Chapter 6 - Early Sacrifice

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A young nobleman was seen walking towards the training academy. The students around him stood clear after seeing his irritable eyes. He eventually made his way to the training field.

"That damn Itachi...he isn't better than ME! HE IS A WORTHLESS PEASANT!" Daiki thinks to himself as he channels his reiatsu and flares it at a training dummy in the field. The dummy's head blows up.

"Damn that guy!!!"

"Oh? What made a young scion of the Kuchiki so angry?" a calm voice came from the side.

Daiki turned around to see two men and a woman walking towards him.

"Hmph. What do you want Taro?" Daiki scoffed at the noble.

"Hey now! That's not how you talk to a friend!" Taro smiled at Daiki.

"Shut up! What friend!" Daiki blurted out.

"Hey watch your tone!" A second noble said from the side.

Daiki looked at the other two before saying "Oh look the servants of the Shihouin. You should watch your place when you're speaking to me!"

The young noble was about to retort before Taro placed his hand in front of him "Calm down Kenta."

Kenta looked at Taro and then at Daiki before turning away.

Daiki didn't continue and just bid his farewells.

"That guy is as arrogant as ever..." Kenta said watching Daiki depart.

"He seems angrier than usual. What do you think Daiyu?" Taro said, turning to the woman.

"Hmm..." Daiyu simply nodded.

Taro looked back at Daiki and smiled.

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Dawn slowly approaches, sending a cascade of light into Itachi's room. He slowly wakes up and puts on his shihakusho. Itachi feels a light rumbling in his stomach. "I haven't eaten anything in a while." Itachi thought to himself. He goes to the bathroom and rinses his face with water and leaves his room.

Itachi goes to the cafeteria and lines up for breakfast. He picks up some onigiri with seaweed and miso soup then heads to an empty table. Itachi eats his breakfast then looks up at the clock and sees it's almost time for class. Itachi throws out his trash and walks down the hallway to the classroom.

As he approaches the door, Daiki Kuchiki also approaches the door at the same time. Daiki glares at Itachi and Itachi shows no visible reaction on his face. A curious Taro Shihouin who was following Daiki notices this and gives Itachi a smug smile before walking into the classroom with Daiyu Feng and Kenta Omaeda right behind him. "I see... so that's what happened." Taro thought to himself.

Itachi enters the classroom and sees Itsuki is already in his seat and goes to sit down next to him.

"You have a good morning Itachi?" Itsuki asks glumly as Itachi sits down.

"Nothing spectacular." Itachi notes a hint of despondency in Itsuki's voice. Before he has a chance to question it, Gengoro Ounabara walks in. The class silences as he clears his throat at the podium.

"Good morning class! Today will be a long day so I hope you are well rested! We'll be doing a brief lecture on Soul Society history then go onto the basics of zanjutsu and hakudo in addition to picking your asauchis!"

Ounabara wastes no time in diving straight into the lecture as the students frantically take notes to keep up. Itachi paid little attention to the lecture as he had already read about it the day before. Instead, his mind trailed off back to his life in the world of the living and his academy days during then and his life following it. He thought about how Sasuke might be doing and if Naruto was successful in changing Sasuke's perception of the world. Ounabara notices Itachi was staring out the window and not taking notes and asks him a question, disrupting Itachi's trance.

"Uchiha Itachi! Tell me the purpose of the Senkaimon!" Ounabara shouts across the classroom mid lecture. Daiki sneers as he anticipates Itachi to answer incorrectly. Itachi regains himself and calmly responds.

"The Senkaimon is a dimensional gateway that shinigami use to enter and leave Soul Society. In order to pass through it, a jigokucho is needed."

"An acceptable answer, Uchiha." Ounabara was a bit shocked to hear Itachi's correct response.

"Maybe he was paying attention." Ounabara thought to himself before he continued the lecture.

The classroom was a bit surprised as they stared at Itachi.

Daiki pulled a long face, not expecting Itachi to be able to answer correctly.

Itachi spaced out once again as Ounabara continued his lecture.

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"We will now be going over Zanjutsu, the fighting style in using your zanpakuto!" Ounabara goes into detail on the basic forms and stances used in wielding a zanpakuto.

"Before your blade becomes a zanpakuto, it is considered an asauchi. An asauchi is the form your zanpakuto takes when it is in its sealed state without a name. Over time as your asauchi develops with your soul, a separate spiritual entity will inhabit the blade and tell you its name. It is from then on it will be called a zanpakuto. For this reason, once you receive your asauchis today, you are expected to carry it around with you everywhere you go in order to imprint your soul onto it."

Ounabara finishes his lecture and takes the class to the armory. There, the students line up as they wait to receive their asauchi. Itachi is handed his and he looks at his reflection on the blade. Ounabara tells the class to sheath their asauchis.

"It is forbidden to unsheathe your blade on academy grounds." Ounabara warns the class.

Ounabara signals the class to follow him and they head towards the zanjutsu training hall. The students are given wooden practice swords and line up in front of Ounabara.

"I'm going to show you the proper form in swinging your blade. These will only be the absolute basics. Once your asauchi develops into a zanpakuto, from then on you have to hone your skills by yourself using the basics."

Ounabara picks up a wooden sword and stands in the middle of the zanjutsu hall and gets into a stance.

"Pay close attention. Notice how my left foot is slightly behind the right with my left heel slightly raised, both feet are parallel, hɨps are straight forward, shoulders are relaxed, and my spine is perpendicular to the floor at all times. And make sure your center of gravity stays centered between your feet."

Ounabara shifts his sword and explains what he is doing.

"Keep your left hand in line with the middle of your body even as you attack."

Ounabara raises the sword above his head while holding it with both hands.

"When you strike, do it as if you are going straight through your opponent and fully stretch your arm to reach out with your blade."

Ounabara demonstrates the sword slash slowly then does it once more with a faster speed.

"Okay! Starting from the left, the first ten students step forward with your swords and get into the stance!"

Itachi was part of this group and steps forward. He centers himself as he positions his feet and thinks back to similar drills he practiced with the sword during his time in the Anbu Black Ops. The swords were one handed instead of two but the concept was relatively similar. Ounabara walks down the line of students and looks at their feet position. He lightly kicks the feet of those who were too wide apart or too narrow and observes their center of gravity.

"Relax your shoulders!" He says to a student.

Ounabara proceeds down the line and sees Itachi's stance. He makes no comment and walks back up to the center of the room.

"Now perform the slash I demonstrated and keep doing so until I say to stop!" Ounabara orders.

Itachi raises the sword above his head and executes the basic forward slash. The sword makes a whipping sword as Itachi performs the technique with no wasted movement. Itachi resets his position and does the slash over and over again.

"Amazing. Just by watching it a few times, he is able to execute it to such an advanced degree." Ounabara thought to himself before checking the other students. After giving some pointers to the rest of the students he has them step back and the other students in the class have their turn. Daiki stares at Itachi with contempt as he steps forward to do the training drill.

After the rest of the class finishes the training, Ounabara calls a short break before they do hakuda training. Ounabara leaves the training hall momentarily. Several minutes into the break, Daiki sees this as his opportunity to approach Itachi. He storms towards Itachi who is standing by himself near the back of the hall. Taro notices Daiki heading towards Itachi and watches.

"Itachi! You are lucky that the teacher saved you that day. But this class allows the students to spar. Let's see how you escape this time!"

Itachi looks at Daiki blankly as the rest of the class catches onto the commotion. The two have a staredown until Itsuki walks up to Itachi's side.

"Hey don't you-" Itachi places his hand in front of Itsuki before he finishes. Itsuki looks at Itachi in shock but decides to say nothing more. Daiki sneers at Itachi.

"Ready to be put in your place now you peasant!"

A young woman in the corner was also looking at the confrontation with some interest in her eye.

"Ah, so this is why he was so pissed that day. But if he won, why was he so angry?" Taro smiled as he thought to himself.

"Did that guy really provoke a noble? Is he out of his mind?" Some students whispered to each other.

"That Uchiha guy is in trouble." Another student whispers.

Daiki glares at Itachi before charging at him. He sends a right hook enhanced with his reiatsu towards Itachi's face.

"Pathetic." Itachi says to Daiki before dodging away from the fist at the last moment, after which he grabs onto Daiki's shoulder with his left arm and he flips into the air using Daiki's shoulder as a springboard. Itachi lands behind Daiki still holding his shoulder and in one fluid motion, uses the force of his momentum to throw Daiki to the ground. Daiki rolls several meters across the training hall before his body skids to a halt.

Daiki remained laying on the ground in shock of what just happened. His head was spinning and he just bȧrėly remembered Itachi grabbing his shoulder before he blacked out. Daiki shakily gets up from the floor and looks back at Itachi who is standing across the hall.

"Why is he all the way over there?" He thought to himself still in a daze.

"Wow, what just happened?" the students were shocked. The fight ended too quickly for some to even see what happened.

Taro's eyes were wide as he witnessed the battle. "Daiyu, did you catch his technique?" He asked.

"It looked similar to the Taketonbo but the execution was different…" Daiyu said seriously while looking at Itachi.

Kenta was also shocked as he looked at itachi. "What was that?" He thought to himself.

Taro looked at itachi with some trepidation. "Could I also beat Daiki that easily?" He thought to himself.

During this scuffle, Ounabara had returned as he could hear Daiki's voice from outside the hall. He witnesses Daiki about to throw a punch at Itachi and sees Itachi counterattack flawlessly with a high level Hakuda technique. Ounabara flash stepped to the center of the hall in the space between Itachi and Daiki.

"THATS ENOUGH!" Ounabara stares at Daiki. "Kuchiki Daiki! "If you can walk, go to the nurse's office! I'll deal with you later."

"Yes sensei…" Daiki leaves the zanjutsu hall with a defeated look. However, before he exits he looks towards a young woman standing with her back to the wall.

The young woman notices his gaze and looks toward him. She gave him a cold look.

"Akemi-.." Daiki said.

"Don't talk to me. Your actions disgrace the Kuchiki family." Akemi coldly replied.

Daiki breaks eye contact and sulks away to the nurse's office.

"The rest of you! Go to the Hakuda training hall and DO NOT DO ANYTHING until I get there!" Ounabara commanded the rest of the class. Before Itachi has a chance to move Ounabara flash steps over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Stay here and wait until the rest of the class leaves. We need to have a talk."