Disclaimer: The ideas and concepts used in BLEACH belong to Tite Kubo, as well as any regular characters. Most of the characters in this story belong to me. Thank you.


Suichi stepped cautiously into a clearing where he saw a dead body greedily clutching a sword in the ground. There was a significant amount of wooden debris scattered across the grass and many broken trees as well.

Was there some kind of fight here or something? Suichi pondered as he crept across the ground with one hand on his wounded arm. He decided it was best to avoid the corpse in case it happened to be a trap and looked around the area for some form of shelter or, at the least, food. Up in a tree, for reasons Suichi couldn't quite understand, there seemed to be a large cache of meat. "Well, that's fortunate" whispered enthusiastically. He started to climb up the tree to grab some of the curious nutrition, when the brush started rustling beneath him.

Suichi made a silent gasp and a fearful face as a familiar figure shambled through the forest and into the clearing. A face he had seen many times before, carrying a nearly fabled sword over shoulder with a guard shaped like a skull's silhouette. Shin Kenpachi, the Mass Killer of Shinigami. The corpse, Suichi figured, must belong to his accomplice Hoji Araijin the defect of a mercenary group far to the south.

"Oi, oi…" Shin mumbled aloud at the unmoving body of his comrade. "Wake up, Hoji." Hoji didn't move at all, so Shin started poking him with the sheathe of his sword. "Wake up." After a few pokes, Hoji's limp body fell to the ground. His sword, still in hand, rested neatly across the grass. Shin stared down with a stone face at Hoji, who still showed no signs of life. Then Shin started kicking him in the gut. "Wake up!"

What kind of respect is that? Suichi thought. Suddenly, the despair lifted as Hoji started coughing on the ground and rose up carefully. He took a few seconds to collect himself until Shin reached out to help him to his feet. Hoji darted his head back and forth with building panic. All at once, he dropped his sword, fell to his knees and raked his head with nervous hands as he screamed with wide eyes.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHHH!! What the hell happened to all the food!?" The scene in the clearing was enough of a clue for Hoji to discover what exactly had happened during his transgression with his sword. He glanced over at the shining metal that was deflecting raindrops in tiny splashes. He grabbed it angrily with both hands and reeled it close to his face. "WHY!? Why waste all that delicious food!? WHAT DID I DO TO YOU!!" With that angry outburst, Hoji threw his sword like a javelin up into the nearest tree he saw. It just missed a now paralyzed Suichi.

"There, there" Shin said very dryly to feign concern. "There will be more meat…more apples, somewhere else."

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT APPLES!!" Hoji hissed menacingly, then went back to sobbing over a pile of desecrated food on the ground. "My meeeeat…how will I get protien now…" As Hoji whined, Shin sensed some form of disturbance nearby. He looked over to the tree that Hoji's sword was now lodged in and started forward in that direction. Suichi saw him coming and attempted to cloak himself.

"Takokawa!" Suichi whispered with his good hand folded in front of him. Slowly, he disappeared and blended perfectly with the tree on which he crouched. Not a second too soon, Shin scaled to the top of the tree and removed Hoji's sword.

"Oi, Hoji!" Shin shouted. He pitched the sword back down and Hoji caught it by the blade. Shin jumped back down and walked over. Hoji wiped his eyes and rose back up. "We should get to some kind of covering before it rains even harder" Shin suggested.

Suichi decided to do the same. He carefully and silently deactivated his camouflage and jumped from his tree branch perch. Shin's ear twitched at the noise of a tree moving and he whipped his head around, just barely catching a glimpse of the retreating assassin. With glowing white eyes, Shin extended his open hand and grasped hard in Suichi's direction. All at once, Suichi felt as if a mountain had been thrown on top of him and he was sent hurdling down to the ground. All went black for a while…


Far away from our protagonists, Netami dashed through the vast wilderness that led into the no-man's land known as the Blood Fields. Most common people assume Hollows to be magical animals that have developed basic understandings of speech and communication. Animals, which feast exclusively on shinigami and other high-spiritual latent beings, even each other. No one of this era knows just what hollows are…

Thousands, maybe millions of Hollows inhabited the knolls and caves that these rolling badlands offered. Netami was only focused on finding and killing his would-be assassin before word of his deed had spread through the upper grapevine. A treachery the likes of which Netami had committed would not go unpunished or unseen for long.

"Damn you, Suichi!" Netami cursed as he neared the border between the cartographed region and the wilds. "If the Hollows don't pick you to pieces out here," he dug his feet firmly into the ground, drew his sword and pointed ahead it with both hands beside his face, "then I will."

After coming to a complete stop, and with sword still wielded in his fashionable way, he took one step onto the ankle-high orange grass of the plains. Like an alarm, the resonating blunt roar of one Hollow woke up and sounded off many more. The plains echoed with the hollow screams as the shinigami made his way slowly and merrily deeper into the grassy death-land.


Takokawa: Octopus Skin (for some Octopi can change their colors to blend in)