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.


The manor was alive and in a panic. The rooms were locked and the wings were all sealed down as shinigami with swords at their sides scattered and fervently searched for signs of any attack. Two shinigami met as they ran from opposing corridors at a four-way hallway crossing.

"Anything?" one asked.

"No" he said. "I'm going to the west part."

"A group is still searching that" the first said "but help is always good. I'll go east."

"Be careful" the other said. They separated at simply that, one heading west and the other east. The man heading east came up to a room that was forced open and drew his sword. He sliced down the door and took up a protective, soldierly stance, but the first sight he saw was one of failure. The room was empty save for the stains of blood on the wall and the remnants of a struggle. There had been sleeping men in there, men who had no intention to ever wield a sword, men who lived peacefully within the manor cooking and cleaning and in times even aiding the injured many that found their way there. A Hollow had come by, the shinigami knew. He bowed his head in a quick prayer and fled, keeping his sword out.

Why must this happen!? He thought. We are never warned about these things. No great advents occur that pre-warn us when such a terrible thing will happen. We've had visitors come and go without a single problem, and men of grand power spend multiple nights without a single incident of an attack! So then, why now? Of all times and for all reasons, why must we be under attack now!? The soldier stopped in front of a room, one he had guarded in the past days. The room where the powerful Ishin slept and meditated under the influence of Lady Unohana. Could it be....him?

Suddenly, a spark of danger and a creak of the wooden floor. The shinigami turned and swung on instinct, clashing against some bone-hard substance and pushing back an entity from mid-pounce. In the pale light he could see it. It was a Hollow with a low bow-legged crouch and long, scooping shovel-like forearms. Its forehead was broad and concave and topped like a spade. A shoveling beast, one that had much experience digging.

"Heheheee" the Hollow laughed. "I surprised you, didn't I?"

"Uah!" the shinigami exclaimed. "You...can talk?"

"Don't be so damn conceded" the Hollow growled. "Of course I can talk! I know Hollows that talk better than most shinigami!"

"Bastard!" the shinigami lowed. "You killed those men, didn't you!? Fiend, prepare to answer for your actions!" The shinigami stepped in and swung hard. The Hollow blocked it simply with one arm, then swung its other arm up into the shinigami's gut.

"You're a poor excuse for a swordsman" the Hollow said. "I've likewise fought men twice as strong as yo-" the shinigami pushed through the pain and kicked the beast square in its unopened mouth. The Hollow grunted and staggered back in recoil. The shinigami took his sword from its hard arm and stepped in to swing again. The Hollow jumped up and to the side, avoiding the attack, and gripped the shinigami's head with both of its hard, powerful arms. "That hurt, you know!" The Hollow twisted itself around in the air and snapped the shinigami's neck before it landed. His body fell and his sword clattered out of his hand and onto the floor while the Hollow stood behind his corpse, shrugging its shoulders.

"Now what should I do?" it wondered aloud. "These beings tend to travel in packs as well, so the others will eventually find out he's dead and look for him. I suppose I should just carry on with my business like I planned and eat some shinigami before retreating to Hueco Mundo." The devious evil spirit started off down the hall with arms folded out and in front at its sides, making heavy strides with its short tail trailing behind. It passed in front of Ishin's door and doubled back on it for a quick second, eying the prospect down and measuring the power inside the room. "Could I?" it wondered. The wave of energy hit it like a blunt wind. Whatever was within was something the Hollow wouldn't face alone. "No, whatever is in there would tear me apart...." Suddenly, something caught the dejected beast's nostril-slits. It sniffed at the air, catching the scent of Ishin's reiatsu, and found much weaker samples somewhere in the distance. "Ah, so it has a family I can eat instead. Excellent...!"

The Hollow dashed through the halls, following the scent, and came to a stop at a four-hallway crossing. Damn! Now there's even more of them! This powerful reiatsu is so far diluted, though, that these others might just be clones. Or wait, that's how a Hollow would be, but do shinigami work like that? Can they just....clone themselves? The Hollow took a deep and introspective moment to try and come to an educated and logical conclusion as to the nature of the shared reiatsu scent, but it found nothing and shook its head of thoughts. Well, I can already tell that there's only one nearby and two somewhere further on. I'll just eat the one and be on my way! The Hollow ran around a corner and encountered a wall of shinigami with swords held out.

.....DAMN!!!!

"Kill it!" the head of the wall shouted. "Kill the fiend!" The Hollow panicked and thrust both of its forearm shovels into the floor. Then it flipped up the wood from beneath the shinigami's feet and dove down into the ground beneath the support foundation.

"This must be how the other one got into the mansion grounds!" a man exclaimed.

"So this thing is responsible..." the head said. "Check all the rooms! We can't tell where it could emerge! Protect the lives of everyone incapable of fighting for themselves at risk of your own! Be soldiers!!!" Before his speech was fully spoken the men had dispersed and were checking rooms with swords at the ready. When one opened a room, the room where Ishin's family so gratefully slept, he brandished a look of horror and rage. There was the Hollow, bent over a body on the floor, with blood in its mouth and hunger in its growl. Ishin's father lay under the beast, his throat torn out, a dead man.

"More" growled the Hollow. It turned and whipped its short tail at the shinigami. Its eyes glared red. "I want MORE!!!" The Hollow pounced, right into the man's expert swing, and was cleaved straight in half. It dissolved before it could hit the floor, but not without the casualty of the innocent. The guard sighed and gave a proper, solemn head-bow toward the man's disgraced, dead body.

I am sorry he prayed. My blade is swift, but my feet were slow. I shall take up the burden of your lost life for the rest of mine, old man. It is the only recourse fitting a soldier like me.... So the man closed the door and stood before it, guarding it further from all others who would dare intrude on the sullen peace within.....


The hardened soldiers remained guarding the garden, their swords unsheathed and their hearts beating with a furious tension. From either that one hole they stood so tightly around or from any breach in the ardent walls of the estate, that fiendish creature could return at any moment. Each grizzled soldier was ready to fight the first thing that moved with a bloodlusting fury while the kido squad of sure-sighted men and women stood above them on the roof keeping a careful eye on everything. Telly was at their center, acting as a watchtower on the lowest awning of the roof, keeping a stern and steady read on the constant flows of spiritual pressure.

"I've got something!" Telly exclaimed. "It's a huge, massively powerful pressure!"

"Where!?" one of the men shouted.

"In the hole again?" the men near the burrow shouted.

"Fools!" Telly shouted, pointing to the wall. "You don't need any sensory powers! You have eyes! Just look!" The men looked up to her and followed her finger to see a shadowy vision standing before the silver light of the moon. At its side was a blade sheathed in its scabbard. The men could tell by the slender and graceful silhouette who it was and immediately rejoiced in their own, stoic ways. Rei Unohana jumped down to the ground, near the men guarding the hole, and let rest her arms at her side.

"Lady Unohana" a man with a bald, scarred head and eyepatch began, "did you manage to see the Hollow in the woods?" Rei turned to him and slowly shook her head.

"There are Hollows besides that one lurking around" Rei said "but I did not see where that one had gone. The giant slime-Hollow is still elsewhere, or perhaps even..." she looked at the burrow, and the soldiers around it jumped away.

"It could still be down there!" a man exclaimed. "We never figured that!"

"The last place we'd think it would be!" another man said with an angered snap of his fingers. "Dammit! Why is it so smart all of a sudden?"

"Leave this to meeeee!" Telly called as she jumped from the roof to the ground. "I've got a perfect kido to take care of this problem! I'll use a flood of fire to scorch that thing out of hiding and out of the manor's underground! Then, if it dares to surface and face me, I'll whip out a quick binding spell and freeze it in place so the rest of you can shatter it to pieces!"

Make us do all the work, eh? The group of hardened swordsmen said. Telly was standing tall and proud for a moment until Rei came over and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"At what risk to the swords that the Hollow has consumed?" Rei asked.

"Hueh?" Telly grunted.

"That Hollow has stolen several swords" Rei said. "If they are broken by kido, the resonance will injure the reiatsu of their wielders. It would be irresponsible to risk breaking their swords over a fleeting hope of an attack." Telly lowered her head and started to sulk, not seeing Rei smiling at her. "It's good that you are thinking positively, Telly. Please, keep everyone's morale up if you aren't fighting. You are good at that." Telly suddenly looked up with sparkles in her eyes and nodded fervently. She turned to the kido squad on the roof and jumped up to them.

"Alright!" she shouted. "Let's sing a song to boost our warring spirits!!!"

"Uh....?" the squad flatly grunted. Rei and Telly, both spiritually sensitive beings, were suddenly stricken with an alarm of presence. It was not a Hollow, or even a shinigami. The feint, innocent defenselessness of the presence itself was what alarmed them. They both turned in the same direction, toward the furthest entrance into the garden which opened up to the flat grass, and saw Ishin's mother and sister frightfully wandering into the night. Rei stood up to rush at them, but something overwhelmed her.

"Lady Unohana" a guard began, "aren't those."

"Save them!" Rei exclaimed. "Before this beast gets to them!" The soldier saw a terrifying glare in her eyes. With a flash of steely silver and pale white moonlight, with her eyes narrowed into glowing slits of light on her shadowed face, Rei sliced free her leg from some unseen binding and jumped away. She spun her sword in a glowing circle in the air, an act so fast that it became nothing more than a swift flashing of light to those that saw it, and her miracle blade Mujitsuyu shone out a brilliant white light that brightened the garden grounds. A severed slime tentacle, nearly transparent in Rei's illumination, was squirming up out of the burrow in the garden.

"It's back!" one of the men shouted. They all drew their swords on instinct. The man tasked with saving the women made a run for them and tried to keep his eyes behind him, looking back to keep track of the glowing aura of the battle he distanced himself from. Finally, he reached them, only to have Telly jump down right in front of him with two other women in robes of black from the kido squad. The soldier stopped with a scowl.

"What are you two doing out here!?" Telly demanded. "It's dangerous! You have to go back inside, right now!"

"We can't!" Mizumi said, fighting back sobs. "My husband....he told us to go as fast as we could out here...there was a monster in the hallway! We escaped after it ran past us!"

"The Hollow!?" the soldier said. "What about your husband? What did he do?"

"He was trying to defend us" Mizumi said, so fretful that she couldn't stop herself from outright crying. "He made us run away! He made us run away while he stayed behind!!!" The soldier didn't say anything, for he could assume the best of his fate was the worst news for them to bear.

"GAAAAAHHHH!!!!" A soldier from the battle shouted. He was picked up by a long and slender tentacle and heaved up over the wall of the estate.

"NO!" the grizzled leader exclaimed.

"Huhuhuu!" the Hollow mockingly laughed. Its mask, now tiny enough to slither its way up and onto the thicker tentacle extending from the burrow, was revealed and opened with a wide, taunting smile. "What a delicious meal you've given me! The swords were a fancy treat, but a whole shinigami's body! You are wonderful hosts! HAHAHAHA!!!"

"Silence" Rei lowed. She flash-stepped forward and stopped near the wall of the garden grounds. Her sword was held at her side, tip near the ground where a flower bud grew. She moved it just an inch to tap the bud, and a gorgeous white head of petals bloomed just as the Hollow's mask and tentacle were made into a severed mist. "You shall not speak ill of the dead here...." Rei motioned to sheathe her sword, sure that the worst of the battle was over.

"LADY UNOHANA! DUCK!!!!" The man from before, running in a flash-step speed from the women in the corner of the garden, made a dive into Rei. She was stunned, at first, by the alarming suddenness of his call. Then, she was horrified, for he was stopped in mid-flight with his sword still sheathed. His face twitched a few times, then became stiff as his body went limp. He was slowly risen up, impaled by an unseen force, and taken over the high wall of the mansion grounds.

"Huhuhuhu...." the Hollow chuckled. "Can you not see now the danger you face? I am known far and wide through Hueco Mundo as El Masa. I am the joined bodies of over a hundred Hollows whose reiatsu dissolved into the form you see me in..." A giant thudding press went against the walls and they began to slowly bend to an enormous weight. Rei dashed away and appeared in the middle of an adamant soldier line. The kido girls took the mother and daughter in a single leap up to the roof to keep them safe and prepared their attacks at a distance. The Hollow slithered its way up on top of the wall, compressing it and bending it under an enormous weight, and extended tentacles that stretched out of eyesight in all directions. "I am an invincible being! I am free of all bodily harm! Try as you dare! YOU CAN'T TOUCH MEEE!!!" To Mizumi and her daughter, seeing such a thing was horrifying beyond imagination.

But to Rei, and Telly, and all those gathered to fight and defend with restless grins and menacing glares, it was just a hearty challenge....


Waking up in an unfamiliar place is common for the soldier on the move. The lands they explore and the enemies that they fight give way to a whole new life worth of new and exciting experiences. Ishin was used to this, but in the past few days he'd woken up in similar places to similar sights and sounds. At first it was nothing, just cramped darkness with humid air. Then, suddenly, he was pulled from the darkness and awoke to pleasant sights and sounds and smells. His world of darkness and violence had been so quickly taken from him, or he from it, that he could hardly believe he wasn't dreaming. Only the chill of loneliness reminded him that he was awake, because in his dreams he was never without the company of faceless warring brothers or his trademark butchery blades.

Suddenly, in this instance of waking, Ishin decided to stand up and move. He had never gone against any authority before, but this time was different. He was in a place of peace and understanding, far removed from the fields of battle. Ishin got up from his bed off of the floor and went for the door. He found it hard to open, but with enough force he managed to push it down and duck out from under the low arch. Then he turned to the right and started walking. There seemed to be a starkness to the hallways he marched through. A fearsome sort of staleness. This was normal for the most part. The soldiers in the other rooms needed to sleep, if they were soldiers at all.

Ishin continued through the halls, ignoring the slight sounds of stirring and the distant rushing of feet. These were normal sounds of war, plain and simple. Soldiers rushing out to get a good position in the line, on a field where rank didn't matter. These were men that Ishin knew and would proudly fight with. They were brothers who didn't have names, a family with which he only shared the blood which he spilled. Ishin continued to wander, unknowingly following the sounds of rushing feet and war. Then, he was stopped and pulled aside and into a room he didn't know. He stood for a moment, then tried walking, but was stopped again by a sharp ringing in his head, a ringing so clear and loud that it muted out all the other sound.

Hello boy whispered a voice. Ishin's eyes shifted left, then right, looking for the source. You can't see me yet, but you will. You rarely ever see me when it matters. I'm just a blur to you anymore, just a quick flash of color before your eyes, followed always by a deep splash of red. Ishin's eyes drifted two different ways, one right and the other left, leaving him rather confused in the middle of the room.

"Uh, are you talking to me?" Ishin asked.

Take up steel and sever flesh and bone whispered the voice in a tantalizing tone. What else am I for but to rend and destroy? Can you build a city with a sword? Or with temporary corpses that fade off into the air after too short a time? Can you erect and capital ground with merely the resolve of willpower?

"Um.......maybe?" Ishin said. Something threw him against the wall, face first, and he bounced away and fell straight down to the floor. He looked up and saw one of his blades, hung over a smoking incense in the middle of a bowl or sweet-smelling water. Ishin looked behind him, across the long room, and saw his other blade affixed in place in the same manner. "What is this?" Ishin asked. "What's going on? These are my swords! What are they-"

She did this the swords whispered to try and bring you and I apart. She doesn't want warriors to exist in the world. She doesn't want strong people to exist in the world. She wants a world with no war or conflict ever happening! Ishin stood up, looking shocked at the floor, as if flush with some horrible revelation.

"No war...." Ishin said in grave fear. "Without war, what will I do? All I know is war. I can't live in anything but a war! Is this.....her doing, seriously!?"

We must struggle against it the swords declared in a single voice of united, mad chorus. Take up your strength, fighter! Show what a soldier does! Go to the field of battle and become dominant!!! Ishin was stolen into the influence of the swords again. The calm nightly colors of faded white paper walls and dim brown floors turned quickly to red and marble. Everything went mad in Ishin's eyes. In an instant his swords were in his hands. He could see himself, a fierce warrior, skin bare and ready to be coated with nothing but hot blood shed from the army that was his enemy.

Now go! Commanded the spirit of Ishin's blade. They merged together, resonating as one, an eternally released shikai in its master's hands once more. "Let us bleach the battlefield of all life!!!" Ishin roared. He charged blindly ahead and ran through winding tunnels with great speed and power. He came to a wall that bore an evil grinning face and he slashed his way through it. He was outside in a small field, walled in by great steel clubs. In a short distance he saw that many of the clubs had fallen and a demon, some gigantic creature of scale hide and stout lizard-like head with a great many horns all over its broad snout. It had many long arms with talons reaching out from its round, scaly back. Its head had a broad and flat-toothed grin with eyes surrounded by deep blackness.

"What is that?" Ishin asked. Before his humanity could uproot itself to answer his curiosity, an answer came to him. He crouched down and snorted like an enraged animal. "Enemy! It has to be!!!" Ishin made a tremendous leap from his crouch and came down swinging into the enemy's back. He started to slip and fall down its smooth scaled skin, but he dug his blades into its thick, armor-like flesh and stopped himself from falling. He looked down. Facing the demonic thing was a line of soldiers like Ishin had never seen. He, barbaric and undressed, carrying only a mad rage and two blades into battle, and they shimmering bastions of guardian strength. Decked in armor of shining silver and pearl, these beings held swords not unlike the myriad he had seen before, but one was different. In all respects, one glowing warrior was totally different and held a shining white blade.

"These are brothers of war" Ishin said. "I can't see their faces past their helmets, but these are my brothers of WAAAR!!!" Ishin dug his blades down hard into the beast's hide and stomped his feet into its skin, denting footholds to keep him up. "We all fight to the same end! It doesn't matter who wears what into battle! In the end, if you're not dead then you've WON!!!" Ishin started hacking and chopping at the dragon's hide, delivering blow after blow of blind, fatal fury. His madness only intensified from there, and his attacks became brutally powerful.

He could only see the war in his head. Not the horrified guards or Rei protecting his sister, nor the captured bodies of shinigami immersed into El Masa's slimy form. He just chopped and hacked away madly, unaware that it was his brothers he was quickly murdering....


Rei stood aghast, watching the young Ishin hack away at the Hollow's slimy flesh where the soldiers had been dragged into.

"What's he doing!?" a man shouted.

"He's killing them!" another exclaimed. "Someone stop him!!!"

"No!" Rei ordered. Two men ran up anyway with their swords posed to attack Ishin. The mad young man turned with his foot planted solidly on the unsolid Hollow's body and swung his blade to lop off their arms. They both fell into the Hollow's sinking slime flesh and were slowly drawn into it. Through Ishin's eyes, he saw the scales of the beast's back slowly devouring the armored soldiers, chomp by chomp, until nothing remained of them. They had assimilated into the armored hide of the dragon, they had become a part of it. Though Ishin could still see the outlines they made like graves so shallow the body's form could still be seen, he could only see within that indentation the flesh of a monster, so he hacked away at it.

It's flesh is tender where it's just eaten Ishin thought, overcome by the madness of his swords. I have to strike fast! And hard! And swiftly before the flesh hardens again! Rei and the soldiers that remained at her sides looked on in horror and listened to the wet carving hacks he made into the monster's flesh.

"Uaaahhh" El Masa groaned. "It huuuuurts.....get it off me. Get it off...!"

"It's in pain" Rei said. "We have to use this to our advantage! Move up and strike its mask before it can kill again!"

"Right!" the men shouted. They, led by Rei, dashed forward and encircled the horrid beast's huge body, looking for its mask under its slime-like skin.

"Kido squad!" Telly called. "Prepare yourselves! Aim and fire at will!" The men and women of the line on the roof held out their open palms, aimed by grasping their wrists tightly, and fired explosive balls of energy. Simple techniques, but very effective. El Masa's flesh blew off of its body in layers and spattered around at random in the garden, only to dissolve into weightless darkness when it was gone too long.

"No!" the Hollow exclaimed in fear. "My body! Stop! MY BODY!!!!"

"We will purify this cursed body" Rei lowed "and send you into the void of de-creation."

"AGGGGHHHHH!!!!!" roared El Masa. It shook its massive body, quaking the earth and shaking the walls and roof of the estate. Mizumi and her daughter held on to their protectors gravely, but Mizumi slipped off of a roof shingle and fell down. El Masa heard her screaming and reached out to grab her out of the air as she fell. "I cannot let a meal go to waste! This body of mine is too important to let die!!!" El Masa revealed its mask, pushing it out through the slimy gel of its skin so that Ishin unknowingly stood on top of its forehead. Ishin looked down and saw, through his eyes, a praying woman with a smile being taken into the wide and gaping maw of the enormous creature. Its jaws were lined with spikes of teeth and its tongue reached out and curled around her like an arm. Then the flesh and form of the broad tongue warped and became a mirrored image of the woman, but with a face of fear and hands scraping at her cheeks in terror.

It feeds to grow stronger Ishin thought. I must stop it from feeding at all!!! Ishin thusly jumped down, kicking off of El Masa's mask so powerfully that he cracked it, and flew forward with his arms both wound around his chest. He landed with a crash into the ground, both arms swung far back, leaving a wing-like trail of blood and slime behind him. The Hollow's tongue, a slime-like protrusion with a current inside of it leading into its black-pit mouth, was severed along with what it was trying to eat. Mizumi's daughter looked down in horror at what her brother had done. A shrill, piercing scream went through the night sky, one that shook Ishin out of his madness and brought him swiftly into the realm of reality. There he saw, coated in black flames, the top-half of a woman's body which he barely knew, but one that he knew was not in any way a warrior. And this was someone he had killed.

What have I done...!? Ishin thought. He dropped to his knees, unable to drop his blades, and started to shake. Cold....why am I so cold? Why aren't I in my room? What's going on!?

There, there, little boy spoke a voice from within the furthest, deepest reaches of Ishin's head. You don't need to think about such painful things any longer. I am here now. You will never have to face the world alone again. Now pick yourself up. There is still a great monster for you to face! Ishin followed the voice's order and stood up, his eyes devoid of all life and a short smirk on his face. A compelling sense of evil started to flow over him, like a warm wave of hot insanity hitting at every corner of his skull. He glared the demon-beast down and suddenly the air became displaced. The aura of madness began to go everywhere, warping the normal spiritual pressure and throwing everything out of balance.

"What's going on...?" a man around the Hollow asked.

"I feel sick" another groaned. Rei was unaffected. She stood within a protective shining light of her own cleansing aura, one of light and purity. She stabbed her sword into the flesh of the Hollow and made a swift run over it, slicing it in half from its back to its front and straight down the middle of its mask. She turned to her work, seeing the Hollow's mouth close with a thud and an evil glimmering stare in its eyes.

"Well, at least my final meal was worth it" El Masa tauntingly lowed. "Well done, shinigami. I leave you with your other mess now....Huhuhuhuhu....." El Masa's enormous body began to dissolve but the threat of lethal danger still seemed to beckon. It was dangerously close-by. Rei brought her sword up and blocked a berserk, full-body swing of Ishin's blade. The power sent her off to the side in a slide and stunned her with fear. His power overloaded hers and invaded her closed circle of purity, forcing her mind into a short burst of madness, giving him time to step forward and swing again. Rei ducked down and dashed to the side. Ishin pursued her, nothing in his eyes but a selfless anger and rage.

"Ishin, calm down!" Rei called. "Your swords are warping your mind! This is what got you here! This is why your family entrusted me to you! Ishin, you must calm down!!!" Ishin saw nothing but the form of a body and the made, white fires that surrounded it. A blade of pure black was in its hands, contrasting the white of its armor and giving off an awful glow. Ishin wound up his arm to throw one of his blades, but somehow it felt to heavy. His sister, a being he did not know at all, had fallen from the roof and grabbed onto his arm in desperation.

"Brother, stop!!!" she shouted. "Mother is dead! YOU KILLED HER!!!!" Ishin suddenly snapped back for a second. He remembered his mother, that pale but caring woman, and the blood that just moments ago drove him insane. Then he turned, keeping his arm and his sister where they were, and stared at her out of the corner of his blood-red eye.

".....what?" he softly asked. His sister was tearing up. She fell off his arm and onto her side in weakness and started to cry. Rei stayed herself from acting and held the others off with a commanding hand. She could see what the moment would lead to. The battle, for now, seemed to be over. Just as peace and calmness seemed to be restored, some new evil presence made itself aware. A serpent with a bone-white head, a Hollow snake, slithered up from the burrow and sped for Ishin.

"Damn! Another one!" a guard exclaimed. "Kill it! Kill it!!" At his words, words so familiar to the young warrior supreme, Ishin's mind went once more blank. He faced his sister, now an unknown entity, and turned to see an odd and long creature making its way between them in escape from warriors wielding silver blades against it.

An enemy! Ishin thought. They're after it! Is it me? Her? No, it's that thing! I have to kill it! So Ishin thought, narrowly and madly, only to kill. The snake brushed against his sister's side just as Ishin swung down for it. She had turned just a moment too soon and her arm was taken off. The snake continued to wiggle away, just past her head, and opened its mouth. Ishin stomped on the creature's head and crushed it under foot. The whole thing evaporated away, leaving him standing tall and panting with a mad scowling grin on his face. His sister had gone silent with fear and looked up at the immense figure looming over her.

This isn't him she thought. She recalled the sights of her dear, sweet brother with auburn hair and a cheerful smile. No, that's right. My brother....he died a long time ago, and then this monster came in his place. This monster....must have eaten my brother. I hope....something eats him as well.... Out of fear, or perhaps even sadness, she died right there. Rei managed to silence Ishin by stabbing her glowing blade through his head, temporarily curing his ailing mind. She could tell that she was too late to save his sister, and at looking down on the mad warrior with blades still loose in his hands, she wondered in doubt if she was capable at all of saving him anymore.....