Welcome to the first chapter of NDFC! This chapter is a personal best, being just under 2,500 words :DDD
Enjoy all, and I do hope you review ;)
Disclaimer: As much as I hate to admit it, I don't own the Bleach series.
Mindless chatter filled the room, causing the man at the front to groan. A tall, ruffled woman looked at him and raised an eyebrow. Running a hand through his hair, the man explained in one sentence.
"Once they start, it's nearly impossible to get them to stop talking." The woman nodded, understanding how he felt. The two of them went back to the papers they had abandoned shortly before.
Continuing to talk, the men and women in the room did not notice a smiling green-haired woman stride into the room. She cleared her throat, though nobody took notice but the two at the front. They gave her sympathetic looks and the man mouthed "good luck". The woman sighed and took out a rectangular box from her shihakusho sleeve. Holding it up above her head, she pressed the red button on it, causing something small to fly out of it. The small item exploded. The loud and sudden noise caught everyone's attention and the talking ceased. All eyes were on the small woman and she cleared her throat again.
"Hello everyone, I am third seat Miira of the twelfth division. Today I am here to do something a bit different with your graduating class. I will be testing you all with a multitude of tests in order to correctly place you in the division you will enjoy and work well in."
The students looked around at each other, some rolling their eyes and joking about it to their friends. Miira sighed and clapped her hands a couple of times to quiet them down.
"Please pay attention. Now, create groups of four. It would be best to go with one for Kido, one for Hakuda, one for Zanjutsu, and one for Hoho in order to balance the groups for the tasks I will assign to you."
The students looked at her for a moment before complying with her order. Friends called out to each other, trying to work together. Some of the more introverted students stood still for a second before asking the nearest person what they were best at. All in all, it was pretty chaotic. Eventually after quite a few minutes, the students settled down and looked to the woman in front of them.
"Ah, good. Now we must move to the Kido training court. Once we are there I will make sure the groups are well balanced and then we can start testing you all. If you would all follow me." She turned and strode out of the room with purpose, not waiting for the men and women to get up and follow her. Slowly they all trailed after the woman.
xxxxx
Miira exited the building and stepped into the bright light of the noon sun. She sighed in content and readjusted her shihakusho as the students caught up. The bright light turned her deep green hair into a glowing cascade of liquid emerald and illuminated her crimson red irises, making them appear as glittering blood rubies. Her slight tan was noted by some the academy teachers there to observe. Some found it strange since those from the twelfth usually stayed indoors for their work and became quite pale from lack of natural light.
The shining woman in the courtyard turned and faced the large mass of students milling about, waiting for their chance to prove themselves. She surveyed them with a passive face and noted various things in her mind, also noting their reiatsu levels. She came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't matter if she checked the balance of the teams, so she just skipped over that.
"Is there a group who would like to step up and be evaluated first?" Miira called out to the students. They looked around nervously and no one volunteered.
"If no one steps forward, then I shall choose. It's your choice." Some eyes widened and a group in the front shrugged and walked out of the group.
"We will, ma'am." Miira beckoned for the first man to step in front of her.
"If you would please introduce yourself and the rest of your group along with what you are best at." He nodded and cleared his throat.
"I'm Ryouta Masaya and I excel in Hakuda." Ryouta stepped back into line and the shortest of the group stepped forward.
"My name is Michio Yoshikawa. I am best with Hoho." He bowed and stepped back as another from the group stood in front. He was pretty damn tall.
"I am Daichi Hirano and I am best in Zanjutsu." Miira craned her neck to look him in the face and nodded for the final group member to step forward. This one was a woman.
"I am Ritsuka Kamiyari. I do best in Kido, though Hoho is a close second." The woman bowed to the soul reaper and stepped back. Miira gave the group an appraising look.
'Well, they seem to have balanced out their group nicely. None seem arrogant and they were all actually rather polite. Good kids.' She brushed a strand of hair that had fallen in her face back behind her ear and continued to look them over. Masaya was a plain man, with black hair, brown eyes, and a calm air about him. Yoshikawa was small for a man, but his golden brown hair swept back neatly gave him the appearance of a respectable young man and his deep blue eyes shone with determination. Hirano was a big, hulking guy with dark brown hair and equally dark eyes. He had more of a tan than the others, but it didn't seem out of place. Miira smiled; he had been so polite.
Kamiyari had a strange air about her. The soul reaper didn't know what it was but something was familiar about the way she held herself. Miira paused for a moment before giving a mental shrug. She was in the twelfth; she saw quite a lot of other people because she was occasionally required to sort the documents on all the soul reapers. Damn hard task, says I.
Nodding with satisfaction, she motioned for them to follow her farther out and had the group stand in a square formation.
"Now, we have captured some very weak hollows for you all. They should not be able to overpower you, though I am here if such a problem arises." The group of students stood as directed and readied themselves for the hollow.
They heard it before they saw it. It was making an infernal racket, causing the spectators to cover their ears and the ones being tested to flinch. Masaya narrowed his eyes and signalled for Kamiyari to be at the ready. She nodded and began to chant a kido spell under her breath while motioned to Yoshikawa to go. He nodded and his leg muscles tensed. Hirano had his right hand placed on the hilt of his Asauchi casually and nodded to Masaya.
The hollow appeared in front of Yoshikawa, sensing he was the weakest in physical strength. The young man smiled and ran from the hollow, confusing it, making some of the more brutish students laugh. Masaya exhaled and ran at the confused hollow. He hit it quickly on the back of its neck and then pinned it down with his arms.
"Now!" Kamiyari narrowed her eyes and aimed the binding kido at the struggling hollow. It screeched, causing Masaya to pause in his escape to cover his ears. Just as the kido was about to hit, Yoshikawa grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out of the way. The kido hit and the hollow was trapped, struggling and screaming on the ground. Hirano calmly strode over to it and sliced its mask clean in half.
Miira's eyes were widened with slight surprise. They did that very well and very fast.
"Well. I think we all know you did that amazingly. First test, passed!" She raised a green flag in the air to show their success. The group high fived each other rather unenthusiastically. Miira blinked and mentally shrugged. She called another group forward.
As the first testing ended, Miira realized that the graduates this year weren't all that good and sighed. A total of five groups out of twenty six passed with a perfect score. The rest just failed miserably at working together. She wrote down the current standings of the students and moved over to stand with the teachers.
"The statistics for these students don't look good." Miira presented her notepad and the teachers sighed.
"Yes, this class was never expected to be the best one." The woman stared blankly at the teachers and shook her head.
"You should really have more faith in your students. The higher the expectations, the higher they can rise." She said bluntly. The older teacher's left eyebrow twitched in irritation at being lectured by someone younger. The assistant teacher nodded, taking in Miira's words and filing them away in her memory.
Gathering her papers back into a proper order, Miira called the students to attention.
"Okay, we're moving onto the next test everyone!" The students groaned. Some even in pain. A couple of groups were unfortunate enough to have gotten a hollow slightly stronger than the others and it had taken them off guard. The woman smiled in amusement and waved her hand, signalling for them to follow her once again.
xxxxx
It took a few minutes to get everyone needed to their destination, but they did get there. Miira opened the door to the large Zanjutsu training hall and ushered the graduates inside. She closed the door as the teachers trotted in after their students.
"Okay everyone. This one is the easiest of the tests," Miira announced loudly as the groups settled down, "You must simply go through all the forms of Zanjutsu and land at least one direct strike on your opponent." Miira moved around the room as she explained the forms for some of the more forgetful students while setting up small cameras at various angles to document the matches.
"This is essentially just a kendo match. And you will be using bokken, not your Asauchi." As she finished the saying the last bit, some students sighed in relief.
Done with setting up the cameras, she walked over to a chair by the door and sat down to observe as the teachers decided on who would fight who for the test.
Miira made herself comfortable, knowing she'd be there for a while. She got her notepad ready to take down anything she might need to keep in mind for the selection process.
'And to think I had to do this for four days with all the classes. I'm glad this is the last day.' The woman sighed, bringing her hand to her cheek as she watched the students go at one another.
As one student stepped forward to strike, she flinched internally.
'What horrible form. That will leave him wide open to a counter attack….Well. He can just go to the eleventh if he doesn't like the proper forms.' Miira snorted in derision and then shook her head, stopping the internal criticism.
'Right, I need to see all aspects of their fighting style before I can have anything set in stone.' Nodding to herself, Miira set herself down for a long afternoon.
xxxxx
"That test is always the longest even though it's the easiest. Sometimes I wish we had different tests for the placing exams." Miira breathed out. The teachers laughed their agreement, having been through many boring days with their students.
"Just be glad this only happens once every year." The older teacher, a man by the name of Hideo Komatsu, chuckled.
"Yes, I suppose it could be worse." Miira laughed along with the two.
The day went on and all the tests were eventually finished. The third was something of an extremely difficult obstacle course that had pits of boiling water and blades sticking out from handholds. Not one student came out of that test unharmed.
The fourth and final test was a test of Kido precision and power. A simple test, really. This class had a better time during this test than the others and Miira was happy to see that the students had done better than before. Smiling, she gathered all her notes together and looked them over one more time. The four students that volunteered for the first test had stood out throughout the whole testing. Glad to see some good potential Soul Reapers come out of the lowest class, Miira packed up her belongings and called the students to attention once more.
"I've administered all the tests and gathered all information possible from this class." She started, "To tell you all the truth, at first I did not think you would all do as well as you did from the results of the teamwork test. I must say, excellent work everyone. I look forward to seeing you all as my fellow Soul Reapers." Smiling, she waved goodbye to the teachers and the students she had tested.
'This day went better than expected. And I must remember to look into that Kamiyari girl. She's a strange one.' Miira's day went through her head one more time and she nodded, still smiling.
"Time to report to the Captain-Commander."
The green-haired woman stepped into Shunpo and arrived rather quickly at the first division. The light of the sunset softened the look of the formidable building. Miira stepped inside and was soon met by Lieutenant Sasakibe. They nodded to each other and left for the Captain-Commander's office.
The two arrived at the office in a couple of minutes and Miira strode in and bowed to Yamamoto.
"Third seat Miira of the twelfth division, reporting with the results of the academy graduates tests." She announced and rose from her bow when given permission.
"Here are the papers, Captain-Commander. If there is anything needing clarification, please tell me." Yamamoto took the papers from the woman's outstretched hand. The old Soul Reaper looked over the papers quickly and then handed them off to Sasakibe. The lieutenant nodded and left to bring the papers to the selection committee.
"You may return to your division, third seat." Yamamoto dismissed her calmly and Miira bowed, leaving for the twelfth division.
Whee~
Review please? :D