenty of experience battling Hollows. His team became famous in its work, and the still-developing Soul Society's borders were considered well protected under the watch of Tomomi and his squad. However, the general consensus (that is, the Tomomi's family and teachers at the Shinigami Academy, including Yamamoto) agreed that there needed to be more drastic operations for the boy Tomomi, especially given the Lieutenant level of power he held even without Shikai, which was why such an interest was taken in him. There were no objections from Tomomi himself, who was all too pleased to be of importance in his family.
A small team comprising of Yamamoto, a few of his select students, and Tomomi himself departed for Hueco Mundo. At the time, there was an active station in the Hollow home world with high-level Shinigami inside of it, maintaining a waypoint for Soul Society in emergency situations (as yet unneeded). The expedition itself was a long time in coming, so it wasn't necessarily for the purposes of aiding Tomomi.
A week into the trip, and after a sizeable amount of fighting with Menos and Adjuchas, Tomomi found himself and a companion trapped in an ambush just out of range from the camp. They both fought expertly, but when the companion cut down, it was Tomomi and his Kido against a swarm of Hollow. His zanpakuto would do nothing to the hierro of any of his opponents, after all. It was simply a blade without its powers unlocked. He fought, he struggled, and he eventually lost. Before the finishing blow was struck by a voracious Adjuchas, there was a flash of light and Tomomi felt himself grow exponentially stronger right on the spot. His sword had changed form, supposedly denoting a Shikai. The problem was, he hadn't heard his zanpakuto's spirit at all. Still, he was only too happy to slaughter his opponents with the blade, whose name he didn't know. When the battle was done, he noticed the zanpakuto radiate with energy and suddenly cause each Hollow to disintegrate into black insignificant pieces, as if each had been grated by air. The pieces then swirled together and flew into his sword. There was a mental click, and then he spoke the name of his zanpakuto without realizing he was doing so.
"Ragnarok," he had said aloud, just as Yamamoto arrived. It had turned out the ambush had also led to the deaths of another hunting team in the vicinity as well, meaning that the reason Tomomi had found himself on his own was that the Hollows had led an organized strike to systematically cut down their hunters.
Suddenly, even though both Genryusai Yamamoto and the adrenaline-pumped Tomomi had thought the fights for today were over, a Vasto Lorde appeared flanked by low-class Hollows, Menos, and Adjuchas alike. On top of that, there were even more appearing seemingly out of the sand itself. It wouldn't be determined until later that they'd been attracted by Ragnarok's unique energy signature, one that combined Shinigami and Hollow. Yamamoto quickly went to work cutting down everything in sight while Tomomi decided to play it safe and for the most part stay out of the Headmaster's way. This proved difficult, however, when various Hollow flew and crawled past Yamamoto and headed for Tomomi instead. Ceros were fired, claws were outstretched, Hollows leapt everywhere. Tomomi was now trying to defend himself with a zanpakuto whose incredible abilities he was too panicked to discover against each Hollow that Yamamoto couldn't stop. He was literally separated from the Headmaster by a thick wall of meat - meat that fired Cero nonstop. Amazingly, though, Ragnarok absorbed the Cero, even when its blade didn't touch the blast. Tomomi was in a protective field employed by his sword by default, yet he was still not immune to physical attacks, as one Hollow - the Vasto Lorde - realized. For some reason, this Vasto Lorde (one of the precious few in Hueco Mundo at the time) craved that newly awakened zanpakuto just as all the other Hollow did. Yet, because he was more intelligent, he sat back and observed as the blade grew more and more powerful from absorbing energy, right up to the point that lesser Hollows began to disintegrate from the close proximity. Finally, the Vasto Lorde made its move just as Yamamoto systematically destroyed most of the obstructions between him and Tomomi.
With a shunpo and a thrust of its single clawed hand, Tomomi was impaled through the heart and died in the next few seconds. The Vasto Lorde sensed the danger of lingering any longer and used its influence to order every Hollow that would telepathically hear him (that is, the Menos and the lesser Hollows) to serve as a wall between him and Headmaster Yamamoto. The intelligent Hollow took the Ragnarok even as it burned his fingers. However, to his surprise, the blade suddenly stopped rejecting him and ceased to burn. On top of that, it then absorbed the body and power of Tomomi and the fallen companion of earlier. That was when the Vasto Lorde realized the true magnitude of what he held, and silently thanked the Shinigami for this present. Somehow, the blade had transcended the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow by containing the energies of both, and rejecting neither. It was a new type of weapon, a horrific tool of complete destruction.
It was too bad Tomomi hadn't lived - he would surely have surpassed any Shinigami that had ever existed...although perhaps by that time, he'd have gone rogue or insane.
And so, the Vasto Lorde fled even as Ragnarok absorbed each and every body that had fallen, Hollow and Shinigami. By the time Yamamoto realized the dead were disappearing and made a vague connection, it was too late. He'd seen Tomomi die, yet his body was nowhere to be found. The same went for the other Shinigami, and many of the Hollow.
It was some time later that the grim-faced Yamamoto departed Hueco Mundo with only about two of the students he'd brought with him. Hours later, the Shinigami outpost was obliterated by the Vasto Lorde, who was making use out of his new toy.
And so the Vasto Lorde went on, killing and absorbing his Hollow brethren, but never daring to set foot into Soul Society, despite the power of Ragnarok. Despite the enormous energy boost it had gotten from the dead Shinigami, there wasn't much the average Hollow had to offer the sword, and it was difficult to find powerful game like Vasto Lorde. On top of that, it seemed that the more Ragnarok absorbed, the weaker its ability became.
One day, when experimenting with Ragnarok, the Vasto Lorde found out there was a way to release the built-up energy rather than keep piling it up. A wave of pure energy (not unlike the Getsuga Tensho) was released upon the will of its owner, generating the equivalent of an earthquake and a ferocious sandstorm with about 3/4's of its pent-up Hollow energies. After discovering this, the Hollow also instinctively felt the capacity of the absorbable energy itself build up. Delighted, he continued to systematically hunt and absorb Hollows for a while...
...Until Yamamoto returned, along with a squad of Captain-level Shinigami. There were even one or two future Royal Guard members in that group. The Vasto Lorde knew that it needed to fell just one of the group to hold an unshakable advantage, and so he focused on what he felt to be the weakest of the powerful group. In the end, after releasing so much energy from the Ragnarok in an attempt to stay alive, he finally did manage to kill one. Unfortunately, in his celebration, he neglected to remember that the absorption process took about five seconds, and that his head could get separated from its shoulders in two, as was the case.
The Hollow's reign over Hueco Mundo was over, and the blade exhausted of much of its energy fell. Yamamoto identified it as the deceased Tomomi's zanpakuto. As the group gathered around the odd weapon, some reported feeling a temptation to take the sword in hand and have it as their own while others kept it to themselves but agreed with those that didn't. However, there was also the fact that everyone felt significant pain the moment they got close enough to the sword, making them hesitant to lay hands on it. Still, Ragnarok couldn't just be left there - who knows what Hollow would swarm out of the woodwork and continue its predecessors work?
Finally, Yamamoto took it in hand and suddenly realized that doing so had alleviated the rejection aura that the Shinigami had felt from being close to it. It was later determined by analysts in the Soul Society that Ragnarok shifted wavelengths depending on its owner. A Shinigami owner would have a Hollow rejecting aura, and a Hollow owner would have a Shinigami rejecting aura. On top of that, Humans were determined to be extremely sensitive to both auras to the point of death. At the time, no one had imagined that there would be hybrids of Hollow and Shinigami like the Vizards, so it was unclear what kind of aura, if any, those would emit.
When research was completed on the sword (though the research itself was inconclusive), Yamamoto brought it before the Central 46 and requested it be sealed away and never to be allowed to use again, since the sword itself absorbed energy of all types and thus could not be destroyed by traditional means. There was little opposition, considering a good chunk of Central 46 was influenced by Tomomi's family and thus blamed the sword for the loss of a promising Shinigami (strangely enough, they seemed to forget that they themselves had approved the expedition to Hueco Mundo).
A chamber of Sekki Sekki was thereby constructed inside of the Squad 1 Barracks to house the Ragnarok, and then sealed with a long-lasting and powerful Bakudo. The only existing records of the entire incident, including the Central 46 case, the dead involved, and the expedition itself, were locked into a restricted section of the Daireishokairo (document storage) and ultimately made known to only a few important figures, including some of the oldest Captains of later times.
Namely, Kyoraku, Ukitake, Unohana, and of course, Yamamoto himself. Future Captain-Commanders with access to the restricted document storage section also could became aware of Ragnarok's 'prison', and the ghost decree that stated none shall ever use the Shinigami-Hollow hybrid zanpakuto ever again. Even associates of future Captain-Commanders could be allowed access to the knowledge,(if they unwisely distributed it, of course).
And so, the Ragnarok remains a lost chapter in the history of the Shinigami. A chapter, those that know of it, agree is best left forgotten.
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