I do not intend to garner any revenues from the use of Soul Eater or Bleach and their associated characters.
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Shinigami Chronicles
Act 1: Hollow Eater
Chapter 4: Souls at Midnight
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Ichigo frowned as he wandered the moonlit streets of Death City, idly taking in the stone masonry of the market district as he made his way towards his temporary abode on the outskirts of the city. The cool breeze of the desert night wafted through the cramped throughways and streets, rustling various banners and hanging implements that had been left behind after the stores had closed. The sound of the banners billowing in the wind underscored the chimes of the more metallic implements dancing in night air, giving a lonely meditative anticipation to the moon born shadows of this night.
It reminded Ichigo of his return to Hueco Mundo just before the Dark Times began and those bittersweet memories of the last time he and all of his friends fought together as a unit. He still remembered the windswept "nights" in the endless twilight of that world, defined only by the times when the hollows weren't active. Times that weren't often due to the massive amounts of hollows that had surfaced there during that time. It was a life threatening situation to be sure. No matter how powerful a man was, he could be overwhelmed by sheer numbers if the enemy force was large enough. And with Soul Society preoccupied with other matters in the world of the living, no reinforcements were coming anytime soon. Even so the eight of them had been able to survive that adventure together. After that day, events transpired that would pull them all away from each other. For that reason, Ichigo was torn between disparity and fondness for those days of friendship and comradery under never ending twilight. If only that comradery had been as everlasting…
Ichigo continued his nostalgic meanderings, leaving the wind chimes of the market place for the empty whispers of the residential district, the light of the old fashioned street lamps adding their glow to that of the ever grinning crescent moon above. It was as Ichigo wandered past one of these street lamps that he noticed something moving at the corner of his vision.
Whirling on instinct to face his supposed attacker, Ichigo centered his weight and braced for an attack. However, all he found were the empty front steps of one of the many houses that lined the street. Ichigo did not lower his guard however, quickly continuing the motion of his turn just in time to see something dark and ragged surging towards him.
He narrowly dodged the attacker, lunging to the side and landing in a combat roll. As Ichigo finished the roll he got a small glimpse of the ragged thing before it rushed him again. It was a deathly haggard figure that stood before him, clad in the tattered remains of a pair of trousers, a shirt and vest. A myriad of black chains, ropes and locks hung limply from its thick grey-brown arms and legs. It was continuously shifting between a bipedal and quadrupedal gate as it lurched its way towards its adversary.
The discoloration of the body suggested that this was a zombie or at least something like one. Although, it didn't resemble Sid in intelligence or physical tendencies so Ichigo couldn't be sure. However, it was clear that the thing at least intended to hurt him and that was enough to get Ichigo into fight mode.
As such Ichigo was quite ready when the thing attacked once more. Handily dodging the possible zombie's second lunge with a quick jump to the side, Ichigo grasped his right forearm just under his limiter bands. He narrowed his gaze slightly, keeping a wary eye on his dark adversary, while focusing the energies of his spirit into his right hand.
Black crimson energies flowed from Ichigo's hand swirling together to form a rather large samurai sword not unlike the odachi used in certain Japanese shrines. As Ichigo grasped the manifesting blade with both hands he took a moment to set himself, lowering the hilt to waist level, Ichigo let the blade reach far behind him as he lowered his center of gravity. It'd been awhile since he'd had to use the technique of spirit manifestation. It was originally developed by Yuruichi as a means of allowing shinigami to fight hollows without exiting their gigai. A somewhat impractical technique in the days before the Winter War, but almost essential to effective combat during and after the Dark Times. The gigai provided protection against some of the stranger forms of attacks that surfaced during the Dark Times.
The blade had slightly more weight to it than he remembered from the last time he'd used this technique of physical manifestation. More than likely due to the limiters he was wearing.
"Don't know what you are." Ichigo said with a dark frown as the thing turned to face him once more. "But I'm pretty sure I can't let you live." He adjusted his grip on the hilt of his blade slightly, cracking his neck in the process. "No hard feelings."
With that, Ichigo charged the beast, stepping into a turning horizontal swing. The thing barely managed to avoid the attack, leaping backwards whilst maintaining an upright posture.
Allowing the weight of his oversized blade to pull him Ichigo continued his charge forward, spinning into another turning slice that followed the same direction of his last cut. The thing managed to avoid this attack as well, falling forward onto all fours and ducking under the attack. In almost the same motion, the thing launched itself up at Ichigo, its right arm reared back to hammer the orange haired swordsman.
As this happened, Ichigo allowed his weapon's momentum to take him once more, moving with the curve of his slash to pivot out of the way of his adversary's attack. This lead into a spinning backhand bash with the back of the blade, catching the attacking beast squarely in the stomach. The thing hissed in anger and surprise as it was thrown to the ground, arms and legs scrambling to right itself even before it landed.
So Ichigo was unsurprised when it rebounded immediately after hitting the ground, rushing in at him on two legs, arms reared back to strike with all its might.
Ichigo couldn't help but smile slightly at the beasts incessant attacks. It reminded him of himself back in the day. Always biting off more than he could chew.
Ichigo stepped into the beast's advance, jamming the hilt of his sword into the beast's stomach before it could make its next attack. Then, while it was stunned from the hilt to its gut, Ichigo continued the motion of his hilt strike, throwing his weight into an upward swing that cut the wretched thing in twain.
The possible zombie made naught a cry as its two halves fell to the ground, its many chains hitting the ground with clanks of varying harmonics. He watched it warily for a few seconds. Though he was no expert on the mythical beings that wandered the earth in this age of meisters, Ichigo was fairly certain that the thing was dead.
Sure enough the two halves of the thing remained still under Ichigo's wary gaze, though it appeared that something else was forming out of the two halves. A luminescent grey mist was flowing out of the beast's remains, slowly coalescing into a small sphere no larger than Ichigo's palm.
Freed from the confines of its grotesque outer shell the misty sphere floated lazily in the cool air of the desert night.
"huh." Ichigo murmured as he dematerialized his sword, pulling its black crimson energies back into his body. "Guess that means you really are dead."
Just to be sure Ichigo watched the spherical soul warily for a few moments, waiting for a response. When it was clear that there would be none, Ichigo inched closer to the grey soul with inspecting eyes.
This was definitely a closed soul from its appearance. At least that's what he remembered from Mizuiro's description of them back in the day. Mizuiro, Keigo and Tastuki had worked under Urahara gathering research materials for his soul experiments after the conclusion of the winter war. It was through them that Ichigo learned the basic difference between closed and open souls, though he'd never had the time to really sit down and learn everything about them.
In short terms a closed soul had a protective outershell whilst open souls didn't, making the closed type more durable than its counterpart, and the open type more versatile.
Beyond that he didn't know much about closed souls. Then again, he'd never really had the time to sit down and talk to about them in detail. Or rather, he'd never really thought to at the time. Yet another thing he would live to regret. He seemed to have amassed a lot of those kinds of things.
The orange haired swordsman frowned. "So what do I do about you now?"
Soul purification would be a moot point without anywhere safe to send it and even if there was somewhere to send it, he wasn't sure what effect the shinigami techniques of purification would have on such a soul. There weren't any gigai nearby to temporarily shove the soul into. There was the option of taking it into his own gigai temporarily, but he was cramped inside of his body as it was. The chances of crushing the compact soul with his spirit pressure were quite high with all of the restrained soul energy he had inside. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any other options.
Grasping the soul with his right hand, Ichigo performed the same motion he did to summon his sword. The soul was slowly sucked into Ichigo's gigai until there was not even a hint of its grey mist left.
"This'll have to do until I can find someone who'll know what to do with you." Ichigo murmured as he continued on his way. The soul, now inside of Ichigo's gigai, made no reply, remaining silent for the entirety of the trip back to Ichigo's temporary abode.
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Soul frowned as he lay in his bed, eyes towards the ceiling. It was rather uncool of him to be like this, especially with an extracurricular mission coming up soon. However, he was more than a little worried for Maka.
"Of course you're worried" an all too familiar voice replied "You've got no power except for what she brings out of you. You really are a tool."
"Shut up Red" Soul muttered "I don't have any business with you. Not anymore"
"If that were true you wouldn't have lied about my presence."
Soul sat up in his bed the shadows of the moon's glow hiding his annoyed expression. "Maka's got enough to worry about without knowing that her demon weapon's still got a goblin in the back door of his mind."
"Say what you want, but you can't fool me." Red replied "I know you still need it. It's in your blood. Been there since the beginning. Waiting for you to accept it. That's why I'm here."
Soul scowled "I don't need anything from you Red."
"That's not the way I see it, kid. Your eyes are telling me you need everything I can give."
"I don't need your black blood."
"Who said anything about that stuff?" Red replied in an aghast tone. "That is merely a means to an end. To find what you need, or rather what you want you're going to need more than that."
"I know what I want" Soul replied "And it doesn't involve you."
"You think so?" Red replied smugly. "Then what do you want, kid?"
"I want Maka to succeed." He said firmly "She needs that more than anything."
Red laughed "So selfless. I'd be in awe if it weren't all ruse toward your own betterment"
Soul frowned. "Say what you want Red. I'm not changing my stripes"
Red chuckled, "Nor will you have to. Maka will do enough changing for the both of you."
At this Soul stiffened. "What's that supposed to mean?"
For a brief moment the red goblin appeared in front of Soul, a perverse grin taking up almost the entirety of his visage. "I won't even have to lift a finger to make you lost to her, Soul."
Then, as briefly as he'd materialized, the goblin disappeared, leaving Soul alone once more.
For a long moment, all was silent, as Soul mulled over what had just been said. He sighed, returning his head to the relative comfort of his pillow, allowing his eyes to droop closed.
"Even if that's true" he murmured as he drifted off to sleep. "She'll never be lost to me."
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Bonus Excerpt
Notes From Days Long Past:
On Souls
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August 9th 2015
For the sake of convenience I shall gather what knowledge I have divined about souls here.
In this world there are two kinds of souls: open and closed. Although these souls have their specific subdivisions inside of their types, however, there are fundamental similarities that unify them into one of these two classes.
The open soul is the original type of soul that has existed since before the Shinigami were first active. This is a soul type that mimics the human form when outside of a host body. As such it is quite versatile in the ways it can interact with things of both the physical and spiritual nature. It can generally behave like a human does in the ningenkai, walking, running, talking, and general things of that nature. On top of this, the open soul is capable of manipulating the energies that comprise it to either to release a raw form of it or to manifest items that represent parts of the soul's psyche. Such is the manner that Shinigami, Vaizards, and Arrancar manifest their weapons and attacks.
The disadvantages of the open soul come from its relatively unprotected state when outside of a host body. The open soul, though capable of being strengthened, is very destructible, and can be destabilized by attacks that utilize spirit energy.
It should be noted that this type of soul is also quite susceptible to direct attacks on the psyche. Other than the thin outer layer that makes up the soul's spiritual body, There isn't much separating the mental faculties of the open spirit from the energies that comprise its body. As such, corruption of these energies will result in corruption of the soul itself. A corrupt soul cannot perform the autonomous actions that need to be taken to hold its energies together when outside of its host body, thereby causing the soul body to begin to destabilize. If the destabilization reaches a critical level, the soul will disperse entirely.
Note: Need to test the limits of soul restabilization. Is apparently possible according to Slayel's research. The credibility of his research notes is more than a little suspect due to erratic the nature of his now dated and incomplete "experiments".
The closed soul is a far more resilient soul type, which first appeared two years after the Winter War. It differs considerably in appearance from the open soul, in that its appearance is generally that of a sphere with small elements of the soul's more pronounced traits appearing on its outer shell. As suggested by the nature of the soul's form, this type of soul isn't quite as versatile as the open soul is when outside of the soul's body. Indeed, most closed souls enter a form of stasis when removed from their host body.
However, the closed soul is far more useful when inside of a host body. Depending on the type of closed soul, the energies of the soul can be used to change the properties of the host body or the properties of things within close proximity of the host body. So far, it appears that the easiest of things for the closed soul to affect from within its host are other closed souls. Just what this entails has yet to be defined.
Also notable is the sheer resilience of the closed soul. Dispersion of the energies that comprise these souls is rather difficult. The compressed layering of the soul resembles something like the rings on the inside of a tree, varying from soul to soul, and offering quite a bit of protection due to this. The bonds that hold the energies of these souls together are much stronger than those of the open soul, holding together under much duress. According to some sources they can survive being eaten by Hollows. This particular notion has yet to be tested.
Research regarding the propensities of closed souls has come to a halt due to the loss of souls on hand to various stress tests and experiments. As it stands there are only two subjects left. More will have to be acquired if the research is to be completed.
Note: Urahara has been hoarding closed type test subjects as of late. Will have to find a way acquire some of his wares. No doubt his conscience is holding back his research regarding them. Quite a shame that such rare materials will go to waste. Unless of course, someone more suited to this sort of research were to acquire them.
To future generations who would examine these pages, please note that the writer is Kurosotchi Mayuri, and only he. I will not have other second rate scientists taking credit for my brilliance.
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More to come…
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Until then…
