Chapter 8: Armoury Arc: The Truth Revealed in Kanji 1/3

Summary:

The first arc comes to a close! Nariko has, once again, done her own thing and had it come back to bite her. Attacked by an unknown (but sure to be more powerful, because the universe doesn't like her) assailant, our not-so-brave heroine has to get herself out of danger no one's coming to rescue her from... are they?

Also, warning for Unohana and a cranky Chinese lady. There are some spoilers for the Thousand-Year Blood War arc.

Notes:

Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMii9q4qz0E ("Finest Hour" by Extreme Music)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

My mouth tasted like something had died in it. Typical morning mouth, really, except generally I woke up in my bed, not wherever here was.

'Here' sounded like distant dripping water instead of Shinju's rhythmic breathing. Instead of her sandalwood scent, I could smell wet stone and the fishy-metallic stench of dried blood. I turned my head slightly, cracking my eyes open, and heard metal clink. I decided not to turn further as some of that metal proved to have very sharp edges that were very ready to poke me in the eye. Not that I got poked in the eye, but I had to go cross-eyed to see the stuff, which meant I was lucky to have been dumped where I was.

"You can stop pretending to be unconscious. I heard your breathing change."

No. Nonononono. Not happening. This wasn't happening, someone pinch me, what's going on it can't be-

It was. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I caught sight of purple hair in the gloom. Oshiro.

But he's a teacher, I reasoned as I levered myself into a sitting position, careful where I put my hands so I didn't shred them. He's my teacher. He won't hurt me. He's probably been attacked and captured too. He has to be good. Hastobegoodhastobegood HE HAS TO BE A GOOD GUY-

"Where's my Zanpakutou?" I managed through cracked lips. That wasn't water on my cheeks. A metal shard had cut me. Right, that was it. I wasn't going to cry because of some stupid guy. Or because of the gaping hole in my soul. Not inside me, not like when I let Momohiko get to me. Deeper, in the same place I reached to for my reiryoku.

"Your Zanpakutou?" Definitely Oshiro's voice, but not his smile. Oshiro's smile belonged on Ukitake, wide and benevolent as it was. This man's not-smile was a cut in his face. "Ah, yes. I suppose one could call it that now. Right on the threshold, neither an asauchi nor a full Zanpakutou. Call it what you will."

"That isn't an answer," I growled. My head was throbbing, my stomach didn't particularly want to hold onto its contents, and my teacher had apparently kidnapped me. Life sucked too much right now to be polite.

Kidnapped. Oshiro kidnapped me. Somehow that thought made it clearly through the pain pulsing through my brain.

He's my teacher! He couldn't have kidnapped me! I protested. Why, I wasn't sure. The thought didn't come from my Zanpakutou spirit, just from my own mind. It couldn't provide me with anything original.

Face it. You're in an unfamiliar place that smells like blood and he's the only other one here. He kidnapped you and if you don't figure something out the next person here will be smelling your blood, the part of me that had stayed rational responded.

"I took it," Oshiro said, nonchalant as though he was critiquing an essay I'd submitted. "You won't be needing it after I've finished the process." Something about that niggled at me. He sounded like a B-movie villain, the kind that narrated their whole evil plan before finally, finally moving to finish the damsel in distress. Just in time for the hero to arrive, flex his manly muscles, and save her, of course.

I went through a whole life without having a Zanpakutou and did just fine. My mind's just going to have to be original enough. "P-process?" I asked, not having to fake the tremble in my voice at all. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, or even hinted that I made a habit of walking around Shin'ou at night. There was no hero coming to save me.

So I'll just have to be the heroine and damsel in distress at the same time, I reasoned as I waited for Oshiro to snap out of his daze. He seemed lost in some demented trance. Why couldn't Soul Society have some mental healthcare on top of the Fourth Division? Or was this guy sane and just plain evil? What do I know?

Wherever you are has an entrance and exit, or he couldn't have brought me in here. There may or may not be a source of water that I can swim through as a last resort. Oshiro has experience doing this, or you wouldn't have stumbled across that girl. And there wouldn't be so much blood here. Was it a bad sign that I didn't put more emphasis on the whole 'this place reeks of dried blood' thing? I couldn't, anyway, not right now. I needed to take this rationally, with a nice, neat plan. No freaking out. He cast some Kidou on me which might have side-effects I don't know about. I don't have my Zanpakutou. And this definitely involves his obsession with asauchi. Oshiro isn't afraid to hurt me, so I can't be afraid to hurt him.

Not that hurting him would be likely. An armed, adult Kidou practitioner vs. an unarmed teenage girl with no practical combat knowledge? Yeah, I could predict the outcome of that pretty easily. But still. He's done this to other people. They didn't deserve it. You don't deserve it. You have to fight!

Oshiro had started up again. I tuned back in. "Simple in theory," he said in a dangerously absent tone, as if his mind was on murdering kittens. Oshiro turned to face me, strange slash-smile still in place. "You're a prodigy, Nariko-san. I wonder if you really know how much of one you are?"

Ooh, flattery sounded nice right about now. Plus, I needed to get him monologuing. Observations meant nothing without application. "I'm not a prodigy!" I blurted out, injecting as much confusion and fear into my voice as I could. "That's Shinji you want! He's not crazy, not like me..." I sniffled, which actually wasn't part of the act. This place reeked.

"Crazy? Some people call geniuses crazy. But they realize how smart they are after the fact. Of course they do. Except for the lucky. The lucky get recognized for what they are before. Nimaiya was one of those. My wielder... wasn't," Oshiro said. His eyes weren't twinkling now. They were flat, almost literally so. The half-light that illuminated the chamber didn't reflect in his eyes. Impossible.

Not if he isn't human, I realized, processing the last of what he'd said. I'd touched him, talked to him. But that meant nothing. I knew very little about Zanpakutou in the grand scheme of things. Except that Zangetsu, the real one, had possessed Ichigo's body on multiple occasions. Even the fake one had been able to affect Ichigo's body by stopping his bleeding. Could the Oshiro I knew, sickly and worshipful of Nimaiya, be a Zanpakutou possessing the real Oshiro's body? Not out of the question.

"You're a Zanpakutou," I breathed, lowering my voice to cover up the lack of actual awe in it. Didn't quite have the stupidity to admire a villain right now. "How?" Zangetsu hadn't been able to possess Ichigo's body indefinitely. Then again, he'd been trying to kill everyone and thus been stopped, and Oshiro was a schoolteacher, but still. Weird.

The Zanpakutou seemed happy to oblige me. "I heard you advocated for Byakuren to be left intact," he said in a voice as flat as his eyes. "So you have an idea of how much it hurts for a Zanpakutou to be broken." Gingerly, he drew the sword at his waist from its sheath. Only 'sword' didn't really apply here. 'Hilt with shards of metal attached to it in a mockery of a blade' was a hell of a lot more accurate. The whole construction was sickening to look at, pieces mismatched as though they were straining to get free of each other. I didn't try to touch it with my reiatsu. Vomiting tended to make one weak. "Fixable, of course, when the Shinigami applies the reiryoku and time necessary to fix what others have done to him. Not when the Shinigami consents to it. Not when he breaks you, over and over again, and forces you to fix yourself every time. Not when he hates his own soul."

I can't imagine why anyone would hate a murderous, controlling spirit, I thought, but kept the scared-animal look on my face. "Nobody should be hurt like that," I said to hide my disgust.

"He should've been," the Zanpakutou hissed, pacing across the metal-strewn floor. "He knew how much it hurt both of us. He wrecked this body!" The Zanpakutou raised a red-stained hand to his chest. "But he didn't listen. Never listened. Some self-righteous quest to destroy his demons. You fear me, Nariko-san. Your reiryoku is sealed, but I can see it. Because you liked the way I acted. You would've liked him too. Where do you think I took my inspiration from?"

"Is he still alive?" I asked, shifting position so I was kneeling. We'd learned in Zanjutsu how to strike from a specific kneeling position. Maybe I couldn't make a sword-strike, but I could get up a lot faster. Hopefully the Zanpakutou didn't know enough to recognize what I was doing. "I don't want you to give him back. Just... curious."

He made a choking sound that I guessed was laughter. "You like what I really am better? Doesn't that make you a traitor to your kind?"

"If I ever held allegiance to them, yes," I said, matching his flat tone. "I hear it when Zanpakutou speak to their Shinigami. Listening... it's obvious they aren't the paragons they pretend to be. Weak. Why shouldn't I support the limitless Zanpakutou?"

He stopped dead. "You know of that ability, yet you claim to be ordinary? You're lying about one of those, Nariko-san."

"Am I? Nimaiya knows every one of the asauchi and Yamamoto wields the strongest blade in Soul Society's history. They're the prodigies. I just have a... unique perspective," I said, keeping my eyes trained on his sword hand, still gripping the broken blade. You moron. You think I'm lying about that and not sympathizing with you?

The Zanpakutou turned, approaching me and kneeling so we were almost eye to eye. "You poor, ignorant girl," he rasped. "Nimaiya-sama can forge the asauchi, but he doesn't run the risk of turning each one to himself. Yamamoto can devastate the world with Ryuujin Jakka, but hear others' souls over the roar of his? No, never. You are of your soul in a way no other student of mine is. Which makes you the ideal candidate for the final stage of my process."

Shit. Got so caught up in debating the crazy Zanpakutou that I forgot about that. "You never explained what the process is," I stalled, wrapping a still hand carefully around a metal shard. Better weapon than nothing.

The Zanpakutou clicked his tongue. "No, I didn't. Simply put, I'll take your Zanpakutou and make it part of me. The asauchi haven't been enough, even over years. Blank. Holding allegiance, but not strongly. Confused. A blade receptive and half-formed, but not of you completely? It'll last me forever. And a prodigy's, too. Young souls are the best candidates, being so raw, but they have no flavor. I wonder what yours will taste like?"

"That'll kill me," I said, shifting grip on the metal.

"It won't," the Zanpakutou said. "It'll kill your presence inside my world, then kill your body. Entirely different."

Inner- Oh, fuck this. I'm not in the real world. No reiryoku, nobody to hear me screaming. Smart. I glanced down at my arm, muscles tensed to strike, and saw glowing marks swirling over it. Apparently they were the source of the light here. Seals, probably. Well, I'm well and truly fucked. How do you fight a spirit in its own soul world?

"You don't," the Zanpakutou said. "There's no need to struggle. I've got your Zanpakutou right here. You'll have to hold it while I take it, to have the connection to your soul. It'll be over quickly."

Now or never. "No, it won't!" I shouted, lunging to my feet and slashing out with the metal.

The Zanpakutou caught my strike effortlessly. "How foolish. You think I can't control part of my own world?" He squeezed and my arm exploded with pain. I shrieked, yanking away as the marks burned red.

"You can't control me!" I gasped, cradling my arm. "You stupid spirit. I'm not part of your world. You can't control me."

His expression hardened. "I can control everything else," he growled, and the world collapsed. Something struck my head. Then another something.

When I could think clearly again, warm, sticky liquid trickled down my head. I gasped for breath, ready to run, until I saw what surrounded me. Imbedded in the cracks between stone chunks that formed my prison, shards of metal were poised to cut me to ribbons. Only my hand was free, and even then limited in its motion by a small armory's worth of iron.

"You think you're the first to fight back?" the Zanpakutou snarled, form rippling until he no longer looked my teacher, but instead a warped combination of him with a suit of steel armor, accented by darker iron. Not in the armor, merged with it. "Stupid Shinigami! I wouldn't even need you if you couldn't listen!"

"Well, you do!" I howled, lightning fury the only barrier keeping me from complete terror. The world spun around me like a whirlpool. "What's to stop me from killing myself on this?"

"Your damn need to survive. The need your kind never respects in others!" He shrieked back, each word hell on my ears. An asauchi just like mine materialized in its hand. No, the asauchi was mine. I didn't know how I knew that, but it was.

"You're a murderer! You would kill me for my powers!" I yelled. "And you don't regret it! You're the exact person I told Shinju I wouldn't hesitate to kill! You bastard! You don't deserve to survive!"

He howled wordlessly, a sound echoed by tearing metal, but kept advancing. "I hate you! You rejected him and led him to form something he hated! Shinigami! You all deserve to die! Now take your blade and give me yourself!" He shoved the hilt into my hand roughly, and despite myself I gripped the thing like it was my lifeline.

"Goodbye, Hirako Nariko-san. Your wretched mind was the only one I ever enjoyed for a time." He wrapped a blood-stained hand around my neck and placed the other on my forehead, misshapen fingers on each temple and right between my eyes. The world blazed with tattoo-light again as the spirit opened its maw.

No! Not me! I refuse! He's been doing this unchecked for too long. I have to make the difference. I have to havetohavetohaveto! I will change the world!

Time slowed to a crawl. A statuesque woman, delicate features more traditionally Japanese than my own, stepped out from the shadows. If the spirit noticed her, he gave no indication. She glided towards us, kimono unstained and whole despite dragging over the broken-metal ground.

"Daoshi," she said, every word proper Tokyo-ben, lifting the sakkat that shaded her face. Silver fabric attached to the back hid the suggestion of dark hair. "You are better than this death. I am better than this thing. You will challenge me later. Now, we make the difference." She reached out a hand to me, wrapped in trailing indigo fabric, placed it on my sword. "Speak."

Words fell into my mind and out of my mouth. "Extinguish the infernal flames," I whispered, void filling with every word. Lightning fury? The real thing was surging through my veins. "Cleanse the unjust, roar through heaven, and strike down the moon. Turn the tide, Tennyou no Rai'arashi!"

The world exploded.

Laughter carried over the thundering waves and screaming lightning as if from a demented Valkyrie, come not to collect bodies but to leave them behind. Whoever it was, I didn't care. Rage and joy and belonging crashed through me like a tidal wave as blood and metal gave way to a winter storm. Nothing could beat me. Top of the food chain, fuckers! I shrieked in my head.

...oh. I'm laughing. And why shouldn't I? I win, you lose! Nyah!

When the hurricane cleared, no trace remained of Oshiro's cramped dungeon-world. We stood atop rocks, the Zanpakutou on a flat slab of granite while I balanced on top of stone clearly placed to mimic a mountain peak. A sloping rock stood between us as though trying to make peace.

Too bad. Despite the smooth white sand of a Zen garden raked around the rocks and temple I saw out of the corner of my eye, I wasn't in a mood to be fucking peaceful today.

"Maybe you control your world, but I control mine!" I snarled at the spirit in front of me. Human parts drenched and armor parts dented, he didn't look so formidable in the light of day. "Still want my power? Bring it!"

"How?!" He howled. With a shudder and the scream of metal on metal, his human parts twisted into armor to match the rest of his body. "The seals make Shinigami powerless!"

"But not Zanpakutou," my spirit's voice said, calm as it cut through the armored man's voice like a well-placed knife. She materialized, wraithlike, from the koi pond bordering the rock garden, approaching with the same eerie grace she'd shown in Oshiro's world. "Those marks seal one person, not the spirit bonded to them."

The armored man was done talking. I leaped off of my rock as he stamped his foot like a petulant child, a burst of blades exploding where I'd been a second before. A forest of metal sprouted around Arashi, as I'd decided to call her, who continued to advance, untouched by the weapons.

"Daoshi," Arashi intoned, face still set in an implacable, rice-powder-pale mask as I landed not-so-gracefully on the sand. "This is our world, not the lair of an usurping vampire. Any effect he has is what we allow him."

What we allow- Fuck yeah.

If the armor's helm could be said to have skin, it would've paled at the grin on my face.

"You wanted to be some kind of genius? The kind people remember?" I strode across the sand towards Arashi as I spoke. "Try 'forgotten in pieces beneath an ocean.'"

Arashi was far too dignified to laugh like me, but the whisper of her kimono told me as much as a huff from Shinji. "You ask a lot for an apprentice, daoshi," she said.

"You can deliver," I replied without a hint of doubt that it was true. "On three?"

"On three."

She drew a sword longer than a wakizashi, yet shorter than a katana, hilt wrapped in blue and sword guard a circle made of crescents. Not as poetic as Byakuren or as in-your-face as Zangetsu, but way cooler for all that. I wrapped my hand around the hilt beneath hers, once again engulfed in overlong sleeves. Together we raised the sword high above our heads.

"One," Arashi and I said in unison. The armored spirit stood frozen like the proverbial deer in headlights. "Two."

Right about then, the spirit finally realized we meant business. We let him get a few steps away before bringing the sword down and yanking.

The mountainside turned white with rushing water, frothing torrents barely clearing my head. The streamers of lightning riding the tempest made me very glad that it had. I couldn't see what happened when it met its target, but the raw scream of pain I heard was enough. The water crashed over the sand, to the very edge of the garden—and over.

For a long minute Arashi and I stood like that, sword held high as we stared at the water, vanishing from the sand as though it had never been.

The world shook, bluebird sky turning to night, and my mountain garden shattered.

"Nariko? Nariko!" A boy's voice, one I dimly registered as familiar. Thin, kinda awkward. Who did I know like that? "Nari- Gah!"

I jolted awake, eyes flying open. I sat up so fast I nearly clocked Aizen in the head. His dripping wet head.

A look around revealed a room that could've belonged to any dorm room, save for the layer of dust covering everything. Oh, and the copious amounts of dried blood. Less dry now, as it looked like someone had turned a fire hose on the place. Which made me acutely aware of how very dry I was. And the stench of burned something that might explain that.

"A-Aizen?" I said. Stopped, when it came out hoarse, like I hadn't used it for years. "Wha- Agh! Sorry. Aizen-san?"

I really had to ask that question, too. He looked like a different person, glasses gone and so pale he might as well have had no blood at all.

"We have to go," he gasped, forehead wrinkling like he was in physical pain. "Please-"

I nodded, grabbing a rotted bedpost and shoving myself to my feet

"Be mindful of me, daoshi." Arashi, finally as loud as other Zanpakutou. But how-? "Look down."

I looked.

Holy shit, tessen. Sure enough, my other hand was clenching a pair of war fans, plain indigo silk stretched between shining silver ribs that looked uncomfortably sharp. Great. Yet another way to cut my hands open.

The second I was up, Aizen was dragging me out of the room through a door reduced to splinters. As we went, I discovered a building much in the same style of the dorm room, if marginally less bloody. An old dormitory, I guessed. Probably didn't want to know why it wasn't in use anymore.

"H-how'd you find me?" I had the presence of mind to ask when we were in daylight again. Sweet, sweet daylight. I thought I'd never say this, but I love the day right now.

Aizen didn't answer for several minutes, evidently too focused on getting me as far away from that building as humanly possible.

"It doesn't matter," he answered finally. "You're safe. We need to find your brother before tears up campus looking for you. And before Oshiro comes back."

I shuddered, mind trying very hard not to remember the charcoal form that had been so, so close to me. If Aizen wasn't focusing on it, I wasn't. "He's dead. You don't- you don't come back from that."

"People can survive a lot." He said it flatly, not a hint of the syrupy tones I knew he'd eventually attain. "Don't. Take. Chances."

I swallowed hard. "That's- that's not what I mean. He wasn't Oshiro. He- I think he was Oshiro's Zanpakutou. Possessing him, or something like that. He tried to kill me in his soul world. Only- it didn't stick." I twitched the hand holding my tessen. "I think I got Shikai."

Aizen spared a slight smile for me. "At least one of you survived that untarnished. She's beautiful."

I tried for a grin and ended up with something that probably looked more like a minor facial seizure. "One of us has to be." Wait, had I said that? Or had someone with my voice said that? It was hard to say. Something else was definitely putting one foot in front of the other; I was way too tired to be doing that. Everything was going hot, and cold, and hot again.

Yet again, everything went white.

This time when I woke, I knew exactly where I was. The infirmary was really the only place to go after passing out.

"Nariko!" A slender body awkwardly wrapped around mine. I sniffed, breathing being the only action I had the energy for right about now, and didn't smell sandalwood. Shinji, then. The layered uniforms didn't always make it easy to tell. He held the hug for a few happy seconds before pulling away. I made a noise to make him come back—I was cold, dammit!—but Shinji ignored my pleas. "Ya moron! Ya just got me shown up by Aizen!"

A sniffing noise came from somewhere to my right. "You were the first to point out that Nariko-san doesn't skip class, Shinji-san. That counts for something."

He snorted. "Not enough if ya dragged her back all bloody. What the hell happened? Oshiro's dead, they're findin' a buncha the kids who disappeared's bodies, ya got Shikai... Jeez, ya just had ta show me up!"

"Hirako-kun..." Shinju said plaintively. Was she on my right or left? Things were getting spinny again...

"Please step away from the patient," a soft female voice, clipped yet gentle in the way only a nurse had, said. Another face appeared above me and some dim emotion stirred in the abyss of fatigue filling me. I wasn't completely sure whether it was fear or awe. Could be either, given the face above me belonged to Unohana friggin' Retsu. I couldn't quite bring myself to swear. She'd know. I didn't know how she'd know, but she would. "I wouldn't want to be forced to remove unauthorized persons, even close friends and her brother."

Everyone kindly shut up. The part of me paying attention wondered if Nanase was there—Minoru I could imagine not saying anything, but Nanase had exactly no concept of silence. The part of me already drifting back into sleep—the dominant part—didn't particularly care.

"Now, Hirako Nariko-chan. Exactly how is it that you managed to disrupt your reiryoku so severely that the faculty at the Academy saw fit to send for me?" Her smile had the sweetness of anyone else's genuine smile; its rigidity was all that indicated otherwise.

"M' Zanpak'tou spirit an' I got really pissed off," I mumbled. Breathing enough to speak hurt. Screw Tokyo-ben and dignity right now. "We kinda... drowned Oshiro's Zanpak'tou spirit."

Unohana was quiet for a few moments. "That would be sufficient to explain it," she murmured at last. "A maturing soul is generally less receptive to the introduction of order than a fully developed one."

Shinji saw fit to pipe up right about then. "Erm, Captain Unohana? Ain't ya gonna ask how she got the thing anyway? Or why she drowned our teacher's soul?" He wilted at the look she gave him—a look I couldn't quite get worked up about, given that it was measuring rather than harsh. "If'n ya want her ta explain, I mean."

"Hirako Shinji-kun," Unohana said, folding her hands in front of her. "I would remind you not to attempt this in the future. Your sister's injuries are the only reason I tolerate it now."

"Yes'm."

She turned back to me. "But your brother raises a point that I think may be significant. Shikai is... very, very rarely achieved in your year." A particular piece on the age of souls vs. Zanpakutou development that I'd read probably would've said 'never,' but I didn't particularly want to quibble. Especially since memories seemed a little fuzzy right now. "Destroying another person's Zanpakutou is an equally rare achievement."

"'shiro wasn't there anymore," I managed. "His spirit implied that he hadn't been aroun' for a fair amount of time. That it... killed him when he tried ta destroy it." I closed my eyes for a couple seconds, seeing its nightmarish face caught between spirit and man again. I pried them open to avoid the temptation of falling asleep again. "It was psycho enough that I got that. It said that it kept killin' students with asauchi ta stay alive."

Unohana's elegant black brows furrowed. Damn, the manga didn't do her justice. "That would explain the worsening of Oshiro-sensei's health in the summer," she said, voice poised on the razor's edge between hard and quiet. "And how the state of his soul was resolved so very quickly in his time at Shin'ou, despite its severity."

"Na' Oshiro," I mumbled.

She turned steely blue eyes on me and I suddenly discovered how very, very cold the Academy could be in the summer. "For the purposes of our discussion, the being possessing Oshiro-sensei's body will be referred to as Oshiro-sensei himself. Is that clear, Hirako Nariko-chan?"

"Yes'm."

"Now. You say that you drowned Oshiro-sensei. I was under the impression, however, that such a thing was impossible in his own soul world," Unohana continued. "Please explain how such an event came about. I would hate, after all, to be informed that a problem had been dealt with only to have it resurface."

I squirmed, insofar as one could squirm lying on a bed. I hadn't figured that out either. "Uh... I don't think we were in his soul world. He was a Zanpak'tou spirit, so I think 'e used Kidou an' forced himself into mine. 'Cause I didn't have Shikai just then, it looked like his, an' when I got mine, it changed. When I did... I kinda made a flood, only there was lightnin', and it threw him off a cliff. I think the Kidou keepin' me there broke when he died."

Though they were already quiet, complete silence fell on my friends.

Unohana continued mercilessly. "Water and lightning, according to the current theories of elemental Zanpakutou, cannot be contained in one sword." The look on her face didn't say it was impossible, though. Actually, it looked more like a scientist with a particularly interesting specimen to dissect.

"Ask Aizen-han," I mumbled, blush staining my cheeks as I fell into the worst depths of Kansai-ben. "We were talkin' 'bout it an' I never thought it was impossible. Maybe that messed with her."

"Your spirit?" she asked, arching an elegant black brow.

"Yeah, her." A giggle trickled out of me at my own nonchalance and the floodgates opened. Everything was all nice and fuzzy and friendly... except for the huge green shimmery thing lurking behind Unohana. Whatever. "Like it weren't enough ta have all the Zanpak'tou yappin' at me, I get one more. Byakuren an' Engetsu an' Oshiro's an' Tennyou no Rai'arashi. That makes... five? Four, four. But five if Minazuki says anythin'. Maybe. One plus one plus one plus one plus one equals five, except when it doesn't." I giggled again. "An' then sometimes I think Shinji's is startin' ta get an idea of itself, only maybe that's him bein' dumb, 'cause Shinji's dumb."

This time the pause was practically tangible.

"Out," Unohana ordered, half-turning to catch my assembled friends in a gaze that I imagined made her seem very captainly indeed. "Including you, Hirako Shinji-kun."

When the last person had shut the door behind them, she turned back to me. Pale green light shone on her palm as Unohana reached out a hand to me. I shut my eyes as she laid it on my forehead and-

What the heck? What was wrong with me? This was Unohana friggin' Retsu here! Ex-Kenpachi and Terror of the Fourth! Nothing fuzzy and warm and friendly about it! And what had I been saying?! I shot up, ignoring the protests of muscles that wanted to rest for the next five years.

"Please don't strain yourself, Hirako-chan," Unohana said, turning a sapphire gaze on me that better suited a tiger. Or Yamamoto. It was that sort of guilty-until-proven-innocent look. "I only lifted that Kidou so that we might discuss your... statements."

State- Shit. "What did you do to me?" I burst out, feeling sick and scared and angry all at once. "That was supposed to be secret!"

Unohana lifted white-clad shoulders. "Standard procedure for healing patients with unknown injuries is to place a Kidou on them to lower inhibitions. Very delicate, as I'm sure you understand, and unfortunately limited to incapacitated patients." Otherwise the Onmitsukidou would use it, went unsaid. "Many members of the Eleventh would refuse to disclose the nature of their injuries otherwise."

I bit back a snarl. "I told you how I got hurt!" I said, scrunching my sheets in my hands to keep from lunging for Arashi, wherever she was.

"Yet you neglected to include the discovery of your... abilities," Unohana replied, clasping her hands in front of her so tightly I thought she was trying not to strangle me. "A key point." Which really sounded more like 'something that you could be thrown in prison for.'

I sighed. No point in getting angry at someone who could flatten me with a sidelong glance. "Yeah, because I didn't 'discover' them just now. I've been... hearing things since Yamada-senpai—Yamada Seinosuke—attacked me the second time. And I started hearing something like my Zanpakutou spirit shortly after we received asauchi." I couldn't help the hunch of my shoulders and set of my jaw. I hadn't fought off Oshiro just to get punished for a useless ability I couldn't help. "Everybody's good at something. I'm good at listening."

Unohana regarded me for a long moment before sighing. "Then you are unaware of the implications and history of abilities such as yours."