Post by Clyde on Aug 6, 2011 20:17:09 GMT -5
((Continued from this thread, this is a VERY LONG POST BTW))
After spending nearly a day training with the Alchemist Drystan, Clyde had quickly learned much of the basics of alchemy and about the nature of his power, Hou-renkenjitsu. With this knowledge, he prepared himself for one more confrontation with his own abilities. When last he used them, he hit a wall, a mental block that prevented him from progressing any further with his power. If he was going to protect his allies and change things like he promised, he needed to get past this limit.
...So here he sat within a warehouse that Drystan had deemed safe for Clyde's training. The alchemist had his back to the wall, watching the boy as he placed his hands together as if he were praying. In between them he conducted his reiatsu into a spherical shape; this was a common practice for Clyde when he meditated. However, here he was using it for something different. This was not to clear his mind, but to build up concentration. All of his energy was being focus on a single point about the size of a pea, something that took all of his focus not to expand in anyway. The object was to keep its size the same while continuing to put more and more of his power in it.
He did this for hours, only holding it for so long from the training Drystan had been giving him. Sweat dripped from his brow as he remained motionless, his attention solely on unlocking his power. The sun had long since fell into the background of the building. The boy still had not budged...until it finally happened. His heart skipped a beat, his rhythm was knocked off course...just as it had in the final moments of his battle with Kyoshin. It was the mental block. "Here it is again~! Then...this is it!, I can't lose my focus!" The blonde haired boy thought as his eyes snapped shut.
Images flashed within his shut eyes again like before. A spear, the gravestones in the huge desert, a black robed man. His arm burned with the torrent of images in his fractured mind. He winced as the concentration of energy began expanding...he was losing focus. "No! No more! My memories are here right in front of me...but I'm not gonna let them stop me like they have in the past!" He reassured himself as he put all of his effort on maintaining control. The images became more intense for the boy but he would not give up this time...and just when it felt like his mind was ready to burst energy shot out in all directions from his body. His eyes were forced open, revealing gray reiatsu that covered them completely.
It was this moment that time seemed to completely freeze for the boy, his mind had sent him into a trance. Drystan would feel a sharp increase in spiritual pressure around him, almost like a bubble had formed around Clyde that cut him off from the outside. Things would go quiet after this, as the boy disappeared into the recess of his mind.
~~~
((Music))
The gray eyed boy drifted downward from his perspective. It was like he was sinking into an ocean, but all he saw was endless white in all directions. This place was empty, void of time or reason. Was this his mind? A short chuckle escaped his mouth as he wondered what this said about his actual intelligence.
"A laugh? ...A visitor, then." Clyde eyes shot open as to his surprise he heard the voice of another. He spun himself around inside the void and saw in front of him a bright light. "That definitely wasn't there before...", he thought as he examined it closer. Looking closely, he saw that inside the light was the a body of some sort, but it was too bright to make out who or what it was. The light seemed to examine the boy as well.
"Who...are you?" Clyde questioned the creature curiously and somewhat nervously, he was at a loss for what was happening to him. The body of light stared back, monotone and emotionless.
"I am not a "who," but a "what." You...are the "who."" The spoke blankly to the completely confused human. It seemed to realize this, so it explained, "I have been called many things in my existence, the most recent being the Philosopher's Stone. I'm a conduit of all alchemy, the supreme object. I am the "what". And you...you are my conscience, Clyde. You are the who."
"I...don't understand." The boy made his opinion loud and clear as the two drifted in this endless area. "Are we in my mind? Or am I in yours or something? Is any of this really happening?" He questioned, rubbing his forehead, "I remember...being in the warehouse with Drsytan."
"Confusion is to be expected, this is the only time you've passed the barrier." The light again spoke in an emotionless tone as the Clyde's feet felt a "landing," as if he had reached the floor of where ever they were. "We are in my mind...though it is more accurate to say it is the mind that was created when you were created." Clyde just stared and listened, "In most cases for humans, it is the person who develops first and then their power. For you however, circumstances were different. I was created, and from me you were created." The sound of the being breathing slowly was heard, it seemed to have a calming effect on the young man. "Being a "what," I lacked the ability to make decisions, to control fate...Hou-renkinjutsu was a tool and it needed a user for it to achieve purpose. So you were born from the barriers reiatsu. Clyde was born so that this power to change the very fabric of reality had a conscience."
Clyde couldn't believe what he was hearing. He almost fell back from what this light told him. "That doesn't make any sense! How?" He questioned with irritation, "I was created from my own power? How...how is that possible?" He paused and thought on what the being had told him, "If what you're saying is true...am I even a human? Or am I just some sort of shell?"
"You're both." A third voice chimed in, this one from behind Clyde. When the boy spun around to meet with the voice, it was the man in the black robes that the boy saw in his memories. Getting a clear image of the man, it was clear what he was. He was a shinigami.
~~~
Day two had just ended for Drsytan and Clyde was still in his trance, if he even believed it. Not that it matter, if he tried to get any closer than usual the incredibly dense spiritual pressure would simply push him away. All he could possibly do was come back every so often and check up on him, hoping that he'd wake up.
~~~
((Music))
The shinigami was just like any other in clothing, his appearance was what bothered Clyde the most, he looked strikingly similar to Clyde himself! It was like looking at himself if he were aged about 20 years."Ishiro. Nice to finally meet you, Clyde." The shinigami introduced himself, bowing to the boy almost mockingly. With a sigh he lifted his head from the bow looking into the boys gray eyes. "...Are you really what's come of all our hard work?" The boy clenched his right fist in anger. It was rare that he was impatient, by now he had two people speaking cryptically to him. "Easy, kid, I know why you're here. Better yet I'm much easier to talk to than that light bright over there." He joked, pointed to the white light, which did not seem to respond to the comment.
"S-so...then you'll help me?" The boy asked, surprised that this man seemed to have a personality.
The man shrugged his shoulders and sighed, "Now, I never said that." He moved his robes to their side, revealed a zanpakuto. Clenching it with his right arm, he removed it and pointed the blade towards Clyde. "That barrier that you can't seem to get past? Hate to tell you this, you philosopher's pebble, but that's me." He teased the young man before shunpo'ing next to him to deliver a quick swing of his blade, just barely missing the boy who jumped backward from instinct.
The boy lowered his head, allowing a grin to crawl across his face. "I'm not gonna lie...just about none of this is making any sense to me, though I guess I should have expected this. But there is one thing I know..." He said raising his right arm gathering his power around it, "And that's how to fight! I've come this far to get past this barrier, if beating it is all I have to do then I'm home free!"
Ishiro's teasing grin dropped into a scowl at the boy's words. "Who gave you the right to be so confident? You don't know a damn thing, do you?" With that he flashed again in front of Clyde and swung his blade down upon the boy who again dodged the blow. Ishiro continued to swing at the young man, his strikes getting harder and harder to predict for Clyde with each passing second, before he knew it he had a handful of cuts across his body until a powerful kick sent him flying across the void for some distance.
"Damn...what is a shinigami doing in my head anyway?" Clyde spat out as he stood back up and steadied himself out to ready for the next attack. It was around this point he was beginning to realize how useless the power of manipulation was inside an empty void.
"Shinigami? I lost that job a long time ago." He echoed out from behind Clyde suddenly, cutting across his back with ease before he shunpo'd to his front. Grabbing him with his free arm and leaping upward with the boy. "How about I enlighten you. You see...I didn't always look like this, " He began to explain as he carried the injured young man, "I was a shinigami who had every intention of ending the question of how to defeat the onigami in the war once and for all...the philosophers stone was my answer." His threw Clyde up from his grasp and swung at his stomach, the boy barely able to use his reflex's to escape the attack. "So I made a team and went to find it. To the vast desert I went, Hueco Mundo. Tell me when this starts sounding familar!" He yelled out as he shunpo'd again, delivering a series of kicks to the human before launching him in another direction.
"To make a long story short, too late I know, my team was all but decimated and died there. The permanent kind of death too. I still was able to claim the prize, the knowledge of how to make a philosophers stone...but it was for naught!" Clyde yelled out in pain as Ishiro's sword dug into his shoulder. "The war was over, none of it mattered anymore! My people died for the shinigami but we were forgotten, like tears in the rain." The man stayed floating in the air as Clyde collapsed down next to the Philosophers Stone.
"He ran away from Soul Society and came to the human realm, intent on creating me...so his friends would not die in vain. The knowledge was deemed forbidden when they realized that a human's body and soul was needed to create the weapon." The bright light continued the story emotionlessly all the while Clyde tried to push through his injuries and get back in the fight. By know things were becoming more clear. This "Ishiro" was a part of Clyde's power as much as the bright light was, somehow he seemed to have the bulk of Clyde's own strength making it nearly impossible for the boy to fight back.
"Who's telling the story here, night-light?" Ishiro interrupted, pointing the sword down at the human boy once more. "Let's stop beating around the bush and just get to the point. Ishiro the shinigami, going mad from his experiences, found a suitable human to create the philosopher stone and went through with creation, with some help from those alchemists I might add. "Ishiro" sacrificed his body and reiatsu to this human-philosopher stone, another ingredient in the recipe as it were. Slowly, his power worked as a barrier or sorts to prevent you from gaining your power without at first earning it. That's where I come in, I'm the Ishiro that this mind created." He laughed a bit at this point, "Do you get it yet? The bulk of your memories came from my noggin', not yours. You were a Tabula rasa, a blank slate."
Standing completely up again, the boy lifted his head up at Ishiro. Was this the truth? Somehow, it felt like it was. It fit with the boy's own amnesia, if he never had any memories to begin with it would make sense. The reason no one seemed to recognize him here, the reason he had only known about his power through instinct. It was like the shinigami said, he was both a human and a shell. A conscience created by the philosopher stone so that it could make decisions on its own. It was the body, he was the mind. It was both enlightening and scary all at once. This was the truth he had been seeking, and now he was finally beginning to get an idea of what actually happened. Ishiro, having gotten help from the alchemists allied with Drsytan, created the philosophers stone using the knowledge he found in Hueco Mundo. At the cost of his own life, Clyde was born...he was the philosopher's stone.
"The name too..." Ishiro spoke up more melancholy this time, noticing that Clyde was digesting this revelation as best as he could. "It came from my zanpakuto." Bringing his left hand to the katana, he flicked it, causing it to glow and change shape. When the shape settled, it resembled a spear. It looked just like the ones Clyde always made, but solid...it looked as if it were made from blood red crystal-like material. "Clyde-no-Okami."
~~~
One week had past for Drsytan since Clyde had entered this trance. It was obvious the boy was alive, his appearance was beginning to change but his reiatsu remained strong. His hair was growing longer in the back, he even seemed a bit taller than before, and his clothing had new tears in it reflecting where he had been injured in his mind. Something began to stir this day, however, his reiatsu "bubble" had shrunk down, getting closer to his body. The gray reiatsu was visible now around the human. But what was most interesting was a different color reiatsu, this one red, that escaped the boy's arm. Clyde was on the cusp of a new power.
~~~
"Ooof~!" the blonde haired boy grunted out in pain as he rolled across the "floor" of the void-like area. Ishiro had continued to pound on the human for a long time it felt like for Clyde. Despite the hours of getting his ass kicked though, he kept getting up, ready to defend himself. Even against his own mind, he had the tenacity to keep fighting regardless of the odds.
"You really are a stubborn ass mule, you know that? If you were ready for this power I would have given it to by know, I wouldn't need to exist." Ishiro spat at the "ground" as he spun the spear casually in his right hand, taking calculated steps forward to the boy, who just stared back with his arms put up defensively. "You've stopped talking I noticed. ...Was what I said too much for you to understand? Or are you realizing you're not as ready and well informed as you thought you were?" The shinigami asked, annoyed. Clyde could barely move though, it was obvious this fight was over. "Where did I go wrong with you...Did I pick too soft of a human? Your stubborn, no doubt about it, but damn it you are one naive little kid, you think you can save everyone? I'm putting an end to this." Ishiro at that moment charged forward, aiming to finish the fight in one last blow.
Clyde braced himself as the Philosophers Stone spoke once more. "I seek to only have purpose, Clyde, it is why you exist in my place. Why I listen to you." The white light spoke to heavily breathing human. "I care not for what our goal is so long as you believe in it. Ishiro holds back much of my power but I am still yours to use. To what end would you use me?" It posed to the boy, expecting an answer before he was skewered.
Once again, things seemed to move in slow motion to the gray eyed boy. The bright light had asked him a question he had asked himself so many times before...and suddenly things seemed so much clearer. His past had never really mattered, what mattered was what he did in the present. What was he trying to accomplish? Did he want to be the hero? To change everything? Maybe not. He remembered what matter most to him, what has always mattered most to him. It was his allies, his friends. It was Jake, Miwa, and Zakura. It was Kimiko, Ryoko, and Drystan. It was Hasaki Ryu, Fi and Autumn. It was their future he had cared about the most, not his own. It was why he was here, so that he could have the power to ensure their future, the knowledge to give them so that they could lead on. For once, Clyde had an answer of his own.
"My goal...is to allow us to keep moving forward, my friends, and myself." At this, the philosopher stone smiled in approval and disappeared into a flash of red reiatsu which entered into Clyde's right arm. "I will be their guide, their knowledge, their philosopher!" He announced to Ishiro as to red tendrils of reiatsu escaped his arm and maneuvered at incredible speeds towards the metaphysical shinigami. Upon contact with his Zanpakuto, the reiatsu used Hou-renkinjutsu on it and changed it to ash until it continued forward, piercing Ishiro's chest. "I won't...run away. Running never solved anything."
"..." The spirit seemed unharmed, his eyes lowered somberly. "Congratulations, Clyde. Guess you said the magic words to get that light to help you out. ...Truth is we're both just parts of you, remnants of the events leading to your creation. Of us...you're the one who matters. Take our power, change the future or whatever it is you plan to do with it, I can't hold you back from it anymore." The shinigami's body was slowly dispersing into gray reiatsu which was flowing into Clyde as he spoke with melancholy. "Excuse a bitter old man for what he did to you. The real you was an innocent bystander, and I took his future away. You deserved better, honestly, but I had just lost all hope by that point. I stopped caring. Make sure that doesn't happen to you. ...Well, anyway, we won't be meeting again, it's all yours now. Good luck." And with those parting words the area began to fill with the red light that shined from Clyde's arm, waking him from his trance.
~~~
Drystan would be pushed back into the wall of the building as fiery red Reiatsu escaped Clyde's arm. The human boy's shirt was almost completely eradicated, it was not like Drsytans clothing which was made to react to this energy. When the reiatsu finally died down, an exhausted Clyde was seen standing from where he once sat for nearly a week, his body drenched in sweat and blood from open wounds. His head turned to the alchemist, and a grin crawled across his face. He gave his friend a thumbs up before collapsing to his knees, catching his breath. He looked pale and very thirsty, his breathing even sounded dry, but he remained conscious despite this.
After spending nearly a day training with the Alchemist Drystan, Clyde had quickly learned much of the basics of alchemy and about the nature of his power, Hou-renkenjitsu. With this knowledge, he prepared himself for one more confrontation with his own abilities. When last he used them, he hit a wall, a mental block that prevented him from progressing any further with his power. If he was going to protect his allies and change things like he promised, he needed to get past this limit.
...So here he sat within a warehouse that Drystan had deemed safe for Clyde's training. The alchemist had his back to the wall, watching the boy as he placed his hands together as if he were praying. In between them he conducted his reiatsu into a spherical shape; this was a common practice for Clyde when he meditated. However, here he was using it for something different. This was not to clear his mind, but to build up concentration. All of his energy was being focus on a single point about the size of a pea, something that took all of his focus not to expand in anyway. The object was to keep its size the same while continuing to put more and more of his power in it.
He did this for hours, only holding it for so long from the training Drystan had been giving him. Sweat dripped from his brow as he remained motionless, his attention solely on unlocking his power. The sun had long since fell into the background of the building. The boy still had not budged...until it finally happened. His heart skipped a beat, his rhythm was knocked off course...just as it had in the final moments of his battle with Kyoshin. It was the mental block. "Here it is again~! Then...this is it!, I can't lose my focus!" The blonde haired boy thought as his eyes snapped shut.
Images flashed within his shut eyes again like before. A spear, the gravestones in the huge desert, a black robed man. His arm burned with the torrent of images in his fractured mind. He winced as the concentration of energy began expanding...he was losing focus. "No! No more! My memories are here right in front of me...but I'm not gonna let them stop me like they have in the past!" He reassured himself as he put all of his effort on maintaining control. The images became more intense for the boy but he would not give up this time...and just when it felt like his mind was ready to burst energy shot out in all directions from his body. His eyes were forced open, revealing gray reiatsu that covered them completely.
It was this moment that time seemed to completely freeze for the boy, his mind had sent him into a trance. Drystan would feel a sharp increase in spiritual pressure around him, almost like a bubble had formed around Clyde that cut him off from the outside. Things would go quiet after this, as the boy disappeared into the recess of his mind.
~~~
((Music))
The gray eyed boy drifted downward from his perspective. It was like he was sinking into an ocean, but all he saw was endless white in all directions. This place was empty, void of time or reason. Was this his mind? A short chuckle escaped his mouth as he wondered what this said about his actual intelligence.
"A laugh? ...A visitor, then." Clyde eyes shot open as to his surprise he heard the voice of another. He spun himself around inside the void and saw in front of him a bright light. "That definitely wasn't there before...", he thought as he examined it closer. Looking closely, he saw that inside the light was the a body of some sort, but it was too bright to make out who or what it was. The light seemed to examine the boy as well.
"Who...are you?" Clyde questioned the creature curiously and somewhat nervously, he was at a loss for what was happening to him. The body of light stared back, monotone and emotionless.
"I am not a "who," but a "what." You...are the "who."" The spoke blankly to the completely confused human. It seemed to realize this, so it explained, "I have been called many things in my existence, the most recent being the Philosopher's Stone. I'm a conduit of all alchemy, the supreme object. I am the "what". And you...you are my conscience, Clyde. You are the who."
"I...don't understand." The boy made his opinion loud and clear as the two drifted in this endless area. "Are we in my mind? Or am I in yours or something? Is any of this really happening?" He questioned, rubbing his forehead, "I remember...being in the warehouse with Drsytan."
"Confusion is to be expected, this is the only time you've passed the barrier." The light again spoke in an emotionless tone as the Clyde's feet felt a "landing," as if he had reached the floor of where ever they were. "We are in my mind...though it is more accurate to say it is the mind that was created when you were created." Clyde just stared and listened, "In most cases for humans, it is the person who develops first and then their power. For you however, circumstances were different. I was created, and from me you were created." The sound of the being breathing slowly was heard, it seemed to have a calming effect on the young man. "Being a "what," I lacked the ability to make decisions, to control fate...Hou-renkinjutsu was a tool and it needed a user for it to achieve purpose. So you were born from the barriers reiatsu. Clyde was born so that this power to change the very fabric of reality had a conscience."
Clyde couldn't believe what he was hearing. He almost fell back from what this light told him. "That doesn't make any sense! How?" He questioned with irritation, "I was created from my own power? How...how is that possible?" He paused and thought on what the being had told him, "If what you're saying is true...am I even a human? Or am I just some sort of shell?"
"You're both." A third voice chimed in, this one from behind Clyde. When the boy spun around to meet with the voice, it was the man in the black robes that the boy saw in his memories. Getting a clear image of the man, it was clear what he was. He was a shinigami.
~~~
Day two had just ended for Drsytan and Clyde was still in his trance, if he even believed it. Not that it matter, if he tried to get any closer than usual the incredibly dense spiritual pressure would simply push him away. All he could possibly do was come back every so often and check up on him, hoping that he'd wake up.
~~~
((Music))
The shinigami was just like any other in clothing, his appearance was what bothered Clyde the most, he looked strikingly similar to Clyde himself! It was like looking at himself if he were aged about 20 years."Ishiro. Nice to finally meet you, Clyde." The shinigami introduced himself, bowing to the boy almost mockingly. With a sigh he lifted his head from the bow looking into the boys gray eyes. "...Are you really what's come of all our hard work?" The boy clenched his right fist in anger. It was rare that he was impatient, by now he had two people speaking cryptically to him. "Easy, kid, I know why you're here. Better yet I'm much easier to talk to than that light bright over there." He joked, pointed to the white light, which did not seem to respond to the comment.
"S-so...then you'll help me?" The boy asked, surprised that this man seemed to have a personality.
The man shrugged his shoulders and sighed, "Now, I never said that." He moved his robes to their side, revealed a zanpakuto. Clenching it with his right arm, he removed it and pointed the blade towards Clyde. "That barrier that you can't seem to get past? Hate to tell you this, you philosopher's pebble, but that's me." He teased the young man before shunpo'ing next to him to deliver a quick swing of his blade, just barely missing the boy who jumped backward from instinct.
The boy lowered his head, allowing a grin to crawl across his face. "I'm not gonna lie...just about none of this is making any sense to me, though I guess I should have expected this. But there is one thing I know..." He said raising his right arm gathering his power around it, "And that's how to fight! I've come this far to get past this barrier, if beating it is all I have to do then I'm home free!"
Ishiro's teasing grin dropped into a scowl at the boy's words. "Who gave you the right to be so confident? You don't know a damn thing, do you?" With that he flashed again in front of Clyde and swung his blade down upon the boy who again dodged the blow. Ishiro continued to swing at the young man, his strikes getting harder and harder to predict for Clyde with each passing second, before he knew it he had a handful of cuts across his body until a powerful kick sent him flying across the void for some distance.
"Damn...what is a shinigami doing in my head anyway?" Clyde spat out as he stood back up and steadied himself out to ready for the next attack. It was around this point he was beginning to realize how useless the power of manipulation was inside an empty void.
"Shinigami? I lost that job a long time ago." He echoed out from behind Clyde suddenly, cutting across his back with ease before he shunpo'd to his front. Grabbing him with his free arm and leaping upward with the boy. "How about I enlighten you. You see...I didn't always look like this, " He began to explain as he carried the injured young man, "I was a shinigami who had every intention of ending the question of how to defeat the onigami in the war once and for all...the philosophers stone was my answer." His threw Clyde up from his grasp and swung at his stomach, the boy barely able to use his reflex's to escape the attack. "So I made a team and went to find it. To the vast desert I went, Hueco Mundo. Tell me when this starts sounding familar!" He yelled out as he shunpo'd again, delivering a series of kicks to the human before launching him in another direction.
"To make a long story short, too late I know, my team was all but decimated and died there. The permanent kind of death too. I still was able to claim the prize, the knowledge of how to make a philosophers stone...but it was for naught!" Clyde yelled out in pain as Ishiro's sword dug into his shoulder. "The war was over, none of it mattered anymore! My people died for the shinigami but we were forgotten, like tears in the rain." The man stayed floating in the air as Clyde collapsed down next to the Philosophers Stone.
"He ran away from Soul Society and came to the human realm, intent on creating me...so his friends would not die in vain. The knowledge was deemed forbidden when they realized that a human's body and soul was needed to create the weapon." The bright light continued the story emotionlessly all the while Clyde tried to push through his injuries and get back in the fight. By know things were becoming more clear. This "Ishiro" was a part of Clyde's power as much as the bright light was, somehow he seemed to have the bulk of Clyde's own strength making it nearly impossible for the boy to fight back.
"Who's telling the story here, night-light?" Ishiro interrupted, pointing the sword down at the human boy once more. "Let's stop beating around the bush and just get to the point. Ishiro the shinigami, going mad from his experiences, found a suitable human to create the philosopher stone and went through with creation, with some help from those alchemists I might add. "Ishiro" sacrificed his body and reiatsu to this human-philosopher stone, another ingredient in the recipe as it were. Slowly, his power worked as a barrier or sorts to prevent you from gaining your power without at first earning it. That's where I come in, I'm the Ishiro that this mind created." He laughed a bit at this point, "Do you get it yet? The bulk of your memories came from my noggin', not yours. You were a Tabula rasa, a blank slate."
Standing completely up again, the boy lifted his head up at Ishiro. Was this the truth? Somehow, it felt like it was. It fit with the boy's own amnesia, if he never had any memories to begin with it would make sense. The reason no one seemed to recognize him here, the reason he had only known about his power through instinct. It was like the shinigami said, he was both a human and a shell. A conscience created by the philosopher stone so that it could make decisions on its own. It was the body, he was the mind. It was both enlightening and scary all at once. This was the truth he had been seeking, and now he was finally beginning to get an idea of what actually happened. Ishiro, having gotten help from the alchemists allied with Drsytan, created the philosophers stone using the knowledge he found in Hueco Mundo. At the cost of his own life, Clyde was born...he was the philosopher's stone.
"The name too..." Ishiro spoke up more melancholy this time, noticing that Clyde was digesting this revelation as best as he could. "It came from my zanpakuto." Bringing his left hand to the katana, he flicked it, causing it to glow and change shape. When the shape settled, it resembled a spear. It looked just like the ones Clyde always made, but solid...it looked as if it were made from blood red crystal-like material. "Clyde-no-Okami."
~~~
One week had past for Drsytan since Clyde had entered this trance. It was obvious the boy was alive, his appearance was beginning to change but his reiatsu remained strong. His hair was growing longer in the back, he even seemed a bit taller than before, and his clothing had new tears in it reflecting where he had been injured in his mind. Something began to stir this day, however, his reiatsu "bubble" had shrunk down, getting closer to his body. The gray reiatsu was visible now around the human. But what was most interesting was a different color reiatsu, this one red, that escaped the boy's arm. Clyde was on the cusp of a new power.
~~~
"Ooof~!" the blonde haired boy grunted out in pain as he rolled across the "floor" of the void-like area. Ishiro had continued to pound on the human for a long time it felt like for Clyde. Despite the hours of getting his ass kicked though, he kept getting up, ready to defend himself. Even against his own mind, he had the tenacity to keep fighting regardless of the odds.
"You really are a stubborn ass mule, you know that? If you were ready for this power I would have given it to by know, I wouldn't need to exist." Ishiro spat at the "ground" as he spun the spear casually in his right hand, taking calculated steps forward to the boy, who just stared back with his arms put up defensively. "You've stopped talking I noticed. ...Was what I said too much for you to understand? Or are you realizing you're not as ready and well informed as you thought you were?" The shinigami asked, annoyed. Clyde could barely move though, it was obvious this fight was over. "Where did I go wrong with you...Did I pick too soft of a human? Your stubborn, no doubt about it, but damn it you are one naive little kid, you think you can save everyone? I'm putting an end to this." Ishiro at that moment charged forward, aiming to finish the fight in one last blow.
Clyde braced himself as the Philosophers Stone spoke once more. "I seek to only have purpose, Clyde, it is why you exist in my place. Why I listen to you." The white light spoke to heavily breathing human. "I care not for what our goal is so long as you believe in it. Ishiro holds back much of my power but I am still yours to use. To what end would you use me?" It posed to the boy, expecting an answer before he was skewered.
Once again, things seemed to move in slow motion to the gray eyed boy. The bright light had asked him a question he had asked himself so many times before...and suddenly things seemed so much clearer. His past had never really mattered, what mattered was what he did in the present. What was he trying to accomplish? Did he want to be the hero? To change everything? Maybe not. He remembered what matter most to him, what has always mattered most to him. It was his allies, his friends. It was Jake, Miwa, and Zakura. It was Kimiko, Ryoko, and Drystan. It was Hasaki Ryu, Fi and Autumn. It was their future he had cared about the most, not his own. It was why he was here, so that he could have the power to ensure their future, the knowledge to give them so that they could lead on. For once, Clyde had an answer of his own.
"My goal...is to allow us to keep moving forward, my friends, and myself." At this, the philosopher stone smiled in approval and disappeared into a flash of red reiatsu which entered into Clyde's right arm. "I will be their guide, their knowledge, their philosopher!" He announced to Ishiro as to red tendrils of reiatsu escaped his arm and maneuvered at incredible speeds towards the metaphysical shinigami. Upon contact with his Zanpakuto, the reiatsu used Hou-renkinjutsu on it and changed it to ash until it continued forward, piercing Ishiro's chest. "I won't...run away. Running never solved anything."
"..." The spirit seemed unharmed, his eyes lowered somberly. "Congratulations, Clyde. Guess you said the magic words to get that light to help you out. ...Truth is we're both just parts of you, remnants of the events leading to your creation. Of us...you're the one who matters. Take our power, change the future or whatever it is you plan to do with it, I can't hold you back from it anymore." The shinigami's body was slowly dispersing into gray reiatsu which was flowing into Clyde as he spoke with melancholy. "Excuse a bitter old man for what he did to you. The real you was an innocent bystander, and I took his future away. You deserved better, honestly, but I had just lost all hope by that point. I stopped caring. Make sure that doesn't happen to you. ...Well, anyway, we won't be meeting again, it's all yours now. Good luck." And with those parting words the area began to fill with the red light that shined from Clyde's arm, waking him from his trance.
~~~
Drystan would be pushed back into the wall of the building as fiery red Reiatsu escaped Clyde's arm. The human boy's shirt was almost completely eradicated, it was not like Drsytans clothing which was made to react to this energy. When the reiatsu finally died down, an exhausted Clyde was seen standing from where he once sat for nearly a week, his body drenched in sweat and blood from open wounds. His head turned to the alchemist, and a grin crawled across his face. He gave his friend a thumbs up before collapsing to his knees, catching his breath. He looked pale and very thirsty, his breathing even sounded dry, but he remained conscious despite this.
