CHAPTER FOUR

Hitsugaya Toushirou, Captain of the Tenth Division, knocked on the gate of the Twelfth Division and prayed for a thunderbolt from heaven to smite the building directly in front of him.

Unfortunately this did not happen. Clearly God didn't exist. Or was a sadist.

A bustling shinigami swung the door open, and bowed obsequiously. "Hitsugaya-taichou! We're honoured to have you drop by! Kurotsuchi-taichou ordered that you be brought to him immediately -- please follow me!"

Hitsugaya did his best to look approvingly to left and right as he followed his guide across the blasted landscape, and not to speculate too much about the craters and tattered remnants that littered the compound. You're a distinguished visitor here, he reminded himself. The Captain is pleased to welcome you as a guest; you're the sort of interested spectator he never usually gets.

A group of scientists rushed past, bouncing a trolley in front of them. The shinigami strapped to the trolley waved a hand limply and groaned something about not wanting extra limbs.

And try not to think about why he never gets interested spectators.

Kurotsuchi Mayuri was in the first laboratory they checked -- much, Hitsugaya suspected, to his guide's relief. The Twelfth Division captain turned to greet his guest, extracting his hands from the innards of something vaguely Hollow-esque, but was polite enough to remove his gloves before approaching normal conversational distance. Kurotsuchi Nemu waited patiently in the corner, arms folded around a clipboard, face as blank as an exquisite doll.

"Well!" Kurotsuchi Mayuri began, white mouth curving in a broad smile. "It's good to see that you don't treat me the way some of those old fossils do, Hitsugaya-taichou. I appreciate your making the effort to come and see me like this."

Hitsugaya smiled frostily in return. "Not at all. I am most grateful for your receiving me at such short notice. I value the great contributions which Twelfth Division has made to the Gotei 13, and hope to cooperate with your Division more closely in future. I apologise for any inconvenience which I may have caused you."

Kurotsuchi approached. (Hitsugaya deliberately avoided the word "slid", banished it from his memory, buried it six feet under, and piled furniture on top of it.) "Allow me to give you a tour of our current projects. Nemu! Finish off this dissection, then file the results, then go and bring the latest reports -- you know the ones -- to meet us with at the end of our tour!"

"Yes, sir," Nemu said, bowing her head gracefully. She walked over to where Kurotsuchi had left the gloves, pulling them on over her smaller hands.

Kurotsuchi dropped a hand (and really, it didn't feel like a bagful of ooze inside a rubber glove, of course it didn't) on Hitsugaya's shoulder. "I think you'll be extremely impressed with our latest advances. Come this way . . ."

Ise Nanao presented all the proper forms of authorisation at the side door, and had them signed in triplicate by the squinting guard. She was hardly an unfamiliar face here; everyone knew that Kyouraku-taichou couldn't be bothered with paperwork, and therefore tended to send her on all the administrative errands. With a brisk and official air, she made her way into the archive library.

It was, as always, dusty and quiet. High stacks of books and scrolls lined a long room with regular alcoves, and light filtered down in shafts from high slanted impenetrable (she'd tried once) windows. For someone as obsessed by research as Kurotsuchi-taichou, it had always seemed odd to Nanao that he wouldn't take similar care of his library facilities. Then again, very few people took what Nanao considered to be proper care of their bookshelves. It was a shame.

She'd formulated the request for archive access with reference to "Kurotsuchi-taichou's recent description of new anti-Hollow shielding", which was vague enough to deal with anything from the last few decades, especially if she explained that "Kyouraku-taichou had been a little unclear about which sort he meant". She quickly scribbled a few notes in the book under her arm from two recent tests, to give herself protective colouration in case anyone should find her at work, then penetrated deeper among the shelves.

Now what exactly was she looking for?

It was something that Kyouraku-taichou suspected was involved in Twelfth Division research. It was probably something to do with the recent Hollow oddities. She'd heard the casual rumours about what was going on; more to the point, she'd read the official message from Unohana-taichou requiring and requesting that any shinigami who had been involved in conflict or contact with any unusual-seeming Hollow should come in to Fourth Division for checks and potential quarantine. This hadn't created any major difficulties yet, though the potential bottleneck was envisageable . . . but in any case, that gave her some indications. Unohana-taichou was clearly thinking in terms of some sort of disease which could be passed from Hollows to shinigami. Twelfth Division would not have been put in charge of curing such a disease; they might, however, have been set to create one.

She walked over to the index, then paused. There was also the possibility that the disease-effect had been created accidentally by something which Twelfth Division had been producing, which would mean that it wouldn't be directly filed under germ warfare experiments. Absently, she tapped a finger against the filing cabinet.

And then again, this was something which would have been covered up to some extent. Kyouraku-taichou's words suggested that it wasn't a matter of open record. But equally, Twelfth Division weren't the sort to ever destroy records permanently, under Kurotsuchi-taichou . . .

. . . she frowned. Or under their previous Captain, Urahara Kisuke. That was also a possibility. So how was she supposed to research something which she wasn't sure of in the first place, and which would have been hidden in the records in any case?

Maybe that was the answer. She felt her mouth shape itself into a thin smile. Postulate: this was a project which Twelfth Division had tried to hide. Facts: Kyouraku-taichou clearly suspected it, and Unohana-taichou knew about it. Postulate: it had occurred before her vice-captaincy, as otherwise Kyouraku-taichou could have dropped some kind of hint. Note: this meant it would have to have been during Urahara Kisuke's holding the position of captain, as his, ah, rapid exit had occurred at around that point, and indeed she had never been able to ascertain the precise details.

She tapped her finger on the filing cabinet again, thinking.

So, she was looking for a research project which had occurred during Urahara Kisuke's captaincy. but which would have had most of the details hidden or destroyed. It would have had to have dealt with Hollows, if it was found to produce this sort of result. It probably involved some degree of casualties among the researchers and research subjects, so check the death records. That was it. Death records under Urahara Kisuke, looking for any particular spikes, work from there.

With enthusiasm and efficiency, she began riffling through the indices.

Madarame Ikkaku hung on the windowsill, peering into the room beyond thoughtfully. Ayasegawa Yumichika hung next to him, carefully adjusting a lock of his hair via the reflection in the windowpane.

"You see anything?" Ikkaku hissed. They both knew the dangers that could lurk in the Twelfth Division laboratories.

"Looks quiet to me," Yumichika noted. "Let's get in before Yachiru comes looking for us."

The firetrap on the window-frame was surprising but not unexpected, and as Ikkaku pointed out while they stamped out the flames, only a wimp cares that much about his sleeves. Yumichika would have disagreed, but he was too busy saving his hairstyle.

"Look at this." Kurotsuchi indicated a glass pane set into the wall. "While naturally we cancelled Project Spearhead under direct orders from above, there was no reason not to keep the modifications which were developed during the project. Observe."

They both peered through into the room beyond, where a young shinigami was busy punching holes in solid steel.

"Imagine that as the norm," Kurotsuchi said, his voice avid, from just behind Hitsugaya's shoulder. "Not just a combat speciality for those who have nothing better to do with themselves, but a standard modification built into all your Division. Wouldn't that improve performance?"

"It would make things a great deal more efficient," Hitsugaya said neutrally. "I'm very impressed. How is it done? Muscle implants?"

"Psychosurgery reconstruction and amplification," Kurotsuchi said cheerfully. "Let me show you some more."

"You appear busy."

Nanao looked up from the scroll between her hands, and saw Kurotsuchi Nemu in the doorway. Careless of me . . . "I apologise," she said without blinking. "I hope that I am not inconveniencing you in any way, Vice-Captain."

Nemu shook her head. "Not at all. But I am curious about why you are looking at the death figures. I thought you came in order to check some of the anti-Hollow-shielding results?"

Nanao weighed possible lies, and possible overly excitable reactions, and decided that this might be an occasion where the truth would serve best. "Indeed. But it struck me, while I was researching, that some of the recent problems with Hollows could conceivably be traced to some of Urahara Kisuke's research." She watched the flicker of Nemu's eyelashes. "Such a project would be likely to have a very high death toll, and to have been swept under the rug in order to conceal it from official notice."

"Indeed," Nemu said slowly. "Such a situation would not in any way be the fault of current Twelfth Division work."

Nanao was fairly sure that the other woman had taken the hook, but decided to add a bit of bait just in case. "Unfortunately, I lack the expertise to interpret fully the experimental records that are stored here . . ."

Nemu strode across briskly to peer at the death figures. "Have you any likely candidates?"

"Mm. I had just been noting down the ones I thought were most probable. This one, here, three hundred years before his exile; this one, fifty years before his exile; and this one, a year before his exile."

"This one," Nemu said without hesitation, tapping the third entry with a perfectly manicured nail.

"Why that one?" Nanao asked.

Nemu never smiled, but the line of her shoulders conveyed the satisfaction of one who has succeeded in a test. "Look at the titles. Project Raitei. Project White Serpent. Project Enhancement. Ise-fukutaichou, I assure you that nobody here would ever choose to call something "Project Enhancement", unless they actually wanted it to go unnoticed. My father disapproves of such lack of imagination and failure in ambition."

"Ah." Nanao let the scroll close. "I see. So -- where would the records on this be, do you think?" And what interesting timing.

Acid vats could be avoided by springing vigorously over them. Spiked walls could be destroyed by brute force, or by sprinting past them before they could collide.

Arcs of electricity were "pansy-ass things that no real 11th Division fighter would take seriously".

Poison gas, however, was thoroughly unfair, and both Ikkaku and Yumichika were going to have very severe words with whoever had put invisible vomit gas in that room they'd just escaped from.

As soon as they'd finished throwing up, that was.

"Of course," Hitsugaya said, and hoped that it sounded plausible and not like a complicated trap, "it's almost a pity that Aizen has so thoroughly discredited the whole shinigami/Hollow-blending line of research. While naturally one can't support the lengths he went to, there could have been advances there which would have been extremely useful."

Kurotsuchi's eyes almost seemed to glow. "My reasoning precisely. My words precisely! Hitsugaya-taichou, you must accept my apologies. I have been underestimating you for a while now. They don't call you the boy genius for nothing, it seems. There is a great deal of potential which has been utterly ignored by those without the sense to see it!" He paused, and seemed to withdraw behind his usual mask, like a snail into a shell. "But of course, there are also potential dangers."

Hitsugaya tilted his head and attempted to look winsomely admiring and curious. "But surely, with the proper precautions . . ."

Kurotsuchi sniffed. "Believe me, Hitsugaya-kun, there are some things which precautions cannot allow for. Why, the previous Captain -- but let's not go into that. Trust me when I tell you that even for the most ardent and experimental scientist, such as myself, there are some areas which are better left alone. It is more profitable to concentrate on areas which can provide quantifiable and definite benefits . . ."

Like turning yourself into green ooze, Hitsugaya thought.

". . . rather than those which may lead to unjustifiable danger. Anything of that nature would be put down most severely by the higher authorities." His eyes darkened. "It would be unwise to raise that sort of topic again."

"A pity," Hitsugaya said, and tried to look sincere. That had sounded like a genuine response, rather than something trotted out for official use. But what could have set Kurotsuchi Mayuri so thoroughly against the topic? He'd have thought that a scientist of his calibre would be demanding specimens and calling for the scalpels. A previous bad experience, maybe -- but if so, what? And how could he find out about it?

To one side, an alarm began beeping. "Excuse me a moment," Kurotsuchi requested, and hit several buttons on the computer screen next to it. "What is -- oh? Oh, really? Well, keep on filming them, you dolt! We haven't had a chance to test those anti-intruder measures in ages! Do you think you can get them through the shark pool?"

Hitsugaya reassured himself that it couldn't be Matsumoto. She wouldn't be that stupid. He worked to believe that.

They had spread the documents that Nemu had found over the nearest table.

"Interesting," Nemu said, flicking through a sheaf of notes. "Apparently, while Urahara Kisuke had overall command of this project, they were using expertise from various other sources. Someone in Fourth Division was involved, and they were also factoring in high kidou and alchemy levels. Urahara Kisuke had the experiment under his personal supervision, with Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou not being involved." She frowned. "They were working on non-conscious modified souls at first, trying to trace the actual enhancements caused by shinigami or Hollow status, in order to artificially induce them in shinigami later."

"Logical, I suppose," Nanao granted. She decided not to push the issue of why Kurotsuchi Mayuri might not have been involved, and tapped the next few stacks of paper. "These would be the standard experimental results, I take it?"

Nemu nodded. "Everything went smoothly, or at least, within the usual tolerance parameters, for a while. Some Hollows were captured and kept in enclosures outside the walls in the hope of removing their powers. After all -- this is a note from Urahara Kisuke himself here -- "possibility Hollow power removal, inference depower Hueco Mundo, therapy?" Or so I read the handwriting."

"Mm. Very bad handwriting."

"Very." Nemu checked the next pages. "Ah. Now here it gets interesting."

Nanao correlated the date against the death figures that she'd brought along. "We have some actual shinigami deaths that day."

Nemu nodded. "They were volunteers. They'd stopped using the mod souls by this point -- they'd started reaching an unacceptable degree of sentience." Her words were as calmly paid out as always. "These shinigami had volunteered for actual reception of some Hollow modifications. But look, this note shows that the Hollow specimen numbers went down too --"

"It states full purification mode, though," Nanao pointed out, leaning over Nemu's shoulder. "So they were cleansed properly."

"But why the shinigami deaths?"

"No. No, wait a minute." Nanao leafed forward through the papers. "Look here. They still had five Hollows left at this point. I thought that was an error, because it said earlier that there had been eight purifications, and they'd only had ten specimens, but if you factor in the three shinigami who died, and assume that they were the purification deaths . . ."

Nemu pursed her lips. "The shinigami assumed the full characteristics of Hollows, you think? Masks and all?"

"It'd make the numbers match," Nanao said, more excited now. "What happened the next day?"

Nemu turned another page. Her eyes widened. "The remaining five Hollows were put down," she reported, "but we have twenty purifications reported. How many shinigami deaths?"

Nanao checked. "Thirty-five. And another twenty the next day. And five the day after that. But if all the Hollows were dealt with the day before that --"

"Ten purifications recorded the next day," Nemu added. "And one the day after that."

The two women stared at each other.

"It didn't stop with the death of the Hollows," Nemu finally said. "It went on till they somehow closed it down."

"What happened to the mod souls?" Nanao asked. "And what about Urahara Kisuke?"

Nemu flicked through the pages, then frowned and rechecked. "It doesn't say. How careless. But why do you mention the previous Captain?"

"The timing." Nanao's brows drew together. "Doesn't it strike you as a little significant that shortly after this occurs, he is exiled on unspecified charges --"

"Charges of creating a gigai that was undistinguishable from human," Nemu cut in. "It's in the records."

"That's certainly what we've been told," Nanao agreed.

Nemu frowned, now. "This is disturbing."

"It is." Nanao opened her book and picked up one of the stray pens. "So --"

Nemu's hand caught her wrist. "Ise-fukutaichou, I am not sure that I should be letting you leave with this information."

Nanao broke free with a twist of her hand, closing her book as she did so. "Kurotsuchi-fukutaichou, I must insist."

"I regret this," Nemu said, and swung into a straight kick at Nanao's head.

Ikkaku ducked under a flying net of razorblades, and scanned the area ahead. A net of laserbeams blocked the path to the east. "Over there!" he called to Yumichika, pointing at a large vat of water.

"It could be acid," Yumichika said dubiously as he forcibly dismantled a large clawed apparatus.

"Naah." Ikkaku grinned. "Look, there's big fishes in it. Come on!"

"Ah -- what is going on?" Hitsugaya asked nervously.

Kurotsuchi's gaze was fixed on the viewscreen. "It looks like some Eleventh Division louts. They attempt to infiltrate every now and again. Absolutely marvellous for testing our anti-intruder equipment. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get suitable material to try out the fire ant pits. I even allow a certain amount of betting on it -- I'm sure you have similar means of encouraging unit cohesion in your own ranks, Hitsugaya-kun?"

Hitsugaya swallowed. As far as he knew, the only current betting pool in Tenth Division was How Long Till The Captain Gets It On With Matsumoto, and he'd got a heavy anonymous bet on Never. "Similar," he agreed. "But what if they die?"

Kurotsuchi snorted. "I have a signed waiver from that moron Zaraki that any of his people who die on my premises are formally expelled from Eleventh Division as wimps. Simple enough."

"Oh, very much so," Hitsugaya agreed, and decided just to be grateful that it wasn't Matsumoto out there.

Nanao ducked the kick, feeling the wind as Nemu's left foot swept past her face, and fell into a crouch, bringing her leg round into a sweep at Nemu's right ankle. This should really have been expected.

Nemu leapt into the air, landing smoothly on the table amid the documents. She relaxed into a loose stance, one hand extended.

Nanao converted her sweep into a pivot, and let the motion carry her upwards and several feet away from the table. Perhaps negotiation --

Nemu dived forward, flipping into a cartwheel that brought her upright again with her right hand moving into a sideways strike at Nanao's neck. Papers sprayed from the table on which she had been standing, flying outwards in all directions.

Nanao brought her left arm up to parry, catching consecutive blows on wrist, forearm, wrist, and powered into a jump over Nemu's head, turning to kick downwards. Nemu dodged the movement, but it took her a step forward, letting Nanao gain the height advantage with one foot on a table and the other raised above her head and balanced against the shelf behind it, both arms spread and hands open.

Nemu frowned, face tightening, then charged, hand slamming squarely into the table. It split from the force of the blow, halves flying to right and left to crash into the sides of the alcove. Books fell from the shelves, opening as they spilled floorwards, dust thickening in the air.

Nanao flicked herself upwards, then converted the motion into a rush across the room, flickering jumps from book to book as they tumbled through the air, spinning on her last movement to flick her hand along a shelf and send scrolls scattering outwards, spinning through the flakes of dust towards Nemu. She landed on the ground, hands still open, and used the moment to catch her breath.

Nemu caught a scroll from the air and used it to bat the others down, knocking them around her in a spiral so that they fell to the ground in a wide circle around her. She spun the scroll tube in her hand, face full of mild concentration.

Dust drifted down through the shafts of light.

Nemu took the offensive again, flipping the scroll tube from her right hand to her left, then moving in. She struck at Nanao's right shoulder, fingers folded together into a hard point.

Nanao blocked it, blocked again, and pondered tactics. It would be a very bad move to seriously injure Kurotsuchi Nemu under these circumstances -- assuming that she could manage it, for the other vice-captain was certainly competent. It would be an even worse one to take the matter to the level of swords. Even knocking her out and then leaving would result in future awkwardness between their Divisions, for Nemu would tell her Captain the moment she woke up, and frankly she couldn't blame her for that. But even if she were to walk out now --

A faster blow by Nemu ripped her right sleeve open at the shoulder, and nearly caught her hard enough to bruise the joint. Nanao responded with a sequence strike of knee-hip-side, and spun backwards in the momentary gap to kick the flexion point on a set of shelves. Books came cascading out from the other side, forcing Nemu to knock them away and take a half-pace back.

It was hard to fight back large fish with fucking large teeth while trying to swim at the same time, Ikkaku mused. It was even harder when the rim of the pool seemed to have gone and risen and was firing laser beams at itself in the process.

"We could beat the sharks to death and then use them to fry the laser net?" Yumichika offered. He didn't seem happy. Possibly it was the effect of the water on his eyebrows.

"Naah." Ikkaku felt himself smirking. "I've got a better idea. See, if we both hit here -- back, fish, back! -- and hit together . . ."

Hitsugaya did not cower, but he did take a few prudent steps back as Kurotsuchi screamed at the screen. "What do you mean they built the shark pool next to the archives? Well, get someone down there now! NOW!"

Nanao stepped in and swerved round another nerve strike from Nemu, bringing the side of her hand round into the small of Nemu's back. Nemu rolled with the blow, losing a strip of cloth from her obi, and came up on one knee, slamming her fingers into the side of Nanao's thigh. Nanao managed to pivot, but couldn't avoid the full force of the hit, and swung her hip to settle her injured leg behind her, folding her arms in front to catch Nemu's next blow.

There was a groaning creak from the wall.

Both women flicked a rapid glance sideways to look at it, unwilling to take their attention from each other for more than a moment.

Another creak. Drops of water sprayed out from a crack between two ranks of shelves, spattering across the floor between the women.

Nemu gasped. "The shark pool!"

Nanao thought about the potential advantage of choosing this moment to make her exit, but the possibility didn't stand a chance against the very real probability of all the archive, all these documents, all this information getting waterlogged and destroyed. "We need to block it!"

Nemu nodded, once. She pointed towards a table that was still intact. "Please take the other side, Vice-Captain."

Nanao ran to the far side of the table, and hoisted it to her shoulder, as Nemu did the same thing on the other side. She and Nemu glanced at each other to get the timing, nodded, and then ran three steps forward before leaping into the air. They caught themselves on the bookcases on either side of the crack, and swung the table into position, bracing it against the shelves.

There was a heavy booming on the far side of the wall.

"Shit," Ikkaku gurgled, coming up for air, "it must be braced."

"Again," Yumichika recommended.

They sank beneath the water once more. The sharks were avoiding them by now.

"I'll deal with the ones in the shark pool, Kurotsuchi-taichou," Hitsugaya said quickly. "Can you deal with the leak on the archive side?"

"Of course," Kurotsuchi grunted, striding to the door. He grabbed a cowering minion. "You! Show Hitsugaya-taichou to the shark pool! Now!"

Nanao looked round for anything that would be useful for stuffing in cracks. Anything except books. Useless. "Is help coming?"

"Yes, but I do not think we have the time to wait for it."

She restrained her temper. Displays of annoyance were best saved for her own Captain. "Standard procedures for archive integrity?"

Nemu shook her head and frowned. "I do not know who put the shark pool there, but there is no kidou I know that would work against floodwater --"

Nanao flicked through her mental index. No way of shielding the wall from the far side, no way of blocking the crack if it got much further, she could use kidou to reinforce the table but that wouldn't help if the crack got much larger --

There was the sound of a chunk of wall breaking loose. The table creaked and fell to the floor with a boom. Water came gouting out in a stream as thick as a man's arm.

Nanao smiled. An opening. "Do you know any kidou?" she asked Nemu.

"We got something that time. Right, try it again --"

Hitsugaya followed his babbling guide, rushing through the narrow corridors, and made a mental note to never, never, never suggest to Rangiku that spying on Twelfth Division would be a good idea.

"None applicable in this case," Nemu replied. "Please help me with the table."

"Just a moment," Nanao said, and leaped back up to the shelf again. Yes, the opening was within reach. "Lord and Master," she started, stumbling as quickly as she could through the full protocol. This was going to need all the energy she could control. "O mask of flesh and blood -- o entire universe -- o beating of wings -- o that one who bears the name of human! Truth and temperance -- from beyond these walls built from pure dreams and without sins, you only ever raise your claws except when purely necessary --"

"Ise-fukutaichou!" Nemu shouted as the crack in the wall widened again.

"Thirty-third Hado technique!" Nanao called, as she thrust her arm into the crack in the wall and let the energy come boiling out. "Soukatsui, wall of flames!"

Steam gushed out around her.

"What the fuck--"

Ikkaku and Yumichika staged a temporary retreat towards the surface of the pool of water, competing with the sharks to escape from the sudden burst of flame.

Hitsugaya could identify the shark pool fairly easily, but he didn't remember the gouts of steam from when he'd been watching it through the viewscreen. First things first. He turned to his guide. "Shut the lasers off!"

"But, sir --"

Hitsugaya let his reiatsu rise. "Shut them off now so I can reach the pool."

"Sir!" the guide squawked, and ran across to hit some inconspicuous switches in the wall.

Hitsugaya rushed forward. Ikkaku and Yumichika from the Eleventh Division were struggling with the sharks in a steaming, slowly sinking pool of water. "Out of there, now!" he shouted.

The two thugs seemed to have at least some intelligence. They were scrambling out before he could finish the sentence.

He swung his blade round, pointing it downwards, and felt it stir coldly in the back of his consciousness, flexing its coils. "Hyourinmaru!" he called. "Sit in the frozen sky!"

Ice gushed out and down.

The flow had paused for a moment, but now regained full force as Nanao dropped down from her perch. Her clothing clung wetly to her body, and her glasses were misty with steam. She stepped back, glancing to Nemu, who nodded to the table again.

"Stand back!" came a call from the doorway.

Nanao flicked a glance across. It was Kurotsuchi-taichou himself. She took several steps back, then, on consideration, a few steps more, drifting over to where her book lay abandoned, conscious of Nemu's shifting of attention from herself to her Captain.

Kurotsuchi-taichou pointed both hands at the gouting crack in the wall, and called out a kidou that Nanao didn't recognise, moving his hands in a complicated pattern. She could feel the energy shifting around him, though; shifting, fluxing, then thrust forth, as the light solidified round the water and held it in place -- oh, it was an alternate form of the sixty-first kidou, the Brilliant Prison of Six Staves, how interesting . . .

The room fell silent.

Tucking her own book under her arm, she stepped forward and gave a full bow to Kurotsuchi-taichou. "Sir."

He turned to look at her, mouth twisting into a thin line. "Ise-fukutaichou? Unfortunate that you should have been involved in this, most grateful for your assistance -- have you anything to report, Nemu?" he added towards his daughter.

Nemu visibly composed herself, bowing to her father. "Ise-fukutaichou was assisting me in researching a matter which I would like to discuss with you, Kurotsuchi-taichou, but otherwise she has no connection with what was going on."

Nanao nodded. "Indeed. If you will excuse me, sir, I will beg your indulgence and return to my own Division's business."

"Oh, go, go . . ." He waved a hand in the direction of the exit. "My regards to Kyouraku and all that. I'll be seeing to matters here."

With a last nod to Nemu -- and what was behind those dark eyes? Complicity? Acceptance? A threat? A promise -- Nanao strode briskly and wetly out through the door, leaving a trail of soggy footprints behind her.

"We were looking for the men's room," Ikkaku said promptly, before Hitsugaya could even start questioning him.

Hitsugaya frowned. Letting them go would probably remove any goodwill that Kurotsuchi had towards him, but did he really want it at that price? He pointedly turned his back on the two of them to look at the cowering guide. "How long before Kurotsuchi-taichou gets up here?"

The sound of breaking windows -- and incidental firetraps -- behind him was all that he needed to hear.

Ise Nanao sat at her desk, copying out facts and figures. While her memory was not perfect, it was extremely good. The original documentation would of course have been preferable, but this would do for the moment.

Doubtless Kyouraku-taichou would soon return. He had been unreasonably concerned about a few minor steam injuries, but fortunately she had been able to put him off with promises of a full report. He'd gone to talk to Ukitake-taichou instead. This would probably involve alcohol, but at least it didn't involve him drinking alcohol next to her while she was trying to write.

It had really been a most informative day.