Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold, Bring Me My Arrows of Desire

Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! -- William Blake, Milton (1804)

Shunsui Kyōraku led his team through the ruins of Seireitei. In the darkness, the outline of the Department of Research and Development gradually emerged from behind the broken roof ridge.

That building was once one of the most peculiar structures in Seireitei —its staggered cylindrical towers, the Reishi tubes embedded in the outer walls, and the constantly rotating detection array on the roof—each feature highlighted the Twelfth Division's unique way of being, distinct from the other divisions.

But now, the core area of the entire Department of Research and Development is shrouded in a huge semi-circular protective shield. The shield is dark gray with a very faint metallic sheen on its surface, completely isolating the internal towers from the external ruins.

Nanao followed behind Kyōraku, looking at the dome that enveloped most of the Department of Research and Development. A hint of confusion appeared on her usually calm face. "What's that?"

"The Twelfth Division's defensive measures." Kyōraku turned his head slightly during Shunpo, his eyes, hidden in the shadow of his straw hat, sweeping across the surface of the protective shield. "The Twelfth Division is different from other divisions; the threat posed by their internal dangerous experiments is greater than external attacks."

Therefore, a long time ago, under the direction of the Captain-Commander, the Department of Research and Development developed this protective shield, which uses the Sekkiseki as the main material and is supplemented with a binder.

He raised his hand and pushed his straw hat up with his fingers, revealing a face beneath it that was unusually devoid of any frivolity. "This is troublesome. Once this protective shield is opened, it can't be opened from the outside until the bonding agent wears off. We have no idea what's going on inside, and those outside can only wait helplessly."

Ukitake landed beside him, his usually gentle face now showing a hint of seriousness. "So, all we can do now is deal with the enemies on the periphery?"

"That's how it is." Kyōraku's gaze swept across the area around the protective barrier where the battle was still raging—explosions and shouts of battle rose and fell, the light of clashing Reiatsu flashed constantly in the night, and the members of the Twelfth Division were fiercely exchanging fire with their Zanpakuto: "All teams, provide support to the Twelfth Division members who are still fighting!"

At Kyōraku's command, the Soul Reapers surged into the surrounding flames of war like an open fan.

The Twelfth Division has a very strict hierarchy. Without a certain level of strength, there is no permission to enter many areas. Naturally, the strength of the members outside the protective barrier and the equipment they can use are much weaker. Fortunately, they do not rely on Zanpakuto to fight, so their strength is not greatly affected.

As for the Zanpakuto — Muramasa took away the most elite batch when it broke into the core area, leaving behind those with slightly weaker strength on the outer perimeter.

Many battles became deadlocked and difficult to resolve from the very beginning.

In one part of this vast battlefield

Renji Zanpakuto was unable to Shikai, his Lieutenant -level Reiatsu and his own combat experience still allowed him to suppress ordinary enemies.

"Sixth Division, follow me!" Renji's voice boomed through the gaps in the explosions. He used Shunpo to cut into the battlefield, his Zanpakuto slashing horizontally, the blade grazing the edge of the foremost Zanpakuto, sparks exploding between the two swords.

The Zanpakuto was forced back several steps by the impact. Before it could regain its footing, Renji's second strike followed, the back of the blade facing down, slamming hard into its shoulder.

"You better behave!" Renji, pressing down on his sword, turned and shouted at the members of the Sixth Division, "Tie these guys up!"

Kyōraku and his group had not yet received any news from Mayuri Kurotsuchi, so Renji and the other Lieutenant prioritized capturing the Zanpakuto.

It proved that the gap between the Lieutenant and the ordinary soldiers was real. After the Lieutenant, Renji, joined the battle, the Zanpakuto side went from a stalemate to being defeated in the blink of an eye.

Those Zanpakuto that had been fighting the Twelfth Division soldiers to a standstill were defeated one after another under Renji's blade, as if being chopped into vegetables.

The members of the Sixth Division rushed forward, carrying ropes with Bakudō that they had prepared beforehand, and bound the fallen Zanpakuto tightly one by one.

However, when Renji reached the Zanpakuto bound in a row, he encountered a problem even more difficult to solve than the battle itself.

The Zanpakuto were tightly bound by the Bakudō ropes, but their faces showed no sign of yielding. Some turned their heads away from him, some closed their eyes and pretended to be dead, and one spat viciously as Renji approached.

"Hey, you guys." Renji crouched down and tapped the head of the Zanpakuto that Zanpakuto. "If you've lost, you should act like you've lost. Tell us your names honestly so we can find your owners."

No one answered him; silence was like a wall, blocking the space between the Zanpakuto and the Soul Reaper, causing Renji's brows to furrow even more deeply.

"You—" He was about to explode when a strong female voice came from the darkness behind him.

"It's no use, Renji. You're simply not suited for this kind of work."

The voice carried an extremely familiar teasing tone, as if the speaker had known him for a long time and knew him inside and out.

Renji suddenly stood up, his Zanpakuto held horizontally in front of him, his gaze sweeping across the surrounding ruins. "Who!"

The members of the Sixth Division also went on alert, drawing their Zanpakuto and forming a circle back to back. However, all they could see were broken Reishi tubes and burning wreckage of equipment; they couldn't see the person who had spoken at all.

Another voice rang out, this time a boyish voice, even more flippant than the previous girl's, with a slight upward inflection at the end. "A fool like you can't do such delicate work. Using your brain hasn't been your forte anyway."

"Who is it?! Show yourself!" Renji roared.

"Here." A male and a female voice sounded simultaneously behind him.

Renji suddenly turned around.

Not far behind him, on the steps, sat two figures. One was a voluptuous woman, her body wrapped in green fur, her long pink hair cascading over her shoulders. A chain was wrapped around her waist and extended outwards, making a very faint metallic scraping sound in the night breeze.

The other end of the chain was attached to the neck of a boy with short, peach-colored hair. He was dressed in white clothes with yellow trim, and his figure was agile. His eyes were particularly bright in the night.

The two sat side by side, the chain connecting them gleaming coldly in the moonlight.

Renji's pupils contracted sharply. "You are!"

"Who is it?" Renji tried hard to remember, but he had no recollection of the two people in front of him.

The Monkey Woman's expression stiffened slightly. She lowered her head and ran her hand through her long pink hair. "Oh dear, you're such a cold man, Renji. All those years of friendship we've shared are wasted."

"So many years?" Renji tilted his head, his brows furrowed. "What a coincidence, I don't know any hairy women."

The Monkey Woman took a deep breath, stood up from the steps, and the chains rattled with her movement, pulling the Snake Man behind her up as well.

The Snake Man revealed his long snake tail, leaving a winding trail on the ground.

"Snake?"

Renji looked at the Monkey Woman again.

"Baboon?"

"No way..."

Something deep within Renji's mind was touched.

The Monkey Woman led the Snake Man step by step toward Renji, saying, "Now, Renji? Are you still going to say you don't remember us?"

Renji's gaze darted back and forth between the Monkey Woman and the Snake Man several times. The chain connecting the two, the snake's tail winding on the ground, and that indescribable sense of familiarity surging from the depths of his soul—all these clues spun, collided, and finally pieced together in his mind like fragments.

"Could it be... that you two are my Zanpakuto?!" Renji's pupils dilated in shock. He had never seen Zabimaru in this form before.

The Monkey Woman stopped, crossed her arms, and tilted her head to look at him. "Why do you look so surprised, Renji?"

Renji pointed at them, waving his finger back and forth between the Monkey Woman and the Snake Man, his voice filled with disbelief. "They were just ordinary monkeys and snakes before!"

"You really are petty," the Snake Man said, feeling an itch in his nose as he put his finger up his nostril.

"It's not that I'm being petty!" Renji's voice rose a few decibels, "You all look so different from before!"

The Monkey Woman sighed, "It doesn't matter."

The Monkey Woman continued walking towards Renji: "Renji, we came here today to let you know how much you rely on us."

Renji took a half step back, his Zanpakuto horizontally in front of him in a defensive stance. He looked at Zabimaru before him and said, "Me? Relying on you?"

"That's right." The Monkey Woman stopped about three steps in front of Renji and tugged at the Snake Man with her chain. "Right? Snake."

No one responded.

The Monkey Woman turned her head and saw the Snake Man standing beside her, his right index finger deeply inserted into his nostril, his vertical pupils half-closed, completely absorbed.

The members of the Sixth Division looked at each other in bewilderment, and the scene became extremely quiet for a moment.

Something twitched on the Monkey Woman's forehead. She raised her hand, clenched it into a fist, and the veins on the back of her hand bulged out one by one.

"What are you doing, you bastard!" She punched the Snake Man on the forehead with such force that he staggered several steps to the side, the chains rattling loudly.

"Ouch!" The Snake Man clutched his forehead, tears welling up in his eyes, as his snake tail curled up on the ground.

"Listen to me properly, you damn shorty!" The Monkey Woman bent down and poked the Snake Man's forehead with her finger.

"Why are you hitting me, you big-assed woman!" The Snake Man, clutching his forehead, charged forward, the chains clanging loudly.

"What does this have to do with my ass!" The Monkey Woman raised her hand again and punched the Snake Man on the head. "It's all your fault, we can't even continue the conversation!"

"You started it!"

That's because you're not listening to me!

The two of them started arguing right in front of Renji and the members of the Sixth Division.

The Monkey Woman grabbed the Snake Man's ear, while the Snake Man bit the Monkey Woman's wrist. The chains rattled between them, and the snake's tail lashed incessantly against the stone slabs on the ground.

The members of the Sixth Division were completely at a loss, their gazes shifting back and forth between the two arguing individuals and their own Lieutenant.

Renji looked at them, his Zanpakuto hanging at his side, and rubbed his temples. "Well, if you guys don't have anything else to do, let's talk about it later. I don't have time to mess around with you guys."

The Monkey Woman and the Snake Man stopped at the same time. "Huh?! What did you say?"

The two turned to Renji at the same time, and the chains between them swayed slightly.

"Renji, you probably..." The Monkey Woman released her grip on the Snake Man's ear, and the Snake Man released his teeth from the Monkey Woman's wrist, "You thought you could leave safely like this?"

The Monkey Woman and the Snake Man stood side by side, the chain connecting them trembling slightly in the night breeze. The Monkey Woman's right hand and the Snake Man's left hand were stacked together, their Reiatsu swirling rapidly between them, condensing into a Zabimaru.

"Renji." The Monkey Woman gripped the hilt of her sword, holding the Zabimaru horizontally in front of her, her eyes fixed on Renji. "We followed our instincts, ignoring Muramasa's orders to stay put, and came specifically to find you."

"So that we can completely eliminate you!" The Monkey Woman and the Snake Man spoke at the same time, their voices overlapping in the night sky.

The two of them, each holding Zabimaru, walked step by step toward Renji.

The members of the Sixth Division, seeing the menacing Zabimaru approaching, prepared to fight back, but Renji stopped them. "You guys take the captured Zanpakuto to the main force first, I'll hold them off here."

"But, Lieutenant." The members of the Sixth Division were uneasy. Yesterday, their captain had faced off against his own Zanpakuto and had been missing ever since. Now, their Lieutenant had also encountered his own Zanpakuto, and they worried that their Lieutenant would suffer the same fate.

Renji interrupted them, "It's alright, trust me. I understand your anxiety. Captain Kuchiki will return, and I won't lose to my Zanpakuto. Focus on your mission!"

Meanwhile, the other Lieutenant each led their troops into different battlefields.

Rangiku Matsumoto and the members of the Tenth Division cleared a space. She had just helped an injured member of the Twelfth Division onto a stretcher when she suddenly felt a gust of wind sweep over her head.

She looked up and saw a Catgirl with short, deep red hair and emerald eyes, dressed in a pink top and pumpkin pants, crouching above the broken Reishi tube.

Rangiku's hand froze in mid-air. The two exchanged a glance, and Rangiku knew who the other was. She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the Catgirl had already leaped up and sped through the ruins, disappearing into the depths of the night.

"Haineko-- " Rangiku immediately used Shunpo to chase after it.

On another battlefield, Shūhei Hisagi swung Shūhei Zanpakuto, deflecting the Zanpakuto in front of him. Just as the blade was retracted to his side, he saw a strange-looking man clad in chains emerge from the ruins ahead, wielding a chain scythe with blades at both ends. "Yo!"

Shūhei Zanpakuto tightly. "Looking at this weapon, I don't think it belongs to anyone else. Are you Kazeshini?"

Momo Hinamori knelt on the ground, and a faint green light emanated from beneath her hand, which was pressed against the wounded soldier's chest—it was the Kaidō she was operating.

The wounded soldier was a member of the Twelfth Division. She had a deep, bone-revealing slash wound on her chest, and her breathing was becoming increasingly shallow. Fine beads of sweat were seeping from her forehead. Maintaining her Kaidō required an extremely high level of concentration, and in this chaotic battlefield, concentration was the most luxurious thing.

Footsteps stopped behind her. Hinamori didn't turn around, assuming it was another wounded soldier from the Twelfth Division. She simply moved aside to make room for the newly arrived wounded soldier.

However, she was wrong. She saw those feet—wearing white socks and wooden clogs, the hem of her kimono's crimson hakama fluttering slightly in the night breeze.

Hinamori's pupils contracted sharply. She looked up and saw a girl in a white long-sleeved blouse and a purple skirt standing in front of her, with the bells at both ends of the ribbon she was wearing burning.

"Tobiume!"