CHAPTER 41: FINISHED PREPARATIONS

Harribel suddenly felt an arm snaking around her waist and before she could even react she was pulled forward until she collided with a shirtless body and then felt a pair of lips on her face.

Sometime Earlier…

As Houryu continually fended off Harribel's attacks he thought about what to do as this was in no way a part of his plan. He still wanted to find out the process of how she becomes an arrancar, but that wasn't supposed to happen for a few decades, and he obviously couldn't keep watch on the only espada he had found and while he could have gone on to look for Barragan, he had his own problems that couldn't wait any longer as he already felt himself slipping.

So, he decided to do something crazy by his standards, and that was to track her. But the crazy idea was how, there were no techniques for tracking people with spiritual that he knew and the only reason he was able to even get a vague inkling of an idea of where clone houryu was, was because they were the same person.

Obviously, things like using your spiritual energy to mark her was dumb because even if it did work, it wouldn't last long enough as spiritual energy could wear off, and so he thought of giving her his phoenix life blood, the one present in very little quantities in his heart.

It was a crazy idea because it was literally giving her extra abilities just because he wanted to track her and be able to come back a few years later and then continue his research to strengthen himself.

Frankly he didn't like the idea as it reminded him of his morbid past, but he decided to do it anyway as he could now deal with any consequences that came from doing this.

The tricky part was now how he was going to get the blood into her body. He wasn't really enthusiastic about the idea of stabbing into his own chest with his hand, so he decided to do something else that was only possible with his perfect body control.

He controlled his cardiac muscles to push out the blood from his heart and then controlled other body muscles to bring the blood towards his mouth and then.

'Here goes nothing.' he thought as he moved into a different stance and called out,

"Arie Swordsmanship: White Nebula." and swung his sword. He made sure to make the sword attack as weak as possible so as not to kill her by mistake.

After sweeping her away with the attack he quickly moved towards Harribel and then just as quickly removed his hollow mask before grabbing her by the waist and pulling her towards him until she collided with his bare chest.

He could feel her body pressed against his, her curv… 'cough that's not the point right now' as he kissed her in the middle of her face on the brow of her nose that was exposed under the mask before using his very sharp canines to scratch her nose and then pushing the essence blood there and it quickly was absorbed into her small wound.

Meanwhile Harribel suddenly felt a rush of heat on her nose before it suddenly felt like her head was on fire and she fainted.

Houryu felt her going limp in his arm and he then slowly put her down on the cave floor before staring at her face and feeling a fire slowly burning him from within.

"Never thought my first kiss would be taken this way." he said as he turned away and began to slowly walk away after confirming that he could now sense her anytime as she now had some of his life essence inside her.

(A/N: I know it sounds weird but keep your dirty thoughts to yourself, dirty minded people)

Houryu walked outside the cave and looked around again at the endless plains of gray sand that was present before him before slowly sighing and opening a garganta, as he didn't have any reason to be here anymore, and he wanted to quickly get a move on so he could find a way to solve his current problems.

After opening the garganta he stepped into it and started walking forward, the garganta closed behind him erasing his presence from hueco mundo.

When the garganta opened up again, it was in a mountain range and as Houryu walked out he quickly used his sharingan to search for some landmarks he had left here years ago.

He then began his free fall from the sky to the ground.

*BAM* as he landed on the floor sending web like cracks all around. He quickly began to walk towards the mountains and then after the foot of the nearest mountain, he began the steep climb up the windy path.

Halfway up the mountain he stopped and began to feel around the rocks until he found a rock with a palm size crack on the side.

He put his hand into the crack and pulled the rock obstructing the hidden path that he knew lay here.

As he pulled the rock away, it made grating sounds against the floor it was being dragged across. When the path was finally opened, he walked into it and pulled the rock back across sealing himself into the hidden path and into the darkness there.

The darkness though, did not affect him as he turned and began to walk down the path and he kept walking until he heard the sound of rushing water, but he didn't hurry his footsteps and continued walking at a leisurely pace until he came to an opening that had water pouring across it.

He jumped through the water and came out of the other side of the water wall before falling down towards a pool of water that was present at the bottom of the waterfall.

*SPLASH* as he fell into the water, but he quickly came back to the surface and then swimming to the other side of the pool and unto the shore.

As he got to the shore, he looked around at the place he had found a long while ago, it was some sort of hidden valley in this mountain range and the funniest part was that it was in soul society, but no one had ever found it.

As he looked around, he felt something different and quickly heightened his senses to know what it was but all he noticed was a major increase in the spiritual energy density and amount in this area.

He quickly went to look for the egg he had left here and when he found it, it was surrounded in swirling mists of blue spiritual energy.

"Well, that's new." he silently commented and walked towards the egg, but he noticed there was something different about the swirling mists around the egg. It wasn't just spiritual energy, it felt different but stronger and he was beginning to feel his instincts subside, but he also began to feel sleepy.

He began to feel an urge to just sleep and let the energy rein in his instincts that had been exposed. A hollow is mass of instincts, and their mask is what shields that instinct from the outside world and him becoming a hollow and then merging all his powers together made his other instincts to become wild and unexposed especially as he was not just a hollow. It was what had been causing his blood lust to go out of control easily.

He tried to focus on something else instead to keep his mind from the sleepiness and he felt some sort of connection or familiarity with the egg that he hadn't felt before.

"This can't be something as cliche as getting a sense of familiarity because it's one of my kind in the egg, right?" he said to himself as he sat beside the egg and decided to just go with the flow and perfect his body that was thrown out of wack by the reincarnation and all, even if it meant going to sleep for who knows how long.

'Just go with the flow. I wonder what kind of mystical animal is inside there since I feel a sense of familiarity, is it a dragon …or a phoen…' he thought as his consciousness drifted into nothingness.