"What's this fuss about the Age of Maturity, You might be wondering?" Kisuke Urahara mused to himself, occupying a conversation without Rukia's input- who was lying in a cylindrical chamber, capsule? with blue lights haloing around her head in this scientist's laboratory, conveniently located under his shop, unable to speak. He was tinkering about his lab with the efficacy of someone who knows what he's looking for among the chaos he's wrought because down here, nothing is in order, unlike the neat shop upstairs. The Lab isn't dirty, per see, it was just very, very, unorganized.

Rukia didn't realize, for all the times she's been in this place collecting the gear a Soul Reaper requires to function in the World Of Living, that Kisuke not only owned the land his shop and home sit on but every square inch of land in every direction for 180 miles, underground!

Ichigo had related to her that he trained under Kisake's shop to get stronger before he came to her rescue, and when he underwent training in a similar setting at the Vizard's hideout just learning to control his hollowification before the war with Aizen and the rescue of his 'now' girlfriend, Orihime Inoue.

Rukia thought, based on Ichigo's retelling, that it was a tiny controlled facility Kisuke had constructed, given his previous occupation in the Soul Society and, of course, judging from the size of his shop on the outside as a frontal operation.

Wow, how badly I was mistaken. Rukia thought, still in awe, her head whirling from the ridiculous scale this man's mind works on; this was the last time she was going to take Ichigo's word on anything. The boy always tries to downplay everything, thinking that by not giving details, it makes him look cool. To Rukia, Ichigo seems to constantly be in a state of - (yeah, I did that, and it wasn't a big deal. What else you got?) sort of mode, which annoys her to no end. The accomplishments that boy has published are nothing to easily brushed off, and for anyone else, they wouldn't be taken so lightly. But that's Ichigo for you! Instead of putting his fetes of achievements on display as idols to boast about as an ordinary human being does, he moseys on to the next thing; constantly getting stronger, collecting a treasure of experiences, but never getting blinded by the bling. His attitude is:

Yeah, I see and communicate with ghosts daily, something no normal human does, but it's no big deal.

Yeah, I became a Soul Reaper, something no human has ever done on the mortal plane- but it's no big deal.

Yeah, I trained with two former Captains exiled from the Soul Society in their big-ass underground secret training bases, the size of a small city and a small village, but it's no big deal.

Yeah, I evolved faster than any Soul Reaper in the history of the Soul Society. I got my Bankai a few weeks after obtaining my sword name, and my Shikai plus fought toe-to-toe with the biggest and baddest names in the Seireitei and bested them on their home turf, but it's no big deal.

Ichigo Kurosaki excels in downplaying the magnitude of every situation. Rukia should have learned by now not to trust him with scale.

In her previous visits, Kisuke had her Gigai ready for her to jump into, much like she was about to do when she arrived at his shop three hours ago. That was plan A. Conduct business with Urahara as quickly as possible, then get the hell out here as fast as her new artificial legs can carry her, but things didn't happen as they should this time. For example, when Rukia tried to 'jump' into one of the ready-made empty-shelled bodies, Kisuke had on hand (just in case a soul reaper popped out of the Ether into the World of the Living without assignment). Instead of reconstructing a Gigai from scratch, Kisake made sure to have a storage of the things on hand upstairs in the shop, in a cold room for easy access. They had never rejected her spirit in the history of her visits, even that first one Kisuke gave her. What was most disturbing is that a Gigai has never, in Kisuke's explanation of the matter, decomposed upon contact with a Soul Reaper before today. These (empty-shelled) bodies didn't have features, sinews, flesh, or bone structures to rot, yet their material needed a unique, viscous substance sustained at a particular temperature to keep them in good condition until they were ready to host a spiritual entity. There is more science-y stuff involved with a Gigai, but Rukia had never been interested in how they worked (only that they worked!). That was up until three hours ago. What confused Rukia is why, after what's been a seamless transmutation countless times before, created a problem three hours ago when she tried to step into one of the Gigai bodies from the storage room upstairs, and it turned to powder on contact.

"The hell?" Rukia exclaimed, startled, turning to the man in the hat and clogs behind her for answers to the rising unstated questions, no doubt playing out in a riot on her face. What's this trick? How did that happen? Why did it happen? Did you do this? Explain this, please. Et. Cetera, Et. Cetera. She was surprised to find his face riddled with a mixture of curiosity and astonishment.

"That," Kisuke had paused as he took a breath to speak, "is very interesting," he said, nodding to himself as if confirming some private conclusion. His shaded eyes lingered on the powdered remains of his property. Kisuke's voice was laden with novelty, which is worthwhile to note because Soul Reapers, with their long lives, rarely found anything interesting, and it gave Rukia no solace to be of interest to a man like Kisuke Urahara. A man who not only does experiments as a hobby, but an obsession. For it takes more than contentment in one's work and passion to build some of the things Kisuke had from his laboratory over the years in the Soul Society and the World of the Living. Kisuke Urahara, though exiled from his home world, was still 'Mr. Indispensable' and from time to time, the Soul Society reaches out to him in his exile for assistance, which vexes the Captain of Squad Twelve to no end.

A few moments of silence passed between them. Needless to say, this didn't put Rukia in a trusting state of mind. She wasn't before she entered this place, and Kisuke is someone she trusts as far as she could throw a full-grown warhorse.

"Mr. Urahara?" Rukia tried to sound confident. She was not sure if she succeeded or not because her voice sounds strange in her hearing.

The man looked up, a slow grin exposing his too-white teeth from the shadows of his face as he turned his attention down in her direction. "You are a one-of-a-kind creature, aren't you, Rukia Kuchiki?" Kisuke said his words like honey in winter as his long legs took one step toward her. Every instinct in Rukia's gut went into alarm mode, and she had to fight the impulse to back up a step from his advance. "In the hundred years I've been creating Gigais for Soul Reapers, none has ever done that," he pointed a gnarled finger at the knee-heigh piled heap of dust where the Gigai body once stood, "to one of my creations."

"I'll pay for it," Rukia said hastily.

"Why, yes you will," Kisuke replied matter-of-factly. "These materials are not cheap or easily obtained, especially out here on the frontiers of mortals. Regardless of their technological advances over the last seventy years, they're still lifetimes away from producing anything remotely conducive to my field of study and experimentation."

Another step toward her, and Rukia couldn't help but swallow reflexively, having to cock her head back to keep contact with the man's enshadowed eyes; a sign to him that she was not cowed despite the overwhelming intimidation emanating from his soul into her spatial awareness. Kisuke Urahara is a tall man, and his reputation makes him a figure of legend in the Soul Society, but Rukia wasn't about to let anything about him dictate her reactions. "But you know," Kisuke leans down, folding his six-foot-three length forward to get closer to her, "I might need more than your money to pay for this little mess here."

Rukia felt her brows furrowing on her face like a freshly planted field as she tried to follow this man's train of thought. What does he want from me? Coming up with zero ideas of what Kisuke could be asking for, what he was after, or what planet his brain is on right now, she asked her question outright in her most haughty tone. "What do you want, Mr. Uraraha?" she said, glaring up at the man. She didn't like his body language, his attitude, or his tone, almost as if he was blaming her for what happened to the Gigai with impunity. Kisuke is smart enough to know that she couldn't have known that touching the Gigai would cause it to disintegrate. How could she have? Nothing like that had ever happened. He, himself, said the same, so what is he expecting here?

"Oh!" the man exclaimed softly, and there was that grin again plastered on his face like a nasty little mask. "That's easy," he bent his lips to her ear before whispering, "I. Want. Your. Body."

Rukia's fist went flying before her mind had a chance to communicate that this was the action path her body was taking. Anger danced in her veins as Kisuke's words languished around her thoughts like an echo, and for a few seconds, all she saw was Kisuke's grinning face.

A few of those white teeth needed an immediate vacation down the column of his skinny throat, and it wouldn't be too much to ask if a few of them got stuck in his artificial windpipe, too. How dare he!

But instead of the hard impact against soft giving flesh and vacation time for a couple of Kisuke's molars, she was looking for, a rough palm caged her right hook, stopping its momentum inches from her target. Urahara's face painted a disapproving expression in his facial muscles.

"Why is it when I say that to females, they get the wrong impression?" He sighed as he released her fist and straightened his spine. "Has feminism taken over for good? Can't a man joke once in a while without having his character brought into question with such feminine aggression?"

"Fe-?" Rukia sputtered, the words stuck somewhere at the back of her tongue. "You-you! Aggression!? How do you expect me to react to a statement like that from a man?"

Kisuke sucked his teeth rudely and sighed again as if he was having this conversation for the millionth time. His voice took on a bored tone. "I am a scientist, Ms. Kuchiki, not just your typical male who thinks with his lower phallic brain." He gave her a look that seemed to say, "So that's where your mind is." "And here I was hoping you'd be a cut above the rest, Ms. Kuchiki. Color me unsurprised. All of your minds are in the gutter."

"Gutter? You're something else." Rukia scoffed disbelievingly, easing down from her sputtering fit.

"Well, one of us has to be. Since you've proved yourself lacking in that category, I'm afraid I will have to take up the mantle." Kisuke said. His interest seems to be deflating from their conversation like a balloon losing air, gray eyes shifting around as if puppeteer'd by his chain of thoughts.

She gasped at his insolence but recognizes that arguing with the man would get them nowhere. Kisuke Urahara seems to Rukia like the kind of man who can drone out the noisy distractions by teleporting to his own world via his mind space. Once he gets that far-away look in his eyes, like the one he's wearing now, you can beat your gums up all you want; if he chooses not to hear a word you say, there's nothing you can do to change that situation no matter how loud you want to get. That said, while he was still being responsive, Rukia wasn't about to digest her words. Despite her stubbornness, some of those lessons of comportment sank into her thick head, and she will not allow Kisuke Urahara to treat her how he sees fit.

By your actions, you train others on how to treat you. Has the same meaning as 'it's not what people call you, is what you answer to.'

She has never experienced this side of Kisuke Urahara before, and for all his faults, Rukia has never known him as ill-mannered; that would be Mayuri Kurotsuchi's angle. "You, sir, are arrogant!" Rukia stated, grappling with her irritation as it reaches new heights from being in Kisuke Urahara's presence for too long. "Do not forget that I am your customer."

"Oh, I forget nothing," Kisuke said in a blasé tone. "that's a part of my curse as a learnered manifestation. And you should not forget, my sweet snow flower, that you're are about to marry the King of Arrogance, personified." He chuckled drily at that. "No extra charge for the sample, my dearest customer! I hope that you took notes. You're going to need them." Kisuke said, turning his back to her and waving his hand in her general direction in a shooing gesture, his attention on the dust pile as he stooped on the balls of his feet, cloistered in his comfortable-looking house slippers, getting a closer look. It was difficult to read anything in his voice other than the rudeness her emotions wanted her to bite into.

Rukia took a breath and counted to three to calm her vexation. That little tat about her imaginary impending nuptials to Byakuya (of all people) is designed to grate on her nerves, she knew. Kisuke has been up her ass about it ever since she came here and Rukia refuses to play his game any longer. She just needed to focus on getting one thing done at a time.

First, my Gigai. Next: getting the hells out of this place.

Rukia arrests her emotions on the subject, for now, remembering that this is the only man in this world who can help her. During this time of setting down, Kisuke remained as he was, bent in front of the pile of white sand, peering at something, his head tilting to the side. She had no idea what his eyes were seeing that hers couldn't, but she wasn't the mad scientist here. Rukia is a soldier without assignment in the World of the Living, and this man is the only person capable of helping her blend in with mortals.

Best not piss him off. Even paying customers can be refused service.

With a final haughty huff, she turned, making her way toward the exit of the storage room. Her right foot was just stepping through the threshold when Kisuke called out to her, his voice wearing a serious-sounding cadence for the first time since her arrival. "I'll have an answer and a Gigai for you in three hours. Be back in three hours, Ms. Kuchiki." There was no mistaking the cut-and-dry command in his tone that stiffened Rukia's back, even on the heels of her annoyance with his behavior seconds ago.

Now here she is three hours later, in a capsule built by this man to hold spirits, and Kisuke is singing. Rukia has never heard the song before, even in her downtime while on assignment in the World of Mortals. There was always so much to do, explore and learn from humans. Because of her age, she looks like a high school student, and to keep up appearances, she had to integrate with the school system whenever she was in the World of the Living, rooming with Ichigo, in his closet. Why schools in the mortal realm require so many things, she'll never understand. Until she completed her assignment, she had homework to do and research to do with computers. Computers! Rukia knew what a library was, sure. But these teachers wanted everything submitted online and typed. Rukia had no idea what a laptop was at the time or how to use one. Because she's used to writing everything by hand in the Seireitei, it was all one-finger-typing the first couple of times (hell on wheels)until she graduated to two fingers from each hand, then after consistent practice for a few months, two hands and ten fingers. Group projects were another thing that confined her time in between the Konsōs to perform, hollow hunting, stakeouts to conduct, and reports to fill out to make sure all of her movements were documented. She had friends to hang out with to keep up with her appearance, club meetings to attend, school activities, social activities, and the grueling list went on.

Ichigo has a collection of music that he listens to through his giant headphones in respect of his guest's privacy living in his bedroom closet, but they're all in Japanese; beautiful music, intense at times, and she understands what they were singing about close enough to their culture references to like them, but none ever resonated with Rukia to transfer fancy into an enjoyable hobby. Ichigo also has a guitar in his room that she never saw him play.

Maybe he has it in there to make himself look cool, the idiot.

Kisuke is singing a song in English, one of the many human languages she was required to learn while at the academy, just in case she was sent to the World of the Living. Rukia had thought it was far-fetch for someone like her to be sent to the World of the Living at the time.

Good thing I paid attention in class.

"I could stay awake just hear you breathing!" Kisuke belted out tones, causing her to roll her eyes at the man.

Rukia didn't care for Kisuke's exploration into the shower singing niche, though his voice wasn't half bad, she had to admit. A light tenor sonorous voice lives in that skinny neck of his. She would never have guessed, but she wanted him to shut it and hurry up with the process so that she can get out of this capsule and get her voice back. Rukia didn't know how it happened, but the moment Kisuke locked the door over her spirit, her ability to communicate disappeared.

I wonder if that's why he's singing, because he knows I can't deliver a scathing remark. Because he knows, he knows I'll have to endure this. Why couldn't he cut off my hearing, too?

For some reason, the former captain is being random as seven hells since she came down from upstairs, finding him tinkering about his laboratory. He was yet to get back to his previous question of what the age of maturity was. Rukia has an idea of what it is, of course. If she were to compare it, it would be akin to a human experiencing puberty for a few months in its full, confusing, hormonal fury. If she were a human, she would be experiencing menstrual cramps, acting out due to crazy hormones, and mood swings. Rukia's age of maturity came with whispering voices, crazy power upthrust, and precognition. Creepy as thirteen hells, but the worst part is the surprises. Like melting a Gigai and having to have one specially made because her spirit feels like being a bitch.

According to Kisuke, while he was strapping Rukia into this capsule thing, it was not her 'explicitly' that was having a problem but Sode no Shirayuki, her zanpakuto spirit.

"You're zanpakuto spirit is manipulating the reishi storage in your body, sort of like a vicarious puppet string to the master, you, from her realm. This way, she can affect your reality."

"What?"

"She wants to control your life and not have you control her life. That's dangerous, by the way." Kisuke said unnecessarily.

"You think!" Rukia said, delivering that statement with all the sarcasm she could deposit in those two words. "But why is she doing this?"

Kisuke shrugged. "Zanpakuto's are independent thinking entities outside of the normalcy of their powers (Shikai and Bankai). They adopt personality traits from their welders in their development, so it is safe to say that she's you from a section of your sub-conscience that you're not familiar with."

"That's-that's not helpful."

"I understand, but that's my best guess on the subject until I can learn more in the couple of weeks that you'll be here with us. All I can do now is make sure that the vents in your wrist are not blocked while you and your zanpakuto have a mother-daughter all-out war in your body. Ouch!" He expresses sympathetically.

It took a second for that to register. "With us?" Rukia asked, taken aback. Surely, Kisuke didn't expect that she'll be staying here with him and the rest of his household, did he? Rukia wasn't about to be his on-call experiment subject. She opened her mouth to tell him just that at the same time Kisuke closed the capsule door, and she lost her right to speak.

Great, now he was whistling!

A new song had started just as the last finished on a soaring note. Rukia sighed, enduring Kisuke's singing as he began the first stanza. "I can't light no more of your darkness." Finger snapping joins in more whistling, "frozen here on the ladder of my life." Were these songs targeted at her? Their lyrics seem to be.

Rukia expanded her lungs, taking in all the air she could in this confined space. Thirteen hells. Why can't this man shut up? It did her no good that the spirit living inside her wanted to start a coup d'état of her body, if Kisuke's words could be believed.

The halo light dimmed for a second before it flickered to red, then back to a steady blue. Rukia had no idea if Kisuke was about to turn her into a frog or a chicken. She had no say in the matter. And if he did turn her into a frog or chicken, she'll have a plausible excuse for why she couldn't return to the Soul Society and the viper pit that is the nobility with the Kuchiki Clan at the center of all the whispers and rumors. All at once, Rukia felt weightless as she laid back in this capsule, cradling her soul essence in its container.

For a second or three, she didn't care about the nobility, the Soul Society, or the Game of Whispers. She didn't care if Kisuke Urahara flipped a lever and transmuted her soul into a chicken or a bunny. Bunnies are cuteness incarnate; she wouldn't mind being a bunny. She never had cute things growing up. That's why it's soul-wrenching when she comes to the World of the Living, sees all the beautiful things here, and can't take them back with her to her home world. It makes her appreciate them more, she supposes.

Rukia was beginning to feel sleepy. It didn't occur to her to be alarmed about this since putting on a Gigai has never made her sleepy. A wave of exhaustion came over her, not physically, of course, for she was still a spirit. The fatigue came from a mental source like she just had the strings that's been holding her up all this time in the face of everything (the nobility, her duty, and obligations) snipped one by one.

Eyes drooping, Rukia registered that Kisuke had started another tune, the words saying; "If you don't know me by now. You will never, never, never know me! Oooh!"

Ominous poetry, Kisuke, you asshole.

When a human is born into this world, their spiritual identity is pushed back to the furthest reaches of their unconsciousness until the death process comes for their physical bodies, extinguishing the breath of life from their lungs, and pushing them back out into the Aether that spawned their souls to begin with; where no physical element is welcomed. That's where they find their true selves, their higher selfies, their divine light; their purpose. Like leaving your problems at the gates (when you're born) and picking them up at the end of the day when you're leaving (when you die). Only there are no problems at the end of life, only freedom, only luminosity. A Soul Reaper occupying a Gigai experiences no loss of their spiritual identity. Soul Reapers know what they are and who they are spiritually but have to dim the light of their souls less they violate the rules of the Soul Society and upset the delicate balance of the mortal and spiritual worlds. They are things that the human mind, in its dormant, programmed habitual state, is still not ready to know, much less understand.

Pouring the undiluted spiritual essence of a Soul Reaper into a Gigai is a delicate job, and one slight slip-up can ruin everything. It is like the birthing process as a baby comes into this world, but sped up dramatically. While it takes nine months for an egg to grow into a mortal baby, to form the cell structure, and to develop the carbon copy from its parent's DNA into its countenance. When a soul is transmuted into the body of a Gigai, the soul is aware of everything; from the formulation of its hands into the physical, the growing of its nails, to the development of every cell, every hair follicle, every layer of skin grafted over bones, tissues, muscles, and ligament. The bubbling of brain matter under the skull, the stinging of chemical reactions and nerve signals running at over a thousand times their normal speed, delivering messages to cells as they form systems of organs, eyes, nose, teeth, ears, tongue, heart, lungs, kidneys, livers, flesh, bone structure; as they become human with their spiritual identities intact.

Yes, they're usually aware of everything as they happen, but Rukia had to be induced into a comma, this around.

"They are a few things we need to discuss, Ms. Kuchiki."

That voice. Rukia thought groggily. That's Kisuke's voice. Why does he sound so far away?

"Ms. Kuchiki?" Kisuke's voice repeated. "Ms. Kuchiki, wake up."

"Where am I?" Rukia asks, her eyelid feeling like they weighed a ton and a half.

"The Soul Society," Kisuke whispers, "my exile's rescinded, and I'm now your new captain."

"The fuck you are." Rukia mourned miserably, stretching her body? She blinked open her eyes. Yes, she can physically blink now.

Kisuke snorted. "someone's grumpy when they oversleep in a capsule."

That statement made Rukia bolt upright, a mistake against the rules of physics because her forehead kissed the glass of the capsule hard in a desperate and failed attempt to sit up. "Ow!" she shrieked. "Why would you leave me in here?" Rukia demanded, glaring at the man through the glass window of the capsule and rubbing her stinging forehead.

Kisuke was wearing a patient look on his face, his strip hat off, presenting his messy light blond hair under the bright lights of the lab. His hair looks like the last time it saw a comb, the comb was running in the opposite direction for its own safety. Inhaling a deep gulp of air through his mouth, then exhaling gustily, Kisuke began, holding up his hand for her to see through her small square glass as he ticked his reasons off from his fingers, "1. You're naked, and I didn't want you waking up with clothes on your new body that you didn't put on yourself. Which would result in you assuming that I fondled you in your helpless state. 2. You're not stable yet for this lab's hostile environment, but you will be in about half an hour. I hate it too." He said before Rukia could voice displeasure at being confined. "I don't like people in my laboratory for more than the time that they need to be here. This is very uncomfortable for me as well. And reason number 3." Kisuke said, speaking over her protests. He hiked a thumb to his left, and Rukia craned her head in the direction he was pointing to as best she could in the confined space. It took a moment, but when she saw what Kisuke was pointing at, her violet eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, "your zanpakuto spirit has attempted at several intervals to freeze the blood in your veins, solid, her actions, not mine." Kisuke said, with palms up before sighing an exhausted breath that turned to fog.

"W-what?" Rukia barely managed.

Kisuke shrugged tiredly, and when Rukia took a closer look at the man, there were bags under his eyes and dark circles. Did he stay up all night?

"Were you-" Rukia started to ask.

"What good is the answer to that question, Ms. Kuchiki?" Kisuke interrupted, a yawn breaking on his lips. "You'll be stable in twenty-five minutes, then your zanpakuto spirit," he tilted his head in the direction of the white, pale figure in the corner, "won't have any leverage to turn you into a summer ice statue. There is some clothing in the closet over there and a pair of boots. Come up when you're ready."

"Mr. Urahara," Rukia called out to the man readying to leave her down here, naked with her murderess of a zanpakuto spirit.

"If you're going to thank me," he interrupted her again, "hold your gratitude until you're ready to leave, to go back to the Soul Society. Thank me then, if you still feel inclined, at the gates of the Senkaimon. For now, the capsule will open in less than twenty-three minutes, get dressed and come upstairs for some breakfast." He turned to her zanpakuto spirit. "the both of you. And whatever you do," he called over his shoulders, "don't touch anything in my lab." With that, he made his way to the exit.

"What the hell are you doing here, Sode no Shirayuki?" Rukia demanded the second Kisuke left the room, her tone biting.

"Were you not paying attention," her zanpakuto said blithely, "How I ever allowed you to be my welder? I must have been out of my mind."

"Are we going to do this again?" Rukia narrowed her eyes at her sword spirit remembering the last time they fought back at the zanpakutos' rebellion.

Shirayuki shrugged her shoulders delicately, "I have no objections to fighting you, my master." she chuckled, covering her mouth with her long sleeve." I'm not the one hiding behind a contraption." she turned her nose up at the capsule. "Come out so I can kill you. Or are you such a coward?"

"You bitch!" Rukia spat.

"I learn from the best," Shirayuki reposted coolly. "One of the hardest things to do is face yourself. Your ugly, disgusting self. Is that possible for you to do right now? To face me, that is?"

"I don't see any reason not to put you back in your place, Sode no Shirayuki."

"Delighted to hear it, my master," Shirayuki said sarcastically.

Rukia bristled, feeling for an opening in this tin can immediately. She needs to get out of this capsule and teach her zanpakuto spirit a lesson in manners. To demonstrate that she is still its master.

"Were you always this stupid?" Came a male's voice from somewhere in the lab, making Rukia's fingers pause in their frantic search. The voice was deeper than Kisuke's, gruffer. "Your zanpakuto just verbally mooned you, and your first response is to beat it into submission even in your vulnerable state?" The voice made a 'pfft' sound. "You really are his sister. Pardon me! Fiancé.

"Who are you?" Both Rukia and Shirayuki demanded at the same time.

"We've been so out of touch, you don't even recognize me in this voice. I'm hurt, Rukia."

Movement came from the shadows to Rukia's right. Damn it, she could barely see anything from inside this tube! Shirayuki, on the other hand, could see perfectly. The zanpakuto spirit inclined her head gracefully in the direction of the shadow coming closer to the bright lights. It hopped up onto Kisuke's clutter-filled desk, finding a purchase on top of a pile of papers.

"Lady Yoruichi Shihoin," Rukia breathed.

"That's master Yoruichi, to you Rukia," Yoruichi declared, her cat eyes gleaming, black-furred body stretching. "At least for the next two weeks."