Suzumi had been spending increasingly long amounts of time being worried recently, which was hardly a surprise.

Grayson had been getting himself into all sorts of trouble as of late, the hellish cycle of training being only the start of her anxieties. He had gone from that insane training straight into a massive beatdown with a Hollow, one that Yuzu and Karin had help purify and had relayed that information back to her.

That Hollow had been powerful, far more powerful than she could have handled alone. She would have put up a good fight, but it would have killed her at some point. Grayson, however, had torn the thing to shreds while his body was being savaged at the same time.

Suzumi didn’t know if she had that in her, that same pure drive to fight that Grayson had seemingly found there, with that Hollow.

It was strange. The ways they had started to develop in the beginning had made her think that she’d be the one more competent in battle, more willing to beat something to a pulp as savagely as possible. Grayson had assumed a cat and mouse fighting style that had made her think that he’d always be defensive and patient.

But the way that Karin had described that Hollow’s body… that was far from defensive, and it left her in the dust.

“Miss Hamase.” The gentle but still thunderous voice of Tessai filled the room, reminding her of his presence. She sighed as she rubbed at her forehead, giving the man an apologetic smile as she looked at him over the coffee table that many a conversation had been held around.

“I’m sorry Tessai, I’m just a bit out of it today.” The stoic man pulled the glasses from his face, as he did occasionally, and pulled a small microfibre cloth from his pocket and cleaned the lenses efficiently.

“That is quite alright. I know how it feels to be separated from one you love and respect and worry for them.” He smiled sadly, the genuine expression breaking past his calm façade. Suzumi felt a question boil to the surface, one that she’d held and kept to herself for months at this point, but only now found the right time to ask it.

“You and Kisuke. Are you…?” She said, trailing off with the implication. Grayson had never asked, and he didn’t even seem to notice the possibility. She had never claimed her boyfriend to be anything but a little daft.

“Ah, we are not.” The large man said with a hint of amusement. Suzumi made to apologise, but he shook his head gently, “It’s quite alright. Many assume that we are partners, but we are simply men who have found our lives inextricably tied together. For better and for worse.”

“That sounds a lot like marriage, Tessai.” Suzumi said, allowing a little amusement to make its way onto her face with her ribbing of the man. Tessai grinned as well, a very uncommon expression on the man.

“I believe I could to a fair bit better than Kisuke.” Suzumi almost snorted up a sip of tea that she’d taken but managed to keep it down. “Regardless, he has found who he loves, even if they are hard pressed to show it.”

“Wait, Kisuke has a wife?” Tessai chuckled warmly.

“If only. They don’t even consider themselves a couple, even if its painfully obvious that they care deeply for each other.” Tessai sipped from his tea as Suzumi thought.

“What about yourself?”

“What of me?” Tessai asked, playing hard to get. Suzumi fixed him with a glare, and after a moment he cracked. “I simply have found none who hold my interest. It also so happens that talk of kidō bores many to tears.”

“Hey! I find it interesting.” Suzumi proclaimed, but Tessai rose a decisive eyebrow. “I only fell asleep once…” With a wry expression, Tessai moved to instead sit with crossed legs, rather than kneeling on the pillow like he usually did.

“Maybe one day I will find someone as interested int eh art as I. The only others I have met who were as interested were of the Royal Guards, and they stand a little out of my league. The rest are men.” Suzumi scrunched her eyebrows together in thought.

“The Royal Guards are the ones that guard the Soul King, right?” Tessai nodded, “Why wouldn’t you be in their league? Kisuke said, like, multiple times that you were probably the best kidō wielder alive. You don’t even need to use your Zanpakutō you’re that good!” Suzumi’s praise was not lost on the behemoth of a man. The two ways to really get Tessai blushing was to praise his kidō or his work, both of which Suzumi did as often as possible.

“Maybe so.” Tessai said finally, his cheeks cartoonishly rosy, “However, I do not use my Zanpakutō for more reasons than being powerful enough without it.” While Suzumi found herself wanting to ask more, she was able to withhold her questioning. The man’s tone was sad and closed off. Apparently having a difficult relationship with a Zanpakutō was possible.

“You find yourself in a place of difficulty, Miss Hamase.” Tessai intoned, the surety in his voice brooking no argument from the girl in question. Suzumi sighed heavily, letting her head rest on the coffee table with a thunk.

“I don’t know, Tessai.” She said softly, her words almost mournful, “He’s always getting stronger now. I walked down to the Study Room earlier today and could barely breathe in there, the spiritual energy was so dense.” She turned her head upright, so she was resting on her chin, looking at Tessai with confused eyes.

“How can I possibly keep up with that? How can I help him if he blazes past me no matter what I do?”

The tall, tanned man looked into her eyes for a long moment, taking a sip of tea and then pushing his glasses up the bridge of his powerful nose.

“You ask for help, Miss Hamase.” He let the words rest in the air for just a moment before continuing, “You and Grayson have been progressing at an excellent rate, far past what we had originally projected for your growth. However, yes; Grayson is now much more powerful than you. There is the distinct possibility that he always will be just ahead of you.” Each word beat on Suzumi’s conscience, only confirming what she knew was true still hurt in its own dull fashion.

“But you now have something that Grayson does not. You have connections that you have forged and maintained, rather than Grayson who has simply met with those people once or twice. You even met with the team of high-spec humans that Grayson saved that day. You have far more potential than you give yourself credit for, and there are still options for you to consider.” Tessai paused for a long time, merely looking at the girl opposite him in the same way he had looked at so many others in his days as Captain of the Kidō Corps. So many young men and women who had lost their way with their power, lost confidence in their potential to find it.

“All you must do, is ask.” He felt the word echo within his mind, thousands of past versions of himself saying those exact words to countless Soul Reapers.

Suzumi felt it too, the surety in the words the same as they always have been. Tessai did not lie, nor say anything without complete confidence. It’s what made the man so ridiculously trustworthy, too easy to believe on the drop of a hat. Suzumi sighed deeply, her body deflating with the loss of confidence that led her to ask the question at all.

“What do I do so I can get stronger?”

---

“This is experimental Kidō arts. It is a concept that I’ve been working on for hundreds of years now and may work on still for the rest of my existence. This is the first time I am showing it in full, even Kisuke has only seen much of this in parts.”

Suzumi looked to the massive circle on the ground, filled with characters and symbols that hurt to even try and conceptualise. Spiritual energy hummed with a quiet intensity in this room, below Tessai’s sleeping quarters.

“What is it?” She asked, a little unnerved. Tessai walked gracefully around the sprawling mass of characters and lines, his eyes scanning them for any perceived error.

“It is something I am calling the Soul Freedom Ceremony.” Tessai intoned, the pure seriousness of his voice reverberating with the hum of spiritual energy in the room. “The soul is a powerful construct, something that Grayson is coming to understand now as he slowly rebuilds his own. However, the regular soul has been limited by the Chain of Fate.”

Suzumi swallowed, wonder just what she’d gotten herself into. She knew about the Chain of Fate, something that was obvious on the Plusses that were slowly hollowfying, the horrifying mouthed chain eating itself in a self-destructively, the cause of the transition into a Hollow.

“We have always believed ourselves tied to this chain; Soul Reapers possessing one, even if it isn’t visible. However, Hollows are beings that survive without, and with the advent of Arrancars it only makes me believe that it’s truly possible to live without.”

“Uh, that’s cool. I mean, isn’t that supposed to be where a lot of power comes from? Didn’t you say that it was an antenna for spiritual energy when you taught us this stuff?” Tessai didn’t look up from the circle of mind-boggling spiritualism. Occasionally the man would bend or crouch to examine something closer, and rarely the man would edit the existing characters, making the whole things hum much louder.

“Indeed I did, and I did not lie.” He stood from his crouched position and looked directly at the nervous girl, standing close to the door like a scared child. “However, it is our limiter. It confines us to the way we were born, disallowing our own soul from breaking past that limit without some outside help. It dictates that those born with power are to remain with power.” Tessai stood taller than he ever had before in that moment a sudden air of exacting importance surrounded him, swirling like a pool of spiritual energy.

“This is Soul Freedom. This relieves us from the need of an intervening factor. Zanpakutō’s are simply one path to push back against the chains that bind us all. Quincies utilised the power gifted to them by Yhwach, the Father of Quincies. Visards shrug the chains further with the risk of hollowfying themselves and risking Soul Suicide. We use Kidō to utilise the power we have to push against those chains even further, striving to understand the bindings and limitations so that we may best defy them” Tessai walked to a closet in the corner of the room, forcing Suzumi’s eyes away from the terrifying ritual circle in the centre of it.

The room outside of that circle was filled with books, drawings, tools, and god knows what else. The walls were filled with diagrams so complex that Suzumi couldn’t even read a line of the text despite it all being in Japanese. She was standing int eh room where a man’s magnum opus was to be born, and she was a simple layman.

Tessai looked inside the open closet and smiled gently, pulling a long, flowing robe from its confines. It was a spectacular thing, a rich, royal blue trimmed in gold. There was a gorgeous crest that fanned out at the neck of the robe, just adding to the air of importance that the one wearing it held.

Tessai closed his eyes for only a moment, and suddenly he was dressed in a set of black robes, not too dissimilar from Suzumi and Grayson’s own training clothes, except it was an entirely black affair with a white undershirt and sash around his waist. The man threw the robe over his shoulders and slipped into the arms of it, then turning to walk towards Suzumi with a purposeful stride.

“Uh, Tessai?” Suzumi said quietly, “Why are there two of you?” The man had indeed split into two, one which was still standing in front of the closet, and the Tessai that was walking towards the circle.

“That is my Gigai, not my true body. This is the true, spiritual body that we hide within these Gigai, though we have little reason to anymore.” He explained calmly. Suzumi had to admit, the new getup suited Tessai and even made her slightly nervous in his presence. It was only now that she began to realise just how true Kisuke’s words were, that Tessai was one of the most powerful kidō users alive.

“The chains, no matter how we try, bind us still. Only those who have been given more chain to work with, or those who are exceptionally lucky, do they ever move to accommodate more than what has been prescribed to them. Thus, we are left with no choice but to remove the chains ourselves.”

“If you agree to this, you will be the first human without limits, without boundaries. You will be the first to ascend past what even Soul Reapers are capable of, in our finality. You will find Soul Freedom”