Archive of Our Own ^beta

"How nice of you to join us!" Shinji crowed as the hostess ushered Kensei through the door into one of the private rooms at Izakaya Kamenoya.

I must be tired, Kensei realized, as he felt a horrible pang of delight at seeing Hirako Shinji's horrible fucking face. He was tired. He'd been working his ass off all week, getting back in with his squad. It was good tired, but it also became immediately, retroactively apparent how weird it was to be surrounded by subordinates all the time, yessir, nosir, leave-it-to-me-sir. He was just happy to be around some equals again.

"We got the two-hour full service," Rose announced, "so sit down and catch up." With a flourish of his elegant fingers, he set a freshly filled cup of sake in front of the empty seat.

"Thank you, sir," Kensei tipped his head as he plopped down, glad to be off his feet.

"Something happen?" Shinji asked, one eyebrow quirked.

Kensei shook his head and took a sip of his drink. Fuck, he had missed the taste of good Soul Society sake. "Nah, just lost track of time."

"It's different here, isn't it?" Rose said lightly.

"Yeah," Kensei agreed slowly. "It sure is." He hadn't considered it up until now, but Rose was right. His entire sense of time was different in Soul Society than it was in the Living World. There, time marched by like a disciplined soldier. Sure, it felt slow when you were waiting around, marking time, lifting weights and working shifts in some shitty Living World hardware store. Then, when war suddenly loomed on the horizon and there were weird kids to train, weeks slipped through your fingers like water. All the same, every day had 24 hours in it, 60 minutes each. In Soul Society, time was more negotiable. The days seemed to expand to fit everything they needed to hold. The sun rose when it was the time for the day to start and set when it was time to be over, and who the Hell knew how much was going to happen in between.

"You know what doesn't change?" Shinji gestured with his cup. "This place. I can't believe it's still standing, let alone still looking like it does. I walked in and half-expected to see Iba at the bar, drinking Kotsubaki under the table."

"You could have," Rose said archly. "Both of them have sons in the upper ranks now."

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me!" Shinji groaned.

"It's true," Kensai nodded. "Except that Iba Junior wears sunglasses and Kotsubaki Junior doesn't."

"What is this world coming to?" Shinji moaned. "Top me off, will you, Rose?"

"Of course, my good man," Rose agreed. "While we're on the topic: obviously, I love Chikane dearly and no one will ever replace her, but she's enjoying her retirement and my new fellow, Kira, is the most precious little thing. I love him already."

Kensei grabbed a piece of grilled ray and swiped it through the mayonnaise. "I can't tell if you're joking or not."

"Absolutely not!" Rose insisted. "At the moment, he's very reserved, but he has the most dramatic soul of anyone I have ever met. I could listen to him sigh all day."

"Musician?" Shinji asked.

"Even better. A poet."

"Is he any good at…you know. Lieutenanting?" Kensei asked, grateful that he hadn't been saddled with a sigher.

"He could stand to be a bit more assertive, but overall, everything's been running smoothly, and I've hardly had to lift a finger. Smart as a whip and a good man with a sword, too."

"Well, I've very happy for you," Shinji declared, "but he's got nothing on my Momo! I would have murdered Aizen a hundred years ago if I could have had her instead! I've never met a kid who works so hard. My third seat told me that people call her 'the tiger of paperwork.' How metal is that?? She's tough, too! Her zanpakutou shoots fireballs! I bet she could beat up your wispy poet guy!"

Rose took a dainty sip of his drink. "She can and does, is my understanding, although he bests her about as often. They were school friends, did you know?"

Shinji made the worst Shinji-face, the one where just his bottom teeth were showing. "How do you know all these things?"

"She came by with some papers and we were chatting. She's fantastic, by the way, I couldn't agree with you more. I learned more about Kira from talking with her for five minutes than I had in the previous two weeks. They were inseparable, apparently. Top of their class, the two of them and--have you met that wild-looking fellow who seconds Kuchiki?"

"I think his name is Renji," said Shinji.

"Is that his given name or his surname?" Kensei frowned.

"Hell if I know. Little Byakuya just calls him 'Renji.' Momo's friends with him? That's hilarious! I hope she kicks his ass, too!"

"That was certainly the impression that I got." Rose jerked his chin at Kensei. "They're friends with your new boy, as well. He was a year or two ahead of them in school. I haven't met him yet, although Kira and Hinamori had nothing but good things to say about him. How do you find him? Are he and Mashiro getting along?"

"Eh?" said Kensei, who'd gotten a little distracted by a plate of assorted chicken skewers. "Oh, Hisagi?" Shinji and Rose looked at him expectantly. "I haven't, ah, seen much of him. Actually."

"Oh," said Rose softly.

Shinji cleared his throat. "My cup is looking a little empty. Rose, my good friend, do you think you could help me out?"

"Why, of course!"

Kensei stared at them. Why were they changing the subject? Did they think he didn't--? "It's not like that!" he corrected. "The thing is-- well-- we've got this newspaper."

Two heads turned to look at him, suddenly curious.

"Did you know that? Did you know that fucking Tousen decided that what we really needed was to acquire that shitty propaganda newsletter that the First used to print? 'Keep your sword sharp and your eyes sharper'? 'Have you donated reiatsu to the Fourth lately'?"

"It had some good articles," Rose frowned. "I used to read the restaurant reviews."

"It also used to have those really ridiculous drawings of the Captain-Commander. Love used to doodle 'extra features' on him, remember that?"

Rose looked vaguely confused. Kensei always forgot that he hadn't actually been a captain for very long when the Vizard thing happened. It was weird to think of a time that Rose wouldn't have been the first person Love would show his treasonous cartoons to.

"Sometimes it was creative hairdos, but usually--" Shinji made an illustrative gesture "--he just gave him a big ol' pair of bazongas."

"I miss Love," Rose said immediately, and Kensei couldn't agree more.

"Anyway," Kensei said, before this veered into sappy territory, "Tousen somehow convinced Yamamoto that the new direction of the Ninth was to 'promote the art and culture of Soul Society' and that he wanted to improve and expand that fishrag. Which was lies, of course. What he really wanted to do was publish a real newspaper, with actual journalism and shit."

"So, that's what you do now," Shinji concluded.

"No. That's what Hisagi does now, and he's great at it. Takes care of everything, and most of the other paperwork beside. I've barely had to look at the inside of an office all week. Which is good! Means I can be out there on the training field. Squad's not the same one I left, you know? It's not like they've been slacking or anything, but the…the character's different."

"You had a great crew in the old days," Shinji nodded. "And you will again. It will be different. My squad's gonna look nothing like it did before, and I can't wait to see how it shapes up."

"Here, here," said Rose, hefting his cup.

"I hope mine looks a little like it did before," Kensei grinned, "but I'll drink to that."

The next morning, Kensei felt like shit.

Mostly it was because Soul Society alcohol hit in a way that Living World alcohol could only dream of, but some of it was due to the fact that his friends had gushed about how great their new lieutenants were, and the best he could come up with was "he does the stuff I don't want to." To be fair, Kensei thought, as he gelled up his hair, he was very grateful to Hisagi for keeping everything running smoothly while he got his bearings. To be honest, though, Kensei felt like he already had a lieutenant, and that was Mashiro. He realized as he brushed his teeth that he still thought of Hisagi as Tousen's lieutenant, and that wasn't very fair of him at all.

Kensei didn't like dwelling on stuff like that. Bad feelings were like pain: they were a sign that there was something you needed to fix, the sooner the better. He shrugged his shoulders into his captain's haori and made his way down to the editorial offices.

The Seireitei Bulletin was produced out of a building that had once been the Recreation Hall. Then, most of the building had been taken up by one large, open room that was used for parties or indoor sporting activities. There had been three smaller multipurpose rooms and half a dozen storage closets, as well. Hisagi hadn't been around at the time, but as he'd told it to Kensei, the newspaper had started out in one of the multipurpose rooms. As more of the squad became interested in taking part, they gradually took over the rest of the space. The printing presses and shipping operations now took up the main room. About twenty years ago, they'd built a fancy extra wing on the front of the building for the customer-facing offices. Apparently, visitors frequently mistook it for the Squad Administration offices. Those were on the other side of the grounds, in same modest little building they had always been.

Even first thing in the morning, the place was hopping. Kensei had never actually worked an office job in the World of the Living, so he had no basis for this, but he felt strongly that the Editorial Offices ought to smell like coffee. It irritated him that they didn't.

Unlike the traditional shared office set-up they still had over in the Administrative Offices (he'd hauled in a third desk, even though Mashiro had never used hers in the old days and did not appear to have any plans of starting), the newspaper buildings had separate, private offices for the Editor-in-Chief and the Assistant Editor. Hisagi hadn't gotten around to explaining the rationale for this, but Kensei assumed it was so Tousen had office space to do secret traitor stuff in private. Despite the fact that he did all the Editing (Editoring?), Hisagi had never bothered to move into the bigger office. As he walked past, Kensei tried very hard not to look at the updated nameplate next to the door.

There was someone in Hisagi's office, talking with him. The door was open, though, so it couldn't have been either private or important. Kensei was the captain, and if this wasn't the stupid newspaper, he probably would have walked right in. Instead, he hung back in the hallway, feeling kinda stupid.

"Yeah, no, I get it!" Hisagi was saying. "My legs hurt, too! It's just a different training style. You'll get used to it, I promise. Anyway, I understand that it's a pain in the ass going that far out into South Rukongai, but we were the ones who dropped an entire human town in the middle of their district and then let two incredibly powerful guys go hammer and tongs at each other. We owe it to the souls out there to be really thorough in our coverage of the clean-up efforts."

There was a resigned sigh. "You're right, Lieutenant."

"Besides, I tell you, a good run will loosen up those leg muscles! Find a courier to keep pace with, you'll be feeling great by tomorrow."

A laugh. "Not so sure about that one, sir, but I'm going, I'm going!"

Kensei quickly adjusted his posture to make it look like he had just walked up as Eleventh Seat Yagamo exited the office. Kensei had always taken the care to learn the names and faces of the people who joined his squad. A hundred years ago, Yagamo had been a greenhorn, fresh out of the Academy. He was one of the last set of faces Kensei remembered memorizing. Now he was Eleventh Seat. Kensei didn't even know what his shikai was.

"Ah--good morning, Captain!" Yagamo managed, after nearly running face-first into Kensei's chest.

"Morning, Yagamo," Kensei grunted. "Hisagi in?"

"Yessir, I just got done talking to him!"

"Thanks," Kensei replied, as Yagamo scurried off. He stuck his head in through the door. "Knock, knock!"

Hisagi blinked, then popped up to his feet. "Good morning, Captain!"

Kensei waved his hand dismissively, indicating for Hisagi to sit back down. He grabbed the visitor's chair, and flopped down into it.

"What can I do for you?" Hisagi asked cheerfully, although his posture was ramrod straight as he sat back down in chair again.

Kensei jerked his thumb over one shoulder. "I see you put my name on the office next door."

Hisagi's cheeks darkened. "You said you were okay with taking the Editor-in-Chief title. It lends prestige to the paper, you know, having a captain at the helm--"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you told me all this," Kensei cut him off. "That wasn't my point. My point is, I'm not the kinda guy that just puts my name on something and then forgets about it. I've been kinda busy, getting back into the swing of things, and I realized I hadn't checked in over here for a while. So that's what I'm doing."

"Oh," said Hisagi. "Okay."

They stared at each other for a long moment.

Kensei cleared his throat. "So, is there, ah…anything you could use my help with?" He didn't know a whole lot about journalism, but he'd watched a lot of movies in the World of the Living. "Any of your reporters been getting the runaround? I could probably go lean on someone."

Hisagi rubbed his chin. "Nothing…like that at the moment." Suddenly, he brightened. "Oh, I know!" He shuffled through some folders on his desk until he found the one he wanted. "So…well…it's always been the policy to allow captains to publish a column, if they so chose. Unfortunately, with, um, recent events, we've had to put a number of those on hiatus, and at this point, it's time to make some more permanent decisions. In order to sort of…not make it so obvious…I've picked out a few of our least popular columns to ax at the same time. Then I'm going to run an advertisement asking for new column suggestions. Make it sound like we're freshening things up, you know?"

"Hmm," said Kensai, who was thinking that letting captains write whatever they wanted in the newspaper sounded like a horrible idea to start. "Sure. Sounds good to me."

Hisagi slid a piece of paper across the table. "I came up with this list of proposed cuts. Of course, this is the sort of decision that the Editor-in-Chief ultimately should be making. Or at least approving."

Kensei glanced over the list and frowned. "This is kind of long. Isn't the paper going to seem kinda…empty?"

"For the time being, there's still a lot of appetite for war-related coverage. We're reprinting an old feature on the geography of Hueco Mundo with some updated photographs. I've also been asking some of our irregular contributors if they can help us out. This month, Captain Soi Fon kindly volunteered to provide a new installment of I'll Do Anything to Live. She said she was feeling inspired."

Kensei glanced up from the paper he'd been skimming. "What kind of column is that?"

"It's…ah…well, it's sort of like survival tips, but it's epistolary, and there's sort of an…implied plot to it? I guess you might call it…experimental fiction? The survival tips are legitimate, though."

Kensei raised an eyebrow. "People…read this?"

"Oh, it's extremely popular!"

"Huh. Wouldn't have guessed. I'll have to check it out."

Hisagai gave a non-committal little head wobble. "Well…see…the thing is…there's a rumor that it's sort of…well…like, hidden in the narrative…sort of a…sapphic…"

Kensei put the paper down. "It's thinly-veiled yuri? We publish thinly-veiled yuri?"

Hisagi cleared his throat. "The veiling is very thick. Also, it's just a rumor…more like a conspiracy theory, to be honest. I don't think anyone would even buy into it if Captain Soi Fon hadn't been so evasive on the matter, which of course that only makes people more interested." His waved his hands. "If you read the manifestos, it makes sense, but you'd never notice it on your own. There aren't even characters, per se, just two distinct narrator voices that alternate--"

"Stop," Kensei said, holding up a hand. "I don't care about the secret yuri. Although if I had known about the secret yuri, I probably could have convinced Yadomaru to take over my squad, and I could have stayed back in the World of the Living."

Hisagi did not laugh. Hisagi, in fact, looked vaguely stricken.

"It was a joke," Kensei reassured him. "I guess you're too young to remember the infamous Lieutenant Yadoumaru?"

"She was…Lieutenant Ise's mentor?" Hisagi said vaguely.

Kensei sighed. He would have assumed the entire women-loving-women population of the Seireitei was still in mourning to this day. Oh, well. If Lisa ever did decide to come back, she'd probably just consider rebuilding her horrible reputation a challenge.

"Anyway," Kensei reassured Hisagi, "I love being back. No place I'd rather be."

Hisagi did not look particularly reassured.

Kensei cleared his throat and looked back at the list in his hand. The Yin of the Pine Needle, what the fuck was that even about? That's Absurd sounded absurdly painful. Why did Tousen have two columns about justice? And in particular-- "What are these numbers over on the right?"

"Those are the results from the latest reader survey. It's a count of how many times a reader rated it as one of their top three favorite columns."

Kensei blinked and squinted again. "Walk me through the numbers on this Recipe for Justice thing. It's the sky-high compared to everything else on this list. Tousen's other column has a zero. An actual zero."

Hisagi nodded knowingly. "He had a lot he wanted to say, you know. It was a good column, Path of Justice, if you really read it! It was just…" He made a vague hand gesture. "It could be complicated. Reading it felt like being back in the advanced Academy ethics class."

Kensei just stared at him.

"Soooo... he started a second column."

"Also about justice."

"Actually it was about cooking. Well, there was usually a long preface about justice, but people just skipped that part."

"Cooking?" Kensei scratched his chin. "I didn't know Tousen cooked." To be honest, he hadn't known a whole lot about Tousen, period. He'd been a quiet guy, the kind that liked to keep his work separate from his personal life, and Kensei respected that sort of thing. Now and then, he had the stray thought that maybe he should have paid more attention, maybe he should have tried to connect to the guy. He didn't think so, though. In fact, it made things easier, in some ways. He was mad about Tousen's betrayal, obviously, but he didn't feel anything personal about it. Still. Cooking?

"He wasn't a fancy cook," Hisagi said, slightly wistfully. "But he was really good at explaining things. His column was easy to follow, and hard to mess up. He picked good recipes, too--interesting flavors, nice mix of trendy stuff and old favorites. You'd read the title of the recipe and want to make it, and when you did, it would taste good. It was no surprise it was popular."

Kensei looked down the numbers column again. "Do you think you could get someone else to take it over, rather than just ax it? I mean, I'm sure it was a good column, but lots of people are good at cooking."

Hisagi deflated a little. "I considered it. I just didn't…I couldn't bring myself to ask anybody. I even thought about doing it myself, but then I…I don't know. It sounds silly to say it out loud. It's just a cooking column."

Kensei sucked his teeth for a long moment. Maybe this was a bad idea, but in his gut, it felt right. "I could do it."

Hisagi blinked at him. "You could…find a replacement?"

"Yeah, I could find a replacement, and it would be me. You say it's just homestyle-cooking, right? I cooked for the crew all the time when we were in the World of the Living."

"Really? You'd do that?" A slow grin crept onto Hisagi's face, and Kensei could see the glitter of admiration in his eyes. It had been the right call after all.

Kensei nodded decisively. "Just leave it to me!"

Fuck, why had he agree to this again?

"Kensei! Kennnnnnseeeeeeeeeeei!!"

Kensei's head snapped up. His eyes refused to focus. He rubbed at them with his knuckles. "I'm in here!" he hollered back.

Out in the hallway came the grunts and oofs of several people being plowed out of the way before Mashiro's head popped into his office doorway. "There you are!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing in the newspaper office? I was looking for you!"

"I'm doin' newspaper stuff!" Kensei gestured at the papers and magazines spread across his desk. "What do you want?"

Mashiro shoved out her lower lip. "For drills today, I wanted to do Cyborgs vs. Kaiju: Space Battle Ultimate!! but I need you to be in charge of the Kaiju team."

Kensei glanced down at what he'd written so far. "I'm busy," he replied. "Get Hisagi to do it."

"What!" Mashiro exclaimed. "No! He can't be the Kaiju leader, he's a weenie-face! And what are you doing that's so important? What what what what what?"

Kensei closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "He's your co-lieutenant, do not call him a 'weenie-face.' And I'm writing…my article."

Suddenly, Mashiro was climbing over his shoulder, grabbing at things on his desk. "An article? On what? I want to see! Why do you get an article? I want to write an article!"

"Take that up with Hisagi! Leave me alone!"

"This isn't an article," Mashiro declared, squinting at his work so far. "This is just your recipe for stewed hamburger steak."

"It is so an article," Kensei snapped, grabbing it back. "It's my cooking column."

"Nobody in Soul Society cooks hamburger steak."

"I know that. But I figure, that's the value I bring. Hamburger steak is fucking delicious and easy to make. People will love it!"

Mashiro scratched her head. "Isn't beef still really expensive here?"

Kensei sighed. "Yeah, I thought of that. But boar meat is cheap. Hamburger steak usually uses a mixture of beef and pork--I figure maybe you could raise the ratio of pork if you were using boar."

"That sounds shady, Kensei." She stabbed a finger at his recipe. "Also, where are you gonna get the demi-glace sauce? Don't you buy it in a jar from the supermarket?"

"I just wrote down the recipe I make it at ho--in the Living World! I'm sure I can figure out how to make that stuff from ingredients you can get here." He gestured at the stack of Bulletin back-issues he'd been reading through. "I've been looking at the old cooking columns to try to figure out what's available. As long as I can get Worcestershire sauce, I should be good."

"I don't think they have Worcestershire sauce here."

"They already had Worcestershire sauce in the Living World when we moved there! I can't believe they haven't figured it out over here by now!"

"Are you gonna actually make the stewed hamburger steak, Kensei?"

Kensei heaved a heavy sigh. "I was hoping I could avoid it, but I think I'm gonna have to."

Mashiro started tapping him on the head. "I don't like stewed hamburger steak! Make ketchup spaghetti instead!"

"Ketchup spaghetti also uses Worcestershire sauce, and it uses ketchup, which I am sure they don't have here."

"I bet they do, Kensei, I bet they do! Please? Please, I want it! Ketchup spaghetti, Kensei, I love your ketchup spaghetti! Please, please, please?"

Kensei squeezed his eyes closed. He never liked to admit when Mashiro was right, but the hamburger steak had been seeming like a progressively worse idea over the last hour. "I will make you a deal. I am going to go ask Hisagi if they've got ketchup in Soul Society. If they do, I will change this column to be about ketchup spaghetti. I will also ask him to help you with Cyborgs vs. Kaiju, and if he says yes, you have to stop bothering me about it."

"'We', Kensei."

"'We'? 'We', what?"

"If we've got ketchup in Soul Society. You said 'they,' but we live here again, so 'they' is 'us.'"

"Right," said Kensei. "Of course."

Hisagi wasn't in his office. He was out in the bullpen, having a very involved conversation with another lieutenant. It was Kuchiki's second, the one with all the tattoos. Kensei had seen him before, but he hadn't realized how catastrophically young the kid was. Hisagi's junior, Rose had said. Kensei supposed it made sense. Kuchiki himself was only about twelve years old, right? The two of them must be Hell on wheels.

"Yo, Hisagi!" Kensei said, waving a hand.

Hisagi's head whipped around. "Oh, hi, Captain!"

Tall-and-Spiky dipped into a respectful bow. "Afternoon, Captain Muguruma!" he barked.

"Yeah, hi, uh…Lieutenant…" Kensei frowned. "Renji?"

Tall-and-Spiky stared at him in confusion for a long moment. "Uh…sure," he finally agreed.

Huh. Sure. Go figure.

"I got a question," Kensei announced. "It's about, uh, getting Living World stuff in Soul Society."

Hisagi grimaced, then exchanged a glance with his pal. "You know more about that stuff than me."

Renji straightened his shoulders and looked very smug. "I know everyth--" Suddenly, his eyes darted to Kensei and Mashiro, and a look of panic briefly crossed his face. "I mean, I know quite a lot about the World of the Living."

"Hit us with it," Hisagi suggested, jerking his chin at Kensei.

"Have people gotten over the tomato thing?" Kensei asked.

Hisagi and Renji blinked at him. "The…tomato thing?"

"Look, the last time I was in Soul Society, we had tomato plants, but they were considered ornamental. The fruits are actually edible. People in the Living World eat them all the time. Are we past that? Have we boarded the tomato train?"

"That's…a good question, actually," Hisagi nodded. "And the answer is…it's complicated."

"You can get tomatoes," Renji added. "They are readily available."

"Many people love them," Hisagi went on. "I love them, actually. But, uh, especially among some of the…more…historically…that is, the senior…"

"Captain Unohana does not believe in eating tomatoes," Renji interrupted. "Do not bring up tomatoes to Captain Unohana."

"I see," said Kensei.

"Tomatoes aren't the point," Mashiro interrupted. "What we really care about is ketchup! Kensei needs to buy ketchup to make me ketchup spaghetti."

Hisagi squinted. "Ket-chup?"

"See? See, I told you!" Kensei tried to jam his elbow into Mashiro's ribs. Not to be dissuaded, she just spaghetti-noodled out of the way.

"It's tomatoes mashed up until they're smooth, mixed with vinegar and sugar!" she explained. "You can put it on hot dogs and french fries and omurice and spaghetti! It's delicious!"

Hisagi waved a finger at Renji. "When I was hanging out with Chad--you know, when he taught me to play the guitar--he also made me this soup--"

Renji looked scandalized. "Chad made you soup?!"

"He makes very good soup!"

"I know he makes good soup! I can't believe he made you soup!"

"The-- the guitar playing wasn't going well. Anyway!!! He had some tomato product, a paste? It came in a jar. Is that ketchup? I think Rukia found it for him? Are the Kuchiki on the tomato train?"

Renji shook his head. "Rukia is. The captain is not, although Rukia's been working on him. Anyway, that was not ketchup, that was tomato paste, and I know where she got it."

"Tomato paste would be good," Kensei mused. He could work with tomato paste.

"Captain Ukitake is a huge fan of tomatoes," Renji explained. "He is the…driver? Of the tomato train?"

"You guys are really bad at this metaphor," Mashiro informed them.

"Anyway, you know how his squad is about him. A lot of people grow tomatoes in the Squad Thirteen community garden and it was too many for the mess hall to use, so he wrangled a deal with that big pickle shop on Two Fish Street, Amamizu's." Renji turned back to Kensei. "If they don't have your ketchup stuff, I bet they would make it for you. They're always trying to come up with stuff to do with the tomatoes. Most of it's pretty strange, but they sell a juice that's good."

For a brief moment, Kensei entertained the idea of skipping the ketchup spaghetti entirely in favor of printing up Shinji's Bloody Mary recipe. He'd only been back for a month, though. It was a little early for getting called into Yamamoto's office. Still. Useful to know.

Mashiro chose this moment to start trying climb up his body like a squirrel. "Did you hear that, Kensei? K-E-T-C-H…UP! You have to make it now!"

"Hold your horses!" he said, trying to shove her off. "How about Worcestershire sauce? Can you get that around here? It might have a different name. Some people call it Bulldog sauce or just 'sauce' or--"

"Yeah, of course we've got that," nodded Hisagi.

"They'll have that at Amamizu's, too," Renji added. "They'll have, like, six different kinds. Do not get the spicy one, unless you mean it. It is not for casuals."

"Great," said Kensei. "Perfect."

"There! Are you happy now?" Mashiro shouted directly into his ear.

"I don't know," Kensei said, feeling a pang of doubt. "Is it okay to publish a recipe where people have to go to a special shop to get an ingredient?"

"Oh, no, it's great, actually!" Hisagi replied, and immediately started looking around. "Hey! Oeyama!"

A tall woman with glasses materialized out of nowhere. There were at least four pencils stuffed into her bun. "Yes, Assistant Editor!" she barked.

"Captain's going pickle-shopping over by the Thirteenth. Offer old Amamizu a good deal if he wants to do a tomato-product spotlight or a coupon or something. We'll run it next to the cooking column."

"Will do!" she replied, with great enthusiasm.

"Oeyama is the head of Advertising," Hisagi explained.

Kensei eyed her. He had definitely never met her before. She beamed back at him.

"He can't go right now," Mashiro announced. "We're doing a drill."

"Oh, right," Kensei said. "Hisagi, you can run a drill with Mashiro for me, right?"

Hisagi stood up a little straighter. "Yes, sir, of course!"

"Noooooooooooo, he won't do it right!!!" Mashiro howled.

"What kinda drill is it?" Renji asked, as if what Kensei needed was a third lieutenant. Actually, you know what? Why not?

"It's a territory defense drill," Kensei replied. "You gotta figure out some way to pretend to be some sort of giant, fearsome creature, a nuclear-powered dinosaur or an enormous turtle or some shit. Use your imagination. I usually just go to bankai and stomp around. You get a team of troops, you can assign them to be your minions or a personification of your nuclear breath or whatever. Mashiro and her team will be trying to kick them in the face. Look, Lieutenant…" Fuck, did this guy truly not have a family name? This was going to bug him. Was Renji a Kuchiki? He was probably a Kuchiki. That would explain why Byakuya referred to him by his given name. He didn't look much like a standard Kuchiki, but he did have pink hair like that Third Seat who was married to Ginrei's daughter for a while and then…didn't he get banished? Double fuck. Maybe it was better to just go with one-name thing after all. Kensei cleared his throat. "Hisagi, if your buddy wants to hang around, you can have him on your team."

Hisagi glanced at Renji out of the corner of his eye. "I imagine Captain Kuchiki needs you back," he said slowly.

"I'll just tell him I got invited to participate in another squad's training activity. He'll be down with it," Renji's face split into a feral grin. "...as long as we win."

Hisagi narrowed his eyes. "Shouldn't be a problem."

Mashiro was still scowling. Kensei gently pried her off his shoulder and put her down on the floor. "C'mon," he said. "Two against one, that should at least keep you busy for a little while."

Mashiro leveled a death glare at Hisagi. "What kind of kaiju are you going to be?" she demanded.

Hisagi and Renji exchanged a long glance that Kensei didn't trust, not even a little. But it didn't matter, because he wasn't going to be there.

"Renji's tall," Hisagi finally said, sounding very sanguine about the whole affair. "I'll probably just get up on his shoulders and wave my arms a lot and shout."

"I will also be shouting," Renji added.

"Fine," Mashiro finally, grudgingly allowed. She jabbed a finger at Renji. "But you're not staying for spaghetti."

Kensei stared at the spaghetti. He didn't know how long he had been staring at the spaghetti. As if it even deserved to be called spaghetti.

The big steel double doors of the test kitchen swung open and Hisagi poked his head inside. "Thought I might find you here," he said cheerfully. "How do you like the test kitchen?"

That wasn't what Kensei had expected him to ask. "Uh," he stuttered, "it's, uh, pretty nice, actually." It was surprisingly modern, all stainless-steel surfaces and kidou-powered appliances. Oeyama had shown him around. At first, he'd been hesitant to cook in a workspace that had clearly been Tousen's, but Oeyama assured him that lots of people used it. All of the drawers and cabinets had labels describing their contents in both kana and Braille. Inside the drawers were specific slots for each tool, and there were signs on the wall kindly reminding people to put things back exactly where they found them. Aside from that, it was just a kitchen. Yet another place where Kensei kept trying to find some personal remnant of a man he didn't understand, and to come up empty.

Hisagi had come up beside him. He squinted at the plate in front on Kensei. "Is this it?" he asked. "The ketchup spaghetti? Lieutenant Kuna wouldn't stop yelling about it."

"Sort of," Kensei admitted. "This was my third try. It's still not right."

"Oh," said Hisagi. "It looks good. It smells good. Ooh, are those Vienna sausages?"

Kensei heaved a sigh. "It tastes okay. It's not ketchup spaghetti. I'm out of most of my ingredients, though, so it's the closest thing Mashiro is going to get for today. I'll try again tomorrow. You want some, too?"

"Sure! Thanks!"

Kensei dug out a couple more plates. "Where is Mashiro, anyway?" He frowned. "She probably doesn't know where this place is. I hope she's not running around the barracks, screaming."

"I told her where it was," Hisagi replies. "I'm sure she'll be here after she finishes cleaning up from the drill."

Kensei froze in the middle of scooping spaghetti onto a plate. His head swung over to regard Hisagi with one cocked eyebrow. "Loser cleans up from drills."

Hisagi nodded serenely. "Mm-hmm."

Kensei just stared at him. "You beat her. You beat her at Cyborgs vs. Kaiju."

"My team won. It was a group effort."

Kensei continued to stare at him. "Are you fucking pulling my leg?"

The corner of Hisagi's mouth quirked up. "Okay, I will admit it. Abarai was a big help. Apparently Miss Inoue has made him watch a large number of Godzilla films. He makes a very good kaiju."

"Abarai?" Kensei frowned. He didn't remember that name at all. He was going to have to go back and look at the roster again. "Remind me who that is again?"

Hisagi looked at him like his brain had just fallen out of his head. "Lieutenant Abarai?" he said. Suddenly, realization dawned over his face. "You didn't know his surname! You didn't know his surname because Captain Kuchiki calls him by his given name for reasons no one can figure out! That's hilar--" He clapped a hand over his mouth. Kensei realized he must be making one of the faces Mashiro had told him not to make. Hisagi cleared his throat primly, but didn't say anything further.

"He does have a surname, though? It's Abarai, you say?"

"Yes, sir."

Kensei scratched his head. "He was your junior in school or something? You can make fun of him for this? At least get some mileage outta my stupidity?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Okay, good. Don't, uh. Don't tell Captains Hirako or Outoribashi."

"Don't tell him you messed up his name?"

"No, don't tell them he has a surname. They were just as confused about it as I was, and wanna hold this over them a little while longer." He slid a plate of spaghetti onto the table next to Shuuhei. "Here's your weird spaghetti. Bon appetit."

Suddenly, the double doors slammed open again.

"DO NOT GIVE HIM SPAGHETTI, KENSEI!!" Mashiro wailed. "He is A CHEATER!! CHEATER!! CHEATER!! CHEATER!! CHEATER!! CHEA--"

"Enough already!" Kensei groaned. "The spaghetti isn't even good. What'd he do, anyway? How do you even cheat at Cyborgs vs. Kaiju?"

"This stuff is delicious!" Hisagi said, stuffing spaghetti into his mouth.

Mashiro's mouth hung open. Her brain appeared to have frozen up.

Kensei started spooning spaghetti onto the second plate. "Here. I'm making you spaghetti. What did he do?"

Mashiro's mouth snapped shut and she drew in a huge breath through her nose. "His stupid friend has a bankai that's basically Skeleton Godzilla!!"

Hisagi chewed his spaghetti, a portrait of tranquility. "I don't see how this is my fault. Lieutenant Abarai's bankai is not exactly the Seireitei's best kept secret. Besides, it's a snake."

"With fire breath!"

"Yes. With fire breath."

"What are you complaining about?" Kensei asked, waving Mashiro's plate at her. "Sounds like the best game of Cyborgs vs. Kaiju you're ever had."

"I could have beaten him, if I hadn't had to deal with Shuuhei's dumb scythes on top of it! He should have had to be on the cyborg team with me!" She grabbed the plate out of Kensei's hand and thumped down on a stool.

"Those were the terms," Hisagi said. "Next time, we can invite Kira over, and you can have him on your team."

"Does he have bankai?"

"Hmm," said Hisagi. "I don't remember."

Kensei frowned. "What's this about lieutenants coming with their own bankai these days? Can you do bankai?"

"Er…not…yet."

"Why not?! You're letting your juniors get the best of you?"

Hisagi's eyes went wide. "I'm…working on it! And don't compare me to Abarai! He had extenuating circumstances and also he's very intense! Lieutenant Kuna doesn't have bankai!"

"She's scary enough without it."

"Kensei, this spaghetti is wrong."

Kensei shrugged. "I warned you."

"I love it!" Hisagi announced.

"It's not bad!" Mashiro agree. "I might love it, too! But it's not ketchup spaghetti!"

"I'm pretty sure the problem is the Worcestershire sauce, which is kind of like Worcestershire sauce, but somehow entirely different."

"Did you put persimmons in this?" Hisagi suggested

"I did not! It does have a distinct tinge of persimmons, though, doesn't it? The ketchup did not have an ingredients label. I blame the ketchup." Kensei grabbed the ketchup bottle and swabbed a taste out of it with his finger. "Nope," he said. "No persimmon." He sighed. "I guess I'll go back to the pickle store tomorrow and try again."

"Kensei," said Mashiro, "maybe this is just what ketchup spaghetti tastes like in Soul Society."

Kensei stared at her. "It's food. It tastes the way you make it."

Hisagi swallowed his bite. "They say that all writing is an act of translation. That one person can never truly understand the experience of another, but writing is an attempt to bridge that gap. That's why it's called 'media,' you know. It's the thing in the middle, the thing that connects two other things."

Kensei stared at him for a long moment. "I don't know shit about writing," he finally said. "But in cooking, if you put in weird ketchup, you get weird ketchup spaghetti. I'm trying again tomorrow."

To his credit, Hisagi laughed. "Do you want some help?"

"You don't even know what ketchup spaghetti is supposed to taste like," Mashiro griped.

"No, but I know what things in Soul Society taste like. And Tousen used to say that he found it helpful to explain to me how to do things. It made it easier to figure out how to write it down. And thirdly-- well, I want to know how you made this! I think it's really good!"

"You're stupid," Mashiro informed him. "If you offer to help him, he'll make you do dishes."

"I don't mind doing dishes," Hisagi replied.

"You can help," Kensei decided. A lieutenant who did dishes. What were they gonna think up next? "There's something else from the Living World that I need you to help me find."

"Oh?"

"Coffee."

"The drink? We have that here. It's not popular, but the Kidou Corps Department of Experimental Agriculture developed a strain that grows well in East Rukongai. You can get it from some specialty shops, or I can get my buddy Akon, at the Twelfth to put in a bulk order. Do you need it for a recipe?"

"I need it for the newsroom," Kensei replied. "My own personal contribution to journalism."

"That sounds like a terrible idea," Mashiro noted. "My sister works at the Twelfth. I can ask her to build us one of their coffee brewing machines. Can I have more spaghetti?"

"Of course you can," said Kensei.