Rain hammered the asphalt like a thousand tiny bullets. It's been pouring heavily for the past hour and it didn't look like it'll be clearing anytime soon from the looks of it.
The highway stretched endlessly through the darkness, illuminated only by scattered streetlights and the glowing red taillights of distant cars. Water pooled across the road, turning the blacktop slick and reflective, every passing vehicle sending sprays of mist into the air.
Inside a dark gray sedan, two brothers were driving home from a party.
The windshield wipers moved back and forth in a steady rhythm.
Thunk… thunk… thunk…
The heater hummed quietly as warm air filled the car, fogging the edges of the windows.
Kaito shifted his grip on the wheel with one hand trying to see the road outside, his eyes narrowed as he peered through the rhythmic slap of the wipers. The world outside was a smear of gray and neon red. Yeah maybe they shouldn't have left the party at all and stayed till it stopped raining… well not like they had any choice.
"I'm still processing the sheer audacity," Ren muttered from the passenger seat. The blue light from his screen brightness cast sharp, skeletal shadows across his face, making his annoyance look a lot more pronounced, "That was actually insane. I can't believe she called the cops to crash Patrick's party just because he finally dumped her, the level of petty is off the charts. Man, I hope Patrick takes my advice and go lower."
Kaito snorted, his eyes tracking the spray coming off a distant semi-truck. "Diabolical is what it is. Especially given the fact that he caught her cheating on him last week. Some people just want to see the world burn because they can't handle the smoke of their own bridges burning."
Ren didn't respond immediately. Instead, the familiar, high-octane screech of an energy blast echoed from his phone speakers. It was a sound Kaito knew by heart. He glanced over and groaned with a smirk tugging at his lips.
"Dude, seriously? How many times are you going to watch that same episode? We've been in this car for twenty minutes and I've heard that Cero blast four times now."
"It's the peak of the medium, Kaito. Deal with it," Ren retorted with his eyes still glued to the screen. On the display, the winged, demonic silhouette of Ulquiorra Cifer stood atop the canopy of Las Noches, looking down at a golden-haired, primal beast. It was the climax of Bleach: the despair of the Fourth Espada versus the Vasto Lorde.
"You've seen him throw that Lanza del Relámpago fifty times today, not that I don't love it but…" Kaito joked, merging into the slow lane to avoid a massive puddle. "We get it, he's 'depth and nihilism' personified. You're obsessed."
"It's not obsession, it's appreciation for a character who actually has a philosophy," Ren countered his brother. The car fell into a brief silence after that little back and forth, save for the violence on the small screen and the rhythmic thwack-thwack of the wipers. As the episode wound down and the ash began to flake off Ulquiorra's fingers and drift into the wind, Ren exhaled softly, "That... was actually unexpected."
"What's that dear brother?" Kaito asked. "The fact that he finally found a 'heart' at the very end?"
"Yeah," Ren said, leaning his head against the cold, vibrating glass of the window. "It's bittersweet, I don't hate Ulquiorra, he's arguably the best-written villain in the show but I still prefer Grimmjow. At least Grimmjow has the guts to just be a predator without the existential homework. Plus he enjoys the fun of the battle."
Kaito rolled his eyes, a playful heat entering his voice. "Of course you'd pick the loudmouth. Ulquiorra would wipe the floor with him nonetheless. Rank four exists for a reason, Ren. Power isn't just about screaming the loudest."
"In your dreams, Kai. Grimmjow's Despairing Claw would tear through that green emo's—"
The argument was severed by a sound that didn't belong to the rain. They both looked forward and their eyes widened by what they saw.
A flatbed trailer fifty yards ahead hit a patch of black ice, jackknifing with violent, metallic momentum. The heavy chains securing a load of massive, rain-slicked pine logs snapped with the sound of gunshots. In the heavy downpour, it looked like a slow-motion nightmare to the two brothers. A splinter from a three-ton log launched from the bed, soaring through the air like a battering ram. It punched through the sedan's windshield as if it were tissue paper.
There was no time to scream or even for a final word.
The log intended for Kaito struck him without resistance and with brutal precision.It erased the space where his neck and upper chest were, impaling him through the driver's seat and anchoring him to the frame of the car. Ren fared no better; a second log crushed the dashboard, driving straight through his abdomen, pinning him like an insect to a board.
The car shifted without Kaito controlling it, it spun around and crashed into a tree. Kaito's vision flickered with the world fading into a gray, static-filled void. His last conscious thought was a visceral, exhausted loathing of the cold.
'I hate the rain,' he thought, and then the light left his eyes.
—————
Kaito and Ren gasped in unison, a violent intake of breath that felt like lungs expanding for the very first time in God knows how long which felt weird considering nothing of such should be happening after the experience they just had.
They weren't in the car or even in the rain anymore. They were sitting in high-backed, white minimalist chairs that felt oddly cold against their skin. Their hands flew instinctively to their bodies. Kaito clutched at his throat; Ren clawed at his stomach. There were no logs, or blood or even the shredded skin they expected from the impalement.
But as they looked down, their hearts (or what remained of them) stopped. There were perfectly circular, smooth-edged holes where their vitals should have been.
"What the... what the fuck?" Kaito choked out and for some odd reasons, his voice didn't sound like his own, it was layered, resonant and echoing with a haunting vibration.
Ren looked at his brother, his face was a mask of sheer terror. "We... Kai, we died. I saw the logs. I felt the steel... I think we're dead."
"Ah... I see you've awoken."
A voice sounded out of nowhere shocking both brothers, it was like velvet over a razor blade, dripping with a terrifying, polite confidence. The brothers froze. They weren't in a hospital or some pearly-gated afterlife. They were in a vast, white dome supported by pillars that stretched into an infinite dark sky. A long, rectangular table sat before them. The weird thing was that they both knew this room as the Espada meeting room from Las Noches.
At the head of the table sat a man with perfectly coiffed brown hair, wearing white robes that seemed to glow. He had a gaze that seemed to weigh their souls like gold on a scale. It was Sosuke Aizen.
"This can't be real," Ren whispered with his breath hitching in his throat. "This is a hallucination. My brain is misfiring before the neurons die. This is some weird fan-fiction dream."
The figure smiled in a terrifyingly polite expression that made both brothers wary, "I assure you, your brains have long since ceased 'misfiring.' I am what your kind might call a 'Random Omnipotent Being.' But I find this form... aesthetically pleasing for our current business. It suits the 'flavor' of your transition."
The ROB leaned forward, resting his chin on intertwined fingers. "I've spent eons listening to a gazillion debates across the multiverse. Power scaling, 'who would win,' the endless, droning drivel of mortals trying to quantify the imaginary. But your debate? The passion with which you defended those two specific hollows right before your 'untimely' end? It fascinated me. It was... synchronized."
Kaito and Ren shared a look. It was a look they'd shared since they were toddlers, one of silent, deep-seated understanding. 'Don't provoke it, Keep your fear internal and observe only and don't speak unless necessary.'
The ROB's eyes glinted with genuine amusement. "Hooo... how impressive. Even in the face of the inexplicable, you remain in tune. You understand each other without a single vibration of the air. Rare."
Suddenly, the room inverted itself. One moment they were looking up at the ceiling, the next, the gravity shifted with a sickening lurch, and the ROB was standing on the opposite side of the room, yet somehow he was still looming directly over them. The physics of the space were a playground for his whim.
"You both are so remarkably synchronized," the entity chuckled, the Aizen-face masking a cosmic hunger for entertainment, excitedly said, "I've decided to grant you a second life. But don't expect 'wishes,' or 'cheat systems,' or some golden path. I am bored, and I want a show. I am going to reincarnate you as the very things you were defending."
The brothers' eyes widened to the size of saucers.
"Wait—" Kaito started, but his voice was drowned out by a low-frequency hum that vibrated through the floor and into his marrow.
"Don't look so worried," the ROB said with a sharp, sarcastic lilt. "You wanted to know who was stronger? Now you can settle it in a world where strength is the only currency that doesn't devalue. A world of 'Levels' and 'Gates.' Let's see how the shadows of Hueco Mundo handle the world built around the system of the Shadow Monarch and well other things as well… oh they'll find out."
Green spiritual pressure erupted from Kaito's chest like a geyser of emerald fire; an electric blue pressure exploded from Ren, crackling like a downed power line. Their bodies began to swell, their souls warping and stretching as the sheer volume of Reiryoku flooded their essence. The pain was transcendental, a fundamental rewriting of their spiritual DNA.
The entity waved a hand, looking thoroughly satisfied as their forms began to dissolve into particles of black and white reishi, spiraling toward a new reality.
"Now then," the ROB whispered into the vast, empty dome. "Let's enjoy the show, shall we? Try not to die too quickly this time."
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