The Story of the Fifth, by Renji Abarai
A little drama with Ise and Iba. (IseIba?) Oneshot.
Disclaimer: I'm 90% sure that I don't own these characters. I should double-check, though.
The Fifth? That's not my division, so I don't know much, but I can tell you what I've heard.
You know how Soul Society is with rumors, so I can't vouch for any of this. But the story going around was that Aizen screwed them up on purpose. Ichimaru had a perfectly capable staff that he constantly messed with, and Tousen just kind of fell into that weird pacifism of his, but they say that Aizen pulled together a terrible division from the start just to be able to have complete control over them. It sure seemed that way.
After he left, and with Hinamori in and out of medical care, and eventually "retiring", I guess they called it (and she's a great girl who went through a rough time – I'm not putting her down or anything), the division was without any leadership for about a year. They didn't get assignments any more, not even the grunt work that the Third sometimes got. And if you remember how crazy that year was, if they couldn't get assignments then, they were just pretty much considered useless.
Anyway, Shuhei got promoted to captain of the Ninth, and everyone was expecting Izuru to be promoted in the Third, and I'd take over the Fifth. But the old man made me captain of the Third Division, and Izuru stayed on as my lieutenant. And that left the Fifth, well, by that time they were more like a boarding house than a division of soul reapers. Anyone who had a contact in another division transferred out. A couple of them came here. Then there were the divisions that are easy to get into - a bunch of people in the Fifth left for the Fourth, and a few even went to work for the Twelfth. So they were down to about half their personnel by the time the old man finally made a move.
Now, I don't know if this really happened, but I've heard that that Matsumoto turned Yamamoto down. She supposedly didn't want to leave her captain. Even Sasakibe supposedly turned down the division too. So the old man made Iba temporary captain, with Nanao Ise as his temporary lieutenant. You've never seen the word "temporary" used so much, on every single form and announcement. No one knew exactly what a temporary position was, or how it was different from an acting position or a regular position, but it was no vote of confidence in either of them, I can tell you that.
And Iba and Ise? Those two pretty much hated each other. It wasn't just the rivalry between the Men's and Women's Associations. Iba is just a macho bonehead who didn't even seem to understand why "tail" (that's what he called women in his more polite moments) was allowed to serve as shinigami at all. And Ise, she'd put up with Captain Kyoraku, so she wasn't going to back down about anything.
So then Iba summoned the whole division for his first speech, and of course he screwed that up. He told them that their motto should be "follow the rules and don't get killed". Then he spent a couple of minutes explaining that he didn't mean to threaten them, and that he wasn't going to kill them if they didn't follow the rules, and that what he meant was that they the two things they should do were follow the rules and stay alive. Then he went off on this tangent – and you told me to keep this T rated, so I can't really do it justice – but it was about the people who'd quit the Fifth Division to go work for the Fourth, and what the sewers they cleaned were filled with, and how they had a lot in common with the sewers. But it was even worse than you think. And actually that part of the speech did inspire the division, in a weird way, because they could tell that Iba respected their loyalty.
So, the first thing that Iba and Ise decided was that they'd both quit the Associations. No need to make things more uncomfortable than they already were. And besides, they'd both be too busy at work to be involved in outside activities, at least for a while. Other than that, they didn't agree on much. Iba finally decided that he'd train the division in swordsmanship in the mornings, and Ise would train them in kido (what he called "the other stuff") in the afternoons.
So they trained. And trained and trained and trained, because there was nothing else for them to do. They're both very organized and hard workers, so they'd gotten the paperwork and administrative stuff under control pretty quickly. And training kept Iba and Ise out of each other's hair. She ran the office in the morning, and he ran it in the afternoon.
Iba finally arranged an assignment, a straightforward recon mission into the World of the Living. A small mission, three reapers. The unexpected thing was, they encountered a couple of Hollows. One of the Fifth called Soul Society for backup, while the other two killed the Hollows without anyone getting hurt.
When the team got back, Iba and Ise greeted them like they'd just killed a Menos barehanded. They praised all three team members equally, because each one had done exactly what he was supposed to. The Fifth celebrated for about a week. (The thing is, even though Iba and Ise are strict about rules, they both know how to throw a party.) It was the first thing that Division Five had had to be proud of in a long time. It felt like all that training was paying off.
Of course, the rest of us made fun of them. Two hollows, big deal. But yeah, when they weren't around, we'd admit that it was kind of a big deal, and good for the Fifth for getting two clean kills.
A few days later, Ise had an idea. The truth was, and she knew it, that even though Temporary Captain Iba and Temporary Lieutenant Ise were good teachers, Iba was just a better swordsman than Ise was at kido. After all, he'd spent time in the Eleventh Division. She wanted to train under the best, too, and that's the Kido Corps.
Even Iba, as stupid as he is, had to admit it was a good idea. But the Kido Corps doesn't allow outsiders to train with them. They don't even reveal their identities to outsiders. Iba knew he didn't have the clout to pull it off, but maybe Komamura and Zaraki and Kyoraku did. And even if he was only temporary captain, this was something that could save lives, and his division deserved a break. So the two of them reached out to all their old captains and friends. I don't know how they pulled it off, because no one else ever has, but Iba eventually got Yamomoto to approve the plan. The Kido Corps made Ise sign dozens of nondisclosure forms, promising never to reveal the names and locations and secrets of the Corps. After all of that got finalized, Ise disappeared for a month.
Iba was on top of the world when she finally returned. He had been training the division during the morning and afternoon sessions, as well as doing both the captain's and the lieutenant's paperwork. He was wiped out. But that first afternoon, when she assembled the division for their training, Iba was there – standing among her students.
That's when the division really seemed to click. Ise knew all the little tricks that separate a kido professional from the rest of us. I mean, Iba was more skilled at kido than most (don't tell him I said that), but Ise was just amazing. And the division really respected the fact that their captain was willing to line up with the rest of them for instruction. As soon as Ise got settled back in at the division, she started zanpakuto training with the others under Iba. Pretty soon, the division started getting more missions, although they always kept the emphasis on training.
When the next class of students graduated from the Academy, a lot of them were interested in joining the Fifth. They figured that they could carry on their studies, training under two masters of the fighting crafts.
It must have been a full year that passed before the big captain's meeting when the general announced Iba's promotion to captain. Iba surprised all of us when he turned it down. He said that each division has a different structure, and that the Fifth shouldn't have one captain, it should have two. He and Ise were equals in skill and reputation and leadership abilities and all that, and they were basically running the division that way already. He compared it to a zanpakuto – that most people only had one, but for a few people, the zanpakuto took the form of two weapons. (He'd gotten a lot better at public speaking over the past year.) He said that he didn't want to be co-captains or acting captains or anything goofy like that, but that they both deserved the rank of captain, and the old man consented.
And that's about it, really. As the years have gone by, the Fifth has become known as the division of elite all-around fighters. (I hate to say that, but I've got to give Nanao and Iba credit where it's due.) A lot of guys from Iba's days in the Men's Association joined the Fifth to serve under him, and women who'd always looked up to Ise joined as well. After a while the Fifth also had something like twice the marriage rate of any other division. But Ise and Iba never really became friends. Of course, since neither of them has ever married, there are always rumors that the two of them are hot and heavy on the side. There are some really crazy sex rumors about those two. Izuru and I made up some of the worst ones ourselves. Iba and Ise hate that so much. Heh.