Summary: Insurrection, drought, and clan conflicts plague Soul Society. Based very loosely on legends of Yoshitsune and Shizuka. Set years prior to the beginning of Bleach.

Bloodlines and Battle Lines

01. Dancing Girls

The sweat was thick. The heat was even thicker. Eighty-three days had passed, and there was no sign of respite. The winds had died. The rains never came. Even the clouds hung thin and wispy, proving inadequate cover for the blistering summer sun.

Hunched over his sword after a particularly fell blow, Byakuya watched as the perspiration from his brow fell to the cracked, scorched earth. Upon impact, the droplets turned to steam, evaporating before his eyes with a hiss. He did not wish to imagine what would have happened had he steadied himself with his hand.

Pulling himself up, he wiped his brow with the back of his arm and yanked his Zanpakutō from the parched clay.

"Again," his grandfather stated in a voice so cool that one could almost forget about the heat and the sun and the lack of rain.

Dripping wet and feeling his muscles burn in protest at the prospect of functioning in such extreme conditions, Byakuya molded himself into a guard position. He had asked for this, after all. Although, as he struggled to keep his sword balanced and his knees from buckling, he began to wonder why.

Another bout. Another victor. The same victor.

It was always Ginrei no matter Byakuya's efforts. The clan head had never lost a round with his progeny or their issue. Not once. And, at the going rate, likely not ever.

The last clash cost Byakuya a knee.

Kneeling, he repressed the urge to wince as the searing heat ate through his hakama and burned his flesh. The smell of burned skin stung the back of his throat as he inhaled an uneasy breath. Struggling to stand, his bent knee refused to obey his command to move. The flesh was sore and bubbling, and the salty mixture of sweat and fluid from the blisters stuck to the ground, as if the earth was trying to soak whatever moisture it could find.

Either way, the pain he felt was real, and it throbbed, keeping a steady pace with his pulse, which, for all his efforts, remained slow and calm.

His balance was shot. Too many losses, the heat, and the electrical surges in his neural circuitry left him fried and slow. Despite everything working against him and despite his better judgment, he raised his chest and pulled himself into something resembling a standing position. It was not quite standing, and it definitely was not a position suitable for a solider.

Indeed, his hips were not squared or even for that matter. He was favoring his left leg, and his muscles refused to remain still. The excited molecules that were colliding in the air—responding to their respective spiritual pressure—appeared to be plucking at the strings of his fibers, causing them to vibrate.

His hands were so tightly wrapped around the hilt of the sword, not only had the stitching began to imprint on his palm, but small rivulets of sweat-drenched blood began to stream down his arm.

It only took Ginrei one glance to measure his grandson's mettle. The ensuing frown told Byakuya everything he needed to know: He had failed.

Failure. The word was so final, so cutting.

Byakuya did not like failing in general, but, most of all, Byakuya could not abide failing his clan, or its head.

"Enough," his grandfather announced, pulling a handkerchief from his sleeve.

In a graceful, but definitive, motion, Ginrei wiped the silk against the back of his neck. "You are clearly spent," he said, crisply folding the silk square in half before dabbing it against his forehead. When he was finished, Ginrei tucked the handkerchief away in his sleeve and gave Byakuya a grave, glacial look.

Foolish boy, his stare seemed to proclaim of his grandson.

Wordless, Byakuya bowed, hoping the rush of blood to his head could drown out the shame threading its way from his heart to his brain.

No such luck.

"Thank you, Honorable Grandfather," he choked the words out in working order.

"We will begin with kido when I return from duty."

"Yes, Honorable Grandfather." Byakuya kept his head bowed and his eyes rooted to the ground until he felt his grandfather turn heel and begin toward the manor.

"You should show me how your shikai has improved," his grandfather noted as a dark afterthought.

"Yes," Byakuya replied, finding the strength of will to straighten his back. Sheer, untempered bravado, however, focused his eyes on his grandfather's. In the moment where his slate gray eyes met his grandfather's icy blue gaze, a bolt of electricity charged the air. The molecules vibrated. The heat, if possible, intensified.

"Good. Your tutelage in the mountains, I hope, was spent wisely," Ginrei's words were crisp, sharpened to a point, and they cut deeper than Byakuya cared to admit.

Fear was funny that way, wasn't it? Fear seemed to cut deeper than the blade, and its wounds took longer to heal. And, try as he might, Byakuya had not been able to master the heady cocktail of dread, self-doubt, and adrenaline that swallowed him in the face of certain defeat.

Some day he would, he vowed. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But, someday.

For now, he had the chill of doubt and the pinpricks of shame to occupy his thoughts as he watched the distance between Grandfather and him grow.

. . . .

"It is unbearable," Shunsui bellowed between flicks of his garish fan. The leaves of his fan were bright reds, yellows, and oranges, depicting cranes taking flight into the setting sun.

The fan's design held Ukitake's gaze a beat longer than he intended or he considered appropriate. "Indeed," came Ukitake's curt retort; although, he very much assumed that they were referring to two very different topics. He, of course, was referring to that hideous fan that Shunsui thought appropriate to not only purchase, but use. In the company of others. His friend, Ukitake suspected, was likely referring to the temperature, which was beginning to feel as if it was permanently set on "hell boiling over" high.

How unlike me! Ukitake reprimanded himself for thinking ill of the fan. It must be the heat.

Yes, that infernal heat. It was slowly driving everyone in the ranks insane. Heat-related illnesses abounded. Exhaustion, psychosis, burns, strokes—what were they to do? Training was inadvisable as long as the summer bore down on them. Already, the summer's rays had claimed fifty men, at least. The Fourth was the only operational unit, and that was only out of necessity, not prudence.

"Do you think you could convince Kaien to drown us?" Shunsui asked between flicks of his fan.

Ukitake responded to his friend's inquiry with a staid laugh.

Shunsui's fan stopped wafting, and he cocked his brow. His eyes, usually gleaming with some devilish thought, narrowed, and his smile faded. "I'm serious."

Ukitake chuckled. Serious for Shunsui was a rare look, and, given the request, he questioned his friend's candor.

"Okay, I'm half serious." Shunsui's stoic expression melted, and he leaned back into a rather colorful puddle of pink, "The other half, however, is deathly serious."

Still smiling, Ukitake shook his head. "Oh, come now."

"Sure, he'd level half the city. Sure, some people would die. Sure, we'd make it out alive since we're the ones orchestrating the typhoon—" his voice drummed at an even beat, like the waves breaking on the sand.

Ukitake shot his friend a bemused glare.

"—but just think how great it would be for us and those of us that lived! Free of this sweltering heat," Shunsui continued without a hint of irony in his voice.

"We haven't completed the renovations from the last incident."

"Ah," Shunsui swatted this inconvenient fact away with his fan, "the Kuchiki's have all the construction contracts. Ginrei could pull some strings, surely. It could be a twofer. Economies of scale or something like that."

"I don't think that would work." Ukitake punctuated his disbelief with a slow headshake.

"Could we get some religious types? They could do a rain dance or prayer or whatever it is they do."

"Getting worse," Ukitake warned, teasingly.

"Dancers, then!"

Ukitake was not convinced. Not in the least.

"Come now, have some vision!" For some unexplainable reason, the idea of dancers seemed to animate Shunsui. The large man had gone from Giant Pink Puddle to sitting up and gesticulating wildly. "C'mon," he urged, putting an arm over Ukitake's shoulder, "can't you see it?" With a graceful motion, he gave a swooping gesture with his free arm as if he was painting a picture. "Beautiful, young dancing girls. Even if they didn't bring ran, it would still be a success!" At this revelation, Shunsui opened his arms wide, as if to give the world a giant hug.

Ah, there it was, the reason Shunsui was so excited. Girls. Beautiful, Young, Dancing Girls to be exact. How terribly predictable of him.

Dumbfounded, Ukitake just shook his head. It was rare for Shunsui's enterprising machinations to be complete enough to disarm him, but there he was with not a single word to express his disapprobation. At least, there were no words that Shunsui would not find a way to turn against Ukitake. No. Not when Shunsui had his mind set on something as devilish as dancing girls.

"I think I am going to put the idea forth to the activities committee," Shunsui said, hopefully. His eyes twinkled manically at the thoughts he was clearly editing for Ukitake's sake.

"You do that," Ukitake said, generously pouring on the sarcasm.

"You'll see," Shunsui threatened melodically as he pulled himself to his feet. "It will be magnificent."

"I have no doubt it will be some adjective or another." The one coming to Ukitake at that moment was terrible.

But, there was no point in talking Shunsui from a terrible idea when he had one fully developed. At least, no point at that moment in time, in that heat.

. . . .

"Dancing girls, eh?" Rangiku seemed amused, or sardonic. Shunsui couldn't tell either way.

"I like the sound of it," Isshin burst in from across the room.

Surprise. Surprise. The Captain of the Tenth wasn't asleep at his desk. He was merely face-planted to the grain in hopes of soaking up all the cool surface area on his desk.

"I think we've reached the threshold for throwing ourselves at the mercy of dancing women," Isshin reasoned, turning his cheek to get an eyeful of both Rangiku and Shunsui.

Rangiku's lips pulled to the side, and she donned her most critical of gazes.

In the midst of exhaling a long sigh, she shook her head, "You know no noble man is going to allow his daughter to dance in what would most certainly amount to a giant, dishonorable spectacle, right?" With that, she folded her arms tightly against her chest and tucked her hands into the sleeves of her Shihakushō.

"And," Shunsui and Isshin echoed, expectantly, as if they were waiting for Rangiku's grand reveal.

"We'll have to recruit dancers from the Rukon districts if we want them at all, and that will be a hassle and a half."

At this proclamation, Isshin lifted his head, balancing his chin on the tops of his hands, which were neatly steepled on his desktop. "How so?"

She responded with a breathy chuckle before throwing herself across the couch stationed in the middle of the captain's office in dramatic fashion. "We'd first have to vet them and allow them waivers into the Seireitei. That alone would take forever."

"Why do you care?" Shunsui asked, cocking a brow. Certainly, the Vice Captain of the Tenth did not concern herself with such matters unless such matters directly impacted her life.

"Who do you think will have to process all that paperwork?" she sighed, heavily.

Always an angle with that one, Shunsui mused wryly.

"What if we did some sort of special one-time deal?" Isshin remarked, clearly making it up in his head as he went along.

"And what would this Special One-Time Deal be?" Rangiku bickered back, shutting her eyes languidly.

"We open one of the gates and allow any dancing girl from Rukongai to enter and perform before shipping her back to her respective district."

Stroking his chin, Shunsui mulled the proposal over in his head. It didn't sound too bad, and it could bring hope to the troubled, unfortunate souls in the distant districts.

"We could pay the winning dancer well," Shunsui added. "A monetary incentive may bring out some talent."

"A monetary incentive," Rangiku scoffed so hard that she nearly choked on her own spit, "would bring everyone out."

"Good. One of them has to be able to bring the rains," Isshin reasoned.

Upon hearing that brand of logic, Rangiku popped up in her seat, blonde curls whipping around her as she turned her head, "Has the heat melted your brain?"

"I think it's a solid idea, Captain," Shunsui said, grinning toothily past the blonde vice captain. "It would bring the souls in the outlying districts hope, and it could possibly divert their attention from the talks of rebellion in the West. And, given the fact that training and drills have screeched to a halt, we could turn this into a festival of sorts. It would be a morale booster for the men of the ranks!"

Isshin flashed a smooth smile. "Then it is agreed, Captain."

"Dancing girls it is."