The fluorescent lights of the hospital room buzzed with that particular frequency that burrowed into the skull like a persistent insect. Twenty-seven years of life, and this was how it ended—not with a bang, not with glory, but with the slow, pathetic whimper of a body betraying itself one cell at a time.
The man in the bed had stopped counting the days. What was the point? The doctors had given him weeks, then days, and now they just looked at him with that particular brand of pity reserved for the already-dead. His mother had fallen asleep in the chair beside him, her hand loosely gripping his, and he wished she would just go home. Watching her suffer was worse than the cancer eating through his organs.
On the tablet propped against his water pitcher, an anime played on mute. Bleach. The Kenpachi Zaraki fight against Nnoitra. He'd seen it a hundred times, but something about watching that monster of a man tear through his enemies with nothing but raw power and an unhinged love of combat made the dying process slightly more bearable.
That's the life, he thought, watching the pixelated carnage unfold. No hesitation. No fear. Just the pure, undiluted joy of battle.
His eyes grew heavy.
The heart monitor's beeping began to slow.
If I could be anyone, he thought, the edges of consciousness fraying like old rope, anyone at all...
The flatline tone sang its one-note dirge.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing, followed by everything.
It hit him like a freight train made of lightning and fire—sensation beyond sensation, pain beyond pain, and then something else entirely. Power. Raw, unfiltered, absolutely monstrous power flooding through every fiber of a body that he suddenly realized was very, very different from the one he'd died in.
His eyes snapped open.
The first thing he noticed was the sky—impossibly blue, almost offensively vivid, like someone had cranked the saturation up to levels that shouldn't exist in nature. The second thing he noticed was the grass beneath him, which was currently dying in a perfect circle around his body.
The third thing he noticed was his hand.
It was huge. Scarred. Calloused in ways that spoke of decades of gripping a sword. He flexed the fingers experimentally and watched muscles ripple beneath skin that looked like it had been through a meat grinder and come out the other side tougher for the experience.
He sat up.
The world seemed smaller somehow. Not literally—if anything, the landscape stretched out around him with a vastness that suggested this wasn't Earth, or at least not any Earth he recognized—but smaller in the sense that he felt bigger. More present. Like his very existence was pressing against reality and reality was the one giving ground.
What the hell happened to me?
He looked down at himself. Torn black robes—no, not robes. A shihakusho. The word surfaced from somewhere deep in his mind, accompanied by a flood of memories that weren't his.
Except they were his now.
The 11th Division. The Zaraki District. Yachiru. Ikkaku. Yumichika. Unohana.
Unohana.
The name sent a shiver down his spine and a grin spreading across his face—a grin that felt natural, that felt right, like his face had been waiting his whole life to make this expression.
The memories kept coming. Battles. Countless battles. Victory after victory after victory, and yet never satisfaction, never fulfillment, because no one had ever been strong enough. He'd spent years searching for someone who could actually push him, actually make him feel alive, and he'd found exactly one person capable of doing that.
And now she was gone.
But the grin didn't fade. Because along with those memories came something else—knowledge from his previous life, knowledge about fiction and fantasy and worlds that apparently weren't so fictional after all.
Dragon Ball.
He recognized this place now, or at least the general aesthetic of it. The impossible colors. The strange rock formations in the distance. The faint but unmistakable sense of ki permeating the air like background radiation.
And speaking of ki...
He closed his eyes and felt.
The ability came as naturally as breathing—sensing energy, reading power levels, understanding the shape and texture of spiritual pressure. Except what he was sensing wasn't spiritual pressure. It was something else. Something similar but fundamentally different, like comparing a katana to a broadsword.
And there were some big signatures out there.
His grin widened.
In the distance, maybe a few miles away, he could sense a cluster of powers. Most of them were nothing special—impressive by normal standards, maybe, but nothing that would make him break a sweat. A few were stronger, strong enough to potentially be entertaining for a minute or two.
But two of them...
Two of them were magnificent.
One was enormous, vast, deep like an ocean that went down forever. It felt ancient and terrible and absolutely divine in the most literal sense of the word. The other was smaller but no less impressive—a blazing sun of energy that kept fluctuating, rising and falling like waves crashing against rocks.
And they were fighting.
He could feel the shockwaves from here, reality shuddering with each exchange of blows. The smaller power was losing—that much was obvious even from this distance. Getting absolutely demolished, actually, with the kind of one-sided domination that made fights boring to watch.
That won't do at all.
His hand moved to his hip without conscious thought, and his fingers closed around something that made his whole body sing with recognition.
A sword. Battered, chipped, looking like it should have been retired decades ago. But the weight of it, the feel of it—this was his partner, his other half, the extension of his soul that had drunk the blood of a thousand enemies.
He drew it slowly, savoring the whisper of steel against sheath.
"Well then," he said aloud, and his voice came out as a low rumble that seemed to make the air itself vibrate. "Let's go find some fun."
He started walking.
The vessel came into view after about ten minutes of walking—a massive cruise ship-looking thing that was inexplicably sitting on dry land, surrounded by what appeared to be some kind of party setup. Colorful decorations. Tables laden with food. People milling about in various states of casual dress.
None of that mattered.
What mattered was happening about two hundred meters above the ship, where two figures were engaged in combat that made the sky itself tremble.
He stopped walking and looked up, taking in the scene with the critical eye of someone who had spent centuries analyzing battles.
The purple one was clearly in control. Slim, feline, moving with the casual grace of a predator that knew it was at the absolute top of the food chain. Every attack was precise, every defense effortless, every movement radiating the kind of supreme confidence that only came from being genuinely unbeatable.
The golden one was trying. Really trying. Pouring everything he had into attacks that should have shattered mountains, moving at speeds that should have been impossible to track, fighting with a desperation born of knowing that everything depended on this moment.
It wasn't enough.
The purple one flicked a finger against the golden one's forehead, and the resulting shockwave sent the golden fighter plummeting toward the ocean below like a discarded toy.
Pathetic.
Not the golden one—he was clearly giving it everything he had, which was respectable enough. No, what was pathetic was the fight. The absolute lack of tension, of excitement, of that beautiful uncertainty that made battles worth having.
The purple one was too strong. The golden one was too weak. And the result was something that looked like combat but felt like bullying.
I should do something about that.
He didn't bother with subtlety. Subtlety was for people who cared about making good first impressions, and he had never been one of those people.
Instead, he gathered power in his legs—spiritual pressure, reiatsu, whatever you wanted to call it—and jumped.
The ground cratered beneath him. The air screamed past his face. The ship below shrank to the size of a toy, and then he was up among the clouds, ascending toward the divine being who was watching the fallen golden warrior with an expression of bored disappointment.
"Hey."
The purple one turned, and for a moment, genuine surprise flickered across those feline features.
"What's this?" the being asked, his voice carrying an undertone of power that would have made lesser creatures fall to their knees. "Another challenger?"
"Don't know about 'challenger,'" came the response, accompanied by a grin that showed far too many teeth. "I just saw a boring fight and figured I'd make it interesting."
A blue-skinned figure floating nearby—tall, elegant, carrying a staff that radiated calm authority—tilted his head with obvious interest. "Lord Beerus, this one's energy is quite unusual. It's not ki at all."
"I noticed, Whis." The purple one—Beerus, apparently—studied the newcomer with renewed interest. "What are you, exactly? You don't feel like anything I've encountered before."
"Does it matter?"
Beerus's eyebrows rose. "I suppose not. But I am curious—do you have any idea who I am?"
"Nope."
The admission was cheerful, utterly unconcerned. Beerus seemed almost offended by the lack of recognition.
"I am Beerus, God of Destruction. I have existed since before the dawn of this universe. I have destroyed more planets than there are stars in your sky. My power is absolute, my authority unchallenged, and every living thing in existence trembles at my name."
A moment of silence.
"Cool," came the response. "So are we gonna fight, or are you gonna keep talking?"
Down on the ship, someone choked on their drink.
Beerus had lived for millions upon millions of years. In that time, he had encountered every possible type of reaction to his presence. Fear was the most common—the instinctive, primal terror that came from standing before a force of nature made flesh. Respect was frequent among the more civilized races. Worship was practically universal among the truly religious.
What he had never encountered was this.
Complete, total, almost dismissive lack of concern. Not bravado—he could smell bravado, could taste the fear it tried to mask. This was something else entirely. This massive figure with the scarred face and the battered sword and the unsettling grin genuinely, truly, fundamentally did not care that he was facing a god.
It was either the height of stupidity or the depth of madness.
Either way, it was interesting.
"Very well," Beerus said, a smile curling at the edges of his mouth. "If you're so eager to be destroyed, far be it from me to deny you."
He moved.
Not at full speed—that would have been pointless, like using a nuclear weapon to swat a fly. But fast enough that most mortal eyes wouldn't have been able to track him, fast enough that his fist should have connected with the newcomer's face before the fool even realized the fight had started.
It didn't.
CLANG.
The sound was unlike anything Beerus had heard before—not the dull thud of flesh meeting flesh, not the crack of bone or the wet squelch of destruction. It was the ring of metal, clear and pure, accompanied by a shockwave that sent clouds spiraling away in every direction.
The sword had intercepted his punch.
Not blocked—intercepted, with perfect timing and precision that spoke of reflexes honed over countless years of combat. And the force of the impact, rather than destroying the blade, had been absorbed, channeled away harmlessly into the surrounding air.
The grin on the scarred face widened.
"Not bad," rumbled that gravelly voice. "But I hope that's not all you've got."
Beerus felt something he hadn't felt in a very, very long time.
Anticipation.
"Oh," he said softly, "this might actually be entertaining."
The battle began in earnest.
To call it a fight would be technically accurate but emotionally misleading. Fights implied some level of fairness, some pretense of equal footing. This was something else—a god throwing everything he was willing to commit at an opponent who simply refused to fall.
Beerus's attacks were devastating. Each punch carried the force to shatter planets. Each kick could have disrupted the gravitational stability of solar systems. His energy blasts—casually tossed off like afterthoughts—would have erased lesser beings from existence entirely.
They all hit.
And they all did damage.
Blood flew with increasing frequency as the exchange continued. That massive body accumulated wounds at an alarming rate—cuts, burns, contusions, injuries that would have killed ordinary beings a hundred times over.
But the grin never wavered.
If anything, it grew wider.
"HAHAHAHA!"
The laugh echoed across the battlefield like thunder, utterly incongruous with the violence being inflicted. It was the laugh of someone having the time of their life, someone who had finally found what they had been searching for.
"That's it!" the scarred figure roared, catching one of Beerus's kicks on the flat of his blade and sliding backward through the air. "MORE! GIVE ME MORE!"
Beerus obliged.
A devastating combination—fist to face, knee to gut, elbow to spine—sent the newcomer spinning end over end through the sky. But before the God of Destruction could follow up, that battered sword was singing through the air again, and Beerus found himself actually having to dodge.
"Interesting," he murmured, weaving between slashes that left afterimages in the air. "Your technique is crude, but your instincts are exceptional."
"Technique is for people who need it," came the response, followed by an overhead strike that would have split a mountain in half. "I just cut what's in front of me."
Beerus caught the blade between two fingers.
For a moment, they stood frozen—god and warrior, divine power against mortal steel. The air crackled with competing energies, reality itself seeming to hold its breath.
"You're bleeding from a dozen wounds," Beerus observed. "Your body is damaged beyond what should be survivable. And yet you keep fighting. Why?"
The answer came without hesitation: "Because it's fun."
And with a surge of spiritual pressure that made the sky itself groan, the scarred warrior pushed through Beerus's guard.
The blade bit into divine flesh.
A thin line of blood appeared on Beerus's cheek.
Absolute silence descended over the battlefield.
On the ship below, no one moved. No one breathed. The assembled fighters—some of the strongest beings in the universe—stared upward with expressions ranging from disbelief to shock to something approaching religious awe.
"He..." Krillin's voice cracked. "He actually cut him."
"Impossible," Vegeta whispered, and his voice contained something it rarely did: uncertainty. "Beerus is a god. A God of Destruction. No mortal should be able to..."
"But he did," Piccolo interrupted, his eyes narrowed in concentration. "I saw it. We all saw it."
Goku, who had managed to crawl out of the ocean and make it back to the ship, was staring upward with an expression of pure, undiluted excitement. "That guy's incredible! I've never felt energy like that before—it's not ki, but it's strong. Really, really strong!"
"Who is he?" Gohan asked. "Where did he come from?"
No one had an answer.
Beerus touched his cheek.
His fingers came away bloody.
For a long moment, he simply stared at the red staining his fingertips, his expression unreadable. Then, slowly, he looked up at the scarred warrior hovering before him.
"Well," he said finally. "That's new."
The grin facing him showed no fear, no triumph, no arrogance. Just pure, undiluted joy.
"Told you I'd make it interesting."
Beerus laughed.
It started as a chuckle, grew to a full-throated laugh, and eventually became something approaching genuine mirth. He laughed until tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, until his shoulders shook, until the sheer absurdity of the situation overcame even his divine composure.
"You're insane," he managed between laughs. "Completely, utterly, magnificently insane."
"Probably," came the cheerful agreement. "But I'm also not done yet."
The scarred warrior's spiritual pressure began to rise.
It had been impressive before—strong enough to distort the air, to create visible waves of force around his body. But now it started climbing higher, and higher, and higher, with no apparent limit in sight.
"There's this thing I've been wearing," the scarred figure explained, reaching up to his face. "An eye patch. Keeps my power in check."
Beerus's eyes narrowed. "A limiter?"
"Yep. Makes fights last longer." The grin turned almost sheepish. "Bad habit, I know. But I think you've earned the full experience."
The eye patch came off.
And the universe screamed.
The shockwave of released power was visible from space.
A dome of golden energy exploded outward from the scarred warrior's body, expanding at near-light speed and carrying with it a pressure that made reality itself bend and flex. On the ship below, the weaker party guests collapsed instantly, their bodies simply unable to withstand even the ambient force of what had been unleashed. Even the stronger fighters—Piccolo, Vegeta, Gohan—found themselves struggling to stay upright.
Goku, fully recovered thanks to a hastily consumed Senzu Bean, stared upward with wide eyes. "That power... it just doubled. No, more than doubled. It's still climbing!"
He was right.
The spiritual pressure continued to rise, defying logic and reason and every law of conservation that should have applied. It was like watching a contained star suddenly expand, except this star showed no signs of reaching its limit.
And in the center of that maelstrom of power, the scarred warrior rolled his shoulders and sighed with contentment.
"Ahhh, that's better. Gets cramped, holding all that in."
Beerus studied his opponent with new eyes. The change was obvious—not just in raw power, which had increased dramatically, but in the very presence of the being before him. There was a weight to this warrior now, a gravity that had nothing to do with physics and everything to do with the sheer density of power contained within a single form.
"Fascinating," Whis murmured from his observation point. "I've never seen energy quite like this before. It seems to be responding to his emotional state—the more excited he becomes, the stronger he grows."
"Is there an upper limit?" Beerus asked without taking his eyes off his opponent.
"Unknown, my lord. But I suspect we're about to find out."
The scarred warrior raised his sword, and the battered blade seemed to hunger in his grip.
"Round two?"
Beerus's tail swished behind him. "By all means."
The second phase of their battle made the first look like a warmup exercise.
Where before Beerus had been fighting with casual superiority, now he found himself actually having to work. The scarred warrior's attacks came faster, hit harder, and showed an adaptability that bordered on prescient. Every technique Beerus used was analyzed in real-time, countered more effectively with each repetition, and occasionally turned back against him in ways that forced the God of Destruction to actually dodge.
And through it all, that manic grin never wavered.
"HAHAHAHA! YES! THIS IS WHAT I WANTED!"
The sword sang through the air, leaving trails of spiritual pressure that persisted for seconds after each swing. Beerus found himself giving ground—not much, not consistently, but enough that he noticed. Enough that he began to take this strange, impossible warrior seriously.
"Your improvement rate is absurd," Beerus observed, ducking under a horizontal slash that would have taken his head off. "You're literally getting stronger as we fight."
"Always have!" came the cheerful response, followed by a devastating downward strike that Beerus only barely avoided. "That's the best part about fighting strong opponents—I get to push past my limits!"
It was, Beerus reflected, one of the most ridiculous abilities he had ever encountered. A warrior who grew stronger through combat itself, whose potential seemed to have no upper limit, who treated mortal wounds like minor inconveniences and divine power like an exciting challenge.
If he'd had a few million years to develop...
The thought was interrupted by a knee to the face that actually snapped his head back.
"Focus!" the scarred warrior roared gleefully. "The fight's not over yet!"
Beerus wiped blood from his lip and smiled.
Very well. If you want to push yourself, let me show you what you're pushing toward.
He stopped holding back.
The change was immediately apparent.
Beerus's casual grace transformed into something else entirely—a focused, concentrated lethality that spoke of aeons of combat experience. His attacks came faster, hit harder, and carried behind them the weight of divine authority that could unmake reality itself.
The scarred warrior was forced onto the defensive for the first time since removing his eye patch.
But he was laughing.
"THERE it is!" he roared, his sword a blur as it intercepted strike after strike. "That's what I was looking for! More! GIVE ME MORE!"
Beerus obliged with prejudice.
A palm strike to the chest sent the scarred warrior rocketing backward through the clouds. An energy blast—a real one, not the casual attacks from before—detonated against his guard and scorched away a significant portion of his clothing. A devastating kick to the spine would have paralyzed any normal being, enhanced or otherwise.
But the scarred warrior was not a normal being.
Not anymore.
He caught himself mid-flight, spiritual pressure flaring so brightly that he became a second sun in the sky. Blood streamed from a dozen wounds, but his body was already healing, regeneration working overtime to keep pace with the damage being inflicted.
And his power was still rising.
"You know," he said, almost conversationally, "I've been using this sword in its sealed state. Didn't think I'd need to release it."
Beerus paused his assault. "Release?"
"Yeah. This blade has a name, has a real form. I've been fighting with it asleep this whole time." The grin took on a different quality—anticipation, excitement, something approaching hunger. "But you're strong enough that I think it's time to wake her up."
The scarred warrior raised his sword to the sky.
The blade began to glow.
On the ship, the assembled fighters felt reality shift.
It was subtle at first—a change in the air pressure, a deepening of shadows, a sense that something significant was about to happen. But as the glow around the battered sword intensified, as the spiritual pressure emanating from the scarred warrior reached heights that should have been impossible, even the subtlety vanished.
This was power.
Real, true, absolute power.
"What's happening?" Bulma demanded, clutching Chi-Chi for support as the deck trembled beneath their feet.
"He's transforming," Vegeta said, his voice hushed with something that might have been awe. "Or his weapon is. I can feel it changing, becoming something more."
"The energy output is incredible," Gohan added, his senses straining to process what he was feeling. "It's like... it's like the sword itself is alive, and it's waking up."
Above them, the scarred warrior spoke.
"Drink," he intoned, his voice resonating with power that made the air vibrate, "Nozarashi."
The sword transformed.
What had been a battered, chipped blade elongated and expanded, becoming something that should have been too large for any human to wield. A massive cleaver-axe hybrid, its edge serrated with teeth that seemed to drink in the light around them. A handle wrapped in dark cloth, connected to a heavy chain that snaked around the warrior's arm.
And the power...
The power was immense.
It radiated from the released weapon like heat from a forge, like light from a star. It merged with the warrior's already considerable spiritual pressure, amplifying it, multiplying it, pushing it to heights that made their earlier clash seem like a minor scuffle.
Beerus looked at the transformed weapon and felt something stir in his chest.
Excitement.
"Well," he said softly, "this just got interesting."
The scarred warrior's grin was wide enough to split his face. He hefted the massive weapon—Nozarashi, he had called it—with an ease that belied its enormous size.
"Now we can really fight."
And then he moved.
The assault that followed was unlike anything Beerus had experienced in millennia.
Nozarashi carved through the air with devastating force, each swing carrying enough power to shatter planets, to rip holes in the fabric of space, to challenge the very authority of a God of Destruction. The serrated edge bit into Beerus's defenses with a hunger that seemed almost sentient, as if the weapon itself was alive and desperately wanted to taste divine blood.
And the scarred warrior wielding it had become something beyond mortal.
His movements were faster, his strikes more precise, his instincts sharper. The fusion of warrior and weapon had created something greater than the sum of its parts—a perfect instrument of battle, designed for one purpose and one purpose only.
Cutting everything in its path.
Beerus found himself pushed to levels he hadn't accessed in centuries. His attacks came with the force of supernovae, his defenses hardened to the point of dimensional stability, his speed increased until he was moving faster than light itself.
And still, the scarred warrior kept up.
"HAHAHAHA! THIS IS AMAZING!"
Every wound that should have been fatal was shrugged off. Every attack that should have been devastating was either blocked or embraced with terrifying enthusiasm. Every technique Beerus employed was met with adaptations, counters, and occasionally pure savage instinct that accomplished what refined skill could not.
They crashed through clouds, shattered rock formations, sent shockwaves rippling across the ocean. The ship below was forced to deploy emergency shields, its passengers clinging to each other as the battle raged overhead with apocalyptic intensity.
And through it all, the scarred warrior laughed.
Not mockery. Not madness. Joy—the pure, undiluted ecstasy of someone finally, finally finding a worthy opponent.
"This is what I wanted!" he roared, Nozarashi carving an arc that left afterimages burned into the air. "This is what I've been searching for my whole life! Someone I can really cut loose against!"
Beerus blocked the strike—barely—and found himself actually sliding backward through the air from the force of impact.
"You're not normal," he observed, wiping blood from a cut on his arm. "No mortal should be able to do this."
"Normal is boring!" came the response, followed by another devastating assault. "Normal is weak! I want to be the strongest, to fight the strongest, to feel ALIVE!"
And in that moment, Beerus understood.
This wasn't about victory or defeat. This wasn't about dominance or submission. This was about the pure, fundamental thrill of combat—the joy of pushing beyond limits, of testing oneself against worthy opposition, of finding someone who could actually, genuinely, make you work.
It was, in its own twisted way, beautiful.
The battle reached its peak as the sun began to set over the strange, colorful world below.
Both combatants had pushed themselves to extraordinary heights. Beerus had accessed power that could unmake galaxies with a thought. The scarred warrior had grown beyond anything that should have been possible for a mortal being, his spiritual pressure now rivaling entities that existed on cosmic scales.
And yet, inevitably, the difference between god and man began to tell.
Beerus was the God of Destruction. His power was not merely immense—it was fundamental, woven into the fabric of the universe itself. He could be challenged, could be pushed, could be made to work... but in the end, there was a ceiling to mortal achievement, and that ceiling existed far below his true capabilities.
A final exchange left the scarred warrior falling from the sky.
Nozarashi had reverted to its sealed state, the spiritual pressure maintaining its release finally exhausted. The massive body was broken in dozens of places, blood streaming from wounds that would have killed lesser beings a hundred times over.
But even falling, even defeated, that face wore a grin of pure satisfaction.
Worth it, he thought as the ground rushed up to meet him. Totally worth it.
He crashed into the deck of the ship with enough force to leave a crater.
For a moment, nothing moved. The assembled fighters stared at the broken figure lying in the splintered wood, none of them quite sure what to do or say.
Then Beerus descended, landing lightly beside the crater with an expression that was difficult to read.
"You're still alive," he observed.
A cough. Blood splattered the deck. "Barely."
"Most beings would have been erased long ago. Your resilience is... impressive."
"Thanks." Another cough. "You're pretty good too."
Silence.
Then Beerus laughed.
It started as a chuckle and grew into something full and genuine, the kind of laughter that came from unexpected joy. He laughed until the tension broke, until the assembled fighters began to relax, until the absurdity of the entire situation overcame even divine dignity.
"I like you," Beerus declared. "You're the first mortal in millennia who's actually made me enjoy a fight."
"High praise from a god." The scarred figure struggled to sit up, wincing as broken bones ground together. "We should do this again sometime."
"Perhaps we will." Beerus glanced at Whis, who nodded imperceptibly. "But first—who are you? I've never encountered power like yours before."
The scarred warrior paused.
For a moment, memories surfaced—memories of a hospital room, of fluorescent lights, of a life that had ended in weakness and regret. But those memories felt distant now, like stories told about someone else.
He was not that dying man anymore.
He was something new. Something strong. Something that had stood against a god and earned respect through nothing but raw power and unbreakable will.
"Kenpachi," he said finally, the name feeling right on his tongue. "Kenpachi Zaraki."
Beerus's tail swished thoughtfully. "Kenpachi Zaraki. I'll remember that name."
"You'd better." Kenpachi's grin returned, bloody but undiminished. "Because next time, I'm going to cut you for real."
What followed was, somewhat bizarrely, a party.
Bulma, demonstrating the particular brand of pragmatism that came from years of dealing with superpowered beings who regularly destroyed her property, simply ordered the ship's automated systems to repair the deck and announced that the festivities would continue.
Kenpachi found himself seated on a reinforced chair that groaned under his weight, surrounded by curious faces and bombarded with questions he mostly ignored.
"That was AMAZING!" Goku practically bounced in front of him, eyes shining with poorly concealed excitement. "The way you kept getting stronger, and that transformation with your sword, and—and we HAVE to spar later! You have to teach me how you did that thing where you—"
"Later," Kenpachi grunted, accepting a massive plate of food from a blue-haired woman who seemed to be in charge. "Hungry."
He wasn't sure if Shinigami needed to eat, but his body was demanding sustenance with an urgency that suggested his regeneration was burning through considerable resources. The food disappeared with alarming speed, plate after plate vanishing down his gullet while the assembled fighters watched with varying degrees of amazement.
"So," Vegeta said, arms crossed and scowl firmly in place, "where exactly did you come from? Your power isn't ki—I've never felt anything like it."
Kenpachi paused mid-bite to consider the question.
He could explain the truth—that he was a reincarnated anime fan from another dimension, that his knowledge of their world came from fiction, that everything they experienced as reality had been entertainment in his previous life.
He could.
But that sounded like way too much effort.
"Somewhere else," he said instead, and resumed eating.
"That's not an answer," Vegeta pressed.
"It's the only one you're getting."
Vegeta's scowl deepened, but before he could push further, Piccolo intervened.
"Your energy signature is unique," the Namekian observed. "It's not ki, and it's not magic. What is it?"
"Reiatsu." Kenpachi finished another plate and reached for more. "Spiritual pressure. Manifestation of my soul's power."
"And that weapon?"
"Nozarashi." He patted the battered sword at his side, its sealed form innocuous compared to the devastating power it had displayed earlier. "My zanpakuto. Been with me a long time."
The answers only raised more questions, but Kenpachi's body language made it clear he was done with the interrogation. One by one, the fighters drifted away, leaving him to his mountain of food and his thoughts.
All except one.
Goku remained nearby, practically vibrating with contained excitement. "Hey, hey, Kenpachi—that's your name, right?—when can we spar? I want to feel that power for myself! Beerus is way too strong for me to really fight, but you—"
"Tomorrow," Kenpachi interrupted. "Let me heal first."
"Tomorrow?! You'll be healed by tomorrow?!"
Kenpachi looked down at his body. The wounds were already closing, bones knitting together with an audible grinding sound. By morning, he estimated, he'd be back to full strength.
"Yeah. Tomorrow."
Goku's grin matched his own. "It's a promise then! I'm Goku, by the way. Son Goku! And I can't wait to fight you!"
Son Goku.
The name echoed through Marcus's memories—the legendary Super Saiyan, the man who had defeated Frieza, the greatest warrior in Universe 7. In his old life, Kenpachi had watched countless episodes of this man's battles, had admired his pure love of combat and his seemingly endless potential.
Now he was going to fight him.
"Neither can I," Kenpachi said, and meant it.
Night fell over the Capsule Corporation ship.
Most of the party guests had either gone home or retired to the ship's guest quarters. Beerus and Whis had departed for Beerus's planet, though not before the God of Destruction had made it clear that he expected to see Kenpachi again.
"You have potential," Beerus had said. "Real potential. Don't waste it on weaklings."
"Wasn't planning to."
Now Kenpachi sat alone on the ship's upper deck, staring up at stars that were subtly different from the ones he remembered from either of his lives. The universe spread out above him in all its infinite majesty, and for the first time since his death and rebirth, he allowed himself to really think about what had happened.
He should be more disturbed by this.
He had died. Actually died, flatlined in a hospital bed while his mother held his hand. He had been reborn in another dimension, in another body, with another person's memories and powers.
He should be grieving his old life. He should be confused, frightened, overwhelmed by the impossibility of his situation.
Instead, he felt...
Alive.
For the first time in twenty-seven years, he felt truly, completely, alive.
"Figures," he muttered to himself. "Had to die to finally start living."
There was probably some philosophical insight there, some deep meditation on the nature of existence and the meaning of life. Kenpachi couldn't be bothered to find it.
What he knew was this: he had power now. Real power, the kind he had only ever dreamed about while lying in that hospital bed watching anime on his tablet. He was in a universe full of strong opponents, beings who could challenge him, push him, make him grow.
Tomorrow, he would fight Goku.
After that... who knew? This universe was full of threats—Frieza, Cell, Buu, and dozens of others his old memories told him about. And beyond that, other universes, other dimensions, other realities full of beings who might provide the challenge he craved.
He was going to fight them all.
Every single one.
And he was going to love every second of it.
Kenpachi Zaraki lay back on the deck, closed his eyes, and let himself heal. Tomorrow would bring new battles, new challenges, new opportunities to test himself against the strongest the universe had to offer.
He couldn't wait.
The next morning dawned bright and clear.
Kenpachi woke to find his body fully restored—every wound healed, every bone mended, every muscle refreshed and ready for combat. He stood, stretched, and felt the familiar weight of Nozarashi at his hip.
"All right," he said to no one in particular. "Let's see what this universe has to offer."
He walked to the ship's edge and looked out over the landscape. In the distance, he could already sense Goku's energy signature, elevated and eager. The Saiyan was warming up, pushing his power levels in anticipation of their promised spar.
Kenpachi's grin spread across his scarred face.
This is just the beginning.
He leaped from the ship, spiritual pressure flaring around him like a golden shroud. The air screamed past his face as he rocketed toward Goku's location, toward battle, toward the life he had always wanted but never believed he could have.
Behind him, the sun rose over a new day.
Ahead of him, endless possibilities stretched toward the horizon.
And in his heart, for the first time in his existence—either of his existences—Kenpachi Zaraki felt at peace.
Not because the battles were over.
Because they were just beginning.
End of Chapter 1
Next Chapter: "The Saiyan and the Shinigami—A Battle of Eternal Rivals Begins!"