To Rekindle The Flame
After a time of infinite fall through a Void beyond his understanding or perception, beyond hope and desperation, without sight, hearing or touch, Yamamoto breathed and discovered that once more, he had lungs to fill. His eyelids felt as heavy as lead, and in the absence of senses that he had briefly found herself trapped into, he grasped with all of himself: every sensation, every feeling, every otherwise ignored twitch of muscles under his skin.
He breathed, marveling at the rushing air that went through him, feeling with distant understanding how his diaphragm moved to allow him to le air inside of his chest. He stirred briefly and felt that his skin was nothing but a veil between muscles and sinew and a cloth that had been placed over him.
A constant beeping sound was, in the end, the one detail that made him open his eyes, and he was, at least at first, confused. He blinked quickly, slowly but surely returning aware and categorizing his surroundings even if his vision remained blurry.
"Maybe it was the storm to trounce him like that? Lightning and being blown off your feet over the desert would trounce pretty much everyone."
Voices that he couldn't recognize pierced through the hazy thought processes that still hindered Yamamoto, his bushy and burnt eyebrows furrowing in confusion at the sounds in a foreign language that hit his aged ears.
And as if the sound of another human voice was a trigger, the mind of the man that held together Soul Society for more than a thousand years cleared, his senses and thoughts returning to their usual sharpness.
With only a glance, he realized, in order, three things. First: there wasn't a battle going on. Second: he lost to the Quincy's King. Third: he was no longer in Soul Society.
The world felt at once vaster and dimmer, his own reiatsu pouring out of himself at speeds that should have cracked the reality around him, but that instead seemed to behave like oil over water. If the old shinigami needed a confirmation that he no longer was in Soul Society, that was it.
"Yamamoto Shigekuni, you never manage to follow things through. Why else do you think, I never considered you one of the 5 warring potentials?" Ywach's last words echoed in the one-armed, wounded shinigami as if they were being spoken out loud.
The ancient man gritted his teeth in outrage at the words of that man, responsible for the death of countless souls.
"Why didn't you heal your left arm? Had you ordered that human girl, she would have surely done it... but why didn't you? I already know. You just didn't want to depend on a human." The ethereal voice was mocking now, and even pedantic, presenting an irrelevant question with the heavy implication that it was more meaningful than what it actually was.
The knuckles of his remaining hand popped when he clenched his fist strong enough to crumple steel like it was paper. For a single istant, Yamamoto could only feer sheer rage. What he had built, gone. A thousand years to shape those who wielded power into protectors instead of common bandits, dust in the wind.
"I know all about it: even during the battle with Aizen, you were uncomfortable relying on the human, Kurosaki Ichigo... and now, you try to not only shoulder the entirety of Soul Society on your shoulders alone, but the fate of the rest of the world too. That is why you have lost." A barely restrained chuckle seemed to seep between a word and the next, igniting anew the blood in Yamamoto's veins.
Without saying a single word, the old man forced himself to seat, categorizing his own wounds from what his senses told him, but still, while he did no longer give any sign of the raging inferno of his abject fury, his spirit was thundering in outrage.
"You've gotten weak, Yamamoto Shigekuni. The former you was different. When the Gotei 13 just begun, you were known only as divisions and were actually just a bunch of murderous thugs. But that was precisely why you were a group to be feared. You, who ruled over that group, were a true sword-demon." The mockery was gone now, as if Ywach was actually being respectful of the downed opponent.
His rather insane pain tolerance allowed him to treat the throbbing wounds like benchmarks to measure his own health, but now, he was even grateful for the pain, because he gave him an excuse to not think about the Quincy's words.
"You would have done anything in order to cut down your opponent, you were someone who couldn't care less for the lives of his subordinates."
Was he an inexperienced man, or shinigami, he would have paused at the gravity of his own wounds, but his recent defeat was simply too massive to allow him to rest until he healed. Yamamoto knew what Ywach had been talking about, he remembered it, how could he not? Authority is always born from power, and in the very beginning, he and his were exactly that: authority in virtue of the power they were capable to bring forth.
"But all of that changed after the extermination of us, Quincy...Once you got things to protect, once you got your hands on some peace, with that worthless justice and pride, you and yours became a group of weaklings."
If the wounds hadn't killed him by now, they wouldn't in the future. He concluded his self-examination, even as his mind ran over the endless years of warfare and strife he had to endure in order to establish his rule, the rule of the powerful, and the vastly more complex and delicate task of slowly turning that power inwards, so that he and his people could command themselves, know themselves, and be something more than violence unneeded, something better than the rule of might.
"Even in death, you lie there unknowingly, but let me tell you... Soul Society is going to be destroyed, because the Gotei 13 died a thousand of years ago, along with us."
With a last deep breath, the Head Commander found once more his balance, remembering that even if now those years were gone, even if he had ultimately failed in his self-appointed purpose, that millennium and change of Order, somewhat merciful if not always rightful, had happened. The souls that walked Soul Society in those years wouldn't know the nightmare that it was before, nobody would thank Yamamoto for his efforts, mostly because he carried them out with the edge of his blade, but he was proud neverhteless.
It was difficult, to assume a perspective that so closely resembled those of mortal beings, that enjoyed everything knowing instinctively that it wouldn't last. Yamamoto couldn't deny that he had been much more dangerous in his youth, even if less experienced and not as powerful. Was losing that might worth the millennia of pace? The years spent guiding the lost? Nurturing the young? Blowing kindly upon the tiny embers of hope for a better tomorrow?
After a last fortifying deep breath, his neverending rage, his fury, that could set the very world aflame, was subdued, an inferno brought to heel, reduced to a single ember, ready to burst. Only then, Yamamoto's head turned slowly, mindful but not scared of his own injuries, and he started to take notice of his surroundings. The words of Ywach now faded away from his mind. Discipline isn't easily discarded, even when everything around you falls down: methodically, he started to set a system of objectives and targets with a mind far too used to keep going in face of adversities.
Yes. Losing his absolute power over Soul Society, in exchange for the headaches born by dividing that right to rule had been a worthy exchange. A grim smile found his way on the weathered features of the elderly warrior. For all of his cunning and undeniable power, Ywach couldn't even come close to understand why Shigekuni Yamamoto Genryūsai acted as he had.
Power for the sake of power. The one-armed God of Death almost scoffed at the image of the man that had ultimately defeated him. For all of Ywach's power, for all of his ambition, for all of his success, the Quincy King hadn't even realized that as Rulers, they stood in completely different leagues.
Shaking his head minutely, he schooled himself, his eyes briefly looking around. He was in an insipid room of a human hospital, that much was clear. Outside, the nervous presence of two stationary figures informed him that the humans had placed guards to keep an eye on the situation. Wise of them, if meaningless.
His sharp senses stretched over an impressive stretch of land, but soon enough he focused them on the building he was in, in particular over a human... that was not, in fact, human. Not a shinigami, not a Quincy, surely not a hollow. It didn't feel like Kurosaki Ichigo had, but there were similarities and many of them at that.
Power, rumbling and erratic, that should have been able to roll over the world very much like the one Yamamoto himself wielded, was kept bound in the spiritual equivalent of 32 golden chains, visible only to the refined senses of the ancient shinigami. In the distance, at the very edge of his senses, Yamamoto could feel something that was echoing the power of the strange creature that was remaining stationary at the floor beneath his.
It was a matter of seconds to bring his spiritual pressure low enough to overwhelm the souls of the humans waiting outside his room, and then he walked out, distasteful but uncaring of the state of his clothing, that clearly depicted him as someone that shouldn't have been roaming alone to the eyes of humans. But that hardly mattered.
There wasn't that subtle feeling of tension in the air that when broken could lead back to Soul Society. No, if he was right, and he had no reason to believe otherwise, Yamamoto wasn't on the Mortal Earth that so closely was intertwined with Hueco Mundo and Soul Society.
He followed his senses, gritting his teeth when the labyrinth-like succession of corridors, stairs, and strange rooms made him occasionally blunder on his way towards his target, until he once more brought his soul to bear on the unsuspecting humans, that fell to the ground in a crumpled mess, allowing him to enter the room of the only one that could represent the key to the knowledge of the actual circumstances.
When he closed the door behind himself with a sharp *clack*, the man whose power was bound whipped his head in Yamamoto's direction.
"I am Thor Odinson, Mortal!" the boisterous blonde thundered in his bounds, "God of Thunder! Now free me, so that I can recover the mighty Mjolnir!"
The old man walked forward with measured steps, slowly but surely nearing the head of the bed, where he briefly opened his eyes to stare at the blonde, who stammered: "You're no mortal."
The silence exuded by the aged shinigami was confirmation as good as any other, but after a couple of seconds, the raspy yet commanding voice of Yamamoto echoed in the small room: "Your situation... your bound power, is it because of the absence of your weapon?"
"How do you..." Thor frowned heavily: "Did my father send you?"
"No." now that he was close to this curious being, Yamamoto found himself wondering if the distant item that he felt was connected to the bound blonde acted in the same way as a Fullbringer's focus, and how could he use the situation to his advantage.
"But then, how do you know of Mjolnir?"
"It rests at the edge of my senses," the aged shinigami turned his closed eyes towards the boisterous youth tied to the bed, "but it's calling to you, that much is clear."
At the frown of the blonde, Yamamoto spoke, lest the youth started to ramble like they tended to do, never getting to the actually important topic he was trying to reach: "I have a sword, that to me is like that hammer is to you."
"Where is your weapon then, old man?"
"Broken." his sword had been broken, the physical manifestation of his own soul, that he had known and refined for more than a millennium, had been first stolen away, then used against him by that scum Ywach.
"But then..." Thor could clearly feel the power exuded by the old man next to his bed, even if it was precisely controlled, and it sat just beyond the reach of mortal men, it wasn't something that could be explained with the use of a weapon. It came from within, and it was undeniable.
"I am more than the application of my power, foolish child." the one-armed elder reprimanded the bound ex-god of thunder, "The sword isn't my soul, only its manifestation." Yamamoto's eye opened a fraction, freezing the self-declared 'God of Thunder' in place, "It's only a matter of forging her anew." he spoke thoughtfully, his mind trying and failing to come up with an obvious and immediate way to reforge what was lost, " even if I'm no swordsmith."
The talent necessary to create a Soul Cutter belonged solely to Ōetsu Nimaiya, who rightfully owned the title of 'God of the Sword', Yamamoto was far from being defenseless, or powerless, but a Shinigami without Zanpakutō... it was simply wrong.
"Long the dwarves of Nidavellir have been friends of Asgard, mightiest smiths across the whole universe!" Thor laughed at his good fortune, now that he found a direction to regain his own power, even if it was paved by the company of this unnerving old man: "Help me retrieve Mjolnir, and I'll ensure that the Dwarves forge anew what was broken!"
The grey eyes of the ancient Shinigami opened fully then, if only for an instant, and in that second, Thor felt himself being weighted, and he knew, in his gut, that if he fell short of whatever measure the old man was taking of him, or if he ever went back on his word, he would die.
But the God of Thunder had always liked a challenge.
Yamamoto nodded, and in ten seconds flat, Thor was free of his bounds, and the unlikely duo was crossing the hospital pointing to the exit.
AN
Hope you enjoyed this peek inside of the Old Man's mind.
For those that are unfamiliar with the character that I'm writing this fiction for (you fucking casuals, you), imagine that your afterlife is an endless purgatory in which powerful souls gain superpowers, mainly in the form of magical swords.
Yamamoto is a Bleach character that was so powerful and charismatic, that he managed to rally others of his own calibre and conquered the fucking Afterlife. Once he was done, he sent his 'team', his companions, his equals, to defend 'God', while he remained behind. And for a thousand years, he turned the endless expanse of the Afterlife's anarchy into an actual government.
He remained the head of the 'Military', but relinquished all the other powers to a Ruling Body.
And he remained General Commander (head of the Military), only because in more than a thousand years, nobody was ever born with the potential to surpassing him.
This (I don't think the author did it consciously) indicates a pretty hardcore set of beliefs, two very big steely balls, and a general veneer of awesomeness that has nothing to do with the Japanese-Mangaka obsession of making old, wrinkled men unreasonably powerful.
I'll try to put some humor in the next chapter, this one was pretty heavy.