Chapter 29: Any Mind Worth Snapping is Worth Snapping Twice

"Well, this sucks." Hitsugaya said.

It seemed appropriate.

"To. Shi. Ro." Aizen said, savoring each syllable of Hitsugaya's name as if it were made of delectable chocolate and he were eating it. "Not who I was looking for, but you'll do. Oh, you'll do."

"Look, Aizen, it's been a long freakin' day, so if you'll just go away, we can get out of your fortress and you don't have to risk doing anything that will make the day longer." Hitsugaya said. He realized that he probably should have been scared, but he just wasn't. All he could manage was some indefinable emotion that was somewhere in the middle of 'annoyed', 'angry', and 'depressed'.

"On any other day, I might consider it." Aizen said. "On any other day, I might look at my losses… my horrible, horrible losses, and say 'Why, I don't feel like having anymore of my army slaughtered or anymore of my elite guard traumatized or anymore of the masonry ripped off my castle'."

"Stupid castle was too big anyway. Demolishing a few wings could only improve it." Hitsugaya muttered.

"But not today, Toshiro. Do you know why?" Aizen asked.

"Do I care?" Hitsugaya asked. "I think I can see where this is going, so..."

Momo said, "Please try to be more polite to Captain Aizen, Toshiro. We are guests in his house, after all." Momo said severely.

"First of all, Momo: His house sucks. I hate his house, possibly more than I hate anything else in the universe except him. Second: Would you please shut up? We'll get you your medicine soon, so just try to stop talking until then." Hitsugaya said.

"Shall I kill her for you, Milord?" Halibel asked.

"No! And stop asking that unless someone is trying to kill me!" Hitsugaya said.

"Go ahead, I don't really care about her." Aizen said.

"I was talking to him," Halibel said, pointing at Hitsugaya.

"… … … why?" Aizen asked.

Halibel stared at Hitsugaya. She continued to stare for several very long, awkward seconds. Then she blushed and sighed in contentment. "Why not?" She asked.

Aizen blinked a few times in confusion before shrugging. "All right. Fine. So we'll be needing a new Tres Espada, wouldn't be the first time that's happened. Maybe one of your Fraccion? We really should have at least one girl in the group. And Szayel doesn't count."

"Look, Aizen, do we really have to do this? There's no way you could be convinced to drop it and just let us leave with all our blood? How about we trade you Gin for our safety? You like Gin." Hitsugaya said.

"Oh, Gin? Don't worry, everyone but myself is expendable to me. You can go ahead and kill him before I kill you if you want to, I don't mind." Aizen said.

Gin said something that was muffled by his gag but which might have been 'Screw you, Sosuke!'

Hitsugaya sighed in annoyance. "Dammit, Aizen, would you listen to yourself? If another big fight starts here, what do you gain, exactly? You lose Gin. You lose another couple floors off your fortress, which is already not in the best condition. And you kill off a couple Shinigami in exchange? Wouldn't the smarter move be to draw back and wait for the chance to kill us at a more tactically advantageous moment, like when we aren't in your house? Nobody wants us to get into a bloody battle to the death right now!"

"I do! Please, please get into a bloody battle to the death, milord!" Halibel said.

"Nobody normal wants a bloody battle to the death right now." Hitsugaya clarified. "My point is: Just back down. You get some time to fix your house and get your army back up to speed, we get to... y'know, live. We'll all get back together and kill each other when we're at our best. See reason, man. Let's not make a bad day worse!"

"As I said before: any other day, I might even consider your words. There's a certain wisdom to them. But not today. Because today… I have seen the light." Aizen said. "You see, Young Miss Kusajishi has taught me a valuable lesson about the world." Aizen said.

Hitsugaya thought back to his own 'enlightenment', or rather the few fuzzy flashes of memory he had of it. "Yeah, in a couple hours that lesson isn't going to seem as good as it does now. Trust me on this one."

"I never used to think of myself as a sadist, Toshiro. I took no pleasure in the pain and suffering of others… until now. I have realized for myself the true joy that can arise from inflicting horrible, horrible injuries upon others for no reason other than my own satisfaction." Aizen said, drawing his sword with a distinctly unbalanced expression on his face. "I want you to appreciate this, Toshiro, because… while I would have killed you eventually anyway, just because you're a Captain and none of you have place in my new world order… never before would I have enjoyed it so much."

"You have no idea how little comfort that provides me." Hitsugaya said.

Halibel sighed in adoration, looking at the impending battle like a normal person might look upon the most wonderful meal they've ever seen. "Lord Hitsugaya, feel free to do battle with him for as long as you desire."

"I don't desire to do it at all!"

"Ah, so your lust for blood is so intense that you need to make brutal war upon him! I understand." Halibel said, nodding in satisfaction.

"You know, Halibel, sometimes I wonder if what I say and what you hear are the same thing."

Halibel sighed. "He still knows my name…"

"… and now I'm not wondering anymore. Just what I needed in my life, another girl who only listens to every other word I say. Maybe you and Rangiku can each start hearing different words, then after I finish speaking you can compare notes and actually get the entire thought." Hitsugaya said dryly.

"Captain? Not to interrupt you… but, um… we're all about to die?" Matsumoto interjected. "Shouldn't you be taking this a little more seriously?"

Aizen smiled at her. "Perhaps he's simply recognized that he doesn't have the slightest prayer of survival, no matter what he does? It's not as though he can defeat me. Perhaps before, when his berserker rage afforded him an advantage, but now? He's seen my shikai. I have total control over his mind… all of your minds, in fact. Everything you see, hear, smell, taste and touch. There is absolutely no hope of any of you even scratching me."

"Yes, that sounds about right. We don't have a chance!" Momo said cheerfully.

Gin, still sitting off to the side, chuckled.

And that, Gin's chuckle, was the absolute last straw.

Toshiro Hitsugaya was having a bad day. A bad couple of days, in fact. His best friend was cheering on their worst enemy, he had a Hollow following him around and she was really way too affectionate, he was trapped in the depths of the worst building ever, he couldn't find a girl he didn't want to find, and Rangiku had been sort of whiny lately. Oh, and he was about to die.

No, that wasn't even all of it! His headquarters were, after all, still a pile of ashes. His house was still covered in water damage. All of his spare uniforms and coats had been in one of the two, which meant the only one he had left was the one he was wearing, and it was covered in blood that would almost certainly never quite come out… which meant he'd be wearing pink to work for at least a few weeks.

But Gin laughing at him was more than he could take. It wasn't a great laugh, since he was gagged, but the bound and gagged bastard was still sitting in the corner chuckling. That was the worst of it. Worse than Aizen's slightly insane superiority, worse than Rangiku and Halibel fighting like a pair of cats shoved in a bag together, worse than Ikkaku being useless and Yumichika being less than useless, worse even than Momo's insistence that their death at Aizen's hands would be the absolute most awesome thing ever. None of it was worse than Gin's. Damn. Laughter.

It was all too much. A man can only be the universe's chewtoy for so long. Toshiro Hitsugaya listened to that smug, muffled laughter… and for the second time in recent memory, he snapped.

But not like Aizen had. Not even like he himself had before. It wasn't quite certain why... perhaps he was already so close to crazy that this last snapping pushed him past crazy. Perhaps his subconscious remembered that 'crazy' had gotten him chained to wall and, realizing it did not work, chose to try something different. Perhaps this time, when he snapped, he was just snapped in the opposite direction.

Whatever the cause might have been, this much was certain: Toshiro Hitsugaya did not lose his mind. If anything, he found it.

Toshiro looked up at Aizen, and he didn't look angry. Or sad, or scared, or annoyed, or anything. He was smiling, a very tiny, calm little smile that suggested he'd just seen something mildly, but not very, amusing. A tiny curving of the mouth which barely qualified for a smile in any sense of the word, and which certainly did not convey much in the way of joy. He then said, in a very, very calm voice, "Don't worry, Rangiku, everyone. Everything is going to be just fine."

Aizen blinked. "No, it really isn't."

Hitsugaya chose to ignore this and asked, "Would you like to know why it's going to be okay? Because it really is quite fascinating. I know I was fascinated."

"Um… why is that, sir?" Matsumoto asked, the strange calm making her feel calmer as well. It was like the entire room was simply bathed in serenity that even Aizen seemed unable to completely ignore.

"Because I," he said serenely, "Have figured it out."

"… … what?" Ikkaku asked in spite of himself.

"The world. I've figured out how the world works." Hitsugaya said. "Would you like to know the Truth?"

"I would. I truly would." Halibel said, her expression seemingly mesmerized.

"Oh, for the love of… I do not have time for this. Just close you eyes and prepare to…" Aizen said, pulling his arm back.

"Hmmmmmmmff!" Gin mumbled urgently, motioning for Aizen to stop talking before turning his eyes back to Hitsugaya.

"… fine." Aizen grumbled.

"The Truth of the world is this: Things will go badly. They just will. I don't know why, but they always will. It's a recent event, but it has become an indelible fact of the universe. Things will go badly, and the harder I try to make them not go badly, the worse they'll go. But it is not just me… Ukitake. Byakuya. Those around me also suffer… and like me, they suffer when they try to make their lives better. When they oppose the will of the Universe. Before, there was a time when my madness made me believe that the Eleventh Division knew the truth of the universe. They do not. How could they? They don't know anything. They're total morons."

"Hey!" Ikkaku and Yumichika said.

"But they have found it, they're just too stupid to recognize this fact. They do not try. They do not even think, they just… wander forward and do whatever random thing comes up. But they don't try. I do not have to be insane, like them, I just have to be unconcerned. If I do that, then the fog will lift, my life will realign itself, and the punishments will fall upon those who don't go with the flow. I simply need... to stop trying." Hitsugaya stopped to smile slightly at Aizen. "Now, take Aizen here. He is trying. He is trying veryhard. He really, truly wants to kill us all. And because he's trying so hard to do that, trying to make things better for himself… things aren't going to go well for him. That is simply what will happen; I don't even have to do anything. I have seen the pattern of the Universe, and that is just what's going to occur. It is inevitable."

Aizen's eyes narrowed. "Right. Maybe you are still insane."

"Oh, no. I am sane. I am so very, very sane right this moment, you have no idea." Hitsugaya said in a very, very frighteningly sane tone. "If you had the slightest idea how sane I am, you would be running for your life, believe me. But you don't. You'll stay, and you'll doubt me… and in the end, you're going to pay for it. Not because of anything I did, because I'm not going to do anything. You'll pay because you tried too hard."

Aizen raised his sword and said, "You just keep telling yourself that. The thought that you were hopeful when I killed you will just make the murder taste that much sweeter."

Matsumoto, Ikkaku, and Ayasegawa drew their weapons, but it was painfully obvious they would not make it in time to intercept.

Gin smirked viciously around his gag.

Halibel squeed in delight.

And Hitsugaya smiled in a very sane manner.


The warrior dove, her breath pounding through her lungs and sweat stinging her eyes. The target was small, and the enemy ruthless, but her skills were equal to the task, this she knew. She would have one and only one shot to pierce her foe's defenses and claim utter victory, but her conviction was strong and her aim was true.

Her weapon sliced through the air, aiming for the total and final obliteration of her hated foe. And after so much blood, sweat, and tears… that true victory was finally, finally hers!

The ball bounced off the table and sailed under Kyoraku's arm. Soi Fon threw back her head and laughed maniacally. "Finally! Finally! 11 to 9! By the official rules of ping-pong, I win! And now after debasing myself by playing this insipid game with you like a moron for the last hour, I at least get the joy of watching your own sword gut you!"

Shunsui shrugged. "Katen Kyokotsu says 'best two out of three'."

"… … … what?"

"Best two out of three. We have to play again, at least once more."

"… … … what?!"

"Hey, I don't make the rules. I just… hmmm? Eh? Oh, okay." Kyoraku said, carrying on half of a conversation. "Katen Kyokotsu says we're gonna need two more people. Says he'd like to play jump-rope."

"… … … what?!" Soi Fon futilely protested. But even as she did so, the paddle shifted in her hand to leave her holding one end of a rope, the other end in Kyoraku's grip where his own paddle had been.

"Well, you see, if we're jumping, we're going to need two people to hold the ends of the rope and swing it for us…" Kyoraku explained patiently.

"I know how jump-rope works!" Soi Fon roared.

Kyoraku winced. "Just making sure."


As she sent Aaro... Aaororo... the one in the ruffled outfit out of her office, having left him firmly convinced that just because the only power he had was tentacles, that didn't make him any less of an Espada than the other nine (and discreetly not mentioning that she was of this opinion only because the other nine Espada were every bit as pathetic as him), the Arrancar Therapist steeled herself for the battle to come. One left.

This was going to be a bad one, the Therapist knew.

Szayel Apollo-Grantz was the looniest of the Espada even under the best of circumstances. Even looking directly at him gave the person looking a roughly fifty-percent chance of ending up shoved into a vat full of formaldehyde with a tube in their brain. And that was when he was normal. Now that he was reduced to a babbling more-maniac-than-usual, certain precautions needed to be taken.

"Now, Mr. Grantz, I want you to understand that I truly appreciate the bond that needs to exist between doctor and patient for healing to take place." She said. "So you may be wondering why I am sitting in such a way that I can jump out the window if needed. And why I have insisted that Mr. Ulquiorra sit in on your session and why I have placed him between us."

"I was actually wondering that as well." Ulquiorra said.

"Well, I don't want you to think that it's because I'm not truly dedicated to helping you. I am. I really, really truly am. It's just that I am also very scared of you. And if some twisted corner of your mind decides that you'd like to randomly dissect me, or do something even worse? I'd like to make sure that I have a bigger target in the room and a means of quick escape. All in the interests of your health, of course."

"Devil… tiny devil…" Szayel said.

"Right, then. As long as you understand." The therapist said, choosing to take this as a sign of acceptance.

"She comes… she comes from nowhere. The tiny devil. I know not her name. I know not from where she approaches. I know not to where she returns. Perhaps… perhaps I am not meant to know. Perhaps if I knew these things, I would seek nothing so much as to undo the knowing of them. Perhaps I should retreat into the black recesses of my mind, the places where the spiders gnaw at my thoughts, and forget her. Such a thing would destroy me, but… would that be better? Would I be willing to surrender all other knowledge to escape the nightmares she has left me? Perhaps mindlessness would be the better choice. Yes, perhaps I should take oblivion rather than continue to experience this pain, for I have seen my own mind and I have not the strength to fight. I have not." Szayel said.

"… … …" Ulquiorra said.

"I… I may be a little out of my league, here." The Therapist admitted. "What do you think we should do, Mr. Ulquiorra?"

"How should I know? I am not a therapist."

"Neither am I!"

"Well, no, but you are pretending to be one."

"And now I'm 'pretending' that I don't have any idea what to do!"

"… well, we could just leave him like this. People would probably just assume he was engaged in some kind of self-experiment; it would probably be a few weeks before they really started to even notice. And, when they do, well… it's not as though anyone actually likes him."

"Is… is that ethical?"

"Do we care?" Ulquiorra asked frankly.

The Arrancar Therapist thought back, briefly, to the time when she had been taking with one of her friends in the medical department and Szayel had walked by with Nnoitra, the two of them loudly talking about how much they didn't like women and Szayel proclaiming that, 'The next woman I see, the very next one, will be dissected, useless thing that she is. Unless it's Halibel, she'd hurt me.'

"No," She said. "We really don't."

Ulquiorra nodded. "Well then, I believe the sessions are all completed."

"I guess so. I never met with Mr. Yammy, though..."

"He'll be fine. If he starts to get out of hand I'll just tell him that he came back for a second session and that fixed all his problems. That should work. He's a very zen creature, when you get to know him."

"Well, if you say so. I suppose that, all told, seven out of ten isn't bad, although I can't say for sure that I really helped most of you. Or… um… well… any of you." She said. "Let's put it this way. You're all crazy. But I think you're at least back to being the right kind of crazy."

"Horrible… pink… hair…" Szayel moaned.

The Therapist blinked. "But… don't you have pink hair?"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEK!" Szayel screamed, running out of the room.

The other two Arrancar watched this with slightly confused expressions before eventually just deciding to forget about it. "Well, thank you for your dubious assistance… is your title 'doctor'?"

"Not really."

"Well, thank you in any event, pseudo-doctor. Now, as I recall, certain of our members were planning to kill you when we were finished… I shall not be reminding them of this fact, which should leave you more or less safe."

"I appreciate that."

"But please? Do keep in mind that at least three of us have a tendency to commit random murder. No promise of safety is ever completely guaranteed."

"It's all right. I'm sure as long as I don't speak to any of you and just keep to myself, I'll be…" She began.

"BLAAAAARGH!" Yammy said as he suddenly burst through the wall of the office.

"What the-?!" The Therapist began. She didn't quite manage to finish the sentence before he charged across the room in her direction, and, for no discernable reason, head-butted her.

"… oooow…" She said, bleeding.

Yammy nodded in satisfaction. "All right! That worked perfectly!"

"Yammy?" Ulquiorra said.

"Yeah?"

"… … … might I ask why you felt the need to do that?"

"Well, I just got my mind fixed, right? I needed to make sure it was workin' right." Yammy said.

"… by smashing the therapist with your head?"

"My mind is in my head, Ulquiorra." Yammy said, his tone suggesting that he thought Ulquiorra might just be the biggest idiot in the world.

"I… hate… you… people…" the Therapist groaned.

Yammy looked down at her. "Hey, when did you get here?" He asked.

Were Ulquiorra the more emotional sort, he probably would have let out a long-suffering sigh. However, he simply closed his eyes and said, "Let's just go, Yammy."


Soi Fon disentangled her legs from the jump-rope in disgust. "For the love of all that's holy, is there anything you idiots can do?!" She snapped at the two ninja she'd press-ganged into being their rope-holders. "It's like you were actively trying to make me lose!"

The ninjas had the good grace to look embarassed. "S-sorry, milady, it's just that we thought we should use our ninja arts to help you win, and... well, as it turned out, using our ninja weapons training just made the rope faster and harder to jump over..."

"So why did you do it twice?! After you saw it didn't work in the first round, you decided to make me lose again instead of doing it to him?!"

"... we thought we might have just done it wrong the first time. We wanted to be sure."

"Right. That's wonderful. Good job. Congratulations on your thoroughness. I'm having you both assassinated." Soi Fon growled. The ninjas, heads hung low in shame, wandered off.

Kyoraku smirked. "You lose, Captain. I believe that this game is mine."

"… Fine. I've been taken by your sword's reiatsu, I'm subject to the rules of the game. Finish me." She grumbled.

"Oh, believe me, I… hmmm? Oh, you cannot be… but I just…! Fine!" Kyoraku said in annoyance. "Best three out of five."

"… what?"

"Katen Kyokotsu wants to play to best three out of five. We have to do at least one more round. Oh, and he wants to play hopscotch now, so we'll need some chalk." Kyoraku said.

"… why?!" Soi Fon asked in disbelief.

"Because we kind of need the chalk to draw the pattern on the ground to, you know, jump on…"

"Not that! You'd won! Why are we still playing?!"

"What part of 'Katen Kyokotsu makes the rules' did you not understand?"

"But… but… what kind of sentient weapon would steal victory from itself?! You are it's wielder, so your victory is its victory! You won and it turned on you! This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of! Why would it possibly do such a thing?!"

Kyoraku shrugged. "Because it wanted to play hopscotch."

"… … … I realize that this situation benefits me and I shouldn't be complaining, but… I hate that sword so much." Soi Fon said.


"Hmmmm… what's the best way to put this?" Ichigo said. "I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be… you know, important. Like important events happen around me. But they aren't, lately. Orihime and Rukia are in Soul Society, Renji's taking a vacation after Toshiro tried to kill him by accident, Chad and Uryu are… um… I don't really know and I'm not sure I want to know. Sooooo… I'm bored. None of my friends are around and there's nothing interesting to do. So since I literally had nothing else to do with my time, I decided to stop by to see if you had anything going on. So do you? Because seriously… I'm getting to the point where painting someone's garage would be more interesting than my life."

Urahara sitting together with Ichigo in his shop, thought about this. More specifically, he thought about the portal to Hueco Mundo in his basement. Even more specifically, he thought about how sick he was of guests and how much he wanted Ichigo to leave so he could have some peace and quiet.

Then he smiled.

"I might have something for you there."

And there was no way it could possibly, ever go wrong.


"Well?!" Soi Fon snapped.

"Best eleven out of twenty."

"Dammit!"

"Also, how many people do we need to play soccer?"


Hitsugaya did not bat an eye. He'd known it was going to happen, after all. Maybe not that exact thing, but he'd known something ridiculous was going to happen. That was just how the universe worked: if you tried to fight it, tried to fight the absurdity, things would happen. He'd warned Aizen; given him every opportunity to pull back. It wasn't his fault that 'Mister Genius' couldn't take advice.

And so, when a gigantic damn worm smashed through the walls of Las Noches, Hitsugaya did not bat an eye… and Aizen got exactly what he deserved.

With a roar of confusion, the worm desperately tried to halt its progress. It managed to stop moving, but not before smashing over several pointless pillars and driving its head completely through one of the inner walls… and, since Aizen had been directly in its path, plowing him through that self-same wall at a rather high speed.

Gin stared, wide-eyed, for several seconds. He then muttered something that his gag made unintelligible but which might have been 'Holy crap!'.

Once the worm had stopped, two small girls sitting on its back stood up.

"What just happened?" Nel asked.

"I think we hit something." Yachiru said.

"Is... is this Las Noches? Ooooooh, Lord Aizen is gonna be angry..." Nel said.

"B-but it was an accident! I didn't mean it!" Yachiru said.

"Weeell... I don't see Lord Aizen, but that's the Tres Espada, Lady Tia Halibel! Oh, man, she's right there! She's gonna be so angry, you're gonna get in trouble..." Nel said solemnly. I apparently hadn't occured to Nel that she would also be in trouble, but realistically Nel was probably happier not realizing that.

"T-trouble?" Yachiru said. Wait, there might be consequences for her actions? She hadn't signed up for this!

"You probably won't get any dessert. Or she'll murder you."

"No dessert?! No, please no! It wasn't my fault, it really wasn't! I just told Mr. Worm to turn left! I didn't even see the castle there, I swear!" Yachiru said desperately.

"She… she didn't notice the city-sized castle?" Matsumoto asked, trying her very best to follow this conversation. "... what am I saying? Of course she didn't."

Ikkaku blinked several times in confusion. "Wait. Wait. Wait. Aren't we on, like, the sixtieth floor? How did...?"

Halibel looked at the giant worm, then at Hitsugaya. "Milord..." She asked very quietly, almost worshipfully. "Did you... did you plan that?"

"Not at all," Hitsugaya said, smiling. Very. Very. Sanely.