A/N: I've been pretty down lately, but your reviews cheer me up a lot. Thanks, guys. :)
Regarding IchiRuki v IchiHime, since this seems to be a huge concern?: At this point, my plan is to do the equal-opportunity ship teasing Kubo did up until the last manga chapter, if I do anything at all. I don't consider any of the three among my "main" characters and don't really intend to go in-depth with them. Caveat: I didn't think I'd delve into Isshin as much as I have so who knows where the characters will take me?
I don't often glom onto one set-in-stone OTP when I read or watch things. Characters and relationships are like Legos to me: You can combine them in so many interesting ways. Following the directions on the box is fun but experimenting has its merits. ;)
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FÜNFUNDVIERZIG
TIMELINE X + N + 1
Before school Saturday morning, Homura was the first to arrive at their usual meeting spot. She tensely waited as first Shizuki and then Miki walked up, but didn't relax until Madoka bounced up the path. Glad her friend had come early, she greeted Madoka and quietly said, "May I ask a favor of you, Madoka?"
Madoka looked up from scritching Yoruichi's ears with a happy expression that said she was pleased her new friend had asked. "Sure!"
"I have personal business to attend to back in Tokyo tomorrow," Homura fibbed. "Do you think your parents would mind if you kept Yoruichi at your house until Monday? I can give you her things at my house after school. I could take her with me, but it is a long ride to spend in a small crate."
Madoka's eyes practically sparkled. "Oh! I'm sure they wouldn't mind! I mean, I'll text Papa to be sure, but I'd love it!" She picked up the cat and cuddled her. "Do you wanna visit me and play with Tatsuya instead of being caged up on a train forever?" she cooed. She giggled when Yoruichi purred and nuzzled her neck.
Homura relaxed. Bodyguard successfully assigned.
Morning classes breezed by. Passing off Yoruichi with her pet supplies in her crate went smoothly, though Madoka whispered a quiet worry about the Witch at large. Homura urged her to stay home if possible and stick to populated areas if not. Leaving her was difficult, but at least she had a competent protector.
Homura was surprised when her phone rang halfway through the train ride south. She rarely received calls these days.
"Hey, Homura," Karin said pleasantly. "Ichi-nii's home. You know when you'll get here?"
"A-ah, um." Homura peered out the window at the current station. "Maybe two hours?"
"Cool. See you soon!" Beep.
Homura stared at the phone for awhile and pondered how such a normal thing had come to be strange.
When Homura rounded the corner into the main lobby of Old Karakura Train Station as the sun was just beginning to set, it was to the sight of all three Kurosaki siblings sitting on a bench sharing an open box of Pocky. Or Ichigo holding it out of his sisters' reach, to be more accurate. Both girls were playfully trying to get to it without standing. Ichigo noticed Homura first.
"Hey, Stopwatch!" he called casually, grinning as he kept the Pocky box high above his head. "Anything interesting happen on the trip down?"
"No," Homura murmured as she approached the siblings and stood in front of them, awkward.
"You sure travel light," Karin quipped. Yuzu oohed her agreement, noting Homura wasn't carrying anything.
"That shield thing's a really cool trick," Ichigo said as Karin launched herself up to get the Pocky. He dodged, drew his arm straight down, then offered the box to Homura as his sister squealed and toppled over the back of the bench. "Pocky?" he asked innocently, the remains of an earlier cookie stick dangling from the corner of his mouth.
A reluctant smile turned her lips upwards. Homura hesitantly withdrew a stick. She raised a brow. "Ah. Crushed almond?"
Yuzu beamed. "Mr. Urahara said he thought you might like them!"
Homura stared at the snack and paused to think. To know that, Urahara— the other Urahara— must have written down even her choice of marzipan from the last timeline. Just how detailed were the man's notes? Was he trying to send her a message? Was she overthinking this? Was he just trying to be nice? Was it a complete coincidence?
"Um, do you not want it?" Yuzu asked meekly.
Homura snapped back to reality. "Ah, no— I mean, that's not it. Just thinking. Thank you."
Ichigo watched her with his head tilted. Karin threw herself over his shoulder from behind and snagged a stick of Pocky from the box, discovered she had no leverage to go back, and just stayed draped over her brother to munch her snack with her legs hanging a few centimeters off the ground.
"Do you mind?" Ichigo drawled.
"Don't mind if I do," Karin said sweetly.
Yuzu giggled and took a stick for herself.
§ x § x §
Isshin spoiled them all with an early dinner at a teppanyaki restaurant that evening. It was the loudest dinner party Homura had ever been part of. Halfway through, she started eyeing the waitstaff and hoping they wouldn't be tossed out. The servers seemed resigned, though, so they'd probably had a Kurosaki Experience before. She hadn't known it was possible to duel with chopsticks, but every Kurosaki except Yuzu had. While bickering. At high volume. Despite Homura's upbringing screaming it was a massive faux pas. Yuzu and Orihime laughed through it while sniping food among the tangle and Sado was mellow as always, but Homura thought she'd do best huddling off to one side of the chaos like Ishida was. Unfortunately, she was caught between Ichigo and Karin making a victory gesture at each other over a choice piece of meat and Isshin bawling to the heavens that it had been grilled to perfection but our cruel children stole it from Daddy, Masakiiiii! Yuzu caught Homura's eye and mirthfully made hand gestures as though demonstrating. Soon, Homura was tentatively sneaking in to grab good pieces while the others played— and their bickering was perhaps ninety percent dramatic play. Homura was beginning to be able to tell the difference.
She wasn't sure if that was good or bad. At the very least, it was weird. She thought. Was it really? Maybe her quiet, serious family had been the weird ones, back before. Who knew? She rarely visited other households to have much frame of reference.
Their rowdy mob gradually quieted as they approached Urahara Shop. No one truly wanted to talk business, but they slipped into business mode anyway as though proximity to the store enveloped them in gravity. Mr. Tsukabishi greeted them quietly and escorted them all to the back room, where Jinta and Ururu sat on either side of Urahara, who was poring over files from an SD card on a tablet. Several more SD cards were lined up on the table. At its other end, Hitsugaya expressionlessly contemplated the steaming surface of a mug of green tea. All but Urahara looked up as they entered.
Karin plopped down next to Hitsugaya. "Hey, Tōsh. Who gave Sandal-Hat the nerd-candy and what's in it?"
The shinigami captain dipped his head at her. "That would be me. And those would be classified research materials from the Great Spirit Library in Seireitei."
"Wait, dead-people libraries use computers?" she asked.
Hitsugaya scoffed. "Yes. But a good deal of the records I sought were so old they only existed in hard copies so I had to get Yamamoto's permission to take Urahara's secure phone in there and take pictures of every... single... page and compile them. I'm still not done."
Karin gasped dramatically. "Tōsh! You've been holding out on me! I didn't know a geezer like you knew how to use newfangled technology for anything but talk and text!" She leaned in close and slyly stage-whispered, "When you say you're texting reports, are you really playing shinigami game apps on your shinigami phone? What kind of games do dead people play? Hangman?"
Hitsugaya rolled his eyes powerfully.
"Most of the other shinigami seem confused by computers and stuff," Ichigo said curiously.
"The rank and file would be. They're not common in Soul Society," Hitsugaya explained. He glanced around, very obviously realizing he was being used to stall. He looked at Urahara, who met his eyes and gestured with his chin to go on before turning back to the tablet. Hitsugaya sighed. "My division does a lot of reconnaissance, investigation, and Living World infiltration. Matsumoto and I are far more familiar with the information processing functions of Soul Phones than many of the high-ranking officers. Less than Twelfth, but better than Second. Soi Fon's old-fashioned when it comes to information management. The overall bureaucracy is all done by hand, so seated officers of the Tenth use the Soul Phones as aides for reference for reports. Other divisions haven't caught on to the convenience." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Eighth maintains the Library and Ninth publishes the newsletter, so they know about textual stuff, at least."
Karin pressed her hands to her cheeks as her face turned mockingly gleeful. "There's a dead-people newsletter? Where do I sign up?!"
The young shinigami looked heavenward for patience.
"Find anything interesting?" Ichigo asked.
"I dunno. Can you keep your mouth shut about it?" Hitsugaya droned.
Karin winced as her brother looked like a kicked puppy. "Harsh, Tōsh."
"True, Karin."
"I think my children have learned their lesson about intel," Isshin drawled with a glance at each of his children, who flushed and avoided his eyes. "Share?"
Hitsugaya sighed. "I still have a large swath to go through, but I found sporadic records of strange girls with shinigami-like powers of purification and Soul Burial. Old reports of skirmishes between them and patrolling shinigami. Back in the old days before Twelfth adopted its scientific, communications, and world-monitoring functions, the Thirteen Divisions had a fair number of shinigami go missing in action. At the time, there was suspicion that these girls had somehow stolen shinigami powers from a segment of the missing shinigami. That they were the reason why the shinigami went missing in the first place. It turns out it's actually one of the reasons a shinigami sharing their powers with a human is— was— such a dire crime." Many glanced at Ichigo. Homura recalled he had been involved in some power-sharing debacle.
"So, what, the shinigami went for summary execution after jumping to conclusions?" Ishida snorted derisively. "Typical."
An irritated scowl furrowed the captain's brow. "I hate the history as much as you do. Soul Society changes slowly by its very nature, but we are progressing. If you study human history, you find that such tendencies pervade many human civilizations even to the modern day. Every society has skeletons in its closet. Even Quincy."
"The Quincy—" Ishida interrupted.
"Speaking of Quincy," Urahara said mildly as he set the tablet down and looked at Ishida with interest. "What did you find in your research, Mr. Ishida?"
Ishida's jaw worked silently for a minute. Then he sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "I looked in the genealogies for Quincy who died before age twenty. Proportionally speaking, more girls died in that age bracket than boys. I cross-referenced the dates with the histories. About two thirds of the female deaths were definitively listed as due to illness and encounters with Hollows, hostile humans, or shinigami— roughly the same number of female deaths as male deaths, which makes sense. The extra third of the deaths of Quincy girls is further split into rough thirds. Overall, about one ninth documented deaths in childbirth in the late teens, one ninth disappearances presumed dead, and one ninth undetermined causes— just being found dead, usually without injuries or illness, often when away from home by themselves."
"My, my," Urahara murmured. "About twenty-two percent of female Quincy deaths in childhood and adolescence that could support the Quincy magical girl model. That's over one fifth. Fairly significant." He tapped his fan against his chin. "Did you calculate a margin of error?"
"Plus or minus about seven percent."
Urahara hummed in thought. "Were there any location or population distribution patterns?"
"I haven't compared locations, but population distribution? Yes, actually," Ishida said with a frown down at his notes. "Eighty-nine percent of the mysterious deaths and disappearances I've found were among Gemischt girls. Only eleven percent were from among the Echt. For all other confirmed deaths, the numbers are around sixty-forty due to there being more Gemischt than Echt. A twenty-nine point deviation is suspect, in my opinion."
"Gem-what? Ett?" Ichigo asked, confused. "The hell, Ishida. I don't speak Russian."
The Quincy glared. "German."
"Whatever."
Ishida twitched and looked like he wanted to throw something at Ichigo.
Yuzu raised her hand like she was in class. Ever the peacemaker, she said, "Umm, I've never heard those words before, Uryū. Can you explain, please?"
Ishida sighed. "Echt is the term for those with an unbroken line of Quincy among all direct ancestors. Gemischt is the term for those whose bloodlines are broken up with non-Quincy direct ancestors."
Karin raised her brows and drawled, "Like purebred and mixed breed dogs?"
"Or nobility?" Yuzu quickly added before her sister could be subjected to more than a murderous glare.
Ishida gave Yuzu a flat look that said I see what you did there, but he didn't verbally acknowledge her ploy. Instead, he continued, "Echt generally had much more social and financial power than Gemischt. Gemischt often took subordinate roles to Echt. On the battlefield, Echt were their commanders. Off the battlefield, Gemischt were often house servants, laborers, et cetera." He sighed unhappily. "Something of a feudal system. The basic structure followed Quincy culture as it expanded globally."
"Meaning Gemischt girls might have stronger wants," Isshin said thoughtfully.
"And be more vulnerable to something offering to grant a wish," Sado murmured.
Urahara looked fascinated. "Did you notice anything about the relevant Echt girls that would set them apart from the others?"
"Not that I saw," Ishida answered. "I can look into that more."
"Please do. And plot locations, if you could." Urahara scratched the stubble on his chin. "Was there anything else in the histories that would support the assertion that Quincy girls contracted?"
Ishida frowned and looked down at his neat notes. "About half of the girls in that mystery segment were noted to have been vaguely rebellious, or to have suddenly changed behavior, or to have been punished for sneaking out unescorted not long before their deaths or disappearances. Nothing more specific than that, I'm afraid. Many didn't have notes like that at all."
"Proportions?" Isshin asked.
The Quincy glanced at him. "More notes about erratic tendencies and misbehavior among the strange deaths than among the rest of the deaths. More notes about Gemischt girls than Echt girls. Then again, the histories were written by Echt Quincy who may have... obscured some details about anything embarrassing by fabricating illness or injury, or omitting any notes at all if a girl did something... scandalous."
"What, like a fancypants purebred Quincy pulling a Romeo and Juliet and prancing off into the sunset with a normal human?" Karin asked with a smirk as she leaned her chin on her elbow.
"...Exactly." Ishida looked like agreeing with her pained him.
"Well," Urahara said decisively. "For now we can at least say that the Quincy evidence doesn't definitively rule out the possibility of Quincy magical girls." He clapped once to close the subject and turned to Homura. "Did you bring me anything, Miss Akemi?"
"Yes," she answered quietly. She manifested her shield, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and passed it across the table. "Yoruichi had me buy a map and draw a rough boundary where she thinks the spell is set. At least a section of it."
"Spell?" asked Orihime.
"There's some kind of kidō over Asunaro. We have to figure it out before we can poke around up there," Urahara said absently. Looking at the map, he observed, "Huh. Right on the city limits, eh?"
"That mean something to you, Sandal-Hat?" Ichigo asked.
Urahara looked up and beamed sunnily. "Nope! Just interesting!" He carefully folded the map and set it down. "How are things proceeding this time, Miss Akemi? Is Yoruichi having any effect?"
"Yes," Homura replied coolly. "She is an excellent distraction and talking point with the other girls." The magical girl looked down for a moment, debating internally, then looked up and hesitantly offered, "She gives... sound advice."
"I'm glad to hear that!" Urahara said with a grin. "Now, when we talked on the phone, she mentioned that she was able to guide you through rudimentary healing kidō on that boy who is the usual cause of Miss Miki making a healing wish, correct?"
Homura nodded seriously. "She said you would probably teach me something more this weekend."
"Quite!" Urahara's grin widened with vaguely sadistic eagerness. "I'm going to give you and the girls a crash course on healing kidō tomorrow morning!"
"Oh, God," Ichigo and Isshin said in the exact same dreadful tone.
Homura glanced at them with trepidation. Isshin noticed and ran a hand through his hair. "Kisuke is a genius—"
"Thank you!" said genius chirped.
"—And his methods of teaching can be extremely effective but... ah..."
"More stick than carrot," Ichigo said drily. "More whip than carrot."
"You wound me," Urahara mourned with a pout.
"Whatever. You haven't told us what you've found out, Sandal-Hat," Ichigo said suspiciously.
The shopkeeper hummed and gestured vaguely with his fan. "A lot of scientific jargon, but it boils down to something being very wrong with the distribution of spiritual density around Mitakihara. I don't want to get too deep into the details there because I'm still working with hypotheticals. The information Captain Hitsugaya brought should help me fill some of that in." He nodded his gratitude at the shinigami, who nodded back. "I may have to craft a ruse for Yamamoto to get some more data from Twelfth for me to add to the files from the last timeline, though. Now, as far as magical girls themselves are concerned: My experiments with Karin and Yuzu this week have been quite edifying. The magical girl soul seems to function with very fine differences to the shinigami soul. Weapon summoning or generation appears to be an interesting mix of shinigami shikai and Quincy generation of spirit weapons. Magical girl flash step seems to be a hybrid of shinigami shunpo with Quincy Hirenkyaku— very much like the Bringer Light of Fullbringers, but without the Hollow reiatsu and usually not the visible flash. I want to study this in more depth before coming to any conclusions. My working hypothesis is something to do with the involvement of the living body as the focus of magical girl powers instead of fighting as a pure spirit. It's all nebulous but very fascinating."
"Nerrrrrrrrrrd," Karin droned. Her face was pleasantly amused, though.
"I hope I'm your favorite nerd," Urahara cooed with one hand pressed to his cheek in mock-shyness, the other hand fluttering his fan in front of his face.
"No comment~"
"Awwwww~"
§ x § x §
The meeting wound down after that. Karin and Yuzu cheerfully dragged Homura out the door and down the street ahead of the rest of the group heading back to Kurosaki Clinic. They trooped into the kitchen, shoved a pan of brownies at their friend and plopped three plates and silverware on top of them, loaded their own arms with drinks and ice cream, and swept a confused Homura upstairs for a sleepover during which they had no plans to sleep anytime soon. Homura was initially reluctant to talk, so Karin and Yuzu slid into easy gossip that didn't require much response from her if she didn't feel like it. The sisters related Urahara's weird tests through the past week, chatted about their school friends, and eventually used that transition to coax Homura into telling them the mundane but pleasant things that she had done with her once-and-again friends.
Karin's eyes gleamed at the words Midnight the Conqueror. Yoruichi would probably be hearing a lot of that title.
The girls demolished the sweets and finally drifted off to sleep around two. Homura was the last to succumb, too comfortable to bother moving to turn out the light. She drowsily watched Karin's brow and fingers twitch as she dreamed while Yuzu clung to the cake server and muttered to it grumpily. It was... peaceful. Elsewhere in the house, Ichigo's three friends were steady beacons on the floor below; the burning moonlight of the Kurosaki men— one fire bright, one fire dark— was banked and warm in sleep in the rooms to either side of the sisters' bedroom. Homura had forgotten what it felt like to be surrounded by friendly magic and not feel caged, stifled, or threatened— to not have to obsess over which "Homura" the people around her knew this time. She could just... relax. Though she was very sleepy, her bone-deep, constant tiredness felt lessened somewhat.
What an odd juxtaposition, she thought distantly. She immediately forgot the thought. Just as she floated away, Homura wondered how long it had been since she last felt so safe.
§ x § x §
Homura jolted awake at the slam of the window next door and a shout from outside. Karin opened her eyes just enough to target and grab her shoulder while Yuzu sat up and yawned. Isshin's voice bawled outside; Ichigo's window slammed open, his voice yelled something angry, and the window slammed shut again.
Typical Kurosaki morning madness. Right. She needed to get used to that.
Following another lively breakfast, the three magical girls walked to Urahara Shop together. Mr. Tsukabishi escorted them to the back room and served tea at the table. The girls waited for Urahara in silent boredom. None of them bothered turning around when he wandered up behind them, whistling, so they all nearly jumped out of their skins when he sashayed past them and dumped what looked like a bare-muscled human body on the table with a thud and a rattle of teacups. Yuzu squealed and flailed backwards. Karin and Homura leaned back and looked down in horror.
"Welcome to Healing 101!"
"Holy shit, did you skin someone?!" Karin shrieked.
"Who, me?" Urahara asked with an excessively innocent expression. "Of course not! This is my good friend, Mr. Monk!" He bent down, grabbed the body's wrist, and made it wave a greeting.
Homura was no stranger to gruesome bodies but this was the last place she had expected to encounter one. Her mouth opened and closed without sound as she tried to find words. "Wh— What? What?"
Urahara grinned sunnily and dropped the body's arm. "It's short for Homunculus! He'll be your friend, too!"
"It is a skinless human body," Karin ground out, looking at Urahara sideways as though he had gone insane.
"No, no— Mr. Monk is a gigai with transparent skin and subcutaneous fat to best display internal anatomy." Urahara waved his fan at the body, face and gestures goofy. "Don't worry— he's just a medical dummy. A really detailed one. That can bleed. And has a functioning autonomic nervous system. And a rudimentary reiryoku system akin to a normal human's. But no consciousness."
The girls' faces cycled through many different emotions. After a delay to process and really look at the gigai, Yuzu held her hand in front of her mouth and said, "Oh, my God, it's breathing."
"I did just say he has a functioning autonomic nervous system," Urahara said gleefully. "That and the reiryoku are what make Mr. Monk so useful!"
Karin calmed down and got grumpy. "You're such a goddamn troll, Sandal-Hat."
Urahara giggled behind his fan. He then strolled to the opposite side of the table, slung a long art tube off his back, pulled out some odd contraption, and unfolded it into an easel from which a stack of posters unfurled. The girls looked at the top image for a moment, but Urahara stepped to the side and slapped his folded fan into his hand. "All right! Before we begin, I'd like to summarize my observations of you girls regarding healing."
"Joy," Karin droned.
"You magical girls appear to be excellent at healing yourselves— a curiosity in itself, as shinigami can have difficulty with that. You can heal other magical girls and injured shinigami with diminished effectiveness or efficiency, but it's still within your abilities." He paused and tilted his head toward Homura. "My sample size is admittedly small. Do you have any observations to add, Miss Akemi?"
Homura frowned. "Some magical girls have greater healing abilities than others. For example, Sayaka Miki's wish to heal someone enhanced her capacity for healing of herself and others."
Urahara looked fascinated. "There is a correlation between wish and abilities?"
"Yes." She paused thoughtfully. "Allegedly. I do not know how far to trust the Incubator's explanations of powers now."
Tapping his fan against his chin, Urahara asked, "Can you give me some examples? If you know any, that is."
Homura nodded. "Mami Tomoe contracted when the Incubator approached her in the wreckage of the car accident that killed her parents."
"Asshole," Karin sneered.
"I found an article about it once. She was trapped in the back seat with serious internal injuries. Anyway, she didn't want to die. She never told me her exact wish, but the Incubator once said her abilities with magic ribbons stem from her desire to be 'tied to life'."
Karin crossed her arms and skeptically said, "That sounds kinda..."
"Abstract," Urahara finished when she couldn't find a word.
Homura shrugged. "Sakura's wish for people to believe her father's preaching gave her a power the Incubator calls 'enchantment'. It's mostly like... a boost in persuasiveness. Tomoe once told me Sakura tries to avoid using it since her father..." Homura sighed. "I think she must use it unconsciously when she manages to rent hotels without an adult, though. She sometimes has the ability to create illusions of herself in battle, but I have only seen it very rarely and very briefly, usually when things are particularly dire. She has a fire aspect but mostly relies on her segmented spear." She noted Urahara's interest and paused. He gestured for her to continue. "Then Miki. The Incubator said outright that her extremely advanced healing powers stem from making a wish to heal. Her main attributes appear to be water and music, but she relies almost exclusively on her cutlasses. I do not know if the musical aspect is... innate or artificial, I suppose."
"What about Madoka?" Yuzu asked.
Homura frowned. "I... don't know. Her wishes are always made out of... concern or sympathy. Her Soul Gem looks like a teardrop when she is transformed. She uses a bow and arrows and her magic is associated with roses. I do not know how those could relate."
"What color?" asked Urahara.
"Excuse me?"
"What color roses?"
Confused, Homura replied, "Pink."
"Light or dark?"
"Light?"
"Ah," he said with understanding. "In Western flower languages, light pink roses can signify several things. Among them: grace, sweetness, gentleness, admiration, and sympathy. Medium pink is associated with cheering people up— especially those who are grieving or healing." Urahara tilted his head. "There's also the Western association of the bow and arrows with love— Cupid's bow."
Homura stared with blank surprise. "Oh."
Karin smirked at Homura and leaned on one elbow. "Sure sounds like Madoka."
"Yes," Homura murmured as she looked down at her hands, face soft.
"Does degree of power correlate to effectiveness of healing, in your experience?" Urahara asked Homura.
Homura looked at the ceiling in thought for a long moment. "I am unsure. Tomoe can heal, but does not do it often. Most of the times she has, it was to repair damage I did to the Incubator. Sakura... I have not seen her actively heal someone, but she can... repair or preserve Miki's and Tomoe's bodies if they are recovered when they become Witches. I am not sure if that is healing or something else. Both of them are on the high end of the power scale. Miki's magic is average, but she is the best healer."
"Interesting," Urahara declared. "Anyway, back on track! Your greatest challenge appears to be the healing of normal humans. I personally think it's more due to a lack of education than a lack of ability." He glanced at Homura. "Did Yoruichi tell you about how physical bodies get weird with spiritual healing?"
"Yes, though not in great detail," Homura replied. "She had me focus on sensing Kamijō's soul as it overlaps with his body and sensing where the... reiatsu... felt weak and dim in his hand, then applying my magic carefully while imagining the places that felt weak as paper I had to glue to cardboard. Then she had me pour in some extra magic while willing healing and leave it to 'take' for a few days. Miki mentioned that he improved some, so something about it worked." She tilted her head. "Yoruichi said she would leave the explanation for why it worked only a little and how to do more to you. She has had me studying the anatomy of the arm and hand in the mean time."
"Excellent." A pleased smile curled Urahara's lips. He snapped his fan closed and slapped it into his empty palm. "Okay, students! The issue at hand boils down to most spiritual healing working on and through the subject's soul, not the physical body itself."
"Then why could Kyōko heal the empty bodies?" Yuzu asked with confusion.
"I have no idea!" Urahara declared with a smile. "I don't even know if what she did was healing. I'll investigate that anomaly later. Moving on. While the human body has a great potential for repairing itself, it has its limits. Healing is also tied to the subject's soul and its bond with their physical body. The stronger the connection, the more the resiliency of the soul can boost the physical body's ability to repair itself."
Yuzu and Karin oohed in understanding while Homura focused on Urahara with intense concentration.
"Oddly enough, some of the living actually identified these connections in depth before shinigami did," Urahara continued. "The simplest to explain with a visual aid is the concept of chakra. It is a system that describes the flow of spiritual energy through the human body, strengthening it and occasionally allowing abilities considered near-miraculous from a human standpoi—"
"Have you been watching too much Naruto again, Sandal-Hat?" Karin asked drily.
"Nooo," he replied with a pout. "Besides, there is no such thing as too much."
Karin rolled her eyes. "Nerd."
"The battle techniques are quite creative. Crafting similar kidō is quite entertai—"
Homura cleared her throat. Her face was bland as though she had done nothing when everyone glanced at her.
Urahara coughed into his fist. "Right. Yes. Moving on." He sharply slapped his folded fan against the poster on the easel like an instructor's pointer. The image was a diagram of a human body with a vertical column of large colored circles stacked from head to groin. "Each major focus of spiritual energy is directly correlated with the main nerve ganglia— ah, clusters, I suppose— that emanate from the human spinal column." He flipped to the next page for a minute to show them an anatomical cross-section of where bundles of nerves exited the spine, then flipped back to the first page. "These are also the main anchors of the soul to the physical body. By far the most important of these is Anahata, the heart chakra." He slapped the fan against the circle on the diagram's chest. "Students, what else is located here?"
Karin and Yuzu chorused, "The Chain of Fate."
"Correct!" Urahara drew back from the easel and tapped his fan in his empty hand as he lectured. "This is partly why a Hollow is said to have lost its heart. As we know, this is the place where the human soul is most directly tied to the body. Ancient Hindus with high spiritual power were able to determine this chakra point had that duty and figured out that mastery of meditation focusing on it enables one to leave and enter the body at will. Astral projection, in modern terms. To a degree, anyway. The concept has been embellished in fiction and oral tradition." He looked at Homura. "Relevant for your project, Miss Akemi, they also determined this chakra is associated with, among other things, the actions of the hands."
"Oooh," Yuzu cooed as Homura's eyes went sharp.
"Now, various sects and scriptures identify hundreds to thousands of minor chakra points elsewhere throughout the body. Most of them are correct to at least some degree, excepting some clerical errors by scribes— the discoverers had varying power levels and techniques that made them notice different things and group themselves together into separate sects, is all." Urahara flipped to a third poster that resembled a human outline completely filled with circles of varying sizes, many quite tiny. "What Yoruichi was walking you through, Miss Akemi, was a simplified version of thinking of the foci as stitches holding two identically-shaped pieces of cloth together. In alignment, I mean. When stitched properly, each piece of cloth reinforces the other. The soul is stronger than the body to some degree and is thus the reinforcing agent." With his free hand, he fished around in his haori and whipped out an object that was two differently colored handkerchiefs sewn together, one thicker than the other. He tucked his fan in a pocket and made a show of tugging and twisting the cloth, demonstrating that it was strong. "Now, sometimes physical damage comes along— be it illness or injury— that is serious enough to damage those connections." Urahara lay the cloth on the table, pulled a scalpel from a pocket, and sliced open the stitches near one corner of the cloth, then picked it up and jerked the corners apart, popping more stitches. He held it up and wrenched it around more, showing that the separated portion of the cloth was more flimsy, somewhat ragged, and not exactly aligned. "As you can see, when lacking the extra reinforcement from the soul, the body is less resilient. It can be repaired by itself to an extent, but it's more delicate."
"Dude. Are you saying people who are sick or paralyzed or something are that way because their souls aren't powerful enough to fix them?" Karin asked skeptically. "Because that would be shitty." Beside her, Homura frowned and unconsciously lay a hand over her once-flawed heart.
"No, no, you misunderstand," Urahara answered. "No matter the power or strength of the soul, it's the integrity of the anchors that matters most because the soul is always more powerful and inclined to healing than the body. It remains poorly understood, but some diseases and injuries compromise the anchors as well as the physical body, so even a powerful person with good anchors could succumb if the damage outweighs other factors. Someone with great spiritual power but compromised anchors may not recover from injury and illness as well as a much less powerful person whose anchors are perfect. Consider serious bone injuries as a metaphor. If a bone suffers a complex fracture and receives no treatment— no support— it can heal mangled, if it heals at all. If it is placed in a cast, it will likely heal better. But if pins or bolts are placed surgically to hold the bone pieces in very fine alignment, the bone may heal to nearly-normal status. The degree of reinforcement can make a significant difference in outcome." He pursed his lips and rolled his head, thinking. "Let's go with another metaphor. Consider an average house that is properly secured to its small, simple foundation and a mansion poorly secured to its large, fancy foundation. Assuming otherwise equal workmanship on both houses, which one is most likely to sustain less damage in an earthquake and be repaired more quickly afterward? Or more likely to stay where it is instead of being washed away in a flood?"
"The little one that's actually attached to its foundation," Karin answered with a frown. "But... so, people who are sick or permanently disabled by something would be better if they, like... connected to their souls better?" She leaned on an elbow and gave him the side-eye. "That sounds like blamey New Age bullshit to me."
"If what you mean to ask is if the sick or disabled can be blamed for their outcomes for lack of spiritual effort, then no," Urahara answered. "Barring outside interference, the degree of spiritual connection and support between a body and soul is mostly innate— think of a physically strong person with a weak immune system and a physically weak person with a strong immune system. Third-party interference can have some effect in a way similar to a vaccine or surgery's supportive role. Base degree of connection is a roll of the dice when soul first joins body. All you can do is work with what you were granted by the cosmic lottery, as it were. Human ability to repair one's own anchors is extremely limited, no matter the level of power, and is especially limited when a chronic condition continually erodes the tethers. Spiritual activities such as healing-focused meditation or prayer might have some effect, but results are usually negligible if the person in question has inefficient connections to begin with. And that is no fault of theirs— it's as much of a gamble as one's genetic predispositions to illnesses are." He looked at each of the girls and evaluated their faces. "Miss Akemi?"
Homura was frowning deeply. "If that is true— if what you said about healing one's own physical body being so difficult is true," she said slowly, "why am I able to rapidly heal my heart and repair my eyes on command? My physical body?" She drew her finger along her jawline and curled her hand under her chin. "Why can any magical girl heal her own physical body? Especially as automatically and intuitively as it seems to be for us?"
Urahara pointed at her with his fan, gray eyes sharp. "That is an excellent question, Miss Akemi. I have yet to study it."
"I see." Homura frowned down at her lap.
"Ahhh, don't sound so disappointed," Urahara cooed, opening his fan and waving it at her as she looked up again. "A mystery is an opportunity to learn! Now that you know of it, you'll be paying more attention when you encounter healing, will you not?"
"...Yes?"
"Good, good!" Urahara grinned. "Who knows what you might find if you apply critical thinking to the aspects of magical girlhood you've taken for granted!"
Homura tilted her head doubtfully. "I suppose."
"You'll see, you'll see," Urahara chirped with more waves of his fan. "Ah. One concluding thought to wrap up the lecture thus far: Unfortunately, some physical diseases and injuries have a chronic destabilizing effect on the anchors between body and soul even if the anchors have been healed by an outside source. It is quite frustrating. We are still unsure why this happens in some souls and not others, but it seems to be the rule, for now."
"What? You haven't figured something out?" Karin asked. She held her hands to her cheeks and widened her eyes in feigned shock. "How can this be?!"
Faint amusement crossed the scientist's face. "Every Napoleon has his Waterloo," he murmured. "But it is on my list of things to do more research on. I've had a busy century." He took a deep breath. "Anyway. Back to healing. Spiritual healing is mostly centered on strengthening the tethering of soul to body so the soul can support the body better. Pouring reiatsu into a spirit body with repairing or healing intent can be very effective though imperfect because it is a spirit-to-spirit correction, and the soul is nothing if not malleable. Pouring reiatsu into a physical body can help, but it is the support structure that is most effective to bolster. Consciously repairing connections and encouraging the spiritual side to enhance the physical side is the best option. It also concentrates and conserves your energy to use it most effectively. Think of applying your power like spraying water from a hose to put out a fire with and without a pressure nozzle. Focusing the water— your power— is more effective and not as lossy."
The girls nodded and murmured their understanding.
Urahara grinned. "Now for the hands-on portion of our class!" He bent and smacked his fan against the chest of the medical gigai— over the heart chakra. "Mr. Monk and I will now teach you how to detect the connections and what playing with them does to physical anatomy."
It was a long afternoon.
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A/N: The trickiness of those technicalities and checking and re-checking them slowed me down. Had to be careful~ ;) If I obsessed over checking it any more I would lose my mind and never post ahaha. Let me know if something seems off. It could screw up something down the road if there's a contradiction.
Thanks for your continued encouragement and support!
This chapter was replaced with an edited version on November 1, 2019. Reviews with timestamps before that date refer to a slightly different version of the chapter.