"So, ya makin' any progress in jinzen?" Gin asked.
"I'm not having any trouble going into my inner world, but my zanpakutō spirit is nowhere to be found." Picking listlessly at the grass on which they sat, Rangiku still managed to make it very clear how unfair this was.
"Have you tried searching for 'em?" Gin settled back and laced his hands behind his head, peering up at the tranquil blue sky. "Maybe they wanna see ya put out some effort first."
"The thought occurred to me, but I keep getting… sidetracked," she replied sheepishly.
He raised a brow at her sardonically. "How can ya get sidetracked in yer inner world?"
Rangiku blushed. "Well, whenever I get to my inner world, the first thing I always run into is… this really cute tiger cub."
Gin stared at her.
"Anyway, I can't not visit the kitty!" she insisted, crawling over to glare down at him defensively. "And she's so adorable that I want to spend time with her, and before I know it, time's passed and it's too late to go searching anywhere else for my zanpakutō!"
Still he made no attempt to speak.
"Well? What am I supposed to do, Gin?!"
At last her old friend took a deep breath. "Rangiku… I wanna ask ya somethin', an' I want ya to think 'bout it 'fore answerin'."
"O-ka-a-ay?" she frowned in confusion.
"Did it ever occur to ya that yer zanpakutō spirit… might be the cub?"
The idea was so ridiculous on its face, Rangiku had just opened her mouth to chastise him, but then remembered his request and stopped to consider the suggestion. The cub was the only other being she ever saw in that forest, and she felt a strange kinship with her, not unlike how Gin had described the instinctive familiarity he felt when he first met Shinsō.
Those great blue eyes narrowed, and she pursed her lips in firm refusal to give him the satisfaction of admitting he probably hit the nail on the head. "I think… I'll go check on that right now."
A few minutes later, Rangiku entered the pine forest in her mind and sure enough, the adorable critter sauntered up to her expectantly.
"Hi, again," the blonde greeted the tiger cub warmly, and sat down to pet her as she normally did. The little animal promptly leapt into the shinigami's lap and made herself comfortable there for the usual treatment.
Rangiku obliged, and almost lost herself in the pleasant feeling of stroking the feline's fur. But after spending a good minute basking in the sensation, she eventually plucked up the nerve to ask. With a degree of hesitance, she softly inquired, "You know, this may seem like a dumb question but… are you my zanpakutō?"
"Yep."
Rangiku choked and gaped down at the critter, her eyes closed and purring contentedly in her lap.
After a moment, the zanpakutō spirit opened her eyes and looked up accusingly. "You stopped petting me."
It took every ounce of willpower not to just scream in frustration, but eventually she mastered her outrage sufficiently. "Why didn't you ever say so?!"
"You didn't ask," the feline returned. "And you're still not petting me."
"Petting you?!" the young shinigami exclaimed incredulously. "You're my zanpakutō! You should be helping me get stronger!"
"Later."
Rangiku's eye twitched.
"If you're not going to pet me, then I guess we're done here," the baby beast leapt off the girl's lap and then darted away.
"Hey, wait a minute!" she protested as she scrambled to her feet to give chase. "Get back here!"
An hour's pursuit with nothing to show for it later, Rangiku emerged from her inner world with a scowl on her face.
"Didn't go well?"
When the innocuous question earned him a glare, Gin sucked his teeth idly. "Guess that's a no?"
"Oh, I found her, all right," Rangiku grumbled. Springing upright, she began to storm about the division garden angrily. "But she's utterly uncooperative! She wasn't interested at all in training or trying to give me her name! All she wanted to do was goof off and run around and be petted!"
"Sound like worthy goals to me."
Incensed, the young woman whirled around on him. "Gin, I'm serious! I won't be able to get my Shikai until my zanpakutō cooperates with me!"
"Well, last I checked yer not on any deadline fer that," he remarked with frustrating reasonableness. "'Sides, Shinsō didn't tell me everythin' right off the bat. Ya jus' gotta be patient."
"I hate being patient," Rangiku pouted. To emphasize this she kicked the heads off a few flowers that some poor Fourth Division scrub had probably spent weeks cultivating.
"C'mon, why dontcha jus' indulge her?" Gin stood up and came to stand beside her. When she continued decapitating plant life, he sighed and laid a hand on her arm. "It'll give ya somethin' fun to do while you wait, and maybe doin' what she wants will encourage her to share her name with ya sooner."
Still not happy with her situation, she nevertheless grumbled, "I'll try to keep that in mind."
"Emergency! All divisions report to their captains! Emergency! All divisions report to their captains!"
The urgent roll call sounded throughout the Seireitei, and shinigami scrambled to their barracks to hear the cause of the alarm from their superiors.
"Wonder what this ruckus is all 'bout," Gin remarked as he and Rangiku jogged to the command center of the Eighth.
"We'll find out soon enough," she replied.
Indeed, after they arrived at the main courtyard of the barracks with the rest of their division, Captain Kyōraku stood before them with Yadōmaru at his side and revealed the situation.
"Last night, two tsunamis struck the coast of Japan in the world of the living," the captain explained solemnly, a state of mind so uncommon for him that allowed most of his subordinates to understand exactly how serious things were. "Squads from the Second and Twelfth Division scouted out the scene and reported that many thousands of humans have perished, enough that Yamamoto-sōtaichō declared a state of emergency. He has ordered the Fourth to the world of the living to set up healing camps, and that the remaining ten divisions manage the fallout, with five being active at a time while the others rest."
The assembled shinigami started to murmur fearfully among themselves, and even Gin's smile turned brittle. To have practically the entire Gotei 13 participate in a campaign was a rare event, unheard of in the lifetimes of most shinigami. The situation must be dire, indeed.
"The Eighth Division has been selected as one of the first responders," Kyōraku continued. "As the Second and Twelfth Divisions will be mainly support and observation, we will be working in the field alongside the Thirteenth, Ninth, Tenth, and Seventh Divisions in managing this crisis.
"As I'm sure you've all figured out by now, this is not going to be an easy mission. But this is what you've all been training for, so you will overcome the challenge ahead of you."
That simple encouragement given, Yadōmaru stepped forward. "You know your squad assignments. Move out!"
Since both Gin and Rangiku served directly under their lieutenant, they both strode forward to follow the bespectacled officer to the Senkaimon.
"Gin, you mentioned that you had a mission like this a couple years ago," Rangiku murmured to her friend. "How bad will it be?"
"The one I was in turned out to be pretty manageable, but that was only a few hundred dead humans to worry 'bout," he recalled. "But if the briefin's anythin' to go by, then what we're 'bout to find is way worse. Sorry, but it sounds like yer firs' mission is gonna be a sink-or-swim experience."
"Then I'll just have to swim," she declared with a confidence she did not entirely feel.
The veracity of Rangiku's courage was challenged the moment she stepped into the world of the living.
From the flooded wreckage of the city below arose a great cry of agony and loss. The screams of newly dead echoed in the air along with the still-living human rescuers shouting to one another. Intermixed with them all were the howls of Hollows on the prowl for an easy meal.
"Matsumoto, focus," Yadōmaru ordered, breaking the rookie out of her reverie. "You are to prioritize search and konsō, while Ichimaru will cover you and purify any Hollows that come close."
"Right," Rangiku nodded as she steeled herself for her task.
Due to the high casualties, there was no shortage of souls needing her to perform konsō. As she descended to the ground, she picked one at random to start her mission of mercy. It turned out to be a boy, physically seeming to be about the same age as her if not a little younger, curled up on himself on top of one of the collapsed buildings with one arm apparently broken.
Rangiku approached him and gently called, "Hey there."
The plus soul jerked his head up at the unexpected address, but surprise and fear quickly gave way to awe and hope as he laid his tear-filled eyes on her.
"Shh, it's going to be okay," Rangiku reassured him warmly. "I'm going to help you, but I need you to trust me, okay?"
Whether it was because the boy knew his situation could not get any worse or he just blindly trusted the pretty face in front of him, he nodded.
Rangiku took out her zanpakutō and gently pressed the hilt against his forehead. Surprise initially crossed his features, but it gave way to relief as he faded away into spiritual particles, and a black butterfly fluttered away to signal the completion of Rangiku's first konsō.
It would prove to be the first of many.
Moving from soul to soul, sparing several seconds at least for each individual so she could bring some comfort to them before they moved on, the young shinigami made good use of her gift. Not all were as easy as the first in several different ways. Some souls proved unresponsive, catatonic due to the trauma of their deaths. Others were screaming in grief or pain, and barely remained still enough for her to end their suffering. On the physical side, almost all the souls retained the gruesome injuries that had ended their lives, from fractured skulls to broken legs and arms to completely missing those limbs altogether.
But Rangiku persevered. Despite how nauseous she felt over the state of the plus souls when she found them, she could not help but bathe in the signs of life her appearance sparked in most of the people she comforted.
It also helped that she was not alone. Every now and then, a Hollow's roar would pierce the air in anticipatory attack, but each time the shriek would be cut short, signifying that her guardian kitsune was keeping watch over her.
Rangiku nearly cried in relief when it was declared that her first shift was over, and they could return to base camp to rest. She let herself drop on the nearest available patch of clear ground, and Gin settled down next to her even as Yadōmaru arrived with rations for the two young warriors. "Here you go."
While Gin accepted his with a nod of thanks, Rangiku turned away and quietly declined, "I'm not really hungry."
"You need to eat something to keep up your strength," the lieutenant pressed, not unkindly. "Don't make me order you."
With a resigned sigh, the blonde reluctantly accepted the proffered lunch. As she stared down at it in an attempt to steel herself for her first bite, she asked, "Are the souls always in such bad condition?"
"Not from a tsunami, no," Yadōmaru answered. "Most of the time, they just appear soaking wet, bedraggled, and coughing up water. It's still an unsettling sight for the uninitiated, but better than the rather… violent deaths this disaster caused. It's unusual, to say the least."
"Well, maybe this can shed some light on that mystery."
The trio turned and saw a young man with a small packet of papers in his hands. He had black, spiky hair that he allowed to grow down to his neck, and bright blue eyes brimming with confidence. Most interestingly, he bore the wooden insignia of the Thirteenth on his arm, but last Rangiku checked, Ukitake was still lacking a lieutenant. Kyōraku did mention that the man had his eye on someone…
Apparently, the same thought occurred to Yadōmaru, as she pointed at the badge in question and asked, "How long have you been wearing that?"
"Since this morning," the Thirteenth's Second grimaced. "Ukitake-taichō finally won me over with him saying how he needed someone he could trust in this crisis. Resisting his puppy eyes is one thing but this…" The newly minted lieutenant glanced around the devastated vicinity and sighed, "It didn't feel right to keep declining."
"Well, your assistance is appreciated now," Lisa offered. She then seemed to remember her subordinates, who had remained quiet but interested in the conversation. "By the way, I don't think you all have officially met. Kaien-san, this is Fourth Seat Ichimaru Gin, a prodigy who graduated from the Academy in two years. Ichimaru, this is Shiba Kaien, our newly promoted lieutenant of the Thirteenth Division."
Recalling that the Shiba clan were among the most powerful families in the Seireitei, Rangiku studied the older shinigami. She would not have guessed this man to be so blue-blooded from how casually he acted.
"Oh, hey there, Ichimaru-kun!" Shiba grinned at the younger genius. "Ukitake-taichō's told me about you, so it's great to finally meet you in person!"
"Great to meet ya as well," Gin mock saluted in return.
"And this is Twelfth Seat Matsumoto Rangiku," Yadōmaru introduced. "She graduated in five years."
"Congrats to you, too," Shiba beamed at her with no less enthusiasm than when he greeted her friend. "Man, the Academy is a fountain of talent right now!"
"Nah, I think we're jus' the exceptions," Gin spoke up.
"Ouch, not very charitable towards your peers, huh?" Kaien laughed.
"Hey, I included ya in that 'we,'" the young fox pointed out.
"Yeah, but not everyone can shave off a year or four on their education," the elder prodigy countered. "If that was the case, then graduating in two to five years would be the norm, not six."
Observing the pair of star students banter with a twitch of her lips that might be revealed as a smile under a microscope, Lisa returned her attention to what Kaien brought with him. "So, what was that you were saying about answers?"
"Reports from the Twelfth." Her counterpart in the Thirteenth held out the documents, which she accepted. "Urahara-taichō's been working with Shihōin-taichō on trying to figure out why the disaster was so bad this time, and if we could do anything to be better prepared. Most of the info we got has been from questioning lucid souls before performing konsō, or listening in on conversations between living humans."
Yadōmaru glanced through the intel. "Only small tremors were noticed yesterday, so nobody thought to move to higher ground, huh?"
"Yep," Kaien agreed with a grimace while rubbing the back of his head. "That, and apparently it was high tide, so when the tsunamis hit, the waves were almost forty meters tall."
Rangiku shuddered at the idea of a wall of water that sounded like they could easily wipe out the Rukongai and even crest the walls of the Seireitei.
"Doesn't sound like anything we can prepare for, does it?" the bespectacled lieutenant remarked grimly.
"Not really, short of posting permanent patrols along the coast to give us more advanced warning, but I don't think we have the manpower for that."
Yadōmaru acknowledged his words with a nod as she finished glancing over the document. "Thanks for bringing me this."
He inclined his head before taking one last look at the younger officers. "Well, as great as it was to chat with you all, I need to make my rounds," Kaien turned away and saluted with two fingers. "See you around, Lisa-san. Bye, you two kids!"
"Don't get lost," Yadōmaru replied flippantly.
"Great to meet you, too!" Rangiku returned brightly, while Gin gave a simple wave of acknowledgement.
As Shiba Kaien sped to his next task, Rangiku realized that the man's infectious cheer had lifted her spirits, made her feel like she could face the rest of her day. Her stomach took this chance to remind her how hungry she really was, and with a small smile started to eat.
The days passed by, and while the shinigami fell into a routine, it did not make their workload any lighter. There remained thousands of dead souls to perform konsō on, most from the initial disaster, but plenty more would flood in as the victims would die from their injuries before they could be rescued by their living brethren. And with such numerous plus souls, there were just as many Hollows who wished to feast on this prospective banquet.
Which was the situation Rangiku found herself in, as she guarded a group of human souls who were sheltering in a building that was still partially standing, as she desperately stood her ground against a veritable army of Hollows clamoring for the souls cowering behind her.
A slash of her blade parted one mask, seeing its howling wearer dissolve into black flakes and a fluttering butterfly. Panting for breath, Rangiku assessed the situation. While each Hollow facing her was weak enough she could easily purify it, their raw numbers meant she was getting overwhelmed. She could not even count on Gin, too busy as he was slicing through his own horde to spare any assistance.
"Rangiku!"
Blue eyes widened in shock as she recognized the voice of her zanpakutō. Her surprise at hearing her speak for the first time in the real world was dwarfed by her next words. "You want to hear my name?"
Being pressed by her foes, Rangiku could only acknowledge her zanpakutō's question with a desperate affirmative.
"Then listen, and show our new playmates what we can do…"
Moments later a huge spike in reiatsu drew notice from hundreds of meters away. At the center of this outpouring of power, Rangiku felt herself filled with new knowledge, and let out a ferocious roar, "Erupt, Kazantora!"
The blade glowed white and burst into a million superheated particles with ash trailing in their wake, simultaneously brightening and obscuring the shinigami's visage as the glowing cloud swirled around her. Left with only the hilt in her grasp, the surrounding Hollows still flinched at the heat generated by the release of her zanpakutō. No longer was she a girl overwhelmed by the horde. Before them stood a tigress, whose only difficulty was choosing which of her innumerable imminent victims would be the first to perish.
Now that she had taken measure of the swarm, Rangiku gestured with the hilt forward, and the opaque cloud rushed down at the foes before her. Before they could escape, the cluster of Hollows were engulfed by hot ash. Any that were not baked to death by the searing cloud were flayed alive by the millions of sharp particles within.
Rangiku grinned in triumph. She had just ended several Hollows with the same effort it had taken to purify one before discovering her Shikai.
This sudden development caused most of the Hollows to pause, which Rangiku took eager advantage of. Not only did Kazantora grant her a significant power boost, the form it assumed allowed for a more ranged option and a more efficient method to purify Hollows. In short order the pack attempting to swarm her was reduced to an idle mass of butterflies bobbing off. Surrounded by this host of luminous insects, the Twelfth Seat lifted her head and smiled in satisfaction.
"Great job, Rangiku!" she heard Gin call out, and she spared a moment to see him grinning proudly at her.
"Thanks!" she beamed back at him and returned her focus to the next wave. The battle was not over yet, but Rangiku was now more confident she would see it won.
Rangiku's accomplishment led to Kyōraku promoting her two ranks up to Tenth Seat, and also switched her primary task to Hollow purification to help her get more practice with her new abilities. Today, Yadōmaru had taken Gin and a few of the more combat-worthy officers to exterminate a cluster of Hollows, while Rangiku remained with Third Seat Odaka Ryō to defend against more opportunistic predators. So far, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
That all changed in one moment.
With a deft swipe, her ash cloud shredded the Hollow, but to her surprise, there was no mere dissipation of spiritual particles and mark its transition into Soul Society, nor did a Hell Butterfly emerge out of the deathly mist.
Instead, the Hollow shrieked in agony, and green glow could be seen through the ash. Before Rangiku could long wonder what this new phenomenon was, the light erupted skywards and scattered her cloud, leaving the vanquished beast in full view. The spectacle was enough that both sides of the conflict initiated an impromptu ceasefire to bear witness to a pair of titanic doors decorated by the upper halves of skeletons emerging into existence behind the defeated monster.
The door parted, but not very far, on account of the multiple chains serving to prevent it from opening entirely. But then those fetters broke, and the doors swung wide to reveal a dimension colored fiery crimson. And from this infernal abyss came a colossal arm bearing an equally gargantuan blade to impale the victim and bring it inside. Once the captive Hollow passed the boundary, whatever power governed the doors deemed the task finished, and so they slammed shut. Then crimson cracks emerged over the barriers, and after a few moments, they shattered into nothingness.
Silence followed the event, and several Hollows actually retreated back to their own dimension, no doubt fearing such an end to them. But most of the monsters persevered, either confident of their power and numbers, or just too hungry to care. The resumption of the battle forced Rangiku to put her questions aside, but she made sure to voice them for later.
Exhausted, Rangiku dropped to the ground in exhaustion and shakily took a gulp from a water canteen.
"How are you feeling?" Odaka inquired in concern, obviously tired out himself, but not the extent of his subordinate.
"Like I can't wait for this whole disaster to be over," the girl groaned miserably. "Is Yadōmaru-fukutaichō back yet with the others?"
"No," the Third Seat shook his head. "Come on, let's get some rations."
A few minutes later, both officers chowing down on their dinner. Rangiku took this opportunity to finally ask about that incident before. "So, those doors that opened… were they…?"
"The gates of Hell, and yes," Odaka confirmed. "I take it that your first time seeing them?"
"Yeah," Rangiku nodded solemnly. She shuddered a bit, remembering what she had felt coming out of that portal. "It felt nothing like Soul Society, that's for sure."
"I know they can be quite the shock the first time; certainly was for me," the senior officer remarked in a sympathetic tone. "Fortunately, most souls are not so depraved that Hell comes for them. To be honest, this is only my fourth time seeing them in person."
"Seeing what now?"
Odaka and Rangiku looked up to see both Yadōmaru and Gin approaching them.
"Gin!" the Tenth Seat cried happily in relief at the sight of her friend. "How did it go?"
In response he stretched his arms over his head, lacing his fingers together with a grin. "It was a breeze."
"While I would not put it in such lackadaisical terms, we did complete our objective without too much difficulty," Yadōmaru assented. "Now, what were you two talking about?"
"One of the Hollows Matsumoto-kun defeated today was taken to Hell," Odaka remarked, standing at attention to salute his superior.
The lieutenant raised a brow at the girl, and Gin looked at her with interested curiosity. "Well, then, ya beat me to it, 'cause none of the Hollows I've killed ever made that kind of show," he remarked.
Odaka looked at Gin without amusement, "Fortunately for you, otherwise they might have grabbed you, too."
Rangiku snapped her head to the Third Seat, shocked he would say something so ugly to his subordinate, but before she could voice her offense, Gin started laughing. He was the only one to do so.
"Sorry, Odaka-san, but Hell'd probably spit me back out if they got a taste," the boy chuckled.
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised," the older man replied thinly.
"Odaka-san, I would like to remind you that you should judge others on what they have actually done, not what you think they might do in the future," Yadōmaru reproached him.
The Third Seat did not look convinced, but nevertheless he acknowledged her with a slight bow to the silver-haired youth, "My apologies for the comment."
He then stood up and took his meal elsewhere.
"What a jerk!" Rangiku hissed at his retreating back.
"What's the big deal?" Gin spoke with a snicker. "It was actually pretty funny."
"He wasn't joking when he said that," the blonde explained darkly.
"I know."
When she persisted in glowering at him for not being as offended as she was, Yadōmaru stepped in. "Odaka-san is a good student of our lessons on pragmatic combat, though he still has high standards of morality in other areas of life. But apparently, it's led him to jump to unfair conclusions about you, Ichimaru."
"Aw, are ya really sayin' I'm not so bad after all?" Gin teased.
"Of course," the lieutenant confirmed bluntly, which elicited a brief expression of surprise from the boy, and a more vindicated one from Rangiku. "You have difficulties with social skills and basic ethics, and you've got an inclination towards cruelty, but hardly anything I'd judge you to find yourself in Hell for, even if it came for shinigami."
"Oh really? And pray tell, what would it take?" the boy inquired, and despite his mocking tone, there was an undercurrent of genuine curiosity.
At this she tilted her head to one side, gazing at the sun as it sank towards the horizon. "I'm not sure if there's an exact requirement, but it isn't just doing something bad in life as a human. For a soul to be summoned to Hell means that not only do they commit evil, they revel in it. So much that they would refuse any redemption offered, even if given a chance in Soul Society. Therefore, to prevent those sinners from causing harm, they are taken into Hell."
"But we've run into lots of nasty people in the Rukongai," Rangiku frowned in confusion. "How did they make it to Soul Society?"
"Simply put, because Hell is a last resort measure, and the folk you ran into either weren't bad enough to warrant damnation in life, or they became worse after entering our realm."
Rangiku gulped, not sure which answer was more horrifying. If the former was true, then people existed that were worse than the thieves and murderers wandering the Rukongai. If the latter was true, then that meant those same individuals were once better people, but became damnable in Soul Society.
"There's a practical reason for being so selective," Yadōmaru continued. "Souls that go to Hell never leave, but the stability of the worlds relies on a balance being maintained between the living and the dead. Souls go to Soul Society when they die, and reincarnate in the world of the living after that. What effect do you think Hell would have on that balance if it kept taking souls at a faster rate?"
"Too much 'weight' on Hell, and not 'nough on the world of the livin'?" Gin guessed.
"And not enough on Soul Society, either," the lieutenant nodded in confirmation. "That's where the Soul King comes in. He's the one who makes adjustments to the realms so any imbalances that occur do not result in catastrophes."
Rangiku considered this for a moment before asking. "What happens if too much imbalance happens that he can't fix?"
Taking off her glasses, Lisa cleaned them on her shirt. "The worlds collapse, and all creation ends," came the concise answer.
"Has that ever been in danger of happening?" the younger beauty asked nervously.
"Very rarely, as something as severe as destabilizing the worlds requires a cause of great magnitude to incur." Done cleaning to her satisfaction, the frames snapped back to the bookish offer's face like they were born there. "Events like that have only happened only two or three times throughout Soul Society's history. The most recent one was less than a hundred years ago, when I was still a child."
"Really? What happened?" Rangiku inquired, a little unsettled at how a cataclysmic event had been averted so (relatively) recently.
"I'm not privy to all the details myself, since I was barely old enough to even begin training as a shinigami, and Kyōraku-taichō has never told me anything about it despite my asking," Yadōmaru replied, looking a little put out by that last bit. "But that didn't stop me from inquiring other sources."
"I'll bet it didn't," Rangiku remarked dryly, and Gin snickered in agreement.
Here Lisa turned a frosty expression her way. "If you have a problem with my inquisitiveness, you don't need to listen to more."
No way was Rangiku going to miss out on this, and so she boldly proclaimed, "Not at all! Such initiative should be commended!"
"That's what I thought," Yadōmaru nodded in satisfaction. She then continued relating the affair. "From my research, apparently a tribe of humans called Quincy had the ability to defend themselves from Hollows, but with the consequence of destroying Hollow souls instead of sending them to Soul Society."
"So the imbalance was too much 'weight' in the world of the living, and not enough in Soul Society," Rangiku realized. "How did they fix the problem?"
The lieutenant inspected her nails as though looking for any flaw. "From what I learned, attempts were made to try to get the Quincy to stop using their abilities to kill Hollows, but as you can imagine, the humans were not exactly inclined to give up their means of self-defense." Her eyes traveled over to Rangiku, who flinched at the level of cold in that gaze. "With no other recourse, the Gotei initiated a campaign of extermination against the Quincy."
"Extermination?" Her stomach lurched at the revelation. Was this really how the Gotei 13 handled such problems? "There was no other way…?"
"Not from what I can tell, no," Yadōmaru replied in a casual tone. "And if this purge had not happened, we would not be here talking about it."
"The ends justify the means, huh?" Rangiku frowned as she looked down at her lap.
"It was the same principle as we've been teaching you in combat: using any and all means necessary to accomplish a goal."
While unable to find an argument against that assertion right away, the young shinigami did not find herself totally convinced of the total universality of that lesson.
To be continued…
Author's Note: The inspiration for Rangiku having different zanpakutō abilities if her soul hadn't been harvested by Aizen for the Hōgyoku came from a comment a video on MrTommo2304's channel, where Tommo speculated on what Rangiku's Bankai could be. Posted by username davidettles5318, the comment said, "One theory I liked was originally her Zanpakuto was actually a Fire based one. And when she had her spiritual energy stolen by Aizen's men, what was left with was Ash."
At first I was leery of the idea of changing Rangiku's zanpakutō abilities, as it would be challenging and it would require me to rewrite a couple scenes I had already submitted to Tomas for beta-reading. But ultimately, the prospect of exploring how someone's zanpakutō could change due to an alternation in a timeline was too enticing to refuse.
"Kazantora" means "Volcano Tiger," and was originally going to be the name of Rangiku's Bankai before I read the aforementioned comment.
The disaster featured in this chapter was the 1896 Sanriku Earthquake, and with a death toll of about twenty-two thousand, it was one of Japan's deadliest natural catastrophes. It was an 8.5 on the Richter scale, and the 38.4 meter (125 ft) high waves from the tsunamis would hold the record of tallest until the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.
Bleach's timeline can be vague at times. Early in the Soul Society arc, Ganju mentioned that Kaien graduated from the Academy in two years, and became a lieutenant five years after that. In the Turn Back the Pendulum arc, Kaien is shown refusing the lieutenant's position from Ukitake, which would be about 1891. This means Kaien graduated from the Academy between 1889 and 1891, and would be a lieutenant by 1896. While establishing Kaien in this story as finally accepting the promotion here during the 1896 Sanriku earthquake makes sense dramatically, it does imply that Ukitake has been wanting him as his lieutenant since he graduated from the Academy.
Thanks to LoveGlutton, X59, Black' Victor Cachat, and EVA-Saiyajin for their reviews!
Omake: Shinigami Illustrated Guide
"You know, it really doesn't surprise me that your zanpakutō is a tiger," Lisa commented to Rangiku during a brief respite in the operation.
"Because I'm so strong and fierce?" the younger girl asked with a proud grin.
"Because you like stalking your prey," the stoic lieutenant corrected.
"What?!" the Tenth Seat squawked indignantly. "What stalking? What prey?!"
Lisa had the audacity to look confused by her protests. "Have you forgotten that during our first meeting, you practically bragged how you had your eye on a certain silver fox?"
Rangiku squeaked as her face flushed. "That is not what I meant!"
"Oh, I guess I need to reassign you to a different squad and issue a restraining order then," the bespectacled stoic shrugged. "Can't let my little brother be harassed by a strange girl with unknown intentions."
The Tenth Seat's protests were halted in confusion. "Wait, are we talking about the same person? I didn't know you had a younger brother."
"We are; Gin has expressed an interest in me adopting him, though nothing official has become of it yet," Lisa explained conversationally, her tone leaving no clue as to whether she was pulling her subordinate's chain or not. As she tried to puzzle it out, the lieutenant then continued thoughtfully, "And you know what, I don't think Gin would mind a stalker if it happened to be you."
Potential prank put out of her mind, Rangiku pulled in her hair in frustration. "I do NOT stalk Gin!"