Disclaimer: Bleach, sadly, does not belong to me. I'm just not that good at drawing people.
Welp, a few days late, and I'm sorry about that, but! Chapter 14 is here!
The night after pounding some sense into his past self, Kaito couldn't sleep. This was the night that Kuchiki had been taken back, the night where the final unraveling had begun, and there was nothing he could do to interfere if everything went downhill. Not if he wanted Aizen's attention on Kurosaki while he snuck in to stab the man in the back.
Instead, he sat up with Urahara, staring blankly at the closed shop door and ignoring the sounds of mindless cleaning that were coming from the kitchen. Tsukabishi was handling the stress in his own way, while he and Urahara were just… sitting. Motionless. Waiting.
To their credit, the two hadn't even attempted to convince him to sleep and leave it all to them. They had let him stay up, let him keep vigil. And even if a distant part of him realized that this was just another way that they could keep an eye on him, he still appreciated the implicit inclusion the action showed.
His hands tightened on the edges of his shirt as reiatsu rose near the edge of town, flaring and clashing together. Kurosaki's reiatsu was so much stronger than he remembered it being during this event, honed and precise in a way that it had only gained partway through the invasion of Seireitei. Again he found himself hoping that his meddling hadn't made things worse for them.
Kaito stilled as he sensed Ishida's reiatsu, rising to prominence while Kurosaki was still on his feet. That was a change he hadn't been expecting, and he winced at the way Kuchiki Byakuya's reiatsu roared to life, heavy with frustration and disbelief.
"They'll be fine," Urahara spoke calmly. "Byakuya's not in a killing mood, so he'll leave both of them alive."
"But what if they push him too far?" Kaito asked, trying to keep his voice even. "Kurosaki can't match him without his own blade, and Ishida's not yet experienced enough against a fighter like Kuchiki."
"They'll be fine," Urahara repeated, even as they could both sense the sudden disappearance of Kurosaki's reiatsu, like a river in flood suddenly vanishing.
Kaito winced, kept from leaping to his feet only by the strong grip Urahara had on his upper arm. Seconds later, Ishida's reiatsu faded back to a background murmur, and everything seemed to calm down at last.
"Let's go," Urahara murmured, releasing Kaito's arm and rising to stand. Tsukabishi appeared moments later, expression grim and reiatsu coiled tight.
Kaito scrambled to his feet as well, following Urahara out the door and down the street, the three of them using shunpo to flit from shadow to shadow. Ahead of them, Kuchiki Byakuya's reiatsu hummed quietly, accompanied by the snap-flare of Abarai's own wilder power.
Urahara kept them moving at a slow pace, taking short shunpo steps that Kaito could track by eye. He knew they had to wait until the two Shinigami left with Rukia, but the emptiness in the air, the missing blanket of living reiatsu that Kurosaki constantly exuded, was making him anxious and fidgety. He wanted to see, wanted to know, that Kurosaki was still alive, even if currently severed from the powers he had been relying upon.
Finally, finally, the presence of the two Shinigami disappeared, and Urahara stretched his legs into a flurry of shunpo steps that Kaito could barely track, much less keep up with. He arrived at the scene seconds after the shopkeeper and paused at the edge of the streetlight, taking in the destruction that scarred the area.
His breath stuttered in his throat, his gaze fixed on Kurosaki's still form, and all he could see was black-sky-heavy-moon-pale-dome-demon-demon-DEMON! Metallic scented blood flooded his senses. Drowned out reality. He was back on that dome, staring at Kurosaki's broken body, listening to Inoue's screams of denial. Listening to Ulquiorra's taunts.
A hand touched his shoulder. Kaito reacted. Lashed out. Flipped his attacker aside in a flurry of violence. Sent a flurry of arrows after him.
"Kaito!"
(*Wake up!*)
(*Dammit, snap th'fuck outta it, koneko!*)
Kaito blinked once. Stared blankly at the black bow in his hands, then at Tsukabishi as the man pulled himself out of the crater Kaito had created. He released a shuddering breath and allowed his bow to dissolve.
"Sorry," he told Tsukabishi quietly, as the other slowly walked back towards him, hands up in a show up being unarmed. He knew it was just a show, that Tsukabishi was just as dangerous as ever, but… it helped. Made the last wisps of paranoia fade back into his heart.
"It's alright," the man replied just as quietly. "I should have expected a reaction like that. You've grown quite powerful since you first arrived."
Kaito gave the man a wan smile, then took a deep breath a braced himself, turning to look at Kurosaki's body again. As the blood started to rush through his ears again, he focused as hard as he could on Urahara, on the green glow that spread out from the shopkeeper's hands. Green meant healing. Green meant life. Green meant Kurosaki wasn't dead.
Just to be sure, he crossed the distance and knelt at Kurosaki's other side. The tension drained from his body the moment he finally saw the slow movement in the teen's chest.
(*Shit, did I..?*)
(*You looked… very similar, when I came upon you in our timeline,*) Kaito admitted. It hadn't bothered him quite as much back then, but he hadn't enjoyed the sight either.
"He'll be fine," Urahara informed him confidently, even as the green glow of healing kido cut off. "His will to live saw him through the worst of it, and my kido patched up the rest. He'll be hurting, but it's nothing time and training can't take care of."
Kaito gave a shallow nod, though he couldn't resist reaching out to rest his fingers against the pulse-point on Kurosaki's neck, reassured beyond even Urahara's words to feel the steady beat. Fears assuaged, Kaito rose back to his feet and turned to check on Ishida.
The teen was sitting up already, Tsukabishi healing the few wounds that Ishida had picked up in the brief combat. Ishida's gaze was moving from Kurosaki's body, to Kaito, to the crater that Kaito had caused and back, a considering look in his eyes as he did.
"I've seen far too much death," Kaito informed the teen bluntly, trying to head off any strange leaps of logic that might already be forming. "This was… very similar to how I found one of my friends."
"I see," Ishida replied a bit awkwardly, almost as if he wanted to say something more but didn't know how.
Kaito gave the teen another wan smile, feeling unable to pretend under the dark, dark sky with the scent of metallic blood heavy in his nose. "I'll be fine, and so will Kurosaki."
Ishida nodded thankfully to him, then lapsed back into silence as Tsukabishi finished healing the last of his wounds.
"Kaito, if you could carry Kurosaki, please?" Urahara called, as he pushed himself to his feet and looked over at him. "I'll set up a futon in the empty room we have, so if you could bring him there, we'll let him sleep it off."
He nodded at Urahara to show that he had heard, then glanced over at Ishida again as the teen rose stiffly to his own feet. Kaito contemplated the other for a long moment, then said firmly, "Kurosaki will want to save her. Meet me in the training ground tomorrow after your classes and we'll train."
Ishida gave him a considering look, suspicious and thoughtful all at once. "And if I refuse?"
"Do you believe you can become stronger on your own?"
Kaito saw it, the moment of hesitation as the lesson he had beaten into Ishida's head warred with years of doing everything himself. It was a war that Kaito had never truly won, not until it was far too late to mean anything, and he had to wonder if that one session would be enough.
Finally, Ishida made his decision, and Kaito felt his tension slipping away when the teen inclined his head slightly.
"I'll be there."
"I won't go easy on you," Kaito promised, while stepping over to Kurosaki and gently scooping up the unconscious teen.
Ishida glowered at him and turned on his heel to stalk back to his own apartment. "I wouldn't expect you to be."
(*A win?*) Ichigo asked curiously.
(*A win.*) Kaito couldn't help the pleased smirk that tugged at his lips. Things were changing, and for once he felt hopeful for the future.
Kaito waited in the empty shop, turning over and discarding plan after plan. How would he train his past self? What would he focus on? Should he do it here, or outside of town? The training room was quite large, but he didn't know how much of that his father needed to use for the training that Kurosaki was going to receive.
(*I don't think we used that much of the area,*) Ichigo spoke up, trying to remember what he could of that short, brutal training. (*Just try to keep your arrows to yourself.*)
He made a soft noise of understanding. The best way he knew to keep them separate was a barrier like he'd seen some of the Shinigami create. And the best way he knew how to deal with that…
Was to ask Tsukabishi.
Mind made up, Kaito rose from his seat on the tatami mat and headed into the back. He doubted there would be any customers in the short time he was away, and even if there were, the kitchen wasn't that far away from the public space.
The scent of cooking hung heavy in the air as Kaito approached the kitchen door and rapped lightly on the frame. Tsukabishi was cooking up what looked like a mountain's worth of food, all things that Kaito recognized as food that kept and required little effort to be edible later on. Given the man's distraction, Kaito patiently waited at the doorway to be acknowledged, before finally stepping into the room and moving to the side where he wouldn't be in the way.
"Did you need something, Kaito-kun?"
Kaito hesitated for a moment, then nodded and asked, "Could you create a barrier around a section of the training ground? I wish to train Ishida in privacy, but I don't want to be endangered or to endanger you or the others while doing so."
"That won't be a problem, Kaito-kun," Tsukabishi replied easily. He slid a tray of food into the oven to bake, then turned around to look at Kaito once the timer was set. "I know several barriers that could provide the type of safety you wish. Do you know what you'll teach him?"
"At this point…" Kaito began, before trailing off in a mixture of shame and frustration. The glove had given him the strength to survive — briefly! — against a Captain, but the price it had cost him was one he was unwilling to allow Ishida to face. His pride had kept him from advancing, had forced him to lag behind Ichigo while he spent months powerless and weak, and turned Hueco Mundo into a death trap. Kaito clenched his fists, forced himself to breath, and resumed speaking, "At this point, I trained with a certain item in order to hone my ability to gather reishi. I refuse to allow Ishida to fall into the same trap I did. Though I am unsure how I will managed to replicate such training."
Tsukabishi pursed his lips and tugged on his mustache for a moment. Finally, he spoke slowly, gaze still a bit distant, "There's a barrier that I believe I could modify to restrict the flow of reishi into a space. If I paired that with a barrier to keep our training groups separate, that should work to achieve what you want."
He considered the offer. There were downsides, of course, especially because he would be under the same limitations as Ishida, but he also had a vaster internal store of reiryoku than the other did. He would need to make sure he wasn't spilling his reiatsu everywhere, but that was something he needed to practice anyway. Finally, with a firm nod, he made his decision. "I would appreciate it if you could. It won't be quite the same, but it should hone his precision anyway, especially if I'm fighting him at the same time.
"Then I will do so," Tsukabishi told him while wiping his hands clean and setting the towel down on the counter. "Come, we will see how well my modification will work in practice."
Kaito followed the kido expert out of the kitchen and down into the training grounds. Tsukabishi led the way to a far corner of the place, darting into the air to get a better view of the area around them. When Kaito joined him in the sky, the man made a few gestures and formed a glowing line that outlined an area. "Would that be enough space?"
Kaito considered the contained area thoughtfully, then shook his head. "Could you make it a bit bigger? I don't want to have too much room, but we'll be training as archers, not swordsmen."
Tsukabishi nodded his understanding and moved the line out a bit, step by small step, until Kaito finally indicated his acceptance of the outlined area. It was, to his eye, just enough space to tease at the limits of a good archery battle, but not too much that Kaito would have to go out of his way to hunt down Ishida.
"If you would descend into the area?" Tsukabishi asked.
Kaito darted down to land inside the demarcated zone, then turned to stare up at Tsukabishi, waiting for whatever the man was going to do next.
He didn't have to wait long. The man had begun to chant quietly the moment Kaito had crossed the marker line, and a bare minute after Kaito had landed a strange, shimmering curtain rose up from the ground and arced overhead until he was sealed inside a green barrier. It reminded him of images he'd seen of the aurora, and he had to wonder if it was actually a true seal, considering the apparent thinness of the barrier overhead.
"Try gathering reishi," Tsukabishi ordered from outside the barrier, distracting Kaito from his contemplation of the barrier around him.
He reached out and pulled the free reishi towards him, compacting it into the beginning form of Lichtregen. The more he gathered, the more he noticed that it wasn't coming as quickly to his grasp as before. Slowly he move forward, trying to split his concentration between walking, holding the attack, and gathering the reishi. A wry smile touched his lips, as he thought briefly back to that moment in Hueco Mundo, where Ichigo questioned him about this very action.
It did work after all. Who knew.
Still, he was finding it hard. Not just the moving while gathering, but the gathering in general. The concentration of reishi all around him was dropping like a stone, and it wasn't replenishing the way he was accustomed to. Curious to know if he was right about the thinness of the barrier, Kaito carefully darted up towards the top, coming to a stop just below the shimmering green that marked the barrier.
Even here, where he could stare at the painted sky with only the faintest of green tinting his view, he could sense no more than the tiniest of trickles slipping through. Satisfied with this, Kaito descended once more to stand opposite Tsukabishi.
"Well?"
"The free reishi isn't replenishing the way I would normally expect it to," Kaito informed the man. "I think I've gathered about everything I can touch."
Tsukabishi seemed pleased with Kaito's words. "Good. If you want to fight in a reishi-poor zone, I believe you should be able to leave this barrier with what you've gathered."
Kaito pursed his lips, wondering at that. The barrier was meant to prevent the passage of reishi. Could he really just leave with the gathered power?
He reached out a hand towards the barrier, feeling it give way before him almost like gelatin. There was no pain from the action, so he slowly pushed himself through, and had almost made it when it felt like he became caught on something. A glance over his shoulder showed the quiver to be the cause, but also showed him that it was partway through the barrier already.
(*Maybe it's still too much like reishi?*)
Kaito considered that for a moment, turning Ichigo's words over in his mind, before he narrowed his eyes and flooded his own power through the quiver. In a flash it turned his signature emerald green and the barrier suddenly released him to stumble forward. Once out, it was the work of a moment to draw his bow and fire the attack straight up into the air to impact and disperse against the ceiling. He had no reason to carry around a charged Lichtregen, after all.
"I will leave this barrier up, Tsukabishi told him as they started to move back towards the ladder that led out. "When we come back down to train, I'll put up the second barrier to keep our attacks from interfering with each other."
"Thank you," Kaito told Tsukabishi, with a glance back at the shimmering dome that was visible in the distance. "This makes things much easier."
Tsukabishi nodded in acknowledgment and headed up, with Kaito following just behind.
The barrier would not allow Ishida to gain the same sort of strength that Kaito had earned when he reached this decision point, but perhaps it would be a greater strength. The sanrei glove had been a brittle, fake strength; a perfect final strike in everything that mattered, but this was not a situation where a final strike was warranted.
For one thing, he didn't intend to allow himself or his past self to die.
(*You'll probably need to release some reiatsu into the area,*) Ichigo said after a moment. (*You pulled most of the free reishi that you could touch, after all the training you've already had. Your past self isn't there yet.*)
Kaito nodded thoughtfully, having considered their differences in that regard. It had been a bit of a shock to realize how far ahead of his past self he was, but now he knew he needed to take into account the other's lesser experience.
He reached the top of the ladder just in time to hear the door of the shop slide open, and paused for a moment before he realized that Tsukabishi hadn't closed the trapdoor behind him. The idea that it might have been a normal human was shot out of the water the moment he heard Kurosaki's grumbled comment about dumb idiots, followed by Ishida's return shot of taking one to know one.
With an amused feeling in his chest, Kaito climbed the last few rungs and stood up, gaze moving from Kurosaki and back to Ishida, taking in their appearances and the weary tilts of their bodies. He could already feel a smirk starting to form at the further torture he was going to put his past self through, and did nothing to hide it away. The burning fury that had ignited in him last time was missing, leaving him looking forward to these next few days the same way he had looked forward to beating up Kurosaki whenever the teen had come to the shop for a spar.
Ishida had went to Kurosaki's aid, before Kurosaki fell.
He had agreed to training.
The boy wasn't hopeless.
"He says you're going to train him?" Kurosaki demanded, the moment he caught sight of Kaito.
Kaito smiled at Kurosaki, making the other fidget slightly. "You're going after her, aren't you?"
"Of course I am!"
"Then why should you be the only one trained?" Kaito asked with as much puzzlement as he could gather. "Unless you think you're good enough to take on an entire society of people like what you faced last night, on your own?"
"No!" Kurosaki yelped, shaking his head a bit wildly, "No, I don't believe that! I just don't want other people to risk their lives like that and—"
"And you thought you could decide for them?" Kaito gave Kurosaki his best Shiro-smile, making the other teen take a step back and raise his hands in denial. "Take away their options and leave them out of things? My, my, I had thought Ishida was the lone wolf I had to worry about."
Ishida, perhaps wisely, took two large steps to the side to separate himself from Kurosaki and ignored the sour look that Kurosaki shot him in reaction. "You said it, not me."
Kurosaki growled, crossed his arms over his chest, and tried to look intimidating. "That is not what I meant and you know it! I just don't want too many people involved in this, and there aren't that many I'd trust anyway—"
"What about, hmm, what were their names…" Kaito tilted his head up a bit, pretending to search for the names of Sado and Inoue. This version of himself had only met the two once, after all. "Ah, yes. Sado Yasutora and Inoue Orihime? Their powers—"
"No," Kurosaki declared firmly while glaring at Kaito. "They don't need to be involved in this."
"Mou, well, if you say so!" Kaito smiled brightly, internally laughing at the way it brought a tick to the corner of one of Kurosaki's eyes. He then beckoned for Ishida to descend the ladder. "I just thought you'd want them at least trained a bit, since their powers are already waking up."
"What?!"
"Oh, didn't you know?" Kaito widened his eyes a bit to project surprise, then smiled and shrugged. "All that time around you has made all those people I was introduced to just a bit sensitive, but those two… well, it wouldn't surprise me if a Hollow came after them and they snapped awake out of self-defense."
It was what had happened in his timeline, after all. That he had prevented it so far meant very little in the long run; Karakura was rife with Hollows and Hollow attacks, and it would take but a single moment of inattention to leave them either dead or empowered.
"Then that's what they'll do," Kurosaki growled. "You are not going to drag them into this mess, do you understand me?"
"Maa, maa, of course I do. I promise I will not drag them into anything," Kaito replied airily, before descending back down into the training room before Kurosaki could do anything more than sputter in confused protest.
"We're going to head inside that barrier over there," he told Ishida the moment he stepped off the ladder. "I'm going to be honing your precision at gathering reishi in the middle of combat."
Ishida gave him a suspicious look, but still followed his directions and headed towards the barrier in the distance. Once they reached it, the teen paused for a moment just outside of it, then passed through the barrier in one quick rush. Once through, he stopped dead in his tracks, a flicker of panic crossing his features that Kaito only just caught as he stepped through as well.
"I can't sense anything in here," Ishida informed him, eyes wide and hands trembling slightly at his side.
Kaito frowned a bit. Was his sensitivity really that heightened by everything he had gone through. Because there was reishi in the air that he could sense. Not enough for him to build even a third of a true Lichtregen up, but certainly enough to fight with.
"We'll work on that," Kaito informed Ishida firmly, as he started heading towards the center of the barrier area. Carefully, he increased his reiatsu output until he was leaving faint trails of power in his wake. He could tell the instant it crossed Ishidia's sensitivity, because the teen relaxed and his hands ceased trembling. Making note of that, Kaito reeling his power back in as firmly as he could; there was no way he could avoid spilling power while in combat, but he was getting to be a fair hand at keeping himself contained otherwise. "You've lived in this town all your life, with Kurosaki spilling power everywhere he went. I'm not surprised your senses are dulled by it all."
A second barrier went up around the first, enclosing them in another layer of protection.
"What's that for?" Ishida asked warily, as he stared at the barely visible box that had formed on the outside of the green barrier.
"It's a barrier to keep our training separate from theirs," Kaito told Ishida. "Kurosaki needs to regain his powers, and we will be training as archers. I would rather neither of our attempts interferes with the other."
Ishida nodded in understanding, then hesitantly raised his hand and summoned up his bow. It flickered once, before firming under Ishida's dark frown.
"Good, your will and your internal reiryoku can help you overcome reishi-poor areas," Kaito told Ishida, before forming his own bow and using a burst of shunpo to leap backwards, then another couple to climb atop a large boulder, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips. "I do hope you aren't attached to that outfit, because I doubt there'll be much left of it once I'm through with you."
Ishida squawked as the first flurry of arrows came straight at him, and attempted to dart away in a burst of hirenkyaku, only to tumble forward a few steps away.
"Will and focus!" Kaito called out in amusement.
Ishida snarled and spun, arrowing forming in a heartbeat and launching straight from his bow. "Doesn't help when there's no reishi to support me!"
"Trust me, there's plenty around!"
Ishida's only answer was another arrow, but Kaito easily shot that one out of the air as well. With a chuckle, he held his ground and decided to play sniper, much to Ishida's clear dismay.
It was child's play to continually snipe down Ishida's weak strikes, and his own return volleys left the boy with few options. Kaito kept pressing him, driving him from cover to cover, being careful about how much of his own personal power he used. If he wanted this to actually be a lesson in reishi gathering, he needed to keep things low. It meant he was relying upon just the reishi in the air, keeping his own personal reiatsu tucked as tightly away as he could.
It was clearly wearing on Ishida, the longer it went on. Even from his perch atop a rock, Kaito could see the stress and exhaustion that was building in his past self. Ishida's arrows were often shot wide, missing Kaito by so much that he didn't even need to bother shooting them down to keep from moving. On the other hand, the boy's hirenkyaku was going further and faster before Ishida ran out of power and stumbled to a halt.
A wild, pleased grin tugging at his lips, Kaito set himself to hunting his past self, all in the name of training. Oh, the things he did to help everything along!
"You… are cruel…" Ishida panted, doubled over with his hands on his knees and his shoulders heaving as his body attempted to regain its breath. Like Kaito had promised at the beginning, Ishida's clothes were tattered and worn, especially his shirt and cape, and much of the rest of the white cloth was stained with ribbons of crimson from various injuries.
Kaito smiled brightly, "Mou, Ishida-kun, you're the one who agreed to this!"
"And I… regret that… with all I… am."
"Splendid!" Kaito chirped like Urahara did, drawing a wince from the teen in front of him. "It means I'm doing something right, then!"
"So what are we doing now?" Ishida asked once he finally regained control of his breathing and had straightened up. He glanced up at the twin barriers still protecting them, then down at Kaito.
Kaito made a thoughtful noise, then shrugged his shoulders and started to make his way towards the far corner. "We'll stay within the barriers. Father told me that it will take three days to retrain Kurosaki-san, so I'd rather not draw Tsukabishi-san's attention away from that."
Ishida looked surprised, then thoughtful, but followed him willingly enough across the broken terrain. That level of trust surprised Kaito, given Ishida's previous experience with him and how little Kaito himself had been willing to trust others at this point in time, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Were you… being honest before? About Sado-san and Inoue-san?"
"About them being capable of joining us? Yes. They'll need to be properly awoken, but I know Sado-san is already at least half-way there," Kaito told Ishida with a nod, before pushing his way out of the inner barrier and into the small zone between the inner and outer barriers. Ishida followed him out and breathed an audible sigh of relief at the immediate flood of power that washed over his senses.
Kaito, curious as to whether he was right about something, headed towards where he remembered the healing spring being. To his pleasure, Tsukabishi had left it within the barrier, and Kaito didn't take more than a few moments to strip down and settle into the heated water. Even if it hadn't actually taken any injuries, it was still a pleasant experience. The warm water, the faint whisper of healing brushing against his body and, better yet, this time his spirits remained within his head.
He heard the cautious splash as Ishida followed him into the water, and smirked at the quick intake of breath as Ishida noticed the effect of the spring.
"It's a healing spring that Father made," Kaito told Ishida casually, as he stretched out and relaxed. "For those times when training takes its toll on us. Usually me, for now, but I hope to one day push him far enough that he needs to use this pool for more than just relaxation."
"Like you're doing right now?" Ishida asked dryly. He carefully splashed water across his injuries, then moved to wash his hair out. He'd taken more than one spill face-first into the dusty ground, and his hair was a dirty, sweaty mess as a result.
Kaito made a noise of agreement, tipping his head back and allowing his eyes to slide closed. It was so nice to have no reason besides relaxation to enjoy the hot spring, and it made him seriously consider coming down just for this on occasion. A hot bath was great, but this was somehow a step above even that.
"What… am I going to do for clothing?" Ishida asked awkwardly, as he sat back up and settled back to try and enjoy the warmth himself.
"Tsukabishi-san would have brought some over for both of us," Kaito answered the teen with an absent wave towards where he suspected their supplies had be placed. "Along with sleeping mats, food, and everything else we'll need to camp out here for three days."
Silence descended over the two of them, broken only by the gentle splashing of the water as they shifted. Kaito allowed himself to relax, pulling himself partially down into his mindscape and just letting the presence of his three spirits sooth him. Ichigo was content, at peace, pleased with how Kaito had handled the day. Zangetsu remained a stoic pillar of support, satisfied with being relied upon but not needed as a crutch. Even Shiro wasn't kicking up a fuss, secure in the knowledge that Kaito would need him soon enough, and that Aizen was soon to fall.
Finally, long after Kaito had lost track of time, he pulled himself back to full awareness and sat up, only to give a soft chuckle of amusement at the sight that greeted his eyes. Ishida had fallen asleep in the pool, head lolling back against a rock he had been using as a backrest, exhaustion clear in his expression. Kaito contemplated his past self for a moment, then quietly rose from the hot spring and grabbed a towel from a nearby stack in order to dry himself with.
Not wanting to wake the other teen, Kaito kept his movements quiet and steady as he moved over to where Yoruichi had once made him camp, finding everything set out much like he had expected. Two sleeping mats, several blankets, stacks of clothing — and boy, wouldn't Ishida twitch when he realized that Tsukabishi had likely raided the boy's own house for clothing — and both food and water aplenty.
Luckily, most of the food was the prepared sort that Kaito had watched Tsukabishi cooking earlier in the day. He didn't want to imagine having to cook out here. He could do simple things, so long as he had the supplies, but he'd never done anything akin to campfire cooking.
Instead, there was a collection of prepared foods set out underneath little barriers that Kaito was certain were either stasis or refrigeration. After a moment's contemplation, Kaito selected a pot of what looked to be stew, and reached through the little barrier to grab it. The barrier shattered the moment his hand touched the pot's handles, and Kaito carried it over to the hotplate that had been provided. Once he was sure the stew was still heated through, and that the hotplate was working, Kaito rose to head back to the pool.
He grabbed another towel off the pile as he passed and set it down nearby as he knelt next to the sleeping teen. Kaito gently shook the other's shoulder, chuckling a bit as Ishida yelped and sat upright sharply, looking around with a wild gaze for a moment before his current situation settled back in his mind.
"Maa, Ishida-kun, you fell asleep," Kaito told the other cheerfully, sitting back on his heels and proffering the towel he had collected. "Dinner's heating up, so you had best come eat something before you fall back asleep."
Ishida nodded, accepting the towel and exiting the hot spring while Kaito rose back to his feet and slowly meandered back towards the little camp. By the time Ishida trailed in after him, Kaito was already dishing up two bowls of stew. Though he didn't look up to watch the other, Kaito had to hide a smirk as he heard Ishida's movements freeze, likely at the sight of the clothing that Kaito had set out for him on one of the sleeping mats.
"These are mine."
"Oh? Did you expect to have to wear my clothing?" Kaito asked while turning around with a bowl in each hand. He placed them on the little table he had set up, followed by a couple of spoons and a few rolls that Tsukabishi had also provided them. "I didn't think you'd enjoy my tastes."
Ishida's sigh was followed by rustling cloth as the boy got dressed, and then he was settling onto a thin pillow in front of the low table, staring dubiously at the bowl of stew in front of him.
Kaito pouted, pulling up everything he remembered seeing Urahara doing whenever the man tried to act pitiful. "Mou, you're going to hurt my feelings, Ishida-kun. I promise you it's not poisoned."
The face Ishida made had Kaito chuckling again, but he otherwise ignored the other as he settled in to eat what he'd served for himself. Tsukabishi's cooking was amazing as always, even kept under stasis and reheated. Even better, it was filling and had enough in it to help restore Ishida's energy that he had burned during the afternoon.
He set his bowl aside after a second serving and stretched, content with allowing the silence to remain over them until Ishida was also finished with his multiple helpings. Kaito then nodded towards the second pot that he had filled with water and had heating over the hotplate while they ate. "If you could clean our dishes up, I'll deal with the remains of our meal."
Ishida didn't complain, just set to his task quickly and efficiently as Kaito sealed the leftovers in a container and went to rinse out the pot itself.
"Why are you doing this?"
Kaito blinked, pausing in his cleanup, and looked over at Ishida. The teen wasn't looking up at him, his gaze focused down on the bowls and spoons that he was supposed to be washing, but his movements were slow and absent-minded. "Doing what?"
"Helping me," Ishida clarified. He took a breath and finally lifted his head, staring at Kaito with an unreadable gaze. "The other day… you hated me. I felt it. If you had… if you had managed to kill me, your only regret would have been Kurosaki's hate."
Kaito met Ishida's stare with one of his own, wondering how best to approach this topic. He had thought it resolved already, but clearly there remained some doubts within Ishida's mind. "If you feel that way, then why did you accept my help?"
Ishida's lips thinned into a wary grimace. "Because you're strong. Because you offered. Because… because there was… something about you, last night. The way you reacted to Kurosaki there, the way you spoke…"
"I don't hate you," Kaito spoke into the silence that had fallen between them. He dumped the last of the water from the stew pot and set it aside, then rose to fill a teapot and set it up to boil. The simple actions of gathering teacups and preparing the tea helped to ground him, and the pleasant smell of the brew steeping helped him order his thoughts. "I hate… what you could become."
"I don't understand." Ishida set the cleaned dishes aside, and settled once more across from Kaito. He accepted a cup of tea, though didn't drink.
Kaito took a sip, then another, struggling to find the words to explain without revealing his biggest secret. "I see… much of myself in you. Specifically, in how I viewed the world. Mother was always on about how the Shinigami were to be feared and guarded against, and I accepted that as truth. They were next to useless, after all, but they were still powerful, and if they took offense at someone it was… never very pretty."
Ichigo and Zangetsu shifted within him, passing on their support to the lie he was weaving. Kaito appreciated it, appreciated them, and distantly wondered how he could have ever lived without the constant support and reinforcement from within.
"You need to be aware, since we're heading into Soul Society soon," Kaito continued. "The Shinigami have little to do with the outer Rukongai, and Hollow attacks are not precisely uncommon out there."
"So they're just as useless in their own realm as they are here."
Kaito nodded. "Yes. But remember what I said before; the vast majority are hopeless followers. Sheep who do little but follow the orders of their shepherd, and their Captains are mostly tangled up in bureaucracy and paperwork. That a Captain was free enough to retrieve Kuchiki is either a mark of who she is, or of that Captain taking a personal interest in her."
"She called him her brother a few times," Ishida offered after a moment's thought.
"Ah. I suppose that answers that," Kaito mused, as if this information was new to him. He then shrugged and took another sip of tea before pouring a bit more into his cup. "In any case. Before father's friend found me and brought me here, I was doing my best to survive. Mother finally fell to a Hollow when I was out hunting food for us, and I was… I came back to a ruined house and Hollow tracks everywhere. But not a single damn Shinigami. I hated them. I wanted to kill them."
"What stopped you?"
"A friend. He kept my attention on him, and away from charging blindly into trouble."
"The friend that died," Ishida spoke with confidence.
Kaito nodded in agreement, gaze focused over Ishida's shoulder and distant with thought. "It was a stupid bit of pride that saw him dead. Neither one of us fought as a team. It was always just trying to show each other up, a constant struggle for supremacy between us. He bit off more than he could chew, and I was too late to do anything but avenge his death. And even that saw me nearly die upon the beast's weapons, myself. If Yoruichi-san hadn't shown up in time, I likely would have died from either my injuries or the Shinigami that were coming to investigate the flares of reiatsu."
"After that… well, hate just seemed so… pointless." Kaito focused his gaze on Ishida, willing the teen to understand. While it was weeks after Ichigo's death when Kaito had decided that holding onto all his hate was doing nothing for him, that moment was still the turning point in everything he'd believed in. "There are still people I hate, people I will see dead if it's the last thing I do, but I can't afford to live by it anymore. And you… I looked at you. I heard your words. I saw myself and my friend, and I hated you."
Ishida shifted backwards at Kaito's curled lip and cold gaze, eyes wide and wary. He set his untouched tea down on the table, hand trembling enough that the liquid spilled over the cup's sides and splashed across the wood. "And… now?"
"You'll do," Kaito said, reeling back in his reiatsu and determinedly restraining it within his body once more. He hadn't meant to let it spill out, but thinking on his own past idiocies was apparently a sore point that he was going to need to work on. "You at least began to work with Kurosaki-san the other day, and you came to his aid before he had fallen, which is more than I ever really managed to do."
Ishida slowly relaxed, though he didn't reach for his tea. Silence settled between them once more, broken only by Kaito pouring himself more of the tea and setting the teapot down again.
Kaito watched Ishida carefully, wondering if he had driven the teen to truly fear him this time. But it didn't seem as if that was the case; Ishida seemed to be thoughtful, not fearful, especially now that Kaito had restrained himself. Deciding that some actual encouragement would do more to win the teen over than more silence, Kaito spoke up again, "You did well today. You visibly improved in the few hours we had available, and I suspect if you continue to improve like this you will be a match for many of the seated officers, and perhaps even a few of the Lieutenants."
"But not a Captain?" Ishida asked pointedly, jarred from his thoughts and apparently suspicious of anything Kaito had to say.
Kaito hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "Well, that depends on both you and them. Many will underestimate you because of your youth, others because you're an archer, still others because you're a human. If you get into combat with one, if you keep your head and don't give them any leeway to realize their mistakes, victory won't be out of your reach."
"But not assured."
"Nothing is assured," Kaito told Ishida with a wry twist of his lips. "Remember, Ishida-kun, you are discussing beating warriors who have been fighting for centuries, in some cases. Power is only a part of the solution."
He could see the way Ishida was turning Kaito's words over in his mind, likely comparing them to what he had experienced while facing Kuchiki-taicho and Abarai.
(*What are you trying to get him to do?*) Ichigo asked curiously, as they waited in silence for… something to happen.
(*To think,*) Kaito replied simply, taking another sip of his tea and allowing the silence to stretch, not pushing his past self any more than he already had. (*Urahara has been trying to correct my own mistakes. I realize this now. It's made me think back on everything I've done, that we've done, and, well… I always thought myself so very clever, but now…*)
Ichigo made a thoughtful sound, clearly pausing to think before he answered. And that, too, was a mark of how far they'd changed together. With his new perspective on the world, Kaito was coming to realize that neither of them were master tacticians, especially compared to people like Urahara. Their victories had come from luck and the sheer unpredictability of untrained beginners with more guts than sense. But as soon as people got used to their habits and thought processes, they became predictable.
(*You've been trying to correct that for both of our past selves,*) Ichigo spoke slowly, working through his thoughts as he did. (*First working with my past self, and then this with your own…*)
Kaito nodded shallowly, then drained the last of his tea from his cup and set it down with a gentle clink. He rose from his seat and inclined his head to Ishida. "Think on it, but don't stay up all night. Tomorrow will be a full day."
He didn't get an answer, not that he expected one, and moved away to his sleeping mat to settle down for rest. Whether or not his past self was intelligent and went to sleep, there would still be training tomorrow.
Kaito had to shake Ishida awake the next morning, and gave the sleepy teen an amused smile at the way he glowered and tried to glare and just ended up looking like he was pouting.
"I warned you to sleep!" Kaito chirped, as he shoved an opened energy bar into Ishida's hand, followed by a bag containing several more and a couple canteens of water. "We're going to be training all day today, so these will help you keep your energy up."
"How can you be so cheerful," Ishida grumbled while reluctantly following Kaito back towards the inner barrier. He took a bite of the bar in his hand and his face instantly screwed up into an expression of disgust as he forced himself to swallow it. "Or eat these things! Augh, what the hell's even in this, it's disgusting!"
"Unlike someone, I actually got a full night's sleep!" Kaito declared with a grin. He motioned for Ishida to remain on the outside for a moment, then stepped through himself in order to gather up the reishi that had pooled during their fight yesterday and the little that had drifted in overnight. "As for the bar, just take little bites and swallow it quickly."
"I don't know how this counts as food," Ishida muttered with a baleful glare at the thing in his hand. He did, however, follow Kaito's instructions to take smaller bites. "It's too sweet, and so sticky."
Kaito laughed at his past self's reaction; misery shared and all that tripe, after all! Still, he needed to focus on his actual goal, instead of just enjoying Ishida's pain. He reached as far as he could into the enclosed area, gathering every scrap of reishi that he could reach and compacting it into a quiver along his back. As the ambient levels balanced themselves out, Kaito kept drawing in as much as he could, until it reached a level lower than he had started with the day before. He would need to release some power into the air when Ishida entered, of course, but it was better to start as low as possible in order to make Ishida struggle for it.
Flushing his own power through the quiver to make it his, Kaito turned and stepped back through the barrier. A moment's thought and his bow was in his hand, all that power concentrated into a single massive strike fired straight up at the barrier above them. It impacted and shattered like a firework, but didn't even make the barrier waver; Tsukabishi's skill shining through despite how inoffensive the man often looked.
Ishida, too, was staring up at the barrier they were inside, eyes clouded with tiredness and circling thoughts that had clearly not left the teen alone all night.
"Maa, are you going to stare at the sky all day?" Kaito asked curiously, pausing halfway through the shimmering curtain of light. "Or do you want to get stronger?"
Ishida shook his head, clearly trying to dispel his circling thoughts, and stalked through the barrier with his shoulders pulled back and his back straight. Even the hitch in his step and the trembling of his hands was less than the day before once he was faced with the 'null zone' that Kaito had created. "Let's get on with this, then."
Kaito gave the teen a wolfish grin, releasing a bit of reiatsu into the air for Ishida to work with, and said, "Then run, little rabbit. Before I catch you yet again."
The look Ishida shot him was all fury and injured pride, but something in Kaito's expression had him backing away and darting off as quickly as he could make himself go.
(*Please stop channeling Shiro,*) Ichigo murmured. (*You're really frightening like that…*)
Kaito just laughed, adjusted his Quincy bow, and casually strolled off into the training ground. Maybe Ishida would actually be able to attack him today. That would be exciting!
Kaito swayed to the side, letting Ishida's arrows sail harmlessly past him. Before the teen could attempt to manipulate their path, Kaito reached out and deconstructed the attack to use the reishi against Ishida in turn. After all, his past self had proven basic mastery at path manipulation, so now he needed to realize that he couldn't always rely on that.
At least his hope had proven true. Ishida was capable of striking back in a meaningful way today, Kaito mused, as another volley of arrows sailed towards him. They were all relatively weak, thanks to the low amount of reishi in the air, but the fact that Ishida was becoming capable enough to send six at him instead of a single badly aimed arrow spoke volumes about the teen's improvement.
Pleased with the progress the other was making, Kaito shot those arrows down, sent another small barrage towards the teen, and surreptitiously siphoned some of the free reishi out of the air and into the slowly forming quiver across his back. Kaito was being sure not to let Ishida see it, so the other didn't realize what was going on, and the added concentration that Kaito needed to spend to keep it all contained was a benefit to him.
Below him, Ishida stumbled, fumbled for the reishi that had suddenly slipped from his grasp again, then firmed up his resolve and grabbed at it. The return attack was weaker, only three arrows instead of six, but the arrows were stable and perhaps a bit more sturdily formed than the previous barrage.
Kaito smirked, deconstructed Ishida's attack before it reached him, pulled in a bit more reishi from the air around him, and let loose a barrage that had Ishida racing for cover. The teen's steps were enhanced with hirenkyaku, even if each individual platform didn't take him very far. It was incredible the way his past self was adapting and advancing, and Kaito was more than pleased with the progress.
Oh, and also with the way Ishida yelped as Kaito's final arrow slammed into the ground right in front of him, sending the teen spilling into a tumble across the dusty ground. That was priceless.
Kaito decided to call an end to the day's training when Ishida collapsed and didn't even try to get back up. It had been hours upon hours of relentless work, after all, and Kaito wasn't quite so cruel as to demand Ishida get back up and keep on going. So instead he slung his bow across his back, hopped off his perch, and strolled over to where Ishida was laying in the dust.
"Oh dear, do you need some help?" Kaito asked with Urahara's obnoxiously cheerful tone, even as he extended his hand to the panting, exhausted teen.
"I. Hate. You," Ishida growled, though he didn't reject the offered hand and used it to help him stumble ungracefully to his feet. "How?! How do you do it?"
"Focus—"
"And will, I know, you keep saying that!" Ishida huffed in frustration and ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair, leaving smears of blood and dirt behind as he did. He was a mess, and yet another of his changes of clothes were good for little more than rags at this point. "But I keep trying and I just can't!"
Kaito just smirked at his past self and the teen's frustration, then turned to walk towards the barrier, purposely revealing the quiver of reishi that he had been collecting slowly all day. Ishida's squawk of outraged shock was music to Kaito's ears.
"You— you!"
Kaito laughed, moved through the barrier, and fired off the reishi. "Me indeed. There's only as much reishi inside there as there was when you first walked into it this morning."
Ishida clearly hadn't expected that, and froze before he crossed, turning back to stare at the training area with wide eyes.
"And you can sense it now, can't you?" Kaito spoke cheerfully. "You kept fumbling every time I managed to lower it a bit below your threshold, but you sprung back quite handily each time!"
Ishida made a frustrated, wounded noise, before spinning back towards him and lunging, hands outstretched and fingers clawed. "You bastard!"
"Guilty as charged!" Kaito chirped, while stepping out of the way of Ishida's furious lunge. He kept moving away as the teen dredged up the last remnants of his energy in an admirable attempt to murder him. "Mother and father were certainly not married when I was born!"
"You could have told me!"
"Mou, Ishida-kun, I did tell you about my parents!"
"Not what I meant!" Ishida cried in fury, making yet another lunge at Kaito.
Kaito reached out and casually trapped the exhausted teen's wrists in a strong grip, tugging the other around until Ishida was off-balance and unable to free himself. Ishida struggled for a moment, before giving up and going limp in Kaito's grasp, forcing Kaito to fumble for a moment to catch the other before his dead-weight dragged both of them into a heap on the ground.
"Look," Kaito told Ishida firmly, as he half-carried, half-dragged the other back to the healing spring. "Would you have believed yourself capable of keeping up if I told you what I was going to do before I did it?"
Ishida considered this for a moment, then reluctantly shook his head.
"Exactly. So I let you discover for yourself that you can. Now tell me, how does it feel being out here?"
"Like… like I'm swimming in power," Ishida reluctantly admitted. "And… I can sense you? Are you not hiding yourself anymore?"
"I'm holding my reiatsu in just as much as I was inside there. I can't actually pull it in any further; I have far too much power for true stealth at my age."
Ishida frowned in thought, as he settled on the edge of the healing spring and painfully pulled his clothing off. He then slowly slid down into the spring itself, giving a sigh of relief at the warmth and healing that promptly spread through him. "That… doesn't make sense though. I could barely sense you in an area that had less reiatsu than this, but out here I can?"
"You're not actually sensing my reiatsu output," Kaito told the teen firmly. He set the last of his clothing aside and dropped into the water across from the other, letting his eyes slide closed as he relaxed. "There's different types of sensing, and each is useful in different situations."
Sensing that he had caught Ishida's attention even through the teen's exhaustion, Kaito began to explain what he had recently discovered thanks to Yoruichi and Urahara. "The type of sensing you're thinking about, and which almost everyone is capable of as soon as they're aware of the reiatsu of others, is simple reiatsu sensing."
Kaito relaxed his grip on his powers just a bit, allowing his reiatsu to rise and spill around them. He cracked an eye open and watched Ishida, immediately reeling his power back in the moment he saw comprehension flicker across the teen's face. "That sense is very useful, and deserves to be trained up. You can learn a lot about your opponent through their released reiatsu."
"I didn't notice before," Ishida murmured, "But your reiatsu doesn't feel entirely Shinigami."
"No, it doesn't," Kaito agreed with a grimace and a shrug. "Very few will notice, though, and you're likely only noticing it because you know I'm not pure Shinigami and because I have been fighting as a Quincy all day. Father's made me a pendant that obfuscates the Quincy feel of my power, just in case another Shinigami who was sensitive shows up."
Kaito grimaced a bit as he felt Ishida's gaze land on the medallion resting against Kaito's sternum, and raised a hand almost protectively over it before forcing himself to relax again. "Don't spread that around."
"I won't," Ishida agreed solemnly.
"Good. Well, to continue. If you get good enough, you can start to guess at the strengths of a fighter based on the feel of their reiatsu," Kaito continued. "Kuchiki-san's reiatsu, the few times I actually felt it, felt cold. So I suspect her Zanpakutou has some ice powers to it. Of course, not everyone is going to be that easy to notice or deduce."
Ishida nodded thoughtfully, and asked, "And the older they are, the harder it will be to guess, won't it?"
"Exactly. So you can't rely on that to give you information. If it comes, good, if it doesn't, just fight mindfully," Kaito told Ishida. When it seemed that Ishida had absorbed what he was saying, Kaito continued, "Now, the other type of sensing you were picking up on is less about my personal reiatsu and more about how I affect the reishi around me."
"Like ripples in water," Ishida spoke up almost instantly, understanding flaring in his eyes. "That's why I couldn't sense you very well in the training area!"
"Precisely, very good!" Kaito praised the teen, repressing a grin at the sight of Ishida's brief flash of confused happiness. He'd realized exactly how much he liked to hear honest praise when Yoruichi and Urahara had begun to give it, and suspected that the two were using it to bind him closer to them. But even with that knowledge, he couldn't help but like it, and didn't even want to try to ignore it. Those two, and especially his father, had done more for him in the past few weeks than most adults had done in his entire life.
And if he turned that knowledge around and used it on his past self, what was the harm? Especially if it bound the reclusive teen closer to their side, and made him more likely to listen when one of them spoke?
"Just like ripples in water, what you're sensing right now is the 'ripples' that result from my movements through the reishi. You're starting to sense that consciously now because I've been training you in such a reishi poor zone," Kaito continued.
Ishida frowned a bit, and ventured, "So I've been sensing this… unconsciously, then?"
"Yes. No matter what you piece together about high speed combat after the combat is over, most of the action is actually too fast for your eyes to register. Rather, you're taking in information through both reishi and reiatsu sensing, and your brain is interpreting that as vision. Father says that there are a few rare people that interpret it as other things, like sound, or touch, or even smell, but the vast majority seem to default to the sense of sight." Kaito could believe the first two, especially in the case of a blind person, but the idea of registering reishi or reiatsu as a smell just felt like something Urahara had come up with to tease him about. Surely it wasn't true.
"So we think we've seen something, but we've actually just sensed it through the reishi?"
"Correct. Some people never realize what they're actually sensing, and just improve haphazardly because of that." Kaito and Ichigo had both improved that way, scrambling to push themselves higher, better, more capable of standing up to the monsters they kept facing, and never entirely understanding what they were trying to grasp. It had made him so furious when Yoruichi had first explained what she wanted him to do, because no one had ever told him or Ichigo about it. Perhaps there had been no time, or perhaps the other Urahara had simply assumed that Ichigo knew about it, but it had left both of them scrambling in the dark.
"Now, another thing I want to bring up. I want you to be very careful about how you use your powers out here," Kaito told Ishida after a moment to let Ishida digest their previous conversation. "I've been training you on sensing and how to gather reishi no matter how little is around. Take a look at what that's done for you; form your bow and fire an arrow at the barrier above us."
Ishida frowned at him, then did as asked. His bow appeared in a brilliant flash of light, reishi wisps bleeding off of the giant thing, and a huge arrow formed and shot straight up moments later. Ishida stared in surprise at his bow, then carefully released it and shook out his singed fingers.
"And that's why I want you to be careful," Kaito said. "You're still grabbing at the reishi as if there's not much around you, without taking into account the greater density. Until you manage to relearn regulation, you're just going to overpower everything you try."
Ishida took a deep breath, nodded once, and lowered his hands into the healing water. "I understand."
"Good." Kaito rose from the spring and grabbed a towel. "Stay here and relax a bit. I'll get dinner heating up and the table set. And, Ishida-kun? We've still got plenty of time. The three days was just for Kurosaki-san to regain his powers. We'll continue training for several days after that point."
He didn't wait to see Ishida's reaction to that, just moved off back to their camp. Kaito didn't dare hope that Kurosaki was doing better than Ichigo had in regaining his powers, but knew it would still be an anxious several days as the past version of his best friend went through hell, all in the name of a friend.
Well this chapter had been ready and almost edited completely, and then Tales of Berseria came out and I was eaten. Soooo... sorry about that!
Life's been a bit sketchy lately, all things being equal. I still don't have another job to replace the part time thing I had, but at least my right hand is pretty much healed up. It's not a horrible event, seeing as my income wasn't important for our living situation, but it's still something, y'know?
In other news, I've got a tumblr up now, if anyone wants to take a look. The address is akaluan tumblr com and add periods where appropriate. It's pretty sparse at the moment and I need to edit the layout some =P But I'll be working on that over this next week and try to get something posted at least once a week there. Also! That's where I'll let people know if any more chapters will be late (or early).
Til next time!