Disclaimer: It's not mine.

The Three-Body Problem

A Bleach Fanfic

Chapter Two: October

"First class! I'm so proud!"

Karin slid a foot or so to the left, avoiding her father's attempt at a hug-tackle by a narrow margin, judging from the air that blew past her face. Yuzu, however, was swept up in it, making small squeaking noises by way of protest, though they were muffled against the old man's kosode.

When she was sure he couldn't see, Karin allowed herself a small smile at the sight of her name alongside her sister's in the roster for the accelerated class. Ishida was there, too, which somehow didn't surprise her, and she let the smile drop before she turned to him.

"Guess we're classmates."

He adjusted his glasses, which hadn't looked to her like they were in much need of it, and made a vague noise of agreement. "So it would seem." His eyes moved so that he was looking over her shoulder, and the corner of his mouth slanted down.

"He's still hugging her and babbling, isn't he?"

"Should we be concerned about suffocation?"

Karin rolled her eyes. "No. The geezer acts like an idiot, but he's not actually that careless."

"Should we get our stuff into our rooms? I think we're together, Karin." Yuzu, newly freed, attempted to pat down her ruffled hair, but it was pretty much a lost cause unless she pulled out the ties first.

"Sure. Got anything you want us to help you move, Ishida?" Karin glanced down at the small satchel at his feet. It was all he'd arrived with, and probably all he'd brought. Then again, she didn't have a whole lot more. It wasn't like they'd need a ton of clothes or anything.

"No, thank you. I suppose I'll see you both at the first lecture tomorrow?"

Yuzu nodded. "Mhm. We'll save you a spot if we get there first."

Uryū arrived at the room he'd been assigned to find it empty. He considered himself fortunate—the last thing he really wanted to deal with was someone else's family all moving around in what was a fairly tight space.

It wasn't terrible; there were only two beds, and they were on opposite sides of the room, both with a pile of linens folded neatly on top. There was also a desk on each half, closer to the front, and a pair of sliding doors that presumably went to modest closets. The floor was standard green tatami, and the desks made out of a light, yellowish wood.

Making a note to go see about uniforms in a bit, Uryū deposited his satchel on the desk, opening it and tucking his existing garments away at the top of the closet. Other than that, he had a small selection of sewing supplies, writing utensils and notebooks, and toiletries. Yoruichi had assured him that the practice was for the academy to provide all absolutely essential supplies, which he supposed made sense considering that many of the students came from the Rukongai, and might not own much.

He'd seen a flyer for remedial reading classes posted with the class assignments. He wasn't sure how that was supposed to be helpful, but maybe they verbally asked about it at some point in the first couple of days.

He was stowing his sewing kit in the drawer of the desk when someone else entered the room. A man with short brown hair and a stocky build, dressed in what Uryū judged to be a well-made yukata, looked him over for exactly three seconds before turning and walking back out the door, closing it with a snap behind him.

In all likelihood, he'd have to get used to that.

Three hours later, another man showed up, this one slightly older-looking, though that didn't mean anything here. This one was blond and about an inch shorter than Uryū, but he smiled amiably enough, meandering his way to the right half of the room and dropping his stuff on the unmade bed.

"I'm Matsuda," he said, his accent slightly thickened, and rougher than most.

"Ishida."

Matsuda nodded, threw most of his sheets under the bed, spread the blanket, and went to sleep, snoring softly.

That, Uryū could deal with.

Yuzu must have checked her schedule half a dozen times just to make sure she was in the right place. The enormous lecture hall was empty save for herself and Karin, who observed their surroundings through bleary eyes.

"Remind me again why we had to be so early?"

Yuzu shifted; her shitagi and kosode were slightly loose, but they hadn't had any smaller ones, and so she made due by tying everything more tightly. "…because I promised Ishida-san we'd save him a spot?"

Karin rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Wake me up when the teacher gets here, would you?" She folded both arms on the long writing table in front of her, and slumped forward, pressing her forehead into the middle of them.

Yuzu smiled slightly, reaching down for the bag of supplies she'd carried in over her shoulder. Taking out a pair of notebooks and two pens, she set Karin's in front of her and cracked the second notebook, writing History of Soul Society on the center of the first page. They hadn't used to sell pens in Soul Society, at least not anywhere Yuzu could find, but within the last couple of years, a small stationary shop had opened in the First District that carried ones from the living world, both the disposable kind like theirs and the fancy fountain kinds, with the bottles of ink.

She supposed they must have come into fashion within the Seireitei, or something like that. Yuzu had never really understood the strange cultural mixture around here. Within the Seireitei, she'd heard that they had really advanced computers and touch-screen technology for some things, but most of the paperwork was still done with ink and brush. Out in the Rukongai, technology was much more difficult to find, even in really simple, cheap forms like these. It was frankly a little baffling for her, but maybe this class would help her answer such questions eventually.

She didn't notice the way her knee was bouncing up and down until Karin abruptly reached under the table and put her hand over it, stilling the motion.

"Yuzu," she said, voice muffled from where she was still leaning against her other arm. "Calm down. I can hear you thinking too hard. It's distracting."

"Sorry, Karin," she said, sighing softly.

A few more students filtered in over the next couple of minutes, most of them electing to sit either far in the front or far in the back, and pretty much all of them alone. The clock on the wall showed fifteen minutes left until class was supposed to start when Ishida entered.

Yuzu looked over her shoulder as the door opened again, and when she spotted him, she raised an arm and waved it back and forth several times.

He hesitated momentarily, but approached anyway.

"Good morning, Ishida-san," Yuzu greeted, prodding Karin gently under the table.

Her sister lifted her head long enough to give a laconic salute, then went back to dozing, shifting a little in her chair in an attempt to get comfortable.

"Good morning to you as well, Yuzu-san." He sat on her other side, taking out his own supplies.

Yuzu tilted her head when she saw his hands. "You wore the gloves from your other gear," she said, noting the blue stripe on the middle two fingers.

"The uniform regulations indicate only that all parts are to be worn, and none may be obscured by other articles," he replied, splaying his hand out on the surface of the table. "As there is nothing standardly on the hands, I am obeying both precepts."

"Technically," she said, giving him a mild smile. "I think it's good, though."

He raised an eyebrow, and she rushed to explain.

"That you're proud of it, I mean. Being a Quincy. It's easy to start… forgetting about things from the living world, if you stay here long enough."

Ishida frowned slightly, and Yuzu wondered if she hadn't said too much.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to project or unload on you or anything." She grimaced, but he shook his head.

"No, it's fine. I don't—"

He cut himself off as a door at the front of the room opened, and a very tall, somewhat rotund man walked in. He was bald, and very tan, with thick eyebrows and round glasses. The students in the room immediately fell silent, and Yuzu turned to poke Karin, only to discover that her twin was already upright and attentive.

The man scanned the room, almost as if he were counting them, and Yuzu did the same, trying to be unobtrusive but unable to avoid craning her neck a little to see those behind. This was a big lecture hall, but there were probably only ten or so people in it, including the three of them.

"Welcome to Shin'ō Academy." The man's voice was rolling and sonorous, filling the whole hall without trouble. He didn't even have to yell to do it, and his tone was evenly modulated and neutral. "I am Gengorō Ōnabara, head teacher for class one, and the ten of you are this year's top-scoring entrants. I recommend you all get a good look at each other, because you'll be spending a great deal of time in one another's company."

He paused, apparently to allow them to do just that, and there was a fair bit of uncomfortable shuffling, as everyone glanced around. Yuzu exchanged a look with her sister, and another with Ishida, seeking the familiar before daring to make eye contact with a stranger.

The other seven students varied in just about every way imaginable. She and Karin were two of only three in red, but then, the exam lines had been mostly filled with men as well, for whatever reason. The other girl was tall, Yuzu could tell, and sat with upright posture, her long black hair braided over one shoulder.

The oldest man looked about her father's age, actually, and had a jagged scar along the left side of his jaw. The youngest might have been in his early twenties, if they were in the living world, and looked like he hadn't ever seen much sun. Aside from him and the woman, though, she suspected most of them were from the middle districts. But since everyone wore the same uniform now, it was difficult to tell anything about their histories just by looking at them.

That was probably a good thing.

"Your fellow students will be your teammates and your challengers, your friends and your rivals, and you would do well to remember that. The ten of you compose an elite group—those among the applicants whose potential far exceeds the rest." Ōnabara folded his arms into his sleeves, which sort of made him look like a daruma doll, but the atmosphere was far too heavy for that to make Yuzu smile.

"Because of your demonstrated talent, you will receive advanced instruction from the very start. You will be expected to outperform everyone else at each juncture, and your instructors will be harder on you than they would on other students. But you will also have additional privileges, including the ability to access practice buildings and the library at night, and a later curfew on weekends. We trust that you will honor these testaments to our confidence in you, and not abuse them."

There was a deliberate silence for several seconds after that, and Yuzu automatically filled it with an 'or else' clause. Maybe that was the point.

Ōnabara's tone shifted, and he removed one hand from his bell-sleeve to adjust his glasses by the earpiece. "That is where the speech usually ends," he said, fixing each one of them in turn with his eyes. "But as most of you are no doubt aware, there may soon come a time when what is standard is not enough. And so I will tell you that there is one more thing we are changing for you, and for us." He pursed his lips, the lines around his eyes deepening.

"This year's zanjutsu classes will run half an hour longer than they customarily do, and that half-hour will be devoted entirely to Jinzen, communion with your zanpakutō. Normally, we do not ask students to devote so much time to this until at least the third year, but it has been decided that this part of the curriculum must be compressed." A furrow appeared between his brows—it sounded like he almost had to grind the words out.

"It is the hope of the Gotei 13, and the Central 46, that at least some of you will be able to attain shikai before you are due to graduate. Any student who manages to accomplish this feat may apply to take their exit exams at the end of the academy year in which they achieve it. If all those exams are passed, the student will graduate, and receive a posting just as if they had completed all six years of the program."

Yuzu gaped. There were, of course, stories of geniuses who had completed the academy curriculum in a year or two; they came along now and then, and that was expected. But this… it sounded like a much more concentrated effort to accelerate students out of the academy. Not that she thought it likely that too many of them would achieve shikai; her dad said many shinigami never did.

"Are there any questions?"

Yuzu felt a shift beside her as Karin raised a hand. "What's the fastest anyone's ever gotten shikai?"

"Tōshiro Hitsugaya-taichō obtained his shikai eight months after he enrolled at Shin'ō. A few others have managed it in the first year. There is a possibility, however small, that one of you could do the same."

"Eight months," Karin muttered under her breath, nodding to herself.

Yuzu's eyes rounded. It sounded like…

But another hand went up, and she didn't get the chance to ask.

The first class after the history lecture was, for class one, the zanjutsu practicum.

"Do you think we'll actually have to use our zanpakutō to spar with each other?" Yuzu asked from beside him, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.

"That's how the officers do it, right?" Karin shrugged one shoulder, leaning casually back against the wall. Her eyes kept flickering towards the door. Then again, so did most everyone's.

Uryū brushed nonexistent dirt off the front of his uniform. "I think it's highly unlikely, Yuzu-san. I expect that the fundamentals will be taught with wooden arms." It would surely be far too dangerous to risk anything else until they were adequately prepared.

She nodded, her posture slackening slightly, only to abruptly straighten her spine again as the door to the practice room slid open.

At first, two muscular men entered, carrying between them what looked like a large crate with an open top. A few sword handles protruded from it, so it wasn't difficult to guess what they were carrying. Carefully, both gripped the poles on their shoulders, stepping out from underneath their burden and lowering it to touch the ground.

"Thanks guys; you can head back now."

The voice was familiar, and Uryū recognized it an instant before its bearer stepped through the door, scratching absently at the back of his tattooed neck and turning to glance over the assembled students.

"All right. You all are the first class, right? I'm Renji Abarai, and I'll be teaching your zanjutsu practic—Ishida?" His perusal finally reached the end where Uryū and the Kurosakis sat, and he froze in the middle of what he was saying.

"Abarai-sensei," Uryū said, drawing the syllables out in an intentional deadpan.

"Uh." Renji blinked slowly at him for several more seconds. "Okay then. Right." He shook his head rather vigorously, as if resetting his thoughts, picking up where he'd left off. "Anyway, I'm teaching this class's zanjutsu practicum. And leading your Jinzen, at least until you can do it yourselves. The first thing today is getting your zanpakutō back. From now on, you have to keep them with you everywhere you go. That's every class, every time you go out to the Rukongai, even if you're sitting around in the library. If you're wearing your uniform, you're wearing your zanpakutō, got it?"

Most of the class bobbed their heads up and down.

"Uh, okay, good then. Let's see… who's first…?" He reached down into the crate and picked up a nodachi with a dark blue hilt wrapping. "Abe? Who's Abe?"

"Here, sensei." A rough-looking man with a scar on his face stood, bowed in front of Renji, and accepted his sword, sliding it into his sash.

Uryū tagged faces with names as they went by. The man who'd almost been his roommate was Moribito, the sickly-looking one was Nishimura. Tojo was a large, broad person with a large, broad grin. Sugitani had almost as many tattoos as Renji, but they were in color and seemed to center around themes of water and fish, if the ones on his neck and forearms were anything to go by. Fujita was the third woman in the group, and with his actual cohabitant Matsuda added, the class had precisely ten.

"Ishida."

Uryū stood, advancing to stand in front of Renji. He tried not to grimace when the time came to bow, and from the look on Renji's face, he wasn't enjoying it either, but he handed over the zanpakutō.

"It's a nice blade," he said, not exactly quietly, but probably not loud enough for anyone else to hear, either, occupied as they were with their own swords.

"Thanks." Uryū stepped back, returning to his seat with his zanpakutō in-hand.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he touched the asauchi that had been placed in front of him. Once, he'd inadvertently touched Sode no Shirayuki, and there had been a definite… something. A presence that he could feel. But with his own, there was no such thing. Perhaps that was because it was still just an asauchi, something that had not been released yet. Physically, it was a wakizashi, the hilt black throughout and the metal all dark grey. The tsuba had the form of five strands of steel, originating at equidistant points and all curled around in a smooth clockwise pattern, giving the impression of a turning motion.

But it felt like an ordinary piece of metal.

Sliding it into his sash, Uryū lowered himself back into his seat. For the moment, he simply had to submit himself to the process, and work diligently at it in hopes of worthwhile result. He had the distinct, untraceable feeling that he needed to achieve shikai by the end of the year, and despite his knowledge that the difference between one and two years would likely be negligible, he could not shake that intuition.

"All right, kids. This is where things actually get difficult."

Karin frowned. For the last week, kidō class had just been a lot of memorizing and trying out stances and the like, which was incredibly boring. Matsuda had fallen asleep in yesterday's lecture, only for Kozu-sensei to wake him up with a live demonstration of Hadō #4.

She wondered if that was even allowed, but she sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to ask. Kozu-sensei, who had apparently been one of Yuzu's examiners, looked slightly more like a street fighter than a shinigami, but apparently she was third seat in the Kidō Corps, or whatever they had instead of seats.

"This isn't zanjustu, where you can play around with bokken for a while before you move on to the dangerous stuff. If you fuck these spells up, you could seriously hurt yourselves or each other. So pay attention to what you're doing." Kozu gripped her biceps with the opposite hands, face falling into a scowl.

"Who remembers the stance and incantation for Hadō #1?"

Several hands went up, including Yuzu's and Ishida's. Karin added hers to the set, letting it hover near her head and list slightly to the side, avoiding eye contact with Kozu.

"Fujita, let's see it."

The fancy-looking girl stood, advancing to the front of the range. Several targets were set up at the other end, thus far unused. Fujita stood on the white line marking their spot, and extended both arms, bracing her right hand with her left wrist and folding down all her fingers but the index.

"Hadō #1: Shō."

There was something in the air, like a weird pulse or ripple, and it flew straight for the target, smashing into the left side of it, blowing half the rectangle off the post it capped. It hung awkwardly in parts, still attached by a few splinters, but then broke off and fell onto the grass with a rustle.

Karin blinked. No words. It was only the first Hadō, but still.

"Pretty sure I asked who knew the stance and incantation, Fujita. Next time you wanna show off, you can clean the range by yourself afterwards, got it?"

"Yes, sensei."

Karin was pretty sure there wasn't even a tiny bit of apology in the way Fujita said it, and she blinked when the other girl moved past to take her spot in the second row. Yeah, that little smile was totally smug. She glanced sideways at Ishida and rolled her eyes.

His eyebrow quirked a little. Karin was pretty sure that was Ishida-ese for agreement.

"For those of you who don't have family members in the Corps, let's go over that incantation again." Kuzo wrinkled her nose, tossing her ponytail back with a sharp head motion. "You've gotta memorize these, because they don't actually make any sense or correlate even a little bit to what you're doing. So learn 'em upside down and backwards."

Karin suppressed a groan. Who knew becoming a shinigami would be so much like actual school?

Yuzu pulled in another breath, wincing when it aggravated the stitch in her side. Putting her palm against her ribcage, she forced her legs to keep pumping, already wishing it was over. She hadn't had a P.E. class since elementary school in the living world, and somehow it was worse than she remembered.

"You should pick up your feet more, Kurosaki-kun."

"Gah!" Yuzu jumped sideways at the sudden appearance of her teacher, and her left foot scuffed hard against the packed-earth track they were running on. She nearly went down, but then a gnarled hand reached out and pulled her back by the shoulder.

Beside her, Yanagi-sensei, a diminutive old man with a bushy white mustache and a perpetually-unruffled air about him, smiled mildly. "Whoops-a-daisy. Take care, now." He kept pace with her absolutely effortlessly, as though he were out for a nice, ambling stroll on a weekend afternoon.

Yuzu felt her face starting to flush. She was easily the most out of shape in her entire class, and that included Nishimura-san, who she'd thought was kind of sickly, and Tojo-san, who had to be at least triple her size.

Karin lapped her on the left—again—and Yuzu tried not to start crying in front of her instructor. It was difficult, though—the wind was in her eyes and her side hurt and now her toe was throbbing too. She pressed her hand harder into her ribs and puffed several times, trying to pick her shuffle up into something moderately respectable.

"I know it's hard now," Yanagi said quietly. "But you'll get the hang of it." He dipped his chin and sped up, easily eating the ground between himself and the next runner ahead.

Yuzu's lungs burned and her eyes burned and everything felt heavy and awful and humiliating, but she kept shuffling forward.

The heel of Moribito's hand cracked up into Karin's jaw, and she lost her footing, falling to her ass on the ground and forgetting to tuck in the way she was supposed to. The impact jolted up her tailbone all along her spine, and she bit back a curse.

The jerk stood over her, arms crossed, a sly slant to the corner of his mouth.

There was a thud from the mat next to her. Fujita had just dropped Yuzu, who rolled out of it and stood back up, resetting her stance.

Karin couldn't well do any less. Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself up off the mat, cracking her neck to either side and flexing her fingers. Sinking her center of gravity until her knees were bent almost at a square angle, she waited.

Fortunately, she didn't have to wait long. Moribito came in low, trying to unsettle her stance, and Karin sidestepped, driving for his side with her fists.

He caught her on the backswing, slamming an elbow into her stomach.

"Ngh!" Karin folded like a fan, the impact strong enough to push all the air from her lungs. She lost track of trying to do anything but breathe, and when she got awareness of her surroundings back, her hakudateacher was looking down at her.

Lin Fēng was a tiny person, about Yuzu's size, with streaks of grey in her hair and a very judgmental stare. Or, well, it sure looked judgmental right now, anyway.

"Get up," she said, and Karin groaned, losing almost all the air she'd regained to do it.

"Now. And stop acting like you're the same size as him. You aren't, and you never will be."

So Karin got up, dusting herself off and scowling at Moribito. He was still smirking.

Asshole.

It was a very ordinary door.

In fact, it was exactly like the one that led into his room, except the names on the temporary paper tags were Kurosaki and Kurosaki, not Ishida and Matsuda.

Uryū hovered just outside of it, entirely uncertain that he wanted to do this. But his options were limited, and Yuzu had made the offer. Still, it was imposing, and he rather thought he'd worn out their hospitality plenty already.

But where else would he go? His desk in the library was still covered in glue and profanity, and Matsuda and his friends were still playing King's Cup in his room, making it a suboptimal place to engage in anything productive.

Forcing a breath out through his nose, he raised his hand and knocked twice, stepping back to a polite distance.

It was Karin that pulled the door open. "Oh, hey Ishida." She stepped back inside, leaving it ajar for him to follow.

Removing his shoes and placing them just inside the threshold, he did, making sure to shut the door behind him. The room itself was somehow exactly what he'd expected: Yuzu's half was composed, minimalist and elegant, with everything in its place. A cheerful green bamboo plant sat in a delicately-painted ceramic pot on the corner of the desk, and a line of stuffed animals occupied the foot of the bed.

Karin's side was more… lived in. The bed wasn't made, the covers pushed down to the end, and the desk had a smattering of loose paper spread across it, a spare shitagi draped over the back of the accompanying chair.

Uryū tried to quash the distinct feeling of awkwardness. Some part of him remembered that he was in a girl's dormitory and the door was shut and it was not quite in line with propriety.

The other part was curiously reassured by the fact that they didn't seem to notice. Karin plopped back down on her bed, reaching over to pull the shitagi off her desk chair.

"You can move my crap if you need to. Just put it in a pile or something." She moved her attention back to the paper she was writing on, braced on a textbook, propped on her knees.

"Hello, Ishida-san," Yuzu said, glancing up from her desk and sparing him a smile. "What do you have to work on?"

He sank into Karin's chair, carefully stacking her papers and setting them aside before he could start organizing by subject matter and date. "I was going to start that essay for Kidō Theory."

"We have an essay in Kidō Theory? Shit. When's it due?" Karin stretched her legs out, curling and uncurling her toes.

Uryū checked his notes. "Three weeks from now."

"You're as bad as Yuzu."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing."

He let it go, flipping through his notebook to the pages he wanted, underlining what he thought would be most relevant to the assignment. Occasionally, he'd hear the scratching of Yuzu's pen or a frustrated sound of some kind from Karin, but for the most part, it was quiet. At least for a while.

"Hey, what's the time limit on shinigami in the living world again?"

"A month," Uryū said automatically.

"Thanks. Stupid history assignment. Why do we have to learn this, anyway? It's not like it's going to matter. Nobody remembers anything before the Seireitei anyhow."

"I bet the Sōtaichō does," Yuzu said. "Wasn't he one of the first people to establish the Gotei 13? I think he and one of the other current captains were both in the first generation of them."

"Well it's not in our book, so if the old man ever bites it, I guess we're screwed for that information."

Uryū shook his head. "There's a lot of information sealed under the Central 46 chambers. I'm guessing it's somewhere in there."

Karin scowled. "Well then why isn't it in the book? It just doesn't make any sense to start 2,000 years ago and say nothing about how all this crap got here in the first place."

"Maybe they don't want you to know." Uryū made the last stroke on his kanji and glanced up at her. "Why does Soul Society resemble ancient Japan? Which way does the influence go? If it's from Soul Society out, why did it only affect one culture so much? Shinigami operate over the entire living world. If it went the other way, why choose that culture? In either case, why has it stayed the same for so long, when the living world changes so quickly by comparison?"

Yuzu turned to face them, draping an elbow over the back of her chair. "Maybe because most people forget their deaths and things? So they just kind of… assimilate to what's already here?"

Uryū dipped his head. "Certainly. But the power the Seireitei and the Central 46 have over how things are done could easily be used to change the culture, if they desired to. So why not do it? Plenty of technology is available to them, I've heard. Some more advanced even than what's in the living world. But people in the Rukongai are still living under a feudal government, a system most living world cultures did away with centuries ago, and some never had at all."

"You know, that is kind of fucked up, isn't it? Like… you couldn't even get a cheap pen out there until like two years ago. How's anyone supposed to learn to write if they can't afford the paper and stuff?" Karin frowned, spinning hers between her thumb and forefinger. "Half of the old man's patients can't even sign their names."

"But why would anyone want things to continue being that way?" Yuzu's brows knit, forming a little vertical line between them.

"Who benefits if people can't read?" Uryū asked.

Yuzu tilted her head, but Karin clicked her tongue against her teeth. "The people who can."

"And they are?"

"…nobles, shinigami, and people who live in the inner districts." Yuzu looked like she'd bitten into something very sour.

"Exactly."

They all fell silent after that, returning to their work with heavier thoughts than before.

Term Dictionary:

Kosode – 小袖 – "Small sleeve." The outer layer of the shinigami uniform, and also the academy one.

Asauchi – 浅打 – "Shallow Hit." A generic zanpakutō, not yet attuned enough to its wielder to be released. Not to be confused with a sealed zanpakutō, which could be released but is not. At this point, Karin, Yuzu, and Uryū all have asauchi, even though their swords have changed shape from the way they were originally forged and are superficially unique.

Jinzen – 刃禅 – "Sword Meditation." The practice of entering one's inner world and communicating with a zanpakutō spirit. This is the only way to learn a zanpakutō's name, and one of only two methods that can be used to attain Bankai.

Shitagi –下着 – "Under clothing." The lower layer of either the shinigami shikahushō or the academy uniform. Karin and Yuzu's are red, Uryū's is blue.

Hadō #1: Shō – 破道#1:衝 – "Way of Destruction #1: Thrust." A kidō technique that generates a small burst of kinetic energy at the index finger.

So here's the first look into what I imagine Shin'ō runs like. There's a little extra weirdness since everyone's worried about Aizen, so Soul Society really trying to push class one through as fast as possible in hopes of striking upon a student or two who can get shikai fast. It makes sense, if you consider that zanpakutō abilities are unique and unpredictable. For all anyone knows, some student at the Academy will manifest exactly the thing they need to deal with Aizen, and even one more person they can hustle to near-fukutaichō level could make a difference. (Toshirō once pointed out that if Aizen could get ten Espada-level Arrancar, that would be enough to pose a serious threat to Soul Society; likewise if Soul Society can get a few more ranked officers, they might have better odds.)

I promise this is not secretly a story about OCs. I did need to populate class one, however, and they also needed teachers. The environment is competitive and intense, and hopefully that's coming through okay. Also, Lin Fēng is indeed a relative of Suì-Fēng. Renji is teaching zanjutsu to class one as part of his punishment for beating up his own division members and breaking out of prison, which happened offscreen in the last fic between his fight with Uryū and him helping Rukia try to escape, similarly to where it happens in canon.

I also think he'd be a good teacher for it: he's skilled enough, officers in canon sometimes teach, and he already writes a column for the Seireitei Bulletin about getting shikai. Also I found the idea amusingly awkward, considering.

Next chapter: Karin, Yuzu and Ishida make some progress in skills, Ishida can't find his zanpakutō spirit, and Rukia puts in an appearance.