Tough Boy, Eh? [Noharu, Ranma]

Well, certainly Ranma would live to get beaten up another day. It was all thanks to this wonderful Kido user of the Eighth Division, which further solidified Ranma’s satisfaction of joining them to begin with. It had already been, like…

It hadn’t actually been that long since he graduated from Shin’o Academy and enrolled in the Eighth Division. Still, time moved in such a peculiar way to him after that whole hide-and-seek game he played with Hōkamaru, so maybe it had been more than a few years. Definitely more… right?

Either way, a lot of other 8th Division members were celebrating him. He did well against a Seated Officer from the 4th Division, after all – that was no small feat, especially for an Unseated Member like him. The hype was all over the place, really, and Ranma… wouldn’t want his precious Squad any other way.

But after a while of partying, he came to the shocking and heart-wrenching realization – he wasn’t allowed to drink! The Kido user from before told him off from any sake, since he was still in need of recovering tissue from where Shura had tried to cut him up like calamari. He could risk losing his limbs if he didn’t pull up – damn it all! How many times would this happen?! He ought to have worked on his durability, maybe do some heavy-lifting…

Therefore, in the end, he was seen sulking away at a corner at the barracks while the other were returning to their duties. Not exactly what you’d expect from the party-mania that was Ranma…

What in tarnation!

Oh, it was Noharu… damn, Ranma couldn’t help but throw a shocked look from his face at her appearance. Guess she took more of a beating than she let on out there, given what he saw earlier… but it didn’t stop her from checking up on him. Bless her kind heart. “I… ye, all wrapped up, you see,” he replied, waving his arms and legs to reveal several bandages basically holding them together, “Just gotta stay like this forever – seriously! At this point, can’t I just wear bandages for clothing?”

He was visibly upset. Not only because of the predicament of not being able to slap a bottle in his mouth, but the fact that he couldn’t defeat Shura by himself. “Now I gone and got your sweet ass all bruised up… but, uh, thanks Noharu. Really cheered me up with my Bankai-lacking butt swinging around. Fucking hell, you put on a show…”

Yeah… he did decide to go toe-to-toe with a 3rd Seat! What was he thinking?! Shit could’ve gotten way worse than this, man… but hey, he got to take a break now. Easy peasy, that was how he liked it-

*Smack!*

… Ranma had a mouth, okay. He often said weird things, okay… but he was certain that he didn’t say anything rude to her. He was certain, convinced and had no idea what the problem was. What, what, was it because he was worried for her? A Seated upper of his? Was that inappropriate?! “W-W-Wh-W-Wrrrrrrrrrrr-W-W-W-“ he zoomed, his head vibrating from the smack earlier and prompting him to grab it to stabilize himself. She might’ve found the ‘sweet ass’ comment rather unwelcome, but… well… slang, right?

Seriously, that was why Ranma was out of the loop. What on earth did he say?! Nah, you know what, last time I ever worry about your shit… he thought to himself in silent protest. However, while Noharu was chilling out, she groaned about the low blow that Shura tried dealing to her, and how it led to her using her Zanpakutō. Now… Ranma didn’t know about the 4th Division that much, but he’d head rumors. Tilting his head, he’d throw another comment: “You think they got some far district vibes in that squad? That Shura girl kind of reminds me of home…” I mean, it was just a hunch based on his encounter with her – immediate hostility, no warning, life or death, it was all written on her face.

“Aye, I ain’t going all that way to freaking… bother people and stuff, that’s giga awkward. Though, maybe she got her Shikai that way, it was kinda heavy and unwelcome if you ask me… you think it’s a Captain thing? ‘Cause I’ve heard from a handful that the Fourth do act like the barbarians… and that just doesn’t sound like the Soul Society, does it? Aren’t you all supposed to be more sophisticated than what she displayed earlier? If I wanna wake up fighting for my life every day, I’d return to the 71st…”

OH! Asses?! ASSES?!?! THAT WAS JUST SLANG, THOUGH! HE JUST MEANT ‘YOU’! C’mon, Noharu, if he was checking out his Seated upperclassman’s shapely buttocks, he’d at least be slow enough to get caught in the act… then again, maybe that was why she swatted him out of nowhere. But Ranma was a big fan of romance – intimacy had to contain the entire damn package, and merely lusting in its own, pure form just wasn’t enough… feelings had to be behind those cheeks. Passion that can’t be replicated.

Or maybe that was just the case for sober Ranma. Who knew…

Although both Ranma and Noharu were from the Far District Gang, the Outskirt Hooligans and that, they weren’t anywhere near as confrontational as Shura – not to that degree. She also mentioned Zaraki, a Shinigami of rumored unlimited strength, but who did not possess neither Shikai nor Bankai… and from what Ranma was conscious enough to hear, Shura had a little problem with non-Bankai users.

Wait… he didn’t have Bankai? Did that mean that Ranma was an errand boy?! Noharu quickly snapped him out of that, going to the other end of the spectrum of his very short-lived inferiority complex – she emphasized how big an achievement unlocking Shikai was, despite Ranma’s misunderstandings of Shikai and Bankai being more common than they actually were. Blame his lack of research.

“Oh shit… uhhh, that was back at the Academy,” Ranma began telling her, spinning a few old cogs in his brain and shaking the rust off of his memory, “My… Spirit isn’t very talkative, he’s kind of a shy bean… and by shy bean, I mean he’s down-right allergic to social interaction. Now, you’d wonder how I’d ever achieve Shikai that way- trust me, none of this shit makes sense to me either, and I was there.” The more he thought about it, the more… comical his ordeal with his Zanpakutō was.

“I was training with my Asauchi when time stopped – that’s the best way I can explain it. Everyone, everything in the Soul Society just froze the fuck up. Nobody was moving, people were floating, standing or sitting still outside and inside, and I could move for some dumb reason. So I asked for help, tried to talk to anyone, but there was no sound… no fucking sound, nothing, I couldn’t hear the chatter in the background, I couldn’t hear the birds in the sky, but I could hear my blood running in my veins. You know what that shit sounds like?!”

Ranma’s eyes were starting to dilute a little bit from… a state of, say, tilting madness?

“And then I see the fucker – this white-robed, white-skinned, white-haired dude, looks like an inverse Shinigami himself, just hugging his legs and staring into nowhere. Obviously, I wanted to talk to him – that’s natural, right – and he teleports away from me. Why even show yourself if you were just going to do that, then?! Why did he teleport away from me?! He repeated that shit for… for… h-how long was it, it was longer than a day, or maybe one and a half day.”

Ranma took a break to recollect himself again. Those several years of frozen time had done something to him, alright… but the effects varied.

“… I think I caught him. And he kept grunting and groaning all the time, as if he was tired of me – dipshit, I was tired of him! A-Anyway, once I caught up to him again… he just said one word. Hōkamaru.”

Upon saying that name, Ranma pulled up his Zanpakutō, held it horizontally and glided his hand over the flat side of the wavy pattern. “I have no clue what my Spirit’s on about, but… I can tell why it’s such a big deal to achieve Shikai now.”

Her own Spirit, Kamiito, apparently was a shy bean as well… was this common among Zanpakutō Spirits? He was beginning to get the idea that it was… which made him worry a bit. If he were to try and achieve Bankai, just how much more did he need to endure? How much longer did he have to play tag with Hōkamaru? He dared not think that thought through, but he was glad to have achieved Shikai. And so was the 3rd Seat. “You all make it sound pretty rad, not gonna lie… I ought to pat myself on the shoulder, sometimes,” he mused, even going as far as to do exactly what he mused about and give his left shoulder a couple swipes with his right hand, “Not bad, Ranma.”

Then, she noted that an Inner World – definitely that weird, paused Soul Society – with animals and people in it was stranger than normal… which set him off. “W-Wait… is that a problem? Is there something wrong with Hōkamaru?” he panicked, switching his gaze between Noharu and his Zanpakutō, “I mean, there were other people in it… and birds, too… but I wouldn’t call any of them alive if they didn’t move an atom. I remember that much – they were more like still mannequins than actual people, and it s-scared the shit out of me.”

…

…

…

Wait, the comment from earlier. About Zaraki… wait, did Shura-

“… THAT Zaraki, right? The Kenpachi Zaraki, right? The guy who terrifies everyone, even without Shikai or Bankai, right?” Zaraki himself kind of gave Ranma a slight inspiration for a moment there – without Shikai or Bankai, a Shinigami could become so utterly powerful…

“… Maybe I should follow his example- n-not the mental part, though, but what if I got so good at punching people that I wouldn’t ne-“

*Growl*

“!!!”

Ranma barely got to finish his imaginative sentence when his Zanpakutō suddenly released a deep growl, triggering Ranma to move his head back with widened eyes as if he hadn’t seen stranger things. “… H-Hey, you there, H-“

…

No answer.

“… S-So, uh, is that Shura one still around? If I fight her again, I might be able to achieve Bankai.” Of course, talking without any knowledge on the subject of how to achieve a Bankai, Ranma simply went off a gut feeling. Hōkamaru rarely ever made a sound, so… anything was a step in the right direction.