'Are we... still conscious?'
Originally, the Squad 7 members present had braced themselves to pass out. After all, no matter how they looked at it, Lord Shihouin's underlying implication just now was that he intended to help that Ryoka.
They hadn't expected him to genuinely just offer her a single chance without any intention of going easy on her. A few members who had joined the squad less than a century ago suddenly recalled the phrase Instructor Shihouin repeated most often back at the Shin'ō Academy: "Opportunities are seized by your own hands. Never expect your enemy to give you a chance, or else you already have one foot in the grave."
Thinking about it that way, this outcome didn't seem surprising at all. However, Instructor Shihouin's doting affection for Rukia was a well-known fact, so it wouldn't have been entirely impossible for him to deliberately let the Ryoka go.
Ikkanzaka Jirōbō couldn't care less about what Kōe was thinking. If you could actually guess what Instructor Shihouin was thinking, you weren't far from developing a split personality anyway. His only concern was the custody of the unconscious Inoue Orihime—or rather, the custody of the merit for capturing a Ryoka.
"Thank you for your hard work, Instructor Shihouin. I will take this Ryoka back to Squad 7 and keep her under strict surveillance."
"Oh? When did I ever say I was handing her over to you?" Kōe looked at Jirōbō's square face with great interest. *'This guy looks honest and simple-minded, but he's actually quite petty and calculating. You really can't judge a book by its cover.'*
"You are not permitted to participate in the Gotei defense mission..."
"But besides you, there is someone else here who can participate in the defense mission." As Kōe spoke, he knocked on the wall to his left and called out loudly, "Someone is trying to snatch a prisoner from Squad 11. Aren't you going to come out and say something, Captain Zaraki?"
A small head with pink hair suddenly popped out from the end of the bridge, waving happily at Kōe. "Hello there, Kocho!" She then turned her head and complained to Zaraki Kenpachi on the other side of the wall, "I told you Kocho would spot us, Ken-chan!"
"You were the one who wanted to play hide-and-seek first, Yachiru." Finding it too troublesome to take a detour, Zaraki simply kicked down the wall in front of him. He first flashed a grin at Kōe, then turned his toothy smirk toward Jirōbō. "This Ryoka belongs to Squad 11. You lackeys can get lost now."
"Captain Zaraki, we clearly found her first!"
"Do you catch Ryoka with your eyes? Or with your mouths? As expected of Komamura, he only teaches trash." Zaraki cracked his neck and sneered. "Squad 11 has never played by those rules. If you're so reluctant to let her go, you can try and see if you can take her from me. Heh."
Because of Kōe's restricted status, these squad members still had the nerve to argue with him. But facing Zaraki was a completely different story. The man was the bona fide Captain of Squad 11. Until their own captain appeared, his word here was the highest command.
Whether they were willing or not, they had to yield. Dejected, Jirōbō bid farewell to Kōe and Zaraki before leading his subordinates away.
*'It's just a shame about that Ryoka,'* Jirōbō thought. *'She looks like the weakest of the bunch. It'll be hard to find another opportunity to earn merit this easily...'*
"I didn't expect you to actually attack that woman. She's so weak I don't even have the interest to kill her." It wasn't until the squad members had completely left that Zaraki began to complain to Kōe. "I thought following you would be the fastest way to find some interesting characters, but now you're just wasting my time."
"I'm not a violent maniac, and I didn't leave the Shin'ō Academy just to hunt down these Ryoka."
"You hypocrite. You were clearly the first one who couldn't resist attacking."
"Protecting the Seireitei is the duty and obligation of every Shinigami," Kōe replied. Then, a question suddenly occurred to him. "Suppose I really did come out specifically to find the Ryoka. Why did you come following me? Don't tell me it's for something as boring as stealing merit?"
"Yachiru's directions are too inaccurate. She keeps making me run in circles around the Seireitei." Before Zaraki could finish, Yachiru, perched on his back, retorted in dissatisfaction, "It's clearly because your sense of direction is terrible, Ken-chan!"
*'You two don't need to compete over this. You're both top-tier with no sense of direction, so why hurt each other?'* Kōe complained silently. It was obvious that both of them were hopelessly bad with directions, yet strangely enough, there were two places they would never get lost trying to find: the Squad 4 Comprehensive Relief Clinic, and the Shin'ō Academy.
*'Sure enough, as long as they put their hearts into it, even people with no sense of direction can remember the way, right?'*
Zaraki didn't bother arguing further with Yachiru. Similar disputes happened almost every day, but it never stopped him from continuing to let her guide him.
"Second, you're pretty good at tracking people down. Following you saves a lot of time." Zaraki shook his head, continuing with a disappointed expression. "I just didn't expect the person you found this time to be so boring. Did you get so fed up with the Shin'ō Academy that you just wanted an excuse to get out as soon as possible?"
*'It really is true that you become who you surround yourself with.'* Kōe couldn't help but view Zaraki's intelligence in a higher light. *'After fighting with me for so long, he's actually gotten a lot smarter!'*
However, there was one thing the man got wrong. Inoue Orihime was not a boring person. On the contrary, Kōe was far more interested in her than he was in Ichigo.
Shun Shun Rikka, the power of rejection—an ability that Aizen Sōsuke had evaluated as trespassing upon the realm of the gods. Kōe had wanted to witness it for himself for a very long time.
But he couldn't tell Zaraki any of this right now. He still needed to rely on the captain to temporarily look after Inoue Orihime. With that in mind, Kōe tossed out the bait he had prepared. "This woman might be boring to you, but if you use her, the interesting ones will come looking for you on their own."
"Oh?" Zaraki was predictably intrigued. Seeing this, Kōe smiled and explained, "This woman knows the identities of all the Ryoka. At the same time, she has a close relationship with three of them. Tell me, if those three hear the news that their companion has been captured, do you think they'll rush over to rescue her?"
"So, you're going to use her to make all those Ryoka come to you at once. Sounds pretty good. Saves us the time of hunting them down."
"Not me, you!" Kōe pointed at Zaraki. "I told you already, I have no interest in these Ryoka. I'm leaving them all for you to play with. Just don't mess it up."
"It'd be best if they actually could make me mess up."
*'I really don't understand these guys who find joy in fighting,'* Kōe thought helplessly. Aloud, he said, "Take good care of her. Seeing the person they want to rescue right in front of them should raise their fighting spirit a bit higher. If there are no other questions, I'll be taking my leave."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Sayo ran off and got lost! I have to hurry up and find her!" Kōe grabbed his head, a look of absolute despair on his face. Zaraki stared at him, the corner of his mouth twitching as he asked uncertainly, "So, you rushed out here in such a hurry just to find a cat?!"
"What else would it be?!"
Completely unable to understand people who found joy in raising cats, Zaraki waved Kōe off. He had almost ended up accompanying Kōe on a cat hunt and missing out on the Ryoka. It wasn't like he could ask the guy's cat to fight him, right?
Zaraki couldn't comprehend the joy of seeing a cat, and most people in the Seireitei would find it equally hard to understand. But that did not include the person below.
"Oh my, isn't this Sayo? How did you end up all the way out here?"
What kind of feeling was this?
"It's been a long time since I last saw you. Has it been a hundred years already..."
For him, it was likely the joy of reuniting with an old friend.