Crows x Souls

“No matter what darkness or contradictions lie within the village. I am still Itachi Uchiha of the leaf.” — Itachi Uchiha. 

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Everyone stood in silence as they watched the Captain and her 3rd Seat staring squarely at the other. Even if they didn’t know exactly what was happening, just the fact that the Captain was willing to let this play on let them know that it was more complicated than who was right or wrong.

Another Senkaimon opened and when they looked up, everyone gulped - even Shinji looked unease - as three people stepped through. Their reaction was mainly because of the third person that came with Captain Unohana and Grand Chief Tessai;

Head Captain Yamamoto has descended on the World of the Living. 

“Yoruichi, what is happening here?” Everyone bristled at the phantom weight that fell on their shoulders as his words were pronounced. 

Turning to Yamamoto, without fully taking her eyes off Itachi, Yoruichi explained the bare bones of what she knew. 

Someone had given Itachi a mission with her seal; something both Soi Fon and Itachi verified – except that was just the beginning of the downward spiral that they were now in. 

“Captain Unohana, Grand Chief Tessai, examine the body and tell us what you can. After that, everyone is returning to the Soul Society.” He stared at Itachi as he said that. 

He normally wouldn’t listen to what Itachi had to say, at least until Itachi was standing before him in his office along with a panel of Captains but Yoruichi’s acceptance of the current situation forced his hands. 

“It might take a while, Head Captain.” Tessai Tsukabichi, Kidō Corps Grand Chief, said as Unohana first determined the state of the body before shaking her head. 

“Hmm.” Yamamoto stared at the corpse under examination with no particular emotion on his face but those attuned with their senses could tell that the old man was not happy in the slightest. “In the meanwhile, drop your sword, boy.”

Itachi disengaged from Yoruichi. The lightning on his other hand flickered off while the flames simply entered his sleeves and kept billowing there. 

“Head Captain…” Unohana’s expression looked severe as she regarded the corpse. “Someone is trying to give Shinigami Hollow powers. That, as far as we can tell, is the basis of… whatever experiments this is.”

“The execution then…”

“Was most likely a sacrificial play.” 

Yamamoto turned to Itachi, his back no longer hunched but ramrod straight. “Tell me what happened, and for your sake do not miss a detail.”

Itachi’s robes billowed fiercely as if expressing its displeasure to Yamamoto’s words causing the old man to snort and bang his cane on the ground. 

Whether he was sure of what he was doing or not, Itachi narrated what happened on the mission and got to where he mentioned them being under the influence of an illusion. 

“An illusion, you say?” Yamamoto said and glanced at Itachi’s blade that was obviously different from what he remembered the young man wielding during his test. 

“If you couldn’t tell the appearance of my sword with a single illusion, why are you surprised that there might be others with illusion-type Zanpakutō and are hiding it?” Itachi questioned back, to the surprise of the other Shinigami present. 

He could be passive if he wanted to, but not on this. Clearly whoever was observing him miscalculated quite a bit in the estimation of his strength or else he would have been dead two times over. 

And then there was his own personal bias against traitors. 

“Are you trying to say that a Shinigami fooled the Seireitei, as well as I and the Captains?” Yamamoto asked slowly, causing some of the lower level Shinigami to start sweating down their brows.

“Yes.” Was all Itachi could say. Whether he liked it or not, regardless of his reasons or feelings, he had willingly donned the shihakushō of a Shinigami. 

Make no mistake, he had no delusions about trying to fight everyone off if it came to it, but this was a situation where he had to stand on his beliefs. 

“Tessai?” 

“Head Captain, I’m afraid there’s little we can do here without extensive diagnosis.” Tessai started but paused in hesitation in speaking his next words. 

“Speak freely, Tessai.” 

“Head Captain, given the number of coincidences surrounding both incidents concerning 3rd Seat Itachi, there is a lot of credibility to his words.”

“So it would seem.” Yamamoto turned around and a Senkaimon appeared in front of him. “We are leaving.”

Everyone gathered around Yamamoto, except Yoruichi and Itachi who found themselves in another stare-off that inadvertently increased the tension in the air. 

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” Yamamoto said and walked into the Senkaimon with the other Shinigami. 

“… Seriously?” Yoruichi chuckled as Itachi sheathed his sword and canceled his Shikai. “You had me a bit worried there.”

“The fact that you can somehow find a way to joke around it irks me, Yoruichi.” Itachi said as they walked towards the Senkaimon. 

Yoruichi could only bitterly smile as she saw the cautious distance Itachi was keeping from her. 

“You of all people should understand me and the basis of my reaction. I somehow expected something like this given the different powers at play in the Soul Society but I wasn’t expecting to be targeted like this, not this soon at least.”

They arrived in the Seireitei at the same time to hear Yamamoto’s displeased voice ordering an immediate Captain’s meeting, but this time it wasn’t just limited to Captains but also extended to their Lieutenants and 3rd Seats. 

The Captain’s meeting this time around was way more tense than it had been for the century if the Captains remembered correctly. 

“3rd Seat Itachi, step forward and summarize what happened in your mission in the World of the Living.”

The other people present who were just hearing this for the first time visibly expressed their shock and surprise with the way their jaws hung low by the time Itachi finished saying his piece. 

“So you’re saying that a Shinigami from one of the Divisions with an illusion-type Zanpakutō did all this?”

“I am saying that whoever was behind this has or has someone under them with an illusion-type Zanpakutō. Given how they could manipulate information in the 2nd and 12th Division, as well as the Kidō Corp, at the same time shows that they have considerable influence in the Divisions of the Gotei 13.”

If before they were shocked, now they all wore completely aghast looks at what Itachi practically insinuated with the last sentence of his statement. 

“Bold words there, young man.” Said Ginrei Kuchiki. 

“Bold it might be, but the evidence points that my words might as well be true.” Itachi replied. “And the truth is that someone in the Soul Society, inside the Gotei 13, is experimenting with the souls of Shinigami and Hollows.”

The gathered Captains and 3rd Seats frowned as they started getting a clue as to why they were called in attendance to this meeting. 

This wasn’t about the importance of the matter at hand, well not entirely, instead they were all here as potential suspects; and from the looks on some of the Captains faces, they were realizing the same thing too. 

“Oh, so scary.” Gin sounded in a mock scare. “So did the Capn’s dice ‘n slice up someone innocent?”

“I don’t think so, Gin.” Aizen said with a thoughtful expression. “It’s already established that we are working with a group of people amongst our ranks, so maybe Kinjaro Tomori was just the fall guy. Someone to keep attention from being thrown their way.”

Aizen looked up and saw that half of the people in the room were either looking directly at him or were passively listening to him. 

He wanted to say something else but someone else beat him to it. 

“You do realize that there’s something that doesn’t exactly fit with your whole conjecture, right?”

It was Kensei Mugurama who expressed his doubts, earning some nods from the other Captain. 

“You get it, right? It doesn’t matter how strong or complicated someone’s Zanpakutō is, especially when it’s something elusive like illusions, it is meaningless if they have a weaker Reiatsu than their target, so you saying that they probably fooled their Captain or the Captains means that they have a stronger Reiatsu than us… and you think we wouldn’t notice something that obvious?” 

Itachi didn’t answer because he knew how that sounded himself. Even thinking about it felt unreal. Someone with more Reiatsu than the Head Captain… he didn’t really believe that. 

The Captains, Yoruichi even, could shake herself off his genjutsu because of her overwhelming Reiatsu. Even some of the other Captains were quick to notice his illusion when he first used it. 

‘So someone not known? Maybe outside the Shinigami sphere so that his abilities won’t be known? A member of the Noble Houses perhaps?’

“Of course I wouldn’t have all the answers. If I did, the nature of this meeting would have been different. But…”

‘Tsukuyomi, Amaterasu.’

He slowly pulled out both of his blades under the careful scrutiny of the other Captains, Lieutenants and 3rd Seats. 

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