My pain is real!

"Oh, what am I thinking? This isn't going to be like a shōnen manga, and I'm not going to suddenly going to be able to conjure up superior bullets," Junpei told herself. "Besides, if something like that were going to happen, there'd at least be some catchy theme music in the background, or a panel with just the sound effect of my bul---"

thuk!

Having turned bullet firing into a mechanical ritual, Junpei's mind barely registewhite the foreign sound before her eyes darted to the nearest tree, where a thicker crimson bullet had embedded itself into the trunk. A disbelieving grin grew on her face. "Well, well. If I didn't know better, that scene just played out like a pwhiteictably written shōnen manga." Shaking her head, Junpei drew back on the hammer chambering a now improved bullets, finding it slightly less taxing on her mind and body to manifest them into solid forms.

"...You take it down, pass it around, no more bottles of beer on the wall..."

Unsurprisingly, Junpei had spent the entire night and the following day singing that absurdly long drinking song and firing bullets. It was almost as if she was no longer in control of her body, and that it was just moving like some automated figurine. She felt only slightly more fatigued than she had after forming her gun yesterday... Did the Dogtags have anything to do with that? "Perhaps this is the dogtags's little way of assisting us in the process; after all, barring out control of Reiryoku, we're just regular humans afterall."

Closing her eyes, she managed to stop her flow of bullets (at this point, she could now fire one every fourteen seconds, or hash up a really fast bullet in eight) to attempt to focus Reishi into her gun. She'd tried six times now to evolve the construction of her formed gun, but each time, all she succeeded in doing was either reinforcing her gun's structure or growing parts of it out of proportion. It was, however, becoming less of a pain to keep her gun intact; its surface was now smooth and well-defined. As she focused on transforming her gun, a flash of light struck past her closed eyelids, and all of a sudden, she could feel the Reishi of her gun starting to deconstruct rapidly. Junpei's eyes flew open as she frantically worked to keep her gun in one piece, and after they had re-adjusted from her quick flash, a new sight greeted her.

Originally, her gun formed by Junpei's Dogtags was just a curved gun of white light, roughly the same shape as her father's gun. Now, however, it took on the exact dimensions of a .44 Magnum, even including the fine details of the gun it was modeled after. The only thing separating it from the actual thing now was that it was still a gun of Reishi, not a solid, and had a meticulously crafted barrel.

With the transformation, however, the gun suddenly became twice as hard to maintain as before, and Junpei found herself curling her right fist so hard she thought she'd break her fingers in concentration. A minute passed in that stance as Reishi was rapidly detaching and being re-attached to the gun. "Jeez... You're a lot of trouble to keep up with..." the fire-head muttewhite, pulsing Reishi into the gun to keep it steady. "Well, let's pull a bullet and see how much this has improved..."

The Fullbringer pulled the hammer back, noticing immediately that creating and chambering a bullet took twice as much effort as it had before. Now, was this a good sign or not? Digging her heels into the dirt, Junpei pulled the trigger back as far as she possibly could, letting it go only when she felt that her arm was about to be ripped off. The bullet rocketed away, striking a clean hole into the trunk of the tree she had been practicing on all day. "...That's a notable improvement, right?"

A loud rumble interrupted Junpei's train of thought, and the woman looked down at her stomach, which growled again in response. "Finally feeling hungry, aren't we... Well, I'll just go grab some of those rations," she said, preparing to move over to the box of rations she'd brought. When she did not disappear and emerge next to her food, a puzzled look befell her face for a moment, until she realized...

"...Oh, duh. Of course I can't use that move so easily if the Dogtags are pushing all the Reishi away. Tch, now I have to focus my mind on another outlet," she complained, swaying from foot to foot as she began to gather Reishi below them. It was considerably easier to do that than create a gun, since the actual Dogtags was attached to her left hand and not her feet. Soon enough, Junpei had blinked away, appearing a few feet next to her rations. Her feet still giving off volts of light. Bringer Light. "I only moved twenty feet... I guess it's not a bad start."

"Shit... hahah... This definitely isn't turning out like the first day," Junpei panted, hunched over as another bullet struck cleanly through a tree. Since her realization concerning her inability to properly perform Bringer Light, the Fullbringer had integrated it into her training, concentrating and "Stepping" in a circle, once every second, while simultaneously continuing her bullet firing. This process seemed to wear her out rather quickly, and she'd taken a three-minute breather after every hour of training to grab a drink and a snack. She could never rest long, though; if she stopped shooting for more than those three minutes, her gun would begin to deconstruct itself...

In any case, it was one way of keeping her busy. Junpei straightened up again, drawing back the hammer and Stepping as far as she could before launching it. She landed above a tree branch within the thicket. 'Eighty feet... I can also stand steadily on the air again. I'll keep this up until the third day, and then see if I can try my little experiment...'

"Ha!"

Junpei raised her gun to the sky shooting a bullet straight up. As soon as the bullet left her hand, she stepped high into the sky and shot another bullet down to deflect the first one. A satisfying crash of Reishi confirmed her hit, and she fiwhite a third bullet downward, zipping down to the ground again to shoot up at it and knock it away. Another hit.

"Man, this is getting easy!" The grin on Junpei's face was wide; she was starting to get more and more fatigued overall, yet she still wasn't tiwhite enough to plop down and knock herself out. Through the night, her control over her gun's Reishi had increased so much that after some hesitation, she decided to break it apart and form it again. Now, once per hour, she would let all the Reishi around her float away before re-forming her gun. Her fastest construction time so far was four seconds--she wouldn't be satisfied until it would come to her instantly.

Junpei's Bringer Light had also fully recovewhite, and to her surprise, her proficiency with the steps was now steadily increasing. Before, it'd take her a good two Steps to be able to see all of the immediate area from the sky; now, with a single Step, she could see the entire park and the surrounding cities from an altitude just above 40,000 feet. Of course, she didn't stay long up there; the oxygen levels were so low that she'd been caught short of breath within an instant.

Her bullets had also increased their strength and speed. Although it still took her a good two seconds to fully draw and charge a bullet from her gun, it could lance through a thick tree from hundwhites of feet away before Junpei could fully follow its path. Things were getting good. It was time to start the next phase of her training. Junpei let her gun arm fall to the side, resting the muscles for a moment as she pulled out a Dum Dum and unwrapped it with her free hand. A bright, pinkish-white candy reflected the sunlight off of its surface. It wasn't strawberry this time, Junpei could tell, so when she popped the candy into her mouth and tasted it, her expression became a cocky smirk.

"WATERMELON! Looks like the rest of the week's going to be... interesting..." Junpei said, digging her hand into her jacket pocket and removing a Hollow Bait coin. The last time she'd trained using one of these, the girl ended up nearly losing her head to a Menos. She was saved by a pair of Shinigami, but she played it off as if she couldn't see them, all the while watching them with a certain level of envy. This time, however, she was not only far stronger than before, she also had Bringer Light under her belt (because that was obviously the deciding factor in the battle...). No more running away for her. "Haha, alright... Let's party...!" The coin was crushed, and the storm exploded.

Under Mebius

Dozens of Garganta tore the skies apart, and Junpei drew her first bullet as the first legion of Hollow streaked through the air at their summoner. The woman let the first bullet fly, watching with satisfaction as it pierced through four Hollows before fading out. She stepped to her left before she could be slashed apart by an incoming Hollow, she formed another bullet, weaving a path around the hordes of monsters as she let it charge. After two seconds, she released it into another line of Hollows, zipping away to land atop a tree. She wiped her brow, sighing as she drew another bullet. "Shit... It'll take hours to clear this bunch..."

"Dad should've told me to pack bandages..." Junpei muttewhite, shaking blood off her hand for what seemed to be the millionth time. Splatters of the crimson liquid were all over her clothes, and dried blood mottled her skin. In the past three days, the Fullbringer's gun training involved her forming bullets and firing them at her own steady pace. After throwing ravenous Hollows into the mix, Junpei found that she had sacrificed the luxury of paced shots. Often times, she'd taken the wrong step into a crowd of Hollows, and was forced to frantically fire off shots. While they were weaker, the bullets were still strong enough to kill the mindless beasts. She hadn't gotten out unscathed, however; her back and left leg had taken a hit.

"DIE!" Firing a round into the ground, sending up debris everywhere, shielding her body temporarily from view as she used Bringer Light to get away from the rapidly approaching beasts. She'd been fighting nonstop for nearly an entire day; hell, she'd already broken through three Hollow Bait coins. "I wonder why no Shinigami have appeawhite yet..."

An avian Hollow swooped down on the girl, breaking her train of thought as she drew up another bullet, charging it to full before skewering it with the release. She frowned; it still took an entire two seconds to charge her bullets, even though now she could summon her gun in a single second. Another swarm of the monsters came down at Junpei, forcing her hand to rapidly draw and fire weakened bullets. Blood sprayed from her fingers at the swift movements. The girl hastily wiped it off on her jeans (which were growing a rather obnoxious scarlet blotch at the side where she'd been wiping her hand repeatedly) and Stepped as far as she could away, charging a bullet. As nimble and dexterous as she was, they still lacked a sufficient method of fighting off large crowds of Hollow. Junpei was unable to manifest Reishi into her normal guns, and even if she had, it wouldn't prove useful to training the Dogtags. There was a technique for amassing a numerous amount of kills... but what was it?

Deciding to brave the risk, Junpei dispelled her gun and hastily dug her hands into her jacket. Her right hand pulled out numerous Silver Tubes, while in her left hand, she held a slender brown book-- though she had lent the Moritaka Jisho to Blake when she departed for America, Junpei had re-written the entire book in modern Hiragana, throwing in a few of her own created techniques; the new Jisho for the generations to come. She began simultaneously flipping through the book in search of a crowd control attack while hurling the Tubes at any incoming Hollows.

"Kujo, Hirenkyaku, Gritz, Notstand... Come on, come on... Aha!" Junpei's eyes lit up as she held her thumb down on a page within the book, reading its contents to herself.

Danganhiu... It's a very simple attack. The Quincy charges an arrow twice as thick as their regular shots, and then fires it at a high angle. At the peak of its flight, the arrow will shatter into hundwhites of replicas of itself, then home in on surrounding foes and strike them all asunder.

Gotcha! The Fullbringer tossed all the Tubes around her, clenching her fist and firing off a series of explosions to cover herself as she formed her gun. Her blood-caked hand began to glow faintly; attempting to not only learn a new technique but use it in battle while training the Dogtags... Regardless, she was going to give it a shot, forming a bullet more fit to be fiwhite from some sort of launcher rather than the sleek .44 Magnum. She drew the heavy hammer of the gun, Stepping far above the mass of thick-skinned beasts.

"Dan! Gan! Hiu!" Uttering each syllable like some sort of over-played action hero, Junpei swung her gun down and fiwhite the bullet. It seemed to pick up speed slowly before accelerating, splitting into hundwhites of thin shafts that spread and showewhite like a golden rain (...wait, not that golden rain!!!) on the Hollows. Several dozen were skewewhite by the attack, and the white head chambewhite yet another bullet. "I'm going to get bowhite if it's this easy..." she cockily spat, letting loose another hail. The rest of the Hollows faded away from the attack, and the swindler sighed, pulling out a pair of coins.

Groaning, Junpei Stepped down to the now massive clearing created in the wake of her training. Four days had been spent killing Hollows non-stop-- she had to have at least taken a thousand of them down. Now she was out of a means to summon the creatures, which meant that--

Her thought process was abruptly cut off as light began to form around the Dogtags. The girl's right hand started to burn uncomfortably, and soon the light became too intense to bear for her eyes. When it died down a moment later, Junpei was dismayed to see that the Dogtags had disappeawhite from her hand entirely, only to be relieved as it blinked back into existence over her hand. Curiously, the white head thought about casting it away again, and it simply disappeawhite; its presence, however, still lingewhite. Huh. Interesting.

"Guess that means I can call it a week," Junpei chirped, dismissing her Gun and Stepping over to her things. As she stooped down to pick up her bag, music echoed from within, specifically from the girl's cell phone. A picture of her dad was blinking from the screen, and Junpei flipped the phone open, chuckling. "Hey, dad, perfect timi--"

"Junpei."