After the tennis season ends, and the third years retire, Kirihara finds himself at irritatingly loose ends.
Akaya toed the door open and leaned in the frame. “Have I forgotten anything?” he asked, unable to keep the plaintive note out of his voice.
At the simplest level, a little research to track down overviews and details is not particularly onerous for anyone with a modem. A very little research goes a remarkably long way. As for the really ambitious stories, wherein the author attempts to write about something fraught and complicated, well, she should expect to work harder for those.
An Essay about Creative Punctuation, Arguing for its Acceptability in Modern Usage
Knowing the history of Byakuya’s promises, Rukia makes one of her own, and hopes Renji can accept it.
A subtle softening passed over her brother’s face. Nothing so overt as a smile, but Rukia brightened to see it. I’ll make our house proud, she assured him silently. I will. I promise.
Spinning off from Resonant8’s entry on character making, and the discussion following, I find myself wandering in thought toward the writers of the Endicott Studio, toward Ursula K. Le Guin and her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, and toward Lois McMaster Bujold and her Vorkosigan books.
At first glance, one of these things is not like the others.
Rukia gets exasperated and points out the obvious to Renji. Spoilers through manga 181.
“Get it straight,” she snapped at him. “I am fully recovered. I have not had my spiritual energy drained. I am not in a false body that keeps draining it. I have not just come out of a prison that also keeps draining it.” Each not was punctuated by a brisk shake.
Slightly twisted ficlet about the aftermath of the Soul Society arc. Spoilers through manga 181.
“Nii-sama?” she asked, a bit cautiously just in case this was a symptom of madness, or some strange family ritual she’d never heard of.
Renji gets an offer and wibbles hesitates over it; Byakuya pounds talks some sense into him.
Renji liked to think that he stayed alert for anything, even when he was at home.
Anything, however, didn’t usually include a tiny brat of a fellow vice-captain landing on his shoulders and pounding him on the head with a small but very hard fist.
Rukia campaigns against her brother’s stoicism.
Rukia drew some odd looks, marching through the main offices of Sixth Division with a tray of tea.
Renji deals with his new job, and the echos of his old one.
Renji collapsed into his desk chair with a groan. “Who knew I’d ever appreciate paperwork?” he muttered, slumping over. Paperwork, at least, didn’t explode or kill anyone or change into weird, unpredictable hybrids.
Byakuya and Rukia speak of regrets and possibilities.
“Tell me about Hisana.”
Renji catches a glimpse of Rukia dealing with her own new position.
It was good to know she hadn’t lost any of the edge off her vocabulary after all those years in a noble house.
Byakyua watches Renji and Rukia, and tries to plan a future.
For a long time, Renji had walked at his heels, as if tame, always watching but never challenging.
He was no longer tame, and thus became worthy of consideration.
Ukitake and Kyouraku discuss the general success of their plans.
Juushirou took a distracted sip of sake, and paused as the taste on his tongue reminded him that he’d been going to stop. He gave his friend a rueful glance.
Renji broods on his relationship to the Kuchiki family.
Life would be so much easier if he could just hate the bastard.
Byakuya causes there to be romance, like it or not.
Rukia sank back, arrested by the phrase marry out of the house. She remembered the conversation she and her brother had had in the garden one evening, about regrets and stubbornness, and spouses and honor. Her heart couldn’t decide whether to stop beating or to race.
Rukia and Renji, and, in fact, most of Soul Society, prepare; plotting continues.
He looked up at her with entreaty. “Are you sure I can’t just stay the third morning?”
Kirihara finally gets that serious match he wanted out of Tachibana.
Akaya flipped restlessly through the pages of his book, cursing the English language and the educators who thought it was a good idea to make Japanese schoolchildren learn it. The voice that interrupted him wasn’t one he especially wanted to hear, most times, but at the moment even Seigaku’s terrifying old lady coach would have been welcome.
Very memorable ceremonies.
But however much of a pain parts of it had been, it all came down to this. To he and Rukia, having escaped from the layers of their formal robes and elaborate hair ornaments, down to a yukata apiece, in a dim bedroom that belonged to them.
Rukia talks to her brother about career plans.
Kuchiki was her House, just as Rukongai was her past. And neither a survivor of Inuzuri nor a daughter of Kuchiki needed anyone holding open doors for her. She’d open her own damn door.
Tachibana and Kirihara stumble into intimacy.
Tachibana was leaning over him, now, playing the same game of dare and counter-dare they played on the court.
The new year begins and Kirihara suffers a bit of culture clash.
“What are you doing here?” Akaya exclaimed, wide eyed.
Suzuoki blew a stream of smoke at him. “The coaches drew straws to see who would stay with each division this year. I got the short one.”
Kirihara’s relationship to Sanada and his temper.
The first time wasn’t really a surprise. Even one summer of observation was enough to tell anyone that Sanada-senpai had no sense of humor.
Some friendly bickering within the Rikkai team.
They were all getting off the bus, stretching and exchanging dinner plans, when Masaharu heard Yanagi ask Kirihara, softly, “So which are you going to be, Akaya? A tiger cub, or the boy who swallowed a dragon pearl?”
Yukimura’s reaction to his team’s behavior during his absence.
“Too many of those games were sloppy, and too many were aimed at cheap victories that were unworthy of you. We are Rikkai. We are the best.” His eyes narrowed. “We don’t need to win by default. Ever.”
Sanada practices, and considers connections between sword and tennis.
Sometimes intense focus shut out the rest of the world; sometimes it only brought the world closer.
A post-manga reflection on Ashura’s tunic and the likely adolescence of a god of destruction. All that energy’s got to go somewhere. This is entirely the fault of the artbook.
Ashura’s tunic is narrow, which suits his frame, even now that he’s grown. It’s simple, merely two pieces of cloth bound at his waist and wrapped at his shoulders, which suits his taste. And he goes bare under it, which suits both his desire and his humor.
Twenty thoughts of Niou Masaharu.
To deceive is to control the perception of others.
Scar’s experience at Lior, and after.
The world was red. Red with blood. Red with pain clawing through his body. Red with the light rising around him. He watched it brighten, growing as each breath slowed, until one last breath felt like it wasn’t air any more.
Scar’s experience at Lior, and after.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by now,” she said, clinically. “You’re the most willful human I’ve ever met.”
Roy wakes up in the hospital.
Roy woke far more slowly than usual, which would have been his first clue that something was wrong, had he needed a clue.
Roy recovers and Lisa keeps watch.
Hawkeye crossed one slippered foot over her knee and rubbed her toes. “I should have kept you at my apartment longer,” she said with some asperity. “At least I could walk across my guest room without tripping over anything.”
Lisa gives her old job the boot, much to the puzzlement of those around her.
When General Hakuro popped out of an office right in their path Lisa knew he’d been waiting for them, and tensed. There were a lot of unpleasant ways this meeting could go, and she could tell by the number of teeth in Hakuro’s smile that he had at least one of them in mind.
What does a career soldier do when he loses his career? And what do his friends do about him?
Roy’s past slid through his fingers into a box: a folded “portrait” of him, product of Elysia’s first finger paints; a box with his captain’s insignia—so that’s where it had gone; two letter openers, one of them an old knife of Hughes’.
Lisa gets some good advice from Gracia.
Lisa set down the teacups with a bit more force than necessary. “I’m not heartbroken over anything.”
The husband and wife conspiracy team.
Maas folded his arms around her, beaming. “I’m so lucky,” he sighed. “Not only is my wife beautiful, smart, sweet and amazing, she’s also the best secret agent I’ve ever seen.”
Some reflections, while Hawkeye cleans her guns.
She liked her guns. Killing made her reluctant to eat for a day or two, but the guns themselves were clean and precise and definite at all times.
Havoc watches and worries a bit about his friends, as he moves them in.
Anyone with eyes knew Hawkeye’d had a thing for their superior officer since day one. Well, anyone with eyes who wasn’t Roy Mustang, but Jean had never been sure that wasn’t deliberate ignorance.
Lisa chooses a new direction to move in.
Roy would be in motion again, soon. He probably didn’t know it, yet, but she was sure of it.
Roy comes to some realizations and starts to move again.
Lisa had been a sweet, cheerful girl, when he’d met her. But she’d been seventeen at the time. He hadn’t been surprised that she’d become more solemn, when she showed up as his new Second Lieutenant two and a half years later. People changed as they grew up.
Lisa goes back to her roots.
A corner of her mouth twitched as she wondered what Roy would think if he knew that she’d learned half her officer skills from her family’s bank manager.
Roy stirs things up and gets a new job.
Clearly, Roy was heading for another superior who could spot him coming and going. This could be good or bad.
Team Mustang dives into politics.
Hawkeye sniffed. “It was bad enough, dealing with bureaucratic idiots as an officer,” she noted. “I’m not going to deal with them as a secretary.”
Lisa unveils her own new job.
She really couldn’t help a satisfied smile at the stunned realization spreading over Roy’s face. To be perfectly honest, she didn’t try all that hard.
Lisa and Roy reach an understanding.
“I’ve never met another woman who’s so beautiful when she isn’t trying.”
Hakuro reflects grimly on Mustang’s influence.
It was a messy idea, a jury-rigged, special-dispensation way to disorder records and assignments. It proposed to bend regulations into pretzels without ever quite breaking their letter.
It was Mustang all over.
Ross fields some odd questions from her new boss.
“Ross-kun,” he murmured, not seeming to notice. “What do women really want?”
Lisa gets tired of waiting and coaxes Roy into bed.
“Lisa.” The whisper drew her attention from his hands to his face, and her lips parted. Roy was looking at her—at nothing but her—with a focus she’d only ever seen when he faced mortal danger. Except that, where his eyes were cold, then, they were warm now.
Havoc teases a happy Lisa.
Faint color painted her cheekbones and she gave him a mild glare. “Don’t you start too. Gracia is bad enough, giving me those doting looks every time I turn around.”
Their world has changed.
The first assassination attempt should probably not have come as a surprise. And, in a way, it didn’t.