This is for Lin, Val, Ink, and Vin. We're trying something a little new here which will hopefully be fun. Good luck guys and girls.
~ Like Rats ~
Looking over the small crowd gathered in the late evening glow, Sayis smiled grimly. It wasn't a huge audience, but it would likely make the first set of trainees -- competitors? -- a little nervous. The group stood in front of two square-sided holes in the ground at the edge of one of the grassy training fields. There were ladders carved into the sides of the holes, descending fully thirty feet underground. There were hinged metal hatches to cover the openings, with strong locks to prevent unauthorized entry.
The darkness in the holes seemed even more forbidding as the late was starting to fade from the sky.
The grey-haired captain turned to the four shinigami in front of him. Shukumei Junichi, Maruyama Ilsa, Kagoshima Daichi, and Mineto Mitsuyo. They would be the first to undergo the unusual training. As newer members, they could use the chance to build solidarity and camaraderie.
"I think we're just about ready to begin," Sayis called out, once he saw the second shinigami he had sent in (with the map) exiting from the ground far away on the opposite side of the field. He clapped his hands together once and addressed himself to the four shinigami. "You four are going to be the first to undergo this training. Under that training field, there is a stone-worked labyrinth. I'm going to pair you up, and the goal will be to reach the exit as quickly as possible.
"There are few dangers down below, and this is mostly a test of how well you can work with your partner, how quickly you can come up with solutions to problems, and, in part, simply how lucky your intuition is." He grinned, crossing his arms behind his back. "You must provide your own sight, one way or another, and you must stay with your partner at all times. At least, if somebody reaches the exit without their partner, there will be consequences."
Letting that word linger in the air for a moment, Sayis pointed at Ilsa. The tall young woman was probably the most experienced of the bunch. "Ilsa, you'll be working with Daichi." He pointed to the entrance on his right side. "Mitsuyo and Shukumei, that means the two of you will be working together." He pointed to the opposite entrance.
"If there are no questions," the grey-haired captain prompted, "you may begin when ready. Good luck, everyone."
Mitsuyo stared hard at his captain, as if he might, through sheer disbelief, make Sayis decide he was just kidding. That he really, actually didn't think it was a good idea to make the redhead wander around an underground maze like a lab rat looking for a reward and a pat on the head.
Underground.
With nothing to see by unless he made some light himself.
With traps (because 'few dangers' still meant that there were a few).
And with someone else tagging along.
A maze? Why the hell would he want to make a maze?! Apparently everyone in Soul Society had a heavy streak of eccentrism. It was like a freakin' requirement.
The small redhead opened his mouth to object, to ask if Sayis was serious, to insist he had a migraine, to offer his resignation, to say something. And then he shut it again.
He hated his life. Hate hate hated. More importantly, he hated that stupid, nagging voice that had made him enter the Academy in the first place. Against his parents wishes, even. Mitsuyo crossed thin arms over his chest, and began methodically chewing on the inside of his lip to keep from calling the 10th Captain a retarded, sadistic, gray-haired, funny-faced, overpowered nutcase. Or anything similar. Instead, he glanced briefly in the general direction of the other three, wondering which one of them was Chukumuu...Shumuki...Sh...Chuchiku-...his assigned partner.
Whatever, he'd find out once each pair moved to their corresponding maze entrance, wouldn't he? Absently, the young soul raised himself onto his tiptoes and attempted to peer into the square pits carved deep into the training field.
Nothing much aside from a ladder that faded from sight as it fell away from any light source. That...that's reassuring. Did Inuzuri say that the labyrinth was stone-worked? Maybe he could just blast his way through it. Alternatively, the entire structure would just collapse on top of him (and that Chuuchuu shinigami) the moment he tried anything like that.
Maruyama Ilsa eyed the hatch assigned to her team and swallowed. She did not like enclosed spaces. At all. Of course, some of that dislike was probably due to the fact that many enclosed spaces were rather tighter for her than for most people. Ilsa stood 6’2”, with the kind of strong, muscular build that would look more at home in the 11th Division sparring ring than on the arcane specialists’ kidou grounds. She did not look at all like a man- her bust and hips were proportionately sized to the rest of her- simply a very large woman. This, combined with her long, braided blonde hair and pale gray eyes, made Ilsa a rather distinctive figure.
I hope he carved those tunnels tall enough for me, Ilsa thought. It’s bad enough visiting houses with roofs that are too short. At least then I can sit down! If I have to fight in a too-short tunnel... She shuddered.
Forcing her eyes away from the labyrinth entrance, the young shinigami looked over at her partner. Kagoshima didn’t look familiar to her, but that was hardly a surprise. Ilsa was still getting to know her division mates. She offered him a callused, pale hand. "Nice to meet you, Kagoshima-san. I don’t suppose you have any experience solving mazes, do you?”
Taking the outstretched hand and shaking it was only muscle memory for the boy, and the handshake itself faired poorly without his direct attention to grip and firmness. Instead, the recruits attention was on the woman before him. She was...large, but not in a bad way. Intimidating yes, but had a kind smile that Daichi liked.
"Its a pleasure to meet you," the boy bowed out of sheer habit, which looked rather odd since he was still shaking her hand. He smiled rather awkwardly and gave back Ilsa's hand. With a small breath he managed to tear his attention away from the woman's appearance and focused on the small hole in the ground. "Don't get me wrong Ilsa-san, I love puzzles and the like, but the only time I've ever done a maze was at a festival, and it was a simple hedge maze."
The boy walked over to the trap door. Opening it slowly allowed the darkness within to breath. The odor of its breath was that of earth and moisture, possibly mold. It was a natural smell that was kind of nice. "Its dark down there," he commented looking over at Ilsa, "very dark." Looking over his shoulder he noticed the other two. "We'll discuss our plan down below," he whispered to his partner. If this was indeed a test he didn't want to go giving the others any ideas that might help them. With that he gave Ilsa a small nod and a grin and started climbing down the ladder into the unknown depths. There was something about descending into the maw of darkness that sat uncomfortable in the recruit's stomach.
Apparently Daichi liked long handshakes. Ilsa surreptitiously rubbed her wrist once the other shinigami’s back was turned. "Well, you’re one up on me, then, because I’ve never been in a maze at all.” She smiled thinly. "Should be interesting.” Looking over at the hatch, Ilsa swallowed. A large flock of butterflies seemed to be having a wild party in her stomach. Sayis-taichou wouldn’t put anything deadly in there... at least, not right under the hatch. Probably.
She followed Daichi over to the hatch, doing her best to ignore the butterfly party. The darkness almost seemed to expand, reaching up to engulf her. Stop that! You’ve been in the dark before, you big baby! Except that she hadn’t. Not a complete blackness like this. The streets of Rukongai were dark after sunset, true, but somebody almost always had a lamp or candle burning, close enough to a window that at least a little of the warm glow escaped. There were always the stars, tiny glittering points of light breaking up the blackness of the night sky. Besides, nobody went out after dark in Rukongai unless they absolutely had to. The night was dangerous.
Somehow, Ilsa managed to dredge up a smile for Daichi. It would probably have been better if she hadn’t; the expression looked more like a corpse grin than any expression of happiness or confidence. Okay. Come on. You can do this. Close your eyes and pretend this is a normal ladder. Squeezing her eyes shut, Ilsa felt around for the ladder with one sandaled foot. It was an act of supreme will to take that first step... but she managed. One step, two steps, three. Closing her eyes did help a little. The darkness behind her eyelids was much more familiar than the darkness around her.
Before she knew it, her foot hit a solid surface. Ilsa turned away from the ladder, walked forward... and the all too familiar pain of walking into a low-hanging obstacle exploded in her head. "Ow! DAMN it all!” Her eyes (still shut) flew open. What had she walked into? Stairs and ladders were always set directly opposite doorways, right? "Futatsu!” The circle of runes on the back of her left hand flared violet. Three orbs of golden fire popped into being above Ilsa’s aching head, bathing the area in light.
"Oh no...” She hadn’t misguessed. She had found the entrance to the maze, all right... but the ceiling was a few inches too short. Tact and prudence temporarily deserted her at the prospect of navigating a booby-trapped maze while hunched over and banging her head on the ceiling every time she was startled. Scowling up at the hatch she had just climbed down from, Ilsa raised her voice just enough that someone standing above might hear her. "Well, this is unfortunate. Somebody forgot that some shinigami are really freaking tall when he planned the maze!”
Oops. I probably shouldn’t have done that. With a mental shrug, Ilsa ducked into the labyrinth entrance, balls of light floating along in front of her. What’s said is said. Sighing, she turned to Daichi and gave him a wry smile. The yellow Ghost Lights swooped around to hover on the ceiling to Ilsa’s left. "Well, this is goig to be interesting.”
Watching as his teammate descended down the later bathed in a pillar of light, the thought came to the boy of a celestial being of great power coming down from the heavens to save all of humanity. Then came the sound of a small thwack, followed by a frustrated curse towards the too small tunnel. Three ghost flames appeared around Ilsa as she called on her futatsu. Instantly the boy knew that his partner would be very valuable to the test.
"Ignite and thrive. Hadou number one, Yakekoge." The recruit's middle finger and forefinger of his right hand began to glow with a hot flame. With a swift motion Daichi placed a mark by the entrance. In case the duo became turned around and wound up back in front of the same ladder they wouldn't think it was the exit. "This is my plan Ilsa-san. We mark each turn we make. I'll put down a circle for each time we choose to turn right, an x for each time we turn left, and a straight line for each time we continue straight. That way we'll always know which way we came from," the boy thought a minute, remembering the small hedge maze he had been in, "also, if we come to any corners that don't give us a choice in which way to turn then I'll just place a line on the walls. That way it'll be harder for us to get lost." The shadows hid the shinigami's smile partially.
Turning and running his fingers along the tunnel wall as he walked The group came to their first intersection. The corridor continued straight, but also made a sharp and dark fork to the right. Glancing at his partner through the dancing flames Daichi gave her a smile of confidence and continued on straight, keeping his fingers in contact with the cold wall.
"Right.......Left.......left.....right...right." Daichi muttered to himself at each corner. This was to try and remember the current path should the duo need to backtrack. Another fork stood before them. "Right or Straight?" Daichi looked at Ilsa. It wasn't a clear option for either of them, but perhaps his partner had a spark of intuition that he didn't.
Mitsuyo? I’ve never seen that person before despite the fact we’re in the same division. Well at least I think he’s in the same division, otherwise he wouldn’t be with me and Captain Sayis would he?
"H-hi, I’m Shukumei,” he spoke hesitantly, peering into the black pit.
This really doesn’t look promising. I hope this Mitsuyo guy has some kind of brave personality or fearless resolve or...something.
Turning to Mitsuyo with eyes asking for reassurance and yet he didn’t find what he expected. He seemed to have spirit yet he did not seem as confident as Shukumei would like his partner to be.
I can’t rely on others for my own self-confidence all the time anyway. I have to get tough sooner or later.
After completely skipping out the pleasantries between himself and his partner, Shukumei took another gaze into the black hole.
A few dangers and I will need a lucky intuition? Sounds like Captain Sayis has set up a good challenge for us here. I do hope those training sessions with Haze and Owen have paid off.
Shukumei took a final deep breath and then turned to Mitsuyo.
"Shall we enter?” he asked nervously, yet trying to stay strong in front of his fellow comrades.
Ilsa shrugged, the gesture looking a bit odd in her hunched-over stance. Her neck and back were already complaining; she did not want to think about how she would feel once they got out of this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned maze. “I read once that most mazes have patterns to them, but I can’t see any pattern so far.” She sighed and reached around to rub the back of her neck. “And if we can’t remember all the previous turns correctly, there’s no way to find such a pattern. Darn it, I really need to see about buying a case or pouch or something to carry writing materials.” Something like what Sayis-taichou has, but with a loop or something to attach it to my obi.
“Might as well just pick something, then.” Ilsa pointed forward. Her three orbs of light arranged themselves in a tidy line. “Straight.”
Daichi marked the wall with a straight line, and the pair continued on into the silent darkness. Ilsa kept a wary eye on the walls and floor, occasionally detaching one of her little golden lights to more clearly illuminate a suspicious crack in the stone. Everything seemed safe so far, though. Smooth stone corridors, stretching out into the absolute darkness that lurked beyond their traveling island of light. It was all too easy to imagine a demi-Hollow leaping out of the black, or a storm of arrows, a fireball triggered by one wrong step…
Stop that, self. You’re making this worse than it already is. Ilsa turned to her partner. “So… um, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around the compound before.”
"That's because I'm new to the division. I actually went right into the tenth division from the academy. What about you? Have you been a part of the tenth for long?" She must've been here longer than him. He wouldn't think that his captain would pair him up with someone with no experience what so ever.
Daichi focused on marking the walls with Yakekoge as the pair talked and tried to work their way through the maze.
Ilsa frowned in thought. "Let me think... oh, it’ll be exactly two months tomorrow!” She beamed happily. "Maybe I’ll go out for drinks or something to commemorate the occasion. This has certainly been the most, ah, eventful two months of my afterlife.” The memory of her first meeting with the captain surged up with sharp-edged clarity. Standing there in the cool predawn with her fellow graduate Kohei Kenji, trying to answer Sayis-taichou’s questions about the nature of the mitsudomoe, wondering if she would be marching off to war in Hueco Mundo when the sun finally rose. Her voice was much quieter when she spoke again. "I came fresh from the Academy as well. I... I was extremely lucky to escape being sent to Hueco Mundo.”
Mitsuyo took a moment to size up the shinigami he had been paired with.
He was kind of pathetic.
And he had a stutter.
Shukumei wasn't even that much taller than him (which was really saying something), and his nervous, timid way of talking only highlighted, bolded, and underlined his lack of confidence. So Sayis had decided to pit the two taller, more confident shinigami against the semi-retarded midget group.
Where the other two 10th Division duo had already taken their show underground, here was Mitsuyo and Mr. Wibbles, not even properly introduced.
Well whatever.
The small redhead bit back the usual flurry of sarcastic comments, gave his blue-eyed partner a bland stare, and huffed. “Might as well,” he sighed, stretching as he stepped forward to peer directly into the maze entrance.
Can't see crap, sir. He cast one last gloomy stare Inuzuri-taichou's way before placing his foot on one of the ladder rungs and starting the long climb down.
Oh wow. It was really, very dark down here. There was a brief moment of vertigo when his sandaled foot touched solid ground again, and as he stepped away from the ladder Mitsuyo kept one hand pressed against the left side of the tunnel's wall. Absently, he reached up with his right hand, fingertips brushing the underground labyrinth's ceiling. Kinda low, wasn't it?
Hope Wibbles-san isn't claustrophobic. Or afraid of the dark. He really should have paid closer attention to the incantations for some of those light-creating spells. In his experience, trying to recite the incantation for a demon art without knowing it one hundred percent was mostly just a catalyst for failure.
Oh well. Maybe Chuuchumei had something in his repertoire that could help them out.
Shukumei remained silent as Mitsuyo took a step onto the ladder and began the slow descent into the pit.
He doesn't say an awful lot does he? Then again I don't say an awful lot to someone I've never met before and am paired up with to travel through a dark, gloomy labyrinth as a greeting.
He waited until there was room for himself to climb down the ladder himself and as he placed his foot on the first step of the ladder, he cast Sayis a look of uncertainty about this entire situation before following Mitsuyo down into the depths of this big...hole.
Sure as Hell is dark down here. This should be fun.
When his feet eventually touched the ground, Shukumei let out a sigh of relief and turned to Mitsuyo...or at least he thought he turned to Mitsuyo. He hoped he was still there because he couldn't see a damned thing.
"Hey, Mitsuyo. You do have a light spell, right?" Shukumei asked with a hint of nervousness in his voice, smiling faintly to himself. He had a tendency to smile when he was nervous.
Isn't it usually the quiet ones that have secret powers that they don't ever talk about or use except for in dire situations? Or is that just a generalisation? I ask far too many questions in my own mind.
Ilsa's answer made the recruit stumble a bit. "Hueco Mundo?" Daichi must've still been filling out paper work during that. Wow. He never thought that such new recruits would be sent to the White Sands. "I graduated from the academy about two months ago, immediately filled out paper work and registered for the Tenth Division. I joined the Tenth Division because I love kidou and the challenge it poses. I love using kidou to solve simple puzzles, like this maze. The practical application of Kidou is something they don't teach you in the academy. Sure, they teach you how to cast Kidou, and that Kidou require incantations, however, they never teach you things like this," the boy indicated his flame infused fingers. "Making marks as to not get lost. Maybe even using a binding spell on a piece of crumbling wood or stone to keep it from falling. Kidou has so many different possible applications."
A sigh escaped the boy as he remembered the ring on his hand. "My father wanted me to go into the ninth..." His voice faltered. It had been years since he had heard about his father, or talked about him even. All at once, all the emotions and feelings came rushing back, and had if not been for his Yakekoge infused hand against the wall, the emotions would've brought him to his knees. The young shinigami stopped walking. It was all he could do to remain standing.
Focus on breathing. In, out. Take in what's happening now, let go of what's happened. In...out. After about 5 minutes his breathing returned to normal, knees strengthened, and chin lifted. There was no way Ilsa-san didn't notice, but he could not let his division see him falter. Dammit, she must have noticed...
The silence that settled over the shinigami was too thick and heavy for Mitsuyo's preferences.
Oh good, he grumbled to himself. Because, really, making his way through a booby-trapped underground maze designed by their arcane-specialist captain wasn't enough of a challenge. Doing so without even a speck of light to see by – that made it worthwhile.
“I have no idea,” he muttered, hunkering down next to the wall he'd been resting his hitotsu-signed hand against. “Not...really...off the top of my head.” He'd have to study those Academy-level incantations more thoroughly when he'd left behind Sayis's stupid idea of training (and by 'study', he meant, 'briefly skim through again'). “There was that one made specifically for being used as a light source, wasn't there? Spirit Balls...Light Fire?...it had 'Fire' in it...”
He was mostly talking to himself at that point, eyebrows furrowed and mouth quirked to one side in concentration. “Lead me through the marsh...make a path through the dark...something like that...”
He exhaled sharply with annoyance. For a moment, he considered climbing right back up that stupid ladder and asking that stupid crowd that had been watching them if anyone knew the Hadou he was thinking of. Hell, he could just ask Inuzuri...or find something to use as a light, lantern, torch, something....
Show me the way through the marshes... cut a path through the darkness... be my guide in the night.
“...Bakudou #11, Ghost Fire...”
Always liked that one...
Mitsuyo wasn't sure when he'd gotten to his feet, but he was definitely standing – hands suddenly cinched tight into fists, eyes glaring fiercely at the fog of darkness in front of him. Shut up! SHUT. UP. Don't you dare start talking to me again.
He wheeled around to face Shukumei (or at least face where he remembered Shukumei's agitatingly-nervous voice coming from). “Show me the way through the marshes. Cut a path through the darkness. Be my guide in the night. Bakudou #11, Ghost Fire,” he bit off, unable to hide the abrupt anger in his voice.
A single ball of pure white fire erupted above and in-between the two short shinigami, illuminating the redhead's unhappy expression as well as the carved walls of the underground maze.
Shukumei tilted his head slightly to the right and raised on eyebrow as the light shone into his eyes, holding one arm slightly above his eyes to protect them from the light.
He seems pissed off. I guess being stuck in a dark maze having to stretch into the limit of our arcane knowledge with a person we've never even met before isn't this guys idea of fun. Either way I don't want to stress him out anymore so maybe I should stay quiet. Wait a minute...isn't this a test of teamwork? I can't stay quiet if this is a test of teamwork because that's...just wrong. Though I should be careful what I say to him.
"Yeah, we're good," Shukumei smiled heartily, "but didn't you just say that you didn't know a light spell?"
His tone of voice was particularly calm, even for Shukumei, as he did not want to provoke the seemingly stressed Shinigami.
That light is pretty damn bright considering he doesn't appear too familiar with the spell.
"Shall we get going?" Shukumei suggested, looking past Mitsuyo down the dark, dingy corridor.
I guess we can talk as we walk, though even for us the ceiling is pretty low. I wonder how Ilsa will be doing with that other unfamiliar Shinigami...
Mitsuyo looked over his shoulder, following Shukumei's gaze, and wasn't impressed by what he found. His Ghost Fire bathed the underground tunnel in bright white light, but all it had revealed was a depressingly simple passage, fading to black at the edge of the kidou spell's range.
“I said 'not off the top of my head',” he muttered irritably, before turning back to study Shukumei's expression. What the fuck was with that smile? “So I thought about it. And obviously I remembered one.” He tilted his head towards the ball of heatless fire suspended in mid-air for emphasis.
For some reason, the other shinigami's happy grin and calm tone did nothing to settle the redhead's temper; in fact, that Shukumei was actually putting effort into seeming like he was in a good mood made Mitsuyo immediately suspect the opposite. Unless Wibbles-san was just delighted to be able to see again.
Nope, what was more likely was that the ginger-haired kid had noticed the sudden irritation written into every angle of his tone and body language, and decided to tread carefully around him.
Hell, his fingernails were still pressing crescents into the palms of his hands. He flexed his fingers out and relaxed them. He was pissed, yeah, sure, but he didn't want his Division-mate asking why.
There was a brief moment of deja vu when Shukumei spoke again.
“Shall we enter?”
"Shall we get going?"
The redhead raised his eyebrows in bemusement, said, “Might as well,” with a completely straight face, and started walking, leaving Chuuchuu-kun to catch up, find his own source of light, or get left in the dark
I really, really hope Captain Eccentrism didn't make this thing too elaborate.
Ilsa reflexively turned and stepped toward Daichi, then halted. He might not want a hug from someone he barely knew. She sat down on the stone floor, keeping an eye on her partner while trying to look as if her greatest concern was massaging her aching neck and shoulders. It didn’t really work that well. Once the young man was standing up straight again, Ilsa smiled at him. “You okay now?”
Oh, screw propriety. The tall shinigami stood up, wincing as she had to hunch over once more, and laid a friendly hand on Daichi’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to laugh at you or anything. I don’t bite, appearances notwithstanding.” She paused. “Something happened to your father in the Ninth, huh.” It wasn’t a question. “If you want to talk about it, go ahead. I don’t gossip about this kind of thing.” Ilsa shrugged, somewhat painfully given the way she was forced to stand. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s your business.”
Shukumei frowned for just a moment as a slight stream of Mitsuyos unsocial attitude and rudeness shone out of an orifice in his speech patterns.
Ooooh, I think this guy is a bad egg. There are people who have bad days, people who get pissed off at things within reason, people who get pissed off without reason and people who are just plain pissed off all the time. This guy seems like the latter one. Oh well, I don't want this situation to defy karma so I guess I'll just smile through everything. Happy happy happy!
The young Shinigami decided it was in his best interest to follow Mr. Bad Egg down the corridor since it was supposed to be a 'team building' exercise rather than a "I'm so cool so I'm going to wander off by myself with my awesome kidou light" exercise. Oddly enough, Captain Sayis never ordered many of those training sessions.
So Shukumei remained quiet for a short part of the oh-so-glorious journey with his oh-so-glorious partner through the claustrophobic maze, trying to think of something optimistic and happy to come up with along the way. His frown did not remain for long as he did not require a huge amount of reason to smile.
"This place is too quiet. I can't even hear anything stirring. All I can hear is our own footsteps with that constant echo. It is a good job that repetitive sounds don't piss either of us off isn't it?" Shukumei spoke in an optimistic tone of voice with that constant happy-go-lucky smile on his face.
As the journey continued on, Shukumei began to lose interest in the constant walking, beginning to yawn and stretch his arms behind the back of his head.
For awhile, the two of them walked in (relative) silence, and that was nice. It gave Mitsuyo an opportunity to organize his thoughts – to put them back in (relative) order after the whirlwind of anger that hearing that fucking voice had provoked.
He knew he had lashed out at Shukumei, which probably meant he should apologize (not that he would), but how many rhetorical questions did the kid plan on asking? Was he looking for Mitsu to hold his hand and guide him through this retarded exercise? And why did he keep smiling, even when there was no way he was really in a good mood – it was such a fake expression, and really, Mitsuyo would have preferred it if the kid came right out and said he was being a jerk, and to knock it off, instead of laying down at taking it, and that stupid fucking voice, always butting in when he didn't want its advi-
Ow, shit.
A sharp jolt of pain, accompanied by a metallic tang on his tongue, made him realize he had been biting at his bottom lip. Surprised, he raised a hand to his mouth, and it was the smear of red on his fingertips, illuminated in the white wash of his Ghost Fire, that snuffed whatever flame had caused him to start boiling over.
Tch.
Tch.
He casually scrubbed away the rest of the blood with the back of his hand and slowed slightly from the no-nonsense pace he'd set from the start.. He needed to calm down. If he kept walking with his thoughts scrambling every which way, it was no better than pacing. In a maze. With a kidou spell constantly eating at his energy. While someone followed him.
He didn't want it to be his fault if they got helplessly lost...speaking of...
Mitsuyo, with hesitation born of embarrassment (after all, he hadn't apologized for before), opened his mouth – and it was at that moment that the other shinigami decided to pipe up. The redhead's voice died in his throat until Shukumei was done making random comments in an even more cheery voice than before. Mitsuyo would bet that the other kid had a smile to match.
"Mm,” he said vaguely in agreement with whatever Shukumei had said (something about how he didn't hear anything except their footsteps, which Mitsu was going to have to take his word for, since he'd been far to caught up in his own thoughts and hadn't heard even that), then slowed to a stop. He pressed his hand against the left wall again. "Sh...shouldn't we be marking the ground or walls or something? So we know where we've already been?” he asked the darkness in front of him instead of turning to face the other 10th Divisioner. Losing momentum, he mumbled, "And which way we came from?...to make sure we don't get lost...”
Ugh, fuck, that stupid voice had to go and ruin everything. It was way too awkward to talk to Chuuchuu-kun now, with the memory of his rude comment hanging in the air between them.
Shukumei raised an eyebrow again as Mitsuyo began to move his hand around suspiciously, appearing to wipe it across his facial area.
What is that guy up to? Well if he doesn't want to talk I won't make him talk. I'll just be happy!
Shukumei stopped in his tracks right behind Mitsuyo and just about heard him mumbling something about marking where they have already been.
Hansel and Gretel style. I always did love that story. Though behind every fable there was an important moral so perhaps this would be quite a good idea. Though I can't tell whether he's talking to me or himself...or...some invisible person stood next to him? Maybe he's talking to his Ghost Fire. Perhaps my cheerfulness is his version of gloominess and because the Ghost Fire doesn't reply he can have himself a good conversation...with himself...without having to make up an excuse for not talking to me. Or maybe he is talking to me, just quietly. Maybe in this case, actions speak louder than words so perhaps I should do something.
Without giving Mitsuyo a vocal response, Shukumei drew his wakizashi and held the tip of the blade against the wall on the left side of the passageway, just before Mitsuyo. Keeping one hand on the blades hilt whilst placing the other hand closer to the edge of the blade for support.
Taking a quick breath and letting it out with equal speed, Shukumei began to drag the blade slowly down the wall in a diagonal shape, making a sound bearing similarities to nails on a chalkboard. After carving the wall for about a foot, Shukumei ceased his actions and the aggrovating sound.
"Would you like me to draw an X-shape or will that do?" Shukumei asked in a slightly less nervous tone of voice than previously (yet his voice still did not scream confidence) and he lowered his wakizashi to relax his arm.
