Bleach Cfyow Read Online – CHAPTER TWO – Part 2

The gentleman’s face clouded at the young man’s mention of that facet of the Soul Society, but a shout from behind him contradicted those assumptions. “I saved up to buy that thing! Although I guess you could call it a toy since that’s pretty much what it is.”

The man with slicked-back hair narrowed his eyes as he turned to face the interloper. “Oh. When the sound of a rare motorcycle lured me over, I had no idea I was about to come face to face with a Soul Reaper.”

Hisagi scowled when he saw the stranger’s face, which matched a description that had recently circulated several times among the Thirteen Court Guard Companies —the face of a dangerous Reaper killer, Kugo Ginjo.

Kugo Ginjo had been the first-ever deputy Soul Reaper, but he had become estranged from the Soul Society and had pursued and slaughtered countless Soul Reapers. Hisagi had never seen it for himself, but after Ichigo had killed him, the corpse of the outlaw Kugo Ginjo had remained for a time in the Soul Society.

Although he had eventually been buried in the world of the living at Ichigo Kurosaki’s request, his konpaku was another matter entirely. Because he had been a human of the world of the living, when his konpaku had broken free of his remains it had most likely drifted until it reached the Rukongai.

“Oh, what an honor. I can’t believe someone with an assistant captain’s armband recognized little old me.”

Hisagi’s shihakusho had no sleeves to hold his rank insignia, but he always fastened it to the wraps around his arm when he went out in public. Hisagi’s voice lowered when he heard Ginjo’s brazen laughter at the armband. “I heard rumors that you hadn’t gone to hell, but what are you doing here?”

“Ah, that’s no way to look at a stranger, is it? Did I do something to you?” “So you’re playing dumb. I haven’t forgotten what you did to us Soul Reapers

or to Kurosaki.” Hisagi glared at the former deputy Soul Reaper with narrowed eyes.

Ginjo narrowed his eyes in reply and shot a shameless grin toward Hisagi. “And so what? You tellin’ me to bow down and apologize? Listen, even though I’m in Ichigo Kurosaki’s debt, I’m still not buddies with you Soul Reapers and I don’t regret turning against you.”

“You lowlife! What’re you scheming?”

“Hah. Do I look like I’m scheming? And even if I was, what’re you going to do about it?” Ginjo snorted as the tall young man next to him closed the book he was holding and removed a bookmark from its pages.

“Stand down, Tsukishima.”

“Are you sure? He looks like he might try to kill you,” Shukuro Tsukishima said in an unruffled tone.

At that name, Hisagi drew up his guard even more. “Tsukishima… Aren’t you the guy who screwed with Kurosaki’s past?”

The very same Tsukishima smiled cynically as he looked at Hisagi. “What a terrible thing to say. It wasn’t his past I changed. Oh, I guess I did help with his sword another time.”

Unable to understand Tsukishima’s meaning, Hisagi gave the man a puzzled look.

The gentleman in the eye patch who observed them sighed as he said, “Mr.

Ginjo, it seems he is not aware that you were one of Ichigo Kurosaki’s reinforcements.”

“You were a reinforcement?” Wait, I think Abarai mentioned something about an “unexpected helping hand.” Tch. I should’ve interviewed him first.

For the past half a year, Hisagi had been working himself to the bone as the Ninth Company’s acting captain while the corpseified actual captain had been undergoing medical treatment. As a result, Hisagi hadn’t been able to conduct any detailed interviews while Captain Muguruma recovered.

Ignoring Hisagi, who was deeply regretting postponing interviews with the Court Guard on the assumption that he could do them anytime, Ginjo’s response to the gentleman in the eyepatch seemed jaded. “I wouldn’t call us reinforcements. We were just returning a favor.”

Hisagi fell into thought as the leisurely conversation between the three men continued. Can I win against these guys, one on three? I don’t know who the guy with the eye patch is, but he’s probably one of Ginjo’s buddies. I don’t know his abilities. I’ve heard about the other guy’s abilities from Madarame and Captain Hitsugaya, though…

Was this the guy who, as rumor had it, “croaked after a single swing of Kenpachi Zaraki’s sword”? Hisagi considered that information, but he wasn’t foolish enough to write the man off as weak just because Kenpachi Zaraki beat him with one sword stroke. Hisagi was well aware that there wasn’t much difference between a wolf and a puppy in the face of someone like Kenpachi.

In any case, these men had been enemies who had slaughtered other members of the Thirteen Court Guard Companies. Ichigo Kurosaki seemed to have found a way to forgive them, but that was a separate conversation. As a Soul Reaper, he could by no means ignore their presence.

Coming to that determination, Hisagi decided that he first needed to discover their objective. He tightened his guard as he jumped back into the conversation. “Why did you betray the Soul Reapers? Why did you betray Ukitake?”

The darkness in the back of Ginjo’s eyes brightened instantly. He looked surprised and exasperated. “What a surprise! Why would a Soul Reaper ask me that now?”

“I heard that Captain Ukitake used your deputy badge to keep an eye on you, and that was enough to make you decide that the entire Court Guard was your enemy. No one enjoys being spied on, but all you had to do was bring it up with Ukitake as soon as you discovered it.”

“I should’ve brought it up as soon as I discovered it?” Ginjo muttered, then fell silent for a moment. Finally he laughed out loud as though he had seen some ridiculous clown act. “Hah…is that it? You don’t seem like you’re playing dumb, which means that even someone at the rank of assistant captain doesn’t know what happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying I really get it now—you just don’t know anything!” Then his smile vanished, and he started to fidget with a cross necklace hanging around his neck.

Hisagi felt the reverberation of some sort of unpleasant spiritual pressure coming from that necklace and took a step back, reaching for his zanpaku-to. The air around them filled with the foreboding of a coming eruption, and they were quick to put distance between each other. But the tension was suddenly shattered by a rumble and the braying of a beast.

They turned to face the braying, and a gigantic boar the size of a small car came charging at them from the direction of the nearby village. It thrust itself between Hisagi and Ginjo as they faced off, slowing abruptly as it got to them. As a result, the man on its back plunged headfirst into the grass between them.

“Bwaghh?!”

The boar rider shrieked comically as he crashed into the ground, then staggered to his feet and gave a thumbs-up to the boar. “Heh, you’re as enthusiastic as always, Bonnie!”

As though ignoring him, the boar raced off like the wind to a different horizon.

Hisagi’s eyes went wide at the sudden, comedic exchange. The man, who had watched the boar rush off, turned to him and started talking in a voice full of authority. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’s going on here! You havin’ a fight?”

“It’s nothing, Ganju. I was just riling up a Soul Reaper who hasn’t got a clue how the world works.”

The rough-faced Ganju looked exasperated as he continued. “You were fighting with a Soul Reaper? Seriously, I get that you hate them, but don’t go around digging up trouble! I’m not gonna tell you to let bygones be bygones, but it ain’t smart picking fights with them face to face.”

The gentleman with the eye patch, who had been listening in, tilted his head as he asked, “What was that you said? According to Madame Kukaku, your meeting with Mr. Kurosaki was like a child’s squabble.”

“Guh…! I can’t believe my sister’s been talkin’ about that!” The man, whose face was the spitting image of the flagbearing statues Hisagi had just seen, scowled as he spoke.

He was unmistakably just the man Hisagi had been looking for. But with Ganju Shiba right in front of him, Hisagi knit his eyebrows together as though troubled. “I don’t know if this is good timing or what, but…”

“Hunh?! Who’re you? Actually, aren’t you assistant captain of whatever company…? Assistant captain Hi…Hisa…”

After an awkward pause, Ganju nodded firmly and smiled at Hisagi with the same thumbs-up he had given the boar. “Hi-sa-a-ay, it’s so great to see you again! Rukia Kuchiki’s assistant captain buddy!”

“C’mon, it’s just one more syllable! It’s Hisagi! From the Ninth Company!

Shuhei Hisagi!”

Ginjo sighed from where he stood next to the yelling Hisagi as he pulled his fingers from his necklace. “What? You know each other?”

Confirming that the incredibly strained atmosphere had truly eased, Tsukishima opened his book once again and dropped his eyes to its pages.

“Hey, Ganju Shiba, what’s going on here? Who are these guys, and do you and Ms. Kukaku know them?”

“Of course we do! We don’t just know them—they’re freeloaders my sister picked up.”

“Freeloaders…?”

Ignoring Hisagi, who had no idea what was going on, Ginjo and the two others tried to take off. But Ganju quickly spotted them and halted them with a cryptic, glowering look. “Hey, hey, where do you think you’re going?! I dunno what happened between you and the assistant cap here, but I’m not gonna let there be grudges between the Soul Reapers and the Shiba gang while I’m alive!”

Ganju, unlike Ginjo and the other two men who turned around with

annoyance, or the befuddled Hisagi, was full of self-confidence as he resoundingly explained the peace plan. “I won’t assume anybody’s in the wrong here. Just leave things up to ol’ Ganju—the self-proclaimed deep-red bullet of West Rukongai! The self-proclaimed but universally acknowledged boss of West Rukongai—voted number one for fourteen consecutive years in a row!

And!! The self-proclaimed former number-one Soul Reaper hater of West Rukongai, Ganju!”

Ganju beat his own drum very loudly. Ginjo and the other two men were already acquainted with Ganju but had no idea how to respond to the cryptic names he had bestowed upon himself. Hisagi looked on unimpressed and barely managed to utter something coherent. “About that last bit…? Why are you still calling yourself that if it is former…?”

Suddenly, his many years of experience as a Soul Reaper set alarm bells ringing in his mind. This seems bad. I feel like I’ve been caught up in something that’s gonna mean trouble…

≡

SEVERAL HOURS LATER,

SEIREITEI FIRST COMPANY BARRACKS

“This is definitely going to mean trouble—a lot of it.”

The two assistant captains in front of Captain General Kyoraku—Nanao Ise and Genshiro Okikiba—traded quick looks at his words. Kyoraku had said the phrase half out of habit, but as assistant captains, Nanao and Okikiba knew by his voice that it was serious. Though it was something only those familiar with the Captain General could have noticed, his tone indicated that something truly terrible had happened.

“What is, Captain General?”

Kyoraku let out a long sigh at Nanao’s words. “Ah, sorry, sorry. Did I worry you? Why don’t you leap into my arms and let me quell your frightened shivers.”

“I’m being serious, Captain General.”

“Right, well. Just before you showed up, little Nayura came to me with a few guards. They had a formal message and request from the Central 46.”

“You mean Nayura Amakado came here directly?” Even Nanao knew about

Nayura.

The Central 46 was the acting voice of the Soul King and so led the Soul Reapers. Occasionally they acted as the supreme judiciary body and meted out judgments. Nayura Amakado was the youngest member of that body—a girl who appeared to be just ten years old. But both Kyoraku and Nanao recognized that the girl had a sharpness that came from living many years longer than her looks suggested, and that she had initiated steady changes in the Central 46, which had on principle previously served the aristocrats foremost.

As the result of Nayura and Kyoraku’s efforts, the gaps in knowledge between the Soul Reapers and Central 46 had slowly been shored up. At least, that was how Nanao felt. And although the issue of balance still remained, Nanao had hopes that the differences in judicial treatment between the nobles and the Soul Reapers, or perhaps even between them and all the inhabitants of the Rukongai, was beginning to settle in a good direction.

Nanao did wish Kyoraku wouldn’t use the names of the Central 46 members so casually when he spoke. But Nanao often accompanied Nayura Amakado when she occasionally observed the populace incognito, and even Nanao was close to using just her first name.

Kyoraku’s face held a slight shadow as he sighed. “There was a pretty concerning incident with the four noble families earlier. I think you’ve heard about that.”

“Yes. You’re referring to the assassins who snuck into the Tsunayashiro household and murdered the head of the family?”

In peacetime, the brutal murder of one of the heads of the Four Great Noble Clans would have been enough to shake the Seireitei itself. But since the chaos of the war had yet to subside, the official public declaration was that the noble had “fallen ill from distress during the battles and passed away due to an epidemic.”

That was precisely why the particulars of the incident had only been relayed to the highest ranks. Among the Thirteen Court Guard Companies, only Captain General Kyoraku, his adjutants, and the captain of the secret remote company, Soi Fon, had knowledge of the progression of the events. “Well, Captain Kurotsuchi and Yoruichi have probably found out by their own methods. They probably even found out what happened next before I did.”

“Does that mean there’s a problem with who will succeed the head of the family?”

“Little Nayura gave me some general details, but issues with the nobles are

out of our jurisdiction. The Gilded Seal Aristocratic Assembly deals with that, not the Thirteen Court Guard Companies. At least, for the time being…”

Nanao picked up on Kyoraku’s implication and narrowed her eyes. “When you say it’s theirs to deal with for the time being, do you mean that the situation will involve the Court Guard later?”

“Well, it’d be nice if it didn’t.” After letting some of his misgivings show on his face, Kyoraku looked at the official directive from Central 46 and continued, “Oh, and could you call Muguruma and Hisagi in for me?”

“From the Ninth Company?”

“Hisagi alone will be just fine. I’d like to make sure the captain knows what’s going on, the situation being what it is.”

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