"Sawada Tsunayoshi, forgive me for being blunt, but there's no need for you to continue down the path of the Quincy. On this road, you have absolutely no talent!"
Ryūken said it outright.
"Father, but Tsuna already condensed the outline of a spirit bow, didn't he?" Uryū protested. "As long as we kill a Hollow, we'll be recognized as Quincy. How can you say that?"
After spending this time with Tsuna, Uryū had already learned that those monsters were called Hollows.
Ryūken pressed a hand to his forehead, forcibly suppressing the twitching veins there. Since Kanae had been struck by Auswählen, his expression had once again reached the brink of collapse.
"You call something that small the outline of a spirit bow?!"
Ryūken pointed accusingly at the object in Tsuna's palm.
Lying quietly there was a tiny spirit bow no bigger than the palm of his hand. At that size, it was little more than a toy. Let alone firing arrows with it, Ryūken seriously doubted whether Tsuna's spirit arrows could even be nocked onto it properly.
Tsuna himself was confused.
During this entire period of training, everything had gone smoothly. The only problem had appeared right now. Compared to the spirit arrows he could form—each one as long as his arm—this palm-sized bow was like hitching a heavy cart to a tiny pony. It was practically useless for actual archery.
"Tsuna's only condensing it for the first time! If he keeps trying, the spirit bow will definitely get bigger!" Uryū argued in Tsuna's defense. "When Father first formed one, did you produce a finished longbow right away?"
At that, a trace of pride appeared on Ryūken's face.
"I already told you—I simply wasn't interested. As for the two of you, you just lack talent."
Without even using a Quincy Cross, Ryūken casually manipulated Reishi and condensed a longbow that Uryū could only look up to in admiration. The bow then dissolved back into spirit particles, leaving Uryū staring with unmistakable envy.
"Under normal circumstances, Quincy rarely rely on bows formed purely from raw Reishi. More often, this spirit bow outline serves as the prototype for crafting one's own personal bow. A bow made that way condenses faster and is somewhat stronger as well."
"Uryū, once you get back, you'll need to start learning how to craft your own spirit bow. Otherwise, after firing three arrows, you'll be left without any combat ability."
"And as for you, Tsuna…" Ryūken stared at the tiny spirit bow in Tsuna's palm and summarized coolly, "to be honest, I don't believe your spirit bow has any value worth developing. Even if you turned it into something like a hand-crossbow, it still wouldn't be able to support your spirit arrows. And if you shrink the arrows to fit, the whole thing becomes nothing more than a toy."
Ryūken truly couldn't understand it.
Tsuna had performed excellently in all his Reishi control training, and had even mastered Hirenkyaku. Yet in the end, he had produced this kind of spirit bow.
Ryūken honestly didn't know whether to classify Tsuna's training as a success or a failure.
"Maybe I really just don't have the talent," Tsuna said easily. "I'll keep practicing in the future."
Tsuna himself was taking it well.
During his training, the Quincy section on his status panel had finally changed—but not in the way he expected.
After the long blacked-out portion, two new entries had appeared:
[Heilig Pfeil]
[Hirenkyaku]
But unlike when he trained Fullbring, the censored-out sections themselves had not been revealed.
Tsuna felt he simply had not yet found the power that truly belonged to him as a Quincy. That was why the blocked-out entries had not appeared.
And there were only so many types of Quincy abilities to begin with.
On top of that, the skills he had learned directly from Ryūken had appeared as new additions.
That made Tsuna realize what the blacked-out sections probably were.
Schrift. Vollständig.
Just like Fullbring, these were powers unique to each individual. Shared abilities such as Heilig Pfeil and Hirenkyaku naturally did not count as unique traits on the panel.
Once he understood that, Tsuna stopped feeling discouraged about the size of his spirit bow.
After all, for those Quincy who used Vollständig, Heilig Pfeil was only one means of combat among many.
As long as his Schrift and Vollständig were strong enough, that was what truly mattered.
"You've already learned Heilig Pfeil and Hirenkyaku," Ryūken said after thinking it over. "What remains on the Quincy side is learning how to create and use various Quincy tools. Given the limited size of your spirit bow, I don't think there's much point in pushing further outward along this path."
"For now, you can stop your Quincy training here. Kisuke Urahara may be a new option for you."
The moment he heard that, Uryū grew anxious.
Because of Tsuna's presence, Ryūken had actually started speaking to him more often. If Tsuna left, wouldn't things between him and his father return to the old cold, distant state?
Before Uryū could say anything, however, everyone suddenly felt an unfamiliar spiritual pressure appear somewhere in Karakura Town.
Tsuna and Ryūken exchanged a glance and immediately recognized it—
a Hollow.
After a brief moment of thought, Uryū understood as well. He looked at Ryūken with excitement.
"Is it a Hollow? Can I go?"
He was still fixated on the idea that once he killed a Hollow, he would finally earn the title of a true Quincy.
"Go ahead," Ryūken said calmly.
Uryū had only just condensed his spirit bow and was currently intoxicated by his own excitement. Letting him clash with a Hollow and get a bucket of cold water thrown on him wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
With Ryūken's permission, Uryū excitedly rushed off in the direction of the Hollow's spiritual pressure using Hirenkyaku.
His Hirenkyaku, however, was still unrefined. He looked wobbly and unsteady, as though he might trip out of the air at any moment.
"Uncle, you're really just letting Uryū go like that?" Tsuna asked.
Having spent all this time exterminating Hollows himself, Tsuna knew perfectly well how dangerous they were. Uryū had only just begun to grasp Quincy power. It would not be easy for him to deal with even a single Hollow.
"Isn't that why you're here?" Ryūken replied. "And I'll be watching from behind as well."
Blue Reishi light had already begun to glow beneath his feet. As a father, there was no way he would truly let Uryū face a Hollow alone.
Tsuna likewise used Hirenkyaku, trailing behind Uryū alongside Ryūken at a distance.
As the two moved side by side, Tsuna answered Ryūken's earlier suggestion.
"Uncle, I'll put the Quincy training on hold for now. But don't you stop moving forward, either. Make sure you study every single text your old man left behind."
"If you want to read them, those materials are open to you too," Ryūken said.
"I'll pass," Tsuna said helplessly. "When it comes to studying from books, I really don't have much talent."
He wasn't exaggerating.
Between daily training and hunting Hollows, Tsuna practically spent all of his school hours sleeping through class. His grades were, unsurprisingly, terrible.
"I'll speed up the work on the Still Silver," Ryūken said.
During this time, Ryūken had already dissected all the dead mixed-blood Quincy he could find and extracted every last trace of Still Silver from their bodies.
But he still had not figured out how to forge that Still Silver into a weapon.
"It's not just the Still Silver," Tsuna said. "Shopkeeper Urahara mentioned that Soul Reapers can bring out their unique individual powers, right? Quincy have that too—the power to manifest each person's hidden, unique ability."
"The Quincy equivalent to a Soul Reaper's Zanpakutō is called a Schrift. And above that, there's another ability called Vollständig."
"Your old man, while he was still alive, was already researching the Vollständig of the Quincy in the World of the Living."
"The Sanrei Glove is a byproduct of that research. By using it, a Quincy can forcibly enter a form of Sklaverei, turning the surrounding Reishi into slaves and forcing it onto their body, achieving a temporary Vollständig-like state and gaining power comparable to a Bankai."
"But that form of Vollständig is incomplete. At best, it can only be called a half-Vollständig state. Unfortunately, your old man died before he could finish the research."
Tsuna shared what he knew of Vollständig with Ryūken.
If Ryūken could bring forth Vollständig earlier, then their side's strength could take another major step forward.
Ryūken halted midair and looked at Tsuna.
Even he, as Sōken Ishida's own son, did not know all of this.
Yet Tsuna was freely sharing it with him, detail by detail.
At that moment, Ryūken finally understood why the Kurosaki family trusted this boy so much.
"Will the outcome be a good one?" Ryūken asked.
"I'll do my best," Tsuna replied with a warm smile.
Once he had decided to change things, then he would do everything he could to stop the coming tragedy and protect the people he cared about.
Having received his answer, Ryūken accelerated again to catch up to Uryū.
The old indifference he had once felt toward Quincy powers was gradually changing.
Tsuna had saved Kanae.
Ryūken, in turn, would now devote himself fully.
...
As for Uryū, he had already reached the scene of the Hollow.
It was a serpent-like Hollow.
Filled with excitement, Uryū condensed his spirit bow and prepared to finish it off with a handsome midair shot.
The idea was good.
The execution was far too immature.
The moment Uryū unfolded his spirit bow, the long serpent Hollow sensed him. It turned its head and roared in fury.
Uryū, whose Hirenkyaku was still shaky, was knocked straight to the ground by the force of the roar.
He rolled quickly, sprang back up, and drew his bow.
But by then the Hollow had already lunged straight toward him.
Uryū's expression hardened. With confidence, he fired.
The Heilig Pfeil hit the Hollow's body and sank deep into it. The Hollow recoiled in pain, retreating a little.
Uryū pulled the bowstring again and loosed another arrow directly at the Hollow's white mask.
In his mind, this second shot should have shattered the mask outright, completely exterminated the Hollow, and earned him the title of Quincy under the approving gaze of Ryūken.
But unexpectedly—
the arrow, the full-force arrow he had fired with all his might, burst into sparkling Reishi light the instant it struck the mask.
Insufficient talent. Insufficient power.
At once, Uryū remembered Ryūken's cold assessment.
If his talent had been just a little greater, would this arrow have pierced straight through the Hollow's mask?
But there was no more time for such thoughts.
The Hollow had already recovered and charged again.
Uryū frantically tried to draw his bow once more—
only to realize that his bow was already starting to show signs of collapsing.
His spirit bow wasn't finished yet. It was only a prototype.
At his current level, Uryū simply could not sustain repeated fire.
What was he supposed to do?
He froze.
In his excitement, he had never even considered this possibility.
Facing the Hollow's savage charge, Uryū simply stood there, rooted in place, making no move to evade.
Just as the Hollow's enormous maw was about to swallow him—
a spirit arrow tinged with a faint red glow slammed into the Hollow's forehead.
Its mask shattered piece by piece.
And before Uryū's eyes, the Hollow dissolved into Reishi and scattered into the air.
Uryū turned.
There, not far above him, Tsuna stood suspended in the air in exactly the cool, dramatic pose Uryū had imagined for himself—
holding a longbow of red light and white bone, the weapon that had just shot down the Hollow.
Ryūken raised an eyebrow.
No wonder Tsuna hadn't shown the slightest frustration over that palm-sized spirit bow.
The bow Tsuna had just drawn forth could completely replace a Quincy spirit bow in battle.
Combined with Tsuna's already refined Reishi control, his ability to freely form spirit arrows, and his use of Hirenkyaku—
Tsuna could now officially be considered a Quincy.
In fact, this longbow of Tsuna's skipped the Quincy process of crafting a personal spirit bow altogether and reached the final result in one step.
Ryūken nudged his glasses upward.
If he wasn't mistaken…
that bow had also endowed Tsuna's spirit arrows with some special additional power.
What Tsuna had used was, naturally, his Fullbring—G's Bow.
The spirit arrows shot from G's Bow carried the Storm Flame's attribute of decomposition at their tips, which was why the Hollow's mask had not been pierced clean through, but instead cracked apart and collapsed before being destroyed.
"Congratulations, Sawada Tsunayoshi," Ryūken said in the same flat tone as ever. "You are now a Quincy."
He drew out a slender piece of equipment and handed it to Tsuna.
"Seele Schneider. Consider it your graduation gift."
"Thanks, Uncle," Tsuna said solemnly, storing the Seele Schneider away with care.
He had never learned how to craft equipment himself, so if he wanted to use Quincy gear in the future, he would have to rely on Uryū or Ryūken for it.
"I'll give you one more piece of information," Ryūken said.
"Uryū was struck by Auswählen. It was Kanae who chose Uryū and transferred all of his weakened condition onto herself. That may well be the power you call a Schrift."
"…What?"
Tsuna was completely stunned.
That hadn't happened in the manga at all.
Which meant the owner of Schrift A wasn't Ishida Uryū—
it was his mother, Kanae Katagiri?
At the moment of Auswählen, Kanae had switched Uryū's weakened state with her own? And perhaps even transferred her own Schrift A to Uryū along with it?
"Uncle Ryūken… when did you find this out?"
"The day after your first day of Quincy training," Ryūken said. "As Kanae gradually recovered, she told me what she had chosen to do."
He turned away with Uryū.
"Work hard, boy. There's still far too much you don't know."
Ryūken and Uryū departed, leaving Tsuna alone in the wind—
utterly dumbfounded.
[Author's Note]:
[-Some of the context will be AU like the part about kanae transferring the Antithesis to uryu and soken's time of death.]
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