At a grand scale, the Seireitei responded to Shizukana’s declaration to evacuate relatively perfectly.
From the common, to the unseated and even the nobles abandoned whatever they had been doing in order to begin fleeing. In a situation like this, to have earned not only the attention but also the cooperation and obedience of the royalty was in a word, astounding! It was a show of just how much the classier side of the soul society favored Captain Kurayami. Luckily, she had always fostered a well-rounded relationship with nobles, with the general impression of her being good ones. They heeded her advice and took shelter in ways unavailable to others.
As usual, the indecisive young woman is faced with a slew of choices and each presented itself to be more daunting than the first.
"URGENT NEWS OF UNUSUAL HOLLOW ATTACKS AND NUMEROUS GARGANTA REPORTED IN H.M. AWAITING ORDERS!"
Shizukana had been so preoccupied with her Lieutenant’s catastrophe that she’d not made time to check her own division’s life line as of yet. She was well aware that many messages had been bombarding her throughout the totality of the incident as the overly anxious captain had once again left her Denreishinki on silent with the only way of her having knowledge of their calls and messages being a series of violent vibrative patterns built into the device’s soundless notification mechanism.
"?!”
It was momentary but that was all that it had to be for the captain of the fifth division to sense a flicker of hollow-like activity in the sector of the rukongai. It was a faint, almost undetectable flicker of activity in the fluctuations of the channel of presently documented Reiryoku that would have bypassed the unseasoned nose of a rookie hunter agent, but not Shizukana.
Although she could feel nothing besides that spark she was so familiar with, it was all that she needed to know something was up and that she had a responsibility to determine whether it was a threat to the already spiraling situation. However, with just a whisper it was not enough to deter her from weighing out her options as to what she was going to do next. Something was going on but figuring out what would take a little more finesse than charging blindly in. Her soldiers knew what they signed up for and how to hold their own while she was absent. At the moment, the Seireitei demanded her full attention. Uemura would have to be able to endure everything until then.
Finally gaining some time to breathe but not to stop as she continued moving in order to assure she would be able to continue to avoid the indiscriminate and growing bolts of crimson lightning.
Although she is hundreds maybe thousands of miles away from the epitome of Densagi’s display of outrage she can feel that between the two of them, Otokogi’s Reiryoku was becoming slower, stagnant and less. A flutter in her heart alongside it's ache made her believe that that this was evidence that the old man was losing the fight or at the very least it could have been a surrender and an act of attrition for the mistakes made not only that day but this very day by the lot of them. Though, she was sure in this particular case the gravity weighing her grandpa down was guilt instead of the gravity normally under his complete control. Unable to respond to his fury without recoiling from taking offense and lashing out, the Seireitei met Densagi with remorseful resistance until there was no more justification, which begged the question...
had there ever been to begin with?
Half of her hoped that with the Kenpachi’s sacrifice that Densagi’s anger would finally be quelled and any one of the more peaceful resolutions could come to pass but the other half longed to return to the field of battle and come between the senseless clash that had brought so much ruin and tragedy to the soul society yet again. Like a wound that had been ripped open and salt applied to reignite the sensation of agony, the civil-war had only just ended and trust was just beginning to grow, not even the first bud had seen the light of day before the darkness of conflict overshadowed it’s reach to the sun.
The Seireitei had not even had time to really breathe any sense of ease and now she found that it was choking on blood again. This morbid visage was what would keep her from returning to do anything to stop her deluded vice captain. It was always the same view of everyone around her choking to their deaths, decaying all around her by the hoards! Until she turned away. It was not until she looked away, off to the future did those visions give her mercy. Then she saw her comrades by her side, alive and well able to evade so they can live another day!
From the birth of Otokogi's unforgivable transgression, the captain had known that this was not her fight and she knew that she’d have to come between the both of them eventually. So many options, so many possible scenarios raced through her brain as she trudged around in the white sands of hueco mundo months earlier. The one that had come to pass, had been one of the ones she'd fortold and so she began her acts of preventative action.
Wondering what she could do to save them all, Captain Kurayami had painstakingly taken the steps she had decided on that would make sure that she could.
Everything had been planned so carefully for those long arduous months only to be ruined by her own misjudgement and the multitude of aspects entirely out of her realm of manipulation.
It was enough to make her want to die.
Regardless, from the beginning, if her chosen course of action failed then she had already known that she was not going to turn back. She knew that she was going to abandon the Shiba to his fate, and Otokogi’s by extension. It did not occur to her that perhaps even with Otokogi’s body crushed and spirit destroyed, that she might be his next target. Rage was so frightening and so transforming as well as uncontrollable, it was something she vehemently avoided as nothing good ever came from indulging in it. In times of turmoil before she had been a space of calm for Densagi, a friend and a confidant but now with her own idiotic move she had seemingly twisted his rapturous perspective so that he no longer trusted her. Did he also
hate her? To the point that he would come hunt her down and kill her?
That didn’t come to her mind once.
No, with all of Shizukana's kind and trusting heart she believed that Densagi would never want to hurt her much less kill her as she felt the same toward him and so that did not play into her decision in the slightest.
She also knew that somewhere in there, he understood her principles on retreat as well as her duty to protect the people he was currently neglecting and endangering.
It had never been her fight.
This was why the icy haired phantom had shed so many tears.
So that she could let it go.
It was nothing personal of course, her next actions were simply motivated by Shizukana knowing she stood a better chance of surviving, therefore the Seireitei stood a better chance of surviving so long as she retreated along with the rest of the reapers and public.
This was how Captain Kurayami saw the world, something many people were unaware of as she rarely appeared in the public eye and or in her fellow captain’s eye. All that most knew of her was that she was a benevelont and archaeic force that saved many lives, enduring multiple wars and was honored the same way, a woman with a legend in her likness about a beautiful ghost that mothers recited to children when they needed to go to sleep.
All of this considered, Shizukana turned away from and continued to follow the path of the fleeing crowds soon shunpoing away reaching the further reaches of the Seireitei absconding entirely from the clashing men.
Once she was far enough away that she was no longer feeling the drain of Densagi’s parasitic Bankai, the physician conjured the assistance of her
Kaido, medically attending to the restoration of her siphoned spiritual power, physical strength and focus. In a flash, she was complete again.
The fifth's captain had left the job of delivering the broken, beaten and drained to the fourth division response where she was sure someone of merit who was able to do their jobs would be able to take the surplus of patients in.
Next, it appeared someone in their panic had opted to request help which was in direct violation of her order. Instead of anger, Shizukana understood how they must have felt surrounded by the terror of the moment. It was more than likely, those who joined her in rank would heed her word over the ambling of a lower seated officer so she didn’t see much coming of his request besides perhaps Itaku making the rare choice to step out onto the battlefield. However, she knew whoever had made the useless call had done so with the best of intentions!
By now they had to be aware of the situation either by feeling the weight of it's oppression, her earlier announcement or just by being the fourth division.
As Budo glided around the environment, tending to the weakened, beaten and those in need of his help the Mod souls that peppered his surroundings made a mental note that he was gathering a number of their master's orbs. However, they do and say nothing once they see what he is doing with them by assisting the retreat efforts. They were doing their own jobs with some going as far as leaping in the path of an incoming bolt of lightning thereby preventing an actual person from being struck. It left the soul's previously reanimated corpse a corpse yet again. This time the marble escaped it's host or was fished out by another mod soul agent, snatched away to be placed into the next more useful and available operative.
At the same time...
" Lady-Harai!~ Sorry i made a mess! <3 ur prob already on this but pretty please take care of the pplz! i think densagi will stop stomping around soon. i hope he does! close to everyone's got away i gotta check out some other stuff, but can you do something?? I felt hollow ickies around the rukongai and it might be nothin but can u check? A sign, anything? Winging it! lol its crazy out here! ttyl! <3 <3 <3 "
They would also be sent to the twelfth division where Shizukana only just in that moment thought to shoot the unproclaimed matriarch of the twelfth an urgent but friendly text indicating she’d be sending her a wave of survivors to look after until everything settled down. The way she saw it, the safest place for Shibuya to be would be tucked away in the confines and fortitude of her laboratory and so on and wasn’t something she’d worry about any more than was necessary. She trusted that ginger granny with just about everything she had! Some of her was scared of the wretch after all, she always had such brilliant ideas that she shared with the captain but she wasn’t just inventive…Shibuya was incredibly keen and powerful and in times of crisis had proved herself just as if not entirely as capable as herself.
