Arc #1 – I’m Also Gonna Need You to Go Ahead and Come in on Sunday, Too

Arc #1 – I’m Also Gonna Need You to Go Ahead and Come in on Sunday, Too

Chapter 1: A Prodigal Summer w/Tetsuya Akimoto // Set back during Nao’s Academy days with her secret sweetheart Tetsuya Akimoto, we see the woman she was before she became who she is today, as well as the event that made her that way. Nao was originally a much more open, cheerful, and conniving person, at least with Tetsuya. He was her only real friend, and they had just started to become something more when tragedy struck.

It was here that, because of her scatterbrained lack of discipline, she permanently scarred the man she was falling in love with and had him taken away from her by overprotective parents. Her love of offensive incantations, her drive to be a part of Third Division, her reason for caring about anything beyond not looking like so much of a fuck-up all trace back to this moment and color the woman she will become. She also dabbles a bit in a powerful use of Kaido, sacrificing her own lifeblood to keep both herself and Tetsuya alive after their horrible mistake

Chapter 2: This Isn’t even my Final Form w/Helena Akimoto // Here we find Nao in the present day. She’s landed into a dead end job, is constantly behind on her work, and has an overbearing supervising officer and colleagues who abuse her meekness. On what should be a routine encounter, she’s brought into contact with Helena Akimoto, the relative of the man she injured so many years ago. Already terrified of disappointing another noble, she shrinks back in fear and has to be dragged out of her hiding place.

She finally finds that confidence when Helena admits uncertainty with the paperwork process, going as far as to exploit a little known process to help elevate her guest’s visibility at the time of her assignment to her new Division, feeling an itching at the back of her mind being scratched by her giving in to dispensing favors.

Chapter 3: A Cheap Ploy w/Anatoly Volkov // Nao finds herself sent on patrol after having coasted by for years on her inability to perform in the field keeping her behind her desk. Either Helena made mention of it to someone or she was getting punished for not sending the noble on to someone better than her, Nao isn’t quite certain. Regardless of what caused it, this is when she runs into that son of a bitch Anatoly.

Anatoly uses his shaman magics to imprison Nao and draw her spirit out forcefully, resulting in a premature glimpse of her Shikai, watched from inside her inner world on a laptop. The man she sees identifies himself as Murat and he displays a confident and effective defense against Anatoly before boldly binding the two of them together in a high risk attempt to keep himself alive.

The gamble pays off and we see Anatoly returning Nao to her body, though not without taking something away from her. She, fearful of what he might do, attempts to make a stand, but he effectively dispatches of her with a torrent of rushing water. It is in this moment that she is sucked back to her inner world and Murat decides to tell her how to draw him forth.

Though Nao doesn’t get it, the reason why this happened now instead of during her attempts at meditation is that she’s always performed at too high a level for her own good. While many inner spirits might need to motivate their Shinigami or push them to better themselves through hard work, Nao’s is the opposite. To become better, she needs to slow down and take some time for herself. In her despair and selfishness at wanting to be free from the guilt and embarrassment at how worthless she felt, she finally did what he’d wanted, only much more morbidly than would have been preferable.

Chapter 4: A Night Time Relaxation w/Rubedo Lux Regis & Ignatius Solomon // On her way back to the Seireitei from Anatoly, Nao runs into two Quincy masquerading as spiritualists in the woods. Not knowing that Quincy are back, she buys their lie and decides to warn them about Anatoly. This shows Nao, in a moment of weakness, not thinking and going directly against protocol in favor of doing what she believes to be the right thing, an attitude that will come back in the opener to her next arc, albeit with a far worse potential outcome for the Quincy than a cute girl nervously eating steak with them.

Chapter 5: Two Peas in a Pod w/Zenji Hatayama // Here we see Nao meeting up with Zenji Hatayama in her daily work now that Murat is back. She has become irritated with her spirit’s insistence that she do corrupt or unethical things in order to make her life easier, but that irritation leads to her giving in to temptation as a means to shut Murat up prematurely.

Finally, after going on a century of absence, she has Zenji reach out to Testuya, waffling back and forth over what she wants from it and, finally settling on requesting a meeting. She also, unknowingly, plants the seeds for someone who might actually care about how she’s being abused in her position. Finally, at the end of the thread, she is tricked by her spirit into releasing her Shikai and allowing him to straighten out all of her paperwork so she can have her date. She still double-checks all of his work, but this will certainly buy her the one day off that she needs to meet with Testuya!

Chapter 6: Battle Arena Crackdown w/Sabitsura Rei, Slevin, Yuki Kameko, & Zenji Hatayama // Nao is sent to post a bunch of fliers telling Shinigami who are fighting between the grounds of Fifth and Sixth to cut it out. When she gets there, however, she finds that a confrontation has already broken out. She tries to talk non-verbally to Slevin and, at long last, pokes her head up and screams for the battling Sabitsura Rei and Yuki Kameko to stop their senseless violence.

They don’t, but Zenji shows up to help her out, throwing up a powerful barrier to keep the two from fighting and giving her the first cause to actually use her Shikai’s powers for something other than panicked self-defense or absent-minded laziness. When Yuki and Sabitsura ignore her efforts, she doubles down on stopping them, using her Shikai to impressive effect after an initial no-sell by everyone involved and being urged to go for a seated position by both nobles.

Chapter 7: Paper Beats Rock w/Zenji Hatayama // This serves as the cap on this arc. Nao finds out that her supervisor has been manipulating her and telling her lies about her performance relative to the rest of her unit for years. She, to put it simply, does not take this well. She had already been planning to make a challenge for the 10th Seat but, in her rage and realizing that she needs to aim big if she wants to prevent her supervisor from just getting someone to challenge for a spot higher than her, she aims for the biggest prize she can get that isn’t trying to be Lieutenant of First or Captain Commander.

Nao puts all of her chips on the table against a much more physically powerful and experienced foe, pulling the Hado Tetsuya tried all the way back in 1935 back out. Just as back then, something goes horribly wrong, though she’s more fortunate with it this time around as the bulk of the damage comes crashing into her foe. Fortunately for her, Zenji is there to have his own badass moment and put her weasel of an ex-supervisor in his place as the man attempts as desperate last ditch effort to prevent Nao from taking power.
========================

This arc follows Nao Aoki, a member of the forms and processing team in First Division from her days in the Academy over 8 decades ago to the present day. She is initially a happy, if somewhat shy girl who falls for a similarly shy nobleman. With him, she’s able to open up and explore a side of herself she didn’t know existed. She’s bold, conniving, and likes not always playing by the strict letter of the law. A horrible accident kills off this version of Nao, almost literally, and she spends the next several years languishing at the hands of an abusive boss. She is still yet to meet her former beloved, but she gradually builds up the confidence to request a colleague she might actually refer to as a friend after the last thread contact him.

She also gets her first real taste of combat, facing off against a man who wants to enslave her and turn her into his spirit guardian. Anatoly helped drag her Zanpakuto Spirit out of her before she was ready, but this is something the spirit was actually quite pleased by. He has wanted Nao to cheat and be a corrupt lazy waste of space for decades, but her nose to the grindstone, eager to please attitude got in the way of that. By using Anatoly to cheat the system, he goes from totally silent to butting in far more often than she’d want.

By the end of this arc, Nao has grown into someone who is willing to do some pretty extreme things in order to do what she thinks is right. A desire to be willing to act like this this always been there with her in some degree, and she has done it before by nearly killing herself to save Tetsuya, but the end of the arc truly sees her turn from a guilt-ridden mess to someone who is willing to fight to correct mistakes. She won’t be the same as she was, not with all of these new responsibilities, but she’s proven to herself that she’s not the incompetent waste of space she’s been told she was for 80 years.


PS: Judge me publicly.

We begin at five stars and add or remove based on notable additions or glaring omissions.
+0 - Writing - Nao is a very interesting sincerely written character. The only note of criticism I have that you tend to say in 600 words what could be said in 200 but it's a hard line to walk. This is roleplaying, not novel writing, some things are very important to write to a partner that isn't anything to a third party so concision is always difficult to balance. To try to be useful to you, Nao is well characterized, so you don't need to necessarily remind me of who she is with every paragraph at this stage. Though a little reminder when it's particularly fun is always welcome.
+1 - Story - I think it's good. I think it's Bleachy. The prologue thread with Tetsuya I think is what pushes this past the mark for me. I think one of the greatest weaknesses here is that a lot of these threads were written out of order, and if you had the power to go back and pull various elements together it would have really helped make the threads stronger but the plot itself is full of little bits of material that should help keep Nao going into her next steps. A prodigy who suffered a huge setback and became a meek paper pusher who, when forced into the field was reminded of her potential and then decides to go for it. It's good, try to be a bit more forward-thinking in your next arc, try to pull your threads into a more cohesive bundle.
+1 - Growth - I think we're squarely in a good territory for Nao, her move from quiet meek paper pusher in chapter 2 (well, from bold confident prodigy in chapter 1 which really should be highlighted as prologue for pacing!!!) to kicking ass to take Third Seat (Lieutenant woulda been better but I get that's a reach) is not only a good bit of growth but well supported by her arc. I'm not sure you've done the right work to sell this prodigy angle of Nao. Her being given her Shikai needed work somewhere if the premise was that she's so great I really need to see why she is so great. Prodigal Summer was more of showing that she was, not in really giving me a reason why, but it did do great work to hint towards what was so interesting in the second half of Two Peas in a Pod. I think Cheap Ploy was underutilized from an emotional angle, for being so seemingly traumatic in the moment I was expecting a bit more from it in chronologically future-looking threads. Feedback aside, Nao continues to be fun to read and I look forward to seeing the core of her character stand strong as she deals with greater and greater responsibility. I focus a lot of words on this prodigy thing but it's more for me determining on how that kind of character trait can work more than something I think drags this section down. Outside of that, Nao evolves in a very organic and interesting way the fact that her central fuel was a sense of just bureaucracy was perfect.
+0 - Impact - You thread with lotta folks and always seem to work with them to see that they get something out of it. A solid bit of effort here that I'd be happy to see continue. Paper Beats Rock is a very good example of this, I'm tempted for things like that but I think with the number of threads here, the arc as a whole is more build-up than pay off.

Congrats! This is a solid 7 STAR request! Go ahead and link this post to your profile and redeem for

7 Threads x 7 Star Rating = 980 EXP!

Error, should have been 7 * 7 = 1050.