Chapter 3: Makoto Souken

After having opened the sliding door, it didn`t take long for the first few challengers to storm the dojo in an attempt to get to his apprentice and fight her. Despite Kiara`s complaints that she wasn`t learning anything, it was really quite the opposite. She did take up on some things rather quickly. The 3 months of sparring had already given her a rather surprising tenacity, strength and speed. She thought of herself as weak, but that was only because she measured herself after him.

She was quite adept at copying and adopting fighting styles and moves that she had only seen, but never performed. The way she directed his sword to the ground just a couple of minutes before was a move he was constantly using whenever she attacked from above. Not just that, but she learned a few things here and there from all the other fights that she had to endure.

She was a little copycat, since every move she used against him, she had learned somewhere else.

In just 3 months she had already improved a great deal, given the fact that she had never yielded a sword before.

However, that was not relevant now. She knew how to take care of herself and would have to do so for about a week.

He went on ahead to his quarters and gathered a few things he might need later. Then he went on his way to tell his captain that he would be on a leave for a while. The first few times he did this Captain Kenpachi actually complained that he was working and not lazing like everyone else.

"The Hell kinda work do you gotta do that prevents you from doin`nothing?", he had always shouted. With his raspy voice and his towering statue, Zaraki Kenpachi always made a terrifying impression on him.

"I`m afraid that`s personal sir", he had always answered. He could not believe to this day that a lazy excuse like this wasn`t questioned at all.

"Fine whatever. Since you`ve got so much work, you can just as well do the cleanin` shit. You an` your little protégé. `The devil she at anyway?", he had always roared.

"Either fighting some of the rookies or running away from them, sir."

"You better reduce that behavior to fightin` only without the runnin` away shit. And don`t be so formal, i`m your captain, not the freakin` Soul King whose boots you`re about to polish", he had added the first time. Since Makoto was never around when he had cleaning duty, all that baggage unfortunately fell to Kiara. And naturally the women and cleaning jokes didn`t take long to turn up. That was until everyone in squad 11 realized that she had a quick temper and a quicker fist when it came to things like that.

And so it was almost destiny that one poor soul talked about this stuff in her near vicinity and got his nose broken, at which point the jokes had vanished just as fast as had appeared.

He made his way to the captain`s office to deliver the document with which he requested absence for an undetermined amount of time.

When he entered the office, it was empty. So he simply put his papers on the desk, since he got the feeling that his captain would not even read them even if he handed them over directly. It was simply a formality.

Slowly making his way out of the squad 11 area, he made sure nobody followed, surveilled, or noticed him leaving in any way. He steered towards the walls, which weren`t too far away. He had made sure that his quarters were close to the borders, when he had chosen them after being relocated to squad 11. When he was sure that no one followed him and as soon as he was out of the seireitei grounds he started using shunpo in the direction of the northern Rukongai district.

He wasn`t a great shunpo master or anything, but he had more than enough proficiency with it that he was still a lot faster with it than on foot. He bypassed the 3rd and 13th squad grounds as he first had to go around seireitei in order to go to where he needed to be directly.

The 80th district of northern rukongai. That was his goal. What he needed to do, could only be done there since no one would notice it. If the central 46 would ever find out, they`d imprison him on the spot. And if they ever figured out everything that he was planning to do, he`d be executed before he ever saw the court room from the outside.

District 80 was very far away and even if he was able to use shunpo the hole day, he`d barely manage to get there. So he took his time. Not that he was dawdling around or anything, but he wasn`t exactly pushing himself either. He just had to make sure that he would arrive at his destination somewhat rested and not completely exhausted, or else the next thing he was about to concoct would go horribly wrong.

So he traveled and rested again and again, until it had been about about 2 days, as he finally reached district 80. And was, once again, disgusted and disturbed, because of the way people were living here. Everyone was covered in dirt, blood and sweat, solid houses were practically non-existent and the residents behaved like animals.

Tearing themselves apart over even the slightest bit of food or water, fighting for everything that could assure their survival, if even a little bit.

Makoto pitied these people. They had not done anything wrong in their mortal lifes and yet, after having been sent over to the soul society, have seen and lived nothing but misery. He would have loved to have done something, and he would do so, when he had accomplished his primary goal at the time. Finding the other soul for whose death he was responsible.

He always thought back to that one faithful day, where he had seriously fucked up on a mission in the human world. Where he had let a hollow get away, which resulted in the death of 2 children playing on the street, a boy and a girl. The girl, Kiara, he was able to find in time to send her to the other world and save her from becoming a hollow. That was why he was raising her, why he took her in. So she wouldn`t be alone, that she would have someone to turn to and that she would not be subjugated by someone who had only the worst of intentions.

The boy however, he was never able to find. Although he did find his trail, he was never able to get to him, he had always run away. When the boy had eventually stopped running and Makoto had finally reached him, only for it to already be too late. He would always remember the horrified look on the boy's face, as the last piece of the chain of fate evaporated from his chest, revealing the hole in his chest and when he was automatically transported to hueco mundo, where he then surely had fully transformed into a hollow.

Makoto couldn`t let things be as they were. He would find this boy, even if he didn`t know where to look, or if he even was alive anymore. But the boy had something special, the only reason why Makoto had been able to sense him in the first place when he was looking for him back then. He couldn`t explain it, but the boy felt like he was emitting the same reiatsu as a hollow, even before the chain of fate had completely dissappeared.

The boy had had hollowpowers even before he had died. That alone was assuring enough that he would survive for at least sometime.

Makoto made his way to his hideout, where he had hidden the equipment he needed to open a garganta. It was underground so no one would suspect something. It didn`t look like much, the only things that were there were a bed, some medicine, a ration of food and the tech which he used to open gargantas.

He had stolen the equipment from the science division a few months ago, which took quite a lot of effort. Kurotsuchi Mayuri, the 12th division's captain, had made some excessive security measures, through which Makoto barely made it out alive.

He even had to resort to his Bankai in a last ditch effort.

But he made it. Maybe it was because the tech he stole wasn`t so unique anymore, for his follower`s ferocity was nowhere near the level on which the break-and-enter precautions had been.

He hid the the tech in a heavily fortified and hard to find hideout, where he was right now.

After having closed his hideout from the inside and after having checked if all his defensive systems and spells were intact he stepped in front of what looked like a normal doorframe with a mundane looking door in the middle of the room. There weren`t any walls around the frame so it looked kind of strange. He took a deep breath and checked if he had enough reiatsu to create a stable pathway the whole way to hueco mundo. He took another deep breath and started to cast the spell.

Well, it wasn`t really a spell, more him pouring his Reiatsu into the door, at which point the door did the rest, it was a very automatic process.

After he was finished, he took another deep breath. And opened the door.

Author`s notes:

Alright, another one done. I`ll try to keep `em coming on a (somewhat) steady pace, depending on me having the time and or a writers block.

If you`ve got your own opinion, PM me, or, better yet, review the Story. I`ll always welcome consturctive criticism.