#manlysilence

@manlysilence​ said:

“You seriously got drunk without me?!” He's wounded! Better have left something good for him to drown that pain away with!

“O-oh! Sorry, no, there’s still plenty left!” Caught in the act, Kōtarō immediately set his little saucer of sake down, not having hit that pleasurable buzz... yet. The sheepish lieutenant quickly cleared his throat and turned his attention to the macho taichō of the 7th.

@manlysilence​: "Jeez , who went and pissed in your cornflakes this morning ?"

“What’s it to ya anyway!? Don’t you have any Lieutenant work or whatever to do!?” He snaps. “Can’t a guy have a bad day!?”

          The sudden declaration from his Lieutenant takes Sajin by surprise,  ear twitching in the mans direction.  He...  was not oblivious to the fact that Iba looked up to him.  It was clear in many ways but for such an exuberant expression Sajin can only ponder what has brought it on.  He turns,  peering down the length of his nose at him as if he might be able to gather the reason by assessing him alone.  Yet nothing shows outright nor can he conjure a reason from anything that he had done recently to warrant such excited exclamation.

          “...  You are always welcome to speak your mind freely with me.”  Be it praise or discontent,  he wanted the other man to know that above all else he would always lend an ear to him.  That was the foundation of trust,  wasn’t it?  For all the mistakes he had made in his past,  he would strive to do better now and in the future.  “About anything you wish to say.”

Mayuri jolts a little,surprised to hear himself be greeted this late at night. He glares at Iba for a second,about to snap at him, but he looks down in his arms and sighs,shifting them and his sleeves a little to show he’s carrying his newborn around.

“Nemuri couldn’t fall asleep,so I thought a walk might help her. She’s still a little fussy, but she’s getting better.”

“alright, tough guy.”

He ties the cloth of his sheath around the guard of his weapon, locking it in place. Now, it can act like a blunt instrument.

“here goes...”

‘Practice makes perfect’ was a convenient lie of omission people used to excuse their own sloppiness. The real mantra was ‘Perfect practice makes perfect’. True ‘perfection’ was of course impossible, but what was practice anyway? The most basic form of drill was repeating the same action over and over again until it wasn’t just functionally flawless, but mastered. Every movement, every motion, pared down and optimized—streamlined. As for what that looked like... it could be anything from Beatrix Kiddo’s ‘Wiggle your big toe,’ to Mr. Miyagi’s ‘Wax on, wax off.’

Standing within 7th Division’s training grounds, ‘Kisaragi Yōko’ had an opportunity to engage in exactly that sort of training. There were no other distractions, no other concerns aside from maintaining her cover and performing her drills. Just execute with precise power control (to hide her true strength) and exacting form. Nothing but the motion, over and over, like a machine, until it was second nature—until she was the motion.

Yoruichi demolished yet another stack of ceramic tiles almost as tall as she was in a spray of chips and dust, splitting them like twigs. She’d actually become so absorbed in it, gotten so deep in the zone, that she moved onto the next without immediately sensing the new arrival among the others using the space. She blinked and stalled on the next windup, finally noticing and processing it. Her reaction was further delayed by fractions of a second as she got back into character.

She looked behind her in a kind of lazily quizzical fashion, then spun and snapped to attention with a kind of exaggerated frenzy, resulting in a British or French Army style of salute, palm out, which was maybe too sharp and tryhard. She held it for a second too long, but nonetheless, she beamed. Everything about her body language was over-eager.