The academy smelled like ink and wood and rain-damp lanterns. For weeks Ethan had learned to measure himself by small things: breath counts, foot angles, the polite way a blade met a block. Those details would be a lifetime of practice, and on the morning the node was supposed to end for him, they felt like armor.
He kept his Panel on the smallest of whispers. The Personal Taming Suite slept behind his left sleeve, folded like a cord he could pull. Suzu and Aoi waited there; their names sat in his private ledger like worn tickets. He tightened the cord of his training robe and walked out into the courtyard.
PP: 115 — the number had been tidy and stubborn for days. He'd promised himself he wouldn't squander it.
---
Morning: precision and small tests
Roll call. Stances. A lecture on kido ethics that sounded like promises repeated until they were true. Ethan moved through the morning like a person who had made a map of the world in his hands: the Panel nudging micro-corrections to balance, Exam Reflexes suggesting timings, Alpha Sense catching edges of movement that his eyes missed. He kept everything visible small; he had learned the cost of being loud in a place full of swords.
Between drills he got the Panel's quiet note: a stray spirit had been bothering the shrine walk beyond the northern lot. It was the sort of problem the academy expected its students to clear as part of training—practice that taught discipline more than victory.
He checked the Suite only for the fold-dampening—no visible lights, no public announcement. The Panel confirmed the path: low-output hollow cluster, suitable for pacification and capture rather than destruction.
Ethan made the decisions the world liked: clean, private, useful.
---
The field: pacify and bind
He moved with Suzu called into a narrow whisper: the familiar flowed from the Suite like a breath and scouted the angle. Suzu's Trailmark left thin glyphs the Panel showed him only; they traced where hollows had nested. Aoi, still new and cautious, watched in the Suite's shadow—conscious, consenting, and safe.
Suzu slipped in first and found a small hollow crouched in the roots of an old cedar. It snapped up at the shadow and struck once—slow and uncoordinated. Ethan sidestepped, fluid and low. He used no Full Shift. He didn't want reiatsu spikes. Instead he used the Panel-assisted rhythm: a single palm at the hollow's flank, pressure applied to break structural motion. The thing crumpled into the old crouch of hunger.
He could have cut it down; the academy often practiced kills in the form of clean neutralizations. He did the other thing—the quiet one. The Panel ran the Common bind sequence inside the Suite. The hollow's pattern reorganized, the wild hunger folded into a simple tether: follow and guard, small instincts redirected.
The Suite stamped the ledger: Bind successful — Common Familiar.
The Panel then wrote the reward line in its clinical voice.
Base reward registered: 10 PP. Ethan's talent activated automatically — everything the Panel paid earned him ×10.
Gain: 10 × 10 = 100 PP.
PP total: 115 → 215.
He did not gloat. He watched Suzu settle like a small animal learning a new rhythm.
A second hollow, weaker and skittering, crawled out behind a stone. Ethan repeated the method—soft pressure, a short tether, a folded bind.
Base 10 → ×10 = 100 PP.
PP total: 215 → 315.
The Panel's ledger recorded timestamped lines and nothing else. The academy's patrols walked past in the distance; no flags, no blunt questions. Everything stayed quiet because he had made it so.
---
Afternoon: a small reconnaissance, a tidy gain
Later, during the mandatory night-sweep practice, Ethan volunteered for the outer flank. The instructors appreciated students who practiced unobtrusively; they praised the line for discipline. Ethan took advantage: he let Suzu scout ahead in the Suite's damp shadow, mapped a thin trail of mask fragments, and found a shallow nesting place where a cluster had passed through earlier in the week.
He laid simple wards the Panel suggested—nothing aggressive, just a tether and a mark for the academy's ritual team. That was service; the academy liked service.
The Panel log: reconnaissance base 5 PP ×10 = 50 PP.
PP total: 315 → 365.
He did the work not for the numbers but because the pattern of doing it made the place better for people who slept there—a low, steady selfishness that warmed him.
---
Evening: final practical assessment
The day closed with the academy's modest capstone: a practical assessment of everything they'd taught a term's cohort. Not a trial of destiny—students were not sent to burn the world down here—but a careful set of tasks that tested restraint, method, and reflex. Rukia watched from the sidelines; she had scheduled her final orders and duties for the 13th and returned to give Ethan a small nod when she saw him.
Ethan kept the Suite closed. He did not want to bring a familiar into public lines. The assessment had two parts: controlled sparring and a small spirit-handling problem. He performed, measured, and kept himself plainly good—skilled enough to pass, restrained enough not to alarm.
At the spirit-handling station, another cadet panicked and nearly made a dangerous attempt at force. Ethan stepped in across the mat and added a stabilizing hand—no spectacle, only a pressure that redistributed the cadet's motion. The instructor marked it and nodded. That mattered more than the medals.
The Panel recorded a small reward for assistance: base 5 PP ×10 = 50 PP.
PP total: 365 → 415.
---
Night: a small private reckoning
The ceremony for graduation was the following morning; the academy evenings became a thin, patient hush. Ethan walked the quiet paths with Aoi briefly—let the companion be visible to him alone—and listened to the small, bright hum of the Suite. He read the consent log again: Aoi's signature, Suzu's tether timestamp. The bindings were his responsibility now, real as a promise.
He thought of limits. He thought of talent. The Panel multiplied rewards and did so without judgement. That multiplication made utility attractive; it made the arithmetic of kindness almost intoxicating. He resolved to keep the math from clouding his ethics. Bind what needed binding; hide what needed privacy; respect consent; never push a sentient being into servitude.
The ledger tallied his final preparations. He spent none of his PP on evolution yet—saving felt like discipline. 415 remained a number he would not spend lightly.
---
Graduation morning — mission close
The hall filled with quiet formality. Rukia's name was called and she walked with the composed gait of people who had made the decision to take responsibility. Ethan watched her receive the sash that knotted her to a division and felt the small, uncommon warmth of being present for someone else's passage.
After the formalities, the Panel slid a single window into his private HUD: Mission Status: Bleach Node — Objective (survive and integrate; learn) — Graduation achieved. The mission's metadata folded into a tidy completion packet.
A final reward for mission completion processed: base mission credit 20 PP ×10 = 200 PP.
Final PP total: 415 → 615.
The Panel wrote a last line, solemn and bureaucratic: MISSION COMPLETE — BLEACH NODE. Host return option: available. Log archived. Talent calibration incremented.
A tiny progress bar nudged upward: the talent bar — the Eternal Multiplier's calibration ticked forward a fraction. The Panel suggested recommended next steps: decompress, review consent logs, hold an optional data purge if he wanted the ledger shrunk. Ethan opted to keep the records.
The Suite folded into him, quiet as a vow. Suzu and Aoi rested in their private pocket, not displayed, not flaunted. He had done small, considered things: pacified hollows that bit at the edges of the academy, steadied a cadet in panic, mapped a nest for ritual clearing. Nothing grand. Everything practical. The node had taught him to be less spectacular and more useful.
He stood then, in the hush after the banners and the clapping, and let the Panel prompt him with the final choice: return to Settlement Space now, or remain for another day to help the academy staff file their ritual notes.
He looked once toward Rukia—now an officer station in the distance—and thought of the kind of person she'd been that day: steady, unwilling to make a show. He smiled and tapped the HUD.
Return: Yes.
The world blurred at the edges like the closing of a book. The Panel withdrew the node; the Suite closed behind his thoughts. He felt the settlement's quieter hum return as if the whole neighborhood recognized him in as much as the system did.
Mission over. Lessons kept. Bindings honored.
PP on return: 615.
Ethan slid the ledger closed and let himself feel the small, private satisfaction of a job done without applause.