[Solo ITP.R/Closed] 1842 AD

[Síofra ó Murchadha]

There were only three good jokes in the whole of the second division.

The first was that their official duties consisted of criminal investigation within the Seireitei and guarding whatever prisoners needed to be held as a result of investigation. But there was no crime within the Seireitei, and there weren't any prisoners to guard, despite persistent rumor. Nor was there a prison. Ask any member of the second squad what they did all day and you would both walk away laughing. But no one ever asked.

It was a ridiculous question, after all. Central Forty-six had declared long ago that as a race of gods, Shinigami were incapable of committing any real wrongdoing. Stories were told occasionally, but the supposed perpetrators of these impossible crimes were always found to be figments of the imagination, with no tangible record of existence. Despite this, the Second Squad was more than busy, much to their own amusement.

The second joke was the overall level of security.

Since non-existent prisoners and non-existent investigations required no paperwork; any documents, letters, or communiques handled by the second squad were pure gibberish for the purposes of exercise. This was almost true. Codes for basic missives were changed every two days, were never the same, and were usually completely nonsensical. This was only compounded by the fact that every code had to be memorized after verbal instruction, none were written down. Ever.

The chance of any member of the division understanding a given piece of paper as anything more than gibberish within five minutes was fifty-fifty, some claimed that the current memos had been circulating for over a century and that only the codes had changed to give them new meanings.

The third joke had yet to be explained to Síofra, and to tell the truth, he found the first rather horrifying.

His transfer to the second division had come as a sudden surprise, he had wished his friends the best of luck and promised to stay in touch, but once in the second he found them strangely distant, wary. His new apartment(!) had been described as a luxury in comparison to the communal quarters in most barracks, but in reality it was a six by six stone room with a futon. The lock on the door was strong (privacy being a necessity) and he never heard a peep from the neighbors. More than anything it reminded him of his lonely time in the Soul Academy. He made the best of it, but before the letter arrived there was very little to actually do.

. . .

The envelope was plain rice paper. There was no signature or squad mark, but at this point Síofra expected neither. The string of characters on the paper inside didn't immediately make sense.