Turning into my office at the Squad Headquarters, I lit a candle and reviewed what awaited me there. I looked over at the small pile waiting for me on my desk, they were mostly reports from the field for me to read over then enter into summary log-book, and file under their proper places. I could do that in the morning. My body was feeling stiff and creaky from being stuck in one place for most of a day. The best way to loosen it up would be with some good quality exercise. I still had that new move to work on for Zabimaru, after all.
:Yeah, I think it can wait a little while,: I told myself, reversing my steps and heading out to the Squad training court.
It was almost the middle of the night by now, and the air was chill enough to cover the loose turf and the patches of grass with dew. A hint of frost still hung in the air from the recent winter, and there was enough nip in the breeze to ensure that I stayed nice and cool for practice. I didn't skimp on warm up excersizes, I'd heard enough lectures from Unonhana on the subject of impatient young hot-heads who made more work for her and her nurses.
I took a deep breath of the night-scented air and considered the empty moonlit court before me, deciding which would be the best training exercise for me to practice. I frowned a bit after a minute, noticing that something felt a little off. I looked around and scented the winds, there didn't seem to be anything around me that I could detect that felt any different, though now that I paused to notice it the individual reiatsu's of the Reapers in the nearby barracks did feel just a little clearer to me right then.
:There's something different,: I thought, puzzled.
I pulled out Zabimaru and transformed him to Shikai for practice. I blinked and stared down at my blade for a very long moment.
It felt lighter. Zabimaru had never been terribly heavy, but there had always been a weight to him that had made him satisfyingly solid in my grasp. Now he felt noticeably lighter in my hand.
I looked sightlessly out over the courtyard before me and realized just what it was that felt so different about tonight. My sword was lighter... and so was I.
Always before I had approached practice with Zabimaru as though every practice was a true life or death battle. I'd always been pushing myself to excel; to beat my best time, to refine a technique, to swing harder or longer or quicker, to bring more power into my attacks. I set goals for every practice session and mock-battle and wouldn't allow myself to rest until I achieved those goals. I'd gone into every practice with a serious-minded attitude that was really at odds with how I generally was as a person. Not once in all the time I'd been practicing with the goal in mind of making it to where I wanted to be had I ever thought of practice with Zabimaru as something other than a way of increasing my abilities with my partner. When I practiced, it was work! I never practiced just for fun, it was always serious for me. Granted, you didn't get better by goofing off, but it seemed a little sad somehow that I never just wanted to play a bit.
I rested back on my hip and regarded my shikai Zabimaru gleaming in the moonlight. It had been a productive day, and I was really only out here for the exercise anyway, no-one was watching me or grading my performance, and a sudden attack by a horde of shrieking Hollows was vanishingly likely... there was nothing stopping me from having a little bit of fun for a change.
:Whad'ya think Buddy?: I asked him. :Up for a little fun tonight?:
I felt a delighted tickle in the back of my mind and, taking it for the assent that it was, I launched myself at my target. I didn't set any goals for speed or technique, it was more or less just do whatever the heck I felt like. I was surprised by how good it actually did feel. It took me back to the way I had felt in those days at the Academy, learning my way around Zabimaru for the first time. The power and freedom I had felt for the first time as we had taken out out target after target together. It had felt good then, and I wasn't saying that the times I'd practiced since then had not felt good, but practice just wasn't as nice when one was driven and purposeful; I had forgotten the way it felt when it was just me and Zabimaru, fighting and learning together without any pressure. With a strange sense of epiphany I realized that a lot of the pressure I felt, was pressure that I put on myself so that I would be strong enough and good enough to never fail, but now that the fear of failure had lost its hold over me a number of shackles I hadn't even realized were there were loosened and falling off, leaving me feeling almost like I was floating.
That night, the practice session with Zabimaru felt a little like fighting with my own shadow, the movements of dodge and lunge and twist and snap flowed all in a seamless pattern, as sinuous as the snake he resembled. Like yin and yang we circled each other, each having a power that the other felt, tied to each other and part of each other. It felt good just moving with him, our movements mirroring each other so we were like partners in a dance and a single entity at once.
It felt just a little like flying when I launched myself up into the air and arching my back to push upwards and then kicking my leg over into an axle spin. Zabimaru curled in loosely around me. As we descended I pushed him outward, as I fell back down to the earth he soared towards my target and hit beautifully, momentum from the coiling leap we'd taken restored and he flowed perfectly into a reverse slash that took out my next two targets.
Showing off for no-one but myself, I preened a little inwardly at the fact that only Zabimaru combined such power and grace of motion with such deadly blades. Other swords could have enormous edges or ribbons and other doodads attached to them, but Zabimaru was beauty and grace and deadly precision and power all in one. I found myself smiling, really enjoying myself for the first time in a long time. He and I both felt light as feathers and I was feeling particularly good that night, like there wasn't anything I couldn't do.
:So why not just try it?: I wondered to myself, feeling light and sorta happy right then.
I was feeling good and we both seemed to be in good form. So why not give it a try?
There had been one technique I'd been trying for years to prefect, but had never been able to make work the way I wanted it to. I was supposed to be able to jump in the air in a theifs crouch, whirl Zabimaru around me so he tightened into a coil, then shoot him out to lodge head-first into something, and once he was secure, make a curling motion with my end and then slide down the extended flats of the blade on my feet, sort like a grind down a rail in skateboarding. Once I was near the end I'd pull Zabimaru back to rest in his sword-form and then really let my target have it with all the momentum we'd built up. That was the idea at least. I'd never quite managed it, and after nearly a straight three months of having Unohana or one of her staff treat me for lacerations on the soles of my feet, she'd personally banned my practicing the maneuver herself, the ban to be enforced by cudgel if neccessary. So I hadn't tried for it in several years. Maybe now was agood time.
I felt a feeling of approval from the sword and took that as an okay for a go. With a feral grin of challenge on my face, I sped towards a nearby boulder and sprung off it to launch myself up into the air, spinning upwards with Zabimaru in a tightening coil around me. I shot Zabimaru at a nearby post to embed the head as an anchor and curled and flipped in mid-air, whipping with a half-moon slice to one side to that the blade was facing the proper direction, I straightened my legs and touched the flats of his extended blade, my own momentum sliding me down along it. I wove a bit as the ever-present motion became difficult to compensate for, but I was already much farther along in this move than I had ever managed before so it was okay with me if it wasn't perfect (for a change). When one particularly unpredictable swing threatened to start causing problems, I dropped to the side and let myself hit the ground again, crouching and rolling as Zabimaru snapped back into ready position.
:Not perfect, but still...!: I thought, very pleased with our teamwork as I called a halt for the night and walked to cool-down as i headed over to the drinking fountain to the place where I'd thrown my top off, mid-excercize, to keep cool. I was surprised to see a silent form sitting in the grass next to my shirt, a familiar form that I should have sensed earlier. I guessed I was more into my practice than I'd thought.
"Hey Rukia," I said, dipping my head down to drink from the spout so she wouldn't see my expression of mingled joy and pain.
I was happy to see her after a while of being apart from her due to her mission in the mortal world, but at the same time it was hard to look at her.
"Hey Renji," she said with her usual quiet solemnity. "You're up late, do you usually practice in the middle of the night?"
Yeah," I said sticking my head under the fountain to rinse of the sweat and then shaking myself like a dog.
"It's quieter," I explained. "And there ain't no-one around to see my screw ups. Well, usually that is."
"I'll go if you want me to," she said.
"No, no stay," I said, just a bit too quickly.
Fool that I was, even if it hurt, I just wanted to be near her.
"I'm done practicing for the night anyway."
I flopped down beside her and stretched out, using my wadded up shirt as a pillow. No, I was not showing off for the girsl it was just that I was still warm from the excesize and that was my story and I was sticking to it.
"You, um... You looked good, out there," she said.
Her tone sounded a little shy.
"I mean, your movements were, um, very fluid. That move you made at the end was a little choppy but other than that... and have you gotten faster?"
"Workin' on a new technique," I told her. "And that last you saw is the closest I've come so far to an old one that I've never quite got the hang of. It was a good practice."
I didn't bother keeping the note of pleased satisfaction from my voice at what I felt was a bit of well-earned swagger. It had been a good practice and I felt I deserved a little recognition for it. I was glad she'd caught me on a good night rather than one of those practice sessions where nothing ever seems to go right, though, I caught enough crap from her without her having to see all my screw-ups.
Rukia seemed to regard me with wide eyes. Like I'd just said something unusual.
"How often do you practice like this?" she asked.
"About every night," I said, mystified as to why her eyes seemed to get even wider when I said that.
I had a morning practice regimen too, one that I usually woke up around dawn for, it was done in my own home though, with Zabimaru left in his un-shikaied state. I just warmed up, stretched my body limber, then went through combo-reps and ten of the sword forms before cooling off, bathing and heading out for the day. Night-practice was for outside because I couldn't swing a snaketail in a room seeing as it would destroy the room in question if I tried it. Even I had more sense than ta go an' do that.
"Usually it's for longer but I did a lot of running around today so I thought I'd take it easy," I said, shrugging casually. "Why? How often do you practice?"
"Uhmmmm..." she said hesitantly. "Not as often as that, that's for certain."
"Oh," I said. "Good thing yer not in my squad then," I blurted out honestly.
An instant later I wished I hadn't. Rukia never took criticism well.
"Why's that?" she asked, a slight edge to her tone.
"Uh, no reason," I lied quickly.
I should have known better, that woman could smell a lie better than a snake could smell a nest of baby mice.
"No I really want to know, Renji," she said.
"Well, if you reeeaally wanna know," I said with a teasing smile over at her. She'd asked after all.
"I saw yer last battle with a Hollow and if you'd been a member of my squad, I'd have had you doin' drills with the element that had all the rest o' the noobs in it."
She stared at me in shock and mounting offense.
"Are you implying, Mister Abarai, that my skills as a Reaper are somewhat wanting?" she asked sharply, cheeks flushing a little in anger.
"Rukia, you know me better than that," I said, putting a mockingly injured hand to my chest I said. "I never imply. I'm stating a fact, your skills could use some work."
"Oh really?" she said. "I've seen you on a battlefield too mister, I'm surprised you could fight your way out of a paper bag."
She scoffed with her cute little nose in the air. I regarded her for a long moment. There was a lot I could say to that, starting with "which of the two of us got caught with their pants down by an ordinary Hollow on their first mission" and go from there, but I really wasn't looking for the kind of ugly verbal fight that that would bring on. I was starting to see that a lot of Rukia's and my own problems with ourselves and each other came from the fact that, due to our own insecurities, we couldn't seem to stop using each other as verbal scratching posts to sharpen our claws on. I was starting to see that the tendency we'd developed of using each other to fight with had gone beyond the puppies-rustling-in-the-litter stage and could be an actual problem. When we'd been younger, being tough and proud was how you survived, if you were stronger that meant you were better and that gave you status and respect, so we'd always been at each other throats (more or less) as a way of keeping each other sharp and toughening each other up so the world couldn't tear us down. I'd been too dumb to notice when that habit had started to change what I was and was not willing to reveal to her. She'd always been quick to pick a fault and rag me about it, but I couldn't say with any honesty that I wasn't the same way in my own way. She called me dumb and clumsy, but I was always willing to point out that I was, hands-down, a better fighter than she was. How had I not noticed that our constant claw-sharpening was alienating us from each other? Well, that'd have to stop. Time to try out a little more of that diplomacy thing I was picking up from Momo and Kira. So instead I said to her assertion
"I didn't say that I don't have areas to improve on, but you do see me improving on them though, don't you? I can't rest on my laurels, because in my world there's always someone better out there waiting to take what I've got."
I stretched out lazily along the ground, letting the cool grass soak the exertion-heat from my body as the sweat I had worked up from my practice cooled on my bare skin. The soft scent of night was nice and the moon was high overhead, giving the air a peaceful feeling to it. We used to sit out on nights like these, just Rukia and me, after the rest of the younger boys had all gone to sleep, and talk. Sometimes we'd talked about nothing, sometimes we'd talked about our dreams for the future or what we thought life in the Academy would be like, sometimes we'd even tried to make out shapes from the stars (that one so totally did not look like a rabbit, anyone could see that it was a lion!). I missed those days. I often wished we could talk now the same way we had back then.
"Sound's like Rukon," she said with quiet solemnity.
Yeah, it did, it sounded exactly like Rukon.
"There's a lot o' times when I think they ain't so different," I said just as quietly.
That statement was followed by a long moment of silence.
"Hey Renji?" she asked after a a bit.
"Yeah?" I asked her, inwardly praying she wasn't about to ask me for some kind of human-world dating advice or something.
I think I'd sooner run myself through with my own sword.
"Have you ever gotten something you thought you really wanted, only to find out that it's not what you thought it'd be?"
"Yeah, and the paperwork and sheer crap that comes with it is a pain in the butt," I replied.
"Well, what did you do about it?" she asked next, sounding strangely hesitant. "Did you stick with it and hope it turned out better or did you leave it behind and look for something else?"
I stretched back, looking up at the half-noon in the sky and thought about how to answer that.
"With me, when I accepted the position as Vice-Captain, I sorta made a promise ta do my best fer the people under me," I said. "Sure I thought about sayin' ta hell with it all and findin' another position in another squad but in the end I guess I figure that even with all the hassles that comes with it, includin' yer brother, I think that at the end of the day I have somethin' that's worth it. But maybe that's because of how I decided to handle it."
"What's that mean?" she asked curiously.
"When I took up the position of Lieutenant, the squad was run pretty normal compared to other squads, that is, everyone ran around doing their own thing. They all just took their orders from the Seats and that was that. But I brought some of myself into the position with me, I figured that there were some areas that could use a little work, so I set things up to work at 'em. The thing I've got going is a little... what's the word?"
"Unconventional," Rukia informed me.
"Yeah, unconventional, but it seems to work pretty well. I get my exercise, they get theirs, everybody gets to work with everyone else, and we even have a little fun doing it. I've even noticed that the death-toll and injury toll seems to have dropped off."
I wasn't trying to brag, but I was actually kinda proud o' myself for the improvement.
"So you think that I shouldn't just be unhappy with it, but that I should try to change what I don't like about it," she said.
"Unless the things you don't like about it are the sorts of things in its own nature that can't be changed," I qualified. "Then yer screwed."
"How do I know the difference?" she asked next.
"I dunno," I sighed. "Keep pokin' at it 'til ya figure it out?"
Rukia made a noise in her throat that suggested that last bit hadn't been very helpful but she appreciated my effort. My morbid curiosity almost prompted me to ask how things were going with her and Ichigo, but I wasn't the sort who went in for self mutilation, so instead I said
"Yer bro's hostin' some aristo- shindig tomorrow eh?"
"How did you know about that?" she asked curiously.
"He has me playin' paper-boy, so I'll be droppin' by tomorrow."
I squirmed around a bit, trying to find a cooler spot, since I'd managed to warm that one up. The dew flickered onto me, turning into droplets of silver across my stomach in the moonlight and i absently flicked them off and stretched out in a yawn. It was late and I should probably think about getting to bed soon.
"You really should put your shirt on, or you're going to catch a cold sitting out here on the ground in the middle of the night," she said suddenly.
Well that was an odd change of subject. Rukia rose suddenly to her feet, well, more like shot to them would've have been a more accurate description. Was it something I'd said? She started walking quickly away from me.
"Hey, Rukia, what's wrong?" I asked, trying not to betray my sudden half-panic that I might have somehow offended her.
She half-turned and looked back at me, her cheeks looked pink and she looked kinda flustered. Maybe she was more nervous about tomorrow than she wanted to admit?
"Er, it's nothing, I just have to go and... uh, be up early tomorrow. And I have a kimono and make up and jewelry and it'll last all day," she said with an odd, half-crazy note in her voice.
With the odd babble she had sort of sounded like Orihime Inoue for a minute there.
"Oh," I said, trying not to sound to sad that she was leaving so suddenly. "Well... I guess I'll see ya around then."
"Uh, sure," she said distractedly.
That didn't sound very promising. She looked back over at me again, oddly and her face got pinker. At least she didn't look angry. I sighed a little as I watched her walk back toward her home. It had been nice while it had lasted. It wasn't likely I'd get to see her tomorrow, she'd probably be busy with whatever was going on at the Kuchiki place all day and I'd just be nipping by to drop off paperwork, it wasn't like I was invited. This was a noble function and I was just Kuchiki's underling, there was still that line there.
:Too much thinkin': I chided myself before I could think myself right back into a state of inadequacy and depression.
I drank from the fountain and headed back to the barrack baths which would be empty by this time. After a quick wash-up and a change of clothes I went back to my office to get at least part of that paperwork waiting there for me done.
After about an hour of steady work, I'd managed to work my way through nearly all of it and I retired to bed feeling accomplished.
The thing about me and sleep... I was something of a night-owl by necessity more than by choice. I just didn't sleep well. I didn't suffer night terrors or anything definite that I could pin down as a cause for my lack of sleep. Growing up in Hangdog taught most kids who made it there to sleep like cats, with one ear cocked to the slightest noise that could signal a change in ones whereabouts that could mean a potential threat. A kid who let himself get snuck up on, even in sleep, didn't make it very long and never managed to keep what few meagre possessions he did have, including the clothes on his back. It might have simply been my upbringing, but I didn't think so. I just didn't sleep easily. I was always waking up at odd hours, restless, and walking around, often pacing. No real cause, it was just what worked.
That night I slept straight through without waking.
Yay! A chapter with Rukia in it. Writing these two kids is so fun, I love how thier bond is always there, unspoken, in the background. Remember, reveiws are love.