43Chapter 10- Blue and Black Ribbons
AN: Uh, sorry, I'm sorry. Something about this story and me always making it late. I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep but I'll try to make the next one faster. I honestly didn't mean for this one to take sssoooooooooo long but you know, life happens. Thank you for your patience, really.
Rin and Ichigo were in the healing spring after Rin went full hollow. "So what's next Ichigo?" Rin asked getting out of the small pond, pulling on his soul reaper garb.
"It's time to train you in swordsmanship and endurance. For now, you can probably only keep your hollow mask on for a few seconds. We need to get you to be able to stay hollowfied for at least a full minute," he said as he also got up and dressed, grabbing Zangetsu.
"Sounds good. Let's get started! But…" Rin exclaimed as he grabbed his Kurikara, "… why don't we use our demonic swords as well?"
"Sure, we might as well."
"By the way, what's your sword's name? It doesn't do anything to give it a name, but it's useful to call it something."
"I don't think it has a name. I guess I'll name it then," Ichigo scowled as he tried to think of a good name for his new sword. "I think I'll name it Yoko ken*," Ichigo said, unsheathing his newly named sword.
"Okay, let's get to sparing!" Rin said. Ichigo and Rin grabbed both of their swords and began sparing. At first they kept it slow and simple, seeing as they were both new to using two swords, but soon they began so speed things up. Ichigo swung Zangetsu at Rin, leading him to an attack from Ichigo's Yoko Ken forcing Rin to flash step away from the flaming sword. After a few hours of sparing in shikai they decided to switch to bankai, speeding things up even more. After about an hour of bankai training they decided to take a break.
"Rin, how long do we have before we need to get back to True Cross?" Ichigo asked.
Rin took out his phone and checked the time. "Let's see, uh oh," Rin said looking at Ichigo with his classic "oops" face. "We have an hour before class starts."
"WHAT!? I thought we had another day!"
"Nope, today's Monday. We have an hour before class starts and we get detention. Don't worry though; we both have a key to the cram school. If we hurry back to your house and get our things, we should make it back with time to spare."
"Right, the keys. Okay let's go!" Ichigo said hustling to the ladder out of the training room with Rin not far behind.
"Hey Ichigo, Rin!" Urahara yelled with his head sticking out of the hatch.
"What's up Mr. Urahara?"
"I have a present for you. Catch!" Urahara yelled as he dropped a door with a lock and a key-ring down the hole.
"Watch it, you almost hit me with that!" Ichigo yelled barely dodging the big metal door.
"I got into contact with that cousin of yours, Mephisto, and he had a pair of special keys made for that door, so now you can travel straight here whenever you want."
"That's awesome, thanks!" Rin yelled as he picked up the keys and gave one to Ichigo.
"You know about the keys?" Ichigo asked.
"I know about everything," Urahara responded sarcastically.
"I wouldn't be surprised if you did, thanks," Ichigo said as he climbed to the top of the hatch. Ichigo and Rin said goodbye to Urahara and the others, returned to Ichigo's where they gathered their things, and said goodbye.
"Make sure to come visit soon so we can trade more recopies, okay?" Yuzu said to Rin as she hugged her new cousin goodbye.
"I will, and thank you all for making me feel so welcome," Rin replied.
"Of course kiddo, you're family!" Isshin said.
Ichigo tugged on the back of Rin's shirt and said "Come on, we have to go."
"Bye, come back soon!" Yuzu and Isshin said while Karin just scowled and waved like she (and Ichigo) always do. Rin put the key in the lock and opened the door to cram school to the surprise of the Kurosaki family.
"Bye," both teens said in unison as they shut the door; Rin snickering at the look on their faces. As they approached the cram school classroom a thought wondered into Ichigo's mind that he had to test.
"Rin, hold on a sec. I want to test something," Ichigo said, stopping Rin.
"What is it? Class starts in like five minutes," Rin said.
"Don't worry, it will only take a minute. I want to see what color your spirit ribbon is now. Remember how your spirit ribbon was blue before you became a soul reaper? Let's see what color it is now," Ichigo explained as he searched for Rin's spirit ribbon.
"Oh, look at that. It's black and so is yours."
"Interesting. So demon ribbons are blue, soul reaper ribbons are red, and demon soul reaper ribbons are black."
"This blue one feels pretty familiar; it must be Yukio's."
"Yeah, I can sense that he's near by. Let's go see how he's recovered before class starts," Ichigo said as they walked in Yukio's direction.
"Rin, Ichigo. I almost thought you weren't going to show up for class. So how did things go in Karakura Town?" Yukio asked as Rin and Ichigo approached him.
"Pretty well, actually. Rin was able to get very powerful extremely fast. He's a pretty quick learner."
"Really? Why can't you learn so quickly in class then, Rin?" Yukio said intimidatingly as he pushed up his glasses.
"S-so how are you doing Yukio? You all healed up after that hollow attack?" Rin asked changing the subject from his failing grades.
"Yeah, I'm all better, but I'm still curious about how and why this hollow thing got into True Cross."
"It's possible that it was after me. Hollows seek out large sources of spiritual pressure to consume. Or maybe it could sense Rin's bottled up spiritual pressure. It doesn't really matter now because Rin is more than powerful enough to fight off basic hollows now and I hear that the Soul Society is going to post a soul reaper to guard over True Cross," Ichigo explained
"The what society?" Yukio asked in confusion.
"I'll explain on the way to the classroom," Rin said, enjoying being the one who knows more about something for once.
*When I Google Translated "Sideways Sword" it translated to Yoko ken, so if it's wrong, sorry.
AN: So what do you think about the new chapter? Don't forget to review, it really helps me when you guys give me suggestions and helpful criticisms so keep it coming. The next chapter should be coming out faster that this one did so keep those reviews coming and I'll keep the story coming. Thanks, bye.