Another chapter! Yay!

*Ducks volley of rotten fruit and vegetables*

I know, I know, please don't kill me. I'm working on the fourth chapter for this now. Thanks again to my beta for reading over this despite her busy schedule.

As usual, I don't own Bleach. If I did things would be . . .different. Yeah. Let's go with different.

Chapter 3

The plan was Urahara's.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead and ask and get it out of your system now before you explode; you know you want to.

. . .

No? Fine, then I'll do it for you. Were we stupid? Or just out-of-our-heads climb-the-walls-and-tear-out-our-hair crazy? After all this is Urahara we're talking about. Mad Genius. Inventor of the improbable. He who likes to poke his nose into Things Men and Shinigami Were. Not. Meant. To. Know.

Not that I blame people too much, after all that rat-bastard, Aizen spent literal decades half a step ahead of everyone including one former Captain of the Twelfth Division. Asshat that he was, Aizen had an almost preternatural ability to get inside Soul Society's decision-making cycle.

Which was the reason Kisuke decided to throw proper procedure, rationality, and common sense out the proverbial window. When he heard the final version of The Plan, Toshiro is said to have asked Urahara if he'd been concussed recently, because nobody with fully functional mental capabilities would ever consider something so illogical.

Urahara, being Urahara, pointed out that Logic had thus far been nothing more than a wonderful way to be wrong with confidence when trying to deal with Soul Society's own personal Evil Overlord and his Band of (Evil, Bloodthirsty, Deluded, etc.) Brothers and Sisters, so why should it start working now? Because they wanted it to?

See, the funny thing is that when people hear the name 'Urahara Kisuke' their minds seem to stick on the 'Mad' part and never quite make it to 'Genius.' Their mistake.

XXXXX

"No fucking way!" Ichigo yelled at a grinning Urahara and an exasperated Hitsugaya. "Not only 'no', but 'hell no!' You are not keeping me out of this fight!"

"Now, now, Ichigo," the annoying bastard with his irritating antique clogs (and that frigging fan!) began in his patronizing 'I'm Urahara and I have everything under control' voice. Ichigo wasn't having it.

"Kami damn it, Urahara! There's no way in hell I'm sitting out this fight. Not when we might actually have a chance to end this war and tha—"

For only the third time in the year Ichigo had known him Urahara cut him off. "And that is precisely why you have to 'sit it out.'" Urahara said, his voice, for once, totally serious. He reached up and adjusted his hat before allowing some of the humor back into his voice, "After all, the victorious general is the one who commits his reserve last."

"And that's my point," the younger blond interrupted. "All Aizen has to do is open up a Garganta and he can call for reinforcements from Hueco Mundo. That means he's always got a reserve so-" Ichigo cut himself off then as he looked at the expression spreading across Hitsugaya Toshiro's face.

"Normally, yes," the silver-haired Captain of the Tenth Company acknowledged, the grin on his face was such that it was impossible to forget that he shared his soul with a dragon, "Unfortunately, Aizen is unaware of certain recent advances in the science of Spirit Particle Compression."

"The flip side of the equation, however," Urahara took over smoothly, "is that so is everyone else."

Ichigo scowled at his mentor. "I'm missing something, aren't I?"

"Not much," the banished former captain said with a manic grin firmly in place as he snapped his fan back open, "Just that the area of research I recently finished exploring explains the substrate reaction that catalyses the formation of the monopolar particle wall responsible for the creation of the Garganta, and thus allows for the destabilization of said phenomenon."

"Urahara, that might as well have been Russian." Ichigo complained, his expression suggesting that he was moments from taking Urahara's fan and inserting it into one of the Scientist's bodily orifices. Sideways.

"What he means," Captain Hitsugaya cut in, his smile still visible in his eyes if not on his lips, "is that we have a way to prevent Garganta from forming or destabilize an existing Garganta without preventing us from opening Senkai Mon," the corners of his mouth twitched minutely and even Ichigo could appreciate the control that kept the malicious grin off of his face, "So, in fact, it is we that have the ability to reinforce our units at will."

"Or we would," Urahara interjected, "If we dared tell anyone about it."

While it wasn't a totally unfamiliar feeling, Ichigo did have to admit that Urahara was confusing him even more than usual. "Okay, I don't get it. Why can't we tell anyone? It's not as if that bastard still has-" Ichigo's eyes almost popped out of his head as he got it. "You think Aizen still has sympathizers inside Soul Society." It came out almost like an accusation, but Ichigo didn't bother to soothe potentially ruffled feathers. He was getting pretty close to sick of stumbling around in the dark because no one had bothered to tell him where the metaphorical light switch was.

Hitsugaya and Urahara exchanged a speaking look before they met Ichigo's eyes. Urahara spoke first, his expression and voice both serious again, "If he didn't have some source of information in Soul Society there's no way he could have known which of the gates Orihime was going to use to return to the living world. He might have been able to guess when she was going to return, but there are dozens of passageways through the precipice world. He'd have to have known the exact departure and arrival points to intercept her halfway, and no one on this side of the gate knew that she was even on the way."

"When you add to that the cleaner that almost destroyed the Third division despite supposedly being disabled by Twelfth . . ." Toshiro added and Ichigo couldn't help the grimace that spread across his face.

"Hell, there's a lot of guys in Soul Society that I don't like, but I can't picture any of them working with that asshole,"

"They might not even know they're working for him." Urahara commented, "Don't forget the power of Aizen's Zanpakuto. The person feeding him information might be convinced his reports go to the Secret Mobile Corps or the Shinigami Research Institute. For that matter he might be under the impression that he works directly for the Captain Commander or the Chamber of 46."

"Fuck, this is complicated." They all sat in silence for a moment before Ichigo continued, "I suppose that this means that I'm going to be running the message to Soul Society to get their asses here with every Shinigami I can beg for, trick into coming, or abduct?"

"Oh no," Urahara said with a grin, "You're going to drop off the radar entirely for a couple of days for some utterly fictitious 'special training' then you're going to have an equally fictitious, very public 'accident' and have to be sent back to Soul Society for treatment by Orihime," Urahara said it like he meant it, the smug look on his face suggested that he probably meant it, and his posture seemed to suggest a certain amount of anticipation for the end result. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . .

Ichigo went ballistic. "He may be an asshole, but he's not stupid! No way in hell is that bastard, Aizen gonna fall for something that lame!"

"Oh, but he will, I guarantee it." Urahara stated, the same daunting look on his face as he'd worn when he worked on forcing Ichigo's Zanpakuto to manifest, as when he faced a life or death decision. The look that meant the part of him that had Ichigo's gratitude and respect was out from behind the clown's mask that it usually wore. When Urahara stopped bothering with his idiot-psycho mask, he didn't make promises lightly.

"What else haven't you bothered to tell me?" it might have been a demand, in fact, it usually would have been a demand, but Urahara was on the short list of people who had his full confidence and respect, and times like this made Ichigo remember it.

"I finished the last of my work on Mod-souls," Normally that would have been said in his Look-at-me-I'm-so-great voice with emphasis from his fan and a big shit-eating grin. This time no smile crossed his lips, nor was there one hiding in his eyes. Instead his eyes flicked to Captain Hitsugaya and back precisely once, and the smile abruptly died out of Toshiro's eyes. Ichigo was far from the best at reading a person's expression, but something told him that the indomitable Captain Hitsugaya Did Not Approve.

Huh. "And this means . . . what?" Ichigo asked Urahara while shooting the occasional glance at the prodigy-captain.

"It means, for a very short period of time, one of my new mod souls can, when placed in a special gigai, perfectly imitate everything about the Shinigami it is attuned to,"

Which explained why frosty was pissed. If and when the old man found out about this . . . yeah, that was gonna purely suck. "So, this imitation me is gonna pick a public fight with somebody and—"

"Become a rather spectacular casualty," Urahara said with his customary grin. "And if Aizen thinks you've been sent to Soul Society so that Orihime can patch you up . . ."

"He might just try to move in and take over before Old Man Yama can send in reinforcements," Ichigo sent an impressed look Urahara's way knowing that his supposed absence would give Aizen a legitimate shot at taking over Karakura and turning it into a great big hole in the ground. "Hell, this might actually work."

"You know, I'd feel a lot better if you didn't sound so surprised when you said that," the former captain muttered before he continued, "You still missed a point in your analysis. We'll say we're sending 'you' to the main gate in the Seretai, while actually sending the mimic to the Kuchiki family's gate and observing the path to the main gate. That way we ought to be able to tell if Aizen has anyone placed in Karakura while throwing off pursuit and hopefully taking at least one Espada out of the fight."

Ichigo frowned a bit in thought, though ole Hat and Clogs certainly seemed to have thought of everything, Ichigo still didn't like the plan. He'd learned the hard way to respect the K.I.S.S. method of warfare; getting too clever was just an invitation for someone to step in and knock your teeth out while you weren't looking. Still . . . it had a chance. And that was better than anything the Soul Society types had managed to come up with since this whole mess started. Then he realized what had been bothering him since Urahara'd started explaining the plan and winced. "I'm not gonna get to warn anyone about this ahead of time, am I?"

XXXXX

And that's a wrap! Again, sorry it took so long to get back to this, but I've been distracted.