Deep Within The Maggots Nest

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Bleach.

Chapter 8: Innovation And Excitement

"Y'know you could always take a picture?" A young looking silver haired boy said smiling at the pink haired woman. Sakura snapped out of her thoughts once he spoke and smiled sadly surprising both Gin and Aizen when she next spoke.

"I'm sorry, it's just..." She trailed off before shrugging inwardly deciding it couldn't hurt to tell them, it's not as if they could could use this information against her. She smiled at him. "You remind me greatly of a close friend of mine, from when I was alive I mean." The boys smile widened.

"Oh? How so?" The smile stayed on his young face while Aizen took a sip of his tea looking over at Sakura seemingly surprised about something.

"You don't usually like to talk about your human life." He commented smiling his ever gentle looking smile. Sakura sighed and took a sip of her own tea before responding.

"To tell you the truth I'm not sure you should take that as a complement." She smiled wistfully "Sai was... Hmmm, how do I put it?... Conditioned at a very young age to be completely emotionless. He knew almost nothing of how to socialize with people other than the ones giving him orders and what he did know was only knowledge he acquired from reading books." She looked down at the boy sitting across from her, hyper aware of the man sitting next to her, studying her, and frowned. "He was always smiling, that stupid, transparent fake smile." Her eyes sharpened just a bit. "Just like you." Then she suddenly smiled breaking what would have been an awkward moment. "You know you would be a much cuter kid if you showed your real emotions." She said ironically but he just laughed it off.

"I must admit I am extremely curious about your human life, Sakura-san." Aizen said looking down at her. "It sounds so much different than the human world I have seen." Sakura raised an eyebrow knowing that he would try to take advantage of her sudden sharing mood, and decide to remind him that he was out of luck.

"You must remember that I am a lot older than I look. Not only was I imprisoned for over a thousand years but before that I lived a long time in both Rukongai and Seireitei." She smiled, enjoying playing with him. "I'll assume you're most curious about my people." He nodded looking somewhat sheepish. Sakura smiled a small sad smile, one she didn't even have to fake emotion for. It was still a sore subject but she reminded herself it was for her friends and her new home and for the sake of disappointing Aizen. It was something she had come to enjoy over the years, seeing the slight tightness in his eyes. He always managed to smile it off be she knew she frustrated him. "We were a race of warriors and almost every one of us was raised on conflict. The different nations always seemed to find a reason to fight and when they weren't fighting, criminals always seemed to act up. But then a Great War was started, in which all the nations came together to fight a common enemy." Aizen raised an eyebrow while Gin listened still smiling. "After the war was a time of peace like which no one had ever seen. I left my own village a few years later, I had stopped aging by then and decided that leaving was the best way the protect the friends I had left, there were after all still people out there who would stop at nothing to gain immortality. I didn't see any of my loved ones again until the day I died when one of them killed me." Gin hummed.

"Hmmm, sounds sad." The sympathetic words seemed meaningless when said with such a smile on his face. Sakura lifted her cup to her lips to hide a secretive smile and started once again.

"It doesn't matter anyways." Aizen looked over at her, puzzled.

"Why's that?" He asked.

"For all I know I could have come from a completely different world, different dimension even." She frowned. "And there is absolutely no way back, trust me I've tried and I was thrown in jail for it."

"I see so it is a moot point anyways." His voice had an edge to it. Sakura shook her head and moved to stand.

"Sorry, but I really must get back. I'll see you again next week Aizen-san," he nodded to him before looking at Gin. "It was nice of you to join us Gin-chan" his smile widened as she called him 'Gin-chan', a sign he was annoyed but she ignored it and continued. "You'll have to come by again." The child nodded.

"Gin why don't you walk Sakura-san back to her division." Aizen suggested but both Sakura and Gin knew it was an order. Gin nodded again and stood to stand next to the pink haired woman. She waved as they walked out of the tea house.

Sakura and Gin walked side by side in a comfortable silence. She looked over to the smiling boy and sighed, causing him to glance up at her through slitted eyes. She smiled back at him.

"You don't have to walk me back Gin-chan. Why don't you swing by the tenth division?" She said looking down slyly at him. "I know Rangiku-chan would be happy to see you." He seemed to consider this though his face betrayed nothing and not for the first time she cursed him for only leaving his eyes slightly open, she hated not being able to read his eyes.

"Why not?" He laughed a bit and waved happily. "See you later Sakura-fukutaichou."

Sakura shook her head as she watched him walk away off towards the tenth division. She smiled faintly looking at his back for a second longer before walking off. She hadn't been telling the complete truth when she said the he had reminded her of Sai. There was someone else he reminded her of even more than the emotionless artist, despite the smile on his face.

It had become a tradition to have tea with Aizen once a week. It brought them closer and gave both of them the opportunity to keep an eye on each other, though Sakura hoped he had no idea of her ulterior motives. It so far seemed as though he didn't suspect her but it was always hard to tell with Aizen. Sakura shook her head as she walked and sped up. She wanted to get back to her division quickly, if she didn't someone was bound to stop her causing her to be late which meant some kind of unusual punishment from Kurotsuchi, well, not that he would be able to catch her if he tried to give her any kind of punishment. Though she did have to put up traps all throughout her room just incase he tried to get her while she was asleep.

Kurotsuchi had made some major changes these past years, the biggest being the expansion of the lab. It now had several basement floors and according to his plans there were still many more floors to be built. Not that that was a bad thing, especially because the next one to be built would be for her sector alone. She was actually quite excited, it had become rather cramped in her lab as more and more people transferred in to her sector. It was of course no problem and she really could use all the help she could get so Sakura tended to accept anyone with drive to heal but no real gift at the art of healing.

A sigh escaped her lips as she finally stepped into her, now temporary, lab just barely getting past Kurotsuchi who was too busy to do anything but glare at her. She nodded to her assistants as they all greeted her with a loud cry of 'Good afternoon, Haruno-fukutaichou!' and headed to her desk to start on her paperwork. That was finished in a little more than an hour, paperwork was easy and familiar but still a bother so she tended to complete it as quickly as possible so after a quick trip to Kurotsuchi's office to drop it all off she started on the real work.

The project she was working on now was actually Kurotsuchi's idea. He had asked her if her chakra would still keep a shape if not in contact with her body and for this question she had no answer. Since that day though she started on what would have been the biggest medical innovation that the shinobi world had seen since Tsunade's own medical jutsu: a chakra bandage. It was literally a thin sheet of her medical chakra incased in a specially made sleeve that could be applied to a wound in the field. In theory it would, once applied to a wound, drain the chakra into the wounded person's body to heal surface wounds. It couldn't heal any internal damage but it would stop anyone from bleeding to death in battle. The problem was that she had yet to figure out how to get it to react to a wound with out applying the bandage herself, she assumed it had to do something with chakra and not her.

Sakura worked late into the night before finally retiring to her room for the night. She woke up early the next morning and after another visit to her inner world through meditation she was off to the training grounds for her morning routine. A few hours later she stretched as she left the training grounds. She knew she was still far away from bankai but she felt confident enough in her abilities as she was not bound only to shinigami technics. After a few hours in her lab she headed out of her division once again, this time towards the second division. Sui-feng had been angry, very angry, at first then bitter and then determined. She vowed to surpass Yoruichi and practically demanded Sakura train with her. Sakura had agreed hesitantly, this after all sounded a bit to much like revenge for her and she didn't want to get involved in anything close to that. She found though, that she enjoyed training Sui-feng, although she wasn't as fast as Yoruichi she might reach that level some day and Sakura was simply happy to have yet another distraction to keep her from becoming complacent. Secretly though she felt bad for the girl, Sakura knew Yoruichi well enough to know that she wouldn't just be sitting around and that even with all of Sui-feng's training she might never be able to match up to Yoruichi. So after a rather drawn out spar Sakura left the second division in search of lunch. Once her stomach was full she then headed to the shinigami academy where she taught an optional class on basic healing. She had been surprised to find that students didn't learn anything beyond basic first aid and none learned any healing kido until they were actually inducted into the Gotei 13. Even then the only ones who learned advanced healing were the ones brought into the fourth division. She felt it was a gross oversight to not train advanced field medics and had resolved to at least make some kind of difference. Her schedule was, admittedly, packed but it didn't bother her much, she had been a known workaholic in her human life as well.

It was the middle of the afternoon when her class ended and she was walking back to her division when someone she vaguely recognized as an unseated member of the eleventh division barreled into her. She locked herself upright as the man fell to the ground. He looked up and froze in fear for a second before stuttering out an apology.

"H-Haruno-fukutaichou!" He squeaked fearfully in an unmanly voice and Sakura inwardly rolled her eyes. She had made quite the reputation in the eleventh division and it had become rather common for the unseated members and even a few of the seated ones to respectfully avoid her after seeing what she could do to their captain. The man got off the floor and bowed to her. "I'm so sorry Haruno-fukutaichou but I have to get to my division now." He made to run but Sakura grabbed his arm before he could bolt.

"What's going on?" She asked in her most authoritative voice.

"A-all eleventh division members are being called back to the division. Taichou has a challenger." Her eyes widened and she let go of the man's arm. He quickly bowed again before running off. An excited grin appeared on Sakura's face and she turned on her heel and pushed off into a run, not noticing the small crater she left in her wake. She surpassed the man from before and quite a few more eleventh division members as she ran. Although life was rarely boring in Seireitei it was also rarely exciting and she just had a feeling that this would be pretty entertaining. Barely two minutes had passed before she found herself in front of the eleventh division. She slowed her pace to a walk and stepped inside, her grin never leaving her face.

I'm such a bad author!-sob- But here is another chapter, finally. And the next chapter(which I've already written half of) is the long awaited Kenpachi meeting! Well I'm excited about it, at least. Anybody got anything special they would like to see in the next chapter? Sorry again, I hope I can be forgiven. Anyways, as always, thank you so much for reading and please, please review!