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.
"...What?" Shin asked, staring in disbelief up the steps to the mysterious old man that claimed to know everything he wanted to know. "You're saying..." Shin's mind was clouded with thoughts. He looked down at his sword, still comfy in its sheathe and thought back to that fever dream he had. The one with the skeleton.
"Can't believe it, eh?" The old man gloated. "Well, you better believe it! I'm a far-known seer who has the ability to read the minds of shinigami and their zanpakuto alike!" Shin kept staring, while Hoji shakily stood to his feet and glared wide-eyed up at the buggy old man. "And you, Hoji Araijin. Do you want to know the secret to your sword as well?"
"HELL NO!!" Hoji shouted, blindly charging forward again. The old man let him get to the lowest step before he decided to throw out another half-powered wave. Hoji swung his sword as hard as he could but still got pushed back to Shin's feet on his back with his feet dangling haplessly over his face.
"Ha ha" the old man laughed triumphantly. "You underestimate me, child! I have a millennium of spiritual training, whereas you two have nothing!" Regardless, Hoji sprung back up and tried to charge again, holding his sword in two hands at his side. Suichi regained consciousness from the first blast in time to feel the rush of wind from the old man firing yet another. He watched Hoji fly back through the air and recover as Shin stood perplexed on his own sword.
"Answer me, Shin Kenpachi!" the old man shouted, drawing up his club like a sheathed sword. "I can tell you what you want to know!" Suichi decided to try and sneak up from behind, but the old man was craftier than that. He took his club and thrust it back into Suichi's gut, knocking the wind from him. With the club's end still on Suichi's stomach, the old man twirled it forward and Suichi went flying down to the ground.
"Oi, Shin!" Hoji shouted right next to him. "Come on, this guy;s mocking us!"
"...Hoji..." Shin said. Hoji perked up and tried to listen. "...is he telling the truth?"
"You're damn right I am!" the old man shouted in response.
"Are we really that weak still?" Shin asked, raising his head up mournfully. The old man's victorious smiled slowly faded into an awkward, wrinkled look of curiosity as Shin spoke. "All of our training and all of our work, it's all been wasted up until now? If we can't achieve a higher level of power on our own, than why try at all. But if we can't achieve it period..." Shin sadly trailed off into silence. The old man took his club-staff and leaned on it. "...old man!" Shin shouted.
"Eh?" The old man grunted to affirm his attention.
"If you really know everything that we want to know..." Shin started. Hoji wanted to lop off his head to keep his mouth from asking the question that would negate their entire existences, but figured that Shin would out-sword him and just covered his ears. The old man, meanwhile, was looking more prosperously curious. "...can you tell us where Hollows come from?" Suichi had stayed conscious long enough to understand how stupid a question that probably was while Hoji was sqeezing his head blue. The old man chuckled softly and looked down in defeat.
"You're quite adamant in your desires" he admitted, "Shin Kenpachi. Very well, pull up a seat." Shin looked around and uprooted a tree stump. Hoji released his ears and followed after Shin, grabbing a rock.
"What's happening?" Hoji asked as he sat next to Shin.
"Shut up and I'll start!" the old man yelled. Suichi crawled over on his belly and settled himself down in a lizard pose. "And for the purpose of simplicity, call me Inaga rather than 'old man' if you have a question."
"No problem, old man Inaga" Hoji affirmed. Inaga took a very angry stare before he sighed heavily.
"From what I understand" Inaga started, "there are two major beings in the afterlife. There are we shinigami, the deceased from the human world who have received a proper spiritual burial via another shinigami, and of course there are the Hollows. In our dimension, we see Hollows ever so often hunting for souls to devour, as they exist on souls. We shinigami have kept our human side of our souls, but the Hollows abandoned their humanity and became animals when they died. That is why we two beings cannot appropriately co-exist in the same world."
"But where do they come from?" Shin interrupted.
"No one quite knows" Inaga said. "Even the foremost authority on the Hollows herself sometimes questions their origin. We know that when a humans soul is particularly dark and evil, they will eventually become a Hollow filled with anger and regret. Some souls that linger too long in between the living and unliving worlds rot away, and they too become Hollows. I only know that the process is gradual and only the shinigami can properly save a soul with the pummels of our souls and send them here. Much like you were saved, Shin Kenpachi." Shin kept staring ahead to listen, but Hoji recoiled in surprise.
"You weren't born here?" Hoji exclaimed. Shin didn't care, so he edged Inaga on.
"So where do these corrupt souls go?" Shin asked. Inaga sighed and sat down at the top step.
"Like I said," he started again, "no one is sure. Everyone has their own strange story and few of them seem to be related. Besides, this isn't a question for me. There's a researcher in this country that could definitely tell you more about Hollows than I can. Go find her."
"What's her name?" Shin asked.
"Rei" Suichi moaned as he sat up. "Rei Unohana.I've been approached with contracts to kill her from the major voices of the churches in this region. They don't like the work she's doing in researching 'demons' or so they believe."
"That's right" Inaga said, nodding. Shin sat up, brushed off his pants and pulled up his belt.
"One last thing" Shin said. Inaga looked to listen. "You said that in my current state, I can't defeat the Kyuuhiouto. Suppose I can achieve my higher state of power. What would happen then?" Inaga chuckled at Shin's remark. Hoji got up and got ready to hurt the withered old freak for laughing at his friend when Inaga spoke.
"Shin Kenpachi, yours is a power that my very well end the world as we know it." That was a shock. All six eyes from the trio darted over at the space where the old man used to be. "As for the 'then'" Inaga continued atop a tree, "I'm sure that you'll reach that level soon enough, young man." Shin looked up with his blank seriousness, staring down the happy old warrior. Then, with a sudden smile, Shin started setting off. Hoji followed, scooping Suichi up over his shoulder as the three walked down a beaten path through the mountains.
"When was this road here?" Hoji questioned. Inaga watched as those two ambitious young swordsmen set off with the beaten assassin in tow and he smiled.
"It's a long road" Inaga said poetically. "You can't see its end or its turns from where you are, but know that it is long." He vanished and the temple doors shut with a clap of metal thunder.
Meanwhile, while Shin and Hoji hopped and skipped along with their lively trustee Suichi, a man was walking into a wilderness fortress. These forts, established by those who wish to forgo the solidarity of the shinigami's code of conduct in the cities, are few and far between. This one is the infamous 'BloodBane' encampment, where the worst kinds of bandits and thieves gather to group and establish a base for their raids in the nearby cities. It is of course made all the more infamous for its treacherous surroundings, bordered by the mountains to the north, a sea to the east, heavily guarded and dense forest from the west and the narrow, horrific strip of the Blood Plains to the south. From the south, a tired figure staggered onwards.
"Hey!" one lookout shouted down to the guards below. "Something's coming in from the south!"
"Is it a Hollow?" a guard shouted back. The lookout took up his telescope and looked again seeing the tattered robes, long wet hair and more importantly the sword of a shinigami, all of which were glistening with the dank and dark blood of the Hollows.
"It's a stick!" the lookout shouted. The guards picked up their swords and rushed out. They met the man mid-way and offered their arms in help.
"Hey guy! Are you crazy!?" the guard said to the still marching man. "You sticks must have some weird crack in your skulls that makes you go out and try to kill all them Hollows."
"You didn't go after Alpha, did you?" the other guard asked. It was all in vain to try to reconcile with this man. The lookout watched in horror as the two guards, men he knew, were sliced down in a flash. The murderer was already inside the city, having flash stepped through the door the guards left open.
"RAID!" the lookout shouted. It was the last thing he shouted, his bones all crushed under the wave of pin-point pressure delivered by the mystery man. Suddenly, and army of various weapon wielding bandits came from nowhere and circled their assailant.
"Who are you!" the man with the sharpest looking sword yelled. Very slowly, Netami raised up his head and glared out of his orange-filled eyes with a paralyzing hate.
"I'm nothin" Netami said, raising up his released sword that blended with the dark light of the valley. "The nothing that swallows everything it sees." One swipe, and everything faded to black... "I'll find you Suichi" his voice echoed through the darkness he created. "I'll find you, and I'll kill you..." The BloodBane fortress had vanished the next morning, a barren spot of dead woodland in its place. No one ever found out why...
