Well, time for a new chapter. I know, I'm pretty weird, I don't write for months and then I steadily write a chapter or so a day. I really hope these chapters haven't felt rushed or poor in quality, I'm trying my best to feel inspiration and finish off the Kaworu arc once and for all. It's a story I want told before it becomes too late and I get lazy or the Bleach series finishes off by itself entirely.
Oh, and please do submit reviews. Doesn't matter how long, I just LOVE input and without it I lose the urge to write more because I think no one is reading at all.
Captain-Commander Shigekuni Yamamoto-Genryūsai tore through them, like they were blades of grass, slicing and smashing his blade viciously against them. They were the thousands he had already killed once, and he found that faced with them once more, he had no choice to slaughter them all over again or face an utter collapse of his insanity.
He found his hands were overcome with their sticky blood splashing against him, he found once more that their bones were nothing but mere obstacles to saw through like so many chunks of wood for the fireplace.
The old man had killed thousands over the centuries, but to have each opponent he had admonished and erased appearing before him simultaneously was almost unbearable.
There was the Quincy general he had slaughtered personally in the Quincy extermination, the old man flashing with consummate speed forward and firing a volley of arrows that Shigekuni disintegrated in a wave of flame that also turned the old Quincy into dust.
There was the hulking seven foot tall Shinigami who had once challenged him for the position of Captain of 1st Division, the man having already released his bankai and sent a torrent of acid surging from his blade towards Shigekuni. The Captain-Commander merely used an unmatchable shunpo to decapitate the Shinigami and quickly avoid the wave of acid the villain had released with his bankai.
Instead the acid merely surged forward and disintegrated a handful of Shinigami nobles that Yamamoto had killed long ago during the first Shinigami war.
Meanwhile, Shigekuni had flash stepped in front of a young Bount commander he had personally killed in the Bount wars. The Bount had already summoned its doll, a massive dragon-like lizard that was breathing flames in Shigekuni's direction. However, in seconds, Shigekuni had decapitated it and sent a fireball screaming through the air at the Bount's face.
The Bount screamed and died in agony a minute or so later, but by then Shigekuni had already moved on, clashing swords with a Shinigami criminal he had executed long ago. The Shinigami roared, swinging his massive nodachi viciously once more towards Shigekuni, but Shigekuni met the blade and overpowered the strike effortlessly. In one stroke he broke the nodachi and carved the Shinigami villain in half.
With another stroke, he sent a searing wave of fire flowing out of his sword and directly at a dozen assorted Quincy and Shinigami nobles, who were instantly turned into ash.
Slowly his opponents began to back off and swirl around him by the thousands, either frightened or singed away by his flames. Any that would step forward would be slashed into pieces or burnt into ash by Shigekuni, but they were slowing circling around him in a precise circle that was slowly closing in in terms of size.
The Captain-Commander could see them closing in on him with their superior numbers and merely let out a mildly annoyed grunt, clearly not too concerned.
Slamming his flaming sword into the ground, he muttered a couple words and let his private chambers shake with power.
"Kaji Kootetsu."
In a ring with Shigekuni at its circle, the ground around which the flaming sword was embedded began to melt into molten stone.
The lava began to flow out all around Shigekuni and swallow up hundreds of screaming opponents in its stubborn burning flow. As it enveloped and burnt them away, it cooled and hardened, forming obstacles of stone to stop his opponents from forming anymore complex formations, splitting them up in confusion and terror.
Soon his thousands of opponents were no longer organized or in a circle, rather in dispersed groups chased by the exponential growth of burning lava or confused and trying to rally back against Shigekuni by themselves.
Regardless, Shigekuni's massive attack soon began to peter out, either because of the distance it had traveled and cooled or perhaps because of an equally impressive attack that had been used in reaction to it.
"Hyotenka, Kori!"
The voice had issued from within a group of dozens of Shinigami nobles who quickly separated to reveal the source of the voice and the flow of ice that was pouring out from the voice's attack.
It was none other than the noble lord Kazou Kyōraku, using his shikai to send a wave of ice forward that would cool and calm Shigekuni's lava and at least stop its flow from decimating countless more opponents of the Captain-Commander.
In a single moment of time, Shigekuni was upon Kazou, dicing apart his Shinigami bodyguards into dozens of separate pieces and then clanging his blade Ryūjin Jakka against Kazou Kyōraku's ice zanpakutō Kori.
Old Kazou grit and ground his teeth, desperately trying to hold his ground against the opponent who had vanquished him as a younger man so long ago. But Shigekuni's power had grown exponentially while Kazou's had remained frozen in the era of the Shinigami wars.
It was not very long before the blade of ice began to yield against the blade of flames through Shigekuni's pure superior physical strength and reiatsu, the vicious fire dragon Ryūjin Jakka biting against the elegant ice princess Kori and nearly rending the sword in two.
Kazou desperately jumped away, trying to get one of the dozens of Quincy or Shinigami that Shigekuni had killed in between him and the murderous Captain-Commander. However old Kyōraku's shunpo was nowhere near fast enough and in a second later Shigekuni had landed behind him with Kazou's blood head severed at the neck and held in his wrinkly merciless hands.
"Goodbye again, you old fool."
Tossing the head away without any further words or hesitation, Shigekuni once more jumped forward to mercilessly continue the slaughter of the thousands of opponents who had been summoned up by Gendo.
Gendo eyes widened as he watched his older brother ripping through the thousands of people he had already murdered once, taking their lives again without any mercy. He had not expected such solemn fortitude and determination from his older brother, and Gendo was nearly amazed by the monster that Shigekuni had become after killing his own wife and ending the Shinigami wars once and for all.
"I see...so this is the revelation of your true monstrosity, a blasphemy standing against both Time and Fate. Heed my words, brother, you will suffer for eternity for your sins, even if I am unable to deliver you to oblivion. You will never live a happy and pleasant life, for you do not deserve such an existence."
Directing more and more of the enemies of Shigekuni he had summoned forward towards his older brother, Gendo caught a flash of amber hair and pretty almond eyes that made him wince in pain.
Asuka…I supposed you WOULD be here as well. I am sorry I could not defend your life.
Turning away while the thousands of enemies he had summoned rallied once more to attack and perhaps finally vanquish Shigekuni, Gendo merely sighed in the corner of the chambers.
"I understand, Tokikaze...So this is how Fate speaks: with the mouth of Injustice. It makes sense after all these centuries that scum such as this one would be victorious. Yet I will not let myself fall hollowly into death's arms..."
Captain Commander Shigekuni Yamamoto-Genryūsai rose forward once more, sending a surging wave of flame forward that intercepted and blocked a volley of hundreds of Quincy arrows that had been fired by a dozen angered Quincy he had slain so long ago.
Blocking their subsequent arrows and flashing in front of him, his fast hands began to swing his flaming sword so quickly that in a matter of seconds they were all but a hundred or so pieces of burnt flesh.
Turning to finally intercept another Quincy arrow, he smirked as he gazed at the man who had fired it.
It was a stern old man around Shigekuni's age dressed in flowing blue Quincy robes. The great-great-grandfather of Sōken Ishida and therefore ancestor of Uryū, the proud and powerful Quincy legend known as Itachi Ishida who had been a major Quincy commander during the Quincy wars and extermination.
Drawing his glowing bow Tenraisan back, the Quincy let fire a vicious volley of arrows that Shigekuni barely managed to deflect and turn into dust. It was now that the old Captain-Commander was slowly remembering how difficult it had been to finally kill Itachi during the Quincy extermination.
Itachi grit his teeth, shaking his old head in anger. In an instant, he used an amazing Hirenkyaku to dodge one of Shigekuni's flame waves and appeared directly above the Shinigami with his bow glowing with energy and his shoulder pulsing with collected reiatsu.
"You will die now, Shinigami scum! Licht Regen!"
Slamming down from the Quincy's bow came a cloud of over a thousand glowing arrows which quickly began to crash down into Shigekuni's position, sending out a giant burst of rubble and destruction.
When the arrows and their destructive energy had cleared, Shigekuni was revealed with multiple wounds all over his already scarred and muscular body and much of his Captain's uniform burnt away. Otherwise however, the Captain-Commander was defiantly intact and ready for battle.
Raising his sword in the air with one hand in the Quincy's direction and positioning his other hand over his upraised head's mouth, he spoke a single muttered word.
"Higan…"
In an instant a massive breath of flame burst out of Shigekuni's mouth as if he himself were some terrifying dragon, the giant cloud of fire flying up into the air directly at Itachi Ishida's position.
Itachi Ishida let out a defiant roar, the Quincy drawing a blazing Seele Schneider and sending it flying through the air at the cloud of flame. The special Quincy arrow collided with the fire and exploded in a giant wave of energy that managed to just barely shield Ishida from the flames.
However, when the destruction in midair had cleared, Shigekuni had used a speedy shunpo to disappear underneath Itachi and reappear directly above the old Quincy's position.
The Quincy quickly drew another Seele Schneider and using it like a blade managed to block Shigekuni's sword with one hand. Meanwhile with his other hand he grabbed the Sanrei Glove on his hand and ripped it off, exploding with a sudden burst of reiatsu that swept away Shigekuni and pushed him back down slamming into the ground.
Shigekuni grunted in annoyance as he rose and gazed upon Itachi glowing with renewed power. He remembered now, this was the so-called Quincy final form.
It would not, however, be enough.
Using another shunpo to catch Itachi's speedy diagonal Hirenkyaku, he slammed away a volley of Quincy arrows and swept his blade up into the air to send a searing fireball slamming into Itachi's body.
Itachi let out a final scream as the flames engulfed him, and a few minutes later he was nothing but ash trodden upon by the feet of hundreds of other of Shigekuni's enemies as they charged forward in the wake of the old Quincy's defeat.
Shigekuni was as ready as ever, slicing another Shinigami in half and then sending a burst of flame flying forward to disintegrate another poor Quincy. Minute by minute the numbers of the thousands of opponents that Gendo had summoned were being cut down by the hundreds. Soon only a few hundred would be left, but it mattered not to the Captain-Commander; truly he was not even slightly fatigued.
Behind him landed a tall muscular tan man who he had once known as the defiant noble Naraku Ukitake, great-granduncle of Jūshirō.
The angry noble Shinigami had been one of the leading generals of the first Shinigami war whereupon Shigekuni had tried to bring all the rogue Shinigami groups and noble clans together under one strengthened dominion under his control.
Naraku had been famous for his immense strength and even now it was impressive, his fist smashing into the airspace where Shigekuni had been seconds ago prior to a swift shunpo. The punch shredded apart the stone ground of Shigekuni's chambers like it was mere paper.
Flexing his muscles in a self-congratulatory fashion as Shigekuni fled under another vicious punch, Naraku quickly drew the katana at his hip and spoke his shikai phrase.
"Metsu, Shigan!"
The katana turned into a giant iron mallet with which Naraku quickly blocked Shigekuni's blade and then pushed back the Captain-Commander with great ferocity.
Slamming his mallet into the ground, Naraku sent out a dangerous earth-shaking tremor which momentarily made Shigekuni unsteady on his feet.
In that instant, Naraku used a shunpo to appear directly above Shigekuni and smash his giant mallet down as hard as he could towards his opponent's skull with the intent to match it into paste.
To Naraku's surprise, Shigekuni dropped his blade in response and caught the mallet head on with two flaming hands. Naraku's surprise and terror only increased as Shigekuni's literally flaming hot hands began to rip apart and melt the iron mallet into pieces of scrap and fling them at Ukitake's face.
Ukitake hadn't any time to scream as the molten pieces of his own zanpakutō splashed against his face, blinding him and sending him stumbling away…directly into Shigekuni's blade as the Captain-Commander appeared behind him and then sliced him completely in half.
Naraku's proud muscular body was nothing but two pieces of burnt flesh by then, which Shigekuni solemnly turned into dust with a gesture and burst of reiatsu.
However, Shigekuni's next opponent from within the midst of hundreds was one that shocked him completely. Once more Asuka Kyōraku had come forward in her ravishing form, embracing Shigekuni and essentially paralyzing him with trepidation and nostalgic guilt.
"A-Asuka…what are you…doing?"
"I'm sorry…"
Though she held him gently, he found himself completely paralyzed in her hold, his grip on his sword loosening as hundreds of his opponents closed in on him ready to skewer him once and for all while his deceased wife embraced him.
I cannot…die like this…I cannot allow Gendo and Kaworu to triumph over Soul Society and the justice I took centuries to create.
I'm sorry…Asuka…A part of me will love you, always.
"Jōkaku Enjō."
In an instant a massive curtain of flame spewed forth from Ryūjin Jakka, a veritable fortress of flame that then spread out in an explosion of fire that enveloped and disintegrated absolutely everything and everyone around Shigekuni completely.
When the flames had ceased, there was nothing left but the final man, Gendo Yamamoto-Genryūsai staring at the carnage with a shocked and trembling face.
And it was through that shocked and trembling face's chest that Shigekuni's blade protruded a second later, broiling Gendo's insides with merciless flames as it pierced him in twain.
Gendo's eyes widened and he stared down at the blade stuck into his chest, trembling slightly.
"I...see...So this is fate's wave..."
The guard speaking the sentence halted.
"Do you have any last words? Perhaps you will apologize for your sins and ask for forgiveness from your leader?
Gendo grit his teeth, unable to move.
"I will say this…"
Pursing his lips, he spit directly in his brother's face.
"That is all, I am-"
He gasped as he felt Shigekuni's blade slash deep across his chest in a spray of blood and the guards sent him tumbling down into the dark abyss of the pit.
"Hahahahaha...brother...I died long ago...your blade is nothing but a postscript..."
Gendo laughed, spitting blood in Shigekuni's face as Ryūjin Jakka lay in his body.
Gendo Yamamoto-Genryûsai lay in the darkness of the pit. The darkness was eternity, time and reality no longer existed as he lay starving and wasting away.
How long had he been banished to this hole without light or time? Minutes? Hours? Centuries?
Beside him there was a tall, majestically beautiful crane of pure white feathers, with a long delicate beak and slender legs. Tokikaze, the wave of fate and time.
He glanced at the bird, smiling warily in the paused darkness of his world.
"Tell me, Tokikaze...Am I alive? Is this what one could call life? Can I be called alive? Is this but a dream? Can I dream alone?"
"That would not be a dream. It would just be a projection of reality."
"Then... where is my dream?"
"That is the extension of reality."
"My... where is my reality?"
"That is..."
"...That is at the end of the dream."
Gendo smiled as he dropped Tokikaze's form, still pierced mortally by Ryūjin Jakka but placing the index finger of each of his hands on each opposite shoulder of his older brother directly in front of him. His index fingers both suddenly flared with spiritual energy.
"Destructive Art Four. White Lightning..."
Shigekuni didn't even budge through the two shots of lightning that flared and blazed through his shoulders, keeping his blade firm inside his younger brother's body and continuing the flames that were eating away at Gendo's insides.
Gendo for his part smiled sadly through the pain while staring at the new burns he had sent into Shigekuni's shoulders, his hands moving forward and reaching out gently towards his older brother's face.
"R-Remember me…brother…"
The sword of flame cut off any further words he would have, a mere burst of it turning Shigekuni's younger brother into ash and then disintegrating him completely.
Shigekuni gave the empty space where his younger brother had once been a stern look and then turned around while sheathing his sword.
"No one shall remember you."
In the hallway of Shigekuni Yamamoto-Genryūsai's chambers, Kaworu Yamamoto-Genryūsai lay under the binding spell of a Grand Kidō Chief and an entire Kidō Corps.
All of them were struggling against the bestial energy of Kaworu struggling to break through the bonds of the forbidden binding kidō they had used. It was a spell so powerful it was supposed to be able to bind an entire army of Shinigami, let alone one man.
Yet even then they were struggling, trying to keep the beast that was Kaworu down and pinned while the spell drained away and inhibited his reiatsu.
Kaworu was struggling as hard as he could, though he suddenly felt something else inside of him as he lost track of Gendo's reiatsu for good.
Uncle?!
Letting out an angry roar, Kaworu let Inazuma send a surge of lightning through his own body, painful but far more destructive for his enemies as it burst out of his skin and slammed into each of the Kidō Corps members, sending them flying back and disrupting their concentration and Kidō spell.
In an instant Kaworu was up on his feet with a fiery roar, singed and drained of reiatsu but otherwise fine and ready to battle. In an instant he sprang forward with his bare hands, snapping the neck of an enemy Shinigami and then crushing the skull of another.
In a matter of seconds, he had decimated the entire Kidō Corps with vicious hand to hand combat that none of them were able to counter. He had been so agile that none of them were even able to mutter any chants or cast any spells.
All accept for the Kidō Chief himself, Fuyutsuki the proud, standing there tall and muscular with his auburn mustache and face full of rage at the man who had destroyed his entire squadron.
"You murderous bastard! You beast! I'll take you out once and for all! Destructive Art 90. Kurohitsugi."
Kaworu barely had anytime to react as a box of black energy formed around him and then converged onto his body, piercing him with dozens of spears of ebony destructive energy.
When the spell had cleared however, Kaworu remained standing, dripping blood from his many wounds but otherwise unharmed.
"It'll take more than that, Chief."
"What…what the hell are you?"
Kaworu merely smirked, flashing forward and appearing in front of Fuyutsuki.
The Kidō Chief let out a violent scream as Kaworu plunged his hand straight through his chest, crushing his ribs and coming out of his back. A pulse of lighting surged through Kaworu's hands and in a few instants Grand Kidō Chief Fuyutsuki was reduced to a pile of dust.
Feeling an immense spiritual pressure directly behind him, he turned to gaze at his waiting father.
"Well then, shall we, father?"
"So be it."
"No reason to waste anymore time with formalities, I think. Both of us are a bit too torn up."
"Agreed."
Both of them reached for their blades and spoke with their similar booming and authoritative voices, reiatsu blasting out and breaking apart the stone chambers they were in.
"Inazuma…Bankai! Adauchi Raikiri!"
"Ryūjin Jakka…Bankai! Kakijusshigan!"
It was time for the two great cursed dragons to clash.
Hope that was an exiting chapter for you guys, it was plenty fun to write. Finally we've reached the great climax of the Kaworu arc…father versus son!