So one evening, I was sitting there in the eleventh division vice-captain's office doing the eleventh division's paperwork as usual, and I was kind of annoyed.

First of all, I had a headache from staring at numbers for hours, and the usual grunts and groans of pain and so on coming from outside were getting on my nerves. Secondly, it just seemed a bit sad that not one person in our division other than myself was capable of doing basic math and signing their name at the bottom of a piece of paper. Ask them to do it, and you got this crumpled mess covered with mud, ink blotches, possibly blood and who knew what else; they'd probably spent half our budget on kido training and ticked the box that said we didn't want the fourth division's medical services. It was pathetic.

The third reason I was annoyed, though, was that, after too many years of basically doing all the division's paperwork, I had realized how pointless it all was. I mean, I knew the captains complained about how much paperwork there was, and there was a huge volume of paperwork that went around the Gotei 13. I didn't know how there were even forests left in Soul Society, considering the amount of paper we used.

But what I'm saying is that I had a revelation: all this paperwork was intentionally designed to be time-wasting and redundant. It had to be. Every form was ten times longer than was necessary. Every authorization needed to be signed in triplicate. It was all completely repetitive, and I had never seen any evidence that anyone at the first division actually looked at it once we sent it there. There was just no way the paperwork could be this time-wasting and pointless unless someone actually wanted to waste our time.

So, obviously, at that point I just wanted someone who I could tell about my theory. There would be no point talking to Ikkaku because he'd just say "Paperwork is stupid anyway," and likewise the personalities of my captain and vice-captain were not best suited to the task. So I went out of the barracks and the first person I ran into who I thought would understand was Matsumoto.

I told her what I'd realized, but before I'd even finished she started laughing.

"What?" I said.

"Okay, okay," she said, crossing her arms. "Stick with me here, but—what did your captain do before he was a captain?"

"You know what he did," I said. "He went around challenging and fighting people, like Ikkaku and I did."

She nodded wisely and said, "So, if he wasn't a captain right now, what would he be doing?"

I rolled my eyes. "Probably the same thing. Is there a point to this?"

"Trust me," she said, sitting down on the wall next to me. "So, let's say, Kurotsuchi, or Soi Fon, or even my captain . . . if they weren't captains, what do you think they'd be doing?"

"That's not really something I really want to envision," I said. "But I suppose Kurotsuchi would be doing his vile experiments somewhere in Rukongai . . . Soi Fon would probably be acting aggressive somewhere, and I'm not sure what your captain would be doing. I can't really imagine him as a normal person."

"Right!" she said, and then she looked around and then leaned in and whispered. "How much does the Gotei 13 really do, huh? We purify hollows and perform soul burials, but you don't need a whole lot of power to do that. You sure don't need bankai for that. The main duty of the Gotei 13 officers is to complete mounds and mounds of paperwork. Why?"

She lowered her voice even further. "Because if the Gotei 13 didn't have the structure it does, and if there weren't seats to compete for and bankai to achieve and paperwork for captains and vice-captains to complete . . . the most massively powerful people in Soul Society would be walking around creating chaos."

I could feel my mouth fall open, but at the same time I saw it: she was right. The Gotei 13 took these crazy powerful people, many of whom were somewhat off-kilter in the brain, and put them in a situation where they weren't going to fight one another for dominance and where there were certain checks on their activities and where, essentially, they got so wrapped up in bureaucracy and the minutiae of being a captain that they forgot they were terrifying furnaces of monstrous power.

"And that's why I don't do my paperwork," she said. "I think Sasakibe just throws it all out anyway." She sat back again. "I don't want Hitsugaya-taichou to find out, though. Paperwork really gives him something to throw his heart and soul into, poor kid."

"Wait," I said. "So I've been doing all this for—for nothing? Staying late at nights and—"

"No, it's not for nothing," she said contemplatively. "Even if Zaraki-taichou doesn't actually do the paperwork, the idea of paperwork is there in the back of his mind. It's all about the illusion of structure: if he couldn't rebel by not doing his paperwork, what do you think he'd do to rebel?" She raised her eyebrows.

"Incidentally, are you drunk?" I said.

"Eh, a little," said Matsumoto, "but I'm completely used to thinking under the influence, so I can adjust." She tapped her head. "Now, remember, you can't tell anyone about this. The safety of Soul Society rests on your shoulders."

"How did you figure it out, anyway?" I said.

"I figured out that nobody was looking at the reports," she said, "because nobody ever noticed that Hitsugaya-taichou can't spell for anything. They're practically incomprehensible. He can't do long division properly, either." She bit her fingernail. "I guess he'll find out one day, but I just have to make sure I'm far, far away when that happens."

I nodded, but what I was really worried about was the day when Ise Nanao found out.

Author's note: Well, tinycaptain is still a child, after all. Kind of.

So, please review this silly crack.