Gateway 46

There wasn’t much more to do aside from just entertaining Kie during my stay at the 80th.

I simply did not care about what else was going on in the district. Who was dying and who was killing was meaningless. I had made my choice, and I planned on following through with it.

Although I didn’t expect the kid to be so good.

Kie was brilliant for her age, so much so that she mastered any game I taught her almost instantly. I gave up on that particular avenue when she started to outplay me at poker.

But that’s where things got interesting. Instead of games, I decided to start her on some basic exercises to strengthen her spiritual pressure, sharpen her spiritual sense, and learn to control her spiritual power.

What I didn’t expect was for her to take to it like a fish to water, mastering exercises just as quickly as she learnt them. It was almost as if she had been waiting her entire life for the opportunity, and her soul was completely ready to make the most out of it.

And she did, as far as she could, of course. She was still a kid at the end of the day.

So her ability to detect spiritual pressure was limited to either those close by or those strong enough that it’d be impossible to ignore. She internalized her power use well enough that she could slightly push my pinky when I wasn’t paying too much attention. And her spiritual pressure was strong enough that a small rodent might think twice before getting in her way.

As I said, she was still a kid, so baby steps.

___

We were having an early lunch (pasta with my father’s sauce, I knew it’d be a good idea to keep a few liters of it frozen in my expanded storage) when her head snapped up, looking at the wall behind me, eyes unfocused while she sensed what lay beyond it.

I held back a laugh. I knew her range was small, but I hadn’t been able to measure how much until then. It was tiny, and she was only sensing our visitor because they were broadcasting themselves. I pulsed my spiritual pressure once while standing up, and by the time I opened the door, she was already there, hand raised to knock.

Her gray eyes widened in surprise even as I rolled mine at her embarrassed expression.

“Isane,” I smiled, “What brings you to my cozy little home?”

She tried, and failed, to contain a snort before looking at me with a deadpan expression.

“Captain Unohana heard that Captain Zaraki sent you here to ‘learn what it’s like in the real world’ and decided it was a great idea and that I should go too,” she groaned.

I cocked my head to the side, letting her words run through my mind for a moment.

“What do they think goes on in here?” I wondered. Sure, there was violence at every corner and no end to other depravities going on, but I saw no reason to involve myself in any of it.

“No idea,” she shrugged. “And what’s this place? It’s better than any other shack I’ve seen while coming in.”

She took a step back to look at the entrance. It had a small porch with a window covered in curtains to one side, and little candleholders stuck out of the walls at regular intervals so that I could light up the place once night fell.

Apart from those details, everything was basic. The walls were smooth gray stone, the floor was smooth gray stone, and the roof was smooth gray stone.

Honestly, having Isane inspect my work made me feel self-conscious at how uninspired it was. With my magic, I could have at least made it look good, but instead, I went with the drabbest design I could.

“That’s just something I threw together in a hurry,” I said with an awkward laugh.

“Threw together in a hurry?” She muttered, looking at me in confusion for a moment, before whipping her head to look at the house in shock. “Is your magic that versatile?”

“Isane,” I sighed. “This is basic. A tent back home has better accommodations.”

She looked back at me, fire in her eyes and resolution in her face.

“Teach me,” She said. It wasn’t a request.

“Sure,” I smirked, moving to the door and waving her inside.

Isane had barely set foot inside the house when she, thanks to decades of training, instinctively leaned her head to the side to dodge the incoming knife aimed at her eye.

She was still shocked by the initial assault when she slapped away the tiny hand trying to stab her in the throat with a fork.

Kie didn’t let up, taking the knife off the ground and attacking with a viciousness and precision that belied her age.

Of course, even beyond being older, Isane was a Lieutenant. So once her surprise had passed, she calmly weaved her way around Kie’s attacks while shooting me confused looks.

But I wasn’t paying attention to her. I was looking at Kie, the little girl who, just a few moments before, looked and acted like a normal kid, who now seemed like an assassin who had trained her entire life for this moment.

The hint that something deeper was going on was in her eyes. Where once I saw fear, confusion, excitement, and resolution, now it was devoid of all life, just a robotic focus on the next action.

I raised my hand, intent on casting a Sleeping charm on her when, with a soft mutter that made her hand glow a light pastel green, Isane put her glowing hand on Kie’s head, which prompted her to drop as if her strings had been cut. And maybe they had.

Isane caught her before she hit the ground, slowly lowering her before looking at me in confusion.

“Alex, what just happened? And who is she?” She questioned, muttering another incantation and holding her forest green glowing hand over Kie’s head, the diagnostic Kaido.

“Her name’s Kie,” I said softly as I knelt beside Isane. “I rescued her yesterday from a gang who were going to ‘teach her a lesson’ for stealing.” I pulled out my wand to cast some of my own diagnostic spells. “As for what happened, I don’t know. I taught her some of the basic spiritual training exercises, and she picked them up pretty quickly, but this was something else entirely.”

Isane nodded as she kept checking Kie, the glow in her hand slowly changing colors as she looked for the reason for the girl’s attack.

My own search yielded no results. The possible causes were too broad, and my spell repertoire, too specific. Not to mention how the all-purpose diagnostic spell might not even pick up spirit-based magic.

I huffled and got up, giving Isane space to do her job as I started pacing the room.

It didn’t make any sense. As a prodigy or even a genius, Kie didn’t have the training to be able to attack Isane at that level. If she had, Kie wouldn’t have had any problems dispatching the mooks who took her and going about her day.

So why did she do it? I quickly discarded the idea that she might have been hiding her strength. There was no reason for her to do so, especially when she dropped the act to attack Isane of all people.

Isane. Why her? It wasn’t power, or she’d have attacked me, and it wasn’t perceived threat, or she’d have attacked the men who took her.

I was still trying to figure out why attack Isane in particular when she drew my attention with a gasp of “Got it!”

“What did you find?” I asked, noticing her furrowed brows and gritted teeth.

“It’s faint and very subtle, but there’s a secondary spiritual power inside of her,” she said, glaring at a spot just over Kie’s head.

“And what does that mean?” I asked cautiously.

“It means,” she forced out, “That she’s being controlled,” she snarled.

“And I know what it is,” she finished, looking at me with murder in her eyes.

___

“It started when I was still in the Academy,” she said as we stepped out of the door.

I turned around and started transfiguring all possible entrances into stone, with a few small air vents here and there. Kie was left inside, in a coma induced by Isane, since, according to her, the foreign spiritual power was too deep for her to be able to securely remove it.

“Villages in the 30s started going dark. Any Shinigami sent to investigate found the place deserted,” she continued as I worked. “It was a slow process. Only two villages had been hit before I graduated,” she looked out at the afternoon sun. “The first Shinigami casualty happened around 20 years after the first case. She was like a sister to me, we joined the Academy together and we had known each other for decades. And she just disappeared with the village. No traces remained.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“After that, the frequency of attacks started slowing down, until a Captain finally found it,” she muttered, bitterness creeping up in her voice. “He was one of the most competent at the time, but old. And what he found…” She shivered, glancing at the spot where we left Kie lying down.

I finished forifying the house and turned to her.

“That bad?” I asked.

“Worse,” she looked at me. “It’s a Hollow without a proper body. It takes over a host and uses it to infect those surrounding it, using any developing spiritual power from the infected as a source of power.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“A soul gets stronger through adversity, having their spiritual power suppressed in such a way makes the infected grow stronger,” she said, before giving me a bittersweet smile. “The good news is that we’re almost certain it has a limit in how much individual power it can suppress, otherwise it wouldn’t need to change locations so much.”

“And the bad news?” I sighed.

“The bad news is that Kie’s jump in skill is a defense mechanism from the Hollow,” she pursed her lips. “The infection runs deep, and the Captain who fought it before said that the infected he had to fight on his way to the Hollow had skill and power beyond what you’d expect from even a rookie Shinigami. My own theory is that the Hollow learned to be on the lookout for anyone wearing a shihakusho, and that’s why Kie attacked me the way she did.”

“So our best bet is to try and go unnoticed until it’s too late,” I nodded, pointing my wand at Isane and quickly tranfiguring her clothes.

“Wait! Whaa-?” She stumbled, looking at the icy blue martial arts gi she was now wearing. “Whoa, your magic is versatile.”

“You didn’t bother reading any of the books I left beyond the ones on healing, did you?” I deadpanned.

“Hehe,” she sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. “That was already too complicated, so I haven’t gone past it.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s because you skipped the basics and went straight to the most advanced material. If you hadn’t, you’d know that my magic’s healing revolves around undoing other magical effects, so you need to already be well acquainted with those to properly know how to reverse them.”

She made to respond when I cut her off.

“It doesn’t matter now, we can fix the gap in your knowledge when we return,” I turned to look at the village. “We have more pressing matters to deal with.”

She nodded, letting the moment of levity pass before saying softly.

“Alex, I have a request to make.”

I turned my eyes back to her. She was biting her lip and looking down in indecision. Then, letting out a slow breath, she looked at me, steel in her eyes.

“I’m the one who kills the Hollow,” she stated.

I made to question but stopped myself, understanding why she’d make such a request.

“It still has her, doesn’t it?” I whispered.

The steel in her eyes strengthened, even as a small tear fell from one of them.

“Yes, it does,” her voice was faint, but the meaning was clear.

She’d be the one to free her friend.

___

A/N: And that’s that.

One thing I always liked about Bleach is how, if you strip the thin veneer of shonen, it is just a terror universe. And the deeper you go in the lore, the worse it gets, with the No Breaths From Hell one-shot making even the shonen parts terrifying.

As always, thank you all for the support! And see you next week!

P.S.: Happy Brazilian Valentine’s Day!