Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ The Soul Slicer ❯ The Final Piece ( Chapter 1 )

“Once there was a way to get back homeward. Once there was a way to get back home…”

 

Silence drew across a small city park as a single lulling voice pierced through the darkness. All bodies drew still to tune to the sift melody and one by one all those who heard slumped to the floor in peaceful slumber.

 

“Sleep pretty darling, do not cry and I will sing a lullaby.”

 

The impending stillness of the night was broken as a hideous beast drew towards the influencing melody. It seemed to be unaffected by the notes the spewed from the mouth of a single woman.

 

“Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep pretty darling, don't ch'ya cry and I will sing a lullaby.”

 

Drawing ever so near to the woman the beast slowly dropped its weapon, a startling sight too anyone, most certainly.

 

“Once there was a way to get back homeward. Once there was a way to get back home. Sleep pretty darlin' don't ch'ya cry.”

 

With certain movements the woman whose voice echoed throughout the near blocks of the city raised her arms as if showing love and warmth towards the beast that only a mother could muster.

 

“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you made.”

 

Falling to its knees the beast looked down at the woman with tears brimming in its colorless eyes. Smiling up at the beast with a soft glow in her eyes the woman shuffled closer to the beast who with unexplained happiness floating through its mind, pressed its rough white mask into the woman's welcoming embrace.

 

“Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep pretty darlin' do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby…”

 

The Woman's voice faded as the sing finally came to and end. Pressing her lips to the beast's mask in a releasing prayer the body behind the mask dissolved away until only a little boy was left. Releasing the mask of the former beast the woman looked down at it with distaste. Rising her foot she brought it down on the five foot tall mask shattering it into small pieces of white plaster before it too dissolved into the air. Turning her attention towards the boy who lay curled into a small ball the woman's smile returned as she walked over to the boy and sat down next to him. Silently coaxing him to sit up she pulled him into a soft hug.

 

“I am so sorry you had to suffer for so long. Please accept my deepest apologies.” The woman said as she gently rubbed circles in the trembling boy's back.

 

“Why did that thing…” The boy's words were cut off by his own tears as he pressed his face into the woman's chest.

 

“You have something that if you do not rid yourself of will turn you into that hollow again…” The woman slowly pulled the boy away from her body and looked down into his eyes with a sad smile. “I'm a sorry for what I must do…”

 

The boy looked up at her with a questioning stare, but his expression quickly changed when the woman plunged her closed fist through the metal plug in his chest. The boy sat in her lap silently with a look of despair and agony plastered across his face. Watching as he faded just like his former body the woman sat in silence. Once the boy was completely gone the woman turned her hand up so she could view the item she now held in her grasp.

 

…

 

 

“General Yamamoto!” Ripping open the conference room doors a young woman with short black hair stumbled into the room with a frantic expression consuming her face. Stopping short of the general's desk the woman glanced from side to side and froze in and instant. “I- I am extremely sorry for interrupting the Captain's meeting, but I thought you should know that Captain Kakusareta has returned with the-”

 

“Please, Ou-chan, I don't need an introduction.” A blonde woman said as she entered the room only seconds after the frantic girl. Resting a tanned hand on the smaller woman's shoulder she smiled towards the General. “Sorry about arriving so late. It took me a little while longer then I thought to find my Zampakuto's sheath after all these years.” Turning her attention to Ou-chan she motioned for her to leave with a nod of her head which the woman quickly complied too as she hurried out of the room. Bowing to the General and the rest of the captains, Captain Kakusareta took her place among the two lines formed by the other captains of the Gotei 13.

 

There was a long pause in the room as the conference room doors were shut that lasted until the General finally spoke. “Do you have it?”

 

Captain Kakusareta nodded. Slipping a hand into the sleeve of her kimono-like Shihakusho she spent a moment searching the pocket of her sleeve. After a few seconds she pulled her hand out with a closed fan between her fingers. Frowning she lifted the arm hole to eye level and looked down into the pocket quirking an eyebrow she let her sleeve fall back against her arm and quickly searched the other sleeve for the item in question.

 

“Damn, my sleeve's empty…” She grumbled as she let her other sleeve fall back into place on her arm. Quickly moving onto searching her Haori she sighed when she had no luck and quickly moved onto her obi. Patting the thick sash around her waist down like a security search at the airport she stopped and grinned. Slipping a hand into the large bow, a taiko, on the back of her obi she produced a ring which appeared to be made of pink gold and adorned with various gems situated in a varying order.

 

“Sorry it's so girly; it just seemed to fit when I captured the first Arrancar on its way through the gates to hell. The Sapphire goes well with the pink if I do say so myself. ” She said referring to the pink tinted gold as she held the ring up for the other captains too view.

 

“An Arrancar soul? How did you capture an Arrancar?” The captain of the second squad asked as her gaze went back and forth between the ring and Captain Kakusareta's face.

 

“I guess I should explain from the beginning as to why none of you have ever met me and why I was in the human world for so long before I go into the details of this ring. Is that alright, General?” The Captain turned her head to glance at Yamamoto who nodded. Kakusareta nodded back and smiled softly down at the ring in her hand.

 

“It all started when I applied for the position of captain 7 years ago, during the fall of preparation for the battle against Aizen. None of you were asked to view my Bankai demonstration because the demonstration was of my natural abilities are my real weapon against anyone I should come across, not the powers I gain with my zampakuto. So, because of this difference in power, I requested to prove my worth in the human world against one of Aizen's early Arrancar that I had lured out of Hueco Mundo with a bit of bait.” Kakusareta paused for a moment as she thought back to the incident.

 

“First off, my natural abilities are that of controlling and healing emotions or emotional stress. So when it comes to a hollow of any kind turning them back too a human spirit is as easy as breathing for me. Arrancar, on the other hand have a collection of many human spirits due to the amount of other hollows they had to eat in order to become a Menos and also the collection of human spirits they have eaten in order to become greedy enough to eat other hollows. Eventually they just become a mush of human spirits and you have to thread through every one until you find the true human spirit of the Arrancar. Once that has been done they are as easy as a weak hollow to turn into a human spirit. That is what I did to the Arrancar to prove I was worthy of the position of captain.”

 

“That's a nice story, but what does it have to do with that ring?” The Captain of the seventh squad asked. It was easy to tell he was looking very curious under the helmet on his head.

 

“Everything,” Captain Kakusareta grinned. “Absolutely everything. You see, this ring returns things too their original state, just like my voice does too hollows, but this ring works on everything. Say you were confronted by a Vizard. They are Shingami who melded with a hollow to gain their abilities and became more powerful, Right? Well, when you put this little band on and touch them with either your body or zampakuto they will instantly be separated into a Shingami and Hollow. The same thing goes for the Arrancar, Menos, Gillian, or Hollow of any kind. One touch and poof, they're human spirits again.” The captain's grin faded as she slipped the ring on her finger.

 

“The only problem with it is when you touch a fellow shingami they will loose any power they possess, essentially turning them back into a simple spirit.” To make an example the captain suddenly lashed out at the captain of the eighth division who stood next too her.

 

Not bothering to dodge the hand coming at his head he blocked it with his hand. Holding her hand up where it was still in front of his face the ring glinted and the three emeralds on the band flew off and smacked against his forehead. The captain looked up curious as to what was going on when the three gems bounced off of his forehead and rammed him again.

 

Pulling her hand away from his face so the rest of the captains could the three rocks as the bounced horizontally on his forehead Captain Kakusareta held back a laugh as she watched the sight. After a moment she choked back her urges to laugh and glanced at the others in the room too see their expressions.

 

“Due to the threat of touching a Shingami I put a limitation into the ring that made it so that the gems would be unable to touch a member of the Gotei 13.” When she turned the ring around on her hand so that the gems faced down, the unheard command was given for the three emeralds to return to their place along the band. Not bothering too watch the gems return she continued explaining the limitations.

 

“However any Shingami that doesn't belong to a squad, the Special Forces, or whatever else I'm forgetting at the moment would be penetrated by the gems and instantly turned harmless. This fail safe should one. Keep our own squad members from being turned into a useless spirit, two. Allow one shingami to wear it for long amounts of time without being harmed by the spirits contained inside each gem, and three. Keep any one from trying to betray the Gotei 13 like the three former captains did.”

 

“What do you mean by that second reason for the fail safe?” Kakusareta turned to glance at the 13th captain and smiled.

 

“Before I put the fail safe on the ring a human decided to try it on behind my back. That human's body was destroyed and the spirit was sealed into the gems.” Kakusareta idly turned the ring around on her finger as she recalled the incident. “Back then I was the only one who could wear it without becoming part of the ring's being. I had made it so that during the war I could slip it onto someone's finger just before they died and it would instantly seal their soul to the ring so that once they died their soul would be sucked into the ring. That's how I gained the Shingami spirits and a good deal of human spirits.”

 

Slipping the ring from around her finger she pointed at each of the gems on the band as she spoke of each one. “Each color represents a different type of spirit that had been sealed inside of the ring. The blue ones are the Spirits of unrefined hollows, or Arrancar. These green ones here are each compiled of roughly 10 shingami spirits each. I had to use so many because all the shingami's souls that I collected upon their deaths were not that extremely powerful. However I did manage to seal the spirit of Gin Ichimaru into this darker green one here along with two others with substantial Reiatsu. As for the red ones, those are human spirits and each contains roughly 100 too 200 spirits each. These spirits are the ones that really threw me through a loop for the past, oh, five years or so. Humans with even a strong spiritual sense are so hard to come by, let alone their souls after they've passed on.”

 

“How did you come by those Arrancar and Shingami souls after they died?” The captain of the fifth squad asked as she also stared down at the ring with intense thought.

 

“Just before they died, actually. Their bodies may linger but their souls as I said earlier were marked for this ring. The only notable shingami in here that you may recognize are, as previous mentioned, Former Captain of the Third Squad Gin Ichimaru, Former Lieutenant of the Fifth Squad Momo Hinamori, and Mr. Clogs and Hat… Uh… I forgot his name but he was once a captain... He's the one who turned Ichigo Kurosaki into a hybrid.”

 

“Keisuke Urahara?” One of the captains asked.

 

“Sure, why not.” Captain Kakusareta said shrugging before she slipped the ring back into her taiko. “But it doesn't really matter who's in it because now they are merely refined power. Because the rather massive collection of spirits in this little thing and the unmatched Reiatsu it gives off nothing can over power it for at least a good thousand years. After that some of the souls will have lost power and they will need to be replaced, but until then this thing is the ultimate weapon against anything.”

 

“What have you named it?” The General asked, his voice also sounding curious.

 

“Of course, The Soul Slicer.”