[11th/3rd] Week 290: Blood On Fire III

[Wayne]

6,132
Blood On Fire III
Wayne | Beaks​

For some reason despite brandishing the title of captain, Kyuketsu found it difficult, nevertheless, to enter another division’s compound. In this case, the vanguards watching over Squad Three’s gates seemed hesitant to grant him access. The very best the soldiers could do, it seemed, was to simply send off a messenger while the Eleventh’s commander stood in wait amidst the shadows of the Blitzkrieg Unit’s walls.

“We’re well aware that you’re a captain, sir,” said one of the men, “But as of right now, protocols state that unless you have any appointments set up, you’re not to be allowed within the grounds. I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience.”

Bearing an aloof, almost deadpan expression, Kyuketsu detached his sights from the patrol. “How long still?”

“Won’t take long, I guarantee it. Even our newest recruits are as quick as lightning. They’ll be here in no time.”

After the stunt pulled by Tsubaki during the committee meeting, he wouldn’t be all too surprised if she was nowhere to be found. The woman, after all, had a rather annoying tendency to stretch out any sort of insanity as long as she possibly could.

"What do you idiots want him to do, sign the friggin' guestbook?" She came walking in an uneven pace up to the gates with the same look of weary annoyance on her face. "I felt him coming before you could even see him."

"You might want to work on that attitude of yours, Ninth Seat." The first guard turned to give her a glowering look, trying to peel the layers of self-assured readiness back with nothing more than his eyes. "I'm sure you've made too many enemies already."

"Oh really?" She merely sneered at the man and his comment regarding her rank, treating it with all the worry that an alligator pays cattle. ”I would think that you wouldn’t push so hard to get killed by someone of my lowly little rank." Though the Haori had long since left her shoulders, the air of irrefutable authority of a Captain still flowed freely from Tsubaki.

"You think just because the Captain has taken a shine to you she won't have something to say about-"

"You think some meaningless title in front of my name is going to save you from being nothing more than a red smear on the wall?" She laughed to herself in a short chuckle, shrugging her shoulders back to complete the pause between insults. "Because hey, if so you should totally go get her! I'll wait, you can come back, and then two Captains can watch me personally end you. It'll be fun!"

She left the very real threat of a horrible death lingering in the guard's thoughts before turning towards the visitor for the most fleeting of seconds.

“I’m busy burning bridges, what do you need?"

“You, for one.” His eyes bounced briefly on the guards distancing themselves from the pair. “I’m not going to bullshit around and ask how you’ve been these past few days, or just drop by and say hi. I think it’s rather obvious already as to what’s going on.”

With an open hand, he gestured to the winding roads leading away from the barracks. Should his hunch prove accurate, those paths led to a more private and secluded location within the Seireitei’s back lots. And even better, it was spacious. What he had in mind for their ‘talk’ certainly required an ample amount of all three.

“Play with fire too long and you’ll ash up those pretty little hands of yours.” There was no lighthearted tone to his voice—only lifeless, robotic deliverance—which, in itself, made him sound all the more precarious. “That aside, however, I need to confirm something with you. From former student to former master.”

“Pretty little hands that have washed off more blood than you may ever see in your lifetime.” She started to walk at his behest, momentarily pleased that he hadn’t forgotten who he was talking to in terms of mincing words on idle chatter. While the weary tone caused her a moment’s pause, there would be time enough to explore it later.

“So, what are we confirming?”

Walking alongside her, despite being taller in terms of physical stature, he felt barely able to reach the woman’s level. It was an irritating feeling that chewed painfully up and down his spine. He was so close to surpassing her... so close that he could almost see the mountain’s apex. And yet, despite such adjacency, the gap, though however small, felt like light-years away from being conquered.

Regardless, that intense acrimony of his, though inflamed to the highest degrees, was best left unmentioned.

“If I’d hazard a guess, you probably already know.” He veered his attention elsewhere, onto the incident that occurred weeks prior. “That outburst of yours during the meeting about giving up and being ‘done.’ I heard everything. Not just yours, but of everyone’s tongues. Their whispers, their reactions... their words after you left. So tell me, confirm it to me if what you said was the absolute and final truth.”

They continued to walk further away from the Third’s compound, closer and closer to the more emptied blocks south of the place.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking.” She shot him a sideways glance, momentarily unsure if he meant to console Tsubaki or challenge her.

Kyuketsu bit back his lips, taking note of the uncertainty carrying the woman’s voice.

“I want to know where you go from here, on what you intend on doing now that you’ve ‘cut’ any sort of ties with the men and women that run this court of supposedly pure souls.” The captain paused, though never faltering in his pace. “We’re standing on the precipice of change. At least, that’s the way I see it. Regardless, you might as well batten down the hatches and ready yourself for what’s to come.”

“What I intend on doing?” She almost smiled at the remark, raising her eyebrows to such an unintentionally stupid question. “Killing Hollows. You know, our job. I don’t need assistance or guidance from any of those fucking idiots to do that Kyuketsu, and neither did you.”

“Everybody likes to stand on the ‘precipice of change,’ Captain. It gives them hope that maybe they can escape the big pile of shit that is their reality.” She rolled her eyes at the self-spoken comment, looking back at him with a gaze devoid of all humor or misleading nature.

“It won’t change, things will just turn into a different kind of shit. Honestly, I thought I taught you better than this.”

“And from you, I also learned to be realistic. To know that everything doesn’t last forever.” He forced out half a smile, although his accent still carried a distant, rather distracted articulation. “What ‘reality’ is is a living, breathing cycle of arbitrary change and repetition. We stand here right now talking, but tomorrow might not be so similar. Or the day after, or the year after. And even after that, someone else will take our place.”

Opting to quickly dismiss his prior remarks, the captain shook his head.

“But... just for this one time, I hope you prove me wrong. I wish you’d be right in saying that things will remain as they are. I really, honestly do,” he admitted, pressing a palm against his right eye hidden beneath locks of pale hair.

It still hasn’t subsided. The quite literal tears of blood left as a reminder of Prometheus’ ‘offer.’ Its downpour wasn’t as severe, but it never once ceased.

Eventually, they stumbled upon a secluded part of the district where not a single soul could be seen. Abandoned, empty lots of white immaculate stone made up the vista, and not far were the bloodstone walls that towered high into the heavens. The silence was almost alluringly perturbing, as even the slightest breeze sounded like an orchestra of a thousand souls.

Yet for all the allure that the place might have contained, it was utterly lost on the woman who accompanied him. To Tsubaki it was nothing more than an empty space filled with empty purpose. “Well this is uplifting.” A dry tone accompanied a wandering set of eyes that carried equal parts boredom and uncertainty.

“So, are we here to try and rape me or something?”

“Something to that extent,” he joked back rather flatly.

The captain’s eyes lowered to the ground, noticing the lack of a decent pavement or any sort of half-built landscaping. It seemed that even if the place were to catch on fire for some reason, nothing of material value would be put in harm’s way. The buildings were far back enough, and not one of the half dozen trees decorating the place would get in the way of what Kyuketsu had planned.

Turning to face Tsubaki in full, the captain continued, “There was one more thing I wanted from you, and it’s a far cry from what we’ve just talked about. From what I’ve heard, you’re able to cast a nineties level kidou out of the blue even without being proficient in demon arts.”

“How that’s even possible is beyond me.” A stern, nearly lifeless look washed over Kyuketsu’s eyes. “But I want it.”

“No please, no courtesy, just....give me your power.” She scoffed lightly. “Hey Tsubaki, give me that power that you and only you have that you went through god-knows what to get! Come on, don’t be a bitch!” Another embittered laugh accompanied the comment, though to say it was born of humor would have been a bit of a stretch.

“Assuming I even can, and also assuming that I even would, riddle me this love.” Tsubaki turned to the man who now wore the Haori in her stead, a rather serious look on her face.

“Why should I?”

He purposely said nothing in response. Initially, that is.

Allowing the awkward silence to linger further still, he advanced, pacing one step closer towards the former captain. His gaze locked with her leonine stare, there was an invasive feeling in his features, as if drilling into the woman’s soul in search of answers to nonexistent questions. He towered over Tsubaki, breaking all sense of personal boundaries that stood in between them.

“Because I’m the unsatisfied, insatiable gullet that you’ve so happened to nurture.” His voice was practically whispered from his lips. “The little chick that you fought four years ago that’s now a raptor wishing for a second shot.”

He leaned in closer still, his lips practically a hair away from hers. “And because I’m your legacy, and your reflection of what could have been. Isn’t that right, ‘mom’? So... if you would, please?”

“My god, has it been four years?” She smiled to herself, ignoring the sudden invasion of her personal space. In truth, the smile wasn’t for Kyuketsu...or even herself. So much...so many ascents and miserable failings and wounds and stitching...god almighty it had been four years stretched into eons.

“Fucking-fuckin’ hell.” Tsubaki’s head shook at some unspoken or unknown question, accompanied by a laugh that bordered both on the dominions of exhausted and psychotic. A restless twitch raced through her right arm like lightning, making the lengthy seal on it waver back and forth in and out of the shadow of the Duelist Captain.

“What would-would Fuko go thinking if you called another woman ‘mommy,’ I wonder.” She laughed bitterly to herself as the comment was quipped. Did he truly realize the pertinence behind it? Would Kyuketsu truly grasp that his voice, his thoughts were hers to bear audience to and analyze at her leisure? His. Hers. Thousands of others. Every second of every minute of her entire existence was filled with countless thoughts and fleeting fetters of the day to day of each and every single Shinigami who had once fought under the banner of the Blood Templar.

They had moved on...she had not. Their blood was her blood. Their hopes and fears and fates still raced through her veins with each beat of her tired heart. It wouldn’t end until the day her heart ceased its labor, and beat no more.

He never took the responsibility, never took the curse.

He would never know.

“Thinking thinking spin and sing...dance to dance and drive the tides of boasts and blood and fire and-and ash.” Her voice lost normalcy, drifting back and forth in an almost singsong cadence but faltering in abrupt stutters all the same.

Without warning the sword at her side had appeared in her right hand, un-aimed but ready all the same. Tsubaki had taken several uneven steps back and away from the boy, letting the grin that had failed to fade from her lips grow even wider. She was going to slip now, he had seen to that.

“Time. Time to fight and stand and rise and fall. Bend and break and bleed as one, boy.”

Might as well make it memorable.

Her words, more so than usual, were wrought with the same irritable, cryptic execution that he so thoroughly despised. He hated her riddles, her sparring wordplay which danced around whatever point she intended to make. He loathed it, but at the same time, couldn’t help but be attracted to it. The way she talked, cloaked as it was in a veil of jittering instability, further empowered the growing flame which raced inside the captain’s being.

“My, how fearsome your presence is.” He stepped off, pacing one foot after the other before inevitably encircling the Queen. His eyes stalked her every movement, every diminutive, inadvertent twitch that came from her body. “You’re invading my shadow, waltzing and claiming control of my space. Stop that.”

Kyuketsu drew his own sword, each hand splitting its soul into two. Tenzansatsu’s talons, his talons, gazed hungrily at the only other soul present within their madness-ruled domain. The captain bore a feral, carnivorous grin, his fangs sharpening to consume whole. Spreading from his depths, drowning and corroding the entire battlefield, the lightless sun emerged to vindicate his stance. The temperature swelled to ungodly extremes, reaping the land and laying waste to its fertile zest. Arid, violated, and seared, all creation within his presence bowed before him.

And then came the descent.

His movements were congruous, swooping down on the woman with heightened frenzy the likes of which only gods of the blade such as them could fathom. His multi-pronged bite seized sight and sound, ripping through dust and dim to once again tyrannize the balance of control.

Beyond comprehension. A sojourn of liberation from the chains of logic or restraint. Aeons of arms met in a fleeting moment of the utmost purity of purpose, clashing souls and screaming blades carved an epitaph into the spiral of time immemorial.

Her eyes regarded the claws that bit and grasped for any kind of purchase they could win against the Rite of Rebellion, smiling all the while. How long had it been since she had experienced a good fight? Months? Years?

The short answer was far too long.

“Better make it good-good, boy, I hate dancing alone.” The quip came as her own Reiatsu answered the boast of the lesser presence, unfurling like the flag of a conquering tyrant and filling the already stifling air with even more raw and unrestrained power and force.

Force pressed back without hesitation, screaming steel locked in struggle as Tsubaki pressed the sword away from her body, letting the black blade of Duskdrinker form in her opposite grip.

With one last fleeting smile, the sword swung in an easterly crescent towards the Duelist Captain with unyielding force and flawless technique.

His swordplay’s ferocity was unparalleled, unmatched by the thousands of individuals which made up Soul Society... except for two. The captain-commander of the Gotei Thirteen, Inuzuri Sayis and the former queen of the Eleventh were the only warriors to ever match and even surpass the raptor’s lethality with the blade. For years he stood under their silhouettes, buried underneath their supremacy of power and dominion. But no more... not now when he was at last beginning his ascent upon the mountain of murderous apotheosis.

Shattered cries filled the massacre scene as Tenzansatsu met the Rite of Rebellion, clamoring menacingly amidst the captain’s infernal bastion. The second claw stood against the broadsword, spitting corrosive fire to welcome the dark sword’s descent.

“This isn’t a dance,” he said in a whisper as a dead, cannibalistic glare swallowed the Queen whole. “It’s a feast. And I intend for you to be the main course.”

He pushed, exerting a primal, brutish duress down on the woman. From his lips came a near-inaudible hymn, bringing destruction and devastation down on the land. “The crest of turbidity, seeping out. An insolent vessel of madness. Boiling up, denying numbness; blinking, obstructing slumber. The steel princess who creeps, the mud doll ever disintegrating. Unite, oppose, filling the earth... know your own impotence. HadHadou Ninety, Kurohitsugi.”

No hesitation, no second thoughts. As the black prison began to form, the captain detached from his quarry, manifesting a proceeding flurry of strokes to drown the queen under.

A crack of thunder pealed through the empty lot as the last few minute inches of the coffin’s interior were engulfed in the shroud, accompanied by the woman Kyuketsu had sought to ensnare standing behind him and engaged in a merciless cross-slash with both the blade of steel and living flame ready to intersect at a critical second.

You want the power, boy? Survive it first.

“Fleeting filigree, rampant race of searing screams!” The words left her lips accompanied by the unexpected flourish of both blades in twin vortexes of impressive speed and ferocity.

Then came the spark.

“Ittou Kasou.”

From the depths of her power a hopelessly massive blade born from nothing short of Hell’s fury erupted, lancing straight for the Duelist Captain. Air crackled and spit with the sudden burst of immolation, and the ground below the two fighters split and cracked in parched wails of death and defeat. As the assault raced for her former protégé the words of his predecessor echoed in the man’s thoughts.

You are what I was in the beginning, I knew nothing, nothing of hunger, of starving lust for fire and death and answers and hopeless struggle against everything and anything.

You are an insect that thinks a single dinner table holds all the food in the world, said the rows of teeth back to her. Then his countenance wore only a slight smirk of smug arrogance.​

A voice rang out of the maelstrom of flame as it raced towards Kyuketsu, clear as day despite all the sound and fury that erupted around the two combatants.. The voice she kept hidden from all she could in all but the most desperate of circumstances.

“Once the hunger awakens in you it will never know satisfaction, not ever. Even if you win here today, Reijuu Kyuketsu...”

Something different. Regret? Concern? That was for him to decide.

“...you will not survive the starvation. It will claim you just as it already seeks to claim me.”

As the blade of unquenchable and unyielding flame raced towards the Captain, a lone fragment of desperation whispered quietly in his mind.

You can’t save me, Reijuu. Just stop me.

What makes you think I want to save you?

​

There she saw in full the duality of man, the indescribable horror etched within the very core of the individual that was once her inferior. The fiery, purging light she wrought only further nurtured the all-consuming shadows... his shadows. From behind the titanic blade’s glow outstretched the dark, coruscating voracity which transcended the natural boundaries of literal and figurative.

I’ve shattered your mask, Tsubaki. I’ve torn apart your iron curtain and bathed in the electrifying madness of your presence. Do not lie to me, or to yourself. You are not hunger. You are maternal zeal, corrupted by the outside world yet still true deep down in your being. You harbor darkness and malice, yet due only out of piety, of compassion, of love.

His heels spurred with accelerated vigor, carrying the raptor back with the breeze of a flash-step. Tsubaki was a demon of the sword, a frightening lioness that few dared to face... yet she dabbled with forces beyond her reach, pushed herself to limits despite not knowing its extent. Ittou Kasou was powerful, destructive, chaotic... torpid. Had it been a fully mastered spell and had she been versed more in the minutiae of demon arts, the massive hell-blade would have consumed him whole. As he emerged away from the detonation, skin charred and seared by the flames, the entirety of his body’s left side was tainted with the black burns of Tsubaki’s onslaught.

“You don’t ‘save’ something you want to conquer.” He snarled, smoke billowing from his figure. “You don’t rescue something you need to devour. We as swordsmen, we whose instincts scream to amass more power... we only advance forever forward, leaving everything behind us... our conscious, our morality... our humanity, most of all. To know that we... that I can never be satisfied is, in fact, the most satisfying thing to fall into my abyss. I kill, therefore I am. Ban Kai.”

Infinite. Expansive. Eternal. The fangs and talons of Fuhen Souryokusen raped the land, piercing its grip against the parched, desolate warzone. From behind the burnt captain came the phantasmal apparition of a devil, carrying the means to compensate for his lost arm. Three swords held in all his limbs, the matador casted his crimson cape over to his bull.

“You are protection.” Cold, malignant barbarism. “I am destruction.”

He blinked back into range, three blades whipping in three different angles—a silver iron maiden to ravage and plunder the Queen. Behind their descent came the innumerable strokes of Tenzansatsu, materialized and given form by the captain’s raw spiritual pressure.

“And after four years you still need to work on your hearing, boy.”

Her words echoed across the makeshift battleground with a chilling hiss, bringing every flourish and gaudy display of light and sound and steel and violence to a halt. Including Kyuketsu himself.

“I suppose you’re probably a little confused at the moment.” The speech of the former Templar Queen was slow and deliberate, almost ambling over certain syllables as she approached the boy. The Duelist Captain remained static but unharmed as Tsubaki grew closer, though it was clearly not of his own will.

“This, my oldest and most steadfast friend, is the boon I traded my life, my heart, my-my very soul for. Each and every person who carries the blood of the Templars?” She leaned forward slightly, placing a gentle hand on his cheek.

“Is mine.”

“Truly and hopelessly mine, an ownership that goes beyond Divisions or units or humanity.” The hand receded, coming back to her side with a gentle fluttering of fabric. “The day you took that glorious gift that has let you carve out a name for yourself you gave up the future of ever surpassing me. Because even if you ascend to a raw strength beyond me, even beyond Inuzuri himself? You will always have this weakness.” A quick raising of one eyebrow complimented the revelation, followed by Tsubaki raising her blade to the boy’s throat.

“Four years, and you still do not know me. You assume I hide behind masks and misgivings, when in truth I am one of the most honest people in the Gotei. You claim I know nothing of hunger, despite a daily starvation that constantly dwells inside my heart...and must be endured regardless. An endless ache for purpose, for fulfillment, to both matter and prosper not only to the world and our peers, but ourselves. I ache to live on, and yet I ache to die. The thought of wounds suffered in battle both excites me and terrifies me to my very core, aided by the prospect of being permanently disfigured or disabled, no longer capable of fighting...which has been my only purpose and calling for centuries.”

“It would be so quick, this death.” Her eyes darted to the blade still held at the boy’s throat, then met Kyuketsu’s frozen gaze once again. “You’d barely feel it. A quick jilt of the wrist and then? Then you’d be free of the hunger I suppose. I’d save you a lot of pain, and even more so by removing the prospect of loss from your plate. You’d never see your friends wither and die. You’d never see Fuko lost to the darkness to come, torn limb from limb or turned to something worse yet entirely.” Her tone grew almost...thoughtful as it continued, a lingering possibility that the words were new not only to Kyuketsu but herself as well.

“But...I’m droning on.” The blade held to the boy’s throat retreated slowly, brought back to her left side and held lazily in it before she continued. “It would do no good to save you, Captain Reijuu Kyuketsu.” With an almost tired cadence the former Templar Queen stepped back to the spot where she had initially frozen the world around them, summoning the black blade of Duskdrinker once again and bringing both about in a flawless flourish. Hues of ebony and orange clashed against the incoming waves of silver in a chorus of unfulfilled violence.

As the Duelist Captain lurched out of his forced stasis and back into the fray, an eerily calm thought echoed in his mind born of the woman’s voice.

I do not save that which has already been conquered.

A deranged, thoroughly derisive cackle was the first to respond to the Queen’s heartfelt monologue. Again and again, braving the legendary might of her swordplay, Kyuketsu desperately struggled with undying, unyielding, forever-rapacious gusto. His trio of blades vomited scores of fire, driving and spiraling with the Duskdrinker’s descent. All around, the other manifested blades hissed at the woman, vilifying her with noxious, scornful luster. Those closest, impaled atop the dirt, ignited as their blaze and shards dug deep into Tsubaki’s flesh and bones. Theirs was a symphony of the damned, a revolution of blades which screamed far into the heavens, so much so that the firmament itself was set ablaze.

“A name for myself!??” he replied, his voice bearing a stark mark of ridicule. “Then you don’t know a thing about me either, Tsubaki...!”

Scarlet embers billowed around the captain’s form, sewing together a fiery tapestry which detailed the very source of Kyuketsu’s unending march for apotheosis.

“Power begets power! Titles, fame or infamy don’t concern me, for I walk a path devoid of logic or reason! I am the greed and gluttony which slits the throat of Life, the raptor which seizes the hegemony of Death. I am the cold, cruel reckoning that was never meant to be, the outlier that would inevitably bring about the most divine of terror and dread!” His shadow salivated with murderous ecstasy, dancing fervently with surgical sadism. “You speak of hunger as if it could ever be separated from me, that if my head were to fall off, it would no longer be part of me. How gravely mistaken you are, you who saw me grow and become what I am now!

Templars, Duelists, shinigami, humans, Hollows—these are just branded edifices, shells which mean nothing when the purest essence of one’s being comes into play! What I am, is none of those things... what I am... is avarice incarnate, hunger given corporeal form. I will never become satisfied, never become content, and should I desire the whole universe, the cosmos would be forfeit unto me for I desire it so! If I want to live, I live... if I want to take, I take! For this... is what I am, what I have become! And no one, not even you, will stand in my way.”

His lightless sun only intensified to ungodly extremes, further amplified and made cruel by Tsubaki’s proximity to the source.

You have yet to conquer me woman, and you most likely never will. For you have restricted yourself, you have set yourself up against a corner that you could no longer leave. You chose your path, the road stagnancy and endless, banal redundancy. While I... I choose to go beyond what I am, to not go down the Rabbit Hole and instead make it my own. Now I am hunger, but one day very soon, I will become power.

Winds howled and churned around the woman as shards and flecks of metal lacerated her skin, though no reaction penetrated the veil of stoicism that Tsubaki wore. It was fitting, in an innately primal sense of things. He openly bore the flames of avarice, and she only spurred them on with the tempest that surrounded her being.

“You are not power, child. You are arrogant, conceited to the core.” Despite the ferocity and violence that surrounded the two like an unending maelstrom, her words were spoken softly. “You have laid waste to whatever path you could have ascended to.”

You and I could have changed the world once. I looked to you more than you’ll ever know, probably more than you ever looked to me. You were there through all my mistakes and rage, through every shortsighted moment of ignorance and arrogance. Even now I want to help you, to let you rise above my station and become what you are truly, truly meant to be.

You deserve far better than what I left you. You deserved far better than to have me as a Captain. I can’t change that now. All I can do is press against you with everything I have, so you’ll never have to doubt again.

“I will free you from the chains that you yourself have forged.”

This will be our last dance, my most faithful and steadfast friend.

“Ban Kai.”

Forgive me.

Time stood still for a fleeting instant, staggered and locked fast against the endless turning by the sheer magnitude of power that pressed against the cosmos. The torn and marred robes of the Shinigami were wiped away, replaced by a discordant outfit of the former Templar’s own mad design. As the world slowly started its weary march once more, an aura of raw and chaotic energy surrounded the woman in a churning bubble of ebony ivory and crimson.

With no other warning aside from a look of nearly unfathomable sadness across her face Tsubaki burst forward, bringing the Axis of Anarchy upwards in a brutal vertical slice.

What I’m truly meant to be!?

A full gleam of fangs met the woman’s invasion, laughter of strangling madness echoing throughout the land with senseless direction. A dark whisper crept around the Duelist captain’s silhouette, a corrupt, damned regalia which, strangely enough, carried the scent of that most distant from a shinigami. The air was twisted, its scent reminiscent less of the Soul Society and more of the atrocious dunes of the Pale Desert. In that moment, unbeknownst to Tsubaki, a shrill melody seeped off from her former protégé, marking him neither as a man nor a monster... but something else entirely.

Kyuketsu leaped forward, welcoming zestfully the threat of despair materialized in the form of the woman’s zanpakutou. Its corrosive aura met vehemently with that of Fuhen Souryokusen’s, each spewing slurs of profane devastation which razed and ravaged all around them. Blades interlocked in what seemed like an eternally forsworn embrace, their souls pushed against one another, each vying unapologetically for dominion. Kyuketsu’s feet, despite his inebriation from the adrenaline, began to give way, shaking underneath the tremendous weight of the Queen’s assault. From the talons he held in his hands, cracks slowly formed, dulling their edge with each chip breaking down their illustrious steel.

Yet this would not stop him, this would not impede him. He had given in way too much, fell far too deep down the rabbit hole to yield now. Still, as merged as his consciousness was with Tsubaki’s, a separate, distinct voice echoed further down his being... darker, more primordial snarls which translated into an inviting call into oblivion.

"I can give you power."

​

Breaking, bowing before the Axis of Anarchy, Fuhen Souryokusen fell—Kyuketsu’s power, the powers of a shinigami failing before Tsubaki’s.

The power of only a shinigami.

Scarring the raptor was a purging flame which scalded at his flesh, wrecking havoc down to the bone. As the final phases of the descent came and gone, the thundering look in his eyes flayed somewhat, sinking deeper into an unknown emptiness. For a moment—a brief, flicker of an instant—it seemed as though the white of his eyes shifted to an overcast, deadpan shade of black. Then it was gone.

Forced breathes pushing out his throat, blood dripping against his wounds, he eyed down the woman, asking in an almost genuinely curious tone, “What am I meant to be?”

“You are meant to be better than this.”

Her empty hand conjured the black blade of Duskdrinker once again, slamming it against the back of her own sword and knocking the Duelist backwards in a display of sheer force.

“YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS!”

Tsubaki disappeared in the blink of an eye, appearing to the man’s left side and bringing the flat of her blade flush against Kyuketsu’s arm with crushing strength.

“YOU ARE STRONGER THAN SIMEON!”

Another blast of power and she disappeared once more, blurring into motion at the Captain’s right and striking again with unrestrained power and intent.

“YOU ARE STRONGER THAN YUZUKI!”

Two more bursts, accompanied by merciless strikes to the back of his head and the center of his gut. No more feeling out her borders. No more pensive hesitation at the threshold of going too far.

“YOU ARE STRONGER THAN ME!”

She looked at Kyuketsu with a dangerous expression. No pity. No resentment.

Rage. Nothing but blind and boundless rage.

“You.” She dismissed the black blade for the final time, grabbing his collar with the newly liberated hand and pulling him close. “You are too strong to give in to that miserable creature. There is too much in you to take the easy way out and bargain with and cheapen the victory.”

With the energies of her Ban Kai fading away around her, Tsubaki stuck the tip of her thumb between her teeth and bit down. As the crimson solicitation dripped from the wound and into her mouth her voice calmed to a level but stern whisper.

“You want my technique so damn badly?”

It should have been more intimate, in the sense of retrospect. Then again, there was blood. There was violence. There was a pitted and burnt to hell landscape trying to pass for the banks of the Loire.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be more intimate.

The rush of adrenaline and knowledge transferred before the kiss ended, imbuing the Duelist Captain with the technique he so openly sought in the span of a second.

As the moment subsided Tsubaki slowly pulled back, letting Kyuketsu come to stand on his own feet once again.

“Take my damn technique.”

Her hand unclasped from the cloth around his neck, coming idly to rest at one side. In seconds the unyielding Templar Queen seemed to wither before him, going from unsinkable to just utterly...human.

“Now be a damn man, and stop trying to break my heart.”

One last glare accompanied the jaded comment, and without warning she turned and began to walk away.

He just sat there, slumped to his knees still attempting to process the series of blows which utterly mauled his form. His flesh stung, bitten by steel and tenderized by flames. The maladies hich made him ache, the once shrieking symphonies that screamed in his ears—they were gone, all of them. The world became inaudible to him, save for the faint, departing footsteps of the woman which he once called his mentor. Her voice repeated in his mind ceaselessly, saying the same words over and over again until they were burned into his very core. He analyzed them, dissected every minutia behind her reasoning, attempting desperately to make sense of it all.

Left alone at last with his thoughts, there came no catharsis to satiate his lingering queries, no final answer that brought clarity to Tsubaki’s pleas. Instead, what Kyuketsu found was an ironclad justification that further drew him deeper into the void. The hole inside him—the excruciating emptiness within his being—only grew as his beliefs came in full circle.

The shadows which coiled around him resonated outwards with a frozen blaze, roaring alongside the mirror-like blades of his final release... before eventually crumbling, dying back down into a single, solitary zanpakutou.

A line of red trickled down his cheek, a single droplet falling against his sword’s dirtied edge.

“I... I am...”