The recruitment had been a disaster. Well, there was the possibility that he was exaggerating, but really, Shunsui was rather disappointed. There had been no real talents so far and oh… Right. He was going to have to eat his words, as Kurosaki smacked yet another one of the thugs into the ground. Not bad then. It had not been a complete disaster, and at least there was something which was not completely bad. Come to think of it, that relative of Byakuya's was not bad too. But the others were just ordinary.
He was secretly looking forward to the reassessment of the transfers, especially that of his new General Secretary. He had heard quite a lot from Yoruichi, most of which having been rather interesting, to say the least. And the glowing review about Kaien from none other than Jyuushiro. Hisagi looked to be rather good, and that Izuru seemed not too bad either. Best of all looked to be Soi Fong. He was certain that she was going to be able to rank quite high within the organization, especially since she had been the one who had been single-handedly running the China branch, which was equally complicated but not nearly as large as the original one.
The Ranged tryouts had been equally disappointing, with no true talent. Until that last extremely familiar face, that was. His jaw had dropped, together with half the leaders', when Ishida's son had stepped up onto the plate, rifle in hand, still shooting it off with the impeccable accuracy and precision that his father had been famous around the parts for. He had not expected the boy to turn up in the first place, let alone come along and show off his skills. (And he was pretty sure that Ryuuken had not agreed to it. Of course. If not, the fearsome doctor cum illegal trader would have shown up on their doorstep already.)
And then, it had been reassessment time, and he was certainly not disappointed. Most of the Melee fighters had fallen to Ikkaku, who was a fearsome fighter in his own right, though most had assumed that simply because he was under Zaraki meant that he was not as good or as fearsome. The first was true, but the second, apparently not. The others had been savagely vanquished by Mayuri, the guy a little off his rocker, but still remotely reliable and still one hundred percent twisted genius.
Soi Fong had exceeded his expectations, really. He had not expected her to trounce everyone else in hand-to-hand combat, and he was pretty sure that Yoruichi had not been expecting this either. The newcomer had still been no match for the more experienced fighter, but the fight itself had been a deliciously exciting one. Little Hanatarou had surprised all of them with his choice of weapons, interesting and innovative. And then it had been her turn.
He had been surprised when Nanao had signed up for Kisuke's Lockdown, and had stated there that her weapon of choice was a handgun. He had been very surprised. At the same time, he was very interested to see what she could manage with the gun. The K40 was a new model, and had been out for at most, about half a year or so, not very long for a gunman to be expert at the field.
He had been even more surprised when she was actually rather good at it, her shots placed quite well within the target. Kisuke looked only slightly impressed, but impressed nonetheless. Personally? He was pleased. Yes, he was pleased. He had not been looking forward to working with a boring person, so this was an interesting revelation. It was over a little too soon for his liking, and since he was not involved in the decision making process of the allocation of personnel, he was bored. Not to mention, it was a hot day.
Taking off his pink jacket and placing to a side, he rolled up his sleeves. These windless humid days were the type he absolutely disliked. What on earth was it with the lack of any proper cooling? Twiddling his thumbs, he let his gaze wander all over the area. There were no reminders of the Melee brawls, but the individual targets for the different gunmen had been, and were laid out in front, a nice neat row of metal plating. He found himself looking at her again, before his eyes were drawn to her three targets, each with three neat holes punched into them, either in a row, or close together. They were shiny, and reflections of what seemed to be the bottom of the platform could be seen.
Hang on. What was… With a cry, he leapt off his seat, grabbing Jyuushiro by the scruff, and the next nearest person, Retsu, by the sleeve. Throwing himself and the other two of them off the platform, their leap was aided by the shockwave, and the resultant sudden expansion of heat. He felt the tips of his hair singe, and the heat scorched his back. Silently thanking the saints for silk shirts which did not burn easily, he crashed to the ground rather painfully. Crouching down, his hands flew to his head, protecting it, the pink suit forgotten, still hanging limply somewhere on a frame of what used to be a chair. The resultant shower of metal was a painful one, but now that his head was semi-protected, he felt significantly safer.
And it was over in a matter of seconds. Sure, the platform was up in flames, but he was sure that Yoruichi and Kisuke would have reacted in time. Zaraki did not seem like he would be too badly off, seeing as it did take a lot to take the man down. However, he was concerned about the others. A jarring pain in his left side did not help matters, and he was rather unwilling to look down at what he was sure was going to be nasty.
Retsu had been lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed, only a thin cut along her right thigh, something small, and not hindering her abilities. It was lucky for all of them as well, as she began galvanizing her crew, the ones who had been present to tend to much more minor injuries, into action. They had a small tent set up within minutes, and the casualties began pouring in. Jyuushiro seemed fine as well, although he was now coughing desperately, moving as far away as he could from the smoke. Once Shunsui was satisfied with the fact that his best friend was mostly fine, he quickly moved on, doing a quick check. He could not afford to lose his leaders. Not now.
The acrid smell of smoke hung in the air, as Ikkaku and his small gang, who looked to be relatively unscathed as they had been lounging away far from the platform to smoke, put out the flames, stamping them down with booted feet. All around him, members were helping each other up, towards the tent for medical treatment. Most of them had been harmed by the shrapnel caused by the explosion. The targets used during target practice were now lying on the ground in several hundred sharp pieces.
Yoruichi and Kisuke were fine, both actively moving around the area, helping others up on their separate sides. Ichimaru was bleeding from a cut in his head, his smile still ever present as he went about helping others up, together with a scowling and slightly limping Hitsugaya. Zaraki scowled fiercely from behind a half burnt face, burnt but not severely burnt. Blood was leaking from a sleeve of Kuchiki, but it did not seem to severe. It was Kurotsuchi that horrified Shunsui.
The poor man was bleeding from more places than just the huge gash along his leg. Being supported by Zaraki and surprisingly enough, Kuchiki, he seemed to be unconscious, hanging limply from their hands. Shunsui followed them into the tent, where he was immediately assaulted and pulled to one side by a decidedly and surprisingly grim Hanatarou, the new transferee with bandages wrapped from his wrists to his elbows. Peering around, and attempting to use his relatively superior height to look out for his subordinates, he was surprised when the sharp pain at his left side acted up.
"Kyouraku-san?" When Shunsui looked down, he saw a worried looking Hanatarou, face half obscured by his own body as the little healer frowned. A soft poke elicited a yelp of pain, and the frown deepened, and he looked so horribly apologetic that Shunsui was pretty sure that there was no way he was ever going to be angry with this kid. "I would apply anesthetic for you, but we seem to be running short of that. I'm sorry, but this is going to hurt." Shunsui sighed melodramatically, deflating.
"Figures," he muttered, "all healers are sadistic." Another yelp of pain as a much more severe bout of pain assaulted Shunsui's side. He felt something warm leak from there, and something dabbing at the area. Resisting the urge to look down, but losing, he looked down and saw Hanatarou with a pair of bloody tweezers. A small, or well, it didn't look too small to him, piece of sharp edged metal had emerged from his side, and he was not sure if he was supposed to be relieved that it was out or horrified that it had gone in in the first place.
A formerly brown strip of cloth that looked relatively familiar to him just that he could not quite place it was now stained a dark red. Hanatarou looked rather uncomfortable as he held up a short piece of bandage which was either just long enough to snake around Shunsui's torso once, or could be folded back to cover the gash about three times. The poor healer looked frustrated, disappearing off into the next tent, before coming back with a roll of medical tape and a slight smile on his face.
The bandage was placed on and taped into place by Hanatarou. Quickly thanking him, Shunsui went off in search of the General Secretary who he had not previously located. Now, he knew that she had been last seen somewhere near the other transferees, and the fact that Hanatarou seemed to be relatively unscathed should have comforted him. It did not. From the few days in which he had seen her work, he knew that she was extremely organized. The fact that she was not currently ordering people around was disturbing.
Shunsui was rather worried. She was nowhere to be found, and he had not seen either Kaien or Sentarou either, the two who had been sitting near her during the short period of time after her assessment and the blast. Moving through the field cautiously, he avoided stepping onto anything which looked remotely metallic, dancing around the area, trying to remember exactly where it was that the logistics tent had been set up. Ah. There.
Moving quickly over, he bent down slightly, fighting back the wince. Frowning slightly at the amount of debris, he began to shift the bigger pieces aside. These were mostly just still smoldering cloth that might be covering an unlucky soul or two. He did not find her under the pile, and although he did rescue a sooty and bleeding Nemu, who he helped to the medical tent, he could not help but feel a growing sense of unease.
While he attempted, and mostly successfully banished the thought on the basis of him not wanting to lose yet another person to flirt with, there was still a nagging thought at the back of his head that refused to go away even after they had all packed up and left the site, the injured and the dead with them.
Nanao blinked. When had she gone to sleep? She did not remember going to bed, nor the fact that her bed was a little lumpier than usual, and why was there something blocking out the light? Blinking again, she opened her eyes, and realized that her left eye was obscured by something. Her left hand reached up to touch that something. The texture was somewhat rougher, rougher in the sense that the fibers felt further apart. It was still smooth though, the fibers larger than that of usual being the only unusual thing.
Where was she? Attempting to sit up, she blinked at the bright light in her face, trying to remember things. She did remember someone poking her regularly every goodness knew how long, but for the life of her just could not quite remember why. That was before it came back to her in a flash. Oh. The explosion! Sitting up suddenly, she felt the world spinning, and sunk back with a thump and an enormous headache.
It was as if an elephant was doing the cha-cha in her head. With knife blades as the stiletto heels. It hurt, alright. Other than that, she felt mostly fine. Or at least, when she could concentrate enough to think about how she felt, she was rather fine. As she attempted to move her right arm, a jarring pain shot up into her shoulder, and she winced.
"Now, now, Nanao-chan. Retsu says you shouldn't be moving so soon after a knock to the head a day ago." She turned in the direction of the voice, and came face to face with a beaming Kyouraku Shunsui standing in the doorway. Sweeping into the room, his grin widened upon seeing her glare. "Don't be so mean to me, Nanao-chan." He pouted slightly. "Retsu always knows what's best for her patients, and especially after you took that nasty knock on the head from a pipe. Such a bad pipe too."
Her right eyebrow raised, and he suspected that her left eyebrow was raised as well, just that behind the bandages, that was simply not visible. As her hands went up to the bandages again, he cut in hurriedly, not wanting her to think that anything horribly unfixable had happened to it. "Your eye's fine. It's just that the area around it got a little bashing, and the cut was quite deep. Any further and it might have caused some damage, so you were really lucky, Nanao-chan!"
He literally sang her name, and Nanao found herself cringing in embarrassment. It was not that his singing voice was horrible, but rather that she was very unused to, and would prefer if he did not refer to her as Nanao-chan. Then again, as she had attempted to correct him about a hundred times since the beginning of her tenure as the General Secretary but failed, there was no point in it. Oh well. The things one had to put up with when one was in the…
"Sir, has the cause of the blast been investigated?" She had lapsed back into business mode then, Shunsui mused, pouting slightly as he sank gently into the large armchair which Rangiku had been previously occupying. The blonde had stayed by her friend's bedside for a couple of hours, before she had been called back by Hitsugaya. Drawing his thoughts back to the conversation at hand, he pouted again. Upon seeing her serious face, and knowing that there was no point in attempting to lighten the mood, he grew more solemn.
"Kurotsuchi is currently recovering in the intensive care ward, so Urahara has been conducting the research and gathering the data while waiting for him to return back to us. Unfortunately, he's the main bomb expert that we have, and his injuries were rather…" He was not quite so sure how to phrase 'lost an arm, leg, and will probably be scarred for life' in proper terms, merely covering it up with ", severe, so we'll be waiting for a long time yet."
A happy grin came back to his face. "But in the meantime, Nanao-chan, Retsu says that you shouldn't be doing any of the work." He happily gestured to the tablet PC perched on his lap, which she had only just noticed. "Which is why I have been doing it for once." Her jaw dropped slightly, and she blinked rather stupidly at him. No way. He had actually done his work? On an ordinary day, it was incredibly difficult to locate him to sign the few key documents, and it was nigh impossible to get him to actually do up a document or two. And now he was actively working, and had completed about ten of those? She was going to have to mark that down on the calendar, when she got back up.
Shunsui beamed at the stunned look on her face, happily reading through the next document, before signing the requisition form for more funds to be directed to Research and Development. Intending to milk the moment, his train of thought, or rather, dastardly planning, was so rudely interrupted by a high-pitched squeal from the doorway, and a rush of blonde hair. Frowning slightly, he waved at her, picking up the laptop and leaving the room. Something about girl talk made him want to leave, even though he didn't really want to.
Nanao looked away from the laptop and back to the doorway, where Rangiku had been mere seconds ago. Not having remotely enough time to ponder about where the blonde had been, she was squashed by those monstrous things which called themselves Rangiku's bosom. It was the patented Matsumoto Rangiku Hug Of Death, which she had seen her little division head, Hitsugaya-kun sandwiched in, to his annoyance. (There was speculation that he was gay because of the obvious lack of any reaction other than irritation, but oh well… Nobody's perfect.)
Gasping slightly from the lack of air, she was released as Rangiku flopped happily down in the seat previously occupied by Kyouraku-senpai, and proceeded to regale her with the tales of what had happened so far. Nanao found that she was rather unable to concentrate. It was probably because of the concussion.
Yep, completely not because of the fact that Kyouraku-senpai was not in the room.
Sorry for the delay in updating! I've been busy (and kinda dazed) these few days. Stuff should be getting back to normal soon.
Cheers,
Tan