I had awoken from my unconsciousness feeling very confused, and very tired.

My body didn’t want to respond in the ways I wanted it to do, and as I tried to push myself up from the futon that I had been tucked into, I felt my arms wobble with the effort, my muscles complaining under my own weight.

“Grayson! You’re awake!” An excited voice sounded out in the quiet room.

“Suzumi?” I pushed myself upright quickly, ignoring the weakness of my muscles. “Are you okay? Were you hurt?” I reached out towards her ribbon, quickly coming in contact with the silky skin of her arm.

“I– I’m okay. Better than I thought I would be. I understand what you mean now, it was terrifying…” She trailed off, but quickly perked back up.

“Oh! By the way, Tessai came in earlier and told me that I was going to be trained with you?” I blanched at that.

“Wait, you want to be trained? If training was anything like before then it’s going to be terrible!” I said, worry overtaking my voice in an effort to convince Suzumi. There was a pause before she spoke again.

“I think it might need to happen regardless of if I want it or not, Grayson.” I opened my mouth to speak again, but her hands enclosed around mine. Her grip was steadfast, not too tight, but strong enough to let me know of her conviction on the matter.

“Why?” I asked dumbly. She just sighed.

“I don’t want to feel like you are out doing dangerous things while I lay at home in bed at night. I want to be able to help you, be able to be by your side when you need me to be. Just like you were…” I flashed back to when I raced forward, dragging Suzumi out of the way of Urahara’s wrath. I hadn’t been able to protect her from a candy shop owner, how was I going to be able to protect her from anything else.

Why was this connection to each other already dragging one another into dangerous situations? We hardly know each other, and yet this unknowable connection has silently bound us like steel cable, making it seem almost ludicrous that we move apart now.

I felt something soft and wet gently press against my cheek, and suddenly realised that Suzumi’s face was right next to mine. I almost recoiled, if the sensation wasn’t sending shivers down my spine. After a long moment, she pulled away.

“That’s for saving my butt back there.” I could hear the smile in her voice, maybe a bit of embarrassment too. I opened my mouth to respond but was cut off when a sliding door was opened quickly.

“Ah! Mister Carter and Miss Hamase, I must say, its excellent to see you both awake and seemingly doing fine. Mister Carter, are you experiencing any weakness?” Tessai walked through the door and knelt next to me.

“Uh, yeah I am. I’m feeling pretty tired overall.” I could head the cap of a bottle being twisted open, the neck ring snapping easily under Tessai’s powerful hands. He offered the small bottle to me, which I accepted with hesitancy.

“This concoction should taste slightly better than the other we had you drink, I assure you.” I nodded, still hesitant, but the man hadn’t so much as fibbed to me yet, so I put my trust in him and took a swig of the small bottle. The effect was immediate. I felt a little bit revitalised, my eyes not quite so dreary and stomach stopped revolting at the lack of rest. I quickly chugged down the rest of the bottle, the strawberry flavoured liquid slowly giving me my energy back.

“Wow, that stuff is great!” I said, wondering where this drink had been all my life. Certainly could have used it during high school.

“It is indeed. It is intended to service those with minimal spiritual energy of their own, replenishing it. However, drinking more than one a day will make someone violently ill, unfortunately.” I nodded, I guess there had to be a downside somewhere.

“Are you going to give Suzumi one?” I heard Suzumi begin to rise to stop me from hassling him, but Tessai spoke before she could.

“Unfortunately, at this moment, Miss Hamase has little to no spiritual energy to speak of. Humans naturally generate very little spiritual energy. However, her soul itself is unusually strong. Whether that is an effect of being close to yourself, or simply an inherited trait is not discernible at the moment.” I hummed in interest.

“You think I may have the ability to strengthen souls?” Tessai grunted.

“I believe that it is possible, given your ability to apparently steal spiritual energy from someone. The ability to alter souls, or grant people power in such ways, is not unheard of, but increasing the power of a soul is an incredibly complex process. It is, quite literally, easier to create a fake soul than it is to enhance an existing one,” The giant of a man seemed to think on his words for a few moment before concluding, “it is extremely complicated, and very few understand souls on the level needed to dramatically alter their abilities and power. I am most definitely not one of them, at least in that specific department.”

I couldn’t help but be a little confused by that explanation. If you could make a soul, couldn’t you enhance one that already exists? Maybe it was a bit like gene editing. Unknowably complex, but all theoretically possible to implement in humans, just with insane reparations if incorrect. I ended up simply shrugging. I wasn’t sure if I was doing anything to Suzumi in the first place and worrying about it was a total waste of time. If I could seize the ability to do it consciously it’d be a different story entirely.

“Well, alright. I don’t really know what to do with that information, but I hope it’ll come in handy?” Tessai laughed, a deep rumbling sound.

“You do that, Mister Carter. Knowledge is truly power in the world we all live in, even if it doesn’t seem so.” Tessai stood back up from his crouched position and I heard his footsteps receding towards the door.

“As you both seem physically able at this point in time, you will be trained by myself, and then Mister Urahara will train you personally for an hour.” We both stiffened and Tessai sighed.

“I understand that what Mister Urahara did was uncouth, on many levels, but there is no-one that I would trust more in finding out about your abilities and increasing your power overall. I urge you to put aside your doubts and listen to him despite his… more recent shortcomings.” Tessai walked out of the room without another word, leaving Suzumi and I sitting alone. I listened for a while, but it didn’t seem as if Suzumi was going to speak.

“Are you okay with this?” I asked, my voice strained with worry.

“I think so. I don’t like Urahara, and I’m not sure that I ever will. But that power…” She trailed off, but she didn’t need to say anymore.

Urahara was clearly extremely powerful, on another entire level in fact. I understood little about what Urahara and Tessai were and where they came from, but I can only imagine that there are far, far more than just Urahara at that level of strength. Tessai had even brought up a Kurosaki, someone who apparently even worried Urahara.

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” There was no more that needed to be said.

We both stood and walked towards the door, meeting Tessai outside.

“Good. Today we will be training in the Study Room.” I quirked my eyebrow.

“Study Room?” Tessai didn’t respond, and started walking towards the back of the shop, his steps quick and consistent. After a few moments of walking, we came to a door that opened and released a burst of warm air towards us, through my hair and skin. I could hear the air rushing through what I could only assume was a staircase.

“Watch your step, the steps are quite steep.” Tessai said, already moving efficiently down the steps. The day before I had run on an outside oval in a park nearby, this was entirely new to me. Suzumi grabbed my arm, linking it in hers and slowly we started to move forwards.

“Is it dark?” I asked. I felt her nod.

“There are torches, but this staircase goes on forever.” She said, nervousness apparent in her voice. I hummed in thought, the dark never really scaring me, obviously.

“We’ll be just fine, one step in front of another, Suzumi.” She took a deep breath in and we picked up pace. I was counting the steps the entire way, but there was a truly astronomical amount. This staircase was like the equivalent of climbing a hundred stories without the help of an escalator.

By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase, indicated by Suzumi, we were both puffing from the exertion, but I realised that there was a hell of a lot of light for an underground ‘study room’.

“Wow! All of this underground?” Suzumi’s voice was filled with genuine astonishment. I furrowed by brow, trying to squint enough to get an impression of what I was supposed to be looking at.

“What is it? Can’t see, remember.” I distinctly felt that she was blushing a little bit.

“Uh, right. It’s like a whole mini mountain range under here. Its huge, and the walls look like they’ve been painted to look like the sky. Its really impressive!” My eyes widened in second-hand amazement and I heard Tessai laugh heartily from in front of us, the warm air carrying his voice.

“I’m sure that Urahara would be quite chuffed with your praise. It took him years to make this area.” The mood soured a little at that, but I guess even shitty people can do amazing things.

“Either way, Mister Carter, Miss Hamase, this is the study room. In here, many of exceptional power have trained and found themselves great power to fight equally against foes of greater strength, and so I have decided that you will train here from now on.” Tessai stopped and thought for a moment before he continued.

“Training will take up all the time you are capable of giving. Your training will not keep you from loved ones in need, but to train with me and Urahara, nothing but your absolute best will be accepted, and this likely means that you will be unable to do outside work. You will be paid for this time, we have quite an amount of human currency that we do not use, and you will easily be able to subsist off of those funds.” I turned to Suzumi, wondering how she would react to that. She didn’t respond verbally, so I assume she nodded.

“Good. You will both be worked extremely hard. You will exercise physically with me, learning basic hand to hand combat as well as refining techniques that you learn with Urahara. Urahara will teach you new techniques that will be extremely difficult for you to put into practice. But once he manages to teach you something, then I will refine that so that he is able to teach you something new. I will not understate how incredibly important Urahara’s understanding of your abilities are. He knows much, and him sharing it with you is extremely generous.” Tessai’s voice was like iron, a commander in truth.

“We will start with basic cardio. Follow my lead.” And he began to run.

Both me and Suzumi quickly learned that Tessai could run fast. In fact, just keeping up with the man felt almost impossible, but just when you got the tiniest handle on the speed you were running at, the man cranked it up just a little more.

As you could imagine, trying to run over a rocky landscape was precarious and extremely anxiety inducing. Before long, me and Suzumi had worked out a system making it so that I could traverse the landscape while following the man’s red ribbon.

“How can you follow him so well!” Suzumi exclaimed, in between puffs, desperately trying to get enough air. I laughed as Suzumi called out a stone ahead, allowing me to avoid it.

“Remember when I told you about my neurodegenerative disorder?” I said, in between gasps for air myself.

“Yeah?”

“Well, that ribbon thing I talked about was apparently me seeing souls.” Suzumi called another hazard and I managed to only stumble without falling on that one.

“That sounds amazing! Can you see mine?” I turned towards her ribbon and smiled.

“From day one. I only see the important ones, even when I don’t want to see any.” I laughed when her ribbon coiled in embarrassment.

“Well, it seems that I am not working you two hard enough, given that you are still both capable of flirting!” Tessai’s booming voice called out, before he sped up once again. I think we both blushed at that.

We raced after Tessai, trying our best to keep up. It wasn’t long until I realised that I was actually performing quite well, no, really well. I was barely puffing anymore, able to keep up with the giant man as if he were jogging.

Suzumi was struggling, but she also seemed to be doing better.

“Ah, it seems that they have both started to utilise their spiritual energies.” A voice called out, cutting through all other sounds.

“Urahara.” I growled.