Forty-Year Rejection (Solo)

Frightened Obsessive Reality - Godlike Intense Virtue - Eternal Unending Strife

(OOC: Okay well, here is my first submission. I don't know why, but I always feel rushed in my writing, even when I sit back to relax. It seems to be pretty quick paced, and I tend to rush through some of the details. I want to flesh this out further, but it seems that I'm at about the end of it. I hope you enjoy what I have wrote, and that I have not taken too many liberties. And sorry about the Abstract titles at the beginning, it's...it's a bad habit I guess.)

“Gravelle, please take a seat.” The instructor ordered.

Remington gave a weak smile and walked across the large classroom, sitting at an empty desk in the front row, front and center to the instructor. Though the room was large, and there were many desks, over fifty as he had counted from his first few weeks at the academy, those many years ago, there were only about a dozen or so students in the room, each sitting no closer than the fourth row. He would have enjoyed it more if the room was less large, but it was fine so long as he sat in the first row. Of the students behind him, they were a ratio of five to one, men to women, though all appeared younger than he. The room was also plain, being made of whitewash plaster walls and plain planked flooring.

He drew a blue-covered book from his haversack when the instructor cleared his throat.

“Sit in your assigned seat, Gravelle.”

He drew himself up and out of the desk, walking back towards the last row of the desks, in the very back. He sat down, put his book on the desk, and leaned forwards, elbows resting on the desk with his head hung low. He squinted towards the board at the front. He made great pains to detail how annoyed he was, making extra noise and grunting when he reached into his bag to pull out a small black case. He dropped it onto the desk with a light thud, and then audibly made it pop, revealing the wire-rimmed glasses inside. He leaned over again and shoved his hand into his bag, searching for something else. He made efforts to be as distracting as possible, even upending the bag and letting all of its contents, more books, all fall loudly to the ground. He shuffled the mess about until he found the little white case he was looking for. He picked it up and grunted as he unscrewed the cap. With care, he held his eyelids open one at a time and removed his contact lenses, before screwing the cap back on and dropping it into his bag. He picked up his glasses and pushed them up his nose and around his ears. He then made show of putting everything back into his bag.

He raised his hand, a habit instilled in him from his many years of learning while alive. “Sir? I can’t see the board.” He commented.

The instructor ignored him.

“Sir? I still cannot see the board.”

The instructor continued to ignore him, although he took pains to do so.

“Sir? I still cannot see the board.”

The stiff tension in the room was intensified more by the silence of the other students. If one could concentrate enough, the only thing that they would have heard was the stiffening of almost every muscle in the instructor’s body, along with the rather slow, steady pace of Gravelle’s heartbeat. It was like the Students in the room had willed themselves inexistent.

“Sir? I still canno-”

“-Leave. Leave now and do not return.” The instructor managed to say through grated teeth.

Remington got up from his desk, picking up his haversack and smiled before haughtily pacing his way down towards the front of the room.

He paused before the instructor before leaving. “I really don’t like you.” He said before leaving.

He pushed the door shut behind him, letting it close gently. He cackled loudly in the hall, proud with himself as he made his way through the building and out towards the Student’s residential area.

His were quiet steps down the halls and the only steps at that as well; his bare feet making a soft pit-pat, pit-pat as he walked. Like the classroom, the walls here were whitewash as well, and the floor was more of those plain wooden planks. He turned a corner and paused, listening and feeling the environment around him.

“Hello Gina.” He called out, flatly.

Truth of the matter was, her name wasn’t Gina, it was something else, far too complex for him to remember or even pronounce, but after a few years, he’d just stopped and continued to call her Gina. But behind him materialized a young girl with short blond hair and large brown eyes.

“How did you find me? You’re no good at anything like a Soul Reaper like me. How can you discover my presence? What do I do wrong?”

He turned to her, a faint smile on his face. Gina wasn’t all that unattractive; she was about six inches shorter than him, with her short, blond hair and her big, innocent brown eyes, and always wore her black Soul Reaper outfit, the Shihakusho, which made her look like almost every other Soul Reaper around. Now, her sister on the other hand, she was an altogether different matter. Gina was kind, and Natty was…crazy. Natty took a whole different approach, having a tighter outfit without a back, and with her silvery-blond hair done up in a bun, and though she had brown eyes like her sister, they were wild and dangerous.

“You won’t be as good as you want with your nature.” He continued. “You’re just too nice. You don’t have the personality or even the genetic mutations to make yourself a good predator. I mean, look at you! Show me those teeth!” Gina opened her mouth, only for him to grab her by the shoulder and tap his fingers on her molars and canines. “Flat molars, small canines…you’ve got no aggression to you. Look at me, see my teeth?” he bared his teeth, revealing the unsettling collection of sharp edges he had. “Everything, long, sharp and pointed, molars included, canines, elongated. Jaw strength, endurance, diet, it’s all aggressive.”

“Where do you know all of this…this information?” Gina asked.

“When I was alive, I was a science major, specializing in biology and chemistry. I excelled at the Engineering and theory of evolution and the design of living beings, primarily mammals like humans, birds, cats, and so forth.” He answered. “It’s really very simple when you know these things. All living things adapt to suit their needs and ancestral habits. Kind of like how hollows evolve and get stronger with the more souls they devour.”

“You’re still really smart though…” Gina trailed off, listening to him talk reminded her of a conflict he had had long ago with one of their teachers. “Why do you still annoy master Tensu?”

“Because he’s an arrogant bastard and I don’t believe that his ideas are correct. I do not believe in the stale theories he espouses and the truths he continues to deny. I do not believe, that in all of these years, Hollows would not somewhere along the line, evolve to surpass the regular tactics of Soul Reapers. Surely there is a hollow out there that is immune to everything a Soul Reaper has to offer. I mean, these things we often deem as merely stupid creatures, they don’t not learn from the mistakes of others. Hueco Mundo is Darwin’s theory in practice. The strong survive and the weak are eliminated! How can Tensu just ignore this logic? I spent twenty years building that thesis, and he has the ignorance to say ‘It will never happen’!?”

“So…you go to his class each day to piss him off?”

“I have surpassed his class. I don’t even need to be there. I graduated that class and HE KNOWS IT.” He continued, yelling the last part. Annoyed, he grumbled to himself about all of the lousy reasons that Tensu.

“But…” She hesitated for a second. “Do you really want to be a student here for the rest of your life? Ankou, couldn’t you just get along with him so you could graduate from his class? You’d make an excellent Soul Reaper! I know it.”

He smiled at the mention of his preferred name. Everyone at the academy knew him as Remington, or Gravelle, but to his one real friend at the academy, he was Ankou, as he preferred. He was also called a great many other things, none very pleasant, because of his lack of traditional values. He noted that since they had been talking, they had ventured out into the training grounds of the academy.

“Maybe. Maybe I’m happy where I am. Perhaps I just don’t want to graduate because I’m afraid I’ll lose the privileges I’ve made here. I’m sure I could be an excellent Soul Reaper, but I do lack what makes many of them great.”

“How so?”

“A proper Soul Reaper should excel in the fields of swordplay, magical arts, and flash step.”

“Uh huh…” Gina interjected, nodding to his words.

“But I do not excel in any of those, more to the point, I am likely the opposite of excelling at them. My only strengths are my intellect and my technical skills, which are then still lacking.”

“No they’re not!” Gina said proudly to him. “You’re good, you just haven’t discovered your full potential yet.”

He frowned at her. He drew his pistol and tried to hand it to her, for which she adamantly denied the invitation. The pistol was a great idea, although its actual function differed greatly from what he had intended. He and Gina had tried it out years back when he had first made the design. It had sort of worked well in the Prototype One’s version. He had held it at a tree, to test its destructive capabilities, and ended up evaporating both the tree, and the area surrounding it, but it had come with a cost, eating up his Reiryoku and almost eliminating him entirely with the energy draw of the gun. He was in a coma for a whole month after using it.

“It’s modified, Gina.” He told her.

And this model was, as it was one of the Prototype Three’s, which were much more controlled, and stable. The weapon still drew its possessors Reiryoku in order to fire a projectile, which was sort of like firing a weak version of a Cero that Hollows used. Unfortunately, the mechanics still hadn’t worked, and drew large amounts of energy from the user to fire the projectiles with less force than was lethal, and seemed to do more harm to the wielder than the target. He had wished he was able to continue working on it, but as a student, he was not permitted to do so, nor ever bear one of them again. This last part he had been carefree about , as he kept the thing on him, not the original of course, but one of the replicates that the twelfth division had made. It was certainly a good threat too, since as far as everyone but twelfth division knew, it still had that full destructive power.

“I still don’t want to end up like you did. That was scary enough for me.” She replied hesitantly. “In fact, I think I’m late for some of my duties. I’ll see you around, Ankou!”

Before he could call her back, she vanished, in the sort of sense that she had been erased from his vision, though he could still hear and smell her as she left, which wasn’t very dramatic, since her could hear her soft steps dashing away from him.

“Neither the nature, nor the skills, honestly.” He murmured to himself.

He looked around himself, wondering what next he would do. He didn’t have another class for another hour, and he never felt comfortable enough doing Zanjutsu in front of others with his Zanpakto, nor showing his poor skills at Kido either. He looked to the Zanjutsu class on the field and scowled before sitting down on a bench to watch them. He envied everyone with a Zanpakto. It was true how he had his own from the first day he had arrived, without even attempting to summon it or anything, but in all of his forty years at the academy, he had yet to learn how to release it. Several of the students out there had their weapons, and many had released their Zanpaktos already, meaning that the class was part of a senior year.

“I wish I could commune with you,” he sighed, pulling his Zanpakto and holding it across his lap.

At first, he thought he had been lucky, since he had been told that being able to manifest one’s Zanpakto so early was a good sign. Then he had learned that one’s spiritual energy, or life force, or whatever, determined the size of one’s Zanpakto. He had quickly become very aware of his sword in contrast to everyone else. In his original class, his was the shortest of everyone’s. It was also inelegant, which made him more awkward. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t average, it was just…it was below average. To him, it was the masculine equivalent of having a small penis; and he felt he needed to compensate, badly. At first, he would sit down and talk with it, encouraging it to get larger, when that failed, he tried to enhance it through other means, such as practicing theories of elongation, and even going so far as to invest in Zanpakto-lengthening packages which guaranteed results every time, and which had turned out to be false, every time.

It was then that he and Gina began to become friends, as she noticed his frustration over his sword, and tried to help him realize that, no matter what he thought, his Zanpakto was fine the way it was. At first, she had helped, especially since she had been unable to manifest her own Zanpakto, and told him he was lucky to have one in the first place. Then she was awarded a sword in her senior year, and shortly after that, had released her blade’s spirit. This had frustrated him more, seeing as she had only had her sword for a whole six months before doing so. It was after her graduation that he seemed to have snapped, abandoning the whole concept of conformity over personal appearance. He stopped dressing in uniform, and made great show of being someone different.

Unfortunately, he also overcame his personal image fears, and grew his self-conscious confidence to a whole new level. He chuckled to himself about those days. He was supposed to duel with someone during Zanjutsu, and they had remarked about the size of his Zanpakto; he responded poorly, stripping himself naked and saying he was proud of himself and his weapon, and would show no ill feelings or shame about it. He repeated this for almost a month, until he was removed from the Zanjutsu class due to inappropriate behaviour. Later, through counselling, he revealed his insecurities about his sword, and was allowed back into Zanjutsu, although, he was to have some self-restraint over how he took the things that people said to him into account.

“Gravelle,” Called the instructor, a Hiro Yagatsu, if he remembered correctly. “Would you like to join us for class?”

He shrugged and stood up, crossing the field to meet Yagatsu. The instructor was a kind man, who looked to be in his forties, but was much older than that. He was also one to enjoy being different, although in a very different way, as he wore a Shihakusho that was entirely pink. He had asked once if the instructor was interested in men or women, to which Yagatsu had chuckled and said that despite what he wore, he was the proud father of six young daughters, and had a loving wife, and he wore his uniform in that colour because it made his children happy. Yagatsu was also his instructor for his Zanjutsu class, and the two of them got along incredibly well.

“You’re certainly early for class today.” Yagatsu chuckled, “There’s still almost an hour until you are supposed to be here.”

“I was in Tensu’s class today, got myself kicked out.” He replied coolly, “He knows I’m too good for that class.”

“And so do I, but,” Yagatsu smiled, though his face showed concern, “I’d much rather believe in Tensu’s ideas than your research. The world would be a much scarier place if I didn’t pretend that those things don’t exist.” He shuddered. “You can be scary, but now I want you to scare your opponent. This is a friendly spar, so don’t go all out on him, and try not to trip again.”

Gravelle was about to meet the single lone student practicing with a dummy when Yagatsu held his shoulder and motioned with a free hand to pass up his usual things. He smiled and removed his coat, and left his accessories, aside from his Zanpakto with Yagatsu. He approached the student, bare-chested and sword tucked into his sash. He tapped their shoulder and opened his mouth but found no words came out when she turned.

He wasn’t sure about what it was about her, but something was…off. Her hair was long, semi-curled and brown, while her eyes were a sort of olive green with teal ridges; her face was fine, a sharp nose and small lips. She wore a plain shihakusho, but with it was her air that threw him off. He couldn’t place it, but she seemed…familiar in a way. Or, he surmised, perhaps it was because she was also Caucasian, and was distinguished from the others by her western appearance.

“Well, this is Janet.” Yagatsu introduced, surprising him. “Janet, this is Remington, he will be your sparring partner today.”

He broke a weak smile and drew his Zanpakto in front of himself. The girl, Janet, drew her weapon as well before breaking into a combative stance and holding her blade behind her back with the blade pointed up at an angle.

“Cry before the hand of death, weep not for the end has come,” she chanted, changing her zanpakto from its sealed state, “Cross of the Ankou!”

Her sword transformed, the grip elongating into a shaft, and the blade turning at a right angle to it, and making another right angle nearer its end until the whole thing had completely changed. Before him stood the young woman, complete with a scythe just a little larger than her; He was ready to cry, as the weapon was just as inelegant as his own, being of plain structure and form, and he was furious that another student could achieve what he could not, even though it was rare for a student to release their zanpakto so early on in their training.

“Instructor?” He hesitated, “Why is this particular student capable of shikai already?”

“Well, maybe it’s because she’s talented, and maybe it’s because she’s had almost seventy years to practice it. She’s also very much like you in that she’s a slow learner. But keep your eye on the ball, there’s a reason she wasn’t chosen to spar with the others.”

He was about to complain more when the whoosh of something overhead stopped him. He watched, as if everything had become a slower form of time, as little bits of hair glided to the ground around him, and was very aware that she had given him a light cropping for his lack of attention. She locked her feet and began to crouch, getting ready to enter a stance for which she would launch forwards.

“Oh shit.” He managed to blurt before bolting to the left and making a run for it across the field. Without much other need for incentive, he weaved, rolled, kicked and barrelled his way around the field as she chased him, swinging her scythe behind him to and fro. And for him, the hour didn’t go by fast enough. Yagatsu blew his whistle, signifying the end of the class, and an exhausted Gravelle stopped before him, panting when the head of the scythe was quickly placed around his neck.

“You lose.” Janet said to him before withdrawing her scythe and returning it to the sealed appearance it had before. She smiled and then sauntered off, pleased with herself and moving onwards to her next class.

“You can’t get tired yet, you still have Zanjutsu, Kido training, and two other classes to complete today.” Yagatsu said cheerfully, giving him a good thump on the back and sending him to the ground in a heap.