—————
The wooden bokken carved a slow arc through the morning air. Down. Across. Return.
Hatsu moved through the seventh kata with deliberate precision, each position held a half-breath longer than necessary. The practice ground was empty at this hour — just him and the packed earth and the pale wash of light bleeding through the canopy of wisteria that climbed the eastern wall of the Sixth Division barracks. The petals drifted like ash. Lavender ash.
His feet slid into the next stance. Hips low. Weight centered over the back heel. The bokken trembled at the apex of the cut — not from fatigue, but from something else. Something underneath his sternum that had been humming for three days now, ever since the night his zanpakutō had spoken its name.
He hadn't told anyone. Not directly.
Apparently, he hadn't needed to.
"Hatsu!"
The voice hit the quiet like a stone through paper. Heavy footfalls followed — sandals slapping against the flagstone path with the subtlety of a cavalry charge. Hatsu didn't turn. He completed the kata's final downward strike, held the position, and exhaled through his nose.
"Hatsu, hey — hold on —"
Megumi rounded the corner of the equipment shed at something between a jog and a lunge, his shihakushō already loosened at the collar, sleeves tied back with cord. His zanpakutō sat on his hip in a worn leather wrap, the guard nicked and dull. Everything about Megumi Arata was nicked and dull — the knuckles, the jaw, the permanent bruise along his left orbital bone that never quite faded because he never quite stopped getting hit.
Or hitting.
"Heard something interesting this morning." Megumi planted himself three paces away, arms folded, the grin already pulling at the corners of his mouth. The kind of grin that preceded property damage. "Word is you manifested your shikai."
Hatsu lowered the bokken. "Word travels."
Megumi cracked the knuckle of his right thumb against his palm. A habit. "So? That true?"
The wisteria petals kept falling. One landed on Hatsu's shoulder. He didn't brush it away.
"It's true."
The grin completed itself. All teeth.
"Then let's go." Megumi's hand dropped to the hilt at his hip, casual as reaching for a cup of tea. "You and me. Right here."
"I'm in the middle of practice."
"Yeah." Megumi glanced at the bokken. "Swinging a stick around. Boring. Come on — I want to see what you've got."
Hatsu turned the bokken over in his hands. The grain of the wood was smooth, worn pale from years of use. Someone had carved a small notch near the pommel — a previous owner's mark, or just idle restlessness. He studied it as if it contained something worth reading.
A spar with Megumi. The man who ate lunch in the Eleventh Division mess hall despite belonging to the Eighth. The man who had, by credible account, headbutted a Hollow unconscious during a field exercise when his zanpakutō got knocked from his grip. The man who wandered the Seireitei's training grounds like a stray dog looking for someone holding a bone.
Refusing would only delay the inevitable. Megumi would be back tomorrow. And the day after. He'd bring sake and frame it as a social obligation. He'd show up during kido drills and stand at the edge of the field with that same idiotic grin until Hatsu's concentration fractured.
Better to get it done.
"Fine."
"Yeah?"
"I said fine." Hatsu set the bokken on the wooden rack beside the shed. His sealed zanpakutō rested against the wall beneath it — a plain katana in an unremarkable dark scabbard. He picked it up. The weight of it was different now. Had been different since the name. It carried a low warmth, like holding a cup that someone else's hands had just left.
They moved to the center of the practice ground. The earth here was harder, stamped flat by a thousand previous bouts. Stains of old reiatsu still clung to the soil in faint discolorations that only someone paying close attention would notice.
Hatsu paid close attention.
He drew the blade. The steel caught the morning light — a clean, unremarkable gleam. At rest, his zanpakutō looked like any other. That was the point. That was perhaps the first lesson it had taught him.
Megumi drew his own blade with the sound of a quick exhalation. No ceremony. He held it one-handed, point angled toward Hatsu's throat, weight already shifting to the balls of his feet.
"Don't hold back," Megumi said.
"Wouldn't dream of it."
—————
The first exchange told Hatsu everything he needed to know and nothing he wanted to hear.
He opened with a feint — a half-committed thrust toward Megumi's leading hip, designed to draw the parry left and open a line to the shoulder. Textbook. Clean. The kind of move that worked against sparring partners who thought before they moved.
Megumi didn't think. Megumi moved.
The parry came not from the blade but from Megumi's forearm, his free hand slapping the flat of Hatsu's sword aside with the heel of his palm — bare skin against steel — and then the counter was already arriving, a diagonal slash that Hatsu barely deflected, the impact jarring through his wrists and into the bones of his forearms.
Fast. Not refined. Not elegant. Fast the way a rockslide is fast — indifferent to technique, governed entirely by momentum and mass.
Hatsu disengaged. Three quick steps backward, resetting his guard. His pulse knocked against the base of his throat.
"That all?" Megumi hadn't moved from his position. The grin was gone now, replaced by something more honest. Focus. Hunger that didn't bother wearing a polite mask.
Hatsu shifted his grip. Fine. Kido, then.
He raised his left hand, fingers already forming the configuration for Hadō number thirty-one. The incantation compressed into a single exhaled syllable — a shortcut that halved the power but doubled the speed. A bolt of red fire lanced from his palm, spiraling tight, aimed at Megumi's center mass.
Megumi sidestepped it. Not dodged — sidestepped, one foot sliding laterally as if he'd known where the bolt would land before the reiatsu had finished coalescing. The kido struck the earth behind him and scorched a black smear into the packed dirt.
He read the hand position. The realization settled behind Hatsu's eyes like cold water. He doesn't know kido theory, but he's fought enough practitioners to recognize the shape.
Second attempt. Hatsu combined shunpo with a binding art — Bakudō four, Hainawa — launching the crackling yellow rope from his trailing hand as he flash-stepped to Megumi's blind side. The rope snaked toward Megumi's sword arm. The shunpo brought Hatsu to a striking angle at his unguarded flank.
Megumi dropped.
Not a dodge. Not a defensive technique. He simply let his knees fold and fell beneath the rope's trajectory, then pivoted on one hand — one hand — and swept Hatsu's lead leg with a kick that carried the force of a man who did not understand the concept of restraint.
The ground hit Hatsu's shoulder. The sky replaced the earth. A grunt escaped through his teeth, involuntary, the kind of sound that is an embarrassment to warriors.
He rolled, came up, flash-stepped again — three rapid bursts that carried him in a triangle pattern around Megumi's position, probing with short cuts at each arrival point. Shoulder. Hip. Knee.
Megumi blocked two and took the third on his forearm, the blade biting through fabric and into skin. Blood. A thin red line drawn across the meat of his left arm. Megumi glanced at it the way someone glances at a mosquito bite.
"Better," he said.
Hatsu's breathing was ragged now. Not from exhaustion — from the growing, uncomfortable recognition that his sealed blade and his academy-polished kido were insufficient. That this scarred, grinning fool who probably couldn't recite a single passage of zanjutsu theory was, in the metrics that mattered on this packed-earth stage, more than him.
The hum beneath his sternum intensified. Not a vibration. A voice. Not words — something older than words. An invitation.
Not yet, he thought.
He tried one more combination. Shunpo into a high guard, feinted thrust transitioning to a reverse grip slash, followed by a palm-fired Shakkahō at point-blank range —
Megumi caught the blade.
Caught it. Left hand wrapped around the flat, blood running freely now between his fingers, and he pulled, dragging Hatsu forward off balance, and the pommel of Megumi's own zanpakutō drove into Hatsu's solar plexus with a precision that contradicted every assumption about the man's fighting intelligence.
Hatsu staggered back. His diaphragm spasmed. The Shakkahō died in his palm, reiatsu dissipating like steam.
Megumi released Hatsu's blade and stepped back. Blood dripped from his palm onto the earth. His forearm wound bled freely. He didn't seem to notice either.
"You're good," Megumi said, and there was no mockery in it. "You're real good, Hatsu. Clean technique. Smart combinations." A pause. He tilted his head, and the morning light caught the scar tissue along his jaw. "But you're fighting me with your brain. And I don't lose to brains."
The invitation pulsed again. Warmer now. Almost tender.
Hatsu straightened. Drew a slow breath that burned on the way down.
Alright, he thought. Alright.
—————
He held the sealed blade before him, horizontal, edge up. The steel hummed. Not audibly — not in a way that Megumi or anyone watching could perceive. The vibration lived inside Hatsu's blood, inside the narrow channels where his reiatsu ran like groundwater through limestone.
The name rose.
Not from memory. From somewhere deeper — from the place where his soul and the blade's soul pressed against each other like two palms separated by a sheet of silk.
"Bloom in silence," he said. The words came out quiet. Almost private. "Shizuka no Hana."
The transformation was not dramatic. There was no explosion of light, no theatrical surge of visible energy. That was not his zanpakutō's nature.
The blade shifted. The steel rippled like the surface of a pond disturbed by a single dropped petal, and when it stilled, the weapon in his hand was different. Medium-length — shorter than his sealed form by perhaps four inches, a blade designed for close quarters and precision rather than reach. The steel had taken on a faint iridescence, like oil on water, visible only at certain angles. The hilt — that was where the beauty lived. Pale wrappings the color of bone, threaded through with silver wire that formed a pattern too intricate to follow with the eye. The guard was shaped like an open flower, five petals rendered in dark metal, each one engraved with a single character too small to read at arm's length.
The reiatsu hit.
Hatsu felt it first — the pressure that had lived coiled at the base of his spine unfurling like a fern in time-lapse. It rose through his core, spread across his shoulders, poured down his arms and into his fingertips. The air around him thickened. The wisteria petals closest to him changed direction mid-fall, curving away as if repelled by a sudden wind, though nothing stirred.
Megumi's feet shifted. Subtle. An adjustment in his stance — weight redistribution, center of gravity dropping half an inch. The grin was gone entirely now. In its place, something Hatsu had not expected to see on that battered face.
Respect.
"There it is," Megumi breathed.
The practice ground's atmosphere had changed. The faint reiatsu stains in the earth responded to the pressure, old spiritual residue flaring and dying like embers in a breeze. The air tasted different — metallic, sharp, the way it tastes before lightning finds the ground.
Hatsu looked at the blade. Shizuka no Hana caught the light and held it, the iridescence shifting through pale greens and silvers.
The voice — not a voice, but a presence, a warmth curled around the bones of his hand — purred.
He moved.
—————
The difference was not speed, though he was faster. It was not strength, though the blade cut deeper. The difference was certainty. In sealed form, Hatsu fought with his training — with the accumulated catalogue of techniques and responses drilled into muscle memory over years of academy discipline. With Shizuka no Hana in his hand, he fought with something else. The blade knew where to go. Not in his place — alongside him, a second intelligence layered over his own, whispering trajectories and timings that his conscious mind would have taken a full second to calculate.
The first strike came from below — an ascending diagonal that Megumi blocked but didn't expect. The impact drove his guard wide. Hatsu stepped into the opening and cut horizontally, the iridescent edge tracing a clean line across Megumi's chest. Fabric parted. Skin parted. A thin ribbon of red appeared from left pectoral to right floating rib.
Megumi grunted. A real sound. Not performance.
He countered with a heavy overhead strike, committing his full weight. Hatsu didn't block. He pivoted, let the blade pass through the space where his shoulder had been, and delivered a short, precise cut to Megumi's sword arm — the same arm that was already bleeding from the earlier wound. The blade kissed the skin just above the elbow, a shallow incision that would sting but not disable.
Megumi swore and swung backhanded. Hatsu caught it on his guard, deflected, and moved again — flash-step into a position at Megumi's flank, another cut, this one across the outside of his thigh. Clean. Controlled. The depth of a fingernail, no more.
Three wounds. Three separate points of contact, each one placed with surgical deliberation.
Megumi stumbled. Not from pain — from the accumulation of small imbalances, the way three shallow cuts across three different muscle groups compound into a disruption of coordination. He planted his blade in the earth and leaned on it, breathing hard. Blood ran in thin streams down his arm, his chest, his leg, darkening the fabric of his shihakushō in spreading blooms.
Hatsu stood four paces away. Shizuka no Hana rested at his side, the blade clean. The blood had not clung to the steel. It never did.
The warmth in his grip had deepened into something almost euphoric. A tremor of pleasure that radiated from the zanpakutō's spirit through the shared channels of their bond. Not bloodlust — Hatsu understood that distinction with the clarity of someone who had spent three nights in his inner world, sitting across from the spirit of his blade, learning what it was and what it wanted.
Shizuka no Hana did not crave violence.
It craved connection.
Every cut was a planted seed. Invisible. Imperceptible to the person cut. A tendril of spiritual energy so fine, so deeply threaded into the wound's closing flesh, that no diagnostic kidō in the Seireitei's medical corps would find it. The seed lay dormant, waiting — and then, over hours and days and weeks, it grew. It extended roots through the victim's spiritual architecture, brushing against the pathways where experience and instinct accumulated.
And it sent everything back to Hatsu.
Not memories. Not thoughts. Competence. The hard-won neurological architecture of practiced skill — the ten thousand repetitions that transformed a novice's fumbling into a master's reflex. Whatever Megumi learned from this day forward, whatever technique he drilled or insight he earned through bruise and repetition, a copy of that learning would travel the invisible thread back to Hatsu's own developing spirit.
Three cuts. Three seeds. Redundancy, in case one failed to take root.
Megumi pulled his blade from the earth and straightened. The blood didn't seem to bother him. Nothing seemed to bother him. He looked at Hatsu with that same naked, uncomplicated respect, and then he laughed — a short, barking sound, startled out of him.
"Damn," he said. "Damn, Hatsu. That's a beautiful sword."
The corner of Hatsu's mouth lifted. A small, involuntary motion. Not a smile — something more private. Agreement, perhaps. Or gratitude that Megumi had given him precisely what he needed without understanding what he'd given.
Shizuka no Hana hummed against his palm. Warm. Satisfied. Patient.
"It is," Hatsu said quietly. He held the blade up. The iridescence caught the light one more time — green, silver, gone. "It really is."
Megumi sheathed his sword and pressed his palm against the chest wound, applying pressure with the absent efficiency of someone who'd bled enough times to consider it routine. "Same time next week?"
Yes, the zanpakutō whispered. Please.
Hatsu slid the blade back into its scabbard. The shikai receded. The spiritual pressure dropped, the air thinned, and the wisteria petals resumed their slow, undisturbed fall.
"Sure," he said. "Same time next week."
Megumi turned and walked away, trailing small red drops onto the flagstone path, already rolling his injured shoulder to test the range of motion. By tomorrow, the cuts would be scabbed over. By next week, healed.
The seeds would remain.
Hatsu stood in the practice ground, alone again. The packed earth bore fresh scars — scorched kido marks, disturbed soil, a few dark spatters of blood already soaking into the dirt. He looked down at the sealed zanpakutō in his hand. Unremarkable. Plain steel in a dark scabbard.
Beneath the surface, three new roots stretched outward through the unseen.
He picked up the bokken from the rack, settled into the first stance of the seventh kata, and resumed his practice. The wisteria petals drifted. The morning light climbed the eastern wall. Somewhere across the Seireitei, Megumi was already looking for his next fight, carrying within him something he would never know was there.
The bokken carved a slow arc through the air.
Down. Across. Return.