Paper Beats Rock [Closed/Zenji]

Nao never liked sitting in the chair in her supervisor’s office. It wasn’t just the severe lack of comfort. She could deal with that easily enough. She’d had to get her own cushions after her chair had been taken from her as punishment for failing to meet her numbers, and that was only after she’d spent a month picking splinters out of her robe every time she stood up. No, it was the atmosphere.

It had gotten worse since she’d discovered her Shikai. Her supervisor seemed to have taken interior decorating tips from Murat. A luxurious desk, the best chair in the team, spotless polished floors – courtesy of Nao’s late-night handiwork. It was really a beautiful office. He was even allowed two windows, something she never dreamed of having in her small office.

She hadn’t dreamed it before, but that was another thing that was different. Nao had given it few nights of thought after her confrontation with the wolf girl and the kido specialist in that plot of land between Fifth and Sixth Division. Finally, deciding she might as well give it a try, she had marched right up to her supervisor’s door, brought her hand up to knock, and decided it would be better to spend around fifteen minutes pacing about indecisively.

She ought to have gone back to her office, but Nao’s distractedness had worked against her yet again. As she had rounded her spot, still rehearsing the speech she was going to give, her supervisor’s door flew open angrily. She had been humiliated, stumbled in her speech, and been brought in for a berating over not having been at her desk. It was neglect of her duties like this that had caused Nao to make their unit into a laughing stock.

An important call from one of her team members had caused her supervisor to be taken away, with Nao sitting in a sort of time out at the desk while she waited for the return, her recent performance evaluation sitting in front of her with big bold letters explaining just how much of a miserable failure she was and her completed challenge request paperwork tucked in the inside front pocket to her robe.

’I should have never listened to them,’ she thought, flipping through her numbers exasperatedly, ’I’m not even qualified for desk duty. Why did I think I should try for an actual position?’

”Oh yes, go improve your metrics first. We both know how that will go,” that unpleasantly familiar voice sarcastically chimed in in the back of her mind, ”You’ll just get new requirements tacked on.”

’That’s because we keep getting more work. You’ve seen the reports, too. There’s been a spike,’  she insisted back mentally, flipping through sheet after sheet of underperforming numbers. Speed of request, volume of requests processed, percentage of returned documents, everything was through the roof with hers compared to the unit standards.

”Has there really been a spike?” Murat asked, ”You’ve never actually read anyone else’s performance review, have you?”

She saw the folder her boss had left out containing the rest of her team’s recent reviews still sitting on the other side of the desk, the cover threatening to flutter open. ’Don’t! You’re going to get me in even more trouble!’ Nao thought in a panic, reaching over and slamming her hand down on the cover before her spirit could open it on his own.

”Window’s open, dumbass. That wasn’t me,” he laughed at her. Sure enough, the window was open, and it had just been a pleasant breeze doing that, not her spirit somehow taking control and forcing her to use her powers against her will again. ”Though, if the wind did just happen to flip it open, you would hardly be blamed for catching a glimpse, now would you?”

She kept her hand slammed on the cover of the report, her heart beating faster than it had any right to. The offer was tempting, horribly so. Nao had gotten in trouble for reading things she wasn’t supposed to before, and that had done much to stop her from sticking her nose where it didn’t belong again, but all of this business with Zenji being willing to reach out to Tetsuya for her again was stirring up all kinds of old feelings she thought dead.

Rebellious thoughts, self-indulgent thoughts, thoughts of power and control, all things Nao had forsworn that fateful day in her Academy days. They’d trickled in like a leaky faucet from the moment she heard the Akimoto clan name. Anatoly had turned that faucet on, but the business with Zenji and Yuki might as well have kicked the handle clean off.

It wouldn’t be her fault if the wind had happened to blow it open, and if the cover of the folder had just happened to get caught on her sweaty palm as she pulled it off the cover of the folder, it wouldn’t really be her fault that she saw whatever was on top.

Biting her lip, she pressed down, feeling the paper stick to her hand. These cheap manila folders were always so troublesome when she was nervous enough to make them cling to her, but now a part of her that was bizarrely in agreement with Murat was glad for that fact. With a cautious movement, she moved her hand back, being sure to do it slowly enough to keep her hand from breaking free.

”Oops,” she said to no one in particular as the cover finally opened and she stood up. It was too hard to read from this side of the table, though. Sparing a quick glance at the door, Nao hurriedly got up, realizing that the longer she kept this up, the more risk she was in of being caught. She stood at the other side of the desk, ready to close the folder to cover up what she'd done, but she soon found herself frozen in place.

What she saw stunned her. The numbers weren’t right. They couldn’t be right. In the last month, she’d processed over 20,000 forms. Her supervising officer had told her that she needed to complete, on average, one per minute in order to meet the metrics the rest of the team was working under. By contrast, the review she was looking at had under 1,000 listed documents.

Disbelieving her eyes, she flipped to the next one. 2,000 documents processed and glowing marks across the board, granted seven days of leisure time in addition to weekends.

Another showed 700 processed documents. Again, she saw the same recommendation for seven days of leisure. She’d been busting her ass for a single day, and her colleagues were matching her output for a single day in an entire month and getting seven plus weekends?

Nao felt her eye twitch with rage as she flipped through the file, laying each sheet inside of it out on the desk in front of her one by one, her breathing becoming more and more hectic as she found a new slight.

It wasn’t hard to do the math, even for someone as incompetent as her. She was carrying over two thirds of her office’s volume, and every one of them-

every

single

fucking

returned request had been sent to her. Any mistakes anyone else had made were put on her file. Any work they didn’t want to do had been thrown on her desk. It was enough to make her laugh.

Part of her always suspected this, but seeing it all laid out in front of her, the facts became crystal clear. She couldn’t lie to herself and believe the stories about spike times or how everyone else was so much better at their jobs than she was. It was here, in incontrovertible evidence, exactly how much she’d been abused by her supervising officer and the rest of her team.

To think that she had wanted to help them. She thought back to the succession plan she’d left sitting on her desk, on promises made to continue covering her work until a new replacement was found. They didn’t deserve that. They’d made her feel like the stupidest Shinigami in the Seireitei for decades and for what? So they could coast on by living easy lives of comfort while good old Nao actually handled the responsibilities of administration?

She ought to turn them all in. Send this file off to someone in Sixth Division for a little justice to be done. Her hands, thankfully free of the folder now that she’d set up her gallery of shame, twisted in on themselves in fury. How could she have been so stupid? What would sending this to Sixth even do? They’d managed to play her for decades. They were well connected. She’d be the one in trouble for her shit performance, not them. Incineration would be better. Destroy the records and get out of here.

”Use it. Don’t throw it away.”

’How would I use this? Oh, hello Lieutenant. Please promote me for how stupid this makes me look,’ she thought back at Murat, bile dripping off of her thoughts of self-loathing.

”Do I really need to spell out how blackmail works to you?”

Her hands trembled on the desk as she gripped it to try and suppress her seething rage. Could she really stoop so low as to use her supervisor’s records against him? Nao had prided herself on always upholding the standards of the First Division for decades. She knew something had to come of this, but blackmail? Could she really stoop so low?

Would it really be enough to make them pay for years of torment?

In a fury, she collected papers into the file, stuffed it into her robe, and stormed from her supervisor’s office. She didn’t bother to close the door behind her or put the room back in its place. The rest of her team would know what had happened soon enough, but she wanted them to sweat and feel a taste of the dread she had felt every time one of those damned lying reviews was brought before her to admonish her for doing all of their work. Blowing past everyone in the hall with an uncharacteristic glare in her eyes, she  headed straight for the office of the Lieutenant of First and banged on the door.

Her meeting was brief, yet fruitful. Nao left the office one challenge request short and one destination heavier. Her indignation at the way she’d been had been too severe, but she was still riding that wave. Tenth seat, the one she had been planning on applying for as a way to stop Yuki or Zenji from doing something stupid, was too low. One of her colleagues could rise above her and then she’d be in for a world of administrative pain.

No, she had to go big. Borrowing the Lieutenant’s own quill and ink in a display of audacity Nao wouldn’t have imagined herself capable of an hour before, she scribbled out the 10 on the challenge request and handed it back with a single number written on it.

Three

Nao Aoki, the quiet, reserved, weak paper clerk who had wasted her entire career in the ranks of the Gotei doing the bitch work of the forms team, was challenging to be the Lieutenant’s right hand. She should be feeling butterflies in her stomach, trepidation over the absurdity of trying to leap so high in a single move, or the life-threatening danger posed by issuing such a trial by combat.

Instead, she only felt her anger. She had spent the last 80 years of her life in that office giving every ounce of herself to the job. She’d been lied to and made to feel like she was useless by everyone she was supposed to be working alongside. She’d worked nights, weekends, given up any semblance of a personal life, all towards forwarding the mission of her beloved First Division. She had considered those bastards the family she never had, and they’d done that to her.

If they were her family, she was done being the baby. It was beyond time someone put on some fucking pants and straightened this house out. She didn’t know which of her disparate ideas would win out on how to do just that, but she knew one thing. She had to come through here, otherwise everything would have been in vain.

Nao paced about the challenge hall waiting for everyone to arrive. Messengers had been dispatched to round up the current Chief Administrator and a handful of other Division staff for her challenge immediately after she made her way from the Lieutenant’s office. They would require a Kaido specialist, official witnesses, and a second for each of the competitors.

Nao had no idea who to put down as her second and had actually originally left it blank. There had been challenges she’d heard of where one or both sides entered without a second, but these were the exception to the rule. Upon realizing that it was entirely likely that the Chief Administrator would select her supervisor as his second or that he would at least be present as a witness, she wrote the only name she could think of that she could trust and had confidence could be found.

Zenji Hatayama

Nao paced about the challenger’s side of the arena, watching as a smattering of observers showed up. She recognized several of them, though she suspected with the pointing and whispering they were doing amongst themselves that they did not recognize her or, if they did, they did not know what she was doing here.

Nao would have made a better adjudicator or second than a challenger. She had almost always observed the rules and regulations of the Division, often to a fault. She wasn’t connected to many nobles or involved in Division or Clan politics, either, and she was on the Division emergency Kaido roster that occasionally got summoned for events such as this. Not even she would have expected to ever see herself pacing about the Challenger’s box.

Her irritated scowl passed momentarily from her lips as she saw Zenji. She was still plenty pissed off, but his familiar face let her calm the surface waters, even if a raging torrent still beat below them. ”Good to see you, Zenji,” she replied, turning her back on the empty block across from her where her opponent had yet to appear, ”You’ll need to stay down here, I think. I hope you don’t mind, but I listed you as my second. According to the procedure surrounding challenges, you are allowed to decline if you don’t want to.”

She bowed back, matching him for depth out of reflex. She was relieved to hear that he would be in her corner for this and, from the size of the gathering crowd, she was visibly surprised when he said that she would be challenging for the 10th Seat.

”I have, long ago. One of the benefits of working in forms processing is that you get to meet almost everyone, at least from a paperwork standpoint. I’m not challenging for the Tenth Seat, though,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder as an increased murmuring alerted her to a new entrant to the room. He was every bit as tall as she’d remembered. She could still remember it like it was yesterday.

The year was 1962. Nao had been working on a stack of transfer paperwork when he walked into her office, nearly banging his head on the door. The future Chief Administrator, Kanichi Mimasaka, was an impressive mountain of a man coming in from Fifth Division. Crass, confident, and already mentally well above her despite being her peer, he had tossed the paperwork on her desk and bailed on the room before she had a chance to stammer her way through her standard greeting.

She’d still reviewed his records and made sure they were properly routed. A few minor disciplinary issues stood out early in his time, though his duel record was suspiciously quiet for a member of Fifth. His impressive bulk no doubt played into that, as the man’s forearms back then had likely been broader than Nao’s thighs. Famed for the double handed axe he wielded in his Shikai, she knew all too well that his powers centered upon the manipulation of the ground.

Since his entry into First Division, Mimasaka had let the lifestyle of administration drive him toward and well beyond obesity. He was now less a mountain and more a boulder, completely bald on top with impressively flabby jowls that shook when he moved, laughed, or shouted. After waving to her supervisor in the stands and gesturing for him to come and take a front row seat behind him, she scowled. He wasn’t going to use the man as a second. it seemed that, unfortunately, he wasn’t going to use any second. That worked for her, though she suspected most of the crowd was already in his corner.

”That’s who I’m challenging,” she said in quiet confirmation, adjusting her Zanpakuto in its sheath and turning her gaze back to Zenji.

”It’s the only way anything’s going to get changed around here,” she said, handing him the file from the inside of her robes. The venom and irritation came back to her voice as she let go of it for him to take, ”My unit’s performance evaluations over the last year. You can look at them if you want. Keep a loose grip on them, though. I might need to borrow them.” Her scowl perverted itself into a toothy grin as she finished the handoff and she stepped to the side, doing a few breathing exercises to calm herself down.

”You don’t need to know how to fight. You just need to know how to win.”

Despite the circumstances, Nao found herself unable to resist a small chuckle at her Zanpakuto’s reminder. Of course she wasn’t going to be bringing her ridiculously short tanto to bear on a man with a giant axe. There were going to be consequences if she failed, and serious ones. A transfer out of First was almost certainly necessary, assuming her supervising officer was willing to grant that, something she strongly doubted would be coming her way any time soon.

No, she’d made up her decision on what her opening move was going to be the second she handed over the paper to the Lieutenant. There would be no incense this time, but she’d seen firsthand what screwing that up could cause. Still, it was the closest she could get to having Tetsuya there by her side, and she needed a way to tap into that confidence more than ever.

Her meditative thoughts were interrupted by the opening ceremonies of the challenge. As with all things in First, it was drawn out, complicated, and exceedingly detailed, just as something of its significance needed to be. Formal introductions were given for the challengers after silence was requested from the crowd, a silence Nao was grateful to see actually being observed. She’d been to some challenges where the crowds had been more rambunctious, but those usually required both sides to have friends to jeer at each other. She only had Zenji and nobody was going to be as unprofessional as to openly jeer a challenger so poorly supported, least of all in so high profile a challenge.

They’ll do it and worse behind my back, but those rat bastards are good at keeping up appearances, she thought, bowing respectfully to her opponent to formally start the duel.

”Come on, pup,” the huge man bellowed at her from across the arena, raising his Zanpakuto and immediately entering his Shikai with a call in some strange foreign tongue Nao did not recognize. The blade shimmered, extended, and quickly formed the massive axe she had been told of. She could see him gripping his two meaty ham hocks of hands to the grip as the shimmer faded and he charged at her full bore.

Her throat caught momentarily as she drew and raised her own Zanpakuto, positioning her left hand behind the flat of her tanto. ”Bakudo 39. Enkosen!” The energy shield popped into existence in front of her, fainter than usual. She knew she’d need to skimp some on the energy for it to follow through with her own counter strike, she only hoped that it would be enough to hold against that massive axe.

Nao dipped into her trance, continuing to focus her will into the shield while she began the incantation she had stolen away so many years ago.


Closer he came, that axe held high. No doubt he thought her just like any of the other whelps he had taken down, and no doubt the witnesses would soon think that he was the one summoning forth the earth to strike at her. Her teeth flashed as she continued the incantation. She hadn't expected it to feel this powerful. She could feel her own energy surging forward, digging deep into the ground, threatening to drag her with it if she didn't hold her footing.


The calligraphy etched itself in the ground in front of her, just as it had done for Tetsuya so many years ago. Unlike his, hers sunk quickly into the ground momentarily before bobbing back up, small fissures forming along the edges as little oddly colored bolts of charged energy crackled from one to the other. Chunks of the earth loosened around the fissures, some of them falling down and vanishing from sight only to be replaced by a thick glowing magma.

He was fast, faster than she’d expected. If she’d have been able to think about anything other than the barrier and the powerful Hado she was working, Nao would no doubt be seriously questioning her opening gambit. She couldn’t have focused on that if she’d have wanted to, though. She knew what was coming, what would happen to her if she failed, both to her body and to her future chances of service for the Gotei.

She could already feel the heat building up inside of her. Small jolts of excess energy popped off her her fingertips, ricocheting against the shield and falling to the ground where they sputtered and clattered their way into the cracks, suffusing with the secret beast surging its way forth to serve her.


She was able to complete the line in her incantation right as the axe connected with the barrier, sending the weakened shield scattering in a cascade of light. It hadn’t been enough to stop it, but she knew she wasn’t going to be able to win a fight on shields alone. She needed something else, and that something else had just started to make its way up from the ground. A majestic serpentine dragon burst from the kanji, engulfing her challenger as it passed through him, sending chunks of molten rock and jolts of chaotic energy spewing out between the two competitors.

Forward momentum proved to be her undoing, and Nao winced at the sudden jolt of icy pain as the axe blade smashed through the barrier, severing the tips of the fingers on her left hand. She’d healed similar injuries, but she’d never suffered one herself. The pain and anger she felt toward her opponent were almost blinding, and she nearly abandoned any hope at finishing her incantation to take a slash at his exposed throat after his follow-through missed the rest of her body. It was so close, though, and the power that had been at her fingertips but moments ago now surged forth along with her blood, unrestrained and powerful.


The barrier gone, Nao pointed the stumps of her fingers at him, feeling the heat licking up all around her. His impressive size would be his downfall as she stumbled back, aiming the hado so it would shoot through him and into the sky. They were fighting for the title of Chief Administrator, after all. What kind of a Chief Administrator would she be if one of her opening acts was to trash the building with an errant Hado strike?


Nao shouted the final part of the incantation as the blood in her fingers boiled. She angrily plunged her hands downward, commanding the beast to strike him head on. It did as she commanded, immediately surging back into the ground, forming a superheated patch of ground that singed her tabi. Something was wrong though, and Nao soon realized just what it was.

The raw power, the unrestrained nature, the dragon was bleeding, just as the area where her fingers had been were. All of the study she had done had told her that she needed to control it with both body and mind, but she was completely lacking a crucial part of that equation.

Staring on in horror, she winced as a chunk of the dragon's tail separated in a splatter of firey blood, crashing down onto her already injured arm and charring the part of her robe covering that to ash and flash burning skin in a painful char that looked more like the bottom of a chicken breast left in a cast iron for far too long than an actual person’s limb. She screamed as the skin burst with the slightest movement, exposing the soft pink underneath.

If what she was getting was bad, Mimasaka had it worse. Nao only caught the tail end of the Hado. He ate the whole thing at point blank range, twice. A similar burn covered much of the larger man’s torso, and her own sickening burned flesh was nothing compared to the boiling fat that coated the Chief Administrator’s chest, stomach, and back as he stumbled backward in shock.

She tried to raise her hand to resummon the dragon to finish him off, but she couldn't bend her arm. She, finally, truly knew some of the agony Tetsuya must have felt that day. To have sacrificed so much only to achieve so little, and both times the mistake had been her own doing. It would have left a bitter taste in her mouth if it weren’t for the bile already threatening its way up her throat at the disgusting mess she’d made of herself and her opponent.

”You bitch!” the enormous Third seat roared at her, holding his axe in the one arm that wasn’t now seared to a crisp. He brought it back down, only this time he merely pointed it at her, not bothering to close the distance.

From behind him, chunks of the ground and pieces of molten rock left behind by the dragon ripped themselves up and hurled themselves across the arena directly at her at a breakneck speed.

”Murat, Inin-jō!” Nao cried, summoning her quill into existence. Every sweeping motion pained her to make, but she finished spelling cut into the air between them as she stared at the largest of the boulders. From the folder still held in Zenji’s hands, her performance evaluation rocketed out, tore through the chunk of rock, and embedded itself into the empty seat behind her supervisor’s head like a dart.

The main attack dealt with, she stepped back away from the scalding ground, rapidly spelling cut over and over again, her aura flaring up more now than it had in their entire brief yet brutal exchange. Chaotic bursts of purple, orange, and green energy crackled behind her as she repeatedly sent lie-filled evaluation after evaluation streaming through the air. The first ones cut through the remaining rocks in her opponent’s arsenal. Though she'd damaged most of them, it didn't stop a watermelon sized stone from colliding with her left arm. The char blasted off of it, exposing chunks of muscle and bone to the elements.

Still Nao pressed on, screaming as she frantically rewrote the same word in front of her.

”Cut!”

A chunk of her opponent’s ear fell to the floor of the arena, sizzling like a strip of disgusting bacon as it landed.

”Cut!”

That sterling 700 review buried itself three inches deep in the middle of Mimasaka’s chest.

”Cut!”

She scored a retribution strike on his hand, severing the axe from his grip by removing the offending digits.

”Cut!”

Out of evaluations, the folder itself flew out of Zenji’s hands and collided square into the Chief Administrator’s temple, the label bearing her supervisor's handwriting half sunken into the flesh above his right eye. For a moment, the two of them seemed to stare at each other, Mimasaka’s eyes wide in shock and Nao’s narrowed in spiteful purpose. She wasn’t looking at Mimasaka though. Her gaze was fixed in the crowd, locked squarely onto the bastard of a supervising officer who had made her life hell. She heard the thud of the larger man dropping to his knees, followed by a louder bang as he collapsed onto his back away from the absurdly hot patch, blood starting to pool around his wounds as he gurgled and choked on his own spit, puke, and blood.

Nao remained standing a few moments longer, her eyes fixed squarely on her true enemy. As she glared at him, she lifted her quill aloft in defiant victory, roaring with the same vigor the dragon had showed moments before. She was spent, utterly and truly. She felt the quill shift back into her tanto as she stumbled back, reflexively reaching for support with her broken and battered arm.

I have to put it away, she thought, I have to look strong.

She twisted in her swooning, feeling the blade connect with its sheath and slide in as the ground approached far quicker than it had any right to. As she collided with the much cooler earth of the challenger's box, a sharp spike of pain shot up her left side, as her arm bent and contorted in the wrong direction. It was too much. The agonizing ache spread from there and overwhelmed her nervous system and, in a matter of milliseconds, Nao Aoki joined her opponent in unconsciousness.

The grounds were still for a moment as the crowd stared on in disbelief. Even the Kaido specialists whose job it was to provide the severely needed healing held off for a few seconds before they dashed to the battleground, quickly joined by a handful of spectators with skills of their own. Nao and Mimasaka were both treated where they lay, with two unlucky Shinigami tasked with recovering their severed digits from inside the hot zone.

In observance of the traditions of the challenge, Nao was officially declared the victor, not that she could have heard the good news. Some in the crowd began to disperse, gossip and questions already flying as Nao’s supervisor yanked the parchment from the wall, their face whitening as they read the document and realized just how much unpleasantness they were in for once Nao came back around and assumed her office.

With a steady hand, he stood and pointed at his downed staffer, marching onto the field. ”That looked a draw to me. In the case of a draw, the victory goes to the defender. As his second, I declare that Kanichi Mimasaka is still our Third Seat!”