Chapter 6

Byakuya awakes with a start.

Had it all been a dream?

Heart pounding, he sits up, his blanket falling from his chest to softly thump onto his lap. In the low light of the dawn, a silvery blade glitters, laid neatly beside his futon. He reaches out to touch the naked metal, and the cold edge meets the tips of his fingers. He shudders.

No, so it wasn't a dream.

Then, going by events, neither is the talking cat, or the secret training ground. Everything that has transpired last night has actually... transpired.

His entire body aches - muscles straining even more than when he usually trains, and he grunts as he pushes himself off the futon, and kneels beside the blade.

According to the cat, he'll have to hide the stolen blade, or things could turn out bad if anyone finds out and reports to his grandfather, and then his dreams of becoming a skilled Shinigami will vanish.

After much careful deliberation, he decides to strap the Asauchi to his back, underneath his clothes, where hopefully it will be concealed enough for it to be undiscovered. So decided, he creeps out from his room, and sneaks down the corridor in search for a roll of bandages.

"Byakuya." A familiar voice stops him dead in his tracks, and his heart pounds as he turns, kneeling in one swift motion.

"Yes, Grandfather?" He tries desperately to keep his voice from trembling, and dares not look up to his grandfather's face, lest he be found out.

"How is your training?"

"Fine, sir. I am... making progress." Byakuya swallows, keeping his eyes trained on the ground.

"Very well. Your teacher has also conveyed to me that you look to be a promising young man." A promising young man? He hadn't known that the Shihōin demon was capable of such compliments.

"Yes, sir."

"Train well! Perhaps then you will live up to the Kuchiki name, as have I, and my forefathers before me."

Byakuya notices that his grandfather doesn't say a thing about his father.

"Now go for your training, boy."

"Yes, ojī-sama."

Satisfied, Kuchiki Ginrei walks past his grandson's kneeling figure, haori fluttering behind him, and moves away.

Byakuya looses a sigh, and rises, heading forward.

"Forty-eight... forty-nine... fifty!" Byakuya drops from the branch, and lands in a crouch, grimacing from the impact. His arms are burning, and he rubs them vigorously, then sits with a huff, stretching tired muscles above his head.

"Not bad, Byakuya-bō," Yoruichi grins as she squats beside him, haori billowing in the wake of her motion. "Fifty pull-ups already - my, you look promising."

"Don't underestimate me!" He grumbles, crossing his arms, though the motion cracks a whip of pain across his shoulders. "I could've done more if I wanted to."

"Then, why didn't you?"

"Because... because you told me fifty!"

And because all this is darn tiring. The Asauchi strapped to his back is threatening to slip from the sweaty bindings, and he wishes the session would end, so that he may return to sword training with the cat.

Yoruichi's eyes gleam. Byakuya has learned to be wary of that look, but instead of teasing him, she simply says,

"Good."

His eyes widen slightly, and a faint flush creeps across his face, so he looks away, muttering under his breath.

"A good soldier always obeys his superior's commands. That is the way of the Onmitsukidō. Disarray and disorganisation because of personal wants will lead to chaos. Always think for the whole team, and never for your own good."

Is he just imagining it, or when she says this, does he see the light glancing off a dampness in her eyes?

"Yeah... whatever... wait. So, you're training me to become a ninja? I thought I was going to become a Shinigami!" He turns back towards her, fists clenched and ready for... For, well whatever she was going to do next.

"Not entirely. All Shinigami must go through basic physical training, but as head of the Onmitsukidō, I will not settle for mere clumsiness in your movements. Being a Shinigami is like learning how to write calligraphy - if you do not master the individual strokes, how can your characters flow? How will you have force and power in your writing?"

Byakuya falls silent, so that only his breath rasps like the cicadas calling on the trees around them.

Yoruichi continues. "Your grandfather... As you're well aware, he did not wish for you to walk down this path. He would rather you stay your hand in the family business, learn how to conduct talks and tea-parties, how to make deals and trades, and have a shrewd mind, than allow you to protect where you should be protected."

"Yeah, I know," Byakuya grumbles. "And then get married and have kids. Like I want to. But anyway, isn't he a Shinigami? And wasn't my father a Shinigami as well? Why doesn't he want me to become a Shinigami?"

Yoruichi doesn't attempt to reply, so Byakuya concludes, "It's something to do with my father. I know it is. That's why I want to become a Shinigami. So I can be stronger, and access those files in that Great Library place and find out what exactly happened to him. That's all."

Again he finds himself met with silence, and in the few moments that ensue, his brain registers the absurdity of the situation.

"... And anyway, why am I telling you this? Jeez. You've got nothing to do with it, so keep your nose out of this and just hurry up and make me a Shinigami already, Shihōin demon!"

"That will take a while. After you have completed your training, your grandfather will hopefully see fit to allow his pride and joy to enter the Gotei 13."

"He will. I'll make him!"

"You sure have a lot of energy, young one. How about 500 more push-ups? You're to be able to climb that tree by the end of this week, you know."

"You're... you're kidding me, right? Right?"

She has drilled that into him since... and that is why he knows that even if he does not want to continue his mission, he must. Always think of the greater good - the greater good.

Night throws its silvery spotted lampshade over the sky, and Byakuya finds himself in his room, tersely awaiting the cat's arrival.

If this isn't all a dream, then surely it will come back for me.

His fingers sweep across the words printed on the pages of his book, his eyes straining to read the words in the candlelight, but truth be told, he isn't really concentrating on what he's reading. Every five seconds, his eyes flick to the window. Vines of anticipation are creeping across his heart, squeezing, and the added pressure makes it beat faster, and faster...

"If I didn't know better, boy, I'd say you were waiting for a lover."

Byakuya jumps. The cat is behind him, in a place it couldn't have gotten to without arousing his attention first. If he really hadn't known better, he would have sworn that it had knit itself together from the shadows littered in the corner of the room.

Or had it?

"Come, there's no time to dilly-dally. I trust you've been with your sword all day long?" Byakuya answers in the affirmative, and the cat nods. It is dark, but from what Byakuya can make out of the cat's expression, it seems to be satisfied.

"Well then, let us begin your training."

It is exhausting, swinging continuously at the huge rock with his Asauchi, and the movement drives blisters into the skin of his hands, but it is something he is more than willing to do. The cat has assured him that the sword will not tarnish from such a beating, and so Byakuya puts everything he has into each swing. He reaches up briefly, stopping his momentum to wipe sweat from his brow, and hefts the sword back up onto his shoulder.

The cat perches atop the rock, watching him intently as he grits his teeth and powers the blade into the rock again and again. From where his sword has made continuous contact, cracks have begun to spread across the arid surface; they criss-cross, weave into each other, dark spidery lines across the surface of the rock.

It is another half-hour before the black cat stops him. "You're now used to the heft of this sword, are you not?"

Byakuya nods, unsure of what the cat has planned out for him.

"Good. Your next task is to break this rock within the next five hours." The cat leads him away, to another smaller rock not far away, and then jumps on top of the rock, padding around in a circle, and then settling down, head on its paws as it watches him work.

Byakuya gets to work immediately. He hefts the sword onto his shoulder, then, muscles straining, brings it down to meet the rock. Steel clashes with stone, but there is no visible impact mark.

"Try harder," the cat yawns from atop the rock. "I didn't feel half a vibration from up here. Remember, five hours, brat."

Byakuya hides the scowl spreading across his face, and makes another swing.

Repetitions turn his hands into an angry red mass of blisters and fingers clenched so tight they are white, and sometime... sometime between now and then he's just lost any train of coherent thought. All he knows is that the sun is relentless, he hasn't drunk anything for the past three and a half hours except for the occasional bead of sweat trickling past his parched lips, and that he is... unsteady. No, swaying. But he has no time... has to... has to...

It is dawn, or just before, where the sky is a shade of fish-belly white and the clouds are beginning to take on the same colour just beyond the edge of the horizon.

Byakuya awakes with a start, eyelids flying open. Still groggy, he sits up...

...And immediately regrets it. Pain slices through his back, his shoulders, his thighs. Every part of him feels like he's been force-fed into a shredder, and he winces, a gasp escaping his throat. The Asauchi lies quiet and still next to him. He remembers, then, the realisation hitting him like an open-palm strike to the back of the head, stinging in his ears.

Dammit. I failed.

Training that morning loses its flavour, and most of Yoruichi's taunts have gone completely ignored. He hasn't even reacted to having to more than the number of push-ups he does usually, though Yoruichi can see the strain in his arms, and the way he bites his lip on every exertion, his breath coming out in fierce huffs that swirl into the dense morning air.

It's as if he's shut himself down.

But his eyes have continued to burn with a defiant flame, and he completes everything he's asked to do with little other signs of exhaustion. A smile spreads slowly across Yoruichi's face as she watches from beside him, arms crossed as she notes his progress.

Well, he's learning. It'll take time, if anything, but he's as persistent as Sōjun.

She finally allows him a break, passing him a canteen, which he takes suppressed, but grateful, sips from; then he tilts his head up in a way that is so stomach-lurchingly familiar, and grumbles, some of the original, disgruntled boy back in his furrowed brow, "Are we done now? I did everything you asked me to, and I'm hungry, Shihōin demon. Do you have lunch prepared, or are you too poor to afford it?"

She throws her head back in deep belly laughter at this feeble attempt at preserving dignity, and he scowls.

Lunch is a simple affair, shared under the canopy of a tree, away from the hot sun. Byakuya devours his lunch, hunger an amnesiac to all the table manners he's ever learned.

He takes some time after lunch to wander the expansive gardens of the Shihōin compounds, and he is once again in his element, bending to inspect flowers blooming in their beds like a commander would assess his troops. The wind is blowing in his face, and curves the flowers at their waists, the petals trembling with exquisite loveliness, as virgin court maidens do. He passes a hall where the strains of music float past his ears from an open sliding door, watches the musicians inside display their skills with the flute and the samisen, and another where young men dressed in fine garb practise their calligraphy with decisive strokes, all things he has been taught to do ever since he learned to stand. A sudden and violent shudder at the emptiness of fine art comes over him, amplified by the pressure of the Asauchi along the length of his spine, and he turns away, wandering back on the paths that cut through the flowerbeds until he's back at the tree.

Yoruichi is waiting for him, hands on hips.

"Did you see anything interesting?"

He shakes his head, suddenly drained of the strength to add a good insult to the end of that statement. To his relief, she doesn't pursue it; instead leads him away from the buildings and into the forest. They commence the long trek of leafy green vegetation and soft damp soil underfoot until they have reached the towering behemoth of a tree in the middle of the forest. It still looks as intimidating as yesterday, and his attempts to climb it still futile, though less so, as he manages to get himself up onto the second layer of thick, outstretched branches before realising that he has no apparent way to get to the third. He's stuck for a while there, caught between admitting defeat for the day or remaining stuck on the tree, to be left alone in the rapidly approaching dark.

It's not something he fancies, and the weight of the Asauchi strapped to his back, cold against the sweat forming there, sends pangs of buzzing, dreadful anticipation into his stomach at the thought of his night training.

He clears his throat, awkwardly.

"Um... Shihōin demon?" His voice is crackly from disuse and a parched throat, and it takes him a few tries to sound the words.

"Yes?" She calls, from the ground below. He can hardly see her for the way her silhouette seems to melt into the patches of shadow below.

"Um... How do I..."

She waits, patiently.

"... How do I... get down?"