Crows x Souls

I'm back! 

It's been a rough month and some what with final year projects, projects essays and reviews and whatnot. If I'm being completely honest, it's not what I signed up for. 

With how it has been so far, I hope I can get back into things without to much stress. 

It's back to baby steps, for now at least. 

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“You focus on the trivial, and lose sight of what's most important. Change is impossible, in this fog of ignorance. How can we evolve when regulation is all we know?” — Itachi Uchiha. 

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The fog of darkness dispersed and the two adversaries once more came face to face with each other – Itachi’s being a blank sheet while Aizen had a very curious gleam in his eyes. 

“You stayed.” It was a rhetorical observation but Aizen replied nonetheless. 

“Something caught my eye, and given you were achieving your Bankai Release, it was only fitting I see it to its end.” 

Itachi frowned and held up his finger and a crow was summoned from a burst of smoke and feathers. “I am curious. How are you stalling the Head Captain?”

Aizen looked back into the distance and let out a disappointed sigh. “You will find out soon enough.”

Itachi said nothing to that as his eyes trailed Aizen’s form. From his sword to his Reiatsu – which was a bloody wave – and saw what he was looking for. 

The only choices to counter Aizen’s Kyōka Suigetsu had been either to use Izanami and risk one of his eyes or to use Tsukuyomi on himself to counter Aizen’s hypnosis – both of which were full of holes and disadvantages to himself than Aizen. 

The feeling he was getting from his new eyes were unlike anything he’d felt whenever he had used his Mangekyō. The drain wasn’t crippling, nor did his head buzz softly with it being kept on. 

“So it’s not that they happen to facilitate your techniques but are instead part of your Zanpakutō’s abilities.” Aizen remarked, noting the changes in Itachi’s eyes. So he asked curiously, “Can you see through it now?”

He smiled and swung his sword at Itachi but the latter remained unmoving and not even flinching when it cut across his chest and sprouted a fountain of blood. 

Crack. Crack. Crack. 

A shimmer of light flashed and the space before Itachi cracked like breaking glass to reveal that Itachi was completely unhurt. 

The smile on Aizen’s face was gone. He’d suspected that there was something more symbolic about Itachi’s eyes and his Zanpakutō’s and the way the latter had juts seen through his perfect hypnosis was all but confirmation to his hypothesis. 

“Should I applaud you? Congratulations, you managed to see through my perfect hypnosis.” Aizen said sarcastically. Despite Itachi’s change, other than the initial surprise, he remained unfazed. 

And the reasons for that were simple. 

First, just because Itachi saw through a basic application of his Kyōka Suigetsu did not mean that he was immune to it. He ‘saw through it, meaning he still fell under its influence. 

He deflected Itachi’s sword and enacted a little bit punter before the latter could react, cutting him through across the torso. 

“Hmm. Your Zanpakutō, is it truly in its Bankai state?” Aizen turned to Itachi who stepped out a stone’s shadow in a splutter of flame. 

He took a closer look at Itachi’s blade and realized that the blade held no true form. 

Itachi held one hand in a tiger seal against his blade. “Curious?” 

The instinctual sensation and information he got from Tsukuyomi and Amaterasu concerning his Bankai was the very reason why Itachi knew he would be on the back foot and the situation wasn’t exactly looking good for him. 

He was still playing off his shock concerning these new eyes of his, setting the deck in case he was forced to play a gamble, while also feeling off the huge changes he was currently going through. 

He and Aizen rushed at each other and locked blades with each other and broke off to continue the deathly sword play between them. 

“You think because you’ve achieved Bankai that you’re strong enough to face me?”

And that was the second reason, Bankai or not, Aizen was incredibly strong. The strongest being Itachi had ever fought. 

“I can shatter this sword of yours if I so will it.” Aizen said seriously for the first time and brought his hand down, the seamless flow of his Reiatsu coming down on Itachi like a sea’s tide. 

CRACK. 

Itachi’s eyes widened as cracks spread over his blade in an instant before it completely broke apart and Aizen’s blade tore into his shoulders. 

“How is it?” Aizen taunted as he pushed Itachi down to his knees. “Hmm?”

He looked at the fragments of the broken blades and caught a reflection of red eyes staring right at him. 

“How is it?” Itachi asked as his sword threatened to take away the kneeling Aizen’s shoulder. 

“Heh.” Aizen chuckled. “Not bad.” 

The both of them stared at each other, never having moved an inch from their spot since the beginning. 

A fitting conclusion to an unending sequence. A battle between illusionists – a maze of untruths – where winning depends on who was the better manipulator, and between the both of them the answer was clear. 

Aizen was no longer in the mood to prod Itachi’s abilities, especially when his time limit was creeping dangerously to its end, and settled for killing him as soon as possible. 

“Hadō #91: Senju Kōten Taihō.”

It was too instantaneous. A Kidō of such high level casted in an instant without a shortened chant or an activation time. 

Ten energy points that threatened to disintegrate any form of state, material or immaterial, surrounded Itachi at point blank range. 

If their conjuring was fearsome, their movement was even more so as Itachi who was mere inches from them felt as if time paused and they exploded. 

‘Aizen, you bastard.’

……

…

—  “Bankai: Amenominakanushi – Tengoku no chūshin!” (Amenominakanushi – August Center of Heaven)*

….. 

Kenpachi made his way towards the maelstrom of Reiatsu that couldn’t be missed – not when two Captains were fighting a deathly Hollow. 

“I’ll be going on ahead, Yachiru!” His partner alighted her reliable steed who leapt into the air and locked his eyes on the two fighting Captains. 

“That Hollow is mine! Butt out, you twigs!”

“Captain Zaraki, watch out!” Jūshirō shouted at the incoming Kenpachi whose eyes narrowed before kicking off the air and changing his trajectory right at the moment where a purple energy blast flew past and exploded, completely disintegrating everything it engulfed. 

“Huhhh? And who might you be?” There, down below, was a completely black Hollow with a stark white mask. “It doesn’t matter! You are strong, I can feel it!” 

He completely forgot about Baraggan and faced the strong Hollow. Of course he knew it was strong, or else his blade wouldn’t be thrumming so excitedly. 

“I’ll carve you up sweetly.” One swipe of his sword and everything around him was swept away from the resulting cyclone. “Let’s die with joy!”

His eyelids went lower as the Hollow dodged his sword and with a shout punched him heavily in the face and sent him skidding a few steps back. 

Ptui. 

“That’s more like it.” He said with a low voice and, edging over the limits of his madness, barreled into the Hollow. He surfed on the Hollow as it dug up a trench along the ground. 

Whether it was Kenpachi surfing on it, his smug grin as he did, or whatever it was, the Hollow bellowed angrily and started charging a purple Cero. 

“Bring it on!” Kenpachi dared and raised his sword as if to bash both the Cero and the Hollows head in. 

“Kenny, be careful!” He heard Yachiru shout and lost his focus for a moment when he looked at her, which was when the Hollow fired off its purple Cero. 

Yachiru landed on Kenpachi’s shoulders and hastily erected a Kidō barrier only for it to crumble as soon as the Cero touched it, buying just enough time for Kenpachi to get them out of there. 

“Oi! What are you doing, Yachiru? I had that.” He shouted angrily while Yachiru wore a serious frown on her face. 

She warned Kenpachi sternly. “That Cero is dangerous, Kenny. Even for you.”

“Huh?” Kenpachi bent to hang his pissed off glare over Yachiru and questioned threateningly. “You think it’s going to kill me?”

Yachiru replied unflinchingly. “Yes. Even a single hit might be too fatal or outright kill you.” She stared pointedly and added, “Unless you can cut it.”

“Watch me–” 

BOOOOOM!

He put Yachiru down and turned to the Hollow who dared to interrupt them. 

“Die.” A single word. No shout, no expression. 

His left hand dug into the Hollow’s face and lifted it off the ground to slam it back against it while his right hand swung his blade forward from behind, slicing through the ground as it did, and dug it deep into the Hollow’s side and flung it away, jumping after it while it was midair to pommel it into the ground. 

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“Bankai: Amenominakanushi – Tengoku no chūshin.”

(Amenominakanushi – August Center of Heaven. 

*Amamenominakanushi* is the first deity in Japanese mythology, coming first before two others and forming the Kotoamatsukami – A group of three primordial gods – before the creation of other gods like Izanami and Izanagi.)