Yamamoto watched the other captains gather, arranging themselves in two lines, flanking him, four on one side and four one the other.

Wait. Four?

He counted again. He was definitely missing four captains, one more than he should be. He carefully counted slower. One, himself. Two, Soifon. Three, Gin was gone, traitorous scum. Four, Unohana—Where was she? He scrutinized those present. All the captains looked slightly disheveled, their white coats dirty and wrinkled. Ukitake held a giant pad of paper.

"Where is Captain Unohana?" He asked them, once they had settled slightly.

Ukitake scribbled down a message and held it up.

SHE'S SICK

Yamamoto sighed. "Why are you writing instead of talking?" His tone was that of an exasperated parent waiting for his child to grow out of an irritating phase.

I LOST MY VOICE

"I'm not even going to ask…. Why didn't she send a representative to the meeting?"

Ukitake flipped to a new page in his pad of paper, but before he could pen a reply, Yachiru popped up from behind Kenpachi's shoulder like a cheerful jack-in-the-box.

"They're ALL sick."

"What?" Yamamoto must have misunderstood her grating high-pitched voice. They couldn't all be sick. The universe could not possibly hate him that much.

It was Kenpachi who clarified.

"From what I could get out of my subordinate between his attempts to gouge out his own eyes or kill himself, the entire 4th squad has the flu. Useless wusses."

Apparently the universe did hate him that much.

"How long has this been going on?"

Everyone looked at their feet. Komamura muttered something unintelligible, loathe to disappoint the oldest captain.

"Well?"

It seemed no one wanted to answer him.

"Soifon?"

The young woman wrung her hands but looked him brazenly in the eyes.

"According to my ninjas the last time any of them were seen outside the relief station was six days ago."

"Really?" Shunsui asked, interested, "I didn't realize until yesterday."

"Perhaps if you deigned to look up from a Sake bottle someday you would have noticed earlier…" Mayuri hissed.

"So says the scientific circus freak," Hitsugaya said quietly, "I saw you jump earlier. You had no idea before this meeting began that anyone in the soul society was sick."

"Well, when you can, um, build your own artificial sentient beings from scratch you have no need for—"

Yamamoto shut his eyes, wishing that the captains' ages matched their immaturity so he could put some of them in a time-out right now.

Unfortunately that would make Hitsugaya older than he was, and wasn't going to let some young whippersnapper stroll in and steal his thunder.

But he was getting off topic.

"And what are we doing to help them?"

"I have many highly important experiments I cannot abandon at such a crucial stage—"

I HAVE NO IMMUNE SYSTEM

"Whatever you request, I will do it immediately," Komamura hastily added.

"Take care of sick people?" Kenpachi made a pffffffffft sound. "That's 4th division's job."

All the captains stared at him.

THAT WAS INSENSITIVE

"What Ukitake said," Shunsui muttered, slipping a bottle of sake surreptitiously out his sleeve.