Chapter 6 – Undercurrents

It was the first day of the week after the joint-training with the First Division's new recruits, the first day of work for the new recruits. It was just after work hours at the Sixth's and some of the new shinigami were lounging around the hallways when they saw their lieutenant walking by—probably just finished with his tasks for the day.

"Lieutenant Abarai!" they greeted enthusiastically, but paused when they see the man beside the redhead. "Oh, and uh... Captain Kuchiki, sir!" they each hastily bowed lowly at the man. Byakuya narrowed his eyes at their bowed forms as he and his lieutenant walked by.

Renji nodded at the excited recruits and grinned as he waved them by. "Yeah. Keep working hard, you guys."

They straightened up as they watched the captain and the lieutenant passed them and went to the entrance of the barracks, confusion in their minds as to why the redhead was not going back to his quarters in the barracks—since they were informed the lieutenant stayed there on workdays. As it were their first day, they didn't put much thought into it, but boy did all the senior officers looked at the retreating duo as if they both grew a second head.

Rikichi was the last person to stop the pair on their way out of the Sixth's compound, hesitating when he saw the intimidating look on his captain's eyes. "Renji-san, you aren't going to your quarters?" the timid shinigami asked after he greeted and bowed to the two highest-ranking officers. Kuchiki Byakuya looked as if he would rather be anywhere else but there, and he focused all his disdainful thoughts on the one deathly stare he aimed at the slighter raven that seemed to tear through the mind and ripped out one's worst fears and show it to one's face.

Renji, unaware—or chose to not acknowledge—his captain's decidedly 'sour' mood, gave his young mentee a reluctant shrug. "Uh...no," he answered vaguely with a sheepish grin and walked by as naturally as he could after saying his goodbye to the younger shinigami to not garner more confusion from the younger man. Byakuya, on his most gracious behalf, did not make any fuss on the matter and simply followed his lieutenant out of the compound while pinning Rikichi on the spot with his looming gaze.

The walk to Kuchiki Manor was silent—and awkward, mostly on Renji's side. He obviously noticed all the confused stares he—and his captain—had been getting from their subordinates. If he just walked out of the barracks on his own, fine, they knew he would probably be out for a drink with his friends. But with his captain in tow? That was a rare sight, because no one truly believed that Kuchiki Byakuya would accept Renji's invitation on his nightly excursion—much less actually following the redhead on said excursion. Man, would they be even more surprised to not find me walking out of my quarters back in the barracks tomorrow, Renji thought rather grimly.

Sensing his lieutenant's anxiety—he was quite adept at detecting lies, after all, he would know if someone's looking other than 'normal', as insensitive as he was when it comes to the actual handling—the Kuchiki cleared his throat. "Give them time, Lieutenant," he assured. They would not dare to voice anything with me there, after all, he smugly mused.

"Yeah," Renji sighed loudly. for half a second he marveled at how his captain knew what he was thinking, but dismissed the thought as the manor came in sight.

After about one month since his first moving into the Kuchiki Manor, all debacles aside, Renji found himself mostly lounging in his room or by the garden when he had no work to do. He didn't venture much into the slopes and corners of the manor, for he still felt it was not appropriate to do given the hosts never really gave him a proper tour. Then again, he rarely ever saw Rukia in his spare time, their schedule either got in the way or she was just in the other end of the manor, not actively seeking him out as often as he wished she would. She had her own life, he justified, but still complained about it to the raven herself whenever she made time to hang out with him, to which she rolled her eyes and mocked him for his melodrama. As for the older Kuchiki, well, let's just say Renji hadn't yet felt comfortable addressing the man in a casual setting.

At least he got to meet and talk with the cooks, being taught recipes and new cooking techniques, the kitchens being the only other place he visited other than the calligraphy club room that his captain had arranged for the club's weekly meeting—but that was a weekly thing, so he didn't bother to loiter around in the otherwise empty room. Of course, there was the dining room—but that was self-explanatory.

Thus Renji settled in comfortably, albeit awkwardly, in the Kuchiki Manor, along with its other two residents and staff. What shocked him most was exactly that, permanent residents—besides the staff—were actually just the three of them, he even had the initial nervousness of meeting the rest of the 'family', to find out they weren't there. He remembered that his captain had a grandfather, and surely he had other family members, but it was funny to him that they didn't live in the manor together. Rukia told him that the branch families live in their own mansions, while Ginrei Kuchiki—her adoptive grandparent—lived mostly in the outskirts of Seireitei, preferring to be out of the hustle and bustle in his old age. Renji deemed it was simply nobility's warped logic and leave it at that.

What really got on his nerves was how accurate his captain's dreaded promise was when he said to have Renji under 'constant supervision'—the man literally escorted him wherever and whenever he went outside of the Manor and the Sixth's compound, making certain missions more complicated and less in his element since he had to accommodate to another person—let alone the infamous Captain Kuchiki. If the Kuchiki Head was not there, then at least two Kuchiki guards were sent in his place to monitor every single thing Renji did. While he appreciated the efforts and tried to understand the reasoning, he really couldn't wrap his head around how surreal it was, and he even tried—and failed—to escape the captain—absolute failure—and/or the guards, to no avail. The Kuchiki even threatened—implied, really, but still—to lock Renji inside the basement—dungeons, his delirious mind supplied—if he ever tried to 'escape' again.

So far, his closest friends had been in the know about his situation with the apartment complex being repurposed and tried to cheer him up by visiting him on weekends—he was only glad that his captain allowed the rowdy group to enter the premises, but the noble usually steered far away from their group whenever they visited, anyway. They still didn't know the real reason, and still threw the occasional speculations as to why he said that he wouldn't be able to join their drinking sessions anymore unless done at the Kuchiki Manor, but he tried his best to keep a tight lip. Shuuhei had his suspicions, but didn't know where to throw his assumptions just yet.

Ichigo visited twice more in that month to report updates on the Arrancar activities. He said that initially, the numbers of Arrancars in the forest perimeter of Karakura Town had tripled in the past few weeks, and then around a week ago, they weren't sighted anymore, other than the occasional normal Hollows.

Around two days passed after his report, suddenly more and more reports of Arrancars sightings in Soul Society were delivered; again, not near the human-populated areas, but abandoned districts and forests. The Captain-Commander had to call a joint meeting with the Captains and Lieutenants, as well as the Twelfth Division's team of researchers whose duties were to monitor Hollow activities in Soul Society. They all came to Byakuya's initial hypothesis, that Aizen Sousuke was most likely searching for some sort of spiritual artifact, from the officers' reports and the researchers' affirmation on the sightings of Arrancars sniffing around abandoned spiritual sites.

"They're expanding their reach," Kyoraku Shinsui hummed as he looked at the map of Soul Society, spread on a vast table in the middle of the Captain's meeting room which was usually bare. Blinking red dots clustered on certain sites that bear a simple shrine symbol all across the map. At first, the red dots were shown on a very small area of the map, but as a researcher pressed some buttons on a portable device, the red dots started to scatter outside and grew many, littering the map with their blinking lights.

"At least 197 Arrancar sightings had been reported in these regions, expanding every three days. They are usually spotted in pairs or groups of three. 46 of those sightings ended up with shinigami confrontation and a total of 12 casualties and counting. None of them seemed to engage if not threatened," a researcher reported, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he re-checked the data he had on his clipboard.

"This looks more and more like a war map," Renji muttered as he took a look at the map, noting the many locations he was familiar with, did a double-take on a particular location where there was no shrine symbol but still had clusters of red dots on them. It was near Inuzuri—and for a split second, he mused that it was really close to the cliffside where he trained the new recruits just a month ago.

"That is because we are getting closer to having one," the Captain-Commander's voice was grim. No one seemed to be paying much attention to his direction since they were busy looking at the map—some of them hummed in agreement, but Renji looked at the ancient man standing in the front and middle of the group. The Captain-Commander looked weary—as if his age decided to settle on his body now more than ever— and as he noticed the Sixth Division's lieutenant eyes to his direction, he shifted ever so slightly and motioned for the researchers' to continue their reports.

Byakuya has been taking more absences in the Sixth's barracks for the past week. While he still delivered his share of the paperwork in time, he rarely showed up to his office. This little fact surprised every single one of his officers, for Byakuya was never absent from office outside of urgent matters; he didn't even give any proper excuse for his absence this time. And they weren't brave enough to ask him why. Renji dared, being who he was, but only met with silence and cryptic responses that were as clear as a cloudy day.

It confused Renji because he thought the captain was so keen on monitoring him 24/7, that the man actually would take drastic measures to do so—and then he just gave Renji more 'room' than he ever had for the past month. He was somewhat gleefully delighted by his newfound 'freedom', if not for the fact that the Kuchiki actually put two more guards—so that's four of them—that monitored him stealthily. He felt like a Yakuza heir from some anime series he often watched in Ichigo's house, being treated as he was.

There were still no new incidents with Renji so far. But Byakuya grew his suspicions on the connection between the Arrancar sightings and Renji's incidents. Renji was not the only one to notice the location of the Arrancars that were near the cliffside—the one where Renji said the mysterious red-eyed man told him that he was 'born of that cliff'. That really needed his further investigation, now, didn't it? Especially for the fact that while it wasn't the location of a holy shrine and the likes, it was one of the Kuchiki Family underground archives that held ancient scrolls older than the Captain-Commander himself. They just made the matter personal to him.

The captain was on his way to exit the Kuchiki compounds when his red-haired lieutenant stopped him.

"Captain, you're not going to the office today?" the redhead asked as casually as he could. He was dressed in his black uniform ready to leave for office—trailed by four guards watching somewhere he couldn't see but still be able to feel— and absently noting that the captain was not.

The Kuchiki noble gave Renji a curt nod, "yes."

"May I ask why you've been absent?"

"You may not."

Renji stood still for a few seconds as the Kuchiki flash-stepped out of his sight.

"Good talk."

In truth, Byakuya had taken into himself to explore the older, more ancient archives that the Kuchiki Family was responsible for keeping. The Kuchiki archives were spread out across Soul Society, some of them were located in strongholds during the warring eras millennia ago, while some buried underground long before Soul Society even gained its name, when it was simply fractals of the civilization it was now.

Even as the Head of the Kuchiki Family, the only nobility trusted to archive Soul Society history, Byakuya had never set foot into the more ancient archives—they were deemed irrelevant to current affairs and had never been explored by the more recent generations since their abandonment—though heavily layered and lethal seals were still active in case enemies trying to steal the olden wisdom the scrolls provide, as what Aizen was doing.

Byakuya believed that the genocidal insanity they call Aizen Sousuke was searching high and low for an artifact very well hidden in the nooks of Soul Society, but the raven knew not what it was. What drew his attention was the fact that the Hollows were diversifying their search; they didn't only search areas with holy grounds or known spots of spiritual fluctuations due to their history, but they were also searching sites that had even the slightest anomaly—that traitor didn't spare any effort on this, therefore he must be desperate. So far he hadn't found anything of use from the archives he had explored the past few weeks, which made him grew more frustrated by the day since it meant that his absence in his barracks and in monitoring his lieutenant was simply for naught. But he believed that the last Captain-Lieutenant meeting proved to be a significant clue for him, as he found another location of one of the older underground archives, and it had been hiding in plain sight.

Which was why Byakuya was currently standing in front of seemingly dense foliage, quite near to the cliffside—the location of one of the Kuchiki Family underground archives. The site was heavily sealed and enchanted with illusionary and protective spells, quite well that the Arrancars that were sighted near the area—and swiftly eliminated as Byakuya stepped into their periphery—couldn't detect the hidden site. As it was the Kuchiki Family archive, only Byakuya—and a few trusted members of the family—as the clan leader, could safely disable all the protective measure just enough for him to get through, the spells erected back in place the moment he went inside—the ingenuity of the past couldn't stop baffling even himself.

As he stepped through the barrier, and down the entrance, he had to wrinkle his nose—the air was terribly stale and did nothing to invite him further into the caves. He steeled his nerves and willed his senses to endure as he trudged through the densely packed rotten leaves from the foliage by the hidden entrance, and hid the floorings for at least past his knuckles if he were to force his fingers through the yellowish-grey layer. As he walked deeper into the catacombs—lighting a torch hanging by the wall—the leaves thinned out and he reached a sandstone area with many caverns leading to different directions. He decided to choose one and started from there, finding a small hole barely enough for him to walk through without ducking his head. Inside was an archive of scrolls, packed into the stone walls with holes as shelves—this must've been the older archives, he thought absently and got to work.

He spent hours rifling through the ancient scrolls which were in good condition only due to the spells they were preserved within the catacombs. The moment they were brought out, they may very well turn to dust if the proper spells were not in place. So far he had gone through two of the five caverns, and so far he had not found anything worth noting—at least for the problem he was trying to answer at that moment. Most of these scrolls were older than the time before the Kuchiki Family was established, long before the warring era thousands of years ago.

At the third archive—the one with the more recent, still ancient, but more recent than the last two archives—, after going through at least half of the scrolls, he found a small section in the dusty shelves that held scrolls with a different colored wooden rod. As he inspected them, he realized that they were probably from the last war at least two thousand years ago, when they used a different type of redwood to hold the scrolls, and had been carried on since then. Progress, he thought almost jubilantly as he nearly tore through the tie that held one of the scrolls in place, gleeful excitement—mixed with delirious fatigue and a dash of curiosity—reverberating through his fingers as he hungrily scanned through the text.

As he read through the scroll his eyes grew increasingly frantic and confused and as he looked to the end of the scroll to see the signature, his grip tightened.

'...it was the holy divinity, the Seika, that guided me and blessed me with its holy powers. Even so, the enemy was far too strong, and I too weak to measure to the Seika's unfathomable gift. I could not eliminate the evil, thus resorted to contain it. What terrible future have I gifted to the world, when I mayhap so be still alive when it struck once more, given this powers bestowed upon me that prolonged my vitality, yet be so powerless? I established the Gotei 13 as a defense mechanism against enemies who wish for chaos and death, yet they too would not survive for long, not without the Seika's gifts. And while it will forever remain as long as evil persevere, but who will wield its powers? Who will be strong enough to bear its terrible blessings and achieve heights of greatness it should have brought me? I have failed, and I fear the day that evil may take its powers from the pure souls, and obliterate both souls and men alike...'

"..for the Seika with all its sentience and divinity is a lure for all evils to come," Byakuya murmured the last line of the last passage, his fingers absently stroke through the soft material of the scroll he opened, grazing the glaringly familiar symbol of chrysanthemums at the end of the scroll, signed by the very man who made peace within Soul Society possible. He was sitting by the garden, his back rested on a wooden column that erected the roofs on his head.

"What are you reading, Cap—Kuchiki-san? Poetry?" a familiar loud voice asked the brooding raven. He rolled the delicate scroll close.

"Renji," he acknowledged the redhead lowly, his eyes boring into the redhead who grew more uncomfortable by the second. The raven just got back after, what, a whole day being MIA, and the moment he returned he secluded himself in his room. It was thankfully the last weekend of the month, so Renji was now looming over the noble who decided to grace the members of the manor with his presence in the garden—the one just outside his room, still, progress. But then he was busy looking at whatever it was that caused him to act so... clandestine. Even more so than usual.

Renji frowned, it was very unsettling to see how distracted the normally so vigilant noble was—it was as if he was daydreaming.

The captain abruptly stood up, the scroll held tightly in his hands, "Aizen is indeed searching for something," he stated decisively, looking at Renji with clear eyes—finally snapping out of his self-inflicted reverie, it seemed.

"What is it?" Renji queried, his brows still furrowed as he looked at his captain's shifty movements.

"I shall tighten security," the noble decided, and swiftly walked pass his lieutenant in a hurry.

"What—wait, Kuchiki-san!" Renji called as he strode along with his captain.

"Pardon me, Abarai, but I am needed elsewhere," the Kuchiki paused, looked at his lieutenant, and flash-stepped away. Renji looked at the empty spot where his captain used to be with incredulous anger. The hell is going on with that guy?!

"What's gotten into him?" a grating voice said a little too loudly next to his ear.

"Ichigo! What are you doing here? Again?" He exclaimed, jumping to see the grinning substitute shinigami behind him.

The orange-haired high schooler tapped his fist to an open palm as if reminded of his business in Soul Society. "Oh, yeah, now that you remind me, I actually needed the snob for something," he exclaimed, jumping away and flash-stepped out of the compound, "talk to you later, Ren!"

"Wait you damned Strawberry!" Renji shouted at the shinigami reappearing on top of the roof of the entrance, only to disappeared again, "Jeez, each and every single one of them," the redhead grumbled.

Byakuya was observed walking in an urgent but subdued manner across Seireitei which was only beginning to glow a soft yellowish-orange, awaiting the setting sun. While flash-steps would take him faster to the location he wanted to go, the raven took the time to arrange his thoughts before he arrived at his destination.

As the noble paced through the nearly empty streets, someone called his name in the most obnoxious tone he ever heard—at least that was what he would say if ever asked. "Oi, Byakuya, wait up!"

He paused his steps and turned on his heels to face the offending individual. "Kurosaki Ichigo," he grunted impatiently.

As he caught up to the captain, Ichigo fumbled over his sleeves as if trying to find something. "Sorry, I gotta—wait a second here," he said sheepishly as he searched through the pockets of his uniform, and pulled out a piece of folded paper triumphantly. "I got these notes from Urahara-san, he's captured one of the Arrancars and interrogated it. Didn't get much outta that thing before it self-detonated," the younger man grimaced, "but he told me to deliver this to you, since you were the one who proposed that they might be searching for some kind of artifact?"

"He said they kept saying this one word..." he trailed off as he gave the paper to Byakuya, who received it silently.

"Uh, I haven't read the notes so I forgot what Urahara-san said it was," the orange-haired shinigami mumbled as he watched the captain eyed the paper in contemplation.

"Seka? Saiko?"

Byakuya paused in reading the note given to him, he frowned distastefully at the grim realization.

"Seika."

Urahara must have known the significance of that piece of information that he decided to trust Byakuya to look further into it. He didn't know that Byakuya already did. Thus Byakuya didn't even bother reading the rest of the message.

"Oh yeah that's it, you read it fast!" Ichigo exclaimed, and continued by asking "you know what it is?"

"I am about to."

"Byakuya-dono," Kuchiki Ginrei greeted his grandson as he kneeled on the opposite side of the room, a servant offering tea to the visiting Head of the House.

Byakuya responded in kind and nodded to the servant as she bowed to excuse herself from the tranquil room. He pulled out the scroll he had been reading and keeping with him since his discovery of its rather perplexing content, and presented it quietly to his grandfather's eyes.

Ginrei was silent as he noted the scroll, but chose to ignore it for a moment longer to sip his tea.

"You went to the archives," he stated more than questioned, as he put his delicate teacup down.

"Indeed, grandfather," Byakuya affirmed just as astutely, still presenting the scroll as if urging the older man to immediately address his offering at once.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the older Kuchiki prompted instead, idly eyeing the scroll, knowing that the young Lord did find something, and knowing where the conversation was heading. He had been waiting for this moment.

"I must say it is not as I expected," Byakuya voiced, pushing the scroll—delicately —to his grandfather's reach. "Did you know about this?" judging by the flitting recognition in the elder Kuchiki's eyes when Byakuya showed the object, Ginrei did not just know of the scroll, he knew of the answers that Byakuya seek; it was one of many scrolls that looked similar on the outside, after all. He must have known that Byakuya would be coming to him someday. And that day had come.

Ginrei took the scroll and opened it, stroking the edges of the soft, worn paper as he read the content that he had read hundreds of times before that he already memorized it at the top of his head, even after so long.

"My late grandfather fought alongside him, my boy," the older gentleman answered, his eyes still gazing fondly at the scroll clutched in his wrinkled hands, "he told me all that he could remember."

"More than the scrolls could provide?"

"There are some... details, that was purposefully left out in the writings," the former Kuchiki Head conveyed delicately, looking at his grandson as he gave the scroll back to the younger man. It did not belong to him.

"Then the Seika...?"

"Only the tip of the iceberg."

"Where is it now?" Byakuya frowned, tilting his head forward subconsciously, hungry for the first of the many answers he would wring out of the older Kuchiki.

"Not 'it', Byakuya-dono," Ginrei asserted, a glint in his eyes.

"He will be taken before the time comes," a deep, resonant voice grounded in restrained frustration.

Another sighed, having had the same conversation thousand times over. "when the time does come, shōken will protect him. You have faith in it, don't you?"

"Fine."

- to be continued -

Additional Notes:

Seika: lit. holy light; described by Yamamoto Genryuusai Shigekuni in his account as what 'guided and blessed' him with 'its holy powers'; no further information is available.

Shōken: lit. ascension, power; 'it' seems to 'protect' someone; no further information is available.

*if you watched the Turn Back the Pendulum Arc, there's a moment between Ginrei and Byakuya when he called Byakuya simply by his name, and Byakuya, in turn, referred to Ginrei with a more 'fond' jii-sama (if you watched with subtitles instead of the English dub). However, in this chapter you see Ginrei referring to Byakuya with the '-dono' suffix. I feel that it is more appropriate that way because back then, Byakuya was a boy practicing kendo while his grandfather watches. Now, he's the head of their clan visiting the former head. It's simply different settings :) I imagine Byakuya would also refer to Ginrei with the more formal Ojiisama (if this is an anime lol) in this.

If there is anything that I missed or things that you don't understand, please let me know - but not things that are plot-related though xD