Disclaimer: Bleach is the creative property of Kubo Taito. I do not own any characters affliated with the series, but I still have a great time messing with them.
The Babysitters Club
"Kyouraku-taichou…" Ise Nanao groaned as she tossed and turned on the tatami floor of her personal quarters. She had rolled off the futon that served as a so-called mattress and was currently lying on the tatami fibers with her pillow thrown to the side. "Taichou… tai… chou…." Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were squeezed shut in a contorted sort of expression. A bead of sweat rolled down her pale forehead. "Tai…chou….faster…" she gasped. "TAICHOU! Can't you move any faster!" she screamed. "These reports need to be signed by 5:00 and it's already 4:55—OUCH!" Nanao awoke abruptly having slammed her arm into her low lacquered worktable that was pushed against the wall. "Just a dream… What time is it anyway?" she murmured to herself as she sat up and reached for her glasses on the table. Everything came into focus and she looked at her small clock.
6:17 AM
Sighing, she picked up her futon and bedding, folding everything neatly before tucking everything into the closet. After straightening the cushions that surrounded the table, she began undoing the sash to the yukata she wore to bed and opened the door to her bathroom. She turned on the water and carefully hung her pajamas on the hanger next to the towels.
After her shower, she quickly towel dried her hair, brushed out the tangles, and twisted it up, pulling it away from her face. Left, over, down, under, right, snap. As soon as the clip was in place, she put on her glasses once again and began her ritualistic check of her shinigami outfit while she brushed her teeth.
Hair, not a single strand out of place. Nails, no dirt or foreign matter under the nails. Socks, spotless. Uniform, clean, pressed, and lint-free today. She really hated how the lint from the towels always seemed to be attracted to her clean uniforms. Finally satisfied, she put everything on and went to her worktable.
7:00 AM
"Excuse me!"
"Enter."
"Very sorry to bother you, your morning tea, Ise-fukutaichou." It was one of the new members of her squad. He was sitting in typical seiza fashion with his knees to the ground, head bowed, and knuckles flush against the wooden floor outside her room. He bowed deeply once and shuffled over to her worktable, setting the tray next to her planner. She hardly gave him a second glace as he stood up. "Very sorry to have bothered you. Excuse me." He bowed deeply once more and quietly shuffled out sliding the door closed behind him.
Nanao had her inkwell and brush ready to go as she opened her planner. "Great. First of the month. And it's Monday," she mumbled. "Which means—"
"Excuse me!"
"Enter."
"Sorry to bother you, Ise-fukutaichou! I have brought the reports for your approval and processing." It was one of the former members of her squad. He had just been "promoted" to the Information Department and was now stuck shuffling important classified papers from the main office. "Some promotion, more like a demotion," Nanao thought to herself.
"In-tray," she motioned, setting down her brush on its rest, picking up the handle-less teacup and bringing it to her lips. She stopped and frowned when she noticed what the day's activities included. "SHINIGAMI WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION MEETING, KYOURAKU-TAICHOU: PHYSICAL." The pause caused the steaming tea to fog up her glasses, so she put the teacup down in annoyance.
"Sorry for having bothered you. Excuse me," the former member bowed as he too exited the formidable fukutaichou's room.
Nanao glanced at the stack of reports that had been left on her desk. They had been bound with rope held together by a small disk that bore the official seal of the Soul Society. She closed her eyes and infused a bit of her reiatsu into the seal. The seal clicked and the rope retracted into the disk.
Putting the security disk to the side, she read the cover page aloud, "8-BANTAI MONTHLY REPORTS. ATTACHED 57 COMPLAINTS & 83 REPORTS FOR APPROVAL." Nanao sighed as she could feel a headache coming on as she sipped her tea. As usual, the complaints were filed on top of the reports and required her immediate attention.
She skimmed the summary of the complaints and realized that of those 57 complaints, 39 of them were against, "8-BANTAI TAICHOU, KYOURAKU SHUNSUI. 16 cases of alleged sexual harassment, 9 cases of disturbing the peace, 6 cases of serving alcohol to minors, 3 cases of purchasing alcohol for minors, 3 unpaid tabs, and 2 overdue fines for past misdemeanors," she read aloud to no one in particular.
Sighing, she opened a box filled with stacks of colored paper, took out one sheet of each and began clipping them to the stacks of complaints. Lavender, "8-BANTAI RELATED." Yellow, "SEXUAL HARASSMENT." Pink, "DISTURBING THE PEACE." Sky blue, "ALCOHOL RELATED." Neon green, "PAST DUE BILLS." Bright orange, "FINES." All of them were written in her distinct handwriting, perfectly balanced characters, not a stroke missing or out of place.
Nanao stacked the complaints up and turned her attention to the massive stack of reports. The reports were considerably thicker despite being relatively less pressing than the complaints. Each report was bound and had the subject clearly printed on the upper right hand corner of the report. As she read the subject of each report, she began organizing them in order of urgency. After she had sufficiently reshuffled the reports, she put them under the stack of complaints.
7:55 AM
Nanao glanced over at the clock just as she reactivated the seal on the reports. Just in time to go and fetch the taichou for his appointment. Nanao stood up, picked up the monstrous tome she always held and stepped out into the semi-lighted corridors. As she walked to the end of the hall, she noticed a certain familiar, gaudy pink haori that had been thrown to the side of the quiet corridor. Picking it up, she proceeded down the hall until she arrived at the last room. "8-BANTAI TAICHOU, KYOURAKU SHUNSUI," read the also pink piece of wood nailed to the side of the doorframe.
Normally, she would knock, but she figured that her knock would fall on deaf ears, so she just slid the shoji door open. The stench of stale alcohol filled her nostrils and her nose wrinkled in irritation. The room, as usual, was littered with shinigami corpses. Nanao used to this, simply put her book down on one of the bookshelves, and walked to the large gong her taichou used as "decoration". Personally she hated the ancient instrument because it was so gaudy with its red-turquoise-gold dragon and random lotus blossoms, but it did come in handy more than she would care to admit. Today was no exception.
Nanao picked up the large mallet sitting next to it and gave it everything she had as she swung.
GO------------------------------------------------N!
The sound echoed down the halls of the 8-bantai headquarters, shaking the walls and the corpses littering the taichou's main quarters to life. Nanao angrily dusted off her hakama as some of the dust that had settled on the gong had some how settled on her clean uniform. If it wasn't the pesky lint from the towels, it was the dust from her taichou's quarters.
"MATSUMOTO-FUKUTAICHOU, KIRA-FUKUTAICHOU, MADARAME IKKAKU-SAN, AYASEGAWA YUMICHIKA-SAN, ABARAI-FUKUTAICHOU, UKITAKE-TAICHOU, AND HINAMORI-FUKUTAICHOU, RETURN TO YOUR RESPECTIVE HEADQUARTERS AT ONCE!" she bellowed as she threw open the curtains. The corpses stirred, groaning and squinting at the sunlight pouring into the room.
"Nanao-chan, OOF!" Nanao threw the pink haori right into a barely rising Shunsui's face.
Kira was the first to actually fully rise from his interrupted slumber. A look of panic crossed his face as he noticed that he was not within the confines of 3-bantai headquarters, so he straightened his hakama, grabbed Wabisuke without so much as a word, slamming the hilt into Matsumoto's face in his haste, and jumped out the window, using his shunpo to get there in record time.
Matsumoto, being disturbed from her slumber, groaned and sat up clutching her forehead. "What's the big idea?" she moaned, opening one sleepy sky blue eye. "Oh, Ise-fukutai—what are you doing in my room at this early hour? Why is it so chilly in here?"
Nanao raised one eyebrow quizzically, but said nothing. Matsumoto stared back at Nanao for a moment, looked around and then at her state of dress.
"Whoopsie! Sorry, here I was talking to you with one of my girls popping out," said the voluptuous beauty, promptly fixing the problem by stuffing said mammary back into place.
"Ahem, Matsumoto-fukutaichou," Nanao said as she cleared her throat, "Today is Monday. You and I both know what that means."
Matsumoto paled, "PAPERWORK!"
"It's also the first of the month," Nanao said as she adjusted her glasses.
"Wait that means…" Matsumoto looked up thoughtfully, considering the comment very carefully.
"MATSUMOTO!" bellowed a certain white haired prodigy, his anger falling on deaf ears. No paperwork on his desk yet, or tea for that matter. He cursed the system that dictated that the paperwork must pass through the hands of the fukutaichou before the taichou. "Just what the hell was the Soul Society thinking when they implemented this system!" he thought grumpily. "Who was the damn idiot that put matters into the hands of people like Matsumoto!"
"First of the month means…COMPLAINT DAY!" she gasped, her eyes widening in realization. "Taichou is gonna kill me for being late again! EVERYONE! WAKE UP! TODAY'S COMPLAINT DAY!" she screamed breathlessly, stepping on Renji's chest and Ikkaku's arm, both who happened to be blocking her way to the nearest exit, a.k.a. the window, as she bounded out the window.
Renji and Ikkaku both sat up with a start, slamming into each other's forehead.
"What the fuck! Who the hell just banged into my head!" roared Renji.
"Goddamn it, Abarai! Keep your voice down and close the curtain. It's so damn early and here you shouting at the top of your lungs. Besides, YOU were the fucking hard-headed idiot that just slammed into MY head!" Ikkaku shouted back.
"AHEM!" Nanao coughed. "Could you ALL evacuate yourselves from Kyouraku-taichou's room, except Kyouraku-taichou!" she bellowed stepping on Shunsui's pink haori stopping him in his tracks as he attempted to slink towards the door.
"This is all your fault!" Ikkaku accused, yanking Renji by the collar.
"My fault! You were the one who frickin' suggested that we—"
"Now, now let's go already," interrupted Yumichika, smiling and looking amazingly shiny and pretty, despite having spent the night amongst drunks.
"Yumichika, when the hell did you—and why the hell do you look so—oh, never mind, let's go already!" shouted Ikkaku as the three of them bounded out yelling at each other.
"Hinamori-fukutaichou, this is a surprise," Nanao said looking sternly at a bewildered Hinamori.
"Where am I?" hiccupped a clearly confused Hinamori. Nanao raised one thin eyebrow.
Nanao cleared her throat, "Hinamori-fukutaichou, what you choose to do in your personal life is up to you," she said as she approached Hinamori. "However, I would appreciate it if you would take any 'personal business' to your own personal quarters instead of conducting it here—"
"Huh?" Hinamori looked puzzled for a second before looking down at her state of dress. Her eyes widened in shock as she noticed that she wasn't wearing anything but a bed sheet. "Ack!" she squeaked, turning bright red with embarrassment. "It's not what it looks like," Hinamori said pleadingly. Nanao looked unconvinced as raised one eyebrow.
"Nanao-chan," said Shunsui, turning around, knowing he was safe from being attacked, as he was already on the ground, pink cape harassed by his beloved Nanao-chan's sandal. "Hinamori didn't do anything. She just lost all her clothes to Matsumoto in strip poker—"
"Strip poker? Again?" Nanao sighed. "I guess this would explain why your haori was outside. Maybe I should have given it to the newly entered shinigami as the rag to clean the dusty halls." Shunsui paled as Ukitate decided to remind the two "lovebirds" as he called them behind their backs of his existence with a raspy cough.
"Ma-Matsumoto was having a lucky night and she somehow won all of Hinamori's clothes," Ukitate managed to choke out.
"Matsumoto thought it would make things interesting if she 'took care' of Hinamori's clothes for her," Shunsui continued.
"All right, in ANY case," interrupted Nanao. "Ukitake-taichou, would you mind taking Hinamori-fukutaichou back to her quarters? I think it's best that you both go now when there are not so many—NOT YOU," she said stamping her sandal even harder into her taichou's pink coat.
"But, Nanao-chan," groaned Shunsui, reaching for her leg.
"Taichou," she said calmly while stamping on his hand. "You have an appointment today at—"
"Go on, pretty boy," Shunsui said to Ukitake, slowly slithering out from under his haori. "Hurry up and take Hinamori. We'll clean up the mess," he said, ignoring Nanao as she read of his schedule for the day.
"Excuse us, then," Ukitake said as he led Hinamori out.
"And finally, we have to take care of all those complaints that were filed against you. Are you listening, Taichou?" Nanao asked in irritation to a Shunsui that was creeping towards the door.
"Nanao-chan," Shunsui said turning around to face his serious fukutaichou. "Did I ever tell you how cute you look when you're angry?" he said, immediately regretting those words as it landed an empty sake bottle smack in the middle of his forehead.
"Taichou, you need a bath before your appointment." Nanao shoved her protesting taichou into the open bathroom and slammed the door in his face.
"Nanao-chan," Shunsui said pleadingly, poking his head out from behind the door. Nanao stopped in her tracks. "I have a problem. Will you hear me out? You see, I have no fresh towels in the bathroom and I—OOF!" Shunsui was momentarily deprived of oxygen as he was chucked a white towel from the closet. "And I don't have any—OUCH! Thanks," he groaned as he picked up the cake of soap that had also been chucked at his forehead, hitting the spot where the sake bottle had moments earlier had connected with his face. "Damn, she has good aim," he muttered touching the tender spot and wincing in pain as he slowly retreated into the safety of the bathroom.
8:47 AM
As soon as she heard the sound of running water, Nanao sighed and began cleaning up the remnants of the previous night's activities. There was a large cardboard box in the corner with some crumpled up bags in them. Figuring they were for rubbish, she opened one to line the box and began picking up the empty bottles and rubbish.
"This must be what meant when she said she'd 'take care of' Hinamori-fukutaichou's clothes," she murmured, picking up what clearly looked to be the work of Haineko. She sighed once again as she tossed the shreds into the garbage box. Nanao, getting into the swing of cleaning, bustled around, moving what she could of the furniture back, collecting the remaining trash, and piling all the bedding together so that it could be washed. No sooner had she pooled together all the sheets, she felt the hairs on the nape of her neck stand up and reacted accordingly with her fan.
9:39 AM
"OUCH! Nanao-chan, why did you go and have to smash your fan into my nose?" cried Shunsui covering the protruding body part, praying that it would not start bleeding now.
"You were breathing on my neck and you were getting ready to do something," she said seriously, pulling a stray thread that had somehow migrated from the sheets to her obi. "Keep your appendages to yourself unless you plan to donate them," she said flicking her wrist to open her fan, preventing his lips from sucking her check as she walked to retrieve her precious tome.
"Why are you so cold to me, Nanao-chan?" Shunsui whined, pulling his damp waves into his trademark loose ponytail.
"TAICHOU! You have an appointment at 10:00."
"Do I have to go?" he looked at her with pleading eyes.
"Yes. Now that you're finally ready, let's go," she sighed, walking towards the door.
"Nanao-chan," Shunsui said quietly. She stopped in her tracks. "I have another problem. Will you hear me out?"
"We should go already."
"The thing is," he said, completely ignoring that last comment. "I wanted to wear my haori because I thought it would make me look sexy, but it seems that it's wrinkled, dirty, and it smells like alcohol—"
"So take it off, then," she said sliding open the door and walking out into the corridor.
"Nanao-chan," he called running after her, grabbing his hat.
"HEY, you two new recruits!" she shouted to the two younger female shinigami polishing the floor.
"I-I-Is-ssss-se-ff-ffukutaichou! Good morning!"
"You missed a spot back there. And the corners are filthy!" she said power walking towards the main gate of the 8-bantai headquarters.
"Terribly sorry, ma'am! We'll do it again from the beginning!" they said as the bowed deeply, foreheads practically to the floor.
"Nanao-chan" called Shunsui, bounding down the hall after her. "Wait for meeeee! Oh, good work, you two, keep up it up!" he said winking and waving as he ran after her.
"Thank you very much, Kyouraku-taichou!" they said blushing deeply.
"He's sooooo cool!" cried one.
"And handsome," said the other as they watched the bamboo hat chase after the serious book wielding fukutaichou.
"I wonder if they're romantically involved," wondered one aloud. "They say opposites attract…"
"OUCH!" The distant voice of their taichou could be heard even as the two commanding officers reached their destination.
"NAH!" the two new recruits said shaking their heads and walking towards the other side of the corridor.
10:07 AM
"We made it just in time," gasped Shunsui. Nanao rolled her eyes.
"If you had just used your shunpo—"
"But I didn't know where we were going, so I had to chase after you," he interrupted. "What are we doing here?" he said looking around at the 4-bantai headquarters.
"Oh, Ise-fukutaichou," said the Shinigami working at the reception. "Do you have an appointment?"
"No, but he does," she said gesturing to her taichou who was currently flirting with one of the cute pharmacist that was currently taking inventory.
The receptionist looked down at his appointment book. "Very well, Kyouraku-taichou, this way," he called.
"Coming," he chirped. "What is this all about?" he said following the receptionist.
"Routine physical," he said.
"What!" Shunsui said looking surprised. "Nanao-chan! You tricked me! You didn't tell me I had a physical today!"
"I figured it wasn't necessary. In any case, I have a meeting for the Shinigami Women's association. I'll be back in an hour to pick you up."
"Wait? Just what is going to happen to me? Noooooooooooo, my lovely, lovely, Nanao-chan!" he cried.
Nanao was about to walk out the door, when she felt the surge of a shunpo.
"Hey, Nanao-chan, if you wanted to play 'doctor' or nurse and patient, you could have just asked," Shunsui whispered saucily.
"W-what the—of all the nerve—" she said, blushing slightly, turning around furiously. But he had already used his shunpo to return to the waiting room. "Honestly," she muttered to herself, stomping off to her meeting.