Chapter 2: Hitsugaya reads many reports

The image of her sitting in the white snow for some reason became emblazoned in his memory.

Hitsugaya had had many a headache in his day but the one he had currently surprised even him. He'd once witnessed, quite innocuously, mind you, a Karakura High student, on a dare, shove his finger underneath a stapler and promptly staple his finger to the table. Hitsugaya thought he was like that student, except the staple was a thick, long, blunt nail and the finger was his skull.

Captain Unohana was beside his bed, smiling pleasantly. There was a notepad in her hand and she was carefully looking over whatever was written there.

"How do you feel Captain?"

"Fine."

"Any pain?"

"No."

"Do you feel any discomfort anywhere?"

"No."

"On a scale of one to ten, ten being what you would describe as normal for you, how would you rate your energy levels?"

"Seven."

"I see. May I?" She tucked the notepad under her elbow and reached for his hand. Hitsugaya allowed her to take it and she pressed a firm finger against his pulse. Smiling, she let go of him. "Well, it seems like your reiatsu levels are back to normal. You gave us quite a scare there for a moment."

Hitsugaya closed his eyes tiredly. "I apologise for any inconvenience."

Unohana's smile didn't change. "Well, you seem to be alright now. I'll let you leave at your convenience but I suggest a full day's rest before you attempt any strenuous use of your reiatsu. Your lieutenant is waiting for you outside and I believe she's brought you a change of clothes."

She made her way over to the door before looking back. "Also, Yamamoto has asked for you, Lieutenant Matsumoto and Captain Ukitake to submit your reports about the incident as soon as possible." And then she left.

Captain Hitsugaya, about to close his eyes and will away his headache, paused.

What did Captain Ukitake have to do with any of this?

Matsumoto was sitting patiently outside when he came out of his room, looking thoroughly exhausted. It had been about three days since they'd set out for the outer Rukongai district and she didn't look like she had rested at all.

Despite this, she still managed to smile and greet him with a cheery 'Captain'.

He sighed. "Let's head back to the office first."

Outside the building, the atmosphere was colder than he was expecting. The courtyard was quite wet, as though it had rained, and the building next to the one he had just exited appeared to be under significant construction.

Back at the Tenth Division offices he and Matsumoto got a grasp on the situation. The whole story goes like this:

Hitsugaya and Matsumoto had entered the Rukongai district without much fuss. They were on a regular, routine patrol and although there hadn't been much hollow activity in the area since Aizen's defeat, there was the occasional more powerful than average hollow every now and then, which was, statistically speaking, expected and normal. Hitsugaya and Matsumoto happened to run into a handful of these.

The duo had split up the work; Matsumoto had gone after the largest of the hollows and Hitsugaya had gone after the two smaller, but faster and more agile hollows. He'd dealt with the first one with relative ease, not even having to release his zanpakuto. The second one, however, proved to be more difficult.

The hollow's name was Screecher. It was tall and slender, with arms and legs and a torso disproportionately long for the width of its body. It had a short sharp beak and when it opened its mouth to scream, which it did often, Hitsugaya could see that there were rows upon rows of razor-like teeth inside.

Screecher was the fastest among the three and even when it was running away it would swing its long arms behind it, sharp claws slicing through whatever it happened to catch.

Hitsugaya pursued it for a short while, steadily closing the distance between them. Up ahead of them was the first trees of a vast forest. Hitsugaya, a little lazy by nature, thought it would be best to finish Screecher out here in the open than among the dense trees. So he tightened his grip on the hilt of his zanpakuto and prepared to release his shikai, reaching for Hyorinmaru only to find him…not there.

He faltered, reaching deeper and deeper until he felt that familiar chill wash over him and he found himself unexpectedly pulled into his inner world.

"It was super weird, Captain," Matsumoto told him, who, seeing that he was fine as can be, had relaxed back into her carefree self. "You were going so fast, catching up to that hollow when all of a sudden, you just stopped, like you hit a wall at full speed and then kinda just fell back. It was a little funny."

Of course, it hadn't been funny at the time. Some kind of panic had propelled Matsumoto to cross the not insignificant difference between them and catch him before his head hit the ground. She'd taken him all the way back to the Fourth Division herself.

With more humour than she had felt at the time, Matsumoto began to relate to him what occurred after they'd gotten to the Fourth. The reiatsu leaking began about when they got to the Fourth Division, but in the beginning, it wasn't that bad. Unohana had managed to check him in, do all of the basic procedures and give a good attempt at trying to wake him up before his reiatsu reached a level where even she couldn't approach him. And it seemed that the worse it got, the faster it got worse. By the time Unohana had figured out what was wrong with him, they'd started evacuating the building. Of course, this in itself was an endeavour made all the more complicated by the fact that it wasn't good for word to spread among people, but especially among the Shinigami themselves, that there was something seriously wrong with a Gotei Thirteen captain, so they'd had to do this as quietly as possible.

"You did quite a lot of damage to the Fourth's main building," Matsumoto mused. "You must have seen it when we were leaving."

Hitsugaya winced, leaning back in his chair. He could, of course, put two and two together.

"You'll probably have to send Captain Unohana a fruit basket," Matsumoto suggested. "But if you really want to know the extent of the damage you caused you'll have to ask Lieutenant Hinamori, or, better yet, Kuchiki-san."

Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow. "What do those two have to do with anything?"

So Matsumoto continued the tale:

At first, Hinamori had been called to keep the ice from spreading to other buildings; it was already out the door at this point and she did manage to hold it off until Kurotsuchi had arrived. It was better to nip the problem in the bud, he'd said, and offered them the reiatsu suppressant. Hinamori, who had been training at the time she had been called (more on that later) happened to have some special equipment rope on her. With these things in hand, they'd tried their first attempt to reach him. Hinamori got about as far as the receptionist's desk before they had to pull her out. By then Yamamoto himself was on the scene and he managed to control the spread of the ice long enough for them to come up with another plan. Surprisingly, it was suggested by Kurotsuchi.

You see, the only other ice-wielding Shinigami was Kuchiki Rukia, whose reiatsu, Kurotsuchi happened to know, was quite compatible with Hitsugaya's. At the very least, she had the best chance of making it to him alive without having to burn the building down.

Hitsugaya frowned here but gestured for Matsumoto to continue.

Anyway, Kuchiki had been sent for and successfully fetched and Ukitake had accompanied her. They'd geared her up in their state-of-the-art equipment—Matsumoto made a joke about having her sign a waiver—and she'd gone in to find him.

Here Matsumoto stopped because she didn't know what happened next and she looked at her captain expectantly.

Captain Hitsugaya didn't know either, given that he was unconscious at the time.

"Well," Matsumoto continued. "It was only the two of you in that building so I guess only Kuchiki-san knows. It took a little while but eventually, your reiatsu receded and the ice melted—all at once actually, it was a little shocking. I guess Little Kuchiki managed to put that sticker on your head just fine."

Here her eyes rose to his face, settling over his brow, and she snickered. Self-consciously, Hitsugaya rubbed at the spot. There was no longer any sticker there but the area sure was sore.

Matsumoto spared him, looking away. "Only the Captains and Isane were allowed to enter. They moved you over to the other building and I followed you. As for Kuchiki-san…I don't really know, but Captain Unohana treated her for a while and then I heard she was taken back to the Kuchiki compound. Renji dropped by earlier and said she's doing fine."

Matsumoto looked over at him, thoughtful. "You probably need to give Kuchiki-san a fruit basket too, Captain."

Hitsugaya's headache, which had been easing somewhat, seemed to be coming back.

"Also, Hinamori came to check up on you," Matsumoto told him. "But she's on a tight training schedule and couldn't stay for long." Matsumoto shifted in her seat. In a more serious voice, she asked, "But what actually happened to you, Captain?"

Hitsugaya sighed but took his time and explained it to her.

The way reporting worked in the Gotei Thirteen was like this:

The very lowest level of reports generated by each division every day typically consisted of rosters, deliveries, payroll, mail, patrol schedules and so on. These things had no bearing outside of whichever division it came from and were kept for record-keeping more than anything else and could usually be handled by a higher-ranked seated officer.

Any other kind of report, encountering hollows, trips to the Human World, recruitment applications and such, were dealt with by the division's captain or vice-captain. In some divisions, most of this work was taken on by the vice-captain, like in the Eight Division, and in others, it was taken on by the captain, like in the Tenth Division. Most divisions though managed to split the work equally.

Only Captains were allowed to submit reports to the First Division. This was for two reasons. One, it greatly reduced the number of reports that came into the First Division. Two, whatever reports did make it in had been curated by the highest authority available. There were some types of reports that were always required to be submitted—for instance, the First Division, along with the Twelfth, monitored every Shinigami outside of Soul Society, regardless of which division they came from. But for the most part, it was up to the captains' discretion what reports were filed with the First Division every week. All subordinates submitted their own reports to their captain, who would then compile and summarise the events as succinctly as possible before sending it higher. This was why Hitsugaya was always doing paperwork. He could not rely on his Lieutenant to do her share, he happened to have a large number of his officers out in the field at all times, and he was something of a perfectionist.

Unfortunately for him, his little incident had involved five separate divisions, not counting the First, and, as he was the person most involved, it fell on him to correlate all the reports and submit them to Lieutenant Sasakibe.

Fortunately, Unohana had been kind enough to give him the medical portion of the paperwork on his way out. Having sent Matsumoto off to rest, he promptly assigned one of his seated officers to collect Kurotsuchi's as he would much rather not deal with that captain himself, and he collected Hinamori's personally before making his way to the Thirteenth Division.

He'd managed to get a good grasp of everyone's version of events, filling in quite neatly what had transpired while he'd been unconscious. The only missing piece, of course, was what had happened when Kuchiki Rukia had gone in to find him.

All things considered, it wasn't a very important piece of the story. But Hitsugaya had a weirdly persistent feeling that there was more to it than there appeared to be and he himself wanted to know the full details of everything before he let anyone else.

He'd looked through the medical report, of course (there was no sensitive information on her medical report so Rukia had given Unohana permission to pass it on to Captain Hitsugaya directly to save some trouble). Unohana had treated Kuchiki for frostbite, dehydration, exhaustion and pneumonia. Extensive, but ultimately very easily treatable and far from life-threatening, especially for an ice-wielder.

Unfortunately, it didn't tell Hitsugaya anything more than that Kuchiki had braved his reiatsu to put the suppressor on him, which he already knew.

Also unfortunately, it turned out Kuchiki was still at home resting and had yet to submit her report to her captain. Ukitake, however, was also curious about what had transpired, more so what exactly had happened to Hitsugaya, and he invited his fellow captain to have some tea and tell him about it.

"So, it's a growth spurt? A teenage rebellion?"

Hitsugaya winced, unwilling to accept this description.

The way Hyorinmaru had explained it was like this:

Hitsugaya had yet to unlock the full potential of his spiritual power: this was well-known. However, slowly but surely, and especially after all of the work he'd done during Aizen's betrayal, he was getting closer to crossing the barriers that were currently in the way. It wouldn't happen all at once, and it would be a challenge to cross each time, but Hyorinmaru had told him that they were at a barrier right now, a fairly significant one at that, and that it would be a contest between this newfound power and Hitsugaya's ability to attain and control this power and neither of them had much say in it. This power had decided Hitsugaya was ready so Hyorinmaru had advised him that he had better be.

The whole thing was making the already reticent Hyorinmaru even more taciturn and he had retreated somewhere into Hitsugaya's soul that he couldn't easily reach him.

"By the time I realized something was wrong, it was already too late," Hitsugaya sighed. The week prior he hadn't used Hyorinmaru at all, not even to train. He had been properly swamped with work, overseeing a new batch of recruits and subsequent transfers, and had just been so distracted that he hadn't noticed the difference between Hyorinmaru's normally subtle but consistent presence within him, and how he'd been the past few days. Usually, it felt like the dragon was there with him all the time but sleeping, not paying too much attention to what was going on around him until Hitsugaya called for him. The last few days it had been more like the dragon was wide awake but ignoring him. And he hadn't realized something was wrong until he tried to call for him while chasing after Screecher and got no response. And of course, Screecher had escaped.

"In the end, I still failed," Hitsugaya admitted.

He had thought that he and the version of himself he'd found waiting for him on the ice that day were evenly matched. But in the end, he'd still been defeated.

Ukitake was thoughtfully dipping a tea bag into his teacup and Hitsugaya found himself focusing on it. Ukitake noticed and belatedly said, "Oh, this is a teabag from the Human World. Rukia brought over a box for me recently. They're quite convenient. They're a little too special to part with usually, but I'll give you a few, Shiro-chan, since you've been having a hard time lately."

Hitsugaya wanted to, somewhat exasperatedly, tell him that, having been stationed in the Human World for an extended amount of time and being fond of tea himself, he knew what a tea bag was, but refrained and silently accepted.

"Do you think you'll experience something similar again?" Ukitake asked him.

"I think it's probably likely," he answered. "But now that I know what's going on, I can at least prepare myself for it."

"You should request some time-off from Head Captain Yamamoto," Ukitake suggested. "Or at the very least that he does not assign you anything right now. You could consider it something like your bankai training."

Hitsugaya nodded absently. A portion of his attention had snapped to the small teabags he held in his hand because, for the first time since Hyorinmaru had appeared beside him in that icy valley, the dragon stirred within him when he realized that the tea's flavour was cherry blossom.

Hitsugaya made an appointment to see Kuchiki Rukia the next day.

"I'll collect her report myself," he'd told Ukitake. "I may want to speak to her about it."

However, when he returned the next day the report was there but Kuchiki Rukia was not.

"Rukia told me to tell you she's sincerely sorry," Ukitake had said to him regretfully. "But she'd previously put in a request to have her patrol in the Human World start today and she couldn't stay to see you."

Kuchiki Rukia's calligraphy was quite admirable, Hitsugaya thought, as he read through her report. It was very neat, evenly spaced, neither too big nor too small. Her report described her short but strenuous journey through the Fourth Division building to get to him. She gave a very detailed account of what she had seen, which Hitsugaya had to admit sounded just as terrible as everyone else had guessed it would be. She wrote about the wall of ice that she'd had to break through and the resistance she'd met when she approached him. Very honestly, she wrote about smacking him on the head to get the suppressor on, for which she profusely apologised—Hitsugaya couldn't help touching the spot and frowning—and then fainting. Her report ended here, and Hitsugaya supposed it was about right; Unohana's own report picked up pretty much where hers left off.

Still, Hitsugaya felt dissatisfied. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more here and as he was usually right about such things, he decided to do something he had never done before: he delayed submitting his report, at least until after he could speak to Kuchiki.

He had to wait until she returned from the Human World of course, but he didn't intend to wait longer than that. So a few days later, when the Senkaimon opened up and Rukia Kuchiki took her first step back into Soul Society. Captain Histugaya was there waiting for her.

The funny thing was, Rukia noticed him immediately. An interesting side effect of falling into his soul, she was quickly realizing, was that she had become interestingly fine-tuned to his reiatsu. She'd walked into her captain's office the other day and had instantly focused in on it, even though Hitsugaya had already left many hours prior. This was, of course, still only when he wasn't trying to hide it and Rukia didn't know if she'd still be able to detect it if he did. She was rather hoping not.

The even funnier thing was that Hitsugaya didn't immediately approach her. She could tell on which nearby rooftop he was and knew he could see her clearly but he didn't do anything as she lingered with the Senkaimon closing behind her.

Truthfully, though she knew she had to, she didn't actually want to talk to him, so Rukia decided to take her chances and prepared to shunpo away.

"Kuchiki."

She almost tripped over her own feet but caught herself in time.

"Captain Hitsugaya," she replied automatically. He had descended from the roof and was now standing a fair distance away from her. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I'd like you to tell me what happened that day I was in the Fourth Division."

Rukia bit the inside of her cheek. "I've already submitted my report to Captain Ukitake. Perhaps it would be simpler if you just collected it from him—?"

"I've already read your report, Kuchiki, I'm asking you to relay your version of events in person."

"Why?"

Now, it should be mentioned, and here's as good a place as any, that Kuchiki Rukia and Captain Hitsugaya were not strangers. But just barely.

Besides knowing about the other, in the vaguest of ways you would expect through having only ever heard of a person but never meeting them, Rukia and Hitsugaya had been both assigned to that small makeshift team that had been sent to Karakura Town in the months following Aizen's betrayal. As the highest-ranked Shinigami, Hitsugaya had been, technically, in charge. However, everyone had their own orders from their captains, and Rukia, in particular, had been given her own assignments related to Ichigo and his friends. Hitsugaya hadn't spent much time telling her what to do, or interacting with her much.

Rukia's Why? had been said in the tone of voice of someone who was perhaps a bit more familiar with him than Hitsugaya thought they were.

Nevertheless, he just waved his hand vaguely. "There seems to be something missing from your report."

To his surprise, the Shinigami in front of him started. "Something wrong, Kuchiki?"

She seemed to hesitate before taking a deep breath. "Captain Hitsugaya, would you mind coming closer?"

He raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

She didn't answer him and eventually, He just walked towards her. When he was close enough, she casually lifted a hand and pressed a finger to his forehead. There was a sharp spike in his reiatsu—this was more out of surprise and displeasure than anything—but nothing else happened.

"Kuchiki, what do you think you're doing?" Hitsugaya asked calmly. He was looking at her very sharply but she seemed not to notice.

Frowning, she slowly took her hand away. "Just checking," she said vaguely. She flicked her hand as she brought it back to her side, like she was getting something off of it, and he tried not to be too bothered by that.

"Has your zanpakuto, uh…told you anything?" she asked him delicately. Hitsugaya blinked at her. Somewhere inside of him, Hyorinmaru stirred moodily.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I guess not," she said, looking particularly put out. Hitsugaya was beginning to regret approaching this girl at all.

Tiredly, he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Listen, Kuchiki, I'd like to get this over with as soon as possible. Let's have this conversation in my office."

Kuchiki pursed her lips but nodded.

At his office, Hitsugaya took his seat behind his desk and gestured for her to sit. She did but looked at him uneasily. For a moment, they just stared at each other, properly looking at each other for the first time.

Captain Hitsugaya looked very tired, Rukia realized. His face looked a little thin and the skin under his eyes was almost translucent. He still didn't look as bad as the last time she saw him, which was when he was covered in blood and his own tattered robes.

To Hitsugaya, Kuchiki looked like she always did. She was sitting very respectfully before him, hands folded neatly in her lap. The dark cloth of the Gotei Thirteen uniform pooled around her like a small black puddle on his floor. She was looking at him with her head slightly tilted, like she couldn't make sense of him. At the corner of her mouth, he noticed a little unwillingly, was a small speck of something bright pink. Frosting, perhaps? She sure enjoyed her time in the Human World.

Rukia cleared her throat. "Sir?"

"Tell me about what happened after Lieutenant Isane called you."

So she did. It was pretty much an identical account to what she'd written in her report. When she got to the part where she'd had to hit him on the head, she flushed bright pink and gave a hasty apology, which he magnanimously waved away.

She got to the end and fell silent. She seemed thoughtful.

Hitsugaya sighed. "It seems like you still haven't told me everything, Kuchiki."

Surprisingly, she nodded, very serious. "I haven't. I'm just not sure how I should tell you. I was rather hoping your zanpakuto already had."

Hitsugaya didn't have a good grasp of what was going on here and couldn't imagine what Kuchiki and his zanpakuto spirit had to do with each other. And Kuchiki couldn't know that actually, no, his zanpakuto hadn't spoken to him in a while. But ever since he had watched her step out of the Senkaimon, Hyorinmaru had perked up in interest, a quiet but steady hum in the back of his head.

Curious, Hitsugaya gave the dragon a little mental nudge and, surprisingly, he responded.

Listen to her.

"Just tell me, Kuchiki."

She seemed to take a deep breath to steady herself and then launched into a story Hitsugaya couldn't quite believe. Of course, despite knowing that this would be a strange story for someone to completely fabricate and that Kuchiki should have no reason to do so, he was still inclined to not believe her. Except, her descriptions of his inner world and the fight that had taken place couldn't be guessed. The most remarkable thing, however, was what Hyorinmaru was showing him: as Kuchiki spoke, Hitsugaya could see it in the back of his mind, through Hyorinmaru's eyes.

The image of her sitting in the white snow for some reason became emblazoned in his memory.

He'd had no idea she was there.

My doing, Hyorinmaru told him. You did not need the distraction. And with that, the dragon disappeared again.

Hitsugaya focused on the Shinigami in front of him. She maintained some external calm, which he admired, but the look in her eyes was wary and the fingers in her lap were curled tightly around each other.

Hitsugaya himself was a little shaken up. To say nothing about how intrusive it was to have someone come into your very soul (this he quickly brushed off so that he could deal with it later), he had never heard of something like this happening before, and didn't even think it as possible.

"You didn't put any of that in your report," he said flatly.

She blinked. "Would you have wanted me to?"

Hitsugaya leaned back in his chair and massaged his temple. Before him, Kuchiki shifted uncomfortably.

"I had no intention of keeping it from you, Captain Hitsugaya," she said. "But as I have mentioned before, I thought your zanpakuto would tell you himself. As for the report, I figured it was best if I spoke to you first. Otherwise, Captain Ukitake, Head Captain Yamamoto and probably Captain Kurotsuchi would have all known before you did."

"This will have to be reported, regardless," Hitsugaya said, though he was particularly not looking forward to it himself.

Kuchiki hummed in agreement and gave him a thoughtful look. "You are taking this much better than I had anticipated."

Hitsugaya raised an eyebrow at her. "And what did you anticipate?"

She opened her mouth to answer him—she clearly had a response to this, but then seemed to think better of it and just shrugged. Hitsugaya was curious enough to press her, but figured they had other things they needed to work out that were more important.

"I expect an updated report by tomorrow, Kuchiki. I will arrange to meet with Head Captain Yamamoto. You will likely have to be present as well." Hitsugaya gave her an exasperated look. "Honestly, Kuchiki, you could have saved me some trouble by just being there when I had asked. Was your trip to the Human World that important?"

He watched the corners of her mouth flatten into a thin line, but really, it just ended up looking like a pout.

"My apologies, Captain, but this was also something I needed to wrap my head around."

Hitsugaya sighed. He seemed to have done that a lot since talking to her. "Very well. You can go. Look out for my message."

She got to her feet in one impressively fluid motion, bowed and left like she couldn't get out fast enough.

To say Hitsugaya was disturbed would have been an understatement. But, he had always been a practical thinker and his outbursts of excessive emotions were usually reserved for brief frustration and irritation and usually directed at his lieutenant's disregard of his clearly stated orders and expectations.

And he knew in his heart that Hyorinmaru would protect him; if the dragon had not been alarmed, then there was probably good reason. What this good reason was, Hitsugaya might not know for a while, as trying to get answers from his zanpakuto spirit right now seemed impossible.

Hitsugaya tried not to be too suspicious of the fact that Hyorinmaru had hidden Kuchiki's presence from him while she'd been in his inner world, to say nothing of how he was able to do that in the first place. Hitsugaya was ready to just accept these things as they were—for now. He had other things to think about.

Like how Kuchiki had even gotten into his inner world and what magic was at work there. Kuchiki's account made it clear that the girl had no idea what was going on herself and was as much a victim of circumstance as he was. He believed her on this, though he couldn't help but wonder if she had her own ideas of the matter and was not willing to share them with him.

He would have to wait and see.