Div. 12 Headquarters

[kittenlynn]

Ran looks back at the door as Ikasu lets Tsubaki into the lab and smiles down at the girl. Before turning his attention to Ikasu and the tablet the child had brought back with her. He was curious about the kid but knew that the two men had things that they would want to take care of first. Though it was possible that she was not a child since among the soul society apparent age could be deceiving. Though the way his cousin spoke to her she was a child or was really dumb or something. He went with a child though and kept his mouth shut about it. So as not to upset the girl or Ikasu or Hax. Definitely not Uncle Hax one just never knew what he would do when angered. Or so Mama had said years ago. He then smirks at Ikasu's comments about the paper and work. The lad then holds still when he is told to. "Ow! cousin could you not have cut instead of yank... nevermind I remember the root." He says rubbing the spot where his cousin had yanked out a strand of hair. Ran smiles at his cousin as he finishes up "I do not know which division to join." He says "I really do not know much about the different divisions. Um, I guess twelfth. I learned a lot about Biomechanics from Mama " Ran feels a little sad as he remembers Sakura, Ume, and the rest of his family. Though he keeps smiling and does not show his sorrow. Besides he thought that joining twelfth or fourth would make mom happy. Well, Ran was not actually a healer so he thought he would join twelfth at least for now. Ran could always go to another division later on if it did not work out for him here.

Ran has a sudden urge to run as far as fast as he can when Uncle Hax cheers delightedly. "I do not need a celebration Uncle." He says even though he already knows how his Uncle would respond. "What happened to Yamagamisha?" He asks though he doubts he would get a response. Admittedly he liked Hotarubi more. Ran then hugs his uncle back when he is hugged. There is a moment of worry when Hax runs to get some kind of accessory to go with his uniform. "Thank you for the scanner glasses, Uncle Hax." He says after the glasses are placed on his face and Hax explains them to him. Ranmaru then walks over to the refrigerator and starts rummaging through it without even asking. And returns to the trio with the last of the pizza that they had for dinner the night before and proceeds to eat it cold.

"Hello, Tsubaki-chan I am Ranmaru or Ran for short." He says smiling at her while she climbed onto the stool. Ran had just taken a bite of cold veggie pizza when Tsubaki admitted to pinching someone "there". He chokes on his snack and starts coughing. Then hurries back to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water he had seen. Ran double-checks that it is water then proceeds to guzzle it. After a moment as the girls, words echo in his head, Ran doubles over laughing. "Tsu-chan you do not touch there at all only strike when you are in danger of being harmed." He says when he can breathe again.

word count 569 x 3.7 + 4,596 = 6,702  

[Tai Mao]

Tsubaki nods with wide eyed innocence. "Oooooh. Okay, Ran-chan," she replies using the wrong honorific, only because she heard the adults calling him that. She pulls a juice box out of her pocket and starts to drink it, looking every bit like the little kid she is. She is not super little, but definitely lacking in life experience yet despite her intelligence. The youth cheerfully enjoys it and tosses the box into the trash can. "Can I have a snack, too?" she asks, unintentionally brushing off the subject. She means no disrespect, simply that she thought she could use a snack.

Hax blinks and then begins to laugh, "I forgot how easily children switch subjects. Especially inconvenient ones that involve mild scoldings." He gently pats her on the head and turns back to his desk. "You kids know where the fridge is. I need to get this stack of projects done. The redesign of the network is going to require extra planning and one of the things I plan on involving is a secure way to lock the router up." He is about to start the process when Ikasu turns his chair towards himself.

"I think you forgot the small matter of I still haven't approved your budget yet," Ikasu says flatly.

"I told you why we need it," Protests Hax as he makes a flamboyantly frustrated gesture that morphs into a shrug.

Ikasu sighs and rolls his eyes, "You still have not laid out your explanation for the budget request being double the last time I approved the upgrades. I want the outline first, then I'll tell you what your budget will probably get green lit for. Odds are the Vice-Captain and Captain will not mind, but I am more concerned with what our backers will say. Certainly the current captain commander will also want a ready explanation, assuming that he ever needs to ask. The Soul Court has already rejected three budgets this month and cancelled five projects in our division. Certainly Father will donate again for anything that has not been disapproved for reasons other than budgets, but I need to know everything so I can argue for it before our superiors. Do not leave me wagging in the wind here, because if you do I cannot be of any help to our division. I'll go to the mat for anything I can justify."

Hax sighs and then nods, "Yes, sir, Third Seat Yougan." He shrugs and changes the wall sized monitor from displaying a cozy third floor glass wall window overlooking a gorgeous beach and pulls up his schematics plan and other associated documents. "Here, these are the old LAN wires. They have not been updated in twenty years or more. There are complaints about them being slow. We need them for the secure intranet use to secure us from prying eyes that should not know. The WiFi was only a secondary concern at first, but reviewing some issues with the network going down is that it proved that there was an issue with having no redundancies and the router was still kept in a place that was unsecured if one were made aware of it. Plus the range was hampered in the first place by all of this signal scattering equipment and metal walls. This is terribly old fashioned by our standards. We pay attention to our own projects and take for granted that we have no equal within the Soul Society, but do we really? We have already seen that there are highly intelligent people in other divisions. Such as Oda Kuroyuri. She hides behind a oni like personality, but that girl is highly intelligent, even if mercurial in temperament. She is capable, which is saying quite a bit coming from me. Not that she would. However, we have our division's reputation at risk by not upgrading to the next stage."

"You're talking an awful lot without actually saying much, but I get what you are saying - you feel that we need it for several reasons, chief among the reasons being that leaving things the way they have been is beyond foolish and could cost us should somebody simply attempt a cyber attack," Ikasu replies as he looks over the scenarios on screen. "I did not ask for your Power Point presentation for why we needed it. I asked why your projected budget is so high." He crosses his arms and looks at Kirukoto with a stern, evaluative expression.

"Ah, that, well, I will take you to this expense chart I made for myself." The pink haired scientist opens the file and slides the chart in front of Ikasu for review.

"You could have lead with that hours ago," Ikasu says gruffly. He reads line by line and taps a few to expand them for clarification. "You seriously want to allocate more funds for using gold for the wires?"

"As you should know gold is the superior conductor and does not corrode. It is soft, sure, but it is well worth it since the LAN will be buried back in the walls and accessed from behind hidden panels. The cost is according to the current cost of gold by ounce."

"We will not need that. Just send the request to Division Eight to have the appropriate length of wire crafted and sent over. Let them worry about the budget. We only need to give them the specifics for what we want. Next: this line about the doubling of routers. I assume that it is because of the scattering issues? Let's piggy back the WiFi routers and hubs off of the old LAN system and double the servers. It is far cheaper to handle it this way than doing all of these things, those, and that. I can justify that. Save the fancy networking for Hotarubi. Father will approve that much. As for the upgraded routers, absolutely if the Research and Development for it has already advanced enough to justify not just simply rebuilding the last ones. Do these changes and I will gladly put my name on the approval and submit it to our superiors for their decision. However," Ikasu replies with a tone that says that none of these are options, "I like the ideas you have presented, so do not get rid of them. It is something that will need time to do and in phases. We should not try to do this all at once. After we can prove the usefulness and efficiency, I can submit a proposal to do the upgrades to Division Three and Six for their networks."

Tsubaki walks over to Ran and smiles up at him sweetly. "Snack?"  

[kittenlynn]

Ran soon ignores the two men when they start talking work and focuses on his cold pizza, At least till Tsubaki comes to him for a snack. Ran pushes the pizza box towards her so she can grab a slice or two. Though there was not much left of it. Ran pondered why he was so hungry and got up to go hunt in the refrigerator once more and returns to sit next to Tsubaki with a small bowl of natto which he proceeds to eat as if he actually enjoyed it. Whether or not Ran liked it only Ran knew, actually he only ate it because it was there and he was hungry. Ran grinned at Tsubaki impishly waiting to see her reaction to him eating natto. He also glances at the two men with an impish glint in his eyes. He eats the entire bowl of natto before remembering that you were supposed to put it on rice or something. "Uncle, do you happen to have any breath mints?" He asks as he takes the bowl to sink at rinses it out.

Quote:

word count 184 x 3.7 + 6,702 = 6,890

 

[Tai Mao]

Tsubaki happily grabs a slice of cold pizza and bites it. It tastes different when cold like this, she notices and then just shrugs it off. Continuing to eat the pizza, she crams the last of the crust in her mouth and snags the last slice of pizza and begins to eat it when Ran pulls the natto out of the fridge and dumps it into a bowl. She wrinkles her nose and makes a disgusted look. "Gross, get those nasty barf beans away from me, Ran-chan!" she squawks and moves further away from her older cousin. However, she is determined to eat that slice of pizza regardless of her disgust with the aroma, texture, and memory of what the natto tastes like. "UGH ..."

Hax looks over to where Ran is calling from. "Just brush your teeth in my bathroom. Don't worry, the toothbrush is in a sterilizer." He looks over at Ikasu, "I can accept that," he replies. "Is that all, sir?" he continues, disliking the need to be back on a formal level with him.

"Yeah, we can go back to talking like family now. I just can't play favorites," Ikasu says with a shrug as he taps out the results of the discussion and submits it. "Let's hope that Sawako-sama is up for the updates. Typically anything she approves the captain will probably just rubber stamp." He looks at the clock and smirks. "Oh, look. Time to go. If you have any other projects to start, you might as well wait until tomorrow. We got a lot done. Also, as for Ran and Tsubaki's budget, that was paid for by our family - resources and all, except for whatever others have dumped into Tsubaki." He snags Tsubaki by the wrist, "Come along, Tsu-chan. We need to get the office back together and get going to find us some din- Oh, how many? You just ate quite a bit. Eh, well, I'll go get myself some dinner. You can read the manners book I got you. It'll teach you honorifics, polite sayings and responses. Maybe you'll find the information useful."

Hax raises an eyebrow at the manners book. "While valuable information, don't you think that she needs something to entertain herself with?" He shrugs and closes out his applications and slides off his lab coat. The equipment can be cleaned later. "She is a child after all."  

[kittenlynn]

Ran smirks at Tsubaki as she reacts to the beans. Then chuckles when she calls them barf beans. He then gets up and heads to the bathroom to clean himself up in the bathroom. Making sure to put everything back where he had found it. Once he comes back out he sees Ikasu and Tsubaki are about to leave and makes a face at his older cousin's comment about a manners book. Ran wondered what Tsubaki did wrong and shrugs. It was none of his business. "What should I do now?" He asks uncertainly looking between Hax and Ikasu

Quote:

word count 99 x 3.7 + 6,890 = 7257

 

[Tai Mao]

Ikasu looks over at Ran and shrugs, "I guess we should get some training in before dinner. It'll look less odd if we act like you belong here. Artificial or not, you're family and I intend on seeing to it that you get treated as a member of our family." He gently takes Tsubaki's hand and glances over at Hax. Frowning thoughtfully he considers Hax's protests. "Very well. We should see to it that she gets something suitable for a child besides educational materials." He smiles down at Tsubaki and says, "We will get you some fun things, too, but I am going to insist that you do your best with your studies. I am eager to see you show me how smart you are." He gives her hand a gentle squeeze and drops his tablet into his lab coat. After riding the elevator up, he gets a thought. "Hang on, I'm going to take these things back to my lab." He presses the elevator button for the admiinistrative floor and exits it heading for his office. Near the door the man from earlier was walking funny. Ikasu surmises the situation and asks, "Do you have business here?" The man salutes him, but it is clear that he is still hurting from getting dropped by the little girl. "Uh, no, sir. I just finished dropping off someth-" His eyes land on Tsubaki who is standing behind Ikasu and pulling a face at him. Ikasu follows his gaze and notices her, now standing there like a good girl. "Is there something wrong with my daughter or are you trying to be creepy on purpose?" Ikasu says with a cold tone of a protective father. The man sweat drops and frantically yelps, "No, sir! Sorry, sir! I'm sorry for holding her up earlier, sir!" Ikasu sniffs indignantly and makes a shooing gesture. "Get out of my way. You're blocking my door," he responds impatiently. The man urgently bolts out of his way and down the hall, lest he incur his superior's wrath. "Is that the man who gave you pinched? Good thing for you I am with you. I think we have to set a few things straight about how you are going to get along with others around you. Judging by your reflection in the wall mirror, that manners book is going to come in handy. Now, I will expect a report on what you have learned after you read it. It is one thing to be smug, but another to be completely disrespectful." He frowns, but inwardly he cannot really blame her much for reacting as she has. Still, if he starts being too lenient now, how will she start acting in the future when he is not around?

"A report! I- Yes, sir," Tsubaki sighs, seeing the look on his face. "I will be a good girl." Her expression is that of a scolded child, but she makes mental notes about various things to research and ways to get this report done satisfactorily. She is determined to make up for her mistakes. 'If this book is a good way to learn how to interact with others, then it will be useful. If I can get this right, Papa will be proud of me. He's so stern when he's doesn't approve of things. Even Ojisan didn't get away with trying to be dodgy earlier. I need to remember that. Still, he doesn't really seem that mad. Just disappointed. I think I hate seeing him look disappointed. That is worse than the other night's scolding for rough housing in the penthouse and breaking his antique vase. Still, even though he yelled at me, he didn't really say anything that was mean. I think he was more worried that I nearly cut myself on the shards than about me breaking that vase. I need to make things right with him. I'm screwing up too much and I've only been alive for three days! I need-' She is pulled from her thoughts by a gentle hand on her shoulder. Looking up she sees her uncle smiling down at her and then giving her a big hug. He whispers in her ear, "Your face is so dour right now. Did your papa scold you harshly or something?" Tsubaki wipes a small tear from her eye and shakes her head. "I'm just mad at myself. I'm always doing impulsive stuff and getting into trouble it seems ... I want to make him happy. I don't want to be a disappointment or a failure." Hax hugs her tightly and then bounces a pen off of Ikasu's head. "Ika-chan, you are too strict with her. She has no life experience to teach her to be calm. You yourself struggle with impulse control issues and hyperactivity. Look how you made her cry."

Ikasu stands there stunned for a moment and looks truly apologetic. "Tsu-chan, did I really make you feel this way? Honey, I never meant it like that. I guess this family thing is so new to me ..." He pulls her out of Hax's arms and into his own. "I will try to be more patient with you. Forget the report. That was too harsh. I want you to be a kid. I want you to learn and grow. I want you to be happy. Making mistakes are not the end of the world, but we can learn from them." He rests his chin on her shoulder, looking past her at Hax who is now looking smug. Ikasu narrows his eyes at his uncle and sighs, "Though, that said, every action has a consequence and besides that the book is not a punishment. It's a children's book and it'll explain things in a fun way for you. I just do not have enough of my own social skills to teach you right, but the least I can do is give you the book so that somebody in our family can have some level of dignity." He looks down the hall at Ran and smirks as he walks out of his office, locking it behind him. "Come on, let's go train."

[Exit Academy]  

[kittenlynn]

Ranmaru grins as Ikasu suggests training. Unlike many teenagers Ran liked to train. The better you trained the better you were later on in life. He followed Ikasu and Tsubaki out of Hax's lab and to Ikasu's office. Ran hides a smirk as Ikasu deals with one of his subordinates. After they had reached his cousin's office. "That is rude Ran-Kun" Ran's eyes widen for a second as he hears his feminine voice speak in his head. He then hears her giggle as he stares at his cousins without seeing them. "I am your Zanpakuto Baka Ran." Ran then blinks and relaxes. "Oh" he whispers and smiles then gets to enjoy watching their uncle scold Ikasu for being too strict with Tsubaki. Ran turns away to give the trio some privacy and addresses his Zanpakuto "So you gonna give me your name Zanpakuto or should I call you Ran-Chan?" For a second Ran sees a vast field of ice surrounding a huge fire, inside the fire, he could see a large building of some kind. Also, he could see hail falling all around him. "Nope. I do not feel like it" A says giggling girl who was standing on the stairs of the structure. "Go train Baka Ran." Then the image in his head was gone and he was back to looking at the others as they come out of the office. Ran walks over and picks up Tsubaki "Lead the way." Ran could not wait to train some more and learn new skills. Already he seemed to be forgetting the ones he had learned as a mod-soul. "You do not need them Baka Ran they are useless to you." Ran looked over at his cousin and uncle and wondered if their Zanpakuto's spoke to them like his own was. Or was he just weird? "Your just weird."

word count 308 x 2.6 + 7,257 = 8,058