The Double Edged Sword

32

Recap:

"And what if I wasn't able to raise it?" Ichigo trailed off trying to figure out if his new teacher was trying to kill him or not.

"You probably would have gotten hit by the punch and died." Urahara said nonchalantly with a flirty voice. "Now, now, everything worked out well didn't it? In the end, you recovered your spiritual powers after all. What do you think? In celebration of your passing the lesson, let's-" before he finished that sentence he silently glanced over at Izumi who was back to staring at the ceiling.

"We're gonna get food or something?" Ichigo asked hopefully, he was hungry and he thought his training was over; he had gotten his powers back. Just before he could even think of what he wanted, Tessai suddenly appeared with a large ax and chopped his soul chain in half away from his body.

"Let's continue on to lesson two!" Urahara said confidently though it was cut short when Izumi suddenly appeared between him and Tessai with both of her Zanpaktou's raised to their necks. Her head was tilted downwards so her hair was covering her face, her arms were still with the deadly weapons pressed tightly against throats.

Immense spiritual pressure flooded the room as sweat formed on everyone's foreheads. Jinta and Uryuu dropped to the ground in the distance while Tessai dropped to his knees, the action itself caused a slight cut to form along the right side of his neck and up his jaw. Ichigo stared in horror at what was happening not only to him, but in front of him.

Izumi was terrifying even to him. What was going on?

....

Meanwhile, out in the middle of a lively green forest, Ishida stood observing a nearby waterfall he had found. It was loud, and powerful, something about it reminded him of a certain girl who he had failed to help. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, the Quincy boy clutched onto the straps of the bag he had hanging over his shoulder; now wasn't the time to ponder over the details of his past defeats. 

"Good, here is good. That way no one can bother me so I can focus on my training!" he declared before there was the sound of multiple twigs snapping behind him; by the time he turned around he couldn't believe his eyes. Orihime Inoue was making her way over some rough rocky landscape to wave at him. 

"Hey! Ishida-kuun!!" she waved with her normal carefree attitude while Chad and an all black cat followed just behind on her heels. Ishida couldn't believe his eyes, out of everything and everyone that could've followed him, he would've never guessed that it would be this nice girl from his sowing club. After some time of her explaining why they had sought him out, Ishida had sat down on a near by rock to try and understand exactly what his classmates were telling him. He had been in battle with Izumi and Ichigo, but he had no idea that these particular people had also been training and facing their own battles. 

"Lessons?" he questioned finally after thinking over what Orihime and initially said; they had been training to get stronger and they wanted him to join them. Unfortunately he knew that he couldn't allow himself such a feet, but he still wanted to get all of the information they were giving him. 

"Yup! We were told that we need to take lessons if we want to go to the Soul Society. I figured if we're going to do it, then we might as well ask you to do it too!" she said with a happy smile, appearing to not truly comprehending exactly what she was saying to the dark haired boy. Ishida clenched his hands together that were in his lap, before looking down at his bags that he had brought with him; he had planned to spend quite a deal of time up by this waterfall. 

"I see, I noticed that your spiritual powers have increased significantly so suddenly, but I never imagined that it would be because of this." he trailed off while thinking deeply about what she was saying once again. "But, who is your master? Who is going to train you?" he asked while watching the uncertain expressions coming onto his friend's faces.