Gin was looking up at the stars as he walked down the road beside Toshiro. "It's nice, isn't it, when Yama-ji's mad at someone else? I've not really tried it much before, and I must say, it's a pleasant change."
Toshiro glared. "He was mad at you too."
"But he's always mad at me. I don't think anyone even notices anymore. When was the last time he was angry at Kyoraku? And Ukitake? I really didn't think that was possible. How does one get angry at Ukitake? Unless, of course, one is Kurotsuchi and one imagines all sorts of creative things to get angry about."
"I'd be angry at the whole lot of you if I was the General," Toshiro answered. "Showing up falling-down drunk to a captain's meeting. Not one of you were taking anything seriously. People are dying in Rukongai, and you were all giggling like it was the funniest thing you'd ever heard."
Gin lowered his eyes to his son's head. His white hair shown like silver in the moonlight. He glanced back at his father, wide blue-green eyes narrowed and fierce brows arched. There was nothing of his mother's gentle beauty in that face, but, still, he was a beautiful child. Gin could not argue that point with Rangiku. Beautiful and strong and terribly conscientious. How many children lectured their elders about how they should take things more seriously? It had to be unusual. And it probably wasn't healthy. Gin was pretty sure children were supposed to be the ones who were laughing all the time, and not just because their parents did something stupid. "You're a good boy, Shiro, but I think you might need a few friends your own age," Gin said.
Toshiro rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I need friends? Like you've got--" He broke off suddenly and when he spoke again, his voice was so faint Gin could barely hear him. "We're being followed. Can you sense him behind us?"
Gin frowned. Of course the boy was right. There was someone back nearly two hundred yards behind them, tracing their path along the far side of the wall that ran along the road. He hadn't noticed, but that wasn't particularly surprising, there was still too much alcohol in his system.
He nodded. "I'll keep walking. You double back and see if you can catch him." He usually would have suggested the other way around, but Toshiro would definitely be a better choice for the trickier job tonight.
Toshiro vanished from his side, and his reiatsu vanished a moment later, suppressed to near nonexistence. Gin kept walking normally with his senses focused on the person following him. It would only be seconds before Toshiro had him.
But the man turned and ran. It made no sense. He could not possibly have sensed Toshiro. No one who could have been noticed following them so easily could also have sensed Toshiro coming for him, but somehow he did, and he ran.
Gin turned, too, and gave chase. The person, whoever it was, did not even try to conceal their path, using shunpo to go as quickly as they could, but not moving nearly quickly enough.
It was not more than a couple of blocks before they caught up. The person froze in the middle of a road. Toshiro stood only a few yards further down the road and Gin was only a few yards behind. Anyone would have felt trapped between the two captains, but the one they had chased down--both Ichimarus stared.
The person they had been chasing was not wearing any uniform, not of the shinigami, or any of the special forces, or even one of the Four Great Houses. The person they had chased down was a beautiful young woman in the layered silk kimonos of a noble, and in her hands she held a silver incense burner.
It was with quite a shock that Gin realized he recognized her. "An-chan?"
The girl turned round eyes on the captain. "You are a murderer," she said softly, taking one slow step after another toward him. "You slaughtered the good and wise men of central Forty-Six, and so many innocent people of Rukongai, women and children among them, people you were sworn to protect."
Gin stood frozen as he watched her approach. The accusations were not new. She wasn't the first grief-stricken relative he'd faced, and she was hardly the most dangerous, but there was something surreal about this. It was nearly two in the morning, dark and cool and a faint fog was beginning to cling to the road, and the girl, herself, in her expensive kimonos, shimmering with an aura of reiatsu, stronger than he'd perceived before, was strangely calm. He'd faced down rage and hate, even blind desperation born of grief, but calm, no one had ever accused him, challenged him, with such complete calm. Something was wrong; no one challenged a captain like this; it wasn't rational.
"Do you even remember how many you've killed?" she asked, and her hand shifted. She was lifting the lid of the incense burner.
"Look out!" Toshiro shouted, somehow realizing Gin wasn't going to act, and the incense burner was frozen into a block of ice along with An-chan's hands.
At the same moment a shield dropped, revealing more than twenty separate reiatsu on either side of the street. Kido flashed everywhere, filling the street, low-level kido, easily dodged thanks to Toshiro's quick thinking.
Gin leapt upward, expecting to find Toshiro beside him, but instead there was a scream like he'd never heard before and he realized one of the explosions below him wasn't kido at all. The entire street had gone up in a blaze of red flames. One of the scents he had caught had not been from An-chan's incense; it had been one of Kurotsuchi's flammable gasses. The clinging fog had been a trap custom-built for Toshiro.
Rage ripped through Gin's heart, rage like he'd never felt before. The boy appeared beside him only an instant later, his shihakusho smoking and his face only slightly scorched, but it did nothing to calm Gin's fury. He didn't care who went after him, he deserved it, but to target Toshiro--
He pulled Shinso from its sheath and shouted, "Shoot to kill."
Every one of the men who had attacked from both sides of the road fell before they could make a single move. Fools! Not one was strong enough to dodge a captain's shikai.
Gin looked around swiftly for anyone else to attack. Their deaths had not been enough. The blood was still pounding in his head. Rage still burning away every other thought. His son! They had targeted his son with fire, hurting him for no other reason than because they could. He was indifferent to the charred body of Shihoin Anako still burning below him. He wanted only to know if there was anyone left alive who had had any part in the plot to harm his son.
Toshiro stared at Gin for a moment. Then he dropped back to the road and drew Hyorinmaru.
"Reign over the frosted heavens," he commanded, sounding sad and worried.
A sheet of ice washed over the fire, quenching it instantly, and the boy sighed.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It was only seconds before Soifon arrived with Lieutenant Omaeda and what felt like half the stealth squad. Toshiro hurried to meet them before his dad could. He was worried about Gin. He didn't seem to be acting like himself. Since when did his dad stay on alert with his zanpakuto drawn after an enemy had been defeated?
"What happened here?" Soifon demanded, and Toshiro could tell she was only barely managing to hold back making any accusations.
Toshiro hopped up to the wall beside her, and looked down at the men, each and every one dead from a single strike through the heart. They were all dressed as noblemen, although several were shinigami as well as nobles, and Toshiro even recognized a few of them.
He felt a little sick at the sight. The idiotic nobles had decided to band together to get revenge on his dad. He'd bet money Aizen had somehow pushed them into it.
"They had the girl follow us," he explained to Soifon. "And when we chased she led us into a trap. I have no idea why they thought they could hurt us."
"Looks like they managed to get a hit in on you," Omaeda pointed out.
Toshiro glanced down at his burnt hands. He could feel the burns on his face as well. They were just superficial. They'd hurt like hell, and he'd had a moment of terror he'd never admit to. The sudden heat and raging flames had sent him back, just for an instant, to the center of Yamamoto's blaze, and he'd panicked, but it hadn't been him who'd screamed. It had been the woman his father had called An-chan. Her scream had brought him back to himself, and he'd been able to escape easily--without her. He'd probably never forgive himself for leaving her behind.
"They set the road on fire," he said, frowning. "I guess they figured it'd be my weakness. Idiots. All they managed to do was kill the girl."
"Why are they all dead if they weren't a threat?" Soifon asked.
"That would be my doing," Gin said, finally sheathing Shinso and dropping down to the wall to join the others. "Seemed like the best way to keep them from escaping."
He smiled pleasantly, but Toshiro could tell that no one was buying it. He had never seen his father like this, losing control, lashing out, and now struggling to control his emotions. It wasn't right. It worried him.
Soifon's eyes narrowed. "Are you entirely ignorant of restraining kido, Captain Ichimaru?"
Gin cocked his head to one side and frowned slightly, his usual imitation of thoughtfulness, but to Toshiro it seemed like he was forcing it because it was expected, rather than simply doing it to irritate them, and that was so wrong. "Seems like there might be a few Bakudo for that purpose," he said, finally, "But don't you find death much more effective?"
"I cannot question the dead, Ichimaru," Soifon snarled. "And these men, their deaths are going to be difficult to explain. They are from important--"
"How can they be difficult to explain?" Gin asked. "They attacked two captains. It was practically suicide."
"It didn't have to be," Soifon answered angrily. She started walking along the wall, looking down at the faces of the fallen. "You could easily have disabled every man here without causing a single death. These are all members of the Four Families. Do you realize that, Ichimaru? There will have to be a meeting of the--"
She broke off when she came to one particular man. "This is Yoruichi-sama's cousin," she said in a voice like ice. "You murdered Shihoin Katsutoshi on Shihoin property--Toshiro, take your father away from here before I kill him myself."