#AEIWAM

[gallusrostromegalus]

ok I need elaboration on pretty much all of those bankais that you haven't already talked about but for now i'm probably most curious about ichigo and hanataro? please, a measly few crumbs of context

The short version of Ichigo's sword situation is that he is D'artanigan to Zangetsu's Three displaced-during-the-fuckery-surrounding-his-parent's-meet-cute-slash-manslaughter-thing Musketeers. We got his dad's half-starved family Zanpakuto, The Family Ghost from his Mom's side, and a guy made in an evil instapot that wandered in here on accident and precipitated the whole enfuckening. They are untied in their goal of "Keep Ichigo Alive" but unfortunately they also have a collective IQ of Negative Four.

Reader: Gee Ichigo, why does the author let you have THREE Zanpakuto spirits?

Ichigo: That's nothing! Orihime has SIX!

Ichigo and Orihime's nonsense is connected to how The Almighty operates:)

Meanwhile, short summaries of Unohana and Byakuya's Bankai under the cut:

Minazuki is a sword primarily about the manipulation of flesh- healing injury, making better fighters by pushing the flesh to it's limits- This is a spirit that is distinctly VISCERAL in nature. It has mass. It has a very distinct body.

Unohana:

So it follows that, in order to supply injured patients with blood and drugs and new flesh and everything else, Minazuki is giving up some of her Mass. Consequently, the Stingray form of Minazuki is the SECOND one- she cannot create her elixirs and make new flesh from nothing. First she must FEED.

Which is why Minazuki's liquid format is acidic blood that devours anything organic. It's why Kenpachi!Unohana's bloodthirst was so bloodthirsty: she was literally starving for biomass to complete her sword's two forms and finally put her Soul in Balance.

Senbonzakura has been with the Kuchiki family for generations, passed from one head of the clan to the next in a sacred ritual that allows the Zanpakuto to bond to its new weilders and grant them the power accumulated with generations.

In the fic, Ukitake is one of a handful of people old enough to remember "Yachiru" Unohana, and until Zaraki's arrival, probably the closest to understanding her. That Unohana and Retsu both understand the horrors of the flesh he lives with every day more intimately than anyone else in his life, and it's the basis of an almost sacred friendship between them. He knows perfectly well where the emergency transfusions and drugs she creates come from, and they have a standing agreement that if he predeceases her, she is to feed his body to Minazuki so he can pay forward at least some of the debt given to him.

He will not be the first of Unohana's friends that have been willingly devoured by her sword.

Byakuya:

But for course, everything has it's cost.

Byakuya was not the head of the Kuchiki clan when his father Sojun died prematurely and make Byakuya the orphan heir apparent as an adolescent. He was not the head when he met Hisana in a grove of cherry trees in the middle of harvest, and fell in love with her He was not the head when he had a terrible row with his grandfather Ginrei and the rest of the clan elders about his elopement. He was not the head five years later, when on a cold spring morning before the plum trees had blossomed, Hisana died of a miscarriage.

One week later, when the plum trees bloomed and the cherry trees had budded, Byakuya came to his grandfather, head bowed and heart broken, and agreed to take up the mantle of Clan Head. His soul had already been torn in half, what was another half?

Everything has it's cost, and the price of Senbonzakura's power is the sacrifice of the weilder's own original Zanpakuto spirit, and by transference, the imminent death of the previous head.

He had known this day was coming, ever since his own native Zanpakuto spirit failed to awaken at the academy. At the time, he'd thought it a mercy that the poor thing wouldn't awaken and be aware of being devoured. But now, as he held the tiny, warm body of the spirit out to Senbonzakura, he could only think of the child he never got to hold.

...with Senbonzakura, at least, she'd be at rest with something beautiful that loved her.

Because Senbonzakura loves it's family, and in particular it adores Byakuya. It has, ever since Byakuya fearlessly climbed it's branches as a small boy, since he partook of the sword's fruits as a young man, and now, when Byakuya offered the most precious parts of himself to the sword with a sense of peace and profound trust. And Senbonzakura repays that trust in kind.

The sword's shikai release is the same, or at least similar for all it's wielders, but long-term friends of the family note that that is a LOT MORE blades than the sword ever summoned for Ginrei or any other head.

The Bankai is different every time. Senbonzakura is ready to give Byakuya whatever Bankai he wants immediately, but it's not until after he adopts Rukia and sees her fooling around in the family orchards when she thinks he isn't watching that he realizes the shape it should be.

It's name is "Senbonzakura: Sakura no Kaju-en" and it is beautiful and terrible.

Sakura no Kaju-en requires only that Byakuya pierce the flesh of his enemy or the terrain around him with one or more of his petal-blades. Once in the ground or embedded in flesh, the blade is transformed into a seed and an entire magical cherry tree grows from it, converting the Reishi and spiritual energy around it into its own mass. Since Byakuya is effectively wielding somewhere around 10,000 petal blades in his shikai alone, he can summon up to 10,000 devouring cherry trees, which will radically alter the landscape of battle and blossom into millions and millions of new petal-blades.

That is, unless his foe is unfortunate enough to have the blades penetrate their flesh. Then the trees will devour them as they grow. Even a truly massive opponent like Yammy can be mulched in minutes.

The trees initially blossom almost white, but as his enemies are felled and Senbonzakura drinks, the blooms grow pinker and then redder until they transform into deep crimson fruits.

It's a brutal Bankai, but a beautiful one. When Byakuya looks out upon the blooming landscape and tastes the sweet fruits of his efforts, it brings him peace to know the small, sleeping spirit he had to sacrifice is playing somewhere within, they way he saw Rukia playing in the family orchards that day.

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #bleach #bleach fanfic #ichigo kurosaki #retsu unohana #yachiru unohana #byakuya kuchiki #minazuki #zangetsu #senbonzakura

[japhgura]

I finally managed to finish this piece!!

After taking the pressure of art and redefining with myself that it's for fun and the creating is the fun part, not necessarily the results I could finally finish it

Tama's design is so strong, I loved drawing her

It's been soooo long since I last made a pattern so I really enjoyed her shirt haha (also Manta Rays?? Hello?? And they're in even tied into the character and aren't just for show??? Chefs kisses all over<3)

I also had a surprising amount of fun with the nudibranch boi, I'm taking name suggestions

Colour wise I really wanted to lean into the toxic a little but keep it somewhat natural? I guess I tried to go for a 'the kodoku is fucked up but it's supposed to be that way' kinda vibe, like, I changed the sky colour from blue to green at some point

Anyway Tama is a canon bleach character, thank you so much @gallusrostromegalus for letting me draw her, hope the wait was worth it haha<3

#bleach #bleach oc #tama nikuya #japhysart #aeiwam #tama so good #what would her nickname for asahi be I wonder #the nickname thing is so frgn cute still #would autistically listen to all her fish facts at the aquarium ngl

[brighteyedbadwolf]

Enjoy the Easter Egg Hunt!

I've been suggesting adding seashells, additional parapets, and twig ballistae to @gallusrostromegalus ' magnificent sand castle, and also making my own, off to one side.

#tag response #aeiwam #can i use the fic tag?

[mediumsizedpidegon]

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category: Gen

Fandoms: Bleach (Anime & Manga), An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy

Relationships: Unohana Retsu & Original Character(s), Unohana Retsu & Mako (AEIWAM), Mako (AEIWAM)/Uchiyama Hideki | Fourth Seat of the Fourth Division

Characters: Original Characters, Original Shinigami Characters (Bleach), Original Non-Human Character(s), Unohana Retsu, Kirinji Tenjirou, Uchiyama Hideki | Fourth Seat of the Fourth Division, Mako (AEIWAM)

Additional Tags: Deities, deification, Dragons, Sewer Management, Diplomacy, Shapeshifting, Gotei 13 | 13 Court Guard Squads (Bleach), Worldbuilding, Hope vs. Despair, Ecology, Interspecies Relationship(s), This is Fundamentally Ridiculous, Spirits

Kirinji finally unfroze and spluttered, "What are you doing?" "Sewer dragon," she said. "What the fuck are you talking about," said Kirinji. Retsu stared at him with the blank, confused exasperation of those in the presence of fools. "There's a sewer dragon." And then she disappeared back down. Tenjirou screamed into his hands. Or: it begins with a carp.

Thanks so much to @gallusrostromegalus for letting me play in their sandbox!!!

#bleach #AEIWAM #retsu unohana #my writing #my fics #my posts

[platinumz0nvrmre]

hey can some reblog or comment on this with what AEIWAM means?

#bleach #aeiwam #confused #i’m so confused someone help? i’d appreciate it lmaoo

[url-is-url]

I was possessed and wrote a tiny fic about Zaraki and Unohana encountering each other again, inspired by @gallusrostromegalus and An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy

https://archiveofourown.org/works/49884865

#bleach #aeiwam

[gallusdrawseverything]

AEIWAM: Odessyus

[gallusrostromegalus]

so Rangiku's Bankai is named Haineko Asama, and since Haineko means "ash cat" and Mount Asama is a volcano in Japan, does that mean her Bankai can create a pyroclastic cloud? Or does "asama" mean something else in this context?

Got in in one!

Haineko: Asama is a Bankai that creates a Vesuvius-like eruption of 1,000 °C (1,800 °F) Hot Gases and Burning Tephra and a REALLY FUCKING LOUD KABOOM. The Pyroclastic cloud can travel up to 430mph and destroys everything in it's path- opponents closer to the epicenter are the luckier ones- the sheer kinetic energy for the explosion incinerates them immediately. Those farther away may find their bodies punctured with molten shrapnel, crushed by flying boulders, or suffocated and cooked alive as they are encased in ash like the victims of Vesuvius.

It's not an easy Bankai- the energy output is catastrophic, and the longer the 'Eruption' goes on, the greater Rangiku's risk of falling into a coma or straight-up dying from expending too much energy increases. It's also not an easy Bankai to train- For a while, Rangiku wasn't 'wielding' her Bankai so much as just 'releasing' it and learning about the damage when she woke up a week later.

In the end, the ONLY person who could help her with training Asama was Yamamoto himself, because of his Literally Divine resistance to fire, and a millennium's worth of practice at dodging to deal with the rocks and ash. He had to take her out to the ass-end of nowhere in South 80 to find somewhere deserted enough to practice without mass causalities, and the practice STILL effected the weather in the rest of Soul Society. He still spent almost a month in the 4th after they returned from The Year With No Summer, getting the burns, lung damage and broken bones treated, while he waited for his pupil to wake up again.

Yamamoto is now Very Fond of Rangiku because she's the first person in a LONG time that proved to be an actual challenge for him as an opponent, was an interesting student to teach and the first person to even begin to comprehend the problems he faces as an Avatar of Destruction.

Like most Volcanoes, Rangiku spends a lot of time sleeping. Nobody who knows what she's capable of when she 'awakens' complains about her nap schedule.

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #Bleach #bleach fanfiction #rangiku matsumoto #Haineko #I feel like she should be allowed to go the fuck off at people you know? #See Also: Elemental Typing solidarity in the Gotei 13

[gallusrostromegalus]

Will They Yeet Rukia?

Inspired by this post, which @toast-star tagged as "RenRuki", which is absolutely correct, but I started thinking about everybody else.

The reason Yachiru can yeet Rukia but not Soi Fon is that Yachiru has to good sense to launch her from atop Kenpachi's shoulder. She believes height is a choice.

#Bleach #Bleach fanfic #aeiwam #an elephant is warm and mushy #it's not-not-canon though

[gallusrostromegalus]

Kenpachi Realizes Nobody Else Actually Read The Employee Handbook And Decides To Get Inventive, A Story In A Ranking Chart

Yamamoto Thought He Was Punishing Everyone Including Zaraki By Making Him Actually Fill Out That Report, Was Not Ready For Zaraki To Deliver A Twelve Hundred Slide Powerpoint Category Seven Autism Infodump About It A Week Later, A Sequel

#Bleach #Bleach Fanfic #AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #kenpachi zaraki #the key difference between Canon Zaraki and AEIWAM Zaraki is about 500 Menial Labor Jobs worth of practical skills and skepticism #For real though if yamamoto made Zaraki fill out a Report on everyone fighting ability the lad would go hog fucking wild #Yamamoto has never seen analysis like this #Yamamoto would prefer not to see analysis like this #but he DID ask and Zaraki is having so much fun he feels bad interrupting

[gallusrostromegalus]

Me: Look, you know you're wildly sympathetic and like exploring the complexity of "villainous" characters in particular, but this fic is already enormous and you hate this guy, do you really want to expend the mental energy on making him into something else?

Also me: Hey, Disney was wrong about a lot of shit but he was fucking right when he said that a story is only as interesting as it's villain, and no matter what kind of monster they are, they also have to be appealing and interesting to watch. Tweaking this asshole to have some actual depth and sympathetic reasoning is solid storytelling.

Also Also Me: If I Doofenschmirtzinate the shitty little ICP wannabe war crimes "scientist" Mayuri it'll hurt more when I kill him :)

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #sorry Mayuri fans #your clown prince of mad science war crimes is gonna have a bad time #he dies #but he gets better! #and then really wishes he'd managed to stay dead #:)

[gallusrostromegalus]

AEIWAM: Wait, if there’s only one “moon”, and Hueco Mundo exists in the same plane of existence as soul society, how is it always night in Hueco Mundo, but day and night pass regularly in soul society?

...Who said there was only ONE moon? :)

Hueco Mundo is on the same PLANE of existence as Soul Society but notably Separate- like how Avatar Kiyoshi separated Kiyoshi island from the main continent, Hueco Mundo was separated from the main matter of Soul Society, but in a scenario that was a lot shittier and and involved a lot more murder and other craptastic behavior.

The "Moon" in Hueco Mundo is a Tulpa as well, and behaves according to how the population of Huceo Mundo believes it should- since most of that population is Hollowfied Animals who rely on the regular lunar cycle for biology, the moon in Hueco Mundo is actually still on it's regular cycle, but it runs backwards- as in, it travels from west to east across the sky, and it's always in the opposite phase of the moon in the living world. When it's a Full Moon in the living world, it's a new moon in Hueco Mundo. When it's a half moon in ht living world, it's also a half moon, but the other half in Hueco Mundo.

Nobody in the universe is quite sure WHY the moon in Hueco Mundo seems to be in an opposite tidal lock with the moon in the Living World, but since the Moon in Soul society has been doing whatever the hell it feels like for at least two thousand years, this probably isn't a bad thing.

The actual reason is that Hueco Mundo's atmosphere is SO heavily charged with Spirit energy that the hollowfied animals can more or less live on air alone. this means a Lizard from Hueco Mundo is packing about a hundred times the spiritual punch as a lizard in Soul Society. The More spiritually powerful animals in Hueco Mundo Memetically counterbalance the handful of Adjuchas and higher-class hollows, but the weaker lizards of Soul Society do not balance out the captain-class individuals in Soul Society. It's in tidal lock with The Actual Moon because that's the one the animals of Hueco Mundo remember. It's backwards, because to lizard logic, the afterlife is an inversion of the living world.

Nobody in or out of the narrative understands Lizard Logic.

There is actually daytime in Hueco Mundo! The Sun and The Sky in the afterlife is ALSO Tulpas and do not need to obey any more physics than anyone generally thinks they do, and the Lizards of Hueco Mudo are VERY SURE it's Hot Time now. The Sun in Soul Society is still behaving normally (approximately), and so is the one in Hueco Mundo- it just looks dark all the time because pretty much all the Sapient Residents of Hueco Mundo believe they have Gone Into That Great Night, and the Fauna of Las Noches cares about the heat more than the light, so The Sun in Hueco Mundo is functionally an Invisible ball of Heat, and the Sky is colored Black for the aesthetic.

TL;DR: There are two moons and an invisible daytime in Hueco Mundo because the lizards think there should be.

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #Bleach #Bleach fanfic #Hueco Mundo

[gallusrostromegalus]

You can lay blame for this second ask at @hoifne 's feet, I saw their comment on the post and had to:

How did folks react to the moon landing?

"You're ready? No Big Regrets?" Renji asks. He always asks. He'd done hundreds of Konso rituals now that he was doing his mandatory tour of duty in the living world, but he never wants them to feel 'routine', so he talks to the ghosts. Hypes them up a bit for the afterlife, tries to keep his heart in it.

Especially when it's a kid.

"Well, it's not really a big deal..." The ghost Suichi considers. He was maybe ten or eleven years old. Thick prescription glasses, face round with puppy fat, very loved. Love won't stop a freak electrical accident though. Young Suichi is handling his sudden departure really well, all things considered, so maybe love does stop despair. "-but its a bit of a shame that if there's no TV in the afterlife, I won't be able to watch the moon landing."

"Yeah, we're a bit behind the times, but I'm sure one of the mad geniuses in the 12th will invent one sooner than late-" Renji grins ruffling the boy's hair before the rest of the sentence registers. "-The What Landing?"

"The Moon Landing!" Suichi lights up with excitement. "They just launched the rocket yesterday! But in just three days, man will walk on the moon!"

"...The Moon?" Renji blinks, bewildered.

"Yeah!"

Renji points up over his shoulder into the sky, gripping the boy's shoulder, eyes wide. "THE MOON IN THE FUCKING SKY?"

---

The lights of the Fifth division offices reflect blankly off of Captain Aizen's glasses as he attempts to process the news. He is entirely still, save for his eyebrows which are writhing like overcaffienated caterpillars, unable to settle on an emotion to convey.

"The Moon?" Lieutenant Ichimaru squints at Renji even harder than usual, pointing up out the window behind him. "The Moon in the fucking sky?"

"Yeah!" Renji spread his hands. "I didn't believe it either but the humans have managed to work out some neat trick with the way the world turns to like, throw the spaceship like a slingshot..?" he tried to explain.

"So, so there's three guys in a boat-" Captain Aizen tried again, reaching up under his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

"It's really more like a sealed metal tube, but they call it a Space Ship because it does sorta sail through space..." Renji tried to explain, holding up the newspaper from the living world he'd brought back to substantiate his claims and also provide helpful images to explain what was happening.

"So there's three guys in a metal tube and they... threw it into the sky so hard that instead of falling it started flying instead?" Aizen tried. "How do they even throw something that hard without Kido?"

"So the men are up in this little itty bitty bit at the top that looks like a cap on a vaccine needle-" Renji pointed at the image of the Apollo 11 rocket. "-All the rest of this is the uh. enormous amount of extremely coordinated high explosives they used to launch it. The. The whole thing is like... It's a little over three hundred fifty shaku and only 12 shaku of that is where the humans are. The rest is um. Air they smooshed so hard it became liquid and then they set that on fire and look at the picture you can see the kaboom!" Renji tried to explain, pushing the paper across Aizen's desk for his captain to read.

Aizen certainly pointed his face at the image and accompanying article, but 'read' may have been a bit beyond him at the moment.

"Oh, is that all it took?" Ichimaru hummed with interest. "Well fuck, why haven't we done that?"

"Oh yes, how very silly that the humans have beaten us at the trifling matter of FLINGING OURSELVES INTO SPACE, WHAT THE *HELL* ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ICHIMARU??" Aizen objected.

"Well like. Idea's sound. Moon goes around the earth, so a smaller thing should too. And we can absolutely make a sealed metal container and kaboom bigger than that." Gin shrugged, as though this were plainly obvious. "Betchya the clown that runs the twelfth has the stuff laying around- we got a meeting with him later today anyway, why not ask?"

"Oh sure, that's a great Idea!" Aizen beamed. "Why hello Kurotsuchi-taicho, curious news from the human world- do you think you could spare a few parts and several tons of explosives to send some guys for a stroll on the moon?"

There was a moment of silence where Renji and Gin shared an awkward glance (or at least, Renji gave meaningful look to the narrow slits where his lieutenant-commander's eyes theoretically were).

"...he'd agree to that in a heartbeat, if he hasn't started work on his own Spaceboat already." Aizen groaned.

---

"No." Grunted Mayuri.

"No? Why not?" Aizen asked, head cocked to the side like a confused spaniel.

"Look, what the old man doesn't know about budget expenditures won't hurt him!" Gin smiled encouragingly. "Think of all the scientific data you'd get to research!"

"What the old man finds out about budget expenditures after the fact can and will hurt me." Mayuri growled. "It's not cookie money, kitting an expedition to the living world to engineer a spaceship with atomic matter instead of Reishi- No, much more efficient to let the humans do it for us and poach the date from them."

"...Why would we need to go to the Living world?" Aizen blinked, confused. "I can see the moon from the window right here?" Aizen pointed out the window of Kurotsuchi's office.

"What? That moon? You can't go to that moon!" The clownish chemical engineer cackled."

Aizen and Ichimaru stared at him blankly.

"Is. Is the moon here different than the one in the living world?" Aizen asked, bewildered.

"Different? It doesn't exist!" Mayuri laughed, waving his hand at them.

Aizen and Ichimaru stared at him, then leaned back in their seats, looking out the window at the moon, which still looked as physical and present as it ever did.

"...Oh don't tell me you didn't know." Mayuri frowned, pouting. "No, spirit world doesn't have a moon. The thing up in the sky is a Tulpa- there's a "moon" because everyone who comes to spirit world thinks there should be one, and there's so much ambient spiritual energy even weak souls can exert some force on the nature of reality and when millions of them are all certain there should be a moon, a moon manifests. Or at least, a thing that looks like a moon. Doesn't act like one, changes size and skips around it's phases all the time and if it really were a round object in space, that's NOT what a crescent moon would look like."

Aizen and Ichimaru looked back out the window at the "Moon", whose crescent arced a full three quarters of the alleged satellite's circumference.

"Seriously? this is some really basic stuff." Mayuri glared at them in disappointment. "You never noticed that the moon is always visible out any random window at night, no matter what time it is? It doesn't even go east-to-west more than half the time!"

"But. But we have a lunar calendar..?" Aizen muttered, an edge of genuine distress in his voice.

"Oh yeah, the moon *used* to be regular as clockwork- everyone literally set their watches to it." Mayuri shrugged. "Then sometime about eh, two and a half, three thousand years ago? Right around the same time the first captain-class spirits started appearing, the moon started doing this 'Full Moon Thrice A Month If it Feels Like It' and 'Visible At Improbable Angles' nonsense."

Aizen's eyes were wide and Gin's very nearly open with alarm.

"That's uh- that's terrifying?" Aizen sputtered, now outright frightened.

"Yeah, anybody know what coulda caused that?" Gin muttered.

"The going theory is that the precipitation of a new class of spiritually hyperpotent souls like us has caused disproportionate tugs on the desired appearence of the the "Moon", but that's only a theory- my predecessor's predecessor once attempted to send a camera to the 'Moon' for a closer look, but it never actually *got* any closer." Mayuri explained, casually inspecting his fingernails- he seemed to be growing out the middle one for some godforsaken reason. "-Your theoretical starboat would likely far worse."

"...Okay but that's worse. You understand how that's worse, right?" Aizen demanded and Mayuri waved him off.

"No, no hit makes sense-" Gin nodded, and Aizen glared at his lieutenant. "Think about it! There's what, three and a half billion human on earth? Millions die every day, but only a couple hundred ever turn up every day at the intake queue in the 7th, and nearly everyone is from just the one part of Japan. We're one afterlife of many- ugh, could you imagine if the missionaries were sent here?- anyway, our world is nowhere NEAR as big at the Living World, so the moon-moon is just a geographical feature in the living world, and there's only a couple million people living here. We got disproportionate swing, so we pull on the collective conciousness more. It's fine!"

"That's AWFUL!" Aizen shouted, dismayed.

"I mean I think we all understand God is an Asshole, but what are you gonna do about it?" Mayuri shrugged before tapping on the crate beside his desk. "-Anyway, do you want these Polio Vaccines for the rukongai outreach program our not?"

"I- yes. Please." Aizen muttered.

"Good man, sign here." Mayuri tapped the sheet on his desk. As Aizen tried to read over the provisions release paperwork, the small "Electronic Mailer" on Mayuri's desk pinged. "Oh, the word got out- Kyoraku-taicho wants to hold another moon-viewing party for the occasion. Do me a favor and attend so you can explain to him why we can't go to our 'moon' for me? I don't want to go, and I really don't want to explain it to him through a hangover either."

"If you don't wanna go Boss I'll stand in for you. Promises to be a real riot." Gin grinned.

"Yes, you have your young friend, don't you? Miss Matsumoto?" Aizen smiled fondly at his second-in-command.

"Oh, she probably already got her invite- she an' Miss Nan- er, lieutenant Ise are real pals from the academy." Gin laughed. "Nah, I was gonna drag old blind bones along."

"...Captain Tousen?" Aizen asked, befuddled. "Whatever for?"

"Stars ain't exactly braille, y'know?" Gin explained, wiggling his fingers. "He knows even less than we do an' I wanna watch Rangiku and Kyoraku try'n 'splain the whole thing to him." Gin grinned.

"Sounds lovely! Take your shit and get out of my office." Mayuri threatened.

---

Renji exhaled, still bewildered, laying on his back on the grassy hill just outside the 2nd division training grounds, staring up at the moon as it rose opposite the sunset behind him. Or, maybe not? There had been some lecture about how the moon in spirit world wasn't a moon back at the academy that he didn't really remember-

"You sound like you're in the throes of a moral conundrum Red." Shuuhei teased, looking up from the strange contraption he was setting up.

"Huh?" Renji blinked. "Oh, no I'm just- Those guys in the Spaceship gotta be somethin' else, going to die thousands of miles from home."

"What? The Astronauts? They'll be fine! -Probably." Shuuhei laughed. "They're definitely insane, getting in that contraption at all, but they still gotta come home with all the rocks and whatever they get from the moon for the lab techs to look at."

"...How the hell are they getting back?" Renji frowned, rolling up onto his elbow to frown at his senpai. "I thought they blew up all the rocket getting off the planet?"

"They got a bitty rocket in the lunar landing craft that will get them between their ship and the lunar surface, and then they will angle the ship a bit and the moon will fling them back to earth the way earth flung them at the moon." Shuuei explained, not looking up from the weird bass-drum looking object he was messing with.

Renji opened his mouth, realized his friend probably understood it way better than he did, closed his mouth, shrugged, and changed topics. "So what is that thing you had me haul up here?"

"It's uhhh... Experimental. Haven't got a name for it yet." Shuuhei muttered, placing a level on top of it and frowning at the bubble before adjusting the legs bolted awkwardly to the side of the drum. "-But with all this excitement about the Lunar Landing, I realized Tousen-Taicho is... I mean he gets left out of a lotta stuff, y'know? But it's not like he can see the stars, or the spirit-moon, and I don't think he really understands orbital mechanics-"

"I sure fuckin' don't." Renji muttered.

"Yeah, because you're the kind of moron who put a ham sandwich in a VCR-" Shuuhei rolled his eyes.

"That was ONE TIME, and Matsumoto Senpai told me it was a Panini Press!" Renji sulked.

"-and then pressed "Fast Forward", but Tousen is actually smart as hell- I'm the one who can't explain it without gestures he can't see." Shuuhei continued. "...but I can use a camera obscura and reiryoku-sensitive film to sort of take an old exposure image of the night sky. I'm hoping that if I treat the exposed film right, that the light and dark parts will turn into different textures for him to read, like a braille sky."

"Oh." Renji muttered. "That's really nice of you actually."

"I mean, we'll see if it works." Shuuhei shugged, examining the level again. "Hand me the allen wrenches- What about your boss?"

"Captain Aizen? Uh- honestly? He seems a little freaked out by all this and I saw him fuckin' slam the newspaper into his wastebasket when he got back from the twelth." Renji winced. "He's weird like that. Sweet as cake most of the time but then there's these weird flashes of anger... and I'm not sure how much longer he's gonna be my boss."

"As in you got ambitions, or you think he's gonna get fired?" Shuuhei asked, staring at the level again.

"As in 'Tetsuzaemon Iba got in another brawl with his mother about him only being fourth seat when she made captain, and Liuetenant Madarame asked me if I'd updated my resume recently." Renji winced.

"Woof. Talk about a lateral promotion." Shuuhei winced. "Still, the pay raise would be nice. You could afford to take your girl Rukia somewhere up to her brother's standards!"

"IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!" Renji snapped, rolling over and jumping to his feet. "-It's -I'm sorry. It's kinda complicated." Renji sighed.

Shuuhei was silent for a minute as Renji sat back down on the grass, face in his hands. After a minute of fine-tuning the drum to keep it level, he spoke up. "You're more than good enough."

"Huh?" Renji jolted. "Oh, yeah- I'd be doing all the eleventh's paperwork but there's no way it's worse than the fucking rice subsidies accounting board-"

"That's not what I meant." Shuuhei glared.

"...I know." Renji groaned. "It's just. It's complicated, okay?"

"If you say so." Shuuhei shrugged. "Alright, hand me the flat box- thanks. It'll be ready for exposure in a minute, and I want to get it done before those clouds roll in." He gestured at the distant thunderheads threatening to bloom into a summer storm on the edge of the city.

The process was quick- the shielded plate went into the gap under the drum, and the light of the night sky was reflected onto it from a pinhole in the top. Once the metal plates were pulled back, it needed a few minutes to pick up enough light, before Shuuhei pushed the metal shutters back in and locked the plate in darkness until it could be developed.

"It's for taking pictures of the stars, right?" Renji asked as Shuuhei started disassembling the camera. "You could call that plate an Astrograph."

"Hah! Futuristic. I like it!" Shuuhei grinned. "C'mon and help me with this thing before the punishment squad turns up to kick my ass for having a camera within a mile of the second."

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #Bleach #Bleach Fanfic #renji abarai #sosuke aizen #gin ichimaru #mayuri kurotsuchi #shuuhei hisagi #the moon landing #And THAT's why the moon is fucked up in spirit world! #long post

[gallusrostromegalus]

Sad Bleach/AEIWAM thought of the day:

How much of Ichigo's highly cultivated "Weird and vaguely hostile loner" persona he projects at school a rebellion against the parentification he was undoubtedly subjected to at an early age? Because I think he was taking care of Yuzu and Karin much more than they were of him, and he strikes me as 100% the guy who has ibuprofen, snacks, a spare water bottle and cell phone charger and a bunch of other stuff anyone might need in his bookbag, so perhaps the Persona is there to give himself a break from being his and everyone else's Mom all the time.

#bleach #ichigo kurosaki #AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy

[gallusrostromegalus]

Got any more ocs that are tied to cool concepts? 😍

Remember the two Skele-Bros from the Gates of Hell in that one plot point kubo dropped and only started to expand on recently?

These lads.

In AEIWAM, they both have extensive, badass and HEAVILY guarded True Names but in daily conversation the one on the left goes by Franklin (Not Frankie) and the one on the right goes by Louie (Not Lewis) and they are jolly fellows who constantly tell terrible bone/skeleton/death/hell puns. It's like having this guy but ridiculously tall and in stereo:

They get to meet and ADORE Ukitake, promising to "fix you up with a good supervising officer for whenever you get here"

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #they are important characters in the Hell Arc #and genuinely kind #also completely insane and more than a little annoying in person #Franklin and Louie #One of them plays Jazz Trumpet

[gallusrostromegalus]

Drawing some AEIWAM Zanpaktou Spirits for funsies, here's Grandpa Tree (Senbonzakura) with a Byakuya for scale.

#AEIWAM #An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy #Bleach #Bleach Fanfic #byakuya kuchiki #senbonzakura #I don't CARE what the Zanpaktou arc Says #that sword is a Bigass Ancient and Very Very VERY thirsty tree