First came the kido training. The books he'd stolen from the library were useful for a little while, but it was the spell listing he used most. Practising the incantations over and over again until the images they evoked in his minds eye were cast in stone in his memory. The tricky part was going through all of the images mentally in the shortened time it took to utter the name of the spell when casting without the chant. He'd built shelters in all of the valleys that fell away from the main ridge, and he moved between them to hunt the animals that populated the area. The delay in getting himself situated in the middle of nowhere meant it took him a full month to get all of the 30's level spells down without laboriously chanting out the entire incantation. The 40's took longer, and he gave up in the mid 50's, desperate for a change. So he turned to flash steps.
His ability in flash steps was improving significantly. He could jump from anywhere in the area he frequented to the summit of the highest peak. But he still wasn't happy with the technique itself, frustrated with its excessive use of force. There had to be a more subtle way to do these things. He focussed on the nature of the flash space. His inner senses had long ago told him what the form was – it was the ocean that lingered beneath the surface of matter, reached by pushing through, and was easily disturbed by reiatsu. Using reiatsu to create a shockwave and then surfing this to your destination – it was never described like this at the academy, but that was the most succinct way of putting it. But the shockwave was ridden in the real world. Surely it would be more efficient if he could move his entire body into the flash space? No resistance, no obstacles. And instead of riding one massive ripple, a continuous stream of reiatsu could propel the user at much higher speeds. But there was no room there; the gap between the liquid surface and the real world was just too small.
This problem frustrated Kyuzo for a long time. He even went as far as talking to his zanpakutou about it, but Edge could offer him nothing, the two voices intertwined as eerily as ever making the disparaging comments even more annoying to the youth. He was sitting in his favoured location to relax, the flat rock on the summit of the top peak, which he had unconsciously named Everest, and was focusing on as small an area of ground as he could, trying to get as detailed a view of the flash space as he could. The image was blurred and unclear, but there were recurring themes. Sometimes he could see his surroundings reflected on the ocean surface, sometimes it was another area, not the same, but sharing the blue sky, the sun, the mountains, but there were other people there. He surmised that this was the real world, but couldn't be sure. Getting a clear view was nigh on impossible; the ocean that sat just beneath the surface was never quite still, the minor ripples caused by the trickle of reiatsu he couldn't contain always seemed to disturb the surface and obscure his view. It was the third prevalent image that sparked the most curiosity out of him though; it always seemed to be night there, a crescent moon adorning the sky, and a white expanse stretching as far as could be seen. But still the answer wouldn't come to him. And he was tired of trying to get his whole body into the flash space. He had improved though. His accuracy was better and he'd been trying to work out how best to combine it into his fighting style. Using the speed to close distance and attack in one fell swoop was the obvious conclusion, as he had done in his duel with Kaneda.
He finally tired of shunpo, and moved on to the ultimate point of his self imposed exile; he wanted to achieve bankai. The fact that it took years of training and most shinigami never got near it didn't put him off in the slightest; most shinigami didn't manifest a zanpakutou until they were dead, so he figured he had a head start on them. Calling the spirit of his blade into the material world didn't take him long, but Edge wasn't forthcoming at all about bankai, and generally refused point blank to explain why, usually offering nothing more than "You are not ready for bankai yet."
So the routine began. Practising kido spells, slowly increasing the distance he could flash step and arguing with his zanpakutou. Edge had taken to following him round and commentating sardonically on his attempts to improve, and the apparition was particularly biting when it came to kido spells blowing up in his face. It struck Kyuzo that his zanpakutou was very similar to him in personality; closed off and guarded, with a very dry sense of humour and generally no interested in anyone else. If the roles were reversed, Kyuzo was pretty sure he would be holding back on bankai as well. But this knowledge didn't stop him getting pissed at the sarcastic spirit. After a particularly frustrating session on the low 60's Ways of Destruction, he finally lost his temper.
"Will you shut up for once! Fuck, you told me that you were MY power, but you refuse to tell me anything about how to achieve bankai, other than 'You're not ready for it yet' (in a very bad impression of the zanpakutou spirits eerie dual voice), and now you just stand around and annoy me." Kyuzo launched himself at Edge, his reiatsu flaring involuntarily and the sword itself forming unbidden in his left hand. The spirit of the sword easily caught the blow aimed at him with the sheathed sword, and held it tight.
"Let your anger fuel you. It increases your reiatsu. You are not ready for bankai yet because you do not even know what your shikai can do. You have only used it ONCE!" The two voices were rising in unison. "You cannot improve in your use of us without practise. But we have been trapped in our sealed state for so long you have no idea what we can do!"
Kyuzo's response was to wrench the weapon out of the hands of the spirit and snarl out the release; "Sever every last bond! EDGE!" More reiatsu flooded out of him, kicking up dust and rock from the hillside. The zanpakutou spirit was now holding an exact copy of the blade-within-a-blade shikai. He taunted Kyuzo; "Come at us!"
Kyuzo launched into a fierce flurry of attacks; broad swipe with the sheath, spin, draw of the main blade, follow through with the offhand, diagonal slash with both. There was no planning in his mind, he had never tried anything like this before; he was flying totally blind. Yet at some level he understood every attack, why it was good, what openings it left and every swing of the sword cemented the knowledge further into his mind. As the fight went on the youth started to notice some of the tactics his opponent was using; deftly spinning the blades in either hand so that the blade was either out of the top or bottom of his hand as and when necessary, thus adding another element of unpredictability to the overall fighting style, as well as rapidly resheathing the sword when the moment came to unleash on of the powerful sword draws. So Kyuzo started to imitate these moves, having only brief trouble getting used to them, but almost straight away they felt natural. If he hadn't been so busy venting frustration, he would have noticed how once again the ability to fight well seemed to come naturally, no learning necessary; it was just there one moment where nothing had been before.
After a while the two combatants separated. Kyuzo was breathing hard, and had numerous scratches, while Edge seemed totally unscathed. But the sword-spirit was not satisfied; "Not enough! All you are learning are swordsmanship techniques! You could have learned that from anyone."
"What the hell do you want me to do? I can't learn something without knowing what it is!"
"You already know. You have been trying to perfect this since you left the academy. We will show you once. That should be enough"
Before Kyuzo had a chance to respond the spirit blurred out of existence, and had both blades crossed in front of his throat. They had both been using flash steps in the fight, and Kyuzo was sure that he had the measure of his weapon. The spirit slowly withdrew, the two blades he had been holding dissolving into thin air.
"That wasn't an ordinary flash step. What did you do?"
"Look. Examine where we moved from, and where we moved to. You already know the answer."
Kyuzo focussed his senses on the ground where Edge had been standing. There was no ripple left over from flash steps; the gap between the dimensions the he called the flash space was massively deformed, but the unexplainable ocean that occupied that space was perfectly still. He changed his focus to where the spirit had been stood a few moments ago. It was the same; the space seemed to be much larger, but there was no evidence of the massive tidal waves it took to move that quickly. Puzzled, he looked at the zanpakutou, which was watching him intently. Turning the problem over in his mind, he stumbled over the answer, and once again the second it hit him he knew it was right, and exactly how to copy it.
"You moved round the flash space in a bubble of reiatsu… Not disturbing the liquid film that everyone else uses. Totally untraceable, and impossible to follow…" He was thinking out loud more than anything. So lost in thought, he missed the slight smile that played across both the faces of his sword. He was still going over all the possibilities of this discovery when his train of thought was interrupted.
"Try it."
Kyuzo looked up, grinned briefly, and then vanished from sight, appearing instantly on another peak. For a second he was off balance – that was the first time he had totally submerged himself in the flash space, but it passed momentarily. His head was buzzing though. This kind of speed… it must be unheard of. And he'd only just started. With practise he would improve. Edge appeared next to him.
"Good. That was an elementary use of what our power will allow you to do. Our gift to you is the mastery of the flash space. Only because of that knowledge can you move that fast. You already know how much faster it is than flash steps don't you?"
"No resistance from the real world; four, five times faster?"
"Depending on the user of flash steps, but yes that's about right. Now I will show you what it is used for in combat"
Almost immediately after the zanpakutou finished speaking, his outline started to vibrate and blur, and then he slowly separated so that there were two identical figures stood next to each other, and then a third, a fourth. As the numbers went up they formed a circle around Kyuzo, with no difference at all between them. Then they started moving, rotating around him. There was no movement of feet, the images simply slid sideways across the ground. Already his mind was analysing the uses for this technique; so far it was obvious. "Any opponent won't be able to tell the real one from the fakes, so I'll be able to attack freely. No. Not fakes. Moving round the flash space and pressing on the barrier... not really any danger to me. Everywhere and nowhere…" The words were again spoken to nobody in particular. A smile spread across his face; he had new things to do; more stuff to add to his training, and thoughts of bankai still lurked at the back of his mind.
