Hinamori and Kira had spent the night scouring the city outside the Southern Gate, looking for clues to Yoruichi's disappearance. After hours of questioning frightened peasants they finally found themselves following a man who promised to take them to a murdered shinigami if they were willing to pay. They were weaving through back alleys in the dead of night, following an obvious criminal.
Kira had Wabisuke out and was looking around constantly. He was always uneasy outside the walls of Seireitei, and the slums of Southern Rukongai made him particularly nervous. From what he'd heard, his captain and Rangiku had come from worse; he hated even to imagine it.
The man who'd been leading them stopped abruptly, and both Hinamori and Kira stopped just behind him
"It's there," he said, pointing to a pile of empty crates in a dark corner between two tall buildings.
Kira took a step forward, staring into the darkness. The crates were piled on something, a dark colored tarp, maybe, or-then he saw it; a foot in a white tabi and sandal, sticking out from what had looked like a rolled up cloth but was a shinigami's shihakusho.
Kira leapt forward, knocking the crates to the side as quickly as he could. It wasn't Yoruichi, but someone, a shinigami, had been dumped here like garbage.
It took only seconds to uncover the man and the pool of drying blood he lay in. Kira knew he was dead the moment he saw that. It was too much blood. Maybe if someone like Unohana had been here the moment he'd been struck, but it had been hours.
He knelt beside the still body, feeling almost painfully sad. They had thought they had some time to prepare, and some peace to pull themselves back together, but they'd been wrong. First Yoruichi had vanished and now this.
He took hold of one shoulder and started to turn the body over. He let go with a cry of horror and turned away, fighting the urge to vomit. The man's neck had been severed. Whoever had hidden the body had carefully placed the head so that it wasn't immediately obvious. Kira'd seen a lot of truly awful things while working in the Fourth, but a decapitation was still a horrible thing to come upon when you weren't expecting it.
He stood up quickly and turned to Hinamori. Unsurprisingly, their guide had vanished, and Hinamori stood alone, trembling and pale as a leaf.
"You shouldn't get any closer. He was murdered, whoever he-"
"Eiji. His name was Eiji. He was in the Ninth," she answered softly.
Hinamori could not believe it. Eiji was dead. He was Aizen's agent in the Ninth. His head had been severed like a-like a scythe would do. Could it be Hisagi was on the other side? Could he be a part of the conspiracy? AIzen's last letter had warned it was possible. He was close to Captain Kyoraku, who Aizen suspected was one of the leaders, but, still, Hinamori did not want to believe it. Hisagi had always seemed like a good person, and he had a family. She did not want to think he would do something like this, even to an enemy. "Could Hisagi-san have-"
"Don't even say it!" Kira snapped, shaking his head. "Don't! Don't even-he wouldn't do this. I know he wouldn't."
Hinamori nodded. "Someone did," she said softly. She hoped Kira was right, and it wasn't Hisagi. She hated to think of poor little Aiko losing both her parents.
"We'd better call it in."