A Short Journey of Self Discovery

Shinigami Evaluation:
Subject: Atoshi Giriko
At eleven hundred hours, Giriko successfully initiated Jinzen for the one hundredth and thirteenth time. Subject remained in contact with his Zanpakutō for twelve minutes, two minutes fewer than his previous attempt and two and a half hours shorter than the initial attempt. Giriko was unsuccessful in learning his Zanpakutō’s name and is still incapable of achieving Shikai. Successful Shikai does not appear to be imminent or even likely.
Recommendation: Expend resources and training elsewhere, relegate to rank and file.


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~ 11th day of the Cold Season, Tuesday

I have decided to attempt something new concerning my journey of self discovery, namely speaking I will discover if I am a remotely competent writer. Conventional wisdom would say that I am not, seeing as how this is but the second time I have written anything aside from my name since the academy. This particular brand of time wasting foolishness was devised on the dreary walk toward the mountain, tiresome as it was. I am not particularly certain why a mixture of road kill, rotten wood and rank air drove me to consider recording my little adventure down on paper, or in this case a napkin (paper will be the next purchase on this glorious foray in to the unknown), but I have no resolved myself to record my exploits, regardless of how mundane and that is what I shall do, perhaps the report I wrote last week was weighing on my mind. However, the first few days on the road were just that, mundane. I almost wished I was back in Rukongai; the constant desire to bludgeon a ruffian at least made the place interesting, if not necessarily safe. It had a life to it, a hum, a feel that one simply could not get from strolling along a dirt road, being mauled by bloodsucking insect wildlife and praying to whatever divinity guided our miserable lives that the mushroom I just ate wasn’t poisonous. Then again, to be fair, if it was poisonous I at least wouldn’t have to put up with this garbage any longer. It is a good two day trek from my blanket draped over a low tree branch as a miserable excuse for a tent and I will most likely not be able to write until I arrive, as I have used up every potential space on this napkin and folded it every possible way to cram in more information about how miserable I am. It’s my journal, screw you. No, I don’t know who I’m talking to.

14th day of the Cold Season, Friday

This entry in to the journal marks two significant advancements in my journey of self discovery. I have first, acquired paper and will no longer have to deal with accursed napkins that tear as soon as they’re prodded and scratched by a marginally sharp object. Secondly, I have found a location to write that does not involve getting bark and sap lodged underneath my finger nails. It took a good several hours under running water to free myself of the discomfort. It has however been two days since my last entry in my new but not new friend and there is much to discuss.

The two day trip to my current residence was undeniably plain. I lived on mushrooms, potential food assisted suicide adding the only form of excitement, and walked as quickly as I could while maintaining a healthy fortitude. I was, sufficed to say a little bit miffed about the whole ordeal. Why did this place have to be so damn far away from Seireitei? Was Soul Society really even this big? I suppose it was a good tactic, Seireitei wouldn’t police this place if it meant having to endure this tedious walk.

Then again, they might just invade for the view I received when I got here. It was like being opened up to a whole new world as I stepped over the horizon emerging from the murky woods. I was a large hill, almost a mountain that was covered with lush grass that my time in neither Rukongai nor Seireitei had afforded me. Lining the mountains were a plethora of pine trees, whose purpose he could not determine but they sure look beautiful from here. Lining the mountain with it were numerous houses and accompanying farms, designed to run the village’s main focal point. Near the top of the mountain, surrounded by a veritable forest of pine trees laid a magnificent building that almost seemed out of place in this overly rustic setting. I can admit in earnest that the scene had me spellbound for a few moments. Well, many moments, but it was a fascinating picture for me. Of course, all good things must come to an end as I slowly traversed down the hill and toward the valley entrance to the village, the experience making me question why people think traveling up is more difficult than traveling down. Perhaps they particularly care about traveling down in one piece. That was another thing I really hate about those people they’re always so nice and concern when you fa~~~~```…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Sorry, blood was dripping on the page. No, don’t ask why I’m apologizing to a piece of compressed dead tree just pay attention to the story. After the exciting ordeal down the mountain slash hill slash bug filled gravity trap, I had finally made it in to the village proper. Once I was there, I got nasty looks from everything with eyes, even the blind man sitting alone outside managed to give me a nasty look. It was unfortunate that I was so certain that I didn’t get lost, because I certainly didn’t seem welcome. After a good thirty minutes of failing to communicate, I finally managed to wrestle the name of the dojo I was looking for, the thing I was sent here for. The place was operated by someone by the name of Hei Ness, which felt like an odd name to me. It didn’t occur till after the thirty minutes that it would have been save to not seek confirmation and just head for the giant building on the hill and that might be why the locals looked at me as if I was criminally insane, but I didn’t really care at this point. I had two hours of sleep over the course of the last two days and I could care less about what the puissant locals thought of me.

I, without an ounce of trepidation or, depending upon how you look at it, sense, pushed open the door and entered in to the dojo. There were students practicing on the main floor, roughly eighteen strong and all with swords pointed at wooden dummies or each other. Thirty-six eyes turned to me as I apparently made my dramatic entrance. I took a few steps in to the building and things changed, very quickly. A nineteenth pair of eyes that I did not see before seemingly materialized at the back of the room, glaring at me apprehensibly and the climate of the room did a drastic turn from minute curiosity at my presence to outright hostility. A second after the sudden shift, the first student made his move.

He rushed at me, sword raised and quickly slashing down toward my shoulder as if I had recently killed his friend or eaten his sandwich or something equally grievous. I reacted almost without thinking, Hakuda training had been drilled in to my head from youth and my body at times might as well be reacting on its own. As the blade came down, my left leg sank back and my body pivoted, the sword flying right past me and the boy’s balance now thrown completely off as my hand snapped forward and grabbed his wrist as my body continued rotating, my elbow colliding right with his temple as a resounding thud was heard and the boy dropped down cold.

The rest of it happened too fast to fully remember the details. The other seventeen students rushed me and I fought back, their attacks never ceasing despite my constant attempts to yield and explain that I was merely there for training and that the Gotei Thirteen had sent me here to receive that training and that I thought they had already been warned. It was around when I relieved the tenth or so assailant of his consciousness that I figured they might have been warned. Was the organization trying to get rid of me? I’m obviously writing now so if they had intended to they had failed miserably but the thought had crossed my mind, the whole bloody mist revolution and my general distaste with killing unless necessary. As I dropped the last and final student, I noticed the eyes in the back of the room now had a body to accompany them. She was an older woman, late thirties most likely and she had an odd, striking beauty about her. If there weren’t swords flying at my face and the look in her eyes didn’t relay anything but murderous intent, I might have been taken in by it…much like I am now thinking back on it. At the time though, I didn’t have time for it.

The woman rushed at me much like the first attacker did and while she moved significantly faster, my initial reaction was one of boredom. Do these people not learn? Well, it was me that was in need of an education. I instinctively did the same thing I did on the first attacker and instead of blowing right by me; she made me pay for it. He sword stopped, she didn’t put nearly the same weight behind it as the other hand as soon as I was committed to the pivot, he foot shot forward, striking me on the inside of the knee and I crumpled rather quickly. Now off balance and in a completely bad position, she moved to deal the finishing blow as her sword raised high above her head and dove down at me. In this position I couldn’t dodge, the pain in my knee was too intense to really even move, so I did the first thing that came to mind, I tried to catch it. Both my hands shot up to meet the blade cupping it in my hands and stopping its motion. At first, I must have looked really cool, but it didn’t take long for the realization to sink in, I hadn’t caught it well enough. Blood trickled down from the palms of my hands and on to my shirt, the pained look on my face only compounded by the now painful cut on my hands as my knee slowly popped itself back in to place in a kneeling position before her. The look on her face was one I wasn’t going to forget. It was no longer anger, but mild bemusement. Like she couldn’t decide if she liked a certain hairstyle or not, it was kind of irritating to be honest. Her foot then shot forward and nailed me in the sternum, wrenching her blade free in the process and sending me sprawled to the floor before she finally spoke to me, my dumb rear end finally realizing that this must be Hei Ness.

“Come back tomorrow for training, don’t wear those ridiculous foot adornments.”

I was set up in a small room where I’m writing to you now, bloody and bruised but not sleeping with bugs, so it’s a good trade off I suppose. It just figures that I’m almost killed because I happened to have footwear. I hate my life. I will begin another entry when I find the time. For now I need sleep.

15th day of the Cold Season, Saturday.

My hand was stitched together, reopened, and then stitched together again so ideally I should no longer has a bloodstained journal, regardless of how much of a rough ass that makes me sound. Today was a little annoying though. I’m guessing it’s some “learn the importance of something” kind of thing, but right now it just seems like the lady was making me do her damn chores.

I arrived at the dojo, early and barefoot and was ushered in by a disgruntled looking student sporting a rather painful looking bruise on his left temple. I admit to feeling a pang of guilt at that moment, but the guy had tried to kill me not twenty four hours ago, so my distaste was somewhat tempered to be honest. The first matter of business was that the students shackled me down with a heavy set of weights that I couldn't help but admit were very encumbering. I went through their morning rituals, that were foreign to me and involved a lot of bowing but I didn’t question it, wasn’t in a mood to incite any more bladed wrath. It seemed however, that I wasn’t going to be doing anything bladed today. As soon as the morning rituals were concluded in which I dumbly and probably incorrectly tried to mimic, I was taken aside by her Hei Ness and given my assignment…and good lord was it a boring one.

I was to go in to the town to a local seed merchant who was passing through, her banzai trees were apparently not too kipper, and buy some special banzai seeds off of him to reinvigorate her garden. Of course that just made me pissed, but I had a job to do. Finding the seed merchant was by no means a simple matter. The man was seemingly purposefully avoiding me, like he knew I was coming to buy his stupid crap and he didn’t want to give it to me because I wasn’t covered in appropriate layers of dirt. That might not have been the only reason however. I soon discovered that the man did not even have the seeds I was looking for. After a lengthy discussion/ yelling match the man stormed off in a huff and I was left with no seeds and an unsatisfactory answer for Her Hei Ness.

It was around this part that the story began to get strange…well stranger. A little girl approached me as I watched the old seed salesman storm off. She was a cute little girl; I really have no other way to identify her. She had this strange child-like innocence and purity that emanated from her. If I wasn’t so annoyed at the old man, I’d probably find it creepy. She told me that I could find the seed I’m looking for far up the mountain near the very top and offered to go with me to help. As futile as the little adventure seemed, I decided to tag along, both since going to the dojo empty handed seemed like a suicide journey and that this little girl had a strange determination that told me that she was going up there whether I was or not, and I couldn’t really let her go by herself. I also didn’t have time to do the responsible thing and return her to her parents because she was speeding up the road toward the mountain with a speed I didn’t think possible with her tiny legs. The energy of youth I suppose.

So up the mountain we went, battling all sorts of wild growth that the girl just seemed to slip through effortlessly and that I seemed to be going out of my way to get stuck in. It took an hour to climb to the top, mostly because the girl was nice enough to stay behind and disentangle me from every stupid plant that wrapped me up. Of course, she just giggled innocently every time, like she was enjoying me having to claw for every inch up this mountain while she weaved through it like it was nothing. Living here probably helps with navigating this place, but it was still absurd how easily she moved through this place.

When we finally stopped, I was scraped, bruised, miserable, and adorned in that fresh cover of dirt I was lacking before. The cuts on my hands had reopened and I was stretched pretty thin. The girl, almost a pristine image of cleanliness and perfectly, the little annoying…anyway, stopped still and smiled warmly at me and pointed down to a small little stem, no more than an inch high, and told me that this was the plant. Well…I was angry. She had made it sound like I’d find something that’d actually be ready to harvest and I could just go home. But no, the tree was no less than, as the girl so cheerfully informed me, thirty years from blooming to the point to making a seed. My first reaction was cold outrage, but I figured strangling a little girl wasn’t exactly proper top of the mountain stranded in the middle of nowhere etiquette. I slumped down against a nearby, actually grown tree possessing seeds that were irrelevant to me and stared menacingly down at the little, taunting plant as the equally taunting cheery eyed girl kept staring at me. I was kind of pissed, but I was determined. I’d sit there for the next thirty years if I had to, beating Her Stupid Hei Ness was something I was very set on doing. Teach her for giving me stupid assignments. As soon as that wave of resolve swept over me, a wave of fatigue followed, the trek up the mountain must have drained me. I could have sworn I felt a pressure on my eye lids as they closed and I completely faded from consciousness.

I’m not sure how long I had been asleep, but the first sight I possessed when I awoke was no longer the small saproling. Instead, before me stood a gargantuan tree, easily quadrupling the tiny twigs around it. The behemoth tree was intimidating, incredibly, but there was also a sort of giddy excitement I felt. I rushed forward and collected a small handful of the acorns on the ground and quickly started on my way back down the hill of hell when a sudden realization stopped me. The girl, had she gone home? Well…I had potentially slept for thirty years. Had she gone home? I looked down at my hands and noticed they were surprisingly childish for a forty-six year old. Well, no matter, shoving these seeds in that old crones face will be good enough. The trip down was just as hazardous, if not more so due to gravity taking me in to the obstacles even faster this time, as the trip up and never had I breathed a heavier sigh of relief then when I got to town. The sigh was quickly covered up by the fact that I noticed the same old guy glaring at me as if I smelled like unwanted soap. It was around that time where I put the thirty year sleep theory to rest. Had the girl lied to me about how long it took to grow? And where was she? I was so determined to wait the whole time too, it was almost disappointing I didn’t get to. I made my way to Her Hei Ness’s dojo where she instantly snapped up my acorns before adding in a comment that I’ll leave off the day with as it firmly cements my dislike for the woman.

“That’s good, we needed some shade.”

16th Day of the Cold Month

The long strings of expletives that are mostly needed to adequately begin the events of the day are probably not the most acceptable addition to such a reputable journal entry. Of course, I could always censor them out using ornate and pointless symbols to replicate, but then I’d be a B****. I’d prefer not to be one of those. So we’ll just leave it vague and allow you to understand how agitated I was with the day. I was not permitted to take the weights they had given me off during the night and they managed to be incredibly itchy when I woke up this morning, ignoring how sore I was from climbing up and down that wretched mountain with them on. Since when did a Zanjutsu school care so much about this garbage?

I got back to the dojo, a little later and with dirtier and was ushered in by an even further disgruntled looking student, his rather painful looking bruise on his left temple seeming to not have gotten any better over the course of the last twenty-four hours. My pang of guilt was now completely gone for the angry looking fellow, between attempted murder and his general grumpiness, my distaste was somewhat justified to be honest. I went through their morning rituals a, that were still foreign to me and I was tired, I didn’t have the same effort in to it as I dumbly followed the leader without much presence of mind. It seemed however, that I still wasn’t going to be doing anything bladed today. As soon as the morning rituals were concluded in which I dumbly and probably incorrectly tried to mimic, I was taken aside by her Hei Ness again and given my assignment…and they weren’t attempting to be more relevant.

I didn’t say anything about it today and I really wish I would have. This assignment was at least less obnoxious than the former…or so I thought. The assignment didn’t start off obnoxious yesterday either but quickly spiraled in to it. So perhaps my optimism at the start of the day was somewhat misplaced. It turned out to be a less strenuous, but far more retarded day. I was sent in to town to pick up her Hei Ness’s laundry. Why I was busy running petty errands was beyond me. Like everything in this awful town, it took me a good hour or so to find the damn Laundromat. Heavens forbid anything be simple to find. I got spit on a few times for good measure.

Once I did locate the Laundromat, things didn’t get any less weird. There was a tiny man, steadily losing the entirety of his hair dubiously scrubbing what once must have been a shirt inside a dingy little water bucket. I was a little afraid to approach, the man seemed like an inch away from flinging that wet…wad of cloth back at me and I wasn’t about to get in to a wet towel fight with this little bald man. I did eventually get out of it and asked for the clothes I was supposed to pick up, to which he reluctantly threw the clothes he was currently washing at me. They were rigid, might as well have been cardboard and he then went in to a large monologue about how he’s been washing and drying and rewashing that shirt for the past twenty years. I’m sure he was still talking about all of the times he had washed that shirt, he was on year two before I stopped waiting to see if he was going to say anything relevant before returning back to the dojo. I turned the shirt over to Her Hei Ness, and she didn’t seem too phased by the rigidity of her shirt. Given that it had been there for twenty years, I doubted she cared about it begin with, she just wanted to piss me off.

I got sent home earlier and spent all that free time by sitting in my shoddy housing conditions in a huff and writing this somewhat lackluster entry in to this little stack of paper is all I’ve accomplished during the second half of the day, or it would have been. If I wasn’t visited by some of the stupid students and assaulted again, dispatching them proved slightly more difficult with the weights, but I made sure to commandeer one of their swords this time. I was going to use a sword even if they didn’t want me to. When the first one tried to cut me down, I caught his wrist and wrenched his weapon from him before elbowing him, funnily enough, in his other temple. It was surprising that this guy kept trying to mess with me. Sufficed to say, once I had myself armed, it didn’t require much more effort to chase away the rest of the goon squad here. A long gash on one’s face was enough to chase the rest of them away as I picked up the one unconscious body and threw it out of my “house” and on to the very dirty ground. There was a strange sense of satisfaction that came from kicking the crap out of her students, despite being tired and wearing weights none of them were forced to deal with. Very satisfying indeed.


17th Day of the Cold Month

[Insert a long string of expletives of your choosing her in order to fully understand my frustration and anger at my life.] Yes, that is all that can sum up my morning. While thrashing her students was oddly satisfying, returning the weapon the next morning led to some awkward questions that caused Her Hei Ness to only regard me with that bemused glance that she just loved to harass me with. Well screw her, I had done stupid and pointless errands for her the past few days and I was skeptical whether anything more interesting was going to happen today. Of course, it wouldn’t.

We went through the same tired bowing and facing ritual that I had gone through the first two days, the tug of the weights on my muscles being increasingly agitating. And, surprise surprise, I wasn’t going to be doing anything related to swordsmanship, again! That merited an exclamation point entirely. It most certainly did. There was some petty squabble going on in town and I was tired of doing her chores for her, but at this point I didn’t have all that much of a choice. I had nothing better to do anyway.

It did not take me long to get to my destination, primarily because I didn’t have to spend an hour finding it. All I had to do was follow the screaming. I didn’t realize someone like Her Hei Ness would usually have the duty fall to her for dealing with moronic and petty arguments like this, but in a small town like this, I suppose all law enforcement comes down to her, must be such an exciting life.

This encounter required a lot more effort and energy than it should of. Both people arguing were loud, obnoxious and almost impossible to talk to. I lacked empathy to begin with so this was particularly agitating. It took me all day to diffuse this situation, this situation that was being fought over the property line. They were arguing over one square foot of land. There wasn’t anything even on the square foot, all that was there was a rock. We had a twelve hour fight over a rock. What the hell was wrong with this place? I dragged my sorry ass back to the dojo, her majesty was not a mite surprised and sent me home, again without touching a sword. I hate this place.


18th Day of the Cold Season

I admittedly view this entire experience in a new light. I arrived at the dojo the same time I had the last three days, but this time it was completely empty with the exception of Her Hei Ness. As soon as I arrived, she motioned me to sit down. I sat down, and sat there for a good five minutes waiting for what the point of this was. It was then she asked me one simple question.

“What have you learned?”

I will not pretend I was some amazing genius and figured out exactly what she meant, but she managed to walk me through it. The first task taught me what it meant to have resolve and never give up. That kind of determination was necessary for a swordsman and more importantly, to demand the respect of my Zanpakutō. The second task taught me against ritual for the sake of ritual, my interactions with the old bird were becoming more and more half-hearted as time went on and I was merely attempting for the sake of attempting. The old man had been dissolved to insanity because he practiced the same tired moves constantly and if I continued down this path, I doubted I would get anywhere with my Sword’s soul. A swordsman had to be fresh and original while being strong at your fundamentals. The third task taught me how to read his opponents. He had to read the people arguing and find the solution to their problem, just like one had to read an opponent to know what moves they would make. He needed to understand his weapon in order to harness it.

I returned back to my room, for the last night. There wasn’t much for her to teach me, she told me people like me learned better by figuring themselves out instead of relying on another’s moves and I could agree more or less. I would have liked to stay a little bit longer, beat up on that guy some more, but I also wanted to go home. This will be the last entry in this journal, unless something particularly exciting happens on the way home. I believe I’m ready to face that overgrown chicken head on now.

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As the last words were scratched out on what was now a really tattered book (plus napkin), Giriko gently set the cluster of paper down on the bed beside him, giving it a rather longing look before a sigh escaped him. He had endured a rather long series of events and as he sat on what was becoming a rather familiar bed, his mind replayed all the lessons he had learned. Resolution, creativity, understanding; Giriko really believed he had grown substantially not only as a combatant but a person as well. Patience however, would apparently forever elude the boy as he decided, despite the exhaustion that now was when he would confront his Zanpakutō spirit. Giriko turned slightly, laying his legs out across the bed before folding them tenuously over one another as he gently laid his small Tanto across his lap. As his eyes slowly inched closed, the setting changed.

He was no longer on his bed in his room. Instead he was standing, tall (sort of) and proud (definitely) on the air in the sky of the setting sun around him. He had been to his Zanpakutō’s inner world many times before, the spirit itself apparently never found a way to reliably keep him out, but today was different than it was before. He wasn’t here simply for the sake of coming here. He was going to get his Zanpakutō’s name, even if he had to mercilessly beat it out of him. The bird in question arrived soon after to welcome the guest of honor and as was quickly becoming tradition, opened off the forum with a derogatory and rather cruel comment about Giriko and as per usual, it centered on his rather vertically challenged stature.

“Oh I’m sorry Giriko, there was a lot of dust floating around, you simply got lost with so many things as big as you are floating around in here.”

“You’d imagine gigantic poultry would be a little more humble, but we’re not playing this game today. Give me your name or I swear I will force it out of you.”

Control wasn’t something Giriko had apparently learned and he couldn’t help but get baited ever so slightly when his height was insulted. Giriko didn’t wait however, he knew asking for the birds name was not going to yield any results. Instead, he simply attacked. Now for reference, Giriko is but a few inches north of five feet tall. The spirit was a few inches north of three hundred meters tall. Giriko’s spirit was a veritable sky scraper which made the small framed boy pelting toward the massive head almost comical. What was even more comical was when that tiny little fist crashed in to the massive head and sent the even more massive body flying backward as it was attempting to respond. The bird was half way through the opening to his witty retort as to why Giriko would never learn his name before the aforementioned witty retort twisted in the a shrill screech of shock and agitation with the slightest hint of pain. As the massive creature was reeling backward, it violently flapped its wings in Giriko’s direction and it felt like the very sky itself was attacking him as a strong torrent of wind slammed in to his small frame, sweeping back his clothes and pushing him through the air as he stubbornly remained on his feet.

As the two beings gained their bearings, squaring off to each other, the bird would make the first move. Spreading its wings wide, its feathers began shifting for a brief moment before ten chains, five from each wing, shot toward Giriko as he hastily wove in between them, hoping to use the slight opening to traverse through the field and drag him back in to close combat. This would prove to be a mistake as soon as Giriko dodged the chains and pushed off the reishi in the air around him, jettisoning himself forward, the bird disappeared from sight. It was only due to his ability to feel disturbances in the air that allowed him to sense the creature appearing behind him as he quickly shifted to his right as the massive creature dragged his chains back and in to the direction Giriko was moving, the massive things just barely missing the boy’s body, barely missing crushing him entirely.

Giriko flipped around and steadied himself, staring carefully at the bird, trying to figure out how the thing teleported. He was sure that was what it was; he didn’t feel any disturbances from the movement in the air, only when the thing arrived behind him. He only had a moment to examine it before the chains receded back in to the bird’s wings, but the chains themselves never seemed to change places at all, only the placement of the bird’s body. That was it. As the bird fired the chains from its wings Giriko, Giriko repeated his earlier action, ducking in between the chains and moving forward to close the distance but this time, he didn’t follow through with it. He knew how the bird was moving and knew exactly where he was going to be, it was predictable. As the chains by him, Giriko turned on a dime, digging his foot in to the reishi in the air before launching himself at where the bird’s head was going to be using what he believed was the fastest flash step he had ever used. As the bird’s head was materializing on the other side, Giriko’s foot was violently swinging upward. His tiny leg crashed in to a small part of the bird’s gargantuan head with enough force to send the bird back and reeling, flipping it to the point where its stomach faced up. Recovering from the kick, Giriko quickly pushed off the ground and further in to the air, tucking his chin in to his chest and rotating in the air, flipping as a small human ball before his feet caught the air above him, the top of his head aimed straight down at the prone bird. Giriko let out a howling cry of battle before pushing off the reishi and rocketing down toward the bird. As he flew, he reached to his side and pulled out the Tanto and gripped it with both hands. Giriko raised it above his head and as he flew toward the bird’s neck, the boy violently slammed the tiny weapon through the feathered neck and was greeted with a rather pleasant sound of metal cutting through flesh. The bird’s head tilted up slightly, its giant eyes bigger than the gnat on its neck as it…smirked down at Giriko. Whether or not a beaked face was capable of smirking would be a debate for another time however.

“Who would have thought a midget like you could do that to me.”

“Damnit, I’m not short, Ikarutori!”

Giriko was no longer in the sky with the setting sun. The boy was back on his bed in the familiar foreign room and bed as his mind reeled, trying to process what happened. He was tired, more tired than he had ever been and he could only look around the room in a confused daze. It didn’t take long though, first he noticed the weight. His Zanpaktuo shouldn’t be that heavy on his lap. His hand reached down for the handle, he didn’t feel the grip in the right place, as he shakily slid off the side of the bed and placed his bare feet on the cold floor, lifting himself in to a standing posture. Giriko’s eyes shifted down and he saw the full glory that his Zanpakutō had become. It was a large double bladed axe that carried a rather futuristic look to it and it stood a good two feet taller than its wielder. Giriko stood in silence for a good plenty of moments as he stared down at his shikai. It was difficult to identify his emotions as a casual onlooker, perhaps it was simply because he was so tired, but the words he spoke would be put the matter to bed, for the night.

“You would become something I’d hate using…you jackass.”