Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 142 - The Substitute Teacher

Having reached an agreement with Mizusue, Wayne returned to Shin'ō Academy. When he arrived at the Shunpo training grounds, he deliberately skirted around the Mustached Man from the 2nd Division and made his way to a female Soul Reaper's teaching area. Kira, Momo, and Nakai all converged on him at once.

"Big Brother Tsukishiro, where did you go this time?" Nakai had woken early and once again found no sign of Wayne, leaving him anxious and restless. But familiarity breeds habit. A few more times and Nakai would probably get used to it.

"Buying breakfast." Wayne raised a hand and handed out the dango he'd picked up. It was the Hour of the Dragon now, and aside from Kira, none of them had likely eaten. Campus life made it easy to skip breakfast. Kira, being from a noble family, commuted from home and usually ate there.

"Big Brother Tsukishiro, next time let me handle that kind of thing." Nakai took a bite of dango and muttered through his food. Something as trivial as buying breakfast, and Big Brother Tsukishiro had to do it himself, he really was falling short as a junior.

"It's fine. I woke up early, so I grabbed it on the way." Wayne kept his reply short. "Get ready for class. Today's lesson won't be easy."

"Yeah," they answered in unison, then spread out to their positions and waited for the instructor to begin.

The instructor might have been swapped for a different Soul Reaper, but she was still 2nd Division. No old grudges, no bad blood, this woman had no reason to make Wayne's life difficult just because a colleague had said something. She was only here to teach. A future genius from the academy could easily become a seated officer or even a lieutenant overnight. Only a fool would go looking for trouble with someone like that.

The lesson began. The instructor laid out the day's material.

Shunpo, at its core, is a high-speed movement technique. Unlike a Hollow's Sonído or a Quincy's Hirenkyaku, where the former is acceleration and the latter two are spatial displacement, Sonído and Hirenkyaku are higher-order transfer techniques. From the standpoint of speed and evasion of Reiatsu detection, both outclass Shunpo by a fair margin. The tradeoff is greater Reiatsu consumption, though for high-level combatants, the cost of footwork is negligible.

Shunpo works by channeling Reiatsu into both legs and using the interaction between that Reiatsu and the ground to launch the body forward. From a combat perspective, Shunpo's greatest weakness is that it leaves a traceable trajectory. Sonído and Hirenkyaku are point-to-point spatial transfers. If someone can predict a Soul Reaper's Shunpo path, all they have to do is place a blade in the way, the target won't be able to dodge, and one clean strike is enough to cut them down. That said, actually tracking the path is extraordinarily difficult. If Shunpo's speed could be read that easily, the technique would have been abandoned long ago.

Listening to the explanation, Wayne had already started experimenting. The Reiatsu circulation route for Shunpo was actually quite similar to the combat technique he'd devised when simulating Shadow Step on his own, just more refined than what he'd worked out by feel. With Shadow Step as his foundation, Wayne picked up Shunpo with startling speed. In a single lesson, he was already covering several dozen meters in one burst. Farther than Shadow Step's ten-odd meters, and more Reiatsu-efficient too.

With the fundamentals down, Wayne tried to refine his Shadow Step footwork and incorporate Sonído's principles into Shunpo. That failed. Sonído operates on spatial force displacement, something Shunpo cannot replicate. But when Shunpo's activation burst generated the same kind of explosive force as Sonído, the burst speed jumped and the distance stretched further. It could even function as a second-stage Shunpo dash. Paired with Shadow Step's three-stage sprint, Wayne could now cover a hundred to two hundred meters without much trouble.

And he could change direction mid-movement. That dramatically boosted his overall mobility while amplifying the striking power of Shadow Step's final hit. A solid high-speed movement technique, all told.

Watching Wayne move several dozen meters on his very first exposure to Shunpo, the Mustached Man in the distance rolled his eyes. Any thought of pulling this new student into a fixed match was now completely off the table. The female Soul Reaper instructing Wayne, meanwhile, let out a low whistle and praised his rate of progress.

"Movement distance is decent. Speed still has room to improve. When you can leave afterimages in the air through directional shifts, that counts as clearing the basics. To truly master it, you'll need to leave at least ten afterimages at once."

She was clearly trying to put some pressure on him, reaching straight for the standard of a Shunpo master as her benchmark.

Of course she was irritated. Her student had grasped the technique in one lesson, it left her feeling entirely irrelevant as a teacher. So she chose the strictest possible standard to hold him to. Wayne simply gave a light nod, showing no sign of arrogance, and saw no reason to argue. It was just footwork. There was no point in rushing toward the level of a Shunpo master.

"All right. Train on your own." The instructor dismissed the group. She had considered giving Wayne extra drills but ultimately dropped the idea.

This was his first lesson with her. Demanding high-level footwork at this stage would be going too far. Verbal guidance was enough for now, practically speaking, the priority was still building a solid foundation.

What she didn't know was that Wayne's self-invented three-stage Shadow Step could do more than leave two phantom afterimages, it even carried an attack advantage. That had already blown past her expectations from the start. As for leaving multiple afterimages through Shunpo directional shifts, what that really tested was control over Reiatsu output and the technical execution of footwork transitions. Given enough time to accumulate Reiatsu, this wouldn't be too difficult for Wayne.

As of today, Wayne had been exposed to all four foundational disciplines: blade, fist, step, and Kidō. As expected, swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat still had room for refinement. As for Shunpo and Kidō, the former just required accumulating Reiatsu to keep up with advanced footwork output, and the latter... better not to bring that up.

Choosing swordsmanship as his primary focus had been the right call. As for hand-to-hand combat as a secondary discipline, Wayne could only say that learning more never hurt. Better than getting one-shotted by someone at Old Man Yama's level and not even knowing how he died.

With his future direction decided, Wayne followed Nakai back to the dorm after class and resumed sitting cross-legged in meditation, absorbing Reiatsu through Soul Absorption. Nakai had grown accustomed to Wayne's habit of using breathing meditation in place of sleep. He settled onto his bedding across from Wayne, entered the same meditative state, and gradually drifted off.

Shin'ō Academy's curriculum ran on a seven-day cycle, matching the rhythm of the World of the Living. The first four days covered the fundamentals of combat. The fifth day was theory, Soul Society history, Hollow studies, and other academic material. The final two days consisted of one day for combined combat skills training and one day for Zanpakutō-related knowledge. Days off were not a thing. Of course, if a student decided to give themselves a day off, the academy's instructors wouldn't ask questions. Take tomorrow's theory class, for instance, Wayne felt he had little reason to attend. But when the school announced that the first instructor of the day would be 5th Division Captain Sōsuke Aizen, Wayne decided he would go after all. Just to see what this enemy he hadn't faced in decades looked like now.

The next day, Wayne arrived at the classroom with Nakai. Because it was Aizen's class, Wayne didn't play any games, he walked in calmly alongside Nakai, behaving like any ordinary student. He wore his blindfold the entire time, senses fully open. It didn't take long to perceive the carefully restrained Reiatsu, and there at the lectern sat Aizen. By now, Aizen already wore the haori of the 5th Division Captain, wide black-framed glasses complementing his thoroughly gentle expression. He looked utterly harmless. But within that soft smile lurked a faint trace of contempt for lesser beings, just the barest flicker, hidden quite well behind those black-framed glasses.

Unlike the original story, Aizen's throat bore a large expanse of burn scarring. Wayne knew exactly what that was, a permanent mark he had carved into Aizen at the cost of his own life all those years ago. He had been so close to ending everything back then. Unfortunately, that idiot Ichimaru had ruined it.

With the 12th Division's technology, Aizen should have been able to erase that scar completely. Yet he had kept the gruesome battle wound. Tōsen, the man who'd had half his body severed, had been brought back and now bore not a single scar. Wayne could not read Aizen's intent in keeping it.

"Oh? You must be student Tsukishiro Hinamori, yes?" Before class had even started, Aizen noticed the student with the black blindfold enter his field of view and spoke up directly.

So he's already taken notice. Wayne kept his expression neutral. "Yes. Hello, teacher." He gave a slight nod, no crack in his composure.

"Hello. I am today's substitute instructor, and the Captain of the 5th Division — Sōsuke Aizen. I heard about you from Captain Tōsen. After Captain Tōsen, you are the second person I have learned of to enroll with sightless eyes, and you entered this class on the strength of outstanding results."

"A 5th Division Captain!" Wayne let a flash of surprised delight cross his face, then quickly suppressed it. "I never expected a Captain to come and substitute teach."

"The 5th Division has always been responsible for protecting the Seireitei and cultivating new blood for the Gotei 13. Teaching at Shin'ō Academy is part of that duty." Aizen smiled, having caught that brief flicker of delight. "Even with your visual impairment, I believe you will become an outstanding Soul Reaper in the future — just like Captain Tōsen."

"Yes, sir." At Aizen's praise, Wayne allowed a barely perceptible ripple of Reiatsu to surface, a performance. He was confident Aizen would pick up on that faint, subtle shift.

"Return to your seat. Class is about to begin."

"Yes, sir." Wayne gave a slight bow and walked unhurriedly back to his seat.

"Hello, everyone. I am your substitute instructor for today — Sōsuke Aizen. Today's topic is the history of Hollows and Soul Reapers, and the formation of the Zanpakutō." When the hour arrived, Aizen rose and began the lesson.

To place all of Soul Society under his control, Aizen would seize any opportunity to release his Zanpakutō before new students. Sure enough, when he reached the topic of Zanpakutō today, he drew Kyōka Suigetsu and performed a Shikai release before the entire class.

"Everyone, this is my Zanpakutō — Kyōka Suigetsu." Beside Aizen, an illusory figure identical to him materialized. The visual effect of his Zanpakutō's hypnosis. Wayne, however, could perceive with perfect clarity the distinction between Aizen's true body and the energy construct of Kyōka Suigetsu, having kept his eyes shut throughout, he had not been hypnotized.

"My Kyōka Suigetsu is a flowing-water type Zanpakutō. It uses the refraction produced by water current ripples to feed enemies incorrect visual information, and projects light to cast my image onto them, triggering them to cut each other down." Even while weaving lies, Aizen couldn't resist a jab at himself. "The greatest weakness of this ability is that it cannot work on an enemy who simply refuses to use their eyes. So my Zanpakutō cannot affect student Tsukishiro Hinamori at all. In a sense, Tsukishiro Hinamori may well be my greatest natural counter in the future."

Laughter rippled through the classroom. Wayne could only manage a small laugh along with them.

With that act, Aizen had pulled the entire class into his hypnosis. Wayne, eyes shut the whole time, could even perceive the subtle shifts in the Reiatsu of Momo and Nakai sitting beside him. That observation led him to a blind spot in Kyōka Suigetsu.

Kyōka Suigetsu's true ability, complete hypnosis, was, in practice, quite similar to inducing hallucinations. A higher-order form of illusory technique, capable of altering all five senses. Abilities of this type all fell within the domain of Kidō. If the Reiatsu of someone caught in the hypnosis were disrupted, would that break Kyōka Suigetsu's hold?

Wayne sank into thought. If the opportunity arose, he could look into the relevant archives, the Seireitei's records library should have materials on the subject.

Carrying that question with him, Wayne kept his eyes shut and listened to Aizen's lecture. Class ended. Everything passed without incident. Beyond hypnotizing all the students, Aizen had done nothing else.

"Big Brother, Big Brother — Captain Aizen was so cool today! Big Brother, do you think we'll become captains as gentle and powerful as him someday?"

The moment class let out, Momo was chattering into Wayne's ear without pause. She had clearly been drawn in by Aizen's manner. He had to admit, Aizen concealed his contempt for Soul Society extraordinarily well.

"As long as Momo works hard enough, she'll become that kind of captain someday." Wayne ruffled her head.

"Hehe, yeah!" Momo beamed at the encouragement. "What about Big Brother?"

"Me?" Wayne smiled and tilted his head up, pretending to look at the sky. I'll just be a lieutenant and serve under Captain Momo.

"Ah! Big Brother, you're teasing me again!" Momo puffed up her cheeks in protest, setting off a round of laughter from Wayne.

Yes, what would he become in the future? Wayne himself didn't know. Better to deal with the problem right in front of him first. The Ranking Tournament. There wasn't much time left.

➤ Next: One Month