After a long and tiring day, it was evening, and although many hours had passed since the Hollow attack—which was manifestly fortuitous, as the Head Captain said vehemently to the gathered crowd when it was becoming too inclined to believe the notion that the Hollow was sent purposely by some malevolent being—and even though Renji and Ichigo had emerged virtually unscathed, and didn’t have the slightest semblance of the common cold in their system, Unohana was determined to administer this so-called saké treatment to them for the sake of her honor as the Chief of the Medical Department and the fact that it was her duty to make sure everyone at the Meadows was 100% healthy, and maybe also because somewhere deep down she enjoyed doing such things. Whichever was the case, Ichigo and Renji placed a minimum distance of a hundred feet between themselves and Unohana, and were constantly vigilant, ducking behind cabins or flash-stepping to some remote location when they sensed Unohana approaching them. Unohana on her part seemed indefatigable in her pursuit of Renji and Ichigo, and thus, to the eye of the bystander, which was the role played by Hitsugaya, Zaraki and Byakuya, the whole scene was quite comical.
“I bet all of Rangiku’s saké bottles that Captain Unohana’s going to catch them before nightfall,” Hitsugaya said.
Zaraki let out a bark of a laugh at this.
“They’re not even with you. You gave them to Captain Kyoraku, I thought.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot,” Hitsugaya said. “But don’t worry. Getting them back from him won’t be much of a problem.”
“Then be prepared to hand them all to me, kid. Those boys are gonna be caught within the next twenty minutes!” Zaraki laughed.
“And if you’re wrong?” Hitsugaya said.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll let your squad practice in Squad Eleven’s training grounds.”
“That’s good enough for me. My squad could do with some professional training.”
“You’re both wrong,” said Byakuya, who was hitherto silent and patiently waiting for the right opportunity to place his bet. “Ichigo and Renji are not going to be caught at all.”
“And if you lose?” Hitsugaya and Zaraki said at the same time.
“And if I lose,” Byakuya said, rolling the words on his tongue as if saying them after deep deliberation, “I’ll give you my scarf.”
Zaraki whooped.
“I’ll take the bigger half, kid,” he said to Hitsugaya.
“Fair enough,” said the Captain of Squad 10.
“In the unlikely event that I lose the wager,” Byakuya said, “only Captain Zaraki gets to keep my scarf.”
“What?” Hitsugaya said. “This is not fair, Captain Kuchiki.”
“Oh, yes it is, kid,” Zaraki said.
“I don’t want my scarf to trail on the ground behind the wearer. Therefore, only a tall person is allowed to wear it. You are not eligible to wear my scarf, Captain Hitsugaya. You are diminutive.”
“Captain Kuchiki!” Hitsugaya said. “How could you insult me like that?”
“I was not insulting you,” Byakuya said. “What I said was merely an asseveration of a well-known fact.”
“Exactly, kid,” Zaraki said. “You’re short for your age. Hell, you’re short for anybody’s age.”
“Watch your mouth, Zaraki!” Hitsugaya snarled. “You forget that I’m also a captain of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads, and that protocol requires that you behave with me in a suitable fashion. There is no room in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads for someone who doesn’t understand that. And another thing Zaraki, I could insult you on the basis of your height just as you have insulted me on the basis of mine.”
“Oh no, you couldn’t,” Zaraki said, sneering.
“And why’s that?”
“Because it would render you a hypocrite,” Byakuya said. “I agree with you, Captain Hitsugaya, that while conversing with one another, captains of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads need to follow the protocol that you mentioned. However, by making remarks on Captain Zaraki’s height as a means to insult him, you would be exhibiting hypocrisy yourself.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hitsugaya said.
“Well, now you know kid,” Zaraki said.
“And another thing,” Byakuya said; “You can’t insult someone for being tall: it is only the short who are ridiculed.”
“You both are so mean,” Hitsugaya said petulantly. “I’m out of here.” He marched away with his nose held high.
“Technically, Kuchiki,” Zaraki said, turning to Byakuya, “you’re short compared to me, too. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t make fun of you.”
“There is,” Byakuya said calmly. Just as he was about to divulge what this reason was, Captain Komamura, who was perambulating aimlessly, noticed them and walked over, greeting them amiably with a “Good Evening!” so loud that Byakuya winced and the bells on Zaraki’s hair jingled wildly, as though hit by a hurricane.
“Good evening to you, too, Captain Komamura,” Byakuya said. “But I would appreciate it if you did not speak so loudly.”
Komamura said something incoherent that sounded much like a bark, and only when he repeated it upon Byakuya’s asking did it transpire that the Captain of Squad 7 was apologizing.
“I sometimes forget how loud I must be for smaller people,” Komamura said as sheepishly as his imposing nature would permit.
And then it came to Byakuya in an epiphany.
“Captain Zaraki,” he said, “if you insult me because I’m shorter than you, there is no reason why Captain Komamura couldn’t insult you: everyone is shorter than him.”
“Pah!” Zaraki said. “It’s not height that matters. It’s strength.”
“For one thing, Captain Zaraki, your double standard in this respect is invidious. For another, it sounds as though you are insinuating that Captain Komamura is weaker than you,” Byakuya said, and when Komamura realized that that was indeed what Zaraki meant, he snarled.
“What is the meaning of this?” Komamura said, rising to his full height.
“Yumichika was right,” Zaraki said; “Dogs are ugly and stupid.”
Komamura flared and rose to his full height, which was an impressive feat. Before he could pronounce the latter syllable of the word ‘Bankai’, however, Byakuya incapacitated him using Bakudo Number 61: Rikujokoro.
“You insult me, Zaraki?” Komamura said, struggling in vain against the superior strength of Byakuy’s Kidō.
“Any retard could see that!” Zaraki said.
Byakuya quietly excused himself and headed cabinward, not willing to witness violence in its most animalistic sense just then. And besides, there were certain other things he had to take care of.
“Captain Unohana,” he said when he spotted the Captain of Squad 4 surreptitiously peering around his cabin; “I was just about to go looking for you.”
“Ah, Captain Kuchiki,” Unohana said, smiling. “What can I do for you? Perhaps a little saké in the right places—”
“As tempting as that offer sounds,” Byakuya said with no little asperity, “I must refuse. The reason I have approached you is to ask you to abandon your search for Ichigo Kurosaki and my lieutenant.”
Unohana gazed at Byakuya with polite astonishment in her eyes.
“Why ever should I do that?” she said.
“Suffice it to say that a lot of things depend on it,” Byakuya said laconically.
“But it is essential that the two boys be perfectly healthy,” Unohana persisted. “I have taken it upon myself to ensure that everyone present at the Meadows is absolutely healthy.”
“I appreciate your concern for them,” Byakuya said, “but I implore you to abandon this pursuit. I assure you that Ichigo Kurosaki and Renji are absolutely healthy at this point, and if you want, I could personally make sure of it.”
“There will be no need for that, Captain Kuchiki,” Unohana said. “I believe you. But I won’t make such concessions the next time.”
As Byakuya watched Unohana walk toward her cabin, he heaved a sigh of relief. He straightened his scarf around his neck and entered his cabin, feeling a lot lighter than he had felt in ages.
But wait!
He stopped in his tracks.
Ichigo and Renji didn’t know that Unohana had ceased chasing after them. Byakuya smirked.
* * * * *
As Byakuya sat in a chair in his cabin with his eyes shut, contemplating the infinite, or at least appearing to be doing so, he was remotely aware of a spiritual presence in the vicinity. With the intention of testing his ability to sense spiritual energy, Byakuya chose not to open his eyes, and try instead to recognize the presence using his other senses. And thus he sat in his chair, deeply concentrating on trying to identify the person whose spiritual energy he could sense in traces.
That is, until a pair of strong hands grasped him by the shoulders and shook him violently.
Byakuya didn’t register anything for the next five seconds or so after his eyes shot open, even as he stared into the mischievous face of Captain Kyoraku.
“You all right, Captain Kuchiki?” Kyoraku said in a speciously solicitous tone.
Byakuya said nothing, but calmly extricated himself from Kyoraku’s hold and stood up, straightening his robes with dignity.
“You were hiding your spiritual presence,” Byakuya said.
Kyoraku nodded.
“I was.”
“To what end?”
“Nothing. Just thought I might drop in and say Hello.”
“There are other, more polite ways to greet someone,” Byakuya said with asperity.
“I know,” Kyoraku said simply.
“But I could still sense a spiritual presence. Evidently you are not perfect in the art of hiding it.”
Kyoraku raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean? I have years of practice, and not even Old Man Yama could detect me if I hid my spiritual presence.”
“Clearly your claims are mendacious.”
“No, no, I’m certain,” Kyoraku said complainingly. “I tried it on Jushiro only a couple of days ago.”
“Then Captain Ukitake’s senses are becoming dull.”
“You’re sensing things that don’t exist!”
“I trust my senses more than your claims,” Byakuya said with dignity.
“And I trust my claims more,” Kyoraku said.
“In order to achieve parity in our discrepant views, we must consider one of the more unlikely possibilities: that there was a third party whose spiritual presence I sensed. But I don’t believe this was the case. I am not a believer of coincidences,” Byakuya said.
“That’s a possibility,” Kyoraku said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“And I don’t understand why we are wasting precious time on something as trivial as this. Tell me, Captain Kyoraku, why is it that you dropped by in the first place?” Byakuya demanded.
“I already told you: to say Hello.”
“Either you are the whimsical person that everyone says you are, or there was a different, deeper reason behind your coming here.”
“Fine,” Kyoraku said, the last vestiges of levity draining from his face to be replaced inexorably by a sort of graveness that portended bad news. “The saké’s all gone.”
The interest that Kyoraku’s sudden change in visage evoked in Byakuya flickered and died. But Byakuya’s sense of the proprieties obliged him to respond.
“And where would this saké have come from?” he said.
“Don’t you remember? Captain Hitsugaya generously gave it to me. And before I could taste a single drop, all of it was gone.”
“Tragic,” Byakuya said apathetically, but at the same time, he vaguely remembered something Hitsugaya had said a while before: something about retrieving the saké from Kyoraku as a part of the bet.
“I just remembered something,” Byakuya said.
“Is it about the missing saké?” Kyoraku said, pleading with his eyes that that was the case.
Byakuya nodded, and Kyoraku began to feel visibly elated.
“I think searching Captain Zaraki’s cabin would prove fruitful.” Byakuya said.
“Well, if you say so,” Kyoraku said, and with renewed exuberance, he flash-stepped out of Byakuya’s cabin.
“Now where was I?” Byakuya said to himself. “Ah! Ichigo Kurosaki and Renji. Yes. Now what I do with them?”
He drifted into his former contemplative state.
* * * * *
“Is the coast clear?” Ichigo whispered to Renji, who was peeking from behind a large conifer.
“More or less,” Renji said. “We can’t be too sure, though. What if Captain Unohana’s waiting right there?”
“Man,” Ichigo said, slumping to the ground at the base of the tree. “This is so tiresome, all this running and hiding . . . . Why can’t that crazy woman give it a rest?”
Renji shook his head.
“You don’t know Captain Unohana,” he said. “She’d catch you even if yours was the fastest flash step, and even if she had to search the entire world: she’s that determined.”
“Just my luck,” Ichigo said petulantly.
“Our luck, you mean,” Renji said. “I’m not so keen on being given the ‘Saké Treatment’ either.”
“There you are.”
Both of them started as though they had unknowingly stepped on a corpse.
Renji peeked around the tree, and sighed in relief.
“Oh, it’s only you, Captain.”
Byakuya nodded.
“Captain Unohana was looking for the two of you,” he said with a straight face. After all, it was the truth: that Unohana was looking for them.
Renji shuddered at the mention of the name, and Ichigo suppressed a gasp.
“We know,” Renji said.
“She has searched everywhere,” Byakuya said, “except here. It’s only a matter of time before she finds you.”
Renji fell to his knees.
“Please, Captain, help us!”
Byakuya nodded.
“You will?” Renji said, his face lighting up.
“But,” Byakuya said.
Renji cursed in his mind. He should have known his captain was not going to help them without demanding something in return—something ridiculously disproportionate to the task he was supposed to do, most likely.
“But,” Byakuya repeated, “you will have to do my bidding for the next three days.”
“Don’t I do that already?” Renji said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Ichigo Kurosaki. You, Renji, have to clean my cabin every morning and do everyone’s dishes at every meal.”
Both Renji and Ichigo grimaced.
“You suck,” Ichigo said.
“Pardon me?” Byakuya said.
“You suck,” Ichigo repeated.
“Suck? Suck what?” Byakuya said, a look of genuine albeit polite confusion on his face. “You’re behaving strangely, Ichigo Kurosaki.”
Saying so Byakuya strode away, the shadow of the great tree and the fact that he had his back to Ichigo and Renji helping him conceal his smile.
Ichigo turned to Renji.
Renji stared at Ichigo.
Ichigo blinked.
Renji blinked.
Ichigo coughed.
Renji scratched his head.
“Well, what’re we waiting for? Let’s get out of here!”
* * * * *
“What on earth is going on?” Nanao demanded of no one in particular as she allowed a misgiving to lure her out of her cabin, where she was in the process of gleaning knowledge from a great old book that she had picked up at the Soul Society. Upon stepping outside, however, she gasped—or, well, came as close to gasping as the situation would permit. The air was thick with black smoke that made it virtually impossible for her to speak, or see, or for that matter, smell anything besides the pungent, suffocating substance that the smoke was made up of.
“Nanao, is that you?”
“Rangiku! What’s going on?”
The amorphous silhouette that stood in the direction from which Rangiku’s voice had proceeded began slowly assuming a human shape as the Lieutenant of Squad 10 neared Nanao.
“Apparently it’s Captain Kurotsuchi’s doing,” Rangiku said, coughing as her lungs became filled with unwholesome amounts of the smoke.
“My Captain’s missing, too,” Nanao said, putting forth an asseveration that seemed far from being germane to Rangiku’s statement, or for that matter the situation itself.
“What?” Rangiku said, confused.
“Can’t you smell it?” Nanao said. “It smells a little like sake. And if you don’t have the sake, there’s just one other person who can.”
“You mean to say, this is burning sake?” Rangiku said, shuddering at the notion that the sacred drink should incur such a terrible indignity.
Nanao nodded, but the act went wasted, since to Rangiku it might as well have been a trick of the billowing smoke that limited visibility, despite the propinquity between the two lieutenants.
“Yes,” Nanao said. “I think that for some strange reason that oddball Kurotsuchi’s burning sake.”
Rangiku shuddered again and emitted a series of guttural sounds that insinuated that she was experiencing a paroxysm of some sort.
“Shall we go find out?” Nanao offered, since she knew, from her studies in the matter of Soul Psychology, that undesirable information is even more insidious to the mind of a person if it is unconfirmed.
“Captains Kuchiki and Zaraki and my own captain were already headed there, as far as I know. Captain Zaraki was shouting it out: you couldn’t miss it. He said something about a bet and claiming the sake,” Rangiku said.
“We can’t just sit here!” Nanao said. She couldn’t forego the opportunity of exercising even more control over her captain than she usually did. The idea of her captain being the potential perpetrator of all this was too sweet for her to just cross her arms and sit down until the other Soul Reapers managed to restore things to their original state. No, she needed the spotlight, which she would doubtless get when her captain’s ear was close within reach. Every eye in the Meadows would instantly be upon her when she grabbed hold of the ear and turned it hard in order to elicit that cry of pain that she was so familiar with and loved to hear—music to her ears. She would be venerated and exalted beyond her wildest dreams, being possibly given more deference than the Head Captain himself. After all, a mere lieutenant achieving perfect control over her captain with no visible effort and with an air of authority was no ordinary feat. All the glory, all the respect, all the awe—none of it could possibly be achieved by just sitting in one place and hoping for things to return to normal.
“No!” Nanao said so vehemently that Rangiku took a couple of steps back reflexively. “I mean, we have to go help!”
“You’re thinking about your captain again, aren’t you?” Rangiku said dryly. “Believe me when I say no sake lover can possibly set to fire his own sake.”
“Then he was careless and should be punished for it!” Nanao yelled, the malevolent glint in her eye visible even through the smoke.
“Nanao—!”
But Nanao had already flash-stepped blindly and become invisible at the horizon, which happened to be a little beyond five feet from where she had been standing, considering all the sensuous limitations the copious amounts of the air pollutant imposed.
Rangiku sighed before blindly diving after her misguided friend into the unknown.
* * * * *
Leaning against a badly damaged table as he coughed out blood, teeth, and what he suspected was his appendix, Mayuri Kurotsuchi cursed like he had never cursed before.
“Damn it!” was what he meant to say, but considering the fact that through his throat at that moment was passing regurgitated blood, he only managed to emit a sort of strange gurgling sound, following which he choked on the blood and made another attempt at articulating the interjection, paying for his foolish stubbornness in blood.
The sight of his hat, which was lying some distance off on the same table, with flames dancing happily around its brim, infuriated Mayuri greatly. He obliterated it with a badly aimed Hado 31 attack that only got lucky. Lucky only at that instant however: not after that. For after destroying Mayuri’s hat, the red ball of fire still had enough energy in it to become one with and intensify the already large flame that was burning underneath the pot of sake that Mayuri had hung over it based on a whim, with the result that the flame rose to twice its height, and the dense black smoke became even denser and blacker and more voluminous than it was before, and the pot, which seemed to contain an endless supply of sake.
“Alas, it’s not just sake,” Mayuri said within himself, for speaking outwardly would yield him no result, since Nemu conveniently happened to be absent from the lab at that time, but would only occasion him a lot more pain than he already was in. “If that test tube full of that strange green liquid hadn’t fallen into the sake, my lab—I wouldn’t be in this state right now. Damn it!” The green liquid in question was something he had found during one of his visits to the Seireitei sewers, where, he thought, there existed many undiscovered chemical marvels.
Staggering over to the emergency cabinet, upon reaching which he discovered, to his immense chagrin, that the fire extinguisher that was supposed to have been in there was not there. Mayuri remembered after a couple of moments that he had scoffed at his lieutenant’s proposal at bringing the emergency equipment along, since he did not consider the occurrence of an emergency situation likely, and more so because the thought of preparing against an accident—in other words, a failed experiment—hurt his enormous ego way too much.
Mayuri choked in the process of cursing out loud and decided that it was high time he got himself a new body. Getting rid of all the smoke and fire could wait until a happier time. Picking up a steel rod, which had broken off one of his lab equipment when he had accidentally made a cylinder of hydrogen—which had thankfully been more or less empty—explode, he cast it a lugubrious glance before tightening his grip on it with an air of finality and driving it through his throat. He held back a cry of pain—which would not have made it to his voice box anyway—as he felt his body melt away—quite literally—into painless bliss. He dribbled down the table against which he had been leaning for support, and flowed torpidly past all the flaming debris that littered the floor of the lab, eventually trickling into a small room, which greatly resembled a space capsule, at the very back of his laboratory, through the gap around its steel door. Mayuri would be convalescing in there until he regained his human form, courtesy of the ultraviolet lamps installed all over the room, and the fact that his genome was forcibly programmed to enable him to condense back into his modified body.
He heaved a sigh of relief, not knowing that danger was still lurking near. Three Soul Reaper captains were on their way to the lab.
* * * * *
Through the sheets of smoke that had now pervaded the greater part of the housing area of the meadows were walking Zaraki, Byakuya and Hitsugaya, like three musketeers in order of height, toward what they gathered was the source of all the trouble: Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s laboratory. Their purpose was not exactly to save the vacationers from excruciating suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning and what not, but to ascertain whether the pronounced scent of sake that the smoke seemed to carry originated from the one that the three of them had used in a bet earlier that day. Zaraki was quite graphic in describing how he would rip Byakuya apart, limb by limb, and chop his body up into little pieces, which he would then feed to the crows that frequented some of the more miserable regions of the Rukongai, if it was found that Byakuya, fearing that Zaraki might win the bet, and thus the sake from Hitsugaya and the scarf from him all at once, came up with this utterly invidious, not to mention callous plot to dispose of the prospective winner’s rightful winnings. Casting a surreptitious side-glance at Byakuya, Zaraki noticed, even through the smoke, that Byakuya’s neckline was peculiarly bare. It appeared as though the conniving Captain of Squad 6 had contrived to put his scarf safely away and out of Zaraki’s reach. The bastard, Zaraki thought contemptuously.
“Zaraki, watch out!” Hitsugaya called all of a sudden, but all too late, for before he could articulate the last word, Zaraki’s head came in contact with a large steel beam.
Swearing in the most colorful terms he could come up with, and with Byakuya wrinkling his nose in the background, Zaraki rubbed his forehead, which had now developed a conspicuous bump over it.
“What the heck is this?” he demanded of—as it appeared—the offending beam.
Hitsugaya, who was much blither and quicker to react, sauntered up to the beam, and where a taller man would have crouched over it to achieve the appearance of a professional detective, stood on the tips of his toes and yet couldn’t reach the beam, much to his annoyance. This wasn’t enough to discourage him, though, and like water, when flowing downhill and finding in its path an insurmountable boulder flows around it, he stepped forward in order to see what was behind the pillar.
“Bingo,” he said triumphantly.
Byakuya found that of late he had been coming across too many strange words whose meanings he did not know. It was frustrating to say the least.
“What do you mean, Bingo?” he asked in a clever way, as though he were inquiring about whatever it was that elicited the interjection instead of what the word meant.
“This beam seems to have fallen from over this door,” Hitsugaya said.
“Door?”
“The door to Kurotsuchi’s laboratory. I mean, it’s the only thing made of steel in this dimension. Except, of course, for our Zanpakutō. Although I’m not sure if steel is used—”
“Kurotsuchi’s lab?” Zaraki snarled. “So it was that bastard all along! I should have known. Hitting me with a beam, that crazy freakazoid!”
Byakuya seized the opportunity to ameliorate Zaraki’s impression of him. After all, he was never at ease when he knew his scarf was being targeted. It was a good thing he had forgotten to put it on in all the excitement.
“It was Captain Kurotsuchi from the beginning,” he said. “He was the one who stole the sake.”
Zaraki snarled, and it wasn’t until a few moments later that Byakuya realized that what he said was, “Yeah.”
“We have to go inside and see what’s going on,” Hitsugaya said. “For all one knows, the lives of all of us are in terrible danger.”
“It would seem so,” Byakuya said. “I think we should use Kidō to enter the laboratory.”
“Right,” Hitsugaya said. “Captain Zaraki—Oh, I forgot: You don’t know Kidō. Captain Kuchiki, then, the door’s all yours.”
Byakuya stepped forward.
“Hado 33: Sōkatsui!”
The steel doors were blown apart with incredible force as Byakuya’s spell made contact with it.
With an air of finality, the three of them stepped into Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s laboratory.
“I bet all of Rangiku’s saké bottles that Captain Unohana’s going to catch them before nightfall,” Hitsugaya said.
Zaraki let out a bark of a laugh at this.
“They’re not even with you. You gave them to Captain Kyoraku, I thought.”
“Oh, that’s right. I forgot,” Hitsugaya said. “But don’t worry. Getting them back from him won’t be much of a problem.”
“Then be prepared to hand them all to me, kid. Those boys are gonna be caught within the next twenty minutes!” Zaraki laughed.
“And if you’re wrong?” Hitsugaya said.
“If I’m wrong, I’ll let your squad practice in Squad Eleven’s training grounds.”
“That’s good enough for me. My squad could do with some professional training.”
“You’re both wrong,” said Byakuya, who was hitherto silent and patiently waiting for the right opportunity to place his bet. “Ichigo and Renji are not going to be caught at all.”
“And if you lose?” Hitsugaya and Zaraki said at the same time.
“And if I lose,” Byakuya said, rolling the words on his tongue as if saying them after deep deliberation, “I’ll give you my scarf.”
Zaraki whooped.
“I’ll take the bigger half, kid,” he said to Hitsugaya.
“Fair enough,” said the Captain of Squad 10.
“In the unlikely event that I lose the wager,” Byakuya said, “only Captain Zaraki gets to keep my scarf.”
“What?” Hitsugaya said. “This is not fair, Captain Kuchiki.”
“Oh, yes it is, kid,” Zaraki said.
“I don’t want my scarf to trail on the ground behind the wearer. Therefore, only a tall person is allowed to wear it. You are not eligible to wear my scarf, Captain Hitsugaya. You are diminutive.”
“Captain Kuchiki!” Hitsugaya said. “How could you insult me like that?”
“I was not insulting you,” Byakuya said. “What I said was merely an asseveration of a well-known fact.”
“Exactly, kid,” Zaraki said. “You’re short for your age. Hell, you’re short for anybody’s age.”
“Watch your mouth, Zaraki!” Hitsugaya snarled. “You forget that I’m also a captain of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads, and that protocol requires that you behave with me in a suitable fashion. There is no room in the Thirteen Court Guard Squads for someone who doesn’t understand that. And another thing Zaraki, I could insult you on the basis of your height just as you have insulted me on the basis of mine.”
“Oh no, you couldn’t,” Zaraki said, sneering.
“And why’s that?”
“Because it would render you a hypocrite,” Byakuya said. “I agree with you, Captain Hitsugaya, that while conversing with one another, captains of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads need to follow the protocol that you mentioned. However, by making remarks on Captain Zaraki’s height as a means to insult him, you would be exhibiting hypocrisy yourself.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hitsugaya said.
“Well, now you know kid,” Zaraki said.
“And another thing,” Byakuya said; “You can’t insult someone for being tall: it is only the short who are ridiculed.”
“You both are so mean,” Hitsugaya said petulantly. “I’m out of here.” He marched away with his nose held high.
“Technically, Kuchiki,” Zaraki said, turning to Byakuya, “you’re short compared to me, too. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t make fun of you.”
“There is,” Byakuya said calmly. Just as he was about to divulge what this reason was, Captain Komamura, who was perambulating aimlessly, noticed them and walked over, greeting them amiably with a “Good Evening!” so loud that Byakuya winced and the bells on Zaraki’s hair jingled wildly, as though hit by a hurricane.
“Good evening to you, too, Captain Komamura,” Byakuya said. “But I would appreciate it if you did not speak so loudly.”
Komamura said something incoherent that sounded much like a bark, and only when he repeated it upon Byakuya’s asking did it transpire that the Captain of Squad 7 was apologizing.
“I sometimes forget how loud I must be for smaller people,” Komamura said as sheepishly as his imposing nature would permit.
And then it came to Byakuya in an epiphany.
“Captain Zaraki,” he said, “if you insult me because I’m shorter than you, there is no reason why Captain Komamura couldn’t insult you: everyone is shorter than him.”
“Pah!” Zaraki said. “It’s not height that matters. It’s strength.”
“For one thing, Captain Zaraki, your double standard in this respect is invidious. For another, it sounds as though you are insinuating that Captain Komamura is weaker than you,” Byakuya said, and when Komamura realized that that was indeed what Zaraki meant, he snarled.
“What is the meaning of this?” Komamura said, rising to his full height.
“Yumichika was right,” Zaraki said; “Dogs are ugly and stupid.”
Komamura flared and rose to his full height, which was an impressive feat. Before he could pronounce the latter syllable of the word ‘Bankai’, however, Byakuya incapacitated him using Bakudo Number 61: Rikujokoro.
“You insult me, Zaraki?” Komamura said, struggling in vain against the superior strength of Byakuy’s Kidō.
“Any retard could see that!” Zaraki said.
Byakuya quietly excused himself and headed cabinward, not willing to witness violence in its most animalistic sense just then. And besides, there were certain other things he had to take care of.
“Captain Unohana,” he said when he spotted the Captain of Squad 4 surreptitiously peering around his cabin; “I was just about to go looking for you.”
“Ah, Captain Kuchiki,” Unohana said, smiling. “What can I do for you? Perhaps a little saké in the right places—”
“As tempting as that offer sounds,” Byakuya said with no little asperity, “I must refuse. The reason I have approached you is to ask you to abandon your search for Ichigo Kurosaki and my lieutenant.”
Unohana gazed at Byakuya with polite astonishment in her eyes.
“Why ever should I do that?” she said.
“Suffice it to say that a lot of things depend on it,” Byakuya said laconically.
“But it is essential that the two boys be perfectly healthy,” Unohana persisted. “I have taken it upon myself to ensure that everyone present at the Meadows is absolutely healthy.”
“I appreciate your concern for them,” Byakuya said, “but I implore you to abandon this pursuit. I assure you that Ichigo Kurosaki and Renji are absolutely healthy at this point, and if you want, I could personally make sure of it.”
“There will be no need for that, Captain Kuchiki,” Unohana said. “I believe you. But I won’t make such concessions the next time.”
As Byakuya watched Unohana walk toward her cabin, he heaved a sigh of relief. He straightened his scarf around his neck and entered his cabin, feeling a lot lighter than he had felt in ages.
But wait!
He stopped in his tracks.
Ichigo and Renji didn’t know that Unohana had ceased chasing after them. Byakuya smirked.
* * * * *
As Byakuya sat in a chair in his cabin with his eyes shut, contemplating the infinite, or at least appearing to be doing so, he was remotely aware of a spiritual presence in the vicinity. With the intention of testing his ability to sense spiritual energy, Byakuya chose not to open his eyes, and try instead to recognize the presence using his other senses. And thus he sat in his chair, deeply concentrating on trying to identify the person whose spiritual energy he could sense in traces.
That is, until a pair of strong hands grasped him by the shoulders and shook him violently.
Byakuya didn’t register anything for the next five seconds or so after his eyes shot open, even as he stared into the mischievous face of Captain Kyoraku.
“You all right, Captain Kuchiki?” Kyoraku said in a speciously solicitous tone.
Byakuya said nothing, but calmly extricated himself from Kyoraku’s hold and stood up, straightening his robes with dignity.
“You were hiding your spiritual presence,” Byakuya said.
Kyoraku nodded.
“I was.”
“To what end?”
“Nothing. Just thought I might drop in and say Hello.”
“There are other, more polite ways to greet someone,” Byakuya said with asperity.
“I know,” Kyoraku said simply.
“But I could still sense a spiritual presence. Evidently you are not perfect in the art of hiding it.”
Kyoraku raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean? I have years of practice, and not even Old Man Yama could detect me if I hid my spiritual presence.”
“Clearly your claims are mendacious.”
“No, no, I’m certain,” Kyoraku said complainingly. “I tried it on Jushiro only a couple of days ago.”
“Then Captain Ukitake’s senses are becoming dull.”
“You’re sensing things that don’t exist!”
“I trust my senses more than your claims,” Byakuya said with dignity.
“And I trust my claims more,” Kyoraku said.
“In order to achieve parity in our discrepant views, we must consider one of the more unlikely possibilities: that there was a third party whose spiritual presence I sensed. But I don’t believe this was the case. I am not a believer of coincidences,” Byakuya said.
“That’s a possibility,” Kyoraku said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“And I don’t understand why we are wasting precious time on something as trivial as this. Tell me, Captain Kyoraku, why is it that you dropped by in the first place?” Byakuya demanded.
“I already told you: to say Hello.”
“Either you are the whimsical person that everyone says you are, or there was a different, deeper reason behind your coming here.”
“Fine,” Kyoraku said, the last vestiges of levity draining from his face to be replaced inexorably by a sort of graveness that portended bad news. “The saké’s all gone.”
The interest that Kyoraku’s sudden change in visage evoked in Byakuya flickered and died. But Byakuya’s sense of the proprieties obliged him to respond.
“And where would this saké have come from?” he said.
“Don’t you remember? Captain Hitsugaya generously gave it to me. And before I could taste a single drop, all of it was gone.”
“Tragic,” Byakuya said apathetically, but at the same time, he vaguely remembered something Hitsugaya had said a while before: something about retrieving the saké from Kyoraku as a part of the bet.
“I just remembered something,” Byakuya said.
“Is it about the missing saké?” Kyoraku said, pleading with his eyes that that was the case.
Byakuya nodded, and Kyoraku began to feel visibly elated.
“I think searching Captain Zaraki’s cabin would prove fruitful.” Byakuya said.
“Well, if you say so,” Kyoraku said, and with renewed exuberance, he flash-stepped out of Byakuya’s cabin.
“Now where was I?” Byakuya said to himself. “Ah! Ichigo Kurosaki and Renji. Yes. Now what I do with them?”
He drifted into his former contemplative state.
* * * * *
“Is the coast clear?” Ichigo whispered to Renji, who was peeking from behind a large conifer.
“More or less,” Renji said. “We can’t be too sure, though. What if Captain Unohana’s waiting right there?”
“Man,” Ichigo said, slumping to the ground at the base of the tree. “This is so tiresome, all this running and hiding . . . . Why can’t that crazy woman give it a rest?”
Renji shook his head.
“You don’t know Captain Unohana,” he said. “She’d catch you even if yours was the fastest flash step, and even if she had to search the entire world: she’s that determined.”
“Just my luck,” Ichigo said petulantly.
“Our luck, you mean,” Renji said. “I’m not so keen on being given the ‘Saké Treatment’ either.”
“There you are.”
Both of them started as though they had unknowingly stepped on a corpse.
Renji peeked around the tree, and sighed in relief.
“Oh, it’s only you, Captain.”
Byakuya nodded.
“Captain Unohana was looking for the two of you,” he said with a straight face. After all, it was the truth: that Unohana was looking for them.
Renji shuddered at the mention of the name, and Ichigo suppressed a gasp.
“We know,” Renji said.
“She has searched everywhere,” Byakuya said, “except here. It’s only a matter of time before she finds you.”
Renji fell to his knees.
“Please, Captain, help us!”
Byakuya nodded.
“You will?” Renji said, his face lighting up.
“But,” Byakuya said.
Renji cursed in his mind. He should have known his captain was not going to help them without demanding something in return—something ridiculously disproportionate to the task he was supposed to do, most likely.
“But,” Byakuya repeated, “you will have to do my bidding for the next three days.”
“Don’t I do that already?” Renji said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Ichigo Kurosaki. You, Renji, have to clean my cabin every morning and do everyone’s dishes at every meal.”
Both Renji and Ichigo grimaced.
“You suck,” Ichigo said.
“Pardon me?” Byakuya said.
“You suck,” Ichigo repeated.
“Suck? Suck what?” Byakuya said, a look of genuine albeit polite confusion on his face. “You’re behaving strangely, Ichigo Kurosaki.”
Saying so Byakuya strode away, the shadow of the great tree and the fact that he had his back to Ichigo and Renji helping him conceal his smile.
Ichigo turned to Renji.
Renji stared at Ichigo.
Ichigo blinked.
Renji blinked.
Ichigo coughed.
Renji scratched his head.
“Well, what’re we waiting for? Let’s get out of here!”
* * * * *
“What on earth is going on?” Nanao demanded of no one in particular as she allowed a misgiving to lure her out of her cabin, where she was in the process of gleaning knowledge from a great old book that she had picked up at the Soul Society. Upon stepping outside, however, she gasped—or, well, came as close to gasping as the situation would permit. The air was thick with black smoke that made it virtually impossible for her to speak, or see, or for that matter, smell anything besides the pungent, suffocating substance that the smoke was made up of.
“Nanao, is that you?”
“Rangiku! What’s going on?”
The amorphous silhouette that stood in the direction from which Rangiku’s voice had proceeded began slowly assuming a human shape as the Lieutenant of Squad 10 neared Nanao.
“Apparently it’s Captain Kurotsuchi’s doing,” Rangiku said, coughing as her lungs became filled with unwholesome amounts of the smoke.
“My Captain’s missing, too,” Nanao said, putting forth an asseveration that seemed far from being germane to Rangiku’s statement, or for that matter the situation itself.
“What?” Rangiku said, confused.
“Can’t you smell it?” Nanao said. “It smells a little like sake. And if you don’t have the sake, there’s just one other person who can.”
“You mean to say, this is burning sake?” Rangiku said, shuddering at the notion that the sacred drink should incur such a terrible indignity.
Nanao nodded, but the act went wasted, since to Rangiku it might as well have been a trick of the billowing smoke that limited visibility, despite the propinquity between the two lieutenants.
“Yes,” Nanao said. “I think that for some strange reason that oddball Kurotsuchi’s burning sake.”
Rangiku shuddered again and emitted a series of guttural sounds that insinuated that she was experiencing a paroxysm of some sort.
“Shall we go find out?” Nanao offered, since she knew, from her studies in the matter of Soul Psychology, that undesirable information is even more insidious to the mind of a person if it is unconfirmed.
“Captains Kuchiki and Zaraki and my own captain were already headed there, as far as I know. Captain Zaraki was shouting it out: you couldn’t miss it. He said something about a bet and claiming the sake,” Rangiku said.
“We can’t just sit here!” Nanao said. She couldn’t forego the opportunity of exercising even more control over her captain than she usually did. The idea of her captain being the potential perpetrator of all this was too sweet for her to just cross her arms and sit down until the other Soul Reapers managed to restore things to their original state. No, she needed the spotlight, which she would doubtless get when her captain’s ear was close within reach. Every eye in the Meadows would instantly be upon her when she grabbed hold of the ear and turned it hard in order to elicit that cry of pain that she was so familiar with and loved to hear—music to her ears. She would be venerated and exalted beyond her wildest dreams, being possibly given more deference than the Head Captain himself. After all, a mere lieutenant achieving perfect control over her captain with no visible effort and with an air of authority was no ordinary feat. All the glory, all the respect, all the awe—none of it could possibly be achieved by just sitting in one place and hoping for things to return to normal.
“No!” Nanao said so vehemently that Rangiku took a couple of steps back reflexively. “I mean, we have to go help!”
“You’re thinking about your captain again, aren’t you?” Rangiku said dryly. “Believe me when I say no sake lover can possibly set to fire his own sake.”
“Then he was careless and should be punished for it!” Nanao yelled, the malevolent glint in her eye visible even through the smoke.
“Nanao—!”
But Nanao had already flash-stepped blindly and become invisible at the horizon, which happened to be a little beyond five feet from where she had been standing, considering all the sensuous limitations the copious amounts of the air pollutant imposed.
Rangiku sighed before blindly diving after her misguided friend into the unknown.
* * * * *
Leaning against a badly damaged table as he coughed out blood, teeth, and what he suspected was his appendix, Mayuri Kurotsuchi cursed like he had never cursed before.
“Damn it!” was what he meant to say, but considering the fact that through his throat at that moment was passing regurgitated blood, he only managed to emit a sort of strange gurgling sound, following which he choked on the blood and made another attempt at articulating the interjection, paying for his foolish stubbornness in blood.
The sight of his hat, which was lying some distance off on the same table, with flames dancing happily around its brim, infuriated Mayuri greatly. He obliterated it with a badly aimed Hado 31 attack that only got lucky. Lucky only at that instant however: not after that. For after destroying Mayuri’s hat, the red ball of fire still had enough energy in it to become one with and intensify the already large flame that was burning underneath the pot of sake that Mayuri had hung over it based on a whim, with the result that the flame rose to twice its height, and the dense black smoke became even denser and blacker and more voluminous than it was before, and the pot, which seemed to contain an endless supply of sake.
“Alas, it’s not just sake,” Mayuri said within himself, for speaking outwardly would yield him no result, since Nemu conveniently happened to be absent from the lab at that time, but would only occasion him a lot more pain than he already was in. “If that test tube full of that strange green liquid hadn’t fallen into the sake, my lab—I wouldn’t be in this state right now. Damn it!” The green liquid in question was something he had found during one of his visits to the Seireitei sewers, where, he thought, there existed many undiscovered chemical marvels.
Staggering over to the emergency cabinet, upon reaching which he discovered, to his immense chagrin, that the fire extinguisher that was supposed to have been in there was not there. Mayuri remembered after a couple of moments that he had scoffed at his lieutenant’s proposal at bringing the emergency equipment along, since he did not consider the occurrence of an emergency situation likely, and more so because the thought of preparing against an accident—in other words, a failed experiment—hurt his enormous ego way too much.
Mayuri choked in the process of cursing out loud and decided that it was high time he got himself a new body. Getting rid of all the smoke and fire could wait until a happier time. Picking up a steel rod, which had broken off one of his lab equipment when he had accidentally made a cylinder of hydrogen—which had thankfully been more or less empty—explode, he cast it a lugubrious glance before tightening his grip on it with an air of finality and driving it through his throat. He held back a cry of pain—which would not have made it to his voice box anyway—as he felt his body melt away—quite literally—into painless bliss. He dribbled down the table against which he had been leaning for support, and flowed torpidly past all the flaming debris that littered the floor of the lab, eventually trickling into a small room, which greatly resembled a space capsule, at the very back of his laboratory, through the gap around its steel door. Mayuri would be convalescing in there until he regained his human form, courtesy of the ultraviolet lamps installed all over the room, and the fact that his genome was forcibly programmed to enable him to condense back into his modified body.
He heaved a sigh of relief, not knowing that danger was still lurking near. Three Soul Reaper captains were on their way to the lab.
* * * * *
Through the sheets of smoke that had now pervaded the greater part of the housing area of the meadows were walking Zaraki, Byakuya and Hitsugaya, like three musketeers in order of height, toward what they gathered was the source of all the trouble: Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s laboratory. Their purpose was not exactly to save the vacationers from excruciating suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning and what not, but to ascertain whether the pronounced scent of sake that the smoke seemed to carry originated from the one that the three of them had used in a bet earlier that day. Zaraki was quite graphic in describing how he would rip Byakuya apart, limb by limb, and chop his body up into little pieces, which he would then feed to the crows that frequented some of the more miserable regions of the Rukongai, if it was found that Byakuya, fearing that Zaraki might win the bet, and thus the sake from Hitsugaya and the scarf from him all at once, came up with this utterly invidious, not to mention callous plot to dispose of the prospective winner’s rightful winnings. Casting a surreptitious side-glance at Byakuya, Zaraki noticed, even through the smoke, that Byakuya’s neckline was peculiarly bare. It appeared as though the conniving Captain of Squad 6 had contrived to put his scarf safely away and out of Zaraki’s reach. The bastard, Zaraki thought contemptuously.
“Zaraki, watch out!” Hitsugaya called all of a sudden, but all too late, for before he could articulate the last word, Zaraki’s head came in contact with a large steel beam.
Swearing in the most colorful terms he could come up with, and with Byakuya wrinkling his nose in the background, Zaraki rubbed his forehead, which had now developed a conspicuous bump over it.
“What the heck is this?” he demanded of—as it appeared—the offending beam.
Hitsugaya, who was much blither and quicker to react, sauntered up to the beam, and where a taller man would have crouched over it to achieve the appearance of a professional detective, stood on the tips of his toes and yet couldn’t reach the beam, much to his annoyance. This wasn’t enough to discourage him, though, and like water, when flowing downhill and finding in its path an insurmountable boulder flows around it, he stepped forward in order to see what was behind the pillar.
“Bingo,” he said triumphantly.
Byakuya found that of late he had been coming across too many strange words whose meanings he did not know. It was frustrating to say the least.
“What do you mean, Bingo?” he asked in a clever way, as though he were inquiring about whatever it was that elicited the interjection instead of what the word meant.
“This beam seems to have fallen from over this door,” Hitsugaya said.
“Door?”
“The door to Kurotsuchi’s laboratory. I mean, it’s the only thing made of steel in this dimension. Except, of course, for our Zanpakutō. Although I’m not sure if steel is used—”
“Kurotsuchi’s lab?” Zaraki snarled. “So it was that bastard all along! I should have known. Hitting me with a beam, that crazy freakazoid!”
Byakuya seized the opportunity to ameliorate Zaraki’s impression of him. After all, he was never at ease when he knew his scarf was being targeted. It was a good thing he had forgotten to put it on in all the excitement.
“It was Captain Kurotsuchi from the beginning,” he said. “He was the one who stole the sake.”
Zaraki snarled, and it wasn’t until a few moments later that Byakuya realized that what he said was, “Yeah.”
“We have to go inside and see what’s going on,” Hitsugaya said. “For all one knows, the lives of all of us are in terrible danger.”
“It would seem so,” Byakuya said. “I think we should use Kidō to enter the laboratory.”
“Right,” Hitsugaya said. “Captain Zaraki—Oh, I forgot: You don’t know Kidō. Captain Kuchiki, then, the door’s all yours.”
Byakuya stepped forward.
“Hado 33: Sōkatsui!”
The steel doors were blown apart with incredible force as Byakuya’s spell made contact with it.
With an air of finality, the three of them stepped into Mayuri Kurotsuchi’s laboratory.
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