BE SEEIN' YA

DISCLAIMER: Kubo is a god, and, in this case, I am merely borrowing his characters for a play date in my world.

It was a big, open room, notable mostly for being almost completely featureless. The walls were white, the ceiling was high, and the lighting provided by innumerable banks of fluorescent bulbs. The floor seemed to be changing depending on the angle one was looking at it; several sections seemed to waver between being polished wood or tatami mats, although a long strip against the wall had apparently been covered with deep-pile carpet. This was presumably for the comfort of the people prone to sitting on it, as there were no chairs.

Near the door, a slim woman with jade-colored eyes and hair a few shades lighter than Renji's was standing beside the room's only piece of furniture - a table, one of the distinctly uninspiring ones usually found folded up in the corner of inexpensive banquet rooms, this one looking as though it might have been rejected from one such institution - sorting through the piles of neatly-organized paper that had been heaped on the warped mock-wooden surface.

As she placed the last few batches of paper in piles that seemed to in no way correspond to the color-coding tabs on their corners, the door swung open, admitting the distinctive figure of Ichimaru Gin, incongruously dressed in jeans and a black tee shirt decorated with silver scrollwork revolvers, their downward-pointed barrels half-hidden behind the armload of papers he was carrying.

The woman arched one dark eyebrow at him as he set the papers down on the table, surveying the outfit with clear amusement. "Really? You're stealing wardrobe from another character now?"

Gin grinned at her, eyes open and teeth showing. "Y' never officially gave me a new yukata."

"...it was implied," she answered, after a pause in which a facepalm was heavily suggested but not quite achieved. "I specified in their last appearance that they were your oldest clothes, and that was why you were wearing them for cleaning. 'Oldest' implies that there is a successive generation."

"Implications, heh," Gin answered, snickering, and she swatted at him with a sheaf of papers marked by an ice-blue tab, which he allowed to hit twice, mostly for politeness' sake, before swiping out of her hand.

"Stop cracking jokes about my old fics," she scolded, although the corners of her mouth were twitching with suppressed laughter. "Even if they deserve it, and even if they are just implied jokes, thank you, now shoo. The sooner you call the other characters in, the sooner we can get the fiasco that is script hand-outs accomplished."

"Are you fucking kidding me, Jade?!"

It wasn't the first time over the series Ichigo had uttered those words, although, given that the script he was currently gawking at was for the penultimate chapter of the last major story, it might actually be the last.

"What's the problem this week, Ichigo?" Jade asked, not turning back to him as she continued to hand out copies of the chapter's script to the surrounding characters.

"Have you ever heard the term 'mood whiplash'? You have us going from mourning him -" here, Ichigo swung a hand to point towards Gin, who was perusing his own copy and inexplicably giggling - "to Kaien laughing, then back again, and then to Katy Perry?!"

"Leave her alone, Ichigo, she hasn't played with ringtones in ages," Rukia answered, leafing casually through her own copy.

"And that's another thing. Where are you?" Ichigo added, flapping his script towards his onscreen wife. "There's a passing mention in the last line of the previous chapter of 'Oh, she might be DEAD,' and then - what? Are you going to have her be dead offscreen and just handwave it? Or is it something else that you'll fix in the edits?" he snapped, the flapping script now flapping towards the author, whose eyes crossed as the papers nearly grazed her nose.

"Ichigo, consider my actual track record with killing off people, here," Jade countered, holding up Chad's copy of the script. "Not counting the OCs, I'm technically only two for... however many characters I've killed, and that's Gin and Aizen. Everyone else was resuscitated or reincarnated, particularly since reincarnation is the whole point of this story."

"Ignoring the fact that you killed off a significant number of my Division in the Hollow attack," Rukia interjected.

"And the presumed death toll in the Battle of Seireitei," Renji added, smiling his thanks at her as he accepted his red-and-black tabbed script.

"Redshirts," Jade shot back, waving a pencil at the pair of them in a gesture that was somehow ridiculously more threatening than should have been possible, given that it was, well... a pencil. "No names, no plot armor, no chance of survival."

"Oh, speaking of plot armor, thanks for the whole 'suicide strike brought Byakuya back from the dead' asspull, that one was appreciated," Renji shot back. "But really, burnin' him to death? That was cruel."

"And you killed me twice, you bitch," Grimmjow muttered, hands shoved in his pockets as he glared at her through his bangs. "Was vivisection really necessary?"

"You're very welcome, Renji, and don't bump your head on that lampshade. May I remind you that it was you and Byakuya who went off-script? He was only supposed to get bitten by the Hollow that I had to rewrite into gnawing on Hitsugaya, so you only have yourselves to blame. If you don't like it, stop improvising. And Grimmjow, vivisection is never necessary, but you're bucking for a repeat experience if you call me a bitch again," Jade answered, voice sugar-sweet. Renji, Kira, and Shuuhei all backed up several steps, much to her amusement.

Ulquiorra gave Grimmjow a look that suggested his estimation of the other Espada's intelligence was sinking like a proverbial lead balloon, and collected both of their scripts with a silent nod.

"Besides, it was more to illustrate the fact that Kurotsuchi is horrific and give Ichigo an excuse not to have you all locked up immediately when you reappeared, despite a history of, y'know, battles to the death. If you make him feel guilty and responsible for someone or something, he's going to protect it, regardless of prior experience."

"Put like that, you make me sound like an idiot," Ichigo grumbled, scowling at his script. "And is the fact that the rest of the Arrancars were reincarnated actually going to come into the story at all after this, or was that just an aside?"

Gin, who had settled himself sitting comfortably against the carpeted section of floor, back to the wall, was still giggling over his copy of the script. "I thou' makin' Szayel an' Nnoitra inta girls was inspired," he added, eyes gleaming with mirth as he read through the last few pages of his copy. "Oh, so 's Kisuke, is it?"

Ichigo and Renji, the two nearest, exchanged confused glances and double-checked the last few paragraphs of their respective scripts, neither of which contained any mention of Urahara at all. "Ummm..."

"Your copies are fine. Gin has the draft notes of the final chapter attached as well, since he's not going to have much to do now," Jade answered, letting the previous line of questioning drop without comment.

"Bein' dead and all," Renji answered, with a very narrow-eyed look at Jade, who gave him a half-sly, half-smug smile in return, waving the pencil between her fingertips. The expression was disturbing.

"Renji, I trust Masa and Tsutomu's deaths met with your approval?"

"Wh - yeah, a' course. Felt a little sorry for Tsutomu, if anythin', but he probably deserved it."

Jade grimaced, a heavy shudder running down her body. "Trust me, he did. I barely dipped a toe in his mind, and felt like I'd been swimming in a cesspit. That said, though, Masa was significantly worse."

"Th' villain in a rape-as-backstory is never gonna be nice," Renji pointed out, sidestepping so that a clipboard-wielding Ise Nanao could get by. "But I worry a little that you can get someone like that from inside your head."

"Trust me, so do I!" Jade answered, shaking her head sharply as she pulled out a stack of scripts to hand to the waiting Nanao, double-checking the color-coded and labeled tabs; periwinkle, pink with a red pinwheel sketched on, blue with white, dark green, and three untabbed. "Let's see, that's... yours, Kyouraku's, Ukitake's, Minori's, and three spares?"

In contrast to the rest of the characters, who received precisely-tailored scripts, each one meticulously arranged to give the character the precise amount of information deemed necessary for the most impactful and emotional performance and no more, Nanao received a full-chapter draft with her script, as well as extra copies, and had done since her first appearance in the series.

It was probably worth noting that even Jade never questioned that.

"Correct, thank you," Nanao answered, checking off the list on her clipboard before accepting the papers and Flashstepping out of the way, a perfect model of efficiency, as ever.

Renji, reading the last of his script for Chapter 34 - a four-page brief on the chapter's events as well as the continuing, offscreen situation in the Soul Society, given that he didn't appear in the chapter itself - flipped the pages shut and glanced over his shoulder at Ichigo, who was focusing a bit more intently than necessary on his own, significantly thicker, script.

Sighing, Jade ruffled the stack of papers she was still carrying, handing a binder-clipped bundle off to Hitsugaya and a pair off to Kira before checking the tags clipped to the rest. "All right... the Ishidas, the Karakura Crew, and the Visoreds still need to collect their scripts, please!"

"The Ishidas and the the Karakura Crew couldn't make it, Kensei's down with a hangover, and Shinji's refusing to come in until you actually provide closure on what happened to the rest of the Visoreds," Ichigo called back immediately. Despite his laconic tone and the fact that he had his nose buried in his script, ostensibly ignoring her, he was still half-hiding behind Renji as he relayed the news.

Jade snorted, tapping a rolled-up bundle of scripts - binder-clipped with a scrap-paper tag reading 'Visoreds' and appearing to contain at least three scripts - against her shoulder. Shinji's orange and Kensei's amber tabs were visible, but any others had been folded up against the papers. Knowing Jade, that was probably intentional. "His logic is as turned-around as his shikai. He wants to find out where his friends are, so he refuses to pick up the scripts explaining it?"

There was a pregnant pause, broken only by Gin's quiet snickering and the soft murmurs of conversation in the background, before a sullen-faced Shinji appeared in a flash of iridescent light, the Kyokko spell that had been hiding him falling in shards from his fingertips.

"I do not know how many times I need to specify," Jade snapped, crossing the steps between them and slapping the Visoreds' scripts sharply against Shinji's chest, "no kidou in the meeting room. I don't care if it's just bakudou, it's rude."

Shinji opened his mouth, and was cut off by several more bundles of scripts landing in his hands. "Since you are the last one to appear, Hirako, you get the rotten egg's honor of taking the other absentee's scripts to them. That's Isshin, Uryuu, Ryuuken, Kisuke, Yoruichi, Kaien and Masaki, Kensei, yourself, Keigo, Tatsuki, Karin, Yuzu, Hallibel, Ichiro, Nova, Kurodo... oh, and Hikifune."

Shinji grunted under the weight of the eighteen total scripts, but eyed the color-coded and occasionally scribbled-on tabs identifying them, frowning. "What about Tessai? He's usually counted with us."

"What 'usually'?" Renji muttered in the background. "Has he actually had any lines in this entire series?"

"Renji, stop hanging lampshades unless you'd like an AU story featuring your employment at a lighting store."

Hitsugaya stepped forward slightly, showing off the scripts he was holding. "I have Tessai's here. He's still in Seireitei because of the Kidou Corp's presence."

Shinji eyed the papers, a speculative gleam in his eyes. "You have a lot of scripts too, Hitsugaya. Care to share?"

There were six in the young Captain's arms, in two bundles; the top three marked with Hitsugaya's teal, Matsumoto's pink, and an ice-blue identical to Gin's that could only be Kin's. However, Shinji's eyes were focused in particular on the bottom script in the lower bundle, which was marked with blue-and-pink, filed under two with matching blue-and-gold tabs.

Unamused, Hitsugaya threw a dirty look at the Visored. Jade, equally unamused, threw her pencil. It bounced off Shinji's temple, eraser first, hit the ground, and rolled towards the wall, while Shinji swore in surprise and tried not to drop his armload of scripts.

"Your closure's in the second section of your script, starting with the scene opener 'several minutes later, his numb and still-shaking hands wrapped around a cup of restorative tea'," Jade informed him. "As usual, don't try to read anyone else's, or unspecified yet horrible things will happen to you."

"Gee, how terrifying."

"You don't believe me? Try it."

Warily, Shinji poked at Hikifune's script, sitting on top of the heap in his arms, hard enough to wrinkle the cover sheet, then frowned, withdrew his hand, and pulled the whole pile flush against his chest. "I'm good."

"Thought you might be," Jade smirked, pulling out another handful of scripts and glancing around. "Renji - oh, good, Byakuya, you are here. If you can take these -"

Eight scripts landed in Byakuya's arms. His own silver-and-pink tab marked the one script loose on top of the pile, but the seven below it - blue, green, lavender, silver, navy, another of his silver-and-pink and one of Renji's red-and-black - were binder-clipped together, with a note jammed under the front edge of the clip. Renji, looking a little puzzled, accepted two more scripts and a manila envelope. One was tabbed with Fourth Division relief-pack green and the other with yellow-red-and-blue stripes. The manila envelope, when he peeked into it, proved to contain a personnel file. "You're giving me another OC?"

"Just a guest cameo for the next chapter. She'll behave."

"Yours usually do," Renji answered, tucking the new papers under his arm with his own script.

Byakuya lifted his head from reading the note clipped to his script bundle - Director's Cut: Diamonds and Demons (Battle of Seireitei, Kuchiki Manor) - to shoot Renji a sidelong look. "She gave me a maid in love with my mother."

"Byakuya, Duty and Honor canon for your mother is completely opposite Kubo-sama's canon anyway, so why does it matter?" Jade pointed out, her shrug philosophical. "And besides, Riko has gotten good reviews."

"Kickass, sarcastic, mature, knife-throwing ninja maid? What's not t' love?" Renji grinned, cutting off Byakuya's response by throwing a heavy arm over his shoulder. "C'mon, Taichou. Unohana'll have our asses in a bad way if we're late getting back. Do we need to take her script to her?"

The last was directed back to Jade, who shook her head. "She came by before I could actually call the rest of you in. But she collected most of the Fourth and Eleventh Division's scripts, and a few others as well. I need someone to take Komamura's, but that's all."

It was Hitsugaya who quickly accepted the tan-and-white tabbed script, and the group soon dispersed back to their scene stages, leaving the massive room echoingly empty, except for Jade and Gin.

Gin's giggles had finally died down, but his grin was as wide as ever and his eyes were bright as he stood up and joined the author at the doorway, tightly rolled-up script in one hand, Jade's pencil in the other. "Yer evil, y' know tha'?"

"I'm not sure if I'm flattered or worried that you save that appellation for me after chasing Aizen around for a century," she smirked back, flicking off the light switches and dropping the room, bit by bit, into darkness.

Gin gave a mock-shudder as the last of the lights shut off, leaving only the brightness from the room beyond framing them in the doorway. "Sosuke's a special kinda wrong," he answered after a long moment, tapping the rolled script against his chin. "But yer like me. Pickin' an' playin' wi' people's heads, all fer yer own amusement. Only wi'out m' killin' streak," he added, handing her back the pencil.

"Mostly," Jade chuckled, accepting the pencil and tucking it eraser-down in her back pocket as she stepped through the door. "Goodnight, Gin. I'll see you when the story gets back underway."

"Mmhm. Be seein' ya," Gin answered cheerfully, stepping out as well and pulling the door shut behind him.

Jade was already walking away, so when Gin allowed his script to unroll and the the series of scribbled notes on it became visible - written in Gin's hand with the author's own instrument, her thrown pencil - they never caught her eye.

But, because she had her back to Gin as she left, her half-sly, half-smug smile never caught his.

~ END ~