This is a little something I thought of when writing a different oneshot - that's not finished yet - and I was searching up "anti personification". Guess what popped up? That's right, prosopopoeia.
I still have no idea how a small, short three-hundred-word scene turned into an over-a-thousand-word monster...
Anyways, enjoy. Be appreciative and review, too - it took a lot of math to figure out how many captains were missing...I almost forgot to subtract Aizen, Tousen, and Gin. Good job, me.
I don't own Bleach. Not even the cleaning kind (my mom used it all up just yesterday).
Prosopopoeia: a figure of speech in which an imagined or absent person or thing is represented as speaking
Yamamoto Shigekuni Genryusai surveyed the half-empty meeting room. "And where would our other six captains be? They seem to have taken a rather sudden and uncalled for leave of absence."
The present captains – Soi Fon, Kuchiki Byakuya, and Komamura Saijin – swiveled their heads to glance around the immense hall. Sure enough, the captains of divisions four and eight through thirteen minus the ninth were absent and unaccounted for.
Suddenly, one of the enormous doors slammed open.
Kyouraku Shunsui strolled in lazily without a care in the world (Hueco Mundo, Soul Society, or otherwise). "Yo, Yama-jii! Sorry I'm late! Juu-chan had another attack, and I had to take him to Retsu-sempai! That's why they're both not here."
"Ah. Well then. Would you happen to know the location of the other three captains still unaccounted for?"
"Of course, Yama-jii!" Kyouraku-taicho stretched languidly, clearly not offering any more information on the subject without further prodding.
"Do please enlighten us," Kuchiki-taicho said coldly (what he doesn't say coldly is still a mystery to most).
"Ah, yes, well, Ichimaru-taicho, Tousen-taicho, and Aizen-taicho are –"
"We already know this, Kyouraku-taicho," Soi Fon-taicho interrupted.
"Do please let me finish, Soi Fon-chan!" Kyouraku-taicho chided. "Well, as I was saying, those three are out playing hooky in Hueco Mundo, somehow holding tea parties every other hour despite a severe water deficiency. Toshiro-kun is currently taking a nap – Matsumoto-chan said he was trying the old philosophy of 'children who sleep well, grow well'. Kenpachi-san apparently didn't want to attend another, and I quote, 'pointless, repetitive meeting consisting of nothing but useless verbatim' and threatened to eviscerate me, although I did censor it a bit for those of you with delicate ears."
Cue rather pointed look.
"Anyways, when I passed by the twelfth division, there were a few quivering shinigami who reported that Kurotsuchi-taicho was threatening to dissect anyone who interrupted his 'research', so I very graciously did not interrupt him." Kyouraku-taicho smiled blithely. "I very much do not feel up to being dissected, after all.
"But anyways, that is all of them, not present but all accounted for!"
"Thank you, Kyouraku-taicho," Yamamoto-soutaicho said, giving him an appreciative nod.
Kyouraku-taicho gave a lackadaisical grin. "No problem, Yama-jii!" He headed for his place in the rather empty line.
"There is no need to get into place, Kyouraku-taicho. As a large number of our captains are absent, this meeting is over. Please make certain to attend the meeting scheduled for next month. Dismissed." With that, Yamamoto-soutaicho walked off in a…totally random direction, leaning heavily on his crooked walking stick.
Kyouraku-taicho waved lazily and disappeared in a flit of casual shunpo, muttering something about sake, paperwork, toilets, and his sweet, lovely Nanao-chan.
The other captains all skillfully ignored the slightly insane rambling (all captains were somewhat insane to a certain extent, and Kyouraku-taicho was one of the oldest, so it was excusable) and stiffly took off towards their corresponding divisions.
In a dark, gloomy, unknown but seemingly underground location, five white-clothed figures of differing heights met to secretly conspire about a malicious, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plan.
"Good job, team!" One figure with long white hair cheerfully said, high-fiving another with brown wavy hair and of a slightly shorter height and a heavier build. "Mission: Boycott Captains' Meeting – huge success!"
The largest figure with a mane of tall, spiky hair whooped. "Yeah! No more boring meetings when I can be having fun!"
"Now, now, Kenpachi-san," A woman's figure of slender build said in a soft, gentle voice. "Let's not get too excited. After all, we wouldn't want to bring this place down upon us, right?"
Something gleamed ominously in the darkness.
"H-hai…" Kenpachi said nervously, sweating bullets.
The one with long white hair one turned to face another (much shorter) spiky white-haired figure.
"Now, Shiro-chan, what would you like to have, in honor of our achievement? Candy? Toys? Snacks?"
"Um –" the shorter figure said.
"Ooh, I know, I'll just give you all of them! Here – I brought extra just for this occasion!"
"G-gah!" "Shiro-chan" was quickly overwhelmed by indeterminable objects of assorted shapes and sizes.
The brown-haired one smiled. "Well, we were lucky this time. Kurotsuchi-taicho was not originally part of our movement. He just happened to pick today, of all days, to perform one of his more…serious experiments today. Next time, we probably won't be so fortunate…" He suddenly trailed off.
"Eh? What's wrong, Shunsui?" the taller white-haired one asked, finally done pulling random unidentifiable objects out of his shihakusho, much to the relief of "Shiro-chan".
"Oh kami, next time…" the brunet identified as Shunsui breathed. "What'll we do next time?"
"Eh? Wha'd'ya mean, 'next time'?" Kenpachi asked.
But a few others, with dawning horror, realized what Shunsui meant.
"Yamamoto-soutaicho probably won't fall for the same thing again…" one figure said.
"Oh dear," said the scary woman, still smiling calmly.
"What'll we do next month?" "Shiro-chan" asked, as close to pleading as he would ever get.
Shunsui, predictably, was crushed. "All those weeks of planning, wasted…all that time sneaking around, wasted…all that time dreaming and hoping and wishing and dying of boredom and the roasting in the sweltering heat of the meeting room – wasted!"
"Now, now, Shunsui," the white-haired man said. "I'm sure we'll think of something…"
"Something…" everyone echoed. "Something…"
They all lapsed into incoherent mumbling, pondering this extremely grave dilemma.
"Gah! We'll never be able to think of something that'll work!"
In a large, sterile room full of rather disturbing scientific equipment with questionable purposes, a clown-faced man with yellow-stained teeth and lots of white and black makeup cackled while watching a large, occasionally flickering screen depicting several brooding figures.
"Oh dear…it seems as if my dear fellow captains have reached a little predicament…" He cackled again. "Well, whatever they may come up with, I will follow…" He turned back to a cloth-covered table with a decaying…something on it and casually selected a few small instruments, a long, sharp scalpel being one of them.
"After all…" he said, making a careful slice in the abdomen, "I despise those useless meetings…taking up hours of my day when I could be holding experiments and…" He grinned creepily. "…dissecting specimens…"
He turned to face the door. "Nemu!"
Almost immediately, the door opened. "Hai, Mayuri-sama?" a slender girl asked, bowing obediently.
"Plant another of my camera flies in the underground tunnels. The current one seems to be having a problem."
"Hai, Mayuri-sama."
An old man with a long beard stood on a tall hill overlooking Seireitei. He appeared to be sleeping until he spoke.
"Ah, my poor delusional children. They think they can escape unscathed from an act such as this? I will let this go by the first time, but if it ever happens again…" The old man opened his perpetually closed eyes. "The father may deem it fit to punish the misbehaving children."
"Oh, Yama-jii!" a distant figure climbing the hill called, waving. "Watcha doing, talking to yourself?"
"Oh, nothing at all, Shunsui-kun, nothing at all…" Yamamoto-soutaicho said, chuckling slightly.
Yeah, I got some ideas from "Shinigami Illustrated Picture Book". I normally get ideas from it - "Anathema" was inspired by it too! And its (hopefully) soon-to-come sequel (you can thank Eternal Cat Moon for that)! And another few that I'm currently working on but have not finished yet!
So yeah. Hope you liked it!
