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.
Shin was comatose...again. Therefore, his group of merry marauders was stayed for the time being under the protective political shelter of Rei Unohana, the worldwide influential Hollow expert and researcher. Of Shin's infamous band of fellows, two were well. Jin had mostly recovered, though was undergoing a voluntary separation from his swords so his own reiatsu could readjust itself and solidify his body again, and moved about the mansion at his leisure. When he chose to sleep, he did so in the special healing spring waters with a heavy wooden weight tied under his chin to keep him from slipping under and drowning in the night. The other man yet to rise, but conscious none the less, was Suichi. Freed from his own technique, he let himself wake but was restricted in moving again as his body had been too greatly damaged and his energy to greatly exhausted during his fight.
Hoji was the only freely mobile envoy of Shin's usually solitary presence. He carries his sword with him and checked it multiple times each day to see if the blade had regrown yet. It was still shattered with barely any metal of the blade remaining out of the handle, no matter how many times he checked. Still, the ordeal of life continued alone for him as he trained his body and fought with a weighted wooden sword one of the grateful soldiers owned as a souvenir from his services previous to joining the manor. Hoji took extreme steps to keep his form sharp and his body trained. He swung a hundred swings of each kind as a warm up each day, then practiced actual combat against shadow opponents using the woefully impractical training stick. Despite its weight, Hoji managed to swing it with proper power each time, with each swing being lethal to whatever imposing target Hoji seemed to face down at the time.
And when his sword would fail him, or he would fail the sword, a spectacle would begin. Hoji would take his wild Kaijuuryuu stance and make a series of amazingly acrobatic attacks that seemed to, at least, imitate proper impact upon his imaginary opponent. Hoji's vision of battle was one where he seemed to lose constantly, as more than once he would simply stop mid-swing, breathe for a moment and then take his sword back up as if he hadn't started fighting at all yet. It was bizarre thing to watch each day for many of the more peaceful and duteous men and women of the manor, and it didn't help that Hoji would practice where and whenever it seemed to strike him as a favorable activity. In the halls, in the garden, on the roof, in the front court, even in his own room, fights within his mind seemed to spring up at every possible opportunity. By the end of each day Hoji was so soaked with sweat that he had to sleep in his fundoshi and let his regular kimono dry over a stick in his room.
After a few days, Hoji seemed to become more accustomed to the weight of the practice sword he had taken up than Shin's absence. He walked halls aimlessly, lost in thought, and then would suddenly burst into hour-long training runs. His physical health seemed to improve the more his apparent mental and emotional health seemed to decline. However, as Hoji was sly and easily lost within the large estate, Rei was never able to meet with him after they left Shin's private recovery wing. Their paths happened to intsersect one day as Hoji came prowling on his knuckles and toes around a corner and saw Rei from the feet up. He pushed himself up to his feet and stood his ground.
"Hello, Hoji" Rei greeted.
"Hi" Hoji greeted back. "Uh, how's Shin?"
"He's still recovering" Rei said. "His body is dangerous. It will take some time."
"Right, right" Hoji said. "I guess, among all of us, I get off the easiest with a wind aura, right?"
"Shin's aura is something he must learn to control" Rei said "if he wishes to properly use it. Perhaps more training between the two of you is in order now."
"Unless he trains in his dreams" Hoji said, expressing a certain seriousness in the idea that Rei couldn't help but break a slight grin. She continued forward and seemed to lead Hoji down the halls to the front gate. "What's going on?" Hoji asked.
"I am taking an important visitor" Rei said.
"Oh" Hoji said, slinging his practice sword across his shoulders. "Well, in that case, I'll just go camp in the forest out of your way."
"Don't be foolish" Rei said. "I don't doubt that you could easily slay a Hollow if need be, but without your sword any affects of defeat you are able to inflict upon a strong enemy will be merely a subversion of their true intent. You won't kill anything with that piece of wood, and if you fight yourself to exhaustion unarmed then you'll only die without the honor of having your sword drawn in the last breaths of your battle." Hoji gulped. "You need not leave at the sight of company. It doesn't work that way here. I don't ask the soldiers or the injured or the deeply wounded to stay out of sight if someone who their region considers important comes by for something. Each life taken in here is something precious and to be looked upon in admiration."
"Tch" Hoji scoffed, taking up an arrogant, animistic smile. "I've got plenty of worthy attributes to admire. I guess I'll stick around then, out of curiosity, and if you need a good-looking distraction I'll be withing a whistle's distance." Rei stared him down, trying to measure how serious he was, then turned without a single trace of response on her face. "Oi. Don't do that." Hoji said in low spirit. The great front gate slowly opened, and through its gap marched two flanks of shinigami with plated armor over their garb. Their kimonos were different. They had no sleeves, they ended just above the stomach to fully expose the midriff and the bottoms were short and open skirts. Skirts. Hoji noticed, with a punch-like impact, all of the shinigami entering the estate were beautiful, strong-looking women. He shed a single tear but kept his face tense with a warrior's scowl. His lower lip quivered open and he hissed through his grit teeth a short and low "Yessssss."
"Welcome to the Unohana Manor" Rei greeted. She gave a deep, respectful bow, which Hoji saw with a gasp and widening of his eyes. He looked to the flanks of women, with wild hair and curvy, toned bodies all stepping their feet together with their arms at their sides. As they lowered themselves with an equal bow of respect, Hoji turned his head and grit his teeth.
No he thought. The me of this life has not yet earned the honor of seeing paradise manifest like this. I must be a stronger man, with a perfect mastery over my body, and a righteous unending discipline to achieve before I may take a sight of... Hoji broke. He turned and saw a whole row of women bowed down with low-cut, knot-bound kimono tops and he saw, as if from the vault of heaven itself, endless beautiful valleys laid out before his own eyes. Hoji began to cry and smile widely. I AM WORTHY! I AM WORTHY TO SEE THIS! he exclaimed in racing, excited thought. The women all rose up at the same time while Hoji stood fast with his cheeks streamed with tears. One woman stepped out from the line, one whose sword was long and broad, sheathed behind her back, with a brilliant red tassel hanging off the pommel. She was a tall woman, just a bit taller than Hoji, and by and far not the tallest one present. She had wild brown hair tied by two thick bands over her shoulders, like a mantle of fur. Hoji noted the details of her face as well. She had two thick scars on her left cheek, just under her eye, seemed to bear a fang even with her mouth closed, and looked generally discouraging.
She was also angry. Her eyes were in constant furrow and her brow seemed to cast a shadow of thickness equal to that same perpetual anger over her green eyes. Hoji's smile faded as he looked into her eyes from the side. The swirling, berserk shine they had seemed all-too familiar to him. The entire muscular pattern of her face struck him as all-too similar in a way, and he soon pieced it together with a gasp. This woman looks like Shin he thought.
"You are Rei Unohana" spoke the woman, a sultry and deep voice, a warrior's voice from the mouth of a woman indeed. Rei nodded and closed her eyes. "I am Ami Mai. I have come to ask of your terms. Will you accept our stay here?"
"Of course" Rei replied. "You are welcome here as long as you please. Let my home become a part of yours as you rebuild." The flank of women let out sounds of great joy and relief. They settled quickly at the sight of their leader who had turned her head to the red X of Hoji's forehead.
"Who are you?" she demanded of Hoji. The man stared into her jade-green eyes, shining and narrow with a fearless fury, and he grinned.
"I'm the watchdog" Hoji growled with a grin.
The women were of a small clan within a larger territory, and had all been driven out by the war. There's was the fiercest lot: they were the protectors and fighters, the soldiers and defenders of their clan's sacred land. When they lost it they lost all their honor and their place in their home, so they left all at once and sought shelter. At some point, via Rei's apparent network of outside contacts, they gained wind of Rei's estate being used as a refuge and struck a deal. They would seek new land and a home for their clan if they could only manage to rebuild what was left and summon the rest of the remnants from across the wide realm to join them. All the while they would count on Rei to help them train and become stronger so their next home would be better defended.
Across many lands and regions, they were known as Musha-onna, the Warrior Women. Their clan was exclusive to strong females. It was a part of their legacy to harness the inner strength of only the strongest, wildest, most beautifully strong women within the Spirit World to train the strongest woman and have her leave to find the strongest man. Obviously, nature would take course from there, and by their logic their clan would either be in possession of the strongest shinigami child born or be responsible indirectly for creating one. Obviously, one honor had a higher priority, and most of the men born of their methods were sent to live with their fathers instead.
During their first night of stay in the Unohana estate, Ami and her league of warrior women were ushered to their own private hall. A single room, long enough for all of them to fit side-by-side laying down, with enough beds and sheets to keep them as warm as they pleased. They were treated to a hot feast as well, all the same food that the rest of the manor would eat, served with calming tea to help them relax as they prepared themselves for their first night of rest in their recent, difficult times. The women, however, were not the type to relax. In no time they were out, walking the halls, making themselves known to everyone nearby.
"This place is kind of shabby" one girl said to another as they walked through the halls.
"I know" she replied. "Our hall in Shan-Va-Nal was at least twice as big as this place, including that orphanage wing."
"Those poor kids" the first girl cooed. "Raised without parents to teach them how to fight. What'll they do if a Hollow comes and attacks? Or worse, an enemy shinigami?"
"They'd just scream and die" she replied coldly. "Brats. If they aren't strong then let them suffer for it. That trauma of facing down an inevitable end is usually what forces most kids to manifest their swords early on, you know." As the two tall, toned and very threatening women walked through the halls, those within earshot of their rather harshly worded conversation chose to wait for them to pass before they went into the hallway themselves. It had barely been a day since they arrived and already their fearsome presence seemed to dominate the halls of the estate. Sadly, the only one who could stand up to their intimidating presence was doting on them lustfully at every turn.
The two girls encountered Hoji in the hall as he made his evening course through the halls of the manor, shirtless and glistening with sweat.
"Evening, girls" he greeted. The girls just shot him an uninterested look, though he ignored it with his own deafening arrogance. "Tch, it's a nice night, ain't it?" he asked casually.
"Who are you really?" one of the girls asked. "I mean, why are you here?"
Hoji shrugged slyly. "Here seems like the place to be."
"No, out there is" the other girl protested. "Out there, in the thick fires of war, is the 'place to be' for warriors like us. Out there, on the unknown stretch of land where Hollows meet and prey on the weak, that's the place to be. This place, this haven for weaklings and cowards, is the worst place to be right now!"
"...it's a phrase" Hoji said, taken aback by her hot protest. "Besides, no one is keeping you here against your will, are they? I bet your leader would be thrilled to hear you say all that crap and she'd probably cheer you on if you left to fight."
"What do you know?" she shouted. She leaned in angrily and pressed against an unmoving, undaunted Hoji. "You weren't driven out of your only home in a blaze of fire and bloodshed, were you?"
"Nope" Hoji bluntly said. The girl drew away, scoffed and pushed past him. Her comrade followed her, ignoring Hoji for the most part, and both left him alone in the hall. When they were out of sight Hoji stomped and snapped his fingers.
"Damn!" he exclaimed. "What happened? I was just trying to be casual and flirt. Damn, crazy, berserker chicks. I need to think more on their level if I want to get anywhere..." Hoji looked up and started running through the halls. With no sense of direction or position within the manor to guide him, Hoji left his path in the trust of his animal instincts and sought out the scent of women. It wasn't long until he found one, but it wasn't as prime a specimen as he had been looking for. It was Natsumo, of all people, carrying a bundle of clothes topped with armor.
"Evening" Hoji said. Ignoring her struggle, he ran past her.
"Hold it!" she shouted. "Help me out here, please!" Hoji slumped his shoulders but obliged. A women was calling on him for help. What man would he be to say no? He and Natsumo, with Natsumo leading him very close by, unloaded the loose and flowing new robes off at the women's hall and took their armor into the barracks to be placed under lock and key using special kido protection to keep it safe. Once Natsumo made sure the locks were secured, she turned to Hoji and gave him a short bow.
"Thank you for the help, Araijin" she said. "I'm sorry if I kept you from anything...urgent."
"Not really" Hoji said. "Just trying to hit on those new girls." His bluntness almost left a visible mark of impact on Natsumo's maidenly pride.
"W-watch that mouth of yours!" she chided. "These women aren't lightweights by any means! They could easily pick you up and throw you out of the estate, even if you were in prime condition to fight! Your sword is still broken, isn't it?" Hoji checked. The blade still hadn't grown, for some reason, and forced Hoji to scowl and slam it back into its sheathe. Natsumo lowered her anger when she saw Hoji's eyes flare up. "Take it easy, Araijin. It's never an easy process to regrow one's sword once it breaks. It takes an extreme concentration and narrow mind to focus the energy necessary. Just be patient with it."
"Tch" he scoffed. "Easy for you to say. I'm the only one awake right now that can fight. You know if Jin starts swinging his arms his instincts are going to make him flip the hell out. Suichi's not getting better as fast as I'd like, either. If someone comes for Shin, I'm the only real defense he's got! As a warrior, I at least have the pride to defend my friends when they can't do so themselves, but what can I do with a useless piece of broken metal?" Hoji stomped the floor in anger, then sighed and calmed himself down. Natsumo looked aside to not draw her own notice to his rage and adjusted her glasses above her light blush.
"Perhaps your just stressed" she said. "Have you tried...dealing with that?"
"That's what I'd do" Hoji began "if I could get one of these Amazon chicks into bed with me!" Natsumo's face went to full blush, but the hue was more akin to a rage-induced one than shame. She punched Hoji square in his gut and stunned him. She did a heel-face turn and left the room. Only when she was out of sight did Hoji exhale sharply and buckle over to clutch his stomach, being the prideful idiot that he was...
The next day followed all of its regular patterns. Hoji went to the garden and began his arduous, extreme warm-up session for training. 100 swings with all the basic swings. Vertical, left-side, right-side, shoulder to hip in both directions, stabs and 50 one handed horizontal in alternating hands. This time, however, his audience was not the fearful passersby or the soldiers and guards off duty that awed with respect and fear for the man. A small group of the warrior women had gathered and sat in the shade of the viewing deck to watch him.
"He's got a nice back" one girl said.
"I like his little hair-thing" another girl noted, she having her own very thick pigtail that she twirled in her hand as she admired.
"He's got a nice, ferocious look" another girl with a square jaw and too many muscles said. "I wonder if he'd have the same look in bed..."
"A man's fighting style" one skeptical girl began "contrasts his methods in bed, obviously. If he's this diligent, powerful and well-versed in fighting, well, that speaks for all kinds of things about how he'd be in bed." The girls snickered under their breath, unaware of just how well Hoji could hear. He smirked away from them and lowered his practice sword. He closed his eyes and drowned out all the worldly noise, hearing only the wind around and within. He secluded himself to a dark realm of thought and visualized an opponent. A man as tall as he with a head of black fire and a sword of frozen steel. A dark figure with deep, black eyes that stood out from the shadows in their darkness. Shin Kenpachi, the ideal opponent.
Hoji sprung forward and attacked, fighting his invisible foe. He kept Shin's style as ideal as he could. Fearless, powerful and precise. He swung to kill and didn't hesitate, but he didn't attack from behind. He would avoid a head-on fight and take on his opponent's sides as a weakness, work down their foundation and topple them from the top. It was a fight Hoji knew he couldn't win, but in such conditions he wasn't afraid to fight it. The girls watched him fighting a shadow and tried to read the same movements that Hoji did. They saw, very faintly, the outline of his enemy. A man wielding a sword, nothing more, who seemed too agile to follow at times. Their reading would vanish often and sometimes poses would reset when the shadow appeared again.
"Is he losing?" a girl asked.
"When you do this kind of training" the skeptical girl began "you visualize what your opponent does during a fight and follow through with your own responses. The idea is to learn to read an opponent's moves from the memories of what they looked like. However, doing so isn't usually as much of a physical affair as he's making it out to be..." Hoji was indeed acting out vividly. With his sword he jumped and rolled and went for whole short runs with his sword drawn back only to draw it back up and block with it. He'd fall to a knee, turn and take up his beginning stance often, signifying another loss on his part. "The fact that he's doing it so quickly is actually very impressive. He must have his opponent's every single move memorized right down to the smallest detail."
"But if that's true" the man-faced girl began "and he's losing that much, then he'd have died in a real battle long ago."
"Maybe it's an ally" another girl said. "Or an old master. Or a training partner that's not here. He doesn't have to visualize an enemy for it to work." The skeptic girl squinted her eyes and analyzed then man from afar. For all the exhaustion and apparent death he was experiencing in his practice, there wasn't a single shred of defeat of give to his glare. He looked undaunted, excited, even satisfied to be coming out behind despite his best efforts. It didn't sit right with her. She stood up and jumped across the garden immediately to meet him. Hoji had just taken his stance when she landed and was numb to the outside world. His vision of Shin had become more stable and clear as his concentration had gone so long uninterrupted by anything else.
"Hey!" shouted the girl. Hoji didn't hear. He dashed forward, sword over his head, and swung. When he stopped he had to take a knee in honor, for the sword was out of his hands post-swing and the vision he had was one of total loss. That unexpected turn forced him out of his training nirvana and back into reality. He turned and saw a vixen of a woman with long, thick hair in a silken white kimono covering her normal, tiny black garb. She held his sword at her side and visibly strained to keep it in her hand. "You look like you could use a training partner" she said with a smirk.
"Tch" Hoji scoffed, cracking a grin of his own. "Fancy that. It seems I do! And I was just starting to have fun playing alone. Tch, well, if you're gonna force me to play with you, then I guess I'll just have to." She grinned and tossed the wooden sword away. It rolled itself to a stop under its own weight. She then drew her own sword, razor-sharp and thin with a flat edge and crescent-curved stabbing tip. Her handguard fell down in front of her fingers about halfway in three thin claws which were twisted and wound around to make the rest of the guard solid and interwoven to the blade. Hoji glanced at his sword. He drew it, held the still-broken blade to his face and then sheathed it. Then he took the sheathe out and tossed it to the side.
"I could use some unarmed practice" Hoji said. The girl got the meanest glare. She sheathed her sword and did the same, abandoning her weapon to take up an honorable stance against Hoji.
"Can you live with hurting a girl like me?" she asked as she took up her pose. Left arm forward with a fist and right arm back with an open palm. Her left leg was forward as well, leaving her body in profile to Hoji. Hoji took in a deep breath and focused on his own pose. He held his right arm forward with an open palm aimed right at his enemy, and his left arm was cocked back to his side with a tight fist, ready to punch. His legs weren't as slenderly spread and extended as his foe's, as he stood with them near and knees slightly bent. Hoji's face lost all emotion. The girl kept her vixen smirk.
"What's your name?" Hoji asked. "I feel obligated to know who I'm fighting."
"Lora Rola" she said. "And you, my masculine foe?"
"Tch" Hoji scoffed. "Hoji. Enemies should go by a first-name basis, Lora." She seemed to agree. At once they fought and rushed in at each other. Lora cocked her left arm back before reaching Hoji and moved her right palm up to catch Hoji's blocking arm. Hoji grabbed her left arm with his open right hand, jerked her forward and smashed her face with his tensed fist in a fully-extended punch. The scene seemed to go on for too long as their clash slowed down the perceived time of the horrified audience. Then Hoji leaned into his fist and let go of her arm, pushing himself away with another semi-punch to her face. Lora slid on her back for a solid meter before flipping herself back onto her feet. Hoji landed on his hands and backflipped twice, landing the second time with one leg up and in pre-kick position, left arm framing the top of his face and right arm held out palm-up with a shaking fist of fury clenched.
"If you feel like it, go ahead and call me a monster!" Hoji lowed. His emotionless facade was broken. In that single punch all of his muscles had moved and powered his fist into Lora's face. He held nothing back. It was a full-body contact in the size of a simple fist. Lora's nose was broken, in simplest terms, and she was bleeding from the front of her gums. She could feel the blood warming up her chin and grinned to show her bent and bloodied front teeth.
"It's our duty to kill monsters" Lora lowed. She struck her fighting pose as Hoji hopped back and reversed his, holding his fist-arm down rather than up and his framing arm back with a palm opened out to the side. His mighty pigtail billowed in the breeze as he prepared to fight one of the hotter chicks that he'd been eying down, all for the sake of his own repressed frustration...
