Bleach: Enosichthon - CH3 (Patreon)

I left Goro’s place with a heavy old bag slung over my shoulder, and a fairly clean, slightly rusted katana tucked through the belt of my robe. Between the sudden discovery of spiritual energy and the actual supplies, I felt like I was in a pretty good spot for a dead guy starting a cross-country hike. All and all, things were going well for me.

Goro had pointed me inward, which sounded like a simple enough direction at the time. The problem with a place that had no street signs, no paved roads, and a chaotic design for its buildings was that 'inward' was a highly subjective concept once you were trying to orient yourself. After about three hours of walking, the main road had splintered off into three different rocky trails. I had picked the one that sloped slightly downward, figuring gravity naturally led to the center of things… I mean, I think I read that somewhere, or was that about following rivers?

In hindsight, I really should have asked for a map. But hey, sue me, it’s my first time being dead, so cut me some slack.

I walked for the better part of the afternoon, taking my time and chewing on a piece of dried meat, the sky never seemed to change much as I walked, just a vast, blank stretch of blue that offered zero navigational help. But while the sky stayed the same, the landscape definitely didn't.

Goro had warned me that the high-numbered districts were lawless, and that the deeper I went the better things would become, but I had genuinely expected at least a marginal upgrade in the real estate as I moved on… Instead, things were getting aggressively worse.

The sagging mud shacks of Kusajishi had entirely vanished… Here, there wasn't even a pretense of civilization, the terrain was nothing but jagged, gray rock, deep craters, and the charred, splintered remains of what might have once been fences or walls decades ago. There were no clustered settlements, no people hiding in alleyways, and absolutely zero hushed whispers.

"Well," I muttered, taking a pull from my water skin and wiping my mouth. "District 78 is an absolute dump…." Goro had a very weird definition of 'better', this was… a whole lot worse.

I kept my pace steady, resting one hand casually on the pommel of my new sword. I didn't know the first thing about swords, kenjutsu, fencing, or whatever proper martial art was used with blades, but having three feet of sharp steel on my hip was a nice comfort blanket, considering the place.

As I crested a small, rocky ridge, the wind picked up, carrying that metallic smell straight into my face.

I stopped.

Down in the shallow gorge ahead of me, there were bodies. Lots of them, and by their looks, definitely not recent, just a haphazard scattering of corpses and their remains torn apart.

Okay. So the 'lawless' description wasn't an exaggeration… this amount of death didn’t seem to serve a purpose, in fact, it looked like the carnage itself was the purpose… I had definitely taken the wrong turn… there was no way this was district 78.

I let out a slow sigh, adjusting the strap of my bag, as I turned around, weighing my options… because I had a strong feeling I wasn't alone anymore, I could feel a heavy, suffocating tension in the back of my neck, practically vibrating in the air, but it felt entirely different from the desperate energy of the thugs or Goro.

This felt hot…. Animalistic in nature. It felt like someone was staring at a steak. And I had a strong feeling I was that steak.

"I don't suppose any of you want to just ask for a piece of dried meat?" I called out, really hoping this didn’t escalate... “Some food for directions?" 

A low, scraping sound answered me, the noise of metal dragging against stone.

From behind a massive fractured boulder to my left, a man stepped out into the open. The man in question was tall and skinny, and covered in a layer of grime and dried blood that made it impossible to tell what color his ragged robe used to be… his eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of anything resembling sanity… He was grinning so hard his gums were bleeding, it looked straight out of a horror movie, so I wasn’t exactly a fan.

In his right hand, he held a jagged meat cleaver that looked like it had been salvaged from scraps and corpses, considering the handle was a bone.

He didn't say a word. He didn't demand my clothes, my shoes, or the supplies in my bag, or even my servitude like Goro had. He just let out a wet, rattling maniacal laugh, kicked off the dirt, and launched himself directly at me with a terrifying amount of speed.

"Shit," I murmured.

I grabbed the hilt of my shiny new katana and pulled.

In the movies, the blade makes a clean, ringing sound and the hero naturally shifts into a perfect, balanced stance. In reality, my wrist caught at an awkward angle, the scabbard snagged against my belt, and I just barely managed to jerk the steel up in time to put it between myself and the charging lunatic.

The heavy bone-handled cleaver slammed against my blade. The impact was jarring, sending a violent, rattling jolt straight up my forearm that nearly made me drop the weapon. I stumbled backward, trying to push him away, but I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was holding a perfectly good blade like a baseball bat.

Something the crazy bastard seemed to realize, as he let out another wet laugh, before simply sliding  his cleaver under my probably very clumsy attempt of a guard, slashing upward in an arc.

I tried to move out of the way, but I was not fast enough, the jagged edge of the cleaver bit into my left shoulder, slicing effortlessly through the coarse fabric of my robe and carving a hot, burning line right across my collarbone.

"Well, that ain't good," I hissed, stumbling over a loose rock as I retreated.

Blood immediately started soaking into my robe, but the guy didn't give me a single second to process the pain or the fact this was quickly turning into a slasher film, the bastard was simply swinging the heavy cleaver in wild, frantic strikes as I awkwardly swung the katana trying deflect his strikes, but my nonexistent technique was a massive liability. I was just throwing metal in the way of metal hoping it would work. His blade scraped down the side of mine, slipped past the handguard, and sliced a shallow, stinging gash into my forearm.

I gritted my teeth as another sloppy parry left my guard wide open. He didn't hesitate, driving a heavy kick right into my chest that sent me sprawling into the dirt.

My bag dropped onto the rocks, and my blade clattered out of my grip, landing a few feet away, as the maniac loomed over me, raising the cleaver high above his head with both hands, letting my blood drop into his face, his gums bleeding as his smile stretched from ear to ear.

Instead of scrambling for the dropped blade, I planted my feet against the dirt, curled my hands into a fists, I was more of a puncher anyways… and as the cleaver came down, I didn't try to dodge, I pushed myself forward just enough to drive my fist directly into his ribs.

It connected with a loud crunch; which worked for me, I just wanted to hit him as hard as I humanly could. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of him and shoved him backward, throwing his swing off course, with the cleaver buried itself in the dirt instead of me as he stumbled back a few steps, clutching his side.

I scrambled to my feet, expecting that to be the end of it. After all, so far a punch has been all I needed to de-escalate stuff. Not only that, but breaking ribs usually took the fight right out of a person, that is mighty painful if I do say so myself.

Yet, this man, like this world, didn’t seem to operate under the same set of rules I was accustomed to.

Instead of calling it a day, the maniac coughed up a mouthful of blood, looked down at where I had punched him, and actually laughed. His grin hadn't dropped a single inch… no… if anything, he looked more excited.

"Lord have mercy," I muttered, wiping a streak of dirt and blood off my cheek.

He ripped the cleaver out of the ground and lunged again, swinging in a wild horizontal arc. I stepped back, as the tip of the cleaver caught the front of my robe and sliced a shallow gash straight across my ribs.

I winced, stepping in before he could pull the weapon back for another swing, throwing a left hook, catching him squarely in the jaw, with the impact snapping his head to the side, with such force I actually saw a bloody tooth hit the dirt, but instead of going down, the crazy bastard just ate the punch with a smile, and immediately tried to tackle me.

We tangled up, and he shoved his head right into my wounded shoulder, creating a fresh, blinding wave of pain that flared up my neck, making me grit my teeth before I pushed him off, barely dodging another frantic swipe of the cleaver that managed to clip my hip.

This was getting ridiculous… 

He let out another maniacal laugh, raising the cleaver for what it looked like a desperate, overhead strike, completely abandoning whatever defense he had left, not that he had any, he fought like an animal, not that I was an expert, all I knew was how to punch. Either way, it was easy enough to see it was a massive telegraph, the kind of wild, reckless swing someone would do when they don't care if they live or die, and during our short… time together, I could say this guy didn’t particularly care.

I moved forward, shifting my weight as I slipped inside the arc of the falling cleaver, before driving my right fist straight into the side of his head with all the strength I could muster.

There was a sickening, solid thud, as his eyes rolled back instantly, and the cleaver slipped from his grip, clattering uselessly against the rocks as his body went completely limp and he crumpled to the dirt like a ragdoll, face-planting hard into the ground.

I stood there for a long time, listening to the quiet wind whistling through the gorge and the sound of my own heavy breathing. I looked down at the guy, then at my bleeding shoulder, the slice on my arm, and the fresh cut on my ribs. I was a mess, and my brand new clothes were ruined.

As I tried to catch my breath, the guy on the ground let out a low, rattling wheeze.

He wasn't dead. Unconscious, sure, with a caved-in side and a jaw that was definitely broken, but his chest was still rising and falling in shallow, jagged spurts.

I rubbed the back of my neck, wincing as the movement pulled at my bleeding collarbone. This was the part where you call the cops, give a statement, and go to the hospital to get patched up… But here? There were no cops, I mean, there were, but I had a feeling phones were not common around here.

I walked over and picked up my dropped blade, brushing the dirt dust off the scabbard.

I had never killed anyone… Never even come close, I mean, I loved life, I respected it, and the idea of actively ending someone else's… even a crazy bastard like this, sat heavy in my gut. It felt like crossing a line you couldn't uncross, a permanent stain on whatever this new season of mine was supposed to be.

But then I looked at the bodies scattered around the rocks… I looked at the bone-handled cleaver lying in the dirt.

If I just walked away, he would wake up, and when he did, he would either track me down because I gave him a fun fight which seemed to be the kind of thing that he liked, or he would just go right back to butchering whoever else wandered into this rocky hellhole… Leaving him alive wasn't an act of mercy or a good deed from me; it was just passing the buck to his next victim.

"Give and take," I muttered, the words tasting a bit sour in my mouth. "There's some folks that just need killing... but I never figured I'd be the one holding the rope…"

I walked back over to where he lay in the dirt, I didn't feel angry, and I didn't feel like a hero making a hard, I didn’t even know what I felt… I just knew it had to be done, so with a deep breath, I reversed my grip on the katana, pointing the tip of the blade down at his back, right between his shoulder blades.

"It ain't personal, man. But a mad dog don't get a second chance," I said quietly to the unconscious man, before I drove the blade down.

It wasn't clean, and it wasn't like the movies where blades cut through people like butter, no… There was heavy resistance, a sickening, jarring friction of steel parting bone and muscle as I pushed through with my weight until it was done and the maniac's body went completely rigid for a split second, releasing a final silent gasp, before he went entirely, permanently still.

I pulled the sword out, my hands shaking just a little bit, and wiped the blade on his ragged robes before awkwardly sliding it back into the scabbard.

I didn't linger to look at my handiwork, I grabbed my heavy bag from the rocks, slung it carefully over my uninjured shoulder, and started walking again… I needed to find a place to patch myself up, and I needed to get the hell out of this god forsaken place before the smell of fresh blood attracted whatever else lived in this neighborhood, because I had a feeling guys like him were a common occurrence here.

I put a solid hour of walking between myself and that gorge before the adrenaline completely checked out, leaving me with the full, unfiltered reality of my situation, which, spoiler, wasn’t good… Every step started to send a dull throb up my left side, and the burning sensation across the cuts was quickly graduating from a sting to a deep, relentless ache.

The rocky terrain hadn't changed much, but the shadows were getting longer as the sun began its descent as the sky was bleeding from blue into deep shades of orange, which meant I was running out of daylight, which also meant this place would get more dangerous, whichhhhh also meant I needed a place to hole up, and I needed it fast.

Sleeping out in the open in a place that apparently doubled as a serial killer playground was a hard pass.

Off to my right, the jagged ground sloped upward into a cluster of massive, overlapping boulders, it wasn't exactly a five-star hotel, but the way the rocks leaned against each other created a natural overhang, a shallow, shadowed alcove that offered cover from the wind and hid me from the main path and from the view of more crazy people.

"Good enough," I smiled, dragging my feet as I climbed up the slight incline.

I slipped into the alcove and practically collapsed against the cold, gray stone, dropping my bag next to me, as I unclipped the katana from my belt, and let out a long, ragged exhale… it had been a long day, and the most dangerous forty eight hours in my life. The silence here was palpable, broken only by the sound of my own breathing and the faint whistle of the wind through the rocks.

Now for the fun part.

I shrugged my right arm out of the robe, carefully peeling the fabric away from my left shoulder, by now the blood had started to dry, sticking the cheap sackcloth to the gash on my collarbone, which meant pulling it free felt like ripping off a band-aid made of sandpaper, but worse… I hissed through my teeth, leaning my head back against the rock.

The cut wasn't terribly deep, but it hurt like hell. The madman’s cleaver had been jagged and filthy, and if I could bleed in the afterlife, then… well, an infection was probably a very real thing here as well, the gashes on my forearm and ribs were shallower, and hurt considerably less, but they were still bleeding.

I reached into the heavy bag with my good arm and pulled out one of the water skins and the block of salt Goro’s guard had packed.

"Well... you really went and done it now," I breathed out, bracing myself. "This is going to hurt a lot."

I poured a generous splash of water over the salt block, rubbing it with my thumb to get a thick paste, and then slathered it directly onto the cut on my arm. The pain was immediate and blinding at that, it felt like someone had just held a lighter to my skin, and shit did it hurt, my vision actually went white at the edges, and I had to bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling, which also hurt.

"Son of a—" I wheezed, my entire body locking up in a tight, rigid flinch.

I took a few rapid breaths, waiting for the worst of the fire to die down, before repeating the process on my ribs and finally my shoulder. By the time I was done, I was sweating profusely, shivering in the cooling evening air, and feeling thoroughly exhausted, I used my rusted knife to saw a few long strips off the bottom of my robe, tying them tightly over the wounds as crude bandages.

I had no medical degree, but it would have to do.

I slumped back down, resting my forearms on my knees as I uncorked the water skin again, taking a long drink to wash the pain out of my mouth, before finally letting myself just sit for a moment, before I picked up a piece of dried meat from the bag, tearing off a tough chunk with my teeth, and chewed slowly as the last of the sunlight faded from the rocky landscape. 

The night brought a biting chill that cut right through the thin, coarse material of my ruined robe, once the sun completely vanished. The rocky landscape didn't just get dark; it went pitch black, besides the fact that there were no lights of any kind around this place, whatever moon hung in the sky was smothered by the thick clouds. 

I didn't sleep much. It wasn't just the pain radiating from my shoulder and ribs, etc, though that certainly didn't help my case, but every time my eyes drifted shut, the wind would whistle through the jagged rocks, and my brain would immediately supply the image of a bleeding, grinning lunatic charging out of the shadows… I spent most of the night in a half-doze, keeping my breathing shallow and my right hand resting loosely on the hilt of the sheathed katana.

When morning finally broke, creeping over the jagged craters in pale, watery shades of light, I felt like I had been run over by a truck, backed over, and then parked on, like a dozen times.

I let out a long groan as I pushed myself off the rock wall as every single muscle in my body protested. My left shoulder felt incredibly stiff, the skin pulling tight around the gashes when I moved, the salt and water trick had burned like hell, but it seemed to have done the job, hopefully narrowing the chance of an infection, with the downside of a bigger scar.

"Breakfast of champions," I muttered, taking a small sip from the water skin and tearing off another piece of dried meat.

I chewed watching the desolate gorge slowly illuminate… No fresh bodies from what I could see, no movement, just endless gray rocks. Once I finished the tough piece of jerky, I strapped the katana back onto my belt and hoisted my bag over my good right shoulder, before stepping out of the comfort of my sweet temporary home and back onto… wherever this place was. The plan for today was simple: keep moving, try not to get stabbed, and have a better day than day two?

It didn’t seem like it was a lot to ask.

I spent the first few hours just putting one foot in front of the other, letting the steady pace distract me from the throbbing pain in my body, but as the sun climbed higher, warming the chill out of the air, I decided it was time to experiment.

If I was going to survive a trek across seventy-something lawless districts, I needed more than a rusty sword I didn't know how to swing and a few well placed punches, I needed that dense, vibrating pressure on command, the spiritual pressure thing.

As I walked, I curled my right hand into a fist. I tried to remember exactly how it felt back in the alleyway with the thugs, and in Goro's tent with the guard. Both times, I had been reacting to an immediate threat, I closed my eyes for a second, focusing entirely on my knuckles, trying to force that heavy, rattling hum to the surface.

Nothing. 

I sighed, opening my hand and flexing my fingers. Okay, so brute-forcing it wasn't going to work, it seems it wasn't just a muscle I could flex on command. Perhaps it didn’t work as well when I was injured?

I kept walking, trying different things over the next mile, I tried getting angry, thinking about the lunatic with the bone cleaver, that didn’t work, that just made my body ache more, I tried visualizing the air turning into concrete, which mostly just made me feel like an idiot playing pretend in the middle of a post apocalyptic wasteland.

Around midday, I stopped by a dead, withered tree trunk sticking out of the rocky dirt, I stared at it for a moment, then squared my stance, took a deep breath, cleared my mind and threw a solid, straightforward strike at the dead wood. My knuckles connected with a dull thud, the rough surface of the tree scraping my skin, as the impact jarred my wrist uncomfortably, but the wood didn't splinter, shatter, or explode.

"Well, that's embarrassing," I muttered, shaking out my stinging hand.

"Hi."

I stopped dead in my tracks, my hand instinctively dropped toward the hilt of the katana, my heart giving a sudden, violent kick against my bruised ribs. In a place where the local greeting was usually a death threat, a cheerful, high-pitched voice was the last thing I expected.

I turned around, scanning the rocks, and blinked.

Sitting on top of a weathered gray boulder, swinging her bare feet casually over the edge, was a little girl, she couldn't have been more than a few years old, she wore a ragged, oversized piece of cloth that hung off her, and her hair was a messy, unmistakable shade of bright pink, she was entirely alone, completely unarmed, and looking at me with large, unblinking eyes that held absolutely zero fear… in a place that looked like the mouth of hell, she looked like she was waiting for a bus for her school trip.

I slowly took my hand off my sword, my shoulders relaxing. Hoping this wasn’t one of those tropes where the tiny cute little girl was the almighty beast of destruction, "Hey there," I said, offering a small  smile. "You're a bit young to be hanging around a place like this by yourself, aren't you?"

She didn't answer the question, she just stared at my heavy bag. "Got any food?"

"I might have a little something," I said, reaching into the sack, pulling out a piece of the dried meat, before tossing it at her.

She caught it with surprising coordination, immediately taking a large bite, chewing happily, her legs swinging a little faster against the rock.

"Thanks!" she chirped.

"Don't mention it," I said, resting my hands on my hips and looking around the empty wasteland. "Actually, maybe you can help me out… I'm trying to find District 77, you see… The guy who gave me directions wasn't exactly a cartographer, and I have a feeling I took a wrong turn a few miles back… Do you know where I should go?"

The little girl stopped chewing as she looked at me, then tilted her head, her pink hair shifting over her shoulder. "This isn't 77," she said plainly. "This is 80. Zaraki."

A long, heavy silence settled between us, broken only by the dry wind whistling past the boulder. Well… that explained the slasher movie moment I lived through.

"District 80," I repeated slowly, letting out a tired breath. "Right. So, instead of walking out of the murder capital, I just walked right into the middle of it. That explains the guy with the cleaver." I rubbed the back of my neck, wincing as it pulled at my bandaged shoulder. "Man, I am really bad at this."

The girl didn't seem to care about my existential crisis regarding my navigational skills, she just pointed a small, dirty finger off to my left, perpendicular to the path I had been following.

"That way," she said.

"Appreciate it, kid," I smiled, adjusting the bag on my shoulder and turning to face the new direction. "Stay safe out here, alright?"

I had barely taken two steps when her voice called out again, cutting through the quiet air.

"You should get stronger! You seem fun!"

I paused, glancing back over my shoulder, she was still sitting on the rock, chewing on the dried meat, her bright eyes locked onto me. There was no malice in her voice, in fact… it almost seemed like an invitation of some sort, to what exactly, I didn’t have a clue.

I let out a soft chuckle, shaking my head. "Yeah. I'm working on it."