Only caught up to Aizen's defeat and sealing. Anything that occurs afterwards in canon, does not here.

Disclaimer: I in no way claim ownership to Bleach. I can't draw that well. I only claim my OC, Mitsumune Kenki (光宗薫 謙 希 ), from the Chinese "Qian Xi (chi-en shi)"

It was only supposed to be a type of revenge.

In the end, it kind of still was. Only it was the best kind.

Nine hundred years previous found the Soul Society flourishing under its new-found stability. With a new Head Captain and a new system of government in place, without the earth crashing down around everyone's ears, was something that had not occurred for a very long time.

Especially not under the previous regime.

Genryuusai Shigekuni Yamamoto looked out upon the city he had sworn to protect. He felt the curl of his reiatsu that had always permeated the air, and felt the nostalgia of his zanpakutou lull him into a meditative trance.

What could only have been an instant after entering this theta state, he felt the tumultuous reiatsu signature of one of his oldest friends approaching him. It always pressed upon him like a blaze storm; they'd always gotten along because of their zanpakutou's shared nature.

"Gen! Where are you?" Yamamoto sighed, and flared his reiastu once. "Ah, thinking again, old man?"

He didn't deem that comment worthy of a reply. They were effectively the same age.

"Yeah, yeah, boss man can't cut loose anymore, I got it." She hesitated, likely trying to find an alternative to the floor, before finally deciding to plop down beside him, and join him in viewing the scenery.

They stayed like that, silent and contemplative, until the sun's edge had breached the horizon. "You know what I'm going to say."

"I do."

"And you still refuse to see sense?"

"What would you wish for me to do?"

"That you do something. That this society isn't going to cave in on itself, the second either of us stop looking." It wasn't in her nature to start screaming when she was infuriated. Screaming only ever served to rile people up. So she spoke, and instead put the force of a typhoon behind her words. "I care for my men, but these other captains, the people we've agreed to put into power, they aren't what we wanted." What we needed, what this wretched existence needed, she doesn't say.

"They are a starting point. They will secure the Gotei 13 the beginning it needs, so that we can continue on protecting every spirit's afterlife." What we want and what we need can't always go hand in hand, he doesn't reply.

"At what cost, Gen? These men and women aren't going to just vanish once the Gotei 13 has gathered the reputation you deem necessary. I would be very disappointed, in fact, if they did." Neither acknowledged the glare shared between them. "And what reputation? Zaraki certainly heads the aggression in a passive way, but she is not the sole disrupter of the afterlife.

"And therein lies the problem, Gen. These people aren't doing anything to ease the rest of souls everywhere. They serve to generate as much terror as any hollow, rogue, or spirit could ever hope to." She paused. Yamamoto knew it was so that she could find the new angle she intended to present. "I went back, this past Monday, to the 54th. Do you wanna know what they were saying about us? 'Those so-called Soul Reapers? Yeah, looks like another eternal Shogun to me.' And they're right, Gen. What are we doing differently, from the government that we worked centuries to overthrow?"

"We cannot change what we have always been. A hundred years later is still not far enough beyond the reaches of the past to instigate such a massive change. No matter what they say, if we remove the Rukongai from the situation that they are so familiar with, then we risk them recoiling from the shock."

"And them continuing to cower under a new master is better than them adapting to freedom? To safety? To regular, humane comforts?" She rose sharply. Yamamoto sensed the end of the conversation approaching. "I can't keep arguing with you on this, Gen. Nothing I've said has swayed your opinion has, it?"

Yamamoto only turned to fix her with a gimlet stare "We cannot change the past so easily."

He watched her begin to leave. At the door, she called, "Then I, Mitsumune Kenki, resign my title as captain of the Fifth division."

And that was the last he saw of her for a very long time.

He would later hear of a large portion of the fifth defecting from the Gotei 13, alongside their beloved captain.

He saw her again centuries later, when both Juushiro and Shunsui had grown comfortable and experienced in their places as captains, and Zaraki had calmed enough to assume the position of Head Healer. She had been alone, fighting off what appeared to be a small hollow army in the forested part of Hueco Mundo, one tentatively called the Menos Forest by the elite of his Soul Reapers. Her Zanpakutou, still among the few comparable to his own Ryuujin Jakka, swirled around her.

Alone, her shikai was something to be feared. When coupled with the kidou that she was layering into her Inabikari Boufuu, she truly became the winds of change the history books had named her.

Still, she was a traitor, and traitors were to be disposed of. As Yamamoto moved to interecept her, he saw blink of purple. When the next gust from her blade had ceased buffeting him, Ken- Mitsumune, and all of the menos she'd been fighting, had vanished.

The next time he saw her, he was not expecting in the slightest. There had been complaints in the 33rd about missing Soul Reapers in training. Such complaints had cropped up over the years, never numerous enough to investigate. For all anyone knew, those who failed out of the Academy sought to prove their worth through true battle, and likely got gobbled up due to their vacuous inexperience and lacking talents. This year, however, saw an increase in the requirements for graduation, An intense curriculum in a six year period - devised to let only the truly strong move onto the Gotei 13 – would naturally mean there are more dropouts than normal. What was not normal was the large percentage of those dropouts going missing. Unofficial investigations of their dwellings showed no struggle, but a great deal of missing belongings, and no note or memo to speak of. Necessities such as bedrolls, clothing, ryo, and personal affects were gone. Officially, no one could tell where they'd gone.

It eventually became such a matter of concern that the issue was brought before the Central 46 by the Shiba clan, a young but promising noble family, whose charm had garnered them a great deal of support from the rest of the Soul Society. Several of their youth had gone missing, and one them was a precious niece to the Shiba Clan Head. The Central 46 then saw fit to set the matter on the Gotei 13, as it was their prospective men going missing, and their Academy losing them.

Yamamoto could only roll his eyes at the ineffectiveness of the government.

It was with great prompting that a few of the remaining almost-graduates came forward with their answer.

Shortly after the final results had been announced, all of the dropouts had been invited to a consolatory party, allegedly put upon by the Gotei 13 itself. The explanation given was, 'to inspire the failed graduates to continue pursuing their careers as Soul Reapers.' The staff of the party, adorned in the standard Shihakushou, then offered to everyone a chance at a remedial training school, whose focus was more on practical work than the theoretical; work that many people craved, field experience to offset the tedious paperwork.

Apparently, said the remainders, those who went missing were ones that accepted the offer.

And that was where Yamamoto stood now, pondering the possible solutions to his latest problem. He was far more concerned about what they were being trained for, rather than why they were targeted. Who could possibly raise such an army so efficiently?

In the privacy of his office, Yamamoto allowed himself one snort. The who didn't matter, because there were any number of those. The real question is, why now?

Below him, the current batch of captains debated the reason for such a mass abduction, as well the length of time that the practice had been going. How many soldiers did this invisible threat have? How many centuries had this new enemy been amassing?

In the end, no answer truly became forthcoming. A decade later, when the case was not forgotten, but at least pushed to the wayside, and the yearly disappearances were steadily becoming a fact of life once more, the absolute worst happened.

A vasto lorde appeared in the Rukongai.

Yamamoto floundered for a mere second, before shunpoing out to meet the threat. None other than himself would be capable of handling the hollow god.

And then he paused, at the scene of the beast. Because swarming it were hundreds of Soul Reapers, all acting to contain and wear down the threat. These beings could not have been his, however, because their uniforms, upon closer inspection, did not match his own. They were tighter, blacker, more covering, closer to the things the Stealth Force wore than what the Soul Reapers preferred. Yet they wielded Zanpakutou with the ease that the Stealth force did not, and the mass of people moved in a well-synchronized, practiced, efficient way, that spoke of years of training that the Gotei 13 simply did not have, did not find the necessity in.

And then the entire ordeal vanished. The Not-Soul Reapers vanished back to wherever they came from, over rooftops and into streets. Remaining was a single, black orb, one that pricked his memory in a single, bitter way. It had been four hundred years snce he'd seen that particular Zanpakutou.

Eventually it was over, and the falling body of the Vasto Lorde was swept in flame, the pithy effort that Yamamoto could make to remove the threat from his home.

Cool eyes regarded him. "Gen. It's been a while."