AN: I'm not dead and neither is the story, I've just been really busy IRL with my job. Classes are starting up again but I'll no longer be working so expect updates sooner than three/four months. Anyway, on to the story.
Like he was informed, Ichigo found the beast to be extremely weak and the "fight" lasted less than a minute. Still as a stress reliever it did its job well enough, who knew that watching a giant tree thing would try and its best to imitate breakdancing to put his fire out. Ichigo was slightly worried about his new found sadistic tendencies but didn't dwell on it too long; after all it was just too amusing.
Ichigo made it back to school with a couple minutes to spare before lunch ended and was grateful, albeit surprised, to see that Yuri and Erica weren't on the roof anymore. He wanted some peace and quiet before class in order to bring himself out of his battle mindset, and after his parting words he doubted he would have gotten that with them around. Releasing his Authority and Fullbring his thoughts turned to his two "servants" and his face paled slightly as he realized something. Erica would likely try and move in with him.
While not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself as Ichigo didn't particularly mind what she did it did make him think of Shizuka's likely response to Erica. When taking in to account Erica's attitude and explanation as well as his teasing…yeah Ichigo was screwed. Well he might not get berated by his sister too much Ichigo could definitely see a headache in his near future.
Hearing the warning bell go off Ichigo dragged himself out of his thoughts and went to class, nothing like the boring monotony of lessons to clear your mind of other thoughts after all. He wasn't surprised to see Erica and Yuri already sitting in their seats though the small "eep" from Yuri and the shy expression on Erica's face was slightly surprising.
Maybe the teasing was a bit too much? Nah it was too amusing to not be worth it. Still maybe I should tone it down in the future; I'd rather not give them the wrong idea. Ichigo thought before mentally shrugging to himself, deciding to deal with things as they come and not worry about it too much.
The rest of the day went by as normal, as long as one disregarded the increased whispering, glares in both his and Erica's direction and the increasingly depressed expression on the teachers face as his students mostly ignored him. An outside observer would likely be amused by the scene but for Ichigo it just brought irritation and the second coming of his headache. So it was a small relief when the school bell rang for the last time that day. Well it was until he noticed that Erica, along with Yuri, was following him on his way to pick up Shizuka.
While he had expected Erica to move in with him (though admittedly it had slipped his mind) he had expected her to show up at his home not follow him. Yuri was even more of a surprise as she had club activities after school and shouldn't be going back yet, though he expected she was doing so because Erica was. It was times like these that he wished he still had ready access to medical supplies, like extra strength headache medicine. Of course that thought brought a pained grimace to his face that he quickly got rid of, he didn't want Shizuka to see him sad and he was almost at her class.
When he opened the door a small smile graced his lips as he saw Shizuka excitedly talking with her friends by her seat. He knew that more often than not her "happiness" was forced or fake as she didn't want to make him or her grandfather worried, but that was slowly changing. Right here her happiness was neither forced nor fake, and the joy in her eyes when she turned and caught sight of him assuaged the still lingering guilt he felt, even if it was just a little bit. Of course her happy attitude didn't last long once she caught sight of his Yuri and her expression turned downright scary when she caught sight of Erica.
"Onii-chan… what is that girl doing here, and who is this?" Her voice was deceptively quiet and everyone except for Ichigo and Erica who either didn't catch or was unfazed by the underlying malice in her words shivered involuntarily. Before Ichigo could even open his mouth Erica beat him to the punch.
"My name is Erica Blandelli an exchange student from Italy and the future husband of Ichi-kun here?"
While Ichigo was confused by his new nickname he missed the sound of cracking wood coming from Shizuka's desk as she reacted to Erica's words. As a result Ichigo's first hint that something was going on was a rather hefty textbook hitting him in the back of the head. The angry tirade that followed was even above his expectations but the only hint of surprise on his face was the faint lifting of one of his eyebrows. Meanwhile both Erica (and Yuri), who were also targets of Shizuka's wrath, were cowering behind Ichigo, something that amused him as he thought about ordering them to go face the full brunt of his sister's anger by themselves. Oops, there's that new found sadistic streak again, definitely need to watch that.
It took a good bit of time and a lot of promises of explanations in the future before Ichigo was able to calm Shizuka down enough that he could get close enough to her to push her wheel chair without getting smacked with a book…or bitten. Of course that lasted only long enough to get home when Erica just claimed out of nowhere to be moving in with us. It was expected and he wouldn't have denied it anyways but it would have been nice to have been at least asked first.
Of course after his explanation he was exempt from her anger and much like with Yuri it had turned to a different target, mainly Erica. At that point Ichigo had left the two unfortunate servants with his sister so he could get some peace in his room and (hopefully) get rid of his headache.
Ichigo's room was Spartan; there was no better word to describe it. It had a bed, desk with a chair and lamp, fan and a dresser, nothing else. There were neither decorations nor personalization and the only reason one could tell it was lived in was the slightly messy bed and desk. He had of course been offered, many times, the ability to furnish it how he liked but Ichigo hadn't accepted. At first it was because he hadn't planned on making this his home but now it was that he just doesn't want to be reminded of his old home by decorating his room according to his usual tastes.
Setting down his school bag Ichigo quickly changed into a set of plain black exercise clothes before leaving his room and heading to the house's courtyard. He could still hear Shizuka's angry voice in the background, though the words were too muffled to make out, as he walked through the house shaking his head in faint amusement.
Reaching the courtyard Ichigo, for the second time today, utilized his Fullbring and was quickly clad in writhing shadows. Since he was only planning on traveling to the training location and time was not an issue he didn't bother using his authority to speed up his travel time. It was also a good practice to minimize his authority usage in general as while his authority didn't have a daily usage limit it did have an overall time limit of sorts and recovery was generally slow.
In order to not get spotted by a person randomly looking up he traveled through the sky fairly high up, enough to be nothing but a dark speck in people's eyes. The trip was peaceful and Ichigo spent it simply enjoying watching the scenery pass below him. While he wasn't technically flying (it was more running on air) it was close enough that it was hard for anyone to not enjoy the feeling, even if they had done it many times before. It wasn't long before he reached his destination though and his mind switched from enjoying the scenery to thinking about what he would be training today.
His previous fight and all his previous training sessions were all centered on his Authority and he felt that, for now, he had enough of a grasp on it. Instead Ichigo wanted to experiment with his Fullbring powers. When he was training with Xcution they had only told him the extreme barebones facts and focused on evolving his Fullbring to the point where he could add his Shinigami powers to it.
His ability to use Bringerlight was done entirely by himself using his observations, instinct and past experiences so he had no knowledge of how it works exactly. The only "explanation" he got was when he heard Ginjō (the bastard) mumble something about Fullbringing the ground/air. The explanation didn't really make sense to Ichigo just based on what he knows as the act of Fullbringing was the ability to manipulate the soul in an object that a person was emotionally close to.
Of course that explanation was given to me by the same bastards who betrayed me so let's look at what I know. Ichigo thought to himself. All Fullbringers have a main object that they use to fight with, that is a fact. The powers might be mundane or bizarre but they all seem to be at least be derived from the object used. My Combat Pass gives me an appearance and ability similar to my former Shinigami powers for instance. If Fullbringing manipulates a physical object's soul then why is it necessary to have an emotional attachment to it? After all I don't have an attachment to the ground of air (except for the need to live on the former and breathe the latter).
Taking that into account I should be able to Fullbring any physical object, no matter the size (after all air molecules are beyond tiny). His thoughts finished for the time being Ichigo decides to experiment and test his hypothesis on a nearby stick.
It took him awhile to find the stick's soul but he managed, though he hoped it would get faster the more he practiced. The first thing Ichigo tried to do was to try and manipulate the stick and blend his soul with it like he does with his combat pass. Unfortunately, it did not work as when he tried he immediately felt strong resistance and no matter the force he exerted was unable to overcome it.
So maybe an emotional attachment does play some role, so I can't utilize it as a Fullbring but maybe I can do something else with it, after all I don't Fullbring the ground the same way as my combat pass.
Ichigo's next test was trying to manipulate the soul of the stick without blending his own with it. The souls of objects were strange and difficult to put into words. Unlike what one would expect they do not take the form of the object they reside in. Instead it's more like a small ball that has the sort of "feeling" of the object. For his Combat pass it was slightly different (maybe because of his attachment to it) and the soul was complex with many different traits, like power, resolve the feeling of shadows and so on. For the stick's soul well…it felt like a stick: solid, rough and dried out.
For this experiment Ichigo tried moving the soul like he did with the ground's/air's. The result was the stick flying out of his hand and into the sky. It made sense once Ichigo thought about it since he was essentially "pushing" the soul up with hands. He figured that if he could push it up he could also easily push it down or to the side so after retrieving his wayward branch that's what he tried next, and as expected it worked. The next step was seeing if he could replicate the same feats without being in contact with said stick. The answer was no, at least not yet.
When he tried finding the sticks soul from a distance he found out he couldn't after it was more than a meter away from him, and manipulating said soul was impossible. However, Ichigo had much better luck with his combat pass, likely due to a stronger connection between his soul and its. He could sense it from much further away and even manipulate it slightly when it was close enough but it was difficult. He thought as his familiarity with his powers went up it would get easier and he could even do so with objects other than his Combat Pass. For now though that was a dead end.
For the next couple of hours Ichigo tried many different experiments with many different objects and his end results were as follows:
He can move an object in any direction as long as he was in contact with it and could, to an extent, control the speed of the movement.
He could reinforce an object's soul by expanding it to conform to the objects shape, thus making the object more durable.
The soul of an object could be manipulated to change an object physically. For his trusty stick Ichigo was able to make it vaguely pointier and even make it look slightly less dead.
He can manipulate multiple objects souls at the same, though the difficult of doing so is high.
Finally the emotional attachment (or potentially familiarity) he has to an object not only makes manipulating its soul easier but influences the degree of change he can make as well. The amount of resistance he feels when trying to blend souls with the object also decreases (his clothes had slightly less resistance than the stick).
All in all it was a rather informative evening and Ichigo had more ideas to explore in the future. For instance possibly utilizing two true Fullbrings (his word for Fullbrings like his Combat Pass) at the same time or utilizing ordinary objects as improvised projectiles.
The return home passed in the blink of an eye as Ichigo thought about his discoveries and his future training path. Before he knew it he was landing in the courtyard and walking to the nearest bathroom to wash off the dirt and sweat he had accumulated. Stripping himself of his clothes and wrapping a towel around his waist Ichigo pulled open the door to the bath and stepped in. It wasn't until that point that the thought of maybe knocking first had occurred to him.
"KYAA!" While the scream sounded a bit off to Ichigo he reacted immediately…by turning into a klutz and tripping over himself in surprise, resulting in his grip on his towel coming undone. It wasn't until he heard the laughter that he realized he had been had by his grandfather, who currently had tears in his eyes. Growling lowly Ichigo pushed himself off the floor (temporarily forgetting about his towel) as he prepared to chew out the old man. Unfortunately, this was just not his night as apparently the rest of the house had heard the scream to.
How did he know you might ask? Well he knew because before he could say a word the door was thrust open as a worried looking Yuri opened the door, only to get a prime view of Ichigo's bare ass. The result was predictable as the poor girl lit up like a Christmas tree before fainting (Ichigo swore he even saw steam rising from her head). Bad things always happen in pairs however as just when Ichigo grabbed his towel and was wrapping it around his waist again Erica made her appearance. She lasted long than Yuri but alas she too went down like a sack of tomatoes.
Ichigo finished wrapping his towel and went to move the two girls out of the bathroom all the while listening to his grandfather howl with laughter in the background. He could only sigh as he felt his headache come back with a vengeance as he heard the sound of Shizuka's concerned voice draw near.
