Chapter 4: Bragging Rights

Shuhei seemed to be looking at Ichigo quizically, which was blissfully ignored by the latter, mainly because he was in his own mental world where he was really happy about the news that his team had just received, the news that his team was categorically the best in the entire year, and he got to train with Byakuya. This was going to be awesome!

They were heading to the cafeteria for lunch and to catch up with the others, it had been one day since the news had been broken, and they had only told their other two team mates so far, it had been evening by the time they got back to their dorm and then they had to get up early for their first lesson with Byakuya or Mr Kuchiki as he demanded to be called in lesson time. Ichigo had also found out why he had been called out along with Shu, it was because he was the team ace and Shu was the leader, this meant that they were solely responsible for anything that went wrong with the other members of the team, which they didn't have to worry about anyway, Uryu and Chad were both sticklers for the rules, as was Shuhei so the ace was the only reason that they would get in trouble.

"Hey, how are we gonna break it to the others?" Ichigo asked his teams leader excitedly.

"We just explain to them about why we weren't in class today, if and when they ask. don't randomly shout it out, Yang will beat you into the floor, if she can after Weiss freezes you." SKIY's leader explained to the impatient strawberry.

"Aww, but that's no fun Shu!"

"Don't care, we don't need you incapacitated on our first day."

"Fine," Ichigo pulled his regular serious demeanour back over and set his scowl in place, while pulling a single earbud from his jacket, his usual one because HP (High Preformance) students didn't need to wear the normal uniform, and began blasting music into his right ear while stuffing his hands into his pockets, suddenly the 'Black Reaper' had taken the place of the hyper-active strawberry. It stunned Shuhei everytime he saw it, he went from strange, hyperactive kid with a sword to mature adult with a terrifying presence with a deadly weapon in a split second.

"How do you do that?" Shuhei asked, hoping to gain some insight into the ability.

"Do what?" Ichigo looked puzzled

"How do you switch from excited to serious so fast?"

"I don't know." he shrugged "It just happens I guess," his leader did not belive him, he felt that Ichigo must be hiding something, a power or something that made him so superior to others his age, but he dropped it in favour of walking in comfortable silence with his now scowling teammate.

They eventually got to the cafeteria to see the rest of their friends sat on a table looking with intense hatred toward Cardin and team CRDL, who were bullying a faunus girl. Ichigo's scowl quickly deepened when he noticed Cardin, but ignored it for now and sat down with the others, Uryu and Chad had gone on ahead and sat down, while instructed not to say anything of their whereabouts until Shuhei and Ichigo got back.

"What's up? Why does Jaune look like he is shrugging off his problems?" Shuhei asked the group because Ichigo clearly wasn't in the talking mood, watching with hawk eyes through his orange bangs, the cause of most of the bullying at Beacon.

"Cardin is being an ass, and Jaune is pretending its not happening." Yang supplied helpfully.

"What did he do this time?" Ichigo asked with subtle malice in his tone

"He is just being Cardin, it must be hard being a faunus around him," Pyrrah was trying not to make the situation any worse, she could feel the hatered spewing off Ichigo like a fountain.

"Damn right, I'm going to have a little chat with our armour wearing buddy." Ichigo said with a slight smirk, everyone else just looking both relived and worried. Relived someone was dealing with Cardin, worry because it was Ichigo, and he will kill Cardin if they let him. But it was too late to stop him, he had used his speed to get over to Cardin and stop him from pulling on the girl's ear, by firmly grabbing his wrist.

"If you want a beating I'd suggest you continue, beat it asshole," Cardin spat at the newcomer, not worried, thinking the display yesterday was just against a weak Grimm. Oh how wrong he was.

"I was just about to tell you the exact same thing," Ichigo let his wrist go, before Cardin just scoffed.

"And what are you going to do about it, strawberry?" Ichigo's friends winced at the taunt, more for Cardins sake. Ichigo hadn't even been close to serious when he faught the day before, in fact he had yet to get serious in a fight in his entire time at Beacon. But now he was deadly serious and Cardin had given him the excuse he needed to beat the living hell out of him.

"Oh, you are going to wish you hadn't said that." Ichigo murmered as his palm shot up from his side and hit Cardin in the chin, sending him three feet in the air, before he dashed to the teammate with the green mohawk and punched him dead in the face, the poor guy was unconsious before he had even registered that Ichigo had moved. The one with shoulder length, dark hair was next to fall, Ichigo had used a single leg to pull the boy's feet out from under him before slamming his right palm into his face, that was a third unconcious. The other one attempted to run the second Cardin went flying but made the mistake of looking behind him, only to look back around and be greeted by a fist and quickly introduced to the floor, face first.

"I had no idea that's how strong Ichigo really was..." Shuhei

"They got what was coming to them," Uryu

"Remind me never to piss him off," Jaune

"That was brutal..." Blake

"That was so fast..." Yang

"THAT WAS AWESOME!" Ruby and Nora in union. The rest just settled for a 'woah' and stunned silence, including Weiss which was a rare occurrence. Ichigo just walked back over to the group while the entire cafeteria erupted in a deafening roar of applause at the short display, with Ichigo completely ignoring all the attention and sitting back down, only to realise Blake was looking at him oddly. Then he looked at Yang, before she leapt at him and was on her knees on the floor.

"Teach me, O great sensei!" Yang began professing her admiration toward the other teen, while everyone else just sweat dropped.

"Uh, Yang, I don't mean to burst your bubble but I'm not qualified to teach you. Ask one of the actual teachers," Ichigo was still annoyed by Cardin, so he was still in his 'Reaper mode' as Shuhei had dubbed it now.

"Really though, none of them could match you in a fight, Ichigo."

"Hey Byakuya, Didn't realise you were there. Haha she was just kidding." Ichigo laughed nervously around his incredibly powerful cousin, who was prone to punishing those who disrespected him.

"What do you mean, Ichigo? You must have known I watched your 'fight', well done." Byakuya said flawlessly pulling off the straight faced, serious, brooding type.

"Yeah, thanks, those as- idiots had it coming, You probably would have dealt with it better." Ichigo remembered that his cousin was also his teacher, so he couldn't use any expletives around him, especially not after he had just witnessed the entire 'fight'.

"No, I would have given them a week straight of detentions and then two weeks of extra homework, and I was just about to do so until you stepped in. however they will remember this lesson much more, and I must thank you for that because we are not allowed to physically punish students." Byakuya admitted he was wrong, this was almost as weird as him smiling, neither happened very often, so Ichigo was going to make the most of it.

"Sorry does that mean I was right and you were wrong? Oh Rukia is going to love this! And Renji will never let you live down the fact you admitted I did something right and you were wrong, in front of actual people!" Ichigo was grinning like a maniac through the entire sentence, just thinking about how he could tease the stoic man in the future.

"We will never speak of this again."

"Yes, sir." Ichigo instantly shut up at Byakuya's command

"I'm sorry for interupting, but are you single, cause you are hot." Yang immidiatly began getting close to Byakuya.

"No I am not single, I am married, and I'm a teacher here, so even if I wasn't married it would hardly be appropriate."

"Too bad, we could have had some fun." she winked at him before sitting back down and pouting. Byakuya blushed slightly, not much but enough for Ichigo to notice and barely surpress a grin and a laugh at his cousins expense.

"Oh yeah, Byakuya, If it is possible, Yang here wants training in the same hand-to-hand combat you and I are instructed in, I'm busy, so do you think you could teach her?" Ichigo piped up, desperate to see more encounters between his blonde haired friend and his reserved cousin.

"I suppose, If she is availible at 6:30 sharp every morning other than weekends until 8:00,"

"Yep, I'm definitly free whenever!"

"You do realise you would need to wake up an hour and a half earlier every morning." Blake piped up, she and her partner had thought about early morning training but Yang said she hated mornings. A look of sorrow passed over her face before she shook it off.

"That's just something I'll have to deal with in order to get stronger!" Yang looked determined to better herself. Blake looked quite surprised.

"Ok cool, so Yang is getting early morning training. Uh, Pyrrha, Blake you guys use swords too, right? What do you say to training at the same time?" Ichigo asked, prepared to squeeze in as much training as possible, also helping people along the way didn't seem too bad

"Yeah, why not?" Blake actually looked quite happy with the deal, for reasons unknown to Ichigo,

"Extra training can never hurt, I suppose." Pyrrha was her usually smiley self about the whole thing.

"What about me? I use a sword too, could I come train?" Jaune piped up, determined to get stronger, of only to impress girls the way Ichigo did.

"If you really want to, but this is going to be a tough training session, you seem more like the strategist type to me. I wouldn't launch stright into this, I'll do some swordplay and fitness stuff after classes before you jump into this early morning stuff." Ichigo offered to Jaune, not wanting to leave him out, but not wanting to kill him with his training plan.

"What do you mean? I'm just as fit as you guys!"

"How many push-ups can you do in one hit?"

"I don't know, like 15?"

"Yeah this early morning stuff would be brutal for you, find something more your own pace. I'm not saying your weak, I'm saying that the others set a hard standard to compete with, so do this after class stuff first, so I won't kill you after one session." Ichigo tried his hardest not to kill the other boy's confidence, he knew he was struggling with the burden of being the weakest fighter on his team as well as being leader, so in all fairness, Ichigo was doing him a favor not throwing him into the deep end right at the start.

"I mean, it does seem more convinient than waking up really early. But just how hard is this morning session going to be?" Jaune didn't seem convinced just yet so Ichigo was going to enlighten him as to what the warm up was

"100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 35 pull ups, 100 squats and a two mile run. That's the warm up." Blake and Pyrrha had begun looking confident that they could handle all that in an hour and a half, but then he said warm up and they got worried.

"Well, I'm just going to tell you that you are insane, and I'll take the easier session first," Jaune said in typical Jaune fashion, very much joking about something horrifing. Byakuya just looked at him and wondered how someone so frail could be stood in the same acadamy as his monstously strong cousin, who had barely been trying against Team CRDL earlier.

AN: And that's a wrap for chapter 4, I will not be including all that training crap in future chapters, but I will include some of the weekend missions with Byakuya. I hope you liked what I did with Byakuya and the fact that I tried to keep him in character, while making slight adjustments. If you couldn't tell, Hisana is still alive, and Rukia and Renji are dating. I may include some of the other characters from Bleach but for now it's only the introduced ones. The chapters will slow down to one every two weeks on a thursday from now on, to give me some more writing time, I am a little stuck with chapter five. The pairing poll is also going down at 5:00pm GMT on the 20th may.

Bye for now!