Tamashini was elbow deep in the frame of the engine she was constructing with three arms. She'd enacted her resurrección because she needed her extra hands. She was intent on making this a reality. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn't hear the door open and close to her shop, so when a hand touched her back, she nearly yelped in surprise. She placed a hand over her heart and looked behind her to see it was Hisashi and Dam.

"Dam, Hisashi," she breathed out. "You scared me."

"Sorry, Tamashini," Hisashi said gently, as always.

"I wanted to see you. You've been so busy, I haven't seen you in several days," Dam said, smiling at her.

She carefully removed her three hands from the engine pieces and ran one through her black hair where it had come loose from the tie. "Oh, yeah, I had a bit of a breakthrough on the engine design and ended up getting a lot more work done on it than I expected," she said, wiping grease off two of her hands on the overalls she was wearing. "How are you today, Dam?"

"I'm feeling a little better. Hisashi had another of his concoctions for me to try, and so far, it seems to be working. I don't see any butterflies yet today, and they've been rather bad the last few days." Dam always had a smile for her.

It had always been like that, though. For as long as she could remember, Dam, no matter how he was feeling, would always smile for her. Tamashini had never been that good at doing some of the things that her siblings had been good at. She had always been good with her hands, all four of them, but reading and learning had never been her strong suit. However, she could take apart and put back together mechanical objects like no one else. She spent a lot of time working with her hands as she grew up, and it had been Dam that had recognized that in her.

She walked over and cupped her Dam's face and kissed his forehead. "I'm glad, Dam," she said.

If it hadn't been for Dam, she didn't think her life would have turned out the way it had. Dam had seen her aptitude early on for doing things with her hands and had encouraged it. Dam had never made her feel bad about not being able to read as well as the others or forced her to sit still when he knew that it wasn't possible.

"How is your project coming?" Dam asked as he looked over the engine housing that Tamashini was working on.

Tamashini looked at him and leaned over. "This here," she said, pointing at one of the internal components. "I've been trying to come up with an efficient engine that uses the ambient reishi of Hueco Mundo to cycle through energy. So far, I'm halfway there. If I can make this work, it will be the first engine ever created to run on spiritual energy ever. See, that spot there? I've been trying to make the parts smaller and more efficient as I go along." She stopped and realized that Dam probably wouldn't be following half of what she was saying. "Uh, so yeah, Urahara-san and I have been working together lately, and he seems to think my theories are sound as far as what's gonna work here."

"That's amazing, Tama!" Dam exclaimed, eyes roving the parts of the exploded engine. "To even come up with such a thing, and then to get as far as you have, that's just the best thing I've seen."

Tamashini couldn't help the grin that split her face, her wide mouth lighting up her eyes. There was nothing better than being praised so heavily by Dam. Not even her father's praise put this kind of feeling in her chest. She stood up straighter and glanced over at Hisashi who looked completely confused about what she had been talking about. Dam looked like he understood, but she had to wonder how much he had really gotten out of what she said.

"We're planning a dinner for everyone for Dam's birthday," Hisashi interjected. "We came by to see if you would be able to come."

"Oh, of course! When is it?" she asked, unable to stop smiling no matter what she tried.

"Tomorrow night. I hope the late notice isn't too much trouble. It was kind of a last minute decision since Dam's been in such good spirits lately and hasn't been having too many of the bad hallucinations," Hisashi answered, watching as Dam continued looking over Tamashini's work where it was laid out.

The workshop was well used, with parts and tools laying all over the tables and the various machines that she had created from parts that still sat around. She kept most of her inventions, even if they didn't have a purpose or a reason to them. Most of her work centered on using the ambient energy of Hueco Mundo in order to power her creations. She had gotten small, seemingly unimportant machines to function perfectly fine with smaller engines and systems, but the larger engine for the train was a lot more difficult to balance the different parts.

"Will Urahara-san and the others be there?" she asked, watching Dam carefully to make sure he didn't touch anything he shouldn't.

"We've invited everyone from Soul Society and the World of the Living, so we'll see who comes. With the short notice, we're not sure who will be able to come after all," Hisashi said, also watching Dam a bit nervously as he started poking around in the engine to look closer at parts of it. "Uh, Dam, shouldn't we go?"

Dam stood up, looking over at him curiously. "Do we need to be somewhere else?" he asked.

"Ah, well, I'm sure Tamashini's busy, and we could spend some time in the art room if you wanted to. I thin the twins were going to work on their latest pieces in there. Or maybe visit with Uncle Grimmjow for a while? You haven't seen him in a bit," Hisashi said, trying to smile. Tamashini knew he was just trying to get him out of the workshop before he messed anything up.

Dam stared at him for a second, then looked back at the engine. "Oh." He spoke simply, looking a little forlorn.

"Oh, Dam, you don't have to go if you don't want to," Tamashini said quickly, waving her hands at Hisashi.

"Oh, no, I understand. I'm in the way here. It's okay," Dam said with a slight smile. "I really do understand. I'll go with Hisashi and see what Grimm is doing today."

"Dam, really, you're not in the way—" Tamashini started.

"No, no. I should see how the others are doing. It's fine," Dam told her and leaned up to kiss her on the cheek. "You have your work to do, and you should do it."

Hisashi shrugged as Dam turned and headed toward the door. Tamashini couldn't help but feel a little bad about Dam leaving. The truth was that she couldn't work while she watched him, and with Dam, there was no telling when a moment would overcome him, and he'd do something or see something. She sighed and dropped down to sit on the bench beside the frame of the engine. She leaned back and looked up toward the ceiling.

Learning the truth about Dam had been hard. The others all found out their own ways, and Tamashini was no different. It had been Renji Abarai that she had cornered to tell her the truth. She spent much of her time either working on her various mechanical projects or sparring with her father or Uncle Grimmjow. Now and then, Abarai-san would come and join in, usually with Ryoto since he could always be found in the training rooms.

"I want to know." She wasn't quite as tall as the redheaded Shinigami, but she was close.

"I'm not the person to ask," he had said, calling back his Bankai.

"You are the one that is here now, and you will tell me the truth," she had told him, crossing her arms on top of each other, interlocking all four of them with each other.

Abarai-san tried to put her off, to make her ask anyone but him, but Tamashini wasn't having any of it. She wanted to know the truth, and she wanted it right then. Finally, the Shinigami relented and walked to the side of the training room where a couple benches sat. He sat down heavily and looked at her sadly.

"I won't lie to you. We fucked up, that's the truth."

"What do you mean?" she had asked, confused by the way he said it.

"I mean exactly what I say. It's our fault. The Shinigami. Those of us from Soul Society. We're the cause of yer Dam's madness." He had placed his sword across his lap and looked at her sadly.

"How?" she had whispered.

He had looked at her again then sighed. "A long time ago, Sōsuke Aizen had a plan, and it was to frame yer Dam for the murder of Ukitake-taichou. He left enough clues behind to clear his name, if we'd tried, but we didn't. We believed what was seen, and we locked him up for five years alone. I think he was going a little crazy by the end of that time. The loneliness and solitude had started to eat at him. Then, because yer Dam was never 'normal', we thought since he could hollowify himself as a Shinigami that the hollow had taken him over and changed him. So, he was given to Kurotsuchi-taichou," he stopped and looked thoughtful. "I told him he'd be forgotten, but he was always on my mind no matter how hard I tried to forget him."

"Kurotsuchi-taichou? But he's not allowed to even talk to Dam…" she said, knowing from listening to them that the captain of the twelfth division was a genius but almost as mad as Dam was.

"That's because he spent the next five years trying to separate his hollow Zanpakutō from him and figure out what had caused him to change. When it gave no results, he moved on to testing alpha/beta hollow attributes in the confines of his lab," he had stopped again.

"So, that red cell? The one he draws all the time, and tells us he drowning in red, that was from that?" she asked, truly horrified by what she was hearing. She had always thought it was a hallucination that Dam suffered from. She had no idea it was a real thing.

Abarai-san had nodded. "It was very real. The red is the blood, we think, because he became obsessed with blood. Aizen sent the Espada to come retrieve him when Kurotsuchi had decided that it was time to execute him since he could do nothing else. Ukitake-taichou was returned, and the hypnosis removed to reveal the truth of what had happened and how wrong we had been."

Tamashini was quiet again as she thought. "So, you made Dam lose his mind."

"Yeah, and it was Aizen who helped heal it, as much as I hate to admit it. I don't know the details of all the Arrancar mating rights or anything, that's something for someone like Szayel or Aizen himself. I just know that he finally used the hogyuku to turn him into an Arrancar without a hollow hole. After that, there was something about giving each of his mates an offspring, which was when he had you all. It made his madness less, and now he's like he is. They've been trying to come up with ways to heal it still, but no one has had any success." He had stood up and sighed. "I have to go back. I'm sorry, we all are. He forgave us all, though, even Kurotsuchi. He's a much better person than any of us."

She had watched him go and just sat there in silence, letting her resurrección go. She shivered and felt tears for the first time in a while. How could they? All of them? Including their Grandfather? No one had put a stop to it?

She shook her head, reaching up to wipe away fresh tears. Every time she thought about that conversation, she got teary eyed. She wasn't nearly as bad as Hisashi, but she did let herself cry now and then, though usually out of frustration. She had later gotten Uncle Szayel to tell her what had happened in Las Noches and how he was being poisoned by the foreign reiatsu, and how it was necessary for the six of them to eliminate it. By that point, she understood alpha/beta relations because once they all became adolescents, they had that talk with Uncle Szayel about understanding the drives that each of them would eventually have.

She played with the wrench she was holding, passing it back and forth between her right hands. She glanced behind her at the engine and smiled. Part of the reason for her even thinking of making this rail system was because of Dam. In Dam's stories of the World of the Living, he spoke about the bullet trains and how they got people to places so fast. Eventually, she had books on mechanical engineering, which had diagrams and information about engines and working with different types of fuel. Dam had mentioned one day when she was studying a book on the bullet trains that he wished they had something like that for Las Noches to Agartha. That had sparked the idea for Tamashini to come up with this system.

It had taken her years to refine the engine that ran on reishi. It was something in infinite supply, and literally could be gathered from the world around them. Because the energy wasn't consumed, rather simply transferred, it came back out of the machine, thus maintaining the levels of reishi in the environment around them.

She put down the wrench and got up. She had lost interest in working for the day. She truly felt terrible that Dam thought she didn't want him around. She never intended such a thing and it made her think of these things. She put away some of the tools and closed the cabinet. She would just have to hope that her birthday surprise for Dam would make up for any hurt she caused him. She looked over on the table where the plain looking box sat. Even if Dam had looked right at it, he wouldn't know what it was. From the outside it looked like a simple wooden box. She picked it up and opened it, triggering the music that played. In the top was a copy of the picture of them as children standing with Dam.

Closing the box again, the music stopped, and she again hoped that something so simple would make Dam smile. She picked it up and took off in a sonido to get to the common room to see where they were putting Dam's gifts for the party tomorrow. She got there and found Gin and Kin both standing by the sofas where Uncle Sōsuke and her father were both sitting.

"Tamashini," Uncle Sōsuke said as she approached. "We were just talking about you and your project. We were wondering if you would be coming out of the workshop for the get together tomorrow."

"I wouldn't miss Dam's birthday," she said as she held up the box. "I made him something."

Her father smiled at her. "Good girl," he said, blinking his one eye at her. "I'm sure he'll love it."

She felt her cheeks heat up a little and she looked over where there were a couple wrapped packages sitting on the sofa table. She sat it down beside the others. Gin and Kin had each made something too, no doubt.

"What did you make this year?" she asked them.

Gin, wearing a floral yukata today, pointed to one of the packages. "I carved him a set of picture frames. Enough to put all his favorite photos in and hang on the wall in here or their room."

"I painted the frames," Kin explained with a smile. She was wearing a pair of black slacks and a bright patterned shirt with large flowers on it.

"I know he'll like that," she said. "He always loves the things you give him. Mine looks so plain compared to what you two can do," she sighed, feeling a little inadequate.

Uncle Sōsuke spoke up. "Do not sell yourself short. He greatly enjoys the mechanical marvels you create for him."

She nodded, still feeling a little sad that she'd sent Dam away from the workshop. She thought maybe she should go see him again, but she didn't want to bother him either.

"Tamashini, you look like something is amiss," Uncle Sōsuke said, and she turned her attention back to him.

"I just… Well, Dam was in the workshop. And I think he thought I wanted him to leave, because he left, and I didn't want him to think I didn't want him."

Her father shook his head. "I'm sure that ain't what he thought."

"He's in the art room with Hisashi if you want to see him for yourself. He didn't look like he was upset about anything, so I doubt you hurt his feelings," Uncle Sōsuke told her with a soft smile.

"Yeah, I guess," she answered. "I'll go see how he is."

She turned and left to head to the art room. She wondered what Dam thought sometimes. It was so difficult to get a read on what was going on in his mind. She always wondered at the things he said and tried to figure out what was real and what was simply a hallucination. She knew that some of the things he saw were straight out of his nightmares. She couldn't imagine living with that going on. More than once, she had to help find Dam after he had one of his scary ones that caused him to run and hide. Luckily for them, he usually hid in places he considered safe like Uncle Szayel's lab or one of the training rooms.

When she was small, she remembered spending so much time in this very room. She smiled at the memories as she put her hand on it. She released her resurrección and recalled her extra hands. She opened the door and went in. Smiling, she looked over to see that Dam was playing with the keyboard that Ishida-san and Chad had brought for him. He wasn't very good yet, but he was learning some basic songs.

He looked up as she closed the door. "Tama. I thought you'd be working still."

"Oh, no, I'm done for the day. It's better I don't get started on anything right now since tomorrow is your birthday and I don't want to miss it. If I get into my work, I may forget it," she said, coming to sit down beside him.

"You all worry too much over a silly thing like a birthday," Dam said, staring at the keyboard and then tapping out carefully a song. It was Mary Had a Little Lamb.

"You're getting better," she said, looking over to see that Hisashi was crashed in the pillow pile with a book of some sort. She arched a brow and guessed that Dam was having a very good day since Hisashi was doing something while he was minding him.

"I like playing it, even if I can't do it yet," he said and started tapping out the tune again.

"I think it sounds lovely, Dam," she said and patted him on the back.

"Who is coming tomorrow?" he asked suddenly, frowning as though the thought had just occurred to him.

Tamashini recognized that look. She sighed. "Everyone, remember? Abarai-san, Kuchiki-san, Urahara-san, Ishida-san, Chad…hopefully Grandfather."

"Grandfather?" he echoed, and she looked over to see Hisashi listening to them carefully instead of reading.

"Yeah, Dam, you know, your father," she reminded him.

He was quiet for a second and then nodded. "Oh yeah. I forget about him sometimes."

"I know, Dam, I know." Tamashini reached out and hugged him to her so he couldn't see the tears she was trying to hide.