An Arcanist in Karakura Town 59 (Patreon)

An Arcanist in Karakura Town

Chapter 59

-VB-

“Alan.”

I stopped rewiring my latest bomb and spun my chair around.

“Hime! What’s up, love?” I asked her with the levity of a man who knew his struggles were coming to an end. 

Orihime looked at me with a frown, and I couldn’t help but think that she should be smiling more. I didn’t like how she was frowning. She wasn’t here and I knew that Tatsuki was out, which probably meant that Hidemasa, my Servant Qin Shi Huang, was probably watching the kids. 

Who knew that the emperor was good with kids? History definitely didn’t suggest that. 

“What is it?” I asked more seriously to match her mood. 

“Is it … right?”

I blinked. “What is right?”

“Your plan.”

I stared at her before nodding. “I think so.”

“Can you explain to me?” she asked as she came down and sat next to me. “It just seems like you’re going to be hurting a lot of people.”

I nodded. “It probably will.”

She frowned. “But…?”

I leaned back just a little. “While it’ll no longer be the case in Karakura Town, hollows and shinigamis hurt people. Not everyday, of course, but they hurt a lot more people than I will. Hollows will hunt their living families and loves and then continue to hunt other souls and people to satiate themselves by their very nature. Shinigamis, by their very existence, cause damages to nearby human souls that are weaker than them. Their fights with hollows often cause collateral damage, which may or may not include lives. If I hadn’t established such a powerful defensive barrier with Hide, then the collateral damage would have leveled the neighborhood at the very least. Taken off the city off the map at the worst. Actually, the worst would be seeing you, Tatsuki, and our children hurt,” I amended with a frown. “But my point stands. As they are right now, the spiritual side of this world is wholly unconcerned with living people beyond the bare minimum. To them, those without power are ultimately irrelevant.”

She looked down at her hands. 

“Would … I have been irrelevant if I didn’t have some sort of power of my own?”

I blinked. “No? If you don’t remember, I seduced you before you got your own unique power.”

She blushed prettily. 

I couldn’t help what I did next. I leaned toward her, gently brought her face up, and kissed. She kissed me back with her eyes close. Our kiss ended not too long after. 

She looked at me in the eyes and seemed to be searching for something before nodding. “Okay,” she said. “But family first. Always, alright?”

“Family first always,” I replied sincerely. 

-VB-

Urahara Kisuke stared at his wallscreens that was connected to sensors and computers keeping a close eye out on the local magician. 

His stunt had momentarily stunned all of the factions, old and new, into immobility. 

And why wouldn’t it? Whatever was on the other side of that portal had been … horrifying. 

The thought that he could do it again, this time more permanently and in their own realms, stopped anyone from attacking the magician right now. 

So everyone was slowly gathering information because they wanted to know what the magician’s triggers were and how to best avoid it even as they skirmished with each other. 

The local onmyouji were equally horrified but they somehow trusted the magician to not cause a catastrophe on the level of a world apocalypse despite the evidence suggesting otherwise. The mage association of the west, on the other hand, were skeptical that Marris had been the one responsible. To them, fighting hollows by itself was amazing and beyond their capability. Someone opening a portal to a realm no one has ever heard of before? That was a stretch too far for them to believe. 

As far as Kisuke was concerned, those European isolationists just didn’t care enough because they weren’t in the immediate vicinity of whatever fallout Marris was going to get involved in. It’s why they refused to help Marris in the first place.

It was amusing how the European magicials and mortals were so different. While the mortals were doing so much to connect with each other, the magical clans, houses, and lineages did their absolute best to do the opposite between each other and with outsiders. 

‘And that’s why everyone tolerates them,’ Kisuke hummed. 

Because unlike the other pantheons, gods, quincies, hollows, and shinigamis, those European magicians were like frogs in a well. Content, happy, and all too ready to believe that their world started with and ended with Europe. 

But would it remain that way once Marris has his way? 

Urahara thought of Marris as a more … unstable and aggressive version of himself and Aizen. Capable of creating devices and systems that no one else would think of but unlike them, he was all too ready to use them at any sign of hostility. He had neither the patience or the meticulousness to plan like he and Aizen would. 

So what would he do if he was someone who wouldn’t plan, didn’t have the patience, but had the means to cause untold damage to the world with a personality to match that destruction? What would he do in retaliation for the constantly bothering him? When he had access to other worlds beyond his comprehension?

Start an apocalypse.

And he would bet his liver that he was close. 

The problem with this was that he didn’t have the evidence to warrant attacking Marris, who’s been … neutral so far with shinigamis. He wasn’t looking to fabricate one either. Doing so might just trigger whatever latest horror the magician had in store. 

So all he could do right now was observe Marris’s warehouse-fortress while working on his own countermeasures. 

He just hoped that his countermeasures would work as intended and not cause a chaotic mess.