On the top of the Soukyoku hill, Aizen looked at the small orb in his hand, the purple and black swirling over it. He'd just pulled it directly out of Rukia, and for the first time held the object of his desires, the first step on the road to realising his ambitions. He was speaking more to himself than anyone else; "I'm surprised… It's something this small? … This is the Hougyoku…." His thinking out loud was interrupted by the reiatsu he could feel approaching. It was travelling at an amazing speed, and suddenly there was an unknown shinigami stood on the hill as well, reiatsu crackling around him. Aizen slipped the Hougyoku into his robe and considered the newcomer; he hadn't arrived using flash steps and so necessitated further enquiry, after all, he had some time to kill before the Negacion would remove him from Soul Society.
Kyuzo took in the scene at a glance; the man in glasses was obviously Aizen, and he quickly recognized Tousen and Ichimaru as his accomplices. There was another taichou bleeding heavily on the ground not far away, he also recognized Renji, and he assumed that the orange haired teenager was Kurosaki Ichigo. There were some other kids dressed as shinigami who he guessed were the rest of the ryoka. All this was observed, processed and stored in a millisecond before he turned his focus back to Aizen. He was already annoyed by the grin on the mans face. Without speaking he took a quarter turn to his left, so he was side on to Aizen and brought his shikai to his left hip. Aizen recognized the stance as the prelude to sword drawing attack. He sighed to himself.
"Looks like I have another piece of dust to brush away." He drew his own blade, surreptitiously releasing it at the same time, though nobody present saw through its effect to acknowledge the release. He left an image standing where he had been and advanced slowly on the youth in front of him. This was one of his favourite parts about a fight; just watching his opponent start following an illusion while he got in place and ended everything in one fell swoop. Then the new unnamed shinigami started doing something odd. It seemed to all the observers that he started oscillating, his outline vibrating. Kyuzo was using the projection ability of his zanpakutou. Aizen took a closer look at him, noting some of the details. First the clothing was very different form a normal shinigami; not a usual hakama, but some other form of legwear with a narrow waist but loose enough to hide leg movements and feet position. Tighter clothing on the upper body and right arm completely uncovered. The markings on his arm drew Aizens attention, both due to the shape and also the strange fronds of reiatsu that were coming out of them. Suddenly Kyuzo erupted into his projection, and there was an unbroken circle around the image of Aizen, all rotating round like they were fixed to a disc centred on the false image.
As soon as Kyuzo moved into the flash space, Aizen disappeared from his sight, but then he noticed that the traitor had just moved slightly. Confused, he stopped the projection for a fragment of a second, just enough to see that outside the flash space Aizen was still stood smiling in the middle of his circle, but in the flash space he had moved off towards where Kyuzo had been originally stood and wasn't smiling. "An illusion." It made perfect sense. The thoughts continued; "So his illusions don't work in the flash space. Handy." He adjusted himself so he was circling where Aizen was actually stood and launched his attack; the vicious swipe of his main hand blade as he drew it and the follow through with the bladed scabbard. Aizen had seen the circle realigning itself around where he actually was and knew the attack was coming, to his unguarded left he guessed. The two blades met with a massive release of reiatsu, Kyuzo abandoning the second attack with his left hand so he could put more force into the first swing, and then the deadlock when it was blocked.
"Who are you? And how did you see through my hypnosis?" Aizen asked, as their faces were close. Kyuzo almost roared back he was so furious at the conceit.
"As if I'm going to tell the likes of you anything more than my name," he ground out through clenched teeth, "I am Kyuzo." Aizen simply smiled his infuriating smile. "Well Kyuzo, I think it's time to end this." With that he left another illusion where he had been, which off balanced Kyuzo just long enough for Aizen to get behind him and land a slash along the length of his back. Kyuzo felt the blade passing through his flesh and it only made him angrier. He staggered a few steps and then, blood dripping freely to the floor, turned back to his opponent. As always some part of his mind was working furiously on categorising everything he was seeing and the most striking thing about the 5th Division taichou was the nature of his reiatsu. It was unlike anything he'd ever felt. Tousen and Ichimaru were easy to identify; the white light and the nest of snakes respectively, but Aizen was just a tower of willpower. It was like standing at the bottom of a mile high monolith, with Aizen standing on the top looking down at you. And it was holding everyone else who wasn't one of the three traitors down on the ground. Kyuzo breathed heavily and sheathed his sword again. He turned it round so he was holding his shikai in a standard two handed grip, almost like a practise stance. All rationale was forgotten, the only parameter for decision making in his head was the need to kill Aizen. With a surge of his own reiatsu Kyuzo yelled out; "BANKAI!"
Immediately the resonata surged up his arms and onto his chest and back again, the pain irrelevant to the fight. The reiatsu streamed out of them, shredding his clothes and leaving him dressed only from the waist down. All the tendrils collected behind him, slowly massing together and growing into a cocoon on his back. His sword was growing as well. The blade curled back on itself and the whole thing turned into a rounded cylinder. The curve straightened and extended, before turning completely black, until it looked like he was holding a 6 foot long staff by the bottom six inches. Suddenly blades erupted from both sides, growing further outwards closer to his grip and tapering to a point at the end. It was like a huge swept back arrow, with very irregular supports attaching the blade to the central column. At the same time as the blades grew, the cocoon of reiatsu exploded behind him into a pair of ethereal wings; there was no structure too them, just a skeleton of black reiatsu that swirled out of the resonata on his back and chest, like smoke flowing over an obstruction. The same black aura surrounded his sword, and dripped off from the lowest part of the blade.
"The Bleeding Edge," Kyuzo said without looking at Aizen, "You die now."
"Very impressive, Kyuzo-kun," Aizen uttered the honorific with a sneer. "Since you have bankai perhaps you would like to be a taichou?" With this he whipped off his haori and held it out to his side, before dropping it contemptuously on the floor. "I don't have time to play with you now." He turned his back, but before he'd even taken three steps Kyuzo was charging, every joint in his body in harmony, every muscle working together, every nerve screaming and every tendon straining under the desire to kill the man in front of him. So much reiatsu was streaming off him he left a massive gash in the ground as he flew at Aizen, his black wings unmoving. Just before his sword connected with the back of Aizens neck a ray of yellow light shot down from the sky and surrounded him in a square. The yellow wall buckled under the strike, and then yielded, but stopped the blade just short of the man inside. Aizen simply reached up and pushed the blade away, the walls of energy springing back into place.
Kyuzo staggered backwards. He'd put a huge amount of energy into that strike, only for it to be brushed aside as if it was nothing. His attention finally left Aizen as two more columns of yellow light burst out of the sky and surrounded Tousen and Ichimaru. It was then he noticed both the gaping hole in the sky and the presence of several more shinigami. Above him hollows writhed about in the hole, trying to break into Soul Society and the feast for them that waited there, only held back by another even more ominous presence behind them. On the ground Kyuzo saw 4 taichous and a number of fukutaichous had arrived during his fight with Aizen. The three traitors were now being slowly lifted, the ground they had been standing on was floating serenely up into the sky and all the chaos beyond. He hefted his newly enhanced sword and prepared to attack again, grimacing slightly at the wound on his back.
"STOP!" It was the soutaichou that had shouted. "That light, it is called Negacion. A hollow technique used to defend their own." The old man looked up at Aizen, whom he had considered the most promising taichous in the Gotei 13, and continued. "Once they were encased in that light, there was nothing we could do to touch them." Kyuzo looked from the speaker back to the object of his hatred. Without taking his eyes off Aizen he stabbed his sword into the ground, straight through the taichous haori that Aizen had discarded while taunting him.
"Aizen Sousuke! I mark you for death!" He had shouted but there was no doubt in his voice, no wavering; just pure hatred. He ran his right hand along his blade, slicing the palm open in the process, and the squeezed his hand into a fist so the blood dripped out onto the white garment on the ground. He raised his voice further; "By my own blood, I will cast you down!" At this utterance he gripped the hilt of his sword again, and the reiatsu suddenly flowing through it obliterated the haori it had pinned down, leaving not even a visible shred. "You will be slain by my hand, never forget that!" Aizen simply smiled down on him.
"You should be careful that you can follow through when you make threats like that. Otherwise you will end up looking weak."
"Aizen!" It was Ukitake shouting now. "Why have you done this?"
"I will ascend to new heights" was the condescending response. "I will stand in heaven, and take the throne that has been so long unoccupied." As he spoke he removed his glasses, before shattering them in his fist, and sweeping his hair back over his head. He looked back down on them, a malevolent presence to the kindly face he had always worn before. "Goodbye, shinigami." And with that the rift in the sky closed around him, along with his two accomplices.