Kirihara meets Yanagi while out studying, and they chat about literature, history, psychology and teammates.
Of course, in the past few weeks Akaya had also learned that if he didn’t look up when the door opened he was liable to find himself lassoed by Niou-senpai’s scarf or pounced on by Marui-senpai, who turned out to be a lot more solid than he looked.
Yukimura, a bit troubled over Kirihara, talks first with Tezuka and then with Suzuoki.
“You don’t care, do you?” he asked, reaching up to touch a branch. “Not that you’re growing on volcanic rock, not that it’s winter. You just keep growing.” He sighed and smiled, a little crookedly, at the tree.
Kirihara deals with a stressful practice and finally snaps. In a good way.
Akaya tried to unclench his teeth before he gave himself a headache. “Both of you be quiet,” he growled.
Kirihara sets up some practice matches with Fudoumine, to the general annoyance of most concerned.
What was it, he thought crankily, with pushy senpai who couldn’t retire properly when they were supposed to?
The new year starts, unsettling Kirihara a bit until he talks with Jackal.
The second years he could handle; he had earned what he saw in their faces when they called him Kirihara-buchou. Respect or fear or pride, he had earned it. But the glow in the first years’ eyes, the awe in their voices when they whispered to each other about him, that made him twitchy.
Inspired by ep. 174, and the anime version of the Rain Scene. Just how might Fuji answer the demands Tezuka is making?
More than Tezuka’s tongue stroking against his own, that firm hold occupied Shuusuke’s mind and defined the world for him at that moment. It was so unmistakably Tezuka holding him. Powerful, demanding, overwhelming. He felt so light in Tezuka’s grasp, as if Tezuka might breathe him in.
The start of the new year gives Fuji some new problems to deal with. Yamato-buchou is his mildly evil self.
Shuusuke regarded the lineups for the first ranking matches of the year as though the board might bite him.
Tournament season starts, and Kirihara gets a present from his coach.
Akaya turned a glower on Suzuoki, silently demanding to know what he was up to this time. Suzuoki smirked at him. “You got to play exactly once this weekend and last. You should unwind a little. Besides, you could use an actual challenge.”
Kirihara’s second spin through Regionals, and Nationals, as a captain this time.
The pace of what Akaya couldn’t help but think of as the real tournament season had two very different parts. There was the daily practice with his team, which, while demanding and sometimes intense, had a smooth swoop to it. And then there were the actual tournament matches, that sprinted along like a heartbeat after an adrenaline spike.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”
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.
Sort of missing-scenes. Three possible ways Diamond’s attack on Rufus’ office might have gone, two possible explanations for the look in Rufus’ eyes, one possible explanation for Jenova exposure. (And a partridge in a pear tree~. Or maybe that should be a president in a penthouse…).
“If you want to commit suicide, sir, I’m afraid we’re going to need advance notification.”
Rufus gives Reno an assignment; or tries to. Written because I don’t, for an instant, believe Reno doesn’t take his job seriously.
Rufus looked like he wanted to run a hand through his hair, except it would mess up his styling. “Goddammit, Reno, when you think it’s a bad plan, can’t you just say so?”
