Lisa had come up with the name, some English word current enough that its meaning was obvious but old enough that it stood out.
Visored. Shinji had rolled each syllable around in his mouth, tasting the word's potential. It said mystery and exoticism, hidden motives and unknown variables. And really, wasn't that what they all were now? Spanners in the works, walking rejections of the natural order.
They had been tossing different words around for weeks before Lisa proposed her idea. Some were judged too stupid—mainly by Hiyori and Mashiro, for once in agreement—and others too plain—mostly by Rose, but he had a good point in that 'half-Hollows' (Love's proposal) was stating the obvious.
So Visored it was, a word without any of the precise rhythm or nasal sound that 'Shinigami' had. 'Visored' could be slurred, vowels stretched into a drawl, made to arch pretentiously or dip humorously or even said flat and sharp like a blade. Their new name could be twisted til it was elastic enough to wrap around all of them. There was nothing in 'Visored' that confined them to tradition and at the same time it opened up every possibility to them. This rebranding was a rebirth of sorts, shrugging off their pasts and the pain that came with it. 'Visored' meant only what they wanted it to mean.
The meaning was the only problem Shinji had ever had with it. The word he defined himself with meant 'masked army,' and he would be lying if he claimed that his Aizen-given scar didn't twinge each time he remembered that. None of them were soldiers anymore, never would fall into line again the same way as they had before, but somehow they'd settled on a reading that denied that. Shinji had never had to write out 'Visored' and hoped he would never have to tell anyone outside his band of misfits how it was written. It didn't take a genius to realize that even a century after they'd been thrown in agonizing pain and only a vague semblance of consciousness from their home that the Visoreds were still trying to define themselves by Soul Society's standards.
Only Soul Society held them as monsters and always would. The only reason they'd taken this new name was because they couldn't change what they'd become, what Shinji had let Aizen turn them into. All the Visoreds could do now was slap a different label on themselves to paper over the one Soul Society had given them the second they no longer fit into the command structure.
Bastards. That was the label Shinji gave them. See how they liked being stuck under a name they didn't deserve.
As he scrawled his name on the blackboard for the benefit of human children, Shinji reversed the kanji, twisted the meaning again. It, like every other epithet hurled at him over the centuries, carried nothing of the truth.
There was only one word that truly described him and it was one that no one ever thought to use.
Avenger. In a sense the Visoreds were all avengers, betrayed and left to guard wounds that would never heal, but it was Shinji's lieutenant who'd betrayed them all, and he had the most to answer for. He counted himself an avenger and nothing else.
If that meant he had to sharpen someone else's blade for Aizen's back, so be it.
Visored. It evoked a masked army, instead of a band of outcasts who trusted no one and feared nothing.
Shinigami. To the uninitiated, they were protectors who brought peace to the dead, instead of a nest of snakes who turned their fangs on their own in the name of justice.
Captain. It was supposed to mean authority and strength, not a glorified pencil-pusher with blind spots easily exploited by anyone with ambition.
Pariah. It evoked someone who'd made a choice to stand apart, instead of someone made a monster and ripped away from everything he'd known and loved.
Man. It was a basic concept, simply written, belying the complexities of people and what exactly constituted a person in the face of life-altering metamorphoses.
Monster. Equally basic, at its core it meant a beast, a murderer who wanted blood and pain and fear, ignoring the humanity that all monsters began with to justify making new monsters.
Leader. It came from a verb, meant that whoever got saddled with that title had to be actively leading, even though Shinji'd found that most of the work was getting the people beneath you just to talk.
Victim. Everyone used the word with some shade of pity in it, not realizing that anyone could be blindsided like Shinji and the Visoreds had been. Soul Society had probably called them victims when it was the Central 46's judgment that they'd really suffered from.
Visored, Shinigami. Captain, pariah. Man, monster. Leader, victim. None would be true until Aizen's blood stained his blade.
Standing high above the false Karakura Town, Shinji wondered if long ago Shinigami had stood over his crumpled form and scorned the creature lying there a vulnerable wreck. Wasn't this a lovely reversal of roles, with them lying torn and helpless and desperately in need of help that they knew wasn't coming? Today they thought wrong, but he couldn't help but wonder if they still called him enemy. Was it true? Did that word suit him as it once had?
No, he decided, flitting over to Yamamoto and flinging a few words at the old man that he knew would stop the rusty gears of Yamamoto's mind spinning for a few seconds.
"We're allies of Ichigo."
Ichigo, the one who protects. Fitting, that a protector would be what the Visoreds needed to finally choose a side. They hadn't had anything but themselves to protect in a century but somehow here they were fighting for a world that had hated them in that time.
Finally, a guy who deserved the name fate had given him. Shinji supposed there had to be someone like that among the Visoreds, who had chosen every name that told a truth about them.
He drew Sakanade to defend for the first time in a hundred years, smile wry. It was the names you didn't choose that made the greatest impact, he'd always known but denied. Today he didn't choose to brand himself an enemy or ally of Soul Society, and that would make all the difference.
Captain.
After a century in the living world, outcast, the word fell oddly around Shinji. It settled differently on his shoulders than he'd imagined it would, light and strong and almost natural instead of heavy and too flimsy and impossible.
Soul Society had seen fit to give him permission to apply that word to himself again, should he want to. Did he? The blond couldn't quite decide. There was no room in those two syllables for coffee, or bright collared shirts, or cellphones, or really anything that Shinji had taken a liking to in the Living World.
But try as he might, 'Visored' would not allow him to shoehorn in acceptance, or friendship outside of his fellow exiles, or the beautiful white walls of Seireitei among everything else that he'd made the word encompass. It would still apply, would always apply, but he would need another word to hold those things.
Captain. The Fifth needed someone to redeem what the title had come to mean to them, and Shinji needed to redeem what had never failed to be Aizen's term of address for him.
No, 'captain' did not sound quite right to Shinji anymore. But 'avenger' could not apply in the way he'd meant it at first, with Aizen defeated now. It could be written differently, he decided. As a captain he could avenge the damage done to his division by Aizen, and his many other epithets could hold the rest of Shinji's identity.
Captain would just have to do.