After my first bout with Uyu, Suzumi had her turn.

She fared not so well against the young girl. Obviously, I couldn’t see much of anything, but Tessai was kind enough to give a running play-by-play of the fight. Suzumi, it seemed, was much better at staying on the ground than I was, not getting juggled by the small girl’s gauntleted punches.

If how Tessai described it was even remotely close to the truth, then Suzumi was impressive in her own right. Though she wasn’t able to shut down Uyu like I had been capable of, or really fight her equally at all, but the shielding that she had slowly inherited from me over time allowed her to block most of the damage only sustaining minor cuts to her arms and face. Though it seems like she figured out how to use her spiritual energy to root herself in place for the most part.

That was the big difference between Suzumi and I, when it came to spiritual energy.

Sure, I had the fancy pants powers that dumbfounded Kisuke and Tessai, potentially making me a threat to all of the spiritual realms, but Suzumi had a weapon that I certainly wasn’t as good in.

Suzumi had a natural inventiveness in using her spiritual energy that surpassed anything I could muster so far. Tessai didn’t comment on it directly, but I could tell that he was impressed by it as well. She had never trained to root herself to the ground before this fight. It had either been total instinct, or she had invented her own method from the ground up as soon as she needed it.

Both of those options were mind blowing to me. I had the easier time in actually utilizing spiritual energy, for whatever ancestral reason, but Suzumi seemed to iterate on her own technique, blazing past what she had been taught by either Kisuke or I.

The fight ultimately ended with Uyu managing to pummel Suzumi’s shielding to breaking point, which was when Tessai stepped in and called the match. I excitedly approached my, tentatively titled, girlfriend, helping her up from her spot in a ditch that Uyu had managed to pummel her down in.

“Wow! You were amazing, Suzumi. You even managed to root yourself in place with spiritual energy.” I gushed. Suzumi just laughed at me.

“Oh, shush flatterer. I didn’t even win against her.” She said disappointedly, brushing the dirt and dust off of her clothes.

“I don’t know that we were really supposed to win, Suzumi. Uyu is one scary girl. I doubt that I’ll win the next bout against her.” I said, flashing a reassuring smile. Suzumi seemed to grudgingly accept, and I started to get ready for my second bout.

Getting ready consisted of me trying to puzzle through Suzumi’s technique that allowed her to root herself to the ground. I tried infusing my spiritual energy into the ground, like you’d classically think of roots. However, the tendrils of spiritual energy just dissipated into the rocky surface beneath my feet with seemingly no effect.

Though, things changed when I reimagined it as if I were wearing shoes with hooks attached to them, like cleats for soccer. As soon as I used that imagery, the spiritual energy formed more solidly. I don’t think that the energy had solidified into an actual hook attached to my shoe, but it certainly felt like it. There was no added weight, but when I decided I wanted my foot stuck to the ground, it really stuck.

Obviously, I spent some time performing gravity bending tricks, like bending backwards far past tipping point and pulling myself back upright.

After that, the fight started and I got absolutely clobbered to no tomorrow.

Uyu was strong and fast and, if she wanted to be, absolutely ruthless. My only saving grace was my shielding being nigh impervious to anything that Uyu could throw at me. I’m sure that she had things she could do that would break through my shielding, it wasn’t that amazing, but those same attacks would also probably vaporize me.

However, even as I was being clobbered, desperately trying to keep up with the insanely fast and powerful ten-year-old, I realized something.

I was having fun.

I had been limited my entire life by my eyesight, physical activity had never been an option in my brain, left at the absolute bottom of my list of what I could imagine I’d be capable of. But here I was, fighting a superpowered young girl, sensing her positioning almost entirely based on tracking her ribbon and interpreting what she was doing from her silhouette. Though I was starting to find myself unable to keep up with just that.

It also helped that all this fighting made me realise how physically powerful I’d become with just learning how to utilize spiritual energy, even to a minor degree.

“It seems that you figured out Miss Hamase’s tricks. Managing to keep yourself rooted against Uyu’s attacks.” Tessai said from beside me, helping me up from yet another ditch that Uyu had dug with my body.

“Well, you could say that I had good incentive. I didn’t really want to be knocked around like a human basketball.” That got a chuckle out of the burly store attendant.

“I have to ask.” Tessai began, “How, exactly, are you managing to keep up with Uyu. Are you able to use spiritual senses?” I scrunched my eyebrows at the men.

“Spiritual senses? No, I just use her silhouette and her ribbon to keep track of her.” Now it was Tessai’s turn to be confused.

“I can understand that you are capable of seeing spirit ribbons to a freighting degree of accuracy, certainly enough to locate someone quickly and effectively, unlike the typical longer-range tracking use for spirit ribbons. However, I was under the assumption that you were entirely blind and were using spiritual sense to determine exact locations and movements.” I turned to the man, somewhat dumbfounded.

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“Wait, this spiritual sense. Are you saying it can reproduce eyesight?” Tessai’s ribbon shook its end.

“No, it far more like echolocation than anything else. I only know of one or two users of the technique, as there aren’t many that would even require to learn the technique in Soul Society.”

“Can… would I be able to learn to use it?” I asked tentatively. Vision, even if only limited to an echolocation derivative, would be a massive step up from what I can currently see. Being trapped in a decidedly grey and largely colourless world of shifting fog wasn’t something that I enjoyed. I can still barely remember small things, paintings and pictures I saw more than a decade ago, jealously guarded in my memories.

If I can regain even a small bit of that through spiritual sense, even just to see someone else’s face, I’d be more than happy.

“I am not sure, Mister Carter. I myself haven’t ever bothered to dabble in the art myself. Though I suppose that I do have experience with it. I, at one point or another, have taught kidō to one or two that were capable of using it.” Excitement rose in my chest quicker than ever before.

“However, I do warn you, Mister Carter, that developing and using spiritual sense is an incredibly difficult feat. It is usually born of many decades worth of dedicated study. It would be remiss of me to not mention that those that I have encountered who were capable of using spiritual sense, were some of the most powerful people to live within Soul Society. Some of which became Soul Society’s enemies.”

And there went the excitement, replaced with a sullen disappointment.

“So not really?” Tessai nodded.

“Not really.” Tessai said thoughtfully, rubbing at his chin, “However, you have also displayed that you are easily capable of sensing the spiritual ribbons to a degree of which I am not sure many could possibly reach, even if they had the power to do so.

“There aren’t many like you, Grayson Carter. The only other person I have met that was as much of an anomaly as you has subsequently become one of, if not the most powerful people of all spiritual realms. I would recommend that you take any ‘impossibility’ with a grain of salt and try it yourself first.” I could feel the warm smile on Tessai’s face without even needing to see it. What else could I do but nod?

From then on, Suzumi and I took turns fighting Uyu. In between my bouts, Tessai tried to explain spiritual sensing to me. It became evident that it was a complex topic, especially when discussed as analytically as Tessai was capable of, but the short of it was using spiritual pressure to ‘feel’, determining the shape of something and interpreting.

It could be seen as a complex form of echolocation, except the spiritual pressure didn’t necessarily need to return to you to allow you to sense something. Spiritual pressure was just the force that resulted from your spiritual energy from being released, though it seemed like you could release your spiritual energy and have it follow you around like a blob, subsuming anything that surrounded you and enacting itself on them.

It was a complex topic, and the more that Tessai expanded on the nature of spiritual energy and spiritual pressure, even lightly touching on kidō, the more it overwhelmed me.

I managed to pick up one good first step, however. I needed to properly master spiritual pressure, at least to the point where I can have it surround me like a cloak, from there I can figure out something to actually sense things with that spiritual pressure.

The alternating battles with Uyu and training to properly release my spiritual energy was draining to say the least, leaving me utterly exhausted. But somehow never truly crashing and falling into a heap. I don’t know if that’s thanks to the spiritual energy or the sudden motivation to improve that I’ve found.

Releasing my spiritual energy properly was hard. Using it within my body, or for simple tasks like the rooting technique was simple enough, and I was able to get the hang of them relatively quickly, but truly moving the energy outside of my body and into the atmosphere around me was way harder.

The only parallel that I had was the shielding technique that popped into my head out of nowhere, but that followed a strict structure that seemed as second nature to me as anything, so it may as well have been the same as the rooting technique for me, even if it technically was formed of spiritual energy outside of my own body.

So, I went back to absolute basics. I tried to release spiritual energy around my finger alone. Trying to wrap it with the energy like a bubble of water.

It took hours of trying to get it to work, even a little bit. I didn’t even know what it did, though it certainly did feel like my finger was clamped in something heavy. For some reason that weight didn’t bother or affect me. In fact, it made me feel heavier instead.

In that next fight there didn’t seem to be any different because of it, not that I could keep it surrounding my finger for very long, after being clobbered by Uyu. Though this time I managed to steal her ribbon twice, but still got my ass handed to me.

Afterwards, I worked on getting a second finger covered, then a third. It slowly became easier to manipulate, but it was really hard to maintain. The releasing part was easy, but maintaining it was difficult, especially with what I was doing. I think–massive emphasis on think there–that I am condensing the released spiritual energy around my fingers, and the spiritual pressure that emanates from it is surrounding that. It’s very confusing, and I tried to have Tessai explain to me a few times, but I think the man is used to teaching someone who already understands the basic, if not higher concepts of spiritual stuff.

I wasn’t all that sure what I had actually created, honestly. Was it just a rudimentary version of shielding that sat underneath my better, more advanced shielding?

I continued to work on it either way, and it started to get harder to maintain multiple fingers at once when I reached all five fingers, but I was able to manage it. The task from there was to cover the entire hand, which was an interesting task. It took two more bouts between me and Uyu to manage it, but when I did I felt accomplishment like never had before. I sat there and just felt the heaviness and solidity of my hand.

It was like my hand was encased in concrete, or maybe metal even. I could feel the peculiar weight that it now had, as if moving my hand was moving an object hundreds of times heavier, but with no extra effort that normal.

“Grayson! It’s your turn.” Suzumi called out.

“Y-you did great Miss Hamase!” Uyu said to Suzumi nervously. Turns out that those two got on like a house on fire. It was like a big sister, little sister dynamic. Cute to see.

I got up from my spot on the rocky floor and walked over towards Uyu’s ribbon. The little girl had been fighting with only a few breaks the whole time, and she still seemed like she was going strong. She was clearly more experienced than us and probably capable of fighting for much longer too.

“Hey Uyu, I’ve been trying to do stuff with my spiritual energy, do you mind if I use it on you to see what it does?” There was a moment of hesitation from the small girl.

“U-um, sure! I don’t see why not…” She said, somehow both encouraging and cautious. I nodded and the fight began in earnest.

I focused on maintaining the glove of spiritual energy as the small girl rocketed towards me like a speeding car, arm wound back ready for a punch. I focused on her and then, just at the right moment, punched forwards with as much force as I could muster with my gloved hand.

My spiritually gloved hand connected with hers, and a loud boom followed. I desperately pumped energy into my feet to stop me for flying away myself, and only marginally succeeding. But when the dust settled and I could focus on something other than not being blown away, I looked up to see Uyu’s ribbon very far away and another ribbon I hadn’t ever seen before.

A very powerful, stark white ribbon.

“Who tried to kill my daughter?” A voice boomed out from far away, but still managed to exude enough force to make the ground shudder beneath my feet.