The Noble Sort

A/N: I'm going through editing the final five chapters now, as well as the epilogue, which will bring the story to a total of 41 chapters. It should all be posted by the end of January! My first big story!

I am very proud of fully finishing and posting this monster.

This is a fun chapter, inspired by a friend during an episode of Bleach.

Anyway, Enjoy!

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"The Noble Sort"

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The Next Day

The night was cool but not uncomfortably so; it was perfect for lounging on the small porch on the front of her house, a mug of tea and a blanket all that was needed to stay warm.

Akane was curled up in the wicker chair next to hers, her face lit by the blue glow of her laptop computer. She was, no doubt, shopping. It was what she did most of the time. Sometimes it was clothing, sometimes movies or music. It amused her, which was all that mattered—the kid hadn't been allowed nearly enough fun as a child.

They still didn't have the last name, although they were very close. They had found the access code that allowed the input of the coded time-delay morph, and they had found that the code had been used recently to access the underground prison in Seireitei. Whoever their last target was, he was still alive and still active, even if there was a gap of at least thirty years between the times he had used his own access code.

To Minako that just meant he was smart.

She took a sip of her burning hot tea, sighing as she stared off into the distance.

There was still the problem of Nishiori. His code was used continuously since his promotion, never a good sign. If he was that active he was high up. That or he was really low on the totem pole and forced to use his own code to protect those of the higher ups. Either way, it meant that one of the last two targets was most likely higher in the division formation than she probably wanted to try to deal with.

Not like she had a choice anyway.

"Minako?"

She shook her head clear of her thoughts before turning to face Akane.

The laptop was closed now, slid to the floor so Akane could throw her legs over the arm of the chair. She raised an eyebrow at her, her personal way of asking what she wanted.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Minako scrunched her nose up.

"You don't want them."

They both laughed when Hidaruma—sprawled on the grass about eight feet away—snorted his agreement.

"C'mon. I'm bored, and if you don't tell me the only thing left is work. If I look at one more line of shinigami code I'll kill myself."

Minako rolled her eyes.

But—hmm. How much did Akane really know about the forces that she was now up against? She had put a decent amount together from the messages, both verbal and written, that she was forced to carry. An amazing amount, in fact. But she was mostly ignorant of the upper echelons of the military in Soul Society.

"You obviously know what Zero is," she said dryly, and she fought not to smile when the younger woman shot her a dirty look. "Just what you learned in the Academy, I guess?"

"Mostly." Akane shrugged. "Some rumors from when I was in Sixth, too. But you can't believe most of that, can you?"

Minako snorted.

"No, you can't." She paused, tilting her head and looking at the ground beside her chair. "I—I didn't have a normal childhood."

It was Akane's turn to snort.

"I'm sure. Your oji-san is the most powerful man in the Gōtei 13."

"Yes. Well." She sniffed. "Something happened when I was young—don't ask what, I don't really remember, but I ended up living with oji-san for about a year. This was before the academy…after which I moved in with him permanently to get away from my mother, who was a major bitch for most of my childhood. But I went everywhere with him—meetings, drills, even his academy classes, which he was still teaching every once in a while at that point."

"Aw," Akane drawled, "a chibi Minako dogging her oji-san's every step."

"Pretty much. Well, because of this I was introduced to people I wouldn't have met otherwise. I grew up around taichou, Onmitsukidō members in and out of the house, even the Kidō Corp. leader was a regular. He," she laughed, "he spun some line about it being better to meet at the house, less revealing. I think they all just liked Hikaru-san's cooking."

Her brow furrowed, and Akane leaned closer.

"But one night a man came in that I never forgot. I was in awe of him—he was invisible when he entered and when he left, his haori was shimmering silver-grey instead of white. Oji-san rushed him out of the room down to his study in a hurry, but I…you know how I am. I made sure I knew who the guy was by bedtime that night."

"And?"

"What the hell do you think?"

"Zero-taichou?"

She took a drink of her tea, closing her eyes and remembering how the man had looked as he appeared in her uncle's living room all those centuries ago.

"The leader of Zero—they're all taichou, dumbass. I vowed that day I would be one of them so I could be invisible." She chuckled. "Of course, I was barely old enough to hold a sword; I wanted the haori because it shimmered and the cloak so I could sneak treats and spy on sensei and his students when they were training."

"Of course," Akane agreed, a smile on her face and amusement in her voice.

The redhead suddenly slumped, fiddling with the hem of her jacket and looking as morose as Minako had ever seen her. It was as if someone had removed all the happiness from her life in that single second.

"But you never got one," she murmured.

"No," Minako replied, "I never got one. Too many powerful Yamamoto already in our history for another one to go past fuku-taichou. Probably didn't help that all the taichou still saw me as either the little girl that had followed her oji-san around like a puppy or the eternal third seat of the Eighth. No promotion allowed for me other than to fuku-taichou when everything went down with Urahara."

There was a heavy silence.

"I—" Akane swallowed heavily, looking away, "I wanted to be a Kidō master, or a member of Onmitsukidō. I'm good at it, really good, and I can sneak around with the best of them. But they assigned me to the Sixth," she scrunched her face up and her voice changed pitch, sinking into a low tenor, "Every member of this family has belonged to the Sixth. You will too. It's an honor, a privilege to serve under the noble Kuchiki family."

"So no Kidō Corp.," Minako muttered, her good mood suddenly gone as well.

"Nope."

The women shared a meaningful look before turning and glancing out into the night.

"Fuckers."

"Pretty much, sensei."

Minako sent her protégé another look before climbing to her feet, grabbing her cup and blanket and preparing to head into the house. There was a peculiar grin on her face, her maroon eyes shining with mischievousness.

"Lesson number one: tolerance. I think it's time for some sake, pupil."

Akane grinned and jumped up.

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It had taken her almost two hours to track them down.

That was two hours of wasted time, two hours of time that could have been spent on paperwork, two hours that she shouldn't have been searching for her errant taichou slash lover and his best friend.

She finally tracked the pair down in one of the seedier districts of Western Rukongai. They were visiting a teahouse that she hadn't even known existed—she was pretty sure her lover could sniff them out at fifty paces—and had taken up one of the private rooms in which to have their fun and converse without interruption. She hoped interruption didn't include her; most of the time sharing her lover with his best friend wasn't an issue because she knew how close they were but this…this was important.

She shoved and glared her way past the hostess, through draping fabric and sliding doors, and finally into the small room they had chosen as their own for the evening. In return for her two hours of work she received two confused smiles and a halfhearted greeting.

He will pay for it later, she decided.

"So sorry to bother you during your…essential duties."

"Of course not, Nanao-chan! I'm sure it's important."

She scoffed. He wouldn't know important if it bit him on the ass. Especially right now—she could smell the sake on his breath from across the room.

"Come, Nanao-chan, sit! Enjoy some of this fine sake," he drawled, and she was almost tempted to do so. It had been a long and disturbing day.

"I don't think so."

"Well, then," Ukitake-taichou said as he sent her a puzzled look, "what can we do for you, Nanao-san? Have I kept him out too late tonight?"

She could feel the vein in her forehead beginning to throb.

"No, Ukitake-taichou. I just have some information you both might be interested in."

Her lover swept a large brown arm across the table, gesturing for her to sit down. She reluctantly crossed over to the table and sat; it wouldn't be long before he was hitting on her and pressuring her to drink. It was still a sore point for her—she couldn't stand the drinking.

Or the public broadcasting of his affection.

"I had to go over to the Twelfth this afternoon to turn in the requested dimensional transfers for this week."

She opened her mouth to continue but was cut off.

"Oh, my sweet Nanao-chan! Always on top of things!"

She sent him a look above her glasses, subtly straightening them at the same time. Her errant lover quickly shut up. The nonverbal message she had been sending them since her arrival finally registered.

"Yes, well, they were in an uproar. Apparently they're monitoring twice the frequencies of normal."

Both of the taichou suddenly sat up straighter—they knew what that meant. The Twelfth was monitoring the secret corps. as well as Zero. That was extremely rare.

"They were given the order to do so after mistakenly intercepting a message from Zero. This happens occasionally, but this was a distress signal." She flicked her eyes back and forth between the two men in front of her. "One of their squad leaders was murdered yesterday."

"What?" Ukitake-taichou exclaimed. "Murdered?"

"We haven't heard anything about it, Nanao. Surely it would have been brought up in these dreadful nightly meetings."

"That's the thing—I don't know if the sou-taichou knows about it. I'm pretty sure Minami wasn't supposed to say anything about it, but you know how it goes—any gossip about Zero and people can't hold it in."

Both men nodded distractedly.

"Do you know who?" Shunsui asked.

She shook her head. "But he was beheaded. Apparently caught unaware coming out of a gate."

"Impossible," Shunsui murmured, his eyes wide.

"Apparently not."

Ukitake-taichou furrowed his brows and gave her a stern look.

"If the order did not come from sensei, then who—"

"Kurotsuchi-taichou, sir. Minami said," she glanced around, paranoid that someone might overhear even in a private room far from Seireitei, "Kurotsuchi-taichou has been finding all sorts of discrepancies in the dimensional transmission logs. Even in the legitimate, butterfly-assisted transmissions."

She watched as her lover stroked his chin with his left hand, obviously contemplating the information.

"That in itself isn't surprising—we've all been in and out of the human realm much more than usual," he murmured, a faraway look in his eye.

"But Shunsui, the logs are always kept extremely accurate. Sensei is most strict about it."

"Mistakes happen, Juu."

"Well," she said, garnering their attention, "these mistakes are very specific. All but one or two of them have been butterfly-assisted, and they almost always occur on Sunday nights. That isn't a coincidence."

"Indeed not, Nanao-san."

"Juu," Shunsui said, glancing over at his best friend, "didn't you say someone was at Yama-jii's when you stopped by the other morning?"

"Hai. But it was a Thursday morning, not a Sunday night."

"Still," her lover muttered, "I bet it would be on the list of transfer discrepancies."

"You think the sou-taichou knows about the log discrepancies," she said.

"Nanao-san, Kurotsuchi-taichou was held back after a meeting a week or so ago. He didn't leave sensei's office until late that night."

She nodded, her own mind now racing.

It didn't matter right now, though. She had accomplished what she set out to do; there was paperwork to be completed on her desk and nightly rounds to get in order. She needed to head back to the division if she wanted everything done so she could be in bed before midnight.

She could ponder all of this later.

She pushed up off the table, an uncharacteristic sloppiness but she was too tired to care, and nodded at them both. "I've got to get back. I wanted to make sure you both got the information before it was passed around to any of the other taichou."

They nodded, Ukitake-taichou sending her a sweet smile and a 'good evening' and her own taichou pulling on her arm as she walked by and giving her hand a kiss.

"I'll be back before eleven, hmm?" he said, his lilting tone and the dark eyes staring up at her sending shivers up her spine. She just nodded, too embarrassed over making their plans to share the night together in front of another taichou to even speak, and headed out of the room.

But her anger, which she had been nursing steadily all night, was suddenly gone with the heavy-lidded gaze he had sent her way.

"He said he was done with this sort of thing," Shunsui muttered into his sake.

"You know sensei." Juushirou took a drink of his own, his face settling into a moue of disappointment as he stared at the doors his friend's lover had just left through. "Can you not get her to finally call me by my name in private? I'm your closest friend, and…it makes me feel old."

Shunsui chuckled dryly.

"Nanao-chan will do what Nanao-chan will do."

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The women were torn from what was quickly becoming a night of drunkenness—complete with off-key song lyrics—by a harsh pounding on the front door.

Thankfully they were in the kitchen, invisible to any prying eyes looking through the living room windows. They both hopped down from the stools surrounding the high counter, balling up and forcing themselves back against the kitchen cabinets. At this angle they weren't even visible through the kitchen windows.

They more resembled two pre-teens hiding from a monster than two exiled shinigami, both known for their tempers.

Hidaruma, just a lump of fur in the shadows of the dining room, shifted once and then curled back up. The man at the door wasn't a threat to anyone in the house. He wouldn't be needed anytime soon which meant he could continue lazing about; it was his favorite activity nowadays.

They weren't leaving, though. Someone was still pounding on the door.

"Shoul' we get it?" Akane slurred.

"Dunno. Too sloshed to fight right now. I can run but shunpo would make me throw up."

The knocking continued unabated.

Akane crept sluggishly down the wall of cabinets on all fours, poking her head around them and into clear view of the living room.

"Don' see anyone in th' windows."

"I don't feel anything either," Minako hissed.

Answer the door, onna.

"Watcha think?" the redhead asked, shooting a drunken look at her sensei.

I think you should answer the door. Drunken fools.

"I'm gonna go for it!" she whispered excitedly, as if she was journeying toward the moon, and Akane shot her a thumbs up.

She stood up heavily, swaying a little bit from side to side. Akane backed away from the small, narrow doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room and threw her fists into the air, cheering silently. Minako could see her lips forming "sensei!" over and over.

"You can't hold your booze," Minako hissed accusingly before shuffling awkwardly into the living room and to the front door.

She swung it open, taking a blind leap of faith in the shishi's judgment, and came face to face with her oji-san's fuku-taichou.

"Sasakibe!" she belted out drunkenly, pulling the man into the house when he leaned back and away from the sake fumes. There was a distant shout from Akane, basically an even more slurred repeat of the older man's name, and she ushered him bodily into the kitchen. "We were just thinking we needed some guys to get this party going, but—" she scanned up and down his body in a manner that made him look decidedly uncomfortable, "you aren't exactly my type. Hair color could work, but I prefer taller. And paler."

"Mine either," the now upright Akane said, pouting.

"You're both drunk!" he exclaimed, his disbelief plain.

"Guilty as charged," Minako replied as she moved to reclaim her stool. Akane tried to copy her movement and failed; she just slumped back against the cabinets once again.

"We've been," the redhead hiccupped loudly, "sharing. Sharing is caring."

"Sharing?" the man asked tentatively.

"Like you do at the shrink's office. My screwed up childhood, her obsessive family." She waved her hands around in the air. "Basically, why we are who we are where we are with whom we—ooh, that's alliteration."

Sasakibe's jaw dropped momentarily before a furious scowl formed on his face.

"You are in the middle of a very sensitive operation, which not only your vengeance and your freedom but your uncle's very existence now hinges upon, and you're drinking?"

"Weren't s'pose to be here tonight," Akane said matter-of-factly, shaking her finger at him.

"What she said," Minako agreed before she took another drink from her sake bottle. The sake saucers had long been discarded as a waste of time and effort. "But we don't care!"

She squinted at him, suddenly realizing she might need to care.

"Why are you here?" she asked suspiciously.

"To find out what you were thinking when you beheaded a member of Zero! You were supposed to assassinate him, not perform acts of gratuitous violence."

Minako gave him the patented soulful puppy dog look all women master at an early age and tapped herself lightly on the chest. "Yamamoto," she said almost regretfully.

Akane stared at her sensei, eyes wide and adoring.

"You—you cut his head off? I knew you killed him but—you're my fucking hero, you know that?"

Minako sent her a look right before she dissolved into giggles.

"I'm not sure what that says about you!" She patted Sasakibe on the shoulder. "It's okay. It was just—how it went down. He was on the ground, my sword was at his throat. It was—um, well, shit." She tapped her chin her index finger. "Not destiny, but close."

"Fate, Minako-sama?" he asked, his entire posture screaming defeat.

"There you go! Fuckin' fate!" She brought her bottle back to her mouth, sending him a dirty grin before she took another drink. "Fun, too."

He rubbed his forehead, looking embarrassed for himself, her, and the entire Yamamoto line.

"What is gratuitous?" Akane asked, obviously too drunk to fully participate in the conversation. Sasakibe just stared at her.

"It's a lot. Too much. Unnecessary. And keep up or get out."

Akane gazed morosely into the top of her own sake bottle.

"I really can't hold my booze," she murmured.

"We can train you for that, it's okay," Minako said reassuringly, as if drinking was something that could be practiced for improvement.

Sasakibe flopped down onto the stool next to Minako and put his head in his hands.

"I'm dead when I get back," he muttered.

"Nah," Minako said drolly, "just tell him I did it. I did it all. All my fault." Now she too was staring morosely into her sake bottle as if it contained the answers to all the great questions in life. "Always all my fault."

He raised his head up and looked at her.

"It wouldn't be if you would just do as you're told," he said, his voice stern.

"Bleh. Rules. Regulations. Who needs the damn things? Didn't get me very far the first time now did it?" She patted him on the shoulder again, but this time her hand was caressing his shoulder and he jumped. "You're stronger than you look, 'Kibe. You're hiding muscles under there!"

"Don't even think about it," he spat out, scooting his stool away from the drunken woman next to him. The fear he once had when he looked at her had morphed into terror of a completely different sort.

"What are you thinking about?" Akane asked. It was clear that staying in the conversation was taking up most of her brain power.

"Me?" Minako said, pointing to herself. "Nothing."

She leaned forward over the counter and spoke in a hushed whisper.

"But the men—they can't handle me. Don't know me at all and they think they do but they don't. Think I'm always thinking about sex. I'm apparently a whore."

Sasakibe looked scandalized.

"Oh," Akane replied solemnly. "World's oldest profession. Good job secur'ty."

"I don't get paid for it, dumbass!" Minako said defiantly. "And I've been a good girl for years now. Since the seventies, actually. Monogamous. And stuff."

Sasakibe let out a very impolite guffaw of laughter.

"I highly doubt it, Minako-sama."

"I have!" she shouted, twisting on her stool to face him. "You haven't been around! You wouldn't know!"

"Yeah!" Akane shouted, eager to defend her sensei.

"What a ridiculous end to a ridiculous day," Sasakibe muttered, and Minako nudged an unopened sake bottle inch by inch across the counter with one finger until it sat right in front of him. He looked at it and then her—she was again using the puppy dog eyes that had once been so effective on him—before sighing and pushing it back.

Well, she had offered. It was hers now, and it was corralled into the circle of other bottles.

Excellent manners, onna.

I thought so, shishi.

"Bad day, 'Kibe?"

"You have no idea," he sighed out.

She patted him on the shoulder again.

"Sure I do," she said in a commiserating tone, as if she shared and understood his woes, and taking a swig of sake, "I cut a guy's head off yesterday."

He shook his head before letting it fall with a thump onto the counter.

"Is still coo'," Akane said, as if her opinion was being challenged.

The women shot each other dopey grins, and the poor man thrown into the situation closed his eyes, hoping that he would somehow magically transport to anywhere that was not this kitchen.

"Yeah, it was, Akane."

"Good God."

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Two hours later the fuku-taichou of the First had returned to Seireitei and stood in front of his boss, his hair askew and dark circles under his eyes. He was in a state few had ever seen.

"She was gloating about it. And drunk," the tired man said, his disapproval evident.

His taichou looked at him, a perplexing smirk on his face.

That was fine. Sasakibe really wasn't in the mood to play games tonight, but he had finally come out above his revered boss in something. It was a stupid something but it counted.

"And you were wrong—" he said, pointing his finger at the venerable figure before him, "about Ukitake. It wasn't just…well…"

"Sex, Choujirou? A man of your years should be able to say it."

He nodded, blushing.

The sou-taichou leaned back in his chair, his right hand coming up to absently rub at the stump of his left arm. Perhaps he didn't know his niece as well as he thought he did.