Here it is people. Pay attention, the plot thickens.

I picked up the Shadows scent-trail again and the two of us walked briskly after it. There weren't as many of those Gateway-platforms in this world as there had been in the other one but that just made the trail easier to follow. There were, however, more little nasties hiding in the woods to spring out at us and I was kept from getting bored by being able to slice away at them for kicks. They were all really weird-lookin' critters; some of them looked like someone had taken a bunch of different kinds of animals and mashed them together or given them traits found in other sorts of beasts, other of the creatures looked like someone had given the weirdest looking plant a person could come up with the power to walk around on two (or a hundred) feet and attack people. There were vines that came to life and cats-like creatures that blew fire, there were creatures with more than one head, there were things that looked like someone had crossed a tree a jellyfish and had decided to give the result legs so that it could move around and there were other creatures that looked like someone took a milipede and decided to give each segment a fire-breathing head. There was, however, no other beast that was big and fun like the one that Isana had found earlier though, and I was privately a little disappointed by that despite the fact I wanted to get this Shadow I was chasing as quickly as possible. But all the small-fry kept me entertained as we continued our journey across the Realm, following the trail of the Shadow. It was during a relatively peaceful spell that Miss Isana decided to open a conversation.

"Hey renji," she said into the silence as we walked on a dirt path through a wooded area. It was mostly silent anyway, there was the sound of crickets and the chirp of birds in the background, it was when those sounds went dead that I pulled out Zabimaru and prepared to fight.

"Yeah?" I asked curiously.

"I think there's something different about that thing that I bound into that necklace earlier."

"Different as opposed to what?" I asked. "Everything in this weird place is different."

I hadn't seen a single thing yet that I would attribute as being completely normal for me. There were no Hollows here, there were no people or any buildings. It was just one weird setting after another. The monsters, even the tiny critters, were all weird looking things that I had never seen or heard of before.

"Most of the creatures that you've been killing for the last little while have been kinda small, and when you kill them, that stardust-looking stuff leaks out of them and blows away in the wind," she said.

That was another odd thing we'd noticed about the feral creatures inhabiting this realm, once i landed a killing blow they disintegrated into a sort of dusty-light that glowed like stars and blew away like puff-mushroom spores. It was pretty and it saved me from having to worry about whether or not the creature was actually dead.

"But that thing from earlier kept coming back. There was no stardust stuff. And for another thing, it had that strange bead that looks like it was actually meant to be part of that necklace."

"So it was a booby trap an' ya boobied into it," I said with a shrug.

"What of it?"

"Well don't you think that that's a little strange?" she asked.

Hn, now that she mentioned it...

"Here, lemme smell it," I said reaching a hand backwards and gesturing she should hand it to me.

When she put the large talisman in my hand I was a little surprised at how heavy it felt. I brought it up near me and took a whiff.

"Yeah," I said after a minute. "Yer right, that bead has the smell of Shadow all over it."

I guess I hadn't noticed because I'd been so busy having fun.

"You think the Shadow might have left it behind?" she thought.

"Hmm.. could be," I said. "I dunno how smart or dumb Shadows are. I've only encountered the one, and when I did, it wasn't so much into talking as it was in trying to get at the kids."

And turning me mortal, let's not forget that.

Deep down I had sort of thought of Shadows as just being like another sort of Hollow, big and stupid and powerful. What if they were more like the Espada? Smart and fast and good fighters. If so, and it knew we were actually after it, times ahead could get interesting. I took another whiff of the bead, just to see what else I could pick up about it and caught something odd, or I guessed it was odd... it was hard to tell what was normal and what wasn't when everything was so strange.

"What?" Isana asked, seeing by my very easy to read face that I had picked something up.

"The bead doesn't just smell like Shadow," I said. "It smells your spell and this place... and-"

:The structure of this hado smells very, very familiar,: I thought with a sinking feeling of dread.

I had served under Aizen along with Momo and Kira for a number of years and, even though he's a traitor now, all three of us had liked him then. The one thing I had learned about him in my tenure in his squad was that he was incredibly adept at kido. He wasn't powerful, or at least, he wasn't terribly powerful. He'd probably never make it in Squad Two with all of thier kido powerhouses, but what power he did have he was masterfully effective with. He knew ways to twist and turn even the simplest of hado into doing something I could never in a hundred years begin to imagine. Then again, I wasn't exactly known for creative thinking either. The point was that Aizen, while not powerful, was beyond a master-level at manipulating spells. I couldn't detect his scent on the bead, but the twisty way that the spell had been set up... that had his fingerprints all over it.

:Could he be moving here, in the Dangai?: I wondered.

He wasn't in Hueco Mundo anymore, the advance team that Second and Eleventh had sent in to clear out and investigate the former lair of the Espada hadn't turned up so much as a nail paring of his. We had Gin Ichimaru in the tower, but everyone knew he wasn't talking. We weren't sure about Tousen, most people thought that he was still with Aizen. Aizen was still out there somewhere, plotting, setting things up to make his move. Myself, and it seemed like everyone else, had simply assumed that he was hiding somewhere in the Mortal Realm, keeping a low profile while he planned his next move. What if he was here? What if he'd tripped across a Gate or a weak point in the Mortal Realm and discovered the Divine Realms spotted throughout the Dangai?

~...And there was one other access to the system, around the time that Aizen looked up the information about the oh-ken...~

The report that Nemu had dug up for me echoed back, only adding to the sinking feeling of dread clenching inside my stomach. It had to have been Aizen who had accessed information about the Believed back then, so he knew that there was something else out there. There was a larger than average possibility that he had investigated the matter. After all, if I had stumbled across it, how hard could it be? And my former Captain wasn't the sort to let a possible advantage slip through his fingers out of laziness, he'd have stored the information away for later use, I was sure of it.

"You look like you're thinking pretty heavily about something," isana noted after a little while.

I guess my face was just that easy to read.

"That bead o' yers just gave me a thought," I said honestly.

"Well I have nothing to do right now, a penny for your thoughts? Maybe I can help."

I shrugged and explained a little bit to her.

"... so this traitor Captain of yours, Aizen, wants to become a god himself by breaking into the Imperial Court of the Realm of the Dead and killing the Emperor.," she surmized after the explanation. "And you and your other Reaper friends got together and destroyed the thing he was going to use to make a key to get into the castle but he escaped and now none of you can find him, do I have it right?"

"Basically," I said. "That bead you bound up... something about it reminded me of Aizen. I usta serve under him, before I was transferred to another squad. One of my best friends, Momo Hinamori was his Lieutenant before he showed himself as a traitor, and one of my other best friends was his co-conspirators lieutenant. Anyway, the way that hado was made, it was all tied up and twisty, just like the way he useta make spells. He gave me a demonstration once on the art of free thinking when working with kido, I remember being so awed and impressed by it but part of me now things that he might have done it just ta rub it in my face that I'll never reach his level."

"Hmmmm..." Isana said, musing to herself as we walked along.

"I'm a woman so maybe this doesn't apply to him seeing a women are more inclined to common sense than men," I shot her a dry look for her comment.

"But I never have only one key to get into the house. I have the key I carry with me everyday and use but I also have a spare key that I keep carefully hidden, or with a trusted friend, to get into my house. So, if one plan didn't work for him, he's probably got a back-up plan. There's more than one way to get power I'd imagine."

I pondered that as I followed the scent of burning metal and incense towards a gateway platform on a high hill five or six miles away from us.

It could be that he might try using the Divine Realms in the Dangai to gain access to the Imperial Court, provided that access to the Court could be gotten that way at all. I didn't know much about the way the Divine Realms worked other than what had been explained to me, but it sort of made sesne to me that the different Imperial Courts (it was so strange to think of there being more than just the Court of Souls) might have some kind of diplomatic relations with each other. Maybe Aizen would try to go through the other Courts.

:But Aizen ain't really the type to go knockin' politely on some ones door and beggin' ta be granted an audience,: I thought to myself.

No, he was more of a go in, flatten the resistance and take what he wanted by superior strength sort of fellow. Fortunately for us, in the last days of our confrontation we had managed to decimate nearly all of his main forces, and the few that had escaped back to Hueco Mundo and the Citadel of Las Noches there were now currently being rounded up and exterminated by a cooperative assault by the Thirteen Court Guard Squads. Aizen had no army with which to take over another Court.

:But just because he has no army, doesn't mean he's not up to something.:

If one path to get his own Oh-ken and access to the Court of the Emperor wasn't working out for Aizen, would he then try another path? Or..

:Or did he know about this path all along, and the other path was just a distraction?: I wondered.

Gaah! It was ridiculous for me to try to figure out all the weird twisty ways that people like him thought! They could never come at anything in a plain sort of way but they always came at everything sideways. Even his own Zanpaktou was based on misdirection.

:Maybe yer just overrreacting,: I told myself.

Not everything had to come down to Aizen and his grand master plot for total domination. Maybe it was just a coincidence that this heretofore unknown enemy would suddenly start stealing kids secretly in the Rukon District. If I hadn't accidentally stumbled across the rumors and gotten curious enough to investigate, the movements of this Shadow enemy would never have been uncovered. (I also would not currently be bound into mortal bones, traipsing gate by gate across undiscovered realms as the bound vassal/protector of a pushy, bossy human woman who happened to be the reincarnation of my boss's wife!)

I still didn't feel like I knew enough about my mysterious new enemy in general. I basically knew what they were and basically where they came from, but I didn't know anything about their capabilities (besides the fact that they could open a Portal across The Line without detection and turn unsuspecting Soul Reaper Lieutenants mortal). Nor did I know what was motivating them. Why steal kids? Why steal kids from the Rukon District?

:Why steal kids from the Rukon District with spiritual powers?: I wondered.

Then my mind made one of those intuitive leaps.

If Miss Isana was to be believed and her son really was a Quincy, then maybe all of the other kids had been Quincy as well. The Quincy Clan had been wiped out well over a century ago, with only a few stragglers hanging on. For some reason thier souls and thier powers never reappeared on the Wheel of Rebirth, because if they had, more Quincy's with spirit powers would have been born in the succeeding generations, but Ishida was always going on and on (and on) about how he was the last. What if there was a reason why there were no more Quincy's? What if there existed someone or something that was preventing the proper transmigration of their souls on the Wheel of Rebirth?

:Nevermind that speculation,: I thought to myself. :More importantly, if those kids in the Rukon District that had gotten taken by the Shadows were like Miss Isana's son, then that means they're Quincy's and it isn't just random... they were especially selected. Then that would mean that the Shadows are targeting the Quincy for some reason.:

But why? What possible interest could the Shadows have in the Quincy? It must be something really important for that unknown enemy to risk betraying its presence by sneaking into the Soul Society, if not the Seireitei itself, and causing a stir by kidnapping children.

:It only caused a stir in the Rukon District though,: I thought. :Nobody else seems to care about those missing Rukon kids, certainly none of the other Reapers do.:

Still, the Shadows seemed to be making an effort to keep their presence low-key. Why risk exposing themselves to the Soul Reapers if the thing they were taking the risk for wasn't counted as a significant gain? They wanted them for a reason, and that reason had to be important or they wouldn't risk it. There had to be something about the Quincy that they either needed... or the Quincy were counted as a significant threat.

:I dunno which one it is, an' my feet are already pretty firmly on this path or else I'd head to Uruahara's shop and tell him ta give that Ishida brat a heads up.:

I guess I'd have to count on my letter putting the Ichigang on high alert. I would hand one thing to 'em, those mortal brats looked out fer each other right and proper. I was probably just worrying over nuthin'. If a Shadow tried attacking him, Ishida was good enough with a bow to take it out-

:Hey, waitaminit...: A thought occured to me.

If the Shadows weren't interested in the Quincy ability to channel reishin spirit particles through their medalions (which they used to fuel thier weapons) then maybe it was the weapons themselves that the Shadows were after.

"After all, apparently they have nothing to fear from us Soul Reapers, we can't reap the souls of beings that have never been human." I muttered to myself, following my train of thought as easily as I was sniffing out that Shadow's trail. Isana looked at me oddly for a moment but decided to leave me in peace to sort it out for myself.

"And if they don't fear our element-based Zanpaktou, an' they know they're immune to 'em, there's gotta be somethin' else they're afraid of."

I turned to Miss Isana and asked

"Didn't that mountain-spirit say somethin' about a weapon that could kill 'em?"

"Yes," Isana said in reply. "He said that your Zanpaktou, which relied on the four elements, would not destroy a creature that was made of pure spirit. He said something about needing a weapon that relied on the fifth element... whatever that means."

The fifth element...

"Spirit!" I exclaimed, the light coming on.

It was so obvious that I don't know why I hadn't made the connection before. The fifth element was the spirit.

And doesn't Quincy mean five in some old dead language?

I kinda thought that it did. So Quincy weapons were weapons made of spirit and so, they were the only things that could kill a creature made purely of spirit. The Quincy could kill the Shadows.

"Ihy's that important?" Isana asked, so I quickly explained my theory to her.

"So that Shadow took my boy because he's got a weapon in him that is the only thing that can kill one of the Shadows?" she summarized the only important part to her.

"Yeah, basically," I said. "That's my thought anyway."

There was the small slim chance that, if Aizen were somehow involved in all this like a puppetmaster working backstage, then he might have found another way to use the Quincy powers. I couldn't even begin to speculate about what use he might put them to. Damn, I shouldn't have left the Mortal World, now I had no way of getting another notice to my comrades to update them. I couldn't leave the trail now that I was on it, or else the scent would fade and I'd never find my quarry. I felt frustrated at not being able to get in contact with anyone and give them a warning. What if the whole Seireitei got caught blind-sided by a sudden mass-attack by the Shadows and I could have warned them but hadn't? It wasn't a likely event but it could happen.

Still, I felt like I didn't know enough about them. What I had was information about their origins and a single encounter with one lone Shadow (that had turned me mortal) and a whole bunch of speculation about why they were kidnapping kids from the Rukon District. I knew that if I went back to the Seireitei with what I had now and tried to call a meeting of the Captains to warn them about a possible threat to the Seireitei I'd probably be dismissed or laughed right out of chambers (right before they arrested me for supposedly breaking Seireitei rules). None of them were likely to care all that much about a few missing kids, and a couple of rumors with no solid evidence wasn't going to get my warnings noticed and taken seriously. I needed something I could show them. Something that was going to make them take me seriously.

:I'd say drag back to body of a dead Shadow, but I don' think they have actual bodies,: I thought.

The one I had encountered hadn't seemed to.

I wondered again just exactly what it was that I thought I was doing there. Sure I had to track it down while the trail was hot or I'd never find it at all...

::As usual Renji,:: Zabimaru noted with wry humor. ::You are not long in the thinking ahead department. What were you planning on doing with it once you found it? You and I alone cannot kill it.::

Well if we couldn't kill it ourselves we'd just have ta get someone who could. I'd bet one of those Rukon Quincy's would do the deed happily.

::And if they are too young to reliably manifest their powers? Neither of us should ever be so desperate that we would send in a child to do our own dirty work.::

Good point.

:Well shit,: I thought in frustration, stymied again.

I knew some stuff but I didn't know the important stuff. I could track it down but I couldn't kill it.

:Hey Zabimaru, whatcha think?: I requested his opinion.

::What about taking it captive?:: Zabimaru suggested.

I was more of a "take no prisoners" kinda guy.

::You would have the evidence you would need to get the Captains to take you seriously,:: he pointed out.

It seemed like a lot of work to lug around some prisoner.

::Do you have any better ideas?:: he asked.

I thought about it for a bit and found that there were yet more problems with even that sort of solution. The fact that they were old gods, and therefore pretty much automatically guaranteed to be way more powerful than I was drifted first to mind, followed by, how exactly was someone supposed to bind something that had no connections to anything but itself and its old Realm?

For one long moment I held the terrible vision of myself having to hop from gate to gate and realm to realm, laying binding spells all over the place to fight the Shadows.

:No frickin' way am I doin' that!: I thought in alarm.

I was a Soul Reaper dammit, not some kind of... I didn't know what to call it. Besides that, I didn't know how many of those buggers there were, there could only be a few but there could be a few hundred. I didn't know if they were working together, if they were coordinated or not. The fact that they seemed to be targeting a group kinda made me suspect that they were at least hunting together but I knew nothing about them. More crap I didn't know. What the hell was I doing? I was like some idiot flailing blindly in the dark, hoping to hit something by accident. I shared my thoughts with Miss Isana, reasoning that she seemed like a pretty smart woman, maybe she'd see something I didn't.

"We definately can't fight them that way," she agreed with me. "We don't know how big the Dangai is and how many Realms are in it. For all we know it goes on forever. There's no way we'd be able to fight anything efficiently if we have to run around trying to track it down first. That's one thing that's always confused me a little about your story Renji."

"what's that?" I asked curiously.

"If this guy's talent lies in creating Illusions that no-one can break through, and he covertly amassed an army of Hollows in Hueco Mundo that was strong enough to give all you Soul Reapers a run for your money, why didn't he just sneak off in the middle of the night with that girl of yours who had that... thingy-ummy-"

"Hougyoku," I supplied.

"Yeah that. Why did he go to all the trouble of getting her tried and sentenced to execution, then slaughtering your Senate, and turning you all against each other if he was only going to pull that hougie-thing out of her in the middle of day light where everyone can see him, blab his master plan to you all and then tell everyone "hey! lookit me! I'm a traitor! And here's where to find me!" It makes no sense. You'd think that if he'd spent all this time putting his peices into place quietly, he would have been a little more... subtle, verdad?"

Whack!

Have ya ever been hit by a sudden revelation dropping down on you like a ton of bricks from out of the clear blue sky? Let me tell ya, it ain't pretty.

Captain Souske Aizen was no fool. In fact, he was the very opposite of a fool.

Now I'm almost famous in the Soul Reapers for the level of my density and inability to understand stuff that had nothing to do with killing Hollows dead and rendering anything else related to them into a similar state. Franky, despite my rank, ya just point me in the right direction and let me go at 'em. I was a fighter and damned good at it... which it why my sudden lapse into the world of intelligence came as such a sudden and unwelcome surprise. I was used to being stupid and having people take advantage of my density, It was a distinctly uncomfortable feeling to suddenly realize that all the rest of the men whom I regarded as my superiors in intelligence and I basically counted on all of 'em ta run the show for me (just let me do what I did best) had been taken in as easily as I had.

Why would a man who was not a fool suddenly reveal his traitorous intentions in front of the whole seireitei, and make a big production of casting off his shackles and leaving for his lair of evil when he could have more easily continued on in his position, spinning out his plans like an evil spider in a web, biding his time and waiting? Our fearless leader was over two thousand years old, and though he might have aged very very well, he had still aged. There was no-one else in his line to inherit so the position of Head-Captain was bound to be up for grabs in a few centuries. Wouldn't it have made more sense for an evil twisty schemer like Aizen to just wait it out? True, Aizen had been handed a unique opportunity to get hold of the hougyoku and thus to a great deal of power, but there were surely other ways of gaining power for a man like him. Aizen had always struck me as being vaguely distainful of people who just swung around thier power like barbarians with clubs rather than getting the most out of every speck of it. That was the kinda guy he was. Getting past the fact that he'd betrayed the Seireitei at all, the thing that bugged me now was the way he had chosen to reveal it. Lying in wait for centuries, gathering allies, putting his people into place... that was more the kind of shadow game that an evil schemer like him went for. Taking it in that context, Aizen's sudden grab for power, his announcement of his intentions, the flashy way he had openly exited the Seireitei after spouting off his evil scheme right in front of all of the captains? It just didn't make sense.

:And the way he gathered a collection of easy targets all in one location for us to concentrate our fire on easily...: I thought, with a sinking feeling of dread.

I just stopped, unable to take another step as the full implications hit me. Hard. I sank to my knees.

It was a diversion.

Hueco Mundo. The Espada. Orihime? It had all been a diversion. The plot with Rukia and the Hougyoku was all to kick-start it off. He'd announced his betrayal in the most flashy and obvious way possible to draw our attention to the Espada he'd set up in Hueco Mundo. But they had been nothing more than very obvious bait. He'd wanted to draw us out, get us to commit our forces.

The memory of the dog-fight I had seen that day in the back alley of Hangdog suddenly flashed to the fore of my mind. Two dogs fighting over a prize, injuring and weakening each other enough to where a third dog, rested and uninjured could sweep in and defeat them both, stealing the coveted meat. If there were suddenly gonna a new enemy on the scene that no-one had ever heard of and knew nothing about that was well rested and fresh fer th' fight...

I mentally tallied how many of our people were in Hueco Mundo running cleanup duty on the Arrancars and the Espada right then and the numbers made my stomach turn.

All of Second Division including Captain Soi Fon, three-quarters of Eleventh Division including first seat Madarame, a quarter of Thirteenth Division, a quarter of First Division (all of their Seated officers from Third Seat down to Twentieth were coordinating the different fighting units), fully half of Ninth and Seventh Divisions had been called to the field along with most of their upper-level officers, a quarter of Twelfth was out there gathering samples, A quarter of the healers of Fourth were there to provide back up and healing, nearly all of Tenth was over there...

The numbers weren't as bad as they could be, but they were still bad. If I was right and it was a trap, then when the trap was sprung it would seriously weaken the Seireitei. Possibly even cripple it. The only squads that had been asked to stay home and babysit the fort were Third (with Kira nominally in charge) Fifth (which had yet to be sorted out, because Momo was too frail right then to step up to bat) Sixth and Eighth.

:Four squads,: I thought, despair and panic sweeping over me.

Four squads and only mine was up to full strength and at that just barely; I had still been training noobs to take up the positions that had been vacated in the action.

I tried to grab a hold of myself before I dropped everything and rabbited back home to warn them. If I came busting through that gate, suddenly mortal, and started raving like a lunatic they'd never believe me. I had no proof. This was all only conjecture. I couldn't produce solid evidence of a single Shadow, much less a whole conspiracy of them. Most of the people there had never even heard of the Believed, much less the Divine Realms. I could count on Urahara looking into it based on my letter but who knew what he would find and where he would go with it.

:it's not just a matter of want to now,: I realized. :I need proof. I have to have it. I have to get it to make them listen to me and withdraw our forces before it's too late, if it isn't too late already. I gotta figure out a way to capture a Shadow so I have something to prove to them that I'm not just making it up.:

I didn't have many options open to me right then, i was essentially flying blind, but it stood to reason that if the Shadows were faded members of the Believed, that was, old elemental spirits, then another elemental spirit would know a way to beat them. I had a sudden thought, the little Missy had a way for us to get in to see one too... she'd sealed a deal with that mountain spirit to bind me into service with her in exchange he'd given her a scroll to deliver to the Emperor of the Earth Court. That seemed like a good, perhaps the only, lead on a way to trap an elemental spirit that we had right then.

"-Enji? Renji!" I suddenly became aware of Miss Isana shaking my shoulder and calling my name. I blinked and looked up at her.

"What?" I asked.

"You suddenly spaced out there and then you just dropped," she said in exasperation. "I thought you might have gotten hurt or something. Are you alright."

"Not really," I said honestly. "But it has nothing to do with you. Hey... that Mountain Spirit gave you a scroll to deliver to the Court of Genbu. What's that all about?"

"The Court of Genbu is the Great Court of the Earth Spirits," Isana said, looking perplexed by my sudden non-sequiter. "He says that it is a petition to the Emperor he's allied to. I assume he's bored of the mortal realm and wants to join his Court, although he didn't actually say so."

"Ya think the Emperor might know more about the Shadows?" I asked urgently.

"Probably," she said. "After all, he is a Great Spirit, the master over one of the four cardinal elements."

"Good," I said pivoting on one heel to hit the nearest gate. "Let's go."

"Hey!" she snapped, looking at me in anger. "You promised that you were going to help me find my son, and you keep delaying it. Why do you want to take a sudden detour to the Earth Court now?"

"I need a spell that can bind a Shadow," I told her. "It's a matter of life and death. I can come back later and pick up the trail but I need a way to beat my enemy once I've found 'im. If I can track him and fight him but not defeat him, then how am I s'posed to rescue yer kid?"

She shot me a glare that could have felled pigeons in mid-air.

"Lookit it this way," I said. "You were gonna have to go that way sooner or later and we need that information."

"How do I know you're not just trying to get out of it?" she demanded angrily.

"We both have the same goal still," I pointed out. "I need ta git that Shadow as soon as possible just as much as you do, but it doesn't do either of us any good ta hunt 'im down and then not be able ta defeat it. If we find yer kid and can't git 'im back how've we helped 'im?"

"I hate this," she said in a shaking voice. " I want my son back. I want to hold him in my arms."

Oh crap, she was crying. I was helpless against a woman's tears... no way was I hugging her though. No matter what her reincarnation was, that was my boss' woman, an' I wasn't suicidal. Still, I absolutely couldn't stand to see a woman in tears before me and not do anything about it.

"We'll git 'im back. I promise," I said instead, letting her hear the sincerity in my voice. "I swear on Zabimaru's strength that I am gonna do everything I can to reunite you with yer boy. Ya hear me?"

It took longer than I would have liked and I felt horrible just watching her tiny body wrack with sobs. She looked so much like my Rukia that it just made it all worse but at last the sobs abated into sniffles and she rubbed her eyes dry.

"I want my boy," she said, trying to firm her voice.

The look she gave me was feirce and demanding.I nodded firmly, once. A promise between us.

"Let's go," I said. "The sooner we make a deal with that Earth Court Emperor, the sonner we can get back ta chasin' Shadows."

I'm just going to ignore for now the fact that what you just said is usually considered to be an exercise in futility."

Sorry its late, my schedule had still be crazy-hectic and I hadn't uploaded my latest batch of chapters to my account so I couldn't access them anywhere but at my home computer (and by the time I got home I was always too tired to get online) but I finally had a day off today so here it is! I hope you all enjoyed the nice little twist. When i got to thinking about it, Aizen's manuver that is, it didn't make any sense to me that he'd spend so much time being covert and manipulative then suddenly make this big huge exit where everyone can see him and knows he's a traitor, then all but hang a giant neon sign at his new lair practically screaming "here I am, come and fight me one by one". Aizen's got to be a lot sneakier than that. So my thought was that he used the Espada and Las Noches as both booby traps and disposable decoys while he powered up his real army for a fight.