Research in Progress

"What are you planning to do?"

Yoruichi hesitated for a moment, then lifted her gaze from the notes and looked at Urahara.

"Snap!" Urahara shut the notebook and said firmly, "What do you think? We have to keep it under wraps. This isn't a small matter. Once Ichiro finishes his research, we'll discuss it together. This could change an entire era!"

Yoruichi smiled. She hadn't been wrong about Urahara after all.

"Alright. What materials do you need? I'll have someone prepare them for you."

"Mm, wait a moment. I'll write them down."

And so the three of them plunged into another round of training. Once they were done, their strength was sure to reach an entirely new level.

One morning, as usual, the captain came to bring Ichiro breakfast. She pushed open the door and saw that yesterday's dinner was still sitting on the floor, untouched. With a sigh, she silently set down the breakfast, picked up the cold dinner, and quietly left the room.

This had happened many times over the past half month. At first, she'd scolded Ichiro, but eventually she understood: once someone like him got absorbed in his work, nothing anyone said would get through.

Before leaving, the captain glanced at the shocking scene inside the warehouse. Only after seeing it for herself did she understand why Ichiro had forbidden anyone else from coming near, and why he'd told her about his research in advance.

If she hadn't known what he was researching, anyone who saw this hellish scene would surely misunderstand.

Severed limbs were scattered all over the warehouse!

There was an arm here, a leg there, a box piled full of fingers, and another filled with toes.

You could find every organ in the human body in that room, whether you knew it existed or not!

The warehouse walls were splattered with blood!

There were even bits of broken bone and fingers stuck to them!

It was like a scene straight out of Hell!

And Ichiro sat in the middle of the warehouse, smeared with blood from head to toe, frowning as he fiddled with a pristine, jade-white arm. He looked just like a demon from Hell!

"Tsk." The demon grunted in displeasure, tossed the arm aside, and went back to calculating the data.

"Thud. Thump!"

But before Ichiro could start recording, the sound of the arm hitting the floor reached him. He turned to look and saw that the box was full, and the arm had fallen out.

"Tsk, full again. What on earth am I getting wrong?" Ichiro surveyed the room and voiced a startling complaint.

Still, it was good timing. He'd been up all night and hadn't eaten yet. He could use the energy. Closing his notebook, he stood and headed for breakfast.

As he passed a sword stuck in the ground, he brushed his right hand over it and murmured, "Devour everything! Demon Dragon!"

"Whoosh!"

As Ichiro spoke the release incantation, a hazy glow enveloped the blade. In the next instant, several enormous dragon heads burst out of it, jaws gaping as they lunged toward the scattered body parts in the warehouse!

Sitting cross-legged by the doorway, Ichiro ate his breakfast as he always did, wolfing it down to the sound of the body behind him being chewed. At first, the noise had turned his stomach, but he'd gotten used to it.

"Ah... it actually sounds kind of nice?"

That twisted thought sprang to mind.

Ichiro kept busy while he ate, comparing the Body Transmutation data to see where he'd gone wrong.

As it turned out, he'd made all those body parts using Alchemy. The limbs scattered everywhere were all failed transmutations. Technically, they hadn't failed—the bodies' normal functions were all intact. They just didn't meet Ichiro's standards.

It went without saying that these couldn't have been body parts cut from living people. Even if he'd wanted to do that, the captain would never have agreed. The two executed criminals' corpses were already the limit of what she could tolerate. There was no way she'd let him keep going.

So where had all the blood come from?

That's right: the Demon Dragon Zanpakuto had made it.

The Mimicry Zanpakuto Demon Dragon was a biological-type Zanpakuto Ichiro had newly created based on the data on Minazuki that the captain had provided. It had three forms. The first was a dragon-head form specialized in eating and growing stronger—the form it was in now. It could grow multiple heads to feed efficiently, and the blood-filled flesh it swallowed would strengthen the Demon Dragon as much as possible.

The second form was a dragon-man, meant for combat. Ideally, it would master advanced fighting techniques. By "ideally," of course, he meant it couldn't do that yet.

It had the right appearance, but since the Mimicry Zanpakuto itself was just an inanimate object, for now it was only a dimwit that knew how to eat. Expect it to fight?

Forget it.

The third form was a giant dragon with a pair of wings on its back, meant for transportation. Come on, what man didn't want to be a dragon rider? It might not measure up to the dragon rider from Quanzhen, but riding a real dragon would still be pretty cool.

Unfortunately, that was still just an ideal. The giant dragon couldn't fly right now, because its current design made flight impossible. Ichiro planned to work on that from the Kido side after he solved its intelligence problem.

Still, those ideas were only side benefits of making this biological-type Zanpakuto. What Ichiro really wanted was to use the opportunity to understand how Zanpakuto and living organisms could be transformed into one another. That would greatly help with his current research.

The data on Minazuki alone wasn't enough. Besides, it was a summary the captain had put together, and it left out a lot of the information he wanted to know.

Before long, Ichiro and the Demon Dragon finished eating at about the same time. He casually released the Demon Dragon's Shikai, then returned to his seat and resumed working through the data. A while later, he wiped away the blood on the floor, revealing the Transmutation Circle beneath, and began another round of transmutation.

Meanwhile, Urahara's two research projects were both progressing smoothly. The Mimicry Shikai had reached its most perfect state in the calculations; all that remained was to overcome a few final production challenges before it was officially complete.

This progress wasn't surprising. For one thing, Ichiro had already solved the most important parts. For another, Urahara was a genius in his own right. In fact, this pace was a little slow.

After all, even though the Mimicry Shikai was important, Urahara's research focus was still on the Tenshintai. And since Ichiro's work on the Mimicry Shikai had already covered several of the difficult points in considerable detail, Urahara's research had suddenly surged ahead!

He expected to complete his research on the Tenshintai within half a month!

And further optimize the Mimicry Shikai!

That was how confident he was!

Compared to Urahara's smooth progress, Yoruichi was having a rougher time. Her specialties were Hakuda and Shunpo, with Kido coming after those. Her research happened to be unrelated to Urahara and Ichiro's, so until now, Urahara and Ichiro had always advanced hand in hand.

When one of them made a breakthrough, the other could use the results. When the other made a breakthrough, the first could use those results too. Their progress was rapid.

Yoruichi, on the other hand, had been working alone the entire time.

So even though she'd enlisted the help of her family this time, the huge gap she'd fallen behind earlier meant that her research into Shunko still wasn't progressing much. Many people had even begun urging her to abandon the idea and focus on training her Hakuda.

Then she could find a way to have a more suitable Mimicry Zanpakuto made for her Hakuda-based fighting style at the Soul King Palace, instead of wasting her energy on this.

But was Yoruichi the kind of person who would admit defeat?

So, ignoring everyone else's objections, she threw herself right back into researching Shunko!