Kisuke, after a stern talking to from Tessai, allowed us a day to prepare. It also seemed like Uyu was coming along with us, though it sounds like she’d been on Hollow hunts before with her father.

Speaking of Uyu’s father, we were apparently going to be directly supervised by him on this hunt, and I was somewhat anxious about it. He’d been a firecracker when I had met him last, though with his daughter around he seemed relatively harmless, especially under the threat of his wife’s ire. I had enough wacky characters to manage with just Kisuke, I certainly wasn’t excited to have more to juggle.

I let my hand explore to the side of me in the sheets of the futon, quickly finding Suzumi’s sleeping form, her soft pyjama shirt tangled in the sheets, not that she seemed to mind given her light snoring.

It had been a bit of a hurdle to get over the first few nights, always having found it difficult to find sleep, but after a while the soft sound was what calmed me in the late hours of the day. Suzumi, bless her, managed to find sleep in mere moments and stay asleep, so I never had to worry about my multiple trips out of the room waking her. I woke frequently during the night, though with solid sleeps between.

At the moment, it was about five minutes before the alarm on my phone would usually go off, more an emergency measure around the unlikely case of me oversleeping. I quickly moved over to my phone and turned off the upcoming alarm, sitting up and pushing my sheets away I grabbed my clothes and quickly got out of my own pyjamas and got into some normal clothes.

Tessai had told us last night that there was going to clothes made for us, possibly by Kisuke. He hadn’t exactly elaborated at all, and I had no idea what the clothing would look like, but judging by the casual clothes everyone seemed to wear, even while fighting, it didn’t seem like protective clothing like armour did all that much in comparison to spiritual shielding and enhancement.

I quickly walked to the toilet, went through my routine and walked back to my room, closing the door behind me and opening the blinds to let in the dim morning light illuminate my foggy vision.

“Suzumi!” I called gently, shaking her body gently. Hearing her mumble something incoherent I called her name again and she jolted a little.

“Ah, I’m up, I’m up.” She groaned at my harassment, making me laugh. She was always groggy in the mornings, even if she typically went to bed earlier than I did.

“Good, remember that we have that Hollow hunt today. I’m going to go grab a hot chocolate, do you want something?” She requested coffee, two sugars, and I walked back out of the room to oblige her.

I walked towards the kitchenette, filling the electric kettle with water and carefully directing it back towards it’s baseplate, then fumbling around with the cups and the coffee and chocolate powders and just waited silently for the kettle to boil.

But just as the kettle did exactly that, I saw Tessai’s ribbon move at his general walking pace towards Kisuke’s room. Kisuke was in his basement, a room he spent most of his time in directly underneath what I could only assume to be his sleeping quarters.

The man was usually out at this hour, god knows where, maybe at a market or something similar, but today seemed to be an exception. I heard Tessai call Kisuke, muffled through the various layers of building in this deceptively large estate. Kisuke’s ribbon moved up from the basement to meet Tessai. There was a short, muffled conversation and they both walked out of the room and towards me.

I quickly finished making the coffee and hot chocolate, and as the two men walked around the corner I called out to them.

“Do you boys want coffee or something?” I asked, not looking at them. None of us were surprised to see the other, which probably just meant they were as away of my movements around the house as I was theirs. I wonder how they did that.

“Coffee for me.” Kisuke said wryly and Tessai said the same, just more politely. I did as such, leaving those on the bench and walked back to the room to give Suzumi her coffee. I walked into the room to see from her silhouette that she had already changed out of her baggy pyjamas to a pair of shorts and a t-shirt.

“By the way,” I said between my sips of hot chocolate, “Tessai and Kisuke are up and at ‘em, so finish up drinking so we can see what they want.” She nodded and we quickly downed the hot beverages and walked out of the room together towards the meeting room that I’d had a few conversations with Kisuke in.

“Ah! Good morning you two!” Kisuke greeted jubilantly. We sat at the opposite side of the table and looked inquisitively towards the two men.

“So,” I began, “what time do we get going?” Kisuke waved his hand dismissively.

“Not for an hour or two yet. Uyu is taking the day off school and her father will be leading us. Tessai and I will merely be observers, not that we will be meeting anything of sufficient strength to warrant our presence.” He said with a haughty tone, but I could tell it was mostly play acting on his part. He was probably being entirely truthful.

“So… do we have to wear armour or anything?” Suzumi questioned thoughtfully, “I know we are capable of having full on fights against each other in normal clothing but fighting something that wants to actually hurt us in shorts and a t-shirt seems wrong.” I laughed while Tessai nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Indeed. Soul Reapers rarely wear protective clothing, mostly because of spiritual energy being used for protection instead. Most simply wear the standard garment called a shihakushō, which amounts to a black robe with a white sash and sandals. With minor adjustments based on personal tastes.” I reeled back, a little dumbstruck.

“Wait, you’re telling me no-one uses armour or anything?”

“Some do,” Kisuke piped up, “but again, it’s either usually for flair or practicality. Most Soul Reapers would try to simply increase their own spiritual defences before they decided to try create armour of any sort.” I could already feel a headache forming.

“Why? Surely there is a way to create spiritually enhanced armour of some sort. You guys have special mystical soul swords, don’t you! How do you not have armour?” I asked incredulously.

“They are called Zanpakutō,” Kisuke corrected dryly, “and no need to argue with me about it. I tried to tell the old man to put funding into armour years ago, but he just went on and on about how Soul Reapers needed to be masters of the spiritual, and using armour would be a crutch against proper learning and training, not that it stopped Zaraki.” He grumbled, his voice growing with frustration as his elaborated.

Well at least Kisuke had thought about it before.

“So did you ever try to make it anyway?” I asked curiously.

“Of course I did!” Kisuke responded happily, his anger washed away with the allure of the new discussion, “Though, to be honest, they were all duds. My scientific partner at the time was… uninterested in the idea, for whatever reason. I had next to no funding for it, so most of what I built came out of what I could scrounge up and even then I was tinkering with ideas that were way out of my league.” I raised an eyebrow and guessing from Tessai’s ribbon this was the first he’d heard of this as well.

“Like what?” Suzumi asked, confused but trying to keep up with he conversation. I’d tried to explain what Kisuke had to me about Soul Society and all that, but she asked lots of questions I didn’t have any answer to, so she was even more confused about it all than I was.

“Well…” he coughed embarrassedly into his hand, “I was trying to, well, apply the ideas of a Zanpakutō to armour.” This made Tessai burst out in a fit of laughter and the two of us look even more confused.

“What? We were all young once!” Which only made Tessai laugh harder. I had never seen the man as unprofessional as this, the sheer juxtaposition of his usual demeanour to this made it difficult not to laugh along as well. As the entire room chuckled, even Kisuke’s ribbon glowed with a blush slightly. The ribbons were getting even more emotive, which was weird but helpful.

“It occurs to me that you may not understand why…” Tessai giggled in the middle of his sentence, “why exactly that was so comedic to me. The Zanpakutō is a marvel of spiritual creation, each blade a masterwork that at first reflects the soul of the weilder, then becomes one with their soul, and potentially even advances to become one with their wielder themselves. The Zanpakutō’s creator Ōetsu Nimaiya is a genius of untold proportions in the smithing and creation of Zanpakutōs. Kisuke has been a fan for many years.” Kisuke looked even more embarrassed now.

“You tried to create a soul bound armour?” I asked inquisitively. Kisuke gave Tessai a withering gaze when the man began to chuckle again at the man’s old aspiration, but returned his gaze to me and sighed.

“Yes, in a sense. In fact my idea was to somewhat piggyback off of the connection that Ōetsu made with the Zanpakutō’s spirit, and the power and soul of the Soul Reaper wielding it.” He hummed as he puzzled through his own thoughts, “hijacking that connection would allow the spirit of the Zanpakutō to theoretically empower the armour, and if I can create it correctly I could even potentially allow the armour to change form much like a Zanpakutō can, though that is all theoretical to the highest degree, I might add.”

Tessai, who was quite amused at the idea before now seemed to actually be thinking about the prospects of the armour.

“Would… could that possibly be used to further our connection to our Zanpakutō?” Tessai mumbled thoughtfully, but Kisuke just shrugged.

“It certainly could, but it also could simply act entirely the same as before. There’d be no way to tell until it was made, and I can’t make it if I don’t have a truly monolithic amount of funding. Like, all of the four Noble Houses put together type of funding. Though, Ōetsu would be handy so that I could pick his brain.” Tessai nodded, accepting Kisuke’s review of is. I had no idea who the four Noble Houses were, but I’d assume they were filthy rich.

“In either case, I have a present for you two, under the topic of armour and clothing.” Kisuke said jovially as he pulled something out of thin air and placed the two things on the table.

I couldn’t see them very well, their silhouette being pretty confusion, but it didn’t take long for Suzumi to talk about it.

“They look like fancy kendo uniforms?” I tried to picture a kendo uniform, but came up with nothing, but Kisuke barked out a laugh.

“Fair enough. And for the one of us who visually impaired, I have created clothing for you two to use for todays hunt. It is a long baggy set of pants and a loose shirt, similar to that which martial arts schools use for their uniforms. It is in a traditional fashion so they may be difficult to wear initially.” I nodded, and Suzumi explained to me in more detail.

The pants were a very dark blue, large and flowy, which made them look like a robe, but the legs were independent from each other. The shirt was a stark white with no symbolism, except for a sash that was tied around where the pants and the shirt intercepted, being a lighter blue than the pants.

“Are these protective?” I asked, curiously.

“Unfortunately not, making something protecting enough to be useful in a fight with a Hollow in a single night is a bit of a stretch. Though I have made weapons capable of fighting Hollows before, but they took many weeks of time to create.” I nodded, a little disappointed, but I guess out last topic was a good enough explanation as to why that was the case.

“Alright, I guess we should go get changed then.” I said as I picked up the bundle of clothes that sat in front of me, seeing Suzumi do the same. We walked out way back to our room and started trying to get changed.

Suzumi was exceptionally unconcerned about changing in front of me, probably because I was next to blind, but hey I could still see rough outlines, so that was always a treat. The clothing turned out to be exceptionally difficult to put on while blind.

Thankfully Suzumi was good at this sort of thing and helped my useless ass into the thing. It was simple enough once I’d learned where all the holes were and how to tie the sash, but I would be useless trying to get it on myself.

Of course that didn’t stop Suzumi from giggling at me trying.

“Alrighty then.” I said as I gripped onto the lapel of my new shirt and grinned towards my sorta-girlfriend. “Ready to go smack around some scary monsters?”

“I’ll make sure they don’t scare you too much, darling” she said, sarcasm dripping, pushing me playfully. I just laughed as we both walked out of the room, preparing ourselves for the day ahead.