Continued From: Errand Run, Part 1
“So… many… stairs…!” Kotaishi huffed and wheezed as they finally arrived at the First Division barracks. “Why the hell… did they have to put the barracks all the way the hell up here?!!”
“I’d like to know myself,” Tsukiro sighed, slightly winded himself.
“Aren’t you worried?”
“About doing Head Captain Yamamoto’s chores? Hell no.”
“No, I mean about running into your old man.”
Tsukiro halted on the top step up to the First Division gates.
Shit…
“Well,” Kotaishi sat on his haunches for a rest. “The First Division barracks are enormous. I doubt you’ll run into him at all. By the way, I thought your father was Stealth Force? Wouldn’t that be Second Division?”
“He was Stealth Force. After Mother and Ryushiro were killed and he started taking more and more missions, each harder and more dangerous than the next, he eventually caught the higher ups attention. He was promoted and transferred to First.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“My father wouldn’t agree with you…”
While Dainosuke Ashimitsu was not at all happy with his promotion and transfer, Tsukiro could not have been more relieved. Being transferred out of the Stealth Force meant three things for his father: less field work, more paperwork, and less chance of him dying in the field on a mission, which was exactly what his father wanted. And so, his father was spending the rest of his career as a shinigami cooped up in the overly-huge First Division barracks and acting as an idol Soul Reaper for everyone else.
Just how Tsukiro preferred it.
“Let’s go…” Tsukiro said as he walked up to the gates.
The two guards at the front bowed to him. “Eighth Seat Ashimitsu, I presume?” one of them said. “We have been expecting you.”
“Yes. I’m supposed to meet with the Head Captain and complete some tasks for him.”
“The Head Captain is busy today,” the other said. “So he has appointed another to lead you around the barracks to complete your given assignment.”
Tsukiro nodded. “Alright. And who will be accompanying me today?”
“I will.”
Tsukiro turned around at the sound of the familiar voice so quickly that he almost gave himself whiplash. He grabbed his neck, wincing. When he saw the owner of the voice, he inwardly cringed.
“Remember what I said about probably not running into him? I take it back. The world is a small place.”
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My father, Dainosuke Ashimitsu, stood tall and handsome at about five-foot-ten and a half. I was short by his standard, as the man had over four inches on me. He had the same, jet black, raven’s feather hair and piercing eyes of the brightest blue that were so clear you swore you could see straight through them and into his soul. His hair fell around his face and the crown of his head like a feathered head-dress. None of it ever got in his eyes, and for that I would always be jealous. He wore an all black shihakusho and black flats. Around his neck was a black scarf that hugged his shoulders and throat. Silver guards were strapped to his forearms. And strapped to the small of his back was his blazing red, bright silver and sooty black zanpakuto.
Myoujouhikari, “Morning Star Light.”
Also called “Venus Light,” because the kanji for “morning star” was also the kanji for the planet Venus, the second planet closest to the sun, and the hottest planet in the solar system.
The hilt was completely black, the guard was silver, and the blade, when in its released state, was red with a slight orange tint, like fire. The sheath was red with black whisp like flames crawling up from the end to about a quarter ways up.
Myoujouhikari was a fire zanpakuto, obviously. Of course, it wasn’t nearly as powerful as Ryujinjakka, it burned like a son of a bitch. I say that from experience. On my father’s back was an ugly scar from a burn he received from his own zanpakuto. One day, when I was young, he agreed to let me see his zanpakuto release. Of course, I was too excited to listen to him when he told me explicitly “don’t you dare move from that spot.”
I moved.
Excited at the brilliant display of flying colors of fire, I ran toward him.
The next thing I knew, those brilliant colors were soaring towards me and my father was screaming at me to get out of the way. Too stunned to move, I stood there as the fires of his zanpakuto raged closer and closer. The one thing Father always hated about his zanpakuto was how unpredictable and uncontrollable it seemed. He couldn’t stop the fires once they gained momentum. He did the only thing he could.
He shunpo’ed over to me, faster than I had seen any Soul Reaper move, and blocked me from the fire as it crashed into his back. There were days when I swore my eardrum still rang from his screams as the fire seared his skin.
I never could forgive myself for that, and from that day on I never again asked to see Myoujouhikari’s power. Hell, sometimes I even asked myself if I feared it.
“Tsukiro, are you listening to me?” My father’s voice snapped me out of my moment of recall.
“Uh…” I stuttered as I looked on at my father. He only stood there looking at me, his reflective eyes displaying only one emotion: concern.
He was like me in everyway. Or actually, I should say the opposite. I was like him in everyway. He hardly ever showed his true emotions, however his family was the exception. Even then, however, we had always wondered what was going on in the mind of Dainosuke Ashimitsu. I, on the other hand, had the uncanny talent for knowing exactly what he was thinking.
Right now he was concerned about me. He wondered when I had graduated. He wondered how I was liking Squad Ten. More so, he wondered how I was doing. And by that, I mean had I been haunted by any dreams of my past recently.
Of course, he knew everything I was thinking as well.
No words were needed between us. There never was any need, and there never will be.
I heard him give a half sigh, half chuckle. “Of course you’re not listening to me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “W-what were you saying?”
Well, this is going splendidly.
Shut up Kotaishi!
“Fifth Seat, Ashimitsu. It’s nice to finally meet your son,” the first guard said to my father.
“Yes, the resemblance is striking!” the other added.
Okay, now I was embarrassed.
Father laughed. “Thank you, men. It’s a pleasure for me as well, to be able to work with him today.” He turned to me. “Let’s go, Tsukiro. We have work to do.”
As he turned his back, I gritted my teeth and grumbled. I turned and followed him, only to have Kotaishi bite at my heels.
Be nice to your father.
I guess I couldn’t blame him. It was hard to bond and reconnect with my father knowing that he was secretly suicidal but was too prideful to kill himself. However, that was no excuse for shoving him off. He needed me more than I needed him, and while that sounded extremely mean, it was true. It was my job to keep him sane.
Not mentioning how hard that was.
I followed him through the gates and into the actual beginnings of the First Division barracks. The barracks were literally a huge network of buildings, offices, walkways, stairs and towers. I had walked maybe ten steps into the front courtyard and I was already lost.
“I want to kill whoever drew up the blueprints for these barracks. This is insane,” I said both to my father and to no one in particular.
“How do you think I felt when I got transferred here? I must have circled the same area three times trying to find my room,” he laughed and to my surprise I remembered the sound.
He turned to me and smiled. “But it’s definitely not the Shihoin Palace, isn’t it?”
I shook my head, smiling slightly. “Definitely not.” We walked for a while, traveling up several flights of stairs and down several corridors. “So, what am I supposed to do?”
“We,” he sighed, “are cleaning the hot springs in the back of the barracks, I’m afraid. After that, I’m not sure. A lot has to be done around, here, but to my understanding, First Division isn’t your only stop.”
I shook my head again. “No, it’s not. After this, I have to visit all the other barracks, except for the Tenth.”
He continued on beside me. “Toshiro Hitsugaya sounds like a hard captain to please, despite his young age.”
“You have no idea.”
“He can’t be much more difficult than the Head Captain,” Father challenged.
“If you say so.”
We settled into an awkward silence for a while, until my father finally looked down at the huge leopard who had been following me around. “And you must be Kotaishi no Kori.”
“At least someone notices me,” Kotaishi grumbled.
“He’s my father. He’s inclined to notice and acknowledge you.”
Father chuckled. “Hikari is the same way. She’s got a mouth on her.”
I rolled my eyes and mumbled, “That’s not the only thing she’s got on her.” I exclaimed in pain when I felt my father backfist me in the side. “What?! She’s basically the roman god of love and beauty herself! It’s no wonder she looks the way she does considering part of her name means ‘Venus!’”
Myoujouhikari’s form was that of a tall and beautiful young woman with long, fiery red hair, black eyes and even less coverage than Rangiku Matsumoto, which said a lot about the zanpakuto spirit. She was busty and curvy as hell. Her clothes consisted, more or less, of transparent, loose, silver robes that just barely covered her woman parts and left the rest blatantly exposed. Also attached to her clothes were golden chains with eight point star charms.
I couldn’t count all the times Mother had cried out in surprise and covered mine and Ryushiro’s eyes every time Hikari just had to walk in behind him. I always felt sorry for Father because he couldn’t walk around with Hikari next to him simply because of how she looked.
I rubbed my side as we continued on. Eventually, we reached the back of the barracks. As we got closer to the exit of the inside parts of the barracks, the air got hotter and more humid. Father slid open a huge set of sliding, bamboo doors and revealed to me were the hot springs. There were dozens and dozens of Soul Reapers relaxing and splashing in the hot, spring water. The pool was sectioned off by natural, tan colored rock. Some of the circular sections of the pool were of higher elevation than the others. Spring water poured in from three sections of a tall, rock wall with eroded cracks in it.
“Okay,” I said narrowing my eyes. “I’m officially jealous. First Division gets a natural hot spring and Tenth Division gets a constant cold front. That is so not fair.”
“Yeah,” Father sighed. “The problem is getting everyone out.” He stepped forward and took a deep breath. “Alright! Cleaning time! Everyone out and back to work!” he shouted in his “Stealth Force Unit Commander” voice.
It was to no effect which had me totally surprised. That was the voice he always used to scold me and my brother. It always worked. With everything.
Talk about lazy…
Father gave another sigh and shook his head. “Alright. Stand back Tsuki.”
I was about to ask why, except at that moment he reached back for the hilt of his zanpakuto. I immediately leaped far back, almost back beyond the bamboo doors.
“Er, I think I’m going to go back in my sword now,” Kotaishi said as he disappeared from my side.
Father whipped out his sword and held it out in front of him. He took his other hand and swept it over the blade. As he did, the blade transformed into its fiery released state and fire surrounded the blade, as well as gathered in my father’s hand.
“Burn wildly, Myoujouhikari!”
The look on the Soul Reapers’ faces was priceless. The moment they felt Hikari’s reiatsu, they all froze and turned to look at him with horror on their faces.
“Dainosuke, don’t you dare!” one woman screeched in terror.
Father brought the hand that Myoujouhikari’s fire was gathered in up to his mouth, holding it flat. “Taiyoufuura!” (“Solar Winds")
The fire formed a ball in the middle of his palm and he took another deep breath, this time using it to blow on the fire. An enormous plume of fire raged from his hand and forward, towards the hot spring. The fires licked the water just as the very last Soul Reaper scrambled out of the water. The already hot water boiled instantly upon contact with the fire. Within minutes, the water boiled dry, all the way up to the cracks in the wall of rock. In each of the cracks, a fire burned, keeping the water from refilling the pool.
Father lowered his blade and placed his other hand on his waist. “Now, like I said, cleaning time. Everyone back to work.”
They groaned, some even cursed my father’s name and his zanpakuto. Despite their complaints, they grabbed their uniforms and got dressed, leaving right afterwards.
“Why don’t you ever warn us before you pull that stunt, Ashimitsu?!” one man yelled in his face.
“I did. You lot just weren’t listening,” Father simply smiled at the man.
The man scoffed and then switched his eyes to me. “You! You’re not a fire type too, are you?!”
I smirked evilly and unsheathed my sword, raising it in front of me. “Wanna find out?”
The man gave a grunt of fear, his expression turning in panicked. With that, he bolted out of there.
“Coward,” I grinned as my father laughed. “Alright now what?”
Just as I asked, he reached into a storage room off to the side. He came out with two scrub brooms. “Now, we clean.”
My spirits fell after that.
-----------
An hour and a half later, I laid in one of the empty rock tubs, completely exhausted. “Everything hurts…” I groaned. “Curse you, Toshiro Hitsugaya.”
“Ready to fill the spring back up?”
I opened my eyes to find my father leaning on his scrub broom and looking down at me.
“Don’t you just take the fire away from the cracks and let it fill back up?”
“Normally, yes, I would. But then, you’re an ice type. If you fill the spring with ice, I can melt the ice into water and then heat the water. It will be quicker than just letting it fill back up naturally. Then we finish sooner and the good people I chased out can come back without having to wait for the spring to finish refilling.”
“Good point,” I said sitting up.
I got out of the empty pool and stood off to the side. I unsheathed Kotaishi and raised the sword up next to my head, both hands on the hilt. “Come forth, ruler of the winter storms! Kotaishi no Kori!”
I aimed the point of my sword at the empty spring and let Kotaishi’s and my reiatsu pour out and into the spring, covering every inch of it in sparkling ice. After that was done, I stood back and let my father finish the rest.
He raised Hikari and pointed its blade at the ice covered pool. “Shounetsujigoku!” (“Inferno/Burning Hell”)
My heart stopped as he used the same attack that gave him the scar on his back. Just like back then, a raging storm of fire burst from the blade and surged forward like a fiery hurricane. The fire blasted into the ice and melted it almost upon contact. A second later, the water simmered then died down. The water was left with a pleasant steam after the flames disappeared. As Father returned Myoujouhikari to its sheath, the fire in the cracks disappeared and the spring water burst from the cracks and poured down into the filled spring. The water sparkled beautifully, making it even more brilliant than it was before we cleaned it.
Suddenly I was aware of my father’s hand on my shoulder. I jumped slightly and looked up at him. He smiled. “Let’s get you back to the front of the barracks.”
--------------
The trek back to the front was silent. When we reached the front at last, the silence became awkward. Always the one to break the ice, Father spoke first.
“I’m sorry that our reunion was on these circumstances. I know I surely didn’t picture it with us cleaning a hot spring,” he laughed.
I cracked a small smile.
“Tsukiro, look at me.” Reluctantly, I did so. His gaze was apologetic. “I know you’re trying hard to show me that I couldn’t help what happened but--”
Like always, his words broke off, but I knew exactly what he was saying. I nodded.
“I know.”
“And that doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
“Well that depends,” I glared at him. “Are you going to stop being inadvertently suicidal?”
He gave me a wince that I knew was supposed to be a smile of reassurance. “I’m trying to cope.”
I nodded, but it was hesitant. “Then you keep coping in your own way, and I’ll cope in mine.”
I turned to the open gates and started to walk forward. However, then I heard my father call out to me. “Hey. You be careful, you hear me? I don’t need to lose my other son.”
I froze just as I was about to walk through the gates.
“You’re all I have left.”
Damn it all! I cursed to myself, trying to force back the wash of tears that threatened to fall. I turned around and ran back, throwing myself at my father. He immediately hugged me back fiercely.
“Don’t you go getting yourself killed out there, you understand me?”
I nodded against his chest. “I promise.”
He nodded and released me. “Now go. You’d better not keep the other captains waiting.”
Without another word--none else were required--I turned back and ran out the gates and headed for Second Division, but not before looking back to catch one last glance at my father waving to me as the gates closed completely.
Continued To: Coming Soon...
