Lately, Ichigo had reached an inescapable conclusion: he just was not strong enough. Even though he had promised to get better and be able to protect everyone, Aizen and the arrancar army had him worried. His few encounters with the arrancar's led him to be worried, not that he would EVER admit that to ANYONE.

While Captian Hitsugaya had been around, Ichigo learned a few more things from him. One specific thing caught his interest: captains manipulating the size of their Soul Reaper. It started to make Ichigo wonder if it would be possible to use spiritual pressure in other ways to get stronger. Maybe the best evidence that it could work was Kenpachi Zaraki who used it to make himself so physically strong that even someone on a captain level would have trouble wounding him.

So Ichigo began to experiment, and he discovered...