A/N: Posting a few hours early this week, just... because. Again, major thanks to my reviewers and fave-ers, (HUGE thanks to BloodyRoses in particular, your reviews are the biggest ego boost I get all week!)

Warnings: Language, again. Nothing serious.

RED DUTY, BLACK HONOR

Chapter Three: Changes

"Oy! Anybody home?" Shouldering through the front door of the Urahara shop - hung with a 'Sorry, Closed!' sign in Urahara's appallingly messy handwriting - Renji stared around the darkened interior. "The fuck? Where is everybody?"

A whisper of movement from the far corner of the store caught his attention, and he had just begun to turn when a familiar voice cut through the shadows.

"Sorry, Renji-kun, they're aaaaallll gone..."

Smiling broadly, Ichimaru Gin stepped into the light.

"Son of a -" Throwing down his pack, Shuuhei reached for his Zanpakutou, only to find Renji's hand securely around his wrist.

"Relax, senpai. He's harmless now, remember?"

"He's not harmless," Shuuhei scowled, but slowly released his grip on Kazeshini's hilt all the same.

Gin had been the only one of the three treasonous Captains to survive the War, and it had only been the intervention of Captain Hitsugaiya, Matsumoto Rangiku, and Kira Izuru on his behalf that had prevented him from being executed after it.

After a great deal of debate, Gin had been handed over to Kisuke Urahara 'for use as an experimental subject,' his reiatsu channels destroyed and his Zanpakutou shattered. Exactly what Urahara did with the man wasn't clear, but whatever it was had the odd effect of causing Gin's eye and hair color to change, at random and entirely unrelated intervals. The last time Renji had been out here, two months before, Gin's left eye had been brown, his right one blue and purple, and his hair had been neon green.

Kisuke had evidently put a little more effort into complimenting colors this time around. A royal-blue streak, edged with indigo, colored the main section of Gin's bangs, highlighting the fact that his eyes - both the same color this week - had been turned to a rich shade of amethyst. The rest of his hair had been returned to its normal shade of silver. He was wearing a hip-length lavender yukata over a pair of blue jeans, a combination that should have looked patently ridiculous, but somehow suited him. His narrow feet were bare, and heavy piece of purple silk cord was knotted loosely around his pale neck.

Even without prodding the cord with his reiatsu, Renji could sense the kidou contained in the collar. It was a restraint - delicate to look at, probably fatal to fight against.

"An' Renji-kun's right, Shuu-kun," Gin added, batting his eyes - eyes that he hadn't held shut since the war ended - at the pair. " 'm harmless as a declawed kitten. No reiatsu, mm? An' no Shinsou, either."

"Where is everybody, Gin?" Renji interrupted, not wanting to involve himself - or worse, Shuuhei - in any of Gin's psychological games. Even without his former powers, the man could still talk you into believing black was white and white was purple polka-dots, and Shuuhei had far more issues stemming from the betrayal than Renji did.

"Mm, Tessai an' the brats are out shoppin', an' Kisuke's down below with Ichi-kun. He said yer free to go down as soon as yer settled in."

"Right, thanks," Renji answered calmly, and strode past the man with a nod, his firm grip on Shuuhei's wrist leaving the other Lieutenant little choice but to follow in his wake.

"How the hell do they expect us to sleep under the same roof as that psychopath?" Shuuhei hissed, as soon as they'd gotten into the hallway.

Renji just shrugged in response. "He keeps to himself, for the most part. And while you're right, and he's not harmless, he's not dangerous, either. You saw the restraint collar he was wearing. I'm sure Urahara's got it bound into his brain waves or something, ready to liquify his brain if he thinks about violence."

Biting back several comments on whether Gin's brain actually required liquefaction, Shuuhei settled on saying, "I don't trust him."

"Neither do I," Renji answered with a shrug, rolling the door to the guest room open and pitching his bag inside. "But when I was in the Eleventh, I could never trust that the guy sittin' next to me at meals wasn't gonna try to take my head off 'cause he wanted my Seat. Just the way things are. I'm never gonna trust Gin, sure. Doesn't mean I'm gonna waste energy on staying mad at him when we've got other things to worry about. He's being punished; let it go, Shuuhei."

Grimacing, the other Lieutenant merely followed Renji's example in pitching his pack through the door and remained silent. They made their way back to the front of the store in silence, where Gin lifted the cover off the hidden ladder for them with no more than an "All set?"

Renji gave the former Captain a polite nod as he slipped into the hole; Shuuhei stared across the gap at him for a moment before silently following Renji down.

They'd gotten about halfway down the ladder when the shockwave struck.

Cursing, Renji clung to the metal rungs as the waves of reiatsu-laden wind tore past them, the scorching heat making the ladder unbearably hot beneath his hands. Glancing upward, he caught Shuuhei's gaze and nodded, once.

Drawing their Zanpakutou, both men released their grips on the ladder and plunged.

"I told you not to teach him the incantation."

"It wouldn't have worked without the incantation!"

A delicately stifled cough was the only response. Kisuke Urahara opened his mouth to respond again, eating a fair amount of dust in the process, when two identical pats drew his attention to the base of the ladder, where Renji and Shuuhei landed, crouched, weapons drawn, both searching for the danger.

"What the hell...?"

Glancing around, Renji tried to absorb what he was seeing. The immense training room under the shop had seen a lot of abuse in its day, not the least of which had been sustained by Renji's use of Bankai to train Chad, shortly before the War.

The damage it had taken from Hihiou Zabimaru was nothing compared to this.

A crater spanning at least a hundred feet across had dug itself into the rocky ground. Black scorch marks decorated the rocks lay scattered around the circle, clearly having been blasted from their previous positions by whatever force had created the earlier shockwave.

Standing well off to the side of the damaged circle were Urahara and a lean man that Renji vaguely recognized. It took him a moment before the ragged, flame-like hem of the second man's coat - so similar to Ichigo's shihakusho in Bankai - clicked in his memory.

"Oy, Zangetsu. Long time no see."

"Renji," the Zanpakutou spirit nodded back, but anything else he might have said was interrupted by a yell from the center of the crater. There was a tingling burst of reiatsu that indicated shunpou, and Ichigo landed next to his mentor and his Zanpakutou, muttering curses and wiping soot from his face.

"I told you it wouldn't fucking work!" the young man roared at Urahara, who blinked back at him from behind his fan, unperturbed.

"And I told you to regulate your reiatsu. If you can't do something that simple, it's no great surprise it blew up in your face, now, is it?"

"Maybe if you'd actually try teaching me instead of throwing me into all this shit headfirst -"

"Ichigo, the only way people like you learn anything is by being thrown in headfirst."

" 'People like me'? What the hell are you implying?"

"...the hell?" Shuuhei muttered suddenly, and Renji turned his attention away from the furious Substitute, back to his old senpai.

"What is it?"

"That blast pattern - I recognize it. It's Shakkahou."

"What? There's no way..." Staring into the crater, Renji felt the not-unfamiliar sensation of disbelief sweep over him. Shakkahou was only a thirties-level kidou, barely a third of the way up the power scale. There was no way in hell it should have been able to cause this kind of damage.

Then again, this was Ichigo they were dealing with. He'd turned every preconception the Seireitei ever had on its ear, so why not turn Shakkahou into the kind of destructive force that usually only kidou in the nineties could hope to be?

"That kid..." Shuuhei muttered, shaking his head. "Unbelievable."

"And your training is done for the day, go, practice on your own. Though I would advise having Inoue-san present to undo any damage you case." Beaming madly, Urahara calmly grabbed a fistful of Ichigo's kosode and quite literally threw him to the ladder, ignoring the stream of shouted curses that trailed the teen's flight.

"And you," Urahara added wearily, turning to Zangetsu, "please keep trying to help him regulate and refine his flow of reiatsu."

"Even I can only do so much, Kisuke," the spirit answered dryly, and dissolved into nothingness before Urahara could reply, re-materializing in sword form on Ichigo's back as the young man bounded up to the shop, still making his feelings on the matter abundantly clear. Even Renji raised an eyebrow; some of Ichigo's vocabulary wouldn't have sounded out of place in the Eleventh.

When Ichigo and his rant finally vanished through the false sky, Urahara turned his gaze on the two Shinigami lieutenants standing nearby, his smile growing to genuinely alarming proportions "So-oo, Hisagi-san. I understand you need to achieve Bankai."

"Ah, Byakuya-kun! Thank you so much for agreeing to come."

"I would hardly refuse your invitation, Ukitake, though I admit I am curious as to the occasion." Seating himself calmly at the table, the young captain surveyed the bounty of food spread over it with a wary eye. All of his favorite dishes were there, even his peculiar favorite of curried bananas. "And exactly what you are attempting to bribe me for."

"I'm not allowed to indulge a friend? After all, you would hardly appreciate me offering you chocolate."

Byakuya refrained from pointing out that Hitsugaiya rarely appreciated the chocolates either, and occupied himself with making selections from a few of the dishes. The food was quite excellent, he realized, and subsequently found himself enjoying the best lunch he'd had in quite some time. Hurriedly-grabbed take-out, eaten only just slowly enough that it didn't overturn on the paperwork, was no substitute for a good, well-prepared meal.

Ukitake, politely ignoring Byakuya's unsubtle hints to get on with asking whatever he wanted to ask, made small talk about the weather, his books and flowers, and the health of Byakuya's koi carp throughout the meal, until the young noble had devoured the last bit of spicy banana and the actual topic of conversation could be put off no longer.

"I asked you here today because I wish to talk to you about Rukia."

Dark eyebrows flashed upwards. "Has something happened -"

"Oh, it's nothing to be concerned about! As you are well aware, however, when Rukia graduated the Shinigami Academy, the only reason I did not place her as a seated officer within this squad was the letter you had sent to me, requesting she be kept out of such a position." Folding his hands, Ukitake leaned forward across the table, his dark eyes intent on Byakuya's icy ones. "I would like you to reconsider."

The younger noble did not answer immediately, electing instead to slowly finish the cup of tea in his hand, setting the empty vessel carefully back on the table before asking, "Is there a particular reason you are making this request now?"

Ukitake sighed softly. "It's been over forty years since Kaien's death, and the Thirteenth has been without a lieutenant for far too long. Neither Kotetsu nor Kotsubaki have the potential to rise to Lieutenant status anytime within this century, nor could I, in good conscience, promote only one of them if they did. The events of the War showed me, very clearly, that I cannot allow this division to continue without a full and proper command structure. Should anything happen to me, there must be another who can take my command."

"And you believe," Byakuya said slowly, reading the very clear subtext that Ukitake had laid out for him, "that Rukia would be willing to take over the position of the man she idolized - the man she killed?"

"The Hollow had already killed him; Rukia merely put him out of his misery," Ukitake responded calmly. "That aside, if it's presented correctly, yes. What she endured in Hueco Mundo helped give her peace of mind about the actions I forced her to take on the night of Kaien's death."

"I see."

"Truth be told, Byakuya-kun," the older captain said, leaning back and favoring the other with a stern expression, "ever since Kaien's death, I have been waiting for Rukia to achieve an acceptable level of maturity and stability, both with her emotions and her powers, to take lieutenant's position. I believe she has finally done both, something that you would be aware of if you spent more time looking at Rukia, and less at Hisana's ghost."

Had that statement been uttered by anyone else, they barely would have closed their lips on the last syllable of his late wife's name before their blood had decorated the walls. As it was, Byakuya's reiatsu spiked furiously, a razor-edged, arctic chill, before he reasserted control of himself.

"Ukitake, that statement -"

"Is entirely correct, and you know it." Sighing, the other man leaned forward again, planting his elbows on his knees and fixing Byakuya with a penetrating stare. "Tell me, what is Rukia's favorite color? Favorite foods? What kind of music does she listen to? Do you know the answer to any of those questions, Byakuya?"

Both of them knew full well he did not; instead of answering, Byakuya lowered his gaze, refusing to meet the disapproval in Ukitake's eyes.

"They are, incidentally, lavender, rice dumplings and eggs, and although she listens to classical music to please you, she is quite fond of a human-realm Japanese rock artist named Gackt."

"...I see."

"It is a rather sad state of affairs when your sister's captain knows her better than you do, Byakuya. I trust you will rectify it."

"I will... make an attempt to do so."

"Good. And as to her promotion...?"

Sighing, Byakuya dropped his gaze back to the tabletop. "I dare not lose her as well, Ukitake. However... I do her no favors by denying her strength."

A broad smile of approval lit up Ukitake's face.

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