Chapter 23 version 5

1995

Tanya let out an annoyed and exhausted sigh. She had been trying to file the necessary paperwork with Kenpachi Zaraki for the last few weeks to finally get her transfer orders. She'd already done all the legwork with the 10th Division, and they were willing to take her on and give her a nice little officer position; However, all attempts to get the official sign off from her current division's Captain has been less than successful.

Tanya was afraid that she knew why Zaraki wanted her to hand-deliver her paperwork, the bloodthirsty man likely wanted her to fight him for her transfer. Considering his previous behaviour it made a terrifying amount of sense.

Captain Zaraki had a record of fighting strong people and had gone out of his way to foster her in a way that would force her to grow stronger. No doubt, this had all been part of his master plan to one day fight her, although exactly when the Captain's plan had been set into motion was still unclear..

Nervously tapping her fingers on the desk, she looked at the paperwork before her as she tried to figure out how to handle this. Of course, the moment she started to consider possible solutions, a certain sword decided that was an invitation to weigh in on the situation.

In a blink of an eye, the world flipped from her office in the 11th Division to her inner world, with a bright and shiny blue sky stretching over the mismatched Imperial and Japanese architecture. Tasha sat across a table from her, dressed in her customary red dress, no doubt chosen purely to aggravate Tanya just a little bit more during their conversations, sipping at what Tanya assumed was a cup of coffee.

Setting the cup down Tasha bluntly stated her solution "Just fight him already. Sure, he's a mass of spiritual energy that can instantly knock out most people but he's also not going to kill you. Probably."

"That 'probably' is the concerning part of your statement," Tanya responded. "He already accidentally killed the last Captain with a punch - this is not a man you fight and expect to come out untouched and singing in the rain."

"True but on the other hand, remember that old thing you learned all the way back when we first arrived? The harder you fight, the faster your powers grow." Tasha replied with a teasing smile.

"I don't want my abilities to grow any further in the public eye. I want to maintain my current status, fighting Captain Zaraki will be a public affair and only create more problems for me to deal with." Tanya pointed out

"Well, if you're that worried about it, you could always throw the fight." The sword's tone of voice implying that she already knew that was not an option.

Tanya wryly chuckled at that. "Then he would just deny my application on the grounds that I didn't give him a good fight and you know that just as well as I do."

"True, but two near-death fights would probably significantly increase your abilities."

"You're just hungry for a fight, like some kind of adrenaline addict!"

"And so are you."

"Preposterous."

"Tanya, I am quite literally part of your soul. We've had this conversation before: Deep down, you want to try and win. Sure you know the odds, you know you'll lose and that's why you want to try and find a way around it. But don't you see that there's no reason to avoid the fight? As long as you're careful to not let him kill you, you can just go home to Visha stronger than you went into the fight, which would make the next time you have to fight something powerful less likely to kill you."

"Let's say you're right and I admit that I would be interested in seeing if I could win." Tanya grudgingly allowed "Are there actually any benefits that fighting him would bring to make the near-death experience worth it? "

"Well, on one hand, you've begun to slightly stagnate again. You'll probably make it to Fourth Seat someday, but the 3rd and 5th aren't going to make that particularly easy. You'll be with Visha at least but we both know that you've chosen a terrible way of going about your relationship with her.

"What was it you decided again? Oh yes, 'Officers should not be in a relationship within the same division' and you're mindlessly stubborn enough that you won't break that, and I do feel like I should stress it again, self-imposed rule. Oh, you do have such a delightful way of trapping yourself in your own internal logic."

"So yes, I would say it's worth it, because beyond the danger lie the unknown and your desires. So, what will it be Tanya? Will you hunker down in the ground, unmoving and stationary, letting what you desire to slip further away in a hole of your own making, or will you let yourself fly?"

Tanya sat there for a moment, her anger at the situation and irritation threatening to overtake her"What's the point of you babbling your poetic bullshit? " As she spoke, Tanya reached over and stole Tasha's cup, quickly downed the remnants of the coffee inside, and held out her right hand towards the sword spirit for a handshake. "All right, fine. Let's do this. But if I lose an arm, you're going to have to figure out how to get me a new one. "

With a chuckle of amusement, Tasha grabbed the proffered arm and shook. "Oh darling, It would be my pleasure too." In another blink, Tanya was back in her office. Somehow, her sword was now in the same hand that she'd extended to Tasha, wisps of silvery spirit energy slowly flaking off in lessening amounts.

"How does that even work?'' Tanya muttered to herself, slightly confused and a bit annoyed at her cagy sword as she fastened it back in its proper place on the side of her belt.

Placing her cap on her head, Tanya fixed the Silver Wings Assault Badge to her uniform before grabbing the almost-completed transfer paperwork and heading out of her office.

Moving with purpose she quickly made her way down the hall to the 11th Division Captain's office. Admittedly the designated office space really was more of an extension of his living area since Kenpachi didn't do much if any paperwork there and it connected directly to the personal apartment of his station in the 11th Division.

Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, Tanya knocked on the battered office door.

"Come in~" came the sing-song voice of a certain pink-haired demon child.

Cracking her neck and taking one last deep breath, Tanya opened the door and quickly walked in before she could change her mind, noticing that Yachiru was sitting at a miniature desk next to where Kenpachi was sprawled over his supposed desk, his massive legs draped across it.

Purposefully, Tanya walked forward, and placed the paperwork on his desk beside his legs.

"Now what have we got here?" Her Captain rumbled, picking up the paperwork and handing it to Yachiru.

"Kenpachi Zaraki, I would like to transfer to the 10th Division." Tanya calmly replied.

Nodding his understanding, Zaraki gave a cursory look at the paperwork. "Well, see, I could do that or…"

"I am willing to fight you to get this transfer." Tanya interrupted, not wanting to mince words or waste time dancing around what the Captain obviously wanted.

"Never mind! Guess you already know what I need. How long are you gonna need to prepare?" the Captain replied, now donning a smile brimming with predatory interest.

"No time at all, I'm ready now." Tanya shot back, the sooner she started, the sooner it would all be over.

Zaraki chuckled appreciatively, then looking over at Yachiru, said "Go prep the stadium. This is going to be fun."

Looking back to Tanya, the gargantuan captain continued. "Alright, we going til the other fighter passes out?" Zaraki's voice had begun to grow more husky with controlled emotion as he offered his terms.

"No." Going until one of them passed out would horribly favor Kenpachi. Tanya had decided it would be better to go for terms that favored a shorter, more contained fight "First to three injuries loses." She offered her counter-proposal, fighting to maintain her calm.

Kenpachi nodded, his wolfish smile growing a few teeth wider. "Sounds like fun. I'll see ya at the stadium."

Tanya shook her head with irritation when she realized how many people had dropped everything to show up at the arena the moment they'd heard she'd agreed to fight the Captain. This fight was such a waste of their productive time but here they were nonetheless, bringing in drinks and snacks to enjoy as they goofed off to watch the fight and her inevitable asskicking courtesy of Kenpachi.

At least someone with a brain had realized there was a high chance that she might end up maimed, because the Captain of the 4th had apparently decided to show up and had brought along some of her nurses.

Surprisingly, she also saw Grantz there with them, one arm around a nurse, seemingly in the process of hitting on her or otherwise engaged in deep conversation. Her former comrade had somehow turned her imminent beating into a bloody pulp into an impromptu dating opportunity.

On one hand, Tanya was proud that Grantz was working on expanding his social circle and most likely developing connections that would help him progress his career; on the other, she wondered if this was some sort of payback for the training camp incident, when she had to revive him via a swift kick to the back.

"I highly doubt it. " Tasha whispered in her ear.

Sighing, Tanya returned her attention to the problem at hand. Kenpachi was smiling uncomfortably widely as he practiced a few one-handed swings with his sword, a ridiculously long blade in her opinion but being the giant of a man he was, Kenpachi made the longsword look reasonable in his meaty paw. "Feel free to go all out Tanya! I can take it!" He called out, his voice sounding awfully cheery.

"Of course he can take it," Tanya muttered, feeling somewhat intimidated just by being so close to the spiritual pressure waves coming off of him. Normally, she, like everyone else she assumed, could just ignore the sense of pressure, but now he was stoked up and in a fighting mood, which turned the usual sensation of pressure into an acute feeling of weight.

Taking a deep breath to release some of the tension, Tanya cheerfully responded "Are you sure, sir? I wouldn't want to accidentally cause any major damage to the facility."

Kenpachi laughed at that, "Kid, ever since I learned that you could hear the bells in my hair, I've had Yachiru put aside a bit of our budget to help rebuild this place after our fight."

"...What?" Tanya asked, slightly confused by this nonsensical revelation.

Pointing to one of the many bells hanging from his hair with his free hand, Zaraki explained"The day I came to the Academy all those years ago, Yachiru noted that you were looking around trying to spot where a sound was coming from. That sound, of course, was these bells, which can only be heard by people with spiritual energy concentrated enough that they would be an interesting fight."

"Since that day, I've just been waiting for an opportunity to fight you. I figured you being a bit new to sword fighting and all that fighting you right out of the Academy wouldn't be fair or fun, but after 10 years in a Division devoted to combat," He gave the most unnatural grin Tanya had ever seen. "Well, this is gonna be a good fight."

Tanya's jaw has dropped at some point during Zaraki's rant The man was clearly insane, a living representation of the 11th Division's bloodlust for fighting. And here she was having agreed to give him exactly what he wanted, a one-on-one fight. Even worse the maniac had apparently been biding his time for over ten years for this. If she tried to throw this fight, or devoted anything less than her full capacity, the madman might actually try and kill her for her offense.

"I mean, was there ever another option?" Tasha's voice came tinged with what Tanya could only identify as excitement. Ignoring her similarly deranged sword Tanya took another deep breath of air, before finally replying to the armed lunatic in front of her.

"Yes, this will be a fun fight. Let's remember not to kill each other; the paperwork from that would be horrendous."

Zaraki threw his head back and laughed uproariously. Tanya, though amused by this absurd situation as well, was more focused on trying to calm her nerves.

"Well then, let us begin," Tanya said, before holding her sword in front of her.

"Entfessel die Gewalt des Krieges, Shirubātitania*."

With a flash of silver light, her sword transformed, the handle thickening and growing down until it was a 4-foot wooden pole. The silver dragon crawling up the handle had extended with the haft, dividing into a pair of silver dragons wrapped criss-cross around the pole before meeting at the pommel, which itself had enlarged to form a mace-like counterbalance.

The three-foot blade of her saber remained relatively unchanged, except for a strange hook-like protrusion sprouting out of the spine of the saber. In all, the head looked like a fusion between a Japanese naginata and a German billhook. The guard of the blade was now offset; the cross-guard that protected the back of the blade was now offset, curving so it didn't interfere with the hook.

Immediately upon being summoned, tiny silver flakes began to fall from the blade and pole, a passive generation ability that, while useful, wouldn't be fast enough for what she needed right now. Pulling out her sword's sheath, Tanya smashed it onto the blade of her zanpakuto, causing the sheath to shatter into more of the dusty silver flakes.

Said flakes then flew through the air on unseen currents of spiritual energy to form a sort of silvery cloak over Tanya's shoulders that grew until it reached her mid-back. From prior experience and practice, she knew it could reach all the way down to her ankles if she had enough time and didn't use the silver particles too aggressively, but she doubted she would have that luxury today, not versus Zaraki.

"Very pretty and neat, and yadda yadda. Anything else you need to activate?" Zaraki said with a hungry chuckle.

"Actually, yes." Tanya calmly replied, activating her mental enhancement spell as her eyes began to glow a familiar blue. It had been a slight joy to find out that using her old spells was much easier with Shikai, she believed some of the ease came from Tasha helping her out by handling the necessary concentration and calculations the complex spells required.

She theorized that the soul-bound blade was replicating some of the abilities of her old computation orb, allowing her to process more spells simultaneously than she could have without the aid of herShikaii, two minds fulfilling the purpose of two 'cores'.

"Ya ready now?" the Captain of the 11th said, his blade resting across the back of his right shoulder behind his head in a position of affected boredom.

Taking a defensive posture, Tanya signaled her readiness Without further fanfare, Zaraki charged her, chopping his blade down at her from the right. Thankfully, though the Captain was absurdly strong, Tanya found that she could keep up with his speed and was able to dodge underneath her opponent's first strike before slashing back at his exposed left side.

Her strike sadly didn't connect and it seemed to slow down the closer it got to his body as the spiritual pressure pouring off Zaraki acted like an ablative shield of molasses, gumming down her blade and throwing off her timing.

Now that she knew a normal strike had no chance of hitting him, Tanya lept back and brought up a shield, just in time to stop another mad chopping from the Captain. Despite his blade being unpowered by anything as far as she could see, he nearly cut all the way through the blue spectral shield.

"I've been wondering if I could do that!" Zaraki said, stepping back and swinging his blade down again, cutting the rest of the way through the shield but giving Tanya ample opportunity to retreat.

Taking a moment to consider the situation, Tanya frantically tried to figure out how she was going to even get so much as a single strike on him. After a moment, another thought occurred to her, if she could get even a single strike on him, even if it was just a shallow wound, that might be enough to earn her a higher rank in her new division, something that seeing as most divisions didn't have a similarly easy vertical mobility assurance, would certainly be useful in the honor-fight based structure of her new adoptive society.

Besides the potential incentive itself, the thought gave her a goal to focus on, a goal that she could conceivably accomplish to focus on would make this fight slightly more bearable for her.

With measured steps, the Captain of the 11th advanced ever closer to her position, slowly cutting her time to think down till finally, an idea presented itself in the nick of time. Pointing her Shirubātitania at the Captain she quick chanted "Hadō #31. Shakkahō" and sent a red blast of fiery energy exploding from the hole in the vestigial sword guard that had once served as an attachment point to her rifle barrel.

The blast of red energy would have hit Kenpachi squarely, if he hadn't slashed it in half causing it to explode prematurely, but that was what Tanya had hoped he would do, as she had followed close behind the red sphere and charged forward hoping to catch him out of position.

Both of her hands tightly grasped the bladed polearm and she slashed into the Captain's side with all of her strength, applying a dense mage blade along the cutting edge of Shirubātitania to increase the cutting capacity and hopefully penetrate the dense reiatsu surrounding Zaraki.

The blade sliced through the molasses-like spiritual pressure like a hot knife through butter and cut deeply into the Captain's side. Tanya smiled as she realized she had already achieved her personal goal… And then looked up and saw the Captain looking down at her, completely unfazed, with a smile that, though she didn't know it, was a mirror of her own. "Like I said, this is gonna be a fun fight."

Tanya tried to dodge back but Zaraki grabbed onto the blade of the polearm before she could withdraw it and swung his sword down towards her. She raised a shield in response, but the Captain's sword immediately slashed through it and through the next one and the next all the same upon finally completely shattering her fourth shield layer. Thankfully, Tanya had tricks other than her shields up her sleeve nowadays. She'd learned a thing or two in the last decade.

The cloak of silvery flakes flowed with the direction of her spiritual energy and flew up to block the incoming zanpakuto. There wasn't enough substance to the cloak to prevent the blade from cutting into her shoulder, but the cloak stopped it from going too deep.

The "cloak" structure hardened, becoming more metal than cloth as she infused it with her will and reiatsu before forcing the blade out of her shoulder, allowing Tanya to skip back, out of the Captain's reach. Immediately, some of the silver flakes broke off from the cloak and began to seal up the wound like a bandage, expending their energy to provide first aid, prioritizing any issue that kept her from continuing the fight.

"Huh. Didn't know your cloak did that," Zaraki noted, looking at the tiny silvery plates that hung from the cloak with appreciation, even as they dissipated back into the almost formless flake-like structure. "Is that a new thing you've been working on, or have you been holding out on your fights with Madarame?"

"A little of column a, and a bit of column 's always good to have a little trick up your sleeve in case you make a mistake, like I just did." Tanya grunted, the analgesic formula already aiding her in ignoring the pain and keeping it out of her voice.

Looking at Kenpachi's wound, Tanya could already see the flakes Shirubātitania had left behind in the wound starting to glow as they drained spiritual energy from him. Of course, by the look on his face and the fact that the pressure was not lessening one bit, she doubted her flakes would be able to collect enough energy from her target to be particularly useful in that capacity today.

Taking a deep breath, Tanya ground the pommel of the spear into the dirt of the arena's floor and braced it with her right hand. Checking the cloak for a moment, she quickly confirmed that she was already down to a quarter of the flakes she'd had at the beginning of the fight. She had already used up more than she had expected, but then again such things were to be expected, she was fighting Kenpachi himself tonight after all. Turning back to the Captain of the 11th, Tanya recentered herself and lowered her center of gravity, dropping into a defensive position.

"Ready for round 2, Tanya?" Zaraki bellowed with a laugh as he swung his blade through the air, sending her still-warm blood splashing back towards her.

"Bring it on you tone deaf carillon!" Tanya called back a bit of her repressed anger at the situation and her bubbling up before she could properly control it. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the Captain immediately charged at her again, his blade brutishly striking down again from over his head. If Tanya hadn't managed to bring Shirubātitania up in time and caught Zaraki's blade between the back of her saber blade and the billhook, the Captain might have cleaved her in two, she realized.

Laughing at the absurdity of it all, Tanya suddenly realized that the Captain truly didn't know how to hold back and might actually seriously hurt her, entirely by accident. She quickly pumped up the physical enhancements strengthening her arms and tried to force the oversized blade back, hoping to press her advantage and get another cut on him. However, the titanic Captain simply applied a second hand to the weapon before abruptly stepping back and slashing down again, this time cutting the billhook right off the end of her blade. The hook disintegrating into more of the silver flakes as hit the ground between them

The sword slashed down past the guard and grazed the side of Tanya's head and her cheek, splitting her face open. That was much too close, and Tanya took a step back to disengage, allowing more of the flakes to detach from the cloak and try and seal up her wound. Head wounds being what they were, there was already a profuse amount of blood pouring down her face and neck.

"Well, that was unexpected" Tanya commented as she wiped the blood off her face with a quick movement of her shoulder.

Zaraki, for his part, looked rather disappointed about his own success. Which annoyed Tanya just a bit. The crazed lunatic had just after all, nearly cut her face off and yet he just looked annoyed that he'd been able to cut her blade in half. That really said a lot about her life expectancy if she stayed in this division.

"Yeah, your Reiryoku needs a bit of honing, I think, but this was a good fight. Think you'd be interested in doing this again once you're out of the division?" Zaraki asked, a note of hope clear in his voice.

Tanya shook her head. "I would rather not, but who knows what will happen?" she said, more to throw a sop to his hunger for a fight rather than any real agreement to put her life on the line again.

"Too bad. Something tells me the rematch woulda been worth it. Anyway, I think it's about time to put an end to this one.'' The eyepatch-wearing Captain said, taking several slow steps towards her.

"Yeah, this has gone on a bit too long," Tanya replied, sighing as she pointed her damaged Shirubātitania at the oncoming captain once more. The man was seemingly invulnerable, so now was as good a time as any to try something that might work, or might just explode in her face. Either way, whatever happened, it would be an impressive showstopper, and would hopefully temporarily appease the man's hunger for a fight.

Tanya quickly raised her polearm and spat out her incantation. "Bakudō #61. Rikujōkōrō!" Six beams of light appeared around Zaraki, stopping him in his tracks, although she could already feel the bonds beginning to break. She had little time, so she forced down the bile rising in her gut and got to work on the last arrow in her quiver.

"Ye Lord!" She hated this chant already. "Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man!" As she was chanting, all the energy collected by her silver flakes flowed into her polearm, resulting in a ball of energy that first glowed red, and then blue. As she pulled the collected energy together, the silver flakes that made up her cloak turned red as their energy was expended and floated away, down to the ground around her. "Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south!" The ball of blue and red energy formed around the head of Shirubātitania, the room temperature noticeably rising as heat roiled off the ball of raw spiritual energy. "Hadō #31. Shakkahō!" She aimed directly at the oncoming Captain, the polearm recoiled back in her hand like an artillery shell had burst from the end.

The blue energy blasted directly toward the Captain, who seemed to pay the incoming energy beam no mind. Then, there was a blast as it connected, and Tanya was thrown back as her energy beam and the Captain's coating of spiritual pressure slammed into each other with a thunderous bang, causing the building itself to shake.

The room quickly filled with smoke, and Tanya was left a bit confused as to what happened. A small, nonsensical part of her was terrified that she had accidentally killed the man because she'd overestimated his abilities. Then the Captain of the 11th Division walked out of the smoke, his clothing scorched and smoking, his face perhaps a little bit sunburnt but otherwise entirely unscathed.

'Good for my career prospects,' she numbly thought as he emerged, though considering she had dumped a third of her available energy stores into that attack with no apparent result beyond smoking clothing, she knew her chances of ever defeating Zaraki Kenpachi were effectively nil.

"Now that was a good one!" Zaraki roared, walking up to a wide smile on his face. Tanya started to raise her polearm to defend herself, but he casually knocked the blade out of his way and reached out with his free hand. She braced herself, expecting to get smacked through the wall, but the Captain just patted her on the head. "You're welcome to train here anytime and you're free to join the 10th! Just don't let the 10th make you go soft. I wanna see what you pull next time!"

Tanya felt like she should be annoyed that the Captain was treating her like a kid, but after using up so much of her energy she was too tired to complain. Sighing, she gave up any thought of resistance and just said "Thank you, sir, I'll do my best to do just that." Grounding Shirubātitania's pommel into the ground so she could lean on the haft and try to get her breath back.

Zaraki laughed, then patted her on the shoulder he'd cut open, causing her eyes to squeeze close from the spike of pain, and said "Well, do yer best, and I'm sure you'll get a high rank in that wimpy Division. Just remember I want round two down the line!" Then, mercifully, he walked off yelling at the members of the crowd who had fallen unconscious, leaving Tanya standing in the arena on shaky legs even as the oppressive nature of Kenpachi's reiatsu slowly receded, till Visha came down from the stands to help her to a bench.

"Go for it" Tasha Voice whispered, oddly gentle and supportive in her ear, "You'll never have a better chance."

"Visha, would you mind going to the theaters with me as my date this weekend? I heard there was an interesting musical being put on by the 9th."

Third Seat Tanya von Degurechaff was happy. It had been nearly 6 months since her transfer and the 10th Division was shaping up to be exactly what she needed, less stress, more paperwork, and nobody banging down her door and trying to goad her into a fight.

Not to mention the pay raise from being elevated to the divisional Third Seat over her previous rank as a Seventh Seat was quite substantial. If she put enough of her new pay away, Tanya was sure she would have enough to open up branches of Visha's coffee shop across the central districts.

Which would be very helpful for implementing the project: "Caffeine enlightenment", if each new coffeehouse had a set of books for reading material on the subjects of governance, social contracts, the scientific method, and the other building blocks of humanism her admittedly somewhat hair-brained scheme might actually have an impact.

That, the endless paperwork and her occasional contributions to the Seireitei Communication had kept her pretty busy but she had somehow managed to find enough time in her day to handle other matters as well.

Such other matters included how she was going to handle her relationship with Visha. She was officially out of the same Division, they were still living together and they had gone on several dates. While that was a fine arrangement, Tanya was still unsure how to test the waters and push things along.

She considered being open and straightforward about it, but that seemed ill-advised, as a ham-handed approach like that might damage their good working relationship and if things ended up not working out she wanted to keep that. She had also considered speaking to Lieutenant Matsumoto about it; she was, after all, someone who dealt with relationships quite often.

But, she knew that Matsumoto was clearly a bad influence and thus perhaps not the best person to ask about such a delicate situation. Tanya was honestly tempted to leave things as they were, especially since there seemed to be some sort of inevitable path that they had been following, leading to... something more.

After all, they had been getting progressively closer as their afterlives went on at an almost trackable rate. That, however, seemed like an almost offensively passive stance to take. After all, Tanya hadn't gotten where she was today by just letting things happen to her; when she had an understanding of a situation, she had always acted on it, for better or worse.

Which, of course, had led to the problem, she didn't know how far Visha was willing to go in this situation and didn't trust her own understanding of interpersonal romantic relationships as her previous lives had left her, unfortunately… unprepared for the situation, so she was stuck, unsure what move to make or how to accurately gauge her options.

She would need to find some way to confirm that her former adjutant had similar thoughts as she did. Until that happy day, she was forced to concede that her efforts on that front had ground to slow slog but at least she had experience with those, the dead of the Rhine front could attest to that.

But her life with Visha aside, Tanya had other things to worry about, including the girl who had just walked into her office and saluted her. "Tanya Lehrgen reporting for duty." The dark-haired, spectacled blue-eyed girl said, looking fairly unsure of herself.

Tanya Lehrgen had recently graduated from the Academy after a somewhat long time spent in that educational facility. She'd gone through the full six years of the standard curriculum, and a few extra years on top of that, unlike her namesake. But, she was now a fully rated soul reaper and so had earned the privilege of wearing the black and white.

"At ease, Lehrgen," Tanya said, noticing that the girl was rather tall compared to her, in fact, Tanya Lehrgen was a rather tall girl in general. Visha was about five-four, with Tanya standing around five-nothing, Lehrgen had to be about six feet flat, at the absolute minimum.

'Her family line must be predisposed to being very tall' The jealous thoughts crossed Tanya's mind as she got up to shake the girl's hand. Oddly, she now looked about the same age as Tanya, even though they had been born decades apart. Spiritual aging was a strange and very pseudoscience field, from what she had picked up about the topic.

"Welcome to the 10th. I've already arranged for you to be assigned to my unit, the Third Squad of the 10th Division. Of course, if you need anything, just let me know." She said, trying to be as charming and gentle as possible with the girl.

The girl nodded and then shook her hand. "Thank you, Ms. Degurechaff, I never thought I'd be working for you."

"Well, I never thought General Lehrgen would name a child after me. I guess we're both in for surprises in this world."

Tanya saw a quick flash of pain or sorrow in her namesake's eyes and belatedly realized she'd stepped on a social landmine. As far as anyone knew, herself included, Brigadier General Lehrgen was dead.

There was no way around it. He was dead, as was his wife and the large majority of the town that had been her waypoint during her trip through the 60s. Meaning Tanya was probably the only one still living who had known the girl before she'd come to the central districts.

It was an unfortunate faux paus, but Tanya would shovel her way through it. As far as she was concerned, the girl was now her responsibility and she would do whatever it took to make sure her old commander's daughter would become a fine soul reaper.

She'd not bothered to stick her nose into the girl's life while she had been making her way through the Academy, thinking it would be best for her to learn how everything worked in her new home on her own, but now that she had become a full soul reaper and had been placed within her division, thanks to a few favors she'd pulled with Hitsugaya, Tanya would make sure the girl would be able to survive anything the job would throw at her and would be just as much of a model officer as her father had been. It was the least she could do for the man who'd had her back and supported her through most of the war.

"Well then, shall we begin your training?" Tanya said with a smile, looking over her desk at the younger Tanya, taking note of the blue-handled sword on her hip.

"Training?" Lehrgen asked, sounding confused as she looked back at her.

"Yes, training. You may have reached the Academy's standards for a soul reaper. However, if you're going to work for me, I'm going to make sure you meet my standards as well." Tanya replied matter of factly

The dark haired girl seemed to lean back, and after a momentary pause, asked "This wouldn't happen to involve live artillery, would it?"

Tanya blinked, and let out a short bark of laughter."Oh, no, I don't have access to artillery yet. However... Don't be disheartened! This training will make you wish I had live artillery, because then I wouldn't need to be so thorough and hands-on with your training." She said with what she was sure was a reassuring smile as the young reaper in front of her nodded in response.

Writers note

And here is another chapter. I've been teasing Shikai for a couple of chapters now about the time I revealed it, as well as a fight I've been building to, for what 10 chapters give or take few? And more of the "will they won't they"... OR WAS IT!

Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…

Edited by : ,Starstruk Lord Feunoyr Readhead, Emberwing

*original release phrase in English: Cast upon this land the curse of war, Shirubātitania

*Literal English Translation: Unleash the force of war, Shirubātitania

Jctherebel:
thank you have another

FrequentFailure:
there doomed

Rairi Valelira:
ah could be worse situations.

PsylentFox:
yep good points

Dragonaut344Doomed:

ha a paper war

EricFreak:
hmm those are some interlude ideas I might use

Kisame Hoshigaki:

poetic indeed

Nerdpacalypse:
that pretty cool, though I have an idea already, which I think you like

Pinkypi:
yep thought she getting there