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.


And so the fight raged through the town. Finding his efforts to block in vain, Shin jumped and dodged Ryoko's wild and powerful swings. In doing so, he noticed a strange pattern that her sword was taking. With each swing it seemed to shrink, and as time passed without her offensive it grew. Shin had guessed that this ability was constant, keeping as far away as possible from the estimated swing radius at all times.

"So that's it then?" Ryoko growled in question. "Your fantastic offensive was just for show? Now that I have more strength, you can't fight back!?" Shin was begrudged to reply, mostly because he knew she was right. Refusing her strikes anymore, he leaped away as her blade smashed down and through what was left of the cobblestone road and landed on the roof of a house still barely intact.

"No one said my strength was that limited" Shin shouted over the cracking of rocks. Ryoko looked over with her demonic eyes and smirked as she lifted her blade and let it slowly grow. "I have power that you don't want to see, girl."

"Oh?" Ryoko grunted. "So then you'll show me this power? Your released state?" Shin stared on blankly, refusing to comply with an answer, then gave a vacant and confused grunt while tilting his head.

"Release what?" Shin asked.

"Are you slow!?" Ryoko shouted. "Shikai! Initial Release! It's simple!"

"Ah!" Shin shouted compliantly. "No, I can't do that."

"Then quit talking big!" Ryoko chided back. Shin pointed his sword straight up while still crouched on his toes and tilted his head down at her.

"Look at the sky!" he commanded. Ryoko blinked at him in confusion. "On one side is the setting sun, and on the other is the rising moon! Both spheres are comparable to the greatness we all search for! No matter how far we walk or run or fly if we can we will never reach those celestial things! They are far out of our reach." Ryoko could sense a heavy cloud of danger forming around herself. With her sword adequately huge, she decided to shut up her prey and swung down, obliterating what was left of the house.

"The sun is taunting" Shin continued from another house behind her. "It shines with a radiant golden sheen, symbolic to the highest echelons of power! The flaming sphere that brings light to everything and burns the sky!" Ryoko turned around on her toes and made a sweep, blowing away the house completely.

"Shin!" Suichi called out in panic. Hoji watched on with aggravated disbelief as the girl seemed to be keeping Shin from properly acting.

"The moon" Shin continued from above again. "A tranquil, silver shield that brings light through the darkest nights, a glimmering beacon that quells the heart's worry! It stays away the demons that come in its dark domain of night. It shows us that there is light everywhere as it sails smoothly across black sky..."

"Binshoraiko!" Ryoko screamed, shooting the house Shin was perched upon into dust, as well as the several blocks after it. She panted, her sword retracting from the spell, unaware of where Shin would pop up next.

"This is the razor's edge, my dear" Shin lowed from directly behind her. "This is where the day and night meet and split apart. Tell me," he started, raising his sword up in both hands above his head, "which sphere will shelter you when you die?" Ryoko's eyes went wide with fear. A mass of energy, more than she was using before, came from nowhere and started twirling around Shin. The neutral energy that she could see twisted around in both directions, circling the shinigami before her and spiraling upwards along his sword.

"Boko no..." Shin began to incant. Hoji knew the spell well enough to grab Suichi and get away from the general area quickly. The pressure that was produced a split second before his stroke cracked rocks, blew away rubble, and fell Ryoko to her knees. "Hakumei!!" He sword crashed down, and the energies of both night and day swirled in wonderful orange tower of explosive light. Ryoko was caught in the middle, lifted off the ground and spinning in the air in the middle of the deadly explosion. Her sword's runes broke apart from the clear, glass-like casing of the blade and dissipated in the energy.

It's amazing she thought as the light became brighter and brighter until the light suddenly vanished.


Now the sun was gone. The purple horizon blended the shadows of the ruined town to create an uneasy darkness which the frightened citizens of the town stepped out into. The devastation of the fight that broke out was still as prominent as it had been when it was created just moments before. The mystery swordsmen who had watched from the roofs were now sitting with their victorious friend who was on his back, panting hard. His sword was sliced into the ground beside him, his feet just at the edge of the crater his powerful attack made.

"Dammit, Shin" Hoji huffed. "You went too far!" Shin panted harder and more sporadically, attempting to laugh. Hoji and Suichi were staring into the hole where the unconscious, lashed up Ryoko laid. There were cuts all over her that seemed to appear out of nowhere from the huge wave of pressure, most of them tearing up her shinigami garb. Above all, Hoji's amazed statement came from the shrapnel that used to be her sword in a neat line that led up to the shattered piece of metal sticking out from her sword's hilt and handle.

"Shattering her sword at that level" Suichi marveled. "Remind me never to get you mad..."

"Ha!" Shin blurted out in response. "I never thought I'd even have to use that technique" he admitted exhaustedly. "It drains the utter hell out of me."

"I remember when you used that first one" Hoji said. "You passed right out."

"Oh yeah" Shin replied, suddenly remembering. "That was the giant, big-nosed Hollow..."

"A Gillian" a voice said. Hoji and Suichi turned their heads with a start to the now conscious Shigu who was strutting down the street leaning on a cane. "Those big hollows, they're called Gillian." Hoji shot up with his sword drawn and Suichi placed his hand readily on his.

"Ah, calm down" Shin chided them tiredly. "If he's hobbling on a stick I doubt he can fight you." Hoji looked at him, then kept his eyes neutrally on Shigu as he sheathed his sword again. Suichi decided to relax himself as well. "Now, how do you know this, guy?" Shin asked.

"I don't" Shigu admitted. "She does." Suddenly, Ryoko's serious, sharp presence became radiant. She was standing just before Shin, the soft moonlight casting a white glare off of the glasses that appeared on her face without explanation. Hoji slowly turned as she administered her massive spirit pressure, forcing him down to his face. Shigu pushed on his cane and flew back, just out of her radius. Shin, without any energy to retaliate, just laid back and let his body slowly sink into the soft, broken ground.

"I know more" Ryoko started "than you probably think I do. I'm not just some random girl who's good with a sword, I'm a scientist."

"No, I caught that" Shin said with great strain, "when you said you were the head of a research thing with the...thing."

"Seriously, Shin?" Hoji grunted in strain and disbelief over his friend's stupidity.

"However," Ryoko said, adjusting her glasses, "I can't let you live now that you have declared war on my parent organization. Shigu!"

"Yeah?" her subordinate yelled.

"Kill these two whelps" she coldly ordered.

"I can't" he shouted back.

"WHAT!?" Ryoko yellled venomously with an exaggerated scowl and white eyes of anger. "Why not!?"

"The bald trick broke my sword!" Shigu replied distantly.

"I AIN'T BALD!" Hoji growled loudly, despite the pressure. Ryoko jutted out her jaw in anger and held out her hand, in which was her broken sword.

"Fine then!" she yelled, Suddenly, her sword slowly started to grow out from the handle. Soon, its basic form was back, and she was ready to stab down into Shin's still unmoving skull. Regardless to the danger presented above him, Shin smiled. Just as Ryoko was about to make the attack, she jerked forward. Her hands became limp and she dropped her sword beside her. Her spirit field lifted as she fell to her knees then over to her side. Hoji shot back up, pushing himself up with one arm and face Suichi, who had crept in under her radar and stabbed her in the back.

"Good job" Hoji said.

"Even though you didn't tell me" Suichi started, letting his Shikai chain blade dangle from his hand, "I still knew when you needed an assassin."

"Hooray for teamwork!" Shin joked weakly. Suichi and Hoji both laughed heartily while Shigu and the villagers spectating looked on with utter horror. Three killers were laughing like drunken men at the apparent death of the girl. After all the fighting and all the blood, they laughed so well and fully that it cause many faces to cringe.

"That's scary" one man said in the crowd.


Through the night the village allowed the three to rest and sleep and eat what food the poor people could offer in what shambled shelter they could provide. Granted, Shin had inadvertently dug them all a new shallow well or pond with his attack, their work had just started. Other reports of a group of obscenely destructive young men fighting the Kyuuhiouto had circulated around through the villages under their grip.

"So that's why you guys hid?" Hoji said with his mouth full of meat.

"Yeah" a bashful young man said. "We thought you were them."

"Well, we were" Shin said. "We still are, by the way. I don't think we won't be them any time soon..." There was an awkward silence among the men in the tarp-covered room.

"...what?" Hoji grunted. Shin smirked and laughed softly.

"How's the girl doing?" Shin asked. The young man, not wanting to stir up another tantalizing little quip from the riddle-spouting shinigami, just made a shaking motion with his hand.

"Like water?" Hoji asked. The young man then slapped himself on the head. In another tent, Ryoko was still unconscious and her cheeks were puffed out significantly. The young and old doctors and village medics were gathered around her, trying very hard to discern her condition.

"We should ask that young man" and old lady doctor suggested. The younger doctors cringed.

"Ask an assassin how he crippled her?" a young woman dreaded. "I'd rather not."

"It was simple" Suichi explained, appearing room the air and earth in the middle of the gaggle of women. His voice scattered the young and easily frightened around like dust from a lightning strike. "I used a spirit energy amplified acupuncture on her back. She'll be out for a few days, with a slight side effect of cheek puffing. I'm not sure why."

"Interesting" the oldest woman medic said. "You should teach it to me. So, where will you three go next?"

"Wherever" Suichi said noncommittally. "I'm really just floating along with those two monsters...a leaf in a hurricane..." Suichi stared off blankly, thinking hard about how his fate would unfold as he stayed in tow of two men so powerful that their fights destroy towns and spread terror throughout an entire countryside. As he did, he unconsciously smiled.


Boko no Hakumei: Hollow Twilight