Shunsui cursed again for the trillionth time as he dodged another widespread of rot, his curses growing more linguistically flamboyant with every close brush he had with certain death.
He looked down at Katen Kyōkotsu in his hands and couldn't help but grumble to his most trusted partner.
"I have a feeling he's one to throw a fit every time he loses because he's that bad at games." Shunsui said, chuckling to himself.
"Arrogant fool. Your false bravado will crumble as you will. No one laughs in the face of death. Soon you will learn." Baraggan's deathly voice reached Shunsui who stood a safe enough distance from the walking bone with a penchant for hard words and deathly charity.
Shunsui stood up straight, in a moment where his usual laidback flair left him, he regarded Baraggan with steely glint in his eyes. "Don't forget, Mr. Hollow, we are Shinigami. No one race delivers the unfairness of death more than us. It is not a fancy job, I'll admit, but it doesn't mean to be more."
"And the point of your drivel is what? Your words hold no meaning, merely the rambling blunders of a self-conceited daft." The decaying rot, the essence of the sovereignty of time, rose before him. "Time and death is perpetual. Absolute. I alone am the herald of its grace."
"Seriously? All I was trying to do was play a game with you."
"Insufferable jester. Begone from my sight." His Senescense flailed haphazardly for a second before they shot towards Shunsui in six paths, each a step behind the other.
Baraggan was trying to reduce his movement options, predict his movements, and push him into a pattern all at once with one attack. Shunsui saw through all of it, not that it made it any easier for him, and clicked his tongue as he descended and weaved between the buildings.
"Futile." Baraggan made a grasping motion and the tendrils grew larger and covered an entire area of the street below.
Baraggan's features grew somber as he felt Shunsui's presence flicker like a candlelight on a breezy night. Eventually it flickered its last light and was put out for the night. "They all refused to accept the truth until the very end."
Even with most of his powers sealed in his Arrancar form, Baraggan was still a damning enemy to anyone who was unfortunate to stand in his way. One of the reasons why was because of the time dilation field that was formed around him and slowed down everything that entered the field, except of course him. The other reason was that he could rapidly accelerate the aging of anything he touched with just the slightest contact.
The time dilation field in particular was also a field where his senses were heightened to perceive the slightest change in the field.
And so when the dilation field alerted him of something foreign in his presence, despite not being affected by the field, he was a tad bit slower as something rose up from the shadows of his billowing cloak and drove a blade through him.
It was the reflexive instinct when reacting to an extremely shocking surprise that made his hand go straight for the blade to stop its path that made the shadow retreat.
"Kageoni." Shunsui said dispassionately. He winded up his blades and held them in a traditional stance.
"How? I am sure my Senescence turned you to dust." Baraggan held his chest with one hand and gripped his axe with another.
"Kageokuri." Shunsui teased, his former expression gone with the wind. "It's a game of projecting shadows. A real illusion that takes place when either of us catches a glimpse of the other's shadow. The shadow swaps places with them seamlessly. The closer you look, the clearer you see."
"You mock me with an infant's trifle?" The increasingly baleful Reiatsu gave Shunsui a warning dread.
"Come on, we're old stinky men. How about we just let the kids play to their heart's content?" He said jovially. "Honestly, you're taking this a bit too seriously."
"I will stand this no longer." Grabbing his axe, he appeared behind a shocked Shunsui and cleaved the man in two, only for the mirage to fade away.
"Your Sonído is not the only thing that can leave mirages, you know." Shunsui said as if stating what should have been obvious.
"I grow tire of you, Shinigami." Baraggan growled.
Shunsui's shoulders slumped as he became downcast. "Aw chuks. I have feelings too, you know." He dodged the axe swing with sweat dripping down his forehead.
The main issue with defeating Baraggan was how to get closer to him and how to avoid getting hit with his Senescence. Yes, he had the abilities to get closer, but… he sighed as he looked at his blade.
"At least try to make it easier for me." He muttered, forced to abandon his position again as a wave of rot hit it.
"Hey old man, you know we can't keep going on like this right? How about w—"
"You are right. This has to end at the earliest."
"Eh?"
Baraggan held his axe forward and Shunsui's face paled at the Reiatsu buildup. "Rot, Arrogante."
His rot spewed out from his axe and washed over his old man body, flaking away all the skin until only pale bones remained. A golden crown and dark cloak covered Baraggan's body as his Resurrección was released. His presence alerting every Shinigami and Hollow in this anchored space.
"This is—" To Shunsui's shock, Baraggan wasn't done as he stretched his hand and an all-black double-bladed axe shot to his hands from the hangs of his cloak. An aura of death flowing off his effortlessly.
"What have you so stunned, Shinigami? Surely your bravado is not shaken." The terrifying skeleton took a step and the grip around Shunsui's blade tightened.
Before Shunsui's eyes could widen, Baraggan was already behind him, his axe coming down in a great cleave and with it a great miasma of rot.
"Respira."
The great wave swallowed him whole, and like a churning sea, swept over the area and slowly reduced everything to dust.
Baraggan took a step in the air and stopped. He slowly turned to look at a wryly smiling Shunsui, gripping hardly his axe in anger.
"How?" He asked, his genuine curiosity apparent. "This wasn't like the others. I know I killed you."
"You did." Shunsui said, not explaining what had happened. "It's a nifty thing I picked up from a friend."
...
Soi Fon blocked Tōsen's blade but had to brace herself as he drove a kick into her unprotected stomach, which she managed to mitigate in time raising her knee up and trapping the offending kick in between her knees and her elbow.
"Can you see it now? This is the power my lord has granted me to enforce justice."
Soi Fon scoffed. "Just this much? Then you are either truly blind or your 'lord' does not not know the weight of justice."
Tōsen ignored her taunt and instead replied with greater ferocity but soon was forced to retreat as his aggressiveness almost gave Soi Fon an opening to paint a target on his body.
Just then, Baraggan's Reiatsu washed over them as the former King of Hollows entered his Resurrección, which impacted the moral of the Hollows.
Tōsen looked at Soi Fon causing her to quirk her brows.
"What? Surprised your strongest soldier was forced this quickly?"
"Hmph. You know nothing." Slowly he brought his hands over his face, dark Reiatsu covering its tip, and brought it down, dawning the release of a bland Hollow mask that covered his full face with a line that separated it asymmetrically and a shorter one where his mouth was.
Soi Fon remained unfazed at the showing, no surprise or disdain on her face, just plain disinterest.
"Is that all?" She asked. "I'll kill you quick, so you better use all you can right now."
Instead of answering, he pointed a finger at her and fired an instant Cero which she dodged but it turned out that he used the Cero to telegraph her movement as he appeared in the position she moved to before she did, and cut her through only for her to fizzle into air.
"You are not at the level where you can easily read my movements." She said at a distance across him. She wasn't usually this chatty or even taunting to her opponents, preferring silence and time-efficient eliminations, but Tōsen was a special case.
In a way, her failure in killing Tōsen was tied to her sense of inadequacy when Yoruichi left her and Itachi. He was a stain of the past she had let go, only for it to rear its ugly head against her for the second time.
Only this time she had grown above it and all she could do against this joke of her past was taunt it and look down on it arrogantly. He was not worth her fears or apprehension.
"To show you how meaningless your strength is, I'll kill you with just this." Shunkō was not required. Suzumebachi and a few tricks was all she needed to kill this fool. Assassination was her forte, and unfortunately for Tōsen, the fool, he was not at a level where her strength was redundant.