‘The Academy?’
‘Straight from the Commander, ma’am.’
Hazuki paused, taking a deep breath. Her eyes wandered sidelong from the slightly pained look on the messenger’s face as she mulled over what she had just been told. The very latest in what was shaping up to be a long series of tasks she had been assigned since coming to the First designed, it seemed, to occupy her time and little else.
She reached out and took the offered document, eyes sliding back to the Shinigami in front of her. The effort not to simply snatch it from her grasp was a conscious one, but the thank you that Hazuki offered was pure reflex. She received a curt salute in return, and on some level couldn’t help but resent the almost apologetic look she caught on the other Shinigami’s face as they turned away and left her there, parchment in hand and an increasingly dour look on her face.
She already knew what she would find upon unfolding it, of course. Not the assignment itself, no, but the manner in which it would be presented. Something official-sounding, tasking Hazuki to embark on some ultimately meaningless errand far beneath her station, and at the very bottom, scrawled in her own handwriting, a personal note directly from the Commander herself. Something to the tune of I need you to do this for me.
As if it would take the edge off.
As if Hazuki alone was able to manage.
She sighed, turned the paper over in her hands a few times, her thoughts going unbidden to the sword at her hip and wondering if she would ever get the chance to use it outside of sparring lessons with her aunt or uncle. It was looking ever more unlikely. Letting her talents go to waste was putting it mildly. The dour look had turned into a scowl at this point, and she shook it off, unfolding her orders deftly, by now a well-practiced habit.
Her orders were as neatly dictated as ever, and Hazuki skimmed through them picking out the gist of how the Commander wished to waste her time. Investigate Academy operations to ascertain validity of complaints, it read, Concerns related to adoption of Asauchi pivotal. Ah, so that was it. Hazuki wasn’t quite sure where she stood on what had become quite a controversial matter, but she could certainly see why Central 46 had seen fit to approve the use of the "empty blades". It had certainly accelerated recruitment, and if desperate times called for desperate measures then these times certainly qualified. There had, of course, been those who disagreed, and it seemed the Academy was bearing the brunt of their displeasure. Yet another stress in the seams holding Seireitei together. She scanned past the Commander’s seal and sure enough, there it was. A personal note of what was surely meant as encouragement that Hazuki could now no longer help but view as patronizing:
I need someone I can trust on this.
She loved and admired the Captain-Commander—she was practically family, after all—but this soured Hazuki’s mood all the same. Another meaningless task to perform, another series of meaningless reports to write, and the bitter, helpless feeling of utter stagnation kept growing in the pit of Hazuki’s stomach. Fifth Seat of the First Division, professional errand-runner. Her scowl returned in an instant. No sense in putting it off, she thought, neither the mood nor the errand.
The walk to the Academy, while scenic, was a brisk one; she wasted no time on admiring the view (though did, admittedly, steal a glance in the direction of the Second’s gardens as she passed the highlands, wondering how her mother was spending her day) and arrived at the Academy grounds in fairly short order. She hadn’t spent long there herself, and for her it had been almost a formality more than anything else. She had been born, in a manner of speaking, to the black, and the reds and blues of the academy uniforms were not in her taste. It was an odd feeling, seeing the students meander across the grounds in groups of three and four, laughing, talking amongst themselves, seemingly oblivious to the mood among the rest of the Gotei. Understandable, but jarring nonetheless.
She squinted in the sunlight, her off hand falling to the pink silk of her Zanpakutō’s hilt, and wondered where she should begin this most vague of tasks. A brief meeting with the Tenth’s leadership would probably do her some good, maybe even a quick round of the premises, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rely on the Tenth’s lieutenant for much outside of conversation and was unwilling to bother his captain with such a triviality, orders from the Commander be damned. Their offices would have to be the first port of call, however, and she would simply have to make the best out of whatever happened. She set off in the direction of the administration building, still scowling—she wouldn’t have to wipe that off until she reached her destination—but as she rounded a formation of students performing drills under the keen supervision of an academy instructor, something caught Hazuki’s eye. A flash of blonde on the opposite end of the courtyard, and a gait she recognized from her short stint here.
She put herself on an intercept course, acknowledging the instructor’s glance at her with a polite nod, and moments later she was in range.
‘Hildr!’
‘Straight from the Commander, ma’am.’
Hazuki paused, taking a deep breath. Her eyes wandered sidelong from the slightly pained look on the messenger’s face as she mulled over what she had just been told. The very latest in what was shaping up to be a long series of tasks she had been assigned since coming to the First designed, it seemed, to occupy her time and little else.
She reached out and took the offered document, eyes sliding back to the Shinigami in front of her. The effort not to simply snatch it from her grasp was a conscious one, but the thank you that Hazuki offered was pure reflex. She received a curt salute in return, and on some level couldn’t help but resent the almost apologetic look she caught on the other Shinigami’s face as they turned away and left her there, parchment in hand and an increasingly dour look on her face.
She already knew what she would find upon unfolding it, of course. Not the assignment itself, no, but the manner in which it would be presented. Something official-sounding, tasking Hazuki to embark on some ultimately meaningless errand far beneath her station, and at the very bottom, scrawled in her own handwriting, a personal note directly from the Commander herself. Something to the tune of I need you to do this for me.
As if it would take the edge off.
As if Hazuki alone was able to manage.
She sighed, turned the paper over in her hands a few times, her thoughts going unbidden to the sword at her hip and wondering if she would ever get the chance to use it outside of sparring lessons with her aunt or uncle. It was looking ever more unlikely. Letting her talents go to waste was putting it mildly. The dour look had turned into a scowl at this point, and she shook it off, unfolding her orders deftly, by now a well-practiced habit.
Her orders were as neatly dictated as ever, and Hazuki skimmed through them picking out the gist of how the Commander wished to waste her time. Investigate Academy operations to ascertain validity of complaints, it read, Concerns related to adoption of Asauchi pivotal. Ah, so that was it. Hazuki wasn’t quite sure where she stood on what had become quite a controversial matter, but she could certainly see why Central 46 had seen fit to approve the use of the "empty blades". It had certainly accelerated recruitment, and if desperate times called for desperate measures then these times certainly qualified. There had, of course, been those who disagreed, and it seemed the Academy was bearing the brunt of their displeasure. Yet another stress in the seams holding Seireitei together. She scanned past the Commander’s seal and sure enough, there it was. A personal note of what was surely meant as encouragement that Hazuki could now no longer help but view as patronizing:
I need someone I can trust on this.
She loved and admired the Captain-Commander—she was practically family, after all—but this soured Hazuki’s mood all the same. Another meaningless task to perform, another series of meaningless reports to write, and the bitter, helpless feeling of utter stagnation kept growing in the pit of Hazuki’s stomach. Fifth Seat of the First Division, professional errand-runner. Her scowl returned in an instant. No sense in putting it off, she thought, neither the mood nor the errand.
The walk to the Academy, while scenic, was a brisk one; she wasted no time on admiring the view (though did, admittedly, steal a glance in the direction of the Second’s gardens as she passed the highlands, wondering how her mother was spending her day) and arrived at the Academy grounds in fairly short order. She hadn’t spent long there herself, and for her it had been almost a formality more than anything else. She had been born, in a manner of speaking, to the black, and the reds and blues of the academy uniforms were not in her taste. It was an odd feeling, seeing the students meander across the grounds in groups of three and four, laughing, talking amongst themselves, seemingly oblivious to the mood among the rest of the Gotei. Understandable, but jarring nonetheless.
She squinted in the sunlight, her off hand falling to the pink silk of her Zanpakutō’s hilt, and wondered where she should begin this most vague of tasks. A brief meeting with the Tenth’s leadership would probably do her some good, maybe even a quick round of the premises, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to rely on the Tenth’s lieutenant for much outside of conversation and was unwilling to bother his captain with such a triviality, orders from the Commander be damned. Their offices would have to be the first port of call, however, and she would simply have to make the best out of whatever happened. She set off in the direction of the administration building, still scowling—she wouldn’t have to wipe that off until she reached her destination—but as she rounded a formation of students performing drills under the keen supervision of an academy instructor, something caught Hazuki’s eye. A flash of blonde on the opposite end of the courtyard, and a gait she recognized from her short stint here.
She put herself on an intercept course, acknowledging the instructor’s glance at her with a polite nod, and moments later she was in range.
‘Hildr!’