another week another chapter. I hope you enjoy.
Aura Michibane had been very busy.
The joint quincy-onmitsukido raid was unexpected and she had to take great pains to ensure it didn't happen again.
The first of these steps had been going to ground. She needed to lay low and get off of the radar of whoever found her. The problem was that she couldn't easily relocate.
Karakura was a key location due to both its high relative reishi density, allowing for spiritual techniques to work more effectively, and its proximity to Tokyo proper.
They had to make sure that when they blew the lid off of the secrets of the world, it was in a way that made sure they couldn't be suppressed.
That meant more than just cultish religious talk, that meant more than billing herself as a holy figure.
She needed to set up tenkai kecchu around Karakura for the plan to work.
Tokkinada bought her some freedom to maneuver through reinstating the Shiba, but there was more to it than just covertly placing them around Karakura.
There were other factors. Chiefly, Ichigo's human friends.
While Aura was confident she could handle Orihime and Yasutora, Uryu was the primary concern now. Her attempt to find out his shrift had been fruitless, and so any direct confrontation with him bore an unknowable risk to it; then he also had command over a small collection of former sternritter who, while known, possess quite a lot of combined firepower.
There were ways to isolate Ichigo before, especially with the help of the visuals department, but Uryu would not fall for such bait due to his hesitancy to endanger himself and his fellow quincy, but therein lay the key. Hesitancy can be exploited, and she had the ability to make some powerful threats.
Yes. This would work nicely.
Rukia found herself at the quincy detention camp. She had managed to get Captain Sui-Feng's approval for her proposal, and now she had to choose a candidate.
Sui-Feng had provided her with dossiers on many of the quincy in the camp for the purposes of picking a candidate to train Ichigo. While there were several good candidates among the regular soldats, they wouldn't have the experience of working with such a powerful student. This was also before she considered flight risk. No, there was only one candidate on that list, and she was going to speak with him now.
Rukia nodded to one of the detention corps guards standing guard at the entrance to the interrogation room. While she didn't like the choice of room, she also appreciated the need for it. The matter she was about to speak of was highly sensitive and required great discretion.
So much so that as soon as she entered the room she cast a silencing kido within the room as a precaution.
"So, the Kuchiki ice princess is the one who they dragged my ass all the way out here for, that's surprising," Bazz B was to be her chosen assistant in attempting to help Ichigo reign in his power.
"I would prefer it if you would refer to me by my rank and name," While Rukia had been called much worse in her career as a shinigami, she didn't like the way it hit close to one of her other nicknames.
"Alright, mind if I ask why I was brought here?" Bazz B didn't mind the disruption, it's not like he had much else to do, but the detention corps were assholes about it and that had soured his mood.
"I assume you are aware of the heritage of one Ichigo Shiba?" the name felt weird coming out of her mouth, but that was his legal name in Soul Society, and since it was now known to her Kurosaki was a quincy family name, she wasn't going to risk dropping that hint.
"Yup, gemischt quincy of the Kurosaki bloodline. What about him?" Granted gemischt didn't fully encompass what Ichigo actually was, but if there was a term for it he didn't know it.
"I have been given the task of training him to better control his reiatsu, and while progress is being made, it is slow," Rukia got straight to the point. There was no point in doing otherwise.
"Too slow, and you want to pick my brain for quincy training techniques to speed the process up," Bazz B sighed. It wasn't as bad as what he thought it was, but this meant that there would be more of this, because the answer was not conducive to him not getting run around places with a bag over his head. "We do, hell, Hashwalth had a whole training regimen ready to go for him, not that he ever got to use it."
Rukia shuddered at the thought of Ichigo fighting alongside the Wandenreich before collecting herself.
"Good. I do not expect that I will be able to implement these techniques on my own, especially after being informed as to how his quincy powers had awakened, as such, tomorrow you will be escorted to an undisclosed location to assist in training Ichigo," Rukia's answer was not what Bazz B wanted to hear. He would be shuffled around like a damned criminal all over the Seiretei when all he wanted was to relax until they finally decided to do something with them.
Before Bazz B could respond Rukia had already left.
"Bitch."
Byakuya had an interesting development on his hands.
Ichigo had given Rukia a gift.
Normally this wasn't a big deal. Friends got each other stuff from time to time. No, what made this different was what the gift was.
An absurdly large Chappy plush.
His sister had often explained how she didn't understand why Ichigo didn't like the rabbit. Frankly he found himself agreeing. Rabbits were good luck and they made his sister happy, so he had little reason to dislike them. The fact that Ichigo got her one in spite of that meant something, especially when the reason he told Rukia was 'he thought of her' when he saw it.
There were… implications of such an act. He wanted to ask either Rukia of Ichigo about that, but he felt it was prying. His sister deserved what privacy she could get.
This did mean however that Kukaku's 'plan,' if he could call it that, was working.
He knew Ichigo cared deeply for Rukia, he had felt it in his blade almost three years ago. At that moment there was nothing more that Ichigo cared about than Rukia's safety.
The passion Byakuya felt behind that blade, he could only remember one time he had ever felt a passion that deep.
It was when he had fallen in love with Hisana.
As much as he would deny it openly, he and Ichigo were quite similar in many ways.
It seemed the depth of their hearts was another commonality.
He would have to begin making preparations for a possible marriage agreement. Nothing concrete, but it would speed up the process.
He hoped that the elders wouldn't be too sour when things started actually moving that way. After all, while Ichigo may be a Shiba, he was also born human, and if his interview with Lieutenant Hisagi was anything to go by, he certainly had some… progressive opinions. This observation was reinforced if the incident between him and one Goro Yayahara was anything to go by.
Byakuya figured that the elders would want him to marry Rukia off to reinforce their current alliances, or as a means to bring one of the independent lesser houses into the Kuchiki fold. Not to reforge bonds with a great house that in their eyes have proven volatile.
The real challenge was going to be finding the most eloquent and polite way to tell them where they can shove those opinions.
Isane was busy once again.
Apparently, an all-out fight broke out in the eleventh again. Isane didn't care about the details but for the fact that she now had multiple belligerent patients in various trauma wards based on wound severity. Fortunately nothing bad enough to require her direct attention, but she had to authorize the use of sedatives for each patient for the safety of her own subordinates.
And now had to speak with Captain Zaraki about their status.
"So, how are the whelps?" Kenpachi had explained that he had ultimately broken up the fight himself. This explained some of the more… over-the-top injuries.
"Beligerant, but stable," Recent events had not been kind to Isane. The looming anxiety of her captaincy evaluation was adding on to the average day-to-day stress of running the fourth, which had included reasserting the division's specialization and refusing to do the menial tasks that had been forced upon her subordinates previously.
"Sounds like they're doing fine then, I'll make sure to dock the cost of the sedatives from their pay," Isane didn't comment. They were his men, he was free to punish them as he wished as long as it remained reasonable. Then Kenpachi noticed Isane was clearly fatigued, possibly stressed even. He knew what it looked like when he had an enemy on the ropes, and he saw something similar in the fourth's acting captain. "How have you been holding up?"
Isane was surprised at the question. She didn't expect Zaraki to even notice her fatigue, let alone care about her well-being.
"I'm fine," it wasn't stress she was unused to. One doesn't enter the field of medicine for stress free work.
"Bullshit, something's eating at you," Kenpachi had learned how to read people as a part of his duty as captain. When he realized that he was supposed to lead people he had asked himself how he would want to be led, and tried to be that. Eventually, he learned how to listen to his men, and to care for their emotional states as best he could. He was no psychologist, but that often wasn't the case. Some people just needed someone to listen, and this seemed to be one of those times.
"Am I worthy of being Unohana's Successor?" the question caught him off-guard. He had never once in his life cared if he was worthy of anything. Yet at the same time, he understood the emotions behind the question very well.
Yachiru cast a long shadow, and he wasn't the only one who had to fill the void she left behind.
"She chose to train me didn't she?" Kenpachi knew that when the head captain said she would train him what it actually meant. He knew that either he or Yachiru were going to die, and she had made sure it was her life that ended.
"Yes," Isane's reply was quiet, understated, almost inaudible.
"Then that's all the proof you need. I doubt she would leave the fourth in incapable hands," Unohana had been many things. Murderer, warrior, healer, teacher, but most importantly she was a woman of ideals. She had built the eleventh in the image of what she called the perfect fighting force. Kenpachi imagined that she did much the same with the fourth, and had imagined that he would only select an individual as capable of replacing her has he was.
"I know I'm a capable healer, but I'm not a fighter," Now he understood. Unohana's role as captain was two-fold. Not only was she supposed to be a healer, but also the one to defend her subordinates in the case of an attack. "Can I truly succeed her?"
"Did you fight her too?" it was the only way she could know Unohana's true potential. She had to have fought her.
"She helped me attain bankai," Isane's voice was still quiet, still uncertain.
"All the more reason to believe she thought you were ready," She would have known Isane's capabilities, and had a fair grasp of her limitations.
"I…"
"Unohana wasn't a true healer. She never was," Kenpachi probably knew her true self better than anyone left alive. They had crossed blades, twice! He had even fought against her bankai, the true expression of who she was. "She had always been, and would always have been a killer at heart. You aren't that. You aren't a warrior or a killer, you're a healer," Unohana would never truly have had the perspective that Isane has. Everything Unohana did she did because it challenged her, pushed her to her limits, even if her intent was to heal. That was not the motivation a healer should have.
A healer needed to care about their charges. And while Kenpachi knew she cared on some level, it wasn't from the heart. It was more professional pride than anything, selfish motivation. A flawed approach that he was sure she would have been aware of.
"If you're worried about you being unable to stop some gutless sack of shit from killing your patients, then I'm always open to sparing," He grinned as he left the office.
Isane was left alone to mull over the words Zaraki had told her. They were, as per usual for him, gruff and crass, but they had been accurate. She was a trauma surgeon, and before that had done just about every posting in the fourth that 'trauma nurse' covered.
Every death hurt.
Even now, after so long working in this field, having a patient die on her still hurt. Many of her couleagues had said that eventually you'll stop being hurt by it, but she never was. She had wondered why Unohanna had chosen someone who still felt that point to be her Lieutenant, but now, knowing her past as Yachiru, knowing how death was common to her to the point of lives being almost worthless… maybe her still feeling that pain was why she was chosen.
Isane started walking back to her desk. She had more work to do.
The sands of Hueco Mundo were not a forgiving place. Bambietta knew this. She and Candice had been treking to the Jagdarmee camp with Gantenbainne leading them.
The tall arrancar didn't make much conversation. Not that she minded, the less he spoke the better his chances of not pissing her off, and since she was in mission mode, she was close to a hair trigger.
Candice though, she was also unusually quiet. She kept her gaze fixed on the arrancar, almost as if she was anticipating a betrayal.
"There it is," the privaron espada pointed forward at the mass of tents and campfires. "Now do us all a favor and get rid of them," Gantenbainne did not care much for quincy, those of the jagdarmees especially.
"Candice, stay here with our guide, I'll handle the assholes," and without waiting for an affirmative she began walking toward the camp before vanishing in a burst of hirenkyaku.
"Are you sure about letting her wander off?" The arrancar looked over at his charge for the time being. Bambietta could do a lot on her own, including putting a knife in Her Majesty's back.
"If she's going in alone, it's because she doesn't want us in the blast radius," Candice then sat looking over the camp. If Bambi was worried about killing them, then she was certain that it would be necessary to kill them.
This was going to be one hell of a show.
so I'm going to be taking another short (I hope) break as I've again burned through my backlog, and one of the upcoming chapters is going to be a doozy. until then, feeback is always welcome.