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Consolation Prize (of Victory)	By : blackfox1 Category: Bleach > Het - Male/Female Views: 5764 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, any of the characters mentioned here and I'm certainly not in this for the money.

Chapter List
- 7
- 8
- 9
Consolation Prize
Interval 4: Two May Keep a Secret If… (Denial and Depression)
In which the rule of unintended consequences is put to the test.
Renji didn’t remember owning an alarm clock.
Back when he’d been staying (or mooching, depending on which long-dead member of Urahara’s bizarre little commune one talked to) in the Living World, the shop’s proprietor and head lunatic insisted that each bedroom contain an alarm clock. Renji, of course, had made the mistake of asking for an explanation. He was a soldier, accustomed to rising at all sorts of ungodly hours to perform whatever tasks his superiors required of him. He didn’t need some mechanical babysitter to remind him to get up in the morning.
Urahara had looked at him with those uncanny, blue-gray eyes of his and chortled behind his ever-present fan.
“Maybe you don’t need one, Moocher-san, but your gigai does. Let me know how your physical body fares, keeping the kind of hours to which you’re accustomed. You’ll thank me later on. Remember, I’m granting you the use of the merchandise. Please don’t rough it up while you have it on loan.”
To the best of his knowledge, the only place an alarm clock might be found in the Seireitei would be somewhere in the 4th Division or in the Science and Research Division, due to the sheer amount of equipment from the Living World housed in both places. The fact that he was in the latter meant little; there were clocks everywhere, courtesy of the painted madman who had run the place before Szayel declared the entire Division his personal fiefdom. However, actual alarm clocks seemed rare. Szayel didn’t use alarm clocks. He didn’t like them. He declared that an Espada didn’t need one, that perfection was always on time.
If that was true, Renji wanted to know what the hell the annoying and increasingly loud electronic beeping boring into his brain was so he could go kill whatever made the sound.
He cracked an eye open and saw the ceiling in his room. He’d gone to bed close to eleven-o-clock, after finishing a load of the children’s laundry. He’d put them to bed in their now-separate rooms in Szayel’s private suite three hours earlier and the basket of children’s clothing was still in the corner. Renji’s plan had been to put the stuff away once they’d had their breakfast and got them ready for morning lessons. By all rights, he’d intended to get up at five a.m., as he always did, to get in an hour of training before Szayel handed him a list of chores.
It did not feel like five a.m. and whatever was going on with the noise showed no sign of abating. The alarm, if that was what it was, wasn’t loud enough to be the Defence Net’s warning system going off. Another month and it would be time for the Swarm’s yearly, lemming-like run at the Net. They started seeing scouts in late August, and the main barrage would start not long after that.
He groaned, scrubbed his face and decided that since sleep was impossible and as he had no alarm clock to throw against the wall to get the things to stop blaring, he might as well get up. Fumbling around the room, his hand connected with the light switch and the clock he did have, hanging on the wall, came into view.
Two-thirty-two in the morning? Sweet mother of…
The debate about whether or not to change out of his sleeping yukata into a real uniform didn’t last long. He stalked to his closet, shrugged his garb on and tied the obi with the kind of pissed-off energy one only got from having a restful night’s slumber rudely interrupted. Sandals found, he decided to leave his hair in the braid he normally put it into at night, just in case the whole incident was a mistake or a false alarm or some asshole’s idea of a practical joke. He stuck Zabimaru into his obi, tugged on his headband and didn’t have to work too hard to fix a scowl on his face. Flinging open the door to his quarters, Renji stepped out into the hall…
…only to have Tsubokura Rin slam into him from behind. Papers scattered every which way, as the researcher’s body propelled Renji right into the door he’d just opened. The result was a bloody nose on his part, stars flaring behind his eyes and a lump the size of an egg on his forehead.
“Oww!!! Be hab to stob beetig lig dis, Dubogura-zad…” he muttered, his hand over his nose as his eyes uncrossed. Rin had fallen on his rump and busily scrambled around on hands and knees in an effort to retrieve what looked like a report and some spreadsheets. “Bud’z goig od?”
“Come on, Abarai. I was just coming to get you. Szayel-sama wants to talk to you.”
That sobered him up. What the fuck could the pink menace want with him at this hour? His confusion must have been evident, despite the hand covering half his face in an attempt to stop the blood trickling from his left nostril. He went with the first thing that popped into his brain.
“Duh twids?”
Once Rin was sure his papers were back in their proper order, the smaller Shinigami grabbed his bicep and started tugging him down the hall.
‘I don’t think so. There’s been a break-in. That’s all I know. Szayel-sama wanted some records from Kurotsuchi’s archives and the corresponding reiatsu patterns and for me to bring you to him on my way back.”
None of that meant anything to Renji, so he decided to let Rin lead him to the place where he might get some answers. The whole issue of a ‘break-in’ made no sense either. Who would break into the Science and Research Building and for what purpose? The place was fully monitored and fully staffed and anyone trying to get at anything had a better chance of doing so by waltzing through the front door, rather than going through the trouble of breaking into the building's more secure areas.
Rin eventually brought him to one of the main monitoring rooms, crowded with various staff members in varying degrees of panic, all at one workstation or another, shouting results to the Espada staring up at the large screen hooked up the a conduit of thick cables. Renji pinched the bridge of his nose and tilted his head back, in an attempt to stop the blood dripping from his nose. As he did so, he looked up to see what had Szayel so captivated and froze.
He’d seen this place before, but then much of the architecture of Hueco Mundo looked the same, so he assumed that this was the part of Szayel’s domain that he and Uryuu hadn’t reduced to rubble. Renji lowered his blood-stained hand, gaping at an underground chamber full of items of one kind or another encased in what appeared to be clear glass cubes. Someone had lined them up neatly in a grid throughout the room, which made the five shattered cubes in the midst of the orderly arrangement all the more noticeable.
“Sir, the fifth barrier is back online. Here are the readings from the control boxes just before the intruder destroyed them.”
“Trying to get a discernible reiatsu tag from what remains of the twentieth barrier and the chamber itself. There’s not much left of that barrier though.”
“Someone find me the surveillance recordings from Levels 2 through 9. There has to be something, anything on them!”
Szayel glared up at the screen, as if the image on it offended him. Rin dropped Renji's arm, trotted up to the Arrancar and handed him the pile of papers, then hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Here’s the archival data from Kurotsuchi Mayuri’s Quincy project… and I brought your ‘pet’ as you requested.”
Kami, how Renji hated that term, but his ears pricked up when he heard the word ‘Quincy’.
“Very good. Go assist Yukawa and see if there’s any residual trace of a Garganta or any other sort of ‘gate’ being opened within a ten kilometer radius of the storage facility. Mikimoto, I want a team assembled to inspect the site of the break-in. They’re to leave within the next twenty minutes!”
“Hai, sir!”
Then Szayel’s eyes lit on Renji and his mouth thinned.
“I’ll be just a moment. Find out if any of the other artifacts were disturbed, or if the problem is localized to that chamber. Takahashi, for the sake of all that’s holy, shut that alarm off! It’s served its purpose and I don’t want my children’s slumber disturbed.”
The scientist turned his back on the screen, marched up to Renji and hauled him roughly down a side corridor. He reached up one sleeve and pulled a handkerchief from it, thrusting it in Renji’s face as he kicked open the door to what looked like a tiny, single-person washroom. Renji found himself shoved inside, Szayel following and the door clicked behind them.
“What did you do to yourself this time?” Szayel hissed, pointing a finger at the blood on Renji’s nose and face, and then turning abruptly to latch the door. “First, use that to clean up and second, you’re going to answer a few questions, or so help me I will use your tattooed hide as a throw rug.”
Renji, more than a little befuddled, did his best to wipe away what he could of his nosebleed, gave up and tried wetting the handkerchief in the sink. It helped get the majority of the blood from his lip and face, though it still trickled from one nostril. Rin had been sprinting at a good clip when they’d collided and his face showed it. Putting direct pressure on his nose with the cloth, he answered in a nasal voice.
“I woke up to that alarm, stepped out of my room and Tsubokura ran into me. Literally.”
Szayel turned his eyes heavenward, as if praying for patience or deliverance, then waved away Renji’s explanation.
“Fine, fine.”
“What’s going on? He said there was some sort of robbery.”
Now Szayel looked furious and trained angry golden eyes on Renji, as if the redhead had personally masterminded the heist, or whatever it was that had gone down in Las Noches. For his part, Renji began to get a bad feeling about where this might go.
“Yes, that’s right. A break-in. I’ve been burgled. Someone pilfered some very specific items from my most secure storage facility in my former domain. From the preliminary data, they knew what to look for, where to look and most importantly, how to get around at least sixteen of the layers of security I keep on the artifacts and specimens in that chamber, as well as how to disable part of the surveillance system.”
“Ah…and… why do you think I know anything about that?”
“Go ahead, Abarai. Ask me what the thief, or thieves took!”
The last thing Renji wanted to contemplate were the various oddities that Szayel had tucked away. He saw enough disturbing things each time he had to clean out the storage rooms in the Science and Research Division. He had no desire to think about what the Espada might have stashed in Hueco Mundo. Still, Szayel apparently thought that Renji ought to have a grasp of whatever it was that had been stolen. Then again, it was close to three a.m., and he felt he ought to be forgiven for not coming up with an immediate answer. If Szayel wanted him to ask, Renji would have to oblige him.
“Okay… so what did they take?”
Szayel hissed the reply through clenched teeth.
“The assorted and cataloged weapons of the late Ishida Uryuu.”
Shit…
Renji paled, any blood in his face heading for his gut and finally putting a stop to his nosebleed. For a second, he wasn’t sure that he’d heard that right, but Szayel’s incredibly pissed demeanor told him otherwise.
“But… but, you gave Uryuu-kun a proper burial…”
“I did! I told you, dolt, that I kept his weapons, guarded and under security, for future study. There are, to the best of my knowledge, only a handful of people who know that I have those, or ‘had’ those, until late last night. You, Abarai, are one of those people. Now, try to sift through what little gray matter you possess and get back to me with the name of anyone with whom you might have discussed the topic of our late acquaintance.”
It was as good as an accusation and Renji found himself bristling at the Espada.
“You think Ichigo and the rest of them did this?”
“I’m ruling nothing out at the moment, but yes, they’re on the short list of suspects!”
“Why would they bother? They’re Quincy weapons. No one on the ‘at large’ roster would be able to use them, correct?”
Szayel ran a hand through his hair. The gesture, minus the usual smirk, told Renji that the Arrancar was well past the point of ‘stressed’.
“That’s what I want to know. As I said, I’m not ruling out anything at the moment until I have more information. But since you’re one of the few that knew I kept those things, I feel this overwhelming urge to ask you if you told that cheap tart that rides you every ten months anything that would have led to this!”
He flinched at the scientist’s words. That… hit a little too close to the mark for Renji. He also had no idea if he’d mentioned that Uryuu’s weapons were still in Szayel’s possession when he’d informed Nel of Uryuu’s burial. That conversation was almost three years gone. He chose to cover his shock and uncertainty with some good, old-fashioned outrage.
“She’s not a cheap tart… and how the fuck would I have any information on your storage units in a completely different Realm, Szayel-sama? I can’t give anyone codes I don’t have!” he snapped.
“Who said anything about codes?!” Szayel shot back nastily, sticking a finger under Renji’s finally-non-bleeding nose. “From what I’ve learned so far, it would seem that the intruder knew exactly where those weapons were, knew which generators to destroy and mapped out a path to get to those weapons using the shortest route possible, taking out the surveillance cameras and sensors along the way and disabling the alarms. They tripped what was left of the alarm system after they walked off with those weapons, like tossing their calling card on the foyer table on their way out. Whoever it was wanted me to see what he or she had done! That narrows things down a bit, don’t you think?”
Renji wasn’t sure if he wanted to applaud the thief’s audacity, or yell at him or her about taking some incredibly stupid risks for the sake of weapons that were next to useless now that the Quincy race was extinct. Alternatively, he was also inclined to throttle the intruder for putting him in a no-win situation. He had been passing Nel what information he could, but as the Division’s ‘grunt work’ guy, he wasn’t privy to the sort of knowledge that would make such an attack possible. Szayel had long since rebuilt and improved his old lair in Las Noches, so any intelligence Renji could have given Nel about the floor plan would have been terribly out of date, as well as erroneous, considering how screwed up his senses had been while wandering around in it the first time.
“Look, the only thing I told her about Uryuu was that you’d given him a proper burial. She knew him too, so she was interested in finding out why someone had gone to the trouble of carving his name on the family stone. That’s all I told her.”
Szayel turned to face the mirror and leaned over the sink, his head bowed.
“I swore to Karin-sama that this whole business was a bad idea. Kami, if you told her anything that could come back and hurt us…”
“How can Uryuu-kun’s weapons do anything if there’s no one qualified to use them?” Renji demanded and spread his arms as wide as the narrow space allowed. Szayel leaned forward until his forehead touched the glass, and two pairs of golden eyes, one real and one reflective, gave Renji a withering sidelong glance.
“I’m not as worried about who has the weapons as I am worried about what Aizen-Kami will do when he finds out those weapons are in enemy hands!’
Renji had to admit that was a sobering thought.
“Furthermore, if I can trace any of this back to either you or to Kurosaki and his little band of ‘merry men’, I’m going to ask Karin if I can hang you from the Seireitei’s southern wall by your ankles!”
“Your thief is probably some Adjuchas…”
“That would be a best-case scenario, Abarai and you know it. Therefore, dunderhead, I would suggest you think very hard about what you might have shared with that tempest-in-a-D-cup before our overlord demands to see the reports and starts asking questions!”
Szayel pushed back from the vanity, turned on one heel and pulled the door open.
“I thought I told you people to shut that damned thing off!” he bellowed.
Then he stalked out without looking back, slamming the door hard enough to shake the jamb and its hinges. That left Renji backed up against the far wall with a wet, bloody handkerchief in his hand and more questions now than when Rin had hauled him away from his quarters. He had no real orders and no desire to add to the chaos out in the larger monitoring bay. The twins wouldn’t be up for another few hours.
His fingers closed around Zabimaru’s hilt and Renji quietly moved to the door. He closed it and turned the latch to the ‘locked’ position.
Sitting down on the only seat available in the small washroom, he pulled his Zanpakuto into his lap. Thankfully, the persistent sound of the alarm chose that moment to die with a garbled noise much like that of someone strangling a cat. The former Fukutaichou sent a prayer of thanks to whatever gods happened to be in the neighborhood and used Jinzen to slide carefully into his inner world. If he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d told Nel about Uryuu and the deal he’d made, maybe the other two sets of ears available to him could recall the information.
At six-o-clock, he came back to reality without getting much more out of Zabimaru than he already knew. Exiting the washroom, he noted the change in the air immediately. The out-and-out panic he’d seen at two-thirty-two in the morning amongst the staff had given way to hushed tension as researcher after researcher handed Szayel report after updated report. The Espada, seated at one of the monitoring stations, gave him a brief, irritated look and pointed in the direction of his private quarters. Renji took that to mean that his ‘master’ wanted him to go through with today’s schedule. He stopped by his rooms to pick up the children’s clean laundry and launched into his now-familiar routine.
The twins, of course, had heard the strange new alarm, but he quickly assured them that it had nothing to do with them or the Swarm. Abisara hadn’t been content with Renji’s answer. He could tell that the little boy would spend the morning pestering him with very politely-phrased questions and if he didn’t come up with something plausible, the child would find the next likely-looking adult and start in on them until he got what he wanted.
“Someone stole something from your father’s laboratory last night. That’s why the alarms sounded.”
“Was it Laboratory 4 or Laboratory 10?” Abisara asked. “That’s where all the good stuff is.”
Renji tried to remember what projects Szayel had going in those labs, and then decided it didn’t matter. He shook his head, also not wanting to know what the child considered ‘good stuff’.
“Ah, the thief wasn’t in the building here. He or she was in Las Noches.”
That seemed to throw the boy a little, but he wasn’t deterred for long.
“What did they take?”
The last bits and pieces of a once-proud, very dangerous race of people, he mentally replied and then sighed.
“Something no one can really use, actually.”
Abisara gave him a very strange look that seemed to say ‘all that trouble for nothing?’ and rolled his eyes.
“Well, that’s stupid! Why take something useless?”
That was an excellent question. Uryuu’s weapons were ineffective in the hands of anyone other than a Quincy, unless the Strawberry had managed to pull yet another amazing bit of battle prowess out of his ass on short notice. It would be just like Kurosaki Ichigo to do something as reckless and harebrained in the name of retrieving Ishida Uryuu’s belongings.
The problem with that scenario was that the one thing he could see Ichigo fighting to retrieve, the Quincy’s corpse, was long-gone. Ichigo had once kicked open the doors of the Seireitei to save a friend he’d known for less than two months. He had no doubt that in order to give Uryuu the kind of burial that would prevent the young man’s soul from lingering in Hueco Mundo as a Hollow himself, Ichigo would have burned Szayel’s entire domain down.
However, taking back a set of obscure, Quincy-specific weapons wasn’t Ichigo’s style. Saving people, now that was Kurosaki’s specialty. Renji decided to tell the kid the truth.
“I have no idea, Abisara. It doesn’t make sense to me either. Now eat your rice and your fish and drink your soup. Vindula, no slurping!”
Abisara’s observation bothered him for the rest of the morning, as the twins settled down for their lessons and he managed to get the inevitable disarray that occurred in the rooms of two small, energetic children under some semblance of control. He did his own sort of mental inventory of the list of people that had remained at large; if Ichigo wasn’t the culprit, then perhaps one of the others had pulled off the theft. He had to ignore the unfamiliar names. Renji considered speculating on those whose abilities were unknown to him to be a waste of time. That left Yoruichi, Yachiru, Rukia, Kenpachi and Nel herself. Zaraki he considered all of two seconds before dismissing him. His former Taichou, the one he’d served under before his promotion to the 6th Division’s Fukutaichou position, had all of the subtlety of a brick to the face. There wasn’t nearly enough damage to Szayel’s storage facility for the Kenpachi of the former 11th Division to be involved. He also dismissed Yachiru-chan for similar reasons.
The rest were all distinct possibilities. Yoruichi had stealth, skill, power and the ability to plan out such a complex attack. Rukia did as well, though he’d noticed a complete lack of ice in any of the images he’d seen onscreen. If she’d been involved, she chose to use Kido instead of Sode no Shirayuki. Nel, he thought a little guiltily, knew her way around Las Noches and might just know how to traverse Szayel’s domain, courtesy of her former position as the Third Espada. She was also capable of opening a Garganta directly from the Living World to Hueco Mundo, or at least, he thought she had that ability. However, none of the women he knew seemed the sort to engage in the kind of showboating that followed the theft. Setting off the alarms was the act of someone that either knew the risks and didn’t give a fuck about them or didn’t care because they had the kind of power that negated those risks entirely.
If Renji were to hazard a guess, he would have said it was the act of someone with a very deep-seated personal grudge against Szayel involving Uryuu. Which brought him right back to Ichigo’s little group. Anyone who would have known Ishida Uryuu in life was in one of three places: enslaved in the Seireitei, dead and buried with the eradication of Karakura or with Ichigo. As he moved through the tasks assigned to him that morning, he kept going around and around, arriving at the same conclusion time and time again, until he felt a headache starting to form behind his eyes.
Around noon, Szayel found him in the middle of remaking Abisara’s bed and unplugging the mini-centrifuge hidden beneath the child’s pillow. His next task was to fetch the children from their respective tutors and see to lunch, but Szayel’s white-faced expression, and the fact he had Vindula in his arms stopped Renji in his tracks. The little girl reached out for her caregiver and he took her wordlessly.
“Come with me. We’ve been summoned to the Palace.”
“But, Vindula-chan…” he began to protest and Szayel held up one hand to stop him.
“It’s as I’ve said, Abarai. We’ve been summoned. Please carry my daughter as we walk.”
Now it was Renji’s turn to go a bit light-headed as he realized what ‘we’ meant in this situation.
“Abisara?”
“With his mother, in my quarters. Let’s go.”
Numbly, Renji sat the little girl on his shoulders and followed Szayel out of the children’s room, trying to get his pulse and his breathing under control before he gave in to panic.
“Where are we going?”
“To Kami’s Palace, Vindula,” Szayel answered, keeping the terror Renji had seen in the Espada’s eyes out of his voice. He had to hand it to the scientist, as Renji didn’t think he would have done quite as good a job of it. “I have to answer some questions about last night.”
Renji noticed the three heavy folders of papers tucked under Szayel's arm. He assumed those were the most up-to-date reports on the break-in in Las Noches, but didn’t press his so-called ‘master’ for the details.
“Are we going to have lunch?
“Not until after the meeting. I need you two to be very quiet while Tou-san is speaking to Kami-sama.”
In Renji’s mind, there was only one reason for Aizen to request Vindula’s presence and it took all of Renji’s self-discipline not to turn on his heel and bolt. It wasn’t as if he could go anywhere. He hadn’t figured out how to open up the portal from within the Kido cube yet and even if he was able to open a Senkaimon, he had no idea where Nel and the other escapees had hidden themselves. While Nel might be able to find him via her Claim, there was no guarantee that she would reach him before the inevitable pursuers from the Seireitei caught up with him.
As if he could guess the direction of the Shinigami’s thoughts, Szayel began speaking in a low-pitched tone. Renji had to speed up to pull close enough to hear him.
“I mean it. Let me do the talking, Abarai, and follow every direction I give you as if your next meal and life were on the line. Because they very well might be, do you understand?” he growled from between clenched teeth.
“Hai, Szayel-sama,” the redhead grimaced, fighting with his instinct to run as far as he could with his charge in the opposite direction.
“Vindula-chan?”
“Hai, Otou-san?”
Her small voice sounded worried, given the rising tension between her father and Renji as they made their way through the 1st District.
“You must be very respectful to Kami while we are here. There are a lot of pretty things in the Palace and I can’t have you running all over looking at everything. You need to stay with your ‘Ji-ji’ unless I or… Kami-sama tells you otherwise. Do you understand?”
“Do I have t’obey Kami-sama over you, Otou-san?”
“Yes, you do sweetheart. I’m sorry, but you must do everything Aizen-Kami asks of you.”
“Isn’t Karin supposed to handle anything like this?” Renji whispered when he found his voice again.
Szayel groaned quietly.
“As I don’t know what ‘this’ will entail, I’m not sure if he’s summoned her or not. We’ll know when we get there and I can give him the report. We’ll see if he believes what I tell him, or if this is just another excuse for him to amuse himself at my expense.”
Renji did not like the way Szayel said the word ‘amuse’. In fact, he liked nothing about this whole thing.
“Well, what did you find out about the…”
“Abarai, if you don’t shut up now, and stay quiet while I deal with this situation, I won’t bother asking Karin about hanging you by the ankles, provided I can still move by the end of the day.”
The redhead shut his jaw with a ‘click’ of his teeth and concentrated on staying calm, if only for Vindula’s sake. They spent the rest of the trip to the Palace in silence.
Once past the gates, Renji had the second surprised of the day when Ichimaru Gin met them in the courtyard. Gin seemed equally surprised to see Renji, but didn’t say anything other than “This way, please” to Szayel. The Espada followed him wordlessly and Renji followed Szayel.
He found himself appalled by Gin’s appearance. Did they not feed the man? The former Taichou had always been on the slender side, but Gin had become downright gaunt in the last couple of years. He was pale before, but whatever color he did have had been washed away over the course of Aizen’s dictatorship, until he seemed as white and as flimsy as one of the sheets of paper under Szayel’s arm.
The farther into the Palace they went, the more Renji started to compare the trek to the throne room with a condemned man’s march to the gallows and he wasn’t sure who he was more afraid for, himself, Vindula or Szayel. The man leading them unnerved him, his ghostly pallor a sharp contrast to the richly appointed surroundings, his silence an art perfected by self-preservation.
Finally, Gin led them to a large set of doors, which the scrawny man pushed open with both hands. Renji had been here on a few occasions, mostly during those ‘social’ gatherings where the Espada and their households put on a parody of an excruciatingly uncomfortable family reunion for Aizen. As those little get-togethers held little appeal for him, he didn’t relish a return to the throne room. Vindula must have thought the same thing, because she leaned down and whispered in Renji’s ear.
“Ji-ji, is this a party?”
“No, Vindula. Now hush, okay?” he murmured back and carefully removed her from his shoulders, setting her on her feet. She clutched his hand and it felt terribly small and vulnerable in his.
Aizen lounged on the throne, the tyrant sipping on his usual cup of tea with an almost bored expression on his face. Gin stopped a yard or two from the dais and bowed low, then made his way to the side of the throne itself. Szayel had obviously done this before, as he took a step forward and bowed. Renji and Vindula followed suit, staying a few feet behind the Seventh.
“You wished to see me, Kami-sama?”
Szayel’s voice betrayed nothing of the agitation he’d shown earlier.
“I hear there was a bit of excitement last night at the Science and Research Division.”
“Yes, Kami-sama. I have a preliminary report here for your perusal.”
Aizen shifted, lifted a finger and Gin immediately poured more hot tea from the teapot sitting on the small table next to the throne. While his ‘master’ took a sip, Gin walked calmly down to Szayel, took the heavy report from the scientist and handed it to Aizen.
‘Kami-sama’ gave it a slightly disdainful look that Renji recognized from years of dealing with the 6th Division’s seemingly endless tide of paperwork.
“I don’t remember requesting that you bring your pet with you, Szayel, only that you bring your daughter to this meeting.”
Renji involuntarily tightened his hold on Vindula as Aizen’s eyes flicked over to him, then back to Szayel.
“I’m sure Kami-sama is aware of the incident involving the Second Espada and Ajuga Jaegerjaquez. I felt it wise to assign my children a bodyguard, lest some of the Numeros forget your orders regarding the children. He is under Claim-induced command to keep them in sight at all times if they leave the Division and to defend them to the death.”
“I see. Interesting. Well, let’s look at your report, shall we?”
To Renji’s irritation, it looked as if Aizen would really sit back and read what had to be a five-hundred page report, while he made them stand there. He might be able to do it, but Vindula’s ability to sit still had never made it past the two-minute mark. Then he sighed and handed it back to Gin, who took a step back and bowed his head. Aizen leaned to the right, that ‘benevolent ruler’ mask that Renji had come to hate firmly in place and propped up his head with the knuckles of one hand against his cheek.
“Hm. I’m sure your report is thorough, but I’d much rather hear a condensed version from you. If you need to reference something in it, Gin can pull the necessary pages.”
“As Kami-sama wishes,” Szayel said quietly, and bowed again.
“Oh, and with regard to your daughter, Vindula Grantz, could you please come up here and sit by me while your father tells me what went on last night? You’re growing into quite a charming young thing and I would like to see your lovely wings up close.”
Aizen wasn’t actually looking at the child whose hand he held. The son-of-a-bitch was looking straight at Renji and now the redhead could see the smugness in them.
“Surely, you will agree that your daughter will be quite safe from any harm in my throne room?”
Renji could feel the blood drain straight from his face to the bottom of his sandals and he turned to see Szayel, face equally pale, nod.
“Yes, of course Kami-sama.”
“Is it okay, ‘Ji-ji’?” she asked, looking up at him with her golden eyes.
He tried to answer, but found the words were stuck in his suddenly dry throat.
No, it’s not all right. The most dangerous spot in the room is any spot within arm’s reach of that psychopath…
“Renji, go ahead and let her sit with him, if he so desires,” he heard Szayel say quietly.
As smooth as the Espada sounded, Renji could hear the undercurrent of fear beneath his words. Then, strangely, the Claim around him unexpectedly tightened a little. That surprised him, until he remembered that one of the first commands Nel had ever given him was to give Aizen no reason to question Szayel’s supposed ‘Claim’ on him. He eased his grip on Vindula’s hand. As he did, the pressure from the Claim around him lessened, to his utter horror. When he’d first imagined his role as a spy for Yoruichi and the rest of the escapees, he had no idea the cost of doing so might involve sending an innocent child to sit within fang’s reach of a poisonous spider.
He almost snatched her, almost ran for it and to hell with the consequences… almost.
Vindula took the matter out of his hands entirely when she pulled her hand from his grasp and walked towards the man on the throne, casting a couple of glances over her shoulder at her father and her caregiver. She navigated the short set of steps and when she reached the throne, Aizen picked her up, sitting the little girl on his knee. He gave her a measuring look, one that made Renji want to put out the man’s eyes.
“You hardly weigh a thing, my dear. Are you eating properly? It’s my understanding that Arrancar children require a great deal of nourishment to thrive.”
Vindula seemed to think about this before giving Aizen a confused look.
“We eat lots! But, Abisara eats even more than I do, ‘cause he’s a boy an’ Otou-san says he’s gonna’ be bigger’n me when we grow up!”
Her translucent, pastel-colored wings had begun their usual, almost involuntary fluttering. Aizen reached out and gently ran a hand from where her left wing poked out from the hole Renji’s preferred seamstress had tailored into the garment she wore, along the flexible ridge to the tip of the upper portion of the appendage. Vindula giggled and squirmed a little, and Aizen looked down at her, one eyebrow going up.
“That tickles!”
“My apologies, young lady. I think that these…“and here he tapped the edge of her wing with one finger “…might be where you expend all of your energy. A few extra snacks for you might help your growth rate. Very well, my Seventh, please tell me what occurred and what steps you’ve taken to address the issue.”
Renji swore his heart stopped beating when Aizen’s hand went to rest on the spot where Vindula’s wing emerged, between her spine and her shoulder blade. The usurper left it there while Szayel quickly launched into his report, sounding both unnerved and just a little desperate. Aizen’s expression never changed as the Espada gave his account of the previous night’s unrest.
“At ‘o-two-hundred-and-fifteen’, the alarm indicating a breach in the security fields around Storage Facility 3 in my domain in Las Noches went off. My staff and I went to bring up the monitoring system, only to find that key portions of it had been disabled. Each barrier between the contents of the facility, and there were twenty five physical and reishi-based barriers, had either been disabled or simply blown through at a strategic point. I sent a team to investigate the site at o-three-hundred via a Garganta, to save time. Their report begins on page 325, with their summary.”
“My, my. Someone was apparently very eager to raid your closet, Szayel. Please continue.”
“Of course. The team tracked the thief or thieves’ route through the facility once they arrived and created a secure perimeter. It appears that the intruder or intruders took the most direct route to their targeted items. If the barrier to the next segment of their route was reishi-based, the thief either nullified it for a short time or destroyed the first line generator for that section or level. If the barrier was physical, they simply blew a hole in the wall and walked through it. They made their way down to the lowest level and proceeded to smash through the last barrier surrounding each of the artifacts they wanted."
“The team was able to deduce an approximate path from the specific pattern of deactivated surveillance nodes. Once they had the items they wanted, they left the way they came.”
“Pray tell, what could you possibly have down there that would warrant that kind of attack?”
Szayel’s lips thinned a bit, but he didn’t pause or hesitate.
“Five assorted Quincy weapons, obtained from the corpse of Ishida Uryuu after your Victory, Kami-sama.”
That bit of information brought a change in Aizen’s demeanor. All traces of his earlier boredom vanished, and Renji didn’t like the look that replaced it.
“Now that’s interesting, Szayel. Why would you keep weapons that could destroy your kind utterly?”
Thankfully, the Espada seemed to have a ready answer for this.
“I thought it better to keep them in Los Noches, since the majority of my facilities there were uncompromised by the War and it took some time to diffuse the traps surrounding the late Kurotsuchi-Taichou’s Division. The weapons themselves are useless in the hands of anyone other than a Quincy, but I decided to salvage them for their potential research value. I always intended to get back to that line of inquiry someday, but as time went on, other matters took precedence.”
Aizen actually seemed to consider Szayel’s explanation, which sounded reasonable and practical, even to Renji.
“That is true. Hence, they’ve been down there all this time. Did your team discover the thief’s identity? I’m going to assume that you found at least some trace of the culprit upon investigating?”
“Yes. Between my staff here and the team that I sent to Los Noches, we were able to recover a consistent reiatsu signature from one of the smashed reishi containers. There’s also something… interesting about the containers themselves the perpetrator left behind.”
“What could that be? I don’t particularly like things drawn out for the sake of suspense.”
The warning in Aizen’s voice made the hair on the back of Renji’s neck stand up and the muscles in his jaw twitch. Vindula’s wings had stopped moving completely and he could see she was starting to get uneasy. Szayel took a deep breath and forged ahead and his answer shocked Renji enough so that he looked sideways to see if Szayel was actually joking.
“Whoever it was smashed the containers from the inside. The few fragments of retrievable reishi we found embedded in the walls and in the other reishi fields surrounding those that the thief damaged display an outward scattering pattern. The diagrams are on page 350 through 375 of the report.”
Aizen made a motion for Gin to hand him the mentioned documents and in a few seconds, the silver-haired man pulled the files from the much larger report, carefully giving them to the man lounging on the throne. A few nervous minutes went by as Aizen took in the evidence, flipping through the pages. His slight frown grew graver as he did so.
“How is this possible?”
That finger tapped on Vindula’s wing again and Szayel swallowed before answering.
“Upon examining my predecessor’s records regarding one Ishida Souken, it would appear that, the thief or thieves used the weapons to expand the reishi within the cube itself, hurtling it outwards, leaving the weapons intact. Had they tried to smash the barriers from the outside, they would have risked damaging the contents.”
“So what you’re telling me is that someone with the ability to manipulate reishi came in, selectively destroyed your storage facility and its defenses and made off with a set of weapons that would have value only to a few people. Why do I find these things both strange and at the same time, hard to swallow?”
Now Szayel looked very nervous.
“The reiatsu signature was, I believe, deliberately left for me to find. Because of the lethal nature of some of the things in that vault, I made certain that there were back-up alarm systems and generators here in the Seireitei, in case the primary alarm systems failed for some reason, or one of the lesser Adjuchas wandered into one of the outer barriers. When the investigation team made it to the lines that connect the backup network to the system in the Science and Research Division, they discovered evidence that the thief targeted the secondary system and blocked that as well, again, with reishi. When they’d taken what they wanted, they destroyed the primary system utterly.” Szayel’s voice took an angry turn, “Then they ‘unblocked’ it, so that the secondary alarms would go off. I believe it was the equivalent of throwing down a gauntlet.”
“Only one signature? If that’s true, then why do you present a possibility that there was more than one thief at work?”
Szayel ran a hand through his hair, while Renji did his best not to flinch at Aizen’s scowl.
“So far, the break-in itself seems to be the work of one person. However, my team hasn’t finished its examination of what remains of the barriers and the shielding. We’re comparing the signature to what we have on file to see if there’s a match.”
“A match to what?”
“We… we have the reiatsu signatures, courtesy of my predecessor’s extensive archives, of a number of those who have… refused to acknowledge you as Kami,” the Espada replied reluctantly, as if he didn’t want to remind the bastard of the fact that he hadn’t yet brought down all of those who opposed him.
Renji could actually see the proverbial ice cracking under Szayel’s feet as he spoke and prayed that whatever else the Espada said could get Aizen to overlook it long enough for Renji to hustle Vindula to safety.
“We’ve yet to make a positive match in that regard. As of o-seven-hundred, we did track the reiatsu signature to a spot approximately forty kilometers away, where the team found evidence of a fresh ‘passage’ to the Living World opening up. It bears an uncanny resemblance to a Garganta. I’m still waiting for the full results from that site, as my team has had to fight off a number of Menos attracted to their activities.”
Aizen’s hand had begun to gently tap on the edge of Vindula’s wing again as he contemplated the report.
“You realize just how hard this is for me to believe, don’t you?”
“Kami-sama?”
The man on the throne sighed, managing to sound both exasperated and patronizing at the same time.
“You are, after all, telling me that someone with the ability to absorb and manipulate reishi, in other words, a Quincy, managed to bypass or destroy your best security system. They then stole weapons that no one alive now ought to be able to utilize, wanted you to know they’d done it and then used a Garganta to make good their escape?”
“Kami-sama, I can assure you…”
All the while, Renji’s eyes never left the little girl in Aizen’s grasp. There was no reason for her to be here other than to fluster Szayel, or punish the Espada for allowing the break-in to happen. It didn’t matter how many levels of security the scientist had placed around that facility, or how good the guard was or what Szayel had or hadn’t done. Renji knew it in his bones, knew it as only someone who had once been a vulnerable kid trying to stay one step ahead and out of the hands of the adults around him. He had to fight back the despair he felt at his own helplessness at the moment. Aizen had found the Espada guilty of negligence long before he ever set foot in the Palace. Szayel just didn’t know it yet.
If he or her father didn’t think of something fast, Vindula would be the one to pay the price.
Renji had no idea how he was going to get her away from Aizen. If he tried to move towards her, Nel’s instructions would prevent him from grabbing her. Aizen could rip the child’s wing from her body with little effort, long before he could reach her and if Szayel barked anything out to try to mitigate his actions, he’d be stopped cold, as if the scientist truly held his Claim. His mind raced to find some solution, some way of shifting Aizen’s focus…
…from one target to another. The redhead grimaced inwardly.
I hope it doesn’t come to that, but there may not be a choice.
“Out of sheer curiosity, what did you do with the boy’s body, once you’d rifled through his pockets? Is it swimming in a jar somewhere?”
Aizen said this as pleasantly as possible, and Szayel seemed startled.
“I disposed of it years ago. I’d gleaned as much from it as possible and wanted the storage space freed up.”
“Oh, come now, Szayel. You’re essentially telling me that a Quincy, the last of whom I presumed perished during the conflict with Kurotsuchi, pulled this off and then used a Hollow’s technique to…”
Renji decided it was now or never.
He cleared his throat.
Silence descended on the throne room and Szayel turned furious golden eyes on his ‘pet’.
“Abarai, so help me…” he snapped, but Aizen’s eyes had also slid to him. He had to make it count.
“Does your pet have something to add?”
“No, he…”
“…Because I’d love to hear what he has to say.”
Renji inclined his head, gave the Espada fuming next to him a significant sidelong glance as he did so and began to spin what he hoped was the finest load of hogwash this side of the Living World. In doing so, he raided his memories of the young man in question for anything he could throw into the mixture, lacing the cocktail with enough truth to keep Aizen interested.
“Ishida Uryuu is dead. Kurotsuchi Mayuri slaughtered him while Szayel-sama was busy resurrecting himself within Nemu-chan. He said he was done studying him, and crushed the discarded doll Szayel-sama made with his released powers. I watched him die. To the best of my knowledge, Uryuu said he was the last of the Quincies. But…” and here he paused, both to take a breath and to try to figure out how to hook the man with his hand still on his charge’s wing “…it doesn’t mean that he was the last Quincy. He was just the last one we knew of.”
For one, long, fear-filled moment, Renji thought he might have made a mistake, that Szayel was right and he’d just made things much, much worse for all of them.
Then Aizen’s eyes lit up a little and a real smile broke across his face.
“My goodness, Szayel! You’ve succeeded in teaching an ape to reason! How in the world did you do it?”
Aizen not only removed his hand from Vindula’s wing, but also picked the child up and set her back on her feet. She hesitantly backed away, but ‘Kami-sama’ rose to his own feet and began to walk purposefully down the steps towards the redhead. Szayel made a small motion to her that went unnoticed by Aizen as he approached Renji and she practically flew down the steps towards her father. Szayel swept her up in his arms and retreated a few steps.
“What an interesting theory. Did you come up with that on your own?”
Renji never actually looked Aizen in the eye as the bastard came to stand before him, keeping his gaze locked on the pair of feet just a little over an arm’s length away.
“I spent my time during the months leading up to the war with your forces in the Living World, in the company of Urahara Kisuke. During that time, I got to know Uryuu-kun as well as the rest of Kurosaki Ichigo’s friends. He spoke frequently of the grandfather who trained him. He also spoke, less often, about his father.”
“Father?”
Good. This was obviously news to Aizen.
Now to set the hook, he prayed.
“They didn’t talk much and Uryuu-kun didn’t live with him. I never met the man, but then Uryuu-kun didn’t have anything good to say about him, except that he was the director of Karakura’s hospital. I believe the exact words he used were ‘an unfeeling bastard who didn’t honor his heritage’.”
“What of his mother?”
That was a topic that Uryuu had been particularly tight-lipped about, but that worked in Renji’s favor.
“I’m not sure if she died, or if she left the family, because she wasn’t around. That’s all I know about her. She might have had relatives he never mentioned. Same thing with his old man.”
Aizen decided to take a short walk around him, considering both Renji and what Renji prayed was a story worth believing. The smooth voice didn’t waver, but there was more than a little intrigue in it and the redhead decided to go all in.
“The last, great battle with the Quincies was over 200 years ago. There were two differing camps of thought within the Quincy population, according to Uryuu-kun. A small branch wanted to work with the Shinigami. The larger group wanted to destroy us. If the history courses at Shinoreijutsuin were completely accurate in their account of that war, Uryuu-kun, his grandfather, his father and mother… none of those people ought to exist. But they did, so the records are suspect. Uryuu-kun’s father is probably dead as well, since Uryuu told me he rarely left the hospital and it was well within the boundaries of Karakura Town…”
He would have died with all of the others you sacrificed, you sonofabitch, Renji mentally seethed “…but if Szayel-sama’s systems went down in a manner consistent with the way a Quincy attack works, then well… if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, odds are it’s a duck.”
Please believe me, you lousy prick…
“Szayel, about that reiatsu signature. If you were to guess what kind of being created it, would you say it was of Shinigami, Hollow or human origin?”
The pink-haired Espada took a second to answer, but his reply only reinforced Renji’s suggestion
“I’ve a copy of it in the report, Kami-sama. However, after trying to match it against what we have on the escapees, I would have to say it most closely resembles that of a human. Moreover, it doesn’t belong to Kurosaki Ichigo, who happens to be the only living human on that list. That man’s reiatsu is a book unto itself. My predecessor had quite a collection of data he’d amassed over the years on various Quincy specimens he’d studied. We’ll use those for comparisons next. The results will be in the next report.”
Aizen finished his perusal of Renji’s bowed frame and placed a hand on the redhead’s shoulder. Renji tried not to flinch, but couldn’t help blinking.
“Szayel, when you have an amended report from the team in Hueco Mundo, please have it sent to me as well. The theory your pet has put forth actually has a small amount of merit. The number of Quincies over the years has dwindled to almost nothing, if one believes the archives…”
Renji could almost feel the smirk on the man’s face as Aizen turned on his heel and walked slowly back to the throne.
“… but ‘nothing’ and ‘almost nothing’ are two very different animals. I will make time this afternoon to read this,” and here he motioned towards the folder in Gin’s arms. Aizen proceeded to sit down calmly, take another sip of tea. For one hopeful second, Renji thought he’d managed to pull off the impossible.
“I’d also like you to find those weapons and bring the thief in alive. If not, then just the weapons will suffice.”
The silver-haired man at Aizen’s side refreshed the tea in his master’s cup as Renji straightened his back.
“Gin, could you bring me the long, inlaid box in my private office. After that, I’d like you to show little Vindula-chan my wife’s private gardens, if just for a few minutes. He does a lovely job with the landscaping this time of year. The mid-summer blooms are quite beautiful.”
The other’s face betrayed nothing as he bowed and scurried away with Szayel’s folder. Aizen’s orders, spoken and unspoken, hung in the air behind him. A few minutes later, he brought what looked to be a finely-made case of patterned maple wood, holding it out to Aizen, who laid it across his lap.
Szayel’s white face told Renji that the contents of the box weren’t anything he wanted to be part of, but at this point, it was unlikely he’d leave here unscathed. He steeled himself for the meeting to go downhill once Gin had Vindula safely out of sight.
Szayel carefully handed his daughter over to Gin, and when she suddenly looked scared, the Espada put a finger on her lips to silence any protests she might make.
“Gin-san is going to take you to see Unohana-Taichou’s gardens. The rest of the meeting isn’t for little girls. Go on with Gin, and no matter how pretty they are, don’t pick any of the flowers.”
“Hai, Tou-san.”
Poor kid, Renji thought, as Szayel gave her as reassuring a smile as he seemed capable of at the moment. She got dragged to this joke of a meeting, with no idea what‘s really going on, put within a heartbeat of being fucking maimed by the asshole sitting pretty on that thrice-damned throne of his…
I swear, once I slip free of this collar, Aizen, I’m going for your throat.
He didn’t think he was going to get a decent breath in his lungs until Gin nodded at Szayel, the two men sharing a glance that did nothing to put Renji at ease. Then Gin gave the little girl one of those fox-grins of his, as if he was utterly relieved to be dismissed and disappeared from the room with Vindula in tow. Renji would have to think of a suitable reward for her for being so obedient while trapped in the lair of Aizen the man-eater. The Seventh Espada, he suddenly remembered, had mentioned the possibility of not being able to move at the end of the visit. He tried to keep his features as guarded as possible and tried extremely hard not to let any of the emotions roiling beneath his exterior calm from showing.
Once the door closed behind the Taichou-turned-slave, Aizen set his teacup on the table and proceeded to slide the box open.
“Come here, Szayel. I’d like you to take this.”
The scientist, looking a bit dazed, walked quickly up to the dais and reached into the box. Renji heard a faint rustling sound before he watched Szayel pull out something black and coiled, attached to a wooden handle. The Espada took the handle gingerly, as if it was a snake ready to strike him. Aizen closed the box and placed it on the table next to the tea set. Then he rose once more, took a few steps down to stand next to Szayel and draped a companionable arm over his subordinate’s shoulders.
“I must say, you’ve wrought wonders in your pet over the last few years, but I suppose having one’s Zanpakuto and part of one’s soul destroyed would leave a lasting impression. Now, tell me what you think of it,” he demanded, indicating the black coil in Szayel’s trembling hands.
Those hands unrolled it, until six feet of tightly braided black leather, tipped with a sharp metal claw hung in the Arrancar’s grasp. Szayel looked as if he was trying to say something, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered.
Renji knew what would happen next. There was no avoiding it now; no way was he going to walk away without injury. Aizen didn’t bother chastising the Espada for failing to answer. The redhead knew that just holding the thing was probably doing a number on the scientist‘s psyche. Renji was having trouble looking at it too.
“It’s the companion piece to the one I gave Karin to discipline you with some time back, for your lack of progress on my Defense Net. It’s not quite as… wicked… as its sister, but then, it’s meant for those without the protection of a Hierro.”
His knees suddenly felt watery and in the back of Renji’s mind, he felt Zabimaru shore him up from below. The support came, thankfully, before his composure broke and betrayed him. Renji had just enough time to send a quiet ‘thank you’ to his Zanpakuto, to stomp down the rising panic in his gut before Aizen opened his mouth again.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you discipline your pet for speaking out of turn in my presence.”
Golden eyes met his brown ones and the thought he saw a mixture of relief and fear in them. Relief, maybe, that he wouldn’t be the one suffering under the whip and Renji had no clue about the fear. Aizen was still giving Renji the once over with his eyes, sounding almost nostalgic as he went on.
“If I remember correctly, Abarai left my Division because he had a tendency to speak his mind without thinking first. I approved his transfer to the 11th Division, where I thought he would fit in with the rest of its mentally-challenged members. Surprisingly, he succeeded in getting promoted to the 6th, which is no small feat for someone with so little common sense. I heard that Kuchiki Byakuya had even less patience than I did for indiscretions regarding rule-breaking.”
Aizen took Szayel’s hand and as gently as if he were handing Szayel a fragile family heirloom, curled the Espada’s fingers around the handle. He stepped away a few paces and gestured towards the spot where Renji stood frozen.
“Don’t feel too badly about his occasional relapses, Szayel. I’m afraid that, no matter how hard one trains it one simply can’t take the slum out of a stray mutt, even if what occasionally falls out of its mouth has some value. After all, if it barks like a dog and scratches like a dog… ”
Now Aizen actually laughed, a hearty sound that coming from anyone else would have meant good things, or at least a good joke, were imminent.
“You never fail to amuse me, either of you.”
Some kind of signal passed between Aizen and a near-trembling Szayel and Renji could guess what it was. Szayel parted his lips and in a cracked voice, gave the redhead an order.
“Disrobe to the waist, Abarai and place your hands against the far wall.”
Renji found it ironic that Nel’s Claim tightened around him and his body moved of its own accord, hands loosening his obi and pushing his kosode off of this shoulders. The presence of the cocksucker standing next to Szayel seemed to be the catalyst. He would have laughed if he weren’t bracing himself for what he knew was going to hurt like hell. Something that was supposed to keep him safe from Aizen’s scrutiny was going to get him flayed instead, all to preserve the illusion of Szayel’s ‘ownership’. If there was one silver lining, it was that Vindula wasn’t here to see this and that the little girl wasn’t the one Aizen was going to use as an example.
As his kosode fell around his waist, his hands brushed his fall of hair and he remembered that he hadn’t bothered to put it up in its usual high tail. It remained in the braid he wore for sleeping, so he wouldn’t have to spend time combing out a mess of tangles in the morning. It was just as well, since it would keep him from having to wash a lot of caked blood out of his hair. His inner-kosode was going to need some time soaking in cold water to get the stains out though. He pulled the braid over his shoulder and placed his palms flat on the wall as ordered, staring at the painted plaster.
“Because he did bring up a possibility that bears investigating, a total of ten lashes ought to suffice. Oh, and don’t spare your arm in an attempt to spare yourself. If you do, I’m afraid that I’ll have to take over for you.”
“O…Of course, Kami-sama.”
Understanding came to Renji as he got a good look at a faint, hairline crack in the wall before him. He needed to find a spot to focus on, to keep his mind occupied while Szayel tore open his back with that toy. His ‘master’ might be unnerved by it, but he could hear Zabimaru chuckling in the back of his mind.
That might hurt now, but that thing’s got nothing on our Bankai.
Thatss not a whip…. Thatss a noodle with pretenssionss…
It was a nice try and he almost believed both halves of the Baboon King. He could deal with ten lashes. In the 11th Division training sessions, if one could call such riotous melées with no regard for life or limb ‘training’, ten lashes would have been considered a ‘light’ day.
No, his ‘punishment’ was for both of them. Nel’s demonstration of her end of their Claim came back to Renji in a rush and his fingers twitched involuntarily. This meant, at least in the redhead’s mind, that Aizen wanted Szayel to suffer for both Renji’s interjection as well as his inability to produce a perfect explanation for the Las Noches raid. He wondered how the fucker had kept the ocean of sadism within him hidden for so long, and from so many people.
Aizen’s footsteps retreated, back up to the throne and he heard fabric rustle as the usurper sat down. Renji took a chance and glanced back at Szayel, who resembled nothing more than a young man in his late teens, torn between doing what he’d been ordered to do and running away. He caught Szayel’s eyes and then barely nodded at the Espada, before turning his head back to face forward, eyeing the wall.
“Please proceed.”
Renji grit his teeth.
Better me than Vindula, and from how Szayel’s acting, probably better me than him. Now let’s see what kind of performance that melodramatic, cotton-candy-haired freak can put on…
Then the first of ten lightning bolts of pain seared its way across his back with a loud ‘crack’ and Renji’s world narrowed to that small patch on the wall, blanking out anything else in an effort to stay upright….

“I… think that went very well, all things considered…”

“Abarai, you will personally be responsible for any gray hairs I find in the sink tonight.”
Szayel growled this as they made their way down the street, the gates of the Palace closing behind them and the indifferent-looking Arrancar sentinels resumed their stations. Apparently, a damaged person leaving the Palace was a common enough occurrence to bore the guards. Vindula hummed to herself, the sound covering most of the semi-whispered conversation below her.
“Awww… you flatter me…” he replied, trying to make it sound like a joke and failing because his voice wavered too much. “ I had no idea you could do crocodile tears so well, Szayel-sama. Must be a handy skill on stage. We should get you a prop, like a hankie. Oh, wait… I still have that one from this morning!”
“Curb your tongue, twit. There’s a child present!”
“Hmmph.”
“Otou-san, are we going to get some lunch?” a small voice above him asked.
Vindula, perched on her father’s shoulders this time, gave the caregiver that leaned heavily into his grip on Szayel’s bicep a worried look. She’d run to him first when they’d met Gin and his temporary guest in the Palaces antechamber, but Szayel had intercepted her. She hadn’t stopped giving Renji worried glances since then, particularly since he was moving in such a stiff, stilted way and trying not to seem as if he was using the Espada as a crutch.
“Soon. We need to go to the 4th Division on the way home…” Szayel started to say and Renji’s grip tightened, as if to warn the Espada next to him.
“She actually needs food. If anything good came out of that meeting, I hadn’t thought about how much more exercise she gets than Abisara, from the wings. No wonder she eats like a horse.”
“Wha’s a horse?”
“It’s a very large animal that smells bad, eats all day and yet has more brains in its left hoof than ‘Ji-ji’ here. I told you to keep your mouth shut! Why, oh why don’t you listen?”
The redhead hissed in pain as the next step caused the cotton sticking to his wounds to shift. He’d never been more thankful that the standard Shinigami uniform was black. Nothing hid the blood seeping through the cloth better than basic black did. Again, he had to wonder about the usual attire of nannies. Were those dresses blood resistant as well as water- and vomit-proof?
“It got her off his lap. He wasn’t going to read your report until I brought up Uryuu. Moreover, don’t give me that face. Are you going to object to taking her home in one piece?” Renji muttered, trying to keep what they were saying between one another. It was difficult when his voice wanted to crack a couple of octaves higher.
The 4th Division wasn’t too much farther and while they wouldn’t be allowed to heal him with Kido, he could count on a few bandages and some antiseptic cream, which was more than what he’d ever received after an 11th Division free-for-all slugfest. The painkillers at the 4th were better than the ones at the 11th too and the bottles much more easily opened that the average bottle of cheap sake.
Szayel’s silence was answer enough for him.
“Ji-ji, you’re walking funny. Are you hurt? How did you get hurt?”
“Vindula-chan, how about you tell me about Unohana-Taichou’s garden, huh? I hear it’s really gorgeous!” he asked, trading a question for a question.
True to form, his small female charge rolled with the change of subject easily. Sometimes her short attention span was a blessing in disguise.
“Gin-san’s really nice. He tol’ me which flowers Unohana-Taichou likes best an’ let me chase dragn’flies all ‘round the well!”
“As long as he didn’t let you fall into it, I’m happy,” Renji said faintly. ‘You and your father will go home for lunch, okay Vindula? I’m going to eat at the 4th Division. I… have some friends I need to talk to there. I’ll let Unohana-Taichou know you liked her gardens.”
“Abarai? We’re nearly there.”
“Is that concern I hear? I’m touched, Szayel-sama, absolutely touched…”
“Ugh. If you’ve the energy to be sarcastic... Nemu will take care of the children for the next few days. I can spare her for this. I’ve got another job for you to do, one that won’t…”
“Not in front of ‘dula, remember…” he heard himself whisper. From the shift in the arm he clung to as he walked, trying to stay moving, he could tell Szayel nodded.
“You can go through the older archives and start pulling up anything you can find on Quincies. That painted freak has more data than I have researchers to spare and I need an identifier on the thief. I’ll assign that nervous-Nelly Tsubokura to help you until we can build a case for…”
“…until I’m fit for scut work again. Got it. Thanks for the reprieve. We there yet?”
He stifled a scream by swallowing it as the arm he held in a death-grip snaked around his waist. His Zanpakuto was just full of mixed messages today, offering Renji mental support for the rush of pain while calling him a crybaby pussy for letting a wound from such a flimsy weapon get to him.
Renji told Zabimaru to fuck the hell off as his vision began to flicker.
“We will be. Vindula, my dear, grab hold tightly. We’re going to go fast, now!” Szayel warned. Renji felt the body next to his shift, as if it was going to launch itself forward.
“YAAYY!!”
The world around him lurched, blurred and shifted, and when it came back into focus, the doors of the 4th Division compound were before him. Renji took a deep breath as the arm around him went slack. The medic on duty saw them, took one look at Renji and fled inside shouting for his fellow Division members.
“Can you make to the front desk, imbecile?”
“Sure. Go on. It would be best if Vindula doesn’t see my back right now.”
Renji stood up, as straight as possible and slapped what had to be the most insincere smile he’d worn on his face since the day he’d told Rukia that being adopted into the Kuchiki clan was fine by him. He turned so that the child on Szayel’s back wouldn’t see the blood dripping from the edge of his kosode into the dirt behind him, or the smear of red on her father’s sleeve.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back later tonight, Vindula-chan. Go home and you can tell your brother about the gardens that you got to see and he didn’t.”
Szayel gave the redhead a withering glare that said ‘We're not done with this by a long shot’. Then he took a deep breath, beamed up at his daughter and the second-most insincere smile of the day promptly made an appearance.
“Let’s go have lunch!”
Szayel didn’t give Vindula a chance to say anything before his Sonido bore them both away, leaving Renji to fall, finally, to his knees on the walkway. He could hear increasingly loud voices behind him, the sound of sandals scratching as they raced forward to grab him and he let them gently lead him inside. Even with the pain, even though his back was a shredded mess of blood and cuts, it was still preferable to sitting in some 4th Division hallway as a visitor, while Unohana tried to stem the bleeding from a wound created after a pastel wing was torn from its socket by the psychotic fiend that ruled them all.
No, this was much better. He’d even succeeded in keeping Szayel from experiencing any form of punishment. He was no fan of the scientist, but to threaten someone so early in an investigation was insane and he took more than a little bit of glee in that the only one Aizen had actually managed to hurt was Renji, all without the motherfucker knowing about it.
Renji started to chuckle and gasped in agony as the movement jostled his wounds. Somewhere above him, he heard one of the medics calling for Unohana-Taichou. It would be a bad idea if he passed out before letting her know what happened. In the back of his mind, he also gave Yumichika the proverbial finger, for his less-than-flattering appraisal of Renji’s abilities at spycraft.
He’d succeeded in fooling Aizen under the most trying of circumstances. Now all he had to do was ask Nel why, or how, a Quincy had managed to open an Espada’s Garganta.

To be continued:
- 7
- 8
- 9
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Consolation Prize (of Victory)