Title: Heal, My Soul: A Bleach Tetralogy Part 1: Rise, My Blood

Pairings: Multiple

Rating: Teen (T)

Warning(s): Coarse Language and Mild Depictions of Violence, Character Death

Recommended Font/Page Layout: Ubuntu, 1/2, Expand, Light Story Contrast

Overall Song Choice: Blood On My Hands by The Used

Alternative Song Choice(s): N/A

Author's Note: Rated Teen because of source material, deviates from canon, has original characters and altered canonical personalities of (some) canon characters, references to Chinese and Japanese Mythology and historical figures

Full Synopsis:

Part I: Rise, My Blood

Yachiru Unohana is the only captain of the Gotei 13 without a 2nd or 3rd seat. She views any potential candidates as weaklings, until a boy with a resonating spiritual presence is made known to her. Yet, this boy induces memories of a past best left buried and, in order to stay who she is rather than who she was, she must end his existence before it's too late.

Read and review, but most of all enjoy.


Ø. Desire

Wisps of steam rising from the pool of boiling water she stood over, Unohana ran a fingernail down the scar on her chest. Long since healed, having become a part of her flesh again, its crimson cut was now pale and puffing outwards. Like a worm stuck underneath her skin, embedding itself inside her chest, it writhed. Sunken in, slightly. Stinging still, greatly. Stroking it, she watched the bubbles in the pool pop and fizz, the carcass of a dead animal partially submerged. Partially decayed.

The way the fumes destroyed the skin, dissolved the muscle, and bleached the bone. It filled her with a yearning, a certain lust that could only be quenched with spraying blood and flayed limbs. A feeling that made her heart pound and scar itch; something that only the thrill of fighting could mend. Minazuki felt restless at her hip, hissing a want for the crossing of blades with another of its kind.

She turned from the pool then. If only the rest of them were still alive, or that boy was still rampaging around the forests of Rokungai, she could've had a bit of fun. A way for her to unleash this desire that was eating away at her senses from the inside, kept at bay by time. After she'd defeated the majority of the warriors from the forests, he'd told her not to cause anymore unnecessary bloodshed. To focus only on training the next generations of "Soul Reapers" and guarantee that the Soul Society would continue well past its expiration date. Given how ancient the Soul Society was already, that date was more than a long ways off. It irritated her, but she knew his words were the right course of action. There was no one left to face off against, after all.

Perhaps that was why the others had died, because they had became so starved from not rending flesh and breaking bone that they'd succumbed to their hunger. It'd consumed them like the pool was consuming the dead animal's carcass.

She was now the only one of the original thirteen left besides the old man himself. That realization alone, she knew, was enough to have to agree with the old man and carry out his wishes. To continue on as a high ranking member of what he now called the "Gotei 13". Not just a member of a group of thirteen warriors with followers any longer, but now as a captain of her own division in a new militaristic system. The 11th Division, as he'd called it. In that short amount of time he'd gathered the thirteen of them to quell the worst of the violence in Rokungai, he'd created this whole new hierarchy within the Soul Society.

Besides her division, the old man had created twelve others from one to thirteen, with himself being the captain of the 1st Division. Each division had twenty seats, with captains being the first seat. The second seat belonged to their vice-captain, while the third, fourth, and fifth seats were reserved for members of a lesser high ranking. Everything after these first five seats were nothing but placeholders; ones that could change hands daily as they were based on an individual's ability to climb through the ranks. Which was why she felt as if she'd find the most enjoyment in watching those seats; numbers six to twenty.

To put more true to the matter was that it didn't change the way she felt deep down. That hunger would always be there, no matter what was used as an excuse to seal it away. Even the hope of peace. The only thing that would satiate that hunger would be she and Minazuki doing battle with an equal again, but so far that wish of hers was on hold. Which reminded her, the only divisions that didn't have a vice-captain was her own; the remaining eleven all had theirs, if she recalled correctly. She'd have to find one, it seemed.

Casting her gaze in the direction of the academy he'd built not long before they'd first met, she wondered what types of warriors were to come out of its walls this time. So far, the only ones that had were all too weak to be considered decent. Not even one among them skilled enough for a third seat in her division. Which, again, reminded her; she'd also have to find a Soul Reaper fit enough for third seat, as well. The old man's two protégés, the sickly one and that oaf who was too lazy for his own good, they had been two of the first to graduate from that academy of his. He'd pampered them like small children, praising them both as his "pride and joy". They'd also been the first two to become captains after graduating. Both of them had accepted weaklings as their second and third seats, but she wouldn't settle for that. She couldn't settle for that.

Only a warrior equal to her own strength was worthy enough for the position of the 11th Division's second seat, and only someone of lesser but still worthy strength was to be her third seat.

The desire that resided inside every fiber of her being and was waiting for the moment come spewing forth, she felt these two seats were the key to helping her let off some steam of her own.