I'm trying to use the fanfin app and I'm having a little trouble getting the breaks to work so I'm trying a couple different things. Hopefully one will actually work. Sorry if it's a bit rough till then
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Nine Days after Aizen's escape:
A tall, careless-seeming man wearing a striped hat and wooden sandals walked along the busy road from the West Gate into Seireitei. He raised his cane to wave and smiled if anyone seemed to notice him particularly and seemed to be doing nothing more than going for a morning walk. No one paid him any particular attention.
A captain appeared abruptly beside him, and at that the crowd on the road drew back a little, but whatever fear the captain might have inspired was mitigated by the golden-haired boy he had slung over one shoulder who was squirming and protesting loudly.
"No fair!" Kinta yelped. "You said if I could beat you to the Tenth I could see Nii-chan!"
"Good morning, Urahara-san," Gin said, ignoring his son's protests as he set him on the ground. "How nice to see you here in Seireitei. I hadn't heard you were expected, and, funny thing, I was under the impression that you were going to call ahead."
"You cheated! Nii-chan says you always cheat!" Kinta added as he was dragged along. "You did 'cause you picked me up, and that's not allowed in a race!"
"Ah, well," Urahara said, shrugging, as he continued to walk along the road. "Seemed like so much trouble--I just thought I'd pop by to pick up my cat. No reason to be a bother to anyone--and is this young Kinta-san?"
Kinta immediately stopped fighting his father and turned to look at Urahara. He grinned pleasantly and said, "I like your hat."
"Why thank you,' Urahara said, smiling back at the boy. "So do I."
"Who are you?" Kinta asked, regarding Urahara curiously.
"Urahara Kisuke; It's very nice to meet you," Urahara told him, pausing just long enough to bow politely.
Kinta's eyes widened to the size of saucers. "I've heard of you! You sell candy!"
"You're well informed," Urahara told him, and he handed over a lollipop. "Don't forget, any time you happen to be in the World of the Living, to drop by Urahara Shoten, supplying the hardworking shinigami since nineteen hundred and two."
"Wow!" Kinta said. "Do you get to eat candy every day?"
"Of course. It's a shopkeeper's duty to sample the merchandise. It wouldn't do to sell anything that might not be of the very best quality."
Kinta nodded his agreement of that wise observation.
Urahara flipped open his fan and turned his eyes to Gin. "What does bring a captain down to check on a lowly shopkeeper, I wonder," he said.
"A lowly shopkeeper," Gin repeated thoughtfully. "Well, Mr. Shopkeeper, I was wondering about the price of a product a dear friend of mine purchased a few years back. You must remember Isshin-san? Quite the vanishing act he pulled. I thought I might purchase the same for Ran and the two little ones."
Urahara hid most of his face as he answered. "Ah, I'm afraid that is the most costly of my products. The price is simple humanity with no chance of returns for the children, I'm afraid."
Gin's hand tightened suddenly on Kinta's. He'd never thought much about how short the lives of humans were, but the thought of his glowing, golden-haired son turning into a doddering old man in a short seventy years was horrifying, and to take his reiatsu, the power he'd already mastered to drive his mother mad with shunpo, it would be beyond cruel.
Kinta, as he walked between the two men, was still looking Urahara over. "I like your shoes too," Kinta said brightly. "I like the noise they make. Mommy won't let me have noisy shoes."
"But it's such a nice noise," Urahara protested.
"Mommy said it'd make her crazy, but Nii-chan always says she's crazy anyway so that's not a good argument," Kinta declared.
Urahara nodded. "It is after all a son's duty to drive his mommy crazy."
"I can do shunpo," Kinta offered.
"And I'm sure that helps," Urahara answered pleasantly.
"Yep, so she got some sekiseki to stop me but that made Yuki so she threw it away, and now I can do shunpo whenever I want except when Nii-chan's home, 'cause he won't let me. Do you know Nii-chan? He's very bossy."
Urahara tilted his head to look at Gin sideways. "It's a very expensive product, Captain Ichimaru, are you still interested?"
Gin took a deep breath. No amount of safety was worthwhile if Rangiku could not be happy, and this, it would steal her children from her in less than a century. He would have to find another way. "I'm afraid I'll have to pass, but I wouldn't say no if you've got another of those lollipops."
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Yoruichi burst out laughing the moment the door opened. A little boy stepped into the room wearing a too-big green and white striped hat, a black haori that drug on the floor and large wooden clogs. He had a lollipop sticking out of his mouth and a fan in his sticky hands. He was followed by Urahara Kisuke sans hat, haori, shoes, and fan. The only thing he seemed to have managed to keep hold of was his walking stick.
"What happened to you? You get robbed?" Yoruichi demanded.
"Well, I could hardly help it," Urahara answered, smiling. "He asked very politely."
"Did ya, now?" Yoruichi asked, looking down at the child. "And who might you be?"
"I'm Urahara-san," Kinta answered proudly, and he pulled the lollipop from his mouth with a pop. "See? I have candy!"
"You've convinced me," Yoruichi agreed. "Why don't you tell the hat-haired dummy to get lost? I don't need him coming round to rescue me like some knight in shining armor, 'sides the part doesn't suit him at all."
"You've already been rescued," Urahara pointed out, although he was scratching his head and looking more than a little embarrassed. "I just thought you might want to come home, you know, with me?"
"Aah! Have you been worrying about me, Kisuke?" Yoruichi demanded, smiling hugely. "You know I can take care of myself. I can take you anytime, too."
Urahara decided it would be wise not to mention she'd been missing for days and hadn't managed to free herself. "I thought it was about time to bring Ichigo and all home, too, so I thought I'd just drop by and collect everyone. Seemed the easiest way to go about it, least fuss and all, can even leave by the Shiba Gate. I'm sure Kaien-dono won't mind."
"There're a lot of people around looking to talk to you, Kisuke," Yoruichi said as she pulled back the covers and got out of bed. She moved carefully as though each movement caused pain, but while Urahara's eyes took in every slow movement, he made no move to help her. "They're not going to want to let you leave without going to meet with them, Yamamoto especially."
"Not to worry," Urahara answered. "Captain Ichimaru has promised to provide an adequate smokescreen to get us through Seireitei unmolested."
"Oh, he has, has he?" Yoruichi said skeptically.
At that moment the fire alarms went off in Division Four and smoke started seeping under the door.
"That's our signal," Urahara said. He lifted Kinta up out of his sandals and set the boy on his shoulder before slipping into his sandals and grinning at Yoruichi. "Come along. It smells like he's used my Heavy Duty Double-Acting Smoke Bombs. The whole building is going to have to be evacuated. Captain Unohana is going to be terribly cross."
Not only had the smoke bombs been set off in the building Yoruichi had been staying in but in every other building and throughout the main courtyard as well. Shinigami were evacuating with their patients out into the gardens and onto the road outside the gate. No one noticed that Urahara and Yoruichi kept walking.
They had not gone far when they were passed by a small company from the Sixth; then there was another from the Third, and when the came to an intersection a company from the Eleventh was well on its way to picking a fight with another from the Seventh. It soon became clear every division in the Gotei had received orders to run invasion drills, and their specific orders sent them on constant head-on collisions with the other divisions. With the streets filled with chaos there was no chance anyone was going to manage to intercept them.
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Toshiro left off on a long line of swearing with a demand to know what the hell was going on. He had gotten to the gate in time to stop only the final company from exiting the division.
The poor officer who was leading the company was so confused and frightened by his captain's behavior he couldn't seem to find his voice.
"You'd better not let your mother hear you talking like that," Gin said smoothly.
Toshiro spun around. "You!" he shouted at Gin. "You did this? Why the hell are you issuing orders to my division?!?!"
"It's not just your division," Gin answered, smiling. "There are shinigami from every division--well, not the Fourth; I thought they had enough to do cleaning up the smoke bombs--but every other division is running into each other all over Seireitei. It's absolute chaos. You should come see."
He vanished then, heading toward the towers at the center of the city.
Toshiro turned back to his men. "Don't go anywhere!" he ordered. "And call back everyone else!" Then he chased after his father.
He found Gin perched on one of the lower towers, grinning as he watched the little black companies of shinigami running this way and that along the roads far below. He especially liked the bits where a couple companies had run into each other. They seemed to be entirely incapable of sorting themselves out. They stayed in little knots of chaos, no doubt blocking traffic and upsetting the locals.
"Why?" Toshiro demanded as he came to a stop beside Gin. "Are you trying to force Yamamoto to lock you up?"
"Well, there are three reasons, actually," Gin answered. "One is that Urahara-san is not in the mood to face hours of meetings with the Gotei after we let his girlfriend be locked up and beaten half to death, but Yamaji never seems to understand these sorts of things. The second is that I've been wanting, for years, to point out how stupid it was for each captain to create their own crisis response plan without consulting each other. Every division is running an official plan; I just picked out the ones that get in each other's way. If you notice, the Eighth and the Thirteenth don't actually overlap. No doubt Kyoraku and Ukitake worked out their plans years ago with that in mind, but every other division is doing its own thing, and I don't doubt they'll all be fighting with the Eleventh by the end of the day."
"Fine," Toshiro admitted grudgingly. He had a point. "But you could have just told us."
"But then I would have missed out on my third reason!" Gin protested.
"And that is?"
"Isn't it hilarious?"
"How is it you've never been murdered?" Toshiro growled.
"Oh, people have tried, don't doubt that. They have definitely tried--well, best go fetch Kin-chan. Miyako will tell your mother if I leave him there all day."
He vanished before Toshiro could ask why his little brother was at the Shiba Estate, and to be honest he wasn't sure he wanted to know.