Rain drummed through the night. The wind was still—the perfect time to leave.
Once everything was "ready" (Shuuichi hadn't really prepared much), Higashino Shuuichi pushed open the Otherworld Gate shaped by Seyabasa.
Beyond the door stretched a pitch-black wasteland—an endless plain.
First impression: a lot like Hueco Mundo.
He stepped through. The gate shut; Seyabasa returned to his hand.
Then the far horizon began to roll upward, and the surrounding barrens condensed into tangible reiatsu, pressing in on Shuuichi from all sides.
"What the—?!"
First time facing something this absurd, but the reflexes drilled into him in Soul Society didn't lag.
"Advance, Heisha! 'The finest win with the unexpected!' Bakudō 73: Hi · Tōzan Shō (Fire · Inverse Mountain Crystal)!"
A down-pointing triangular prism flashed up around him; a skin of blazing particles formed a high-temperature buffer, hardening Tōzan Shō's shell.
What shocked him next were the countless pinpricks of light that winked on all around him.
He knew those lights by heart after endless scrims in Hueco Mundo.
Cero.
As the saying goes: the sound arrives with the light.
Blinding brilliance burned this black domain to white; then came the deafening chain of explosions.
Reishi shattered.
Shuuichi threw every trick he had at the storm, using even his decent zanjutsu to shear away beams—but the tight space and the near-unquantifiable number of Ceros left him nowhere to dodge, nowhere to retreat.
For a heartbeat, it felt like he was getting worked over by Starrk.
When the spray settled, Shuuichi fell in a bloody heap, flat on his back and gulping air.
His "infinite regeneration" must have kicked in dozens of times just now—barely keeping him alive.
No wonder Hell had suppressed so many of Soul Society's greatest reiatsu monsters. If this was the "welcome gift," Shuuichi had to tip his hat.
Still… he'd underestimated it.
Hell's opening move had zero patience for "testing the waters." It went straight to full bombardment.
Only now did he make out what had been shooting him.
An ancient Menos, a living tower of flesh and bone, loomed before him. Above, a pitcher-plant head closed fast—its rim brightening with a newly-forming Cero ring.
Did I… fall from that high up?
For some reason, that useless thought came first.
He raised his blade.
"Heisha—Bankai! War-Craft—Smiling Blade!"
Power roared out of him. The sudden surge from Bankai gave him back most of his stamina.
And with stamina came the fuel his regeneration needed to keep humming.
"Child of heaven! Ironclad wall! Dragons run, lions roar, tigers cry, wolves surge—cleave the world before collapse! Bakudō 81: Dankū (Severing Void)!"
A black eight-petaled bloom opened overhead; a transparent reishi wall spread wide.
Shuuichi sprang up, one palm braced on the back of the black blossom—shoving it forward as a shield.
A trick he'd picked up fighting Kapu Holmes.
Cero rained like bullets. He knew the Dankū wouldn't last long.
But—
"I only need to get level with you!"
He broke back to where he'd first fallen.
As he suspected, that "endless plain" he'd seen earlier was just camouflage inside this giant's hollow skull.
Before his barrier failed, Shuuichi flash-stepped to the crown of the Menos's head. Ceros that had punched through pierced him in turn—he ignored them and stabbed his Zanpakutō straight down.
Thunder and howls rattled the sky.
Even drew two more behemoths from afar, drifting closer.
"…Hadō 99: Goryūtenmetsu (Five Dragons Converge to Annihilate)!"
The chant snapped shut; under a hail of suicidal Ceros—even ones that didn't care about hitting the Menos's own body—Shuuichi unleashed his heaviest strike.
Five dragons burst from cloud and surged away.
The giant body shredded, swallowed, and vanished.
Was that it?
He wanted to tell himself yes.
Reality said no.
Watching the Menos reconstitute at a speed he couldn't quite grasp, Shuuichi realized: in Hell, every monster seemed to have a regeneration cheat better than his.
In fact, it felt like a rule of this pocket world.
And as an interloper outside that rule, he didn't get to share the buff.
"Kinda cheating, don't you think…"
He tightened his grip on Seyabasa. Hell was trickier than he'd imagined.
Honestly, the fact that Maki Kurando—who likely hadn't even hit "normal captain-class" back then—had lasted half a day here was something to brag about for generations.
In his current state, Shuuichi could drop this Menos a few more times without breaking a sweat—but it meant nothing. No matter how often he killed it, inside Hell this thing was "invincible."
That left him two real options.
One: use Seyabasa to carve a divine sigil into it.
Two: Shikai Seyabasa again, open the gate, and go home.
As for that tempting "third" option—wander to another zone of Hell—one glance at the two ancient Menos oozing in from the flanks struck it from the list.
If three of these were crowding the spawn point, what did the rest look like?
With a few more, he might not even get the chance to use Seyabasa to bail.
He wrestled with it for a beat, then chose to test the first option.
Couldn't go back empty-handed, right?
Lovely in theory; bony in practice.
Without overwhelming control, he couldn't keep the behemoth still long enough to complete the sigil.
Every critical moment got smashed.
Either the carving spot got vaporized by the Menos's own Cero—or, buried under a skyful of beams, Shuuichi had no choice but to let the Smiling Blade eat the pressure… and ended up "accidentally" wrecking the target.
At which point the ancient hunter showed why it was top-tier in its era—demonstrating the most efficient self-kill imaginable:
A point-blank Cero fired into the softest weak point from inside its body.
Even he had to respect the efficiency.
Out of tricks, stamina flagging, Shuuichi was done playing.
He drew Seyabasa again to leave this cursed pit.
He'd come back after Hollowfication was complete and he'd fused a few more Spirit King shards.
But some things—like people—love to arrive late. Or, like he'd done with Kisaragi Shūsuke, they wait for him to give up before they turn.
It was a white sphere the size of a brown bear. No eyes, ears, nose, or limbs—only a gaping maw lined with nightmare teeth.
And maybe it was his imagination, but the world around him felt darker than before.
"Watase Higan, Seyabasa! (Cross the Mortal Shore, Seyabasa!)"
No hesitation. He blasted backward from the newcomer, releasing Seyabasa's Shikai—and, as soon as the gate's frame sketched itself, threw a layer of cover over it.
"Bakudō 73: Tōzan Shō (Inverse Mountain Crystal)!"
That cool blue, down-pointing prism should have filled him with—
—nope.
"Can someone tell me why there's a second one?!
And why it just ate my Bakudō in one bite?!"
The new arrival was pure wrongness.
At Shuuichi's current power, even Retsu would need a few cuts to break a Bankai-grade Tōzan Shō.
And that thing? One bite.
Round up the math and it was stronger than Retsu.
And there was another one.
What kind of heavenly-hellly fairyland was this?
He wanted to drag Kurando out of the grave and ask how he'd lasted "half a day" in a place like this.
By Shuuichi's count, he'd been in here… maybe thirty minutes?
Nope. Not messing with this.
It reminded him of a game from his past life:
Army-chess flip. In theory, about a fifty-fifty split between friend and foe—yet he kept flipping enemy tiles in a perfect circle around him.
He set his hand to the gate, ready to sprint back to Soul Society—when a geta-clad foot dropped from above and stamped the frame flat. Seyabasa snapped back into blade form.
A rough voice rumbled from over his head.
"Haven't seen a new shinigami in ages. And you're not even wearing a captain's haori?
Heh, brat—don't tell me you died before making captain?"
Shuuichi looked up.
White shimmered in his eyes.
On the flowing haori, the stitched character scythed like a blade: eleven.
"Kenpachi… Kuruyashiki?!!"
Hearing his name, Kuruyashiki Kenpachi pinched his chin, curiosity flaring.
"So you know me?"
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