Here have a chapter or something

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The Striking Snake

ch26

Forever Hold Your Peace

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"Ichimaru."

Gin looked up.

"It's time."

The vulpine grin widened, the smallest glint of teeth showing.

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The silence had persisted down the mile of tightly spiraling staircase, and the barren, menacing entrance hall. Not a single alarm sounded. Not a single guard, or even receptionist, appeared to acknowledge their entry.

Tōshirō hadn't sheathed Hyōrinmaru after destroying the door. The large nōdachi blade hung by his side, loosely, but not at all carelessly. Hyōrinmaru was significantly larger in sealed form than an average zanpakutō, and more than a few shinigami had commented that it looked severely disproportionate on Tōshirō's small frame.

Had one of these detractors currently been present, they would have been harshly silenced by the sight alone.

Tōshirō didn't often make the full use of his aura of command, but when he did, it was a sight to behold. Despite his barely-teenage body, it was impossible to see him as anything less than a fully fledged shinigami captain - one of the pantheon of thirteen living demigods.

"They're not here."

Rangiku cocked her head quizzically.

Tōshirō's eyes narrowed further. "The council of forty-six are all of noble blood. Together, their reiatsu presence is such that the meeting hall must be insulated by a meter of deathstone to make their sessions undetectable." He looked crosswise at his lieutenant. "Here in the antechamber, the air should be thick with their spirit pressure. Yet I feel nothing."

Rangiku turned her eyes back to the door at the end of the hallway. There was no trace of the reiatsu of the council of nobles.

There was, however, a reiatsu signature - one that Rangiku knew intimately and in great detail.

"Captain..."

"I know." Tōshirō's voice, which was never excessively warm at the best of times, hit a solidly sub-arctic note. "I feel him."

Tōshirō strode forward and viciously kicked the door open.

The first thing they noticed was the smell.

In the soul society, where the bodies of the fallen evaporated into reishi after a day or two, the cloying smell of dead flesh and rot was uncommon. However, the disgusting stench wafted forth from the meeting chamber like the breath of an evil beast. It was overlaid by an intense odor of iron.

Not a single corpse lay in the chamber of 46 - the carcasses had, indeed, evaporated. Instead, dried blood lay like paint over every surface. Each desk, chair, and step was painted in dull dark stains, and still-damp pools of decaying ichor covered the low floor of the circular amphitheater.

The sheer level of gore indicated that the bloody puddles on the floor must have once been a veritable lake. For the blood to have dried almost completely after such inundation, the slaughter could not have taken place less than a week ago.

"Heyo, Tōshirō."

The young captain's head snapped up. Standing on the far side of the meeting hall was the familiar, haori-clad figure of Kurosaki Ichigo.

Tōshirō raised Hyōrinmaru instinctively, but Ichigo was already turning and walking out the other exit of the hall - towards the administrator living quarters, where the members of the council of 46 dwelt in isolation.

Had formerly dwelt. Tōshirō was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they were clearly all dead - and, according to the laws that the Gotei collectively prayed they'd never need, the Soul Society defaulted to martial law. Responsibility for governance and defense now fell solely upon the shinigami captains.

Tōshirō gritted his teeth as he realized he'd just become a de facto head-of-state in a crisis situation.

"Matsumoto," he managed. "Retreat. Get out of here as fast as you can. Contact the other captains - ALL the other captains. Get backup here, now! I'll try to prevent his escape as long as possible."

"Taichō.."

"Go!"

Rangiku flinched, but nodded, and promptly flash-stepped away.

Tōshirō gripped his sword tighter as he moved forward. He grimaced as the stinking, putrescent blood began seeping through his sandals and tabi, but he kept moving.

The entrance opened like the door of a forbidden crypt, and Tōshirō found himself in the living quarters of the clandestine council of 46.

The place was very oddly constructed - it resembled a huge, dark hall filled with massive square pillars. However, upon closer inspection, the pillars clearly supported none of the ceiling's weight. They were, in fact, housing units. Tōshirō could not fathom why the apartments were constructed in the eccentric tower format.

His eyes caught a flash of white, and he quickly turned his head to see Ichigo standing in the doorway of one of the nearby towers.

"Taichō! We got a visitor... and he's seen the mess." He scratched the back of his head. "Might wanna come out yourself. See, ah... it's Tōshirō"

Tōshirō gathered his wits, raising Hyōrinmaru again as a silhouette appeared in front of Ichigo. He lowered it, however, as the figure came into full view, and his eyes widened.

"Hello, Hitsugaya-taichō," said captain Sōsuke Aizen.

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Byakuya Kuchiki was an arrogant man. One could hardly blame him, given his incredibly aristocratic breeding and upbringing - and, in all fairness, he was among the mightiest beings in existence, powerful even among his fellow captains. While he knew better than to compare himself the sōtaichō, or the three elder captains who had held their seats for over a millennium, he was both powerful and lethal in every way a shinigami could hope to be.

Nevertheless, to say his noble life bred arrogance was not to say it bred senseless hubris.

Senbonzakura was already well out of its sheath before the head of the giant skeletal snake shot forth from the cloud of dust. Kuchiki lord or not, captain or not - to underestimate an opponent with Bankai was a suicidally foolish, no matter how powerful one might be.

However, the blade did not see immediate action. Byakuya vanished seamlessly, the serpent biting through empty air.

"I always believed you held yourself back from becoming stronger," Byakuya remarked as he reappeared on the other side of the walkway. "I see your overriding dedication to my sister has allowed you to overcome your aversion to introspection. Your achievement would be impressive, were it not completely misplaced."

There was a blast of wind as the massive figure uncurled itself, raising its head. The dust was blown away violently.

Renji moved his arm like he was striking with a whip. Around him, a vast skeletal snake the size of an express train danced. It opened its mouth to roar, and the vicious, reedy call echoed around the Seireitei.

"Misplaced? On the contrary, Taichō. Ain't no achievement in my entire life that's been more perfectly placed."

Byakuya's eyes narrowed, and he raised his sword before him, perfectly vertical.

"Scatter, Sen- "

Renji, however, had no intention of facing Byakuya's terrifying zanpakutō until he absolutely had to. His arm whipped around again, and Hihiō Zabimaru made rubble out of the flagstones where Byakuya had stood.

"I don't think so, Taichō. You ain't brushing me aside this time." Renji's smirk remained, but his voice was like steel. "If you're going to beat me down... you're gonna face me like an equal."

Byakuya raised one eyebrow by the merest fraction.

"An equal?" He said, his voice perfectly controlled. "Ban Kai or not, Abarai, your sword could never touch me."

Renji finally dropped the satisfied smirk, and his face twisted into a glare, his eyes burning bright enough to bore through the ice of Byakuya's own gaze.

"Oh yeah?" He bit back. "This isn't an overnight power-up, Taichō. This is the result of decades of training. Your treatment of Rukia might have been a catalyst, but this match has been a long time in the making... and I intend to hit you with all I've got, and then some."

Renji swung his arm. Hihiō Zabimaru lashed forward, uncurling as it did so to form an impenetrable wall of bone and flame-red reiatsu. Byakuya abruptly noticed the bladelike protrusions which studded the surface of each segment.

Byakuya flash-stepped, but Renji's strikes were like a hurricane. The undead serpent coiled and writhed, ripping up flagstones and tearing down towers in pursuit of its prey.

Finally, Renji slowed, his shoulders heaving with exertion. His immense Bankai retreated, coiling around him into a guard position.

Byakuya executed a final flash-step, appearing straight ahead of Renji. His posture and expression were as utterly controlled as ever.

However, there was a rip in his left sleeve, and Renji grinned like a jackal as his saw a thin but unmistakable trickle of blood dripping from a long, shallow gash in the noble's upper arm.

"You was wrong, Taichō... looks like I can touch you after all," he said heavily. "Say, who was it that said that quote? 'If you make god bleed, people stop believing... and then, he is just a man.'"

Byakuya gazed impassively at his lieutenant.

"You are not a god, Kuchiki-taichō!" Renji shouted, straightening. "For near a century, you seemed all-powerful to me! But if I, a stray dog of Inizuru, could lay a blade on you... then you can't be that different from my kind."

His eyes narrowed further. "And that makes all the difference. I'd cower before a god, same as anyone. But a man... I can look a man in the eye and not back down."

Renji finally paused again for breath, and Byakuya blinked, his expression never changing.

"Truly, I never expected you to have such a penchant for the dramatic, Abarai," he said. "But no words will change the fact that you still have a long way to go before you will even approach the level I stand on."

Renji's eyes widened, and his glare intensified. "You-"

"Did you forget, perhaps, that I have been a captain longer than you have even been a shinigami?" Byakuya said coldly. "Did you forget the level one must reach to even be eligible for such a post, let alone keep it for any respectable length of time?"

Renji drew the snake tail back defensively as Byakuya stretched out his sword arm, this time with the blade pointing straight down. The captain's reiatsu spiked, suddenly bearing down on Renji like the hammer of a god.

"Ban Kai."

The elegant gloved hand released the sword, and the weapon struck downwards, passing into the flagstones as smoothly as a surgeon's scalpel into flesh. The sky seemed to darken, and the background faded from Renji's vision, leaving only the terrifying Kuchiki lord.

From the ground, katana blades the size of helicopter rotors began to emerge, forming a surreal hallway in the unnatural darkness around Byakuya's form.

Renji didn't even bother counting the blades. He already knew exactly how many there were.

"Scatter, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi."

With a rustle not unlike the sound of wind in the tops of trees, the thousand giant blades glowed pink and dissolved, scattering themselves into a glittering magenta cloud. The shards danced on the morning breeze, covering the whole walkway in a feather-light wind of death.

Renji could only stare transfixed at the beautiful, lethal display.

Huh, he thought idly. They really do look like cherry blossoms.

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"Ugh, ya gotta be kidding me!"

Kenpachi skidded to a halt, his odd group of companions following suit as he scowled at the skyline.

Yachiru sat on his shoulder, as usual, and his third and fifth seats were following him as faithfully as ever. However, he had recently staged a violent attack on the thirteenth division jailhouse, and in doing so acquired the previously captured ryoka as temporary traveling buddies. In retrospect, it wasn't very wise of the Gotei in general to keep all the ryoka in the same cell in the same prison.

All of them, even the blunt, untrained Zaraki, could feel the fury of two Bankai clashing against each other. The distance mitigated the physical pressure, but not the intensity of its presence.

The fifth seat of the eleventh division, Yumichika Ayasegawa, seemed especially put out. "Oh, dreadful!" He said indignantly. "Kuchiki-taichō in combat is a sight I simply can't abide missing! His elegant form - his beautiful zanpakutō - "

"Huh," Kenpachi grunted. "Fuckin' noble bastard. Probably slaying someone for spitting on his shoes. And here's me, still not able to pick a fight. I just have the worst luck."

"Don't speak too soon, Taichō"

The tall captain turned his eye back to Ikkaku, who had spoken. "Huh? What do you mean?"

Ikkaku rolled his eyes. "No offense, cap'n, but while you might be good enough at sensing big fights, yer fine sight sucks." He put Hōzukimaru across his shoulders, hanging his arms idly from the scabbard. "I ain't exactly clairvoyant either, but I'm better'n you, and I can feel some pretty strong customers just a street or two ahead."

Kenpachi's eyes narrowed. "Strong?"

"Stronger'n me. At least, one of them is, maybe two. There's a couple of them."

Without another word, Kenpachi resumed his dash, the rest of the group struggling to keep up.

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Such it was that the eleventh captain and a group of escaped prisoners skidded into a featureless courtyard somewhere in the ninth division grounds.

"Huh?" Kenpachi growled. "I don't see nothin'."

As soon as he spoke, there was an abrupt shockwave of reiatsu, and four figures appeared on the roof of the far buildings.

Two wore haoris; the remaining two had lieutenant badges around their arms. Tatsuki tensed, and the rest of the ryoka took an involuntary step back.

"Zaraki-taichō!" The smaller captain - an African man with a strange opaque visor - called out sharply. "You are under arrest for direct defiance of orders, and conspiracy to incite rebellion in the Seireitei!"

Kenpachi grinned, his teeth gleaming like a great white shark.

"Finally!" He shouted back. "Took you fucking long enough! Come at me, then!"

The arrest party tensed, but paused as two of Zaraki's group stepped forward.

"Sorry, captain," said Ikkaku lazily. "I gotta ask you to throw us a bone here. I've been bored out ta my mind since I recovered, and Yumi'll get pissy if I get a fight and he doesn't. Let us take the lieutenants. Two captains at once should still work up a sweat, anyway."

"Heh. Well, whatever." Kenpachi twisted his neck. "But you know the deal. Get in my way and I'll cut you down."

Ikkaku and Yumichika grinned back, drawing their swords.

"Yachiru!" Kenpachi called. "Get these kids away from here. Drag 'em up to the hill, I guess - the Hyapponzashi's gonna be there soon, if the execution's going through."

"Okay!"

In a single, incredibly precise flash-step, Yachiru managed to grab the hair on every ryoka's head and drag them away from the impending battleground.

The third and fifth seats of the eleventh charged in the same moment. Their blades met in unison with the two lieutenants, and then the pairs vanished as the blurry flash-steps of battle carried them away.

Kenpachi slowly, leisurely drew his wicked sword. "Two captains should work up a sweat, huh?" He muttered to himself.

"I'll say it again, Zaraki-taichō," said Tōsen again. "You are under arrest. Will you come quietly?"

Kenpachi looked back up, his grin gone, but is eyes dancing with glee.

"No." He replied bluntly. "No, I won't. Now come on if you think you're hard enough."

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