Bleach: Derailed

"Thanks, Takako." You say.

"You... said yes?" The skinny girl repeats, astonished. "But Ichimaru is a captain. Accepting his patronage would have given you a guaranteed spot in his division!"

Which yeah, you kind of figured, but there's more to it than that. "I'm not here just to get a spot. I've got a goal to achieve, and anybody who graduates in a year is probably going to get more than just one offer, I figure. Plus," you grimace. "I don't want to feel obligated to join up if he offers me a spot in his division."

"I see. You're very confident that you can graduate in a year."

"I've got to be. There's no way I'll do it if I doubt myself."

Takako's expression takes on a wan caste. "It's not quite that simple, Kurosaki."

You ignore her.

The next station is class registration, where an elderly woman passes both of you a pair of papers. Yours is different than Takako's, which has an ink seal stamped into a box on the bottom, but before you can do more than notice that obvious difference the noble woman slides yours back. "Ichigo Kurosaki will be advanced to class 1, sponsored by the Omaeda clan." She says.

The aged woman raises her eyebrows, but shrugs and pulls a simple stamp out of her sleeve, marking the appropriate spot. Then she withdraws a pen, and writes OMAEDA below it.

"Thanks." You say.

She nods. "You're welcome."

After that you both look at the papers, which seem to be lists of classes and times throughout the week. At first you're not sure, but a quick check verifies that no two classes are at the same time. Most of the subjects are familiar to you, ones that require a certain amount of proficiency in order to pass their mandatory examinations, but there are a few that have differences, like kido. Instead of there just being one category, there are three: bakudo, hado, kaido -binding, destructive, and healing. Then, of course, there's the things you expected such as zanjutsu, hakuda, and hoho, and the things that make you scratch your head. "What do calligraphy and haiku have to do with being a soul reaper?"

"They're meditative arts." The woman at registration says croakily. "Zanpakuto of a contemplative nature often desire their users to become more in tune with their surroundings, and to gain some manner of self reflection that poetry and art provide."

"And zanjutsu is swordsmanship, right?" You ask, just to be sure.

Which is when the young woman next to you decides that staying silent wasn't accomplishing anything. "Yes. Of course, you will need more skills other than simple zanjutsu. Kido at the least, destructive and otherwise, perhaps barriers- " Takako lays out options you'd only glanced over at blistering speed, timidity vanished under the ever growing mass.

"Shouldn't I focus on one thing, if I want to graduate quickly?" You say, considering just signing up for all the zanjutsu slots and nothing else.

"Only if you want to be nothing more than a brainless thug, like so many commoners." And just like that you're reminded that Takako is one of those nobles you were thinking poorly of, admittedly for no reason other than that Soul Society still has nobles with actual power. You'll need to try harder to remember that, in the future. "Anyway, you should definitely take these classes, and you can sign up for meditation in the spring should your zanpakuto spirit need more prompting to bond with you."

Before you can say anything to object you're signed up for one class a week in almost everything. No day save Sunday is completely free of classes, though you only have zanjutsu on Saturday. You do the normal thing to estimate how much time each class will take, doubling the length of the class for good measure and adding that as 'practice time', and frown. "What if I want free time?"

"Then drop one of the classes. Class 1 members can do that. It's a benefit of being a more advanced student."

Dropping a class. Gah. If you hadn't always assumed you'd just inherit the family clinic, and had been the kind of guy to get stressed about bad marks on your record stopping you from getting into a good college... Well, some of your classmates would be upset with you for dropping anything, at least, but it looks like Takako knows better than you so whatever.

SCHEDULE
Monday: Hakuda (kaido)
Tuesday: Hoho
Thursday: Kido (bakudo)
Friday: Kido (hado)
Saturday: Zanjutsu
Sunday:

You do some quick annotation on a blank piece of paper to keep better track of things.

SCHEDULE
Monday: Hakuda, Kido (kaido) -hand to hand, healing magic
Tuesday: Hoho -movement magic (?)
Thursday: Kido (bakudo) -barrier magic
Friday: Kido (hado) -destruction magic
Saturday: Zanjutsu -swords
Sunday:

"Healing, huh?" You murmur. The idea appeals. "My dad's a healer."

"Maybe you'll have an advantage, if the teacher is anything like him."

"Hopefully the teacher's not like him at all." You grumble. "The old man's a maniac."

"I believe I'm familiar with the feeling." Takako says, commiserating.

You glance at her schedule, which is the same as yours, but without the classes in healing and barrier magic. She's replaced them both with more zanjutsu lessons.

You hand the papers back in, get a small coin purse full of odd currency, and you're done. It feels anticlimactic, almost exactly like you did when you first woke up as a soul in the afterlife, though nothing like the blind panic and worry you remember from after when you died.

...Run over by a truck. How pathetic could you get? If Chad'd been hit by a truck it'd be the truck that died and had to watch their sisters stare at... the space where you were. Where you would have been standing, if you hadn't been. You know.

The worst part was waiting all day, stewing in your own fury, until the soul reaper in the hat came along and explained what'd happened, and that he'd have to send you on to the afterlife before you turned into a monster -a hollow. You hadn't wanted to go, but once you knew that hollows go for their living families first, it hadn't even been a choice.

One year, you promise to yourself.

You'll see your family again in one year. "Yuzu, Karin, dad, all of you... just hold on."

---

Unfortunately, you can't give everything one hundred percent effort, or you'll burn yourself out. What will you count as your top training priorities? Vote for three in the following format.
[] option
[] option
[] option

The vote will be tallied by line. The three individual option with the most votes will be your initial top training priority. The option with the fewest will start as your lowest priority. Etc.
[] hand to hand
[] healing magic
[] movement magic
[] barrier magic
[] destruction magic
[] swords