“Kisuke…” I called into the dark void around me, eyes wildly scanning my surroundings in a panic, “what the hell did you get me into.” I muttered, my voice losing itself against the sheer magnitude of space.

There was total silence around me, the ear destroying noises that had led me into this realm were completely gone now. The silence was reassuring and even relieving for a while, that was until I could begin to hear my own heartbeat in my chest and the blood rushing around my body.

This was an odd place, somewhere between reality and the journey I had into my soul. While I had been inside my own soul, things worked in half measures, more akin to a dream than anything real or substantial. For example, my brain hadn’t quite realised that I could see in my own soul, my eyes capable of seeing the horizon of in the distance. Stuff as simple as what clothes I was wearing were only filled in with details after my brain had focused in on them, rather than them existing beforehand.

So this was a strange medium, where I could still feel my training clothes, soft by stiff, rubbing against my skin as I moved slightly, but where the surroundings were so clearly fantastical.

“What do I even do here?” I asked to the void, and surprisingly an answer came back.

“I don’t know, you tell me.” I whipped my head around to see a golden orb the size of a basketball, resting only five metres from me. I did a double take before it finally sunk into my skull what was going on.

“Grayhom? Why’re you here?” I asked dumbly, prompting a scoff out of the other identity.

“Well, I was pulled here just the same as you. Heard a terrible racket just outside the bright waters and I thought I’d go take a look and bam.” If the orb had arms, I’m sure he’d be gesticulating with them wildly.

“Ah, sorry about that, Kisuke put me in a machine for training. Good to see you though.” Grayhom was about to respond, taking in a superfluous breath, but was interrupted with a thundering voice.

“Testing, testing; one, two, three!” The noise echoed within the void, vibrating my body with the sound as it did. Both Grayhom and I groaned at the same time, somehow sharing the frustration of dealing with Urahara Kisuke.

“Too loud, numbskull!” I called into the void, letting it sit for a moment.

“No need to shout.” A voice called from what only felt like a few metres away. I spun around in all directions, trying to find the source but coming to the realisation that it was coming from everywhere.

“Well, that’s creepy. I can’t say that I enjoy being a disembodied voice in my head. I might need to get that checked out.” I said dryly, earning a snort from my other identity. After a small delay, Kisuke made a scandalised sound but didn’t do much else, the faint sound of fingers clacking on a keyboard could be heard in the silence.

“So, mind actually explaining what’s going on right now?” Grayhom asked out into the void, then I joined him while we looked out into the void, waiting for the answer.

“Well, your simple minds wouldn’t understa–”

“Skip!” I yelled, cutting the man off after a word or two more, Grayhom chuckled loudly to my right.

“Why I never!” Urahara exclaimed, but sighed after a moment, “Fine. I’ve basically forced your mind to go into a state of meditation, much like the bigger and bulkier machines that Soul Society use to help others get in touch with their Zanpakutō. Instead of helping the Zanpakutō’s spirit materialise, I just made your brain open a link and do the heavy lifting for you. I’m glad it worked the first time.”

I had listened to that whole explanation with a reasonable amount of interest, but as soon as the last phrase was spoken, both Grayhom and I spoke at once.

“The first time?” Both of our voices chimed in unison, and Kisuke’s voice paused for a second.

“That’s really creepy that you’re basically the same person, y’know? I could probably help you get rid of–” I cut him off, a little anger reaching my voice now.

“Kisuke. What the fuck.”

“God, calm down a little, would you? You’re the only test subject I had, and plus, Tessai and I can talk to our Zanpakutō’s whenever we want! It’s not as if the likelihood of permanent brain injury is all that high.” Grayhom and I simultaneously sighed, apparently sharing the same set of responses when it comes to Kisuke.

“Anyway, what did you want out of me doing this, anyway?” I asked, but Grayhom tacked on his own thoughts.

“Like, I appreciate being able to interact with Grayson and all but ending up as a soul in a braindead body isn’t high on the to-do list.”

“Well,” Kisuke began, his voice a little more serious now, “all of this is really an exercise in seeing if the same principles that apply to us also apply to you. Also, this device would be considered a massive breakthrough in the field. I’m not sure that even Mayuri has come close to perfecting this sort of technology, and I’ve minimised the size of the machine from a large building down to a small sphere.”

“You’re intending on giving this tech up to the Soul Reapers?” I asked, but immediately received my answer.

“No, I’m not. For the moment I’m only using this on people that have super advanced Gigai or real bodies lying around somewhere. The technology that is required to affect someone’s spiritual body is slightly different, but I should be able to figure it out. Being able to force this great of a connection could potentially mean that you can brute force someone’s training post-Bankai.” I scrunched my eyebrows up, but Grayhom got to the question faster.

“So, you don’t think that the regular Soul Reaper could find much use out of this?” The confusion was evident. We both knew so little about the actual training processes for Soul Reapers, making it hard to actually put it into perspective.

“No. Most regular Soul Reapers have very underdeveloped Zanpakutō spirits. While those spirits are technically fully formed, they are more like a wire mesh that consists of the form that they take should the soul that they are bonded with actually gain that level of strength. It’s what makes hopping from Shikai to Bankai so impressive, because it just means that the power was already there, in some fashion.”

“If you forcibly dragged out the Zanpakutō spirit from their Inner World, it’d be a mess?” I asked finally.

“Sort of. The Soul Reaper needs to find the power themselves sometimes, especially when it comes to finding the spirit’s name. Every time someone thinks they’ve found a subversion to that rule, things go horribly wrong. Either way, it’s more useful for those who’ve already achieved Bankai and are searching for further power beyond that, which some Zanpakutō’s are known to have.”

That left Grayhom and I in a thoughtful state. It was a weird thing, to be sitting not five metres from a version of yourself, both likely thinking remarkably similar, if not the same thoughts. Grayhom broke the silence first, voice quiet with a pondering tone.

“What do we do now?” But Kisuke was silent. The silence dragged on for what felt like seconds and minutes at the same time, and it became obvious that we weren’t going to receive an answer. I nodded my head, understanding the message that Kisuke had decided to send.

“Let’s go walking then, I guess.” I said, before stretching my leg out and walking gracefully through the void with Grayhom floating beside me, trailing me by only a little bit. It was a calming experience, despite its surreal nature, and the astonishing multitude of stars within the void intrigued the mind easily.

I couldn’t tell what they were, really, though they had many different colours and sizes, the brightness being somewhat variable even then.

“What do you think they are?” I asked my other identity, and he took a long time to answer.

“I can’t be sure, but I think they are parts of us.” I rose an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue, “I think we’re in the dark waters of our soul, far enough out of the bright waters for both of us to be comfortable with being here. It’s the middle ground of our soul.” Realisation washed over me subtly.

“And if our soul wasn’t so bloated, we’d probably be sitting in a dead space, or be forced into the Inner World that all the Soul Reapers talk about.” For whatever reason, the abstract soul stuff was pretty easy to understand on an instinctual level, maybe partly because of Grayhom’s influence. Like I probably am for him when it comes to Kisuke or outside world things.

“Should we… try to do something with them?” I asked, but received the closest thing to a shrug as the glowing ball could mimic.

“I don’t know if we even can. Plus, we need the compression from you using the blackhole technique, remember?” I hummed thoughtfully. I hadn’t used the technique much since I’d first compressed my soul, but it’d probably be understandable if I gave it another shot. Or I’d be rudely awoken to Kisuke stabbing me.

“Gimmie a sec.” I said while quickly sitting in space, my upper body staying still while my legs folded underneath me, and I focused my mind. It didn’t take long for me to fall back into the mind space of the blackhole technique, having ownership over everything actually was quite an easy mentality to encourage, though I knew I had to be careful with it.

In only a few moments, I could feel the spiritual energy being drawn towards myself, quickly sucking the immediate area around me completely dry. Thankfully, I was already ninety percent full with spiritual energy, even after the big fight a day ago, so it didn’t take long for the pressure to start rising.

At first, nothing seemed to be happening within this space, even though I was definitely pushing more and more spiritual energy into my relatively large reserves. I was almost ready to call it quits when Grayhom called something I didn’t quite comprehend in my meditation.

“Holy damn, that’s a sight.” He said, forcing me to open one eye to take a peek. Right before my eyes, every light within the void was shifting, and fast. They moved closer and closer to each other before sparks began to fly between the sources of light.

“Stop, Grayson.” Grayhom said, as he saw the stars begin to arc spiritual energy between them as they drew closer and closer. “Grayson! Stop!”

With a jolt, I forced myself out of the blackhole technique, and letting some of the spiritual energy leak out of my body. The motes of light in the void of my soul slowly separated again, the reactions between them lessening until they finally quieted, sitting across from each other without the fanfare.

“What was that man?” I asked, but Grayhom just made a squeaking noise.

“Whatever it was, you were too good at the whole compression thing. Why is it so much more powerful while you’re in here?” He questioned, but just as he did, the answer hit us mutually.

“Because we’re both here.” We said in unison, voices being almost exactly the same other than a def definitive tweaks.

“So, doing stuff with the soul is just easier because we’re both here?” Grayhom asked again, but I furrowed my brow with confusion.

“Why wasn’t it the same when I was down with you in the bright waters.” I asked, and Grayhom hummed with thought.

“Well, probably because we weren’t on equal footing. You were a visitor in my domain, just like how I’d probably be pretty useless if I somehow made it to the surface without us both dying.” We both pondered for a moment before I spoke up again, sly smile on my face.

“You know, it really is creepy that we both know each other’s questions and answers before we even say them.”

“I was just thinking the exact same thing.”

We chuckled heartily for a while at our own bad joke, but before long we were just left with the possibilities. With this sort of power over our own soul, we could get so much more done than the little bit of soul compression here and there. We could become substantially more powerful in a fraction of the time, and possibly even open up new doorways. The think was, that because I didn’t have a fully functional soul, I couldn’t tell what doorways were closed to me in the first place.

I turned to the golden basketball beside me, knowing that he was thinking almost exactly the same thing, and grinned.

“Looks like we have a whole lot of work to do.” I said eventually.

“Bah, you think pulling in all that spiritual energy is going to be work? Try putting together the infinitely complex Lego set that is a soul.” I snorted, rolling my eyes.

“Infinitely complex might be overselling it a little.” I had the distinct impression that Grayhom was lifting both eyebrows.

“Wanna bet, idiot?”