That was the last of the devices.
Aigis did not dare to move from her perch just yet as she watched her target reach for his sword. She was sure that the sword's reach was too short, but he acted as if distance did not matter. That worried her.
"I should've known that it would be a risk to try and recruit you." Namba growled, still in his battle stance. "I truly hoped that you would join us."
She failed to suppress her open disgust. "Join you?" she choked. "You insult the people who took care of me for the past eight years and then dare to ask me to join you?"
A sigh escaped from Namba's lips. "I suppose I can only blame my poor choice of words, but if you refuse to join…" he warned.
Pinpricks formed on Aigis's back.
"Flay, Seiden!"
She barely dodged the first strike, the smell of ozone still fresh in her nose. Her footing lost on the clay tiles, she righted herself after an unsteady hop, and landed on the ground to the side of Satou's house. She felt her hair frizz from the close brush to the attack.
Aigis steadied herself, directing her focus to the katana in Namba's hand. Only it was not a katana anymore, but what seemed to be a coil of crackling electricity that extended from the tsuba.
She internally grimaced. Electricity was a longstanding weakness she suffered from.
Part of her thoughts wondered how the katana had transformed, because she was quite sure a sword was not supposed to spontaneously turn into a whip, especially one that looked like it was a traditionally made katana. Perhaps it was something all shinigami can do, or just something unique to Namba. With the way that he called for the katana to transform, it also reminded her of a Persona. With that logic, maybe each shinigami has a unique sword? Aigis filed those thoughts to the back of her mind before she got distracted.
"I'm quite impressed you managed to figure out what I was planning." Namba said casually, as if he did not attempt to murder Aigis just a moment ago. "Especially with such a tight deadline."
"You left too many clues," she tried to keep her tone casual, not betraying the growing worry in her heart. "Considering everything I've seen, you were very sloppy."
"So it seems. I'll have to keep my mouth shut next time." Namba agreed.
His stance was casual, apart from the hilt still tightly gripped in his hand. But it was balanced, allowing him flexibility on where he would need to turn and move. At the very least, he was not lying about his combat experience. He held up his whip to his face, the yellow glow of the electricity illuminating his eyes.
Almost like a Shadow.
His arm twitched. Her eyes darted to the whip, which obediently moved with the jerk of his movement. Aigis twisted out of the way from the incoming attack, landing hard on her back foot. Her sandals skidded a short distance before she steadied herself again.
"Consider this a warning shot." Namba threatened. "Next time, I won't miss."
An idea came to her.
"Really?" she asked. "You don't seem to be capable of hitting me."
There was barely any warning before the coil snapped out again, aiming for her chest. She spent the next minute dodging electric arcs and debris as Namba chased after her, destroying chunks of the ground and surrounding houses.
"Stand still!" Namba roared. Aigis rolled behind a house just as another whip strike landed on the ground she was standing in a second ago, leaving a small burn mark behind. She did not wait for him to appear around the corner before she put her arms behind her and sped off into the dark alleyways of the town, a telltale shadow appearing on the ground before her being the only warning she had before she ducked another attack aimed at her head, then made a hard turn into another alley.
Between attacks, she observed what she could. Namba used an aggressive combat style, his strikes all aimed at critical points – her head and her heart. He certainly was skilled, with how the whip snaked around on his command, but fortunately for Aigis, she was familiar with the weapon. Ann had managed to translate her Metaverse whip skills into the real world eventually, after all.
Aigis jumped over another attack, the whip barely missing her sandals and destroying a chunk of the fence next to her. She mentally apologised to the people whose homes she was planning to ruin, but the safety of the townspeople were her priority.
She dashed out into the open street, leading her pursuer back to the Satou house. The houses surrounding her were now peppered with holes, allowing a view of their empty interiors.
Her instincts warned her first before she careened to a stop – too late, as Aigis found out, when electricity arched up her left arm out of nowhere. She bit back a scream and almost backed up before she remembered her pursuer, then leapt sideways to dodge another attack. Her left hand brushed the whip, and she failed to suppress her pained grunt.
"Huh." There was grudging respect in Namba's voice. "For a Rukongai brat, you've got some pretty good reflexes. Didn't expect you to dodge that little trap of mine."
"Trap?" Aigis questioned. She risked a glance at her injured arm, but kept an eye on Namba.
Her skin looked more pink than usual under the faint yellow light that emanated from his whip, and she hissed in pain when she tried to flex her fingers. It may have been her imagination, but she thought that her arm looked like it was lightly smoking. It certainly smelled like lightly charred flesh.
"My zanpakutou keeps its memory of where it's been," he answered.
He's being intentionally obtuse, Aigis noted to herself, and filed away the strange name for his katana away at the back of her mind. However, that hint was enough for her. She recalled the route she took earlier, and where the whip had struck. Her mind quickly calculated the patterns she had observed so far.
Well, when that came together, she realised that her plan suddenly seemed much more risky than expected. But it was the best plan she could come up at the moment, and she was nothing if not adaptable. That was how she survived for almost three centuries as the director of the Shadow Operatives.
"Stand down," Namba continued. "You put up a good fight, but you don't stand a chance against me. I quite prefer to solve things peacefully, you know."
Aigis decided that he was asking to be defeated.
One deep breath, to calm her nerves. Another, to bring up the well of energy, or reiatsu, inside her.
Her arm still stung, but she was ready.
She dashed again – straight at Namba.
The sudden movement caused him to falter, before he attempted to retaliate with his whip. Now armed with a rough understanding of how his powers worked, she ducked neatly under the wild strike, instantly reaching inside his guard.
Aigis imagined her hand as a knife, one that would disable her opponent.
Her thrust to his jugular missed when he managed to jerk out of the way, and then she had to roll forward with her momentum to dodge the rapidly retreating whip. It barely missed her hair, leaving a few singed ends on her head. She came out of her roll into a three-point stance, low on the ground.
They spent the next several seconds trying to strike each other, with neither side managing to score a substantial hit. Namba's whip was versatile in movement, and it was only thanks to Aigis's own superior agility that she was able to keep up at all.
She missed her bullets.
Aigis saw her chance when he overreached, perspiration on both of their foreheads. She ducked low, put as much power as she could muster into her fist, and sent a straight punch to Namba's gut. With an orange flash, he flew back into a building already pockmarked with holes, and the wall collapsed on top of him.
Akihiko would be quite proud of that punch.
Aigis took the momentary lull to catch her breath and survey her surroundings.
The damage to the neighbourhood had been kept rather controlled, considering the amount of destruction she usually saw in a fight. Multiple buildings had fist sized holes in them, and the ground was littered with black scorch marks, but other than the building that she knocked Namba into, none of them seemed to be on the verge of collapsing, though the darkness prevented her from fully analysing their structural integrity.
There was something nagging at her, something that screamed for attention. She took a closer look at the scorch marks.
Electrical burns dotted the ground around her. She also noticed both her and Namba's sandal prints over some of them, indicating that she had definitely crossed over them at some point after the whip had passed through the space.
Warning bells blared in her mind.
She pushed her body as fast as possible, praying for her agility to keep up with her mind. Electric tendrils shot up from the scorch marks just as she jumped outside of the ring around her, barely escaping the lightning trap she almost found herself in.
Apparently Namba can control when his sword's special ability activates, and can command it even when incapacitated. It seemed incredibly useful, but right now it was a hindrance. She eyed him, still buried under a small mountain of bricks. The telltale yellow glow of his whip was half covered by dust and debris, and the light wavered slightly.
Just to be safe, she picked up a nearby brick, then threw it at what she assumed was his hand. She heard a pained yelp, then the yellow glow rolled some distance away and faded.
Aigis approached the man carefully, with half of her attention on their surroundings, wary of more traps. Fortunately no attacks came, and she stopped a few metres before him.
The house looked dangerously close to collapsing entirely as it swayed slightly in the night breeze. Namba had managed to knock a large hole into the wall from slamming into it, and he still looked slightly dazed, half struggling to get up from his position on the ground and failing to do so, pinned by the debris that fell on top of him. A trickle of blood dribbled down his mouth. His dominant hand bent at an unnatural angle. His whip had turned back into a sword, and laid some distance away. She walked over and kicked it further into the house.
"Who knew—" Namba coughed from the dust, "that you can actually use your reiatsu? Man, I should've found you much earlier."
Aigis frowned slightly at that. She was fairly sure she had used her natural strength, not her reiatsu, considering that she only knew how to barely control it, not how to utilise it.
"What do you mean?" she asked warily.
Namba laughed, then it turned into a cough halfway through. "You mean you didn't know? I don't know if you're foolish or just suicidal for taking on a shinigami then."
There was, perhaps, a touch of foolishness in taking on a trained soldier directly, but Aigis had faith in her own skills. And she's intimately familiar with magic.
He sighed again, the sound raspy. "All this power, and you don't even know how to use it," he lamented. "Why wouldn't you use it to change the world to your liking? Why wouldn't you use it to defy death?"
"Because I know what that entails." Aigis replied darkly, her hands moving to a battle stance. "Because, despite its flaws, there are many things in this world still worth protecting."
Namba barked out a sardonic laugh. "So it was useless from the beginning huh? Me trying to recruit you."
She struck his neck, knocking him out.
Aigis trudged her way back to the Unagiya household after disarming and tying up Namba, reflecting on what she could have done better. A solo post-operation debrief felt odd, since she had always done them with the entire team if possible, or at least with Labyrs, but she had to make do. And there's always room for improvement.
The children worked surprisingly fast once Aigis explained the outline of her plan. They practically jumped over themselves volunteering to help, and it had taken almost half an hour for her and Unagiya to wrangle them into settling down and planning out the details.
It took a lot out of Aigis to decide on exactly what they could do. She was used to having a group of competent, experienced adults assisting her plans, friends who will listen and make their own judgement depending on the situation and adapt quickly. Expecting the same out of children who had never been in a real battle was asking too much.
Still, they exceeded her expectations with aplomb.
Unagiya, Touma and Megumi led small groups every day asking the townspeople their opinions of the cultists – they were the ones who gave the information needed to allow Aigis to conclude that Namba was planning to burn the town down. The troublemaker boys scoured the town looking for incendiaries as they created quiet mayhem and even helped the townspeople with minor construction troubles. Even Hitomi pitched in when they found one of the little red orbs, poking around until it unexpectedly blew up in her face.
Thankfully no lasting harm was done.
It was significantly more difficult to convince the townspeople to quietly move out for the week without letting the cultists know, Satou most of all. A few families needed candy bribes to make them move (and wasn't that weird, that candy was such a coveted commodity in Rukongai, perhaps even more than money), and many of them only agreed to temporarily relocate after Aigis emphasised that the consequences of not moving would be worse than being eaten by a Hollow. Thankfully, Morioka agreed to help pitch some tents in the forest for the townspeople to temporarily stay in.
She still have not seen a Hollow in person yet. She wondered how similar they are to Shadows.
Ironically, the most difficult part of the plan was convincing Unagiya to let Aigis confront Namba alone. She won by pointing out that it would be too easy for Namba to take any of them hostage, and Aigis could not risk that. In the end, she still had to give Unagiya and the children the task to rout the cultists and trap them elsewhere, to minimise the chance of them coming across the fight and helping their leader. The plan was terrifyingly simple — a trapdoor pit trap near the fields where the cultists frequently worked, but still far enough from the orphanage, with the children (sans Hitomi) as bait.
They didn't dare to implement the plan too soon in case Namba noticed the missing cultists, but they hit a lucky break when they found out that many of the cultists stayed in the townspeoples' homes during a job. Perhaps they were looking for new recruits, similar to how Namba had tried to recruit Aigis herself, and needed some time to convince the residents. They did a poor job of trying to integrate into the community though.
So over the course of a few days, they managed to trap all the cultists, with Namba none the wiser. The children did keep the cultists fed though – they were not heartless enough to leave them to starve.
Overall, the plan was a decent success. Damage to the town had been within expectations, Namba was subdued and unable to retaliate, and there were no casualties. Considering that he had no reinforcements through the fight, she figured that the plan to trap the cultists elsewhere succeeded too.
Yet Aigis felt that there were better ways to handle the situation. Solutions that did not involve violence in the first place. Maybe if she was better at persuasion, she would be able to convert Namba. Maybe if she used her resources more efficiently, the townspeople wouldn't need to be evacuated in the first place. Maybe if she decided to trust her instincts earlier, the children wouldn't need to risk themselves to help her.
So many maybes, but the results were already decided. Not much point in dwelling on them. She would do better next time.
Aigis stopped in front of the orphanage. She took a deep breath, then opened the door.
"I'm back."
The town was odd, but quaint, he decided. A smattering of brick buildings with shingle rooftops mixed with the largely straw rooftops, the town looked peaceful on the surface, as is typical of Rukongai towns. However as he walked closer to the centre, he started noticing the telltale signs of recent fixings — an oddly coloured brick here, patches of fresh mortar there, an unblemished roof tile on top. One entire house seemed to have collapsed on itself, and he greeted the workers still dismantling the building. He received a lukewarm welcome in return.
When he first received the report, he was mildly surprised. Namba Touji was a fugitive that Seireitei had been trying to track down for some time ever since the first reported instance of arson all the way in the 72nd district came about that was traced back to him. The man was elusive, almost constantly on the move, which made finding him all that more difficult. The fact that a random citizen of Rukongai managed to beat a shinigami was partly surprising, and partly worrying. It either meant that the citizen was incredibly lucky or skilled, or their shinigami were lacking training.
Both prospects were somewhat unbelievable.
So, his captain gave him two missions to fulfil on this trip: arrest the fugitive and his cultists and bring him to Seireitei, and find the individual who defeated him to convince him or her to join the shinigami ranks.
Finding the fugitive and his cultists was easy enough. The townspeople tied them up, threw them into an abandoned shed and left a rough rotation of guards outside the door. The former shinigami's been so thoroughly beaten, his wounds had barely begun to heal three days after the incident. Apart from that though, he looked fine, physically. At the very least, not in danger of death. The cultists didn't have any injuries on them, but were very tightly tied up. So he left his two subordinates there to deal with the logistics of transporting the fugitive and his cultists back for judgement and went to look for his other target by himself.
Finding the fugitive's assailant was slightly more difficult.
Not that she (the townspeople told him it was a young woman who subdued the fugitive) was hard to find. The townspeople gave the information willingly enough when he put on his charming public persona. It just turned out that where she lived was right at the very edge of the town.
Two hours of searching later, he found himself at the town orphanage. It had taken longer than he'd expected, mostly because he did not expect the entire town to be blanketed with a layer of reiatsu – clear evidence that someone, or many someones, lived here and possessed reiatsu. But upon reaching the orphanage, it became evident that this was the place where people with higher than average levels of reiatsu lived, with its clearly elevated levels of reiatsu surrounding it.
The building brought back unpleasant memories of his own childhood. Not the ones of his time spent in Soul Society – he'd been practically an adult when he first arrived all those centuries ago, but rather, of his memories from when he was still alive. It was rare for shinigami to remember their past from when they were alive, as he found out from his time in Shin'ou Academy, and he suspected that he only remembered because of his…colourful life and death. Even then, the passage of time was slowly blurring his memories.
He clamped them down — no need to get lost in his own past.
He stopped a little before what he estimated was the boundaries of the orphanage. "Excuse me!" he called out over the low din of the house. "I'm here on behalf of Seireitei! May I see the owner?"
The din stopped. A minute later, a middle-aged woman in a green kimono stepped out of the rickety wood door.
She was most definitely not his target, but he felt that she was probably someone who knew the assailant well, assuming that they lived here together. Her features looked fine enough, but they were marred by wrinkles and a light tan. Her hands looked calloused. Despite everything, she carried herself tall and proud.
"You're late, shinigami." she ground out.
He chose to put on his usual winning smile. "I assure you, I rushed here as soon as possible, my lady," he replied easily, accompanied by a light, sweeping bow.
"You still took three days." she replied, still hostile. "Did you know how difficult it is to make sure Namba didn't run away? We even had to restrain the cultists and we had nowhere to put them. You could've at least come in a day to take them off our hands. And don't try that smile on me, I know it's fake."
In any other circumstance, he might've praised her for her sharp deductions and insight. But he just wanted to get this mission done. His expression flattened out. "Ma'am, with all due respect, we did indeed get here as fast as possible. I hope you understand that messages take a while to reach the authorities from the further districts." he explained. "May I see the woman who defeated Namba?"
"For what?" she narrowed her eyes.
"I'd like to ask her some questions, if possible," he kept his tone genial. "I promise that she is in no trouble, and she will be able to return any time she likes."
He hoped that the olive branch would be accepted. However, the woman looked about ready to leap at him.
"I will not agree to an interrogation! If you ever do any–"
"Unagiya-san, it's fine."
The soft, melodic voice cut through the rant that was increasing in volume. Another woman emerged from the door, this one looking a lot younger than who he identified now as the main caretaker of the orphanage. She put a hand on Unagiya's shoulder, a clear sign to calm down.
The first thing that he thought was: what's a foreigner doing here?
Her features were clearly of foreign origin — natural blond hair, roughly cropped short, and sapphire blue eyes. However, her mannerisms were quite Japanese, and she carried herself with a gentle grace. She wore a sky blue kimono, but her unusually delicate look was broken by a few bandage patches around her neck and face, along with her left arm wrapped in them. She released the hand on her caretaker's shoulder, then stepped in front of her.
"Are you here because of Namba-san?" the blond woman asked. Her voice was soft, but firm. Welcoming, but still slightly wary and ready to defend herself.
Dangerously experienced with conflict, apparently.
"Yes," he agreed before any hesitation was shown. "Are you the one who defeated him?" He'd been momentarily thrown off by the abrupt change in mood, but he soldiered on.
The young woman gave a curt nod. "Let's continue this discussion elsewhere."
"But—" Unagiya tried to stop the woman.
"I'll be fine, Unagiya-san." The woman in question walked across the empty courtyard. Her steps were light and confident. "I'll be back later."
"I swear that I will bring her back safe and sound." He tried to sound as solemn as possible. He did have every intention of doing just that, but the older woman seemed unusually distrustful of shinigami.
Unagiya seemed barely mollified, but she cast one last look at her charge, then went back into the orphanage.
With her gone, his focus went back to the target.
She definitely has a decent amount of reiatsu. It was untrained, like most Rukongai citizens, but her reiatsu coated her like a blanket, not leaking outwards like most. Interesting, but not something to focus on right now. What is concerning is the way she carried herself, in a manner distinctly familiar with combat. She seemed unguarded, but her measured movements meant that it would be easy for her to spring into action whenever needed.
She stopped before him.
"I don't think I have introduced myself yet." she said. "Aigis. It's a pleasure to meet you." She extended one hand out in greeting, but her expression remained flat. The name sounded starkly foreign, but he put it to the back of his mind for now.
He extended his own hand out to shake her's, along with his usual charming smile. "The pleasure is all mine." he said pleasantly. "Akechi Goro, at your service."
Notes: Seiden - 静電 - lit. "static electricity"
A/N: It's been a while everyone! I didn't quite expect to get this chapter out this quick, but having a lot of flights in the last couple of days meant that I had some extra time to write down my ideas and organise them into a coherent chunk. The fight took the longest to nail down - I changed a lot of the scenes here and there to keep it relatively short and sweet, so some of the funnier ideas I had will have to wait for the next couple of fights in the story. Hopefully I still remember them then.
Akechi was always planned to be in the story, but his role isn't quite fixed yet. For the purposes of this story, assume he died at Shido's Palace. Did Royal's third semester happen? Yes, but assume that is a cognitive of Akechi that Maruki conjured up.
I plan on playing through P5R at some point (the game is just a tad bit too expensive for me at the moment on Steam, and I need to buy a controller), and I haven't watched a playthrough of the third semester yet, so unfortunately my Akechi voice may be somewhat lacking. Please bear with me.
As usual, this isn't beta'd, so please let me know if there are any mistakes!