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[b]Sagamiyama - Stone Household - Lurking Shadows!
Night[/b][/center]

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How could he have missed it? He must have passed it so many times, on tonight's patrol, and even before that, yet somehow this was the first he'd ever seen of this Hollow, lurking outside his home. He'd been about to walk right past it yet again, too, when that shell began to melt away, its arm coming up in preparation for what surely would have been a brutal, if not outright lethal ambush. If Ouga's text and his own ominous dream hadn't put him in such a state of paranoid vigilance, he doubted he would have felt the thing's spiritual pressure even when it did move... But as it was, he was just on edge enough to feel it, his stride halting just a moment before he might have strolled right into its reach. He tried to make it seem like chance, avoiding looking directly at the creature, simply straightening up and yawning, hands pressed to the small of his back so he could bend backwards, cracking his back noisily. Just a pause in his patrol, a matter of happenstance.

He hoped that was what it would believe, at least, even as the action brought his hand closer to the hilt of his zanpakuto. The key to any good ambush, after all, was surprise, especially when trying to [b]reverse[/b] one. He made a point of staying loose, leaning one way, then the other, as if to stretch. Just as he started to let his hands drop again, weight shifting to resume his walk, he finally let his eyes snap to the waiting Hollow. One smooth, precise motion, his only chance to catch an ambush predator off guard; That simple step becoming a lunge, the drop of his hand instead drawing his zanpakuto from its sheath, bringing it up and out in a thrust meant to take the lurking Hollow right in the center of that goat-like mask. It wasn't a complex attack, nor even a particularly fast one, but it was well aimed and smoothly executed. Darius could only hope that would be enough to, at the very least, put the monster onto the defensive, and take the momentum of the fight early, even if it weren't enough to kill it outright.

Banking that it wouldn't be, he focused his reiryoku even as he struck out, weaving the first Kido he'd learned to ward against counterattack. A lattice of reishi, laid across his body like chainmail; Kōshi. It was weaker than it could be, woven fast and without incantation or expression, but it should have been enough to save him from any unexpected counterstrikes.