Well, sorry. That's all I can really say. I just cannot keep up with regular updates anymore. The story is not abandoned, but updates are not going to be quick - I just can't manage that. Sorry.
Anyway, hope y'all enjoy.
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The Striking Snake
Ch27
Capital Crime
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Blood slicked every surface within ten meters. The sticky red liquid flowed in rivulets down walls and pooled in the cracks between flagstones.
Fresh blood stained crimson hair, loose and wild where it had once been tied down. The bright gore created a strange lustrous gleam in contrast to the natural red.
A semi-flayed hand twitched, shakily clutching the hilt of a broken sword, trying to drag itself up from the pool of blood.
Gritting his teeth, Renji raised his head.
"I'm not... dead... yet," he gasped. "I said... I'll die... before... she... does..."
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One of the first things Rukia noticed was the extremely poor turnout. The barren, rocky north half of the sokyōku plateau was surprisingly empty, given the protocol of all captains and lieutenants being obliged to attend an execution of such magnitude.
Soifon and Ōmaeda fully represented the second division, while Kyōraku-taichō and his own lieutenant stood on the other side of the nominal parade grounds. The captain's hat was pulled down to hide his eyes, but Rukia could make out a curious hint of a smile on his lips.
Apart from the first, second, and eighth, however, no division was fully represented; even Captain Unohana was absent, although her lieutenant had showed up - moments prior, judging by her labored breathing.
So few? She wondered. Even with the death of Aizen-taichō, there are still twenty-five top officers. Where can they all be...?
Rukia inclined her head, despite the red collar and linked ropes by which she was held.
There was blood in the air, a taint of carnage and ruin to a degree she had never felt in her life. The whole Seireitei felt like a war zone. Reiatsu flared left and right as brother fought brother and sister fought sister. Kidō crackled in the distance. She could even feel the tremendous, immeasurably destructive might of recently discharged Ban Kai.
No wonder so few officers are in attendance...
The court of pure souls, bastion of order for millennia on end, has been reduced to anarchy.
Is your hand in this, Gin? Do your fake smiles and hidden fangs continue to sow chaos, even from beyond the grave? Or are you, despite the might of the gods you face, somehow still alive?
Her time for speculation was cut abruptly short as the faceless figures pulled the red ropes, and she was dragged onto the slab of white stone below the towering execution stand.
"Kuchiki Rukia!" The harsh, gravelly voice of the mightiest shinigami alive boomed. "You have been sentenced, by the council of 46, to face the sokyōku! Have you anything to say before the sentence is carried out?"
"I..."
Clouds had gathered over the sokyōku plateau. The sky was darker than it should have been for near noon, and a chilly breeze blew.
"I... I understand the... ryoka forces that invaded... have been apprehended," she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. "I would ask... if I may... that you return them to their own world unharmed. They... they are misguided, but... I was their target; they have no quarrel with the Gotei themselves..."
Yamamoto's expression was unreadable. However, after a pause, he nodded.
"Very well. Your request is reasonable," he said. "Now, proceed."
Rukia looked up, over Yama's shoulder, and her purple eyes locked with those of a new arrival. Her eyes widened, almost pleading.
Byakuya's own cold greys did not change, and betrayed no trace of emotion. Rukia looked away, ashamed that she had been foolish enough to hope.
The faceless guards stepped up to the sides of the slab, and performed an esoteric Kidō gesture. Rukia felt a tug on her arms.
A second later, two limestone blocks rose from the slab, gripping her hands in the eldritch force field they generated and pulling her arms out in a bizarre crucifixion pose.
Then a third block took hold of her feet, and the assembly began to rise.
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"Aizen... taichō..."
Tōshirō gripped his sword so hard his knuckles were white.
"It's unfortunate that you came here, Hitsugaya-taichō," said Aizen. "I honestly can't see you as amenable to my plan... very unfortunate, this is."
Tōshirō's eye twitched. "Unfortunate?" He blinked. "Is that a threat? Was it you who killed those nobles?"
"Actually, most of those were Ichigo, but it hardly matters. I'd prefer not to kill you. Not only would it be distasteful, it would strip me of an asset that I have great faith in." Aizen adjusted his glasses. "Ichigo keeps telling me I should cut her loose, but such loyalty is not easily replaced, and really should not be discarded lightly."
"Ichigo... but he..." Tōshirō was at loss for words.
"Come, come, Hitsugaya-taichō. Do not tell me that you cannot see what is before your very eyes." Aizen put his hands in his pockets nonchalantly. "Ichigo was always acting on my orders. I was the mastermind behind these events. The orders from central 46, ever since the order for Rukia's arrest, have actually been from me. There has not been a single significant event in the last month that was not planned and orchestrated by my own hand."
Tōshirō gritted his teeth. "Was using Hinamori part of your plan?"
"Of course it was. I needed people to believe that Ichigo had killed me and gone rogue - some of what I've been setting up would have attracted a great deal of attention if I hadn't been officially dead - and Hinamori was an exemplary -"
"Enough of this!"
Aizen fluidly stepped back as Hyōrinmaru cut through the air where he had just stood.
"Former gobantai-taichō, Aizen Sōsuke," Tōshirō growled. "As a Gotei captain, and acting governor of the soul society, I hereby place you under arrest for mass murder and treason. Will you come quietly?"
Aizen's kindly smile managed, without changing physically in any way, to somehow become one of the most malevolent expressions Tōshirō had ever seen.
"You're intelligent enough that you should not need to ask such questions, Hitsugaya-san," he said, and Tōshirō could not help but notice the omission of rank from his name. "Even if I thought you could defeat me, I would not merely submit. I have had quite enough of that life already."
Tōshirō's grip on Hyōrinmaru tightened. "I didn't think so."
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Kenpachi poked the wound on his shoulder, but didn't show any sign of pain; it seemed to be very shallow.
"Come on, you two," he grunted. "Put a little effort in. Ain't you both captains? I'm falling asleep over here!"
Komamura growled and stepped forward. He was stopped, however, by Tōsen.
"No need. If it is a true battle he desires, my friend, I will finish him here and now. Ban Kai."
Kenpachi's grin widened.
"Suzumushi Tsuishiki: Enma Korogi."
The ring on Suzumushi's tsuba began to spin, growing until it was as wide as a man's arm-span. It abruptly split into eight identical rings, and the rotating hoops spun away from Tōsen, encircling the combatants in an octagonal arena.
Then darkness fell, as utter and absolute as the inside of a coffin.
Kenpachi's sightless eyes widened. Not only was the darkness complete in every way, it was clearly not the only threat. The morning breeze, the tap of footsteps, the beating of his own heart - all sound had been utterly silenced. Not even smell remained. There was nothing at all in his world.
As his reiatsu sense had been nonexistent to begin with, he was utterly adrift in emptiness, with not a trace of sensory input to orient himself by...
... until there was a whisper of wind across his skin.
And then a sharp, cold spike of pain as a steel blade bit through his flesh.
Damn... what a dirty trick! Taking a man's eyes away from him in battle... this is why I hate Kidō types! Think, dammit, think. Kenpachi gritted his teeth, narrowing his useless eyes. I'm the Kenpachi of Zaraki, dammit. The demon of the sword. I'm captain level without even a proper shikai. There's nothing I can't beat! There's gotta be a way... something, anything...
There was another spike of pain as the blade of Suzumushi sliced his shoulder open. And just before, there had been another whisper of the wind ahead of the blade...
Thank you, Tōsen. That's all I need.
There was the same tickle as the blade came down again - and Kenpachi twisted away just as Suzumushi cut through the air a millimeter from where he had been, swinging a parry with a gleeful roar. Even if he could not hear his own voice, there was little doubt that Tōsen could - and he could definitely feel the jarring of his arm as his swing roughly knocked the whiffed blow aside.
Kenpachi's gleeful expression returned, his teeth gleaming in an unseen grin.
The brush of Suzumushi tickled his skin again, and this time, he twisted away - but instead of parrying, he thrust forward, and was rewarded with the feel of his sword ripping the cloth of a haori. Probably not a scored wound, but enough to shake Tōsen up a bit.
I can avoid his blows if I need to. Good. But dodging forever never won a fight. Kenpachi sighed. Nothing for it, I guess.
He solidified his stance, waiting for the brush of the next attempt from the ninth captain... and then lowered his sword.
Suzumushi stabbed into his stomach, straight through and out the other side, cutting clean through Kenpachi's infamous imitation of a hollow's hierro and just barely missing his spine. Even so, Kenpachi could feel the shock lacing the blade. Tōsen had not expected to hit so easily after two perfect dodges.
He probably didn't expect Kenpachi to reach out and grab hold of Suzumushi's hilt, either.
The violent captain leered at the terrified blind man, now able to see clearly - if dimly, as Enma Korogi's influence created a shade even to the wielder. "Dirty, Tōsen, but effective," he purred. "Why, you almost had me. And here I was thinking you'd be a pushover... I guess I gotta thank you."
And with that, he pulled the blade from his torso - and let go of the hilt, his grin never fading even as his vision blinked away again.
"Been a long time since anyone landed a hit on me!" He shouted into the silent blackness. "I can finally say it was worth the effort of these last two days! Fights like these - they're what I live for!"
Then the prickle of another attack came, and Kenpachi swung his blade in return, steel clashing against steel.
And the darkness shattered as Suzumushi's blade snapped.
The wounded Tōsen staggered back. "D- demon!" He babbled, almost incoherent. "Only a devil would take to the darkness like that! You - "
"Calm yourself, Tōsen," came a deep voice from the edge of the arena. "A fight is never over until all strength has been given."
The courtyard was suddenly overlaid in a hellish orange glow, and a spiritual pressure mighty enough to make even the blunt eleventh captain take notice.
Kenpachi and Tōsen both looked up to see the imposing nine-foot figure of Captain Komamura, alight with burning reiatsu. His inscrutable armored visor stared down at the sword-demon of the darkest district.
"Ban Kai!"
The sun seemed to dim as an immense pillar of hellfire shot skywards and a great wind began to blow. Komamura brought his sword around, and there was a groaning of mighty metal constructs, like the support beams of a collapsing skyscraper.
"Kokujō Tengen Myō-ō!"
The fire vanished, revealing a colossal metal golem the size of a building standing behind Komamura. It was so large that its feet stood on the street behind the courtyard, easily three floors lower than the battleground, and yet it still towered a full fifteen meters above the combatants.
Kenpachi's look of hellish delight only intensified as the iron giant brought up its colossal sword and swung down.
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A chant had begun. The faceless Kidō corps gestured in the air, one beside the anchor of each binding rope of the towering sokyōku. The ropes twisted, writhed, and unraveled, whipping away into nothingness.
The masked figures moved together, their hands moving towards the weapon at the center of the circle, and the chant abruptly stopped.
There was a moment of silence.
Then there was a terrible screeching, and the roar of the kindling of an unimaginable furnace.
The haft of the colossal halberd vanished, and the blade exploded into an immense fire, too hot to look upon even from a full fifty meters away. The conflagration whipped in the wind, shaping itself into the form of a huge phoenix.
"The sokyōku has been unleashed into its true form!" Yamamoto declared. "The execution is over when nothing remains of the guilty!"
The huge bird flapped its wings and surged forward.
And then, there was a ripping crack of thunder, loud enough to echo all the way out to the 80th district.
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