The Iron Sole Alchemist and the Soul Reapers (Chapter 7) Stolen Power
by Howlin
(Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to any of the universes, places, or characters, and only claim the protagonist, Sloth, and Loki as my own creation. This is fan fiction, and I don't profit from it. Please don't sue me.)
The Soul Society had a sun, which set. Our party was invited to stay the night by a local elder. Yoruichi was asking about someone named Kukaku Shiba when a man rode a boar in through the front door, was thrown off said boar, and got to his feet greeting the elder. The man had a stocky build, a large chin, and a broad face. He wore a green bandana on his head. The boar wore a red ribbon tied in a bow.
He introduced himself as Ganju, along with a number of explicitly self proclaimed titles. Among those titles was number one soul reaper hater in the West Rukon. In keeping with that title, he proceeded to pick a fight with Ichigo despite the elder's attempts to defuse the situation.
What started as a fistfight that was taken outside soon escalated as Ganju drew a short sword from a sheath at the small of his back. Chad, Uryu, Orihime, and I moved to help Ichigo, but were stalled by three other members of Ganju's boar riding gang. I knocked two of their heads together and licked the third in the face while Chad threw Ichigo his zanpakto.
Ganju used what looked like a basic transfiguration spell to turn a circle of ground to sand then sunk Ichigo's zanpakto into it to pin it. Ichigo retaliated by kicking the short sword out of Ganju's hand.
When beating down Ganju's gang, I'd held back to avoid killing them. They turned out to have been tougher than anticipated as they were all still conscious. They were also a lot smarter than they looked as they stayed on the ground nursing their bruises rather than try to get up.
Now that the fight was relatively even and relatively nonlethal, we let Ichigo settle things with Ganju. Their fight was interrupted, however, by a clock strapped to the back of one of Ganju's goons striking nine o'clock and sounding an alarm. Their entire party panicked at the idea of missing some meeting and they called their boars and took off. Ganju promised to return tomorrow to finish his fight with Ichigo.
Ichigo grumbled and groused as Yoruichi led us out of the city and into the surrounding countryside the next morning. He'd wanted to settle his fight with Ganju, but came along with us after being reminded we were here to prevent Rukia's execution not brawl with strangers.
According to Yoruichi, Kukaku Shiba's house was in this direction. Kukaku apparently moved frequently, but the houses followed a similar and distinct design aesthetic that we'd know when we saw it. Yoruichi wasn't kidding.
The house we came to was situated under a pink banner held up by a pair of giant stone arms on either side of the house. There was an enormous chimney that was apparently sealed up with a paper cover.
A pair of guards got in our faces as we approached. As we were here to ask for help, I refrained from decking the both of them. I also placed a soothing hand on Loki's head to preempt any growl from him. If they threatened my dog in any way for any reason, I wouldn't have a choice but to respond. For diplomacy's sake, it was best to avoid that situation.
The guards changed their tune instantly upon sighting Yoruichi. Their bluster was silenced and they instead started apologizing and praising the cat as though he was nobility, which for all I knew, he might be. Yoruichi accepted this as his due and the guards led us in through the front door.
Most of the facility was underground. The guards led us down a flight of stairs to a waiting room where Kukaku Shiba was seated in on a cushion smoking a pipe. My human companions expressed shock that Kukaku Shiba was a woman for reasons I couldn't fathom.
Kukaku Shiba had black hair that stuck out at odd angles from what was either a set of bandages or a loosely wrapped turban. She wore a tight red vest that emphasized her large chest. Her right arm was missing and had been replaced with a prosthetic. It didn't look like she could move the prosthetic arm.
Yoruichi stepped forward to explain the mission we were on to Kukaku. The two had clearly had previous dealings, some good, some bad. Once she's heard the story, Kukaku agreed to help us infiltrate the Seireitei. She insisted, however, that we take along a chaperone who'd be able to report back to her if this turned out to be a trick and we were lying about our intentions.
Kukaku introduced the man who'd be escorting us, her brother Ganju Shiba. Ichigo immediately jumped up to resume their fight, but I grabbed him by the collar and forced him back down. For her part, Kukaku was confused and asked the two how they knew each other.
Not overly concerned about the outburst, Kukaku led us to another room. Uryu commented on the light and the lack of generators as we walked, and I learned there was a plant native to the Soul Society that generated usable amounts of electricity. It seemed to also bypass some of the problems conventional electronics tended to have in areas with high concentrations of ambient spirit energy. No doubt the material from those plants made sophisticated devices like my soul cell phone possible.
While possible applications for a plant like that whirred through my mind, Kukaku had us gather on a platform that was raised up. A hidden hatch opened at ground level. Now back on the surface, I realized the long chimney wasn't a chimney at all, but rather an enormous cannon. Kukaku Shiba, fireworks expert of the Rukon District, proceeded to explain the plan.
The walls surrounding the Seireitei were composed of a material called sekiseki stone. This material repels and neutralizes all spirit energy. To demonstrate, she put a small chip of it on the floor and struck it. The floor around the chip crumbled away from the force of her blow, but the stone and the floor immediately beneath it were untouched.
Kukaku further explained that the configuration of sekiseki stone around the Seireitei caused there to be a spherical membrane around the city that destroyed all spirit particles that attempted to pass, whether by air or underground. The solution was to surround oneself in a sufficiently dense layer of spirit energy while we passed through the membrane. This would be possible by use of a device of her own invention.
The device was a sphere roughly the size of a human head, made of glass or crystal, with a stylized image of a phoenix in its center. She called it a cannon ball and had Ganju demonstrate. Holding the orb in both hands, Ganju focused and a spherical shell of blue energy centered on the orb sprang up around him.
Kukaku struck the shell to show it was solid, then proceeded to warn us that keeping the distribution of spirit energy in the shell even was important. Any instability or loss of concentration would cause the cannon ball to explode.
The plan was for each of us to put our spirit energy into the ball, and then the shell with us inside it would be launched out of the cannon toward the Seireitei. It was a very risky plan, which she fully acknowledged. If anything went wrong, we'd either be blown up or destroyed by the membrane. My focus, however, was on a different problem with the plan, which Uryu voiced.
"All of us need to put spirit energy into the cannon ball?" He looked over at me.
Catching Uryu's meaning, Kukaku noticed my lack of spirit energy for the first time and asked, "How did you expect to do any good inside the Seireitei without any spirit energy?"
"I figured being a well armed immortal with super strength, I'd figure out some way to leverage that," I said dryly. "But it looks like if this is our way in, I'm going to need spirit energy if I don't want to be a liability."
I turned to walk away.
"Where are you going?" asked Ichigo.
"I need spirit energy, so I'm going to go mug a soul reaper and take his."
"You can't do that!" exclaimed Yoruichi.
"Sure I can," I said. "Rukia's being executed for transferring her powers. I just have to beat up a soul reaper and make him do the same thing."
"I told you that method has a low success rate, and that its far more likely that you'll die than that you'll gain any powers!" exclaimed Yoruichi.
I reached into my bag and retrieved a clear bottle containing a potion the color of liquid gold and said, "I'm feeling lucky. I'll be back soon."
Walking in the general direction of the Seireitei, I took out my pocket watch and checked the time. The potion I was about to use had the extremely dangerous side effects of recklessness and overconfidence, so I'd need to make sure I was aware of when the beneficial effects ran out. I measured out a dose that would last me one hour and swallowed.
I'd never used felix felicis before. As the powerful luck potion took effect, a confident smirk curled onto my lips. I felt more like myself than I had since losing Sloth. My plan was going to work, and with this new set of powers and abilities, I would find a way to reverse what the Incubator had done to her. It was easy to see how you could get hooked on this stuff. This feeling of confidence and certainty would've made that a risk even without its primary effect being so useful.
No sooner had I felt the effects kick in that I turned right on a whim down a dirt road. I'd followed the road only a short distance when I saw a soul reaper coming the other direction. He was balding and had his remaining hair tied back in a pony tail. He also wore a well groomed mustache that drooped slightly past the sides of his mouth.
"Excuse me, sir," I said, waving cheerfully at the soul reaper.
"What do you want?" he asked grouchily.
"I'm looking for a friend of mine, a soul reaper named Rukia Kuchki," I replied. "She was imprisoned and sentenced to death for transferring her powers to a human."
"What?" he asked. Drawing his zanpakto, he said, "I don't know what you want with-"
He cut himself off in stunned silence as I cleared the distance between us in the blink of an eye and gripped hte hand he was holding his sword with in my right hand so he wouldn't let go.
"I'm glad you asked," I said, shifting his blade and placing the top directly in the center of my oroboros tatoo in the center of my chest. "First, you're going to run me through, like so." I pulled the sword into my chest until the blade came out my back.
His eyes wide, the soul reaper asked, "What are you-?"
"What I am is probably too complicated for you to understand," I replied. "The important bit just now is I'm someone much stronger than you who doesn't die when you stab a sword through his heart.
"For the next bit, you have a choice. You can channel your spirit energy into me through your zanpakto now then go into hiding so the Soul Society doesn't execute you for the same crime they're killing Rukia over, or you can refuse. Of course, if you do refuse, I'll have to persuade you, which will leave you a lot less... mobile by the time I walk away with your powers, and that'd make going into hiding a lot tougher."
Accepting my reasoning, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. The sword through my chest glowed blue, and I felt a surge of energy at my core. Suddenly, I was pulled in two directions at once. For a brief instant, I had double vision, then I was literally in two places at once.
My use of time turners had gotten me used to the idea of there being two mes around at the same time. The only difference here was that neither me remembered the other's experiences past the point of the split. One me was standing behind the other wearing a black soul reaper uniform. The other me was my soulless homunculus body, still run through with a zanpakto.
The two mes turned and faced one another. Homunculus me pulled the sword out of his chest and handed it to soul reaper me. My soul reaper self bent down and took the shieth from the terrified soul reaper we'd attacked. Wiping the blade and resheathing it, soul reaper me slid the weapon into his belt.
As a side effect of being drained of his spirit energy, the black uniform the soul reaper wore had turned white. I had so many questions about that, but those could wait for another time.
"One last thing," said soul reaper me, resting his left hand on the sword at his belt. "Do you know my new zanpakto's name?"
He gritted his teeth and shook his head. Homunculus me took a secrecy sensor out of his bag and said, "You'd better not be lying."
Not sure what I was going to do with the antenna-like device, but no doubt imagining torture, the soul reaper called out, "I don't know! Please, let me go!"
Looking at the antenna which didn't quiver, homunculus me said, "Go. Just remember the soul reapers think what you just did merits execution. I wouldn't spread around what happened if I were you."
"Your powers should recover in a few months," added soul reaper me. "I'm sure you can make some story up about where you were in the meantime."
Both mes watched him run away down the street so he wouldn't see us turning toward Kukaku Shiba's house. We switched to parseltongue, the language of snakes, as we stood side by side in case our voices carried farther than we might intend.
"That was unexpected," said soul reaper me. He closed one eye at a time to verify he hadn't been stuck with an empty eye socket on account of having had the Mad Eye in before the split. "Do you think we'll be able to remerge?"
"If we can't, I have spare souls and we've got that gigai back home you can use," said homunculus me.
"It's probably a good thing we ended up split," said soul reaper me. "This way, I can go in with the others to rescue Rukia and you can stay out here with Loki. After what we saw from Gin, I wouldn't want to risk Loki in battle even if his powers were working."
"Don't go in there thinking you're expendable," said homunculus me. "As much as we were always telling Sloth she wasn't, I don't want you going in there and making us hypocrites."
"You also don't want to lose my new powers," said soul reaper me, smirking.
"Damn straight," said homunculus me, returning the smile.
"Speaking of those new powers," said soul reaper me, drawing his zanpakto. He looked over the sword contemplatively, then pointed it at a nearby rock. Moving the blade through a practiced series of movements, he incanted, "Windgardium leviosa!" and the rock floated in the air.
"And thus the prophecy has come to pass," said homunculus me.
Soul reaper me shook his head. "Even the centaurs can read the stars wrong. However this looks, we haven't lost her yet."
With the soul reaper we'd mugged now out of sight, both mes turned and started to walk side by side back to Kukaku Shiba's house. As we walked, we divided up our possessions. Homunculus me kept the Mad Eye, our Grief Seed connection, and everything sentimentally important to us. Soul reaper me took everything that could be useful in the mission ahead of him.
The guards at the Shiba house directed the two mes downstairs to a large room with an open floor plan where the others were practicing with the cannon balls. Homunculus me went over to where Loki was napping and sat down beside him while my soul reaper self stepped out onto the practice floor.
"I can't believe that worked," said Uryu as I picked up one of the cannon balls on the floor.
"I can't believe you managed to get out of your body when we're already in the Soul Society," said Ichigo. "Did the soul reaper you attacked have a soul candy on him or something?"
"No. I'm just fine without a soul," said homunculus me.
"So, what have I missed?" said soul reaper me. "I have some catching up to do."
Thanks to seven years of studying magical theory at Hogwarts, I caught up with the others quickly. The cannon ball I formed was round and stable, if not very powerful. Apparently the soul reaper I'd mugged didn't have much spirit energy to begin with. Uryu had told me there were ways to build it up, but we didn't really have time for that.
With no time to build up my reserves of spirit energy, I instead focused on boosting my output, dumping as large a chunk of my energy into the ball as fast as I could while still maintaining its shape and stability. It was exhausting work. Over the course of three hours, I got more tired and hungry than I'd ever been, including hte times before I became a homunculus.
Ichigo had the opposite problem. He had power to burn, but couldn't keep it stable. Even after hours of work, he couldn't get the energy to form an actual ball, and he was getting frustrated.
The Shibas offered us food, which the soul reaper me desperately needed. Hungry as I was for the first time in years, I appreciated the simple meal of fish and rice more than I had the expertly prepared feasts that had been served at Hogwarts.
Ichigo didn't join us, choosing instead to keep practicing. Ganju stayed with him to supervise. Orihime had first tried to pretend she wasn't hungry so Ichigo wouldn't be alone, then she tried pretending she was full after eating only a small part of her dinner so she could bring the rest to Ichigo. Both times her stomach growling gave her away.
Feeling replenished after wolfing down my meal, I drew my zanpakto and pointed it at Orihime's half eaten meal. I spoke the incantation for the food multiplication spell. Not only was it a tricky transfiguration spell rather than a beginning charm like levitating hte rock had been, but it felt like my zanpakto was resisting. After w few failed attempts, and gathering stars, I shifted the sword to my left hand and tried the spell without the sword acting as a wand. Without the resistance from the sword, I managed the spell, fully refilling Orihime's plate and then multiplying it again enough for us all to have seconds.
"Wow, that was amazing," said Orihime.
"Where did you learn how to do that?" asked Uryu.
"Remember how I told you about my old school? Its full name was Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," I said with a smirk as I sat back down.
Laying my zanpakto on the table, back in its sheath, I said to it, "You're okay with me using you to cast spells, but not that one. Is this charms versus transfiguration, or is it because you're a sword and don't like domestic spells like that?"
Before we had a chance to dig in, the ground started shaking. Orihme identified it as something to do with Ichigo and we all leapt to our feet to rush back to the training room.
Ichigo'd screwed up with the cannon ball worse than I'd thought possible, producing an ever expanding sphere that shook the building as it pressed up against structural supports. He was dumping way too much power into it without concentrating that power. Kukaku yelled some directions at him and it finally clicked for Ichigo, and the ball shrunk down to the exact size and shape it was supposed to be.
He celebrated a bit too soon, as he lost his concentration. A crack formed in his sphere of spirit energy and I raised my zanpakto, calling, "Protego!" just in time. The explosion from Ichigo's unstable cannon ball washed over the shield charm I'd cast, and as a result, Ichigo was the only one who was hurt.
Kukaku berated Ichigo for his screw up and denied him dinner as punishment. She did the same to Ganju for screwing up in his instruction. Fortunately, Ichigo had suffered only minor burns and bruises from the explosion.
As I resheathed my zanpakto, I quietly said to it, "That one was even easier than the levitation charm. It's definitely because you're a sword. Don't worry. I'm sure we'll get the chance to do a lot of combat spells when we get into the Seireitei."
We woke the next morning before dawn. Everyone was as ready as they were going to be given our severe time constraints. Ganju had donned a battle outfit with armored shin and forearm guards to join our party. When Ichigo confronted him about his reasons for coming along, Ganju revealed that his brother had been a soul reaper who had been killed by his own comrades. Ichigo thought Rukia was worth risking his life for, and Ganju was coming to try and understand why.
Loki and my homunculus self stood back from the base of the cannon to watch the launch. Kukaku opened the side of the cannon using transfiguration and my soul reaper self entered with Ichigo, Ganju, Uryu, Orihime, Chad, and Yoruichi. We formed a ring around the orb, each of us pressing our palms to it while Yoruichi stood on top.
Rather than packing the base with explosives, Kukaku painted a black ring around the base with a mop sized brush, stabbed her sword into the platform, and began to chant. My homunculus self witnessed the power building from her chant and fire being first conjured, then concentrated. With the final line of her spell, the flames flowed into the cannon and were released all at once, exploding and propelling the cannon ball skyward.
Inside the cannon, my soul reaper self witnessed none of that. When Kukaku Shiba began her chant, all of us poured our spirit energy into the cannon ball, forming the protective shell. Thanks to the cannon ball, we barely felt the sudden acceleration of the launch. When the cannon ball unexpectedly changed direction in midair, accelerating sideways, we felt that.
Ganju took a hand off the cannon ball to pull a book out of his vest. He explained that while the launch and initial acceleration vector had been preset, the next stage was to chant a series of spells to handle the precision guidance. As much as I wanted to get a look at that book, it was all I could do to keep my spirit energy pouring into the ball.
We had to synchronize our outputs or the cannon ball would destabilize and explode. If that happened, we'd either die in the explosion or die when we impacted the membrane without protection. Ichigo's power was so much greater than ours, and his control so much sloppier, Chad, Uryu, Orihime, and I had to repeatedly remind Ichigo to turn it down while beads of sweat formed on our skin from the effort of trying to compensate for his poor control and meet him halfway.
The entire process got much more difficult when Ichigo got frustrated and got into a shouting match with Ganju. As Ichigo's control slipped, I reached for reserves of spirit energy that hadn't been there a moment ago to compensate. I'd contemplate why my reserve of spirit energy had increased when we were out of immediate danger. For the moment, I was just grateful it had.
The Seireitei came into view. We were high enough up to see the entire city laid out beneath us. The city was dozens of miles across, easily dwarfing any city I'd ever seen. I could make out mile long bridges between parts of town, sprawling estates within walled off compos, and towers as tall as skyscrapers situated on an elevated plateau in the central part of the sprawling city. Yoruichi's maps hadn't done the scale of the place justice. It would take days just to traverse.
But, that was a problem for when we landed. There was still the far more immediate problem of the membrane to contend with. Our cannon ball impacted the invisible barrier and stopped dead. Arcs of unstable spirit energy flickered around the cannon ball, illuminating the position and shape of the membrane.
Kukaku had explained that the key to making it through the membrane was a function of the density of spirit energy in the shell. We didn't have enough. Yoruichi made an executive decision and told us all to force as much spirit energy as we could into the cannon ball. Exploding from instability was more survivable than colliding with the membrane unprotected.
For the second time since launch, I found that I had more spirit energy than I'd had a moment ago, and I forced it all into the ball. We pushed through. Ont he other side, the instability crossed a critical point and the shell burst. We found ourselves suspended in midair just inside the membrane.
"What's going on?" asked Ichigo. "We blasted through the shield, but we're not falling to the ground. We're just floating here."
"Don't get separated!" ordered Yoruichi. "The cannon ball was destroyed by the shield, but its residual energy will still hold us up until it dissolves."
"And what happens then?" asked Uryu.
"It will coalesce into a whirlpool then explode and vanish," said Yoruichi. "We just stick together, because anyone who gets separated will be blown away by the explosion."
Suddenly, the remnants of glowing blue energy around us began to swirl, forming into that whirlpool Yoruichi was talking about. We were thrown this way and that by the powerful winds. Ganju and Ichigo managed to reach and cling to one another. Chad caught hold of Orihime, who reached out for Uryu, but couldn't quite reach him. Uryu was pulled outside the whirlpool and began to fall. Chad pushed off from Orihime to get to Uryu. Catching the quincy, he hurled him back into the center where he collided with Orihime before falling like a comet himself.
For years, I'd worn shoes with transmutation circles on their soles that, among other uses, let me find traction and get a firm grip on any surface, even in midair. Even though I was wearing the sandals of a soul reaper uniform instead of my regular boots, and even though the fact that this world wasn't made of matter made it so they wouldn't have worked even if I'd been wearing htem,I still curled my legs beneath me and pushed off. Somehow, my feet still found purchase in midair and I successfully launched myself out of the whirlpool following Chad.
As I rocketed headfirst toward the ground, I stayed focused on Chad and drew my zanpakto. "Don't fight me on this one," I pleaded with the sword as I cast a cushioning charm beneath us. Rather than slamming into the paving tiles, the two of us were harmlessly decelerated and landed safely thanks to the charm.
Author's comments:
As noted by the mention of Trelawney's prophecy, this was planned at least in vague terms since before I wrote the third year at Hogwarts. Spirit energy in Bleach increases a person's base physical attributes including durability and allows the user, with training, to cast spells of various descriptions. This fits remarkably well with how magical ability in Harry Potter functions. The fact that both settings have a quasi-sentient tool that forms a special bond with a person was just icing on the cake for compatibility.