Wayne
The Rustler of Jimmies
5,193
Fremitu Lupus
Cur | Wayne
Fremitu Lupus
Cur | Wayne
Zakeriah walked with a slight limp in his step. The healers had done their jobs wonderfully, after the tournament the Blackwolf had quite literally had a significant portion of the bones on his left side all but shattered into gravel and the fact that he was not crippled for life, much less walking, was nothing but a testament to the incredible skill with which they wove their healing surgeries and spells. In truth he was pretty much fine, the limp was more of a psychological issue than any remaining physical disability. The doctors had warned him that this would almost certainly be the case, such trauma caused a natural shock that was ingrained to the point that even a shinigami would still feel it. It would go away on its own, likely without him even noticing it but for now it only served as a nagging reminder of his inadequacy and a channel of quietly mounting rage.
Now the captain was calling him, for what reason Zakeriah had no idea unless he was to be disciplined. The Eleventh Division was made up of the killers, the War Eaters as Captain Kyuketsu had called them once (that particular division name had resonated with Zak), and supposedly the most powerful frontline attackers. The fact that he had made no progress in the tournament had steeled the Third Seat’s resolve but might show badly upon the division itself.
The shinigami paused and looked down at his armored hand, the liquid silver armor shone back at him, apparently untouched, and clenched his fist. The pointed finger tips curled into his palm eliciting a delightful tingle as they pressed into his skin. He had been lax in his training of late and deserved whatever might be handed to him by Kyuketsu, it would only redouble his efforts. A smirk began to trace along his face, it didn’t matter what happened to him... he remained a warrior.
He was waiting for him—a rarity nowadays considering the hectic schedule around shifts and other personal affairs. People usually came to Kyuketsu rather than the other way around, but in this case, it wouldn’t have served any good if he was to wait further still. The Eleventh, in all intents and purposes, was flourishing... in his mind, far more compared to his predecessor’s reign. The troops were in top condition with sky-high morale, nearly every soldier was a proficient fighter in their own right, and everything else non-combat related was handled smoothly by Inoue. The only real concern the captain had in mind was the matter of elevation and acclamation.
Seeing Zakeriah arrive, the Duelist captain simply gave a shallow nod to welcome him. With Tenzansatsu dangling freely by his side, the swordmaster took a single step forward, distancing himself from the tree where he took shade.
“Word around the office is you’ve been fighting spies and human women lately. Not exactly my cup of tea when it comes to targets, but how’d that go?” he asked, the casualness in his voice betraying by the raptorial sharpness defining the captain’s eyes.
The captain read him like a book, Zakeriah stared back at Kyuketsu but the man was impossible to read. For someone who looked like little more than a boy at a glance the man’s stare was steel, totally unreadable, and infinitely watchful. This was just the thing he didn’t really want to talk about but there was no avoiding the fact that he would have to fess up to it.
“I didn’t care for how they ended.” Zakeriah replied and continued forward until they shared the same shade of the tree. “It was a learning experience at the very least. At the very worst it was somewhat embarrassing.” Some excuses ran through his mind: this being his first tournament of this sort, having a brand new kai to try and sort out, but none of this was relevant.
The Black Wolf folded his massive arms over his chest. “If anything it’s given me the motivation I’ve needed to further develop some new techniques to better my range on the battlefield.”
“So you lost. Miserably, at that. You could’ve just said that from the start, you know,” teased the captain, eager to elicit some emotion from the third seat.
Pacing to the side, Kyuketsu eventually began encircling the man, observing and analyzing with scrutinous eyes at whatever appeared different from the last time he had spoken with Zakeriah. Sure enough, there were slight aesthetic changes to the officer, more scars here and there, most likely from the battles previously noted. Still, there was something different about him beyond the physical. There was growth, but there was also a certain level of stagnancy... potential stuck in the mud, unable to advance.
It was only right then, that the captain gave it a nudge.
“Still... no shame in that, so long as it doesn’t stall your drive. You lose and you die, it’s over. But you lose and you live, then that just means you have the chance to strike back. Giving no excuses for your fumble, persevering to grow stronger... yeah, I like that. However, that being said... for the third seat of the Eleventh to lose against such meager opponents... that, my friend, is utterly unacceptable. To what lengths did you strive to achieve victory? How savage and cutthroat were you when engaging your foes? How close to death were they that you yourself fell and lost?”
His interrogating voice thundered through the thicket of greens, the spiraling intensity wrapped around the captain molding into a vast, all-encompassing shadow which now loomed over the entirety of the forest. His sharp gaze turned to a malicious, cannibalistic glare, chaining and pounding down on Zakeriah’s figure.
As a single hand crept over Tenzansatsu’s hibernating blade, he continued, “I’m afraid I can’t allow that. Arashi, Hayashi, and even Kanzaki don’t have your rank for a reason. Prove to me that you’re still worthy of that mantle, and beyond.”
Utterly unacceptable...
The words reverberated throughout Zakeriah’s body and if his soldier’s stance ever wavered it was now. “What lengths?” he growled watching the captain circle him with only his eyes, “Both nearly died to claim their victories...one with an explosion practically in her guts, the other with my blade through his neck, millimeters from shattering his heart.” The motion Kyuketsu made toward his sword was more than obvious. The offer, the demand, the captain made was obvious as well. He knew of others playing for his rank or more and he was not about to lose his standing to anyone else. “You want to know why I’m still worthy of my title? Because I would rather die than lose again.”
“Bankai!”
Reiatsu and black ash exploded from the Third Seat in a blinding fury of power. Silver fangs erupted from the blackness within a maw of death as wide as the captain’s body threatening to clamp around his abdomen.
Brutal, masterful execution. As the ferocity of Zakeriah’s final release came into fruition, even Kyuketsu couldn’t help but gaze in awe at the magnificence of it all. Truly, though the gap between their strengths was like heaven and earth, there was no denying the perpetual terror which now embodied the Blackwolf.
As the attack came, so too did the captain’s response. Tenzansatsu was drawn instantly from its sheath, edge crashing swiftly against the primal assault of the third seat’s hellhound. With the sword angled so as its length prevented the maw from snapping shut, he raised his head to meet the rider’s gaze. Thunder growled all around them, the ground shook, and the very air trembled with vehemence. Kyuketsu could feel it in his bones, the coruscating madness which defined and gave meaning to the Blackwolf’s existence.
“Prove it to me, then. Survive.” His tone was as menacing as ever, and though he was aware of the stunning aura exerted by the officer, the raptor’s terrifying shadow had yet to be cast in full. “Cast a memorial of heavenly light, buried in the traps of consummate darkness. Stolen shadows, rod of enmity, cast forth and draw in. Bakudou Seventy-Nine: Kuyou Shibari.”
The beast was a part of the Blackwolf and as such shared his unholy strength, had Kyuketsu tried to protect himself from the silver fangs any other way he would have failed, regardless of which the Third Seat could feel the vibrations of Vandal passing through the fangs and reverberating against the captain’s sword. Smoke poured from his now stone-forged armor, its veins glowing through the black ash like silver lava. Lightning flashed through the cloud as the soldier himself growled through his own smoking and glowing jaws and narrowed his fire wrought eyes. While wisps of the smoke peeling from him seemed to flow toward the gravitational wake Kyuketsu’s spell Zakeriah wholly ignored the spell as though it had not been cast.
“There was a point when we had a Vice-Captain that I told him I wanted his job but that was a lie. I deserved his job.” A blazing spear lifted from the ash shroud, the head thrumming, shattering and rebinding in a visible display of power. Smoky hands grasped the weapon along with his own real hand. “Now the job I want is yours!” As if the choking smoke of his release wasn’t enough, with his final statement fire crashed down upon the battlefield as he unleashed his second division technique, Scorched Earth. The wolf pushed forward, shoving the Captain backwards and trying to force him to choose between holding his ground, using his blade to keep the reverberating pressure of the wolf’s teeth from clamping closed around him...or deflecting the spear Zakeriah just hurled at his chest with the force of a bullet.
Ambition, desire, go all out from now on Zakeriah...There is no point to holding on to your reiatsu reserves if it means you’ll lose...
Driven by a contemporary march of lunacy, defined morbidly by the shrill lack of self-preservation, the captain allowed himself to be trapped within the hellhound’s fangs, pinched and bit tightly underneath its excruciating pressure. He could feel its teeth sink into his flesh, drawing blood and bruising skin. Yet, suppressing the anguish and overcoming the torture, there came no such thing as a grimace, no expression close to that of pained, subjugated defeat.
Instead, decorating the raptor’s visage was a grim dye slowly simmering within, piece by piece eager to reach its boiling point. The mark of chaos and obliteration was evident in his eyes, clear as day like a bright sun scorching all underneath its reach. Golden, leonine sights washing onto the approaching spear, a swift, near-godly stroke swatted away the third seat’s blow as if its speed was reduced to the pace beneath that of a meager snail. The thundering roars of clashing blades ripped through the ears, the separation between their strengths and skills given display with such elegant, derisive grandeur.
“Everyone wants to become a captain as if it’s some sort of race for prestige.” Kyuketsu snorted. “You, Felone, Arashi, and countless others. There is no glory in the captaincy... only burden and heartache. You are cursed to carry the whole world on your shoulders... you’re to be a beacon of light amidst the impregnable darkness. And when logic and reasoning are made obsolete by creatures that are not bound to such rules, you are meant to remain unhinged in the face of reality. They say that the life of a soul reaper is pain... and if that were the case, the life of a captain is ten times that.”
Kyuketsu glanced back down at the wolf’s jaws, still tightly clamped around his midsection. Slowly, but surely, it dared to further puncture through, threatening to gnaw him in half. A single free hand caressing the beast’s temple, the silver gleam in his zanpakutou came to life with a dance shattering everything onto oblivion. A whirlwind of swings scattered, their masterful vibrancy fully invisible to the naked eye. Strokes upon strokes smothered the mount and its rider, breaking and bashing as the blistering air of Kyuketsu’s lightless sun was born in full, fighting against and even overwhelming that of Zakeriah’s.
The lesser foliage began to ignite under the weight of the powers being levied among them. As the captain began to unleash display his overwhelming skill and strength Zakeriah began to feel elated. Never before had Kyuketsu had to raise his skill to a level beyond matching the Third Seat’s own to face him in a duel, the fact that he was now having to draw on the full of his skill made the muscular shinigami practically cackle with glee.
The wolf was not a truly summoned creature and as such could not withstand the barrage of attacks from the captain, exploding into ash and energy almost immediately and dropping the Blackwolf to the ground.
For Zakeriah’s part, his armor absorbed much the insane assault but not all, the zanpakutou slicing into the exposed areas of his flesh and robes spreading small amounts of blood over the wilting grasses.
“If you are not reveling in the glory of your command...” A spear from Zakeriah’s back was in his hand by the time he landed on the ground. “THEN YOU ARE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!”
He exploded from the shroud of smoke with his spear thrusting for the Captain’s face, but more importantly his fist was aimed for the man’s bleeding stomach. Kyuketsu was a renowned swordsman but an incompetent brawler at best (last time Zak had faced him). If the Third Seat was going to force his Captain into raising a serious hand against him it would have to be by taking him on in the one area he was not adept in.
“Scream.”
Such a simple word, yet its enunciation alone brought forth the promise of death and decay in the hands of its master. The blade’s soul was split in two, each of the captain’s hands now bearing the remarkable, deadly talons which had before slaughtered and purified thousands. His right hand ascended swiftly, crackling thunder booming as it impacted against the third seat’s driving spear. The left, less dominant blade fell by his waist, brandished sideways as it welcomed the approaching fist Zakeriah unleashed.
“I said almost the same thing before I took on the mantle,” he said, reminiscent of his past position. “But you cannot have any say in the matter unless you’ve tackled such a responsibility firsthand... the lives of hundreds resting on your decision, the necessity to make sacrifices for the good of all. If you’re looking for glory and prestige, sure, captaincy is where it’s at. But if you seek something else entirely... something better than just some feel-good mindset about your accomplishments... then rank is practically worthless. Ask yourself, Zakeriah: what is it that you truly desire...?”
A simple thrust fortified behind his heels, he pushed back the third seat with sheer force alone. Blade and flesh pushed against one another with the lord of the Duelists practically unhinged from where he stood.
“...To lead... or to rule?”
He dove back to the fray, pouncing on the officer with blades spiraling in a frenzy of flashing silver. Behind the wake of the raptor’s onslaught came proceeding whispers of both dread and certain annihilation: “The oozing crest of corruption, the arrogant vessel of madness. Deny the seething urge, stun and flicker. Disrupt the sleep. The crawling queen of iron, the eternally self-destructing doll of mud. Unite, repulse. Fill the earth, and know your own powerlessness! Hadou Ninety, Kurohitsugi.”
Zakeriah pushed himself away as the black walls began to form around him. His glowing eyes and veins of the few exposed area of his flesh burned furiously through the smoke. The stare that he fixed on Kyuketsu was one of a fighter, a warrior unbound, the gaze of a predator that matched the captain’s own. “We do not rule but we do lead. Leave the ruling to those of the forty-sixth, true leadership lies within your hands...”
The black coffin sealed with an audible crash and the immediately forming energy spears impaled the prison from all angles as the powerful spell completed itself. The spear that he had knocked away had gone flipping through the air and the only sound was the vibrating wobble of the shaft as the loose weapon imbedded harmlessly in the ground just behind the Captain and the kidou burned across the otherwise silent battlefield for several moments before a resounding echo reverberated throughout the forest. The stone covered fist of the Third Seat shattered the black wall, destabilizing the rest in short order and revealing his form sheathed in a web of lightning holding the deadly spears at bay. The black smoke flowing all over him slithered into the shapes of seven wolf heads snarling and snapping at Kyuketsu.
Zakeriah was delighted, not because he wasn’t yet defeated but because for the first time he had forced Kyu to release his swords into their named form. “Your leadership of those beneath you gives our soldiers cue. If we are weighed down and miserable so are they! You are my captain, I am your soldier. Let me see your joy as we battle, revel in what we are, delight in what we can do so that I may as well!”
The truth was he was not challenging Kyuketsu’s place or ability and this was clear. He wanted the powerful captain to see his strength and to delight in his own. The Eleventh was a division of fighters unmatched by any of the others and they should be proud to be so. While in the hospital Zakeriah had vowed that he would no longer hold anything back, he would never wind up there again by refusing to exercise his strength to its fullest and this duel was no exception.
The time of his Bankai was running out and he had to make these final seconds count. The spear behind the captain erupted into smoke before detonating with an ear shattering ‘boom’ that sent barbed shards showering all around. At the same time, the Third surged forward once more, the spear in his hands spinning and flipping as he moved to attack once more.
They were so similar, and yet so different. In many ways, perhaps more than he cared to admit, Zakeriah resembled a more optimistic, less sardonic incarnation of Kyuketsu from years past. The viciousness in the man’s eyes gave way to the promise of tomorrow, a future which howled an eerily similar tune to that of his own. The black coffin which purged and raged at the officer had done its work, executed with brutal efficiency that spared only the strongest and most valiant of killers. Though Zakeriah’s body was broken, his mind and soul were still firmly intact.
No—perhaps to say such a thing would be unfair to the warrior. Indeed, his mind and soul did not remain in place, but instead grew exponentially, burning all the more exuberantly with scalding passion and vigor.
That was what Kyuketsu was looking for. That was the response he sought to achieve from Zakeriah even from the very beginning. This hulk of a man... this beast known as the Blackwolf... was, without a doubt, the epitome of the Fearless Duelists. He was what Kyuketsu imagined when he initially pooled together the remnants of the Elevenths of old. And now, he has come face to face with the monster which he had created.
“Then you are sorely mistaken, Zakeriah!” he snarled with frenzied jubilation, his fangs glistening sharp and wide at his subordinate’s advance. “The Eleventh... my Eleventh is not a bureaucracy of leaders and followers! It is a tyranny! A congregation of savages and barbarians that claw and maul at each other for the sake of rising to the top! Look at me not as your mentor and not as your superior, but as a mountain needed to be overcome! A dragon needed to be conquered!
In this empire, I am the most harrowing darkness! I am the Eleventh’s raptor whose shadow blots away the sun! My wish for you and for every single fucker out there who dares calls themselves a Duelist... is to try and dethrone me from my seat, to pluck and tear the wings off the raptor! Through that will you grow stronger, through that will you be able to burn away the abyss...!!”
He met the incoming attack head on, displaying in full the terrifying and legendary swordplay that was near-peerless in all of Soul Society. Kyuketsu’s intent resonated out loud like a vanquishing scream echoing throughout the valley of death, a fiery maelstrom which promised complete and utter decimation to all who dared to stand in its way. The shadow of the Duelist lord had come eclipsing the battlefield at long last, enslaving and bending the land to his authority. Flashes of silver danced, scattering in all directions like brushstrokes painting a grand scene of undiluted carnage.
...Or become it.
The captain laughed and danced forward revealing the fire and light that Zak sought but in doing so was completely oblivious to the explosion that occurred only feet behind him until the foot long barbs tore into his vulnerable back. If there was anything evidenced by Zakeriah’s recent trials it was that simply having dense spiritual pressure did not protect one from the edge of a blade and this was given all the more prominence by the three copperish slivers that now jutted from Kyuketsu’s chest and abdomen.
The Third Seat’s kai protected him from the pain and the debilitating effects that should have been wracking his body but that captain had no such devises at his disposal. The insane flurry of blows was not stopped but the beautiful, unstoppable, web Kyuketsu’s blade wove faltered, faltered enough for the Blackwolf to see an opening...
He laughed along with his captain, the two caught in a joy and hysterical camaraderie that only warriors upon the battlefield knew. Both fighters tasted blood on their tongues, crimson spotted the landscape in a mixture of like blood that burned all it touched. He dove into his thrust, pulling upon speed and power that was not naturally his own.
The opening in the flurry was directly in the center of the sword’s pattern like an eye at the center of a great storm that only Ei Wo Toru could penetrate facilitated by the length of his spear. Zakeriah loosed himself into the lightning fast counter attack, a single stroke, the epitome of one’s zanpakutou training, backed with his own immense physical strength.
At the same time, the second part of his spear’s explosion was developing. The point of eruption became a black hole, a singularity drawing all of the pieces that had scattered about back into oblivion along with anything they were still attached to.
There was an old proverb that Kyuketsu found to be both senile and amusing at the same time. It spoke of civilizing one’s mind, but in turn making savage their body. At first glance, such a saying made sense, placing discipline internally and merging brute prowess externally. For the captain, however, he felt such a philosophy failed to give justice to the individuals whom had been fully consumed by the heat of conflict. He knew better than anyone how a person’s mind was utterly lost once the anxiety of impending death loomed within an earshot. The ‘civil’ part was broken down completely, leaving nothing but the primordial, genetic instincts which drove all living things. Truly, when a warrior reveled in the mindless vortex of carnage, humanity, morality... and even self-preservation were just whispers in the wind, unheard and unnoticed in the bleeding theatre of war.
He secured his footing against the parched dirt, the rush of adrenaline drowning out the feelings of intense pain as the barbed wires churned and tore off from his flesh.
His leonine, golden glare remained affixed unto his subordinate, never wavering and never stalling. Ei Wo Toru was a powerful countermeasure against most foes, and in the hands of Zakeriah, even more so. Yet, against to Kyuketsu, against a demon of the sword whose prowess was peerless only to two individuals in the whole of Soul Society, such an attack meant nothing. In his eyes, in his senses honed to extremes dedicated to the blade, the descending blade moved at a snail’s pace, sluggish and easily breakable.
But he did nothing against it.
He held a grand scheme in his sinister, barbaric mind—one that would both destroy and recreate Zakeriah and make him stronger... better... more terrifying. As a diagonal cut scarred the captain from shoulder to hip, a fountain of blood splashed vibrantly in between the two Duelists. Crimson fell like rain, drenching and dying in the heat of their combined auras. Kyuketsu staggered half a step, a single footing moving backwards as his swords remained dutifully intact. He merely smirked, the momentary silence and pause which sat after the fact seeming almost like an eternity.
“I told you to tears my wings off... and yet you’ve only scratched them,” he teased, chuckling underneath his breath. “...That’s a start, I guess.”
His blades moved with purging velocity, its speed violating the very notions of sight and sound at a level unbeknownst to the third seat’s entire cognitive being. The full, destructive might of the captain’s zanjutsu drove his swords, diving forward along with the stolen force carried by Zakeriah’s own decisive blow. He had shown before the breath, the chains, and the venom of the Duelists. Now, displayed in all its murderous glory, was the vengeance of the Duelists.
Zak’s final attack took the remainder of his bankai’s strength along with it. The spears and smoke collapsed into him like a vortex leaving only the man when Kyuketsu retaliated. The captain held nothing back for the first time in a spar against his Third Seat, and the Blackwolf laughed even as the blade that made contact tore into his torso halting only against the sound of metal on metal.
This had been an encounter of firsts. This was the first time Zak had shown Kyu his new kai. This was the first time the captain had been forced to release his zanpakutou against him. The first time he had seen Kyuketsu actually delight in battle instead of plodding through it in a series tired moves like a practiced game of chess. This had also proven the first time the Third Seat had done any real damage to his captain and in that, more than anything else, did he delight in.
Zakeriah had expected a counter attack, Ei Wo Toru could not be incredibly effective against the dizzying skill of Kyuketsu’s blades but there had been a hope of gaining surprise and perhaps he succeeded but whether he had been successful or not was beside the point now.
A spray of blood was coughed from the Blackwolf’s mouth as he held the wrist of the captain’s sword arm steadily in his powerful armored hand. The weapon made a perfect razor cut completely through his torso beneath his right arm which had been raised during the thrusting attack he had just performed. The zanpakutou was only just short of hilt deep with the tip extending from his back. It had sliced through armor, muscle, bone, and lung as though they were nothing only gradually slowing from the impediments and being resisted by his enacted granite constitution but it was really only his hand on the captain’s arm and his impossible physical strength that saved the blade from severing his spine, or worse, cutting him completely in half at the torso.
“Oh, there you are Captain,” he mused, “I knew you were in there somewhere.”
He coughed again though the grin did not leave his face nor did he waver from standing tall. “I want your job Kyuketsu, but I’m not ready for your job.”
The intensity faded in the blink of an eye, the brutish, blood-drunk frenzy which engulfed the killing fields dissipating in an instant. Tenzansatsu’s soul merged back once more into its dormant state, tired yet satisfied. Its hunger, though forever unquenchable, was satiated for the time being. There was no point in wasting an unripe fruit, and the Blackwolf’s prime was still yet to dawn in full. That time would come eventually, and Kyuketsu would surely endeavor to face and consume such tremendous potential. But for now... he would watch and wait until the howling reached newer heights.
“Is this humility I’m hearing?” Kyuketsu scoffed, noticeably amused. “Well now, that’s a breath of fresh air if I’ve ever seen one. Though I’m not too fond of such rabble, I do appreciate the sentiment... especially if it’s coming from you.”
The captain sheathed his sword, though the wounds which scarred his flesh still pulsated in pain. A sharp, lasting grin decorated the raptor’s features, his head turning to match gazes with the officer.
“This was an obvious choice even from the start. Ascendance is something not given much thought in the Eleventh, especially when raw power is the true deciding factor in the hearts and minds of its soldiers,” he explained, cringing slightly as he felt a pang bite the side of his ribs. “You’re right, Zakeriah. You’re most certainly not ready for my job. Pound for pound, you’d be eviscerated by many of our foes... but that can be fixed. You can grow, you can evolve, and surmount your limits. While you work on that, instead of a haori, a lieutenant’s badge should do nicely for now, don’t you think?”
Kyuketsu reached into his shihakushou’s pockets, past a part slashed over by the hulking giant. Pulling free the adjutant emblem from within, it bore a slight cut indenting its side courtesy of the Blackwolf himself. With a quick flick of the wrist, he tossed it to the man.
“Try not to break it in half, vice-captain.”
Zak caught the badge casually but that did not hide the expression of pride worn on his blood stained face. The badge was light little thing but carried with it the weight of responsibility, the second in command of an entire division...a division of wrriors where the strong vied for power and took it from the faltering. The Eleventh had recently taken in a series of eager new recruits, Alexia had been eager enough to challenge for the Vice Captain spot in the midst of the tournament and once she recovered she would likely be gunning for him if her ambition was truly as powerful as it seemed. And what of Ryoujin should he resurface?
His fist clenched around his new badge and title.
‘Let them come. Let them come and try to take you from me.’
“It is my honor Captain.” He was about to say more before a gout of blood sprayed from his mouth in a vicious cough and blood began to flow down his torso from the razor thin wound. He cleared his throat as best he could and tied the badge across his heavy leather belt.