34.

Title: Checkerboard
Prompt: Murder
Pairing/Character(s): Aizen, mentions of others
Word Count: 651
A/N: Prompt goes to Belmont. I dunno what's up with my weird fixation on Aizen-related pieces lately, but I've been pretty busy. Too much so as to question it. Chemistry this year is a killer.
9-30-12: Eeep! What's with FF not wanting to save my titles?

It was rather simple. Nearly too simple. But, perhaps, simple was for the best. Simplistic was always easier to understand and accept for the masses than some elaborate scheme.

It was never quite a game. Yes, he saw them as chess pieces, to be moved and won and lost and sacrificed to come closer to winning. No, not chess. Checkers. Because in checkers, if one reaches the other side they become a king.

Kinging himself was his ultimate goal. He was not stupid enough to leave himself off of the chess board, after all. He was not removed from the game. Never removed as a player might, but as a piece to be moved when it might. Someone who played from his view of the board.

It was a limited view, perhaps. But only a god could hope to see it all, and he was not a god. Not yet, anyway.

But he'd best not get too far ahead of himself. The crux of his plans had yet to find a space into which it might move. Other pieces were blocking its way. His chief among them. They'd be foiled and crushed like so much aluminum foil if he let out a peep. He'd be put in the Maggot's Nest and left to rot.

A piece lost to the enemy. The game, too, if it were his own.

No matter. It would not come to that, he was certain. The times when he may have been caught were long past. He could recall them all.

When Hirako-taicho and the other Captains unfortunate enough to follow him into that trap were hollowified. When Grand Fisher made an appearance for the first time in three or four years in a small town in Japan.

When he had to cull Abarai Renji from his lot of potential Lieutenants for either himself or one of his more important pawns, the man having been far too proactive and having too copious an amount of Rukongai street-rat canniness. He'd only kept him so long, if he recalled correctly, because he had happened to step in on the Academy hollow massacre. The other three to have seen him and Gin that day were the ones who had become their Lieutenants: Hisagi Shuuhei, Hinamori Momo, Kira Izuru. He'd set that up only because the spiritual pressure of the four seemed enough to one day become plausible excuses for Vice Captains.

Why he wanted to choose his Lieutenant like that? To spark admiration. Admiration is the furthest thing from understanding, that was always certain.

The next furthest being keeping the object of which understanding is wished five feet away at all times, without more than a passing glance in their direction. Hirako-taicho had learned that.

Those and a few others. Not many, but more than enough for someone to have found something.

Now, it was too late. Both to study him and to find something. Why? He was going to be murdered within the day.

Murdered. Impaled upon his own sword. Preferably on a high building of some sort-he hadn't decided which yet. It didn't much matter-he could be spur of the moment if he so wished.

A timid little knock sounded on his door right as he turned to dip his pen back into his inkwell. It was likely Hinamori Momo. It had been mildly amusing to watch her hero worship of him from time to time. He called her in. She smiled gratefully and sat down on the rug behind him. An hour later, she was sleeping.

Sleeping in the presence of a man about to betray her. How tragic. He closed the note and placed it where it would be found, much later the next day.

It was time to go get murdered, Aizen thought almost jovially. His checkered piece moved, and the hidden piece was soon noticed by all of the other chips on the checkerboard.