Ori grinned savagely as his attack landed. Hardened mercury collided with soft flesh, leaving a trail of blood to explode out as he withdrew his limb. Ori's triumph wouldn't last long, however, as all of his limbs, including the one he had just used to stab his captain, were entangled in winding tentacles. Kokoro screamed at him to fight it, but he showed no outward reaction, and he made little reaction at all as he was slammed into the wall. Instead, he began to lose his solidity again, slipping out of the grasp of the tentacles as his limbs turned to mercury.

Upon flowing out, he would charge a cero in his left hand and loose it toward Kokoro's center of mass.


"FIGHT IT!"

Ori's eyes snapped open. It took him a second for his consciousness to come to him, but he recognized where he was immediately, even though it was vastly different. He tried to move, but found that he could not as his arms and legs were bound in place by metallic silver vines covered in thorns. The spikes were digging into him, and he observed that he'd been bleeding for a while. Here he was trapped in this mercurial garden in his head, the realm of Ginbora.

"Ugh." He growled. It was deathly quiet, and although he knew Ginbora surrounded him, it had never manifested in his mind like this. Usually his inner world was an endless lake of mercury, not this mess of vines. Presumably, it had been hijacked by the hollow. He'd have to reassert control. "Ginbora!" He called, and the mercury began to shift, allowing him free.

"It's about time you woke up." Something said, but Ori knew it was the mercury. And as the vines receded and the ground flattened, Ori found his reflection speaking to him in the voice of his zanpakuto. Ori looked about him to find the other interloper, the hollow. Thankfully, he didn't have to look for long. He turned behind him and he stood there, only dark-haired where his was light, and with black sclera.

The hollow grinned at him tauntingly.

"It's annoying that I have to subjugate yet another reflection." Ori sighed. Mercury formed out of the lake beneath him and into his hand, taking the shape of his shikai. "How about we make this quick?"

"You're free to try." The hollow said, forming a sword of his own.

Hollow-Ori faltered as something stirred within him, giving Kokoro an opportunity to entangle him with a binding kido. Thus, Ori missed his shot and it fired toward the ground instead of the shinigami. Still, that didn't deter his hunger, and he sprung forth again, thorns of mercury emerging from his very being in a manner eerily reminiscent to his master's tentacles. They swept out in an attempt to batter Kokoro's own tentacles out of the way enough for him to charge up and fire a handful of bala directly at his face.

However, since he faltered before, there was something inside him that was causing him to slow down, as though there were turmoil within him. His movements were fragmented, and his footwork seemed less sure. There was something in him that was fighting back, and based on the pace of Hollow-Ori's deteriorating movements, it was gaining ground--quickly.

After the balas fired, Hollow-Ori collapsed to the ground as though his strings had been cut. He would take a couple of seconds to stand up, the half mask on his face staying on the ground.


Ori's sword collided with his duplicate's. As expected, the duplicate's sword liquefied and flowed around his own before solidifying--a basic play. Ori was already in the process of dodging before the hollow's consciousness completed its action. The Hollow duplicate growled and thrust with the blade, but he'd drawn in far too close for the large sword, and so was entirely unprepared for a quick Hado #1: Sho to the imposter's chin, creating a concussive force that was not significant enough to do any real damage, but it made him look up for the split second Ori needed to follow the attack up with a solid kick to the gut, before a follow up by extending and thinning Ginbora quickly, spearing the hollow in the gut.

It wouldn't be enough to kill, but that was fine. By Ori's reckoning, fighting on two fronts would leave it reishi-starved soon enough, and Ori would be able to assert complete control soon enough. The hollow continued its assault, and Ori lazily dodged the duplicate's swinging sword.

"You truly must regret allowing me to wake. You should have killed me while you had the chance--at least you would have had my body to play with, if not my soul." Ori lamented, flashing a grin. "One underestimates me at their peril, you see." It was true that he wasn't doing all the legwork--the hollow's concentration was divided meaning it must have been fighting with someone else, who logically must have been his Captain. And his power wasn't so simple to use, so while the hollow was busy using more sophisticated strategies against the more powerful opponent (as Ori would grudgingly admit) he was free to toy with it in his mindscape.

It was mere seconds until Ori had the hollow under his control. One slip up from the hollow and that would be it. Ah! There was the chance!

The duplicate drew his sword back and came forward in a long thrust that Ori stepped around. His footing was all off, so this puzzle didn't even have a solution worth his effort. Ori molded Ginbora into a whip and wrapped it around the hollow's feet, yanking them from underneath it. As it landed on the ground, Ori was able to jam his sword through the duplicate's face as tendrils emerged from the mercury to bind it.

It was captured and slowly being pulled into the mercurial lake. And that was that. Ori would have to return here every now and then to remind his inner hollow who ruled here, but for now, this would give him a good foundation with which to subjugate it and start using its power. By now, the hollow should have stopped influencing Ori's body, and so he willed himself to wake.