the void cremation

Somber thoughts flooded the mind of the Kidōshū's Lieutenant Commander. Always so earnest and full of certainty, his temperament was alien to him now. He wasn't depressed nor was he sulking anymore. He'd gotten past losing her, the things left undone and unsaid he couldn't change them now no matter how bad he wanted to. At most he could only pause this moment, not rewind it to being her back. Now his problem was moving forward the right way, honoring what she had left behind.

Between being the unofficial-acting head the Tokomaru house in lieu of his father's more prominent duties, taking on the role of Kidō Corps. Commander was no welcomed venture. He always knew if he lived long enough the seat would be his. He just never thought he'd get the 'live long enough' part right. With the life she'd lived and survived Minamoto was gonna outlast him, no questions. That was the reason he had been plotting against her. Readying himself to strip her of her title of Dai Kidōchō, crowning himself the best at their art.

Set the fight in Rukongai, reiatsu dampener fields would have made it easy for the normal plus to watch the spectacle in full force without being snuffed out by it. They would have made an event of the whole thing, even inviting the Goteijuusantai. After he beat her they would just went back to their stations, Sakura at the helm and himself at her side. Maybe once he had that, there wouldn't have been a void between them.

He approached with reluctance, like he was made of fire a cretin unworthy to stand before her casket. The Captain Commander present and in colors of mourning, holding a cigar. In his youth it had taken him weeks to nail down the dressing colors and garbs for each noble house and for what occasion or statement they were for. Likely he'd had to learn such things for moments like these. His baritone was sturdy and warm if not a little nostalgic. "I was going to tell you to light it.. no need for decorum at Sakura's funeral. She always said she would sleep when she was dead and that when it happened we could all just let it hang out... even cry if that's what we felt. So long as we didn't wake her up." He wasn't crying... but anyone could see he was hurt just as plain as if physical tears trailed down his face.

He tried to shift the tone of the conversation. "You deserve praise for keeping the peace this long. Took a little over two-hundred years for me to lose a superior officer." His mind dwelled on Itagaki for a split second, but Itagaki's circumstances were different. He had known Seishiro personally, before he became a shinigami. Losing him wasn't losing a superior officer, losing him was losing an older brother. He managed a forced smile and chuckle. "I didn't think I was this attached to her, I guess she got to me without meaning to." He realized how open he was being with the Jukan and remembered his place among the nobles, quickly resumed what he considered the appropriate default setting for a noble; composure, restraint and discipline. "In any case Sōtaichō thank you for coming.. you don't know what this means to us. Minamoto-Sōshi swore by the 'Spirit Way you would show to send her off proper. It feels good to know she was right."

Following the lead of the Captain Commander he turned away from the empty wooden box of his predecessor's final resting place, only to turn a steal one last peek. The biggest tragedy is that they hadn't been able to recover her body. He hated to think of it falling into the wrong hands. Minamoto-Sōshi had spent much of her existence with her body being used by others, in death what remained of her deserved to be left in peace. Set ablaze as her soul purified from a lifetime of pains and was reborn anew. There weren't many beings who could reverse engineer power from a corpse but he knew there was at least one in the Goteijuusantai... practically at all times, there had to be others out there as well.

There was a chance of disintegration upon death but somehow her possible-killer being able to utterly destroy her body made him feel worse. That thought pinged another; if she had been killed by quincy.. which was likely given their actions in the mortal realm as of late, then she was gone. Her very soul not just 'dead' but wiped from the very circle she served. That thought pissed him off and would be put in a special place in the recesses of his mind to be followed up on later.

They came upon one of the outer labs and after dismissing the corpsmen inside he began. "Before anything else you should know she didn't abandon her post. It.. we... " He exhaled deep.

"Once we've progressed far enough, learned too much I suppose, leaving this place seems wrong. The demon arts are dangerous once you reach the last and most powerful of them. We have a duty to safeguard these spells not just from those outside the seireitei or the soul society. But every soul until proven they can handle the temptation such power brings." It seemed more like he was convincing himself than the Captain Commander, still he knew it to be true. "Its possible someone got the drop on her and stripped her of her kidō before she could end them but in such a case she would have taken her own life before being used again." He didn't let the 'again' part resonate, they both knew what he was alluding to.

Coming up on a side wall started again. "After Seishiro.. she decreed that missing officers be declared dead in a given amount of time so as not to create holes and hangups in duties. Because of their importance the Commander and Lieutenant Commander have much smaller durations of being 'allowed' to be missing before being stricken from the active roster and replaced." Tapping the walls to the lab he stopped when he came across a hollow sounding knock. A dip in his reiryoku and the meter wide section of the wall slid down into the floor, exposing an impressive cache of nearly depleted scotch among other drinks and several glasses. "One of her alcohol contraband caches... mostly lifted off our lowest seats and some of yours; the ones not cleared to bring things back from mortal realm." He let out his first genuine unforced laugh and smile. "If she liked the brand she'd let them off with a slap on the wrist."

He poured them glasses without confirming if his guest even wanted any, she was free to decline once the glass was already poured. It wasn't much in his glass so he drank it all down at once, then poured another. "I always thought it bad for morale for the leaders to be written off so quickly but I was wrong and she was right. If we replace our lost leaders we can go on in duty and work past our grief get on with our lives, maybe even avenge them if we move swiftly enough."

"If we hang on to them however.." His face twisted in a scowl and he looked more like his father than ever. "The integrity of ourselves and the corps would crumble."

Leaving the contents of the bottle on the table he finished his second glass and resolved to have no more. It wasn't lost upon him that for all his sharing on his memories of his Commander, the Captain Commander had nothing to add. She listened and drank and only seemed appreciative of the latter. He spoke his peace about Sakura's life and Sakura's death, though his concerns with the integrity of the Kidōshū were misplaced. It was in no danger of losing any, not its collective 'soul' nor any individual soul that composed it.

His concerns were the creation of a man somewhat unaccepting still that he in fact was the right man for the job. Though even with his doubts he wouldn't surrender the commanding position to anyone else knowing said anyone else would likely drive this corps he had come to love to ruin. Here and now at this point of time, he felt he was the best man for the job but that his best might not be good enough. His resolved to push through his doubts however, knowing no one else could do better.

When the Sōtaichō spoke again she inquired as to the shadows of the corps watching him waiting to strike although he emphasis on those that were of nobility was strange. "Everyone in the Kidōshū of nobility or otherwise is vying for my position, or rather no one is."

The open door challenge policy of the Kidōshū was very much like the Goteijuusantai's with the caveat that no one challenged the Sōshi especially when they were also Daichō, which was almost always the case. "None are capable of 'dethroning' me at this time." He crossed his arms in ponder, rehashing facts and details he thought about often, as if to confirm the conclusion on the facts and details hadn't changed. "I myself had only recently become capable of taking '-Daichō' from Minamoto-Sōshi and everyone else is... was  a far cry from our skills. The exceptions being my... Lieutenant Commander, Tokomaru Souta.. and Itagaki Seishiro." The last part he only said in his head. "The fact that we're so open with challenges keeps the challengers at bay. We tend to make sure they're ready before we step to the Commander; no challenging half-cocked and no half-stepping. It'll be sometime before there's another Sōshi here."

"The Black Core Clan..." He said it aloud to confirm he knew something of them and collected his thoughts before continuing. "Before the advent of the Kidōshū or kidō the Kurotake Ichizoku... or Black Middle Clan were the Soul Societies first nobles under the Spirit King. Unlike today where nobility is bred and houses hold the status of its clansmen who derive their status from the house, seventeen hundred years ago the soul king himself marked individuals for nobility." His gaze at the wall was serious but pondering.

"The individuals of the Black Middle Clan were not a house nor an actual family. Rather, they were an enclave of powerful souls who did something to impress the soul king, I guess he was more accessible back then." He continued on again before his mind went off on a tangent about how the soul king was so scarce nowadays he was nearly a myth himself. "They were the first and last to receive this unique blessing which extended their life spans considerably. This was done so that they might both live long comfortably and long service the Soul Society before their eventual return to the great cycle."

He lifted his index finger on his drinking hand in gesture to his words. "Though they did continue to serve for generations and generations they began to do so while keeping the heights of their natural progression a secret. I'd heard that this was done so not to be resented by those who had not been blessed. Namely their loved ones." He said with eyebrows raised as to give off that the last small segment of the details and the next small segment of details he couldn't remember clearly. "Though some came to resent outliving their friends, family and comrades accepting their duty with grace, most of them went mad from the loss of loved ones over and over and for some reason sought to increase their 'blessings' and become immortal.. or maybe they just wanted to kill the Soul King."

Shaking his head to push away the foggy memories of that part of the tale he moved on. "Their plan was to seal the soul king away inside of themselves and take his power as their own. They hid in the middle of Soul Society as average shinigami while others arose to prominence and reputation after a couple centuries. Among these masses, they became true gods of death among their peers and attacked the Seireitei from within hence; Black Middle. After a few hundred years it kinda just became Black Core."

He made a fist staring at it intently. "My favorite part of the story was their skills. Each of the six of them had reserves and pressure rivaling that of myself and the higher tier captains. Each of the six of them was an established master of each of the five arts. Each of them had transcended a single art beyond the comprehension of the others with the first of them having by then, a pressure that was unrivaled in all of soul society. Speculation is that the constant presence of that all-encompassing pressure made the other six strong and allowed them to progress as far as they did."

"During the attack the clan was stopped by the only beings who could stop them; two of their own." Having refilled his glass one more time he took a sip. "The one with the crazy pressure and the one with the best perception abilities turned on the others quickly killing their best hand to hand fighter and their zanjutsu/zanpakutō guy, the two best fighters. The last two, agility and spirit control, escaped but were never heard from again. In his gratitude the soul king heeded the wishes of the two who stopped their clansmen and allowed them to age at the same pace as other shinigami but impressed with their achievements he bestowed the slow aging upon all souls in soul society thereafter so that future shinigami might reach their levels." He sighed as he finished the long winded legend. Enthralling as it was, that only made it seem more like a fable especially the end part about soul king making everyone live longer lives just for the benefit of shinigami to be better able to protect soul society... actually no that part seemed realistic enough.

The whole thing was a mouthful and he was curious about how much of it was true. He suspected that Minamoto-Sōshi hadn't lied to him. But, as the whole thing seemed to center around nobles it couldn't be over looked that his former Commander wasn't of a noble house and thus the entire story might not have been revealed to her. "Supposedly the one with the monstrous pressure and the person who founded the Jukan Noble House are one and the same." Still, the story he knew was poetic at least even if it wasn't true. For all the death and destruction they caused something good came of it. "From the actions of the Black Core Clan shinigami attained long lives and in that, the capacity to perfect the arts."

"So.. how much of that is true?"