You know, I checked recently. This story is in the Top 20 Most Followed Bleach fanfics on this site. Yet there's no TV Tropes page on it. I feel like someone should get on that.
Edit: Thank you everyone who corrected me on the Spanish word for 'Steel', I fixed it in this chapter, unfortunately with the way fanfiction works I cannot fix instances where I used the word in previous chapters!
As soon as I entered the classroom, I felt everyone's eyes on me. There seemed to be a pervading sense of intrigue and curiosity that I truly could care less about. With Yoruichi happily swishing her tail while on my shoulder and Unohana possessing a silently satisfied smile behind me, I went over to my seat, slinging my backpack onto the back of my chair. Keigo, thankfully learning quickly, entered my view before coming closer, an odd look on his face. Mizuiro and Tatsuki also joined in, the dark haired boy fiddling with his phone once more and the karate student leaning on my desk. I regarded them all cluelessly as Keigo and Tatsuki attempted to stare something out of me.
"…What?" I asked first.
"What's up with you?" My childhood friend immediately demanded. "You went home with the new students on Wednesday, I hear something about them having already transferred out, you skip Thursday and Friday, and now you come back after your extended weekend damn near glowing." Snorting, I leaned back in my seat.
"I solved Rurichiyo's problem, so they all returned to the Soul Society. As for why I'm happy, I found out I'm now rich, ate some McGroban's, and made plans to watch Kamen Rider." My hand came up to scratch Yoruichi's chin, which she delighted in, purring against my fingers. "Also, I got laid." Tatsuki slipped off my desk, failed to catch herself, and smacked her jaw against the wood on her way to the floor. Keigo froze in place, his face turning a bright red as his own jaw dropped. Mizuiro's phone slipped from his fingers before he madly lunged down, luckily managing to catch it before it hit the ground. As I enjoyed the silence, I swiftly realized the silence extended to the entire room. A glance around confirmed that everyone inside, most especially an unfortunate Orihime that seemingly entered at the worst time, was staring at me.
"Ah." I breathed, completely uncaringly. "I must've said that a bit too loud. My bad." There was absolute certainty in my mind that Yoruichi was exercising every technique she knew to not collapse with laughter, and I still felt her body shaking with repressed hilarity.
"…Y-" Some random student who I will never bother to remember the name of stuttered. "You mean…like…l-laid out…right?" It appeared to be the unanimously agreed upon belief that it was impossible for me to be sexually active. Then again, I displayed pretty aggressively in the past how much I opposed perverts. Rather impressive that everyone found it more believable that the Ichigo Kurosaki they were certain could hold his own against the Yakuza would lose a fight over having sex.
"Nah." I tore apart that belief viciously. There was the sound of Orihime fainting and falling to the ground. Well, it was better for her to learn sooner rather than later.
"WITH WHO?!" Another student that would unfortunately would forever remain nameless in my mind shouted. Hm. As the son of a doctor, I was well aware of how frowned-upon doctor-patient relationships were, so I couldn't mention Unohana. And none of the students were aware of Yoruichi's human form, so that could only end catastrophically.
…Wait. A devilish thought came to me, and a smile befitting the thought curled onto my face.
"Someone I met while invading some old gang's territory." My nurse had to cover her mouth to smother her giggle. There was no way the populace of Karakura High wouldn't believe such an idea. Keigo choked on his spit. It appeared he made the connection first out of all my friends. That actually kinda makes sense, he's the only one to whom I hinted the idea that Unohana was comparable to a Yakuza member. Also I was fairly certain that if class didn't start soon to shift us off topic, Yoruichi was gonna explode from suppressing her laughter.
"What's got all of you so freaked out? Class is about to start, quiet down!" Ms. Ochi came in as if she was summoned by my thoughts, and I leaned back in my seat while stroking Yoruichi's fur.
"Was it really necessary to get Unohana to drag Kisuke out of the shop before you came?" Yoruichi asked as she stretched, the two of us currently in Kisuke's basement. "You're kinda going a bit overboard with teasing him about the fact that he's in the dark about something."
"It's not that." I shook my head, my breath escaping me in such a way that I didn't think I would be able to suck it all back in for a while. "I get it, and it's why Zangetsu and I keep drilling it into everyone's heads, but when we say that Kisuke and I were the only ones left at the end, everyone focuses on the fact that so many died. No one really catches onto the other part of it, which is that Kisuke was all that I had left to hold onto." Yoruichi flinched violently, as the realization hit her. "That Kisuke was the only other one that could understand. He had been there from the start, made it all the way to the end, and was there to witness every single crack and dent Yhwach hammered into me as it happened. He was almost as vital in the war efforts as I was, more so in many cases. He wasn't a Front Liner, he's not built for that, but I'm certain he got as much rest as I did, if not less. He pushed himself as hard as I did, if not more, in different ways. He pulled me out of so many downwards spirals I'm not even sure he was able to keep track. I pulled him out of his labs and forced him into a bed so many times there's no point in counting. When you died," I had to pause as the memory flickered behind my eyes for a second, "Kisuke was the only other one that was hit as hard as I had been. Soi Fon probably would've been as well, but she had been dead for a while by then. Kisuke was there for me when Unohana died as much as I was there for him when the shop got decimated with Tessai and the kids inside. Kisuke bore witness to all the ways my friend's deaths tore me apart just as I saw his steady breakdown as every invention and plan he painstakingly made failed.
When I traveled back in time, seeing everybody was like getting them back again. But it feels like if I see Kisuke again, it'll be like throwing away the one I know. I'll see him, I just need more time." Yoruichi came close and pulled me down in a hug, which I returned as I rested my chin on her shoulder.
"Do you want to leave this for another day?" She whispered in my ear.
"No, doing something productive will make me feel better." I mumbled, before forcing a grin on my face. "And we both know you're just stalling because you know what your training is without me having to tell you." I felt her slouch against me.
"I hate that form." She whined. A chuckle left me as I unwove my arms from her and stood straight. She repositioned her hands so they were on her hips. "It's disgusting."
"It's powerful." I mentioned.
"It's inherently uncontrollable."
"Very, very true." There really was no way to argue that. The form reduced her to nothing but impulsive instincts and desires, even low-level hollows usually had a level of sentience that superseded that. "We did figure out a trick to…direct you, though." She seemingly couldn't help but raise an eyebrow in disbelief.
"Ok, I know you wouldn't just lie to my face like that, but what the hell could you come up with to make that form manageable that even Kisuke couldn't figure out?"
"Kisuke's flaw with figuring stuff like that out is that he doesn't really have a proper understanding of feral instincts. He can tell you what they are on a chemical level, but past that he draws a blank. Instincts don't really follow a logical pattern, so he can figure out easy stuff like eat, sleep, and breed, but the nuances of it are more or less forever lost to him." It was at that where her eyes began to soften in understanding.
"And you've got a much clearer awareness of that stuff because you're part hollow."
"Right. So, in your Kokubyo Senki form, you basically enter a state of being incredibly impulsive. As soon as something new comes to mind, you abandon everything before that and focus on that new thing."
"That's what Kisuke told me, yeah."
"The thing is, while that high-impulse thing isn't really gonna be something we can do anything about, we can manipulate it thanks to you being in a state where your instincts are also turned up to eleven. The first priority for anything is self-survival, but the one after that is the survival of things you deem important."
"That…makes sense, but I'm not really figuring out what you're getting at."
"I'm getting there, don't worry." I assured. "What we figured out is that your instincts will more or less direct how your impulses go. If your instincts are telling you that you need to survive, your impulses will streamline into attacking and dodging. When you're in that state, you actually adopt a fighting style that's similarly as dangerous as mine, in that experienced fighters are so vigilant of other experienced fighters that going off pure feral instinct completely catches them off-guard."
"If I'm buying what you're selling, then you figured out a way to keep me in a state of fight-or-flight while in that form?"
"Or something very close to it, at least." I confirmed.
"Alright, what's this method then?"
"Speaking from experience, you are never going to like it."
"I don't even like the idea of using this form, just shut up and tell me." The werecat snapped.
"Like I said, after self-survival, your highest instinctual priority is the safety of those you care about. So if we can trick you into thinking something you care about is in danger, you'll enter full fight-mode. Furthermore, if we get you to think something specifically is endangering something you care about, you practically maul whoever it happens to be." Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
"…Are you implying what I think you're implying?"
"The way we managed to direct you in Kokubyo Senki was by throwing vials filled with the blood of either Unohana, Soi Fon, Kisuke, or myself onto the enemy. Usually, it was Soi Fon's followed by Kisuke's since Unohana and I were always in a fight, but Unohana's and mine were usually more effective at getting you to really go off on an enemy."
"Nevermind, it's worse."
"It was generally agreed that the trade-off was worth it. Honestly, Kenpachi was still more feral than you on your worst days, so Kyoraku didn't even see it as that bad."
"Kenpachi was guaranteed to consistently attack the enemy. That form is not."
"It's not like we had you go into that form often. Over the course of the full seven years, I think it was only around ten times."
"That is ten times more than I'd like to use that form. Feral strength is nowhere near as effective as precise blows."
"That's true, but feral instincts are leaps and bounds harder to predict than trained skills, and remember, the Quincy have files on how you fight. Add on the power boost you receive, and Kisuke and Kurotsuchi both calculated that you're overall more effective in that form than out of it."
"There's no way it's that necessary for me to use that form to win the fight against the Quincy." I really couldn't stop the incredulous raise of my eyebrow.
"Are you really defaulting to the argument Yamamoto and Unohana both tried on me? You know, the two remaining original captains that were said to be part of the strongest generation of the Gotei 13, who each have redefined the shinigami's perception of strength as a whole?"
"…Fuck you."
"How about this: we'll compromise. You and I, with absolute privacy since I turned off the cameras before we went down here, will train with your Kokubyo Senki form. When it comes time to fight the Quincy, we'll keep a vial of my blood on you, and I will fully trust in your ability to determine whether or not it's absolutely vital for you to use that form."
"That doesn't sound like much of a compromise."
"It does when Kisuke has an invention that can force you to transform." Her eyes shot open, indignation filling her golden orbs.
"That piece of shit!"
"So, compromise?" I pleaded. She huffed and crossed her arms under her chest.
"…You turned off all the cameras?"
"I'm not Kisuke. You said it yourself; I wouldn't lie to you." The werecat remained contemplative for a few long moments, before she bared her teeth and hissed distastefully.
"Fine."
Tatsuki couldn't help the twitch in her eye as she looked upon the shop before her.
'I've never seen a shadier-looking building in my life…' She lowered her eyes to confirm the address that had been texted to her, unfortunately discovering that she was indeed in the right place. With a defeated sigh, she slid open the front door and stepped inside. A dark skinned man in an apron paused in his stocking of one of the shelves and focused on the karate girl.
"Good Evening, Miss, are you looking for something?" He politely asked. Tatsuki readjusted her bag on her shoulder.
"Yeah, Ichigo told me that if he's not at home, then this place is the best way for me to find him. I wanted to go over some homework with him."
"I see, you're a friend of his?" The man paused for a moment. "He's currently busy with something downstairs, I'll let him know you came by."
"You don't have to pretend around me, he gave me the full story. He said that as long as he's not going out to kill someone, he's free to talk, so where is he?" She huffed.
"…I…see." The dark haired girl thought the man blinked, but she wasn't certain considering his glasses practically absorbed all light and prevented her from seeing his eyes. "You may…follow me, then." He gently placed down the box he had been holding and began walking towards the back of the store, the girl mostly-patiently trailing behind him. He led her around more hallways than she felt fit inside a building the size she had estimated upon looking at it, before he stepped aside. She glanced at the only thing found inside the room he had directed her towards, being a square hole in the ground with a ladder leading down. "Kurosaki-san and Unohana-taicho are down there." He explained.
Tatsuki glanced down at the ladder, and shrugged, shouldering her bag and starting the climb down. As she lowered herself down, she took notice of the room she was climbing down into, which had a painted ceiling and walls to mimic a sunny sky with the occasional cloud. The floor was simple rock, replicating a rocky canyon or mountain range with concerning accuracy. To her pleasant surprise, there even seemed to be a hot spring hidden amongst the rocks, the stone around it high enough to provide decent coverage. She hummed in approval as she went down the rungs, noting in the back of her mind that the ladder was very tall, and further noting how large the room appeared to be. The girl wondered how the room didn't collapse without any support pillars. Almost two full minutes later, she skipped the last couple rungs to drop to the ground. Glancing around, she couldn't find anything that indicated where Ichigo or his nurse were, so she decided to simply start to wander in hopes of finding them. Ichigo had mentioned something about recognizing her soul or whatever, so she felt confident that if she truly got lost, she could just shout and wait for him to come to her.
Then, amidst her wandering, she began to hear noises. The first and most notable noises she heard were both feminine and masculine grunting. Rough, throaty, and aggressive, from both ends. The second that came to her awareness were the distinct sounds of flesh meeting flesh. Powerful, unforgiving, and fast, with seemingly no rhythm to it. The third was the wetness. The distinct sound of something wet colliding with something equally as soaked. Droplets being flung into the ground aggressively. A cold pit began to form in Tatsuki's stomach as disgust and horror seeped into her mind. Unfortunately, she could not keep herself from recalling Ichigo's words from the previous day, the words that had stunned the entire school of Karakura High. Despite the awareness of what she was most likely to find, she was incapable of keeping her feet from cautiously stepping towards the sounds. As she came closer to the source, more sounds joined the others, and absolutely none of them helped the image in her mind. The ripping of clothing, the shuffling of something moving along the ground, the smacks of bodies being slammed against stone. Her body prepared to expunge the contents of her stomach in anxiety of what she was about to witness, before she peered around the outcropping of rock blocking her from the source.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO DOING?!" She couldn't help but scream in genuine terror as she sprinted towards the sight of Ichigo and Unohana in panic.
Both Shinigami blinked in surprise at the unexpected shout, before turning their heads towards the oncoming karate girl.
"…Sparring?" The orange haired man asked, seemingly lost as to why the dark haired girl was so horrified.
"THERE'S A KNIFE IN YOUR FUCKING EYE! WHAT KIND OF SPARRING INVOLVES THAT?!" True to the high schooler's word, there was a foot-long blade that was impaled in the man's right eye. When he had opened his mouth to speak, there had been a glint of metal within that most likely was the point of the knife embedded within his skull. There was additionally a second blade of the same make sticking out from just below the left side of his collarbone. A third was lodged in his right side, penetrating through his ribs to undoubtedly pierce his lung. A fourth was also found on the right side of his body, directly above where his nipple ought to be. Many bruises and cuts of varying sizes were upon his face, and several slices were scattered around his chest and arms, blood trailing from every open wound. The time traveler currently was also straddling the torso of Unohana, who was on the ground. His right hand had loosened his grip, but remained upon the throat of his apparent sparring partner. The orange haired protector's left was pulled back in a fist, though his hand had turned black up until around halfway up his forearm. His counterpart, the proclaimed 'nurse', was soaked in nearly as much blood as Ichigo. She was dressed in as many bruises and cuts as him, though rather than slices from the mysterious knives, she looked as though she had been clawed at by something with the ferocity and strength of a bear. The blue eyed woman, surprisingly, also could claim to being impaled, a fifth knife stuck though her collarbone. The source of the collection of knives was also seemingly apparent, as a sixth blade was clasped in the woman's left hand, in position to stab into the brown eyed man above her. Her right hand had a firm grip on Ichigo's top, to keep him in place.
"Sparring where we agreed to not use our zanpakuto, of course." Unohana was the one to answer, both Shinigami seemingly content to remain in their position.
"I SEE SIX KNIVES BETWEEN THE TWO OF YOU!"
"Yeah, and?" Ichigo questioned dumbly. "These are just normal knives Unohana keeps in her sleeves. The only thing we banned were our zanpakuto. Everything else is fair game." The sapphire eyed 'medic' had her eyes scrunched in confusion, as though she felt her sparring partner's words made perfect sense.
"If we did not wish for any weapons to be used, we would have made that the rule." She supported.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU TWO?!"
"Well, I already told you what's up with me. Unohana's just like this." To the brown eyed girl's increasing horror, the 'nurse' did nothing more than nod in agreement. "Actually," the boy amended, "to an extent, I am also 'just like this'. We like fighting." The karate girl sputtered in a moment before rage finally managed to wade through the shock. She stomped forth and grabbed the hybrid by the back of his top, mostly only succeeding in pulling him up thanks to the other two permitting the action.
"YOU HAVE TWO FUCKING KNIVES IN THE SAME LUNG, THAT IS NOT 'FIGHTING', THAT IS 'TRYING TO KILL EACH OTHER'!" Ichigo then decided to do what was apparently his thing now, which was to flip her perception so violently on its head that she lost any semblance of an ability to respond.
"I have high-speed regeneration, and she was trained by the guy that invented all forms of healing that Shinigami use. Getting impaled by a knife or two for us is the same as getting a bruise. Though," his face turned pouty as he shifted his gaze to Unohana, "I know I told you how annoying it is for me to have internal bleeding."
"I was curious to see why you find it so annoying."
"You could've just asked!" The man groused as he stepped a few feet away from the woman and the girl. As he did so, he grasped the blades sticking out from his lung and ripped them out without a moment's hesitation. Before Tatsuki's eyes, she watched the gaping wounds visibly seal themselves shut, though it was far from instantaneous. In no more than a minute or two, she was certain, there would be no indication that he had ever been impaled. Save for the nauseating amounts of blood.
"Being told why you find it so annoying isn't as informative as witnessing the reason in action. As a medical professional, it's good to-" Even the braided woman paused as the blood-soaked man braced his hands on his knees and vomited what had to be a liter of blood onto the ground. Once he was done, the honey eyed man stood back up straight and wiped his mouth with his right sleeve.
"The body is obviously not made to have blood in places that aren't supposed to have blood, so the only way for me to get it out is to either vomit or piss it out." He sent a glare towards the captain. "I'm sure you aren't unaware of how much it burns to vomit or piss blood." Was what he finished with before removing the blade in his eye. Thankfully for Tatsuki's stomach, he covered the damaged eye with his hand as it healed. The karate girl didn't want to find out what it looked like when an eye fixed itself. A shuffling of feet brought her to automatically turn her head towards Unohana, who was rising to her feet. The woman was giving the blade in her collarbone as much attention as her childhood friend had been, mostly poking at her ripped clothing with a pout on her face.
"I told you we should have stripped for this spar." She complained like it was a perfectly normal thing to say. "If we keep damaging my robes like this, Yamamoto-soutaicho is going to start taking it out of my pay."
"And like I told you, I would have been fine with that, except I don't trust Kisuke to not record and sell footage of you naked." Tatsuki's eyes bulged out of her skull at the words.
"He didn't seem like the sort to do those things when he was a captain, as brief as that was."
"Well, obviously. He had the pay of a Captain, and he was the head of the R&D. He could get any resources he needed. He has neither had access to Soul Society's resources nor funds for the past hundred years. If the man wants to experiment, he needs some way to get those resources, and trust me, he's willing to sell other people's nude pictures." A long moment of silence followed.
"…Did he-" The brown eyed girl questioned.
"Yes." The orange haired man's voice was understandably tight. "The women of the Soul Society hounded me for a goddamn year after that. They only stopped after I stormed Las Noches and ended the Winter War." Unohana tilted her head.
"I feel as though an achievement as great as ending a war would only further their interest, no?"
"After the fight with Aizen, I needed extensive healing. From what I was told, you and Orihime worked together for almost 40 hours to get me stable." The mature woman nodded as if that explained everything. "Also the Quincy declared war like three hours after that." He tacked on.
"I'm sorry, is shit like this just, normal for you?" The karate girl finally snapped. The Shinigami turned to her.
"…Are you just now realizing this?" Ichigo asked.
"Well, sorry if it takes some time to get used to you going from a teenage jackass who thought he was too cool to smile to time traveling war-torn ghost badass in the blink of an eye!"
"Aw, you think I'm badass?" The man smiled widely. Her fist slammed into his gut. She was the one that doubled over, cradling her injury. His laughter filled the air.
"Shut Up!" That only heightened his amusement.
"Ichigo, are you going to release your black armor?" The captain wondered.
"Hm? Oh, you mean my Acero?" He held up his hand for clarification. Before their eyes, the black covering his hand receded into his fingertips before disappearing completely. "It's like Hierro Level 2. No one's told me of a proper name for it, so I made it up myself."
"And what does it mean?"
"Well, Hierro means Iron, and I know steel is stronger than iron, so I just looked up Spanish for Steel."
"…That's more effort than you've put into naming anything else, so progress." Tatsuki muttered. Unohana giggled behind her hand. "When we were kids one day, we were talking about what pets we wanted to have, and he wanted to name a dog Inu! How lazy is that?!" The time traveler rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah, my being shit with names is nothing new. But why you're down here is." He raised an eyebrow meaningfully. Which in turn caused her to remember why she had ventured here.
"I wanted your input on the homework we got." She explained. The girl looked up at him as she said this, and witnessed the complete transition from passivity, to confusion, to dread.
"Fuck. I didn't catch what was assigned as homework."
"What do you mean, 'you didn't catch what was assigned'? You were staring straight at the board the whole day!"
"I was thinking about training people!" Was his defense.
"For six hours?!"
"You do not understand how complicated training can get when you involve zanpakuto. And Quincy powers. And Fullbring. I literally cannot train two people in the same way."
"Have you not been training Yamamoto-soutaicho and Kenpachi-taicho in the same way?"
"Training Kenpachi was helping him realize that he shouldn't hold himself back out of fear of being too much to handle, what we're doing now is getting his body to catch up to where his head's at. Training Yamamoto is the spiritual equivalent of undoing atrophy." Unohana nodded in acquiescence.
"Doesn't matter! You're the only one I have the contact info for in my fifth period! How am I supposed to check my answers if you don't even know what the homework is?!" After a moment of thought, Ichigo's expression slowly narrowed.
"…Uryu is also in our fifth period." He sounded oddly disgusted as he spoke the words.
"And you have his number." Tatsuki grinned. "Why do you sound so pissed, though?"
"I was gonna try to take advantage of being from the future to get higher grades than Uryu. Going to him to ask what the homework was might tip him off, which would get him to study more."
"Are you serious." She deadpanned.
"He'll never admit it out loud, but he's been aware since day one that he would never be able to beat me in a fight. To balance that out, he's always lorded his better grades over me. I will beat him one of these days."
"Does it even count if you're literally using knowledge from the future?" To the shock of both the woman and the girl, Ichigo merely waved that off.
"Uryu has and always will be smarter than me. I happen to currently know more shit regarding spiritual affairs, but that doesn't change the fact that he will always be better at using his head. I want to get higher grades than him once just so I can see the look on his face."
"…You know what, fair. How about you give me his number and I tell him that I had to get it from you 'cuz you didn't bother to pay attention in class?"
"Deal."
"By the way, if this all goes well and you stop the war, what are you gonna do after you graduate?"
"Never really had the downtime to give it much thought. Prolly just gonna die, to be honest."
"Wha-!?"
"I already have a job in the Soul Society, I'll probably just kill my human body and live there. I'll visit on weekends."
"Oh yeah, you mentioned that last week. What was it again?"
"War Preparation Leader. When I put my authority into practice, I basically can order around the entirety of the Gotei 13."
"Holy shit."
"What's funny is that last time, I ended a war and was basically the most essential fighter during both wars, but they never let me be anything higher than what basically amounted to a paid intern." All three of them laughed at that.
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Next Chapter: Taking Every Possible Precaution