Ghost Touch bit – Truenames

~ crossovercreativechaos

Rukia looked bewildered. “But I thought this was a school for-”

“Adventurers?” Ichigo snorted. “You gotta learn not to take Keigo too seriously. Yeah. A lot of people here want to go into that kind of thing. Keigo’s got sorcery in his blood, Mizuiro wants to be a bounty hunter, Chad’s saintly enough to make paladin, half-orc or not… heck, even Orihime’s training to be a priestess. But some students are just here to learn how to do the stuff that’s not flashy. The kind of stuff a town like Karakura needs, that’s got nothing to do with adventure. Like Tatsuki; she doesn’t want to be heroic, she just wants to be a good magehunter with the Watch someday, and make sure what wizards did to her relatives never happens to anybody else. And me? I’m in beginning alchemy. Hand to hand I’m okay in, it fills the P.E. requirement and it’s fun going up against Tatsuki. I don’t know anything about kenjutsu. If I hadn’t gotten the drop on that Hollow last night, we’d both be dead. I’m going to be a doctor, like my Dad, and lead a quiet, boring, normal life.” Outside of the ghosts. Darn it. “Look. We’ll find a wizard, or sorcerer, or somebody who can get this rock off me. You can tag somebody in the Watch instead, they’ll be glad to-”

Red glove. Skull with blue flames on it. Coming at his chin like lightning, even Tatsuki wasn’t that fast.…

Perfect palm-heel strike, part of him noted. The rest was burning cold, drowning in shadows, can’t breathe-

Breathing. Collapsed in a dusty, incorporeal heap on the walkway to the field, but breathing. Cold – and yet not, like stepping into welcome shadows on a blazing summer day. Shadows that were even now slipping over him to settle in folds like silk, and solidify into a sheathed weight on his back.

“I can’t use my amulet. I never said I couldn’t activate it.” Rukia latched onto his hand, firmly as he would a particularly annoying ghost. “You.”

It echoed in his head, like that binding spell he’d broken last night, like Rukia’s swift hiss before her zanpakutou pierced his heart; a whisper of extra syllables that melded with shadow to redefine himself and the world. Only instead of locking his arms behind him, or shifting power from one soul to another, this called to power.

:You. You are-
:Shinigami-
:Ally–
:One who remembers duty.:

Shadow magic was kidou’s heart, but these fragments – what he would later learn were truespeech – were its soul.

“Come with me!”

Little or not, she could pull.

29 thoughts on “Ghost Touch bit – Truenames”

  1. Rukia is not easily deterred. You have to be that dyed-in-the-wool stubborn to survive the Rukongai, especially the part she lived in.

    True speech huh . . . saying he is shinigami, ally, one who remembers duty . . . . well if this alternate universe is anything like canon universe, Isshin has been hiding some shinigami shaped secrets for years.

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      3. Hey, he’s not too far off on the ‘like his dad’ bit. Heck, he’s just about as crazy as Isshin too, it’s just a less obvious and more initially reasonable looking kind of crazy.

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      5. Does this juxaposition between Isshin (a character who is obviously crazy) and Ichigo (a character who can look sane but is just as crazy in his own fashion) reminds anyone of another set of characters Vathara is writing about?

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  2. Tatsuki’s intending to be a magehunter when Keigo’s got sorcery and Orihime aiming for priestess-hood……

    Makes sense. Girl probably realizes somebody’s got to keep a handle on these maniacs when they roll into town between adventures.. Gods knows their team-mates won’t.

    Mostly because both classes tend to be high CHA builds and can talk their team-mates out of or into doing things. *G*

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    2. >…Poor Tatsuki. It’s not going to go according to plan.>
      The Call Knows where you live Tatsuki. And you cannot Refuse the Call, no matter what sort of restraining orders you have against it.

      Tatsuki: I’m Not a Hero, I’m godsdamn guardswoman!
      Uryū: And yet for all your complaining. here you are Arisawa, in the middle of it all.
      Tatsuki: This is just to keep you morons from accidentally blowing up Karakura and/or getting Orihime killed.

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      3. >Uryū: Just keep telling yourself that.>
        Well somebody has to be the voice of (relative) sanity on the band of lunatics.

        And on a related note at least person is going to love the antics of the Karakura Wrecking Crew, I mean Ichigo’s posse. Vathera previously mentioned a particular bard who was somewhat crazy, like Ichigo’s crew and teaches at Karakura school. Also that she was a canon character.

        From my limited searching, the best match would be Misato Ochi.

        And as a bard, the things she loves most are epic/crazy awesome/hilarious stories to retell (and potentially embellish).
        Here she has a Knight in Sour Armor (Ichigo), a noble soul rising above the prejudice heaped upon him (Chad), a mystical warrior bent on revenge/restoring his families name (Uryū), the cowardly sorcerer (Keigo), the sane man (Mizuiro) an all loving potentially Fae-struck maiden (Orihime), a pint-sized spiritual guardian who has a temper bigger than a red dragon (Rukia) and the ‘I’m Not a Hero, I’m godsdamn guardswoman!’ (Tatsuki).

        Seriously, she’d have to work HARD to find a better bundle of insanity for future ballads.

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  3. Hmmm… Bounty Hunter? Sooo… I’ve never really seen Mizuiro as the physical confrontation type (he’ll leave that to big guys like Ichigo, Chad, or Tatsuki), but swishy… I could see. Granted, whenever I try and imagine something spiritual-power related for Mizuiro it usually ends up being support or at the very least ranged based… Sooo, Ranger or Rogue going into a Prestige Class (Ranger’s d10 HD and full base attack are more aggressive than I’d expect for Mizuiro, but it’s tracking/hunting focus works well for Bounty Hunters. Rogue has less class bonuses to tracking, but sneak attack with nonlethal damage is probably one of the best ways to take someone down without killing them, and that’s before poison use + knock-out agents come into things; plus medium attack growth and d8 HD feel like a better fit for Mizuiro to me)?

    As for Keigo… Sorcerer? Huh. Not gonna lie, I always pictured him as a Bard (sure he can get close, but he really doesn’t want to and he can’t spec just Dex like the Rogue for an AC boost, never mind no Evasion. And him being less skilled than the Rogue, less cast-y than the Sorcerer/Wizard and less healy than the Cleric seems… fitting for the character who most often seems to get left behind. Plus he’s the exact type to sob and complain about how useless his character/powers are compared to everyone else’s more explosive class features while using his bardic music effects), but Sorcerer seems fine.

    Tatsuki is obviously Martial Artist (I’d say Monk, but in RAW that’s a Lawful-only class, and Tatsuki seems either Nuetral or Chaotic to me), though a splash of Fighter for durability and Base Attack is pretty reasonable.

    Orihime a Priestess (Cleric)?

    …
    Pffft- lawl. Sure, I can mostly see it, especially with the healer thing she’s got going on, but y’know who’re almost as good at healing, and also way better at blowing stuff up + have a badass animal friend? /Druids/. She still gets – and prepares – all the heal spells, but she also gets the kind of elemental blasting power that would make an arcanist cry. Plus weird animal companion for the fairies would work to cover animal companion.

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    2. Well you have to remember that these are professions they are chosing to learn, not character sheets they’re rolling up.

      Keigo for example is supposed to have innate magical ability. He’s probably getting at least minimal training in said talents so he doesn’t accidentally hurt anyone. At that point he probably decided he might as well go whole hog.

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      4. >Not to mention – Keigo. Flashy magic. PB&Jelly!>
        Also that CHA stat.
        “All the ladies will be coming to Keigo’s door!”
        -He’s is then shut up by at least three punches to either his gut or head-

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  4. The case can be made for Orihime having evil extraplanar ancestry. (I understand that when her brother describes their estranged family, he uses a word that can be translated devil.)

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    2. … Now I’m just picturing Orihime as a cute-as-a-button Tiefling. Might partially work as an equivalent to her red hair getting her picked on in middle school actually… Especially because Tieflings can look like a totally normal member of their parent race until puberty and suddenly start sprouting horns, tales, cloven hooves, and turning funky colors.

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      2. I said it that way partly for spelling and cosmological confusion, partly because my bunnies have other ideas.

        Line of inspiration went ‘Fey? No. Far Realms.’ before digressing into talk of mythos warlocks and mythos druids. Wasn’t sure whether Eberron used the name ‘devils’, so figured less specific was better. Bunnies were debating Balrogs versus DxD. Currently they are insisting that the DxD non-afterlife underworld could be grafted onto Eberron, and could then have Balrog immigrants. They think a) her true form is reasonably close to human without tells b) she drew her future self as Sauron c) her family was violent and abusive, but not evil in the grand sense (trash not Hitler) d) she grew up enjoying Far Realms fusion cuisine.

        If such an Orihime is a Cleric, thematically it might make sense for Chizuru to be a Warlock, because of that one fight. Is it spelled Aasimer?

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