Chapter 9: Training
Disclaimer: Not mine. Kubo Tite's.
…
Chapter 9
Training
…
Karin bowed her head. "Please teach me how to fight!"
There was a moment of suffocating silence, where Karin could literally feel Urahara's eyes gauging her, judging her seriousness, her intentions, her worth. Then she heard him draw breath, to say…
"No." With that short answer, Urahara's sandals clopped away.
Confused, Karin raised her head. As soon as she saw the shopkeeper sauntering away, the confusion turned into anger. Straightening, she cried out after him, "Am I not good enough? Is that it?"
Urahara looked over his shoulder. "What gave you the idea that you wouldn't be taught? I simply meant that I don't intend to teach you, Karin-san." Turning to the dark skinned woman who had been watching the exchange with vague interest in her keen golden eyes, he addressed her, "Yoruichi-san?"
Momentarily disappearing only to reappear right beside Urahara, Yoruichi placed a hand on his shoulder and assured him, "Don't worry, Kisuke. I'll take over from here."
Nodding, Urahara replied, "I'll be counting on you."
Karin's new teacher beckoned to her, saying, "Follow me." Then she led Karin to a plain room. While Karin looked around in apparent dissatisfaction, Yoruichi removed a tatami mat in the middle of the floor. Karin's eyes stopped sweeping around the room and settled down on the square hole that the tatami mat revealed. So the room had a secret behind it after all. Curious, Karin looked down into the hole, and was surprised to see that there was a ladder stretching endlessly down. Or endless was what it seemed like. Without bothering to use the ladder, Yoruichi agilely jumped down, landing like a cat.
From Karin's point of view, Yoruichi looked like a speck. The speck called back up to Karin, "O~i! Don't be shy! Come on down!"
Karin gulped. Not wanting follow Yoruichi's example, (in case her ability stand on air failed her and she ended up with broken limbs) Karin started to climb down the ladder, which led down into what seemed like an underground… desert. When she was about quarter of the way down, Yoruichi grew impatient; leaping up impossibly high and grabbing Karin by the back of her collar, "Hurry…" she yanked her student down. "Up!"
Karin found herself falling. "Aaaaaaaagh!"
Standing on what appeared to be the air, Yoruichi looked down at the screaming Karin and commanded, "Calm down and analyze the situation!"
Karin clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her scream, and realized in a split second what she needed to do. She twisted her body midair so she wouldn't fall on her back and somersaulted in the air to avoid landing facefirst, then safely landed on her feet. Having just narrowly avoided cracking her head open, Karin heaved a sigh of relief. Then, standing up, she glared up at Yoruichi. "Are you crazy? Do you plan on killing me?"
Neatly landing on the ground next to Karin, Yoruichi ignored the rhetorical questions and circled around the girl. Nodding pensively, she observed, "You've got a fair bit of muscle there." Then she paused and looked directly into Karin's eyes. "But we're going to have to do something about your spiritual pressure first."
Having said this, Yoruichi strode over to a boulder that stood about as tall as she did. Placing a hand on its rugged surface, she turned to face Karin.
"Pack as much spiritual pressure as possible into your fist, and punch this rock."
Karin, bemused, held up her fist, and looked at it. "…Pack… spiritual pressure into my fist?"
Examining her fist as if it was something alien to her, Karin then looked at her new teacher. "…How?"
Yoruichi slapped her forehead, exasperated. "Right. Your older brother was like this, too." For a moment, she stared intently at Karin as if wondering how best to explain it, before she waved a hand dismissively, "I'm not gonna explain it to you. First, I want to see how well you do on your own. Just focus on your fist and punch the rock."
With some trepidation, Karin went into a karate stance, and drew a deep breath as she pulled back her fist. Exhaling harshly, her fist collided with the boulder.
It sustained damage. 'It' referring to Karin's fist.
Attempting to hide her reddening fist behind her back, Karin resisted the urge to hold her hand and hop around in pain, which would be highly embarrassing. Instead, she laughed sheepishly. "Eheheh…"
Yoruichi stood, hands on her hips, unimpressed. "Is that all you can muster?"
The purple-haired woman shooed Karin to the side and demonstrated what she had meant by the phrase 'punch the rock.'
Yoruichi lunged, and in a flash, there was a smoking crater left where her fist had made contact. Seeing Karin's dismayed face expression, she reprimanded, "Don't look so surprised, I'm holding back as it is. At full power, I can blast this rock into pebbles." Stepping aside, Yoruichi ordered, "Now, try again."
Having seen what was expected of her right before her eyes, Karin prepared herself. It had been just a brief moment, but Karin had felt a strong flare of spiritual pressure in Yoruichi's fist right before she had hit the rock.
Suppressing feelings of doubt, Karin concentrated on forcing all of her spiritual energy into her fist; her fist suddenly grew warm and it shot out to contact the rock's surface, and literally reduced the boulder into dust. Staring at her fist, Karin thought the warmth felt vaguely familiar.
Shocked, Yoruichi's eyes widened. Recovering quickly, she suddenly grinned and clapped Karin on the shoulder. "See? You can do it if you try!"
…
The missing people cases had ballooned, and there were more and more bodies turning up everywhere, some unmarked, others mauled. The newspaper lay on the table, and Kurosaki Isshin stared at it blankly, looking but not seeing. He knew a lot more than he let on; the sudden influx of guests staying over at there house coupled with Karin and her mysterious 'kidnapping' and her sudden rise in -
"Oi, Oyaji!"
Ichigo's rough voice interrupted Isshin's thoughts. Isshin glared at his son, who was undoubtedly the cause, or one of them, of Karin's current situation. "What are you doing here? Don't you have university classes to attend?" he asked, annoyed.
Ignoring his father's question, Ichigo picked up the newspaper and waved it in front of Isshin's face. "What do you think of these disappearing cases?"
"Isn't that the work of a serial murderer? I've heard that the murder device was an as-of-yet undetectable poison..."
Ichigo pursued, "What about the people that turn up bloody?"
"That's just a victim of an escaped zoo animal. Zoo keepers these days." Isshin shook his head and ambled off towards the clinic before Ichigo could ask any more.
Ichigo had skipped his university classes that day to keep a closer watch on his younger sisters. At school, there was Toushirou to watch over them, but to be safe, Ichigo too would stay. After Yuzu had returned from school, he asked, "Oh, you're back. Is Karin at soccer practice?"
If she was, he was prepared to go and haul her back; he would take no chances with his younger sisters.
Shaking her head, Yuzu said, "There isn't any soccer practice today. It's Friday, remember? She said she had some business at the candy shop."
'Urahara's shop…' Slowly, Ichigo nodded. Urahara and Yoruichi-san would be there to protect her. Satisfied that both his sisters were safe, he went upstairs to his room where the other shinigami were. As he shut the door, he noticed a tense silence in the air. After the sudden attack that morning, the shinigami were all on their guards.
Abruptly, Toushirou broke the silence, "Where's Karin?" he asked Ichigo.
"At Urahara-san's. She's safe there with Yoruichi-san and Urahara-san, otherwise I would have gone after her." Ichigo replied. "And you asked me to find out what the masses are thinking about the hollowfication, right? The people are dismissing the cases of disappearing people turning up as corpses as serial murders, and the works of a zoo animal, but I don't know how long that will go on..."
The usually lively and carefree Rangiku had a frown on her face. "When are the reinforcements coming, Taichou?" Rangiku asked worriedly.
Toushirou answered, "Tomorrow, if they're on schedule. I've asked for Abarai, Hisagi, Madarame, and whoever else they recommend. But I'm not sure if they'll abide by my request; Soul Society might not afford to have three captains posted here."
"Three?" Ichigo exclaimed. "But there's only you, Toushirou."
Toushirou looked at him, surprised that Ichigo didn't know such important information about Soul Society. "Didn't you hear? There's only the 5th Division left without a captain now that Abarai and Hisagi both got promoted to captain status. Abarai to the 3rd Division, and Hisagi to 9th."
"Did they now?" Ichigo cast an annoyed glance towards Rukia, who had been relaying the latest happenings in Soul Society to him by phone since four years ago when the winter war took place. "I guess I'm not up to speed as I had previously thought."
Flustered at the thought that she had left out some information by mistake, Rukia defended, "Baka! I told you! You just didn't listen properly!"
"Oh yeah?"
"Y-yeah!"
The other two shinigami just left them to bicker. Turning to her captain, Rangiku asked him, "What was it about that second Espada coming back to take somebody? Did he mean Karin-chan?"
Expression immediately hardening at the mention of the second Espada, Toushirou growled, "It seems like they were here to take her back to Hueco Mundo."
"So Karin-chan's a target?"
Toushirou grimly nodded. "They must be after her because she's the only 'experiment' that succeeded. It's with the same objective as a hundred years ago."
"So you're saying that Aizen is behind the incidents." Rangiku summarized with a pained look on her face. Toushirou recognized the expression. 'She had that look when Ichimaru died.' he thought with regret. He wondered what expression his face took on when he recalled his childhood friend.
"There's no denying that Aizen is behind this…" he trailed off, looking far off into the distance, his mind swimming in unpleasant thoughts.
…
Karin stared down at her knuckles, bleeding in protest to the abuse of being slammed repeatedly into boulders. Try as she might, she just couldn't replicate the fluke from before. Once again, she tried smashing her right fist into the boulder in front of her, but it only aggravated the wound. Frustrated, she tried punching with her left hand. When the left hand started to bleed as well, she gave up and collapsed spread eagle on the ground. Heaving a sigh, she stared up at the fake blue sky, which gave the illusion that it was midday.
The thoughts that Karin had held at bay during her training flooded back. She tried to sort them out in vain. Hiko had been acting strange after she had returned; the camaraderie that they'd shared had changed into something else, and in her opinion, it wasn't for the better. More like awkward. And she didn't feel as happy as before when she saw him. Her feelings were leaning more and more towards -
Her thoughts were broken when Yoruichi's voice interrupted, "Oi, giving up already? You're not as persistent as I initially thought."
As Yoruichi had intended, Karin reacted spectacularly to the implied challenge by immediately jumping to her feet and shouting indignantly, "Who said I'm giving up? I'll try again!"
She stalked over to a nearby boulder. Calming herself and cutting off all her thoughts, she closed her eyes and recalled the peculiar feeling from before. Gathering her spiritual energy into her hand once again, Karin once again felt the familiar warmth and curled her hand into a fist, and shot her fist forward. The boulder shattered into pieces. Alerted by the sound and the lack of stone surface in front of her fist, Karin opened her eyes and surveyed the results. She smiled in excitement and looked down at her fist.
"I did it!" Turning to Yoruichi, she repeated, "Did you see that, Yoruichi-sensei? I did it!"
Suppressing a grin, Yoruichi said in a stern voice, "You can celebrate once you can do it at will, or better yet, without even thinking."
Excitement doused, Karin sighed and went back to training.
…
The Segundo Espada knelt before his master.
"Why have you come back empty handed, Caballero?" A smooth voice spoke.
Caballero explained. "There were too many shinigami, master."
Aizen raised an eyebrow. "Too many for you? I guess you must have been outnumbered by several captain class shinigami, then."
"Indeed. Forgive me, sir."
"It's quite alright. I never expected you to bring her back in the first place. I only sent you there to observe her progress." Surveying the subservient figure before him, Aizen continued, "How fares she?"
At this, Caballero raised his head. "Her spiritual powers are undeveloped so far, but she will ripen well."
Aizen's lips curled upwards into a smile. "Well, then, all in due time. Let us wait a while longer before we pick the fruit. You did manage to gain skin-to-skin contact with her? "
"Yes, Aizen-sama."
Aizen's smile turned triumphant. "Then while we wait, you can execute that excellent idea of yours. You'll need the Primero Espada for that, yes? "
…
Hours later, panting, Karin swung her shoulder round, stretching herself out after the bout of exercise. She winced at the cracking noise emitted from her own arm.
"Give up?"
Karin grinned at Yoruichi, who stood in front of her. "Give up? What's that? That isn't in my dictionary. I'm just getting started."
"Stop for today; don't wear yourself out too much. You'll be training tomorrow and it's already dark out."
Karin hadn't realized how much time had passed. "Really? I couldn't tell because of the fake sky."
"Well, now you know. You should get some sleep. And by the way, the young captain from earlier today is waiting outside for you." Yoruichi's grin could have put the Cheshire cat's to shame. "You've bagged a nice one, eh?"
Flushing, Karin said, "I don't know what you're talking about," and leapt up the square hole without further ado.
Arms crossed, Yoruichi watched her leap out of sight. It was an incredible height, she thought. It was understandable that one could jump down that distance, but to jump up was an entirely different matter. Most shinigami would have trouble with it. In fact, she was still marveling at the lightening speed at which Karin had picked up the skill of focusing her spiritual energy to one section of her body; in the case of jumping, the foci lay in her feet. It took years, even decades, for some of the Onmitsu corps to attain those skills, yet the Kurosaki girl had attained it in one day.
Surveying the ground before her, Yoruichi sighed. 'Kisuke… what sort of monster have you picked up?'
And there was reason enough to make Yoruichi of the great Shihouin clan to sigh. Even if Karin had chosen to stay, there wasn't much for her fists to practice crushing; Karin had ground every last boulder in the underground training ground into dust.
…
Up above, Karin came face to face with blue-green irises. Toushirou was staring at her rather unnervingly through half-lidded eyes. Scrambling out of the hole and scooting back, Karin asked cautiously, "What brings you here?"
"Nothing." Though from his face, Karin could tell that was obviously not the case. Eying her suspiciously, he asked, "What were you doing down there?" Though seeing her state of perspiration, Toushirou could hazard a pretty good guess.
Karin harrumphed and turned away from Toushirou's gaze. She crossed her arms to hide her injured knuckles, hiding a wince when cloth rubbed against the raw wounds. "Why should I tell you?"
A vein popped out of Toushirou's head. "Why you-!" Taking deep breaths, Toushirou forced himself to calm down. He likewise turned away from Karin and muttered, "How stupid of me to worry about you…"
Hearing this, Karin suddenly felt angry. "Who asked you to worry about me anyways?" Her anger was unreasonable, she knew.
Suddenly, before she knew it, Toushirou's hand had clasped around her wrist, and he had pinned her against the wall. Shell-shocked, Karin stared at him with wide eyes. "Wh-what are you doing?" Karin asked shakily.
He leaned towards her. Karin would have backed up if the wall hadn't already been pressing against her back. She could feel his breath on her cheek; it smelled like mint and grass, she thought abstractly, as she squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head as his face moved closer. When she didn't feel anything, she cautiously opened one eye. When she saw Toushirou peering at one bloodied hand, both of her eyes popped open.
"See, I knew it. You hurt yourself."
Embarrassed, she bowed her head. What had she been expecting?
Shifting his angry blue-green eyes from Karin's hand to her face, Toushirou said icily, "That's why I'm worried about you."
The door slid open. Both of them turned at the noise, surprised. Ururu stood there. After staring at the two for a moment (and no doubt noting the postures that they were in: him pushing her up against the wall while keeping her wrist pinned above her head), she silently turned around and said in a monotone voice, "Excuse me for interrupting."
Worried that she would misunderstand, Karin reached out a hand and cried out, "Ururu, wait - !"
But the door snapped shut, and afterward, she sagged and gave up.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Toushirou picked up her other hand and examined it as well. He sighed and sat her down on the tatami mat floor, saying, "I'm not as adept with healing Kidou spells as the captain of the Fourth Division, but I can heal this."
Before Karin could ask what the Fourth Division had to do with healing, Toushirou placed a glowing hand on her forehead and put her to sleep with a kidou spell.
…
The next morning, Karin discovered her hands were completely healed and that Toushirou had already left, presumably to meet up with Ichigo and the others. She sat up muttering, "Damn bastard put me to sleep..."
After splashing some water on her face, Karin returned to the underground training room. Once she jumped down, she saw Yoruichi was already there waiting for her, among something like a hundred boulders to replace the ones Karin crushed yesterday. Jaw dropping open, Karin wondered where and how Yoruichi had replaced all the boulders.
Yoruichi announced, "Today's training will focus on speed. Hakuda, that is, hand-to-hand combat, is based on strength and hohou, which means movement. And speed is key to movement. We worked partially on strength yesterday, so today you will work on speed with me."
Making a face, Karin asked, "You said I already worked on strength, so why did you haul more boulders here?"
Yoruichi grinned in a rather feral manner. "I said that you worked partially on strength yesterday. Not completely." At Karin's look of dawning understanding, Yoruichi's grin turned positively wolfish. "You couldn't have possibly thought that using your fists were the only way you could smash boulders, did you?"
At that question, Karin immediately felt grumpy. She had in fact, assumed it was the only way, though she should have known better. It was mostly her kicks that had shattered hollows masks, after all.
Yoruichi went on, "But I'll teach you speed first. Now, what I'm going to show you is a movement technique, which is called…" she suddenly disappeared and reappeared behind Karin. "Shunpo."
Instinctively, Karin flung herself around, raising up a fair amount of dust in the process. "This… is what the second Espada dude called Sonido, isn't it?" she asked, confused.
Raising her eyebrows, Yoruichi looked surprised at Karin's knowledge of this. "Oh? You know that already? Well, Sonido is more impulsive than shunpo, but for all intents and purposes it's the arrancar equivalent of shunpo, yes."
"Whatever it's called, I know how to do it already." Not noticing Yoruichi's stunned look, Karin paused for a second before her face darkened and she added reluctantly, "But it wasn't enough to shake off that Caballero guy, though."
Yoruichi narrowed her eyes while she observed Karin. 'She even knows how to do shunpo… eh?' "Well, if you ran around being chased by the second Espada, then it should be relatively easy to practice catching up to me." Then she snickered, as if enjoying a private joke.
Though at first, Karin was didn't know what Yoruichi meant by that small laugh, but she soon found out just how fast Yoruichi was. It was like tag with Caballero all over again, but the speed gap was even wider; Karin was breathing raggedly while Yoruichi didn't have a hair out of place. Even the endurance that Karin had built up playing soccer didn't prepare her for this. "Why are… you so damn fast?" Almost immediately, Karin regretted trying to speak while running. She felt like throwing up.
Laughing, Yoruichi said, "The title of 'Shunshin no Yoruichi' would cry if I got outrun by the likes of you, who are practically a newborn in the ways of shinigami." 'If that's what you truly are.'She silently added. She then disappeared again, at least to Karin's eyes.
To the human eye, Yoruichi just seemed to be able to teleport large distances in a moment. But compared with Yoruichi, Karin took a longer period of time to teleport shorter distances. After fifteen minutes of flash stepping straight, Karin was panting like a dog, trying to keep up with Yoruichi's speed. Karin gasped, "Can… we…" she coughed, "get… some…" she struggled to draw in a breath, "rest?"
Appearing on the top of a boulder, Yoruichi grinned complacently. "Tired already?"
Too exhausted to see any point in denying it, Karin wordlessly nodded her head.
"Too bad. Hold on for five more minutes." Yoruichi said (in Karin's opinion) heartlessly, as she disappeared again.
Karin grit her teeth and tried to continue for another three minutes, but at that point, she was just jogging, and weakly at that. Her lungs just couldn't take any more. Then, as if her body was telling her to stop torturing it, her legs gave out and she crumpled to the ground.
Yoruichi landed lightly in front of Karin and grinned. "That was hard work, no?
By this point, Karin couldn't even muster the strength to nod her head.
Yoruichi screwed the cap off of a bottle and held it out for her to take.
"Here, drink this. You'll feel better."
Only then did Karin realize how thirsty she was. With shaking hands, she accepted the bottle and drank from it, ignoring the excess water dribbling from her mouth. As she downed the whole bottle of water Karin noticed something strange about her body; it felt lighter. As if her energy was getting restored.
Yoruichi smiled. "That's water that has physical healing properties, and it's good for when you're hurt or exhausted."
When she had sufficiently recovered, Karin stood up, signaling that she was ready for another round of tag. Yoruichi beckoned to her with a finger, as if to say, 'Bring it on!' then disappeared with a flash, with Karin following nanoseconds afterwards.
...
A.N: Phew, got that over with. Onto the next chapter! Next up: reinforcements are coming!
