Joseibi yawned as she stumbled out of the village behind her ridiculously energetic elder sister. It was like this every morning since Joseibi had announced that she would be attending the Konoha Ninja Academy, assuming they let her.
Well, they had let her, and she had given her promise to Konoha, which meant that Ryoko couldn't take Joseibi to search for their family. And that meant that Ryoko wouldn't leave.
And if Ryoko was away from their parents, she was safe.
But it did mean that Ryoko had insisted on certain things.
"Oneechan!" she said wearily. "Why do we have to get up so early ever day."
"Please, Imouto-chan," Ryoko said, hesitantly. "If...if...you are going to be a...a shinobi, there will be...danger."
"That's what the training at the academy is for, Ryoko," Joseibi noted. "Why do I have to get up before dawn everyday?"
"We're here," Ryoko said, looking back. "Ano...imouto-chan...you left footprints."
Joseibi looked back over her shoulders and noted the slight indentations in the dirt Ryoko was politely talking about.
"Yeah, yeah," Joseibi said. "No one's following us out here."
Ryoko frowned but said nothing else as she turned to face her younger sister, starting to set her bokken and white cloth aside for the moment.
****
Jiraiya sat and tried to listen to Misao-sensei, but lectures weren't what he was interested in. Even lectures on proper use of ninjutsu.
He'd rather be learning some kenjutsu, now that would be useful for beating his way to the guy that kidnapped him and finding the memories that were taken from him.
He'd much rather be trying to find the guy that Kenshin had rescued him from, or learning how to fight from Kenshin. So far, he hadn't been any more successful at drawing techniques from the older, scarred man than Yahiko had admited to being.
"Are you listening, Jiraiya?" Misao demanded, suddenly right in his face.
"Hmm," Jiraiya asked.
The response was the woman grabbing the front of his gi and rolling back to toss the boy into the pool behind her. She watched with satisfaction as he hit the water and promptly sank under it.
"I guess you weren't listening to what I said about Chakra Control, were you?" she asked loudly, smirking as Jiraiya sputtered up out of the thigh-deep pool.
"Oh come on, Weasel-lady," Jiraiya complained as he struggled out of the pool. "Teach me something useful, who cares about walking on water."
"Weasel-lady?" Misao shrieked as she stalked forward, finger stretching forward. "Listen brat, we already know you've been trained in the basics of ninjutsu, so when we find your home, they're probably going to be ninja. That means if you focus and work on the jutsu, you might just trigger some memories."
She caught her breath and stood up straight, crossing her arms.
"And you can tell that fox-lady that told you that name to stick to being a doctor and stop trying to lead astray innocent kids," Misao insisted before walking away, nose high.
A girl about his age came in from the Onwiban house and bowed as the clan-leader passed by before giving an amused smile to Jiraiya.
"You've just stuck yourself into the greatest war of all times," the young girl said, smiling.
"Ashiko," Jiraiya said stepping out of the pool and shaking himself dry. "Why is your mom so..." he left the phrase hanging.
"Mom has always been energetic and tempermental," Ashiko said, smiling. "Father might be able to teach you better when he gets back, but we're only a small clan with few powerful jutsus. We mostly use taijutsu ourselves, or variations of samurai kenjutsu."
"Yeah, okay," Jiraiya said. "So when do we get to learning about sneaking into places to get information and such. I spent a week learning to walk up walls, but what for? How does that help me find my home and family."
"Probably more than learning just to fight will," Ashiko noted with another infuriatingly amused smile.
****
Kenji watched as his opponent fell to the ground and gathered in his breath.
He was getting stronger with every fight, win or lose. As he saw the manager of the small tournament adjust his ranking, a small thrill of pride worked through him.
Still, however, he remembered his duty and he kept his eyes open around him.
He'd been slowly gathering information on Shadoloo's operatives in the Shura-Shiai, and passing it along to Saitoh quietly.
Kenji knew that he'd managed to have an impact in a small way on the criminal empire's operations, but he'd like to have more. In addition, Shadoloo wasn't his only concern either.
He was training and building strength to find and face Akuma.
What he'd heard first didn't match what he'd seen.
Akuma supposedly sought out challenges to his strength, but hadn't lowered himself to fighting a weaker opponent like he had with Tian-Mei.
Whatever the man's reason, he was someone that had to go down. He definitely agreed with old-man Saitoh on that point.
Evil had to be destroyed.
****
Tian-Mei quietly stepped out of the Seireitei dojo and tipped toed her way through the courtyard, heading as quietly as she could for Division 13 and the scrolls that detailed how to get back to the living world.
Her student's garb made her stand out and she would have to move extra quietly to compensate for that.
Then, after she had that information, all she needed was a gigai and she'd be back home.
"Ahhh, Tian-Mei-chan," a voice spoke casually, causing the martial artist to freeze and grip her zanpakto tightly. "I was just thinking about you."
Twitching as she turned around to look at the small woman standing behind her in the black robes of a full-certified soul-reaper.
"Ah, hi, Rukia-sensei," she said, sweating.
"'Hi, Rukia-sensai,'" the small woman parroted back. "'I'm just sneaking around here, nothing too important going on. Please ignore me and go back to what you were doing.' You know the graduation ceremony is tomorrow, don't you?"
"All I want to do is just speak to my parents once," Tian-Mei said. "Let them know I'm fine and all of that. Where's the harm. You send messages to your daughter all the time."
As the drawing pad came out, the student reaper flinched. What followed was a childish if generically accurate depiction of the situation. Little rabbits and bears were dancing and playing in different playgrounds marked Living World and Soul Sciety.
Here and there was a rabbit among bears or a bear among rabbits, mostly walking through doors in cartoonish wall between the two playgrounds.
"As you know from class the Seireitei exists to keep the living world and the soul-society in balance," Rukia explained. "Now, in the nature of things, souls flow from one to the other in the form of death, birth and reincarnation. Rarely, a living soul moves to the Soul Society for an extended period of time, and just as rarely, one of us moves to the Living World for an extended time."
The page flipped and now the rabbits and bears were mixxing willy nilly with each other and punching holes in the walls.
"Now, if it's rare it can be handled, but otherwise, the walls seperating the worlds get weakened," Rukia said. "And eventually..."
The page flipped again and all the bears and rabbits were swirling away through chaos with their eyes showing them to be dizzy.
"Everything falls apart and we're lost in the sea of existence," Rukia said. "Both worlds fall apart and everybody is annihilated."
"Yeah, but...I'm not everyone," Tian-Mei protested. "And you still haven't...why am I inviting more explanation from the sketch book of doom...explained why it's okay for you to send messages to your daughter on the mortal world."
Tian-Mei blinked as she found herself sporting a marker mustache, she'd never even seen the woman move.
"It's okay," Rukia said. "Because Miyako is a medium and already introduced to soul repear life. The soul-reapers that delivery our messages would be there anyway, and no extra strain is placed on the boundaries between our worlds."
"You," and here Rukia tapped Tian-Mei's forehead forcefully, "will need a gigai, which means being seen, which means stirring up trouble that we don't need."
Tian-Mei slumped as she wiped the ink off of her face and sighed.
"Now," Rukia said. "I need you to come with me."
"Yes, sensei," Tian-Mei said, waiting to be led back to the student's dorm.
She started in that direction, depressed.
"Not that way, this way," Rukia called out from further down the courtyard.
Tian-Mei rushed to join up with her.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"It's a secret Soul Reaper's Women's Society pre-graduation ritual," Rukia said with an evil smile.
"And that is," Tian-Mei asked.
"We sacrifice a student from every class the gods of beefcake and cute fluffy animals," Rukia said before chuckling evilly.
Tian-Mei's eyebrow fluttered drastically as she took in the woman's humor. Rukia-sensei could be downright nonsensical if she didn't feel like explaining why she was doing something.
Crossing her arms stuborrnly, Tian-Mei refused comment as they walked into a building and she found herself among exalted company.
Catching her breath as Rukia moved to sit with her husband, the soul reaper that had brought her to the Seireitei from Rukongai, Tian-Mei saw Soifan, the leader of the stealth force, Captain Ukitake of the 13th division, the Commander-General, and their associated lieutenants.
"What's...going on," she asked.
"Well, you're going to turn rogue and break into the Living World," Ichigo said.
"But...that's what she just told me not to do," Tian-Mei said pointing to Rukia who, again, smiled evilly.
"On the contrary," Soifon said. "What she did was explain why we can't just do such things as we want to. But we have need of a rogue soul-reaper seeking to rejoin her family just now."
"That won't cause trouble...?" Tian-Mei asked.
"Tell me," Ukitake said, "what made you think you could sneak yourself into the Living World successfully?"
"I'd heard...rumors," Tian-Mei said and narrowed her eyes.
"Exaggerated," the commander-general said. "But true enough in their base. There have been rookie reapers going rogue that we couldn't trace."
"And we have some reports have ghosts that suffered...strange deaths," Soifon said.
"I told you it was obvious from the get go," Ichigo said.
"You're saying that Soul-Reapers are killing people?" Tian-Mei said, aghast.
"A flaw in these rushed recruitments," the commander-general said harshly. "Some of these soul reapers have not been in the Soul Society long enough to forget their old lives." He looked pointedly at Tian-Mei as he said that.
She grimaced and folded her arms in front of her.
"Well, like mother, like daughter I guess," she said reluctantly. "So when do I go AWOL?"
****
"Miyako Kurosaki!" a voice yelled as the daughter of the Kurosaki Soul-Reapers walked onto school grounds.
"Oh please," Miyako said, looking at the person across from her as she flipped her bag over her back. "What's going on now?"
"Don't stand there like that, acting like you don't know," the young man said. "You told Kuno-san about my collection."
"You should thank me, Kumon," Miyako answered rolling her eyes. "She was flattered you had the interest."
"But you told her about the pictures I had of Loshun too!" the boy snapped. "And you told Loshun!"
"Maybe that will teach you to be more honest with the girls," Miyako said, walking past him toward the school grounds.
"If you're jealous, I do have pictures of you too," he said just as she passed him.
The girl flinched and turned around to look at him.
"For your sake, that had better be a joke, Gotei," she said grimmly.
"I'm not looking to fight a girl," the young man responded quickly.
"Then you're looking to get beat up by one?" Miyako asked.
"No! There's no way you can beat me," Gotei said.
"Then you do want to fight me," Miyako said, crossing her arms and smirking.
"But you're a girl!" Gotei protested. "I can't fight you. It wouldn't be honorable."
"Okay then," she said, setting down her bag and rolling up a sleeve as she walked over to him. "You can just stand there while I thrash you then."
"But...then..." Gotei paused trying to think through the problem.
Before Miyako got even half way to the confused would be fighter, cracking her knuckles as she moved, he'd acquired a panicked expression and fled away from the scene.
"Baka, a fight would have been fun," she said with a laugh as she turned back to the school and waved ahead to her friends, the grim demeanor dropping in favor of the friendly. "Morning!"
"Morning, Miyako-chan!" one of the girls ahead of her called out in return, eyes squinting in cheer.
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(Posted Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:35)
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