Back to the Present

(F/N)'s POV

By the time (F/N) and Ryuken were done reminiscing about the past, their food delivery came and the entire group ate before continuing to work on translating Daichi's research.

At this point, the group were finally finding some more interesting discoveries. (F/N) found a diary study that spoke a lot more on more rare and ancient Quincy techniques, or rather, Daichi's first discovery of some of the techniques.

(F/N) read one of the entries detailing (F/N)'s first discovery of said techniques.

April 2nd,19XX

Entry #7

After searching through what was left of the (L/N)'s property, I came across some interesting letters that suggest that there are some techniques that have been lost to time due to the extermination of the Quincies. Though I believe I can recover some of them if I'm fast enough. Perhaps I should visit Soken and bring it to his attention. He perhaps knows what they are or someone who does know.

April 9th, 19XX

Entry #8

Me and Soken haven't spoken in quite some time, so it was a surprise to hear that he was "invited" by other Quincies to push the progression of the power of the Quincies. Though he originally accepted, he quickly grew to dislike their methods and was exiled. Soken told me that they called themselves the "Wandenreich" and served under the Quincy King. Though he slumbers, he will awaken soon enough. I must be weary, as after this revelation, it's obvious that it will only be a matter of time before I'm approached as well.

That aside, Soken was able to enlighten me on what these "techniques" are. They aren't used much in recent years, and with our extermination they will fall to obscurity and be lost to time. It would be wise to study them for the worst case scenario.

(F/N) read this in intrigue before turning to Ryuken

(F/N): Hey Ryuken... Do these techniques sound familiar to you...?

Ryuken: Techniques you say? Do they pertain to the use of Ginto?

(F/N): Doesn't seem so... Torment Circle. You guys are into some weird stuff.

Ryuken: Can't say I have... the name translates to Qual Kreis.

(F/N): Qual Kreis, huh? Says here... " Qual Kreis was made to surround the target in question with multiple Heilig Bogen. Theoretically, it sounds like a good way to cut off the escape route of the target."

Isshin: You're saying that technique allows you to summon multiple bows? How would you fire them all simultaneously?

Ryuken: It is most likely a Heilig Bogen that fires itself.

(F/N): Yeah... There's another one. "Disheveled Paradise Puppet".

Isshin: Another disturbing name... What's the description on that one?

(F/N): Let's see here... "The Quincy that uses this technique is able to control their bodies with strings of reishi to control their body, regardless of broken bones, paralysis or any attack or ability that may hinder movement. This technique is best left for desperate measures." The other is called Holy Chant: Sanctuary Veneration.

Ryuken: Kirchenlied: Sankt Zwinger. What description did Daichi give it?

(F/N): It simply says, "The ultimate technique. It serves as both the best offensive and defensive ability that a Quincy can learn."

Isshin: Do you think the Quincies that the Soul Society are facing off against know these techniques?

(F/N): There's a possibility. Especially if Yhwach is awake. He no doubt knows how to use all of them. He could have possibly been the originator of these techniques.

Ryuken: I hate to say this but I'm not aware of any of these. Why did these techniques lose relevance over the years? Were there downsides or were they considered outdated and obsolete by the newer findings?

(F/N): Well, on the bright side, we at least know these abilities exist.

Ryuken: I would say we're finally finding information worthwhile. However, we still have no information on Yhwach himself.

(F/N): Well we still have a few books left. Let's hope we can find and answer in our final stretch.

(Timeskip)

More time had passed and the group was on their final book.

(F/N): Well... we found out as much as we could. This book is the only thing that gets in between us finding an answer or being a waste of time.

Tessai: Then let us begin with haste.

Isshin: Yeah... What language is it in?

(F/N) flipped through the book and noticed something.

(F/N): This book isn't in just one language...

Isshin: What? You mean he wrote it in multiple languages?

(F/N): Yep... Whatever is in this book must be important.

Tessai: How many languages exactly?

(F/N) All four. To be specific, each page rotates between Japanese, English, German and Spanish. Thankfully it's the shortest book here. Doesn't seem too long.

The four adults gathered around the book while Ururu and Jinta looked in confusion. Ururu had everything she translated in an organized pile on a nearby desk. Meanwhile Jinta, while he had every research journal in a stack, wasn't as neat.

Jinta: I don't understand all this sciency stuff... Are we sure there's a way to beat this Quincy guy?

Ururu: You should have more faith in them, Jinta. Mr. Urahara, Yoruichi and Big bro are all fighting to save us. We should do what we can to help them out.

Jinta: But didn't they say this guy can change the future? What can we do against that?

Jinta said as he backed up a bit. However as Jinta walked back, he accidentally bumped into one of the books he had in a stack, causing the book to fall out of its book sleeve. Jinta picked up the book.

Jinta: What the?

Ururu: What's the matter?

Jinta: This book has a bunch of numbers written on the cover. Looks like the sleeve was covering it...

Ururu: Hm?

Ururu walked next to Jinta and took a look and sure enough, the book cover was covered in various numbers. Ururu then noticed that a letter was written next to each row of numbers.

Ururu: What does this all mean? E, G, S, J... Hey, Jinta, do you think every other book has something like this written on the cover?

Jinta: I dunno... It looks like a bunch of nonsense to me... Does any of this even mean anything?

Ururu: Perhaps Mr. (L/N) might know what it means.

Ururu picked up another book and took off the book sleeve. Just like the last book, this one also had numbers inscribed. The numbers were different from the last book while the letters stayed the exact same.

Ururu: It's the same as the previous book. I think this was done deliberately.

Jinta: So if we find out what these numbers are, we'll find what we're looking for?

Ururu: I hope so...

Meanwhile, the adults were working at a rapid pace.

(F/N): It's not a research journal. It's more of a documentation.

Isshin: Of what...

(F/N): A meeting with a Wandenreich member. More specifically a "Sternritter".

Tessai: What does the first page say?

(F/N) read the english text.

It was only a matter of time until they caught up with me. As suspected. A Quincy, young in appearance, approached me to recruit me to serve under the Quincy King.

Jugram Haschwalth was his name.

Despite his appearance, it was quite clear he was much older than myself. This Haschwalth fellow claimed he was second in command of the "Sternritters" and the right hand of the Quincy King. I took this chance to gather what I could about the rumored King but Haschwalth was tight lipped. However, I did manage to find two crucial pieces of information from him. The Quincy King's goals and The Quincy King's ability..

...

(F/N) turned to the next page. The second page was written in spanish.

(F/N): Tessai, can you translate this page?

Tessai: Of course.

With a few minutes of trying to get an accurate translation, Tessai read the page.

Yhwach, "The Quincy King", plans to overthrow the Soul King and merge the three realms.

Tension in the room raised.

(F/N): So this fight is way beyond getting revenge on the Shinigamis.

Isshin: What does he get out of fusing the three realms?

Ryken: Let's keep reading to find out.

Tessai continued reading.

I have my thoughts on the Soul King that I wish to look into further. However, that might take a lot more effort as gaining this information resulted in a battle with Haschwalth that left me paraplegic. Perhaps in my prime I would've left in better condition but that isn't the case.

While The Soul King is an enigma, rumor has it that he's the being who created the three realms. If Yhwach is trying to overthrow him, then that means that Yhwach believes his existence isn't needed anymore. Or he may be scared of him. If the latter is true then it seems that Yhwach is actually more vulnerable than I thought.

I have a few theories on what his weakness may be but I don't think I should mention them here, or to anyone for that matter. Who knows if Haschwalth or another Sternritter will return and find this. For now, I can't have anyone know of the real reason for my inability to walk. I still don't have a clue what kind of organization the Wandenreich is. Who knows if they're the type to silence anyone who is alert of their existence.

(F/N) stared at the last paragraph intently. His father's sudden decline in health wasn't what he thought it was. Of course it wasn't.

(F/N): He said it was a tumor... But he really got it in battle.

Ryuken: To fight someone claimed to be the right hand man of the Quincy King and survive is quite the miracle.

Tessai turned the page and passed the book to Ryuken.

Tessai: It's in German so it's up to you, Mr. Ishida.

Ryuken took the book and read the page.

In the case that I'm captured, I've placed a failsafe into myself to prevent Yhwach and the members of the Wandenreich from finding out what I've theorized in the case that I'm correct. It comes with obvious downsides but I believe it will be worth it in the end. I made sure that there was only one way to lift the failsafe I had in mind.

But before I end my research and documentation on the various supernatural races, I must express that Yhwach's ability is called the Almighty and must not be taken lightly. The Almighty allows Yhwach to see and alter the future. I can't speak anymore on this subject. Anymore and I may cause more problems for myself.

And with that, the documentation came to an abrupt end.

The four adults looked at each other in confusion.

Isshin: Daichi (L/N) was ahead of the curb. But something's strange about this last book.

Ryuken: It's almost as if he knew how to counter Yhwach's ability. Unfortunately his fear of the consequences that came from giving away that information prevented him from doing so.

...

...

(F/N): Perhaps he did give us the answer.

Tessai: What do you mean?

(F/N): Why would he go out of his way to tell us he had an idea on Yhwach's weakness and then keep quiet? If he was scared of the consequences he would have simply not mentioned it at all and kept it to himself. Why would the old man go through the effort of putting a failsafe on himself to prevent the information from being leaked if he was just going to alert the enemy that he knew the weakness of their leader?

Ryuken: So you're saying that he's taking a gamble to tell us that he left the answer while simultaneously throwing off the Wandenreich by giving them a false sense of security?

(F/N): Exactly. It sounds like something the old man would do. He may not look it but he likes to mess with people's heads with these games.

Isshin: So where did he leave the answer exactly?

"Maybe this will help."

Ururu walked up to (F/N), handing him the book with the inscribed numbers on the cover.

(F/N): What is this?

Ururu: This was the first book in the collection. Jinta accidently took off the book sleeve. We looked through a few and they all had these numbers written on it.

Jinta: It also has letters written next to a few of the numbers...

(F/N): And you said all the books you saw had these?

Ururu: That's right.

(F/N) looked at the book for a bit before his eyes widened.

(F/N): Jinta, remove the book sleeves from the rest of the books and bring them to the table. Ururu, I'll need you to follow my instructions carefully.

Ururu and Jinta looked at each other in confusion but decided to follow (F/N)'s instructions regardless.

Tessai: Did you find something out?

(F/N): Yeah. That father of mine... He knew I would've been one of the few people to understand what this means.

Ryuken: What exactly is it?

(F/N): It's a book cipher. And thankfully we've completed most of the steps already.

Isshin: I've heard of it before but I'm not too versed in things like this...

(F/N): In short, a book cipher is a method used to encode a message. In this case, the old man encoded the secret of how to defeat Yhwach in this book cipher. The last message in that book was his way of disguising his true intention. If the Wandenreich got ahold of these books, they'd simply think he was withholding information from his own allies.

Tessai: You said we completed most of the steps, correct? Would did you mean by that?

(F/N): The letters written on this book cover. E, S, G, and J... They're the first letter in English, Spanish, German, and Japanese respectively. All of these books were in those languages. However, for us to accurately understand the message of the cipher, we needed to translate them all into one language, which was our original goal in the first place. The numbers next to the letters represent how to decipher the message after we translate the book in that respective language.

Ryuken: And because we decided to unanimously translate everything in Japanese, we'll be following any of the numbers written next to the letter J.

(F/N): That's right.

Isshin: So how exactly do you translate this into words?

(F/N): Book ciphers follow a pattern of being a group of numbers. The first number would represent the page number we turned to. The second number represents the paragraph number and the rest of the numbers would present the letters found in that paragraph. I'll give you an example. If the 3 numbers are 7, 8 and 9, then we'd turn to the seventh page, look for the 8th paragraph and then find the ninth letter on that paragraph.

Isshin: Well isn't that a convoluted way to hide a message. But I get the gist of it.

(F/N): Yeah, and it's more impressive that he spread the key among multiple books. In order for this to work, you would need the same or identical book. But because these are books written by the Old Man himself, there are no other copies. If we lost these, we'd have to kiss our asses goodbye.

Tessai: Do you think your father knew that you would be the one to figure this out.

(F/N): He made it as hard as possible to find out for any outsider to even think of this as a possibility. He went through the trouble of doing this because he probably knew I would be the only one to understand his line of thinking. This message was for my eyes only. Once I learned, I'd be the one to spread it to the people I knew were capable of taking on Yhwach.

Ryuken: Then let's not waste anymore time.

(Timeskip)

Though it took the group a few minutes, they finally got the message...

"Yhwach's precongition is rendered useless to both the Soul King and the negative effects of Still Silver made by Auswählen."

Isshin: No way...

(F/N): We were on the right track. We have the Still Silver.

Ryuken: But we're still facing the same problem. How do we stop him from perceiving the arrow?

(F/N): The answer's right there. We simply give the arrow the same power as the Soul King.

Isshin: Hold on a second, what do you mean by that?

(F/N): The old man said he had his thoughts on the Soul King. Despite having almost no point of reference, he went through the effort to "research" him. What I'm getting at is that this entire research that we've been reading through was Pops' way of researching the Soul King.

Isshin: You're saying that gathering a piece of every spiritual race would result in creating a small portion of the Soul King's power.

(F/N): Exactly. So the Still Silver from the arrow will temporarily shut off the Almighty, while it goes undetected due to the energy of this Pseudo Soul King weapon that we're making.

Ryuken: I'll admit, this is a brilliant idea.

(F/N): I'd like to say that this is a result of my expert detective skill but that would mean discrediting the old man for his efforts to give us these hints.

Ryuken: We're still down two races, however...

Tessai: You're right. We have a Shinigami, Quincy, and Fullbringer. The only two remaining are-

(F/N): A Human and a Hollow.

Isshin: We can always ask for assistance in Hueco Mundo but finding a Human that isn't a Quincy or Fullbringer with spiritual awareness will be difficult...

(F/N): Not really...

Isshin: Huh?

(F/N): Isshin, think about it. We have daughters... And we have Ichigo and (F/N)'s friends. They're all spiritually aware. We just have to find a way to transfer their reishi to the bow.

Isshin: You're right. Tessai, is it possible to tweak what you did to returned Ichigo's Shinigami powers and apply that to the bow?

Tessai: Of course.

(F/N): Then we have our gameplan. Let's get to work everyone.

To be continued.

...

...

At the Royal Palace.

A pillar of reishi shot through the sky, breaking the floors of the Royal Palace entrance Hallway. Stepping down was Yhwach, with Uryu and Haschwalth at his side.

Yhwach: I see... So this is the Royal Palace.

Haschwalth: I feel your pain, Your Majesty.

Yhwach: What are you talking about, Haschwalth? I'm not feeling a shred of emotion from looking at this decaying grave.

Haschwalth: My apologies.

Yhwach: Let's go. We will end this world full of deceit and create a new world of true peace... with our own hands.

Haschwalth then raised his hand, as a shadow crawled up his hand and shot into the air. Many Soldats fell from the sky before finally, a coffin fell directly next to Haschwalth.

Yhwach: We won't be needing him quite yet, Haschwalth. Not until (Y/N) and Ichigo arrives.

Haschwalth: Understood, your Majesty.

Haschwalth returned the coffin into the shadows as Yhwach then looked down the entrance of the Royal Palace and spotted Senjumaru with foot soldiers of her own, ready to attack.

A lot to unpact here.

First of all the title "For Your Eyes Only" was meant to represent Daichi's way of giving (F/N) the answer of defeating Yhwach without alerting Yhwach or his army. The encoded message from the book cipher was essentially "For (F/N)'s eyes only".

That's also why the second title for this chapter is called "A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma". The meaning of the idiom meaning "That which is so dense and secretive as to be totally indecipherable or impossible to foretell."

The message was intended to be locked away by a multitude of different steps. Having all of Daichi's research materials and documentations, being able to learn multiple languages, and knowing how to decode book ciphers. I doubt most people know what a book cipher is or would know if they were looking at a key for a book cipher. It's why it was a perfect way for (F/N) himself to uncover what his father was trying to tell him. It wasn't (F/N) academic or scientific intelligence that allowed him to discover the message, but his investigation and deduction skills alongside being one of the few people who knew how Daichi's way of thinking is. I don't think any normal person what know to go through those exact same steps by simply taking one look.

As you can guess, that's why Yhwach opted to take Daichi's corpse instead of finding where his research was hidden. I think its obvious what Yhwach is planning but for those who haven't caught on yet, I'll keep my mouth shut for now.

Also a small little tidbit that I thought was pretty cool is how the more (F/N) talked about Daichi, he stopped referring to him as "Old Man" and called him "Dad" or "Pops", almost as if he finally broke his old habit from all the way back in his teenage years.

For my final point, there will be spoilers for the end of the bleach manga so if you havent read it, I'd advise you not read this last part.

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So if you've read the entire Bleach manga you'd know by now that (F/N), Ryuken and everyone else is essentially creating the Still Silver arrow that eventually turned off Yhwaach's Almighty and allowed Ichigo to take out Yhwach. However due to Kubo's health, he had to cut alot of things out during the manga's original run which includes a lot of foreshadowing of the arrow's creation. This made the arrow feel like an asspull and it also brings up a lot of questions like "How did Yhwach not see the arrow coming with his Almighty?" Sure it makes sense that Yhwach would be affected by the Still Silver but he can just alter the future so that he dodges the arrow.

So in this story I found a workaround (maybe not the best but still works)by making Still Silver arrow composed of Spiritual energy of every race in the series. That way it's almost like a transcendent weapon. However it's only good for one use. The arrow doesn't produce it's own energy so it's "transcendence" won't last forever. Once it hits it's target, that's it. It loses that power. However being transcendent means it can't be perceived by Yhwach's Almighty, similar to Mimihagi.

Like a said before, if you read the manga then this isn't a spoiler, I just didn't want the Still Silver arrow to feel like a plot device like the original.

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That's it for me.