Sachihiro

Slowly I come back to myself gaining consciousness and alertness from a deep sleep. I wake gradually as though surfacing from a deep pool of water like a puff fish that has buoyed full of air surfacing from the depths. I feel myself coming into awareness of my body slowly from some other place that I can't fathom.

I slowly take in a breath filling my lungs seemingly for the first time in my life with something that seems to be better than any air I have ever tasted. I take it in, yawning loudly popping the pressure that was blocking my ears before stretching my arms with a little sigh of pleasure.

My nodachi is sheathed and perfect on my lap as I find myself sitting naked in a lotus cross-legged position. My skin is tingling slightly in a way that resembles micro sparkles happening all over it in my mind's eye, like it's sizzling from acid instead of suffering from a lack of blood flow.

It feels as though if I opened my eyes and looked at myself I'd see my skin scintillating like a diamond reflecting the light of the sun. There is no need to open my eyes though, I doubt there ever will be again as I look all around myself with a sense stretching fort from me to capture the outline of things all about me. I wonder why I'd never used this sense before.

There is a synergy of sorts within me of dark awareness, vibrational sense, spirit sense, battle sense, aura detect, soul sense and every mundane sensation that is painting very vivid and utterly breath-taking picture of my surroundings in my mind. I can see in a way I have never before even imagined it possible to yet it feels so natural it obvious I could have been seeing this way since childhood.

I take in everything around me as far as my senses will go which doesn't turn out to be too far but the wonder and detail in everything is awesome. I take it all in, the very floor I'm sitting on, the texture the hardness the density of everything around me even. There are details like texture and hardness I'm getting I'd previously need touch, hearing and sight to quantify.

I'm realizing I can catalogue everything around in a broad sense almost like seeing things in the peripheral vision, ahhh... I can also focus on specific objects or areas to get a clearer image. My focus is in my mind and doesn't diminish the broader sense of things even as it analyzes what my attention is focused on in details that go beyond just seeing and identifying something.

With this sight I know what I focus on in detail. Detail that has more to do with just identification but gives me a glut of other information I didn't even know objects freely gave away. It's as though this new sight comes with an examine skill already active at all times as I take everything in.

No, not exactly an examine skill but more an appraisal skill I realize as I know the ornate table by fluctuating door, I know the material its made of, the weaknesses in its structure, the density and strength of the different materials that it's composed of. I have all this new information coming in from this sight and its a matter of learning to interpret it now.

{Deep breath}, I stay focused on myself and sensations cataloguing the changes to my perceptions.

With Awakening in this way comes new instincts and knowledge and I instinctively know how to separate the different information I'm getting even if I can't immediately identify what it is I'm cataloguing. The table is solid stationary object but it moves, everything moves at a deeper level. I place my hands on the floor and watch/experience a wave propagate outward, there's a type of frequency identification I realize as everything vibrates in it's own unique frequency throughout the world/room.

Never before has depth perception been so pinpoint accurate outside a spatial awareness skill or something very similar. I know information about everything I set my phantom sights on as it freely gives it to me, I am pulsing with every heartbeat realise, creating waves by which I see/feel the surroundings. I look at my nodachi again and yes I see so much more about its workmanship and finer details.

Truly this thing is the culmination of divine provenance and millennia of perfected craftsmanship. I can see that this thing/zanpakuto I carry is perpetually in two worlds, the physical it has been clothed in and the spiritual where souls can reside if they take off worldly flesh. I know this without being told. A zanpakuto is both here and there like a crack in the world where two realities meet, there is a life growing in this stiflingly inanimate object I carry.

There is a life inside my sword, my sword is alive. Its stationary, made of lifeless minerals so physically it cannot grow beyond its bounds but spiritually its growing.

I know this about my nodachi as though I've always known it but never truly paid attention. There is an ethereal realm I can access that is within the soul of my soul-sword and being there I could potentially commune directly to that growing soul where it isn't bound in the inflexible shape of a sword.

I can perceive the existence of this space through a combination of my spirit and soul senses within this new phantom sense by which I'm seeing everything else. There is a depth to my zanpakuto I am still unaware of and as I sink slowly into this soul space It/she looks back at me from within in her physical embodiment. She smiles mischievously, wanting to play and I grin back ready to play whatever it is we are about to play.

We end up playing tag in an ever twisting foggy landscape with thin tall mountains that we use as barriers and stepping platforms to change flight direction at speed. She laughs and giggles as I struggle to keep up with her in what feels like an actual physical body to me yet I know nothing physical can enter this space.

I seem to be moving at slow motion in this place, not exactly at slow motion but as if everything is moving at slow motion or at least less urgently; like I have just a little moment longer to think about everything I'm taking in. My perception of everything happening has increased but its frustrating because physically I can feel that I'm slow.

Gravity is very fluid here as I jump a distance of miles from stone tower to stone tower chasing after my opponent who seems to be having the time of her life. Sometimes I'm on the ground but mostly I'm flying through the air using the tower faces as launch pads in my chase. There is no pain or thirst or fatigue to slow me down.

I don't know how long I stay in there but I find myself slowly coming out of that soul space as though waking from a vivid dream where the laws of nature didn't apply but it all seemed normal. I breathe in again as I come to myself and my perception blinks open like an eyelid. Booting itself up I slowly gain awareness of all around me again.

I'm still in that same room with the strange twisting void of a door with the table next to it. Everything is still the same yet some things are different, I tap the floor eliciting a wave. The frequencies of the vibrations of everything around me are dynamic not stationary. Moving in a range and osculating at varied vibrations, my heartbeat alone gives me perception yet its foggy compared to the clarity I get from forcing a wave, forcing the vibrations of things to interact.

There is so much I need to figure out about myself now, I'm excited on so many levels.

I open my actual eyes slowly because I realise I haven't actually opened my eyes yet. I'm almost surprised by the slight luminous glow coming from the wall not because it is anything special but because I hadn't even realised I couldn't see colour this whole time. My phantom sight has been so efficient that I didn't realise I couldn't see any light with it at all.

With the strange phantom awareness still primary within me I use my eyes to judge the light as colour coming into them. I see with them assisting in only a secondary role to the greater awareness of seeing usin the culmination of all my other senses in this new sense by which I now perceive. I have 4-dimensional awareness of all around me, sight can never again take a primary role in my senses.

Dimensional awareness, that's what the phantom sight is and I suddenly know this like I know my own name. I have gained dimensional awareness as an extra sense, but my dimensional awareness is unique in that it has soul sense in its mechanism. Something that has never before been achieved or gained on Gaia. I somehow know this...

The realisation fades.

I blink a few times taking everything in, even my eyes have had an upgrade surely. Colour has never been this deep and this clear before, my eyes have never seen so clearly have they? Though I can see the rough texture of the walls actually seeing them with eyes adds another dimension to the awareness of my dimensional awareness.

I sigh out the breath of amazing air I've been holding and I place one of my palms on the floor and get up smoothly, I feel lighter but I'm still perceiving myself as moving slightly slower than I should. I stand smoothly and am fully amazed at all this 360° 4 dimensional awareness I have without needing to turn my head. I marvel in it but there are other realizations happening even as this one does.

I feel... loose, like I've stretched and am supple after a quick run. I feel good, full of energy and vitality that should be glowing off of me in a miasma of misty aura on my skin. Even as I visualize that thought an aura does manifest itself about my naked form wafting off like ice evaporating in the wind. But this aura is more than that as it sparkles now and again changing form from misty to smokey fluid even as I try to study it.

I get into a practice stance and with a sheath nodachi in hand I move through the forms so as to feel my body and everything around me. I move through them smoothly and diligently, my movements precise as they cut through the air around me with explosive power that I didn't before have. A power amplified by my strange crackling white aura that seems to be getting tighter and stronger as more energy is absorbed into it.

Energy, mana, I feel it inside me leaking into my aura paradoxically strengthening me while weakening me at the same time. But then more of the sour sweat energy fills the vacuum left by the energy empowering my aura manifestation.

I'm still Awakening I suddenly realize with a start and finish the last stance with a flourish. Yes, I'm still Awakening to mana in a lot of ways or is this what is meant by consolidating? Whatever's happened to me first was only the initial stage of the Awakening and I still have a ways to go before I exhaust this Awakening Mana.

I was supposed to surrender, I was supposed to Awaken in the way of Master Zaraya, I was supposed to let the Mana lead as it pleased through me and Awaken without my direct hand on the reigns. Did I succeed, is this the result of that, what else has changed within me?

As I think that thought it slowly comes to me as knowledge whose origins I can't identify. Yes, I have mostly succeeded in letting go and being led through the Awakening, I have become and am still becoming a first tier Awakened human being.

I'm faster, stronger, more resilient, more agile, more perceptive, just all-round generally more badass and powerful than I've ever been in my life. I feel as light as a leaf in all honesty but I know that with a kick I could easily cave a mundane person's head in, I feel solid, strong.

The mana combined aura crackling around me is still condensing from smoke to a liquid form but even at its current level it's almost 10 times stronger than any aura I have ever been able to produce to protect myself or attack with. It's white because it has a lot of spirit energy mixed into it I suddenly realize and yes, the amount of spirit energy I have has become a deep well of power.

I am more than what I was, a lot more and I'm realizing its more than a little insane for a mundane to fight an Awakened of any kind and hope to win. The difference between me now and before I started Awakening is simply too stark and I don't see how I could've been a challenge for my current self as a mundane.

I can feel I have lost my limit-break ability as I have now transcended the limits I once had for whatever my current limits are. I will have to discover my new limits and transcend them as well, breathing is so easy.

I walk around the space, I'm in exploring it as diligently as I can even as I think my thoughts and try to remember what I went through those initial moments of Awakening. If it was moments, I have no sense of time at all but nothing seems urgent.

My feet tingle a moment and then stop, mhmm...

[Zzzzwee], I unsheathe my nodachi and play through my personal kenjutsu style kyokugei.

My movements are fluid and precise, my blade is harder than it ever was with a keener edge yet I didn't sharpen it. Its level of quality has gone from a grade-A legendary weapon to a Grade D mythical weapon with my Awakening. Our Awakening I should say since looking at the weapon's increased quality and coming from its soul space I know she has also grown with me.

Her soul is healed where it was cut away from my own, I feel I could unleash her true form now if I so chose but I don't for some instinct. My soul is almost fully healed as well but that's due to her soul-energy stealing abilities and not the influx of mana. Besides being a badass physically and having unique epic senses I wonder what else has changed within and without.

I need to meditate on my chakra since I can't seem to feel it at all right now. Then after that I will need to go into the Rage and see how different things are whilst still in this isolated chamber where I have fewer chances of hurting anyone.

I sigh, I close my eyes whilst simultaneously sheathing my blade. Closing my eyes does absolutely nothing to dim, stop or even pause the dimensional awareness of my surroundings. I guess I have to learn to meditate with sight wide open then.

I sit back into the lotus and get to work, starting with seeking the quiet mind state.