Disclaimer : Bleach, its characters and its settings aren't mine.

Nemu was a silent creature, she'd been designed that way. Her father didn't ever want to hear her speak unless she was responding to him.

As usual, she was deep in thought. Unusually, she was thinking about breaking rules.

The monitoring station had been twelfth division's realm since it left the auspices of the kido corps more than a hundred years ago. When Seireitei technology reached the point it could monitor the real world more efficiently than Kido the corps had gladly turned over those duties.

She'd become the linchpin of Ikkaku's plan, had seriously rethought her opinion of the third seat's intellect. They'd needed someone inside the monitoring center. Ikkaku had covered a great many contingencies, as many as he and Renji could while still keeping their group as small as possible. Ikkaku and Renji, it had started there, grown to Hanataro of fourth squad, she hadn't known the boy before, had quickly come to respect him. She was familiar with Seireitei documents around the escape of Kuchiki Rukia; Yamada Hanataro had shown a willingness to break rules if he felt the cause was justified, it was because of him she'd agreed to join the conspiracy.

Nemu was still wondering about her own motives. It was one thing when it had all been theoretical. When the call came last night-

Nemu hadn't hesitated. She'd designed her part of the plan flawlessly, it could never be tracked back to her because she had done absolutely nothing wrong. It was – coincidence.

There were probably others in their conspiracy, they hadn't told her and she hadn't asked. Kuchiki Rukia probably. Instinctively Nemu knew the less she knew the less involved she was.

Should she have been more interested? She wondered. The boy Uryu Ishida had lost his sanity in the war, the girl Inoue Orihime a part of hers. And both were better off then Kurosaki Ichigo, one day they would die and be released. He had an eternity as a hunted criminal.

It wasn't right. The criminal Aizen would have won were it not for Kurosaki Ichigo.

Elements of the plan were beyond her knowledge. They'd feared for him, certain Kurosaki-san's mental state was unconducive to long term mortal survival. Presumably they had some monitoring methods outside normal Twelfth division practices. Nemu's part, her active part in the plan was to arrange for the system maintenance cycle to be triggered. Policy had been subtly rewritten two years, sixteen days ago in name of efficient workload balancing; monthly maintenance activities were to be performed at the discretion of the shift supervisor (or the shift supervisor's superior officer) rather than at scheduled times. It allowed... flexibility.

Nemu wasn't sure how Kurosaki Ichigo had been retrieved. She didn't know that he had been, in fact. This was an important technicality; should Mayuri ask her about Kurosaki Ichigo's whereabouts her answer would be truthful. Even extracted, he would be unable to conclude from her data that she knowingly played a role in misplacing him.

There were carefully drafted procedures for monitoring Kurosaki Ichigo. She'd originally drafted them herself, but Ikkaku had changed them three years, six months and four days ago. Quite brilliantly, she had to concede, loosened them ever so slightly, allowing just a little extra time to reestablish a lock on the substitute shinigami before the matter was escalated, arranged for extra stops for the data if for whatever reason the subject's spirit pressure signature was lost. Ikkaku very carefully inserted an additional three hours into the process before Kurosaki Ichigo's disappearance would be reported to anyone authorized to order shinigami into the human world.

Nemu did not smile. As that time approached Kurosaki-san's location had not been reestablished, despite correct and complete following of all relevant procedure. Ikkaku-san had conveniently edited procedure to avoid superfluous redirection of monitoring resources to search within the bounds of soul society itself. An oversight, Nemu reflected; it was conceivable that Kurosaki Ichigo could leave the mortal world and come to the Seireitei. She had no proof this had occured, therefore her data did not record the possibility in any form Mayuri could establish complicity from, but her data would record the possibility. Given an unauthorized gate was unlikely (within appropriate tolerances) the situation would not require immediate attention, but some day that oversight would need to be corrected.

Perhaps when the sun next rose in Hueco Mundo.

Approximately six hours was as long as Nemu could wait. The system had been up for four hours, fifty eight minutes, appropriately bench tested as per procedure under non-emergency conditions. Then failed initial location of target, testing around target loss, preliminary and secondary searches to reacquire target, secondary bench testing until Nemu could wait no longer without her complicity being recorded. If it were, Mayuri would simply disassemble her, extract the relevant information and Madarame Ikkaku's plan would fail. Any discovery meant total discovery if Mayuri was in charge of the investigation.

The sun was rising. Hopefully they'd had long enough; the loss of the subject had to be reported now.

Nemu went in search of her captain.