[Invite] Two Spirits, One Trial - Bankai

Mitsuoki had returned to the small riverside village in district sixty eight of the rukon districts, the shrine where he had buried Haruka's ashes alongside the other twelve people who died so long ago. He had spent time moving about the town, patrolling the city under the cover of the moon's light, spreading his residual spirit pressure all over the place to make it seem like he was recently at the village. Well, that was a lie. Mitsuoki did not think he was doing anything wrong since it had no effect on the kido corpse or the soul society. Mitsuoki was walking the streets so he could remember the old days, back before he was a soul reaper, before he met Haruka. Afterwards, when the moon was in the middle of the sky, he had went back to Haruka's grave where he formed his Shallow Grave, a barrier that completely blocked spiritual pressure and scent from being sensed by anyone on the outside. He did so to prevent anyone from the village from sensing him and coming to look for him. The following morning, he took the barrier down and used his gatestone teleport to return to the training grounds for more punishment.

While he was asleep, Akatsuki had invaded his dreams and told Mitsuoki something that forced him to make a decision. She told him that the longer she fought him, the closer she got to owning his soul. The closer she got to owning his soul, the more likely it would be that she would become the soul reaper, and he would watch helplessly as she did everything that he was afraid of doing. She wanted to make his dreams come true, but she hated as she watched him refuse to use his power to make it happen. He could take over everyone, every last soul reaper who was weaker than he was, and make them all confront their leaders. Doing this would make it so they had to stand down or kill almost everyone, and, they would all choose to give up. Mitsuoki did not want this. It was not the way he operated. He knew that by doing that, he would just be taking over the Soul Society, and making it unsafe for himself. They would try to assassinate him, rebel against him, and do everything in their power to bring him down. They would not pay attention to any good he would do. He wanted to change them over time, show them that there was another path to peace, and war was not it. But this required patience, and Akatsuki was running low on that commodity.

The energy shot forward in the same "x" form that Mitsuoki had slashed in and sent Akatsuki flying backwards, trying to block and failing miserably. She hit the wall and formed a crater and gave no time for herself to recover before flash stepping to Mitsuoki's face and trying to slash at him. Mitsuoki had turned on his heel, letting Akatsuki slash the ground next to him before using his elbow to ram her in the side of the face. He turned in Akatsuki's direction while sending out another crescent shaped wave of silver energy in her direction, this one being dodge by the zanpakuto spirit. The large attack obstructed Mitsuoki's line of sight of her and made it so she was able to try and make a slash at him. Mitsuoki had blocked with the white sword and Akatsuki smiled before grabbing it, letting Mitsuoki that in order for him to fight her, he had to reject her, which means that her own blade would get more dull. Mitsuoki released the sword and raised his hand as though he were going to smack her, but instead formed the same reishi sword that she had used the day before and used that to try and cut Akatsuki, catching her off guard entirely.

Mitsuoki had caught Akatsuki off guard, but that shock factor had worn off. They had resumed their ballad of trading blocks from the day before, except, Mitsuoki was striking much harder. He was fighting with purpose. A battle to save the Soul Society from having to kill him. The energy had filled his blades again and Mitsuoki had returned to hitting Akatsuki with everything he had. Akatsuki had parried one of his attacks and quickly jumped in the air, turning her feet towards him and kicking him in the stomach hard enough to send him flying back. Mitsuoki had rammed his zanpakuto and rei-sword into the ground while sliding back in order to slow himself down to a stop before launching himself forward with his pulse ability. He began spinning while rapidly charging and discharging his resonate ability, creating multiple waves of the attack that flew out and hit the walls of the crater, cutting deep into it. More importantly, it his Akatsuki multiple times, with each hit forcing her to use both swords to block, and each hit forcing her back. Mitsuoki did not dare to let up his attacks and got close enough to begin slashing at her.

Mitsuoki had vanished with his own flash step, leaving his zanpakuto and the one Akatsuki had dropped behind with a thin, silver cable extending from both of them. He was directly above her and began rapidly firing energy bullets at Akatsuki's position, kicking dust and rubble into the air around her. He began spinning while falling, closing in on Akatsuki's position. While moving downward by gravity, he shortened the length of his tethers, pulling them off the ground while making them whirl around him, increasing in speed as they drew closer to his hands until they were being grabbed by Mitsuoki and spinning as fast as he was. The crater shook and another explosion was set off inside the training ground where Mitsuoki had slammed down on Akatsuki's position, but kicking even more dust into the air. The dust was tons of small particles, which blocked Mitsuoki's ability to detect things with his own spiritual pressure, since things were everywhere around him. He began spinning again and rapidly firing off daggers in all directions, punching holds in the airborne debris that made it so he could effectively find where Akatsuki had flash stepped to. He should have been enjoying this fight, but he was not.

Akatsuki relaxed her arms and looked to her side, turning her head away from the zanpakuto. She was crying in the face of defeat, but she willingly said the words "I yield." to let Mitsuoki know that she would comply. Mitsuoki took his foot off her chest and pulled the zanpakuto out the ground slowly before flicking both of them and giving the two swords a quick twirl in his hands for added flare. He said "Good." in a stern voice with a hint of attitude before turning to Tasogare. Mitsuoki had pointed out that Tasogare was next on the list of trials to complete, and the zanpakuto spirit nodded his head before getting off the wall and making his way towards him. Akatsuki got off the ground and sat on her knees, looking at the ground in a sullen manner. Mitsuoki could tell that Akatsuki was afraid and sad that she would have to let him undertake Tasogare's trial. His eyes narrowed on her and he asked what she was looking so sad and scared for. Akatsuki had given no answer. Tasogare had told Mitsuoki that she was afraid of what he was about to learn, but she was following his orders of having confidence in his ability to remain neutral in his judgement.

He looked around at the world, noting several stone pillars arranged in a circle. Stone steps were had lead in varying directions, away from where Mitsuoki was standing, but they had all seemed to be floating on the surface of the water, rather than being attached to something below. There was something missing from this world that was normally here when he consulted with his zanpakuto spirits in the past... His spirits, themselves. In hindsight, that made sense since his spirits had been summoned to the real world. Mitsuoki took a step forward, standing on the first stone and immediately, all of the fish turned to look at Mitsuoki with their eyes glowing. The black fish's eyes glowed white and the white fish's eyes glowed black. Then, the world changed to being red. Everywhere Mitsuoki looked, he saw flames engulfing everything. He was unable to move his own body but at the same time, his body was moving on its own. He moved to the door and swung it wide open only to recoil when a blast of flames came into his room. Then, Mitsuoki ran to the window. Looking down, he saw a fence with sharp spikes and a garbage dumpster with a meter of space between them.

The vision faded out and Mitsuoki was standing on the second stone. He mumbled to himself his realization that the stones were points in his life... or, rather, his death. He moved to the next step and watched the world return to the world of the living, where he saw his soul version directly after touching the officer. He turned and ran to the next one, shouting at him, calling for attention. He was in severe distress and had even been crying, displaying more emotion in a few seconds than Mitsuoki knew was possible for him. Every last one of the firefighters had ignored Mitsuoki and his panic only increased more from it. Mitsuoki then tried getting the attention of a police official who was keeping the road blocked, only to come to the same result as the firefighters. The real Mitsuoki had tried to reach out to him, trying to say that he was dead and should stop trying to interact with the living. But, of course, the vision version of himself was completely unable to hear him. Mitsuoki tried to touch him and saw his own hand phase right through the soul version's body. That reminded him that he was in the middle of a vision, and not the real world.

Mitsuoki had taken another step when he returned to his inner world and saw a vision of his soul form on his knees, clutching his cheast and screaming in pain. Mitsuoki tried to look away but he knew what was happening, he did not need to see himself undergoing the process of hollowfication. Then, he paused and looked at himself. He questioned why he was a soul reaper at all if he was turning into a hollow. Mitsuoki watched the chain in his chest vanished and the hole opening up. Suddenly, just as the soul version of Mitsuoki was about to burst into spirit particles, he saw a flash of light and a faceless soul reaper was pressing the butt of her sword against his skull. When the hilt was removed, he saw a bright, blue light shining- the symbol of a soul burial. Mitsuoki's soul had stopped screaming and that blue light had consumed his entire being before sending him off to the soul society. Mitsuoki did not need to know what happened after that, he had very vivid memories of his arrival to the rukon district, number seventy. His first meeting with people who could see him was an attempted mugging, his second meeting was the soul reaper Michino.