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.
Guy let himself stay set into the stone wall while he prepared his next move. Jin seemed to be conversing with Suichi in the long corridor. Kinden was nowhere in sight and his sword was still possessing Shin's deathly spirit, keeping him subdued and stunned.
This is bad he thought. Thankfully I know his weakness: he can only attack. He has poor hand-eye coordination and can't defend against a well-aimed attack and he doesn't understand kido to save his life. He's basically a runaway wagon loaded with swords and explosives, an utterly unpredictable bomb with a wick made of blood. Who knows when his ration will be overpowered by his instinct and he simply kills everything around him!? Guy dove down with his sword down and coursing with Earthly energy. I'll finish this from up high! He's too simple to block an attack from this angle, even if he sees it coming!
Unfortunately for Guy, Suichi saw the attack coming a mile away and stopped it with a quick dash on top of Jin's head and a clean swipe to the side. Guy landed easily on the wall which came crashing down from Jin's random sword swing. The madness came creeping up and shivered Jin's bangs into their primal, jagged shape. Suichi retreated a safe distance and released his sword, then attacked Guy once more.
"From what I can tell" Suichi began "you aren't a good guy. Jin is at least nice."
"Thank you" Jin said, not noticing Suichi's chain as it blazed past him to stab at the defending Guy.
"Damn!" Guy shouted. I can't keep up with this guy!" Jin raised up his leg just above the ground and kicked back behind him. Guy dodged easily. Jin then planted his toes on the floor and let his body fly backwards, using his toes as the only pivot in his body-twisting full-swing. His sword just barely scraped the sruface of the rock, nowhere near Guy, but both the floor and Guy's chest opened up and sprayed out their own contents into the air. Guy flew back, clutching his wound, and landed in a full retreat.
"No choice now" Guy said as he sprinted away. "If I kill the man I'm possessing at least I can take control of that freak again!"
"HURAAAAAAAGH!!!!" Jin roared. Suichi was downed to his knees, his pain coming back in a flash flood.
What is this chaos? Suichi asked. The air stopped shaking when Jin was done roaring and he went stomping in a full run down the halls that were too narrow for him to move eloquently through. Suichi watched him go, trying to get a spark of his natural aura, but got nothing except a chaotic soft orange bouncing every which way, a pattern he had never seen or heard of before. It's as if his own aura just doesn't mix with him. What could that mean? While Suichi thought, Jin thoughtlessly ran ahead with blade in hand.
"You won't hurt my friend Death!" Jin shouted. "No one can kill Death! Death is Death, therefore only suicide can kill him!!!" Jin sliced a wall into shards and ran through one room far too small for him to fit in. "Death wouldn't dare take his own life!" He kicked down and tore through another mostly-wood wall and stood in a wide open hall once more. "He has too much PRIIIIIDE!!!"
He's mad! Guy ran full speed. Jin crashed through the wall and saw Guy retreating. He snarled and furrowed his brows, forcing his glowing orbs into more angled, degenerate slits of eyes. He kept his one blade tightly clutched in his hand and reached out with his fingers pointing in towards his chest. He slammed his hand through his skin, searched inside his own body for a moment and finally found it, his other blade. Identical to the first in every way, down to the bumps and creases and other imperfections that reflected his insane soul. Jin's hair folded up off his face and onto his head again as spiked frills that shook and rattled at the base of his neck. His breathing intensified and his energy started pouring outward. The walls started to melt and bleed. The ceiling caved and exploded into a spiraling, black sky above. Suichi joined the scene just in time to be assaulted by the full strength of Jin's mad aura.
"HAAAH!!!" Jin growled. Suichi was floored.
What the hell...!? What is this???Jayce and Shin were still deep in their respective meditations, Shin's being much deeper and closer to death than his previous opponent's. Within Jayce's mind he saw the landscape where he grew up as a child of wealth, a regal young man with the unruly ambition of leading an entire kingdom to peace. He stood, as himself from the present, observing his memories from an omniciesnt position atop a hill. He saw his child form dressed all in regal red and his sister in splendid light blue dresses. They were but children, barely over a hundred years old each, born into the nobility of their land outside the capital.
"Brother Jayce" his sister called, "come chase me!"
"Oh" young Jayce whined, "but you're so very fast! I can never catch you!"
"That is because" she said pompously "you are simply not strong enough in the chase! Don't you know? Any good police must first chase a criminal before apprehending them!"
"That is not what I aim to be" Jayce defended.
"Regardless" she said. "You must learn to run faster than anyone can outrun you, or you'll never be able to catch those who slip under the rules you put in place! You must be able to stay not within their step but two-steps ahead of them!"
"Then give me a head start" Jayce begged. "You know I can't keep up with you otherwise!"
"Fie!" she laughed. "You'll do just fine, brother Jayce!" She began running away, holding her arms straight out and leaping occasionally, while Jayce ran after at full speed. He was intent on catching her, even though she wasn't exerting herself half as much as he was, but his efforts were still in dire vain. His sister had already learned the art reserved for aristocratic women, the 'Flash Dance', a series of flash-step movements to confuse, distract or in extreme cases combat an opponent. She used this technique and vanished from Jayce's view. He stopped suddenly and turned fully around where he saw he trying to make an attack. She smiled and vanished again.
"You've danced around me" Jayce shouted "for the last time!" He prepared an unseen ball of energy, a spell in the making, and waited for her routine to end. She came out of the dance with her leg raised his for a face-kick but Jayce was prepared for her. He had in his hand a ball of force pulsing with all the colors of the rainbow and a victorious, regal grin on his face.
"Verven Uitbarsting!" he declared. He threw his hands out in front of his body where his sister came in with her kick and a huge, chaotic blast of seven-colored spiraling lasers ripped through the air and blew apart whatever they touched with a stunning force. His sister, however, was over his head, landed in her loafers on top of him and simply skipped back to the ground, kicking her brother in the ass once more to totally sink in his defeat.
"You're still slow" she said in a kind voice "but at least you're not afraid to use your magic against me. There was a time when you couldn't even do that, you know." Jayce didn't get up. He just sat down in the ground, wallowing in his own selfish pity. The real Jayce, who watched his memories form up high, looked terrified. Off in the distance was a moving darkness with two red-hot eyes that stampeded towards the unsuspecting children. Equipped with only his witless drive to change these terrible memories he ran full force ahead to intervene.
"Brother Jayce?" she asked, noticing his trembling body. "Are you alright?" She reached down a helping hand but had it swatted away by the intently angry young man.
"Get away!" the young Jayce exclaimed. He turned up with the look of a furious, beaten dog, snarling and glaring wide-eyes at his own sibling. She backed away in fear and started to tear up at his rage. He staggered back to his feet and struggled to form another of his magical attacks, but the energy was all gone from him in his first attempt. She tried to step forward to help him but he stumbled at her and then barked. "Stay back, damn you!"
"Oh!" she gasped. The darkness drew even closer. Jayce knew, even in his mind, there was nothing he could do to stop it, but he was determined to nonetheless. The darkness finally came and young Jayce looked upon it behind his sister in horror. She saw his expression and prepared to sincerely turn the same way but the grief came too suddenly. A gnashing swipe and a spray of blood, her fragile body was cut in half and her lifeless arms flew away as her upper body floated down to the hard ground.
"Huhuhuhuhuuuu..." the darkness laughed. Young Jayce quivered in fear while the real one smashed his fists to the ground in anger. He had let it happen and saw he grave results. The Hollow attack that shook his family and prompted them to separate from their homeland was a memory he had thought was hidden and sealed in the darkest parts of his mind, but now he had seen it in its complete form.
The monster Hollow, thick sinuous legs not unlike a draconian monster with huge black talons and the upper body of a muscular man, was an image he had forever associated with terror. Its bone-white skin and pale-green stripes that ran up and down its back were synonymous with his fear of combat. And its mask, terrible beyond even his recollection to see, plagued him so that just trying to envision it sent him straight back to reality with a dizzy jerk of his head.
Suddenly everything was calm. Even the air seemed to sleep with a deathly chill. Jayce looked around in a panic and then panicked and fell over upon seeing Shin, who resonated with a visibly aura of black flames that licked off his skin and formed laughing skull of smoke in the air before dissipating.
My heart! Jayce thought, clutching chest. It has stopped!!! He pounded at his heart two times, then a third and felt the blood pump correctly. Seeing a man like him first thing after a nightmare would kill lesser men. Jayce straightened himself, honored to be one of the few men to be unshaken by such a sight, and corrected himself into meditation at once. So long as I show him no fear I should be fine. He is the type of man to operate based on the instincts of other creatures, myself included. Jayce attempted to reenter his meditation when a familiarly dirty feeling came over him. He creased his brow but didn't move otherwise from his pose.
Guy entered the room panting and looked around until he made his usual cocky, condescending grunt of approval. "There you are" he growled as he stomped through the rubble in Jayce's direction. "Still swordless, I see." Jayce knew right away what was going on. Shin was unarmed and Guy was coming to kill him after Shin's apparent reinforcements came to aid him and caught up with Guy. At least, that was his theory, and it was close. "I'm sorry, shinigami, but I need my powers back for a bit to quell my soldier, so I need you to die. This will only take a second, so stay still."
Shin didn't move at all. Not even his hair. Guy drew up his sword, preparing for a simple head-cleaving slash, but Jayce took up his blade and came up to stop him. The sudden rush of adrenaline that awakened him from his dream was still burning fiercely inside his veins and made him act on impulse to save Shin's life. His sword blocked Guy's and didn't allot it a single inch to budge. Jayce took a swing and forced Guy into a retreat, then advanced with regally measured and practiced two-handed swipes which he threw the rest of his body into.
"What's this?" Guy smugly said as he blocked the blows with a single hand. "The high-and-mighty prince is stepping out of his frilled trousers and into the fight? I'm so scared I'm shaking!" Jayce caught the blade and pressed in hard. Guy was stuck standing form the force but wasn't nearly overpowered. He leaned in himself and reversed the force back onto Jayce. "Oh no, wait. That's you!" Guy pushed Jayce away with a short shove and then kicked him in the throat. Using the motion form his kick he lifted up and kicked once more in a propeller-style rotation. Jayce went against the far wall, shaking the floor just enough for Shin to feel it.
"Eh?" he asked. Shin's meditation took place at the edge of an infinitely black cliff that led down into a spiraling well of screaming souls and grotesque images of death. Even in his mind he couldn't escape his true self, the grim reaper in a cloak of war. He stood up suddenly, thinking nothing of the deathly-cold wind that carried the spirits over the edge and dragged them down into the eternal Event Horizon of souls. The sky was somehow clearing and real light was shining forth. In a brief flash of white Shin was displaced from his meditation spot and sent straight into the realm of Shikei, still overrun with the sword-stealing spirit plants. Half the field was on fire and form the black ashes grew more, taller and thicker flowers. Shin looked up at the top of his mountain and saw it was on fire, so he hurriedly ran and flash-stepped up the steep climb.
"Finally" Shikei groaned. "I thought you had forgotten that you had a sword for a moment. In a way I was happy."
"Happy?" Shin asked, stepping into the flames and dispelling them. "Why would my sword be happy to be forgotten?" Shikei's fire returned around his white body and formed the same ethereal, ever-moving cloak of the darkest black which exposed only his meaty white hands and skeletal face. On his back there hung a scythe by a chain of hooked swastika-symbol links that crossed his covered chest. He took the chain in both hands and shattered it, sending the scythe up into the air, right for Shin, who caught it and spun it around his head several times before planting it on his shoulder. The plants didn't wither away but they did show fear and didn't approach any further. Shin stepped in with a hand stretched out to grasp that of his inner Death, who mimicked his gesture and joined their hands together with a tight clamp.
"It would mean" Shikei explained "that I wouldn't get worn down anymore by your berserk fighting style."
"You love it" Shin said. Suddenly a strike of black lightning shook the world and shattered the peak of the mountain. The flowers dispersed, evaporated in screaming clouds of black and the energy shot back as a flash of light to Guy. Jayce was blinded temporarily and Guy was totally moved from his foundation as the energy returned to him in an uncontrolled amount. He felt a rush of power but a huge drain of intellect as his pressure pushed his reason away.
"What the hell!?" Guy shouted, lurching over. "How...How could this happen? It should be impossible!!!"
"There is no wall" Shin began "or barrier that death cannot penetrate." Shin had his sword out and pointed the tip right at Guy's heart, then jerked it up and aimed between his snide, narrow eyes. "I can overcome any damn power you throw at me, you cocky bastard!"
"In saying that" Guy began, regaining his intellect as his power dampened within him, "aren't you being cock-sure yourself?"
"Nope" Shin said. Jayce braced himself for a blast of power out of nowhere but saw Shin sheathe his sword instead. "If it's a fact then it's not bragging." The wall was torn down and the ceiling started to collapse as Jin made his entrance once more with both hideous knives in hand.
REEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIII!!!!!!!
The battle would end in the throne hall at last! Shin, coated with dried blood and Jayce, bleeding new blood by the second, were now backed up against the nefarious Guy Rose and his sword-stealing power by the juggernaut shinigami Jin!
Verven Uitbarsting: Color Explosion (Dutch)
