A/N: Hello everyone and welcome to chapter 14! Sorry for the abrupt long wait but I've had a lot of stuff to do lately and this chapter really hated working with me. I haven't quite figured out how to work out the fight and training sequences since I'm not used to writing them at all, hence this chapter and probably the next couple ones are going to take longer than usual to update.

Aside from that I have a convention coming up in about a week and I have a dress to finish making and all that con prep stuff so yeah, I probably wont be working on anything until the end of august, the con being on the 28th.

With that said…

Enjoy!


Harry was utterly exhausted.

Not only had Urahara made him demonstrate a huge amount of spells rapidly following one another, he had also been made to run a full lap around the entire training room, which was definitely nothing to sneeze at, and he had been made to demonstrate the Kidō he had mastered until now as well. All in all Harry was ready to drop and yet still the shop owner prodded him with an odd device the man had been tinkering with the past few days.

Honestly, couldn't the man give him a bit of a break?

He groaned when he could feel a bit of energy flowing out of him and glanced over at the man sitting next to him.

"What exactly is that…?" He asked slowly, not quite sure whatever that thing was nor if he wanted it anywhere near him if it lowered his already rather drained magic reserves.

"Oh nothing, just a little bit of research."

That definitely was a reply he didn't like. It sounded a lot like Dumbledore brushing things off that seemed inconsequential but only came back to bite him in the ass later. Still, Urahara was helping him for now so there was little he could say to oppose the man. Instead he was told to rest and wait for his reserves to charge back up again before they would continue Harry's Kidō training and his Cero training as well.

He had only shot it off once now and considering the widespread destruction it had caused, he wasn't sure he wanted to continue delving into it. The power rush it had given him though, that had been amazing. His entire body had tingled for a while with satisfaction while the Kidō almost felt foreign as it flowed through him. Perhaps that was because it was a Shinigami skill that he wasn't supposed to have. True enough the only reason he could imagine for being able to wield it was his magic.

Magic certainly was a strange force to be able to pull off such changes in him and his abilities…

Speaking of which, he took out his own and his mother's trunks and started going through the library he had managed to gather in one night. Luckily his mom's trunk was set up perfectly for such a thing though complete with shelves and everything.

He disappeared into it, leaving a note behind saying where he was, and started making out everything she had gathered before putting them in decent order. There were muggle books, which he set aside for their own shelf, and a lot of magic books, some of which he knew were about outlawed magicks in Britain. Blood magic and Necromancy were at the top of that list…

She really had a lot of interesting topics though, right along with a large collection on his most hated subject. She had liked potions? Why? To him it was a horrid form of magic as, while it had a lot of potential, was very dangerous and seemingly without much logic at all.

"Might as well look through what's in here though. I do need to take my NEWTs eventually…"

With that he sat down and found himself absorbed for several hours. Who knew potions could be so interesting?


When dinner came around, the table found itself under a cloud of somewhat tense anticipation.

"Harry-kun, I've been speaking with a friend of mine and since I'm going to be busy for the next few days he's agreed to take over your training for a while." Urahara began when they were nearly finished eating. Talk about unexpected…

"Really, who is it?" Not that a name would help much at all but if Urahara was going to be busy then having someone else's help might do him some good. Urahara was good at training him with his magic, giving the right pointers and all that, but had told him that without Harry bearing a weapon there was little he could do.

"Shinji Hirako is a good friend of mine and what we call a Visored. He had his friends are able to use Hollow powers through a mask they can summon, though they are former shinigami. It resembles the Arrancar's powers but it is certainly different. I believe he'll be a good teacher for you. He has already agreed to help you get along until I'm back."

Harry simply nodded, deciding to take things as they went.

"I'll be with him the entire time then?"

"Yes, he has a training room similar to my own and you will be with him there. I have asked to keep you a secret from the others though, as the more people know about your situation, the more danger you could be in."

Well, that made sense at least, though he was curious about meeting more than one Visored. No point moping about it though, he knew that he was going to be in deep trouble if he didn't master his powers before the Shinigami found out about him. It had to be done before their troubles were over. They would notice the difference in spiritual signatures on earth after that, similar to magical signatures actually.

He was a unique creature after all.

Harry spent a long time musing about what he would learn with this Shinji person and what that would do for the development of his powers. He knew he wasn't ready just yet, though ready for what remained the question. His mask needed to be completed, somehow, and he would need his sword, Zanpakuto was what Urahara called it. Regardless, he knew he needed that weapon to complete his powers and his form. He didn't know what would follow that, but he'd find out when push comes to shove.

Shinji was a humanoid Hollow like him but he'd been forewarned that the other was nothing like him and held no real magic, just Kidō, and while Harry viewed it as a powerful technique, it didn't hold a candle to what real magic could do. Shinji had been a shinigami before experiments turned him into a Visored so he already had his zanpakuto from those times as well, so what was Harry supposed to learn from him?


When Harry found himself in front of an old warehouse he was certain he was at the wrong address, or he would have thought so had he not sensed the Kidō barriers around the place. He sensed magic easily now, since the Shinigami skill was more difficult to sense. If he could find those wards, he knew he could find magical ones as well. He shook the thought away quickly though, knowing he needed to focus on his Hollow powers again for the time being. His magical prowess could wait.

"Yo! So yer Harry Potter, eh? Kisuke told me 'bout ya; yer quite special if what I hear's true." Shinji was hovering on air a little while away and looking at Harry with his head cocked slightly to the side. He seemed to be evaluating Harry by the feel of his reiatsu, like Harry would do to other people by the feel of their magic. He knew Urahara had already told the other his limits, since he was certain the device had something to do with that, as well as all the running. Urahara had hinted that it had something to do with his reiatsu so he had done as asked of him, as exhausting as it had ended up being.

"Well, no time to lose then!" The blond said, abruptly clapping his hands before Harry could even say a word. The ground before him opened up to reveal a staircase down to a room uncannily similar to Urahara's, though it held a few damages. It had obviously been used recently… The trip down was a little eerie since there were no lights at all but he managed not to trip over anything until they reached the room.

A fight had definitely broken out here if the pieces of broken rock and the chasms in the ground were anything to go by. Maybe they had been having a training session on their own before?

"Ah, don' worry about that. We jus' trained someone else before you but he needed to get his Hollow under control. Seems to me you're a lot different so the same tactics won't apply. What can ya actually do?" Shinji asked, walking ahead a little to face Harry. Being technically a born Hollow meant he needed to devise an entirely new strategy and figure out what he could work with.

Ichigo had been forced to fight his inner Hollow and master it and that, while it had been a struggle, was relatively easy. Harry, on the other hand, didn't have the same experiences as he was a wizard instead of a shinigami before becoming a Hollow. All in all, he wasn't sure what to do with the boy, but they were going to figure something out for sure.

"I have the Vacío I can summon, I'm sure they can help me in fights and I can fire off my Cero as well as a bunch of Kidō which I've trained in with Urahara-san." He replied slowly. He knew that the last two were things he could accomplish. He had never actually seen the Vacío in action and didn't know if they had any special powers, not to mention he knew his speed needed a lot of work, considering Urahara was fast as lightning and he was sure Shinji possessed the same abilities.

Shinji nodded, taking in the boy's posture and the way he seemed to fold in on himself during scrutiny; that wouldn't do at all. This kid needed to grow a backbone if he was to defend himself against the Shinigami and other people that could come after him.

"Alright, we'll work with what we've got then. We'll have yer pets out soon enough but I want a decent lap around the place first eh? Lets see how fast you are." If what Urahara said was true then Harry hadn't learnt shunpo or sonído yet, meaning they needed to improve on that as fast as possible. How was this kid going to be able to defend himself if he couldn't even see where the blows came from, right?

To his pleasant surprise there was not a single word of complaint from the raven-haired boy, instead he received a nod and watched the kid start running. The generally human pace of it almost made Shinji groan. If the kid was at human-level speed they were going to be here for a long time…

As he continued watching the boy and staying close enough to look for signs of exhaustion he started noticing the boy's speed was picking up, little by little. Of course he was still slow but he was nearing a low-level shunpo at least, which was good. A good thirty minutes later they were back at their starting point and it wasn't too hard to see the kid was tiring.

"Not bad, kid. Ye've got a long way to go still but so far you've got decent speed. The problem is the time it takes before you actually start getting anywhere near fast. Shunpo and sonído would look like teleportation to people like you 'cause it's too fast for ya to follow." To demonstrate he feigned going left before turning right into a sonído and appearing behind the lad.

He blinked, staring briefly at the boy when he realised Harry had been able to tell which way he was going and the curve he had taken to do it. With the level this kid was on there was no way he should've seen it.

Noticing Shinji's surprise Harry chuckled slightly. "I'm the youngest seeker of the century in a game we have called Quiddich. My job is to find a really fast ball throughout a game of flying. I'm used to tracking fast things." He was pretty proud of himself for having been able to follow Shinji's movements. He would almost have failed but he managed to keep up, somehow.

"Even then ya shouldn't have been able to keep track of that…" He frowned slightly and observed the boy for a moment before his eyes rested on the mask under the boy's skin. The fact Harry could command Kidō was odd in itself and should have been impossible in the first place and now again he was doing something he shouldn't have been able to. The boy's reiatsu kept fluctuating constantly as well, which it wasn't supposed to do at all.

Hang on...

What if Harry's problem was similar to Ichigo's after all? He was a Hollow after all, he should have been hungering for souls and his Hollow side should have been much more active, taking over whenever it had the chance; yet it hadn't happened. Was that why the boy's reiatsu felt unstable?

"Tell me kid, did you ever notice yer Hollow talking to ya?"


A/N: The end of this chapter, at long last! I know I've been busy and partially procrastinating but here it finally is. I hope it was worth the wait I don't know when I'll update next though considering the Convention is soon and I don't quite know how to run the training sessions. It's starting to form bit by bit though, so hopefully future training sessions won't take as darn long to be written.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, they're fuel to my writing fire so keep 'em coming! xD

Until next time,

Love,
~Lumina