This was kinda dangerous. Or at least it was supposed to be.
This was a first for me. All of my life, nobody had ever tried to drown me before. A new experience unlike any other, but not one that I could properly appreciate.
No, my attention was mostly on how I could sense no spiritual energy from the water around me.
Was this some sort of inherent property of the Dolls of Bounts or did this specific Doll simply have the ability to hide its signature? Some sort of cheat due to water already being aa part of nature?
"It looks like he's frozen in fear, isn't he Ban?"
"It does appear so, Hō."
Oh, the owners of this Doll were here. And they even appeared to have the cliche twin speak of saying each other's names too.
Admittedly their appearance was a bit surprising. Not because they were ugly or anything but because if I didn't know of the longevity of Bounts then I wouldn't have believed them to be older than twelve years old. And that was me being generous.
I kinda remembered them. My memory about the Bount arc was spotty at best but I was pretty sure these two were shown in about three episodes before someone, I think Rukia, destroyed their water Doll and then they just turned to dust or something.
"It's no wonder. He might have some power but in the end he's just a weak little human."
So one could understand my irritation at being mocked by a pair that were more pathetic than Team Rocket in performance.
I raised one hand with a glare and let out a shockwave to disperse the water, before falling down on the ground on one knee.
"I don't know where you two twerps are from, but I'm about to teach you both about some asian disciplinary measures." I said with grin as I rose back up and cracked my knuckles.
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"Goethe!" Yoshino yelled and her Doll threw two huge balls of fire at Utagawa, who jumped to evade the first one and then summoned a wall made of grey snakes to block the second one.
"Must you make things so unnecessarily complicated?" The Bount with goatee asked as he got up and dusted off his shoulders. "We both know exactly how this will end."
"With you dead at my feet!" Yoshino gritted out and had Goethe send a stream of fire, apparently having far more animosity towards Utagawa than she had realized. Probably had something to do with his sadistic tendencies towards humans or the fact that he was the one Kariya used to track her down whenever she escaped before.
Or, as she watched more snakes get conjured to block the fire, it could also be the fact that despite having no redeeming qualities as a sentient being; Utagawa was still very powerful.
His Doll Fried, the golden snake around his arm, might look weak and frankly ridiculous due to it's ability simply being conjuring snakes but it was actually one of the more, as much as she disliked vulgar language, bullshit powers among Dolls.
Fried did not simply conjure snakes around Utagawa, but instead it's ability was to turn anything inorganic within it's awareness into snakes as long as they were 'lines'.
This meant that she had to jump away from the slash marks on the ground as Utagawa could simply have the marks turn into snakes if he wanted to and since that didn't erase the damage to the ground, that meant he could summon as many snakes as he wanted to from it.
Away from the fight, Yoruichi was sitting on a tree branch in her feline form with Soi Fon beside her.
"Are we really not going to interfere, Yoruichi-sama?"
"Cain needs no help, and I want to see the ability of this Yoshino." She said uncaringly, as she was not impressed much.
Sure, the firepower of her 'Doll' was enough to raise some eyebrows if only due to it being in the living world with none being the wiser but she was not sure how impressed she was with this Pokemon-like battle style between Bounts. From what Yoshino told them, Bounts had tried to fight against Soul Society once but if these were the extent of their battle style than 'fight' would be a bit too generous for what must have happened.
Still, if the current 'battle' went on the way it currently was, Yoshino would get the upper hand soon. Despite the man's power being more... resourceful, there was a very big difference between their firepower output and the man simply did not show enough skill or intelligence to make up for it.
Her thoughts were cut short as a blur flew between a mass of snakes and Yoshino's Doll.
"It's not nice to exclude people from the fun!" Cain yelled as he walked towards them and Yoruichi had to take a moment to make sure she wasn't seeing wrong cause he was walking with an unconscious child in his grip. A look towards where the blur had gone through showed that there was also another child embedded into the ground head first and they were not moving.
She knew that Bounts had the whole 'eternal youth' package but she hadn't realized that it could kick in while they were so young. Almost made her pity them, the world had many great things to enjoy when you were long lived but she could guess that it wasn't easy to do so while looking like children.
While she was distracted with her thoughts, Cain threw the kind in his hand at the goatee Bount who sidestepped only to get punched and wow, the man flew quite far.
"You coming?" Cain asked with a raised eyebrow as he looked up at where they were sitting before shooting after his new punching bag, with her; Soi Fon and Yoshino following after him.
Soon they reach the mansion, where the man Cain punched was sitting in front of one of it's walls that had a very huge crack and some fresh blood on it.
"You will pay for that." He hissed through gritted teeth as he tried to force himself upright.
"You are half dead after one punch, do excuse me if I'm not trembling in my boots." Cain snorted.
"Perhaps I am not strong enough to deal with you." He said as he finally managed to get up. "But don't think for a moment, that you can face the combined might of Bounts!" He yelled with a huge grin as he hit the door behind him, sending it flying inside the mansion and then...
"...this can not be?"
...nothing happened.
As far as any of them could see, the mansion was empty.
"...have you betrayed me, Kariya?!" Those were the last words of Utagawa before Cain slammed his head to the ground and knocked him out.
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