Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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The impact of the book’s spine against Lyn’s skull was the only thing she could hear. Bleach, The Blood Warfare Vol. 55, Hard Cover - Delux Edition was currently being used to collapse her cranium, a graduation gift she planned to read on her first commute to university.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day. A wind chime tinkled gently from a closed storefront.

Thump!

Her blood splattered on the pavement, and loose, red-stained pages of the manga fluttered to the ground.

This particular alleyway had always been relatively clean; trash was neatly disposed of in its dumpsters, and the grime between cement grains was minimal. This street was usually quiet but not so abandoned that a screaming drug addict should've gotten away with a brutal assault.

Unlucky, it was quieter than usual today.

“Why won’t it work?! Why, why, why?!” The woman’s voice was shrill and unearthly as if it was owned by a vengeful ghost that had clawed its way back up from hell.

Thump! Thump! THUMP!

Lyn felt her own frustration burn at the wailings of the woman above her, crying of untold events which Lyn was sure had nothing to do with herself. Part of Lyn wanted to run for her life, and another wanted to curb, stomp and break every bone in her assailant’s body. Most of her was helplessly frozen.

The blinding pain was worryingly numbing away, and a bone-piercing chill replaced it. Inane questions, such as how she was still conscious and just how hard this book was, were swallowed by the increasingly wet thump thump thump of her brain. She was rapidly losing her splintered thoughts in the sluggish current of blood running down her face, and in time, only her sense of absolute terror and hearing remained.

THUMP!

Lyn thought it was an oddly slow death.

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Thump! THUMP!! THUMP!!!

Lyn kicked out viciously with reinvigorated legs, and her arms threw themselves over her head protectively. Her shoes met empty air and her arms pressed against a smooth forehead instead of a wet, bloody indent of brain matter and bone. A rush of cool hair cleared her hair from her eyes, and the echo of maddeningly repetitive impacts faded. She sat up in a daze, panting with cold sweat dripping down the back of her neck. Concrete had been replaced with compact dirt, brick walls replaced with wood, and the sky was spotted with wispy clouds. The ally smelled relatively clean, but the organic musk contrasted greatly with her city's thick smog. Lyn sat there silently, staring at the traditional Japanese garb of those flitting by the ally in their morning rush. She heard snippets of passing conversations but couldn’t decide if they were in English or Japanese. She only knew that she understood, and Lyn knew that she didn’t understand Japanese.

She dug her nails into the earth beneath her. Lose, grainy, dusty, real - possibly.

‘Did I really die? No - I mean, I’m right here, aren’t I?’ Lyn stumbled to her feet unsteadily and shuffled closer to the mouth of the ally with one hand braced against the grainy wood planks of the wall. ‘There’s no way...’ A mirthless, breathless laugh slipped between her lips. ‘There’s no way I’d be unlucky enough to run into a psycho in such a safe area.’

The memories felt real.

Fresh.

Painful.

Loud.

Thump!

An ox-drawn cart loaded with wooden crates noisily passed her, and once it had, Lyn was given an unblocked view of the street. Clay tiles on overhanging roofs, wooden frames, and white plaster walls lined streets filled with fluttering haori and bright kimonos. 

Lyn sighed. ‘Of course, I’m not dead, idiot. I’ve just been heavily drugged with hallucinogens, kidnapped, and brought to some heritage site in Japan - it makes so much sense now.’

Lyn took in a slow deep breath and turned back into the alleyway. She slammed her head against the wall and immediately regretted it. ‘What - the - Fuck?!’

She looked back out of the alley.

Edo Period Japan was still there.

With her head against the wall and head tilted to the ground, Lyn got a glimpse of her shirt. Though she swore her shirt was beige, her vision filled with aggressively spattered crimson and her mind with the realisation that it was sticky wet and disgustingly warm against the skin of her chest. The rising blood in her ears created a disgustingly rhythmic thump thump thump thump thump, and her breaths came out thin and raspy. Lyn didn’t know when she dropped to her knees or how long she sat there, eyes locked on her shirt and ears filled with the sound of rushing blood. 

She looked down at her hands, and her breathing hitched. Her hands were flickering in and out of transparency, and a rapidly increasing pain was coursing through her body. Her insides felt like they were pulling themselves in different directions, and the seams of her existence were being torn apart. She flexed her hands, and crimson filled the creases.

Lyn collapsed into the dirt, and her creeping blood stained the streets, slowly sinking into the earth.

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Akon curiously stood over a bloodied body. In front of him, a young soul lay in the dirt, darkened by a small pool of blood that clung to her prone outline. Blood had leaked from the soul’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears down the side of her face. Across her arms and legs were strange, weeping wounds akin to knife cuts but had irregular, ragged edges.

‘The afterimage of her clothes is still fading, so she couldn’t have passed on more than half an hour ago,’ Akon noted while he turned her over. ‘And new souls don’t appear with injuries; was she beaten right as she appeared? Attacked with an amateur kido? No wonder souls from neighbouring districts usually avoid Dakotsu.’

Her reiryoku was like a delicate candle flame flickering in the wind, and he could barely tell if it was coming from the body in front of him or if it was just wisps of reishi lingering in the air like smoke.

Akon frowned. ‘Interesting… but this soul is past the point of saving. I came to Rukongai to take samples, so I should get back to work.’

Before he left, Akon placed an abandoned rag over her body. She would at least have some dignity left if her clothes faded before her soul did.

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Lyn slowly cracked open her eyes, and her eyelashes painfully tugged out of the crusted blood they were sealed in. Flashes of an endless lake and reassuring whispers came unbidden to Lyn’s mind but were pushed aside for now. Then, moving to sit up, Lyn quickly clutched the rag thrown over her shoulders when she realised she was naked beneath.

In the setting sun’s red glow, Lyn made out a bundle of clothes tossed into the alleyway near her with a small note on top. It briefly welcomed her to Rukongaki District 42, and to heed the authority of a certain gang that was apparently in control of the area.

Lyn quickly changed into the navy blue samue that consisted of a pair of trousers and a jacket that crossed over left-over-right, similar to a kimono. It was tied together with an inner cord at her left hip and an outer cord at the right, and beneath the jacket was a similar undershirt of a thinner, white cloth. After dressing, the contents of the note finally seemed to register in Lyn’s disorientated mind.

She re-read the message again and again. ‘Did I… seriously get murdered and then isekaied into the book used to bash my brains in?’

Raising her head, Lyn watched with morbid fascination as an old man sitting on the ground across the street dissolved into thin air, leaving only his clothes behind.

“I really… died.”

Acknowledging it out loud didn’t quiet the whispering doubts of potential comas or drug highs, but it did send an unpleasant clench through her chest. The alien brush of the thick air against her face and the sense of wrong beneath every step was enough to convince her that this could indeed be happening. Simultaneously, there was an indescribable feeling of detachment that made it all feel like a vivid nightmare.

Lyn slowly crumpled, hunching over and curling in on herself with her head by her knees. Her shoulders shook, and her breaths turned to raspy hiccups. Tears trickled down her face, into and around her mouth, and darkened the fabric of her pants. Family, friends, university, and her entire future had been violently torn away from her, and she had no idea if she would ever get it back. She didn’t dare to hope she could.

By the time her tears had stopped, night had fallen. She sat in despondent silence.

Suddenly, Lyn felt light-headed and fresh; warm blood began dripping anew from her nose. ‘It’s happening again?!’

It was then that Lyn finally realised a small pouch had been left with her gifted clothes, and something in the back of her mind urged her to take it - now. Lyn clumsily pulled the drawstrings open with trembling hands and thoughtlessly shoved one of the small balls into her mouth.

Sweetness dissolved across her tongue.

A moment of relief.

In the next instant, she was writhing on the ground in pain as a foreign sensation burned through her flesh. Then, blacking out for a few seconds, Lyn was blinking awake just as quickly with only a lingering ache in her bones. Strangely, each breath felt lighter - like the air wasn’t pressing in on her from all sides like a bubble about to be ejected from water. The sporadic cuts across her body had also closed themselves, leaving thin, rough lines of pale scar tissue. 

Lyn shoved the small pouch of sugar candy into her pocket and stumbled to her feet. 

‘Bleach never mentioned other souls needing to eat unless they had high reiryoku… but I’m not even hungry.’ Lyn placed a hand on her chest and frowned. There was something there, deep past her flesh and bone. ‘Is something wrong with my soul since I’m not meant to be in this world?’ Lyn stared into the small pouch with about ten or so pieces of colourful konpeito and was reminded of one of her favourite films, Spirited Away. ‘Chihiro had to eat food from the Spirit World to stop her from disappearing… So is this a similar sort of situation?’ 

Lyn slipped her feet into the wooden geta and walked out into the lively street life before her thoughts could consume her. The streets were full of flame-lit lanterns, colourful stalls, and mutely dressed civilians. Those that noticed the dried blood all over Lyn turned their heads away, but most either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

In the corner of Lyn’s eye, Lyn saw a man being beaten by a group. She quickly averted her eyes and walked faster. It seemed being covered in blood wouldn’t surprise too many people around here.

Without warning, an old, wrinkled hand reached out from the crowd and caught Lyn’s sleeve. Lyn flinched, wheeling around to see an old woman appraisingly looking her up and down.

“Hoh? Looks like the Daken does have more money to spend these days,” the old woman commented. “These clothes are much better than the rags they used to hand out.”

“The Daken?” Lyn echoed the familiar name and swiftly retracted her hand.

The old woman squinted her eyes at Lyn before smiling thinly. “If you remember how to read, I’m sure you received their cute little welcome message to Rukongai. If not, you’ll recall a snake and sword symbol printed on the back of the note.”

Lyn silently nodded.

The deep-set wrinkles in her face slackened into an unimpressed expression. “Well, they enjoy doing a bit of charity work, but they’re just gangsters trying to lure in naive kids that might have high reiryoku. They like to recruit them while they’re fresh. So I’d say keep away from them, but they're everywhere. Just don’t join ’em or you might end up reincarnating sooner rather than later.”

“I see… Thank you.” Lyn bowed her head, and the woman was gone with the crowd by the time she straightened.

The nightlife only seemed to grow as the hours went by as more establishments opened their doors. The lanterns kept the streets lit but seemed to cast even darker shadows between buildings and hid downturned faces better than natural moon-cast shadows. After wandering whichever way Lyn’s feet led her, she ended up back in the same alleyway she had arrived. She stepped into the store just next to it to escape the throng of moving bodies.

Lyn ran a hand through her hair. ‘I need to find somewhere to wash this blood off. At least my hair is black, so it isn’t so noticeable. I wonder-’

She cut that thought short when she realised just what type of shop she had stepped into. 

A bookstore.

She desperately tried to focus on the humorous absurdity of being murdered with a book only to land next to a bookshop inside the work of said book, not the fact that the world seemed to be beating her over the head with reminders that she was murdered with a book.

‘I think when that crazy woman pushed me over, I hit the back of my head and got paralysed or something. Maybe that's why I couldn't move,’ Lyn considered morbidly in an attempt to justify such a pathetic, unlucky death. ‘Maybe in this afterlife, I should learn how to… fall over. There’s a lot of skill involved in falling safely, right?’

Eventually, Lyn turned to one of the bookshelves and lethargically pulled one out. She turned it in her hands, lightly bending and prodding at it and running her fingers over the string binding pattern. It was nothing like her rigid, hardcover manga volume.

‘It’s not like I can start hating all books just because I got killed by one… Well, I guess I could, but I don’t want to. If anything, I’m probably more afraid of alleyways and people with substance intoxication.’ Lyn flipped through the pages and watched as the kanji fluidly changed to English, the ink constantly swirling and somehow maintaining its legibility. She gave the book an unimpressed glare. ‘Okay, maybe I can love and hate them simultaneously if they keep pulling this nonsense. Hecking nonsense books.’

Lyn picked up another book. Tale of Ken, The Brave Shinigami, a children’s book about a Rukongai-born soul and his adventures as a Shinigami. She couldn’t resist blowing a raspberry. 

‘Propaganda for children.’ She turned another page.

Ken drew his zanpakuto with a shout, “Beat, Shinku no Kokoro!” A crimson naginata blade erupted from the molten metal of his katana, and the handle extended in a brilliant flash of light.

A frown pulled at Lyn’s lips. ‘Getting involved with the Shinigami and the storyline will do nothing but get me killed.’ The future threats to soul society passed through her mind one by one. Many characters were going to die, and Lyn didn’t plan on becoming one of them. 'But it would be so cool to have a zanpakuto and meet my favourite characters!’ Lyn slapped the back of her hand scoldingly. ‘Bad Lyn! I could mess up the storyline. Or worse, I could die! Idiot!’ 

“Ah, Tale of Ken is quite popular with children these days.” Lyn turned to see the old bookstore owner had hobbled near her and was squinting at the book she had placed down. “Though, its ending is quite dark since the main character dies horribly in the end.”

Lyn forced out a laugh. “Yeah, dying isn’t so fun.” 

The bookstore owner didn’t seem to appreciate Lyn’s new sense of morbid humour, and his face went pale. “You… You remember parts of your death?”

“Yeah, I remember the whole thing. I got my head caved in with a book. Kinda lame, huh?” she casually explained, her pitch rising sharply at the end. Lyn wondered if laughing at her death would make the memory any less terrifying.

Thump thump thump.

She blinked back tears.

Maybe she would be able to joke about her death after some more time had passed.

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Over the next week, Lyn haphazardly acclimated to life in Dokotsu. Well, she was still getting used to bathing cold and having no internet access, but she could appreciate the loss of monthly cramping and bi-weekly assignments. On the upside, had found work at a traditional medicine shop since the owner’s adoptive sons had moved to the higher districts, and Lyn was one of the few souls that could read that wasn’t already employed. Studying the different plants just to locate and identify them - the boss took care of their uses - was the easiest part of the job, as she had an entire high school life dedicated to cramming for tests and exams for practice.

It was the physical work that Lyn struggled with, and she was sure if she were still human, she would have been hospitalised by now. Thankfully, souls seemed a bit more durable - even if Lyn’s happened to have her collapse occasionally in a gasping, bleeding heap. At least her episodes never got as bad as her first night in Soul Society.

Lyn carefully plucked more mushrooms from the forest floor and placed them in the straw basket on her back. ‘I’m pretty sure half the stuff I pick is poisonous and being shipped off to the Daken.’

She knew the true nature of the seemingly innocent job she was doing. She knew what kind of people she was helping. She had walked past the dead bodies in the back of allies with faces contorted in pain from slow, painful deaths.

Thump thump thump.

Lyn slapped her cheeks harshly and pulled a large grin onto her face. “You took this job, so you don’t get to pretend you feel guilty about iiit,” she sang mockingly.

She took a deep breath and clenched her fists around her basket straps. ‘I’m going to save up a bunch of money and move to a higher district. That way, I can avoid Kurotsuchi’s future soul cullings when the Quincy tip the balance. And I can avoid this place.’

Lyn silently threw both fists into the air in a dramatic gesture. ‘I will live a peaceful afterlife away from Shinigami!’

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Akon frowned as his reishi-detecting device returned an irregular reading of the alleyway. Though he had long since left District 42 after failing to find the source of a reishi disturbance, he had returned on a whim. A secondary reishi disturbance had been detected simultaneously and had some similarities; however, because of its tiny size, it could barely be called an irregularity, and Akon had dismissed it. Disturbances ten times the scope of this one were usually a little more than natural fluctuations.

The Third Seat let out a quiet sigh through his nose and lit up a cigarette. ‘I only came out here because that dying soul happened to be in the same location as the second disturbance, but it looks like I wasted my ti-’

The cigarette dropped from his lips.

A girl walked briskly past him and disappeared into the crowd. The same girl meant to have died right where he was standing.

It seemed he had more data to collect.

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Drawings

A sketch of Lyn! Though the cover I drew up above is also her

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Name | Kanji | (Meaning) — Details

▮ Dakotsu | 蛇骨 | (Snake Bone) — District 42, South Rukongai

▮ I’m no kanji expert, so feel free to correct incorrect translations or pronunciations if you know them~! We won’t be spending too much time in District 42, so I just came up with a very random name (￣▽￣*)ゞ

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Author’s Note

▮ Thank you very much for reading, and please feel free to comment, kudos, or bookmark! I’ll try my best to answer any questions I can without spoiling anything! 

▮ Up next, Chapter Two | Into The River!

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Chapter Text

The following day, Lyn set out to the mountains with a small onigiri in hand. She chewed it slowly with lightly pinched eyebrows, as it was the first time she had felt hungry in over a week.

‘I only feel a little hungry, so I probably won’t develop high spiritual energy or anything, right?’ Lyn devoured the last of her onigiri and finished the few pieces of rice stuck to her fingers, leaving nothing behind. ‘It’s probably just my brain thinking I’m hungry or something; I’ve only been dead for a week.’

As she climbed over a rotting log, she felt a stirring in her chest - a buzz of static almost in a show of refuting her hopes that nothing was wrong. Lyn crouched by a large patch of lichen and began to harvest pieces carefully. So far, Lyn had yet to stop for a sudden nose, eye, or ear bleed or the numbing, pulsing pains that usually came with them. It took a few hours, but eventually, her chest thrummed in warning before her knees buckled beneath her.

Lyn wheezed out, “Never mind, looks like that’s still a thing.”

Once her fingers solidified entirely and her skin no longer felt like it was violently pulling itself in different directions, she shakily stood and grabbed a bloodstained cloth from her pocket. Lyn wiped the blood from under her nose in a practised movement.

‘The sugar candy only helped the first time, but at least they were tasty,’ Lyn lamented dramatically in the confines of her mind. Unfortunately, she ran out after the third day. ‘If they were more than sugar, I might have joined the Daken just for another handful.’

Once Lyn had completed her checklist of herbs for the day and the sun had begun to set, she started the long walk back. She expected to trip at least a couple of times, to perhaps have another episode, or for her grumpy old man of a boss to be waiting at the edge of the village to complain about how long she had taken to return.

She didn’t expect to be jumped the second she stepped out of the tree line.

“Good evening. Lyn-san, right?”

“Ah!” With a warbled shriek, she wheeled around, and Lyn’s soul quivered with excitement.

Akon towered over her in all his 6-foot glory. Three small horns protruded from his forehead, and his black hair was spiked with tufts raised on either side like his manga counterpart. However, this Akon was real, animated beyond the anime and breathing the same air as her - a person, not a character.

‘Wow, the horns and lack of eyebrows stand out way more in person.’ Lyn pursed her lips together to keep a childish grin from breaking across her face. ‘And his deep voice sounds so serious and cool!’ She bit the inside of her cheek. ‘Wait, no! He’s threatening my peaceful afterlife with his Shinigami nonsense. Why is he here?’

Lyn gripped the end of her samue jacket, torn between drinking in the sight of her first cannon character and fleeing.

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Under the sunlight and cleaned of blood, Akon could now see just what made his subject so hard to find. She was absolutely plain. Hundreds of girls and women had the same inky black hair in fringes, pointed side bangs framing their faces, and low ponytails. Akon had even given up trying to find out what her face looked like since anyone who might have been talking about her couldn’t decide if she was Caucasian, Asian, or something else - an ambiguous mix.

Despite that, Akon was sure that the young soul in front of him was his subject: Lyn, the unassuming employee of a traditional medicine shop. There was no mistaking the unnatural, radio static-like nature of her presence. Where others had a clear reishi signature, hers felt like an amorphous dispersion around her general vicinity, murky and constantly flickering in and out of his senses.

Dark brown eyes stared into his own.

Her gaze wasn’t malicious or calculating - they were simultaneously confused and knowing. A week was long enough to find out what the Gotei 13 was. A week was also long enough to find out that a member of the 12th Division had been poking around her dying body by simply asking around. He hadn’t exactly been subtle about it. Thus, rationality told him the possibility of her recognising him was within reason. Anyone on that street could have given her a description of him, just as the bookstore owner’s loose lips had blabbered to Akon himself. Yet, despite that, Akon felt oddly uncomfortable under the eyes of the young soul.

‘Then just what’s off here? Her condition does seem unnatural, so maybe she’s wary of me since I’m a part of the S.R.D.I.?’ Akon tried to come up with a better explanation, but he hadn’t heard a word from his subject yet.

“Your unstable condition caught my attention the other day. I’m Akon, a Shinigami of the Gotei 13 and the 3rd Seat of the 12th Division. I believe it would be in your best interests to allow me to run some tests to help you find a treatment,” Akon explained.

Lyn continued to stare for another long moment before turning away from him with a polite smile. “Thank you for your concern, Shinigami-san, but I think I’ll be fine.”

Akon sighed quietly and followed after her as she continued to walk down the mountain. ‘That’s the logic of a week-old soul, alright.’ He resisted running a hand through his hair.

“A baseless assumption like that could leave you hurt or even dead.” Akon watched as Lyn’s geta caught on a jutting stone, and he grabbed her upper arm before she could fall.

She shot him a startled expression that she quickly schooled back into a not-so-convincing smile. “Doesn’t Captain Kurotsuchi have better things to allocate his manpower to?”

“Researching your soul’s condition is a personal project,” Akon admitted.

“Oh? And why do you care about the health of a random soul, Shinigami-san?” She held her arms behind her back and rocked on her geta.

“Well, I’m particularly fascinated by how you retained memories of your death.”

The young soul’s entire body tensed, and her smile became an awkward pursing of lips.

Akon subconsciously took a step closer. “Most souls will cross over by themselves. Others, subject to great regret or traumatic deaths, usually linger in the world of the living until konso is performed on them or they are purified as hollows. All three methods should not yield more than the occasional name or a faded and scattered memory that quickly slips away. Of course, there are other recorded cases, but they are centuries old, and those souls have long passed.”

The thick forest surrounding them was full of rustling leaves, flitting birds, and small insects caught in the light breeze drifting over them. They were stark statues amongst the movement.

“Has your damaged soul resulted in a retention of your death, or has a retention of your death damaged your soul? I don’t think it’s a coincidence.” Akon was so tempted to take a sample then and there, but even he had boundaries when it wasn’t necessary to break them. “But such an isolated incident of this kind won’t be significant to the Seireitei. So, to answer your question… You could say I want to assist you out of personal interest.”

The young soul gave him a long, slow blink with wide eyes.

Realising he might have said too much, Akon expected her to cringe away from him in fear or disgust. That was how most that weren’t members of the 12th reacted. 

Lyn’s face scrunched up, pulling her hands to her chest. “Ew. You’re interested in a week-old soul when you’re, like, two hundred plus.” Her entire body cringed away from him. “What a creep.”

Akon was left stunned as Lyn started to speed-walk away. The conversation’s tone changed so quickly that it gave him whiplash.

“What?” He immediately shunpoed to catch up to her. “It’s not that kind of interest-”

Lyn narrowed her eyes at him and increased her pace. “You’re still following me, Creep-san?”

“That’s not what I-”

The town came into view.

Lyn started sprinting and shouted, “Help! A pervert is chasing me!” 

Her shout was nowhere near loud enough to be heard, but Akon couldn’t help but shunpo away in the next instant, his face and ears burning a bright red.

▯▯▯▮

Lyn’s first encounter with Akon had left her shaken and panicky. And possibly a little giddy as well - she had just met one of her favourite characters. However, she quickly realised that anything she said aloud could easily be traced back to her if the right person asked the right questions. Thus, she distanced herself further from the other civilians. Lyn was already wary of most of them, but now she had to be cautious of herself and her absentminded mouth.

Spoilers she had read on Akon’s wiki page had portrayed him as a decent man. Still, he was the right hand of Kurotsuchi: at minimum, a sociopathic genius with morally dubious tendencies. So when Akon appeared along her usual mountain route eight days later, she managed to remain composed. Kurotsuchi hadn’t taken an interest in her, the Gotei 13 wasn’t concerned with her, and she desperately hoped that her amateur psychological profiling of Akon was correct.

‘He doesn’t seem like the type to kidnap someone just to cut them open, but only as long as he doesn’t think not doing so would harm Soul Society,’ Lyn considered. ‘And I’m not a threat to anyone but myself, right?’

Akon walked steadily up the path to the patch of wildflowers Lyn was crouched. Soon, he was standing across from her.

“Good morning, Lyn-san. I was taking more samples in the area, so I thought I would see if you had changed your mind about getting professional help for your health issues,” Akon explained in the same brief and logical manner as last time.

“Hello, Stalker-san; it seems you’ve tracked me all the way out here again. But, as you can see, I’m perfectly fine.” Lyn’s smile and tone might have appeared polite if her words matched them.

The muscles in Akon’s jaw flexed, and his hairless brow twitched. “Please, just call me Akon.”

She was trying to make him uncomfortable enough to leave her alone, but it seemed he was quickly building immunity to her taunts. ‘Maybe messing with what is currently the most dangerous threat to my peaceful afterlife isn’t such a good idea.’ Lyn suppressed a grin. ‘But I can’t deny it’s kinda fun.’

Lyn wasn’t sure just what ratio of excitement to fear her hands were trembling with. Funnily enough, it turned out it was neither of those things - because Lyn was on the ground writhing in pain the next second.

“A-Agh!” It only lasted a few moments, but her nose started bleeding, and Akon was hovering over her with his hands growing green with Kaido.

Akon gave her an unimpressed look. “Perfectly fine, you say?”

“Do not touch me with your nonsense hands,” Lyn declared dramatically and rolled away from him. Now on her back with some distance from Akon - a measly two or so feet - she stifled another groan and pinched her steadily bleeding nose.

Akon simply reached his arm out and hovered it over her face to heal her injury. Lyn sucked in a sharp breath at the feeling of pins and needles erupting across her face, and with it, a cold, uncomfortable wave washed down through to her sternum. The sensation quickly trickled away as Lyn sat up, smacking Akon’s hand with her face to knock it away.

“Thank you for healing me with Kaido - please never touch me again.” Lyn’s smile was strained, but it didn’t matter since Akon had turned his attention to his notebook.

“Kaido is capable of healing surface-level damage, but reishi is quickly absorbed and dispersed through the body beneath the subject’s skin,” Akon muttered aloud as he scribbled down his notes. “Unable to make a diagnosis of internal damage without instruments.”

Lyn wasn’t precisely sure what Akon was writing down, but it was far too much for simply smacking her in the face with Kaido for a couple of seconds.

Panicked, she tried to derail his theorising.

“A Garganta!” Lyn cried while pointing over Akon’s shoulder.

The 3rd seat calmly peered over his clipboard down at Lyn and gave her a blank look with half-lidded eyes. “Do you really think I’m that gullible? And if you’re trying to distract me, then maybe you have something suspicious to hide about your condition?”

Lyn tried to shoot him a similar look but appeared more like she was squinting. Well, maybe she was since the sun was behind his head. “If anyone here is suspicious, it’s you - a pervert that stalks young girls through the forest asking for suspicious samples for suspicious things.”

“I’m a researcher, not a pervert.”

“Researching underaged girls.” Never mind that Lyn wasn’t underaged - at least in the human world.

Akon slowly dragged a hand down his face, and while he did so, Lyn scampered away.

▯▯▯▮

Over the next two months, Lyn’s reiryoku continued to increase gradually. For others, it would have been something to celebrate, and even part of Lyn couldn’t help her excitement at the possibility of playing with the power of a Shinigami. Instead, it felt like a noose slowly tightening around her neck - a noose made of pretty rope covered in crimson glitter. Even if her reiryoku wasn’t at a level where others were affected by it, it was concerning.

Lyn drummed her hands on the book laid closed on her lap but immediately stopped at the nauseating feeling that crawled through her guts. ‘Now I have to eat at least once every couple of days to feel comfortable, and that tingling under my skin is lingering a lot more. Is it reishi or something else? My episodes also occur less frequently these days, but I think they’re getting worse.’

Lyn held her hand in front of her. Last night, she could see through her entire arm. Now, it was scattered with new tears beneath the bandages where the skin had pulled itself apart. It was never as terrifying as dying, so she held onto the hope that it meant she wouldn’t. That wasn’t even covering the issue of one of the Gotei 13’s smartest deciding to hang around. Supposedly, Akon had work to do in District 42, and Lyn’s condition really had become his personal side project. So he badgered her for samples every week or so, and each time he inevitably failed, he stuck around just long enough to give her a heart attack.

“You knew what kaido was when I used it on you a couple of months ago,” was the first thing Akon said when he waltzed into her little clearing.

“You’ve smoked one too many shrooms, Shroomigami-san.” Lyn pointedly avoided eye contact and waved him off. “When did I mention anything about this kaido you speak of?”

Akon crossed his arms over his chest with an unimpressed look that was growing increasingly familiar.

“If not drugs, then is chain-smoking the cause of those three tumours growing out of your forehead?”

“They’re not tumours,” he snapped. “It’s a body modification I had done. And stop trying to change the subject.”

“Ah, I’m sorry for upsetting you, Creep-san. Your horns are very cute,” Lyn consoled him with a solemn expression. “Please, take this consolation mushroom.”

Akon looked down at the small, white mushroom in his twitching hand. “This is a death cap.”

“And we’re in the land of the dead, so isn’t it a lucky find?” Lyn chirped, shaping back to her usual customer service smile. 

Dropping the extremely poisonous mushroom, Akon wiped his hand with a cloth from his lab coat. “As usual, you refuse to make any sense.” Akon plopped down on the stone Lyn was sitting on and lit up a cigarette. “Anyway, you knew about kaido and who the captain of the 12th Division was a mere week after arriving in Soul Society.”

Lyn shrugged. “I can’t ask a little about Seireitei when you’re out there stalking me? Plus, who’s not a little curious about the Gotei 13 and Shinigami magic?”

“How you manage to make such a sensible answer sound so suspicious is beyond me.” Akon placed a hand in his coat and dug out a container with rice balls. After passing one to Lyn, he started eating his own.

“Thanks.” Lyn unhesitatingly dug into the food. “Remind me why you’ve been giving me food your past couple of stalkings?”

“I want to see if a consumption of reishi-rich food will make any changes to your condition.”

Lyn swallowed thickly. Initially, she hadn’t been worried since poisoning her with food was too unnecessarily roundabout, and a little bribe wouldn’t get her to reveal anything. But before she could start worrying about potentially increasing her reiryoku levels, she was smacking away a device Akon waved near her chest. “Hey!”

“A slight improvement in the extreme fluctuations of your reishi flow,” Akon mused aloud with a familiar notebook in his lap. He glanced back over the mess of numbers on his device. “But it’s probably temporary since your presence was just as unstable as last week. You seem to have an imbalance of something. I can’t tell what it is, but it seems like a combination of regular reishi and reishi that’s not behaving properly - the latter making up the majority.”

While Akon finished his cigarette and continued to scribble away, they sat in oddly comfortable silence. Lyn lightly clicked her geta together and stared down at the book in her lap. The hard wooden geta were uncomfortable at first, but Lyn had slowly taken a liking to the feel of the smooth wood beneath her feet and the low clack when she knocked them together. Similarly, she was slowly becoming more comfortable around Akon and begrudgingly enjoyed his company. However, Akon's curious mind was determined to uncover the mysteries of Lyn’s condition. So far, he had yet to find anything substantial, and all he knew was that something was wrong. Lyn would have to try harder to distance herself from Akon if she wanted to keep it that way. She was doing a terrible job.

“Why won’t you let me properly research your condition?” Akon glanced pointedly at the fresh bandages around Lyn’s fingers.

“Aren’t you already invasive enough without my permission, Stalker-san?”

Akon took another slow drag from his cigarette with a slight frown. “You died from a book in your last life, didn’t you? Do you really want to die such an avoidable death again-”

At the instant clench of Lyn's jaw, Akon knew he had screwed up.

“I’ll be going now,” Lyn sang in a sickly sweet tone with a matching smile.

Without another glance in Akon’s direction, Lyn set off randomly through the trees. Lyn assumed Akon wouldn't follow her - not when he could find her whenever he wished if he had enough motivation to - but she needed to lose track of where he was. She roughly snapped branches in her way with her bare hands in her rush to put distance between them before she threw a rock at his head. Lyn really wished she was half as patient as she pretended to be.

Once she had tired out her legs, and her hands were covered in fresh scrapes and bleeding through old bandages, she stopped. Crouching down, she grabbed a fallen branch and aggressively gouged holes into the compact soil.

‘Of course, I don’t want to die again.’ Tears welled in her eyes, and anger simmered beneath her skin almost tangibly, prickly and building in pressure. By the time she exhausted her arm, the heat had slowly settled back into her bones. Lyn dragged her hands down her face. ‘Getting pissed will just make things worse, and I know going back to throw a rock at his head is a stupid idea. Plus, Akon was trying to help, even if it was out of curiosity …Aaand it’s not like I could hit him if I tried.’

Lyn felt like an ant in a forest of giants.

She hoped that as long as she didn’t go around biting ankles and getting in the way of the insane powerhouses, she wouldn’t get crushed or bottled. At the very least, a colony of ants could chip away at a more powerful predator. 'But I'm on my own here.'

With that gloomy realisation, Lyn dragged herself back up to her feet and started the trek down the mountain.

▯▯▯▮

As Lyn weaved through the busy nightlife, she brainstormed more ways to get Akon to leave her alone and how to avoid cannon. Too focused on her thoughts, Lyn overlooked the rotten crate left on the side of the walkway and tumbled forwards. Rolling to the side with an annoyed groan, Lyn flinched when something loudly crashed by her ear, and she was showered with dirt and ceramic fragments.

"Puh!" Lyn spat the dirt from her mouth and stumbled to her feet. "W-What the?" Looking down, thick, sharp fragments of a large pot and a large amount of dirt it had held were scattered across the ground where she had been standing before she tripped.

Lyn swallowed thickly, and a queasy feeling settled in her gut. 

Thump thump thump.

Glancing up to the window the pot had fallen out of, she saw no movement. There were no strong winds, and the curtains hung limply. Hairs raised across Lyn's skin, and she hurried down the street. She had almost forgotten that as an ant, it wasn’t just predators she had to look out for, but literally everything. A falling pot, a bad fall, a mugger - she might just die another unlucky death even if she kept away from the worst of the Bleach world.

Lyn bit her lip and stared down at her hands. There were just ten or so scars, and they were only small; however, the newest ones beneath her bandages would be longer, deeper and more ragged once they healed. Maybe one day, her entire hand would split in half. Maybe she would split in half. ‘Would a zanpakuto spirit be able to help me regulate my ‘imbalance’ as Akon put it? If I can manage to become a Shinigami - even a weak one - then I’d be a little less helpless, and my soul might get stitched back together. But if the only way to get more control over my own survival is to get closer to canon, is it worth it?’

She snapped her fingers. ‘Wait, why am I thinking that just becoming a Shinigami makes canon my problem? I can become a paper-pusher, and when shit hits the fan, I’ll just… become scarce. No one will expect unseated officers to face people like Aizen, right?’

Hollows, Arrancar, Aizen, Fullbringers, Quincies, and even the Gotei 13 itself - she would be thrusting herself straight into their storm while trying to hide in the eye of it by doing paperwork.

But Lyn had a forecast for the future and an archive of information to navigate herself to safety.

Lyn took a deep breath. ‘I’ll become an unremarkable, unnoticeable, paper-pushing Shinigami!’

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Note

▮I hope you guys enjoyed the second chapter! Feel free to comment, kudos, or bookmark, and I’ll try my best to reply to any questions that won’t spoil things!

▮Keep an eye out for Chapter Three | Shake the Crysalis in the coming days!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Just to spite Akon, Lyn left without saying a word. Equipped with a new surname - Cadell would stand out, if only slightly - Lyn arrived in District 3. Hokutan was the location of the next Shin’o Academy entrance exam, and Lyn thanked her slave driver of a boss for making her trek up and down the mountains nearly every day for two months. Otherwise, crossing thirty-nine districts in time for the exam while constantly collapsing on her face would have been the death of her.

Lyn stood at the fringes of a large crowd at the base of Mt. Koifushi and readjusted her modest pack of belongings. The souls ranged in appearance from young teens to the elderly, and most were dressed in worn work clothes like Lyn. But, scattered at the respective back and front of the group were those in shredded rags barely clinging to their bodies and those clad in luxurious silks.

Lines had already been drawn between Rukongai civilians and aristocratic families if the physical splintering of the group was anything to go by. Lyn slipped into the crowd. Accustomed to weaving quietly through bustling and crowded cities, she avoided bumping into anyone.

‘I can’t get too close to the other students since I might slip up, and I especially need to keep my distance from any canon characters.’ Lyn pressed her hands together in front of her lips thoughtfully. ‘But a few friends should be fine, right? Being a complete loner would stand out. Plus, not having friends can get super boring.’

Unexpectedly, a familiar face stumbled through the crowd straight into Lyn and the person standing behind her. While Lyn didn’t mind, the person next to her sure did.

“Hey! Watch it!”

“I-I’m really sorry!”

Lyn turned on her heel sharply and began to urgently speed walk away. ‘Yep, nope, that’s not the kind of friend I’m looking for.’

Behind Lyn, Yamada Hanataro was getting a verbal lashing from the brawny man he had crashed into. In the seconds before Hanataro bumped into Lyn, she had recognised his combination of black hair, short stature, and watery blue eyes – even with the Bleach world’s new hyper-realistic lens.

Hearing a cry of pain, Lyn’s head snapped around. Hanataro was on the ground with a sandaled foot in his gut. 

‘What is this cliche bullshit?!’ With more outer district examinees around them than inner ones, they appeared more likely to join in than help. ‘Not my problem, not my problem, not my problem.’

Thump.

“U-Ugh!!”

Thump!

“Fucking weakling. Why the hell are you here if you can’t walk straight?”

Thump!

Before the hoodlum could bring his foot down again, Lyn darted into the fray. Leaning down without stopping, she roughly scooped an arm under Hanataro’s and dragged him into the crowd. Then, with a few rough tugs, pulls, and hand jerks, they were lost in the gathering of souls.

Eyes blown wide, Hanataro was still trying to figure out what had happened. “H-Huh?”

“You’re welcome - goodbye.” Lyn smiled at Hanataro before turning on her heel, ready to flee again. But, instead of a quick escape, she was met with a wall of tightly packed bodies.

“Thank you for helping me!”

Lyn slowly turned around. Hanataro was still there. “It’s no problem.”

Hanataro straightened from his deep bow and was barely taller than Lyn, 153cm to Lyn’s 150cm; she had remembered his exact height from his wiki page. Afterall, Hanataro’s Zanpakuto was one of the more unique ones.

“I’m Yamada Hanataro. I-I’m really sorry you got dragged into that. I made you make an enemy so early in the exam.” Abruptly, Hanataro’s regretful expression turned to one of panic. “W-What if he comes after you because of me?!”

Lyn placed a hand on Hanataro’s shoulder to still his light trembling. “Yamada-san, don’t worry.” Her other hand popped out a thumbs up. “We both have super forgetful and plain faces, so he totally won’t find us in this crowd.”

Frozen for a few moments, Hanataro gaped at her. “Oh, you’re right… W-Wait! I didn’t mean to imply-”

“How’s your stomach, Yamada-san?”

“I’m alright, please don’t worry about me, um…”

Looking around, Lyn resigned herself to her fate when she saw the crowd wasn’t going to budge. “I’m Chiba Lyn. Nice to meet you.”

Hanataro smiled back with his bruised and dirt-smudged face. “It’s nice to meet you too, Chiba-san.”

Lyn’s backpack had medicine from her old workplace - that she may or may not have obtained from getting them lobbed at her head when she told her boss she was leaving - but she resisted her urge to press him. She’d already interfered with Hanataro’s timeline enough.

▯▯▯▮

“Yamada-san, we’re bwest friends now,” Lyn declared with a slight lisp due to the considerable swelling of her bruised cheek.

“I’m not sure if getting beat up together is the best reason to become friends with someone,” Hanataro spoke dejectedly with his swollen, black eyes glued to the floor. Yes, he had indeed been punched in both eyes. “Plus, it’s my fault he came after you too.”

“Don’t wurry about it, Yamada-san. We were just unlucky he had an abnormurly good memury. And huge muskles. And angur issues.”

They had used up an entire jar of Lyn’s Jidabokuippo for their bruising and inflammation, and the exam hadn’t even started yet. Fortunately, Hanataro had informed her that the physical exam was usually the day after, so they had some time to recover.

‘Hanataro protected my head with his body when that ass was about to stomp on it.’ Lyn leaned back into the tree truck she and Hanataro were sitting against. They were close enough to see when the exam would start but far enough that the other examinees wouldn’t bother them.

‘Canonically, Hanataro is bullied a lot even in the Fourth Division, so I doubt the Academy will be any better to him. The least I can do is look out for him a little bit.’ Lyn narrowed her eyes at her bandaged-up arms. ‘Wait a second, on a scale of one to ten, how bulliable am I?’

Before Lyn could contemplate her ability to defend Hanataro, let alone herself, the examinees began to follow the Shinigami up the mountain.

“Let’s hurry, Chiba-san.” Hanataro helped Lyn up, and they limped behind the tail end of the crowd.

They were led to a large, wooden building that would be their exam room and handed numbered slips of paper to randomise their seating arrangements. Shinigami with katana at their waists were stationed along every wall, paced up, and the various rows of seats, and even more watched them from an observation deck above. 

Lyn and Hanataro parted with quick exchanges of good luck.

▯▯▯▮

Hanataro knew that Chiba was exaggerating when she called them best friends. Yet, she truly had felt like one when they were helping each other apply medicine and bandages to their wounds and tentatively making fun of their assailant’s hair. It was an unexpected turn of events. Honestly, Hanataro was still trying to figure out why she had shared her medicine and genuinely wished him good luck when it was his fault she had gotten injured and could potentially fail the physical test.

Hanataro could see Chiba a few seats down, gripping her pencil tightly and focusing all her attention on the paper in front of her. Hanataro had already failed many times, and he would be injured in this attempt.

Though he usually would have given up by now, Hanataro took a deep breath and steeled himself for the test ahead. ‘I’ll try my best too.’

▯▯▯▮

Lyn stared down at her paper with wide, panicked eyes. ‘Fuck - how do I write in Japanese?’

Lyn had mainly ignored her strange ability to understand the written and verbal language because thinking about it gave her a headache, but now she was stumped. She had never picked up a writing apparatus during her time in this world, be it a stick in the sand or a pen on paper and had no idea how this would work.

Ignoring the following standard warnings about cheating, Lyn was focused on her blurring vision. ‘Do I have a concussion? I totally have a concussion.’ A light tingle spread through her skull. Lyn decided to scribble down her name in English on the front of her exam booklet where her name would go. ‘Maybe there’s a Shinigami that can translate my paper? I doubt it...’

千葉リン

Lyn stared at the kanji on the page that had come out of her pencil for a solid five minutes, glancing between her hand and the paper. 

She filled in her district next.

蛇骨

The graphite was rewriting itself on the page. She quietly gasped in awe and then held that breath for an awkwardly long moment. Lyn’s new nonsense ability was suspicious as hell. And she was in a room full of Shinigami.

For the next two hours, Lyn wrote half-hunched over her page. The beginning of the test was mainly in hiragana, taking into account the varying literacy levels of the Rukongai, and progressively became more difficult. Lyn didn’t doubt that some would get in with zero literacy skills if they aced the physical portion of the exam and that any geniuses could be snatched up by the S.R.D.I.

Lyn bit her lip. ‘I’ll be stuck in the Gotei 13 for the rest of my afterlife. That, or locked in the Maggot’s Nest if I try to leave of my own will.’

Pushing those worries aside for the moment, Lyn focused on the questions in front of her.

Why do you want to become a Shinigami?

‘Um, ah, random bullshit, go!’

▯▯▯▮

Those with greater physical abilities - or poor written skills - were directed to another part of the mountain for a more demanding physical test, though there were only a few. For Lyn, the basic test was going to be hard enough of a challenge itself if the sadistic smirks of the Shinigami testers were anything to go by.

However, one other test was to be completed before the physical test could begin.

“Even I passed the reiryoku measurement test last year, Chiba-san. It was just barely, but I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Hanataro tried to encourage Lyn.

“I’m not worried at all.” Lyn’s usual customer service smile was as pleasant as ever, but she couldn’t control the sweat on her brow or the visible tenseness of her entire body.

‘What if they notice something wrong with me and fail me? Or worse, what if they call over the 12^th Division?’ Lyn anxiously smoothed down her fringe for the fourth time. ‘I mean, the 12^th shouldn’t be a problem since Akon never made a big enough fuss about my condition to do anything extreme…’

When it was finally Lyn’s turn to head inside, the Shinigami spoke bluntly, “Sit in that chair and place your hand on either side of the cube. You don’t need to exert your reiatsu yourself since you probably don’t know how, but don’t try to suppress it either.”

With a nod, Lyn nervously extended her hands and tried to resist pulling away from the cube and its oddly magnetic pull. Suddenly, the electrical buzz beneath her skin and the thrumming in her chest were burst outwards like roots being torn out of her flesh and thrown into the air.

Gasping, Lyn sucked in a sharp breath and jerked her arms back instinctively. In the next instant, the buzzing was sucked back under her skin, and she could breathe again.

“You, uh, passed,” the tester acknowledged hesitantly. “Um, just barely.”

Nodding to the examiner with a queasy expression, Lyn walked out on shaky legs.

Hanataro was by Lyn’s side to help her stand before she could even make it through the doorway. “Chiba-san!”

Blood was dripping down both of Lyn’s nostrils, warm moisture was in her left ear, and a handful of new cuts had split open over her hands and arms, hidden beneath her samue sleeves and old bandages.

“It’s just a nosebleed; no need to panic,” Lyn attempted to calm Hanataro.

Lyn’s nonchalance only seemed to feed his concern.

“Your legs are shaking, your eyes are unfocused and - and… is that blood dripping from your left ear?” Thankfully, Hanataro lowered his voice once he had assumed Lyn’s eardrum had burst. Well, it had felt like it, but her hearing was good in both ears as usual after the ringing had faded.

“I’m just a little delicate, Yamada-san. I have the constitutional strength of a wet piece of paper, but I dry quickly and glue back together just fine.” Lyn smiled brightly at him with a pair of thumbs up.

“I have no idea what that means, but you need medical attention!”

Hanataro was tenacious in his endeavour to drag her to the small team of Fourth Division members on site. Finally, he conceded when Lyn pointed out that all of the Rukongai citizens trying to talk to the Fourth Division members were being turned away. Only those that were clearly nobles were given a second glance, so they retreated to the bunkhouse next door.

Lyn could hold on until she got a zanpakuto spirit. She had to.

▯▯▯▮

Akon frowned at the white reiraku ribbons dancing in front of him. Lyn’s had always been a crumbling mess, sections threading back together while others frayed into ashes, but it had at least been a clear indicator that she was alive and in the area.

Now it was missing, and he could confirm neither of those things.

The frustration he felt quickly fizzled into disappointment. Though Lyn’s condition was unique, it wasn’t a priority he could waste time chasing after - especially when the reishi disturbances he was here to study initially had disappeared a fortnight prior.

Then, as Akon went to the Soul Society, a hell butterfly fluttered into his path. Once it had landed on his offered finger and relayed its message, he changed course. Instead of returning to the 12^th Division, he shunpoed to District 3.

‘Looks like I’m reviewing the S.R.D.I. potentials again.’ Akon arrived at Mt. Koifushi swiftly and lit a cigarette as soon as he stepped into the main building. ‘As usual, it will probably be a waste of time, but we can’t risk losing any suitable recruits to the muscle-head run academy with how low our numbers have gotten recently.’

Where the examinees would have once sat for their tests was full of exhausted Shinigami markers pouring over their booklets with repetitive strokes of their pens.

A male Shinigami Akon nervously shuffled over to him with his eyes constantly darting to his horns and back to his eyes. “Here are the test booklets where the optional S.R.D.I. sections were attempted.”

“Thanks.” With a nod, Akon retreated to a corner of the room. Out of the way of the paper piles and scattered booklets his fellow Shinigami were working with, he would also be able to work mostly undisturbed.

Flicking through the booklets, it didn’t take Akon long to discard them one by one as their intellectual capacity was quickly revealed to him. So far, only two booklets had been spared from the ‘absolutely failed’ pile to the ‘slight possibility because we’re just that low on staff’ pile. 

Despite his focus, Akon couldn’t help but pick up on a nearby conversation.

“Did I tell you what happened to one of the applicants I was with during the reiryoku test?” a not-so-hushed voice whispered.

“What?” Akon could almost hear the feminine voice owner’s eyes roll. “Another Rukongai brat with heigh reiryoku levels? It’s rare, but not that rare.”

“No, no, no, this kid barely passed.”

“What’s so interesting then?”

“When she put her hands on the reiryoku testing device, she suddenly started bleeding from her nose and jumped back like she’d been struck by lightning!” As the speaker got more into their story, they completely abandoned whispering. “It was really freaky. Her friend had to help her walk out too.”

“Huh, that’s never happened before. So, you passed her? Maybe she’s got some weird illness.”

“Hah, as if we can fail anyone for that. Sick, elderly, or criminals - we’re meant to let anyone that passes in, and then they’re the Academy’s problem.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“Excuse me.” The two of them jumped at Akon’s sudden appearance behind them. “Could I have the name of the applicant you’re discussing?”

“Um, I think it was Something Rin? I, uh, don’t quite remember.” 

Akon’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘Lyn?’

“Should I go find her test for you?”

“It’s fine, thanks.” Akon grabbed the rest of the papers and speed-walked out of the room.

“Well, farewell to that kid then. Looks like the 12th Division is gonna snap them right up.”

▯▯▯▮

The next day, Lyn and Hanataro were sent through an obstacle course for the physical test, and they pushed past their limits by running, climbing, jumping over hurdles, and crawling through mud. With Hood-Ass right behind them - the hoodlum and asshat with an annoyingly good eye for faces - they exerted themselves past exhaustion to keep a precious few feet ahead of him.

The route had been monitored, but the Shinigami made it clear that crushing other examinees under your heel to finish faster wasn’t against the rules. It was a shame that the Shinigami didn’t seem to care if they got kicked in the guts a few times behind the finish line, either.

“Yokota Akihiko, Doi Satoshi, Hasegawa Natsumi, Sabitsura Sachiko, Sakahone Ryuu-”

One by one, examinees who passed were led behind the line of Shinigami that would lead them through the gates of Seireitei. Originally, Lyn hadn’t thought an obstacle course was such a good test of their physical abilities, but when she spotted a soul she was sure had passed out two-thirds of the way through the test had passed, she retracted that assumption.

‘I guess it’s also a test of character?’ Lyn pondered. ‘Or maybe if you do well enough on other sections of the exam, then this is for class placements.’

“Isobe Rokuro!”

Lyn’s lips sucked inward like she’d eaten a whole lemon when Hood-Ass walked up. ‘And I guess the Shinigami aren’t against characters like that.’

“Yamada Hanataro, Toyama Tsuneo, Chiba Lyn-”

Hanataro turned to Lyn and cheered. “We did it, Chiba-san!” 

“We?” Lyn echoed.

Hanataro cocked his head at her curiously. “Wasn’t your name just called?”

Lyn mimicked the gesture with her own head. “Was it - oh riiight.” Lyn slapped a hand on her forehead. “I’m Chiba… Wait, we did it?”

Hanataro nodded vigorously. “We did!”

Frozen, Lyn was struck with the familiarity of her situation. The Shin’o Academy was Soul Societies equivalent of a university, but it would never be the same. Instead of a shoulder bag full of textbooks, her laptop, a phone, and some water, her backpack was light with a change of clothes, a small pouch of food, bandages, medicine, and other bare necessities. 

Hanataro couldn’t compare to the friends she’d lost, either.

“Move it already!”

They quickly scampered to the passing group. Jittery with shaking hands, Lyn’s let herself be swept up in the nerves and excitement rather than longing. 

Soon, they were on the move. As they steadily drew closer to the towering, white walls of Seiretei, Lyn’s heart stuttered.

‘This is actually happening,’ Lyn mentally reminded herself for the third time. ‘I’m actually going to become a Shinigami.’ Lyn’s childish fantasies of swinging swords and casting spells were finally within reach, and it was terrifying.

Even if Lyn was about to throw herself into the centre of the Bleach world, she was still trying to ground herself to the realities of what someone like her could accomplish without plot armour. But Lyn’s reality had already been shattered and glued back together once, so maybe stepping into the Shin’o Academy was less rational than she thought.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Lyn reassured herself. ‘I mean, I’m walking into a metaphorical minefield, but I know where the mines are… Kinda. All I have to do is be super careful to avoid any recognisable characters.’ 

After a beat of silence, Lyn’s head violently turned to Hanataro. He was walking happily in step with Lyn, albeit exhausted and bruised, and they had been stuck together like glue since their first encounter. ‘...Hanataro doesn’t count since he doesn’t do much after the Soul Society Arc. Just being friends won’t change much, riiiiight? Right.’

The buzzing in her chest pulsed like second and third heartbeats, driving the hesitation out of her noddle legs. She had to go to Soul Society, regardless of the dangers.

“W-Woah.” Hanataro awed at the towering, white gates. “I still can’t believe we’re going to become Shinigami!”

“Well, we could still fail to graduate.” Lyn and Hanataro shared an awkward beat of silence. “Well, you’ll definitely pass, and I’m pretty sure I can scrape by.”

“You sound so sure that I’ll pass, haha,” Hanataro laughed bashfully. His shoulders dropped for a second before slowly drawing up a smidge higher than before. “If that’s the case, then I’m confident you’ll become a Shinigami too, Chiba-san. So, let’s graduate together!”

“...Way to trigger my death flag, but oh well.” Lyn took a deep breath.

“Um, what’s a death fla-”

“Let’s do this!” Lyn fist-bumped the air. “I’m full of confidence that we’ll somehow survive the Shin’o Academy!”

“W-Wait is the Academy really that dangerous?!”

Hanataro’s question was drowned out by the loud grating of the west gate of the Soul Society opening up and the excited chattering and gasps of the other examinees. A group of Shinigami from the Shin’o Academy were waiting to lead them in, and Lyn spotted a familiar face at the back. A very familiar, very pissed-off-looking face made of furrowed, hairless brows, narrowed eyes, and a clenched jaw.

“Nope, never mind about being full of confidence. I am full of anxiety. Goodbye.” Lyn turned on her heel and would have started walking away if Hanataro hadn’t latched onto her arm. 

“Y-You can’t give up now, Chiba-san! We haven’t even stepped inside yet!”

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Name | Kanji | (Meaning) — Details

▮Chiba | 千葉 | (Thousand Leaves) — Lyn’s new/fake/extra surname. 葉 has multiple meanings, but ‘leaves’ is the most common for this name. Or is the only meaning used for this surname? I am not sure (ノ*°▽°*)

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Note

▮ I'm really excited to write the next chapter~ 

▮ Thanks for reading, everyone! Feel free to comment, kudos, or bookmark!

▮ Up next, Chapter 4 | Tangling Threads!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

The traditional architecture mixed seamlessly with its more contemporary touches, but the sheer size had Lyn in awe. The gold lacquered roofs seemed a bit ostentatious; however, the Shin’o Academy was entitled to be a little flashy when it looked pulled straight from a fairy tale. Or a best-selling manga.

After being led into a strangely modern lecture theatre, the orientation assembly was a blur as Lyn kept an eye out for a certain angry 3rd Seat. Even as students exited the theatre to check the large billboards outside to see which dorm rooms they had been assigned to; Lyn’s attention was elsewhere.

“Do you know what electives you want to sign up for, Chiba-san?” Hanataro asked tentatively.

“Electives?” Lyn echoed.

“Outside of the core zanjutsu, hakuda, hoho, and kido classes, we get to pick a few electives too.” Hanataro was beaming. “There are some additional classes on medicine that I really want to take!”

“Ah, no wonder you’re so excited.”

“You mentioned you worked in a medicine shop; will you take it too?”

“Nah, I’m not that interested in medicine.”

Lyn rubbed at her neck. ‘I spent more of my time collecting things for poisons anyways.’

While Lyn was distracted, a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. 

“Maybe you should be.” Akon's voice was monotone, but Lyn could pick up the rough edge to his words like sandpaper against the back of her neck.

Lyn turned slowly. “Shinigami-san, who would have thought I’d run into you here of all places-”

Silently, Akon grabbed Lyn by her upper arm and dragged her away from the prying eyes of other students. They hadn’t attracted much attention, but it would only take a couple of loudmouths to start a new rumour mill. Once Akon had led her behind a nearby building, he let go.

“Are you stupid?” he snapped.

“No, I’m Lyn.”

Akon closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You have enough resourcefulness to find information on Gotei 13 officers that rarely reaches beyond the 20th District, but not enough to find common knowledge about the entrance exam? You should have realised that the reishi testing device would harm you!”

Lyn shrugged nonchalantly.

“I didn’t invest two months into researching your condition for you to die to a reishi testing device,” Akon droned and began to pull out his usual tools. Before Lyn could open her mouth to start complaining, he was done with a couple of button presses. “Your condition looks worse than it’s ever been, and that’s a surface observation without the thorough examination you should be having.”

At the spike of annoyance Lyn felt, she recalled why she had left without saying a thing in the first place. Bitterness leaked into her voice, “You should be minding your own business, Shinigami-san.”

Akon grit his teeth, and the tension increased tenfold.

“What do you plan on accomplishing at the Academy other than getting eaten by a hollow or blowing yourself up with Kido?”

Lyn smiled mirthlessly. “I plan on getting a zanpakuto spirit that can help me regulate my reishi irregularities.”

“That’s…” Akon’s eyes widened a fraction. “Not a bad idea.”

“Mhm.” Lyn crossed her arms and looked up at him expectantly.

“It’s still incredibly risky with how many unknowns there are, so you better let me know if you have any issues with your asauchi’s development.”

Lyn rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, Stalker-san.”

Not leaving just yet, Akon lit up a cigarette and leaned back against the building. Lyn mimicked his posture, and the last of the tension between them was washed away with the familiar scent of tobacco in the air.

“Ew, it’s blowing in my direction,” Lyn commented and shuffled over to Akon’s other side. She winced when she raised a hand to smooth down her fringe. “Ouch.”

Akon rolled his eyes.

From inside his robe, he pulled out a container full of large, marble-sized pills that were a rusty red colour, and handed them to Lyn.

Lyn immediately shook them to listen to them rattle in the class cylinder, and Akon slapped her injured arm.

“Ouch! What was that for?!”

“Those are made of expensive resources!” Akon snapped. “Don’t just shake them!”

Lyn glared at him and placed a hand protectively over her slapped arm. “What are they then?”

“These are some new experimental reishi pills I’ve been developing.”

“I’m not going to grow a tumorous horn like you, right?”

“These are body modifications.”

“Tomate, tomat.”

“Anyways,” Akon took another long drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly, utterly exasperated. “The food at the academy isn’t reishi dense enough for you, especially since they won’t be expecting you to need to eat as much when your reishi is so low compared to your peers.”

“Have you been carrying these around just for little me, Stalker-san?” Lyn teasingly held the cylinder of pills to her chest with a smile of mock admiration.

“No, I’ve been testing them on members of my division, and so far, everyone either throws up or collapses.”

“Stalker-san, are you trying to kill me?”

“Just go back to the others!”

Lyn obliged, but not without sticking her tongue out at him on her way.

▯▯▯▮

After taking one of the pills, Lyn immediately felt better, and the rush of reishi made the ache in her bones and brain fade, at least for now. Separated from Hanataro, Lyn instead followed the group of women being led towards the female barracks. She was roomed with an uppity noble, who after seeing the state of the room, turned up her nose with distaste. She grabbed a set of papers left on one of the desks and left with her things. Lyn thought she was going to knock into her shoulder as she exited, but instead kept as much distance as she from Lyn; probably because she was coughing up a bit of blood earlier.

Lyn didn’t care and skipped inside with a grin. ‘One room all for me? This is so much better than living in that old man’s shop attic!’

A small space for sure, but plenty of room to study at the small kneeling desk supplied. And if no one else was going to be sent to bunk with Lyn, then she could push them together and have twice the amount of desk space. Lyn opened the small sliding door closet, and stuffed her things inside beneath where two futons were stored.

‘And a spare futon for when I get this one covered in blood!’ Lyn hummed merrily before picking up one of the guides left on the desk.

Under the guide itself was a rule book that Lyn would probably read later, her schedule, and an application form for electives, as well as instructions on where to pick up her uniform before the school year started next week. Most importantly there was a map.

‘Oh my god, there are communal bathhouses for the students!’ The women’s bath was connected to the back of the dorms, and nowhere near the male dorms on the other side of the school grounds. ‘Sorry Hanataro, you ain’t gonna see me until dinner.’

▯▯▯▮

After arguing with the woman who was in charge of the female bathhouse, she was allowed in with some waterproof dressings to cover any leaky wounds. The feeling of soaking into clean hot water for the first time in months taking cloth baths with dubiously clean ice water was orgasmic- up until she suspected she was going to faint, and she dragged herself out.

‘This place looks ancient, but they have waterproof dressing? I guess even Japanese ghosts really love their baths, and who doesn’t?’ As Lyn dried herself off, she looked down at her scarred body. She sighed, knowing she was going to have to redress her arms, fingers, calf, and shoulder blade again, but the bath was worth it.

▯▯▯▮

“Yamada-saaan!” Lyn cheerfully sat down next to the boy who had seated himself in the corner of the dining hall by himself.

He greeted her with a smile. “Chiba-san! You look a lot better.”

“Are you saying I looked terrible before?”

“N-No I just m-meant that-”

“The food here is delicious!” Lyn exclaimed stuffing another mouthful of soft rice and curry into her mouth.

“Y-Yeah,” Hanataro bashfully agreed.

Lyn looked around the room as she ate. There weren’t many students, as apparently the new first-years had been assigned a much earlier dining time until the semester started, and the dining room had been roughly split into four groups. There were regular souls of the Rukongai like herself, those that were clearly from noble houses or at least upper districts, and even smaller groups of nobles that the others seemed to be crowding around to get their attention. Lastly, there was a small group of ten or so people in their own corner that Lyn immediately identified as outer Rukongai members.

They’d seated themselves closest to the back doors and windows, and while some dug into their food ravenously and bare-handed – as if they hadn’t eaten in years, and maybe they hadn’t – while others constantly scanned the room.

Lyn locked eyes with a boy with copy, dark red hair like jagged flakes of rust, and a face covered in deep scars. Her entire body tensed up, and she would have remained frozen in place if a hand hadn’t grabbed her by the collar and tugged her forward roughly, causing Lyn’s head to whip around to the offender.

She was met with a set of brown eyes, black hair, and a round face. Strangely enough, there was a dark piece of fabric on the girl’s head as well; a dark orange and creased like a half-opened umbrella.

“Don’t stare at them, idiot,” she whispered to Lyn harshly. “They might just kill you for looking at them funny!”

Lyn took a moment to recollect herself as the girl let go and sat across from Lyn and Hanataro with her own tray of food. “Right. Thanks.” She let out a shaky exhale.

“B-But they can’t do that! We’re all just students so why would they kill us for that!”

“They’re outer outer Rukongai,” the girl informed him.

“Yeah,” Lyn rubbed at her neck. “I’m pretty sure that guy when he was called up was going by Sakahone for his family, which, if you don’t have one, is sometimes registered as your district. And that’s at least district seventy or something.”

“Seventy-six, to be precise,” the girl added. “And at least you’re observant, unlike those idiots back there that are gawking at them eating.”

The girl looked back over her shoulder to the centre of the dining hall where a group of clearly upper district Rukongai souls were laughing at the way the outer Rukongai souls were eating, and the dirt and rags on the few that hadn’t bathed or collected their uniforms yet.

When Lyn saw them stand up from their seats and start to heat to the other corner of the back of the dining hall, Lyn’s jaw dropped, and she forced herself to not look back towards the scene that would unfold. “They’re fucking crazy.”

“What’s going on?” Hanataro started to turn around, and Lyn placed a hand against the side of his face to keep it tilted away. “C-Chiba-san?”

“Don’t look at them,” Lyn ordered.

The still-nameless girl at their table asked him, “Do you know just how dangerous the outer districts are?”

“Um, well, I heard that beyond District 59, it becomes so poor that no one even wears sandals?” Hanataro nervously held his hands together.

The girl adjusted the cloth on her head. “If you thought the 40^th district sounded bad, from district 59, the rate of theft, murder, and rape rise exponentially. I don’t even think cannibalism is out of the question past the 70^th district.” She frowned harshly.

In Lyn’s peripheral vision, she could see the upper district souls were now standing next to the few tables the outer Rukongai souls were eating at.

“They let dirty pigs like you guys into the Shino Academy?” Lyn could hear a male voice taunt them.

It was followed by the sound of a wooden tray clattering to the floor, and the slap of wet food against the ground. The food hall was silenced.

“If you’re going to eat like pigs with your hands, then eat it from the ground!”

“You wanna die?”

Lyn watches as Hanataro’s expression morphs into one of fear as a scream is followed by the sound of a fist wailing against flesh. The soon-to-be first years in the dining hall run to get help as the one-sided beatdown began, and Lyn pulled Hanataro up by his shoulder, ready to lead them away in a sprint.

But before any of the students can exit the building, a Shinigami bursts through the doors. “Enough!”

With a single flash step, she crossed the distance of the entire dining hall and knocked out the attacking soul. Lyn couldn’t help but look. She saw the bloody mess the haughty soul had become in a matter of seconds; a broken nose, hanging jaw, and a couple of bloody teeth on the ground next to him.

Lyn’s quickly turned away. ‘A nice reminder of why I need to get my hands on an asauchi.’

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Note

▮ Guess who’s baaaaack~ That’s right, it’s me (O-O)

▮ Up next, Chapter 5 | Friend, Friendly, Frenemy!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

The next time Lyn saw Hanataro and the young woman from yesterday was during breakfast. Everyone unanimously decided it would be a better idea to take their food outside into the courtyard. A few other students were out there too, scattered on the grass in small groups, sitting on the edges of walls, and even one silently enjoying their meal in a tree.

Lyn hid her urge to dramatically limp with every step well. Her last episode had left her with jagged cuts over her feet and partially up her calf. She was so tempted to call Akon for some help with it. Even if she didn’t have a way to do that. Sure, the reishi pills that Akon had given her had sped up the healing considerably while she slept, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t currently hurting like hell.

“I’m Madarame Shino. We didn’t exactly have much time for introductions yesterday,”

Lyn managed to smile at her instead of cringing in pain, “Chiba Lyn, nice to meet you.”

“And I’m Yamada Hanataro.” Hanataro bowed politely to her. “Nice to meet you.”

Shino tilted her head to the side. “Huh, you remind me of-”

“Shino! Don’t leave without me!” A young man with black hair, green eyes, and a similar build and demeanour to Hanataro appeared. Like Shino, he had some interesting hair ornaments; three circular white hair clips on the left side of his head, and two on the right.

As he ran over, Shino grabbed him in a chokehold and noogied him. “We’re training to become Shinigami, Ryunosuke! Quit acting like a wimp!”

“Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Ryunosuke became limp in her arms which weren’t really choking him. “You’re right, I’m not cut out to be a Shinigami. I should quit.”

“We haven’t even started classes yet!” Shino let go of him with an annoyed sigh. “You can’t just give up!”

Lyn pursed her lips together. ‘Why does that sound familiar?’

“Anyways, you should introduce yourself since you’re late. This is Yamada Hanataro and Chiba Lyn – they seem decent enough to hang out with.”

He smiled politely. “I’m Yuki Ryunosuke, please don’t expect much of me.”

Lyn suddenly grabbed one of his hands with both of her own. “What an inspiring introduction, let’s be friends.”

Ryunosuke looked confused at the seriously presented offer. “Sure, I guess.”

Hanataro laughed awkwardly. “How about we start eating, everyone?”

They sat down on a few smooth stones littered around the courtyard. Hanataro gave Lyn a worried look at the expression of pure relief Lyn had on her face as she sat down, glad to be off her feet. While Lyn disliked having to wear the flowy hakama pants, at least they sufficiently covered her legs, and didn’t chafe against her bandaged legs. And, conveniently, being female meant she got the red version of the uniform.

Hanataro leaned closer to Lyn to whisper, “Are you okay, Chiba-san?”

Lyn whispered back, “Yeah, my feet and legs just hurt a bit.”

Hanataro looked concerned, but it was clear Lyn wanted to leave it at that. He relented.

While they ate, Shino filled Ryunosuke in on what had happened last night since he had gotten lost while looking for the dining hall at that time.

“And may I ask why you came to our table yesterday, Madarame-san?” Lyn asked, and there was something familiar about the family name as she sounded it out. “I’m happy you did, but I’m just curious what brought you to the back corner of the dining hall.”

Shino crossed her arms over her chest and clicked her tongue. “I got sick of those social climbers from lower-standing families trying to suck up to me just because the Madarame is a reputable clan. And when I told them to get lost, I wanted to get far away enough to not be able to hear how I’m not lady-like enough!” the last part being near shouted. “And your table had plenty of space, especially with the lack of huge egos and big heads.”

“Haha, no wonder you left. Well, I don’t care about either of those things, and you guys seem nice.” Lyn smiled at the other girl who settled back down with a near-silent sigh of relief.

“I won’t bother you about those things either, Madarame-san,” Hanataro piped up.

“So, what combat classes are you guys in?” Shino asked. “I’m in class two for zanjutsu and hakuda,” she stated proudly. “Uh, but I’m in class three for hoho and kido.”

“I’m in class four for hakuda, hoho, kido, and zanjutsu,” Ryunosuke answered.

Hanataro went next. “I’m in class four for hakuda, hoho, and zanjutsu, but class three for kido. We’ll be in a lot of the same classes, Yuki-san.”

“Gosh, how are you both in so many of the fourth classes.” Shino whacked Ryunosuke on the shoulder. “I told you; you should have trained more for the entrance test.”

“Ouch! But you know I’m no good at training.”

“That’s not an excuse!”

“How about you, Chiba-san?” Hanataro asked.

“I’m in class four for everything like Yuki-san.” Lyn beamed at what she said next, “Though, I’m in class one for introduction to paperwork!”

Shino slapped a hand to her forehead. “How’d I get stuck with a bunch of weak losers, what the hell? My brother would laugh his ass off at me, damn it.”

For the rest of the conversation, Lyn was practically glowing. ‘It’s so nice to make friends with more side characters that won’t drag me into anything crazy.’

▯▯▯▮

The week passed by quickly. While Lyn got to know Shino and Ryunosuke a bit better – the two of them being stuck together as friends because of their parent’s friendship, though Shino certainly was staying by him of her own accord – she only saw them during mealtimes. It was hard to spot one of them without the other, and Lyn realised it was similar to her and Hanataro.

‘Well, I can’t exactly leave Hanataro alone when he gets bullied as soon as someone spots him by himself. Calling himself the most bullied kid in the world isn’t the biggest exaggeration. I’m not that selfish of a person.’ Lyn sighed. ‘And the only reason people are leaving me alone is because they think that I’ve been getting into fights with other students.’

Lyn looked at her scarred and bandaged fingers wrapped around her wooden training sword. ‘Seriously, the blood on my bandaged knuckles isn’t from punching people, it’s from existing.’

“M-My arms are going to fall off,” Hanataro groaned while swinging his sword.

They were in the thick of their first introductory Zanjutsu class and were told to swing their swords and not dare to stop before the end of class unless they were going to collapse.

“I-I think mine are,” Lyn wheezed out, and fresh blood dripped from reopened wounds on Lyn’s hands.

“C-Chiba-san!”

Hoho and hakuda were a similar shit show, with Hanataro barely able to keep up, and Lyn bleeding all over the place because she kept reopening her wounds. And it seemed that her instructors were intent on forcing her to leave the academy of her own accord in their mercilessness.

“If you can’t even keep up in the fourth class, there’s no point in being here. I hope you realise this, Chiba,” the hakuda instructor told her, arms crossed over his chest. “You won’t be given any handicaps when out there facing hollows; you won’t get any in this class. And you too, Yamada!” he quickly turned just to shout at Hanataro who had started to slow down.

Lyn picked herself up from the floor, and the trickle of blood from her nose quickly staunched itself after taking another one of the reishi pills Akon had given her. She was quickly running out.

Looking up at her instructor, Lyn couldn’t tell if his expression was one of disapproval or concern – maybe it was both. “Yes, Sensei.”

Maybe, trying to force Lyn to quit while she was ahead to not end up in the jaws of a hollow was a mercy in their eyes.

Both would be understandable.

But Lyn didn’t have a choice.

Lyn smiled, and a single tear ran down her face. She dramatically placed a hand on her chest, as she looked away from the class. ‘Fuck, this is so much harder than I thought it was going to be.’

At least the rumours that Lyn liked to get into fights died as quickly as it appeared.

▯▯▯▮

By the second week of studying, the kido class four was finally allowed to start practical lessons. Hanataro had already started at the end of last week and was slowly making progress.

‘I’m sure he’ll have better luck when his classes expand onto kaido or is that a separate class for the upper years?’ Lyn wondered.

“Unleash thy fury, gather and thrust. Hado 1, Sho.” The small rock Lyn had been pointing at fell off the training dummy it was perched on.

Shino scoffed. “That was the wind.”

“Must have been, I wasn’t using any reiryoku.”

“What do you mean?!” Shino pointed at Lyn. “You’re not even going to try? Even him!” Her finger shifted to Ryunosuke. “That wimp is still trying!”

‘Akon prescribed me with no kido usage, lest I blow myself up.’ Lyn wanted to make a sour expression just thinking about it. ‘It’s not fair that I don’t get to play with the Shinigami magic. Real magic! How would I not want to at least try it? No, no, I shouldn’t.’

“I mean, even I tried a couple of times,” Ryunosuke added with a small, encouraging smile.

Lyn smiled back at the two, and Shino and Ryunosuke thought she looked oddly pleased for some reason. Like a cat that had been permitted to knock over all the glass bottles on the table.

“Ah, I guess I have to try it properly at least once now.” Lyn took in a deep breath and pointed at the training dummy’s head. She focused on the cold tingle that was embedded in her flesh and tried to draw it forward. “Unleash thy fury, gather and thrust!” The tips of Lyn’s fingers tingled uncomfortably and started to burn. “Hado 1, Sho!”

An invisible wind hit the straw dummy’s head, causing some of the straws in the centre to abruptly part

Lyn felt a rush of excitement hit her at the achievement – however small it was. ‘I just used magic oh my gosh. This is the coolest thing ever.’

“It’s like someone poked the straw dummy in the face.” Ryunosuke raised a hand, and Lyn gave him a high-five, as they had taken to sharing high-fives on any minor accomplishment either of them made in their mediocrity.

“Hahaha.” Lyn wiped her hands on her red hakama.

“C-C-Chiba-san! Why is there blood all over my hand you high-fived!” Ryunosuke shrieked, holding his wrist.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Yuki-san.”

In the seconds that Lyn her body turned away from them, she pulled a fresh bandage hidden in her sleeve and bandaged up her fingers. ‘Would mess up my fingers again to play with magic 10/10 times.’

“My hand is seriously covered in blood! Are you bleeding from anywhere, Chiba-san! Wait, maybe I’m bleeding?!”

“You’re just imagining things, Yuki-san,” Lyn smiled at him placatingly.

“I’m really not!”

▯▯▯▮

It was nighttime in the courtyard, and under the bright stars and amongst the calls of cicadas, the sound of flesh being beaten starkly stood out.

Lyn spat a mouthful of blood out at Isobe’s feet, having blocked another kick aimed at an unconscious Hanataro’s head with her body. “What the hell is your problem with me and Hanataro?”

“You weaklings shouldn’t even be allowed to train as a Shinigami.” Isobe snapped. “Either of you bugs make eye contact with me again, and I’ll kill you both,” he threatened and left with a cruel smirk on his face.

‘Dumbass. That’s the same thing Sakahone Ryuu said when you made eye contact with him in the hall, and he beat the hell out of you.’ Lyn wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth with an unimpressed expression. Despite being prone to getting her body bursting with spontaneous cuts that felt like they were shredding up her soul, souls were pretty resilient – especially compared to her old human body, anyway.

Lyn sighed and ran a hand through her fringe. ‘Gosh, Hanataro is a nice friend, but I’m starting to wonder if he’s worth the trouble.’ She stared at his crumpled form. ‘And what if helping him messes with his timeline? What if he doesn’t help Strawberry Boy in the future and he dies, and then the world goes to hell?’ She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying her best to ignore the ache throughout her body. ‘But maybe I’ll need his help in the future if I don’t completely solve this problem with my soul, and Akon isn’t always going to be there to help me. He might get bored of studying me someday too.’

As Lyn was rolling over Hanataro to start poking him awake, a large hand landed on her shoulder.

“What happened to you?” Akon’s naked brows were pursed, and he immediately started to apply kaido to Lyn as he crouched down next to her.

“Oh, some guy compensating for his teeny peeny weeny beat us up.”

Akon glanced down at Hanataro on the ground as if it was his first time noticing him. “Oh, the both of you.”

Lyn flopped down onto the grass of the courtyard. “Why does healing kido feel so weird.” Lyn shivered as another aggressive tingle went through her arm and down her spine with a jerk. Then the cold feeling of pins and needles hit. “Ugh, uuuugh.”

“It isn’t even that bad.” Akon continued to heal her with an annoyed expression on his face. “Does this happen often? It’s going to be pretty hard to continue my experiment if my only test subject dies.”

“He’s only beaten us up one and a half times during the academy test, and once today because he wanted to take his anger out on someone. People try to bully Yamada-san pretty often since he seems like an easy target, and I kind of get caught up in it. But it’s only things like knocking over our stuff, that time we got stuffed into a supply closet, that time someone dropped some bugs in Yamada-san’s food-”

Akon raised a naked brow muscle at her. “And someone like you is putting up with this?”

Lyn smiled sweetly up at Akon. “What’s little half-crippled me going to do about it right now?”

Akon huffed a bit of air out of his house. “So, you’re biding your time. That sounds more like Lyn-san.”

‘Well, not so much biding as hiding what I’ve been up to.’ Lyn resisted the urge to break out in a big, ugly grin. ‘I found half a dead mouse a bird had been eating and put it in one girl’s dorm room, and I mixed in some mushroom powder into a guy’s food when he wasn’t looking to enshittify his day.’

Akon stood back up with his hands on his hips.

“Aren’t you going to heal Hanataro, Creep-san?”

“Is that necessary?”

“Yes. I’ll cry if you don’t.”

“Disgusting. I’ll heal him as well.” Akon quickly finished and left Hanataro to sleep on the ground. “How have your first couple weeks of the academy been?” While he waited for Lyn’s response, he started pulling out different devices from his pockets to run his usual medley of tests.

Lyn dramatically placed the back of her hand on her forehead. “Don’t get me started. The instructors are trying to get me to drop out by not letting me have any breaks – and those physical classes are so hard. I keep reopening my wounds too. Oopsies. But I made a couple more friends. Can you believe it? You should, but you’re the only one who doesn’t understand my unique, charming nature-”

Akon pinched his non-existent brows. “I meant how is your body doing.”

“Well…” Lyn looked down at her bandaged-up arms and hands. “It’s still following the same trend – less often but each episode is a bit worse, and now old wounds just won’t close up as quickly. I think- ouch! Warn me if you’re taking a blood sample.”

“Your reishi is still slowly growing at the expected rate. And it seems that since you’ve been training, eating more, and regularly taking the reishi pills I gave you, you now have a higher ratio of normal to irregular reishi in your body,” Akon explained while looking at the results on his equipment and taking notes at the same time.

“Isn’t it better to have less irregular reishi?” Lyn asked.

“No, because that irregular reishi is irrefutably the core part of your soul and the unstable mess that you are. Just increasing your normal reishi isn’t the answer.”

“But isn’t that what’s been healing me?”

“It’s more like layering bad aids over a ball of fog and trying to keep it from blowing away. And yes, that metaphor barely makes sense, because you don’t either. It’s the only way I can think to put a name to the strange, patternless way your reishi behaves and interacts with one another.” Akon looked annoyed as he flicked through his notes as if he’d find the answer in the mess of scribbles, and Lyn could see the tension set in his jaw. “Having more reishi just means more pressure builds up before you have one of your episodes.”

“So how do I fix that?”

“For now, get a zanpakuto and hope for the best, because your soul is barely regulating itself, and I don’t have anything that can even affect your irregular reishi.”

Lyn gave Akon an annoyed look. “So, you came here to tell me to keep doing what I was already doing?”

“And to check in on you,” he added, while still scribbling something new into his notebook. “And give you this.”

Without looking up, he held out a new glass cylinder of pills, that instead of a rusty red, were black. Lyn’s hands automatically reached out for them.

“I’ve improved the reishi pills, but I’ve also made the absorption rate slower, so it’ll help create a more constant supply of normal reishi for your body since quite a lot slips away from you with each of your episodes or subconscious use of your reiryoku.”

Lyn stared at him. Eventually, she decided to make herself comfortable on the grass and laid back to admire the stars. She still couldn’t get over the skies with hardly any light pollution. Akon waved another instrument near Lyn’s head. Internally, she forgave him for his upsetting comment back in the mountains. But not for waving his silly science tools so close to her eyes.

She turned to stare at the side of his face. She looked at the 3^rd seat badge on his arm, and it didn’t tell her much about where she was in the timeline. All she knew was that he would eventually become lieutenant of the 12^th Division and that it would be during one of the most turbulent times Soul Society would ever face.

Lyn opened her mouth to ask a question.

‘Are you going to die in the Blood War?’

“How’s work been lately, Stalker-san?”

Akon looked up from his equipment for a moment, then back down. A couple of seconds later, he stashed his things back into his shihakusho jacket and replaced them with a cigarette.

Sitting down next to Lyn, he took a long drag from his cigarette. “The new recruits have been a pain in my ass lately.”

“Not as much as me though, right?”

“Don’t sound so proud of that. And, currently, I’m overseeing development on a device to make communication between Soul Society and the Human World faster than the hell butterflies, but my co-workers keep trying to add unnecessary functions.” Akon sighed.

“You should add sudoku to it.”

Akon gave her an annoyed look, and Lyn couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Notes

▮ Hello hello! It’s me –(o-o)- I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!

▮ Thank you so much for reading and feel free to leave any comments down below!

▮ Up next, Chapter 6 | Secret Keepers!

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Chapter Text

Lyn had barely survived a month of gruelling training. She was barely making it conscious through hakuda and zanjutsu classes, but Akon had snuck into the school grounds twice to heal her since Lyn refused to go to the medical ward and attract attention. Akon agreed with this, not wanting a healer to unknowingly overload Lyn’s fragmented soul by trying to force too much reishi into her system at once. It helped that he needed to come by regardless to record more data.

However, not all of Lyn’s classes were going terribly. Classes on history and Soul Society laws and regulations were straightforward enough to study. But, Lyn excelled in the class that introduced documentation, reporting, and other forms of paperwork and office management. Her father had been an accountant who had taught her the basics of ledgers and general journal entries when she was considering following him into the same field (an interest that quickly died when she realised just how boring his job was) and helping her mother out in the small local library that she managed.

Those results were ones that Lyn could expect, but surprisingly, Lyn wasn’t completely physically inept. She was nimble and quick on her feet in hoho classes, even without being able to speed her movements up with reiryoku yet.

But that only made her fall down the stairs even more embarrassing.

“I swear, I swear I’m not that clumsy,” Lyn was talking to herself, head in her hands, as Hanataro led her by the arm to their zanjutsu class.

Shino looked Lyn up and down. “I’d say your fourth fall down the stairs says otherwise.” While Shino was in class two for zanjutsu, she still walked with them since all the zanjutsu classes for the first years were done simultaneously – just in different levels of the zanjutsu hall.

Lyn wanted to throw her hands up in the air. “Something tripped me.”

“Your feet?” Ryunosuke suggested.

“Is there a kido that can make someone invisible?” Lyn asked.

Hanataro gave Lyn a few pats on the back. “It’s okay to be clumsy, Chiba-san. I’m sure you’ll grow out of it soon.”

“I’m not in denial.”

Lyn lightly stumbled again, suddenly feeling her left leg painfully cold to the point where it was starting to burn. “Actually, I think I might have hit my head on the way down those stairs,” Lyn awkwardly rubbed at the back of her neck and started to split away from the group. “I’ll meet you guys in class after I take a quick trip to the medical office.”

“That’s what we were telling you to do earlier!” Shino shouted at Lyn as she started to shuffle away into the crowd of other students moving between teaching areas.

“Maybe I should help you get there?” Hanataro asked.

Lyn shot him a strained smile over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine, Yamada-san.”

▯▯▯▮

They watched as Lyn walked around a corner, and Hanataro could have sworn he saw a barely disguised limp in her step.

Hanataro sighed. “I wish Chiba-san would let us help her more. She did just fall down some stairs, and she keeps getting injured in training and reopening her wounds. Maybe I should go after her anyway to make sure she makes it to the healers?”

Shino shook her head and started to lead them back towards their classes. “There’s no point. That stubborn idiot never lets us go with her when she gets treated, and she’s never let any of us check her injuries either.”

“Now that I think about it,” Ryunosuke cupped his chin thoughtfully. “We’ve only been training with our bare hands, kido, and wooden swords, and I don’t think that we’ve been getting thrown around hard enough to cause us to bleed. Even I just get super bruised.” Ryunosuke lifted his sleeve, revealing a red bruise with a purpling edge.

“Chiba-san did mention once that her body is more fragile than normal,” Hanataro suggested while thinking back to Lyn’s self-comparison to wet paper.

“But you noticed she was limping earlier too, right? Maybe the fall reopened a wound on her leg, but she doesn’t have any wounds on her leg at the moment,” Ryunosuke continued.

“You’re right.” Hanataro felt his worry grow. “Chiba-san, Yuki-san, and I are all in the same combat classes, so we would have noticed if she got a bad injury on her leg.”

“Then maybe it didn’t happen in class…” Shino pulled Hanataro and Ryunosuke out of the hallway. “Yamada, people try to bully you pretty often, right?”

“I guess so,” Hanataro answered.

Shino was glaring at Hanataro, but Hanataro knew that her anger wasn’t directed at him.

“Has someone been hurting Chiba?”

Hanataro held his hands together anxiously. “Since we entered the academy, we’ve only been beaten up by Isobe-san once, but it hasn’t happened since then.” Hanataro held his head. “O-O-Or maybe he’s just been targeting Chiba-san while she’s alone.”

Shino felt rage bubble up inside of her. “Isobe Rokuro? That bastard is in my zanjutsu class.”

“You’re not going to start a fight with him, are you?” Ryunosuke asked.

“Of course I am!” Shino shouted, raising a clenched fist.

“Sorry!” Hanataro and Ryunosuke quickly apologised at the same time.

“Why are you apologising to me, you idiots!”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn slipped into an empty room and threw herself into the supply closet, closing herself inside as she collapsed against broomsticks and writing supplies. A bit of ink splashed onto her hakama, but she ignored it over the blinding pain in her thigh.

Before it could get any worse, she quickly ate one of her reishi pills with a face contorted in pain and disgust. Sliding to the ground, she lifted her hakama over her left leg. In the light that came from under the door, she could see the skin around her thigh turn translucent, and for a moment, the pain faded to a feeling of angry, radio static sizzling.

Suddenly and violently, from her knee to her hip unseamed itself, and Lyn had but a dusty cleaning cloth to bite onto to stop herself from screaming. Lyn could feel her body tearing apart the reishi pill inside her stomach, quickly using it to feed energy to her leg and heal the injury.

Like Lyn’s body was made of paper mache, the injury stuck itself back together with reiryoku as the glue, filling with thin scar tissue that would thicken over time.

Spitting out the cloth, Lyn flopped back against the little space she had on the floor and panted.

‘Maybe the reason these episodes keep getting worse isn’t because my reishi is growing, but simply because I’m not meant to exist there?’ Lyn wondered. ‘Is this world just trying to off me like some sort of virus before I spread? …But it’s not like I can share that theory with Akon.’

Lyn lay there for a few more minutes, slowly recovering. Once Lyn started to get up, she felt the other, much smaller cuts that had burst across other parts of her body. With a sigh, Lyn pulled out the compact bag of bandages, both regular and adhesive, from a small pouch she kept strapped to her right leg, hidden under her hakama.

She started to bandage up her thigh, and her darkness-adjusted eyes showed her a gruesome, ugly scar that was about an inch wide and stretched from kneecap to hip. The scar tissue was still thin and was weeping blood along the centre line of the wound.

Removing parts of her uniform, she went on to slap the palm-sized adhesive bandages Akon had supplied her with over cuts on her lower back, shoulder, and the base of her neck. Once Lyn was back on her feet, she ate another reishi pill and started to use the cleaning supplies in the closet to remove her blood on the floor.

‘Whether this world actively wants to kill me for slightly altering the storyline, or if this is just a consequence of not originally being from this world, I should try my best to stay away from any other main characters as much as possible,’ Lyn reminded herself. ‘Especially Aizen – getting that guy’s attention is a sure death flag. So, I’m definitely not joining the 5^th Division. That’s the one he’s captain of, right?’

Not noticing the shadow of a person standing in front of the storage closet door, Lyn quickly slid it open.

Aizen Sosuke stood right in front of her – glasses, captain’s cloak, and Kyoka Suigetsu at his hip.

Lyn froze like a deer in headlights. ‘Maybe if I stand still, he won’t notice me?’

▯▯▯▮

Shino stalked into her Zanjutsu class on the third floor, anger radiating from each loud step. Her fellow students turned to look at her in confusion. They knew that Shino was an easy person to anger, but she’d never started the class looking this pissed.

“Where the hell is that bastard, Isobe!” she demanded, already holding one of the wooden training swords in her hands. Looking around, Shino lost some of her momentum in her confusion, lowering her sword. “Why the hell isn’t that bastard here?” Shino pointed her wooden sword at the boy she knew was his roommate. “Hey! Where is he hiding?!”

He lifted his empty hands placatingly. “I haven’t seen Isobe since last week! All his stuff is still in our room, so I just assumed that he got into a bad fight.”

Shino cocked her head in confusion. “Huh, now that you think about it, that asshole did miss last week’s classes.”

“Actually…” one of the female students caught their attention. “Quite a few students are missing from class.”

They started to look around themselves, realising that from their thirty classmates, about six or so were gone.

“B-But I saw Aoki-chan yesterday.”

“And Arakaki-san was at breakfast!”

An abrupt, boisterous laugh suddenly coming from the centre of the room startled the students. “So, you’ve finally noticed!” their sensei said. “Today’s a special day, thus, it’s also the cut-off time for students we’ve deemed unfit to continue their pursuit to be Shinigami to be sent back to the Rukongai!”

“Woah, Isobe’s attitude must have been even worse than we thought for him to be thrown out a week in advance,” one of the students muttered, but was heard by the keen ears of their sensei.

“Isobe-kun?” Their sensei raised a confused brow and stroked his short beard. “Haha, oh yes! That little rascal. Where is he? I certainly wasn’t informed of him being dismissed.”

▯▯▯▮

Sosuke couldn’t help how his eyes widened a touch in surprise and adjusted his glasses. While he knew someone was hiding in the closet, he hadn’t expected the soul to look so… alive. He quickly relaxed his facial muscles back into a calm and friendly expression.

“Oh my, you’ve caught me a bit off guard,” he commented lightly with a smile he knew was charming. “I wasn’t expecting any students to be here before class.”

Instead of calming the little frightened soul with his carefully crafted demeanour, he could see the muscles in her face and neck tense further, and a bead of sweat run down the side of her pale face.

He let out a light, airy chuckle. “Don’t worry, you’re in no trouble. I’m just curious as to what you’re doing in the supply closet.”

“M-My apologies, Captain Aizen.” The little soul quickly bowed at a perfect ninety degrees, making her tied-back hair flop forward messily over the front of her face. “I didn’t want my friends to know that I was feeling unwell, so I was hiding here for a short time.”

Sosuke noted the scars and bandages peeking out from the top of her kosode at the nape of her neck and that she favoured her right leg. He could smell blood and cleaning products in the air, and there was something fundamentally wrong with the young soul standing in front of him; something indescribably foreign, no matter how minute it was. And once he noticed it, it was impossible to ignore.

‘It seems like her soul is… deformed.” Sosuke concluded. ‘It would have been more interesting if not for how pitifully weak it was. Surely, someone is making efforts to keep it alive. Is Kurotsuchi working on another artificial soul?’

“Please lift your head. It may not seem like it, but even I can understand not wanting to seem weak in front of your friends.”

She tentatively lifted her head, and her face had been schooled into a tense smile that was painfully fake. “Thank you so much for your understanding, Captain Aizen. I shouldn’t bother you any longer and be on my way.”

‘No, it has too much personality compared to the current product of the Nemuri Project,’ Sosuke strokes a finger against Kyoka Suigetsu’s hilt. ‘And I doubt it belongs to Urahara – he wouldn’t send such a sloppy spy. But that doesn’t explain this level of fear when I’ve cultivated such an approachable persona.’

“Do you perhaps need assistance getting to the medical office?” Sosuke asked kindly. “I can spare some time to help you before I begin my calligraphy class.”

Her muscles in her face holding her tentative smile twitched. “I couldn’t trouble you so, Captain Aizen.”

“It’s no trouble at all.” He smiled back naturally, and lightly tilted his head to the side in a way that had most female students swooning. He extended a hand to her but lowered it when she didn’t take it. “Is there something wrong?”

She swallowed thickly and kept her gaze lowered. Her hands that were grasped together in front of her were lightly trembling. “I-I’m afraid I don’t have permission for that.”

He took a slow step forward and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “And just who is stopping you from getting treatment?”

“T-T-Third Seat Akon of the 12^th D-Division,” she mumbled, head now completely lowered and out of his view due to Sosuke being much taller.

Sosuke rubbed his chin with an amused smile, but seamlessly switched back to an expression and voice of concern. “I see… I’m sorry to have put you in a difficult position. I’ll let you be on your way.”

She bowed and began to speed walk to the exit.

“But before you go,” he called after her, and she froze halfway through the doorway. “Might I know your name?”

The watery brown eyes with tightly constricted pupils finally met his. Sosuke felt a tinge of confusion under her gaze that was shrinking back from him – yet somehow so sharply focused. She acted as if Sosuke was going to attack her at any moment, but he could only attribute it to past trauma or a fear of authority.

Sosuke’s pride utterly denied the possibility that such a careless thing had the potential to see through his façade.

“I’m Chiba Lyn.”

He could hear his class quickly approaching, the quiet march of pattering feet and excited chattering.

“Well, Chiba-san, if you ever need any help regarding the 12^th Division, don’t hesitate to seek me out. And, please, don’t be shy to attend one of my calligraphy lessons,” Sosuke added warmly.

As soon as Sosuke’s hand lifted from her shoulder, she darted for the door like a skittish animal.

His calligraphy students quickly herded themselves into his classroom like the good sheep they were, taking their seats and politely greeting him with even more awe and respect than they had at the start of the semester.

Sosuke sat before his adoring class and picked up his calligraphy brush. ‘I guess leaves will always tremble before even the lightest of breezes. To be such a powerless thing; how pitiful.’

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Author’s Notes

▮ Aizen encountered! Will he catch on to anything else, or will he be too preoccupied with his other plans? But just how far into the timeline are we, and just when are these plans going to go into motion?

▮ Thank you so much for reading and feel free to leave any thoughts or questions down below!

▮ Up Next! Chapter 7: Broken Photocopier!

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Chapter Text

Despite the state of Lyn’s leg, she practically ran from Aizen’s classroom, a disbelieving smile born of pure stress and panic stretched across her face. Her heart drummed madly against her ribcage. Her leg burned, and the barley-coagulated wound had opened again. Lyn was surprised it didn’t hurt more, but she also suspected that Akon had started putting some of the ‘good stuff’ in her reishi pills.

Once Lyn started to approach the zanjutsu hall, she slowed down, giving herself some time to catch her breath and attempt to calm her mind. ‘Did he fall for the skittish, fearful experiment act? Because I sure as hell couldn’t hide my fear, so let’s hope he at least doesn’t think I was about to shit my pants because I know all of his plans! I’m wearing red hakama, not brown ones. I mean, sorry to make you look bad, Akon, but I have come too far to die to one of the main villains before the official start of the show even begins.’

Lyn scrubbed her hands over her face roughly. ‘And Aizen teaches a calligraphy class? It was such a ridiculous part of his Wiki page that I didn’t think was real. Like, what kind of deranged ego-boosting praise kink is that meant to be for him? Isn’t he meant to be more preoccupied with trying to take over the world?’

Letting out a deep sigh and collecting herself, Lyn decided it wasn’t worth worrying about, since it was unlikely their paths would cross again. She would simply stay away from his classes, stay a low-ranked Shinigami (though that part was a bit less optional), and try to stay out of the way of his war.

Lyn speedwalked into her zanjutsu class; fingers crossed that her sensei hadn’t arrived yet. Not a minute after Lyn entered the ground floor, Sakai-sensei stalked inside. Lyn quickly went over to Hanataro and Ryunosuke, kneeling next to them in the neat rows the class had rapidly formed.

Sakai-sensei, a strict woman with her black hair always pulled into a neat bun, and her shihakusho always pristine, stood in front of them with a strict expression on her face. “As I’m sure you’ve realised, there is less than half of the original class left since the start of the semester.”

Lyn, who hadn’t noticed, tensed once she realised just how few students were left in the room. Of the sixty students, there were now only twenty-five or so.

“Most of you wouldn’t know, but the first month of being accepted into the academy is purely preliminary to becoming an official student. A practical test run to see who is not fit to continue to train to be amongst the Gotei 13, and who is not.” Sakai looked down at them with the same cold eyes, and they focused uncomfortably on Lyn. “Class four, of course, has the highest rate of failure. Being here in this class is a sign that you have barely made the cut to continue to train as a Shinigami, though I may disagree with some of my co-workers’ decisions.”

Lyn wondered just how many students had been sent back to the Rukongai, and just how many had been taken care of; sent to The Nest of Maggots for dangerous – treasonous – ideals or tendencies.

Sakai removed the cloth covering up a long rack of swords to reveal what looked to be real blades within black sheaths, rather than the wooden ones they had been using thus far. “Subsequently, you will now choose an asauchi to carry on your person at all times.”

Lyn didn’t realise how far forward she was leaning, excitement tingling under her skin. Quickly, all concerns about Aizen and the fate of her missing classmates were gone from her mind.

She chewed on her inner cheek; laser-focused on the asauchi. ‘I might finally be able to fix this broken soul of mine!’

She swallowed thickly, and a light ramble went down her spine at the thought of what might happen if it didn’t work. If she wasn’t able to manifest a zanpakuto, or if her zanpakuto could only watch along with her as her episodes got worse and worse until they undid her completely.

‘Wait, crap. Just how long does it take to learn the name of your zanpakuto?’ Lyn tried not to focus on the new tinge of pain in her left leg. ‘No. No, it’s not that bad yet. I still have time. These injuries won’t kill me just yet.’

Yet.

“This last month we have drilled basic zanjutsu forms, sword maintenance, and sword etiquette. I expect to see you respect your blades. If I catch you swinging your swords around carelessly like a toy, I’ll show you how a sword is meant to be used. While you will be imprinting your soul onto these asauchi, do not think that they can’t be taken away from you at any moment.” Sakai glared at the class. “You will not officially own your blade until you graduate and join either the Gotei 13, Kido Corps, or Onmitsukido. Don’t think you’ll get to keep it if your studies are terminated for any reason. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Sakai-sensei!” the class chorused.

“Find a blade the same length as the training swords that I assigned you all during our classes. You have fifteen minutes.”

▯▯▯▮

When Chiba entered the class, she looked like she had been running, and was breathing a bit hard through her nose. But as soon as the class started, she was one the first students on their feet and standing by the asauchi.

“Chiba-san sure is excited,” Ryunosuke commented. “And her leg doesn’t seem too badly injured if she’s moving around that quickly. Do you think she actually went to get healed this time or got ‘lost on the path of life’ again?”

“I’m not sure…” Hanataro felt a bit unnerved by Chiba’s sudden change in demeanour.

Her eyes turned almost obsessive as she looked over the blades but seemed too afraid to touch any of them. He knew that Chiba tried to avoid conflict when she could, so it was strange to see her excited over a sword. But then again, he still didn’t know just why she wanted to become a Shinigami in the first place.

Holding his own carefully picked asauchi in his hands, Hanataro approached Chiba who stood at the end of the sword rack. “Is everything okay?”

Chiba blinked at Hanataro in confusion, before shooting him an awkward smile. “Everything’s okay. The swords just feel a little weird, you know?”

“Right…” Hanataro replied despite not understanding.

“Oh, and-”

Before Hanataro could ask another question about whether her leg was okay, Chiba suddenly reached an arm over his shoulder.

“-here you go!” Chiba placed a piece of paper with a bit of tape in his hands that read: kick me.

“Oh, thank you, Chiba-san.” Hanataro held his sword closer swords himself. “I hadn’t even realised someone put that on me.”

‘Even if I don’t know much about, Chiba-san, she’s still a good friend,’ Hanataro told himself. ‘Chiba-san is just an oddly private person sometimes.’ Hanataro looked down at the sword in his hands. ‘Yuki-san and Madarame-san too. I may be really weak… but that doesn’t mean I can’t support them in my own way.’

“And I was wondering if your body is okay after seeing the healers?” Hanataro asked.

Chiba’s eyes widened a bit before becoming sheepish. “Haha, well I didn’t get healed up completely because I needed to get back to class on time, but I’m feeling better.” Chiba smiled at him appreciatively. “Thanks for looking out for me, Yamada-san.”

Hanataro can’t help but smile back, feeling warm. “You always do the same for me, so it’s the least I can do.”

“I thought I told you to be quick,” Sakai-sensei’s cold voice cut into their conversation, the woman looming over them. “Stop dawdling and prepare to perform your first jinzen.”

▯▯▯▮

Where Lyn’s hands contacted her unsheathed asauchi, they broke out in almost painful pins and needles the longer she kept contact. If Lyn closed her eyes and tried to enter a state of jinzen like the other students sitting around her were, she swore she could hear the echo of a scream in the back of her mind, spooking her out of the sword trance each time she got close.

It was unsettling and made Lyn sick to her stomach. Especially the way something under her skin seemed to lurch for the asauchi in an almost predatory manner. It reached, grasped, and pleaded for the sword. It was like the time something in Lyn’s head had instructed her to eat the konpeito when she had first arrived in those dark, dirty streets of the Rukongai.

Lyn pretended to keep her hands on her blade that rested on her lap for the rest of the lesson, hovering just above it.

As they walked out of class, Hanataro asked, “Were you two able to communicate with your zanpakuto? I had no luck.”

“Man, I didn’t hear anything at all.” Ryunosuke hung his shoulders. “I don’t think I’m ever going to manage to contact my spirit.”

“It’s only the first day, guys,” Lyn assured them. “And there are plenty of unseated officers in the Gotei 13 that still don’t know the name of their zanpakuto or focus entirely on other methods of combat instead.”

“I’m no good at other types of combat though,” Ryunosuke said.

“Me too.” Lyn smiled, and Ryunosuke and her clapped both their hands together.

“Don’t celebrate being weak, you idiots!” Shino, who had appeared behind them in the hallway aimed to punch both Lyn and Ryunosuke in the back of the head.

Lyn dodged, but she knew Shino was moving slower for her, not actually wanting to hit her perpetually injured friend.

Unlike the rest of them who were holding their sheathed asauchi in their hands, Shino had her blade at her ship. A pretty dark orange sageo the same colour as her hair piece was wrapped around her sheath to attach it to her belt.

“Ooh, you look so cool, Madarame-sama. So graceful- Ak!” Lyn cringed back from the strong flick to her forehead.

“I told you already – just call me by my given name!” Shino nearly shouted at Lyn.

Lyn bashfully held her sleeve over her lower face, “A-Are we that close?”

Shino’s raised hands twitched as if resisting the urge to pull out her hair. “I’m just saying you’re a close friend, not to marry me!”

“By the way, any luck with contacting your zanpakuto spirit?” Lyn asked.

Shino raised an eyebrow at them and placed a hand on her hip. “That’s what you guys were talking about? It’s only the first day since we received our asauchi.”

“Hahaha. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a chat with them in our dreams tonight.” Lyn held her face in her hands and closed her eyes. “Or maybe I’ll see you in my dreams tonight, Madarame-sama- ouch!”

“Shut up, you stupid idiot!” Shino frowned hard at Lyn who immediately knew to pause her antics. “Anyways, has someone been beating you up while we’re not around?”

Lyn pointed at herself, dumbfounded. “Me?”

Shino sighed aggressively. “Who else would I be talking about? Yamada-kun’s told me that Isobe has beaten you two up a couple of times. And you keep reopening injuries you shouldn’t have in class!”

Lyn felt her heart rate start to increase, not expecting the sudden onslaught of questions.

“Plus, you’re always avoiding the healers, so just what is-”

“Madarame-san!” No one was expecting Hanataro to interrupt, and Shino couldn’t help but go silent. “I know you care about Chiba-san’s well-being, but I think that you’re going too far.” Hanataro’s blue eye stared into Shino’s unwaveringly.

“Huh? And just how am I going too far?” Shino demanded, placing a firm hand on her hip.

“Everyone has their own personal problems, whether they’re related to family, health, or other issues,” Hanataro began to explain in a level tone. “And I don’t think interrogating Chiba-san for answers is going to help her.”

“But if we don’t know what’s wrong, how can we help!” Shino threw up her hands, exasperated.

Lyn’s eyes darted between the two, lips pursed together.

“It can be extremely stressful to talk about issues you’re not prepared to share at the moment,” Hanataro continued resolutely. He turned to Lyn, and she blinked at him in surprise, not having seen this side of him before in person.

He gave her a soft smile, and the small waver of it revealed his true anxiousness at the confrontation. “Chiba-san, we were just worried about your injuries since they seem worse than what most of us get in class. We wanted to know if anyone is physically bullying you while you’re alone.”

“Yeah, we were just worried about you,” Ryunosuke added. “Even I don’t get that injured.”

Lyn is left frozen with her mouth slightly hanging open for a long moment. “The only times I’ve been beaten up are in class and while you were with me, Yamada-san.”

Shino was quieter now. “But then why… Ugh, I guess you don’t have to tell us if you don’t think it’ll do you any good. As long as you’re not going to die on us, that is!”

‘Haha, yeah, don’t worry, I just might pop into a fucking blood balloon because I’m from another world and my soul is completely fucked! Don’t worry about it at all, guys!’ Lyn thought sarcastically, digging her nails roughly into her palms. ‘Yeah, that would go over really well, and maybe they can come visit me in The Maggot’s Nest.’

Lyn bashfully rubbed the back of her neck and looked to the side. “Thanks for worrying about me, everyone. I appreciate it, but it’s as I told Yamada-san before, I’m just a bit fragile is all.”

▯▯▯▮

Feeling boneless, she almost fell asleep as soon as her body flopped onto her futon. She was glad she had spent the time changing her bandages before lying down, or she would never get up and might just let the injuries fester in old blood. Lyn placed her asauchi next to her on the bed and stared at it once her eyes had adjusted to the moonlight that filtered through her open window.

She yearned for the feeling of a springy mattress, the sound of a muffled T.V. playing the latest news coming from down the hallway, the gentle ping of her group chats going off, the charred smell of something new her father had managed to burn in the kitchen, and the warmth of her mother’s hugs.

There was nothing but silence and her own thoughts to accompany her.

‘Akon, Hanataro, Shino, and Ryunosuke are all… they’re all so… real,’ Lyn thought. Their concern, their efforts, their needs, and desires as living beings. Lyn stared at her arms, a patchwork of crisscrossing scar tissue and raised skin. ‘Why do I feel the least real of anyone here?’

Pain hurt, but not as much as it should have when she was and human. Healing took time, but not as much time as when she was alive. She no longer ate to satisfy hunger but to suppress a foreign buzz that crawled beneath her skin and prickled in her gut. Every movement was a fraction faster and stronger than it should have been.

Her body felt like an elaborate skin suit that didn’t fit right – and it was falling apart.

Lyn wanted to live.

But what other purpose did she have in life beyond that?

Time slipped away from her as she lay in a shallow pool of troubling thoughts. They washed in and out of her focus like small waves lapping at a desolate beach, never focusing on one thing, but a little taste of all her issues coming one by one and back again once more.

‘I’ll wait until Akon comes to visit to try jinzen again just in case something strange happens,’ Lyn decided. ‘I’m getting closer to my goal of a peaceful afterlife. I’ll be a basic photocopied Shinigami you can get for a dime-a-dozen,’ Lyn reassured herself, eyes starting to flutter.

‘I bet my zanpakuto will be something simple too since they’re like their owners… I’m a simple enough person, right?’ She patted the asauchi’s sheath. ‘Let’s have a simple, easy-to-forget ability, m’kay?’

Lyn dreamed of an endless lake, and white and black confetti falling from the sky.

And the asauchi screamed.

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Notes

▮ Asauchi acquired! But will Lyn be able to develop a zanpakuto spirit with it? (O-o) Who knows (me knows, but shh). Also, I am way too excited to finally start to write some combat scenes soon ⸜(*ˊᗜˋ*)⸝ They’re one of my favourite things to write!

▮ Thank you so much for reading and feel free to leave any thoughts or questions down below!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

The 12^th Division housed various buildings and laboratories, including the Spiritual Wave Measurement Lab, predominantly used to monitor the spiritual stability of the Human World. However, a good portion of its resources were used to closely monitor Soul Society itself. Various, screens lined the walls with blue dots representing souls on the maps. Occasionally a hollow would appear in the Human World, and their communications team would send whoever was stationed there to take care of it.

While Akon was working on improving the system, he took a moment to glance over at one of the screens showing the spiritual waves and signatures at the Shino Academy. Minor irregularities in the monitoring equipment were appearing around the female dormitories, the kind that naturally popped up everywhere, but he knew that this particular one was Lyn. Akon knew this because if you watched it long enough, it would suddenly behave erratically; the tiny pixels on his screen expanding and contracting rapidly around Lyn’s location before turning to normal half a second later. The only time he couldn’t identify Lyn’s position was when she was standing next to another soul, almost entirely masking her. And that was quite often.

‘Well, even if Lyn-san probably won’t want to tell me anything about the memories of her death for a while, my research into her reishi signature and recognising minute patterns in spiritual waves is helping make our monitoring system more accurate.’

Captain Kurotsuchi walked into the lab, holding up a vial of black reishi pills with Nemu following silently behind him. “Just what kind of pet are you trying to kill with these, Akon? Reishi this dense can’t be digested properly.”

“One with a unique digestive system that’s not very efficient at circulating her own reiryoku through her soul, Captain Kurotsuchi,” Akon answered while altering the code of their monitoring system.

“So, you’re still wasting your time playing with that half-dead thing.” Akon had mentioned he had started a side project out in the Rukongai, and Kurotsuchi didn’t mind as long as it didn’t get in the way of his usual duties. “Deformed, defective souls aren’t as interesting or rare as you’re treating them, Akon.”

“Well, I’m finding this one in particular to be quite interesting.”

“Then why don’t you just keep it in a cage here at the S.R.D.I.?” Kurotsuchi grinned unsettlingly wide as he leaned closer. “And been a while since you’ve taken on a personal project. If you want to dissect it and chop it up, you know it would be simple to make sure no one interferes or even knows. It’s just a small thing from the Rukongai, isn’t it?”

Akon gave his captain a mildly annoyed look at how excited he was getting at just the mention of dissection when he wasn’t even interested in Akon’s research on Lyn. And this was the third time he had suggested it.

“Not everything needs to be dissected to understand it,” Akon snapped.

Truly, Captain Kurotsuchi was only one of two – no, it had become three now – people that could make him lose his cool.

Kurotsuchi stared up at the monitors with a low hum and uninterested expression. Dryly, he commented, “Oh, it looks like your pet died.”

▯▯▯▮

It was the kind of all-encompassing pain that pulled her apart atom by atom all at once. The kind that while her entire body screamed in agony was completely deafening. She made to shriek from her lips from her throat to her vocal cords but found that she had become but a bloody soup soaking into her futon. A rapidly dissolving asauchi was a temporary topping, dispersing into her.

In one instance, she was crimson liquid and bleached bones.

In the next, she sat atop an endless lake that reflected the blue sky above.

Lyn panted and sat in the cool, inch-deep water dumbly. Her brain was still playing catch up.

A shower of black and white confetti fell with a small pop like that of a party popper, setting off a myriad of small ripples in every direction.

“Congratulations!”

The absurdity of the abrupt scene had Lyn temporarily forgetting about what it felt like to be melted.

“Well, I’d call it reprinting.”

Lyn whipped around to see the owner of the stoic, male voice and found a man floating just above the ground, dressed in a long, white kimono of many layers that looked to be made of giant paper sheets. His cloudy white hair was short, and his face was entirely covered by a long paper talisman.

Standing a few metres away from the first spirit was a young boy who only just came up to Lyn’s shoulders. He was dressed in an entirely black kimono that also appeared to be made of thick paper, and his face was also covered by a black paper talisman.

Lyn instinctively knew what they were. “You two better not come in a set of two swords because I have been trying to be discreet.”

The floating man shrugged. “You could simply hide away the small one.”

“No! Don’t hide me away!” the little one protested. “You should show off that you have two zanpakuto! We’re so cool because only three other Shinigami are dual wielders, and only two at the moment since Strawberry Boy hasn’t gotten his yet. Remember that spoiler we saw that one time online of him holding two?! It looked awesome!” He jumped up and down, splashing the water everywhere with his wooden geta.

Lyn gestured between the two of them. “How am I already talking to you two? No, first, what the hell happened to me outside?” She rubbed her temples.

The taller one held his kimono sleeves in front of himself like a curtain. “Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to go about rearranging the structure of a soul.” His eyes looked regretful and focused on the lake water. “And to answer your first question, we first started to form out of your soul’s desperation to survive as soon as you arrived in this world.”

“So, we quickly ate up all the reishi in the atmosphere that we could!” the smaller one added cheerfully, and Lyn was grateful for the positivity. “And a zanpakuto spirit was the most plausible form for us to take within the boundaries of this word, of course. Especially when we got a taste of reishi from a passing Shinigami.”

“Wait, so I started to manifest you guys before I even touched an asauchi?” Lyn asked.

“Yep! And it’s not that weird since Strawberry Boy and Ice Child did something similar, didn’t they? We first started to manifest when you ate the konpeito and integrated a part of this world into yourself. And we really, really, really didn’t want to die again after such a stupid death like the first time around.”

Lyn frowned but nodded in agreement.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t realised. Since some of the first pieces of reishi you absorbed were from a Shinigami, I was able to read the imprinted structure of a soul, the structure of a zanpakuto, and the structure of the local language. However, your conscious mind was only able to absorb the linguistic information. I also manage the storage and flow of reishi in your soul, as it naturally can’t do so on its own.”

“And I’ve been rewriting the stuff you write down with my ability to rearrange a tiny amount of reishi particles around us! I also break down the reishi you eat so that your soul can absorb it way easier now – they’re not really made out of the same stuff, you know.”

Lyn slapped a hand to her forehead. “So that’s what was happening.”

“Consuming the soul of the asauchi and using it as a skeleton instead of slowly trying to integrate with it also helped speed up our complete development,” the tall one mentioned offhandedly.

Lyn paused and pressed her interlocked hands with her lips. She whispered, “Were those the screams I heard while I was trying to jinzen my way here?”

The little one tapped his index fingers together innocently. “Yeah, we were busy eating it, and there wasn’t a proper soul plane like now for you to visit yet. It was a little awkward, but I’m sure it didn’t mind getting eaten too much. And eating it made our overall soul more stable too!”

“And you,” the man drifted close and folded his legs beneath him to be able to see at her height. “Are the core of our soul; the book and the binder of this mess of spirits.”

Lyn gave them an unimpressed, blank look. “You guys are really funny, making your appearances and analogies book-related after that’s how I got murdered.” She crossed her arms. “And you aren’t doing such a good job with the state of my body.”

“T-That was before we had fully manifested!” the tall one snapped, looking flustered.

The little one suddenly began to jump up and down. “Oh my gosh! Sword Daddy is here!”

Lyn gawked at him. “Who in the hell is Sword Daddy?!”

▯▯▯▮

Akon shunpoed across the Soul Society, passing over other division districts without a second glance to the confused Shinigami that watched him rush by. Roof tiles shattered under his heels in his rush. Soon he was at the academy grounds and suppressed his reiryoku as best as he could. He snuck past the Shinigami guarding the premises and jumped up to the window of Lyn’s dorm room on the fourth floor.

He jolted to a stop in the window frame and froze.

Lyn laid half sprawled off her darkly splotched futon, limp arms reaching towards the other side of the room.

She took in a slow breath.

It only took him a split second to spring back into action, carefully rolling her onto her back, and checking for injuries. He quickly realised that the darker shadows on her futon were partially dried blood soaked into the fabric and that Lyn was covered in it. But as he scanned her body with kido, he couldn’t find any injuries.

Sweat beads down Akon’s forehead.

He sets up a light and monitoring equipment on the floor and keeps looking for the new partially closed wounds that he’s expecting to see. But the blood was everywhere as if her skin itself had been bleeding. But the bleeding had already stopped. He pulled open Lyn’s kosode and undershirt and saw that some of Lyn’s worst scars had faded. Still no source of the injury.

He deftly starts to hook up monitors to her chest and temple. As his equipment begins to take readings, he sprays her eyes with a chemical that allows him to clear away the dried blood gluing her lids shut with a single wipe. Akon flashed a torch into her eyes, lids held open by his fingers, and they reacted as normal.

Lyn squinted her eyes shut from the torch light with a groan. “Ugh, wha?”

 “You’re conscious?”

“Where’m I?” Lyn slurred her words together, turning her head back and forth, looking sloshed and disorientated.

“We’re in your dorm room, and I’m here because you looked like you died on my monitoring systems,” Akon explained and kept his sigh of relief quiet. He looked over to the readings of the devices hooked up to Lyn. “But it turns out your reiryoku signature just changed. If anything, you’re looking healthier than ever.”

“I knew you were a pervert, Triceratops,” Lyn grouched at him as she sat up, and pulled all the wires off at once, taking them into one handful and yanking.

Akon no longer turned completely red at Lyn’s harassment, but he couldn’t help his pink ears. “I’m not a pervert. And what the hell is a triceratops?”

After Lyn peeled off her bloody kosode and undershirt the rest of the way, leaving her in a black crop top bra. She placed her wrist to her head and popped three fingers out of her fist. “A dinosaur with three horns sticking out of its head.”

Akon pinched his nose bridge. “Your mouth certainly seems to be working fine as well.”

“Anyways, what’s that about me having a different signature?” Lyn asked.

“First you should tell me what happened to you,” Akon countered.

Lyn gave Akon the widest, most honest smile he’s seen on her face. “Plan ‘have my zanpakuto fix all my problems’ was a success!”

“Seriously?” Akon resisted gaping at her.

Lyn looked behind her and grabbed something hidden in the shadows and twisted folds of her bedsheets. “Here they are.”

Lyn showed him a pair of swords, not just one; a wakizashi and tanto. Both were on the larger length limits of their sword types, being sixty and thirty centimetres long respectively. “I don’t know their names, but they’re both helping me maintain my soul in different ways since my damaged soul naturally can’t do it by myself.”

At this point, Akon couldn’t help but let his jaw drop. ‘Lyn-san of all people has dual blades? Could this be an effect of needing separate zanpakuto souls to manage different aspects of maintaining her soul, did retaining memories of her death affect the development of two spirits, or is it because of something else.’ Akon scribbles down his encoded notes at a lightning-fast pace.

“Just what do each of them do?” Akon asked. He looked back at the last readings his equipment recorded before Lyn ripped off the sensors. “Your flow of reishi almost looks natural, and you have a more… defined presence.”

Where there was once radio static, a simple song was playing like everyone else. But the more he focused his senses on her reiryoku, the more he could notice those tell-tale signs that this was still Lyn in those discordant notes and the occasionally stuttering connection – the beat that was just off and became more noticeable the more you tried to keep time with it.

Lyn crossed her arms and appeared to be thinking hard, eyes closed. Eventually, she opened them and declared. “They explained it to me, but I didn’t understand at all.”

Akon sighed. “What was I expecting?”

He reached for the cigarettes in his shihakusho, and Lyn slapped his arm.

“Shroomigami-san, don’t smoke your tumour sticks in my room,” she snapped at him. “This place already reeks of blood.”

“Spray yourself and your room down with this.” Akon throws Lyn a bottle labelled, ‘Captain Kurotsuchi’s Special Blood Dissolver! Removes up to 101% of Blood!’

“Is spraying this on myself going to dissolve the blood inside of me too?”

“Of course not.”

Lyn gave him one of her looks. Even now, there’s no cold calculation to her gaze, yet she sees a fraction more than she should. It’s a simple gaze that just said, ‘That is the kind of thing Captain Kurotsuchi would do though?’

Akon watched as Lyn marvelled at the way the blood soaked into the futon disappeared and was replaced with the refreshing, yet confusing, scent of florals.

A question suddenly came to him, “Were you a Fullbringer while you were alive, Lyn-san?”

Lyn paused her spraying with the blood dissolver and raised a confused brow at him. “No?”

He cocked his head at her. “You’re not going to ask me what a Fullbringer is?”

“Sounds like it's going to have a long and boring explanation.”

“I see. Well, don't mention them to anyone else unless you want to disappear.” Akon looked down at his collection of new notes and data. “The only relevant detail to know is that Fullbringers with enough power can retain both their powers and memories when they pass onto the Soul Society like Humans with above average reiryoku remembering their names and places they died if they had enough.”

“Are you suggesting that I was one of these Fullbringer, and I didn’t know it?” Lyn asked.

“No, your soul was too weak when it first arrived for that to be the case.”

“You’re such a charming triceratops.”

“But maybe you were killed by a Fullbringer with a strange ability?” Akon asked but didn’t push any further.

A few minutes of silence went by as Lyn continued to clean, and Akon continued to work on his other theories.

“It was…”

Akon quietly put down his notes as Lyn started to speak. He gave her his undivided attention, even if her back was towards him. She stared at the small pile of books under her desk.

“Ha.” Lyn’s expression was a painful contortion between a smile and a grimace. “It was a stupid way to die. Just a crazy bastard, a book, and my brains all over the sidewalk. Nothing supernatural about it.”

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Notes

▮ MightyBookworm had a really interesting guess last chapter for what Lyn’s zanpakuto abilities might be, and they’re not too far off. We’ve got a bit of an idea of what each spirit can kind of do, but how will it be applied to Lyn’s zanpakuto abilities? 👀

▮ Thank you so much for reading and feel free to leave any guesses, thoughts, or questions down below!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Lyn plopped onto the ground next to Akon, elbows on her knees and head in her hands.

“Do you remember… anything besides your death?” Akon eventually asked.

“Everything that a peaceful, normal life would entail,” Lyn answered. “And all I want now is to keep living a normal life. I’m not built to do anything extraordinary, so I’d at least like to make it to a normal Human’s lifetime.”

They continued to sit in silence.

Akon was eventually the one to break it. “Then how are you so comfortable around me?”

“Hm?”

“You seem to have heard all the worst of rumours about the 12^th, and not all of them are false. And while I’m the 3^rd Seat, I mostly work directly under Captain Kurotsuchi.” Akon kept his eyes forward. “I’ve partaken in all kinds of experiments most would consider cruel for the pursuit of knowledge and the sake of the Soul Society. How can a normal person accept that?”

“Well…” Lyn stared at him for a long moment. “You’re not doing those things for the fun of it. Are you?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you planning to cut me up into little pieces and dissect me?”

Akon answered quickly, “Absolutely not.”

“Mm.” Lyn poked him in the shoulder, and Akon was once again struck by just how casually she treated him. “Well, I’m not going to try and pretend I’m on some moral high ground. You’re doing more for Soul Society, the Human World, and everyone in it than I ever will or care to. And since you’re no danger to me, I guess you’re just my overly invasive, neighbourhood stalker.”

Akon had subordinates who respected him, ‘comrades’ of the other Gotei 13 divisions who feared him, superiors who saw him as reliable, co-workers who were in awe of his intellect and dedication; a network of professional relationships. As a child in the Rukongai, he had been looked at with disgust for his interests and even sent to Mukon for his pursuit of knowledge.

It was funny that a soul as strange as Lyn only wanted to live a normal life, and that she was able to share a piece of that normalcy with him.

“Well, if you want to stay under the radar, then you should wrap your tanto in this,” he said, handing Lyn a roll of black fabric from his shihakusho. “While your wakizashi feels relatively normal, your tanto gives of a lot of that unsettling, pseudo reishi you used to give off a lot. That cloth should mask most of its presence.”

Lyn looked down at the fabric for a long while before she said, “You know I can’t pay you back for any of this, right? And for all the food and stuff you’ve given me too.”

“I don’t need you to pay me back, just don’t die until I find out why your soul is so strange.”

“Actually…” Lyn pulled her zanpakuto onto her lap. She hesitated. “I think it’s because these two began to manifest as soon as my soul arrived to keep me alive, that my soul is the way it is. Maybe there are other zanpakuto that change how a Shinigami’s reiryoku feels?”

Akon cupped his chin. ‘While that may be somewhat true, it doesn’t make sense for such a weak soul to be able to begin to manifest their zanpakuto spirit so early, though it’s not entirely impossible. Is it because of a heightened desire to live due to passing on as a soul that remembered struggling for its life? But then why didn’t her soul develop into a Hollow?’

Akon glanced down at Lyn’s tanto in her lap. ‘Unless this strange reishi is actually from something in between. No, not in between regular reiryoku and a Hollow’s, but something entirely different. Could it just be a unique effect of her zanpakuto’s influence? I find it unlikely…’

“Lyn-san,” Akon grabs her attention. “You didn’t have a Shinigami perform konso on you.” She shook her head. “You weren’t a Fullbringer, and you weren’t eaten by a Hollow that was then cleaned to send your soul to Soul Society.”

Lyn looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “Where are you going with this?”

“Then how does a soul with all its memories and worldly regrets pass on to the Soul Society by itself?” Akon asked, but at his point he was talking to himself, his mind racing through different possibilities and continuously coming up short, leading his mind through a maze of questions and impossibilities. But there had to be an exit – an answer to this question.

An answer to Lyn’s condition.

‘Did Lyn’s soul pass through an alternate, unnatural way, both damaging and bringing something foreign back with it?’ Akon thought. ‘Or maybe…’

“Are you sure there was nothing strange about the person that had killed you? Perhaps there was something off about the person?”

Lyn glanced around at anything but him with a grimace. “I don’t… I don’t think so? She was behaving really erratically… I guess.”

Akon turned to a new page to take notes. “Can you tell me anything else about her behaviour – her appearance?”

“Well… she seemed like she was having a psychotic breakdown. Screaming about something not working… I think she had b-brown hair that was stupidly long. Bloodshot hazel eyes?”

It was only when Lyn’s voice trailed off into a whisper that Akon looked up and realised his mistake. Lyn’s grip on her zanpakuto was hard enough to reopen the cuts on her hands, dripping onto the wooden floors with a near-silent plip, plip, plip.

“Fuck- I didn’t- Sorry, that was insensitive of me.”

‘Damn it, Akon,’ he cursed at himself.

“I should have realised I was making you uncomfortable, by bringing up something traumatic,” Akon continued, head turned uncomfortably away.

‘I might just have ruined any future cooperation into my scientific inquiries.’ Akon feels something foreign and uncomfortable settle in his stomach. ‘And the fact that I’ve killed any of the… normalcy between us. It was-’

“Jeeze, Pervigami, I know you’re a curious guy who gets a hardon for science but keep your pants on. Anyways, could you heal my hands?”

Akon looked up in surprise, lips slightly parted.

Lyn was holding out her injured hands.

Akon’s hands glowed green, and he held them over hers. This time, her body reacted to the kaido more naturally, actually getting swept up into a proper flow around the wound rather than dispersing. “Last time, you ran.”

Lyn sniffled obnoxiously loudly. “Last time, we were complete strangers. Also, I could have told you I needed a minute to collect myself before answering your questions or told you directly that now was a bad time. So, it’s fine.”

Once Akon deactivated his kaido, Lyn flexed her hands, satisfied.

“Thanks. But why are you suddenly asking so much about who killed me?”

Akon stared into Lyn’s red eyes, considering whether or not he should end the conversation.  “Because I want to find your murderer.”

▯▯▯▮

Akon had left Lyn in a state of internal conflict. ‘Did I reveal too much about my zanpakuto? Is sending Akon on a wild goose chase going to distract him from any canon events behind the scenes that he should be attending to? But what if he gets too close to the truth – what happens then?’ Lyn bit the nail of her thumb. ‘Lately, I’ve been trusting Akon too much… But he seems strangely… trustworthy?’

But Lyn had an even more dangerous thought. ‘Would it be so bad if Akon knew the truth?’ Lyn dug her nails into her palm. ‘No way. Even if he reacts well, it could derail the storyline, especially if it got out to anyone else. Walls have ears and Kurotsuchi could have bugs everywhere. Who knows what would happen to me?’

Despite Lyn’s new concerns, things weren’t looking so bad. Over the next two weeks, she managed to keep her zanpakuto’s splitting a secret, wrapping her tanto in the strange black fabric and using the excess to strap it to her thigh. And while her wakizashi was a bit shorter than the already short asauchi katana she’d been assigned, Sakai-sensei wasn’t paying enough attention to anyone in the fourth class to notice. She could stretch without hissing like a demented cat in pain – unless her hakuda instructor was trying to force her down into the splits – and the crawling under her skin had converted itself to an almost soothing coolness.

“You’re looking healthier, Chiba-san,” Hanataro noted with a smile.

“Yeah, you’re looking better,” Ryuunosuke added with a thumbs up.

“Are you saying I looked terrible before?” Lyn asked.

“We’re really sorry!” Both of them bowed apologetically.

“Guys,” Lyn awkwardly reached a hand halfway towards them. “I’m not going to try and bonk you on the head like Madarame-san.”

While Hanataro lifted his head with an awkward chuckle, Ryunosuke let out a relieved sigh.

“Woah, I’m really glad. I almost died last time I pointed out how shiny Shino-san’s forehead is.”

Lyn nodded solemnly. “That would do it.”

Once Sakai-sensei arrived, she immediately set them do to mindless drills and other types of physical conditioning. Once she was satisfied by the class's level of physical suffering, she halted the drills.

“We will now move on to sparring,” she stated.

For once, Lyn was almost excited about a physical class. For the first time since joining the academy, Lyn could take a moment to think about how getting to learn how to fight with a sword, despite being bad at it for now, was kind of cool.

“Line up on the other side of the room. You already have your weapons.” Sakai almost rolled her eyes at the looks her students gave her, some of them halfway towards where the bokken was stored. “I allowed you all to keep using the bokken for a while, but you were given an asauchi to wield, so wield them. For now, of course, your sheaths will stay on so none of you fall onto your own blades.”

Lyn, Hanataro, and Ryunosuke quickly shared a few glances, but hurried to shuffle over to the side of the room and waited to be assigned a training partner. Lyn sighed quietly, already knowing that Sakai was going to pair her with one of the stronger students in their class.

It had been obvious from the beginning that of all of them, Sakai had disliked Lyn the most, seeing her constant injuries and fragile body as a liability and waste of resources. However, she hadn’t been able to disqualify Lyn based on being unhealthier than her peers. It would both be a potential insult it could be to Ukitake – known to be dealing with illness from his early childhood, and still managing to become a respected and revered captain – and the fact that Lyn had some of the highest scores across her academic classes. The ranks of the Shinigami were filled with cannon fodder, as long as they managed to have some worth in other areas.

Sakai-sensei thought the ranks of the Shinigami were becoming far too weak. Thus, to circumvent this, Sakai-sensei seemed to be trying to get Lyn to quit of her own volition.

Lyn let a small smile creep onto her face. ‘But things shouldn’t be as bad from now on.’

Sakai-sensei tucked a lock of silky black hair behind her ear. “Chiba-san, you’ll be sparring with Isobe-san.”

A moment of stunned silence.

“Isobe?” Lyn echoed disbelievingly.

Lyn turned to see a pissed-off Isobe already standing in the centre of the training floor with a murderous scowl on his face. It was a wonder they hadn’t noticed him earlier.

“I-I-Isn’t Isobe-san in class two?” Hanataro piped up anxiously.

“Shut the hell up!” Isobe snarled at them, and Lyn’s trio weren’t the only ones to flinch back. “I should be in class one, not in the bottom of the barrel with you fucks!”

“Quiet,” Sakai-sensei ordered.

“You bit-”

In the next instant, Isobe was slammed down by an invisible force onto his knees. The students closest to Sakai-sensei stumbled back. Lyn felt a tingling over her skin, but no downward force.

‘Sakai-sensei has a lot of control over her reiatsu.’ Lyn shuffled back in case she released any more.

Sakai-sensei stalked over to Isobe who was now on all fours. He turned red in the face as he used all his strength to keep his head off the ground.

“That mouth of yours is what got you sent to the punishment unit.” Sakai-sensei reined her reiatsu back in, and Isobe stood quickly. “Insult me again, and you’ll either be sent back for longer, or removed entirely from the academy.”

Isobe clicked his tongue but remained silent.

Sakai-sensei’s cold eyes turned to Lyn. “Chiba-san, Isobe-san, pair up now.”

‘You sadistic fuuuck,’ Lyn thought as she walked across from Isobe. Sakai-sensei was calling out other pairs' names, while Lyn continued to curse her. ‘You just made this a hundred times worse for me! And just when all of my injuries were healed at the same time for the first time since I got here.’

Hanataro and Ryunosuke shot Lyn nervous glances, and even some of the students Lyn didn’t know so well seemed concerned. This was meant to be a class of the weakest and least coordinated.

Soon, everyone was standing across from a partner, spread out across the large training hall.

“Begin.”

Isobe immediately attacked Lyn with a heavy downward swing that she narrowly dodged, and it struck the floorboards with a crack! On the second and third swing, Lyn was still on the retreat from Isobe’s vicious strikes, not daring to block lest she break her wrists.

Lyn wanted to try and draw him into a distracting conversation, but there was no room to breathe. Lyn ducked under a slash to her head and sidestepped another while moving forward, striking at Isobe’s throat with her sheathed wakizashi.

She missed.

He kicked Lyn in the stomach with a heavy side kick, sending spittle from her mouth, and followed it up with a strike against her stomach, wielding his asauchi more like a bat.

Lyn quickly rolled out of the way of another downward slash and stumbled to her feet as she popped back up.

There was no point system to save her, only a five-minute timer; courtesy of classic Sakai-sensei sadism.

“Quit, running, like, a coward!” Isobe shouted; each word punctuated by a swing.

Lyn wheezed as she tried to keep her breathing even despite her aching ribs. Pumped full of adrenaline, Lyn managed to keep dodging and weaving, hyper-focused on where Isobe was aiming to strike next. And for a moment, Lyn had found a rhythm to the terrible exercise that was swordplay. Dodge, duck, deflect.

Isobe, distracting himself with his own rage - because Lyn should have just stood there like a good punching bag – put too much force behind his swing, sending him off balance. Seeing an opening, Lyn skirted behind him and to hit the back of his legs. But that was where Lyn’s luck ended abruptly as Isobe recovered, spinning on his heel.

The world spun, and Lyn hit the ground with a thud.

Pain bloomed across either side of her head from the strike and the fall, leaving her thoughts lost in a pounding mess of pain.

Lyn felt her accelerating heart rate and shallow yet rapid breathing slow as the world came back into focus with Hanataro leaning over her, hands green with kaido. After a minute of healing, Lyn’s rattled brain had settled itself, and she was understanding the words on Hanataro’s lips.

“Chiba-san! Chiba-san, can you hear me?” Hanataro had tears starting to well up in his eyes.

“Yerp.” Lyn sat up and felt blood on her temple and new, ragged scar tissue.

Hanataro looked down. “Sorry that I couldn’t heal the wound neater.”

Smiling at him, Lyn gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Thanks, Yamada-san. You’re really skilled at healing, and I don’t mind the scar at all.” Her head still ached, but first aid was better than nothing.

Hanataro’s ears warmed at the praise. “I’ve been doing some extra training lately.”

‘I might give the poor kid a heart attack if I took off these bandages and conservative clothes,’ Lyn joked to herself despite the tension she still felt crawling under her skin. She glanced to the side. ‘At least Sakai sicked Isobe on someone else already.’

Sakai-sensei walked over to them, and Lyn and Hanataro quickly got back to their feet from where they were kneeling. She looked between them slowly with narrowed eyes.

When her lips parted, they expected sharp reprimands for the interruption to her class. “Yamada-san, you have a better kaido technique than most students by the end of their second year. But you must not slack in your other disciplines, or you will be a liability on the battlefield.”

Hanataro awkwardly straightened up. “Yes, Sakai-sensei!”

She turned her attention to Lyn who flicked off a bit of the dried blood on her forehead. “Your technique is improving, but you’re too fragile to keep being on the defensive. Get faster and commit more to your strikes to make them count.”

Sakai-sensei turned on her heel and headed towards a pair of students who had started wrestling on the ground.

Lyn and Hanataro looked at each other in pure bewilderment.

“Did Sakai-sensei just give us constructive feedback?” Lyn whispered.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Hanataro whispered back.

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Note

▮ One of my least favourite things in isekai fanfics is when it gets revealed that the MC is from another world too quickly and/or without consequences ( ˙▿˙ ) Will Lyn ever tell Akon, will he find out for himself, or will it remain a secret? Expect more shenanigans. ✧˖°

▮ Also, I think that it’s reasonable for Hanataro to be a bit accelerated in his kaido training with some friends supporting him, a bit less bullying going on (because we learn that even in the 4th Division it happened to him constantly), and with some added motivation and confidence in himself!

▮ Thank you so much for reading and for all of your kind and interesting comments! Feel free to leave any thoughts, questions or opinions down below!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Warm sunlight trickled down through the canopy above, and a curious bird watched as two souls exchanged blows with their sheathed weapons.

Almost four months in the academy had resulted in Shino rising to the top of the third class with plenty of opportunities to beat Isobe into leaving Hanataro and Lyn alone, as well as being skilled enough to start helping her considerably weaker friends with their own technique.

“You’re being too timid!” Shino shouted, striking downwards. “Try and hit me like you mean it!”

Lyn braced a hand against the side of her sword, eyes flinching half-closed at how close Shino’s weapon came to her cranium. Recovering from the harsh jolt that went through her arms to her shoulders, Lyn darted to Shino’s left while dropping into a crouch and swung out her leg for a low leg sweep.

Shino deftly jumped over Lyn’s legs and kicked Lyn’s chest, throwing her onto her back and adding to the grass stains all over her uniform.

Hanataro jogged over with Ryunosuke from the mossy log they had been seated on at the edge of the small clearing. “Good job, Chiba-san! You lasted thirty seconds longer than last time.”

Hanataro’s hands glowed a soft green as they passed over all the places, he had seen her get hit the hardest, knowing that purpling bruises were forming underneath.

“Thanks! And you’re getting really good at healing, Yamada-san,” Lyn complimented him, stretching out her muscles that were still aching, but no longer pulsing with pain.

Hanataro sighed, shaking his head. “Our extra training sessions are certainly giving me plenty of practice.”

“Thank you for the spar, Madarame-san,” Lyn nodded her head toward said woman. “Sorry, you’re probably not getting as much out of it as we are, haha.”

“No, at least this much training is necessary if you guys want to keep up.” Shino frowned and crossed her arms. “But you’re still flinching at any overhead strikes towards your head. Did Isobe hitting you on the head scare you that badly?”

“To be fair, you do hit like a gorilla- Ah!” Ryunosuke shrieked at the narrowly missed swing Shino aimed at his head.

“Like a what, Ryunosuke?!”

Ryunosuke scampered behind Hanataro and Lyn. “Nothing! Nothing at all! I’m sorry!”

“But back to what I was saying. We need to be at our best for the mid-year exams.” Shino declared. “And you three still barely know how to fight!”

Hanataro awkwardly shuffled in place. “I really don’t like hurting others.”

Lyn pointedly avoided eye contact. “I just want to be a paper pusher.”

Ryunosuke held his hands behind his back. “If I fail all my exams, can I go home?”

“You guys… seriously.” Shino slapped a hand to her forehead.

“There’s also been a lot of talk amongst the other first-year students that they’ve noticed a huge drop in teaching quality in the lower classes,” Shino added with a snarl forming on her face. “And with how many accidents happen in the end-of-year prac-exam, I don’t want you guys to lose an arm because your sensei were all trash!”

Everyone felt certifiably cowed by Shino’s words.

‘I came here to regulate my soul, but she’s right. It will be important to know too to not die a stupid death before any crazy canon events even happen because I wasn’t taught swordplay or kido as well as I could have been,’ Lyn thought with a sigh.

“By the way, Madarame-san, where did you learn to fight?” Lyn asked, curious. Shino was using a different fighting style from what was taught at the academy, making fighting her all the harder for Lyn who’d only ever seen fighting on T.V. or in street fights that didn’t involve her before coming to the academy. Additionally, class four’s sensei was more focused on physical drills to get them somewhat on par with their peers in the third class.

Of the four of them, Shino was certainly the best at melee combat.

‘And there’s something familiar about Shino’s name… Madarame, Madarame… Where have I heard that before?’ Lyn thought while staring at Shino’s perfectly smooth, shiny forehead, sparkling in the midday crepuscular rays.

Shino rested her sheathed sword on her shoulder. “I learned while travelling through the Rukongai with my older brother. Well, he’s not actually my brother, but we got passed around between so many family members growing up that we’ve lost track of exactly how we’re related. He was constantly hunting for strong people to fight, and it’s only natural that I learned how to fight as well. And if I ever introduce you to Ikkaku-nii-san, don’t mind how weird he is.”

‘Wait… Ikkaku?’ Lyn managed to stop her jaw from dropping. ‘As in spear-wielding, lucky dancing, 11^th division weirdo Ikkaku?!’

“He is a little strange,” Ryunosuke agreed. “The Madarame head family residence is quite close to the Yuki’s, so we were introduced to one another when they moved in years ago. But Ikakku didn’t stay for long, even though he technically has a place to stay there.”

“And all these years, I still haven’t managed to get it into your skull that you need to train harder!” Shino growled at him, snatching Ryunosuke into a headlock. “Gramps asked me to look out for your weak butt, so you have to at least make it to graduation!”

“Mwercy,” Ryunosuke wheezed.

Lyn quickly calmed herself while watching their usual antics. ‘I mean, I guess this should be fine? Just because I’m friends with Shino, doesn’t mean I’m going to get involved with Ikkaku or any of his canon events. He doesn’t have that many after the Soul Society Arc, does he?’

As soon as Shino was done scolding him, Ryunosuke turned to Hanataro. “And how did you learn how to heal so well, Yamada-san? Did you have training before attending the academy?”

Hanataro immediately becomes shy as all eyes turn to him with nods of agreement. “Oh, well, I’d never used kaido before the academy. But my brother’s a member of the 4^th Division, so I’ve had plenty of time to look over books on the theory of kaido and some other related topics. I’ve always wanted to help others, so I decided I was going to do my best to become a member of the 4^th Division as well.” Hanataro’s confidence seemed to grow as he continued. “I’ve also been feeling extra motivated to study and practice because if you guys are ever injured by Hollows in the future, I want to do my best to help you without regrets.”

“I feel so reassured, Yamada-san.” Ryunosuke held onto the other boy’s hands.

“Yamada-san is the best,” Lyn declared from behind a dramatic hand placed over her mouth.

Confidence looked good on Hanataro. He had slowly been coming out of his shell over the past few months to both Lyn’s delight and concern. Hanataro was growing and improving as both a person and a future Shinigami, but as good as that was for Hanataro, Lyn couldn’t predict what it would mean for the future of this world’s timeline. And knowing how things were going to end up was one of Lyn’s few advantages.

Shino gave Ryunosuke a chop to the back of the head. “Oi, that’s not an excuse to let yourself get beat up. Don’t burden Yamada-san.”

“I’m the youngest of five siblings,” Ryunosuke continued to speak, ignoring the attack. “And I’m not particularly good at anything related to the family business, so my family head sent me to join the Gotei 13 because it’s prestigious for the family… That’s only if I don’t come home an embarrassment though.”

“Which you won’t! Not on my watch,” Shino snapped.

“And how did you get so good at academic and paperwork-related classes, Chiba-san?” Hanataro asked.

“I spent a few months in the mountains collecting mushrooms.”

Shino’s eyelid twitched. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“And then I got stalked.”

“You what?!”

“And that’s how I became one of the top students in paperwork, division logistics, and reporting.” Lyn smiled and delicately tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“You just left us with more questions!”

▯▯▯▮

Akon dropped down onto the reishi-infused air outside of Lyn’s dorm room window, scaring the hell out of her and causing her to chuck her pen at his head. He deftly caught the offending stationary and dropped it back down onto her notebook.

“If I hadn’t set up privacy kido around your room, you’d have already been investigated long ago for all the noise you make.” Akon sighed and dropped inside.

Instead of turning around to look at him, Lyn kept leaning backwards until she could see his upside-down figure. “And just when did you set up those?”

“A month ago, when your sword split into two.”

“And you didn’t even think to tell me, you weirdo?”

Akon sat down beside her, back leant against her dresser casually as he sorted through the strange collection of items hidden within the lining of his lab coat. “No, not really.”

Lyn finally turned to face him fully with a disapproving face. “And you wonder why I call you a creepy stalker, a tumour-wielding weirdo, a creepy creeper, a suspicious-”

“Food.” Akon tossed a neatly wrapped sandwich at Lyn’s head, cutting off her ramblings with a delighted gasp as it bounced off her forehead and into her lap.

“An egg salad sandwich!” Lyn cried, and immediately dug into the food. “Ah, I missed the taste of these so much. You’re the best, Akon!” The last time Akon had visited, Lyn had been rambling about missing Western food, though she still loved Japanese cuisine, but she never expected him to actually do anything with that information. “Where’d you get this, anyway?”

“You’re finally going to start calling me by my name, Lyn-san?”

Lyn held her hand over her mouth bashfully, looking down dramatically. “I deeply apologise, Stalker-san, it was but a slip of the tongue.”

Akon’s eyelid twitched. “You apologise for calling me by my name but not all the other crap you call me?”

Lyn took another bite of her food while maintaining unashamed eye contact. “Yup. Now, why are you sneaking into my room in the middle of the night today, Stalker-san?”

Akon wanted to bury his head in his hands but opted to flick her in the forehead instead.

“Ouch! Assaultergami- Ouch! Stop flicking me!”

Akon clicked his tongue. “Just call me by my name. You’ve already done it once now.”

“That’s a weird kink, Kinkigami-san- ah!”

“Akon.”

Lyn aimed to poke him in the eyes. “Blindedgami- ouch!”

Akon easily grabbed her arm and simply stood up, leaving her dangling in the air.

“A-kon,” he sounded it out for her.

‘This tall, lanky, bastard, putting me in air jail!’ Lyn swung at him, but he just held her out further with his long arms. ‘I can’t believe I used to think this guy was such a cool character!’

“Put me down!” Lyn thrashed but was quickly dropped onto her face. Lyn rolled onto her back with a scowl and decided to stay on the ground, arms folded over her chest.

With a final sigh, Akon pulled out his notebook and started going over the results of his recent testing. “So, Lyn, your bone density is finally at normal strength, but it’s still weaker than most Shinigami. Your muscle density is also…”

▯▯▯▮

The exam week itself was filled with studying and training. Though Lyn neglected her hakuda and zanjutsu training, she finally learned how to use her reiryoku to reinforce her movements somewhat and perform a bastardized version of a flash step which was more of a speedy jump from one foot to another with some uncomfortable tingling in her calves. But for a first-year in class four, it was more than enough.

And as cool as Lyn thought learning to use a sword was, the initial wonder wore off the second she got concussed and left bleeding on the dojo floor. Being valuable away from the front lines – not a healer, or a fighter – and making sure she had the speed to hop out of the frying pan and not get licked by the tongues of the fire seemed like a more useful pursuit. It was a shame she wasn’t smart enough by a landslide to hide away in the 12^th Division and didn’t have the acting skills to slip anything past Kurotsuchi if she had to be within his direct radius so often.

At least, hoho and paperwork were meant to be her main focuses. Instead, they end up coming second to Lyn’s new obsession with kido once Akon had given her the okay to start casting it more regularly. Because you don’t give a young, twenty-first century woman from a boring, magicless world who used to be bound to a bleak corporate future and not expect her to become entranced.

“Unleash thy fury, gather and thrust: Hado 1, Sho!” Lyn cast, the hado having the strength of solid punch, enough to collapse the wooden target inwards. Feeling more confident after hitting 8 of her ten targets, Lyn opted to switch to a higher kido for her last shot. “Crack of thunder, sizzling red flesh: Hado 4, Byakurai!”

Lyn felt the reiryoku flowing through her veins twist, bend, and sizzle as it exited the tip of her finger as a thin, jagged bolt of lightning. It missed the target she was aiming for due to its chaotic nature and her lack of experience, but coincidentally hit another one of her targets. The target was left lightly charred with thin trails of smoke wafting from it.

“Good, good,” Kumagi-sensei complemented, the stout woman looking oddly pleased, despite Lyn doing as well as the other top members of class four – which wasn’t much. “I told Goya-san that you’d be able to make it through ten kido without fainting by the end of the semester, hohoho!”

‘I can’t believe my hakuda and kido sensei are betting on how long I can stay conscious.’ Lyn wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but she settled on mildly annoyed. ‘I wasn’t that bad at the beginning of the semester, was I?’

Lyn maintained a polite smile, knowing that Kumagi-sensei was as easy to piss off as a grizzly bear despite her kind, round face. “Thank you, Kumagi-sensei.”

Except for maybe fainting the first time she had cast Byakurai.

And getting at least once a week in hakuda or zanjutsu class.

Lyn pursed her lips together awkwardly. ‘Ok, well I guess it was pretty bad, but it’s not my fault my soul was literally falling apart trying to exist in this nonsense world.’

She discreetly flexed the muscles in her arm, feeling a fresh ache. ‘And if I overdo it with the kido I still get knocked out or hurt from the sudden imbalance in my natural energy and this world’s… Okay, maybe it’s not so weird to bet that I’ll survive the examination week. ’

But so far Lyn had, and she was on track to be moved up to class three for both hoho and kido. That is if she could demonstrate her abilities in a practical setting in the final exam, because what use were techniques and skills if you couldn’t use them under pressure?

So, by the end of the week, Lyn found herself standing in line with Hanataro, and Ryunosuke, while Shino was on another part of campus set to have a harder exam, as they were divided by zanjutsu classes for the final practical.

‘I guess it shows that swordsmanship is still considered the most favoured of Shinigami skills, despite how effective kido and hakuda alone can be.’ Lyn could think of a few examples of Shinigami that didn’t even use their zanpakuto most of the time in the manga and anime, but zanjutsu was still predominantly seen as the most vital skill for most.

“Attention!” their examiner shouted, silencing any chatter amongst the group. “You should all be standing with your submitted or assigned teams, and unless you have a good excuse for why you’re alone, consider yourself failed! This is first and foremost a teamwork exercise.”

There was a nervous air among the students.

A lot of the students, like Lyn and her own friends, weren’t just in the fourth class for zanjutsu, but most of the other combat classes as well. Class three was meant to be the lower end of average.

They were, essentially, the weakest of the weakest.

The future cannon fodder and hollow bait.

They would only have so many chances to move up to higher classes, and by now, everyone knew that you would get a drastically higher quality of teaching just by moving from the fourth to the third class of any combat discipline. It was the difference between your hoho teacher letting you repeatedly fall onto your face until you figured it out for yourself or keeping you after class to help you improve some errors in your technique. It was the difference between your hakuda sensei making you beat each other to a pulp, or showing you altered versions of techniques that better suited your build. It was the difference between your kido teacher droning on about theory or taking a minute to monitor the flow of reiryoku through each student’s body to make sure it was correct as they cast their kido. It was the difference in your zanjutsu sensei telling you to mindlessly repeat drills, and actually noticing when your sword had completely changed sizes (not to mention anyone in particular).

It would probably be the difference between getting killed on their first hollow patrol in the Human World or living to struggle another day.

Lyn grimaced. She could somewhat understand that the Shinigami had been enjoying a prolonged time of peace – withholding losing a few lieutenants and captains – and that right now it didn’t matter if the cannon fodder stayed at the level of cannon fodder. If anything, maybe it was more useful to keep the lower ranks as helpless pawns to their superiors and the whims of Central 46 when they could afford to. She understood, somewhat, that she and the other students around her were generally on a level that a lot of their sensei would consider a waste to invest any extra time in.

But maybe if they knew what was coming, fewer members of the Gotei 13 would die when the Blood War came knocking on their doorstep and knocked their society of souls on their unprepared asses.

Lyn near-silently scoffed, massaging a growing headache between her eyes. ‘Yeah, there’s no way I warn the Shinigami that the Quincy are living in their literal shadows without ending worse off than if I had kept my mouth shut. And I’m not even completely sure of that.’

She felt a pang of something unpleasant roll through her guts.

‘But maybe Akon, Hanataro, Shino, and Ryunosuke will come out the other end worse.’ Lyn chewed on her inner cheek and kept her eyes on the examiner as she forced down the feeling. ‘Forget about it. You can barely take care of yourself, you idiot.’

The examiner began to announce the rules. “Each team of three will need to utilize any and all of their skills to collect one of each token for full marks.” He held up three palm-length tubes of bamboo, each being red, yellow, and blue respectively. “Keep your asauchi sheathed at all times, and return to this clearing by sundown, or you fail! Go!”

“But where are we meant to go?” Hanataro asked Lyn and Ryunosuke quietly.

It seemed everyone else had the same question.

“I SAID GET MOVING! HOLLOWS AND OTHER ENEMIES WON’T JUST TELL YOU WHERE THEY ARE! SO, HUNT DOWN YOUR OBJECTIVES, MEAT BAGS!” He bellowed at them, his loudness seeming to be enhanced with reiryoku that left their ears ringing.

They scattered like startled animals.

“Let’s try the bamboo forest that’s just north of here first,” Lyn suggested while rubbing her sore ear. “The tokens themselves might be a clue.”

The two boys agreed. And it seems they weren’t the only ones who thought that the bamboo tubes themselves were a hint, noticing at least four other groups headed in the same direction. Within a few minutes of running that left Lyn and Ryunosuke lightly panting while Hanataro was unaffected, they found a large sign at the border of the oak and bamboo forests.

A Shinigami should be able to locate their target, be it a hollow that needs to be exterminated, or an ally or soul that requires assistance.

Though not endless, the bamboo forest was vast and sprawling, and it seemed their first test was to find a needle in a haystack.

“Yamada-san, have you learned how to use reiraku in the third kido class?” Lyn asked.

Hanataro shook his head. “That’s a high-level technique that only a few sixth-year students know.”

Lyn looked around and noted that the other students had disappeared further into the forest. “Ways to locate a target or ally without reiraku…” Lyn quickly clustered together a small pile of leaves and pointed a finger at it. “Crack of thunder, sizzling red flesh: Hado 4, Byakurai!” A tiny zap of electricity hit the small pile of leaves, starting a small fire and sending a twirling column of smoke into the air.

Ryunosuke jumped back. “W-What was that for?!”

“If there’s an ally, then they know someone is over here. If it’s an enemy, then they might come out and investigate too,” Lyn suggested. “Or maybe we’re just meant to go out and search on foot.”

“Wait, over there!” Ryunosuke pointed up at the sky. “We actually got a reply.”

A fresh trail of smoke rose from deeper within the bamboo forest.

After quickly putting out their fire, they followed the smoke. They occasionally had to stop and shimmy up bamboo poles to make sure they were headed in the right direction when the stalks clustered together too high and too densely.

Eventually, they came across a small clearing where two senior students covered in fake blood – in the form of obnoxiously bright, pink paint –were sprawled on the ground.

“Oh nooo, we’re dying!”

“Ah, both of my legs are broken,” the other student droned in a monotonous voice, staring ahead with a bored expression.

His friend turned to him with a scowl. “You’re really terrible at acting.”

“Oh, they’re here,” the man with ‘broken legs’ said, ignoring his friend, and pouring a handful of dirt onto their small fire to put it out. “You need to either carry us back to the checkpoint at the entrance of the bamboo forest or defend this position for thirty minutes.” He pointed to a deep purple bruise on his upper arm. “Optionally, you can heal these, if any of you know kaido, that is.”

“They injured you two for a test?” Hanataro asked, his expression shocked and uncomfortable.

“Oh, no, we were having a punching competition to see who would wuss out first,” the monotonous one explained.

“So, Sakai-sensei said anyone who can heal these bruises completely gets a blue bamboo tube too!” the dramatic one continued to explain. “Usually, you’d only get a red or yellow one from this scenario.”

“Wait, what are we defending against?” Lyn asked.

And her question was answered when a classmate exited the bamboo swinging. “Ha!”

“Hado 1, Sho!” Lyn barely managed to cast the hado from her fingertip, giving her classmate the equivalent of a ranged slap to the face for surprising her.

“Ouch!”

Another senior student, this one standing in the air, pointed down at Lyn’s team. “Either beat the other team or hit one of those wounded morons on the ground and you’ll get a red tube!”

‘Maybe they’re using fake scenarios to test different types of skills and our teamwork? And the upperclassmen are either the supporting actors or directing the scenarios.’ Lyn chewed her inner cheek, going over their options.

“Yamada-san, could you start healing their bruises?” Lyn directed him while she readied her own sheathed blade.

Hanataro gave a hesitant nod, but his voice was confident, “Okay!”

“We’re going to fight?” Ryunosuke asked, hands unsteadily raising his own sword as the opposing team’s members stomped through the forest to catch up to their first member who had rushed head. “Can’t we just carry them and run?”

“Can you run while carrying a fully grown man while under attack?” Lyn asked, and his silence was all the confirmation she needed to widen her stance into a more grounded one.

Their classmate kept his own offensive stance and glanced behind him. He was clearly waiting for his teammates to catch up, and Lyn cursed at herself for hesitating, because those precious moments when it could have been two on one were gone within seconds.

One enemy team member engaged Lyn and Ryunosuke each, the two of them being put on the defensive while the third woman rushed towards Hanataro and the ‘injured.’

Lyn directed her index and middle finger to the classmate who aimed a strike at Hanataro’s back.

“Bakudo 1, Sai!” Lyn cast, and Hanataro’s would-be attacker fell to the ground with his arms and hands bound together with invisible bindings. But they would only last for a few seconds long without the added power of the incantation, and a wave of nausea hit her from the rough, and unprepared release of reiryoku from her system.

But Lyn’s current opponent didn’t just sit and wait while she cast, she was kicked in the back of her legs, causing her to flop onto the ground on her stomach. Her classmate smirked and made to run past her, but she grabbed his ankle, sending him to the ground in front of her.

Thwok!

His head hit a tree root with an oddly hollow sound, leaving him unconscious and Lyn stunned at her luck. One moment her mouth was agape in disbelief, in the next, she rushed to clash sheathed blades with the blond woman who had freed herself from Lyn’s Sai and was about to head for Hanataro once more.

“Chiba-san! Help me!” Ryunosuke screeched as he ran from his own opponent.

“You’re doing great, Yuki-san!” Lyn shouted back, preoccupied with her own fight. Plus, he was effectively keeping the one chasing him away from the injured in his own way.

Lyn’s hand ached as she blocked and parried the faster and stronger strikes from her opponent, the other woman a lot more aggressive in her approach.

Lyn parried, ducked, and popped back up while throwing a handful of dust and dirt into her opponent’s eyes. While the blond was blinded, Lyn slammed her heel into the side of her knee, not breaking it, but still sending the woman to the ground shouting in pain. Moments like this made Lyn wish she was wearing a pair of shoes, or even a wooden geta, rather than her flimsy zori.

She was torn between satisfaction and gut-twisting guilt.

She swallowed thickly and quickly turned to help Ryunosuke, only for a hand to grasp her own ankle, sending her to the ground in the same manner she had done to her unconscious classmate minutes earlier.

The blond shouted at her. “I’m not failing this exam to one of the worst swordsmen in our class!”

The second knuckles contacted Lyn’s face, and the pain shot up her jaw and rattled her brain, leaving her stunned.

Thwok!

Thud!

Thump!

Lyn heard the crunch of her nose breaking more than she felt it. She almost reached for the tanto strapped to her thigh – fight fight fight – but managed to cover her face with her arms that took the beating instead.

Somehow, between one moment of pulsating pain from her arms to her skull, Lyn found her hands wrapped around a warm throat and spittle flying onto her face. Nails picked at the flesh of Lyn’s hands but were partially blocked by layers of bandages.

Lyn stared up at the bloodshot eyes of the suffocating girl above her.

They were hazel.

Lyn didn’t know if she should let go, and her hands clenched down harder in her panic. ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, she’s turning bright red! Why aren’t the upperclassmen stopping the fight?!’

Lyn breathed in short, panicked breaths.

The girl she was choking wheezed out a mouthful of spit bubbles as she clawed a hand towards Lyn’s eyes that were out of reach by mere millimetres.

Lyn was waiting for the girl to tap out or give some sort of signal for surrender, but it never came. She just kept writhing and thrashing, and her eyes carried the full intent to split Lyn’s head open the second she was foolish enough to loosen her grip.

It was one thing to cleanly knock out an opponent with a quick, coincidental concussion. It was another to watch them slowly struggle – to watch them suffer as you stared them straight in their asphyxiating face. Somehow, this was scarier than being in the same room as Aizen – but maybe that was because, in her mind, he was still just a character and not a real person. Not like the warm-blooded soul struggling under Lyn’s scarred hands where she could feel every desperate attempt at breathing and the frantic beating of her blood through her throat.

This felt very different from her fight with Isobe.

And there was something that simmered spitefully in Lyn’s bones at having been hit in the head again.

One of the injured students whistled. “Woah, that’s one crazy catfight. First-years in the fourth class always have the messiest fights, huh?”

“That’s what you get with Rukongai rats with no honour, I guess.”

‘This level of violence between students is meant to be normal?!’ A single tear and blood from Lyn’s bleeding nose dripped down the side of her beaten and swelling face.

“Hang in there, Chiba-san! I’m almost done!” Hanataro shouted, but Lyn felt like she was underwater.

Just before Lyn started to hyperventilate proper, she felt the girl above her go limp. She tossed the blonde’s body to the side and scrambled to her feet. The blonde’s throat was red and bruising, and all of Lyn’s knuckles down to the tips of her fingers ached, twitched, and flushed red. She was still breathing. Lyn’s eyes flicked to the three upperclassmen casually chatting as Hanataro finished up his healing, and Ryunosuke was kneeled over exhausted side by side with his opponent as the two of them had tired themselves out with their prolonged chase without even fighting.

Lyn let out a shaky sigh. She wiped the blood and sweat from her face in one swipe of her sleeve, leaving red smears she didn’t care to properly clean right now.

The female upperclassmen looked at Lyn with a bit of disgust but threw her the red token and murmured something about outer Rukongai under her breath.

The two male students, now with perfectly healed bruises, passed a blue token to Hanataro.

“My arm feels great! That’s the best healing I’ve seen from a first year in a while. Anyways, we’ll be taking these kids to the medical office,” the livelier one said, slinging a student over his shoulder, with the other two older students doing the same with their other downed classmates. “If you want that yellow token before sundown, then pay close attention to what you’ve already got on hand.”

In a matter of seconds, it was just Lyn, Hanataro, and Ryunosuke left in the bamboo forest clearing.

While Lyn had taken a sort of leading position when the test had abruptly started, she didn’t think she’d be much help directing them now with how unfocused she was.

“Let’s rest for a short bit while we try to figure out what that upperclassman meant,” Hanataro suggested. “We don’t know what we’ll run into next, so let’s be careful, everyone.”

Ryunosuke and Lyn nodded in agreement, and the three of them shared a relieved sigh as they plopped down on a small patch of grass. They quietly caught their breath and dusted themselves off.

Hanataro healed the worst of the swelling in Lyn’s face, but she stopped him from healing it completely, noticing the way his hands lightly trembled and fresh sweat beaded across his forehead. Feeling more present, Lyn checked the two of them over for injuries, and thankfully there was nothing serious.

None of them were good fighters, and Lyn could already feel the full-body discomfort of having to use multiple kido without full chants and concentration. Her hand ached where reiryoku had been roughly exiting from, and she could already hear the complaints of her taller zanpakuto spirit. Lyn crossed her fingers that they wouldn’t need to fight again to get a yellow token. Just placing a hand on his handle, she could feel displeasure fizzle under her palm.

“Oh!” Ryunosuke jumped, turning their attention to him and his now wet lap. In his hands were the blue-painted bamboo tube dripping with water, and a cap in his other. “Why is it full of water?!”

“Wait, there’s something in the red one too,” Hanataro said, pouring out red sand onto his hand. “Is this, iron?”

“Are these more geographical clues, like the bamboo tokens being linked to the bamboo forest?” Lyn thought aloud.

“Maybe it’s downstream at a river? There’s a little arrow on the lid of the blue bamboo tube that was pointing down when I poured out the water,” Hanataro noted.

“Or maybe…” Ryunosuke stared to say, chin cupped in his hand. “Then I think I know where we need to go to earn the yellow token! In bends of rivers where the water flow slows, it accumulates heavier sediments like iron sand – so maybe it’s at the training ground that sits in the inner bend on the lower end of the river that cuts through the academy grounds! I noticed a lot there the last time we trained there before we got kicked out by the senior students.”

“Good thinking, Yuki-san!” Hanataro complimented, and Lyn nodded in agreement. “Let’s try heading to that training ground first, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll continue downstream.”

▯▯▯▮

As soon as everyone was ready to move, Ryunosuke and Hanataro led the team with renewed energy and a touch of excitement. Lyn trailed a few running steps behind, no longer feeling torn, just tired.

Coming upon the grass-edged, dirt training ground tucked into the river’s wide bend, they found three other teams waiting in front of a senior student. As soon as they joined the end of the larger group, the student clapped his hands together with an excited smile.

“Alright!” She grinned as she glanced over them. “Now that there are six of you, raise your hand if you have a blue or a red token.”

Hanataro raised his hand, and a thick manila envelope was handed to him along with three of the other teams.

“You’ll need to deliver one of these envelopes all the way upstream to the academy ground wall to my friend who will be waiting for you, and you’ll get a yellow token. Consider it an important secret message, so don’t let it be opened, damaged, or even a single page stolen, or you’ll fail this test,” she explained. “And if you don’t have a red token yet, then you can either take an extra envelope,” She held up two more as she smirked at the remaining two teams. “Or chase down the other teams and destroy their messages. If you successfully destroy them all, you’ll get a bonus red token and be considered for movement into the third zanjutsu class even if you don’t have the grades for it.”

As soon as Lyn heard those words, she grabbed Hanataro and Ryunosuke’s hands and started to book it for upstream as fighting broke out behind them. The sound of battle immediately broke out behind them.

Lyn chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘Of course, we didn’t get a proper countdown after all the rules were laid out.’

“Yuki-san!” Lyn called out. “Do you know how far upstream we have to go?”

Ryunosuke glanced over his shoulder at the rapidly disappearing fights behind them. “A-At this speed it should take us about twenty minutes, but we can cut it to fifteen if we cut straight through the forest and other training grounds instead of following the river directly!”

Wordlessly, Yuki-san began to guide them up at the front of the team, Hanataro with their package went in the middle, and Lyn was at the back, ready to throw kido over her shoulder if any of the two attacking teams started to catch up to them.

They’re ahead of the pack and five minutes into running – with Lyn constantly glancing back, none of them are expecting to be attacked from the front.

Ryunosuke goes down like a sack of rice, the wind audibly knocked out of his lungs. In the time it takes for Hanataro and Lyn to shout their comrade’s name, the envelope in Hanataro’s hands is hit with a red, hot Shakkaho, reducing it to ashes, and singing Hanataro’s stomach.

The exam was over for them.

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Author’s Note

• Hi hi everyone~ I really hope you all enjoyed the chapter since it’s been almost two months since I’ve updated haha
• I also wanted to thank everyone for all the kudos, comments and support that this little fic of mine has had so far! (I especially love the new Akon fans I’ve created- kekekeke ✨) I wasn’t expecting it, or just how motivating the comments would be when I was feeling stressed pulling all-nighters haha. You guys are the best (●’◡’●)
• Feel free to leave any opinions, comments, or questions down below! I try my best to respond to everyone when I can!

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Chapter Text

Crowds were gathering outside the zanjutsu hall, hakuda hall, kido courtyard, and hoho field – everyone eager to see the grades that had been publicly posted in order of the student’s rankings. Lyn had joined the tight mass of students fighting to see their grades and wondered why it couldn’t have just been sent to them privately, but public grades would only drive competitiveness in what was essentially a boot camp for the Gotei 13.

But what most students were more concerned about was whether or not they would be moving up into a higher-ranked class next semester.

There had been a thick air of desperation around the fourth class as they had crowded around their noticeboards. It made Lyn wonder if she should have fought and struggled harder – if she should have been more cutthroat in her approach like the blond woman in the exam who had almost been trying to kill Lyn.

‘That soul… she must have a lot at stake to have fought so hard.’ Lyn chewed on her lip. ‘But don’t I have a lot at stake as well? Do I need to be that vicious, or do I just need to keep hiding in the background?’

Thin, wispy clouds drifted over Lyn and her friends as they sat in a loose circle on the grass, finding one another after checking their respective noticeboards, and collecting their notices of class changes if they received any.

Shino looked down; shoulders hunched. “I was only moved up to class two for hoho…”

“That’s okay, Shino-san,” Ryunosuke reached out a hand for her shoulder. “There’s still plenty of time before we graduate to move up!”

“And being in class two is impressive,” Lyn smiled at Shino in support. “The gap between class two and one is much bigger than the other classes, so give yourself some time.”

Shino let out a small sigh but nodded her head lightly at their words. Still frowning, Shino turned her still mildly displeased face to Ryunosuke. “And what about you?”

Ryunosuke avoided eye contact. “I will… strive to get into the third classes? I didn’t fail any of my exams or anything!” He raised his hands placatingly.

Shino shook her head with her hands on her hips. “Well, at least that’s something.”

“Yamada-san?” Lyn prompted him with a grin, already knowing the good news.

“Oh, I’ve been moved into class two for kido with special consideration because of my… skills in kaido?” Hanataro exclaimed, still shocked by his results.

Ryunosuke nodded enthusiastically. “We told you! Your healing is really great, Yamada-san! All my healed injuries from the beast can attest to it.”

“What beast, huh?” Shino asked, leaning forward with a hand reached out like a claw.

“Save me, Yamada-san!” he screeched, latching onto the said boy and sending them both flopping onto the grass.

“Pff,” Shino let out from behind her covered mouth.

“Haha, good job, Yamada-san,” Lyn added, and Shino chimed in congratulations as well. “It’s  a shame we won’t be in the same class even though I managed to move up into class three for kido too, and hoho, but it’s great that the sensei are noticing your skills.”

Ryunosuke and Hanataro sat up from the grass, the latter with tears in his eyes.

“E-Everyone… you’re all the best friends I’ve ever had!” Hanataro cried, launching himself at his friends for a group hug that Ryunosuke and Lyn welcomed. They forced a struggling Shino into their tangle of arms.

“Shit!” Shino cursed, even as they could feel her hug them back. “If we’re going to start hugging each other and all that sappy crap, then you two idiots better start calling me by my first name like this one!”

“Wah!” Ryunosuke let out a strange squawk as Shino presumably jabbed him somewhere ticklish.

▯▯▯▮

“You shouldn’t be getting so close to fools that might get themselves killed in the future,” Lyn’s taller spirit frowned, his paper kimono fluttering in agitation around him like leaves rustling under a sharp gust.

“What’s wrong with having friends and having fun!” the little one shouted, jumping around as he splashed in the ankle-deep water.

Lyn was still too conflicted to decide.

The tall one clicked his tongue. “Our leader wouldn’t even be in this academy if not for needing to join their ranks to maintain ownership of us.”

The child stomped. “Boss got a second chance at life – she should live however she wants!”

“We shouldn’t interfere more than we already are in the timeline of this story,” he hissed. “The more we alter, the less we’ll be able to predict! The less we can predict, the more at risk we shall be!”

Lyn simply crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the ground. Every time she had come into her inner world, they had simply bickered back and forth on the same topic. The water, rather than just lapping at her ankles, seemed to become deeper the longer she stared.

“To hell with the timeline!” The little one crashed into Lyn, black pages fluttering all around him as he latched onto her waist. “Hey, hey! You never ever train with me – it’s not fair! You should do some extra private training with me so you can be ready to learn our names quickly! Your body is still too weak.”

The tall one sighed and ran a hand through his white hair. “Is it even a good idea to give the leader our names when that time comes?”

Now that got Lyn’s attention.

She blinked at him in confusion. “But isn’t it in our best interest for me to know?”

The tall one ticked his hands into his large, paper sleeves and floated a step further away. “Is it? Will knowing the name of your zanpakuto, us, not put you in a position to be targeted by those who wish to use you? Would it not simply nudge you on the front lines of the wars to come? I think it has a higher chance of getting you killed. It’s always easier to conceal that which you do not have.”

“And it’s easier to die when you’re dead,” the little one shot back with a glare.

The tall one sighed in exasperation, falling back in the air in defeat in a horizontal position.

“I guess dying would kill you,” Lyn chimed in, and the tall one groaned, floating lower to the ground.

“Hehehe.” The little one unlatched himself from Lyn’s waist and looked up at her. “I think hiding in the shadows is cool, but cowering is no fun,” he continued, voice dropping into an unusually serious tone.

It was Lyn’s turn to sigh. “So, you just want to see some action, and the big guy wants us to live peacefully irrelevant?”

“No.” They chanted in unison. “We want you to live.”

▯▯▯▮

The break between semesters meant that Lyn had a whole month to herself. Hanataro returned to his family home like the others, and while he had invited Lyn to visit as their family were apparently happy to host her, she had to decline. It would only make it harder for Akon to reach her, and the distance might make it a bit easier to figure out just what she made of her new fast friends.

But while the Shino Academy was considerably emptier, it was by no means abandoned with there still being many students from outer Rukongai, those who simply lived too far for the journey to be worth it, or those who had no one to go back to.

And with a majority of the teaching staff gone too, the campus became quiet and tense – especially amongst the lower-year students.

Lyn headed towards the hoho training field, wondering if she would be able to sniff out one of the remaining hoho instructors for some extra tips on her technique before the new semester began, or if it was a bad idea to draw a more attentive set of eyes to herself. She rounded a corner and would have crashed straight into a fellow student if they hadn’t shoved her backwards and away from them.

Lyn immediately prickled with annoyance but put a pleasant smile on her face. “Oh! My bad, sorry about that.” She looked up, smile almost faltering, and was immediately very glad she’d kept her displeasure to herself.

Smiling down at her with eyes that were a touch too wide and pupils too narrowed was one of the other outer Rukongai students. It was well known that she’d bit an upperclassman in the throat – not killing him, just nearly – but had been allowed to continue studying since she’d made a case of self-defence.

“Oh, oh, oh!” the girl cried with a wide grin, her lavender hair bouncing along with her bobbing head. “It’s you! Kareha, right?”

Lyn stood, awkwardly dusting herself off. “Chiba, actually.”

The girl placed two scared, calloused hands on Lyn’s shoulders firmly, long nails digging into her skin through her clothes. “Kareha, Kareha, it’s so nice to meet you,” she sang, her smile brightening. “That’s the nickname me and my friends gave you! I think it’s cute.”

Lyn’s heart dropped into her stomach – because this girl only spent time with other outer Rukongai students.

“A-Ah, I see,” Lyn smiled back nervously.

She released Lyn and clapped her hands. “I’m Fuyoko, from Sabitsura, District 64. You’re from District 42, right? Da-kot-su!”

Lyn hesitated for a moment. “I am.”

Fuyuko leaned closer. “And you wouldn’t happen to be with the Daken, would you?”

Lyn’s heart picked up its pace in her chest, now knowing what the correct answer was. But from the way Fuyuko cocked her head to the side, staring into her soul like a raptor, the truth was the only thing she was getting away with today. “I’m not.”

“But you sure smelt like their brand of poisons when you first arrived,” Fuyuko stated, releasing Lyn’s shoulders to hold them behind her back which was somehow no less threatening, and Lyn cursed in her mind.

‘What the hell is this girl’s nose? Is she actually a velociraptor or something?’ Fear stuck Lyn’s friendly smile to her face like hardened glue.

“I worked as an assistant of an apothecary they probably purchased from, haha,” Lyn laughed sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck. “That might be why.”

Fuyuko cheered, “That’s even better!”

“I can’t make them for you,” Lyn blurted out.

Fuyuko and Lyn’s perpetual smiles dropped simultaneously.

“Hey, hey, hey what’s up with that?” Fuyuko asked, a touch of whininess to her tone as she cocked her head to the other side. “I’m being so nice.”

“I mean,” Lyn forced an uncomfortable smile back onto her face and raised her empty hands placatingly. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to – they don’t let assistance near those sorts of recipes, especially new ones that dip after a few months.”

“But you should at least know some of the ingredients-”

Fuyuko was cut off as the heavy pressure of someone’s reiatsu dropped on them, snapping both their spines straight and whipping their heads to the side.

Sakahone Ryuu stepped closer, towering over the two of them with arms crossed, peering at them from under rusty flakes of red hair.

“Fuyuko.” He stared down the said girl until she clicked her tongue and stepped back from Lyn with a snarl, showing off her canines. “I told you to stop drawing attention to yourself – and to keep away from the nobles and sponsored students.”

His eyes turned to Lyn, and she took her own quick step back. “Forget everything you heard.”

By the time Lyn had calmed her breathing and the slight tremors throughout her body had stopped they were long gone. Sakahone didn’t need to threaten Lyn – not when his presence itself was a threat.

Lyn chewed the inside of her cheek and headed in the opposite direction in quick strides. ‘What the hell was that?!’ Lyn thought she had been one of the most unmemorable and discreet students there was, but it apparently didn’t mask her from bloodhounds. ‘That girl seriously approached me because she wanted to poison someone? How the hell do they expect to get away with that in the middle of Soul Society?!’

Lyn rubbed at her chest. ‘Calm down Lyn, they probably don’t get away with whatever they’re doing – even if it’s just violent pettiness against other students. Characters like those would have been mentioned at least once in the story if they caused incidents that bad… Or… or it’s simply another one of the infinite amounts of ‘events’ that happen in a real world where there’s no room to include everything in a few manga panels.’

Having wandered into the nearby forest, Lyn kicked the trunk of a tree and hissed at the pain. Destroying angel mushrooms grew at the base, and Lyn kicked them too, sending little chunks of white mushroom flying into the underbrush.

Lyn sat down, leaning against the tree. She laughed mirthlessly and her hands through her hair. ‘Holy shit, I really was just about to spill all the types of toxic ingredients she’d need to make something similar to the Daken’s poisons because I was scared.’ Lyn gripped her roots painfully tight, snapping hairs. ‘But I already fucking did that didn’t I? I already indirectly killed who knows how many people with all those ingredients I helped collect for one of that gang’s damn suppliers.’

Lyn felt guilty, but more than that her blood was simmering, pressure building under her skin. Back home Lyn had spent her entire life people pleasing and following the rules, and at least it usually always indirectly benefited her in some way. Here she was indirectly killing people.

Technically they were all already dead.

But Lyn had already died too, but she was just as attached to this life as the first.

The Daken was already going to be killing people with poison.

But maybe they were killing a few more with the added resources Lyn provided.

That job meant Lyn got to eat and be strong enough to make it into the academy.

But now maybe she’d probably murder more people indirectly here too.

Her muscles were too twitchy to keep sitting, so she stood, pacing back and forth and crushing leaves and snapping sticks underfoot. Lyn wasn’t sure if she felt more guilty or pissed off.

▯▯▯▮

That was exactly how Akon found Lyn, pacing, pacing and pacing without noticing him standing a few feet away. He frowned, having a good guess at what she had so stressed after stumbling across her encounter with her fellow outer Rukongai students.

He obviously knew she had spent some time working for one of the Daken suppliers, but that wasn’t something she needed to worry about when she was a mere apothecary assistant, and the Daken was being run at the very top by an undercover Onmitsukido member. Not that he could share that detail, but he was sure he could get her to calm down without it.

“Afternoon, Lyn-san,” Akon greeted her, and she jumped almost 4 feet in surprise which was good to see. Her muscles were a lot stronger now, and subconscious use of her reiryoku was a good sign of recovery and integration of reishi into her system.

Lyn let out a dramatic sigh with a hand on her chest. “Akon, what the hell?”

“Called me by my name again,” he taunted with a small smirk. “And without honorifics too.”

“I was just so happy to see you, I could barely Akon-tain myself,” Lyn said in a dead voice, and  Akon had never had a smirk leave his face quicker.

“Never do that again.”

Lyn placed the back of her hand on her forehead. “But I thought you wanted me to say your name, I thought we had… Akon-nection?”

Akon buried his face in his hands. Every muscle in his chest and throat fought the traitorous laugh – or probably just a cough – from escaping his throat at the pure ridiculous of the situation. He groaned. “I regret checking in on you.”

“Awe, you came to check in on me?” Lyn simpered at him.

“Don’t worry about those outer Rukongai students or your old job.” Akon’s words had an immediate effect, Lyn crossing her arms and looking away, far off into the distance. “I can’t report them without explaining what I’m doing here, but they already have a set of watchers in case they step over the line.”

“Conspiring to poison someone isn’t over the line?” Lyn finally looked back at him, raising a sceptical brow.

“Depends on who they try to poison.” Akon shrugged and lit up a cigarette. “Sakahone seems to be close to learning the name of his Zanpakuto already, and Sabitsura has an uncanny ability to smell reishi that certain squads are already taking interest in for recruitment.”

Akon frowned when Lyn became more tense at the news. “And about your old job – I think you’ve realised now that the Soul Society doesn’t care about your background.”

“It’s not that… I just guess I didn’t like the reminder that I might have…” Her eyes flitted everywhere but his, and she crosses her arms tighter against herself. “You know, indirectly killed some people at the apothecary.”

‘Oh, so that’s what it is.’ Akon had completely misinterpreted her, and now he didn’t have as straight of an answer.

He crossed his arms and let out a long exhale of smoke. He had been conflicted when he too was just a young soul, but his will to live, and later the positive effects of his discoveries, research, and inventions outweighed most regret over any souls lost in the process. It was a generally accepted consequence for the greater good within Soul Society. Their deaths were the logical option to him, even if some of Captain Kurotsuchi’s were sometimes unnecessary.

‘Lyn seems to be accepting of me despite knowing my division and that I have caused harm and death to more than just a few souls, but will it be too much to try and push her to process things the same way?’

They stood in tense silence.

“It was the only job that could pay that much and afford me that much food that I could get,” Lyn explained to him, but with her faraway look, he knew she was justifying it to herself. “Maybe… Maybe I wouldn’t have lasted as long as I did and made it here with how messed up my soul was.”

Akon raised his hand slowly, but eventually gave her a stiff pat on the shoulder. “Then it was the most logical option.”

Lyn sighed, running bandaged hands through her hair again. He knew they were healed, but Akon figured that she didn’t want to show off her scars.

“Yeah… Yeah, you’re right. I would do it again if I were in the same position, so I shouldn’t feel… Ugh.”

Akon couldn’t help but gaze further than the forest as well. He could still distinctly remember the feeling of dirt and blood under every nail, years of aching in his stomach, the constant cuts of rusting metal on his hands and the sharp burns of acid splashes from his first experiments driven by a will to live, the warmth of foreign blood on his skin. “You can feel bad about potentially hurting others, but don’t apologise for living.”

She pondered on his words in silence which was eagerly filled by the ever-noisy sound of unapologetically noisy life around them, squeaks, chirps and rustling foliage.

Lyn gave him a small tentative smile. “I’ll try.”

It wasn’t an answer he liked.

▮▮▮▮

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Name | Kanji | (Meaning) — Details

• Kareha | 枯れ葉 | (Dead leaves.)

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Author’s Note

• Woo! I’m back – I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!
• Feel free to leave any opinions, comments, or questions down below and I’ll do my best to respond to everyone when I can (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
• Update: I forgot that Fullbringer's are a secret, oopsie woopsies haha - so I've made it so Lyn doesn't reveal that she knows what they are back in Chapter 8. It's classified info (me thinks) but I feel like Kurosuchi's grubby little hands aren't going to be kept from much of anything, and if he was going to tell anyone about it, it would be his second hand he actually respects and trusts. Thanks a bunch to the reader who reminded me in the comments ✨

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Chapter Text

Fuyuko was unlikely to bother her again, as Lyn assumed being a ‘sponsored student’ in the outer Rukongai students’ eyes meant that they had either seen her with Akon – or Fuyuko smelt him – and that meant they thought that causing trouble with her wasn’t worth it. Lyn assumed quite a few students were being sponsored by notable families and those who had connections to more high-ranked Shinigami. But she certainly hadn’t seen any other canon Shinigami around besides Akon and Aizen so far. Regardless, she wasn’t about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth.

Without threats from fellow students distracting her, Lyn was able to focus her time on receiving treatment and advice from – tormenting – Akon and training harder than she might have without the insistence of her smaller zanpakuto spirit. Though, she had to admit she wasn’t putting her all into it. The weight of both of her blades was eerily natural in her palms, like an extension of her limbs. It was just too bad the limbs they were attached to still weren’t experts at wielding them in any capacity, but at least they could give her some tips. It was – according to them, hard to be a weapon without knowing at least an inkling of some of the optimal ways to be stabbed, thrusted, and slashed. Like how a human knows how far back their arm bends before it hurts, and how to shift their weight to put more power into their punches. If they were physically competent that is. Unlike Lyn.

However, Lyn hadn’t tried wielding them together yet. One, because they refused to be used together, telling her to either use one or the other out of pure spitefulness. Two, because she might actually just slice open herself with how clumsy she could be – remember, physically incompetent.

A natural kido practitioner she was not either, but it was still a very shiny silver lining out of her entire dying situation.

“I don’t think you’ll ever be able to cast more stable structured kido, like barriers and seals, with your abnormal reiryoku. But you’ll be able to make decent progress over the next few decades,” Akon explained through a cigarette between his teeth. “And quit overdoing it – you’re going to end up looking like you stuck your hands in an oven at this rate.”

“Yeah, well, I already look like I went through a blender, so I might as well go through a few more kitchen appliances to complete the look.” She had already acquired a few small burn scars on her hands, but it didn’t seem like much on top of the soul-tearing ones already covering them.

Akon groaned, letting his head loll back. “I’ve got more work to do these days, so at least try to keep your extra Byakurai and Hainawa training till the end of each fortnight.”

“Orrr, you could teach me kaido,” Lyn suggested.

“Your reiatsu is too unstable for that – and do not test it on anything you enjoy the company of. You might do more damage to the sight of the wound or spread your condition.”

“I could spread it?!” As she tried firing off a Byakurai at her target without any chant, her lack of experience and concentration was immediately rewarded with injury.

“Yes, they might suffer from unpredictable bouts of stupidity.”

Lyn turned to stick her tongue out at him while holding back tears and shaking out her crispy fingertips.

Akon sighed and healed her hands.

Lyn flexed her digits, and stared at Akon for a few moments before asking, “Since you’re done recording data for today, want to go get food?”

Akon gave her a flat look. “Don’t I already feed you enough?”

“I mean, like, down in District 1, Junrinan. We could get street food or something.” Lyn immediately felt self-conscious after asking and shrugged. “Or not, if you’re busy. I just haven’t been off academy grounds yet.”

Lyn bit her inner lip. ‘This isn’t some ‘friendship is magic’ fanfic. Akon probably has more important things to do. And didn’t I tell myself that I need to maintain at least some distance? Seriously, I’m-’

“Sure,” Akon replied far too casually.

“Really?” Lyn immediately perked up.

Akon stretched his arms above his head, exhaling a long breath of smoke. “It’s been a while since I had a meal that wasn’t brought to my lab or to go between field research runs. But if we’re going, I’m picking the place. I prefer to know exactly who’s handling my food.”

▯▯▯▮

After ordering a set of kaisen-don from one of the only restaurants Akon trusted, he subtly cast a privacy kido around them, dampening the sounds of their conversation to outsiders. There were plenty of Shinigami that would frequent the nightlife of Junrinan, but simply wearing a black headband to cover his horns and taking off his lab coat to leave him in his all-black uniform would be enough for most to not recognise him.

Meanwhile, Lyn didn’t need any disguise to meld into the background but had changed out of her academy uniform into a navy set of samue. She clicked her geta together happily under the table, clearly pleased to be out of her zori.

“Don’t worry about the price. I’ll use some of the budget allocated to your research, so just consider it a late celebration that you’re no longer actively dying, and I’ll celebrate not needing to make so many expensive reishi pills.”

“I thought I was a personal project?”

“Well, you’re not explicitly listed on any of the Acute Reishi Irregularity Detection and Diagnostics research files,” Akon explained. “Unless you need to be. I have alternate versions of the documentation in case Central 46 comes poking around. It’s very unlikely, but they’re afraid of their own shadows, so it’s best to have some record of monitoring a potential ‘threat’ to dissuade them from drastic measures.”

“I love being reminded I could be disappeared at any moment,” Lyn said in a faux calm and gentle smile. “If that happens, I’m taking you with me.”

Akon nearly scoffed. “As if I’d let that happen.”

Their food was placed in front of them, and conversation comfortably paused. Akon took a bite of his kaisen-don, enjoying the sweet, umami taste of high-quality urchin. He had almost forgotten how much he enjoyed the flavour. And it was a bonus that Lyn traded her portion of urchin for his scallop, at her request. He was all too happy to oblige.

They took their time finishing their food and tea, bantering and discussing their plans for the future. Lyn maintained her position of wanting as simple of a life as she could maintain despite needing to be a Shinigami if she wanted to keep her swords, and thus her heart beating. She was aiming to gain the most mundane position possible in the Gotei’s ranks.

‘Though unambitious, I suppose I have to concede that the minutia of normal activities is… surprisingly pleasant,’ Akon thought.

“What about you, Akon?” Lyn asked but cringed and looked away. “I mean – Pervertgami-san.”

“Do you forget to use honorifics with my name at times because you’re still too used to the conventions of your home country? And since I know about the retention of your life’s memories, you focus less on maintaining appearances that you don’t in various ways, including remembering to use honorifics.” Akon raised a brow at her, blowing over the other name he called her with his analysis.

“That’s not…” Lyn puckered her lips as if tasting sour. “Okay, maybe that’s exactly it.”

“I thought so.” Akon smirked. “I’m sure you weren’t an actor in the World of the Living.”

“Don’t think you’re special.” Lyn crossed her arms over her chest with a huff. “I refer to plenty of people by their first names in my head – or I jump between the first and last name because their last name is all I hear.” She quickly turned sheepish. “Um, sorry if it seems rude.” But just as swiftly, it was replaced by a spark of mischief. “But stalking young women through the mountains is pretty rude too, so I guess we’re even!”

Maybe this was the real reason Akon was using a privacy kido.

Akon shook his head lightly. “Well, I’m not offended if that’s what you were worried about since I’m going to interpret it as not coming from a place of disrespect. At least, not more than usual. It’s just semantics in your case.”

Lyn stared off into the distance quietly for a few moments. “Is it weird to feel extra homesick because no one calls you by your name? I still sometimes forget to respond to Chiba too.”

“I’m not familiar enough with the feeling to be able to provide an option, however, if you’d prefer, I’m not averse to calling you as you were used to as long as we’re not in front of others. Seireitei is full of martinets.”

Lyn stared at him in surprise. “Are you sure?”

“As I said, I’m not concerned with cross-cultural semantics.” Akon shrugged and took a sip of his tea.

Lyn tucked a strand of hair behind an ear in an exaggerated movement and said, “You’re going to start Akon-troversy if you start calling such a charming young lady so much younger than you by just her name.”

Akon coughed loudly, the tea going down the wrong way. “You are an insufferable menace.”

“Anyways, we’ve gone off-topic. Your plans for the future?” Lyn asked, head tilting to the side.

It was an easy question to answer. “I’ll simply continue to focus on my duties as third-seat of the 12^th Division and vice-president of the S.R.D.I. The greater Soul Society is still severely lacking in many areas of technical development, and there are many fields of research lacking sufficient progress like research into the various pocket dimensions, and even hollows. Not to mention…” Akon glanced back over at Lyn. “If more souls like you start showing up without some countermeasures, Soul Society will be turned upside down,” Akon jested.

Lyn became oddly sober, discomfort clear in her slightly more defensive posture.

Akon raised a brow at her. “You do realise him kidding. As unusual as your soul is, you’re still primarily a threat to yourself.”

She rubbed at her neck, a habit that was easy for Akon to recognise as a response to embarrassment and stress for Lyn. Her nails dug in. “Yeah, primarily myself.”

When it was time to head back to their respective housing, Akon watched Lyn walk back up the road to the academy. With a frown and one hand on a new device, he wondered if her stress wasn’t because she still concerned herself with what she had indirectly done for the Daken, but because she could instinctually sense that maybe she wasn’t her own primary threat.

His device let out a low-frequency set of beeps and blinked with a small yet harsh red light.

The base of a rotted tree creaked and groaned out of hearing distance for Akon, and wood splintering at the base before tumbling straight into Lyn’s path. It would have hit her if not for her improved reflexes. Lyn startled back in surprise but turned back and spotted Akon in the glow of the commercial district he stood at the edge of. He made out her waving to him one last time in the dark, and likely also communicating to him that she was fine.

Akon didn’t wave back, and she didn’t stop to watch to see if he did, jogging deeper into the shadows and towards the academy.

‘Perhaps just a natural minor distortion in reishi caused by sudden movements under particular conditions?’ Akon looked down at his device that silenced, leaving him in the stillness of a deathly quiet night. ‘No need to concern Lyn with inconclusive suspicions then, not when she wants a mundane life.’

▯▯▯▮

The rest of the month passed in a blur. Now, Lyn’s Sho felt like a solid punch to the face, and her Byakurai would be more than a small zap but had enough power to burn a thumb-deep hole into a tree trunk. Though it admittedly wasn’t much compared to any of her upper clansmen’s executions, and the tree wasn’t exactly able to reinforce its trunk with reishi to defend itself.

Part of Lyn was hoping that her zanpakuto – if they decided to reveal their names – would be kido types, while the other part hoped they’d turn into an unassuming set of paper clips to help keep all the papers she’d be pushing organised.

But no matter the slow and steady progress she was making, it was moments like these that reminded her that attacking head-on would never be an option.

Not with monsters like these at every turn.

“Chiba-san, what a pleasant surprise it is to see you again,” Aizen greeted her kindly, every stride towards her graceful if not for the way each gentle step thundered in her ears threateningly.

“Captain Aizen,” Lyn bowed awkwardly.

“It’s a shame I haven’t seen you in my calligraphy class yet, I thought it was quite popular with the students.” He shook his head in mock disappointment as he adjusted his glasses. “I heard you have the best handwriting of any student. Almost mechanical, some might even say. So, I have to admit, I’m quite curious about your calligraphy skills.”

‘What the hell – relying on my zanpakuto’s auto-translate feature seriously can’t be the way I die a second time?’ Lyn’s mind raced uselessly. ‘If I go to the calligraphy class Aizen’s going to figure out I’m technically illiterate in Japanese, and then he’s going to interrogate me on how I usually write, and then he’s going to find out about my zanpakuto, and then I’ll somehow end up dead! D – E – D!’

“Yes, it’s very mechanical, so I’m afraid I won’t do too well,” is all Lyn said, hoping with every fibre of her being he wouldn’t push.

“It couldn’t hurt to try at least once,” he smiled encouragingly. “The arts are often unappreciated by most Shinigami, but I have an inkling that you might be different. You can help me test out the new ink and calligraphy paper before the classes start up again in three days.”

He started to walk, and Lyn knew she had to follow unless she wanted to seem disrespectful.

▯▯▯▮

Sosuke showed her how to gently grind the sumi ink stick into a small amount of water in the well, thickening the ink until it reached the perfect consistency. Unpacking the fude brush set from their carrier, he demonstrated the correct amount of pressure and speed to use and just how much ink to soak into the fibres. He used the kanji for heart or mind, depending on the context, as his example.

心

While Sosuke’s strokes were gently swooping and gracefully bending like a river’s unassumingly strong current, carving through the page with strength and conviction, Chiba’s shaky first attempts were stiff. Her three smallest strokes of different weights and tapers reflected confusion and conflict in each movement. Or she was simply as unskilled at calligraphy as she calmed at first glance.

‘But her handwriting demonstrated in her class work does have an… unnaturally uniform quality to it. It’s akin to the 9^th Division’s printing press.’ Sosuke raised a hand to his chin, pretending to be more thoughtfully observing her brush strokes. He would only need to do so for but a moment with how fast his mind moved. ‘Could it be a result of the 13^th Division experimenting with more body modifications relating to the brain? Did it extend to the repetition of other repetitive movements? No, if that was the case, then her combat skills would not be so sub-par. A failure? No, not quite. Not if Third Seat Akon continues to monitor her as he does.’

When he had first noticed Akon sneaking his way across the academy rooftops, Sosuke had felt genuine surprise at his behaviour as he sensed the man sneak his way into the female dormitories. It was only when he realised that the room belonged to one Chiba Lyn that his behaviour fell more in line with his understanding of the man. At the very least, six months of monitoring a failed project is not something that either the Third Seat or his Captain would invest time in.

Sosuke’s interest was rekindled.

‘Whatever the case, rarely do they let their experiments run free like this. It’s likely she’ll be brought straight into their fold as soon as she graduates.’ He subtly glanced over her bandaged fingers, seeing soot and singe marks on the cloth. ‘If she lasts that long, that is, but her condition has certainly improved.’

It was unexpected that she was still alive, let alone still studying and training at the academy. Whatever the 12^th had done, her soul felt more whole. It was less like dust particles desperately trying to hold a silhouette, and more condensed into a mosaic; unassuming from a distance, but the closer one observed, the more unsettling it became with gaps too deep and too wide, pieces upside down, and the glazing unfired.

Sosuke wanted to know what potential the 12^th saw, and if it would be of any benefit to him. And, despite her cautiousness, it would be simple enough to mould her into another pawn should he desire to.

“A good first attempt, Chiba-san,” Aizen complimented the stiff-postured girl. He could tell that she was biting down on the inside of her lip harshly from the light flex of her jaw muscle beneath her cheek. “Don’t concern yourself with the differences – calligraphy is not simply meant to be beautiful or mimic exact forms, but to reflect emotions and feelings through the weight, speed, and taper of each stroke. You’re simply expressing something else.”

She kept her eyes down. “Thank you for your instruction, Captain Aizen.”

“Now, I must admit.” Sosuke let out a soft sigh, letting his shoulders droop ever so slightly and lightly leaned forward. “I didn’t quite invite you here to teach you calligraphy, as much as I enjoy sharing the art.”

He didn’t need to be able to sense the leaking radio-static buzz of her reishi, the anomaly less residual but instead simply contained within its faulty vessel. The instant tightening of almost every muscle and flexing of every tendon from her neck up easily did that for him.

Sosuke leaned back, adding a touch of empathetic sadness to his smile. “Ah, my apologies. I could have worded that better. I mean to say that I wanted to ask how you are, without the chance of your minder stumbling across our conversation. I can’t help but be concerned, knowing that the 12^th is involved.”

Chiba blinked half a second too long.

Her jaw lowered as if to speak, but her lips didn’t part.

“I assure you that nothing you share with me will make its way to the ears of Kurotsuchi Mayuri or his subordinates.” He peered down at her. She was full of cracks and vulnerabilities. “Unless you wish for me to convince them to separate you from their… care.”

She finally met his eyes.

Sosuke expected awe, adoration, shock, surprise, anxiety, confusion – he was not expecting the micro expression of an almost raised brow in what a small part of his mind whispered was disrespectful, abject scepticism. Her pupils contracted. Her eyes flitted away just as quick, her expression settling into something more thoughtful, considering his offer.

But there was too much doubt he had sensed in that instance.

‘Hmm, more cautious of others than I first assumed, despite seeming to be such a young soul.’ Sosuke reevaluated his approach. ‘But this is only our second meeting, after all.’

“Does the 12^th still not permit you to use the academy’s healers?” Sosuke asked.

“They don’t…” she murmured.

“In that case, let it be our little secret that I healed your hands for you, so you don’t have to wait in pain for the next time they come to examine you.” Sosuke gently grabbed her hands which were frozen stiff and had her bandages unravelled in her lap in a few moments. His eyes widened a fraction at the amount of scar tissue. Her fingers twitched, wanting to pull away. But he knew she wouldn’t pull away – she seemed obedient enough to the 12^th.

But there was a fraction of defiance if he needed to draw on it.

‘Positively mutilated, but there’s a considerable rate of healing for such injuries that should be causing permanent physical impairments. Does something about this soul’s peculiar nature make it more malleable and adaptable to injury? Perhaps I could even utilise it for some of my own experiments.’ Sosuke healed the burn marks on her hands that he smelt as soon as she entered the room – the burnt flesh neatly knitting itself back together, but it did nothing for the small patches of already melted and set skin. ‘Would altering such a damaged soul tear it apart, or is it already in so many shreds I could stitch it back together however I please?’

“T-Thank you, Captain Aizen. I should return to my training now.” She scooped up her bandages into her arms, ready to flee from the room and slightly red in the face.

He smoothly rolled up her calligraphy work and tucked it into the crook of her arm. “I hope to see you around, Chiba-san.”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn slammed her door shut behind her, coughing up the repressed, stress-induced goblin giggles she had almost let out right in Aizen’s face. ‘'Our little secret – what kind of Pedogami voice line is that?’

Small little coughs and almost laughs slipped out a few more times as she rebandaged her hands with a fresh roll from her stock. With a sigh, her mirth quickly dried up, leaving her lightly trembling from the adrenaline alone. And with the uncomfortable reality that she had gotten Aizen’s attention despite her efforts.

‘Well, if I ever mess up too badly, I won’t have to worry about it since I’ll be dead,’ Lyn mused. ‘But his offer… could actually come in handy.’ For now, Lyn trusted Akon not to kill her, but she could never trust Kurotsuchi. ‘If Aizen thinks he could use me for something in the future, then that might just be a good way to stay out of Kurotsuchi’s clutches if he ever takes too much interest in Akon’s personal research.’

Lyn slumped bonelessly against her door. ‘Sure, let’s leave my body in an owl's talons and put my head in a snake's jaw so neither swallows me whole. Sounds like a great idea.’

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

My Drawings

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Note

• I’m back with a week with a new update – surprise! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o Now time to go drown myself in homework and work ✨✨✨ Yippie!
• Born to be Yapasarus 🦖 forced to be a functioning member of society 😔
• Anyway, feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll respond as soon as I can!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

When the second semester of the year started, Lyn could finally breathe a sigh of relief. She no longer feared running into the outer Rukongai students or Aizen around each corner. Even better, it would be Aizen’s last year teaching too. And as much as Lyn reluctantly admitted she enjoyed Akon’s company, there was something nice about being able to have some normal company that weren’t certifiable geniuses that could undo her existence if she uttered one wrong word. Not to mention, Akon was now swamped with new work and responsibilities left to him by Kurotsuchi, meaning she would be seeing less of him for a while.

Lyn managed to keep her head down for the rest of the semester. Her combat abilities were progressing as slowly as ever, but she found herself unconscious a lot less from her own reishi usage and from the blows of others. Moving into the third hoho class had been a stark contrast in training quality, and she already had less blood and bruises to show for it.

But when she inevitably did get injured, Hanataro was always enthusiastically there to offer his assistance. Lyn couldn’t help but feel guilty when she had to start denying his help halfway through the semester.

He was getting too good at healing too quickly, and Lyn worried he’d begin to sense something was off about her anatomy. Like the more experienced medical staff on campus that Akon had warned her away from.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help heal your bruised hand, Lyn-san? Isn’t it going to make training hard?” Hanataro asked once more, looking like a kicked puppy.

Lyn let out a sheepish chuckle. “I’m sure, Hanataro-san, it’s fine. I got a checkup by a professional the other day and I was told not to rely too much on kaido, or my body will be weaker in the long run. Plus, you know I’ve been doing better recently.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that…” Hanataro relented with a sigh, but they both knew he’d still continue to offer out of pure good-natured reflex.

‘How he’s still so sweet despite all the crap people give him, I’ll never know,’ Lyn sighed and lightly shook her head. ‘But he already seems less timid than canon.’ Her small smile faltered as she looked away, focusing on the path to their zanjutsu class. ‘Will he be bullied less when he goes to the 4^th then? If not, will he still feel the same amount of connection with Rukia when she’s imprisoned that moves him to help Ichigo despite the dangers?’ Lyn chewed on her inner cheek. ‘Will he even be assigned to clean and maintain Rukia’s prison cell if he’s better established and higher seat when that time comes?’

Lyn resisted rubbing her temples as familiar guilt churned and twitched in her guts. ‘I’ll have to cross that bridge when I come to it, so I just need to focus on not changing anything else. And I have bigger problems right now.’

As Hanataro and Lyn approached the zanjutsu hall, the outdoor training field was currently filled with the year one class one students – many of whom couldn’t be contained indoors if they wanted to spar properly.

Especially when Sakahone Ryuu had his shikai on display.

He slashed a molten blade that pulsed with energy rhythmically at his sensei, but after the first swing, the blade returned to its sealed state. Sakahone shared a few words with his sensei and wiped the sweat from his brow.

It had been the hottest piece of gossip across the academy for the past week. He’d apparently been approached by recruiters from a couple of divisions already too.

Lyn hurried an awed Hanataro along with her into the zanjutsu hall building. ‘Either I’ve butterfly effected a stronger character into existence, the storyline of this world doesn’t actually follow canon events exactly, or Sakahone dies before he graduates.’

Because if he lived, that would make him an early graduate from the academy, of which there were only three people that Lyn knew. Shiba Kaien, Ichimaru Gin, and Hitsugaya Toshiro had all graduated early – and Rukia, though only because of her Kuchiki connections – so it was meant to be a big deal.

‘And if something kills a monster like Sakahone before graduating, what the hell is going to happen to me?’ Lyn swallowed thickly, barely paying attention to Sakai-sensei. ‘Is it the Human World dummy hollow training at the end of the year? Does something else happen that wasn’t mentioned in the canon material?’ She chewed on her inner cheek. ‘It could just be because of his personality – he could end up in Muken and that’s the end of it.’

Lyn hoped that luck would be on her side for once.

“Chiba-san, adjust your stance,” Sakai snapped at her, tapping her legs further apart with the wooden sword she used specifically for prodding students into the correct form.

“Yes, sensei!”

▯▯▯▮

“Let’s be extra careful during the training mission,” Lyn murmured to Shino as they soaked in the steamy water of the women’s communal bath house.

Few other students were around at this time of night, many of them sleeping early to prepare for their first visit to the world of the living or migrating their gossip into shared dorm rooms. Despite that, Lyn still kept her bandages on, and her waterproof wrappings over that. She didn’t want to worry Shino more than she already did, and as alarming as seeing someone fully bandaged should have been, they were desensitized to the sight of it since Lyn was always wearing them.

Shino rolled her eyes and stiff shoulders. “We’ve gotten plenty of warnings from all our sensei all month.”

Lyn didn’t know what she could say without sounding paranoid, suspicious, or downright treasonous.

It was a given that any death tolls from these missions from accidents or results of neglectful overseers would be toned down or hidden. It would be a shame if the Gotei 13 propaganda weakened or if anyone responsible for any accidents needed to face proper punishments. Especially if they were from a respected family.

‘There was also a hollow attack that happened during Renji, Momo, and Kira’s training exercise that went pretty badly, but what was the cause again? I can’t remember.’ Lyn packed the thought away for now.

Lyn gave Shino a sheepish smile and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Guess I’m just nervous.”

Shino scoffed, “Then you should have trained harder.”

By now, Lyn knew that jab wasn’t barbed.

Lyn stuck out her tongue. “You know I can only train so hard before I faint, Shino-san.”

It took a while before Shino said anything else. “I guess I’m a bit nervous too.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Lyn sang lightly.

“It better be!”

▯▯▯▮

When Lyn stepped through the light of the senkaimon she looked around as eagerly as the other students, but for entirely different reasons. It had been almost a year and two months since she’d been alive. Her eyes immediately search for skyscrapers, bright lights, obnoxiously bright advertisements; her nose sniffed for the scent of cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, the oily fast-food chains; her ears listened for the honking of cars, the marching of thousands of feet with places to be, the constant chatter of busy streets.

The woods were moonlit.

Foliage rustled gently.

Sandals gently brushed against the dirt ground.

Petrichor and the scent of wet grass were in the air.

Students murmured to one another quietly, waiting for instruction.

The quiet sigh that left Lyn’s lips felt so loud. It seemed they were somewhere in the Japanese mountains then. A small, old shrine on the hiking path was the only sign of civilisation. Lyn couldn’t even see past the thick canopy to spy the glitter of distant cities.

For the training mission, all of the first years regardless of their zanjutsu class were together, mixing and matching students together at random. Usually, they were divided into differing difficulties of training missions, but they were experimenting with their year. Apparently, this was meant to help them find ‘hidden gems’ amongst the students that would otherwise be overlooked in the lower-ranked classes and improve teamwork between future Shinigami of differing skill levels.

Sixth-year students were sent to watch over the perimeter of the zone the dummy hollows would be in. Lyn thought she spotted a couple of seated officers as well. Not ones that she recognised, but they were there all the same.

Lyn felt lucky when she was grouped with those standing closest to her – Hanataro, Shino, and Ryunosuke – but it only made it that much worse when Sakahone and Sabitsura were added to their team.

‘Hanataro doesn’t die here – he can’t,’ Lyn thought. ‘So maybe nothing too crazy happens tonight? Sakahone must just be another unseen strong character, or he just goes missing somewhere else along the timeline.’ She swallowed thickly. ‘Or maybe Hanataro wasn’t meant to pass the academy entrance exam this year originally? Damn it, I wish I got to read the Blood War Arc! Maybe Sakahone Ryuu and Sabitsura Fuyuko have been canon all along?!’

“Lyn-san, is everything okay?” Hanataro asked.

Lyn almost flinched out of her thoughts, and turning to stare into Hanataro’s blue eyes didn’t calm her at all. Not when in the dark he looked as pale as a corpse with all the warmth sucked from his skin.

She might get him killed. ‘I should warn them something bad might happen.’

Lyn turned away quickly and ran a hand through her hair. “Just a bit nervous, don’t worry about it.”

Shino gave Lyn a reassuring clap on the shoulder which she returned with a smile and nod.

“Teams one to four! You’ll be spreading across the southern quadrant of the mountain! Teams five to ten…” their instructor continued to shout orders.

Their team moved out immediately with Sakahone taking the lead, Sabitsura humming merrily to herself, and Lyn and her friends taking up the rear.

Lyn’s eyes flicked around them constantly, her head on a swivel. She had a bad feeling about being with these two, and she wasn’t about to let herself get caught off guard. Only, she was so focused on spotting the hollows, that she forgot to prepare herself for actually seeing one for the first time.

The dummy hollow was a smooth, dark green texture, and a mask of pure bone opened with a clack and loud screech. And it was the size of a house.

“T-That’s terrifying!” Ryunosuke shrieked, jumping back.

‘It’s just a dummy hollow – it’s not even a real one!’ Lyn told herself, despite how much she agreed with him. ‘The seniors are on the lookout nearby, and we have emergency flares for a reason.’

But while the dummy hollow was large, it was slow. Sakahone rushed to exchange blows with the creature and began severing some of its many legs that precariously held its gargantuan weight. He knocked back massive arms with his blade like they were made of paper mache. Shino followed with a war cry, picking off limbs.

“Hado 31, Shakkaho!” Sabitsura exclaimed with manic cheer, letting off a powerful red blast that took a chunk out of the dummy.

A spider-like limb flailed downwards at Lyn.

“Hado 4, Byakurai!” With a crackle, Lyn blew open the joint of the attacking limb.

Before Lyn could do anything else, the dummy hollow shattered in a light explosion as Sakahone cleaved through its head horizontally. Sabitsura smirked and blew on her nails.

Lyn coughed as she inhaled some of the white, plastic-scented smoke. She had almost forgotten they weren’t real. She kicked away a chunk of soldering material and warped wires.

“You almost hit me!” Shino snapped at the lavender-haired girl.

“Awe, are you scared of a few burns?” Sabitsura raised a brow at her. “I think you’d look just as good in bandages as little Kareha over there.”

Shino opened her mouth to verbally tear Sabitsura apart for essentially calling Lyn a pile of dead leaves, but Lyn quickly placed a hand on her shoulder. Shino turned to look at Lyn, and she lightly shook her head with a grimace.

It wasn’t worth it.

Not while they were in a forest full of excuses for a training accident.

Shino gritted her teeth when Sabitsura blew them a kiss.

Sakahone continued to lead, taking down dummy hollows left and right without giving Sabitsura or Lyn a chance to assist most times. But when there was a moment between his strikes, Sabitsura was already on it with chantless kido much stronger than anything Lyn could use.

After getting used to the appearance of the dummy hollows and the sounds of their screeches stopped making Lyn jump, they didn’t seem so bad. Especially when they had two monsters doing most of the work for them.

“Hmm.” Sabitsura started walking backwards and stared straight at Lyn. “Now that you smell more than just dried blood for once, you smell really funny.”

Lyn tensed. ‘Didn’t Akon say Sabitsura can smell reishi?’

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Lyn replied, trying her best to keep her expression unimpressed.

Sabitsura leaned a mere centimetre from Lyn’s face and whispered, “Your reishi… is your soul even human? What are you?” Before Lyn could blurt out a defence – her head was full of panic panic panic – Sabitsura crinkled her nose and spun on her heel. “Ugh, I smell something even worse up ahead.”

Sakahone looked unphased, but there was something in Sabitsura’s tone that had the rest of them step closer together. They could hear something moving, something as large as the first hollow they faced.

Lyn put a hold on her dread and shoved down the feeling of being stripped bare.

There was a tangible pressure that settled over Lyn’s being that set off every instinct to flee. Lyn was frozen in place as she looked up at a ten-foot monstrosity. It had the texture of wrinkled skin hanging from tree-like limbs and long, thin fingers that dragged across the ground. It was a true reaper of lives come to harvest them, to rip and tear them apart like the morsels they were. To chew their souls up and feed the heartless amalgamation that was itself – a hollow.

It swiped its long arm at them, and its size gave it the illusion of moving slower than it really was. They scattered like bugs, and the trees in front of them fell in cleanly sliced segments.

At the same time, Hanataro fired their red emergency flare into the sky, and Sakahone’s sword burst into crimson flames.

“Beat, Shinku no Kokoro.” Power laced every word, and the air thickened further.

Tha-thump!

Sakahone’s sword flared with heat that hit them in pulses.

Tha-thump!

Each but was punctuated by a violent slash that painted the forest in crimson light and hot ash.

Tha-thump!

It was a rhythmic, violent dance of fire and blood.

Lyn was in awe, even as she and Sabitsura fired kido at the creature whenever Sakahone was forced onto the defensive.

“Let’s get out of here!” Ryunosuke shrieked.

“W-we can’t just leave Sakahone-san on his own!” Hanataro cried back. “We have to hold on until help arrives!”

“Hanataro-san is right,” Lyn agreed as she jumped back to avoid Sakahone’s stray flames. “And if there are any more hollows around, they’ll be headed our way, attracted by his shikai. We won’t make it far without them.” Lyn tried to speak clearly, but her voice raised sharply at the end as the hollow let out another screech.

“Graaaaaaaaaah!”

Staying put was the most logical option.

Help would come.

“Damn it!” Shino relented, even as her arms shook lightly as she gripped her sword tightly, unable to move in to attack lest she get burnt. “We can take one hollow together!”

“If you weaklings are done psyching yourselves up, then switch out with Ryuu-kun now!” Sabitsura ordered with shrill, unmasked hysteria.

Sakahone flash stepped in front of Hanataro wheezing with his hand over his heart. His eyes remained focused entirely on the hollow. The flame of his sword pulsed in an erratic rhythm. “Heal me or my heart gives out and we all die.”

Hanataro already had green kido following through his back before he finished his sentence, and Ryunosuke did his best to quickly bandage the bleeding gashes on Sakahone’s arm with clumsy movements.

Shino shared a glance with Lyn, the other girl giving her a sharp nod that somehow gave Lyn just enough courage to rush at the hollow with her.

The left half of the creature’s body was a charred mess, and the unintentional cauterization meant the scent of its smouldering flesh filled the air.

“Bakudo 4, Hainawa!” Sabitsura shouted, and a crackling rope of golden energy raced around the arm, torso, and one of the hollow’s legs in a painfully contorted mess.

Shino immediately took advantage of the opening, slicing open the heel of the hollow. The hollow let out an ear-piercing screech as it freed itself with a flex of its arms. Lyn’s blinding Byakurai to its face gave Shino just enough time to avoid being trisected.

Lyn hoped the hollow would retreat with one arm burnt off and a barely functioning leg, but it was enraged and turned its fury to Lyn. Lyn had never performed flash step properly before – but one instant she was looking up at clawed death, and the next she slammed into a tree a few metres away with a pained gasp and burning legs.

Lyn scrambled back to her feet, sliding in the leaf litter. She ducked and weaved and panted and bled, as claws nicked the back of her calf and shoulder. Lyn dove between the creatures’ legs in a roll that made her gasp in pain, just as Sakahone flash-stepped over her and slammed straight into the chest of the hollow.

Hanataro reached for Lyn to support her, but when she heard a sharp whistle of air and buzzing energy building behind them, she tackled him to the ground. A blast of red shot over their heads, and the thunderous boom and impact sent them skidding through the underbrush. Lyn’s skull felt oddly protected and cushioned as they rolled, and Hanataro let out a cry of pain.

Hanataro’s back was smoking, and she didn’t need to roll him over to know he had taken the aftershock of the initial impact.

“W-Why’d you use your body as a shield?!” Lyn demanded Hanataro, but her voice sounded muffled. “You idiot!”

Hanataro gasped in pain, and tears slipped down his dirt-covered cheeks. “I… I can’t just watch my friends get hurt,” he groaned out.

“Get up!” Ryunosuke’s desperate voice pierced the ringing of their ears as he tugged Lyn and Hanataro to their feet.

Just in time to dodge another red blast that sent splinters of wood cascading down on them.

Lyn turned back to the fight, ready to anticipate where to dodge next, because right now, that’s all she could do to not die. Instead, she got to watch Sakahone cut through the mask of the hollow, cleaving through the head straight through the torso. The hollow disintegrated into black ash that was taken by winds of reishi, returning it to the cycle of souls. Sakahone in turn collapsed to one knee, and his shikai returned to its sealed state.

Sabitsura was at his side using her own kaido on his chest. The gentle hand over his heart and the way her body created a barrier between his vulnerable moment and the rest of them was sickeningly tender for such a vicious person.

Lyn sighed in relief.

Behind her, Shino was scolding Hanataro. “No! No more healing while you’re already so exhausted, Hanataro-san. Help should be here any minute now and we can leave it to them.”

Thud.

Everyone turned to look at what had fallen out of the dark sky. A twisted mess of black cloth, a 20^th seat badge, and a pair of lifeless eyes.

Lyn felt a shiver run down her spine from the base of her neck, like a sharp nail trailing mockingly down to right behind where her heart pounded to the rhythm of unadulterated fear in her rib cage. She could almost hear laughter on the wind as a vulture-like hollow slammed into the ground, talons plunging into Sakahone and crushing his head like a watermelon.

Any hope or slither of pride in their earlier victory was crushed along with it.

Sabitsura sat frozen in front of the talons of the hollow that cocked its head at them and clacked its hollow mask that covered its crimson-splattered beak.

“So many snacks for me! Snacks, snacks, snacks!” The hollow chanted, showing off the bits of flesh between its teeth.

It was the third hollow that sparked everything into chaotic movement, a giant snake that came crashing through the trees.

“My snacks! Mine!” The vulture hollow screeched possessively, and the next thing Lyn knew, she and Sabitsura were in the air.

Down on the rapidly retreating ground, Lyn saw the snake hollow disintegrate in a flash of steel. Help had arrived, but not fast enough for the two of them up in the sky.

“Ryuu-kun! Ryuu!” she wailed. Sabitsura trashed in the hollow’s talons while stabbing up into its belly with what was left of her asauchi that had snapped in half. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

Sabitsura was bathing herself in the hollow’s blood, but it only tightened its hold on them in response, snapping Fuyuko’s offending arm.

Lyn screamed as she felt each crack crunch crack of three of her ribs. ‘No no no no no no! I don’t want to die!’

Lyn thought Sabitsura let off a blast of kido into the hollow’s wing, but it didn’t matter when they plummeted. They slammed into the top of a cliff, hidden by the same canopy that took the brunt of their fall.

Lyn blinked, vision going dark and feeling like she was underwater, suspended in the depths of a lightless abyss. Then, she gasped for air and the sounds of battle flooded back in. Sabitsura was still screaming bloody murder, even with only one working arm and undoubtedly her own set of broken ribs, but she was actually putting up a fight against the hollow.

Both of the vulture’s wings were broken, blood was still dripping from its stomach plumage tickly, and only one of its legs barely functioned.

Sabitsura’s hair was no longer lavender, muddied by the blood she was drenched in. She was no longer a thorny flower; but unfurled into a rusty blade of warped metal – gone was technique in the face of rage – that was going to burry and tear itself into flesh with the most amount of pain possible.

Somehow, Sabitsura was winning.

But she wouldn’t win before she collapsed. Not from the way she panted and shook from exhaustion.

Lyn had to wait until she stopped seeing double to raise a hand from the dirt. She pointed a carefully aimed finger at the ankle of the injured talon. She watched the hollow’s weight shift – left right forward backward.

“Byakurai!”

Pain burned from her chest down her fingertips, but it was worth it when the hollow was sent falling backward over the cliff. Its long screech as it fell abruptly silenced.

Lyn felt no relief.

Not yet.

▯▯▯▮

“Fuck!” Fuyuko fell to her knees and backward onto the ground. “It’s finally over…” The blood and tears had dried on her face, and she stared up at the stars of the Human World.

Fuyuko set out a quiet sigh, her ribs and arm were definitely broken, and she was undoubtedly covered in blackening bruises and fractures all over. Her reiryoku levels had never been so low, and the exhaustion was hitting her all at once. She didn’t think she could move.

‘Ryuu-kun wouldn’t want me to die. I’ll… I’ll need to be more careful from now on.’ Fuyuko bit her lip. ‘But I’ve avenged him from that damn hollow, and I’ll live to see the day I’ll avenge us all from the stupid system that twisted us into what we are! I’ll rise through the ranks with the others, and we’ll find a way to pick apart the shitty nobles that turned the outer Rukongai into the hell it is!’

Fuyuko would let Ryuu’s death be in vain – not his, or any of their other abandoned brothers and sisters that suffered on the edge of this broken Soul Society.

She heard the crackle of gravel to her left.

Fuyuko managed to turn her head to look at Chiba who was also on the ground, but on her stomach. “Looks like you finally made yourself useful, huh? You owe me at least as much after how many times I save your ass earlier.”

Chiba remained silent.

The other girl slowly raised her upper body upon weak, trembling arms like a newborn calf and was almost covered in as much blood as one too. One of her legs was bent at an almost ninety-degree angle in the wrong direction.

She slowly started to crawl in Fuyuko’s direction.

Shh-shh….

“Quit moving – help is gonna be here soon,” Fuyuko grumbled at her.

There was the scent of strong Shinigami – at least lieutenant class – on the wind, and they would be found soon enough.

Shh-shh…

Chiba kept her eyes down, her fringe covering them, as she slowly crawled closer. Even as she gasped and wheezed from the pressure on her broken ribs.

Fuyuko smelt a different scent in the air – it wasn’t stronger than the scent of lieutenant class Shinigami, as powerful as the hollows they were facing, or the blood the sweet and coppery blood that coated everything. It smelt less like a scent more so than it felt like radio static prickling across her skin; sharp, cold, erratic, but so so diluted.

Shh-shh…

And when Fuyuko finally made eye contact with Chiba, every hair on her body raised.

“Just – Just stay over there!” Fuyuko snapped at Chiba, spitting as she did so.

Fuyuko tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. Black started to encroach on her vision, and her head became heavy. Her wounds were finally starting to clot, but dying of blood loss wasn’t what worried her.

“Stay… back…”

Shh-shh…

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Author’s Note

I hope you guys enjoyed the newest chapter! ╰(*°▽°*)╯✨ I had a lot of fun writing it!

Also, it’s been super interesting to see over the last couple chapters some of your thoughts on what division Lyn might end up in – or thinking about what kind of shenanigans might happen in each one haha 😂 (I muSt reSiSt revEaliNG EARLY!!!)

Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or opinions down below and I’ll respond as soon as I can! See you next chapter everyone!

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Chapter Text

She nudged and nudged and nudged because she didn’t have the strength to shove and be done with it. No. Every readjustment of her body, every shuffle and braced push had to be slow and deliberate. Sabitsura’s body was heavy with limp muscle, and Lyn was on the last dredges of her adrenaline.

‘I can’t let her live,’ Lyn thought, as she nudged Sabitsura’s unconscious body towards the edge of the cliff.

Lyn let in a hiss as her broken ribs were dragged over a stray stone.

‘She can smell there’s something wrong with my reishi – she’s too much of a threat,’ Lyn argued to no one but herself.

Lyn dragged herself forward and braced one arm against the ground, using the other to move Sabitsura another centimetre.

She paused, catching her breath.

‘But… But all she can smell is that I’m ‘weird’, right? She can’t get me killed by sharing a stray suspicion.’ She let her head fall into the dirt as fresh tears ran tracks through the blood and dust on her face. ‘Maybe she’s not as bad of a person as she seems? Maybe she won’t tell anyone because I helped her?’

Lyn had seen Sabitsura be cruel, sadistic, and unpredictable even before she had sensed something was off with Lyn. But Lyn had seen her cry and scream in anguish over a friend – maybe even found family – and every scream had been filled with unmistakable, love-driven fury. Sabitsura Fuyuko was no background character – she was a person.

‘She’s so young too…’ Lyn stared down at Sabitsura’s youthful face. ‘No, she’s not human – she’s a human soul. And that means whatever ability she has, has so much room to grow, doesn’t it? She could find out the extent of just how messed up my soul is. What it is. She even asked if I was a human soul earlier…’

Lyn started pushing again.

She stopped.

‘But Akon’s been monitoring and studying for ages and hasn’t made much progress.’ Lyn swallowed thickly. The blood in her mouth went down her dry throat sharply like flakes of rust. ‘But I’ve never let him do a proper, in-depth test – he’s always complaining he doesn’t have a full picture without them.’

Akon was practically a genius, but it didn’t mean he had Sabitsura’s ability to smell reishi and all the doors it would open, just like he couldn’t reverse engineer Orihime’s ability to reject reality. Some souls were spectacularly good at certain things beyond reason.

‘She has the potential to ruin everything. She learned aspects about me in a moment that took Akon almost a full year, and even then, most of his results seem inconclusive.’

Lyn started to nudge Sabitsura once more.

‘But… he does still have the potential to ruin everything too - eventually.’

“Ha… Hahaha!” She couldn’t help the mirthless laughter that bubbled up from her lips, despite how it made her ribs flare with so much pain because pain meant she was still alive. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t…” Lyn mustered up the energy for a harder push.

Sabitsura’s arm and leg dangled over the edge.

Lyn knew that if the other girl hadn’t fainted from her injuries, Lyn would have to dance and perform for yet another person. She would have to pray to a godless universe that Fuyuko wouldn’t have a change of heart and squish her underheel like a bug. Lyn was already doing the same for so many others.

The wind carried the scent of burnt feathers and sickly sweet copper.

She gripped tightly onto Sabitsura’s sleeve.

Lyn screamed and yanked the other girl away from the edge. “Dammit! I’m not thinking straight! Fuck! I can’t just kill a-”

But Lyn had been foolish to think that she had any control over the situation. They were not mere characters playing their parts in a scene. They were both real people in a living breathing world that would not pause for Lyn’s act to end in a moment of reclaimed morality.

It was going to remind Lyn just how powerless she was. A hollow that crested over the edge of the cliff with an open maw that spanned the width of a large car. It bit down, taking part of the cliff with it and cutting a wide crescent chunk from Sabitsura. Lyn stared straight at the bloody teeth of the hollow’s mask that had snapped shut mere centimetres from her face. She felt like her guts were rising from her stomach and coiling around her heart and lungs with guilt.

Because beneath all the panic and fear and adrenaline she felt relieved.

The scales had tipped ever so slightly back into Lyn’s favour.

She was probably going to need it.

▯▯▯▮

Shuhei Hisagi cursed whichever sensei was in charge of organising the disaster he and his squad descended upon. Butterflies carrying emergency requests for assistance in the Human World had swarmed the 13^th Division, but with Captain Ukitake currently recuperating at his family estate, Sentaro had called for an already-on-standby Shuhei for backup. He always was whenever the students were sent to the Human World for training, and it hadn’t been the first time he had been called upon either.

‘I keep telling the academy they should have more seated officers with them when doing these training missions!’ Shuhei bit his tongue, focusing on cutting down the swarm of hollows that had formed, attracted by the gathered Shinigami in training.

A buffet.

It was even worse that they had included students from the fourth and third classes instead of limiting it to the top students. Not even his own botched training mission from his academy days has been that bad. But despite the alluring, unrefined reiatsu of an early graduate hopeful he had heard about thrown into the mix, the number of hollows didn’t add up.

“Sir!” a young man’s voice called out. “Our friend got taken by a flying hollow!”

“Which direction?” Shuhei asked while focusing on the sky but saw black hair and teary blue eyes in his peripherals.

“That cliff!” the boy’s voice broke as he pointed. “The hollow crash-landed on the cliff!”

“Gather at the senkaimon with Lieutenant Kotsubaki,” Shuhei ordered before disappearing in with a flash step.

While the hollows in the valley where most of the students were gathered – both living and passed – had been neutralised, more were converging on where he could only assume the other students had been flown to.

‘There’s something wrong with the way the hollows are behaving.’ Shuhei had a bad feeling even before he saw a large hollow hanging on the side of the cliff. That feeling was only compounded when he saw a helpless student lying right in front of it, her leg and likely other bones broken. An extra leg and arm that clearly weren’t hers laid next to her.

Shuhei cursed under his breath.

He swiftly decapitated the hollow from behind before it could move another inch.

“Hey! Are you conscious?” Shuhei asked and landed at the student’s side.

A blood-encrusted eye winced at him through the strands of her fringe.

“This is going to hurt, but I need to move you away from the cliff, we’ve got more hollows coming our way,” Shuhei warned her. “Can you feel each of your limbs?” he asked.

Her arms shifted under her, curling closer to her body, and her unbroken leg readjusted.

“Yes,” she groaned out.

Shuhei was sure she’d rather not by the state of her, but it meant moving her would be slightly easier if she didn’t have a broken spine. He placed a hand on her back with the basic kaido he knew, and she immediately took in a quiet gasp of relief. Shuhei didn’t need to be better at kaido to know her ribs were likely broken – but his treatment was only the equivalent of a wet towel to her overall state.

As soon as Shuhei moved the student to a less precious position, a pair of hollows scaled the side of the cliff, roaring as they charged, and another burst through the trees behind them.

“Reap, Kazeshini!” Shuhei released his zanpakuto but was careful to keep his reiatsu from crushing the student at his feet.

Like his zanpakuto’s name, Shuhei generated winds of death and singing metal, his dual-bladed scythes spinning rapidly and launching by their chains in a defensive barrier around them. Shuhei may have hated that his shikai made him look like a reaper come for the weakened soul of the student he was defending, but it did well to keep the hollows at a safe distance from her.

At the very least, Shuhei hoped that his presence was reassuring in the face of the clearly traumatic events that had occurred here. And the fact that the student had likely watched her classmate be eaten right in front of her.

The remaining hollows were quickly purified, leaving Shuhei and the student in the company of the silent forest. He knelt at her side and slowly rolled her off of her back to take the pressure off of her ribs, making sure to support her snapped leg in a way that would hurt the least amount.

“Ugh!” she winced, and fresh tears trailed down her dirtied and bloodied cheeks. “T-Thanks.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shuhei let out a relieved breath. Despite how injured she was, she was conscious enough that he wasn’t worried about her dying on him for now. There was still a risk of internal injury, but it would be nothing Captain Unohana’s healers couldn’t handle. “I’ve already sent for help, so we’ll have you moved to the 4^th in no time. Just hang tight for a bit and try to stay awake for me. What’s your name?” he asked, trying to distract her from the pain and keep her conscious.

“Chiba… Lyn,” she replied, and her eyes drooped with exhaustion.

“I’m Lieutenant Hisagi Shuhei. Stay awake for me, okay?”

Shuhei asked her questions about where it hurt most – her ribs, but it didn’t seem a lung was punctured – and applied basic first aid to the worst of her lacerations. Luckily, most had stemmed themselves with dried blood and the shifting of numerous bandages already on her body. He wondered why she was already bandaged up, but her current injuries took precedence over his curiosity.

Shuhei’s brow furrowed. Her small frame was only emphasised by the weakness of her presence, her reiryoku so low even for a first-year student. She had barely managed to hold her own in time for him to arrive, and her classmate clearly hadn’t. She looked like a child in Shuhei’s eyes.

‘They better find out why this happened, unlike how they never found out why so many of my own classmates had to die,’ Shuhei thought.

At least in his case, Captain Aizen and, at the time, Lieutenant Ichimaru had been able to protect most of them. The unpleasant empathy that soaked his soul almost made the three scars that dragged down his face ache.

“A squad will be arriving any minute now, hang on for a bit longer,” Shuhei reassured her.

“That won’t be necessary.”

Shuhei turned to see Akon of all people drop from the sky and briskly walk over and kneel at the student’s other side.

“Thank you, Lieutenant Hisagi, but I’ll take things from here,” Akon said, eyes focused on Chiba.

“Akon-san?” was all Shuhei could say, watching as Akon assessed the student with glowing green hands, and reset her leg with kaido after placing a small pill in her mouth – painkillers most likely, because she hissed rather than screamed. “What are you doing here? And the 4^th will be here soon.”

“The 4^th isn’t qualified to treat her. I’ll be taking her to the 12^th.”

Akon’s expression was neutral, but he still managed to seem more agitated than Shuhei had ever seen the usually stoic man.

Alarm bells went off in Shuhei’s head at the mention of the 12^th Division and the implication of its captain, Kurotsuchi Mayuri. Shuhei didn’t know Akon well, but he knew that he was Kurotsuchi’s right-hand man and the vice president of the S.R.D.I., two things that did nothing to reassure Shuhei of his intentions.

Shuhei’s grabbed Akon’s wrist which moved to slip under the student’s head. “Are you doubting Captain Unohana and Lieutenant Kotetsu? And just what does the 12^th have to do with this student?”

It wouldn’t be the first time a Shinigami under Kurotsuchi had disappeared, and Shuhei sure as hell wasn’t about to watch it happen to a helpless academy student.

Akon closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He pulled his hand from Shuhei’s without much resistance.

“Then she’ll decide who she goes with once she’s lucid.”

Before Shuhei could argue, Akon was propping up Lyn’s head and upper body on his thighs in a fluid movement. Akon tapped her on the cheek, and her unfocused eyes cracked open.

“Where are your reishi pills?” Akon asked.

When all he got was a groan in reply, Akon pulled a syringe from inside of his lab coat. It was a viscous, black liquid that immediately gave Shuhei a bad feeling, tingling at the edge of his senses unnaturally. As soon as he sensed it, he finally noticed the tinge of a similar presence coming from the student.

The hairs on the back of Shuhei’s neck raised. “Just what is that?”

Akon didn’t answer, instead injecting it straight into the student’s neck. She went completely limp before all of the concoction had been injected.

“Hey!” Within a blink, Shuhei had grabbed Akon by the front of his lab coat, dragging Akon to his feet and moving the two of them a few feet away from the student’s body before Akon could inject the rest. “What the hell did you inject her with? I’ll take this situation straight to the Captain Commander – Kurotsuchi be damned – if the 12^th is experimenting on students!”

An anger that almost matched his own contorted Akon’s features, his horns making him seem like a pissed-off demon. “She is completely out of your jurisdiction Lieutenant-”

The student loudly gasped, halting their argument as both of their heads snapped to the side. The student – Chiba – was wide awake with a hand over her neck. She seemed to be lightly bleeding, and Shuhei almost winced, knowing he had been the cause of the needle being so roughly yanked from her skin. Akon, seeming to know exactly what Shuhei was thinking, glared at him before he walked over to Lyn and healed the weeping neck injury.

“I’ll be taking my patient to the 12^th now,” Akon stated.

Chiba looked both concerned and annoyed as Akon picked her up, but she was clearly familiar with the vice president. They disappeared in a blur of flash steps, leaving a confused and concerned Shuhei in their wake.

Shuhei needed to speak to his captain as soon as possible.

▯▯▯▮

Akon brought them through the senkaimon. After taking their names, the Kido Corps members that guarded the senkaimon entrance ignored Lyn despite the oddness of her being with Akon instead of the rest of her class.

“I got permission to bring you through the senkaimon from Captain Kurotsuchi as soon as we heard the distress signals,” Akon explained, and Lyn didn’t know enough about the inner workings of the Seireitei to question it. “But it looks like I’ll need to switch out the research documentation to the version that includes you explicitly. I’ll go over the details you need to know later.”

Lyn quietly looked around as Akon as he brought her past buildings she had never seen before, crossing over training grounds, and courtyards before landing on the top floor of a three-story tall Japanese building. It had white walls and amber clay tiles that matched the academy grounds. Though it was still night, Akon was clearly taking more isolated routes and avoiding being seen unnecessarily.

“Where are we?” Lyn asked.

“The 12^th Division barracks,” Akon replied as he landed softly on the wooden walkway. He slid open the shoji door with a weak use of Sho, as his hands were currently full. “Excuse the dust, I haven’t used this room in a while.”

Akon carried her into a desolate room that only had a futon and desk, completely bare of any personal items and covered in a thin layer of dust. He gently laid Lyn down on the futon, and she winced, the pain starting to come back to her. Akon didn’t care about the blood and dirt getting all over the bedding.

“How are you feeling after taking the new medication?” Akon asked as he checked her wounds, but hesitated. “I couldn’t exactly let you go to the 4^th, and the 12^th Division labs – while they have more equipment and beds – didn’t feel like the best idea.”

Lyn pressed the palms of her hands into her eyes. “That’s the least of my worries, Akon,” Lyn murmured as Akon healed her broken ribs. “Do you know if my friends are okay?”

“I saw them return through the senkaimon on my way through,” Akon reassured her. “And I’ll be sending a team to investigate the strange activity on the mountain we detected later.”

Akon moved onto healing Lyn’s knee as it had been snapped the wrong way. Usually, an injury like that would need the attention of the 4^th to not have lasting damage, but Akon knew that Lyn’s soul – for as easy as it was to break – was malleable. It would repair itself fully in time.

Surprisingly, it was Akon who broke the silence. “The medicine I gave you earlier.”

He placed the mostly empty syringe down next to Lyn.

“Assuming you’re not talking about the crazy painkiller you gave me…” She picked it up to examine it, slowly running the black liquid from end to end. “Compared to kaido, it felt like a warm mug of coffee with a bitter aftertaste. In my soul, that is – if that even makes sense.”

Akon let out an amused huff of air. “I’m sure you’re the only one that thinks that. I’ve recently prototyped a machine that essentially damages and warps reishi particles. It happens to give off a bit of an unnatural feeling. It’s not the same as your own anomalous energy, of course, but it seems that your body can absorb it better than through kaido or food. Think of it like an artificial blood transfusion.”

“Is there a reason it looks so gross?” Lyn asked quietly.

“That black substance is what’s keeping the damaged reishi held together. It naturally wants to dissipate and reform as regular reishi particles, so it’s been a struggle to keep it in that state.” Akon lifted his hands from Lyn’s now mostly healed ribs. “It’s extremely inefficient cost and time-wise and degrades very quickly, so don’t be reckless. It was pure luck that I had only a seventy percent degraded test sample on hand. Otherwise, you really would have needed to go to the 4^th.”

He handed Lyn a cloth, which he sprayed with some of the blood dissolver. She absentmindedly took the cloth with a hum and started to rub at the blood on her face lethargically. She was covered in so much red. Lyn was used to being covered in blood, but she tried not to think about how, for once, it wasn’t hers.

“Sakahone and Sabitsura were so strong…” Lyn uttered, barely audible to Akon. “But they died so easily.”

Akon looked away with a sigh. “Shinigami are surrounded by death.”

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Note

Hisagi Shuhei encountered! An upstanding Shinigami with a strong sense of justice – how might he interfere? Or will he even be able to? And is Akon maybe spending a bit too much time monitoring Lyn’s location? Possibly~

I hope you all enjoyed the chapter! Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or opinions down below and I’ll respond when I can! See you next chapter ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

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Chapter Text

Lyn laid in shallow water, sprawled out like a half-dried starfish beneath the warm sun. Under clear skies and a gentle breeze, Lyn could almost hear the tinkling of wind chimes from the corner store and the screams of that deranged woman. She felt herself sinking deeper, cold water lapping slightly higher up her legs, arms, torso and sides of her face. The water slowly rose to her ears, muffling the sound of her bickering spirits – or at least, it should have. Instead, they got louder.

“The most important thing now is for Leader to keep her head down,” her tall, white-clad spirit snapped, pieces of paper fluttering in jittery agitation around him. “Strength didn’t save Sakahone and Sabitsura!”

“And knowing the main storyline didn’t save us from almost getting eaten along with Lavender Locks! We would have died if Sixty-Nine Man didn’t swoop in and save the day!” the little one argued, the black piece of paper covering his face fluttering, but never revealing more than his snarling mouth. “You’re just feeding the Boss’s fears!”

Lyn closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath.

▯▯▯▮

Lyn’s hands twitched and trembled. She had burned her fingertips from the many Byakurai she had cast, but she didn’t cry out. She was still on the strong pain medication that Akon had given her, and she knew that what she was doing now was abusing it.

The students had been forced to move on quickly from the incident in the Human World. With the recruitment fair coming soon, many students were quick to turn their attention to training, some found comfort in their friends, and a few left the academy entirely.

Lyn isolated herself. She left her dorm room in the middle of the night instead of letting Shino’s banging on her door wake her, took her food to go from the mess hall before anyone else arrived, kept away from her and Hanataro’s favourite nooks in the library, and trained on the other side of the academy grounds.

Because she couldn’t help but imagine the blood streaked across Hanataro’s face, and the sound of his scream when he’d taken the brunt of the explosion from that cero for her.

She could have gotten him killed.

Hanataro could have died right then and there, and only a much smaller part of her cared that maybe Ichigo would die from his injuries in the Seireitei in the future if Hanataro wasn’t there to save him. She didn’t know Ichigo. She knew Hanataro. She was friends with Hanataro and maybe that would really be enough to upend his life.

Lyn feared death. Lyn thought she knew her influence could lead death to others. But she hadn’t understood until she watched Hanataro risk his life, and the two strongest students she knew be crushed and eaten in front of her.

She could get other people killed, and for the first time, it wasn’t a far-off idea involving mere characters, years into a future, with deaths already destined.

But more terrifying than that was coming face to face with her own mortality once again – that after dying once she could lose everything and wasn’t likely to get a third chance. The thought of crossing another hollow sent ants crawling through her veins, spreading out like an infestation from her pounding heart.

Lyn scratched and picked at old scar tissue that crawled up the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure if reality was crashing down on her, or if it was blurring away into the white noise.

▯▯▯▮

Akon frowned at the data before him, tracking the movement of the strange reishi signature on his monitors. He was tracking the recorded movements of the students, the dummy hollows, the real ones that had struck, and something else. His eyes followed Lyn’s group of five – though to most, it looked like a group of four with how she was shown as a weak, flickering speck.

He’d spent hours at his desk long after official reports had been sent to the 1^st and 9^th, recalibrating the specialised equipment he had developed just for tracking Lyn. A tiny speck – a mere pixel on his monitors he wasn’t sure was just eye strain from sitting at his desk for too long – abruptly appeared and disappeared near Lyn.

On three separate occasions.

Akon pinched his nose with a sigh, holding his head in one hand. He was being paranoid. There were always tiny irregularities like this on the monitoring systems. And there were plenty of spots on the old monitors that had dead or damaged pixels.

Suddenly, Akon’s monitor flickered before dying with a small pop and sizzling sound. He cursed under his breath and went to tell off the team meant to be in charge of basic maintenance. This wasn’t the first time this had happened this month.

‘Those fluctuations are either nothing or it's just Lyn’s zanpakuto reacting – it might have awareness of outside her inner world already. This stupid girl is making me irrational,’ Akon thought as he swept out of the dark room, his lab coat flowing behind his quick strides.

He missed the low, repetitive beeps of the smaller monitoring device he’d left on the desk.

It blinked a dull red, alerting to no one but an empty room.

▯▯▯▮

It took a while for Akon to find the time to visit Lyn again, dropping off pain medication, and reishi pills. They were sitting on a patch of grass tucked away behind the trees of the older, unmaintained training grounds.

“Could you sign this, Lyn?” Akon asked, pushing a small stack of papers into her hands while not even looking up from Lyn’s knee that he was checking over. It was the one that had been snapped badly in the human world.

“Shroomigami-san, this is too many words for me. It’s Akon-fusing.”

“I have nothing to do with mushrooms. And quit making puns with my name.”

Lyn dropped a poisonous mushroom above Akon’s conveniently lowered head, hovering over her kneecaps. Not needing to look up, Akon flicked the mushroom into Lyn’s face.

“Gah!”

“I’m taking away your bread privileges.”

“Don’t threaten me with a bread time.”

Akon’s eyelid twitched, and he pointedly ignored her to gesture back at the documents. The stray thought to smack her in the head with the documents crossed his mind – or maybe it was lingering. “After you sign these documents, they’ll go to Central 46 for approval and we’ll be able to…”

▯▯▯▮

“Surely just registering yourself as someone’s physician doesn’t mean you could deny them lifesaving healing from others, Captain Tosen?!” Shuhei exclaimed, his hand swiping through the air.

“Calm yourself, Lieutenant Hisagi,” his Captain quietly ordered.

“My apologies, Captain,” Shuhei immediately relented with a grimace.

“Under current Central 46 laws, it is possible.” Tosen explained with a frown, “As 3^rd Seat Akon is officially registered as Chiba Lyn’s primary physician by the approval of Central 46, she, and Akon-san on her behalf, can reject treatment from other healers. Even if doing so might lead to her death.”

Tose’s lips pursed, clearly frustrated with the law as well. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. “It’s a little-known law that hasn’t been utilized in years. In the few cases it has been used, it’s been used between noble family members to keep clan secrets or to keep tight control of those under them.”

“That’s…” Shuhei’s clenched fists almost drew blood.

“And even without the Exclusive Care Clause, if Akon is experimenting on this student as you suspect, then Captain Kurotsuchi is certainly supporting him.”

But even with everything blocking Shuhei’s way, Tosen knew he wouldn’t give up so easily. That wasn’t the kind of person he was.

Tosen a hand on Shuhei’s shoulder with a sigh. “However, it’s to your luck that Captain Kurotsuchi and Akon are no nobles. That means you have a few options.”

▯▯▯▮

By the time the recruitment fair had arrived, her little zanpakuto spirit’s annoyance was palpable even outside of her inner world. He used his small amount of influence on the physical world by showing his displeasure by rearranging Lyn’s written words to say obscene things. Lyn had only just managed to fix the nonsense he had added in with her slowly growing knowledge of kanji before she handed in her final written exam.

But when he had figured out how to pinch her, Lyn found herself walking through the recruitment fair with her friends. She lied to them, saying that she had only just gotten out of the special care unit they had her in because of her weak body, and not that she had been avoiding them for the past week. They brought her back into their fold in such a warm welcome that almost made Lyn blurt out the truth.

“We were all treated at the 4^th Division within a couple days, so we were all so worried when no one would tell us where you were! It’s great that you’ve recovered.” Hanataro beamed at Lyn.

“Thanks, Hanataro-san, and I’m glad you’re all doing well.” Lyn’s smile was weak in comparison, but she couldn’t help the genuine happiness at seeing them again. She knew then she wasn’t going to be able to push them away a second time – at least, not entirely – and basked in their unearned companionship.

Isolation didn’t suit her like most humans. ‘That’s probably why I started trusting Akon a bit too quickly…’

The recruitment fair was bustling with students and there were more official Shinigami in one place than Lyn had seen before. Booths had been set up across the courtyard with officers of each division engaging with students in conversation and handing out brochures – some divisions doing so a touch more desperately than others like the 4^th and 12^th.

The 4^th Division recruiters were quick to latch onto Hanataro as soon as he approached, and Lyn cringed at the sugar-coated tones and false promises.

“So, which of the events are you entering?”

Lyn turned to Shino with a polite smile smacked dumbly on her face, paired with her owlishly blinking eyes.

Shino let out an exasperated sigh. “You know it's mandatory to sign up for at least one event, right? The last thing the academy wants is the students wasting the time of all the seated officers, Lieutenants, and Captains that will be arriving in the evening for the final matches of the main tournament.”

“The who are coming to where and I need to do what?”

Ryunosuke jumped in, “Don’t be mean Shino-san! Lyn-san just got back from special care, and the academy probably forgot to send someone to let her know what she missed.”

Shino clicked her tongue. “I guess you’re right. Let’s quickly sign you up for kido demonstrations or something.”

Shino dragged Lyn behind her while Ryunosuke waited for Hanataro to be released by the 4^th Division recruiters, taking Lyn towards a stand run by academy staff and a bulletin board covered in various events and tournament brackets.

“Excuse me!” Shino got their attention over the noise.

The staff member leaned over the table to hear them better over the chatter of the students and Shinigami around them. “How can I help?”

Shino nudged Lyn closer, almost making her knock heads with the staff member.

“Woah- Um, I’m here to sign up for one of the events?” Lyn asked more than stated.

The man in front of her put a hand to his face and shook his head. “The cut-off date for signing up was yesterday.”

Lyn’s tense shoulders dropped. “Ah, that’s my bad then. I was told it was mandatory so will I need to have some sort of disciplinary-”

The staff member cut Lyn off with his laughter. “Oh no silly, it’s mandatory, so you’ve just automatically been placed into the main event.”

Lyn meekly raised a hand and asked, “And what is the main event exactly?”

“It’s the tournament of course!” he cheered. “Now go out there and do your best to impress the seated officers watching! You might even catch the eye of a Captain,” he winked in a way Lyn was sure was mocking.

“Hey.”

Lyn turned to Shino who pulled them out of the crowd, a flicker of concern escaping her narrowed eyes and furrowed brows.

“Are you going to be okay fighting? You just got back,” Shino asked.

Rubbing her neck, Lyn looked away and sighed. “Well, I have recovered, but I’ll probably just let myself get beaten in the first round or something.”

Shino sighed excessively, but there was a touch of relief in her expression. “Seriously, I’m surrounded by wimps.”

Lyn burst out in laughter not even she expected. “Awe, are you worried about your wimpy friends, Shino-sama? Such kindness-”

Shino struck at Lyn’s head with a weak slap that was easily dodged. “I told you to quit calling me that!”

▯▯▯▮

The ring of seats was filled with spectating students, some of their family members, and some souls from the inner districts, and encircled the square tiled arena below, the warm mid-day sun illuminating the matt surface. The main viewing platform for the captains, lieutenants and other seated officers was raised above the other seats with an amber-tiled shade above them, giving them a perfect view of the main event of the recruitment fair.

Shunsui settled onto the zabuton next to Jushiro just as the kido demonstrations were finishing up. Sentaro and Kiyone had dutifully set up a table spread of calming medicinal tea and light snacks for Ukitake despite trying to tell the two it was unnecessary. In the end, Jushiro relented with a fond sigh as his two subordinates butted heads and left to help the 13^th Division recruitment stand.

“Nanao-chan!” Shunsui sang her name playfully, turning back to look at his stern lieutenant.

“I’m not bringing you any sake,” she stated coldly before he could even ask. “You’re here to recruit promising future Shinigami.” Before Shunsui could complain more, Nanao continued, “And to increase student morale after the recent incident.”

Essentially, she was telling him to pretend to be interested in the matches. They both already knew the most promising students that would be graduating in a few weeks had already been snatched up by other divisions, and that all the first-year students had passed in the Human World incident. There had even been a boy who had gained his shikai – set to be the earliest graduate of the academy – snuffed out in an instant.

And it was because of the incident that there were more captains and lieutenants in attendance than usual. However, the Captain Commander, Soifon, Zaraki, and Mayuri were still missing as usual.

Shunsui sighed dramatically. “I guess I’ll behave for now – just for you, Nanao-chan.”

As the small tournament began with the sixth-year students, a few released their shikai. Disappointingly, some of the few shikai displayed were still so unrefined and uncontrolled that other students were able to defeat them with their asauchi alone. The few students with a good handle on their released blades defeated their opponents swiftly, or they drew out their fights arrogantly in a show of flowery attacks and wasted movements.

Shunsui readjusted his pink haori over his white captain one as the wind generated from a kido blast lightly disturbed it. He chatted with Jushiro and teased Nanao-chan some more, but even that wasn’t fun anymore when the academy sensei that milled around the captains and lieutenants turned to chat with him about a student whose name he couldn’t remember. A few of the sensei were clearly being paid off by families with too much money on their hands trying to secure their children seated positions without properly earning it. But most sensei were simply putting in good words for their students simply because they were good students that they didn’t want to be overlooked.

Those greedier sensei practically lined up to talk to Jushiro, wanting to take advantage of his generous and open nature. A few sharp smiles from Shunsui over his friend’s shoulder were enough to send them scampering away.

“Everyone seems to be leaving in such a hurry,” Jushiro commented lightly as he sipped at his tea, giving Shunsui a knowing look.

Shunsui returned it with a serene smile as he enjoyed the breeze, now entirely ignoring the battles down below. “It’s a busy time of the year after all.”

Nanao glared at the back of Shunsui’s head. “It should be a busy time of the year for you too. Quit leaving all your paperwork to me.”

Shunsui chuckled nervously and pointedly turned back to the matches. “Oh, look, some little first-years joined the tournament.”

How did Shunsui know it was a pair of first-year students? Well, one was monologuing, and the other had tripped on air onto her face.

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Note

▮ I’m baaack! ✨✨✨ Man, I underestimated how busy I was going to be, but I’m glad I got over my writer's block to finish this chapter! There’s no way I’m giving up on this fic – tormenting Akon is too much fun.

▮ I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I reply to what I can  ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Sweat beaded down Lyn’s neck under the hot sun. But she wasn’t sweating from how her black hair absorbed the sun rays and heat greedily, nor was it the crowd of people whose eyes were on her. It was the sight of so many of her favourite characters merely a few metres away, looking down at the arena from their viewing platform.

There were so many familiar faces it was overwhelming. It was like being slapped in the face with multiple manga covers at once, snapping her head back and forth as she looked between them in awe. Shuhei, who she had met before – but barely remembered the encounter from the pain – had always been an interesting and admirable character to her. Kyoraku and Ukitake sat side by side and just seeing them alone was enough to make her want to make her want to squeal and punch a wall. There was also Unohana, Isane, Toshiro, Rangiku and more she couldn’t quite see further back amongst unfamiliar seated officers and some academy sensei. Even after being dead for almost a year and two months by that point, she still felt like she was dreaming in moments like this.

The tanto strapped to her thigh vibrated in excitement. Not expecting her tanto to abruptly turn into a vibrator, Lyn tripped onto her face as soon as her match started.

Lyn’s opponent stopped his monologue about upholding his family's honour.

Lyn slowly stood up and dusted herself off with an awkwardly blank face and pursed lips.

She charged up a Byakurai in her fingertips and considered blasting it at her own face to save her from the mortification. ‘I want to die. Oh wait, I’m already dead! Hahaha – ghost joke. Fuck my life-death.’

▯▯▯▮

Shunsui burst out laughing and immediately received a disapproving look from Jushiro.

“Shunsui, you shouldn’t-” Jushiro cut himself off.

“Hado 1, Sho!” The short, black-haired girl shouted, her index and middle fingers pointed outwards as she dual cast two weak Sho to poke her opponent in the eyes.

“My eyes! You rat!” the boy screeched as he held his face.

Shunsui laughed harder and slapped his knee, now keenly paying attention to the fight.

Jushiro covered his mouth, hiding his suppressed laughter with wide eyes. “What a… unique use of Sho.”

Shunsui grinned as the girl threw a weak Byakurai through her opponent’s sword. The electricity ran up his arm, and she almost knocked the sword from his hand with a Sho to his twitching fingers. “Not the best fighter but she seems to be making up for it well enough.”

“Boys!” a deep, feminine voice boomed from behind them. The older soul sat between the two in the space they readily made between them for her. “It’s been too long!” Kumagi laughed.

“Indeed, it’s good to see you again, Kumagi-sensei,” Jushiro greeted her politely, happy to see an old teacher.

“Kumagi-sensei, how have you been?” Shunsui grinned. “I’d offer you a drink, but Nanao-chan is keeping me dry today.”

Kumagi had been a kido teacher at the academy for a lot longer than most would assume. Her black hair pulled into a large bun only had a few grey streaks through it, and her deep crow’s feet were easy to miss with the energy of her smile and the fullness of her cheeks. But there was an undeniable strength to her movements and mischievous wisdom that came with age in her eyes and in the corners of her smiles.

While Nanao told Shunsui off again, Jushiro offered his old sensei a cup of tea which she happily accepted. However, Kumagi’s attention quickly turned back to the current match between the first-year students.

“I heard you two talking about Chiba-san, so I had to come over.” Kumagi smiled fondly as she watched the girl almost stumble. “Oh, look at her casting three chantless kido in a row without fainting. I taught her that.” Kumagi pretended to wipe a tear from her eye.

“As impressive your teaching is, those are only low-level kido she’s using? Not too powerful either,” Shunsui’s voice was tinged with confusion. Most students wouldn’t even need to use the chant for Sho, the first Hado spell, after the first few weeks of practice.

Kumagi crossed her arms, looking like she wanted to tut at him. “She used to exhaust herself and faint after casting even a couple kido with full chants at the beginning of the year. It’s a drastic improvement!”

Jushiro frowned and his brows furrowed lightly in concern, eyes quickly following Kumagi’s to focus on Chiba. “Exhaustion isn’t too uncommon, but fainting?”

Kumagi sighed. “Her soul seems to have passed on unnaturally fragile. Fainting, exhaustion, reopening old injuries often and getting hurt easily. She tries to hide it during class, but I’m much more observant than that, of course,” Kumagi gestured with her hands for emphasis. “But she’s been getting much healthier in recent months!” She looked the picture of pride, her back straight and hands on her hips.

“A bit clumsy as well – like a cute little indoor cat playing on the streets for the first time,” Shunsui chimed in with his pink fan over his mouth.

Everyone ignored him.

“Oh my.” Jushiro covered his mouth with his hand. “Is she receiving any treatment? Does she have a family sponsoring her?”

Despite Jushiro’s own bad health, had become a Shinigami due to being the eldest son of a low-class aristocratic family and needing to support his five brothers and two sisters. Jushiro couldn’t think of what other reason such an unhealthy soul would be struggling so hard at the academy if not for familial pressure, to support someone else, or needing more money to eat. But he couldn’t sense enough reiryoku in her for her to necessitate becoming a Shinigami for food. Of course, there were other reasons, but it was clear the young soul wasn’t fighting with delusional arrogance of her own abilities with goals of grandeur like her opponent.

She looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but out there with her sword in her hands.

Kumagi cupped her chin. “I’m not sure, but I don’t think she returned to the Rukongai to visit anyone during the last break. Regardless, she’s certainly not my best student, but don’t sleep on her applications when she finally graduates. She’s got quite the eye and hand for paperwork I’ve heard. Now this other sixth-year student of mine…”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn placed a hand over her mouth as she scampered back to the stands. She had already embarrassed herself enough and the last thing she wanted to do was vomit in front of so many important characters – important people. Lyn groaned at the tingling in her fingertips and the churning of her stomach. She wasn’t as recovered enough as she thought to be letting off so many chantless kido, even if they were quite weak ones.

Shino raised a questioning brow at Lyn but sat her down next to her with a guiding hand on her back. “I thought you were going to throw the first match?”

Lyn sighed dramatically. “No, just throw up. Kumagi-sensei and Sakai-sensei would have my head if I let one of the few students worse than me in combat classes win.”

‘Why did he even compete? Is he also stupid?’ Lyn wondered.

Shino chuckled and nudged a flask of water into Lyn’s hands with a smirk. “They would. But no one will blame you when you lose to me next.”

“Lyn-san! Shino-san!” Ryunosuke called, out to them.

The women turned and saw Ryunosuke and an exhausted Hanataro with an arm full of pamphlets and papers in his arms. Hanataro followed behind Ryunosuke through the crowded stands and quickly made their way over.

“Sorry everyone, that took a lot longer than expected,” Hanataro apologised and slumped into the seat next to Lyn, while Ryunosuke sat on Shino’s other side.

“How did it go?” Lyn asked curiously, wondering what all the material he was carrying was. She thought she spied a few books buried in the mess in his arms.

“It went alright – I think?” Hanataro tilted his head to the side. “They told me that in my third year, I’ll probably be ready to start doing some practical training and interning as a healer at the 4^th Division infirmary.”

Lyn’s eyes widened as she looked over just what was in his arms. Extra training materials for kaido and medicine. “That’s amazing, Hanataro-san! Do students usually get internship offers so early?” she asked, turning to Shino and Ryunosuke for confirmation.

“They usually only offer those to fifth and sixth-year students,” Ryunosuke explained, eyes shining as he looked at Hanataro with admiration.

Hanataro was quickly turning red under the attention. “M-Maybe they just need an extra hand for cleaning duties and other simple tasks?”

Shino scoffed. “Yes, that’s why you’ve had textbooks on second and third-year kido dumped on you.”

While they continued to both tease and praise Hanataro until he was a stuttering mess, jumping between the anxiousness of responsibility and the joy of his efforts being acknowledged, Lyn held the bench beneath her with a white-knuckle grip. It was very unlikely that this had happened in the original storyline.

Lyn had concerns before about what changes Hanataro would experience with a proper friend group supporting him. Less bullying and more training with their group would result in him doing better for himself – but she didn’t think it would be at this scale. ‘But will all these efforts amount to anything, or will the world somehow ‘correct itself’ and beat Hanataro back down to his canon self where he’s bullied by most of his squad?’

A fresh wave of nausea and a constricted throat had Lyn’s jaw clenching and her knee bouncing up and down at her side anxiously. ‘Or will I have to do it myself to make sure things stay canon?’

Lyn was disgusted that she considered it.

Or was that twisting of her intestines fear of the future if she could no longer predict it?

A firm nudge to Lyn’s leg turned her attention back to her friends.

“Oi.” Shino pulled her knee back to herself. “I’m not going to beat you that badly in our match. Just consider it another training session.”

Shino’s expression was teasing, smug, but there was a concerned crinkle in the corner of her eyes again.

But Shino wouldn’t ask.

She knew Lyn wouldn’t answer.

“Huh?” Ryunosuke leaned forward from behind Shino to get a better look at Lyn. “You two have a match against each other?”

Shino gripped the hilt of her asauchi with a smirk that was more teeth than lips. “Right after I beat Isobe’s ass, then you’re next up in the first-year bracket.”

Lyn smiled plastically at Shino and wiggled her bandaged fingers in the other woman’s direction. “If you send me back to the infirmary you’re paying for my bills. I don’t have health insurance.”

Hanataro raised a brow. “But all the treatment is free? And what’s health insurance-”

“I’m up.” Shino stood up abruptly, shocking Ryunosuke with the sudden movement and making him let out a shout. “And the only person I’m sending to the infirmary today is Isobe.”

“Make sure to break four of his bones!” Lyn called cheerfully after Shino, waving at her back.

“W-Why four, exactly, if I should even ask?” Ryunosuke asked.

Lyn smiled sweetly and gave him an energetic thumbs up. “One bone for each of us.”

Meanwhile, Hanataro finally managed to wrangle the books and papers in his arms into a neat stack on his lap. “Lyn-san, please don’t encourage excessive violence.”

“His ugliness is excessively violent to my eyes.”

“Lyn-san!”

▯▯▯▮

Shino and Isobe’s match was quick to burst into action. Both being in the same zanjutsu classes, they traded blows with familiarity. Their movements were fast and vicious, with sword tips scraping against the tiled arena floor with sparks and striking against one another’s blades with sharp clangs and screeches of metal. Neither was the type to patiently wait for their opponent to move – they aimed to overwhelm.

Isobe had physical strength and a taller build on his side – and with it came a longer reach. Shino was slightly faster, nicking him in a few places with her blade. Isobe smirked when he brute forced his way through another one of Shino’s disarming techniques.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen your wimpy little friends, huh?” Isobe grinned as he parried Shino’s overhead slash and opened a small gash on her upper arm that was slowly staining her white kosode red. “I should visit them after I pummel you.”

“Hah!” Shino barked out a laugh in his face. She ducked jumped over his next slash and aimed a spinning heel kick at Isobe’s head that had him stumbling back. “Our matches are 13 to 7! What makes you think you’re winning this time?”

Despite her words, sweat beaded down the side of her face.

Isobe seemed to have been training a lot since the incident in the Human World.

The veins across Isobe’s forehead looked ready to pop, the tendons in his neck flexing with his grin that was all teeth. “Cocky bitch – you’d be dead a long time ago if I could just run you through or lob off that shiny melon head of yours!”

“The hell did you just say about my forehead?!”

Shino had been trying her best to manage her temper, but she couldn’t help the snarl on her lips or the way she held her sword in a grip that was too tight. Shocks were sent up her arm with each meeting of their blades because of it, and her muscles strained.

She wasn’t sure what happened next, but one moment Isobe’s blade was coming down at her with a diagonal, overhead strike. In the next instant, it was coming from below.

Her blade clattered to the ground.

“Match!” the referee called.

“What the…” Shino stared at her empty hand. “How the fu-”

Isobe clicked his tongue and sneered down at the shorter soul. “Seriously? Things were only just getting interesting.” He walked past Shino back to the stands with a rough clap to the shoulder. “I’ll just take it out on Chiba instead then. Let’s see you try to jump in this time.”

Shino shoved him off, and hissed, finally feeling the pain of the gash on her arm.

“Shino-san!” Ryunosuke ran into the field, to quickly lead her back to the student's stands where Hanataro and Lyn were anxiously waiting.

“Are you hurt badly anywhere else, Shino-san? The cut goes a bit into the muscle so please take it easy for a few days.” Hanataro quickly healed up the worst of Shino’s gashes and cuts with glowing green hands. It was clear why the 4^th Division recruiters had been so excited.

Lyn pulled a bundle of clean bandages from somewhere – she always had them on her, being perpetually injured as she was. She neatly bandaged up Shino’s arms with speed and experience that was on par with Hanataro. “Is it too tight?”

“No – it’s perfect. Thanks, everyone.” Shino sighed.

“Do you need some water? I also have snacks from earlier,” Ryunosuke asked, holding said items out to her.

Shino’s cheeks flushed pink. “Guys, calm the hell down! I’m not dying!”

“Good job on your fight, Shino-san,” Hanataro complimented as he finished healing her.

“You’re getting a lot faster,” Ryunosuke added.

“I’m sure you’ll get him next time. You always do. But what happened at the end there?” Lyn’s brows furrowed in concern. “We missed it because someone walked in front of us.”

Shino quickly became tense again, gritting her teeth together. She zeroed in on Isobe’s back at the first aid tent and glared. “I wasn’t even sure what he did – but he pulled some kind of trick, that bastard. One second his sword’s coming down from the top, the next moment it’s coming from below.” Shino turned to Lyn, expression stern. “You should forfeit the match now. That asshole just wants to take his frustrations out on someone, and you know he hates you and Hanataro. He’ll probably drag out the fight for fun.”

Lyn awkwardly sucked her lips into her mouth – like she had tasted something sour – only now realising that Isobe’s next match would be with her. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”

But when Lyn tried to tell one of the academy sensei organising the matches that she wanted to forfeit, she was met with a scoff.

The sensei looked Lyn up and down with a sneer, seeming to recognise her. “You kids have no backbone. No drive. No, you look well enough and we’re not wasting the time of all the captains and seated officers that came all the way out here. And you’re especially not depriving another student of a chance to show off their skills – events like this are important for not just your own future!” the sensei scolded Lyn harshly, continuing to chew her out until eventually Lyn was sent back.

But Lyn heard one last mutter beneath the sensei’s breath as she was turned away, “Damn cripple. What’s even the point in wasting everyone’s time at the academy in the first place?”

Lyn slowly sat down between her friends who overheard the loud shouting. “Welp. Guess I’ll die.”

Hanataro grabbed her by the shoulders. “D-Don’t just give up!”

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Note

▮ Hello everyoneee! A few more scenes for you fellow Kyoraku and Ukitake fans ✨ (But don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Aizen, Akon, or Shuhei).

▮ I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll reply to what I canヾ(≧▽≦*)o

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

While a couple of other seated officers – Rangiku especially – had found some humour in Lyn’s fighting style, another paid almost as much attention to the fight as Ukitake and Kyoraku. Shuhei worried his lower lip as he watched Chiba fight while discreetly listening in on the conversation between Kumagi and the two dual-blade captains before the conversation shifted to other students.

It seemed Akon had certainly treated the young student’s injuries well if she was fighting, but his concern only grew from what Kumagi had mentioned. Hearing that the student was perpetually injured and weaker than most in terms of her general health did nothing to increase his confidence in Akon’s odd investment into Chiba.

‘There’s no reason for Akon to have registered an Exclusive Care order with Central 46 if he wasn’t doing something that he didn’t want other healers to find.’ Shuhei crossed his arms and bit his inner cheek. The breeze ruffled her kosode sleeves, revealing white bandages that trailed down her hands, wrists, and further up her arms, hidden by the cloth.

‘Could the 12^th Division be taking advantage of a student with bad health for experiments, or are experiments causing her bad health? Those two things don’t need to be exclusive either…’ Shuhei resisted groaning in frustration.

Shuhei had stuck his nose in the business of others before – it came with the territory of not being able to ignore the troubles of others right in front of him, a trait his division respected him highly for. But never had it been so complex to act on. Akon was the vice president of the S.R.D.I. and he was Kurotsuchi’s right-hand man; everyone knew he was more so the acting lieutenant of the 12^th Division than Nemu was. Those were all aspects that made him much harder to deal with than the average Shinigami. He clearly wasn’t eager to share the nature of his business with Chiba the last time they had talked in the Human World, and Shuhei was in no position to leverage his own rank to make him.

He considered Tosen’s suggestion, but first, he would try to see what he could learn from the girl herself. Tosen’s suggestion would simply take too much time. Shuhei didn’t even know if he had time or not – not with how little he knew.

While Shuhei was deep in his thoughts, with a flutter of white cloth, someone stood at his side.

“Good afternoon, Lieutenant Hisagi,” Aizen greeted him warmly, lightly adjusting his glasses.

Shuhei quickly bowed, “Captain Aizen, good afternoon.”

“Is something troubling you, Lieutenant?” Aizen asked with a curious tilt of his head in Chiba’s direction, and Shuhei’s eyes followed Aizen’s own to land on the girl.

“The last I saw that student was during the Human World incident a week ago, and she was quite injured. I was just concerned, seeing her being so active already,” Shuhei explained.

Aizen’s eyes somehow managed to lock on the same nondescript soul sitting in the stands that Shuhei was looking at.

“Ah, Chiba-san. I didn’t think she was the type to want to enter these sorts of events.” Aizen frowned lightly as he adjusted his glasses, concern clear on his face.

Shuhei’s brows raised. “You know this student, Captain Aizen?”

Aizen held his hands behind his back with a small frown. “We’ve crossed paths while I was teaching calligraphy. Still bandaged up as usual. It seems her situation hasn’t improved as much as I’d hoped...”

Shuhei’s fists clenched at his sides. “Her situation?”

Aizen gazed back out at the arena. “I’m not entirely sure myself, but I think I should share my concerns... Could you spare me a moment of your time, Lieutenant?”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn ran through the simple plan she made with Shino for the umpteenth time: block and make at least one strike so her sensei can’t complain, then let herself be disarmed and forfeit.

The moment Lyn blocked Isobe’s slash that she remembered she doesn’t usually block – she dodges. The steel of her wakizashi sings as she’s thrown back, and something in her soul shrieks. A small chip of metal flies off her sword, and a cold tremor vibrates through her body front to back, leaving various small cuts in their wake across her skin that burned cold.

Lyn blinked away her double vision as she made a mental note, ‘Right, don’t let the sword keeping you alive get damaged – dumbass.’

She retaliated with a shaky slash at Isobe’s arm. She forced herself to loosen her white-knuckle grip, anticipating his block to disarm her and end the fight. Lyn expected him to deflect, but she didn’t expect the next instant for his blade to be coming from the other side, aimed straight at her face.

Lyn instinctually regained her grip on her blade and spun as she fell, blocking the strike in a wild panic. The force of Isobe’s strike quickened her descent, slamming her into the dirt with another echo of cold, tingling pain through her flesh and bones.

Isobe aimed a kick to Lyn’s skull that had her clumsily flash-stepping while still on the ground, sliding herself back a few metres to roll onto her feet.

Her breaths were short and panicked, her chest pounding against her rib cage.

Like a beast smelling weakness, Isobe grinned toothily. “Giving up already, numbskull?”

Lyn flinched and took a step back, ‘Shit shit sh-’

Isobe rushed forward to fill the gap, one hand holding his blade against Lyn’s trembling one, and his other hand gripping the front of her kosode. “You try letting go of that blade or giving up again, and I split your head open, understand?” he whispered.

Thump.

Lyn’s weakness was not a hard one to spot.

With a shout, Isobe threw Lyn hurtling upwards into the air. Lyn’s body spun out of control. Somehow, she managed to aim at Isobe who flash-stepped up to follow her.

“Sho!” Lyn shouted, and small cuts opened in the path of the reishi violently rushing down her arm.

It was stronger than usual, adrenaline and fear making Lyn forgo her soul’s limits and slammed into Isobe’s arm which was pulled back for a slash. The blow sent his arm bending backwards. It shocked Lyn out of her panic for just a moment, but it was renewed when she didn’t hear the crack of his elbow. His unharmed forearm whipped around and upward with a disgusting, boneless quality.

Thump.

Lyn shrieked as his blade nicked her stomach. ‘What the fuckity fuck is this hypermobility on steroids?!’

Isobe was fully grinning now, eyes burning with sadistic glee. “C’mon, insect! Struggle for me!”

“The hell is your problem?!” Lyn shouted back, unable to hold her tongue anymore.

They drop to the ground simultaneously in fighting stances.

Isobe’s grin was wiped clean off his face. “Your dirty eyes, you weak fucker.”

He doesn’t elaborate, instead continuing the conversation through blows, punching and kicking Lyn in the stomach, arms and legs, her arm and blade she’d managed to hold onto flailing. A heavy punch to Lyn’s stomach sent her sliding back on trembling legs. Lyn threw up a mouthful of bile and held her stomach, hunched over.

Thump.

Lyn glared at him as tears of pain pooled in her eyes. ‘They’ll call the match soon. Stop panicking – he’s not as bad as a hollow or anything that comes next. I’ll just endure this and then-’

“That damn look again,” Isobe murmured. “It ain’t one of those condescending noble looks or because you’re stronger. You’re fucking lookin’ through me like I’m not even here.” He forced a grin that looked more like a snarl. “You better look at me with the fear of death from now on.”

She tried to retreat, “I for-”

Lyn’s face exploded in white hot pain and her brain rattled around in her skull at the world-shaking punch. Isobe expected Lyn to drop to the ground unconscious, and so did she. But the blood trickling between her eyes felt more like brain matter. The wind on her forehead felt more like it was blowing into her open cranium. Her sweat-slicked hair strands felt more like pieces of skin and veins splattered across her face.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

“How the hell are you still standing?” she thought she heard Isobe whisper through the ringing in her ears.

Isobe wanted to be the one to knock Lyn out. He had a point to drive home and insecurities to soothe.

Lyn took a step forward because she feared not waking up from that encroaching void again.

Lyn didn’t know where her sword was anymore, but her body was pulsing and buzzing with static and energy that was unnatural and she just wanted it gone along with the threat. She flash-stepped with a speed that reopened old scars on her calves. She darted around Isobe who wheeled around to slash at her – but Lyn turned with him, having jumped onto his back, legs around his waist and arms around his throat.

“Get the hell off me!” Isobe tried to rip her off.

“Contort your way out of this, double-jointed bitch,” Lyn growled. “Byakurai!”

▯▯▯▮

Chiba’s release of reiryoku was wild and uncontrolled, electricity streaming from her entire body and into Isobe who couldn’t even scream in pain from the way all his muscles locked up. After the crackling explosion of light fades, the smoking pair slowly tipped to the side. They thudded to the ground in a heap.

“T-Tie!” the complacent referee declared. He had extended the fight more than he should have. He wanted to teach the weak coward of a student a lesson for wanting to waste the precious time of the captains – and academy resources enrolling in the first place – but he hadn’t expected things to end like this.

And by this, he meant standing across from the Thirteenth Division’s Third-Seats Kotsubaki and Kotetsu. A fearful glance at the seated officers viewing stands quickly revealed Captain Ukitake’s displeased expression. Captain Ukitake had surely been out of earshot when he had called the girl a cripple, but it seems his subordinates hadn’t.

As the healers rushed into the arena and struggled to separate the two unconscious students, the referee was quietly replaced.

▯▯▯▮

Waves rocked the shallow water Lyn assumed always remained still. Glancing at the sky, she realised what she thought were streaky clouds were scars. Fresh gaping tears in the ceiling that hadn’t been patched yet revealed more void than sky. Water slapped noisily at her calves, adding to the cacophony in her skull. She stared down at her reflection as blood dripped from her forehead, slowly dying the swirling water at her feet red.

Part of Lyn wanted to bring upon a slow and painful death to Isobe – to drag it out as long as possible. The other part wanted to just put a bullet between his eyes and see how he liked the feeling of his brains on the sidewalk. The line between self-repulsion and rage was blurring.

It suddenly reminded her of her stupid, fearful and adrenaline-fuelled attempt to get rid of Fuyuko. But maybe Lyn had killed Fuyuko, in the end. Shuhei was mere seconds from arriving when the hollow ate her, and if Lyn hadn’t dragged them both to the edge of that cliff – closer to the beast – maybe both of them would be alive. A small, sadistic voice whispered that it’s still more convenient that she’s gone – that her ability is one more unknown factor to not have to account for.

She’d already helped get all those people poisoned by the Daken back in Rukongai, and she was going to sit and watch as more people died in the future. Maybe this was a punishment for living.

She lifted her hands, and blood dripped onto them, flooding the wrinkles of her scarred palms. Lyn buried her face into her hands, sliding bloody streaks across her face as they slid up to grip her hair.

“I’m not built for this,” Lyn whispered, eyes blown wide and staring at the endless horizon. “I’m not smart enough for all this lying and planning and predicting.” Lyn’s voice was slowly rising. “I’m not built for all this violence and p-pain, and everything hurts so bad all the time it’s driving me nuts.” She hadn’t realised her spirits had gone silent or that she was kneeling in the low waves. “I can’t do this shit anymore!”

Lyn’s tanto spirit stood firmly against the agitated water in front of Lyn, arms crossed as he looked down on her crumpled form. “So, what will you do.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Lyn croaked, hiding her face in her hands now, shameful tears mixing with the blood.

Her little spirit crouched down in front of her with a sigh and tugged her hands from her bloody, teary mess of a face. “What would you do, if you didn’t know anything about this world?”

“Die?”

An angry vein popped on her little spirt and he smacked her on the head. “No! You’d just do your best to adapt and survive!”

“But I do know-” Lyn is cut off by her other spirit who sat behind her, his much taller back leaning against her own.

“You do know, so use what information you have,” her wakizashi spirit muttered, but his words rang loudly in Lyn’s ears. “I’ll admit I was… naïve, to think we could avoid changing everything, but it’s already too late to worry about the butterfly effect ending the world now. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still utilise every advantage we have – and we do have one.”

“So, what now?” Lyn laughed weakly. “You two just tell me to survive again and I-”

Lyn blinked and suddenly she was standing. Her little spirit dashed at her with a tanto blade aimed straight between Lyn’s eyes. She deflected the blade with her own tanto that materialised in her hand and lept back with a panicked gasp for breath. “W-What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Her little spirit had the gall to smirk while spinning his tanto between his fingers. “Oh look! You survived! The old you would have died riiight on the spot – just like the first time!”

Lyn somehow found herself with her tanto stabbed down into the head of her tanto spirit – right between his eyes. It was only after this she realised the violent energy bubbling in her bone marrow had finally reached the surface.

He smiled again, but this time there was a morbid pride to it. “Thereee we go! Now that’s a natural response to someone trying to kill you.”

“Are you trying to fucking retraumatize me you little shit?” Lyn growled now that she knew he wasn’t going to die.

“Not traumatized enough I say, Boss!” her little spirit chirped with an energetic salute. With the tanto still sticking out of his head.

“You’ve felt it before.” Her wakizashi spirit placed his hands on Lyn’s shoulders firmly from behind, stopping her from turning away from her display of lethal aggression. “That unapologetic, violent struggle to live.”

“W-What so I need to kill people to survive?! That’s bullshit!” Lyn snapped.

“Nope!” Her little spirit pulled the tanto from his head, mirroring Lyn’s blood dripping between her eyes. He placed the tanto into her hands and closed her fingers around it. “Just to be capable of it.”

The squeeze her wakizashi spirit’s hands gave her shoulders bordered between comforting and threatening. “Come now Leader, you understand you’re no longer at the top of the food chain. That comes with certain sacrifices if you want to survive.”

“Maybe your choices will get others killed,” her tanto sighed dramatically.

“Maybe you will simply need to let a lethal fate run its course to preserve your own,” her wakizashi continued.

“Maybe a friend will turn foe, and you have to fight to the death!”

Her taller spirit reached around to place his wakizashi in her other, dominant hand. “You know this. You’ve been reacting but regretting. Hesitating. Now are you ready to accept it? Are you ready to do what it takes to survive without hesitation, Leader?”

Lyn’s spirits stood across from her.

Her weapons fit perfectly in her blood-encrusted hands.

She gripped the hilts tightly. She had her tools, but she didn’t know how to properly use them just yet. “I don’t know what that looks like compared to what I’m doing now.”

“You will, and when you do, you will know our name.”

▮▮▮▮

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Author’s Note

▮ Thank you so much for reading everyone! No shikai this chapter – I hope I haven’t been misleading! (ಥ_ಥ)

▮ Also, anyone have tag suggestions? I don’t know about you peeps, but sometimes I want to read, and I can’t find much like what I’m looking for because I don’t know how other people would tag it. Silly and serious suggestions are both welcome! (I feel like I should add edging sldfjlksdjf)

▮ I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! Please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll answer what I can as alwaysヾ(≧▽≦*)o

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Lyn was flash-banged upon regaining consciousness.

It turned out to be Akon shining a small light in her eyes. “It’s barely been a week since the Human World incident and you’re pushing yourself this hard in a mere tournament?” Lyn didn’t need to look at him to see the twitch of his brow muscles or the tension in his jaw.

“Wait, where are we even- ah!” Lyn scrunched her eyes shut again as a familiar, icy static burned and pulsed its way through her left arm, erupting in a smattering of small cuts.

Akon immediately took Lyn’s arm into his steady hands. “Hold still.”

Blood seeped from the wounds quicker than Akon could heal them, smudging red onto his palms. As he did so, Lyn whispered a quiet thanks and took stock of their surroundings. It wasn’t a room she was familiar with, but it was clearly within the academy’s infirmary with the view of the dormitories outside of the window. The walls and floors were wooden, like most of the architecture, but the bed was of a beaten metal frame on locked wheels. It was bare of anything else. Beneath the copper of Lyn’s blood, there was an odd scent of cleaning chemicals. The sun was still shining brightly outside, so she couldn’t have been unconscious for long.

Akon cursed under his breath. “I thought this stopped months ago.”

Lyn sheepishly looked at her swords that were propped up on the edge of the bed. “Um, I think it’s because I… chipped my sword?”

Akon’s eyelid twitched as he dropped Lyn’s now mostly healed arm. “You chipped your sword… that’s actively responsible for keeping your soul together?”

Lyn pointedly avoided Akon’s eyes while pressing the tips of her index fingers together. “Maybe it’s just not as sturdy while I’m still kinda recovering.”

Akon pinched the bridge of his nose. “The chip should fix itself as you recover your energy. Let’s focus on your injuries for now. I’ve healed your skull fracture and bandaged up your calves and stomach. I also healed the minor burns on your arms, legs, and face.” He crossed his arms and looked away. “But I’ll bring you an ointment later for any others you have. I’m assuming they’re not too bad?”

Lyn gave herself a mental pat down. There were a few more that stung a bit, but nothing serious. Naturally, she placed a hand in the centre of her chest and flinched, quickly pulling her hand away with a wince. “Ouch! I think I might need some extra help with this one.”

A beat of silence passed as Akon stared blankly at her. “…Your chest is f-”

Lyn abruptly covered her chest with both arms. “Kyah! Don’t look at my chest, pervert!”

Akon slapped a hand to his face. “I swear you get more ridiculous with every new head injury.” He dragged his hand down his face. “How did you even get these burns?”

“I piggy-backed Isoggy and let off an unfocused Byakurai,” Lyn explained, beaming with her hands on her hips.

“I…” Akon cut himself off, placed his pressed-together hands against his lips, and exhaled deeply. “Do I even want to know why you were fighting him in the first place? You were meant to be resting.”

Lyn rubbed the back of her neck and avoided Akon’s eyes. “No one told me I had to sign up for one of the demonstrations, so they threw me in the tournament. And I was going to forfeit, but Isobe kept trying to hit me in the head.” Lyn’s shoulders pulled toward her, and her nails picked at the scar tissue on her nape. “And- and I panicked because – you, know – and he figured out that I couldn’t think straight if he kept threatening to split my head open and it felt like my brains were dripping out of my skull again and I didn’t want to die so I just-”

“Lyn.”

Suddenly Lyn realised that there was a warm hand on her shoulder. Akon gave her a light squeeze. Akon let go, and Lyn remembered where she was. Lyn blinked away any tears and shoved her hand into her lap with a smile that was more of an awkward purse of lips. “Haha, sorry.”

Akon’s hand stayed half-reached out for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. He eventually placed it on his knee. He spoke with a factual sincerity, “You have no need to apologise. Considering everything you’ve experienced, and in the last week alone, you’re handling things well.”

Lyn picked at the blanket threads. “Really? I’m kind of a mess.”

Akon held unerring eye contact with Lyn that was impossible to look away from. “Really.” Akon let out a sharp exhale through his nose, almost like a laugh. “You should see how most souls just react to finding out they’re dead even without all their memories. And you don’t want to see how crowded the academy office was yesterday with first-year students trying to drop out.”

Lyn couldn’t help the small smile on her lips. “Thanks, Akon. And… thank you for everything else as well. I’d probably be dead without your help. But I also appreciate you outside all the help, if that makes sense. You’re a good friend and- yeah.”

▯▯▯▮

Akon didn’t know how to respond to Lyn’s words, and for the first time, it wasn’t because he had upset her, or she had said something profoundly ridiculous.

At his silence, Lyn crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought I should let you know before I do something stupid like fall down the stairs and die… or something.”

Akon scoffed. “You’re a lot harder to kill than you think. Like a cockroach.” He blocked the pillow swung at his head. “Since your episodes are back, I’ll drop off more pain medication the next time I see you, and you better not be unconscious when I do,” Akon firmly instructed as he stood.

Lyn crossed her arms and turned to glare out the window. “And you better sleep more than three hours, you stupid… rhinoceros beetle. Your eye bags are bagging.”

“I’m not going to ask what that is,” Akon commented dryly.

He stepped out of the infirmary and decided to walk in the direction of the Twelfth Division recruitment stand. The mid-day sun was bright, irritating his tired eyes. He held up his hand to shield them. He had come out to check on Lyn because he noticed he sudden increase in irregular behaviour from her soul on his monitoring systems, but he told himself he would have checked on the recruitment stands regardless.

‘Has anyone called me their friend? I don’t think so.’ For a man so long-lived, he was severely lacking in everyday experiences. ‘Do I consider Lyn a friend?’

He mused over the past year. The memories were clear, unlike the blur of squad management and research that the past few decades had consisted of. Lyn’s research – for as stressful as it was keeping her alive – was exciting. His initial interest in her soul’s composition and structure had only continued to grow, and every piece of data learned was an emphasis of everything he was yet to understand. It was that investment that had him flash-stepping halfway across Seiretei to keep her alive. He wasn’t about to let his subject and patient die. Sending out confused subordinates searching across Soul Society for somewhere that supplied bread was simply to make Lyn more cooperate with tests. And learning more about Lyn as a person had been a simple side effect of the time taken to monitor her condition.

But then there were the unnecessary efforts he made to keep her life normal. He snuck in and out of the academy at night like some common delinquent. He supplied Lyn with unnecessarily high-quality painkillers and reishi pills to allow her to function more comfortably on a day-to-day basis. The Exclusive Care order would keep more advanced healers from stumbling across just how strange Lyn’s soul was. The tanto wrap he’d developed for her also masked the bulk of her unusualness from those with keen senses.

‘Of course, too many people knowing of Lyn’s condition would interfere with my research.’ Akon frowned. ‘But wouldn’t it be more efficient to collaborate with the rest of the S.R.D.I.?’

Akon thought back to times hidden in the training fields at night under the stars and in the cramped quarters of her dorm, surrounded by Lyn’s study notes and small comforts. Listening to Lyn’s embellished tales of her day, and Akon sharing the frustrations of his own. Maybe it was the fresh air, but it wasn’t a question that afterwards he felt a little less like knocking the heads together of his newest subordinates when they blew something up.

But his captain and co-workers would want her picked apart and confined to a laboratory.

Other captains would see Lyn’s dual blades as potential to be forged into another Kyoraku or Ukitake.

And Lyn just wanted to get through the day and live peacefully.

Akon smothered his cigarette beneath his heel with more force than necessary. ‘No, I think I quite like how things are now, friends or not.’

And Akon would do his best to keep it that way.

▯▯▯▮

Shino’s hands fisted at her sides. ‘I’ve beaten him plenty of times, but he was holding back the whole time just to show off at this tournament… and Lyn-san of all people manages to beat him?’ The sticky feeling in Shino’s lungs is quickly swallowed by her concern for her friend. ‘By knocking herself out, of course, careless dumbass.’ Shino sighed and shoved past other students to clear the way for her and the boys to the infirmary.

Before they made it all the way there, they saw Lyn walking herself out of the building. Her hands were covering her face, and her ears were pink with what looked like embarrassment.

“Lyn-san!” Hanataro called out.

Lyn’s head snapped up, and her hands over her face slid to the back of her neck. “Hey guys! You got here quickly.”

Shino scoffed. “We tried to be quick, but I think time just passes faster when you’re out cold.” Shino pulled Lyn into a quick hug that was more of a light pat on the back – one didn’t just squeeze the perpetually injured Lyn. “Are you okay?”

Lyn blinked in confusion at the unexpected contact. “Um, I’m a little sore but I’m all patched up.”

So, Shino whacked Lyn’s arm.

“Why?!” Lyn dramatically cried and held where Shino had lightly hit her.

“For worrying us!” Shino snapped. “You just got back from special care, and you send yourself straight to the infirmary?!”

Ryunosuke held his head in panic. “W-Wait that’s right! What if all these recent bad injuries give you permanent damage or-”

“I’m really okay guys!” Lyn tried to calm them, one placating hand on Ryunosuke’s shoulder and the other half reaching out toward Shino.

Hanataro placed a hand on his chest with a relieved sigh. “You sure had us worried. But you must be feeling well enough you’ve if the healers have let you go already.”

“Yeah, I’ve just been prescribed some ointments and rest, and I should be fine,” Lyn explained.

Hanataro seemed to feel confident enough in the academy healer’s abilities, but Shino was sceptical. After all, this was the first time they’d ever seen Lyn near the infirmary itself, even after offering to bring her there multiple times for all the minor wounds and fainting spells she’d had throughout the year. Of course, Lyn was allegedly visiting on her own, but her wounds were always reopening.

‘Or maybe the academy healing is fine enough, but Lyn just really is that fragile,’ Shino tried to reason. ‘But something still isn’t adding up.’

▯▯▯▮

The recruitment festival’s peak was quick to end with most of the Captains and Lieutenants leaving after the tournament had completed. As the sun was setting and colourful lanterns were being lit, students were enjoying the food stalls and more light-hearted games that had been prepared to see off the graduating students. While most students were still in their plain white academy kosode, the lanterns and colourful banners painted a range of warm reds and playful yellows across them.

Lyn and Hanataro sat side by side, eating savoury yakitori from the nearby food stand. They were waiting for Shino and Ryunosuke to return with their own snacks. They watched a group of tipsy, graduating students who had snuck alcohol into the festival be half-heartedly chased by the academy sensei.

Lyn asked herself once more, ‘What does it mean to survive without hesitation? To just do everything I can without worrying about the storyline? But I need to worry about the storyline to best survive. No, it’s something else…’

She looked to Hanataro and returned Lyn’s uncomfortable expression with wide, clueless eyes.

Hanataro swallowed his last bite of food. “Are you okay, Lyn-san?”

“I’m just thinking about stuff,” Lyn replied. “Do you… How do you feel about being a Shinigami, after everything that happened in the Human World?”

Hanataro wrung his hands. “It was t-terrifying, honestly. I guess, I guess I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

Hanataro paused for a long moment, the chatter and energy of the festival around them flooding in to fill the silence. But Lyn patiently waited for him to continue.

“It was so scary I really thought about leaving. But I…” Hanataro’s hands stopped their movement and settled firmly on his knees. “Seeing you all hurt was more terrifying than anything else.” Hanataro’s blue eyes stared into Lyn’s unwaveringly despite the tremble in his voice. “And I know I’m not strong, a-and I’m pretty helpless in some ways. But I know I want to be the best healer I can, so you and our friends can rely on me in that way, at least.”

‘Healers don’t jump in front of others and protect them with their bodies from ceros.’ She couldn’t hold Hanataro’s determined gaze, looking down at her lap with a hidden grimace. ‘You should have run. You should just run and leave this all behind.’

But Hanataro would not run.

And Lyn couldn’t run no matter how much she wanted to.

‘Maybe I’ll never be half as brave or good as a friend as Hanataro.’ Lyn gripped her knees, digging her fingers in. ‘But the least I can do is not worry him.’

“I’ll train my hardest too,” Lyn told Hanataro with a smile she hoped her inner terror wasn’t bleeding through. “In hoho and paperwork!” Lyn struck a dramatic pose, her yakitori skewer raised high above her head, held like a pen. “I’ll be so invaluable in the office and good at dodging, you’ll never have to worry about me becoming one of your patients again!”

Hanataro didn’t expect the relieved laugh that bubbled out. “Hahaha, if it keeps you from getting hurt, then it sounds like a plan. Let’s both do our best then!”

▯▯▯▮

The sun was shining brightly, reflecting warmly off the amber-tiled roofs, wooden walkways, and training fields swaying with flowering weeds. With most students returning to their districts for the end-of-year break, it was silent beyond the chirps of small birds. Shunsui had escaped Nanao for now, and he had taken Jushiro with him for some fresh air. Their walk had taken them around the outer wall of the Shin’o Academy, and they reminisced on their time studying here centuries ago. Inevitably, their conversation turned to the recent recruitment festival.

Jushiro spoke with a rare frown, “I understand that the academy is not a place for making accommodations for weaker souls, but it still seems barbaric to push a child so far.”

Having to watch children fight was the main reason it was rare that Jushiro attended the recruitment festivals. And while Chiba and Rokuro’s fight hadn’t been so bad by Shinigami standards, the fear that dripped from Chiba’s every movement and her eyes that desperately searched for an exit that should have been there had been disturbing.

Shunsui tilted his straw hat up to admire the small birds flitting through the sky. “The kid’s still young, so they’ve got time to find their place in the world.”

Jushiro sighed, following Shunsui’s gaze. “It may be hypocritical of me, but is it bad to hope that place isn’t as a Shinigami? At least, not for another decade or two. I feel like the new Shinigami these days just keep getting younger.”

Shunsui patted his friend on the shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, Jushiro-san. It’s a dangerous job, after all.”

The conversation soon shifted. As the academy’s main entrance came into view, they heard the light tap of geta against stone, and a small figure stepped out. She was clearly a student despite being dressed in a navy blue samue; there was an asauchi at her side, after all.

Shunsui stopped next to Jushiro with a look of mild surprise. “Isn’t that Kumagi-sensei’s student we were just talking about?”

Her soul even at a distance felt unhealthy. The more they concentrated, the more irregularities appeared in her flow of reiryoku around her, like heart palpitations and weak wheezes. For a moment, it almost reminded Jushiro of his own soul on his worse days, but so much more fragile with how little reiryoku she had. With her black hair pulled back into a low ponytail, her pale skin, round face, and short stature, Jushiro was reminded of his little sisters when they were younger.

Abruptly, she tripped over an uneven section of stonework, and her arms flailed. Jushiro couldn’t help but flash-step to catch her. He steadied her with gentle hands on her shoulders.

“Are you alright?” Jushiro asked.

“Thank you, I’m really-” Chiba cut herself off. She stared up at Jushiro in wide-eyed shock.

Jushiro gave the young soul a warm smile. “It’s a fine morning for a walk, is it not?”

Her eyes somehow widened more when she noticed Shunsui walk up to Jushiro’s side. In a blink, she stepped out of arm’s reach.

Her back snapped down into a ninety-degree bow. “I’m so sorry for disturbing you Captain Ukitake, Captain Kyoraku!”

Shunsui laughed, but not unkindly. “Haha, no need to be so formal. You’re one of Kumagi-sensei’s students, right?”

Like it was an order, she stood uncomfortably straight, bandaged hands politely clasped in front of herself. “Yes sir.”

Her eyes stayed low, almost at their feet in a way that seemed a touch more fearful than respectful. Jushiro suppressed his frown. Jushiro and Shunsui hadn’t wanted to scare the girl, but certainly, two of Soul Society’s strongest captains were an intimidating sight. She picked at her bandaged hands.

“Chiba-san, was it?” Jushiro spoke softer than he intended. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you receiving sufficient treatment from the academy? Kumagi-sensei mentioned you injure easier than your peers.”

“I have been. Thank you for your concern, Captain Ukitake.”

Jushiro couldn’t help but feel pleased when she stopped picking at her bandages and curiously glanced up at him, even if it was only for a split-second through her fringe. However, maybe Chiba herself hadn’t noticed, but both captains saw the blood spots blooming crimson through the bandages on the back of her hand.

“That’s good to hear,” Jushiro said amiably. “But perhaps a more thorough checkup at the 4^th Division would be wise, especially if this has been going on for a while.”

A tight smile pulled at Chiba’s lips as her eyes looked everywhere but theirs. “Thank you, Captain Ukitake, but I’ve already seen an experienced healer for my condition.”

Jushiro schooled his worried expression. ‘Maybe I’m letting my emotions get the best of me. Kumagi-sensei mentioned that her health has been improving in recent months. She doesn’t seem to be in pain either, so the injury on her hand must be minor.’

“I see. My apologies for being presumptuous then.” Jushiro gave the girl a light pat on the head. “We should leave you to enjoy your academy break. Take care, Chiba-san.”

“And if you’re as good at paperwork as Kumagi-sensei says you are then maybe I’ll see you in my division in a few years, little lady,” Shunsui winked.

The two captains barely made it a step around Lyn before they halted.

Tink-tink-tink.

The quiet rattle of metal and wood had Shunsui and Jushiro glancing at one another, then peering down at Lyn.

The sound seemed to come from her left leg.

And the blood drained from her face.

Chiba acted as if she heard nothing and spun on her heel to go straight back into the academy grounds. “I-If you’ll excuse me-”

A tanto dropped out of the left leg of Chiba’s pants and clattered to the ground loudly.

▮▮▮▮

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Author’s Note

▮ Lyn: Oh no, my giant tampon just flew out of me! DEAR GOD PLEASE DON’T LOOK AT IT IT’SNOTASWORD---

▮ Anyways~ Lyn is hecked – and thank you all so much for reading! I’ve updated a bit earlier with a longer chapter than the last few ✧˖°. I hope you guys enjoyed it!

▮ As always please feel free to any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll reply as soon as I canヾ(≧▽≦*)o

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Chapter Text

Lyn awkwardly leaned down to retrieve her tanto – too fast and jerky because she wanted to bolt, but with legs locking up as stiffly as her smiling face. She quietly tucked her tanto into the inner lining of her samue. Lyn then started to walk away, arms mechanically swaying with each stride.

Then she found herself walking on the air.

Kyoraku had picked her up by the back of her samue, his other hand cupping his chin. “My my, what was that, Chiba-san?”

Lyn was already sweating and hung stiffly in Kyoraku’s grasp like a cat by the scruff. Her eyes avoided his, even when Kyoraku spun her around, still held in the air, and tried to shift her eyes to align with his.

A bead of sweat slipped down the side of Lyn’s face, her eyes looking far to the right at nothing. “…My utility knife?”

Kyoraku raised a brow at her, and the corner of his lip quirked upwards. “A bit big for a utility knife, isn’t it?”

Ukitake patted his friend’s arm with a sigh. “Shunsui, you can’t just pick students up as you please.”

As soon as Lyn’s geta went ta-tap to the ground, her hands pressed defensively over the side of her chest where her tanto was beneath. “I don’t think it’s against academy regulations to carry bladed tools under 30cm, sir.”

Kyoraku smirked wider, and leaned down, closer but not quite at Lyn’s head height. “Then why are you so nervous?”

“It’s… my favourite utility knife, sir,” Lyn responded solemnly. “From a friend.”

▯▯▯▮

Shunsui cupped his chin with an amused grin as he watched Chiba excuse herself for a second time. She awkwardly shuffled away behind a corner like a hackled cat crab. As soon as she was out of their line of sight, they sensed her flash step away.

“How mysterious. Don’t you think so, Jushiro?” Shunsui asked.

“It’s certainly strange,” Jushiro responded with a frown. “It does technically fall within regulations… but…”

“Buuut,” Shunsui sang. “I believe we have a moral obligation to investigate further, no? Someone could get hurt, after all.”

Jushiro coughed lightly into his fist. “Of course.”

In the face of the curiosity of two several hundred-year-old Shinigami captains with a severe lack of interesting occurrences over the past few decades, it didn’t take long to have a small stack of information on Chiba Lyn in front of them. The two were in Shunsui’s rarely used office with stacks of actual work pushed to the side.

“Various sensei notes on first-year students show she does have an extensive history of constantly being injured and being behind in class.” Jushiro frowned as he placed the documents down. “It must be hard – this condition that makes her more fragile than her peers.”

Jushiro couldn’t help but think back to her fearful, desperate eyes during the tournament. “I also find it highly likely that physical bullying is occurring outside of classes.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not something the academy usually steps in for. Carrying a tanto might give the kid a sense of safety, then? She hasn’t been using it, or there’d be a report,” Shunsui added as he flipped through general academy incident reports. Shunsui let out a small chuckle. “Though, I wouldn’t put it past the kid that uses Sho to poke her opponents in the eyes to really be using a tanto to open cans and cut paper.”

Jushiro was more solemn. “While strange, to report her for an unapproved weapon, even if technically within the rules, would cause the academy to cast her out. They would have no leniency for a weaker soul – I’m inclined to believe that in Chiba-san’s case, they’ll act more harshly.”

“And you already have a soft spot for the kid, so we can’t do that,” Shunsui stated, causing Jushiro to bashfully hide his face behind his teacup, taking a long sip.

Jushiro stared into his half-empty cup. “I just want to know why she behaved so…”

Shunsui leaned back. “Suspiciously? Sweating, panicking, stumbling over herself-”

Nanao dropped a new stack of paperwork in front of Shunsui with a loud thud. She tucked her black hair that flowed over the right side of her face out of her vision and gave her captain and uncle an unimpressed look. “Her tanto is indeed within academy guidelines for sharp tools if it’s shorter than 30cm. And in my academy days, I knew plenty of girls who wore sharpened, steel hair pins, and carried small knives or needles.”

Nano didn’t need to explain why to them. But she didn’t blame them. It was an easy oversight to make – it wasn’t something they needed to worry about.

“Ah… Perhaps we’ve been a bit hasty once again.” Jushiro only felt more concerned for Chiba now.

“Forgive me for interrupting your discussion, Captain Ukitake.” Nanao bowed politely to Jushiro.

“What about me, Nanao-chan!”

Jushiro smiled at Nanao fondly. “Not at all, Nanao-san. Thank you for your insight. Do you have any suggestions for these two old men?”

Nanao turned her pointed gaze back to Shunsui. “I believe my captain shouldn’t be leaving all his work to his lieutenant.”

“But Nanao-chaaan-”

▯▯▯▮

A week went by.

Other than a visit from Akon to teach her a simple kido and drop off more medication, she was eerily undisturbed.

Lyn spent today pacing in her room and picking at the old scars on her neck. She spent hours training till her palms were bloody from blisters and kido burns. Every few minutes, she was looking over her shoulder and waiting to be dragged away, locked in a detention centre and interrogated.

She was training alone in the academy’s forest. Hanataro, Shino, and Ryunosuke had long left to return home once more until classes started up again.

It made everything so much quieter and had Lyn even more on edge.

Crack!

Lyn startled, flash stepping back a few metres and tumbling to the ground. She cursed under her breath when a small rat gave her a soulless glance before scurrying away into the undergrowth. Lyn sighed deeply and flopped back against the grass, squinting at the painful rays of sun that peeked through the trees. She was soaking in her sweat and the dampness of the forest floor.

Blood, sweat, and petrichor.

‘Are Kyoraku and Ukitake taking their time reporting me for having a sus weapon because multi-century old Shinigami have no sense of urgency? Or did I just get away with an excuse so shit I could taste it?’  Lyn wondered. ‘Isn’t the 30cm tool rule only meant to be for things like… scissors?’

Anxiousness had transformed into bafflement, and she wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Lyn pursed her lips together and rolled them into her mouth. ‘Well, I’m sure as hell not telling Akon. Nope. No sir. That’s a problem for future Lyn.’

She had her fingers crossed that the two, hopefully very busy and preoccupied, captains had completely forgotten she had existed.

After all, she had too many other things to worry about.

On cue, her fingers twitched from a cold humming deep in her bones, causing her to drop her wakizashi with a hiss. Blood bloomed on the back of her knuckles from her lightly splitting skin, but quickly closed after soaking blotches of blood onto her pre-bandaged hands.

Lyn sighed, this time in relief. It would likely be one of the last episodes for now. The chip in her wakizashi had healed just by keeping it close by. Her spirits were much more connected to her soul than other Shinigami’s were after all. Healing her body and taking more reishi pills had been enough.

She’d come to a few new conclusions and insights into her soul with the help of her spirits. After the tall one verbally chewed her out for chipping his blade. ‘My flesh-tearing episodes are caused by not having enough reishi to hold my body together or damaging my wakizashi in charge of reishi regulation. Which is bad because this reishi body is housing my actual soul that can’t endure this world’s conditions and would probably kill me if it’s completely exposed. Solution?’

She raised her dirt and blood-smudged hands to block the sun, trying to blind her again. ‘One: I guess I just need to continue to stay under the radar and the hell away from anything that expends so much energy from this point on – like fighting and getting my ass handed to me. Two: extra training to increase my reiatsu… Hell, training feels so inefficient by myself because I barely know what I’m doing, so I need to find a better way. And training my friends has a limit because we’re all inexperienced students.’

Lyn groaned and buried her face in her hands.

Both seemed impossible.

Still on the ground, Lyn reached out blindly for her wakizashi and managed to grab it by the handle instead of the blade. She slipped into her inner world. Cool water splashed at her feet and dripped from her hair as she stood.

She stretched with another dramatic groan. “Do we have any idea how far the Soul Society Arc is? I need to know how much time I have to prepare for that shit show.”

Her white spirit fluttered down, while her small black-papered one skipped in from the side with splashing steps.

The white spirit grimaced from behind the white talisman covering his face and ran a hand over his short, snowy hair. “The events of the Turn Back the Pendulum arc are approximately 100 to 110 years from Ichigo’s arrival in Soul Society. But even if we find how many years ago the Hollowfication Incident occurred, we’ll have a significant range of error unless we can visit Katakura Town ourselves to observe Ichigo.”

He floated lower with a hand on his chin and kissed the back of his teeth. “That is if he’s been born yet.”

Lyn crossed her arms with a thoughtful frown. “I’ll check the library history resources first. Hopefully, they left a date between the propaganda if it’s in there. If not, I’ll prod at the information to Akon in a roundabout way.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Her little spirit stomped, splashing water loudly before throwing his hands up in excitement. “Because we need special training from strong people if we want to be strong! Like Ukitake and Kyoraku – they’re perfect!”

Her wakizashi smacked her tanto in the back of the head. “You impulsive dumbass! There’s no guarantee that things will go well if they find out!”

Lyn rubbed her temples. ‘They’re already back to arguing.’ She bit her lip. ‘God it would be so awesome to train under the coolest captains in Seireitei but DAMN it’s bound to get me dragged into all sorts of crap and killed.’

Her little tanto, who could hear her thoughts, waggled his eyebrows at Lyn, of which she could only see the outer ends from behind his talisman covering his face.

Lyn smacked him in the head too.

“Hey!”

A sudden shudder rippled across the endless lake from various directions like earthquake tremors.

Her tanto grinned widely, unsettling Lyn with the sheer glee radiating from lips pulled too taut and canines too sharp. “Looks like we have special company. And it looks like we’ll get to see how your plans hold up in action. I think you’ll need to prioritise step two of your plan a little more.”

Lyn was knocked out of her inner world with a kick to the skull that sent her rolling until her back slammed into the trunk of a tree. Spittle flew from her mouth at the harsh impact.

Lyn scrambled to her feet, wakizashi already in hand from when she had been lying down.

“You fucker!” a deep, male voice boomed.

Lyn hissed, a hand over her aching and bloody left ear that Isobe had struck with his foot. “Are you kidding me? Haven’t you targeted me enough?!”

The veins in Isobe’s neck and forehead were bulging in the redness of his snarl-contorted face. “I’m finishing what I started, you bitch.”

Lyn dodged a slash that embedded halfway into the tree she was just leaning against. “Are you seriously trying to kill me?! W-What the hell!”

Isobe snarled through his words as she slashed at Lyn. “You’re still looking at me like a goddamn nuisance when you should be looking at me like your worst fucking nightmare!”

‘Why the hell are background characters pulling this kind of shit?!’ Lyn thought. ‘What should I-’

Lyn took an unexpected spinning heel kick to the face – Isobe utilising his flexible body to bend and twist unnaturally – which sent her to the ground with a mouthful of blood. He slashed at her trembling form, opening thin cuts made to hurt rather than maim. At least, not yet. They bloomed red across her arms and back, which were defending her head and stomach, hunched over her knees.

‘It hurts! Fuck it hurts it hurts! How do I get him off without maiming him? I can’t – fuck I can’t overpower him like this!’ Lyn asked herself as the pain built. ‘I wish I could just-’

Thump thump thu-

Isobe’s chatter became muffled background noise.

The pop of her shoulder and knuckles as her muscles wound.

The drag of a thin, ragged breath through her red lips and bloodied teeth.

She pivoted in her crouched form under Isobe’s next slash with an utterance, “Fuonheki.” A dome of silence surrounded them; Akon’s privacy Bakudo.

Lyn moved with pure intent for the first time, and a scream answered.

Her wide eyes dilated fully to capture the pure catharsis of crepuscular rays glistering beautifully across an arc of fresh blood. An arc that followed Lyn’s blade, Isobe’s hand, and Isobe’s gushing stump of a wrist. Lyn’s lips stung, and the morning air tasted crisper than ever.

Neither of them expected it.

“My hand! MY HAND! Call the healers you crazy bitch! Why’d you go so fucking far?!” Isobe yelled, lungs working perfectly.

He didn’t bleed as much as Lyn expected – she almost forgot that even weak Shinigami were much tougher than humans.

It wasn’t enough then.

Lyn swept Isobe’s feet from under him, and in the next instant had her wakizashi stabbed through his shoulder; the one that still had a hand attached further down. She pinned him to the forest floor with it. Lyn stood over Isobe as he screamed, and the blood of the numerous shallow slashes across her arms and back dripped down on him. It dotted his face in crimson.

Lyn wasn’t sure what Isobe saw when he looked up at her, but it killed the words in his throat.

She twisted her blade in the bundle of muscles, tendons, and cartilage.

And Isobe’s face twisted into an ugly expression that Lyn couldn’t identify. “FUUUUCK! U-Ugh! I-I’ll leave you alone, so get off of me!”

“Hado 4, Byakurai.” Lighting coiled down Lyn’s sword into Isobe’s shoulder.

Isobe’s jaw snapped shut, and he spasmed as lightning charged through his veins. Lyn’s blood on his face steamed and burned into crusted flakes. He cried in pain as soon as the lightning stopped.

Lyn’s adrenaline was wearing off. The pain across her body was starting to pulse through her like licking flames growing in heat. For some reason, her cheeks were hurting too. She took a painkiller from the lining of her samue jacket and popped it in her mouth.

“Plea-”

Lyn kicked his head like a football, and a shiver ran through her.

“-ugh!”

Lyn wondered for a moment what monsters turned Isobe into what he was; there was clearly something wrong with him. Surely, he had not always been this way. Maybe he had even been a good person at some point. But this world was starting to bleed Lyn’s sympathy dry, and she didn’t have enough to spare for him.

If he hadn’t made the mistake of assuming that Lyn healed slower and arrived half-healed from their last fight, Lyn knew she’d still be on the ground. She would have been the one begging for mercy and praying for a saviour once again, or to cross her fingers and hope that he wouldn’t take it too far.

She had gotten lucky again.

Lyn twisted her blade once more, angling it against bone with a slick grinding sound.

Isobe’s shout spat saliva over his blood, dirt, and tear-stained face. “Help! HEEELP! SOMEONE! She’s trying to kill me!”

She stared down at Isobe, who was squirming, struggling to remove Lyn’s pinning blade and failing. Lyn knew that she was petty. She had left half of a dead rat in another girl’s dorm room and spiked another boy with laxatives, among other things, for bullying Hanataro and her after all. Some would consider it too far. This was something else.

But it felt familiar.

The chirping birds above startled at Isobe’s screams. Her Fuonheki barrier was fading quickly. Akon had taught her the kido in case she needed to hide her cries during a bad episode if she didn’t take her painkillers in time. Not for something like this.

Nausea rolled through her guts.

‘Everyone has stray violent thoughts, right?’  Lyn covered her face with a shaking hand. ‘And it’s just a natural response to act on it after what he’s done, right?’

Lyn’s hands slowly slid down her face, and her trembling fingers slid over a wide grin.

“Survive without hesitation?” Lyn uttered. “Alright then… Time to get rid of you in a way that doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass, today.”

▮▮▮▮

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Drawing by me for you guys *:･ﾟ✧

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Author’s Note

Hello hello I am back! I’ve been super busy with studies and work, but thank you all for your patience! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o I am also going by sesameImp across different fic sites now, wee.

Also yippie! Somehow, this little Bleach OC fic of mine got over 300 kudos! I’m really happy that people are enjoying this fic! To celebrate, I did a little drawing of the scene from Isobe’s perspective *:･ﾟ✧

Thank you so much for reading, and as always, please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below!

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ

Name | Kanji | (Meaning) — Details

Fuonheki |  封音壁 | (Sealing Sound Wall) —​​​​​​​ A little fan Bakudo I decided to make – because I feel like there should be plenty more low-level, practical kido developed in the soul society, and Akon would surely know a few of them! Maybe he’s made one or two small and convenient ones in his spare time!

▮▮▮▮

Chapter Text

Lyn did a quick, mental count of her and Isobe’s wounds. Not including Isobe’s missing hand and shoulder wound, he was almost in better shape than Lyn who looked like she’d been shaken – not stirred – in a box full of knives. This was no longer a battle of blades and fists. Not when the sensei were likely already investigating Isobe’s earlier, half-muffled screams.

So, she took a deep breath.

Dispelled any lingering effects of her Fuonheki.

And yanked her blade out of Isobe’s shoulder.

“HEEEEELP!” And Lyn’s high-pitched scream travelled far on the cold morning air.

Isobe cursed and tackled Lyn to the ground with a broken war cry. Lyn let her wakizashi be knocked to the side. Isobe fought as if his life depended on it, pummelling his remaining fist into Lyn’s face again and again before he decided to try to choke her to death. Lyn’s face quickly became red. Delicate blood vessels smattered red speckles around her eyes after they burst.

The lights only turned back on in Isobe’s bloodshot eyes after Lyn breathlessly mouthed to him with bloody lips, “You’re fucked.”

▯▯▯▮

Academy breaks were peaceful and quiet, with most students gone until next year. It was a chance for the sensei to re-evaluate their lessons and corroborate the progress of talented students. A chance for most of them to relax, and for a few to sharpen their skills.

Peaceful and quiet, the scene before them was not.

“Over here!”

“We’ve located the students!”

A group of academy staff descend from the sky. The boy was pulled from the female student in an instant. She took a greedy, panicked breath. She rolled over and failed to get to her feet, falling face forward in the sensei’s direction. Now, on her stomach, her back was a clear, bloody tapestry of intentional cuts.

It almost looked like torture.

They were left speechless, heads turning between the bloody student and the boy who was missing a hand. The grass was covered in crimson, and the metallic stench of burnt blood was in the air. They recognise the two students from the tournament. A first-year student with violent tendencies as bad as his ego, who let a weaker opponent get the best of him. And the weaker girl who did so. Isobe Rokuro shouted and cursed as a hakuda-sensei held him back from Chiba Lyn, who coughed with a hand to her throat.

“That bitch tried to kill me! She tried to kill me!” Isobe exclaimed.

“It was an accident,” Chiba spoke weakly, voice raspy from damaged vocal cords. “I-I didn’t mean for his hand- his hand to-”

“Shut up you lying bitch! Fuck! FUCK!” Isobe was going to continue shouting but was instead knocked out with a chop to the back of the neck.

Isobe and his hand were collected and rushed to the 4^th Division for reattachment and treatment. Lyn, with less severe injuries, was taken to the academy infirmary for the second time in a week.

No one knew what the hell was going on.

▯▯▯▮

Only a small healer team remained at the infirmary during the academy break. They regarded Lyn with derision. Apparently, Akon didn’t even need to invoke the Exclusive Care Clause on his last visit for them to get the message that they shouldn’t ask too many questions. They didn’t ask why Lyn was always injured, or why she never came to them for treatment despite that. And certainly not why she only asked for basic first aid through her clothes after she was delivered to them by a zanjutsu sensei she didn’t know.

The 12^th Division was a powerful deterrent.

Thus, Lyn didn’t need to disclose the Exclusive Care Clause to them either. It was on a need-to-know basis, and the fewer people who knew, the better.

Then it was onto getting Lyn’s side of the incident. Fights between academy students were common, but academy students trying to kill each other was another story. But it wasn’t unheard of. It called for a minor investigation at the very least.

But as Isobe impatiently pleaded his case as his hand was reattached halfway across Seireitei, Lyn already knew how things would play out.

For a moment, the chatter of the arguing sensei faded as Lyn slipped deeper into her own thoughts.

She flexed her bloody, bandaged hands, feeling the ghost of her tanto’s grip, she had yet to draw blood with. She kept thinking back to her internal justifications for scraping her blade against Isobe’s bones, cutting at the tendons and muscles of a man already incapacitated.

Her knee bounced. ‘Natural response my ass…’

▯▯▯▮

The Shino Academy was quick to close the case between Isobe and Chiba within hours of the incident. They didn’t let the news spread outside of the involved teaching staff, besides a brief incident log that was sent to the 9^th Division as part of the Academy’s yearly incident report. It was innocuously slipped between uniform violations and sake being snuck into the grounds.

----

Incident Log #4697

Date | Time: XXXX-03-04, 1030

Location: Shino Academy, Southern Training Forest

Involved Parties:

• Chiba Lyn
• Isobe Rokuro

Incident Description: In a vengeful rage over tying in the Career Fair Tournament, Isobe attacked Chiba, inflicting numerous shallow cuts to her back and arms with the intent to maximise pain. Chiba retaliated in self-defence, severing his left hand and stabbing Isobe in the right shoulder (wound cauterised). Isobe then attempted to strangle Chiba with his remaining hand. Nearby sensei swiftly responded to Chiba’s cries for help, and the students were separated for treatment.

Action Taken:

• Chiba Lyn: declared to have acted in self-defence; no disciplinary action.
• Isobe Rokuro: expelled from the Shino Academy for repeated misconduct.

----

It reflected a system that only cared for strength and order. Because if Isobe had demonstrated strength considerable enough to overlook his ‘unruly’ nature, he would have received little more than a slap on the wrist.

And as in all such cases, it was all quietly swept under the rug.

▯▯▯▮

Lyn watched from across the courtyard as a group of boys cleared out boxes from the boys’ dormitory, heading towards one of the offices. Isobe’s things were being cleared out.

It had only been a couple of hours, and Lyn’s bruises hadn’t even fully swollen and purpled. Lyn almost regretted asking the healers to just focus on the open wounds to have minimal contact. It ached.

‘I wonder what they did with him.’ Lyn swung her feet back and forth, seated on the engawa of the dining hall. ‘He’s been expelled – I know that much. But did they take him down to the Maggots’ Nest because he’s learned too many Shinigami skills to be released back into the Rukongai? Maybe he’s been quietly executed if he’s not worth keeping.’

Lyn continued to kick her feet back and forth, enjoying her onigiri. She couldn’t stomach anything else for dinner.

Either way, it was a good thing for her.

But she did cross her legs to keep them from swinging. ‘It’s good for Shino, Ryunosuke, and Hanataro too. He can’t mess with them anymore either.’

She stood and headed for the library. She went straight to the history section, searching for any mention of the events of the Turn Back the Pendulum Arc. The loss of Shiba Kaien, the fall of his clan, the Hollowfication Incident – though really, she looked for the mass execution sentencing of its affected captains and lieutenants – the exile of Urahara and Tessai. None of it was there, and any brief mentions of the loss of various captains had been so brief that no one had bothered to date them.

Lyn clicked her tongue. ‘I guess it’s about not letting students see too much weakness in the upper ranks? Because the Shinigami are certainly still recovering from the blow the Hollowfication Incident brought.’

She moved on to Human History, trying to find the current date. It was just as sparse. ‘Ugh, what the hell. I mean, I guess they also don’t want students involved in current human events too much, so no one attempts to interfere… But what the hell?!’

Lyn almost threw the abysmal history book across the library. Once again, books were her number one enemy.

Instead, she slapped it on the lower back cover, like giving it a spank for being a naughty book.

Turning back to the shelves, a set of titles caught her eye in a way that made her muscles tense. Quincy history. A quick flick-through didn’t reveal a glorification of the head captain, but they were still disappointing propaganda pieces; a demonisation of the Quincy. Maybe not so unfitting with what Yhwach had planned. Still, there was nothing about Quincy's abilities she hadn’t seen in the show or read from the manga, or that one of her friends had rambled to her excitedly about.

A single tear ran down Lyn’s face. ‘Why did I ever tell Ryan to not give me spoilers? I don’t even remember if the Quincy hiding in the shadows of Soul Society was literal or not!’

Just before she left, she cringed at the sight of Aizen’s beautiful calligraphy hanging on the far wall. ‘And universe, why did you have to remind me he exists as well? Damn, hot, creepy genius. At least he’s probably forgotten I exist by now. On that note, I need to make a list of questions to ask my preferred, hot, creepy genius for when he comes by next.’

▯▯▯▮

The last thing Lyn expected to see when she finally returned to her dorm room at the end of the day was a gift basket. She was afraid to touch the cloth-covered thing. It even had a menacing, cute blue ribbon tied around it. Lyn poked it with the end of her wakizashi as if it would go off like a bomb.

She looked down the hallways and listened for movement. No one.

Lyn nudged the basket into her room with her foot and closed the door behind her. She kneeled next to the basket and cautiously peeled back the cloth. It was a basket made of bamboo weave, and densely packed full of medicinal teas, herbal tonics, ointments, creams for wounds, and high-quality bandages. Konpeito candies, lollipops and other snacks tucked into the side.

A small, handwritten note that said, ‘Don’t give up! -Ukitake Jushiro.’ And next to those words, a small drawing of what Lyn thought was meant to be a smiling Ukitake in his captain’s coat, and little chibi fists raised encouragingly.

Lyn covered her face with her hands. ‘He’s treating me like a kid – like how he treats Toshiro!’

She ended up staring at the gift basket for a long while, too afraid to unpack any of it.

Eventually, she gave in.

The ointment was relaxing and reishi dense, making the perfect balm for her new and old wounds that was soothing in a unique way compared to Akon’s more practical treatments. It was a considerate and thoughtful gift from someone who had experienced chronic sickness for centuries.

Lyn felt dirty for receiving his undeserved empathy.

Depending on how she distorted the future, she might become more like an illness herself.

However, with all the dirt and blood building under her nails, it wasn’t biting as hard as it should have. Not as hard as it would have been a year and two months ago.

▯▯▯▮

In Lyn’s inner world, her tanto spun and laughed, splashing water around merrily. His wild, fluffy black hair bounced as he went.

“Hehehe! ▮o▮▮▮▮▮! It’s ▮▮▮▮s▮▮!” he shouted and sung his name. “Come on Boss! Can’t you hear me yet? ▮▮-▮▮-▮h▮!”

The wakizashi held the smaller spirit by the mouth. “Shut up.”

The taller spirit's white robes were splattered in his own blood as his offending hand was cut off. He clicked his tongue. In the next instant, his hand reformed.

“Ha!” the little spirit mirthlessly laughed at the other’s audacity. “I thought we both understood what Boss needs to survive.”

The other scowled. “She does not need something like you to survive.”

The little spirit dragged the floating one to his height by the front of his robes. They stared past the talismans covering their faces, and the little spirit smirked once he found what he was looking for.

The little spirit skipped by the floating one to look out at the lake. “This guilt and self-loathing you and Boss cling to is kinda like a tail. I guess it’s pretty and good for balance. But now that she’s out in the wild getting chewed up, it’s a prideful ornament that’s festering after too many bites.”

“And it’s much better to lose a tail than a hand, after all.” When the little spirit grinned down at the reflection in the water, a rippling Lyn grinned back. “Especially when you’re not a dog! Hehehe!”

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Author’s Note

Damn I’m so cringe lmao – but it’s all for fun anyways haha *:･ﾟ✧

AND HELLO! I have updated earlier than usual! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o I’m so happy people are still enjoying this silly fic of mine despite how long it takes me to update sometimes – thank you for your patience!

Also yay! More ✧canon characters✧ featured next chapter! *:･ﾟ✧

Please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll respond as soon as I can!

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Chapter Text

Lyn dreamt of rolling, sunbathed hills and an ocean of flowering weeds. The gentle flutter of her dress around her short and clumsy legs. She crouched down in the dirt that wriggled with life – ants marching in neat lines; a shiny, red ladybug; and slow, round snails. The fluffy clouds were slow too, like the snails.

Lyn pulled at the thin, hair-like legs of a cellar spider. She squeezed the base of a removed leg and brought it up to her wide curious eyes as it extended.

Warmth plucked her from the ground and placed Lyn on her hip. “Sweetheart, don’t do that. Life is precious.”

Lyn clapped her hands, ridding herself of spider bits and latched on. “Okay, Mama!”

A gentle kiss was placed on the top of her head, and Lyn beamed.

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The first signs of winter rolled in quietly on clear skies and frosted dew. More citizens of Junrinan were layering up in winter jackets, such as padded hanten and thick winter haori. The warmth of souls could be seen in cloudy exhales and friendly chatter as the end-of-year festivities were approaching.

But fewer and fewer banners, decorations, and festival preparations could be seen as Lyn trekked further out from the heart of the Soul Society through the district rings. Her left cheek, aching and purpling, and her right eye,  black and swollen half shut, would take a couple more days to go back to normal. It would have been convenient for Akon to drop by and heal her, but she hadn’t lost lethal amounts of reiryoku to alert him that anything had gone wrong.

She could have called for him herself using the hell butterfly he had sent to her to keep, but she probably shouldn’t unless it was an emergency. ‘Akon mentioned he’d be extra busy with end-of-year reports and other managerial stuff since it’s almost the end of the year.’

And while technically it was okay for her to have it – the 12th was in charge of communications as well as distributing the reishi creatures – it wasn’t something to use carelessly.

So, instead, Lyn was out in the cold, frowning at the high prices of fabrics and tailoring services.

She had been lucky when she first arrived. While the mountains had her teeth chattering in the mornings of her first winter spent herb gathering, Soul Society had skipped over a true winter season. The ebb and flow of souls through Soul Society had an effect on weather patterns, but that was as much as Lyn knew on the subject.

And of course, the Shino Academy had run out of winter uniforms for the many first years who didn’t know to request one earlier; Lyn included. They wouldn’t have any more available for a long time.

At least the frosty air felt nice on her bruised face.

▯▯▯▮

It took Lyn a couple hours of clumsily flash-stepping all the way out to the 10th District to finally find someone willing to barter with Lyn for a set of winter clothes. Now she just had to collect the list of herbs and other forageables the old woman wanted.

Lyn readjusted her old foraging basket on her back as she trekked further up the mountain. ‘While I’m up here I might as well grab anything else worth some money. With a proper winter setting in, the price for a lot of herbs is going to spike.’

Lyn picked and bundled wilting, wild shiso. Even blackened along the edges, it was still worth a decent amount. A hard, muscle-jerking shiver ran through Lyn’s body as cold winds bit into her flimsy layers.

‘And I’m lucky prices will be a lot higher in this district too. Other foragers are too afraid because these lazy-ass Shinigami reduce hollow patrols this far out in Rukongai as soon as it starts to get colder.’ Lyn groaned. ‘But that old lady is totally going to try and rip me off even if I get everything she wanted. I hate bartering.’

Lyn followed a babbling creek, and easily traversed boulders covered in dying moss that would have her struggling to climb over in the past. As soon as Lyn crested the top, she flash-stepped out of the way of a whistling blade and clanking chain.

“What the hell?!” Lyn shrieked, high pitched and shrill, and now standing in the upper branches of a tree.

The last thing Lyn was expecting to see was a shocked Hisagi Shuhei, staring at her with wide, dark grey eyes. His zanpakuto, Kazeshini, was hanging in his rigid hands by its long chain, double-sided sickle blades dangling on either end.

Rather than wearing a sleeveless version of the shihakusho he was usually depicted in, his arms were covered for once. He even had a thick, winter cloak over his uniform.

“Chiba?” Hisagi questioned, utterly baffled. “What on earth are you doing out here?”

▯▯▯▮

“What are you doing out here swinging around your shikai like a maniac?!” Chiba snapped back, half-hidden behind the trunk of the tree she was standing in.

“Training, obviously!” Shuhei quickly sealed Kazeshini and sheathed him at his hip.

Chiba gave him an unimpressed look, narrowing her eyes at him. “And you just swing at any innocent bystander minding their own business in the mountains?”

Now that Shuhei was concentrating more on her presence, he became confused. There had been a biting cold on the edge of his senses that screamed danger like claws digging into his shoulder from behind – foreign enough to have him attack on reflex – but that presence was nowhere to be found now. And Chiba’s weak reiryoku certainly felt strange, but didn’t seem like what he was sensing earlier.

Shuhei opened his mouth to respond but quickly snapped it shut. ‘I can’t just say I attacked on reflex because I assumed she was a hollow. Did I just imagine it? I couldn’t have, but… Damn it, this isn’t the time for this.’

Shuhei bowed. “I apologise; you could have been harmed badly.”

He should have known it was a soul that was approaching long before she crested the top of the boulders.

Chiba hopped down from the trees and bowed lower. “You don’t need to bow, sir! I should also apologise, Lieutenant Hisagi. I was rude, sir.”

Shuhei sighed. “It’s alright, you must have been shocked.”

He crossed his arms and frowned, getting a proper look at Chiba now that she wasn’t half-hidden. She looked haggard. Her face was covered in a mottled bruise of mottled reds, yellows and purple, along with a black eye. Her outer clothes were shredded with futile efforts to stitch the falling apart cloth together, and the red of her academy uniform stuffed underneath peaked out from multiple places. Chiba was a mess, and ill-prepared for the weather, despite her layering.

“So, what brings you out here?” Shuhei decided to ask first.

Chiba pointed to the woven basket on her back. “I was out collecting- Ah! My herbs!” Chiba cried as soon as she caught a glance at her basket which was practically empty. She knelt by the creek where a few leaves were left on the edge, and tears welled in her eyes. “I needed those to buy winter clothes…”

Shuhei panicked in turn. ‘Shit! What do I do? Her herbs must have been all those leaves I saw go flying into the river when she dodged my attack.’

He half crouched at her side and gave her an awkward pat on the back. “I’m sure there’s plenty more around?”

Chiba’s tone was now a defeated monotone as she stared pathetically down at the rushing water. “It’s the start of winter. There’s already barely anything left… But it’s okay. I’m used to things like this happening by now. On my way here I almost got hit by a boulder falling loose from a cliff too, so it’s just one of those days.”

Shuhei saw the glitter of tears from the morning sun plopping to the ground and held up both of his palms, hovering, not sure if he should pat her on the back again or not. He’d been punched by other women for making similar mistakes. “H-Hey! I’ll just buy you winter clothes since I made you lose those herbs, so stop crying.”

Chiba’s head snapped up to look at him, a hand over her mouth while fat tears rolled down her round cheeks. “R-Really?”

Shuhei planted his hands on his knees with a sigh. “Yes, really, so please stop crying. We can go now since the town isn’t far.”

Chiba’s tears were wiped away in the next instant, and she sprang up in a joyful hop, her hands thrown into the air. “Yay! Thank you, Lieutenant Hisagi.”

Shuhei’s lips pulled into a thin line. ‘Did I just get scammed?’

He could practically see Kira shaking his head and sighing. Like when Shuhei folded to paying for Matsumoto’s drinks for the umpteenth time.

Despite the stray thought, Shuhei wasn’t going to turn away the opportunity that had fallen into his lap. Or avoid taking responsibility for the accident he’d caused.

They steadily descended the mountain in relaxed hops and a light series of flash-step with Shuhei carefully matching Chiba’s pace. He didn’t want to push her if her injuries extended to more than a few nasty bruises on her face. And with her track record, they likely did.

Chiba stopped moving, and Shuhei turned back with a raised brow.

Chiba frowned. “I never got to properly thank you for saving me during the incident in the Human World. If you hadn’t arrived when you did, I would probably be dead. Thank you.”

Her direct gaze was more sincere than the depth of the bows he was more used to from subordinates and civilians.

With her hands clasped in front of her, fingers winding in front of her stomach like a twisting feeling in her gut. “And I was too hasty in accepting your generosity earlier. I don’t even have a proper way to repay you for saving me, let alone for this.”

Shuhei turned away to hide any visible embarrassment. “That’s – I was just doing my duty. And I still caused you to lose all those herbs you collected, after all, so don’t sweat it.”

Shuhei turned away. ‘This girl is all over the place, but at least she’s made it easier to bring up my more pressing questions.’

The thought quickly quelled any lingering embarrassment. “However, regarding the Human World incident, I wanted to ask more about your relationship with 3rd Seat Akon.”

Chiba gave him a slow blink. “We’re not in a relationship.”

Shuhei slapped a hand to his forehead. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Ah.” Chiba dropped her fist into her palm with an expression of realisation. “We are in a relationship.”

“Oh, I see.” Shuhei froze mid-nod. “Wait – you are?!”

Chiba smiled pleasantly. “A patient-healer relationship.”

“You’re being awfully cheeky with a superior officer, Chiba.”

He swore she blinked at him out of sync like a gecko.

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

Shuhei frowned, brows pinching lightly. He didn’t want to come off too stern and scare her off now. “It’s clear you’re deflecting, and I won’t pressure you. But if the 12th is forcing you to be involved in any of their experiments… I’m a Lieutenant. If an Academy student is being exploited, it’s my duty to act.”

Chiba continued walking, her steps light and arms loose. “Like I said, a patient-healer relationship. My soul just passed on a little fragile, and Akon has been helping me.”

‘Maybe he is helping, but why? Outdated healer's clauses, turning down assistance from other healers, and hauling Chiba off personally after a hollow attack…’ Shuhei’s longer strides easily caught up to Chiba’s shorter ones.

Shuhei ran a hand through his hair in silent frustration while Chiba continued to lead the way. ‘Captain Aizen said she was likely fearful of authority and scared at the mention of Akon. That’s why he thought I might be easier for her to talk to, especially since I helped her once before. And she doesn’t seem too intimidated by me, which is a good thing. But she doesn’t seem scared at the mention of Akon now either.’

‘Not to mention whatever medicine he injected into her definitely isn’t being used by the 4th.’ Now that he was next to Chiba again, the unnatural presence of that substance had certainly felt similar to the odd stutters in Chiba’s reiryoku, but not quite the same.

And as things stood, Shuhei couldn’t do anything about it unless substantial evidence fell into his lap. And somehow, watching Akon jam a needle of suspicious black liquid into Chiba’s neck wasn’t evidence enough. It really could have just been a specialised treatment for this particular, strange, Shinigami girl in training. It didn’t have to be malicious in nature.

But it implied that the 12th wanted Chiba alive and were investing resources in her. That was concerning in itself.

Shuhei reached out a hand to stop Chiba but held back. ‘That stupid clause and Captain Kurotsuchi’s authority have my hands tied for now... But she is alive. And showing improvements in her condition. She does seem to go out of the academy unmonitored too. So… I’ll have to assume things aren’t dire for now.’

Shuhei sighed. “I’ll take your word for it then. But don’t be afraid to reach out to a member of the 9th Division to get in contact with me if you need to. My door is always open.”

They approached the entrance of the town, and Chiba turned to him again. Her eyes crinkled at the edges. “You seem like a really good guy, Lieutenant Hisagi.”

Shuhei crossed his arms. “I’m just doing what anyone should.”

Chiba rubbed at her neck. “I do appreciate your concern, and I’m not completely oblivious to the reputation the 12th has, Lieutenant Hisagi. If I think I need help, I will contact you.”

Shuhei pinched the bridge of his nose. “I can’t even decide if it’s reassuring or not that you know.”

The conversation turned to getting Chiba basic winter supplies when she started to dramatically shiver and hug herself. In the end, Shuhei had to force the girl to take another set of winter tabi – that and the rest would be sent to the academy later -  and a cloak she could wear now.

Chiba thanked him again, and Shuhei was ready to return to his training.

Then he noticed the sword at her side.

As Chiba turned to walk away, he grabbed her by the shoulder with a deep sigh. “Chiba, is that your asauchi?”

“No?”

“Chiba.”

“It could be handy if someone swings at me out of nowhere.”

“Chiba, you carry other weapons outside of the academy for self-defence. You’re aware your asauchi needs to stay at the academy while you’re a student unless you’re on a mission or training exercise, correct?” Shuhei narrowed his eyes at her.

Chiba dropped into a ninety-degree bow immediately. “I’ll return to the academy immediately, Lieutenant Hisagi! I apologise!”

Shuhei put his hand out, waiting. “I have to take it for now, but I’ll have a subordinate return it to the academy.”

Chiba kept bowing. And not handing over her weapon. Then she started to scoot backwards.

“Chiba.” Shuhei reached forward.

Chiba shot back up, arms wrapped around her asauchi now. “I promise I’ll head straight back to the academy – no detours at all!”

Shuhei had her asauchi in his hands before Chiba could react, making the girl look back down at her empty arms twice before things connected. Chiba let out a small shriek and tried to reach for her weapon. Shuhei held it up out of reach and kept her from jumping up with a hand planted on top of her head.

“You’ll get it back later, Chiba! Why are you acting like this?!” Shuhei asked, his own voice taking on a higher pitch from his extreme confusion.

“That’s my life support you’re holding!”

“Your what?!”

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Author’s Note

Sorry for the wait everyone! I tried to update way earlier, but I had to scrap and rewrite the whole chapter because it was just that bad. And confusing. It was a bad time I shall not subject you to. I have sOmE standards for my cringe .:*☆

(Also, there were going to be more canon characters in this chapter, but it just didn’t make sense, hence the rewriting!)

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!ヾ(≧▽≦*)o

Thank you so much for reading and please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or opinions down below and I’ll try to respond concerningly fast!

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Chapter Text

Shuhei’s hand barely trembled as he continued to hold Ly back by her head. His expression, however, wavered between shock, confusion, and concern. “What do you mean, your life support?!” he demanded.

Chiba tried to leap up but failed, only making it up half a centimetre before her feet plopped back down again. “I-I mean I’m gonna get eaten on the way back to the academy if I don’t have it! We’re out in District 10!” Chiba planted her hands on her hips and glared up at him. “You also tried to take my head off, if I need to remind you!”

Shuhei scowled down at her. “Your words may make some sense, but your reaction doesn’t.”

Shuhei blinked, and Lyn was now calmly standing across from him with her hands held politely in front of her.

She tried to give him a sweet smile, but her swollen face made it crooked. “Lieutenant Hisagi, could you please escort me back to the academy? There might be hollows on the way back, and I’m still injured from my recent fight and another scuffle I got involved in recently, sir.” Chiba bowed. “I’m very sorry for any inconvenience, but I would really appreciate it, sir!”

Shuhei rubbed his temple, wide, confused eyes unfocused. “What’s even happening right now?” he asked no one in particular under his breath. He crossed his arms, her asauchi still in his other hand. “And aren’t you quite good at kido regardless-”

Chiba coughed, and a mouthful of blood splattered over Shuhei’s chest.

“Ah. My legs,” Chiba wheezed and fell over.

Shuhei scrambled to catch her and managed to not drop her sword while he was at it. “Why did you cough up blood if there’s something wrong with your legs?!” He picked her up and started to rush back to the Seireitei.

Chiba was silent, eyes closed, and her bloody tongue partly sticking out of her mouth.

Despite Shuhei’s concern, he couldn’t help but want to drop her.

“I’m bringing you to the 4^th-”

Between coughs, Lyn whispered, “Exclusive Care Clause,” and coughed again.

Shuhei’s right eyelid twitched. ‘Seriously, what have I gotten myself into?’

▯▯▯▮

“Lieutenant Hisagi… Chiba-san,” Akon greeted with the rough edge of exhaustion to this voice. Deep bags were under his eyes, and his lab coat was askew with a dangerously neon pink substance splattered on the bottom.

 Akon looked more done with the lump in Shuhei’s arms than Shuhei did.

Despite that, he reached out and scooped up Chiba from Shuhei’s arms before Shuhei could speak. “I’ll take care of my patient from here. Thank you for your assistance and sorry for any inconvenience, Lieutenant.”

A brief moment of understanding passed between them. Just a bit.

The next thing Shuhei knew, the gates of the SRDI were closed in his face. Chiba’s asauchi was also gone, leaving Shuhei empty-handed and with more questions than answers once again.

Shuhei sighed. ‘Yeah, I think that strange girl will be fine for now.’

▯▯▯▮

Akon marched Lyn through the 12^th Division, ignoring the curious eyes of his subordinates who were scattered around, but mostly too preoccupied with their work. They passed monitoring rooms with bickering officers shaking papers at one another; quieter areas where beakers and small specimens were delicately handled; and a couple of overworked Shinigami leaned up against one another in the hallways, fast asleep.

Akon brought Lyn to his office and plopped her down on a cot released from a hidden wall panel. “Do I even want to ask what happened?”

Lyn breathed in deeply but winced, scrunching her face from the pain of biting open her inner cheek. Akon wordlessly healed it with a hand cupping the side of her face. Lyn didn’t wait for him to finish before she started talking. “So, I was out in the 10^th District mountains foraging to barter for winter clothes-”

Akon glared, but she knew it wasn’t directed at her. “Why didn’t the academy supply you a set?”

“-because I was meant to order some ahead of time, and I didn’t know I was meant to. And Shuhei- I mean, Hisagi, almost chopped my head off because I spooked him while he was training. And then one thing led to another, and he was trying to confiscate my asauchi because I brought it out with me, so I convinced him to be a gentleman and bring me here instead.”

“That depiction of events certainly made sense.” Akon raised a naked brow at her. “And you convinced Lieutenant Hisagi by coughing up blood on him?”

“You’d be amazed by all the questions you can make a person forget by coughing a little blood on them,” Lyn declared proudly.

Finished with his treatment, Akon patted her on the cheek a couple of times. “Never change, you idiot.” Then he gave her a chop to the forehead.

“Ack!”

“I know that didn’t hurt. And what happened to your face?”

“I flexed all over the commoners, and they bowed down to my greatness.”

“Another likely story.”

Lyn laid down on the cot, her elbow-propped hand holding up her head and the other on her hip – a caricature of a sexy pose. “So, am I interrupting anything?”

Akon blinked; slow, tired, unfocused. He looked between the piles of paperwork on his desk and back at Lyn twice. “You know what, your timing is perfect. Let’s put your grades in the paperwork to the test.”

Lyn took an awkward seat next to Akon from a chair that had materialised from somewhere. Pen in hand, she cocked her head at him in confusion. “Am I even allowed to look at this stuff?”

Akon held out a stack of papers. “Do you plan on telling anyone about this?”

“Nope.”

“Then your job is to rewrite these documents into something legible that’s not going to get sent straight back from the 1^st Division for me to rewrite myself.” Akon’s unfocused gaze told of many years spent dealing with such a thing.

Lyn held up a page. “This looks fine to me.” Then she unfocused her eyes in a particular way that deactivated the automatic translation of her zanpakuto spirits. “Oh, never mind, this is horrendous!” Lyn chirped. “Huh, I guess even terrible handwriting in researchers passes on to the afterlife. Does the 4^th Division have it even worse?”

Lyn was still learning her kanji without the assistance of her zanpakuto spirits, but even she could tell that what she was looking at was a near illegible mess. How her spirits were understanding what the hell she was looking at was beyond her. ‘What other zanpakuto spirit would come with Woogle translate, if not the most mundane of all? Hehehe, desk job here I come!’

She found the matching document template blanks she needed and copied over the information. With the assistance of her little zanpakuto, twisting her looping English into hiragana, katakana, and kanji strokes, she was tearing through the stack. Sure, using her spirits for this wasn’t conducive to learning the language properly, but her current priority was helping out Akon cull some of the paperwork he was swimming in.

A few minutes passed, and Akon looked over at what Lyn was doing. He rubbed his eyes. “Wait, you can read this? And how are you doing that with your pen?”

Akon was sure the exhaustion had finally caught up to him, and he was hallucinating.

Lyn paused and remained silent for an awkwardly long moment, staring. “I didn’t tell you my zanpakuto translates stuff and rewrites things from English to Japanese for me?”

“You didn’t…”

“Oh! Haha. I thought I did.” Then Lyn went right back to work.

Akon stared at the far wall for a whole minute. No, he was not going to look this gift horse in its loud yet vague mouth.

▯▯▯▮

At some point, while Lyn had made her way through a stack of papers as tall as herself, running on zanpakuto assisted autopilot. It was nice to do something simple and repetitive after the recent events. And it was nice to pay Akon back a bit, even if it was just taking some paperwork off his hands.

Seeing as he was slumped over his half of the desk, pen still clutched tightly in one hand, he certainly needed it.

Lyn looked at him from a few different angles. ‘He looks uncomfortable, but if I try to move him his tall ass is going straight to the floor.’

Lyn rubbed her arms with a small shiver and looked around the hyper-organised room. There were many shelves filled with things she definitely shouldn’t touch. And while Akon had opened a wall panel to release a cot, Lyn might blow up the room if she went slapping around the walls looking for one to pop out a blanket.

“Are you perhaps looking for this?”

“Oh, thank you.” Lyn happily took the blanket and placed it over Akon’s shoulders. “That’s better. There’s no way Akon has been sleeping enough.”

Lyn saw someone nod in her peripheral vision, and her muscles locked. She stiffly turned to see who had been next to her the whole time.

Nemu’s blank, green eyes looked back impassively. Her shiny black braid from the manga looked shorter, but still had the same red bead attached and a matching red choker around her neck. And now that Lyn could look at Nemu properly, rather than in just a few manga panels, she noted that not only was the bottom of her shihakusho styled into a short skirt, but she was wearing Mary Jane-style flats instead of sandals. Everything about her appearance seemed custom-tailored just for her.

Nemu observed Lyn in turn, eyes scanning methodically. “You are Chiba Lyn. Third Seat Akon’s current personal research focus, and the false focus subject of the emergency alternate version of the ARIDD project; the Acute Reishi Irregularity Detection and Diagnostics project.”

Lyn held her hands behind her back – she felt like she had been caught. Well, she probably shouldn’t be in a seated Shinigami’s office, messing with documents she didn’t understand. Especially as a student. ‘Am I going to go to jail for messing with military documents? These are technically all military documents, aren’t they?!’

“That’s is- that’s me,” Lyn eventually answered, pitch rising at the end.

Nemu remained silent.

Lyn’s heart started jerking around in her chest. ‘Kurotsuchi didn’t send her here to kick me out or drag her to him, right?!’

“It is nice to meet you as well. I am Kurotsuchi Nemu, Lieutenant of the 12^th Division under Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi.” Nemu turned to look at Akon for a moment before focusing on Lyn in an intense way that made her want to shrink back.

“I have read of this display in the books the Shinigami Woman’s Association has provided for me. This is what they describe as…” Nemu placed a hand in front of her blank mouth delicately. “Romance.”

Lyn’s head jerked back like she had been punched, and she aggressively gestured between her and Akon. “There is nothing romantic between me and this triceratops!”

Lyn swore she saw Nemu’s cheeks pinken. “You already trade nicknames with one another. You should now gaze fondly at him, and kiss either the top of his head or the cheek that has turned to the side.”

Despite her blank face, Nemu’s silent stare was imploring.

“I’m not doing that!” Lyn dragged her hands down her face, and quickly switched topics before Nemu could suggest another weird teaching the Women’s association had imparted to her. “Who’s teaching you these weird things?! Lieutenant Kurotsuchi-”

“You may call me Nemu.”

“Nemu… san, um. Anyways! Do you know why Akon is usually the one left to rewrite these messy research notes?” Lyn held up one of the offending documents. “Why doesn’t he make the ones that messed them up redo them instead?”

“The three most frequently offending researchers are unable to decipher their own handwriting. Akon is currently the only one within our division capable of deciphering them.”

Lyn placed her pressed-together hands to her lips pensively, brows pinched. ‘How the hell is this place still running? How is the Seireitei still running? Is this the real reason Aizen wants to take over? So, he can force everyone to learn calligraphy and have some decent ass handwriting?!’

“Mayuri-sama is calling for me.” Nemu was already halfway out the door. She left with a monotonous whisper. “I shall leave the two of you… alone.”

“It’snotlikethat!” Lyn rapidly whispered back just before the door fully clicked shut.

Lyn scuttled over to Akon and shook his shoulder. Realising the blanket was still on him and that apparently it had implications, she ripped it off him and threw it to the other side of the room. Just before his eyes started to crack open.

Akon groaned. “Sorry, did I fall asleep?”

“Take me back to the academy before you fall asleep, Sleepygami! You can’t leave me alone in a place like this!”

“A place like this? This is my workplace and office that you’re insulting.”

“And I’ll do it again.”

“Fine, fine, let’s go.”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn didn’t visit the 12^th Division again for the rest of the academy break. However, Akon visited her a couple of more times to graciously share some of this paperwork. He appreciated the help, and Lyn never complained. And Akon was sure she’d start complaining if she really didn’t want to. He knew her at least that well by now.

Meanwhile, Lyn’s soul was slowly recovering and adapting, building stronger foundations of reishi around her more erratic core. Or at least, it seemed that way to Akon. Her spirit ribbon was now a solid thing he could hold, even if it twitched between his fingers with pieces fraying under too much pressure.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It was a good thing. Because Akon found his research equipment, which had been recalibrated and set to deconstruct reishi for emergency transfusions for Lyn, as a smouldering heap. A pile of twisted metal and jittery black soot that had partially melted his reinforced floors. The blast radius was big enough to stretch across the entire back wall of the room and reach the top of the 5-metre-tall ceilings.

He almost dry-retched at the revolting shiver that ran through his bones. Quickly, the damaged reishi dispersed, leaving his skin goose-bumped and cold. “Fuck.”

There was no way his captain would give Akon more funds to rebuild what he already considered a waste of resources. Akon was attempting the impossible and impractical. Something fundamentally unnatural. But it shouldn’t have gone up in an explosion like this. He knew it shouldn’t have. Or at least, he thought he did.

Every setback only made his curiosity more insatiable.

Akon looked down at his soot-smudged hands. In one, the radio-shaped device that continued to flash red and beep at him urgently. His heartbeat rose to match the fast pace. Or maybe that was the guilt. Because in his other hand was a phial of stolen blood.

“Sorry, Lyn,” Akon murmured, his voice loud in the empty room. “But I have a theory I need to test.”

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Author’s Note

Heheheh… I bet none of you were expecting an update in a couple of days! ヾ(≧▽≦*)o Me too! How did that happen? Weird. Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!

Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or opinions down below! .:*☆

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Chapter Text

The real ARIDD files were slowly buried under Akon’s mounds of work and responsibilities. He’d come to a standstill in his progress. He still had devices up and running, recording any data they could, and he recalibrated them time to time after his checkups – visits – to Lyn. But some things just took time. And years of data.

Akon had tried to use the blood sample he’d taken from Lyn as part of a sort of dowsing machine, and for the short time the sample lasted, it had led him to a couple of odd places. A random cliffside out in the Rukongai where a large boulder had dislodged, shattering into a mess of fractured stone shards and chunks at the bottom. Then, further out into the 10^th District mountains by a babbling creek with a cleared space that looked like someone had been using it as a training ground.

The blood sample had quickly degraded to nothing.

And by the time he had slipped another, those traces had long disappeared.

Akon had no idea what connected those locations, or if they had any relevance at all.

He knew Lyn didn’t want him touching her blood – prying deeper into her soul. After all, she’d only allowed it the first few times before her asauchi had split because she needed options. Not that it wasn’t still in her best interest to account for future developments and to just let him examine her properly already.

Akon ran a hand through his hair.

He wasn’t going to steal any more samples. Not unless the situation became more dire. But then in that case, he was sure he’d be able to convince Lyn. She could almost be a reasonable and logical person sometimes.

Probably.

He might need to ask for muscle – even a small sample of bone if it came to that.

‘The woman who murdered Lyn.’ Akon crossed his arms. ‘Maybe I’ll find more answers with her if I can find her in the Human World. I was planning to… I’ll just have to not directly interfere with her if she’s still alive and she turns out to be a regular human. See if I can find traces of this kireishi there too and trace it back to her…’

Akon walked into one of the main labs and was met with the sounds of breaking glass and arguing subordinates. He was pretty sure he spied someone lying face down in a green puddle at the back of the room, too. At least he could sense they weren’t dead.

He sighed. ‘When I finally get some time on my hands, that is.’

▯▯▯▮

Returning students flowed into the academy bundled in cloaks and winter jackets, their energetic chatter and fresh snowfall filling the air. Amber roofs were already starting to be coated in fresh, soft blankets of white, and students were carving paths through the courtyards. Students settling into their new and old rooms alike would soon be set rotations for the coming winter for who’d be shovelling snow from the paths each day.

“Shino-samaaaaa!” Lyn crashed into the arms of her friend, almost knocking them into Ryunosuke.

“Get off me, idiot! People are looking!” Shino snapped, cheeks pink. She would blame it on the cold later.

Hanataro spotted them and quickly jogged over. “It’s a reunion group hug!”

Shino slapped both her hands outward to keep an approaching Hanataro and Ryunosuke at bay. “No, it’s not!”

Shino tripped, and the four of them tumbled into a snow pile.

▯▯▯▮

Lyn had been moved into the same dorm as Shino to make room for the new students; they were no longer the freshest faces as second-year students. Quiet conversations in their room together as they prepared for classes or settled in for the night were awkward in a way they hadn’t been for a while. Not since they’d first started chatting more one-on-one together. But as the weeks passed, things settled back into normality.

Lyn glanced over at where Shino was lying, hunkering under an extra set of blankets. Grinning, Lyn rolled onto her stomach and cupped her mouth conspiratorially. “Tanaka-san kept glancing over at you during the combined class exercise we had today. When were you planning on telling us about him?”

Shino threw a pillow at Lyn, nailing her in the face despite how dark it was. “I’m not into that weakling!”

“Ah! Don’t say it so loud, he’ll hear you and then we’ll hear his heart shatter from all the way over here.”

Shino loomed over Lyn’s bed, hands raised and fingers wiggling threateningly. “What about you and your secret man you keep sneaking out to meet, huh?”

Lyn let out a garbled shriek, choking on her spit, as Shino’s tickling fingers hit her sides, launching herself across the room like a cat and hitting the wall. “I’m not sneaking out to meet a man! I mean- I haven’t been sneaking out!”

Shino raised a sceptical brow. ‘Lyn doesn’t realise she’s got cigarette smoke clinging to her clothes. Seriously, we’re halfway through the year, and I keep noticing it. Maybe last year as well. Is this a serious relationship or what?’

Sometimes Lyn came back with a stupid little grin like she’d been up to no good.

But other nights, Lyn would return to bed, and Shino’s keen ears could hear her picking at the skin of her hands in agitation. Restless. Anxious.

Shino sat up in bed and poked Lyn in the shoulder. “You know you can tell us if something’s wrong, right?”

Lyn smiled. “I know I can come to you all if I need help.”

Shino stared down at Lyn tensely. “No, you don’t. You don’t think you can rely on us.”

“Huh? I rely on you guys all the time.” Lyn sat up, but that was when Shino flopped back down.

“Hmm.” Shino crossed her arms, and her expression scrunched up.

“Fine, fine! But if he’s a jerk, then tell us and we’ll beat him up!” Shino relented and rolled over in her futon. “…Or is it a girl?”

“I’m not into women! I mean, I’m not meeting up with anyone!”

Bang! Bang!

The girl in the next room over banged on the wall and shouted, “Shut up, Madarame and Chiba!”

The two silently lay down in their beds in awkward silence, bodies stiff as boards.

“Pff.”

“Heh.”

“Heheheh-”

“SHUT UP!”

Shino banged back on the wall. “You shut up!”

▯▯▯▮

The Shino Academy library was a crowded space of towering shelves and a dusty scent, a maze cast in soft amber lighting.

Lyn, Hanataro, Shino, and Ryunosuke were studying together for their second end-of-year exams, crowded together on a small wooden table that had them kneeling on cushions worn thin over the years. Lyn tucked herself into the corner, notes in her lap, while Hanataro took up half of the table with his medical and kaido notes for his advancement exam to qualify for early interning with the 4^th Division. Shino held her head in her hands, frustrated, but kept her speaking volume library appropriate – barely. Meanwhile, Ryunosuke patiently explained methods to help with her memorisation while breaking down the subject.

When Ryunosuke disappeared to grab more history books for them to study with, Lyn followed him when he didn’t return for a while. Lyn found him deep within the back shelves, where mostly untouched books were collecting dust.

Lyn peered over Ryunosuke’s shoulder. “Find something interesting?”

Ryunosuke let out a short scream, throwing the book he was reading up into the air. His circular clips almost looked like they were about to fly off as well.

Lyn caught the book with a wince at his volume and handed it back to him.

“Oh, it’s just you, Lyn-san.” Ryunosuke let out a relieved sigh. “I was just… well…” Ryunosuke glanced around before leaning towards Lyn with a hand cupped by his mouth.

Lyn leaned closer eagerly, lending him her ear.

“I know Urahara-san was banished, but founding the S.R.D.I. like he did, and the unique bakudo he’s developed are really amazing. He’s why we have…” Ryunosuke continued to ramble on the various projects Urahara had led and his contributions to the Soul Society management, and even the integration of more modern infrastructure.

Lyn listened intently. ‘Huh, I knew Urahara was a genius inventor, but I guess Bleach only ever shared with us his combat-focused inventions. Wait, but what are Shinigami even using modern plumbing for?’

Ryunosuke's voice started to rise above a whisper, words spilling out in a rush, “N-Not that I would imply that it makes up for his crimes, but I just really admire him! I mean- his contributions to Soul Society!”

Lyn shushed him with a finger over her grinning lips. “I think he’s pretty cool, too. Your secret’s safe with me.”

Ryunosuke held the book to his chest, green eyes downcast. “I know I’ll never be able to come close, though.”

“Maybe you won’t be the next Urahara-san, but you don’t need to be. Just play to your strengths.” Lyn stacked a couple of bakudo books into Ryunosuke’s arms. “And you’ve got lots of strengths you don’t give yourself enough credit for, Ryunosuke-san. Your hoho technique is really good, your control in bakudo is getting better by the day. You’re also a lot smarter than you think – it’s just the exam settings that stress you out and make you fumble sometimes. And won’t that make you a pretty decent tactician and slippery trap setter for hollows in a few years?”

Or against Quincy.

Ryunosuke's smile wavered at the new books in his arms. “Thanks, Lyn-san, but I’m no good at kido.”

Lyn placed a hand on his shoulder, face stoic. “Ryunosuke-san, have you ever made your Geki backfire so badly you paralysed yourself?”

“No? I mean, I also haven’t tried to use Geki yet-”

Lyn’s eyes were unfocused, looking far beyond the walls of the library. “I did it to myself seven times yesterday. And you remember when I used to faint, casting Sai. I mean, I still do that when I’m really tired and unfocused-” Lyn mumbled the last part under her breath. “But my point is that, well, I’ve seen you reading through bakudo manuals a few times, but you always put them down in the end. You’re clearly really interested in it, so why not give it a try?”

“I’m afraid I’ll mess up.” Rynosuke’s eyes remained downcast.

‘So am I.’ Too many times had Lyn escaped injury by the skin of her teeth. Just a little slower, just a little weaker, just a little less prepared, and it could have all been over by now. ‘Shino’s… right. I don’t want to rely on my friends. And I don’t want this stupid world to rely on them either. But…’

To survive without hesitation, Lyn should leave her friends to stagnate, to slip into their predestined roles and take the same skills and lack thereof into the future with them. It would make the future easier to predict – especially when she didn’t know how volatile that future was to change yet.

Hanataro’s blood-streaked face came to mind again. ‘Right… But how the hell am I meant to survive without hesitation if I’ll be too busy regretting not doing more for my friends?’

“I paralysed myself seven times. In a row. You literally can’t be worse than I am at it. Just give it a shot. I can’t probably help much, but we both know Hanataro-san would love to.”

“…Maybe I’ll give Hainawa a try during training tonight?”

▯▯▯▮

Lyn and Hanataro held bated breaths. The sounds of battle surrounded them throughout the forest and the convincing cries of fake hollows.

Sweat dripped down Hanataro’s brow. ‘The tendons, muscles, and the arrangement of bones in the wrist make it one of the most complex joints to repair. But I know I can heal this break correctly. I know I can do it!’

Lyn's jaw was clenched tightly as she hissed in pain. ‘Alright, time to put Akon’s theory to the test. The exterior layer of my soul should be normal enough that healers won’t notice anything unless I’m really low on reishi!’ Lyn groaned in pain. ‘Also, a broken wrist HURTS!’

The next thing Lyn knew, Hanataro was wiping the sweat from his brow. “Done! Let’s go back to supporting Shino-san and Ryunosuke-kun with the dummy hollows.”

“Thanks, Hanataro-san!” Lyn grinned, clapped her hand into Hanataro’s, and swept him into a princess carry, an arm under his knees and back.

“L-Lyn-san, what are you doing?!”

“We’ll catch up to the others faster this way!” Lyn sped off with a screaming Hanataro in her arms as she dropped off a short cliff to follow the sounds of battle.

But by the time they caught up, Shino was already standing triumphantly over the sparking scraps of the dummy hollow.

Shino sheathed her blade but kept her hand on her hilt and her eyes on the surrounding forest. “Heh, too easy.”

Meanwhile, Ryunosuke was a panting mess on the ground. “Only because,” He panted. “I was distracting it. And-” he gasped for breath. “I held it back with Hainawa. It worked this time!”

“Lyn-san… you can put me down now.”

Shino placed a hand on her hip, her shiny forehead catching the moonlight. “Four dummy hollows. It’s pretty good for our second try at this, isn’t it?”

Ryunosuke, exhausted, blearily looked up at Shino from the ground. “Shiny…”

“What the hell did you just say?!”

▯▯▯▮

A unit of the 9^th Division Shinigami, along with their Lieutenant, had been overseeing the drill this year.

Shuhei watched from above, standing in the sky. Chiba’s group fled from a group of three dummy hollows that burst from the tree line, sending them scampering away. ‘Chiba and her team are a bit cowardly, but at least they know their limits and when to retreat.’ Shuhei sighed and repeated to himself as reassurance, ‘Chiba knows her limits.’

No one died during this Human World training exercise. There wasn’t unnatural hollow activity that Shuhei and his squad members had to keep out of the exam perimeter this time, just a normal amount that the academy sensei could have handled on their own.

“Lieutenant Hisagi, that’s the last of the hollows,” the fourth-seat reported.

Shuhei frowned. “Do we know what attracted so many hollows up into the mountains last year?”

“No, sir. But the 12^th said that they’re still looking into it.”

Shuhei kissed the back of his teeth quietly.

▯▯▯▮

That year’s Recruitment Fair, Lyn successfully stayed far from the tournament and away from any unnecessary attention. Only a few officers below 10^th seat ever came to observe the kido demonstrations, and there wasn’t anyone Lyn had to keep an eye out for. She actually got to enjoy some of the less serious events with her friends and cheer for Shino in the stands without dreading her own match.

Lyn just had to keep her head down and her eyes off the seated officer’s stands. Which was actually really hard. She didn’t feel eyes on her – not that she had good instincts for when she was being observed – and hoped she’d become a blip in the long, long lives of the characters above.

After all, her paranoia over the past year had yielded… nothing.

She hadn’t run into Aizen again.

Shuhei didn’t seem to be insisting on poking around her business.

Ukitake had quietly left her alone after that first and last gift basket.

Whether such long-lived creatures as Shinigami had lost their sense of urgency over the centuries – or if Lyn wasn’t so strange in comparison to whatever miracles and horrors they had seen over the years – she wasn’t going to question it.

▯▯▯▮

The false sense of security Lyn had slipped into twisted and warped back into paranoia during the middle of her third year. Lyn’s arms trembled, the blades in either of her hands wavered and deflected her own flickering reflection.

‘I’ve plateaued already.’ Lyn cursed aloud between her gasps for air and sheathed her tanto and wakizashi. She ran her hands through her sweat-slicked hair.

She paced. ‘The academy doesn’t have any books detailing dual blade techniques, and I had to burn the ones Akon brought from the human world for me after Shino almost found them. They were for katana and wakizashi pairings anyway – they’re not designed for the short reach I have! Tantos are more for utility and self-defence too. This wakizashi and tanto pairing is so impractical.’

Lyn chewed on her inner cheek. ‘Maybe they’re just not designed to be used together like the other dual wielders are? But they’re parts of my soul, and wouldn’t it make the most sense to bring out the most of my potential if I’m using all of myself to fight at once? Or maybe… my spirits really aren’t meant for fighting at all? There are other ways to defend myself, like hiding in the office.’

She placed her sheathed swords on her lap and felt the rush of water around her legs.

The endless lake and her spirits greeted her.

Lyn crossed her legs and leaned back on her hands to look up at them. “Do you two seriously not have any more advice on how I’m meant to improve my fighting technique? And am I even meant to use you two at the same time?”

The little one stomped and splashed over to her with a grin. “Just do what you want!”

The tall floated above. “Do what you have to.”

“Do you both have to be so vague and evasive?”

The little one kicked up water at Lyn’s face and stuck his tongue out while she spluttered. “We get it from you!”

▯▯▯▮

During Lyn’s third year, she pestered Akon. “C’mon, we just slip away to the Human World for a little bit. I’m stuck in Discount Afterlife Japan, but I’ve never been to real Japan before! You’re a professional creeper, no one will even know we’re gone.” Lyn kicked her legs from where she was lying on her stomach on the grass, head propped in her hands. She blinked aggressively up at him, a caricature of an attempt to be cute. She looked more like she had something in her eye.

Without looking up, Akon flipped through the paperwork Lyn had helped him reorganise minutes earlier. “That’s extremely illegal.”

Lyn's legs flopped back down, whimsy killed. “Are we pretending the 12^th cares about legalities now?”

Akon scoffed and took out a cigarette from his back pocket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about; everything we do is within Central 46’s laws.”

Lyn lifted her head from her hands to start listing off on her fingers: “Stalking; harassment; drugging unsuspecting, cute girls with pain killers in their reishi pills-”

Akon’s brow muscle twitched, biting down harder on his cigarette. “I told you I added painkillers.”

“-air pollution, illegally bringing back the dinosaurs – that should be some sort of ecological crime.” Lyn had made Akon painfully familiar with what a triceratops was and the Human movie called Jurassic Park.

“By the way, you’re lying on an ant’s nest.”

“Ack?!”

▯▯▯▮

From their fourth year onward, Hanataro was around less often for their extra training and studying together, being whisked away to the 4^th Division more and more often. Hanataro was accelerating quickly in the field of kaido, and by their sixth year had caught the attention of Lieutenant Kotetsu.

“Lieutenant Kotetsu has me shadowing her now, and afterwards her feedback on my observations and tasks she assigns me is always super helpful,” Hanataro chatted excitedly about his experience.

Hanataro still had bags under his eyes from the late nights studying, training and being pulled between classes and his internship, but he somehow seemed more energetic. He had started wearing his hair up, the front of his bangs tied onto the top of his head like a little sprout; it showed off his face more clearly and made it easier to see while he was doing treatments.

“That’s great, Hanataro-kun!” Ryunosuke clapped, but his smile twisted in a touch of concern. “Just make sure they don’t, uh, overwork you to death. We haven’t even graduated yet…”

By their sixth year, Ryunosuke had finally been moved up into the second kido class with Hanataro’s help, now having a lot more confidence in defensive and trapping spells. It didn’t make him any less cowardly, but more prone to act in his panic than purely flee.

“Right. And if they do, just let us know and we’ll make sure they regret it!” Shino exclaimed, almost snarling. She’d almost stormed out to the 4^th Division once before, but the three of them had managed to pile on her and convince her to stop. “Even once we’re in different divisions, it doesn’t mean we can’t come and kick some sense into them!”

And Shino was confident she could thrash some 4^th Division punks if she needed to. She hadn’t gotten into the top level of Zanjutsu classes for slacking off.

“Shino-san.” Ryunosuke reached out a hesitant, placating hand that hovered over her shoulder, scared to make full contact. “You can’t be kicking sense into anyone; we’ll end up in even more trouble.”

“But Captain Unohana would totally let us challenge her division members to a spar if they ever stepped over the line,” Shino said with confidence.

Lyn was baffled. “Has she done that before?”

“But she’s so caring!” Hanataro countered, blue eyes wide in disbelief.

Shino shook her head. “According to Ikkaku-nii, she’s terrifying. I was ranting about wanting to knock some of their heads together, and he said I could just request a spar or not get caught.”

Lyn, Hanataro, and Ryunosuke level Shino with a range of uncomfortable to downright terrified looks.

“…I’m- I’m not sure if Ikkaku-san has the soundest advice,” Ryunosuke piped up.

“Ha. Ha.” Lyn laughed stiffly, clapping her hands together lightly to get their attention. “Onto a less violent topic… Well, I can’t think of one! Shino-san, can you think of one for me?”

Shino smacked Lyn over the back of the head lightly. “Idiot! Don’t change the topic suddenly if you don’t even have one!”

Shino treated Lyn less like glass these days, reassured by Lyn’s more stable health. Lyn still bruised more easily than others, but they healed up much quicker. She was still bandaged up across most of her visible skin, but it was more to hide her old scars, and rarely did they see them bleeding through in crimson patches anymore. And eventually, Lyn had moved out of all the fourth-level combat classes but still failed to move into the second beyond hoho.

It didn’t mean there weren’t still other things about Lyn eating at Shino. Like the sneaking about that had never stopped, that trailing smoke like a bad omen, how they still knew barely a thing about Lyn before her academy days.

Spirits were patient, perhaps even slow to act.

But they were not forgetful.

▯▯▯▮

Lyn flinched at nothing, slamming her back into the wall behind her.

Summer cicadas chirped noisily, and the muffled sound of chatter came from the other side of the wall.

The streets just beyond the academy were empty this time of day, the path safe and familiar, the sky above a brilliant blue.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Lyn shook her head with a sigh and speedwalked back into the academy grounds. Clumsy trips downstairs and unlucky falling pots and boulders had steadily been replaced over time. Instead, phantom nails dragged against her skin, along her carotid or pressing into her tear duct with the false pressure of a cold digit, tracing around the delicate flesh of her eye.

Nails trailed straight down the centre of her skull tenderly, tauntingly.

Shino teased that Lyn was finally getting less clumsy.

Lyn joked back that the ghost haunting her had changed tactics.

Six monotonous years at the academy were passing in a blur from the busy routine, souls content to stick to them without diverting for long periods of time. It made Lyn feel like she was wading through water but somehow ending up at the end of the river in only a few blinks, unable to be sure if time was moving fast or agonisingly slow. Her human and soul perceptions of time clashed.

Maybe one of these days, Lyn would ask Akon about getting a psych-evaluation before she was dragged off to one.

▯▯▯▮

Aizen smiled, humming to himself. He walked the open breezeway between the upper levels of the 5^th Division buildings, giving him a perfect view of the path between the 5^th Division grounds and the Academy grounds right by it, especially its outer wall.

Chiba disappeared back behind the academy boundary.

‘Still alive,’ Aizen mused, a breeze gently pulling at the brown hair falling in front of his glasses. ‘And scared of her own shadow.’

He hadn’t bothered to test the soul, not when chance seemed to be doing a fine job of it already with that Human World mess, and he wasn’t sure Akon’s investment was one worth stealing yet. ‘Regardless, I think all it needs is one more nudge to end up somewhere nice and convenient for further observation.’

▯▯▯▮

The sun was hot and bright, shining off the lake along with the reflection of the students and hollows fighting above. Lyn’s team had been driven out of the woods and over the water, starting with Lyn being thrown out of the treelined and straight into the lake with flailing limbs and a violent splash that sent fish scattering as she skipped like a stone.

“RAAAAH!!!”

Lyn rolled to her feet, feet skidding but holding solidly on the surface of the water with reishi, water flinging from her clothes and whipping hair at her jolting stop.

Their final Hollow Subjugation Field Test.

And this time, it was with real Hollows.

“This is fine, totally fine,” Lyn hyped herself up, smile wavering.

“Hado 4, Hainawa!” Electrified, golden rope crackled from Ryunosuke’s hands, wrapping around the hollow.

The tall, lumbering thing’s legs were bound together under the surface, flesh of its legs sizzling and bubbling. The five-metre-tall hollow tipped forward abruptly, Shino slamming into its back from behind. Her entire upper body twisted like a whip, arms following through to cut through the hollow’s neck, slamming its face down into the water, but her blade screeched to a sparkling halt an inch against its unusually thick skin.

“Lyn, now!” Shino jumped back, ripping her blade from the hollow as it screeched, flailing its arms, flinging arcs of water that stung when they hit.

Lyn went against her instincts and dashed forward into the opening, “Hado 11, Tsuzuri Raiden!”

Electricity surged through Lyn’s wakizashi, feet lifting from the ground to reduce contact with the water and stabbed the hollow through the eye hole in its mask. The electricity surged, combining with the current from Ryunosuke’s sturdy Hainawa coiled around the hollow’s legs, and the water boiled.

The hollow’s skull popped, disintegrating into nothing. The surge of bakudo and hado broke instantly like a tripped circuit.

Lyn shook out her hands with twitching fingers with a hiss, “N-Nice job, guys…”

Ryunosuke’s shoulders slumped in relief. “That was the last one in our zone, right?”

Shino nodded, wiping the sweat from her brow. She might have been able to decapitate that weaker hollow usually, but the earlier two hollow fights had gotten to her – she’d been leading the offensive after all. “Right, we just need to grab Hanataro-kun and report back to our sensei.”

Lyn wheeled around, frantically searching. “You were with him last, Ryunosuke-san. Where-”

Ryunosuke started jogging back the way they came, over the lake towards the forest. “He healed Shino’s shoulder and your knee earlier; he must just be tired and lagging behind.”

Lyn let out a sigh, matching Ryunosuke’s pace on his right, while Shino was on his left. “Right, probably.”

“Yeah, I sense him over there, and the Soul Pager isn’t picking up anymore hollows either,” Shino added reassuringly.

The 9^th Division hadn’t even needed to accompany the Academy to the Human World this time, the irregular hollow activity returning to normal after their second year.

And that meant they were alone.

The peaceful chirp of birds resumed, sounding more like a death rattle to Lyn.

Hanataro found them first, blood dribbling down the side of his face, out of his split lips. “G-Guys?” It’s a weak, broken sound – a gasp of pain.

He was hanging in the jaws of a quadrupedal hollow that stalked out of the tree line, hollow mask long and alligator-like. Hanataro’s leg dangled from its mouth on his impaled back, a long tooth through the meat of his thigh, dangling tauntingly just out of their reach. Another tooth was through one of Hanataro’s lungs, his head lolling back as he coughed up another mouthful of crimson.

‘Hanataro can’t die here? Hanataro can’t die here?’ echoed like a distorted mantra in Lyn’s head. ‘Hanataro has important things he needs to do. He can’t die here like this.’

But it’s such a beautiful day to die.

▮▮▮▮

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Name | Kanji | (Meaning) — Details

Kireishi | 壊霊子 | (Broken Spirit Particles) – the new term Akon decided to use to describe Lyn’s reishi, as for him to replicate some of it, he basically had to try and damage and break reishi at the particle level.

• 壊 (kai / kowasu / ki) = “broken,” “destroyed,” “ruined.” +
• 霊子 (reishi)

Does this actually make any sense at all? Hahaha. I who gives a FUC-

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Hey everyone! Sorry for the wait (≧∇≦)ﾉ I’ve been super busy and with lots of writer’s block! Haha, at least I got a couple of chapters out in rapid succession before that .｡.:*☆ Anyways, I hope it was a fun read! Gonna be revealing a couple things you guys have been looking forward to next chappy or two! What will it be? Haha. Who knows. Me. Probably. Weeee-

As always, thanks so much for reading! Feel free to leave any questions, comments, or opinions down below! .:*☆

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