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.
A moment in passing of Death is like an eternity to its beholder. For Shin, whose body Death was freely wielding, eternity had slipped by and by, again and again, in the boredom of his mind. He lay on an untouched pile of destruction and chaos that piled with each passing distance of countless time with more mud, or blood, or random splashes of rain far up at its peak, staring at the black-and-white clouds of his black-sun sky.
"Should I be training?" Shin wondered. "For that matter, will I ever get to leave? This hasn't really happened before, to my knowledge. Letting my alter-ego fight through the far of death for me is obviously a good thing if I just want to get out of this fight alive....but if Shikei manages to kill me, what will become of us? Will we separate and plummet into Hell? Or will we simply dissolve back into the flowing life of the world to become trees or grass or....what the hell ever....is that how it works?"
"Ahh, Shin Kenpachi!" a manly voice heralded. Shin sat up to the sound of a whoosh as a thick metal blade of dull edges and rusted color was swung slowly thorugh the air to be hoisted up onto dark-skinned shoulders. Mann Aulder, a grizzly phantom of the man that once was, ascended the mountain of rubble towards Shin, a black mask over his face with his black, pointed glasses over where his eyes were covered. "Thinking doesn't seem to suit you!"
"Mann" Shin said. "You're.....still dead." A brief silence passed. Shin looked away with a scoff. "I thought you were the kind of man who couldn't die, even if I killed you."
"WHAT WAS THAT, SHORTYYY!!!???" Mann bellowed. Shin turned back with his eyebrows raised and saw Mann adjust his glasses in front of his face and regain his composure. "Oi, Shin. You know why you're here, right?"
"I don't" Shin answered. "Why are you here? Some kind of stupid vision quest?"
"It's hardly stupid!" Mann said, pointing the broad tip of his weapon at Shin. He didn't flinch and took his knuckles to the flat, rusty end, pushing it away. "This is about power! About fear and conquest. Shin Kenpachi, this is about your life!"
"It's hard to consider my life" Shin admitted "when all of my being seems to be composed of death. In essence, I'm not really living at all anymore. I'm just a moving mass of death, working its way through the realm of spirits and phantoms and monsters yet beyond, looking for a fight that I'll never want to stop."
"Hmm" Mann said. He swung his sword back onto his shoulder and stroked his chin. "I believe I see....Shin Kenpachi, what am I to you?"
"A dead guy" Shin answered, straight-faced and flat.
"YOU SONOFABITCH!!!" Mann roared. "YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!!!" He cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. "I'm just a figment of your mind, a representation of your warrior's mentality, a symbol of your never-ending hunger for battle! Why have you chosen me, would you say?" Shin stayed silent and rose up from his sitting spot. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles, shaking his hands after. He stepped his right leg to the side and began stretching, keeping Mann waiting patiently as he prepared himself mentally and physically for a response.
"You were the first warrior" Shin said "I really bothered to kill. You weren't the first one I murdered, nor the first I bothered to understand. I've killed men who claimed to be stronger, liars and posers who brandished exaggerated swords they called 'Bankai' against me, just swords and nothing more, yet I killed them all. You, Mann, understood your sword, and forced me to understand mine. In essence, I see you as my equalizer. My first step through a deadly threshold."
"Hmph" Mann grinned. "That's not bad. For an idiot, you can be pretty sharp!" Man turned his blade, still propped to his shoulder, at Shin and swung down hard. Shin jumped away as the rubble was smashed through and stepped on a metal pole protruding from the rock and the wood and the mountainous elements. "Will you run me or fight me, Shin Kenpachi? Will you fight your fighting will!?"
"A weapon..." Shin lowed. He reached down into the rubble and grabbed for whatever thick metal implement he could find. Meanwhile, Mann was rushing in, stomping across the mountain while climbing up. Each solid stomp he made sank him down a step or two, but each push of his legs that shifted the grounds shot him up those same lost feet. His black mask showed his broad and toothy grin, even through the blackness of its cloth, as his monstrous thick paddle trailed behind in his grip. Shin stuck his hands through the solid rubble and gripped the shaft of a long, metal thing he couldn't see. He pulled it up through the rock and debris and blocked Mann's attack with a long, solid-steel pole of black. Shin pressed against the blade, hopped forward and kicked Mann off his balance, forcing him to tumble down the mountain a distance until he regained his footing and slid down to the base.
"My will" Shin called "is to exist and fight. I will myself to bleach the world with my enemy's blood, to find the strong and become stronger than they. I have no allegience but to those with the same task, and we strive to surpass each other so that we may stand at the peak of the world together, looking from different mountaintops of bodies as the world around us floods with a cleansing deluge of suffering! I, my allies....those friends of mine all have the same goal: We will kill our way to a perfect existence! We will ascend our way, through Shikai and Bankai and all of this world and the next, until no one can stop us!!!!" Shin held up his pole. A straight and weightless thing of black, horizontal over his head.
"I AM..." Shin began, spinning the pole to a stop before his face, vertical, with two notches grown near its top. A lateral, unequal cross, a black metal crucifix. "...A BLACK DEATH!!!!" Shin spun the weapon yet more and stopped it again. The ends of each straight notch turned, each of them the same way, to make a manji with one long, shaft side. One of the upper arms, the left one from Mann's perspective as he gazed up at his enemy, lengthened yet more with the notch aiming down parallel to the shaft. Shin took the weapon and swung with both arms, the way he only knew how: like a scythe. That longest arm's notch angled out, and from it a blade of pure, black energy connected to the shaft, then materialized into a mighty scythe blade with a blast!
"KURO KOROSU!!!" Shin's power was held in hand. A fiendish scythe with notches at all ends like a swastika cross. A right-facing, eternal symbol of power. He spun the weapon around with a single push and a balancing finger, its form weightless but deadly, and picked up a wind around him. His hair blew with it and a dark shadow consumed his face, his eyes glowing pure white and his teeth shining from the dark of his open, grinning mouth. "Come on....."
"Hahaha!" Mann laughed. "So this is your power, revealed at last, from the sea of your soul!? Another scythe!? Honestly, Shin Kenpachi, without a little variety you'll become predictable!!!" Mann charged up the mound, pushing past the broken, dirt-thin grains of rock, with his thick sword held at his right side with both arms. Shin disappeared, only to instantly reappear with his scythe blade in front of Mann's torso, the shaft leading behind him, and Shin holding it in an unflinching grip in his right arm, wound all the way across his chest, his torso torqued to the side and his right leg leading forward. With a sudden shout, Shin snapped all his body back into place, his right arm extended out with the shaft straight along his arm to his right, his chest forward his feet dug into the soft ground and turned sharply, and an arc of black light tracing Shin's blade's travel in the air followed by a red mist. Mann's legs fell forward, his torso flew back, and both landed at the same time, a sizeable distance from each other. Shin walked forward, seeing Mann's body not bleeding and his sword itself cut at an angle that made it dangerously sharp, for once. Mann coughed in amusement as Shin neared him with his mighty new scythe in hand and grabbed his pantleg before he passed.
"You are strong, Shin" Mann said "but don't let that mistake you for what true power you seek. The power to understand, to journey, to discover, to know the beings of the world that possess such great power. Surly, something like this man, this Netami, can't be one of those beings. His strength is purely aesthetic. It's all sound and fury with no real meaning." Mann coughed and his cloth mask fell off. Shin looked down with blazing white eyes at his face, starch-white skeleton as if ripped off from the head. The glasses stayed in place. "Surely, you don't intend to seek and end to power....already?" With that, Mann turned to dust and was blown away by a building wind. Shin followed its travel until it was out of sight, all while his own world moved without his noticing. The swords of the graveyard in his soul started moving, and from beneath each stood up the ghastly, undead body, lacking a face for Shin to know, each of them holding up their own swords against him.
Shin sighed. "I understand 'strong'" Shin began, taking his weightless weapon into his hands. "And, among other things, I understand my 'power'. I am Death, merciless and uncaring. I slay, I take, I am ambiguous to strength...but that is not who Shin Kenpachi is. He's too strong for Death to take! I, Shin; I, Kenpachi, will deny Death the pleasure of my death until the SUN ITSELF HAS DIED!!!!" Shin charged into battle. Fast as light, silent as a shadow, he stood before the front line of men and chopped them all down to dust with a single one-handed swing. "You are weak" Shin said. "Weak!" The army continued to amass, bodies Shin didn't recognize, swords he had broken and felled, all souls reaching up through hell to take one final grip at Death's throat....
Shikei continued the fight physical, taking Shin's body and his own weapon, a constitution of his pure Death aura. The blackness billowed around him, a false skin of pure energy that sapped the life all around it. He stood on a barren patch of dirt, a hard rock crater where no life could ever grow again....and pressing into him was Netami from above, a descending Darkness with a vicious sword.
"I'll kill you!" Netami growled. He pushed back and was airborne. He swung his sword wildly with his left arm, each stroke of his blade blocked by the whirring energy swings of Shieki's scythe, all the blades produced after hitting the dry ground where rainwater gathered and kicking up splashes. "I'll kill yooou!!!"
"The obvious counter of Death" Shikei began "is Life. If both are in balance, everything is fine. Only when one is triumphant over the other shall change ever occur. Shikei swept his blade in one last block and then caught Netami's blade in his hand, stained pure, pitch black by rainwater. Netami hung in the air, elevated on the high of his rage alone, and struggled to reclaim his sword with vain jerks and pulls of his shoulder. "In an abundance of death, the weak die off but the strong live on! With an abundance of life the weak overpopulate and threaten control of the strong! In either case, new breeds are destined to be born. Those with or without, those lacking the common sense to pick a side and kill everything around them!" Shikei's energy gathered all into his hand, like a crackling ball of black lightning, and he used it in a wicked punch to Netami's gut.
"You" Shikei said, "are weak. Weak." Shikei released his grip and Netami was thrown back by the hit. He stopped in the air, standing on a raindrop frozen in place, and kicked off of it with a powerful splash against his feet. He landed with a swing that Shikei dodged. He made a turning slash in his direction and was blocked with the energy scythe. Around like that they danced, Netami swinging with pure murder in his eyes and death out-stepping him, blocking and watching him tire out, while all the grass around them died and the rain sank down into the rounded rocky craters they made. Netami swung a powerful slash from over his head and let Shikei dodge to his right. His left palm was open, just above his right wrist that held his blade down.
"Makai Myaku!!!" Netami growled. Shikei poised his scythe and slashed into the invisible blast of energy. It exploded in the air between them, and Netami was forced back in a slide across the wet ground. Impossible!!! he thought. Shikei was already attacking. He leaped up with scythe overhead and dove down with a powerful sweep through the grass. Netami flash-stepped backwards and gained ground, but he saw the terrible effect of Shikei's power. The grass died instantly, the dirt became stone-gray, and the whole bredth of the area became lifeless and dead. The black cloth around Shin's body started to shorten, replaced by light-gray skin.
"You understand, I take it?" Shikei asked. Netami backed away a step out of shock. "The power of Death is no mystery! One cannot die if there is not Life to take! The power of Death Steals the power of Life!!!" Shikei wound his scythe over his head, spinning it like a crackling black halo, and swung hard at Netami. Despite the distance, Netami's senses kicked up. His reflex blocked a massive slash that forced him back even further. His heels dug painfully through the ground, wet as it was, and Shikei flew in, hovering just above the ground like a shadow. He swung and forced Netami's sword away, then seemed to loom in quickly and grabbed Netami's face.
"There isn't much interesting about you" Shikei said. Through the dark gap between the fingers grasping his face, Netami could vaguely see the form of its face. But, he only saw a skull, a frightening white skull and darkness holding him down. "So you have strength. So you wield a strong sword. So the bodies you've destroyed and the lives you've taken could fill a hall as great as any king or emperor's! Do you understand any of it?" Netami grabbed Shikei's arm and tried to force himself away, but it was impossible. Death's grip was steel-strong, unmoving, completely static. "Do you understand...Death?" Netami freed himself with a swing of his sword. Shikei floated away, a black fire around his feet, and jumped over the wave of blades. Netami drew his sword to his shoulder, began swinging up in an arc, then repositioned the sword over his right shoulder.
"MAKAZE!!!!" He roared. He stabbed forward, and instantly a dark wind blew. A tunnel, straight and wide, encompassed Shin's body and vanished the black energy scythe. All his skin turned to blackened ash and was peeled away, and his bones were hacked so many times that they too became dust. The tunnel stretched on and decimated a hillside, burrowing a tunnel straight through a solid dirt wall before it was stopped. Netami stood in the clearing, alone at last, and fell to his knees. "Finally" he panted, "I've won. I am strong. The strongest now! My title from now on is...Netami Kenpachi!"
"Woe to the pitied and the merciless men" echoed the booming voices of Shin and Shikei. "Theirs are the lost souls in this sea of hatred. Let them be guided to dry land, and not to sink into an eternal darkness within their own minds and souls...." Netami got up and turned around in a start. He searched the fields madly for Shin, for his energy, for his form in any sense. He only saw shadows and laughing skulls in the sky, clouds rolling like devils faces taunting him and chiding him for his poorest performance. Netami drew in a calming breath and stroked the long, silken black bangs away from his fire-orange eyes.
It's nothing Netami thought. It's nothing at all.....
"Your comfort is fake" Shikei said "if this is the extent to which you must calm yourself." Netami turned and saw, standing atop a pile, not of dirt and rock, but of bleeding bodies, the grim spectre cloaked all in black with no face but a skull. "It has been over, since before you bothered to react."
"GO TO HELL!!!! MAKAZE!!!!" Netami, in his rage, drew his up arms and swung down powerfully, but his sword was gone and his hands were both empty. He had to pause and look, slowly, at his hands to make sense of what happened. All logic left him, and the rain finally stopped.
"I have stopped this fight" Shikei declared "for the betterment of both parties. You, who have purpose to be strong, and my own, who is strong with no purpose, are not destined to clash this early. The world is still young! There are wars neither of you have yet discovered to be won! Great kings to dethrone and armies to destroy! And yet, beyond that, there is a world that nobody knows, a place of Gods and Devils, the land of Hollows awaits you!" Shikei announced, with a skeletal arm extended from his swallowing black cloak, "In this fight, where death permeates the very land, THERE SHALL BE NO VICTORS!!!!!" Netami's eyes sank into whiteness. Shock, rage, aggression, deppression; his body was crippled by emotion as he saw past his hands a ground made of dead bodies everywhere.
"No" Netami said. He held his head and pounded against the ground, rock hard like a mound of bones. "No! NO! NOOOO!!!! STOP THIS MADNESS!!!!"
"Death ceases for no one...." Shikei said.
In reality, Netami was frozen, trapped within his mind, a thick shroud of black energy blinding his eyes and binding his mouth shut. Shikei, still holding Shin's body, had released the final ounces of his own power, an effort that made the whole valley between rolling hills totally bare. "I will teach this to you one day, Shin. Naraku No Soko is a kido capable of throwing any man into his greatest nightmare while still standing, but he cannot die. The moment his life is threatened, he will awaken with an elevated vigor, a daring resolve to kill ten time stronger than before! It is not your style....but you will make use of it, I am certain." Shikei looked down in the dark storm light. The clouds finally rolled away and the rain had ceased. The skin that was scarred, slashed, scratched, cut and blasted away was back again but pale and gray in color.
"I have absorbed just enough reiatsu from the environment to keep you standing, but it is up to you to heal completely....." Shikei looked up to the sky as the first ray of sun broke, only to be quickly swallowed by the jaws of the clouds. "Shin Kenpachi, your resistance of death is neither a weakness nor a strength. To me, it simply is. But, as long as it is here, it is an obstacle to us both. You must force your way around death, Shin, or power will evade you forever!" Shikei walked from the battle, leaving Netami to suffer in the darkness of his own mind, sword half-drawn, in the middle of an open grassy plain......
Senshi sped through the forest and came upon the grizzly battlefield of broken trees, broken earth, and the crater wherein rested the damaged body of Kakugari. Standing out in the open with his sword still unsheathed was Horoshi. He breathed vehemently still, his sight cast into the shadows as they moved and mimicked, to him, the flight of the cowards who had shirked his powers so much.
Unforgivable Horoshi thought. Suichi, Baldy, whoever the rest of you are you're dead. You're all dead! I'll kill you all. I'll cut off your heads and rest them of pikes in the middle of the road! I'll throw your swords to hungry Hollows and sell what's left of you to Hollow hunters! I'll drain your blood and sell it as wine! I'll chop you into so many pieces that- Senshi could see, even feel, the rage in the young man and knocked him out with a punch to the back of the head. Horoshi fell, his rage quieted in unconsciousness and his sword finally out of his hand. Senshi walked to him and sheathed it for him, so that it wouldn't distract him if he woke up too soon, and then he heard the groans of pain from within the crater. He walked to its edge and saw Kakugari down below, eyes half-open and mouth coughing out water.
"What has happened?" Kakugari wondered.
"Need a hand, chum?" Senshi asked, extending his arm down. "Luckily, there is no comrade of such bulk that could fall whom I cannot pick back up!" Kakugari smiled and rose, as much as he could, his arm to be taken by Senshi's chivalrous act. Senshi hoisted Kakugari from his hole and dragged him out into the open, under the sun.
"It seems I've been given quite the thrashing!" Kakugari said, a smile on his face. "Senshi, you should have seen it. Ah, you would have loved to fight him. He was like an animal, leaping all around, his two golden gauntlets gleaming like the most regal of adornments, yet in his eyes the undying spirit of a warrior. He was a man, Senshi, one even you may have admired!"
"Golden gauntlets, you say?" Senshi said. He stroked his mustache for a moment and pondered something in the corner of his mind. "I'm reminded of some battlefield tale I heard some time ago. A Golden Goddess, a woman shinigami who's power and renown earned her illustrious prestige within the court of the Seireitei long before it was its own separate city-state as it is now, but alas, her legend faded when her company left the world in some mysterious event."
"How did your fight go?" Kakugari asked.
"Not so well" Senshi said. "I won, but at a cost I fear I cannot pay. I fought not a man, but a beast within one. That Shin Kenpachi has taken no standards to surround himself with such strange beings. An assassin, an animal, a pure monster with an identity of nothing but murder! It defies my knowledge how so many strange men are born into this fascinating world of ours..."
"I have decided" Kakugari said. "Senshi, I'd like to become...a warrior. Would you assist me in seeing that my cloak....be made as a sword?"
"With training" Senshi said as he flexed his arms and chest, "anything is possible! You say you want a sword? I'll train with you so a sword is what you wield! Perhaps even a hammer or ax, or some longer thing like a polearm! We'll take that flimsy coat of yours and make it into a MANLY WEAPON!!!" Kakugari chuckled, weakly but happily with a toothy grin at Senshi's pompous declaration, but broke his vainglorious efforts at a simple question.
"What of Netami?" he asked. Senshi stopped and lowered himself.
"Let the man live or die" Senshi said. He looked to Horoshi's body, still out cold, and sighed. "He is a man of corruption. See what he has done to young Horoshi? You and I are above his wild and carefree antics, but the impressionable youth such as Horoshi are no match for that terrible charisma he posseses! He sways others to his own actions without care, and without true desire! He only manipulates becase he can! Whether he returns or not is up to him, but it will be without us either way. Kakugari, let us take this lad and retire to our proper court. The Tenshioni is not a place for villains anymore!!!"
"Well said, my friend!" Kakugari exclaimed. Senshi picked Horoshi up and slung him over his shoulder. He began to walk from the clearing but stopped and looked back to see that Kakugari hadn't moved yet.
"Oh I'm sorry" Senshi said. "You need a hand still, don't you?"
"Oh, that's uneccessary" Kakugari said. "I can recover fine alone. Just help me draw my sword and I-" Senshi picked him up and held him over his shoulders on his back. The obvious differences of height and weight didn't seem to matter to Senshi, who carried both men in a jog between the trees.
"Nonsense!" Senshi said. "Your training begins the moment it is decided, that's the warrior way! No one ever got stronger 'tomorrow', it all starts with 'today'! You won't be drawing that sword into a cloak until you've mastered it as a blade! Ahahahaha!!!"
"But is this truly alright?" Kakugari asked. "Not this weight you carry of mine, but of those others. They yet live, don't they? And Shin Kenpachi...what of him?" Senshi remained silent until they reached the road.
"That is out of our hands, my friend" Senshi replied at length. They kept it at that, simply, and ran off down the road for their homeland far away.....Meanwhile, those 'others', those that follow Shin in his cold and deadly shadow, finally arrived as the thunder rolled back and the gray blanket of clouds continued to recede. Jin crouched on top of a hill and looked down into the expanse. Far away he could see two beings, one still and the other moving, but at such distance and with such weakness from his fight he couldn't tell who was what. Nor could Hoji, and Suichi was unconscious still.
It seems like they're both still alive, mostly Hoji thought. There's an abundance of darkness over there....it's cold and abyssal, so it's obviously Shin, but then there's some blunt and impeding force as well. It's just as dark, just....it's formless. Could that be Netami?
"I see something!" Jin exclaimed, pointing forward. Hoji stood on his arm in a crouch and peered ahead, shading his eyes with his hand. Indeed, some being was walking forward, and the arrogant young man that he was, Hoji sped off to investigate. "Wait, BalDeath! Where are you going?"
"You stay put!" Hoji shouted. He ran forward and slowed before he reached the person. Walking down from a low sloping hill was Shin, staggering forward with his arms numbly swinging at his sides. Hoji was speechless. He grinned immediately and started breathing, each breath hard and quick as if he were trying to start talking, but his throat was welled up with excited emotions.
Ah, you glorious bastard of an ass of a man!!! Hoji thought, hoping he could reach Shin that way. I knew you'd win, you! There's nothing in this world short of the damn sky and sun falling on you that could kill you! Hell, you'd cut the moon to pieces before it reach the height of the tallest mountain! Come here, you son of a bitch! On our way back I'm gonna pull a whole damn apple tree outta the ground for ya, you god damn bastard you! Shin walked to a stop right in front of Hoji. Finally, at the moment of decision, Hoji managed to part his lips and speak with his teeth grit. "Tch." he said. Shin looked up and grinned.
"Hmm" Shin chuckled back. Hoji stood with his fists on his hips and his feet shoulder-width apart, seeing how Shin would match him there. Shin fell forward into Hoji.
"Tch!" Hoji scoffed. "Take it easy, man. I'm glad we're both alive. Wait'll you hear about the guy I had to fight. But before that, I'm sure we all wanna hear about..." Hoji felt Shin's weight start to pressed against him and grabbed his comrade by the shoulders to keep him from falling flat over. "Hey Shin, you're freezing cold! I was under trees, so the rain didn't get to me as much, but man you're-" Suddenly, as Hoji's hands got a firmer grip on Shin's hard shoulders, the chill came over him and the hollow darkness emptied his throat of words and air. He gulped loudly and began to shiver.
You're cold as.......death. Hoji slowly took his hand from Shin's shoulder and looked at its color. First, under the light, it was black. Then it turned pure red, like ice-chilled wine. But it was still blood. Hoji grabbed Shin and pushed him away, seeing the peaceful grin he had just shown still frozen on his pale face and nothing, nothing, in his eyes. Hoji started to shake. His emotions compiled continuously, until he burst with a gasp of air and a roar of plea.
SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNN!!!!!!!
Kuro Korosu: Black Kill (Also a bit of a pun I tried. Ko-ro-su sounds sort of like co-ro-su, or cross. So, Black Cross works too.)
Naraku No Soko: Abyss; literally, Bottom of Hell
