Chapter Five: A Dangerous Discovery

The Living World – Twenty-one years after the Winter War

Rononeji Tatsuho, senior Squad Leader in the Secret Mobile Unit, was a veteran spy and scout. He had served in the Punishment Force for more than a century, and he was very good at his job. His hair was gray now, and his face lined under the cloth mask that obscured everything but his eyes, yet his movements were as fluid and silent as always, wrapped in a midnight cloak that absorbed the light, he prowled the night of the Living World, flitting between rooftops, coming to rest on flagpoles and balconies, unseen by the mortals who thronged through the town in the evening.

Tatsuho and the men and women he commanded had been stationed in this area for almost a year now, ever since the deaths of two shinigami stationed in the area in a short time, one confirmed to have been killed by renegades who wore the black.

Tatsuho was struck by a moment of irony. The cloak he wore, an invention of a former officer of the 2nd Division that hid his reiatsu was black, and members of the Secret Mobile Unit were the only shinigami serving the present Captain-Commander who were still permitted to wear black. Even so, the combat outfit he wore under the cloak was actually red, dyed in a shade of crimson so deep it was nearly black, but red nonetheless.

In all the time they had been here, Tatsuho and his men had seen only Hollow, which they dispatched as a matter of course. They had found no trace of any renegade shinigami, but Tatsuho didn't allow himself to become distracted. Some of the younger men and women under him grew impatient, wishing for more challenging enemies to hunt, but he had lived long enough to learn patience. He and his squad could do no more than their best to scour this town and its surrounding villages for the black robes. It was not for him to say when the mission would end. That decision would come from an officer higher ranked than he, and if they were recalled, Tatsuho wanted to be able to say with a clear conscience that he had never stopped looking.

Crouching on an awning over a train station, Tatsuho sat back on his heels for a moment, and watched the living mill and flow on the street below. Even if any of them was spiritually gifted, they wouldn't see him. Sticking to the shadows was second nature to a veteran of the Secret Mobile Unit, and even the rare human who could detect reiatsu wouldn't know he was there with the cloak he wore concealing his spiritual energy.

Lost in thought, Tatsuho remained where he was for a while, until a snatch of music brought him crashing back into the present, a whistled melody from a noh drama that had been popular in Seireitei in his youth. He looked up first, wondering if one of his squad had snuck up on him, but the sound came from below, among the living!

Tatsuho quickly located the whistler, a man approaching a healthy middle age, with long, dark hair that fell straight to his shoulders. He wore a modern business suit, and carried a cane and briefcase, the former of which he used to walk but did not appear to need. He was headed into the train station, and as he passed below, Tatsuho got a good look at his face for a moment.

Tatsuho's eyes widened in shock. The hair and the garb were different, but the cane was familiar, and the face he would recognize anywhere. Tatsuho sometimes reflected on the unfairness of a shinigami's lifespan being tied to their power; captains could live for almost a millennium, while he knew he would die of old age in less than half a century if battle didn't claim him first. But for an instant, Tatsuho was grateful that powerful shinigami didn't age quickly, as he looked at a face that hadn't changed significantly in more than a century, the face of the man who had designed the stealth cloak he wore, who had trained him how to use it: Urahara Kisuke.

He went completely still, a chill going down his spine. If Kisuke had seen him, had sensed him… well, Tatsuho had seen that cane in action. Suppressing the urge to flee, he sank deeper into the shadows. When moments passed and his life was not ended by a singing bolt of red energy, when the whistling faded, Tatsuho finally moved. Cupping his hands, he formed a hell butterfly. =Urahara Kisuke spotted in surveillance area. I will tail him as long as I can.=

For a moment, Tatsuho hesitated. Protocol dictated that he send the butterfly to his immediate superior, the 6th Seat of the 2nd Division. But Urahara Kisuke was known to be near the top of the "Find and Kill" list that the Captain-Commander had given to Captain Soifon shortly after his rise to power. Most of those names were crossed out now, but the one second from the top was not. Satisfied that those higher up the chain would want the information quickly, and considering the likelihood that he would not survive tailing one of the most dangerous shinigami alive to his destination, Tatsuho visualized the slender woman with twin braids ending in golden hoops, and tossed the hell butterfly aloft. It vanished, and Tatsuho moved.

Crossing rooftops, he made his way to the train platform. Hiding in the murk, he watched Kisuke board a train. As other passengers crowded on, Tatsuho made his way overhead, dropping cautiously onto the roof of a nearby car. He was taking a risk that Kisuke might spot him when he left the train, but he had to follow. Tatsuho pressed himself low against the roof of the train as it sped away from the city. As they headed out into the country, it got darker, and Tatsuho relaxed a bit. With each stop he hid himself as best he could and waited for the one Kisuke would disembark on.

It was almost an hour later when Kisuke left the train. Calling on every bit of his century of skill, Tatsuho followed. The former Captain of the 12th Division made his way to a nearby parking area, where he retrieved a motorcycle and rode off. Tatsuho followed along the road, sticking to the darkness and leaping rapidly from one tree to the next. When they crossed open fields, Tatsuho simply gained altitude and ran on the air. He would never have risked silhouetting himself against the stars if Kisuke had been on foot; he would have crawled through the fields. But the helmet Tatsuho's old mentor wore limited his field of vision, and though he looked back occasionally, he didn't look up far enough to see Tatsuho, who took care to avoid the reflected fields of vision the bike's mirrors offered.

Following the motorcycle until it vanished into the trees up a personal drive, Tatsuho hung back, moving carefully now through the trees to the home he could see, lit up against the darkness. Sticking to the shadows, he observed. He saw Kisuke get off the motorcycle, and nearly get tackled by a young boy who looked so much like the former captain that he was obviously a son. They went inside, and through windows Tatsuho got his second surprise of the night when he glimpsed the unburned half of a face that belonged to the name at the very top of the same list on the wall of Captain Soifon's office: Kuchiki Rukia. As they sat down to dinner, he noticed that the cook was the house's forth occupant, a tall teenage girl with long, dark hair, brown eyes and a slender frame corded with muscle. The four were joined at the table by two more people that Tatsuho didn't recognize; a Western man with light brown hair and blue eyes, and a Japanese woman in her thirties who resembled the teen girl.

After reconnoitering the rest of the property and assuring himself that there was no one else present, Tatsuho dispatched another hell butterfly with an update. Then he retreated further into the trees, near the road, and settled down to wait and watch.

Seireitei

In the spacious personal quarters of the Captain-Commander, the Gatekeeper sat on the floor behind his low desk, lamps burning around him to provide light as his pen drifted over the papers in front of him. A frown of concentration was etched on his cruel, gaunt face, his cold gray eyes glittering in irritation. Some of the Captain-Commander's duties that he had no interest in, like supervising the Shinigami Academy and encouraging the sniveling brats to excel, he could foist off on subordinates, but even when he delegated responsibility, there was always more paperwork, more decisions that needed his input.

The Gatekeeper shook his head ruefully, the silver orbs that capped his braids tinkling musically as he moved. Early in his tenure, he had even tried killing a few people for sending him things he didn't need to deal with, but even that didn't stop the flow of paperwork. Lower ranked officers just got their superiors to file things for them, people he needed enough that he couldn't summarily execute them. Finishing his reading of another document, he signed it and tossed it onto the "Done" pile.

Still, the Gatekeeper couldn't complain. He had known what the job would entail when his liege, the King of Seireitei, had sent him to arrest Yamamoto Genryusai and replace the old man as Captain-Commander of the Gotei 13. The job had its perks, anyways. Glancing down the hallway at the closed door to the bedroom where his consort was already sleeping, his thin lips twisted themselves into a cruel smile. Yes, ruling the Gotei 13 had many perks, of which she had been just one, if perhaps the most fun of all.

The Gatekeeper's reminiscence was interrupted when a red robed member of the Secret Remote Unit wearing their signature triangular straw hat alighted on the walkway beyond the open wall of his office and dropped to one knee. "Forgive me, Captain-Commander, Captain Soifon sends urgent news." Still kneeling, the messenger extended a scroll. Taking it irritably, the Gatekeeper broke the seal and opened it.

His irritation vanished almost immediately. When the messenger glanced up, he saw the sadistic smile on the Captain-Commander's face, and shivered. "You may go," the Captain-Commander said absently. When the messenger was gone, the Gatekeeper read the message again with a chuckle, then rolled it back up and put it on his desk.

"Chinatsu, come here," the Gatekeeper commanded. When he heard no footsteps, he turned to glower at the painted screen behind him in the corner of the room. Focusing his spiritual senses on the person behind the screen, he was infuriated to detect the fuzzy reiatsu of a sleeping soul. Flicking our his arm, the Gatekeeper let one of the small throwing knives in his sleeve fall into his hand, then hurled it at the screen in a single motion. It pierced through the screen, which already had a few other small holes in it. He heard it slice cloth and flesh before embedding itself in the wall with a solid "thunk".

"Oww…" a sleepy young voice complained from behind the screen.

"Get out here now or you'll get worse, whelp," the Gatekeeper warned. He heard a panicked squeak and then a patter of feet.

A fourteen year old girl rushed out from behind the screen and fell to her knees before him. "Sorry, sir," she gasped. Chinatsu was thin and coltish, in the middle of a growth spurt and all gangling knees and elbows. She was still flat-chested and boyish in appearance, although her wide, expressive grey eyes and face were more feminine. She wasn't aided by her shocks of straight orange hair, cut messily short like a boy's, as though trimmed with the blade of her own sword, a short, curved blade whose scabbard she clutched tightly even as she knelt before him. She wore a short-sleeved white tunic and pants that came down to mid-calf, her feet bare. Her right sleeve was rent open and blood was staining the cloth red, but she seemed not to notice it.

"You were asleep," he said flatly, his voice heavy with displeasure.

"I'm sorry sir," Chinatsu squeaked. "It's been so long since this morning and I didn't have any lunch… or dinner,"

The Gatekeeper considered. She had attended him in the morning and carried a few messages for him. Had he forgotten to let her leave before he departed for the day to perform a division inspection? She knew better than to leave her place without his express command, so she would have stood there behind the screen all day, waiting. It didn't matter; there was no excuse for falling asleep while she was expected to be alert and ready.

Without changing expression, the Gatekeeper backhanded Chinatsu, sending her sprawling onto the floor. She winced, rubbing her cheek gingerly. She glanced up at him to see if he was done. When he didn't strike her again, she got up and knelt before him again. "I don't want to hear excuses, Chinatsu," he said coldly. "Fall asleep on duty again and we'll see if hanging from your wrists for a day will aid you in remaining awake."

Chinatsu's face went pale and she shivered, unconsciously rubbing her slender wrists as though imagining it. She pressed her forehead to the floor. "Yes, sir. I'm sorry sir, I'll try harder."

"I hope so," he said. "Now, go find that muscle-headed Captain of the 11th Division and tell him to come here immediately. I don't care if he's asleep, drunk or just out hitting something with his zanpakuto, I want him here within the hour or you will be punished." When the Gatekeeper paused and gave her his familiar, sadistic smile, dread joined hunger in gnawing at her gut. "Since you've already rested, after you find him and deliver my message, you can relieve his men standing guard duty outside the 11th Division Barracks and remain there until dawn." Chinatsu couldn't suppress a groan of dismay. She'd just fallen asleep before he woke her with his throwing knife. Now she wouldn't get any sleep at all tonight. Maybe if she was lucky one of the gate guards would at least take pity and give her something to eat. "Do you understand?" he growled.

Swallowing hard, Chinatsu nodded and jumped to her feet, ignoring how much they ached after standing barefoot on the wooden floor all day and trying not to think about how they'd feel after spending the rest of the night standing at attention on the hard stones outside the 11th Division's gate. She dashed for the exit, tying her sword to her sash as she went. "And heal yourself," the Gatekeeper snapped irritably. "I don't want you bleeding on the floor."

Chinatsu paused, having forgotten about the shallow cut on her arm from his throwing knife. Pain had been her companion so often that it was easy to forget that she was hurt sometimes, especially when she was trying her best to avoid incurring even more pain. She stood still long enough to press her left hand to the cut on her right arm. Yellow light flashed beneath her palm for a moment, and when it faded, the gash in her skin was gone and the cloth of her sleeve was mended and pristine. She didn't waste time healing the bruise on her cheek where he had struck her; she doubted anyone would care, or comment if they did. Most people in Seireitei didn't know what Chinatsu looked like without a bruised face, black eye or split lip. Running outside, she leapt into the air, forcing reiatsu into her tired feet. She blurred into the distance and was gone.