Author's Notes

Hatake's offspring

There will be an entire book dealing with what happened to Kyōraku

Gold Testament

If I haven't already told you, Tatsuki and Ichigo are remaining together, Arata is interested in Kiyoko

XXXXXXX

It took the students about ten minutes to get to their next class. When they were there, Shin'ichi took a seat next to Arata, both wanting to keep as far away from Daiki as they could. The lecturer was already standing in front of the class. It was Aloysius. When all were seated Aloysius said, "Hello everyone. You should all know me from the test, but my name is Kuchiki Aloysius. Before any of you decide to have a problem with my taking your class, keep in mind that I have absolutely zero problems in keeping my personal life separate to my professional one." Aloysius paused to let any of his students raise their doubts. "Okay. Now, you are all here to learn how to be a Shinigami, correct?" There were a lot of nods from the class. "Gengoro-san would have told you a basic history of Seireitei, correct?" More nods. "Good. Now, the primary form of combat for most Shinigami is with zanjutsu." A brown haired girl raised her hand. "Yes...Seiko I believe it was..."

Seiko said, "Yes, Kuchiki-sensei. You just said 'most' shinigami, but I thought that a significant number of shinigami primarily use some of the other arts as a primary form of combat," prompting some of the other students to giggle.

"Yes," Aloysius said, "However, all of those shinigami that you were just talking about, also have a Zanpakutō of their own and have varying levels of skill in its use." The giggling stopped. "One example of someone that does this is the captain of Squad Two. Soi Fon uses a combination of techniques that you will learn about in your last two classes; Hakuda and Hohō. However she is also very skilled in the use of her Zanpakutō. That aside you are in this class now and I would very much appreciate it if you focused more on what this class is about, rather than those that you are yet to take."

Some of the class laughed at how easily Aloysius had manipulated the flow of the conversation back to what he wanted to talk about, not letting the student dictate the direction that the class was going in. "Now, I'm sure that that gasbag Gengorō said something along the lines of 'I'll answer all of your questions in the course of my lecture', right?" There was a chorus of affirmations. "Well, I'm going to tell you that that will not be happening in this class. I am going to take my time in this class and hopefully convey some of the theories behind the art of Zanjutsu before I let you put them into practice in the practical class after this one. Any questions?"

A black haired male, called Saito, asked, "I know that this might infringe upon Gen-sensei's class..."

"Go on..."

"What did shinigami use before they started to use Zanpakutō?"

Aloysius frowned in thought, thinking back on all of his experiences. He said, "You know...I'm not really sure. I'll look into it for you and get back to you tomorrow."

"Thank you."

"Anything else?" There was no reply. "Alright. There are five different types of practice sword that are available for your use. I'm not going to ask you to decide straight off the bat, but at some point this year you will need to choose a specific type and stick with it. Be very careful when making it too because when you receive your Asauchi it will be the same type of blade as that of the sword that you have been training with." He paused to let the information sink in. "Despite any specific blade types that they have, for ease of use all practice swords here are called bokken. There are two overriding types; nihontō and cruciform(1). The nihontō all have a single edged blade whereas the cruciform blades are all double-edged. There are subtypes within the nihontō blades; We have two types of Daitō and one type each of Shoto and Tantō."

Saito blurted, "What's with the different names if they are all single edged?"

"For the most part there is no differences in the blades, the names are referencing their respective lengths. The tantō and shoto blades, however, are a different shapes. As, even though they can both be used to complete a daishō, the tantō is more commonly used alongside a single-bladed, straight- edged blade like a chokutō, whereas a shoto is more commonly used in reference to a blade like a kodachi, or wakizashi. First off, holding your sword. For most longer blades two hands are required to use a sword properly..." A student with an orange mohawk raised their hand. "...this is so you don't drop it. Of course, as those in the Kuro-kenpachi-Fanclub know, there are some, like Kurosaki Ichigo and the current Eleventh Squad Captain, Kenpachi Zaraki, that do not do this. This is because their Zanpakutō are full-time release type Zanpakutō. This means that they are constantly in their initial release states."

Aloysius paused to think over the students' course before continuing on. He said "Gengorō will delve further into why that is, just be satisfied that it is not a desirable occurrence." Shin'ichi grimaced. "You are welcome to try and come up with your own style of fighting in the second year coursed, but for now you will do as I tell you. Understood?" There were a chorus of affirmations. "Including you Aosaki." Shin'ichi slunk down in his chair, feeling the entire class turn to glare at him. "Alright, eyes on me," Aloysius said, getting the students focused back on him. "I'll start the class with telling you that in my class you will be learning Kendo, which means 'The Way of the Sword'. Do not think that it is by any means pretentious as it is a codified amalgamation of many different types of swordsmanship created by Ex-Captain-Commander Yamamoto for use in this academy..."

Daiki thought, 'Kendo! Great, now my training in the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū School of kenjutsu will be completely worthless. Damn that ol' geezer.'

"...While I can use a number of different styles myself, I have chosen to teach you all kendo because I know that some of you here," he looked at Daiki and Shin'ichi, "already have experience in using different styles. Kendo," Aloysius said, quickly moving on, "is a martial art consisting of two categories of techniques. Would anyone like to guess what those are?"

A girl with orange hair tied into a spiked ponytail, Ayumi, said, "Attack and counter-attack?"

"Yes," Aloysius said, thinking, 'Not another Kurosaki supporter!' as the girl was sitting away from the rest of the orange haired students, as hers was natural. "There are six different theories behind attack in kendo, alongside four ones dealing with how to counter-attack. For the first two weeks we shall be focusing solely on three of these theories, Tobikomi-waza, Hikibana-waza and Nuki-waza. Tobikomi-waza refers to when to initiate your attack on your opponent. Hikibana-waza is the method that you use to attack. Nuki-waza has you avoid your opponents attack and then attacking immediately afterwards."

Ayumi asked, "Sensei...?"

"Yes?"

"Near where I lived there as a swordsman that was said to be able to strike at the same time as he was drawing his sword."

"Ah. That uses a technique called Iaido. There are many different ways to go about it, but I won't be covering them this semester. Now, since time is up for the theory, I want you all to come up here and pick the bokken that you will be using in the practical class that will be starting as soon as you have done so. Since I don't want a big rush, the first row will choose first." The first row chose their bokken, followed by the second and so on and so forth, Saito and Seiko each taking a daitō type bokken. Ayumi, like Daiki also took katana variants of Daitō when it was their turn. When it eventually got to their turn, which was last as they were sitting on the corner of the back row, Arata also drew a katana variant Daitō, as did Arisu. Shin'ichi, however, broke the overarching mould of taking a daitō class blade by choosing a tantō. Aloysius, in a loud voice, said, "Aosaki!"

"Yes?" Shin'ichi said.

"Why did you take a tantō?"

"I thought that we were allowed to take any blade we liked?"

"You can of course, but you already have your own chokutō." Aloysius stopped there, letting Shin'ichi insert the original question.

"Oh," Shin'ichi said, "I recently came into the acquisition of a tanto, so I thought that I'd take the opportunity to learn how to use it."

"I see," Aloysius said, mostly satisfied with the reasoning. "I'd like to talk to you after class."

"Alright," Ichigo half asked, the students around him commenting that he had somehow managed to get on the bad side of two of their lecturers already. Aloysius made a note to talk to his student about it later.

XXXXX

Meanwhile, in the intermediate class, Akane and Kiyoko were sitting next to Amayah and Koichi, both of whom were equally uninterested in the class, which wasn't all that surprising as, alongside their desire to focus on other areas of shinigami combat, the first thing that their lecturer had said was, "I'm a retainer to the Kasumiōji Clan. I am here as a punishment for failing to prevent Kasumiōji Rurichiyo-sama from making a grave error which resulted in the destruction of a large part of the Clan Compound." Followed by, "All of you here are unlikely to be overly successful as swordsmen, but you need to have some grounding in swordsmanship, which may, or may not be built upon when you get into one of the squads."

The students in the basic class were having a lesson that completely eradicated the practical aspects of the lessons, focusing only on the theoretical concepts. The remedial class did push-ups.

XXXXXXX

A/N

(1) All bokken are Suburito blades, which have a hilt that is smaller than the 'blade'