Interlude

"I offered," Caro said to himself, examining his lines of stolen chess pieces. The pieces, black and white from a dozen different sets intermingled, represented steps in his plans. Together, they made campaigns. He took off another piece, letting it fall onto the floor to clatter amid the other discarded pieces. That piece, a black king, had been the lynch-pin several little sets of pieces converged on, and was the only step to lead to the easiest path.

That entire path was slowly dismantled, Caro taking each piece from its place and dropped it to join the rest of peaceful steps taken on his part, and rejected by the other side.

Despite his disappointment in Seireitei, he could not deny he felt a kind of smug satisfaction. Corruption was absolute in the higher powers of Soul Society, so of course they would reject his attempts at a peaceful change of leadership.

"And now, only the war remains," he murmured, looking back over his remaining game. "War, pain, death on both sides... and chaos."

The Primary was screaming again. Caro could hear it from his room, which meant everyone else would be hearing it too. It seemed appropriate, somehow, considering the news that would be seeping through the ranks even now.

War.

The troops had trained for it, known all along it was a major possibility, but half of them had been praying it wouldn't happen. It was now upon them.

There was a firm knock at the door, and one of the Arrancar under-generals walked in, nodding respectfully before giving his report.

"Kurotsuchi says the hijack has been countered, and we won't be able to send your next message via butterfly after all. He has his assistants trying to recover control over the emergency systems, but, in his words, sir... 'Urahara will have shut the whole system down, and locked it tighter then a Dangai probe.'"

"A pity," Caro sighed, turning away from his game table and walking back towards the Wall of Windows. "Thank him for his efforts, and then go prepare your troops. Tell General Halibel that we're going to be moving soon."

The under-general nodded again, and left the room.

Caro scanned the monitors, watching as the entire complex prepared for battle. Shinigami were donning their masks, throwing red cloaks over their shoulders. Arrancar were putting in a last few rounds in the training arena, their collective reiatsu making the rocks and sand whip around like a sandstorm trapped indoors. Kurotsuchi was obsessively playing with his new favourite test subject, Primary, pitting the enraged creature against every expendable he had left in his cages.

Everything he had already planned was underway. There was still that one element he hadn't planned for, and had yet to decide what to do with... but he didn't need to worry anyone else with that. He could spare some time to visit the World of the Living later, after the war had begun properly. Caro didn't particularly want to be there when it happened; he wasn't terribly fond of fighting personally.

There was no hurry, though, Caro was confident he had plenty of time to decide what to do with the so-called Fourteenth Division. It wasn't like they were going to go anywhere he couldn't find them again.

And if they did want to go to Seireitei and get mixed up in the war, that would just solve the problem of what to do with them. If they chose to fight with the Shinigami, they could die with the Shinigami.