Chapter 43 The Helmet

AN:

Life Force –> Ki

Magic Power (Human) –> Mana

After the rowdy lunch with his friends, Kisuke said his farewells and went home, leaving them to their own devices.

He went straight to the underground training facility under the candy store after changing into his usual outfit and taking out Benihime in her cane form.

There he saw Yoruichi with her standard attire consists of a black, backless, sleeveless undershirt, an orange over-shirt with two white straps on each shoulder, a large beige sash around her waist, and black stretch pants with a pair of lightweight brown shoes, which allow for stealth and easy use of Flash Step.

She is sitting on a protruding rock 50 meters away from their Grim Reaper captives while eating her frozen yogurt. Kisuke approached her and ask, “How are they?”

“Sleeping like a baby. It looks like my interrogation took quite a toll on their minds.” Yoruichi answered without turning around, “Do you want me to continue?”

“Let’s not. They’re brainwashed to some extent. There’s no use questioning them.” Kisuke rubbed his chin in contemplation.

“Then what? Just kill them? They’re hostile to the kids you know. We better find out who is behind this, at least we won’t be so blind.” Yoruichi furrowed her brows at Kisuke’s answer. Of course, only Koneko who is like her little sister and Issei who technically grew up with her and she took some liking as she did with Ichigo deserves her worries.

“I’ve developed a not so nice technique. I’ll test it to them later. For now, I want to examine those helmets they are wearing.” Kisuke’s nasty grin returned.

“Why are you so careful about them? I can’t feel anything aside from their power to conceal presence.” Yoruichi sighed in relief as she knew she could leave this to Kisuke who already have a plan. Yoruichi examined the helmets again and can’t see anything else aside from their supposed use. She already saw countless artifacts and even used some of them due to Shihouin Clan keeping a bunch of them, but that doesn’t mean she knows the inner workings of the said item.

“You know I’m very sensitive to the energies, and half of the energy within the helmet isn’t being used. I’m sure that its use is not for something good as they too don’t have any idea about it.” Kisuke gave the helmet another inspection from the outside.

“How are you going to examine it?” Yoruichi crossed her arms and ask.

“I’ll scan it with my Spiritual Power from a distance and try to see the inner workings of the helmet.” Kisuke stopped going around the captives and prepared himself.

“Can’t you remove it from them, first?”

“I can’t. If I’m the one who made it, and they are for my secret forces, the first thing I would do is to make countermeasures against it being stolen by the other party.”

Kisuke released the limiter that he places on himself to hide his Spiritual Power. To other people, it looks like he only has a bit of Magic Power, “Yoruichi grab the small one go to the entrance of the training ground.”

Yoruichi didn’t say anything else and grabbed the small grim reaper and Flash Stepped towards the training ground’s entrance. She also put up a barrier just to be sure.

Kisuke grabbed the big guy and move to the center. He then started concentrating his Spiritual Power and made a thin thread out of it. This thread slowly moves approached the sleeping Grim Reaper and it made contact with the helmet.

Kisuke probed its outside and didn’t see anything of importance and he carefully penetrated the skin of the helmet.

Once the thread went inside, Kisuke saw the complicated inner workings of the helmet and gained some enlightenment at how it hides presence with such effectiveness.

But everything doesn’t go smoothly as long as you’re in the real world. After a few seconds of observation, a hidden mechanism in the helmet was triggered. This was noticed by Kisuke since all the energy reserves of the helmet started gathering in one spot.

“Crap!” Kisuke’s face cramped and he immediately released Benihime to her first form, “Awaken! Benihime.”

The hidden blade in the cane took the form of a sleek, medium-sized sword. It has a crimson tassel dangles on the end of the hilt, which has a gentle decorative bend. Instead of a crossguard, there is a U-shaped decoration that covers the first three or four inches of blade, with a flower petal design right as it meets the string-crossguard. It also has a red decorative string wrapped thrice around the hilt, with a three-loop bow on one side and a folded paper decoration on the other. Benihime’s blade is straight and slim, though somewhat short, with the tip ending in a slanted razor-like edge instead of being tapered to a point.

Kisuke pointed Benihime towards the Grim Reaper whose helmet is shining an ominous light, “Chikasumi no Tate (Blood Mist Shield).”

A crimson hexagonal shield appeared in front of Kisuke. He also used Flash Step to jump backward, but before he could leave the area, a large white explosion with a radius of 100 meters engulfed the area.

“Kisuke!!!” Yoruichi shouted his name in worry. She felt the force of the explosion and wanted to go to where he was but she knew it would be useless and only put herself in danger, ‘Kisuke is sturdy. He’ll only get some injuries if he put enough defense.’ Yoruichi reassured herself. She tried finding where Kisuke is but failed due to the swirling and chaotic energies meshing together because of the explosion.

A figure shoots out of the explosion and smashed to the wall creating a small crater on it. Yoruichi saw this and Flash Stepped towards it and saw Kisuke embedded in the wall. His clothes were in tatters and his hat is missing and he is still holding onto Benihime. What was different however is the broken ivory mask on his face, his eyes’ sclera are black and his irises were glowing green.

Kisuke jumped down from the wall, his eyes returned to normal and the ivory mask disappeared entirely, “Hey there Yoruichi, you got worried?” Kisuke gave his trademarked grin. He saw her reaction and felt gratified deep inside his heart. Ever since they opened up with each other, they seem to get worried about every little thing about each other which was unthinkable in the past. But it’s not a bad feeling, on the contrary, Kisuke feels immense satisfaction that a person he could call a lover worries about him, ‘I should’ve opened up with her earlier in the past.’

Yoruichi pouted a bit and approached him. She then gave him a quick punch to his nose.

“Oww.” Kisuke hastily covered his nose with his hands to nurse it, “You can’t hide your embarrassment by being violent, you know.”

“Shut it, if you can speak nonsense, then you’re fine.” Yoruichi turned around and walked back to their remaining captive.

Do they act like kids? Well, true. In terms of experience in romance, they almost have zero. A typical high school student who thinks nothing but socializing instead of his studies may have more experience in this regard than them.

Why is this? Yoruichi grew up as the heir of a big and influential clan of the Seireitei, become a Commander-in-Chief of the Stealth Forces and also a captain of the 2nd Division of Gotei 13, of course, she wouldn’t have any time or even allowed to fall-in-love.

While Kisuke also followed the almost same track as Yoruichi who is his childhood friend. He also got into researching and inventing things throwing the notion of romance that could waste his time away.

Until they were banished to the Human World, although there was already a budding feeling, it couldn’t bloom as Aizen’s threat is still looming on their heads and they had to keep planning and searching on how to thwart Aizen’s ambition.

Even if they managed to take down Aizen, a hidden threat called ‘Quincies’ is still in the corner, and Kisuke was aware of it shifting his focus on preparing for a big war. Yoruichi, who was given a heads up about the possible invasion of the Quincies also couldn’t stay still and had to go back to her clan to prepare.

You could say that even though they lived a long life, they were always fighting and couldn’t have time for themselves as they have responsibilities on their shoulders they couldn’t take off.

But everything changes when they reincarnated to a different world. Without pressure from the peers or responsibilities to save the balance of the world, they felt liberated. So when they found each other, all feelings that were repressed gushed out. They ‘fell in love’ for the first time. A few years has passed, though they progressed, they were still kids in the act of romance. They couldn’t act like a reckless teenager as they are too old for that. Their mature mind stops them from giggling like idiots. But even then, tiny bits of a ‘little girl’ from Yoruichi spills out sometimes, and Kisuke who has an uncontrollable urge to tease other people became worse when it comes to Yoruichi.

“So? What happened?” Yoruichi looked at the destruction caused by that explosion. Everything 100 meters around the spot where the big guy Grim Reaper was previously on disappeared leaving only bits of molten lava.

“A mechanism that activates its self-destruction feature triggers when an attempt to observe the helmet was detected.” Kisuke used magic to repair his clothes and also materialized his favorite hat and fan, ‘What a convenient skill.’ He thought.

“I assume the same thing would happen when we attempt to remove it from the owner?” Yoruichi asked.

“Most probably.” Kisuke removed the remaining dust from his body and replied.

“Then what now?”

“I’ll use my newly developed technique and see what I can get. I only got to test it in some lab rats but never in an intelligent being. If something were to me, smack me hard so that I can wake up.” Kisuke approached the remaining Grim Reaper.

“Leave it to me!” Yoruichi gave him a bright smile which froze Kisuke’s smile. Nevertheless, Yoruichi is still worried about him when he said that she would need to wake him up.

“Well then, Take some distance from me again,” Kisuke warned Yoruichi again and grabbed the unconscious beside the crater that was created by the earlier explosion. He didn’t want another accident to happen again but it does not hurt to take some precautions. He put up multiple barriers and arrange a teleportation array under his feet so he can instantly teleport to Yoruichi’s side no matter what happened.

Yoruichi followed his instruction again, but this time, she is only 200 meters away from him instead of 1.5 kilometers from the entrance to Kisuke’s current position.

Kisuke held out his right hand, touched the chest of the Grim Reaper and took a deep breath, “Soul Search.” He muttered with a serious look on his face.

Kisuke Reiatsu (Spiritual Pressure) poured into the Grim Reaper instantly waking up the sleeping beauty.

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” A shrill screaming came from the Grim Reaper as his soul body is forcibly being torn up into pieces and converted to Reiryoku (Spiritual Power), not that he knows any of that. He can only feel extreme pain which is originating from deep inside and also the faint feeling of being devoured by something.

After a few moments, the helmet started to light up. Kisuke already expected this and teleported beside Yoruichi. Another explosion occurred, but this time, due to barriers placed, it only expanded to 30 meters in radius. Although it created more pool of molten lava than the first one.

Yoruichi noticed Kisuke’s haggard expression and asked, “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I already expected it to take a toll on my mind when I tried that to a sentient being.” Kisuke just gave her a tired smile.

“Let’s go to the hot spring and take a break,” Yoruichi suggested.

“Good idea, let’s go, but please carry me. My body is fine but I’m mentally tired of processing all those gibberish information. I also need some time to organize my thoughts.” Kisuke agreed and he let his body fall into Yoruichi’s bountiful bosom.

Yoruichi sighed but smiled thereafter, “Good work.” She whispered to Kisuke who is already napping.

She carefully adjusted position in ‘Princess’ carry and carefully move his towards the hot spring in the training ground.

The hot spring is the same one they had in their past secret training grounds. It uses Spiritual Power gathered by an array from the surroundings to heal wounds of the soul and body. A hot spring based on Ki is also under construction to help Koneko’s training. And Kisuke’s goal is to create a hot spring with three-way healing using Mana, Ki, and Spiritual Power.

On the northern side of the training ground, a complete copy of White Bone Hell and Blood Pond Hell of the Qilin Palace also exist, although they don’t use it very often as they would only dip in that when they are seriously wounded or undertaking an insane training regimen.

Yoruichi laid Kisuke at the side of the hot spring and stripped him buck naked. She took a second glance at his junk and flicked it lightly, Kisuke grimaced a bit in his sleep a bit, ‘If this were any other situation, I wouldn’t have let you off.’ Koneko’s developing sadistic tendencies may have come from Yoruichi.

Yoruichi also stripped herself and carried Kisuke to the pool of hot water. Even though he mentioned earlier that his body is fine, but she knew from her experience that Kisuke’s threshold of ‘fine’ is not the same as others by the long shot. He was able to defend himself from the first explosion, but his body still took some stress. He donned his hollow mask to increase the effect of Hierro is evidence of this. His energy reserves also might be plenty, but deploying all of those barriers in quick succession and activating that unknown spell of him took a relatively large chunk of his Reaitsu. Thus he still needs the healing effect of the hot spring.

Yoruichi carried Kisuke to the side of the hot spring and entered from it. She first leaned on the rock after entering and adjust Kisuke’s position so that she is hugging him from behind. Yoruichi submerged him until his shoulders and rest his head on her bosom. She stroked his head and smiled before saying, “Goodnight.” She then entered a dream world of her own while Kisuke is in her arms.