"Yer lookin' better," I said, relieved to see that Zabimaru seemed to be in much better shape than when I'd left him. The extra power boost was doing him good then, good.
"As are you," he replied.
"Really?" I asked him, a little surprised. This inner-scape place didn't come with mirrors so I couldn't look to see if he was right, so I'd just have to take his word on it. And now that I thought about it...
"I feel better," I said out loud, realizing that it was true just as soon as I'd said it. I did feel better, more alive, more complete, more comfortable in my own skin. In short, I felt more myself than I had ever been before.
"The source of your greatest strength is how you feel for the ones you love, not only Rukia but for your friends as well," Zabimaru said, nodding with gravity at me. Being part of such a greater whole made me feel both humble and determined, humble that I was important to so many, and determined that I wouldn't let them down. I could feel the strength of that unwavering resolve fill me, flowing through me with every beat of my heart, endowing me with a warriors strength that was greater than anything I'd ever known or believed myself capable of.
"So, are you ready to try for more?" Zabimaru asked me.
I considered it.
"What's up next?" I asked curiously.
"The Throat Chakra," he replied. "It should be... an interesting one for you."
I wasn't sure I liked the way he said interesting.
"There are many who would say that with the loud way you're always shooting your mouth off, expressing yourself is not a difficulty you suffer from... you and I both know better."
I sighed inwardly, discomfited. Yeah, I knew exactly where he was going with this. I shot my mouth off all the time, but most of the stuff I said was just what the people around me expected to hear from me. I didn't often voice out loud the things that mattered to me, maybe around Momo and Kira, two people in the world whom I knew would never judge me or ridicule me for stepping outside of my role and letting some of my inner self out, but other than that... Not so much.
"I'm getting better though," I said, a little defensively.
After all, I'd actually talked with Captain Kuchiki and had built up the courage to say out loud some of the things that were on my mind. Oh, granted, it was nothing severly life changing, like "may I have your permission to pay court to your sister?" but in it's way it was a significant step. At least I wasn't forcing myself to shut-up out of some kind of misguided sense of concern anymore.
"The throat chakra is the fifth chakra, it has to do with self-expression, communication, honesty and the ability to speak our inner truth out loud. A sealed throat chakra can manifest an inability to convey emotions, which in turn can lead to feelings of stagnation, dishonesty and low self-esteem."
I winced again. Another fun one, I could see that already. I had the sad feeling that if I'd unlocked this chakra all those years ago when Rukia had gotten her offer from the Kuchki Clan and I'd litterally forced myself to be silent and still when what I had really wanted to do was run after her and beg her not to leave me, my life wouldn't be the same mess that it so often was now.
"If you unlock it, however, you will have only one left to go until you have gone as far as you can," Zabimaru pointed out.
I found now that I wanted to go as far as I could. I wasn't content anymore to settle for less, to be less. I wasn't a greedy person by nature but being a person who was strong enough for others to be able to look to had always been important to me. It had shaped the man I was as much as anything had. I owed myself this one.
"It sounds like it'll be worth all the trouble," I agreed, nodding my permission to continue.
Zabimaru nodded and blinked slowly at me as the world around me faded to mist. Over the course of my unlocking the chakra it had seemed to me that with each one that I unlocked, the color of the mist world changed. Witht eh first one I had been surrounded in darkness, and the one following that, the mist had been dark dark grey, like the color of a furious thunder head. Now the mist was such a light color, a soft silvery color that was fast approaching white. It was pleasant to be in it too, very warm and fragrant, though even I could not actually place what it smelled like. Walking out of the light-colored mist was me again.
"We meet again," the other-me said, sounding a little dry about it.
"What can I say, I'm a glutton fer punishment," I said, shrugging.
The other me looked back at me steadily, measuringly, and it was damn creepy.
"What?" I demanded after a little while.
"This one might not be as difficult as it once would have been, but you have a blind spot or two that affects the way you express yourself," he informed me.
"Oh? Like what?" I asked, still not sure I really wanted to know. Unfortunately I had the feeling that being honest with myself was going to be pretty important to winning through this thing.
"Give me another hug and we'll talk about it," the other me said, smirking at me. The smirk kinda irritated me. A lot.
"Talk now, hug... some other time maybe," I said.
Just because I'd done it once didn't mean I was some kind of femmey little wuss that ran around crying and spouting off about his feelings or whatever, and just to be sure he/I knew it, I told him so in my next breath.
"I just don't believe in that new-age hippie crap about yapping on about my feelings and giving myself reaffirming hugs. I'm a man dammit!"
"You keep saying that. I wonder if you realize that gender, for you, is as much a role you play as it is a biological designation. In order to be accepted in the social group you have chosen, you confirm rigidly to certain standards of masculinity, some of which are not entirely realistic... or healthy."
That brought me up short. I thought about it for a long moment rather than immediately dismissing it as a load of huggie-feelie womanish crap.
"Ah, progress," the weirdo-me pointed out. I scowled at him.
I wasn't anything like those wussies at Fourth, always talking about thier feelings and being sensitive.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," my doppleganger pointed out.
"Duh, if an enemy's comin' atcha ya don't sit 'im down an' yap about their feelings or whatever, you take him out so he don't get back up."
Doppleganger looked back at me steadily. I sighed.
"Now look, I don't think that me being manly an' tough is bad, I think it's good, it's the only way I survived. Back in the flop-house if you weren't tough enough to fight tooth and nail fer turf and possessions, you got mowed over by every asshole that was bigger than you."
In the weeks before I'd established myself as a brawler of some skill, one who was ready to take on anyne anywhere over even the slightest perceived insult to me or any of my gang-mates, I'd had to fight and keep fighting. I'd had to sleep lightly to defend the spot I'd staked out for myself to sleep in and my few possessions had been raided time and time again and I'd had to fight to get them back. You had to have a prickly sense of pride and be willing to fight to defend it with whatever you had, that and only that would win you respect. Respect you needed to survive and prosper in the flop-house. Even among kids, there was much the same mentality you'd find in fine examples of most prison-yards, what you could get you could keep, but only if you were strong enough and willing enough to go to war over the smallest thing. Strength equaled respect, and if you were respected, no-one messed with you. So if someone thought they could push around one of my gang-mates, they'd better be ready ta deal with me, if someone thought they could take my stuff or anything thing that belonged to one of my own, I'd take them on tooth and nail (literally). I'd had some real good fights before I finally got it through to the others that they were better of leving me and my friends alone. It had gotten worse over the years, especially as Rukia got older and cuter. Sure she was a skinny thing as a kid, but that hadn't stopped a few of the older boys from finding her interesting when she got to be around that age; she'd always had a certain aura about her, the only thing that kept them off her was my reputation for fighting like rabid dog and being ornerier than a badger with a back-ache. They didn't dare come near because everyone knew I'd fight like a demon if they messed with one of my own.
It wasn't just a matter of being willing to fight either, in order ta have respect as a leader, even of a small gang, you had ta act like a leader. Not just organizing raids and keeping yer gang-mates fed but there was a certain sort of way ya had ta carry yerself, an attitude of pride that told people that you weren't someone they wanted to mess with if they wanted their bodies intact and unbeaten. You had ta look, all the time, like you would be happy ta take someones eye out of they disrespected ya. You had ta be tough, and manly, even if you were still just a snot-nosed little boy. The ones who cried a lot or couldn't fight, got kicked around unless they were protected by someone stronger. In the world I'd grown up in the weak were food for the strong, and if you weren't strong you were weak. Showing any sort of weakness would be like sticking a bloody steak in a shark tank in that flop-house we'd grown up in. Even when my friends had died, as the leader I'd had to keep up a strong, stoic front; anything less than that would have put my remaining friends safety and possessions at were certain unspoken rules and expectations to someone of my unofficial standing. You didn't cry, crying was weakness and you didn't show weakness if you wanted to be respected. If you wanted to be a leader, you weren't a sensitive boy (or if you were, you hid it well). Leaders were the fighters, the ones strong enough to protect thier gang-mates and their pride. You had to be proud if you were a leader, because when you were as poor as that you didn't have much besides your pride.
:I guess that over the years that tough-guy attitude just became so ingrained that it was habit,: I thought.
Later on, after I'd joined the Academy I met plenty of other boys, nobles sons of course, who had that sensitive thing going for them and they'd all looked down on me so much because of where I'd come from that I clung even more tightly to my street pride and my brawler-strength, determined to show them all that just because I came from the outside didn't mean I wasn't just as good, or better, than most of those pansy-assed mamas-boys. "They wouldn't survive one day out in Rukongai" had been a constant inner monologue with me. That tough-guy attitude that I'd built up as a leader became a sort of armor against a world and society that (as usual) didn't seem ta give a damn about me. Granted, I made friends easier than Rukia had but there were still a lot of ways that I hadn't been accepted. Fortunately, I knew enough about leadership and charisma and people to land on my feet okay, or at least I'd made it a point to showcase how powerful a fighter I was so that anyone who might think about starting something with me would think twice about it. There had been a few, early on, it had surprised me on my first few weeks in the academy to witness the same sorts of probing and testing of strengths and weaknesses and the establishing of unofficial ranks with my dorm-mates that had gone on in the flop house when I'd been a little kid.
Later when I'd been part of eleventh, it had been more of the same. You were accepted if you were tough enough to survive, and you climbed ranks if you were proud enough and strong enough. I'd never really questioned the need for that mask of masculinity I'd developed. In order to be accepted, in order to survive, in order to thrive, there was a strict code of behavior. The Guy Rules might not always make sense, but anyone who fit in among the tough set who respected for their strength and tenacity knew what they were and exemplified them.
"I don't see anything wrong with that," I replied after having thought it out.
"Those rules you so exemplify never allow you to express emotion," my doppleganger replied. He paused then held up a qualifying finger as I opened my mouth to protest
"Anger and aggression don't count," he added sharply.
I subsided then thought of another exception and made to speak it but he cut me off by saying
"Neither do threats!"
The wind well and truly taken out of my sails, I huffed impatiently.
Most of the guys I knew, myself included would rather had a root canal or ten than sit down and have to talk about our feelings... Which was sort of the point of this. But frankly, I was more of a man of action than a man of words.
"And Rukia?" the other-me prompted. "Do you believe that your silence, or even worse, your dishonest words to her on that day really helped anyone? If you had been honest with her about your feelings for her, would that not have been much better?"
I looked down and away. We both knew the answer to that one. Rukia had always had some problems with self-esteem sometimes, and I'd unwittingly made them even worse. I wanted to fix that, but I didn't know how or even if I could.
"You could start by being honest with her," the other-me said.
I knew he was right but dammit I just didn't want to. The very thought of having to force those words out of my throat was beyond mortifying. What if she laughed at me, or didn't take me seriously? That last was partly to be expected since I often played the fool to keep peoples spirits up, but I didn't think I'd take it very well if I was honest with her and she laughed at me for it.
"Opening yourself up to others does also mean opening yourself up to be hurt but if you stay inside the box of the role you've assigned yourself then people will not be able to know what's going on inside of you. You often complain to yourself that Rukia is too opaque and that you never can tell what she's thinking, but one might also say the same for yourself, or rather, because you've given them a role to work with , they assume that they already know what you are thinking. If you always pull back and keep shut, never saying what you are feeling inside of you then nothing will ever change... just like nothing has changed for the last forty years because you have been too aware of your differences in status, too wrapped up in your guilt and feelings of unworthiness to speak what is in your heart to her and change them."
I was silent for a good long moment because he was right. I would have to speak up and say what I really thought and felt for anything to change. It was scary in its way, certainly more terrifying than any battle I'd ever weathered, if I lost a battle the only thing I would loose would be my life, valuable in its way but I had already long since resigned myself to fortune in that way, but opening inner self up to rejection and hurt was far more terrifying.
:But if I don't get past this and speak out then things will never change. People will never take me seriously or expect me to be anything but what I make them expect me to be.:
Fine then, I was going to resolve to speak my mind when it was important. Words were power and they should be weilded carefully, but I was at the point now where I was beginning to feel that mine atually counted for something. I'd still be as careful as I knew how, but the fact that I was a person with real feelings and opinions should no longer be dismissed.
With that resolution I felt a stone in my soul give way and I felt inundated with a powerful brillian blue light. The thick, concentrated power that accompanied it was suffocating in its sheer scope but at the same time I felt wonderful. It was a lot like being very pleasantly drunk, the power flowing through me now was intoxicating and I dizily found myself spun out of the mist world and back into the clearing with Zabimaru. I blinked and staggered to my feet.
"I've taken the worst of it and sealed it back away already," Zabimaru informed me.
"Then should I...?" I asked, gesturing to the sword I was holing in my hand.
"Go ahead, it's more than a formality. You must symbolically unlock the chakra yourself Renji," he replied.
I took the hour-glass-shaped, diamond-headed Zabimaru and, with it slung over my shoulder marched on over to the fountain climbed up the side to the teir second to the top and inserted the tip of him in the bottom of the cleaned-out basin. A brilliant flow of turquoise-colored liquid energy sprang up from the bottom and filled the basin. I felt a feeling of well-being and satisfaction inside of me at the sight.
"One more," I said to him. "And is it just me, or are these chakra getting easier as we go?"
"It is not just you," Baboon King Zabimaru replied. "The bottom ones are the hardest, though the upper chakra are the ones with all of the power in them. Once you have won your way through your underlying issues, the lessons and strength traves upwards, clearing away much of the detritus from the top ones automatically."
"What's that you said about sealing my power away already?" I asked him. "Isn't the whole reason I'm here and doing this in the first place so that I can release the binding marks?"
"Yes, but you must understand, you are still lousy and unpracticed at actually handling the power. Think of your meridians as being like a muscle in your body, pretend for the sake of example that you had broken your leg and had to heal it human-slow without the benefit of a Healer from Fourth, during your recovery time your muscles will have atrophied. You wouldn't try to sprint or flash step across the Soul Society using muscles that were not developed enough for it would you?"
I shook my head no, there might have once been times when i would have tried something before I was ready for it, but hard experience had taught me that proceeding at the pace I was able to handle was the only thing that would keep me out of Fourth Squad.
"Your "muscles" for controlling the spiritual energy that you are unlocking are still underdeveloped. The channels you have need to be worked and streched and strengthened before you can handle using the full power of your spiritual energy."
That was a bit disappointing, but I guessed I could see where he was coming from.
"I will continue to regulate the amount of energy you have until you reach a level on your own that is capable of dealing with the concentrated raw power up the upper chakra.
"I leave it to you then," I said. "One more to go."
Zabimaru inclined his head once, and blinked slowly. I was back in the mist-world surrounded by a mist that was almost pure white.
"Why in the world do you constantly downplay your insight?" myself questioned me immediately. "It almost like you don't want to see the big picture!"
"Well...' I said shrugging a little helplessly. "I don't see what good it'll do me. I've never been all that keen on strategy and stuff, I'm more of a ground-pounder than a general anyway. That sort of thing is fer other people to look out for, people who're good at it, like the captain."
"That sort of thinking won't get you anywhere. You're thinking of yourself like a junior officer and you need to stop that and start using your reason. You have solid instincts for battle, you always have, but you limit yourself."
I looked helplessly back at him. I didn't see what he meant, I was the same person that I had always been. I was a fighter, not an intellectual; a guy like Kira, who enjoyed reading scholarly-type stuff about strategy and politics would be suited to studying all that high-minded stuff about the logistics behind running a war. Me, I could get the right people in the right places, match the skills to the situation in order to achieve victory but that was more or less just common sense!
"You'd be surprised by how many fighters and leaders don't have any," myself replied. "Or even if they do, it's all geared toward one particular thing."
I looked blankly back at him. He sighed a bit and said
"Look at the way you're organizing Sixth Squadron as opposed to your predecessors for example."
I frowned. On taking up the figurative reigns of Sixth I'd noticed something; the fighters were all excellent fighters with a great deal of potential, and they were all a mixed bag, but no-one ever practiced and they all knew only the sort of fighting and kidou techniques that was taught in the academy. None of them had worked to develop a style that was suited to them, an worse, none of them knew how to fight against anything more than the average opponent, in short there was a great deal of diversity (which was good since overspecializing bred in weakness) and a lot of untapped potential, but no-one was working to develop it. To that end I took my seated officers, tested them out for strengths and weaknesses, then assinged each of them several no-rank Reapers (what later came to be called an element) with as diverse a set of skills and fighting styles as I judged each of them were capable of and had them fight and drill and train together. I encouraged the fighters to learn from each other and hone their own style but also to diversify their strengths and learn how to work well in teams. Then, once I had judged them sufficiently up to snuff, set two of the elements to trying to beat the other ( a little friendly competition never hurt anyone) the result was a squad of Reapers who had confidence in their strengths, awareness of their weaknesses, and an appreciation for the benefits of practice. I'd polished myself much the same way, minus the organization, and I didn't see where it was so terribly unusual. It was just common sense to me to do things this way. When you trained against others who had skills and strengths you didn't you learned how to fend against that and it made you a more diverse and well-rounded fighter.
"So what?" I asked cluelessly.
"Other squadrons don't train their fighters the way you do."
"What about Second?" I riposted.
"They train only in their own squad, and they only let in a certain, very specific type of fighter. True, they have mad ninja-assassin skills, but they are, in the end, specialists."
I snorted.
"If you overspecialize, you breed in weakness," I said.
"Exactly," myself replied.
"I still don't get your point. How does the way I train my squad have anything to do with unlocking this chakra."
"When you started dividing people up you really gave your teams a lot of thought, remember? You visually assessed each individual fighter, no matter how low their rank or how nominal thier perceived position, you categorized them by type and skill level and assigned them accordingly, placing each fighter in a slot where both personality and fighting style had a good chance of working out."
"Yeah..." I said. "That's what a good Lieutenant should do, there's no point in throwing people together who're going to be at each other throats all the time. Common sense."
Myself looked like he was counting backwards from ten. I noted that he took a deep breath as he said
"What you call common sense isn't as common as you seem to think. You are capable of seeing a lot more than you give yourself credit for but you consistently limit yourself. You refuse to think about matters outside of your prescribed role in life, refuse to allow yourself to have any inside into wider matters. You consistently slough of those types of worries on other people with the idea that they are somehow "better suited to it" than you are."
It was annoying how difficult it was to argue with myself when he pointed things out that I couldn't deny. I hadn't really consciously thought about it, the y way I did things, I just did what felt natural to me. I perceived a lack in my squadron, and I wanted to be surrounded by squad-mates I could take pride in, the same way I taken pride in the acute differences of my gang-mates growing up, so I'd just reorganized things so that it was fixed. It made perfect sense to me.
"Hm. Maybe I am..." I said musingly aloud, thinking back over it.
I had poured a lot of time and work into getting the dynamics just right; a good mix of diversified fighters who would learn a lot from each other and personalities that, while they might rub against each other from time to time, wouldn't seriously clash too much. I'd seen to the details just fine, but also kept my eye on a larger goal of continued improvement across the board for my entire squadron.
"I guess I shouldn't just ignore larger issues because I don't think I'm suited to thinking about them," I mumbled to myself reluctantly. It was a lot easier that way, but sticking my head in the sand just bacause thinking about things was inconvenient wasn't going to make me a better fighter or, more importantly, a better man.
"And while I'm at it, I guess I could use to expand my horizons a bit."
Kira was alway nattering away about the latest book he read or paper he wrote, I guess I could actually listen for real and talk about it (maybe even read it myself to see what was so great about it!) instead of just listening politely but mostly tuning him out with half an ear.
The fact that I seemed to have realized my own intuitive understanding as being something more significant than what I had dismissed it as being, and the fact that I was begining to open my mind up more seemed to be enough to unlock the chakra for I felt myself once again bouyed by a pleasantly warm feeling of power that was siphoned off somewhere and the mist worled around me faded back into the jungle glen where Zabimaru was waiting for me.
I grinned a little cockily at him and took up the new sword to unlock the last fountain which flooded with an intense indigo colored water made of light.
"Well done," he said proudly.
"Nuthin' to it," I said, feeling more than a little proud of myself.
The journey I was about to go on might take me to strange places I had never even imagined, it would probably be dangerous and I might be alone in the journey but I now had a confidence and a strength i hadn't even imagined within myself. I would make the journey, set my feet on the path clearly, looking straight ahead, and move forth under my own power. I could be dangerous and mysterious, but I was looking forward to it. This would be my journey, my story, and I was going to make it a good one.
I waffled back and forth about this one too, as ever I was expecting perfection of myself and all my ideas never seemed like they'd be good enough, finally today I thought to myself, look, you have all these other chapter waititng in the wings and they'll never get posted if you don't move past this. Really, they'll probably appreciate sooner rather than perfect, so just write something already! I got started and, as is the case with all those essays I churn out just before or a day past the deadline, it's not the scary monster I imagine it to be. In fact, I'm sort of pleased with it. I didn't do much beta since I'm in a hurry to post it before I start to think about it too much, so if there's grammar and spelling errors, forgive me this once. I hope you liked it!