Genryūsai tried his best to get me back to the academy to teach but I threw such a magnificent hissy fit. I warned him he'd have to physically haul me back there and we both knew he couldn't defeat me in combat. He relented; I celebrated.

Time continued to march on. I had to eventually bite the bullet and put together a more permanent team. My standard team was not canonical to that universe. In order to change the story I needed to personally pull in characters into my team to train them, guide them, and bond with them. That meant I needed to effectively kick out whoever was my lieutenant prior to make room.

Obviously doing that to an actual human soul would cause dramageddon.

My solution?

Summoned creatures.

Much like Soul Mods, or Soul Candy pills. I molded their bodies from the corpses of... well, perhaps that part is better left unsaid. I did get a little murder happy making their bodies.

(Although the Soul Candy pills weren't invented yet, it wasn't like it was rocket science to figure it out. I've made homunculi before as Elizabeth, the core science remained the same. Just had to make sure no one else figured out how I made them so it wouldn't fudge the timeline up in a way I didn't like.)

After a body was created I summoned forth companions and echoes of creatures I had befriended within my past lives. Not all of them could come personally, but they were happy to donate a copy of their energy and personality.

The result ended up being that the standard team for the Fifth Division was usually made up of inhuman creatures that specialized in utilizing devastating "hadō" attacks rather than the typical zanpakutō. My summons were not allowed to carry such a sword because the Soul King was a prejudice dick. Apparently giving a zanpakutō to a demon or whatever would be too evil.

Pfft.

My sword was Evil™, not my companions!

Most of the time.

Okay like, so maybe two of them helped me do a genocide run but like that was ages ago.

I only kept three, but that was all I would ever need. It wasn't that I really needed them for battle, but as long as I had someone in my squad Genryūsai wouldn't make me take on uninteresting fodder characters.

With my summons, they were more than happy to play the roles I gave them.

First:

Name: Kura

Body type: Red fox

Speciality: Destruction / Fire / Mage DPS

Personality: Tsundere / Kamidere

Second:

Name: Shiori

Body type: Butterfly with clear wings and frost at the tips

Specialty: Espionage / Illusion / Retired combatant but if necessary uses ice-based attacks

Personality: Dandere

Third:

Name: Snuggles

Body type: Tiny panther

Specialty: Assassin / Melee DPS

Personality: Mayadere / Kuudere

And best of all, when I needed a more human canon-friendly team I could send them away and they wouldn't make a fuss about it. Perfect situation for my needs.

(◕▾◕✿)

1006 a.d.

"I think I finally have you in a checkmate," Stark observed.

"Congratulations," I praised him. "It was about time."

"You're very hard to predict."

"I've been told that before." I looked around his stone house. He and Lilynette had built it a couple centuries prior so they could organize and protect the massive amount of games that they had procured. Lilynette had spent the past century mastering programming, drawing, and writing, so she could start making her own games.

I'd start marketing them in 2005 for her so she had plenty of time to make it. I warned her she had to match technology for the time line, which was going to be hard for her to do but not impossible. She literally had almost a thousand years to do it.

Stark was perfectly happy sticking to strategy games and reading books I had brought him. He had quite the underground library.

"You can do other stuff than wait for me every week," I pointed out to him as we put away our hand carved chess pieces. "You and Lils are plenty strong enough to take over Hueco Mundo."

"But why bother?" Stark shrewdly retorted. "You've complained an awful lot about Soul Society and dealing with the politics behind it."

"Yeah," I agreed with a sigh. "To be honest it's a struggle not to slaughter the noble families."

"Why don't you?" he asked me for the hundredth time.

"Too much of a wild card. I could probably compensate for it, but it'd be such a pain in the ass."

"More so than dealing with them for another thousand years?"

"Dunno," I admitted. "Maybe not. But I've learned not to piss off Storyteller too much 'else everything goes wrong. Like my baby girls not being born or coming out stillborn."

"Baby girls?" Lilynette had entered the makeshift living room. It was literally a big empty room with a table to play board games, and surrounding chairs.

"Yeah, you'll meet them both soon enough. They aren't born yet." I told them. I pulled out a pocket watch to check my time.

Time travel was wanky. I wasn't a Time Lord. I had Time's Blessing, which acted as a permit, but there were still things I could not do. The time I was in was marked as my Present, and I could only go so far back from the Present. I could go to the Then and back to Now without fuss, but the Before was dangerous to mess with. I could stretch it to maybe an hour, but anything more would risk damaging the timeline I resided in.

Worst case scenario I'd have to force detonate the dimension I was in and restart in an alternate. Damaged timelines were dangerous business. They were akin to a plague on time itself and could infect and hurt nearby streams. If enough timelines were infected they could congregate into a Glitch which was bad news for all the multiverses. Then the tenth-dimensional beings had to get involved and whoa boy what a mess that'd become.

"Got time to continue our D&D?" Lilynette asked hopefully. "I've finished another line of quests."

"Are they Rirī proof?" Stark dryly asked.

"Hopefully. Rirī, please stop trying to seduce the villains."

"It's in my nature," I protested but Lilynette glared at me. "Ugh, fine. Next campaign I'll play something other than a seductive bard."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

I put away my pocket watch. I'd be late returning to Soul Society, but that should be fine.

Surely they could survive an entire day without me, right?

(◕▾◕✿)

I returned to everything on fire.

Literally. Everything. On. Fire.

"What the fuck?" I asked in disbelief as I stared at the burning city. "How the fuck? Kura!"

Kura popped up next to me, lazily floating in the air as he sipped on a—from what I could smell—pumpkin spice latte through a straw. "Yeah?"

"What the hell happened here?" I gestured to the burning city.

"Yhwach."

"What?! Why didn't you guys come get me? You know I've been trying to get a hold of him, Bazz-B, and Jugram for like centuries now. Not to mention this was my chance to kill Yhwach before he got too annoying."

"Snuggles and I enjoyed the fireworks. We kept the important people alive though, don't worry," Kura reassured me. "Besides, Death was keeping you out of their pocket dimension for a reason, wasn't he?"

'A stupid reason,' I thought bitterly. 'Ask me to change the story then keep me away from key late game actors.'

It was hard enough having to wait so, so, so long for my precious companion to be reborn. Being given limited access to the story felt like a kick in the butt, and in the inspiring / motivation / Therapy-no-jutsu way... rather a kick in the butt like here let me turn up the difficulty for no reason.

'I hate the Soul King.'

"And Shiori—oh, wait," I sighed, recalling. Shiori was rebuilding the kaleidoscope for Rirī's life. Every week she needed to spend three days in the In Between. Today was only the second day. Since I had no physical energy to spare it took her longer to give them forms. They'd be a lot sturdier due to their pure spiritual energy form, but it'd take at least two centuries of careful construction.

'I should have predicted Kura and Snuggles would watch the world burn,' I thought to myself. I was unable to get mad at them. I had hoped to just kill Yhwach right away, but it made no real difference in my goals. He'd be dead by the time I finished Aizen's arc regardless.

At least this way it might be fun to kill him. Put up more of a fight.

Golly gosh, he might even make me take it seriously!

Wouldn't that be a change?

I rubbed at my forehead in irritation. "Ugh. What timing. Almost like a certain dick head Soul King planned it out."

"Perish the thought," Kura snarked.

"On the bright side I can probably persuade Gen-Gen to let me do some city construction work. I've got a great idea for a giant cat statue."

"Good luck with that."

With a shrug I headed off to find Genryūsai. I followed the path with the most destruction and pools of blood that in literally any other world would have meant the person who lost the blood died. In anime world it just meant they started talking in a raggedy breath and golly gee they'd still be kicking long enough for a healer to arrive 9 outta 10 times.

And shit, what did you know.

Genryūsai was using his zanpakutō as a cane as he was bent over, bleeding a waterfall and gasping for breath. He looked up with hazy dark eyes when he saw me then toppled forward in a graceful heap. His last word before he slipped away into an unconscious state was, "Tea... cher..."

What a drama queen.

I caught him, patched him up, then proceeded to carry him like a bridal as I hunted for my other two students. Jūshirō was collapsed on a stone pile with a—I kid you not—a sunbeam poured down on him between the rubble so the whole scene looked beautiful and dramatic. The sun and fire reflected off his pretty white hair in a way that honestly made me a little hair envious.

Patched him up, wrote a little note telling him to meet up by the school when he woke up, then off I went.

Shunsui didn't look as dramatic or pretty as my other two boys. In fact, he was pinned against the wall with some kind of pole in his gut. He was slumped over and I was annoyed to find his handsome face was completely covered in bruises.

'You don't just hit pretty boys and girls in the face,' I thought irritably. 'It's such a waste.'

As with Jūshirō I patched him up.

Lastly was Retsu. I carried Genryūsai over to a nearby medical tent where Retsu was calmly working on some canon fodder.

"Hey honey I'm home," I called out as I plopped Genryūsai on the floor in front of her. He let out a small groan. "I brought our kid back."

"He's our kid now?" Retsu asked with bemusement as she stitched on some random dude's arm. "Where have you been?"

"Errands. You know I always head out on the weekends," I answered with a shrug. "Surprised all this mayhem and gore didn't awaken your lust for blood and violence."

"Oh it did," Retsu assured me. "But the battle is over and I'm needed here."

"I'm very proud of you for calming down on your own," I praised her, reaching up on my tip toes to give her a kiss on the cheek. I ended up having to walk on the air with my reiatsu because she was too tall, but I got my kiss."Ever since you came back from that decade long raid you've been acting less and less crazy."

"That means so much coming from you," she giggled cutely. "Don't get me wrong, Captain Rirī. I wish I could hunt down those who fled and gouge out their intestines with their own teeth—"

"How would you do that?" I wondered, trying to picture it.

"—but after I met someone I realized something important." Retsu smiled fondly.

"That's nice." I said. I looked down and nudged Genryūsai with my foot. "Think you got the healing covered?"

"I'm not on the same level as you," Retsu reminded me. "If you want to help—"

"Nah, I healed my students and made sure you were still standing. I should probably start putting out the fires."

"Oh, yes. The city is on fire isn't it?"

An explosion went off in the distance. It sounded near the ammo so Retsu and I plugged our ears as our black powder storage inevitably exploded.

Yeah, a little a head of its time but there were some things I wasn't going to suffer without. Like basic plumbing and electricity. As long as I killed any scientist who came in and wanted to advance the tech too far ahead it was fiiiiiiiine.

I did have one genius a century ago who was starting to figure out nuclear energy. It was kind of fun hunting down him and everyone he talked to. Didn't like it when they cried, but the scientist was clever enough to put up a proper chase. He actually hid underneath an extra pipeline in the sewers! Took me a whole week to find him. Less than a minute to kill him, though. Was definitely not a fighter.

Once the explosions died down I bowed to Retsu. "Fare thee well my lovely lady. I'm off to make it rain."

"Literally?" Retsu asked, peering up at the holes in her tent.

"Literally."

She sighed. "Give me ten minutes to find a new tent cover."

I saluted. "Okey dokey."

(◕▾◕✿)

1500 a.d.

Hueco Mundo did not change over the thousands of years I had visited it. It remained a white sandy desert eternally at night. There were some small pockets of different environments, but for the most part it was a sea of sand. Barren.

Every weekend I would spend some time with Stark and Lilynette before I continued my search for the rest of the Espada. I had no way of knowing when they would come into existence. All I could do was diligently search Hueco Mundo until I found them.

"Oh praise sweet baby mew I found you," I muttered under my breath. Finding Ulquiorra was a lot harder than Stark and Lilynette since I could only go by sight. Stark and Lilynette at least had such a huge amount of reiatsu that I could sense them a fair bit of distance away. Ulquiorra had an impressive mount of reiatsu, but not enough to catch my attention.

Ulquiorra as a Hollow had the shape of a man. His skin was bone white, and he had long flowing black hair. There was a pair of black bat wings on him. He had a bone mask covering his entire face except for his eyes that looked almost seamless with his skin.

'How does he eat?' I wondered I as landed on the sand in front of him. Hollows need to grow, so clearly he's gotta be able to use his mouth somehow.

Ulquiorra's green eyes indifferently assessed me. He did not speak or move.

"Hi," I greeted him with a curtsy. "I'm Rirī. We're going to be friends."

Still, he did not answer.

"That's okay sweetie," I told him. "I've got plenty of experience keeping a one-sided conversation going. Let me paint you a pretty word picture while I try to entice you to eat one of these deliciously baked cookies infused with my reiatsu."

After six hours of endlessly talking to him, I learned that Ulquiorra did in fact have a mouth as Hollow but holy fuck it was traumatizing to witness him eat cookies as a Hollow.

'For the sake of the ending, I will bear this trauma alone.'

(◕▾◕✿)

Answer: Mayuri. Talk about long and painful death.

Question: What type of _-dere would you become if you were reborn in an anime world?

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