I wasn't sure how much later it was when a feeling of an unfamiliar presence in the room woke me. Since I was a warrior in the feild, my battlefield instincts woke me up all at once and I knew instantly where I was. I looked over at the person who'd woke me up, one of those beautiful elfin people. She or he very obviously eyed the knotwork of tatoos curlning down my shoulders and chest and abs, looking surprised. I'd put them back so I could keep all that damned reiatsu of mine in check. It was a pain in the neck to have to deal with when I wasn't using it with Zabimaru, the power felt damned uncomfortable, especially with my mortal gigai.

"Lieutenant Abarai," the elf said in a polite (but still musical) tone.

I tried not to smile at the use of my proper name and title, it wasn't that I minded Miss Isana calling me Renji all the time, I wasn't the type to stand on ceremony, but it felt good to be acknowledged as what I really was, a Soul Reaper.

"The tourney grounds are ready, your Lady is already there."

I wondered to myself whether or not I should correct him about that "your Lady" thing but decided to let it go. Technically, while she still held me bound by this damned collar around my neck, I was her vassal, so he wasn't entirely incorrect, but it still irked me a little. A lot.

The elf made him or herself scarce, which was good because otherwise it would have gotten a show seeing as I hadn't bothered to put on a stitch before I'd fallen into bed. There were clothes waiting nearby for me, the make wasn't as busy and fussy as the cut of the rest of the clothes that these Elf people wore; the lines were simpler, though still not what I was used to, it resembled neither a yukata nor my shihakushou. There was a long sleeved silk shirt in steely-grey with a sleeveless tunic to put on over it in a red that exactly matched my hair. It was belted at the waist with a belt of braided metal links of a hematite color that came with a loop for me to put Zabimaru in. The trousers were a charcoal grey that was almost black and the folded-over calf boots were black. At least I'd be able to move around in it okay and it was comfortable enough, I'd be sure to thank the host before I became the entertainment for the afternoon.

I followed the attendant elf who had woken me up, waiting outside of the door to the rooms I'd been given to use. He or she led me through the naturalistic city and out into a nearby field I could have sworn hadn't been there the last time I'd looked. There was a covered box and wide covered stands filled already with pointy-faced elven was a large collection of brilliantly colored tent-pavilions with banners flying in the breeze I could smell good food-smells coming out of them, it appeared that win or lose, I was at least going to be fed well for my troubles. There was another, smaller box that held just Miss Isana and the elf king and queen plus one or two others that I took to be either servants to attend to them or high-ranked nobles. On the other side of the field was a series of large tents with different colors, each flying some kind of pennant from the top. I guessed that would be my competitors.

Sure enough, once I stepped out onto a field delineated by a large circle of mushrooms, one elf emerged from each tent, making his (or possibly her) way over to the brilliantly colored box that held the king, the queen and Miss Isana. They all wore armor, like knights out of a story, but this armor didn't do anything like clank, in fact they could have been wearing cloth for all the noise that it made. The armor certainly looked beautifully made too, with the emphasis on beauty. Instead of being plain and militaristic, the armor that these elven knights wore looked like artwork they decided to put on thier bodies (of course, I had noticed that the dress that the rest of the elves wore did the same thing with cloth). Their armor was designed with intricate patterns chased into metal that had been enameled in brilliant colors. Not a line was left unadorned but instead of looking frou-frou, the armor was fully functional and looked elegantly deadly. There were ten elven knights in total, two in different shades of green, four in different shades of blue, one wearing purple, one in coppery orange, one in crimson red and the last wearing brown. I wondered if the colors meant anything or if it was just personal prefference. Thier suits of armor, like everything else I'd seen in this place were works of art and it breifly made me wonder what it might be like to wear one in a fight, but that wasn't for me I quickly decided, a man who needed something like that weighing him down was a man who needed to work on his speed to avoid getting hit.

I lined up along with the rest of them to bow to the company.

"We shall expect an excellent showing," the elf-king said. "My knights remember to uphold the pride of our people against the Mortal, and Mortal Warrior, best of luck to you."

I restrained a snort, they thought I was some kinda weakling or sumthin' well they had another thing comin' to 'em.

"Win or lose mortal, there shall be safe passage since we cannot impede your quest," the Elven queen said in a soft carrying voice. "But as incentive for you to make a good showing of yourself, we offer these as prizes."

She gestured to a nearby stand where I saw a set of cloaks that would have rivaled anything a Kuchiki might wear, a set of incredibly beautiful armor, some kind of strange... it looked a little bit like a dragon with an intricately worked saddle on its back, sort of, only it seemed to be made entirely out of colored light. I thought it was a weird peice of artwork at first, until it moved. Nice stuff. That elf-queen need to go to all the trouble of offering prizes though, I was gonna give a good fight anyway, after all I had my pride as lieutenant on the line. I might be a young one as far as Soul Reapers went, but I wasn't about to let anyone say I didn't have a good fight in me.

After the bow I noted that the elven knights walked over to the boxes to receive scarves or little white handkerchiefs from some of the pretty girls there. I ignored them.

:Ya ready fer this Zabimaru?: I asked, feeling that eager, anticipatory feeling I got whenever there was a good fight involved.

"Hey, Renji!" Miss Isana's voice called over to me before Zabimaru could do anything more than give an answering pulse of affirmation.

"What?" I called back over to her.

She beckoned me over saying

"You need to have a favor from me."

No way.

"I'm a Soul Reaper, not a knight," I replied. "We don't have those silly traditions."

Though, if it had been Rukia instead of Miss Isana, I'da been there.

I felt the magic collar around my neck tighten a little and there was a glowing green light in her hand. The collar started tugging on me, forcing me toward her. Perversely, I dug in my heels and fought. I'd protect her like I promised to (mainly because if I failed and she died and Kuchiki ever found out about it, my after life wouldn't be worth living) but i wasn't some dog of hers to come to heel whenever she whistled.

"Just come over here and take your favor properly," she insisted.

I don't want it!" I growled in reply.

"Oh stop being such a baby!" she exclaimed in frustration as the leash made of magic pulled me more firmly in her direction.

I snarled at her and pulled harder the other way. I felt like a fish being reeled in on a line.

"It's just a good luck charm," she said, with a hard magical jerk that made me stumble toward her.

"I don't believe in luck," I snapped back, finding my feet and pulling back. "Zabimaru's all the luck I need thanks."

A/N Ironically, in ancient mythology, Nue are considered to bring bad luck and plague with them.

The fight had become about more than just me taking the stupid handkerchief from her. She was testing the limits again, seeing how far I'd let her go, seeing how great her control over me with that collar really was. It was a battle of wills now, and I had yet to loose one.

"Just come over here," she grumbled, pulling harder on the spell.

I didn't reply except to dig my heels in even more firmly and stay where I was.

She gave an exasperated snapping gesture with her hand and I suddenly took a nose-dive into the ground. I bit the inside of my cheek as my chin hit the soft earth of the combat ring and I'm sure the glare I sent her way for making me eat dirt was a force unto itself. I couldn't actually make her pay for it since I sworn not to harm her or allow any harm to come to her while I was there to protect her, but damned if I wasn't seriously pissed off right then. She bit her lip and looked abashed but stubbornly held out the token. I made a face at her and ostentatiously ignored her.

I faced the ten knights before me, having been informed by the majordomo of the match-site that my first bout was going to be a melee brawl with a time limit. That suited me perfect right about then, I could use to blow off some steam.

The queen called the start of the match and the ten knights that had been standing in a row before me, suddenly weren't there. I almost wasn't expecting it when the point of a sword came out of no-where and almost landed a hit on me. I reacted with a street-theifs reflexes, twisting out of the way and whirling to counter-strike only to almost walk into another's blade.

"Howl, Zabimaru!" I summoned up the elegant shikai of Zabimaru's Baboon King form, making a quick sweep around me.

Naturally I hit nothing. I could sense the strange presence that was the Elven form of Reiatsu darting here and there, moving almost faster than I could track. It'd be like fighting against ten of my boss, Byakuya Kuchiki, King of the Flash-step. They'd use their positions to advantage in order to herd me this way and that. If I allowed them to di it, they would win the match before I could blink, the realization came to me in an instant. How was I supposed to fight them? The things I'd been fighting up until now hadn't had much in the way of brains so It'd been easy for me, now I was sort of regretting my relatively easy fights.

Maybe I was a bit of a war-monger who really still belonged in Eleventh, but I gotta say, I love it. I love a good fight. It might sound strange to anyone else but to me, I was able to find my greatest strength and clarity when I was on the battlefeild. People and things were pared down to thier simplest forms, there wasn't all the intricacy of interactions and motives and plans within plans or even causality. It was just me, Zabimaru, and the enemy we faced together. In this case there were multiple enemies but in the end it amounted to the same thing.

I'd be able to clear a spot relatively easy with that Raikou Enjin attack, so preparatory to unleashing my new bag of tricks I unlocked my lower two chakra and gathered in my power and started feeding it into my blade.

:What the-: I wondered to myself as I pushed power down the blade and the world went still and cleared in a way that I had never seen before.

All of the miscellaneous background details that had nothing to do with my fight faded to a background grey, and the enemies before me were all I sensed. The world slowed to a crawl. The people who moved about before me were solid grey, like moving granite statues with strange super-imposed glowing shadows of them moved about while the greyish solid reality of them stayed in place; or rather, they weren't perfectly still, but they moved so slowly that they seemed to be standing still. It took me a moment to figure out, but I caught on quickly enough when two of the blue shadows moved in on me at once and I automatically dodged out of the way but the grey form that the blue shadows had come from stayed in place. My body recognized an opening even before my senses did, my sword swung by reflex and I heard a shout of surpise and pain. And then another as I saw another blue shadow come in at me from the left and I automatically moved to block the movement.

:huhn...: I thought, concentrating a little harder on the movement of light and shadow around me.

In the strange clarity before me the world was brought to its most simple state, I'd experienced it once or twice before, a moment of clarity in the middle of a battle where it was almost as though I could feel my opponents movements before he even made any, but never to this extent. It felt like I had eyes on my skin, like all the possible movements they could make between this heartbeat and the next were laid out before me and it was merely left to me to counter them. I pushed myself to more speed intersecting my blade in between the different holes in thier pattern, and they were moving in a pattern. I could see it in front of me as easily as looking at a picture. I felt my blade jolt and clash with thiers when I moved instinctively to block and counter. It was more than a moment of clarity, I could literally see and feel thier movements all around me. They seemed to almost hang suspended in midair forever while I simply moved around them, blocking parrying and countering with Zabimaru's enormous blade.

:This must be how Kuchiki feels every time he has to face an opponent with an ordinary set of skills,: I realized.

Like we were partners in a dance I moved and ducked and swerved at just the right times to avoid their attacks, countering easily with Zabimaru, before I'd even noticed it, three of my opponents had been deprived of their weapons, they stared back at me from various positions on the ground, clearly dumbfounded. I paid no attention to them however since they were, by the rules of the contest, out of the ring. My attention was reserved solely for the opponents still moving around me. It seemed like both a lifetime and a heartbeat later when all of the knights disengaged at once, I almost moved by instinct to follow them but pulled myself back. The match was over and I pulled my reiatsu out of my sword and sheathed it, re-sealing both my chakra and my new abilities in the same stroke. The grey clarity of the world dissipated, the colors and sounds and scents returning to me in a rush that was shocking in its abruptness. I was pulled back into reality to face the elven king and queen. Isana Rourke was clapping her hands as I looked around me. I'd taken out a fourth opponent just before the queen had called time, leaving me only six to face in single combat.

"Intriguing," the king said to me from his position on the dais.

My head was still in something of a whirl from all the sensations suddenly surrounding me. Going from a world of stark clarity to suddenly being plunged in a world that was all sensation and noise was disorienting at first.

I nodded like whatever it was he'd said to me had made any sense at all.

"You may rest before your first combat Mortal Warrior," the queen said graciously.

She gestured to a tent off to one side of the feild that had been dyed a shade that exactly matched my hair. I was sensing a theme here.

"Thanks," I said, remembering to bow.

I all but staggered off to the tent. Now that the battle was over I felt oddly weak in the knees, like a whole lot of strength and energy had been drained from me all at once.

:What a rush!: I told Zabimaru in elation.

That strange othersight (or whatever it had been had been) almost intoxicating in its ability to allow me to fight the way I'd always wanted to. I'd touched on moments of clarity like that before but never to that extent, it had been as though I'd known what they were going to do before they did it. It felt like I'd been able to move faster too, though in my sight, everyone else had been moving slower.

::And I'm back in the game!:: I heard the tinier voice of snaketail tell me exuberently.

:Snakey! Yer okay!: I said, delighted.

Both of the disparate personalities of Zabimaru were as distinct and clear to me as... Momo and Kira were. I'd gotten a little used to hearing from Baboon King Zabimaru, though hearing him actually deign to say something to me still caught me off guard sometimes. I was more familiar with Snakey, I guess since we'd been working together for so long.

::Hey, I could use a little exercise too,:: Snaketail told me. ::I know yer hanvin' fun with furry here, but let's not get carried away.::

::He needs to practice with my form now,:: Baboon King said firmly and with dignity. ::You've had him for the last forty years.::

::But he hasn't been able to access my speed before,:: Snaketail protested. ::We could fully take these guys, using our accumulated expertise plus my snake-strike speed, we'd mow the grass with them!::

::It is not a matter of winning or losing,:: The Baboon King said. ::This is one of the few opportunities that Renji will have to practice his skills without his life being on the line. Unlike in his former position as a memeber of the Soul Society, he cannot simply ask for a sparring match now and not have to worry about his opponent killing him for most of his battles. In our journey across the Dangai Renji must fight to protect his life so there is no opportunity to work on his technique without risking his life, this is an opportunity that I mean to have advantage of.::

::In short, yer callin' dibs,:: Snakey said in a resigned tone.

::You've had your fun,:: Baboon King reiterated.

Great, the two aspects of my sword were arguing amongst themselves over which one got to go into battle with me. If this kept up I could foresee troubled times ahead. To head it off I said

"Okay, here's the compromise you two."

I could feel them both listening with surprise and interest.

"Babs has a point in that Snakey's been my battle sword for the last forty years and we've already gotten Bankai together, I know I ain't mastered the Bankai yet, but given everything else I think we'll have ta hold off on practicin' fer a while. I'll fight with Bab's shikai for now so I can get familiar with it. I think he has a lot he still wants me ta know about it. So... the Howl-shikai will be my battle form until I master it all the way to Bankai. How'zat sound to ya?"

::I guess it's fair enough,:: Snakey said reluctantly. ::But if ya ever wanna borrow my speed again, just concentrate, I'm here waitin' for ya.::

::Don't call me Babs,:: the Baboon King said in a voice that was saturated with injured dignity.

::Nah then, it suits ya!:: Snakey disagreed cheerfully, clearly back up to full strength and ready to tease and antagonize his other half.

:It does not suit me,:: Babook King replied, slightly irritated.

I just smiled and let them go at it. There was no more heat in thier arguments than there was in any of the little bickering fights me an' Rukia got into, no matter how much we teased and fought our bond was still there underneath it all.

:Small consolation,: I thought to myself. :But I guess I'll take what I can get.:

"Hey, Renji," the soft, slightly accented voice of Isana Rourke called from the door-flap of the pavilion-tent I was resting in.

Now what did she want? What, she was actually going to come and visit me instead of pulling me in by my collar like she was bringing a dog to heel? I felt resentment burn in me towards her, at first I hadn't much minded helpin' her out, after all it was her son and she was a very worried mother and what kinda man would turn his back on that? But trying to make me obey had crossed a line somewhere and I didn't want to talk to her right then.

"Go away!" I snapped at her.

"Look, I'm sorry about earlier," she said apologetically. "I shouldn't have tried to make you do something you didn't want to-"

"Ya didn't have a problem with it earlier," I pointed out nastily.

"That was... I just wanted to find my son," she said.

I could hear her voice tighten up with tears and her reiatsu fluctuate with distress. I scowled even as I felt bad about making her upset.

"Yeah well, it sets a bad precedent," I growled in reply. "A lot o' people use power that way, once they see they can get away with one thing they'll turn around and try fer more."

I'd certainly seen it often enough on the streets where I grew up, a world that was dominated by the strong and by what they could get those under them to let them get away with. I didn't like thinking of the frail Isana as a bully.

"That's why I wanted to apologize," she said. "I had no right to run around jerking your chain when you've only been nothing but good to me. You even carry me around piggy back so we'll get through the worlds quicker and you never complain about eating ramen all the time."

"Nuthin' ta complain about," I grumbled as a peace offering. "Tastes good ta me, an' I've eaten worse. Just don't run around thinkin' that since ya got a hook inta me I'm yer pup ta call, got it? Ya keep it up, an' as soon as I get outta this body, I'll search out the foulest, most unpleasant world I can find to dump you in and leave you there."

She looked over at me as if trying to gauge whether I meant it or not. I smiled my scariest smile at her. Let her wonder.

"I'll uh, just keep that in mind," she said carefully as she backed out of the tent.

"Oh hey," she said, poking her face back into the tent a heartbeat later.

I looked a question over at her. She held up a white handkerchif. Did the woman never give up?

"Are you sure you don't wanna wear it, just for luck?" she wheedled.

"Zabimaru an' I make our own luck," I said.

"Geeze, with as single-minded as you are about your fighting, it's no wonder you don't have a girlfriend," she muttered.

I glared over at her. There was no need to rub salt in the wound here. That was uncalled for.

"I mean, if a girl ever were to make the moves on you, you probably wouldn't even notice."

Hold up. No wait... she wasn't saying what it sounded like she was saying was she? This could not be happening.

"Isn't it time you got back out there?" I asked nervously. " I mean, I'll bet they're waiting for you or sumthin'."

"Oh yeah, I guess I should go then," she said shooting a long look at me over her shoulder as she left, like she was expecting me to call her back.

Yeah, that was soo not going ta happen.

:Zabs, I think we're in trouble,: I thought to my zanpaktou.

::Nah then, I wouldn't worry about it,:: Snakey said. ::After all, she's still mortal and you're-::

:Stuck in a mortal body,: I countered in dismay.

It abruptly occurred to me that, even though I thought of myself as a Soul Reaper, maybe Isana was seeing things differently. After all, she'd only seen me in my mortal body, so I guessed that was how she thought of me. I closed my eyes and massaged a temple. And I was stuck traveling alone with her for the next foreseeable while.

:I'm reading too much into this,: I told myself firmly, tucking my misgivings away where they couldn't bother me and turning my mind to my next fight.

Okay, so, maybe it's not all completely irrelevant. Pretty cool new power huh? Please remember to tell me what you thought.