A Thousand Deaths
On the outskirts of Soul Society, there is an old, dilapidated house hidden in a dense growth of trees. There are holes in its roof and its windows are boarded shut. The trees surrounding the establishment are barren and lifeless; the air around it dense and still. No one knows of its location except for one shinigami. He opens the door and locks it from the inside. The inside of the house is empty: barren walls and no furniture. There is only a long stairway leading down underground. The shinigami walks down the stairs, slowly and surely.
He reaches the basement of the house. It is, in all modestly, a square hole in the ground. There are no walls but roots and stone. The dirt floor is damp and loose. Water drips from the low ceiling. The shinigami is unconcerned about the simple conditions; in fact, they make the perfect training grounds. He implants his sword into the soft ground and waits for his zanpakuto to materialize. Of course, there is no guarantee for this; his zanpakuto is very stubborn and disloyal. The shinigami closes his eyes and meditates, focusing his spiritual energy.
Minutes pass and finally he detects a shift in spiritual pressure. He opens his eyes and gazes at a barren room. His sword is gone, replaced by a hazy mist in the air. Ah, this old trick, the shinigami thinks as he prepares for an attack. But the external threat never materializes. Instead it is an internal assault. He feels the water begin to pool inside his lungs, the fluid filling his throat. The drowning man falls to his knees, gagging and coughing. He tries to calm down his racing mind, This isn't real, this isn't real, but his survival instincts kick in and he panics. The lack of oxygen to his brain slows his thoughts and weakens his movements until there is nothing left but the lurching motions of a madman desperate to live. There is no use; the pressure continues to build inside his lungs. He drops to all fours and vomits black bile, bubbling and bituminous. His body loses its last once of strength as his eyes roll back into his head. The shinigami's body falls to the floor without a pulse.
A few hours later the shinigami awakes from his momentary death. He is lying on his stomach, damp dirt clinging to his face. He opens his eyes and sees his sealed zanpakuto on the ground next to him. The shinigami stands up, wipes the earth off his clothes and sheathes his sword. He leaves the house, today's training session another clear failure.
"There's always tomorrow," he says to his zanpakuto.
The haunting voice in his head answers We'll see.
Tomorrow comes with a sweltering midday heat. In the secluded grove, thousands of insects buzz about as if they were swarming a carcass. A single raven stands on a bare branch of a dead tree overlooking the establishment. The shinigami, back for another day of training, stops at the door of the house and stares at the bird. It flies away silently. No observers.
He enters the basement, the intense heat causing him to sweat immediately. He ignores the mild discomfort and embeds the stubborn zanpakuto into the ground. The shinigami sits down and stares at his sword's hilt, daring it into action. It responds by instantly knocking its owner unconscious.
The man wakes with a cough, under a haze of smoke. He remains low to the ground to prevent inhalation of the smoke and tries to determine the source of the fire. From the scorching heat on his back, the shinigami believes it to be in the far side of the room. He slowly crawls to the stairway, his vision blurred by the smoke. He reaches the stair and climbs up them, each step taking an eternity, each breath bringing more and more soot into the weakening body. Halfway up he stops, panting heavily for air. The world is spinning, the room is turning as the shinigami tries to make sense of the situation. He struggles to move up the next step, his left arm slowly rising and falling. Where he expects to find the step his hand feels nothing but air. He slips off the stairs, falling to the ground. The flames rush in to catch him. He hits the floor burning, his skin roasting under the searing heat. The shinigami makes no attempt to escape the flames; he already knows his zanpakuto has won this day's battle. He lies on the fire, trying his best not to give his enemy the satisfaction of hearing his screams of pain.
Hours pass and the flames finally die out. The shinigami wakes from his catatonic state. He sits and looks at his arms. They are burnt and charred. He peels the blackened flesh off, the skin underneath pale and unblemished. When he is finished, there are no sign of wounds but the pain remains. He picks up his zanpakuto and walks back to Seireitei.
Pathetic.
The shinigami is unsure whether it's his zanpakuto or his own thoughts mocking him.
*********
Over three years, the shinigami continues this course of training. Every day ends in his death. Some days the room fills with corrosive gas, dissolving the shinigami's flesh as he chokes. Some days the ceiling slowly lowers, crushing the shinigami's bones to dust. He has been eaten alive by crows, by locusts, by wolves and by dozens of other creatures from the living world and beyond. He has fought masters of the combat arts, human, shinigami and hollow, and has been defeated by every single one. He has faced unspeakable horrors, dissolute nightmares who mutilate his body beyond recognition. Yet every day the shinigami wakes and believes in his training, despite yesterday's terror. Some would call it determination, bravery; others would call it foolishness, idiocy. Thankfully, no one has discovered his peculiar method of combating his zanpakuto.
Winter comes to Soul Society and with it a healthy splash of white on an otherwise grey world. The shinigami flash-steps to his shack, careful not to leave any tracks. Years of training in secrecy would be fruitless if someone discovered his methodology. He enters the building, shutting the door against the bitter wind and the outside world. He walks down the stairs, clearing his mind of the distractions of the Gotei 13, particularly those of his idiotic captain. However, the shinigami's zanpakuto is not keen of waiting. One of the wooden steps turns to glass. The shinigami slips and falls backwards, cracking his head on the hard stairs. The world fades to black.
Drip
Drip
The shinigami wakes and assesses his situation. I'm fastened to a table. My hands and feet are bound. Drops of water are splashing on my forehead at Drip uneven intervals. He opens his eyes; blinding white light shines onto his face. He shuts his eyes, the afterimage burning his retinas. He hears a click and the lights turn off. He tilts his head and sees the physical manifestation of his zanpakuto sitting next to him. The zanpakuto is a short, bald, Drip androgynous figure wearing a white robe. After three years of dismal failure, all of the shinigami's hatred is projected onto this being.
"Hello there. You're awake, I see. I thought we could use this time to talk."
The shinigami is silent.
"Well, you can listen then. You know, in the whole time we've been doing this, you've never died by dehydration or starvation. That changes now. How long do you think you've been tied up?"
The shinigami remains silent.
"Fifteen hours. You can feel it already, the dryness in your throat and the emptiness in your stomach. Of course, you never lived in the slums so you never experienced Drip this before. Enjoy it."
The shinigami smiles, "I will."
"Oh, you can talk? That's impressive; you've miraculously cured your muteness."
"Don't mock me," the man says.
The spirit drops the Drip playful facade. "Don't mock you? I have every right to mock you. How long have we been at this? Three years, and you Drip have yet to defeat me. It's sad; it's disgraceful."
"It usually takes ten years to achieve Bankai," the shinigami replies.
"You think that applies here? Do the rest of the shinigami train for Bankai every day? Do they die every day? No. Any normal person would have given up after a few deaths, let alone a thousand. But you... you persist. Do you not fear death? Or are you longing for it? Your struggle in this endeavour is only reasonable for a madman or a sadist and you Drip are neither. So why do this?"
"Why?" the shinigami says in hushed breath. "You wish to talk and you ask the most inane questions. It's simple: I want to beat you."
"That's a stupid, foolish reason. There are many ways you could beat me without Drip resorting to our training sessions. Yet you choose to continue to train for Bankai. Why do you want this power?"
The shinigami is silent.
"Are you silent because you don't want to tell me or because you don't have an answer?"
The shinigami is silent.
"Until you can answer that question, you will never defeat me."
Drip
"Tell you what, how about we call it a day?" the zanpakuto says, lowering his blade over his master's neck. "I could end it now. One cut. Quick, clean, fairly painless. One word and I'll do it."
"Surrender?" the shinigami growls. "Never."
The light turns back on. "So be it. Starve."
Drip
Drip
Hours pass and the hours fade to days and the days blend to weeks. The shinigami is unsure of how long it's been, keeping time with the count of the unorderly drips. Slowly the energy of the shinigami leeches from his body. His zanpakuto offers to end the misery several times. The shinigami always refuses. Finally, after two hundred and fifty-seven thousand nine hundred and sixty-four drips, he dies. A short while later, his resurrection bring nothing but bitterness. The man undoes the straps and sits up, muscles and bones aching from inactivity. The zanpakuto have left a bowl of rice and a glass of water at his owner's feet; the man leaves the mocking gesture undisturbed. When he returns to Seireitei, there is no commotion over his absence. The shinigami has made contingency plans for such an absence long ago. He merely goes to his bunk and gets his first quiet, uneventful sleep in nearly a month.
Of course, the first thing he does the next day is to return to that infernal shack.
There is no ambush waiting for him. The shinigami tosses his sword to the ground of the training room, which appears to be much larger than the last time he was in there.
"Come on out, you bastard," he says.
The zanpakuto materializes. "I have a name, you know. Or did your month of isolation rob you of your memory along with your dignity?"
"Let's do this."
"Fine. We'll keep things simple. A duel, one on one."
As the zanpakuto describes the format of the contest, several copies of his physical form appear, surrounding the shinigami. Each combatant receives the sealed form of the zanpakuto.
"One on one? I count six."
"It's only me here; it's within the rules," the bald figure states. "Or are you just scared?"
"When have I ever been scared?"
The copy directly behind the shinigami answers. "Since the day you were born," he yells as he charges. The shinigami turns and blocks the blow; two others rush his flanks. The master pushes away the copy he locked with, then leaps in the air in a backflip to avoid the incoming blades. One of the zanpakuto moves to the landing spot and swings at the falling shinigami. He flash-steps behind him and lands a killing blow. To his surprise, his sword passes through the copy as if it were air. It returns the strike with a thrust into the shinigami's shoulder. A shallow cut, but still painful. He retreats.
"That's hardly fair."
All of the zanpakuto answer at once. "Life's not fair," they say as they continue the fight.
The man keeps the conversation going in the middle of dodging and blocking, stabbing and swinging. "So that's all this has been, a poorly veiled metaphor for life: a pointless struggle ending in death."
"Took you long enough to figure it out. I guess that time in the brig taught you a thing or two."
"I know far more than you can imagine. I know where your philosophy is wrong."
"Ha. Don't tell me you believe in that pursuit of happiness nonsense, that life finds purpose through the connection it makes to other living beings. I'm a part of you, and I know you don't believe in that bullshit."
"No, this is not where you are mistaken. This is your error: you believe death is inevitable."
The duplicates stop in their tracks. "What?"
Now that the battle has been paused, the shinigami relaxes. "For any sufficiently strong being, death is irrelevant, impossible."
"For a 'sufficiently strong being', you say," the zanpakuto scoff. "And you think that Bankai is enough?"
"No, but it is a necessary step. That is why I must defeat you."
"You plan to defeat death, but you cannot even defeat me. I am your death. We have proven this a thousand times. This is your reality, inescapable, unrelenting." The zanpakuto charges his master with all of his bodies. The shinigami makes no move to avoid the attack.
"You're wrong," he commands. "The only reality there is is the one that I say exists."
The robed spirits are frozen in place by their master's words. Cracks begin to form in them like crushed ice.
"And the only world there is," the shinigami shouts, his voice building with the rage and fury from three years of continuous death, "is the one that I will create!"
The physical copies of the zanpakuto shatter into shards of glass sprinkling the dirt floor. The original manifestation stands in front of the man about fifteen feet away.
"So you've finally figured out our power. To alter. To change. To create. And you plan to use this power to become God."
"Something like that," the shinigami replies.
"What about the other shinigami?" his zanpakuto asks, walking towards his owner.
"I may have to smite some of the heathens, if necessary."
"Ha. And I thought things would get boring as soon as you'd beaten me." The two are now face to face. "Well then, in your quest for immortality, for perfection, for the infinite, I grant you my full power."
The zanpakuto offers his hand; the shinigami shakes it. The weapon turns back into its sealed form. The man smiles upon the blade, once his bitterest enemy but now his greatest ally.
"Thank you."
The shinigami walks up the stairs and to the door. Before leaving, he fires a kido spell into the corner of the room. It bursts into flames. He walks out of the building to a suitable distance to watch the fire. It gives him pleasure to see this place burn down. As he watches, he realises that this is his final death. His old, weak self is burning along with the wood and a new life is being created from the rubble. The fire is his rebirth, the beginnings of his assent to godhood being forged in this crucible. He feels the heat of the fire on his exposed skin, inhales the smoke into his lungs and grins as the scorching orange flames reflect brightly off his glasses. Once there is nothing left of the shack but ash and char, Sosuke Aizen returns to Seireitei.