"I believe this is the first time you've requested to meet with me and not the other way around," remarked Jushiro(Ukitake) with a smile, seated in seiza across from Vahn as a Sister, dressed like a Japanese Maid, served tea to each of them.
"Really...?" asked Vahn, smiling awkwardly as he admitted, "I guess I do spend most of my free time with my family and loved ones."
"As you should..." affirmed Jushiro, nodding approvingly before taking a relaxed, closed-eyed sip of his tea, savoring its minty flavor and Wisdom-boosting properties. The tea leaves used had absorbed the energy of the Black Tower's Blue Moon, greatly enhancing their flavor and vesting them with the ability to boost Wisdom by 5% for thirty minutes.
"Is there something you required my assistance with...?" asked Jushiro, smiling as he lowered his cup and continued to hold it with both hands, allowing him to take in its warm, humid, and pleasant fumes while he and Vahn conversed.
Nodding, Vahn revealed, "I've done what I can to respect your world's privacy, as per our agreement, but that hasn't stopped me from hearing about the happenings within the Seiretei. To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement..."
"I understand why you would feel that way..." affirmed Jushiro, exhaling from his nose with a sad expression as he confided, "Truthfully, there are many of us who share your concerns and frustration. But we always knew something like this would occur and that it would take time for the change so many of us desire to take hold."
Closing his eyes and bowing his head, Jushiro solemnly pleaded, "Please do not lose faith in us..."
"I have no problem with placing my faith in people," stated Vahn, shaking his head before asserting, "What I've always had issues with are systems of government that take from their constituents to enrich themselves and advance policies geared toward control rather than improving the lives of those they're presumed to represent. Security at the expense of freedom is little different from imprisonment..."
"Is there anything that we can improve upon in the short-term that would ease your concerns...?" asked Jushiro, raising his head and easing into his de facto role as a diplomat.
"First, I should establish that I understand that innovation, recreation, and disconformity in the Rukonai are inhibited to incentivize souls to relinquish their attachments and ambitions to eventually be recycled to maintain the balance of souls between the Human World and the Soul Society..." stated Vahn.
"That's correct," affirmed Jushiro, nodding.
"But that's bullshit," appended Vahn, causing Jushiro to blink in surprise and raise his brows as he asserted, "There is fundamentally no difference between souls who enter the Soul Society after death and those who call themselves natives. They're ultimately just souls who managed to acquire power and cement their positions by coordinating with other powerful and opportunistic souls. And now, instead of seeking opportunities in the wilds beyond the Soul Society's borders, they've become parasites oppressing and denying opportunities to others, sustaining themselves off the energy released when the Ego forming the outer structure of a soul fractures and dissipates."
"But if the Rukongai were allowed to develop, it would gradually create an imbalance in the Human World and Hueco Mundo, leading to the collapse of the Three Realms..." reminded Jushiro, regurgitating what he had been told throughout his more than two thousand years of life.
"How...?" questioned Vahn. "Because there are already considerably more souls in the afterlife than there are in the Human World. And it can't purely be an issue with reiryoku or reiatsu concentration, or else Aizen could just kill off a bunch of powerful Hollows to force the Soul Society to massacre the citizens of the Rukongai—similar to how Mayuri ordered his men to kill 28,000 residents to compensate for the Wandenreich's wanton slaughter of Hollows. How would filtering souls into the Human World ameliorate an imbalance created within Hueco Mundo?"
"..."
Unable to offer an immediate response to Vahn's questions, Jushiro gazed thoughtfully at the contents of his tea cup.
"Here, let me show you how I see things..." said Vahn, producing a scale with three plates balanced on a single fulcrum instead of one. From there, he took a moment to fill each with granular gold until all three sides were in balance.
"Let's say these three plates represent the balance of the Three Realms, with the fulcrum in the center representing the Soul King..." started Vahn, removing sand from one of the plates as he explained, "What I just did is what the Quincy are purported to do—completely eradicating the energy that comprises a Hollow's soul."
Though Jushiro already understood what he was getting at, Vahn took a spoon of gold from the plate representing the Soul Society and placed it on the one denoting the Human World, causing it to weigh more than the other two as he remarked, "Weird...I just did exactly what Mayuri did to fix the supposed imbalance, but it only made things worse..."
"When you demonstrate it like this...it does appear that former Captain Mayuri's actions in that particular situation were founded in a particularly shaky premise..." conceded Jushiro, his brows creasing slightly as, for the first time in perhaps a millennia, he found himself harboring doubts about the very nature of the society he helped to uphold.
"This is the key..." asserted Vahn, taping the fulcrum he had denoted to represent the Soul King, explaining, "The Soul King directly regulates the Cycle of Souls, so if there is an imbalance in one realm, souls which enter the cycle while that imbalance exists are funneled into it. If this process is interrupted and the weight of one side increases, then..."
Tilting over the entire setup, Vahn allowed Juishro to see that the bottom of the scale was inscribed with the Kanji for Hell. In essence, the balance between the three realms wasn't to prevent their collapse but to maintain the seal that prevented the denizens of Hell from escaping.
"I understand everything you're showing me, but I'm afraid I fail to grasp the greater implication..." confessed Jushiro, his head tilting slightly as he asked, "Does this not imply that former Captain Mayuri's solution was the correct one?"
"In a sense..." conceded Vahn. "The issue is the perception behind such actions. There's no underlying reason why the residents of the Rukongai can't be allowed to prosper, and with the errant assassinations occurring within the Seireitei, it's clear those in power aren't particularly concerned with this balance, only securing their positions. And if things continue as they are, the only way to correct the imbalance they're creating would be to launch an attack on Hueco Mundo or slaughter tens, if not hundreds, of humans for each spiritually attuned native soul that is killed..."
Crunching the numbers based on the information available to him as a Captain, Jushiro believed he understood the crux of Vahn's concerns. Nearly four thousand native souls had lost their lives in recent weeks. To restore the balance, that loss mandated either the killing of thousands of Hollows—or, conservatively, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of humans. And with no means of accessing Hueco Mundo at present due to their armistice with Aizen, the number of human sacrifices required could escalate into the millions…
"It seems we're on the same page," noted Vahn, once again tapping the scale's fulcrum as he added, "And this is where everything stems. From the moment your world was divided into three and the being who split it was forced to become a lynchpin, it became fundamentally incapable of changing or growing further. As it stands, if anything happens to the Soul King and the immense pressure he applies to the seal on Hell, your world will gradually revert to its primordial form."
Raising his gaze to meet Jushiro's, Vahn asserted, "Such a cycle can't continue forever, and the longer it goes on, the more powerful the force that will upset it. Aizen and Yhwach are effectively antibodies created by the world itself to try to rectify this problem. And now that we've stopped them in their tracks, an even more compelling threat is all but guaranteed to appear if nothing is done."
"And allowing the people of the Rukongai to prosper will remedy this...?" asked Jushiro.
"Not directly..." admitted Vahn. "But it will increase the number of souls who go on to become Shinigami, some of whom may even reach the level of a Captain. And the more there are of such individuals, the easier it will be to maintain balance, as you can simply relocate a few powerful people to where they're needed. What your world needs isn't ceaseless conflict and a perpetuated cycle of death and necessary sacrifice. It's harmony and cooperation. Three worlds as one—as they were always intended to be."
"It's difficult to imagine that the Soul Society could ever exist in harmony with Hueco Mundo, but not impossible. There are, however, some issues with what you're suggesting..." stated Jushiro, piquing Vahn's interest by revealing, "Before I was born, the Soul Society had a greater presence in both the Human World and Hueco Mundo. However, due to a number of particularly powerful souls accruing even greater power by manipulating people into believing they were Gods, there were innumerable conflicts. In the end, the greatest powers in the world at that time united to root out the vast majority of such individuals before imposing policies to preserve the few human societies that survived. It is because of that humans have been able to prosper and increase their numbers to their current levels in the two-thousand-odd years I've been alive."
"I get that," conceded Vahn. "But let's look at how long the Soul Society has been around. Your history dates back more than a million years, long before humans evolved their current appearance. I'm certain there have been instances in those one million years where the balance between the Three Realms was jeopardized, but in the past six thousand, you've faced near extinction, constructed the Seireitei, and completely restructured the Soul Society as a whole. I have no doubt things were chaotic before, but there's a reason the world survived 994,000 years in that form. Stagnation might feel comfortable for those in a position to benefit from it, but chaos and flux are the natural state of things."
"I can't deny that while things have been relatively peaceful these past two millennia, the few threats that have appeared were nothing short of existential..." conceded Jushiro, his expression hardening as he recalled the catastrophic damage inflicted by the Hollow, Ikomikidomoe, and the forces of Yhwach in his youth—effectively mandating the formation of the Gotei. Had those two events not transpired, the greatest military forces in the Soul Society would still be the individual militaries of the various clans and factions.
"And it's not as though I'm suggesting we suddenly remove all the laws currently in place to allow anarchy," contended Vahn, personally refilling Jushiro's emptied cup before meeting the white-haired Shinigami's gaze, causing the man's pupils to contract as he revealed, "I want to open the gates preventing souls from venturing outside the Soul Society to explore the wilds beyond. I am aware that this will lead to many deaths, but those who are willing to venture into the unknown to elevate themselves should be granted the opportunity. Let those who are content be content, and let those who yearn for more seek it. It's not a big ask."
"It's certainly a proposal one would expect from the freedom-espousing Dragon God of Infinite Possibilities..." said Jushiro with a thin smile, unease visible in his gentle green eyes as he glanced down at the teacup in his hands, the rising steam blurring his reflection. The gates Vahn spoke of were more than old stone and sealed wood—they were boundaries the Soul Society had kept closed for millennia. Beyond them lay chaos, opportunity, and truths even the Gotei feared...
For a long moment, Jushiro said nothing, a tense silence only broken by the sound of tea being sipped pervading the otherwise comfortably warm and fragrant tea room...
...
..
.