"Don't fall behind, Isshin," called the boy's father as he walked, not looking back or losing stride, yanking the attention of the young Shiba Clan boy back to the path ahead. He sped up until he and his father were walking abreast.

"Sorry, father. This place is just so creepy," said the boy to the horizon and the dark tower which sprang from it, haloed by the sun so that it cut its hideous silhouette across the glowing face like a black scar. The ominous structure was to be their destination, and each step of the hour's walk they'd taken from the Shiba compound just to get this far felt like moving one step closer to the front line of war to Isshin.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," said Isshin's father in his stern, matter-of-fact way. "You didn't lose your Hell Butterfly back there, did you?"

"No, father, I caught it."

"Good."

The insect's chilly wings beat a furious tattoo on the palms of Isshin's lightly cupped hands as it tried to once more flit away from its young captor. "It's so cold," Isshin remarked, referring to the chilled wings.

"I warned you not to swing the cage around like that," replied his father coolly. Suddenly, Isshin's stomach felt as cold as his hands, and he hung his head dejectedly.

"Yes, father."

They continued on their way in silence for some time before his father gave Isshin a sidelong look.

"Your zanpakuto shouldn't be on your back," he said, "we're almost there." Then he extended his left arm until his hand hovered above his son's head with his first finger outstretched as if awaiting the landing of a small bird. "Let me have the butterfly now."

The slight tapping of his large sword against his back as he walked sounded like smug laughter to Isshin. He obediently opened his hands, loosing the black butterfly into the air. Miraculously, though not leastwise surprisingly, it alighted on his father's finger as if the man had first stuck it in a sugar bowl. Isshin took his time pulling the sash from around his chest over his head so that he could hold it and the sword it was attached to with both of his newly freed hands.

"You should've been carrying it the whole way," said his father in a tone that neither condemned nor condoned his son's behaviour. "

"It's hard to walk and do jinzen at the same time," complained Isshin as he held the sword out before him, gripping it with both hands, just as he had been told to do. "Besides, she's mean anyway." Engetsu, the spirit of Isshin's zanpakuto, took the form of a girl only slightly older than Isshin, and true to form, acted as though her wielder was a nuisance, like an annoying younger cousin who wouldn't leave her alone at a family gathering. Plus, she wouldn't let Isshin touch her boobs even a little.

"Having some skill in kido does not mean you can ignore training in zanjutsu," said Isshin's father sternly, glancing at his son coolly.

Isshin huffed. "That might be true if I had some skill, but I have lots of skill," he said with a haughty nod. "Hana-baasan says—"

Isshin didn't get to finish what he had been about to say, and his father's knuckle driving into the crown of his head told him that the man must've switched which hand was carrying the Hell Butterfly along.

"Don't call your Captain something like that, Isshin Shiba," reprimanded his father in a growling tone. "Especially Captain Unohana. You're my only heir, and I want you to live a long life." That time, his tone had ridden the line between exasperation and fear.

As he rubbed the tender spot his father had made in his head, Isshin thought he could feel his sword ringing in his hand, as if laughing at him for, he thought, the second time. "Well, Captain Unohana says I'm the youngest Shinigami ever in her Division, so that must mean my kido is something else," bragged the boy. He was once again walking with his chest out and his chin held high. "And everyone knows that the Fourth Division doesn't use their swords," he went on, squinting at the one in his hand disdainfully.

"There may come a time when you have to, to defend yourself," argued Isshin's father in a way that didn't sound the least bit argumentative.

The tower was looming closer now, growing ever larger, having greedily eclipsed the sun. Isshin shuddered at the sight of it but gripped his zanpakuto all the tighter as he found his courage in yet more braggadocio.

"Nah," he said, lamely countering his father's last point, "if anyone tries to get the jump on me, that's when I'd break out my Shiba Clan Taijutsu," he finished confidently, stopping in mid-stride to thrust a kick into the empty air before him. He had to jog to catch back up to his father—who had not so much as paused to admire his son's flawless technique—before the man took his turn to speak.

"Last I checked, hakuda is not an art for which our family is particularly renowned," said the man simply, sounding a bit too skeptical for someone who'd just been in the proximity of an, again, absolutely flawlessly performed side kick.

"That's exactly what they'll think right before they fall to the Isshin Shiba Double Flying Knee," exclaimed the boy excitedly. This technique he did not demonstrate, for a secret technique was no good if everyone could see you using it any old time. Isshin considered that his father knew something about that, seeing as the trial he was off to partake in was apparently to judge his worthiness in learning a Shiba Clan technique his father didn't even name aloud.

For his part, Kouichi Shiba found himself worried about his son's level of excitement at the prospect of a violent confrontation in unarmed combat. He shuddered to think that, had they both been born much earlier, his son might still have followed Captain Unohana in her Division and was thankful that it was the Fourth she was leading in Isshin's lifetime. As he watched his son, who was once again obediently holding onto his zanpakuto with both hands, Kouichi noticed him looking around expectantly.

"The tower's just up ahead," said Kouichi, "even you can't have missed it."

"I'm looking for Kaien, he said he'd ask if he could come to wish me luck in the trial."

Kouichi couldn't help knitting his eyebrows together at his son's lack of decorum. "You should call him 'Kaien-dono'," he corrected.

Isshin gave his father a sour glance. "That's not what he says. Plus, we're the same age, and I don't like it when other members in the Fourth call me 'Isshin-dono' or 'Isshin-sama' either," he whined.

"Isshin, you're a Shiba. You should take pride in your family's status."

"Well, it's hard to do that when we don't do anything special," Isshin pouted. This didn't raise Kouichi's ire as had Isshin's disrespecting of his cousin, because the boy had said it with more glumness in his voice than any sort of anger. "Ichi-neesan's family are the guardians of all these special treasures, and even the Kuchiki at least have that big library," explained Isshin, forcing Kouichi to bite his tongue upon hearing his son's grossly over-familiar term for the princess of the Shihoin clan as he continued on, "but all we have is fireworks."

"We have more than that, as you will soon see," said Kouichi simply. They were almost to the entrance of the tower now.

The cold feeling coiling around Isshin's stomach intensified as he saw the gigantic doors of the tower standing before him like massive iron tombstones, but thankfully, it was then that, as his eyes searched reflexively for an escape route, they fell upon a heartening sight: a boy about his own age with spiky black hair, adorned in a black yukata undoubtedly bearing the same mon on the back as his father's kimono was patterned with all over, that of the Shiba Clan. The boy waved excitedly from a hill some distance to the left of the hill, and beside him stood a young girl much shorter than he who cradled in her arms a snoozing baby boy. Behind all of them stood a pretty, dark-haired woman wearing an indigo yukata and a sweet smile.

"It's Kaien!" shouted Isshin ecstatically as he waved back. His cousin began jumping with each wave of his arm as soon as his greeting had been returned. The little girl, who was Kaien's younger sister, Kukaku, had her arms too full with their baby brother to wave, and so found it suitable to stick out her tongue at Isshin instead. Like a twerp. She could expect an Isshin Hell Headbutt the next time their families gathered, Isshin promised himself as he eyed her venomously. Then he remembered that he already owed her for throwing firecrackers at his feet during the last get-together.

The heat of his anger was instantly iced over by the Hell Butterfly landing on his shoulder, sending chills along Isshin's entire body as the boy stiffened. "It's time, Isshin," said his father, in a voice that sounded ominous to the boy.

Isshin gulped, an act his suddenly parched throat protested painfully. "Dad," he said quietly, turning to the doors, "if this is a secret for Shinigami in our family, how come you know about it? Do you know what's in there?" Isshin looked up at his father, pale and starting to break into a sweat. The man had never worn a shihakusho nor carried a zanpakuto for as long as Isshin could remember, a fact which struck fear into him at that moment as his mind was sent reeling with every imagined horror that may lurk beyond the monolithic doorway. Did his dad even know if his son would make it out alive?

Kouichi's expression became oddly relaxed and he placed a hand on his son's quivering shoulder. "We can speak once we're both inside, but not out here." And he felt his son's shoulder drop with sudden relaxation at the notion of Kouichi's joining him within the tower. Then, Kouichi instructed Isshin on how they must both place a hand on one of the doors—Isshin's left hand on the left door, and Kouichi's right hand on the right door—and channel their reiryoku into it "like you do when performing kido". Isshin was no less surprised that the doors began roaring open a second after he felt a jolt twinge down the length of his left arm—as if the doors had pulled something out of it—than he was to learn that his father knew how to perform kido. His father was a crafty man, being a great innovator in the field of pyrotechnics, but spellcraft wasn't something Isshin expected from him. He was helped inside with a gentle push of his father's hand at his back, then the doors groaned closed, nearly knocking Isshin over with the air they sent rushing in upon their clamorous resealing.

The interior of the cylindrical structure was candlelit, and though its inky darkness threatened each timid flame, seeming to crowd as oppressively as it could around each candle, Isshin could just make out by the oily light the gigantic Shiba mon in the pattern of the stones which made up the floor. Across the expanse of the mon, at one end of the cavernous room, there was a shrine atop a dais, in which rested an odachi held aloft by two ornate holders carved to look like leaping silver koi with trailing golden whiskers mirroring each other. The sword was not visible due to reflecting the surrounding candlelight, but rather, because the blackness of its silhouette seemed deeper even than the darkness that would descend upon the room should the weak candles finally give up their valiant fight and be snuffed out. In fact, no light seemed to touch it at all.

"I was a member of the Gotei Thirteen before you were born," said Isshin's father, his voice carrying eerily. He'd begun to walk towards the dais, and Isshin, awed and frightened by the wicked sword, only started following behind him after he'd broken the initial silence. "I took this trial, just as you are about to do."

The Hell Butterfly fluttered on Isshin's shoulder, startling him, though he kept walking. He'd forgotten about it upon entering the tower but now was thankful for the way the fluttering of its chill wings felt on his sweat-streaked cheek. Though his father exuded calmness, Isshin couldn't help but feel that, in crossing through the doors into the tower, they had crossed the gates of Hell itself. Still, none of this was enough to dampen the shock he felt at hearing that his father had been a Shinigami.

"What? Did...did you quit?"

"No," said his father, "I was forced to retire."

"Is it because..." Isshin paused, not wanting to insult his father. But his fear at losing his position in the Gotei Thirteen forced him to finally continue. "Is it because you didn't pass the trial? Did they make you leave?"

Kouichi looked at Isshin with complete seriousness, though not a hint of incredulity. "Actually, I passed the trial and learned the secret technique. But because I had to use it, I gave up my Shinigami powers," he said. "Or," he corrected, "I suppose its more accurate to say that using the technique cost me my powers."

Isshin stopped dead in his tracks. "This—this is a technique—that takes away your—Shinigami powers?" he stammered. His father nodded solemnly, not attempting to comfort his clearly upset son. "But—but what if I don't want to?"

The question furrowed his father's brow. "You must try," he said simply. "It's a technique that's vital to the safety of the Seireitei—of all of Soul Society—and we Shiba are the only ones who can learn it."

Isshin gulped, something that hurt his throat just as much as it had the first time. "Well...what about Kaien? He told me he wants to become a Shinigami too, and he's a member of the main house, not a branch family," Isshin pleaded. He felt guilty dragging his closest cousin into this dangerous business, but to give up his Shinigami powers? It didn't seem fair. He was the youngest ever member of the Fourth Division, he'd worked so hard...

"Kaien cannot learn it," said Kouichi. "You're right, he plans to join the Gotei Thirteen, and so has already been given an Asauchi to train with. As a member of a noble clan, he's allowed such advantages, just like you were. But he's already learned his zanpakuto's name, and its spirit is one aligned with water. You remember what I told you about our family, Isshin?"

Kouichi had, in fact, informed Isshin of the special circumstances of the Shiba Clan with regard to members who decided to become Shinigami on the day that Engetsu had first told Isshin her name. "Engetsu" meant "scathing moon", a name which had seemed to pleasantly surprise Kouichi when he'd heard it. It was then that he'd told Isshin that all members of their family who became Shinigami were chosen by either the sea or the moon, and that no Shiba in the history of Soul Society had ever possessed a zanpakuto unaligned with one or the other. Isshin, with Engetsu, had been said to be "chosen by the moon" by his father.

Isshin nodded in response to his father's question. "Then you will understand," said his father, "that only members of our family chosen by the moon can learn this technique. Its name..." he paused, taking a moment to draw a breath as if even speaking the name took effort, before raising his head to look at Isshin with shadowed eyes, "...is Mugetsu."

In the more recent history of Soul Society, there have been notable attempts on the lives of the Kuchiki Clan's members. By a twist of fate, two sisters, who each lived entirely separate lives, were at the centre of these events which occurred decades apart—except that, during the latter, one of them was the target, and during the former, the other was the weapon. This account is of the former.

Even before she drifted back to consciousness, Hisana could sense the malevolence she would be waking up to. Having strengthened by simmering for over a century, the murderous intent was the first thing she tasted on the air when she took her first waking breath, which caught in her throat as she made a horrifying realization a moment later: that evil had been transferred to her while she had been on the operating table; it had been sewn up inside of her.

She didn't know it, but the man who'd treated her following a Hollow's rampage through Rukongai had only enrolled in the Shinigami training academy for the singular purpose of getting as close to the Captain of the Sixth Division as possible. That Division's Captain was a young nobleman named Byakuya Kuchiki, and though Hisana did not know him, thanks to the devious machinations of the man who was supposed to have been saving her life, she could picture his handsome face, and found that doing so caused a fiery rage to burn at her mind until she was left helplessly clutching her head in the bed she'd been lain up in within the barracks of the Fourth Division, which was the medical corps.

Her operator had been a would-be revolutionary of plain description who had made it his life's goal to overthrow the class structure of Soul Society. To that end, he'd enrolled to become a Shinigami, training tirelessly in the arts that would make him an ideal member of the Fourth Division, where he could one day put to use the kido his sinister imagination and deft hands had weaved during countless sleepless nights in his dormitory. The very skill and mastery which had made him a commendable kido-assisted surgeon would instead be used to take lives rather than save them. And he knew just the life he wanted to take.

This man was disgusted by the opulence of the noble houses of Soul Society, strained, as it was, to the point of grotesque by the fact that, while they lived in splendour, the districts on the outer fringes of Rukongai decayed around a starving, dying lower class. It had been such a crumbling state that the man had been born into—or died into—and it hadn't taken him long before he figured out that the entire power balance of Soul Society was upside down, and that it would require a dedicated and unflinching taker of bloody risks to be set to right. Decades of plotting later, all the man needed was for fortune to hand him an unwilling host to the volatile designer kido. A kido which, when Kuchiki was in its proximity, would violently go off, vaporizing the chosen target of the man's righteous fury along with the unfortunate host.

This was the scheme Hisana had awoken to find herself tangled up in the middle of. However, when she tried to call out, she found that her voice failed her. When she tried to leave her bed, she felt her legs become as heavy as lead. Even trying merely to inspect her nefariously closed Hollow wound beneath the Fourth Division medical gown proved to paralyze her body for torturous minutes in which all she could do was take shallow, panicked breaths until it passed. The man had not only turned her into a bomb but had also given himself full control of her body. It was no use to try and think of a way to escape the Seireitei before she could even see Byakuya Kuchiki. Her doctor was going to walk her right to the man, whether she wanted to or not.

When the fated day arrived, every step Hisana took felt as though she was walking through a tangle of thorns that needled every inch of her legs. This was an unfortunate side effect of the fruitless resistance her will was making inside of her automatically moving body. Her mind strained against the piloted muscles, willing them to stop or else wishing for them to tear apart before she could reach her target. Her teeth gnashed against one another painfully as she tried the entire time to say something, anything, to anybody nearby as she moved with enforced purpose, and when her throat did manage to make a small noise now and again, it was like swallowing razor blades.

This day had been chosen, as much by circumstance as by Hisana's malicious saviour, due to Byakuya Kuchiki taking action to personally slay a rather large Hollow that had stampeded its way into the Seireitei. It had crashed into the vicinity of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Divisions, giving Hisana's surgeon the perfect opportunity to enact his long-gestating plan. The Sixth was without a Vice-Captain due to the previous holder of the position having recently retired, and so the Captain of the Sixth was the one to put a stop to the injurious rampage the Hollow had made through the upper ranks of the Division. Then, pulling his horrified puppet along as if by invisible strings, the man left for the site of the aftermath with Hisana alongside him disguised in the garb of medical personnel.

Usually, it would be impossible for anybody to get close to a noble, but, as Byakuya was a Captain in the Gotei Thirteen, he was relatively accessible if one was within the organization. Though the man himself needed no medical attention, Hisana's captor made sure to flit from bloodied officer to bloodied officer at Byakuya's heels as the man checked on each of his injured underlings in turn, from a distance, of course. Then, suddenly, Hisana found herself alone. Her captor had fled, and that could mean only one thing: he hadn't wanted to get caught in the imminent blast that would end Hisana's existence.

She'd been only a few laboured steps into her painful walk towards death when Byakuya took notice of her, and his darkly handsome eyes falling on her would have mercifully buckled her knees had they not been reinforced with dark Shinigami sorcery. He may have said something in her direction, but Hisana didn't hear it due to the constant ringing in her ears caused by the kido that had hijacked her senses. A couple of uninjured officers crowded around him as Hisana continued her course, but he stayed them by raising a hand. Again he tried to speak, and again his words fell upon ears deafened by ringing. Perhaps he had told her he didn't need attention, or maybe he'd instructed her to show respect for him by bowing, Hisana couldn't tell.

She saw his dark eyes dart around as he seemed to sense that something was awry. When he waved his men further back away from him and took a step towards Hisana, her chest heated up with such intensity that she was convinced that the sun hanging in the sky behind Byakuya was burning a hole in it. She didn't know if she'd managed to react at all to the pain, but Byakuya had obviously noticed something, for, in the next instant, he vanished. When Hisana's eyes found him a split second later, he was a good twenty yards further away, mixed in with his own crowded officers who were all startled to see him suddenly pop into existence among them. Such was the speed of their Captain's shunpo.

Unbeknownst to Hisana, it was at that moment that the plan of the man who had made her his weapon began to crumble. He'd made the trigger, Hisana's proximity to Byakuya, to be automatic, as he couldn't risk being engulfed by the detonation. In truth, the man was a coward, unwilling to martyr himself for his cause, and more than happy to sacrifice others in his stead. However, in his arrogance, he'd assumed his kido to be flawless, undetectable, even by a Captain with such keen senses as Byakuya possessed. He had been wrong. Hisana had left his range of direct control the moment that Byakuya had taken the near-fatal step towards her, but the Captain's unexpectedly perfect reaction to the kido bound to Hisana nearly activating had thrown off what had been otherwise perfect timing on the terrorist's part.

Hisana, however, was unaware of what a good position she had been suddenly put into by Byakuya's deft assessment of the situation. For her, every second was pure agony. Although she had stopped walking on her captor's accord, she felt that, at any moment, he might decide to drop all pretense of making her the spark of revolution and activate his kido at random, his plan foiled anyway. But, though the stress of it was enough that Hisana would surely have been sick right there in the open had she not been paralyzed by the lingering effects of the kido, nothing so violent came to pass.

Instead, a figure appeared between her and Byakuya. Their sudden appearance thrust Hisana's mind firmly back to the present after it had wandered down every path to her sudden, violent death that it dared to prepare itself for. Only then did Hisana notice that the three of them stood alone, the rest of the Shinigami having, at some point, left the scene, likely on their Captain's orders. Hisana found herself unable to recall how much time had passed, the kido controlling her making a haze of her mind, though the sun was now low enough to halo Byakuya, which Hisana found quite fitting for him.

The figure, garbed in a night blue cloak with the hood pulled up, started out closer to the lone figure of Byakuya before journeying slowly toward Hisana after conversing with the nobleman for a short time. Hisana hadn't seen where they'd come from, for they'd seemed simply to appear, as Byakuya had amongst the throngs of his soldiers when he'd narrowly avoided explosive disaster earlier that day. Hisana's legs shook as the cloaked figure advanced, as, though the kido was denying her brain the sensation of fatigue, the muscles in her legs were clearly battling with it. At that point, she would've accepted it had the bones in her legs just broken then and there, for at least she'd be able to slump onto the cool ground below. She felt feverish as if the spell on her had been left idle too long and its pent-up energy was beginning to overheat her body, like an unattended tea kettle frothing over. How long would the magic hold in anticipation for its intended target to finally enter its sphere of influence?

It wasn't until the cloaked figure was nearly upon her that Hisana realized that her fever had been steadily worsening with each step they took toward her. The sweat that had beaded on her forehead trickled down her face, stinging her eyes, when the figure suddenly stopped. They, like Byakuya before them, had noticed something was off, though they'd managed to get far nearer Hisana than had Byakuya. Something about this figure was in some way similar enough to its target to be recognized by the simplistic will of the kido, but still different enough to not fully set it off. But Hisana was thankful that they had stopped all the same.

Then Hisana was sure that her body had been about to detonate, for she suddenly felt a swell of heat from deep within her. It was only after the panic had subsided enough for her to count her continued breaths that she realized the familiarly magical heat had come, not from within her, but directly below her. Had she the ability to look down of her own accord, Hisana would've seen a glowing circle of spiritual energy radiating from her like a wheel on which she was the hub. She hadn't noticed it, but the cloaked figure had made some motions with their hands to enact this happening, perhaps even spoken some unheard words.

Hisana's right shoulder slumped suddenly as if the puppet string holding it up had been slashed. Her arm prickled painfully with the pins and needles feeling of one you've slept on regaining sensation after you wake, but the hot intensity of that feeling was pushed aside by the elation Hisana felt at even one piece of her finally hanging limply free. She took note, now, of what the figure continued to do, its hands tracing strange patterns in the air before them. As she watched the black-gloved hands move, she felt her left shoulder tighten painfully before it, too, slumped down just as the right one had. Hisana hadn't noticed until both shoulders were relaxed just how much tension the kido had forced them to be under.

"Hey, this is pretty easy," said the cloaked figure's voice cheerfully. It was a young man's voice. It was at that moment that Hisana noticed that the ringing in her ears had quieted—though not entirely subsided—enough to allow her to hear him. "I definitely thought the kido was gonna give me more trouble," he said. "Hold on..."

A second after he'd said this and played his hands across the air like a musician at an invisible piano, Hisana gasped deeply, then proceeded to gulp down many coughing breaths. The exhalations came out as sobs, both out of fear at her situation and of relief because her face was hers to control again.

"That's good, that's great," called the cloaked man, his positivity unshakable. "I think I can enter the circle now, so just hold on," he said. Hisana didn't like the sound of I think, but the man moved in before she could get breath enough to object. The heat in her flared up once more for one heart-stopping instant, then seemed to rapidly fall to a warm simmer deep in her core. It was uncomfortable, but no more so than the ache of a pulled muscle. Still, Hisana felt as though she'd come to a scant blink away from death just then.

She vomited, and hoped to whatever god had previously forsaken her that Byakuya Kuchiki had been spared the sight of her doing so by the cloaked man standing between them. To her surprise, all evidence of her shameful display was rapidly cleared away by the glowing circle so that she was left unsure if it had really happened at all.

"Excuse me," came the young man's voice, then Hisana felt strong hands tenderly touch her shoulders. "This is going to be the tricky part," he told her, "I'm going to release your legs, but I need you to keep yourself up once you're sitting so that I can undo the rest of the kido. Got that?"

Hisana nodded eagerly, the thought of being able to finally rest her legs filling her with ecstasy. The man repositioned his hands to hold her up under the arms so that when her legs suddenly gave out under her, he was able to lower her slowly onto the kido circle, leaving her sitting with her legs folded beneath her as if she sat on tatami. They pained her even more than her tingling arms, but it was a pain she was thankful for nonetheless.

"I guess I should introduce myself before I go tinkering around," said the man, in a tone that sounded to Hisana like he was making a joke, as he pulled back the hood of his cloak. He was as handsome a young man as Hisana had ever seen, though, of course, without the regal bearing that put Byakuya Kuchiki on a level of his own. He had short dark hair which stood up at the front and dark eyes with an aquiline intensity recognizable even through his cheerful, crooked smile. "Pleased to meet you, miss," he grinned, "I'm Isshin, First Officer of the Kido Corps. I'll be your doctor today."

Isshin stamped out his cigarette as he eyed the Deputy Shinigami badge suspiciously. He brought it close to his eyes, squinted at it, sniffed it, then held it up to his ear and shook it. None of this told him anything.

He sighed, holding the device, which he'd taken from his sleeping son's bedside table drawer, up to his mouth as if it were a walkie-talkie. "Alright," he said, "I know what this thing is and I know the kind of thing it's used for. That Kugo kid had one just like it. So, this is Isshin Kurosaki speaking, and I want to know who's spying on my son." There was a long silence in which Isshin considered that he may have misjudged the badge, then...

"...Shin-kun?" The voice crackled quietly out of it, but to Isshin, it was unmistakable.

"Shiro-jii," answered Isshin to Captain Jushiro Ukitake on the other end, not bothering to hide the smile in his voice. All of his righteous indignation evaporated instantly the moment he heard the voice of his family's old friend.

Isshin heard a crackle that was Ukitke's laughter. "Still calling me that, are you? You never had any respect for your elders," he said, and Isshin could hear that he, too, was smiling.

During Isshin's life growing up in Soul Society, his family, the Shiba, had been one of the Five Great Noble Houses, though, as he understood it, that had since changed. Jushiro Ukitake was not only a Captain in the Gotei Thirteen but also a member of a family of aristocrats, lower on the social ladder than the Shiba but respected enough to be invited, along with many other families of their peerage, to gatherings held during festivals and other such times. As such, Isshin had first met Ukitake when the man had been a guest in his father's house, and they'd gotten along right from the off. It helped that Ukitake was one to give fantastic presents whenever Isshin saw him.

Though his father, Kouichi Shiba, reprimanded Isshin constantly for his "undignified" way of speaking to his elders and betters, Ukitake never minded the nickname the boy had so affectionately given him, essentially labelling him as a surrogate uncle. The man was like a Santa Clause whose visits Isshin looked forward to throughout the year, but one that he could talk to on a level of mutual respect that his father didn't afford him. Such a magnanimous man was Captain Jushiro Ukitake, who never talked down to subordinates or those younger than him.

"Hey, Shiro-jii, what do you say we get a drink sometime and talk about how my kid's doing," suggested Isshin. Though memories of their past together left a smile lingering on his face, there was still a businesslike purpose behind his invitation. He still didn't like that Soul Society was keeping tabs on his son, even if Ukitake was part of it.

"Oh? So you're old enough to drink now," he heard Ukitake reply as if in disbelief.

Isshin said through a maniacal grimace, "I was old enough to drink when I left, Shiro-jii," sounding indignant once more. "I have a beard now and everything."

"Ah, so you got old, did you? I wonder what that makes me..."

Isshin's face softened and his smile returned. "Still the best of them, I bet," he said, meaning every word. "I still wanna be like you when I grow up."

Isshin's father, too, had been a high-ranking Shinigami, but had given up that position before Isshin had been born. It was something he hadn't known about the man until after he'd graduated early from Shin'o Academy and been placed in the Fourth Division under Captain Retsu Unohana. By then, he'd already had his eyes on captaincy one day, but the person who'd inspired that dream in him had been Ukitake, not his father, whom he hadn't even known to have ever been a Shinigami. Eventually, he'd achieved that dream, and Ukitake had given him a rib-cracking hug after his appointment ceremony. For his part, Kouichi had simply said "Good work" to his only son, as if achieving the rank of Captain had been something to be expected of him all along.

"You're going to make me blush," said Ukitake modestly. "You made a good life for yourself, so don't let an old ghost decide your future." Here Ukitake had sounded sombre. His tone made Isshin think about the suddenness with which he'd had to abandon his life in Soul Society.

"I asked Urahara to send you a message. He did, right?"

Silence.

"He did," replied Ukitake after a while, and Isshin was relieved to hear that his smile was back, though it sounded a bit sad. "I'm not going to let anything happen to Ichigo, Isshin. The Twelfth cleared this with the Commander before I knew about it. I was lucky enough to get to be the one to give it to him."

"I know that, Shiro-jii," Isshin assured him. "Anyway, I guess I'm keeping you up now. Old guys like you need their beauty sleep," he jabbed.

Ukitake's crackling laugh came through again. "I guess we do. Hopefully, I'll see you soon so we can have that drink. I have a nice sake I've been trying to find someone to help me drink."

"Sounds good," smiled Isshin. He was about to lower the badge when he suddenly pulled it even closer to his face. "Oh, and Shiro-jii," he called.

"Yes?"

"Thanks for taking care of Kaien," said Isshin. Now it was his turn to sound sombre.

"...I wish I had done better at that," said Ukitake after a pregnant pause.

"I know you did great," said Isshin. He'd had to shake his head at Ukitake's self-criticism even though the man couldn't see it. "We both knew you were the best," he said, referring to himself and his late cousin.

"Thank you, Shin-kun."

"See you around, Shiro-jii," said Isshin, ending the call. At that time, still quite a way from Aizen's eventual defeat, neither of them knew that they would, in fact, never get to share that drink.

The tension in the Thirteenth Division barracks was so thick that Rukia kept thinking she might just smack right into it while walking. The announcement that they would be getting a new Captain so soon after Ukitake's death was a shock to everyone, but perhaps to Rukia most of all. She guessed that she'd naturally assumed their Division would get by without a Captain for a while, in deference to the memory of their fallen leader and his long tenure beforehand. She was frankly stunned that Captain Kyoraku, as both the new Captain-Commander and Ukitake's oldest friend, had made such an announcement.

It sounded as though a lot of her fellow Division members had thought that she, Rukia, would be promoted to Captain in Ukitake's place, seeing as she had achieved her Bankai. The thought made Rukia feel sick to her stomach, however. At the same time, though, she didn't know how comfortable she was with the idea of a stranger taking her beloved Captain's place, or an old face that she wasn't expecting doing the same.

Still, Rukia lined up with the rest of her Division at the gates of the barracks, standing the customary three steps apart from their ranks in the centre, so that she would be the first to greet their new commander. Her chest felt tight and she couldn't stop clenching and relaxing her hands in nervous excitement. Then the gate opened, and she was momentarily blinded by the daylight streaming through the entryway. Blinking at the haori-clad figure as the doors shut behind them, Rukia's eyes finally focused on a figure that shocked her so severely that her knees nearly buckled.

Isshin Kurosaki, Ichigo's father, was standing before her, before all of them, recognizable to Rukia only after a moment, for he looked to be no older than twenty human years old. He wore a sleeveless version of the Captain's haori and locked eyes with Rukia seriously.

"Vice-Captain Rukia Kuchiki," he bellowed authoritatively, "we need to talk."