DV: We told you this would be out Wednesday, and we don't break our word lightly. But don't expect this to be the norm. You'll only get a Wednesday chapter if the Sunday chapter is 1000 words.

US- And even that isn't certain, as only Kubo knows if we can actually maintain this present pace.

DV: The final final chapter of Bleach is tomorrow. That's right...tomorrow...I think? Maybe next week if Kubo is a dick. Ouch. First Harry Potter, than Naruto, now Bleach? So many childhood memories ending.

US- Question for you DV? If we're here trying to make some form of amusing anecdotal commentary for this authors note, then who's driving this chapter, and just what plot obstruction is fast approaching on the horizon?

Disclaimer: Insert failed attempt to make a witty disclaimer here. It's just not worth it.

Minato II

The Seireitei sewers were, like most sewers, dark and damp. However, these tunnels clearly had more in common with the Paris Catacombs than the more Japanese architecture one might expect it to possess. Minato felt that these parallels were rather odd, as these passageways had likely been built centuries before the Catacombs were even constructed. However, that fact was rather convenient for their current purposes, so they certainly weren't going to complain.

While Minato chose to stand rather formally, clearly cementing himself as the higher authority person in their dynamic, Marcus has embraced his lower status and was slumped against the wall, sitting down, and was watching the nearby waters solemnly.

Minato was all for waiting for Marcus to begin speaking first, preferring to let others act first then counter, but he had a certain feeling that Marcus would be unwilling to speak of his circumstances without an equal amount of information had been given to him first. How troublesome.

As Minato debated what to start with, the ribbons formerly holding Marcus reformed themselves into a facsimile of a throne, upon which he promptly sat upon and decided to finally just begin the conversation they both knew they needed to have, "They say war makes strange bedfellows."

The other Shinigami looked like he was about to protest something, and based on the way his eyes flickered to the elaborate throne he now sat atop, he could tell what. But instead, he threw up his arms, as if giving into the madness, and embraced it for all it was worth. "I suppose you're right. Though this is hardly a war, and it feels like the only reason we're bedfellows to begin with is because we're both literal Outsiders."

A snicker, "Hardly war? Did you forget what this is a prelude to?"

"The Winter War, yes. But is this our war?"

"No, it's not. But isolationist tendencies tend to backfire. I'm not advocating immediate action, however, I suspect that as long as we are here, we will continue to be dragged into at least some events, whether we want to or not."

"Speaking of which, do you think we should just pull the fucking band aid off and just deal with the elephant in the room? Maybe it's time for us to actually talk about all this." Marc swung his arm around, gesturing to them sat in a miserable sewer tunnel in a different dimension to the one they had woken up in.

Minato leaned back in his seat, the ribbons mimicking his actions, crossing his legs, "That's true. As far as I can tell, neither of us are Ichigo Kurosaki, who possesses the strange ability to make everyone his friend eventually, so long as they're not his main villain. If we want to be able to coordinate, we should know some things at least. For example, when I came here, it was the year 2007 in my native universe, as opposed to 2001 here. You?"

"In case you didn't pick it up, I was dropped here right at the end of Fake Karakura Town. Aizen and Ichigo were just about to have their 'my power up is bigger than yours' dick off." Marc spat off to one side. "I swear, it pisses me off just how bullshit those two are sometimes."

Minato muttered somewhat inaudible under his breath, "'In case you didn't pick it up…'," before changing to a normal tone, "I heard, but it may have not have been the same year, for example. Little differences like that can pile up. Though from your tone, I must assume it was 2001 as well."

The other male nodded fairly casually. "Yeah, it was 2001. To be honest, it was a fairly typical world. Nothing majorly different to the timeline except for me showing up there and screwing things up." Marcus blinked, then smacked his head. "Of course! Dumb me! It should have literally been the first thing I asked! Ahem… before we continue, perhaps we should check if we're on the same page, as it were. You DO know what I mean when I speak of sink cleaning products, right?"

Minato considered the words, finding them to be cryptic. He felt like they were familiar, but couldn't quite identify how, "I'm sorry, what?"

"Bleach! Does the word evoke anything in particular?"

Again, it felt familiar. But Minato was almost 500 years old. Many things has been forgotten- important things. So Minato shook his head, "How does sodium hypochlorite play into this?"

At last, Marcus sighed, and threw his hands up in the air. "Just fuck it. We're already stuck in another dimension, so telling you and effectively shattering your view of Life As We Know It can't screw things too much. Are you, or are you NOT aware that you're a Self Insert living in a fictional universe? You said stuff earlier that implied as much, but I just want a freakin' yes or no, okay?"

"Fictional it might have been...once. But now it is not, for all intents and purposes. Viewing it as such still is a mark of denial."

"... oh good, you are a Self Insert, and I haven't just forced an existential crisis on you. I tell you, that would have been awkward." He nodded dourly.

Minato pulled out a fan from a pocket and held it in a similar manner to Urahara, continuing, "Are you usually this forward?"

Marc gave the dryest look imaginable. "Look Mister 'I sit on a throne made of bandages, because my ego can't bear to dwell on the floor', I'm tired, miserable, have had to find spiritual enlightenment while fighting a dude capable of making lightning thicker than I am tall, just lost my last friends, failed to kill my nemesis, am stuck in another dimension and still have a whole tonne of fucking broken bones. Excuse me if I'm a teensy bit tetchy."

"First off, elegance is a sign of class, not ego."

"Elegance? it's a freaking throne! The only thing more egotistical is a giant sofa!"

Minato continued unhindered, "And second, be grateful. Would you have actually managed to get this far without my help? And if you are capable of movement, come over here so I can begin to heal you. It will take some time. Better start now."

The tattered Ryoka grumbled, but complied. He pulled himself to his feet, walked directly to the side of the throne, then dropped to the floor again. "Soooo then… on a scale of one to ten, with five being almost exactly how canon was, how shitty would you rate your dimension to be then?"

Green light began to emanate and surround Marcus as Minato commented, "That's terribly unspecific."

Marc scratched the back of his head. "True. I meant just how different your world is? If it's a ten on the shitty scale, that would mean the timeline is fucked beyond belief and Aizen won or something, while one would be a Lighter and Happier setting where Aizen was captured by Shinji while Kurotsuchi domesticated Hollows into fluffy, huggable critters or something."

"Ah. Well, the timeline is reasonably similar, lots of small differences, but nothing really major. I saw to that personally. And you? How does your world rate on your 'scale?'"

"Maybe a six or seven." Marc sighed in relief as Minato's hands glowed green and finally began to tackle his ailments in a way that was noticeable. "Nothing apocalyptic, but a few too many things have gone wrong for me to consider it a 'good' verse. Things stuck mostly to canon, but enough wildcards were thrown in to mix things up."

Minato shifted, the throne morphing into a lounge chair, "I see. Well, that Omega character certainly would be problematic. Where was the timeline when you entered?"

"About sixteen years before canon. Not much happened for most of it. I went to school, got bullied for a while, made some True Companions and almost got eaten by Menos. Then I graduated." Marc was almost joking at this point, but his smile was a bit too bitter for his words to be anything but melancholy. "That was about when Omega showed up actually."

"I'm guessing he was one of the main forms of divergence?" Minato queried, curious about the third figure dropped into this world. He could see why Marcus and himself might have been chosen, but what role did the masked man play?

"One of them. He's certainly killed a lot of important people anyway. But he wasn't the main problem."

"'Important people.' People important to you? Or people important to the plot?"

The younger male considered his words carefully. "A bit of both. While he did massacre all of said True Companions, he also got pissed when I tried to recruit a few Captains for one of our face off's so he promised to kill the next five canon characters he encountered."

Minato frowned, "Well, I was about to suggest that your universe didn't want a deviation from canon, and was enforcing it through him, but if he was willing to kill canon characters...that suggests either a level of carelessness or insanity. Unless he's not involved with that at all. Hmm…"

"Odd deduction to make." Commented Marcus, with a single skeptical eyebrow raised. "Nah- I have no clue what that bastards deal is. The universe certainly didn't employ him anyway. From what the Agents told me, I think they wanted to kill him more than they wanted my head."

"Agents? This sounds interesting. There were no Agents in my universe, or I simply never came across them. Who or what are they?"

Marc gave a carefree shrug. "They aren't much. Just Self Inserts from alternate universes employed by Fate to kill other Self Inserts because she hates our guts and spends her entire time scheming to murder anyone that dares interfere with her precious timeline."

"... I don't know how to respond to that. Fate was a personified concept in your universe? Sounds...quite unpleasant."

"It was." Marcus winced. "It's not nice having a fundamental force of the universe screaming for your blood. Still, I'm kind of used to everyone and everything that's stronger than me trying to kill me. Raising the bar to include Conceptual Manifestations and overpowered people from Alternate Universes was just the next step, really."

Minato slid his hands behind his head, fingers laced, as he asked, "If you regularly have to deal with things like that, logically you should be stronger than you are now, unless you're currently restricted by a seal or something similar."

At this point, Minato's companion burst into laughter. It began genuinely amused, but by the end it had been tainted- saturated with too many unspoken things. "No. No seals or anything like that. Just inevitable difficulty curves, really. I'm not Ichigo, and I don't have his stupid quick growth rate. I'm just a normal guy dropped into a fictional world of giants, expected to stand just as tall as them and match figures with centuries more experience than me. Considering I've only had sixteen years to get to this point compared to the centuries it takes many Lieutenants, I still consider myself fairly strong, thank you very much."

"How strong are you then?"

A wry grin at this point. "Sometimes strength isn't important. I was weaker than the Menos, weaker than the Vizard, weaker than the Lieutenants and the Captains, weaker than the Arrancar and Ulquiorra, weaker than the Agents and Omega. I am oh so horribly weak. And yet… I've survived this long, haven't I? And I've beaten them, in many cases, despite my weakness. So why don't you tell me how strong you are? Just how much did you bleed to get to this point?"

Minato smiled, a genuine one this time, "I applaud your strength of character. I am not quite as...resilient as you are. In your situation, I probably would have found a rock to hide under till it was all over and I had been forgotten. But our situations are not quite comparable. You arrived sixteen years prior, so 1985? When I entered Soul Society, the year was 1550."

"Ouch." Marcus winced. "You're older than dirt, old man. I bet you've lived through some shit, haven't you?"

Minato averted his eyes and spoke, tone solemn, "I was there when the first shot was fired at Lexington, and watched the mushroom cloud blossom over Hiroshima with my own eyes."

Realisation was dawning on Marcus, Minato could see it in his eyes. Minato had lived through many years. He could go up to someone in the street, and would have been active even before said person's great, great grandparents had been alive. Humans have a short life span of barely a hundred years if they're really lucky, yet Minato had gone almost five times past that amount. How could anyone so young possibly understand or see the world as one who has seen the very world itself shift and change like sand constructs in the wind?

Even discounting all the many supernatural things Minato had been involved in, he had lived through many, many, many things.

"They say many Captain are centuries old… I don't think I truly got what that meant until just now." Admitted the young man.

"Eventually, you will presumably give a similar speech to someone much younger. Yes, I was a Captain...once, though those days are behind me now."

"You were a Captain? No wonder you took down Kenpachi so easily. The old guard are freakin' OP, and so are you. I only got to Seventh Seat, though it's more of a long running joke now just how inappropriate the rank is considering my actual ability is about Lieutenant level."

A small grin made its way onto Minato's face, "Well, I suppose that makes me your sempai, now doesn't it?"

"Not on your life, old man." Marcus deadpanned, but he had just the smallest smile. Minato was glad. He was still stuck in a foreign world, one where his machinations had never come to light. The board was as it once was, but the unseen third player had been booted from the game long ago. All of his favorite pieces were gone, leaving Minato with only himself. For the minute, Marcus was the only potential ally he had.