Hey, yo, I'm doing a little request event again, where I am accepting prompts in the form of What If...? slight-departure-from-canon scenarios. If you're interested, there are details on my Tumblr.
Anonymous asked:
What if... Kaien, rather than Miyako, was the shinigami first attacked by Metastacia? How might this change who survives, and the traumas the survivors live with?
(The twist to these is that *you* get to request the twist, but *I* get to pick how far down the line I want to set my story, which is why this takes place on the night of Rukia's arrest.)
The problem with men in general, and Clan Heads in particular, Lieutenant Shiba Miyako thought to herself as she raced through the dark streets of Karakura Town, was that they never took the time to think things through.
No, that wasn't very fair of her. Back in the days when she had considered herself friends with Kuchiki Byakuya- in school, and during his days at the Thirteenth, it had taken him forever to get himself ready to do anything. Miyako didn't understand how Central 46 could issue an order for the arrest or execution of her own subordinate, and Byakuya had somehow managed to get himself and his lieutenant all the way to the World of the Living before she even found out about it. She was the first to admit that Byakuya was hardly recognizable to her these days, but the idea of him going off half-cocked- especially where his sister was concerned- chilled Miyako to the bone. It reminded her far too much of someone else from those old, happier days.
Kaien had loved Rukia like one of his own siblings, had always tried to shield her from Byakuya's frigidity. Miyako loved Rukia, too- her affected stoicism, her secret mischievousness, her huge, tender, fragile heart. But her own feelings were nothing in this moment, compared to knowing what Kaien would think, if she didn't get there in time.
"Bakudo #4. Hainawa!" Miyako shouted as she skidded into the intersection. The crackling golden kidou snagged Kuchiki's new attack dog mid-leap and it was only Miyako's quick thinking that jerked him off to the side as a hail of blue-white spirit arrows sizzled through the space he had occupied only moments before. "What the Hell are you doing, Lieutenant Abarai?!" she shouted. "You know that provisional spirit law forbids intentionally harming humans!"
"He attacked me!" Abarai snarled back.
Miyako ignored him, focusing instead on her subordinate. "You okay, Kuchiki?"
Rukia, pale and with eyes the size of saucers, drew herself up to her full height. "Yes, Assistant Captain! I apologize, Assistant Captain, I-"
"We'll talk about it later, Kuchiki," Miyako replied. Her eyes darted slightly to the right. "You! Mind putting that bow down?"
The slim, bespectacled human boy inched closer to Rukia. "I do, in fact."
Miyako did not have the patience for any flavor of men this evening. "I hope you realize he would have split you from navel to sternum if I hadn't stopped him," she pointed out sharply. "You've very slow."
Rukia said something quietly to the human, and with a flick of his wrist, his weapon dissipated, but his eyes remained narrowed and wary. Miyako had never seen a human use a spirit weapon of that sort, and the fact that it was a bow gave her the creeps. She made a mental note to mention it to her captain.
Speaking of captains, Miyaki finally turned her attention to the figure standing silently off to the side. "What is going on here, Captain Kuchiki? We both know you're familiar with the protocols for minimizing adverse spiritual impact on the Living World. I don't care that you've only had your lieutenant for five minutes, but you could have taken the time to tell him the difference between the warzones the Eleventh usually patrols and a neighborhood."
"I do not care for your tone, Lieutenant Shiba," Byakuya coolly replied. "We are under special orders, issued by the Central 46 directly. We have an exemption."
"An order to apprehend my subordinate," Miyako rejoined.
"Yes," Byakuya replied.
"And you didn't find that unusual?" Not that Kuchiki Byakuya had been a real paragon of critical thinking, even in his more approachable youth, but ever since Hisana passed, he'd stopped questioning anything. Not that Miyako didn't know all too well what losing a spouse did to you, but she'd never had the luxury of letting it turn her stupid.
"I was told that that her own captain was incapacitated once again, and her vice-captain was unavailable."
"'Unavailable', apparently," Miyako bit off, "because I'd received my own letter from Central to go lecture my sister-in-law for conduct unbecoming a noble family."
"The business of the sad remains of your clan, Shiba, is none of my concern."
"That's not the point, Byakuya! That doesn't strike you as odd? That Central would send me away to go yell at Kuukaku for the same thing she's been doing for fifteen years and then suddenly decide it was so time-critical to pull back a delinquent unseated officer that they had to pull in some other squad's captain to do it?"
"I am not in the habit of questioning my superiors, Shiba, something you might take to heart."
Hot rage bubbled in Miyako's veins. "Don't you care about your sister at all, Byakuya?" She didn't dare look at Rukia, who had well-hardened herself to her brother's cruel indifference. Instead, she stole a glance at Abarai. He'd only been promoted a few weeks ago. Miyako knew his face, but she'd barely exchanged a dozen words with him. Hisagi and Matsumoto spoke well of Abarai, though, and he seemed to be friends with nearly all the new crop of young lieutenants that had been hired in a rapid flurry over the last few years. Miyako was not unaware of the rumors that he was sweet on the First Daughter of the Kuchiki. The few times he'd set foot on the grounds of the Thirteen, usually on some paperwork errand for Ayasegawa, he'd seemed furtive, and Miyako had personally witnessed him duck behind a tree at Rukia's approach. At the time, she'd found it cute, but now she was suspicious- of his motives, of Kuchiki's in hiring him, of whatever silly buggers Central was trying to pull.
Right now, he just looked confused, his eyes darting between the two Kuchiki, and finally back at Miyako.
"Shiba Miyako, you forget yourself," Byakuya said, and there was steel in his voice. "You are a lieutenant and a dowager clan head. You are not my equal and you shall not speak to me as such. If you continue to interfere with my orders, I will kill you. Release my adjutant."
Miyako spared Abarai a stern look. "You going to behave yourself?"
"You do not answer to her!" Byakuya snapped.
Abarai turned his head away reflexively, but gave an almost imperceptible nod all the same. They might teach discipline and ferocity at the Eleventh, but they didn't teach savvy, politics, the strength of will Miyako had tried to instill in Rukia behind her brother's back. In five years, Abarai would be Byakuya's man to the bone. Unless Byakuya killed him before then.
Miyako released the bind.
"What are you going to do with her after you return to Soul Society?" she asked. "Captain Kuchiki. My captain will ask."
Byakuya's lip curled. "Abarai will deliver her to the Twelfth to be extracted from that gigai and then take her into custody at the Sixth."
"She has the right to be detained at her own company's barracks."
"The severity of her crime merits special handling."
"She should go to the Second, then. Since when is the Sixth 'special handling'? Or are you just pulling strings for your family? I thought you hated it when your grandfather did that sort of thing."
Was she baiting him? Perhaps. Maybe if she could get his blood flowing a little, he would break out of that icy shell and start to give half a damn about what was going on.
Byakuya's nostrils flared, a rare sight indeed. "First you accuse me of being cold toward my sister, and now you accuse me of favoritism? Which is it to be, Shiba?"
"What it is to be, Captain Kuchiki," Miyako shot back, "is that I will accompany Rukia and your lieutenant to the Twelfth, while you negotiate Rukia's detention with Captain Ukitake, in the presence of the Head Captain, if necessary."
"Scuse me, Lieutenant Shiba," Abarai interrupted, the courtesy sounding strangely out of place in the gruff slurry of his deep-Rukon accent, "but we also gotta go track down the human that stole Rukia's powers and kill 'em."
Miyako blinked and focused on Rukia. She'd noticed the young woman was in a gigai of course, but she hadn't realized that her reiatsu was barely above a flicker. Miyako shifted her focus to the young man at Rukia's side- he had his own reiatsu, but it was nothing like Rukia's. In fact, it wasn't that of a shinigami at all. Rukia we are going to talk, Miyako sighed to herself, but now is not the time.
"Ain't him," Abarai muttered.
"I'm afraid I don't care for this talk of hunting down humans," the boy sneered, and the spirit bow flashed back to life in his hand. "Also, if you're going to insist on taking Kuchiki back to Soul Society against her will, I am going to have to reassert my objections."
"Gonna reassert your face," Abarai growled.
"Don't be a fool, human," Miyako warned. "I won't stop him a second time."
"It's fine, Ishida," Rukia murmured. "Vice-Captain Shiba will look out for me." She cleared her throat. "You're wasting your time, Renji. No one took my powers. Please. Let's just go home."
Byakuya wasn't even paying attention anymore, but the way Abarai's stance softened at the words "please" and "home" weren't lost on Miyako. She had known Rukia far too long to dismiss this as accidental. Rukia was protecting someone.
"Rukia, an unsupervised human running around with shinigami powers could cause serious damage, you know that," Miyako replied sternly. "If you're helpful, perhaps we can find a way to extract your powers without killing the human. If not…well, I can escort you back to Soul Society, and we'll leave Lieutenant Abarai to finish up business."
"Unacceptable," Byakuya droned, as if to prove that he hadn't entirely checked out.
"Agreed!" the human snapped. "No one is taking Rukia anywhere!"
Suddenly, like the first rumble of thunder before a storm, a reiatsu that felt like Rukia's, but also strangely familiar rippled through the night air.
""Fraid I'm with Ishida on this one," a new voice announced, rough, but young, overinflated with bravado. "I hear you're looking for humans with shinigami powers?"
All the blood suddenly drained from Rukia's face. "Lieutenant Shiba!" she cried. "Don't look!"
Miyako was already turning toward the voice. She had seen a lot in her long years, though, what could possibly be so horrible that-
"Oh," said Shiba Miyako.