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.
Although my blade may be broken thought Senshi, it is still an active weapon. Therefore, my abilities with it should still activate, even with what little of the blade remains! I can still use Gemini as if it were whole, but only to the extent of producing unlimited doppelgangers. I cannot use it to strike until it is repaired. Against a man.....an enemy such as this, all of my reiatsu must be conserved to repair my blade! It his body against mine now!
That body he spoke of was quickly broken. Jin stomped forward quickly and kicked Senshi away with a screech of his animal voice. Senshi flew against a tree with his hand on his hilt. His sword was drawn out by accident and a copy appeared and took to the trees immediately. Jin madly swooped in with his blades swinging and rent Senshi's body in two. That body disappeared, not to Jin's surprise, and he took to the trees as well. The other Senshi jumped out and caught him in mid air. Senshi grabbed onto Jin's back and wound his arms up, holding tight to the hilt of his broken blade to spike the pommel into Jin's head.
"Moron" Jin lowed. He stabbed through his own body harmlessly and cut into Senshi's gut. The cloned warrior was frozen and released his leg grip around Jin's stomach. Jin spun around with his sword as a guide and slashed through Senshi's torso yet again. He vanished and Jin landed with a pound to the wet dirt, madly glancing around like a startled and hungry, excited animal to the forest darkness. The lightning flashed and Jin's senses blinded the glare of light and drowned his vision with sheer blacks and whites in a high-contrast environment, and Senshi was in plain sight with a pitch black shadow and bright white body.
I see you! Jin thought. I see all of you!!! Senshi rushed in and blocked Jin's one-armed downswing with what was left of his sword. The hilt and the handle, the true life of the spirit of any sword, remained intact and took incredible pressure to even fracture. Senshi's strength of spirit was such that those parts of his sword were adamant even if his blade was broken which proved itself true as he fought with Jin. The mad fighter held Senshi down with one arm and then rose up his other blade to sweep through Senshi's neck.
"Not this time!" Senshi lowed. He pressed Jin's sword up and pushed himself down at the same time, blocking Jin's decapitating swing in motion. Jin turned his wrist around before his arm wrapped around his hip and started a powerful swing upwards. Senshi jumped high over it, his knees tucked in and his fist with hilt equipped wound back before Jin's own face. "Ha!" he shouted as he punched. Jin received the attack without the ability to simply melt around it like mud and stepped away from the hit, shaking his head like a dog. "Now!" Senshi shouted. Jin was called to the presence behind him and turned with a start just as the second Senshi jumped through the air and punched him again between the eyes.
"Gah!" Jin growled. "You jumpy little bastards! I'll kill-" Senshi leaped up and delivered a rotating kick to his mouth to shut him up. "Uah" Jin groaned. The beatdown continued. One Senshi delivered a spinning backhand to Jin's hip while the other leaped up and punched as much as he could before falling back down. Jin was under attack relentlessly and violence was the only retort that could cross his mind. He took in a deep breath through his mouth and let it out in a pressurized roar.
HHHREEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIII!!!!!!! Senshi and Senshi backed away, one retreating fully into the woods, to endure the maddening pressure. It did not press down or lift up or push away. It was wild and untamed, purely chaotic in its direction. Senshi felt sick standing in it and buckled down to his knees. Jin stomped over in the loud silence of his own pressure and stomped Senshi's head into the dirt. He stomped again and again, as rapidly as his leg would work, until that Senshi disappeared.
"Do not toy with me!" Senshi shouted from the edge of the clearing. Jin huffed hot breaths at him. Another Senshi walked out, both glaring at Jin with a sheer intensity of battle, and Jin roared at them.
"I'll break you!" Jin shouted. "I'll BREAK YOOOOOU!!!!"
"It is you who is already broken" Senshi said. "A force lacking direction is a force lacking in power! You must direct your control and seize your own power if you want to be truly powerful! All great warriors are such a way!"
"Why?" Jin asked, his voice subdued in utter madness. "Isn't strength just the force to conquer your foes? It's all just a way to fight the enemies you have! What should matter how you get strength so long as it kill, destroys, utterly obliterates everything that you are against!?"
"As long as that is the limit of your understanding" Senshi said, both pointing at Jin, "you will never become truly strong!"
"GAAAAHHH!!!" Jin shouted. He ran in without thought or plan and blasted his pressure randomly, even so that he was hit with it. One Senshi stood on the other's shoulders and jumped up while the first blocked the brunt of Jin's attack. He chopped one of his blades forward with a punch and pushed the blocking Senshi back while the other stayed in the air. He clutched the hilt of his sword tightly and prepared to make a devastating punch to the top of Jin's blood-red head. Jin sensed the attack and rose his head up from the Senshi he was attacking, then slashed blindly overhead, missing the falling Senshi who had passed by his initial target and hit Jin in the nose again.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!" Jin screamed. The power of his rage increased the whipping force of his mad pressure and, in a thoughtless act, he stepped forward and threw his blade through both Senshi's. The blade sliced through one and the hilt and blunt, rugged end impacted on the other who had no duplicate just then and took the hit in full. He was slammed against a tree and the heavy, thick blade rested on the ground as he slouched himself to the ground in pain.
My collarbone! Senshi realized. He went to touch it but even the motion from his arm seemed to hurt it. When he finally did touch it his eyes shut tight and his teeth grit with pain. He broke it, so suddenly, and with such a random attack! What danger! Senshi looked down at the nefarious weapon at his feet and crawled up along the tree behind him. He glanced up in fear at Jin, who was bent over himself, standing on his toes, holding his remaining sword with his free hand held around his wrist.
"Yyyyou" Jin lowed. "Y-y-y-y-you...." he stuttered. He looked up to Senshi, who looked down at him in great shock. The madness had all left Jin's face. It was like looking at the face of an innocent youth with quivering lip and eyes filled with tears. The will to fight seemed lost in him, and now he only held his blade out of fear of letting it go. Jin stood up slowly, shakily, and held his blade in a hard but shaking grip at Senshi. "You keep away from me! I...I'm not afraid to kill you, alright!? Just go away!"
"......" Senshi just glared at Jin and the loss of his battling will. Jin stepped forward and tried to swing, but it was weak. Senshi blocked it and held it there until Jin retreated.
"Naah!" Jin roared weakly. He swung down, Senshi blocked, and then his blade was thrown back as Senshi pushed the attack away. Jin followed the weight and will of his sword all the way back and fell over himself, the clumsy giant that he was. Senshi sheathed his sword and sighed as his reiatsu traveled through his hand into his blade to repair it.
"This is over" Senshi said. "With your madness went your will to fight, and you are a warrior no longer. I have no will to challenge a child, so I shall walk away the victor of this battle. Consider it a grace from a man as grand as I that you are permitted to continue living."
"Wha...?" Jin said. Senshi began to walk away, but not before he kicked Jin's sword back to his feet.
"Do not challenge again" Senshi said "until you can hold both blades yourself. Not with someone else, and don't you dare allow your swords ever hold you, or you will surely fail yourself as both a warrior and a man!" With that, Senshi left Jin alone with his swords to cry and gather himself up. Jin had lost, and the pain of his disgrace was terrible to bear. He sobbed as he shoved his swords back into his earthen body and lamented silently, unable to speak real words, like a child who couldn't tell what emotion he felt and cried of its unknown feelings....
Kakugari stood imbalanced. His left foot was rent apart and bleeding heavily. In an unconscious effort, Hoji had gathered all the energies of Torakaze's dual-gauntlet form into only his right forearm. The gauntlet was fiercely augmented as its power had increased so substantially from the combined might of two separate yet identical weapons. The gold shone brighter, the streaks of green tiger stripes along Hoji's right arm reached up to his shoulder and along the skin over his right pectoral, three spikes had grown out of the outside edge of the single gauntlet. The tips of the claws had extended as well and curved in at the end, resembling truer tiger claws to rip and tear through the wind with.
"Don't be such a bitch about it" Hoji said. "It's not like you were moving around much anyway!" Kakugari smirked and threw the stretching fabric of his cloak down onto his foot. It absorbed it, lifted it and wrapped around so tight that Hoji could see the full form of the foot from its thinnest bone to the length of each toenail. The dark hue of the cloth began to blend in with the color of Kakugari's skin and, almost instantly, his wound was gone and his foot repaired.
"Does my static stance trouble your style?" Kakugari asked. "Speed and the wind, both are your forte more than mine. What I lack in such I make up for in reach and the properties of my cloak! The wind be damned, speed be damned, only the power of my swing and my reach are important!"
"Tch" Hoji scoffed. He left it at that and made a quick open-palm, tight-fingered jab into the air. A quick spear of air flew into Kakugari's block and was burst when he threw his cloak open again. Hoji smirked. "Speed is everything, fool. I didn't attack once." Kakugari was taken aback by Hoji's remark. He had just prepared himself to advance on his enemy at last when five sudden stabs of sharp air hit him in his exposed body. Hoji dashed in, suddenly charged with energy, and punched with his unarmed left hand into Kakugari's gut. This doubled the tall man over just enough for Hoji to duck back and rise up with an uppercut square to his jaw. The lifting force of Torakaze's wind was such that Kakugari's feet left the ground and his body drifted quickly up while his cloak stuck to the air and left a sort of static, thick trail of fabric in the air. Hoji jumped up with his claw open and hung down at his side for a follow up attack.
"Joushou..." Hoji shouted. He jumped up and slashed up, raking five deep slashes against Kakugari's side and forcing him into a free-fall spin. Then with arm wound upward and eyes narrowly glaring, Hoji spiked his taloned elbow into Kakugari's gut, right between his ribs. "Torautsu!!!" Kakugari was powered down to the ground and his elongated cape toppled over him. Hoji crouched in the air, turned his head down to the ground and his feet flat against the air itself, and pounced down onto Kakugari's body.
"Tch" he scoffed. "You think I'll let you heal, bastard!?" Hoji wound back a fistful of air and punched it forward with a fierce growl. "RRRAAGH!!!" The blast of wind hit the cloak and swung it back against a tree. It reacted naturally and began sapping the life and power out of the tree's bark. Hoji jumped backwards and back onto the ground, holding his gauntlet up and his left arm wound back in a sideways stance. "Get up already" Hoji said. "You think I like waiting for you to act like a moron!? Tch! I shouldn't have to wait for you to be worth hitting!" Kakugari groaned and sat back up, his cloak retracting and slowly healing him by its contact. He was grinning proudly and glaring up at Hoji as he rose. As soon as his knee was lifted off the dirt Hoji took the offense. He flash-stepped with a knee into Kakugari's lower abdomen to which his injured for only winced and smiled.
"Hey!" Hoji shouted. He reached up, just along his forehead level, and gripped Kakugari by digging his fingers into the thin space of flesh between his neck and collarbone. He reeled Kakugari forward and wound back his head for a headbutt which planted beautifully right between Kakugari's eyes. "Quit stalling! ATTACK!!!" Hoji was barely fazed by his own attack and resulted to continue fighting. He wound back his gauntlet and punched into Kakugari's rock-hard stomach. He knew Torakaze was still full of combat energy, and dismissed the fear that his weapon had once again weakened. It meant, however, that Kakugari had strengthened again, and Hoji retreated with a quick dodging roll backwards into a full standing backflip. Kakugari attacked by following Hoji in his whole retreat and swinging at him as soon as he was standing. Hoji leaned away from the huge arm but got hit in his neck and then again by the following uppercut.
Hoji was thrown into a tree and then pressed further by Kakugari's constant attack. He rushed in with his cloak wrapped around his fists and punched at Hoji, sapping away his strength with each hit, then delivered a powerful blow into Hoji's blocking arm. Hoji was thrown down to the ground between the trees, utterly weakened, his energy drained, and Kakugari approaching with a confident stride and a cocky grin.
"You see my power now, eh?" he said to the weakened, crawling Hoji. "It matters not what damage you do to me or my body, all can be recovered. This cloak is by no means a skillful equip of a warrior. This is the means by which I lead my life, the sap of all great powers that oppose me. This is what I control, not a power of my own will, but I control the flow of power of others! Without that, who can fight me?" Hoji punched his golden gauntlet to the ground and stood up. His muscles were weakened and his skin pale. His hair turned limp and heavy in its usually bustling, wind-swept tail. The rain hit him and he felt it. All parts of him were as heavy weights that he could barely hold except for the sacred ground arm of his protected by his powerful gauntlet which still held its amazing and powerful appearance. His claws were still razor sharp.
"Tch" Hoji scoffed. "You think you're big just because you've got a cheap-ass power? You may be strong....but you're a weakling to me."
"Hahaha!" Kakugari laughed. "I have heard such a thing from many men. It must be true then! All those who I've slain with little more than the toss of my cape were right in calling me weak, all those esteemed fighters and elite guards, all the men who dared to come at me with the pinnacle of all their training and power wielded, still all fruitless against me. They are dead now...see for yourself..." Kakugari walked forward to the unmoving Hoji with his cloak held open.
Damn Hoji thought. My legs....aren't listening to me. Lazy bastards. Move! Kick! Do something! I'm no damn tree, I'm a man! I can't just stand in the forest like an exaggerated stump and expect good things to happen!!! I'm a man, dammit! What kind of man doesn't fight back!?
A dead man Torakaze said. But of course, there is always another option.... Hoji looked down to his gauntlet and was covered with darkness. Kakugari was walking past him with the cloak following at his side like an opened, black wing, taking Hoji into the void. Kakugari slid his foot forward and swung his cape in the final capturing movement, holding it across his whole body, embracing the cloak as it embraced him. He stood up and his grin sank. He glared and slowly turned his head over his shoulder.
"Sorry Hoji" Suichi apologized as he had saved his fight-crazed comrade.
"Don't be" Hoji said with a grin. "Turns out I'm a bit weak. Tch. I'm just not ready to die yet!" Suichi was stroking a finger across his exposed forearm, tracing thin blue lines that ran from his wrist up to his shoulder. "What're they?" Hoji asked.
"Knave!" Kakugari roared. "You dare intrude on me!?" Kakugari threw his cloak at Suichi just as the assassing finished his job. He slammed his palm to the ground and the blue lines all drained down into a wide circle which held int both Suichi and Hoji.
"Kohru Amatsumamori!!!" At his incant, the ground sprung up and a dome of ice froze instantly over them, shielding them both from Kakugari's attack with an unliving, unsappable surface that his cloak cleanly slid off of and away from. Kakugari scoffed and drew his cloak back in while he prepared to wait for his prey to reemerge. "That was fun" Suichi said. "Now I'm tired...." Hoji was glaring at his gauntlet and working his fingers from within it, then scathed at his left hand with fingers that barely seemed to work. His whole body was numb but the glowing source of strength around his arm.
Torakaze Hoji called. I have a request for you, if you think you can fill it. I'm not losing. I'm not. Nothing is going to keep me from killing that bastard with my bare hands except this already apparent weakness. I need your help...
And what can I do? Torakaze asked.
I have a name prepared Hoji said. If I get it wrong do what you must, but for now I need as much strength as I can get. There's plenty on my arm, but I need it in my whole body.
There is a name for that Torakaze said. If I tell you, and you lose, we will both die, so you must not use this with lifeless forfeit in mind. Also, after this, your sword shall break and but incomplete for a full turn of the moon.
Okay Hoji agreed. Tell me so we can get it done....The ice dome that protected them steamed in the humid air and rain and Kakugari charged it with his cloak clutched in his hand and balled around his knuckles. He punched into the shield and his fist was knocked back by its sheer solidity.
"Fie!" he exclaimed. "It's kido, ice grown of magic reinforced with a great barrier or magic yet within! What uncanny skill! This young man must be a powerful fighter indeed to know such great powers!" Then the ice broke. It cracked with a thud from within. Kakugari stepped away slowly as thud after thud hit on the inside of the shield. Then it shattered and Kakugari brought up his cloak to block. Jumping up over the shield he put up was Hoji, body full of life and vigor again and covered with green tiger stripes. The X on his forehead remained red and held the center of the stripes that pointed symmetrically to the middle of the cross. Hoji had a fist wound back and a wild grin on his face. He flew forward and punched with a loud, arrogant, powerful scoffing shout of
"TCHYAAAAAHH!!!!" Kakugari's nose broke and his weight was thrown full against his head. He fell backward and rolled backward until he hit a tree while Hoji landed, his stripes glowing in the dim light, his eyes flashing brighter than lightning. A Tiger reborn...
Shin stepped in, his scythe spinning fast over his head, his body leaned far to the right. He jerked his body up to the left and swung from behind his back going right. Netami's block was so powerful that his sword didn't budge, but Shin's force was such that he dragged Netami's feet through the soaked dirt in a full half-circle with his attack. Then, with a raging grunt, Shin leaned in and jabbed the blunt top of his weapon forward, hitting Netami square in his throat. Netami took the attack and retaliated immediately with a powerful, simple forward downstroke. Shin blocked the initial attack and slid back to block the resulting flurry of unseen cuts.
This isn't going anywhere Shin thought. Maybe it's time to start thinking... Netami held out his right palm as Shin blocked the invisible blades. Shin grimaced and swung his scythe hard through the air to kill the tiny blades all at once.
"Makai Myaku!" Netami shouted. A dark burst shot out from his hand. Shin swung his scythe into the ground beside him and hooked himself away from the attack in a slide. Netami's palm simply followed him, crackled with black static lightning, and fired again. Shin pushed against his scythe and dodged again. He held his scythe in front again and started running forward to attack. Netami fired another blast near Shin's feet and forced him to jump. As he went through the air Shin tucked his legs up and kicked just as he got in range. Netami jumped away and Shin swung his scythe to try and catch him. When he landed Shin pursued as Netami continued his retreat and subsequent blasts. Shin dodged the pulses fluidly and without thought, simply rushing in with his weapon in hand. Netami abandoned his plan and gripped his sword high at his side.
Shin and Netami both landed with a slide. Shin attacked first, throwing swing after swing with the slacked rotation of his wrist and the twirl of his scythe shaft between his rigid fingers while Netami batted away the blade and parried the weak attacks. As the scythe returned across Shin's body he grabbed it in both hands again and pressed forward with a full-body powered swing. Netami blocked and swung to Shin's exposed side. The blade was short but Shin felt the sting of the myriad weak cuts hitting him like a fierce gust of wind.
"Hmm" Shin growled. He didn't block this attack. He stepped through it to swing at Netami and made a cut across Netami's forearm, shallow but red and drawing blood. Shin turned the blade around with a quick a quick turn of his right hand, high on the shaft, and swung it one-handed with the power of speed and force increased by the rigid straightness of his arm along the shaft of the weapon. Netami's sword was hit to the side at Shin's attack. Shin let the scythe go loose in his palm and rotate around his index finger. Then, with the end of the shaft, he stabbed the butt into Netami's chest inaccurately and stepped in to power a forceful blunt stab that sent Netami stumbling back. Shin recovered quickly and spun around the shaft of his scythe smoothly, ending squared with Netami and his scythe in a natural stance.
"What kind of style do you practice?" Shin asked. Netami had no intention to answer. With his sword in one hand he immediately slashed and sent a wave of cutting power Shin's way. Shin held his scythe up with the blade in front of his face and spun it around rapidly for the length of the attack, blocking it flawlessly and ending in the same relaxed stance that he had just left, all within the flash of a bolt of lightning and before the blast of thunder even came blasting through the air. "No kind, eh? You just swing?"
"What does it matter?" Netami asked. "This sword needs no style. It suits me perfectly to just 'be swung around' as freely as I wish." Netami held his sword sideways before him, on display for Shin alone to see. "This is darkness, force, uncontrollable power that I have tamed and submitted to my demanding will."
"So you're a dick to your sword" Shin flatly said "and it does what you want? Your sword's spirit must be a little bitch."
"The spirit within this sword" Netami said "is not one to be reasoned with, nor one to be mastered. It and I have made the deal that its power shall remain unchecked and uncoordinated by me, and that I shall use it regardless, and that the union between our individual forms is to be forbidden at the expense of my life. This is the fullest release of my sword I can perform without losing my life to the torrential spiritual pressure that would release should I ever utter the chant for Bankai. This is the sword Murasame, great killer of men. Bloodstained demon. Slayer of the greatest....and of course you, Shin Kenpachi." Netami turned to tip of the blade onto Shin, who stood expressionless with Shikai in his hands.
"Whatever" Shin lowed. He wound his scythe back, flash-stepped in and swung hard into Netami's one-handed block. Netami let his sword drift away, stepped back and wound up an attack with his left hand. Shin retreated and Netami slashed the air. A powerful wave swept over the grass, visibly moving the blades and the rain that fell. Shin blocked it with his scythe and cut through it. The rest of the solid attack flew past him and smashed into the ground behind him.
"This power is absolute" Netami said. "It cuts anything and everything, regardless of what stands before me and ignoring the worth of the world. This is an unlimited power, all harnessed from the will of Murasame alone, leaving my reiatsu to myself and its to itself. It is the perfect harmony for me to work with. I only fight for myself, and it only fights for itself...."
Shikei Shin called, what is our relationship?
We fight Shikei answered. That was all. Shin grinned.
"My sword and I are perfect together" Shin said, spinning Shikei around and swiping a crescent wave into the ground that kicked up cut grass and the rain from the ground. "We are essentially the same badass fighting beast!!! WE are a true unstoppable force!!!"
"I don't doubt you" Netami said "but what happens when unstoppable powers meet?"
"Something awesome" Shin answered. He took his scythe in hands again and rushed in. Their weapons and their eyes met. For a moment the men were identical, so deeply thrown into the darkness of the fighting that they forgot themselves and a mirror image glared orange eyed into the field of white and silence of Shin's eyes. Their mouths grinned wide, angrily, feverishly, and excited for blood. Their weapons parted and blood flew from both body. Shin was cut in many places, all but skin deep and nonthreatening. Netami had a gash across his chest that ran deeper.
But the blood was red. The rain was water. All that was clear. The darkness between these two fearsome men was not. But their blood was red and darkened the mud around them, even in the darkness of the rain, and when the lightning flashed it flashed impartial and white, showing all their cuts and all their rage for what it was truly...
Joushou Torautstu: Invincible Tiger Strike (joushou also means 'rising'. Here I want it to be 'invincible' because Hoji is awesome)
Kohru Amatsumamori: Freeze Imperial Defense
Murasame: Not Muramasa or Masamune. It means, roughly, 'Autumn Rain' describing the rain in the fall season that goes off and on harshly.
