"To be frank, I don't know whose spy I was… even to this day." — Itachi Uchiha.
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"Is it true that you fought Captain Shiba and Captain Yoruichi, and even managed to escape from them?" Aizen quickly slammed a hand over his mouth and just stared down at the students below them from the roof they sat on in awkward silence. "I'm sorry if I appear too intrusive. It's just that my Captain, Captain Hirako, made a statement that only three of the thirteen Lieutenants in the Gotei 13 had a chance in defeating you. I guess you can imagine how some of us Lieutenants felt insulted."
Aizen appeared to be a socially awkward person with how he fumbled with every sentence he spoke. Like he said, Itachi could imagine to some extent how someone who took decades and even centuries to get to the position of the Vice Captain of their Division, only for their Captain to tell them that a newcomer, who was practically a newborn soul and wasn't even inducted in the traditional Shinigami way, was stronger than the majority of them. Practically nullifying the essence of the struggle they went through to get to their current status.
If it were another place and time then it wouldn't have meant much, but (un)fortunately the Gotei 13 was an extremely militaristic society, which meant that strength and competency were the golden standard with which every Shinigami is judged.
The fact that one could simply challenge a higher ranked Seated Officer to a death match for their position said everything that needed to be said.
And it wasn't only applicable to the Lieutenants and lower ranked members but even to the Captains too. Case in point, Kenpachi Zaraki, who was the current Captain of the 11th Division, got his position by killing the former Captain of the 11th Division in a formal death match.
Itachi understood, but he didn't care about anyone's bruised ego in the slightest, not because he was arrogant of his impressive strength, but because he had no attachment to the traditions of Shinigami. The fact that he didn't accept Yoruichi's offer of a Seated Officer and remained an unranked Shinigami spoke loudly.
She even wanted to make him her Lieutenant a while ago but he still refused. That was also when he realized that Soi Fon wasn't actually the Lieutenant of the 2nd Division but instead was Yoruichi's bodyguard and a member of the Executive Militia, who were basically the Shinigami police and disciplinary body.
Seeing Itachi not saying anything, Aizen spoke up to clarify any misunderstanding Itachi might be having.
"I'm not saying I have a grudge against you or anything of that immature topic, I'm just genuinely curious is all." His voice went down a bar, with a hint of self-mockery mixed in. "Even as a Lieutenant, my strength is barely above that of the average Shinigami. Having a degree of animosity towards you for being stronger than me will be the extreme height of foolishness and hypocrisy for me."
"…The nature of every living being, and life in general, is that no one is equal to another. Some are talented, some are not. Some push forward with hard work, while others remain content with stagnation. Talent trumps hard work and vice versa, true, but nothing trumps talent with hard work."
Aizen looked at Itachi with a stunned look on his face from the words the introvert Shinobi-turned-Shinigami said, before his face melted in a wry and extremely pained stiff smile.
"I don't know whether those words were meant to serve as comfort or ridicule to me."
"Neither. It's the truth, or at least what I believe to be one. How you feel towards it should tell you the truth about yourself." Itachi replied and refrained from speaking further.
The both of them sat in silence and watched the Academy students being tested on all the facets of a Shinigami.
"I think it's about time I take my leave. My Captain will send word for me if I spend more time here." Aizen stood up and dusted his uniform, getting ready to leave but not before addressing Itachi one last time. "I genuinely enjoyed our talk, however short it might have been. Hope we meet more often, Itachi."
Itachi looked at him before slowly nodding. "Likewise."
Aizen smiled before disappearing with his application of Shunpo.
Itachi went back to watching the students as they failed and succeeded, a part of his mind thinking of his own issues with his application of Tsukuyomi ever since the moment he arrived, and through his short conversation with Aizen.
Seeing the students try out various things while physically and spiritually exhausting themselves, Itachi mentally shook his head as he knew that for Shinigami the most important factor for growth was mentally as opposed to spiritually(the measure of their Reiryoku) or even more useless physically.
When he was alive, to become competent in a jutsu, he had to cast it over and over again in different scenarios until it became akin to muscle memory.
For souls however, fundamentally understanding what you wanted to do automatically took care of half of the process. Achieving his Shikai actually made him realize this point as he could apply it in new ways he'd never tried before like he did against Yoruichi and Lieutenant Yadōmaru.
He reckons the same was true for the Captains and their Bankai. He doubted they practiced extensively with it to gain whatever level of mastery they had with it.
How else could one grow with their Zanpakutō without trying to understand their Zanpakutō's spirit as deeply as they could? More so when it was a core part of their soul?
Seeing some students cheer as they passed the exercise while others looked glum and sorrowful as they failed, Itachi decided that he had spent enough time idly sitting by and stood up to leave.
'How can you grow strong without even understanding the potential and limit ceiling of your own soul?'
He silently asked himself as his form slowly disappeared.
Fun fact: Despite following directly behind this class along with him and Aizen having a conversation while they watched them quite openly from a roof, not one of the students or the instructors were aware of their presence from start to end.
Regardless of Aizen's self-loathing and lamenting his weakness, no one sensed the barest hint of his presence even when he stood up quite openly when he left.
…..
After Aizen left Itachi to return to his Division, his mind broke down the little conversation he had with Itachi into fine dust particles.
He was more interested in the words Itachi spoke. Every single word he spoke.
A simple psychological approach where he shared his weakness with the man and listened to how Itachi responded to gauge the kind of personality he had.
"What was the phrase again? 'Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power'." Aizen mused as he sat on the chair in his office and started going through the piled up stacks of documents with a bored expression on his face. "Such simple words and yet they uphold a great truth."
Power came in different forms and the figurative 'power' he gave to Itachi was the superior position he made the man assume.
By convincing Itachi in a few words, without doubt or reason, that he was vastly stronger than he was, he immediately got Itachi to respond in just a few seconds, and the reply he got was a bit interesting.
He chuckled, amused at the result of the little experience he just had.
"Where most would console, and vainly try to convince you with empty motivations of the truth you've accepted as being false, and that the weakness you carry is a matter of circumstances and not your doing…" Aizen paused, an inexplicable smile flashing through his lips for an instant, his glasses gleaming in a serial light.
"Talent and hard work, is it? I applaud your belief that talent with hard work trumps talent or hard work, but where you're wrong is thinking nothing trumps talent and hard work."
He continued his monologues as if he was in a philosophical debate with someone else. "Yes, the very nature of life is unfair, but nature's partiality is the same thing that grants our talent, and if it can give us such talents then of course it can erect an unbreakable ceiling – the limit potential of every living being. Even if one has a higher level of potential than another, the highest limit ceiling is still a limit ceiling for all."
He picked up a certain file from the Shin'ō Academy and smiled as he wrote something on it and gave it his stamp of approval.
"If nature sets the potential for every talent and the limit for the greatest act of hard work, how can we then say talent and hard work trumps all? And if they don't, then what does?"
A gentle smile made a way into his face, making his nerdy face appear genuinely caring and innocent.
"A divine move." He said. "The acts of a truly divine being cannot be restricted, and if it is, then that being was never truly divine in nature. After all, God dictates all."
….
A common truth among Shinigami is that your Zanpakutō is a reflection of your soul. The true essence and core of your spiritual being.
If this was a universal truth as Shinigami believed it to be, then what did that say about certain Shinigami and their Zanpakutō spirits.
What did that say about people like Yamamoto, Kenpachi and Kisuke Urahara?
What does it then mean when it concerns people like Aizen and Itachi, and the true nature of their Zanpakutō spirit?
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