Tying up loose ends (solo)

[Darkoda]

Shin did find more than the reverse demon spell during his expedition into the library. With a good enough understanding of Hanki, he was moving on to the other kido on his list of interesting spells; Bakudo 99. Actually his interest lied in the Great seal, but he figured that since the Seal version seems for all intents and purposes to be an incomplete great seal, it might be best to start out with the simple version, and use it as a base for the more complicated, but effective binding art.

This reasoning found Shin within Division 2’s hidden training grounds, this time amongst the many training dummies. He was looking for a particular set though. His face twisted into a smirk when he found what he was looking for. Most of the training dummies were stationary, but a few of them were made for kido practice, created to be able to move and struggle against binding spells. He quickly went over what he had read mentally about the spell, and prepared to cast the binding art.

“Bakudo #99, Seal.”

The dummy’s hands flew behind its back temporarily, but besides that, nothing happened; no spiritual fabric wrapping the arms down, or shafts then stabbing the fabric in place. Shin especially wanted the shaft part down; not only would it be much harder to break or avoid than the six rod light prison, but it also appeared to hurt a lot more too.

‘Well, I didn’t expect it to work out perfectly the first try, but still.’ Ah well, no use complaining. Maybe he just needed to put more power into it. Shin raised his hand again and recited the spell.

“Bakudo #99, Seal.”

This time, spiritual fabric materialised and wrapped around the dummy’s arms. However, the dummy easily pulled its arms outward and ripped through the flimsy material. Shin noted this and already made adjustments to his next attempt. Clearly, he needed to apply a bit more power still. His face returned to its usual impassive state as he got ready to try again.

[Darkoda]

‘Interesting, I might actually be applying too much power in the kido.’

Once again, Shin had attempted to bind the training dummy, to little success. The fabric was simply too brittle, and ripped easily. He needed to spread out his reiatsu more, lower the energy to form the bonds and focus that power on maintaining the strength of the spell. Then there would be the problem of actually materialising the shafts. This was likely to take longer than expected.

‘Okay then, keep the power the same, but use less to form the fabric. Let’s see how this works.’

Attempt number 7, start.

“Bakudo #99, Seal.”

The fabric once again materialised, and this time stood firm against the dummy’s attempts to free itself. At least until the fabric unravelled itself anyway. It was to be expected that without the shafts to hold the fabric in place a little effort would get it off. It would take awhile to unravel it, but Shin wanted as much time as he could get out of the spell, and besides there was no fun in the spell if it didn’t inflict some pain.

“Once again, apply more power, and put the excess towards the shaft formation.”

That was easier said than done. Those shafts of spiritual energy weren’t the easiest things to materialise, and he only needed about four of them. If he couldn’t do this, how was he to summon a hundred of them?

‘I know what the book said to do, but it might be more prudent to try materialising the shafts by themselves, before applying it to the spell.’

Shin focused on hardening pockets of reiatsu around him, focusing the ends into sharp points. He knew that the spell used shafts instead of needles, but the needles would hold the fabric just fine, hurt a lot more, and take less effort for him to picture in his mind. Besides, the real version did use the sharp pointy needles anyway, so it was a win-win situation.

[Darkoda]

‘I wonder if I can just create these nails at will. That holds some promising thoughts.’

The decision to focus solely on generating the nails turned out to be even more successful than expected. The needles were far easier for him to materialise than the shafts, and he was fully capable of creating more than a hundred at a time now. Then to add icing on the cake, if he was feeling particularly sadistic, or bored, or just for the hell of it, he could turn those nails to wider blades easily for more damage. Now all he had to do was apply it to the binding spell itself and he would be set.

‘Well then, attempt number 12.’ Shin pointed at the dummy again, and recited the kido. This time, the results were either good or bad depending on how one looked at it. The dummy certainly wasn’t supposed to have their arms wrapped up so much that the fabric looped around it’s legs a bit, but that wasn’t exactly a bad thing was it? The nails worked just fine in pinning down the fabric, and this time it wasn’t budging no matter how much the dummy pulled. It seemed that the spell was working even better than expected but were the results consistent? Shin dispelled the binding spell and gave it another try. This time, it worked the way it should have in the first place, except with nails instead of shafts holding the fabric down. The nails were definitely doing the job as well as or probably better than the shafts would. There were about ten nails pinning the fabric down, and on a real opponent, the pain would prove to be a deterrent to struggling, especially since on a real opponent, he would use the blades in the first place.

‘Well, that was useful, but on to the main event.’ Shin dispelled the binding again; the dummy clearly wasn’t ripping it anytime this century and if something that could emulate an adjuchas’ strength couldn’t make any progress, Shin wasn’t complaining. The great seal was simply a more advanced version of the Seal. All he had to do was generate more fabric and nails. The troublesome part would be the giant weight he had to drag out at the end.

‘Let’s see, how did that incantation go again?’ Really, all the high level bakudo had some weird incantations. Shin shuddered at the thought of one particular kido that had the most stupid incantation he ever read. Compared to that one, this incantation sounded quite pleasant.

“First song, Halting fabric.”

Well that part was easy enough. Spiritual fabric materialised all around the dummy and shot out at it, wrapping it tightly enough that nothing short of tearing the material was getting it out of there. From the looks of things, he actually got the right reiatsu distribution too, since the fabric wasn’t getting torn apart. Now for the next step.

“Second song, hundred linked bolts..... damn took too long to finish it.”

His concentration apparently waned when he started the second incantation, weakening the fabric pinning the dummy to the ground. Without those posts, the rest of fabric simply fell off. It was fun watching the dummy get stabbed with about forty blades though.

“And I also need to generate more blades.” Well, he already spent at least two hours practicing; it wouldn’t kill him to spend the rest of the day getting the spell down.

[Darkoda]

Attempt 23.

‘Better, the blade part is coming along nicely at any rate.’

While many sharp blades were nice, there was still the problem of materialising said blades while keeping focus on the fabric. Needless to say, it was much easier said than done. Every time he moved on to the second part, the fabric unravelled before he could pin it down. Really, it shouldn’t be that hard to get the timing right, it wasn’t as if he was throwing in the oversized cube yet.

‘Okay, apply more power to the fabric itself, and use the extra energy to hold the fabric for a few more seconds, that should let me get the blades in properly.’

“First song, Halting Fabric.”

Once again, the training dummy found itself wrapped up like a mummy in spiritual fabric. Now for part two.

“Second song, Hundred linked bolts.”

A series of metal blades materialised and embedded themselves into the dummy, through the fabric. It seemed that strengthening the fabric was all it took in the end. It certainly wasn’t going anywhere now. However, the blade amount still needed some work. While Shin was fairly sure that the incantation was not literal, he was sure that he should get a bit more than thirty blades. More practice was required.

Attempt 44.

The amount of blades materialised at once were increased to about sixty. That should be more than enough to keep the fabric pinned down, and inflict lots of pain. With that part taken care of, it was time for the annoying part; summoning the cube. That was definitely going to take awhile, and Shin didn’t feel like taking that on right now on an empty stomach. Food called. Hopefully Tayte was already there to distract Tsuno so he could get at the meat without the vice captain trying to make him actually put a vegetable in his mouth. Really, his zanpakuto spirit was a fox, not a rabbit.

[Darkoda]

Attempt number 94 or so.

At some point, Shin did actually get the fabric and blade parts working properly; now the first two phases of the binding art worked just fine. The issue was the part he knew would give trouble from the beginning, materialising a gigantic cube of doom. It was a new day though, and actually getting enough food had him in a very good mood even if no one would possibly notice it from looking at him.

This was quickly killing it though.

Really, how hard could it be to make a giant cube? It wasn’t like this was the first bakudo to do something like that. Granted, he didn’t know the other ones that did, but that was beside the point. Clearly, this was going to take the same thing he had to do to get the other parts down; focus on the cube alone.

‘Let’s see how this works, picture an outline, fill in the shape with energy, give it weight, focus the reiatsu and.’

“Final song, great seal of 10,000 forbiddings.”

He got a cube flickering in and out of existence for a few seconds, but otherwise, nothing. More materialisation work was needed. And unlike a blade, this was much larger and heavier, thus much harder to focus on. But then, it wouldn’t be a level 99 kido if it was easy now, would it?

Once again, Shin focused on the materialisation of the super cube. Really, getting that thing dropped on you better hurt like all hell if it took this much focus to get off properly. Shin focused all of his willpower on the next cube and recited the incantation again.

‘Well, at least its progress.’

He did manage to summon the cube, but apparently he focused so much on materialisation, he didn’t put any density in it so the cube ended up with the weight of a feather. Not exactly a seal of 10,000 forbiddings. At this point, he was sorely tempted to just ask Kumori for help, but the fox was in one of her sporadic hibernation sessions within his mind, and wouldn’t show up again for about a week, or unless he released her. He could just go within his inner world and find her, but she was essentially keeping an eye on him 24/7, he could wait until she woke up to get from her if he couldn’t figure out the cube by then.

“Final song, great seal of 10,000 forbiddings.”

Great, back to the cube not materialising. Really, what was so hard about summoning an oversized block?

[Darkoda]

One week.

One week of trying to summon a stupid cube properly. If the cube even solidified properly, it lacked any real density and thus purpose in existing. Shin’s patience had long since gotten worn thin, thus leading him to resort on his backup plan.

“Silly boy, should have just asked me in the first place.”

As soon as Kumori woke up, he dived into his inner world to get her to help out. Her reaction to his problem?

“You can’t do this? But it’s so easy! Watch the rain of blocks and feel shame to your core! Listen to the blocks mocking your inadequacy!”

Insert crazy laughter to taste.

And it was accompanied by the musical wonder of an endless rain of giant, very heavy cubes crushing pillars into a sea. Somehow, she even made the pillars resonate like piano keys, and actually played a very familiar song from his living days on them. Damn evil fox.

“Pot calling the kettle black much? Keep in mind that I’m technically a representation of part of your soul, and from the way you act, a very prominent part.”

“And yet you call me an idiot, so then what are you?”

“The part of your soul with the brains clearly. Unless you want to get into a battle of intelligence with me?”

Damn sadistic, evil fox.

“Anyway if you want to get the cube done properly, you need to actually want the cube to form, you need to desire the cube to form itself for a reason. It seems to work for some people. For example, focus on the immense amount of pain it would cause to drop a 10,000 ton cube on someone. Work with that and you’ll have it working in no time.”

So here he was, back at the dummy. He certainly wanted to inflict all kinds of pain to it right now. Such wonderful, unbearable pain, preferably intense enough to rival getting cut by Kumori’s released blade. Watching the look on someone’s face as they scream so loud that they can’t even make a noise, as the corrosive reiatsu corrodes away everything within their bodies. The pain setting their nerves on fire, the pain receptors are always the last to go, probably due to Kumori’s meddling. Such perfect moments in time.

Shin didn’t even know when he said the incantation, but he definitely knew the moment when a gigantic block slammed the dummy into the ground, creating a fairly deep crater in its wake. It seemed that Kumori was, once again, right.
‘So I can make my kido react to my desire to hurt someone? This is definitely going to be a fun theory to test.’ Anyone within the training room would have bore witness to one of Shin’s most malicious smirks ever.

‘I’ve awakened a monster; this ought to keep things interesting around here. Before you go wreck havoc on some poor shinigami though, make sure you can actually string together the entire chant. To fast forward through any problems, think of it as a song of torture.’

Song of torture? That was quite a ..... pleasing way to put it.

“First song, Halting fabric, second song, hundred linked bolts, final song, great seal of 10,000 forbiddings.”

The end result was a work of art. The new training dummy (the other one was still crushed under a giant block) got wrapped up in fabric that even on an expressionless machine, looked incredibly painful, then had the pleasure of getting skewered with actually near a hundred blades and needles, then for a perfect finisher, got flattened under another one of those unnaturally heavy blocks. That last block wasn’t a fluke after all. This was definitely going to be fun.


Somewhere in Division 11, a few unfortunate souls were going to become Shin’s target practice. Ah yes, fun indeed.


((OOC: For the curious, this is what Kumori was playing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRacdl02w4&feature=related
How she was able to do that? Because she can <_<))