Kenpachi one shot. Contains possible spoilers through to around chapter 227 of the manga.

There was a moment of utter stillness. Calm amidst the raging storm.

Clouds of dust hung motionless upon the air where a ragged hole had just been blasted through the wall. They didn't fall, or even shift upon the breeze, locked in place by a sudden, overwhelming density of spirit pressure that even the purely physical and lifeless could not ignore.

The arrancar's breath hissed, steam-engine-like, between jaws grown to resemble those of a skeletal crocodile. Blood dripped steadily from an array of freakish, tyrannosaur fangs. A tongue – obscenely long, pink, glistening; edged in vicious triangular blades of bone – retracted back into place with a grating rasp.

Reptilian membranes flickered across disturbingly human looking eyes. They seemed to be . . . confused.

Atop a pile of rubble lay a fallen blade. A zanpakutou – a Shinigami's soul cutter.

For all its huge size, this one seemed to be badly maintained, the edge a ragged mess of notch upon notch that from a distance made it look serrated. The hilt of it, long enough to accommodate two hands comfortably, resembled discoloured, yellowing bone.

There was blood on this too, as much upon the grip as on the blade.

And if you stared at it, occasionally – for fractions of a second at a time – it seemed as if that ragged edge blurred ever so slightly. Maybe then, you could also imagine a distantly mournful cry.

Most probably not.

A dark shadow loomed from behind the dust clouds. The stillness fractured. The arrancar's eyes snapped back into focus.

"Why'd you have to go and do that, dumbass? Why'd you have to spoil it?" The voice was like the rumbling of thunder – an elemental, barely human sound. "Weren't we having fun? Wasn't that enough for you?"

The arrancar snarled in answer. Its tongue lashed out; six feet, ten, twenty – faster than the eye could follow.

Yet a hand came up and intercepted, deflecting it almost casually to one side. Worse than deflected. Almost caught it.

The tongue snapped back in haste.

That couldn't just have happened. Everything in the arrancar's expression shouted that fact more eloquently than any words could. No one – especially not this lunking, brutish thing – could move so quickly.

And any extremity that found itself in Carnívoro's path should now be lying, bleeding and severed from its owner in the dirt. Always it had been that way before.

The shadow resolved itself into a wild, grinning, spike-haired demon – demented jester of destruction. The bells that tipped each black spike of hair tinkled in laughing discord.

A bloody gash bisected one cheek. Three gaping slashes ran across exposed pectoral muscles that looked like they'd been carved from wind-scoured granite. Yet even as it watched, the arrancar could see the wounds scab over, dark, glistening crimson becoming rusty scales of dull red-brown.

Rage flared in its eyes, clouding all sanity and sense. Instead of attacking with its tongue, this time the arrancar's neck muscles convulsed, propelling its jaws forward with the force of a wrecking ball, snapping ravenously for its opponent's flesh.

And this time, Zaraki Kenpachi did catch it.

-s-s-

Its breath was like a hot, carrion wind, blasting into his face.

Kenpachi didn't flinch from it, his teeth gritted in an expression that combined both snarl and grin. Indeed, he was leaning forward, almost appearing as if he wanted to plunge his head right into that gaping maw and dare it to bite. His shoulder muscles strained, his overwhelming reiatsu concentrating and hardening around his hands so that fangs capable of shredding inch-thick steel as if it were rice paper failed to so much as scratch him.

For a few seconds – an echoingly vast stretch of time on the scale of this conflict – there was equilibrium. The arrancar's jaws strained to snap closed, while Kenpachi strained in turn to wrench them open. Neither side won out.

Then, deep inside its mouth, the arrancar's tongue stirred again . . .

Kenpachi felt it in the shifting patterns of the creature's breath – reacted instantly and twisted, just as much as necessary, to one side.

The tongue flew past his face, missing by fractions. The bone blades did scrape across his left shoulder, but a scratch like that wasn't even worth the bother of acknowledging.

And in the end, it did prove to be the telling distraction.

There was a sharp, splintering crack, louder even than the roaring bellow of effort from Kenpachi that accompanied it. Blood splattered. The arrancar's lower mandible flopped limply, three quarters of the way to being torn completely free.

Kenpachi released his grip on it and caught the tongue before it could retract again, wrapping it around his forearm as if it was nothing more than a length of rope. As he yanked on it, the arrancar let out a thin, high-pitched wailing scream, its claws flailing at him ineffectually.

The scream became a desperate gurgling, choking noise as Kenpachi flipped straight over the arrancar's shoulder, wrapping the tongue around its own neck – a razor-wire garrotte.

Locked together, they slammed hard into the alley's opposite wall hard enough to splinter the stonework. The arrancar slumped to its knees. Even the gurgling cut off.

Face twisted in a grimace, boot planted in its back, Kenpachi worked the tongue back and forth like a band saw. Flesh tore and splattered. Blood flew, covering everything nearby in a thin layer of dripping gore.

Eventually, there was a solid sounding thud.

Bending down, he retrieved the arrancar's severed head and turned it over in his hands.

It had returned to its more normal state, and now looked close to human. Across its top lip was something that resembled a bone moustache – a fragmentary remainder of the mask it had once worn as a hollow.

Its eyes stared blankly into space.

Grunting to himself, Kenpachi retrieved his zanpakutou, frowning slightly as he did so. A few paces away, a scrap of what appeared to be black cloth also lay upon the ground.

His eyepatch, inadvertently torn free by a flailing strike of the arrancar's tongue. Up until that moment, he'd almost been managing to enjoy himself.

He moved to pick that up too, but hesitated for a moment when he realised both his hands were full.

One more glance down at the severed head, with its loosely flapping lower jaw. His lips twisted. "So damn disappointing."

Then he tossed it casually away through the gap in the wall.

-s-s-

"Oh, well done, darling." From somewhere behind Kenpachi came the sound of polite applause – delicate, almost feminine.

He paused, halfway to restoring the eyepatch to its proper place. Suddenly he could sense another reiatsu – one so vast and powerful that it managed to penetrate even through the crushing pressure and density of his own.

The other one. The small one with the stupid hat, who had reminded him ever so slightly of Yumichika. Perhaps it had been that ridiculous looking red plume.

The one that had calmly gone and sat itself on top of a nearby roof, while the big toothy one had done all the boasting and the threatening and the fighting.

Closely followed by the dying.

From the feel of it, it was even stronger than Ichigo. Or at least, he conceded, the Ichigo he had last seen several weeks ago. That boy grew damn quickly.

One corner of Kenpachi's mouth turned up – a sliver of a smile. Perhaps – just perhaps – he wouldn't be needing the eyepatch so quickly after all.

". . . Aizen-sama wasn't exaggerating about either your strength or your brutality I see, Kenpachi-san. Yes indeed, don't be surprised that I know your name. Your 'fame' precedes you. Don't you think it was so sweet of him to worry that you might actually be able to do me harm . . .?"

Blah, blah, blah. Kenpachi gave a belaboured sigh and tuned the irritating voice out. Instead, he concentrated on calculating the speaker's exact position and relative distance from him. Maybe collapsing the building underneath it would be a good first move . . .

". . . but I think Aizen-sama needn't have concerned himself. You're just a battering ram, aren't you? All force. No subtlety. No finesse. Much like dear old departed Carnes here . . ."

Far too similar to Yumichika. In love with the sound of its own voice, with no clue when to just shut up and start fighting . . .

". . . I strongly suspect you aren't even capable of spilling a single drop of my blood."

Another thought occurred, before he invested too much time and effort into this. "What number are you?"

"Pardon?" This second arrancar sounded nonplussed by the interruption to its flow.

"I asked," Kenpachi repeated, slowly and precisely, "what number you are. I want to know if you're even worth me bothering with."

After a brief pause, there was a sharp sniffing noise. "How unfortunately . . . direct."

The emphasis on direct seemed to imply some kind of insult. Insults, generally, were only worthwhile when you could back them up. Perhaps not even then.

"But I suppose that an introduction probably is in order. And then, cur, I shall teach you something in the way of manners."

Kenpachi sensed the arrancar moving and allowed himself to look around at it for the first time. His eyepatch still dangled loosely from one hand.

It had floated up from the rooftop and now stood hovering in midair – a slight, graceful looking figure clothed all in black – other than that white jacket, which seemed to be standard arrancar uniform – with what looked like a cape streaming out behind it. The broad-brimmed hat it wore shadowed its face, though the outline of the broken shard of white mask covering its eyes like a visor was still just about discernable.

As was a smile that seemed far too broad and dazzlingly white to be anything human.

It swept Kenpachi an exaggerated bow, and the strength of its reiatsu suddenly flared even higher. "I am Xochi, el noveno."

El noveno. The ninth.

An Espada. Sometimes, very occasionally, the Captains' reports did contain the odd snippet of useful information.

Kenpachi's grin had widened into something savage. "Well, I suppose that will have to do to start. Before I kill you, be sure you let me know where I can find number eight."

-s-s-

Kenpachi launched himself through the air – a guided Shinigami missile.

The compression and reshaping of reiatsu, and then release, everything around him seeming to flex elastically before simply hurling him against the pull of gravity. It was nothing he had learned in any academy – no true shunpo or kidou – simply unfolding instinct. A means to close the gap with irritating opponents who made the mistake of thinking they could remain beyond his grasp simply by taking to the air.

Xochi twisted fluidly to meet him head on, his smile seeming to grow even broader – a particularly evil looking clown-mask. A pair of blades – oddly crooked looking rapiers made of null-black metal had appeared out of nowhere in his hands.

One of those now traced a casual little flick, seeming to open a small tear in reality itself. From that tear, a focused beam of ruby neon light sprang forth.

Kenpachi saw it coming, but didn't even bother trying to evade, concentrating his reiatsu and thrusting out his chest, accepting the impact in the spirit of allowing his opponent the first strike for free.

It was always a good test. A way of gauging strength more truly than by any other sense. A way of crushing belief right from the outset . . .

Kenpachi heard himself grunt as he came back to himself. Several seconds seemed simply to have gone missing somewhere. And everything was completely the wrong way up.

He groaned. Coughed and tasted blood. For a moment, it seemed like his vision had contracted down into a tight and rather unevenly shaped tunnel. Then he realised he was simply looking up through the gaping hole in the roof he'd just plunged through, and was in actual fact lying flat out on his back.

Not really the time to be napping.

Blotting out pain that seemed to come from every single extremity at once, he sprang up smoothly to his feet. If you could feel pain, it meant you were still alive, and you could therefore still fight. Other than that, it was simply a fact of existence.

Xochi was just floating into view overhead, and very briefly, he considered leaping straight up through the hole in the roof, then on towards the Espada again.

Instead, he chose to kick his way through a nearby wall. Allowing your opponent the first two strikes for free was taking generosity to a fault.

As the dust settled, he noticed there was a door about three-feet to the right of the gaping hole he'd just created.

Oh, well, you learn from your mistakes . . .

Another red beam blasted a semi-molten, foot-deep crater in the ground where Kenpachi had just been standing. He'd felt it touch the outer edges of his reiatsu a tiny fraction of a second earlier and decided not to be in the space it was aimed at when it hit.

Pain might be a fact of life, but you no more deliberately sought it out than you sought to die. They were both merely symptoms and consequences of the fight – not the purpose.

"Interesting." Kenpachi's grin was back. "Seems like you're not quite so weedy as you look."

Xochi laughed. "I assure you, captain, you are quite, quite, overmatched here . . ."

But Kenpachi was already rocketing through the air again, the rushing wind noise in his ears drowning out anything else the arrancar had to say.

There was another flick of a crooked rapier, accompanied by a contemptuous sneer. Another beam of ruby light.

This time, Kenpachi twisted out of the way. He could have chosen to evade entirely, but instead allowed the beam to clip him fractionally, violently changing the direction of his momentum, and sending him spinning past the opposite side of the arrancar to which he'd initially been aiming.

He didn't let the sudden acute burning sensation and inability to draw breath bother him, cutting out hard with his zanpakutou. The tip of it connected satisfyingly with something solid . . .

Then he was descending, landing with surprising lightness and ease on a nearby rooftop.

Breath reverberating in his chest as the burning sensation eased slightly, he could dimly feel his zanpakutou vibrating in his grasp. Fresh blood dripped steadily down its length. "Sorry. Looks like you were right. You said a single drop, didn't you? Seems I can't do that after all."

Even as he spoke, Kenpachi dropped down from the roof, back to the floor of the alleyway. Behind him, the largest, most intense beam of red light yet blasted the entire top story of the house to fragments that showered down around him – hard rain.

Looking up at the arrancar, blade poised, Kenpachi smiled. "Wanna try a new wager? Double or quits, call it."

Xochi didn't answer, looking down at him from the place where he still hovered, expression concealed by the shadow of his hat.

"This time, that I'm not capable of taking your head, maybe?"

-s-s-

The arrancar laughed, but Kenpachi could hear the startled, slightly nervous undertone to it.

"Do you imagine, because of one tiny scratch, that you have my measure?"

It was angry too. Kenpachi watched silently, eyes narrowed, ready to evade as it lashed out explosively. Ready to strike at the slightest hint of an opening the anger might reveal.

"Up until now I have been toying with you. As one might choose to amuse oneself with an irritating child."

Kenpachi grunted. "That so?"

The shadow covering Xochi's face shifted so that it revealed those dazzling white teeth again. "And you are a child, aren't you? Incapable even of releasing your own zanpakutou."

Kenpachi simply bared his teeth in answer. This one talked enough for both of them.

"Watch now, as I rise forever beyond your feeble earthbound reach!"

Xochi began to rotate in place, faster and faster like a spinning top or dervish, becoming nothing more than a black, red-plume-topped blur.

"Flor de Aniquilación!"

Something resembling a cocoon of shifting shadows seemed to form around the spinning figure. Red light, similar to the destructive beams, began to glow within its heart. The spinning continued to accelerate, accompanied now by a rising, teeth-grating suggestion of a scream.

Kenpachi lost patience with waiting. If this idiot was going to take so damn long . . .

He launched himself straight at the cocoon, zanpakutou leading the way and slicing deep as he yanked brutally down . . .

Red light exploded out of the cut, striking him full in the chest.

Dimly, Kenpachi was aware of the sensation of air whistling around him, followed a moment later by a bone-shuddering impact as he hit the front wall of a house. Briefly, everything around him darkened, then there was a second impact – the house's back wall – before he emerged once more into light. With a third crunching impact against the other side of another narrow alleyway, he was finally travelling slowly enough to be brought crashing to a halt.

After a few seconds of quiet and stillness, he heard himself laughing – a wild dog's harsh bark – and clawed his way back to his feet without engaging conscious thought. When he spat it sat bright red upon the dirt, and the ringing in his skull was absolutely nothing to do with the bells in his hair.

"Do you now begin to understand, Kenpachi-san?"

Xochi came floating into view above the rooftops, and he had changed.

He was now surrounded by a vast corona of floating black ribbons – or petals perhaps – that rippled fluidly in the soft eddies and currents of the air. They looked so dark and dense that they almost seemed to be shifting holes in reality, and along their edges shone glints of the now familiar neon red. Following them to their source showed that they originated from Xochi's shoulders – vastly strange wings.

Xochi himself retained a roughly human shape, but was now covered by glittering black armour that seemed to be entirely composed of interlocking spikes and thorns. The crooked rapier blades had merged into its hands to become hugely elongated forefingers, while the plume of its hat was now something that resembled a bright red whip, sprouting from the top of its head and snaking constantly back and forth.

The only things that remained the same was that constant, dazzling grin, and the visor of bone covering his eyes.

"Here in Soul Society you might call this stage my shikai; though in reality it is so much more than that."

Kenpachi just smirked at the floating figure. "You have a bankai too?"

The widening of Xochi's smile suggested strongly towards the affirmative

"Then show me that. I promise not to laugh."

-s-s-

Xochi's strange wings flapped once, sharply. The glinting red edges flared brilliantly, before splintering and raining down towards Kenpachi in a cascade of long, needle-like energy blades.

Kenpachi was already moving, rolling sideways. Despite that, one red blade still sliced into the side of his abdomen; a second slashed deeply across his bicep; a third raked another bloody diagonal down his cheek.

Ploughing on through the impacts as if they were no more significant than actual rain, he launched himself up at Xochi again, furiously focused . . .

A ribbon-like wing tip simply snaked across to intercept. Up close, it felt considerably more solid than tempered steel, the edge of it opening a deep cut across his breastbone before effortlessly slamming him back down to the ground with an impact that made the earth shake.

"This form will be quite sufficient, I assure you. It is capable of crushing you like an ant."

Kenpachi had already bounced straight back up to his feet as if made of hardened rubber. He could feel his own blood running down his body in rivulets, but his head felt strangely – almost preternaturally – clear. Adrenaline pumped through his veins with each thudding heartbeat.

He was finally starting to properly enjoy himself again.

Another leap was repelled in exactly the same manner as the first, resulting in a similar bone-crunching impact with the earth. A third attempt was slightly more productive, in that he managed to evade the first lashing wing-petal, only to be caught by a second one close behind it and knocked, tumbling head over heals, straight through the front wall of another nearby house.

"Ken-chan!"

As he rose to his feet again, struggling not to choke on the clouds of dust that surrounded him, Kenpachi recognised Yachiru's cry as one of frustrated admonishment – stop playing around and get serious already – rather than concern.

His face twisted in a blood-streaked grimace. Don't you know when you need to keep quiet?

Closely followed by: and I don't damn well need you to tell me how to fight.

Through the hole in the wall, he saw red light flare again, and felt something he didn't care to examine too closely tightening coldly inside his chest. He hurried forwards in time to glimpse Xochi's retreating back as the Espada floated upwards and away, glowing like a mutated, maleficent rose.

"What's this? Flotsam?" Xochi's voice drifted back to Kenpachi as he flipped himself out through the gap in the wall, somersaulting up onto the rooftop. Already, as he started running, pushing the air out of the way in front of him by shaping his reiatsu like the prow of a boat, he could tell that he wasn't going to get there quickly enough. "Tsk. So rude of you to snoop."

A bright pink shape, resembling a gigantic, demonically snarling cat, sprang into being, still almost a hundred yards away. Kenpachi crossed a gap between two rooftops without seeming to break stride, tiles breaking off and falling away in miniature landslides beneath his feet. The petals of Xochi's wings curled forwards around himself, the rose closing into a gigantic black claw.

The red light discharged in a single focused burst. Where before it had scattered into multiple blade-like splinters, now it formed one concentrated, incandescent beam.

It struck the pink cat head on.

The cat held out for maybe half a second under the searing force of the raw power blasting through it, its outline wavering wildly. Then, in a moment, it simply disintegrated, blown away in a scattering of fading pink leaves.

Kenpachi stopped, shocked, as something inside him simply snuffed out and vanished.

-s-s-

Somewhere, beyond the bounds of simple rage and fury, was a place that was close to transcendence. Somewhere that at first glance looked calm, but was actually the polar opposite.

Everyone who managed to make it out of the Zaraki, 80th district of the Rukongai knew that place in one form or another. Kenpachi knew it better than most. In some ways, he had made it his home.

One of Xochi's wing-petals came across to intercept and swat him casually away as it had done several times before. This time he met it with his zanpakutou, slicing through it as if it wasn't there and sending half of it fluttering to the ground.

Part of him could feel the blade howling – a vibration deep inside. Most of him was too caught up to pay it any heed.

A second wing-petal just bounced straight off him, unable to penetrate his reiatsu any more. A third was severed every bit as easily as the first, and then he was through the outer layer of the arrancar's defences.

Xochi let out a thin, high-pitched hissing note, halfway to a shriek, forced to catch another swing of Kenpachi's zanpakutou in the crossed 'v' of his finger-blades. The pair of them, locked together, slammed into the ground with crunching force.

Barely pausing, pushing forward using sheer brute strength, the ragged edge of Kenpachi's zanpakutou began to cut its way through the arrancar's shoulder armour, grinding deeper and deeper, finally slicing into the flesh beneath.

Just for a moment, something close to desperation showed in Xochi's expression, that perma-grin even wavering slightly.

Then, like that, everything reversed.

The bright-red plume attached to the Espada's head whipped forward like a scorpion's sting. It simply touched the exposed, wound-scarred skin of Kenpachi's chest, seemingly no more than the lightest of caresses.

There was a monstrous sounding crack; a fleeting impression of something like a truly immense lightning bolt grounding itself through Kenpachi's torso. An instant later, Kenpachi was picked up and hurled straight backwards down the alley, bouncing more than a hundred feet before finally coming to a stop.

Gritting his teeth in a hellish, bloodstained grin, Kenpachi simply overruled every agonised protest of his body – forced his blurring, red-tinged vision to focus by sheer force of will – and climbed straight back up again. His breath sawed raggedly, his insides feeling like they'd been burnt to ash.

It felt good.

Far better than what lay behind the physical pain.

"Enough!"

Xochi was striding straight towards him. On the ground, instead of looking like wings, the black ribbons attached to his shoulders flared out behind him like a vast, living cloak. "I grow tired of this, ape. We will be finished!"

As he continued to advance, the arrancar's finger blades began to whirl in dizzying patterns, opening rift after rift in the air, sending bolt after bolt of red energy straight towards him.

Kenpachi simply charged into the heart of the firestorm. His zanpakutou deflected the first few bolts from his path. Others ripped into the buildings on either side, punching through masonry already weakened to the point of collapse by the sheer pressure of the combined reiatsu it was being exposed to. One entire façade collapsed, right along the length of the alley in roaring torrent of broken stone.

Finally, a bolt penetrated his guard, slamming into his shoulder. It barely broke his stride.

But in that tiniest faltering of his momentum, another bolt got through, then a third. Snarling desperately, Kenpachi lunged with his zanpakutou, straight for the centre of Xochi's chest.

Too far away, by fractions.

A fourth bolt knocked Kenpachi's legs out from under him. A fifth sent him tumbling backwards again. Snarling like a giant dog, he tried to rise once more, but a sixth and seventh bolt struck home in rapid succession, each now both burning and cutting deep, producing spattering arcs of charbroiled blood.

Force of will was, in the end, simply not enough.

Kenpachi's vision redded out, as if he was viewing everything through a tidal wave of blood. His body wouldn't answer any more, no matter how he raged at it, and he was only very dimly aware as he was picked up and slammed straight through the wall of another house.

A moment later, torrents of red energy pounding into it, that house collapsed.

Everything turned black.

-s-s-

The difference between life and death was the tiniest flickering spark of spirit.

It would have been so easy to let go. To surrender to the relentless crushing pressure of the darkness; the constant near unendurable pain, and allow the spark to flicker out.

Easy had never been Zaraki Kenpachi's way.

So he clung on. Each breath was a miniature eternity of torment, his ribcage shattered, the weight on top of him pressing down and squeezing like a giant's fist. From the constant gurgling he knew that on top of everything else, he was slowly drowning in his own blood, and simply clinging on was not going to be enough.

But he didn't let that stop him.

How long he'd been down here, he couldn't say. Seconds; minutes; hours. Those concepts of time didn't seem to have any particular meaning anymore. All he knew was that, some time ago, the regular sound of explosions had stopped, and the only noise he could now hear that didn't originate from his own tortured flesh was a steady groaning from the stone all around him as it attempted to settle.

No, not quite the only noise.

There was his zanpakutou.

He'd lost his grip on it at some point, though it was still very close. Close enough for him to reach perhaps, if the effort didn't kill him in itself. In any case, he could hear that too, louder than he'd ever heard it before. It seemed to be screaming.

Or perhaps that was just something inside his head.

In his minds eye he could see Yachiru – the pink cat manifested by her spirit power – disintegrating under the fury of the arrancar's attack. His teeth gritted together, threatening to grind down to splintered stumps.

And for once, he knew that the fight alone was not enough. That there had to be more, and he had always had more, whether he'd acknowledged it or not.

The sound that emerged from the back of his throat was like a vast hound, howling at the moon.

He wasn't going to die like this, buried beneath tons of rock. He wasn't going to be beaten. Even if it was too late now, he owed it to more than just himself to find a way.

His right arm, pinned by rubble, strained and shifted, muscles flexing hard. It felt like something vital deep inside him was tearing apart, but he ignored it and kept on straining.

Something cracked sharply. The rubble gave slightly and his arm was able to move perhaps a foot or so.

His fingers closed around his screaming zanpakutou's grip.

-s-s-

"Damn it, you don't just walk away from me!"

The footsteps walking away from him stopped. He could hear the sound of his own breathing very loudly now, grating rawly inside his chest. He could also hear the sound of his own blood, dripping from a dozen wounds. It felt hot where it ran in sticky rivulets down his face.

"Oh? Why's that?" The answer, when it came, sounded almost amused.

That infuriated him. "Our fight isn't over yet!"

"Believe me, it's over." There was a quiet sigh that would have been difficult to read even if he'd felt inclined to. "You can't even stand up anymore, boy. You can't even hold your weapon."

"It's not over until you kill me."

There was a pause. "Let me get this straight. You want me to come back over there and kill you?"

"Yes!"

After a moment, there came the sound of footsteps again. This time they were walking back towards him.

They stopped. He tried to raise himself from the dirt but failed, collapsing back with a stifled groan. All he could see of the person in front of him was their sandaled feet.

"I'm curious," their voice said finally. "How is it that a coward can fight so well as you?"

"A coward?" Fury surged inside him. The sudden adrenaline burst it leant him allowed him to rise onto his hands and knees. "You're calling me a coward . . .?"

One of those sandaled feet stamped down hard on his back, blasting the breath from his lungs and pressing him facedown into the dirt. "Only a coward is so afraid of living that they want to die."

His breath rasped. The foot continued to grind down and he could feel his spine creaking. He couldn't move an inch.

"You understand me?"

He didn't answer. He wasn't sure he even could. Apparently, that didn't satisfy the person standing on his back.

"I asked you if you understand me. At least be polite enough to answer. A nod is good enough."

Finally, grudgingly, he nodded.

"Good." The hint of amusement was back in the voice. "You fought well, boy. I wasn't going easy on you, and still you managed to survive. If you manage to live long enough to grow up a bit more, you're going to be truly frighteningly strong.

"The key word there being 'if'."

Then the foot lifted and it suddenly became a lot easier to breathe.

"If you lose a fight and are fortunate enough to live through it, you shouldn't be thinking about dying just because you feel shame. You shouldn't even be feeling shame at all. You should be thinking about how you're still alive, and about how you can take advantage of that fact. About how you can get stronger and better, so that next time you can win." There was a slight pause. "Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"I see." And as much as it might pain him to admit it, he did see.

In answer, there was a quiet snort. A hand grasped his shoulder roughly, and suddenly he felt himself being rolled over onto his back. Pain flared from a dozen separate places simultaneously and it took all his effort not to cry out.

He found himself looking up into the other person's eyes. They were unusual eyes – brown with a kind of amber sheen to them, so that they looked almost golden.

"So, what's your name, boy?"

For a moment, he wondered if he was being mocked. But something in those eyes said not. "I don't have a name. Never have."

"No? Well that's tough." He saw a slight frown line appear between the person's eyebrows. "Perhaps one day you might earn one then. Make a name for yourself that no one can ignore."

He didn't say anything. The other person's lips curved in a smile. "I'm Yachiru, by the way."

Their smile vanished then, as if it had never been. The voice became hard and cold. "Although you and every other person here can call me Kenpachi."

Abruptly, the face disappeared from over him as the person straightened.

"Kenpachi of Zaraki."

He heard footsteps walking away from him again. This time he didn't call them back.

-s-s-

The eyes in front of him were slightly strange: brown, but they seemed to trap every tiniest sliver of light until they shone with an amber sheen and looked almost golden.

From somewhere behind those eyes came an ominous rumbling noise that grew into a growl as loud as thunder. It echoed off the walls of the endlessly long cave around them, until it seemed to come from every direction at once.

Kenpachi exhaled quietly, arms folded across his chest. "It's strange. I've never been here before, and I've never seen you before either. But I do know you, don't I? I've always known you, I guess."

There was a second growl, perhaps even louder than the first. "You dare to just stand there like that in front of me? To come here now, after ignoring me for so, so long?"

The words were inside his head as much as sound. Inside my head, inside my head . . .

Bah, no wonder I hate thinking so much . . .

Behind those golden eyes was a dog . . . a hound. Neither word quite seemed adequate to describe the creature that stood in front of him. Blacker than pitch. Blacker than midnight. Blacker than the cave around them.

Blacker than your heart, boy? There was laughter in the inner voice. It sounded like Yachiru – the first person he'd known to bear that name.

"I've neglected you, haven't I?" Kenpachi told it. "I know that. I've given you every single reason there is to hate me."

The growl this time was quieter than on the first two occasions, but somehow much, much more ominous.

"I should tear your throat out!"

As Kenpachi's vision adjusted to the gloom, he began to make out more.

The dog was enormous, every bit as tall through the shoulders as he was. It was readily apparent though, even from a cursory inspection, that despite its size, it wasn't in the best of health.

Its ribs stood out starkly through its coat, and the way they moved with each loud intake of breath seemed unhealthily exaggerated. Its teeth, bared now, were yellowing. And they appeared both far too long and far too many in number, as if in its rage and lonely madness, it had grown more and more of them as a physical reflection of its ever growing hunger and insanity. Drool fell from its massive jaws in frothing ropes, splattering over the cave floor beneath it.

And then there was the chain.

Each link was as wide as Kenpachi's wrist, made from dull grey iron. There were hundreds of them, attached to a heavy, metal studded collar, binding the hound securely in place. The weight alone must have been a continuous source of torment.

Sighing, Kenpachi stepped forward, bringing himself within reach of the black hound's jaws. Surprisingly, it didn't immediately attack.

He lifted a length of the chain in his hands and held it up almost contemplatively. "And now I have the nerve to ask – no, actually, I don't ask, I demand – your help."

The dog was silent. Its eyes bored into him, virulent with hate.

"I should apologise. I do apologise. What I've done to you is inexcusable." Kenpachi's gaze locked with the hound's and held it fixed.

"But you're not going to accept any apology of mine, are you?" He snorted, the sound contemptuous. "I wouldn't accept my apology, anyway. Not after this. And if what some of them in the Seireitei say is true, you are me in most of the important ways."

The hound's growling was a low, continuous rumbling now – an unstoppable infernal engine.

"When I break this, you're going to attack me." It was a statement rather than a question. "That's fine. That's good. Considering where we both come from, it's inevitable."

Kenpachi's muscles flexed. The chain broke apart in his hands.

"So come. Let's settle this the Zaraki way."

-s-s-

Xochi paced slowly back and forth atop the heap of rubble. Everything within a radius of about fifty yards had been completely flattened, and everything for at least a couple of hundred yards beyond that had had its structural integrity so severely damaged that it was either going to have to be demolished, or would eventually collapse of its own accord.

He still held his zanpakutou in the first stage of release, the black ribbons that formed his living cloak floating out behind him in the dust-clouded air. Those that hadn't been severed by Zaraki Kenpachi, at least.

After the explosive storm of violence, the stillness felt strangely cloying and tense. The air itself still seemed to crackle with the ferocity of the powers so recently released.

The expression on Xochi's face was . . . tight. For a short while, he had been content in victory – content that Kenpachi was dying, and had already gone far past the point where anything could be done to prevent it. The tiny, flickering, fading spark of spirit he'd sensed buried somewhere beneath him, had been comfortingly familiar from all the other souls he had slain – a point from which there was only ever one, inevitable result.

But now something, somehow, had altered.

The spark had ceased fluctuating and stabilised. Which should have been impossible. Something so profoundly damaged should only have been able to fade and fizzle out entirely.

In fact, Xochi suspected that, not only had the spark stabilised, it was growing gradually – almost imperceptibly – stronger.

Which meant there was still work to be done.

His eyes alighted on a length of broken roof beam. Charred black, it was nearly twenty feet long, and one end of it had snapped in the shape of a raggedly pointed spearhead.

Xochi's smile returned, wickedly gleaming. A black ribbon snaked forward, snagging around the roof beam and lifting it without any apparent effort, holding it poised – ready to come crashing down.

Stake the vampire before it could rise up from the grave.

-s-s-

The cave was gone.

In its place was a wide expanse of frosted pine forest underneath a chill night sky. Icy wind whistled through the treetops, and overhead a lambent moon glared down like a gigantic, silver eye. Visible above the trees and stretching along every horizon, rising up like enormous jagged fangs and hemming the forest in to form something akin to a vast arena, were towering mountain peaks of barren grey stone.

The howl that rang out then was loud enough to make the earth shake and the air sing with its power. In it, there was both rage and madness – a desperate hunger that had had decades to grow and sharpen into something that was now utterly consuming.

Most of all though, there was joy. Joy at finally being free. Joy at finally being able to run and hunt.

In response, Kenpachi simply threw back his head and laughed, the sound of that almost as loud as the howl had been. The hound was unchained, and somewhere deep inside him it felt good.

No. Somewhere deep inside, it felt great.

The wind made the bells in his hair ring. He could feel the earth vibrating with the hound's approaching footfalls and turned to face them. He could hear branches bending back and snapping, getting ever nearer, as something huge passed between them at an astonishing speed.

And suddenly he was not remotely content to wait for the hound to come to him. Grinning savagely, he charged straight forward to meet it head on.

The first crunching, cacophonous impact released enough energy to knock every tree within a hundred yards flat in concentric, outwardly radiating circles. The hound's howl merged with Kenpachi's bellow to form a single, ululating, very close to ecstatic cry.

The second impact came a moment later and unleashed almost as much energy as the first.

Again. Again. Again. Again. They slammed into each other repeatedly, neither of them willing to give up an inch of ground. Neither of them willing to compromise or take a single backwards step.

Blood splattered. Fur flew.

Yet paradoxically, with each gaping wound torn into his flesh, Kenpachi felt himself grow stronger, reinvigorated and healed in spirit. And with each new bone-crunching collision, the hound grew bigger and healthier too, filling out so that it no longer appeared three-quarters starved.

Time lost meaning as they continued to tear into each other with relentless, savage glee.

And as the conflict went on, gradually it became more and more difficult to distinguish between the combatants – to tell where one ended and the other began. It seemed like the moonlight was creating optical illusions, blurring figures, diffusing shape and form. Merging them together. Even the sounds – the howls, the panting, the growls and the bellows; the harshly grating laughter – became more and more alike.

Finally, there was only one.

Kenpachi, standing in the centre of the circle of fallen trees, his head thrown back, face tilted up towards the clear night sky. Blood, black in the pale silver light, ran from dozens of separate wounds, but none of them seemed to trouble him at all as he panted raggedly for breath.

In both hands, he held his zanpakutou, its blade angled upwards, straight towards the heavens. In appearance it was subtly transformed, seemingly glowing to match the moon above, the edge of it no longer chipped and notched, but blurring into invisibility – a thousand rapidly vibrating and oh so hungry teeth.

As the bells in his hair sang in the wind, Kenpachi howled with the voice of the hound.

The black dog, unleashed, baying at the moon, its bark every single bit as bad as its bite.

-s-s-

Xochi felt the ground shift slightly beneath his feet. He looked down, frowning, the spear-like length of wooden beam still held up, poised.

Something had emerged from the rubble, directly between his feet. It took him a moment to tell what it was: the tip of a dusty, blood-streaked blade.

And then the tiny lingering spark of Kenpachi's reiatsu surged – became in an instant something crushingly, paralysingly strong.

-s-s-

Golden tinted eyes looked up at him. Even now, like this, their clarity and sharpness were remarkable.

As he looked down into them, it occurred to him that some might have called this reversal of their positions ironic. Personally, such concepts as irony had never much appealed to him.

It especially did not appeal to him now.

Yachiru's lips twitched, curving into something that might have been a smile. A bubble of bloody saliva formed between them, then burst a moment later. "What's with that expression, boy? You won. At least have the decency to look happy about it."

His teeth gritted. He could feel himself grimacing. "This wasn't supposed to happen like this."

A snort. "Are you stupid? This is the Zaraki. It's always supposed to happen like this." Then, as if he hadn't understood the first time. "You won."

"So why does it damn well feel like I lost?"

"Sorry." Yachiru's face tightened briefly in a spasm of pain. "But even if I wanted to, it's not like I can do much about that from here."

It was his turn to snort.

Those golden eyes blinked; seemed to lose their focus. Another bloody bubble burst between Yachiru's lips. "One final thing."

He nodded. Something tightened deep inside him.

"I want to know what your name is."

Blazing anger flared. To be mocked, even now . . . "Didn't I tell you the first time we met? I know I did." His mouth curled in a snarl. "I don't have a name."

Somehow, despite everything, Yachiru's smile had returned. "No? Are you completely sure about that, boy? Have a look inside yourself. I think you'll find you do."

Then Yachiru's eyes glazed over, staring somewhere straight through him, away into eternity.

Her breathing had stopped. He drew in a long, shuddering breath before, as gently as he was able to, he eased his sword free from where it had pierced her through the chest. His free hand shaking slightly, he reached up to close her eyes.

As he did so, the battered blade, streaked crimson with her blood, seemed to call out to him.

For the first, but certainly not for the last time, he shut that voice out.

-s-s-

"Kuroryouken!"

"Kuroryouken, bark!"

-s-s-

Kuroryouken, the black hound, finally released, did far, far more than simply bark.

Decades of pent up hunger, madness, and frustration combined with every ounce of Zaraki Kenpachi's rage, willpower and raw desire for vengeance, focusing tightly into a single furiously howling, explosive blast of chaotic sonic energy.

Xochi's eyes barely had the chance to widen. The Espada certainly didn't have the chance to move.

It struck him directly between his legs, hurling him straight upwards before he could even cry out. After covering a vertical distance of close on a hundred metres in somewhere substantially under a second, friction caused him to burst into flame – a brilliantly shining meteorite in reverse.

Blazing brightly, continuing to travel upwards at a truly astonishing rate, the burning wing-petals trailing after him like a glowing comet-tail began to break off. They fell back towards the earth in strangely graceful spirals before disintegrating entirely and raining down as flurries of faintly glowing ash.

Finally, still not discernibly slowing, at a height of roughly a mile above the Rukongai, it seemed as if Xochi somehow punched a hole straight through the sky into somewhere else. He vanished utterly, winking out of existence, not the slightest trace remaining.

After the fury, silence reigned.

-s-s-

Kenpachi breached the surface with one last roar of effort. The sudden brightness made him blink rapidly, dust stinging his eyes.

There didn't seem to be anyone close about, and as the impetus lent him by the adrenaline flowing through his veins faded away, he slumped over onto his back – exhausted utterly. Lying atop the rubble, his lungs heaving with each breath, his vision began to blur and consciousness began to slip away from him.

Although the most imminently life threatening of his internal injuries had repaired themselves during his confrontation with Kuroryouken, he was still covered in scores of more superficial wounds. Blood oozed slowly from dozens of them, staining the broken stone beneath him.

Once again, a victory where the price felt far higher than defeat . . .

How long it was before he noticed the shadow of the figure leaning over him, he couldn't have said. He blinked once and his vision cleared slightly. It still took him several seconds before his eyes managed to focus on what was in front of him.

A small, frowning, uncharacteristically serious looking face surrounded by bright pink hair.

He blinked again, but the face simply solidified rather than vanishing like the mirage he'd initially suspected it must be.

"Yachiru?" He still didn't quite dare let himself believe.

Her frown suddenly became a beaming grin.

"I saw you . . ." he began to say.

And straight back to a frown. She jabbed him between the eyes with the wheeled end of her zanpakutou's scabbard, knocking his head back against the stone beneath it with a solid clunk.

That definitely couldn't just be his imagination.

"Ken-chan was getting sloppy. Ken-chan needed motivating."

After the moment it took him to take her words in, he grunted, matching her frown with one of his own. "I thought I told you before. I'm not some kind of dog for you to train."

As soon as the words were out though, he realised how ridiculous they were now – how far away from the truth. Laughter built up as a low, voluminous rumbling deep inside his chest, before exploding out in booming peals, rising into the clear, empty sky.

Distantly, he could hear the sound of Yachiru clapping her hands in gleeful pleasure. "Yay! Ken-chan's happy! Yachiru did good!"

Thanks (or possibly blame) also goes to Jedi Boadicea for introducing me to the world of Bleach in the first place J.