Two guards of the onmitsukido nearly jump out of their skins as Ichigo teleports in front of the main entrance to the barracks. The two masked ninja immediately level their spears at the young lieutenant but once they realize it's Ichigo they relax slightly. "Sorry about that, I didn't mean to startle you two." Ichigo says as he walks past the two with Rukia by his side, as he enters the barracks he turns and asks a question to one of the guards. "Is Captain Soi Fon in? I wish to speak with her." He asks politely, "Yes sir, she should be in her office. If not, she may be at the training grounds with Lady Shihouin." He responds, "Thank you." Ichigo says with a slight bow before continuing through the barracks.
"You've been quiet since we left the estate," Ichigo says as they slowly walk through the halls of the stealth division. The pair walks past an open door where dozens of shinigami are practicing sword katas. "Thinking?"
"I'm trying to piece together possible suspects, there were a lot of people who were unhappy with me becoming a kuchiki. I spent years being belittled by passing comments and evil looks. I had to sleep with a dagger under my pillow on a dozen occasions." She replies. "I don't have anything certain, but out of the ones I've come up with it's Komoda, Hama, Satoshi, Yukiko and Takashi."
"Any particular reason?" He asks, sensing Soi Fon's spiritual pressure increase massively. "I think she might be Bankai training." He comments, feeling her reiatsu increase exponentially.
"Komoda and Hama were the most vocal against me joining the clan. Satoshi regularly ordered the guards to now allow me back into the estate while I was still in the academy. Yukiko constantly tore up my clothes and stole what little belongings I had from Rukongai and destroyed them. Takashi was the worst of them all, denying me food, constantly belittling me, she even attacked me and tore my hair out. Old Bitch." Rukia curses.
"We'll have to write these things down, but it could also be someone who was the nicest to you as well." Ichigo responds. "Betrayal comes from where you least expect it. Normally the spouse is considered the first suspect but I know without a doubt that he wasn't the one to do this." He continues.
"Ren and Michiko have always been kind to me." Rukia responds, "Ren Kuchiki died thirty years ago though. Michiko is still around but she's getting to the end of her life as well. She's almost as old as the head captain." She pauses for a moment to recall any other people who might be overly kind to her. "No… it can't be. Ayame and Genpaku were the ones who put a stop to all their abuse."
"We have to consider everyone, the only reason I know Byakuya isn't a suspect is because I read his mind. I had to basically reconstruct Hisana's soul and I started with his memories, after that I let him recreate her exactly how he remembered. Once her body and soul were finished, I restored her memories. That was the easy part ironically." Ichigo responds.
"We might know more when we get the records. If not then this is going to get a lote more difficult." Rukia says as they exit through the rear of the barracks to the massive outdoor training space.
As they exit through the barracks, Ichigo watches as Soi Fon launches her missile towards the mountain range. However Rukia's spirit energy distracts the captain and draws her attention to her. In doing so, the missile changes course and flies towards Rukia at hypersonic speed. Lifting a hand, Ichigo presses his index finger to the nose of the missile a moment before it would hit them. With his finger still pressing on the missile he snaps with the same hand eradicating her bankai's attack, reducing it to reishi. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't launch nuclear munitions at my wife, Captain." Ichigo says as he and Rukia approach the 2nd squad captain.
"Lieutenant Kurosaki? Captain candidate Kuchiki? What are you two doing here?" Soi Fon asks, partially terrified that he just erased her bankai's attack with a single snap of his fingers. "I-I uh… I can explain."
"Hey Ichigo." Yoruichi greets casually.
"Yo." Ichigo returns the greeting. "Sorry to interrupt… whatever it is you're doing but I need a favor." He says, seeing Yoruichi laying flat on her back on the floor with Soi Fon in Bankai and in her lap. "I need to access the recorded uses of Shinigami's bane from 70 to 75 years ago."
"Uh… why would you need to do that?" Yoruichi asks, her hands still affixed to Soi Fon's buttocks.
"We're investigating a murder." This causes both captains to snap to her with surprise on their faces. Rukia gets in closer to the two of them and lowers her voice to a whisper. "Earlier today, Ichigo resurrected my sister Hisana. In doing so he discovered that she was poisoned with Shinigami's bane."
"We haven't carried out a hit on a noble clan in 200 years, and that was against Tokinada after he murdered his wife Kayako Shiba." Soi Fon responds. "After she got divorced from Captain Shiba's father the Shiba clan had married her off to Tokinada to use her in a clan marriage. Instead he murdered her and when this was discovered, Captain Shiba himself and even former Captain Tousen ordered the hit on him requesting that we use Shinigami's bane."
"Well Hisana was murdered with it, she was poisoned over a long period of time as well since she didn't immediately die from the poison. Whoever did it wanted her to suffer before she died and I think it started after she and Captain Kuchiki got married. That's why I'm asking for the records from that time." Ichigo explains.
"Just uh… just so we're clear. Y-you're not gonna tell anyone about this are you?" Soi-fon asks, still extremely embarrassed about the position they found her and Yoruichi in. Ichigo looks at the embarrassed captain and then to Yoruichi.
"Soi-fon. Just ask Yoruichi out already." Ichigo says, causing Soi-fon's face to light up in blush. "Yoruichi, stop teasing her. It's bad enough you teased me when we were training together. You're blue balling the poor girl." Yoruichi tilts her head back and laughs uproariously, meanwhile Soi-fon looks like she's about to stab Ichigo.
"That is the most; unprofessional, rude, inconsiderate, mysoginis-"
"Relax little bee," Yoruichi says as she gets up, scooping Soi-fon into her arms as she does so. "C'mon let's go."
"You're just gonna let him get away with that?!" Soi-fon roars, though being held bridal style defeats any sort of intimidating factor the tiny captain can muster.
"Yep." Yoruichi responds. "Let's go help them with their problem and then we can go fuck." Soi-fon buries her face in her hands, now so red Rukia can't even name the shade of red anymore.
Soi-fon can't regain enough composure to actually walk herself into her division, still being carried bridal style by Yoruichi. The actual captain of the 2nd division mumbling incoherently with her face in her hands as Yoruichi carries her through the main halls and to her office. Ichigo is partially surprised that the room isn't booby trapped knowing the stealth division, but he's even more shocked to see that Soi-fon's office is a bit mundane. He half expected the office to be lined wall to wall with torture equipment. Instead the only thing that seems out of the ordinary is a black plush cat sitting on her desk beside a small picture frame. Yoruichi plops Soi-fon down in her office chair before leading the pair to a side room. She slides open the shoji doors and turns on the light revealing hundreds and hundreds of shelves stacked floor to ceiling with cases of scrolls.
"Jeez, would it kill you all to digitize this? How the hell are you supposed to find anything here?" Ichigo asks as he walks towards the closest bookshelf. "At least they're ordered by year so it won't be that difficult, but there must be hundreds of thousands of scrolls in here."
"What do you mean Digitize?" Rukia asks.
"Right, I forgot." Ichigo says before turning to face her and Yoruichi. "Soul society is literally hundreds of years behind the human world in terms of technology. Hell most of the rukon districts don't even have running water or metal roofing. I'm gonna talk Yamamoto into finding some tech people out in the Rukon and bringing them into the Gotei 13 to help get you all out of the Edo period and into the modern age. Trust me, having computers would make searching for things as simple as typing the word."
"Sounds like it would be pretty helpful. Our system works but it could be more efficient to be honest." Soi-fon says as she perks up from her chair and hurriedly scurries over to the three. "But it also seems like that technology can be abused."
"It is, but there are laws to prevent that. Besides, it'd give squad 12 another job to do other than entertain Mayuri and Kisuke's weekly fetish, hair brained scheme or plot to take over the world." Ichigo responds. "Years in soul society and the human world are the same right?"
"Yeah." Yoruichi says as she leads them towards the section detailing the mixtures, uses and dates of orders of use of poisons. "You said it happened around 75 years ago?"
"Yeah, it could be a couple years beforehand as well. Hisana and my brother courted for 5 years before they got married." Rukia responds as she starts looking for scrolls within the section of 1926 to 1931.
"I'll look through the 1931 to 1936 section." Soi-fon says as she walks a few paces over towards Yoruichi and begins searching through the files.
"Yoruichi." Ichigo says drawing the mocha skinned goddess to turn to him. "There's another part of the favor that I need to ask you to do." She brushes her purple hair from her face then folds her arms waiting for him to continue. "I need you and Soi-fon to spy on the Kuchikis, and appoint guards to the kitchens as well as any of the sake manufacturing facilities across the seireitei and the rukon."
"I think we can manage, but why are you so paranoid about this? At this point shinigami's bane wouldn't affect you or Rukia even if it was snuck into your food." Yoruichi responds. "I will help keep an eye out for Hisana's sake."
"I've also asked Byakuya to replace the Sake for the ceremony with water." This causes Soi-fon and Yoruichi to arch an eyebrow at him. "We're expecting a child and if Rukia was poisoned with Shinigami's bane our daughter wouldn't survive it."
"And here I took you for a prude this entire time." Yoruichi jokes but this just causes him to deadpan at her.
"Congratulations." Soi-fon whispers to Rukia.
"I only acted like that because I didn't expect it and we aren't in a relationship." Ichigo responds before turning to look through a section of ingredients requisition forms. "What woman in her right mind decides to strip naked in front of a testosterone drunk teenager?"
"What did she do?" Rukia asks.
"It was during your rescue, when I was training to learn how to use Bankai. She brought me to the hot springs and decided to torment me by transforming from her cat form and walking around the place completely naked." Ichigo says shooting a glare at Yoruichi.
"Sounds like something she'd do." Rukia says, rolling her eyes.
"You saw Lady Yoruichi's perfect naked body… and you're complaining?!" Soi-fon practically screams her disbelief to her entire barracks.
"Yes." Ichigo responds, "I'm not going to sit here and insult her by saying that she was unattractive. What bothers me is that I was trying to remain focused on attaining Bankai in two days and she was a major distraction the entire time."
"Can we stop arguing about this and focus on trying to find the damn records?" Rukia asks, now extremely annoyed with the conversation. "Since it happened before we were a couple I don't care but Yoruichi you're still distracting both Ichigo and Captain Soi-fon. We need to get to the bottom of this." Yoruichi sighs before going through the last section they've come to search.
Scroll after scroll they comb through, reading through dozens and dozens of poisons, the days they were used, the victims they were used on. Most of which were powerful hollows with the occasional criminal out in the rukon making it to the hit list. As they read through the near 350 scrolls in the decade time span, Soi-fon catches something that catches her attention. "I think I might have found something." She pipes up causing the other three to comically look over her shoulders. "A vial of hollow venom, a bottle of black lotus extract and a few grams of congealed reiatsu were discovered missing from locked storage on October 17th 1934. The instructions to mix shinigami's bane were found to be forged as well."
"Think we can find a reiatsu sign off of the papers?" Yoruichi asks as Soifon pockets the scroll and puts the ones she had taken out back onto the shelf.
"After this long? The person would've had to have had at least level 10 reiatsu strength." Soi-fon explains. "It's around the strength of the average third or fourth seat shinigami."
"What would mine be at this point?" Ichigo wonders out loud prompting Rukia to shrug.
"Before you battled and defeated Aizen, your reiatsu strength was at level 17, which is on par with Captain's Kuchiki, Komamura, Ukitake and Mayuri. After you stole Aizen's powers to add on top of yours… I don't think we can even scale you at this point." Soi-fon responds, "I know where we keep the recipes and the forgeries. If we can find the forged document and then trace the reiatsu signature we could find whoever was behind this."
"That is assuming that one of the Kuchiki elders actually did the dirty work themselves." Ichigo says as Soi-fon leads them through the room to the back office where the forged records are kept.