Kagemaru Ch.2: Broken Blade, Blazing Serpent

   They were waiting for him at the corner.
   Kagemaru didn’t know if they knew Sakabura was in his shikai lesson tonight or if they were just lucky enough to pick this evening to ambush him, but either way he knew he was in trouble. Tsuyake Yamaida, despite (or because of) his sister’s friendship with Kagemaru, was always looking for ways to humiliate and punish him. Sakabura was the one person that reliably stood between the young noble and Kagemaru, but Sakabura was going to be stuck in lessons all evening.
    Yamaida crossed his arms, looking around for a moment while Kagemaru tried to steel his nerves.
   “Your brute friend isn’t around, it seems,” stated the smug noble, his smaller companion standing silently behind him. Kagemaru said nothing as well, his hand unconsciously seeking the hilt of his Zanpakuto.
   Yamaida saw the motion and smirked. “Oh, have you learned the name of your sword, then, too?”
   Kagemaru said nothing, had no retort for that. Of course he hadn’t, he didn’t even know if his Zanpakuto had a spirit yet, let alone a name.
   His silence was enough for Yamaida, and for some reason the near confirmation of Kagemaru’s lack of strength seemed to annoy him. His eyebrows lowered as he turned his familiar glare on the nervous boy.
   “Still haven’t learned it, then, and you mean to graduate this spring?” He shook his head in disgust. “You don’t deserve the weapon of a Shinigami, you don’t even deserve to be in the academy. Pathetic.”
   Kagemaru’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword. “I’ll learn it,” he said cautiously. “I’ll learn shikai before I graduate and join the Court Divisions.”
   Yamaida’s scowl deepened, and he took a threatening step forward. “Join the Court Divisions? You? Do not mock me. The Divisions take only Shinigami, and you will never become a Shinigami. Sooner or later the heads of the academy will realize you are completely useless and send you back to whatever district you crawled out of.”
   Kagemaru could almost feel the tension rising, and he struggled against his natural urge to back away. He had learned from experience Yamaida did not appreciate shows of weakness. All he could do is hold his ground and pray they didn’t go too far.
   The sun had already been low when Kagemaru left his lesson, and now the grey of dusk was well established over Seireitei. The courtyard was empty, the other students either in their quarters or recreation rooms, or (like Sakabura) in special evening lessons.
   Yamaida recognized this as one of the few times in the day there would be such an absolute lack of witnesses, and stepped forward again, grabbing onto the front of Kagemaru’s robe.
   “So, what do you intend to do now?” he asked, pushing forward just enough to unbalance Kagemaru.
   “I was hoping to get to my room so I could… talk to my sword before everyone comes back,” Kagemaru replied hesitantly, not sure how Yamaida would respond. It was the truth, of course, he tried to find his Zanpakuto’s spirit every night before bed, but Yamaida didn’t seem to appreciate Kagemaru’s effort.
   “Talk to your sword…” he said scornfully, turning so as to throw Kagemaru completely off balance and then throwing him against the academy wall. “Talk to your sword? This thing?” And, faster then Kagemaru could react, Yamaida smacked his hand off the hilt of the Zanpakuto and drew the blade from its sheath, stepping back.
   Kagemaru put a hand on the wall to steady himself, eyes locked on the stolen Zanpakuto. “Please give it back,” he said, managing somehow to keep his voice steady. Yamaida raised an eyebrow at him.
   “You want it?” he asked, flicking his wrist to send the sword in a lazy circle by his side. “It’s a soulless lump of metal, not even sharp enough to cut me.” As if to prove his words, he brought the blade across in front of him and slapped his bare, empty palm across the edge of the blade. Kagemaru started forward, reaching to snatch the sword away, but Yamaida’s companion swiftly stepped between them, raising one arm to smash against Kagemaru’s chest.
   Yamaida glared at the clean blade, his unharmed hand clenching in a fist by his side. “Pathetic,” he said again, this time directing his anger at the sword. “Absolutely pathetic.”
   “Give it back,” insisted Kagemaru, ignoring the younger boy in front of him and speaking right to Yamaida. “Give it back or I’ll… I’ll take it back.”
   Yamaida laid a hand on his companion’s shoulder, the younger boy backing away without a word. The young noble leveled the sword at Kagemaru’s chest, tilting his head mockingly. “You’ll take it from me?” he asked, the question asked in the scornful tone he always used with Kagemaru. “I’d like to see you try.”
   Kagemaru didn’t make any move to act on his threat, just eyed the blade nervously and wondered if Yamaida would actually hurt him with his own sword.
   Yamaida snorted in derision and thrust the blade into a crack in the wall next to Kagemaru’s head. “Thought so. Ah, well, I guess there’ll be no fight tonight.”
   Kagemaru’s eyes widened slightly, and he was just wondering if it would really end so easily when Yamaida thrust his shoulder against the hilt of the trapped Zanpakuto. There was a sharp crack as the blade, caught in the unyielding wall of the academy and pressured by Yamaida’s formidable strength, snapped in half.
   Kagemaru yelped in horror, lunging forward. Yamaida turned and slammed the hilt of Kagemaru’s now-broken Zanpakuto into his stomach, doubling the boy over.
   "Unworthy,” he said again, quietly, but more threateningly then anything else he had said that evening. Without another word, he threw the broken sword and turned away, his companion following. Kagemaru didn’t watch them go, as he often did just to make sure they were really gone. This time his attention was completely focused on his Zanpakuto, broken a foot up the blade, lying in the dirt.
   Despite his easily intimidated, weakling attitude, Kagemaru rarely cried. And usually, when he did, it was in sympathy for one of his two friends. But he cried now, holding the two halves of his broken Zanpakuto in his lap, leaning against the wall. For, though it yet to become anything more then a sword as far as his teachers were concerned, it had become a friend to the insecure Kagemaru.
   A friend now broken by, as Kagemaru saw it, his own inability to stand up for himself.

   Kagemaru had trouble getting to sleep that night. His Zanpakuto lay, both pieces, on his bedside table, the moonlight gleaming dimly off its blade. It was already late by the time Sakabura came in, tired from his lesson and probably assuming Kagemaru was already asleep. Kagemaru listened in silence as his friend got ready for bed in the dark, and five minutes later the room was silent again, Sakabura’s light breathing adding more to the deep silence then breaking it.
   But Kagemaru couldn’t find sleep. The evening’s events weighed heavily on him, and he wondered what was going to happen tomorrow. Would he have to use a substitute sword until his own could be repaired? Or would they make him just take a new one, as he seemed to have made no progress at all with this one?
   He didn’t know what they would do, he had never seen anyone else’s sword broken like this. He dearly hoped they could repair it somehow, for he could not imagine using another sword as he had used this one all these years. Despite what they said, there was a bond between them, even if there might not be anything inside the sword to acknowledge the bond.
   Kagemaru then determined to find a way to repair the blade, even if he had to do it himself. This was his Zanpakuto, not just a sword he was using in training. He would use it broken if he had to.
   Encouraged by the thought, Kagemaru finally managed to drift off to sleep.

   He woke inside his inner world.
   He had been there twice before, both times when he had been especially scared or upset. It resembled a young forest of straight-trunked white trees, each with a fair distance between the others, but with a wide cover of leaves that cast the entire forest floor in dappled light. The bright leaves matched the soft young grass under Kagemaru’s feet, ankle deep and waving in the light, barely noticeable breeze. To his right, the sun hung just above the horizon, sending long shadows streaking through the forest. The sky was brilliant blue above the leaves, not a cloud in sight. To the north, south and west, the forest continued as far as Kagemaru could see, but the east the forest ended before a straight, bottomless cliff, from which you could see the whole sky and the sun sitting, motionless, right in front of you.
   Kagemaru smiled, his tension dissipating in an instant. He had always loved his inner world, so quiet and peaceful. Just him and the forest, the constant, tickling breeze and the whispering leaves. Just him, alone.
   That was when he heard the hissing.
   He frowned slightly in confusion, but didn’t tense. This was his inner world, he couldn’t imagine anything here wanting to hurt him. He looked around, wondering if he had imagined it.
   Nothing… the forest was still empty. But he now felt a strange prickle along his spine, like someone was watching him. He looked around again, carefully scanning the forest, and then glanced up.
   He nearly yelped, but instead choked and bit his own tongue. Curled around the highest branches of the nearest tree, looking down at him with narrow eyes, was the biggest snake he had ever seen. Its body was thicker then Kagemaru’s waist in the middle, at first glance a hundred yards long at least. Bluish, frayed looking scales, tinted with purple and dark red at the edges. Two long feathers coming from its head like horns, another two hanging down from its neck. A pair of huge wings lay along its back, almost blending into the feathery scales.
   And solid black eyes, broken by brilliantly blue irises an inch large.
   The two examined each other for a moment, but even as Kagemaru asked the obvious question, he knew without a shadow of a doubt who this serpent, blazing with iridescent color, was.
   “Who are you?”
   “You know my name,” replied the serpent in a hissing, reverberating, almost harsh voice.
   And Kagemaru couldn’t deny it. The name came as easily as his own to his tongue, slipping out almost without his thinking about it. The name he had been trying to find for years, the name he had longed to hear, to say.
   The name of his Zanpakuto. “Hebi Bureijingu.”
   The might serpent smiled in satisfaction.