Portals.

“Okay, master, please touch that wall over there with your right gauntlet.” I did as I was told, “Now concentrate your spiritual energy on that spot.”

Suddenly a black frame appeared on the wall, it was a rectangle in shape and with some concentration I could change the size and ratio of the sides. “Great now use the other gauntlet and touch anywhere else and do the same.” I walked over to another piece of the wall and did the same.

Suddenly that wall became see through. No, that was wrong, if I looked slightly to the side I could see Soifon currently looking downwards. If I didn’t know better I had assumed she was checking my lower goods.

“Now take a step forward.” That was unusual, after all there should be wall there but Merc didn’t fail me so far so I took the step.

Suddenly I found myself back in front of the first piece of wall. I started to softly massage my tempels, this would be a headache. “So, I can create portals between two location?” I asked, “That is correct.”

“What are the limitations?” Soifon asked and stepped towards the nearby portal. Seeing her stretching her hand out and it reappearing out of another part of the wall only increased the pain in my head.

“You should learn to think with portals.” Merc said commenting on my headache. “Soldier, I asked you a question.” Soifon said aggressively and stared at the gauntlets.

“Yes, of course. There can only be one pair of portals at any given time, the distance between the two is of no concern, however you can’t make portals between dimension and living beings can’t cross them as you would need to be made out of spiritual particles to walk through.”

That was easy enough and Soifon seemed pleased by my abilities. “That’s pretty handy, especially because of what I want you to do in the future.”

Now there was one more concern though. I looked down at my gauntlets. “How I actually kill things with these?” I asked Merc. “Gauntlets can’t cut and learning kido as my primary battle technique would take years, my Hakudo is also not good enough to deal with stronger opponents. I need a weapon of some description.”

Merc laughed in what I assumed was supposed to sound dramatic but really sounded more condescending. "You see, master, all you have to do is put your hands together, imagine a weapon and it will appear. I do warn you however you are stuck with the weapon you summon for a week.”

But I would have a weapon I thought to myself. I pressed the palms of my hands together and thought about Merc’s sealed form. As I distanced my hands from each other again the blade materialized between them.

Now granted it was no perfect copy, it was slightly see through and had glowing blue outline, but it was a sword nevertheless.

“That is enough for now.” Soifon said and stepped away from the portal. “You can release your Shikai now, we have other matters to attend to.”

“Yes, captain.” I said and sealed Merc, leading to quick disappearance of the portals and the materialized weapon. Instead I found myself with the blade I was used to, which I quickly sheathed.

Soifon turned to me, “You can call me by my name when we are in private, as a seat you have that privilege, especially as one who secured himself a date with me.”

My heart jumped a little. “Of course, Soifon.”

“I will leave the details to you, but I don’t think you have time to plan it anytime soon.” That didn’t sound good. “What do you mean?”

Soifon smiled at me, her eyes burning with satisfaction. “I still got you in training for another twenty days, you will take up the duties as third seat, take over the portion of Omaeda’s paperwork I have been doing for the last hundred years and generally get worked to the bone so I will finally have some time to relax.”

My eyes widened in shock about several things, first there was the amount of work I needed to do, then the fact that Omaeda was a lazy shithead, no wait that was expected actually, and lastly the position she had just mentioned.

“SECOND seat, Soifon?” I asked in disbelief. “I wanted to give you that position because it comes with being leader of the Imprisonment unit, but if you manage to put that Shikai to good use you might actually be stronger than most of the other seats, Congratulations you just went from a great soldier to the third highest position in the Gotei 2.”