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.


In his frantic flight of barbaric fighting Shin knew of no score. His only mind was that of a warrior, fighting the enemy before him with pure wrath and baseless rage. His scythe sliced through the air in its rapid travel, spinning around his body in its circular arcs as he grabbed its shaft, powered its momentum, stayed steady arms to pivot the weapon faster and moved into the spinning to keep its energy up. His blade was a blur of black steel with a silver edge, a deathly shadow that streaked through the air. Shin stepped left, gathered his blade and all the energy it carried into a single hand and slashed wide, pushing the blades Shikei, his monstrous inner self, a being of bone-white with billowing black shadows of robes tattered around his legs, away from his center.

Shin spun on his heel with the remaining energy, grabbed the scythe over his head, and stepped in towards his opponent and leaned his shoulder with a roar into the shaft of his scythe. The blade powered through Shikei's flesh and a void of darkness was exposed beyond the bone white. Shin did not relent. He hopped away, spinning the scythe, hand-to-hand, from its initial trajectory and across his body back into a natural grip in both his hands before his torso. Shikei sighed with an admittance of defeat and brought up a hand to brush away the deep, black wound.

"That's that" Shikei said. Shin lowered his stance.

"What?" Shin asked. "Where?"

"That was match one-hundred" Shikei said. With a sweep of its strong white hand over its bone-white body the wound was gone and all traces of his fatigue from the fight were absolved as well. Shikei glared up at Shin through his menacing dark eyes with feint glowing orbs of white. "Shin, did you happen to forget how many matches you had won?"

"With that one?" Shin said. He placed the shaft of his scythe to the ground and leaned forward holding his weapon like a balancing cane against his shoulder. He thought with a finger cupped under his pouting lower lip and raised his head to stare past his sweaty-heavy bangs at the unnatural visage of death standing before him. "I stopped counting sometime really early, to be honest, but you know, right?" Shikei just glared. The silence spoke to Shin enough that he prepared his guard by gripping strong the shaft of his scythe. His pressure crept from under his skin.

"That was win fifty" Shikei said in a low growl "out of fifty. You and I are at an equal match...." Death started taking the land. What scraps of life remained in the ground were gone, and the rough, hard dirt beneath Shin was quickly turned to dry, gray sand. The clouds overhead stopped moving. The sun in Shin's world was gone, replaced by a dismal black orb in the sky which shined past even the thickest gathering of stormy, cackling skulls. "Our training together has been little short of a joke if these are the only results worth yielding..." Shikei said.

"Think before you speak" Shin said as he pushed himself up straight. "You and I are the same person. In terms of training, I don't think there's anything I'd do to wilingly hold myself back from my fullest potential."

"No, there is" Shikei bluntly said. Shin tensed his brow and picked his scythe up, slowly moving it to rest on his shoulder. "Shin, you are a great fighter. You take pride not in the act of killing but in the pursuit of victory. You walk through hell barefoot and smile when your feet are charred black as coals. Just another training run to you, just another day in your life facing down death every passing hour. But consider that, no matter what abilities you hone from me, you will always keep true power at a safe distance." Shin scoffed.

"Only a fool would do that" Shin said. "That's like claiming your mastery over water while being afraid to swim!" Shikei laughed. His laugh was hollow, voiceless, like the laughter of a dead, windy skull.

"Then you consider yourself a fool, Shin Kenpachi?" Shikei asked. "It is only natural. The fool sees the edge of a cliff and does not think he can fly to safety. He knows that if he jumps, death will claim him when he falls. Or maybe he can fly? That's what makes such an indecision foolish. Shin, you have no such problem. You see death and you back away. But that is where you Fail!" Shikei's voice exploded up suddenly and the sands shook with ripples. Shin braced his face as the harsh beating of sand blew past him and the swords marking graves in Shin's conscience were blown over, first Mann's to lead the rest...

"Your power" Shikei continued "is not one that can be so simply mastered. Your power is that over death itself. To control life is akin to the task of living, wind to flying, water to swimming, earth to treading it. Shin, what must a man do to make malleable in his hands death? Must he fear it, keep it away?"

"He must hold it close" Shin said as he finally caught on "and embrace the dangers of life without concern...." Shin lowered his gaze in doubt. Shikei stared down his skeletal teeth at Shin and turned away, his scythes exploding silently into a black mist that covered his body with the billowing, black fire of robes. He began walking to the mountain that was shadowed by the clouds, a formless place, a sudden slope in the world, and he ascended it. The sands behind Shin began to stir from under the swords. Through the parting, shifting sands came up the arms of the fallen to claim their weapons of life. The dark skin of a strong arm took up the handle of the rust-colored paddle and pulled its following body up from under the dead sea of sand.

"I must embrace death openly" Shin said "to understand it...and to take control of it. Death is an element within all men's destinies...only I can make it real." Shin's head drifted back up again. According to his mood, to his wishes and his views, the ground returned to its cracked, dead state and the sands were gone. Of the graveyard of swords only one had risen, though many had tried and their arms were left frozen as fragile quartz pillars. One being rose up from the sea of Shin's soul and stood now on solid ground, rolling his shoulders and testing his joints. Shin turned around to him. "Death is a scary, scary thing...isn't it, Mann Aulder?"

There he stood, rolling his arms and neck with his giant steel paddle Habahiorikenlazily slanted over his shoulder and held by the end of the hilt in his hand. He looked just as Shin had always remembered him, deep in the back of his mind, as the first man worth killing he'd ever killed, the first reason for fighting he'd ever truly come across. Mann grinned and, with his free hand, equipped a pair of dark, angular glasses to his eyes.

"Haaah" Mann hissed through a grinning mouth. "Death is a great equalizer of men! I don't think anything of it!"

"Then you won't mind dying twice, I assume" Shin said with a spinning and setting of his scythe to stare Mann down. Mann became flustered.

"Are you picking a fight, you bastard!?" he shouted. He regained his composure and pushed his glasses up tighter to the top of his nose. With a cocksure grin he continued. "You're the one so scared of it. Wouldn't it be better if you got to be on the receiving end of it this time?" He swung his heavy weapon down in one hand and let it crash to the ground, breaking the fragile, dry dirt that it hit. Shin grinned and slid his scythe up, both hands together, and spun it. He began his roundabout charging, his Saishuu Serifu style, and started to approach Mann calmly.

"If you're as good as you should be" Shin said "then I'm the only one remaining with a problem of death...Come and teach me, Mann, everything I need to know about it!" Mann smirked. The battle was on! He blasted forward and took a deep swing of his weapon. Shin guarded with the shaft held steady and straight, and let himself be pushed slowly over the ground by Mann's heavy swing. Then, when he stopped, with eyes wide and a grin flashing white, he stepped forward and parted Mann's chest with a slice down the middle. Mann unflinchingly backed away and brought his sword up, powering a stabbing thrust. Shin grinned and jumped up to run on the blade, then swept his scythe around Mann's neck and caught his iron skin, pulling him to the side and slicing a bleeding gash into his neck!

Shin landed back to the ground and ran in, leaning deep forward, scythe poised far at his side, wielded in both arms and with a mad scream of rage and a madder still face of blood-lust he swung a deep, dark slash through the air!!


Shin sat still silent, still being dragged on Jin's coat, though now more arduously by a determined Hoji who scoffed between nearly every breath. He huffed as he hoofed down the forest path with Suichi leading and Jin trailing behind, inspecting the scenery.

"I remember this rock!" Jin exclaimed. He poked at the mossy side of a rock with a crack in it. "It's one I stepped on! Woooooow!"

"JIN!" Hoji shouted. "You're falling behind again! Get up here!" Jin looked at Hoji's shrunken image still walking into the distance and ran to catch up. He stayed closer to Hoji, letting his arms sway freely in the cool, pre-rain winds, giving them rest for whatever came next. He smiled his wide mouth and walked upright down the road.

"Isn't it nice?" Jin asked.

"Tch?" Hoji scoffed.

"The world...being outside" Jin said. "I'd missed it for so long, I forgot what all was in it for a while. Now that I remember what the world and its forests are like, I wonder what else there is for me to see?"

"Mountains?" Suichi said. "Caves and cities? There's a sea, if I recall, a long ways away we could venture to."

"Tch" Hoji scoffed. "What idiot would go to the sea? There's nothing there! It's the end of the world!"

"Perhaps" Suichi said "but that in itself holds a certain spiritual significance to old and wizened men like me. Glancing over the edge of our reality, knowing that if one walked far enough he would be no more on this spiritual sphere... Ah, that sea. I wish I could see it for real."

"You've never even been to it!?" Hoji exclaimed. "Tch. Even I've been to it as a kid. And you thought you were the most traveled out of all of us. You're just a busy-body!"

"Can't argue with that" Suichi said coolly. Hoji groaned at the lost chance to fight and his loss in the battle of cool. He tugged Shin's tarp up over his shoulders as his arms were beginning to tire, and he started to tie the carpet around his waist.

"Is he done yet?" Hoji wondered. Suichi stopped the company. They stood silent for a moment in the forest path. Everything was silent. The world had stopped spinning for them. A drop of dew rolled from the leaf of a tree to the ground with a loud splash. Then the leaf fell as well, cut at its stem and carried by an unseen weight to the dirt below. The wind picked up in a sudden, loud gust and billowed Hoji's pigtail over his shoulder. The wind went in the other direction and hung for a moment, leaving everything floating as it was in the air, then let it drop neutrally.

"....we're here" Suichi said. "It's unmistakable. This is Netami's pressure..."

"Tch" Hoji speechlessly scoffed. "It's impressive, I'll give it that, but it's nowhere near as heavy as Shin's, even when he's not trying!"

"Netami isn't trying" Suichi said. "This is just his natural, neutral aura." Hoji was swiftly shut up. "Wake Shin up, please. It'd be bad if Netami found us and decided to fight us with Shin sitting unconscious like that."

"Gotcha" Hoji said. He untied the tarp from his waist and ran onto it, kneeling down to Shin's vacant eyes staring into the narrow blunt side of his darkened sword. Hoji grabbed his nose and began moving his head around in a circle with a droning noise. "Wake up, dumbass! You'll miss your duel if you sleep in!" Hoji let go and Shin's head returned to its original position. So he slapped him, hard. "Wake up!"

"Don't hurt him!" Suichi exclaimed.

"I don't see you helping!" Hoji shouted. A dark hand gripped Hoji's arm. He turned and saw a skeletal grip fade away into darkness and back into the swirling blank stare in Shin's eye. Hoji stood up and hopped away, gripping his hand, watching his finger move, but feeling nothing. "Tch" he began, "I guess he's awake...enough. We should just wait for him to be done, for now."

"How much longer will that be?" Suichi wondered.

Within the spiritual world of Shin's sword, the fight continued with powerful clashes of steel against steel. Mann jumped up and stabbed his sword into the ground, scarring it with a blasted gash just as Shin leaped over him, delivering yet another addition to the myriad cuts on Mann's immortal body. Shin landed and spun his scythe while moving slowly away. Mann recovered his sword, swung it onto his shoulder, and ran after. He kicked up his leg and slammed it down, followed by his sword in a massive cleave. Shin dodged around it and had a foot kicked from the upheaved ground, leaving him to hop one-legged for a distance before he was in range to slice.

His scythe went quickly from a vertical spin to a horizontal slash and cut through Mann's exposed ribs. The manic warrior growled and picked his sword up. Shin gripped his scythe tight and prepared to defend from where he stood. With a roar Mann swung his heavy weapon in. Shin blocked and was moved to the side by the giant swing. As Mann's sword drifted away from Shin's block he brought it up over his head and slammed down. Shin blocked again with the shaft of his blade, his feet pushed hard against the rock ground. Mann wrenched his body, all of his muscles, to stop his sword from drifting any further than over his head and prepared for another attack. Shin spun his scythe around his body and parried the blow just in time, forcing Mann's sword to swing up over his head and sink behind him into the ground. His arm went with it and his body reacted to save from having a disjointed shoulder.

Shin spun away and held his scythe steady after, feeling the burn in his shaking legs from absorbing such a tremendous impact.

It's nothing Shin thought. That's the tension I have built up to spring, that's all. Nothing at all! Mann roared and charged in, dragging his sword behind him as he ran full forward. Shin spun his scythe to strike and timed his spin perfectly. He swept out with his right foot as a guide and his scythe made a nasty crescent gleam in the air, right through Mann's neck. The wound bled, or would have bled, but it wasn't fatal. He had deeply injured Mann, but he could live through it. Mann thusly ignored the pain and berserked with a shoulder-charge to Shin's chest. Shin was taken off his guard and let himself be blown away by it. Mann had thrown his whole body into swinging his sword from the ground and was in mid-flip when Shin caught his action. Shin dodged to the side and began running. He got three steps before he crouched down. His legs had given out.

Mann's sword had split the ground and gathered it up around it, like a sprung trap ensnaring its victim, only its victim willingly rose up from the dirt and was placed across the shoulder by the hilt of its wielder. Mann stomped toward Shin, all the weight of his mighty weapon pressing him down powerfully, his every footfall denting the earth.

My legs want to spring now Shin thought, justifying their limp numbness but I know better. If I spring now he'll deflect me. He'll guard me. He'll do something that will make my attack useless. I have to pick the perfect moment to strike.

"Look at this" Mann said with a laugh. "You're down on your knees already? It hasn't even been that much of a fight and now, sooner rather than later, your limits have stunned you and locked you to the dirt. Ha! What kind of a body is that, which can't withstand a little bit of Death's pain?" Mann took his sword handle in both hands and swung it forward, not in offense, but in practice, holding it out before him and breathing hard to keep it there. "You are weak, Shin Kenpachi. Only in death do you understand your flaws!" Mann drew his sword up high. Shin saw nothing guarded, only opportunities to attack on his black-scarred body, and so he sprung. He pushed from the shaft of his scythe and sprung through the air, blade first, cleaving Mann in half with a single powerful swing!

Shin landed behind, his legs finally dead, and grabbed the ground with shaking arms, propping himself up with the shaft of his scythe. He had won against death, and Mann was defeated....honorably. Mann still lived, an immortal vision only in Shin's mind, which Shin realized as he heard Mann's deep, loud breathing from behind. Mann turned around, his sword still held up over his head like an obelisk in the sky, and walked to Shin. Shin rolled himself over and prepared to defend from the dirt.

"Admirable" Mann said. "Even if your body dies, you live to fight! It seems you know something of death after all!" Mann tilted his sword back. Shin's eyes filled with fright, dread, and excitement. He gripped his scythe tight, still defensive in the face of absolute death, and took the graceful attack head on.

Shin awoke and stood up. His pressure killed the smaller plants in the area and cast a heavy black shadow across the forest path. The men around him turned their attention to him and away from the mountain side that Shin now looked at with his arms crossed. He grinned and shot a glare up the hill.

"Where is that pansy?" Shin asked. "I'm ready whenever he is!" Suichi was speechless. Jin applauded and Hoji made a low, growling laugh. Shin's face was full of arrogance and his eyes heavy with an enlightened shadow of knowledge.

I understand, and now, in the real world, I must test my knowledge against true Death. Come at me, Netami, however you want. You'll never kill me...


"....they're here" Netami lowed. He brushed his dark hair from his eyes and parted the silken black curtains to see down the slope. There they stood, in the clearing, plain as day. Shin glared up the hillside, tracking the pressure as he went. The rain started falling again, soft and ominous of the storm to come. Thunder rolled from the far distance, from over the mountains that scaled the horizon.

"They?" Horoshi said. "There's more than one? Are you going to fight them all!?" Netami took a reflective silence to Horoshi's questions.

"No" he said. "The other three won't have anything to do with my fight, I'm certain. This man is obviously the kind of lonely fool who travels with company, but doesn't have them fight for him. We can take our duel elsewhere and leave those others to worry about him."

"Or" Kakugari said "we can test our mettle to pass the time! A good challenge here and there keeps the blades sharp, does it not?"

"What time?" Netami said. He ran for the edge of the hill and jumped off the cliff with a flash-step powered kick. He flew through the air, destined for the ground where Shin walked. "This will take no time at all!" Netami drew his sword back, hand over hand, to his right side. He aimed to slash through the air and preemptively begin the duel.

"Here he comes" Shin said.

"Already!?" Suichi shouted. Shin gripped the inner edges of his robe and pulled them out. With his shirt open and flowing behind him he made a flash-step jump, kicking with a blast off the ground, and flew straight for Netami in the air. The two grim warriors grinned at one another. Shin's blade versus Netami's destined to clash, a fate unknown to powers that refused answer.

"Tch!" Hoji scoffed. "Looks like the bastard wasn't alone!" Hoji pointed to the slope from which Netami had leaped. Three more figures made their way down in long, jogging jumps, following in Netami's trajectory to intercept Shin's entourage and keep them from the main fight.

"Pick a target" Horoshi ordered "and stick with it! Under no circumstances can we allow Netami's fight to be interrupted!"

"Stall them gracefully!" Senshi shouted. "Force them to marvel at your powers!"

"I shall show these indignant men" Kakugari exclaimed "the force of the wild powers I have gathered! To arms, dear friends, to ARMS!!!" They flew as well. Hoji unsheathed his sword and gripped it before him, pinky fingers together, wrist over wrist.

"Rip and Tear" he lowed, "Torakaze!!!" At his incantation the winds whipped and roared from his fists and his gauntlets were formed, golden and powerful. Suichi held his sword at his side, as if he were about to draw it out of a sheathe, with his left hand forward.

"Coil endlessly, Haganerensa!" The chain of his soul was wrapped tight to his left forearm and the jagged metal ended spike extended out from his middle finger. He glared up and locked eyes with the youngest one, the brown-haired Horoshi. Jin was still lost in staring at the leaves of trees and didn't notice the flight of men inbound. His arm, unconscious of his thinking, acting mind, placed itself on his chest and pushed lightly into his body, his sword taking command to draw itself out, and his bangs started to fall over his face.

The battle began with a sharp and wicked crash of thunder as a bolt of lightning split through the clouds. It wasn't true thunder, though, as that crack of energy followed after. What started this fated clash was the wicked snap of blade meeting blade, powers colliding with tumultuous force. Death and glory abandoned themselves as two men were pressed together, their swords scraping blade to blade, with evil growling grins facing off together. Shin and Netami met swords, drifted to the ground, landed their bodies with a crash and then ran together, attacking constantly, both guarding and attacking at the same time. They ran for the rolling plains to escape the aid and interruption of their comrades.

"TCH!!!" Hoji shouted as he jumped. "You guys don't know who you MESSING WITH!!!" He flew towards Kakugari who had just drawn hi sword. They both drifted down to the tops of the trees together and landed on them with the soft control of their finely trained feet. Hoji punched and Kakugari blocked with his broad blade drawn. Hoji stepped forward with each punch and drew Kakugari deeper and deeper into the edge of the forest, drawing him into the dark wilds where only his winds could reach....

"You're mine!" Horoshi called as he drew his sword. Suichi assumed his destined match and jumped away just as Horoshi landed with a swing. Suichi landed in a tree branch and whipped his chain at Horoshi's feet, forcing him to dance in dodging. Senshi landed softly and charged Jin with not a blade but his powerful arms flexing to wind up a punch. With his fingers extended he stabbed forward into Jin's gut, parted through his flesh as if it were mud, and had all the fingertips he used bend backwards and kept backwards as they hit Jin's slowly drawing flat blade. He pulled the weapon from his body and leaned over the arrogant man with a mad, gleaming grin and wide, white eyes.

"What was that?" Jin asked. Senshi jumped away and cracked his fingers straight. He grinned under his broad, blond mustache and reached for his sword. His hand strayed in a violent surge of pressure and skipped across the top of his blade's pommel. "You dizzy?" Jin asked, straightening his massive form. "Confused? Well you should be. I'm always pretty confused!!!" Jin swung down and broke the ground. Senshi retreated into the forest. Jin roared and pursued him. Suichi and Horoshi watched, within the range of Jin's pressure, paralyzed by an arcane influence of indecision and imbalance swaying their bodies.

"Let's stay here" Suichi said as he hopped from the tree. "There aren't many places in the woods worth finding to fight in." Horoshi stepped away and held his sword tight, torqued at his side, swinging loosely as his feet rose and set to the ground. His whole body moved in his pose. Suichi couldn't find any use or purpose to his shifting tension other than preparation to attack. His assassin's mind was working along with his newly honed fighting mind. He rose up his left arm and bent his legs, sliding his dominant left forward. "You're pretty eager, aren't you?"

"I'll defeat you" Horoshi said "as just the first step towards my climb to power. Just watch!" Suichi could see the determination in his eyes. Youthful, arrogant, rough and untrained. He was an amateur but something in the gleam of his sword's metal on the pale light of the storm-covered sky told him that there was an admirable warrior somewhere within that young man's mind. Suichi would fight that warrior and negate all thought on the young man before him. He would fight his potential, as a warrior would...

And thus the battle began. Where it will end, how it will end, who will survive? In the end, the question cannot be answered.

Death takes all. Death will dominate this field of battle as it does all battles and all wars. The difference now in death is how a single man manages to control it, and only if that man can take up its reigns without fear or thought of remiss.