"Hahahaha! I can see! I can finally see!"
Kaname Tosen, consumed by the released form of his hollow power, let out a twisted, almost deranged laugh. His eyes, which had known only darkness for his entire life, now swept across the world around him with a hunger that felt almost childish - and yet there was something so cruel in that joy that it turned the moment deeply unsettling.
Before him, the Seireitei no longer looked like a sacred fortress. It had become an open hell. The ground was split apart, buildings collapsed silently amid pillars of smoke, and the air was thick with the smell of blood, dust, and scorched spiritual pressure.
"So this is the sky…"
His voice trembled, not with pure emotion, but with corrupted ecstasy.
"So this is blood…"
He slowly lifted his face, as though every color he had just discovered was a divine revelation.
"And this… is you, Komamura."
At last, his gaze landed on Sajin Komamura, who stood before him in his human form, unmoving. The corner of Tosen's mouth curved into a smile filled with contempt, as if seeing his old friend had become the final piece of some cruel truth.
"You are even uglier… than I imagined."
Faced with that insult, Komamura showed no anger. No vein bulged on his face, no roar escaped his throat, and no trace of rage clouded his eyes. What appeared there instead was something far heavier.
Pity.
A deep, silent, almost unbearable pity.
He tightened his grip around the hilt of his blade.
In that instant, Komamura understood that there were no words left that could reach Tosen. The friend who had once walked beside him had been swallowed by hatred, vengeance, and an illusion of justice that had twisted itself into monstrosity. The only thing he could still do was grant him release.
Tosen attacked.
His hollow-released form gave off terrifying spiritual pressure. His body looked like an abomination born from obsession, his thin wings vibrating like those of a massive insect, and every movement carried a savage, almost irrational violence. But he soon realized something was wrong.
The giant before him was not the same as before.
This was not the same Bankai he had known when he still served as captain of the Ninth Division.
No matter how he attacked, no matter how his power tore across the battlefield, no matter how violently his energy exploded against that colossal figure, nothing seemed to work.
Komamura's voice rose, firm as a sentence passed down from heaven.
"Kokujō Tengen Myō'ō is an armored Bankai infused with the life of its master. But this form… this is what remains after the armor has been cast aside. What stands here is only spiritual pressure and raw strength."
His eyes narrowed.
"No matter what kind of power you received from Sosuke Aizen, you will never defeat him."
Komamura's gigantic form advanced with crushing brutality. The strike descended like the judgment of a mountain, and Tosen barely managed to escape, beating his translucent wings in desperate struggle. He retreated through the air like a wounded fly, his rage swelling with every second.
Then he suddenly turned and released a wave of emerald-green sound toward Komamura, sharp and destructive.
"Nine Rings of Death!"
The energy tore through the air with a shrill, unbearable sound, as if space itself were being ground apart.
"Your Bankai is connected to your body. Then what happens if I attack you directly?"
Tosen never finished the sentence.
The explosion struck Komamura head-on. A violent flash swallowed his body, throwing up dust, shattered stone, and sparks of spiritual energy. When the smoke began to clear, Komamura's black uniform had been blasted open, revealing his broad, powerful chest.
And there, on the left side, was a hole.
A hollow opening where his heart should have been.
Tosen froze.
Even in his monstrous form, with most of his face hidden behind that grotesque fly-like mask, the shock in his voice was unmistakable.
"What… is that?"
Komamura breathed heavily, but his posture did not waver.
"What stands before you now is nothing more than a vessel. A body offered up for the sake of defeating you."
The story then briefly sank into the past.
Still in his original wolfman form, Komamura had returned to the homeland of his clan and found his own grandfather. There, before that stern and ancient ancestor, he had offered his heart as the price. In exchange, he had earned the right to learn a forbidden secret technique.
Now, he was no longer truly a living man.
He was a corpse that could still speak.
A corpse moved by loyalty, regret, and will.
In the next instant, Komamura instinctively commanded his Bankai, and the strike meant to crush Tosen came down with enough force to end everything.
But at the final moment, he held the blade back.
The violence stopped just short of death.
Komamura closed his eyes for a breath.
"In the end… I still cannot bring myself to kill you."
Tosen, wounded beyond his limit, could no longer sustain his released form. The hollow monstrosity was forcibly undone, and his body returned to its usual appearance. He collapsed to the ground, devastated, barely able to open his eyes.
Two familiar silhouettes appeared in his fading vision.
"Komamura… Hisagi…"
"Do not speak." Komamura's voice was hoarse. "It was only thanks to hollow regeneration that you managed to remain alive until now…"
He tried to continue, but a violent cough interrupted him.
After sacrificing his own heart and enduring that battle, Komamura's life was also fading like a flame exposed to the wind.
"Komamura, I…"
Tosen tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat.
Komamura, however, had already understood.
"Perhaps only now, after crossing blades, have we finally managed to truly understand each other."
Tosen's eyes widened.
Komamura looked at him with a calm sadness, and despite the pain, his voice remained incredibly gentle.
"I will not ask you to abandon your hatred. Nor will I demand that you give up your revenge. But do not allow revenge to make you lose yourself."
He lowered his gaze for a moment.
"Just as you lost someone precious to you, if I lost you, a hole would open inside me as well."
As he said this, Komamura raised his hand and pressed it against the open wound in his own chest.
Tears finally slid down Tosen's face. His voice came out weak, broken, almost unrecognizable.
"Thank you… Komamura…"
At the end of his life, that man found release.
Just as Alex had previously removed the scene where Sosuke Aizen injured Harribel, after thinking it over, he also cut the part where Aizen tampered with Tosen's hollowfication. After all, at this point in the original story, Tosen was already hanging by a thread. There was no need to add that extra move.
Worse, it would only stain Aizen's image as the perfect villain.
And a perfect villain did not need to dirty his hands when silence could already do all the work for him.
"Rest in peace… Tosen."
Komamura lowered his head and placed the body of his old friend in a ruined corner of the Seireitei.
At the very end, after so much pain, the two of them had finally reconciled.
But then, Komamura's human face began to change. Fur emerged across his skin, spreading rapidly over his arms, his face, and his hands. The technique had reached its limit, and his body was mercilessly returning to its original form.
"So… this was all the time I could maintain it?"
He looked at his own hands, now once again covered in fur, and then turned his eyes toward the roof of the First Division barracks, where Sosuke Aizen stood like an untouchable shadow.
Frustration burned inside him.
"Not yet… not yet… I cannot die now…"
His voice faltered.
"I still have to defeat Sosuke Aizen…"
Komamura gathered what little strength remained and tried to stand.
But his body no longer obeyed.
He took one unstable step and collapsed to his knees. As his beastly form returned completely, his life also drained away with terrifying speed.
"It seems… this is my limit…"
There was pain in his voice, but also a strange peace.
"To die after finally understanding my friend… perhaps that is already too happy an ending for someone like me."
He drew a deep breath, as though each word cost more than the last.
"Forgive me… Lord Yamamoto… I can no longer inherit your will…"
His body grew heavy.
"I can no longer… protect the Soul Society…"
With a dull impact, Komamura fell beside Tosen's body, having fully returned to his beast form.
In that final moment, Alex adapted a line originally tied to another character's death and gave it to Komamura instead. Thinking about it carefully, there had always been something strange about that whole situation. The big dog had torn out his own heart and, in the original work, still somehow survived. Meanwhile, another character died merely from having a fight with Kenpachi.
It was the kind of detail that, once examined coldly, started to feel a little absurd.
Then, much like Kakyoin's death in Stardust Crusaders, after Tosen and Komamura fell one after the other, the narration appeared like a final note, heavy and inevitable.
Kaname Tosen.
Sajin Komamura.
Killed in battle.
For a while, the audience fell silent.
Until then, most of the fans' attention had always been fixed on central figures like Sosuke Aizen, or on characters with striking appearances and overwhelming style, such as Ulquiorra or Biakuya. As for Sajin Komamura, a supporting character with an unimpressive battle record, most Bleach fans had never been particularly attached to him.
But from beginning to end, he had never abandoned his old friend, Kaname Tosen.
From beginning to end, he had also remained faithful to his loyalty toward the commander-general and the Soul Society.
Perhaps he was similar to Jonathan, the protagonist of Phantom Blood. A man too righteous, too honest, too rigid. In a work of fiction, that kind of character could sometimes feel simple, predictable, even a little boring.
But that was only on the screen.
If someone like that existed in the real world, more than ninety percent of people would want him by their side.
After all, who would not want a friend like Sajin Komamura?
Someone who, no matter the situation, no matter the abyss, no matter the price, would never abandon you.
As for someone like Sosuke Aizen, with that flawless charm, that calm smile, and that ability to slide a blade into your back without changing expression… well, admiring him in fiction was one thing.
Meeting someone like that in real life was something else entirely.
In that case, the best choice would be to keep your distance.
A lot of distance.
Because by the time you realized you were being manipulated, you might already be dead without ever understanding how.
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