Chapter 10
Sosuke and Gin raced into the chamber. Jushiro was sitting on his heels, in front of the step, patting Wonderwiess' hand. Wonderwiess' other hand was wiping his nose. The chair was empty, save for that one grim reminder of what had just transpired...
"TOSEN!" Gin shrieked. Jushiro slowly turned his hazel eyes onto the pair of Shinigami traitors still remaining. He did not smile. He did not try to make excuses. Sosuke glared back at him.
"What did you do?" Sosuke demanded.
"It wasn't totally my fault. He got angry, and lost control over himself. That was so unlike Kaname, in all the years I'd known him, he was always calm, always loathing violence. I can't even imagine what it took to convince him to... His zanpakuto shattered as soon as the tip hit the back of the chair. I...did what little I could to try and get him out of the chair, but the binds would not let him go, as they did me. So, I put an end to his suffering. The chair's powers cause such excruciating pain, that even I, who despised Kaname for causing such trouble in my life, could not bear to watch him suffer. So, you got some of his reiatsu, but I don't think you got all of it. That, along with the reiatsu I'd been bleeding off the entire time I'd been in the chair, I think that might equal one captain, one of the younger ones anyway, right?"
Gin said nothing, but his eyes were wide open and frightened. Sosuke was seething. "How did you escape the chair?"
"Oh, I was able to leave it all along. You know, you are right about me. I'm far too arrogant for my own good," Jushiro sighed in remorse. "I figured I'd be able to accomplish everything I could without even leaving the chair until the last second. Kaname's actions sort of forced my hand, I'm afraid. So, now, I suppose it might be a good time to finally answer the question that Kaname died trying to get. But, before I do that, I have to give you just a little pretext so that you understand what had happened here."
"Where did you hide your zanpakuto?" Sosuke growled impatiently.
Jushiro stood up, holding Wonderwiess' hand. "Well, I've read all of Urahara's research. When you left, I made it my night-and-day task to tear apart the library, looking for every little speck of your reiatsu. So, trust me on this, I know exactly what you know. Including the idea of the chair to drain reiatsu. Alright, technically, that isn't part of Urahara's research, but then, that business about the Oken isn't either. So you gave the plans to Szayel and he constructed it for you, in hopes of getting your first captain. I was very relieved that I was the first one you captured. By the way," Jushiro asked, "have you ever tried any of the other ideas that Urahara had developed? Specifically, when you found out that it was possible to bury a foreign object into a person's soul, have you ever tried it?"
"Actually, no, I haven't had a chance to try it yet," Sosuke admitted. "But as you know, I can get an object out. It's actually easier than I'd been led to first believe," he shrugged.
"Oh, that's good to know! Because, take it from me, burying something into someone's soul is so easy, it's almost scary!" Jushiro revealed with a wide smile. "Recognize this, Aizen?" Jushiro pulled a cylinder out of his sleeve and snapped it open. Several huge thorns grew out of the marble floor. Jushiro's hand grew a protective green layer around it. He smiled comfortingly at Wonderwiess, who seemed ever so slightly apprehensive. "Don't worry, this won't hurt even a single bit..." Jushiro reached into Wonderwiess' chest, and he felt the hilt of his zanpakuto with those strange fingertips.
"Son. Of. A. Bitch!" Sosuke growled as Jushiro drew Sogyo no Katawari from Wonderwiess' soul.
Gin reached for his zanpakuto, Shinso. "Don't you touch that until we get outside, child!" Jushiro ordered Gin, all kindness and smiles gone from his face. Gin put his hand down.
"You fool!" Sosuke bellowed at Gin. "Just push him back into the chair, and it's all over for him! Hado #1: Sho!" And Sosuke's kido spell flew right into the chair, for Jushiro had long left that area, using shunpo.
"We should take this outside. After all, we don't want all of Orihime's hard work to go to waste, do we?" Jushiro grinned, landing right next to Sosuke and taking a swing at him with his zanpakuto. Sosuke retreated, not drawing Kyoka Suigetsu. "You know, if you really want to go to Hueco Mundo, pitch yourself headfirst into oblivion, I really don't care, as long as you don't take the people I care about with you! And now, I am here, not to stop you, though that's what I'll be doing. Not to get revenge, though you would obviously think of that first. I'm here to show you just how fruitless this all was. I'm here to show you just how far you've fallen!" Jushiro told him.
"There you go again with that business about how far I've fallen. I've risen far beyond your level, Ukitake! You don't even have any concept! You have no idea how close I am to godhood!" Sosuke said scornfully.
"If you don't think you've fallen, Aizen, then tell me why you have been hiding the fact that you have given yourself the Dark Gift! I'll tell you why you haven't. Because you don't want to show me the extent of your descent. You probably figured I'd disintegrate in the chair before you would need to reveal it to the world," Jushiro sighed, shaking his head.
"Don't flatter yourself, wretch! You shouldn't even be a captain of the Court Guard. You're too sickly, too weak! I'll show you just how weak you are, Ukitake!"
"Really, it's so ironic to me that your shikai is the power of 'complete hypnosis,' when you are the one who is hypnotized by your own greed for power. I'm going to help you see, once and for all, just how far off you are from your quest to fill the throne in the the sky!" Jushiro warned him.
"Very well then! Dazzle me with your brilliance, old man!" Sosuke snorted.
Jushiro smiled slightly, not nearly the cheerful grin he'd given before. "Oh, where should I begin? Hmmm, I know! Let's start with my dreary days in the library. Now, I've already told you that, after you left for Hueco Mundo, I had access to everything you looked up. But what you might not be aware of is that I've had access to Urahara's research long before that. You see, when people began to disappear from the Rukongai a hundred years ago, people in the Gotei 13 were getting more alarmed by the day. For my sensei to have sent three extra captains on a task force to find out what had happened to Squad Nine's captain, you can see that things had reached a critical mass. Even after Urahara was arrested, we knew that those people Yamamoto sent that night had become Hollowfied, and that there was a chance that such a disaster might happen again. So, Kurotsuchi was ordered to turn over Urahara's research. But I knew Mayuri well enough to know that there was a lot more that he hadn't turned over to the investigation. So, I cut a deal with him. He was so damned curious about my health..."
Sosuke's face turned sour. "You mean...?"
Jushiro could see some sign of discomfort. He's already squirming. He doesn't even know the half of it, but he will! "I know, I know... It was a sacrifice, true. He's got no boundaries when it comes to privacy, but the price I paid had reaped a reward. I had full and complete access to all of Urahara's research. Especially on the Hogyoku. Now needless to say this happened long before you had time enough again to devote to making up new hybrid Hollow monsters. After all, we had two World Wars to clean up after, and I know that took up a lot of your time." Jushiro glanced at Gin, whose face was now downcast. "It was after the end of the Second World War that you had the time to pursue your hobby again. Remember Metastacia? I remember him. That was my signal, that someone was up to their old tricks again, playing with Hollows, trying to make them somehow merged with Shinigami. That's when I returned to the library once again. This time, I had a specific purpose in mind...trying to smoke out a terrible enemy to Soul Society.
"And what better way than to...manipulate the information that this madman would be reading?"
"What do you mean, manipulate the information?" Sosuke demanded with an uncharacteristic note of discomfort.
Jushiro had to struggle not to sigh. "Nothing makes a nutjob more excited than dangling the carrot of 'World Domination' in front of him! You see, by the time your monster took my Kaien, it was becoming apparent that Urahara might not have been the culprit that your testimony to the Central 46 had made him out to be. We suspected Mayuri at first, which of course then made him much more cooperative than he'd been in the early days. After all, he wasn't terribly keen on going back to the Maggot's Nest. Now, I was allowed to actually edit some of the information Urahara had put into the computer systems. And so I did..."
"What information did you manipulate?" Sosuke asked, now with dread.
"Well, mostly things about the Hogyoku. See, even though I had never seen it with my own eyes, I knew that it had a seal on it. Urahara kept that seal on it all the time, he wrote about it. The parts I changed were about the 'awakening' of the Hogyoku. You see, I figured that if some rogue Shinigami were to get ahold of it, he'd need to be convinced that he couldn't use it right away, so we'd have time to prepare for his eventual attack. So, I gave it four months from the time the seal was broken. The truth is, the Hogyoku can be used at any time with the seal still intact. Surely you must have noticed it. I even put in that little part about how, even if the Hogyoku wasn't 'fully awakened,' if the person using it was at least twice as powerful as an average captain, that it would awaken temporarily. Nice touch, huh? Kind of made you feel all smug and superior, right?" Jushiro asked him.
Sosuke's fists were both so tight that his fingers could have broken. "That's a load of nonsense! You didn't make that up! I don't even recall actually reading that part, I thought I discovered it on my own..." But the wording he used! Could I have really read it after all?
"Well, I had to supply some sort of explanation as to why you'd actually be able to use it even though it was 'sealed.' And you didn't discover that on your own, you read it, among all that endless scribble. It's a miracle that you don't really need glasses after reading through all that! Well, at this late date, it really doesn't matter anymore. You've been using the Hogyoku for months now. It will not grow any more powerful. Whatever you have planned, you'd better do it soon. Oh, that's right, you were planning on creating a new Oken..." Jushiro mused.
"Now what?" Sosuke asked.
"Well, I was just thinking about how you found that information in the Central 46 library... Doesn't that make you a little...suspicious now?"
"Yes," Sosuke admitted.
"Just think. The instructions for creating a new Oken was in the library. Almost any captain could have read it, or any of the Central 46 also! But for all these millenia, the Royal Guard had only allowed the Captain Commander of the Gotei 13 to know of it's location, and they never wrote it down! But almost any other captain or member of Central 46 had access to the instructions to create a new one? What would be the point of taking the precation of keeping the location of the original Oken such a tightly held secret when access to the creation of a new one was so much more readily available? I mean, someone like Kurotsuchi is an ace at hacking into Central 46's records, and this was before you did us the favor of killing all of them off. Why would they need a new Oken made anyway? Are they worried they might lose the first one?" Jushiro mused.
"What if Yamamoto died without telling anyone the location of the Oken?" Sosuke countered.
Jushiro crossed his arms and grinned. "Well, I guess then the Soul King would have to unlock himself out of his royal dimension to tell the new Captain Commander where the Oken is."
Sosuke sighed. "I have to admit, that makes a lot of sense... Wait a minute! Are you saying-?"
"That the reason I figured out your plan so quickly is because it was originally my plan? Yes, that is what I'm saying! I just had to confirm that you had actually read all of it, and sure enough, you had. Very efficient, Aizen. You followed my instructions to the letter. You found out 'how to make a new key.' You found the place where the reishi is so concentrated that it has become a jureichi. You found out that you needed one hundred thousand souls worth of reishi to create the Oken, along with the jureichi. And so, you tried to line all that up by attacking Karakura Town, a highly populated jureichi. Perfect! Just what I'd expect from an excellent calligrapher!" Jushiro nearly sneered.
"Why did you do this? What was your purpose?" Sosuke gasped.
"It's simple. I wanted to 'kill two birds with one stone.' I wanted to smoke out this traitor, and, I wanted to find the Shinigami who had been Hollowfied. Most likely, Karakura Town wasn't the jureichi until a few months ago. Before that, it could have been anywhere. But I figured that it would be anywhere that eight very high level Shinigami were staying. And it's because of Kurosaki-kun that they sought out Karakura Town, as they had recently discovered a ninth Shinigami like them. What's more, Urahara, Tsukabishi, and Shihoin were there too! The poor town was doomed unless the Gotei 13 stepped in! Good thing we knew exactly where to look and had four months to prepare, wasn't it?" Jushiro asked.
"Prepare? You didn't even need to do any of this! It was all a lie!" Sosuke ranted, now completely furious and shaking.
"Well, if you're worried that Urahara was kept a little too busy these past few months, let me reassure you that someone like him and Mayuri need to be kept busy or they get into trouble. And it worked in another way. I found those Shinigami that you doomed with your evil," Jushiro said with a genuine smile.
Sosuke sneered. "You used me to find those criminals? Why are they so important to you?"
"Are you really going to keep that up? We all now know you were the one who turned them into those hybrids, against their will, and you were going to murder them after finishing your cruel experiment. And just think, back then you didn't even have the Hogyoku to do it! Why are they so unimportant to you? You playing God down here in Hell," Jushiro finally sneered, turning more and more scornful by the second. "You don't need to know why they were in any way important to me."
"I'm surprised that you haven't claimed that you suspected me long ago," Sosuke commented coolly, regaining his legendary control.
"No, I didn't suspect you, Aizen. I didn't suspect anyone in particular. But then, you never suspected that the information you'd been working with was tampered with, did you? And if you had, would you have suspected that I was the culprit? Now, I think it's time that we settled this, don't you?"
Sosuke sneered himself. "You're going up against me by yourself?"
"What do you care?" Jushiro asked.
"If I defeat you, I get to put you into that chair again...Surely that would concern you," Sosuke explained.
"I'm not concerned. I don't believe that you will be able to put me back into that chair again." Jushiro unsheathed Sogyo no Katawari. "Especially if we release our Shikai in this building, fragile as it seems to be. Tosen was only able to release his Bankai in here because his reiatsu level was never high enough to cause that kind of problem here. And all three of us know our levels are too high."
"He's got a point, Gin. If this building were to fall down, the chair would be buried under the rubble. Fine, meet us by the front gates of Las Noches in five minutes. I'll give you the extra time; I know how slow your shunpo must be from your debilitating illness," Sosuke grinned graciously yet mockingly, then, he nodded to Gin. They both disappeared.
Jushiro grinned, sheathed Sogyo no Katawari, then began a kido spell. "Black and white net. Twenty-two bridges, sixty-six crowns and belts. Footprints, distant thunder, sharp peak, engulfing land, hidden in the night, sea of clouds, blue line. Form a circle and fly though the heavens. Bakudo #77: Tenteikura!" The square of light appeared before Jushiro's outstretched hands, and his arms were covered with the glimmering zigzag lines of the spell. He began to speak: "Everyone, this building is about to be destroyed, you have two minutes to evacuate! I repeat, you have two minutes from now to evacuate the building before it is destroyed!" Within ten seconds, the first of the Arrancars began to arrive in the downstairs chambers.
"What's the meaning of this? What are doing out of your chair?" Szayel demanded to know.
"Would you like to get strapped in yourself?" Grimmjow growled.
"You...you're rebelling! Where's Lord Aizen?" Szayel gasped.
"You'd better get moving, Szayel, or you'll be under a pile of rocks in a minute and a half! Take Wonderwiess with you and get the hell out of here!" Grimmjow warned him.
"But what about my research lab? That's going to be buried too!"
"Really? That's great!" Jushiro declared brightly.
Tesla appeared. "Lord Grimmjow, what's going on? Why is the building going to be destroyed?"
"That much should be obvious. Have you seen anyone else?" Grimmjow asked impatiently.
"Lord Aaroniero heard the captain's voice and spooked. He ran off," Tesla answered, eyeing Jushiro warily.
Damn! Now I'll have to go look for that little coward later! "Fine, but where are Ulquiorra and Orihime?" Jushiro asked.
"Tesla, we have to find them!" Grimmjow gasped. "We don't have time to wait for them, Aizen's going to come back if we take too long!"
"No need to look for us," Ulquiorra told them, as he arrived with Orihime in tow.
"Great, now, let's get out of here," Grimmjow said as he turned to the wall that Orihime had fixed a little earlier.
"Good idea," Ulquiorra cut in, firing a blast of green light from his finger. His cero blew a hole in the wall, allowing easy access outside.
"Hey! I was gonna do that!" Grimmjow complained. "What are you trying to do, impress Ukitake with your cero?"
"Well, you were taking too long, Sexta!" Ulquiorra shot back.
"You're always brown nosing, Ulquiorra!" Grimmjow complained. "First it was for Aizen, and now..."
"Oh. God. No." Jushiro even developed a slight twitch in one eye as he listened to them. The two Arrancars turned around. "You both are going to get to fire off lots and lots of ceros once we get outside! Now let's go!" Jushiro used his shunpo to end up about half a kilometer outside the fifth tower. From outside, Jushiro could see the fake daytime, and that there were four other towers like that one in a cluster. Tesla, Grimjow, Orihime and Ulquiorra joined him outside.
"Tesla-san, you seem to be the one around here who might be able to figure out at which points it would be best to blast, in order to cause the tower to collapse as quickly as possible. How can we do that?" Jushiro asked him.
"Either we all blast a cero here, or we scatter around the tower. Doing that might cause the tower to collapse on top of itself, rather than falling to one side or another," Tesla told him.
"That's the better option. I want that chair buried under so much rubble that it might never get uncovered again if I can help it. This is the north side of the tower, Ulquiorra, I want you to go to the south end with Orihime. After you blast the tower with your cero I want you to take Orihime to the Living World. Take this with you," Jushiro gave him a small token with a flaming skull on it. "Give it to Yamamoto-sotaicho. Orihime knows who he is. If you give him that token, and tell him what happened here, he will help you both. Grimmjow, take the west side, and Tesla, go to the east. Let everyone have that last two minutes before starting, alright?"
"Ukitake-taicho!" Orihime gasped, "Aren't you going to leave with us?"
"I still have some things to do here before I leave, Orihime-chan. But you can tell Kuchiki that I'll be back soon," he told her with a smile.
"Yes, I will!" Orihime answered. Then, Ulquiorra sighed.
"What's the matter, Ulquiorra-kun?" Orihime asked him.
"Here we will be destroying the building, after we cleaned up the kitchen and took out the trash..." Ulquiorra grumbled.
"Trash, huh? I've heard you've got a lot of that around here, Ulquiorra," Jushiro joked. Ulquiorra hiccupped again, then gave Jushiro a warning glance with those impossibly green eyes. He and Orihime vanished before Jushiro could dare make another joke at his peril.
"What else could you hope to accomplish here? Do you really think you can kill Aizen?" Grimmjow asked.
"I won't know until I go to face him. And I won't go to face him until this building and it's destructive contents are obliterated as much as possible. Now, let's get to it!"
"Right!" both Tesla and Grimmjow agreed, and then, they both also used flash step to leave. Jushiro drew a deep breath and faced the fifth tower.
He decided in order to produce a big enough blast, he'd need to recite the incantation. Besides, though he had seemed to gain their trust, Jushiro had to make sure these Arrancars still remaining knew that he, the Shinigami Captain, was still the more powerful. Big fireballs seem to go a long distance in impressing people with your power... "Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of Man! Inferno and pandemonium, the sea barrier surges, march on to the south! Hado #31: Shakkaho!"
The red fireball from Jushiro's hands flared brilliantly. Then it hit it's mark, making the building waver, but it didn't start falling yet. The reiatsu released from that blast would have been enough to wake up even the soundest sleeper, Jushiro thought unhappily. Aizen and Ichimaru are bound to have noticed it! Let's just hope that this works quickly! The earth began to rumble, and Jushiro could swear he heard a cero blast in the distance. Jushiro could only remain there long enough to see the tower begin to crumble. He had to flash step further and further back as the cloud of debris and red stone raced toward him and everything else surrounding it.
Now, I can fight with some more hope in my heart, now that no one else can be subjected to that horror buried under there! In helping me, you helped yourselves, and I'm sure you all understood this! Good luck, all of you, and thank you! And with that, Jushiro headed to the front gates of Las Noches...