Yuki had woken Rangiku at five-thirty in the morning for breakfast so perhaps it wasn't surprising Rangiku slept through the alarms that went off that morning, and she missed the panic and chaos the murder of a captain inevitably caused. She and Yuki were enjoying a perfectly lovely long morning nap when she was awoken by Kinta's howls from the next room.
"I can't go right now! I'm busy! I'm building a moat! Nii-chan!" Kinta piercing voice startled Yuki, who immediately joined in with wails of her own.
"Oh, God," Rangiku groaned, sitting up slowly and picking up the crying infant.
She heard the water come on, along with further protests from Kinta, and then a voice outside her door. Surprisingly, it sounded like Nanao.
"Rangiku, are you awake?" she called out.
"Come on in," Rangiku said, as she settled Yuki down to nurse.
"Were you asleep?" Nanao asked in surprise.
Rangiku raised her head. She was still in her sleeping kimono, sitting on her futon, with her hair unbrushed and probably in an huge rats nest. How Nanao could even ask was beyond her. "I was up for a little around five or six," she offered, not wanting to sound like a complete slug.
Nanao's eyes shifted from Rangiku to the other futon, turned down but obviously unslept in. "Gin go missing again?"
Rangiku frowned. She supposed that was a nice way to put it. Gin's tendency not to come home, sometimes for days on end, was well known throughout the Gotei. It was so typical of him and their life together that Rangiku had ceased to even be embarrassed by it. "Maybe he was hunting Ryoka," she suggested.
"All night?" Nanao asked, and there was something in her tone that almost made Rangiku a little nervous.
"I haven't seen him since yesterday if that's what you're asking," Rangiku answered.
Kinta pushed past Nanao into the room. He was soaking wet and stark naked and there was still a little mud clinging to his dripping golden curls.
"Ah," Rangiku said. "Did the moat finally reach the koi pond?"
"I just made it, but Nii-chan made me come home! And take a bath! And now he wants me to pack a bag to go to Aunt Nanao's house, but I don't want to play with Ai-chan! I want to finish my moat. Why didn't Aunt Nanao bring Ai-chan here? She could help with the moat!"
"Ai-chan is playing with her jii-chan today. Doesn't that sound like fun?" Nanao said.
Toshiro yanked open the other sliding door into the room. He was also sopping wet, though fully dressed, and he looked more than a little ticked. The captain of the Tenth Division marched into the room, grabbed his little brother, and dragged him out of the room. His, "Clothes, now," sounded more like an order being issued to a subordinate than an older brother to his little brother.
Rangiku looked up at Nanao in confusion. "You're taking Kin-chan to play with Ai-chan?"
"Something happened this morning, Rangiku," Nanao said, looking sad and worried. "Captain Aizen was killed. Lieutenant Hinamori accused Gin; I don't know why; he likely said something as tasteless as usual, but she took it as a sign of guilt and tried to attack him. Kira tried to stop her, but they ended up fighting and Toshiro had to stop them, and they're both locked up for now.
"They say it was likely one of the Ryoka who murdered Aizen, but we can't know until they are captured. Toshiro and I would like you to come to the Eighth so the Captain and I can keep an eye on you. The barriers the Captain had built into my home make it safer than almost anywhere else in Seireitei. If nothing else, please come for Toshiro's sake. He wants to protect you, but he has a job to do. He needs to be able to focus."
Rangiku looked down at Yuki; her beautiful daughter with her father's perfect pale skin and snowy hair. Until yesterday he had managed to come home every day of her life, if not at night at least for lunch. She'd started to feel that maybe, somehow, he really wanted to be with the family. Even with all the worries she'd had it had been so nice, but now-could he have killed Aizen? His own captain? "What about Gin?" she asked finally.
"The entire Gotei is on high alert. I'm sure he's very busy too. And he wouldn't want you to be here on your own after what happened. Not when you won't have even Kira here if something happens."
Rangiku nodded. "You're right, of course," she agreed. "And Shiro-chan can tell him where we are."
"I'm going to pack you an overnight bag just in case," Nanao said.
Rangiku nodded again. They obviously both suspected Gin. They were wrong. She was sure of that. There were very few people Gin respected, but Captain Aizen, he was probably the one who mattered to Gin most. He was practically like a father to him. Whatever they thought had happened they were wrong. Gin would never have murdered Aizen.
Gin was not surprised to see them; Kaien was leading Ichigo to the Fourth with the little healer and that talking black cat trailing a ways behind them. Aizen had predicted they would try, and he had almost never been wrong. It was the obvious move, bringing one of the Ryoka to see Aizen's body. Kaien had plenty of reason to suspect the reality of anything connected to Aizen. The Ryoka could confirm it one way or another.
All Gin could really think was that they probably needed a better screening process for lieutenants because this would be the fourth locked up in twenty-four hours, if, of course, he survived their little confrontation.
Gin hopped down onto the road half a dozen yards ahead of the lieutenant of the Thirteenth and the Ryoka also known as Kurosaki Ichigo. They had at least hidden the boy's zanpakuto in a large pack not unlike the one Toshiro used to lug around. Everyone in the Gotei was looking for an orange-haired Ryoka dressed like a shinigami and carrying an enormous zanpakuto. Even with Kaien, he probably couldn't have made it to the Fourth without being stopped.
"Fraternizing with the enemy, Shiba-kun?" Gin said smiling pleasantly as he stepped forward. "Well, he is your kin so maybe they'll go easy on you. Life in prison instead of the Sokyoku with Rukia-chan."
For a moment Kaien stared at Gin in complete shock. Then there was confusion. Kaien glanced back at Ichigo, and Gin knew he was wondering how the human could possibly be related to him-proof Urahara hadn't told his Soul Society allies everything-and then he looked back at Gin.
He would probably have spoken then but the boy beat him to it. "You're Captain Ichimaru, aren't you? I remember you. You were going to kill Jidanbo for opening the gate," he said, and his hand went to his back.
"Maybe," Gin answered. He really hadn't made up his mind about that. He'd said Jidanbo should die, but that didn't really mean anything. He wasn't the sort of man you should ever take at his word.
Ichigo shrugged the bag off his shoulder, and his zanpakuto was in his hand. He brought it over his shoulder and gripped it in his two hands in obvious challenge. He looked completely fearless as he stared at Gin in defiance. "You owe me a fight."
Gin's smile faded and he scratched his head in seeming thoughtfulness. He'd like to give the boy credit for an unusual amount of courage, but he thought it was probably more likely he just didn't know how stupid he was being. "Has anyone explained to you how things work here?" he asked. "Challenging a captain isn't ever a good idea. Maybe beating up poor Abarai-kun yesterday made you a little too confident. You are improving quickly, better than you were at the gate already, but you're still a long way from captain level.
"Shiba-kun, tell him; running really is his only option here."
Kaien stepped forward, drawing his own zanpakuto from its sheath, and his expression was much more reasonable than Ichigo's. He looked just as determined, but a hell of a lot less confident. He knew drawing his zanpakuto on Gin would probably be fatal. "Get out of here, Ichigo. He's right. You can't beat him."
Gin's smile grew enormous. "But maybe you can, Shiba-kun?" he asked, and he pulled Shinso from its sheath. "Now this could be fun. That is-did you ever get that bankai worked out?"
"I'm not going to run away," Ichigo said.
"You're here for Rukia," Kaien answered, without taking his eyes off Gin. "You can't risk failing her because you're trying to help me. You've got to get out of here before anyone else comes. I can handle Ichimaru."
"Really?" Gin said. "Shinso, shoot to kill."
The zanpakuto crossed the distance almost instantly, and Kaien had to dart to one side to knock Shinso from its path, aimed directly at Ichigo's head.
"I'm your opponent, Ichimaru!" Kaien shouted. "Ichigo, go!"
Ichigo looked from Kaien to Gin, exchanging blows almost too rapidly for him to follow. For the moment, at least, Kaien was holding his own.
"You're sure you can win?" Ichigo demanded.
"Go!"
Ichigo finally turned and ran, and Gin couldn't resist the urge to try one last time to hit him in the back. Kaien blocked it, not surprisingly, and Gin sighed. He considered for a second trying a strike at the cowering healer; the damned cat had followed Ichigo, but, honestly, his heart just wasn't in it. He would have to bring Kaien in, obviously, but he was kind of curious what the little healer would do if he thought no one had noticed him.
He was under orders not to allow anyone connected to Urahara to share their knowledge with Unohana. She was just a little too powerful and, having plenty of time to examine the body, she was the most likely to expose the fake. She was, in Aizen's opinion, their greatest threat, and he'd had Gin controlling the communication to her division from the Eighth and Thirteenth for the past couple weeks-but Aizen knew nothing about the little healer who'd helped out the Ryoka and spent the night at the Shiba Estate. Aizen was too busy monitoring Central 46, and Tosen had spent all night looking for the remaining Ryoka. They couldn't even know Gin knew about the boy; it was too perfect. Could that one little healer make a wreck of all Aizen's plans? Gin would love to see him try.
"Ichigo's gone," Gin said, two blows later. "What do you say to surrendering now? I'll have to bring you in so I can't go after him. We'll just have to see who's lucky enough to find him next, sound fair?"
"You'll let me surrender?" Kaien asked, just after he barely managed to stop a blow aimed for his neck.
Gin shrugged. It kind of surprised him that Kaien sounded surprised. It occurred to him that Kaien really thought he was trying to kill him. He wondered at that. Maybe he really was the only one who had noticed he was getting a little soft, because he'd never for an instant actually considered killing the other man.
"Our wives are friends. Rangiku will be terribly put out at me if I kill you," Gin answered. "It really doesn't sound worth it unless you insist on fighting to the death, because I'm not going to be the one dying today."
"Alright," Kaien said, dropping his zanpakuto and holding up his hands. "You win. Miyako'd be the same if I killed you anyway."
Gin shrugged again as he sheathed Shinso. "Women," he said. "They really do make things difficult sometimes."