Flashback.....
The night after the Hollow incident during patrolling, Akio went to Squad 2 for treatment then returned to his dorm.
The dorm was empty as Ikkaku and Yumichika were on there patrol session. Akio tired from the fight straight went to his bed and fell asleep.
The world was reduced to a monochrome palette of greys and deep, swallowing blacks. Akio stood in the endless expanse of his inner world, the familiar silence pressing in on him. But this time, it was different. The air didn't just feel empty; it felt watchful.
A shadow deeper than the surrounding darkness coalesced before him, pulling itself from the void like ink rising from a well. It grew, towering over him, no longer a vague silhouette but a defined, humanoid figure clad in shifting, matte-black armor that seemed to drink the light. Two pinpricks of cold, white light shone where its eyes should be.
His Zanpakto's spirit.
"You return, Challenger" its voice was a low hum, like the vibration of a plucked wire, resonating in Akio's bones rather than his ears. "You have become stronger than before. Yet you remain incomplete. You are worthy for the hunt now. So let's begin"
Akio said nothing, his body tense, every instinct honed by months under Kenpachi's brutal tutelage screaming at him to fight or flee.
The spirit took a step forward, and the ground seemed to warp beneath its foot. "A weapon that cannot hunt is a tool. A hunter who cannot claim his prey is a failure. If you cannot hunt me…" The white eyes narrowed. "…you are unworthy of my name."
The threat became action. No warning, no shift in Reiatsu—just a seamless transition from stillness to lethal motion. The spirit vanished.
Akio's eyes widened. 'Utsusemi? No—'
A foot clad in shadow slammed into his back, sending him sprawling across the non-ground. He rolled with the impact, Byakuya's lessons on maintaining poise under fire coming to the forefront of his mind. He pushed off the ground, spinning to face his attacker.
It was already gone.
A whisper of movement to his left. Akio pivoted, his hand snapping out in a sharp, precise Toryū strike. His knuckles met empty air. The force of his missed punch threw him off balance for a fraction of a second.
That was all it needed.
A fist of condensed darkness hammered into his ribs. Akio grunted, the air exploding from his lungs. He felt a crack, a flare of agony. This wasn't a spar. This was a dismantling.
Frustration began to boil alongside the pain. He was strong, his Hakuda capable of shattering rock. Yet here he was, being toyed with. Every time he thought he predicted a movement, the space around the spirit would twist, his footing would become unstable, and the phantom would be behind him, beside him, above him.
He was being hunted. The very feeling he'd sworn to leave behind in the squalor of the Rukongai.
He stumbled back, raising his hands in a guard, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The spirit merely watched, a predator assessing its struggling prey.
"Is this your worth?" the spirit intoned, its voice dripping with disdain. "The sum of your borrowed power? You fight with the styles of others, but you have no core of your own."
Memories, unbidden and sharp, flooded his mind.
—A small boy, shivering in an alley, hungry. alone and powerless.—
—The Academy, the relentless training he did every night for proving himself to no one but to become strong and unbreakable.—
—His efforts to get acknowledged by Shunsui, Byakuya and Yamammoto..—
—The Gillian's foot descending, and the sheer, defiant will to stand and fight, because that's what he wanted to do. To stand up everytime he falls. To fight back no matter how much he lose.—
He was prey from the start. But he vowed to never remain as a prey.
The frustration, the fear, the pain—it all crystallized into a single, white-hot point of defiance.
"Enough!" Akio roared, the sound raw and tearing from his throat. He straightened up, ignoring the scream of his injured ribs. The shadows in the void around him began to stir, responding to his surging Reiatsu.
"I am done running! I am done having my worth decided by others—by my past, by my enemies, even by you!" His hands clenched into fists. "If I am prey, then I'll be the prey that turns and bares its fangs!"
As he shouted, a blade of pure, flickering darkness erupted from his clenched fist. It was unstable, its form wavering like a heat haze, but it was there. A manifestation of his will.
The spirit tilted its head. "Finally. A spark."
It attacked again, a blur of black motion. But something had changed. Akio wasn't just watching with his eyes anymore. He felt the shift in the shadows, the subtle warp in the space before the spirit moved. Kenpachi's instinctual combat sense merged with Byakuya's analytical perception.
He didn't see the punch; he felt the intention in the void. He swayed under the blow, the shadowy wind of it brushing his face. For the first time, he'd avoided a clean hit.
The battle shifted.
The spirit pressed, its attacks a furious storm of shadow and force. But Akio was moving with it now, not just against it. He parried a clawed strike with his unstable blade, the impact sending shivers of pain up his arm. He countered not with a named technique, but with a brutal, efficient Sōryū-inspired flurry of kicks and punches, forcing the spirit to break its own rhythm and retreat.
It was a brutal dance. A clash of shadows. Akio was bleeding, his body a tapestry of bruises, but he was fighting on even terms. He was using the spirit's own tricks—misdirection, feints, the control of space—against it.
The spirit landed a kick to his chest, and Akio responded by grabbing its leg, pouring every ounce of his strength into a Gekiryū-inspired grasp, and hurling it across the void. It was a pale imitation of the technique, but the intent—to seize control—was pure.
It skidded to a halt, its white eyes wide with something that might have been surprise for even him.
Akio was at his limit. His makeshift blade was fracturing, strands of darkness peeling away. He knew one more exchange would break it completely. This was it. All or nothing.
Instead of despair, a profound calm settled over him. This wasn't an enemy. This was a part of him. It had his instincts, his anger, his survival drive. It was him.
He dropped his crumbling weapon. It dissolved into mist before it hit the ground. He looked directly into the spirit's cold white eyes, his own gaze steady.
"You test me. You hunt me. You push me to the brink," Akio said, his voice quiet but iron-strong. "But at the end as you said I am incomplete. I am incomplete without you. You are me… and I am you." He took a step forward, extending a hand not in attack, but in acceptance. "So stop with the games. Tell me your name."
The spirit froze. The hostile energy bled from its form. The towering figure seemed to shrink, the oppressive aura folding inward until it stood as an equal mirror of Akio himself. The endless void held its breath.
The spirit bowed its head. The voice that spoke next was no longer a hostile hum, but a clear, resonant echo of Akio's own.
"My name is ..."
Light—or the absence of it—erupted. The void collapsed inward, surging into Akio, into the space before him. Power, raw and immense and intimately familiar, flooded his veins. When the darkness receded, he was holding his Zanpakutō.
The blade shortens slightly and turns matte black, almost absorbing light. A thin trail of mist or shadows follows each swing. The guard reshapes into a crescent arc, like a waning moon.
Knowledge flooded his mind. The threads of shadow he could now feel attaching him to every surface in this world, and how they would function in the real one. This was his power. Not just to hit, but to control the battlefield. To hunt.
Kagegari, now his mirror image, stood before him, a faint, approving smile on its lips. It began to fade, its purpose fulfilled.
Back to present...
Akio's Reiatsu suddenly increased to a frightening degree. The sudden in his Reiatsu startled the assassin. It was not a level of increase that a Shikai release should have. But the assassin still was alert for any attacks.
Akio's voice rang clear.
"Shikai Release: Whisper, Kagegari"
The blade shifted, shadows wreathing into a form no longer just an Asauchi. His Zanpakutō spirit stirred awake, answering his call.