Ribbon (Bleach AU, Original Character)

[Sarius]

Chapter 11: The Final Family

I awoke earlier than Suzumi did, as has become the norm. I went and took my customary morning toilet trip, and quietly making my way across the cool floorboards I traversed back to the room. When I quietly slid the door open, I saw Suzumi sitting upright in her futon, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and stretching. I grinned at the sight.

"Morning, Suzumi." I whispered quietly. I got a weary grunt in return. "You up for a coffee? Hot chocolate?"

"Chocolate." She grunted out, as she dragged herself out of bed and began to do some basic stretching that she always started her day with. A tradition she shared with her mother, apparently.

I walked back out of the room, making sure to close the door to keep the warm air inside and travelled down a long hallway to the small kitchenette. There was probably a bigger kitchen in the place, but this was the closest one.

I boiled the kettle and relaxed for a moment as I listened to the whine of the heating coil, then the bubbling of the water. I grabbed the milk from the mini fridge and the packet of hot chocolate mix in the cupboard.

I quickly mixed the drinks and picked them up, carefully balancing the cups evenly, making sure not to accidentally tip one too far one on my way back to the room.

When I finally returned, Suzumi had finished with her stretches and looked considerably more awake while sitting up against the wall, cross legged. I carefully handed her a cup and sat beside her, taking a tentative sip of the too-hot liquid.

We sat close to one another in the ten minutes that it took us to finish the cups in silence. We hardly ever spoke over our morning beverages, content to sit in silence and enjoy the quiet company. But soon enough, the cups were empty and sitting on the floor next to us. There was still a good forty-five minutes until we were expected to properly be up and out of bed, ready for the day's training.

"Suzumi." I said quietly. She turned to look at me questioningly and I just sighed wryly.

"You know yesterday, when Tessai brought up all that stuff about spirits. You froze when he asked about if you'd ever seen any." I could feel her stiffening, but I placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It just made me realise… that we don't know each-other that well." I turned to her and smiled, but I could tell from the way her ribbon moved that she was uncomfortable.

"I… I don't know, Grayson. I'm not really comfortable with that memory…" I shook my head, and wrapped an arm around her body, pulling her closer, her head resting against my shoulder.

"No. I thought that maybe we should start with my past." Suzumi shifted against me with some surprise and I chuckled softly.

"I never even thought about it. We've been so busy that I've forgotten to ask about you." She said, her tone apologetic. I huffed with laughter as I rubbed her shoulder consolingly.

"It's fine. To be honest, I forgot to bring it up. We'll chalk it up to us both being at fault here." We both giggled stupidly together, dying down into a contemplative silence. I took a deep breath in and prepared myself.

"My parents were amazing people." I said simply, but Suzumi embraced my side, supporting me already. "They weren't always my parents. But they took me in when I was thirteen. A blind child that surely had no future in anything and had upwards of five specialist appointments a month, a massive financial burden." I paused for a moment to think, letting my thoughts properly coalesce into something capable of verbalizing.

"I wasn't always in their care. I was shuttled from one foster home to another, the system so intent on keeping me out of an orphanage. I'm not sure what I would have preferred honestly." I chuckled humourlessly, and Suzumi intertwined her fingers with mine. "I don't know who my real parents are, but knowing the area I grew up in, they were either two young, too poor, or on drugs. Probably all of the above. The foster parents weren't much better. Though they weren't abusive monsters like you see on TV, I'm not sure they really cared either."

"When I was a younger kid, I loved making friends. New school, new home, new friends. Apparently, I was a high value friend, being legally blind. Got you out of classes whenever you wanted." I grinned, and I could feel Suzumi grin, her cheek pressing into my arm. "But time after time, I'd move. New school, new home, new friends. And I slowly grow to care less and less. I stopped paying attention in school, closed myself off from friends, learned to hate my fosters. After years and years of festering, I became the child no one wanted. Being blind and all the medical testing and special needs requirements didn't exactly help." I could feel Suzumi's thumb slowly drawing circled on the back of my hand, fingers intertwined with hers. I let out a long, suffering sigh. There was that bubbling feeling of emotion at the bottom of my throat, threatening to make itself known.

"I was a little monster at that age. Vehemently nasty, terrible in any way I could think up. All I wanted was to be alone." I heard a sniff from Suzumi, as she pulled my hand up to her cheek, pressing it against her face consolingly. I smiled.

"And then they came. They were just another set of foster parents to me. They lived far outside of the city, well and truly into the countryside. They were the only ones who would take me, after all. On the car drive there, I felt the most abandoned I ever had. Sequestered out to the middle of nowhere, to never be seen or heard of ever again. I remember when I first pulled up to the small farmhouse and as soon as I left the car, I felt a large hand wrap around mine and give it a firm shake. 'Welcome, son.' Ray had said." I laughed as tears slowly began to trickle down my face before I could wipe them away. "I'd have never admitted back then, but that's when I knew something was different. That they weren't the same as the other fosters. Even so, for about a year I was a terror. But every single time I acted out, screamed at someone, broke something; I was never yelled at, never physically disciplined, never preached at. I was met with the disappointed voice of Sera and told to go to my room and to come down when tea was ready."

Suzumi pulled herself up and hugged me powerfully, her face firmly planted into my neck, the wetness on her cheeks telling me she was crying as well.

"It took me a year to realize that I wasn't going to be sent away. Ray taught me everything he could, despite my blindness. I could never fix a car, or machinery, but I managed to learn to cut wood, to tend to chickens and horses, even how to ride a horse a few, very frightening times. He taught me that putting effort in the right place could overcome my disability." I grinned as I remembered the old, leathery hands teaching me how to swing an axe safely and helping lift me up to sit on the saddle of a small horse.

"Sera taught me to cook. The kitchen was a dark and scary place for me, filled with hot surfaces, sharp implements, and breakable things. The kitchen had always been a place that was severely off limits to me. I was told over and over that I would hurt myself in there. So, when she asked me for a hand in washing up, I was flabbergasted." I laughed heartily, getting a small sound out of Suzumi. "I learned from her that being afraid of something was normal. You need to be afraid of some things. But it's how you choose to interact with them, and how you go about it that is important. That kitchen was specialised so that I could cook in it. Appliances that I had never heard of that gave me that tiniest bit more safety when cooking something, small optimisations in where I placed things. That's what she taught me."

There was silence for a long time after that, a quiet contemplation of the warmth that life had given me, every single day. I can remember the worried hug I received when I was having a bad day, the smell of lavender from her perfume as she did. Not to mention the strong and determined grip around my wrist when I almost cut my pinkie finger off with a chef's knife. I took a deep breath in and sighed, smiling sadly.

"I saw it in their ribbons first. Something I wasn't comfortable with at the time. I had always been told that it was an illusion that my mind created to reinterpret the signals my eyes were sending my brain. But I could see this strange… detachment happening to their ribbons. But I ignored it, day after day. For months I saw it getting worse and worse and did nothing. Both of their ribbons slowly drifting further from their centre. It was only when Ray began to cough blood did I realise what I had been seeing." The silence was longer this time, a harrowing thing, me desperately trying to hold down the pain I felt resurfacing.

"It was skin cancer. Both of them had it, and it was already everywhere. Ray had it in his lungs and liver, and Sera had it in her bones." I choked back a sob and continued forth. "They… they chose against treatment. They were already old, almost in their nineties by that point. They had adopted twelve children during their lives, lived to grow old together and decided that they would die together to complete the package." The tightness of Suzumi's hug was almost painful at this point, but in a way it reassured me more than anything. I wrapped my arms around her, nestling my cheek against the back of her head.

"Maybe I could have done something, maybe I couldn't have. I'll never know. But never again. I decided the night that they died that I would never disregard a sign like that"

"Never again."

Sobs and cries reigned between us for what must have been hours, until we were simply hugging each-other. I waited for eternity for the knock on the wooden doorframe, Tessai's large form lurking on the other side of the sliding door. But it never came.

We laid there in a mutual embrace, disregarding the world. At least for a while.

---​

"Ray and Sera Carter. Died at 87 and 85 respectively. Their entire history is accounted for, every step of the way has proper documentation. The same goes for every foster parent and official that Grayson ever interacted with." Urahara recounted to Tessai, who was just coming down from an impassioned rant about how he shouldn't have put secret cameras and microphones inside of their room. Apparently, that was breaking 'privacy laws', not that it bothered Urahara. Who were they going to report them to, exactly? The Soul Reapers?

"So that leaves his parents then?" The taller, and much angrier Soul reaper asked, clearly not happy about having this conversation.

"You'd think so. Except they check out as well. I cross referenced Grayson's listed birthday with births in the area. His biological mother even gave him his name." Urahara tapped his lips in thought while Tessai sucked in air and huffed out a suffering sigh.

"What then, Almighty Kisuke Urahara, is the missing link?" The blonde-haired man gave an insufferably shameless grin and widened his arms theatrically.

"Absolutely no idea!" Tessai let out a deep, rumbling groan, making Urahara cackle like a madman before suddenly growing completely serious. "There is, however, only one lead. His name." Tessai raised an expectant eyebrow, pushing his rectangular glasses up his nose ever so slightly, regarding the wily man.

"His mother gave him a name, much like everyone else on the planet. What is new or interesting about this one?" Urahara sprung from his chair and began to pace.

"Well, for one. She was massively addicted to methamphetamines, reportedly not stopping her usage throughout her entire pregnancy. Grayson should have suffered severe effects from this, possibly death immediately, or in the next few weeks after birth. However, he was born perfectly healthy. In fact, extraordinarily healthy." Urahara turned quickly and paced the other way. "However, his mother was not so lucky. Not minutes after his birth, she died. After giving birth she immediately began to seize, only mumbling about being told by 'God' that his name was Grayson. She apparently said this a total of ten times before she stopped breathing and died regardless of treatment." Urahara grinned widely.

"So… you think there was an interloper in Grayson's birth itself?" Kisuke shrugged heavily.

"As I said, no idea. I've never heard of anything like this before. Even through my contacts in other spiritual organisations and Soul Societies. To be honest, I'm not sure that it wasn't just a junkie's rambling." Tessai sighed, unamused.

"So, what are we going to do with this information, Kisuke." The blonde-haired man snatched his bucket hat off of the table next to his keyboard and dropped it onto his head, adjusting it till comfortable. He turned to grin at his large partner.

"We have been teaching them the bare minimum so far, testing and observing. We've done all that analysis we can for now. The only choice we have is to teach them more and see what happens then." Tessai nodded, in agreement with the infuriating man he called is partner.

"It's time to teach them to fight!"

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 12: Respect

After what felt like hours of laying on the floor and simply enjoying each other's presence, there was a collection of gentle but firm knocks on the doorframe into our room.

"Miss Hamase and Mister Carter. Are you willing to train today?" He asked, his usually booming voice made gentle and soft.

However, something struck me as odd. He had never asked if we were willing to do so. It had always been a foregone conclusion. That, added with the extremely late calling time, meant that he had forewarning that something had happened or been talked about in this room. Unless he was able to hear us talk, or had somehow been close enough to the door to eavesdrop with regular human hearing, which I can confirm that he wasn't, as his ribbon was over near Urahara's…

Urahara. That control freak.

"Tessai. I respect you a lot, and I'm sure that you wouldn't knowingly let Urahara plant surveillance in our room. I just want the immediate assurance that they will be taken out of the room. I'll talk to Urahara about it in a moment, when we both get properly prepared for training." I spoke in a low and even tone. There was a moment of quiet from beyond the door, but I got the distinct impression that Tessai was frustrated. Probably with Urahara.

"Of course, Mister Carter." He said, simply. His tone was absolute with that same leader-like quality he had showed on rare occasion. The steps receded from the door and Suzumi tapped me on the hand.

"What was that about? Did you know about those cameras?" She whispered; confusion evident.

"A glorified guess, honestly. But I don't know. Tessai acted oddly, like he knew what happened. Tessai wouldn't peak on us, he's to professional and just plain nice for that. But Urahara is a douchebag." I shrugged. Against her form.

"Cool," she drew out the word longer than normal, a smile touching her voice, "my boyfriend is a detective." I grinned, a sudden flush of heat coming to my cheeks and in my chest.

"I'm your boyfriend now, am I?" I said, half joking, but I practically saw her grin through my foggy sight.

"Maybe. I can't see myself going back to normal, regular, boring boys now that I know that you are the world's greatest blind detective." I rolled my eyes in mock offense.

"I'll have you know, I'm the best blind detective in all of the spiritual realms, thank you very much." I said, stone-faced, until I broke into laughter. We laughed together for a few minutes, before I felt a soft pair of lips lightly press against mine and then retreat before anything else could be said or done. That small flush in my chest was now a raging flame.

"Alright time to get up and get ready for this training. Need to go tell off discount Japanese batman with a bad sense of fashion." Suzumi said quickly. I barked out a laugh, despite how badly I wanted to pull her into a hug, but she was right. We had work to do, unfortunately.

Mixing an intimate relationship into the mix of 'not being human' and 'having my world view destroyed' can't be healthy, but you know what, fuck it. The universe can get fucked for a while. Maybe it'll add some stability to the rapidly changing landscape of my mental understanding of the universe.

---​

Walking down what felt like an infinite staircase to the study room was infuriating. Especially because I didn't know the exact number of steps I needed to take, and also probably because even if I did, I would miscount somewhere. So, I had to trust in the strength of my newly minted and tenuously dubbed 'relationship' and give Suzumi the important responsibility of not letting me plant my face into a nice little patch of concrete.

Thankfully my trust in her turned out to be warranted, and so I directed us towards where both Tessai and Urahara's ribbons were. It took another few minutes of walking to get to that spot. Why the hell did they make this place so inconvenient to get around?

"Good afternoon gentleman and absolute douchebag. How are you today." I said as we approached the two Soul Reapers. There was a miffed silence from both of them. As we stopped in front of the duo I leaned over to where Urahara's location and in a suitably loud stage whisper, "The douchebag is you by the way." Suzumi giggled at my antics, but I could already feel the argument brewing in Urahara's head.

"Nope, you don't get to play with you stupid 'save the world' arguments this time, Urahara. I let you fly with that one last time. This time, you're just an out and out jackass who can't see far enough past his own paranoia that it makes me look like I have the eyes of an eagle." Silence reigned as the air between the two of us suddenly became dense and thick, but I ignored the man with own shielding.

"I'm not playing around Urahara. You are being an incorrigible ass for no good reason. If you had asked for any of the information that you could have possibly gleaned from spying on me, I would have gladly given it to you. In fact, I would have been just as interested in what you could do with that information seeing as I have no fucking clue what the hell I am and would like to damn well know!" I was near close to yelling, a sudden anger boiling close to the edge.

"So, If you can't treat me like an equal, deserving of at least the smallest bit of respect, I will walk right out of here and go find somewhere else to be trained where I might just be treated like a human being, even if it so happens that I'm not." I heard Urahara growl, the spiritual pressure surrounding me shaking with Urahara's petulant anger. I felt a rush of displaced air as collar of my shirt pulled me up and hung me just far enough up that I could only place my tippy toes on the ground. I heard a yelp from Suzumi, but as she tried to draw closer she was mercilessly pushed to the ground and had no choice but to retreat.

"What makes you think I'd let you leave alive?" He said, doing his best batman impression. I just laughed at him, his anger somehow making mine evaporate entirely. I just looked directly into his ribbon.

"Look, I don't know much about you, Kisuke. In fact, I know nothing. I think you're kind of an ass. I think anyone you could even remotely call a friend also thinks that. But I think you and Tessai are really good friends. Partners, working together for a long time and having known each other for longer." I said calmly, not even trying to resist Kisuke's grip.

"So, Kisuke. I have a good feeling that he already knows he is going to have to clean up after you being a childish moron. I bet he has done just that thousands of times, like he has tried to do for you every time you have mistreated us. But this is different Kisuke. This is a breaking point." I smiled down at the man's ribbon and reached out with my hand and grabbed the ribbon and tearing it away from the man, discarding it without a second thought. Kisuke immediately let go of me, surprised maybe. I heard a high-pitched keening noise slice through the air but before it could reach me a deep, rumbling voice called out.

"Pale Lightning." Those two words felt superfluous, but so intently powerful. There was a bright flash through my fog, almost sharp enough to pierce through the fog in truth. I heard a clattering as what I presumed was a sword fell to the ground.

"Do you really want to fight the same man that has been helping you all these years? Because I'm not sure how fights go in Soul Reaper land, but I can't imagine they end well." I looked stoically at the Urahara's ribbon, that had quickly regrown, but wasn't as large anymore. Though the air in the study room did feel denser now. There was a long silence, and it was Tessai who broke the spell.

"Leave, Kisuke." Tessai said, the presence of his words amazingly powerful. Maybe this was what Tessai was like when he was actually really angry. Scary.

The silence dragged on for a little while longer before the displacement of the air in front of me signalled Urahara's departure. There was a loud clearing of the throat from Tessai.

"I am deeply sorry for this." He started, but stopped midway. "I will not make excuses for him. You have brought up a good point. He has not acted this way for a long time, and I believe it is time for me to truly put my foot down."

"Tessai, it's all good. You are hardly the one at fault here." I shrugged. "It's not like I can't see where Urahara is coming from, either. He has a world that he desperately wants to protect. I have no doubt that he'd gladly be wrong about me, and have treated me terribly, than have treated me kindly and have me be exactly what he fears." A smile quirked itself onto my face. I was fumbling my way through this situation, but I had to advocate for myself somewhere, otherwise I'd just be walked all over by Kisuke and I can't say that I fancy that very much.

"I understand your fears, Mister Carter. I have to say, not many have been able to talk to Urahara like that. He is a man of singular drive and focus. He is, in certain ways, unfathomably intelligent to you and I, but lacks the barest understanding in others." The large man sighed heavily, filled with emotion, "We have known each other for a long, long time. Initially brought together in scholarly pursuits, we worked closely as partners in many projects. I am a very skilled kidō practitioner and our skills combined were incredibly potent. We have saved each other from terrible fates many times over. However, it seems that he has become… obsessed with his past failings." He shook his head sadly, silhouette clearly defined in the fog due to the artificial light hidden in the ceiling somewhere.

"Again, Tessai. This isn't your fault. I'm not really sure it is anyone's fault." I laughed as I walked forward and patted the immensely tall man on the arm. "Either way, I still need training. So unless Kisuke decides to kick me out or kill me, then training is still on?" There was a deep laugh from the man who quickly turned away from us.

"Indeed. As such, I will go and collect your training partner for the day." Displaced air gently brushed against our skin as Tessai left us in the study room alone.

"What the hell Grayson!" Suzumi yelled suddenly, making me jump. She rushed over and slapped me on the face, which surprisingly hurt very little.

"What?" I asked, bewildered and concerned.

"What do you mean 'what?', do you have a death wish? You intentionally provoked Urahara! He pulled out a sword." I grimaced. That probably did look scarier if you could actually see what was happening, but I just got to hear it.

"Honestly Suzumi. I'm not sure I was thinking about that too hard. Plus, I trust Tessai and I know that Urahara trusts Tessai. I felt secure enough that I wouldn't be actually killed." Suzumi slapped me again, this time I felt my shielding strain with the spiritual energy she infused with the blow.

"Tessai shot lightning out of his finger! Lightning! And then they stared at each other and the whole place started to get heavy. I could barely breathe." Her voice started to get quieter and quieter, her anger subsiding into fear. I drew closer to her and gently started to wrap my arms around her form, which seemed smaller than before.

"Hey, hey. It's okay. Tessai was going to protect me just fine. I know it was scary, but I think this is our life now. I don't think scary people are going to be any less scary because we are weak, Suzumi." I felt her look up into my eyes, and I looked directly into her ribbon, which always seemed to coincide with their eyes, and smiled gently.

"Why do we have to suddenly be wrapped up in all of this?" I thought for a moment before speaking, trying to make sure I didn't say it wrong.

"Suzumi. You don't have to. This is a me thing, something that being around me will bring. I'm not sure I have a choice here. You do. You can go home to your mother, try and pick up your job again. You can go back to your normal life–"

"And leave you." She said with finality, ending my sentence. She shook her head. "No, that isn't fair. I can't leave you here to face this all alone. I'm not sure that I could walk out those doors and go back to a normal life knowing that there was more than I could ever know still out there, waiting to destroy everything that I love. These Hollows that eat souls and kill people and Soul Reapers that protect us from them. God knows how many other different afterlives and their versions of Soul Reapers. I can't."

There was a certain steel in her voice that let me know that she wouldn't have it argued about. I honestly couldn't tell if I wanted her here at my side in all of this, or safe somewhere, where she won't be hurt. But it wasn't my choice, and she deserves to make that choice herself.

So, I just held her close and respected it.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 13: A Bout of a Lifetime

It seemed that emotional moments were fated to be interrupted, a rush of air displacing behind us caused up to jump slightly and pull apart to face the source of the disturbance.

The regular form of Tessai was visible through my fog but there was another, far smaller shape alongside his large shadow. I squinted my eyes at the form, trying to get a better look at the person's outline, but it was then that their ribbon popped into view. As of late, identifying people from their ribbon alone was becoming easier and easier, and as soon as I saw the stark white ribbon and immediate recognition came over me.

"Uyu?" I asked, somewhat dumbfounded. I felt Suzumi turn to look at me, questioningly.

"U-uhm, yes. Hello!" The small girl said, almost yelling, before bowing deeply towards us. I just gave Tessai a dumbstruck look.

"Yes, Uyu will be assisting in your training today." The large man said, as if there were absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.

"What do you mean assisting!" Suzumi said, a note of outrage dwelling in her tone, ready to escalate.

"W-well, we're going to fight! I brought my gloves!" The small girl slung a bag off her shoulder that hit the floor with a mighty sound like someone dropping a concrete. This seemed to go unnoticed by Suzumi who continued to question Tessai.

"She's just a little girl! She can't be more than ten, Tessai. I thought you were reasonable, but this is insane."

While I agreed with everything Suzumi was saying, I couldn't take my eyes off of Uyu. Even while Tessai was trying to give a half reasonable explanation for why we were going to fight a little kid, my eyes were fixed on the foggy form of the small girl as she pulled out two large gauntlets, smoothly fitting them over her hands. And then I felt it.

Slowly, the gauntlets filled with spiritual energy, little lines of white in my vision filled the gauntlets, like roots of a tree in soil. In only a few brief moments the gauntlets were a radiant white colour, before fading in its brightness and reducing to a dull glow.

I looked the silhouette of the small girl over, and her tiny form made the frankly impractically sized gauntlets look even more ridiculous.

But if you looked closely, even in the silhouette, the fingers of the gauntlets, which couldn't possibly house her fingers because of how big the gauntlet was, were all moving independent and naturally.

"Uyu," I asked gently, "did Kisuke make you those gauntlets?"

"Y-yes, they were for my eighth birthday!" She replied happily.

"Do you use them to fight against Hollows?" Suzumi's argument with the stoic Tessai died down, turning to listen to the little girl.

"Of course!" She said confidently, placing the massive hands on her hips, "Daddy takes me out to beat up the silly Hollows. Though I don't get to fight the big ones…" She trailed off sadly. I could only nod with a consoling smile on my face, trying not to show my surprise. A girl this young was capable of fighting against a Hollow? I hadn't ever encountered one myself, but Kisuke and Tessai had made them seem very dangerous.

This meant one of two things. Either they were lying, and Hollows are much weaker than I was told, or this girl is far stronger than we've been giving her credit for.

"Suzumi," I called, "I think we should fight her."

"What you too?" She growled, scandalized, but I ignored her, walking towards the little girl and then bowed deeply.

"I'll be in your care." I said as politely as I could, hoping that if she was going to lay me out, she'd at least try to be gentle about it.

"O-of course!" She said, responding with a nervous bow.

And then the fight began.

Or, should I say, I got punched so hard that I could have sworn that it rang like a bell. The moment that Uyu had stood up from her bow I could tell that the battle had already commenced, her entire demeanour changing into one of decisive action.

As such, I had immediately put up my shielding. That, clearly, was a good call. The punch from the gauntleted fist was gargantuan. I had only experienced force like it a few times before at the hands of Kisuke, but he had never punched me, simply restrained me.

The blow to my shielding transferred directly into my body being blown back into an uncontrollable few seconds of airtime, the rushing wind surrounding me in a terrifying moment as I was spun in every which direction before I hit the ground in a clamour of limbs tangling together at odd angles.

"Grayson!" Suzumi called, befuddled but also worried. I can't imagine what it would have looked like to her, as I spun through the air and landed on the rock ground around ten metres away.

"I'm fine!" I called and, strangely, I was. In fact, I felt virtually unharmed, despite the short moment of vertigo as I recalibrated, standing up to face the small girl who stood with her arm still outstretched from the blow she had dealt me.

"Not going to go easy on me, then?" I joked, but I received no reply as the girl ran towards me, covering the space between us in a mere moment. I hastily put my arms up to block, planting my feet on the ground, giving myself as much stability as I could.

The rush towards me didn't end with another forward punch, as I had so naively assumed, but an uppercut that blew straight through my guard and crashed into the shielding that was extended around my body my only a few millimetres. This sent me flying once again, but this time I at least managed to stop myself from spinning in circles and completely disorienting myself.

This time, as I fell back down from my trip towards the ceiling of the study room, I prepared myself. I couldn't simply stay on the defensive, it clearly wasn't working. I could definitely try to snatch her ribbon, like I had managed with Kisuke, but I was also falling towards the ground with only scant few moments to prepare.

So, instead of doing some overcomplicated special move, I simply focused and pushed my strength into my right arm and prepared myself to punch as hard as I could. I could feel more than the usual muscle strength coming to aid me, but also a considerable chuck of my own spiritual energy as well.

I just hoped that this amount wasn't way too much.

I prepared myself as I fell the last metre and whipped out my arm towards the small girl, trusting that she could block this amount of power. However, what I wasn't expecting was her to respond in kind, the vague silhouette of her form blurring for a moment as her large, gauntleted hand surged forwards, meeting my fist dead on.

The sound was enormous, like a flashback had gone off right next to my ear. The pain of the sonic blast was hardly the first think on my mind, as I had once again been blasted back through the air. This time, the speed at which I'd been flung back was much greater than either of the other two times, and it ironically gave me more time to think before I inevitably hit the ground and got turned to paste.

The answer was obvious enough, as I flipped myself backwards and jammed my feet into the ground, ramping up the shielding and strengthening to my feet and legs. For a moment I felt like I was ice skating, the speed that I was moving at making it hard to get any grip on the ground at all. However, with a bit of persistence, I managed to dig in with the toes of my shoe enough that I slowly began to slow down.

My legs quaked against the force of my momentum, but surprisingly managed to hold up. The momentum slowed down from a blistering speed to only a few kilometres an hour over the next second or so, until it finally stopped leaving me standing in a ditch of rock and displaced dirt.

The exertion from just the last few seconds of fighting was more than I'd ever put into anything in my life. My mind was still racing, wired on adrenalin and heart pumping so fast that it felt like a marching drum to my sore ears.

It was when I saw Uyu's form cresting the ditch that I had formed, running at a similar speed that had led to the first blow, I just sighed, the adrenalin fading and leaving soreness and exhaustion.

As the terrifyingly strong little girl approached me, in my half-addled mind I simply reached out and snatched her white ribbon from her without a moment of resistance. Immediately I saw the gauntlets, that had been glowing dully through the fight almost instantly go dark, sucking a lot of the power out of the punch that was headed directly for my stomach.

As the punch drew closer, the power that I had snatched with my hand sang with the need to be used, and I simply acquiesced. I lowered my hand that I had snatched her ribbon with towards her gauntleted hand, grabbing it and pushing it away from my gut and off to the side of my body and letting it go.

I was expecting the girl to stumble, maybe fall over at most. What I wasn't expecting was for her arm to swing wide uncontrollably, away from my body, and pulling the rest of her body with it, slamming her into the dirt pile in the ditch next to us, compacting it under the force, and leaving her laying up against a wall of compacted dirt I had launched her into.

I heard the wind be pushed from her chest, but she began to struggle to stand up, ignoring her breathlessness.

"Hey, hey, time out." I called, making a 'T' with my two hands, breathless and exhausted myself. "I think that might have been enough for one bout, right?" The young girl continued to struggle up. I couldn't see any facial expressions, but I could tell from her ribbon alone that she hadn't stopped the fight.

"Uyu, I give up!" I said frantically as she trudged towards me again, getting ready to throw a punch again with her unpowered gauntlets. But, before she could reach me, a dark shadow crossed over my vision, and with a thump Tessai stood before me, blocking my view of Uyu.

"Miss Hanakari, the battle is over." He said gently, almost like soothing a babe. It was quiet for a second before a nervous voice made itself known.

"U-um, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to lose control like that!" The little girl said, a swift change from the unstoppable battle machine she'd been not moments earlier.

"That's quite alright, Miss Hanakari." Tessai said, accepting her apology with grace. I then saw the little girl's ribbon turn itself towards me. It took me a moment to realise that I was meant to speak as well.

"Oh! Yeah, you're fine. I don't think I'm seriously hurt or anything." I said, just before another form showed up, standing up on the side of the ditch I had been punched into.

"Grayson! Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened—" I waved my hand towards Suzumi with a smile.

"Suzumi, I'm fine." I received a look of disbelief form her ribbon, which only made me roll my eyes. "Do I look hurt to you?" I said as I opened my arms up for viewing. After a moment, Suzumi grunted in defeat and let up with it.

"Actually, it was kind of fun in a way. Like a rollercoaster." Suzumi, Uyu and Tessai all looked at me, ribbons showing distinct note of disbelief. "What? I didn't get hurt and I spent more time in the air than I did touching the ground the entire fight. It was great!"

The first to laugh was Tessai who, despite his usual polite chuckle, have a deep belly laugh, which spurred the other two to start giggling. Suzumi was soon wiping tears from her eyes, and Uyu who seemed to be desperately trying to hide her giggles and stop laughing all together. I couldn't help but let my face be split by a wide grin.

"How—" Suzumi continued hysterically laughing trying to pull herself together to say a few words, "How did you find being a human punching bag for a little girl fun?"

"Hey, I got some good ones in there!" I said indignantly, which only made Suzumi howl with laugher harder, eventually forcing her to kneel against her light headedness.

"H-he did! He stole my spiritual energy somehow." Uyu said, coming to my defence, obviously only adding to the hysterics for Suzumi.

"Oh? You managed to do that move in the middle of the fight?" I nodded and he turned towards Uyu, "Could you have resisted it at all?" The back-to-business conversation managed to sober up Suzumi from her hysterics and she made her way over to me and hugged my arm, giggling uncontrollably every now and then.

"N-no, I don't think so. It was very strong, like when Mommy beats Daddy in arm wrestling!" I could feel a slight smirk make its way onto Tessai's face for a fraction of a second before he managed to quash it.

"Well, your goal now is to try to fight against that technique from now on." Uyu nodded quickly and Tessai turned to Suzumi.

"It's your turn now, Miss Hamase!"


A/N: Hey there guys, I'm sorry about the short and unintended hiatus. Unfortunately my pup passed beyond the veil, and I've needed some time to just spend time with her before she passed.

Hopefully I will be able to return to normal schedule from now on.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 14: To Sense Spiritually

After my first bout with Uyu, Suzumi had her turn.

She fared not so well against the young girl. Obviously, I couldn't see much of anything, but Tessai was kind enough to give a running play-by-play of the fight. Suzumi, it seemed, was much better at staying on the ground than I was, not getting juggled by the small girl's gauntleted punches.

If how Tessai described it was even remotely close to the truth, then Suzumi was impressive in her own right. Though she wasn't able to shut down Uyu like I had been capable of, or really fight her equally at all, but the shielding that she had slowly inherited from me over time allowed her to block most of the damage only sustaining minor cuts to her arms and face. Though it seems like she figured out how to use her spiritual energy to root herself in place for the most part.

That was the big difference between Suzumi and I, when it came to spiritual energy.

Sure, I had the fancy pants powers that dumbfounded Kisuke and Tessai, potentially making me a threat to all of the spiritual realms, but Suzumi had a weapon that I certainly wasn't as good in.

Suzumi had a natural inventiveness in using her spiritual energy that surpassed anything I could muster so far. Tessai didn't comment on it directly, but I could tell that he was impressed by it as well. She had never trained to root herself to the ground before this fight. It had either been total instinct, or she had invented her own method from the ground up as soon as she needed it.

Both of those options were mind blowing to me. I had the easier time in actually utilizing spiritual energy, for whatever ancestral reason, but Suzumi seemed to iterate on her own technique, blazing past what she had been taught by either Kisuke or I.

The fight ultimately ended with Uyu managing to pummel Suzumi's shielding to breaking point, which was when Tessai stepped in and called the match. I excitedly approached my, tentatively titled, girlfriend, helping her up from her spot in a ditch that Uyu had managed to pummel her down in.

"Wow! You were amazing, Suzumi. You even managed to root yourself in place with spiritual energy." I gushed. Suzumi just laughed at me.

"Oh, shush flatterer. I didn't even win against her." She said disappointedly, brushing the dirt and dust off of her clothes.

"I don't know that we were really supposed to win, Suzumi. Uyu is one scary girl. I doubt that I'll win the next bout against her." I said, flashing a reassuring smile. Suzumi seemed to grudgingly accept, and I started to get ready for my second bout.

Getting ready consisted of me trying to puzzle through Suzumi's technique that allowed her to root herself to the ground. I tried infusing my spiritual energy into the ground, like you'd classically think of roots. However, the tendrils of spiritual energy just dissipated into the rocky surface beneath my feet with seemingly no effect.

Though, things changed when I reimagined it as if I were wearing shoes with hooks attached to them, like cleats for soccer. As soon as I used that imagery, the spiritual energy formed more solidly. I don't think that the energy had solidified into an actual hook attached to my shoe, but it certainly felt like it. There was no added weight, but when I decided I wanted my foot stuck to the ground, it really stuck.

Obviously, I spent some time performing gravity bending tricks, like bending backwards far past tipping point and pulling myself back upright.

After that, the fight started and I got absolutely clobbered to no tomorrow.

Uyu was strong and fast and, if she wanted to be, absolutely ruthless. My only saving grace was my shielding being nigh impervious to anything that Uyu could throw at me. I'm sure that she had things she could do that would break through my shielding, it wasn't that amazing, but those same attacks would also probably vaporize me.

However, even as I was being clobbered, desperately trying to keep up with the insanely fast and powerful ten-year-old, I realized something.

I was having fun.

I had been limited my entire life by my eyesight, physical activity had never been an option in my brain, left at the absolute bottom of my list of what I could imagine I'd be capable of. But here I was, fighting a superpowered young girl, sensing her positioning almost entirely based on tracking her ribbon and interpreting what she was doing from her silhouette. Though I was starting to find myself unable to keep up with just that.

It also helped that all this fighting made me realise how physically powerful I'd become with just learning how to utilize spiritual energy, even to a minor degree.

"It seems that you figured out Miss Hamase's tricks. Managing to keep yourself rooted against Uyu's attacks." Tessai said from beside me, helping me up from yet another ditch that Uyu had dug with my body.

"Well, you could say that I had good incentive. I didn't really want to be knocked around like a human basketball." That got a chuckle out of the burly store attendant.

"I have to ask." Tessai began, "How, exactly, are you managing to keep up with Uyu. Are you able to use spiritual senses?" I scrunched my eyebrows at the men.

"Spiritual senses? No, I just use her silhouette and her ribbon to keep track of her." Now it was Tessai's turn to be confused.

"I can understand that you are capable of seeing spirit ribbons to a freighting degree of accuracy, certainly enough to locate someone quickly and effectively, unlike the typical longer-range tracking use for spirit ribbons. However, I was under the assumption that you were entirely blind and were using spiritual sense to determine exact locations and movements." I turned to the man, somewhat dumbfounded.

"Wait, this spiritual sense. Are you saying it can reproduce eyesight?" Tessai's ribbon shook its end.

"No, it far more like echolocation than anything else. I only know of one or two users of the technique, as there aren't many that would even require to learn the technique in Soul Society."

"Can… would I be able to learn to use it?" I asked tentatively. Vision, even if only limited to an echolocation derivative, would be a massive step up from what I can currently see. Being trapped in a decidedly grey and largely colourless world of shifting fog wasn't something that I enjoyed. I can still barely remember small things, paintings and pictures I saw more than a decade ago, jealously guarded in my memories.

If I can regain even a small bit of that through spiritual sense, even just to see someone else's face, I'd be more than happy.

"I am not sure, Mister Carter. I myself haven't ever bothered to dabble in the art myself. Though I suppose that I do have experience with it. I, at one point or another, have taught kidō to one or two that were capable of using it." Excitement rose in my chest quicker than ever before.

"However, I do warn you, Mister Carter, that developing and using spiritual sense is an incredibly difficult feat. It is usually born of many decades worth of dedicated study. It would be remiss of me to not mention that those that I have encountered who were capable of using spiritual sense, were some of the most powerful people to live within Soul Society. Some of which became Soul Society's enemies."

And there went the excitement, replaced with a sullen disappointment.

"So not really?" Tessai nodded.

"Not really." Tessai said thoughtfully, rubbing at his chin, "However, you have also displayed that you are easily capable of sensing the spiritual ribbons to a degree of which I am not sure many could possibly reach, even if they had the power to do so.

"There aren't many like you, Grayson Carter. The only other person I have met that was as much of an anomaly as you has subsequently become one of, if not the most powerful people of all spiritual realms. I would recommend that you take any 'impossibility' with a grain of salt and try it yourself first." I could feel the warm smile on Tessai's face without even needing to see it. What else could I do but nod?

From then on, Suzumi and I took turns fighting Uyu. In between my bouts, Tessai tried to explain spiritual sensing to me. It became evident that it was a complex topic, especially when discussed as analytically as Tessai was capable of, but the short of it was using spiritual pressure to 'feel', determining the shape of something and interpreting.

It could be seen as a complex form of echolocation, except the spiritual pressure didn't necessarily need to return to you to allow you to sense something. Spiritual pressure was just the force that resulted from your spiritual energy from being released, though it seemed like you could release your spiritual energy and have it follow you around like a blob, subsuming anything that surrounded you and enacting itself on them.

It was a complex topic, and the more that Tessai expanded on the nature of spiritual energy and spiritual pressure, even lightly touching on kidō, the more it overwhelmed me.

I managed to pick up one good first step, however. I needed to properly master spiritual pressure, at least to the point where I can have it surround me like a cloak, from there I can figure out something to actually sense things with that spiritual pressure.

The alternating battles with Uyu and training to properly release my spiritual energy was draining to say the least, leaving me utterly exhausted. But somehow never truly crashing and falling into a heap. I don't know if that's thanks to the spiritual energy or the sudden motivation to improve that I've found.

Releasing my spiritual energy properly was hard. Using it within my body, or for simple tasks like the rooting technique was simple enough, and I was able to get the hang of them relatively quickly, but truly moving the energy outside of my body and into the atmosphere around me was way harder.

The only parallel that I had was the shielding technique that popped into my head out of nowhere, but that followed a strict structure that seemed as second nature to me as anything, so it may as well have been the same as the rooting technique for me, even if it technically was formed of spiritual energy outside of my own body.

So, I went back to absolute basics. I tried to release spiritual energy around my finger alone. Trying to wrap it with the energy like a bubble of water.

It took hours of trying to get it to work, even a little bit. I didn't even know what it did, though it certainly did feel like my finger was clamped in something heavy. For some reason that weight didn't bother or affect me. In fact, it made me feel heavier instead.

In that next fight there didn't seem to be any different because of it, not that I could keep it surrounding my finger for very long, after being clobbered by Uyu. Though this time I managed to steal her ribbon twice, but still got my ass handed to me.

Afterwards, I worked on getting a second finger covered, then a third. It slowly became easier to manipulate, but it was really hard to maintain. The releasing part was easy, but maintaining it was difficult, especially with what I was doing. I think–massive emphasis on think there–that I am condensing the released spiritual energy around my fingers, and the spiritual pressure that emanates from it is surrounding that. It's very confusing, and I tried to have Tessai explain to me a few times, but I think the man is used to teaching someone who already understands the basic, if not higher concepts of spiritual stuff.

I wasn't all that sure what I had actually created, honestly. Was it just a rudimentary version of shielding that sat underneath my better, more advanced shielding?

I continued to work on it either way, and it started to get harder to maintain multiple fingers at once when I reached all five fingers, but I was able to manage it. The task from there was to cover the entire hand, which was an interesting task. It took two more bouts between me and Uyu to manage it, but when I did I felt accomplishment like never had before. I sat there and just felt the heaviness and solidity of my hand.

It was like my hand was encased in concrete, or maybe metal even. I could feel the peculiar weight that it now had, as if moving my hand was moving an object hundreds of times heavier, but with no extra effort that normal.

"Grayson! It's your turn." Suzumi called out.

"Y-you did great Miss Hamase!" Uyu said to Suzumi nervously. Turns out that those two got on like a house on fire. It was like a big sister, little sister dynamic. Cute to see.

I got up from my spot on the rocky floor and walked over towards Uyu's ribbon. The little girl had been fighting with only a few breaks the whole time, and she still seemed like she was going strong. She was clearly more experienced than us and probably capable of fighting for much longer too.

"Hey Uyu, I've been trying to do stuff with my spiritual energy, do you mind if I use it on you to see what it does?" There was a moment of hesitation from the small girl.

"U-um, sure! I don't see why not…" She said, somehow both encouraging and cautious. I nodded and the fight began in earnest.

I focused on maintaining the glove of spiritual energy as the small girl rocketed towards me like a speeding car, arm wound back ready for a punch. I focused on her and then, just at the right moment, punched forwards with as much force as I could muster with my gloved hand.

My spiritually gloved hand connected with hers, and a loud boom followed. I desperately pumped energy into my feet to stop me for flying away myself, and only marginally succeeding. But when the dust settled and I could focus on something other than not being blown away, I looked up to see Uyu's ribbon very far away and another ribbon I hadn't ever seen before.

A very powerful, stark white ribbon.

"Who tried to kill my daughter?" A voice boomed out from far away, but still managed to exude enough force to make the ground shudder beneath my feet.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 15: Worried Futures

There was a tell-tale rush of air as Kisuke Urahara's form appeared in front of me, his silhouette implying that he was facing away from me and towards where I had blasted the poor girl.

"Ah, Jinta. You've slain that Hollow, I see?" Kisuke called out casually. There was another displacement of air as a tall man, maybe six or so feet, appeared right next to Kisuke, laid over his shoulders a massive snakelike form.

"Of course I did!" The man's middle-aged voice said aggressively, the snake-like form thumping to the ground as the man shrugged it off his shoulders. "But that's not the point. Someone just tried to kill my daughter, and I'd like to kill them."

The man brushed past Kisuke and made a beeline towards me, an aura of menace moving closer to me, the dark silhouette lighting up with the usage of spiritual energy. But as the man grew closer, Kisuke turned around and grabbed the man by his shoulder, stopping him.

"Now, there's no need for violence." Both me and the man snorted amusedly. Ironic coming from the sadistic asshole himself. The man, who I could only assume to be Uyu's father, whipped his head around to glare at me, shrugging off Kisuke's hand.

"Picked up another pet project, have you?" He said as he rolled up his sleeves.

"Uh, sir?" I said gently, "Me and your daughter were having a sparring match and I tried something new, and it packed more of a punch than I thought it would." I bowed, as it was the Japanese way. "I'm sorry and it won't happen again."

This Jinta, however, wasn't appeased. Walking towards me faster, spiritual pressure screaming off of him in droves.

"Say that after I give your hide a good licking!" He yelled, however before he could punch me, another voice rang out.

"S-stupid Pops! You're embarrassing me!" Then Uyu, who had run all the way back from where I'd punched her off to, slammed her gauntleted fist into Jinta's face, sending his body cartwheeling off into the distance with a force that I'm confident that I couldn't produce.

The fiery man went flying into the distance with accompanying incoherent yelling. I just stood there, dumbfounded, and ultimately confused by the display.

"Uh," I stammered out, "well I guess we know where Uyu gets her energy from." I chuckled, and Kisuke snorted.

"Don't let him hear that, it'd make him irrationally happy." Kisuke said dismissively. The man acted like we hadn't had a massive argument not even a few hours earlier, though honestly I welcomed the change, if he acted better at least.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" Kisuke intoned as he crouched to the ground and started poking and prodding at the snake-like form laying on the ground. It was huge, for a snake, but not much larger than a bear in total size.

"What is it?" I asked curiously.

"This, my good sir, is a Hollow. It's a small thing, but size never means anything with Hollows." He gave the snake's form a push and it rolled over easily. "This little thing has been going around terrorising and eating human souls, we call them plusses academically, for a good while now. He only recently showed up on our radar." I nodded thoughtfully, getting closer to the thing to see if I could make out any more details. As I drew closer, I managed to make out what looked like a mask where the snake's head should be. It looked vaguely snakelike, with a jaw and a mean looking set of fangs, but past that it looked more like a human skill, with ridges all across it.

"Watch those fangs kid, they have a mean poison." Jinta said from behind me, making me jump and pull back from the Hollow.

I whipped around to see the man standing there, arms crossed. Though it seemed that he had lost all of his earlier aggression. I couldn't help but sigh. Why were people so bi-polar around here.

"So… this is supposed to be one of those Hollow things, right?" Suzumi said, standing from far away with Tessai. "Why are they called Hollows anyway?" I looked back towards the snake Hollow and tuck my whole arm through a gaping and perfectly cylindrical hole in its forehead.

"I'd assume that it's this hole here?" I answered tentatively, turning towards Kisuke who was still poking and prodding at something in the Hollow's midsection.

"Ah, very astute of you. Basically. Hollows are human souls gone wrong, after all. The hole in their bodies are where the chain connecting them to their bodies and the physical world used to be. Once those souls stick around in the Human World too long without passing on, they lose that chain and they turn into a Hollow. Their 'heart' then turns into their mask."

"Uh, what?" Suzumi said, aghast, "You're telling me that Hollows are human?" Kisuke shrugged, blasé.

"They were, sure. Once they turn into a Hollow, things get weird. Sometimes they just turn into mindless beasts, hellbent on evil and vile things, usually towards those they loved in life before branching out, probably like this one," Jinta nodded to confirm, "and sometimes they retain some degree of intelligence and their memories, but in my experience, that seems rather torturous for the Hollow."

"What happens after that?" Suzumi said, clearly not entirely comfortable with the idea that she was looking at a corrupted human soul, of sorts. Kisuke grumbled something about kindergarten lessons.

"Lots of things, Suzumi. They could be found and sent to Hell by a Soul Reaper—"

"Hell?" Suzumi yelled, running a hand through her hair, "You're telling me that Hell actually exists?" I got the distinct impression that Kisuke was rolling his eyes at that.

"Of course, Soul Society could be considered Heaven. Though it isn't much of a Heaven in my experience." He snorted derisively. "Anyways, Hollows can be sent to Hell and go through processing there. And before you ask, I know a little bit about what that entails, and even I don't want to know more." That genuinely gave me a bit of a shock, the idea that Kisuke wouldn't want to know absolutely everything about Hell, which probably held some of the most dangerous and nastiest people around, was frankly absurd.

"If a Soul Reaper doesn't get to them, they continue to go on a rampage, feasting on human souls before they get to powerful and can't sustain themselves on human souls anymore. From there they either starve and die slowly or manage to make it to Heuco Mundo, the Hollow's spiritual realm."

"It's fine," Jinta managed to interject before Suzumi could become overly worried, "if the Soul Reapers don't get to them, me and my associates do." He grinned reassuringly. Suzumi nodded, seemingly mollified by the idea that a group of Jinta's were running around and keeping things somewhat safe.

"Well, it seems like something managed to get to this one before you, Jinta." Kisuke intoned lazily as he revealed a large chunk bitten out of the snake, "Unless you have taken a fancy to the taste of Hollow?"

"Ew, no way. Hollows taste like garbage." Jinta denied, vehemently enough to confirm that he has indeed tried to eat a Hollow before. "Though you're right. Thankfully that bite slowed him down, made him much easier to shoot. Though I have no idea what did it." Kisuke hummed for a moment.

"No idea at all?" he asked to confirm, which made Jinta pause for a moment.

"Well…" The middle-aged man sighed, but continued on, "there is a possibility, other than it just getting bitten in a fight it got itself into." Kisuke waved a hand to hurry him along, making Jinta grunt.

"The Soul Reapers we've been working with are just calling it Phantom."

"Phantom?" Kisuke inquired, interest piqued. Jinta nodded.

"It's a Hollow that they can't catch. Apparently, he has been around for a few decades now, around when the Kurosaki guy ran off to god knows where." Kisuke rose from his crouching position, pulling and arm from his haori and scratching at his chin.

"I haven't seen anything on my equipment… Is it powerful?" Jinta shrugged.

"Probably not, though no one can really verify. They haven't been very forthcoming with information about it, as per usual, had to get a lot of people drunk for some good info." Jinta laughed merrily before Uyu said words that made the man deflate.

"I'll tell Mum that you're drinking again." She said coolly, easily blackmailing her father. Jinta coughed with embarrassment and continued shakily.

"Uh, well, all I really know about it is that it's capable of disappearing. It's either incredibly fast, incredibly stealthy or amazing at hiding it's spiritual energy and pressure. Possibly all of the above." Kisuke almost growled.

"I don't like it when a Hollow can get past our spiritual detection that easily." Jinta shrugged again.

"Apparently they brought out a Vice Captain at one point and they still couldn't find the thing. Though they don't seem too worried about it."

"Why not?" Kisuke asked darkly.

"Well, they've been saying that it doesn't eat human souls."

I had never seen something get Kisuke's attention so quick other than myself.

"A Hollow that doesn't eat human souls?" Jinta nodded.

"Weird right? Every time they've encountered it, they've always found it eating other Hollows only. It looks really humanoid too. The Soul Reapers just think the thing is creepy and try to stay away from it." Kisuke was tapping his lips in thought as he stared down at the large bite out of the snake Hollow.

"I see. I'll try to see if I can make something that can find it. High sensitivity equipment is hard to make, especially for when you're trying to find something so close, but I'll see what I can do."

"Alright then. I'll tell the team to keep an eye out for this Phantom of our and see if we can get any sightings for you." After that, Jinta turned towards Uyu and reached his hand out.

"Time to get home for us, Uyu. Your Mother is already angry enough with me as it is." Uyu nodded.

"B-bye bye guys!" she said as she waved to us with gauntleted fists, and I just waved back, grinning.

"See you soon Uyu!" Suzumi said excitedly as the two figures disappeared from sight.

---​

"I don't like it Tessai." Kisuke said as he knelt on a pillow, staring down into his tea with a glare.

"I know you don't, Kisuke. But I'm not sure you're ever had as much control as you believed yourself to have. Even Aizen himself fell into the trap of believing himself the arbiter of all happenings." Tessai said stoically as he gently sipped from his tea. He had changed out of his store attendant's uniform and into a set of comfortable striped pyjamas the man had been wearing for a past few centuries, at least. Kisuke idly wondered if Tessai had made them by hand, unsure if humans even created pyjamas in that style that long ago.

"Fine, I'll admit that while I have a lot of plans and contingency plans, I don't have all the information. But over recent weeks I've been getting… flashbacks. Small things seem out of place in my spiritual detection apparatuses, and especially with the appearance of both Suzumi and Grayson." Kisuke sighed, taking a hefty swallow of the light brown mixture.

"Suzumi and Grayson, though unexpected, aren't exactly the lynchpin that hold the world together, Kisuke. Just because Grayson isn't exactly of explainable origin and Suzumi is growing far faster than a high-spec human should, doesn't mean that everything is falling apart." Kisuke shook his head, taking off his hat and placing it on the coffee table, scratching at his unruly blonde locks.

"I'll remind you that we thought similarly with Rukia being sent to Karakura."

"That was different and you know it. We knew much of what Ichigo was even before Rukia granted Ichigo her Soul Reaper powers. We already knew that things were going to happen to the boy, we just weren't expecting them to be on as massive a level as they were." Kisuke scoffed.

"I'm sorry but I can't help but think they are the same, just this time we don't know what is happening behind the scenes with Grayson's past. We have no idea what he is or how he can 'snatch ribbons' as he calls it. He managed to cloak his hand in spiritual energy in a few hours Tessai. As far as I can tell he hasn't undergone anything remotely similar to awakening Soul Reaper powers for whatever he is. It doesn't help that Suzumi can somehow follow along at a similar pace!" The man was slowly becoming more and more hysterical before Tessai spoke.

"Kisuke. Calm. You are doing yourself no favours by becoming hysterical, as deserving as it is." Kisuke took in a few shaky breaths before going back to his tea, cup shaking slightly as he swallowed a few mouthfuls from it.

"I–" the green cloaked man paused to sigh resignedly, "I can't help but compare the boy to the Hōgyoku. Able to influence someone else's spiritual energy and soul to such a degree. He was able to turn someone who was maybe minorly spiritually sensitive into someone with some of the highest spiritual potential amongst a pure human I've ever seen in a matter of days." He rubbed his stubbly chin.

"It… is concerning, I will grant you that." Tessai conceded.

"And then with this new Phantom business…"

"Kisuke, we don't even know if this Hollow exists, let alone has any importance at all!" Tessai said, voice rising frustratedly, but Kisuke simply sat there, his mask of general indifference and snark let down while in the company of Tessai.

Tessai observed his friend of untold centuries and realising that he may have only seen the man in this state once or twice but it was worse this time. He looked to his friends face, the same one that usually carried an easy going smirk now held a haunted expression that Tessai had seen one too many of in his time as Captain of the Kido Division.

It was the face of a man who had lost too much, seen too much. One who had gone to war and never quite come back home. Tessai stood from his kneeling position and moved around the table, wrapping his friend in a warm hug. The usually touchy man stiffened only slightly before he leaned into the hug sombrely.

"Maybe you're right, Tessai." He said, slowly, "But I have a hunch. A terrible hunch."

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 16: Gentle Talks

Laying in bed at the end of the day had become my reprieve from the world around me, ever shifting and evolving past my imagining.

Before, my bed was a trap, a sweet one that tricked me into its warm embrace and silent whispers of depression, but now it was a comfortable moment of safety before sleep took me.

But tonight, sleep didn't want to come, no matter how long I held my eyes closed for or thought about mundane topics. My brain never truly found the right lull to settle into.

For the first hour or two it wasn't half bad. Suzumi seems to have quietly decided that, since we were slowly making our way towards a relationship, that our futons should be conjoined. A larger set of sheets had been acquired and spread over the two sleeping mats.

It was pleasant, being so close to one another. Luckily both Suzumi and I slept like rocks and barely moved during our sleep, which sure wasn't true for everybody.

I spent most of those couple of hours contemplating my relationship with her, as strange and sudden as it was. I haven't heard of any other relationships that seemed to come out of nowhere like this, becoming increasingly important over only a matter of days. Granted, it wasn't as if I or many of my friends back home had a hell of a lot of experience, and a lot of that experience was high school relationships which, well…

After those hours it just became obvious that I wasn't getting to sleep any time soon. I untangled myself from the sheets and gently left the bed, Suzumi's sleep going unperturbed. I made my way out of our room and through the corridors, all the way down the hundreds of steps into the 'study room' as it was so lovingly called.

The air was mostly stagnant down here, but it was a pleasantly cool place to be, during the night anyways. Over the past week I had worked hard in this room, and now it was beginning to feel like a place of productivity.

Idly I started to wreath my fist in spiritual energy, letting it add it's strange heaviness to my hand. I had no idea how it worked, but it seemed like internally infusing spiritual energy increased physical strength and wrapping yourself in it made you heavier? More durable?

I couldn't possibly understand it fully, I only got to use it once before Uyu's dad showed up with that Hollow.

"Hollows, huh?" I mused to myself.

They were weird things, all parts of the equation were weird, really. Human souls or 'Plusses' are usually sent to the afterlife, but if they stick around, they become Hollows who eat other Hollows and Plusses. But sometimes human souls become Soul Reapers, sort of?

It didn't sound like there were that many of them, to be honest. Kisuke and Tessai also keep talking about decades passing like I would talk about a year, so I'm not sure if I'd be surprised to learn that they were a few centuries old, or something close to that.

Honestly, I think I understate how bewildering it is to learn all of this stuff at once, Soul Society, Hueco Mundo–the Hollow's realm–and actual Hell? What's next? Are there other spiritual beings out there, other than Hollows and Soul Reapers, that will once again change how I think about the world?

I let a big sigh out as I sat down on the rocky ground after clearing myself a spot, laying my back down and looking up towards the roof, which was totally obscured from my vision. Though I could imagine the juxtaposition of the darkness of night and the painted clouds and blue sky.

While I was laying there, slowly wrapping and unwrapping my fist with spiritual energy, I felt a gentle displacement of air, significantly quieter than the normal movement that Tessai and Urahara typically use.

"Can't sleep?" Urahara's voice rang out in the darkness. I just gave a short nod to the man, continuing my silence. I heard the man's cane clack against the rock underfoot, then slowly lowering himself to sit next to me.

We sat in silence, for no reason in particular. There was a surprising lack of tension in the air, despite how we'd butt heads quite a few times. The man was an oddity, and I could never be entirely sure what angle he was approaching something from. Which made him almost entirely unpredictable to me. He seemed unpredictable to even Tessai himself, which basically made him a massive wildcard, as far as I was concerned.

"Y'know. We once knew a boy like you." He said casually, but I could tell that somewhere in his voice there was a heaviness you didn't find in casual conversation. I nodded.

"Kurosaki, right? You guys mention him every now and then." Kisuke nodded slowly.

"Ichigo Kurosaki is his name." Tapping my fingers on the rock floor beside me, I felt the stone give way underneath my cloaked fingers relatively easily.

"Who is he?" I asked quietly, almost afraid to break the truce we had silently formed. Kisuke chuckled.

"A handful is what he was. And possibly one of, if not the strongest beings in existence. In various ways." I scrunched up my nose at that.

"Really? Was he always that way?"

"In some ways, yes. In others, he was as weak as could be. Even now you would have been competitive with him, if he had learnt normally that is." I heard the scratching of the stubble that was ever present on the man's chin.

"What did he do that was different than me?" I asked, curious. To become someone powerful enough that you could easily say that he was one of the strongest was… enticing. Kisuke just laughed.

"Everything. For one, he never did any basic training. In fact, as soon as he was granted any abilities at all, he was off galivanting around and killing Hollows. Though that didn't last long." I felt myself physically recoil. No training at all? Was he just immediately good at everything? A genius?

"I can already tell that you are thinking about him the wrong way. Ichigo Kurosaki is an exceptionally gifted person, true. But for him to become as he is now?" The blonde headed man went silent, thinking for a long moment.

"I did many things that I'm not proud of to launch that boy to that position. For him to become the way he is… cost a lot. He was an insect, thrown into a pot with others, left with no alternative. When the lid was removed, he was the only one remaining. The pinnacle."

"But at what cost?" I mused, amusement at the cliched line not lost on the man, who chuckled darkly.

"At the cost of all autonomy until that last moment when he was finally free." The man paused to sigh heavily, "He was a pawn to the powerful, a piece on a chessboard that they utilized to play a cosmically unknowable match with, until the pawn became a queen and chose it's own colour."

"So, you think I am the same?" I said, cutting to the chase, though Kisuke didn't answer immediately.

"I'm not sure. You have unknown powers and unknown origins. It's bad starting point. But I don't think you are controlled as he was. The fact that I know nothing of you, and that all the intelligence that I was able to get on your also comes up clean just means there is something else going on entirely."

"Then why the hostility?" I ask. I kept any heat out of my voice that I could. To his credit, he kept his cool just fine as well.

"I'd like to say that there is a highly reasonable explanation for it, past the obvious, but really there isn't. A fear of fate, you could call it."

"Fate? Is fate a real thing?" I asked him, but I was met with a wry laugh.

"It's just as mystical a concept to mortals as it is to Soul Reapers. I'd sure hope that fate didn't exist, but Ichigo Kurosaki was hundreds, if not a thousands of years of build-up in the making. For it all to come together; I have no explanation other than pure luck."

"Both of those options being unappealing." I added

"Extremely."

The silence regained its grip on the two of us. Slowly but surely, I was starting to understand the man more, in a general sense. His personality was more alien to me than anyone I'd ever met, so I could very well just be reading him wrong, but I think I had the outline of it.

He wanted to protect. For what reason past his own self-preservation, I couldn't say. Though he was willing to go so far as to kill a possible threat, regardless of whose side they were on, or if they had a side at all.

But in a way, he seemed like a scared child. Gifted with clear intellect and cunning, enough to create a high sensitivity thing that was able to use to detect my soul from over an ocean or two away. But stuck fighting against the world, against endless possibilities.

I was glad I didn't have to live inside the man's brain.

"Well." I said casually, "Now that we have contemplated the scary stuff. Have you got any pointers on spiritual pressure and spiritual energy? I want to use spiritual sense."

"Ooh, spiritual senses, hmm?" The man stood from his spot and tapped his cane against the floor in thought. "Spiritual sense is still a little out of your wheelhouse, but you're doing a pretty good job at covering your body in spiritual energy. You learn that a year or two into the academy"

"The academy?" I asked, confused.

"Of course. Soul Reapers have to learn about being Soul Reapers somewhere." Urahara scoffed but returned to thinking. "What you have been doing so far is a good way of using spiritual energy, further adding to your combat abilities and even adding a bit of durability, though your shield is soaking up most of what you're being given. For now, continue what you've been doing and try to get your entire body covered, then compress that and add another layer. Soon enough you'll be punching holes in buildings." I rose an eyebrow, but the man was already walking away.

"Hey!" I called out, making Kisuke stop for a moment, "Thanks for the tip." The man lifted his cane and waved it around dismissively before disappearing altogether, the displacement of air not even recognizable from this distance.

I contemplated going back to my room but decided against it. Making myself able to punch through buildings sounded a whole lot cooler.

---​

After that, days passed in a blur of strenuous physical training at the hands of Tessai, Kisuke being helpful and properly teaching Suzumi and I spiritual energy manipulation, and Uyu coming to the shop after school to show us how terrifying a little kid with the ability to blast us to outer space could be.

The more that I learnt, fought and accessed my spiritual energy the more I realised just how much fun I was having. There was a constant array of problems being thrown at my brain from every which angle and I had to solve them the best I could.

Things started slowly, with just the running with Tessai and Urahara forcing us to use our spiritual energy under threat of his own spiritual pressure, but after that things only sped up. With the baseline things we had achieved, Suzumi and I were able to evolve our techniques into new avenues.

For one, Suzumi had almost completely decided to go fisticuffs all the way. She had modified her shielding to wrap around her arms more concretely, while she used her spiritual energy to focus more heavily on her hands, fingers and forearms. This made her a bit too glass cannon for my liking, but when I saw her fight…

Well, it was awe inspiring, to say the least. It was an all-out slugfest between Uyu and Suzumi, both of the women going at it with as close to no holds barred as you could get without there being a body to cremate after the match.

Suzumi was way better at 'localizing' spiritual energy covering than me. She was able to double coat her fingers and do a single coat of her hand. Though she did something that she called a half-coat on her arms, making them more durable, but forced her to focus more on pushing spiritual energy to that area.

I, however, specialised differently. I went with balance. As of now, I was capable of doing a single coat to around sixty percent of my body, which is both arms, most of my upper body and legs and, obviously, my head. Though this left my midsection and a lot of my back vulnerable.

My fights with Uyu, or even Suzumi now that Tessai considered us capable of not accidentally killing each other, went a lot different to Suzumi fights. I played a game of endless cat and mouse, playing on the defensive and lashing out when the time was right, playing the weaknesses of the other fighter.

It didn't always win, far from it. But when I did win, I won almost absolutely. Typically, I crushed the two girls by stealing their ribbon and then smacking them around to stop them from regaining their composure again.

"Well, you've all been fighting so impressively recently, I think it's getting to the point where It's ridiculous to expect you to fight each other any longer." Kisuke called from across the manufactured stony hills, causing all of us to turn towards the man.

"We've been training you for almost a month now, and while most recommendations would have you waiting for another year or so, I see no point in following the archaic rules of the Soul Society." He turned away from us, and I could feel a wide grin plastering itself onto the man's face.

"Come on ladies and gentlemen, we're going to hunt a Hollow!"


A/N: Oops, forgot to post Chapter 15 the other day. Oh well, you guys get a treat of two chapters at once!

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 17: Preparations for a Day

Kisuke, after a stern talking to from Tessai, allowed us a day to prepare. It also seemed like Uyu was coming along with us, though it sounds like she'd been on Hollow hunts before with her father.

Speaking of Uyu's father, we were apparently going to be directly supervised by him on this hunt, and I was somewhat anxious about it. He'd been a firecracker when I had met him last, though with his daughter around he seemed relatively harmless, especially under the threat of his wife's ire. I had enough wacky characters to manage with just Kisuke, I certainly wasn't excited to have more to juggle.

I let my hand explore to the side of me in the sheets of the futon, quickly finding Suzumi's sleeping form, her soft pyjama shirt tangled in the sheets, not that she seemed to mind given her light snoring.

It had been a bit of a hurdle to get over the first few nights, always having found it difficult to find sleep, but after a while the soft sound was what calmed me in the late hours of the day. Suzumi, bless her, managed to find sleep in mere moments and stay asleep, so I never had to worry about my multiple trips out of the room waking her. I woke frequently during the night, though with solid sleeps between.

At the moment, it was about five minutes before the alarm on my phone would usually go off, more an emergency measure around the unlikely case of me oversleeping. I quickly moved over to my phone and turned off the upcoming alarm, sitting up and pushing my sheets away I grabbed my clothes and quickly got out of my own pyjamas and got into some normal clothes.

Tessai had told us last night that there was going to clothes made for us, possibly by Kisuke. He hadn't exactly elaborated at all, and I had no idea what the clothing would look like, but judging by the casual clothes everyone seemed to wear, even while fighting, it didn't seem like protective clothing like armour did all that much in comparison to spiritual shielding and enhancement.

I quickly walked to the toilet, went through my routine and walked back to my room, closing the door behind me and opening the blinds to let in the dim morning light illuminate my foggy vision.

"Suzumi!" I called gently, shaking her body gently. Hearing her mumble something incoherent I called her name again and she jolted a little.

"Ah, I'm up, I'm up." She groaned at my harassment, making me laugh. She was always groggy in the mornings, even if she typically went to bed earlier than I did.

"Good, remember that we have that Hallow hunt today. I'm going to go grab a hot chocolate, do you want something?" She requested coffee, two sugars, and I walked back out of the room to oblige her.

I walked towards the kitchenette, filling the electric kettle with water and carefully directing it back towards it's baseplate, then fumbling around with the cups and the coffee and chocolate powders and just waited silently for the kettle to boil.

But just as the kettle did exactly that, I saw Tessai's ribbon move at his general walking pace towards Kisuke's room. Kisuke was in his basement, a room he spent most of his time in directly underneath what I could only assume to be his sleeping quarters.

The man was usually out at this hour, god knows where, maybe at a market or something similar, but today seemed to be an exception. I heard Tessai call Kisuke, muffled through the various layers of building in this deceptively large estate. Kisuke's ribbon moved up from the basement to meet Tessai. There was a short, muffled conversation and they both walked out of the room and towards me.

I quickly finished making the coffee and hot chocolate, and as the two men walked around the corner I called out to them.

"Do you boys want coffee or something?" I asked, not looking at them. None of us were surprised to see the other, which probably just meant they were as away of my movements around the house as I was theirs. I wonder how they did that.

"Coffee for me." Kisuke said wryly and Tessai said the same, just more politely. I did as such, leaving those on the bench and walked back to the room to give Suzumi her coffee. I walked into the room to see from her silhouette that she had already changed out of her baggy pyjamas to a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

"By the way," I said between my sips of hot chocolate, "Tessai and Kisuke are up and at 'em, so finish up drinking so we can see what they want." She nodded and we quickly downed the hot beverages and walked out of the room together towards the meeting room that I'd had a few conversations with Kisuke in.

"Ah! Good morning you two!" Kisuke greeted jubilantly. We sat at the opposite side of the table and looked inquisitively towards the two men.

"So," I began, "what time do we get going?" Kisuke waved his hand dismissively.

"Not for an hour or two yet. Uyu is taking the day off school and her father will be leading us. Tessai and I will merely be observers, not that we will be meeting anything of sufficient strength to warrant our presence." He said with a haughty tone, but I could tell it was mostly play acting on his part. He was probably being entirely truthful.

"So… do we have to wear armour or anything?" Suzumi questioned thoughtfully, "I know we are capable of having full on fights against each other in normal clothing but fighting something that wants to actually hurt us in shorts and a t-shirt seems wrong." I laughed while Tessai nodded his head thoughtfully.

"Indeed. Soul Reapers rarely wear protective clothing, mostly because of spiritual energy being used for protection instead. Most simply wear the standard garment called a shihakushō, which amounts to a black robe with a white sash and sandals. With minor adjustments based on personal tastes." I reeled back, a little dumbstruck.

"Wait, you're telling me no-one uses armour or anything?"

"Some do," Kisuke piped up, "but again, it's either usually for flair or practicality. Most Soul Reapers would try to simply increase their own spiritual defences before they decided to try create armour of any sort." I could already feel a headache forming.

"Why? Surely there is a way to create spiritually enhanced armour of some sort. You guys have special mystical soul swords, don't you! How do you not have armour?" I asked incredulously.

"They are called Zanpakutō," Kisuke corrected dryly, "and no need to argue with me about it. I tried to tell the old man to put funding into armour years ago, but he just went on and on about how Soul Reapers needed to be masters of the spiritual, and using armour would be a crutch against proper learning and training, not that it stopped Zaraki." He grumbled, his voice growing with frustration as his elaborated.

Well at least Kisuke had thought about it before.

"So did you ever try to make it anyway?" I asked curiously.

"Of course I did!" Kisuke responded happily, his anger washed away with the allure of the new discussion, "Though, to be honest, they were all duds. My scientific partner at the time was… uninterested in the idea, for whatever reason. I had next to no funding for it, so most of what I built came out of what I could scrounge up and even then I was tinkering with ideas that were way out of my league." I raised an eyebrow and guessing from Tessai's ribbon this was the first he'd heard of this as well.

"Like what?" Suzumi asked, confused but trying to keep up with he conversation. I'd tried to explain what Kisuke had to me about Soul Society and all that, but she asked lots of questions I didn't have any answer to, so she was even more confused about it all than I was.

"Well…" he coughed embarrassedly into his hand, "I was trying to, well, apply the ideas of a Zanpakutō to armour." This made Tessai burst out in a fit of laughter and the two of us look even more confused.

"What? We were all young once!" Which only made Tessai laugh harder. I had never seen the man as unprofessional as this, the sheer juxtaposition of his usual demeanour to this made it difficult not to laugh along as well. As the entire room chuckled, even Kisuke's ribbon glowed with a blush slightly. The ribbons were getting even more emotive, which was weird but helpful.

"It occurs to me that you may not understand why…" Tessai giggled in the middle of his sentence, "why exactly that was so comedic to me. The Zanpakutō is a marvel of spiritual creation, each blade a masterwork that at first reflects the soul of the weilder, then becomes one with their soul, and potentially even advances to become one with their wielder themselves. The Zanpakutō's creator Ōetsu Nimaiya is a genius of untold proportions in the smithing and creation of Zanpakutōs. Kisuke has been a fan for many years." Kisuke looked even more embarrassed now.

"You tried to create a soul bound armour?" I asked inquisitively. Kisuke gave Tessai a withering gaze when the man began to chuckle again at the man's old aspiration, but returned his gaze to me and sighed.

"Yes, in a sense. In fact my idea was to somewhat piggyback off of the connection that Ōetsu made with the Zanpakutō's spirit, and the power and soul of the Soul Reaper wielding it." He hummed as he puzzled through his own thoughts, "hijacking that connection would allow the spirit of the Zanpakutō to theoretically empower the armour, and if I can create it correctly I could even potentially allow the armour to change form much like a Zanpakutō can, though that is all theoretical to the highest degree, I might add."

Tessai, who was quite amused at the idea before now seemed to actually be thinking about the prospects of the armour.

"Would… could that possibly be used to further our connection to our Zanpakutō?" Tessai mumbled thoughtfully, but Kisuke just shrugged.

"It certainly could, but it also could simply act entirely the same as before. There'd be no way to tell until it was made, and I can't make it if I don't have a truly monolithic amount of funding. Like, all of the four Noble Houses put together type of funding. Though, Ōetsu would be handy so that I could pick his brain." Tessai nodded, accepting Kisuke's review of is. I had no idea who the four Noble Houses were, but I'd assume they were filthy rich.

"In either case, I have a present for you two, under the topic of armour and clothing." Kisuke said jovially as he pulled something out of thin air and placed the two things on the table.

I couldn't see them very well, their silhouette being pretty confusion, but it didn't take long for Suzumi to talk about it.

"They look like fancy kendo uniforms?" I tried to picture a kendo uniform, but came up with nothing, but Kisuke barked out a laugh.

"Fair enough. And for the one of us who visually impaired, I have created clothing for you two to use for todays hunt. It is a long baggy set of pants and a loose shirt, similar to that which martial arts schools use for their uniforms. It is in a traditional fashion so they may be difficult to wear initially." I nodded, and Suzumi explained to me in more detail.

The pants were a very dark blue, large and flowy, which made them look like a robe, but the legs were independent from each other. The shirt was a stark white with no symbolism, except for a sash that was tied around where the pants and the shirt intercepted, being a lighter blue than the pants.

"Are these protective?" I asked, curiously.

"Unfortunately not, making something protecting enough to be useful in a fight with a Hollow in a single night is a bit of a stretch. Though I have made weapons capable of fighting Hollows before, but they took many weeks of time to create." I nodded, a little disappointed, but I guess out last topic was a good enough explanation as to why that was the case.

"Alright, I guess we should go get changed then." I said as I picked up the bundle of clothes that sat in front of me, seeing Suzumi do the same. We walked out way back to our room and started trying to get changed.

Suzumi was exceptionally unconcerned about changing in front of me, probably because I was next to blind, but hey I could still see rough outlines, so that was always a treat. The clothing turned out to be exceptionally difficult to put on while blind.

Thankfully Suzumi was good at this sort of thing and helped my useless ass into the thing. It was simple enough once I'd learned where all the holes were and how to tie the sash, but I would be useless trying to get it on myself.

Of course that didn't stop Suzumi from giggling at me trying.

"Alrighty then." I said as I gripped onto the lapel of my new shirt and grinned towards my sorta-girlfriend. "Ready to go smack around some scary monsters?"

"I'll make sure they don't scare you too much, darling" she said, sarcasm dripping, pushing me playfully. I just laughed as we both walked out of the room, preparing ourselves for the day ahead.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 18: First Contact

Before long we were out and about on the streets.

Tessai and Kisuke chaperoned us towards a meeting place on foot, running and a speed that was likely faster than driving a car or a bike. This was one of the first times I had actually been outside for a significant period of time since arriving in Japan.

I had never really gone wandering or exploring, certainly not on my own. I had forgotten about going outside at all really, so caught up in becoming stronger at a rapid pace and all the spiritual business. So much so that it didn't even enter my mind.

Now though, it was different. The middle of the day was glorious and bright as we dashed from one rooftop to another, dancing across the suburban landscape. It was dexterity and agility that I hadn't thought about putting into practice in such a way. My first instinct walking outside of the house was to look for the car that was going to take us to the meeting place, without realizing that we were faster than cars.

It was a far cry from Tessai or Kisuke's instant or near instant movement, but honestly, I think I'd enjoy this more than suddenly arriving at my destination. I felt like I was flying, even having enough leeway to spin and flip, testing the limits of my own dexterity.

Suzumi was doing just about the same, her long black hair fluttering in the wind as she twisted and turned, jumping high into the sky and dolphin diving downwards, only to catch herself in the last moment by springing back up with her hands, flipping into an upright position.

Frankly, it was absurd. I had issues seeing, obviously, and I was nigh blind. But in following the movements of Suzumi, Tessai and Kisuke, I was able to keep myself from falling, just with a little less gung-ho tricks side of things.

Though it was liberating, above all else. I had never moved like this, outside of training. I had barely run or moved at anything other than a stilted walk all my life, but now I was sprinting at a speed faster than a car over the top of buildings.

"Woah!" Suzumi called out, "Sorry!" I turned towards her, confused.

"What happened?"

"I just ran by a lady sitting on her balcony. Scared me good." Suzumi responded in a yell.

"Oh, no need to worry you two, I have implanted small spiritual devices into your clothing to keep you invisible to the living. You two are currently incapable of being separated from your physical bodies, so I thought it best if we keep it strictly physical, yes?"

"So we can't be seen by anyone?" I asked him, and his ribbon shook its end.

"No, anything with a powerful enough spiritual sensitivity will be able to see you, so stay away from children in particular. We don't want a large number of children all talking about people running across the rooftops at once."

"Ah, well I wouldn't be able to see them to know either way. Guess I'll just go bumping into people at high speeds to give them a good scare."

I nodded solemnly, but I think Suzumi just rolled her eyes at me and then the man.

"We have arrived." Tessai grunted in his bass-y voice as he jumped down into a park, landing gently on the grass, lighter than a feather. Suzumi and I followed after him, decidedly less delicate about it, as out feet thumped into the ground with sizable force.

"Uhm, good morning!" Uyu's voice rang out from in front of us, the young girl's ribbon lightening up with recognition.

"Hello there, Uyu!" Suzumi said gleefully, running over to the smaller girl and pulling her into a tight hug. Uyu squirmed and complained nervously, but her Ribbon said that she was loving the attention. I laughed at the delightful antics of my sorta-girlfriend, the two of them together, Uyu and Suzumi, was heart-warming to witness.

"She talks about her all the time, y'know." A gruff voice said softly from beside me. One look at their ribbon told me that it was Jinta. I nodded.

"So does Suzumi. Thinks of her like a little sister." Jinta's ribbon nodded happily. After our less than stellar initial encounter, Jinta mellowed out towards me quickly, though he was the fiery sort in general. If anything was going to temper his flame, it was his daughter, or his wife who I've yet to meet.

"That's good. I think Uyu always wanted an older sister. We're too old for another kid, so this'll have to suffice." He chuckled before walking towards the two Soul Reapers.

"Alright! Let's get going on our patrol, shall we?" He said, metaphorical engines revving at the thought, "You two eggheads got all your fancy gadgets?" I could feel Kisuke roll his eyes.

"When did you get so uppity, Jinta. Did you forget that I handcrafted all your tools?" Jinta scoffed heartly but seemed to take the comment as an affirmation.

"Let's get a move on then." He said, voice more intense now, less unrestricted forest fire and more focused welding torch.

We started to get a move on, everyone going silent and keeping their head on a swivel, looking out for something with their sight. Everyone sunk into a method with ease, Jinta at the lead, followed by Kisuke and Tessai at each side, then Uyu behind them, with me and Suzumi behind her.

Maybe it was the natural leading abilities of Jinta, or simply the experience of all barring Suzumi and I that compelled us towards a structure. Though, I didn't have much in the way of sight, I could try something else to keep a lookout instead.

"Jinta," I called, breaking the silence, "do you mind if I expand my soul sensing abilities? I might be able to get a better idea of what's going on around us." He didn't respond verbally, but he nodded succinctly, showing through on his ribbon.

I did as I had said, expanding my soul sense past just myself and a few others for the first time in a while. Now that I had a lot more control over my spiritual energy in general, I found it much easier to restrict the area my soul sensing 'bubble'. I don't know if it surrounded me like a sphere or a circular area of effect, but I could feel my aura reach further outwards towards the city limits.

By that point my vision was filled with the ribbons, thick or thin, wavy, crimped or straight, sharp-edged or feather soft, they were all slightly different. I'm not sure it was something I was capable of seeing before, a sense that was blocked to me by my inexperience in what was allowing me to see them in the first place. They all imprinted in my mind as easily as the name and face of a person, of their smell or their voice.

But there was way too many of them, thousands, tens of thousands maybe.

"Jinta," I called again, choosing to refer to the team leader of this temporary group, "is there a way to differentiate between living humans and dead human souls?" Thought it wasn't Jinta who answered.

"You believe you can narrow the ribbons you see?" Kisuke asked, intrigued, and I nodded, "A living human's soul ribbons will feel tighter, like water being held in a balloon, whereas souls without a body and without correct precautions will feel like water spilt on the floor." I frowned at the odd examples, but when I recontextualized what I was looking for in my mind, the thousands of ribbons cluttering my view suddenly became only twenty-eight.

"Twenty-eight souls without physically bodies within Karakura town." There was a moment of shocked silence from all that surrounded me, well except for Uyu and Suzumi who seemed to be surprised at the shock in their seniors.

"Accuracy on that, kid?" Jinta called out, his gruff middle-aged voice lightened by surprise and interest.

"Uh," I thought for a moment, trying to scrutinize my own senses, "as accurate as you'd think your sight is? Probably more? It's another sense for me, sir." I answered with difficulty.

"Well I never." Kisuke laughed excitedly, "A boy with a spiritual sensitivity that accurate… maybe captain level, at least, better than mine for sure, and that's saying something." Tessai's ribbon quirked oddly at that, though I couldn't parse the expression.

"Do you have a direction for us, Carter?" Jinta continued, ignoring the Soul Reaper's monologue.

"Uh, depends, sir. Do you want to move to the nearest one, or do you want me to look for something specific about them?" Jinta's ribbon tilted it's end in thought.

"Is there any that are moving in haste?" I looked over the ribbons for a moment and found one. A ribbon that was fairly close, the same 'spilt cup' feeling emanating from them that Kisuke had talked about earlier. It was moving at about a running pace from what I could see. The ribbon itself was fairly plain, but it was slowly becoming paler, a slight rip beginning to appear in the ribbon in a suspiciously perfect corner of a circle.

"One soul moving at roughly running speed, potentially in the process of becoming a Hollow?" I questioned towards the team leader.

"Direction." Came the immediate response, Jinta's voice rock hard.

"Thirty-five-ish degrees to our left, no idea how far out." I responded, tone clipped and short, trying to get as much information into as little time. Immediately the direction of our team shifted, the intensity heightening.

Not a word was spoken, only the sound of rushing air, the beating of my own heart, and footsteps against rooftops could be heard as we raced towards our destination.

The soul that I was keeping an eye on was still running, frantic from what I could only assume was a Hollow, the small rip in it's own ribbon ever so slightly becoming larger, a timer to the corruption of the soul.

"We're here!" I yelled out as we got close enough, but I received no response, the whole group dropping from the roof to the concrete below, finding ourselves on a long strip of road by the edge of steep decline to what sounded like a trickling river.

But that wasn't the only thing that was making noise. There was a shrill scream, and then a far more terrifying roar.

No, not a roar, but like the wailing screams of something that used to be a person, garbled with white noise, clouding it's own vocalization.

The noise was unlike anything I'd ever heard before, something entirely alien and incomprehensible. I could feel Suzumi stiffening at my side, presumably for the same reason. I steeled myself against the horror of it.

"Help! Please help me!" A man cried, the same soul that I had tracked to get here. I could hear the jangling of a chain or some sort as the man ran from the Hollow that pursued him with large, thumping strides.

"What do we do?" I yelled towards Jinta as they moved to the side. It was our first Hollow hunt, after all.

"Whatever you feel in necessary, every moment you are talking to me you are putting that soul in danger!" Jinta responded gruffly, and I simply nodded in response. But even as I made to move forward first, Suzumi had already moved forwards instead, leaving Uyu and I behind.

"Sir!" She called out to the sprinting soul, "Please get behind me and my friends, they will be able to keep you safe!" The soul responded with an incoherent scream but managed to race behind Suzumi.

I didn't let a moment go to waste as the Hollow moved forwards. I couldn't get a good read on the Hollow's ribbon, seemingly not possessing one, or at least one that I could sense correctly. But I could tell roughly where it was based on sound and Suzumi's ribbon. I backed up Suzumi as the Hollow thumped forwards, still trying to chase the soul that it wanted to make its snack.

"Over here, you dumb thing!" Suzumi yelled as she jumped into the air and, with a mighty crack, gave the Hollow's wide chest a kick, sending it stumbling backwards, only just forcing itself away from the steep decline that would've forced it to fight at a height disadvantage.

Now that I was able to get a better look at it, the Hollow was almost comically top-heavy, if it weren't so menacingly built. It's chest and arms were oversized, almost like a gorilla's and its legs, or what should have been legs, were replaced with what looked like claws or hooks attacked to a prehensile tail. I couldn't tell what the patterns were like on its mask, but it was shaped like a diamond, seemingly lacking eyes on its silhouette, but a large, grinning mouth instead, tusks twisting outwards from its gaping mouth.

"Jesus, you're an ugly bastard, aren't you?" Suzumi said, a bit disturbed.

"I can tell that much and I can barely see worth a damn." I said, somehow managing to make light of the tense situation.

"L-less talking more fighting!" Uyu yelled as she launched herself over Suzumi and I's head, winding back a large, gauntleted fist as the Hollow let out another ear-piercing scream and lunged forwards with one of its oversized fists.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 19: Bone White

There was a resounding boom as Uyu's fist met the Hollow's, both seemingly equal in force. I didn't let the opportunity go to waste, and I slunk forward quickly, trying to keep myself as inconspicuous as possible. I finessed my way underneath the gargantuan arm and planted a fist solidly in its side.

The Hollow screeched again, more anger than pain and lashed out with its tail like appendage, forcing me to take a few steps back while Suzumi approached from a different angle, leaping towards the thing and planting a bone shattering blow directly into its collarbone. Though, unfortunately, aside from a screech of pain, it didn't seem to impair the Hollow at all, taking a swipe at Suzumi as she also danced just out of its reach.

So far so good.

Now that I had actually touched the Hollow, I could kind of make out its spiritual energy, or maybe its signature, but I still couldn't visualize a ribbon, which meant that I couldn't just steal its ribbon and summarily beat it to death. Maybe that would've been too easy.

The Hollow lumbered forwards, using its fists to rush towards us, the thumping against the solid concrete able to be felt through the sandals that came with the new uniform.

"Go in!" I yelled, mostly to Uyu, who still had the largest amount of pure firepower of us but had to give her gauntlet some time to power up to full. Luckily, she had been hanging back and recharging since that first punch.

She leapt again, seeking to punch the Hollow in its face, but the Hollow leaned on one arm and swiped, hand open, trying to slap the little girl away, but I was ready for that.

With quick and precise movements, I positioned myself behind the swinging hand and jumped to grab the Hollow's fingers, using all my weight plus a good deal of enhancement to my muscles using spiritual energy. I managed to wrestle the thing's hand to the ground, allowing me to straddle its wrist and let Uyu's fist fly into the Hollow's face.

The fist that was swinging towards me, trying to get me to release its other hand from my hold, suddenly redirected towards it's face as it screamed bloody murder.

"I-I got it!" Uyu cheered, but I wasn't so quick to celebrate. There was a pitter patter of what almost sounded like shattered ceramics on the ground, but all was soon drowned out as an overwhelming scream rang out, the world suddenly becoming heavier with the spiritual pressure the this was releasing.

"It was toying with us!" I screamed as I unhanded the straining wrist, just before it was going to break free and send me flying.

"What do we do?" Suzumi yelled back as the Hollow used its tail for the first time. It shot out like a bullet, catching the Uyu in the chest as she tried to retreat behind us. Suzumi, only seeing the blur of Uyu's form as she flew past into a brick wall, immediately turned to make sure that Uyu was alright.

However, as Suzumi did so, I saw one of the Hollow's fists rocketing towards Suzumi, hoping to catch her off guard while she worried more about Uyu than herself.

"Suzumi, eye on the Hollow!" I yelled at her, trying to be as commanding as possible. I raced towards the incoming fist and, using as much force as I could muster on short notice, slammed my fist into its wrist. With a sickening crack, whatever it was that held the thing together broke, and with a scream it pulled its injured hand back, leaning mostly on its other arm.

"You little–" Suzumi began but was interrupted with the Hollow screeching out it's pain, the air around us becoming even denser than before, forcing Suzumi to readjust her footing to stay stable.

Seeing its chance, the Hollow's tail lashed forwards again, it's clawed end seeking her flesh. However, Suzumi was a smart cookie.

Knowing that the Hollow was more animalistic than anything, she made sure to emphasise her moment of weakness as she 'stumbled' forward. Really, she'd put herself at the perfect angle to enhance her leg muscles and effectively kick against the ground, making the ground shatter slightly underneath he forces, launching herself forward, grabbing onto the Hollow's tail and dashing underneath it's torso.

When she reached the other side, with a scream of exertion and enhancing herself to such a degree that I could see her ribbon glow with power, she pulled on the tail with all her might, forcing the Hollow to strike at the ground, planting its fingers into the earth to hold back against the might of Suzumi.

Of course, I wasn't going to let my sorta-girlfriend's awesome moment fail. Running forwards to where the Hollow's hand was planted, I took a deep breath in, making sure that my hand was entirely coated in spiritual energy and enhancing my right arm with as much as I could spare, I brought my fist down on the Hollow's other wrist.

This time, it didn't simply break, it tore. My hand passed through the strange flesh of the Hollow, its skin giving a token resistance to the force of my fist, then travelling through the strange not-flesh and, with a small bang, reaching the other side. Thankfully, my fist did more damage than just allowing me to sink my arm deep into the Hollow and having me be flung around, but it created a wide hole that didn't quite sever the arm from the hand.

Though, Suzumi's forceful pulling did the job for me, as the flesh stretched past it's limits and eventually tore apart. The Hollow then went flying overhead, and in less than a second, slammed bodily into the concrete on the other side of Suzumi, a stilted screech the only thing that it could muster.

I wasn't panting with the exertion of the past few moments now, and I'm sure that Suzumi was doing similarly, but I had greater things to worry about.

"Uyu! Are you alright?" I yelled, making sure to not take my eye away from the hollow, who, unable to stand on its arms anymore, could only resort to flailing with its tail, which Suzumi was only semi-successfully pinning down, exhausted by her earlier heroics.

"J-just fine!" I head as a dark shape flew overhead. With a single glance I could see both Uyu's ribbon and her gauntlet glowing with a powerful white energy. I couldn't help myself and grinned madly.

With a massive boom, and the sound of shattering ceramic, the fight was over, the weight in the air died as the Hollow's mask shattered in its death, though the body stayed there, fully formed. Tessai had told me that Soul Reapers were capable of purifying the soul and sending to Soul Society or Hell, depending on the crimes of the soul, but I guess just breaking its mask with brute force won't necessarily purify it and may just disable it depending on the Hollow.

Quickly recovering from the fight, I made my way towards the Hollow's body, tentative at first, making sure that there wasn't going to be any surprises. But after a long moment of waiting, the body didn't do so much as twitch.

I reached out my hand, placing it on the body of the Hollow and feeling its unnaturally cool skin, just below a comfortable temperature to touch but not so much that you'd pull your hand away. The spiritual energy of it was still all there, keeping the Hollow's body corporeal, but I was having difficulty making sense of the thing's ribbon.

It was there, it definitely had one, but I just couldn't get it all together. It was different with human souls and Soul Reaper souls, they were basically the same, just varying levels of powerful, but this thing was alien in its essence. An inversion.

"An inversion!" I mumbled excitedly as I looked towards the hole in the Hollow's chest, and then looked towards the destroyed mask, one large piece of the thing's mask still whole. It was a part of the mask's mouth and tusk, laying on the ground. I couldn't see what was underneath the Hollow's mask. But it just seemed like incomplete spiritual energy, not really anything other than a fountain of black spiritual energy, unformed and taking on a similar guise to blood. Interesting.

I walked over to the largest share of the mask and picked it up. I could hear Uyu and Suzumi talking in the background, mostly Suzumi fussing over the smaller girl, but I ignored them for a moment just allowing myself to think about the mask shard in my hand.

"What are you looking for?" Kisuke's voice questioned lightly from beside me, but I didn't respond, my mind only just registering the man's voice in the first place, but other things taking priority.

As I held the mask, the convoluted mass of spiritual energy started to align itself, able to be traced back further, like untangling a mess of yarn. I picked apart the stings from each other, slowly learning more and more about what it was that the Hollow actually was, not just was it had become.

I already knew that it was once a human soul, but now it was painfully obvious. After the death other soul, the clock begun to tick. The soul's unsettled grief and pain slowly compounded, warping the mind of the soul, no corporeal body to keep the soul's mind healthy and regulated.

Then, when the chain begins to die, and the soul inevitably succumbs to it, the heart of their soul, everything that was once that allowed them to feel, to love, to empathise and dream is torn from them, and warped horribly.

The worst part is that they are the same, deep down. Nothing has changed but their heart, the ultimate corruption of how they feel. Their mind is the same, still loves the same people, still feels the same emotions, but their heart tells them the opposite.

Rage at those that they love, feelings of betrayal, grief in excess. It clouds their minds, slowly corrupting it as well. Only the most mentally strong could possibly stand against that force, and even still, it threatens to strip away everything that you once were, forcing the newly formed hollow to sacrifice parts of itself to its now corrupted heart.

The mask.

And now, it made sense. Not total sense, but enough. I could see the thing's ribbon now, a thick, extremely pale white affair with a gaping hole in its tip, the edge of the hole was lined in a pure darkness.

"Grayson?" Kisuke's voice prodded, no worry inherent in his voice, but a quiet curiosity that the man seemed to hold with him everywhere.

"I can see the ribbons of Hollows now." I said plainly. The man's ribbon nodded thoughtfully.

"I had assumed that you'd be able to do as such at some point. I was readying myself to teach you the difference in Hollow spiritual signatures, but it seemed that you are ahead of me." He chuckled to himself before tapping his cane against the concrete underneath out feet, "How about you give it a whirl? See if you can pick out any nearby Hollows."

I nodded and closed my eyes. I hadn't encountered difficulty in trying to sense someone's ribbon before, but I also have to keep in mind that I had never encountered a living Hollow before today and I've spent my entire life surrounded by humans. Sensing human souls and derivatives of, like Soul Reapers, was hardly difficult.

Now, however, as I spread out the range of what I was sensing, I could only get faint ideas of locations and forms. It was far less precise, but the closer the Hollow was, the better idea I got of its ribbon.

"Wait, I've got something weird." I said, as I felt a strange jolt in my mind. I searched around for it within the mess of strange and garbled ribbons in front of me, but no matter how far I pushed my senses out the feeling didn't subside. I was missing something.

I could feel my face pull itself into a look of consternation as I drew in my range again, focusing my sensing strength into a closer and closer area around me. Soon enough it was only a kilometre or two, then nine-hundred metres, seven-hundred, four hundred. Now it was like I was having the worst migraine of my life, but I pushed further. There was something here, and I needed to know what it was.

I pulled the range in further, three-hundred, two-hundred, now my mind was on fire, as if my hair was alight and was eating away at my flesh with reckless abandon.

"Grayson!" Kisuke yelled, "Stop! You're hurting yourself." Kisuke's voice rang out, but I didn't register it. One-hundred and fifty, one-hundred…

Then I could see it. While my mind was exploding with a pain far surpassing anything I had ever felt before, I could see the ribbon I had been seeking.

It was thin, only the width of a few fingers in contrast to the usual three or four. It's pale white was qualitatively different than that of the meagre Hollow we had just fought, a totally different shade altogether.

The shade of bone white screamed of desolation, death and an empty hunger. My eyes trailed up its long length as it reached the neat little hole in its end, out of the small hole a long black strip of blood leaked, pulsing slowly but ever determined.

My body began to shake violently as I fell to my knees. I could feel the blood rushing out of my nose, forcing me to cough violently, blood splattering my clothes and the ground below me. I heard a chorus of worried voices and Suzumi's shrill scream.

But when I looked up, I could see it. Standing there upon the rooftop. Watching, waiting.

"T-there." I stammered out, pointing weakly towards the roof before my mind swam, and with a brutal spike of pain, my world went dark.

 

[Sarius]

Chapter 20: An Apparition

As Grayson's body fell to the concrete Kisuke Urahara's spiritual pressure roared to life—defensively whipping around to stare at the point on the rooftop that Grayson had been pointing at as he fell unconscious.

On top of the rooftop there was a figure, small and extremely humanoid, but not at all human.

Without a second thought, Kisuke's cane became a wicked sharp Zanpakutō, screaming with the energy leeching from its surface. With a single step, he was beside the figure, swinging his blade at a speed most would barely be able to see at all.

Kisuke, however, sent his mind into overdrive. This was a testing attack, something not intended to necessarily kill the target, to allow him to gain information instead. First was it's form. It was indeed a Hollow, though even as he stood directly in front of the Hollow, it was as if it didn't exist at all. It was distinctly humanoid, short even. Kisuke was hardly tall, but the Hollow was a few inches shorter than he.

It's mask was oddly featureless, covering the face and smoothing out features that are barely impressed upon the mask. It fell into a teardrop shape as the mask made it's way towards the chin, two simple holes cut out for dark recesses where eyes would be, and large defined teeth low down on the mask. Apart from those standard features, there was no colouring, no patterns and no edges or hard lines.

The Hollow, instead of letting itself get hit by the blade, simply vanished and appeared behind Kisuke. Urahara had expected as such, and let it happen, waiting for a blow to arrive in short order… but nothing came. Instead, as he whirled around to face the Hollow, it simply stood there almost as if it were analysing him.

The Hollow's body itself was covered in a bone white shawl, covering up anything that may be lying underneath, except for it's arms that protruded from underneath folds in it's robes. They weren't the typical black skin and flesh of a low-level Hollow.

An Adjuchas? How? There should be no way for a Hollow of that level to sustain itself, even in Karakura town. And to travel from Hueco Mundo without any of my sensors detecting it? Kisuke thought, his mind awhirl with possibilities.

Kisuke struck out with his blade, quicker and harder this time, intending to do at least a little damage. But just like before, the Hollow simply disappeared, even leaving behind an after image which was sliced apart by Kisuke's blade.

Again, when he turned towards his back, the Hollow was there, silent and waiting.

"So you have a hunting instinct, then." He spoke dryly, giving the Hollow a questioning glance. The Hollo remained entirely silent.

"Why do you not attack, little Hollow?" Kisuke asked, voice dropping dangerously, his haori billowing with the undulations of his spiritual pressure spewing forth from his body, wrapping itself around the Hollow.

They stood like that, staring into each other's eyes, or eye holes, for a long time. Kisuke kept pushing up his spiritual pressure, far past what Grayson had taken during his training, and substantially stronger than he was capable of enduring even now after a month of training, even with how quickly he had progressed.

"An Adjuchas would be able to converse with me easily, even some low-level Hollow are capable of a such. What are you, exactly?" The spiritual pressure that Kisuke was unleashing was far too much for even Jinta to reliable stand against, however the Hollow stood as silently as it had before, without even a slight expression of difficulty.

There was the tell-tale displacement of air as Tessai made his own way into the small area of highly condensed spiritual pressure.

"A Hollow?" Tessai exclaimed warily, raising a hand, palm facing towards the Hollow and, with a small grunt of exertion, a barrier appeared around the it. Chains quickly rose from the concrete roof, wrapping each of the Hollow's limbs, and then a larger chain wrapping the entire body in a thick layer of pure spiritual energy.

This seal was extremely impressive, an original creation of Tessai's, one he knew so well that he could easily perform the bakudō without an incantation at full power, a feat only few could possibly claim to have reached in even the simplest of kidō.

However, even under both spiritual pressure and sealing bakudō, the Hollow didn't even do so much as move, let alone struggle against it's bindings.

"What is this thing. It's as if I am not even binding it at all!" Tessai called to Kisuke, eyebrows furrowing underneath his rectangular glasses, a concern in the man that he hadn't seen in years. A concern that his kidō wasn't sufficient.

"I don't know…" Kisuke spoke softly. The Hollow didn't even seem dangerous, it was easily the most docile Hollow he'd ever encountered, barring it's habit of using sonido to get behind it's targets, a clear holdover for some hunting instinct that it has retained.

"I haven't seen a non-hostile Hollow like this, not one to this degree. It isn't even an Arrancar. You could almost convince me that it was a Dragon, like the Europeans have, if I didn't know better." Kisuke said, humming and hawing.

Honestly, Kisuke was reluctant to kill the Hollow. It had caused even Grayson, a living spiritual sensor that was only becoming more and more precise, an inordinate amount of difficulty to actually detect at all. For it to also be non-hostile to such lengths as not even struggling against both spiritual pressure and sealing bakudō was possibly the rarest type of Hollow you could encounter, maybe even entirely unique to itself.

"Hollow, are you capable of understanding speech?" Kisuke probed. There was no response, however, the Hollow standing entirely still, looking more like a statue than anything, staring into Kisuke's eyes.

Kisuke wasn't a fool, he was more than ready to release his Bankai and exterminate the Hollow with impunity, and he was entirely sure that he'd be capable of it, but it was a goldmine of information on Hollows, that was so difficult to procure due to the inherently obscure nature of souls.

That was, however, before the Hollow moved.

It wasn't the small shift that any normal Adjuchas would be barely capable of under the circumstances, no. The Hollow entirely disregarded the chains and spiritual pressure altogether, walking through the chains as if they were mere apparitions hanging in mid-air. Kisuke thought himself dreaming when he saw that sight, and before any other instinct made it's way to his mind, he had only one thought.

How interesting.

And then the Hollow disappeared, totally untraceable.

---​

Waking up was terrible, I realised.

Maybe it was the total, utter feeling of lethargy, or the dry mouth, or the lingering taste of blood covering my tongue.

But it was probably the massive headache, like someone was driving a spike through my skull, one heartbeat at a time. Each pulse of pain made me regret waking up at all, destroying any possible coherent thought I could have potentially conjured from the black pit of pain that was my mind.

At some point I had a cup of water forced into my hand, letting me absentmindedly sip on the cool cup of revitalizing liquid. Sometimes water truly tasted like a god created drink, personally crafted for you, to bring your body back to it's perfect state. At least, that's what it tasted like after the first few swigs, those just tasted like blood and gunk from a dry mouth.

"Grayson?" A soft voice whispered, in a concerted effort to be quiet. It still sent a tingle of pain down my spine as my head lit on fire with pain again.

"Suzumi." I replied softly to the voice, feeling her hands clasp around my own gently.

"Are you feeling okay?" she asked, and I definitively responded my exact physical state with one simple grunt. She gave me a forced chuckle, "You just love to make me worry about you, doofus."

I almost laughed, until I realised what a terrible, terrible idea that would be. Just thinking of laughing sent my brain into backflips, so I settled for a forced smile.

"I think that's where half my worth comes from." I could feel her roll her eyes just from the mood.

"Twenty-five cents tops." She jibed.

"Sold, to the lovely lady who's kinda my girlfriend!" I exclaimed with a lack of enthusiasm, only due to my lack of actual energy to put in. Though, if I had to guess by her barely restrained laugh, she didn't mind all that much.

What came next was a soft sensation against my cheek and a gentle hug that lasted a few minutes, simply enjoying each other's presence and warmth.

"Well, since I now own you, we may as well be officially together, then?" She whispered, a smile on her lips before she kissed my own gently.

It wasn't an overindulgent kiss, simply a confirmation of what we already knew. This small, little thing that had grown spontaneously from a chance meeting on a plane, to staying at her apartment and listening to her talk about her father, to finding a 'job', to becoming involved in a mysterious spiritual world, all culminating in that one confirmatory kiss.

It was a simple, no frills thing that we had unconsciously cultivated for no other reason than we enjoyed each other's company. Maybe it wasn't some star-crossed lovers situation, as I'm sure that Suzumi would be perfectly fine simply working as a flight attendant, never finding out what was hidden in the world at my side. But maybe that just made the simplicity of it even more special.

A chance in a chance.

We hugged each-other for a good while afterwards, enjoying the warm silence as my headache slowly, slowly receded, becoming a humming pain in the back of my mind that complained whenever I tried to reach out my ribbon sensing field. I could still see Suzumi, as well as Kisuke and Tessai, but I couldn't even force myself beyond that.

"What happened out there, Suzumi?" I asked after a long time. She just sighed.

"Truthfully, I didn't catch it all and we were all in a bit of a rush when you collapsed, but you pointed out a Hollow on the rooftop and Urahara went to investigate. After that he released more spiritual pressure than I'd ever felt before condensed right on top of this Hollow. Tessai went up and," she waved her hand around emphatically, "did something and chains came out of nowhere and wrapped around it."

"What happened to the Hollow?" I asked, unsure if I really wanted to know what happened to the Hollow that blew my mind, almost literally.

"Well, after that, the Hollow just kind of… walked out and disappeared." I furrowed my brow intensely.

"Walked out?" I asked, incredulous.

"Yup, just went straight through it all like it was an illusion." She said, her voice frivolous, but body tense with concern. Yet again we have encountered something that 'shouldn't be possible', and yet it was possible. First me, with my interacting with souls and 'ribbon stealing' and then Suzumi becoming significantly more spiritually sensitive as quickly as she has, then this new Hollow.

I sighed heavily, I'm sure that Kisuke has ideas, though getting the out of the man was a difficult talk. I got the distinct impression that he has been oddly forthcoming with me, despite our spats, and even then, the information is vague and generalized. I hadn't ever seen one of his labs, though we both knew that he had them, and multiple at that. But I imagine he didn't want me in there.

I struggled against gravity as I sat myself up, preparing myself to get up properly as Suzumi helped. My body, however, was not having it, determined to stay as immobile as possible.

With a few minutes of struggle, I got placed in a large, comfortable chair, and Suzumi promised that she'd go harass Kisuke into coming to meet with me.

I let time blur after she left, my mind sinking back into a power saving mode to help me recover from my headache, though unfortunately a new one walked into the room just as I reached a proper relaxing state.

"Ah, it seems you are doing better than I thought you would be." Kisuke said jovially, scratching at his chin and waving his cane around playfully.

"I make it look good." I grumbled, eliciting a small chuckle from the man.

"I have to say, I'm quite impressed with you right now, Grayson." I quirked an eyebrow at him, an unspoken question. "You managed to sense that Hollow we saw, something even I wasn't capable of. It is simply called Phantom, which is surprisingly accurate in contrast to the usual naming scheme that Soul Society uses for Hollows." He laughed at his own joke. I didn't even know they gave Hollows names, though I had heard about Phantom before.

"Is it dangerous?" I asked.

"Is it dangerous?" He repeated, "Extremely! If it wanted to be, it could probably kill any Soul Reaper sent to Karakura town to investigate until Third Seats and Vice Captains. A Captain could easily kill it." He said dismissively.

"So dangerous, but not that dangerous?" I queried.

"I think you may have a skewed idea of what is dangerous. I am a Captain level combatant and even with the help of someone else who is quite a bit more impressive in battle than I, we were unable to restrain it with regular means. There is no way for any but the top fifty to one-hundred Soul Reapers to feasibly kill it, let alone contain it." He paused dramatically.

"Effectively, being sent to contain or defeat this Hollow is a nigh death-wish!"


A/N: Hey there guys, Sarius here.

So, this is a relatively big milestone! Twenty whole chapters up, over three different stories no less. It's a pretty wild feat, in my opinion. It's something I've been working towards for months now, and I'm glad that I've finally delivered.

But that brings me to a little announcement. I'll be opening a Patreon where you could potentially gain advanced access to 30 chapters of each of my stories. At the highest tier, that's a total of 90 chapters covering all of my serialising stories. If the service were available right now, you'd be able to read Chapter 50 of Ribbon and Fixture of Fate!

It's a pretty big deal, and it's not ready yet, but it will be soon. If you want to get in on this, I urge you towards my little discord server!

Hope you all have a great day, either way!