Speed of the Soul (Solo/training)

As she stepped into the clear area in front of her, the dirt under her feet remaining undisturbed as she was once again using her flash step continuously in order to train herself farther, she took in the area that she had set up so long ago. In front of her was a massive natural cavern, hidden by the great rocky outcropping through which she had crawled. The only evidence of it's presence being the holes in the ceiling that let in natural light from the moon above. Tsubaki was well aware that the moon wouldn't always be shining brightly enough to see by, and in fact no existing natural light source would be able to fully illuminate the cavern through the sparse openings in the ceiling, which was why she had put in the effort to find, or develop, a light source that wouldn't require her to go into civilization to repair or replace it. The result of those efforts were the same vines that had crawled into the entrance of the tunnel she used to enter and exit the cavern. Once those vines had also lined a path up the cliff face that she would use to climb up to that tunnel, though once she had gained training in shunpo she had removed those vines. 

The vines that she had originally cultivated had grown extensively since she had first put them in. Now they covered the walls thickly, barely allowing any of the stone walls to show through, in the light it was easy to see the soft silhouettes of moths and other insects that had been drawn by the light and the scent of the flowers on the glowing bulbs. Most of them simply flew around the plants, feeding on nectar and carrying pollen along with them back into the forest, or bringing pollen in to fertilize the plants. Every now and then however, an insect would land on one of the few wide leaves, and with a snap the leaf would roll up, trapping the insect to be slowly digested and absorbed. Tsubaki had been careful to try and develop that feature, as she had known that sunlight would be scarce in the cave. When she had managed to successfully cultivate this new kind of plant, she hadn't bothered to name it as it didn't seem important, she had immediately began the work of transferring some particularly strong strains into the cavern, and the fruits of her labor were plainly evident now.

Tsubaki's eyes slid from the plants and on to the rest of the cavern. The cavern was filled with wooden platforms of varying height and width. Each one was made of a different material, some were strong, some were weak, and some were no more solid than rice paper, but every one of them looked identical. Many of them were covered in features that emulated different kinds of terrain. Some had rocks, some had dry forest detritus, some were covered with loose tile, again she had worked to find a method to make it utterly impossible to tell what material the platforms and obstacles were made of. Tsubaki had done this to help train herself to always move silently and lightly regardless of the terrain, and also to help train her to identify the small tells that indicated a weak surface, or in some cases a concealed pit. In practice the second purpose hadn't worked out as well as she would have liked since she quickly memorized which platforms were which, though she would occasionally forget from time to time, so some use came of that particular feature. The platforms had worked wonderfully in the other respect though, and she still made sure to practice moving silently over the different terrains.

There was one space that didn't contain the platforms however. A raised circle completely clear of all debris or obstructions. The edges of the circle were lined with symbols inlaid in silver. The symbols seemed to squirm before the eyes if put under scrutiny, and in the center was another, smaller circle, denoted by simple white paint. In the center of that circle was a single, carefully carved wooden mannequin. A strong herbal smell seemed to radiate off of the mannequin. Circling every point where the wood was broken by the presence of a fully articulated joint were more lines of text that seemed to squirm when looked at too closely, though instead of shining with silver these words were a deep, mossy green, and it was from those words that the smell came. Tsubaki had originally furnished this entire cavern as a training area nearly a century after she had left the Rukongai in order to train herself to better live in the forest, instead of just trying to survive from day to day on whatever she could find or hunt down herself. After she had been... persuaded to join the Soul Society and had finished her stint in the academy she had returned to her original training area and made alterations, namely the production of the new training ring and the production of the first mannequin. She had designed the entire area according to an old book she had found deep in the archives of the soul reapers library.

She had originally found the book while she had been particularly annoyed at some colleague or another, she didn't remember why, and had gone deep into the great library to be alone, after she had calmed down she decided to see what the dusty, seemingly forgotten tomes had to offer in terms of information. Many of them were old outdated kido research reports, in fact an in-proportionately large amount of the books were about kido. It took her a few moments, but she eventually realized that she must be in a section for old research papers to be stored against a time when new techniques became needed. She stayed in there for several hours, flipping through many different tomes, not understanding most of them, but still interested to see what the methods used by her peers had been in their research. Eventually however she came across a book that she could understand the nuances of, because it only used very basic principles of kido, which she could easily grasp.

The book outlined a method that had been researched as a method to increase the level of harmony between a shinigami and their zanpakutou through combat without having to enter a shinigami's inner world. The method was discarded quickly, as their research showed that there were fundamental flaws in their procedures that simply couldn't be overcome. The original idea had been to force the zanpakutou spirit of a shinigami to physically manifest through a medium, namely a mannequin. The zanpakutou would then proceed to grow closer to it's wielder by facing them in combat. The problem came from the initial idea itself. When a shinigami stabbed their zanpakutou into the mannequin, which was supposed to then absorb the blade temporarily and manifest the spirit, nothing happened. Extensive testing had shown no way to get the process to work, and was almost scrapped, but not before an incident occurred that sealed the doom of the project.

Apparently, in a fit of pique one of the researchers had released a low level hado at the mannequin, intending to blast the wooden construct apart, however instead of being destroyed the mannequin had absorbed the attack, and quickly began to change. Energy had suffused the wooden creation, and it began to glow brightly. When the glow had faded what remained was an exact copy of the researcher who had initially fired the attack. The clone immediately went berserk, but since it wasn't an actual shinigami it lacked the ability to use any kido or other techniques of the shinigami, but it was extremely hardy. After the research team managed to take it down, with the only injury caused by the incident being a few bruises caused when the creation tackled an unsuspecting researcher, more study was done to determine if there was any use in what had been created. Originally the intent had been to create a training method for students at the academy, something to place them in a combat situation without actually risking injury of the students. However it was deemed to expensive in terms of materials and man hours to produce each mannequin, and to produce one of the circles which were integral to the infusing of spiritual energy into the mannequin, so the project was finally scrapped, and relegated to the many journals deep in the archives.

Tsubaki's curiosity was roused, so she had gone back to look at what exactly was required to make one of these mannequins and a circle in which to animate it, and she almost put the book down when she saw the requirements, but she felt that it would be worth it to try and recreate the procedure, if only to see if she could gain any insight from it, so she decided to write down the procedures needed, and went out to begin working on it. Between her duties and the requirements to perform the procedure however, it took her nearly two years to put everything together, but she eventually had made a circle, and two mannequins, and she knew she couldn't make another. The process was in fact far to expensive to use efficiently. Regardless, she had immediately used the first mannequin as a test. The procedure went off perfectly, and she was able to use the clone for hours to train before it had enough punishment and broke apart, afterwards she set up the second mannequin, but then left it, deciding that it was better to save it for a time when she really needed to train, and after the recent invasion, that time was now.

Tsubaki shook her head, clearing the memories that had clouded her mind, and placed one hand on the mannequin.

Hado number four, byakurai.

Word count: 1665
GP gain: 22
Total GP gain: 36