A Field Trip to Remember [Solo(past)]

Haruko was practically zoning out, sitting at her desk her head balanced on her fist as the teacher rambled on about something; she rarely listened, knowing full well that she should. She didn’t stand out much as a student, she was becoming a well-rounded individual but found she wasn’t particularly good at anything, didn’t really stand out like some of the students, not that she was really too bothered, she just wanted to become a fully-fledged Shinigami.

“Suzuki, Haruko,” she heard her name and made a huge effort to look like she hadn’t just been daydreaming, only to hear someone else’s name be called almost immediately after hers had been. She frowned and turned to the guy sitting next her.

“Psst, why’s my name been called out?” She hissed at him, causing him to look at her whilst making no direct effort to hide the fact he rolled his eyes.

“Field trip groups,” he stated simply, turning his attention back to the teacher at the front of the class. Haruko slumped in her seat, letting a large sigh escape from her as she actually began to pay attention to what was being said.

“So, that’ll be our first group, if you could all report to Acadamy entrance at six this evening, you’ll be staying out overnight so take food but no sleeping gear, you’ll have no time for sleep tonight, class dismissed,” the teacher said, before beginning to clean the huge chalk board that decorated the front of her classroom.

Instead of taking a load of food with her she literally pigged out about half an hour before they left, she had no intention of over exerting herself and so the energy she got from eating huge amounts should see her through the night with no problem. Considering most of her theories ended up being massively flawed, she decided to take some rice balls, packed neatly away on the inside of her Hakama to be on the safe side.

Digging around for information she had been told that she would also need to take her Zanpakuto and this confused her mainly because she wasn’t entirely sure what purpose the field trip was serving. They’d been on one other before and that was only to practise their Kido in the woods, something she swiftly discovered she was not going to excel in.

After staring at, what essentially was just a piece of metal for the time being; she slid it into the belt that held her white hakama pants up, and adjusted it to make sure it was fairly comfortable before leaving her dorm and making her way to the designated meeting spot.

She reached it with a few minutes to spare, finding almost everyone already there. None of the people she considered her friends had been put into the group for this outing and so she found herself standing slightly away from the rest of the students, not that she didn’t like them more that she didn’t enjoy making awkward and pointless conversation with people she wasn’t properly acquainted with (though this was often negatively seen as some sort of arrogance, as though she was looking down upon people).

“Right, now that everyone is present, we’ll set out. We’re going into the forest so be careful, the area has been scouted out, and any hollows have been removed but we cannot guarantee you won’t come across one while you’re out there, so make sure you keep your wits about you,” the teacher started, making eye-contact with one or two people as she spoke in a stern voice laced with authority. “Once we get into the forest you guys will split up from each other, each taking a different path. These paths become a little open after a while and your goal is to find these,” she held up a tiny black cube. “They’re almost impossible to see for when you do this-“ she tapped her finger on the top of it and it because the exact same colour as the hand she held it in “-they become almost completely invisible,” she said looking around. “However, you will find that they have a certain amount of reiatsu, the objective is to teach you to be able to sense it better,” she paused for a second “and also the first one to return is the winner,” she finished with a smile.

“What do we win?” A female voice called from somewhere within the main group of people.

“You’ll just have to wait and see won’t you?” The teacher shot a grin in the general direction of the voice before turning to walk away. “Now, if everyone would like to follow me we’ll get this show on the road” she said.

After a few long minutes of walking and the hum of chatter from the academy students, they reached a clearing within the forest that had obviously been prepared solely for the purpose of exercises such as this one.

“Just pick a path guys, none of them will give you any kind of advantage in the matter of finding the cubes,” the teacher said with a wave of her hand, perching on a tree stump to the side. “Oh, and there’s a time limit of two hours, because this isn’t the only task I have for you lot tonight,” she said lazily as she began to explore the various facial expressions of her students in the dim orange light of the setting sun.

“You may begin,” she said loudly as everyone fell into silence. Most of the students took off at an alarming pace, running off into the shadowy paths between the trees. Haruko however began at a walking pace, she had no desire to tire herself out like some of the other’s most likely would and her natural laziness, born from years of being pampered by an overprotective mother reared its head.

After a little while though she became bored and set off at a run wanting nothing more than to get the whole task over and done with. She stopped abruptly, tripping over her own feet an stumbling forward a little bit as she came to a clearing, from what she gathered of the teacher’s explanation (yes she was actually listening) the small cube would be somewhere within it. But where? That was the question.

--


After a few minutes of searching and finding absolutely nothing she plonked herself down right in the middle of the clearing. Pushing her hair out of her face she began to concentrate as hard as she could manage, closing her eyes and blocking out every sound that could be heard in the fading light of the forest. Her breathing slowed right down as she relaxed into her surroundings completely. She was inexperienced, like all of the other students when it came to sensing reiatsu so it naturally took her a great deal of time to begin to sense even larger of spiritual pressures.

She opened her eyes after a little while, composing herself as she realised the sun was almost completely set now, the forest now looking more eerie than it had done in the light. She was finding it difficult to concentrate and was irritating herself by it, so with a loud sigh she closed her eyes once again and began to focus once more.

This time, after a few minutes she began to sense a faint reiatsu, it was above her, but where she wasn’t entirely sure and so she kept focusing on it, completely pushing everything else to the back of her mind. She centred in on it, finding it to be above her and slightly to the left a smile edged it’s way onto her face and she began to withdraw from herself.

Only then did she feel another pressure a larger, closer one. Her eyes shot open literally just in time for her to jump to her feet, falling backwards and narrowly avoiding the claw of the fairly large hollow it was attached to. She felt the wind rush past her face before she watched it pull it’s hand back, readying itself for another strike. She knew she was not going to be fast enough to both stand and dodge it, so as she stood she pulled out her sword and held it up looking away as she felt the force of the monster’s hand beat down atop it.

A noise of discomfort escaped her mouth as she pushed up with all the strength she had, applying both hands to the hilt of the sword, giving her enough room to swiftly roll out of the way, watching as the creature stumbled forward a little upon the lack of upwards pressure.

She was panicking, it was plain as day. Her breathing had become heavy and she had broken into a nervous sweat. She didn’t know what to do, she had every doubt that she could fight this thing off, and if she ran she wouldn’t know how fast it would catch up, as she hadn’t seen it run or anything similar. She swung her sword as hard as she could with one hand as the creatures limb came hurtling toward her once more; it knocked its trajectory slightly off course and also gave it a nice little cut.

Annoyingly, this seemed to anger the creature and it began to attack not only with its larger arm, but the smaller one on the other side if it’s body, swiping in blind fury as Haruko struggled to dodge and counter. She needed help that much was certain, so when it’s larger arm came toward her, she jumped onto it, pushing it down with the force of her landing, ran up the creatures arm in three long strides and jumped a fair distance behind it’s back, giving her a few seconds to let out the loudest most ear piercing scream her lungs had ever mustered. Someone had to hear that…

Unfortunately, her attention was slightly distracted, and she noticed the creature’s clawed hand moving toward her far too late to be able to do anything. A cry tore from her lips as the claws made contact with her right arm, ripping through the uniform she wore and sinking deep into the flesh.

She had never felt such intense pain in her life and she felt tears run down her face as she fell to the floor, dropping her sword and clutching at the arm which was gushing blood. The shadow of the hollow blocked out what little light was left and she prepared herself for the final blow…

But it never came, when she opened her eyes to look all she saw was the horrid creature fizzling away into nothing, it’s form soon being replaced with that of her teacher. Haru was sure she was speaking but she couldn’t understand a word of it, and her vision became patchy, black spots overtaking before her world were completely engulfed into darkness.

--



She awoke instantly closing her eyes both to wince at the pain and shut out the bright light that raided her vision so suddenly. After a few seconds of composure and expecting to be something close to dead she opened her eyes slightly, looking around to find herself in a room which was primarily white. Her right arm was throbbing with a dull yet fierce pain, and her head was hurting as well.

It took her a little while longer to gather her thoughts as she remembered what had happened, she knew she was incredibly lucky to be alive. She tried to sit up, but failed and at the moment her head flopped back onto the pillow a woman walked through the door.

“I see you’re awake” she had blonde hair and a pair of glasses obscured her chestnut coloured eyes. “Miss Suzuki, I have to ask you to remain still,” she said, her voice calm and somewhat irritating. Despite this she made to push her hair out of her eyes, only to find that her right arm was completely still despite her desire to move it. She looked down at it, her green eyes wide with both fear and shock before she averted her gaze to the woman.

“I’m afraid your arm is rendered immobile for the time being miss. You see the hollow tore your muscles, which would ordinarily be perfectly repairable, but it would seem that some form of toxin has been let into your arm muscles directly from the wounds, most likely from the hollow itself. The toxin, to put it bluntly began to slowly eat away at, and decay everything it came into contact with. Luckily, it was slow moving and we were able to isolate and remove it, but the damage to your arm is not looking good,” still her voice was as calm as ever, her expression neutral. Haruko said nothing, but felt the sting as tears leaked over her eyes.

“We do however have reason to believe that your arm will become functional with some effort, we will have a member of the fourth division through to work on it, though we doubt it will ever be as strong as it was. I am truly sorry, miss Suzuki. The only thing I can suggest it that you train with your other arm from now on,” she said as she stood and exited the room without another word.

She felt physically sick, to find out that there was a large possibility her right arm would be completely useless was a huge blow and to say she was distraught would be an understatement. Yes, she was lucky to be alive, but that didn’t make the situation in any way more positive. She allowed the tears to freely flow as she turned her head to the side, closing her eyes and falling into a plagued and uneasy sleep.


--


It took months of hard work from various members of the fourth division to have any form of luck with her arm at all. At one point she had completely given up on ever having any kind of mobility restored to it. She had trained a little with her left hand and it was a slow and rather irritating process but she was gradually getting the hang of using it for both fighting and doing menial tasks such as writing.

After two long months, she regained the feeling in her fingers on her right arm, and a further week after that she could feel most of her arm, which was a huge leap in the right direction after a long while of getting no-where at all. Even if she couldn’t move it and it ached like hell, she could feel it and that was great.

Nothing happened for a further three months, much to the disappointment and frustration of everyone and as they were about to give up it was discovered that –with large amounts of effort- she could move her fingers, which after a week of trying soon became the ability to loosely clench her fist. Her muscles in the injured arm were so weak they were near on useless and the tough task would then be regaining her strength…