The day didn't dawn so much as the sky slogged into light. The sun was covered by dense, murkey cloud cover. I built back up the fire that had died down from the previous night and set a pot with clean water over it and left it to warm while I streached, warmed up and ran through my forms with my zanpaktou as usual.
Zabimaru was in excellent form that morning. I had to say, even though it wasn't as familiar to me as the snaketail was, I really liked the howl-form of Zabimaru too. It was very quickly coming to feel just as good and just as natural in my hand as the roar-form ever had.
"Don't you ever give it a rest?" Isana said as she unzipped the front door of the tent and emerged, rolled up in a smaller loose furry blanket, wearing it like a druids mantle.
I tried not to remember all the mornings I had woken up with Rukia, who yawned and stretched like a kitten, then promptly stole all of the covers for herself. Like sister, like sister apparently. Unlike Rukia, her older sister's incarnation looked fresh as a daisy when she rolled out of bed. I had been aware of her rousing herself as I ran through my reps and had internally shook my head at how long it seemed to take a woman to pull herself out of bed in the morning. It seemed there was a reason for that. Even surrounded by nature and with none of the modern conveniences that she would be accustomed to having, Isana had found a way to come out with her long black hair looking perfectly elegantly coiffed; she'd braided it up and pinned it in a crown around her head. She was wearing make-up on her face, and her clothes looked perfectly pressed and elegant in a modern sort of way. She looked like she'd just stepped off the cover of a magazine in the Mortal Realm rather than having just rolled up out of a tent after a night of sleeping on the ground. Women!
I spared her only a single glance out of the corner of my eye as I ran through the last of my forms, a slower one designed to concentrate on balance and suppleness rather than speed and brute force. It felt a little weird having an audience, especially one that seemed to be staring at me rather than merely mentally assessing my skill. I hoped she didn't ask how far down the tattoos went, it seemed like every time a woman saw me shirtless, that was the first thing they thought of to ask. At the end of the form I shikaed Zabimaru and slid him home in his sheath and turned to face my erstwhile traveling companion.
"There's hot water over the fire if ya wanna do some girly stuff with it," I said without preamble. "I'll be back in a bit."
I was going to grab a quick bath and swim in the nearby lake and that was my signal that she should take the time to go off into the bushes and... whatever. I grabbed up soap, a clean towel and some clothes.
"Do you uh... do you do this every morning?" Isana asked.
"Rain or shine," I replied shortly, eager to wash up.
For some odd an unaccountable reason she smiled widely.
"I could get to like mornings," I overheard her say as I walked off to bathe.
There was mist coming off the lake in a thin fog, like a ghost floating over the ground. I wasn't scenting anything I recognized as dangerous, but the Divine Realms were all so damn strange I didn't know what was dangerous and what wasn't until it came leaping at me trying to rip me apart and eat me. I knew one thing for certain; clothes were optional, but Zabimaru wasn't. I put him in an improvised shoulder-harness across my back and I waded in. The water was chill, but warmer than the air was, it reminded me of all the times me and the gang had gone down to the river or the pond nearby for baths in the spring and summer and early fall. The hot summer days, when we weren't scrounging for food had usually been spent in the water; it was the closest thing to "play" that we'd ever gotten growing up. Right then, after being warmed to a hot and sweaty state, the chill water felt really good.
I let my mind clear and my body relax as I tilted my head back and floated on the surface of the water. There had been a lot of things over the last week that had been new and strange to me, it wasn't just my new (mortal) body, it was this whole weird situation. I was traveling into places that, as far as I was aware of, no Soul Reaper had ever been to before, and I was doing it without the benefit of back-up from the Thirteen Court Guard Squads. I hadn't really realized how much of me subconsciously counted on their support, how much I had been reassured by the feeling that, even with all the hassles that came with being a Soul Reaper, any one of them would go to the wall for me and back me up if I asked them to. I had always thought of myself as a solitary warrior, even if I was a social creature, but it was being made painfully clear to me that I fought my best with my buddies at my side. Sure, I had the little missy to protect but it wasn't the same thing. I missed my comrades and my home, hell I even missed my captain. Sort of. A little. A very little. It was just so weird for me to be out on my own with no support... I hadn't felt this way since I'd been a kid. Even then, I'd had Rukia, Haru, Miki and Tomi, I'd been the leader of the gang but any of my friends would have been wiling to risk thier skins ta help me out. I wasn't so sure about Isana. She seemed nice enough but she wasn't someone I would dare ask to risk their neck for me, for a lot of reasons. The newness of the situation I found myself thrust in was more stressful on me than I'd realized at first. I had to clear my head.
I closed my eyes, letting myself float on the surface of the water and gathered up all those feelings of stress in a great big ball in my mind, I breathed in deeply held it for a heartbeat and breathed out, letting the tension dissipate. I focused my thoughts and calmed my mind, letting go of the stress little by little every time I breathed out. It was the first time since all the chaos had started that I felt completely calm and relaxed...
And that was when something wrapped around my ankle and dragged me under.
Fortunately, I pulled in a breath before my heard was yanked underneath the surface of the water, an action as instinctive as my lashing out to free myself of whatever had entrapped me. I quickly felt another tentacle try to wrap around my legs and I violently thrashed out against it. Too late, I realized that my automatic reaction had just labled me prey. The tentacle Feind sent three more of the muscled limbs my way, each of them managing to wrap around my legs. I wasn't going to waste energy or precious breath on trying to swim away, not when it had so firm a hold on me. Instead, I drew Zabimaru.
:Howl!: I commanded.
Even though I hadn't spoken it out loud, it was the release within my soul that mattered, and the shikai form of Zabimaru's howl-form sprang up. I let the tentacle feind pull me in. It was hard to see anything in the murk of the water, everything looked shadowy and indistinct. I'd never tried to fight any opponent like this before. I literally could not use any of my senses! The water was too cloudy with agitated bottom-soil to see anything, I couldn't hear, and my two main enhanced-senses of taste and smell (which was how I tracked people) were offline because I was holding my breath. All I had was touch and-
:Well, duh Renji,: I thought to myself. :Why don't you try using your other sense too while yer at it.:
I unbound my lowest chakra from the seal I'd placed around it on my own and reached out with my feelings. I could sense the feind nearby, below me and slightly off to my left, a seething mass of senseless violence and consuming hunger. I stabbed out in that direction and found myself wounded in return by a psychic blow, a sudden empathic feeling of pain and hurt hit me blindsided. My senses reeled from it even as my lungs burned with a need for air. The tentacles that held me around the legs flailed out, but failed to release me.
Fortunately for me, the tentacle-fiend and I were fighting near the surface of the lake and when it flailed it's limbs in pain I broke the surface of the water long enough to expel the rest of my breath and take another before the tentacles tightened and I was wrenched back under the water. My head was still spinning a bit from the psychic blow but I was ready to dispatch my enemy already. I centered my thoughts and raised my mental shields this time before I sent a questing thread of power out to search for the monster-beast-thing attacking me.
:Stupid Renji,: I berated myself as I sought out the beast waiting in the water.
Using ones spiritual power to track prey left one open to empathic spiritual attack unless precautions were made, attacking without raising my own mental defenses had been a rookie mistake.
:Man, if the Captain had ever caught me making a mistake like that, he'd have me running bakudo drills until I dropped for a week!:
Once I located it, I cut the thread of spiritual power and sliced out with Zabimaru once more, this time connecting with something solid. I felt a mental roar of pain bash against my spiritual sheilds and I was physically I was jerked around by the ankle as my enemy flailed its limbs in pain.
:Not used to an enemy that can fight back are you?: I mentally asked it in silent rhetoric.
I swung again, hoping to slice through the tentacles binding my legs so that I could get to the surface. My chest was burning and aching with the need for fresh air and I really really wished right then that Snakey was back in business, I could sure have used a long distance weapon right then. I hit something, it didn't free me unfortunately, it just seemed to make the tentacle-thing madder and it flailed harder, it's movements becoming wilder and more out of control, it even jerked me up into the air and then slapped me down hard against the surface of the water. The whole left side of my body stung and my ears rang like I'd just gotten the mother of all belly flops. I couldn't even groan in pain because I had to conserve what air I could. When I sliced at the center mass for a third time I was tossed around like a rag-doll, receiving only a breif impression of light, water, sky and darkness before I was dragged under again.
The creature pulled me in toward it's main body this time and I was waiting with my sword out. I cut the tentacles as they came at me, unwilling to be further enmeshed in its clutches before I killed it. When I sensed it was close enough to me, I dove down and stabbed straight at where I sensed to welter of emotions was at its greatest concentration. It screamed in mortal pain even as it's teeth sank into my upper thigh, right near the hip on the outside. I stabbed again, and again, and then a fourth and final time as I felt the flailing tentacles that whipped and stung me while the beast underwent its death-throes. In a small burst of dusty-motes of light floating away into no-where, the thing spored into disappearance and all was quiet. I made for the surface of the lake and was greatly relieved to take in precious gulps of air after what had felt like an eternity under water.
:Gotta work on my lung capacity,: I thought absently to myself as I wearily paddled back towards the shore.
I'd been dragged quite a ways out. For a little while I felt fine... but then my limbs started feeling heavy and a slow feeling of grogginess and disorientation crept up on me. I started feeling hot and really dizzy, my limbs didn't seem to want to work quite right. My toes hit the sand while I could still tell what was up and what was down, but after I crawled up halfway onto the bank I knew nothing more after that.
...
I slowly opened my eyes and waited for my vision to clear and focus. I was on my back, under a tree somewhere and there was someone nearby.
"Welcome back," a solemnly cheerful feminine voice said of to one side. Isana.
"You had me worried for a little while there. Luckily, I was able to summon Carbuncle here."
She held up a small armful of aqua-colored fur and three sets of gem-like eyes. It squeaked cutely at me and I groaned a little. The cuteness was annoying and I had a huge headache.
"He was able to get the poison from that tentacle-thing's bite out of you and heal you up. You'll be fine in a few minutes, it's just taking a little while for the healing to set in," she informed me.
I hadn't been aware that my kind could get poisoned... oh, wait... mortal. Poisons were a big deal for them.
Sure enough, she was right, the headache began to fade to nothing within moments after she'd mentioned it. I sat up and she passed me one of those cereal bar things that mortals ate for breakfast when they were in a hurry. They were really very tasty, even if they weren't quite what I was used to.
"There's rice and powdered miso soup too," she said. "But it's not quite done yet."
"Thanks," I rasped dryly. "How did you...?"
I gestured vaguely around, not really able to gather my thoughts into a comprehensible form right then.
"I heard all the comotion coming from the lake," she answered. "You were yelling and there was the sound of violent splashing, so I rushed over to see what was going on. Things had just gone quiet and you'd made it to shore but you were collapsed there when I got to you. I checked you for wounds and found the one on your thigh, since you're such a tough guy I figured you wouldn't be collapsed unconscious from one little bite wound-
I grunted an emphatic and disdainful agreement with that statement. Of course I wouldn't fall apart from such a minor injury by itself, did I look like a wimp?
"So I figured that it must be poisoned or something. Carbuncle said that he is a healer and he could take care of you, so I summoned Bruiser to drag you back to camp so I could tend you properly. I summoned Carbuncle and had him heal you."
Her first real summoning and I had missed it.
I'd never heard of such a thing as a mortal who could summon divine spirits to come to her aid before and I was curious to see how it worked.
"Thank-you," I said sincerely, not certain what else to say.
That was when I first became aware of something. In the barracks, fellow Reaper-soldiers were pretty much all one sex. Even the women, when it came time ta hit the showers, were just men with breasts. Isana Rourke, however, was not a fellow Reaper. And she'd just seen me naked.
"Don't look so dismayed," she said laughing in amusement, apparently at the look upon my very-easily-read face.
"But you-" I started, looking frantically around for something to cover up the vital area with at least. There was nothing near to hand.
She scoffed, waving a scornful hand at me
"Oh please!" she scoffed. "You don't have anything I haven't seen before. In my time I've raised a baby boy and I work in a nursing home; I've seen more bare butts, and other things, than you'd believe. When you've seen one, you've seen them all, verdad? You don't need to be embarrassed."
Embarrassed no, but I was now feeling just a little bit insulted.
I cast about for something to put on and Isana very politely, but not without a little smirk of amusement, turned her back so I could get dressed. I cleared my throat when I was finished putting the clothes on my body and tried not to feel awkward about it as I ladled out a bowl of rice from the pot and dug in.
"We'll break camp soon and get back on the road," I said, resuming business.
This wasn't a pleasure-trip after all. We were there on serious business.
"Right," she said firmly.
We ate well, not leaving much behind when we broke our camp. I got back on the trail again. The scent of incense was ever so slightly fainter than it had been the day before, it was by no means cold, but every time we stopped to replenish our body's, as a mortal shells required, was another moment that the Shadow got father away from us.
The Gateway that led onto the starpath to the next Realm had more slots on the individual wheels than any I had come across before, instead of just three slots, this one had five nodes in the circles at equidistant points on the axis. I looked up to note that Isana was writing something down in a notebook while I was readying my reiatsu to open the gate.
"Whatcha doin'?" I asked curiously.
"I've been writing the symbols that are on the gateways to the different worlds as we've been going along. It seemed like a good idea, just in case we get lost and can't find our way back," she said.
"That's real smart!" I congratulated her, a little chagrinned I hadn't thought of doing it myself.
I relied a lot on my tracking ability to tell me where I was and where I had been as well as where I was going. She just smiled wryly back at me and I half expected her to say something that Rukia would have about her being the brains of this outfit and they'd all be lost without her, but Isana said nothing, just smiled.
We got moving onto the next world, which looked like a vast desert oddly pocked with perfectly round craters at irregular intervals with three suns blazing in the middle of the sky. The smell of sulpher and ozone choked the air, nearly overwhealming the scent of incense. The problem with a sense of smell was that if one had too many strong odors all at once it could be easily overwhealmed and go dead. Lucky enough, my "Scenting" ability tracked not just the physical scent but the spirit scent as well and I dragged a mouthful of air across my tongue, tasting it.
"That way," I pointed slightly to the left. We started walking.
It was hot. True, it was a very dry heat, but it still seemed to press down on us like a palpable weight. Unlike in Hueco Mundo, which had been a moon-lit desert, this place was directly in the sun, seemingly all the time.
"Kyaaaa!" Isana cried out in fright as one of the strange craters in the ground before us made a shush-shush-ing sound and suddenly errupted into a geyser of flame. I pulled her behind me and had Zabimaru out at the ready, a good thing too, because out of those flames a small cluster of four-foot-high little critters made all out of fire erupted.
They didn't have the same powerful sense of majesty that fire-bird had emitted. In fact if I were going to put out a real-life comparison I'd compare it to one of my noobs being placed next to Captain Yamamoto, one was a grain of pebble and the other a mountain of jade.
"Howl," I said, shrugging my shoulders and diving in.
I'd never fought an enemy that was made entirely of flame before. It was more a game of dodge and slice as I tried to stay out of the way of their fire-ball attacks while landing my own hits in. The first two went down kind of quickly based mostly on surprise that I was attacking at all, the remaining three immediately became more cautious. The fight began in earnest as they worked in tandem to try to surround me and fire on me from all directions at once. It became an interesting game of dodge and chase.
:If I get stuck in many more battles like this,: I thought as I flash-stepped to the left then back to the right then took a running leap into the air to try to come down on top of one, missed, and had to quickly flash-step back to one side to avoid an attack by the firelings other fireling ally.
:I'm going to be as practiced as the Captain at this flash-step thing.:
An exaggeration I was sure, not even in my wildest could I boast to be anywhere near his level when it came to the flashstep, but still, battles like these were good for practice. I'd meant to work on my speed anyway.
The flames flickered and flitted here and there and I managed to snuff them out like candles by setting a freeze-trap for one of them, slicing open another, and the third finally fell to my blade after a drawn-out game of chase and evade. By this point I was sweaty and panting with small burns decorating my body. Still, I'd won and it had been sort of diverting.
"Here, let me get those," Isana said as I paced back to her side to get on with our mission.
I blinked at her in surprise as she held her hands above one of the particularly nasty burns on my fore-arm where I'd blocked an attack that had nearly managed to land and the heated metal of zabimaru had accidentally scalded my skin. It was raising in a weal that was dark red and quite painful.
"Green life, healing light..." she chanted, holding her hands in a cupping motion over the wound.
A strange diagram in greenish-white light made of circles and lines and strange sigils wrote itself in the air between her palms. My wound began to rapidly stitch itself closed and the throbbing pain of the burn faded as the wound pinkened and disappeared. She moved onto the next and the next after that. Within moments I was completely healed.
"Hey, thanks Isana," I said, surprised.
Last I'd known she was just an ordinary mortal, where had she learned to heal? Granted, I'd never seen any of the Healers back at Fourth do anything like what she'd done with the finny diagram but I wasn't a Ki-dope so what did I know?
"Where'd ja learn ta heal like that?" I asked next as the diagram disappeared and she looked at me with the cheerful light of confidence in her eyes.
"Carbuncle taught me!" she said happily. "While I was asleep."
I frowned at her in puzzlement.
"Apparently, when a Divine Spirit makes a contract with a Mortal, they can teach that mortal any of the skills it possesses that the mortal is capable of learning," she said. "I would still have to summon Carbuncle if I needed to perform a major healing or use it on the battlefield to boost my performance or someone else's, but other than that... I can heal most common injuries, so if you get hurt Mister Abarai, please don't hesitate to call on me!"
She looked so happy about it, and I kinda got the feeling she was relieved too. I couldn't blame her, she'd forced herself to come along on this mission, and even though she's carrying all of the supplies, I think she knows deep down that I don't really need all that stuff and would be moving more quickly without her. She probably felt up until now that she was slowing me down because I had to move at her pace and I was always spending time having to protect her from monsters. No person with a spine ever wanted to feel like they were a burden. It probably did come as a relief to feel like there was something she could do that was useful besides cook and take directions.
"Alright," I smiled down at her. "I will."
We started back down the path across the relentless sulpheric heat of the desert. This place sucked. I hated the desert. The wind was all mixed up with dust that stuck to yer skin when ya sweated and ya got rivulets o' mud running down yer chest an' back, and then not only that but ya got sand in places where sand had no business being!
"I hope it went through that gate up ahead," Isana muttered, spying at last a gate platform.
We were both practically panting in the heat. The relentless concentration of the suns on our backs was so distracting that we didn't even realize that we were in a gigantic geyser-crater until we heard that omminous shushing sound and the ground below our feet started to tremble.
"Ummm... I don't like this," she said uneasily as the slight tremors gradually grew to full-on shakes.
I flexed my knees and widened my stance to keep my balance and was forced to lift Isana onto one shoulder to prevent her from stumbling to the ground. There was an enormous burst of flame in front of us that pushed outward and then spiraled in on itself to fade into a quasi-man-like shape. The creature was easily three times my size with room to spare, it looked like someone had crossed a lizard with a bull and painted the features on over a man's form. The thing had furred reverse-haunch legs with hooves that sparked like live coals when it moved but from the waist up the fur faded to tough scaley hide. The snout of the beast had flame flickering out of the end of it, and it was long with sharp fangs protruding from the mouth. It's face looked like a cross between a cat and a dragon, with two brightly flaming eyes burning with a lambent glow. Two massive forelimbs that looked like they could pick up and throw buildings whole. It had a great mane going down the sides and back of its neck made of flame.
"None shall pass," it said in a booming basso.
Isana and I exchanged a long speaking look and before I could stop her she stepped forward.
"We need to pass good sir," she insisted. "Renji and I have to reach that gate that's there behind you. You see my son-"
"None shall pass," the flame-beast stated flatly, clearly not interested in hearing her story.
"But, my son-" she tried again.
The beast promptly shut her up by letting out a great basso roar that made the ground around us tremble and nearly shattered my eardrums.
Fine. So I guess he wasn't so interested in listening to words. I'd be more than happy to let my sword do my talking for me.
I stepped up and pushed the little lady back behind me before she could waste her breath on another attempt, and signaled that she should back off a ways, I anticipated a good fight.
"Well, if yer not gonna be polite about it, I guess I'll just have ta make a path... right through you!"
And ready...fight! Ding ding!