I had a couple more hours to kill before moonrise and I didn't feel like doing paperwork. Practice with Zabimaru I usually reserved for the darker hours of the night when all my Reapers would be either out on patrol or tucked away in their beds, so that no-one would catch sight of my ignominious fails as I worked out my technique through old fashioned trial and error.

:I should work on those other things I said I was going to,: I thought reluctantly.

I wasn't in the habit of breaking promises, even (perhaps especially) ones I made to myself. If I had decided that I should do something in order to become a sharper sword, it did no good to put off honing my edge, I'd just start collecting more rust.

:So, which first, Kido or Startegy?: I asked myself, facetiously.

Neither one of them appealed to me of course, but both of them would hone my edge so there was no better time to get started.

:Either way, it looks like I'm gonna be hanging around the stacks,: I thought wryly to myself.

I just wasn't much of a book-learner, not the least because reading had never really much appealed to me.

:Keh, I do enough readin' when I'm keepin' up with the paperwork,: I grumbled to myself.

If I looked at it another way, then that just meant I'd gotten lots of practice lately.

:So, eeney meeney miney mo..: I thought as I dragged myself reluctantly off to the Soul Society library.

The building was massive, three wings that stretched out the size of a city block with three stories each (and sub-levels under the ground that were restricted access) with an enormous dome in the center of it that led to each wing. It was staffed by a small army of librarians, assistants and chroniclers. I heard that all those log summaries I wrote made its way onto a shelf here after my captain was done with it. Maybe that was one reason why he was constantly getting onto my case about my atrocious handwriting. He couldn't order me into calligraphy lessons, so he could just suffer.

Strategy books often had some nifty accounts of old battles, they weren't always dry and dull, but Kido was actually useful in battle, so I was probably going to study that one first. Besides, it was time I started working on getting these tatoos of mine off my body finally. It was time I stopped relying on Zabimaru to keep my Reitasu in line, and shifted for myself.

I well remembered my academy days, even in the advance classes I had a hard time with the Kido. The spells were all complex and relied on some weird ancient gobbledygook about Chakram and Meridians and reishin and spirit energy that made only a dim kind of sense to me. I could sort of make the incantations work for me, but it was chancy. If I wanted to fire off an attack it was just as likely to backfire on me as it was to hit what I was aiming for. In class they'd started calling me "Ol' Charcoal"... well they did at least until I caught enough of them after class to make my objections known.

I had used to study it with Rukia and she'd used to explain the weird stuff in a way that kinda made sense to me. I missed those days still.

"Wonder if I c'n get 'er to help me out again." I wondered to myself.

She'd probably just tease me about having made lieutenant without knowing the basics about Kido though. Granted, she was partly right, but maybe going all the way back to the basics wasn't such a bad idea. I was clearly lacking the groundwork--

::And the control and self-discipline,:: Zabimaru added in a little cuttingly.

:Yer being awful chatty lately, what gives?:

::Has it not occured to you that, even with the aid of the binding-marks I've placed on you, that I might perhaps be weary of restraining the wellspring of your Reiatsu, Renji?:: Zabimaru asked me, irony in his voice.

So in other words, hurry up about it. Still it occured to me...

:If yer so keyed up about me gaining control of my own spiritual powers lately why wait until this late in the game? Why not have put me up to it earlier like when i was tryin' ta rescue Rukia?:

::I had only just gotten the resolve out of you to do whatever it took to master Bankai,:: Zabimaru answered with dignity. ::And even after you had finally managed to master the Snaketail, once you had that woman at your side you weren't interested in concentrating on anything else.::

I suppressed an automatic feeling of insult at his words. He made me sound like some kind of wimp that spent all his time mooning about on hilltops sighing over his lady fair like some sap from out of a Courtly Love Balad rather than the warrior who spent all of his time in training to get stronger that I had been for the last forty years!

::And once you left to fight beside her against the Espada in Hueco Mundo there was no time for study or further refinement on your technique,:: Zabimaru finished.

:So what, you were jus' waitin' fer a breather so you could get me ta study Kido now?:

::You have acknowledged to yourself that our blade is weak. You lack mastery over the skills of Kido and of the Art of War. Are you telling me now that you are willing to accept these weaknesses instead of honing our edge?::

I mulled that one over. My pride as a warrior automatically answered 'hell no!' but I was also realistic, I knew myself well enough to know that when it came to learning things from out of a book I had a serious block there. Put me on a training feild and I could manage just fine, that was just how I worked, but set me behind a desk and I was not in my element.

:Ya got a point,: I aknowledged to him.

I usually tended to discount how important a good Kido attack could be in turning the tides of a battle.

:Heck I seen it fer myself,: I admitted.

When I was supervising the battles between the different elements, tanks were good for knocking a Hollow on its ass and a couple of good Kido specialists could hold one at bay and herd it this way and that, but the fighters that were of real value were the all-arounds; the ones who knew a little of each because they weren't limited to just one manner of attack or defense.

I was a Lieutenant wasn't I? I should already be good at this stuff, the fact that I had made it this far and my Kido attacks still sucked because I used them as little as possible was not a credit to me. A real warrior would want to be able to know and use every advantage he could lay his hands on. The fact that I hadn't was due to sheer stubborn perversity on my part.

::Your pure stubborn hard-headedness is often what makes you pull through when any other warrior would give up and try something else. It is what also enables you to persevere when most would give in, you find your greater strength the greater the adversity you face and you win through simply to prove that you can, but don't turn that strength into a weakness. Don't let your pride in your sword turn against you by making you unwilling to try new things.::

I paused to actually reflect on what the ape was saying to me, sitting down under a nearby tree and thinking about it. Zabimaru retreated back to his little nest inside my soul to let me work it out on my own like usual. I was being stupid and in the process, stabbing myself in the foot. I was a stubborn guy, it was the sole virtue that had made it possible for me to make lieutenant in such a (relatively) short amount of time, but that stubborness had the tendency to make me cling to my strengths.

:Face it Renji,: I said, not willing to allow myself to wimp out. :Yer afraid.:

After all, with everything I'd gained, I'd already lost the one thing I wanted win, which sort of made the rest of it feel not really worth it. In short, I no longer had anything left to loose by being brutally honest with myself... maybe it was some kind of flaw in me that had made me fall short. If this was true then the reason I was not with her was because something in me wasn't good enough. If this was the case, then, just as being second-best in any trial I'd faced was not acceptable; a weakness in my abilities was no longer acceptable either.

So what was I afraid of? Well that one was simple, the only thing I could think of that I was ever afraid of. Failure, the fear of falling short, of not being enough. I'd suffered the ignominy of defeat and this exact thing in the past year more than I ever had before; that brat, in a matter of months, easily surpassed all I had worked for in the course of decades. It was both maddening and discouraging. The worst thing was that I couldn't really dislike the guy and even found myself in the extremely annoying position of having to be grteful to him for saving her life. A bigger man than me would have said 'as long as her life was saved what does it matter how it's done" and I tried to see it that way, but the plain truth was that I just didn't, couldn't. I had wanted to be the one to save her. I wanted to be the one to help her, to be by her side. Why the hell does he, who isn't even an actual Reaper, who doesn't have any rank, who hasn't lived for decades around her, why does he get to fight beside her with his head up? I'd worked so hard and yet in the end, I just wasn't good enough. I'd failed and it still felt like the worst of all possible things. Everything I feared had come to be.

So what could I do about it? I couldn't just stop being afraid, a small amount of fear kept one cautious and alive in battle (though I had never been known for my caution in battle), it was a survival mechanism.

::Stop letting it control you,:: Zabimaru hinted. ::Relax.::

I'd been accused of being so laid back that I was positively slothful, mostly by my Captain, Byakuya Kuchiki... who was the living embodiment of the iron-clad work ethic. So my soul-sword's advice didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I should probably try wrapping my mind around it a bit more before I just dismissed it. Thinking things through wasn't exactly my strong point either, but it was a nice afternoon and I was resting under a tree but I wasn't feeling sleepy enough to nap for a change, besides, this kind of thing was important. I pulled myself into a sitting position and turned my gaze inward, shutting out the world around me so I could concentrate. It wasn't anything so high-brow as meditation or anything like that, I was just trying to shut out all the distractions so i could work my way through a chain of thought. What did Zabimaru mean when he had said I was letting fear control me?

For as long as I'd been chasing my goal of rising high enough in the ranks to be able to stand next to Rukia with my head held up, there had also been this strange feeling like something was both chasing behind me nipping at my heels, and chained to me, dragging me down. I wasn't sure what it was or what I was supposed to do with it so I just ignored it. Maybe it wasn't something I should be ignoring.

I'd heard somewhere that fear could be a goad, to push a guy inta action, but I also knew that sometimes fear could make a guy freeze up and resist taking action when action needed to be taken. So then, was whatever the hell it was that's been chasing after me an' makin' afraid to turn around doing either of those two things? Well the first thing I already knew the answer to. I used my fear of failure to hone my edge so that I just simply wouldn't fail. Usually the only answer i had to what happened if I did fail was to just push myself harder. That didn't seem like a bad thing to me. it made me a stronger fighter.

::You will never be a truly strong fighter with only fear and desperation to hone your edge,:: Zabimaru replied.

:I just gotta be stronger!: I snapped.

::Is that your only reason for fighting? You just want to be stronger? Don't make me laugh Lieutenant Renji Abarai.::

And with that from my sword, my whole world abruptly tilted on its side, sort of. Before that moment, all I'd been doing there was sitting under a tree, examining the lids of my eyes while I thought through whatever it was Zabimaru seemed to have a problem with me about. Now I seemed to be on my feet somewhere else entirely.

Looking at it, it was really strange to see. I was surrounded on all sides by dense, lush greenery sewn all together by vines with strange lookin' fruits and flowers on it. I was standing on an enormous wooden log that three of me linked hand to hand could not had reached all the way around. One side the massive log was anchored into what looked like a side-wall covered in grass with some kind of strange fountain running over it. The water was flowing upwards (which looked really weird) into a series of seven stone rock-basins that were clogged with all sorts of mulch and dead stuff so that instead of the water flowing easily into the bowls, it trickled in little rivulets. On the other side of the log, the log branched off into many large limbs, and hanging in one of those limbs was a massive white baboon with a snake peeking over his shoulder who eyed me with meditative stillness.

"Huh?" I asked intelligently. I'd never seen this place before, where was there a jungle in the Seireitei?

"Glad you could make it, finally," the smaller, tinier voice of the Snaketail greeted me. The Baboon King looked at me silently, his expression unreadable.

"Where am I?" I asked. "Last I knew I was sittin' under a tree an' thinkin' about how I was supposed to get over this Kido hang-up. Now suddenly I'm standin' in th' middle o' th' jungle with you."

"We've manifested ourselves in your world for Bankai, but it's definitely time that you came to visit ours, or rather your own innerscape," the Snaketail replied.

"I have a jungle in me?" I said, non-plussed. A guy would think he'd have noticed something like that.

"Everyone's is different," the snake said. "Anyway, you've finally gotten around to addressing some of your weaknesses, the one's you usually ignore. Growing stronger as a fighter is the path that's easier and we've come far by walking down it until now, but since we've gone about as far as that path alone can take us, we're going to master the other ways to hone our strength."

"Ya mean we're learnin' that Kido shit," I said, getting to the point. "What's all this about then?"

"Normally the best way to learn Kido is to just read the ancient texts, but unfortunately you're not all that great at the book-learning approach so we're going to learn it the same way you seem to learn best. By doing it--"

"Ya remember what happened the last time I tried practicing kido?" I said to them.

He should, certainly Second Division always would. Sure they had been able to replace that particular building pretty easily but they'd never let me use any of their training halls for practice again. In fact, I'd been forbidden from trying to practice kido anywhere within the vicinity of Second for my entire stint there. Second had a record for being filled with the masters of Kido, not the least of which was thier Captain, Soi Fon, but even she had declared that it was probably better that I not try anything that was beyond my capability.

"Kido," she explained at the time. "Requires absolute knowledge of ones self. It requires nothing less than absolute mastery of all of ones aspects, it requires a strength of mental discipline and training that you are so far from being able to posses right now that it might as well be impossible for you."

Let it not be said that the Captain of Second did not know how to be brutally honest. Apparently, at the time, I had lacked that knowledge and mastery. I most likely still did, since I had yet to come any farther in my skills with Kido than the very basics that I had scraped by with in Academy.

"But since we're all of us here too proud to just ask for help," Snaketail continued. "We'll have to handle this ourselves... the hard way."

"What's the hard way?" I asked curiously.

"Y'see that fountain over there?" Snaketail asked me. I nodded.

"It's the manifestation of what your chakra and meridians look like right now."

I remembered from my lessons in the academy what chakra and meridians were; meridians they were the flowing pathways of energy that held a persons reiatsu and Chakra were both like wellsprings that energy came from and sort of like fans in a vent system that pushed the flow of energy out along the meridians. Meridians, I also recalled, were sort of like the warp and weft that made a tapestry, only the tapestry was the fabric of that persons very existence. Energy flowed in great channels along the wider ones and then trickled into smaller channels through the fabric of a person's soul.

I looked down into the basins they were gunky and all clogged up with swamp-like crap in the bottoms of them, a water that was strangely glowing a deep crimson flowed sluggishly in the basins in thin, tiny rivulets, seeping through the muck to flow from pool to pool... only it was more like a clogged drain than a fountain-flow.

"If you want to achieve mastery of Kido you're going to not only clean out all the crap clogging up the basins, you're going to unlock the sluice gates. It's a metaphor-- you understand metaphor?"

"Yeah, I know what a goddamn metaphor is," I growled, resenting the fact that he, too, seemed to think I was a complete idiot.

Granted, I had the tendency to play up my stupidity a little, it made people relax around me a bit more if they thought I was never any real threat, but it did on occasion hurt a little to think that people thought so little of me because they fell for my act so well. I'd never claim to be any sort of genius or anything, and I did have a tendency to miss the obvious sometimes, but I couldn't help the fact that I didn't always seem to see everything the way that everyone else did.

"It's a metaphor for how your meridians and chakra look right now. Those basins with their sluice gates are your chakra, they're currently bound up by our binding seals on your body. The reiatsu you can unleash now is only a fraction of your true potential--"

I stared wide-eyed at the snake in disbelief. I'd never been very strong when it came to kido or reiatsu, Rukia had always been the stronger of the two of us. I said so in the next breath, frankly unable to believe what the snake was telling me.

"You're stronger than you think you are," the snaketail replied. "Otherwise, why would it have been necessary to bind up your power in the first place?"

I didn't have a ready answer for that, of course. I recalled when I was a kid how much effort I'd had to make to call up even a small concentration of spirit energy to my hand, Rukia's light had been much larger (and far more effortless) than mine.

"How do you explain that one?" I demanded of the snake next.

"Girls mature faster than boys do," Snaketail replied easily. The Baboon King smiled and added

"Especially when the girl and the boy in question are yourself and Rukia."

I scowled over at him for the remark but was cautiously willing to acknowledge that maybe he had a point. I recalled that in the Academy my reiatsu was more than enough to get me into the advanced Kido classes as well, even though my skill at Kido was... less than advanced. It had ticked Rukia off to no end, certainly. I also recalled that in those classes, my reiatsu was on a level with all of the other guys--

:Better than most of them, in fact,: I thought to myself.

The only problem had been the fact that it was so difficult to control. It had always been backfiring on me or slipping out of my grasp and causing bigger explosions than I had intended. One had been so bad they'd had to shut down class for three days to repair the damage, and I'd gotten a months detention because the instructors had all thought I'd done it on purpose. I had really only sort of gotten a handle on it when I began making Zabimaru's acquaintance. And he had started putting those tatoo's on me.

"You know the spells," the snake said to me while the Baboon King looked on in measuring, dignified silence.

Great, my sword was acting like my boss, just what I didn't need. Yeah, I knew the spells, just like everyone else did, what it seemed I lacked was the discipline and other stuff, the "complete mastery over ones self and soul" and all that garbage the books had all said were absolutely neccessary to perform great works with Kido. I could shoot off a spell without all that stuff.

"And sometimes you even manage to hit something without burning yourself to a crisp first," Snaketail said facetiously.

Good point.

"Alright, so how's this supposed to work, I clean out that fountain and unlock all the gates right?" I said, reluctantly willing to roll up my sleeves.

"You wish," Snaketail said. "Those fountains are only a metaphor, remember. The junk that's clogging the basins is in actuality all the various emotional and spiritual problems and issues you have in clogging up each of your chakra. You have to clear away all that stuff before your meridians and chakra can flow freely and you can handle your reiatsu finally."

I regarded my sword with what must have been a blankly puzzled expression on my face.

"I don't have any problems," I replied. "If I've got a problem I beat it with my sword until it don't get back up no more. And then I go have a drink to settle it."

Both the Baboon King and Snaketail gave me this lingering, speaking look that said volumes about the claim I'd just made. Snaketail shook his tiny head and regarded his other half.

"I don't even know where to start with this one," the Babboon King replied to some unspoken question.

"Do you even hear yourself when you talk?" Snaketail demanded of me. I looked back at him, nonplussed.

"You just said that you beat all your problems into submission, then you just said that you go drinking after that."

"Yeah, so?" I asked.

I didn't see what the big deal was.

"So violence is the way you deal with material problems," the Baboon King replied with exaggerated patience. "And drinking is the way you deal with any other kind of problem you can't beat with your hands."

"What's so wrong with that?" I asked. Wasn't that how all men dealt with their problems? It had certainly worked fine for me so far.

"We're never gonna get this thing cleared out if he doesn't even realize he's got problems in the first place," Snaketail said morosely.

"Oh he knows it," Baboon King replied firmly. He looked up at me.

"What about the problem with Rukia? She chose another and there was nothing you could do about it... because you didn't even try. You were too scared."

I tried desperately to ignore the clenching feeling in my chest as his words struck home.

"And when she needed you most, you weren't good enough," he pursued.

I felt that old familiar friend anger starteing to simmer inside of me at the reminder.

"She had to rely on some baby from the mortal world and his little friends for a rescue, instead of you."

Another pang at those words and I reached for the hilt of my sword.

"And instead of telling her brother to fuck off and buying her enough time to get away when you were sent to the mortal world to fetch her back, what did you do but bring her back neatly, just like a dog coming to heel?"

I repressed a snarl of mounting rage at that reminder.

"Fetch Renji! Arf arf!" Snaketail added snidely as an aside.

That did it. I pulled out my blade, still in its quiescent form, and lunged. Snarling an enraged

"Fuck you!"

My slice didn't land because suddenly Zabimaru was behind me.

"You see that?" the baboon king demanded of me.

I snarled and turned at bay, sword out in front of me.

"I wasn't hurting you and yet you lashed out with intent to harm, all over a couple of words that can't do anything on a battlefield. You're predictable and easily manipulated, it's no wonder you can't beat a thinking opponent in a fight. Your emotions cloud your judgment and dull your sword. I guess all you'll ever be suited for is cutting down Hollows."

That stung too, and I glared even as I sheathed my sword. Part of me kinda wanted to beat his metaphorical ass.

"So what?" I muttered sullenly. I knew I was pouting like a little brat and I didn't care. "I'm good at killin' Hollows, that's what Soul Reapers are s'posed to do."

"A low-rank Soul Reaper maybe, but you're a lieutenant now. Stop thinking like a peon," Snaketail said.

"I'm not!" I snapped, nettled.

There was nothin' like a little piece of yer soul being given a mouth of its own to get under yer skin.

"You're right, even a low-ranked peon could control his temper better than you do," the Baboon King replied dryly. I scowled.

"I don't get what you pickin' a fight with me is gonna do to help me master Kido," I said. "Especially if yer not actually gonna fight me at all."

"Stop playing stupid Renji," the Baboon King replied. "It might work on everyone else, even Rukia most of the time, but you forget that we are part of you. We know you've already grasped the concept and are now just stalling because you don't want to do it."

Nuts, they'd pinned me.

"Fine fine," I grumbled. "Ya got me, I don't want to do all that soul-searchin' bullshit yer about to ask me ta do. I think a few drinks should end the matter. I woulda ben fine that night if Rangiku hadn't shown up. Sure it might not've settled things, but I'd been able ta stuff it down just fine and take my defeat like a man after the hangover."

"That's exactly what we're trying to tell you," Snaketail said in exasperation. "Stuffing it down into a corner of your mind doesn't "take care of it" it only pushes it aside for a while so you can keep moving on. And drinking to cure it doesn't solve anything."

"It's all still there beneath the surface," The Baboon King said. "And it still has power over you. An enemy who knows you well would be able to strip you down so hard and so fast you wouldn't even lift your sword against him. You'd be so crippled by your own emotions that you wouldn't even raise your head. Or he could just as easily goad you into jumping through hoops if he wanted to."

"You've mastered the outside but if you don't master everything that's on the inside as well, you're not even half of a fighter," Snaketail added. "Detirmination to grow stronger will only get you so far. Holes in your mental armor translates to bad defenses."

"The seven basins you see there are representative of your seven chakra, you need to clear out and unlock each in order for the water, which is representative of your spirit energy, to flow freely," The Baboon King added.

"Ah-huh..." Renji said consideringly. "So how'm I s'posed ta do that then?"

"You will face that which lies within inside The Dreaming, Renji. Once you take up the challenge of unlocking a chakra you cannot abort it, even if it is difficult, even if you feel like you might die. The challenges and the difficulties you face will all be different, tied to the nature of each sealed chakra. You must fully master the nature of each in order to receive the key to the sluice gate that will unlock that chakra. To turn away from your task once you've started means to admit defeat and thus end the challenge."

"What happens if I end the challenge without unlocking the Chakra?" Renji asked.

"You'll die... or at least, you won't ever wake up again. It's basically the same thing," Snaketail said. "You'll just become a vegetable an' they'll probably give yer body over to Twelfth for that creepy Captain to run experiments on."

I shuddered. Talk about a fate nominally worse than death.

"So if I do this an' fail I'll never wake up and Twelfth will run experiments on my body, but if I don't do it at all I'll never get yer binding marks offa my body. Zat right?"

"Correct," the Baboon King said with ponderous dignity.

"But if ya go through with it an' win, you'll have mastered not only yourself, but all that Kido stuff which ya never quite seemed to get," Snaketail said enticingly.

I really sat back and thought about it for a long minute. It was more my nature to rush at an obstacle head on and not think too much about it other than to smash my way through it but this, I instinctively knew, was going to be another order of challenges altogether. They were likely to be the sorts of things I wasn't all that great at, cerebral and emotional stuff. Brain stuff wasn't my strongest suit, and like any guy emotional stuff just made me want to find the nearest exit (or bottle, whichever came first). On the surface this sounded like an easy way to gain mastery over Kido, but I knew damned well and from personal experience that the way that looked easy on the surface often had all kinds of unknown turbulence hidden in its depths.

:But even if I do master Kido by reading it outta some book, and there sure as hell ain't no guarantee about that, I won't have that mastery over myself the chimera here is offering, I'd just be learning it by rote and not improving.:

My goal was to hone my edge, it wasn't supposed to be easy. I might not be bleeding by the end of it, but even I gotta to admit that I do a lot o' my bleeding on the inside. So even if it was deceptively simple sounding, I wasn't going in there expecting a cakewalk. I thought I saw a glimmer of approval in the Baboon Kings eyes at that.

"I'll do it," I said simply. They'd already known I would, heck, maybe we'd all three known it, but this way I couldn't claim later that I hadn't known what I was lettin' myself in for.

"Good," was all the Baboon King said.

I love these chapters! This one and the upcoming ones were some of my favorites to write. I just love writing the real Zabimaru and Renji of course.