Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

SNOW was blowing, the whole world was white. Furious flurries of frozen flakes whirled, blinding all skies, obscuring all lands.

He ploughed through icy, loose banks of white powder, lifting each knee high to take each step, sinking each leg to the shin with each pace forward. His feet and calves were warm, snugly encased in his tall, white mukluks, while his torso was cosily tented within the long, lush cape of his white, fur cloak. His face to his chest were comfortably shielded against the biting gales for he had the front of the cloak laced over his chest, its heavy, plush hood drawn low over his head, and its thick, white muffler fastened over his nose. 

But his hands were painfully numbed. He had left them bare, without gloves, to better grip his heavy basket of fresh fish against his belly. 

And to ease his arduous trek, he had left the lower front of his cloak opened. Freezing currents were blowing past the parted fur panels and biting into the layers of his quilted kimono, seeping cold into his yukata and nagajuban, leeching heat and feeling from his abdomen to his knees despite his steady, laborious march.

But he paid the discomfort no heed.

His destination was nearing, after all.

He could hear them now.

The calls.

Hoarse cries, discordant choruses, echoing through the buffeting snow, rising to a cacophony resounding noisily above the howling winds, crescendoing…

~ ~ ~

…and melding into a single, forlorn moan keening into the dark, then keening and lowing from the dark into deep, indigo gloom… and as indigo gloom segued into greys the lowing note fragmenting, diverging into murmuring tones, the murmurings tones resolving into voices… into words…

~ ~ ~

[…go, time to go, time to go, time to go, time to…]

[…time to go, time to go, time to go, time to go, time…]

He opened his eyes.

To flurrying, white flecks, dissipating into hushed, indigo gloom. Hoarse, echoing braying, receding into silent distance. And a vague, lingering gauziness, a fading dream— 

No, not quite a dream. 

More like a portent. 

He blinked. 

In the bluish, dim darkness, weak light was seeping in from…

His eyes roved… and rested on the wide panels of shōji set several steps away. 

The farthest panel stood fully drawn aside, presenting a wide opening to bluish-black skies without. Pallid, watery light was steeping into the gloom of the bedchamber.

Beyond, a pair of warbling trills were rising in song, floating into the dim stillness. Followed by another pair.

And another pair.

And yet another pair.

Pair after pair, until a mass of exuberant whistling was resounding and wavering into the gloom through the opened shōji.

Songbirds were awakening, after the departure of the cranes.

Cool, damp air began stirring, wafting indoors, feathering over his left cheek, over the round of his left shoulder, where he was exposed.

Chilling him.

Though the rest of him remained warm.

Safely, snugly warm.

A sheltering heat  — blanketing his entire back, engulfing him from behind. Deep within the heat, pulsed a faint beat. Slowly. Gently. Softly  thudding right between his shoulder blades upon his spine, each in time with a slow, deep breath fanning and heating the skin of his nape.

He came fully awake.

Soft, slow breaths were blowing over his nape, warming and moistening his skin. Every exhale brought the faint scent of sake — and the soft, metallic tang of sword oil. Drifting beneath, was the fresh, familiar scent of mountain pines, and alpine frost.

He breathed them in — and felt a warm, heavy weight around his throat, and over his chest. 

Of course.

Swallowing, his throat gently pushed against warm, hard muscles. 

Broad, heavy muscles. 

An arm. Encircling his neck like a thick, heavy collar of warm hardness, keeping his chin tilted up. Its hand lay cupped over his left jaw, upon his pulse, and its wide, firmly yielding biceps lay pressed beneath his right cheek, pillowing his head. 

Then he felt it — the hard, yielding muscles of another arm draping down over his sternum, pinning his left arm to his left side. The familiar shape of its large hand lay resting over his chest, its long fingers and wide palm curving protectively over his left pectoral, cradling his heartbeat.

Neither could he move his lower body. 

The familiar warmth and weight of a broad, muscular thigh lay over his left hip, draping down over both his thighs, while a warm, hard ankle hung over the outside of his right shin, locking both his legs together.

So he was lying on his right side, gently, warmly bound by a warm chokehold about his throat, possessively locked by an arm about his waist and a leg around both his own against the large, heated body nestled skin to skin against his back. With his left breast lovingly captured in a large, warm hand.

Only his right arm was free. 

In the deep, indigo darkness, the outline of his right arm lay splayed straight out over the dark sheets before him. 

He could feel his knuckles resting nearly over the edge of the futon.

Curling the fingers of his right hand, he raised his right forearm, bending at his right elbow as he reached for the arm about his throat.

His fingertips met a hard, hirsute forearm.

Gently — very, very gently — he stroked its sinewy muscle, gliding his fingertips over soft, fine hairs carpeting smooth, veined skin, re-memorising every short, downy strand, every ridged sinew.

Even though they were already utterly familiar to him.

Then, lifting his left hand from where it rested on his left hip, folding his arm up at his pinned left elbow, he reached up beneath the sheet, feeling smooth, warm silk slide over his skin. And lightly — very, very lightly — he laid his hand over the back of the larger one spread over his left breast.

He felt the hard, yielding veins ridging the back of that hand. The softer, finer, dusting of hairs. The calluses on the edges of the large, strong palm. On the tip of each blunt fingertip.

And he re-memorised them all as well, even though he already knew this hand much better than his own.

Even though his memory, and his senses, had long been indelibly engraved with the sensation of how that hand lay so protectively holding the flat swell of his left breast. So tenderly cradling his heart.

For this was how he awakened every dawn, following each night that he fell asleep in these arms.

If he was not tethered to breathing machines, or held half-upright to ease his breathing, the following dawn he would awaken like this — lying on his right side, his right cheek pillowed upon these biceps beneath him, his body held imprisoned against the warm, implacable strength behind him.

It was an unconscious thing, this. He long understood that. An unconscious, deeply seated, instinctual response of the one holding him so.

And he would not have it any other way.

Nor would he speak of it, or even hint at it in the slightest. There was no need to.

There was never any need to explicitly acknowledge this.

And he had always responded by simply allowing it, letting himself be held, permitting himself to cherish every breath of every moment he spent being held like this. 

A moment more, he decided. He would steal a moment more. 

Surely no one would begrudge him this.

Surely no one would begrudge them this—

[Nay! Nay!] cut in a sharp protest, ringing fiercely. [‘Tis time to go! No time to waste!] 

[Aye! Aye! Time to go, ‘tis time to go! No time to waste!] joined in another, shrill and strident.

Reluctance twinged. [I wish only for a moment more… can you both not indulge me just this once?]

As soon as he asked it, he knew he had made a mistake.

[Ai! How can you say that?!] was the outraged wail. [How can you!? We always indulge you! Always!] 

[Aye! Aye! We always give you what you want! Always!] followed an upset cry. [We always give you anything you want! Anything! How can you say that!?]

Not quite true. Since it was he, not they, who had been doing the indulging for most of the last two thousand years.

But of course, his two Zanpakutō spirits would see things in the completely opposite light.

He apologised anyway, as he learnt a long time ago that it was always easier to give in to the pair than try to persuade them. [Ai, I am sorry, I was not thinking.] 

[Hmph! You should be!] huffed one, sounding somewhat mollified.

[Aye! You should be!] sniffed the other, also a little placated.

Only for the first one to become angry again, accusing, [You have forgotten ‘tis been three hundred years, have you not?!] 

[Aye! ‘Tis been three hundred years since Old Fogey let you go out!] joined in the other, just as furious.

So he heard wrong. 

He tried to appease, [I have been going out—]

[Oh, you mean out of Seireitei?]

[Or just to the Rukongai?] 

Stung, he tried to explain — only to be cut off again.

[Those little day trips do not count as going out! You know this! You know it!]

[Aye! Why are you acting obtuse? The fact is Old Fogey has not let you out of Soul Society for three centuries!]

[The Gense is under your charge, ne? That means you have to keep an eye on it, ne?]

[So how does he expect you to keep watch on a place he does not even allow you to go to?]

Reining in his hurt, he pointed out, [We have seven hundred shinigami in the Thirteenth Division alone. And thousands more from all the other divisions to rotate on tours of duty—]

[But none of them are you!] 

[Precisely!] 

The sharp protests were now shrill enough to make his teeth ache.

Grimacing inwardly, he tried once more, [Our High Seats are quite capable—] 

[And Old Fogey wonders how whelps like Aizen and his ilk could fool him for so long?! Foolish Old Fogey! Foolish indeed!] 

[Aye! Foolish indeed! A fool indeed! Old Fogey is a fool indeed!]

The scathing accusations made his insides churn. Unsettle. 

Every time the pair ground into this particular axe, the old conflict would seize and tear at him with fresh vigour.

[Stop, please,] he asked tiredly. [He is still my father.] 

[Aye, aye, your father, Old Fogey is your father, your father who uses you like a weapon!]

[Aye! Old Fogey uses you like a weapon, he is no father but a fool!]

[A fool indeed! A fool indeed! Old Fogey is a fool indeed!] 

On the twins went, jeering in matching singsong.

He might as well have been persuading a rock. For every time the pair lit into this, nothing and no one could sway them.

Not even he, their master.

Like always, he bit it down, to tamp it back into where he kept it buried, deep, and obstinately sealed.

But his emotions refused to settle this time.

Not after all that had happened during the last few months, he supposed.

Giving up, he offered a plea bargain.

Of a sort.

[Please, settle down! Settle down! Let us agree to disagree, ne? I will rise anon, just… Please.]

[Agree to disagree, he says!] was the swift, scoffing response. [What is there to disagree about when ‘tis a fact?] 

Sighing inwardly, he fell back on an age-old trick. [All right, all right, we do not have to agree. But how about you allow me one last question? You cease this, and I shall get on with our mission. I promise.]

Like two insatiably curious young children, the pair immediately stopped their haranguing and gave him their full attention.

[What question?]

[Aye, what question?]

Bribery and distraction. Worked every time.

Satisfied, he asked, [Can either of you remember our dream?] 

At once, another clamour of protests rose.

[Our dream? ‘Twas no dream of ours, but yours!]

[Aye! Your dream, not ours!] 

[You were gone like you were always gone when you dream! Gone!]

[Aye! Gone! You were gone and we could not reach you! We could not reach you!]

[You scared us! Scared us!]

[Aye! You scared us so bad!]

So the twins still could not access his dreams, then. Much less help him remember them. 

Which meant his latest experiment was yet another failure. One more, to add to his long list of failures over the last three decades of attempts to restore his Zanpakutō to his subconsciousness.

But this time, deviating from all the previous times when he failed, he felt no frustration. For rightly or wrongly, the past week had given him a clue to the problem at last, an explanation he had never considered before, and they were beginning to present him with an inkling of a likely remedy.

Pursuing the idea, however, would have to wait for until after his return.

For now, all he could do was comfort the pair.

[Fear not, fear not, I was never gone,] he assured with as much confidence as he could. [You are my Zanpakutō, ne? This means you are both part of my soul. Thus wherever I am, I am still with you, even if you cannot seem to reach me. The absence you feel when I dream are merely tricks on your reikaku.]

[But ‘tis really scary when you vanish like that! ‘Tis been decades! Decades!] 

[Aye! These horrible shadows have been blocking us for decades! They are all around you! All around us! We cannot reach you when you dream!] 

[Have you found a way to banish them? You are spending more and more time in jinzen but every time you do it, we could only watch!]

[Aye! We called you every time, but you did not hear us! Did you hear us?]

[I heard you clearly every time, even if you could not hear me call you in return,] he reassured. 

[You heard us? You could?]

[You could hear us even then?]

[Aye, I could, and I will continue to hear you,] he affirmed.

It would serve nothing now to mention that he had been slowly losing bits of his subconscious.

His dreams… No, the dreams — since he now suspected they were never his to begin with — had begun pulling him in much deeper, drawing him closer to that oblivion of nothing no soul ever returned from.

[So what do we do now?]

[Do we keep calling you every time you are in jinzen?]

[Aye, please keep doing that!] he confirmed at once.

That should help stagnate the baffling erosion of their connection. And give him time to develop the cure.

Time, and the space.

The longer the twins remained disconnected from him, the more needy they became, as clingy as they already were by nature. In recent years, they had been increasingly overcompensating in every way. 

Like how they were doing so right now.

[How loudly do you want us to call you?] 

[Do we shout? Do we scream?]

[Maybe we can get other Zanpakutō to help? If many of us shout your name together, then maybe these shadows blocking us will dissolve!]

[How about Katen and Kyōkotsu? They will help! Minazuki and Ryūjin Jakka and Gonryōmaru will all definitely help!]

[Nay, more of you will not work, ‘tis not a game of numbers,] he intervened quickly, before the idea could escalate further. [The bond between a shinigami and his Zanpakutō is exclusive, thus no other can hope to lend aid.]

[Oh?] contested one hotly. [How do you know? You have not tried!]

[Aye! How do you know if you never tried? Why, every other day we talk to Katen—]

[Shhhhhh!]

He suppressed a tickle of mirth at their inadvertent slip.

If he wanted to, he could eavesdrop with negligible ease on all Zanpakutō in Soul Society.

Indeed, more often than not the intrusion was the other way around — snippets of their endless chattering would barge into his consciousness without invitation or warning. And often at the most inconvenient moments.

But all he said was, [Just keep calling me when you next see me in jinzen. It will help, as long as you keep it up.] 

[It will?]

[Truly?]

[Aye, truly,] he reaffirmed.

Hopefully, that would distract the pair enough to buy him the time and peace he needed. 

A fervent flurry of agreement followed.

[Aye then, we will!] 

[We will! We will!] 

[You can count on us!]

[We shall not let you down!]

He believed them. Whatever else the twins might be, they had never let him down.

[We answered your question like you asked! Now can we go?] 

[Aye! Can we go now?] 

And just like that, the mercurial pair had moved on. 

But a deal was a deal. 

At the thought of what awaited him, a frisson of heat sped through his veins. 

Three centuries. 

He had not been in the field for three centuries. Though a relatively short interval in his two millennia of existence — costing hardly more than a mere eighth of his life — and though those dark, isolated centuries now felt distant as a long ago dream, the twins were still absolutely right about this, for all that they judged his father harshly. 

Three hundred years were still three hundred years too many for any Shinigami to be absent from the front lines.

Even he felt his own absence keenly.

He had been away from the field for far too long, no amount of arguments could change that fact. No matter what manner of strong words against it Kaien would have—

Old pain flared. His pulse rabbited. 

Then his breath hitched as the arm around his throat convulsively tightened, and the leg over both of his reflexively clamped down, so hard that his shin bones ached, even as the hand over his heart clenched hard enough to hurt, fingertips digging into the slight swell of his left breast.

Willing his heartbeat to calm, he swallowed against the biceps constricting his windpipe and, gently, began stroking the suddenly rigid muscles collaring his neck, the stiffened veins of the hand clutching his breast, keeping his touches tender and his motions slow in an even, lulling rhythm

For one breath. 

Then two. 

And three. 

And a few more. 

And then, minutely, the limbs tightly binding him began to relax. And loosen. And, in gradual increments, slacken back into sleep.

Even though their master slept on, stirring not even a breath through the episode. 

He truly had been away from the field far too long, if his emotions could get the better of him like this. 

A curse of his eidetic memory, this.  

Every moment of Kaien remained as fresh as if his late fukutaichō was still alive. Keeping him bleeding inside, for thirty years.

But he had run out of time. 

A lapse like this in the field was always dangerous for any Shinigami. Fatal for even the most powerful among them, if it caught them in the wrong instant. 

He could not heal it. So he would need to bury it. And quickly. 

Before the sun rose, to be exact. 

Forgive me, Kaien.

Kaien did not respond, of course. 

Neither did the twins make a sound, for when it came to his late fukutaichō, even the rambunctious pair were more reverent than their wont. 

Giving one last stroke to the knob of the hard, hirsute wrist wedged up beneath his left jaw, he gently closed his left hand around the joint and softly — very, very softly — peeled and lifted the heavy forearm away from his throat. He kept his grip light enough to leave the owner of the limb undisturbed, yet firm enough to convey his continuing presence.

The heavy arm remained pliant in his hold as its master slumbered on, assured by his touch even in the depths of sleep. 

Gingerly, he unfurled the arm and gently laid it down upon the silk sheets before him, laying the limb straight out with its large hand now lying palm up, facing the dim gloom.

Then he lay still and waited, watching the silhouette of their entwined fingers now resting almost at the edge of their futon. 

The body behind him slept on soundly. And the arm still around his sternum and chest remained loose and relaxed.

Reassured, he lightly extracted his fingers from the loose grip of the sleep-slackened hand, drew his arm back, and joined his right hand to his left, over the back of the larger, stronger hand covering his heart. 

For a moment, he cradled the hard, sinewy hand with both of his, relishing the feel of the large, warm palm cradling his every heartbeat — and the feel of the blunted, callused fingertips resting upon the faint, hairline ridge of the scar dividing his chest, running down between his pectorals. 

He was already missing this.

Though he would not be gone for long — three days, five, at the most, he would be done in the Gense and be home once more — yet he was already missing this, of being held like this, his breast tenderly captured in this gentle, possessive grip, owning him entirely, body and soul.

[We have to go.]

[Aye, we have to go now.]

The twins were still politely subdued, but getting impatient.

Soon, he told himself.

He would be back in these arms soon. Back in these arms with his heart held like this, in this strong, gentle hand.

And with that thought, he lightly — very, very lightly — gathered up that hand, gently peeling each long finger from his breast. Then softly — very, very softly — he began lifting the hand away from his pectoral.

The fingers twitched the instant they lost contact with his skin.

He paused.

The hand relaxed into stillness.

Gingerly — very, very gingerly holding the arm by its hard, sinewy wrist — he raised the heavy limb away from his sternum. 

Then away from his pinioned left elbow, freeing his left arm.

He kept his movements very, very slight. 

But the sleep-slackened fingers gave another twitch, long, blunt-tipped digits reflexively curling inwards.

He paused again. 

And the hand relaxed again.

Inhaling shallowly, he slowly — very, very slowly, keeping his motion as smooth as possible — unwound the long, muscular arm from around him, straightening out the heavy, muscular limb breath by breath.

This time, neither the hand he was holding nor the body behind him reacted, but remained slackened in sleep.

Encouraged, he gently held the hard, sinewy wrist in his left hand as he stretched out his right hand, turning his palm downwards to brace against the cushion of the futon.

Then, with the same painful slowness and smoothness, he began sliding his torso forward, bit by gradual bit, leaning his back away from the warm, solid heat nestled behind him. 

He felt his hair slide down his shoulder blades as his back finally, finally, separated from the broad chest plastered to his spine.  

Stopping, he waited.

All continued in stillness behind him. The deep, slumbering breathing went on, evenly, and slowly. 

Another tiny success.

Discreetly, he tensed the muscles of his left thigh and, with his left leg supporting the heavier weight of the broader thigh draped over both of his, began to slide his right knee out from under his left knee.

Warm, silk sheets slid past under his skin as he raised his right knee, breath by breath. And it was easier this time, as his left thigh held up the larger, heavier one over it, mimicking stillness while his right leg escaped from beneath.

When his right knee was at last drawn up, lying bent at an angle on the futon before him, he slowly — very, very slowly — began lowering his left thigh, keeping his muscles tensed as he exerted very, very fine muscle control to allow his left leg to creep downwards towards the futon. 

And, as his left knee descended, breath by breath, the longer, heavier leg draped over both his thighs began to also straighten out in tandem with each painfully slow movement, breath by breath. The thigh over his left hip began to slide backwards, as the ankle over his left shin began to slide downwards — and when his left knee was finally resting upon the futon, his left leg was all but free, with the longer, heavier leg resting lightly upon the outside of his limb

Now, for the trickiest part of the manoeuvre.

Slowing his motion to crawl of a hair’s breadth, he began to draw up his left knee. 

Hair’s breadth by hair’s breadth, he shifted his left leg out from under the hard-muscled, dead weight of the larger, longer leg.  

And then, just like that, he was completely free.

He paused for a breath, still lying on his left side, still holding the heavy wrist in his left hand.

Inhaling once, he held his breath, and then swiftly and smoothly, in one seamless motion he lowered the heavy arm behind him as he rolled forward and up — onto his right knee, then onto his left — his right palm depressing the futon as he levered himself up, folding his legs under him as he did so.

And then he was sitting up, feeling the smooth weight of his hair slide and slip around his shoulders as he settled into seiza on the cool, left side of the futon, completely nude save for the drape of his own unbound hair.

He began to wait.  

Chilly air stirred in the dim, indigo gloom, the cold breaths prickling the bare skin of his back as they feathered into their darkened bedchamber through the opened shōji. But that was the only physical discomfort he felt.

For there was no trace of stickiness anywhere on his body, no uncomfortable dried fluids. 

He must had been thoroughly cleansed last night, after he had fallen asleep postcoital. 

Warm fondness welled as he watched the familiar silhouette of the tall, husky form slumber on in the darkness.

Shunsui. 

Like always, he swallowed the name before it could escape his lips, to let his soul brother slumber on.

Especially now. The restful sleep they shared over the last two nights could barely recompense the stress of the past three months — stress he caused his soul brother. With his worries, his decisions, his actions, and then the demands of his body when his illness relapsed. His soul brother held him together through them all, and helped him do what he needed to do. 

Because that was simply what Shunsui did. No matter what.

No matter the cost to himself. 

Like those dark, under-eye smudges, those stress lines, stark even in the oblivion of sleep. They had been visibly wearing on his soul brother on account of him. And now stood out clearly to him, even in this darkness which hid all but the aristocratic lines of those lean, sculpted features.

But he never needed any light anyway to see the visage he knew better than his own.

Every languid, rakish quirk of expression, each one a mask for that rapier-sharp perception and lightning-quick mind, none of them ever fooled him. Not for an instant. He could always read each shift and facet of expression instinctively. Unerringly. Each playful wiggle of that aquiline nose, each lazy, slanting gaze or insouciant, glinting wink, each slow, faint curving of those wide, chiselled lips at a humour no one else saw or understood — he understood each and every one like they were his own. 

As he recognised the heart beneath every look of those mild, pewter eyes. Every heavy-lidded wink, every glimmer of humour, every deep-set gaze… to everyone else they were two silvery mirrors, reflecting only what they wished to see, without depth, without a single hint of what lay beneath, as smooth and unreadable as two perfect reflections — but not to him.

To him, when those eyes beheld him, when they watched him... when they flashed white-hot as their owner loved him with fervent, desperate passion, when they glittered and sparked as his soul brother regarded him like he was the most precious, most beautiful thing in all life... to him, those eyes spoke lifetimes' worth.

[Ai, stop tarrying! He will still be here when you are back!]

[Aye! Aye! Get a move on already!]

He had forgotten how short-fused the twins could be when they were set upon a mission.

But there was one more thing he needed to do. 

[Just a moment more, and I will,] he said.

They paused, and then in unison, whined, [Ai! You are not doing that!]

He suppressed a rueful chuckle. [I do not wish to wake him. So aye, I have to.]

The twins began groaning. 

As if hearing them, right on cue, that furrow began to crease between those dark, patrician brows of his soul brother — and a breath later, those large, long-fingered hands began to grope, and rove over the spot where he had vacated merely moments ago.

Swiftly, he unfurled silently to his feet and took two paces backwards, feeling his bare soles leave warm, silk-cushioned surface and settle on cold, hardwood floor. Then lowering himself onto his haunches, he reached down and began working quickly and quietly in the low light.

They were still using their summer covers, a single, oversized sheet of maroon, embossed silk — thin enough to be cool yet sturdy enough to keep out stray draughts, though the maroon colour now appeared as black in this gloom — and as he worked, his fingers absently registered the feel of the familiar, geometric reliefs of stylised curves, the motifs representing the waves of the sea. 

Should the weather turn in his absence, Kiyone would have these sheets replaced with their autumn ones. Or Nanao-san would. Or the two young women would work together to take care of it. Such details were not things Shunsui was wont to notice. 

Unless, of course, the man returned to the Eighth in the meantime, and slept in his own quarters the next several nights.

They did have their own divisions to mind, after all. And their own responsibilities. No taichō could be away from their squadrons for too long, and they did put in consistent efforts to keep their lives and living quarters separate. Never mind that most of the Gotei Thirteen thought they did a poor job of it. 

A little wryly, he looked at what he was doing — bunching and rolling the copious folds of their summer sheet into a long bundle — and decided to add a little flourish.

Presently, the result of his handiwork came into shape — a long, large roll of silk fabric, with its end at the head of the futon bundled to about as wide as his own shoulders. And a slight dip and a rise in its middle section, to represent his waist and hips. 

He thought it a rather clever approximation of his own body height and shape.

Satisfied, he lightly pushed the silk roll into those restlessly searching hands. 

In one lightning flash, those hands grabbed the bundle — then the entire frame of their still slumbering master clenched around it, crushed the makeshift bolster to that broad chest even as that dark head bent to bury that aquiline nose into the warm folds of silk. The broad point of that left shoulder rose as that deep chest inhaled, then lowered as the breath slowly released. And then the large body stilled, and relaxed, and finally loosened back into sleep.

The trick still worked.

That it still could even after all this time, a lapse of over three hundred years, it twisted his heart.

The sensation felt as old as it was familiar. And dismally fresh.

Because it was not like this once. 

Once, when they were young, idealistic uchi-deshi serving at his father’s side, when their hearts and their souls flamed with the fervent loyalty and faith of youth, they would each rise separately to embark upon their separate missions. Countless dawns and dark hours they had done so, when he could leave their warm nest, wash, dress, and depart, and Shunsui would snore right through completely dead to the world, mission after missions, their routine keeping them enduring through the thousand, gruelling years they were quelling wars and forcing peace onto violent, recalcitrant clans… He remembered them all, as perfectly as if they were still in the present. 

Those moments would never be again. 

His error had ensured that.

A ripple lapped urgently at his toes. 

He looked down. 

In the dim gloom, the outline of his sheathed tachi marked a long, gentle, black curve upon the near-black varnish of the akamatsu floorboards. It was lying close along his side of the futon with its cutting edge facing outwards, exactly how he had lain it last night, undisturbed by his recent movements.

Long millennia of navigating in darkness had trained his feet to step unerringly around the sword form of his Zanpakutō. 

Sōgyo no Kotowari.

[Ai! Why are you are still blaming yourself?] lamented Sōgyo. [You must stop! What happened ‘twas not your fault! How many times we told you that?]

[Aye! How many times did we tell you?] echoed Kotowari. ['Twas Old Fogey’s mistake, not yours! How many times we told you so?!]

[Many times,] he answered by rote, out of habit. [And every time I told you my father trusted my counsel, and my counsel was wrong.] He gazed ruefully at the slumbering form of his soul brother.

[My counsel led us to this,] he repeated quietly.

One misjudgement. And thereafter for nigh seven hundred years, every time that he had to rise before Shunsui for a mission, his soul brother would stir like this, grasp after him with restless hands even from the depths of deep sleep. 

But his Zanpakutō would not have it. Of course. 

[You keep forgetting ‘twas Old Fogey who decided!] Kotowari persisted. [Not you! You were hurt because Old Fogey decided wrong!]

[Aye! You were hurt so bad!] Sōgyo joined in. [All because Old Fogey decided so wrong!] And then more reasonably, added, [Even if you judged wrong, you paid the biggest price! You suffered! You were hurt the most!]

['Twas not only I,] was all he cared to return, since he had never been able to convince anyone of his point of view on this matter anyway. 

Not even his own Zanpakutō. 

Swallowing, he forced down the old twists of guilt, and then forced back the accompanying memories.

This constant state of unconscious anxiety over him was buried so deeply in Shunsui, his soul brother remained unaware of it unto this day. 

It was another thing he could never let on, and never would. All he could do was simply continue to deal with it, and do everything in his power to alleviate it.

[As if he will not find out sooner or later!] Sōgyo groaned. 

[Aye! He is the other half of you, after all!] Kotowari tried to reason.

['Tis been a thousand years and he has not once suspected,] he declared, unfurling to his feet. 

Immediately, goosebumps pimpled all over his skin as he stood nude in the path of the cold air stirring into their bedchamber. 

Nevertheless, he went on decisively, [And it accomplishes nothing to tell him of this. All that will achieve is worry him even more.]

Shivering slightly, he strode swiftly towards the narrow door on the opposite wall of their bedchamber, crossing the familiar distance in the dark as he spoke firmly to the twins to ensure his command would be obeyed.

[You must never speak of this to Katen Kyōkotsu or any other Zanpakutō. Not a breath. Not even a hint. Or make any suggestion, however indirect. I will deal with this myself. And the two of you will assist me when I command it.]

[Oooo, when he commands, he says!] mocked Sōgyo.

[We are so fearful now!] sniggered Kotowari.

He let the two pranksters have their fun, for he knew that when it came to Shunsui, they would obey. 

Reaching the door, he reached for the hinoki wooden frame of its sliding panel and slid his fingertips into the varnished, grooved grip, his eyes casting to his right from long habit.

Out through the opened shōji, past their veranda, the lake and gardens beyond their house lay in a heavy calm in weak moonlight, even as birdsongs fluted merrily through the dark skies. The watery moonbeams were at a steep slant, glossing the surface of the lake with a dull, oily gleam, while the moon itself was only a pale, ragged sliver slung low in the west, heavily shrouded behind inky clouds. On the opposite horizon, a greyish lavender was beginning to seep into the sooty heavens, like a stain spreading up from behind the shadowed canopies of the bamboo groves lining the eastern banks. 

Dawn was close. 

He should make haste.

Gripping the door panel more firmly, his fingers lightly pulled-

And froze.

Something… 

He frowned, narrowing his focus and… there, there it was. Extremely faint, and extremely muted, yet clearly a vibration, nevertheless. Even though it was just barely tickling the furthest edges of his senses, so slight that it was nigh absent. 

But it was there, or his reikaku would not have caught it. 

He skimmed over the sensation — and it quickly became clearer, its vibration diverging into distinct patterns. 

Twelve distinct patterns.

From twelve masterfully concealed reiatsu, he realised with a start. 

What had at first felt like a single reiatsu, was in fact a tightly entwined thread of twelve perfectly harmonised spiritual pressures. Each was thrumming with its own rhythm, yet keeping in such tight synchronisation with the others, that the twelve presences felt like one soul, each indistinguishable from the others.

Onjutsu technique, he recognised at once, consternation rising. Just one among a myriad of others in the family of secretive, cloaking arts passed within the Onmitsukidō.

This particular one was created millennia ago to conceal multiple presences at the same time. He employed it himself countless times before, when he needed to hide the true numbers of their battalions.

But there had been peace in the last thousand years. And in times of peace, only the stealth and security division continued to practise these arts. 

That they were using this technique on him now… 

Abruptly, something clicked, and he swivelled his attention accusingly at his two Zanpakutō spirits. 

[Did you two know about this?] he asked, unable to help his sharp tone.

[Ai! Nay!] exclaimed the twins in perfect chorus, sounding innocently maligned.

Suspicious, he shot a glance back at Shunsui’s slumbering form. [Did he?]

[Katen did not say!] supplied the twins, again in precise unity, and completely guileless.

Their reactions were too united, and too put upon. 

[So you knew,] he concluded, biting down a well of exasperation.

Which meant that Shunsui most likely knew as well, including his soul brother's Zanpakutō. 

Which meant that he should probably assume all of his immediate family had not only known, but had most likely also approved of his father’s choice. 

[But these are the best bodyguards ever!] reasoned the twins, attempting to lessen his ire. [They arrived two days ago! The moment Old Fogey ordered bodyguards on you, nobody dared to tarry!]

[I was joined to the Daireishin for two days. How is it that it did not inform me?] he demanded next.

[We told Fake Soul not to tell you!]

He was stunned. [The Daireishin is able to converse with you?]

Suddenly, the twins hushed, as if caught.

Incredible, that he had not thought to investigate this. If the Daireishin had indeed matured this much, perhaps it could also— 

[Do not be mad? Fake Soul made itself useful for once! Your safety means everything this time. Everything!] 

[Every time you join to Fake Soul, we cannot reach you. So we talk to it. But this time, we told it not to tell you what was happening!]

[You two actually believe this is right,] he murmured, still amazed at what the pair had inadvertently revealed.

But not so amazed that he had forgotten his annoyance with them. 

The twins never liked anyone who depended on him — at times for good reason — but on this one matter, they had gone a little far.  

Enabling his father’s overzealous overprotectiveness never boded well under any circumstances.  

With some discontent, he considered his twelve silent sentinels. 

They were not the rank and file operatives typically rostered for internal protection details. Clearly, each one of them had been carefully hand-picked from the Keigun and Keiratai squads of the Onmitsukidō. By his father, no doubt.

As if the best of Onmitsukidō security and intelligence High Seats had no graver responsibilities than pull menial guard duty over one Gotei Thirteen taichō. Especially when said taichō was more than perfectly capable of protecting himself. 

It was completely unacceptable. 

But he had no time right now to do anything about it.

There will be a serious conversation later, he decided. After his mission was done. Two serious conversations, in fact. One with the twins, but before that, one with the esteemed Sōtaichō of the Gotei Thirteen.

Levelling one final once-over at his silent squadron of overqualified bodyguards, he put them out of his mind and, once more, reached for the grooved grip of the door panel. Soundlessly, he slid it aside to open a gap just wide enough for him to slip through, and then stepped forth into the darkness beyond.

As he pulled the panel shut behind him, pitch blackness and silence fell, smothering all sights and sounds. 

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

He stood still, completely blinded and deafened, becoming more conscious of his breathing. 

The air was warmer in here, more moist, laced with old and new scents of peony and chrysanthemum, and the soft, familiar metallic smell wafting from his left. As he drew each breath, he felt the cool, uneven textures of flat stone beneath the soles of his feet. 

Sōgyo suddenly spoke. [Old Fogey will not listen to you about this if you mean to change his mind.]

[We will not listen to you too if you intend to make him call off your guards,] Kotowari added.

Both Zanpakutō spirits sounded unusually serious.

Evidently, the pair had debated his decision and found it wanting.

He began, [You know this is not—] . 

But Kotowari went right on, emphatically, [You need bodyguards! Old Fogey is badly regretting for sticking you in this mess right now, so 'tis our chance. If he ends this whole nasty trouble without hurting you, then maybe we will think about whether we want to forgive him later.] 

[Aye!] Sōgyo agreed resoundingly. [We make him work the hardest he ever worked to make sure no one hurts a hair on your head! Then we can see if we feel like forgiving him later.] A very brief pause, then a very uncharitable, [Much later.]

So the twins were willing to trade their forgiveness for his protection. 

He was not, however. For his issue with his father was never about his welfare in the first place. 

Narrowing his eyes in the dark, he told his Zanpakutō in no uncertain terms, [You two do realise that what he has done is an utter waste and misuse of our resources, correct? And you both know very well why. I taught you better than this.] Then, unable to hold back his ire, allowed himself to vent, [I cannot believe you did not uphold it!]

That only incited the twins into more protests.

[But we do! Just not this time!]

[Aye! Just not this time! Old Fogey is a fool, but he is doing the right thing this time!]

He rolled his eyes, and blew a bang of his fringe off his nose. [We will discuss this again. After this mission.] 

[Ya, ya, ya! He will discuss it, he says!]

[Ooo, we should be sooo scaaared!]

That the pair was now giving him this much cheek, it meant he had driven home his point.

So he ignored them. Instead, he raised his right hand before him and, with pure muscle memory, aimed the tip of his index finger into the black nothingness and flicked a tiny drop of his reiatsu straight ahead, applying just enough force to propel the droplet across a distance long calibrated into his reflexes.

A soft whoosh followed. 

Then a small, gentle light winked into being, glowing suspended in black darkness.

For a breath, the little orb of light hung directly opposite him, twenty paces across from where he still stood.

And then it began to grow, steadily brightening as it began swelling, pouring forth warm, creamy light. His eyes adjusted in tandem with the increasing illumination until he was seeing the scrubbed, grey-green slate tiles of the opposite wall, and of the floor.

Their tall, cast iron kidō stand lamp stood before that wall, directly opposite him, and thus the door behind him. Soft, milky light was diffusing through the sandblasted surface of its fluted, glass lampshade. Within it, white kidō flames were dancing, wavering atop the black, cast iron pole. 

Ingrained habit sent his gaze sweeping methodically around the enclosed space. 

Their en suite ofuro was as large as their bedchamber. Its right half was given to their vanity, changing, and linen areas. Presiding in the space were their antique, double-doored vanity, and against the adjoining wall, their large clothing rack, and double-doored, linen cupboard. 

The left half of the bath chamber, however, was dominated by their deep, oversized tub. Thin steam was wafting gently from it, carrying into the damp air the soft, metallic scent. Covering the floor adjoining the long side of their tub was their wide, washing platform, the slatted, wooden construct resting over the drainage grids built into the slate-tiled floor. And beyond the platform, nestled at the far end of the wall almost flush to the corner, was a small exit, screened by a pair of long, white, noren curtains. The exit stood raised above a single tiled step. 

Suddenly conscious of the pressure on his bladder, he headed for the curtained exit, swiftly crossing the chamber and stepping up onto the washing platform.

The broad, kōyamaki slats were now dry beneath his bare soles, the wood having aired out overnight. 

[You did not pack any provisions,] Sōgyo abruptly remarked, suddenly worried.

[Ai! Why did you leave that out? You burn food like wild forest fires!] Kotowari put in anxiously.

[There will be adequate repast awaiting at Kisuke-kun’s,] he assured the pair, lightly treading over the wooden slats so that they would not creak.

[Are you certain? Sly Boy has not seen or spoken to you in over a hundred years!]

[What if he has forgotten how much you need to eat?]

[Yoruichi would have prepared him by now,] he assured again, navigating silently around the wooden washing stool and bucket. 

Two loud snorts answered him. [That crafty Cat Woman is undependable!]

Stepping off the platform, he crossed the narrow, tiled walkway towards the step below the curtained exit. [If she has forgotten, then I shall simply ask for more if I require. However, I very much doubt I will need to. Tessai-san consumes a great amount of food as well.] 

The step below the exit was tiled with irregular pieces of textured granite instead of square, slate tiles. The transition felt stark against his soles, for the granite was very much colder. Raising a hand, he drew one linen panel of the noren aside, took another step up, and stepped through. 

Immediately, the air turned cold. The small corridor before him extended straight on for several strides, and then angled left. The walls on either side were of darkly varnished, akamatsu hardboards, and ended a foot above his head, leaving a gap of two feet from the lowest horizontal beams supporting the eaves overhang. Fresh, cold breezes circulated through the spaces above the walls, breathing into the short passageway. 

He felt his skin pimple once more.

The light was dimmer here, less intense, though of the same diffused, creamy quality as that cast by the kidō lamp in the main chamber of the ofuro. The illumination came from the small, fluted, glass lamps rising discreetly from the walls, spaced at even intervals.

But there was sound here, instead of silence.

Trilling, warbling symphonies of the resident mejiro populations were now singing in earnest, their songs floating in through the partial open-air.

In an hour or so, likely less, the sun would be up.

Hastening, he made his way through the rest of the corridor, turned left, and reached the privy. Quickly he relieved himself, then wiped and flushed, and strode back the way he had come.

Once he was back in the ofuro chamber, he made directly for the steaming tub. 

It was more of an indoor, heated pool, in truth. For the oblong bath was large and deep enough for soaking up to three large adults at once.

It was also much older than even he. So old, that its origin was no more than a family lore of how his founding forebear shaped it overnight from the single trunk of a giant kōyamaki tree. By the time he inherited the tub, long millennia of use had so thoroughly petrified its wood that no trace remained of any joints in its angles. The material, however, had become impervious to all manners of boiling, corrosive liquids. And that was the reason his family had it moved here, for his use. 

He inspected the water, observing the endless strings of tiny bubbles spiralling up beneath the gauzy steam. The pool-sized tub was always full and fresh, renewed perpetually by a constant flux of streams flowing and ebbing through a parent-child system of pipes and pumps. The parent system tapped into the cool waters of the Ugenkō surrounding his house, while the child system plunged deep below the surface of the lake to bore through its deepest floor into the gaseous, underground mineral rivers. 

The entire design was conceived by his father.

[Fine, so maybe Old Fogey took very good care of you!] huffed Sōgyo, miffed at the direction of his thoughts. [But that was only in the beginning!] 

[We are only temporarily agreeing with him for now,] reminded Kotowari archly, before adding, [We are still blaming him for everything else!]

He suppressed a sigh, and shelved his own feelings for the time being. 

A white square of fresh wash cloth lay on the wide rim of the tub, ready for his use. Beside it, sat his usual wicker basket of fresh peony blossoms.

Shunsui’s doing.  

It must be, since he took his bath before his soul brother last night. 

One particular blossom sat atop the rest of the pile. It was fully bloomed, delicately pink, layered, and round. 

Gently, he scooped it up with his fingers, marvelling at its natural symmetry. 

['Tis his surprise for you,] whispered Sōgyo conspiratorially. [We are not supposed to tell you.] 

[But Katen told us,] supplied Kotowari helpfully, equally hushed.

[I know,] was all he said, feeling a smile crease his mouth. 

He lavished upon the bloom one more admiring gaze, then turned, and bent to lightly place it on the seat of their washing stool, out of the way of his splashing. Then he reached to his side and picked up their wooden wash bucket, straightened, and turned back to the tub.

There was no time for a full wash and soak. Still, long habit made him want a whole-body mop. 

Resting the wash bucket on the rim of the tub, he next lifted the wicker basket and gently scattered the blooms over the lightly steaming water, inhaling deeply as the soothing scent of fresh peony leapt and swirled into the damp air. 

The hot water would take a few moments to infuse, though he could already feel his lungs relaxing, his airways opening up more.

In the meantime, he put up his hair. Gathering the long mane to the back of his head, he began twirling the thick, heavy tail clockwise, twisting it into a loose bun that he could knot into itself. Once his hair was out of the way, the water was also ready.

Picking up the wash bucket once more, he dipped it into the tub, this time to fill it. Several pink blooms flowed into the wooden receptacle along with the freshly infused hot water, but he paid them no mind. As soon as the bucket was full, he released a trickle of reiatsu into the muscles of his arms and upper torso, and gently raised the now-heavy pail out of the tub, careful to avoid any splashes. Just as gently, so as not to spill the water, he set the bucket back down on the rim of the tub, and then picked up the wash cloth. 

The scented, steaming water felt pleasantly hot and fresh upon his hands as he wet and loosely wrung out the cloth. Then he began to mop himself, starting from his face. 

It did not take him long at all before he was wiping his toes. 

Shunsui had done a thorough job the night before. 

Wetting the wash cloth one last time, he wiped once more behind his ears and around neck, then over his intimate parts for good measure. Finally, he rinsed out the wash cloth the final time and laid it flat out on the rim of the tub to dry.

The bucket of water was still comfortably hot, but it was used water now. So he lifted it off the rim of the tub, and bending to avoid splashing the area, upended it over the slats of the washing platform.

Wet, pink blooms fell out along with the small cascade of water, tumbling onto the drenched, wooden slats. Gently, he set the empty pail down, upside down to let it drip dry, careful to avoid crushing the fallen flowers.

And then he was clean, freshened, and lightly stepped off the wet platform and onto dry slate tiles, making for the other side of the ofuro. 

Their vanity gleamed darkly in the gentle light, its dark, resin varnish burnished with a deep, oily sheen that told of countless layers of retouches to keep the keyaki wood frame conditioned and moisture-repellent. It was another heirloom, gifted by his late mother. And transported here for his private use by his father.

The twins began groaning at where his thoughts were once again wandering.

[All right, I shall spare you both,] he wryly conceded.

The pair heaved noisy sighs of relief as he drew up before the vanity. 

Their white, enamel wash basin awaited on its counter, as always. But instead of being empty, it was filled, the small, round surface of clean water resting still and clear. Beside the basin lay a small, white translucent bag of dried chrysanthemum petals, thoughtfully placed atop a white, folded square of fresh, face towel. And next to the petals and towel, was his long-handled wooden comb, with its faded-blue, carp-shaped handle facing up, ready for his fingers.

Another of Shunsui’s doing. 

The sight warmed him, even though the water in the basin had long gone cold.

Smiling to himself, he touched an index finger to the side of the basin, shooting a tiny spark of his reiatsu into it. A moment passed, and then steam began to gently waft. 

He proceeded to make quick work of his remaining ablutions. 

A small pinch of the dried petals was enough to turn the warm water astringent. He let the petals soak while he reached for his toothbrush. 

It stood exactly where he had left it the night before: leaning out of his pale-blue, earthen mug. His mug also sat exactly where he had left it: on the right side of the glass shelf, below the large, round, vanity mirror. And beside his mug was his small, pale-blue tin of toothpaste, where he had left it as well.

He picked both up. Wetting his toothbrush in the basin, he began applying his toothpaste to its bristles, giving a glance at his reflection as he did. 

There must not be the slightest gap in your disguise, rang the stern, gravelly order of his father in his ears. I will not risk even a dragonfly’s chance of identifying you.

A ridiculously paranoid demand, though laughably simple to fulfil. 

He really only needed to hide his hair.  

It was his identifying physical feature. Beyond the few souls in his immediate circles, almost none other had actually seen or heard him. Or sensed his reiatsu. His appearance, his movements, the sound of his voice, his power, all had only ever been portrayed in texts or art, and those were always exaggerated or stylised in some manner. 

So hide his hair, and it would be impossible for any soul who never saw or heard him before to even guess who he was.

Pleased at his decision, he stuck his toothbrush into his mouth and began to brush his teeth. 

[But the whole Gotei Thirteen saw you yesterday afternoon!] objected the twins.

The sparring match, of course.

[My position was far away, and I interfered only briefly,] he reasoned, then gently pointed out, [And did you not observe how overwhelmed everyone was? There was too much excitement over the duel. None would remember me after a night’s sleep.]

[Only you will think that!] argued the pair. [We do not think so!] 

He decided not to debate that particular point, lest he reopened that old jar of worms.

Instead, he picked up his mug and filled it with water from the basin, and began rinsing out his mouth with the scented, astringent water.

[Maybe you can cut your hair!] suggested Kotowari, suddenly excited.

[Aye! That is a good idea! Cut it all off!] Sōgyo joined in enthusiastically.

He froze, glaring at his reflection, right into his own staring, brown eyes. 

[You two cannot be serious,] he stated flatly to his mirror image.

[Of course we are, think about it!] Kotowari urged. [Those greedy, ignorant ingrates out there are now telling everyone Old Fogey is getting too old and muddle-headed to lead. And accusing the other three Gotei Pillars of being too blinded by loyalty to stop him.]

[And guess who they will turn their attention to next?] Sōgyo picked up. [Who does Old Fogey favour the most? Who was the only one he chose to adopt as son? You! Who else!]

[So cut off all your hair! Since those ingrates never saw you before, they will definitely not recognise you!] Kotowari continued. [You will be much safer this way since they will not even know they are looking at you when they are looking at you.]

[Besides, your hair used to be really short when you were young! So it will just be like becoming a boy again!] Sōgyo finished with a flourish.

[Shunsui will kill me,] he stated again, aghast.

Not to mention, he liked his hair.

[It will grow back, Katen’s master will not fret for long,] Kotowari coaxed.

[Aye! It will only be temporarily short! But it will be the perfect, temporary disguise!] Sōgyo cajoled.

There was really only one answer he could give.

Emphatically, he shook the water in his mug over his toothbrush, then shook them both out and returned the set to their places on the glass shelf. Then, picking up the unused square of face towel, he laid it very precisely on the left end of the glass shelf, right beside Shunsui’s sakura-painted, ivory, ceramic mug and its matching ivory tin of toothpaste. He gave the square of cloth a slow, measured pat, readying it for his soul brother’s use, then reached up his right hand and shook out his loose bun, while his left picked up his comb. 

Wordlessly, he began combing out his long hair, his fingers easily falling into the age-old movements of parting the thick, heavy strands into two equal sections, one over each side of his nape.

[He is not speaking to us,] Sōgyo whispered to Kotowari.

[I think we made him angry,] Kotowari whispered back to Sōgyo.

He began to work on both sections of his hair, his fingers flowing as smoothly and swiftly as they once did. Presently, a white, herringbone-patterned rope began to appear in his hands. Pulling it over his right shoulder, he worked quickly and at last, finished off by winding a piece around the tail and tucking off the ends. 

Then he examined himself in the mirror.

A long, heavy, herringbone braid lay hanging down over his right shoulder, gleaming white in the soft light. 

His appearance startled him a little, for it was at once familiar, and yet so different. 

Familiar, because that was how he used to wear his hair in his youth, before he ascended his thousandth year.

Different, because he suddenly looked terribly, terribly young. And very much thinner, gaunt, in fact, with his jawline and the pale shells of his ears exposed like this. Though his braid was thicker now, and much longer, his bangs were also longer and fuller now, and they framed his cheekbones like overweight curtains, making him look that much more skeletal.

This was probably a bad idea in terms of looks. If he had more time, he would have dyed his hair, and perhaps avoid presenting himself as this young, or this malnourished. 

But since he did not have the time, this was his next best alternative. 

[Master?]

[Are you really angry with us?]

[Hngh,] was all he allowed them.

The twins fell guiltily silent.

He let them stew. 

Pausing for a moment, he considered changing the basin of used water. Usually he would do it when he rose earlier than Shunsui, and would also start the astringent infusion of chrysanthemum for his soul brother to shave with. 

But he had tarried a little too long now, and no longer had the time.  

Shunsui would understand. 

Thus decided, he replaced his comb back on the vanity counter, then headed to where their clothing rack stood against the adjoining wall.

One side of the frame was still draped with their bath sheets. The other side, however, was hung and readied with his set of fresh clothing. Beneath the sheets and clothing, three fat wicker hampers squatted on the floor, one for their used towels and sheets, one for Shunsui’s soiled clothing, and the third for his. 

Reaching for his clothes, he dressed swiftly. The fundoshi went on first, of course, and his hands pulled and knotted the strip of black cloth over his waist and groin with practised ease. Next, went on his white shitagi shirt, and over it, his black hakamashita. He shook both arms when he was done, to let the white sleeves of his shitagi fall and nestle down properly within the wider, longer sleeves of his black, outer shirt.

Then he stepped into his white tabi socks, which he had arranged on the floor the night before. Kiyone had long replaced all his tabi with modernised versions, and thus all he needed to do was bend down and pull up both hidden zips behind his ankles. 

Last to go on was his black hakama. He pulled the wide, pleated trousers up over his legs, and then up over the ends of both his long shirts, adjusting the stiff backboard as he did so to centralise it on his lower spine. Then he adjusted the pleats on his front, three on his right side, two on his left, and secured them all with the four attached waist strings. Finally, he pulled down his long white obi sash from the rack, and wound the white fabric around his waist three times before tying it off securely over his navel with a butterfly knot.

And then he was done, fully dressed in his shihakushō uniform.

[We are sorry,] sheepishly apologised Kotowari.

[Aye, we should not have suggested you cut your hair,] followed Sōgyo, contrite. 

He suppressed a grin as he returned to the vanity, collecting his comb. 

[But those ungrateful idiots are really trying to create more trouble! Truly!]

[Aye! All Zanpakutō are talking about them! We only wanted to make your disguise foolproof!] 

[I know you meant well,] he relented, storing his comb into the concealed pocket in the front of his black shirt as he headed back to the washing platform. [I also hear the whispers. The malcontents are blaming my father for Aizen’s crimes.]

[Aye, they are saying Old Fogey is unfit to rule since he let Aizen get away with such terrible deeds right under his nose!]

[We only wanted to prevent them from attacking you to get at Old Fogey.]

Carefully, he picked up the peony bloom once more from the seat of their washing stool.

The flower was still dry. And still fresh.

[I forgive you both,] he murmured, cradling the bloom in his left hand.

[Truly?]

[Really?]

[Aye,] he affirmed, turning and heading for the exit of the their ofuro.

A chorus of grateful noises rose from the twins as he reached the narrow door. 

Snuffing out the light behind him, he reached for the sliding panel of the door, moving blindly but surely in the dark as he slid it aside. 

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

He stepped into greyish gloom as he re-entered their bedchamber, one hand sliding the door panel shut behind him. A trilling mess of bird songs floated in from beyond the veranda, drawing his eyes to the left, past the opened shōji to the skies outside. 

Where the heavens were soot-black before, it was now a dark grey.

He turned back to their bedchamber.

The broad figure of Shunsui was still slumbered on, still curled protectively around the bolster of bundled silk covers.

Quietly, he trod around the foot of their futon, and bent to gently place the peony bloom on the cushioned headrest, close within the grasp of one large, outstretched hand. Then he picked up his tachi from where it rested on the floor, and straightened.

The last part of his preparations lay in the next room, deeper within their home. But he held back, allowing his gaze to commit the face of his soul brother to his memory, noting the play of the dim light over each of those beloved features. 

In sleep, the aristocratic lineage of the man was the most evident. Anyone who did not know Shunsui, or about the reputation of Kyōraku Taichō, would at once mistake his soul brother for a high-born, unreachable noble. Either that, or they would hear of his legend, his prowess, his sharpness, and would fear him even before they met him.

But not he, of course.

Part of the solution, he thought. Should his soul brother’s machinations come to fruition, then all of what would follow would be part of the key to regain full control of his subconscious.

It was still too early to say, however. And what was worse, after experiencing the life he had…

He found it difficult to suppress his doubts.

Though he would not speak of it, for now.

I will see you soon, he promised anyway, conveying his wordless vow across the gloom to the sleeping man.

And then he turned on his heel, and left, heading inside.

Steps falling silently on the hardwood floor, he walked past the dividing fusuma panels, which he left ajar last night. The chamber he entered was his spare room, though for the longest time it had been serving as Shunsui’s walk-in wardrobe.

Here, he had left his last items of clothing. 

Pausing before an opened closet, he stared at his old, maroon yukata hanging inside. 

It was completely threadbare. The inner quilt had long since thinned out, and the long robe was now cool enough to wear even during the hottest summers. He could never bear to discard it, however, and had left it hanging here instead. In his spare closet. 

And now, it came in handy. 

Nigh two thousand years had it been, since the yukata last belonged to his father. Only four others were still alive who could remember its original owner - and none of them were souls he had to hide from. Anyone who saw the robe now would instantly dismiss it as a disreputable item more suited for incineration than donning. 

Quietly, he leaned his Zanpakutō hilt-up against the closed side of the wardrobe, then reached both hands into the opened side and fondly took down the ancient robe. Gently, he pulled it on, and then drew both front panels over his chest.

The panels no longer met. 

And the sleeves no longer covered the full length of his arms either, stopping a full three fingers' breadth from the ends of the black sleeves of his hakamashita.

Looking down, he realised the hems were also shorter now, ending below his mid-shins rather than at his ankles.

He smiled at the discoveries. It seemed he had outgrown his favourite robe without knowing.

But he left it on, nonetheless. For it now hung rather fashionably, like a long haori coat instead of a yukata.

Satisfied, he turned and reached into the adjacent closet, where he had hung his last item of attire. 

It was the long haori of his rank, but now turned completely inside out with its crimson lining on the outside. In the dim light, the crimson appeared as a dark grey. And the white exterior fabric of the garment was now on the inside, as was the black characters of the number thirteen and its accompanying black, stylised snowdrop insignia embroidered on the back of the robe. 

Once he put the haori on, turned inside out like this, the distinctive, white fabric signifying his rank, as well as the characters and snowdrop symbol of his division, would all be completely hidden. 

So he put it on. 

It had been many hundreds of years since he last wore it this way. More than three hundred, he was certain of it, though he had never counted the exact number.

And then he was done.

Lifting his tachi, he carried it by hand as he soundlessly padded out into the front room, the hard floorboards beneath his footfalls giving way to soft buoyancy as he trod onto tatami floor mats. 

It was beginning to lighten outside, for grey dawn was now filtering through the vertical bars of the round window even as the songs of the mejiro were abating, the passerine birds beginning to depart for their morning hunt.

Swiftly, he crossed the room, passing their low, sugi wood table as he headed for the genkan, the entrance foyer of their home. Stepping down onto the slate, stone step, he paused to toe on his waraji straw sandals, keeping perfect balance from long practice as he switched from foot to foot. 

A breeze blew through the sudare reed blinds, stirring the folds on one side of Shunsui’s gaudy, pink-flowered kimono hanging on the kimono rack. On the other side of the rack, draping over one wide, flowery sleeve, were heavy folds of a black, velvet fabric, the plush cloth barely swaying in the swirling currents. 

Feet securely sandalled, he took the last step down onto the slate stones of the genkan, and took down the black velvet cloth, shaking it out. 

It was a cumbersome thing, this cloak. But he had little choice about it. 

Swinging it around, he pulled it over himself, buttoning it down the front. The closure covered down to his sternum, but its folds were copious enough to drape and conceal him completely. Snaking out his free hand, he drew the voluminous hood up over his head and pulled it low over his face. There was a muffler attached to one side of the hood, so he affixed its other end to the other side, drawing the soft, plush fabric over the lower half of his face.

When he was done, only his eyes were exposed by the gap between the muffler and the hood.

It felt strange, to be tented like this, with the sounds of the world slightly muffled. 

Finally, he patted himself down for one last check. The outline of his Denreishinki protruded from the concealed, right pocket, exactly where he had left his Soul Phone last night. 

Then he noticed a small weight on his left side — it was not there when he hung up the cloak the night before.

Lightly, he patted the area again, and heard a soft, metallic clink as his hand met with two circular outlines nestled within the concealed, left pocket.

Mayuri’s bracelets. 

He had not put them there, since he had intended to leave them behind. 

Which meant Shunsui must have.

His soul brother's idea of an added precaution, he supposed. 

He would bring them along, then. Though he highly doubted he would need to use them.

At last, feeling as ready as he would ever be, he inhaled once, gripped his tachi, and then stepped forth, ducking beneath the blinds as he took his first step on his first mission in over three hundred years.

Chapter Text

UGENSŌ.

It meant, ‘Villa of the Northwest Rains’, in classical tongue.

The estate was peaceful, a restful sprawl of quiet, cultivated gardens surrounding a small lake. White, stone walls bounded its perimeter for his privacy, while blankets of bamboo groves lined its east, dampening the noise of the barracks and watch stations beyond. On its west, the reprieve of a stone garden provided a lull of quiet before the gravel path opened into the bustle of the adjoining offices and halls.

Or the estate was typically peaceful, restful, and quiet — save when it was beset by yet another one of those endless, fitful lightning showers: those erratic, strangely electrified rains which tended to open up the heavens without warning, from seemingly nothing and nowhere, only to merely deign the world beneath with a quick rinse before hastening onwards into the northwest, leaving the skies fresh, the lake sparkling, and the grounds and everything else clean and shiny.

The inexplicable weather so impressed his father that, when construction had first begun on the estate, the Sōtaichō fell into a bout of literary absorption so unusually deep and distracted, not even Chōjirō-jisan saw much of his superior. Only when constructions were completed did the Sōtaichō finally emerge, and that was when his father unveiled with a flourish the appellation he had composed. Thereafter the Sōtaichō held a private but elaborate dedication for the estate during which he decreed the metonymy as a constant, discreet reminder of the true nature of the locale he had chosen for the abode of his adopted son.

And he, the adopted son, had accepted it dutifully, even when he thought his father mistaken in attributing the odd climate to more than the natural geography of the place. After all, his new home was nestled within territories closest to the northern ice storms — the northernmost grounds of the Thirteenth Division, situated just behind the northernmost point of the Seireitei, beyond which lay the rural districts of Northwest and North Rukongai, and then the wetlands and flats beyond. Thus, it was only to be expected that the estate and its immediate surrounds would frequently receive fallouts of the wild, electrical tempests that perpetually raged upon those distant, frozen horizons.

And, thus, he always believed his father's conviction to be more of the rationalisation of an oversolicitous, single parent.

Until a few days ago.

Now, he felt less certain that his father had ever been mistaken. 

Though he could not pinpoint why.

Dank gusts buffeted his robes, penetrating his multiple layers, spreading cold to his skin. The inky clouds he glimpsed upon awakening had descended in a grey haze, and stiff, damp winds had risen.

The gales were now blowing hard, tossing the bamboo groves to rough, undulating waves of dark jade, and their leaves and trunks to an echoing mess of harsh rustling and hollow clacking reverberating throughout the entire estate. Wavelets were pushing northwest across the dark surface of the lake, and low, sluggish mists herding towards the northwestern shoreline, blurring the sight of the pavilion where he often sat in jinzen — but incidentally thinning the haze around his lake house.

The last was fortuitous, for what he was planning to accomplish. 

Yet, as the vapours ebbed and swirled about him, a faint scent wavered — very faint, it was, and should have been undetectable. 

Except it was, to him.

For no other soul knew the scent of lightning as intimately as he.

A storm was coming. 

A true storm, that would not be another one of the lightning showers they were used to. For an unseen… something, was bestir. 

Arising… somewhere. 

He could feel it, but not with his reikaku, for his senses were reading nothing of this unseen… thing. 

What he was feeling, he was feeling it with something... deeper. Something somewhere deeper… in him. Deep inside him, in his… his bones.

[Feeling cold?] Sōgyo asked with worried concern.

[Catching another chill?] Kotowari inquired anxiously. 

[Nay,] he assured both, unwilling — and unable, even if he made his best attempt — to put what he was feeling into words. [Have no fear, we shall be gone from here before the rains arrive.] 

[Still, you should not be in this wind,] insisted Sōgyo. [‘Tis too wet and too cold, no good for your lungs.]

[Aye!] Kotowari agreed heartily. Then, with great curiosity, asked, [But why are you still standing here? We should be on our way.]

He inhaled, listening to the creaking of the sudare reed blinds behind him as he stood with his feet firmly in front of the Ugendō.

The air was indeed extremely damp. And chilly. 

The entire front of his lake home was bounded by a very wide and spacious veranda, designed especially by his father for the lounging and resting sessions decreed by Senpai as part of his recuperative treatments. He never really used it for such sessions, however.

He was using it now, to be in full view of his Onmitsukidō bodyguards concealed around the perimeter of this northern half of the estate. 

[Do you think they have seen enough?] he asked drily.

[See you, Master?] Kotowari asked again, this time with great puzzlement. [But why do you want them to? Already, they cannot sense your reiatsu because you are an Elder. Now with this kidō Sly Boy put in your cloak, no one can see you. Is that not the point?]

[Old Fogey can see through Sly Boy’s tricks, I think. Probably Doctor Blood too. And Katen’s master,] Sōgyo put in helpfully. Then added, speculatively, [Maybe Earl Grey can too, but him I cannot be sure.]

[We will find out about Earl Grey soon enough,] Kotowari dismissed, before pressing, [But Master, why do you want your guards to see you? They cannot and they are not supposed to.]

[I just allowed them,] he informed.

The shrill cries of alarm nearly deafened him. 

And would have hastened the coming storm if his control was lesser.

[What?! Why?]

[Why? Master, why?!]

[Because my father does not know everything,] he calmly explained. [Such as the need to do this.]

So saying, he released his reiatsu — and at the same instant, his will. 

The cries of alarm became shouts of dismay as he channelled the potent mix into his right arm, feeling his power course finely through his muscles, into his hand, into his fingers, and onto the spirits of his Zanpakutō.

[Nay! Nay! Not this!]

[Ai! Not this! Not this!]

Ignoring the furious, childish protests, he concentrated on moulding his reiatsu onto the twins, feeling the shape of the sheathed tachi in his hand begin to lengthen, then widen, and then grow heavier, until he could no longer hold it in one hand beneath his cloak.

Pulling his Zanpakutō out from within his cloak, he swung its other end onto his left hand and braced his weapon across both palms — except that the twins were no longer in their usual form of a long, curved sword.

Instead, balanced across his hands was a darkly varnished, single piece of wood, its length almost as long as three-quarters of his height, its width as wide as his hand from the base of his palm to the tip of his middle finger. Narrower on one end than the other, its surface was slightly curved widthwise while its base was flat. Seven white strings were strung taut lengthwise over its curved surface, from end to end.

[Ai! Ai! I hate this shape!] cried Kotowari querulously.

[I hate it too! Especially when you make us sing!] clamoured Sōgyo, upset. 

[Hmm,] he merely hummed, as he surveyed the zither form of the twins with his musician’s eye.

He thought it quite satisfactory, considering that it had been quite a while since he last made the twins assume this form — no longer did the pair manifest as the traditional yamato-goto he once commanded them to copy slavishly; they now presented themselves in the adaptation he ordered: without the bridges beneath the strings, and with a seventh string. 

Lightly tapping one side of the zither, he felt a gentle vibration respond within its body — the instrument was now also hollow inside, just as he wanted. 

The material of the strings, however, remained unchanged. Still made out of his own hair. 

They now gleamed in the stormy light of this strange dawn.

But whether or not the twins would still produce the same deeper, richer sound when plucked, was a test for a less pressing time.

[Bakeru,] he commanded softly, applying a mere nudge of his will.

Another round of protests resounded, but the twins had to obey him nevertheless. He watched as a dark wood grew over the zither, quickly covering the instrument until he cradled in his hands a long, sealed case of darkly-varnished kiri wood, complete with a padded, leather strap affixed below its length. 

[There, are you two not beautiful like this,] he complimented kindly.

[But we still do not like it!] complained the pair, though with a little less heat.

[You are not going to make us sing, are you?]

[Please do not! We do not like to sing!]

[We shall see,] was all he said, then slung the zither over his back.

But the ever-present curiosity of the twins made them press on.

[Why are you making us do this anyway?]

[Aye! Why?]

Ranging his senses out, he scanned the perimeter of the Ugensō, noting where each of his bodyguard was concealed.

He began committing each of the twelve reiatsu to memory. 

[The story is I exerted myself too much at the duel yesterday, so I am now returning to my family estate to recuperate,] he answered absently.

Ascension endowed him with the ability to read every reiatsu — a useful edge he made no excuses for whenever he had to employ it. And no matter how displeased he was with his father’s decision, under present circumstances, it would be the wiser part of valour that he could recognise his bodyguards instantly should he need to. 

Besides, it was negligibly simple for him to peek beneath their Onjutsu cloaking technique. 

[Oh!] exclaimed the twins in sudden realisation. [And you work on your music whenever you are with your brothers and sisters!]

[Hn,] he affirmed, distracted.

For even as he was scanning them, his twelve sentinels were scanning him in return — or more precisely, the estate. To and fro, left and right, they went, and across, and sideways, and all around — relentlessly and without pause — each sweep so cunningly timed, so perfectly seamless with the next, he could spy no crack or blind spot in their entire net of surveillance.

It could only mean that his guards had been put on heightened alert. Most likely at short notice the evening before by the Sōtaichō himself. And most certainly, in painstaking detail.

This made his ruse that much easier then, as it was now a certainty that the four sentinels watching this northern half of the Ugensō had seen him as soon as he had emerged.

He found it all rather ironic, regardless. That his father had to go to such extent now to deceive the very talents he himself had chosen in the first place… if their circumstances were less dire, these excessive manoeuvring would be laughably tragic, like some melodramatic parody of an irrationally overcompensating ten-millennia-old single parent.

However, there was nothing he could do about it now, save to keep turning the wheel he had helped set in motion. And, when this was all over, to speak some sense into his said parent.

[This is a very good idea, actually!] effused Kotowari, filled with admiration. [We thought you were going to slip away all invisible and stealthy-like, but this is so much better!]

[Aye! If any of them mentions your visit home, no one will even think twice to question!] gushed Sōgyo as well, before quickly amending, [Ai! Not that any of them would, because they are real professionals, after all, but in case one accidentally does, no harm will be done!] 

That will happen, he thought to say, before quickly deciding against it lest his Zanpakutō harangued him again.

For the twins never liked his two Third Seats. Sentarō and Kiyone were his highest-ranking officers and therefore in charge when he was not, yet the two archrivals were so competitive, they were wont to inadvertently let slip confidences whenever they inexplicably locked horns over him. 

This flaw of theirs worked to his advantage now. He had simply confided in the two that he needed a brief respite away. And had thus guaranteed his fib would spread. Sooner rather than later, too, when the two Third Seats fell into yet another strange contest — and that was a definite ‘when’, not an approximate ‘if’ — and unintentionally revealed that their legendary but sickly Ukitake Taichō had taken a leave of absence to recover at his ancestral estate. 

That outcome, when it happened, would seamlessly reinforce their diversion. For when word spread that he had taken yet another seclusion to recover his health, the news would be heard like any other news of the week: such as the schedules of water deliveries, for instance, another necessary but utterly mundane detail of daily life in Seireitei, wholly unremarkable and therefore unworthy of note. And any suspicion remaining over his father’s undoubtedly tall tale would surely dissipate from the keen minds of his twelve bodyguards. 

The remaining work, then, would be done by the grapevines. For what the Gotei Thirteen believed, the rest of Seireitei would, as would the rest of Soul Society.

It was not their finest plan. But considering that they had to arrange the decoy overnight, it was a very good ruse. And it would work, because regardless of how ecstatic his division was feeling over his public showing yesterday, and no matter how triumphant Shunsui might still be feeling about it, he knew better than to expect that he had achieved more than remind the rank and file of his existence. Nothing would have changed overnight in how he was perceived: a living relic of a distant, glorious past who had somehow managed to keep living past his useful time.

All he needed to do next, was to help further confirm the concocted story by presenting his twelve bodyguards with the opportunity to watch his departure with their own eyes.

He kept his counsel, nevertheless, lest he excite the twins further when he needed them to focus.

[I am glad you like the plan. Now, please, settle down,] he said instead. And, without allowing them to react, dropped a little reiatsu into the muscles of his legs, and leapt up into the misty air.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

[Phweeeeeeeeeeeeeee!]

[Gaaaaaaarrrrrrrgh!]

[Cooooold!] Sōgyo gleefully exclaimed. [Fun!] 

[Weeeeeet!] fretted Kotowari. [Disgusting!]

He had to smile at the lively twins as he stepped lightly through the damp, misty air and wondered, not for the first time, at the odd incongruity of the pair. They were as old as he was, born in the same instant as his reiryoku in the way of all Zanpakutō spirits were born of the souls of their masters. Yet, for all their age, they were oft terribly childish. So what did that say about them?

What did that say about him? Were their juvenility a reflection of his own true nature? Though he never thought he was child-like in any way… 

The estate was now far enough below him that his bodyguards would see him if they looked up. 

Setting his idle musings aside, he slowed, and — just like how he always did prior to departing his lake home on leaves of absence — began to circle above the Ugensō, following his habit of tracing an aerial circuit above the property at a pace betwixt leisurely and efficient, slow enough that eyes would not miss the sight of him, yet fast enough that he would not delay his mission. 

Dawn was brighter up here amidst these misty heights — but only by a little. Higher up above him, the overarching expanses of the heavens overhead were still a leaden grey while low on the east, the new sun was a weak, pallid, white smudge.

However, even at this relatively low altitude, the smell of ozone was already stronger — at least, to him it was. Others would remain oblivious to the impending storm for some time more. 

Momentarily, he slowed even further, decelerating into a drift as he cast his sight northwards past the northern boundary walls of the Ugensō — then past the Seireiheki, the white, Sekkiseki ramparts of the Seireitei, and then far, far into the distance, his vision hurtling outwards until he was scanning the white, serrated curve of the distant horizon where skies and land met.

Thready lightning were forking and chasing through roiling grey skies, flashing from west to east over the dark, jagged peaks of the far northern ranges. 

A different kind of storm was truly brewing.

And his reiryoku was resonating in tandem with the shifting elements, feeling something…

Something he felt he ought to be able to identify, but for the life of him, he could not. The sensation was emanating over the great distance from that distant electrical tempest, a feeling like the merest trickle of moisture over parched land. 

Pulling his gaze back, he watched the lands closer to home, tracing his eyes over the low roofs of North Rukongai, noting the distant bustle of its rural residents — the miniaturised, ant-sized retinues of farmers and traders already up and about on their business, hastening through the lines of streets snaking between the rooftops — and the expanse of rooftops spreading organically northwards, beyond which the buildings became sparse, reduced to small clusters of nōka farmhouses interspersed among darkened, allotment strips, until they were absent altogether, taken over by sprawling, rolling patchworks of paddy fields.

Those fields were currently dark, as harvest season was just past.

Fortunately. 

The annual crops of purple rice were too delicate to withstand true climatic violence — his father had long ago decreed their cultivation on these lands to take advantage of the frequent, quick, lightning showers that nourished the soil and water — and the fury now boiling in the far northern wastes portended a storm that had not been seen here since—

He ended the thought quickly. 

At any rate, when that storm struck later, the fortuitous presence of Danzōmaru would be of great assistance, as they could then enlist the Seireimon Monban in the rescue of properties and livestock that were bound to follow.

The shaved, patterned pate of the giant gatekeeper was peeking over the top of the colossal panels of the Kokuryōmon, as it always did whenever the monban sat resting against his charge on the outside of the ramparts. This early in the dawn, the gatekeeper was most likely snoozing in between watches over the wakening districts — and perhaps, the icy horizons.

That gate, its gatekeeper, as well as the Sekkiheki walls presently enclosing their city, all would remain with them until their present crisis was over.

For his final inspection, he scoured his gaze over the gate barracks and watch stations of his division. Those squadrons of the Thirteenth presided over the border section west side of the northern gate highway, behind the gate itself. The barracks were only showing the first signs of stirring, with sparse lights coming on in windows, and sparse activities of black-clad shinigami. While behind the barracks, screening their view of the grounds of the Ugensō, the bamboo groves were now swaying wildly in a rousing, almost violent dance, as the temperature continued to drop.

His two Third Seats would be thoroughly enjoying this dawn, if for no other reason than to kick officers out of their warm beds.

He supposed all would be well as they could be in his absence, under the circumstances.

It would only be a few days. 

[Can we get out of this fog now?] Kotowari whined. [All twelve of your guards have seen you! I know, I counted.]

He smiled, once more finding it utterly strange that considering the elements of his reiryoku, one half of his Zanpakutō pair should be so averse to a wetness.

But he acquiesced anyway. 

Turning eastward, he set off at the same, unhurried pace.

He would have to keep east until he was out of visual range, to appear as if he was setting out for his family estate, and his direction observed by all twelve of his bodyguards.

And because he was an Elder, he could release his suppression over Kisuke-kun’s kidō spell now, and none of his sharp sentinels would think to wonder why they could no longer see him.

So he did.

Five steps, and he was past the highway, with the Kokuryōmon on his left, entering the airspace over the Eight Division.

Repairs were almost completed, he observed with a bubble of mirth. Nanao-san tended to do a faster job of things without her taichō getting in the way. 

If Shunsui wanted to sleep in his own quarters tonight, his soul brother would have rooms and offices ready for him.

Suppressing a chuckle, he took another five steps, and was past the Eighth.

Ten shunpo steps in all, when he could have easily crossed the same distance in two. 

He felt as though he was shuffling within the tight confines of an especially closely-tailored kimono.

[They all saw you leave,] Sogyō reported helpfully.

Thank kami.

Releasing his power, he took a proper shunpo step this time — upwards.

One…

Winds blew against his face, tugging at his robes, and he smiled at the sensation of freedom even as he held the hood down over his head.

Five… 

Scooping deep into himself, into the ever-present, ceaseless, restive heaving deep within his soul, he opened a little pathway, letting that half of his power to flow.

He picked up speed.

Ten…

Fifteen…

Vapours rushed to roil about him, burgeoning around him as white billows swelled before him — and scatter apart as he plunged straight through them, then trail him in white streamers as he shot upwards, as he flew spurred on the rushing river of his reiatsu…

Twenty.

Twenty-five.

Rarely did he have the chance to do this, to flex and glide the muscles of his legs and hips as he raced the winds — and he relished in it now, in the exhilaration of unhindered speed, the freedom of movement as he shot through billowing, grey clouds, trailing blankets of gauzy streamers…

His strength in his father’s command was to serve with his mind, in the arcane… in all things which would have depleted other reiryoku. He accepted his place a long time ago, and never yearned for duties of more physical natures… but Shunsui’s plan was simple.

So simple it was, yet it was possible only by virtue of the macabre madness of Mayuri, and as horrifyingly grotesque as it was… it should work.    

Should. Though experience boded that it would not, even when a small part of him, a very small part, was clutching to the thought that if there was even a slightest chance that his soul brother could indeed succeed…

Thirty…

Thirty-five…

He began to slow, for a deathly void sensation was spreading fast on his reikaku.

The lethal force field of the Shakonmaku barrier was now looming just above.

Should he penetrate it? Mayuri’s surveillance sensors were sensitive enough to detect even Elder reiatsu, avoidable only if he stayed above the Shakonmaku barrier… 

But the clouds he had summoned about himself were perfectly mimicking those billowing in the atmosphere, effectively camouflaging him from sight. The rushing waves of the restless half of his reiryoku were melding with the winds, rendering his reiatsu indistinguishable.

He decided to conserve his strength, and slowed further.

Forty…

Whatever would be, would be. His soul brother would do everything that could be done, while he would do everything that had to be done. And the rest… the rest would be determined by the Balance.

He began to level out his trajectory, smoothly turning to face southwest as he slowed even further, now rising at a leisurely rate.

Forty-five…

Giving in to the urge, he at last allowed himself to look down. 

The panorama of the Seireitei lay sprawling out far below in a perfect, circular disk, its surface etched with geometrical lines of streets and raised reliefs of rooftops. The entire vista glowing softly white in the weak, silvery dawn. 

His home, for over sixteen hundred years. 

Though he could still recall with crystal clarity each day of the fifty years of its construction. Commissioned by his father, built by the finest engineering talents Soul Society had ever seen — and would probably never see again — their fortress city was realised on a backbone of funds and treasures ruthlessly confiscated from the hoards of vanquished clans.

Fifty.

And he halted, finally, feeling the lengths of his cloak and robes pull and billow in the winds.

Too long had it been, since he had seen his home from this ultimate, vantage point, fifty shunpo strides above. 

He could see the faint delineation of his own domain — the northwestern border section of the Thirteenth, its arc defining northwestern perimeter of the city from left of the black spot of the Kokuryōmon, to the north of the white sparkle of the westernmost gate, the Hakutōmon. Behind the vanguard of his Thirteenth, the sectioned domains of the Third, Second and Twelfth defended the rest of the Northwestern Quadrant of the fortress city. 

On the right of the Kokuryōmon, the Upper Northeastern Quadrant was defended by the Shunsui’s Eighth, whose border section arced over the upper northeastern city perimeter, with the Fourth supporting at his back. The lower northeastern border section was under the watch of the Fifth, guarded by the Ninth at its rear.  

His own Thirteenth, Shunsui’s Eighth, Senpai’s Fourth. And the Second, Third, Fifth, Ninth, and Twelfth. Together, they commanded the major long-range, arcane, and security prowess of the Gotei Thirteen, in addition to critical intelligence, medical and research capabilities — that was more than half of their entire power dedicated to the defence of the northern hemisphere of their city.

Whereas the southern hemisphere was left only to the melee forces of the Eleventh and Tenth in the southwest sections, and the Sixth and the Academy in the southeast sections.

Each time that he saw his home from this ultimate, vantage point, he could not tell if his father planned their fortress city from centre out, or from north down.

Shunsui always maintained that the Sōtaichō organised them purely for military efficacies, regardless of the cardinal points of geography. Yet, his soul brother’s perfectly sound logic never eroded his nagging suspicion that it was the latter — that his father had orientated the Seireitei exclusively in preparation to encounter the next threat from the north. 

Though, again, he was now finding himself less certain about his father’s mind.

Far below, in the heart of the shiro, the spire tips of the First Division shone and glittered as indistinguishable sparks from the peaks of the towers of the Senzaikyū. Nestled to the northeast flanks of the prison towers was a dark, brown oval — the flat plateau of the Sōkyoku Hill.

From this great height, he could fortunately see nothing of the detritus he left behind on that mesa.

[Old Fogey decided never to clean it up,] Sogyō informed, unusually solemn. [He wants to leave it the way you left it, as a reminder of the mistake everyone made.]

[He made, not everyone!] scoffed Kotowari. [He is reacting out of guilt. But if Katen’s master is in charge, there will be no guilt, and the hill will be shiny as new.]

That drew his attention. [My father informed Shunsui of his succession plans?]

[Aye, Katen told us,] confirmed the latter twin. 

Finally, he sighed an inward breath of relief. 

For he had been wrangling with himself over how to broach that news to his soul brother for over a decade.

[Did he agree?] He had to know.

The uncomfortable silence that followed was answer enough.

One more serious conversation he would need to have after his return, then.

A small surge of power drew his attention down below.

The Kidōshū were arriving at his destination.

[Remind me to speak to him when we are back,] he instructed the twins, as he prepared to descend.

[Aye, aye, Master!] chorused the pair instantly, clearly elated that, for once, someone else would be the subject of his ire.

Even if that someone else was the shinigami they liked more than most. 

Indeed, if he thought about it, Shunsui was probably the only shinigami the twins seemed to like.

Huffing a small laugh despite himself, he summoned a trickle of the currents coursing through his body, and allowed himself to fall.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

The white tower of the Senkaimon dully gleamed with a greyish sheen in the dim, hazy dawn, topped by a colossal gate that loomed imposingly even from atop its plateau of an oversized courtyard. Massive columns bounded either side of the gate, the burnished gold of the giant pillars darkly agleam, with their vertical lines of arcane inscriptions more resembling filigreed trails of dried, bloody tears than calligraphy.

Black, white-topped figures were moving about the base of the gigantic gate, their movements sure and smoothly co-ordinated. 

Kidōshū, he recognised, familiar with the uniform of the corps of arcane arts even from this distance.

In the centre of the activities, however, were gathered a small retinue of black-clad shinigami, who in turn were busting around two small wagons-

He stopped, surprised — and with a tiny thrill of delight, drifted closer for a better look.

The wagons were no horse-drawn carriages.

Rather, they were large, rectangular metal boxes, each standing at least a head taller than the average male shinigami upon a set of four black wheels — two beneath the front end, two beneath the back end — and painted a dusty silver. The substance of the wheels were a material he had only heard and read about or seen in photographs, but never in person. Rubber, they were called, in human parlance. 

And where the benches for carriage drivers should be, the front of each wagon was flat. The top half of each wagon front was a large glass panel, while the lower half bore a horizontal pane of metal grilles. A round, glass disc sat on either end of each pane of grilles, while below the pane, a small oblong yellow sign was affixed lengthwise, inscribed with a string of black numerals and foreign characters.

He smiled, intrigued and a little thrilled.

So these were what humans called 'vans'. 

He had only ever heard about these human machines in the drifts of chatter he inadvertently picked up now and then from among his officers. And had only ever seen them in Hidetomo's private reports, first as drawings, then as photographs. 

Never once had he the opportunity to see one with his own eyes, much less ride in one.

From the detailed updates supplied by his Sixth Seat, humans apparently invented the first motorised cargo vehicles slightly over a hundred years ago as improvements over their horse-drawn wagons and carriages. And as was the innate way of humanity, they continued to advance their transportation machinery ever since.

These two vans, then, appeared to be the latest renditions of human efforts in motorised wheeled transportation for cargo.

Warm comfort suffused him when he realised he had recognised this fact by sight alone. 

Once more, he thanked the nameless kami who had lent him the foresight to entrust Hidetomo with all things related to Urahara Shōten. Not all of Kisuke-kun’s supply orders were entirely legitimate, yet the observant young man had not only been consistently discreet in assisting to fulfil them — whatever the nature of request — he had also been astute and dependably meticulous in peppering his reports with useful information, interesting tidbits, and lively anecdotes on the goings-on and developments in Kisuke-kun’s operations, and consequently, the Gense. 

The last was an extremely thoughtful touch, for it had made his last ninety years seem a little less disconnected from the world he was charged to look after, and helped eased some of the sting of isolation he often felt. 

His Sixth Seat had done an outstanding job. He could not have selected a better candidate to help him with this task, and the young man deserved a commendation. Perhaps a promotion was due.

He made a mental note to himself to look into it after his return.

[But Four Eyes is your only candidate!] huffed Sōgyo, impatient. [Pipsqueak talks too much, Loudmouth talks too loud, and everyone else is not careful enough!] 

[And Ice Lady is too good to be working behind the scenes!] pointed out Kotowari, equally peeved. [That is why we assigned her to the frontlines against Snooty’s wishes, we decided that together, Master!] 

[I have not forgotten,] he refuted, though he was unable to help an inward wince. [You need not remind me so often.]

[Ai! Then is it fair to promote Four Eyes when he is the only one left who can do the job?]

He frowned. [Since when are either of you concerned about fairness for others?]

[We only want Master to be seen as just!] sang the pair, before falling cryptically silent.

He began to wonder at the twins — but then caught a flash of white among the delivery team.

Not actually white, he realised instantly, but a head of silvery-grey hair, cropped short and combed neatly — and a white, sleeveless, jinbaori surcoat worn neatly layered over the standard black shihakushō of the Gotei Thirteen.

The hair and dress of the tall, olive-skinned man was distinctive as he moved amongst the entirely black-clad delivery team of Shinigami, inspecting the cargo and consulting the clipboard he carried in one hand. A black, stylised chrysanthemum insignia of the First Division on the back of his jinbaori. 

Chōjirō-jisan. 

He would recognise his father’s unassuming fukutaichō anywhere, even if he did not see that insignia. 

His adoptive uncle was exchanging words with the delivery team as he went about his work, his words inaudible at this distance. Six shinigami had been assigned to carry out the delivery, three to each van. All were Unseated officers, perhaps fresh graduates, for they were each armed with identical Asauchi instead of their own unique Zanpakutō. He recognised two of the faces as among the recent batch of recruits to the Thirteenth.

Then, as he watched, Chōjirō-jisan gestured at the back of both vans, and the six Unseated officers hurried to obey, hastening around to the back of both vehicles, leaving the ancient fukutaichō momentarily alone.

No sooner had the Unseated officers left him alone, Chōjirō-jisan moved to the front of the van on the right, turned around, and then looked up — directly at him.

About time too.

While Kisuke-kun had spelled invisibility into his cloak to near perfection, nothing that was visible could truly be made invisible. His own eyes had been detecting a faint wavering in the air close about him, and the source of the wave emissions was the very garment meant to conceal him from physical sight. 

And regardless of the cloud cover he wore about himself, it was only a matter of moments before the more senior Elder would detect his presence.

[There you go, you two, your confirmation,] he teased the twins, though with a little veiled vindication for their earlier criticisms. [Ojisan is looking at me right now through the kidō of this cloak. This means Shunsui, Senpai, and my father can all certainly do the same.]

[I told you Earl Grey can see through this!] Sōgyo crowed to Kotowari.

[Nay, you did not! You said you were not sure!] Kotowari refuted hotly. 

Suppressing a chortle, he let the pair argue on while he took a shunpo stride downwards

In the next breath, he was standing upon the flagstones of the courtyard, right before the man who had been his uncle in all ways but blood.

“Your wrists,” the Elder fukutaichō murmured below his breath, without preamble.

He flashed both his hands out from beneath his cloak, palms up, offering a glimpse of his bare wrists, before whipping them back under concealing folds again.

It was enough to send a look of relief over his uncle’s stoic features. “Good. I would rather you not use anything of Mayuri’s.”

His brows raised. “Father told you?” he asked in a murmur.

Those pupil-less, grey eyes levelled him with a stare that answered his question.

Of course. Chōjirō-jisan was his father’s confidant in nearly everything, if not everything.

Then those eyes shifted slightly to over his right shoulder, and a beam of approval crossed the avuncular face. “Ichigenkin? I remember you play it well.”

“Nay. ‘Tis the yamato-goto now, and a new adaptation,” he murmured with warmth. 

Chōjirō-jisan looked impressed, but in the next instant, was all business again. “You will be riding in this one.” 

So saying, the senior Elder stepped swiftly to the right, around the front of the van, waving for him to follow. 

He did. And took the opportunity to see the vehicle up close.

With another thrill — and no small amount of secret relief — he saw that he would not be riding in an utterly alien thing, for the transport was truly similar to how most vans looked like in the various pictures Hidetomo appended in his reports. He had memorised the names of all the parts, and was cheered when he recognised the panel his adoptive uncle was opening — the cab door. 

However, he did not recognise the serial number on this van, regardless that it looked identical to the one owned by Kisuke-kun.

And Hidetomo had not reported that the shopkeeper had acquired a second vehicle.

“Quickly,” urged his adoptive uncle in a low voice. “Climb in, and stay down.”

He hesitated. “But this one does not belong to Kisuke-kun.” His eyes trailed through the glass windows to the other vehicle parked on the other side. “That one does.”

“This one is mine,” murmured a low, masculine voice from within the opened cab.

Startled, he stared inside.

What appeared to be an empty space within was slightly shifting, and then another black cloak fell to reveal a tanned, rugged face with a square, stubbled chin. 

The man was clad in a navy-blue, happi coat bearing the black, rhombic emblem of the Gotei Thirteen on both lapels. His shoulders were brawny even though he was seated with his back hunched. However, despite his uniform of a logistics clerk, his exposed hands holding the fallen folds of the cloak were square, athletic, and sinewy. 

Those hands were the hands of a swordsman.

Most disturbingly, the reiatsu emanating from the stranger was odd, as though the man possessed two of them — a main current overlaying a secondary rhythm, both at once intertwining yet, somehow, also conflicting. As if two opposing, mismatched powers were forced to dance as one.

And then the reiatsu was gone, deliberately withdrawn, leaving behind an ordinary vibration that he would not look at twice.

“Amagai Shūsuke, at your service,” the stranger introduced himself, his low voice amiable despite its soft volume, his grey-brown eyes friendly as they peered from beneath long, unkempt bangs of a messy mop. 

That mop of hair was quite the disaster: a dull, slate-black, grown unevenly to chin-length.

“Ukitake Jūshirō, at your service,” he softly returned out of polite habit.

“I know,” replied Amagai, rugged face breaking into a broad, pleased smile.

“Eijisai-dono wishes that both of you be able to recognise each other out in the field,” Chōjirō-jisan explained quickly. Then firmly added, “I agree with him.”

He cast a glance at the senior Elder. 

Because that was his adoptive uncle’s way of saying that he had expended considerable efforts to discuss this with his father.

Then, to his dismay, Amagai reached out a strong, muscular hand towards him, broad palm up and strong fingers waiting, and warmly offered, “Here, let me help you up.” 

The carriage of the van might be high, but he was one-and-half inches over six feet tall. 

He could board the vehicle on his own. 

Do I look that weak? 

But Amagai’s rugged face was earnest, and his grey-brown eyes shone with nothing but respect and chivalrous pride. 

The young man was clearly feeling honoured that he had been chosen to protect an Elder.

Silently swallowing his own bruised pride — and a sigh — he ditched his wry thoughts and accepted the assistance.

Immediately, his hand was firmly engulfed in strong, hard fingers.

The sword calluses on his skin felt very much like his own, but the grip itself felt utterly foreign to him — and caused his guard to rise.

But Amagai was pulling him up.

Tamping down his uneasiness, he lifted up the long hems of his layers, placed one foot up on the edge of the cab door, and steadying himself on Amagai’s grip, unslung Sōgyo no Kotowari from his back before he slid in, pulling the long zither form of his Zanpakutō across his lap as he settled himself onto one side of the cushioned, brown bench. 

Behind him, the cab door swung in close, then shut lightly without a sound. 

He swivelled his head about.

The pupil-less, grey eyes of Chōjirō-jisan were looking up at him worriedly through the opened window of the cab door. 

“I will leave you two to warm up to each other when you are on your way, but Ukitake-kun, can you please try your best not to be a hero,” exhorted his adoptive uncle in a low, urgent tone. “Eijisai-dono is unmanageable enough these days as he is.”

“I shall be timid as a mouse,” he declared humorously.

The ancient fukutaichō stared at him in consternation. “Shunsui-san and you are more alike than either of you realise. But I can no longer shield you from your father’s wrath if you disobey him and end up in trouble. He has become too attached to having you constantly by his side and may never recover his ability to let go.”

At that, he relented, and using their familial address, quietly promised, “I will not make things difficult for you, Ojisan. I intend to be on my best behaviour. You have my word.”

The senior Elder sighed in acceptance. “That is the best I can get from you, I suppose.”

He could say nothing to that. There was no help for it, at any rate. What would have to be done, had to be done. All shinigami knew that.

“Safe journey,” bade his adoptive uncle, his pupil-less grey eyes filled still brimming with worry.

“See you soon, Ojisan,” he comforted.

That seemed to assure the man somewhat, for his olive-features became stern again as he looked past him to Amagai.

There was a wordless exchange between the two men on his either side, then his father’s fukutaichō looked to the left.

“Wait for my signal,” the senior Elder quietly instructed, before moving out of sight.

Left alone with his bodyguard, he looked around the cab in silence.

It was strange, and new, and wondrous. 

His seat was of brown leather, and supported him comfortably. A wide, dark-grey panel supported the base of the wide, glass window in front of him, the panel bearing an open shelf, which was empty. 

On the other side of the cab, however, instead of a shelf, a round, leather-covered hoop protruded from the dark-grey panel on what appeared to be a black axle, except that a slim lever topped with buttons protruded from the left side of the axle. Positioned on the panel above the axle was a small window showing a set of three round meters. The entire setup was located in front of his new teammate, and between them both, a horizontal mirror hung from the low ceiling, angled slightly towards Amagai. 

He glanced left and right, and noticed that there were mirror flaps affixed to both sides of the glass window. And when he raised his hand to press against the beige ceiling of the cab, his fingers encountered the felt surface of a stiff fabric, and a yielding, cushioned feel. 

If he could operate Mayuri’s Soul Phone, he could probably learn to drive a van. 

The idea was appealing.

A soft huff came from his teammate. 

He glanced down and to his right to see Amagai smiling amusedly. “Sasakibe-san informed me that you have never travelled in a van before.”

“I have missed much in the Gense,” he politely returned. Then said, briskly, “But I do study. And I know you are in what is called the driver’s seat. Are you driving us?”

“Yes, as soon as Sasakibe-san diverts away one officer and puts in my reiatsu,” Amagai explained easily. “The Kidōshū has six registered. This is why I had to come here with mine concealed.” His square hand waved at the black, heavy folds of Reiatsu-Concealing Cloak puddled around his waist. Then he grinned. “I was also wanting to see if you could sense me through it. Urahara-san made some improvements to the kidō last night, and our deal was that if it works better, I’m to swap my cloak with yours. Here, let’s exchange them now.”

The young man made to remove the folds.

He stopped him quickly. “Thank you, but I do not need it,” he declined politely. Then, after a quick thought, emphasised, “Truly.”

Grey-brown eyes looked at him a moment, suddenly keen and intense. Then they shuttered again behind an affable gaze.

It was a very brief moment.

But it revealed much to him.

“Keiratai, Third Seat,” he went on to surmise. “But not at present. There is already a Keiratai Third Seat in Soul Society.” He looked around at the cab of the van. “You said this is yours.” Finally, he rested his gaze on his bodyguard. “How long have you been stationed in the Gense?”

Amagai’s mouth dropped open for a moment, then a smile of admiration flashed across his rugged face. “Taichō got all that just from reading my reiatsu for ten seconds?”

“Your reiatsu, and my own knowledge,” he allowed. Then added, “Power and skills like yours should have raised you up the ranks long ago, but the High Seats of Onmitsukidō have not changed for twenty years.” 

He decided against mentioning that he also knew that because most of those said High Seats had recently been drafted into pulling lowly guard duty over him.

Instead, gazing at the man intently, he continued, “This can only mean that you must have been absent from Soul Society. And that only leaves the possibility that you have been stationed in the Gense. As you are here, assigned as my field backup, you must have also missed many opportunities for advancement. What did my father offer you? If you do not mind me asking.”

“A chance to take the Taishu test if I bring you home without a scratch,” Amagai answered in one breath, grey-brown eyes open and honest. “I hear three taichō vacancies have just opened up. And it was Soifon Taichō who offered me the opportunity.”

At the last, he merely gave the young man a flat stare. 

Amagai huffed another chuckle. “Alright, so that’s as good as saying it was Yamamoto Sōtaichō. And in answer to your first question, twenty years. I’ve been out there twenty years.”

That was surprising. 

Yet, somehow not, if he thought about it. 

“You were tasked to search for Shiba Isshin?” he asked quietly.

Those friendly grey-brown eyes suddenly turned intense. “Nothing slips past you, it seems,” Amagai softly said. Then shaking his head, he looked away, while admitting in a low voice, “And yes, I was. And I still haven’t found him.”

“The Gense is a much bigger realm than Soul Society,” he found himself consoling. “I do not think anyone will deem you a failure if you return now.”

The young man turned back, his expression mulish. “But I will.”

He was impressed, despite himself. 

Then Amagai brightened with a wide smile. “But you are a much bigger responsibility, Ukitake Taichō. I shall neither fail you nor everyone who entrusted me with your safety. You have my sword, and my loyalty.”

“For the duration of this mission,” he felt compelled to limit. 

The young man smiled, but said nothing to that. 

Trust Genryūsai-sensei to pick someone as overzealous as himself, flashed the wry thought.

Then there was the sound of heavy doors shutting, and a knock from behind.

“That’s our signal,” Amagai muttered, manner instantly brisk. 

The young man raised both his hands and rested them on the leather-covered hoop in front of them, and then stopped, grey-brown eyes looking at him expectantly.

He looked right back, puzzled. 

A self-deprecating grin abruptly creased the young man’s rugged face. “I apologise, I forgot this is your first time.” 

Without warning, Amagai suddenly leaned close across him, right into his personal space.

Instinct sent him jerking backwards — only for his back to come up against the back of his seat. He sat frozen, his nerves and heartbeat stuttering, with the foreign, male musk of sweat and spice invading his nose and the heat of the Keiratai’s larger body flushing over him.

And then his eyes saw, to his own shame, that Amagai merely pressed a button on the armrest built into the cab door on his left, starting a glass panel rising upwards with a low hum, before pulling a loop of black belt from behind the side edge of his seat.

Retreating back into the driver’s seat, the young man began tugging the black belt over his hips with one hand.

“Er... please?” Amagai paused, hand gesturing at Sōgyo no Kotowari.

He obeyed and lifted his Zanpakutō from his lap, and watched as the black belt was pulled over his loins, and the metal clip at its end was pushed into a socket in the crease of the seat between them.

A soft click sounded as the clip was locked into place.

“Safety belt,” he said aloud, suddenly realising what the belt was.

“Yeah,” Amagai huffed a small chuckle, teasing, “You clearly studied that too.”

Embarrassed, he looked wordlessly away to his left, breathing slowly and evenly to calm himself. 

Absently, he noted that the glass window of the cab had now risen all the way up, completely sealing them in.

“Sasakibe-san must have substituted my reiatsu,” Amagai reported in a low voice, looking out his side of the window at the other van. “They can’t see or sense you, correct?” 

The Keiratai waved in genially at the Unseated officers looking out the cab of the other van, who waved back. 

“Aye,” he assured, in a low murmur.

His answer was reaffirmed when the two officers in the other van looked right past Amagai, and then through him.

Satisfied, the Keiratai turned to face front, placing his hands back on the hoop in front of him again. Keeping his eyes straight ahead, Amagai advised in a soft, solicitous murmur, “Please brace yourself, Ukitake Taichō. I’m going to start the engine soon.”

He nodded wordlessly, and tightened his hands on his Zanpakutō.

[We are here, Master,] Sōgyo chirruped softly.

[Aye, fear not. We will protect you from him,] Kotowari piped in. 

[Thank you,] he conveyed to the twins quietly. 

Belatedly, he realised that his nerves and heartbeat were not calming as quickly as they should, because there was a sensation prickling through his veins.

The prickling sensation of a quiet fear.

Fear of his bodyguard beside him.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

Grey, hazy heavens split apart as a blinding column of pure, white light pierced right into the clouds, the blazing beam shooting from the top of the Senkaimon. The very reishi of the air hummed and vibrated as the colossal panels of the massive gates began to swing open, slowly pouring brilliant white into the greyish gloom of the pale dawn.

“Starting the engine now,” Amagai murmured gently, one hand reaching out to turn what appeared to be a key behind the axle on its right.

A roaring shudder shook the entire van — and his hand instinctively flew to clench onto the edge of his seat, his heart jumping.

In the next instant, the roaring quietened to low, thrumming rumbling noise even as the shuddering subsided into a gentle, continuous vibration. 

He loosened his grip. The vibration was transmitting through the seat right up into his buttocks, the back of his thighs, and his back. It was not uncomfortable, only strange, and new. The purely mechanical trembling felt odd to his reikaku, for there was no accompanying reiatsu behind it. 

Of course there is no reiatsu, he chided himself. The van is a machine, not a being.

“Feeling alright?” came Amagai’s concerned voice from his right.

He unclenched his hand from the edge of his cushioned seat and waved it, consciously averting his eyes from his bodyguard. “I will be. Just… allow me a moment to become familiar with this.”

A low chuckle followed. “Well, here comes something familiar then, to make you feel better.”

Indeed, a tingle he knew well edged upon his senses. 

Looking up and out, he squinted against the increasing brightness towards where he located the sensation — and spied six fluttering black shapes heading towards their retinue.

Jigokuchō, one for each of the six-member delivery team, released by the Kidōshū.  

Then, out of the corner of his eye, a seventh  hell butterfly shot past and joined its six brethren, whizzing from one sibling to another, unnoticeable if one was not looking for it.

A tentative touch of his reikaku revealed the faint buzzing rhythm carried by the seventh insect.

Comfort rose in his unsettled heart when he recognised the familiar reiatsu of Chōjirō-jisan. 

His father had even ensured the planning of this little detail.

“And off we go,” softly announced Amagai, light humour dancing in his low voice.

Beside their vehicle, the other van began moving, its wheels turning as the vehicle began rolling forward, heading for the blinding light now pouring through the opened gates.

Amagai waited until the other van was ahead of them, before he pulled the lever behind the round hoop.

And then they were moving.

He sat, entranced despite himself, as their vehicle smoothly fell in behind the other one. Through the glass panels of the back doors of the van ahead, he saw the profile of a lone shinigami inside.

That made him wonder about his team.

And his bodyguard.

“You convinced our officers to ride in the back?” he asked, as if to simply make conversation.

“Sasakibe-san ordered them to. Our story is this van is transporting fragile items, so they both need to ride in the back to steady the crates.”

“Did they not question when you showed up from the Gense in your own transport?”

“I was cloaked, they couldn’t see me. Sasakibe-san told them the shōten sent two this time. I was already here with the vans before the teams showed up. Had to make-” 

Then their conversation had to pause, for they were passing through the Senkaimon.

He shuttered his eyes reflexively as blinding white flashed, brightening even the back of his closed eyelids. At the same time, the humming of the Senkaimon escalated until it reached a numbing buzz on his senses. 

So familiar, these sensations. As familiar as he last felt them over three hundred years ago — when he last passed through the threshold of the Senkaimon.

Then, as quickly as they had come, the blinding light faded, and the numbing buzz receded, leaving behind a dimness and the rumbling vibrations of their van.

He opened his eyes.

A low, ambient light glowed gently all around them. The illumination came from seemingly nothing, yet it enveloped them from top to bottom, as though they were travelling through a tunnel of soft light. Ahead of them, just above and before the glass window of their cab, the four hell butterflies of their team flitted on, opening their path as they went.

They were now passing through the passage of the Senkaidō.

He smiled behind his muffler, unable to help himself. The experience was at once so familiar, yet so new — for the last time he came this way, he had been travelling on foot, not in this… human-made machine

“As I was saying, I had to make two trips,” went on Amagai, as if they had not been interrupted. “Human science in remote driving is not developed enough, otherwise I would have saved a trip.” A huff of a soft, rueful laugh followed. “It’s one of things I missed while I was out there. The conveniences. In Soul Society, we can power multiple wagons at the same time with just basic kidō to manipulate the reishi in our air. But there isn’t enough reishi in the Gense for the spell to work the same way.”

“Yet, you clearly adapted well,” he observed, running his free hand along the cab door on his left to indicate his meaning. “You learnt to drive like humans, and I can feel the frequency of the Reishi Henkan-Ki you built into your vehicle. You were planning to bring this transport back with you when you return?”

“That’s Urahara-san’s work,” chuckled Amagai. “He installed it into my engine last night.”

“Last night?”

A wry, hitching snort of mirth answered him. Then, “This is the most last-minute assignment I ever received. As soon as I received the order from Soifon Taichō, my phone rang and Urahara-san was on the other end.” A pause as the humour faded, then, softly, solemnly, “However, even if I was not called upon to do this, I would have done everything in my power to win this assignment. I never lost a single officer or target in the twenty years I served in the Gense. So I know my methods work, and Yamamoto Sōtaichō must let me do this.”

He turned and looked at the young man beside him, nonplussed. 

There was a complete lack of pride and ego in Amagai’s demeanour. 

Only honesty, and a complete seriousness. 

“Not a single one?” he had to ask.

“Not a one,” affirmed the Keiratai. Grey-brown eyes glanced at him, suddenly alit and intense. “I learnt from the best, after all.”

“Kisuke-kun was the finest Head of Keiratai we ever had,” he concurred wistfully. “Losing him was a blow to us.”

Abruptly, the young man’s messy mop of slate-black hair shook as his brawny shoulders quivered with soft laughter. “I have a lot of respect for Urahara-san, but I wasn’t referring to him, Ukitake Taichō. You mean you really don’t know?”

“Know what?” 

Amagai subsided into soft chuckles, though one or two snorts still escaped him. “One of the first things I learnt from Urahara-san is to do my homework, and research well. The Keiratai has many strategies and techniques, so whenever I could, I researched them. Imagine how I felt when I discovered that most of our methods were developed by you!”

He felt his brows rise.

The young man became impassioned. “I loved all the folklore and legends taught in my Academy years, and I still love them, especially those about your campaigns and diplomatic victories. Everyone thought I was crazy to want them to be real. But I told myself that even if they were exaggerations and not real, I would still love them just as much. So when I found out that most of the Keiratai methods are similar to the descriptions of your exploits…”

Grey-brown eyes looked at him again. This time, the light in them were the light of open admiration. 

The gaze warmed his cheeks. 

“I did not know that,” he murmured uncomfortably, then looked away.

He truly did not know. He invented a method, it worked, he recorded into the Daireishin, waited until the sentient archive parsed and redacted his inputs, and that was it. He never had the time, nor ever had the inclination, to inquire after what others did with his contributions, much less whether anyone decided to spin lores and fables out of them.

Then, his low voice darkening, Amagai went on, “It’s very clear to me that unless one studies and researches very deeply into it, the connections between our lores and methods and you appear non-existent. This is why I would have fought to take this assignment if it was not given to me. If I could make the connections I did through hard research, then Aizen certainly would have connected you to all other larger events and developments of Soul Society.”

He frowned. Those words were too similar to his father’s.

“This is also why I need to ask a favour of you, Ukitake Taichō.”

“Please ask,” he murmured distractedly, and mostly out of courtesy..

Amagai hesitated a breath, then began, “Sōtaichō ordered me to be able to identify you by face and reiatsu as a precautionary measure. But more than that, I truly believe in your strategy that half the battle is won when we know our partners and troops as well as we know our enemies. I can’t sense your reiatsu, and I can’t find any books and art which have accurate likeness of you. We have perfect privacy now in the Senkaidō, so if you could-”

Sighing, he stopped the young man’s babbling by simply unbuttoning one side of his muffler, letting the thick, plush strip fall away, and turning his bared face towards the Keiratai. 

Silence instantly fell as Amagai stared at his face, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Allowing the young man to look on, he reached into his subconsciousness, and dropped his shields a sliver. 

It was not much at all, a mere hairline crack, with the venting droplets precisely directed at the young man beside him and nowhere else.

But it was more than enough.

For the Keiratai’s grey-brown eyes widened to near roundness, before abruptly dimming as the young man visibly began to commit the heaving and riotous signatures to memory.

He waited for several breaths, then resealed his shields as he once more hid his face.

“All you had to do was ask,” he chided a little. “There was no necessity to elaborate so.”

However, he kept silent on the unease he felt rising within while his bodyguard was going on and on. The whole point of orchestrating the development of the Daireishin was so that records of him would only exist in folklore to conceal his true role in the Gotei Thirteen.

They now knew that it took a mind as intricate as Aizen’s to penetrate the myths.

So what did it now say about this man beside him? Particularly since this man was someone his father deemed reliable enough to aid him and watch his back.

“It’s my honour and privilege to be your protector, even if you insist that it’s only for a short while,” came the soft, sincere confession.

The admission startled him. Not least because it seemed to be in answer to his thoughts.

He glanced askance at the bodyguard his father had chosen for him.

Amagai smiled when their eyes met. “Your eyes are very expressive. That’s how I can guess at what you’re thinking when I can’t see your face.”

He looked away, averting his gaze.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Grey-brown eyes looked uncertainly at him in the mirror between them. “But I mean what I said. This assignment is a dream come true for me. I never thought I’ll have a chance to work beside a legend.”

Those eyes showed no trace of guile. Indeed, they were holding his gaze openly, even admiringly, albeit tentatively, clearly unsure of his reaction. 

It was refreshing. In complete contrast to the obsequiousness and sycophancy typically lavished upon him by reason of his position. 

Yet it bothered him, indefinably. 

Nevertheless, he tried not to appear ungracious. “Legends are long deceased and faded into myths. I am still a very much alive shinigami serving the Gotei Thirteen, and I intend to remain so for the foreseeable future. Please, do not speak of me as if I am a dead tale.” 

The young man chucked a laugh of relief. “Alright, then I won’t, I promise! I won’t be able to stop thinking it, but I promise you that I won’t speak it. Is that okay?”

Puzzled, he asked, “Oh-kay? What is that?”

Another laugh, this time both chagrined and amused. “I keep forgetting how long you’ve been away! Let’s see…” The Keiratai mulled for a moment, then brightening, explained, “‘Okay’ is what humans use these days in place of ‘all right’, or ‘yes’, or ‘will do’. So if I say, ‘Okay, I promise I won’t speak of it’, then what I mean is ‘All right, I will not speak of it’.”

“I see.” He did not, actually. Not entirely.

But he was saved from further embarrassment when a white halo of light began to brighten around the shape of the van ahead. 

The end of the Senkaidō was in sight.

That effectively rendered Amagai all business-like once more. “Taicho, I think it's better that you exit the van before we reach. The officers riding behind us can't see you through your cloak, but they can see the door open when you leave. So as soon as I slow the van then, can you leave in shunpo? We’ll be emerging into the parking lot of Urahara Shōten, do you know what-”

“I know what a parking lot is,” he interjected softly.

He did. He always made it a point to study every detail of the shōten in Hidetomo’s photographs.

Looking assured, Amagai gave him a small grin. "I suppose Taichō has also studied pictures of how to open the door on his side, ne?”

The young man had a point. 

Studying photographs was quite different from actually operating what was shown in them.

Examining the cab door on his left, he spied a small, beige lever embedded at a convenient position in the felt-cushioned door panel.

It resembled one of those cab door lever handles in the pictures Hidetomo showed him.

“I pull this here, like this?” He mimicked a pulling motion over the small lever.

Grey brown eyes shone at him in approval. “Yes. Pull it hard enough to let the door swing open.” 

“All right, then,” he nodded. Then, experimentally, added, “Oh-kay.”

Amagai’s grin broadened into a wide, delighted smile. “Taichō will make a realistic human yet.”

He chose not to answer. 

Instead, he lifted the right end of Sōgyo no Kotowari until he could sling his Zanpakutō’s leather strap over his right shoulder, then stood the zither up with its left end braced on the floor of the cab. Gently, he leaned it down beside himself, propping its height at a slant against the cushioned edge of the bench seat. Then he held onto the zither with his right hand, rested his left hand on the cab door lever, and waited.

His bodyguard nodded, grey-brown eyes conveying silent acceptance of his wordless reply.

“Once we’re there, give me an hour or two to regroup with my unit. Then I’ll find you,” the young man said. Then, flashing another grin, carefully suggested, “Or will it be easier if Taichō finds me instead?”

It would be more convenient that way since he could sense the young man's reiatsu, but not the other way round.

“Agreed,” he nodded. “However, please allow a bit of your reiatsu to show through that cloak of yours.”

Amagai chuckled. “This really is an improved update, ne? Urahara-san said the wearer can now see through the kidō in the earlier versions, and I really could. That was how I was able to see you the moment you appeared beside the van. Is Taichō really certain he does not want it?”

“I am,” he firmly replied.

“Okay then, Ukitake Taichō,” the young man quipped, grey-brown eyes dancing. “I’ll take that as my first order from you.”

"Order?" He levelled a dry look at the young man. "We are equals on this mission, I am neither your superior nor are you my subordinate-" 

A sudden white glare nearly blinded him. 

Blinking rapidly to clear the dark, pulsing afterimages from his vision, he squinted through the glass screen of their cab.

A long, tremendous row of wide, shōji panels had suddenly appeared up ahead, extending from end to end of the Senkaidō. It was impossible to miss even with the back of the other van obscuring their view, for the panels stretched into the distance from either side of their caravan, reaching far into their left, and far into their right.

As he watched, the panels began sliding apart, rushing towards their left and their right — tingling his skin with the thinning of kidō barriers — revealing cloudy, cerulean skies beyond the dark, squarish silhouette of the back of the other van.  

Then the sight of weathered, wooden walls wavered into visibility, the walls rising on both sides of a brown, dirt road — it was the parking lot of the shōten, nestled between the walls of its building, and its fence. 

The entire scene was at once familiar and yet not, as if a picture suddenly made real.

Which it literally was, to him.

He felt their van begin to slow. 

Shifting his gaze, he met Amagai’s grey-brown eyes in the mirror between them.

And pulled on the cab door lever.

As the door panel began to swing open, he swiftly dropped a dash of reiatsu into his limbs and, under cover of the transition as they passed through the limits of the Senkaidō, leapt out and upwards, aiming for the billowing, white clouds of the Gense.

Chapter Text

[‘TIS all soooooo different from just looking at pictures!] gleefully shouted Sōgyo.

[‘Course ‘tis different! Pictures cannot send sounds or smells or other feelings!] shouted back Kotowari, trying and entirely failing to sound sagely.

[Not that! I mean them!] Sōgyo yelled right back. [Do you not feel them?! ‘Tis like everyone is coming from everywhere at once!]  

To which Kotowari hollered, [Ai! You mean the souls?! There are so many of them now! ‘Tis been too long since we felt a Jūreichi like this!] 

[Aye! Waaaaaay too long! District 3600 has indeed become very interesting!] 

The last was a terrible understatement.

He knew pictures could never convey reality — even the twins knew that — but knowing a fact was entirely different from being prepared for… for this, this sheer invasion of his senses, all of his senses. The smells, the noise, the sights, and… and souls… the endless, kaleidoscopic morasses of them drowning him from… from everywhere, from far, far beyond the district below him, the sensations assailing him from all parts, from this entire world… bearing upon him, overcrowding him, nigh overpowering him… there were just…

So… much.

So… much. 

So much, that even his own Zanpakutō spirits had to shout to hear each other within his mind, to be heard above the deafening noise, the pounding, hammering, crashing, screeching, clicking, ringing, honking, roaring, blasting, rumbling… the anarchic, cacophonous volumes reverberating through this whole world, pressing and crushing his eardrums…

The noise along with the smells, kami, the smells… choking and gagging his airways, smothering his breaths with myriads more of other choking, gagging smells, some metallic, some burning, the smells and fumes flooding the very winds, tightening his throat, turning his stomach, threatening him with nausea… 

Nausea worsened by the sights, the jarring sights hurting his eyes in every direction he looked, cutting his vision with harsh, geometric heights and unnatural right angles, bleaching his perception to stale greys and sterile whites, to hard, industrial browns or brick reds or ochres... all of them thwarting his attempts to see.

Yet nothing — nothing — could compare to the sheer, mind-boggling, insanity of the jabbering, clashing maelstroms of consciousnesses drowning his reikaku, the turbulent, chaotic masses of infinite perceptions, thoughts, emotions, dreams, subconsciousnesses… all of them living beings blurring and melding to a riotous din nearly overwhelming his subconscious...

Everything was too much here, too overwhelming… 

And the reishi in this world, the reishi in the very fabric of this world… they were so much thinner now, so drastically thinner, every particle of his being was striving and grasping for negative matter simply to stay aloft.

The Gense he knew was not like this at all.

The Gense he knew was a world of vast, rolling fields and forests and hills, of blanketing mountains and valleys, and rivers and lakes and seas... a world where winds and rains and air were fresh and earthy and wet, and colours shone in swathes of brilliant greens and fertile browns and glowing blues — where multitudes upon multitudes of souls lived and thrived and died and birthed in harmony with nature, the souls of creatures, and the souls of humans.

Humans who lived perilously, who often suffered death by creatures, or natural disasters, or accidents, or by diseases or poisons, or at the hands of other humans — yet whose populations kept growing, and growing, and even so, even then, the totality of all humans and all creatures in the Gense he remembered still fell far, far short of the astounding countless masses of human souls encroaching upon his senses, their endless thoughts and emotions pressing his consciousness and subconscious to heed, to respond. 

The Gense he knew had only a fraction of the throngs of human souls now clamouring for his attention, souls which he could always distinguish with preternatural ease — a gift, or curse, of the elemental nature of his reiryoku — and despite the astronomical explosion in their present numbers, he realised he could still tell each and every soul apart. Easily, and effortlessly.

If he allowed himself. 

He refused to.

Humans were not the reason he had come.

So he dismissed them all, with as much ruthlessness as he could muster. And cast his eyes down below. 

Far below. 

Where what he had come for lay, hidden within the small patch of land shaped like his thumbnail.

He could roughly discern it through the dusty air: an area of almost uniformly low roofs, dissected by thin, black veins haphazardly criss-crossing at harsh angles — thin, black veins which were faintly glittering with minute, multi-hued movements, as though shiny, colourful ants were snaking along the unnatural web stretched over the small tract of land. 

Yet, for all their resemblance to ants, those movements were sending messy machinery noises echoing into the air: throaty roars, honking horns and, intermittently, blood-curdling screeches.

Road traffic! echoed Hidetomo’s enthusiastic voice, as his Sixth Seat avidly explained what the copious amounts of aerial photographs were showing.

Those photographs had no sound, and the verbal mimicries of his well-meaning and attentive officer now paled in comparison to what he was experiencing with his own senses — senses which he now found that he had to rein in and school, firmly, and over all of them, simply so that he could even think.

A dull ache settled in, somewhere deep behind his eyes, and began to make itself known.

It did not help that the twins were still yelling away to each other — in truth, they were chattering as was their usual wont, but with this excruciating volume and intensity of… well, everything, their juvenile voices were now ringing higher and shriller than their everyday pitch. 

[Both of you, silence, please,] he begged.

His plea had the opposite effect.

[Master! Ai! Master is unwell!]

[Is that a headache? Master, are you in pain?]

[This place is too loud!]

[I think we are too loud!]

[What shall we do? Shall we return home, Master?]

[But what about the mission? Who can investigate in Master’s place?]

[Ai! No one can! No one else is as qualified!]

[How about we get Old Fogey to do this himself?]

This was getting out of hand. 

[Cease, you two,] he interrupted firmly, though kindly. [I am grateful for your concern, but all I need is for you to keep your voices down. This world is noisy and distracting enough as it is.]

[Ai! All right, Master! Keeping quiet now!]

[Shhh! You are still too loud!]

[Shhh yourself!]

[Nay, you shhh!]

[Shhh!]

[Shhhhhh!]

A hushing contest ensued between the pair. 

He sighed, accepting it. It was too much to expect the excited twins to truly quieten down, he supposed. He would have to make do with their loud hushing noises for now, as they were still more tolerable than when they were shouting into his brain.

As for everything else bombarding from without, his only resource was to ignore them as best as he could.

And so he did. And without further ado, allowed himself to descend in a slow drift, unable to help a grimace of distaste as he began to lower himself bodily through the dusty winds. 

No sooner had he begun moving, the asphyxiating smells of this world rose and blasted him from everywhere, the noxious stench and fumes riding thick upon the chilling currents, the currents buffeting him from all directions, penetrating even through the plush thickness of his muffler. 

He forced himself to breathe as shallowly as he physically could — and realised, with a pang, that the only thing still familiar in this new Gense was the biting cold of its unruly winds.

As meagre and ironic as it was, he nonetheless latched onto the cold sensations for comfort, simply to have something familiar in this strange and foreign Gense. If he were still in Soul Society, the bite in these winds would indicate the ending of autumn and the impending onset of winter. 

But here, in this new world of humans he could barely recognise, he could only trust that the Kidōshū had accurately compensated for the time disconnect of his traverse between worlds, and that the Senkaidō had deposited him exactly where he was supposed to be, on the morning of the seventh day of the return of Ichigo-kun and his young friends to their home world.

Then, abruptly, he was below the layers of dust clouds and, for the first time, saw the home of their young human friends in full, living clarity.

So this was Karakurachō, what District 3600 had grown into. The last time he saw it like this, from the skies, it was no more than a sparse, riverside collection of wooden huts, inhabited by no more than thirty human families who dressed in rough-spun clothes, and fished from the river and farmed in their own yards. Karazamura, as it was called by its residents then, when it was but a rustic village of no more than thirty human families.

Now, it was a veritable small town, with roads gushing with traffic — rushing lines of human-made, transport machines of shiny metal and chrome hurtling to and fro upon unnaturally straight, black roads, or turning into other roads at unnatural angles. The roaring noises and the honking of horns which he had heard resounding above the stratospheres were reverberating from vehicles speeding on four wheels, some on more wheels, some which were vans, most others which were not. The blood-curdling screeches he had heard, however, were unleashed by strange, two-wheeled vehicles which riders rode like horses, each one screaming like a soul bifurcating as it zoomed past beneath.

And he could see the human inhabitants now — small figures hurrying alongside the roads, clad in form-fitting clothing whose styles he could, at least, recognise from the Gense periodicals his officers oft presented him with. Pants, he identified. Skirts. Jackets. Coats. Scarves. 

Then, finally, there was that sensation he had been searching for, that sensation he had not felt for over three hundred years — that barely perceptible thrumming beneath his skin, the nigh invisible stroking upon his reikaku, the ghostly touch reaching him from somewhere, somewhere distant, yet deep, as if from within the very substance of the land itself… and the lower he drifted, the more it pulled at him, reached for him, and… grasped at him, pulling and grasping at his very being, prying part his terror and desperation to blast his soul right through his skin, his body— 

He quelled the sudden memory.

The twins were right. 

They were also wrong.

The Jūreichi had indeed shifted to District 3600— to Karakurachō. 

But it was no longer exactly like how it was. 

It had changed. 

No longer was it like before, when it pulsed like a vast, somnolent heartbeat far beneath the throngs of human souls. 

Now, it was pulsing within the very land itself. And it felt eerily, terrifyingly familiar — wrenching from the depths of his memory the abject pain-pleasure catharsis of that moment, nigh two thousand years ago, when the land itself had sunken its power into his very soul, and exploded his reiatsu past the weight of his father’s seals and obliterated his consciousness, and every soul around him, to oblivion. 

His heart pounded. 

He had no explanation for this. 

There should be no similarity at all between this Jūreichi and that ancient, long ago canyon in another world.

[We will find the answer, Master,] came the warm, confident tones of Sogyo. 

[We may be too young to remember what happened then, but we will help you, Master,] echoed Kotowari, filled with determination. 

And the twin promises comforted him more than he could say.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

Urahara Shōten looked exactly like its photographs — worn, out of date, and out of time. 

It was a rectangular, wooden, double-storied machiya shophouse with a grey, tiled roof, with a single-storey shed attached on its right side. The entire small structure sat squatting unassumingly on a small, oblong lot of bare, unpaved earth, dwarfed — literally — between three blocks of concrete high-rises, with the tall buildings obscuring its front, back, and right. The only relief was on its left, where it was flanked by an industrial two-storey, rising over the wooden fence bounding the length of the dirt lane running along the left side of the shop building. 

From the photographs, that dirt lane was not only the habitual parking lot of the shōten, it was also the only point of egress and access of the small plot. And, like in the photographs, that narrow, dirt lane led to a raised, concrete pavement edging a busy, black-surfaced road. 

At this height afforded by his vantage point, he could see that pavement run all around the perimeter of the neighbouring industrial two-storey, staked at even intervals by tall, stout, wooden pools that held up copious lengths of heavy, black cable..

Telephone poles, he recalled the name of the fixtures. Something to do with the fact that among humans, some telephones still operated through transmissions of electrical signals along wires and cables rather than through waves of reishi, like in Soul Society.  

One of the telephone poles was situated fortuitously between the edge of the industrial two-storey and the neighbouring high-rise, in a position that afforded a full view of the goings-on in front of the shōten. The top of the pole appeared wide enough for both his feet to rest on. 

It would do. 

Without hesitation, he lightly dropped through the remaining distance and then settled himself upon the little perch, positioning both his feet securely together upon the circular top of the pole.

Another breath, and he understood the proceedings currently unfolding in the front yard of the shōten.

Amagai’s van was sitting in front of the shop building alongside Kisuke-kun’s vehicle. Of the Keiratai himself, there was no sign, likely the young man had excused himself on some pretext to mind his team, he had said he would.

But of his former colleague, there was no sign either.

Neither was there any sign of Yoruichi, nor even the hint of a shadow of a black cat.

However, the back of both vans were opened wide, with the remaining team of five Unseated officers busily unloading and checking off items on clipboards. Three were carrying crates and parcels to and fro the vans and the opened entrance of the shōten, while the other two seemed to be fussing over their lists on their clipboards.  

And then one of the vans shook slightly, and two human children jumped down, carrying a long, heavy crate between them.

A boy, and a girl.

The boy appeared younger, though he wore a bossy expression beneath the messy spikes of his shorn, red hair. The girl had a solemn, even sad, face framed by long, shaggy, black bangs, with the rest of her hair tied in two ponytails on either side of her head.

Hanakari Jinta, and Tsumugiya Ururu, he recalled their names from Hidetomo’s reports.

So these were the two underage workers Kisuke-kun had reportedly enslaved. 

The first time he had seen them in the surveillance photographs, he had nearly marched to his father to demand to be let back into the Gense.

But he had calmed as soon as he realised the reason Kisuke-kun had taken these two children into his employ — a reason which he was now seeing the first time for himself: despite their small, physical statures, the two children were bearing the weight between them with negligible ease. As if each child was more than capable of handling the load alone.

Clearly, the pair had teamed up only to manoeuvre the unwieldy length of the crate. 

However, their physical strengths were not the only impressive traits — their reiatsu were strong for humans, thrumming with healthy vigour.

Yet, they were still children. And the part of him which was always partial to the young rose in concern at the inadequate dress of the pair. 

Though both the boy and the girl were clad in identical sleeveless, puffy, outer coats to protect their torsos against the cold, their lower extremities were left ridiculously vulnerable: Jinta, the boy, was clad in only a pair of shortened, blue trousers that left his calves exposed. However, his feet were at least properly shoed and covered — unlike the girl Ururu, who was left woefully to the mercy of the biting winds, protected only by the thin fabric of a white, polka dotted, pastel pink skirt, and no tabi with her strange, flat-soled geta, leaving her exposed toes whitened by the cold.

He would need to have a word with Kisuke-kun about this. The last he read — and he had no reason to doubt the accuracy of Hidetomo’s reports — the human society of District 3600 upheld very strict laws to protect their children. 

Including very strict laws against child labour.

[But they seem fine?] interjected Kotowari.

[Aye, they do,] chimed in Sōgyo, who abruptly fretted, [‘Tis Master we are more worried about!]

[Aye! It feels like winter is coming more rapidly here than at home!] Kotowari picked up.

[Is Master dressed warmly enough?] Sōgyo followed, clearly worried now.  

[I am well,] he assured the twins, then gently, [Leave me be for a while, please. I need to think—]

He ceased speaking when he sensed the sudden appearance of another reiatsu — it was weak, even diminutive, almost like that of an ordinary soul. Yet, to his senses, its deceptive impotence masked a vast reservoir swirling deep beneath its harmless rhythm. 

And in that moment, from within the shadowed interior of the shōten, emerged a giant of a man — tall, hulking, almost of a height with Zaraki, except that this man was broader, heavier set, and more muscular, with eyes hidden behind rectangular, mirrored spectacles.

His heart lurched.

Tsukabishi Tessai.

His former counterpart was still stern-faced, still moustached, albeit his moustache was now thinner, and shorter. He still wore cornrows in his black hair — or what remained of it, for the tanned skin of his pate was showing through. 

Gone, however, was the imposing, royal blue long coat of Tessai’s former station. In its place was a knee-length, charcoal-grey apron with the logo of Urahara Shōten printed in black upon its chest, under which was a tight-fitting, short-sleeved, white shirt, a pair of olive-green, form-fitting trousers, and heavy, utilitarian, black boots. 

And as the man approached the two children, he walked with a slight hunch. Like a shop employee. Humbled. Even subservient. 

The sight twisted something in him.

“Where do we dump this,” asked Junta, the boy’s bored, pre-pubescent voice carrying upon the winds.

“All the way at the back, please. And afterwards, please go shopping.” And Tessai handed a small piece of white paper to the boy.

The voice of his former counterpart still sounded the same, still deep, as if the man was speaking from the bottom of a barrel. 

Junta reached out one hand to take the slip, leaving his other hand to maintain a frighteningly careless grip on his end of the long, heavy crate. As soon as he read the content of the slip, however, his red brows skewed askance. 

“We’re having a party?” he scowled, waving the slip a little. “How come no one told us? And what’s with all these herbs?”

“No party, but important guests,” Tessai returned. “The herbs are for Urahara-san’s experiments. Now, please, finish up and go.” 

With a snort of disbelief, the boy stuffed the slip into one pocket, then hefted his end of the crate one-handed and began trudging towards the opened entrance of the shōten. The girl Ururu followed meekly behind, bearing the other end of the crate. 

As soon as the children were out of sight, Tessai approached the two Unseated officers frowning over the clipboards.

Belatedly, he noticed that the two shinigami looked quite unhappy. As soon as Tessai drew near, one of them unclipped a sheaf of papers from his clipboard and waved it before the large man. 

In that instant, the winds changed direction, and only the words “invoices” and “overdue” floated to him — and from the sounds of them, they were spoken with ire.

Tessai bowed, and then dug into the front of his apron to withdraw a thick envelope. Opening its flap, he tilted the packet and showed its contents to the two unhappy shinigami.

Instantly, the faces of the two Unseated officers lit up, looking relieved and satisfied. One of them accepted the envelope, withdrew a small, bundled stack from within it, and began counting.

Kans, he realised, startled.

And despite himself, he was unable to curb a triumphant grin. Well, well, well! Shunsui no rōkun, your next three wagons of Kyōraku Reserve are all mine!

[But… we do not understand?]

[What does this mean?]

He felt his grin break into smile.

The twins might have picked up bits and pieces of commerce over the millennia they had been with him, and by now, were perhaps a tad more educated about such matters than other Zanpakutō spirits. However, the ways of business and economics still largely eluded them.

So he tried to put it as simply as he could. [You see, small quantities of our currency have been disappearing and reappearing all over Soul Society for the last hundred years. I had my suspicions for quite some time, but that little exchange there now confirms my guess. Our missing kans had indeed been brought here to the Gense, and used before they were returned.]

There was a flabbergasted silence. 

Then, from Sōgyo, [So Sly Boy has been stealing our money from right from under our noses in our own home?!]

And at the same time, from Kotowari, only sharper, [So Sly Boy has been stealing our money and then using our money to buy our goods? What do we earn then?]

When they put it that way… 

He tried again, [Ai, think about it for a moment. What use does Kisuke-kun have for kans, when he now lives as a human among humans?]

There was a thoughtful pause, before Sōgyo hazarded, [He needs kans to buy shinigami supplies from us?]

[Correct!] he praised, and before the twins could interrupt, went on, [As you both well know, we simply do not have enough numbers of officers to patrol the Gense. Those we do send here are simply not numerous enough for Kisuke-kun to make a living out of supplying them. Rather than mint his own supply of kans here, ‘tis far easier and more cost effective for him to borrow some of our existing money for a small circulation here] 

Stunned quiet fell, during which he could almost hear the twins thinking hard.

[But that still means Sly Boy is not actually buying anything from us!] Kotowari burst. [He is using our money to pay us for our goods, and taking our money for selling goods he did not buy!]

[We are basically sending him goods and money for him to make profit at our expense!] Sōgyo accused. [That is dishonest!]

There was a truly fine line there, he would readily admit. However…

[This is the only way he can maintain a full supply service for shinigami on duty here,] he gently defended. [Any profit he makes can barely cover his costs of creating kidō and tools, such as this cloak I now wear. His services to our officers in this world have been greatly easing our work here, surely we must not begrudge him this small convenience.]

[But Master, theft is still theft! No matter what!] protested Sōgyo.

[Aye! Master, you must report him!] urged Kotowari.

[Nay, I shall not,] he rejected. Then, very firmly, ordered, [And neither shall either of you breathe even a hint of this to any other Zanpakutō. Kisuke-kun has been serving the Gotei Thirteen very well in the Gense in this manner. I am permitting it to continue.]

[But—]

[Master—]

[Cease now,] he admonished. [I have decided and shall hear no more of it.]

The twins sullenly obeyed, though were clearly sulking in silence.

Only for Sōgyo to quip, irrepressibly, [But you won your bet on this with Katen’s master, surely Katen will know later!]

[And Shunsui knows better than to allow his Zanpakutō to tell,] he retorted softly. [He will not be a tattletale of a secret that has been so thoroughly aiding our operations in this world.]

And to that, the pair had nothing to say.

Satisfied that he had won this battle of wills, he watched the proceedings below with a sense of vindication.  

The two Unseated officers had completed their counting of the money, and resealed the late payments into the envelope. In the meantime, the other three officers had emerged from the shōten, finally empty-handed, and had regrouped with their two colleagues.

It would seem that the deliveries were done.

The five shinigami fell into a loose formation at the back of both vans, and as one, bowed their farewells to Tessai. Then they began to file towards the narrow, dirt lane on left of the shop building. 

As they approached the middle of the path, the one in the lead drew his Asauchi, pointed it into the air and turned its blade.

A bright, vertical slit of white light appeared in thin air. An instant later, on its either side, the shōji panels of the Senkaimon reappeared. Then the panels began sliding apart, the brilliant, white light flooded blindingly into the yard even as the familiar tingle of the inter-world passage vibrated in the very air, frizzling over his skin. 

The group could barely wait for the shōji to be fully opened, however, and was hurrying through as soon as the Senkaimon parted wide enough for them to fit. One after another they began disappearing into the white light; no sooner had the last officer vanished, the shōji panels slammed shut and disappeared entirely, leaving the property suddenly dimmed.

Then, as his vision adjusted, there was a roar of machinery, followed by a high, beeping sound, and he saw one of the vans began to roll in a reverse motion, backing slowly into the now empty dirt lane.

It was Kisuke-kun’s van. 

Through the glass screen in front of the cab, he could see the hulking form of Tessai crammed within, seated scrunched down in an uncomfortable hunch, yet his size still flowed over more than the right half of the cab. Yet, the large man seemed utterly unfazed by the cramped confines, merely divided his attention between the mirror at the side of the cab, and the mirror in the centre of the glass screen. He had one beefy forearm and large hand braced on the outside of the cab’s door below its opened window, while his other hand steered the hoop of the wheel.

The easy manner with which he manipulated the steering wheel, it spoke of long years of experience.

Clearly, Tessai had adjusted very well to life as a human.

The sight heartened him. 

For it meant that despite all of Aizen’s meticulous orchestrations and criminal deeds, here was their former Dai Kidōchō, living a new life in the Gense, undefeated.

And the thought ignited a heat in his heart, a heat which began to flame. 

Anger, he realised. Suddenly, and belatedly. 

He had been nursing a buried anger. At this. At the fact that Tessai had to even learn to drive a human-made transport, had to even live here, among humans, like a human — when the former Dai Kidōchō should never have had to do either in the first place.

“We’re off now,” interrupted the sound of Jinta’s indolent, pre-pubescent voice. 

The children had emerged from the shōten, finally empty handed. 

The boy began leading the way towards the dirt lane, with his sad-faced, female fellow employee following at his heels. As they passed the remaining van still parked in the yard, he jabbed a thumb at it and asked, “Shūsuke wants his back?”

In answer, Kisuke-kun’s van rolled to a stop and, with a final, throaty shudder, fell silent and still as its engine doused. Then the right side of its cab swung open, and the bulk of Tessai unfurled out into the morning sunlight, the man’s movements light and sure despite his great size.

“Yes, he wants it back,” returned his former counterpart firmly, face stern and mirrored glasses shining in the slanting light. “And no, you are still not old enough to drive.”

“Ya, ya, ya,” grumbled Jinta as the boy marched right on, heading for the left side of Kisuke-kun’s vehicle to avoid Tessai.

The two children squeezed past the narrow space, and then emerged behind the van, walking at a ground-eating leisurely pace despite the shortness of their young legs. Soon, they reached the end of the lane and stepped onto the concrete pavement. Turning to their left, they took a few steps and were then out of sight entirely.

He had delayed long enough.

It was finally time to make contact. 

Taking a deep breath, he reined in his simmering fury, and gently lifted off from his perch. Selecting a spot between Amagai’s van and the opened entrance of the shōten, he floated down towards it, cracking his shield a merest hairline to reveal a hint of his reiatsu, to announce his arrival. 

He could never be too careful. Tessai had not been the Dai Kidōchō for over a century, but that did not mean his former counterpart had lost any warrior reflexes. The once shinigami could still be startled into an attack if surprised.

But he quickly realised that he need not have bothered, for Tessai was already waiting for him.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

No longer the same Tessai, was his first thought, silent dismay stabbing him harder than he expected.

As his long-lost colleague and former counterpart approached, footsteps still treading as lightly and soundlessly as they once did, his physique loomed taller and broader — and he began to feel what he had not felt in over a century: like a mere, wee slip slowly being engulfed into the sheer presence of the man.

It did not help that those inscrutable, mirrored gaze and stern, solemn face gave nothing away as the large man watched him while drawing closer.

But therein ended the similarities to the Tessai in his memory.

He now saw what he had missed over the distance: the two thin plaits trailing from either side of the back of the man’s head, the worn condition of his workman clothes — and the subdued, tentative manner about his former counterpart. 

The sight of last twisted his heart. 

For the Tessai in his memory was quiet with a stern, silent authority and power, as befitted the Dai Kidōchō.

But the Tessai coming towards him now was simply quiet, in the way of those who had been humbled were quiet. And stern, in the way of those who were attentively subservient were solemn and stern.

Both which were traits the man did not have before.

Aizen, you have much to atone for.

He felt compelled to apologise, and as the man came within speaking distance, he opened his mouth to speak.

But Tessai wordlessly turned right and trod right on, straight for the opened shōji of the shōten entrance, and marched inside. 

As if the large man refused to acknowledge him. 

He watched mutely, shocked at being ignored, yet somehow unsurprised — until he saw Tessai pause in the dimmed interior of the shop, turn around, and nod once.

At him.

Oh.

Belatedly, he realised that while the former Dai Kidōchō could see through the kidō of invisibility spelled into his cloak, it would appear strange to accidental observers if the shop’s employee was seen speaking to empty air.

A little flustered by his own slip, he gathered himself and nodded in return, then walked towards the opened doors, slowing when he reached the threshold of the shōten entrance.

Cautiously, he stepped through into the dim interior, taking in what he could.

The interior of the shop room had been modified from the usual layout of a machiya. The genkan was wide and very long, and lined the entire front of the room from end to end like a small corridor. But its centre opened onto a wide reception aisle, the miseniwa lined on both sides with terraced racks of colourful candies. Above the racks on each side, rose entire walls of shelves, the shelves crammed with more candies, a myriad selections of books and periodicals, and a jumble of other merchandise he could scarcely name.

At the other end of the miseniwa reception aisle, rose a high platform which he quickly realised was the actual artisan workroom of the shophouse, though this misenomas was oddly appointed, more of a work space than a room. It had no door, only a doorway on its left, screened by a long pair of blue, faded, noren curtains. And it had no windows from which visitors could view the shopkeeper at work — the only view of the shopkeeper was from the reception aisle. 

Of the shopkeeper himself, there was no sign. Neither could he sense his former scientist colleague anywhere in the building — or in the vicinity, for that matter. 

The only indication of Kisuke-kun’s presence was the imprint he had left behind on the worn, brown, zabuton cushion on the tatami platform of the misenomas work space. And the scatters of envelopes, papers and stationery on the nondescript, low, wooden table beside it.

Either the young man was not here, or was hiding from him. 

Most curious, he pondered. For Kisuke-kun’s note had sounded warm, even anticipatory. 

The sound of sliding shōji interrupted his thoughts, and a shadowed gloom fell as the entrance of the shōten slid shut behind him. 

He turned — only to stop short, his breath hitching as he looked up.

Tessai towered above him in the smaller confines of the genkan, even though the large man was standing at the closed entrance, more than an arm’s length apart. Those shoulders spanned twice as broad as his own, and those biceps were twice as thick and hands twice as large. Indeed, the former Dai Kidōchō was taller and broader than even Shunsui, perhaps even Zaraki. 

And those mirrored spectacled eyes were looking down at him quietly.

Carefully.

Abruptly, he became aware of how he must look. The kidō in his cloak distorted his appearance, even if he was visible to his former counterpart.

Raising his hand, keeping his motions slow and assuring, he unfastened the muffler across his face, allowing the plush fabric to drop, and then gently, and smoothly, with no sudden action, pushed the voluminous hood back from his head, feeling his long bangs fall about his cheekbones.

A smile immediately creased the stern, solemn face of the big man.

“Ukitake Taichō,” greeted Tessai in a low, deep voice, then lowered his great head and shoulders in a bow. When he straightened, he added, laconically, “At last.”

There were many things he could, and wanted, to say, though he did not know exactly how he should say any of what he thought. Mentally, he composed and discarded several phrases, rapidly and all at once, only to find himself settling for the simplest thing in the end.

“Likewise, Tessai-dono,” he returned softly, with a smile of his own.

And perhaps he should not have doubted himself, for it seemed that his smile was all it took. 

Because Tessai was exhaling a soft, “Ai!”, and then raising a large hand towards his face. Removing his glasses, the big man stood surveying him with black, lambent eyes filling with warmth. 

“Our accounting of matters must have met with expectations,” his former counterpart murmured with another smile, an even broader one this time. “Since Taichō had not needed to visit.”

He felt his own smile widen. “Much more than met, Tessai-dono, I assure you. And I personally approve, in addition. Though I would have visited sooner, if I had been able.” At the last, he could not help revealing his regret.

Tessai merely shook his head. “‘Tis to be expected, Ukitake Taichō. The old man kept you very close. And from what I hear, he is keeping you even closer now.”

He frowned. “Yoruichi informed you?”

“And the old man himself,” Tessai cracked a deep chuckle. “He was most explicit in his instructions, and that is putting it mildly. You must have parleyed truly well with him that he is allowing you to personally make this trip over such a small matter.”

His brows rose. “‘Tis not the shōten’s handling of trade with Soul Society that brings me here.”

“That is good to hear, though we already know your purpose for coming,” Tessai bowed politely. Straightening, he beckoned with a formal gesture of invitation. “Perhaps we should discuss over tea. This way, allow me.” 

So saying, the big man turned around and pushed on the green, papered wall behind him.

To his astonishment, the wall swung inwards, revealing a small, recessed area lit by an overhead, hanging lamp with a green, enamelled lampshade.

The former Dai Kidōchō half-turned to say over his shoulder, “Please do not mind the sensation,” and then walked into the recessed area.

Curious, he followed.

The instant he stepped through the hidden door, he understood the reason for the caution: a familiar frizzle prickled over his skin.

Yet, this was not a Senkaimon.

Or, rather, the frizzle was reminiscent of that part of the Senkaimon which reversed the matter particles of all things that passed through, living or inanimate.

He glanced around, searching.

The recessed space he was standing in was a bare, enclosed, short corridor whose floor and walls were of plain, screed concrete. At the end of the corridor, a long flight of bare, wooden stairs of seasoned, akamatsu pine led upwards, flanked by wooden handrails of the same, seasoned timber affixed to green-papered walls on both sides. Overhead, the long, slanting ceiling was hung with green-enamelled, hanging lamps at even intervals, all of them identical to the lamp above him.

He could see nothing in the stairwell, nor in the stair landing he was in, which could act as transmitters. Nor as vents, or outlets, or any such similar capacities. 

The arrangement was so immensely sophisticated, it could have only been the work of a Kidō Shihan. 

Or, in the case of Urahara’s Shōten, two Kidō Shihan.

“You incorporated a Reishi Henkan-Ki into these walls?” he inquired politely, hiding his admiration behind courtesy so as not to seem intrusive and rude. 

For he could see nothing else that would explain what he had just felt.

A low chuckle floated down.

He looked up.

Tessai was watching him with a faint smile, standing where he had paused, half-turned, a few steps up the stairs.

“Nothing escapes Ukitake Taichō,” remarked the big man, deep voice resonant in the enclosed space of the stairwell.

“I will not intrude unnecessarily,” he assured with a smile of his own.

The black brows rose in surprise behind the mirror lenses. Then, with a shake of his great head, Tessai huffed a short laugh and turned to resume ascending the stairs, stepping lightly despite his hulking size and bulk.

“That is good to know, though I did not mean it that way,” drifted the jocular return. 

Not entirely believing the former Dai Kidōchō, nevertheless he gathered up the layers of his long hems and began up the stairs.

“We thought to make your stay as comfortable as possible,” Tessai went on. “Most gigai feel restrictive. You will not be used to them, and using one is more likely to hinder than help you.”

That piqued his interest. “I hear so much about Kisuke-kun’s gigai, but I have never seen one before, much less ever used one.”

“Trust me, Taichō, you are not missing anything.” Humour brimmed in Tessai’s deep voice. “I prefer not to use mine if I can help it. And I have been needing to wear gigai on and off for over a hundred years.” 

Intrigued, he scrutinised the big man as the large figure walked up the stairs, and privately wondered if he was seeing Tessai in the flesh, or Tessai in a gigai. 

He was impressed when he discovered that it was nigh impossible to tell.

Utterly curious now, he followed his host all the way to the top of the stairs, and paused when Tessai paused.

His host had reached the upper landing of the staircase. Bending to unlace his boots, the former Dai Kidōchō was soon stepping up the final step onto the floor of the second storey, his light footfalls now completely silenced by his socked feet.

He followed the courtesy, climbing onto the landing and turning around to toe off his waraji. Ensuring that his straw sandals were now resting with toes pointing towards the staircase, he lifted a foot behind him, stepped a pace backwards, and up. 

When he turned around again, it was to the sight of a long, dim corridor.

The passage lay lit overhead by a row of green-enamelled, hanging lamps identical to the ones lighting the stairwell. Its entire length on its right was a wall of battered, shōji door panels, now standing closed. Its left was flanked by a half wall papered in the same green as the walls of the stairwell, and topped by a long row of windows which were completely covered with amado storm shutters.

The shutters were of varnished, akamatsu wooden boards, all having seen better days. The flooring of the corridor was also of solid, akamatsu boards, looking just as worn and, illuminated beneath the direct lights of the hanging lamps, were showing a messy network of cracks, scratches, and not a few chips and dents.

For a lived-in residence and business premises, the condition of the place was less maintained than it should be. 

The revelation was concerning, to say the least. If Kisuke-kun had been experiencing any difficulty in his living circumstances, the former scientist had certainly hidden it extremely well.

A sensation swirled over his senses — it was mild, deceptively so, and steady. Yet, he could feel a vast reservoir of power beneath.

Raising his eyes, he saw that Tessai had moved a few steps ahead, and was now standing at an angle to him, gesturing in the air with the fingers of both hands. The big man was murmuring low beneath his breath.

A silencing bakudō, he identified at once, though it was one whose variety he had yet to encounter.

More pertinently, another kidō was weaving rapidly and smoothly into the silencing bakudō, and this one he recognised instantly, even if it bore a few new modifications — for it was similar to the kidō pattern emanating from his cloak, the one for invisibility.

Both spells entwined, then melded into one intricate whole, and then expanded quickly, vibrating into the very air, through the walls and floor and ceiling, and — he sensed with a measure of surprise — through the entire building. And then there was quiet.

Not a soundless quiet, but a quiet of peace.

A blessed, relieving peace. The instant it fell, the dull ache throbbing behind his eyes lessened, and began to fade.

Tentatively, he ranged his senses out, touching with his reikaku.

All those infinite masses and throngs of human souls, they were still there. But greatly muted.

However, the fine thrumming beneath his skin, the frequency of this new Jūreichi, that was gone. 

He looked at Tessai gratefully.

“Better?” asked his host with a knowing smile.

“What did you do?” he had to ask.

His former counterpart turned to the shuttered windows and began pushing at the worn boards of the amado. “Well, first, I had to ensure that no one can see or hear us once the windows are opened.”

The corridor began brightening as the amado were slid aside one after another.

“Pardon the initial darkness, Ukitake Taichō,” the big man apologised next. “I would have opened up sooner if I had known you would be arriving so early. And we need to thank you, in truth. You know how absent-minded Kisuke is, I had to remind him that you are used to bright and sunny places. But he gave up his penchant for gloom and shadows the instant I reminded him, and now the rest of us can ride along and enjoy some brightness while you are here.”

He was touched. 

“You are staying with us, correct?” The big man turned to look at him inquiringly. “The old man wants you to, he was very specific about your needs…” 

Ai, Father, he lamented inwardly.

But to Tessai, he simply smiled and nodded, “If you will have me, I would be grateful for your hospitality.”

Tessai brightened. “Of course we would! ” Then, stern face falling solemn, he said, “The old man also told us you were joined to the Daireishin for days just before coming here. That place is like a tomb. It cannot be easy for you to be suddenly submerged in our world. What is more, human population has nearly quadrupled in the last hundred years. You were away for over three hundred years, you have to be sensing over eight times the crowd and intensity right now.”

“Eight times?” he repeated faintly.

Tessai nodded sombrely. “Aye. There are nearly eight billion humans in the Gense today.”

[Eight billion!] burst the twins in his mind.

They echoed his thoughts.

“Aye,” was the wan, rueful smile in reply. 

Then his host turned back to the remaining shutters and resumed pulling them aside. 

“I intend to follow the old man’s instructions to the last ink stroke. That means you need to be in flesh and blood form in order to use our amenities and consume our food. The Reishi Henkan-Ki covers the entire shōten except for the shopfront, as you will hardly be using that area anyway. But it also means you are fully detectable by humans as long as you are inside here.”

That explained the complex kidō.

“‘Twas the reason you created this composite bakudō, ne?” he concluded softly. Then with a smile, complimented, “‘Tis supremely masterful.”

“Taichō is too kind,” answered Tessai warmly. Then, nodding, confirmed, “Aye, that is the purpose. Now you are as undetectable by humans as you are to shinigami whilst wearing that cloak.”

With that, his host pushed back the last shutter with a flourish.

The corridor was now filled with light. And, despite the windows remaining closed, the passage felt airily expansive.

For unlike shōji panels of windows at home, the ones here in the shōten were sealed with clear glass, not paper. He found he could look right out of them to the second level of the neighbouring building, which, on this side of the shōten, was the industrial two-storey.

And he was startled when he could even see what the humans within were doing, seemingly bustling around some sort of machinery as they started up their day.

The two structures, the industrial two-storey and the shōten, they had not seemed to be this close to each other when he had been viewing them from a distance.

As he watched, several pairs of human eyes chanced to glance in their direction — only to skim past without registering their presences.

He turned back to his host, deeply appreciative. “Thank you so very much, Tessai-dono. I was prepared to endure these conditions a few days, get used to adjusting my controls. But what you have done allows me a place to truly rest. It helps me greatly. Though I am sorry to put you to such trouble”

The big man shook his head slightly. “As long as you are in our home, Ukitake Taichō, you are under my care. And I will not have you fall into illness or danger before the old man can set things right”

Of course. 

Ruefully, he wondered just how explicit his father had been in his instructions to the members of the shōten.

“This way, now,” invited Tessai, as the big man turned and pushed aside the two centre panels of the shōji door panels. Giving him a nod of wordless invitation, his host led the way inside.

He followed behind the big man, and entered a spacious tatami room.

In the bright, morning light pouring through the corridor, the signs of wear in the room were equally evident, particularly in the condition of the tatami mats.

Most of them needed to be replaced.

As did the low, square table sitting in the centre of the room.

The wooden surface of the table was scratched, and sported a  long crack near one side. One leg bore a dent in its wood. Nevertheless, the furniture was clearly still in frequent use, for upon the worn tabletop there rested a set of eight, upended, white ceramic tea cups upon a tray. And beside them, stood what looked like a kettle.

Although he had never seen such a kettle before — nor had he ever seen anything like it among the copious amounts of photographs and periodicals supplied to him. 

For the utensil was not made of ceramic, or clay, or earth, or cast iron, but of shiny steel, like the blade of a sword. Its spout, instead of being long and curved, was a mere lip.

Its oddest feature, however, was the long, black cable that trailed from its base — the cable ran over the surface of the table, down over the table edge, then across the floor over the tatami mats to finally end at the wall. There, the cable rose about two hands’ breadth up the wall above the edge of the tatami floor, with its broader end affixed into what looked to be a kind of wall socket.

“Please take a seat, while I make us tea,” Tessai invited warmly. So saying, he bent, pulled the black cable out of the base of the strange-looking kettle, and straightened with the human-made appliance in his large hands. 

“I shall not be long,” his host nodded, before turning on his heel and leaving soundlessly.

Momentarily alone, he decided to take advantage of his temporary privacy.

Unslinging Sōgyo no Kotowari from his back, he carried them in their zither form with both hands as he sank down into seiza at the guest side of the low table. Then, twisting slightly at his waist to his right, he gently rested his Zanpakutō on the worn tatami, and gave the plain surface of their wooden case a gentle, curious stroke.

Even Sōgyo no Kotowari had become as material as all other objects in the Gense. 

Then he sat back on his heel, dug into the concealed, right pocket of his cloak, and withdrew the small, black body of his Denreishinki.

A light tap on its screen opened up its preset menu, and another threw up his list of saved contacts. A third and final tap, this time at the miniaturised photo right at the top of the list, set his Soul Phone dialling, its soft ringing tone floating to him like a murmur.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

<-ello? Hello? Hello? Hel-> the staticky, synthesised voice of Shunsui zapped in and out.

“Shunsui? Are you receiving me?” he asked again for what felt like the umpteenth time. 

<-lo? Amai’take? Hello? Are you->

He frowned at the device. 

Its screen remained stubbornly black. 

“Shunsui, you have to move to an open area,” he spoke again, slowly, and as clearly as he could. 

Chances were, his soul brother had requisitioned for the simplest model of Soul Phone available — which also meant the oldest one, with the weakest reception capability.

<-not hear you-…-call you again-…-take care-> and then that was it, for the line went dead.

He sighed.

And then smiled at the ludicrousness of the situation. 

For all of Shunsui’s uncanny intelligence and shrewdness, for all of his soul brother’s frightening power, the man could barely operate something as simple as a calculator, much less a Soul Phone.

No matter how idiot-proof Mayuri made either device.

Nonetheless, despite the connection, his call had achieved its objective — his soul brother now knew that he had arrived safely, which meant that piece of news would soon reach his father.

Which, in turn, meant that a simple text message would suffice to postpone what was certain to be another tense conversation. 

At least for a little while.

With that in mind, he quickly composed his message: <Genryūsai-sensei, I have arrived at Urahara’s Shōten and am awaiting tea with Tessai.>

Then he read his composition again, and debated whether to mention his bodyguard. 

His father would most certainly wish to know what he thought of that. 

But what could he say? Could he say that, as genial and sincere as the Keiratai seemed to be, something about the young man alarmed him at a deep level? 

A message like that would guarantee an instant call from his sole parent. 

Or perhaps not, he realised in the next instant. 

Doubtless, his father already knew the officer possessed an unsettling reiatsu, and in all likelihood, was awaiting his assessment. 

The deduction left him with an easy choice. 

He added one more line: <Will regroup with Amagai anon, sometime this morning.>

There. A simple update, focussed only upon operational details. Nothing complex about it, and nothing to cause his father to call him immediately.

He tapped the screen, and sent the message.

“We have not seen one like that before,” came Tessai’s deep voice.

The former Dai Kidōchō stood framed between the opened shōji wall panels, bearing a large, laden tray between his large, beefy hands — and looking utterly like a human shop employee. 

The man had put on his spectacles again, and his mirrored gaze was directed at the Soul Phone.

“Mayuri’s latest model,” he explained. 

Then he smiled, to hide his cracking heart at the sight of how humbled his ex-colleague had become. 

“This was his own, previously. I believe he had not yet released it for mass production.”

“Tsk,” snorted the big man as he entered the tatami room. “Trust Kurotsuchi to keep only the best for himself. Although,” the mirrored gaze glanced at him inscrutably as his former counterpart knelt down at the adjacent side of the low table, “he must respect you quite a fair bit to bear to part with his personal invention.”

The device had been a payment in kind for his assistance in extracting the records their resident scientist wanted.

But that small exchange was not something he could mention, however.

Tessai was transferring things from his tray to the table. The odd kettle was being reconnected to its cable, and as he watched, one large forefinger pressed the top of the kettle handle.

A small, orange light lit up on the place where Tessai had pressed, and a soft whooshing sound began to rise from the kettle.

“Electric kettle,” Tessai chuckled kindly. “Boils water just the same, except that here in the Gense, ‘tis powered by electricity, not kidō. I suppose your Sixth Seat did not take any photographs of these.”

He looked at his former counterpart with gratitude. “I knew Hidetomo must have had help curating all those pictures. Or had been allowed to. Nothing can get past the three of you otherwise.”

“Two,” Tessai corrected, pushing a covered, lacquer box towards him. “Just Kisuke and I. Yoruichi does not live here.”

“Oh?”

“She comes and goes as she pleases, whenever she pleases,” was the wry admittance. “Most of the time, we do not know where she is, or when she will show, or when she will leave. At least, the children and I do not. Kisuke may know, but if he does, he never tells.”

“Hm.” He looked down the small, lacquer box now placed before him. “The way she spoke, I was under the impression that she had made a permanent home here.”

Tessai spread his hands around them, as if showing something that was self evident. “Taichō must have noticed, our place looks like it lacks a noblewoman’s touch, ne?”

“I had,” he confessed, a little mortified at being caught. “Are things- Have things been… convenient?”

A soft bark of laughter answered him. “We get by well enough, if that is what Taichō is asking. Selling candies and magazines for the young make a nice, stable business among humans. Will not make us stinking rich like Yoruichi’s ex-fukutaichō, but ‘tis enough for us to live a little every now and then. And at least share with you some of that.” The strong chin tilted at the small, lacquer box.

This was the second time he was nudged towards the gift. It would be rude to reject now.

Carefully, he lifted the plain, lacquered cover off the small, square container.

“Oh!”

Tiny, glittering, colourful stars winked gaily at him from within the small box. Along with the merry sight, a subtle, sweet scent wafted, filled with all kinds of fruity notes.

“Konpeitō has not changed in the Gense!” he grinned at his former counterpart, feeling utterly cheered. 

Then helped himself to a handful without waiting to be asked.

The sinful bursts of extremely sugary, wholly artificial fruity flavours as he crunched were no different at all from the konpeitō at home.

“Kami forbid that konpeitō will ever change anywhere,” Tessai laughed huskily. “I heard all about that feast you threw. And how you ate more dessert than the main courses. Glad to see you still love these humble sweets.”

He felt his cheeks warm. 

It was one thing for Shunsui to indulge him with a vice he had never grown out of. It was quite another to be publicly caught enjoying a candy that was essentially invented as a bribe for small children.

Another huffing laugh rose from Tessai. “Ai! Still as bashful over a simple pleasure, I see. You have hardly changed at all, Ukitake Taichō, despite what Yoruichi keeps insisting.” Then subsiding into a warm smile, the big man added, “And I am relieved that you are looking so well. Had meant to say that earlier. Yoruichi told us you were very ill only a week ago.”

At the mention of the last, he swallowed, and quietly replaced the cover over the small box of sweets.

“I am well now,” he assured softly. “The Shihōin medicine helped, I must thank Yoruichi for that.”

Tessai frowned, mirrored gaze scanning him searchingly. “You did not bring them with you? I do not see any travel pack.”

“My stay will not be long. All I need is here.” He placed a hand on the comforting solidity of the case beside him.

In response, Sōgyo no Kotowari sent a soft, supportive ripple against his palm.

He looked at Tessai carefully.

It was time to address the point of his visit. 

“I need to know what happened, Tessai-dono.”

The former Dai Kidōchō stilled, then sat back. Slowly, he removed his glasses again, and looked across the table plaintively.

“That is more than one question you are asking, Ukitake Taichō.”

“I have three days,” he returned simply.

In answer, his former counterpart lowered his great head, and began preparing tea.

“I suppose I should confess,” Tessai began, his voice low and sombre. “All that happened recently, to the Seireitei, to Rukia, to Kaien, to everything in the Gense that spilled over into Soul Society, they were all entirely our fault.”

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

The tea was a clear, golden green, its scent as strong as its colour, and its taste exactly like it looked — strong, bitter, and rather coarse. Its leaves were contained in a small, pale, paper sachet attached to a white string that ended in a green paper label. Brewing it, was a simple expedience of placing the sachet in a cup, and pouring steaming water over it. 

Each sachet seemed to be a measured dose, for one sachet was placed in one cup, enough to brew tea for one.

So this was how humans made tea now.

He sipped his carefully, in very small drips. It was hot. 

Too hot. 

However, his host seemed unbothered by the quality of the tea and its brewing technique. 

Thus, he showed nothing as well. It was only good manners. Particularly since he now understood that the shōten’s business could hardly be called prosperous. And from all accounts he had read, the gyokuro tea he was used to at home was a high luxury in the Gense. 

At last, the amount of tea in his cup was visibly reduced by a polite amount, and he could stop. 

Gently, he replaced his cup on the table before him, then raised his eyes to look at Tessai. 

A mirrored, bespectacled gaze met his, once again hidden and inscrutable. But there was a telltale tension in the lines of the stern, solemn face of the former Dai Kidōchō.

His former counterpart was clearly expecting his judgement or censure.

“That was a very frank and detailed account,” he commented softly. 

The great head bowed, showing widened bald lines between the cornrowed hair. 

Age was slowly, but surely, catching up with Tessai. Or perhaps the gigai he was seeing now was engineered to age like a human. He recalled that the man was of the same generation as Yoruichi, and more senior than Kisuke-kun, but he never discovered the true age of the former Dai Kidōchō. 

He never had any reason to. A hundred and ten years ago, everyone, himself included, had thought that their team would never change. And when it did, he was no longer free to seek the answers he wanted.

Inwardly, he rather hoped that Tessai would be one of those rare shinigami who would live past the millennial year, and ascend to Elderhood. The Gotei Thirteen needed more Elders. 

Especially after he himself was gone, should Shunsui fail.

“Perhaps I ought to agree with you,” he suggested gently, keeping his voice soft. 

Tessai stiffened, but did not look up.

“You should have overcome your disillusionment and disaffection, and informed me of your side of the story much sooner. If you had been strong enough to do that, I would certainly have been able to warn Genryūsai-sensei earlier, and we would have apprehended Aizen long before he could orchestrate the events that followed.”

The large man bowed even lower, and in a deep, strangled voice, finished, “And Taichō would not have lost his beloved fukutaichō.”

The old wound in his heart twisted, and he covered his left breast with a hand, to still it. 

However, he smiled for the big man nevertheless. “If I agree with everything you wish me to, will I make Tessai-dono feel better?”

Tessai shot up straight, stern face startled. “Ukitake Taichō…”

He held up a hand. “Nay, hear me out. None of us knew the true extent of Aizen’s machinations until yesterday. And ‘twas uncovered only because I had cause to investigate that part of the archives. He has been planning this for centuries long before he was even one of us. What difference would it have made if you had alerted me ninety, even a hundred years ago? He had a Hōgyoku in his possession. He could have inflicted just as great a damage then, as he did now. I could have…” his voice trailed off, as his throat closed up.

Reaching for his tea, he lifted the cup and took a scalding swallow.

“I could have lost Kaien just the same, perhaps even earlier,” he managed to finish, hearing the hoarseness in his own voice.

“We do not know that,” Tessai insisted, sounding just as hoarse.

“Exactly,” he stressed, firmly, bracing himself anew. “We do not know. Therefore ‘tis useless to dwell on what might have been, or what we could have done. If there is anyone to be blamed, then blame it on us, your Elders. We should have been more alert, less complacent. Kyōraku Taichō should not have been so generous and recommended Aizen for the Gotei Thirteen. I should not have been so trusting, should have listened more to Shinji. Unohana Taichō should have been more watchful, should have been less hesitant to investigate her sense of ill ease. Sōtaichō should not have been so blind, and so tolerant of the Central Forty-Six. The list goes on. Who shall I blame next?”

“How about Aizen should have been less ambitious and evil?” Tessai suggested darkly.

He chuckled ruefully. “That is akin to expecting the sky to not be a sky, or a deer to not be a deer. Souls can be nurtured in each life that it lives. But its impulses stay within its signature from one life to the next. I have not yet discovered Aizen’s origins, but I will not be surprised if he was once a being who had either been terribly wronged, or terribly frightening.”

“It sounds to me like Taichō does not see things in black or white,” Tessai observed.

“Everything has a cause, Tessai-dono,” he returned quietly. “Every cause leads to one or more consequences, and each consequence in turn leads to one or more causes. Causes and consequences, we attach our value judgements to each one. We judge this one to be good, that one as bad, or others as neutral. When the truth of the matter is, causes and consequences have no intrinsic value of their own. They are neither good, nor bad, nor neutral.”

“Links in a endless chain that turns the wheels of existence,” recited Tessai with a faint smile. “The wheel that fuels an endless cycle that gives rise to the need to uphold the Balance.”

He smiled in return, and nodded.

The big smile huffed a wry laugh. “I never paid much attention to those chapters in the Academy. All I was interested in were the kidō.” Then he shook his great head. “Never thought I would actually live the day that everything in those textbooks becomes so real.”

There was nothing he could say to that, considering his own unique circumstances. 

Life, and death. Such thoughts were something he hesitated to share even with Shunsui, much less anyone else.

Changing the subject, he softly asked, “Now that Tessai-dono seem to feel better, perhaps you could tell me what truly happened with Rukia?”

At his request, Tessai sighed, and appeared to think hard.

He frowned. “I must know how her transfer of powers went so awry. Was it due to the power of the Hōgyoku? The entire Gotei Thirteen witnessed Aizen extract the orb from her soul, but I did not send her here with such a thing embedded inside her. I am also certain no one else is capable of doing such a thing. How did it come to be hidden within her? Did Aizen plant it in her before she left Soul Society?” 

Tessai looked conflicted, even behind his mirrored spectacles.

The man’s hesitation ignited the suspicion which had been niggling in the back of his mind. 

Inhaling once, he went on as calmly as he could, “I cannot help but think that Kisuke-kun has something to do with that happenstance. Rukia was using the gigai he made. Did he tamper with it somehow and inadvertently gave Aizen the opportunity to secret the orb inside her?”

When his former counterpart still did not speak, only continue to look troubled, he tried a different tack. 

“Do not misunderstand, Tessai-dono,” he explained, as kindly as he could. “I am here neither to blame nor judge. I am here to understand, so that we know the power we are dealing with and can prepare for it.” 

He paused, then softening, added, “And ‘tis my own wish to know as well, to better care for Rukia upon my return.”

The last was the key, for Tessai finally broke his silence. 

“Is Rukia-chan well?” 

“She is recovering,” he assured softly. But added, gravely, “Nonetheless, the damage to her soul is deep, and it impacts her abilities. I will not have us go to war with Aizen with my most capable officer so hampered and unable to adequately protect herself.”

Visible relief overcame the large man. Grunting, Tessai admitted, “I was not here, or I would have stopped Kisuke. It was a bad idea even in theory, no matter how desperate he was.”

Kisuke-kun.

So he had grounds to suspect, after all. 

Which brought him to his next question. 

Looking around emphatically, to show that he sensed no one else in the building, he turned back to Tessai and courteously, but pointedly, inquired, “‘Tis past mid-morning. Does Kisuke-kun usually sleep in so late? Or does he have business elsewhere?”

Chapter Text

MID-MORNING light was pouring through the square panes of the glass shōji windows, painting sunny, geometric rows of bright rhombuses on the akamatsu floor - and illuminating myriads of scratches and dents on the worn, hardwood panels.

This corridor looked as battered as the last. And it was clearly constructed in the same way as well, with the panels of glass shōji windows running down the entire left wall of the passage, above another length of half-wall wallpapered in the same, faded green. The only difference was that here, the right length of the corridor was flanked nearly to its other end in large, sliding panels of paper shōji, all of them currently standing closed. A single white door closed stood at the end of the wall, at the end of the corridor. 

Clearly, this was the final corridor of the second storey. It laced the entire back of the shōten building, and starkly visible through the glass shōji windows was the neighbouring property: the first block of the high-rise he had earlier observed from afar.

Perhaps it was the looming height of the high-rise, but it was situated so closely to the shōten that the space in between was almost claustrophobic. He could see clear across right into the second level opposite, to the humans within working at their desks, or convening meetings seated around long tables.

He could see humans similarly working on the floor above, and the one above, and above, and up again, again, and again of the high-rise. 

If it were not for Tessai's skilful bakudō shielding the entire upper storey of the shōten, any one of those humans would be seeing him as clearly as he was watching them.

It made him wonder. Was it only the shōten’s particular location, or had the Gense become so crowded that humans were now erecting their buildings within spitting distance of one another?

What else had changed?

As the question lingered in his mind, he contemplated Tessai’s looming form leading the way a few paces in front of him. Had hosting customs changed as well?

For Tessai was carrying his heavy boots in one large hand, instead of leaving the dusty footwear at the second storey foyer where they first entered. 

“Please, bring them,” was all his former counterpart had said, nodding at his unshod waraji before beckoning for him to follow. The big man had then turned and proceeded indoors, with no indication of why they were breaching common courtesy.

He had patiently, and wordlessly, followed. He had also ensured that he carried his waraji laid sole against straw sole to avoid knocking any dirt loose while he transported his footwear through the home of his host.

“Here is where we house our guests,” Tessai said, pausing at the closed panels of the shōji doors. With his free hand, the big man gently pushed a panel aside, and indicated within with a wave. “Mostly shinigami, especially when they need to recover from injuries. Shūsuke and his agents also. But ‘tis too small and too open for Taichō.” 

He leaned in politely to peer into the indicated space.

It was a second tatami room. Indeed, it was quite small, perhaps less than half the size of the tatami room where they had tea.

And it looked even more worn than the first.

Nonetheless, he thought it cosy enough for a few days' stay, no matter that his host thought differently. The tatami mats might be old, but they still looked buoyant enough to be comfortable.

“And here is the common amenities room of our second floor.”

He looked back up and saw that Tessai had moved farther on. The big man now stood looking at him expectantly from where he had stopped beside the white door at the end of the passage. 

That door was one of those of modern make, essentially a single, large panel with a doorknob. The panel material did not seem to be wood.

Curiosity piqued, he strode down the last few steps and, with his clean, free hand, experimentally touched his fingertips to the white material of the door panel.

It felt cool, slightly tensile, and unnaturally smooth. 

Words and images flew through his memories as he searched. He had seen and read about such modern doors before.

“PVC, or polyvinyl chloride. Some humans call it vinyl,” Tessai supplied softly, with a faint, indulgent smile. “We just call it plastic.”

Oh.

Well, he had heard of plastic. And vinyl.

He just never knew that humans used the material to make doors.

“I guess this is another of those details not important enough for Kajōmaru-san’s reports,” Tessai chuckled slightly. “But I think inside will look more familiar to you. Here, please.”

Gently twisting the metal doorknob, his host pushed the white, plastic door inwards with one large hand, revealing a darkened interior. Then Tessai reached around the doorframe, pressed something on the wall that emitted a soft ‘click’, and light abruptly filled the room.

A white bathroom greeted his eyes, including a white privy. And, as his host mentioned, he did recognise almost everything inside, even though the room was very much smaller than the bath halls of the Gotei Thirteen barracks. 

Everything in it was a stark white — from its white-tiled floor and walls, to its white ceramic sink over which was affixed a white, wall cabinet with a mirror, and its white shower stall enclosed in white-framed, blasted glass panels. Its white, oblong tub was covered with a white mat, and past the tub, stood two tall panels of a white, vinyl, folding door, the panels now partially drawn aside, half-revealing the rounded bowl of a white, ceramic privy.

“Taichō can use these when there is no one on the second floor,” his host indicated with a wave. “Just press the wall switch here to turn the lights on or off. But I think you will prefer the one we have set aside for your private use. Come, let me show you.”

Once more, without waiting for his response, the big man turned off the light, shut the door, and led the way down the remainder of the corridor. 

Wordlessly, he followed, waiting to see what else he would be shown next.

It took them only a few more strides before the passage ended in another right turn. 

Stepping around the corner behind his host, he found himself at the start of a third corridor.

The passage was about the same length as the first corridor, with a floor of worn, akamatsu floorboards. Suspending from the white, plaster ceiling was another row of green-enamelled, hanging lamps, also of the same make as those in the other corridors. And there, the similarities ended.

The hanging lamps were all lit, yet the corridor remained dim. For there was no shoji in sight, nor any window. Instead, the passage was enclosed on both sides by bare walls covered in the same green wallpaper used elsewhere in the house, with the wall on the right bearing a solitary door with a doorknob.

This time, the door was of plain, varnished wood, and its doorknob of brass that was gleaming from the touch of many hands.

Tessai was heading for it. 

Curiously, he followed — and halted when his host halted.

The big man was at the door, with his free hand holding the doorknob. He was hesitating, however. 

Mirror-lensed eyes turned to him uncertainly.

“Your accommodations are through here, but…” his host began, before halting.

Then, sighing in a strangely defeated manner, the big man said, in a near mumble, “Taichō, please breathe through your mouth when you go in. I try my best, but…” With a shake of his great head, he turned the knob, pushed the door inwards, and stepped into the dim interior.

[Eeeew! Gaaarrrgggh!]

[What in kami’s name is that!?]

He clapped a hand over his nose even as the twins cried out.

A cloying stench was wafting from the opened door.

Hesitantly, breathing through his mouth like he was told, he approached and peered inside.

The room inside was—

[How can anyone live like that?!]

[We have no bodies and even we cannot!]

Unwashed sheets, something aged and decaying on the desk, and… something, on the floor… the awful stains and debris were scattered all over the chamber. There was hardly any light either, and the miasma of hair-curling smells hung like a pall in the cave-like gloom.

Dread filled him. Was he supposed to go through all that?

Tessai was standing in the middle of ground zero, red-faced. 

“Kisuke grew up messy, and I am sorry to say, he brought his personal habits all the way here, even in exile.”

He raised a brow, but refused to speak. Lest he accidentally swallowed the stink. 

“But he wanted Taichō to feel secluded and comfortable, and so we emptied out his laboratory, this way…” Tessai turned and trudged across the cluttered floor, heading for the back of the room.

Belatedly, he noticed another door set in the far wall. It was identical to the room’s door — and closed. 

He swallowed behind his hand. 

His host was serious.

He would have to cross… this, in order to follow Tessai to that inner door.

Grimacing behind his hand, he used his other with his waraji to gather and raise up his long hems, and then began to pick his way inside, searching for the cleanest spot before he took each step to avoid staining the soles of his white tabi.

The desk was the first piece of furniture he had to pass. It was pushed against the wall on the left, and bore a large, black screen in its middle. The screen was thin as a book and — is that a handprint? — on both sides of it, the desktop was covered edge to edge with… some experiment.

Then he noticed the heavily draped window beside the door he had entered from. 

It was wide enough to brighten the chamber, if it was opened.

He turned his gaze pointedly at Tessai.

“Kisuke likes it dim,” was his host’s helpless reply.

Oh kami.

“Soifon had the right of it to constantly complain about his hygiene,” Tessai went on, apologising profusely.

[Urrrgggh!]

[How can Corn Head keep talking in this stink?!]

He had no idea either. 

He had to pick his way past the wardrobe next. 

He tried not to look at its partially closed doors.

The last time he witnessed a wardrobe in this condition, it was when he had to assist in cleaning up the display closets after a major pre-loved clothing sale of the Shinigami Women’s Association. And that was after Nanao, Kiyone, and Rangiku had already tidied the first round, and—

Were those books on top of the wardrobe? 

Books were everywhere. On the massive bookcase, on the desk, on the bed, on the floor. Some stained, some dog-eared, some wrinkled. 

Though hardly any were dusty, he noted.

The bed was next. It was one of those modern affairs that were raised on four legs. His eyes ran past the rumpled mounds of sheets and pillows thrown in squashed piles, and accidentally caught sight of stains which looked like… he quickly averted his eyes in embarrassment. 

And finally, in the corner of minor disaster zone, stood something that looked like an artificial tree, except that it had a perfectly vertical trunk wrapped in rough, thick ropes, and was topped with what appeared to be a small, fluffy, orange cushion.

That was when he saw them — the short, black hairs sprinkled and stuck over almost everything, most noticeably all over the artificial tree of ropes and cushion.

So the female member of the exiled trio clearly spent much more time with them than his host had let on.

Almost across. 

There was no en suite, however. 

He began to worry. If this was the state of Kisuke-kun’s bedchamber, and he had to share personal hygiene facilities with his former scientist colleague…

A shudder ran through him.

“In here, Taichō,” urged Tessai’s deep voice. 

He looked up. 

The door in the far end of the room had been opened, and Tessai was already awaiting in the inner room. 

Crossing the remaining space quickly, he all but hopped across the threshold, and gently, but pointedly, shut the door behind him with a definitive click.

Instantly, the smell of the chamber next door cut off, leaving the air now cleanly, blessedly, unscented.

Finally.

Relieved, he allowed himself to look around.

The room was the entire opposite of the nightmare he had just waded through.

For one, everything was new.

For another, everything was spotless. 

The floor of the room was tiled in aged, cream tiles, and bore long, rectangular lighter swathes, showing where furniture had recently stood. Cabinets, or workbenches, perhaps, now moved away.

Against the wall on the left was another one of those raised, four-legged beds, this one dressed in sheets of light-blue cotton that looked brand new. Set to its right, a little distance away, was a matching dresser of four drawers, while rising to waist height between the bed and the dresser — much closer to the bed than the dresser — was a softly gleaming, black, vertical, sword stand. 

Facing the raised bed, on the wall on the right of the bedchamber, was another white, vinyl door. It had been left ajar, and through the gap he could glimpse more white-tiled floor. 

But the most gratifying sight was the tall window dominating the centre of the wall opposite him. Its sill rose a mere two shaku from the floor line, while its top ended a shaku below the ceiling line. Long, dark-blue drapes hung on either side of the window, held back by cloth straps of the same dark-blue fabric. And a thick, hemp mat lay on the floor, its edge nestled against the wall below the sill.

The window was currently shut. To his unaccustomed eyes, its pair of tall, metal-framed, glass panels more resembled a set of doors than windows. Outside, through the glass, he could see the telephone cables swaying soundlessly in the winds. 

“It opens right onto the roof of the shed,” Tessai explained, gesturing at the said window. “The shōten can sometimes be crowded. Here, Taichō can easily come and go without raising anyone’s attention.” 

He had no problem with that at all, if it meant he could avoid what he had just experienced. 

Crossing the room, he looked through the window glass.

On the outside, the sill dropped down perhaps five shaku to a landing of shiny, grey, roof tiles. The tiles had been recently swept. Even washed. In fact, the roof looked clean enough to sit upon.

“The bath and privy is through there,” came Tessai’s from behind.

He turned to see his host standing beside the white, vinyl door. It was now pushed fully open, showing the welcoming sight of another white bathroom.

A clean, white bathroom.

Rapidly, he strode over to inspect it.

Like the other one, everything was in white — from the long, oblong ceramic sink, to the mirror cabinet, and the rectangular tub. But here, there was no shower stall, only a shower head and rail attached to the wall above the head of the tub. The tub itself was half-covered with a white, slatted mat, and it was dry inside, without a trace of water. And past it, the privy area was situated through another white, folding door, also left ajar.

The only telltale sign that it was once a laboratory washing room was the long, oblong, ceramic sink. He had seen many like it in Senpai’s laboratories. And he had a few of them in his own medicine room.

“This was Kisuke’s en suite,” Tessai explained.

Eyes wide, he hastily backed away a few steps.

“But I scrubbed it out and disinfected it,” the big man added quickly. And assured, for good measure, “I also told Kisuke not to use it while you are staying with us.”

He relaxed.

Thank the kami for small favours, he thought, relieved.

More assured now, he returned to his temporary bedroom, and approached the item that had caught his interest

The sword stand.

It was a brand new, cast in a style that was sleek and foreign to his eyes, and designed to allow a long tachi to lean upright against its padded rest with the hilt up. He gently touched it with his fingertips.

And realised he could not identify its material.

However, its height and sturdiness were a perfect match for Sōgyo no Kotowari.

Very few souls knew the exact dimensions and heft of his Zanpakutō in their tachi form. 

Abruptly, he recalled Yoruichi lingering before his sword stand in his office, when she had accosted him in his domain four days ago.

Had it truly been only four days ago?

“‘Tis made of fibre glass. In the latest collector’s fashion, according to Yoruichi,” quietly explained Tessai behind him.

“How did she procure it on such a short notice?” he asked, marvelling at the accessory.

“That, you will have to ask her when she appears,” chuckled Tessai.

He turned and gave his old friend a knowing grin. “When she appears? Not if?”

The stern face suddenly looked incongruously sheepish. “Ai, caught.”

“Tessai-dono does not truly believe I would not notice the cat hairs, does he,” he teased gently. 

“A disgraced shinigami can hope,” wryly returned the large man.

At that, he looked at the former Dai Kidōchō meaningfully. 

To which Tessai sighed, and then shrugged. “I do not know, Ukitake Taichō. Life may be a lot less comfortable here, but we need answer to no one except our own conscience. ‘Tis a freedom that is hard to give up. I do not know if I wish to return, though I am grateful that you intend to exonerate us. I know Taichō will succeed. ‘Tis I who is uncertain.”

“You do not have to decide now,” he answered gently. “Only promise me that you will think about it.”

The great head nodded. “That goes without saying. What you offer is very tempting. I cannot avoid thinking about it.” 

“And Kisuke-kun?” he inquired again, deliberately keeping his tone nonchalant. “I can see that he is not here. However, you have been very kind to give me a tour of his home, and shown me all he has done to ensure my comfort and safety. I am very grateful. And 'tis only proper that I thank him in person.”

But Tessai, evading a direct answer for the second time, said instead, “There is one more place Taichō needs to see.”

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

He watched, perplexed, as his host strode towards the tall window to gently push against its glass panels. 

They swung outwards with a soft creak. 

Immediately, cold air gusted into the room, swaying the long lengths of the dark-blue drapes, ruffling the folds of his cloak and robes and his long bangs back from his face. 

“The Reishi Henkan-ki and my bakudō end around half a shaku outside the walls of this building,” informed Tessai, as he bent to place one boot on the hemp mat, before he turned around to sit on the opened windowsill. 

His host began pulling on a boot over one large, socked foot, speaking as he did so. 

“Taichō must remember to shield yourself in the cloak before you leave our boundaries, lest some powered humans catch a glimpse of you.”

He frowned at the revelation. “Have powered humans become so common here?”

“I would not say common, they are still very much a minority. But indeed, more of them are appearing.” The last was said gravely, before the big man put his booted foot down on the mat and picked up his other boot.

Raising his remaining sock-clad foot, Tessai rested its ankle over his knee and began pulling on his other boot, continuing, “The Jūreichi shifted here thirty, perhaps forty years ago. A short time for shinigami, but in that period humans had raised at least two new generations. Every generation, we noticed more of them being born with strong reiryoku, and some even with innate abilities to exert reiatsu.”

“Like the children who work here?”

“Aye, like Jinta and Ururu,” nodded the great head.

Then Tessai swung down his foot and stood up on the mat, both feet now fully shod.

“I cleaned the roof,” the big man said, one large hand gesturing out the opened window. “But where we are going, it will be dusty. In case Taichō is sensitive to dust, it may be a better idea to keep your nose and face covered throughout. Come, please follow me.”

With that, his host leapt over the low height of the windowsill, and dropped down out into the sunshine. 

So that explained the breach of courtesy. 

[Well, I hope he is taking us to Sly Boy now,] Kotowari grumbled.

[He better! Corn Head used to be direct, not beat about like this!] Sōgyo complained, less shy.

[Patience, you two,] he chided gently. [Has it occurred to you that perhaps Tessai is feeling uncertain of me? For that matter, I, too, am learning how to be a friend to him again after so long.]

At his reproach, the twins quietened, though they still made some indistinct, grumbling noises.

He let them be. 

Instead, he pulled his hood back over his head, refastened its muffler over his face, then strode to the hemp mat and dropped his waraji upon it. 

The mat was brand new, like the rest of the furnishings in his temporary room. 

And its presence made sense now. 

If this window was to be his sole egress and entry during his stay, then it made sense for his footwear to be stored here.

His hosts had truly thought of everything.

Holding up his long hems in a bunch so that he could see his own feet, he toed on his waraji one after another — accomplishing the entire process without the use of his hands, unlike Tessai. 

Long live olden straw sandals, he thought with silent mirth. Ai, Shunsui, you would enjoy this.

And then he was done, ready to join his former counterpart outside.

A simple hop up onto the windowsill, then down onto the roof tiles outside, and he was passing through the familiar frizzle of the Reishi Henkan-Ki, and the mild, swirling reiatsu of Tessai weaving amidst the composite bakudō. Another step, and at last he was outside.

For a moment, he stood still in the cool, morning winds under bright sunshine, with the quiet zinging of his host’s bakudō at his back. The roof beneath his feet slanted outwards, the edges of its eaves almost touching the top of the rough, concrete wall delineating the boundary of the shōten’s property.

On the other side of that wall rose the towering height of the third high-rise block.

It was built too close. Much too close. For he could see the Humans within and what they were doing. Most were engrossed in their day’s work, and only a few were looking out their windows, and down at them.

Or, rather, at Tessai.

His host was behaving strangely, his large, hulking figure stomping about the roof in circles with his great head bent, and his mirrored eyes staring down at the tiles.

Perplexed, he watched as Tessai stamped and thudded his heavily booted feet here and there, as if testing their solidity.

Thankfully, to the Humans watching from the next building, they saw only the former Dai Kidōchō, of course. To their unpowered, mortal eyes, there was only one person, not two, behaving inexplicably on the roof of the neighbouring shed.

And should there be unknown powered humans or other reishi beings lurking about and spying on them now… well, that was why he had promised his father to wear Kisuke-kun’s cloak at all times, ne?

Though he supposed that even if he was visible to unpowered Humans, if they saw him simply standing still here like this, watching Tessai behave oddly on this same rooftop, he would also seem to be behaving inexplicably.

“What are you doing?” he asked at last, keeping his voice at a low murmur.

“Just a moment, ‘tis been awhile since I came by this way, I am trying to remember where— ai, wait, here it is.”

With a soft grunt, Tessai squatted down on his haunches, reached out with his beefy hands and placed his broad fingers at either end of a row of three adjacent roof tiles. Then he pressed.

A low, hollow thunk sounded from below, and then a square of roof tiles dropped down, revealing a dark, square hole in the middle of the roof. 

A trapdoor.

He froze. 

“Here it is!” Tessai rumbled beneath his breath, clearly aware that he had drawn unwanted attention. Unfurling to his feet with satisfaction, the big man explained in the same, low tone, “We mostly enter the shed from the kitchen on the ground floor, you see, and only use the shed doors when we are throwing or moving things. This is one of those rare occasions we are accessing by the roof, not that you will need to come this way again after this, but— ai! Just… follow me, please. ‘Tis easier to explain by showing you.” 

With that, the big, former Dai Kidōshū scrunched his massive shoulders together and, without the slightest hesitation, jumped in, his entire body clearing cleanly past the edges of the square opening.

An opening which suddenly seemed much too small.

And too dark.

“Down here, Taichō,” softly floated up Tessai’s deep voice.

He would answer, or move, if he could.

But he could barely do either. His nerves and tendons had stiffened, his heartbeat fallen to heavy, pounding blows, and his mind begun clouding, sinking into dark and—

[Master? Master!]

[You are safe, Master!]

[Master is safe! There is no danger here!] 

[There is no danger here!]

No danger here. 

“Taichō?”

No danger here, he repeated to himself. 

“Ukitake Taichō? Are you all right?”

“Com— I am coming,” he bit out. 

No. Danger. Here. 

Vehemently, he shoved the hard, thudding fear back from whence it had escaped — in that pit in the very back of his very last subconsciousness, that abyss where he locked everything he never wanted to remember. 

But which his eidetic mind perfectly preserved anyway, whether or not he wished it. 

His gift. 

And his curse. 

[Fear not, Master,] comforted Sōgyo. [We are with you.]

[We are always with you, Master,] echoed Kotowari, adding quite fiercely, [Scary memories will not dare harm you as long as we are with you.]

[Than— Thank you.] He pressed a hand over his forehead. 

His skin had gone clammy.

Wiping off the thin sheen of cold sweat, he gave himself no more time to think, but pulled his long layers around his legs, stepped to the edge of the trapdoor, and leapt in after his old comrade.

Sudden gloom snuffed out the sunlight like a flame.

Then the soles of his waraji met a flat, hard surface.

“Taichō!” 

Tessai’s deep voice was suddenly very near. 

Blinking quickly, his eyesight rapidly adjusted to the weaker light, and then he looked up.

Alarm and worry were writ large upon the stern features of his old counterpart as the big man stood hovering over him so closely, he could see the anxious, black eyes behind the mirrored lenses of the spectacles. 

“Taichō, have you taken ill? We can return inside now, you have a rest and we will resume later when—”

He held up a hand quickly. “Nay, I am well, just… I was surprised, ‘twas all.”

Tessai stared at him, stern features cast into harsh, shadowed planes beneath the single, lit bulb of the green-enamelled lamp overhead. Yet, the look of worry behind the mirrored lenses was still stark.

He tried again. “I am well. Please, let us proceed.”

The mirror-lensed gaze studied him thoughtfully. Then, black brows suddenly rising, the big man looked up at the roof access.  

When his old counterpart looked down at him again, comprehension was slowly dawning upon his solemn face behind the mirrored lenses of his spectacles.

“Ai, Taichō,” the man’s deep voice had gone very soft, filled with regret, “this clearly holds terrible memories for you—”

Firmly, but gently, he interrupted, “‘Tis no fault of yours, Tessai-dono. Please, let us just carry on.”

He would rather not discuss it.

However, the big man shook his head. “We can use the access through the kitchen later. Jinta and Ururu will be home soon, but I can move them out—”

“Nay, that is too much trouble,” he interjected resolutely.

[Master, are you certain?] Sōgyo asked worriedly.

[Corn Head’s suggestion is a good one!] Kotowari pointed out anxiously. 

[I must keep trying to overcome this,] he told the twins. To Tessai, however, he indicated the roof access above them. “Please, keep that open for me later.”

His host looked at him intently.

Then, giving him a firm, respectful nod, the former Dai Kidōchō stepped back, returning to a polite distance.

He smiled appreciatively at the gesture.

Then belatedly remembered that his face was concealed. 

Pushing back his hood once more, he pulled his muffler down, wedged the fabric beneath his chin, and this time, gave the big man a wide, grateful smile.

The broad frame of his host visibly relaxed. “As long as Taichō lets me know if he needs anything.”

“I will, thank you,” he murmured, beginning to look around.

The shed was crammed full of objects. Every corner he looked, piles of crates and boxes greeted his eyes. Or old furniture. And a gamut of metal appliances and equipment he had no name for.

Only a small area of the floor remained uncluttered, and this was where they both now stood. What he could see of the floor was bare, a worn concrete surface covered with scratches, pockmarks, and cracks. 

The lamp above Tessai was not the only one in the shed. Three more identical ones hung from the beams overhead, distributed at regular quarters over the congested storage chamber.

“What is it in here you wish me to see?” 

At his question, Tessai shifted uncomfortably.

He raised a brow. 

Sighing, his host looked down at the floor between them, and said, “’Tis not in here, but down through here.” 

With that, the big man lifted one booted foot over the concrete, and stamped down hard.

At the strike of the heavy boot, a square of the concrete floor vanished.

And winds were suddenly blowing up into the shed, and bright light pouring up from the opening in the floor.

He squinted as he held down the tossing long folds of his cloak and robes. 

The winds were dry, and warm. 

The bright light felt like sunlight on a clear day. 

The hanging lamp overhead swung wildly, its single, lighted bulb suddenly appearing dim and ineffectual.

The shed was quickly heating in the warm, upward-blowing winds.

He shook his bangs out of his eyes, where they had been blown by the balmy, swirling currents.

And then he looked down at where the winds and the bright light was coming from.

Another trapdoor. 

His heart froze. 

He now understood Tessai’s hesitation.

“This is our benkyō heya,” introduced the big man apologetically. “I am terribly sorry, Taichō, but this is the only way in.”

So it was. To both.

The power emanating from the access opening was unmistakably that of a study chamber, humming at such a low register as to be skimming just beneath his senses.

Though it was also unlike any study chamber he had ever encountered — the kidō of this particular one had been intricately enmeshed with reiryoku. 

And why did Kisuke-kun have to make it accessible only through a trapdoor?

For there was no doubt whose handiwork this was. The stitching was nearly seamless, and none but an Elder could have distinguished where kidō ended and reiryoku began. But that power weaving right through the core of it, the force sewing and holding the entire construct together — the pressure pinching at his nerves, grating on the roots of his teeth, relentlessly drilling into his tendons, into the very bone of his jaw… that reiryoku belonged unmistakably to Kisuke-kun. 

And it felt just as nasty as he remembered it.

Except now, he tasted anger. A rage that was new, and which lay deep. Yet it drove every pinch, every pressure. 

When before, the soul of Kisuke-kun had contained neither anger nor rage, only a hard, focussed intent.

He could understand if his former scientist colleague felt anger. Any soul would, in Kisuke-kun’s place. 

However, the depth of this fury was another level.

Carefully, he asked, “How long has Kisuke-kun kept this here?” 

“Shortly after we purchased this property,” wanly smiled Tessai. “And that was about a year after we arrived. We have to maintain our edge, in event Aizen came after us. Having our own training space is the safest way we can keep in practice without destroying anything in this world.” 

And without revealing our abilities, the other objective was left unsaid.

He supposed he should feel flattered to be trusted with this secret.

“But these are difficult conditions for maintaining such a facility,” he observed. “Reishi in the Gense has always been sparse, but it has become so much thinner in the three hundred years I have been away…” he trailed off meaningfully, keeping his gaze on his former counterpart.

“You are right again,” Tessai agreed sombrely. “Reishi here was already pitiful when we arrived a hundred and ten years ago. We had to push ourselves harder simply to collect the same amount we once could with less effort. And as you correctly suggest, indeed it is becoming harder. There will come a time when it will no longer be worthwhile to maintain this.”

“And Kisuke-kun knows this?”

Tessai sighed, and replied, deep voice bleak, “Knows, but is in denial. As he always is whenever faced with any limitation.”

He bit down on his lower lip as he considered the brightly-lit, windy, square opening.

Maintaining a benkyō heya in the Gense was one thing. 

But if the amount of reishi here was depleting so rapidly, it would increasingly drain the reiryoku of his former scientist colleague. And if this was happening to Kisuke-kun, then very likely, it was also happening to the other two members of the exiled trio.  

Shaking his head, he firmly declared, “I need to know more.”

At his pronouncement, relief visibly lightened Tessai’s stern expression. “You have no idea how much and how long I have been wanting to hear that from someone in charge.” 

Rue filled him. “How can I do any less than discover the entire truth? The three of you are the victims of this entire mess. You were unfairly sentenced, forced to flee the only home you had ever known, yet in the century hence even unto today, you continue to serve the Gotei Thirteen unwaveringly. ”

At his reminder, a bitter shadow flew fleetingly past the stern lines of Tessai’s mirror-lensed face.

“Once a Shinigami, always a Shinigami,” the big man said, deep voice lowered to a rasp. “We never seek anything in return for doing what our hearts believe. And my own heart believes that what happened a hundred and ten years ago is about to come to a head.”

A large hand waved at the bright, windy opening at their feet. “This is why I led Taichō here. I know now that you do not like trapdoors, but will Taichō make an exception this once and follow me down? ‘Tis easier to explain if I show you.”

He stared at the opening, valiantly trying to slow the painful pounding of his heart. 

There was no other option but to follow his host through that, if he meant to get to the bottom of the mystery.

[Looks more like a hole,] Sōgyo supplied helpfully. 

[Aye, Master, think of it as a hole in the floor,] coaxed Kotowari.

Perhaps the twins had a point. For he could see neither cover nor any door flap. The opening was really merely a square hole in the floor. And through it, he thought he saw a distant expanse of sandy, barren lands.

“Taichō?” Tessai’s deep voice was anxious. “If you would rather not, I will understand—”

He held out a hand to halt the man’s words. “Just… allow me a moment.” Inhaling a breath, he pushed a fallen bang behind his ear, held down his flapping robes and, very cautiously, sidled to the edge of the opening.

Then he looked down.

And looked down.

And kept looking down. 

Way down.

Way, waaaaaay down.

And down some more.

And then down, even some more.

There was a ladder at one side of the square opening, and its length plunged straight down in a dizzying, vertiginous drop, its end narrowing to a pinpoint on what he now clearly saw was an expanse of barren, brown earth.

Even his own training grounds at home was not this deep.

His vision began to spin, and he felt himself begin to tilt.

~ ~ ~

Large hands grasped his shoulders, pulling him back.

He fell against a huge, hard body, his fingers covering his eyes to cut off his spinning vision.

Breathing shallowly, he kept still in the strong hands holding him as he willed the spinning in his head to cease, inhaling a warm scent that resembled dusty, aged herbs. 

The scent was unmistakably male.

Immediately, he pushed himself away, planting himself more firmly upon his own two feet.

And then he looked up.

Only to see Tessai retreating swiftly, the big man reinstating a respectful distance between them. 

“You nearly fell in,” his old counterpart rumbled his explanation.

Those mirror-lensed eyes were watching him intently, however. Without pity, only with concern and quite a bit of anxiety. 

As well as a rising glint of speculation.

He looked away, slightly flustered. 

“Only a momentary vertigo, nothing more,” he demurred, recovering his composure. 

There was a pause. 

Followed by a low, wry chuckle. “Ai, and Taichō is a well-known shunpo master.” 

The teasing tone of the deep voice nevertheless masked an increasing worry. 

Still, he prickled inwardly, despite knowing he was being petty. 

“Taichō needs to take more care,” came the next words, suddenly sober. “Especially around unfamiliar things.”

That made him look back up.

Tessai’s stern features had become extremely solemn. “The Gense has changed drastically, and we had to adapt with the changes. Taichō is used to relying on his power and skills, but things here can be so different, you may be caught unawares. Take this place, for instance.” One large hand waved at the square opening on the floor before them. “As masterful as Taichō is, falling down such great heights while caught off guard can injure even an Elder like you.”

He tried not to look down the hole. Or at the ladder. 

But he had to know. 

Resolutely, he asked, “How far down does it go?” 

Tessai watched him a moment more, then answered, “We kept it at one ri at most. Any deeper, it would consume too much of our powers to maintain.” 

The former Dai Kidōchō spoke factually, without pride. As if one ri was not astronomically deeper than any study chamber ever built in Soul Society.

But one ri was far deeper than any study chamber in Soul Society. 

A quick mental calculation put the depth at the human equivalent of just under four kilometres, or two and a half miles.

Cautiously, he peered in again, this time with one eye.

Then he looked away quickly before his vision could start to spin. 

However, the brief glimpse had allowed him to see what he needed. 

A depth of one ri seemed capable of containing an entire world down there. And that ladder leading down into that artificial world was new. 

But most importantly, he had seen faint signs of use on the rungs nearest to the access opening. 

Shinigami needed no manual means of descent or ascent, no matter the height, and no matter if the Shinigami was exiled. Unless, of course, the Shinigami’s powers were sealed. 

Which was decidedly not the case with his three exiled former colleagues.

That left only one possibility remaining. 

“I should not have stared down that ladder of yours, it made me dizzy,” he softly admitted. Then, very mildly, asked, “Since everything has changed in this world, am I to use your ladder now to go down there?”

At his words, Tessai huffed a sad laugh. “Fortunately, shunpo is one of those things that still works very well in benkyō heya built in the Gense. So we will shunpo in, as we usually do.” Then the big man lowered his mirrored gaze to rest upon the top rung of the ladder. “We only installed that ladder a month ago for Ichigo, so that we could train him down here. That is what Taichō is really asking, ne?”

~ ~ ~

Perhaps, he thought wryly, I should have displayed a little weakness right from the start.

For it seemed his near accident was somehow the key that unlocked, and his old counterpart was more forthcoming now,  neither hedging nor speaking circuitously. 

He could only hope that the big man would soon feel as comfortable with him as before, trust that they were still staunch comrades, even after all this time apart.

“We trained the lad down there,” Tessai was saying, waving a large hand at bright, windy, square access before them. “Kisuke devised the method, I helped where he needed me to, and Yoruichi did what she could to prepare the boy’s young friends.”

The said catwoman had certainly not mentioned any of these when she accosted him in his office four days ago.

Had it been only four days? 

“Kisuke was intent on doing the impossible to restore the Ichigo’s powers even though boy’ Saketsu and Hakusui were gone,” Tessai recounted. “He said the boy was eaten up with guilt for letting Rukia-chan take the blame for him. But if you ask me, so was Kisuke, if not more so. I had seen Kisuke driven before, but this time he was…” the big man trailed off. 

And then with a sigh, and a shake of his great head, Tessai confided, “Kisuke was not only driven this time. He was desperate. And when he gets that way, he is relentless. So we had to help him, or Ichigo and his young friends would have been poorly prepared and met their end prematurely in the Dangai.” 

“If it makes Tessai-dono feel better, we knew how Ichigo-kun lost his powers,” he consoled. “Byakuya’s debrief report to the Chūō Shijūroku was… thorough.” 

He refrained from mentioning that the young taichō had also been utterly cold and unfeeling in his report, as if the matter concerned someone else, not his own sister-in-law. 

It served Tessai no purpose to know such a thing.

Instead, he softly finished, “What I wish to know is what convinced Kisuke-kun that Ichigo-kun’s powers could be restored. The Academy and the Gotei Thirteen teach that the destruction of the Saketsu and Hakusui is permanent. And for good reasons.”

“What convinced Kisuke?” The mirror-lensed gaze stared at him. “Other than his own obsessive compulsion about impossible things, you mean?”

“Aye,” he affirmed softly.

The great head tilted quizzically. “And I thought Taichō would be more interested in the how of it. You do not wish to know Kisuke’s methods?”

At that, he had to swallow a sigh. “I spent a night seated beside Ichigo-kun at our feast listening to the boy’s accounts of his… training.”

Rueful comprehension fell over Tessai’s stern features. “Ai, then I do not think you will want more details of how Kisuke simply beat the lad to near death until his powers re-emerged.” 

“Nay, I do not,” he said firmly.

“Then Taichō is of the same mind as I,” Tessai said with visible relief. Then straightening, the big man inhaled, and said, “Allow me to show you. I shall go first, and await Taichō just under the access way.”

He understood the unspoken worry. 

Smiling, he assured, “I shall be fine, Tessai-dono. You need not catch me. Just lead the way.”

Giving him an uncertain look, his old comrade nevertheless decided against more words, and simply took a step forward and jumped into the square hole.

He hesitated momentarily.

Just a hole in the ground, he reminded himself. 

[Remember ‘tis not a trapdoor, Master,] Kotowari chimed in.

[Aye, just a hole like any other hole,] Sōgyo piped in.

Resolutely, before his nerves could get the better of him, did what he did before — firmly wrapping the heavy layers of his long hems about himself, he dropped a reliable amount of reiatsu into his limbs, then raised a foot over the hole.

Taking a deep breath, he let himself fall.

~ ~ ~

His gut lurched — but his reiatsu quickly took over, and before he knew it, the transition had passed, and he was through and stepping upon the winds, the currents tossing the long billows of his cloak and robes.

Tessai was hovering nearby, as the big man had said he would. 

Very nearby, he noted. Close enough to catch him in a flash, should he fall into another dizzy spell. 

His host was clearly taking no chances with his care. Whether the former Dai Kidōchō was doing so at the behest of his father, or out of his own genuine concern, it still piqued him a little. 

He was not that fragile.

His mood must have been obvious, for Tessai promptly drew their attention to the land below.

“'Tis down there,” pointed one large finger, “That was where Ichigo first achieved his own Shikai.”

Following the direction indicated, he felt his brows rise.

There was no discernible limit or horizon to the deathly bare land sprawling far below. The expanse was an entire waste of rock and dirt. Completely barren. Winds were stirring up a thin haze of dust, but not so strongly to cloud the strange, violent scar gouged into the land — a colossal, cross-shaped chasm that seemed to have been slashed by a giant hand across almost the entire visible diameter of the space.

But that was not what Tessai was indicating. 

The big man was pointing off to one side of the x-shaped gorge, to what appeared to be a dark hole in the distant ground.

“Lead on, my friend,” he requested.

With a nod, the big man turned and descended, heading directly for that spot.

He followed.

Angling his descent after Tessai’s large figure, he allowed himself to plunge bodily through the azure skies, speeding past puffy, white clouds — only to realise that despite the buffeting winds, the clouds were not moving.

Startled, he looked around quickly, noticing that all of the clouds were unnaturally still.

Indeed, the entire sky itself was not real, but a mere projection of the azure colour, and the clouds lifeless, motionless constructs suspended below a high ceiling.

That was when he noticed the difference in the winds — the billowing breaths were warm and dry, and real enough, but the currents smelled sterile, as if artificially pumped from above ground, sanitised, before unleashed in here.

He frowned. As far as he remembered —and his eidetic mind simply did not allow him to remember wrong — benkyō heya were worlds unto themselves, so realistic in every way that one could be forgiven for believing them to be real. That the benkyō heya of Urahara Shōten, despite its sophistication, was showing such obvious spots of simulations—

“Here we are,” called Tessai.

His host had reached the ground, and was standing and looking up at him some distance from the hole in the ground. 

Now that he was closer, he saw that what had appeared as a small hole when seen from the sky was, in fact, quite sizeable.

He made haste, and descended. 

As his feet contacted flat, sandy rock, grit and dust puffed up around his knees. 

Yet, despite the unevenness of the ground, he felt he was standing upon a smooth floor. And it had nothing to do with his footwear, for waraji soles were made to be thin enough so that wearers could feel the terrain they walked upon.

“‘Tis here,” Tessai was calling. 

Dismissing the oddity for the time being, he strode quickly towards his old comrade.

But the disconcerting sensation struck again as soon as he began walking — powdery puffs of dust and sand were sifting up at his every step, yet he felt as though he was walking across a smooth, featureless floor.

Lack of reishi, he realised, at last.

There was not enough reishi to make the ground feel as real as it looked. Similarly with the sky, the clouds, and to a lesser extent, the winds.

He looked at Tessai, who was standing at the rim of the hole in the ground, waiting earnestly.

The disturbing observations would have to be saved for later.

Drawing abreast, he cast his gaze down at the cavity in the ground. 

It was a wide hole, its diameter perhaps as long as the height of two tall men. And it was very round. 

He looked down into it. 

The hole opened into a vertical shaft. It was fairly deep, about twenty shaku thereabouts. 

And it was entirely unnatural. 

Besides being unnaturally round, its walls were unnaturally smooth and faceless, and rose at an unnaturally vertical angle. The bottom of the shaft was also unnaturally smooth, composed of faceless, flat stone.

But beyond what he saw with his eyes, all his other senses detected nothing about the shaft that could pull forth the power of a latent reiryoku.

Frowning, he asked, “This is where Ichigo-kun first achieved Shikai?”

“Aye, his own, not a mimicry of Rukia’s,” Tessai confirmed. Then, belatedly realising the reason for the question, clarified, “I neutralised the lad’s reiatsu residue as much as kidō allowed, do not want Jinta or Ururu to come down here and accidentally expose themselves to it. But you are an Elder, Ukitake Taichō. No kidō can completely neutralise reiatsu residues. Whatever that escaped the cleansing spells should remain clear as daylight to you.”

He tentatively reached out with his reikaku.

There was no reiatsu within the shaft.

At least, not any that he could easily detect.

Turning around, he let his reikaku range out unfettered, slowly pivoting on his heels as he swept his senses over the entire expanse of the artificial land of the heya, and over the distant, ragged rims of  the gigantic, x-shaped chasm which now resembled a massive, unnatural, rock canyon.

The entire heya had been very well cleaned.

He turned back to his host, and looked up into the stern face observing him with silent anticipation.

“You have a done an exceedingly thorough job here, Tessai-dono,” he commended softly. And then, gently, added, “And I thank you for trusting me to show me this place. Otherwise, I would not have guessed that this was where you took such an unforgivable risk with an inexperienced human youth. No matter how powered he is.”

Tessai’s black brows slowly rose above the mirrored lenses of his spectacles. 

“I see…” The big man hesitated, then asked, tentatively, “The lad had told you… everything? About what we did to him?”

“Aye, amongst the other accounts of his training with you,” he softly informed. With a wry smile, he admitted, “Ichigo-kun’s reiatsu was most… unusual. I had to ask.”

The stern face of his old comrade stilled. “Was he…”

He shook his head quickly. “Nay, he was not angry. Our young human friend has too big a heart to bear grudges. Neither was he boastful at all, ‘tis just not in his nature. He was merely factual in his replies to my questions.”

Tessai looked visibly relieved. “Thank you for that, Taichō. I have not met the lad since he came home, and I have been worrying that he is still furious…”

Smiling a little ruefully, he said, “He seemed grateful to the three of you for his training, if quite baffled and sceptical that you had to take such extreme measures with him.”

At his words, Tessai’s massive shoulders drooped.

“And why would he not be,” his old comrade sighed, saddened. “I am not defending Kisuke, Taichō, but I understand why he did what he did to the lad. You see, Kisuke achieved Shikai very violently. Since that experience, he has it ingrained in his head that immense reiryoku could only be unsealed under stress of survival.”

As the big man spoke, he had to suppress an inward wince. How many times had he heard or witnessed around the barracks, even in the Academy, contests of strength among officers and recruits? “Who is stronger!” or “Who is more powerful?” had become so commonly shouted, he had long since given up on keeping track of the rivalries.

And that was the unfortunate reality within the Gotei Thirteen today. And had been so, for centuries. The rise of too many shinigami believing that violence was the only means of increasing their powers, and the spawning of ceaseless, single-minded pursuit of this misguided faith. 

However, the exiled trio should have been above this.

The three of them should have known better. 

“Yet, survival is about staying behind the line of life to avoid death,” he pointed out, keeping his tone gentle to soften his rebuke. “Not about driving a living human soul to the brink of Hollowfication to test a theory.”

“We realised that, Ukitake Taichō,” Tessai answered bleakly. “Our plan was that I stand by and act quickly to mend Ichigo’s Inga no Kusari and reverse the Shinsoku process should we fail. But if I could not do that in time, and Ichigo’s soul Hollowfied, we would jointly take him down. We might not be able to send the lad on his blessed way to Soul Society through Konsō, but our zanpakutō would cleanse the Hollow from him, and his soul could journey on to rejoin the Balance.”

Dismay struck him — hard — as he listened the explanations of their former Dai Kidōchō.

[Ai! They do not know!] cried Sōgyo, stunned.

[Perhaps they have forgotten?] Kotowari hazarded uncertainly.

The misguided faith ran deeper than he had thought, if even Tessai was solving problems based on violence. Clearly, what had always been so apparent to the Elders had been utterly lost over the millennia. 

He would speak to his father when this crisis was finally over. Such a dangerous misconception needed to be righted, and he would require the time and space to do so.

To Tessai, however, he could only shake his head.

“Nay, Tessai-dono. ‘Tis not as simple as that. Had you taken down Ichigo-kun as a Hollow, he still would have experienced the living torture of insatiable hunger. Such agony cannot be quantified by any measure of time, even a mere instant of it would feel like an eternity. And when his soul rejoins the Balance, he would be lost for kami knows how long among the nameless masses flowing through the Balance.”

“What?!”

“Aye,” he affirmed, pained. “Should that come to pass, you would have dishonoured Ichigo-kun. Not only would he have suffered needlessly, he would have been barred for an indeterminate amount of time from reaping the merits he had earned from his previous lives. He does not deserve such a fate. Especially not when he has done so much good in his present life.”

“I… I did not know…”

“That is our fault,” he confessed, grieved.

“Yours? But… how?”

“‘Tis the responsibility of your Elders to ensure that truths are not lost, and we have clearly failed,” he answered simply.

[‘Tis Old Fogey’s fault!] railed Sōgyo at once. [Tell Corn Head, Master! Tell him!]

[Aye!] Kotowari was equally furious. [Old Fogey is to blame for keeping you sequestered for so long! Otherwise Master would have prevented all these!]

[Now is not the time, hush, both,] he admonished.

However, it seemed that Tessai had other ideas. 

For the big man slowly raised a large hand, took down his mirror-lensed spectacles, and quietly, but very determinedly, said, “I thank Taichō for telling me these. But I hardly think you or any of the Elders can be blamed for what we did to Ichigo. And this is why.”

So saying, his former counterpart dug a hand behind the front of his apron, and withdrew a white object.

He stared at what lay in the large hand.

It was a mask.

The mask of a Hollow.

But sized for a human.

- • - • - • - • - • - • - • -

“I saved this when I was cleaning this place. What I did not tell Taichō earlier was that Ichigo was wearing this when he burst of here in Shikai. But he took it off very easily and threw it away, so I thought at the time that it was a side effect of him achieving Shikai through the Shinsoku.”

Then Tessai’s entire demeanour began to fidget with worry. 

“But Yoruichi has returned with news,” the big man went on, troubled. “This mask, or another like it, reappeared on Ichigo at least twice more while the lad was in Soul Society…” And here, his old comrade’s black eyes simply looked at him anxiously, unable — or perhaps unwilling — to complete the sentence.

The sight of such nervous trepidation on their former Dai Kidōchō was disturbing, to say the least.

“I followed Kisuke's plans and put Ichigo through Shinsoku, and nearly caused the lad to Hollowfy. Looking at this now, and taking into account what Yoruichi discovered, I am no longer so certain that some part of Ichigo did not Hollowfy. But neither Yoruichi nor I have any means to investigate further, our powers do not extend that far. You, Ukitake Taichō, will be able to parse through this easily.” 

“So this is why you brought me here,” he surmised quietly.

Tessai spread his large hands plaintively. “Aye! I wanted you to see this place, Taichō, because we need to know what Kisuke is not telling us. He claimed that the only way to restore the Ichigo’s power was to force the boy’s reiryoku to ignite out of sheer desperation to avoid Hollowfying. But even if he had based that conclusion on his own experience with attaining Shikai, his explanation was still a stretch. I could not explain why it was, neither could Yoruichi. And we still cannot. And now we are finding this.“ The large hand waved the white, bone mask in indication.

“Have you tried discussing with him?”

At his question, his old comrade gave a bleak stare. “We had. In several ways, and several times. But he either changes the subject, or simply excuses himself. To be honest, Taichō, he has not been home since he went to receive Ichigo and his friends on their return from Soul Society. He has shut us out, and we do not know where he is right now.”

“I suppose he is also avoiding me now,” he finished softly, finally understanding why he had detected nothing of their former scientist colleague since his arrival at the shōten.

The massive frame of Tessai loosened, relief lightening some of the shadows that had befallen the big man. “Aye, I am glad that Taichō is so astute. That is just it. He, Yoruichi, and I, we grew up together. And he will not let us in. With Taichō here, we do not expect he will be showing up at all. Our fear is that he is now doing something else to Ichigo.”

“To Ichigo-kun?” he asked, a new alarm going off in his mind. “What is he planning now?”

“I do not rightly know, and that worries me to no end,” Tessai confessed, stern face darkening once more. 

Then, deep voice lowering with urgency, his old comrade beseeched, “Ukitake Taichō, Kisuke needs your help even if he refuses to say it. I asked him privately, and many times, what made him so certain of success that he was willing to take such a mad risk with the lad. But he evaded my question, and all my subsequent attempts to get an answer, and it has been over a month. My fear is that whatever he had done, he is still doing it and digging himself in even deeper.”

“I see,” he murmured.

Turning his gaze down before them, he quietly studied the shaft. 

A mental calculation put its height at around slightly over six metres, or eighteen feet, in human terms. 

With reishi form bound and reiryoku dormant, no human soul could have escaped from in there, except with Shikai, or more.

However, the boy’s Saketsu and Hakusui had been severed. Such a destruction was permanent.

Something else had clearly convinced the former scientist taichō of the Twelfth that his insane method would work.

He eyed the white, bone mask in Tessai’s hand.

“I gather Kisuke-kun does not know you are showing me this place?” he asked thoughtfully.

“No, he does not,” came the dark confirmation. “He would know if he deigns to come home. But since he does not, we have decided to go ahead and probe without his consent.”

Turning back, he stared down at the artificial shaft, considering.

“‘Tis dishonourable, but I see no other solution,” he decided finally, discomfited. “Yoruichi and you are both Kisuke-kun’s best friends, yet he is shutting out even you. What hope is there that he will let me in? I suppose the only way is for me to inspect Ichigo-kun’s reiatsu residue in his own facility without his knowledge, no matter how ill that sits with me.” 

“I apologise for putting Taichō in this position,” came Tessai’s heartfelt apology. “If there was any other way, I would have taken it and preserved Taichō’s honour.”

He shook his head. “‘Tis a small, white artifice, Tessai-dono. And my burden to bear.” 

Decision made, he went on softly, but firmly, “Your neutralisation is near perfect. It will take some concentration for me to find any reiatsu, and I can do so much more quickly without the distraction of yours.”

Tessai nodded quickly. “Of course, Ukitake Taichō. Take all the time you need. I will make sure you are undisturbed. When you are done, please come back into the house. I will have a hot, replenishing meal awaiting.”

At the mention of food, he smiled warmly. “That will be much appreciated, thank you.”

And it seemed that his response greatly comforted his old comrade, for the stern face broke into the first, easy smile he had seen since their reunion.

“The children have gone to purchase the items I need for the recipes Sōtaichō sent me. Tonic herbs which you are used to, and imperial rice, which I know is still your staple.”

The term momentarily piqued his interest. “Imperial rice?”

Tessai gave a low chuckle. “Aye, that is what humans in this part of the Gense call the purple rice you still farm in North Rukongai.”

How unnecessarily grandiose, was his first thought.

“I see. Thank you,” he returned nevertheless, broadening his smile. 

With another nod, Tessai bowed deeply, then straightened. And then his towering form flickered, and was gone in shunpo.

~ ~ ~

Alone at last — and more importantly, assured of privacy — he finally reached up and unbuttoned the front of his cloak, then pushed the long folds back over his shoulders.

Immediately, winds blew apart the crimson panels of his nagahaori, and lifted those of his yukata beneath, cooling him instantly.

But his Zanpakutō — Sōgyo, to be precise — had words to say about even about that, of course.

[Master must not catch a chill!] the twin piped up anxiously. [Suddenly warm, suddenly cool, ‘tis no good for your constitution!]

[I shall be fine, do not worry,] he assured.

Kotowari was all business, however. [What do we think about Sly One? Is he up to no good?]

[Let us not speculate without evidence,] he chided gently. Then, more firmly, said, [Hush now, while I focus.] 

With that, he let loose a tiny drop of reiatsu, and leapt into the shaft.

It was a very short fall. 

In the next breath, he was settling on the flat, circular stone floor at the bottom of the shaft, right in its exact centre.

All at once, silence fell. As though a great, muffling blanket was falling all around, the sounds of winds above were abruptly dampened to a mere murmur.

Finally, without the distraction of any other reiatsu, he reached out slightly with his senses — and immediately felt what he had missed before.

There was a power trickling within the rock.

He stepped towards one wall and lightly placed a palm upon its unnaturally smooth surface.

There. 

It was a fine, gentle wave, sparkling beautifully as it flowed through the very material of the stone, buoyed seamlessly upon the faintest trace of a languidly swirling reiatsu.

He recognised the reiatsu. 

Tessai. 

So this was his former counterpart’s neutralising kidō — or rather, the remnants of it that had been left unused. 

Despite the minuscule quantity of  it, the sophistication of the spell was still very much evident. 

He could feel the kidō surge through every reishi of the rock, igniting in infinitesimally small bursts as it sparked to and fro between opposing polarities as it met and cancelled lingering bits of reiatsu, leaving in its wake cleanly degaussed reishi. And the process went on and on, through the very stone of the shaft walls, and— 

What was that?

So scant it was, he had almost missed it.

But there it was, that unmistakably whimsical rippling. And those rapid, flitting beats. And most of all, that low, purring bass.

His heart skipped a beat.

That purring bass.

Once, in the endless dark of tormented nights, it had crescendoed upon his senses, howled and flared to a scalding, pumping burn that seared through his blood, sizzled through his veins, ignited every one of his nerves… 

The memories surged forth, like it did five nights ago. 

He vehemently banished them, like he did five nights ago.

Sighing, he dropped his hand from the wall. 

What had he been expecting, truly. For all her capriciousness, Yoruichi had nonetheless clearly marked her feline self all over Kisuke-kun’s bedchamber.

But this latest discovery was troubling.

[But why did Cat Woman give her power to this?] Sōgyo quizzed, giving voice to his questions.

[She has always been the selfish sort,] Kotowari pointed out, and quite unkindly too.

[That is something I wish to know as well,] he murmured, frowning at what he had just discovered. 

The woman he knew tended to conserve her strength to the extreme, to the point where she even did away with a zanpakutō altogether. That she had lent her strength in this, not merely in the construction, but also the subsequent maintenance of this benkyō heya…

Had reishi here become so sparse that not only Tessai, but the characteristically selfish woman as well, were now chipping in just to keep this facility in function? 

Or was something else countering the kidō of the three exiles? 

The sense of apprehension he had set aside, now reared its head once more. 

It seemed that questions were piling more swiftly than he could find answers.

He turned around, giving his senses free rein as he swept his surroundings.

Faint, shimmering sheets of the kidō were flowing over his reikaku, seamlessly and uniformly, as though the entire shaft had been washed in the spell, the sparkling, elegant force melding from rock to rock throughout the whole columnar expanse of the shaft walls, through the walls to the stone floor, and through the stone floor from rim to rim flooding past right beneath the soles of his waraji. 

The work was exquisite. 

And had thoroughly degaussed the shaft.

No less expected of a once Dai Kidōchō of Soul Society.

[Quite the overkill,] Kotowari commented critically.

[Corn Head cleaned off everything. What is he expecting Master to find?] Sōgyo groused.

The last, he had to disagree with. 

[‘Tis why Tessai-dono seems so relieved that an Elder is here,] he reasoned. [He is well aware that his spell would block all other shinigami—] He stopped short.

He felt it now. 

Or them.

They were very much rawer here, and very much coarser, but he would recognise them now under any circumstances.

Swiftly padding across the stone floor, he followed the sensation until he was standing right over the spot. Keeping as motionless as he could, he stared at the patch of bare rock between his waraji, seeing nothing except stone—

And then feeling everything.

That domineering, unyielding will, that black, grating, burning, brute force… they were there, the two signatures he now knew.  

What he was unprepared for was the dark, burning, sour tang — barely there, nigh absent, yet it scalded every reishi of his body, every fragment of his soul… 

“…Ichigo was wearing this when he burst of here in Shikai… ” echoed the deep voice of Tessai.

Silent alarms began to scream from the depths of his subconscious.

“…reappeared on Ichigo at least twice more while the lad was in Soul Society…”

Three reiatsu, raging from a mere, stray droplet.

A white, bone mask held in Tessai’s large hand.

The mask of a Hollow, sized for a human.

This third reiatsu here, faint, almost degraded, yet burning dark and sour right here, in this shaft where their young, human friend — their ally — had first come into Shikai. 

It was the reiatsu of a Hollow.

Chapter Text

THE flat, constant light of the perpetual midday beat down clear and hot upon the dry, artificial world. He could feel its heat through the plush tent of his cloak, his neck beginning to feel uncomfortably warm within its high collar and the bunched folds of its muffler he had pushed down beneath his chin. Dry, warm winds were tousling the long lengths of his cloak and robes, stirring the long strands of his bangs about his face. Yet, the brightness of the skies overhead remained unchanging, neither darkening nor brightening like how windy noon days normally would when the winds blew clouds past the sun.

Because there was no sun in this fake world.

And the clouds overhead were merely white, streaky whorls painted on an unnaturally even, azure canopy.

The ground around him appeared gravelly and sandy, a coarse, completely barren terrain of ragged, pulverised stones.

But what he was seeing, was the complete opposite of what he was feeling — through the thin, straw soles of his waraji, his soles felt not a single ridge or depression or bump or crevice, as though he was standing upon a smooth, seamless surface.

The dichotomy of what he was seeing and what he was feeling was dissonant. Disorientating.

Surreal.

Unreal.

Which was what this place was, in the end.

[Does this mean Carrot Top is also unreal?] wondered Sōgyo.

[He must be? The boy found his Shikai here, after all,] pondered Kotowari.

[Many Shinigami trained to Shikai in benkyō heya in our history,] he reminded. [None of them ever exhibited Hol— this—] he fumbled momentarily, then sighed and finished, [Such reiatsu.]

And there it was, the problem at the heart of it all.

Ichigo-kun was as Human as Humans came. There was nothing artificial about the boy — not even the impossible nature of his powers.

Powers which were entirely natural, yet as impossible, as the panorama before him.

For five paces away from where he stood, the dry, gravelly ground suddenly split and the sharp tip of a crack in the land appeared — appeared, and widened dramatically to his left and to his right, cleaving apart to his either side in both directions forming a long, narrow gorge.

The gorge was so unnaturally steep, and extended so unnaturally straight out into the distance, with rock walls on both sides so unnaturally smooth and tapering to meet so unnaturally sharply in a thin, straight seam right at a bottom so far down, it should have been lost to shadowy depths —except that the artificial midday light was flooding steadily straight down from the highest zenith, illuminating to stark clarity the razor line far below where the valley walls finally met — that looking upon it now, was like looking upon a cut in the land left by a gargantuan slash from the strike of a titanic, unseen blade.

So nay, there was nothing artificial at all about the impossible, razor gorge — if he ignored the fact that it was created by a Zanpakutō born in an impossible reiryoku belonging to an utterly Human youth.

And there was not only one scar, but two — in the distance, the straight, razor valley was bifurcated at an angle by another similar one, as though the same titanic blade had sliced two deep, criss-crossing cuts into the land, forming the giant, cross-shaped chasm he had seen from the sky.

Tessai had cleaned them of reiatsu as thoroughly as he had cleaned the rock shaft. All evidence of the event that had so damaged the artificial land had been erased or dissipated — but not to the reikaku of an Elder.

Especially if the Elder knew what to look for.

As the he stood scouring his senses over the dizzying depths of the razor valley, merely five steps away from one tip of the cross-shaped wound splitting the land, the remnant reiatsu screamed right at him at every feather touch of his senses.

All three aspects of the reiatsu, wailing, screeching, and thundering against his senses as clearly and brightly as the light of the unending noon day beating down upon him — the unyielding will, the aggression, the sour darkness, entwining into a relentless hammering against his shields as a single, pummelling force that was part Human, part Shinigami—

And part Hollow.

Exactly the same as the reiatsu that had screamed at him from within a mere droplet left forgotten at the bottom of the rock shaft. Exactly the same — yet, also decidedly different.

There was something about the reiatsu here, exposed in this titanic, cross-shaped chasm — something which the stray droplet in the rock shaft was too minuscule to amplify to his reikaku.

Sweeping the long layers of his robes aside, he bent a knee and lowered himself down to rest upon one heel, and then, very carefully, reached a hand down and touched two fingertips to the ground.

The sand felt like fine powder, yet it looked gravelly to his eyes.

He pinched up a bit of it and sifted it between his fingertips, once more feeling only fine powder, even as his eyes observed only coarse grains sprinkle his fingers onto the ground.

As the grains fell between his fingertips, he began to understand the difference he had sensed.

A fourth reiatsu.

It belonged neither to any of the three exiled Shinigami who made their home above this place, nor to either of the two human children who frequented this underground facility.

Whose was it—

His breath caught as a force inside him bulged.

Then a sharp pressure pushed outwards against his ribcage, squeezed his lungs. His vision blurred—

And then divided. One eye saw the sandy gravel of the ground, the other blinded into black, sank into swallowing darkness—

He stopped breathing as his lungs stifled—

~ ~ ~

[Master? Master!]

[But Master is not asleep! Why is he dreaming?]

[Dreaming— nay, it does not feel like dreaming!]

[Not dreaming? What are these if not dreams?]

[Master! Can you hear us?]

[Master! Master!]

~ ~ ~

“Er, sorry to interrupt you, Ukitake-san, but is that all you’re eating?”

Bright, brown eyes were staring from a young, rugged, peach-tanned face, watching him and his plate with a sort of horrified fascination. 

Momentarily confused, he looked down at the plate in his hand, and saw that only one ball of ohagi remained.

“Ai! Where are my manners!” he apologised hurriedly, holding the plate out. “Here, you can have the last piece—”

Strong, peach-tanned hands quickly flew up and waved between them. “No, no, that’s not what I meant! I mean— Ukitake-san, you finished the whole bowl of konpeitō before they even served the ohagi!”

He glanced down at the clear, glass bowl sitting between their place settings on the table — the empty receptacle sparkled and winked merrily at him with stray bits of sugar crystals.

“Aye, I did…?” he affirmed, puzzled.

“Eating dessert before the main course?” not-Kaien pressed, eyes gone round and face incredulous.

There was nothing unusual in that. But before he could ask again, an imperious alto rose clearly over the din, “Taichō usually has his dessert first!”

Rukia was suddenly visible before their table, seemingly materialised out of the jostling sea of black-clad Shinigami.

“B-But that’s unhealthy!” exclaimed not-Kaien at her.

“What’s so unhealthy about it?” she queried, drawing quickly towards their table, bearing a large tray.

She was still very pale. Despite the resonance of her voice, and the temporary flush in her cheeks from the recent infusion of reiryoku she had received, she still looked as wan as the pale-green of the komon kimono she had changed into.

Setting down his plate of remaining ohagi — discreetly placing it within the place setting of his young Human guest — he made to rise to take her back to the Fourth.

He was stopped when a strong, warm palm fell gently upon his right thigh.

In the next moment, a sake-laced breath warmed his right ear as a dry, drawling baritone murmured low in his hearing, “Settle down. Watch.”

He stilled, and watched.

Rukia was holding herself and moving like she always did, strong and steady, striding with confidence as she drew up at the front of their long table. Her small, capable hands were bearing the tray between them with no trace of weakness — the tray was not large, but it was heavy, laden as it was with the familiar sight of two large earthen bowls covered with weighty-looking earthen lids, a bamboo ladle, and an accompanying stack of porcelain crockeries, with spoons, and a pair of silver chopsticks. Yet, he spied no tremor in her grip as her hands held either side of the tray steadily and surely.

Relief filled him.

She was far from recovered, but had clearly regained enough strength to be up and about.

“…eating all those sugar, flavourings and colouring before proper food…” not-Kaien was going on, “They’re empty calories that’ll spoil the appetite! That’s why we don’t let children eat sweets and candies before meals!”

“Are you saying Taichō is a child?” she demanded.

Brown eyes went wide, and the peach-tan of not-Kaien’s young face flushed red. “No, no, I don’t mean that!”

Ignoring their young Human guest, Rukia set her tray down on the edge of the table opposite him, and with practised ease, turned the tray around before sliding it carefully towards him, informing with a pleased bow, “Here, Taichō, your evening tonic.”

He would have thanked her, except that in a flash, a fierce expression overcame her pale face as she turned to their guest with visible annoyance.

“Do you seriously think we take such shoddy care of Taichō?” she scolded.

“Well, how would I know?” rebutted not-Kaien hotly. “You hardly talk about your home and the people in your life…”

Rukia let out an irritated sound. “Common sense! I told you before the more powerful we are, the more food we need. Taichō needs to have his sweets first, but that doesn’t mean they’re all he eats!” Then turning around, she hollered loudly enough to resound over the din of the mess hall, “Ito! Hurry up!”

“Coming up! Coming right up!” hollered back a booming, rough voice.

And before their eyes, the crowd parted to make way for a strapping kitchen staff clad in the white, happi tunic of the Thirteenth, pushing a trolley of steaming dishes towards them.

He had to do a double take. 

There were three tiers in the trolley, and each tier was filled to nigh overflowing with steaming hot dishes and bowls.

“See?” Rukia gestured with a proud flourish. “We know how to look after Taichō.”

The brown eyes of not-Kaien bugged at the sight of the quantity of food. Then the young, rugged face broke into a laugh. 

“Thank goodness!” chortled not-Kaien, sounding and looking relieved. “For a moment you really had me going there!”

Rukia answered with a withering, purple stare. “I’m surprised you even think otherwise. Come on, help us with this.”

Instantly, the lean, lanky form of not-Kaien sprang up from beside him.

Then he could only watch, increasingly dazed, as the trolley drew alongside their table and both youths — one the fifteen-year-old, Human hero of Seireitei, the other his hundred-and-fifty-year-old, bossy, would-be fukutaichō, if it were entirely up to him — chipped in to assist in transferring a dizzying parade of hot, aromatic dishes from trolley to table, the pair arguing to and fro throughout even as they bustled in unconscious, perfect synchrony around the strapping bulk of the flustered-looking Ito.

The hand on his right thigh squeezed gently, discreetly lending him bracing strength.

“The boy is completely taken with you, Amai’take,” chuckled the dry, drawling baritone in his right ear.

He turned.

Glinting, pewter eyes were twinkling merrily at him from beneath lazy, hooded lids, watching him with fond amusement.

“I do not think—” he began, only to halt in mid-sentence as fragrant steam wafted against his left cheek.

He turned towards the enticing aroma — only to see that the two large earthen bowls had been uncovered, one a herbal, tonic soup double-boiled with a whole chicken thigh, and the other essentially a small pot of plain-steamed, purple rice.

Then a pair of strong, peach-tanned hands set his small, personal bowl down before him.

It was filled with purple rice swimming in tonic soup and chicken pieces. There was noticeably less steam now, the soup having been cooled enough for eating.

It was also served in exactly the way he usually ate his daily tonic meal.

His heart missed a beat, then skipped.

He looked up.

But not-Kaien had turned away to resume Rukia in distributing the never-ending retinue of dishes.

Lifting his eyes to survey their table, he realised he could no longer see its surface, for almost every span of it was covered with tantalising dishes — glistening, tender slices of spit-roasted kurobuta pork loins… thick, honey-grilled fillets of river eels that looked delicate enough to part at the merest nudge of the chopsticks… toasted wheels of white, daikon radishes and lotus roots… small, bamboo cups of chawanmushi egg custard steamed with ginkgo nuts… finely shredded peels of onion skins curling over blocks of tofu steamed in soy sauce and sesame oil…

His brows rose at the sight of the last dish — seafood. A generous, and extravagant assortment of thickly sliced raw fish, of fat, translucent prawns shelled and draped over tiny cushions of pressed, white rice, enormous crab claws freshly steamed, thick rounds of grilled scallops almost as large as his palm, and sea urchins—

Sea urchins?

When did his kitchens indent such delicacies? The coasts lay at the very edge of Soul Society in every direction, and the number of Souls who had traversed to and fro that far over the last thousand years could be counted on the fingers of both hands.

Looking up, he skimmed his gaze over the throngs crowding the mess hall, to the lively, merry queues circling the long, wide buffet arrayed down the centre of the hall — the spread was a veritable feast, brimming with the same exotic, mouth-watering fare that had been so thoughtfully selected for him in elegant morsels — it seemed as though the entire Gotei Thirteen had turned up to feast at his tables, for the throngs and the queues were even spilling into the courtyard beyond.

Or rather, his kitchens had deliberately extended the buffet to the outdoors. He could see the festivities through the entrance of the mess halls, for their shōji panels had been thrown wide aside for the night. Small balls of white, kidō lights were bobbing jauntily above a sea of Shinigami, illuminating their merry faces. Every now and then, through the throngs of black-clad bodies, he could glimpse parts of the same, generous buffet spread… and, of course, the three spit roasts of whole, kurobuta young hogs.

The display could hardly be missed, elevated as it was upon a dais of logs, and attended to by three muscular roast masters clad in no more than white, drawstring trousers and cloth bandannas. Sweat glistened upon their heavily muscled arms and chests as they skilfully basted and rotated the carcasses over the open flames — real flames, not kidō flames, licking up from a stacked mound of red-hot, blackened logs — and whenever parts were deemed perfect to be served, deftly carving them out in a showy display of knifework to wild, appreciative applause and cheering from celebrating Shinigami.

A low whistle emitted from not-Kaien as yet another martial display perfectly landed precise slices of roasted meat onto waiting platters borne by the waiting kitchen staff.

“Look at that, Ukitake-san! Swordsmen disguised as cooks! Rukia, why didn’t you ever tell me your division is full of hidden martial artists? Just look at that skill!”

Rukia’s purple eyes met his helplessly.

He explained, “They are not our—”

“I’ll bet your entire kitchen staff are expert fighters, right?” went on not-Kaien, oblivious with excitement. “Imagine that! So different from Zaraki’s division where everyone can’t wait to show off!”

He tried again, “They do not actually work here—”

But he got nowhere, because not-Kaien finally plopped back onto his seat, and declared with a wide grin, “Hey, Ukitake-san, finish your tonic quickly, alright? Don’t want you missing out on the roast, they smell too good!”

Indeed, a sweet, distinctive scent was wafting over the entire festivities and filling the mess hall, mingling with the aroma of roasting meat, making for an altogether tantalisingly piquant and juicy perfume in the air.

“Here, let me…”  Without waiting for his response, his young Human guest began dishing out more portions of his tonic meal with deft, purposeful motions, clearly intent on emptying the two large earthen bowls.

The low, drawling laugh sounded in his right ear again. “Aye, our young friend is completely taken with you. And why not? I know I am.”

He turned to give an admonishing stare at the lean, aristocratic face smiling indulgently at him.

“In the first place, I did not even know we hired roast masters!” he admonished in a whisper, trying not to sound as exasperated as he felt. “And do you realise those are kaede wood they are burning? To roast meat, of all things!”

The indulgent smile slanted rakishly. “Of course I realise. I reckon ‘tis Rukia-chan who convinced her brother-in-law to spare a Kuchiki maple tree or two, so you have nothing to worry there.”

“I beg to differ,” he muttered disconsolately. “I will be hearing no end of it from his household, even if Byakuya himself is above such minutiae.”

“Then let your officers deal with such minutiae,” was the nonchalant reply, accompanied by an equally nonchalant wave of a nearly empty sake dish. “You are so much farther above petty details than our young Kuchiki lord.”

That did sound like a tempting plan. For the Kuchiki gokenin was nothing short of a terribly difficult individual.

Then the warm palm on his thigh shifted, trailing up over the angle of his right hip to skim over the top of his buttocks, before resting over his lower spine, pressing comfortingly against his coccyx.

“And there is little point in dispelling the rose-tinted view of our young friend, Amai’take.”

Was there not?

He cast his gaze out, at the festivities before them.

The celebrations, impromptu as they were, were only beginning to liven up. Yet, everything was already… too much. Ridiculously over the top, and as far as from the simple, quiet dinner he had intended as it could possibly be.

For it seemed all of his kitchen staff had been mobilised for this, as he watched their white, happi tunics darting through the restive sea of black like spilled barrels of white rice as they bustled about indoors and out serving, clearing, carrying—

He must really learn to be more specific, he realised with a pang of helpless rue. Repay their young saviours with a satisfying and nourishing meal, was what he had requested. And his kitchen staff had certainly obeyed him, for the fare was faultlessly hearty and bracing, exactly as he had ordered.

The rest, however, was the entirely the direct result of his chefs habitually taking enormous creative licences with his instructions.

The palm on his lower back began gently massaging, comforting him.

“They will get it at some point, Amai’take,” rumbled the warm baritone, in a consoling tone. “They have been interpreting you orders through proxies for three hundred years. That is a very hard habit to break. Give them another three hundred years to get used to taking orders from you in person.”

“But these excesses need to stop!” he returned dejectedly. “We did not always live in such times of plenty. You remember that.”

“Aye, I remember. But they do not.” The lean, stubbled chin nodded out towards the crowds in the mess hall. 

And that was utterly, and worryingly, true.

Glumly, he observed the seas of celebrating, feasting Shinigami thronging and brimming through the hall. Some he knew, most he did not. All were young — much, much younger than the faces who used to crowd this very same mess hall over a millennia ago — in the sense that these faces before him were exhausted from the past week’s emergencies and heinous discoveries, not centuries of wars, sieges, and hard campaigns.

These were not the battle-hardened and war-weary faces of soldiers who had survived and thrived through centuries of trials by violence and bloodshed. And loss.

Therein lay the difference, he understood in a flash. These faces before him, they were faces of those who did not know the true meaning of loss.

One and a half millennia of peace and prosperity had erased memories of thousands of years of suffering and devastations. Even from the minds of long-lived Souls.

Looking down, he studied the bowls of tonic chicken purple rice porridge now laid out before him, cooled and ready for his partaking.

He knew some considered him decadent. He had heard the whispers: the favoured son of the founder of the Gotei Thirteen, upon whom the Sōtaichō lavished with a daily staple of valuable herbs and purple rice.

But these herbs and rice, at least, had been carefully, and painstakingly, cultivated over nigh two millennia, and a local economy diligently built around them so that the commodities were now democratised, and were attainable by most without costing citizens too much of a premium over other food staples.

The event tonight was another matter altogether. Those were nothing but excesses — and he could do absolutely nothing about them. Not in the short term, at any rate.

Decision made, he resolutely picked up his spoon and began to eat.

“There you go, Amai’take,” approved the baritone drawl, even as the palm on his lower back began massaging lower and lower — until the loving touch was rubbing soft, teasing circles over the upper cheek of his right buttock.

His pulse quickened. Instinctively, he set aside his spoon, picked up his bowl, and bent his face to drink up the rest of his soup, the better to hide his warming cheeks.

“You really must have more of this, Ukitake-san! It’s sooo good!” gushed not-Kaien. “Can I get the recipe for it? My youngest sister Yuzu will want to try this at home for my old man and my other sister Karin.”

“Uhn,” he began, then hurriedly swallowing his last mouthful, said more clearly, “Aye. Just inform the kitchen that ‘tis my wish the roast masters share their recipes with you. Though I myself do recall that the gravy is braised mainly with kurobuta cheek meat.”

As soon as he put down his emptied bowl, strong, peach-tanned hands wordlessly put the second small bowl of tonic porridge into his hands, and whisked away the first empty bowl.

He did not question and began on it immediately, abruptly feeling hungrier than he realised.

“Oh! Okay, I will tell them, thanks!” A medium-sized plate appeared before him, heaped high with tender, succulent slices of kurobuta roast. Then those strong, peach-tanned fingers picked up a steaming, ceramic boat and began dribbling hot, aromatic gravy over the reddish, meat slices. “Careful, the sauce is very hot…”

The hand rubbing circles on his right buttock slow, then shifted once more, trailing back to his right hip. He felt the fingers pause at the crease of his hip and thigh, and begin to softly rub at the crease.

A frisson of heat flared down his right thigh, and up his right side.

He shot a look to his right, fully intent on asking his soul brother to relent with the distractions — only to see the wavy back of a chocolate-haired head, and the familiar sight of a pair of delicate, crimson pinwheels on the tips of two gold hairpins rising from the knot of a long, wavy ponytail.

Leaning slightly forward, he had to suppress a ripple of mirth.

Shunsui was valiantly attempting to engage their taciturn guest seated on the other side — the tall, hulking, dark-skinned youth whom his friends affectionately called Sado-kun.

The giant boy was clearly unable to converse more than a handful of words at a time.

“Oi, you’re the Quincy?”

At the blustering interruption, tension fell over their long table, and all within hearing abruptly hushed, and stilled.

A band of Shinigami had appeared at the far right of their long table. Meatheads, from the looks of their belligerent eyes and rough, cocky brashness.

Eleventh Division.

They were staring challengingly down at where he had been sensing an unnatural emptiness the whole night — where the quiet, bespectacled Human youth sat silently dining on the other side of Sado-kun.

 Uryū-kun. Whose presence was strangely, persistently blank. Whatever that remained of the Human boy’s reiryoku was now an apparent vacuum.

Though, when he focussed upon it, a bare trace of the youth’s reiatsu grated and jarred dissonantly upon his reikaku.

He had not felt reiatsu like that since he retreated from the field three hundred years ago.

And no Shinigami had ever encountered any like it since the Quincy Genocide.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!”  the band leader was demanding.

Uryū-kun looked up, then ignoring the challenge, resumed his meal.

“Why, you-you’re ignoring me?!”

The Quincy youth merely continued eating his dinner and ignoring his challengers.

The band leader took a step forward, leaning in threateningly, with one fist aiming for the edge of the table.

On his left, he sensed his Human guest tensing up, ready to leap into action.

“Having a party?” interjected a flirtatious, feminine voice.

Despite the words, the tone of the new voice was anything but inquiring or flirtatious — and it had the effect of making the meatheads jump and whip around, their ranks inadvertently parting to reveal the newcomer.

Tall, blonde, and ample-bosomed Matsumoto was standing right behind them, a come-hither smile playing about her full, sultry lips. Her long, manicured fingers of one hand was holding up two sake bottles by their porcelain necks, while her other hand was resting fisted upon a curvaceous hip.

Her watching blue eyes, however, were stone cold.

And she was not alone. At her right shoulder stood Hisagi-kun, staring at the meatheads with his arms crossed, his armbands stretching over the hard, defined bulge of his biceps. While at her left, Kira-kun stood hanging back slightly, looking pale and solemn though no less hard-eyed.

Several heartbeats passed.

Then the band leader and his cronies looked at one another, and as one, slanted their beady eyes towards Shunsui and himself.

His soul brother’s face was showing polite, if bored, interest.

He knew that his own, too, was displaying much the same.

The meatheads exchanged more wordless looks between themselves, then in silent unison, relaxed, snorted, and stalked away, shooting looks at the three newcomers as they passed.

Beside him, his young, Human guest relaxed, muttering, “Who are those clowns?”

“Our neighbours, unfortunately,” grumbled Rukia, farther down his left.

There was a brief pause, and then, in realisation, “They’re Zaraki’s goons?”

“They meant to start a fight right in front of us!” floated the light, high voice of Orihime-chan from the other side of Rukia.

The Human girl sounded audibly shaken.

And who could blame her?

“That’s just stupid!” burst the incredulous rejoinder from beside him. “Ukitake-san and Shunsui-san are both sitting right here!”

He turned to his guest, meaning to calm the young Human.

But his words died upon his lips when he saw the fierce indignation upon the rugged, peach-tanned face.

For an instant, that face became older, more angular, its skin lighter, as those brown eyes lightened to aquamarine and that shock of spiky, orange hair darkened to raven black.

He blinked, and once more he was looking at young Ichigo-kun, their new Human hero and friend.

“Does Zaraki know how badly his people are behaving?” the Human youth was railing on.

“Zaraki encourages them,” put in Matsumoto cheerfully, her voluptuous figure swaying as she sashayed towards them. Her blue eyes had lost their stony frost and were now twinkling merrily. “Do what we do and pay them no heed. They will be soundly trounced tomorrow for their failure tonight.”

“What?” rang out three baffled young Human voices in unison.

Except for Uryū-kun, who stared at the blonde fukutaichō confusedly in lieu of speaking.

“‘Tis Zaraki’s way of training them,” shrugged Matsumoto, setting down her sake bottles between Shunsui and himself before plopping down on the other side of their long table, uninvited. Then she waved for her two male colleagues to join her. “Come on, boys. Kyōraku and Ukitake Taichō are great drinking buddies, trust me.”

Kira-kun looked flustered. “But we’re not invited—”

“You know you are, Kira-kun,” he hastened to assure, smiling warmly.

The two young fukutaichō hesitated a moment more, and then tentatively took their seats, one on either side of their female ringleader in the order they had arrived.

That placed Kira-kun directly opposite him.

Immediately, the young, blonde fukutaichō shrank before him, guilt darkening his fair skin as he began looking everywhere except at him.

The sight saddened him. This young one would not be recovering anytime soon.

“But I don’t get it,” pressed Ichigo-kun. “What do you mean that’s Zaraki’s way of training them? By making his squad going around picking fights?”

“Hmm, you must be Kurosaki Ichigo,” Matsumoto said instead, her long-lashed blue eyes gazing at his Human guest with bright interest. “Matsumoto Rangiku, Tenth Division Fukutaichō. Pleased to finally meet you after hearing all about how your saved us.”

“Well, hi,” awkwardly returned their Human saviour. “Just call me Ichigo.”

“A, I fully intend to,” sniggered the voluptuous fukutaichō, tossing a long, blonde tress behind one shoulder. Then she reached for the nearest stack of sake dishes, her movements jiggling her deep, exposed cleavage.

He averted his eyes courteously.

“And to answer you, Ichigo, for the Eleventh, ‘tis either they pick fights they can win and report their victories, or be soundly beaten by their taichō in their dōjō every day,” replied Matsumoto matter-of-factly, as she began laying out the stack of sake dishes. “Which would you choose if you were an Eleventh?”

“I’ll choose to transfer to Thirteenth!” was the instantaneous reply.

Startled, and utterly moved, he swung his gaze left.

Ichigo-kun was staring at them with passionate conviction.

Exactly like how Kaien used to look when his late fukutaichō spoke of what he believed in.

The hand circling his right hip paused, and then slid down to his right thigh to squeeze comfortingly.

“Bullying is not the way to train!” Ichigo-kun argued heatedly. “I’ve been a Shinigami for only a few months but even I know that by now! And how long do you people live? Centuries?”

“Thousands of years, for some of us,” quipped Matsumoto, slanting a sly, flirtatious look at Shunsui and himself, as she began pouring the sake from one bottle.

“It’s peace time, Ichigo. Where else can hotheads vent their excess energy?” spoke Rukia sagely. “Much as I wish they’ll find other outlets, there’s only so much we can improve in dōjō and simulation exercises.”

“Then send them to our world to fight Hollows for real!”

“And have them make a mess there for real?” snorted Matsumoto. “I think not. I have enough paperwork as it is.”  Then batting her eyes above a broad smile, she asked liltingly, “Ai, Shūhei and Izuru dears, would you both give me a hand and pass me those as well?”

The two young men immediately moved to assist, collecting and passing down stacks of sake dishes from the right and left ends of their long table.

“No way will two bottles be enough,” Kira-kun observed quietly.

“I’ll get some more,” volunteered Hisagi-kun, leaping to his feet and hurrying off towards the buffet tables.

“Awww, Shūhei!” gushed Matsumoto, loudly enough to be heard across the din. “How sweet you are!”

The back of Hisagi-kun’s neck turned scarlet as his tall figure melted quickly into the crowd.

A bark of a baritone laughter escaped Shunsui. “Careful there, Rangiku-chan, or you will be giving him nosebleed next!”

“Ai, but what else can a woman do when the two most eligible taichō are off the market?” Her twinkling blue eyes fluttered outrageously at them.

“Off the market?” echoed Ichigo-kun obliviously. “But I thought Shunsui-san and Ukitake-san are not married— ow! Rukia, what was that fo—”

“How dense can you get?”  exclaimed Rukia in exasperation.

“Ai, the cat is out of the bag!” proclaimed Shunsui merrily, baritone drumming with laughter.

Snorting laughter joined in, buzzing inelegantly out of Matsumoto as her bosom quivered and shook.

He decided to take pity upon their new friend — and perchance to discover the missing piece they still did not have.

“I heard you defeated Zaraki,” he began kindly, changing the subject.

Relief and a wince simultaneously flashed across the young, peach-tanned face beside him.

“Didn’t you also hear I ended up in a world of hurt after that?” grimaced Ichigo-kun. “I’ll be avoiding Zaraki from now on. It’s just not worth the pain!”

“That sounds like a story to go with the sake,” suggested Shunsui, sounding politely curious.

He knew better than to believe that tone, of course. The same question was doubtless burning just as intensely in the sharp mind of his soul brother.

However, aloud, he amiably added, “I believe all of us at this table have stories to share tonight.”

“Can the storytelling wait till Shūhei returns?” asked Matsumoto woefully, holding up the two bottles upside down.

They were both completely empty, yet only half of the dishes had been filled.

“Ai, Ukitake Taichō, considering how much Kyōraku Taichō and you drink, why is it that your decanters are sooo terribly petite?” she lamented. “I hope Shūhei has the sense to come back with jars, not bottles.”

“He better, because here comes Renji and Ikkaku,” suddenly warned Rukia.

He turned his eyes in the direction of where he sensed the pair of arriving reiatsu — and had to quickly stifle a laugh at the sight walking through the wide entrance of the mess hall

Or more precisely, limping through.

Abarai-kun and Madarame-kun were so heavily bandaged, it was a marvel that they were even upright at all, much less walking.

His young Human guest, however, was completely impolite about it.

“They look like Egyptian mummies!” chortled Ichigo-kun gleefully.

And, indeed, the pair did. He once observed the bodies of recently deceased kings and queens being embalmed and wrapped in a country named Egypt in the Gense, over a thousand years ago. Not a sight a Soul could ever forget, even without an eidetic memory like his.

“Better serve all the sake before they reach us,” instructed Rukia quickly. “They’ll drink everything we have even though they can’t hold their alcohol all that well.”

“Really? Oh no!”

He jerked back as Ichigo-kun bodily leaned forward and diagonally across him, reaching for his sake bottle and the stack of sake dishes between them.

Before he could decline, the youth’s strong, peach-tanned hands had deftly lined up the sake dishes between them and was already pouring, quickly filling the dishes.

He really should not drink before his medical appointment.

“I should not—” he began.

But a filled dish was gently pushed before him.

He lifted a hand, meaning to draw the attention of his young Human guest in order to explain, when Ichigo-kun turned and their fingers accidentally touched.

It was just a brush, more than a touch. Only the merest, lightest contact of those young, peach-tanned fingertips upon his.

But every single one of his senses screamed.

And blackness blinded him, smothered him, swallowed his very soul—

~ ~ ~

[—hear us?! Master! Master!]

[Can you hear us?! Can you hear us, Master?!]

[Hush, I hear you. I hear you, fret not,] he assured the twins.

He felt strangely lethargic.

Enervated, to be more precise.

[You told us to call you as loudly as we can if you are dreaming, but you were not asleep, Master, you were not! But you were gone! Gone, Master! Like when you are dreaming—]

[Aye, Master, you just vanished! Where did you go, Master? You were not asleep yet you were dreaming—]

[Hush, all is well now,] he hastened to reassure. [I heard you, like I told you I would. And I am back. ‘Twas no dream, you need not fear. I was merely lost in memory.]

Yet, his own assurance rang hollowly even to himself.

Memories did not blindside the mind like that.

Whatever that was.

Not a dream, he was certain of it.

But neither did it feel entirely like a memory.

It was as though he… as though it was a… a something which he felt he should know.

Yet, he did not.

The answer eluded him.

And it would continue to elude him, if he did not get a move on.

Time to give chase.

He moved to leave — only to find himself pinned.

His eyes flew open.

And he blinked.

The same dry, barren, artificial world greeted him. Still looking as flat as it did beneath the sterile, unchanging, noon light.

Except that the world had tilted.

The lifeless land of gravel and rocks now stood flanking his left in a sandy, rocky wall that reached above and plunged below him limitlessly. Yet it ended abruptly ahead of him, several shaku away, cutting off in an unnaturally straight, stony edge. Whilst on his right, sprawled an endless wall of a glowing, azure expanse painted with motionless, fleecy, white clouds.

For an instant, he stared blankly at the skewed world as he felt it, all at once.

He was not pinned down by any object, but by a heavy, mildly tingling sensation of…

Of stillness.

Focusing inwards, he tried to identify it. 

And realised it was a physical inertia — a debilitating, gripping inertia that was permeating his entire body, all of his limbs, weighing him down to his very extremities.

Even to his fingertips and toes. They were faintly sore, as his entire body was dully aching, stiff.

As though he had lain still and unmoving for an age.

Lain… ?

His senses finally caught up with his mind. 

The world had not tilted.

He had.

It was he who had turned. He was lying supine upon the ground on his left side, while looking out at the artificial world of the benkyō heya beneath Urahara’s Shōten.

Despite the perennial noon day, the ground felt cold. And smooth. He could feel its cold, smooth hardness through the multiple layers of his cloak and robes cushioning his body.

And the sensation felt completely at odds with the rough, pebbly surface his eyes were seeing.

“Come on, awaken now.”

The words were murmured in a low, purring alto.

He became aware that his left cheek was pillowed upon a thigh.

Two thighs.

Someone’s lap.

And then he became aware of the dark, cool scent.

As dark and cool as the soft, smooth touch stroking over the curve of his right cheek.

Fingertips. Slender, soft, and silky, without calluses. Gliding feather-light over his forehead, gently sweeping the long strands of his bangs back from his right temple and tucking them behind his right ear.

Over and over.

Each stroke was careful, and tender. Trailing over his forehead, over his right temple, over the shell of his right ear, and then over his forehead again.

Each touch sent a light, whimsical ripple skipping onto his senses, each ripple rebounding and dancing over the previous ripple, each successive ripple flitting a playful beat upon his reikaku.

He knew that rhythmic reiatsu.

Like he knew that touch.

And that scent.

Mere days ago, had it been — four, perhaps five days — when that presence reappeared upon his senses. After a hundred and ten years since its abrupt disappearance.

Though he now understood the reason for its disappearance.

It was not personal.

Unlike what he did two hundred and fifty years ago, when he ended its dominance in his life. In his bed.

That was personal. For him.

But that presence was here now, cradling his head, its familiar touch caressing the side of his face.

Like how it once comforted him.

For the moment, he allowed himself to accept its offer of solace like he once did — and reflexively turned towards it, seeking it, turning onto his back.

The caressing touch his face stilled, and then fell away as he looked up.

Lambent, golden eyes were looking down at him, watching him unguarded, with naked worry.

And something else.

Something indefinable and barely there, discernible only because he was looking into those glowing, yellow pupils at such close quarters — it cast an odd, unfathomable expression over the dark-skinned, sharp-featured, feminine face looming over him.

Unbidden, remembered images began scudding rapidly through his mind. He swiftly scanned and discarded each one as it sped past, trying to find a match to the look in those eyes. On that face.

There was none.

Those eyes, that face, they had never looked at him that way before.

He opened his mouth to speak, to ask what was wrong — but found his voice lost.

His throat was dry. Tight, and closed up.

Smooth, cool fingertips immediately returned, falling over his lips to still them.

“Shhh, rest. I have you,” spoke those shapely, dusky lips, in that low, purring alto.

In that instant, an ingrained, instinctive need brimmed to the fore — the need to assure, to belay another’s worry for him by obeying.

So, he obeyed, and signalled his compliance by releasing the tension in his body.

He had not even been aware that his muscles and tendons had gone tight.

“There you go now, take it easy for a bit,” burred that low alto with audible relief, even as that strange, indecipherable look faded from those dark, sharp features. “That was some spell you had.”

As his body loosened, so did his throat. Gingerly, he swallowed, to see if he could moisten his larynx.

He must have moved his mouth, for the fingertips began to softly rub minute circles upon his mouth — over the bow of his upper lip, over the pillow of his lower lip, and over the bow of his upper lip again.

“Un,” he responded. And was immediately vexed.

That was not what he wanted to say.

A corner of those dusky lips lifted and curled into that familiar, lopsided half-smile.

“Uh huh, very lucid,” teased the husky drawl. And then, uncannily, answered him anyway, “But you are welcome. Good thing I arrived in the nick of time. You were almost over the cliff.”

Over the… ? Instinctively, he tracked his eyes to his left, turning his face to follow the direction of his sight.

The fingers on his mouth obligingly fell away, allowing him to take stock of where he was.

Gravelly, sandy ground met his eyes. Over the finely pebbled surface were a line of faint footprints, each one small and slender. Each footprint was almost directly in front of the one immediately behind, tracking a nigh single track towards him.

Like those of a cat.

He traced the faint path with his eyes, following it back… and farther back, until his gaze paused at where the last print ended just before a messy blur of impressions — at the spot just before the point of the chasm where the land split into the straight, razor gorge.

Where he had last stood.

Clearly, he had fallen there, right at the split in the land. Almost over the cliff.

Precariously close, indeed.

The precipice was now at least fifteen shaku away from him. So he had been moved, carried to safety away from that rocky brink.

Turning back, he looked up gratefully into the dark-skinned, sharply feminine face above his.

The half-smile upon those dusky lips twitched sardonically in response. “You are welcome, but ‘twas also for my own self-preservation, you know. Genji-sama would incinerate us alive if you hurt even a hair on your head while you are under our roof.”

Reflexively, he frowned, his usual words rising to the fore to correct that age-old exaggeration — and then recalled how his father had been recently.

He paused. Had everyone else been right all this time?

“Finally, you begin to see what I once kept trying to tell you.”

How did she—

“‘Tis your eyes,” went on the low, purring alto.

As he watched, those golden eyes watching him back suddenly sparked, and began to blaze darkly even as that half-smile crooked into a smirk.

A smirk that he knew very well. 

Despite himself, his pulse rabbited through his veins as heat trilled through his nerves. And, before he could react, the cool fingers returned and gently, very, very gently, took his chin and tilted his face up.

Startled, he momentarily allowed it, staring into the smouldering, predatory yellow gaze burning down upon him.

He could not remember any time that this same touch had touched him so carefully.

Handling him like he would break.

“Your eyes speak your heart, even when your face does not,” husked the alto, dipping almost to a burr.

 Then, surprising him again, those cool fingers on his chin softened, and tenderly, so very, very tenderly, turned his face a little left, then a little right, and then a little left again — and that dusky-skinned, sharp-featured face suddenly flashed with triumph.

“And I must say, I am so enjoying having Kyōraku in my debt once more for saving you, so enjoying it. Much, much more than when he last owed me.” And in a soft, throaty, murmur, “Because just look at you now, all alone in my territory. What is he thinking, letting you out of his sight wearing your hair like this?”

~ ~ ~

Ai, Yoruichi.

Still going on about that.

Clearly, the meaning of the word ‘desist’ did not exist in the lexicon of the infamous Shihōin catwoman.

Never mind that it was only very mere days ago that he had outright rejected her touch and reminded her, in no uncertain terms to boot, that their past was exactly that. The past.

“Sto—” But his voice died in his throat when his parched larynx clenched in protest.

“I mean, look at you,” she went on right on, ignoring his attempt to speak. Her fingers fanned, cupping his jaw delicately as her lambent yellow eyes roved softly over him. “Look at you. Do you never see yourself in the mirror?”

He did, and he always saw the same thing he always saw — but he refused to debate his self-perception with her.

Not when she was still so unpersuaded.

Inwardly, he chided himself for expecting otherwise.

After all, this was a woman who had scant little inhibitions, no matter that she had been born and raised within the intense strictures of her station, or that she had been rigorously schooled and trained in the rules and norms of Soul Society government.

“I meant what I said, you know. Maturity truly suits you.” That strange, indecipherable look was suddenly back on her dark, sharp features.

This time, something else was swimming in the heat of her golden eyes, something akin to… to a…

He frowned, trying to identify it.

“All those ancient Shihan painters and sculptors and poets and playwrights, they did not know, did they? No one knew. Except Genji-sama. And I have come to realise, Retsu-sama too. And Sasakibe-san. And, of course, Kyōraku.”

“Nn…” He paused, swallowing to moisten his throat, and tried again, “Nn-Knew…w-what?”

His voice sounded dismayingly hoarse, as if long disused.

How long had he lain insensate in her lap like this?

“Shirogami, the patron kami of the Gotei Thirteen, he who is divine, who commands the storms and the seas.” Her husky tone was intent, delivered with a knowing, satisfied glint in her smouldering smirk.

Like a cat who had discovered his secret stash of mice.

“The four of you hid it so well,” she rasped on, then chuckled, and added, “Nay, the five of you, must not forget that Sasakibe-san has been in on it right from the start. All the lores and legends of the Shirogami are real, are they not? Because the Shirogami is real, is he not.”

He gave her the same look that he gave to very young children with fanciful imaginations.

In answer, she arched a fine, purple brow. “‘Tis not hard to see the connection, you know. All it took for me was sitting here for an hour watching you with your head on my lap. Seeing the way you look now, with your hair braided like this… none of those artists made the connection, did they.”

He answered with another indulgent gaze.

“Although, how many of those artists ever had the chance to look at you so closely like I just did?” At that, her golden eyes cooled, and became thoughtful. “Perhaps no artist was ever allowed to portray the live model at all. Genji-sama certainly would not have allowed it.”

At this point, he felt he had to say something. “‘Tis just a braid, Yoruichi,” he managed to croak.

There. A full sentence finally spoken without a hitch.

“Just?” she snorted derisively. “I learnt enough to know that nothing with you is ever just something. You are Ukitake Jūshirō. The only thing Genji-sama hoards more than his own power.”

This conversation had gone on long enough.

“In those days, many wore their hair in braids,” he dismissed — and was irked when the effect was somewhat spoiled by his words coming out as a weak rasp. He began to shift, turning back onto his left side as he drew his left elbow beneath himself, adding for good measure, “And ‘tis just coincidence that my hair is white... I understand if you are imagining similarities which do not exist.”

“Imagining—” she bit off her retort with an irritated noise. 

Silent alarm rose when he realised his arm was trembling. Beneath the tingling, immobilising inertia, he could feel fine tremors coursing through all of his limbs, down to his very fingertips

Indeed, the tremors were snaking through his entire body, faintly sore and aching as it was, as if all his muscles, even the small, fine ones, had atrophied from long disuse. And were now protesting against his command to move.

How long exactly had he been lying here like this?

Yoruichi mentioned an hour. Clearly, he had lost consciousness before she found him.

But the tight dryness in his throat and mouth felt like he had not spoken in days, even though his conscious mind and senses told him not more than mere hours had passed.

“You know what? Have it your way,” the Shihōin catwoman relented in a throaty huff. Then she leaned back.

As her shadow retreated, noon light fell directly into the side of his face, warming his cheek and making him squint in reflex.

“But I know that you know very well what I am speaking of,” she lobbed in triumphantly. “So go ahead and carry on keeping your secret if you wish. Only mark my words, such a thing cannot remain concealed for much longer, now—”

“Help me up,” he rasped.

“—that Aizen had rifled through the whole of your precious archives for kami knows how long—”

“Help me up,” he rasped again, louder this time.

She stopped, blinking.

“Help… me up,” he panted, vainly trying to lever himself up onto his left elbow.

He hated his body when it failed him like this.

Strong, slender hands wrapped around his shoulders, and with embarrassing ease, lifted his torso bodily until he was sitting upright, albeit still leaning at an angle against the much slighter, female body behind him, with both his legs lying sprawled to his right bent at their knees.

As he sat gathering his breath, supporting himself on his left arm with his left palm planted firmly upon the strangely smooth and cool artificial ground, he cast his eyes around, seeking for Sōgyo no Kotowari.

They lay quietly to his left, within his reach, the lacquered wood of their case gleaming dully in the noon light.

Craning his neck to his right a little, he asked, “Was I unconscious when you found me?”

There was silence.

Alarm rising even more, he turned at his waist within the supporting embrace of his female former colleague, sitting up fully despite the tremors continuing to assail his body.

When he finally faced her fully, she was staring at him with a tight expression, all mischief gone from her dusky-skinned face.

“Yoruichi?” he questioned, his pulse quickening.

“I found you collapsed and almost falling over the cliff. That was an hour ago,” she answered in a low, tight voice.

An hour was usual for his spells. And he must not have been unconscious for long before she found him, or Tessai would have been here already.

“But no, you were not unconscious.”

He started, confused. “Not unconscious? So I was conscious?”

“I have no idea what it was. But you were certainly not unconscious. Your eyes were opened. Yet you were not there.”

He tried to understand. “Not there?”

“That was what I said,” the Shihōin catwoman almost snapped. “Your eyes were opened. But you were simply not there. And you stayed like that for so long, if you had not come out of it when you did, I would be carrying you back to Retsu-sama right now.”

There was—

He swiftly racked through his memory.

He found no precedent for this.

“But that was not all,” she added, face and tone abruptly ominous. “I sat through your spells before in the hundred years we were together. Not once in all those spells did your eyes go completely black.”

He froze.

“You were not only not there, your eyes were wide open and completely black. None of your past attacks were like that. What in kami’s name happened to you while I was gone?” And her golden gaze suddenly sharpened.

All at once, he could put a name to that indefinable look swirling in the glowing, yellow depths of her eyes.

Fear.

It was a look of fear.

For him.

~ ~ ~

There was no sun in the artificial sky. There was not even the movement of clouds to track and mark the passage of time. This fake world was so unnaturally still, it left no clue to how much time had passed — how much time he had lost.

The land sprawling away before them was still as wrecked as it had appeared when he first saw it from above — still horribly scarred by that giant, cross-shaped razor gorge carved into a seemingly endless expanse of dry, barren rockiness — and it still felt incongruously smooth and seamless beneath him where he sat, even though he was padded by the long, multiple layers of his cloak and robes pooled around him.

Only the winds still felt real.

Fortunately.

Dry, warm currents whispered low in his ears as they gently blew past, ruffling the heaped folds of his heavy cloak, stirring his bangs against his cheekbones.

He shut his eyes, to shut out the incongruent sight of the rough, parched terrain, and imagined instead that he was seated on the flat, smooth, granite floor of the pavilion atop the northern banks of the Ugenkō.

But then, without sight, he became acutely aware of the cool, soft, firmness of two round mounds pressed against his back, in stark contrast to slender band of steely strength arm wound about his left biceps, and over the left side of his chest.

Yoruichi’s arm. And her breasts.

His eyes flew open at once, even as his right hand rose, and latched onto her forearm, unconsciously noting that her sinews barely yielded beneath his grip over her sleeve.

He swallowed for the umpteenth time, trying to moisten his throat a little more.

It still felt gummy.

He could use a drink of water right about now.

“You scared the Soul out of me,” murmured Yoruichi against his nape, her cool breath wafting past the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

A gentle pressure was moving up and down over the right side of his chest.

He looked down — and saw slim, dusky-skinned fingertips tracing over a section weave of his braid, going over and over the gleaming white herringbone weave where it hung draped down his right shoulder, and over his right pectoral.

The motion was slow, and steady, and utterly like that of the nervous-obsessive, repetitive self-grooming of a cat reassuring itself in times of stress.

And he let it continue. For the unconscious, idle repetition seemed to be soothing the Shihōin catwoman where he could not.

Because he — he, who remembered everything — could not remember the faintest bit of what had happened to him.

“And you came out of it just in time, you know,” Yoruichi went on teasingly, attempting to mask her audible anxiety. “I knew the wrath of your overprotective family would come down upon my head soon as I appear in Seireitei with you in that fugue state. That thought made me hesitate. And a good thing I did, too, as we now see.” Her arms involuntarily tightened around him.

She never held him like this before. Determinedly, yet with extreme care, as if fearing to hurt him.

Concealing his own apprehension, he permitted himself to rest in her embrace as he silently debated whether — and how — he should explain.

When he had not the faintest clue himself.

The only thing he knew, was that everything in this artificial world was as fake as that fourth reiatsu was utterly real — and currently zinging on the furthest edge of his reikaku.

That fourth power, it was riding so deeply within the three entwined reiatsu of Human, Shinigami, and Hollow, and mimicking the Shinigami reiatsu so perfectly, he would have missed it, perhaps been fooled by its behaviour, if he was not an Elder.

But he was. Hence its existence was now as clear to him as the artificial light of the perpetual noon day — an extremely faint, but utterly distinguishable tearing, discordant sensation searing and gnashing at the fringes of his senses, clawing at him in exactly the same manner as that hammering power which had caught him so unawares a week ago, on the bridge of the Senzaikyū.

It would be hurting him now, if it was not so eroded.

If he was not an Elder.

His father. Senpai. Shunsui. They, too, had each sensed it. And they had each speculated, hypothesised, made suppositions, based on their respective sensory impressions. As had he himself.

But hypothesising and theorising were one thing.

It was a completely different thing to be confronted with conclusive, irrefutable proof of their musings.

Because something like this was impossible.

Yet, here it was, right here. Even if existed as a barely discernible stain, left behind right here, in this very place where their young Human friend had first called his Shikai.

He found his rational mind floundering. There were still some missing pieces. Critical pieces. How was this impossibility… possible? How was it that it had affected him?

Why had it affected him?

“You found something here,” came the solemn, purring alto of Yoruichi close behind him.

He bit his lower lip, then gave a slight nod.

“What is it,” came Yoruichi’s voice again, her tone dropped to a near throaty burr.

“Ichigo-kun called his Zanpakutō in this exact spot,” he finally said, for lack of any other clue as to how he should proceed.

In response, the sound of a low, irritated sigh rose behind him. “Kisuke confirmed that after I came back and confronted him with what I found from you Elders. Grudgingly too, I should add.” Then, falling sombre again, “What else?”

He hesitated, then carefully, confirmed, “We surmised correctly from the moment we met him. Our young Human friend… he is related to Shiba Isshin. Very closely related. But therein lies the difficulty…” He paused, frowning.

“Souls and Humans cannot mix, our natures and biology are simply too opposing to be able to produce offspring,” Yoruichi finished for him.

He nodded, grateful for her quick wits. “Aye. Which means the only possible way Ichigo-kun could be a Shiba is if Isshin passed on in the Gense after we lost him here twenty years ago. And was returned here incarnated.”

“I thought the same,” Yoruichi put in. “That was why I spied on Ichigo’s family for a spell. I wanted to know who the boy’s parents are. I had to find out on my own that Ichigo’s mother had passed away several years back, and his father is a Human doctor named Kurosaki Isshin.”

The name caught his attention, and he half-turned to face her.

“Nay, forget it.” Yoruichi shook her head, purple ponytail swishing like a long, thick bush. “The man may look like a Shiba, but he has no reiatsu whatsoever. None at all. You have been away for over three centuries, so you do not know how common Shiba physical traits have become among Humans. Looking like a Shiba these days says nothing about the lineage.”

He chewed on the new information.

Until another thought struck him. “But… what are the chances that Ichigo-kun’s father is an ordinary Human reincarnation of Shiba Isshin?”

“That, Ukitake, is something only you can tell us," Yoruichi returned. “Kisuke, Tessai and I have never met this former Tenth Division Taichō before.” Then she paused, suddenly looking thoughtful.

He waited.

Golden eyes blinked, and then looked at him darkly. “At least, I have never met him. I am also fairly certain Tessai has never met your lost Taichō either, or he would have told me.”

She had deliberately left out the third member of their trio.

And he noticed that she had also let slip a clue.

Sitting up straighter, he drew his legs towards himself, pulling them into a cross-legged position — and was pleased when he realised that the tremors in his muscles had ceased.

Still, he ought to continue to be gentle with his body. Thus, twisting gingerly at his waist, he reached out towards the long, wooden case of his Zanpakutō.

The case was heavy.

Exerting a drop of reiatsu, he lifted Sōgyo no Kotowari from where they rested on the ground and gently slid them across his lap, running his fingers comfortingly over the plain, richly varnished wooden lid.

A trill of relieved ripples tickled against his fingers.

[I am well,] he reassured them further. And before they could pipe up — as he knew they were wont to do after any episode of his affliction — he quickly added, [We will speak later.]

To Yoruichi behind him, he softly, but firmly, queried, “You said you confronted Kisuke-kun after you returned? But I was told that he had not been in the shōten since he sent me this.” He smoothed his cloak with his other hand, in indication.

There was a pause.

Followed by the stirring shift of a movement.

Then the svelte, toned outlines of feminine legs clad in form-fitting black pants appeared beside him.

As he turned to look, the slender, curvaceous figure of the Shihōin catwoman folded lithely down into his line of side, settling easily onto her haunches beside him as her glowing, golden eyes looked earnestly into his face.

He waited expectantly for her to speak, idly noting that she was still clad in the same attire as when she had accosted him in his office days ago — in that long-sleeved, bright orange, fitted top which he knew Humans called a jacket, worn buttoned up over that black, figure-hugging jumpsuit. Both outfits still looked clean enough, however.

“Kisuke is not avoiding you, you must believe me,” she said, her expression open and honest.

He arched a questioning brow.

She sighed. “Aye, I know that is not how it seems. But trust me, Ukitake. He will never ever admit it, not even to me, but in his heart, he feels ashamed to face you again.”

He frowned. “Ashamed?”

“Aye, ashamed,” she confirmed ruefully. “I know the reason for it, but ‘tis not my place to tell you, nor would it be right for me to do so. He needs to tell you himself. ‘Tis best for his sake that he does so of his own volition.”

“That is difficult, ne? Seeing as he refuses to even allow me a glimpse of him.”

Without a trace of artifice, she pleaded in a low burr, “Give him time, Ukitake. A day more, or two. Please.”

The Shihōin catwoman he knew had never been this genuine.

He looked away from her searching, golden eyes.

Time.

It was something he still had, albeit only a little of it.

“I cannot linger here beyond four days, five, at the most,” he softly reminded. “My father…”

A low, throaty laugh interrupted him. “Oh, do not worry about that. Genji-sama said as much to me when he rang ahead last evening. We know when we should return you to him. Even if we forget, Amagai will come and collect you. That one will not be letting any one of us forget our promise.”

At the mention of his bodyguard, he felt his skin prickle.

But he said nothing, however.

Instead, he swept a hand at the chasm before them. “Well, then, since you are here, you tell me. Do you truly sense nothing here?”

“Not a thing,” Yoruichi confirmed with a shake of her head. “Tessai is always obsessive about cleaning. What I know about Ichigo’s powers is still what I sense, and ‘tis this messy, brutal force that leaks everywhere. I know you Elders told me what you sensed in Ichigo, but I still cannot imagine it. I only saw the Hollow mask appear on him twice, the first time when I rescued him after Zaraki pounded him to a pulp. The second time when I trained him to Bankai.” Her dark, sharp features pulled into lines of confusion. “But I cannot see how such a hybridisation can even be possible. Ichigo will need to have parentage from Humans, Shinigami, Hollows, and Quincies. Yet Kurosaki Isshin is an entirely a non-powered Human.”

“What about Ichigo-kun’s mother?”

The lush, purple ponytail swayed with another shake of head. “From everything I overhead, it seems she was a non-powered Human too. ‘Tis biologically impossible for two plain Humans to produce an offspring like Ichigo.”

Her reasoning was sound. And based on scientifically proven fact.

Yet, not only was it solving nothing, it was now confounding the issue to a whole new level.

But how was he to explain something only five Souls in existence could detect?

Six, if Aizen’s powers had indeed ascended to the extent that he suspected.

He refused to think about that for now.

Looking at the Shihōin catwoman, he carefully asked, “Did you not ask Kisuke-kun about this when you met him?”

A look of frustration crossed her dark, sharp features. “If I had gotten an answer from him, I would be sharing it with you right now. But he refuses to tell even me.”

Rapidly, he chose and discarded several possible replies he could give — but gave up quickly when he realised that in the absence of full facts, there was nothing he could say which would not cause premature alarm.

Thus, he repeated the words of the Shihōin catwoman back at her.

“Back in the Seireitei, you mentioned that when you trained Ichigo-kun to Bankai, his Bankai release made your fur stand.”

A wry chuckle rose as realisation rose upon Yoruichi’s dark face. “That was exactly what I said to Retsu-sama. I should have known she would relate to you my words with her.”

He shook his head. “I did not learn your words from Senpai.”

Golden eyes widened with sudden understanding. “Ai, then ‘twas the Daireishin which told you. I forget you were recently joined to it.”

Ignoring her comment, he went on, “The sensation you felt at Ichigo-kun’s Bankai release, if I am correct, ‘tis also here.”

Again, another shake of the bushy, purple ponytail. “I will take your word for it, since I sense nothing here.”

He was getting nowhere.

Gathering his feet under himself, he began to rise, carefully levering himself up in a steady motion.

Fortunately, there was no dizziness as he steadily unfurled to his full height.

Small puffs of dust stirred and sifted up around his shins at his movement, despite his slowness. When he stood upright finally, he reflexively dusted off his cloak — only to find the black velvet folds completely clean, without the slightest speck of grit.

He frowned.

This place was truly becoming too disorientating.

“We should regroup with Tessai-dono,” he decided.

Yoruichi silently sprang to her feet as well, her golden eyes watching him intently.

“Perhaps he sensed something while he was cleaning this place which may corroborate with what I found,” he went on. Then, belatedly remembering his manners, asked, “However, he mentioned a meal to me, I hope I am permitted to discuss as we lunch?”

Yoruichi shrugged. “No permission needed, we do that all the time, talk as we eat.”

“Even with guests?” He was surprised.

A corner of her dusky lips lifted ruefully. “You really have been away for far too long. Much has changed here. Meal customs being one of them.”

“I see,” he nodded in acceptance, hiding a pang.

Indeed, he had missed much.

Preparing himself, he was about to leap into shunpo when, suddenly, Yoruichi was standing right in front of him, with one of her slim, dark-skinned hands planted firmly square in the centre of his velvet-covered chest.

And she was looking up at him with narrowed, golden eyes — and a set, unyielding expression.

“Not so fast, you. Do not think I did not notice you changing the subject. You still have not told me what happened to you here. Well?”