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Mastering jinzen
"Shinigami and Zanpakuto are two in one. We only reach our full potential once our souls begin to resonate with one another."
— Senbonzakura, episode 252.
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Kenpachi had never had much use for jinzen. Never saw the point in it. As far as he could tell, it was just sitting with your sword and meditating. How the hell was that sorta crap supposed to get you stronger? Buncha bullshit, if you asked him.
He'd heard the stories, of course. That you'd enter some sort of inner world where you fight your zanpakuto's spirit and get stronger that way. It ain't never happened to him, and he'd tried a time or two in his day, more outta boredom than any belief that it would actually do a fucking thing.
It always ended the same way, too.
"Kenny, I'm bored," Yachiru whined next to him, giving up only minutes in. "Let's play!"
Zaraki opened his lone eye and glanced over at the pink-haired girl next to him. She was sitting cross-legged, sword in its purple sheathe across her knees, pouting.
"You feel like training?" he asked, since she didn't request that he play with her often. Usually, she was simply content to watch him fight others.
It was a common misconception that Yachiru Kusajishi was lieutenant of Squad Eleven because she was Kenpachi's kid. Truth was, she'd earned that spot. Neither Ikkaku or Yumichika had ever beat her in a spar. Though it was natural for them to hold back a bit — most people did while fighting a child — they usually learned the error of their ways once she'd handed their asses to them. Occasionally, some punk fairly new to the squad would try to challenge her, thinking they couldn't beat the Fifth or the Third seat but that the kid wouldn't be a problem.
Yachiru took particular delight in stomping them into the dirt.
"Let's play, Kenny!" Yachiru chirped happily, wide grin splitting her face.
"Eh, all right," Kenpachi gruffed, picking up his sword and unfolding from where he'd been sitting on the ground.
Jinzen wasn't getting him anywhere, anyway.
Bunch of bullshit.
"Yay!" Yachiru cheered, attacking while Kenpachi was still stretching. His aged and chipped blade blocked her instinctively.
"Hey," he complained, "I wasn't ready for ya yet."
"You always have to be ready for a fight, Kenny!" Yachiru told him, attacking from a completely different direction.
"Don't go repeatin' my own damn advice back at me, brat," Kenpachi warned as he blocked her strike. Yachiru simply giggled as she planted her sandled feet on his blade and bounced backwards off of it.
Yachiru was chaos and energy, and her fighting style embodied all of it. For most people, it was damned impossible to predict where and how she was gonna strike. But Kenpachi had been her favorite target since the brat could hold a blade, and he always knew how she was gonna come at him. He was able to dodge and block with very little thought.
Just made the little shit all the more eager to land one on him, and Kenpachi welcomed her to try.
He never fought back. Never raised his blade to draw blood. Not against her. She'd been the only being he'd ever met that wasn't scared of him. In turn, she became the only person free from his bloodlust.
In anybody else, Yachiru would be furious that they weren't taking her seriously, but she understood that there was one thing Kenpachi would never do.
He couldn't bring himself to attack her.
As the strikes settled into an uneasy rhythm, Kenpachi let his thoughts drift. The sound of metal against metal, the vibrations in his sword arm as he blocked, lulled him into something remarkably fucking similar to the meditative state he'd been trying — and failing — at reaching before.
He wanted to get stronger. That was a given. The day Kenpachi stopped wanting to get stronger was the day he finally got put in the ground. For too long now, that had seemed an impossible goal. Sure, there were people in the Gotei 13 that could kick his ass like he was nothing more than a punk kid, but none of them were gonna go all out on him just for the fun of it. None of them would fight him fucking seriously.
Not even Unohana, and wasn't that some shit. Not that Kenpachi was ready to fight her yet. She'd made it perfectly clear that with the level he was at, she'd just take him apart and wouldn't fucking bother putting him back together again.
Nah, he had to get stronger.
He hadn't had any interest in fighting most the Captains. Weren't many of them that would make it worth his time, not even working up a sweat to beat them. He'd learned he was right about that when he'd fought Tosen and Komamura.
Kuchiki was the only one he was really interested in, and the prissy ass noble was playing hard to get.
But it was his fight with Ichigo Kurosaki that wouldn't leave him the fuck alone, which was why Kenpachi was in the ass end of the 59th district of the North Rukongai trying to reach fucking jinzen.
"What if he was right?" Kenpachi asked out loud as he blocked a strike somehow coming from directly above him.
"Who? Ichi?" Yachiru asked as she leapt away. Kenpachi liked that he never had to explain his way of thinking to the brat. She always seemed to know what he was talking about even if it came outta nowhere once he finally voiced his thought out loud.
"Yeah, Ichigo," Kenpachi agreed gruffly, deflecting another blow, this one coming from over his right shoulder, in his blind spot. "All that shit about zanpakuto being more than tools. That they're partners. Think he was right?"
"What would you need some stupid zanpakuto spirit for," Yachiru said, an obvious pout to her words. She appeared in front of him, no longer attacking, and folded her arms across her chest, blade still clutched in one hand as she glared at him. "You already got me!"
There was jealousy in that sulk. Wasn't common for Yachiru. Usually, the kid liked anything that made him happy, though Kenpachi supposed that was pretty much just when dealing with a good fight.
Only time he was really happy, anyway.
He couldn't let brat's jealousy stop him, though. He had to get stronger. Wasn't the only reason it was on his mind. "Do you remember what it was like before I gave you a name?" Kenpachi asked her.
He knew she remembered when he named her. Remembered even the clouds in the sky, is what she'd said.
"No," Yachiru admitted quietly, and the attitude was gone. She was serious in a way that she seldom was. "I just remember you, Kenny."
Then, just as suddenly as her light had dimmed, she brightened. "I know!" she said cheerfully. "Since you named me, you can just name your zanpakuto too!"
"Che," Kenpachi gruffed. "I don't think it works that way, brat."
"Sure it does!" Yachiru argued, tugging on his arm to try to get him to sit down.
He sank his blade into the ground before sinking to the dirt beside it. Bracing an elbow on his knee, he leaned his scarred cheek against his fist.
At least humoring her was less depressing than his current fucking thoughts.
"What would you name your zanpakuto?" he asked her.
"Mine?!" Yachiru exclaimed, sounding surprised. "I thought we were naming your zanpakuto, Kenny!"
"Well, I ain't gonna let you name mine if you can't even name yours," Kenpachi argued.
"Oh! Well, in that case, hmmm…" Yachiru put a finger over her lips, rolling her eyes toward the sky in thought, before exclaiming, "I would name mine Sanpo Kenju! The Three-Step Sword Beasts."
"Sanpo Kenju," Kenpachi repeated, wondering where she came up with this shit. It was entertaining, at least. "So there'd be three of them, huh?"
"No, silly," Yachiru chided. "There would be two of them. Moko Moko and Hone Hone."
"Then why ya callin' them the Three-Step Sword Beasts?"
"Cause I'm the third one!" Yachiru told him, sounding rather smug about it. "We'd play a game. Like follow the leader! Moko Moko would attack, then I'd attack, and then Hone Hone."
"Moko Moko's the leader then."
"Huh-uh," Yachiru argued. "I'm the leader, Kenny! They gotta do what I do. Moko Moko just goes first and Hone Hone goes right after me."
Kid had a helluva imagination, Kenpachi had to give her that. He zoned out a bit as she described the two zanpakuto spirits — one fluffy and yellow, wielding a cleaver, and the other a large bone creature with a double-bladed sword — and instead wondered if the brat had any idea how bloody ruthless the attack she'd just created was. Yachiru was hard enough for most people to dodge. An attack going off right before her and right after would be damned impossible to block, even for Kenpachi.
It was fucking brutal.
"And your zanpakuto would be Nozarashi," Yachiru told him seriously, dragging his attention back to the pink-haired girl's babbles.
"Say what?" he said gruffly, "Nozo—"
"Nozarashi," Yachiru repeated. "The Weathered One." She said the last with a sage nod of her head that was almost funny on the girl, if she didn't sound so stern about it. "It's spelled like this," she added as she knelt down on the ground beside Kenpachi and started drawing the characters for the name in the dirt.
Kenpachi watched her, wondering when she'd started to grow up so much. When she'd started getting so smart. Even drawing in the dirt with a chubby little finger, Kenpachi could tell that her writing no longer had the awkward form of a child. Caused more by lack of coordination than knowledge, seeing as they'd learned to read and write together. Kenpachi's chicken scratch was still barely legible, but Yachiru's had become neatly formed at some point. "Who's been helping ya with your letters?" he asked curiously.
"Yun-yun and Bakkie," Yachiru told him, and the illusion of maturity was lost with the childish nicknames. "Yun-Yun's calligraphy is even prettier than Bakkie's, but don't tell Bakkie I said that. It would hurt his feelings."
"Heh," Kenpachi chuckled, imagining for a moment tormenting Byakuya Kuchiki about the fact that the Fifth Seat of Squad Eleven had prettier hand-writing than him. Might have to try it sometime. Shit like that might actually goad the prissy bastard into a fight.
Kenpachi glanced over at Yachiru to see her watching him with an avid sort of expression. Like she was waiting for something, but fuck if Kenpachi knew what that was. He glanced at the carefully written name in the dirt to the chipped and worn blade of his zanpakuto. "Nozarashi," he repeated the name curiously. "It fits."
He glanced over at Yachiru and saw she was smiling proudly, as if those few words actually meant something to her.
"Nozarashi would become in a big ax!" she told him, gesturing widely with her arms to show a massive scale. "You'd be able to cut down anything!"
That was a bit disappointing. Kenpachi was under the impression the brat already thought he could cut down anything. She continued to ramble before he could bring up what he thought was a valid fucking point.
"And in your bankai, you'd become a demon! You're skin would turn all red and you'd get horns!"
"A demon, huh?" Kenpachi muttered. The Demon of Zaraki. That's what they used to call him when he was a kid. He'd have thought he would've left the moniker behind in the 80th district, but it had followed him, even into Soul Society, though it was more likely she'd heard it from somebody out in the Rukongai. It was said as a slur, at one point, toward a bloodthirsty brat with no name. Now, it was whispered with respect and fear for the Captain of the Eleventh, Kenpachi Zaraki.
"I'll draw you a pictures of all of them when we get back," Yachiru promised him with a firm nod.
"You wanna go back already?"
"Uh-huh… but… Kenny? Can we train together again tomorrow? I want us both to get really strong!"
"Yeah, brat," Kenpachi agreed, settling the small girl on his shoulder as he stood up and grabbed his sword. "We can train some more tomorrow."
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