Bleach: Derailed

I've fixed the schedule on the first page.

Your class on Hoho is... interesting.

"GO FASTER!" A man so obese as to practically be round appear in front of you so quickly that you can't track him until he stops, a black ball topped by an increasingly red face. "The defining difference between a dead soul reaper and a living one IS THAT THE DEAD ONE DOES NOT MOVE WITH THE AGILITY AND GRACE OF A CAT!"

He grabs you by the lapels and throws you into another group of students, who scatter in all directions. You roll to your feet. This man is insane!

A familiar woman flies at you from the left. You step forward, catch Takako as she passes, and then set her down on her feet.

"Thank you for the assistance." The scrawny woman is shaking almost too much to stand still. Her eyes jump from side to side, looking for the elite movement class' teacher. The way the healing class worked, where there was one teacher assigned to learners of a given level, isn't how the combat classes work at all. There are more experienced students mixed in with you.

You wince in sympathy as a more skilled student takes a rubber ball to the back of the head and goes down in a heap. Taking a deep breath, you square your shoulders, bend your knees, and try to anticipate the next attack. Speed. Agility. You need more-

A blur of black and red. You step back too fast and stumble, but are caught by a meaty fist grabbing your already wrinkled lapels. "Better." The teacher grunts. "BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH!"

What kind of crazy place have you gotten into?

---

The next three days are almost relaxing, in comparison. Barrier magic, destructive magic, and swordplay apparently can't be trained as rough and tumble as the rest of the combat subjects are., which makes sense. A badly constructed healing kido just won't work. The effects of failing to dodge can be determined by the teacher. It's hard for an amateur fist fighter to kill somebody quickly enough that the instructor won't be able to intervene.

But bakudo and hado are dangerous, combat-ready arts that can have unexpected effects like backfires, splash damage, and the like if improperly formulated, or so you're told by a stern-looking man that looks like nothing so much as an old-fashioned Confucian examiner from anime, slim and with an exaggerated tiny beard, and wearing a little hat. He teaches both classes, and both classes get much the same lesson. Over the upcoming weeks you'll be learning rhymes by rote, and associating individual ways to manipulate your spiritual energy with lines of the rhymes, so that by reciting the rhyme you'll instinctively cast a spell.

...It sounds interesting enough to keep your attention, at least.

Zanjutsu also spends half of its first lesson on a subject you call 'how not to cut your own god damned head off', mostly because that's what the teacher calls it. He's an unseated member of the eleventh division, and, "I handle the rookies."

He prowls around the front of the room, giving each of the four dozen people in it a once over. "Whether because you skipped zanjutsu your first year or you're just that bad, I'm here because I can educate you on the fine art of killing things with your zanpakuto. Today, we will learn a simple strike. Take your sword in both hands. Raise them to the level of your eyes. Swing down until just before the hilt meets your gut. Like this."

He shows the cut. "This is the most basic attack. From now on I want you to use this instead of flailing around wildly if you get jumped. If a hollow ambushes you, turn and cut. If somebody messes up your fancy moves in a spar, you cut them. This is a strike that goes for the head, and that's because everything has a head, and it needs its head to kill you. Now I want all of you to give me four hundred repetitions while I start on correcting your stances and junk. Kurosaki... I'll do you first."

It's just like being back in martial arts classes, for a few hours. Learn a move, repeat the move. It's kind of nostalgic.

---

On Sunday Takako insists on you sitting down over lunch while she talks about the various noble clans of Soul Society. She leafs through a book that looks fairly old, after she apologizes for not having the up to date copy, and points out the clans in passing. She lingers on some, the ones who work for the second division and the omnitsu... the omitusu? The ninjas. There's the Omaeda family, her family. They're minor nobility with a history of serving as the second in command of the second division. The Fon family traditionally serve in the stealth forces. She passes over a page featuring a dark-skinned woman without commentary. You just catch the name Shihoun and a cocky grin before she moves on. Then she moves on to the major nobility and the minor nobility who might as well be major because their heads of family have been captains for hundreds of years.

She insists you take the book with you to read over.

"There are five great families." You read, but recognize one of them as the Shihoun family, whose page you checked in private. They're an almost defunct clan whose head deserted alongside a fellow captain something like a hundred years ago, after... You make a face at the gruesome descriptions of Urahara Kisuke's experiments. At least the current head looks happy. He's a young kid. How old could he have been when he found out that his sister was covering for a man who'd do that kind of thing?

Then you turn to the Shibas, and freeze. "They really do look similar." You whisper as you trace your finger over the picture of the current head, Kukaku Shiba. And then you grimace. "If Karin and Yuzu are going to grow up to look like that, I'd better figure out a way to make sure nobody takes advantage of them. I wonder if Chad'd agree to stand in for big brother duty?"

But all thoughts of Chad intimidating teenage boys slip from your mind when you finally recognize the man in the picture below Kukaku, next to the words 'branch head'. Isshin Shiba.

Your dad. Late that night you sit on your bed, in the tiny student dorm, and stare down at the color illustration of a man that is undoubtedly your father in a reference guide to Soul Society nobility. He doesn't have facial hair in this picture, but a few seconds with a pencil give him the familiar beard. It has to be him. Captain of the tenth division, it says here.

What?

[] You need to talk to somebody about this.
-[] Takako might know somebody appropriate.
-[] Maybe that captain, Gin?
-[] Somebody from the tenth division.
[] You'll hold off until you can talk to your dad directly.