oh oh oh! What up, my faithful readers! Gunshot in da house with... dadadadun... chapter 10!

you been waiting, and here it is: Gin meets his other half!

enjoy.

X-X-X

The Striking Snake

ch10

Ikorosé!

X-X-X

Gin spat out a mouthful of dirt and - laboriously, since his arms were bound behind his back - pushed himself up into a kneeling position.

By the gods, the shaft was deep. Fifty meters? A hundred? At any rate, the wide mouth of the pit, which had looked so large from the surface, was a tiny disc of light far overhead.

The walls of the shaft were rough, with a fair few easy handholds, but there was no doubt they were pretty much perfectly straight all the way up. Unrestrained, he would have been out of the pit in minutes; even if his hands had been bound in front of him, he might have still been able to climb up eventually. Behind his back... not much of a chance.

He looked at his soul chain. Seventy-two links. No way it was a coincidence, but he didn't have time to ponder how it worked.

Gin gritted his teeth, his grin twisting into a snarl of anger. He had never let anything defeat him before. Not a single thing. When he set his mind to it, by hook or by crook, he would have his way. Nothing could stop him when he was truly determined.

Sheer walls of earth were no exception. Gin loved to think of himself as a snake, and what were bound hands to a snake? There were species thereof that could climb such walls as easily as a human could walk.

The first link of the chain was already developing a film of rust.

Growling slightly, Gin began to climb.

X-X-X

"How long has it been so far?"

Jinta looked at his watch. "Bout ten hours, give or take a handful of minutes." He huffed in annoyance. "You've asked me like once an hour exactly. Get your own watch - "

"Would you prefer to be sweeping out in the front, Jinta-dono?"

Jinta yelped as the immense figure of Tessai loomed over him, and proceeded to run for the ladder.

Kisuke leaned heavily on his sword-cane, its sheath still off. "Ten hours, huh? Well, at least he isn't an early failure. The very weak ones usually blow out in less than five... I guess he's got determination," he said. "Now the question that remains is, does his determination outweigh that most limiting of faculties... common sense?"

X-X-X

There was a thud and a cry of frustration as Gin landed, once again, on the floor of the shaft.

How long had it been?

Had to be almost a day. The light from above never changed, but Gin was pretty good at judging time. Of course, it threw him off a little that he never got hungry or thirsty in soul form.

A pang of longing came over him. He had felt hungry in soul form after exerting himself, back when he was still a rogue Shinigami. Heavy reiatsu expenditure left powerful souls weakened, and reishi food seemed to replenish that energy. But as a mere soul, with no trace of Shinigami reiatsu, he would never starve or dehydrate.

His soul chain had decayed by... he counted carefully... twenty-three links. Then he was probably correct in his assumption of a day's time elapsing; the links appeared to decay once per hour.

By that assumption, he had forty-nine hours.

In his current predicament, not much time to waste.

X-X-X

"Is he still trying to climb it?" Kisuke was reclining on a rock with his hat over his face.

Tessai looked down the shaft. "He is."

"Stubborn of him. He struck me as more intelligent than that."

"He is undoubtedly intelligent," said Tessai, stroking his beard. "In fact I would say his mind is sharp enough to cut through the best defense the Gotei Juusan-Tai will be able to put up. But intelligence is always tempered by other faculties, Kisuke."

"Oh?"

"Of course. You have your eccentric grandstanding. Our mutual enemy has his hubris. And in Ichimaru-san's case, it is patience. He continues to climb because he is of the opinion that with persistence - and a willingness to wait a long time for results - many things that seem impossible turn out not to be."

"Hmm." Kisuke pulled his hat off his face. "An interesting philosophical insight. I suppose it's quite true that we all have mental vices; were that not true, there would be no such thing as individuality..." He blinked. "How long has it been?"

Tessai looked at his watch. "Fifty-one hours."

"He'll probably stop trying to climb soon." Kisuke frowned. "I hope. He sure is fighting it to the bitter end, isn't he?"

X-X-X

Thud.

The steadily mounting irritation gave way to fury. Gin finally opened his eyes, unleashing a wordless, ripping roar of anger.

He'd made it almost a quarter of the way up, that time. But it had all been for nothing. He had thought he'd found a perfect route, but he had reached a place where he couldn't get any purchase - and that had been that. Thirty feet straight down. thud.

It was impossible. With his hands, no problem - but he didn't have his hands. He'd exhausted every visible route upwards, attempting each multiple times. None were traverseable in his current state.

There was no way he was getting to the top of the shaft. He was trapped down here until his soul chain ran out.

The realization was like choking on a lungful of cold water. He hadn't made the grade. He'd twisted himself into a failure that he couldn't lie, cheat or fight his way out of.

A bitter taste rose in his mouth, and it wasn't dirt.

He barely noticed the ringing crack of shattering metal.

X-X-X

"Kisuke! It's happening!"

Kisuke jumped up, holding onto his hat. "Finally! Bloody kid ran it right up to the limit! It isn't even supposed to be possible to run the full seventy-two hours!" He gripped his sword-cane harder. "How's it look?"

"No way to tell yet," replied Tessai. "Give it a few minutes. I'll get the barriers ready."

"Use all the layers, Tessai," Kisuke replied, his gaze still locked on the figure at the bottom of the pit.

Tessai paused. "You really think that's necessary? I've never met anything that could overpower her while still so young - "

"Nothing works like normal around Gin Ichimaru," said Kisuke softly. "Full barriers, Tessai."

This time, the large man simply nodded.

X-X-X

He'd failed them all.

It was a fine distinction. Gin would never admit it, but he had a huge martyr complex; his own suffering would not have hurt so badly, were it merely his own -

But he had failed his family, whom he would never see again while sane and human. He had failed his friends, who were counting on his strength for their foolish endeavor. He had failed Rukia.

Rukia.

The name stuck in his mind, even as he was filled with bitter despair and fragments of bone began collecting on his forehead and jaw.

Rukia wasn't his friend, by normal standards. He didn't actually know her that well. She certainly wasn't his family. And yet she had somehow awoken the monster.

Gin knew that, beneath his unnerving-but-jovial demeanor, there was a shard of pure evil in his heart. He'd never actually killed anyone before, but back when Orihime and Chad were still suffering at the hands of bullies, Gin had maimed and permanently crippled a few of the perpetrators without feeling a single twinge of pity or remorse. Knowing his own moral compass was somewhere between faulty and nonexistent, he let those he trusted be his ethical north pole - making their safety and happiness into the supreme tenants of the only moral code he'd ever follow.

And now, unexpectedly, he realized that Rukia had apparently strong-armed her way into that 'north pole' - but on reflection, how could it be otherwise? Without even a thought, she had put her life on the line for him and his family. He at least owed her his own life.

And where was he now?

Kneeling on the shaft floor, collapsing into self-pity, while Rukia was being sentenced to death?

The serpent's eyes opened...

Arrogant, uptight captain be damned. Soul scar be damned. Bakudõ and sheer walls be damned. Impossibility be damned!

Rukia will not die on my watch!

The chain remnant and bindings exploded simultaneously in a blinding flash of emerald light.

X-X-X

The cloud of dust around the mouth of the shaft slowly cleared, revealing a figure dressed in a black hakama with a green sash – and a triangular bone mask over its face, shaped for all the world like the face of a demonic vulpine. A freakishly twisted grin of stylized crimson teeth was painted over the bone, lending an even more terrifying aura than the normal unnerving quality of a hollow's mask.

"My, my!" Kisuke fanned the dust away from his face. "What an impressive display, Ichimaru-san! Truly, I was on the edge of my seat!"

The figure stepped forward, pulling the bone from his face as he did so. It shattered on the rocky ground, revealing Gin's normal – comparatively normal – face.

His smile was back in full force and his eyes were as narrow as the eyes of needles.

"I aim to please," he purred, his voice sounding reminiscent of the click of a gun being primed.

He was stronger than before; he could feel it. Perhaps it was his newfound insight into his need to rescue Rukia that had given him focus - or perhaps it was simply the fact that underneath his fox mask he was boiling with defiance, removing weakness with sheer force of denial. He had to be strong, so he would be strong. He had to be lethal, so he would be lethal.

"Figure it out yet?" Said Kisuke, chuckling slightly.

"I think so," said Gin. "Put your victim in an impossible situation, and force 'em to grow the resolve it takes to escape. Am I right?"

"Close." Kisuke tapped the point of his weapon on the rock. "I developed that method to empower plus souls, to see if it was possible to conscript Shinigami. It turned out that the only thing which could trigger a reiatsu explosion - in those that have no spirit strength alone - was to drive them to the edge of insanity; essentially making them hollow, and trusting their willpower to flare and bring them back just before the process completed. The project was discontinued after it became clear that the... ratio of failures to successes made it too inefficient for the intended purpose."

"The more I hear about the Gotei Juusan-Tai, the less I like them," mused Gin. "Conscripting people and effectively murdering three-quarters of them to make soldiers outta the survivors? That's cold. And I'm sayin' that as a pretty cold person myself."

Kisuke smiled weakly. "I regret that I was the man who invented the process. I had only been head of the research institute for a year... I didn't have the confidence, then, to resist orders. Not that it would have mattered; central 46 do not tolerate resistance in the ranks of their thugs." He sighed. "Enough of the past, for now. We have a damsel in distress to rescue, do we not? The trial will have left you drained, but don't rest too long - your training is not yet over!"

X-X-X

Tessai had erected layer after layer of powerful barriers around the test hall.

Gin frowned. "I thought that deathstone stuff was invulnerable to any reiatsu damage. What're the barriers for?"

Kisuke raised his eyebrows momentarily. "If that were literally true, there would be no way to work the material, would there?" He smirked slightly. "While it's true that not much can harm deathstone - and by not much, I mean that I'd trust a deathstone wall to hold back Ryuujin Jakka - but it never pays to make assumptions. There's nothing and no-one in the universe that's completely invincible, and we're in the dark as to how powerful your shikai will be."

Gin grinned like a shark. "Well, I guess I can count on this to be exciting," he said, his voice almost alight. "So, what's my task for this part of the training?"

Kisuke waved his fan. "Well, you see, this is another very unorthodox method I am sending you through, so I thought you might want to know a little more," he said. "If you were an academy student, you would have selected an asauchi and trained - sparred, meditated, practiced forms - for months, until you formed a strong enough bond with your weapon to imprint your fighting spirit into its soul and, in turn, hear its voice and call forth its power. However, we do not have months at our disposal."

Gin nodded in agreement. "So am I to presume ya have another risky corner-cutter?"

"I do. It's simple, but brutal, although you'll be glad to know it has a higher rate of success than the shattered shaft," Kisuke said. "The long-term effects of this method on the warrior-weapon relationship are unknown, but in the short term, the results are the same as if you had used the 'legitimate' method."

"Cut to the chase," said Gin, leaning back on a rock. "My hair's going grey over here. Grey-er, anyway."

"As you wish," said Kisuke, smirking. "The method is based on a simple principle: no zanpakutõ spirit wishes their wielder to die, and thus, nothing is as likely to force them to manifest as a direct threat to the life of their wielder. En garde!"

Quick as a flash, Gin rolled sideways. The tip of the sword-cane chipped the rock directly where his head had been.

Gin quickly drew his own wakizashi, parrying a succession of brutally fast blows. Though his eyes didn't widen, his grin was replaced by tight-lipped concentration. "So you're hopin' that, if ya come close to killing me, the spirit of my sword'll just jump in and save me?" He blocked again. "Forgive me for my lack of faith. And my parries."

"Understandable," replied Kisuke, just missing a murderous stab. "You've only seen one zanpakutõ ever go into shikai - I'm not surprised that you remain skeptical of this 'mysticism'. But trust me, you will see its value in time."

Another thrust had Gin jumping back, and Kisuke paused. "This is the challenge, Ichimaru-san," he said. "The challenge ends... let us say it ends when you have knocked my hat off. It may sound simple, but if you can do that without using shikai - well, in that case, I doubt even a Gotei Lieutenant will give you much trouble. But from what I have seen of your swordsmanship... I do not think you will be removing my hat without it."

As Gin blocked the next strike, a thought occurred to him. Rukia had once said that most physical matter bore no threat to his soul form, and only weapons made of reishi - like zanpakutõ, or the Quincy's arrows - could do him any real harm.

He raised an eyebrow, relaxing slightly. It seemed odd that Kisuke would say he struck to kill and not use a killing weapon, but then again, he had also said 'psychology is everything.' Maybe -

"Ah, no longer taking the fight seriously, are you?" Kisuke's voice snapped Gin back to reality. "No doubt you have concluded that a weapon of mere wood and steel cannot harm you. How astute, Ichimaru-san! And yet, in another way, not very astute at all."

"Eh?" Gin raised his sword back into a tight guard.

"You're quite correct, superficially. Swords, bullets, falling buildings - these mean almost nothing to Shinigami." Kisuke hefted his sword cane. "However, you failed to make connections. You know I have been alive hundreds of years, and that I served under the Gotei Juusan-Tai - yet you did not pick up what that meant. A mundane weapon will not harm you. But I wouldn't advise letting her hear you call her a mundane weapon."

He lifted the sword-cane and held it forward, arm and blade in a straight line.

"Awaken, Crimson Princess!"

The zanpakutõ glowed with vermilion energy, and when the glow receded, it had changed considerably.

Its blade had widened slightly, going from rapier-thin to the sleek dimensions of a katana - though the blade had no curve, and was undoubtedly double-edged. The hilt was straight, no longer the handle of a cane, and wrapped as one would expect a sword's hilt, while the handguard was non-existent - blade met handle through a sturdy, U-shaped metal fastening with a red ribbon tied around it. Another blood-red tassel hung from the end of its hilt.

Kisuke grinned. Gin ducked, a second before the blade of Benihime parted the air where his neck had been.

"No more play fighting, Ichimaru! This is a real battle, a death match!" Kisuke smiled evilly. "You can never expect your enemy to show mercy, and if you wish for victory, you must be prepared to show none to them! A battle is never something to take lightly!"

Benihime clashed against Gin's wakizashi, and this time, it didn't just slide off. It dug in. Gin's eyes widened as the notch in the metal grew deeper.

The blade snapped.

Gin reeled in genuine horror, falling backwards and rolling to avoid another thrust. He barely made it to his feet before another strike flew towards him.

"Come on, Ichimaru!"

Gin narrowed his eyes once again, parrying another strike with the four inches or so of metal left on the hilt. Was he supposed to knock that hat off with this? Clearly, Kisuke was deploying another trick of the mind - and once again, Gin had no choice but to play along.

"Did you know, Ichimaru, when one doesn't handle their reiatsu in the correct way, their zanpakutõ's asauchi form enlarges to match the their reiatsu?" Gin dodged again. "I've felt your reiatsu at full strength, boy, and it isn't knife-sized!"

Dodge. Dodge. Parry. Gin was losing ground.

"Come on," Kisuke almost whispered. "Show me how big that wakizashi really is."

Gin's back hit a rock formation, and Benihime descended, her point aimed straight for the center of his chest.

X-X-X

It was deathly cold, and the wind whistled like the cry of a mournful ghost.

Slowly, Gin allowed his eyes to open, the blood-red orbs surveying the world through their slitted apertures.

He definitely wasn't in Karakura anymore. A setting sun cast a pink glow over an endless plain of snow. The way the light shifted made the snow seem to flow and swirl on the...

It wasn't snow.

Gin shook his head. The fields before his eyes were an expanse of clouds. He was standing on the side of a single, lone mountain rising through the otherwise uniform cloud layer.

The dry earth and rock was utterly barren. Apart from Gin himself, not a single living thing moved on the face of the mountain. Perhaps a hundred meters above him, a small layer of frost dusted the summit like an icy crown.

"So you have come to me. At long last."

That was a voice Gin recognized. "I see ya moved up in the world," he remarked, keeping his eyes on the horizon. "From a voice in my head, to a full-blown fever dream. Not many hallucinations can claim such a prestigious title - "

The voice chuckled oddly, as if it was hissing and purring at the same time. "A joker to the end. But wit will not save you this time, Silver. The one that broke me stands ready to strike you down." Gin frowned at the implication. "If you do not call me, she will kill you."

"The one who broke ya, huh?"

"Benihime. She is an emperor of our kind. I am young, and thus I do not know exactly what I can bring to bear against her... but without me, you will die. This is not a matter in which there is uncertainty."

Gin turned around.

Sitting cross-legged on a rock just above him - and facing away, apparently regarding the summit - was a young woman with iridescent, almost metallic green hair. She was dressed in a similar shihakusõ, but made of rough sack-cloth instead of the normal cotton, and her skin was a peculiar golden hue.

Then she turned her head, giving Gin a profile view of her face - and one bright amber eye swept into view, its 'white' non-existent and its pupil a uniform black slit.

"You cannot hear my name. You do not yet know me," purred the snake-woman. "But you have come to me anyway. And, as things in the spiritworld tend to go, there is a... cheat, if you will. A workaround."

"Tends to work like that in the real world, too."

"Just so." The snake-woman did not blink - Gin got the impression she didn't need to. "I am a child of your soul, yet I am a distinct being unto myself. From one point of view you are nothing more than the conduit by which I am unleashed, but from another point of view, I am merely a manifested effect of your own power. If you truly need me, you will have me... but, since you are bypassing the normal method, it will not be easy."

"No doubt." Gin's smirk widened, just a fraction. "If there's anything I've learned from this whole Shinigami business, it's that the spiritworld is full of arbitrary trials. what do I have to do?"

The woman's smirk matched Gin's, and her eyes narrowed. "You have to catch me."

She flicked her long, forked tongue out... and her body unraveled. Head, limbs, torso - her entire body split apart into dozens of coils of sinuous scaled length.

In the blink of an eye, the immense serpent had uncoiled and spread herself all over the mountain. The snake's body was, in terms of girth, quite small - it could not have been more than a foot in circumference.

But by the Kami, it was long. Hundreds of feet of it. Maybe thousands. Every inch of it slithered and coiled around itself, moving like a massive net. Gin had no idea which part was which; and clearly grabbing any old part of her was not 'catching' her.

A coil caught the back of his knees, knocking him flat on his face. She hadn't been kidding - it wasn't going to be easy, and she clearly didn't intend to make it easier.

A coil looped around his neck. "Are you trying to kill me?" He said, as an honest question.

"If you cannot take up my power, you will die anyway," came the hissing voice. "And if I resist you with less than my full strength, the challenge is invalid. Catch me, Ichimaru Gin!"

Another coil wrapped around him, this time the left arm. She didn't seem to be going for constricting his breathing -

And that could only mean one thing. His blood went cold.

Gritting his teeth, he yanked his arm free. He then grabbed the coil on his neck, twisted his head down and bit. The serpent shrieked at the sudden spike of pain, and Gin rolled free.

He wasted no time in jumping behind a rock. Her coils spread everywhere, but he didn't see her head behind his hiding place, which meant that she couldn't see him - at least, for now.

He dropped, crawling downhill to the next large rock and keeping to the indentations and scree to prevent himself from being seen. If she caught him in the open he would be dead.

"Where are you, little one..."

Gin couldn't tell if she was asking that to throw him off, or if she was genuinely unaware of his location. It didn't really matter, though. He had set up his gambit - now it was down to the dice.

Gin closed his eyes, gluing himself to the rock. He didn't have the snake's heat-sense, and it wouldn't have detected a reptile anyway; all he had were his human ears.

Would she detect his trail by scent? Did that work? Gin hoped not. He had noticed that there didn't seem to really be any odors in the spirit-plane he was in. If he was lucky, she hadn't smelled his presence...

"I know you're nearby..."

The smooth rustling of scales on stone...

One of the coils of her impossibly long body brushed his foot. For a second, the miles of snake-body stopped slithering. Then they moved with terrifying speed.

The snake's head shot around the rock, its mouth open and its fangs poised. Gin shot upwards from his crouched position, the speed of his arms almost matching the reptile's strike.

The snake missed, her fangs stabbing through empty air mere inches from Gin's hands -

Which closed around her neck.

The snake twisted in his grip, but she was beaten and she knew it. A quick application of body weight had her head forced to the ground, unable to turn and deliver a venomous strike.

Gin's teeth glittered as he smiled, his red eyes gleaming from their slits.

"Caught ya," he whispered.

"Yes." Her tongue flicked, and suddenly Gin was holding her tail instead of her neck. Her body wrapped around his right arm, sliding over the back of his neck to encircle the other. Her head stopped at his left hand - apparently her body had shortened considerably. "I am at your command, Ichimaru Gin..."

X-X-X

The point of Benihime drove towards Gin's chest -

And stopped, halted by an immaculate wakizashi blade. Kisuke's brown eyes met with a pair of hellish, gleaming crimson orbs.

"Shoot to kill, Shinsõ!"

X-X-X