A dark, distorted dimension beyond space and time. A bloodied soul with a mask on its face, ugly, repulsive to all existence.
The thick fluid of the inner Void had already enveloped his eyes, ears, and forehead, crawling down to his cheekbones. The Shinigami still resisted the inevitable, fighting for every millimeter of clean, untainted skin.
His soul was losing its color; his black hair was bleaching into a sickly white, his dark velvet eyes igniting with an unholy gold. Only the spiritual blade in his hand the Zanpakutō burned with a roaring blue flame. It was consuming itself, just to delay its master's fall for a single moment. Shinigami and Zanpakutō, united in soul and in life, were now moving towards a single death for the two of them.
He stumbled through the empty, darkness-submerged dimension, flailing blindly, swinging his sword.
He was losing. The mask was swiftly and mercilessly grinding away his soul, until a powerful, unstoppable torrent of Reitsu in the form of a high-speed train with a golden eye at its forefront slammed into his hunched, screaming figure a scream of immortal soul's agony.
The Hunting Taran, a living equivalent of isolated space, shrouded in countless layers of flowing time, struck the Shinigami at full speed, biting deep. A flash of dull light marked the collision of the two energies. The Reitsu twisted into a loop of a closed system, tearing the fragment of the parasitic soul away from the essence of the Soul Reaper, and then
The Shinigami fell through into a chaotic layer of reality.
Moments of eternity, the sound of space tearing apart two points on the coordinate axis of the Universe connected as a result of an unpredictably random process.
A spiritual equivalent of quantum entanglement gave rise to a sharp, negligibly small moment of transition between a pair of different, randomly connected coordinates in a moment of their vulnerability.
Garganta.
The quiet ember of the Shinigami's soul fell through a strange, random, by-all-calculations-impossible inter-world portal.
In the chaotic eternity, nothing changed.
In the living, real world, an invisible, undetectable micro-tear appeared, through which a dying God of Death seeped out.
He seeped through to enter an abandoned, dying child's body, its original soul gone, to reinforce the new vessel, to remake it for himself, according to the blueprint of his familiar form, appearance, his very essence.
The spiritual blade initiated the process, did everything necessary for the survival of its owner, master, friend, and blood brother.
Now it was his turn.
The dull blue of the World of the Living made his head spin.
Okomura Seki closed his eyes just so he wouldn't have to see.
To not feel the scorching sunrays on his skin, filtering through the jumble of brittle wood and colorful rags above his head.
His entire body felt alien, unpleasant, with an excessive detail of sensations and a poor, castrated spiritual perception.
A patch of distant blue sky seemed more real than his own existence.
Touch was too sharp, the sun too warm, droplets of sweat disgustingly slick, the dry air scratched his throat, his rough lips rubbed against each other painfully, there was too little saliva on his tongue to wet them, his clothes unpleasantly chafed his thighs and armpits, the rustling sounded unbearable to his overloaded senses, worse only by the anxious creaking of the dead, processed wood above him.
He kept his eyes closed, shook his heavy, uncooperative head, and winced at the anxious, irritating ringing in his ears.
Strangely, other sounds didn't bother him as much: thunderous roars nearby, but not quite close, from somewhere to the left. The air slapped, as if after Kido techniques, a polyphony of screaming voices merged into a single din with peak points where one desperate shriek momentarily overpowered the rest.
He tried to straighten his spine, but his body for some reason listed to the right.
His head ached, but not in the usual way, after spiritual energy exhaustion, the pressure of overpowering Reitsu, or poisoning. It ached as if from the inside…
And all this against a faint background of Reishi, the density of spiritual particles in the air.
Faint, even compared to the standard exit points in the World of the Living or the powerless places in Seireitei.
Not Karakura, and certainly not Tibet, to put it plainly.
It was more like the barren deserts or backwater corners where all sorts of creatures liked to settle, from the remnants of the Quincies to the latest monstrosities from the Memory Rosarium.
Such a negligible concentration evoked unpleasant emotions. As if he were the only soul around, a unique original amidst unremarkable fakes. A living being locked in a doll's world.
Tch.
As if he needed more strange sensations.
Why did the light penetrate even through his eyelids? And what was that pressing so insistently in his lower abdomen? It definitely wanted out!
"A doll's world, huh…" He didn't want to open his eyes.
"It's probably that new booze that damned Isshin found. A scion of a great clan, even an exiled Shiba, is perfectly capable of finding a poison that could knock out even a Lieutenant."
Especially since Okomura Seki himself, alas, didn't quite measure up to a full Lieutenant, let alone a Captain. A strong third seat, with good prospects for promotion in the next ten to fifteen years. Nothing more.
The headache suddenly receded. It didn't vanish completely, but seemed to retreat somewhere deep inside, where it stopped being a nuisance. Just left little pricks, purely to remind him of its presence.
"Need to figure out where I am… What I'm doing here. And why everything feels so unfamiliar…"
His hand reached forward, but the distance to the nearest piece of wood turned out to be greater than he was used to his fingers only scraped the dry, baked sand beside him.
Sand?
SAND!!!
His eyes flew open on their own, flashing with pain, tearing up from the abundance of sun. The only thing he managed to see…
His body went limp with relief, falling back onto its makeshift bed, sparing the unfortunate Third Seat Okomura from all the recent achievements of his own movement through space.
"The sand is yellow. Or white. Not gray. NOT GRAY!"
"This isn't Hueco Mundo."
"Oh, Soul King, of course I'm not there. The world of bloodthirsty monsters with bone masks and hollow chests, gray deserts and eternal night, doesn't have this much light! Hah. Yeah. Panicked like a clueless private fresh out of the Academy."
His fingers were still buried in the sand, and they began to feel noticeably hot. But before Seki could pull his hand back, a new shiver ran down his spine and chin as the dune beneath him vibrated from a particularly powerful blast outside.
This time, with immense effort, he managed to get himself into a vertical position, carefully peeling his eyelids apart.
The unfamiliar body irritated him, infuriated him to the point of madness.
He wanted to personally tear the skin from its annoying, contradictory signals, gouge out his eyes, blinded by the bright sun, shave off his disgustingly sweat-damp hair that stuck to his forehead and neck like slimy tow, rip the sensation of dryness from under his nails.
Where were all these intensely saturated reactions coming from in his trained, hundred-and-forty-year-old soul?!
A soul where every movement of Reiryoku within the body was structured. Why, he could even block emotions before feeling them! Right in the middle of a fight! Well, more like postpone them than cancel, and not for long, but the fact remained!
As for his spiritual body, that went without saying. Cellular-level manipulation would be beyond Okomura's capabilities that kind of control belonged to the Captain-Commander and the Zero Squad but less conceptual interventions…
Personally tune every muscle in his face? Saturate every hair on his head with Reiryoku, dictate its position in space and permitted amplitude of movement? Forbid his soul from simulating sweat, from bleeding more than a few drops?
"I can, I know how, I practice."
He could, he knew how, he practiced.
And now he was suffering from an extreme diversity of his own reactions, like a young student of the Spiritual Arts Academy who had just unlocked his overly-specific Shikai, the mysterious power of the soul, the release of the spiritual blade.
However, there was one logical explanation.
"Apparently, I'm currently on a mission in the World of the Living, and some scoundrel from the Science Division decided to skip the official request and secretly gave me an ultra-sensitive or hyper-realistic Gigai instead of a standard one. As a result, I got so baked I don't remember any details."
A Gigai, an artificial, soulless body, was usually tailored to a specific soul, and the spectrum of sensations available in it remained limited.
For rank-and-file Shinigami, if they ever needed such a shell, they were given the most primitive ones they didn't even allow one to taste or smell. For higher officers, the Gigai fully mimicked the sensations of their souls, adjusted for a physical body.
For Seki, the science nerds had, for some reason, gone all out, making the artificial body indistinguishable from a natural, human one. At least, to the Third Seat's amateur eye.
A new, much stronger explosion shook the ground.
Okomura flailed his arms helplessly, only managing to scoop handfuls of sand into his wide sleeves. A moment later, a wave of sand covered his shelter.
Some of the planks above were swept away, but others remained, and his body wasn't completely buried, though he had to blink rapidly and spit out grit.
"Thank you, instincts, for being just as detailed. I wouldn't have even remembered saliva or coughing on my own; I'm not like that Captain Kyoraku, obsessed with his harmless image of a frivolous womanizer."
"Some old Shinigami even forget to breathe or blink. It looks terrifying."
At least now he understood he was inside a shattered, overturned wagon of excessively large size. And a huge canvas tarp, luckily stretched over the wreckage, covered him on three sides.
"So, the World of the Living… And the problem isn't with me it's with the artificial body. But if I'm in a Gigai, that means I'm on a mission..? Then why don't I remember anything?" Contrary to his own thoughts, anxious images began to flood his consciousness.
No specifics, just that very sensation of a headache in the back of his mind began to swell, grow, spill out in waves of disjointed memories.
"I can't just lie here; I'm too defenseless like this! Vulnerable! This feels like the work of a controlling-type…" His brain, out of habit, began analyzing the situation, methods of counteraction, potential allies…
He opened his eyes again, tried to study his surroundings better, but through the tear in the tarp right above him, the scorching midday sun was visible, and his eyes instantly exploded with flashes of light.
Seki clicked his tongue, suppressed the instincts by force of will, shielded his eyes, leaned back onto the loose, stuffy sand, and tried to slip into meditation to enter his inner world.
It didn't work.
He only managed to vaguely detect the presence of living beings about a hundred meters ahead. Their souls flickered constantly, mingled with a faint, intermittent sensation of either Hollows or sinners… It didn't matter.
There was no one near him, so an attack wasn't imminent.
He didn't try to discern the details; retrieving his memories was more important.
His own control over Reiryoku, spiritual particles, was sincerely disappointing: it had plummeted from passable to abysmal, while the volume of his spiritual energy, his Reitsu, had decreased at least threefold, and a state of cottony stupor prevented him from fully sensing the souls around him, resulting in a jumbled mess.
Only his own Zanpakutō burned like a bright star in his consciousness, knocking and tugging at the "closed door" of his inner world.
"So, the door is 'closed' from my side. Whatever," his hand reached to the right, pulling his body along.
Three clumsy rolls one more than necessary helped restore proper control over his limbs. His right palm scooped up the sword from the sand, his left, out of habit, felt around his belt for the familiar scabbard.
Soon the spiritual blade was returned to its sheath, and then the entire Zanpakutō was placed on its owner's lap in the standard novice posture for entering the inner world the lotus position.
The sword, once perfectly sized, now seemed overly, suspiciously large for the scrawny figure of the issued Gigai.
Even in his addled, hypersensitive state, the Shinigami sensed a trick.
His own, so familiar and intimate blade felt alien and unusually heavy, pressing down on his thighs. The hilt of the Zanpakutō resting on his knees was so far from the tip of the blade that Third Seat Okomura Seki couldn't have reached both with his fingers at the same time, absurd as that sounded.
"It seems my Gigai is even stranger than I thought," he decided.
The deliberately light tone in his thoughts didn't help at all: the tension refused to release its grip, and his sense of danger, the instinct honed over a century of battles, persistently needled his nerves with the chill of a chance slipping away right now.
Seki frowned, but then shook his head negatively, focused on the external form of his Zanpakutō, reached for it through his vision, absorbing the image of the spiritual blade.
He needed to prioritize correctly. If danger wasn't imminent, he should ignore it in favor of clarifying the situation.
He needed to regain combat readiness first; he could go looking for trouble later.
With tenderness and a squint against the harsh southern sun, he stared at his own spiritual blade. Standard size, black lacquer, a boring tsuba without strange shapes or etchings only the dark blue braiding on the hilt and the equally laconic pattern on the black scabbard distinguished an awakened Zanpakutō from a blank Asauchi.
And also the braiding and colored patterns on the blade itself, like gasoline rainbows in a puddle, except in this rainbow, blue predominated.
Okomura himself had long forgotten what gasoline was and what it was for, but the analogy from his distant, practically forgotten youth during his Academy days proved more durable than his own memory of his first life in the World of the Living.
Small, at first clumsy, then increasingly confident, deft, firm fingers, in an awkward, possessive gesture, gripped the overly wide hilt and clenched. And the headache vanished.
He stepped into his inner world.
"You lost, Shinigami."
A wide stone platform surrounded bare cliffs. An onyx throne with a pair of wide dishes made from Hollow masks on the edges of each of its three steps: inside, oil, pieces of Gillian's black cloaks twisted into burning wicks. The fragrant smoke mixed with the haughty mountain air; the blue fire at the base smelled of lavender.
Tongues of flame caressed the figure… the being in a thick red haori with silver peonies and the traditional tabi sandals of the Gotei 13.
All visible parts of the Zanpakutō's body under the clothing were wrapped in brown, dried bandages; its wrapped wrists ended in gloves, the wrap from its tightly bound head continued down, covering the nose bridge, plunging its eyes into shadow.
Red hair with ugly red patches, the exact color of rust, stuck out haphazardly here and there from under the bandages on its head; wolf ears of the same strange shade one broken and drooping, a piece torn off the other.
Its clean-shaven face was completely covered; only its eyes with eyebrows, thin bloodless lips, and two holes in the bandages where its nose should be were visible from the outside, along with a grin that was both vile and paternally concerned.
His own Zanpakutō snapped its fingers in tight brown gloves. And Okomura felt fire seize his chest, his stomach, his very essence.
"A-a-a-a-a-AH-O-O-O!!!"
A wild scream echoed off the stone vaults, running further along the rocky peaks. But it wasn't the Shinigami screaming.
A huge gray Hollow caterpillar the size of an infant fell out of a small, barely visible crack in the skin of his chest. The dense white mask of the Hollow was being consumed by a greedy blue flame.
Less than a second later, the otherworldly creature completely vanished in black flakes of residual Minus soul energy.
"Now do you understand?" the Zanpakutō grinned.
Yes. He definitely did. But the return of memory meant the return of emotion. With all the accrued interest.
"AIZEN!!!" Rage overwhelmed him, a pure, refined thirst for violence.
No reason remained: only a drooling, snarling Third Seat, his Zanpakutō, and the stone arena.
There was no clashing of swords: direct parrying in spiritual swordsmanship was dangerous folly, something only Captains or the untalented permitted themselves.
There was no whistle or sound spiritual blades could attack silently, if their owner's will and skill allowed it. No explosions, no conversations, no incantations for Kido techniques.
Too little reason remained in Okomura Seki to consciously direct the fight. Only the Way of Destruction of the First Division, long practiced to instinct, the bare art of Shinigami swordsmanship Zanjutsu and the blue flame that burned both opponents equally.
"DIE, DIE, DiE, die, die, why, why, Sosuke…"
Their battle lasted more than six hours in the time of the inner world. One of the longest fights in his stubborn, hundred-and-forty-year life in the Seireitei, the Soul Society. The longest within his inner world.
And the first where he had felt such potent hatred and rage.
They fell silent by the fourth hour. Stopped distorting their body language by the fifth. Subsided, grew weary along with his very essence by the sixth.
"You've calmed down," the man in the red haori merely stated a fact.
His master retreated, the recklessness of his attacks replaced by an attempt to disengage, and his eyes were no longer clouded by the drunken feeling of righteous fury.
"Yes, perhaps… Thank you, Aogari [Blue Hunter]. Soul King witness, I needed that," he couldn't hide the emptiness and bitterness in his voice.
However, he managed to bring his emotions under control, to translate the remnants of the vibrating pain of betrayal into a melancholic calm. By the same method he'd used as Third Seat of the Gotei 13. It was good the Inner World had its own rules.
"Indeed," the red-haired man settled back onto his throne. "If you'd come to your senses six or seven strikes later, I would have had to spend energy waking you. You know I never hold back. The second rule of the arena," he smiled.
No snarls, no ambiguity: velvet condescension in his expression, beneath it zest and a thirst for battle in the terrifying, fanatical gleam of his bloody eyes.
"What?! I shouldn't be this weak! And since when did you get so tall?"
His own Zanpakutō had always had a build absolutely identical to his own: height, weight, arm length, hairline, everything. Well, except for the total bandaging and color scheme.
Now, however, he loomed over his master like a true colossus, towering over him by more than double his height.
"Hn. I'll grant you the pleasure of finding the answer yourself. If that's all, then farewell…"
"At least give me a mirror!" His suspicions were almost turning into certainty.
A silent nod of agreement from Aogari only confirmed his guess. A mirror forged from sand on the nearest peak another hint. The external world was more important than he'd thought. And finally, his own reflection.
"How could this have even happened?!"
"We died, remember?"
No. He didn't remember. Or rather, he didn't remember how.
The last memory after Tōsen's Bankai, complete sensory deprivation, the loss of all senses, clouded his consciousness the Hollow roaring within, the drooling Hunger, the slow, hypnotic madness of its delusion.
Hollowfication.
"I… I became a Hollow?!"
Horror.
A long-forgotten, firmly buried sensation of the nightmare's cold claws, the first emotion young Shinigami learn to control.
"No!" Aogari's quiet but firm voice, full of obsessed denial, squeezed all the shameful weakness out of him.
"Not anymore," Okomura corrected. "You burned it away, right?"
"The remnants of the Hollow, the implanted parasite, but yes. You are clean," an unspoken implication hung in the air.
"I should have been reborn a monster." The unnatural, wooden calm of a Shinigami's existence already felt slightly strange as he grew accustomed to the sensations of his Gigai, skewed towards hypersensitivity.
Nevertheless, in his inner world, he was, is, and always would be primarily a soul, so the shackles of his pseudo-living body couldn't affect him at the center of his personal universe.
Wait a moment, just how "pseudo-" was his body?
"You burned it, but not immediately…"
"Tōsen underestimated us. That little assassin of your friend Aizen's had to save the situation. The wound turned out to be too severe in the end, and you are not a Captain, not even a Lieutenant. Weakness prevented the corruption from spreading: there was too little time left to fully accept the Hollow."
"Did we manage to be reborn?" The Shinigami frowned.
The cycle of souls didn't work that quickly or that strangely, not to mention that a Minus soul could never embark on the path of reincarnation before being purified.
"Almost. Recall one small circumstance. When the Garganta opened…"
"I tried to escape through the Dangai [Precipice World]!"
"And you were reborn, already in another world," Aogari finished for him.
Quickly, even hastily. Omitting the soul-distorting details.
It was better not to remember that chaotic dimension where the Shinigami spent his moments of pure agony before emerging into another world.
The third rule of the Arena, though it was simpler to call them his Zanpakutō's rules never give his master additional information.
Or "new" information, given his quasi-amnesia. Right now, he had merely finished the sentence to create the illusion of a dialogue.
"Most of my spiritual power was lost after death, but the remnants were enough to prevent my soul from passing through this world's equivalent of purification and memory erasure!"
"If it even exists," the flames on the wicks of the dishes by the throne flared slightly.
A signal that time in the inner world would soon synchronize with the external, or begin consuming Reiryoku.
"So, this isn't a Gigai? This is my new body? I'm a mortal now?"
"Decide for yourself. New world new rules."
Okomura finally resolved to look into the mirror Aogari had forged for him.
Short. Terribly short. His shoulders reached only to Aogari's waist. His black hair stuck out in unruly tufts instead of the traditional hairstyle with the Kenseikan of the Kuchiki clan a distinctive hairpin, symbol of one of the Four Great Noble Houses.
For him merely a reminder of the mother he never saw. The only privilege he inherited from the Great House.
During his time in the inner world, his Shihakushō had adjusted to his new body the black Shinigami uniform now fit the ridiculously miniature figure perfectly.
Okomura sighed. Even immature souls in the Gotei 13, like Hiyori, looked far more adult than the pathetic form he'd been given.
At least his appearance remained more or less the same, adjusted for sudden youth. Whether it remained or adapted, he cared little for the details.
Boring, traditional, commonplace among the Seireitei black hair, black eyes, black eyeliner around them a legacy of his Zanpakutō after achieving Shikai, white skin, closer to the shade of cream or ceramic glaze than to parchment-like unevenness or sickliness.
Still, he was grateful for that much: for the last seventy years he had grown so accustomed to working himself to the bone that he had forgotten what he looked like without the dark circles under his eyes, translucent skin with networks of veins, or sunken cheeks.
The cursed conventions of the Soul Society, where everyone looks how they feel, and he, since his life in the World of the Living, had been accustomed to stereotypes about tired people.
"First life, if Aogari and I are right."
The thought evoked melancholy even in the detached contemplation of the inner world.
He remembered practically nothing about his [first] mortal existence, only some images, habits, a bunch of stupid stereotypes, fragments of concepts, and a couple of oddities in behavior and speech that he had carried through his entire hundred-and-forty-year life in the Seireitei.
And now he had to start all over again?
"I am the Third Seat of the 13th Division, protector of the three worlds, the punishing sword of the Soul King. My calling is the destruction of Hollows, traitors, renegades, other races, and all those who threaten the Balance. It doesn't matter who stands before me: Hollow, Quincy, Kuchiki Kōga, or my former comrade Aizen."
The thought of the latter again evoked a dull melancholy mixed with sparkling, fountainous malice. He suppressed it. Now was not the time.
Ah, how precise, how refreshingly logical the existence of a pure soul was. A pity he couldn't just remain in the inner world, without the idiotically overwhelming saturation of all his senses at once.
"Especially if this is another world, if this is a new rebirth… What am I supposed to do here? I can't get back, even if by some miracle I can open a Garganta. Jumping into the Dangai, under the Hunting Taran, into that eternal darkness, hoping for the one correct outcome is madness!"
"Master."
Aogari's voice echoed from the colossal mountain peaks. In it was a warning and consolation, a hint of hope.
"You think…" Seki mechanically licked his lips.
It had been no time at all, and he'd already picked up another stupid habit from the human body.
"Every world has its monsters. Do you remember my desire, my only selfish desire?" A dark glint illuminated the red embers of his eyes.
Mesmerizing, like watching through a window into someone else's house at a dying fireplace within.
"Eternal service," the Zanpakutō echoed the answer to his own question.
"I remember it every hour of my tenure," Seki wanted to say solemnly, but it came out trite, mundane.
As mundane as the destruction of souls fallen into darkness, with holes in their chests and terrifying porcelain animal masks on their faces Hollows had become.
"Then find a new purpose. Wherever balance exists, there are those who seek to disrupt it."
The cold flame flared again, now at the very foot of the throne. It flared, only to finally die out, plunging the stone arena into a predatory, malevolent semi-darkness. Only a single dish continued to cheer the stone arena with its small, fussy flame.
Time was almost up.
"I won't forget your request," Okomura Seki closed his eyes.
"Don't you dare strive for perfection like you have for the last hundred years," the single, pure white bandage on the bridge of his nose crawled down over his lips in a crooked, but wide, impossibly wide-for-a-human snarl. "A calling shouldn't consume your entire reason for living. That makes you limited; a great mission withers into routine. I will not tolerate such an outcome!"
The eternal twilight of his frozen world was scattered by the fiery glow of sudden anger. And for a few more seconds, blue flashes danced on his retina.
"You should have told me that eighty years ago. Or better yet, a hundred, when I entered the Academy," Okomura muttered. "Tch, maybe it'll be easier for me this way."
"Workaholism at your stage is an incurable disease; don't you dare underestimate your own limitations. Hm, but first, make sure your tiny, frail hands can even hold a weapon."
Seki went cold.
The mirror reflected not only his miniature appearance and the Shihakushō adjusted to his new reality.
The sword in his hand now seemed closer in size to a long tantō dagger than to his familiar odachi blade. It had shrunk by almost three times, adapting to his altered figure.
Because now, in a Gigai no, in a human body the former Shinigami was bound by the same limitations that existed in the World of the Living.
Physical constants, muscle mass, training, ingrained reflexes.
Reitsu had always been just one factor for humans; otherwise, the 'Fullbringers', with their modest reserves of spiritual energy, would never have posed the threat they undoubtedly did.
But now, Okomura Seki fully understood his unenviable position.
Helpless, in a small, weak, undeveloped, untrained, stupid shell of a new rebirth. Disoriented by contradictory signals, with a fluctuating connection between soul and body due to the aftereffects of a violent death and an inter-world transition…
If not for the spar in his inner world, he would have spent days, even weeks, on minimal adaptation things like basic body control, coordination, adjusting the size and form of his Zanpakutō.
That is, he would have easily been killed by any Minus, by every other low-level Hollow.
He would have simply fallen after a single lunge, if he could even stand up at all. And the gap between his soul and body was too great to grant him enough time to adapt mid-battle.
At least now Okomura could somewhat swing his sword-dagger, confidently control the movements of his arms and legs, and use the first levels of Kido and those techniques he had drilled into his soul to the point of reflex, literally fused into his very being, without much trouble.
The training in the inner world had fully justified itself, even if it cost nearly a third of all his spiritual energy.
Unfortunately, his Reitsu reserves remained at a quarter of their original capacity, his severely diminished control hadn't improved, and the anger, the pain of betrayal, the grief for his lost world, and his unfinished business were all postponed for later. He didn't even want to think about them.
Just as he didn't want to think about his own plans, or the lack thereof.
He couldn't very well join the local army for "eternal service" to satisfy his Zanpakutō!
Still, problems should be dealt with as they arise.
As information arises.
Their Captain had always preferred to secure a position, stand firm on the ground, explain the plan of action to everyone, develop several stages and templates, and only then rush into battle.
Thoughtful, conscientious, responsible, but demanding and unyielding, Captain Ukitake preferred a comprehensive approach over the impulsive charges of the 11th Division, the ambushes of the 2nd, or the intrigue-lovers of the 6th. Sometimes it led to mistakes, but more often than not, the slow, deliberate approach saved many lives among the 13th's rank and file.
"In your place, I would focus on the external world," Aogari confirmed his subsequent thoughts, "as quickly as possible."
Right.
However tempting it was to remain in the inner world with its familiar sensations and correct reactions of a pure, bodyless soul, he needed to understand what had happened to him, where he was in the World of the Living.
Soul-searching, seeking purpose, reminiscing these were for a safer place than the sand under the wreckage of a wagon amidst what sounded like either a battle or a catastrophe.
"Maybe I can find something to eat, something sweet, or even get a drink… Captain-Commander witness, I need it," if he was lucky and this place even had analogues of the Seireitei's sweet pastries or spiritual wine.
The main thing was to avoid enthusiasts of warmed rice wine, no matter how spiritually rich it might be. His aversion to sake came from his time as a human… his first time as a human and it was one of the few things that had survived the merciless test of time.
"Can you tell what's happening outside?" Seki needed to know where he was rushing and where the danger was. "If a Zanpakutō can, then its master…"
The Shinigami cut himself off.
Then he straightened up, placed his hands on the phantom copy of his blade, while the real one drilled into him with its smoldering gaze from under the gray, blood-stained bandages.
Seki returned to the external world and opened his eyes.
The spiritual parasite no longer clouded his mind, and the battle with Aogari at the edge of possibility had literally forced the instincts of his soul into his new body, synchronizing them. Existing as a pure soul in the inner world had removed the last barriers of the unfamiliar body, and Officer Okomura finally gained access to his Reitsu.
Along with the sensation of other souls.
Unfortunately, the general weakness hadn't gone anywhere; his control had plummeted to a primitive level, on par with a fifth, or even a seventh seat.
It was enough, however, to sense the presence of others. He quickly detected seven warriors not far from him, engaged in battle.
As well as several dozen strange Minus souls, more akin to those fragments of Hollow souls that remained forever stuck in simple Gillians, with no hope of evolution.
Seki shifted in the uncomfortable posture of his small body, sparkling with unbridled, mostly useless energy. Now he instantly regained control of his limbs, gripped the small sword more comfortably, crouched, and then quietly slipped out through a gap between the planks and shreds of canvas.
The treacherous dune almost sucked his small foot inside; a weak but prickly breeze slapped him with malicious, abrasive sand; the heat of the day's sun bore down on his shoulders with the nonchalance of Captain Kyoraku drinking from morning.
Stoic, impassive even by Gotei 13 officer standards, Okomura suppressed a howl of infuriated helplessness with immense difficulty, because not even the Captain-Commander could extinguish the sun, and Seki himself hadn't felt such oppressive heat in a very long time.
Souls generally endured any conditions that didn't harm them directly. With humans, it was slightly different.
"Bleh-" His nose betrayed him just like all his other senses.
The putrid smell of decaying corpses was familiar from both his lives; the stench of liters of spilled blood and opened entrails had become old news during assignments to the World of the Living, to sites of large-scale battles.
The reek of bodies burned by fire was known to any Shinigami: even sealed, Ryūjin Jakka, the spiritual blade of Captain-Commander Yamamoto, enveloped the entire Gotei 13 with its bloodthirsty aura, from the Nest of Maggots of the 2nd to the barracks of the remote 15th Division.
Only, unlike his soul, his new body had never smelled a single one of the cacophony of odors now thrown in its face.
Ahead, a caravan was burning.
Lazily, reluctantly, as if out of politeness. Half the wagons were destroyed down to wreckage, scattered in all directions, left to languidly and safely await burial by sand or charring in the occasional tongues of flame.
A small part from the middle of the procession remained almost completely intact. The wagons, that is.
With the people, it was precisely the opposite: limp bodies hung over the sides, fresh blood stained the dusty wood and rough tarps, a couple of surviving donkeys screamed.
Most of the human corpses were scattered at the rear of the caravan, as if the attackers had been in a hurry to destroy the fleeing civilians at any cost.
The vanguard of the group, conversely, was a mess of wreckage and remains: the front had taken the first blow, to be scattered across the desert by either one powerful explosion or a series of attacks.
Okomura didn't know how he himself had survived, or rather, his body… the recipient? Questions about that, as well as thoughts on why he hadn't been reborn as an infant if he was reborn in a new world, were left for the future.
"Most likely, the kid snuck into a wagon that fell behind the vanguard, and got caught by a fading attack. Still strange, though: wreckage all around and above him, but not a scratch on him…"
He managed to indulge in detached reflection while his vessel vomited uncontrollably: with painful spasms, kneeling, acrid tears, a scorched nasopharynx, a foul smell…
But after expelling the mucus and remnants of food, the stench of the battlefield became easier to bear, though nausea still gripped his insides tightly. The unfortunate officer could only hope all these discomforts would take a backseat during a fight.
To his relief, there were no survivors near him. With them, he'd have to fuss, losing precious time, or leave them to die, as regulations and common sense dictated.
When a fight is going on nearby, one should finish it first, and only then render possible aid. If one so desires. Shinigami eliminate threats. Support for the population should be provided by the secular authorities of the respective districts of the City. Up to and including evacuation, treatment, and other hassles.
However, no matter how rational the decision to deny aid to a wounded human was, he would still have felt a slight shame and mild discomfort about the situation. Of course, feeling awkward before an insignificant soul for correctly following regulations was absurd. Even if such adherence might cost the attacked civilians their lives.
Nevertheless, a certain strange, thin little voice inside him still squeaked about "wrongness," "protecting civilians," "abandonment in danger," and several other equally stupid or offensive phrases.
Another legacy of his past now his life before last which he, in his foolishness, had clung to for the first forty or fifty years of his life in the Soul Society.
"Perhaps I should try to remember as many details of that period of my life as possible. Since I'm trapped in a mortal body again."
Meanwhile, his body was forcibly acclimating to its surroundings. Reitsu flowed out of his body in a thin stream, heavy, reluctant, almost agonizing: it washed over his corneas to protect them from the sun's rays, gathered under his feet in the standard Shinigami stance, coated his skin in a film to soften impacts and environmental effects.
"Six fading signatures, one on the verge. The first ones are beyond hope; they'll die faster than I can complete the full incantation for any of the Healing Ways (Kaido). The last one is strong; his strange Reitsu is trying to heal his body on its own, but the wounds are too severe. Practically hopeless."
"I'll try to help once I eliminate the direct threat. Definitely no one else survived. Good," he nodded with satisfaction, then tried to suppress his Reitsu pressure as much as possible.
Minus one precious minute and the Third Officer set off on a roundabout path towards the battlefield.
Fortunately, his diminished spiritual control was enough for moving without leaving traces or sinking into the sand. That was sufficient; it was better to save his strength for proper Shunpo.
The sounds of battle (now beyond any doubt, judging by the aggressive hue of the foreign souls) came from quite far away from the destroyed caravan.
Evidently, the defenders had immediately tried to lead the unknown assailants away from the main group of civilians. If they had succeeded, another wave of attackers had nullified all their efforts, destroying every single person the guards had tried to save.
"Hm. Can't gauge their power level," the Shinigami frowned.
He clearly sensed two sides to the conflict.
On one side fought three, no, now two people. Both had highly developed, very material souls, literally nailed to their bodies. Nonsense! The stronger the soul, the more fiercely it tries to shed the shackles of the body.
Even the Fullbringers could transition into an incorporeal form fairly easily, as could the shamans of northern peoples. Only the Arrancar and the Quincies fused soul and body into a single entity, but there was no scent here of either spiritual vampires or the specific Reitsu of the cursed archers.
The second side was represented by three people. The same powerful Reitsu, the same anomaly as with the first two. Except, the fragments of Minus souls around them showed no desire to attack the trio. Quite the opposite: they helped destroy the remaining pair.
And each of the criminal trio had a Hollow fragment residing directly within their bodies. Like that parasitic caterpillar Aogari burned in the inner world. Only his had been several times stronger than these local ones.
But the result was the same.
Hollows… who had merged with humans.
Traitors!!!
A nameless oasis, burned palm trees, trampled vegetation, shattered, destroyed earth, clumps of priceless soil torn out with tree roots, a dried-up puddle instead of a central pond, huge bald patches and scorch marks where spiritual techniques had collided with the material world.
At the sight of this scene, these sensations of the ongoing battle, the Shinigami was seized by memories.
Pain, helplessness, the white mask hardening on his own flesh, the face of the traitor before him, laughter, talks about the "usefulness" of friendship with the maladjusted workaholic Okomura, the division of suspicions, the distrust from the rest of the "rescue" squad.
"There is nothing terrible about expecting to be betrayed. The true horror lies in not expecting betrayal," that voice, Aizen's voice, with an unfamiliar, authoritative velvet tone of a tyrant, sounded clearly, sharper than in real life.
The last words he heard in the Seireitei, before Aogari forced his master to tumble into the coincidental Garganta.
The scene of Aizen Sosuke's ultimate betrayal stood before his eyes, more real than the desert landscape ahead.
Scattered belongings, corpses, the sharp cries of camels and donkeys, exactly like the screams of people burning alive, gradually became background noise as completely different images flashed across his retina.
Red eyes from under Captain Kensei's mask, the first successful specimen of Hollowfication experiments. A pile of clothes from previous victims, weak officers and rank-and-file, the loud, unbearably girlish scream of the kid Hiyori during her transformation, tears in the corners of Yadomaru Lisa's eyes, whom he had admired since the Academy…
The Shinigami wheezed.
A scream of rage fought its way through the barrier of his throat, capillaries in his eyes burst from the mental strain, a roar filled his ears, red droplets of human blood trailed down his earlobes, falling onto his shoulder like spring drips, others left tracks under his nose, pushing a sharp, ferrous taste through his soiled lips.
"I will not respect your death wish when it is so hypocritical," Aogari's voice rang inside him like an iron chain of his past attachments.
Okomura had torn his bonds in the Dangai.
"You have no right to revenge when it is so unattainable. You are not overcoming limits; you are screaming with joy at their insurmountability."
His joy smelled too much of agony. He had restrained himself for so long, turned control into the meaning of life. Why not let him lose himself, just once in these two lives…
"If that is your path as a Shinigami, then I will not help you abandon your duty. Die alone, Okomura Seki!"
"Stop! You feel it too, don't you? Hollows in bodies, filthy Reitsu! They are the same! A threat to the balance, traitors to their own kind!"
"Then eliminate the threat, fulfill your duty. Don't revel in killing pathetic imitations of your real enemies!"
He understood.
He didn't want to understand; the young human body wanted to tear and rage, wanted to topple the sky onto the earthly firmament, declare war on anyone, just to reach the traitors and murderers, to reach Aizen Sosuke…
Who wasn't here, couldn't be here.
Petty, unjust venting of anger. Immature and childish to the same degree that his new body was immature and childish.
"You're right, Aogari."
His voice was hollow from unshed blood.
Anger still choked him, leading to bitten cheeks inside his mouth, burst blood vessels, weak, shameful, powerless tears.
A despicable, human, all-too-human reaction.
He could, no, he should deal with this later. Make a plan, calm his anger or redirect it outward, into the right channel, into other emotions. Into anything less helpless and shameful than a thirst for the blood of the first criminals he came across.
"Help me, my blade."
The warmth of his soul, distributed through human veins, a sensation of fullness and completion.
A whole world inside, where his Zanpakutō sang hymns to war and honor, to battles, to will and unyielding duty. The closest being in the world, the only one who managed to cross the boundary between worlds with his soul, through rebirth… or possessionOkomura couldn't say for sure what he had experienced.
Only the present mattered.
He was distracted for mere seconds, but his run was nearing its end.
Black figures with dark masks pointed the way with their dead, sand-covered, explosion-crushed bodies.
They were occasionally interspersed with the silhouettes of men and women in strange, colorful, chaotic outfits, vaguely, painfully, nostalgically familiar from the fashion of his first life.
The matte barrel of a mangled automatic rifle in a sandy drift quite accurately indicated the technological level of this world. But then why was there a primitive caravan with wagons here? Although… remote backwaters existed in the World of the Living too… that is, on his home planet… Earth?
The desert was the perfect place for all sorts of archaic things.
"Lucky or not? On one hand, in a city I might have seriously lost my mind if I woke up in the middle of a crowded square; on the other hand, it's unlikely to have been as dangerous as here and now…" Okomura was glad to slightly change the direction of his thoughts, to avoid fixating on the upcoming fight.
"This is a mission, just a mission," he repeated to himself, to avoid sliding back into the mind-depriving amok, "Just another assignment for the Third Officer of the 13th Division."
"Like the last time Captain Ukitake sent me with Lisa to find Muguruma Kensei and his group… No! Don't think about that. Focus on what you see now. The fight. The strange auras. The fleeing criminals. The fleeing criminals?"
The battle had managed to die down, almost cease, during the pitiful minute of his run to the target.
One of the caravan defenders had sustained a serious injury and was lying either unconscious or with completely depleted Reitsu, judging by the agonizing fluctuations of his soul. The second, also the last one, was still fighting back, but in terms of condition, he wasn't much better off than his comrade.
However, the soul of the only mobile defender shone far brighter than any other on the battlefield; moreover, it contained two strange formations at once, resembling underdeveloped links of a soul chain.
Exactly like the fourth segment, the connection between a Zanpakutō and a Shinigami. Except these unknown warriors had no spiritual chains to speak of. Their souls were too fused with their bodies.
"And there are the fleeing criminals…"
A wounded young man with a natural scorpion's tail and the dense, developed aura of a trained warrior.
His mouth was bubbling, his eyes rolled back, and his torn-open chest twitched under a sloppy bandage every time his companion moved.
A small, weaselly man in a domino mask, with a rapier at his belt, carried his comrade on his shoulder without much trouble, though the wounded ally of the Hollows dragged his feet through the sand.
They moved quickly, too quickly for ordinary people. A powerful soul aura shimmered with emerald glints under the merciless sun.
There was no particular skill in the retreating enemy's movements; it was only enough to strengthen individual muscle groups and tendons in his legs.
A step above general body reinforcement with Reiryoku or channeling spiritual energy into the legs indiscriminately, like the eternal rank-and-file incompetents, but none of the precise virtuosity, the sensitivity of a Shinigami officer's Shunpo, or even trained soldiers of the 2nd Division.
Skilled amateurs, talented self-taught, the level of a strong Rukongai gang, no more.
Some kind of transport was already waiting for the fleeing enemies ahead. It was impossible to make out the specific vehicle due to the distance. Even enhanced vision has its limits.
After a moment's hesitation, Seki decided to let these traitors go.
Yes, the scorpion-man would definitely die, if not during his first attack, then certainly during the fight. However, the healthier team member still had a normal level of Reitsu and wouldn't stand on ceremony.
And the Shinigami himself was far from in the best shape for a fight with an unknown, dangerous enemy who was also leaving the battlefield.
"First, I need to save the two remaining guards. That way I can find out where I am, what happened, how those people managed to unite with a clearly unintelligent pack of low-level Hollow fragments."
However, he got the answer to his question almost immediately, as soon as he covered the remaining hundred meters to the battlefield and took a close look at the attackers.