#meta;

With that being said, there are a few headcanon/meta concepts that I want to expand further upon thanks in part to being asked by some delightful, creative, and amazing individuals for my personal perspective on Rangiku’s part in all this.

Aizen and his men forcefully extracted the fused fragment of the Soul King that dwelled inside Rangiku’s soul, with it though they also took a large major of her soul itself as per CFYOW.

There are a few interesting points here, one if that Rangiku is the only shinigami stated to have one of the Soul King Nails fused with her. The others are stated to mainly be human/fullbringers and they are eventually used by Aizen and Tokinada in their respective experiments.  

Additionally, other beings that are fused with parts of the Soul King, it seems to be a fundamental concept of their existence. If the piece is removed/ taken/activated from them it would potentially bring about their death/cease to exist as they once had. Ukitake is bonded with the Right Arm, allowing him to live but once he allows Mimihagi dominance of his body, it brings about his death. It’s safe to assume that had Mimihagi been forcefully extracted prior, Ukitake would have died as Mimihagi had removed Ukitake’s diseased lungs as a child and bonded with him.  The Left Hand is literally its own entity and the Quincy Pernida. His body is literally the hand, simple enough to say, no hand, no body, no Pernida.

And yet, Rangiku’s fragment was forcefully extracted, and she still lived – not just lived, thrived, became a shinigami, became a fukutaichou. Even with a large part of her soul and the Soul King fragment taken – so how? Because Aizen and his men were not able to extract the entire piece. The process of removing the fragment fractured it, as well as fracturing her soul in general. I’ll expand more upon this later.

Aizen and his men were inexperienced at this point, extracting and stealing pieces of a soul is one thing but the forceful removal of a fused piece of the Soul King is another thing entirely. @uraharashouten  helped with expanding upon this theory, with the idea that the Soul King fragment that Aizen took from Rangiku was the first piece needed in creating his Hōgyoku. If Soul King fragments can fuse with souls, what’s better to have as the foundation when you’re literally collecting and gathering souls. How else are multiple pieces of individual souls meant to be fused together?

Now, Aizen and his men believe to have extracted the Soul King fragment and the majority of Rangiku’s soul and leave her for dead – but she doesn’t die, because a piece still remains. This is essentially The Hercules rule from the Disney movie. Baby Hercules didn’t drink every last drop and so he still retained an ounce of his god-like strength? Remember that? Yeah, that’s basically the idea here.

They didn’t take the whole fragment, she didn’t die, and she still retains her strength. Just throwing it out there that if she hadn’t had that fragment removed and most of her soul, it would be over for all y’all. New Protagonist.

There’s one last thing I want to touch upon related to this and that actually is Rangiku’s Bankai. I will gladly eat crow if Kubo ever for whatever reason shows us Rangiku’s Bankai (but it’s been over twenty years I ain’t holding my breath). I personally headcanon that Rangiku will not achieve Bankai (although I have also written and thought out her Bankai) because of the damage done to her soul and the amount that was removed during Aizen’s assault on her as a child. Her soul is too damaged, fractured and broken. She lost most of it, goes off and becomes a Shinigami. To have a Zanpakuto, you essentially bond a piece of your soul with an Asauchi, so Rangiku’s soul creates Haineko. Either this girl has way more reiryoku than like anyone period or she’s getting close to running on empty. Her achieving Bankai would put too much strain on her, spiritually.