Voice of the Sword

by Vivienne Grainger - Bleach

Kenpachi's sword eventually talks to him. But not all she has to say has to do with strategy, tactics, and slicing up spirits which might need it.

Kenpachi Zaraki: Not quite a figure of fun, but so dangerous you can't help but put him into situations he can't use a sword to get out of. The appearance of Ren is due to the gracious permission of Lady Bad Luck of The Ladies Luck, whose creation Ren is.

Not mine, Tite Kubo's, not for profit, just for getting to be a better writer.

---

"That was pretty yummy," Yachiru Kusajichi said, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt.

"Hey! Use a napkin!" Kenpachi Zaraki said, handing his charge one. He was well aware that he was not quite the role model that he should have been in terms of table manners. He picked up his own napkin, and used it for the first time in the course of this four-bowl meal, about his usual number of servings.

Yachiru had had three.

Now, she copied him, but her napkin stayed clean: the food had been transferred to her shirt.

Zaraki shoved the stack of four bowls he'd emptied across the mess table, and slurped down a very large cup of tea. He stifled the belch that came afterward. Yachiru, who copied him in almost everything and Ikkaku Madarame in the balance, didn't. She opened her mouth and waited until the rafters rattled.

Kenpachi Zaraki frowned at the members of Eleventh Division who were sharing the mess hall with them this night. Most of them were shaking with laughter. "It ain't funny," he said, his brows down. "How'm I supposed ta teach Yachiru table manners if the resta ya keep laughin' when she does stuff like that?"

The laughter stopped as if cut off by a knife. Nobody would meet his eyes. A few of the newest Eleventh Division members were so nervous they continued to titter, most trying to mask their giggles by putting a hand to their mouths.

Yumichika Ayasegawa used a napkin fastidiously, and signaled the end of his meal by putting his chopsticks neatly across his bowl at a precise angle. Ikkaku Madarame did the same, less precisely perhaps. They were successful at not laughing. Most of the other seated officers were as well. It was the tyros who were in trouble.

The famous Zaraki glower, reputed to have a life of its own, swept the room, scything off even the nervous merriment like some very grim reaper.

The Eleventh Division's Captain rose from the table. "C'mon, Yachiru," Zaraki said to his daughter. "You got homework. I got papers ta push."

Yachiru bounced up to his shoulder. "Do I gotta?"

"Yeah. Me too. You finish it before nine o'clock, we can train together fer half an hour."

"Goody," the little redhead said. "Do I haveta get the math problems right?"

"Yep."

"Aw, Kenny!"

When the door had closed behind the Captain and the Vice-Captain of the Eleventh Division, Ikkaku Madarame, third seat in the most feared division in the Sereitei, turned to Yumichika Ayasegawa, the fifth seat (there was no fourth), and said, "Can Cap really check her math homework?"

Yumichika knit his pretty brows; his feathers waved. "I don't think so," he said. "He has me balance the Division's accounts each month."

-:-

Yachiru sat at her own little desk, about half the size of Kenpachi's (but not piled nearly so high with stacks of paper). Their backs were to each other across the main room of his quarters.

By nine p.m. neither of them had come close to finishing their homework. Yachiru protested the loss of her training session so vociferously that Kenpachi eschewed trying to get her bathed. He helped her into pink pajamas, read her a story, and turned out her bedroom light.

"Night, Kenny."

He kissed her cheek. "Night, 'Chiru."

He went back into the main room of his quarters and stacked the rest of the papers. Then he got up and went to the east end of the room, where he knelt in front of the sword stand which held his own and Yachiru's blades.

Kenpachi removed the topmost blade, and looked at the dingy, nameless sword in his huge fist. He reached out to the small table on which the sword stand rested, pulled open a drawer, and took out the polish and polishing cloth.

His unruly mind said, S' like polishin' a turd.

An entirely different voice replied to him, And you wonder why I don't talk to you.

He nearly dropped the sword. "What? - Why're you talkin' ta me now? I thought I hadda be trainin' to getcha ta talk ta me!"

Yachiru's clear young voice floated out into the room. "Who're ya talkin' ta, Kenny?"

He turned his head. This late in the evening, the spikes he wore his hair in were losing their stiffness and brushed his shoulder. "Nobody, 'Chiru. Just talkin' ta myself."

"Crazy people do that, Kenny."

"Yeah, we do. 'Night, 'Chiru."

She giggled. "'Night, Kenny."

The sword said, I can hear you if you don't speak aloud.

Thoughtfully, he applied polish to the cloth, the cloth to the sword.

Ahhh.

Feels good, does it?

Even turds like to be polished.

Sorry.

So you should be.

He almost dropped the cloth. You're female!

Damn' straight I'm female. Why do you think the ladies like you so much, fool?

It ain't my face.

Nor your personality either.

There's no need ta be nasty. –Will ya tell me yer name?

Not yet. Do you want to know your own?

What! His huge hands had been automatically rubbing the length of the blade. They stopped. How couldja know my name?

The sword said precisely, A part of me has always been with you, even before you took me up. I know what you were called when you were born into this life.

He resumed gently polishing the blade. I'll haveta think about it. I been Kenpachi Zaraki so long I don't know how ta be anyone else. –Why woncha tell me yer name?

It is because you would use my name to call forth bankai.

So what's wrong with that?

Don't you know what bankai really is?

It's a alternate way a' fightin', a lot more efficient, more deadly, thatcha can't do unless yer sword's untied to ya.

It's much more than that. –You need to use a tool to get the crud out from between my blade and my hilt.

He obediently rose and found a thin sharp metal skewer in the kitchen. This he wrapped in the polishing cloth, and applied to the area specified. Crud was removed.

Ahh. –It's much much more than that. Bankai is not just union with the sword. It's union with the very soul of combat itself, and through that the provenance of one's own identity. That's why it requires so much spiritual pressure, and why everyone's bankai is different.

Kenpachi actually knew many quite large words, and understood this sentence entirely. So yer sayin' I ain't got enough spiritual pressure?

Given that a sword has absolutely no physical mechanism with which to snort, she still managed it. No, that's not it at all. You have already achieved bankai at least once in human life. You don't know who you were in the next-to-last life, do you?

He frowned. I don't even know who I was in the last life. All I know is that I died pretty young, just outta bein' a baby. He paused, applied a little more pressure, a little more friction, to a stain. The stain yielded. He thought diffidently, I'd like ta know who I was, once.

The sword was silent for a moment, and Zaraki had the impression that his mind was being rummaged around in: not for information, but for readiness to receive it. Once, she said eventually, you were called Miyamoto Musashi. Once, Sun-Tzu.

The cloth slowed while Zaraki considered this information. That's some big shoes to fill.

It's why you were given such big feet.

Yeah?

Literally. Your size is in the nature of a reward for a past life well-lived.

You talk like yer some kinda priestess.

I am the Priestess of that transition called Death, and you are my High Priest.

Zaraki shook his head. I didn't even understand that.

He could swear the sword smiled. You don't need to. I'll take care of it for you.

So yer not gonna tell me yer name.

Nor your own, until you are ready. And I won't perform bankai with you, either.

Ever? He applied polish to the worn hilt.

"Ever" is a long time. Let's just say at the present moment you're doing all right. You and two other people in the Sereitei could kill Byakuya Kuchiki.

He snorted. I knew that. I still don't understand why. Curiosity arrived. Who's the others?

The only name you need to know is the General's, because right now and for the foreseeable future, you can't beat him. And as for bankai, neither of us would survive making the experiment until the circumstances demand bankai of you, Kenpachi Zaraki.

Because a' what bankai is?

Because of what you are, my friend.

And what am I?

You truly do not know.

No. He finished polishing, looked critically at the result. She seemed to twinkle a bit, nicks and all. It's beginnin' ta look like the most important thing about me is that I'm Yachiru's father.

The sword said, I cannot deny the importance of that. Consider, though: bankai unites one to the soul of combat. You, Kenpachi Zaraki - you bear within you the soul of the artist. You and Yumichika Ayasegawa understand one another because of this.

That little fruitcake.

That little fruitcake. The sword smiled again. Is he not the most vicious fighter in your squad?

Zaraki, polishing again, remembered a day when an excitable new recruit had gotten in a cheap-and-lucky shot in at Ikkaku Madarame, and followed it up successfully, coming to stand over Ikkaku's unconscious body and gloat. They'd had to pull Yumichika off the recruit, who had then spent two months in Fourth Division, and transferred out as soon as he got back. Funny thing was, Zaraki didn't think Yumi had even so much as glanced at the guy after he'd returned. Water under the bridge, to mix a metaphor, in Yumi's book. Yeah. By far. He's vicious, as ya say, when somebody he loves gets hurt. Never seen anything like it.

And you and Ikkaku share the soul of the samurai.

I wish he wasn't so determined ta die under my command.

You and he are meant to be together in your quest. If he dies under your command, he will count this existence as successful. Who are you to say that he is wrong?

Zaraki frowned. He wasn't used to having his authority challenged; he was, after all, the freakin' kenpachi.

Ever the strategist, the freakin' kenpachi decided to let it go. –So I got th' soul of th' samurai and th' soul of th' artist, both?

Yes. Not many are so lucky.

Lucky. He did snort this time, but Yachiru must have been asleep. I'll get killed, eventually, by th' next kenpachi, unless I get crippled enough ta cede th' title. He rubbed a little harder, examined the result critically by the light coming through the window. An' alla this ain't tellin' me why you an' me can't get ta bankai.

You haven't been listening, the sword said patiently. When the time is right.

When will that be?

Immediately preceding your own death, unless you change your self or your circumstances before that time. I shall not speak to you again until the necessity arises.

"Hey! Hey! Wait a minute! I got more questions!" Zaraki twisted her this way and that in the fading light of sunset, but she had said all she had to say, and gleamed mutely back at him.

He ground out the worst of her nicks after that, though, and started taking better care of her.

---

Kenpachi Zaraki kenpachi stopped his brush in mid-path across paper, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He was kenpachi, the best swordsman of his generation. Why was he pushing papers? Deciding small sh - stuff, when he should be deciding who lived and who died?

A'course, that one was pretty simple. Lived: human souls and fellow shinigami, exceptions noted below. Died: Hollows, Arrancar, Kaname Tousen, Gin Ichimaru, and Sosuke Aizen.

Some days, he thought his brain was gonna break, he hadda make so many decisions without his zanupakuto in his fist. When it came to the Eleventh Division, it was all down to Kenpachi Zaraki.

He had some help, and was profoundly grateful for it. Yachiru, despite her age, was a pretty good lieutenant. Yumichika was his first line of defense against needing an abacus, and Ikkaku ruthlessly scheduled, oversaw, and rated all of the training and sparring sessions, including Kenpachi's own.

But everything else was Kenpachi's to create. The freakin' menus, for instance. Menus meant he hadda go grocery shopping for almost five hundred guys every week. Well, actually he sent people with lists twice weekly, but he was the one who made up the f - freakin' lists, which meant he first hadda make up the freakin' menus. He thought about who he could delegate that to, came up with a name, wrote it on a post-it note, and added it to eighty-seven others decorating the wall above his desk.

He was ordering clothes for his division. Waraji, tabi, jikatabi, geta, fundoshi, hakama, happi, kimono, samue, hakamishi, yukata, hanten, jinbei, uwagi, zubon, in medium, large and as far as they went up in extra-larges. His own size meant a special order, or having something custom-made. So did Ikkaku's, although the third seat's extremely minimal approach to dress was a blessing in disguise.

Yumichika, thank every kami there ever was, did his own shopping. There were some things even the kenpachi dared not inquire into. He wondered if Yumichika could be entrusted with ordering the division's clothes, but realized that the Eleventh would swiftly become known as the Fighting Pansies if he delegated the task in that direction; the fifth seat would have them all in lavender head-to-toe ...

Then there was Yachiru's ever-changing (but always pink) wardrobe. She'd once outgrown four separate sizes in a single month. What she didn't outgrow, she destroyed. Sighing, he got her a whole new, but still pink, wardrobe.

His married seated officers were given an allowance for their wives' tomosode, formal kimono, as they were sometimes called for in the social life of the Sereitei. Usually those kimono were ordered through the Division to get a discount, so Kenpachi knew more about women's kimono than he had ever thought possible. He would have liked to limit his awareness to how to take them off the willing, but nooo ...

When he succeeded to his captaincy, it had taken him days to learn the twelve steps to folding his own hakama, and particularly the damned tie straps to the hakama, because he'd never worn hakama before. After that, he stopped throwing 'em over the nearest chair, and in consequence they stopped looking like he'd worn them to bed.

Which he had his first few days as Captain, anyway. Pajamas were a new concept when applied to himself, as neither he nor Yachiru had previously owned a change of clothing. He eventually decided that pajamas were more trouble than they were worth, but at that point Yachiru had discovered that pajamas came in pink and was unwilling to part with them. He slept in his fundoshi, put his haori on over it, or at least over himself, if Yachiru called him in the night, and that was that.

He moved on to weapons.

Whetstones. Polish. Polishing cloths. Various grades and colors of cord for tsuka-ito, to wrap mundane blades to the holder's design. Silk for re-wrappin' the zanupakuto, which was occasionally necessary. Lacquer. Shinai in various sizes for practice, not that he approved of kendo, but the alternative was lettin' his troops kill each other in practice.

The bits and pieces that had to be replaced on mundane blades, like the specialized hollow kashira he encouraged his men to use, and fill with styptic powder to keep themselves from inconveniently bleedin' to death in the middle of havin' some fun, the f- freakin' styptic powder itself, which he ordered in fifty-gallon drums from an entirely different supplier; saya, the wooden sheaths whose purchase he approved every single time because a) they did wear out, b) sloppy use would wear them out faster, and c) said sloppy use would result in being blade-bitten for the careless fool practicing it. Sloppy swordsmanship irked the f - daylights - outta Kenpachi, but in this case was one of the few problems he had that solved itself. He liked that about saya.

He was also tryin'a' cut down on the f, - d, - blasted swearwords, for which Yachiru seemed to have a blotter-like memory. Heard once, used forever.

He had a request on his desk for two new wakizashi from recent Academy graduates; he pulled personnel files, looked at heights of his new recruits, and altered one request by lengthening the blade specified.

Wood for the division's swordsmiths; they made their own charcoal. Leather aprons. Hammers - they appeared to have as many kinds of hammers as he had headaches. Ore to be smelted and forged. Anvils, he had been told, wore out about once every fifth generation. Doubtless they had several shapes and sizes too? Curious, he flipped through a supply catalog, and found twelve pages of anvils, varied to his unschooled eye only by their nose shapes and their sizes. He didn't stop to read the copy.

As for him, when he became Captain of the Eleventh grooming had been foisted on him. That wasn't a problem in itself; for furosha, a homeless man, he had kept himself and Yachiru very clean because he liked being clean.

Having the baths regularly available was heaven, for Kenpachi. On the other hand, it meant he had to make available shampoo, body soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, finger- and toenail clippers, bath brushes, washcloths, towels, nail brushes ... a literal ten pounds of small brass bells ... he'd looked at the several pages of hair styling crap available, settled for just leaving the soap in his hair for himself, and listened to Yumi for the rest of it.

He shook his head, to make himself stop; except for the brass bells, he had to have all that sh - stuff on hand every day for half a thousand guys. Most of 'em bathed every day, some twice. Those that didn't weren't workin' hard enough, or if they were just slobs got told pretty sharply to step up the soap and water.

Yumi and his bergamot, the crushed leaves he insisted on dropping oh-so-casually into the water used in the steam baths. It did smell good, though ... he ordered a half-gross of "Herb bundles for steaming, assorted."

Right now, simplified as he had made his own life, a store clerk asking, "Paper or plastic?" could shut down Kenpachi's mind until Yachiru specified one or the other, usually based on the color of the bag involved, because on any given day he'd already had to make close to a jillion decisions by lunch time. Or it felt like that, anyway.

It wasn't a problem on the training grounds, or thank kami in battle. There, he made decisions without even realizing that he had done so. Fighting was where he kept his soul, and the soul does not burn out on nor weary of its purpose.

Paperwork, on the other hand, is almost never a soul's purpose.

Kenpachi Zaraki, the best swordsman of his generation, stared out the window of his office, past the whorehouse curtains Yumichika had recently put up. They were red with a long gold fringe at the bottoms. He knew he'd allowed Yumichika to re-do his office, but when had he made the decision about the curtains? Since they weren't pink, or lavender, which they would have been had he allowed Yachiru or Yumichika himself to choose them, he knew he had. He just couldn't remember it. –He actually liked the whorehouse curtains, but it bothered him that he couldn't remember making the decision.

He sat back and rolled his shoulders. He was due for a time when he didn't have to make any decisions. He cleaned his brush and got up. "Yachiru!"

---

The lakeside, in summer, was warm and comfortable, its smooth lawn swooping down to the water's edge near the Kuchiki estate. Not on it, thank kami. Kenpachi liked it there.

He knew Yachiru would get wet and muddy. For Kenpachi, that fell squarely into the category of things he didn't care enough about to prevent. It was, after all, fixable.

He was staying comfortable with his back against a shady tree, idly contemplating this and that. This idle contemplation had turned up an amazing fact: he liked very few people. Most of 'em, he just put up with.

He sat peaceably beneath a cherry tree beside a lake on a warm afternoon, watching his daughter wreak merry havoc on the local population of frogs, and arrived at an informal ranking of his acquaintance:

He adored Yachiru Kusajichi with his entire being. That wasn't "like." That was something else entirely. He squinted through warm summer air at her, making a mess of herself and her kimono at water's edge.

Sometimes, when he thought about it, he wondered if Ikkaku Madarame's feelin's for Yumichika Ayasegawa weren't close to what he felt for Yachiru. That is, if they weren't doin' disgustin' stuff to each other day an' night. He didn't think they were, though. There was a pair'a guys in the Eleventh who did just that, and the other guys were always complainin' about the noise. They never complained about Yumi and Ikky.

His thoughts strayed onto the fate of someone who actually did complain about Ikky and Yumi, and he realized that silence was, after all, no guarantee. The steps Ikky would take after someone complained about him were all too easy to visualize, while Yumi's retaliation would be both more humiliating and more long-lasting than anything Ikky could inflict. Bodies heal; minds do so more slowly, and maybe not at all.

He liked Yumichika, if you defined "like" as "wondered what the he - heck made the little fruitcake tick, and was amused when not exasperated by said fruitcake."

He liked Ikkaku as a kindred spirit, although Ikkaku's hero-worship of him, Zaraki, was a little embarrassin'. Dyin' in battle under his command was still dyin', so far as he could see.

What he felt for Ichigo Kurosaki wasn't likin'.

He liked Retsu Unohana a whole bunch.

He liked Shuuhei Hisagi maybe three-eighths of a bunch.

He liked Byakuya Kuchiki about an eighth-bunch less a half-teaspoon. That half-teaspoon went to Soi Fong, whom he recognized as a fellow genuinely dangerous being.

...maybe "like" was too strong a word there. He'd give the priss back his half-teaspoon, then, and settle for saluting Soi Fong from a safe distance instead, like you would a tiger in the zoo, or an approaching storm.

The rest of 'em? Sources of paperwork, no more and no less. Not even worth fightin'.

And where am I, said the voice of his nameless sword, on this august list of people you like?

I was thinkin' about people I have th' option ta dislike, he thought, and you ain't one of 'em.

She snorted.

"Number-face!" Yachiru shrieked, although she did not mean three-eighths, as Shuuhei Hisagi came into sight over the hill that hid them from the Sereitei.

"Hey, squirt!" Number-face said, and grunted as she landed in his arms.

She put both her little feet firmly into his sternum, which made him hiss with pain, and vaulted down. "Sorry! I forgot about'cher busted ribs! Come and help me catch frogs!"

"The ribs have got me there too, squirt. I want to talk to Kenpachi a bit."

"Okay!" She zinged off to Kenpachi, shouting at the top of her lungs, "Ken-chan, I've caught eight frogs! Or maybe one frog eight times! Here's Shuu-chan!"

She ricocheted back to her muddy diversion.

Shuuhei grinned at him, and at her small disappearing streak of pink-and-mud self. "How do you keep up with her?"

"I don't," the kenpachi said simply. "I find somethin' to keep her occupied, and let her tire herself out."

Shuuhei sat down, grunting a little. Kenpachi remained silent, offering neither help nor sympathy, though he actually felt a little of the latter. "Shoulda kept y'self outta harm's way," he said to Shuuhei, by way of expressing that sympathy.

"Yeah, maybe next time."

They watched Yachiru for a while. Bugs whined in the late-summer heat.

Kenpachi shifted a bit, and said to Shuuhei, "So you'n Isane ... you really busted it up?"

"Afraid so. Not with tears and heartbreak, just a little, you know ..." he waggled a hand.

"Minor heartache."

"Yeah, I guess. We said we'd stay friends, but I don't know, the energy just doesn't seem to be there for that. Not on her side, either."

"Too bad. It was cute seein' you two goin' out together, your head maybe as high as her shoulder."

Shuuhei grinned. "Yeah. Presents some special gifts, the height difference."

Kenpachi snorted. "That what you call it, 'special gifts'?"

Yachiru had found a stick somewhere, and was busy pounding the surface of the water with it.

"Things going okay with you and Retsu?"

The kenpachi was silent for a moment, and Shuuhei braced himself for being put outside the pale. But what the bigger man said after that pause was, "You know what she said ta me the other day? She said that she keeps waitin' ta find out somethin' about me that she can't stand, an' so far, nothin's presented itself."

Shuuhei blinked at him. "I'd guess that's good."

"I think so too, but it's unsettlin' ta know she's still tryin' me out. Six years, and she ain't committed yet!"

"Girl believes in long engagements."

"That she does." The kenpachi stretched lazily. "You gonna start goin' out again?"

"Little while, maybe."

"Mmm." Kenpachi's voice offered neither censure nor approval. "Anybody in mind?"

"Yeah. But it's so creepy I don't even want to admit it to myself, let alone share it." Shuuhei grunted himself down into a supine position on the grass, folded his hands across his belly, and watched the clouds chase each other across the sky. "Nice here. –Whose land is this?"

Kenpachi took the offered lead, stifling his curiosity. "Might be Ukitake's. I know it ain't Kuchiki's. His starts on the other side of the lake."

Shuuhei fell silent. Kenpachi did too. After a time, the gentle catching of the Ninth Division's acting captain's breath, not quite a snore, was a pleasant counterpoint to Yachiru's noisy antics in the reeds.

Kenpachi looked over at his friend. The large number and the widest part of the blue stripe were on the side of Shuuhei's face turned away from him, and Shuuhei's profile, relaxed into sleep, was looking a little fined down, a little pale under his tan. He knew that the constant pain of broken ribs could do that to a person. Having a breakup wasn't helping, most likely.

Let 'im sleep. He got up and went to talk to Yachiru about not jumping on Shuuhei.

When he came back and sat down again, the sword said calmly, He looks so young. Did you know that he is only a very few years your junior?

Define "very few."

You're fifty-three years older than he is.

That all? I'd'a thought it was more.

Yachiru screamed with joy, and held up a snake. He jumped up to be sure it wasn't poisonous. It wasn't. The shade under the tree beckoned.

There's something I don't understand, he said to his sword, that maybe you could help me with.

And you believe I would be willing to do so?

Please.

She was silent so long he thought that he had been refused. But what she said was, gently, Yes?

He sat with his own confusion and pain long enough to be able to say bluntly, Retsu says I'll do until she can't take me anymore. That doesn't sound like love ta me.

On the other hand, the sword said precisely, she is promising you nothing she can't deliver.

But - at some point, don'cha commit to the relationship itself?

You do. She may not. Consider, Kenpachi Zaraki, that in all her long life, Retsu Unohana has never had a permanent relationship. Six years is the longest she has ever remained involved with anyone. That's quite ephemeral by Soul Society standards.

You sayin' she's a slut?

No. She's quite choosy, and she stays in a relationship only so long as it pleases her to do so. You are the seventh man to grace her bed in nineteen hundred years. There are many in Soul Society who have no idea why she is with you, nor why you and she are so long-lasting, for her, a couple.

Do ya know why her relationships don't last?

The sword was silent for a moment. Her lovers die in battle, she said finally. Or they can't accept her devotion to healing.

He remembered a few times when she had leapt out of his bed and run off to the Fourth's HQ. He had minded, but never mentioned it, figuring he would as well ask her not to be herself.

Wise of you, the sword said. She accepts your devotion to battle; you, hers to healing. It works for both of you.

I still feel like I'm on trial with her. Since she said that, anyway. I didn't feel that way before.

Clouds drifted across the sky. A gentle breeze blew some sweet scent across him.

The alternative, the sword said, still precise, is Shuuhei's solution.

Hunh? He looked over at Shuuhei, who continued to sleep, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple in the heat.

Shuuhei and Isane expected "forever" of their relationship. It could not be forced into that box. Had either been able to let go of a preconceived notion that relationships last indefinitely, they might have been happier together.

Hunh. That one never struck me as havin' much potential.

No. A basic mismatch of temperament. But there might have been fewer fireworks between them had they been able to let it be what it was.

He had a horrible idea. She didn't break his ribs, did she?

The sword laughed, a merry tinkling little laugh. No. It truly was a Hollow. They did occasionally throw things at each other.

He shook his head. Glad I never -

The sword called up the memory of a certain dark-haired prostitute from his pre-Yachiru years. Kenpachi grinned to himself. You got me on that one. Screamin', hittin', throwin' stuff, we did all that.

She hit you quite hard and threw to wound. You did neither of those things. In fact, I do not remember you hitting her at all, despite considerable provocation. As I recall, your jollies come from throwing crockery against a wall. You and Shuuhei are alike in that.

He gave a snort of amusement. But anyway - yer sayin' that expectin' a relationship to go the distance dooms it?

Not precisely. But it's better to let the relationship show itself to you day by day, isn't it, rather than to have expectations of it?

He thought about it. Realized that the damn' sword had just turned his world upside down. I'll have to think on it some more.

You do that, she said, and vanished.

Yachiru came belting up. "Kenny, Kenny! Lookit!" It was a smooth, egg-round, river-polished stone. "I'm gonna give it to Ikky! It's all round and shiny, like he is!"

Shuuhei woke with a snort. Yachiru turned to him, and said in surprise, "Where'd the pretty lady go?"

Shuuhei said blankly, "Pretty lady? I was dreaming of somebody, that's all, Yachiru." Not Orihime. Wonder why.

Yachiru looked from one to the other. "She wasn't a dream," she said stubbornly. "She was holdin' yer head in her lap, Shuu-chan. Ever since you fell asleep." The little girl lost interest, said, "I'm goin' ta go give this ta Ikky," and skipped off, rock in hand.

The two men exchanged looks. Kenpachi felt his face change, and Shuuhei said, "What?"

"Um. I been talkin' to my zanupakuto. She's - female."

Shuuhei stifled a laugh and winced. "Keeping that secret's going to cost you, buddy. What's she doing holding my head in her lap?"

"We was talkin' about you an' Isane."

The two men looked at each other. Suddenly the sword said to Zaraki, Get your minds out of the gutter. Wolves like to be scratched behind the ears, that's all.

Shuuhei shook his head, and Kenpachi wondered if he had heard it too. "So what about me and Isane?" the Ninth Division lieutenant/acting captain said. He got to his elbows with some difficulty, sat up.

"She was sayin' that you both expected yer relationship ta last, and it mighta gone on a little longer if you'd just let it be what it was, an' end when it had to." He extended a hand down to the younger man, pulled him up gently.

Shuuhei looked at him oddly. "That turns my whole picture of relationships upside down. But she might be right."

"Yeah, she might. She give me a lot ta think about too." Kenpachi twitched his head toward the lights of the Sereitei in the distance, where Yachiru was disappearing into the glowing dusk. "Wanna go back?"

Shuuhei yawned, and stretched carefully. "Yeah, guess so. Thanks for letting me sleep."

"Sure."

Kenpachi heard from his sword one last time: So occasionally, you do listen to me.

Yer smarter'n I am. Why wouldn't I?

So long as you recognize that, she said.

Who's Shuuhei thinkin' about?

He'll tell you when he wants you to know. It does him credit to be hesitant and so I do not wish to spill his secret. He could swear she smiled one last time. You know that I like honorable men, she said, and vanished.

Kenpachi looked for his daughter, saw a woman's figure, trailing the sleeves of a furisode, behind Yachiru. When they caught the girl up, though, the woman was nowhere to be seen.

---

In the morning sun, dust motes drifted in the air above Retsu Unohana's bed.

Of all the things she loved, Retsu loved most the times she could spend in her bed on a sunny morning with Kenpachi Zaraki. Taking him along with her on herb-gathering expeditions was perhaps her second favorite.

She looked over, and as always up, at him. He was so tall that he occupied all of her futon. She had bought a larger one in the first year of their relationship, after seeing his poor feet hanging over the end of her normal-sized futon blue with cold one wintry morning.

He'd never complained, and he was not the kind of man to put cold feet on a bedmate and think it funny. She'd never been so happy to spend money.

On the other hand, he always complained about going to the mountains with her, but packed intelligently, and shut up once they were in the breathing hush of the trees together. She thought sometimes he valued the silence as much as she did.

She also knew he let her go alone, when she needed to go alone, and that was hard for him, the way things were right now - Arrancar around every corner, and so forth. But he let her go alone, and never reproached her for the need.

He also never reproached her when she rose before he did to go to the hospital. She did not reproach him in similar circumstances. (She did get up when he did, and go to the hospital with a tight throat, when he was called from her bed.)

Retsu Unohana knew very well that most of the other shinigami considered Kenpachi Zaraki to be insane. They didn't understand how what they saw as his violence could exist in the same personality as his love for his daughter, or his devotion to herself.

That they shook their heads over her liking for him was a foregone conclusion.

Mostly, she thought of her affection for him as practical, and practicality as a quality they shared.

Healers are practical shinigami. Their profession demands it of them; if practicality is not among their strong points when they discover their profession, both its rigors and the cleaning tasks demanded of unseated Fourth Division members rapidly train them to be practical in all circumstances. There's nothing like cleaning a sewer to forcibly enhance your practicality.

When Retsu Unohana looked at Kenpachi's life before he came to the Gotei-13, she understood why he was who he was. He had only two talents, two things to offer a world indifferent to his survival: a large body, and a practical mind.

His size allowed him to win contests of strength. His strength manifested itself in a zanupakuto. His practicality had led him to master that zanupakuto, since he understood it to be a gift, and practical souls do not waste gifts.

The rest, he'd earned himself, although she was sure he would say that Yachiru was a gift as well.

She often thought that at least fifty percent of his interpersonal problems arose from the fact that he had no one to teach him manners when he was young, and another twenty-five percent from the fact that he was so very practical.

Manners, after all, are only a way of obfuscating things; Kenpachi in his rambling days could not afford obfuscation. For a lot of years, his and Yachiru's lives had depended on making the correct response to whatever presented itself. Clarity, not obfuscation, kept them safe. Good manners would likely have gotten both of them killed.

The remaining twenty-five percent arose from the fact that he was brilliant. Not scholastically, of course; he was far too unschooled for that. His brilliance showed itself in practical ways every day, and he was ferociously impatient with others when they failed to see what was so clear to him.

She was an intellectual match for him, oddly enough. He had never felt the need to be impatient with her. Well, once or twice when he wanted to get out of the hospital and she wouldn't let him, but Retsu would not allow those to count.

She watched him sleeping beside her for a while. (Silly, she knew. Yet with no other lover had she been content simply to watch the person sleep, or to wear his stinky t-shirts to keep herself company in his absence.) Kami knew he was not a handsome man, but somehow, with his hair out of the spikes and that demonic glare sealed behind his lids, even with that battleship of a chin of his ... he looked vulnerable. Perhaps that was why she had been attracted to him initially.

It hadn't happened at first glance. At the emergency captains' meeting, called after he assumed his captaincy in the bloodiest, most violent way possible, Retsu had been more motivated to run for her life than to stay and make small talk. Kenpachi met the other captains with that grin, the one that showed his fangs, on his face, and his predecessor's blood quite literally on his hands.

Outside of the weekly meetings, she'd had nothing at all to do with him until the night he'd gone out to duel Byakuya Kuchiki.

Retsu had since kept her eye on the young healer who first saw him after that aborted duel, who had somehow managed to get Kenpachi Zaraki to lie down on a hospital bed. Everyone now understood what a feat that actually was.

What surprised Retsu when she saw him on rounds that first morning was the amount of damage he had taken and how little effort he had put into defending himself. But that, again, was a practical decision on his part: if he chose speed over defense, he could get a critically wounded Byakuya Kuchiki to the help Kuchiki needed. It had saved Kuchiki's life, while putting Zaraki's own at risk.

That time and the next she saw him, it hadn't been love she felt, but admiration for the courage of a man who had known the consequences to himself of what was needed, and done it anyway to save a colleague he did not like.

She thought she fell in love with him the third time she went to his bedside, when he was sedated, chained to the bed by the General's orders, and almost naked, still a bloodied mass of wounds from crotch to collarbones. On that third visit, she pulled a warmed blanket up over the dressed wounds before she put her hand to his cheek, and he turned his face into it.

Game over, set and match, the crowd erupts in cheers. Tears had come into her eyes, and heat into her loins, and that was that.

Much to her own surprise, years later, she was still attracted to Kenpachi Zaraki, and he still, every time she touched his cheek while he slept, turned his face into her hand.

Retsu reached up and touched his cheek, and he turned his face into her hand. Still turned her on, check. But she was too content to do much about that at the moment. Kenpachi liked sex as much as she did, which meant that whenever she asked he obliged, so she let it fade.

Until Zaraki showed up, Retsu's love life had been intermittent at best; she was choosy to begin with, and her career often overwhelmed her. Entire centuries passed while she had no impulse to find a partner. (She taught Ise Nanao quite a lot about the electronic helpers appropriate to their mutual situation when humans finally invented the things.) The rest of Sereitei, frantically scrambling into and out of one another's beds, sometimes amused Retsu Unohana.

She did share with the majority of Sereitei the habit of not keeping lovers long. Some died; inevitable given their situation. More moved on. Sometimes it was she who broke the news that that should happen; a few times, she'd been on the receiving end. Here and now, she was happy and grateful for Kenpachi Zaraki's presence in her life.

She had come to know that he was kind enough to confound one's expectations of the Eleventh Division, although you had to get beyond the total lack of manners to see it; beyond that and below his gruffness, he had a natural courtesy and a surprising gentleness that she had not expected to find in his character. But then, those qualities had not surfaced until the two of them were alone together the first time, and she did not see their full flower until she faced him, and he her, naked.

Retsu probably would not have gotten herself into the second situation had those two characteristics of his not been apparent in the first.

She was always reminded of their first bedding when he visited a hospitalized Eleventh Division member. His gentleness came out again. Mind you, it was couched in terms of, "You screwed up big-time ta land yerself here, ya idjit!" but it was still there.

When he came by, she normally took herself elsewhere. Seeing him like that aroused her unmercifully, and he knew it. He always smiled at her, his eyes twinkling, and went back to his Division member. It was enough for him that the two of them knew of her predicament.

It was really kind of cute, except that she was distracted and uncomfortable for the rest of the day. Cute too was the fact that he came unasked to her quarters on those nights, never referred to his reason for being there, and unless he was summoned, was always there when she woke up.

When asked why he stayed, he'd wrinkled up that massive forehead, and said, "I like yer company. Why wouldn't I stay?"

He wasn't unsure of himself either, didn't ask anxiously, "If I'm welcome, a'course?" after the first time. Which was pretty cute too, now she came to think of it.

When she came to the Eleventh Division and the toughest fighters in the Gotei-13 fled her as if she had the plague, a reaction Retsu always enjoyed, his face lit up, which she enjoyed even more. Her arrival was a gift to him. And both of them knew that, too.

Kenpachi had a strand of his own hair in his mouth. She pulled it free, gently. He snorted, mumbled her name, and turned toward her, throwing one skinny arm across her.

For his kindness, for his courtesy, for the fact that he turned his cheek into her hand, she would stay with him.

Hot sex was not quite a mere bagatelle, but it didn't compare to the kindness, the courtesy, or the turn of his ugly head.

Retsu Unohana smiled, and moved in closer, tucking her head under his chin. For now, however long "now" lasted ... they belonged to one another.

Falling back into sleep, she thought that that was the practical decision, after all.

Kenpachi Zaraki woke to find Retsu Unohana in his arms, cuddled up underneath his chin. She hadn't been there when he went to sleep; they'd spooned. Squinting in the mote-laden sunlight of a summer morning, he made no move to change this situation.

He thought sometimes that he must be th' luckiest man alive. He was Captain of th' Eleventh Division of the Gotei-13, which brought 'im enough fighting ta keep 'im happy; he was Yachiru's father, in all but th' biological sense, and fuck that anyway; Yachiru had a supportive family ta grow up in - Yumichika, Ikkaku, a mostly unwilling Byakuya Kuchiki, and all th' members of the Eleventh, past or present.

That was th' cake. Being where he was with her, this was th' icing.

You have earned what you have, a voice said in his head.

His sword. He smiled.

He knew, somehow, that his sword had just smiled back. This love story, she continued, is getting quite interesting.

Me and Retsu? I guess that's what you'd call it. He looked down into the sleeping face beneath his own, and no one who knew him would have recognized the expression in that lingering gaze. 'S funny, it felt like it was inevitable, ever since I got Byakuya out of that scrape that time.

Oh, it was settled long before that.

Huh?

I have told you that we zanupakuto know, she said with her usual precision, long before you shinigami do. It was settled between us the moment you laid eyes on one another.

Hunh. I always thought she was scared of me at that captains' meetin', th' very first one.

She was. That grin of yours, blood on your hands, your height, enough reiatsu to have knocked her down and taken her right there on the General's table - who would not have been?

He grew very quiet. I thought she was hot, but I wouldn't have done that.

Yes, I know you for an honorable man as she does now, but she did not then. You were broadcasting quite loudly as well. Did you not see Ukitake and Kyoraku move to her side to protect her? And her imagination is quite ... vivid when it comes to sexual matters.

You're tellin' me?

The sword smiled again. Minazuki and I together ... the sword said, letting the sentence trail off, and had Unohana been awake, she might have seen Kenpachi blush.

The green thing?

Oh, he has other forms, his sword thought, her light amusement coming across quite clearly, as do I. You would be surprised what fun rolling around together in the mud can be, if that is part of your species' mating ritual.

He shut his eyes, which didn't help ta get that image outta his mind a damn' bit. You're a dirty old woman.

She snorted again, and he was presented with a sudden clear memory of a lakeside he took Yachiru to for frog-hunting, and of himself and Unohana putting the mud of his daughter's hunting ground to another use altogether. All right, you got me.

We share some unexpected things, she said, and he could have sworn she smiled once more, happily. We are both very pleased with this love story you shinigami are telling each other.

I'm hopin' fer ferever, here.

He heard her chuckle, and was suddenly aware that for her, he was an object of both affection and exasperation. Somewhat like a house pet whose presence is cherished, but who occasionally sprays bad-smelling fluid on places from which it can never be removed.

What she said was, I can only tell you that we are pleased so far, Kenpachi Zaraki; I do not have the gift of seeing the future. For Retsu, this has been a long love affair. I tell you again as I have before that happily-right-now is all you can depend upon. Happily-ever-after is something to look back on, not forward to.

He heaved a sigh. I'll take what I can get.

That is very ... practical of you, she said.

The silence lasted long enough that he knew she was finished with talking to him, for now, anyway.

Kenpachi Zaraki knew suddenly that he was gonna go fer broke ta get ta "happily ever after." Th' hell with it; some things were worth fightin' fer. Th' best way he could thinka ta do that was ta make all th' "happily right nows" good. Didn't mean they wouldn't argue an' fight about silly stuff; sometimes they did. It did mean, at least it meant fer him, that when th' fightin' was over, they had somethin' to come back ta.

He sighed again, aware that there were no guarantees. Right now, though, he could arrange his arms more protectively around Retsu Unohana, put his cheek on top of her hair, and go back to sleep in her comfortable bed on a sunny morning.

Happily right now was pretty damned good too.

---

It happened occasionally that Zaraki-taichou and Unohana-taichou had a day off which coincided, and did not coincide with one given Kushajisi-fukutaichou. Usually the result of arrangement rather than chance, it pleased only the two-thirds majority.

"But I wanna come toooooo!"

Ikakku's "patient" voice said, "Na, come on, kid. They're gonna do grownup stuff. Let's go have some fun. I think I can spar witcha for an hour."

"A hour? Is that all? Can Feather-brow spar with me for another hour when we're done?"

"I dunno. Whyn'tcha go negotiate with 'im."

"Featherrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!"

Taichou smiled at each other and stepped through the senkaimon.

It would have surprised many that both taichou had a post box in Karakura. Unohana-taichou had little need for medical journals, but subscribed to all manner of magazines, in many languages, which dealt with herbs, energy management, and meditation. She also picked up Ini Kuchiki's subscriptions to yoga magazines and The Carl Jung Institute. The fashion and arts-and-crafts magazines sent to her box were for Yumi.

"Good kami," Zaraki-taichou said, looking at the six-inch pile. "You want me ta carry those for ya?"

"You've a pile of your own."

The latest of several sword-makers' catalogs, Soldier of Fortune (which Zaraki was convinced was high-quality fiction), Military Officer Magazine, Military History, and, for some reason he could not have put into words if he tried, Proceedings, the journal of the American Naval Institute. Each month Yumi read all of them to Yachiru, translating as best he could out of the English with a comprehensive dictionary by his side, while Zaraki held her in his lap and made notes. Sometimes the two men put the little girl to bed and went back to the magazines, using her Barbie and Ken[pachi] dolls to re-enact battles. (Usually they were soldiers, but if Proceedings was under discussion, they often became ships.) The two members of the Eleventh Division told each other, and themselves, that they were doing this to truly understand the strategic principles discussed.

There were some police-interest magazines in there too; the two fields were, to Zaraki's thinking, remarkably similar. He finished, and grinned down at her. "Mine's bigger."

Unohana blushed. This man. "If you'll carry the magazines, and watch the bags while I try things on, I'll carry the bags."

"Deal." Zaraki layered the fifteen-inch pile into his backpack, and swung it over one shoulder.

Unohana's still-empty pack hung off one of hers. She took his arm. "Buy you breakfast somewhere, sailor?"

He grinned down at her. With his hair down, he wasn't quite the sight he was in Sereitei, but his height and his thinness got him more than a few glances. His Osaka accent was particularly strong for the outskirts of Tokyo, marking him indelibly as an outsider whenever he opened his mouth: "You been watchin' too many Bugs Bunny cartoons with Yachiru."

"There is no such thing," Unohana said serenely, and took his arm, "as 'too many' Bugs Bunny cartoons."

They sailed off into Karakura's byways.

Breakfast complete, Unohana pulled out a list. So did Kenpachi. They compared and correlated, and got to work.

Their passes were for twenty-four hours. They didn't plan to stay the whole day, but to return after having dinner, and spend the night together at Unohana's.

They did plan to clothes shop during the afternoon. That is, Unohana planned to clothes shop, and Kenpachi proposed to watch her do this. He had had so few women in his life that their habits and ways fascinated him endlessly, and to watch Unohana shop was almost as good an entertainment as playing soldiers - er, hem, that is, being sure he understood the strategies discussed in the military and police magazines - with Yumichika.

He would admit, if forced to, that he liked watching Bugs Bunny, and especially Roadrunner, almost as much.

His backpack was filled with art supplies to be about equally divided between Yumichika and Yachiru; a particular whetstone from a particular shop for Ikkaku, whose birthday it was going to be shortly; two other requests from seated officers in the Eleventh; the next set of discs containing Bugs Bunny cartoons; the next set of discs containing Roadrunner cartoons; a go set carved from kaya but sized to travel, whose bowls and pieces were contained cleverly within its board for Byakuya Kuchiki, who after his return from Hueco Mundo had not been well for a while now.

Kenpachi hadn't asked Unohana what was up with Sixth Division's taichou, someone who, along with Shuuhei Hisagi, he defined as a "friend." He never asked her about anyone unless he needed to know as taichou; he had never wanted to make it necessary for her to tell him she couldn't violate a patient's privacy. And somehow, in this case, he hadn't wanted to know what was haunting Byakuya's eyes. He just wanted to help make it go away.

He also had four pairs of jeans that fit his lanky frame like spandex, two packages of something called "briefs," which Unohana told him were sexy (and more importantly had indicated their importance as impetus for her to accompany him to a lingerie shop to pick out something of his choice for herself to wear), and some assorted colors of T-shirts, a garment like a very simplified shitagi with a single chest pocket and extremely short straight sleeves. She told him that he wore the blue, the gray, and the green very well. Black and white were not as good. Brown? Okay, not great. He would not wear purple of any shade, didn't like red unless it was flowing from an enemy's veins, and refused to countenance yellow or orange. Two plaid wool shirts (gray-black-and-white, green-blue-and-black), three pairs of thick wool socks, and a pair of size-thirteen hiking boots completed his purchases, and stuffed the bag to bursting.

Unohana thought that if she got him to wear a sampling of all those things at once, she'd croak of pure arousal. Never mind that this was not medically possible. She was a doctor, dammit, she'd find a way.

Kenpachi, for his part, had declared that he needed to refuel, and was currently exploring the depths of the menu at McDonald's. As they sat at a table for four (two gigai, two backpacks), she was checking the compounded list over, being sure that they had forgotten nothing, while she had some chicken bits, or whatever they were called, and a - milk tremor? Something like that.

Kenpachi felt the pangs of hunger recede after he had eaten two four-ounce (before cooking) beef sandwiches, one with and one without cheese, about a half-pound of some stringy yellow stuff that was delicious until it got cold, twenty of the chicken bits, which also were quite good until cold, and first a pink and then a pale-brown milk tremor. He proposed to polish all this off with a much larger dark-brown drink to whose surface rose ominous bubbles. It was called "Boot Rear," or something close to that, and he had liked the name and the appearance so much that he really didn't care how it tasted.

"Well, except for my clothes, I think we got it all," Unohana said, with the slightly glossy look of a woman who is in the middle of successfully hunter-gathering. She pushed the list, with all the items crossed off it, into the middle of the table.

"Good," said Kenpachi. He finished the last of the milk tremors with a noise made through the suction tube traditionally used in their consumption - the Living World had some very odd traditions around the ingestion of food - and started in on the dark-brown drink. "You wanna walk while I finish this? The lingerie shop ain't far. Or if you want we can go to the clothes shop first, then the lingerie shop."

"If we go to the clothes shop first," Unohana said, "I'll hurry." She pulled out her own list. "I've only got to get two more shirts and two pairs of jeans. I'd like to find another pair of black pumps but that can wait if it has to."

He got up and pulled the sixty-pound backpack into place, stifling a belch. Boot Rear, indeed. "You know the way, so I'll folla ya. If you see somethin' ya like, I'll be right behind ya."

She cocked an eye at him, knowing his real reason. "When I wear pants, you just like to watch my ass."

He grinned. "Sure."

They weren't aware they were being watched. Unohana might have been if she were paying attention, but she wasn't. Kenpachi was as blind to other people's reiatsu as many a mortal.

The tall blond man had sharpened his focus from clear across the wide central aisle of the mall. That was a face he had not seen in more than a century. He left the knife shop, and spent the afternoon trailing them, making sure that he was correct.

She'd changed her hair - the long braid pulled to the front was now plaited neatly behind her, falling to her hips from the crown of her head. She wasn't dressed in shikahoushou or even kimono, but rather a western-style shirt and pants, with a casual jacket, suitable for the November weather outside, thrown over one arm.

And then he got close enough to see that the deep blue eyes weren't black, and heard that calm voice, unmistakably Retsu Unohana's.

The guy with her he did not know. Uuuuugly. Taller than he was, but skinny. Still, with the way he moved it was stringy muscle, not lack thereof. And the reiatsu? Through the roof.

Kensei Muguruma put one hand into the pocket of his cargo pants, crooked a finger into the neck of his own jacket, and tossed it over one shoulder. Then he followed Retsu Unohana and Kenpachi Zaraki into the largest clothing store in the Karakura Mall.

The sales clerk approached Unohana within moments of her arrival. "Can I help you to find anything?" she asked, with the appropriate bow.

Unohana bowed in return. "I'm looking for a western-style blouse, long sleeves, green, blue, or pink, with a high collar, or one that can be closed at the neck," she said.

"Ah. Would the gentleman care to sit while we look?"

"Th' gentleman would," Kenpachi said. Shown a seat that kept him in view of the dressing rooms, he excavated one of his sword catalogs from the backpack, and was quite happy to wait for Retsu's return to his world.

Retsu, for her part, had found a pink, a blue, a green, and even a tan blouse she thought she'd give a try-on to. She stepped out of the dressing room in the pink one and came face to face with Kensei Muguruma.

He was the first to speak, after swallowing. "Retsu," he said.

"Kensei ..." She had gone white as a sheet, and didn't know what to say. "I - it's very good to see you, Kensei. It's wonderful to know that you are well."

"What did they tell you about us? That we had died?"

"I - yes. That all of you had been killed in that area of Rukongai that was giving us so much trouble then." She looked down at her feet. "There was a memorial service. I'm afraid I made rather a fool of myself at it."

He glanced down, then back up at her. "It was a little different than that," he said quietly. "I saw you with somebody when you came in here. Do you suppose he might let us go have coffee together?"

"I - yes. He's a wonderful man, Kensei."

"I'm glad of that, Retsu. You deserve someone like that."

"So do you."

"No such luck." He gave her a wry grin. "Do you want to finish here? I'll go talk to him."

She blinked. "All right. His name's Kenpachi Zaraki."

"That's his name?"

"Yes. It's a long story. Ask him about it yourself."

"Okay. There's a coffee shop in this store. Can you find it?"

"Yes." I am a woman, and can therefore ask for directions.

He gave her a crooked smile. "I'll check back here first. See you in a bit, then."

"Kenpachi Zaraki?"

Kenpachi hadn't expected to be addressed by his given, or rather chosen, name. He blinked, and shut his catalog. "That's me."

"My name's Kensei Muguruma. Retsu and I are old friends. I was hoping I might persuade you to let me have a few moments of her time this afternoon."

The taller man stood. "I ain't in th' habit," he said slowly, "of tellin' Retsu what she can and can't do with her time."

They sized each other up. The reiatsu exchange involved began to make the overhead fluorescent lamps flicker.

Kensei said, "Ah. Wise of you. When she and I were together, I was a bit too inclined to run the show."

The kenpachi nodded.

Kensei relaxed a bit. He saw no need to turn this into a pissing contest, although really, he wanted to drag this guy off to the hideout and pound his ass straight into the ground, and that was before he thought about him and Retsu.

Retsu - after a century, he couldn't really expect anything else.

And if she'd still carried the torch? All kinds of difficulties there. It wasn't as if he could travel to Soul Society to pick her up for a date. She couldn't come here on a whim, either.

So. "Times change," he said carefully, holding the other man's single visible eye, "and people move on. But she and I were deprived of a way to say good-bye when we parted, and I'd like to fix that."

Kenpachi nodded slowly. "I see. You figured out a place to talk?"

"This store has a coffee shop. Give us an hour?"

"All right. She'll probably find me at the knife shop, if you get done any faster."

"I'll tell her that." Kensei held out his hand. "Nice to have met you, Kenpachi."

"And you, Kensei." They managed to shake without turning it into a handgrip-strength contest, and went their separate ways.

Overhead, the lights steadied.

Retsu bought the blouses, three pairs of jeans, the pumps, and a nightie she thought Kenpachi might enjoy taking off (off herself, not himself). They all fit into her backpack.

Kensei showed up just as she finished and paid. "There you are," she said cheerfully.

The sales girl, stunned, gaped. She came in with that one, and was leaving with this one? None of the others would believe it after seeing that first one.

"Here I am," he said with the smile that had first attracted her all those years ago.

"How did it go?"

"Have you heard the term 'alpha male'?"

"Oh dear."

"Exactly. Shall we go?" He offered her his elbow, that western gesture he'd picked up from somewhere. She took it.

Kenpachi found himself outside the knife shop, looking at the wares through the window. All pretty crappy. Nothing really worth owning. He sat down on a nearby bench and found the catalog.

His thoughts were in turmoil. He looked at a page for ten minutes without seeing it.

His sword said, It will be all right.

What? His mind felt as far out of order as his lank hair. How can it be all right if she decides ta go back with him?

She won't. His sword and I were not able to become friends. He is a good man, at heart, but his . . . his top layers are impatient and rather cruel, and she was beginning to find that out.

I ain't carryin' you. How can ya talk ta me?

You need me. When you do, I am here. I do not require the blade you carry to manifest myself within your heart; that is where I live.

It wasn't that he hadn't heard and understood the balance of her statement, but he responded to those first three words with a wail of woe: I need her too.

That is not strictly true. But you and she offer each other much happiness, and Minazuki and I are greatly better suited to one another than Kensei's blade and I. That relationship, she said, with something that was almost a huff, was very hard work.

He was somewhat reassured. The sword said, You have done the right thing, Kenpachi, in letting her go. She'll come back. She's yours, in some sense, as truly as you are hers: you are each incomplete without the other. She bears the compassion you cannot afford on the battlefield. You bear the aggression she can wield only for her patients' sakes. Each of you reflects the other, Moon to one another's Sun.

He turned a page. More for something to do than to read the next bit of advertising copy.

Are you familiar with the human saying, "If you hold a bird in your hand, let it go. If it comes back to you, it's truly yours. If it flies free, it never was"?

"Buncha human crap," he muttered. He was not aware he had spoken aloud until a small girl half-turned from her mother's side to stare wide-eyed at him.

The sword snorted at him. He felt oddly comforted. No, it's true. Think on it. You just have time to get to the lingerie store, buy her something, and get back here. Go now. She won't want to when she comes back.

This one, the sword said, stopping his hand above a row of lacy frippery, that size, his hand moved across yellow, green, pink, red, black, turquoise, skin color, lilac ... that color. Get it gift-wrapped.

His but to listen and obey. Oh yeah, and pay for.

Unohana wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, Kensei. It's so wonderful to see you again, but finding all of this out ... you have been very hard done by, my friend."

He turned over the hand that lay beside his coffee cup, and she put her smaller one into it. "Thanks, Retsu. It makes a difference knowing that somebody in Sereitei, now, has the true story."

"A few more people will before I get done with it, Kensei."

"I'd appreciate that. I'll let the others know, too."

"Yes, please do. Please give them all my best wishes. I wish that I could tell Hachi in person; I so liked him."

"I'll let him know you said that."

"Thank you." She looked at the clock; their hour was almost up. "I still like to be punctual, so I think at this point I'll say good-bye."

"Would you object to giving me ... a good-bye kiss?" He stood, and came around to pull her chair out.

Her eyes went round, and dark. "No, I don't think I would object."

Kenpachi turned the beautiful package over and over in his big hands.

He saw them long before she saw him. Saw the kiss. Saw the parting. Put the package away.

She walked toward him outside the knife store, as he watched the blond man go in the other direction.

He wasn't fooled by her appearance of composure; she was a wreck. He stood up, and gathered her into his arms.

"Bad, huh?" he said, over the top of her head.

She nodded, not quite trusting her voice.

"Going to be all right?"

"Oh, I hope so ... I hope so."

That voice was the only indication she ever gave that life, at the moment, had beaten the metal of her soul thin and fragile. He heard it the day after battles, and when she had lost a long fight for a patient.

He stood quietly, and simply held her close without making any demands, letting her find her equilibrium.

She stood back from him eventually, and wiped her eyes. "Look, I know we were going to go to the lingerie store ... but could we come back, and make that the point of the trip? I hate to wimp out on you, but ... "

"No, it's all right." He put his big callused thumb on her cheek, and slid his hand slowly along her jaw for comfort. "It's all right," he said gently. "Let's go home."

She never did get her resilience back, even after telling him the story of the Vizards. He found the tale pretty disappointing himself, and said so.

They spent their night together in one another's arms, and that, that night, was enough for both.

She was called in early in the morning. She hadn't returned by the time he had to leave for the Eleventh.

He left the package atop her pillow.

He still hadn't heard from her by the end of the day. With a heavy heart, he went to bed.

He feared that he'd opened his hand, and the bird had flown.

---

The Captain's meeting was particularly fierce that week.

When Unohana had finished a bald recitation of the Vizards' tale from their point of view, Kenpachi Zaraki stood up.

"I do not expect," Zaraki roared, "any organization which I'm a part'a ta behave that scaly ta its members, the guys who're down there in the trenches!"

"So noted," Genryuusai said dryly.

"That ain't gonna do it," Zaraki said darkly. "I want an explanation, and I wanna know how you're gonna prevent that kinda treatment from happenin' again durin' this war we haveta conduct against Aizen." He paused, and looked around the chamber. Only Retsu guessed that his heart was breaking when his gaze touched her face, and winced away ... "'Cause any one of us that falls inta his hands could end up a Vizard. So whattaya gonna do about that, Genryuusai?"

The General had not felt as if he were at bay for several generations now. He glared at Zaraki, and saw to his discomfort that Unohana was looking at the ape and grinning.

That evening, at about the end of the work day, Unohana-taichou craved admittance to Zaraki-taichou's office. She smiled at Yumichika Ayasegawa. "Do you need anything from him this afternoon, Yumi? I plan to distract him for a while."

The boss's bad mood hadn't been apparent to anyone but Yumi, who'd been snapped at in a deeper voice than usual all day. "No, thank you, taichou. He needs a little distraction today." Yumi locked the front door behind him, all the while wishing he'd talked to Urahara about bugging taichou's office. Oh, to be a fly on the wall ...

Retsu Unohana sat down in the fifth seat's chair, and took off her shoes and tabi.

"C'mon in," Zaraki growled, in answer to her knock. He thought it was probably Yumi, didn't look up.

Until he heard the lock click behind her. "The hell ya doin' - Retsu!"

"Kenpachi." She smiled at him. "I found the package."

"Oh. Oh, good." He put his brush down, got up. "Have a seat. Would you like some tea?"

"No, thank you," Retsu said simply. Her face and voice were calm. She took off her haori, hung it over his on its hook by the door, and shrugged out of the black shitagi.

Zaraki swallowed. "Retsu - "

She shrugged out of the white shitagi.

"Retsu - "

She was wearing lilac underneath.

She shed her hakama with a wriggle that Kenpachi saw in his dreams for several decades thereafter.

She was wearing lilac underneath.

He'd opened his hand, and the bird of her heart came back.

---

That morning, Kenpachi Zaraki had completed an errand he was quite happy to have run.

Retsu Unohana had put her weekly shopping list up on the icebox in her quarters two days previous. One of the items on it was "Panties, white cotton, plain."

His sword said, Go get the damned things for her.

He knew her size. He also didn't want Retsu to believe that he only bought her lingerie so that he could have the fun of taking it off (her ... not him! 'Course her and her western fundoshi - which he was idiot enough to wear - was bad enough). He learned when the Senkaimon would next be opened, hitched a ride, bought the plain cotton panties and had them giftwrapped at his favorite lingerie store, where he knew he was callin' in a biiiig favor, and gave them to Isane Kotetsu. Who this morning had laid them on the Fourth Division taichou's pillow.

Then he had gone to work, then to lunch, and then to the hardest work of all.

"I'm goin' with Braidy-Lady and Captain Pretty an' you're not!"

Sometimes, Kenpachi Zaraki wondered why he had ever bothered ta take her up. He coulda walked away all those years ago, and no one woulda ever known.

No one. He woulda arrived unencumbered in Yumichika and Ikkaku's lives, unencumbered in the Eleventh Division, and unen-freakin'-cumbered at th' feet o' one Retsu Unohana.

"Yachiru," said the aforementioned Retsu Unohana, Braidy-Lady to Zaraki's encumbrance, "that's called gloating and it's not nice."

"Why not? Ken-chan does it all the time."

Braidy-Lady's dark-blue eyes flashed at him, and he had the grace to look down, abashed. His inamorta said levelly, "Whether that's true or not, Yachiru, it's not nice to try to make people feel bad."

"Oh." She put her hands behind her back, and swung her little body back and forth, so that Kenpachi Zarakai fell in love with Yachiru Kusajichi all over again. She was just so damned - darned - cute.

Okay, so pickin' her up was the right thing after all.

Still, even though she was excited, he didn't expect this level o' sass after he got Yachiru ready ta go with Braidy-Lady. He paid special attention ta gettin' her hair ta look nice, got her into her new and therefore clean pink clothes (Yachiru was not so much hard on her clothes as the bane of their brief pink existence, which inevitably ended in one of two ways: she tore and/or stained them beyond wearability, or she outgrew them within two months).

He'd also told her she hadda be nice, and had given her a good lunch before she knew she was goin' out fer ice cream (Retsu was particularly emphatic on that point: she could, and she would, return Yachiru with a recently-ingested belly full of ice cream, and then she would go home, leaving the Eleventh Division to deal with Yachiru-on-sugar, unless Yachiru had had her lunch before she, Retsu, picked her up. Period, no argument).

Where had he gone wrong? When ya considered Retsu Unohana, his nameless blade, and Yachiru Kusajichi, he was the most-whipped six-and-a-half-foot-tall star-haired homicidal maniac in existence. And did he mention, the best swordsman of his generation? Kill ya as soon as look at ya?

And two women and one blade, who refused point-blank to tell him her name thank you very much for asking, ran his entire life. How had he come to this?

It started when he picked her up. So if only he hadn't done that ...

With Retsu, it started when he killed his predecessor, although he wasn't sure he hadn't done the guy a favor by gettin' him outta all subsequent captains' meetings. His first one, where he'd laid eyes on Retsu Unohana, he'd remember that alla his life... it took him gettin' almost killed to make it stick, though, and now, here they were.

Wherever "here" was. He was committed ta her, and ta their relationship. She was only sure he hadn't done anythin' ta make that relationship untenable.

This did not make Kenpachi Zaraki happy. It did, however, keep him on his toes.

And kami only knew when it started with the blade. He had the faint idea that she'd been running his life at least as long as he'd been conscious.

So Retsu Unohana was takin' his daughter out fer ice cream in th' Living World, which happened to be his personal favorite thing in th' whole of a buncha worlds, and they was meetin' Byakuya Kuchiki, who seemed to be Yachiru's longest-lasting childhood crush, and who was one of Zaraki's friends into the bargain, and Kenpachi Zaraki wasn't invited. His blade had made that clear.

Retsu and Yachiru need a relationship of their own. Let them forge one.

Okay, okay.

"Bye, Ken-chan!" his daughter squealed. He picked her up (again) and gave her a brief kiss, and then she vaulted out of his arms, to land in front of Braidy-Lady and take one of her hands, saying, "Can we go now?"

"Sure." Retsu smiled down at her small pink-haired charge, and then transferred that smile to Kenpachi Zaraki. "We'll be back in a couple of hours," she said calmly. "See you then."

"Okay. Have a good time." He found a smile somewhere to give her back. He didn't want her to think he was sulking.

Oh, he was sulking all right: he just didn't want her to think that.

Deprived of the company of the five people he liked best in the world , Kenpachi Zaraki finished quite a lot of paperwork and got up from his desk. Ikkaku Madarame and Yumichika Ayasegawa were respectively in the Living World, although probably not where the others were headed - Zaraki did not know where "Tanzania" was in relation to Tokyo - and here in the Eleventh's training ground sorting out the newbies, a task for which he, Kenpachi Zaraki, was spectacularly unfitted: he would end up sending most of them to Fourth Division and Retsu would not be happy with him - damn, he was whipped.

Whipped or not, he wanted some freakin' ice cream.

He went in search of Shuuhei Hisagi, his sixth-favorite person in the entire world. This took him in the direction of the Ninth Division, where he nodded to the third and fourth seats who did the most routine of the paperwork jobs, Shuuhei still lacking a lieutenant as a consequence of remaining one himself, and knocked on the door to Hisagi's office.

"Enter."

"Hey," Zaraki said, putting his head around the door. "Put that thing - " he nodded toward the brush in Shuuhei's hand - "down an' come out fer ice cream with me."

Shuuhei methodically wiped it, dipped it in water, and wiped it again. "I can't, I shouldn't, and I'm coming."

Once clear of Soul Society, the two walked along the narrow streets of Rukongai. Shuuhei said, "You have your mouth set for ice cream?"

Shuuhei was, for once, healthy. He had a tendency to collect things like broken ribs and cracked collarbones and forcibly stretched ankle ligaments. Zaraki, who often had to slacken his own pace to allow Shuuhei to walk with him, hadn't even thought about it today. And his friend's eyes were a little brighter, and the corners of his mouth turned up a little bit, so Shuu was having a very nice time.

Butter pecan ... the memory of butter pecan teased Zaraki's taste buds. "Depends on what else ya got."

"I know a guy who knows a guy who can get us some wagashi, but we gotta pick it up and eat it someplace else."

Zaraki's zanupakuto stirred under his hand. Wagashi? she said.

The western world had penetrated even to Rukongai, if not very far into the more dubious streets and alleys. But even there displays of Pocky were commoner, now, than the traditional Japanese sweets.

Wagashi were also more than rare in Zaraki's life: he had never had a reliable source for them, outside of restaurants, and even when he ate in one he always had Yachiru with him. And she preferred Pocky. Emphatically.

"Wagashi? Really? That's fine about pickin' it up, it's a nice day. We could go eat it under Ukitake's trees. I can't be gone very long anyways. Retsu took Yachiru out fer ice cream."

"Here? Or the Living World?"

"I think they was plannin' ta go to th' Living World. Byakuya went with 'em."

Narrow grey eyes smiled when Shuuhei grinned. "Says things for that man's patience."

Zaraki grinned. "It does, don't it? I'd never a'thought he'd go ta the Livin' World just ta have ice cream with my daughter, but he was talkin' about somethin' called 'Rocky Road' earlier this week. That, and 'Death by Chocolate.'"

A moment passed, and then Shuuhei said, cautiously, "And are they ice creams, or battle techniques?"

The guy who knew the guy directed them. The guy was happy to sell them wagashi, the real deal, just misshapen or otherwise cosmetically flawed, and thus not usable in restaurants.

Kenpachi liked the jelly types, and his sword whispered "hanami-dango" in his ear - dumplings in three colors, usually threaded onto skewers. These, not having survived the quality-control process, were unskewered and sort-of round. Kenpachi carefully chose three each of the brown, green, and pink: representing the bark, leaf, and blossom of the cherry trees now coming into bloom.

Shuuhei divided his take equally between daifuku, elegant dumplings, and dainty ofukimo in small cups of paper. Well, lumpy-dainty, anyway.

Kenpachi also bought Retsu some of the loveliest monaka he had ever seen, the cake shaped like small walnut shells with a filling colored and shaped to resemble the walnut meat. Those he had put into a separate box, for later ...

They hit a tea cart for something to drink, and adjourned to Ukitake's cherry trees, overlooking a lake, Kuchiki lands beyond it. It was also Yachiru's frog-hunting grounds.

Shuuhei flapped out a clean blue handkerchief the size of a young flag of truce after they found just the right tree to sit under.

Chew slowly, Kenpachi's sword whispered in his ear.

You get ta be my mother somehow?

I do not ask much of you, Kenpachi Zaraki. I ask this. I wish to savor these.

All right, all right.

He knew from her tone that he should be making amends, and so he began with the hamani-dango. The bark balls in this batch had been flavored with chocolate - had he known that, he would have bought a few for Kuchiki as well - and the leaf balls with mugwort. The pink ones had no flavor other than a faint savory sweetness. He ate one of each with a delicacy of gesture odd in such a large, uncouth fellow. But it came from precision of movement.

Shuuhei let a bite of daifuku dissolve in his mouth, and said, "Aaaah," as the sweetness faded. The gentle smile he presented to Kenpachi made him look a lot less like a yakuza.

"So you and what's her name, Orihime, you two doing all right?"

"Oh, we're fine. It keeps gettin' better, in fact. Although I wish she wouldn't insist we watch porn together. She says it's for ideas, but hey, I got enough of those when I was younger. I don't need any more, and they ain't shown me nothing new. And porn, you know, if it isn't instructive it tends to be pretty boring. –You and Retsu?"

Kenpachi had tried watching porn with Abarai and had precisely the same reaction. "Still about the same, but that's good enough for me. She ain't kicked me out yet."

Shuuhei looked up at him and there was a definite grin in his eyes. "You quit leavin' undies around for Ikkaku to explain to Yachiru?"

"Hah. All of Sereitei knows that, do they?"

"All of 'em I talk to."

"Ha. Yeah. Now if I got somethin' to leave her, I take it to Isane, and she drops it off when she does the daily sweep of Retsu's quarters."

"Daily sweep?" Shuuhei chose and applied himself to a second daifuku.

"Yeah. Apparently Second Division found a recording - thingy - in Retsu's quarters, and one in mine. Now they sweep 'em both every day."

Shuuhei considered this. "Well, one way'n another, it isn't like everybody and his cousin and their dog don't know when you have an orgasm anyway. Why a record?"

Kenpachi's cheeks went a little pink. Retsu insisted he remove his eyepatch just before the earth moved for both of them. He was happy to oblige her in this, or at least he had been ... "Apparently in th' Living World, you can get a lotta money for a tape like that."

"So it was Kurosaki who ... ?"

"Nah, too much of a prude. Probably Matsumoto."

"Geez. Glad I'm not Hitsugaya."

"Ur." This was the famous Zaraki growl of agreement, articulated around the blossom representation of a hanani-dango. Shuuhei smiled, and had another bite of daifuku.

Kenpachi had not been able to eat any of the wagashi selected to his tastes, only those of his blade's preference. They hadn't been bad, but he had begun to believe that he really should do something (although what remained unspecified) about how whipped he was, and from various directions at that. He put the sweets back into their box and walked to the Ninth with Shuuhei,

"How will you keep Yachiru from eating those?" Shuuhei said curiously.

"Put 'em in the Division safe," Zaraki said. "Nobody knows the combination but me and Yumichika."

"Hah." The gray eyes were amused. "Tell you what, next time let's see if we can get to the Living World. There's a cart in an alley I want to take you to. Best takoyaki I've ever had."

"Yeah? I ain't much for octopus balls. Yumi likes 'em, though."

"Oh, they've got other things as well. I don't ordinarily care much for octopus balls either, but these are really tasty."

"Okay. I gotta be able to look at my desk to know when I can do that, though."

"All right." Shuuhei stepped up to the entrance to the Ninth, which left him as tall as Kenpachi. "See you next time." They bowed to each other, and Kenpachi growled, "Take care."

On the dusty roads of Sereitei, the sword said, in a curious tone of thought, Are you really so ... whipped, whatever that means ... by me, Yachiru, and Retsu?

Among th' three a' ya, my life ain't my own.

Among the three of us, your life is better than you ever thought it had the remotest possibility of becoming.

He cocked his big head to the side just as he reached the Eleventh's headquarters, so he made it into a nod for the guard (who had just spent the most nerve-wracking nanosecond of his existence trying to remember if there was a spot on his uniform when Zaraki-taichou wagged his head like that), and stepped inside. True enough.

So tell me, Kenpachi of Zaraki ... what next?

This little war we got goin' on with Aizen, I'd imagine.

Aye. We zanupakuto are distressed that three of us are no longer available to talk to. Tobiume is saddened by the absence of Kyoka Suigetsu, as Haineko is through missing Shinso, and Wabisuke misses Shinso as well ... that, though, is not a good bond. Not for Wabisuke.

He was silent, not knowing that the blades had a social life ... well, he should have, he guessed, being aware of what Minazuki and what's-her-name got up to together ...

So, are those guys ... what do you call y'self and Minazuki? Are you a pairing, a couple, what?

She was silent for a long, uncomfortable beat of time, as he opened the safe, put the sweets into it, and hung his haori. And when she did speak, she did not answer him directly. Among us, the saying used for bonded zanupakuto is 'paired blades.' I know that that phrase is used for something different among you shinigami. Some blades are paired for the lives, afterlives, of their wielders. Some of those bonds actually survive death's gate, and go on to be enacted in the Living World.

And you an' Minazuki are paired blades? He seated himself at the desk, pulled out papers, inkstone, ink, waterpot, brush. Swearwords. Yachiru was absent.

I will not tell you that. Nor shall I tell you of the situation among the other blades. You shinigami all must find this out for yourselves.

He snorted. He had never before felt such a sense of uncertainty from his blade. Fer cryin' out loud. You afraid I'm gonna run off to a fortune teller or somethin', find out how long it's gonna last?

Would you? I warn you, Kenpachi Zaraki, find a good one if you wish to know. –Yachiru is coming. I will speak with you later.

His blade vanished from his consciousness, and the door to the office blew open all the way in the breeze of his pink-haired daughter's entrance. "Hi, Kenny! I had butter pecan an' chocolate peppermint and pumpkin macha!"

Behind her, Byakuya Kuchiki and Retsu Unohana were somehow holding one another up. For two people who put such effort into remaining well-groomed, they were both a bit ... tattered.

Good kami, she was going to be up for days.

"Didya?" he said, as she zoomed into his arms. "I had wagashi with Shuuhei."

---

Late the next afternoon, Kenpachi Zaraki, his head heavy as Yachiru had not exhausted her sugar high until one o'clock in the morning, was trying to push papers across his desk when a hesitant knock sounded at his office door.

What the hell? He'd sent Yumi to get Yachiru her dinner about a half-hour ago. He had to get some of this crap off his desk. "Enter!" he barked.

Retsu Unohana put her head around the door of his office. "I got your package," she said.

---

Occasionally, just occasionally, somebody with brains showed up in the Eleventh Division.

Ikkaku Madarame wasn't stupid, although he was so impatient (except with Yachiru ) that you sometimes couldn't tell the difference. He had unexpected talents of the organizational sort, although he was happiest applying them to combat or combat-practice situations. He ran and oversaw all of the Eleventh's drills and training sessions, and if somebody challenged a seatholder, Ikkaku set that up, too. Combined with his talents as a carpenter, these made for some very busy days on his part.

Yumichika Ayasegawa could run an abacus and keep a set of books. Kenpachi Zaraki did not know what he would do without Yumichika Ayasegawa. Well, he did: probably he still would be struggling to balance the Division's books for the first month he ran it, and that was how many decades ago now? This was why Yumichika Ayasegawa was asked to look out for and train his own assistant, who might at a moment's notice become his replacement. (Zaraki had never prayed harder than he did when he addressed the Fates over having Ayasegawa outlive him.)

Ren Tsuriji was new to the Eleventh, a recent graduate, and an odd man. Very secretive. Didn't go into the baths with anyone else. Still, he was gettin' washed someplace, because he worked just as hard as they all did, and he didn't stink, either in the physical sense or at sword play.

Also, like most other members of the Eleventh Division, he had a lot more guts than good sense. These were the basic requirements for staying under Kenpachi's command.

Ren himself liked the Eleventh, although he didn't feel totally at home there. He didn't know where else he'd feel more like he belonged; he knew that that was a problem he carried with him due to his own differences, and not something resident within the Eleventh.

The only other place Ren had felt at home was Soul Academy, where what you could do mattered more than what you were; that was kinda true of the Eleventh as well. Still ... Ren did not trust the Eleventh with his difference, just as he had not trusted most of the Academy.

Ren's sword chops and guts were necessary to staying in the Eleventh. The discovery of his brain was a matter of serendipity:

Yachiru Kusajichi was at her desk in the office, pouting. She had been deprived of extra training sessions with both Kenpachi and Ikkaku until, Kenpachi said, "You getcher grades up. I know ye're too smart ta be gettin' D's in all yer subjects."

"But, Kenpachi - "

"No 'buts,' Yachiru. Yer doin' extra math work until yer next test, an' no sparring wit' either one'a us until we see that those grades're better."

At Kenpachi's pronouncement, both Yachiru and Ikkaku pouted. (Ikkaku was marginally able to hide it better.) But Yachiru, trailing him every chance she got, had provided Ikkaku with an extra set of hands: this is very useful to human souls, who seem to be able to devise tasks that require three hands quite easily. (If humans had three hands, they would most likely devise tasks that require four.)

Ren Tsuriji was idly sharpening his blade in his quarters that day, and heard Ikkaku swearing at his own lack of a third hand.

Ren being the kind of low-key sociable guy he was, he wandered out to see what had upset the Division's third seat. "Hey, Madarame. What's goin' on?"

"Tsuriji? Here, hold this." He was handed one end of a tape measure.

Ren proved himself adept at holding, and was immediately drafted by Ikkaku to assist in some more repairs. Thus, Ren was present when Ikkaku measured the office for a new bookcase, and Yachiru said, "I don't understand why seventeen divided by two makes eight and half."

Kenpachi remained silent, as he did not understand this either. Ren, holding one end of a measuring tape perfectly straight and level for Ikkaku, said, "It makes eight an' a half because if ya divide seventeen by two, ya get eight, and one is left over. One divided by two is one-half."

"Hey! Pay attention to what we're doin' - oh," said Ikkaku, who had just realized that Ren hadn't moved the tape measure.

Yumichika raised his head from deep within the account books, and said to Ren, "Can you use an abacus?"

Ren's answer ("Sorta") made both Yumichikia Ayasegawa and Kenpachi Zaraki very, very happy indeed, although it pissed Ikkaku Madarame right off.

"You can't have him!" the hairless shinigami said, dramatically spreading arms and legs as he stood in front of Ren. "He's mine! I need an assistant!"

Kenpachi raised his head from the mountains of paperwork he commonly addressed in the course of a day, and snarled, "An' since when do you think you get ta vote on stuff like that? Go get Makizo Aramaki. He's about good fer that kinda stuff."

Ikkaku, shoulders slumped, moved off, growling about how he wasn't either, since he, Ikkaku, should know, having tried the fool in the role of carpenter's monkey earlier, and never wanting to do that again ... but Zaraki ignored him after snarling in his wake, "An' that's an order!"

Yachiru said to Ren, "Yay! Now I can ask ya that kinda question alla time!"

Zaraki growled, "Ya can ask him how ta do the problems. Ya can't ask him what the answers are."

Yachiru returned to pouting, having learned a valuable lesson about strategy: never let your father know you are planning to do an end-run around your homework.

Yumichika's days got a lot easier very quickly. Ikkaku's didn't, until he found another hammer monkey - that is, carpenter's assistant - having duly fired Aramaki from the post at the end of the first day. And Zaraki, knowing how far he could push Ikkaku, didn't press the issue.

Ren's days as paperwork monkey - that is, Yumichika's assistant - got fuller. He worked with Yumi until noon, trained with Ikkaku until Yachiru returned from school, and thereafter helped her with her homework.

Much to her disgust, he could not be persuaded into giving her the answers.

Your new office assistant, Zaraki's blade said to him one day right out of the blue, as he was walking back from the taichous' meeting.

Yeah, what about 'im?

He's a she.

Zaraki, having dropped Byakuya Kuchiki at the Sixth, was studiously avoiding Mayuri Kurotsuchi by walking a street's-width away from him (Kurotsuchi was also studiously avoiding Zaraki). He stopped dead in his tracks halfway between First and Eleventh. He could feel saké coming on. In avalanche proportions. You're sure about that?

His blade showed him the picture of Rin's zanupakuto. The persona was decidedly hermaphroditic.

Zaraki breathed out. Okay. I don't know what, if anythin', ta do about that. But it explains why he won't bathe with the rest of us.

He could have sworn his blade shrugged. I believe you need do nothing, she said. The child is not a danger to his teammates, as he is a fairly competent bladesman. His true gender makes it impossible for him to be a danger to Yachiru. He is good with an abacus. Therefore, she said, and there was that of the dare in her tone, you need do nothing.

If he's a she, why do you call him - her - "him"?

He prefers it.

Good grief. I thought my life was complicated.

She smiled. (Never mind that swords do not have a face.) Ren's makes yours look very very simple indeed.

I ain't gonna ask.

That is wise of you, taichou.

He blinked. That's th' first time ya ever called me "taichou."

In this instance, are you not called up on to be taichou, above all else? Whatever your own convictions regarding the rightness or wrongness of the way Ren lives his life, you must decide what is best for your squad, and act upon their well-being, not your own wishes.

I wasn't gonna kick th' kid out. First, he's a good swordsman. Second, he ain't a bad person.

I am glad you think so, taichou. –Here comes Yachiru.

"Ken-chan!" his daughter said. "Was you at th' taichous' meetin'?" She leapt effortlessly to his shoulder.

"Yeah. You at the fukutaichous' meetin'?"

"Yup! Can we go train until lunch?"

"Yachiru, why'd ya ask me that? Ya know I gotta tell ya 'no' until yer next report card."

He couldn't see it, but she gave him a sunny smile of complete adoration. "Aw, Kenny! I was hopin' you'd forget!"

He growled. "I don't forget stuff like that, Yachiru."

"Yeah, I know, but I was hopin'!"

Even he had to smile. But then he had to lecture her about hopin' for bad stuff. Oh well. Part of bein' somebody's parent. Like bein' the taichou of Soul Society's Eleventh Squad, it was not a job he ever expected ta have. So in both cases, he just did everything he could thinka' ta make it come out right, an' so far, in both cases, it seemed ta be workin'.

Two days later, Kenpachi had had it.

"If I push another paper I'm gonna lose my mind," he growled to Ren and Yumichika. "Yumi, get bento for you an' me an' Ren an' Yachiru an' Ikky delivered. Get me the biggest one they got, Ikkaku two of the regulars. Charge 'em to trainin' expenses. We're goin' on a picnic."

Ikkaku, summoned from his workshop, smelled of cedar.

Kenpachi led the expedition to a place he liked himself: streamside, near a deep pool, mature trees overhanging the water. Now, lunch digesting, Kenpachi lay under a tree and watched Yachiru getting herself wet and muddy and doubtless crafting many splendid childhood memories in the doing.

He had no childhood memories himself. He couldn't remember ever bein' a kid. Less tall, that he could remember, but bein' a kid? He couldn't ever remember playin'. Life'd always been pretty hard, until they came to the Eleventh. Even with the paperwork, it wasn't hard here.

He watched his troops with the half an eye he wasn't keeping on Yachiru. Yumichika was sparring half-heartedly with Ren. Ikkaku was swimming - had gone upriver and stripped to his fundoshi, come splashing back down.

Yachiru returned to Kenpachi and picked up her zanupakuto. She raced back to the sandy bank of the river, and began performing her katas: rather well, to Kenpachi's judgmental eye.

Then, suddenly, she stopped in a perfect pose, and remained there for several heartbeats. Kenpachi was about to say, "Whatcha doin', Yachiru?" when she turned her blade sideways, and thwacked it down across a stone. Then she held it up in front of her face, said, "Ya stupid sword!" and brought it down on the stone once more.

Kenpachi swooped down and scooped her up, so that she couldn't hit her blade again. "Yachiru! Whatta ya doin'!"

"The stupid sword! He's givin' me lip!"

Yumichika and Ren both swivelled their heads to her. Ikkaku surfaced like some kind of bald orca, and blew water into the air, turning to stare at Yachiru.

"You mean ... it's talking to you?" Yumichika said finally, daring to voice what none of them wanted to.

"Yeah! He's sayin' 'Neener neener neener, I won't tell you my name!'"

The four adults exchanged glances. Ren gathered up remains of their bento boxes, crushing Yachiru's into a small ball and wadding it with the others into Kenpachi's Great Big Bento Box: One of everything! Your full satisfaction, or your money back!

(It still hadn't been enough. Oh well; Kenpachi had thought that he'd get the refund, go home and have tamako kake gohan, if they had any eggs; rice and furikake if they didn't.)

But this news was far more important than his still-growling stomach. "Yachiru, is that true? Ya know how important it is that yer sword start ta talk ta ya so ya can get ta shikai an' bankai. You ain't makin' this up, are ya?"

"No, the stupid sword's talkin' ta me! Or anyway he's sayin' he ain't gonna talk ta me! Stupid sword!" She took a vicious swing at the air with the recalcitrant zanupakuto.

Kenpachi put his big fist over her little one and restrained the swing. "Don't do that, Yachiru. Didja know where everybody was when ya heard 'im?"

"Yumi an' Ren was there" - she pointed - "an' Ikky was there splashin' like a big fish" (sakana-san rose dripping from the river and scowled) - she pointed - "an' you was there." She pointed at Kenpachi's tree. "An' I was over there with my stupid sword!"

"Insulting him won't help matters, Yachiru," Yumichika said quietly.

"Yumi's right," Kenpachi said. "You want yer sword ta talk ta ya, ya gotta be polite to him, even when he ain't polite to you." He set his daughter on the ground, confiscated her blade.

"That stinks!" The little girl became a blur of pink, finding and throwing small rocks in every direction.

"Ow!" Ren said, deflecting a strike with his elbow.

"Ren-chan!" Yachiru said, throwing herself at him. "I'm sorry!" She burst into tears, and he picked her up.

Kenpachi began a growl, and his sword said sharply, Stop that. Let Ren talk to her.

Yachiru continued to cry. Kenpachi knew this meant that she was close to her limit, and needed a nap: but he obeyed his sword, and let her stay with Ren.

The hermaphrodite carried Yachiru to a rock beside the river and sat down with her on one knee, Kenpachi carefully not too far behind.

"When I want to talk to my sword," Ren said, "I sing."

Kenpachi's daughter sniffled, and wipe her sleeve across her eyes, then her nose. "Ya sing? That's silly. I never heard of a sword that likes singin'."

"Well," Ren said, "you probably won't ever hear of one that likes my singin'. I'm kinda bad at it. But Aoi will come out and talk to me if I sing."

"You know your sword's name. Why won't mine tell me his?"

"I dunno, Yachiru. Only the swords know why they do what they do."

"Huh. Stupid swords."

Ren scooped up a handful of small pebbles, and gave one to Yachiru, throwing another into the water. "Nah, they're not stupid. We jus' don't understand them."

Yachiru grabbed a handful of stones and threw them all into the water at once. "But I want him to come out and talk to me!"

"Well, first you gotta get 'cher grades up, and then you can go back to trainin'. That's probably when he'll talk to you."

"Stupid arithmetic!"

"Yeah," Ren said peaceably, "arithmetic's hard."

"Ain't that the truth," whispered Yumichika, who spent all day every day mired in the stuff.

Kenpachi cut his eyes toward his fifth seat, but didn't want to disturb what was happening with his daughter.

The pair took turns throwing pebbles into the water. "Well," Yachiru said about six rocks into it, "if that's what I gotta do, I guess I gotta do it. –Will you help me?" she said, turning the big big eyes on Ren.

Ren, however, was immune to big big eyes. "I'll help ya figger out the problems, but I ain't gonna give you answers." He turned up a flat palm. "This is the last rock. Do you want to throw it, or me?"

"Me," said Yachiru, and threw the last pebble.

Kenpachi gave her a few more minutes to calm down, then said, "Are you guys ready? It's time ta go back."

Yachiru bounced up to his shoulder, all smiles.

About halfway back to the Eleventh, Kenpachi felt her grip loosen, and took her in his arms. She laid her head on his chest and went to sleep.

Once they were inside the compound, he said gruffly, "Tsuriji, good'a ya ta talk ta Yachiru about her zanupakuto."

The kid blushed. "Thanks, taichou."

Ikkaku gave Ren a buffet on the shoulder. "I still ain't forgive ya fer runnin' off on me."

"Sorry, Madarame. I kinda liked workin' with you."

"That's touching," Yumichika said, "but you can't have him back."

And that was how Ren Tsuriji became a full member of the Eleventh Division, and for the second time in his life, knew where he belonged.

---

That night, Kenpachi lay back with his hands behind his head, in Retsu Unohana's bed.

Retsu herself was off doing something that smelled awfully promising in the kitchen, for which he had promised to get his lazy ass out of bed.

Eventually.

She surprised him, though, by bringing a fully-laden tray to the bed.

"Hey! What's th'occaison?" he said, hastily scrambling linen and pillows into some sort of order, and scootching far enough over to make room for her, and for the tray.

"Remember when you bought me the plain white cotton panties?"

"Uh, sure." He was lying like a flatfish. It wasn't buying the cotton panties he remembered, it was her response to the cotton panties, which had taken place in his office, and ruined a number of papers that he had had to go red-faced to different divisions and ask for replacements of. He was completely unaware that the people he'd had to ask would have simply chalked it up to Yachiru if he hadn't been so obviously embarrassed.

"Well," Retsu Unohana said, sitting down beside her least-favorite patient (wait: Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Second least-favorite patient, then), "when someone does something nice for me like that, I want to reward them."

Kenpachi grinned: fanged version. "You already did that."

"Oh, I don't think spoiling important papers really counts as a thank-you," she said, pouring tea elegantly for them both. She handed him his cup, keeping eye contact. "And I wasn't sure why you gave me lingerie until then."

He cocked an eyebrow at her, and deliberately did not look at her breasts. "Oughta be pretty obvious."

Her expression lightened, as she was perfectly aware of the places those eyes were avoiding. "Oh, yes. But that wasn't the sort of lingerie you so enjoy taking off; that, you see, could have been a selfish gift. Plain cotton panties that I need to work in? That aren't so much fun to take off? That's a truly unselfish gift, Kenpachi."

His cheekbones colored up a little bit. "Don't go makin' me into a saint. I like takin' them off ya just as much as anythin' else."

She laughed, not at him, but at what he had said. "I don't think you're a saint. I do think you're a nice man, and I'll be keeping you."

His whole ugly face lit up. "D'you really mean that?"

"Yes, I think so." She frowned for a moment. "I've never before had a lover with whom I worked to keep the relationship itself intact. This is new for me. Don't expect me to get it perfectly right the first time, Kenpachi."

"Retsu, I'll be happy ta let ya practice on me." He kissed her gently, then said curiously, "What brought this on? Outside'a the cotton panties, I mean?"

"I caught up with Yachiru on my way to shop today. She told me about Ren, and I know that must have been hard for you, letting him talk to her about bankai."

He blinked. He hadn't expected that.

"I've wondered," she said, "how you would react to Ren's ... difference, when you became aware of it." She relaxed back into his arm around her shoulders.

He shrugged. "My blade told me. I wouldn't have known, otherwise. He's a good swordsman, it's just a little weird that he wouldn't bathe with the rest of us, but now I know why."

"Yes, that's what Minazuki said."

He blinked again. "My blade and Minazuki are talkin' about me?"

"My dear," she said, "you and I, together and separately, are the subject of endless gossip and speculation among the zanupakuto and the shinigami alike."

He sighed. "Not much I can do about that. –Will they spill Ren's secret, ya think?"

"No. There are other medical secrets in Sereitei the zanupakuto are privy to, and they are still secret, so far as I know." She passed him a plate. "These are better warm than cold."

"Thanks," he said, and he meant it not only for the food, but for a lot of other things too. She knew that, and smiled at him once more before beginning her own meal.

---

"Where is it?" Kenpachi Zaraki fruitlessly scrambled through his meager belongings.

For someone who was taichou of one of the Gotei-13, Kenpachi had kept his baggage very light. He didn't believe in accruing stuff, and especially stuff you could not carry with you. This mindset was leftover from the years when all he had on his back was Yachiru Kusajichi.

Now it meant that five minutes after he began the search of his bedroom, it was complete. He went into the main area of his living quarters and began the same ruthless endeavor there.

"Where's what, Kenny?" said Yachiru. She broke off coloring with Yumichika Ayasegawa, who also raised his violet eyes to taichou.

"Ikkaku's birthday present! I gotta give it to him today! You know I'm goin' to th' Livin' World for th' next coupla weeks!"

"I'll give it to him for ya!" Yachiru said, her eyes shiny.

"No you won't, you'll open it, and then you'll give it to him. No, I want 'im to unwrap it all by himself. Damn it all to hell, anyway, where'd I leave it?"

Yumichika smiled. That was indeed what happened to any wrapped gift left within Yachiru's reach. "I'll give it to him, Taichou," he said.

"Thanks, Yumi, but I gotta find it first!" Seating cushions flew into the air, papa-san cushions levitated briefly, drawers were opened and slammed shut again. The art-supply drawer was thoroughly excavated, for kami's sake. The kitchen's vegetable drawer suffered the same fate, although as taichou avoided cooking as if it were the plague, why Ikkaku's birthday present would be in there was beyond Yumi.

Taichou, leaving hurricane levels of destruction behind himself, went into the office.

As this was Yumi's province as much as taichou's, the fifth seat excused himself to Yachiru, and followed his superior officer in. "How big is it, Taichou?"

Kenpachi halted the destruction, and measured so-by-so with his huge knobbly hands.

"You check your desk and the safe," Yumichika said, "and I'll check my desk."

Papers flew into the air in an expanding radius of randomization, the ground-zero of which was Kenpachi's desk.

Yumi looked through every drawer in his own desk, and as he also had the combination to the safe, he looked there as well. When he finished his inspection, he studied his taichou.

Kenpachi Zaraki, the best swordsman of his generation, stood baffled and panting behind a desk which was, if Yumi was any judge, going to require a wheelbarrow to put its contents in, and six months' unrelenting effort to get said contents back into working order. "I can't find it."

"It'll be all right, Taichou. I'll get him a card, sign it from you, and you can give it to him when you get back."

"Damn it," Kenpachi said softly, and looked down at the rarely-visible wood of his desk. "I guess that'll have to do."

---

Two weeks in the Living World would have been a lot more fun if Retsu Unohana were there too, but Kenpachi completed his tour, had quite a quantity of fun that involved Hollows, got to spar with Ichigo Kurosaki after hunting him down (which was kinda fun on its own, grownups' tag, Kenpachi thought), and returned to Soul Society.

He had left three days before Ikkaku's birthday, and returned one day after his own. Kenpachi did those things he did when he got home after a long absence: be shrieked, "Kenpachiiiiii!" at by Yachiru, get landed on by her from a height, say hello to Yumichika, report to Genryuusai, be rude to Mayuri Kurotsuchi, give Byakuya Kuchiki a buffet on the shoulder that almost dislocates his arm, report to Retsu Unohana and sweep her off her feet for a kiss before she started with any o' that medical nonsense, and find his third seat.

"Madarame!"

The bellow was known to all in Eleventh Division. Heads snapped around; taichou was back. Ikkaku stopped harassing new recruits into some sort of formation, and ambled over.

"'Sup, Taichou? How was the Livin' World?"

"Buncha candy-assed pansies," taichou replied, "can't even take care of their own selves, so we gotta do it for 'em." He handed Ikkaku a package, about so-by-so, and then another, smaller, but just as gaily wrapped. "I missed yer birthday, fucker." (Yachiru being absent, he could say what he felt.)

Ikkaku's hairless cranium pinked up from sagittal keel to chin. "Naw, I got yer card, so that was all right, Taichou. I didn't really expect anythin' else." He took the packages, held them awkwardly.

By this time the entire training grounds had emptied, all of the occupants forming a circle of shinigami around the two. "Open 'em up, Madarame," somebody said.

This, after all, was the Eleventh Division. All the louts began chanting, "Op-en! Op-en! Op-en!" as Ikkaku stood there, getting redder and redder.

Taichou grinned, and led him to the table never used to eat lunch at, at least never more than once by new appointees to the Eleventh. Having your teammates convert your lunch into pancakes by falling or being thrown onto the table, because this was the trainin' grounds dammit, discouraged its use.

The once-missing so-by-so package had been found by Kenpachi immediately after he obtained the second smaller package. All it took was getting to the bottom of his backpack. The swearwords which occurred immediately afterward were optional.

Ikkaku took out his pocket knife and neatly removed the wrappings from the so-by-so package.

The box below was labeled "Sears" and proved to contain an entire set of interchangeable screwdriver blades and two handles. "Wow," Ikkaku said, "I been wantin' one'a these for years. Thanks, Taichou."

"Ya do a lot around here," Kenpachi said, "I thought that might make it easier for ya."

"Yeah, it will. Thanks."

The next box was also from Sears, and contained more blades, and interchangeable handles. These, however, were for carving wood: Ikkaku's hobby.

"Them's from Yachiru," Kenpachi said.

They weren't, and both men knew that. Yachiru got Ikkaku pate-polish and a fifteen-pound bag of gummy bears, of which she confidently expected to eat two-thirds. (In one sitting, if possible.)

"Tell her thanks for me," Ikkaku said gently, with a smile in his eyes. He folded the case shut, and bellowed, "All right, show's over! Get back to work, ya lazy buncha layabouts!"

---

Kenpachi Zaraki was in the habit of sleeping in his quarters on the first night that he returned from being stationed elsewhere. This was occasioned by the fact that Yachiru had a habit of looking for him if she woke up in the middle of the night, and wailing like a siren if he was not there. Yumi said that she always did that for the first three nights he was gone. By the fourth day of his absence, nobody willingly went near the Eleventh Division, as they tended to be unpleasant people under normal circumstances, and very unpleasant people after three days of sleep deprivation.

Yachiru would have claimed the second night too, but Kenpachi had ensured that both of them understood that that night was his, to be donated to Retsu Unohana.

This night, Kenpachi lay sprawled out across the Kenpachi-sized bed Retsu had purchased when she realized he would be a fixture in her life. Retsu was tucked up under one of his shoulders, asleep with her head against his chest, and one soft arm thrown across his bony belly.

I do not understand, said the precise voice of Kenpachi's nameless blade, why it was so important to give Ikkaku his gift on time.

I guess ... it's because I feel guilty about that time I beat the snot outta him.

This had unfortunately been literally true. They had met in Rukongai, and Kenpachi had trounced Ikkaku so badly the bald man had asked Kenpachi for the killing stroke ... while his nose leaked.

Kenpachi was kinda glad he refused.

His blade, though, sounded puzzled. Why should you be guilty over that? It was a fair fight.

Had it been, really? He'd known he was taller and stronger than Ikkaku, and once he'd trotted out his reiatsu and Ikkaku had nothing to match it, he'd known the way it would go. Even Ikkaku's very long arms for his height, which made them roughly equal in reach, had not been sufficient to match his, Kenpachi's, power.

Ikkaku had given him a good run for his money, but nothing exceptional. Their battle had not been a learning experience for Kenpachi; maybe it was for Ikkaku, though.

I was better'n him, an' I knew that pretty early on, if you remember.

Of course I do, she said precisely. I remember all our fights.

He was sure spoilin' for it, though. I wonder if he'd still like to fight me.

He would still like to fight you. It would be more precise to say that he would like to be able to give you a good fight but he knows he cannot.

Huh. Even with his bankai?

Ikkaku's bankai is a fearsome weapon, but it requires that one not fight at close quarters. It is not suited for a sword melee, and that is what you and I do best. He could not stand against us in that sort of battle. Give him a situation in which he could stand apart from us and use Hozukimaru, and he will fare better. Perhaps not win, but it would not be so - decisive - as it was in Rukongai.

Huh. That why he's got that thing about dyin' under my command?

She snorted. No. That is misplaced romanticism.

He didn't snort in reply, not with Retsu curled up against him; she'd feel it and wake. It nearly blew the top of his head off, but he suppressed it.

He and his sword had occasionally conducted entire conversations with various tones of snort alternated with one- or two-word sentences.

The sword continued, Ikkaku has his pride. He also has his anger. He uses it to keep his affections in check. If you allow it, he will settle into the Eleventh, and find home here, with Yachiru and Yumichika and you.

He was silent so long that she added gently, But to do that, you must find a home here yourself.

Kenpachi Zaraki, who did not have a name until he chose one for himself, glanced down at the sleeping woman in his arms. He knew that Yumichika had probably set up a cot in Yachiru's room, to reassure her; he wouldn't be surprised if she had insisted that Ikkaku sleep there too.

The rest of his guys surrounded them.

Yachiru, Retsu, Ikky, Yumi, his Division. His family. Could Soul Society be his home?

He lay awake, considering, and did not know when he fell asleep.

But Kenpachi Zaraki understood when the sun woke him, and Retsu stretched and smiled up at him, that the answer was yes.

The next day, Kenpachi Zaraki bought two futons and their frames, one in his own size, one for Yachiru. He could not carry either on his back.

---

"But, Ikkaku!"

Ikkaku Madarame looked down from his height at the very small child in front of him. He would have said unhesitatingly that he did not like children, unless they were stuffed, properly seasoned, and roasted whole, but he had made an exception for this one. See where it got him?

"Yachiru, I can't. It takes about a week to do what you want, an' his birthday's tomorrow."

Yachiru stuck out her bottom lip and allowed her eyes to fill with tears.

Ikkaku gulped. But even Yachiru's Ikkaku Management Technique Number Fourteen could not shorten the drying time of varnish, or the carving time needed for the elaborate drawing of a sword rack she held in her hands.

Yumichika Ayasegawa stuck his head around the corner, showing up honorably on time for his shift of babysitting with Yachiru. "Are you ready to come with me, Yachiru?"

Yachiru flounced down from Ikkaku's workbench. "Yeah, I guess, since big old bald stupid here can't do nothing."

Ikkaku flushed red in a variety of interesting places, many visible. When he was in the workshop, he rarely wore more than his hakama. The room was open to the sun by way of the roof, and in winter, if you shut the doors, it was rarely cold. In summer, if two of the four doors at right angles to one another were opened, a cool breeze always flowed through Ikkaku's workshop.

On November 18th, one day before Kenpachi's birthday, one door and one clerestory window were barely ajar. Ikkaku, who worked pretty hard, was warm enough. Yachiru, about midway through her pitch, had removed her coat.

She picked it up now, and flounced through the door to the office of the Eleventh Division. "What's that all about?" Yumichika asked his oldest friend.

Ikkaku shrugged. "She drew up a set o' plans fer a sword-rack. I'd need at least a week to build it. I think she hasn't gotten Kenpachi his birthday present yet."

"Oh." Yumichika waggled his eyebrows. "Might be I can fix that."

"I hope so, buddy." Ikkaku turned back to the sharp things he usually played with, and began, while standing still, to run with scissors.

Yumichika shut the door between the workshop and the office, and said to Yachiru, "You need a birthday present for taichou. How much money do you have?"

She stuck that bottom lip out again.

Yumichika knew that today was Thursday, and that Yachiru got her weekly allowance on Friday. This lead him to assume that Yachiru had spent all of her money on candy, and had not planned far enough in advance to purchase taichou a gift. Thus her last-minute attempt to draft Ikkaku to remedy the shortcoming.

He was very surprised when she said, "Eighteen dollars and twenty-four cents."

"Put your coat on," Yumichika said. "We're going to the Living World."

For the cost of stopping off at the Urahara Shoten with a mysterious package for Kisuke Urahara, the two Eleventh Division members got a free ride through the senkaimon.

"What'cha think we can get Kenny?" Yachiru said. The two of them were having taioyaki at a food cart near Karakura Mall. Urahara's Shoten was crammed to the gills with candies of various sorts, and Yumichika was not taking Yachiru anywhere near it until they had completed the purchase of a gift for Kenpachi.

"I think we'll go to the mall and look around, and once we find something we like, we can buy it. Or maybe we'll be lucky and find two good things, so we can choose between them."

"Or maybe I can buy them both!"

Yumichika smiled at his fukutaichou. "Maybe. We'll have to see what we find. Drink your juice."

"I wanta Fanta!"

"When we're done. Too much sugar."

"Awww. Okay, then."

Slippers? They didn't know his size for sure. Yachiru fell in love with a pair of thongs that had a flower on the post that went between the large and second toes, and looked like they might be Kenpachi's size: anyway, they were huge. Yumichika somehow pried her away from them, and they went on.

Kenpachi had all of the magazines on sale in the mall that reflected his interests. Yachiru didn't have enough to buy "Art of War" by Sun-Tzu or "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi.

Clothes? Mostly out of her price range.

Home decor? Kenpachi had once described it as "Shit you have to dust." Yumi discouraged Yachiru, and they moved on.

She stopped with her mouth struck open in front of a store that sold animé-related merchandise: statuettes, fake weapons, cosplay. "Look," she said to Yumi, and pointed a small finger at the window display.

There, on a T-shirt, was Kenpachi himself.

It was in her price range, but Kenpachi's size was a problem.

Yachiru teared up. The clerk hastily went into the back, to see what they could do about double-X larges.

He came out with four. Yachiru shook her head at the first three.

When the clerk flapped out the last one, though, her little face lit up.

Yumichika, through long association with her, knew how and when to push Yachiru. He also knew when to stop, and that time, three hours after a light lunch, was now. The shirt was boxed and a bow applied, and handed to Yachiru. She paid for it, and they skipped out of the mall together, had a kid's meal each on the way by McDonald's (which cheered Yachiru up quite a bit, as Yumichika knew it would), and went to Urahara's Shoten, to deliver the package.

That done, Yumichika carried Yachiru in his arms, and she carried the precious package in hers, all the way back to the Eleventh Division.

In their quarters the next night, after dinner, Yachiru, bubbling over with anticipation, handed Kenpachi his gift. He thanked her, and unwrapped it.

He held it up in front of himself, so that he could see the design on it, and his ugly face lit up like somebody fired up a spotlight behind it. "Ha! Yachiru, this's great! I can't wait to wear it!"

She grinned.

He folded the shirt, put it neatly back in its box, and hugged his daughter. "Thank you for my birthday present. That's just great."

Later that night, his sword offered him her felicitations. When will you wear that?

Kenpachi gave his bedroom the fanged grin. Only right to share it with the model, he thought, which made his sword snort.

---

"No, I'm not going to fight you!"

Ichigo Kurosaki took flight down the alleys of Seireitei, Kenpachi Zaraki in hot pursuit, Yachiru Kusajichi on his shoulder.

"Aww, c'mon, Ichigo! I got all ready for ya and everything!"

"No! Especially not when you're wearing that!"

"Come on! I wore it just for you!"

"Kenpachi! Criminently! That's just gross! I can't fight you while you're wearing that!"

Kenpachi had returned to his quarters and put on his birthday gift when he heard the kid's voice in Seireitei.

The shirt was the design called "Ichigo Splatter."

Kenpachi thought that was pretty neat, callin' his shirt after his plans for the kid. Now if only the brat'd stop runnin' ...

---

If those who had a brain were a rarity in the Eleventh Division, those who were actually good swordsmen, in addition to talented brawlers, were a scarce rarity.

As well, almost all of the Division had lived their last lives in the island nation of Japan. As souls take with them into death the appearance of their last physical body, most of the Eleventh had black hair and black or dark-brown eyes.

Oh, there was Yumichika Ayasegawa, who had violet eyes and light-brown hair (and an ego the approximate size of the island of Honshu). There was Yachiru Kusajichi, whose hair and eyes were both pink. Ikkaku Madarame could have sprung from anywhere: he had brown eyes and no hair at all. But they were three out of half a thousand.

In the fifth year of their studies, all Soul Academy students were inspected by the various taichou of the Gotei-13. The cattle call, as the students referred to it, either began or settled a student's future: those who could not interest a Division in accepting them were Soul Academy graduates, but had to find other careers.

A few in some years were exempt from the cattle call, having found their niche early. Shuuhei Hisagi had gone that route. Everyone this year, however, was participating.

Different personal strengths and interests called to different Divisions. Geeks and gearheads found a home in Twelfth, scions of major noble houses came to the Sixth or the Thirteenth, those of minor noble houses usually went to Third, kids from Rukongai were pretty comfortable in Ninth, dog-lovers in Seventh, healers of course went to Fourth, the kidou whizzes and a few of the gearheads to Second along with the psychology majors; good swimmers and skaters to the Tenth, and the scum of the earth (those with high fitness and combat-training ratings, or those who had assaulted a senior student, and in either case had a good-to-excellent kendo rating) to the Eleventh. Anyone who didn't fall into these categories usually found refuge with Fifth or Eighth.

The current kenpachi, hight Zaraki, sat with one strong hand clutching a clipboard, the other fingering his chin, as Madarame, his third seat, sparred with a prospective member of the Eleventh Division in a ring at the Soul Academy kendo dojo.

Zaraki frowned at the student he was considering as Madarame, breaking a sweat, continued to spar. This one stood top-of-the-class in kendo.

She was also a woman, and she wasn't Japanese. In the entire history of the Division, six women had served under various kenpachi, one every third century or so.

Oh, and she'd twice beaten the crap out of students two or more years her senior: once with her fists as a first-year, when some guy felt her up after he pinned her in hand-to-hand combat classes, and once with her sword, in a shinai sparring match that had begun as the result of insults exchanged in a chemistry laboratory.

Numerous other episodes of misconduct scarred her record throughout her schooling. Kenpachi, flipping through her file, was amused. She had once been reprimanded for turning another student into a toad? - no, just making him think that had happened. (The notes indicated that the student involved had had to be fed and hydrated intravenously for three days, until the spell wore off, as he couldn't catch sufficient flies using his tongue.) Another time, she had invited her science teacher to dinner at the end of the term, and had served the excess lab animals she had been told to dispose of. –Her conduct had, in fact, lowered her overall standing within her class.

Perfect for the Eleventh Division.

As far as being non-Japanese, Kenpachi Zaraki didn't care if she was a Bulgarian wombat so long as she could fight, and she could - she was makin' Ikkaku break a sweat, fer kamis' sakes, an' countin' his own self an' Yachiru, there was maybe eight guys in the whole Division who could do that.

'A course, she might not want to come. Her kidou scores - fifth in her class in the demon arts - was a big fat red flag.

Still, Kenpachi thought to himself, he'd offer for her, an' they'd see what she said.

---

"Mariko! Riko! I got it! They offered for me!"

"The Eleventh did? Wow! I never thought that'd happen! Congratulations!"

The two women smacked fists in the center of their dorm room. "You get the offers you wanted?" Mary Higgins asked her roommate.

Mariko Rei said cheerfully, "Yes. Twelfth, Second, and Fourth."

"Girl, you go! Who you gonna go with?"

"Twelfth to start with. I'm going to continue my studies post-grad, and in a few years, I'll probably transfer to Fourth."

"You sure? I thought you wanted to go with Fourth all along."

Mariko shook her pretty head. "No. I want a few years of science practice to back up the energy management. I think they'd combine pretty well, but Unohana-taichou is a lot more open to that than Kurotsuchi-taichou. So him first, then her."

Mary Higgins, who wasn't pretty but had a sort of well-scrubbed athletic appeal, and had sparred against Ikkaku Madarame well enough to make him break a sweat, said, "That's the ticket! Well, we've got the next year to get through, and then we're outta here, yeah?"

"Can't wait." Mariko spun her wheelchair on its axis. "Look, there any spare change in the funds? I want to have dinner out tonight. You?"

"Gods, yes. We've got something to celebrate, and I'm out of the tasty lab animals."

---

Two and a half years passed, busy fulfilling years for both Mary and Mariko. Their friendship endured beyond the sharing of a dorm room.

Oh, occasionally there was trouble. When Mary first came to the Eleventh, some of the guys thought that the best way to welcome the first woman to serve in the sword-melee unit in a hundred and ninety-four years ... involved creativity.

Yumichika Ayasegawa was occasionally called upon to fulfill the odd supervisory function within the Eleventh. This time, it was inspecting the lockers. Various members of the Division had complained of a Smell.

Yumichika located the Smell without trouble, much to his disgust. He'd thought maybe someone forgot their packed lunch. But no, this was much worse. He summoned the Division member whose locker it was, and told her to unlock it.

"I don't keep anything in there," Mary Higgins said to him, opening the door. She could smell it too.

The floor of her empty locker was wet with urine to a depth of a half-inch or more. Mary surveyed the mess, took a deep breath through her mouth. "Kami."

Yumichika felt his own temper rise. When he joined, he had been subject to the same scummy trick. "If we can find out who did this ..."

Mary turned to him in surprise. "You really want to?"

"Yes."

"Okay, shut down the baths, close the lockers, and lock the Division compound gates except for incoming members."

Yumi looked up at her. "That's going to cause me a lot of trouble if it doesn't work," he said. He wasn't objecting ... just sayin'.

"Oh," Mary said, rolling up her sleeves, "it'll work, all right."

Yumi took her on faith, and did those things. When he returned to her locker, he said, "All ready."

Mary nodded. She chanted, "Let the waters of the night return to their source!" once through for each word in the chant, emphasizing the words one after another. On her last incantation, emphasizing "source," Mary held out a hand, palm flat, which emitted a purple energy, and all of the urine vanished, along with the Smell.

"Now," Mary said, rolling down her sleeves, "since they can't change clothes or bathe, you'll know who did it."

Yumi gazed at her in blank astonishment. "How'd you do that?" he said.

"I sent all the urine back to its source," she smiled, "but I didn't specify more than the general area. The guilty parties' robes are gonna stink like they got splashed with urine ... 'cause they did."

Zaraki, when told of the results of this and asked to impose punishment, laughed so hard he fell out of his chair. Partly this was because he could hear his sword howling with laughter herself.

The stinkers (literally) who had perpetrated the outrage spent a month doing kitchen duty. Hard, bad, ugly kitchen duty. Peeling potatoes would have been a day off.

End of story: Mary was careful to give each of them a pretty good drubbing the next time she was assigned to spar with any of them. And she challenged the Ninth Seat, the highest-ranking among them, for his title, and won.

Revenge enough, and an increase in salary to go with it. Not bad at all.

---

Mariko's wheels proved no barrier to her visits to Mary in the Eleventh. Eleventh Division members were injured badly enough to require wheelchairs from time to time. Eleventh had a portable ramp up into HQ which saw so much use that it eventually became permanent, and everybody, on wheels, crutches, or feet, used it. The kitchen staff lined the now-unused entry stairs with potted herbs, since the door faced south, and filled up what had once been the front door with a plant rack to hold more of them. So everybody benefitted.

In November of her second year with the Eleventh, Mary Higgins, when last living a citizen of the United States of America, became homesick. Lifesick. Whatever. Most Soul Reapers were familiar with the urge to experience again the celebration of a holiday they once had known in life.

As a result of the multi-faith nature of Soul Society, nearly every day was somebody's holiday.

Zaraki, who had enough trouble managin' Yachiru without havin' to consider every day a holiday (i.e., day on which large quantities of candy are available), had decreed that if it was a holiday, you could keep it to yourself. The kitchen would oblige you and your fellow believers with the feast traditionally enjoyed for your holiday if you asked two weeks ahead of time. Otherwise, Zaraki didn't want ta be bothered.

Oh, and don't give Yachiru any candy.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving was just about Zaraki's birthday. Mary carefully thought it through, and craved an audience with him the day before his cake and candles.

"Yeah, Higgins. What is it ya want?"

"Taichou, I wish to have a Division-wide celebration of a holiday I observed in life. It involves a special meal."

"Ya know I can't do that, Higgins. I do that for you, I got everybody insistin' that we eat a whole pig on Saint Homogenous Day or two pounds o' spinach on Murking Eve or nothin' until sundown on Dystification Tuesday, when we have boiled shallots and stewed clams with barbecue sauce on a bed of stewed mattress springs, an' caramel upside-down turnip cake."

Mary grinned at him. "Taichou, you made all of those up."

He grinned back. "Yeah. So?"

"What I had in mind is not a religious holiday, Taichou. It's just a day where we all eat a big meal with each other, and we're grateful for the good things in our lives."

Taichou, at heart a sentimental sap after he got through killin' you and th' forty-three other people standin' nearest you, put down his brush. "Really? How much candy's involved?"

"There are a few dishes with sugar as an ingredient, Taichou, but no candy is required." My mom had that recipe for sherried yams instead of candied yams ... I wonder if I can find it ...

"Huh. Get me th' grocery list by the end o' th' week. If I can do it, I'll announce it at th' Division Meetin' next Wednesday." He actually smiled at her, no fangs involved. "It sounds like a good idea."

Mary got together a Thanksgiving menu and shopping list for 500 guys and three girls, Mariko being invited, some of the former of whom eat like horses, or would, if hunger demanded it, eat actual horses.

Root-vegetable soup, roast turkey with stuffing and gravy, mashed potatoes, sherried yams, green-bean and onion-ring casserole, pumpkin pie, eggnog. Recipes scaled up to feed 600 (appetites were large in the Eleventh), list of ingredients, and timetable attached.

The kitchen staff took one look at this mess, priced the catering, and had it delivered ready-to-eat. Except for the damn' pumpkin pies, which required bourbon, so they made the pies themselves. Bourbon, while not saké, is after all still alcohol.

Even with the bourbon, it was under budget and on time.

In the Eleventh Division's dining room, the time between the last bite and everybody getting up to go about their business was filled with shouts, cheers, voices raised to be heard over the previous, airborne bread products, the rattle of dice cups, bets on whether Zaraki-taichou would get up to the left or to the right of his chair, thumb-wrestling contests, arm-wrestling contests, the occasional leg-wrestling contest, bruise counts (usually, since Yachiru was present, and now Mary was there too, limited to bruises visible with the hakama on, kosode and shitagi removed, but about every third day there would be a fundoshi-only count in a corner, blocked from Yachiru's if not Mary's perusal by some big guys: this was the Eleventh Division, after all), and those other amusements that seemed suitable to the moment and the amount of saké consumed with dinner.

Mary looked around her, and smiled. After uploading enough tryptophan to stop an elephant - although this is difficult to judge, as elephants decline to consume turkey - the entire Eleventh Division appeared to be taking a nap. Most, like Zaraki-taichou, were trying unsuccessfully to stay awake, which meant that every few minutes they jerked upright as they sat.

Mariko, who had eaten at the Division as her guest many times before, looked around her in amazement. "Kami ... they're all quiet."

"Quite a change, isn't it?" Mary's eye found Ikkaku, drooping in the Third Seat's chair. Beside him, Yumichika was only marginally more awake. Even Yachiru had been slowed a bit, after she insisted on two servings of everything that contained sugar. And the green beans, bizarrely enough.

The kitchen staff began to clear the tables, and bring out the pumpkin pie, made with bourbon, topped with festive splops of whipped cream, flavored with bourbon, and eggnog, bourbon added.

Tired swordsmen sat upright, and prepared to engage with the final enemy. A murmur circulated the room.

Kenpachi Zaraki stood up.

"Alla ya!" he shouted, and the large room hushed instantly. "This was a pretty good meal, an' we got Mary Higgins ta thank fer it! Stand up, Mary!"

She did, and as Eleventh Division custom required, was immediately pelted with dinner rolls.

Mary lobbed a few back at the originators. This was also required by custom.

"All right, knock it off!" Zaraki bellowed. "Mary's gonna tell us what th' festivities is all about." He sat down, but was still head-and-shoulders above most of his tablemates.

"Er," Mary said, her carefully-memorized speech deserting her, "where I last lived, every year, we all get together with our family and friends. We called the holiday 'Thanksgiving,' and one of the things we do is thank whatever god's appropriate for the things in our lives that make us glad, like our families, our friends, our comrades-in-arms. Um. That's all, I guess." She sat back down again, but not before a few more dinner rolls followed her: ballistic impulsion of bread products being among the Eleventh's most-cherished traditions, and the reason why the kitchen staff bought them ready-made at the lowest possible price.

"All right! Everybody take a minute for thankfulness." Zaraki-taichou watched the second hand circumnavigate the clock face, and said, "Okay then, wasn't that sweet? Now enjoy yer pie, ya louts. We got enough for seconds."

Yachiru, who hadn't waited to finish hers, stood up and screamed "Yay!" and pelted off in the direction of the kitchen.

---

Akon was returning to the Twelfth as Mary and Mariko entered the compound. "Hey," he said, genially enough, to Mariko, smiling at her.

"Akon, hi. Mary, this is Akon, my supervisor; Akon, this is Mary Higgins, my best friend."

"Higgins-san," Akon said, and bowed to her.

"Nice to meet you, Akon-sama," Mary said, and bowed back.

"Well, I'll see you later," Akon said, holding Mariko's eyes. "The boss wants me."

"Yeah? See you tomorrow, then."

Akon gave them a lazy salute, and went through the doors to the Twelfth.

Mary, better at reading energy than anyone in the Eleventh except Yumi, said, "He likes you, Riko. Whatcha gonna do about that?"

"Outside of be thankful?" Mariko tipped her head to her friend. "Not much for a while yet. I haven't known him long enough. And I don't fish in the company pond, but I think I'll transfer within a year. So ask me then. Anybody you're interested in over there?"

"Ah. He doesn't know I exist."

"Spar with him. That'll teach him you're not imaginary."

Mary didn't tell her that that had already happened, and so far as she could tell, had not brought her to Ikkaku Madarame's attention. She smiled, and said only, "A good idea."

At the Eleventh, Kenpachi Zaraki retired to his bedroom four hours earlier than normal. Yachiru curled up on his chest, and went to sleep. Two pieces of bourbon-laced pie, each topped with bourbon-laced whipped cream, followed by a tiny, to her disgust, glass of bourbon-laced eggnog, had proved to be too much for her.

Zaraki sighed, and curled his arm around his little girl. The other he bent behind his head.

His sword said to him, For what are you grateful, Kenpachi Zaraki?

It didn't take a lot of thinking. Yachiru ... Retsu ... that you're talkin' ta me ... that all of us're here in the Eleventh. Byakuya, Shuuhei, Renji, Yumi, Ikky. That I found a way ta keep my hair outta my eyes.

The sword snorted as the hair-free eyes drifted closed. In light of his normal consumption of saké, the bourbon was pretty negligible, but even Kenpachi Zaraki was subject to the whims of tryptophan. One of his last coherent thoughts was, An' you? What're you grateful for?

You, I suppose. That you can hear me. That you listen to me.

No reason I wouldn't. You're smarter than me.

As well you know that.

Kenpachi Zaraki smiled, and slept.

---

Where will you go next, Kenpachi Zaraki?

Kenpachi Zaraki, who had been sharpening his sword after having cleaned her, jerked out of the meditative state this repetitive task had allowed him to enter.

I ain't thought a' that yet. This's a pretty good gig ... except fer th' paperwork, an' even that ain't too bad. Yachiru's gotta place to grow up and people to teach her how to be herself; she'll even get a education if she goes ta Soul Academy. I got enough ta do ta keep me busy, enough fightin' ta keep me happy, an' the war's kinda challenging ... an' bein' with Retsu, that's pretty amazin' too.

So you have made no plans to move on. You feel no wanderlust?

It always astonished him that his sword spoke in such an elegant voice. She didn't drop her g's or over-aspirate her h's or sound much like Byakuya Kuchiki ... well, she did sound a little like the clan head ... but that wasn't bad, all things considered.

What puzzled Kenpachi most about his sword was her vocabulary: obviously much larger and more sophisticated than his own. Wasn't she a part'a his soul? How had she gotten this wise, when he had only a very little learning? He couldn't remember ever bein' in a school. The first Yachiru had taught him ta read, more'r less ... pretty much less, come ta think of it. He could do enough arithmetic ta keep th' shopkeepers from cheatin' 'im, an' after patient coachin' by Yumichika Ayasegawa, he knew how much it was costin' ta run the Division, because he could read a set of books. More'r less.

No. I ain't made any plans. Right here, right now - it's good enough. His big, rough hands finished stropping the point, tested the edge he had just painstakingly given her: yes, she could split a hair. Why? You want to be on the road again?

Not particularly. I was somewhat curious to know how you felt about finally settling down.

He put the tools of his trade away, placing the blade carefully in her holder. I ain't so very sure it's a case a' "finally." I ain't thought of more than just now. I mean, I know I can't be th' kenpachi forever, but it's gonna be a while before somebody can knock me off, I think, unless somebody real good comes outta nowhere, like I did. Or Aizen cooks up an Espada that can beat me. An' either one'a those's kinda unlikely. I got a little time ta just ... what's that expression? "Go with th' flow"? Just ta be, for a little while, and not have ta worry about tomorrow.

A change, she agreed. I remember how much you worried about Yachiru when you were on the road together. Especially when she was tiny.

Yeah, I was scared for her a lot. I didn't really care if I died myself, but I couldn' do that an' leave her behind me.

Parenthood changes a person.

He watched the blade gleam in the late-afternoon gloaming. He had scheduled this time for himself a day or so earlier ... Yachiru was with Retsu, in the Living World, shopping; Ikkaku was running the Eleventh ... Yumi had asked to accompany the girls, as he had a package to deliver to Urahara Shoten. As Ichigo Kurosaki was then in the Living World himself, Kenpachi felt sure that his women would be all right.

A' course, either one of 'em'd have his hide for a rug if they knew he was thinkin' that way about 'em, and he knew that they could both take care of themselves. Rather spectacularly well, in Retsu Unohana's case. But ... How d'you know that?

I cannot tell you that. I will speak with you again.

Kenpachi's sword had refused, a time or six, to tell him this or that. He was getting over being pissed off about it ... more or less. He got from his knees to his feet, put the supplies and the blade back, bowed in farewell to her, and went to the dining room. It was about time for dinner.

Jinta had eaten all he could of the night's dessert well before dinner. Now, pale-green and miserable, he drooped in his chair at the dining-room table.

"You have to finish your dinner before you can have dessert," Ururu informed him.

Jinta knew that, but somehow he just ... couldn't. The first serving of the ice-cream cake was quite good, and almost as deeply satisfying as the knowledge that he shouldn't be eating it. The second, less gratifying in all dimensions. The third, still delicious, but somehow ... The fourth had been all he wanted.

The fourth had been more than his stomach could take. He bolted from his chair, and got perhaps three-quarters of the way to the toilet room when disaster overtook him.

Urahara and Tessai Tsukabishi looked at each other, their own appetites spoiled. "You take him to the bathroom," Tessai said, rising, "and I'll run that 'Return to Source' kido."

"Oh, that's nasty." Urahara picked up the limp redhead, and held him at arms' length. "Punishment enough all by itself, I'd say."

"Yep. Having to throw it all up again? He won't be doin' that anymore. –Wonder if Yachiru helped him find it, or eat it."

It was sad, but true, that both adults greatly underestimated both Jinta's perseverance, and his capacity.

Yachiru was a) totally innocent of the consumption of ice-cream cake during their errand to Urahara's, and b) definitely opposed to anything that could possibly be construed as "healthful dining."

"Look! There's a McDonald's! Anna Colonel's! Anna Pizza Slut!"

Retsu Unohana was about ready to kidou the hell out of American capitalism, because there was also some fairly decent Japanese cuisine available. However, you could not drag a sulking, whining Yachiru Kusajichi into such a restaurant and expect to enjoy your own meal. Nor could you bribe her with "Dinner here, dessert there." She was on to that one, and a simple dessert was not sufficient compensation for having to eat everyday, to her, food.

Yumichika Ayasegawa, catching Unohana's fulminating glance, had yet another issue. "Yachiru, who taught you to call it that?"

"Glasses-chan!"

Yumichika wrinkled his brow, but said only, "Oh dear." If there were one thing in the world he wished to avoid as if it were the plague, it was to face down Nanao Ise over her apparent glee at twisting young minds.

But Retsu gave him another glance, calmer this time, and a small smile. "That's all right, Yumi," she said. "I'll talk to Shunsui about it."

"Thank you, taichou."

"In the meantime, it seems that we are for the high jump in terms of cuisine. What's our least-bad choice here, do you think?"

Yumi ran a critical eye over the menus displayed in Karakura Mall. "We might actually survive a visit to Pizza Sl - Hut."

"Yay, Pizza Slut! We're goin' a' Pizza Slut!"

In any crowd the size of the weekday-evening population of Karakura Mall, some few people will speak a second language. English is a popular choice in Japan. Yachiru's enthusiastic mislabeling of an entirely innocent food chain was beginning to draw stares.

One of the challenges of parenthood is reining in the child's appetite for bad choices cold-bloodedly engineered by marketing geniuses to seduce the immature mind, without crushing the child's enthusiasm for life itself.

Another is pursuing the correct course of action despite the child's reaction, and maintaining at least the appearance of not giving a damn what outsiders think of your parenting skills while your kid tests your limits. Yachiru was fortunate in that she had learned that however well it worked with, say, Kenpachi or Ikkaku, flinging herself to the floor and flailing while screaming did nothing to budge either Feather-brow or Braidy-lady. No ROFS-copter was thus presented.

"Yes, we are, because you want to so much," Retsu said calmly. "But we're going to start with a salad -"

"Awwww! I wanna start with a soda pop!"

This level of whine, about that of cutting metal with a band saw, usually worked with Kenpachi and Ikkaku. But Retsu Unohana was made of sterner stuff.

"No, Yachiru. Soda's for dessert. You can have one then. What do you think you'll want? Cola, root beer? Orange, or grape?"

"I wanna strawberry Pocky with a grape Fanta!"

"Okay. If you want those, we have to have milk with our pizza, and then afterward we'll go to a shop where you can buy those things."

Yachiru put out her lower lip until it was in serious danger, in Yumi's opinion, of being trodden on. "I want a soda now."

"It'll taste better later," Retsu said calmly. "What kind of pizza shall we have?"

Eventually, they settled on a half-disgusting and half-Retsu's.

Yumi bought an entire pie of his own, half mushroom-and-shrimp and half Hawaiian, to share with Ikkaku, who strangely enough only liked his pizza cold. If you asked him why this was so, you would get the Ikkaku Madarame Physics-based Explanation of the Affinity of Congealed Melted Cheese, Canned Pineapple Bits, and Cold Greasy Pepperoni With Saké, Which Can Be Warm or Cold Depending on the Weather and the Way I Feel at the Moment. If you were really fortunate, you would not get the Ikkaku Lucky Dance, Version Nine Point Four (beta), the one where he puts his back out and you have to help him to his futon, with the Physics-based Explanation: but that was only a worry when you asked him about cold pizza while he had one in his hands.

Yachiru sucked down her pizza like a vacuum cleaner, and only Retsu Unohana's foresight in bringing a coloring book and crayons in her backpack's outside pocket, where they were easily accessible, allowed the adults to fuel up.

About three-quarters of the way through her third picture, Yachiru kicked her short legs and squirmed off the edge of the seat. "I gotta go pee," she said.

Retsu rose. "Yachiru, when you are not in the Eleventh, you say, 'go to the bathroom,' okay?"

"Fine. I gotta go to the bathroom to pee."

The adults exchanged Eyebrows and repressed smiles, and the women went off in search of a restroom.

Retsu helped Yachiru wash her hands ... the little girl wasn't unfamiliar with the process, but it was quite obvious that she was far from used to doing it regularly. Retsu made a note to herself to have a Talk with That Man.

And, if he pulled out the "Oi woman" on her, she'd poke him in the short ribs. His fierceness hid it well, but he was ticklish. And besides that, they were well beyond fierceness and imposing serenity with one another. Or they would be, anyway, by the time Retsu got through poking Kenpachi in the short ribs.

Yachiru, on the other hand, was not ticklish, and thus tended to give as good as she got in the tickle department, even if she was a little shy in hand-washing skills. She flapped her wet hands in the air and turned to go.

"Wait a minute, Yachiru. I want to teach you something grown-up ladies do."

"Grown-up broads? Kenny doesn't know it, then!"

"Yachiru, don't refer to us as broads. Or if you do, don't do it to our faces. Some of us don't like being called that."

"Oh. All right, then. Silly old Kenny."

"Indeed. Now, when you've just washed your hands, take a towel, and push your cuticles back like this ..."

Some few minutes later, the lesson learned, Yachiru raced back to their table. Retsu Unohana took a moment to make sure her hair wasn't escaping its to-the-back braid - she was too memorable for comfort if she wore it braided to the front in the Living World - and followed at a more leisurely pace.

When she arrived at the table, however, she found only Yumichika. "Where's Yachiru?" she said.

Yumi snapped to attention. "Taichou, I thought she was with you."

"She was. She left the restroom and ... "

Both adults' heads swivelled frantically around the small dining room. There was a child's play area, but Yachiru wasn't there; she hadn't returned to the women's restroom, and Yumi reported that she was not in the men's, either.

Unohana-taichou went to the counter of the restaurant. "Excuse me," she said to the bored teenager on duty, using a brand of pleasant directness all of Seireitei had learned to fear, "but my little girl seems to have gone missing from your restaurant."

They were, eventually, given a ride to Urahara's shoten by the Karakura prefecture of the Tokyo police, who politely insisted that they come in, and with a politesse equal to Urahara's own, insisted on bugging the phone.

Urahara, for his part, let them. Showed them his business license, his tax receipts, whatever else they wanted to look at - because, with one look at him, they had decided he had something to hide, and decided further that it was just a matter of time until they found out what that was. They never did figure out Benihime, though.

Jinta and Ururu were by this time in bed. When Tessai Tsukabishi came downstairs from putting the children to bed, he too was given the third degree.

The police also failed to discover the underground room, or Urahara's lab, which was hiding behind his bookshelves. When the door closed on their dark-clad selves, Urahara took one look at Unohana's face, and spread his arms wide. She sobbed into his haori while Yumichika wondered if he could find someone to sob on as well; he didn't know Tessai well enough to propose such to him ...

It would not be taichou. Taichou was the next order of business.

Urahara and Tessai sat them down and fed them carbohydrates and tea until Yumi, at least, thought he might burst. By that time, Unohana had stopped sobbing, although she still wiped her cheeks from time to time.

Urahara topped up both their cups and Tessai's, and Tessai did the same for him. Then he said, taking up his cup, "How long has she been missing now?"

"Four hours and thirty-three minutes, taichou," Yumi said.

"Please. I am no longer a taichou, just a poor-but-honest shopkeeper," Urahara said. (Yumi refrained from snorting tea out of his nose only because it was unbeautiful to do so.) "So we don't know where she is, or who took her, or what their agenda is."

"No one was in contact with us. The police said that that usually comes later. In this case, they said that given her age, they weren't hopeful of Yachiru being able to direct them to the shoten ... they said that in cases like that, the child is usually sold into slavery, sexual or otherwise."

Urahara gave him a look that said, Well, aren't you just a little ray of sunshine, but Unohana raised her head.

"If that's so," she said, "there's a lot more to be hopeful about than we think."

"Why?"

"Yachiru," Yumi said economically, "isn't your ordinary five-year-old."

The extraordinary five-year-old had been lured into going with her boy-toys (who thought of themselves as her kidnappers, an illusion that would not last long) with the promise of a very large lollipop. She popped it out of her mouth to look at it critically as the car bearing all four of them sped through the Tokyo night. "This one's almost over," she said. "Do you gots another?"

"Sorry, Yachiru, but not until we get to the party," said the man in the back seat, who had told her that his name was Denshi, which it was not. "There are lots of them there."

"An' Kenny's there, right?"

"Yes, he asked us to pick you up."

"Okay." Yachiru reinserted the lollipop into her piehole and crunching noises ensued. The driver, flicking a glance over his shoulder, said to Denshi, "Don't let her get that sticky shit all over my upholstery."

The man in the passenger seat said, "That's the least of your worries, fool."

Denshi tuned them out. Brothers, they could bicker all day long, stopping only to fulfill various biological functions. Eat, sleep, whatever. He turned his attention back to the little girl. "Yachiru, do you know how we can call Kenny? He forgot to give us the number. He'd like to know that we picked you up okay."

Yachiru laughed at him. "Silly Denshi. You just dial one on the special phone he gave you."

No help. One of the brothers snorted. Denshi ignored him.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Home."

"Do you know that phone number?"

"No, but I'll bet Urahara has it, at the shoten."

"What's the shoten called, Yachiru?"

"Silly Denshi. It's called the Urahara Shoten."

Denshi relaxed all over. Okay, contact with the parents would be easy. That was always the worry with a kid this young, that they wouldn't have any contact information. When that was the case, they got a lot less from the Trader than they would from the parents.

When Kenpachi Zaraki arrived through the Senkaimon, Urahara was there to greet him.

"Taichou."

"Urahara. Where's Retsu? If I know her, she's worryin' herself to death over this."

Urarha fell in beside the taller man, working hard to match his longer strides. "She's at the shoten, Kenpachi. This way, please." He opened the passenger's side of the shoten van.

Kenpachi stopped dead. "The hell is this?"

"It's a means of transport, Kenpachi."

The kenpachi surveyed the large metal box and asked the obvious question. "Where are the horses?"

"Under the hood - the front of the vehicle."

Kenpachi gave him a look that said I ain't got time ta get into this with ya now but I can't see no damn' horses, and if ya crammed 'em in there, they gotta be pretty tiny horses. He got into the seat.

"Please hand me your seat belt, Kenpachi."

"M'what?"

"The seat belt. It's the black strap that's fastened above your left shoulder."

Kenpachi grunted around and handed Urahara the strap, and Urahara fastened it in the clip. The Kenpachi's eyebrows crinkled. "You kinky or sumpin'?"

Urahara said "No," managed to neither shudder nor add, "at least not in your case," shut Kenpachi's door, went around to the driver's side, and got in. Putting the key into the ignition, he started the van, and then fastened his own seatbelt. "It's to keep us safe if someone else hits us with their car. - That's what this thing is called," he said hastily, as the eyebrows went up into question mode. "It's one kind of car. There are lots of others, some bigger, some smaller."

The eyebrows elevated. "Livin' people do that? Run their cars into each other?"

"Not on purpose."

The fearsome single eye focused beyond the rain-speckled windshield. Urahara started the wipers, and the kenpachi flinched back. "Don't see why I can't just fly."

"Most gigai can't. Also, do you know where my shoten is?"

"There's that," the kenpachi said grudgingly. There was also the fact that he could not, unaided, find his way out of a wet paper bag; the phrase "directionally challenged" might have been invented for Kenpachi Zaraki. –But he wasn't going to bring that up.

The stormy Tokyo night swept past them, and Urahara got onto the freeway.

Tokyo's freeways swoop and swirl and tumble into and out of one another. Urahara, concentrating equally on his driving and the radar-detector, wasn't paying much attention to Kenpachi, who suddenly, six sweeping turns into a complicated exchange which would eventually drop them a block from the shoten, gasped, "I'm gonna barf!"

"I can't stop here! Roll down the window!"

He night as well have been speaking Sanskrit, Urahara realized. He pulled over, put the blinkers on, got the window down just in time, and resumed the journey.

Let the rain take care of the clean-up.

They had given Yachiru sugar. And they hadn't lured her into the car with a small lollipop, oh no. It had been one of those big-around-as-your-hand-is-wide monsters, white with red and green stripes, and Yachiru was now enjoying the burst of energy its consumption gave her.

And would continue to give her for at least the next two hours and thirty-two minutes.

Her boy-toys - er, kidnappers - would have liked to be sitting around a table waiting for the best time to call the Urahara Shoten. Small problem: Urahara's customer base was both local, in the case of his non-Seireitei customers, and unique to himself within the confines of Tokyo and its suburbs, for his Soul Society customer base.

So Urahara had no need to advertise. Upshot: no listing for the Urahara Shoten in any phone book, not for Karakura, not for Tokyo, not for the outlying suburbs.

Of course he had a phone; he simply did not bother to list it.

So the boy-toys were sitting around a table which held a cell phone, and enough angry glares to keep Kenpachi supplied for a month. Unoccupied by planning the best time to call, they were instead occupied by being scaled by Yachiru.

Her ascent technique was simple. You started on the floor by one leg, climbed it, put a foot into the crotch on the way by for extra points, clambered up the torso (extra points for each foot-plant in the ribs), pulled yourself to the shoulders and then over the head, more extra points were possible if you kicked an ear on the way up or down, slithered (the mostest fun part) down the other side, and landed on the floor by the other leg. Then you went on to the next person's leg.

She had made twenty-two circuits of the table so far.

Denshi pried her off one of the brothers (ascent completed, descent beginning, extra points for crotch and two rib foot-plants, and a half-point for an ascending ear kick) to sit her on his leg. "Yachiru, do you know Urahara-san's first name?"

There were four hundred and sixteen "Urahara" listings in the Tokyo book. Karakura had only twenty-eight, but these mooks didn't know from Karakura.

"Geta-boshi san," Yachiru said.

The kidnappers exchanged glares. "Mr. Hat-and-Clogs" was hardly likely to be a first name. Denshi persevered. "Do they call him anything else?"

"I think Spiky-haired Glasses-san" - she meant Tessai, who would have been glad to know his nickname was no more derogatorily descriptive than that - "calls him 'Kisuke,'" she said. "Put me down! I gotta finish!"

The brothers were not pleased. Yachiru made another twenty-nine circuits of the table, for a grand total of sixty-two, before she wore out at seven hundred and forty-two points ... ten for each climb, and one hundred twenty-two for various painful foot placements.

This was the same child Retsu and the kenpachi, along with Ikkaku and Yumichika, were making do extra math homework.

Kenpachi Zaraki got out of a van with some extremely suspicious splatters down the side of its door. He slammed that door behind him and stalked toward the Urahara Shoten.

Halfway there, he was met by Retsu Unohana, who flew into his arms and burst into tears.

"Ssh," he said, the big ugly head bent to hers. "Ssh. It's going to be all right."

Urahara, though he hated to do it, entered the shoten and left the door ajar for them.

Thus, he did not hear the big scary kenpachi say, "It's all right, Retsu. We're gonna get through this. It's gonna be okay," and put the big scary belled-hairdo head down onto hers, holding her close.

Just as well. Kenpachi would have killed any witnesses.

Yachiru almost went to sleep during the last ascent of one of the brothers. He wasn't as tall as Kenpachi, but his confirmation was sufficiently similar, and she sufficiently tired, that she curled up on his shoulders.

"Oi! Brat! What are you doing? Get offa me!"

Yachiru burst into the tears of an exhausted stressed-out five-year-old coming down from a sugar high. "I want my Kenn-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Kenn-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Kenn-eeee-yeeeee-yeeeeeeeee! You said he'd be here and he's not! Kenn-eeeee-yeeeee-yeeeee-yeeeee!"

Denshi reached down to her, and she scrambled up into the safety of his arms, laid her head on his expensive, but not as it turned out waterproof, suit, and ramped up the wail to full-blown sobbing, with mucus involved.

Denshi patted her back, and made shushing noises. "There, there, it's all right. There, there." He glared at the oaf, and took the little girl to a rocking chair in a back bedroom of the rental house they'd broken into. That was okay, at least from their point of view; they'd only be there part of the night. And in this neighborhood, no one was going to call the cops.

Fifteen minutes later, Yachiru was out like a light. Denshi laid her gently down on a folded-out futon, pulled a throw over her, and went back to the disposable cell phone. He dialed the Urahara Shoten.

At the shoten, five adults stared at the ringing telephone just the same way as a wounded bird watches a rattling snake.

This telephone was the unlisted unlisted number that Urahara had routed the shop's incoming calls to. He had his reasons for keeping the police out of the loop. (Plain sneakiness might, or might not, have been among them. With Urahara, you never knew.)

On the third ring, Urahara shook himself, and reached for the receiver. "Urahara's," he said briskly. "How can I help you?"

"You've lost something," Denshi said. "I have it. Want it back?"

"Yes." At Urahara's single word, the kenpachi's face transformed into pure thunder, and his hand went automatically to the place where his nameless blade's hilt would be ... if he weren't in a gigai. Retsu Unohana put both hands on his arm, and he half-turned to her, putting the other large hand over both of hers. But his eyes did not leave Urahara's face.

"Good. You've got half an hour to get ten billion yen together. Can you do it?"

"I don't know. I don't know if the people I need to borrow it from are home - "

"I'll call you back in half an hour," Denshi said, and broke the connection.

What he did, of course, was call back in twenty minutes. "How much money have you got?"

In those very busy twenty minutes, Urahara had been able to come up with the specified amount. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. "All of it," he said briskly. "Where do we pick up our - ?"

"Package?" Denshi interrupted. "I'll come to you for mine first."

A half-hour later, the occupants of the unmarked police car parked across the street from the shoten believed that the ugliest westerner they had ever seen parked in front of Urahara's, got out of a five-year-old midsized black car and walked into the shoten, which remained open later than usual that night, a fact of which they were unaware.

Denshi opened the door, folded up the bottom half of the rubber Richard Nixon mask, and said to the man behind the counter, "I'd like a pack of cigarettes, please. And I have a package for you to collect, if you have one for me."

Urahara handed him the nastiest brand he kept on his shelves, the really cheap seats that tasted so bad no one but the people who ran out of money between paychecks would buy them, and a pack of matches. "Light one on the porch as you leave," he said. "The police are across the street in an unmarked car." He got the briefcase of money up from underneath the counter, and gave it to Denshi, who accepted it without counting it.

He said to Urahara, "Drive to fourteen sixty-seven Arria Gai at ten p.m. tonight. She'll be there then. She won't be there any earlier. If you follow me, or if the count's short," he brandished the anonymous cell phone, "you'll find a body."

Urahara looked him straight in the Richard Nixon eyes and said, "Understood."

Kenpachi was first out of the shoten's van, even before it had come to a complete stop. He'd been sick again on the way over, but hey, carsickness always gets you a window seat.

He hit the gravel running, and belted into the house, Yumichika seconds behind him, Unohara a close third.

Urahara closed his eyes, and put his head down on the steering wheel. It would be a very long time before he agreed to spend an evening with the kenpachi again. That reiatsu was not just out of control, it was through the freakin' roof. Of the house six blocks away that was halfway up the mountain!

Kenpachi didn't slow down much for the front door, kicking it open with a hop step. It went boom! back through one hundred eighty degrees, bounced off the wall, came back to greet Yumichika Ayasegawa, who impelled it forcefully back to where it had been, from where it bounced yet again, and Retsu Unohana straight-armed the hapless thing open for a third time.

The unlit living room was empty. No furniture, no Yachiru.

Like a pack of wolves hunting for the wounded caribou they know is nearby, the kenpachi ranged the lower story of the house, living room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet room, nameless room near the kitchen probably used for storage, with all of his senses on high alert. He opened every closet, every cupboard, but all of them were empty. He went up the stairs to the second story three steps at a time, raking empty rooms with his eyes, opening closet doors with a crash -

"Yachiru!"

"Kenneeeee! You came! They said you'd be here but you wasn't!"

"Hush," the seven-foot star-haired homicidal maniac said, gathering her into his arms as he knelt before her, "I'm here now."

Retsu Unohana felt herself wobble, and Yumi steadied her with a shoulder under her arm; as he was almost five inches taller than she, this was not exactly comfortable, and not stable, either. The kenpachi swept his little girl into his arms, where she attached herself like a mussel to his neck, and gave only one shattering sob. Kenpachi put one protective arm around her, and swept back to where Retsu and Yumi made a decidedly teetery tripod, to catch the healer up in the other arm, and sail effortlessly down the stairs thus burdened. Yumi barely got the act together long enough to open the car door for the three of them, and pull the seatbelt around the entwined figures.

The kenpachi managed not to be carsick all over his daughter and his inamorta on the way back, but that was probably because Urahara used the surface streets.

Urahara put the tea things away, and said, "Goodnight, Tessai."

"Good night, boss." The big man went silently up the stairs to his room.

Kisuke Urahara yawned himself to bed. Quite a night. Quite a night indeed.

In the morning ... well, it was pretty unlikely he'd have to deal with that, wasn't it? It wasn't like they could complain.

He grinned. Although he would, if asked, cheerfully provide a refund. Maybe even give them double their money back.

In Seireitei, Yachiru Kusajishi clung like a limpet to both Kenny and Braidy-Lady. Had she been an octopus, she probably would have included Ikkaku Madarame, Yumichika Ayasegawa, and Byakuya Kuchiki in her tentacled grasp; as the last would have required four tentacles, everything would have worked out perfectly.

Kenpachi, unfortunately, suffered from this thing about being thought a child molester. "No, Yachiru, ya gotta sleep in yer own bed." He put her down on it gently. She ricocheted back up into his arms.

"But I caaaan't. The bad mens will come get me again!"

The two adults, Unohana and Zaraki, exchanged glances. "No they won't, Yachiru. They can't. They're alive. They won't be able to come here," Braidy-Lady said.

Yachiru was not reassured by this logic, and did what five-year-olds do when they do not have the concept, let alone the vocabulary, to explain their needs. She wailed.

A knock sounded at the door to Zaraki's quarters. He growled and, still wearing Yachiru like a very lumpy necktie, opened the door. "Yeah, whaddaya - whaddaya you guys doin' here?"

Ikkaku, his arms full of bedding, turned a little pink over the cheekbones. Yumi said calmly, "We thought Yachiru might be a little scared to sleep by herself tonight, taichou, so we brought our blankies and pillows to spend the night on her floor. If," concluded this master strategist, "she'll let us. We brought cocoa" - it was sugar-free, thank all the kami that ever were - "and popcorn."

Yachiru peered at him with one eye over the curve of her own arm. "'Kay."

The kenpachi understood a great deal more than he let on about making amends, and so he didn't look directly at Yumichika. "That all right with you, 'Chiru?" he said, as if this extraordinary request were nothing more than an everyday occurrence. "Means that I'll be im my bed, an' you'll be in yers, with Ikkaku an' Yumi sleepin' right there on the floor beside ya. An' ya know the guys'll be right outside yer winda tanight like they are every night."

"No," said a tiny voice from the direction of the Kenpachi's collarbone, "I want you, too."

"There's no room for me if you're in yer bed an' Yumi an' Ikky're on th' floor. Yer room ain't big enough."

The lumpy necktie paused to consider this, and then began to negotiate her way to Best Possible Outcome. "We can have popcorn and cocoa?"

"Yes."

"Will Yumi read me a story?"

"Yes," said Kenpachi, catching Yumi's eye, and Yumi's nod.

"Will Ikky play battleships with me?"

Eyeballs (adult version) consulted. Then Kenpachi said, "For fifteen minutes, on th' timer, while Yumi makes th' cocoa an' th' popcorn. When he comes in with 'em, you stop an' eat, then you have one story, an' then you go to bed an' sleep."

"'lright." The limpet loosened her grip, and dropped to the floor, taking Ikkaku's hand. "Come on, Ikkaku," Yachiru said, casting an eye back for Kenpachi. "I'll show you where the battleships is, but you gotta get 'em down for me."

---

Kenpachi Zaraki took Retsu Unohana into his arms, and they stood together in the middle of his bedroom like that for quite a while, until he felt the deep shakes in her body go away.

"You musta been awful scared," he said softly.

She drew in a deep breath, the kind with a sobbing stutter at the end of the inhalation. "That and angry," she said, looking up into his eyes. "I was angry at her, for running off into such a dangerous situation, angry at Yumi for not seeing her when she ran out of the bathroom ahead of me, angry at myself for letting her do that ... I know it doesn't make a lot of sense to be angry at Yumi or at Yachiru, but I was."

"I get angry too," he said, which wouldn't have surprised anybody in Seireitei, although his next words would have. "I feel like it's easier ta be angry than ta admit ta yerself how scared ya are."

She put both hands on his shoulders. "I didn't know you got scared."

"Not about goin' inta battle. You oughta know by now I love that. But Yachiru? She scares the hell out of me on a daily basis. When she was a wee one" - Unohana smiled - "I was terrified every time she got a sniffle, then when she was older every time she cut herself. Bein' a parent ain't for sissies."

"Being a parent's lover isn't for sissies either."

"No, it ain't. Come on, let's go to bed. Sex'll wait for another night, won't it? All I want to do is hold you in my arms."

"That's what I want too," said Unohana. "There is one thing I'm troubled about, though."

"What's that?"

"How are you going to pay Urahara back?" Each of them got into one side of Kenpachi's extra-large, extra-long futon.

"Don't have to."

This so confounded Retsu Unohana's picture of Kenpachi Zaraki, honorable man if star-haired maniac, that she gaped at him. "But, Kenpachi - "

"He didn't tell ya 'bout that?" Kenpachi gathered her in close, and they snuggled down together.

---

"Ten billion yen. I can't believe it."

Denshi had showered and dressed; the brothers wouldn't have bothered had he not insisted on it.

Following their success, they had rented a room in a cheap hotel, ordered in pizza and hookers, eventually shooed the girls out after paying them, and gone to sleep.

Now, Denshi popped open the locks on the suitcase to distribute the remainder of their ten billion yen.

The lid yawned up, to reveal ...

Ten billion yen, which rapidly faded away into thin air.

"The fuck!" yelled Denshi. "What's that all about?"

The brothers looked at each other, then at him, then back at the now-empty suitcase, then back at Denshi.

Trouble began to brew.

---

Money began to manifest into Urahara's study, most of it appearing in a solid block all at once, and then smaller amounts in neat piles, untidy heaps, or messy crumples. For ten minutes, he and Tessai Tsukabishi watched it materialize, until the entire ten billion yen had returned to papa.

Urahara shook his head. "That's brilliant. Just brilliant."

Tessai grinned. "Nothing more than that 'Return to Source' kido," the ex-Second Division taichou said cheerfully. "It's got more uses than cleaning up after sick kids. –Now, since I know you've got ten billion yen stashed somewhere, I want a raise."

---

At about the same time, Kenpachi Zaraki put one hand, the one not wrapping Retsu Unohana's shoulders, behind his head. Yumi and Ikky had taken charge of Yachiru, and indeed the entire Division, for the day. Retsu, wakening, had sent a Hell butterfly to Kotetsu, and had a half-day off in consequence.

He'd felt the tremors finally leave her body around midnight, and had followed her into sleep shortly after.

All of you are home and safe together, Kenpachi's sword said to him.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is home, after all.