"U-Unohana-taichou!" shrieked Isane, temporarily forgetting all decorum as she rushed up to her captain breathlessly.

"Did you find anything out about the butterflies?"

"Hai! They're over there!" pointed Isane in the direction where she had shunpoed from.

"Arigatou. Does anyone require medical assistance?"

"Erm...not over there I don't think..." muttered Isane hesitantly. As if she could remember when fleeing cannibal butterflies.

"Then alert the other squads immediately. I will go and erect a barrier around the butterflies."

"Hai, taichou!"

They shunpoed off.

Head Captain Yamamoto stared at the odd scene. The admittedly weak child, no, lieutenant, alongside Soifon was dragging along what was obviously a black haired Ukitake.

"...what is going on here? Explain, Captain Soifon!"

Soifon bowed slightly.

"Head Captain, we found this suspect near the butterflies. We believe he may be related to this incident. This suspect claims he is Captain Ukitake."

"I am Ukitake! Head Captain, don't you recognize me? Better yet, call Shunsui!"

"Yo! Someone say my name?" Kyoraku burst through the doors.

The head captain winced at the lack of propriety, but before he could remark on that, he saw the sake jug swinging in Kyoraku's hand.

Ukitake's mouth was open in horror. "Shunsui! It's too early in the afternoon to be drin-"

Kyoraku interrupted, peering closely at Ukitake. "Hm? Who's this person, Yama-jii?"

Ukitake mentally cursed his old childhood friend.

"See? It's obviously an imposter if Captain Kyoraku can't recognize him." said Soifon coldly.

"He's obviously drunk!" protested Ukitake

"Are you all trying to deceive my eyes? It's obviously Ukitake!" snapped Yamamoto. "What do you take me for, a blind old man?"

"Well, you are an old man, Yama-jii," said Kyoraku, swaying slightly.

Yamamoto made a mental note to ban sake drinking in the mornings and afternoons for all captains.

"That is unrelated to what we are discussing now!" he snapped, unable to find a suitable retort, and also deciding not to waste time on reprimanding a drunkard. "you-" he pointed to Hanatarou, "will escort this drunkard to his quarters! And you," he pointed to Soifon, "will work with Ukitake to capture the uncontrolled butterfly infestation!"

"Do we kill the hell butterflies?" asked Ukitake, relieved to be let off the hook.

"If you must resort to that, yes. But surely the captains can handle butterflies," replied Yamamoto with more calm than he felt.

Honestly, they're more immature than I thought.

"As you command, Head Captain."

"Head Captain!" Isane burst through the double doors. "I'm sorry for the sudden intrusion, but the uncontrolled hell butterflies have been located! Captain Unohana is currently securing a barrier around them!"

"There you have it. Captain Soifon and Ukitake, assist Unohana in regaining control of the butterflies. Lieutenant Isane, please lead them to the site."

"Hai!" They shunpoed off, leaving Hanatarou to drag a drunk Kyoraku to wherever the Captain slept.

"So, where are we going?" asked Kyoraku merrily, as Hanatarou struggled to maintain his balance with the captain slumped over his shoulder.

"Where...do you sleep?" asked Hanatarou breathlessly.

"Oh! Right over there!" Kyoraku pointed to the right.

"...but that's a wall!" wailed Hanatarou.

"Those are the eighth squad's quarters," said Kyoraku.

"..." Hanatarou knew his way around Seireitei, but he'd never been near the sleeping quarters of the captains. And the direction Kyoraku was pointing to was actually in the direction of the hospital.

"Ah! I'll take the sewers, and rejoin up with Soifon-taichou!" Hanatarou then proceeded to drag the blithe drunkard to the nearest entrance to the sewers. Hopefully he won't fall into the sewage.

Soifon, Ukitake, and Isane landed next to Unohana.

"Ah, Ukitake-taichou, did something happen to you?" asked Unohana smiling. "I only recognized your reiatsu just now."

Ukitake sighed. "It's a long story."

"Well then, please feel free to dispose of the butterflies however you like," said Unohana cheerily. "Isane and I must attend to the victims of these butterflies."

With a nod from her, Unohana and her lieutenant shunpoed off.

"Great," grunted Soifon, as the butterflies thrashed around in the barrier. "What do we do now?"

"Well, it does seem that they are fighting amongst themselves...let's just sit and let them kill each other off."

"The Head Captain seems to believe that we should be able to recover cannibal butterflies without losing a single one."

"Well, if they kill each other off before that, it's not our problem right?"

"Hn. I have a score to settle with those butterflies. Ukitake-taichou, maintain the barrier for me. I'm going in."

"Wait!"

"I know how these butterflies work," said Soifon coolly. With that said, she broke the barrier, going in while Ukitake hastily muttered the same kido spell that Unohana had used.

"She's surprisingly impulsive," he muttered.

Well, any one would be if they had been slapped by butterflies.

When Soifon entered, the butterflies immediately stopped killing each other, and morphed into Yoruichi. Butterfly Yoruichi wore an evil grin.

"Well, hello there, Soifon!"

Soifon groaned inwardly. Although she did know that they changed into your worse nightmare, she wasn't really sure how to deal with butterflies, cannibal or not.

Butterflies were fragile. So easy to crush in the palm of your hand. Maybe she could catch them, but they'd bite her hand off. And they were already caught in a barrier, with her along them. She had felt that the Head Captain saying that it should be easy to stop the berserk butterflies from being crazy was a challenge to her Captain's status. But how did you stop berserk butterflies from being cannibalistic?

"Pft, I really am weak, unable to deal with butterflies when I ordered Yamada to catch the very ones I brought for him," she muttered, scowling.

She recalled the times when she had watched Yamada trip over himself, manage to grab one, and then carefully trying to put it in the box without hurting it, and then dusting his hands.

"Stop wasting time trying to dust your hands of the powder from the wings," said Soifon boredly.

"Ah, but Soifon-taichou! They're actually scales!"

"Scales?"

"Hai! From the wings! It can affect the way they fly if you accidentally touch the wings, so it's difficult! And the ones that you caught last time, they can't fly anymore, so I took them up to where they're being cared for."

"Hmph...butterflies really are fragile..." murmured Soifon. "to be rendered incapable with the slightest touch...they really are weak."

Soifon snapped out of it as she dodged Yoruichi.

"Hn, so Yamada is useful for something after all."

If I just touch their wings, I can cripple them right? She smirked and pointed at the butterflies.

"Hakafuku," she said, using a spell that would knock them all out so she'd be free to touch their wings without them trying to eat her.

Well, if they're all clustered into one person, it should be fine, right? Even as she thought that, she could see that the butterflies lost Yoruichi's shape and passed out in tiny heaps. What, not even a fight? I don't even need to cripple their wings if they're passed out.

"Soifon-taichou! Are they dead?" called Ukitake from outside the barrier.

"Hn, we should have left them to kill each other," replied Soifon loftily. "They're only unconscious."

"Good job!"

"Soifon-taichou!" she blinked as the sewer cap from inside the barrier opened up. Hanatarou appeared, along with a certain sewer stench. "Kyoraku-taichou kept falling into the sewage! I'm sorry I'm late! Where are the...oh."

"I took care of them," replied Soifon coolly. "You get to fill out the paperwork about this while Ukitake gets to clean up around here."

"Wait, what!" called Ukitake as the barrier dissipated. Soifon swiveled her head to glare at him.

"Ukitake-taichou, what did you do during this mission?"

"um..." well, he admitted that re-erecting a barrier wasn't exactly a major job, but neither was casting just a simple binding spell!

"That's what I thought." Soifon marched coolly out. "I will now alert the Head Captain."

Captain Ukitake and Hanatarou sighed. This is so not fair.

"Yamada." Soifon swiveled around to look at him seriously.

"...what?" he squeaked.

"We have a new mission."

"Really?"

"Your skills don't even meet the requirements to go on this mission," she said bluntly, "however, since it was assigned directly to the Second Squad, I have no choice but to take you."

"...sorry."

It was night time in the Seireitei, and Yamada was still taking a beating from the paperwork. But Soifon was unusually serious this time, and he felt a sense of foreboding.

"What's the mission taichou?"

"We will be meeting up with a few others. I will have some Omnitsukido members with me, but they'll only be waiting in the wings, and god knows what's going to happen to them."

"Who else is going?"

"The substitute shinigami, which means presumably he'll be dragging along that other girl from the thirteenth division, and Abarai-fukutaichou. I personally believe that that is too many to go on a stealth mission, especially for those who have no stealth whatsoever," she sneered. "but things may go horribly wrong any way, scratch that, they always do, so it's good to have some fighting power where we're going. I do know for a fact that Yoruichi-sama will also be going."

"Erm...where are we going?"

"To Hueco Mundo. Our goal is collect information about Aizen's numbers before the Winter War...and most importantly, discover the Hogyoku's weakness, in the small chance that it has one." She cast a disdainful eye on Yamada. "You think you're up to the task?"

"Yes!"

No hesitation for once, Soifon noted.

"Good. We'll be meeting up with them soon. Get some rest. Tomorrow we'll have a last round of training before we head off."

"Er...taichou...does it...involve butterflies?"

"We'll postpone that for awhile," she muttered. She had enough of butterflies to last her a lifetime. Not to mention that her Homonka already reminded her of it.

But for some reason, she could not shake off a feeling of uneasiness.

"Haha! Fourth Squad Member! What the hell are you doing here? This place isn't for weak brats!" Hanatarou was kicked from behind by a laughing Twelfth Squad Member.

"I-I'm just cleaning here!"

"Oh? Cleaning? Better do your job right then!" Laughing, the twelfth division all threw down some sort of trash onto the ground.

"Ah, don't-ow!"

"Hmph, what the hell is a weakling like you doing as a shinigami! This isn't all fun and games you know!"

"G-Gomen! Please don't hurt me-"

"Psh! Get out of our sights!"

"Ahhh!" Hanatarou cowered as the shinigami converged on him and braced himself...

"WAKE THE HELL UP AND GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF, YAMADA!"

Hanatarou abruptly woke up to a rough yank to the scruff of his nightshirt before being shaken roughly. His eyes snapped open, to see a pissed off Soifon.

"S-S-Soifon-taichou!"

"It's three o'clock in the night! What the hell were you dreaming about to be shrieking at the top of your lungs?"

"G-Gomen...ow!" He was indecorously dropped back onto the bed. He could see the position they were in now. Soifon was squatting in an rather uncaptainlike manner on the bed where she had shaken him awake.

"Well? Explain yourself! You sounded like you were dying! You practically had me worried!" spat Soifon viciously.

"You were worried?" Hanatarou sat up abruptly. Well. That was a certain change of how he thought his captain viewed him.

"That's not the point!" snapped Soifon irately, rubbing her eyes.

"Uwah, it was a scary dream!"

"Considering you were wailing, 'please don't hurt me' and crap like that, tell me something I didn't know," grunted Soifon.

"I...erm...well.."

"Spit it out."

"Well...it's just reoccurring nightmares...it's fine, seriously!"

"About what?" scowled Soifon.

"Ahh..." he sank lower into the bed, embarrassed.

"Yamada, I order you to tell me what your damn dream was about," said Soifon wearily. Normally she wouldn't use her captain status on such a petty thing, but it worked on Hanatarou well.

"Um...it's sort of old flashbacks...haha...since I used to be weak-"

"You mean you are weak," butted in Soifon, not really helping with the situation.

"Well, yes, but back then, I used to be bullied a lot by other shinigami..."

"You mean are,"

Hanatarou wailed. "I know! I'm weak! That's why I keep having these nightmares!"

Instantly he was picked up by the collar and shaken roughly.

"Are you an idiot? No, I already know the answer to that. That's all your damn dream was?" growled Soifon. "you are a lieutenant! My lieutenant! Now if you want to continue holding that position, I hope you pick up the pace and stop getting yourself bullied by weaklings! Yamada, you're going to have to do better as my lieutenant! Although we can still continue to attribute your many failings to inexperience, that can't last forever. You've been in the Stealth Force for long enough to know how it works. And yet you're still not stealthy. Come to think of it, you probably never will. But whatever the hell it is, we are going kick your damn cowardice in the ass, got that? And those dreams along with it too."

"H-h-hai!"

"Tch." Soifon dropped Hanatarou, turning around to begin muttering as she got off the bed from her squatting position. "I haven't spoken that much in ages...I never needed to use verbal attacks on that damn Omaeda either...getting me worked up for nothing that I even got on my Captain's cloak at three in the morning...when I should be sleeping...tch, I was even a tiny bit worried..."

"You really were?" asked Hantarou curiously.

"Who wouldn't be?" snapped Soifon. "Howling as if a Menos shot you with a cero in the ass multiple times..."

"Sorry..."

"A bit late for that." Soifon left the room.

Hanatarou sighed and slumped on the bed, worn out from being shaken without a care for his wellbeing.

But he felt happy that he had at least risen in his Captain's favor that he was at least important enough to be worried about.

AN: now that it's finally summer...we have finally updated after many pleas and requests. Although it's probably been at least half a year since the last update, thank you to all of those who reviewed and stayed with us. Seriously, it's what made me decide to type this chapter up even though I had writer's block instead of sleeping XD. I felt like I couldn't really go anywhere with this story (and I hate publishing anything with less than 5 pages unless it's a good chapter), so I stuck in the dream thing for lack of anything else LOL. I dunno if it'll become a pairing thing, but hey, like we said ages ago, it depends on how you look at it.

Yeah, this chappie wasn't really as funny as I wanted it to be for lack of ideas, but don't worry, it's setting up for the next big thing. :) I'll probably make some edits later to this.

Gah, RYOOO WHERE ARE YOU! IT'S SO BORING WITH YOU NOT HERE TO TALK TO. Ok, well I know you're busy helping at some camp thingy, but it's still boring. _