Chapter 21 Version 5

1994

Tanya woke to the sound of birds chirping and an otherwise silent room, no banging at her door, no screams of pain or suffering, just blessed silence which brought a smile to her face. Carefully she sat up from her bed and set about getting herself ready for the day, calmly pulling on her uniform with no hurry whatsoever before taking a seat in front of a mirror to fix her hair.

It had been 4 years since she joined Visha in her home and though she knew she should probably have gotten on to finding her own residence she was in no hurry at this point. Visha accepted a reasonable compensation for living in her home and let her pay for some of the groceries that they inevitably brought in. Tucking her shoulder-length blonde hair back with the green bow she had become accustomed to using she smiled into a mirror with satisfaction with her life.

It had been a full decade since her last conversation with Being X and he had not reappeared since, sure he had given her a tainted start by making her smell like lunch meat for the monsters of this world and placed her in the furthest region from anyone who could help her, but she'd survived, she had done more than survive, she'd thrived and that was the greatest victory of all.

Taking a moment to appreciate her surroundings, Tanya stood up from the makeup table that Visha had helped her pick out and walked out into the living room/kitchenette that made up the central room of the apartment.

A quick look around revealed that Visha was not there, which meant she'd either gone into the division for the day, which was unlikely since this was a weekend, or she was downstairs serving the large weekend customer influx.

Making an educated guess she grabbed her boots from the shoe rack next to the doorway leading downstairs and headed down from the apartment into the bakery/coffee House Visha owned.

Quietly scanning the area she quickly found her quarry despite the main area of the Cafe being full of soul reapers and local nobles enjoying their coffee as well, she spotted Visha working alongside a couple of the girls she had hired from some of the local minor nobility.

Waving at Visha, Tanya continued on towards the front door only sparing a moment to glance at Visha's rolled-up sleeves, the exposed flesh revealing that she too now bore a tattoo in remembrance of the 203rd. An unfortunate and annoying thing all the other members of the 203rd she came across had acquired, thoroughly enjoying the idea of remembering their old battalion within her opinion unprofessional and mediocre body art, additionally, the shared tradition now meant she would never be rid of the accursed ink on her shoulder as doing so would be detrimental to her social status now.

Releasing some of her pent-up frustration with a deep breath, she pushed through the door, stepping outside for a moment and paying a paperboy for a newspaper before stepping back into the little cafe and taking an empty seat near a window to read it.

This had become her daily ritual on the weekends, she would come downstairs, read the newspaper, see that there weren't really any major changes in the world, and drink a cup of coffee. She would then have a chat with Visha and then be off to network, getting some extra training in or practicing whatever hobby caught her fancy for the day.

As if simply thinking of the brew summoned it, Visha appeared lowering the steaming cup of morning delight down in front of her on the table, before taking a seat on the other side.

"Good morning Tanya." the brown-haired girl said, taking a seat across from her.

"Good morning Visha," Tanya responded, putting her paper down and picking up her cup of coffee to sip on it. "An excellent brew as always." She complimented before continuing. "Looks like business is good today, I assume you'll be busy most of the morning."

"I guess so, it's always amazing seeing this place so full," she said dreamily looking around before she continued "So what do you have planned for today?"

"Oh nothing much, I have a meeting with a lieutenant of the 9th division trying to have a few books from the world of living imported, and seeing as that division is in charge of cultural development, they're the people to speak to about it."

Tanya kept that this was part of a vague plan to try to introduce libertarian and free-market ideology to the Soul Society to herself. She did wish for a reform of the government sooner or later and this would be a slow path to do it, given enough time hopefully, some nobles and high-ranking members of society could be brought around to the call of freedom and the modern world.

Vishna nodded, accepting her excuse quite easily, "Are you still free for tonight's get-together? The 11th and 8th are going to be having several matches today, and afterward, there will be quite a party to attend."

"I would not miss going with you to that for the world," she said with a smile, technically she could actually miss it, getting drunk and having to walk home was not a fun time. The after-party however was another chance to network with the captain of the 8th which would serve her well in pushing her ideas of how to prevent large-scale troubles for the Soul Society in the future.

The more Captains she could get on team Reformation the better in her mind because there was always a chance that some of these captains could be thinking along similar lines but willing to go further, perhaps even full-on revolution. Which was something she would greatly dislike. Soul Society was the only civilization in the afterlife, if it was destroyed the hollows would have them all and anarchy would reign once more.

Granted, she doubted any Captain would betray the Soul Society and try to reform it under some new image that they conjured in their mind but it always pays dividends to plan for the unexpected.

Glancing at her watch she noted that it was almost time for her meeting so she stood up and finished her coffee.

"And I'm off," she remarked to Visha, moving for the door "see you tonight."

Visha nodded with a smile "See you tonight Tanya."

Tanya sat in a chair across from the desk in front of her, she had arrived a few minutes early so it was to be expected that the lieutenant of the 9th was not yet here. Being prompt did not look to be his forte either from the few times she had seen the punkish-looking officer. Not to mention the tattoos on his face which did not do much to improve her initial assessment of him and could be taken as rather vulgar in the wrong context. Tanya however considered herself a charitable soul and just assumed the stylised 69 was about 9th division for now.

She was about to pull out her newspaper from her bag when the door to the room slid open, in came the lieutenant of the 9th Shūhei Hisagi, black of hair grey-eyed and bearing a distinct set of scars on the left side of his face balancing out the tattoo on the right.

The man had modified his shihakushō to be sleeveless and pairing that with the choker and armband the man looked like he belonged in the 80s or 90s punk band more than an officer in a military.

Not for the first time she idly wondered if she perhaps was being too conservative with her uniform standard, it wasn't as if she didn't like the uniform she had but when she kept coming across examples of everyone else in high command customizing their uniforms to such great extents she started wondering if there was some important unwritten cultural norm she was missing.

"Good afternoon 7th seat Degurechaff," he said before taking up the comfortable-looking desk seat across from her in a surprisingly proper tone.

"Good afternoon lieutenant Hisagi" Tanya responded with a smile "thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"It's no problem," the lieutenant continued with a steady tone. "Not many people bother to fill out the requisition forms for books from the world of the living, so it's always interesting to see who and what they're interested in getting, plus it's a welcome distraction from editing the Seireitei Communication Monthly."

Tanya nodded having seen some of the work in that magazine over the years, though it was filled with interesting articles they all tended to blend in overtime in her opinion. Not to mention that the 9th division captain's ongoing treatise on Justice seemed to take up unnecessary amounts of the magazine and were rather tripe and boring, though being that it was his magazine to run it would make sense that he would use it as a bully pit for his opinions.

"Well, I hope I don't take up too much of your time with this little request," Tanya said, placing a piece of paper she had previously prepared in front of him. "This is a list of books and authors that I would be interested in retrieving copies of their work."

The lieutenant of the 9th looked over the list of books and free-market/libertarian thinkers before commenting, "I think we could get you some of this, though a lot of this material seems rather dry by the look of it. If you're hoping to get some of these reprinted for people to read I fear you're probably not going to have much luck there."

"No worries about that, I'm planning to put up a small bookshelf in Visha's Cafe and loan them out for people to read," Tanya said.

The 9th division officer nodded and sat back in his chair. "Well I can probably get some of these books brought in within the next week, I'll be heading to the world of the living to pick up a book on how to play the guitar so I'll just lump that in with that trip."

Tanya nodded and asked "Guitar? " not really caring but knowing that appearing to share an interest with someone could help her establish a useful connection for the future.

The 9th lieutenant reached down behind his desk and pulled up a beat-up old six-string. "Found this thing on my last trip to the world of the living, I've been trying to figure out how to play it for a while now. Do you happen to know anything about playing guitar?" he asked, his voice laced with curiosity.

"I'm afraid I don't, I've been told I have a lovely voice for singing but I've never looked too deep into the subject of music myself beyond choir practice in my previous life."

"Too bad, well if you ever find out anything you should have let me know, once I learn how to play this, I am thinking about trying to get a band together," he made an odd noise of interest before adding, "would you be interested in joining a band?"

Tanya was caught slightly off-guard by the question, she did not expect the conversation to go this way but she was great at rolling with the punches. "I've never thought about it but if it doesn't interfere with my work I guess I'd be interested at the very least." She decided on primarily just to be nice, learning an instrument from scratch surely would take the man a long time and by then he wasn't likely to remember this..

"Do it." came the echoing voice of Tasha from the back of her brain.

"Not now," Tanya whispered, glancing down at the blade at her side in annoyance before looking back up and seeing the lieutenant of the 9th looking at her "Talkative sword Spirit," she said to try and explain. "Always a pain in my neck when I am least interested in having one."

The lieutenant of the 9th nodded and commented, "I recognize the struggle, mine can be a bit of a hassle as well."

Tanya sighed, "At least I'm not the only one with a sword spirit that does things that they wish they wouldn't. My shikai paints a rather large target on my back in my opinion. When I'd rather just not be the center of attention for the hollows I fight."

"Liar," came her ever-annoying backseat driver's voice.

Ignoring the sword Spirit Tanya reevaluated the punkish-looking lieutenant in front of her. Though he may have the style of an undesirable, the man had proven surprisingly reliable and professional from what little she had seen, the kind of employee who had extensive hobbies but knew when their hobbies needed to be set aside for their job.

Looking down at the list of books the 9th lieutenant asked, "So what's your plan to do with these books when they're not on a bookshelf? I'd imagine if you're planning to try and redistribute some of these you're going to have a lot of trouble. They hardly seem like thrilling concepts."

Tanya nodded knowing that what she liked could be rather boring for the average person to look through, "Mostly I plan to just loan them out to anyone who's interested in the nobility or military command. I think there are concepts in them that can help the Soul Society greatly."

"You'd have wider reach if you tried to summarize the literature and columnize them into the magazine," Hisagi commented somewhat absent-mindedly as he placed the list in a filing cabinet, "though presented as if I would assume those concepts would be rather boring articles, perhaps if you framed them through a 'guide to accrue wealth' in an economic column?" Tanya laid back in her seat rubbing her chin thinking it over an idea forming in the back of her mind.

"What if they were presented as part of an ongoing storyline in an illustrated comic," She mentioned in thought, causing the 9th lieutenant to give her an odd look.

"Like a manga?" he asked before he said, "You'd need a pretty good storyline to be able to pull it off and the art would need to be alright."

If she presented stories from her life fictionalized to a point and used libertarian and free-market principles as punchlines it would certainly reach more people than just hoping passing nobles would read it on the shelf in the cafe.

At a bare minimum, she would make a little money off the project and if it met its goals it would help prepare the soul society for the inevitable reformation. Most of the outer districts were already on the long march to the free market but unless the central districts started accepting those ideas it would be for nothing, ultimately this would be a decent way to help prepare the seireitei for the coming changes.

All things considered, if the 9th Captain could get away with literal treaties on Justice she figured she could get away with a little promotion of the free market and libertarianism.

Tanya nodded, coming to a decision. "Could I schedule a meeting next month to present a possible item to add to the magazine? I think I have a good idea of something of value."

The 9th lieutenant nodded, "Sure, we're always looking for new material for the magazine so if you've got something I'll gladly take a look."

"Thank you, is there anything you need from me to get these books?"

"No, it should be a simple operation, just have the required amount of money ready to pay for them. The only thing I would like to know is what you want to be known by in the article."

"What do you mean?"

"Well do you want to be Tanya or do you want to be Tanya Degurechaff, just Degurechaff or do you want to be known by some other pseudonym."

Tanya thought about it for a moment before responding. "If I still had my nobility I'd go for Tanya von Degurechaff. Unfortunately, I think the nobles around here would be rather annoyed if I started using that name."

Hisagi gave her another one of his indescribable looks "I don't think so, 'von' isn't used by any Noble family and it has recently entered regular nomenclature within the world of the living, so I don't think anyone would care and von Degurechaff does bestow a certain gravitas to the name that might be function as a good pseudonym. If you want to use it, you can."

Giving it some more though Tanya decided it was her name and seeing as she worked long and hard to get it she felt justified in using it.

"Tanya von Degurechaff," she affirmed with a smile.

Later that evening Tanya met up with Visha at the 11th division headquarters. Looking in from the outside she could already see the party in full swing as members of the 8th division were intermingling with the 11th chatting about various duties that they had and other such behaviors expected at a social gathering.

Looking around Tanya chuckled as she mused to herself, "Well this at least proves that in all lives soldiers find a way to intermingle between branches." She lost herself in the memories of battalions mingling with the infantry after a good hard slugfest against the Russy.

She watched as one of the said soldiers drank himself off a chair and the other soul reapers laughing at his antics. "The men seem to be in good spirits, at least," Visha added as she walked further into the entrance hall.

"Well, they get to sit around all day training and going off to fight monsters for personal glory and profit. It would be an absolute shame for them to be in bad spirits under those situations." Tanya somewhat sarcastically bit out as her former subordinate led her into the main dining hall of the facility, where most of the higher-ranking officers in the two divisions were drinking together.

"You make it sound like it's your dream job," Visha commented with a slightly bemused tone.

"It's not, but I cannot deny it does make life more interesting." She said as they were handed a few drinks from passing soul reapers from the 8th, they appeared to be running drinks to the command staff at a rather frightening rate.

Watching the men go by, Tanya noted that Rangiku was there too, speaking to several members of the 8th division rather closely. She was off towards the left side of the hall and gave a wave and a thumbs up in their direction following the intended course of the thumbs up she noticed Visha returning it with a smile.

Wondering what those two were up to, Tanya contemplated asking but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort, she did however come to the odd realization that she wasn't really aware of what Visha did with her free time when they weren't together. taking a moment to reflect on their relationship, something else she'd noticed came to mind, and figuring there was no time like the present Tanya decided to voice the question.

"So Visha I've noticed that you don't seem to be using the analgesic formula anymore. Is there a particular reason for this?" She noticed this particular quirk in her colleague for a while now, however she did not really investigate too deeply since Visha was too busy doing paperwork to get into any fights, as the years went on however Visha had less and less paperwork to deal with and a small concern started to grow, she had never come up with a good way to approach the subject before but perhaps the best way was to just rip the bandaid off.

Visha upon registering what she'd said seemed to freeze for a second before she took a deep sip of her drink, "I don't like using mental magic anymore, I had some trouble with it during the year I was bandit hunting."

Trouble with it? Tanya pondered for a moment before she hit upon what the problem might be. "Ah I think I know what you're talking about, mental spells do change your perspective on the world in strange and unfortunate ways, the power running through your mind and body can be intoxicating."

She'd always compared the effects of mental spells to drugs though the worst effects came when she used the type 95, She could imagine that someone wandering through the wilderness using mental and physical enhancement spells to keep themselves going through even in the worst conditions would suffer some of the same side effects, perhaps not babbling about Being X as if he was a god but letting their more violent tendencies run rampant like what happened to herself on a few instances.

Visha seemed to be looking at her in shock before saying "You've never seemed out of control to me." Delivering another piece to the puzzle.

Nodding her agreement Tanya continued"I took more precautions than most, tried not to use the analgesic formula too greatly, and when I was forced to, I tried to make sure my allies were at a safe distance and out of harm's way. But that does not mean I was not susceptible to the external influence, my ramblings about God," she spat the word out with obvious venom, since saying being X would mean next to nothing to Visha. "For example, were just one of the many things that crept through when heavily using mental performance-enhancing magic."

"I thought you had full control and we're simply praying to God," Visha said, seeming more shocked at this revelation.

Shaking her head in denial she went on "No one has full control, believe me, I've attempted to have full control of my life from the day I was born and I was made to learn that there are simply things that are beyond my grasp no matter what I do,l I will still fight those things and try and gain my control back as is right and proper but control is a fickle thing. We as humans have free will but we choose when and where to give up that freedom to what extent and for when we fight for it."

"Did I ever tell you the true reason I joined the military?" The question was more rhetorical than anything, sure that she hadn't ever confided in anyone out loud besides saying she had no choice.

Visha shook her head, so Tanya continued "I was a poor orphan girl with absurdly high magical ability and realized that I would be drafted into the military and fed into the meat grinder with no training the moment a war started, so I volunteered hoping I could secure proper training and the rear-line position I would need to survive such a conflict, well you know how that last part ended up."

"This was also one of the reasons I looked out for you more than the other two when we first met. They were volunteers like me. They signed up for the conflict whereas you were drafted in and not ready. Although I will say compared to those two you had a more level head and could actually follow simple orders." Tanya commented praising Visha over the two volunteers whose names she couldn't actually remember anymore.

Shaking her head Tanya continued "Anyway I've gone off track I know you have problems with magic now but the thing to remember is that even if you lose control once that it does not mean it's impossible, it just means that you need more preparation and time to learn how to control it. Over time I came to learn how to control the type 95's magical power and influence over my mind, using it only for brief moments to do things that were absolutely necessary, it's like me with this alcohol" she said embellishing her tale by taking a sip "I need to build up my tolerance so I can maintain control or I will end up not remembering how this night ended."

Thinking about those brief spurts of mind control reminded Tanya of the one time she had perhaps lost the argument with being X. He never called her out for it, the time she'd use the Type 95 to save Wiess over the channel. She had wanted to save him and called upon the powers of the 95 to do it and to some extent, she wondered if she hadn't on some level meant those prayers that day.

Shaking her head out of the dark mood thinking of being X brought her she sipped more of her drink and looked over to Visha who was seemingly lost in thought evaluating her monologue before Visha finally reached over and hugged her. Used to Visha's clingy nature, Tanya only let out a brief sighs before reaching her arms around Visha and only somewhat awkwardly returning the hug.

That moment of emotion slowly passed. They were interrupted by a man wearing a wide hat with a pink flowery kimono over his shoulders.

"Victoriya, I haven't seen you in such a long time," the man said, taking a seat across from them and putting two large containers of sake down. Smiling with a wide easygoing grin all the while "and I see you brought a friend with you too, who is this young pure-hearted maiden escorting you tonight."

Tanya swore she heard half the room snickering as she noted that the man was wearing a captain's coat underneath the pink monstrosity. "7th seat Tanya Degurechaff" she said bowing her head respectfully. "I'm an old friend of Visha."

The man looked her over before nodding as something was appraised to his liking. "Ah you're that one she talks about when you get her drunk enough, her friend from the war, right? I have to say, if any of your recruiters and commanders ever show up I'm going to have some words with them about sending young beautiful maidens such as yourselves off to die. "

Tanya tilted her head wondering why he kept referring to them in such strange and poetic ways before she realized he was hitting on them both at the same time. The audacity of such an action was shocking and surprising; she wasn't sure what the correct word would be, was there even an HR department in the thirteen court guard squads? The irony certainly wasn't lost on her.

For now, though she just let those comments pass instead saying. "Yes, well war was a necessary evil. I would have preferred if both sides could have attained their interests through diplomacy but that is what happens when all the reasonable and logical adults leave the room."

The captain of the 8th laughed, "I like that! I'm going to steal it next time I need to talk my way out of a fight."

"I've tried talking my way out of a few fights a couple of times," Tanya said amused. "It never seems to work for me, I hope you have better luck."

The captain shook his head "From time to time but usually, it doesn't work sadly, hardly means I'll stop trying though."

Meeting another high-ranking pacifist was always a pleasure and brought a smile to her face "I can drink to that" before downing what was left in her cup, without even asking the 8th captain to pour some of his sake into her cup.

"So anyways it's good to finally meet the best friend of my drinking partner here," he said pointing his bottle at Visha, "Hmmm, the Seventh seat so I presume you're the fabled mini Kenpachi, Madarame told me about, the one who's good at applied kido in combat."

Tanya nodded in affirmation, wondering how much info had been delivered to the captains about her by the command staff of the 11th division.

"Got to say you have some neat techniques for improving an organization, you notice they're not good at paperwork you get them to actually do it for once, you noticed they refuse to practice kido you define your combat techniques by your kido skill in such a way that it would be more palatable to the 11th. I assume you're doing that on purpose right?"

Tanya stopped midship, taking credit for unintentional positive company-wide benefits was a long-standing corporate tradition, though she was not quite sure about how she should feel that the captains were noting her unintended positive influence, if anything she was just increasing the expectations they would have for her when she finally transferred out to any other division. Though at this point it was just another unfortunate weight on her shoulders she would just have to bear.

She might as well attempt to dampen the expectations a bit"To some extent, I knew what I was doing but for the most part it was luck, determination and a stubborn refusal to bow to more inefficient methods."

The captain of the 8th chuckled and said "If you have enough determination to make this division do its paperwork I'd hate to see what your determination can do on the battlefield."

Tanya smiled though it didn't quite reach her eyes"Hopefully we never will."

The captain of the 8th nodded and held up his drink "Too friendly fights and never having to face a real battlefield."

Tanya and Visha repeated the toast before sipping their drinks together.

Then without a care in the world, the captain of the 8th piped up"Well you two seem to be having a good night I'll be on my way through a word of advice, life is short don't screw around and just go straight for it." He said directly looking at Visha before getting up and walking away leaving Tanya slightly annoyed, it seemed that no matter the industry, vapid vaguely motivational 'advice' was something all higher-ups spouted. As Visha continued to drink, Tanya shrugged, downed her own, and settled in for a nice night.

Tanya's eyes slowly opened feeling rather dehydrated with an oncoming headache from the night's festivities before. Blinking her eyes several times as she tried to figure out what had happened last night before and noticed that she wasn't in her bedroom, the ceiling above her was a different shade of paint and looked more like the one in Visha's room.

Blinking a few more times and rubbing the leftover sleep out of her eyes she noticed that the room she was in was in fact Visha's room, confused she wondered if they'd accidentally switched rooms in the night being too drunk to realize what had happened till she felt a weight on her left shoulder.

Looking to her left she saw a familiar map of brown hair buried in the pillows of the bed. Turning to look back at the ceiling and feeling the now identified arm wrapped around her she let out a small whine at the throbbing headache she felt as she slowly started piecing together the fragmented and blurry memories of the night before...

Author note

I'm back boys and girls, sorry for wait life happened, on good news I have up chapter 25 written and to editors, along with two interludes, in interesting news, taken part in clone tanya thread on space battles, check out if you want to see the two things I added to it, and stay for a general fun time. threads/clone-senki-or-the-cloneya-wars-open-round-robin-star-wars-x-youjo-senki.977956/

In story news… huh that happen… good on Those two.

Please comment, review, and generally enjoy yourselves…

Edited By:

Lord Feunoyr

Starstruck

Emberwing

Tisaku

Reviews responce

uther10120111: huh should have done Halloween interlude...

Rairi Valelira: which one? there so many to choose from.

Oucs : more
ZobbleStone: thanks i'll need for next two inteludes down line

Mirrors Cracked And Broken: thank you

EricFreak: sorry to here that, hopefully it working now, as for next interlude thinking after chapter 22

Scarlet Anne: no worries i apaoglize for the nearly month lone wait, editor i wanted for this chapter was busy.

tsun: yep denile

Guest: well good news for you on that front