It seemed that emotional moments were fated to be interrupted, a rush of air displacing behind us caused up to jump slightly and pull apart to face the source of the disturbance.

The regular form of Tessai was visible through my fog but there was another, far smaller shape alongside his large shadow. I squinted my eyes at the form, trying to get a better look at the person’s outline, but it was then that their ribbon popped into view. As of late, identifying people from their ribbon alone was becoming easier and easier, and as soon as I saw the stark white ribbon and immediate recognition came over me.

“Uyu?” I asked, somewhat dumbfounded. I felt Suzumi turn to look at me, questioningly.

“U-uhm, yes. Hello!” The small girl said, almost yelling, before bowing deeply towards us. I just gave Tessai a dumbstruck look.

“Yes, Uyu will be assisting in your training today.” The large man said, as if there were absolutely nothing wrong with this picture.

“What do you mean assisting!” Suzumi said, a note of outrage dwelling in her tone, ready to escalate.

“W-well, we’re going to fight! I brought my gloves!” The small girl slung a bag off her shoulder that hit the floor with a mighty sound like someone dropping a concrete. This seemed to go unnoticed by Suzumi who continued to question Tessai.

“She’s just a little girl! She can’t be more than ten, Tessai. I thought you were reasonable, but this is insane.”

While I agreed with everything Suzumi was saying, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Uyu. Even while Tessai was trying to give a half reasonable explanation for why we were going to fight a little kid, my eyes were fixed on the foggy form of the small girl as she pulled out two large gauntlets, smoothly fitting them over her hands. And then I felt it.

Slowly, the gauntlets filled with spiritual energy, little lines of white in my vision filled the gauntlets, like roots of a tree in soil. In only a few brief moments the gauntlets were a radiant white colour, before fading in its brightness and reducing to a dull glow.

I looked the silhouette of the small girl over, and her tiny form made the frankly impractically sized gauntlets look even more ridiculous.

But if you looked closely, even in the silhouette, the fingers of the gauntlets, which couldn’t possibly house her fingers because of how big the gauntlet was, were all moving independent and naturally.

“Uyu,” I asked gently, “did Kisuke make you those gauntlets?”

“Y-yes, they were for my eighth birthday!” She replied happily.

“Do you use them to fight against Hollows?” Suzumi’s argument with the stoic Tessai died down, turning to listen to the little girl.

“Of course!” She said confidently, placing the massive hands on her hips, “Daddy takes me out to beat up the silly Hollows. Though I don’t get to fight the big ones…” She trailed off sadly. I could only nod with a consoling smile on my face, trying not to show my surprise. A girl this young was capable of fighting against a Hollow? I hadn’t ever encountered one myself, but Kisuke and Tessai had made them seem very dangerous.

This meant one of two things. Either they were lying, and Hollows are much weaker than I was told, or this girl is far stronger than we’ve been giving her credit for.

“Suzumi,” I called, “I think we should fight her.”

“What you too?” She growled, scandalized, but I ignored her, walking towards the little girl and then bowed deeply.

“I’ll be in your care.” I said as politely as I could, hoping that if she was going to lay me out, she’d at least try to be gentle about it.

“O-of course!” She said, responding with a nervous bow.

And then the fight began.

Or, should I say, I got punched so hard that I could have sworn that it rang like a bell. The moment that Uyu had stood up from her bow I could tell that the battle had already commenced, her entire demeanour changing into one of decisive action.

As such, I had immediately put up my shielding. That, clearly, was a good call. The punch from the gauntleted fist was gargantuan. I had only experienced force like it a few times before at the hands of Kisuke, but he had never punched me, simply restrained me.

The blow to my shielding transferred directly into my body being blown back into an uncontrollable few seconds of airtime, the rushing wind surrounding me in a terrifying moment as I was spun in every which direction before I hit the ground in a clamour of limbs tangling together at odd angles.

“Grayson!” Suzumi called, befuddled but also worried. I can’t imagine what it would have looked like to her, as I spun through the air and landed on the rock ground around ten metres away.

“I’m fine!” I called and, strangely, I was. In fact, I felt virtually unharmed, despite the short moment of vertigo as I recalibrated, standing up to face the small girl who stood with her arm still outstretched from the blow she had dealt me.

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“Not going to go easy on me, then?” I joked, but I received no reply as the girl ran towards me, covering the space between us in a mere moment. I hastily put my arms up to block, planting my feet on the ground, giving myself as much stability as I could.

The rush towards me didn’t end with another forward punch, as I had so naively assumed, but an uppercut that blew straight through my guard and crashed into the shielding that was extended around my body my only a few millimetres. This sent me flying once again, but this time I at least managed to stop myself from spinning in circles and completely disorienting myself.

This time, as I fell back down from my trip towards the ceiling of the study room, I prepared myself. I couldn’t simply stay on the defensive, it clearly wasn’t working. I could definitely try to snatch her ribbon, like I had managed with Kisuke, but I was also falling towards the ground with only scant few moments to prepare.

So, instead of doing some overcomplicated special move, I simply focused and pushed my strength into my right arm and prepared myself to punch as hard as I could. I could feel more than the usual muscle strength coming to aid me, but also a considerable chuck of my own spiritual energy as well.

I just hoped that this amount wasn’t way too much.

I prepared myself as I fell the last metre and whipped out my arm towards the small girl, trusting that she could block this amount of power. However, what I wasn’t expecting was her to respond in kind, the vague silhouette of her form blurring for a moment as her large, gauntleted hand surged forwards, meeting my fist dead on.

The sound was enormous, like a flashback had gone off right next to my ear. The pain of the sonic blast was hardly the first think on my mind, as I had once again been blasted back through the air. This time, the speed at which I’d been flung back was much greater than either of the other two times, and it ironically gave me more time to think before I inevitably hit the ground and got turned to paste.

The answer was obvious enough, as I flipped myself backwards and jammed my feet into the ground, ramping up the shielding and strengthening to my feet and legs. For a moment I felt like I was ice skating, the speed that I was moving at making it hard to get any grip on the ground at all. However, with a bit of persistence, I managed to dig in with the toes of my shoe enough that I slowly began to slow down.

My legs quaked against the force of my momentum, but surprisingly managed to hold up. The momentum slowed down from a blistering speed to only a few kilometres an hour over the next second or so, until it finally stopped leaving me standing in a ditch of rock and displaced dirt.

The exertion from just the last few seconds of fighting was more than I’d ever put into anything in my life. My mind was still racing, wired on adrenalin and heart pumping so fast that it felt like a marching drum to my sore ears.

It was when I saw Uyu’s form cresting the ditch that I had formed, running at a similar speed that had led to the first blow, I just sighed, the adrenalin fading and leaving soreness and exhaustion.

As the terrifyingly strong little girl approached me, in my half-addled mind I simply reached out and snatched her white ribbon from her without a moment of resistance. Immediately I saw the gauntlets, that had been glowing dully through the fight almost instantly go dark, sucking a lot of the power out of the punch that was headed directly for my stomach.

As the punch drew closer, the power that I had snatched with my hand sang with the need to be used, and I simply acquiesced. I lowered my hand that I had snatched her ribbon with towards her gauntleted hand, grabbing it and pushing it away from my gut and off to the side of my body and letting it go.

I was expecting the girl to stumble, maybe fall over at most. What I wasn’t expecting was for her arm to swing wide uncontrollably, away from my body, and pulling the rest of her body with it, slamming her into the dirt pile in the ditch next to us, compacting it under the force, and leaving her laying up against a wall of compacted dirt I had launched her into.

I heard the wind be pushed from her chest, but she began to struggle to stand up, ignoring her breathlessness.

“Hey, hey, time out.” I called, making a ‘T’ with my two hands, breathless and exhausted myself. “I think that might have been enough for one bout, right?” The young girl continued to struggle up. I couldn’t see any facial expressions, but I could tell from her ribbon alone that she hadn’t stopped the fight.

“Uyu, I give up!” I said frantically as she trudged towards me again, getting ready to throw a punch again with her unpowered gauntlets. But, before she could reach me, a dark shadow crossed over my vision, and with a thump Tessai stood before me, blocking my view of Uyu.

“Miss Hanakari, the battle is over.” He said gently, almost like soothing a babe. It was quiet for a second before a nervous voice made itself known.

“U-um, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to lose control like that!” The little girl said, a swift change from the unstoppable battle machine she’d been not moments earlier.

“That’s quite alright, Miss Hanakari.” Tessai said, accepting her apology with grace. I then saw the little girl’s ribbon turn itself towards me. It took me a moment to realise that I was meant to speak as well.

“Oh! Yeah, you’re fine. I don’t think I’m seriously hurt or anything.” I said, just before another form showed up, standing up on the side of the ditch I had been punched into.

“Grayson! Are you alright? Are you hurt? What happened—” I waved my hand towards Suzumi with a smile.

“Suzumi, I’m fine.” I received a look of disbelief form her ribbon, which only made me roll my eyes. “Do I look hurt to you?” I said as I opened my arms up for viewing. After a moment, Suzumi grunted in defeat and let up with it.

“Actually, it was kind of fun in a way. Like a rollercoaster.” Suzumi, Uyu and Tessai all looked at me, ribbons showing distinct note of disbelief. “What? I didn’t get hurt and I spent more time in the air than I did touching the ground the entire fight. It was great!”

The first to laugh was Tessai who, despite his usual polite chuckle, have a deep belly laugh, which spurred the other two to start giggling. Suzumi was soon wiping tears from her eyes, and Uyu who seemed to be desperately trying to hide her giggles and stop laughing all together. I couldn’t help but let my face be split by a wide grin.

“How—” Suzumi continued hysterically laughing trying to pull herself together to say a few words, “How did you find being a human punching bag for a little girl fun?”

“Hey, I got some good ones in there!” I said indignantly, which only made Suzumi howl with laugher harder, eventually forcing her to kneel against her light headedness.

“H-he did! He stole my spiritual energy somehow.” Uyu said, coming to my defence, obviously only adding to the hysterics for Suzumi.

“Oh? You managed to do that move in the middle of the fight?” I nodded and he turned towards Uyu, “Could you have resisted it at all?” The back-to-business conversation managed to sober up Suzumi from her hysterics and she made her way over to me and hugged my arm, giggling uncontrollably every now and then.

“N-no, I don’t think so. It was very strong, like when Mommy beats Daddy in arm wrestling!” I could feel a slight smirk make its way onto Tessai’s face for a fraction of a second before he managed to quash it.

“Well, your goal now is to try to fight against that technique from now on.” Uyu nodded quickly and Tessai turned to Suzumi.

“It’s your turn now, Miss Hamase!”