Captain Shiba Isshin frowned when he felt a sudden presence at the window. The reiatsu was unreadable, probably strong but suppressed to near invisibility. It had to be either one of the Stealth Squad, Soifon, or, "Are you planning on standing there all night?"
Gin hopped over the window sill and smiled pleasantly. "Good evening, Captain Isshin," he said in a perfectly friendly tone.
"Rangiku went home hours ago," Isshin informed the smiling lieutenant.
"Oh, I know," Gin said, still smiling. "She's taking a bath at the moment. I'm supposed to be reading Shiro a bedtime story, but I really think the whole point of teaching him to read was so he could read his own bedtime stories. Why else did I go through all that trouble?"
"Why are you here, Gin?" Isshin asked.
"Why?" Gin repeated, looking hurt. "You don't think I just came by to be friendly? Well, I suppose, if you must know, I came by to do you a favor."
Isshin's eyes narrowed. "What do you want for this favor?"
"Want?" Gin tilted his head to one side and did his best to look innocent. "Why would I want anything? I'm just here to help out my very good friend, Captain Isshin. If, because we're such good friends, he wants to support my bid for captain at New Years, I would, of course, be grateful, but I'm here to help regardless."
"What do you need my support for? Aizen's told me you could have passed the test years ago."
"It's just a much nicer way to make captain, isn't? With the support of more than half the captains, makes one feel welcome, don't you think?"
"And here I was thinking you wanted to keep your bankai secret."
Gin's smile grew enormous. "That too, but honestly, Captain, I am here for you."
"Yeah, let's hear it then," Isshin said. "How do you think you can help me?"
"While I was enjoying my favorite hobby of eavesdropping, just yesterday, I think it was, I happened to overhear a couple of boys from the Fujiya family discussing an issue they are planning to bring before the meeting of the Four Families-that would be the day after tomorrow, wouldn't it?
"Seems they've been in business with your brother Hiroki for a while now-he's the one in charge of sake production, isn't he? A bit over ambitious for that sort of job, if you ask me, but I don't suppose it's any of my business. Unfortunately, Hiroki-chan is a really bad judge of character, and he let these Fujiya boys talk him into a few risky investments that went south a couple months ago. Then, just to prove how stupid he really is, he let these two talk him into covering his debts using Kuchiki money he'd received to invest in expanding the sake business. One assumes he was too embarrassed to tell you how much of the family wealth he'd lost, but if they're allowed to reveal the whole scheme at the meeting, he's going to bring down the entire Shiba family with him. It's going to be a lot worse than embarrassing."
By the end of the speech a look of horror had overtaken Isshin's face. "Please tell me you're joking, Lieutenant," he said softly.
"I really would like to," Gin said. "But it seems the Fujiya are making a play for your place in the hierarchy. Normally I'd wish them luck; such a clever move deserves to be rewarded, but seeing as we're such good friends..."
Isshin stood up. "If what you've told me is true, and if you had no part in it, and you can be sure I will look into that, then-then you will have my support at New Years."
Gin grinned. "Brilliant!" he said. "Good luck fixing everything up with Kuchiki. I've gotta get home before Ran-chan gets out of the bath." And with that he vanished.
Rangiku and Toshiro were both surprised when Gin offered to take Toshiro to the Third Division for the day. He made the offer irresistible by promising to work with Toshiro on shunpo, which Toshiro had been desperate to learn for years. He was sure it would give him more independence, or at least mean his parents didn't have to keep picking him up every time they were in a hurry.
Rangiku didn't find herself entering the Tenth Division alone very often, and it made her feel a little bit lonely. That is until half the division mobbed her in the courtyard. Everyone was asking her where the captain had gone in the middle of the night and why he hadn't left better instructions than a quickly scrawled note that said all exercises should proceed uninterrupted.
"Then why are you all here?" Rangiku demanded, looking over a crowd that contained mostly seated officers.
Third Seat Nakajima held up an envelope and said, "The captain left it for you."
As Rangiku took the letter the questions started back up. Why had the captain left? Where was he? When was he coming back?
"You all are being ridiculous," Rangiku told them as she quickly scanned the letter. "He's gone home to deal with some family business, that's all. You'd think the world had ended," she said, pushing through the crowd. "He'll be back as soon as he can, so everybody just calm down and get to work."
She found herself feeling very grateful to Gin for taking Toshiro off her hands. He was a very well behaved child, but he was still a child and had a tendency to be underfoot when she was busy. And she was extremely busy. She could have sworn that Captain Isshin did almost none of the day-to-day business of running the division, but somehow, with him gone, she found herself running around nonstop, checking up on everything and answering questions. It was ridiculous. She vowed the moment the captain was back she was going to redo everything so the division could run smoothly without any input from her or the captain for at least a few days at a time.
She had no idea the day had even passed when Gin and Toshiro appeared at the office door, offering to join her for dinner. She sighed with relief when she saw them there. Her day was done. She didn't care that there were still tasks that needed doing, most noticeably the paperwork. It would keep for tomorrow.
"How did your training go?" she asked Toshiro as she picked him up and hugged him tight.
"Mom!" he protested, pushing her away and managing to twist out of her arms. He sighed when his feet were back on the ground. His mother was never going to get it. She'd keep picking him up until he was too heavy to carry and then she'd probably still be all huggy. "I think I understand how shunpo works now. It will probably take me a week or two to get it to work right."
"A week or two?" Rangiku repeated, looking to Gin for confirmation. He just smiled and shrugged. "It took me a year to learn shunpo, and I was already a shinigami! How can you learn it in a week or two?"
"I'm just good at that sort of thing," he answered. His father had recently taken down the limiter in the doorway of their home, allowing Toshiro to keep his reiatsu suppressed on his own, but also giving him access to a great deal more strength than he'd been working with so far. It felt to Toshiro like everything had suddenly become very easy.
He was also getting along a little better with his father. Not that he would go so far as to say he liked Gin or even trusted him-his mother was insane and everybody knew it-but at least now training wasn't complete torture. He felt like they shared at least one common goal, to make him stronger, strong enough that if danger ever threatened, he would be the one keeping his mother safe and not the other way around. It made them almost a team, and today, working on shunpo, could almost have been fun-if his father hadn't kept laughing every time he messed up.
For the next three days Toshiro went to the Fifth Division with his father, and Rangiku went to the Tenth alone. She was exhausted and sick to death of running everything by the time Isshin finally reappeared, and, she was so tired herself that she didn't even notice how stressed her captain looked.
"About time," she declared, when Isshin staggered in not long before noon on the fourth day. "What have you been up to all this time?"
"My little brother killed himself, Rangiku. He left a wife and half-grown son drowning in debt. I've had a lot to take care of. I'd rather not talk about it, if that's alright with you."
"I'm so sorry," Rangiku gasped as she watched her captain cross the room slowly to his desk.
Isshin sat down and stared at his desk for a moment, before raising his head to address his lieutenant once more. "You can tell your husband he has my support when he needs it," he said, and then he pulled a huge stack of paperwork over to get started on.
There was a lot of speculation days later when it was learned that a large swath of Shiba land and property had been transferred to Kuchiki holdings, but as the deal had been negotiated directly between the two heads of house, that was all that there was, speculation. The Fujiya family tried to stir up a bunch of strife with various unfounded accusations, but they'd always been ready to throw mud at the Shiba family at a moment's notice and their accusations went widely ignored.
The most popular theory was that the younger brother of the head of the Shiba family had gotten in deep with gambling debts and when he'd killed himself Isshin had sold off the land to the Kuchiki family to get the money to clear the debts. Everyone said he didn't want his nephew and sister-in-law to have to shoulder such an impossible burden.
Rangiku ran over all the major theories to Gin, watching his face to see if he might give her a clue, but he didn't. She considered it deeply unfair that he had clearly served some important purpose for her captain, and must know most if not all of what had happened, and he wouldn't share. Then he made her feel guilty about trying to guess by saying, "If Isshin wanted you to know he would tell you."
That was, in her opinion, a low blow, but she stopped asking Gin for details.
*No idea how the Shiba family actually fell, but I like the idea of Gin helping to save them, even if his motive isn't exactly altruistic *