Chapter 3: New Faces
AN- Again, sorry for the delay. Shorter though, so we can be happy that something has been updated. Those of you reading HPTM, yes this is being written for first. I'm still in writers block for that one, but I've started the next one... somewhat.
Anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own this. Not at all. I I possess is my OC's... yes... just that... I DEFINITELY don't have any illegal drugs in my car... yes... definistely no powder the- *Police breaks into my car* CRAP!
Beta: Still unbetaed. Should be reuploaded soon.
After Aizen departed, I was left with nothing but my own thoughts until one of the teachers at the Academy would agree to pick me up. So what did I do with myself? Absolutely nothing. Here I was, living a Bleach otaku's wet dream, trapped in the Bleach universe, and I had absolutely nothing to do.
Fate must be laughing at me, because I had often wished for an escape from the boringness of reality, and now that I had escaped my reality, I was doing exactly the same as what I had done before.
Eventually, Kasumi returned with the book she had promised me (A thick tome on Japanese culture, since I was clearly lacking that bit of knowledge). I stashed it in the old school rucksack which I had dragged with me from England, and somehow not dropped over the entirety of my adventure here.
I decided to tell Kasumi the good news, that I wasn't going to be executed any time soon.
"T-that's brilliant!" She told me happily. "I'm pleased that you're not going to be k-killed!"
"I absolutely agree. Admittedly, I'll still need to go to the Shinigami Academy for a few years, but I'm learning how to blow shit up, so I think that I can live with it."
The nurses bright smile darkened. "Oh yes. You have to go to the Academy..."
"Hey, cheer up!" I told her excitedly. "Its not like the other students will eat me alive, and I'm sure that I'll get through virtually unharmed... hopefully."
"Its not that..." She left her comment unfinished. Something else was bothering her, not sure what, but it was something.
Javan's additional sniggering aside, a slightly awkward silence emerged between me and the blonde woman.
KNOCK! KNOCK!
"I'm coming in." A plain, bald man entered the room. I couldn't really call him anything else, since those were the only words I could use to describe the man. After settling his eyes on me, he gestured to the door and said "I'm here to take you to the Academy. No dawdling, get your belongings, we leave in two minutes."
Anxiously, I collected my school bag, having nothing else of value with me, and gave Kasumi a final, reassuring smile. "Hey... I've gotta get going now, so I'll see you around, Kasumi."
"Y-yes." She nodded, sending me a smile of her own. "I suppose I will. Bye, Marc."
"See you, Kasumi. I'll make sure I visit someday when I get out of the Academy."
"I'll be... looking forwards to that day." Her metallic eyes carried an unspoken message, one I could not understand or read. Regardless, I had only known her for a day or two, but she had still been good company, so I think I will visit her if I get the chance.
"Come along." Snapped the teacher, quickly walking away without even checking to see if I was following him. I speedwalked after him, struggling to match his brisk pace.
XXXXXXXXXX
In the end, the teacher had been forced to shunpo us to ensure that we got there while there was still daylight for us to travel in.
Apparently the Fourth Squad barracks were actually quite close to the Academy as far as geographical distance anyway, since the Academy was located within the Seireitei's walls for all of the students protection and could be found directly between the Fourth and Fifth Squads base of operations (Although the Fifth Squad was said to be much closer). If only forty odd minutes of unmanly piggybacking wasn't how the Soul Society classed 'a close geographical location', since in my opinion forty minutes WASN'T close at all!
Makes me wonder just how large the Seireitei was. No wonder it took Ichigo and his allies so long to navigate the place. Not only was it a maze, but it was a VERY large maze according to the teacher (Whom still hadn't told me his name).
After another ten minutes more of shunpoing, we arrived at the Academy. It was certainly... large.
"Its more likely that the architect was overcompensating for something."
Okay then, so the Academy was VERY large. It had a bigass gate connected to a bigass wall, while there was an even biggerass building behind it, so tall and bigass that it went a dozen floors up. Suffice to say that if you fell out of the window on the top floor, you would wake up the next day with a bruise as equally bigass as the building you jumped from. Humour aside, the design of it was clearly Japanese, and it intimidated the hell out of me.
"Come along." Snapped the man. "I've had to postpone paperwork to escort you here, so lets get this done quickly."
"Sure." I trotted after the impatient bugger that had already began marching through the entrance gate (Nodding to the Shinigami officer guarding the gate as he did so), then struggled to keep up as he travelled to the largest door leading into the building and entered.
I've said this before, but I am not the fittest male on the block, so this process had left me panting and wheezing in an undignified fashion by the time he stopped.
"If this is how you're going to act, you won't last twenty seconds here."
"Well forgive ME for not being used to this bloody level of exercise, so not up to your fitness levels! Until the other day, I had never had to run for my life!"
"Well you'd better adapt quickly, because this place demands peak physical health, and being a Ryoka and not an actual spiritual being doesn't help your case either."
"I know! I know! Now how about we go and do what we need to do to get me enrolled?" I asked.
"No." The teacher had stopped to pick up some of the paperwork he had initially abandoned to collect me. Now with the goods collected, he was already walking off again. "I am going to do my job. You can go find the Headmasters office and get the necessary paperwork filled in."
"Look. I don't know my way around here, and classes have finished so there isn't anyone around. How the hell am I supposed to find the Headmasters office?"
"How should I know?" The teacher smirked, quickly walking off. "It will take you an awful long time, won't it..."
"So where should I go!?"
"Find it yourself. You're a foreigner anyway, so why should I help you? If it was up to me, a Ryoka like you wouldn't be attending anyway."
"Just tell me where to go!"
"Its somewhere in that direction." He pointed to one corridor leading off into the depths of the building, and then he was gone.
"What a douchebag." Decided Javan. I had to agree. I knew the man didn't like me, but I didn't think he was such a racist, having an issue with foreigners and Ryoka alike.
Regardless, standing around and monologuing wasn't going to help me get where I needed to be, and I had a general direction, so I might as well get going. Sighing, I began to search for my destination.
XXXXXXXXXX
An hour later and I was no closer to finding the Headmasters office. It was really irresponsible of the man to just LEAVE me at the entrance, since this place was MASSIVE!
I know I said it was a bigass building, but after exploring the labyrinth like corridors, I realised that this place was a friggin' Tardis: bigger on the inside. And then I got to the other side of the building and realised that there was a humongous courtyard outside, with a few other buildings there to search as well.
Oh joy.
Oh well, I'd gotten to have a nosy about the place, and with no classes going on, I had the school to myself. I hadn't seen one person yet.
I had seen some of the facilities though. There was a large Kido target range, a few large halls, a dojo, what seemed to be a swimming pool (No idea why they had one), dozens of classrooms and various corridors which seemed to lead to dead ends for no other reason than to piss me off. This was only on the ground floor, I hadn't even checked the upper floors or the other buildings yet.
Sigh. It was going to be a looonnnngggg evening.
GROOWWWLLL!
And I was hungry too. Oh joy.
My only reasonable hope was that I would find someone here somewhere that could give me directions. Alas, no hope yet.
I was just about ready to give up searching this floor and search the next one when I thought that I had noticed a figure just out of the corner of my eye. Eagerly, I turned to the person.
There! Not an illusion! Just outside the nearest window looking out to the massive courtyard, there was a small island of green amongst the dull grey ocean of the Academy, an isolated garden by the outer wall, far away from prying eyes. It was only a fluke that I saw it anyway due to my positioning in relation to it, considering it was also lodged between large building and had a hedge enclosing most of it too.
Someone obviously liked their privacy when gardening, presumably the person that I had seen within it.
Quick! This was a brilliant chance, since she was the first person I had seen yet! Now to find the nearest exit... I think I saw one a bit earlier on...
Five minutes of navigating later, I found myself walking quickly to the Isolated Garden. Once there, I rushed in and took a quick look round. It was an honestly beautiful place. I am a nerd, so I am hardly the best judge, nor the most vocal lover of nature, since I was most definitely the sort of person who prefers having a roof over his head instead of the sky and the stars. Even so, I could acknowledge the beauty of this sanctuary, this large middle finger to the very urban setting it was growing in.
I could appreciate the colours. Red, yellow, lilac, blue, orange, crimson, brown and a whole lot of green; truly this was Mother Nature at its finest, even if it was only in such a small scale.
"Hello!" I called out loudly. "Anyone still here?"
"Yes." Responded a soft, feminine voice to my left. "I am still here."
The girl that had been toiling in the light of the sunset, busy tending to her flowers and weeding the soil, rose from her knees, allowing me to see her. She wore the female uniform of the Academy, the one that I could vaguely remember from back in the anime, and she made it look good. I am NOT a pervert, no matter how much Javan has recently been implying lately. Even so, I'm not asexual or gay, I can acknowledge when a girl looks cute, even if I have no intention of dating her.
And I can honestly say that this girl was more than cute. Age wise she looked around seventeen (Although knowing how long characters in Bleach live, she could be a hundred... shudder) and was of petite frame, only about as tall as I was. She wasn't nearly as busty as Rangiku or Kasumi though, not that I cared. The one feature that I really liked was her hair. It was long and luscious, impossibly dark and had been tied back behind her in a hime style to keep it out of the way while she had been working. Added to her aqua eyes and slight smile, she embraced the very concept of serene, reminding me of how a nun or a monk might appear: absolutely at peace.
"So then, how can I help you?" She asked.
Realising that I had been staring, I looked away. "Ummm, yeah! You can! Anyway, I was just brought here to sign up for the Academy by a teacher, only he abandoned me at the entrance and told me to find the Headmasters office by myself!"
"Go on." She prompted neutrally, while she wiped her hands on her robes (So I don't know the name of Japanese garments, sue me!).
"Point is that I've been walking around for hours," I exaggerated. "and I'm irritated and hungry and really need to find said office, only I can't find it, so I figured that-"
"You figured that I could help you?" She finished.
"You took the words out of my mouth. You're the first person I've seen around, so you're my only hope!" I concluded melodramatically, putting my year on a GCSE Drama course to good use.
"Well, I suppose most people have left the school to go to the dorms by this point." The girl admitted. "Very well then, I suppose I can cut this short and show you the way."
"You don't have to!" I protested. "Just give me a few directions, I'll be fine!"
"Nonsense. You came to me for help, so I am obliged to assist you to my best capacity." The girl bowed gently to me. "My name is Mika Ikeda, of Class 1A, please take care of me."
Bowing? Oh yeah, they do that in Japan instead of handshakes, don't they?
"Well duh."
"A-anyway, I'm Marcus D Solus, take care of me too... and stuff." Similarly, I also bowed, feeling a bit foolish for doing so. I might like anime, but I wasn't exactly knowledgeable about Japan (Seeing as Kasumi had to get me that book), so I had no idea if I was doing it right or not.
"Pleased to meet you. Come on, we might as well get going now." The now introduced girl gave me a smile, then gestured for me to follow her.
"Right, thanks." I rushed after her much quicker pace (Must be a Shinigami thing), eager to get signed up. As we walked, Mika decided to make conversation, presumably out of curiosity.
"You mentioned earlier that you had just been brought here to sign up."
"Correct. One of the higher up's requested I attend here."
"Its rather odd that you're being signed up now, one month into the term." She remarked passively, the smile still on her face.
"Well, its an odd situation." I admitted to her. "If someone told me two weeks ago that I'd be attending a school for Shinigami I'd ask the informer to tell me what they'd been smoking, then to slip me some."
"Is that so? Fancy elaborating?"
"Why not? We have time to kill." Being the gentleman that I am, upon noticing that we had reached the main building, I opened the door first. "What do you want to know?"
Mika raised an eyebrow. "Anything you wish to share."
"Well, in short, I'm a Ryoka. Yep, that type of Ryoka. Is there any other? Anyway, somehow I found myself in the Rukon District due to quite frankly suspicious circumstances, with my memories mostly blanked, save for my name and the knowledge of my nationality (English), picked a fight with a Hollow and somehow won, then got picked up by one of the big cheeses. One thing led to another, and now I'm to enrol here or lose my head via the executioners axe."
"Oh... what an... interesting... story." She blinked in disbelief. "That's rather hard to believe."
"Fair enough." I shrugged. "It sounds mad to me too. Still, what the Cheese says, goes. So I'm here to stay."
"I see. Perhaps we'll end up as classmates?" The garden growing girl remarked offhandedly.
"Maybe. It'd be nice to have a friendly face, I guess." I scratched my head. "There's nothing worse than being that one guy who transfers into school late."
"Many would be rather annoyed." Understatement of the century. "For one thing, you're a Ryoka. That is likely to grant you a great deal of animosity. And you're foreign. And you managed to skip the entrance exam. You didn't have one, did you?"
"No."
"There you go. I don't envy you... they're going to tear you apart."
"Gaghh! Don't remind me! You're not helping me out at all! I'm so dead..." I despaired. You see, I fully admit that I am a nerd. I'm proud of it, and frequently proclaim so. Alas, that doesn't exactly provide much popularity back where I come from. All it gives you is a whole lot of stress, and a punch to the face if you're unlucky. Due to my frail frame, I was a perfect target for every bully within a mile of me.
Now imagine that, but times it by ten and give the bullies the power to throw fireballs.
Yeah... I is gonna die. Quickly.
"I'm sure you'll be fine." The smile told me. "Admittedly some of the students here are not quite as accepting as myself, but most are about as harmless as bunny rabbits."
"Oh... good."
"Bunny rabbits with an unsatisfiable bloodlust, sharp teeth and a bone the size of a dinosaur to pick with you... but basically about as threatening as bunny rabbits."
I sweatdropped. I have no idea if she was teasing me or being serious, because she was still smiling just as serenely as ever. "I-I... never mind."
"Come along, we still have a few more floors to go up." Mika reminded me as we paced up the stairs. I had been so caught up in conversation that I hadn't realised just how quickly we had been walking.
"Seriously, why are we walking so fast?"
Mika blinked in surprise. "This is fast? I thought I was going quite slow in comparison to how fast most students here walk..."
I gulped, realising just how coming here had been a mistake...
"... If you consider this fast, you're probably going to struggle to keep up with everyone else here physically."
… because I was now going to have to get in shape. We all know my divine hatred for P.E and all forms of exercise in general, so maybe agreeing to attend an Academy where superhumans are taught to punch out monsters was a bad idea. "Shit."
"Indeed." Agreed Javan enthusiastically. "And unfortunately sports movie style training montages accompanied by music don't really work."
"Double shit."
"Perhaps this might be a problem." Spoke Mika. "Since you're a Ryoka, you're probably going to be behind all of the spirits here physically, since souls here are naturally stronger and more resilient than those in the human world. That was one of the first lessons we we taught; a Shinigami is passively stronger and faster than most most humans."
"Triple shit." I cursed quietly. "I'm not just going to get killed... I'm gonna be steam rolled."
Somehow Mika was able to keep up her smile even while shrugging, as if she was saying 'not my problem'. "Anyway, here we are."
Now it was my time to blink rapidly, for we had somehow reached the Headmasters office on the fourth floor while we had been talking. Before me stood the behemoth of a door, a large block of brown in the grey.
"Time flies when you're fearing for your life..."
"Shut up Javan." I mentally sighed. I'm certain that having a mental room-mate was going to suck just as much as it initially sounds like it would on paper.
"Well, thanks for leading me here. I guess I'll be heading in now."
"My pleasure, good luck." Once more Mika bowed to me, then in a surprising display of speed, she had already began to quickly walk away. Within seconds, she was at the stairs we had just went up from, and was gone.
Daaammmnnnn! I really need to get fit.
Oh well, enough deliberation. I had a teacher to meet. I knocked on the large door and waited for the typical call of 'Enter'.
XXXXXXXXXX
Twenty minutes later I left the office better off than I had entered. For one thing, I had been given a map of the campus (The one that damned teacher who brought me here was supposed to have given me), so now I had no reason to get lost. Point one for me!
The man in charge of the Academy was an elderly fellow who reminded me far too much of Yoda, and one who claimed to be nearly as old as the Head Captain himself, that sat enigmatically at his desk and spoke in riddles. I was a nerd though. Yoda talk was practically a unified language that we all shared regardless of nationality or age.
So I had managed to gleam quite a lot off him about how my academic life would be. School was six days a week, not five (NOOOO! What cruel monster would devise such a cruel, evil idea as an additional day on the school week?), there was a strict uniform policy that I had been kindly told to follow, five lessons a day (Except on Saturday) with each being an hour long, there was no shortage of rules and regulations, each class was about 35 people large, and could be classified into three different groups (A, B and C, with A being the group for the 'stronger' students), plus other stuff.
I myself was being placed into Group 1A, for whatever reason. It looks like I'd be in the same group as Mika after all. On the other hand, the bullies would be the strongest of the year group, so I was more dead than otherwise.
As for where I was to live and sleep, I had been given the key to one of the rooms found on the Academy grounds. You see, some of the larger buildings were actually residential blocks for some of the students, while others like the nobles or those able to pay rents were allowed to bunk elsewhere in the Seireitei and migrate to the school every morning. I was in one of the Academy buildings, and I had apparently been lodged in a three person room which was only currently occupied by two people, the third person having left after the first week of class due to lack of talent or desire to learn.
So I was basically having the University experience a bit early. Not too unexpected. The age range of Academy students varied, so it made sense to use a system which would be more suited to a greater populace and was more independent than an earlier school.
"Well, lets go see my new abode."
"Yes, lets."
"Damn... I suck. I should stop talking to myself out loud and get going. People might start thinking I'm mad."
"Didn't you know? Everyone's mad here..." Thus with that ominous comment, I made my way to the block of apartments located in the courtyard.
XXXXXXXXXX
It was dark now. The sun had long since set, and my appetite had yet to be quenched.
Careful studying of my given map had led me to the largest of the student dorms on campus, whereupon further investigation I found my room on the second floor. The plain wooden door read 'Room 050', and I had been looking at it for over five minutes.
You see, I was rather nervous. I was about to move into a room with two complete strangers, both of whom would be stronger than I was and would not be guaranteed to even like me. Call me a coward, but I had been trying to figure out how I was supposed to introduce myself.
Again I sighed. "This is stupid." I said. "Why am I so hesitant? Seriously, why? I killed a Hollow. I'm not exactly going to die if I'm not on my best behaviour, am I?"
"Don't ask me."
"I wasn't."
"Just KNOCK! I'm fed up of you being so indecisive!"
"I'm not being indecisive! I just want to make a good impression!"
"KNOCK!"
"Fine!" I glowered in a general direction, hoping that Javan got the message, and prepared to do thr dreaded task of knocking on the door...
"For the love of, just come in already!" Half shouted a voice from inside the door. "Hayato can sense your Spiritual Pressure, and we heard you deliberating, so just come in!"
Oh yeah. They were Shinigami trainees, and I HAD been talking to myself out-loud for the last few minutes. I felt really stupid.
"Yep... shoulda knocked."
"Shut up you." I wearily dismissed Javan mentally. Composing myself, I opened the door and entered the apartment. The interior was generally what one might expect an apartment for university students to live in: kitchen with the all important life saving microwave in it, joined living room furnished with two sofa's and a few large bookshelves and some doors presumably leading to bedrooms, cupboards and hopefully a bathroom. Surprisingly it seemed rather western, but I guess that they couldn't have really outfitted a few hundred flats with traditional eastern style décor. Doing in plain, simple and Western probably saved them a bit of money.
"Heeeey!" Greeted the voice that had called me out earlier from the sofa he was sat at, alongside another male. "Nice ta see that you decided to finally come in. The names Daichi Kuroisho, and it seems that you're going to be the new room-mate."
"I guess so." I responded, looking the male over. He looked a year or two older than myself, and had a build that was lean and tall like myself, although I couldn't really compare our physical abilities since he was a spiritual existence, so stronger than me, and also wore a baggy long sleeve shirt. Daichi (That was his name... pretty sure than was his name) also had scruffy, light brown hair pulled back from his forehead and upwards, giving him a few short spikes. Around his neck he also wore a bright yellow scarf. It was long and ragged; it had clearly been through a lot (Burns, cuts and an accident with a bear and a tiger by the look of it), but it still remained standing, gracing the room with a flash of colour.
"Well, he fills the quota for a main character with spiky JRPG style hair, even if the hair COULD be spikier."
"Shut up Javan."
"Well, aren't you going to introduce yourself?" Reminded Daichi.
"Oh yeah. I'm Marcus Dr-" I caught myself just before I gave him my real name and not my alibi. "Marcus D Solus."
"Nice ta meet you." He gave me a grin. "Well, you don't sound like a dick, so I guess we can put up with you, right Hayato?" Daichi nudged the boy next to him jokingly, finally reminding me that there was a third person in the room.
"Holy shit, how long as he been there!?" I gestured wildly. The boy was small... pretty damn small. If I hadn't known he was a dead person who could have been a hundred, I'd have guessed him to be about 13, although I'm pretty bad at judging age, so he could have just been unlucky in the random lottery of the gene pool and came up as short as a certain State Alchemist. He seemed perfectly harmless, reading a book silently, his green eyes framed by large circular glasses scanning the pages quickly and methodically. I think I could like this guy, he looked twice as nerdy as myself, had a normal colour choice for his hair (An untidy, black mop) and read books, so I could relate to him.
If there is one thing I know, its that nerds stick together! Bro's to the end!
"Hayato Akamori." He spoke for the first time, offering me only what I assumed his name was to be.
"Heeeyy! Don't mind Hayato, he's a bit... quiet." He offered. "Me and him go waaaayyy back to the when we teamed up back in the Rukon District! They called us the Dynamic Duo, and we've been kicking ass ever since!" Daichi struck up a heroic pose.
"No they didn't." Said Hayato quietly as he read a book. "They called us many a thing, but never that."
"Heeey! Stop putting me down, ya know that I have a delicate temperament! You might hurt my feelings."
Hayato looked up from his book. "Daichi, if you have a delicate temperament then I'm a chatterbox. You're a sleezy womaniser and you've suffered so many rejections that I'm certain it would take a sledgehammer to hurt your feelings."
"You don't have to be so blunt about it!" He winced. "If they can't handle the Daichi charm, that's their problem. Haters gonna hate and all that!"
Hayato shrugged, then returned to his book, clearly not interested any more.
"Is that how you two normally act?" I queried.
"Yeah! Hayato's real cool though, so I know he means well. He often jokes that if he wasn't there to take me down a peg or two my head would be so swollen that I wouldn't be able to stand!"
"Oh... right." I added awkwardly. I couldn't help feeling like I was an intruder interrupting a friendship that's already deep and established.
"Heeeyy! Don't be like that, take a seat." The energetic male encouraged, pointing at the second sofa. Seeing nothing better to do, I took my bag off and threw it onto the piece of furniture, than sat down. "So then, why ya here so late then?"
"Late as in time or late as in date?"
"Both. I mean, me and Hayato had hoped we'd get this place to ourselves, so we hadn't been expecting a new room-mate.
"Long story short, a Captain pulled some strings to get me sent here right away after I did some shit and ended up killing a Hollow."
"You killed a Hollow?" Asked Daichi in disbelief.
"Yeah... with a Zanpakuto."
"Asauchi are given out by Shinigami when you successfully enroll." Mentioned Hayato while he continued to read. "How did you get one?"
"Nobody knows. Yaaayy!" I stated with false excitement. "I just pulled one out of my ass."
"Oh."
"Yep. And I'm also a Ryoka, not a dead person." That comment incited a lot of disbelief. Daichi walked over to the kitchen to get a glass of water, drank some, than spat the rest out in my direction to show his disbelief.
"I call bullshit!" He snapped. "Hayato would have sensed if you were! He's awesome at that sensory stuff!"
"I did sense he was human." Remarked Hayato.
"B-but! You never told me!"
"You never asked." And so he continued to read.
"Moving on. I'm here because apparently what I did was a big deal, so I'm being forced here whether I like it or not. Got a problem with me being alive still?"
"Not really."Admitted Daichi sheepishly. "I mean, we were all human at one point. I don't really see why classes have taught us that Ryoka are bad."
"Oh great." I stated. "One month into the topic and the new class is already being conditioned to want to try and murder me. Bloody brilliant."
"You'll be fine!" Encouraged the scarf wearing boy.
"Spiritual existences are naturally stronger, and I'm a human... with human levels of physical ability. And I have no formal fighting experience... and I'm physically weak even by human standards."
"Meh." Daichi dismissed my claim.
"I'm a gonna die..." And the sad thing was that I wasn't even kidding.
XXXXXXXXXX
Following a dinner made up of leftovers that Hayato had left for me, I had decided to retire to my room and finally have the conversation that Javan owed me. One issue, he insisted that it occur in my mindscape where he was lurking in. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do that weird Shinigami meditation technique, and I couldn't be bothered to open up one of the many textbooks which had been left for me yet.
So I was a bit stuck.
First I sat crossed legged on my bed and concentrated, attempting (and failing) to clear my mind of all thoughts. I sat and I sat and I sat and I fidgeted and Javan scolded me so I sat and I sat and I sat. I then tried humming.
OMMMMMMMM!
It didn't help. Javan complained of a mindache.
Next, I thought back to all those old martial arts films I had watched with my dad as a kid before he dropped dead and attempted to emulate.
I sat a bit more.
"This sucks."
"Bear with it Marc."
"Shut up Javan. How the hell is this meditating crap supposed to help me visit a metaphysical location in my head?"
"Well how should I know? Its just what it says on the tin!"
I tuned out Javan and instead tried to think. Hang on... lightbulb! "Hey Javan, how do I summon up my Zanpakuto?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I'm pretty sure that to visit your inner world you need to meditate WITH a Zanpakuto."
"Oh yeah!"
"Soooo tthhheeeeennn? How do I summon it?"
"Haven't the foggiest." I resisted the urge to facepalm. Seriously!? The one guy who helped me obtain that sword in the first place and he don't know how I reclaim it? Do I have to trek all the way to the Rukon District to pick it up where I dropped it or something?
"Don't look at ME like that! I told you I didn't know what that bond would do. Hell, I expected you to turn into a vegetable."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"The point is most people activate THAT power with a mental trigger. They simply turn it on or off, reach for their power and use it, and most figure out how to do it instinctively. In your case, you're weird. You didn't know what to do, and we had no time to go through the steps to figure it out gradually and we had no tool or device to speed up the learning rate, so I turned myself into A PLUG SOCKET ADAPTOR OF ALL THINGS to help you connect up to your power."
"Speak... proper... English."
"GRRRGGHHH! Look, you're the charger and you're power is the electricity in the plug socket. You couldn't figure out how to stab it into the socket, or you couldn't, so I became a metaphorical adaptor that shouldn't have been able to connect up to you but did. I then jammed myself into the hole in A NON SEXUAL FASHION... pervert."
"THAT'S YOU!"
"Shut up Marc! Stop shouting at the walls!" Came Daichi's voice from next door.
"Sorry..."
"Look. Back on topic, I connected to your power and you connected to me, so by all rights you should have a passageway to use your power. The only thing you're lacking is a mental trigger."
"How do I find it then?" I responded mentally this time, to prevent my room-mates whom were in their own rooms that I wasn't mad.
"Think back to when you first summoned it... try and remember that feeling you felt."
Okay Marc, what were you feeling? Hurt, I was in pain... and I was scared... and ... screw this shit. I ain't having a psychiatric session to help learn to summon a sword, because if I want a sword to kill something I will NOT think about 'What I'm feeling like', as if I was an asylum patient. I ain't got anything with the madhouse, but I shall enter battle screaming for blood, not asking if anyone knows what the blot on the sheet is supposed to look like.
I want a sword! I WANT a sword! I'm not thinking back to then because it was painful and because I was terrified at the time of getting eaten! No. I JUST want a sword! NOT memories like that!
Back then there wasn't really a switch I could just pull. I asked for a sword, felt a sudden weight in my hands and then an unseen tap was released. A steady drip, drip of power flowed.
"Whaaaa!" A sudden weight appeared in my hand, revealing that I now had a sword. "Okay. That's better!"
So now I had a sword. I stuck it on my lap, held it, tried to focus, and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat and I sat... and then I think I fell asleep.
AN- Yeah, I initially intended to stick the Inner World scene in too, but decided it was too long and wasn't suitable too end the chapter on, so I decided to stick it in the next chapter instead. I'm sure some of you are irritated at the lack of canon characters appearing. I know your pain... I do intend for more canon characters to show up, and are trying to implement at least one per chapter (Failing so far). Alas, the OC's are rather neccessary for the fics future and I man treating this as an experiment to see if I can craft OC's that the audience can actually grow to like and enjoy reading about. Once Academy is over, more regulars should make appearances.
Anyway, usual stuff really. Feedback and help me improve, the usual. Until next time, Undying Soul out.