“Yes, yes. It is indeed me. No need to get your panties in a twist.” Urahara said, attitude flippant. Tessai looked over to the man with a glare, making him turn away from the gaze and sigh.

“I am sorry from attacking you, though I thought it best to push you so that I was able to draw out what you are capable of, without protracted testing.” Urahara said, his voice not apologetic at all, but Tessai looked mollified, so it was possible that Urahara was never sorry about anything.

“Your apology was terrible.” Suzumi spoke out, sporting a glare of her own. Urahara shrugged, his overcoat, a haori, rustled along with. Suzumi had explained Tessai and Urahara’s appearance to me earlier. They certainly stood out in Japan.

“Do you want training or not?” I gazed up at Urahara’s red ribbon, flicking side to side like a cat’s tail. I rolled my eyes.

“Sure.” I said, making sure he knew from tone alone, that I wasn’t glad about it. He sighed heavily but continued on.

“Alright then. Thanks for getting them to a point where they can use spiritual energy at all, even if subconsciously.” The taller man gave a nod that reflected in his ribbon, and walked away from us, leaving us alone with the hat and clogs guy.

“Now that you two both have unconscious access to your spiritual power, all we really have to do to grow that power is to put you under a lot of stress, a happy side effect of today and yesterday’s mishaps.” I gave the man a glare, but he didn’t seem to care.

“So, I have this magic now?” Suzumi chimed in, her not being any happier than I was, but the curiosity a more burning issue.

“Well, magic is an entirely different concept. It isn’t even called magic, mind you. Too western for the tastes of the very Eastern Soul Society.” Urahara waved a hand.

“‘Magic’ is called Kidō, using spiritual energy in a routine way, instead of freeform, but less structured options. Most aren’t extremely well learned in kidō because it takes a lot of effort and time to be able to properly perform it. I would recommend that you learn other avenues and basic kidō barriers before you bother dedicating yourself to it.” Urahara’s voice was rapid-fire, answering many questions before we had even gotten to answering them.

“What you currently have access to is pure spiritual energy, with no real way to channel it other than through your bodies or expelling it outside of your body and creating spiritual pressure as a by-product. That ‘attack’ that I used against you was simply spiritual pressure.” I grunted, remembering the term from the day before, but it had been a bit of a blur.

“So… what are you going to teach us?” I asked, eyebrow raised.

“Well, there are a few interesting things happening here. For one, we have what could be considered a base human with no real special attributes, albeit a slightly stronger soul, and an entirely unknown being, though presenting human, with a massively powerful soul. Though, said being lacks actual spiritual power reserves, interestingly. Something that will no doubt scale exponentially within the coming years.” Out of nowhere I felt a ripple around me, as I heard a clack of something wooden against the stone.

“Tessai has decided that both of you will be trained, and we have trained base humans before—though mostly soul sensitives—to great effect, but this entire process is changed by whatever it is that you are, Mister Carter,” the sound of the wooden sandals that the man wore rung out against the stone as he walked closer to the two of us.

“In just the past day alone, since Tessai first met Suzumi, and to when I was subduing her with my spiritual pressure, her soul has drastically strengthened by a not insignificant amount.” The man stopped only a metre or so away from me, and I felt a distinct circular object press into my chest. In that singular moment, I realised I was just as vulnerable as I had been when I laid on the floor, suffering under the man’s aura.

“What do you think that this tells us, Mister Carter?” I felt like a student that was stood up in front of a class, being forced to answer questions he didn’t know the answer to.

“I promote soul growth?” I answered, hesitatingly, the man poked my chest and let what had to be a wooden cane fall down, tapping the ground with its end.

“I told you that already. What it tells us, is that you are able to make base humans that are capable of wielding spiritual energy.” The man walked away from me, his sandals and cane clacking against the stone, moving closer to Suzumi.

“Why is that any different?” Suzumi asked after a moment of silence, playing into the man’s theatrics.

“Why, what a good question,” he replied, his voice a little too jovial, “it is different simply because humans, while not devoid of spiritual energy, are rarely capable of a significant soul sensitivity. Some are most definitely capable of interacting with spirits, controlling spiritual energy like yourself and have enhanced physical attributes and so forth. We call them high-spec humans, and those that we have trained before are considered as such.” There was a sudden whipping of cloth as the man turned, the crack of his cane against the stone ringing throughout the cavernous space.

“However! To have those around you improve their soul in such a way is extremely unusual. The last time there was anything that came even close, it was an object of such power that it created an enemy that we had to lock away under a truly astonishingly powerful set of seals, and they still grow stronger despite that fact.” A chill washed over me, a sudden realisation of just why the man was so quasi hostile towards me. In fact, it was starting to make me worry about all those who I had been around before… those that I may have accidentally gifted supernatural abilities with no knowledge of what they are and what they meant.

“So, you are worried that I will start raising the power of humans around me, granting them spiritual powers?” In that moment, the man’s eyes cut through the fog of my vision, his grey eyes piercing straight into me. I saw a harrowing preciseness in those glowing eyes, like a knife cutting to my very soul itself.

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“No, it isn’t you I worry about. I worry about who it is that gets their hands on you and decides to empower their army to attack everything I know and love.”

The words rung out like a clear bell in the space. The words were not angry or sad. They carried shockingly little emotion. The words were, however, fierce. I pondered for a moment, trying to absorb just how terrifying the outside world suddenly seemed.

“Am I destined to become a tool?” The man scoffed.

“Destiny? No. Anyone who truly believes in destiny will die to the sword of a man who has the willpower to break it. The reason you are alive right now is because I feel that you could potentially be able to protect yourself. I really don’t want to make a habit of letting powerful artifacts and beings go walkies, furthering another step towards an apocalyptic event.”

“So, when are we going to learn?” Suzumi spoke up, more curious than anything now. Urahara chuckled briefly.

“Well, funnily enough, I’m going to start by hitting you with my spiritual pressure, ramping up through the levels and hopefully coax your souls into figuring out how to protect itself.”

The pressure was immediate, but very light. I heard Suzumi gasp, as if she had been punched in the chest.

“Hey! I thought that we were done with this!” I shouted, incensed that the man would just do exactly the same thing that he did before.

“No, we aren’t done with this. We are, however, done with me crushing you for little gain. In this format of training, we are effectively training your soul and body to utilise spiritual energies to counteract my own spiritual pressure. For some this comes naturally, for others like us and most others you will meet, we need to train this ability.” The weight increased further on me, but Suzumi seemed to stay stable.

“Mister Carter, you are doing well, likely a benefit of your soul being the way it is. Though a strong soul will only get you so far before you need to find other ways to mitigate the hostile aura.” The weight continued to grow and grow, my mind slowly being consumed by the weight of it, trying desperately to hold myself upright as it bears down on my body with relentlessness.

“How do I–” I began, but the weight increased further, like I had been punched in the stomach, my body dropped to the floor, just barely staying on my knees.

“Paradoxically, if you are asking the question, you are doing it wrong. Can a fish explain to you how it breathes in water? It is something so inherently natural that an effort to explain it is only of any use after you have learned it.” The weight increased again, forcing my torso closer to the ground, my arms shaking with the invisible weight placed on my back.

Suzumi, however, didn’t make any noise whatsoever. There were the barest grunts of exertion coming from where she was, not five metres away from me.

“Good Suzumi. You are getting an idea of what it is you need to do. Regardless of if it is instinctual or not, you need to take hold of that feeling and hone it. Make it a core process as if you were breathing. If you cannot do this much, then there will come a time when someone only a smidgen as powerful as I will simply kill you by walking past you.” Fear hit me.

Suzumi’s life was that frail? A person could kill her by total happenstance? No, I couldn’t let that happen, not on my life. I gritted my teeth so hard that it hurt, my jaw groaning under the abuse. I began pushing back against the weight in defiance. I could feel it tremble ever so slightly, but it quickly reasserted itself with much more strength, my face now being pressed into the hard stone, my knees being compressed into by chest.

“Very good, Mister Carter, you somehow managed to bypass the entire point of this exercise and learn how do something else entirely. Using your spiritual pressure to battle someone else’s is the kind of contest you want to be sure that you can win. You cannot. Instead of using your muscles, use your brains.” I let out a strained growl, but quickly returned to trying to combat the seemingly relentless onslaught of weight increases.

Wait, combat? He had just told me that I couldn’t win. It was like trying to have a go at a tsunami. No, I needed a way to circumvent the crushing weight on my shoulders without directly combatting it. Physically combatting it was just as stupid as the spiritual alternative.

So, I did what I do best, and closed my eyes. In a single breath the world around me stilled, though still pressed under the same weight. A second breath allowed for my chest to expand further. Another breath, and another. Each a laboured reprisal of my own mind, freeing it from thinking about the situation, and simply letting my body act.

As I took in a breath, I felt power circulate within me, and with a breath out I felt that power slowly exude from my body. As I continued this breathing, the spiritual energy that was being slowly pushed out of me was creating a capsule of space around me. Using minimal amounts of my energy, I shaped the capsule around me to create a slipstream of sorts within the mire of crushing spiritual pressure. I slowly refined it, creating the barrier around me so that the pressure itself was almost cut, where the force of the pressure was sliced through like the hull of a jet cutting through the air that surrounds it, its aerodynamic shape allowing it to reach speeds greater than sound itself.

I could still feel the intense weight pressing down on me, but it was like a sudden skill that I now know that I always had, and that was ingrained within myself to a degree that I didn’t fully understand. However, with my brain disallowed from making any judgements, the sudden memory of a time when this skill was mastered flowed through me, the shape of the capsule around me changed significantly, far past the primitive conical shape I had been suffering with.

The change was rapid, the large capsule suddenly became vacuum fit to my body and as I felt each shift in the energy, the capsule that had become a second skin changed in texture. From a rough and untamed, hazy grouping of energy, it became a solid and incredibly slippery texture that interacted with the spiritual pressure and thankfully not my physical self.

The pressure suddenly disappeared from my back, the weight becoming almost nothing more than a pebble. I could feel the weight increase again, but this time it was different. I knew I had the protection to sustain it, but I also realised that the only way to break through the defences with this type of onslaught was to simply overpower it.

I began to stand up hesitantly at first, making sure each movement was a stable one, not risking Urahara increasing the weight and pushing me back into the ground. In only a few seconds I was standing once again. I moved over towards where I knew that Suzumi was, the pressure entirely disappearing once I passed into her area and felt around for her form. I managed to catch the top of her head, realising that she was sitting.

I sat down beside her and wormed my hand into hers, realising that she was effectively taking the same option as I chose to, and was meditating. I felt my energy touch hers and impart just a tiny fraction of its stability to her energy, intertwining for a moment, learning from each other in that crucial moment.

Like wildfire, the new structure that Suzumi’s energy had observed propagated, leaving her with a far sloppier version of my own structure. I glowed with a pride that was instinctual and also happened to wake up my mind from its brief hiatus.

As my mind returned, any pressure that was being forced down upon the two of us was suddenly entirely gone. I looked towards Urahara’s ribbon, that had its end tilted in such a way that reminded me of a curious puppy.

I heard Suzumi beside me gasp in relief, the stress fading from her body as her mind receded into unconsciousness in my arms. I held her gently, glowering up at Urahara. He didn’t speak for a long while, before I heard the distinct sound of fingers roughly combing through hair.

“Well, can’t say that I expected that one.”