"You only live Twice"

By Quick-n-Popular

Disclaimer: "Bleach" and its characters are properties of Tite Kubo.

Author's Note: Thanks to those who've read, reviewed, and put this story on alert.

Chapter Three: Meetings that define who we are

Coming back to the Seireitei had been an interesting experience thus far for the Algamated Soul, just recently dubbed Ichigo Shiba. Upon arrival, he was stripped of his zanpaktous and thus met with the other captain's for information.

Meeting with the Sou-taicho had been unnerving but the meeting went well when asked if he harbored any ill-will towards Soul Society, he replied in the negative. One of the captains whose specialty was to differentiate between those who lie and those who are truthful gave him the clear, everything went fairly easy. With Ukitake and Hitsugaya's approval, it was set forward that he would become a shinigami for the Gotei 13, pending on an evaluation and the results from the other studies on him conducted by the science and medical fields.

From his point, he met with the captain of the twelfth division and head of the science bureau. Mayuri Kurotsuchi, from a first glance, looked like a mime with constipation but, first and foremost, that he was a dangerous person when he was both happy and/or angry. His curiosity wanted his to explore every facet of Ichigo, going as far as dissecting him. However, since his status was to be kept alive with no impending side-effects from study, Mayuri, begrudgingly, was forced to only take samples from his skin, reietsu, bodily fluids, etc.

Ichigo was happy when he was shown the door.

Next he was to receive a check up with the medical division, the fourteenth division.

Isane Kotetsu arrived in the usual fashion to her squad and made her rounds inspecting the members of the 11th division who had been on the receiving end of their captain's "daily meeting". However, one thing out of the norm, was to be called into her captain's office.

"Hello, Isane." Her captain, Retsu Unohana called out to her as she entered, "Take a seat, we're going to be covering something special today as we'll be receiving a most unusual patient."

Isane nodded and, after taking a seat, listened to her captain explaining everything she knew about an algamated soul, before talking about the types of procedures they were going to use for this type of examination.

When Ichigo arrived he got many curious glances because of his heterochromatic eyes and hair color, most of which was questioned with whispers and only one person dared to question him about it, his escort named Hanatoro.

"So, why do you have two different colored eyes and hair color? Is it a fashion statement of some kind?"

Ichigo raised an eyebrow, but merely grunted in response, "Not really."

The guy wasn't fazed and merely nodded cheerfully as they made their way to a changing room where he slipped out of his shikashou and into a white robe. From here he was sent to a room where he waited.

Time seemed to go on slowly and Ichigo remembered, somewhat, that "Ichigo"'s life that, in the human world, people waiting for some time to see a doctor was common practice as well. The magazine's here was as tedious as those in the human world, despite being published by the ninth division about Soul Reaper common practices.

It seemed like an hour until the door opened to reveal a silver haired tall girl who was humming as she was overlooking a chart, most likely his.

"Hello, sorry to keep you waiting…ah." When her eyes looked up and met his her face was frozen and slowly but surely a reddish hue spread across her face.

"Uh…miss?" Ichigo asked, "You ok?"

The girl nodded robotically before her face became bright crimson and she whispered, "Excuse me." She then whipped right out back the door.

"Huh." Ichigo muttered before sitting back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

Meanwhile, in the hallway, the girl, the fukotaicho of the fourth division, was breathing heavily while trying in vain to get her heartbeat back down to a steady pulse.

'What is wrong with me?' She asked herself, 'Ok, so, he's…good…looking.' She struggled with her thinking while trying to attempt to breathe normally.

"Isane?"

The silver haired lieutenant went stiff as she turned to see her captain with a serene smile.

"What are you doing out here? Don't we have a patient to see?"

Isane gulped before nodding her head.

"Well then," Unohana said, "Shall we?"

Isane nodded again before following behind her captain inside the room, with her focus on the floor as her face began to become hot.

"Hello there Mr. Shiba, How're you today?" The captain of the fourth asked as she took away the chart from her preoccupied lieutenant.

"Alright, just a little bored, I guess." Was Ichigo's reply.

Retsu nodded and she snapped out Isane from her thoughts and had her run a diagnostic scan on the boy from head to toe to detect anything other than what was normal in a regular shinigami. To their immense surprise, nothing was out of the norm from what they would encounter from any other soul reaper.

From here they did the basic routine of questioning about anything that felt wrong or out of the ordinary then asked about connections to the person's zanpaktou in terms of entering or exiting shikai as would pertain to the health of reietsu flow. Afterwards, to the surprise of two individuals, she asked for Isane to talk with Ichigo while she wrote her findings to the head commander.

What followed was a long, uncomfortable silence, before Ichigo started it.

"So, um, what can you tell me about the Seireitei?"

Isane blinked before she closed her eyes and took three steady breaths before answering.

"What would you like to know?"

The two then talked for a great while about the aspects that Isane liked about where she worked and lived. Only until her captain came to remind her of her other round of patients that she had that their conversation had come to a halt.

A meeting of the captains came into place soon where all were assembled to discuss the Algamated soul reaper, Ichigo Shiba and where to place him.

All criteria had been covered in regards to training and performance as he demonstrated to the 10th Division his abilities with his zanpaktou to considerable standards, even though the captain of the division and his lieutenant had already seen him in action. While his ability to use kido was minor, it didn't prevent his recommendation to be allowed to be in any seat from fourth on up.

"So, where do we put him?" Kyoraku of the Eight Division mused after much of the banter of the matter died.

"Wouldn't it better suit him if his captain was one who yielded two zanpaktous as well?" Unohana asked.

"Well, I have no arguments for putting him in my division as a fourth seat." Ukitake stated.

Kyoraku nodded himself, "After the death of my third seat, I have no qualms either but, again, where will he be best in?"

They turned to Yamamoto whose eyes were squinted as he surveyed everybody before making his announcement, "We will have him given a tour of duties of both divisions and let him make the final decision, if both captains agree."

The Eighth and Thirteenth Division captains nodded their heads in agreement.

Ichigo had spent most of his time with adjusting to the Soul Society with the help of Isane and, to his surprise, her sister Kiyone.

While Isane was more reserved and slightly introverted, Kiyone was the exact opposite as she seemed to have an opinion about practically everything and she seemed hot tempered about her associate who popped up just recently with a request from their captain to escort Ichigo to the division.

"Geez, Sentaro! Can't you see we're in the middle of something!"

"Our Captain's orders take precedence, Kiyone!"

The two bickered and argued all the way back to their division, unaware that they were being ignored in favor of the conversation that Ichigo was still having with Isane before the Lieutenant remembered where she was and then promptly excused herself to go back to her own division.

Ichigo and the two squabbling third seats made their way to their captain's quarters. There Ichigo sat and waited while his eyes wandered around and he was able to pick out things that he could recall in crystal clear detail from when Kaien Shiba was still alive and was Lieutenant of this division.

It still, after all this time, difficult to adjust that he was Kaien, but then again he was Ichigo Kurosaki, two sides of the same coin, Ichigo Shiba being that coin.

His inner turmoil was put on hold when the sliding door to the captain's office opened and Captain Ukitake called out to him, "Well, come on in Shiba-san, let's have some tea while we talk about what it is going to happen in the next couple of days."

To be continued…

A/N: Sorry to abruptly end the chapter here but I need to organize my thoughts on what and where this story is headed to. Please review in the meantime.

Q-n-P