#if canon is wish fufilment as a kid about having the power to fix things

[gallusrostromegalus]

Further Rangiku thoughts, because this reappeared in my notes:

In AEIWAM, Rangiku is Captain of the 10th and Hitsugaya is her lieutenant. This is an arrangement that annoys everyone until they consider how much worse it would be the other way around.

---

The vast majority of Shinigami come into their spiritual prowess in late puberty or early adulthood, but Hitsugaya hit his at the equivalent of age eight, and worse, his zanpakuto is Hyorinmaru, a sword spirit that keeps re-incarnating in different psychics, pretty much all of whom have turned out to be immensely powerful and influential. Any dojo or military organization would consider it a massive boon to have the wielder of Hyorinmaru in their ranks. Any noble house would be thrilled to have him marry into the family. Others still think he'd make a fascinating lab subject. The fact that Hitsugaya is a child matters little to the benefits of abducting him, forcing him to marry, or worse.

So from the moment Hitsugaya first drew the dragon blade, there's been a target on his back.

He does have one thing going for him though: His Big Sister is already a shinigami, and during her first break home from the academy, Momo brings her new Upperclassman Bestie home to the farm to meet everyone.

It took Hitsugaya a few years to work out exactly WHAT that brief look of distress on Rangiku's face when they first met was, but once he did, her subsequent insistence that he come back with them for a little trip to the city "just so he can see the academy, and there's some people I'd like him to meet-" made an awful lot more sense. As did her then dragging him along on a "Ditch Day" to the city center to see the first division, then bull-rushing the guards and actually carrying him under her arm like a stolen piglet as she sprinted through the division until she got to the inner courtyards where an austere but refined old man was pouring himself a western-style afternoon tea.

"HI LIEUTENANT-CAPTAIN SASAKIBE SORRY TO INTERRUPT I'M RANGIKU MATSUOMOTO I WAS AT YOUR LECTURE ON ANOMALOUS ZANPAKUTO RIGHT BEFORE BREAK-" She bellowed, holding him up to the old man's face, where he was subjected to the Infamous Chojiro Sasakibe Glower Of Disapproval for the first time. "-THIS IS MY FRIEND'S LITTLE BROTHER TOSHIRO HITSUGAYA HE HAS HYORINMARU."

Sasakibe arched a skeptical brow at them, and set down his teacup.

"PLEASE SHOW HIM YOUR SWORD BEFORE I GET STABBED?" Rankigu prompted, lightly jiggling Toshiro to his senses.

Blankly, Toshiro held up the katana that had manifested in his room last month. Sasakibe leaned forward, glowering at the sword for a moment before his expression shifted to mild surprise and then a pleasant smile.

"...While I must recommend making an appointment in the future Miss Matsumoto, I must thank you for introducing us so promptly. Please, join me." Sasakibe gesture to the tea service set at the table.

"...Master Hitsugaya, was it?" he asked, and Toshiro nodded. "We've been expecting you."

---

Rangiku came to the farm every school break and nearly every weekend after that, bearing study guides and binders full of intelligence profiles and tutored both him and Momo, despite being in the final year at the academy and working on her graduation thesis. She reviewed historical data and survey methods with Momo, every Official Record coming with a bonus Rangiku Record of what a licentious, cruel, lying shithead every district Daimyo, governmental body or noble scion was. Toshiro developed an extreme suspicion of the bourgeoisie and government in short order.

You may enroll in the academy next year, if you like. Sasakibe had offered him at the end of the bewildering tea time. I cannot compel you, and I do not wish to frighten you, but I must be honest. They will come for you and the promise of Hyorinmaru sooner than later.

The first attempt came while walking to the train station to meet Momo and Rangiku.

It was January, and he was probably under-dressed for the weather, but at least the reason the cold never bothered him was a little clearer, and he was taking his time, looking at the way ice crystals had formed on the dead grasses and fenceposts during the previous night's hoarfrost.

"Excuse me young man?" Someone called out behind him. "Can you tell me how to get to the Hitsugaya Farmstead?"

He turned to look- there was a man in the road, dressed in the formal way one might expect a governmental agent to be, but with a notable lack of agency logo, something all legitimate agents were required to display per C46 Departmental Regulations, section 406- I've been studying momo's homework too hard.

-but FUCK this guy.

"Which one? There's like five Hitsugayas in my class alone." he lied.

"Oh, maybe you know him!" the man smiled, stepping closer, and Toshiro fought to not flinch. "I'm looking for Toshiro Hitsugaya- I'm with the Shin'o Academy, he's won a scholarship!"

The Hell And Fuck You Are. "Lucky bastard." he grumbled.

"You know him?" the definitely-fake-agent asked, stepping closer again, and Toshiro turned on his heel, walking towards the train station and waving for the man to follow. Rangiku was on the verge of inventing her own don't-get-groped-based marital art with her "Barmaid Ballet".

"Yeah, yeah- that Dweeb has all the luck. Come on, his house is kind of around the dogleg to the other side of that hill." Toshiro pointed across the valley.

"That's an awfully long way to walk to school for both of you." the man pouted, following him, again, slightly too close for comfort.

"Yeah, that's why I'm ditchin' it to go see The Carrion Crows play down in Inuka-I'll walk you to the station." Toshiro smirked. "There's a path along the river, but I wouldn't risk it in this weather- it's probably faster to get on the next train, take it two stops down to Hinamizawa Station, and then take the county line road back in for about four miles. It's longer as the crow flies, but they've for sure plowed that road by now."

"That's very naughty of you!" The man mock-scolded, speeding up enough that he was almost within arm's reach.

"What are you, my mom? Life's too short for Algebra!" Toshiro laughed, pivoting on his heel to face the man and take his shoulder out of grabbing range. "...probably explains why that nerd Toshiro is getting the scholarship and not me though."

"Not ditching. Lying." the man smirked down at him.

Shit. "Huh?" Toshiro glared, continuing to walk backwards towards the station and trying to keep his knees from shaking. Keep going- maybe Momo's train will get in early, or the stationmaster will hear if I start screaming.

"I have to admit, your ability to fabricate on your feet is very impressive- and bodes well for your future with our organization, Toshiro." the man leered, easily keeping up with him.

"Bruh." Toshiro rolled his eyes. "I dunno what you're on about, but I'm Jushiro. Toshiro lives way the fuck over there."

There was the briefest hesitation on the man's face. "Stop lying, there can't be that many little boys with white hair-"

"Dude, like half the people here have white hair." Toshiro gambled. Statistically speaking, the only other person this asshole had seen was Stationmatster Tanaka, who had gone prematurely silver. "The previous Daimyo was a DOG, Toshiro's probably my second or third cousin, like everybody else in this dump."

The man hesitated. It was a common enough phenomenon, and played to seireitei stereotypes about the middle districts. If he'd only seen Tanaka and only half-read the report, it'd be plausible enough-

"-I mean, if you really insist, I'm more than willing to take the scholarship money off your hands." Toshiro leered, taking the final bend before the train station. "Might be a bit of a problem when Toshiro doesn't show up at the academy bit that's not necessarily *your* problem, right?"

"What'd you say your surname was?" the man squinted.

"Ukitake." Toshiro said the first name that popped into his head. What the fuck. Do I even know an Ukitake?

The man stopped, glaring. "...Jushiro Ukitake? From the Gotei-13? Really?"

THAT'S WHOSE NAME I KNOW? FUCK. and this time, Toshiro couldn't hide the twitch of hesitation-

"GOTCHYA!" the man grinned, lunging for him-

Hands up to guard your head, drop on your side, and roll. Rangiku's Drill Voice echoed in his head as he sandbagged into the snow, the man flying over him.

Up on your fingers and toes, like you're at a track starting line. Whatever direction you're facing- Toshiro popped up again as stranger danger plunged into the snowbank behind him. He was oriented even before he was on his feet.

-RUN.

There was a POFF! as he took off sprinting, reiatsu surging in his legs. Even in his shitty straw sandals, he didn't slide, racing for the station, closing the quarter mile to the station- The man was behind him.

He was fast- too fast, even faster than Momo with her Shun'po technique.

Don't look- keep your eyes on your target. Rangiku mentally lectured him. Hopefully they're stupid and will swipe for you at a stride's length, and miss. If they're smart and close the distance to less than that, they won't miss, but you'll have an extra half-second to run and that may make all the difference.

"You're quick!" The man laughed, a stride behind Toshiro but not grabbing yet. "What, you think you'll be safe if you can get to the station? You think I won't just kill any witnesses?"

SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT-! Toshiro could feel his heart hammering in his chest-

"DROP!" Rangiku bellowed, her voice beautifully, wonderfully booming hard enough to make his ears ring. He obeyed instantly, catching the faintest glimpse of the red-and-white academy uniforms before he was buried in the snow. The man's hand plunged in after him, grabbing him by the collar and pulling up-

"Growl, Haineko."

"DON'T BREATHE TOSHIRO!" Momo screamed just before the scalding wave of reiatsu hit, just over his head, he could swear he felt some of his hair sizzle.

"You think some glitter is going to st-ulk?" The man began to laugh but then made a strange, unpleasantly wet noise, and Toshiro was dropped to the ground. He fell on his shoulder, hard, and rolled onto his back, clutching it in pain and looked up.

It was beautiful.

He'd seen something like it before- Diamond Dust, it was called, when it got truly, deeply, bone achingly cold and the valley fog froze into glittering crystals. This was different- a concentrated stream of shimmering prismatic shards, glittering with both reflected light and the mirage caused by the heat of the attack.

Behind him the man collapsed to the ground with a wet, hacking cough that didn't let up.

"TOSHIRO!!" Momo shrieked, tackling him and pulling him up into a defensive embrace, clinging as hard to him as he clung to her. "DON'T LOOK!"

Naturally, he turned to look.

It was also beautiful. The bright red dotted and spread across the snow like an ink wash over wet paper, the way his body had crumpled to the ground, already half-buried was like the peaks of the distant mountains over the clouds.

And while the sight would haunt him for the rest of his life, there was even something poetic about the way blood streamed from the man's face lacerated beyond recognition save for his mouth, which coughed more up like a fountain with each shuddering gasp.

Rangiku stepped up to the man and with a flick of her wrist, Haineko collapsed back into a sword, growing up from the hilt like hoarfrost building on the grasses. In an elegant motion, she turned the blade so it's tip pointed to the ground, and plunged it straight into the man's skull.

"Rest In Peace." She spoke, voice soft and expression distant.

"You- You killed him!" Momo gasped. "You don't even know who-"

"There's no treating acute pulmonary hemorrhages. That was kinder." she said, voice flat as she re-sheathed Haineko. "-and he's Onmitsukido."

"The- the punishment squad?" Momo's voice quavered.

"This is a real government agent's uniform, but there's no identification patch or badge." She said, kneeling in the snow and rummaging through the dead man's overcoat. after a moment, she pulled out an envelope with the cross-shaped symbol Toshiro witnessed from Momo's homework. "-Here's his letter of marque."

"Oh, GOD-!" Momo sobbed.

"I'll make the call in about the body, but I don't think he or your grandmother should stay at the farm anymore." Rangiku sighed, and placed her hand on Toshiro's shoulder. "I'm so sorry. You shouldn't have to grow up this fast."

Toshiro looked up, bewildered, to the saddest expression he would ever see on that woman's face.

...Until three months later, when the next attempt came.

---

Five years and eight more kidnapping attempts, three extortion attempts and one particularly nasty try at an assassination, Toshiro was about to enter his final year at the academy, and witness to a bizarre conversation.

The boy was walking back from the administration offices when he walked through a noxious cloud of cigarette smoke. He peered down through the banisters of the corridor's safety railing, about to holler that this was a terrible place for a smoke- the Headmaster and Captain-General was here today, and in a foul mood according to the front desk lady.

To his vast surprise, the person lighting up was the captain-general.

"-Look, I get it." Captain Isshin Shiba sighed, his own cigarette in hand as he leaned back against the wall next the Yamamoto. "It's a bad look, putting the kid in a division headed by a scion, especially after that incident with the Tsunyashiros last year-"

"Political fucking catastrophe you mean." Yamamoto grumbled, handing the lighter back to Shiba

"-but for fuck's sake, I don't fucking count. I forsook the clan head position when I swore my oath of office, and my sister makes fireworks for a living. We don't even have land holdings anymore!" Shiba groaned.

"I know that, you know that, the shitheads over at the Ise clan and the Central 46 know that, but the truth doesn't matter- only what they can argue in court." Yamamoto continued to grumble, which Toshiro was beginning to suspect was his default tone of voice. "-Komamura has an extremely secure division, is fond of young Hitsugaya and has trained others in bankai before."

"All my love to Sajin and if that's your final decision I'll abide by it but-" Shiba started.

"-but!" Yamamoto rolled his eyes.

"Be honest on two points: first, what's the worse catastrophe: duking it out in court with the shitheads, or losing Hitsugaya?" Isshin glared. "And second- is the seventh division REALLY more secure than the academy? Where we've already had a string of incidents?"

"Losing the boy, obviously." Yamamoto glared at Isshin. "-And if you can think of a safer place for him than within arm's reach of a fellow captain, I'd love to hear it."

"There isn't one. Koma-kun would kill and die for him." Isshin agreed. "...But how often is he actually going to BE within arm's reach? The Seventh needs to be staffed at all times but Komamura gets called out to handle intractable spirits and yokai every other week! The boy would be either going with him into the unsecured ass-end of nowhere, or guarded by Iba and- again, all my love to the man- but he's not punching in the same weight class as a captain."

Yamamoto continued to glare for a moment, before turning from Isshin and taking a drag on his own cigarette.

"What's your proposal then?" the old man sighed. "You're called to the field even more than Komamura."

Isshin Shiba inhaled, steadying himself, and then laid out his Proposal:

"Matsumoto."

Yamamoto squinted at Isshin for a moment. "-The one with..." he paused, searching for a word.

"-With the huge bazongas, yes." Isshin grimaced.

"...With Haineko, and begun bankai training herself?" Yamamoto bristled.

"Exactly! She's going to be captain-class sooner than later, and devoted to the boy- she was the one that foiled the first attempt on him! ...and set the Tsunyashiro assassin on fire last year." Isshin explained. "Lieutenant Yanagisawa is retiring next year and I'm promoting her to Lieutenant in his place. Even if I'm called to the field, she'll be on-site or if we're both called out, it'll be both of us with the boy on field missions. In this case he really WOULD be within arms reach of a captain-class shinigami at all times."

Yamamoto turned to face Shiba, and Toshiro couldn't see his face.

"Don't get me wrong, I'll take all the help I can get- the more eyes on Toshiro, the fewer chances for someone to grab him. And Komamura is definitely a better teacher than I am..." Isshin winced. "But I do honestly think the Tenth Division is going to be the better place for him to grow as a shinigami. Fewer traumatic interruptions, at any rate."

Yamamoto turned to look out at the courtyard and took another drag, thinking.

"Its poetic in a way. This whole mess is Otogawa's fault in the first place, you know." Yamamoto said, voice very nearly bordering on amusement. "So it really is the tenth's responsibility to handle."

Isshin perked up.

"I'll need to talk it over with Sasakibe and a few other people to make sure the ducks are all in line, and you need to put together a real proposal with a timetable, but you may have something." Yamamoto nodded.

"Thank you sir!" Shiba saluted. "Matsumoto will be very relieved to hear it!"

"Don't act like it's a sure thing- I still need the blessing of a dozen others- least of all, young Hitsugaya himself." Yamamoto waved.

"I'd prefer to work in the tenth, if that's okay?" Toshiro called down.

"MOTHERFUCKER! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN THERE?" Isshin barked with surprise, arms flailing dramatically. Yamamoto turned and arched an overgrown eyebrow up at Hitsugaya.

"Long enough." Toshiro shrugged. "I feel like I should be mad that I'm being micromanaged behind my back..."

"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT! Well. Kind of. I mean-" Isshin sputtered. "Look you might be the genius of your generation and the youngest shinigami to start Bankai training, but you're still a kid- You shouldn't HAVE to make these kind of calculations and maneuvers."

"Like I said, should be." Toshiro hummed. "Truth is, I'm scared. I don't sleep well most of the time. Everyone I meet is a rapid-fire game of spy vs spy bullshit."

He looked away from them as some pigeons took off from the roof, not bothering to hide the sharpness of his gaze- a flinch turned proper defensive maneuver.

"...I guess I'm glad to know someone's looking out for me, you know?" he sighed, giving them a weak half-smile.

"And you'd feel safer in Miss Matsumoto's company than someone else?" Yamamoto asked, voice even, studying him. "The other option I was considering was placing you in the fifth under captain Aizen and your adopted sister."

"Yeah, well..." Toshiro grimaced, scratching at the back of his head. "Look, Momo would fistfight God for me, and Komamura-taicho is really grounding to be around, but neither of them... It's hard to explain, but yeah, I'd feel safer with Rangiku. That's not my main concern though."

"Oh?" Yamamoto asked.

"I'm really, really glad for the Momos and Aizens and Komamuras of this world who keep it running smoothly, but Holy Moly, All Momo ever does in Rukongai Affairs is chase down other people's paperwork, and managing the intake queue of souls is worse because at least sometimes Momo gets to travel? I'd die of boredom before any assassin could get me." Hitsugaya admitted.

"Hollow patrols though? Those are interesting. You go places, you get to see the action, and yeah I know 99% of it is scheduling, but that's telling other people where to be when, not simpering after them for rice subsidy reports." Hitsugaya grinned. "I think- if Hyorinmaru and I weren't being chased all the time and I had the normal amount of pressure on me? I'd still be choosing the tenth to work in next year."

Yamamoto considered this for a moment, before slowly breaking into a wizened, almost draconic grin.

"Very well then. Keep your grades up, let the adults handle the opsec for now, and you'll serve in the tenth." Yamamoto agreed.

"Yes sir!" Hitsugaya Saluted, then jumped again as the warning bell for passing period rang out. "Uh, gotta go!"

"Good to have you on Kid!" Isshin called after him, laughing.

Statistics class was a lot easier that afternoon, with some of his fears lifted.

---

It was five years after that and pouring rain in the late autumn evening, which had cancelled Lieutenant Matsumoto's plans to go boozing with her friends and twentieth-seat Hitsugaya's plans so visit Momo had been cancelled by her- the fifth needed her to do overtime AGAIN, so they were hanging out in one of the covered corridors in the courtyard. Rangiku had badgerd Toshiro into getting her a mug of hot tea, even though it wasn't really cold.

Foul night, but a good one for sharing foul news at least. Like the first abduction attempt on Toshiro in ages.

"-Don't worry about it okay? He didn't even make it into the Seireitei." Rangiku pouted. "I wouldn't bother you with it, except that I remember what a fit you threw when you found out captain Shiba hadn't told you about that court case."

"I- who was this one even working for? You said most of the agencies and clans had given up on me after I became a seated officer." Toshiro stared. "-And how do you even know if he never got close?

"Some fort of Sword-based cult that thinks a bunch of the great swords like Hyorinmaru and Ryujin Jakka need to be taken from the impure hands of the shinigami for some greater purpose, apparently?" she scoffed, shrugging. "...can't call this one great detective work on my part though. The idiot actually walked up to me at the inn during the last SWA Field Trip and offered me money for a chance to 'just talk' to you."

"Oh my goooooood..." Toshiro groaned. "Wait. How much?"

"He did offer me a whopping five thousand kan for an audience alone with you." She nodded, mocking a somber attitude. "-But my loyalty to you is unwavering, and though it pained me, I resisted the temptation of such a great windfall!"

"...five grand? That's barely a week's worth of groceries here?" Hitsugaya glared with disgust.

"I know right? Like I know I look like a whore but I'm starting to worry I look CHEAP!" Rangiku huffed. "Anyway Soi Fon had him hauled off for trial as soon as I stopped laughing so hard I couldn't speak."

"Oh, he got off easy then!" Toshiro sighed with genuine relief.

"Yeah, apparently he didn't see me at first and almost made that offer to Unohana-sama instead." Rangiku shuddered.

"Oof." Toshiro grimaced, trying to not imagine the awful fate the man might have befallen at the chief medic's hands. "Still. Thanks. It's good to know that no news really is good news." he sighed, leaning back against the wall where they were sitting on the floor and sighing.

"So, you're not going to worry, right?" She demanded, ruffling his hair affectionately.

"Augh! No!" He yelped, swatting her hand away. "I won't, okay? You don't need to baby me all the time."

"I really do." She smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes.

Not quite sure what to say, he turned his face away and they sat together in silence for a time, listening to the rain.

"...why do you 'have to' baby me?" he eventually asked, not quite turning to face Rangiku, but watched her out of the corner of his eye. "Were you like, given a secret assignment or something?"

"Hm? No, nothing like that." She shrugged, but didn't immediately answer his question.

"...Have you ever owed someone a favor you can't pay back?" She spoke up after taking a long drink of tea.

"...Sorta." Toshiro admitted. "Kinda sucks."

"Yeah. Kinda does." She nodded, gaze fixed on some distant point, unable to face him.

"I... I wasn't a lot older than you were when I came into my powers and started to be able to hear Haineko. You might have outstripped me already but I'm no slouch, okay? And in the upper districts, you kill ONE hollow and the world and his wife is hammering down your door for help. And I remember what it's like, feeling like you're responsible for everything, that you don't have the option to say no, or someone will die." She sighed. "-That was bad enough, but then word really got around and. You remember the Tsunyashiro attempt?"

"Hard to forget seeing a man engulfed in flames." Toshiro winced. "Not that it's my place to criticize the captain-general, but maybe you could work on an ability for Haineko that isn't quite so catastrophic BEFORE you work on Bankai?"

"I swear, we're not usually that, um, Volatile. But that time I was... angry doesn't cover it. Livid." Rangiku laughed darkly. "You know why he wanted you, right?"

"He was going to forcibly adopt me into the clan to advance their reputation, right?" Toshiro blinked, confused.

Rangiku's pained grimace struck him harder than an actual backhand would have.

"...No. He was intending to forcibly MARRY you into the clan, to advance their bloodline." she sighed.

"He'd be waiting a while for an heir." Toshiro scoffed.

"No. They have. Ways. of achieving their ends." she groaned, rubbing her face. "I won't go into the specifics, but the fact that you're a kid would not have stopped them from torturing an heir out of you."

"...oh." Toshiro mumbled.

They listened to the rain for a while longer. Rangiku didn't remove the hand over her eyes, mug of tea growing cold on the floor in from of her.

"You know that because... Because you were a kid too." Toshiro realized with a cold horror creeping up his spine.

Rangiku nodded, teeth bared in something between a sob and a snarl.

He stared for a moment, before shuffling closer to her and leaning into her side. She wrapped her free arm around him, scooping him up into a hug and burying her face in his shoulder.

"It's okay! I'm okay!" he tried to reassure her, and she sobbed, trying to muffle the sound with his body.

"I'm sorry!" She gasped. "I'm sorry world is still like this! I'm sorry that you need to- to- that we haven't made anything better!"

"It IS better!" He snapped, shaking her shoulders. "You did a really good job! I'm untouchable because of you!"

Rangiku sobbed again, but hugged him tighter. "You get it though? Why I have to baby you? I'll never be able to pay it back, but I can at least pay it forward?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it." he mumbled. "...thank you, Rangiku."

He let her cry into his shoulder for a few more minutes, before she straightened up with a loud and unladylike sniffle, wiping her nose on her sleeve before Toshiro groaned, pulling out a handkerchief.

"Thangs." She mumbled, face flushed and snotty from genuine catharsis. "You're a good kid."

"You're a good guardian?" he tried and she coughed a wet laugh into the cloth, rubbing her face until she could speak again.

"Right! That was too much emotional vulnerability for one day!" She declared, sitting up. "Let's go find Captain Shiba and bully him into getting us dessert somewhere!"

"There's seasonal chestnut manju and persimmon yokan at the tea shop down the road." Toshiro offered, letting her use him as a crutch to get up off the floor.

"IDEAL." She grinned, back to her usual good humor. "Oh CAAAAAAAPTAIN~!" she called.

---

Twenty-six years after that, Rangiku stood over Ichimaru Gin, Haineko's point at his throat, whole body shaking with rage but her hands steady as a rock.

"Come on Ran-Chan, you're not really angry. You'd kill me if you were really angry." Gin smiled fondly up at her.

"The only reason you're alive is that killing you would be letting you get off easy." she snarled.

"You have no idea..." he chuckled and she pressed against his reiatsu barrier, blade nicking his skin and drawing a trickle of blood. "So, this is how it ends? After all we've been through together-"

"I don't owe you." she growled, pressing the point into his neck a bit more.

"Really? That's all our friendship was to you? Debt?" Gin pouted.

"That's all it ever was, me constantly feeling like I owed you happiness for what you did for me." her voice was barely above a whisper, pale silver-blue eyes gone white with rage. "-And the whole time, you were running up the tab from hell behind my back."

"-and who did you pay the debt forward onto, huh?" Gin wriggled, starting to worry that he wasn't gong to win this argument. "Who owes you the way you owe me?"

"Nobody. I never owed you, and he doesn't owe me. It's just being human." she whispered,leaning her whole weight into the blade. "Something I think you don't know a damn thing about."

Gin opened his mouth the protest, inhaling deeply, the opportunity she'd been waiting for-

"GROWL, HAINEKO."

---

so Rangiku's Bankai is named Haineko Asama, and since Haineko means "ash cat" and Mount Asama is a volcano in Japan, does that mean her Bankai can create a pyroclastic cloud? Or does "asama" mean something else in this context?

Got in in one!

Haineko: Asama is a Bankai that creates a Vesuvius-like eruption of 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) Hot Gases and Burning Tephra and a REALLY FUCKING LOUD KABOOM. The Pyroclastic cloud can travel up to 430mph and destroys everything in it's path- opponents closer to the epicenter are the luckier ones- the sheer kinetic energy for the explosion incinerates them immediately. Those farther away may find their bodies punctured with molten shrapnel, crushed by flying boulders, or suffocated and cooked alive as they are encased in ash like the victims of Vesuvius.

It's not an easy Bankai- the energy output is catastrophic, and the longer the 'Eruption' goes on, the greater Rangiku's risk of falling into a coma or straight-up dying from expending too much energy increases. It's also not an easy Bankai to train- For a while, Rangiku wasn't 'wielding' her Bankai so much as just 'releasing' it and learning about the damage when she woke up a week later.

In the end, the ONLY person who could help her with training Asama was Yamamoto himself, because of his Literally Divine resistance to fire, and a millennium's worth of practice at dodging to deal with the rocks and ash. He had to take her out to the ass-end of nowhere in South 80 to find somewhere deserted enough to practice without mass causalities, and the practice STILL effected the weather in the rest of Soul Society. He still spent almost a month in the 4th after they returned from The Year With No Summer, getting the burns, lung damage and broken bones treated, while he waited for his pupil to wake up again.

Yamamoto is now Very Fond of Rangiku because she's the first person in a LONG time that proved to be an actual challenge for him as an opponent, was an interesting student to teach and the first person to even begin to comprehend the problems he faces as an Avatar of Destruction.

Like most Volcanoes, Rangiku spends a lot of time sleeping. Nobody who knows what she's capable of when she 'awakens' complains about her nap schedule.

[twinkrundgren]

hussie even deleted the tweet about making june egbert canon... afaik he's not even associated with homestuck^2 so its up to the writers there to add it but like. if you haven't read homestuck, here's what you need to know about homestuck^2:

homestuck ended on an ambiguous, but positive note. because hussie is bad at writing, many character plot lines were never resolved, but we were portrayed a world where many characters could finally fufill their dreams.

then came... the epilogues.

homestuck is no stranger to timeline shenanigans, to the point of giving the main character super retcon powers to fix all the plot holes that hussie wrote themselves into, but the epilogues have 2 pathways: one where john eats candy, or meat.

they're both very bad.

every happy thing that characters worked towards? ruined by them somehow ending up in a loveless marriage with kids, characters turning evil out of nowhere to provide a new antagonist, including making one of them transphobic for some reason. incredibly ooc, they were both written to basically troll the audience as hussie is known to do, and set up a dubiously canon (their words) sequel: homestuck^2.

sometime around that, hussie ran a contest that involved finding toblerones in random places in the real world, and the first person to redeem it would have their wish come true. the fan who found it asked for june egbert, a name for a popular transfem headcanon of the main character, to become canon, and they said they would.

hussie's done this before, trolling and playing with fans wishes and expectations.

when the kickstarter for hiveswap was going on, you could donate 10 thousand dollars to get your fantroll in the comic. 2 people redeemed it.

you wanna know what happened?

they appear in one panel, getting killed by an explosion.

as far as i know, june egbert is still not in homestuck^2. apparently the project was so badly produced that they had to revamp it entirely, and hussie's only request for homestcuk^2 is making sure a characters name is yiffy.

they never cared about fan expectations, and hussie has had a very long history of doing things just to piss off the fans. (the dancestors, alternate timeline ancestors to the trolls, are all stereotypes of various types of activists, one of them is a hyper sexualized asian woman, and another has brain damage so bad it's treated as a joke.)

homestuck isn't good. you just were never there to watch hussie ruin their own story over and over again to piss off their fans.

whats more queer, a comic about queer women or a webcomic that queer people grew up with and kinned the characters of