‘Those idiots couldn’t follow a simple plan.’ Natsumi scowled to herself as she moved on the next verse of the Kido chant.

‘All they had to do was work together and delay the Ryoka for a few minutes. Instead they decide to challenge her one on one and almost let her get away.’

Yuusuke was now unconscious after taking a sudden attack and Hiei was trying to fry the Ryoka...and getting played like a fool in the process.

It might have fooled even her if she was closer to the fight, but this far out Natsumi could easily tell the Ryoka was holding back a lot in terms of strength.

Really obvious when she would use movements on par with a lieutenant at least and back off right when Hiei started to build up momentum.

‘This looks like one of the introductory training sessions for the new initiates.’ Natsumi thought.

She remembered what it was like when she first joined. A no holds barred sparring match with an undercover elite member. Where the newbie was told they were going up against one of the weaker members of the squad to show how far they had to go even if they passed at the top of the academy.

It would start off simple, the newbie would be able to get some grazing hits in or be able to push their opponent completely to the defensive. They would get overconfident, sure that pushing just that little bit more would let them beat an experienced Shinigami.

All while the opponent was just slowly using more strength to stay above the initiate’s best effort until they couldn’t keep up and lost.

It was easy to see the parallels from a distance. The Ryoka was emitting such a low amount of Reiatsu it was almost like she was an academy student at best. Presumably that’s what gave the two idiots the confidence to disregard the plan and engage her alone.

But Natsumi had seen it.

In that attempt to flee the area the Ryoka had overpowered Yuusuke in an ease she had only seen in officers. Hiei apparently missed the change in behavior since he was acting like he was in control of the fight.

Natsumi watched as the Ryoka dodged around the courtyard. Streams of fire were barely dodged or deflected by the weird longsword the Ryoka had summoned.

At the very least Hiei was doing a good job keeping the Ryoka at a distance. The amount of fire he was sending out with his shikai was buying Natsumi enough time to finish her chant. So he was at least helpful even if he wasn’t going to be taking the intruder down.

Natsumi started the final stanza, just in time to hear the Ryoka run out of patience.

“Well this game of keep-away has been fun.” Her tone indicating she felt otherwise. “But since you haven’t pulled out anything new I’m guessing you’re either waiting for reinforcements or just delaying me. So I’m going to end this if you don’t mind.”

‘Oh please be fast enough’ Natsumi thought desperately as she watched the Ryoka form yet another weapon out of thin air. ‘How many could she possibly have?!’ This one was a large black bow. The Ryoka formed and fired several glowing arrows that exploded all around Hiei. Natsumi prayed that the Ryoka was still going easy on him and hadn’t just killed a member of her team as she finally finished the incantation.

She slammed her hands to the ground and shouted, “Kekkai no 31: Kuriadōmu Kabe!”

A rippling dome bloomed from Natsumi’s hands before expanding to cover the courtyard and some of the streets beyond. Natsumi let out a sigh of relief. While Kuriadōmu Kabe wasn’t the most powerful of barriers, it should be enough to slow the Ryoka down until one of the reinforcement squads made it to help. Of course that meant Natsumi herself would need to delay the Ryoka from breaking out before then.

‘And I have to do it by myself.’ She thought ruefully, as she looked around the courtyard before jumping down to confront the Ryoka.

Yuusuke was still unconscious and now that the dust had cleared from around Hiei it was clear he was also down for the count. Natsumi was relieved to see him breathing, which hopefully meant he was just unconscious as well and not bleeding out or something.

Standing in front of the Ryoka, Natsumi was struck by how tall she was. She was around the same height as Lieutenant Isane, but unlike her the Ryoka was clearly a fighter. Despite the relaxed posture, her sapphire blue eyes were hard and focused.

“And another one pops out of the woodwork. I assume the barrier is your doing?”

Natsumi nodded, “Yes it is, I am Squad 2 Third seat Hanakage Natsumi. I must say that I am impressed by your skill in concealing your Reiatsu. If I hadn’t been observing from a distance I never would have noticed you were masking your strength.”

The Ryoka frowned, presumably upset she was discovered.

“I wouldn’t say I was hiding anything.” she insisted.

“Still…” Natsumi continued, “I cannot allow you to continue. Surrender now, or I will be forced to end you.”

The Ryoka’s lip twitched in an amusement. Natsumi certainly couldn’t blame her, she had easily shown she was stronger than any normal Third Seat officer. Listening to one demand her surrender certainly would be amusing.

Luckily Natsumi had some secrets she could use.

“I ask you again. Surrender now or we will fight.”

This time the Ryoka didn’t stop her smile from showing, “You’re much more stiff than the other two. Why don’t you just relax and wait for your backup? I’ll just be on my way and you don’t need to strain yourself.”

“Very well, Encircle, Kusarihebi!”

Natsumi’s Zanpakuto started glowing brightly. The blade shrank down and curved forward until it formed a sickle-like blade. From the end of the hilt extended a long black chain that ended in a triangular weight.

While she was presenting a confident front, in her mind Natsumi was still cursing her moronic teammates. If the had followed the plan all three of them would be stalling the Ryoka and potentially defeating her, not trying to take her down one at a time.

‘After this is over, I’m going to have them running drills until they can do them in their sleep.’

With a sharp flick, Natsumi sent the chain whipping towards her opponent, only for her to duck under the attack and fire several glowing arrows in return.

After seeing what that attack had done to Hiei, Natsumi had no desire to take that attack head on, so she manipulated the chain to divert a few of the arrows so they would collide in midair.

Temporarily hidden by the resulting smoke, Natsumi circled off to one side. Just in time as a few more arrows streaked past where she had just been standing. With a soft curse Natsumi realised she needed to force the Ryoka on the defensive or she wouldn’t have a chance. Her ability to quickly attack at long range was too much to deal with for a single opponent.

She grabbed Kusarihebi by the chain and threw the sickle part of her weapon at the Ryoka’s legs.If she was lucky she would be able to reduce her enemy’s mobility, cripple it if she was luckier, but Natsumi would settle for forcing the Ryoka to be on the move.

Seeing her opponent jump to avoid the blade going for her feet, Natsumi threw the other end of her weapon in pursuit, using both ends of the chain to attack at the same time. A few arrows tried to end her continuous attack but she was able to deflect those as well.

Natsumi pressed forward, trying to cut off any escape routes. Her chain whistled through the air, but was either dodged to reflected by the bow before she could get a hit in.

“You’re actually really annoying you know that?” the blonde said deflecting the bladed end with her bow again.

Natsumi smiled, “Well if you want to give up certainly won’t stop you.”

‘Just a little longer.’ she thought.

“Nah, I have a certain person’s plans I want to ruin first. You might not believe it but you have a few traitors running around.”

Natsumi felt her eyes widen. ‘Traitors, here?’

“So what, you and your friends decide to invade us to deal with traitors to the Seireitei out of the kindness of your hearts? Do you take me for a fool?”

“Oh no, we don’t really care about the Seireitei. In fact if your little problem didn’t affect us, then I definitely wouldn’t be here. But since I’m going to get involved anyway, I’m going to do my best to upset their plans.”

‘It couldn’t be simple could it?’ Natsumi complained in her head.

If there was a credible threat to the Seireitei, then she was duty bound to learn more and report the issue. But that information was coming from an active threat to the Seireitei already. Natsumi couldn’t really trust anything the Ryoka was saying but maybe…

“You realize I won’t take your word for any of this, right?” The Ryoka nodded easily. “Is there any proof you have to verify this?”

“Hmm, well I don’t exactly carry things like that around you know? But I can tell you they are responsible for the old Squad 2 and 12 Captains being driven off, along with the Kido Commander. Not sure if you would know about that or not but it should be of interest to your Captain.” the Ryoka eyed Natsumi thoughtfully. “Some other things they’ve done that are less relevant to your squad... they are responsible for the death of your Squad 13 lieutenant, the incident involving a bunch of your officers being turned into Hollows, and various incidents where Soul Reapers have been ambushed by Hollows. A certain training incident springs to mind.”

Natsumi just stared at the insane person in front of her. There was no way most of those incidents were related. Hell, several of them had detailed records corroborated across multiple Squads. Natsumi felt pretty safe dismissing everything as a lie at this point.

Her disbelief must have shown on her face since the Ryoka continued, “I wouldn’t tell you that unless I had a way to prove I know what I’m talking about.”

“Yeah? And how are you going to do that?” Natsumi asked cautiously.

“Well I’ll give you a prediction, in the next few days one Souske Aizen is going to die. Apparently, and here is the fun part, from being stabbed with his own sword. And no one will notice a fight. Naturally, it will be done by your traitors.”

Natsumi’s blood ran cold. She was saying a Captain was going to die? So either these traitors were real, or the Ryoka were aiming to assassinate one of the most powerful people in the Seireitei and one of them was happily announcing their intentions. Either way she felt she needed to hear everything.

“Okay, you have my attention. Who are these traitors?”

The source of Natsumi’s growing headache smirked, “Well you have three of them, and you aren’t going to like it. They are…” The Ryoka looked down one of the streets leading to the courtyard. “Well that’s just bad timing.” She turned to face Natsumi. “Don’t suppose you will let me run off after I tell you?”

Natsumi shook her head. She sensed her reinforcements were closing in fast, with two Lieutenant level Shinigami as well.

Suddenly the Ryoka swung her bow to point at one of the streets and unleashed an arrow that positively hummed with power. The attack streaked towards the barrier surrounding the two of them before shattering the thing like it was made of glass instead of a fully incanted kido barrier.

“Sorry, things to do, people to see. Tell your captain about this if you want but don’t spread it around if you don’t want to die.”

The Ryoka took aim down the street the reinforcement team was coming from. Natsumi paled as another glowing arrow formed. If that hit the reinforcement team…

Natsumi hadn’t been just standing around while she questioned the Ryoka. She had been subtly using her Reiryoku to maneuver her chains behind her opponent. Unfortunately she was only able to get the chains around her left arm and the bow, but that was enough to prevent the Ryoka from aiming at the others.

“Its over Ryoka! Give up now and we will investigate your claims.” Natsumi shouted. Without her ranged option Natsumi was certain this was almost over.

Up until the Ryoka let the bow disperse into light and pulled out some boxy handheld device and pointed it at her.

“Just a heads up? The bow probably would have hurt less.”

Natsumi could only watch as golden light erupted from the end of the device and slammed into her, an instant later she collided with the wall surrounding the courtyard and it was a struggle to even remain conscious. Natsumi dimly recognised two more flashes of light before she was able to pull herself to her knees.

Through the haze of in her mind she recognized the Ryoka had run off and the entrance to the street the reinforcement team was coming from was smoking rubble. She wanted to get to her feet, but the effort was too much and she pitched forward, collapsing on the ground.

Her last thought was ‘The captain isn’t going to like this.’ and then everything went black.

-o-

I stared at the pile of rubble where the gate used to be, then at the pistol device in my hand, then back at the rubble.

Huh.

These things didn’t do that much damage to Urahara’s training room. Do the Seireitei just use subpar materials? The shots should have collapsed the walls some slowing down the new arrivals, not explode the thing.

Putting the spent devices back in their holsters, I looked back at the Soul Reaper I had been fighting.

Looks like I surprised her having more than one way to attack at a distance, cause the max power I could squeeze out of the one-off models would only inconvenience a fighter at her level if she was on guard.

I smirked, guess I lucked out she was distracted by the reinforcements. Speaking of, I should get moving.

Spinning on my heel, I ran down one of the connecting streets. While I bought time with my stunt, I wasn’t confident I could take on two Lieutenants at the same time and get away before even more people showed up.

Dodging down some random side alleys, I thought back on the fight. Despite them tracking me down I wasn’t super impressed with the Squad 2 team. I mean yeah, they were skilled and everything, but the boys were only about as strong as Ichigo was before he joined up with Urahara for training. And they called themselves elite!

The girl was kinda scary though.

She had the raw power that the other two lacked on top of being more skilled. If she wasn’t consciously moving our fight away from her downed teammates she would have pressed me much harder than she did. And even then she delayed my long enough for her reinforcements to get close!

I hope she isn’t too upset by the suckerpunch, if we all live through this I kinda want a rematch.

The scenery continued to stay pretty much the same the entire time I ran. Looking up I saw that the plateau that contained the central buildings was pretty close by. At the rate I was going I would be able to reach the cliffside in a few more minutes.

Not bad if I wanted to continue on my own. But I was reaching the end of my ability to navigate the Seireitei on my own.

I had yet to find a comprehensive map of the place- good security by the soul reapers annoyingly enough -and this close to the tower where Rukia was being held I was losing my easiest navigation point. Simply going towards the tower wasn’t really an option when you are already at the tower after all.

Continuing by myself wasn’t something I was very interested in. It would leave me fighting several captain level opponents with no backup, no way to contact the others, and nowhere to go. I might be able to manage if I was on my own, but doing any of that with Rukia in tow was likely impossible.

My best bet would be to hide out nearby and wait for Ichigo to show up. I know that his group was the first to get to this area, and if I remember correctly he had a member of squad four who was sympathetic to rescuing a capital offense criminal.

With that in mind I broke the lock on one of the buildings and found myself in some kind of meeting room. Basically just a table surrounded by chairs, but it would do for now.

I sat down in one of the chairs, put my feet up, and prepared for a bit of a wait.