บท 15: Candy Crush
As Rukia and Chiaki exited the shop with the bags full of their purchase material, Chiaki got the distinct impression that her friend was more than a little cross at her for the stunt she'd pulled. Rukia'a lip has curled into a nasty frown, and she continually refused to let her gaze meet Chiaki's gaze. It was getting to the point where Chiaki was staring to feel both guilty and a little uncomfortable with it. After a moment of silence, Chiaki cleared her throat.
"Hey, I'm sorry if I did something to offend you back there Rukia… in my head, I thought it would be good to just purchase something without having to rely on you for cash. I didn't mean to infringe on your job or anything like that, if that's the issue."
Rukia simply snorted indignantly in response , seemingly not caring much for Chiaki's justification.
"I've dealt with being replaced more than enough by now to be used to it. No, that is not the problem Chiaki. I simply resent the fact that you betrayed your promise to simply watch and allow me to handle things."
Chiaki sighed deeply, but frankly she couldn't realistically say anything to refute this. She'd been planning on lying from the very beginning in order to get the materials she needed to increase her power, so she had been being dishonest since the very beginning. Still, she had to nope up appearances…
"I didn't mean to be an ass Rukia…just, when I said that I really didn't know what I was getting into. The situation changed and stuff, so…"
Chiaki realized her words really weren't getting through to Rukia, and so, with a heavy heart, she decided that it was simply time to let the issue go for now. The two walked on in silence back to the Kurosaki household, with Chiaki quietly making her way back in as Rukia stayed outside, likely to wait for Ichigo. However, while she would have loved to stay behind and help the two with Kon, she had her own plans in mind for the day, an experiment to increase her latent potential to even higher heights. She'd just have to figure out how to skip school.
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"OOOOOOOOH… I FEEL SO SICK… OOOOOOOOOOOO"
Chiaki groaned and moaned up a storm in her bed as her three siblings struggled to get ready for the day. With Yuzu just awkwardly attempting to give her some space and Karin not caring, the only Kurosaki sibling left to try and get her out of bed was Ichigo, and well…
"Hey sis… can you at least try and stop making so much racket…?"
"Leave me alone, it's girl stuff!"
Ichigo simply shrugged and stepped out of the room, avoiding the pillow coming his way that Chiaki had thrown at him in mock anger. As Isshin tried to make his way in with full medical gear on, Chiaki watched as Ichigo patted him on the back as he left.
"Don't even bother. It's girl stuff, I guess…"
"Oh… Well… Chiaki, let me know if you need anything?."
Chiaki simply groaned in response, leaving Isshin to sulkingky walk back down to the first floor, leaving Chiaki alone to continue her fake groaning.
Chiaki cautiously waited a few minutes to make sure that no one would be coming back for anything, especially Isshin. Luckily, today was a quiet day, meaning Isshin would probably go off and take a nap until something urgent happened, leaving her to perform her machinations in peace.
Lightly stepping down to the floor to avoid drawing attention to herself, Chiaki grabbed the bag of shop products she had hidden at the side of the room, checking to make sure everything was still there. As it turned out, Soumafixers came in packages of 10, with 70 really being 7 eye-drop sized containers filled with 10 units of the liquid in question. The three pieces of soul candy were still there, and Chiaki went through everything just to make sure there wasn't anything suspicious left as a surprise by Urahara. In fact, she even gave herself a quick pat down, just in case she had been bugged or something.
Once she was sure that Urahara hadn't tried to spy on her, Chiaki breathed a sigh of relief, before taking a dropper of Soumafixers and begging to empty the bottle onto her hand. At first, she didn't feel much other than a slight tingle where she dropped it, so Chiaki gave herself the go-ahead to continue with the other bottles. As she applied more of the liquid to herself, the tingling began to intensify, before becoming a cool feeling which spread across the entire body, becoming more uniform and evenly spread throughout as she added more. By the 7th and final bottle, her body felt as if a thin film of cool slime had begun to cover her entire body. It felt more refreshing than anything though, and Chiaki felt more… awake? The Soumafixers were meant to synchronize soul and body together… perhaps the thin film was the meeting point where her body and soul touched more firmly?
Regardless, Chiaki had more or less completed the first stage of her plan. That left only the soul candy, which Chiaki now pulled from the bag. She had to admit, she felt a little anxious; if she was wrong, all her hard work would disappear in a flash as soon as she consumed a soul candy. Gingerly taking one from the bag, Chiaki raised it up to her mouth.
"The moment of truth then… bottoms up I guess?"
With that, Chiaki began to feel a rumbling erupt from her stomach, a prelude to things to come.
The true nature of Chiaki's plans was predicated on the true nature of soul candy. They might have seemed like simple gadgets for everyday use by shinigami, but in actuality, the principles behind them were much more complex than initially thought. The Squad 0 member, Kirio Hikifune, had earned her entry by creating the principle of "ingesting and absorbing foreign reiatsu", the foundation behind all soul candy and mod-souls. These artificial souls were at the core, crystallized systems of reiatsu which held both information and power.
While all that sounded quite cool, normally it would be impossible to absorb the energy held within the candy, simply because they had also been applied with soul technology to force out the user's soul before the soul candy could be broken down at all, thus preventing any power boost at all. However, Chiaki had found a way around this, namely, in the form of reiatsu.
Reiatsu was the ultimate determinate of all power in the world. Abilities, of course, were important, but with enough of a difference in reiatsu, it became possible to cancel out the abilities of those who were weaker than you. Furthermore, reiatsu had many dangerous properties of its own. The First Espada, Coyote Starrk, had such immense reiatsu that merely being in his presence would remove the souls of lesser beings. Conversely, however, other Espada closer to Starrk's level were able to guard their souls with reiatsu to prevent such an occurrence.
Similarly, when Ichigo had first fought Kenpachi, without a knowledge of how to counteract an enemy's reiatsu with his own, even his immense reiatsu would be completely unable to pierce even Zaraki's sealed power. Intention was key, and without the active desire to negate the effect of the soul candy's soul removal, no shinigami had ever had a chance to absorb its power.
Now though, Chiaki now had not only her own reiatsu to guard her soul, but the effect of the Soumafixers to anchor it to her body, allowing her to effectively completely stop any attempts to remove her soul. As the soul candy went down her throat into her stomach, it seemed to almost struggle and wriggle as it fought to remove her soul from her body. No matter how hard it pushed though, it couldn't contend with the empowered rigidity of the reiatsu guarding Chiaki's, and after a few moments, the rumbling died down, and the reiatsu within the soul candy was fully absorbed into her body.
Chiaki felt a rush of power overwhelm her, filling every facet of her being as her reiatsu shot up. She was surprised that it had gone up so much, but in retrospect… It made perfect sense. Though these souls lacked the intelligence and self-awareness of a real soul, they had at least as much power as the average spiritually aware human, if not more, being able to perceive spirits with perfect clarity. If she had to compare it to something, each piece of candy held twice as much power as a shaman on the level of Don Kanonji.
Waiting for the first candy to settle down so she could be sure everything went well, Chiaki gave a silent "yes" as everything went smoothly, before popping another candy into her mouth and using her newly boosted reiatsu to digest it even more effortlessly. It didn't take much time for the second one to completely disappear as well, though it didn't feel as effective the second time, lightly because her existing reiatsu was now larger in comparison.
Now feeling more pumped than ever at the success of her experiment, Chiaki popped the last candy into her mouth to finish it off, hoping to complete everything quickly and maybe take a nap after she was done with everything. Once the third candy went down her throat though… something felt very very wrong. Chiaki tried to brace her hand against the bed, only to fall on the floor as her mind slipped into complete darkness.
__________
After what seemed like an eternity in the endless void, Chiaki's consciousness slowly became aware once again. Rather than find herself by her bed as she expected, something entirely unexpected occurred instead: Chiaki found herself in the middle of an arcade, in the middle of playing a video game, with many dazzled kids watching her play. Completely confused, Chiaki let go of the controls, much to the dismay of the onlookers, who she shooed away.
"Sorry, I have something important to do. I'll come back later… I guess?"
As Chiaki stepped away, her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden voice, one that sounded like a young woman more than anything, a crystal clear sound that was easier to hear than anything she'd ever heard before.
"Oh hey there! It's nice to finally meet you Chiaki!"
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