Chapter Sixteen

"So do you plan to keep your blackened buddy in my basement for the foreseeable future?" asked Kitsune dryly, but no one in the exhausted group lying about his living room seemed inclined to answer.

Ryohime was absent, having passed out from overextending her powers. The others were collapsed on whatever chairs and couches they could find. Edward took up a whole couch, sprawled across both armrests like a...

Kitsune caught himself. He couldn't believe he had been about to fall for Edward's silly posturing.

Erina appeared in the doorway, pale but still looking stronger then anyone else. "I'm done with Ryohime," she said tiredly. "Who's next?"

Yylfordt and Edward exchanged glances, then Edward gave Erina an upside-down grin from the armrest.

"Take a break. Kitsune's patched us up for now, and we can't have you collapsing, too."

Erina conceded, flopping down right on the mat in the middle of the room. "Ugh," she moaned, and most everyone else echoed her in gloomy agreement.

The same question was in every mind. What now?

They were all worn to the bone. First the fight with Caro's men, then Dikayumi, both of which had been more intense battles then the Fourteenth Division had been used to of late. If Caro came back, as he had been implying at the end, they'd be in no fit state to fight again.

Herald threw his arms over the back of his chair, sighing at the ceiling. "We've gone soft," he declared in a heavy tone. "Come on, Lilynette, we're patrolling."

His constant companion rose to her feet, and after a moment Herald followed her lead. The others watched the two head for the door with an understandable astonishment.

"Now he has condemned everyone else to feel really lazy," Edward grumbled. "Awfully inconsiderate."

Erina turned over onto her stomach, looking at Edward in alarm. "But what if he's right? We haven't done any serious fighting since Aizen's jailbreak, except in training with one another, and that hardly counts."

"Oh, yes, it counts," protested Yylfordt. "Not all of us are Espada, you may recall."

"But I've seen your fights, Edward always goes easy on you," Erina countered, and Yylfordt closed his mouth with a sheepish snap. "The point is, we haven't been pressed lately. It's been too easy, and now we're slipping."

There was a moment of silence. There was a challenge in the air now, a kind of tension to see who was going to react first.

"Well, fine!" Edward finally said, sitting up abruptly. "Come on, Erina, if we're going to go hard on one another, I need someone other then Yylfordt to train on. And Steve is sulking somewhere, so that leaves you. Nope, no resting and healing," he added as she began to protest. "You're right, we're too used to having the chance to heal up and get back to a hundred percent between battles. That stops now. Come on, up, up, and at 'em."

Kitsune leaned back in his chair. "I can always step in for emergency healing if someone shows up, anyway," he said, and immediately regretted it when Edward caught him in a pointed glare.

"You're Yylfordt's opponent."

.

Heh, made a narrow escape there, Starrk, Lilynette said with a chuckle, and Herald found himself smiling right along with her.

"I caused the need to escape by escaping," he replied. "But it was bound to happen sooner or later, and I get the feeling we all need to up our game a little for the coming days. Do you sense that?"

Lilynette lifted her nose, ears flicking back slightly. That Second Division officer, isn't it? Szayelaporro's shadow.

"I'm not fond of that particular situation, but at least he's helping out," Herald sighed. "It'd be better if we just had a proper officer on Seireitei's side, though, to take care of all the lieutenant duties and leave us to just fight Hollows and send over souls."

Except that this is the Fourteenth Division. Special Units. What regular Shinigami, trained in the Academy, would want to settle for a lieutenancy in the oddball Division that not only has hardly any members, but whose members are all officer-level already and don't generally respect authority?

"I see the point. Still wish I could get out of it, though."

You didn't have to accept the position. Besides, Szayelaporro does most of the work anyway.

"But he's not 'senior'. I am." Herald took a moment to bemoan his great misfortune of being the oldest. Things he couldn't help continued to haunt him.

The pair's relaxing walk ended abruptly when a Garganta opened on the other side of Karakura. It was a distinct feeling, and though Herald didn't sense anything particularly intimidating coming, it set him on edge. He put a hand on his Zanpakuto. "Let's go."

By the time they reached the site, however, it was already over. The Second Division third-seat had gotten there first, with Steve right behind him, and the scout (or whoever it was supposed to be) was already dead on the ground. Herald nodded curtly to the officer, then gestured to Steve.

"The others are all doing an emergency training session at Kitsune's," he said quietly when Steve reached his roof. "Trying to get a bit of our endurance back." He shot the third-seat a glance to make sure he was far enough away, which he certainly seemed to be, before continuing. "We're all tired, but want to go join them anyway? Get in some extra hours?"

Steve looked torn. "I won't deny we could all use it, but... I mean to practice my cero, and the basement isn't really a great place for that. Speaking of, though, what was going on there earlier? There seemed to be a big ruckus."

Herald drew Steve back across the roof a bit, just to be safe. The Second Division didn't need to hear any of this.

"Dikayumi went Hollow on us," he muttered. "Just out of the blue."

"I thought he had defeated his inner Hollow."

"Suppressed it, not defeated it." Herald sighed. "It seems to be back stronger then ever now. Anyway, it's all under control for now. Kitsune, Erina, and Ryohime have enough Bakudos on him to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else, but it's not a long-term solution."

"He might defeat it himself, get it back under control," Steve suggested, and Herald shrugged.

"That'd be nice, and certainly the easiest solution for the rest of us. I'm just worried that, if he doesn't get a move on, we're going to have to figure out a way to stop that Hollow ourselves before it tears Karakura apart."

Steve opened his mouth to reply, but then stopped when they all felt the Second Division fellow approaching.

"Found anything, Sanseki?" he said instead, and the third-seat nodded.

"It was a scout, almost certainly. He had some kind of reiatsu-recording device on him, and," he held up the device in question, "it seems to already have quite a bit recorded. I can't translate it, it's encoded, but I should return this to Seireitei. It could have information on our opponents on it."

"We should be so lucky," grumbled Herald to Lilynette, giving her a casual scratch behind the ears.

"More then that, though," Sanseki said, almost mischievously, "I may be able to infiltrate Caro's ranks. This scout was very good at hiding his reiatsu, Stealth Force good."

Steve caught on immediately. "Don his clothes, hide your reiatsu... was he wearing one of those masks?"

"Yes, exactly," Sanseki nodded triumphantly. "His men want to be invisible, it seems, and I can be invisible with the best of them."

Herald hmmed. "It'd be a risky business. There could be secret codes you would have no way of knowing, and then it's you against an army."

"I'm the commanding officer of the Infiltration Unit; I'll manage." He nodded to them both, then turned back towards the dead scout. He hesitated, then added as an after-thought, "Nakamaru Fukataichou, consider the investigation over. You're handling things here well, an impressive feat for an untrained officer."

"That sounds very final," Steve said, frowning slightly. "You're leaving immediately?"

"Seireitei is at war. We need intelligence, and the opportunity won't last forever to take this scout's place. If I don't move fast, they might become suspicious."

"Right, then... good luck."

The third-seat saluted, then hefted the dead scout and flash-stepped away. Lilynette bumped Herald's still hand for further scratching.

"Well, that's that, I guess. Seems he won't be writing a suggestion to his captain to replace Fourteenth's officers, at least," Herald said, obediently beginning the head-scratching anew. "That's kinda good news."

"And it'll be nice not to have him popping up unexpectedly," agreed Steve, though he sounded a little more let-down then Herald expected. Then again, Steve had been spending more time with the man then anyone else. If Second Division weren't so generally grim and unfriendly, Herald would have thought Steve had actually befriended the officer.

Something Steve had said earlier, before changing the subject, suddenly struck Herald. "Wait, you're practicing your cero?"

Steve winced.

"Yes... it won't fully activate yet, but I could really use it in conjunction with my release. It's a powerful weapon in our arsenal, and it's frankly embarrassing that mine always fail." He looked at Herald in alarm. "Not a word to Edward, or any of the others."

"Alright, alright, my lips are sealed. But why won't your cero work?" Herald was genuine in his confusion, he had barely used cero in this life, but he knew that it would be there when he needed it.

"How should I know?" Steve grumbled. "It just fizzles and goes out. If it was someone else's failed cero, I would think there was something wrong with the build-up, that a flicker in concentration was responsible, but that's not it. I haven't been able to figure it out."

Herald gave Steve a rough pat on the back. "You will, though, eventually. You always figure these things out." He shrugged, then turned about. "Well, I'm going to go back now, see how everyone else is doing. Don't have a sparring partner, of course," he added with an almost-wink, "but... eh, I can live with that."