A/N: For those of you wondering what Karin's doing, she's…practicing. I can't write a scene with her right now without spoiling her reappearance, so…one more chapter of the night of betrayal, and then we'll get down to business!

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach. At all.

Chapter 35: Necessary evils

Yuzu lowered her hands, breathing hard as she stared at the two shinigami in front of her. They were standing in place, struggling against the kido bonds that held their arms pinned to the sides, stopping them from using their swords. She let her hands fall back onto Jungetsu's fans, glancing behind her at Shiyougi, who was standing with his zanpakuto released, the tip of Tenryuga's blade pointed at the pair of shinigami.

"Are there any more?" she asked.

Shiyougi shook his head. "No, I don't think so. The captain went after Okada. Koyanagi's with him, and—."

The two of them stopped suddenly as a wave of reiatsu passed through the air, setting Yuzu's senses on edge before disappearing completely. Her eyes widened, and she quickly turned away from Shiyougi, looking down the hallway in the direction the blast had come from. Shiyougi turned as well, his eyes wide. That reiatsu would have been familiar to anyone in the Sixth, but she had never felt it like that. So strong at first, a presence pushing directly against her mind, and then suddenly gone.

"That's—," Shiyougi began.

—Byakuya.

She turned towards the source of the reiatsu, quickly flash-stepping down the hallway.

"Fukutaicho!" Shiyougi shouted after her, stretching out a hand to catch her as she disappeared. "Wait!"

Yuzu ignored him, gripping Jungetsu's fans tightly in both hands as she picked up speed, forcing herself to take faster flash-steps. She couldn't take her mind off that reiatsu, what it felt like, and what it could possibly mean.

Not Byakuya. He wouldn't have been hurt like that. It couldn't have been Byakuya.

She burst out of the Division's doors and into the courtyard, leaping the few feet from the door to the ground. There was a body slumped on the grass beneath the plum tree, draped in white. Yuzu started running towards it, her eyes wide.

"Taicho!" she said, reaching it. "Tai—."

She came to a stop. Byakuya was lying on his stomach, his head turned slightly to the side and his dark hair spilling out across the grass as he lay in a steadily growing pool of his own blood. Senbonzakura had fallen to the ground inches from his fingertips. His eyes were closed, his breathing labored but still present, the wound on his back an ugly red scar. It was a wound she recognized, a long, thin pattern, like a wound coming from a spear.

Koyanagi's spear. Her eyes moved past Byakuya, to the fallen form of Okada lying against the plum tree. Her fingers tightened around her fans, her blood turning to ice in her veins. She barely registered the sound Shiyougi made as he appeared over her shoulder, or his sharp intake of breath as he took in the sight of the captain lying there.

"Fukutaicho…" he said. "That wound…"

"I know," said Yuzu. She closed her eyes, searching for Koyanagi's reiatsu. It was there, a steadily moving presence outside of the Division, heading south towards the nearest gate. This couldn't be happening. The Division couldn't be falling apart around her. Byakuya couldn't be lying unconscious at her feet.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and realized that as much as she wanted to break down, as much as she wanted to forget everything else, to pour all of her reiatsu into healing her captain, to either pretend that Koyanagi didn't exist, or rage at him screaming for what he had done, she couldn't.

Because with Byakuya unconscious and bleeding out in front of her, she was in command.

She was in command of the Sixth.

Yuzu exhaled slowly, forcing her weight to settle, her fingers slowly uncurling from their death grip on her fans and the conflicted expression slowly leaving her face. Calm, she told herself. A memory came back to her, that of a day over a decade ago, a day in spring in the Kuchiki Manor, when Byakuya was teaching her hakuda.

"Keep your center, focus, and do not panic…"

A ripple formed on the surface of the pond in her inner world, a single small disturbance on the surface of the water.

I am calm.

She opened her eyes and took a step back, turning away from Byakuya and facing the rest of the Division.

"Fukutaicho…" said Shiyougi, turning towards her in surprise.

"Tell the others to close the gates," she said. "Send a message to the Fourth for the captain. Find Shirogane-san and some of the others who are good at kido, and have them see to Kuchiki-taicho until a healer can come. And sound the alarms."

"But—," Shiyougi began.

"Now, Shiyougi."

Shiyougi stared at her, looking her in the eye for the span of a breath. Then, he quickly bowed his head, raising his fist to his heart in salute. "Ma'am," he said, flash-stepping away.

Yuzu waited until he was gone, then glanced northward in the direction of Koyanagi's reiatsu. She heard shouts in the courtyard as the shinigami on watch duty moved to close the gates, heard the first tentative alarm bells start to ring. It wouldn't do anything for Koyanagi, who had already left the Division behind him.

She knew what she had to do.

Calm…she reminded herself, stepping forward towards the Division as chaos erupted around her. Shirogane and a team of hastily-roused kido specialists rushed past her, Kawamoto among them as they went to see to the captain. She saw some of the other officers hanging around by the door, some of them carrying swords, all of them looking confused.

"Nagai," she said, her eyes alighting on her seventh seat. "Take a team of five and follow me."

Without waiting for his acknowledgment, she flash-stepped away, heading northward towards Koyanagi.

Ichigo stared at the group assembled in front of him, everyone that was left of the Fifth. The electricity in the Fifth had been cut during the attack, but the courtyard was lit by torches, the slightly archaic light casting long shadows on the ground and causing the shinigami who stood at attention to shift uncertainly, casting glances at each other. Ichigo stood at the front of the lines with Hinamori and Masa beside him, the three of them now dressed in their full shihakushos.

Hinamori wore her vice-captain badge on her arm, her eyes narrowed and a stern expression on her face as she studied the group. On his other side, Masa had drawn himself up to his full height, his eyes narrowed coldly. All around them, shinigami of the Fourth were scurrying with stretchers and medical kits, rushing to help those shinigami that had been injured in the battle. A handful of the traitors had been captured alive, and were sitting in the brig, under guard until they could figure out what to do with them.

There had been twenty-three traitors in all, five of them seated, the others unseated. Of all the officers that had attacked, none of them had survived. Three were killed outright. The other two killed themselves.

Those twenty-three traitors had already cost him six shinigami lives, and three dozen more injured in the melee. The group that stood in front of him numbered less than three hundred and thirty. There were sixty-five empty spaces in the ranks, and all of them knew it.

All of them could also tell he was angry, judging from the way that none of them wanted to look at him.

He studied the faces, picking out the ones he knew. The newer members, the ones that had joined the Fifth in the past fifteen years from the Academy, or had been taken from other Divisions after Ichigo's captaincy, looked mostly scared and confused, a few looking a little angry. But the old guard, the members of the Division that had been around since Aizen's days, looked furious. Their expressions matched Ichigo's own, and a good majority of them stood defiant, backs straight and hands resting on sword hilts as they waited for Ichigo to speak.

They had every right to be angry.

"I'm not gonna lie," said Ichigo, after the silence had dragged on long enough. "I'm not happy. I bet none of you are either, so I'll make this short. Some of you guys, twenty-three of you, in fact, decided they wanted to fight for the other side. They picked the wrong side, and another forty-two of you paid for it. I don't know about the rest of you, but that pisses me off."

Silence. A few of the older members of the Fifth raised their heads, giving him looks that told him they agreed. Some of them looked like they would give anything to head to the Division's holding cells, to show everyone how much they agreed.

"We, all of us, we spent fifteen years trying to build this damn Division back up. Every single one of us worked. You've all worked harder than any shinigami in any Division these past fifteen years. The last thing we need is people like them, people stuck in the past who are going to bring everyone else down with them. Because of those twenty-three bastards, we're all going to have a hard time trusting each other for the next few days, and Soul Society isn't going to have an easy time trusting us either."

"So, I'd just like to say something," said Ichigo. "To anyone else in this Division who might still have ideas about switching sides. I don't know what Aizen promised you. I don't know what Kyoka Suigetsu promised you. But here's what I'm promising you. If you don't decide to stop what you're doing now, before you get caught, then you might as well turn yourself in right now."

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "Because if you turn against us on that battlefield tomorrow, I'm going to make you wish you had."

Ankoujin Seishin stood next to the open door leading out to the veranda, listening to the alarms going off in the distance. Seireitei's noble district was far enough away from the Gotei 13 that the sounds were muted, but there were so many of them that it would have been impossible not to hear it. It would also have been impossible to miss the flares of reiatsu that came up from every corner periodically, some stronger than others.

He placed a hand on the sword at his side, walking forward and facing the old man standing in the courtyard.

The Ankoujin Manor faced westward on the inner circle near the center of Seireitei, directly opposite the Kuchiki Manor, with Sokyoku Hill between them. Ryushin's eyes were trained to the south, in the direction of the Fifth, and in the direction of the force that was apparently amassing in Rukongai. Unlike his brother, father and son, Seishin had never entered the Academy, never trained as a shinigami, so he couldn't imagine what his father saw there. But that didn't mean he couldn't feel the reiatsu crackling around them, couldn't help but try and scan the chaotic mess for a single thread of the reiatsu he knew so well. Masaryu's reiatsu.

Ryushin had his hand around his zanpakuto, his expression pensive as he faced the south. As old as he was, that had was steady on his sword, although Seishin knew for a fact that he hadn't released his zanpakuto over a hundred years.

"I hope you aren't planning on going out there," said Ryushin, without looking at him. "There is nothing you can do for them with that nameless blade."

Nameless blade.

Seishin's hand tightened briefly around the hilt. When Isshin had been around, he hadn't regretted his decision to not join the Academy. He had always been the more bookish of the two of them, a little frailer than his brother even as a child. It had made sense for Isshin to join the Gotei 13. For himself, he'd been content to read books, to study, to learn to govern. One didn't need to be a shinigami to be a successful nobleman, and one didn't need to be a shinigami to properly lead a clan. Yet, he couldn't help but feel, in situations like this, as though he had made the wrong choice.

If there was anything he could have done to rush to his son's aid, at that moment, he would have done it.

"Can you feel them?" he asked his father instead, turning his attention towards the old man.

Ryushin's answer was to open his eyes, staring at a point in the distance. "Masaryu, Yuzu, Ichigo," he said. "I feel them all clearly. Masaryu and Ichigo are alive. They are done fighting. Yuzu is alive. She is not."

"And Isshin?" he asked.

He couldn't call that man his brother—not legally, not anymore. But that didn't mean the situation didn't have Seishin concerned. He'd been his brother once. And in the back of Seishin's mind, he still was.

"Moving," said his father, and that was all he would say on the issue. Seishin knew better than to hope for anything more.

"Karin?" asked Seishin, more out of curiosity than anything else. They both knew that Karin hadn't been in Seireitei for much of the week.

Ryushin's answer was cryptic. His eyes scanned the horizon, as if he expected to find something there. "Perhaps," was all he eventually said, shrugging his shoulders.

"What are you going to do?" asked Seishin, frowning at the man.

"Nothing," said Ryushin. "For the moment, nothing."

"You aren't going to help them?" asked Seishin, turning his attention towards the south. He stepped forward, raising his voice without meaning to. "Masa's out there. He—."

"I am aware," said Ryushin, cutting Seishin off. "But at the moment, there is nothing I can do. I have other duties. As do you."

The rebuke was evident in the older man's tone. Seishin fell silent, lowering his head. Inwardly, he was still worried. In the back of his mind, he saw Masa as he had seen him a few days ago, lying in a bed in the Fourth Division, his eyes closed and his zanpakuto at his side.

Not for the first time, he wished that he had joined the Gotei 13 after all.

The idea of his only son, the Ankoujin Clan's future, being out there alone…

"If you must do something, assemble some of the guards," said Ryushin, turning away from the south and beginning to walk away from Seishin, his back towards him as he began walking across the gardens. "Send them to the Sixth."

"The Sixth?" asked Seishin, blinking. "Why the Sixth?"

"I have a feeling that the Kuchiki Clan would appreciate it," said Ryushin. "As would Yuzu. Perhaps in the days ahead, we may come to appreciate it as well."

Seishin was about to ask his father what he meant, but the words escaped him as he realized where his father was going. There was only one thing on the other side of the gardens, at the edge of the Ankoujin estate, a small storage shed, under lock and key. The shed where Ryushin kept many of the items that he had brought over from his years as a shinigami captain, and as the head of the Ankoujin Clan.

He stared at his father's retreating back, the words dying in his throat before he could form them.

Perhaps Ryushin wasn't planning to stay uninvolved after all.

The other Divisions of Seireitei were in disarray, alarm bells ringing in every direction. It looked like almost all of the Divisions had their share of traitors, some more than others. Even those who had not had any incidents had been shaken into watchfulness by the confusion, at least one Division seeming to have alarm bells ringing for no reason at all. Shinigami raced everywhere, reiatsu flared, and members of the Fourth darted in and out of the fray, responding to calls for medical assistance from all corners of Seireitei.

In that confusion, no one noticed a lone shinigami, a large man with a bloodied spear in his hand, flash-stepping at a steady pace towards the Southern Gate.

No one except for Kurosaki Yuzu.

Koyanagi skidded to a sudden stop as she appeared in front of him, standing between him and the gate. Around her, five more shinigami materialized, staying off the streets and waiting on the rooftops that surrounded the halls. Yuzu stared at Koyanagi, her hands on Jungetsu's fans. The silk sash that bound the two fans together had settled over her shoulders, hovering just a few inches above her arms like a white river frozen in time. Koyanagi stared at her for a moment, as if surprised to find her there. Then, he grinned, lifting both hands to his spear and levelling the point at her.

"Fukutaicho," he said cheerfully, as if he was greeting her. "Didn't expect to find you all the way out here."

Yuzu raised her eyes to meet his, her expression uncharacteristically cold as her eyes landed on the blood at the point of his spear. "Don't start, Koyanagi," she said.

"Look, how about we just make this quick," said Koyanagi, taking a step forward. "I just wanna get out of Seireitei. We both know how this is going to end, so how about you just stand aside and let me through? Go back home and save the captain. I know that's what you want to do."

"We both know?" Yuzu repeated, her eyes narrowing. "Koyanagi, what we both know is that the only reason you were able to hurt Kuchiki-taicho was because he trusted you enough to turn his back to you. Believe me, I will not make that same mistake."

Koyanagi barked out a laugh. "So, you're what?" he asked, still grinning. "Going to kill me, fukutaicho? Like I'll believe that. You're soft. You can't kill anyone. You've never been able to."

Yuzu's response was to let go of the fan in her left hand, winding the sash around her arm to keep it in place. She snapped the fan in her right hand closed, holding it in front of her by the handle as she braced the palm of her hand against the bottom of it. The reiatsu blades on the left-hand fan receded, all of the reiatsu flowing through the sash to form slightly larger blades at the edges of the fan in her hand. Closed as it was, the reiatsu flared outward, turning the fan into something that resembled a small dagger. She raised her eyes to Koyanagi's, facing him. Koyanagi's eyes narrowed, the grin fading from his face as he scowled at her.

"So be it," he said. "Don't say I didn't give you a warning, fukutaicho."

He flash-stepped towards her, disappearing from sight. Yuzu flash-stepped as well, her hand on the dagger as she shot through the air towards him.

She appeared on his right, and there was a moment where the two of them were frozen in time at the apex of their jump, facing different directions. Koyanagi's spear was still in his hand. It was a second of absolute stillness, where nothing appeared to be happening, a moment of calm.

Then they both disappeared, flash-stepping again and landing on the ground.

There was a pause, and then Koyanagi pitched forward, eyes wide as two lines of blood appeared on his front and back, thin diagonal cuts just across his chest and sternum. His zanpakuto fell from his hands, the spear clattering uselessly to the ground. He didn't get back up.

"You're right," said Yuzu, her back towards him as she straightened up. Jungetsu's reiatsu blades receded, the fans glowing blue as they shrank back into their sword form. She raised the blade, sliding it calmly back into its sheath and keeping her thumb on the guard to keep it there. "I can't kill anyone. Which is unfortunate for you, Koyanagi-san, because I don't think Central 46 will be as kind."

She stepped forward. In an instant, Nagai and his team of shinigami were in front of her, surrounding her in a loose half-circle.

"Fukutaicho—," said Nagai, eyes wide.

"Take Koyanagi to the brig," she said, continuing to walk. "His Saketsu and Hakusui have been cut. You won't have any problem with him."

She continued to walk, her eyes fixed northward, where the Sixth was waiting. Where Byakuya was waiting.

"He'll never be a shinigami again."

TO BE CONTINUED

A/N: The move Yuzu used is called Senka (閃花, flash blossom). It's a canon move, and I'm sure some of you have already recognized it from its most famous practitioner. ^^

Omake

Location: The Fourth Division

"Kotetsu-fukutaicho, are you alright?" asked Hanataro, running up to the vice-captain with concern on his face. "I heard a crash, and some of our members attacked! What happened?"

Kotetsu Isane looked down at the wound on her arm at the same time as Hanataro's eyes turned towards it, then looked up at the healer. "Ah, well…" she said. "It looks like some of our members were actually traitors."

Hanataro's eyes grew round. "Traitors?" he asked. "Where did they go? Did they get away? Is there a battle going on?"

"No, there's no battle," said Isane, a nervous smile on her face as she looked back at the Division. The Fourth's alarm bells were conspicuously silent. "After Iemura-san and I were attacked, Unohana-taicho woke up. The—uh—the traitors disappeared into a room with her."

"So…" said Hanataro, his eyes wide.

"Mm…" said Isane, blinking back at the Division.

"They'll probably never be seen again…" said Hanataro.