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.


While Hoji fought in the castle above, Shin and Suichi sat in the prison cell contemplating a way out. So far Shin's plan to kill the bars with brute force wasn't working and his knuckles were starting to bleed from punching the walls and bars.

"Dammit" Shin growled. "No one traps me like this! I'm killing these bastards once I get out!"

"They're already dead, Shin" Suichi said calmly, meditating in the corner. Shin stopped for a moment to shake off the pain and fresh blood on his hands. He looked back to see his perfectly tranquil comrade thinking nothing of their current state.

"Oi" Shin said, "what's with you? Shouldn't you be panicking more than me right now? I feel stupid acting out like a maniac on my own. Aren't you gonna help me?"

"I've been in a cell before, Shin" Suichi said. "I was a rookie at one point. I made mistakes. I'm just glad those mistakes landed me in a dungeon and not a crucifixion post."

"Cruci...who?" Shin asked cluelessly. Suichi got up, clapped his hands together and started walking toward the bars.

"Crucifixion" Suichi corrected. "In some lands they use it as torture or death. It's pretty brutal from what I've heard. They nail your hands and feet to an X-shaped post and whip you for a while. The can also angle it so you suffocate from the strain put on your chest."

"Cool" Shin flatly said. Suichi nervously twitched at Shin's short and plain observation and placed a hand on the magical bars. It didn't pass through like Shin's sword did. Instead he took a breath, gripped it hard, and concentrated. A chilling blur started picking up. Shin could see the full field of Suichi's pressure mixing with his aura, forming an icy border of energy around him. Shin stepped back as he felt the chill getting to him and left the field that Suichi was concentrating into his hand.

"I've seen bars that work like this before" Suichi noted. "They're made of spiritually-attuned water."

"Really?" Shin asked. He saw the metal of the bars start to flake off and chip rapidly. The bars were peeling apart, as if in layers, and some parts simply shattered off in little frozen explosions. "So it turns to liquid when it comes into contact with a sword."

"Any metal" Suichi said. "Swords, released swords, anything but kido or spiritual energy will just get trapped and eventually absorbed into its liquid form." Suichi sighed loudly and and tightened his grip on the bar. It broke in his palm, then fully shattered into a hail of icy shrapnel to the cold, unforgiving floor where it broke even more. When the pressure lifted and Shin could no longer feel the stinging cold he stepped forward into the snow.

"Why aren't you always this useful?" Shin asked. Suichi chuckled nervously.

"Hey!" a random voice shouted. Suichi's head tilted up when he heard it and he stepped into the longer dungeon hallway that was bordered with cells. Bandits and criminals from the village were being held behind the semi-metal bars and had faces that hungered, starved almost, for freedom. "Hey, how'd you do that!?" the bandit shouted.

"Huh?" Shin grunted. "More people are down here?"

"Apparently" Suichi answered. "What should we do?"

"Why don't you free us?" a bandit suggested.

"Yeah" another testified. "We swear, on our honor as thieves, whatever you want us to do we'll do it! We'll be in your debt for life!"

"You must be joking" Shin lowed as he stepped into the light. He turned with a swift motion of his neck to glare down the hall of cells with an angry scowl. "There is no honor among thieves. You just want to stab our backs." The thieves all fell dreadfully silent.

Damn him! A thief shouted internally, trying to keep his ugly face as solid as he could. How did he see past our perfect ruse!?

"I ain't helping out" Shin resolved "a bunch of miscreants and thugs."

"Then you'll just wind up back here!" a thug shouted. Shin's bangs cast a shadow over his brow, hiding his eyes in the terrible blackness and stealthily glowered the bandits down. Their desperation was just more offsetting to him than anything. "Come on! Be a pal. I'm sure we have the same goal in mind...Shin Kenpachi." Shin's eyes flew open and the shadows lifted. Unconsciously Shin let out a boom of his deathly spirit pressure which shook and stunned all the men in the prison.

"Shin...?" Suichi nervously asked. He felt the power harder than anyone, but he was still standing. Several men had already fainted.

"Release them" Shin said. He had returned from his state of shock and assumed his stern character as a leader and fighter. "We could use the extra muscle, even if they end up being nothing but meat for the grinder." The bandits were cautiously optimistic about their early parole. Every guard had just been taken down by the infamous Kenpachi, and now he was ordering for their lives to be thrown away at his discretion. Suichi concentrated hard on his hands, spreading his pressure in controlled bursts of power to each of the semi-metal cell walls. In no time at all the bandits were free, only a few of the bars holding them back were shattered into a snowy cloud that fell softly to the ground.

"Listen up" Shin growled as the bandits came out with their faces plastered with evil grins and eyes full of deceit. "I'm keep you all on a tight leash. If I sense someone stepping out of line, even by the width of a Hollow's hair, throats are getting cut. And not just one guy. If one of you takes an unapproved step, all of you are dying." The sheer hatred in his voice was enough to make a man drop to the floor and die. The bandits stood fast however, even though their optimistic vagrancy was clouded with fear and dread.


The bandits, all of whom had either been through the palace before or worked their for a time before the mercenaries came, led Shin and Suichi through the corridors and hallways. Their aim was indeed the same. They all wanted to kill the mercenaries, especially the captain of them, for one reason or another.

"Satsugyoushi" Shin suddenly said to Suichi.

"What?" Suichi asked. "Death Gaze?"

"My pressure" Shin started "is almost numbing to me. I don't know why, but I can't perceive my own pressure when I exert it. I guess that's why I seem so oblivious to it. The two forces of death from within me and my sword cancel each other out when they're both released at once. Now that I know just how damaging my pressure is, I've decided to use it more opportunistically."

"How so?" Suichi asked.

"I've already named it" Shin said, "that move I used in the dungeon. I figure if I can make eye contact I can probably increase the effects by at least a bit. Until then I need to figure out just how to control it when I can't even feel it."

"Yeah" Suichi said, rubbing his neck, "I can see how that would be a problem."

"Breakout!" a voice called. A guard at the far end of a hall had spotted Shin's group of escaped bandits and was announcing hem to his cohorts in the room that the hall led into. "The prisoners have escaped! To arms! To arms!"

"Dammit" Shin growled. He unsheathed his sword quickly and flashed down the hall. Before another 'to arms' could be called the heralding guard was stabbed in the chest by Shin's icy-cold blade. "Quit drawing attention to us." The guard looked over painfully as Shin slowly drew his sword out. One of Shin's fingers had drifted up to his mouth and his lips were strangely pursed to show his teeth. "We're being sneaky. Shhhh!" The guard dropped to the floor and bled. His body quivered with fear. Shin swung the blood off his sword and then sheathed it with a stylish spin.

"There they are!" another guard, clad in armor, called from the opposite end of the hall. "We've got them cornered!"

"Ah, crap!" a bandit shouted.

"Those bastards were following us!" another noted.

"Shin" Suichi called, "what now?"

"Grab someone" Shin ordered calmly "who knows where to go and get them to me. I'm trusting you with finding the kid and getting him to safety."

"Alright" Suichi confirmed. "Men, kill those guards! Someone go with Shin and escort him to the mercenary captain!"

"I'll go" a random young man shouted. Before he could make his way out of the bandit legion an explosion shook the palace floor. The guards had formed a tight phalanx wall of their double-edged swords and center-grip metal shields.

"Fire again!" the apparent captain shouted. One man pointed his sword forward, mumbled some archaic incantation under his breath and beneath the cover of his shield, and formed a translucent ball of pulsing red energy at the tip of his sword. The ball flickered for a moment, then flew into a bandit, exploding on contact and taking a greater portion of that bandit's body with it.

"Well that's unfortunate" Suichi said.

"We can guide Shin" a bandit said. He stood tall with a sharp goatee beard and messy, thick dreadlocks on his head. He wore a bandanna lazily across his right eye and had behind him three men of large stature wearing masks with swords slung over shoulder. "It's better if we travel as a group, don'cha think?"

"Whatever" Suichi said. He hopped to the front of the line and drew out his sword into his left hand. "Just get Shin to the mercenary captain and he'll do the rest...I guess."

"You got it" the bandit leader affirmed. Shin was growing impatient. As soon as his entourage arrived he jerked his head to the side and ordered them to lead him in a flash-speed dash through the rest of the palace to his final destination.

"Prepare to fire again!" the captain of the guard shouted.

"Coil endlessly" Suichi incanted, "Haganerensa!" His sword transformed into a coiling chain that wrapped around his forearm. He drew the arm far back and pointed the metal-tipped middle-finger of his left hand back. "Load long-range shot" he commanded. The chain suddenly became loose and drooped off his arm to the floor. He held up his other arm, keeping it perfectly straight like his other, and lowered the tip of his middle finger to aim. After a moment he picked his target and took a hard step forward.

"Fire!" the guard captain ordered.

"SNIPE!" Suichi commanded. He thrust his arm out with a shot and his chain became straight in an instant. The spheres of energy that came from the swords of the guards were blown away by the wind that Suichi's chain tore as it ripped through the air...and the guard' captain's throat. The guard was pinned helplessly with a metal chain pierced through his trachea to the wall. Suichi yanked the chain and it started reeling in, wrapping around his arm as it did.

"Captain!" a guard shouted desperately. The chain shot out just past the line and snapped back into Suichi's hand. The captain was dead, or at least close to it, and the guards were taken completely by surprise.

"Now kill them!" Suichi ordered as the bandits sped past him. "Kill them all with extreme indiscretion!" The bandits roared their battle-cries and unsheathed their wide array of differently stylized swords to fight. The guards took up their shields and identical swords to meet their threat head on. Suichi jumped up to the ceiling and threaded his chain through the stone to give himself a place to observe while the mindless fighting was going on.

"So this is what it feels like to be in charge" Suichi mused. He watched the fighting for several minutes, seeing the superior training of the guards and the barbaric physical prowess of the bandits clashing and the blood that splattered when the two forces collided in a particularly spectacular way. Then he sighed and crossed his arms, hanging onto his chain by his toes. "I wonder if Shin ever gets bored of this..."


Well this is nice Shin mused to himself. I'm being tailed by four bloodthirsty bandits who know who I am. I can't recall feeling this uncomfortable in the presence of warriors before. I'm just hoping my back isn't too exposed to them right now...

"So Kenpachi" the lead bandit began, "where'd you get that name?"

"From a man I killed" Shin answered.

"A duel?" the bandit asked, sounding interested.

"More like a murder" Shin answered. He suddenly stopped his flash-sprinting and stood in the middle of an oddly narrow hallway. "Why do you ask?" The bandits stopped a good ten paces away from Shin, their leader staring with arced brows and a budding grin on his face.

"Hehehe...." the bandit chuckled. "You know, 'Shin Kenpachi' is a really badass name. They both go together so well." Shin was getting suspicious. He gripped the handle of his sword firmly but kept his side facing the bandits so they couldn't quite tell. He just glared at them from under the shade of his bangs. "But you know...the more I saw that wanted poster of yours back in my homeland, the more I got to thinking..." The bandit now started to draw out his sword, one with a straight blade that ended in an angled tip. "Torsic Kenpachi sounds even better."

"Torsic" Shin repeated. "That's your name, eh? Well, you already know mine. That's good, one less formality for me to stay awake through."

"What was that?" Torsic asked, tilting his head and cupping a hand to his ear. Shin drew out his sword. The scraping of metal was so deadly and loud in Torsic's amplified hearing that it made him shiver.

"I'm trying to learn the names" Shin said "of my victims so I can find their families later in life to apologize. Also, when someone ever asks me, I can find your tombstone in a graveyard."

"You're pretty damn full of yourself, fool" Torsic lowed. His allies behind him drew out their swords as well, letting the sheathes hit the floor, and prepared for a fight. "You're reputation has made you a windbag, hasn't it? All that fame and infamy has gone to your head!"

"Heh" Shin laughed. "Don't kid yourself. This is the first time I heard that there was an actual bounty on my head. And in a foreign region, no less! I've become quite a celebrity in the world, haven't I?"

"You're in over your head" Torsic warned with a sly, evil giggle. He pointed his sword at Shin's face and straightened his back. "I'm a master swordsman. No one has ever faced my blade at full strength and lived! No one can rival me! I will be the next man to inherit the Kenpachi title, and then I'll kill your stupid little friend Hoji Araijin and that annoying Suichi!"

"Or" Shin said. With a flash he was in Torsic's face and floating an inch from the ground. "...you can die." Shin delivered a powerful kick straight to Torsic's face and sent him straight through the palace wall. He flew for a while through the air before he could regain his bearings and flip to land on his feet. When he landed he saw that he was in a huge dining hall with table that had been recently cleared but not yet cleaned. Three thrones were at the farthest end of the high-vaulted, wood-paneled room.

"What'dya know" Torsic said with a mad laugh. "We made it to the throne room anyway! Ha! I wasn't even trying to get here and here I am! My impeccable sense of direction is just another reason I should be able to inherit the illustrious name of Kenpa-"

"Shut up" Shin growled. His fearsome voice sent a chill through Torsic's body, but that wasn't the worst feeling he would receive. Shin was in front of him again, sword in hand, and ready to stab. Torsic brought his own sword in with a swoop to deflect Shin's stab, but it didn't work. Shin wasn't going in for a stab at all. With sword in one hand he punched hard with the other, forcing his fist almost through Torsic's hard abs. The blow sent Torsic once again barreling through the air and now it landed him straight against a stone wall. "If all you're going to do is talk then you should do the honorable thing and commit seppuku. I'm not here to socialize...I'm here to kill..."

Torsic pried himself from the wall and looked to the hole Shin made earlier. A bloody hand was reaching in from the hallway, frozen in a state of eternal stun.

Oh well Torsic sighed internally. I guess I'll have to fight him myself... Torsic wound his sword up around his chest and jumped up for a cleaving slash. Shin raised his sword to block. Death met metal...


Satsugyoushi: Death Gaze (just like Suichi said)