A Bottleneck

"To your left!" I called, as a Hollow sprung forward towards Uyu. I could see it's ribbon move through the air in almost slow motion. That was, before Uyu's gauntleted fist connected with it's face, blasting it through the nearby concrete wall.

"Why are there so many?" I heard Suzumi groan as a another Hollow's ribbon went flying into the air, along with it's body.

We had gone hunting again, for the fifth or sixth time this week, waging war on the seemingly horde or Hollows that Karakura town seems to have in endless supply. This particular group of Hollows were all weak, made of tissue paper in comparison to the one we had taken out on out first hunt. Thought they made up with their weakness with numbers. Or tried to at least.

"Hollows can conglomerate if they think it'll get them more chance of a feed." I said dryly, regurgitating Kisuke's nugget of wisdom. With a grunt of exertion, I pushed off from the ground and rocketed towards one of the larger hollows in the group and slamming a leg into it's unprotected midsection, making it fall over.

"I know that, it's just–" the crack of a fist against mask sounded out from Suzumi's direction, "it's just so gross!" I laughed as I danced out of the way of a wild punch from the Hollow I'd kicked. I kneed the originating point of the Hollow's ribbon, it's mask.

"T-they aren't gross!" Uyu said defensively.

"Are so!" Suzumi called back as another Hollow went flying.

They had been having an argument about whether Hollows were, or were not gross for the entire week. I could only sigh as I pummelled the last of the bigger Hollow's fight out of it and moved on to another.

"Is this really important enough to be arguing about it while fighting a small horde of Hollows?"

"O-of course! Hollows aren't gross, t-they need to be purified is all!"

Suzumi made to reply, but it the argument ground to a halt when the air began to rumble with spiritual pressure. Instinctively I upped my own enhancement and cloaking with a burst of spiritual energy, readying myself for a fight.

Interestingly enough, going on regular Hollow hunts and fighting against opponents that have a vested interest in actually trying to kill me had done wonders for my advancement. I hadn't managed to get an entire coat over my body with spiritual energy, but I was probably within five or ten percent of doing so. In short, I had a hell of a lot more artificial weight to swing around, along with the strength to roughly match.

I widened my ribbon sense and taking count of fifteen Hollows that I already knew were there, plus one ribbon that was just a little wider than the rest. It seemed that the wider or more complex a ribbon was, the more powerful the being it alluded to. Tessai and Kisuke were good examples, even going to far as having a pattern in their crimson ribbons. Though, the exception was that Hollow, Phantom.

"Right at the back, just around the corner. Probably the leader." I said, keeping it short. Both of my teammates nodded, mirroring onto their ribbons. We had started to fall into some semblance of a pattern as a team.

Typically Suzumi worked on taking out the chaff, due to her general speed and precision. Uyu was great at taking down the bigger brutes in one blow but could only do that every so often. When her brute busting attacks were down for recovery, I came into play.

Cat and mouse had become my game. I wasn't particularly nimble, or even all that fast. Suzumi would win nine out of ten battles if I relied on just speed. No, I was simply good at keeping track of things.

You'd think that me being effectively blind would relegate me to the back lines, and you'd probably be right in any other context. But the ribbons changed everything.

I could see three different Hollows racing towards me, revenge for their fallen superior. Or just their unending hunger. Even in the gloomy light of the evening sun I could see a faint outline of the approaching Hollows. Though, if I was relying on my sight I'd be dead by now.

I used the sound of their terrible screams, the slight change in the air, the every so tiny sensation of their spiritual pressure interacting with mine, and I spun underneath the leftmost Hollow, plunging a fist deep into it's gut.

The other Hollows quickly changed course to follow me, but as the Hollow I had punched flew higher into the air, I smacked another in the face. That hollow was launched backwards into it's other little friend.

In the brief moment of pause before the Hollow I'd sent flying came back down, I checked in on my teammates. Suzumi was doing as she did best, taking on six Hollows at once, hitting them so hard and fast that they didn't have much recourse.

Uyu was waiting patiently just behind the both of us, using us to protect her from the tide of Hollow. Her target was still playing shy, waiting behind their own defences.

Abruptly, the Hollow I'd launched earlier fell at my feet and I punted it in the mask, receiving a satisfying crack in response. The other hollow, who'd been pushed over by his friend came rushing towards me.

"Making a push!" I yelled out to the team and, not waiting for a response, I reached out and grabbed the mask of the human sized Hollow and, with my other hand, stole it's ribbon.

There was a moment of adjustment as the spiritual energy transferred into me. Infusing more of that spiritual energy into my own muscles, I crushed the Hollow's mask with my fingers and spun towards the rest of the dwindling group.

In tandem, Suzumi managed to finish with her own group, leaving us with six Hollows, barring the leader. With a burst of speed, I closed in on the first of the group, leaving it with a cracked mask, which Suzumi shattered with a follow up blow behind me.

The energy of the Hollow that I'd stolen wasn't much, but it got me through shattering an extra two masks before my next blow exhausted the rest.

"I'm out!" I called, and without a second thought Suzumi jumped over my head to crush the Hollow I had injured. I fell back a few paces, taking a supporting role, readying myself to sneak in a blow between Suzumi's strikes.

In only another ten seconds, Suzumi had fought her way down the street, taking out the rest of the weaklings.

"Uyu!" I commanded pre-emptively. Just on cue, the hulking form of the leader jumped out from behind the corner of the street. Using its multitude of legs, it crawled up from the asphalt surface of the street and pulling itself up onto the side of the abandoned industrial building. With a howl, the massive hollow raced across the building's side, blowing out windows with it's legs.

Though, it's furious charge was short lived.

As Suzumi and I stood and watched, Uyu's compact form flew overhead, directly towards the raging thing. It lunged forward, but was only met with her fist, and an ear-piercing bang that blew out any of the windows that had survived.

The Hollow, now sporting an extra hole through it's body, fell to the ground with a tremendous thud and remained there.

"Good work guys," I said, grin growing wide on my face, "that has to be the cleanest run we've done." Uyu tapped onto the ground beside both me and Suzumi, her ribbon twisting with excitement.

"I-I know right!" The young girl punched the air with enthusiasm, "We were even faster than daddy's teams!" I raised an eyebrow.

"Aren't they all high-spec humans, though?"

"Me and Uyu are both high-spec, so it counts." Suzumi said imperiously. I could only laugh.

"I'm pretty sure you two are a little more that high-spec now."

"He's right about that much!" Kisuke called from a nearby roof, promptly dropping down and beginning the clean-up.

"Hey!" Suzumi complained weakly. There was a multitude of shining lights coming from where the Hollows laid defeated.

"You are perfectly impressive, Suzumi." I said consolingly. I could hear my girlfriend pout with an exaggerated humph.

"Impressive indeed." Tessai's deep, resonant voice said from atop the rooftop Kisuke had dropped from. It was their new favourite pastime to watch us hunt Hollows, apparently.

"So, do we want to go find another fight?" I asked idly, reaching out my ribbon senses and finding a vague smattering of ribbons I couldn't quite sense. I was getting better at sensing the general location of Hollow ribbons, but I still wasn't able to sense them all clearly like other human or Soul Reaper ribbons.

"U-uhm, I need to go home, I think… My daddy will worry."

Oh well. I probably had a few more fights in me, but I'll just redirect it all to training instead.

From there we split ways, Tessai taking Uyu home after Suzumi hugged her goodbye. Suzumi and I just decided to take the walk home, leaving Kisuke to the dirty work of purifying the Hollows.

"So, how're things?" I asked with a smile, earning a light punch from Suzumi. She still allowed me to grab her hand and weave my fingers through hers, though.

"I don't know." She said after a moment, a thoughtful tone in her voice.

"Why's that?" I prodded gently, enjoying the feeling of her soft hand in mine. We were roughly the same height, her being maybe an inch or two shorter, so out hands comfortably fell next to each other.

"My mother likes you, y'know?" There was a seriousness to her voice that I wasn't expecting, but the good news made me smile anyway.

"I like her too." There was a little burst of warmth in my chest as Suzumi squeezed my hand. We walked in silence for a while, bathing in the moment, the rapidly cooling breeze of the late evening surrounding us.

"There's more, isn't there?" I asked, making Suzumi jolt ever so slightly. The tension that I could feel building in her released in a moment.

"Yeah. She knows there's something up." I quirked an eyebrow at that.

"About me?"

"I quit my job ages ago, Grayson. I cashed my sick leave and quit. I really liked that job."

"So, she knows something had to happen to make you quit." I continued for her. She nodded slowly beside me.

"She's worried that I won't tell her what happened, or where I'm living, or what I'm doing." Suzumi stopped beside me and I swung around to face her.

"I've never not told my mother things, Grayson." I could feel the emotions in her voice now. She hadn't told me about this, maybe just due to our life being full of training and fighting, but now I could remember moments where she seemed a little sombre. Moment's I hadn't acted on.

I pulled Suzumi close to me, embracing her fully, letting my head rest just beside hers and she pulled herself into the crook of my neck.

"I'm sorry, Suzumi. I just don't know if we can tell her." I heard a little sniffle, and I swear that it hurt more than any punch I'd received over the past week.

"I know…" She trailed off, her voice too laden with emotion to continue.

"One day, I swear." I said, my voice steely. "But, as accepting as your mother is, there is no way she'd accept this so soon. We barely understand what's going on as it is. I don't want to bring anyone else in without knowing the actual risks."

"How long?" She asked tentatively, "How long do I need to hold that from her?"

"I don't know, Suzumi." I said softly, thinking back to the older woman with a torn heart, "I don't know."

---

Working with spiritual energy was an almost meditative experience now that I'd figured it out.

Sitting on the rocky landscape of the study room, I simultaneously pulled in spiritual energy from the atmosphere, circulating it through my body at thoroughly as possible and then slowly adding that to the coating of spiritual energy that sat over my skin.

It was a complex process. To create a good coating of spiritual energy took a lot of time and patience, but once you did it once, you could reproduce it again. It was a big effort to continually add to the coating, as I did.

Suzumi did it a bit differently, relying on the shielding and muscle enhancement and only focussing on the parts that mattered for fighting, namely the fists and arms. She had double coated her fists and arms up to her elbow now, though I had pushed her into at least coating her head once.

I decided on a more wholistic approach, covering the entire body at least once, and then going for the double coat after. I had asked Kisuke about it on multiple occasions now, asking about optimal methods but I'd never got anything more than a shrug.

"We're human—or were human, I guess. Most of us, anyway. There is no optimal method. Do it in whichever way you can think of, whichever way feels right. That's what spiritual power is, at its core. Do what feels correct."

Not words I'd hoped to hear, or thought I'd hear from a man like Kisuke.

"What feels right, huh?" I mused to myself, feeling the spiritual energy course through me.

It felt… good. But not right. I knew, somewhere deep inside, that it wasn't the right way, not quite. Maybe it was from the same place I had once found that shielding technique from. Maybe not, but I knew it wasn't quite there.

I let out a long breath. What was I missing? Somewhere in the process I was lacking something vital. What was the bottleneck for me?

I ground my teeth in thought but came up blank. I was pushing everything through my body as best as I could, taking the most comprehensive path through the body, then adding it to the coating. The only real bottleneck would be the…

Amount of energy I could take in. I screwed up my nose at that. I've been taking in a consistent amount of spiritual energy since I started, way back when I didn't even know what to do with the energy at all.

I wonder if…

---

Kisuke, having temporarily abandoned his soul sensitivity device, was working on a piece of metal. His hand was hovering over the blue coloured metal with a small tool, poised and ready to begin his work. The tool was little more than a tiny razor blade attached to a stick, yet Kisuke Urahara stared at the metal a determination.

Just as his blade lowered to touch the metal, an odd feeling washed over the man.

"Wha–" Kisuke said in surprise as he jolted out of his seat. But in only a second, the strange sensation became almost painful.

It was as if all of the oxygen was being pulled out of the air, all at once. No… it wasn't oxygen, it was spiritual energy. It was all gone.

"Grayson." Urahara growled.