Not a Girl

One of these days, he was going to learn to drive. Or just get a bike. Or hell, maybe get good enough at reishi manipulation to be able to make one out of soul silver. Anything that meant he wouldn't have to jog or walk if he wanted to get some good food. Koichi turned his eyes to the sky, and briefly shielded them from the glare of the sun. He could head into the gym for a little workout, out into the mountains for a serious workout, or maybe pay his friend a visit at her shrine. On a whim, he stopped and closed his eyes, flexing his senses. The air of Karakura Town was so rich with reishi that it was no wonder this place was a hotspot for hollows and other sorts of spirits. It was probably much easier for them to manifest here. Though, he thought there would be more spiritually aware around too. Like himself. Like Saria. Like the person down the street.

Koichi slowly opened his eyes as he fully registered that last observation. There was someone right down the street, maybe ten or fifteen meters away. His eyes bounced back and forth between the people at that range, a little obscured by other people either just getting out for, or coming from their lunch hour. Finally he spotted out the rather oddly dressed man pointing something at him. Was it a watch? He'd just have to get closer to find out. He made no assumption of being able to maintain stealth. The man was pointing something in his direction after all. Still, Koichi made sure to not run over, despite his curiosity. He continued to scan the man as he got closer and tried to build a story from it. 

"Military uniform, but very non-military hair. So either rebellious, or at a high enough position that he can afford to be slack with his upkeep. Could be a police uniform, but that's not any variation of the Japanese police uniform I've seen. So if he is police, he's far out of his jurisdiction and has no real reason to wear it. A statement of loyalty to his organization to wear it even when not required? And then there's the fact he's a spiritualist." Koichi looked around, then pulled the sleeves of his red jacket up to his elbows as a precaution. The last time he'd been within speaking distance of another spiritualist, a hollow had descended from nowhere to attack. He'd tried fighting with his gauntlets under his sleeves once before, and that only made the chances of losing them jump to one hundred percent.

He stopped a few feet from 'military man' as he'd taken to calling the stranger in his head, and leaned over for a closer look at the contraption in his hand. "A compass? Every time I meet a new one, they've got something out of the ordinary. Or at least something out of the ordinary as far as I define it." Koichi pulled the hood off his head and gave a small bow to Lucas. "Himura Koichi. Quincy. Care for a quick chat?"

Word Count: 525

Someone approached from behind him, more specifically.

On reflex, Lucas looked over his right shoulder, but didn’t see anyone there at all. He didn’t yet feel the need to reach out with his spiritual sense, to scan the entire area if need be, and instead took another look at his compass.

The glowing particle was practically in the center now, on top of him. A bit confused, Lucas looked up towards the sky to see if maybe the man was air-walking above his very head: Nothing. There was just blue sky and some big, fluffy clouds that rolled lazily by.

It wasn’t until he looked to his left next, out of habit, and over that shoulder, did he see the man. Lucas looked just in time for the mystery man to pull back the hood on his jacket and introduce himself, his accent clearly Japanese.

Himura Koichi, Quincy.

The compass never lied.

“I’m on a roll today,” Lucas smiled and laughed while he stood up from the iron-net style chair and offered the young man his hand to shake. His other hand flicked his compass closed. “I’m Lucas Lighter, Knight of the Order of the Quincy. I’d like to speak with you, if you wouldn’t mind having a seat?”

Lucas gestured to one of the empty chairs around the round table. They were all wrought-iron in a net-like pattern, just like his chair, but surprisingly comfortable. He had no idea the Japanese built things like this. After seeing Tokyo, he half expected even their chairs to be strange and futuristic, not painfully normal. His father owned an outdoor set very similar to this, in fact.

“And I have to ask,” Lucas went on. “How did you pick me out so quickly? I hadn’t yet reached out with my mind to find you, I admit; I’m not all that talented in that aspect of our abilities. But it looks like you knew exactly what I was and went right up to investigate.”

Even if the answer was as simple as, ‘I could feel you and figured you were a Quincy,’ he could get behind that. It’d at least be something and, should their conversation go well, Lucas could learn a thing or two from the young man. And if not, no skin off of hise nose regardless. He’d move on. A no-lose situation, to say the absolute least.

“Regardless, I’m seeking out Quincy,” Lucas got the subject back on track. “And if you have some time, I have something to say that might interest you.”

*****

424 Words

Koichi grinned and took the man's hand to shake. A handshake was always a good sign when it came to talking to someone. "Western name. Would it be racist to assume American?" he spoke under his breath. Some might consider it, but others wouldn't. Whatever the case, he made the assumption anyways until he was informed otherwise. "Knight of the Order of Quincy." This he spoke in a normal tone so that his curiosity towards the matter could be known. So that confirmed his suspicion that this man was in some sort of military, though his familiarity with any organization that would use the rank of knight was somewhat limited. In some 'source' material it was a rather significant rank, in others not so much.

Koichi lifted the wrought iron seat, and paused for a moment as he considered whether or not it would be alright for him to flip it around. A short glance at his companion and he left it in it's original orientation and set it back down a little ways from the table so that he could sit comfortably. "Wouldn't mind at all. Came over here to chat anyhow." He shrugged and settled into the chair. Not totally relaxed as it had been a little time before a hollow showed up last time, so they weren't quite past the danger zone just yet. Though he was distracted from his lookout by Lucas' question. He chuckled a little and shrugged again while he enjoyed that small moment of a seeming edge over the other Quincy.

"If I'm going to be entirely honest, I stopped to smell the roses." He spread his arms wide towards the scene around them, narrowly avoiding knocking a tray out of the hands of a nearby waitress. "Karakura, and to a lesser extent, all of Tokyo. My dad brought me here because the concentration of spiritual energy is so high. Makes it an excellent place to train. Especially in the more practical aspects. So, on my way either home or to the gym from lunch, I stopped to just bask in all that ambient energy. And by some luck, there was someone of significant strength nearby." Seemed simple enough to him.

His smile shifted from something general to one more knowing when Lucas revealed he was actually looking for Quincy. A Quincy, who was a Knight in the Order of Quincy, was seeking out other Quincy. An order that contained a military element if it was not entirely military based in the first place. Koichi leaned forward on the table, careful not to tip it over and switched gears from a talking mood to a listening one. "Very well then. It already interests me since it will most likely be new information, so I can't wait to actually hear it."

Word Count: 469
Total Word Count: 994

Racist to assume that he was American? Lucas just laughed a little at the idea as Koichi took his seat.

“No, no, not at all,” he answered. “In fact, you’re spot on. Besides, I figured that my accent would give that away.”

Once the young man was comfortable seated, Lucas could see there was still a considerable amount of tension and unease. Lucas must have seemed pretty suspicious to him, and he could understand why. A foreigner, sitting outside a local Café with the power to spot people who were specifically a Quincy? Lucas had already given Koichi enough information to figure that out, between the compass and his comments about looking for Quincy in particular.

Not Fullbringers, not other Spiritualists: Quincy.

“Not from here?” Lucas observed, out loud, more than he actually asked. He didn’t want to pry into the man’s privacy. But he listened intently, and hoped his comment proved that he wasn’t just glazing over the man’s words or looking to get to his business without paying attention to the person whose time he had so boldly asked for. After all, who knew what was going on in this guy’s life? He could have a million better things to do.

But, by the sounds of it, he was here in the area for anything but pressing matters. Lucas appreciated that, he knew how important it was to get away from things sometimes.

“I kind of stick out, don’t I?” He laughed a little more. He knew that, to recently awakened humans, his presence could be stressful and even enough to make some sick. It was strange, to have such a weight on another person just because he stood nearby, but he had’t even begun to learn how to do anything about that. Part of him hoped that he never had to deal with an even more severe version of the problem. It was only because of what skill Freyleif did have, and Lucas’ own infrequent use of his spiritual senses, that he didn’t pass out the moment she descended the staircase in those knee-high boots of hers.

If nothing else, Lucas enjoyed how open Koichi seemed to hear about all of this. It kept a smile on his face, and he pushed the cardboard remnants of his meal to the side of the wrought iron table. It would have been rude to keep literal trash between them.

“It might be very new to you indeed,” Lucas went on. He couldn’t help but be excited about all of this. Not long in Japan and, already, a new Quincy! There had to be plenty floating around the Tokyo area. “Unless you’ve heard about the shifts in power back over in Berlin?”

Lucas waved off the question, though. Those were details he could get into in just a few minutes. He wanted to start with the hook.

“Not the most important thing right now,” he shifted gears. “What is important, however, is what the new Queen wants to do. For the first time in, at least, my lifetime, there’s a leader of Quincy who wants to reunite the Quincy that are scattered across the globe. I believe in her initiative and her determination, and I think it’s about time for someone to stand up and bring us together. I’ve been sent here, given this town’s importance, to find other Quincy and tell them about what’s happened, and to put them in touch with the rest of the Order.”

*****

578 Words

Koichi looked at the sky while he considered the information immediately presented. "Berlin?" That rhetorical question and the look on his face should have been enough to make it clear he didn't have the faintest clue just what might be going on in Berlin he needed to be concerned about. That's what happened when your father cut all ties with his clan he supposed. Still, Koichi looked back down from the sky to hear about whatever these power shifts were that he should be concerned about. This was, in essence, his way of getting back into the quincy world without possibly having whatever stigma his father accrued be handed off to him.

He wanted details, but what he got instead was a recruitment pitch. He still remained hopeful, but once the pitch ended he had a few seconds before he wiped the expectant look from his face. His eyes turned to the sky again and he tried to do something with what he'd been told. Lucas was probably doing his best after all. "Power shifts in Berlin, and a new queen. So Berlin is probably the Quincy seat of power, so either it or germany holds some significance to our people." He was showing his ignorance, but he was quite deliberate in it. When someone doesn't know, information is offered, and it was information Koichi was after. As much as he could get without having to outright ask for it because he would never be certain he was asking the right questions.

"So, something is coming." He was focused again, the gears in his mind turning. "Yes, we're scattered, but that could be seen as a good thing to some. A group is much easier to fight. To defeat. To exterminate. Scattered, you have to hunt down each individual, or each small group. Most would say that's too much effort. Hell, look at cockroaches. You don't spend a day dancing on the kitchen floor when you can let off a bug bomb in the nest." His eyes refocused from the middle distance on Lucas. Suddenly he felt rather foolish for talking like that, but at the same time, all he owed this man was an ear. He never said he wouldn't speak his mind. And who knew, maybe Lucas had the ear of the queen, and somehow this was going to make it back to her. It was a nice thought.

"But," he continued, "at the same time, a cohesive whole is stronger. It's easier to fight as a united front. Easier to resist attack. Or to make one." He quickly put up his hands. "Not, that is, that I'm insinuating the queen is gathering the Quincy together to go to war. I haven't even met her yet, so I'd have to wait before making an assumption like that. Just trying to wrap my head around the idea of Quincy as an organization. My dad taught me personally, without assistance from a clan, so even that sort of mentality hasn't been beaten into me yet. I don't know how good of a soldier, or knight I'd make. At the very least if I did this, I would hope to be a fully informed one."

Word Count: 534
Total word Count: 1,528

“The thinking out loud type, huh?” Lucas commented with a smile when Koichi started to verbally review what he was hearing. If nothing else, the young man seemed absolutely captivated by the news, in Lucas’ eyes. It also showed just how painfully disconnected he was from news of the other Quincy activity in the world, enough that he didn’t even know Berlin held any significance to the Quincy, or that it always would.

Though, Lucas had some ideas about shifting their major base of operations. After all, he was standing the biggest spiritual center in the world. Berlin, on the hand, was on the other side of the planet.

Lucas listened intently as Koichi went on, half-rambling and half engaging in actual conversation. At first, his hesitance worried Lucas. When the first thing out of his mouth was the suggestion that maybe the Quincy should remain scattered, like pests, it didn’t bode well for his reception of the idea that the Quincy should be a force to be reckoned with. If simple survival was all he cared about, this would be the opposite of what he wanted to be hearing right now. Lucas knew that type all too well.

As the man shifted to the other side of the fence, and went over the benefits of the decision with much more enthusiasm, the relief visibly lightened Lucas. He smiled again, and listened on even as the subject shifted into how Koichi was raised: Isolated from other Quincy, their families, and any organizations thereof. He had been raised by his Quincy father and taught only from that source—he didn’t know anything else about their people that he hadn’t learned from him.

The idea astounded Lucas.

Although his father had been the source of much of his own knowledge, Lucas also had the other families of the Alliance. While his father did a great job with his vast knowledge of Quincy history, it was the books and the stories from others that helped give him the full picture. Without those other resources, Lucas might have ended up just as in the dark as Koichi now was.

“That’s, honestly, astounding,” Lucas answered, his tone every bit as genuine as his intentions. “Most Quincy I know, simply aren’t as powerful as you; even within the Alliance I grew up in, over in America. You have a lot to be proud of, to reach this level without even knowing that Berlin was the home of the Quincy crown. Did you even know that Germany is where history tracks the origin of the first Quincy to arise?”

Lucas tilted his head, happy to be able to share his knowledge with someone who was parched of it for so long. When he met Freyleif, he felt like a door had been opened to so much that he didn’t get to see before. Now, he wanted to return the favor, and be what illuminated the Quincy for this young man.

As a short, thin waitress walked by, Lucas flagged her down. A bit confused at first, the waitress smiled and nodded when he explained that he’d already paid, but would like another glass of water for him and his friend. She walked off a moment later, a professional enthusiasm in her step, and headed back inside and past the outdoor, iron tables.

“But that’s not overwhelming important at the moment,” he shifted the conversation back with a wave of his hand. “I’ll be happy to teach you anything you’d like to know, Koichi. But the reason for my being here, in this country—if my atrocious Japanese doesn’t give away that I wasn’t wholly expecting this—is to find people like you, and to address the very reasonable concerns you have, or questions that you come up with.”

After all, how many people would immediately feel ready to be a soldier, in this situation, especially when they knew so little about Quincy in general? Lucas fully understood the young man’s hesitance.

The waitress was back within the minute, two, tall, thin glasses of water in hand. He smiled at her as she set them down, and she bowed ever so slightly—everyone here seemed to do that—before she left once again.

“So, I want to let you know that we simply want to come together. There aren’t any plans for war or anything else of the sort,” Lucas started, clasping his hands loosely and resting them on the table. “We simply want to organize and unite for the very reasons you mentioned. We also realize that all of this is very new to many Quincy, which is why you’d never be alone during any of this process, nor expected to be a master of it right away. You’d be helped, trained, and properly made part of the larger Quincy family. No one would simply be tossed to the deep end and expected to swim.”

Except for Lucas himself, he realized—but that was a different matter entirely. He actively chose this for himself, wanted it. Just like Koichi, he could have asked for time to adjust and learn, and gotten it without argument.

No one was unreasonable to him.

“And all it’d start with, for now, is me passing on some contact information for the Quincy with our Queen back in Berlin, and bestowing you with our standard rank,” Lucas explained. “And soon enough, in the next few weeks, I’m hoping that we’ll finally be setting up our headquarters.”

*****

913 Words

"If you can't vocalize a thought, does it exist?" A rhetorical question. Though now that he was out of things to say, he could take a step back and listen again. Immediately he got some information he hadn't even known to search for. The relative strength of other Quincy. Koichi ran a hand through his hair and looked back up towards the sky. "No, I didn't. That actually feels kinda weird knowing our people came from Europe." Nothing against Europe, it was just as far from his daily thoughts as the surface of the moon for all intents and purposes.

His eyes went to the waitress and followed her while she made her way back into the restaurant. He knew so little, and he still knew that hollows existed and should be fought or studied. But what did she know? He smirked a little and turned back to Lucas when the man declared their origins to not be of overwhelming importance. "You say that, but I find just about anything you can share to be rather important. After all, it might have an effect on what I do going forward. Who knows whether or not the knowledge will be useful for future experiments or similar."

When the waitress returned, he took his glass and immediately took a long sip from it. Learning always made his mouth dry. Or maybe it was the jog he'd been on only a few moments before he decided to talk to a stranger with a spiritual footprint. Luckily, he'd finished his sip and swallowed before Lucas commented on not being tossed in the deep end. "I suppose it's a good thing that I'm not going to be alone during this process then. I tend to do that to myself. Jump in the deep end, and hope for the best. If I'm not too busy fighting to think." By sheer luck, he usually wasn't.

Koichi took another sup of his water, then reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. He also flagged down the same waitress from before and asked to borrow one of her pens for a few moments. It took him three tries to get his name down in a form he was sure the American would be able to read. First the Kanji, then Katakana, and finally in English. He quickly scribbled out the first two tries, then set his phone number under it. For a moment he considered his address as well, but decided not to and just handed the napkin and pen over to Lucas. If they needed to find him, then they probably would, whether he was at home or otherwise.

"So I guess it's time for me to start asking questions again." He scrolled through his phone's options to get to a screen where he oculd start putting in contacts while he formed his next questions. Once there, he set the device down and leaned on the table. "So, what's the structure of this organization of yours? I can only assume the queen is way at the top. And you, as a knight, are somewhere below that, but in between the two, and probably below you, what am I looking at? And what are the different roles I'll have to play as I move up in the system?"

Word Count: 551
Total Word Count: 2,079

“Not an ‘I think, therefore I am,’ kind of guy, are you?” Lucas joked in return. He liked the kid’s attitude, even if his choice of words were a little strange. For such a good looking young man, he was surprised that his social skills weren’t at least a little bit better than all of this. That said, he wasn’t planning to argue the matter either. Having a perfect ten in Charisma wasn’t a requirement for being a Quincy, or even a great Quincy.

Good news for Lucas, since he didn’t either. If he did, he probably would have married by now—at least, that’s what his father ribbed him about. Just to stick it to his old man, Lucas promised himself to bring home a young woman that would knock the man’s socks clean off.

One step at a time, though.

Koichi had questions, quite a few of them, and as much as Lucas didn’t want to bore him with stories about their origins, he wanted to know. But when he finally got around to asking what was on his mind, he didn’t start with the history of their people. He wanted to know about the organization and it’s structure, and that was the kind of question he could appreciate.

This man got down to the brass tacks.

“We, at the moment, have a straight-forward hierarchy; so I’ll keep it to the skeleton for you—this might change, too,” Lucas shifted in his seat and got comfortable for a somewhat in-depth explanation. “You’re right to assume that the Queen is at the very top. Below her is the primary military commander who handles much of our day-to-day operations at the highest level: The Grand Commander. Below him are the Knight-Commanders, followed by Knights such as myself, then the Companions—of which you’d be one—and, finally, the Squires. Quite simply, they’re Quincy in training that haven’t yet been cleared for independent operation.”

It went unsaid, in Lucas’ opinion, that Koichi himself was well above that level. No doubt, he could manifest his bow with the best of them and fight about as well too.

The roles, though, that was tougher. Lucas avoided the subject at first, and hummed a little when he finally finished describing the general ranks, “As for the job itself, well, that’s kind of being played by ear right now. Our Queen is working with the Grand Commander to work out the details of three sub-organizations within the Order that all Quincy would belong to. I don’t know the specifics yet, unfortunately, but suffice to say? Each rank comes with it greater responsibility. For instance: My personal job as a Knight is to bring in other Quincy, so I have the ability to bestow ranks below my own.”

All unilaterally too, something that Lucas could still hardly believe. He must have made a good impression with Freyleif to get this far, to be trusted this much, after so little time. In a strange sort of way, he wanted to make her—and all the other Quincy—proud of what they could achieve. He wanted to bring that to them.

Who wouldn’t? After that he had seen, who wouldn’t want to restore the pride of the Quincy?

“Good news is, I can also say that the Queen has great interest in moving our base of operations here,” Lucas told him. “We can’t keep letting Karakura come under fire, and it’s about time that the Quincy had a home at the spiritual epicenter of the planet.”

That’s when it dawned on Lucas: Did he even realize that Karakura Town was special in that way? With it’s density of spiritual particles and energy just latent in the very air they breathed? There was notable pause in his speech when it hit on him, and his train of thought visibly shifted behind his eyes.

“What do you know about Karakura Town, actually?” He finally asked. “There’s a lot to teach you, by the looks of it, and there’s a lot to know just about the very ground under your feet. If you’ve got the time, Koichi, I’d be more than happy to go over it all.”

Someone owed it to the man to shed some light on all of this.

*****

709 Words

Koichi chuckled a little at the answer to his self question. He'd just meant the ability to express a thought meant that it was actually a thought in the first place, and not just some vague mashup of emotion and knowledge. But, following that sort of thinking to it's logical conclusion meant he based his own existence on his ability to turn internal conclusions into external interaction. His eyes refocused as he came back from this thread and focused on memorizing the structure presented to him. 

As Lucas explained things to him, Koichi tapped on the table, getting lower as the different levels were laid out. "Six levels. For whatever reason, I was expecting five, in service to the five pointed star. Though if it does change and become five levels, I called it." He was visibly grateful that he hadn't been put on the lowest rung though. Going into something with the assumption or confirmation that your previous experience wasn't going to count for much didn't make a very good sales pitch. "So you get to say who still needs training and who doesn't. Seems like a pretty weighty job to me. You get to decide who gets benched and who doesn't. You could probably be overturned, but who knows what sort of effect your initial judgment will bring about." Koichi leaned back in his chair, still smiling a little. He wasn't intending to put Lucas under even more pressure. He was a great distance from home to recruit possibly ungrateful punks like Koichi after all.

When asked about the town, Koichi looked around. At the people, the buildings, a few birds, and even the occasional tree allowed to flourish in this offshoot of the Tokyo metropolis. "I know that reishi is thick in the air around here. Much thicker than outside it. It's why my dad brought me here. To make it easier to train me to summon my weapon. I also know that there is a lot more spiritual activity here than anywhere else. The town has been through some really rough times. Though, it's a chicken and egg thing to me. Is the reishi so thick because of all the hollows showing up, being fought, and killed, or is it the high reishi concentration that draws in the hollows?"

Koichi looked back to Lucas and quickly put up his hands. "Not that I'm asking my next question yet. Just answering yours. With another question." he explained, his voice getting a little quieter with each sentence. He took another moment to recover, cleared his throat, then continued. "Right, but you said this is the spiritual epicenter of the world? I figured this sort of activity wasn't normal, but look at Tokyo." Koichi pointed off in the vague direction of the greater city. "People are born, live, and die there around the clock. The only way out of my chicken and egg idea was that a high enough concentration of people just caused something like this to happen. Which means it can happen in other places."

The young man nodded finally. He had been looking to get information out of Lucas, and now the sort of thing that had been waved off as nonessential was being handed to him on a platter. "Tell me whatever you can. I just went from thinking I lived near a target to being told I live near the target."

Word Count: 567
Total Word Count: 2,646

Someone definitely likes to think out loud, Lucas thought as he listened to Koichi verbally process everything. Not that the young man bored him, but going over things that Lucas already knew—though, he cracked a smile at the five-pointed star comment—drew his attention elsewhere. He focused on the slight chill in the air or the inviting odors that wafted out over the patio from the café just a few tables away. Lucas just ate and already he was starting to get hungry again just from the proximity.

Even Koichi’s idle thrumming against the wrought-iron, netted table hung prominent in his mind.

“Well, you’re right to say I hardly have the final word in that,” Lucas laughed a little. Him, solely deciding who gets to act freely or not? “Even then, it’s not so much a matter of benching as it is, asking someone if they’d like further practice before being left to do their own thing yet again.”

Which would inevitably bring them back around to what, exactly, the Order would have people do. In many cases, it was Lucas’ secret weapon to use to sell the whole thing. In others, it put off the more industrious Quincy among them who wanted to take a much more active role in the world. Usually, some reassurance that their initiative could be prized and valued did the trick.

Koichi didn’t seem like he was going to be one of those.

“Leading theories, as I understand them?” Lucas chimed in again to answer the more technical question. “Is the area gives off more latent spiritual energy—and, yes, denser spiritual particles—just by default. This compounds as it draws, usually subconsciously, more spiritual attention to the area. Quincy are stronger here in Karakura Town than anywhere else in the world, for these reasons.”

Not that he seemed to have missed that little detail. Completely clueless as to the history and politics of Quincy? Sure, but Lucas quickly noted that despite his strange manner of thinking out loud at all times, he clearly had a handle on how Quincy powers worked. No doubt, he was just as powerful and full of potential as the compass had suggested.

But that wasn’t the end to what he wanted to know. It wasn’t just that Karakura was one such place, it was the only one. Why? What did that mean?

The implication also being: How did that work.

Lucas took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he scratched at the back of his head. “Honest answer?”

He paused, just for a second.

“We really don’t know,” he laid it all out, just like that. “Something about the flow of spiritual energy and particles across the planet has turned Karakura Town into a hub, where all those lines meet. After that, they branch off and go wild, not meeting anywhere else. Kind of like they’re dangling from a single point, like…tassles or something. The location does change, yes, but right now it’s Karakura Town—as far as I know, it doesn’t change but once every few centuries.”

Centuries.

Which meant that, for the foreseeable future, Karakura Town was the most important place in the world for people like the Quincy.

And Koichi just happened to live there.

Bet that’s exactly what he wanted to hear!

*****

552 Words

Koichi leaned forward as it looked like Lucas was going to explain just what it was Karakura was the way it was. His fingers lightly gripped the table, and he waited patiently. He didn't really want to hear theories. He was hoping that Lucas, a man who seemed to be part of something that was either big or getting there, knew at least one part of the equation for sure. The words 'honest answer' brought his spirit down a little. And finally the answer that they just didn't know. This was a place where Quincy were at their strongest. Where they could truly do their work, and do so easily. This organization had a queen! And yet, they didn't know. Meaning one of the many threads of Koichi's curiosity was just as frayed and unconnected as when he'd started.

He wanted to try and not look disappointing. He really did. But when you lean back and briefly cover your eyes with one hand, it's hard to look anything but. Koichi let out a low, slow sigh as he finally stopped processing things out loud. His lips still moved a little, but nothing that could be picked up, even if someone hard their ear an inch from him. Then he let out a second sigh, and then, the cheer from before started to creep back onto his lips. He smirked, and let his hand fall before sitting back up. "So, even a great order of Quincy is still at square one with something like that. Makes me all the more curious now. Seems like something you guys should know. Be it by some ancient legend or thousands of hours of research. And yet, you don't. Just like I don't. Just like everybody else."

The young man laughed a little and laid his hand out on the table, palm up. Little golden motes appeared, swirling and dancing over the ridges of his skin. "So dependent on this stuff, you'd think the Quincy of all people would want to know why this place is practically a fountain of it." He closed his hand and looked back to Lucas. Koichi could poke and prod at the various things he wanted to know on his own. Heck, he could poke and prod with Saria and figure things out all the faster. But Lucas? He was not just one man. Just the face of something bigger. Something with more resources than he could hope to amass on his own or with Saria's help. Resources that could be put towards expanding his father's research and learning everything that caught his fancy.

Including how to avert tragedies.

"So, let's take a hypothetical scenario. Say I join. And that I want to work on research. Does this mean I'll get shoved into a lab all day? I'm not sure if my gym is ready from the influx of money it'd get from not having me around to break the sandbags."

Word Count: 491
Total Word Count: 3,137

Of all the superhuman things this young man was capable of, it was the world and how it worked that seemed to interest him the most. Althought that wasn’t Lucas’ particular cup of tea, at least he hadn’t really found an interest in it, he could respect that Koichi was interested. The Order, like any organization, would thrive off of a diversity of skill sets, opinions, and ability. If all Quincy were like Lucas, it would only spell doom—eventually—for the Order or any similarly afflicted group.

“I have to admit, I’m pretty curious too,” Lucas nodded along. Koichi was clearly let down, and he could relate to that. “I’m not even sure if Soul Society knows, to be honest. That’s what honestly surprises me here, that the people who have been united—for thousands of years!—might not know everything about how the spiritual world works. Wild, isn’t it?”

Other than that, Lucas couldn’t argue. With the ease at which Koichi summoned golden little flecks above his palm, it was clear that anyone who cared would care a lot about why Karakura Town was so special, and so powerful. Certainly, if they could understand it, it would do nothing but help the Quincy as a whole. By extension, that would mean the Order, too.

But Koichi wasn’t done with his own questions, at least not yet. His next one was obvious, natural, and got an immediate shake of the head from Lucas.

“You wouldn’t be shoved anywhere,” Lucas assured him with a smile. “If you’d like to investigate these things, and other matters, I can promise you that the Order would value it. But, think about it like this: The point is to make the Quincy a recognizable and independent force. We don’t need to invade people’s lives to that degree, or micromanage anyone, to accomplish that. Unlike the Shinigami, we’re not a formal military—and we don’t want to be.”

Then, Lucas looked down at his own uniform and smiled a little more, “Well, my Alliance is more of a formal military, but only because we knew that we weren’t the Order. So we took a different path.”

A path with its own merits, Lucas wanted to say. He was kind of bothered that so many people were off put by the militaristic bent of the Alliacen and feared the same thing might crop up with the Order. Lucas wouldn’t mind if the Order had a bit of a stronger hand in the lives of its Quincy, but he also understood that this wasn’t the world or the time for that. With so many Quincy enjoying their normal lives, the more you threatened to change that, the less interested they’d be.

With a few exceptions, such as in Luna.

“If it interests you, though, I don’t think we have many Quincy of your particular type,” Lucas continued. “My compass is more magic than anything, and doesn’t delve too deeply into the secret workings of the world. A lab, performing experiments, is never where I’d see myself. But if you do, I think you could quickly become a very critical man to the Order. If that interests you, of course.”

Lucas hoped it did, and he believed the interest he showed spoke for itself.

But if Koichi would rather persist as he was, he certainly wasn’t going to tell the man otherwise.

*****

564 Words

The young man nodded. "I don't imagine so. Though I get the feeling you have something in mind more along the lines of my attitude about research. A little disappointing that there aren't a lot of Quincy concerned with figuring out the why and how of things, but what can you do. Just means I don't have anyone telling me that my methods are wrong. My method will be one of the only methods." Still, the knowledge that he wasn't going to be shoved in a lab somewhere unable to get hands on with his research was a pretty good thing. Something like that might actually end up being a deal breaker for him. He could just head back to Saria for materials and help her out with her own experiments.

Lucas' comment about his alliance being more militarized in than the Order suddenly jumped back to the forefront of Koichi's mind. His brow furrowed and he looked closely at Lucas' uniform. "Wait, so you're not actually part of the Order? Or do you mean your section within the Order is more militarized than the rest of it? Sorry, that little comment didn't strike me as odd till just now. I was actually thinking those uniforms were the standard thing for the order. I wasn't hoping for one, but it would be pretty interesting to have a uniform represent the organization I'm a part of." And if he went around in the uniform rather than his usual clothes, then that meant when he fought hollows, something other than his good clothes would get torn up.

"Actually, that's one question you don't have to answer if you rather wouldn't. It actually sounds like something a bit above my pay grade as a newcomer to this whole massive network of Quincy thing."

He looked down at his fingers again, briefly summoning and dismissing a few more motes of golden light. He wouldn't need some stuffy lab far from the sun to do the sorts of experiments he was after. Really, he could do all his experiments from home. It was just a matter of quality of those experiments. Finally Koichi nodded and looked back at Lucas. "If I could get one of those uniforms, it would be pretty cool. But even if I couldn't, this is a chance I doubt I'm going to stumble across again. And the more I think about it, the more it seems that the Quincy do much better when working in a group. Not to mention it's that much easier to get things done when working with other people." 

The only thing that was left was how he was going to make it official. "Is there some sort of contract I have to sign, or brand I have to get?" he joked. "Or should I just wait around until the operation gets moved to Karakura and do a little experimentation in the mean time?"

Word Count: 487
Total Word Count: 3,264