Characters: Ichigo, Orihime, Aizen, and Urahara

Ichigo followed Aizen down the long corridor in one of the sub-basements of the Las Noches building, silently fuming. Aizen had called and "invited" him to visit the lab he'd set up for him. Although at first he had wanted to refuse, Urahara had convinced him to comply with all of Aizen's orders and do nothing overt against him - yet.

"Don't you see, Ichigo?" the scientist had asked. "Aizen has analyzed your personality. He knows you're going to try something, and he'll have plans in place to turn whatever you do to his advantage. Your best strategy at the moment is to do nothing rebellious and to act counter to your own instincts."

"Do you really think that'll help?" Ichigo had demanded.

Urahara shrugged and scratched his head. "Well… I don't really know, but at least it won't make things worse. And in the meantime… I have a plan on how to get us all out of Aizen's clutches."

"What is it?" Ichigo asked impatiently.

Urahara grinned. "Trust me. You're gonna like it."

Aizen stopped in front of a heavy door with an iris scanner and a key card reader on a panel to its right. He inserted a key card, paused, and then leaned in for his eye to be scanned. The door clicked open, and Aizen motioned Ichigo to enter.

Inside, Ichigo caught his breath. He was standing in the largest, most well-equipped biochemistry lab he had ever seen. Under high ceilings, stretching out for several hundred feet in both directions, racks of gleaming glassware stood over modern mass spectrometers, gene sequencers, and other wildly expensive equipment he had heard of but never seen in person. Refrigerators and autoclaves lined one wall, and long rows of spotless lab benches stretched off into the distance. He walked slowly forward, Aizen temporarily forgotten as he gazed in wonder around him. Machine noise caught his ear and he stared in disbelief at a large bank of computers behind a glass wall at the far end of the room.

"Is – is that a Cray XT5?" he said incredulously, his voice almost breaking at the end.

Aizen came up beside him. His face wore an amused half-smile at Ichigo's disbelief. "Why, yes. With over 224,000 cores, it's the fastest supercomputer in the world. You'll need it to analyze the results of your tests, the combinatorial explosion you'll get with the molecular structures. You'll have exabytes of data to process, and you'll need significant amounts of raw parallel processing mips." He stepped closer to Ichigo and lowered his voice. "This machine is known as the Panther. For raw speed, it simply can't be touched. You have here over a petaflop of sustained compute power," he murmured. His arm brushed Ichigo's as he gestured to the computer. "Nothing else in the world can compare to it. And it's all for you," he whispered.

Ichigo jerked away from Aizen's touch and glared at him. "Get away from me, you bastard." Aizen raised his eyebrows in amusement but said nothing as Ichigo continued to look around the lab.

After a long silence during which Ichigo carefully examined every corner of the room, Aizen finally inquired, "So. Does it meet with your approval?"

Reluctantly, Ichigo gave a nod. "Yes. I can work here."

Aizen smiled at the understatement. "Very good. Have you begun the formal job application process yet?"

"No. I had to give two weeks' notice at the clinic so that they can find a replacement for me."

"I want you to apply to Las Noches today," Aizen ordered. "Do it when we go upstairs."

Ichigo grimaced, and then bowed his head. "All right."

XxXxXxX

That night, he went to Orihime's house for dinner. Her cooking had gotten better over the years; the wild pairing of odd ingredients had turned into a flair for the creative blending of unexpected flavors that worked well together. Dinner at her house was usually a bit of an adventure, but he no longer had to worry that the meals would be inedible.

She had lit candles and covered her dining table with an embroidered linen tablecloth, deep blue with silver stars scattered all over it. Ichigo stopped at the doorway, taken aback. "Wow, Hime, what's the special occasion?"

Orihime gave a nervous laugh. "Oh, why do you think that? It's just dinnertime."

"Well, we usually don't have candles… and that's a beautiful tablecloth. I don't think I've seen it before."

"I just thought that it would be fun to have something nice tonight." She beamed at him enthusiastically. "And I made one of your favorite dishes - trout with peaches!"

Ichigo had to smile back at her, his black mood lifting a bit. He had to admit that she often just seemed to know the right thing to do or say to make the world seem less gloomy; he never quite knew how she did it, but he was glad that she was in his life.

XxXxXxX

The trout was wonderfully tasty, fresh and delicately cooked in butter, topped with browned almonds and thinly sliced, ripe peaches. The sweetness of the fruit brought out the rich flavor of the fish and it all went perfectly with the Chardonnay Ichigo had brought. They both ate steadily for a few minutes, the only sound the clinking of utensils and an occasional "mmm, this is delicious."

Finally Ichigo sat back, sighing in contentment. "This is an amazing dinner, Orihime."

"Thanks!" She beamed at him. "I'm glad it worked out well. We almost didn't get the trout, you know. When I got to the store, they were out at the front counter, but then it turned out the fishmonger had saved these two filets for me! Wasn't that nice?"

"Yeah." Ichigo shook his head in amazement. Orihime was always talking about all the neighborhood vendors. She knew them all by name, and they all knew her and were always doing her special favors. She would detail long conversations they had had about all sorts of topics under the sun, and Ichigo would marvel that she seemed to find friends wherever she went, that she could find common ground with just about anybody. When Ichigo went to the store, he pretty much pointed at what he wanted, grunted, and left. He'd been going to the same neighborhood store for over a decade and didn't even recognize the people behind the counter.

Orihime started chattering about the produce store, and about how the peaches came from a small organic farm two valleys over, but Ichigo interrupted her. "Orihime. We have to talk about what we're going to do."

"Oh." Her face lost all its animation and she looked down at her hands twisting in her lap. "Do we have to?"

"Of course we do," he said in exasperation. "I mean, what is going to happen with us both working for Aizen?"

"Well…" Orihime hesitated. Then, with a forced smile, she said, "We'll get to talk every day! Why do we have to talk about it now? I just want to enjoy being together."

He fought down the urge to shake her. "How are we going to get out of doing what Aizen wants?"

"I think we'll have to do what he wants, at least on the surface."

"Including human experiments?" demanded Ichigo.

"Well… about that. I have an idea for using live tissue cultures that would obviate the need for human trials, at least for a while. And then…" she glanced up at him with a nervous look in her eyes, "once we're sure it's safe, I thought I could try it out on myself."

"What?" Ichigo leaped out of his chair. "What are you talking about, Hime? You can't turn yourself into a human guinea pig," he shouted.

"You certainly don't expect me to test it on anyone else!" she retorted.

"But…"

"I've thought about everything, Ichigo. If Aizen tries to get us to test on other people, I'll just pretend to go along with it. I'll inject them with a plain saline solution and just make something up to tell him. I…" She lowered her eyes. "I can't do human experiments, Ichigo. You know that."

"But if Aizen finds out—"

"I'm not going to worry about that now." She stared at her hands again. "I… I wasn't going to tell you, so that he would punish me and not you." Then she tilted her head to one side, and smiled. "Besides, what if it works? Then I'll be the first one to get the benefits! You won't be mad, Ichigo, if your wife ends up younger than you?" She laughed merrily and Ichigo had to shake his head. He would have to talk her out of it later. She was clearly too upset tonight.

Then he smiled. "Wife? So… is our engagement back on?" He walked to her side of the table.

"What?" she asked, then blushed. "Oh! I assumed it was still OK with you! Did I make a mistake?"

"Silly," he said, wrapping his arms around her. "Of course it's OK with me." He bent his head to kiss her, holding her tightly. "We'll get through this… somehow… and then we'll be together forever."

XxXxXxX

Ichigo looked at the storefront in disbelief. "This is it? This is your big plan to outsmart Aizen? Opening up a candy store? I always knew you were nuts, but now you've gone totally off your rocker."

The blond man grinned from under his striped hat. "Well, I have to have some way to earn a living, and with the non-compete agreements that Gotei and Las Noches have tied up all the scientists with, I can't start a health-related business." He adjusted his hat with a sly glance at Ichigo and smirked. "So… I just have to start something that's as far away from health as you can get. Ergo… a candy store!"

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!"

Urahara looked hurt at this cavalier dismissal of his plan. "No, it's brilliant," he declared, fanning himself with a paper fan he'd pulled out from his pocket. "There's no way they can get to us, we have a legitimate business to run, and we have a secure base of operations." He smiled slyly. "Wait till you see the secret rooms I've installed in the basement."