The Lower Seats
Chapter 1
A Lowly blade
Taro Inuzuri, 10th seat of the 11th was walking around the Seireitei . As much as he loved fighting, the new Kenpachi, that Zaraki was not one he wanted to fight. If nothing else about the previous Kenpachi, 10th or 11th he didn't remember, with he you could at least tell when he was going easy on you. This one was just an animal, a sick sadistic animal that loved to see you squirm as you realize he's been going easy on you. Then again, he himself was a sick sadistic animal that loved you see you squirm as you realize he's been going easy on you, so he supposed it all evened out. Either way, fighting that man was not his idea of a good time, unless it was helped out by a few bottles of beer, or maybe rum. So, restless he started wondering around looking for someone good to fight. New kid captain of the 10th too powerful, his lieutenant equally so even if he could never bring himself to actually try to hurt a lady. Captain of the 4th...pass, just pass. Random Shinigami right by the 12th doing nothing but sipping at what looked to be a glass of wine, perfect. He'd even have to show the pussy that wine was not a drink for a true Shinigami.
"You, hey you!" the raven haired, icey blue eyed 'gami called out to the sandy haired one. "We're gonna fight."
the sandy haired one sighed and set down his glass, his green eyes dull and bored. He brought out a small booklet and a pen from inside his robes.
"Name, squad and seat?" His voice coming out as though he where perpetually yawning.
"Taro Inuzuri, 10th seat of the 11th!" The guy took a look at his watch and sighed
"At 11:10am...you have impeccable timing, right then." The sandy haired one put away his booklet and stood facing Taro. "Nicholas Reed, 20th seat of the 12th."
"Ha! A 20th seat dares to accept? And what sorta pussy name is that?"
"I keep my living name because I actually remember living, now then, draw your sword, and let's keep this a little clean, don't wanna piss off the captains do we?" they drew their Zanpokutos together, the ice blue handle of Taro's almost blinding compared to the navy blue of Reed's. A 10th against a 20th, didn't matter what squad, the 10th would win every time. Taro took a big, powerful swing that Reed easily ducked under, then a quick reversal that was equally easy to duck. Reed back flipped over a particularly bad leg shot and then rolled away from the upward slash that came after.
"Fight ya pussy! If you wear me down by just dodging I'll kill you!"
"Very well." Reed snapped a kick at the blade on it's unsharpened flat side and it flew into a nearby wall, and stuck there. While Taro pulled his Zanpoukuto out Reed went back to take a sip of his wine.
"Wine's for pussys ya know?"
"It's not wine, it's three different beers, two lagers and an ale combined with a shot of whiskey and a little dash of soda water, disgusting really but it gets the job done better then this fight does."
Taro pulled the blade out in a huff. "What job?"
"Making me forget I'm in the 12th...Hell, unless you're gonna pull Shikai out on me I should just sheathe Silver here." He tapped the glass with the flat of his blade and then finished the rest of the concoction. Just in time to lazily move half an inch away from Taro to have his blade miss completely.
"Fine, you want Shikai, you got it! Blow upon the Glacier's Edge, Koori no Kyoufuu!" The blade he held turned ice blue to match it's handle, a long white tassel burst out from the pommel and it grew to be half again as long. Reed took a good look at the shikai and then looked down at his own blade
"Heh, speechless? I got to 15th's seat just by the length of this blade..."
Reed took one last look at the shikai and said "Useless."
"What?" Taro wanted to make sure he heard the 20th seat correctly.
"Useless, that shikai is completely useless. It's too long of a blade, unbroken it can't be used practically anywhere but open ground..." Reed jumped upon the roof a nearby wall. "So here, let's see what else you've got..."
Taro grinned a feral grin and said, "fine, you wanna just hand me the match then I'm not gonna complain." He leaped up upon the wall and took the tassel in his hand and started spinning the blade with it.
"Yawn, I bet I could be doing my actual work." As soon as he said it a frigid wind came up from the blade, blowing chunks of ice and sleet at Reed.
"Heh, this is what got me 10th...it's not Kido it's just reducing the temperature of the air around the blade and letting condensation do the rest."
"So at least you all aren't completely idiots in the 11th." Reed was taking blow after blow from the ice chunks as he attempted to deflect too many at once.
"We just need to know it's not Kido we're not using."
"Fine." Reed pulled out his best flash step and put his zanpokuto right in the way of the other, stopping the freezing gale as a layer of ice formed over Reed's blade where the other connected.
"Huh, so it really is just your blade supercooling the air around it. Fine then, Reflect..."
"My, my, what's going on here?" The pink hatori and straw hat of Shunsui Kyoraku, captain of the 8th squad appeared in the street where their battle had been not a minute before hand. Fallowed closely by the glasses and tome of his 3rd seat Nanao Ise.
"A fight sir." Taro was the first to answer, though his eyes and blade remained locked on his opponent.
"Sir, this member of the 11th challenged me and I thought it only best for inter-squad relations that I accept the challenge and put up a good fight." Reed put the best political spin he could on it, maybe the laid back captain would just tell them to stop, probably have them join him in a bottle of sake.
"My my, next time choose a less public place, at the very least you wouldn't want to give the impression of true conflict between you two. Come down and perhaps join me in a drink..."
"Sir! You still haven't filled out any of your paperwork today, and you're still looking for a replacement for Lieutenant Umetsu!"
"But Nanao-chan, he only died two days ago, you want me to choose a successor in less then a week?"
"Any 3rd seat from any squad would do!"
"Nanao-chan I'll let you know when I have a new lieutenant in mind." The 3rd seat opened her mouth for a second and then closed it slowly, apparently having thought better of her words.
"Yes, well most of us don't have the ability to make our own. Such a shame," The white face and oddly shaped hat of the 12th's Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi appeared from behind a corner, followed shortly by the doll like Lieutenant Nemu Kurotsuchi. Taro noticed a subtile shift in Reed, as if the man had just gotten a flu just by seeing his captain.
"Oh, Mayuri, I didn't see you there, were you watching the fight?"
"Oh, no no, merely walking, I was considering researching Quincy next, a rather interesting subject don't you agree?" The lie he told was very nearly overtaken by the change of subject.
"Researching them? There are hardly any left nowadays."
"Well yes, yes a few choice samples would be nice, but then again when all of them resist and the 8th is ordered in to clean up, well I honestly have no doubt that you would have been through in only letting the lest of them to survive."
"Something like that. But as Nano-chan told me I should be looking for a new lieutenant, later Mayuri." He started walking off and as soon as his pink hatori left plain sight Mayuri settled in on his subordinate."
"Now then, which are you? Tesla? No matter, whatever your name is, stop fighting that ape and go and prepare soul tracers, I will have 50 tuned to my personal monitoring system by tomorrow. Before noon, do I make myself clear?"
Reed gulped, and slid his blade back into it;s sheathe. "Yes captain..."
"Good, good, and make sure they are precisely tuned, the last ones you did were off by 0.000001, I want that reduced to 0.00000005 this time."
"I'll need help or an extra day then."
"Too bad, and if you don't come up with them...well I suppose I can put off Quincys for a perfectly useless Shinigami..."
One day later Taro Inuzuri had brought reenforcement with him on the hunt for Nicholas Reed, as he had yet to find him. With him was the third "line breaker" platoon. Rumor had his role as platoon leader was in question thanks to their new fifth seat, some fruit who really liked the kanji for three. So he was using his one last harrah to find and beat that pussy to a pulp. And they found him at the 10th's office.
"So, what's a pussy like you doing here?" Taro said, his platoon falling in behind him.
"Getting a nice view." Taro finished the line of sight and saw what Reed was looking at...the mounds attached to the chest of Lieutenant Matsumoto.
"Well, at least you got good taste in women," He said with a laugh.
"Yeah, let's go with that," Reed said. "So what do you want?"
"A Rematch, right now right here, no 20th seat from any squad is gonna beat the any of the 11th's seats in a fight."
"Really? Fine then you ready?"
"Anytime, anyplace, any..." Reed took Taro's speech as time to punch the 11th squad man right in the face, sending him crashing down. Reed took one look at the group of people around him.
"Um...Shit, I really should have thought that one out..." Reed looked around, took two steps back and started running away from the mob after him.
"Where's the one place the 11th won't make a racket trying to find me? Oh shit. Where can I hide that no man, sane or insane would look?"
Eliza Imsote, 5th seat of the 4th squad was in her office, her medical office as apposed to the office of the 5th seat. Of course she had good reason, first off she was the only certified specialist in her field other then Captain Unohana, secondly she was so swamped with appointments that she could barely find time to eat much less sleep and do her rapidly accumulating paperwork, and thirdly seeing the plaque in the door pronouncing her specialty more then once a day was too much of a reminder for her what she was spending her afterlife doing.
"Excuse me," said a beat red female shinigami with light blond hair standing in her doorway. "Is this the Gyne..."
"Yes it is, as it says right on my door. You must be..." She took a look at the appointment schedule some 20th seat had come up with. "...Ah, Volkia Wulfen. Russian?"
"I think so, all I remember from life is my name."
"That's alright. Now then dear if you could just remove your underwear and..."
At that moment a very haggard looking man with sandy hair and green eyes burst into the office, slamming the door behind him. "Liz, you gotta help me!"
"Nick, I'm with an appointment." she said, her voice deathly quiet.
"Yes, I see that and I'm being hunted by the 11th...actually having my eyes stabbed out would mean they'd have no way of making me pay for knocking out their 10th seat in one punch..."
"You are insufferable, you just have to make everything harder. Get out of my office right now."
"But Liz..."
"I have 13 more vaginas to look at before lunch, OUT!" Eliza released all of her reisu in one, red burst. Reed took the hint and dashed away to find a new hidey hole
"Um...I thought I was your last appointment before lunch?"
"Oh you are, but Nick's...well, he's Nick and he would have found away to convince me to let him stick around just look the other way."
"Does this happen often?" Volkia asked, laying down on the exam table.
"Only about every time he pisses off the 11th."
"Does that happen often?"
"If pissing off the 11th was an initiation test to be captain he'd be running this place by now. Now then, is this your first exam?" Volkia nodded. "Then I want you to lean back and think about flowers or kittens or whatever helps..."
Reed panted outside of the 6th's office, he'd been everywhere, calling in favors, or at least trying to with all of his seated friends, trying to get away from the growing mob of the 11th. His last contact, the 8th seat of the 6th, one Kurt Ambrose even said their new 3rd seat and 5th seat had joined the search. It was, for anyone who didn't wish to die, a living hell. Well, at least if he died there was no way Kurosuchi could do anything to him. Or at least he hoped that.
"Found ya," came three different voices from three different directions. To the front of him was Taro Inuzuri, his nose slightly shorter. To his right was a bald man who Reed assumed was the 5th or 3rd seat. To his left however was a monster of a man, spiked hair and a torn up Captain's jacket covered his uniform as a little girl with pink hair sat on his shoulder. Just seeing that man paralyzed Reed with fear. This guy beat the previous Kenpachi to a fine mist without Bankai. He special ordered an eye patch from the R&D department that ate reisu for breakfast just to make his fights last longer. In the official records Reed's death would be marked suicide; cause of death: pissing off Zaraki Kenpachi. The monster laughed, and Reed prayed to the king that it was a good sign.
"You had me all worked up for this? I thought it might at least have been worth my time!"
"Well at least we can see a fight Ken-chan!" said the little girl, her innocence in direct contrast to the man's malevolence.
"Eh, I guess you're right...hey you, Inuzuri, you kick his ass or you'll find yourself unseated."
"Understood Captain." Taro drew his katana, and Reed did the same. "That was a cheep shot you know that?"
"I didn't think it completely through."
"So an 12th guy being stupid, never thought I'd see the day."
"I'm in the 12th, I think that qualifies." Reed rushed Taro, coming in with an easily parried stab which he turned into an upward slash. The slash had no more power then a soggy piece of bread and was flicked away with equal ease. Taro took a hand off his blade and punched Reed right in the face, giving the man a bloody nose.
"I deserved that..." Reed said, reeling from the punch while he held his nose with his left hand.
"You did. Now then, release your Shikai...I did for you yesterday."
"Too bad for you then...15th seats and below in the 12th are not required to have Shikai"
"I heard you say 'reflect', that's a shikai word if I ever heard one."
"Fine then, I'll show you later." Reed slashed out one handedly at Taro, catching him by surprise and letting a clean cut go though uninterrupted. The cut was little more then a paper cut but it infuriated the man.
"You little pussy! Blow upon the Glacier's Edge, Koori no Kyoufuu!" As Taro's blade once again became extra long and took on it's blue sheen Reed felt the air chill slightly. Taro then used the long reach of his blade to bat Reed's blade away and land a hit on his chest. Reed felt the wound go cold, and ice form around it as he went down.
"Ha, if you don't; die then maybe you have a spot in the 11th instead of the 12th..."
Reed would have responded if he could, but the chilling ice seemed to have gripped his lungs.
'I shouldn't have pissed off the 11th and sis at the same time.' was his last thought as darkness clouded his vision.
"That's it?" Kenpachi asked his 10th seat. "You had half the squad out looking for that pussy?"
"He was stronger yesterday." Taro couldn't figure out how the man who'd fought him evenly yesterday for ten minutes could barely last five today.
"Yeah, and yesterday you were weak. Get someone from the 4th to pick that guy up and make sure that the Kurotsuchi bastard doesn't start bothering me. Then you're gonna drill all the seats under you until all of them can't go anymore or you can't. When you stop that's your seat, understood?"
"Yes captain!" Taro bowed, then rushed off, leaving Kepenpachi with his Lieutenant and 3rd seat in the presence of the fallen Reed.
"I was sure you were gonna fight him Ken-chan!" Yachru Kusajishi, his tiny pink haired lieutenant said from his shoulder.
"Would be too quick." Kenpachi said, moving to the bald Ikkaku Madarame. "Did you see the glaring hole in that guy's defense?"
"He tried to set a trap and failed, he forgot about the extra length."
"Hm, wait here for the 4th to get here for the guy. The old man wants to see me."
"Kenpachi left without so much as a confirmation.
Taro was exhausted, the drilling had taken most of the remaining day, and left him once again at 10th seat. With his fellows, the two 11th seats and a 13th seat that would shortly become one of the 11th's three 12th seats. They ate silently together at a table, until one of the 11th seats asked,
"So what happened that we had to drill that much?"
Taro considered his words carefully.
"I fought a guy, and the captain decided that he wasn't enough of a challenge to prove I deserved my seat."
"Really? Who was it?"
"Some 20th seat from the 12th, that guy had balls if he thought he could beat any 10th seat."
"But no skills to back it up?"
"The first time maybe, but this time...disappointing."
"Well, what was different?" asked the 13th seat.
"He was drinking something the first time and no one was around."
"He's a better fighter drunk? Sounds like 8th seat Kuza."
"Yeah, but Kuza gets crazy drunk and does crazy things, this guy just drank a small glass and kept his cool the entire time." Taro stopped with his sake cup inches away from his lips. "...Son of a bitch. He already knew about my shikai giving extra length to my zanpokuto, so why would he set a trap in his guard that was ineffective against a different length weapon?"
"Taro, you saying this guy LET you win?"
"I...I don't know." With instant vigor Taro stood up and took one last swig of sake.
"Where are you going?" his fellows asked all at once.
"To get some answers from the guy."
"Your shikai does some nasty frostbite at the best of times. Unless he's got the healing factor of our new 3rd seat he's still in the 4th."
"Then I'm gonna wait in his room until he wakes up."
Eliza sat next in a chair next to Nick's sick bed. He would make a full recovery and have a pretty good scar. She sighed to herself, not sure of what to say. She was his sister in life, but in death what were they but comrades in arms. She had been confused about it sense he first came to her, saying her full name; Elizabeth Harriet Reed. It had snapped some of her memories back, enough to know he was telling the truth about practically everything. But not enough to make her feel like a Reed. Not enough to make them brother and sister again if her memories of death were right. The door to the room opened and instead of seeing the comforting visage of Captain Unohana, she saw 10th seat Inuzuri of the 11th squad.
"What are you doing here?" She asked, puzzlement on her face. Taro pointed at the sleeping body of Nick.
"He threw the fight." He said simply, closing the door with as much gentleness as a member of the 11th could muster.
"That's impossible, he..."
"He's the 20th seat of the 12th, a squad famous for having it's low ranked members dieing in experiments and for the general weakness of it's officers. What better way to survive as a disgruntled fighter stuck in such a place then to be unbelievably long lived?"
"I'm shocked, I honestly thought you'd just celebrate a useless victory over him until you were too drunk to remember clearly."
"Tell him next time put up more of a fight. Enough of one that it doesn't put my seat in jeopardy. Can you wake him?"
"Who needs waking?" Nick sat up to the shock of Eliza.
"How long where you awake!?"
"About half an hour, been trying to get back to sleep, heal up more...so you want to know why I bet?"
"What, am I not the first one?"
"Actually you're the first one to realize that when push came to shove I let them win easily. But gotta be planned for everything right?"
"Well then, you're right, why did you throw it?"
"In the 12th there are a few cardinal rules, breaking them is a surefire way to find your ass in the next experiment folder. Number one: You don't leave, transfer is at the request of another squad, not you. Number two: you move up you either stay there, die, or become too valuable to leave. Number three: You see something unethical it never happened. Number four: You show the slightest sign of being able to even start fighting Captain Kurosuchi seriously and you will never wake up again. I can't leave, I can't stay, so all I do is volunteer for hollow patrol or whatever study group being sent to Earth at the time. Needless to say my fighting skills have been honed more then my lab coat."
"Then how come Kurosuchi hasn't ordered you out before this?"
"I made the mistake of discovering a formula for a substance that could instantly regenerate limbs. I'm now too valuable to be let go, even if it was a fluke and I found it in an old book of alchemy."
"Then why aren't you a higher rank?"
"I was briefly 19th seat about five years ago, but reverted back to 20th when now 8th seat Tesla and I switched seats. Besides, when I'm as powerful as our 4th seat in a fight why would I want to move up the ranks to be taken down for getting to close to the top?"
"Compare your fighting level to the 11th."
"Um...11th seat, maybe 10th, so yeah about your level. I'm really sorry for throwing the fight so I'll fight you for real, place, time, you set it all, no witnesses if you want to see my shikai."
"Why do you care who sees your shikai?"
"It's my trump card, in case of emergency and all that. But as a special prize for being the first guy to figure out I threw a fight you, and you alone get to see it."
"Yeah right, like I'd be the only other one to see it."
"Actually yes, not even dear old sis here has seen it."
"Nick, I told you not to call me that," Eliza spoke with such quietness that the two men barely heard her.
"Ignoring that," Taro opened the door. "I'll tell you when and where later. Get healed up fast, you're strong, possibly strong enough for the 11th if that's any consolation."
"Thanks," Reed said to Taro's back as the man walked out the door and shut in silently behind him. "Now then, I'm gonna try and get some sleep, dear sister ple..." Eliza slapped him.
"I remember how we died and until you can tell me why we died that way don't ever call me anything even remotely close to family." She stood and left, slamming the door behind her. Nick sighed
"If only Henry remembered, then maybe I could tell you why we three died so soon after..."
In a tiny room in the middle of the officer's quarters of the 4th squad 7th seat Hanataro Yamada woke with a sneezing fit.
"Huh, someone must be talking about me." Hanataro rolled back over and was out like a light.