Greetings!

Here's Chapter 4. Special thanks to apathyninja, Slothman30, Mileryn, perfect beauty, and shaggy-bear for the reviews so far.

I do not own Bleach, or any part of it.

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

Chapter 4 – In which patience and restraint are practiced by all

It is interesting to note that a great deal of destruction is necessary to create and refine things. Something as simple as making a sword requires the creator to burn a great deal of matter, expend a great deal of energy, and strike an object again and again. Impurities are removed through the burning. Strength is gained through the energy expenditure. Shape is given through the impacts of the hammer. Finally, the sword is made sharp through copious amounts of vicious grinding. In the end, the sword is forged in a surprisingly violent way. The same process can be said to apply to any other job, including those that don't produce a tangible product. In the end, you have to sacrifice something to improve or gain something else.

Moderation is required, though. Too much grinding, burning, or striking will only produce a smelly, sticky, flaming mess. And to add insult to injury, you'll still have burned all of that time and money.

Karakura Town, Unknown Location - 10:34 a.m.

Alegria sat on the edge of the stage, overlooking the expanse of concrete where there had once been seating for four thousand people. She stared at the artifact in her hands. It was tiny, which was surprising and yet strangely appropriate. A tiny orb glowed from within its crystalline confinement.

The Hogyoku - It was the most powerful artifact ever created, allowing the fusion of Soul Reapers and Hollows, dissolving the barrier between them.

But that's not all it does, from what Lord Aizen told me. Alegria thought. It can do so much more. And he entrusted it to me!

Aizen had explained his reasoning to her, which she found flattering. He had told her that while most Arrancar were hollows that he had located and turned, she was his creation from the beginning, which made her both superior and special. Since he'd been involved in her planning from the beginning, her abilities were much broader than those of normal hollows, and she would only get stronger with time.

She was not – quite – at the level of the current Espada. The main problem was age. Most of the Arrancar had been hollows for decades or centuries before conversion, and a great deal of their combat experience carried over. Alegria was barely four months old, but she knew everything she needed to – Aizen had given her an advanced knowledge of tactics, strategy, personnel management, geography, and the sciences. In addition, she possessed an encyclopedic vocabulary.

She had spent most of her time during the four months leading up to her first mission learning about her Soul Reaper enemies. She also was especially prepared, thanks to her Zanpakuto ability, to handle Captain Soifon, who she had already been informed would be her opponent.

All of this was the reason that Aizen had entrusted her with the Hogyoku itself. The others in her little team had expressed their doubts that it was the real thing, but she was certain. It pulsed with power; that had to count for something, right?

Mostly certain.

She frowned and looked at it, remembering reading that Aizen had permitted the traitorous Arrancar to take a fake Hogyoku to clean some deadwood out of his army.

Somewhat certain.

She thought about it some more, remembering that Aizen had a tendency to screw with his subordinates, just to keep them on their toes.

Well, I don't have any proof that it *isn't* the real one.

"Oh Alllll-eeeeeeeeee… I found another ooooonnnneeee!" A singsong voice called out across the cavernous room.

Alegria sighed. "Soto, how many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?"

A tall Arrancar walked into the room, a body draped over her shoulder. The two female Arrancar were nearly as great a contrast as Zarraga and Bastida – Alegria was of average height, with long, black hair, and was wearing a nice shirt and a long skirt. The Greek letter alpha could be seen on her wrist whenever her sleeve was pushed back. Soto, meanwhile, was tall, olive skinned, and had bright, blue, short hair that resisted any attempt to tame it. She was dressed in long pants and a white t-shirt, and a beta was tattooed high on her left cheek.

Soto continued brightly as she dumped the body on the stage in front of her leader, "I dunno! It's a lot more fun than calling you 'Alegria' or 'Airgela' or 'Mission Commander' or 'Mrs. Sourpuss' or-"

"Ok, I get it. Where did you find th… oh come on. The high school again?"

"Well, that's where they keep turning up. Maybe there's something there that's making humans spiritually aware?"

"Maybe there is, but I told you not to take any more from that area. The humans will get suspicious!"

Soto visibly grew more excited, grabbing Alegria by the shoulders. "You think so? Maybe they'll figure out our secret hiding place, and the police will come to take us in! They'll be all 'Come out with your hands up!' and you'll be like 'You'll never take me alive!' and then there could be a big dramatic hostage situation – maybe even a car chase!"

Alegria began to feel like she was losing control of this conversation. Soto had a way of derailing rational chains of thought. "Or maybe they'll storm the building, but since they're human and we're Arrancar, they won't see anything. So they'll go home."

Soto frowned. "But that would be boring."

"That's right. And that's why you shouldn't take any more humans from the same spot you've been getting them."

"Oh, alright," Soto pouted. "Could there at least be a car chase?"

"Soto, we don't need cars. We have Sonido."

"Oh. Oh yeah…"

Alegria sighed with relief. She might have been hand-crafted by Aizen, but he'd been forced to create the rest of her team more quickly, so he'd utilized his refined Arrancar-making process on existing hollows. As a result, the other three were powerful, but they came with a few… quirks.

Soto's eyes lit up again, and Alegria prepared herself for whatever fresh insanity she was about to come up with, but was saved by a loud bang as the doors at the top of the auditorium flew open.

"We're back!" Boomed the voice of Bastida. "The living world was fun today! Also we finished our mission."

"It was simple reconnaissance," grumbled his partner. "It's nothing to get excited about."

"And what did you find out?" Alegria leaned forward on her perch.

Zarraga spoke up. "The red-haired Soul Reaper is in on it. The agent seems to be following his advice. Neither one of them sensed us, even at close range."

Alegria leaned back. That was what she had wanted to hear. "That's good. Here's what we'll do, then. Soto will take our newest find to the basement so I can hook him into the loop. You two will tail the agent – do whatever you must to stay near her without being obvious about it. As soon as you get the chance to kill her in private – no allies, no bystanders nearby – you will do so, and watch out for that stinger. See if you can take her by surprise. I'm going to work on getting the Hogyoku synchronized with the rest of our gear."

Soto nodded cheerfully. "Soto's delivery service! I slug 'em, you plug 'em!"

Zarraga nodded seriously. "Yeah, we'll take care of it."

"You'd better," Alegria responded darkly. "I don't want to see any of that idiocy you displayed when we were getting ready for this in Las Noches."

"That was a fluke! We'll be fine."

"Uh-huh. That's good, because if you fail a job as simple as this one, I'm going to take a pair of those cans from downstairs and shove them somewhere unfortunate."

"We're on our way!" Zarraga dragged Bastida out the door. She could faintly hear Bastida asking where 'unfortunate' was. Soto headed downstairs, and Alegria was left alone to meditate. She could barely wait to face the conflict to come.

Somewhere out there was a dangerous, experienced enemy agent. That agent knew she was here, and probably something about her team as well. She would have to plot her moves carefully – the agent was no doubt formulating a plan to eliminate her at this very moment.

Karakura Town, Isane's Apartment - 11:37 a.m.

"How can the flavor be 'all natural' if there are this many chemicals in it?" Isane asked aloud, staring at the canned beverage's label.

Renji looked thoughtful. "Beats me. As far as I can tell, humans think it's ok to lie as long as you call it advertising."

The two Soul Reapers were unloading groceries at Isane's apartment. "This world is even stranger than the last time I was here." Isane mused.

"Wait 'till you see what's on TV," Renji snickered, leaving the small kitchen area.

Isane finished putting the food away, and then counted up how much money she had left. It wasn't much. "I'm going to need a job."

Renji's voice wafted from the other room. "Huh. Why?"

"I'm almost out of money, and I don't know how long I'll be here. Does Urahara have any openings?"

"I don't think so." Renji replied. "Maybe you could get a medical job, you know? You've got to be worth a dozen mortal doctors."

Isane smiled. "That's nice of you to say, but most hospitals are going to want diplomas, certifications, and all sorts of things that I don't have. Besides, I'd almost certainly have to work the same hours that I do at the Fourth Division Med-center, which wouldn't leave much time for the mission."

"Well, maybe you could moonlight at a burger place or something. Your cooking can't be worse than Rangiku's."

Isane shuddered. "It's still not what I'd call good. I mostly fix simple food for myself."

Renji tried fiddling with the window, which seemed to be stuck. "Well, you'll figure it out."

"I hope so. I still don't even know where to start. I don't know where my contacts are, who my enemies might be, what they're up to, or whether or not I can defeat them when the time comes!"

Renji considered. "Well, I can help you work on that last one."

"What, you mean… training? Renji, Lieutenant vs. Lieutenant training can get messy, and we're in the middle of a city. Where would we train?"

The Squad Six vice-captain grinned. "I'm glad you asked. Do you want to see something cool?"

4th Division, Intensive Care - 12:02 p.m.

Retsu Unohana, captain of the Fourth Division and greatest healer in the Soul Society, straightened. She had just finished mending the badly mangled leg of the Fifth Division member in front of her. A hollow near Cairo had turned out to be stronger than expected, and he'd been rushed back to the Seireitei by his fellows.

"…so I was wondering if she'd say yes or not, but then I found out that she doesn't exist. You'd be surprised how disheartening that is. Worse than when my brother turned out to be a puddle."

Unohana remained impassive despite the man's babbling. The Fourth Division used an all-purpose sedative and opiate to keep their patients under control while in surgery. Most patients were simply and cleanly rendered unconscious, and all of them lost motor control and the ability to feel pain. A very small percent, though, remained half awake in a dreamlike, partially delusional state, and were liable to say all manner of things. Frequently, what they said just didn't make sense. Sometimes it was touching, sometimes disturbing, and it was occasionally embarrassing.

And not just for the patient. Unohana had to suppress a small surge of annoyance. It had been one of these episodes that had started the rumors about her and Captain Zaraki, when the captain had finally chosen to dive into a pile of one too many hollows and had come out of it needing actual medical attention. In fairness to the Eleventh Division's captain, Zaraki had won the fight, but he had still been admitted to Fourth Division and had turned out to be one of the delusional types, and during stitching had proclaimed – loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the building – that Unohana was "really hot."

Unohana was fairly certain that Zaraki had been hallucinating and delirious at the time – a hypothesis further supported by Zaraki's subsequent lecture on how waffles were the greatest weapon known to man. That part of the story tended to get dropped, however, and she'd emerged from the operating theater to the applause and cheers of her subordinates. She had simply ignored it, then moved about her daily business while contemplating whether or not she had saved up enough sick leave to crawl into a hole and die. She hadn't, unfortunately, and the operating rooms of the Med-Center had been mysteriously soundproofed over the following weeks. The rumor had finally subsided, though. It had helped that Zaraki didn't remember any of it, and shrugged off any attempt to discuss it.

She shook her head, getting back to the here and now. She turned to the patient's friend as she administered the drug that would reverse the opiate. "He needs to rest now. He will be fine."

The other member of Squad Five seemed to relax. As he got up, though, the patient's hand shot up and caught his sleeve, and there was a panicked gasp, "Wait! Who will take care of my rabbits?"

Unohana looked expectantly at the patient's friend. The friend began wildly pantomiming that he had no idea what the patient was talking about. Unohana nodded and leaned over the patient, gently but firmly placing his hand back on the bed. "It will be alright. I will take care of your rabbits."

"Oh… ok…" The patient then quickly dropped off to sleep.

Unohana emerged from the operating room and called over two of her squad. "Move him to the recovery area." She almost told another to get Isane for her, but then stopped. She sighed and rubbed her temples. Isane had been gone a while now – any emergency situation in the mortal world should have been handled by this time. Unohana decided to send a message to central dispatch to see what Isane was supposedly doing.

Then the sixth response team burst into the ward carrying a Soul Reaper and yelling about poison, and Unohana turned and ran to follow them.

2nd Division, Training Grounds - 2:13 p.m.

If it were possible, Soifon's problem had grown even worse. She didn't know why – she had spent days staking out a target before, without feeling this bored and irritable. She supposed the problem was purpose – at least the stakeout had been accomplishing something. Here she was just sitting on her hands.

So she had taken to prowling around Second Division's headquarters, snapping at subordinates that were performing badly, or looked like they might start performing badly at some point in the future, just in case. As evening approached, she began to suspect that the Stealth Forces were just as eager for her to go on her mission as she was.

About halfway through her walk, Omaeda had joined her, and that hadn't helped her mood any either. She had just finished watching one of the training teams and begun moving again when Omaeda had asked her, "So what did you do about that big thing of ice?"

She sighed. "I put Unit Four on it."

"Awww… I could have handled it for you! Why don't you let me do any of the weird jobs?"

She rounded on him suddenly, glaring. "Why? Because you're the Second Division's biggest failure, both figuratively and literally! You thought Shunko was a kind of ice cream for three years! You're fat enough to have your own zip code, you can't hide because you leave a trail of crumbs everywhere you go, and you can't stalk anything because you have the observational skills of a brick. You're a disgrace. You couldn't find Waldo. You probably still think that this is a private conversation, don't you?"

"There's someone else in here?"

"There are fifteen ninjas in this room!"

"It's true," said one of the potted plants.

"And that is why you don't do anything important." Soifon finished. "I'm sure Unit Four is doing fine."

10th Division, Vice-Captain's Office (Approximate) - 2:14 p.m.

Unit Four was not doing fine. Mitsu sighed and leaned back, massaging her shoulder. They'd been staking out Tenth Division's headquarters for hours. Attempting to schedule an appointment with Matsumoto had proved futile. Rangiku's schedule was a disorganized, amorphous, shifting, Lovecraftian horror with no steady openings in which one could place something as concrete as an appointment. Unit Four had spent hours being shuffled around and put off, before finally going back to doing things the sneaky way. Now they just needed for Matsumoto to be alone and vulnerable, if only for a moment.

I'll get you yet, Matsumoto. Mitsu thought, wondering if she was being entirely rational about this. You and your sneaky, frosty captain. I don't know what kind of secrets you're hiding, but we'll find them.

Karakura Town, Urahara's Training Grounds - 7:42 p.m.

Isane Kotetsu, for a wonder, was doing fine. She and Renji had arrived at Urahara's shop earlier that day, and the merchant had led them to his downstairs training area at Renji's insistence.

Urahara had put on his standard routine, of course. "Whoa! Who would have guessed that there'd be a huge cave right under my shop?"

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you would have guessed," Renji had shot back, impatiently.

After explaining that the area was shielded and very durable, Urahara had left them there and returned to the surface to tend to his store. The two lieutenants had begun practicing, and continued for hours.

What surprised Isane was how well she was doing. As a lieutenant, Isane knew that she wasn't weak in an objective sense, but she had figured that she was one of the weaker vice-captains. But not only was she keeping up with Renji, she was fighting circles around him, both at sealed and Shikai level. It was a huge confidence booster, which she admitted to herself that she'd needed in the wake of the Ryoka attack. In addition to the horror of Aizen's betrayal, Isane personally had gone out like a rank amateur in her fight with Kurosaki, and then had been more or less dismissed by Aizen in the Central 46 chambers.

That day hadn't been good for her self-esteem.

She tried to tell herself that she was being silly. It was partially due to her efforts that Captain Hitsugaya and Lieutenant Hinamori were still alive, and she'd assisted all the other injured officers from Sokyoku Hill with efficient effort and expert skill. The fact remained, though, that her most recent experience in actual combat had been getting stomped by a fifteen year old human boy. Granted, that boy had gone on to defeat Captain Kuchiki, but it still stung.

Which was why she was astounded at how well she was doing in Urahara's secret training ground. She wasn't even really using Itegumo's abilities, and she was easily avoiding Renji's attacks and countering with her own.

"Damn…" Renji grunted, from his prone position on the ground. He pushed himself up onto his elbows. "I can't believe how strong you are!"

Isane was about to reply, but something nagged at the back of her mind. She looked down at Renji, and saw it – his uniform had started to fall open in front, and it revealed the limiter seal of Sixth Division on his chest.

Oh hell, I should have known.

"I can't imagine how you haven't achieved Bankai yet, if you're this powerful even with a limiter." Renji winced. "That last hit was really good."

Isane fidgeted nervously. "Actually, I, uh… I'm not under a limiter right now."

Renji's eyebrows shot up – an action that was more obvious on him than most. "Huh? Of course you are."

Isane shook her head. "No, I'm really not." She pushed up her sleeve. "It's normally right there. I didn't get one when I came through for some reason."

Renji leaned forward and whistled. "Wow, you really are on a secret mission." Then he scowled. "Hey! You've been cheating!"

Isane gave a small bow of apology. "I… I'm sorry! I don't usually have to worry about them, and I forgot."

Renji's eyes suddenly lit up, and his face split into a rakehell grin. "Well then. If you're five times stronger than you're supposed to be, then I guess it would be fair if my power went up by that amount too!"

Isane eyed him suspiciously. "We don't need to ask for a release. I'll acknowledge that you're a better fighter – there's no need to call back home."

"I wasn't talking about that." Renji laughed as he got up. "I was wondering if you'd like to train against a Bankai!"

"A Bankai?" Isane blurted out. She'd heard that Renji had one, but… "Doesn't that multiply your strength by a bit more than five times?"

"Well, yeah, it's closer to ten, but without a limiter you shouldn't get hurt too bad. Are you telling me that you're afraid of the big bad Bankai?"

"I am not afraid!" Isane shot back hotly. "I'm… concerned."

This is crazy! You don't train against a Bankai!

Do you?

"Concerned about what?"

"Isn't it… isn't it draining on you to use Bankai?" She said, searching for an excuse.

Renji shrugged. "A bit, but I could use the practice. Don't worry about me. Do you want to do this or not?"

No! "Yes!"

Isane had no idea at the time why she had agreed. It could have been that she wanted to test herself against someone who wasn't an ungodly powerful Ryoka. It could have been that her mounting frustration with her mission left her wanting a good fight. It could have been that all of those chemicals required to produce an "all natural" flavor had left her with a case of temporary insanity. It was only much later that she would classify it as "pride" instead of "stupidity."

What an odd thing to say. I'm going to die.

"Good! That's the spirit! BANKAI, HIHIO ZABIMARU!"

Chapter End

Chapter 4 complete! This one ran a bit long, and I still didn't put in everything that I wanted to. That just means that Chapter 5 will be out faster, though.

As always, reviews and feedback are appreciated!