The Request

"Goodness gracious Shiori." Blod was slightly startled. She'd slid the door open with her reiatsu, a rare bit of ostentatiousness she allowed herself. Her desk was a cluttered mess of parchments, and she was writing unpretty notes with her left hand as she examined the shinigami in her doorway. "What's troubling you?" Blodeuwen always knew when people were coming to her office, and everyone knew she knew, and usually they would wait for her to call them in. For Shiori to attempt to knock, and also brazenly speak and request an audience was not common. It wasn't that Blod often kept people waiting or anything; she was just tired of knocking pots of ink over when people startled her. Luckily a disaster had been avoided this time and as her heart settled down from its faint fluttering and she moved several items that were leaned precariously on other things. She often left such dangerous stacks unattended until a near-disaster like now.

"Are you quite all right? You seem quite upset." not only was Shiori's sudden appearance along enough to signify there was something strange going on but also Blod could tell from her subordinate's reiatsu that she was riled up, and it showed on her face. Perhaps the most telling sign, however, was the fact that she had tried to knock on a paper screen door.

A chair pulled itself up for her, before turning itself into a plump armchair like the ones at Mathonwy's castle from Blod's childhood. She seemed like she needed it. Blodeuwen nudged the kettle behind her into boiling and waited to hear what was troubling her 2nd squad representative.

Blodeuwen dismissed the apologies with a wave of the hand; it was more important to know that the shinigami of the Kidoshu were well and happy.

She didn't take the seat, and indtead procured a piece of paper from somewhere within her robe and started to read aloud, agitatedly. Once she'd started, however, it wasn't a surprise that she was upset.

Blodeuwen's eyebrows disappeared into her fringe when Shiori asked for a new Zanpakuto. That didn't happen often, no not often at all. She wasn't even one hundred per cent sure what process she exactly had to go through for it to happen. But it was possible, surely...

"He stole your zanpakuto? A quincy? Kozakura is a member of the Crisis Core- presumably she was not able to capture him or at least retrieve your zanpakuto...I wasn't even aware there were quincy left with the exception of Uryu Ishida. And yet here is one strong enough that he was able to defeat you and evade her..." she trailed off darkly, as the kettle began to whistle but all thoughts of tea were gone.

"Sit down." She commanded, uncharacteristically serious. "This is not a trivial thing you are asking." She said, her neat brows once more visible and visibly furrowed. "It is forbidden for a shinigami to have more than one zanpakuto. If you gain a new asauchi I am not even completely certain if you will be able to imprint upon it. And if your old zanpakuto is found, there is a chance it will need to be destroyed. I know that you must want revenge. To desperately get out and retrieve what is yours, and a new zanpakuto is the way to do that. I will warn you that that is a poor road down which to travel." The older shinigami's face, for the first time, showed its age. The sadness it wore revealed weary eyes, and lines around her eyes that appeared only when she recalled her past.

She sighed. Blodeuwen was lucky that her zanpakuto had never been taken; she anticipated that she would be in shoes similar to Shiori's. Though she did wonder... Cariad was such an essential part of who she was that although she seldom had cause to use her soul's sword, she would not have considered attempting to find another. No; she would have hunted the quincy down without it. Perhaps that told her something about Shiori. There were many shinigami within the Kido Corps who didn't even really use their zanpakutos, but who still had attained fantastical strength due to their prowess in kido. But thinking back to the test her zanpakuto had given her in order to obtain her bankai... Well it was early days to say whether or not Shiori would let her vendetta get the better of her.

"Ahh I was like you when I was younger." The kettle lifted itself up, Shiori might feel the waves of spiritual pressure as Blodeuwen brought it and two cups to reside on the desk in front of them, boiling leafy green herbal tea leaves. "I was engaged to a man, and he was killed on the field of battle. He came back as a hollow and murdered me." She said nothing of his identity, as there was every chance Shiori might recognise Llew if she did. "I spent a long time chasing closure." She took a sip of the boiling tea, not even flinching as it scalded her mouth. "Every milestone ws a step closer to getting back what was rightfully mine, I suppose." She mused, Llew's face outlined against the dark sky of Hueco Mundo stark in her mind. Her eyes slid back into focus, staring at Shiori. "If you are given permission to have a new Zanpakuto, you are forbidden from hunting this Quincy. From the sounds of it, you have a long way to go before you even stand a chance, especially as you will be without even a shikai. Unless under explicit orders from me or Captain Feng, you will not be allowed to visit the human world until further notice; to do so would be to commit treason. Do we have an understanding?" She asked, sipping slightly more at her tea. She expected objections but would hold firm- if Shiori got herself killed trying to retrieve her zanpakuto, that would be very sad but would mitigate the impact upon soul society. An Asauchi simply getting out into the world on top of the zanpakuto already stolen; that would be a disaster.