AN: I know I exaggerate the properties of champagne in this chapter, but it works better for the story than if the champagne followed real world logic. Also, Happy 4th of July to my American readers.
Chapter 2: Unohana Retsu
"I'm guessing you left Isane in charge for tonight eh, senpai?"
"She can handle herself while I'm here. I don't take many days off but I am more than confident in her ability to run the division for a night."
Yasuhiro nodded and resumed cleaning up for the night. He had reserved tonight for a class reunion of sorts. Shunsui and Jushiro would be a while before arriving, but he and Retsu had not seen each other in a long time, so they had a lot to talk about. His old friends could only visit so often, not counting Shunsui's drinking competitions with Rangiku, and he enjoyed speaking with them in private whenever he could.
Retsu sipped her wine before continuing. "Besides, it's not like an entire division will try to kill itself tonight."
"Knowing Kenpachi's group, they might come close. I hear he's been particularly adamant about finding a good fight recently."
"Perhaps he just needs to be humbled. You could always volunteer for the job."
"Fight Zaraki? Not happening. If I was a fighter I would have never been allowed to open this place."
"You were one of the best bakudo users in the class."
"Bakudo is great for tying up rowdy graduates. Going against Kenpachi is another matter entirely."
Retsu sighed and gazed into her glass. "You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Making excuses. If you don't want to leave the bar, just say so."
"I do believe that I have no idea what you're talking about senpai. I have left this bar on numerous occasions. In fact, just last week I had to go all the way to one of the gates to deliver an order."
"Really? What time was it?"
"3 or so in the morning, give or take an hour. But enough about my schedule, what's been happening over in the fourth?"
Retsu looked annoyed at the change in subject but humored the bartender. "We have been working with the twelfth on some new equipment. You see, in the human world their hospitals have machines capable of mapping the internal organs and muscular structures of the patient. Our researchers are working on making one for us."
"I think I've heard something about them. Why can't you just bring one of them back into Seireitei?"
"An MRI is not like liquor. It is incredibly large and heavy. Acquiring one is expensive. And even then it could only be used for studying because powering large human devices on free reishi is ill advised. The last time someone tried to do that I had to host half of twelfth division for a month. But even if we could use their version, the problem isn't power. The machines in the human world use magnetic pulses to react with the nuclei within a human's body."
"But, we're not made of atoms. We're made of reishi."
"Exactly, and getting a machine to react differently to the reishi in blood than the reishi in tissue is difficult. The main problem lies with the manner that reishi builds us. As far as we have discovered, it does not react any differently when building a body than it does when building a wall. We can manipulate it into different shapes, but the size, mass, and density of the individual particles is constant. Reishi particles don't act like atoms. No matter what material they are used to make the individual particles are identical."
"What about the density of the clusters of particles?"
"We tried that too. It is the only real difference we can find between various objects, but when we try to calibrate the machine to read it, it refuses to penetrate the skin."
"Well you do sound like you have a problem … WHICH IS WHY I HEREBY DECLARE THAT IT SHALL NOT BE DISCUSSED FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE NIGHT!"
Retsu was startled at his change in tone, but began to giggle. "And why, oh wise and mysterious bartender, would I agree to that? Aren't nights spent in bars meant for moping over problems?"
"Problems of the heart, yes. Problems with family and friends, of course. Problems with the law, definitively. BUT! What you have is a problem of the mind, and problems of the mind are banned from bars. People come to bars to relax and let go. A problem which requires mathematical formulas and complicated mechanics does not belong in a bar. If you wish to take care of such things you go to a library or a coffee house with free wifi. Such problems must seek to exist upon crossing the threshold of a bar!"
Retsu could not hold back her laughter. "Very well, what shall we talk about then? Would you like to educate me in the fine arts of brewing beer?"
"Brewing the beer is not the difficult part."
"And what is?"
"Reproducing it. Every a little change can make a very big difference in the beer. Even if the ingredients used are identical, a completely different beer can be produced with minor adjustments to the recipe. How much malt did I place into how much water? At what point during the boiling process did I add the hops? Did I add the hops all at once or in several doses? Did I send it through the hopback? How long did I allow it to ferment before placing it in a keg? I have been brewing beer for longer than any living brewer and most dead ones, and yet I doubt I have every created two kegs with exactly the same beer. I may be able to advertise them as the same brew, but the taste is never identical."
"Then why bother trying to reproduce it at all?"
"Because, people come into a bar and expect a sense of normalcy. If I cannot reproduce the same beer, or at least a very similar one, that they had three weeks earlier then they lose that expectation, and the bar loses some of its magic. It's like Christmas, if nobody believes in its power, then it really doesn't have any."
"Did you really just compare your bar to Christmas? You weren't even alive when Japan knew about Christmas!"
"And yet, I believe that it is a magical day when dreams can come true. My point still stands."
"Are you this pompous with all of your customers, or do you reserve it for old friends."
"Old friends get pompous; customers get annoying, condescending, or saging."
"Saging?"
"I couldn't thing of a way to say I was acting all wise that ended in -ing."
"Counseling? Guiding? Advising?"
"Okay, so I'm not so great with vocabulary. Doesn't mean I can't give good advice."
"And what would you advise we do now, kouhai," Retsu said with a smile.
Yasuhiro's lavender eyes sparkled in the dim bar-light. He stood to his full height and reached up to the top of the shelves behind the bar, pulling out a bottle of champagne.
"Showing off that you're a foot taller than me doesn't count as advice."
"No, but suggesting that we teach Shunsui and Ukitake a lesson for being an hour late does."
"And how should we do that? Those two could sense anything you tried to do to them long before it happened."
"True, but Shunsui could never resist free booze, and that is why I have a lovely bottle of champagne here."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Champagne is a rather volatile drink. While many of my concoctions fizz and foam, champagne truly bubbles. Properly opening champagne requires a very steady hand and a strong grip on the cork, else it goes flying and the champagne overflows dramatically, even exploding from the mouth of the bottle like a geyser at times. Now, Shunsui is normally good enough to avoid this, but if we properly agitate the champagne beforehand it will work out fine."
"Fine, but I was under the impression that that wouldn't work with the way you bottle it. I know you bottle it tightly enough that shaking it will do almost nothing to the liquid inside besides stir it around. You don't leave any air in the bottle at all."
"True, but I don't plan on being the one to shake it." Yasuhiro reached down and pulled out a pair of headphones and an old cd player. He strapped the headphones around the bottle and turned up the volume to its maximum. "You see, if I shook it the motions would be large and exaggerated, but if I use the headphones then the vibrations pass through the liquid, vibrating each molecule separately, causing a very different reaction."
"So the trick is to cause the particles to vibrate just differently enough to exaggerate the total agitation and create a much more potent reaction."
Yasuhiro smirked. "Exactly, and since the glass vibrates even more differently than the champagne, the reaction is even greater."
Retsu's eyes widened. "Wait, if the glass vibrates differently than it must be caused by the different densities in reishi particles, which means that . . . I apologize Yasuhiro, but I have to leave immediately."
Yasuhiro's grin grew wider as Retsu rushed out the door. "It's always the simple answers that escape the brainiacs. Leave it to a bartender to remind a doctor about simple logic. After all, Seireitei's not that different from the mortal world."
Yasuhiro took the champagne and returned it to the top shelf. "One of these days I'm actually gonna use that for something more than showing off, but for now I think it still has a few lessons let to teach."
When the door opens for Shunsui and Ukitake the streetlight sends a beam up to the top shelf, landing on the bottle that had never been opened and revealing a small note written on the label.
'To My Darling Hotaru; May you be the light that forever guides me home"
