A Wandering Soul - Spirit 2.14

I watched as the diminutive Captain got further away before what he said actually sunk in.

We were going now? With no introduction or even an explanation about a plan of attack? My burgeoning respect for the Soul Reapers discreetly checking and investigating information, even at the word from an enemy, quickly died a horrible death. In the end they were just going to rush in anyway?

"H-hey! What do you mean about to enter? Do you even know who you're going up against?" I called, reaching out to stop the brat. Before my hand managed to touch him, I suddenly had his lieutenant hanging off my shoulders.

"Mah, don't worry about it Ryoka-chan." Rangiku Matsumoto said happily. "We are just going to poke around a bit. If we actually run into anyone we'll be more than enough to take them on!"

"It's nice you're confident, but you realize you might be facing three Captains at once right?" I said, doing my best to throw the slightly shorter woman off, but she just readjusted her grip and I found her hanging off my neck instead. I glanced at Natsumi hoping she would reign in the blonde. Sadly, going by the smirk she was enjoying my predicament and I was on my own.

"Well yeah but as long as we force them into the open the rest of the Captains can step in so it's not a big deal." My new necklace said as she started dragging me after her Captain.

"We are only investigating in this manner so no one can throw our motives into question later." added Natsumi. "Once we verify the status of Central 46, we will proceed to find the identity of any and all traitors working against the Seireitei."

"Or I could tell you now." I pointed out.

Hitsugaya stopped and looked over his shoulder at me. "You know who we are going up against?" he asked, sounding suspicious.

Did they not tell him I knew who the traitors were?

I sent a questioning look at Natsumi. Shouldn't she have told them I was the one who let them know they even had traitors to begin with? Why would they agree to have me here in the first place?

"No one was informed about the source of the information after it was verified. It was decided that we didn't want anyone acting on the information to be biased because of your group's actions." Natsumi explained when she saw me looking at her.

"Ignoring that for now," cut in Captain Hitsugaya. "You have information on the traitors we are facing? I want to know who they are."

I felt my eyebrow start twitching at the demand. I don't work for you kid.

Still, they did need to know who they were up against.

"Probably the one we need to worry about least is Kaname Tosen."

The Soul Reapers all stilled when I spoke. It was easy to say 'let's root out the traitors' but when you had a name to attach to the label they were no longer a shadowy figure to chase, but a comrade who deceived you.

"You're certain?" asked Hitsugaya, who looked grim when I nodded.

"From the info I have on him, among the captains he is somewhere around the bottom third in direct combat and his fighting style and techniques all revolve around small scale battlefield control. Good for dealing with small groups of weaker enemies, but he struggles with individual opponents of similar strength unless he uses his bankai."

I got some confused looks but kept going.

"Next on the list is Gin Ichimaru, he-" I was finally free from the lieutenant hanging around my neck, but I wasn't much more comfortable since she was glaring at me and still very much in my personal space.

"Hey now, Gin is…questionable with how he behaves, but that doesn't mean he's a traitor!" Matsumoto exclaimed, cutting me off.

Ah right, the two of them were childhood...friends? Honestly didn't remember much about Gin's backstory since he played such a small part in most events. Oh well, not really something to waste time on.

"My group confirmed he was working with the leader of the traitors since at least the time he was a lieutenant which means-"

"Which means he has been working against us long enough to match the scenarios you gave us earlier." This time it was Cap- you know what? I'm getting tired of being interrupted. You've been demoted- Toshiro who cut me off. "It also explains how Aizen was murdered so easily. Ichimaru was his lieutenant in the past, he wouldn't have been on guard around him."

Matsu- No, I was annoyed at her too- Rangiku took a few steps back and bit her thumbnail, eventually nodding but didn't say anything.

I eyed the two of them, waiting to see if they were done before continuing. "Anyway, he-" "We already know how he fights Miss Ryoka." This time it was Natsumi who interrupted me. "You don't need to tell us about people we have seen fight for years."

I felt my left eyebrow twitching severely.

All these interruptions. Considering they basically forced me to be here you would think they would at least take what I say more seriously.

"Fine, the third traitor and the leader of the group is Sosuke Aizen." If I sounded annoyed the others didn't react to it. They just stared blankly at me.

"Um, you know that Captain Aizen was killed, don't you? In fact you were the one who told me he was going to die!" said Natsumi.

Toshiro was next to give his opinion. "So does that mean your group managed to eliminate him already?" He brought a hand to his chin and rubbed at it thoughtfully. "Or was it an internal struggle between one of the other members?"

"Neither." I responded. "Aizen is happily alive and leading his group. I just knew he was going to fake his death so it was a good way to convince you we were telling the truth."

"Bu-but we have his body!" exclaimed the squad 10 lieutenant.

"Zanpakuto created body double." I said.

"Who could even do something like that?!"

"Aizen, obviously."

Fed up with this whole situation I started walking in the direction Toshiro had been going before the Soul Reapers had managed to piss me off for both demanding I answer them and not actually letting me speak. I didn't really bother checking to see if they followed me, but I just wanted this whole thing over with.

There was a scramble of motion behind me as the other rushed to catch up, and eventually we were all walking together. Toshiro had retaken the lead soon after with his lieutenant in tow as we continued in silence.

Natsumi didn't seem content to let the last conversation go that easily however.

"Miss Ryoka."

"My name is Alex Cross, not Ryoka. Come on Natsumi, I thought we were closer than this?" I said flippantly.

"Cross-san then," man she is formal when we aren't fighting. "You said that Aizen created a body double with a Zanpakto."

"Yeah?"

"Can you explain how? That does not seem like an ability he should possess."

"Oh? I thought you 'knew how they fought for years'." I said using air quotes to make my point. Natsumi grimaced, but motioned for me to continue.

"Aizen passed off his true shikai ability as a fake one so none of you know how to deal with it. He used his real ability to create a fake body."

Rangiku slowed down to walk next to us. "Really? What kind of ability lets him do that?"

Well if you hadn't been interrupting me constantly you would already know, now wouldn't you?

"Hypnosis. I don't know exactly how it works but if you see his Zanpakuto release he can supposedly control your senses."

And wasn't that a terrifying thought. Captain level fights relied a lot on being perceptive and either reacting to, or countering your opponent's moves quickly or you would be overwhelmed. Aizen cheated by being able to not only hide any tells with hypnosis, but straight up give misinformation about what he is doing.

I don't believe it's 'perfect' but it's clearly effective, especially if no one noticed what he was up to for a century.

"We're here." said Toshiro. Instantly all conversation died as we looked at the compound we arrived at.

I looked around as we passed the walls surrounding the entrance. It was a rather nice courtyard I suppose, but it was also rather empty. Well manicured lawns and ponds surrounded a white octagonal building. Surprisingly, unlike all the other buildings I had seen lately this one was fairly short and looked more like a bunker than a proper building.

So this was where the Central 46 met? It looked shockingly low key.

The others didn't bother looking around and moved straight to the door. Toshiro immediately cut through the thick wooden doors with his Zanpakuto.

"No alarms. They really have infiltrated." he said.

Without another word the three Soul Reapers rushed through the door and down into the depths of the building. I followed at a more sedate pace, both because I didn't have a clue where we were going and because I wasn't super eager to see what was coming up.

We passed by meeting rooms, waiting and rest areas, and even security checkpoints, but there was no sign of anyone else around.

Jeez, this place was a maze. If I wasn't following Toshiro I would spend a lot of time just wandering around aimlessly.

Eventually we reached another staircase but rather than going down Toshiro froze at the top. Rangiku and Natsumi had similar reactions when they came up behind him.

I really didn't want to see what caused them to freeze up like that, even though I had a pretty good idea of what they were looking at. I walked up behind them and got my first look through the doorway. It was just as gruesome as I was expecting.

The room itself was a plain octagonal meeting room. The high white walls were mostly undecorated, the only exceptions being large cloth posters with single words hung from every second wall. I didn't bother reading any of them with my attention drawn to the middle of the room.

In the middle of the room where the members of Central 46 would normally meet was a massacre. Bodies were still seated in a parody of normalcy, but the pools of black blood and slash marks made it pretty clear everyone in that room was very dead.

"The entirety of Central 46 has been...wiped...out." Toshiro breathed.

-o-​

It was with an almost detached sense of horror I followed the other three in investigating the dead bodies.

I had seen several dead or dead looking bodies during my year with Urahara. Usually it was a gegai prototype he was messing with and would leave lying around. I had a hard time determining if it was specifically to mess with me or if he was just forgetful.

For all that Urahara was meticulous with the process of his experiments. He had a habit of leaving things lying around. One that I happily abused to explain some of my knowledge from the show and sometimes just to avoid random experiments he tended to test on the rest of the shop.

The other times were when we were too slow to stop a Hollow from catching a soul. They were not clean eaters.

I think the biggest reason I disturbed by the killing was that none of the faces had any more emotion on them then faint surprise. Either most of them had been killed simultaneously, which I found doubtful, or Aizen had blocked his presence from everyone in the room before executing them all one by one.

This wasn't death due to a fight or hunger, those I could rationalize and eventually accept. This was simply butchering helpless people and not even letting them know they were in danger until it was already too late.

I wandered around the room barely going near the bodies or trying to find out what happened since I already knew who killed them. Toshiro and the other Soul Reapers were doing a much more thorough investigation anyway. I was happy leaving it to them.

Though I was a little lost on what the next step of the plan was. Natsumi said that they were here to verify the status of Central 46, so I figured we would move somewhere else when we found them all dead.

Maybe go looking for where Aizen's group was hiding out now that I had clued them in to who the traitors were.

I looked over at Toshiro who was examining one of the bodies, if there was more to the Soul Reaper's plan then he would be the person to ask.

Before I could make my way over I heard a cold voice call out from the entrance we had come from.

"I thought you would be here...Captain Hitsugaya."

In the doorway stood another Soul Reaper looking down at all of us. His ice-blue eyes had no emotion in them as he took in the four of us standing in a room of corpses. Well the one eye visible to me didn't. His left eye was covered by blonde hair in what I could only describe as an emo fringe.

What the hell? That was the lieutenant of Squad 3, Izuru Kira. Why was he here?

Unlike in the original timeline Hinamori didn't discover Aizen's fake body and didn't go berserk trying to attack Gin. So Kira shouldn't have had the whole mental breakdown that led him to following Gin for whatever sketchy reasons he had in canon.

Oblivious to my internal confusion, Toshiro began demanding answers why Kira was here and if he knew anything about what happened here. Rather than answer, Kira simply vanished at a full on sprint.

"After him Matsumoto! Hanakage, Cross you stay here!"

And just like that half our number ran out the door leaving me in a room full of bodies, a Soul Reaper I had fought several times, and no idea what to do next.

Lovely.

I turned to look at Natsumi. "Any idea what we should do next?"

She opened her mouth to respond but instead of answering me a large amount of blood poured out of her mouth.

Both of our eyes went wide with surprise before Natsumi recoiled in pain and I saw a long silver line quickly retracting towards the other side of the room from where the two Squad 10 officers left.

Natsumi pitched forward into my arms and I felt even more blood begin to leak from her torso. It was obvious she had been stabbed, but how had both of us been taken completely off guard?!

"Well isn' that a shame? I only attacked once an' she's already done."

Standing in the doorway I assumed led deeper into the Central 46 compound was the traitorous Captain of Squad 3, Gin Ichimaru. With a negligent wave, he removed the blood staining the tip of his wakizashi.

"Oh well," he sighed even as his constant smile stayed in place. "Now would ya follow me, miss Ryoka? Someone wants to talk with ya."

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