Blood drips menacingly from the blade, its long sinuous curves glistening in the pale light of Sereitei.
"Heh, you ryoka aren't so tough" I could hear from a rough callous voice, one used to using it full of arrogant pride.
The owner of that voice matched his voice. He was about two sizes bigger than me, with a belly that could fit a small car matching his oversized kimono. The black of the robe clashed with the overextended white belt used to contain it. The man's face was a study in caricature, the chins exaggerated and the cheeks filling rosy dimples. His pride poured from every pore of his bloated body.
I stood up from where I had fallen. The blood from my body had come from a small cut on my calf, where the blade had punctured the fine chainmail I wore, and torn the strong, resilient leather I used for my boots. The cut itself was small, as well as shallow, but the force behind the strike had drawn quite a bit of the red fluid.
I dipped my finger in a small coin-shaped box filled with a blood clot aid, and rubbed a fingertip's amount on my cut, before replacing the package in my belt.
"I don't see how a runt like you could enter the Court of Pure Souls, but I intend to see that you never do so again, not while you still live!" His blade came down at the end of his sentence, punctuating his statement with a powerful hacking move, the edge aimed at my shoulder.
I rolled away from the strike, the shinigami's blade sticking deep into the earth, allowing me time to stand up straight for the first time since I had entered the realm of the spirit samurai, the knights of the soul, the soul reapers, the shinigami.
My chainmail armor was unusual for most spirit travelers, I know. Most preferred to be cut to pieces wearing nothing but robes or kimonos, or worse, civilian clothes. I thought it might be better to wear something sensible, as well as defensive. That was my chainmail, patterned after the mithril shirt of Frodo of Middle-Earth fame. Over that I wore a silver and gold shirt, designed to let me breathe easy, as well as travel in style.
My shirt was expensive but well worth it; it could turn away a sword strike or a blast of kidou as well as a sword could, without showing a single tear in the fabric. The gold and silver dragons in guard was my symbol, each holding onto a single sword raised high.
While the grossly obese shinigami struggles to pull his sword from the rocky ground, I reach with a single hand and draw my sword. While it is still, in essence, a zanpakuto, it is a Western blade, not a katana or butcher blade of the East, but an honest-to-gods bastard sword, the blade shining in the light of the dawn, the four-foot blade extending to a tip of the hardest steel.
"Huh!" With a heave, the fat man, now declared my opponent, finally managed to extricate his sword from the ground, and turned to face me.
"So, you managed to get you sword out, hmm? Well, I'll simply crush that tiny pig sticker with my Getsuburi!"
He took hold of his sword and said, "Bu-tsubuse! Crush him!"
When he said that, his sword transformed into a giant mace-head, missing only the haft to grip it with. For all intents and purposes, he looked like he had summoned a bomb into his hands. Even with the comical pose he struck in my mind, I still knew he was a danger to be reckoned with.
I gripped my sword tighter with my left hand and passed over the length of the blade with my right. As I did, I shouted for the world to hear.
"Dragon's Might, Claw Strike!" My sword transformed from the sleek black blade it normally assumed, and became an icy-hot bastard sword, the hilt decorated in gold and silver, and the blade left a trail of blue spheres of flame in its passing wake. When the spheres hit the ground, it turned it into a pile of ash, which promptly froze into tiny pellets before dissolving into dust.
"You are lucky, fat one. You are the first to see my shikai release outside of the physical world. I doubt even your famed Spymaster Mayuri has even heard of me."
"I am the Dragon of the West, I am the instrument of vengeance, and I shall have my reward for such a long trek across the realms. I am Arken Draykescale, and I wield the Dragon's Blade!"
With every word I spoke I stepped forward, increasing my speed just a little, letting my spiritual pressure build slowly as I removed the distance from between myself and my opponent a foot, then two feet, then five feet, at a time, lengthening my stride to match my power. His mace-bomb, was insignificant next to my true blade, Claw of the Dragon.
As my reiatsu reached its local limitations, I held it in check, funneling the excess into my blade, and as I did so it began to take on a golden hue. I thanked my patron creature for its wisdom in showing me the duels of Kurosaki Ichigo when he arrived here.
"Hey Shinigami! Taste the Dragon's Fire!"
I forced the collected reiatsu into a cohesive cone at the tip of my sword, shaping it into the force behind my attack.
"Breath of the Dragon, Cleansing Strike!"
The energy coursed out of the blade, aimed directly at the most prominent target on the fat one's body: his overextended belly. The irony of a 'cleansing' was not lost on me. He sure looked like he had gone without for too long.
"The Dragon of the West sends his greetings to the Shinigami of the 13 Protection Squads!" I laughed as the dumbstruck shinigami took the full force of my strike, the fiery cold striking him backwards, wreaking havoc across his body. He bounced across the surface of the earth, stopping only when he collided into the wall nearly three hundred feet behind him. He slumped to the ground, severely wounded.
I laughed again. This pathetic gasbag thought to stop me! This might be easier than I had thought! I recalled my spiritual energy back into my sword, returning it to its original form, the bastard sword, before returning it to its scabbard.
"Hmm. I do believe that a flight would do me well enough." I twisted a small ring, with a wing engraving on it. In a moment a pair of wings unfolded from my back, one silver and the other gold. I looked one last time for enemies, and then took off for the white tower that dominated the landscape inside the Court of Pure Souls.
"I have a score to settle with you Yamamoto!"