Disclaimer: Still not Kubo. On balance, I'm pretty okay with that, but owning Bleach would be cool.
The Three-Body Problem
A Bleach Fanfic
Chapter Five: January
Uryū still wasn't entirely sure about how he felt having the second key to Karin and Yuzu's room, but he'd stopped trying to give it back. At times like this, when he needed somewhere quiet and not public to study, it was admittedly very convenient. As both of them were still eating dinner, he took his time setting up at Karin's desk, which might as well have been his, since she did all her homework on her bed.
He was about twenty pages into his reading on the history of forbidden kidō when he heard a soft scratching sound, like someone running their fingernails lightly over a wooden panel. Frowning, he glanced up, checking the floorboards for any possible mice or other small creatures—which seemed to be startlingly rare inside the Seireitei—but found nothing.
The scratching sound grew louder, more insistent, and Uryū shifted his eyes to the window, whereupon sat a black cat, its paw scratching at the window ledge. Given the way it stared directly at him, he reached the obvious conclusion immediately, laying his book upside-down on the desk and moving to the window.
Unlatching it, he slid it open sideways. "Yoruichi? What are you doing here?"
She hopped down from the windowsill, looking around with obvious interest. "This is a girls' room," she said, amusement filtering through her masculine tone. "Something you want to tell me, Ishida?"
Uryū felt his face start to heat, an unfortunate automatic response that he really hoped he'd be able to get rid of one day. "No. I mean, yes, the room does belong to Karin and Yuzu, but it's not what you're implying." Glancing out the window, half-expecting for someone else to be waiting to ambush him out there, he shut the glass pane again and flipped the latch.
"Oh? And just what am I implying?"
He ignored her. "More importantly, I ask again: what are you doing here?"
Yoruichi sighed, shifting slightly, and he caught the glint of something attached to her neck. A band of fabric, but with an oblong shiny bit dangling from it. "Kisuke wants to talk to you. I'm delivering the means."
Uryū's brows knit; he stooped and untied the fabric—silk, probably from his storage closet at the shop—lifting it away from Yoruichi and examining the device on the end. It was about the size of a shogi pawn, or, indeed, the tag on an animal collar, but looked to be made primarily of some kind of smooth metal. It was a little too pearlescent to be steel, but he wasn't sure what it could be instead.
"You have to touch it without gloves," Yoruichi said. "It'll only work with your thumb print."
"When did Urahara-san… never mind." Uryū wasn't sure he really wanted to know how that man had his fingerprints to begin with. They were far from the oddest thing the shopkeeper had ever been able to procure on whatever notice.
Yoruichi hopped up on the desk, sitting down next to his book and cocking her head at him expectantly.
Uryū sighed, setting the device down for a moment and removing his gloves, folding them together and laying them down on top of his book. Unsure which thumb would work, he tried his dominant hand first, pressing the left one to the unblemished metal.
Something under the surface lit up, giving the whole object a dim, red glow for a moment. Uryū took his hand back, watching with interest as the color of the light changed several times, and then the top layer of the object cleared so that it looked like glass. From within, it projected a wedge of light straight upwards, creating a flat, translucent screen of sorts, perhaps as wide and tall as his forearm was long.
"Kisuke!" Yoruichi spoke at the screen, which currently only showed the interior of Urahara Shop's living room, devoid of people. It looked like the counterpart device was set on the table, facing the back wall, but it was hard to say for sure without more reference.
The machine projected the sound of feet on tatami flooring and the rustle of clothes, though, and Urahara's head appeared in the frame from the upper right corner. "Ah, Yoruichi. Right on time."
He stepped back and settled into a seated position, tipping his hat back slightly with one hand. "And Ishida-kun. Nice to see you." His mouth slanted up into a lopsided smile.
He looked, of course, exactly the same. In the nearly four years they'd been acquainted, he'd never really changed at all.
Uryū wondered for a moment if that would ever be true of him as well, but brushed the thought aside. It wasn't something to consider right now. "Likewise, Urahara-san." The extent to which he meant it surprised him a little.
For a moment, the expression on Urahara's face flickered, losing the sly edge it almost always had, but it was back again so quickly Uryū wondered if he'd merely imagined it.
"I'm calling to give you an update from this end," the shopkeeper said, reaching slightly past the screen and leaning back again with a cup of tea in his hand. "Nothing major yet, so don't worry about that. There's been a bit of an increase in Hollow activity here recently, but no Menos or anything like that. I've got some friends in town taking care of it, for the moment."
"Friends?" Uryū raised an eyebrow.
Urahara chuckled. "Yes, well. Maybe that's not quite the right word. But they're up to it, and they've agreed, so… they're the enemies of our enemy, at least."
"That sounds much more like you."
"I'm hurt, Ishida-kun. It's almost like you don't believe I could have friends."
Yoruichi swished her tail. "Speaking of friends, Ishida's made some, haven't you, Ishida?" She turned her head to look up at him through feline eyes. If she could smile, she would probably be doing so.
"Is that so?" A glance back at the projection showed Urahara's fan in front of his face again, obscuring whatever expression he wore, but his voice was one Uryū recognized. It was the same one he had whenever he'd just thought of something that eventually led to several days in the basement making things explode.
Uryū scowled. "No. Don't even think about it."
"Think about what?" Urahara asked mildly.
"You're already wondering what kind of friends they are and if you can fit them into your plans somewhere. You can't. They're just kids."
Yoruichi laughed outright, and Urahara lowered his fan, grinning broadly.
"And just what are you?" he asked, amusement edging the question, softening the underlying sharpness.
"A volunteer." Uryū bit the words out harder than he'd intended, but he didn't regret it. He knew how Urahara operated: he didn't have the luxury of always seeing people as people. He had to think in terms of what they could do, what they had the potential to be or accomplish. And that was a most excellent way to examine a strategic problem and solve it.
Uryū knew that no one ever played shogi without sacrificing a few pieces, however.
On the screen, Urahara folded the fan, and Uryū thought maybe he sighed, but the electronic medium made it difficult to say for sure. His amusement dropped away like an old cloak, and he set his teacup back down on the table offscreen with a soft clink.
"So are they," he said solemnly, folding his arms into his sleeves. "I know you don't want to hear this, Ishida-kun, but I think you understand it already. Anyone at that academy right now is involved in this just as much as you are. Aizen won't care how old they are, or how trained, if they stand in his way."
Uryū grit his teeth, but there was undeniable truth in what Urahara said. He could hope that the twins wouldn't get dragged into the war, but he knew how talented they were. They'd be in squads by the time the Hōgyoku awakened, and because of that, they might be asked to step into the line of fire. There was just no way to guarantee that they wouldn't become involved.
"At least if I have the information, I can plan with them in mind," the other man continued, something almost like sympathy registering alongside the words themselves. "Better that than someone else just throwing them on the pyre as a delay tactic."
It went without saying that if low-ranked shinigami were deployed in the war, that was most likely what they'd be for.
There were too many variables to predict. Letting Urahara potentially involve the twins in his plans meant they would surely be in some amount of danger, perhaps more than if they were never sent to the field. But it also meant they would be involved in the way best suited for them.
He would have preferred to just ask them, but he was deluding himself if he believed they had any choice.
"Before you involve them in anything, you have to get their permission," he said, unwilling to bend on at least that much. He wasn't going to help create another situation like Rukia's.
Urahara nodded. "Of course. We're talking about Isshin's daughters, aren't we?"
It was not even slightly surprising that he knew. "Yes."
"All right, so what are they good at?"
Uryū knew he wasn't interested in Yuzu's baking or Karin's impressive soccer maneuvers. He did his best to set aside all the things that immediately came to mind and focus on the cold particulars. Analysis of ability, assessment of potential, nothing else.
"Yuzu could easily be described as a kidō prodigy. At least one student came into the class with the ability to cast some Hadō and Bakudō without the incantations, and Yuzu has in every way proven that she outmatches her." Though at any other time this was extremely satisfying to Uryū, he brushed away the feeling. "She demonstrates skill with the soft aspects of hakuda, and a very keen understanding of the academic material we're given, enough to make connections of her own and think unconventionally. She's also very perceptive of other people, and one of the most emotionally-intelligent people I've ever met."
He sighed, rolling his shoulders back. "Her general fitness level has increased drastically since we started, but she's still below the class average in this respect. None of us is using advanced Hohō techniques like shunpō yet, but I suspect given her skill in kidō that once her body can handle it, she'll at least learn quickly. Her biggest weakness is one of personality: she doesn't like the idea of hurting people, and this is reflected most in her zanjutsu. She understands the theory and is capable of the motions, but her hits lack power and resolve. In general, she's uncertain of herself, and I think she may even be questioning whether she wants to be a shinigami at all."
He winced, not exactly happy to have said it that way, but Urahara was nodding, taking the information in with that keen-eyed look he had.
"And what about Karin?"
"Physically, she was much more prepared for the rigors of training. Her zanjutsu is easily among the best in the class, and she's dedicated to it. Before reiatsu is factored in, she's also very fast, and probably the closest to actual shunpō out of all of us. Her reiryoku control and kidō are decent, but she'll never have the skill of a specialist." He pursed his lips, considering. "She has more strength than I'd expect of someone of her size, but she isn't very patient, and it makes her hakuda her worst skill by far. She has yet to beat anyone in a sparring match, and it was only recently that she really started to understand the mechanics of the throws and locks."
Urahara tipped his head to the side. "How about you, Ishida-kun?" His eyes were hooded, a touch of the foxlike cunning returning to his face.
Uryū pushed his glasses up his nose. That was a loaded question if he'd ever heard one. Still, if he couldn't even impartially examine his own competencies, he was hardly in a position to be participating in the strategy discussions he'd stipulated admission to.
"I started with considerable advantage," he pointed out first. "While I knew only one of the shinigami arts to begin with, I am nevertheless familiar with martial disciplines in general, and this is not the first time I have undergone training for the purpose of learning to fight a threat. I almost certainly have the most reiryoku of anyone here." He also knew what a real, life-and-death situation was like, something that perhaps only one or two of his classmates could claim.
"As expected, I'm far ahead of my classmates in hakuda." That was, after all, something he'd already had quite a lot of training for going in.
Yoruichi made what sounded like a harrumph from beside him. "Of course you are," she said. "You learned from the best."
Uryū rolled his eyes. "And the most humble." Shaking his head, he continued. "I'm also somewhere in the top three with zanjutsu—it's hard to distinguish myself, Karin, and our classmate Sugitani with respect to that. Kidō is… less consistent. I am still attempting to learn how to manipulate reiryoku generally, though I do not ever find myself lacking it after classes. I have yet to succeed in shunpō, either, for a similar reason."
He paused, debating it, then continued. "But my main problem is that I cannot seem to make contact with the spirit of my zanpakutō."
Urahara frowned slightly. "Let me see it," he said, leaning forward so that his face was closer to the screen.
Uryū complied, the sheath making a whisper of sound against the linen of his sash as he slid it out, laying it on the surface of the desk. Aside from the fact that everything about it was either black or smoky grey, and the particular shape of the tsuba, which was different for everyone, it looked no different from any of the other wakizashi-types he'd seen. Matsuda and Nishimura had them too.
Urahara spent a minute examining it, fingers rubbing at his stubble, before he sat back. "Yoruichi, does it feel abnormal to you?"
She nodded her head, an odd gesture in cat form. "It doesn't seem to have any reiatsu at all."
"Are they supposed to?"
"Kind of." Urahara rubbed lazily at the back of his neck and shoulder. "It's almost indistinguishable from the shinigami's own reiatsu, but in theory if you're good enough at picking up on it, you can sense it. Try it sometime. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about it."
Uryū leveled a flat look at him. "My zanpakutō is possibly non-functional, and you want me to not worry about it? This was the whole reason you sent me here in the first place."
"It's functioning just fine," Urahara said. "If it weren't, it wouldn't have changed shape at all in the first place. My guess is you have a difficult sword, is all. That's not ideal right now, but I can tell you from experience that it's often the most difficult spirits that end up producing the strongest zanpakutō." The corner of his mouth curled. "I found Benihime the first time I entered my inner world, and then she didn't so much as acknowledge my existence for an entire year. She's still not very nice to me, come to think of it."
"What if we don't have that kind of time?" A year might be fine, but then… it might not. The estimate on Aizen's timeline was only an estimate, after all, and getting to shikai was the fastest way to get himself out of the academy. Exactly what happened after that… Uryū wasn't sure yet.
Urahara shrugged. "It'll happen when it happens. If you want to get there as quickly as possible, there are two things you can do. The first is to start asking yourself questions you know you don't want to answer, and answering them anyway. The sword usually helps, but if you have to do it by yourself, it's still worth doing."
"And the second?"
"Try approaching the problem a different way. You're probably wandering around in the inner world searching, right?" One of Urahara's brows disappeared into the shadow cast by the brim of his hat."
"Yes." How else was he supposed to do it?
"Have you tried talking? Zanpakutō are all different. They respond to different triggers. It might take touch, or a question, or some other thing. Don't just look, and don't only look where you expect to find something."
Uryū dipped his chin. "I'll try that then. How are the others doing?"
Urahara accepted the change in topic without protest, apparently done dispensing his wisdom for the moment. "Tessai's fine, of course. The kids miss you, but Jinta won't admit it." He paused for a moment, laying a hand on his hat and tipping his head back.
"Your father came by."
There were several beats of utter silence. Uryū clenched his teeth, then forced his jaw to relax, any trace of the almost-smile he'd been wearing yielding to a dark scowl. "What did he want?"
Urahara remained unfazed by the thinly-veiled hostility in the question. "To know where you went. You had to know he'd sense your energy disappearing."
Of course. What he hadn't expected was for Ryūken to confront Urahara about it. "What did you tell him?"
"That I'd have to talk to you before I told him anything." Letting his hand drop, Urahara put it back in the opposite sleeve and sighed. "You sure you want to burn this bridge?"
Uryū's scowl deepened, etched into his face like something carved in a block of granite. "I'm not the one who set it on fire. My business is none of his anymore; he decided that himself three years ago."
The shopkeeper inclined his head. "If that's what you want. But your father isn't stupid, Ishida-kun. He'll probably figure it out, if he hasn't already."
"Let him."
"Whatever you want," Urahara said. "Anyway, I probably shouldn't keep you any longer. I know it's probably not ideal for you over there, but it sounds like you're doing all right."
Uryū considered that for a moment. "Actually… yes. I am."
The other man grinned. "Glad to hear it. I'll let you get back to it for now. Say hello to the twins for me."
After Uryū agreed to pass on the message, the communication disconnected, leaving a blank projection screen in front of him. Turning to Yoruichi, he arched a brow. "Should I ask Yuzu if she has a cat bed?"
Yoruichi gave him a look, lashing her tail. "You're hilarious," she deadpanned.
He cracked a tiny smile.
"But no, thank you. I'll wait around long enough to say hello, then be on my way. I'm sure Isshin has plenty of space."
Uryū's dreams, as they often did, deposited him in his inner world.
The transition was always abrupt, especially so because the world itself was so different from anything that existed in empirical reality. His disorientation faded a little faster every time, though, and when he'd found his feet this time, he glanced around.
Nothing immediately new to be seen. Perhaps it was time to take Urahara's advice into consideration. Feeling slightly foolish, Uryū took half a step forward, peering out into the endless whiteness. "Hello?" he called, squinting. "Are you there?"
What was he supposed to say to a zanpakutō spirit, anyway? How different were they from what Lucia was? To say it was 'part of his soul' was such an abstract thing. Which part? No one was so simple that they had only one side.
As he'd expected, there was no response to his words, and he sighed. What was the other thing? Ask himself questions he didn't want to answer? Easier said than done.
What questions didn't he want to answer?
Grimacing, he sat down beside the sleeping Lucia, trying to decide what she would be asking him about right now. He'd only been acquainted with her waking self for a very short time. He found her imperious, and haughty, both traits that he was willing to admit he shared from time to time. But she was also resolute, fair, and firmly on his side. Her sense of right and wrong was steady and unshakable.
Was he looking for something like that, or something completely different?
She'd probably ask him about Ryūken. It was a sore spot for him, one he didn't like talking about, which was apparently just the kind of thing zanpakutō spirits bothered their wielders with.
When he spoke, he didn't direct the words anywhere in particular, unsure where the spirit would be located.
"My father and I haven't gotten along for most of my life," he started, adjusting his legs so they were crossed beneath him. "He rejected his Quincy heritage… I'm not exactly sure when. My grandfather was the one who told me what we were. The one who trained me. Ryūken never approved. Nothing I did was good enough for him." Uryū wondered if things would have been different, had his mother lived. She was a Quincy, too; his grandfather had told him that. Had she rejected her power the way Ryūken had? Would she have approved of his actions?
He didn't know, and he never would.
"We argued almost constantly. I trained every day, after grandfather died. I wanted—needed—to be stronger than I had been then, but Ryūken was against it. When I was fourteen, he told me to stop training or leave his house." Uryū shook his head.
"I doubt he expected me to choose to leave. Even if we didn't get along, he was all the family I had left. But I couldn't betray Grandfather's memory by rejecting what I was. So… I left. And he made it clear that I wasn't to come back." The stark whiteness of the inner world was making his eyes feel hot and blurry. Uryū pressed a palm to his left, then his right, brushing his hand off on his hakama.
His shoulders slumped. "Grandfather told me once that Ryūken was immensely talented. I don't think he meant me to, but… I started to wonder if I wasn't standing in my father's shadow. To know that he was that good and gave it up anyway… I couldn't understand it. I still can't."
Still no sign of a spirit, and Uryū wasn't sure he had it in him to keep speaking. Ryūken was a sore subject, but inevitably, talking about him led to a minefield of even more difficult topics. He didn't doubt he'd have to get into all of it eventually, but there was only so much he could lay out there in one day, even if it did feel more like talking to himself than anything.
He waited in deafening silence for what felt like interminable minutes, but there was nothing.
Frustrated with the lack, Uryū turned to Lucia, intending to bid her farewell as was his custom, and froze. His muscles locked up, and he kept his eyes fixed on the exact spot, almost sure he was imagining it.
Lucia had a shadow.
She'd never had a shadow. Nothing in here had ever had a shadow. Not even him. The light everything was bathed in was too bright for that. But all the same, he could see it, just there, cast barely in front of her. Smaller than it would have been under any natural illumination, but noticeable. It moved in time with her breathing, shifting subtly.
"I see you," Uryū said, not really sure what else he should say in a situation like this.
Apparently, it had been the right thing, because the shadow moved, independently of Lucia this time, darkening and pooling outwards from where she slept, until it had completely separated from her and lay in a circle on the ground.
Slowly, it rose, forming into what looked like a half-solid shape. Its features were hard to distinguish, but it appeared to be of a height with Uryū himself, and similarly-built, made entirely of the shadow-stuff. The one exception was its eyes, which were luminous, the sclera black but the irises kingfisher blue. The shape of everything below the head suggested a cloak, one that bled into the inky pool at its feet.
It did not speak, and Uryū rose to stand in front of it, brows heavy over his eyes. "Are you the spirit of my zanpakutō?"
It nodded once.
"Can you speak?"
Another nod, this one slower, more tentative.
Uryū waited a full ten seconds. "Will you?"
"…bright." The voice was hoarse, more akin to a soft rasp than words conventionally spoken; little more than breath given vague shape.
Uryū blinked. He supposed that might not sit well with something apparently composed of shadow. "It's always been like this," he replied. "I can't do anything about that."
"You… can."
If he could, then wouldn't it have already happened? How many times had he strained his eyes in here, wishing it were a little dimmer? "How?"
The spirit cocked its head sideways. "…Try."
He hesitated, glancing down at Lucia. The light was almost certainly connected to her somehow. She and it had been the only things in this world when he first entered it. He didn't know what effect changing it would have on her. "Do I have to?"
The shadow did not respond.
Frowning, Uryū considered his options. Clearly, the spirit wanted him to dim the light. It stood to reason that if he didn't work with it at least a little, he'd make no progress towards releasing it. But Lucia was already dormant—he couldn't risk harming her further. This was his inner world—it was in some way reflective of or connected to his soul. Changing things here might mean really, concretely changing who he was.
But… maybe the reason he could change things here was that he'd already changed. He knew he had, in some ways. As long as he held onto some things, he thought he could alter others safely enough. But how to reflect that here…
Stepping away from Lucia, he beckoned the shadow to follow. Once he was confident she was actually far away, he turned to face the blankness ahead. "I want shadows to exist here," he said, unsure how to achieve it.
But the words themselves—or perhaps the intent behind them—were enough. The light level lowered by several steps in front of him but not behind, creating the first visual feature of his internal world, a perfectly-straight line dividing the white from what was now a mid-toned grey, complete with contour and variation. Where the white seemed endless but also completely flat, like it went nowhere at all, this section had shaped itself into a corridor. He couldn't see the end of it; that faded into a deeper darkness that permitted no vision beyond.
The spirit drifted across the line, immediately straightening and resolving shape considerably, until he was confident that he was looking at something with human dimensions.
"Thank you," it said, its voice stronger now, mid-tone masculine, but still quiet. It stared at him with its bright eyes for a disconcerting period of time.
Uryū shifted, not wanting to break eye contact first. He thought he saw it smile halfway, but before he could ask its name, he found himself ejected from his inner world as suddenly as he'd entered it.
Well, I guess it was an Ishida-only chapter this time, but Karin and Yuzu will both be back next time. Also, more new characters show up, and shenanigans ensue.