Worst moment in Bleach…Bleach.
But when Ginjou pulls that savory ramen away, you can bet that Ichigo will be on all fours wailing.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
Ch. 4:
! Chapter 4: Hitsugaya vs. Barragan
! Many moons past, on the naked sands of fear
! Scores of Adjuchas knelt before their invincible liege as the King of Hueco Mundo proclaimed each his knight, charging them with the momentous duty of direct worship and due tribute.
! The Vasto Lorde sampled ever more magnanimous names aloud, clacking his skull-like mask to their sound. “Barragan the Eternal Sovereign, perhaps? No, too wordy,” he concluded as he received from Choe Neng Poww, a whale Adjuchas who in the future would be his Fraccion, a few threads of his soul-baleen (and, by breaking off a piece of himself, thereby ensuring he could never evolve further apart from Arrancarification).
! “How about simply: Barragan the Ageless?” While most old souls were at least a little self-conscious about their age, Barragan proclaimed his supremacy over fickle “time” far and wide.
! An insect Adjuchas genuflected and Barragan snapped off its bulbous, hollow, hornlike protrusion (presumably a crest for sound attacks). The king’s touch immediately aged the Hollow and reduced it to its pathetic, infantile end, but Barragan was too busy attaching the baleen strings to the horn to register he’s accidentally killed one of his subjects.
! Barragan strummed the strings of the weird instrument he’d irreverently slapped together from the willingly sacrificed appendages of his fearful subjects.
! As the crowned spectral skeleton held the instrument and felt its power coursing though his bones, he knew what his name would be, and breathed it with abyssal frost:
! Barragan, the SOUL KING.
! *__
! “Kubo.”
! “Yes, sensei?” he replied innocently.
! “Kubo, the time I want you to tell me what’s wrong here.”
! Kubo flipped through the name draft absently. “Too little white space, shouldn’t have wasted so much ink,” he guessed. He had run up quite the tab at art supply stores on just ink.
! Editor put out his cigar in the ashtray; had Kubo been wearing sunglasses, Editor might not have resisted the urge to put it out in Kubo’s eye.
! “Let’s put it this way, my friend. I love ya to death.” Editor surreptitiously bit his lip. “But don’t you think that new development’s just a mite… plagiarismy?”
! Kubo blinked, but behind those shades his look of umbrage was lost. “What are you talking—“
! “How long did it take you to timeskip after Oda timeskipped?”
! “What? Are you insinuating—“
! “How long?”
! “About a month, but—“
! “And what came of that timeskip? What did that timeskip contribute to the plot that couldn’t have happened, say, a mere week after Aizen was defeated?”
! “That sword that gave Ichigo his powers back took that long to prepare!”
! “You wrote that after the fact,” Editor fired back. “How long after Hody Jones took too many steroids and morphed into a white-haired monster did it take for Ginjou to become a white-haired freak?”
! “This is ridiculous, those are just coincidences,” said Kubo. “I’m not cribbing from One Piece!”
! “Look, I’m not saying you’re plagiarizing on purpose, it’s just, I think you’re too impressionable and you sort of semi-consciously incorporate aspects of other series into your work. It happens to the best of us, but you have to check yourself. I don’t want to police your every decision, and I sure as hell don’t want you to end up having to take marching orders from your editor. I want you to blaze your own path, and work hard on infusing your brainchild with something unique, content that can only come from within you.”
! “I may have let outside influences creep into the story recently,” he admitted, flattered that his editor believed his inner self had what it took. He sounded excited, as though he were finally trusted to pull the series along by his own skill. “I know, I’ll start putting in more band names and references as abilities—“
! “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure,” Editor reminded him.
! “And maybe I’ll introduce another former substitute shinigami—“
! “Yu Yu Hakusho.”
! “Why don’t I come back to you on what my inner self thinks.”
! __*
! As Barragan (in unreleased mustachioed Mexican geezer form) toted his giant axe onto the battlefield, the Rukongai residents cheered—finally, someone they could root for.
! Charlotte prostrated himself before his erstwhile Espada master. Aizen may have removed Charlotte’s mask and revealed his gorgeous, sensational face to all, but his first loyalty would always be to the highest king, Death incarnate. There was beauty in darkness.
! Barragan, meanwhile, mocked Aizen openly. “Hey Aizen, did you misplace your key? Didn’t you say you were going to unlock the realm of the Soul King!? The only Soul King YOU’RE ever going to lay eyes on, is ME! Aren’t you lucky!”
! But Aizen didn’t care. His primary objective at the moment was to shoot glances at Hinamori (still frozen), then back at Hitsugaya, then make subtle stabbing motions with his (much loved) index finger.
! “Nope, not gonna happen,” said Hitsugaya serenely, applying yet another depressant-patch to his arm (next to its seven neighbors). This was to suppress his chronic Aizen-onset murderous rage.
! Aizen’s finger stabbed the air more vigorously and he nodded, nigh imperceptibly, and always with that unflappable smirk. It’s totally going to happen.
! “Nuh uh, nope.” Depressant-patches #s 9, 10, and 11. He wiped the strange liquid welling in his eyes and looked away from Aizen towards the audience, beaming.
! “BOOOOOOO!!” Though Hitsugaya was raised in the Rukongai, to the crowd this was ultimately a clash of Young vs. Old.
! “I’m sure I have fans somewhere out there,” said Hitsugaya.
! Aizen sounded the START THE FIGHTING!! gong and Charlotte, playing to the crowd, wasted no time casting the god of death as the determined underdog with a heart of gold, and Hitsugaya as the cold elitist.
! “Boy!!” He swung his axe. “What can you accomplish against DEATH ITSELF! Hold on, you don’t happen to know any transportation kidou do you?”
! “…No.”
! “Then what can you accomplish against DEATH ITSELF!”
! “Hyourinmaru!” Hitsugaya barreled forward and bade the ice dragon smash into his opponent, who froze in place.
! “Well, what are you waiting for? Release.”
! “Cheeky brat,” Barragan sneered. “I pity you who harbor not the wisdom of ages! Worry not, for soon I shall embrace you.”
! “Eww.” Hitsugaya shivered at the thought of growing up. “I deal with old people all fucking day, and let me tell you, they’re not exactly winning awards for intelligence in this lifetime. Or any, for that matter.”
! Barragan’s release incantation doubled as an imperious taunt. “Rot, Arrogante.”
! Death had donned his reaper’s cloak, and the block of ice melted away instantly.
! “BANKAI!” Hitsugaya donned his… ice fairy’s cloak? His cloak of winter’s savage broad-winged elemental dragon. In an instant the arena became encased in a solid sheet.
! “All will melt,” Barragan taunted. “All will evaporate.”
! Barragan’s mere presence caused the ice to break up and crack as entropy took hold.
! “Maybe so. But so long as we’re in this arena, that water isn’t going anywhere,” retorted Hitsugaya confidently.
! Which is when Barragan fell to his bony knees and began slurping up the water. “As Soul King, I claim this water!” he averred, followed by a regal flissshul noise.
! “What the fuck, you planning on just drinking up my ice forever?” Hitsugaya balked as he kept whipping the stadium up fresh new coats.
! “All water is now property of the one and only Barragan Luisenbarn!”
! “You, have got, to be…” Hitsugaya spun his dragon overhead. “KIDDING ME!”
! But Barragan drank his dark little heart away. Las Noches was never exactly overrun with streams, and so drinking was a pleasant new sensation for him.
! And so the two top-level reapers of souls were locked in the lamest of eternal combat, as Hitsugaya’s reiatsu replenished as soon as it was spent and Barragan’s belly was bottomless. And neither entity could really age, either.
! An hour passed. And another.
! “My arms are getting tired,” whined Hitsugaya.
! “HA!!” Barragan cackled. “I have you at last.”
! “I said they’re tired, not out of commission.”
! And the crowd mutinied, clamoring for Hitsugaya to just give up already. Hitsugaya wished Hinamori were unfrozen enough to cheer him on.
! “This is taking too long!” said Kon, who took the initiative and rang the gong to end the battle. “You’re both kicked out of the tournament!”
! “Wha? On what grounds?” Hitsugaya didn’t want to think this had all been a massive waste of time.
! “On the grounds of sheer boredom.”
! ROUND 4: BOTH DISQUALIFIED!!
! NEXT ROUND: TATSUKI VERSUS ICHIGO
Lol, that was great indeed~