Ask, and ye shall receive. While my last chapter is not my shortest, it was certainly shorter than is normal for me, especially these days. Consider it a prologue, if you will. I trust that this update will be more suitable to my current standards, and I hope you enjoy it. I certainly had fun with it.

I am going to be updating this particular piece each Wednesday. While this particular update is late (busy day that didn't end until now, at 9 PM), expect to see it up late Tuesday night, or early Wednesday morning. So, the next chapter will be posted 7 days from now.

With that said, enjoy.

Did anybody have a clue what to do in the beginning? Not really, and that was half the problem.

The Gotei 13 kept the peace well enough to keep order when things were normal. But when the unexpected reared its head, it always felt like they broke apart like a stained-glass window met with a sledgehammer, and nobody ever seemed able to keep control for longer than six-point-two seconds at a time. Hitsugaya kept order in his men, order and discipline. But that didn't seem to count for much on the field.

He didn't think of any of his fellow captains as incompetent—except maybe Zaraki, but then the 11th Division sometimes felt like a separate entity all its own, where his brand of leadership actually counted for something.

But even so, even if all the Divisions were disciplined in their own way, that was the problem; it was their own way, for all of them. The Gotei 13 didn't feel like an army so much as a collection of teams competing with each other for dominance. Which was why the decay caused such an uproar. Nobody seemed interested in working together to solve a damn thing. The only thing anybody seemed to care about was if their captain would be next.

It felt like the hundreds of soldiers charged with keeping the peace in Soul Society were nothing but cheerleaders for the officers, and the officers cheerleaders for the captains.

The first thing Hitsugaya decided to do after the…outbreak? After things returned to some species of equilibrium, he would begin to take more notice of the lower ranks of his division. He would oversee their training, read their performance reviews personally, learn their names. Monitor everything more closely.

He would see about getting the Fifth to do the same. Since Ikkaku had taken over, there seemed to be a kind of unspoken allegiance between them. Fifth and tenth. It made an odd sort of sense. He was sure that Ikkaku wouldn't be interested in monitoring his men, especially the peons, but he was also sure that Hinamori would understand the necessity for it and likely relish the task.

And with so little collaboration going on…anything at all was a blessing.

Matsumoto Rangiku was not pleased.

It wasn't so much that she didn't agree with the policy so much as she hated it. And Matsumoto Rangiku didn't like to hate things. Matsumoto Rangiku liked to like things, and that was especially true when it came to her captain. She'd always liked Hitsugaya, to some degree or another. Even when they'd first met, she'd thought he was interesting.

Interest had grown into respect, respect into trust, and trust into…well.

Right now she wanted to throttle the little punk. Staring at the sick joke masquerading as "efficiency" currently invading her desk, she thought it was probably a good thing that Hitsugaya was off in a personal meeting with the seated officers of the Fifth Division, because her hands were starting to itch.

She picked up a sheaf of paper and mumbled aloud: "'Reviewing and Filing Hollow Physiology Reports'—oh, for the love of God, what is this?" She tossed the so-called performance guide on top of the pile and stood up. "'Sick-leave Request Forms,' 'Inadequate Performance Citations,' 'How to Properly Submit Private Meeting Requests.'" She glared at the little ball of orange seated patiently at her right heel and said, "Small damned wonder he's so uptight, if this is what they have him doing!"

The kitten mewed.

Matsumoto picked up her pet and stalked out of the office, muttering, "I need a walk," and pointedly not filling out an Impromptu Office Absense Slip. If anyone had to find her, they could look. She filed that under Extracurricular Training Exercises, thank you very much, and who the holy hell came up with all these titles in the first place?

"Do you ever feel like we're rats running around in one giant maze, stepping on random buttons and hoping the food pops out this time?" she asked the kitten. She didn't know why she insisted on talking to the tiny animal, and Hitsugaya asked her often enough, but she didn't much care about that. Right now she didn't much care about anything, if she were telling the honest truth. The entire world felt like it was falling apart, and all she felt was…tired.

Tired and annoyed.

So wrapped up in general misanthropy was she that she almost stumbled right into Kira Izuru, would have if the cat hadn't suddenly jumped up on top of her head. Cursing, she fell backward and nearly landed flat on her backside. Instinct sharpened by raw nerves kicked her muscles into hyper-drive, and she spun, caught herself with one hand so that it looked like she was performing a one-handed sideways push-up, and tucked her legs in beneath her.

Standing, she suddenly realized tiny, needling little pricks of pain were lancing through her head, and she reached up gingerly to calm the Nameless One before she lost any hair. She said, in a voice much less irritated than she felt, "Good morning, Kira. Fabulous weather to be avoiding, isn't it?"

The blond gave a half-chuckle that sounded more like a whimper of pain and asked if she was all right. Matsumoto nodded with a little wave of dismissal. "You look like you're supposed to be doing something," he said.

"Eh?"

"You have a look about you, when your captain's given you a task that you're trying to avoid." Kira gestured to her face. "Right there. Look in a mirror, next time you're procrastinating. You should be able to see it."

"Seems all it takes to sharpen your sense of humor is an apocalypse," Matsumoto muttered dryly, and Kira flinched. "…Sorry. You're right. Toushirou did ask me to…look over a few things over the next few days, whenever I had the time. Turns out that his definition of a 'few' is two shy of an infinitude. But anyway…how are you?"

Kira shrugged, gave a nervous little spasm, and Matsumoto realized that he had dark circles under his eyes. He hadn't been sleeping. This wasn't exactly a surprise. Anyone who spent more than a week around Ichimaru Gin became something of a light sleeper, and the current situation didn't help any.

"Fine…considering," he said. "Kudo-taichou asked me to deliver a report to the Captain-Commander. He said something about my being too pale. Needing to get outside more often."

"My guess is he also said you should sleep more often. When was the last time you lay down?"

"Three days, I think." Kira chuckled.

"You're an idiot."

Shrug. "What about you? What is it you…should be doing?"

Matsumoto groaned. "Toushirou is concerned because this sickness, whatever it is, seems to be affecting the higher-ups. So he says I should be trained in his duties to make sure I can take over the division in case he's the next one to take a trip to the infirmary."

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Doesn't it, though?" Matsumoto snapped. "Have you even heard of the 'Unmandated Protein-Injection Request Protocol?' What kind of madhouse is Kurotsuchi running, and why should I have to care about it?"

Kira looked like he was trying his level best to look sympathetic.

He was failing.

"Oh…fine." Matsumoto huffed, turned on a heel, and started back.

"…Huh?" Kira asked, and when she looked back over her shoulder, she saw a look of flabbergasted surprise on his face. "What did I…?"

"Your eye told me to suck it up and quit whining," she all but hissed back at him.

She turned away, disgusted and irritated, and didn't watch as Kira reached up and touched his right eye gingerly with the fingertips of his right hand.