It had been three days since Renji passed the test given by Oetsu, and a few more for Ichigo to understand his roots. Both Shinigami had their Zanpakutou forged. But the only person left was Asa. While Oetsu was sitting on the ground, the portal opened in front of him, and out came Mera and Asa. "Took ya long enough, Yamamoto-chan." he said jokingly before giving her a small smile when he took note of her tear-stained face. "I guess ya found out the truth."
Asa smiled back at him and wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. "Yes." she meekly replied.
"Good." he said. "Ready to choose your Asauchi?" When she nodded as a reply, he walked towards the doorway and stepped aside, letting her enter the room Ichigo and Renji had previously been in with the Asauchi. She looked around the kneeling Asauchi until her gaze caught hold of one of them. She walked towards it and held her hand out, letting an Asauchi place its hand on hers. The Asauchi soon took on a form of a humanoid with shaggy ivory hair, sharp eyes with black sclera and red irises. A smile was plastered on Oetsu's face. "Nice. Come here. I'll forge it for ya, personally."
He and Asa then slid down a water pipe along with the latter's Asauchi, until they arrived at the bottom the cliff. "Look, yo!" Asa looked around and realised that the water pipe had taken them to an enclosed cavern structure at the base of the cliff, surrounded on all sides by the tides. "This is the reason the Hououden is on top of a cliff, sa! If we don't have all this water, we can't forge your Zanpakutou. And also, prepare yourself, Yamamoto-chan. Because here, you will have to say goodbye to your Zanpakutou Kage Odoriko." A cold sweat dripped down Asa's temple as she swallowed a lump, bracing herself to part from her Zanpakutou. But after hearing her brother's story, she knew that it was necessary.
"E-VE-RY-ONE!" he called all of a sudden. "It's starting, yo!" With his hands doing the signs of the horns, he crossed his arms and shouted, "Welcome to My Show!"
At that moment, Asa felt the presence of five people appearing from above. "HI~~~~~~" shouted one of them. Stunned, Asa turned around to see who they were, only to see four girls each giving Oetsu a punch until the same girl who shouted earlier stomped her foot on his back. "Nimaiya Bodyguards have arrived!" Both Asa and her Asauchi stared, with the former speechless.
"What are you spacing out for, huh?" asked Oetsu. "When I mean everyone, you're included too, yo. "Asauchi"." It then disintegrated into a form of energy, which prompted his helps to begin the preparation for him to forge Asa's sword. He tied his hair up and took off his glasses. "Alright. Isn't it about to begin, no?" Asa stood at the back, watching him forge her Zanpakutou with a large hammer created by one of his helpers. "Did you figure it out, Asa-chan?" The said woman looked at him, confused by his sudden question. "The reason why it looked like Tamako instead of Kage Odoriko."
"No." was her reply after pondering for a while.
"Did you not think that this might be your real Zanpakutou instead of Kage Odoriko?" questioned Oetsu. "That Kage Odoriko is actually the extension of your Zanpakutou, after all? Do you get what I mean? Kage Odoriko is merely a manifestation of your brother, Kazuo, whose will was to protect you. That will eventually found your Asauchi and fused with it, thus becoming your Zanpakutou. Kage Odoriko wanted to borrow your Zanpakutou's power so it split into two; one was for Kage Odoriko and the remaining left was named Tamako."
"Wait." interjected Asa suspiciously. "So that means..."
"Yup." confirmed Oetsu, who seemed to know what she was thinking. "You should know it yourself. Neither Kage Odoriko nor Tamako are your real Zanpakutou. They're both fragments of your Zanpakutou. You real Zanpakutou is..."
At that moment, Asa found herself in her inner world where it returned to the bright, lively woods when she first entered. But what was most important was that she was standing in front of the spirit of her true Zanpakutou. His appearance was a mix of both Kage Odoriko and Tamako; he had pale green eyes with dark circles around them, and spiky black hair with the front hanging over his face as bangs, a part of it was ivory. His attire consisted of a dark green tailcoat, a white shirt underneath, a striped ribbon tied in a bow around his neck, and a small, matching top hat decorated with a black ribbon and a green gem. He wore black pants, white gloves, and knee-high black boots.
"Him..." muttered Asa, completing his sentence.
"That's right." responded Oetsu.
"What does this mean?" she asked, looking directly at the Zanpakutou Spirit.
"It's as you heard." answered the spirit. "Your brother died protecting you, and his final thought was that he wished he could still do that even though he'd be dead." he explained. "The love your brother had was strong enough to manifest a will; and that will eventually found me when I was still your Asauchi, and merged with me. My powers became very unstable and split into two. Your brother's will became Kage Odoriko, which carried my main abilities, and what was left of my powers became Tamako. However, neither of these powers were stable, which is why they have to merge back when the time comes. As my powers grew, I needed both of them to return to me so that my powers can return as a whole."
"That's why they suddenly left." she said, finally understanding the whole situation.
A chuckle then escaped his lips. "Well, it doesn't matter anymore." he said. "What matters more is that I finally get to have my powers back; and I can show you my true self." He suddenly disintegrated before a violet Reiatsu manifested before her. "Asa. What you've been using so far is the unstable form of my power. Now, you can finally fight with it. Take it with you. Use it to fight your own battles when you need it."
Asa slowly approached the Reiatsu, but stopped with her hand few inches away from it. "What's your real name?" she asked.
Meanwhile, Renji and Rukia were training in Ichibe's Palace/ Just like most places, it was made up many buildings, with the training dojo as the main attraction. The training dojo took the form of a small building at the top of a flight of stairs carved into the side of a hill. The two Shinigami were standing still across each other, holding a wooden sword in each of their hands, as sweat dripped from their foreheads. The moment the shrine beels rang, both of them let out a loud, "Whew!"
Renji fell on his butt and heaved a tired sigh. "This stuff really takes a lot out of you!" he complained.
"Worthless fool!" scolded Rukia, who was still standing on her feet. "What is so difficult about training that simply involves facing one another silently?!"
"Ah, shaddup!" he retored. "I'm not cut out for it, that's all! Not for standing still for long periods of time, or for pointing my blade at an ally!"
"I-I do not enjoy pointing my blade at an ally any more than you." defended Rukia.
"Yeah, and that's why you look at worn out as I do." noted Renji with an emotionless expression. He then looked around his surrounding and added, "Besides which, I'm still not used to the atmosphere of this place."
Rukia mirrored his action and said, "It is true the concentration of Reishi in the air here us quite irregular. It no longer feels so oppressive that it physically weighs down my body, but every motion I make here still feels like moving through water. I cannot imagine what kind of effects all this Reishi concentration must have on our bodies." At that moment, her Denreishinki rang, prompting her to answer and spoke to the caller for a while before hanging up.
"Who is it?" asked Renji.
"That was Kirinji-dono!" she answered happily.
"Oh..." he said, knowing who she was referring to. "The guy with the hot springs and the beak hair. When did you get a hold of his number?"
"He says Nii-sama has made a full recovery!" she announced.
Renji's face soon lit up with joy. "He's back in action?!" he repeated. "That's great news!" But that joy was temporary, as dread was written all over his face. "Which means next, he'll be stuffing his face, reforging his blade, and then..."
"That place." said Rukia, who had the same expression as him when she thought about Senjumaru's City.
"That place was harsh, alright." said Renji, whose face flush with embarrassment. "The measuring up from hell."
"Indeed." agreed Rukia. "Stripped down naked. It is painful to even remember." She took note of the pain on his face and frantically said, "Oi, Renji! Why are you remembering it?! Stop! Do not do this to yourself! Renji! The said man didn't respond, as he remembered being threatened by Senjumaru, who said that she would cut off his "thing" if he didsn't take off his fundoshi, causing him to reluctantly agree. Finally, he snapped out of his thoughts, with cold sweat dripping down his face.
"Have you come to your senses, Renji?" asked Rukai worriedly. "Thank goodness! I was afraid you would recall all the way up to the point where you removed your undergarments!" She then looked away with worry. "Still, it is one thing for you to undergo such treatment, but when I think that Nii-sama must experience the same ordeal, it pains my heart deeply."
'For me it's one thing?!' he repeated with disbelief.
"Ah, poor Nii-sama." she sighed.
Just then, a hearty laugh interrupted them, and Ichibe walked in from his palace. "You have become quite talkative, I see!" he noted. "When you first arrived here, you were so overcome by the Reishi density that you could scarcely breath or move, and could only lie cowering on the ground. But look at you now! How far you have come! What do you say? Are you ready to train with me in the inner chamber?"
"Yes!" responded both Shinigami in unison.
But when he was about to turn around, he saw someone approaching him, which made him smile. "You've finally made it!" he greeted, gesturing her towards the staircase. "Come inside! I'll tell everything that you need to know."
"Thank you, Hyosube-san." said Asa with a smile, following him into his palace, with Renji and Rukia's gaze following her.
"Weird." noted the latter.
"What is it?" asked Renji.
"This is Asa-dono's first time coming here, but she doesn't react to the dense Reishi like we did." she explained, which made Renji look back at the said woman with astonishment.
Asa sat across Ichibe, who was inspecting her new Zanpakutou and hummed. "I see that you've found out that neither "Kage Odoriko" nor "Tamako" are the names of your Zanpakutou." he said before looking at her with sympathy. "It must be hard for you to know the truth. Especially what happened to your parents and brother."
She returned the smile, saying, "It was. But the truth that's necessary for me to know more about my life. So I would have to face it, regardless."
Nodding, Ichibe looked back at the Zanpakutou for a while. "Normally, if a Zanpakutou tells its Shinigami wielder a name that is actually a lie, it means it has yet to full acknowledge the wielder. But for you, Asa, that's not the case. Your Zanpakutou merely had an unstable form when your brother's will merged with it. But I can't blame him for being this desperate." He gently put the Zanpakutou on the ground and said, "Very well. I will now tell you the name of your blade."
Asa looked at him with surprise. "You know his name?" she asked.
"You know the title I have been granted from the Soul King, yes?" he began. ""Manako Osho" - The Eyeball Monk. However, in truth, "Manako" here does not mean "eyeball". It is written with the characters meaning "to speak true names". It was I who created the name "Zanpakutou". "Shikai" and "Bankai", too, are names of my creation. All things that exist within Soul Society were originally given their names by myself. And the names of all Zanpakutou, too, are known to me from the moment each Asauchi forged by Oetsu passed into the hands of its Shinigami wielder.
"Asa. I will now proceed to tell you the true name of your Zanpakutou, his Shikai and Bankai." he continued. "You must then convince him to acknowledge your strength and allow you to call him by that name! Right here and now!"