A Note From Lady Bad Luck: Yay, I'm branching out into Bleach! This was inspired in conversation with my sister, but I can't remember what she originally said. Something about Yachiru, bongo drums, and Ikkaku's head. I couldn't help but borrow it.

It's just a short thing about the musically talented members of the Gotei Thirteen. I don't own Bleach, nor Ini Kuchiki (Vivienne Grainger owns her), but I do own Itoshiki and Watanabe. (At least, unless Kubo's already made up a third and fifth seat for Second Division, which I'm fairly sure he hasn't.)


Music To Their Ears

Several of the highest-ranking shinigami are unusually musically talented. The trend began with the Captain-General, Shigekuni Genryuusai Yamamoto, who liked to play a bone flute in his spare time. He's quite good, if his vice-captain is to be believed.

Shunsui Kyouraku plays the cello. He will tell any pretty girl he meets that there's more to him than meets the eye. Nanao Ise has heard this more times than she can count, but the only time she thinks she might believe it is when she hears him play.

Yachiru plays the bongo drums with more precision than might be expected from someone utilising an empty paint bucket and Ikkaku's head. She serenaded the Eleventh the other night, clanging from the bucket interspersed with the third seat's sullen yelps of pain.

The first five seats of Second Division (with the exception of Soi Fon, who murders music with more finality than she dispatches Hollows) are all decent musicians. Oomaeda learnt in his childhood, and the urge to play has never quite gone away. Third Seat Itoshiki whistles, Fifth Seat Watanabe is a demon with drumsticks, and Fourth Seat Ini Kuchiki fills in spare time by learning how to play every instrument she can get her hands on. Her boyfriend is perhaps the toughest critic of beauty anywhere, but he will praise her skill to the heavens and back.

Retsu Unohana doesn't play an instrument, but back in the heydays of classical music, she would visit concerts in the living world, and watch the conductors at work. Back in the Seireitei, when she's all alone in her beloved gardens, she will imagine the music, and imagine herself at the forefront of a massive orchestra. She doesn't quite let herself go enough to let anyone catch her, but sometimes she thinks it might be nice.

Only Toshiro Hitsugaya knows of Matsumoto's particular talent. She sings in the shower. He was walking past her private quarters early one morning, and heard the melody drifting out her bathroom window. Since then, he makes a point to go past every morning- she's better at singing than fighting, and that's saying something.

Mayuri too is a musician, though not in the conventional sense. He hears music in the screams of his prisoners. Sometimes he jokes to Nemu that if he could just get his latest batch of experiments to scream in symphony, he'd be able to make a fortune in human money off the royalties. (Nemu doesn't get the joke, of course- he didn't build her for that.)

Shuuhei Hisagi, however, missed the talent wagon. He has a guitar. It has survived his merciless mauling of its strings, his persistent attempts at taming it, and even Kenpachi's smashing it into smithereens. (To be fair, it didn't survive that at all- Ini rebuilt it as a favour.) It might not survive much longer though- Shuuhei doesn't know how to replace the strings.