Laying in bed at the end of the day had become my reprieve from the world around me, ever shifting and evolving past my imagining.

Before, my bed was a trap, a sweet one that tricked me into its warm embrace and silent whispers of depression, but now it was a comfortable moment of safety before sleep took me.

But tonight, sleep didn’t want to come, no matter how long I held my eyes closed for or thought about mundane topics. My brain never truly found the right lull to settle into.

For the first hour or two it wasn’t half bad. Suzumi seems to have quietly decided that, since we were slowly making our way towards a relationship, that our futons should be conjoined. A larger set of sheets had been acquired and spread over the two sleeping mats.

It was pleasant, being so close to one another. Luckily both Suzumi and I slept like rocks and barely moved during our sleep, which sure wasn’t true for everybody.

I spent most of those couple of hours contemplating my relationship with her, as strange and sudden as it was. I haven’t heard of any other relationships that seemed to come out of nowhere like this, becoming increasingly important over only a matter of days. Granted, it wasn’t as if I or many of my friends back home had a hell of a lot of experience, and a lot of that experience was high school relationships which, well…

After those hours it just became obvious that I wasn’t getting to sleep any time soon. I untangled myself from the sheets and gently left the bed, Suzumi’s sleep going unperturbed. I made my way out of our room and through the corridors, all the way down the hundreds of steps into the ‘study room’ as it was so lovingly called.

The air was mostly stagnant down here, but it was a pleasantly cool place to be, during the night anyways. Over the past week I had worked hard in this room, and now it was beginning to feel like a place of productivity.

Idly I started to wreath my fist in spiritual energy, letting it add it’s strange heaviness to my hand. I had no idea how it worked, but it seemed like internally infusing spiritual energy increased physical strength and wrapping yourself in it made you heavier? More durable?

I couldn’t possibly understand it fully, I only got to use it once before Uyu’s dad showed up with that Hollow.

“Hollows, huh?” I mused to myself.

They were weird things, all parts of the equation were weird, really. Human souls or ‘Plusses’ are usually sent to the afterlife, but if they stick around, they become Hollows who eat other Hollows and Plusses. But sometimes human souls become Soul Reapers, sort of?

It didn’t sound like there were that many of them, to be honest. Kisuke and Tessai also keep talking about decades passing like I would talk about a year, so I’m not sure if I’d be surprised to learn that they were a few centuries old, or something close to that.

Honestly, I think I understate how bewildering it is to learn all of this stuff at once, Soul Society, Hueco Mundo–the Hollow’s realm–and actual Hell? What’s next? Are there other spiritual beings out there, other than Hollows and Soul Reapers, that will once again change how I think about the world?

I let a big sigh out as I sat down on the rocky ground after clearing myself a spot, laying my back down and looking up towards the roof, which was totally obscured from my vision. Though I could imagine the juxtaposition of the darkness of night and the painted clouds and blue sky.

While I was laying there, slowly wrapping and unwrapping my fist with spiritual energy, I felt a gentle displacement of air, significantly quieter than the normal movement that Tessai and Urahara typically use.

“Can’t sleep?” Urahara’s voice rang out in the darkness. I just gave a short nod to the man, continuing my silence. I heard the man’s cane clack against the rock underfoot, then slowly lowering himself to sit next to me.

We sat in silence, for no reason in particular. There was a surprising lack of tension in the air, despite how we’d butt heads quite a few times. The man was an oddity, and I could never be entirely sure what angle he was approaching something from. Which made him almost entirely unpredictable to me. He seemed unpredictable to even Tessai himself, which basically made him a massive wildcard, as far as I was concerned.

“Y’know. We once knew a boy like you.” He said casually, but I could tell that somewhere in his voice there was a heaviness you didn’t find in casual conversation. I nodded.

“Kurosaki, right? You guys mention him every now and then.” Kisuke nodded slowly.

“Ichigo Kurosaki is his name.” Tapping my fingers on the rock floor beside me, I felt the stone give way underneath my cloaked fingers relatively easily.

“Who is he?” I asked quietly, almost afraid to break the truce we had silently formed. Kisuke chuckled.

“A handful is what he was. And possibly one of, if not the strongest beings in existence. In various ways.” I scrunched up my nose at that.

“Really? Was he always that way?”

“In some ways, yes. In others, he was as weak as could be. Even now you would have been competitive with him, if he had learnt normally that is.” I heard the scratching of the stubble that was ever present on the man’s chin.

“What did he do that was different than me?” I asked, curious. To become someone powerful enough that you could easily say that he was one of the strongest was… enticing. Kisuke just laughed.

“Everything. For one, he never did any basic training. In fact, as soon as he was granted any abilities at all, he was off galivanting around and killing Hollows. Though that didn’t last long.” I felt myself physically recoil. No training at all? Was he just immediately good at everything? A genius?

“I can already tell that you are thinking about him the wrong way. Ichigo Kurosaki is an exceptionally gifted person, true. But for him to become as he is now?” The blonde headed man went silent, thinking for a long moment.

“I did many things that I’m not proud of to launch that boy to that position. For him to become the way he is… cost a lot. He was an insect, thrown into a pot with others, left with no alternative. When the lid was removed, he was the only one remaining. The pinnacle.”

“But at what cost?” I mused, amusement at the cliched line not lost on the man, who chuckled darkly.

“At the cost of all autonomy until that last moment when he was finally free.” The man paused to sigh heavily, “He was a pawn to the powerful, a piece on a chessboard that they utilized to play a cosmically unknowable match with, until the pawn became a queen and chose it’s own colour.”

“So, you think I am the same?” I said, cutting to the chase, though Kisuke didn’t answer immediately.

“I’m not sure. You have unknown powers and unknown origins. It’s bad starting point. But I don’t think you are controlled as he was. The fact that I know nothing of you, and that all the intelligence that I was able to get on your also comes up clean just means there is something else going on entirely.”

“Then why the hostility?” I ask. I kept any heat out of my voice that I could. To his credit, he kept his cool just fine as well.

“I’d like to say that there is a highly reasonable explanation for it, past the obvious, but really there isn’t. A fear of fate, you could call it.”

“Fate? Is fate a real thing?” I asked him, but I was met with a wry laugh.

“It’s just as mystical a concept to mortals as it is to Soul Reapers. I’d sure hope that fate didn’t exist, but Ichigo Kurosaki was hundreds, if not a thousands of years of build-up in the making. For it all to come together; I have no explanation other than pure luck.”

“Both of those options being unappealing.” I added

“Extremely.”

The silence regained its grip on the two of us. Slowly but surely, I was starting to understand the man more, in a general sense. His personality was more alien to me than anyone I’d ever met, so I could very well just be reading him wrong, but I think I had the outline of it.

He wanted to protect. For what reason past his own self-preservation, I couldn’t say. Though he was willing to go so far as to kill a possible threat, regardless of whose side they were on, or if they had a side at all.

But in a way, he seemed like a scared child. Gifted with clear intellect and cunning, enough to create a high sensitivity thing that was able to use to detect my soul from over an ocean or two away. But stuck fighting against the world, against endless possibilities.

I was glad I didn’t have to live inside the man’s brain.

“Well.” I said casually, “Now that we have contemplated the scary stuff. Have you got any pointers on spiritual pressure and spiritual energy? I want to use spiritual sense.”

“Ooh, spiritual senses, hmm?” The man stood from his spot and tapped his cane against the floor in thought. “Spiritual sense is still a little out of your wheelhouse, but you’re doing a pretty good job at covering your body in spiritual energy. You learn that a year or two into the academy”

“The academy?” I asked, confused.

“Of course. Soul Reapers have to learn about being Soul Reapers somewhere.” Urahara scoffed but returned to thinking. “What you have been doing so far is a good way of using spiritual energy, further adding to your combat abilities and even adding a bit of durability, though your shield is soaking up most of what you’re being given. For now, continue what you’ve been doing and try to get your entire body covered, then compress that and add another layer. Soon enough you’ll be punching holes in buildings.” I rose an eyebrow, but the man was already walking away.

“Hey!” I called out, making Kisuke stop for a moment, “Thanks for the tip.” The man lifted his cane and waved it around dismissively before disappearing altogether, the displacement of air not even recognizable from this distance.

I contemplated going back to my room but decided against it. Making myself able to punch through buildings sounded a whole lot cooler.

After that, days passed in a blur of strenuous physical training at the hands of Tessai, Kisuke being helpful and properly teaching Suzumi and I spiritual energy manipulation, and Uyu coming to the shop after school to show us how terrifying a little kid with the ability to blast us to outer space could be.

The more that I learnt, fought and accessed my spiritual energy the more I realised just how much fun I was having. There was a constant array of problems being thrown at my brain from every which angle and I had to solve them the best I could.

Things started slowly, with just the running with Tessai and Urahara forcing us to use our spiritual energy under threat of his own spiritual pressure, but after that things only sped up. With the baseline things we had achieved, Suzumi and I were able to evolve our techniques into new avenues.

For one, Suzumi had almost completely decided to go fisticuffs all the way. She had modified her shielding to wrap around her arms more concretely, while she used her spiritual energy to focus more heavily on her hands, fingers and forearms. This made her a bit too glass cannon for my liking, but when I saw her fight…

Well, it was awe inspiring, to say the least. It was an all-out slugfest between Uyu and Suzumi, both of the women going at it with as close to no holds barred as you could get without there being a body to cremate after the match.

Suzumi was way better at ‘localizing’ spiritual energy covering than me. She was able to double coat her fingers and do a single coat of her hand. Though she did something that she called a half-coat on her arms, making them more durable, but forced her to focus more on pushing spiritual energy to that area.

I, however, specialised differently. I went with balance. As of now, I was capable of doing a single coat to around sixty percent of my body, which is both arms, most of my upper body and legs and, obviously, my head. Though this left my midsection and a lot of my back vulnerable.

My fights with Uyu, or even Suzumi now that Tessai considered us capable of not accidentally killing each other, went a lot different to Suzumi fights. I played a game of endless cat and mouse, playing on the defensive and lashing out when the time was right, playing the weaknesses of the other fighter.

It didn’t always win, far from it. But when I did win, I won almost absolutely. Typically, I crushed the two girls by stealing their ribbon and then smacking them around to stop them from regaining their composure again.

“Well, you’ve all been fighting so impressively recently, I think it’s getting to the point where It’s ridiculous to expect you to fight each other any longer.” Kisuke called from across the manufactured stony hills, causing all of us to turn towards the man.

“We’ve been training you for almost a month now, and while most recommendations would have you waiting for another year or so, I see no point in following the archaic rules of the Soul Society.” He turned away from us, and I could feel a wide grin plastering itself onto the man’s face.

“Come on ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to hunt a Hollow!”