Chapter 25: Land of Dragons: Mountain Trials

At the bottom of the mountain pass, the five scouters waited. Apparently there were several creatures that sounded suspiciously like Heartless heading down and they needed to apprehend them before they could reach the camp. Easy enough, with Mulan in higher spirits and well trained. Toshiro kept an eye on her though, in case she needed support. At the moment she was the weak link and he wasn't about to let her get slaughtered, not when he was already training her to be a better soldier.

'Becoming attached, are we?' Hyorinmaru chuckled.

'When you teach someone personally you tend not to want them dying on you.'

The dragon snorted but went quiet as the Heartless appeared around them. This time Sora struck first, taking after Toshiro in trying to get the first hit and gain an advantage before the Heartless struck. Right after him was Mulan and Toshiro stayed in a defensive stance, watching to see how his students fought against real Heartless. It reminded him of home, training the recruits to be powerful Soul Reapers. He never thought he'd miss it.

A Heartless got in close and he quickly cut it down, shaking away the nostalgia of home and focusing on eradicating the Heartless. It would do him no good to daydream.

A dark power rose in the direction of the camp and he scowled.

"Sora! You and Ping handle things here, a few of the Heartless got through to the camp!" He shouted to the Keybearer several yards away.

"You can count on us!" Donald replied instead as Sora was busy with one of the Heartless mages.

He ran from the checkpoint until he was out of sight before using Flash Step to hurry to the camp, running once more when he was in the presence of the soldiers. They panicked as Heartless sprung from the ground and came after them.

'Need to draw them away.' Toshiro mused and let his Spiritual Pressure rise, cold settling in on the camp.

It didn't affect Heartless as much as Hollows, but it got them interested enough in him to leave the humans alone and surround him instead. He brought the chain-blade to hand and quickly tossed it at a Heartless before they used their numbers as an advantage.

In no time he'd killed the Heartless invading the camp and the soldiers returned to assess the damage.

"Thank you, Hitsugaya." One of them said to him with a bow of his head. "We couldn't seem to do anything to those creatures."

"Leave those creatures to me and Sora, as well as his companions." Toshiro warned. "The four of us are capable of killing these things without too much trouble."

"Understood."

"I must return, keep an eye out for any more of them."

Racing back towards the mountains, Toshiro sensed that Sora and the others had defeated the Heartless and were paused at the bottom of the mountain, no doubt waiting for him.

'Captain Shang is with them.' Hyorinmaru noted.

'Great, just what I need.' He sighed mentally before stopping his Flash Step just out of range and running into the river clearing where Sora and the others were, Mulan looking a little nervous as Shang stood before them.

"Where were you, Hitsugaya?" Shang demanded.

"The creatures were in the camp, I left to take care of them. Your men are safe now." Toshiro replied in a tone void of emotion but warning the man not to pry too much.

"That so?" Shang seemed skeptical but turned back to the others, the Soul Reaper stepping between Sora and Mulan. "You all did well."

"I knew it." Sora grinned.

"And I suppose Ping made decent progress." Shang glanced at the woman disguised as a man.

"Considering the amount of skill displayed yesterday morning Ping made more than decent progress." Toshiro argued.

"Yeah, Hitsugaya taught him a lot." Donald backed him up.

"It's alright guys, he's right." Mulan stood tall. "Let me scout the mountain, sir. I'll show you what I'm really made of."

Shang took a moment to look over the newcomer to his troupe. It was true, Ping had made incredible progress with Hitsugaya's training, more than any of the men he'd trained before. Whether he was just that fast of a learner or Toshiro was that great a teacher, what mattered was the result and he was more than willing to let Ping prove himself in real combat.

"Very well. Go on ahead, you lot. And stay alert!"

"Sir!" Again, Toshiro did not join in on that and simply began walking up the mountain without a word, wanting this to be over with.

"Ah, wait up Hitsugaya!" Sora was quick to dart after the white haired boy with his three companions close behind, leaving Shang in the clearing to watch them leave.

"That child…he's unlike anything I've ever seen." The Captain mused before turning to go back to camp. He wondered how Hitsugaya had gone from the clearing and back to camp in such a short time, there was a good mile or two between them.

On the path, Toshiro paused for a brief moment to spot a hawk passing overhead. The bird seemed to glare at him before flying quickly away and towards the summit. Unsure what to make of the bird, Toshiro kept moving until he found an obstacle in his path. A large set of boulders, no doubt set by Shan-Yu, blocked their path.

"Gawrsh, how do we break that down without it toppling on us?" Goofy examined the obstacle as if to find a weakness.

Donald waddled over to help while Sora looked at it from a distance, wondering the same thing. Beside him, Toshiro glanced at Mulan before sighing; he'd meant to tell Sora about Kido anyway after he'd told him about the barrier in Hollow Bastion, and the woman had her annoying dragon already following him around so it wouldn't be that big a deal.

"Donald, Goofy, back up." He snapped and held his hand up, palm facing the boulders with his other hand over his wrist.

The two animals quickly followed his command, understanding that Toshiro had something up his sleeve.

"Way of Destruction Number Thirty-One, Red Fire Cannon!" A ball of red fire developed in front of his palm before it shot outward in a jet of red flame energy. The Kido shot burst the rubble apart easily even without the need of the full chant.

"Whoa!" Sora exclaimed as he and the others backed up a few steps. "How did you do that?! I thought you only used ice?"

"That was something called Kido." Toshiro explained. "I focus my Spirit Energy into my hands and use the correct chant in order to cast one. There are three different types altogether, but I don't have time to explain all of them."

"What kind was that?" Donald looked interested.

"Hado, or Way of Destruction spells; they're offensive type Kido. The higher the number the more powerful the blast. To make them even stronger you say the full chant but I had no need to and simply said the spell's name. And no, you can't use Kido, Donald."

"Aw…" The duck slumped.

"What kind of person uses Kido?" Mushu popped up from Mulan's armor.

Toshiro opened his mouth to say one of his evasive answers before sensing the approach of Heartless and whipping around, sword drawn in a flash. Following his lead, Sora, Donald, and Goofy had their weapons at the ready. More Shadows and Soldiers, the armored Heartless, rose from the ground to further get in their way when they could see yet more rock obstacles in their path.

"I'll continue this later." He growled. "If you four can keep them off me I can clear the rocks."

"Don't worry about the rocks." Sora said and darted forward, skirting around the Heartless. "Just before you shot it I found a good way to get rid of them using what you taught me!"

"Wait, Sora!" Mulan called out to the boy.

"Let him try, focus on the Heartless." Toshiro stopped her before cutting down the closest Heartless.

Sora focused his energy into the Keyblade before leaping towards the rocks and striking the weak spots in quick succession. Before the rocks could fall apart, he put his strength behind one single strike and launched the boulders away in pieces off the mountain. By then the others had destroyed the Heartless.

"You learn quickly, Sora." Toshiro congratulated the Keybearer, impressed. "I'm sure there's more to come, let's keep moving."

At the next set of rocks, Toshiro used Kido while Sora struck down the Heartless trying to approach the Soul Reaper. It seemed Shan-Yu was determined to stall them from reaching the summit and Hitsugaya believed he was attempting to destroy the military checkpoint Shang had said was there. Whatever the case, they couldn't just let the Heartless travel down the mountain and kill off the Imperial Army.

Sora destroyed the last barrier and made the pathway to the summit clear. Behind him, Mulan struck the final blow on a large, centaur-like Heartless attempting to strike down Toshiro with its spear. Thankfully it vanished before the spear struck, though Toshiro was fully able to dodge it.

"Made it!" Sora shouted.

'Good. Any longer and I might have had to release my zanpaktou.' Toshiro sheathed his blade and walked over to the Keybearer.

"We should signal the others." Mulan suggested.

"No need, they're already heading up." Toshiro countered. "They waited ten minutes to make sure we'd cleared the way before following, they'll be here shortly."

And so they waited, taking a well-deserved break while Toshiro kept alert, his gaze always panning around for the slightest disturbance. The trail they were on led further up into the snowier part of the mountain, which Toshiro was actually glad about. Sora seemed to be fine and the Soul Reaper put it down to his magical garments, while Donald and Goofy shivered until the duck used magic to make their clothes warmer. Mulan's thick armor seemed to keep her warm but out of all of them Toshiro seemed better off. Donald offered to cast the same spell for him as he had himself but Toshiro declined, saying he felt better in the cold.

"How are you not freezing?" Mushu demanded.

"I did just say I preferred the cold, did I not?" Hitsugaya sighed.

"Maybe a little, sure, but the snow past this point will go up to your knees! You can't seriously be willing to trudge through that in such light clothing."

"Are you sure you'll be fine, Toshiro?" Sora asked with a worried expression.

"Look, I'm better in the cold because my body temperature is lower than normal." He glanced quickly at Mulan. "It comes with having power over ice."

"Guess that makes sense." Goofy scratched his chin thoughtfully.

"Freaky body temperature or not, you'll get cold eventually." Mushu argued.

"I won't say it's impossible for me to get cold, it just takes much lower temperatures. The further up we go the more I'll start to feel it."

"Just lemme know and I'll cast that spell." Donald said, narrowing his eyes at the Soul Reaper until Toshiro nodded.

By then, Shang and the others had arrived.

"Ya aint half bad." The soldier in red grinned at them all.

"Men among men!" The thin soldier in yellow agreed.

"Ping did an outstanding job considering the circumstances." Toshiro pointed out nonchalantly, watching the Chinese Captain carefully.

Shang debated with himself over something before he sighed heavily and turned to Mulan.

"Alright…I'll let you join my troops, all of you. But Ping, while you've made incredible progress, you're still not soldier material. Not enough to take on Shan-Yu."

Toshiro snorted and continued on, not interested in hearing any more if the man refused to see the amount of progress Ping had made.

'I may not be on this world much longer but if Mulan really wants to prove herself to that Captain then I better continue training. If she can do even basic combat needed to be a Soul Reaper she'll seem like an invincible statue to the rest of them.'

'Humans can only do so much, and Mushu is watching you closer than he seems.'

'Being a guardian spirit he might know about Soul Reapers, but I don't want him spouting off to Mulan about it.'

Hyorinmaru rumbled in agreement before going quiet as his master reached the checkpoint.

Here's the mountain portion of the Land of Dragons ^^ Shiro's really trying to help Mulan get Shang's approval, but he has a reason for that. After all, Mulan has to be the hero, right? Enjoy!