Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ren shunpoed in front of the classroom door. Taking a deep breath and collecting herself, she put on one of her signature warm smiles and entered.
Walking toward the teacher's desk in front of the blackboard, her eyes focused on the students, who slowly became silent and sat down.
"Good morning my little seeds." Making eye contact with each and everyone of them, she tried reading their expressions: happiness, anxiety, anticipation and even idleness. A specter of different personalities and she wanted to analyze all of them. Leaning on the desk behind her, she crossed her arms on her chest leisurely.
"I'm sorry I'm late, but you know how it is... A headmistress is needed everywhere by everyone all the time." Hoping the students would buy her pitiful excuse for an explanation, she couldn't help but think about how nice the little nap she had was.
"I think I don't have to introduce myself again, you all know who I am by now, I hope. So let's just skip to the point."
She stood up straight and moved behind the desk.
"Theory is an obligatory part of your Shinigami education. Unlike kidou, swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat, which are not all necessary for you to succeed in the Gotei 13, theory is extremely important no matter what squad you shall later belong to. In this subject you will be taught not only the basics you need to know to survive an encounter with subjects of different races, as it was mostly done by the professors teaching here before me. In my class we will go in depth, try to analyze why certain things are as they are, try to find theoretical solutions to the problems you might face in your everyday life as Shinigami and I will try to answer any question that might come across your mind, no matter how banal it might seem."
She turned around to face the blackboard, grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote in big bald letters 'SHINIGAMI' as a headline on the upper part of it.
"Speaking of questions... Are there any?"

Ryan gave Tsubame a nod as the headmistress entered, whispering softly: "I'm used to complicated things...like disassembling and cleaning a gun, for example."

The analogy to seeds made Ryan wince. How many of those did I lose...how many of those were swept away, he thought, his mind returning to the dust storms of old. He couldn't stand those thoughts - a dreary grey landscape with the sun beating down on him every day. When the part about questions came, though, Ryan looked to make sure no one else had any before posing one of his own related to warfare as he knew it. "The nature of warfare, ma'am. What exactly is standard issue? You mentioned swordsmanship, but I find that would be poor against such things as Panzers and Stukas. I do not mean to offend, but I would rather have a rifle by my side than a sword if the Nazi Wehrmacht were knocking on my door with Hitler himself at its head...or if not the Nazis then the Japanese with their suicide pilots - kamikaze was what they seemed to call themselves, if memory serves me correctly."

(( Ryan is, of course, completely ignorant as to what shinigami warfare entails. All he knows is they're all dead, so it's obviously a viable possibility that Hitler COULD come knocking for all he knows, or the Japanese Army as it was in the Second World War.

Also, you guys might recognize the Panzers as tanks used by the German Army (Wehrmacht). Stukas maybe not - they were bombers used by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), and they had an air horn that produced a very conspicuous sound as a method of psychological warfare, a sound that you now hear in most cartoons and other pop culture depictions of dive-bombing. ))

Nodding quickly to Aloe's use of honorifics she whispered, "That's fine." Watching as the headmistress came in she couldn't think of any questions to ask. Her right hand rose to rub her forehead, she had a feeling she had something to ask, but nothing surfaced in her mind. Her eyes opened as she heared the voice of a male. Someone must've already thought of a question to ask.

Looking to the rows in the front to where the voice originated, she saw the brown haried male. The words he spoke of 'Panzer, stukas, Nazi... Wehrmacht' Yuki hadn't a clue as to what they were. Her curiousity of what those word's importance was, it was soon answered by the headmistress that they needn't worry about such things. Pursing her lips, she thought about a question. "Hrmmm..." She murmured, but shrugged, as nothing came to mind.

A few seconds passed and she finally thought of a question. Raising her hand slowly, "Is it normal to remember your past life?" Her face growing worried, as Yuki didn't have a clue as to what her life was like before.

Aloe listened to the questions and answers that were being spoken with interest. Nither of the two questions that were asked had crossed her own mind, but after they were asked she realised that the specifics of past life memories were unknown to her too. She couldn't help but smile a bit more at the fact that even the first questions of fellow students were teaching her something.

When the headmistress asked the class to define what a Shinigami is, Aloe's mind became flooded with answers. She knew the proper answer, or a proper answer, but needed to take a few short seconds to organise the realities she knew about Shinigami from the fantasies that swam around in her head on a daily basis.
Once she had her thoughts organised, Aloe raised her hand to answer the question, sitting up eagerly but still with her other hand neatly on her lap. "Shinigami are protectors and guides of spirits." She tried to give as simple an answer as possible to avoid romanticizing the definition with her fantasies and expectations, but her use of the word protector was probably still a slight romanticization.

Kuro quickly shifted his feet from the desktop as the Headmistress entered through the classroom door. He stared at her with an interested gaze. Classes had finally begun at the academy. Kuro listened quietly as the others asked questions and recieved their answers. He attempted to think of a questions to ask but most things he wondered about where quickly covered by the other students around him. As Ren explained the loss of a soul's memories, Kuro's crimson eyes wandered around the room, from the various faces of the students to the teacher herself. He then studied the posters upon the wall of several zanpakuto and the different forms it took. It was then that the sound of chalk scraping against a board brought him back from his thoughts. Ren had finished explaining the rareity of Shinigami possessing memories of their past life as well as the definition of what a Shinigami was. He quickly read the words that were written upon the blackboard. Medium and Enforcers....simple enough. He placed paper and ink neatly onto his desk and wrote down several notes. It was then that he looked down at the Sensei from his desk.

Kuro brushed his jet black hair from his eyes as he prepared to speak. He then cleared his throat as he began to explain why a Shinigami was a medium. "A Shinigami is a medium because they are a soul's link between this world and the world of the living. A Shinigami possesses the ability to perform a soul burial, or Konso, on a soul. This allows them to send the soul to the Soul Society where they will begin their new life."

James was glad that the class had finally started and was diligently writing down the answers for the questions that had already been asked, as well as possible questions that he could ask in the future. About the soul burial, he had asked around when he first got to Rukongai how he got there and eventually got a decent explaination as to how it actually works.

"Sensei, Shinigami place the end of their zanpakuto's hilt upon the forehead of the soul which purifies the soul and either signals a hell butterfly or transforms the soul into a hell butterfly for them to pass through the Senkai Gate into one of the Rukongai districts. I'm not sure how the specific process works on changing into or signaling the hell butterfly though," James explained to the best of his abilities from the explainations that he had recieved since coming to Soul Society.

I wonder what flower I would be... I hope its not anything lame... Maybe she will see the knowledge and kindness and inner pride to give me some regal flower, James thought with a slight smirk as he waited to see if his answer was correct.

"As Violet has said, it is extremely difficult for us to explain why things like Pluses, Hollow, Hell Buterflies and Konso exist. One can never know everything about the world one lives in, but we try our best in explaining it. Amaryllis' explanation was correct, but not complete. When a Shinigami encounters a Plus, as we call the souls wandering through the World of the Living, they use the bottom part of the hilt of their zanpakuto and put it on the Plus's forehead."
Ren grabbed her relatively large zanpakuto, which was placed on her back, with her left arm over her shoulder. She turned it around with one elegant move to show the students the bottom of the hilt.
"It doesn't look like anything special really. So when the hilt touches the soul's forehead, a Hell Butterfly appears, which guides the soul into the Soul Society."
She strapped her katana back on her back.
"But, what happens to a soul, if it doesn't transcends before their Chain of Fate disappears?"