I can't do names for these but it's a milestone anyway

hello

I’ve got 3,500 Base GP and I’m requesting this be increased by 1,000 to 4,500 Base GP. This is my first milestone and thus all my existing, completed or near-completed threads are being submitted for review:

Introduction
Waking Dream – After a stop at the Academy to find some old records, Hazuki seeks an audience with the Captain-Commander in order to convince him to promote her. She leaves after securing a satisfactory—for now—promotion to Fourth Seat of the First Division. Kenshou Ine
Stage N2 – Hazuki’s assignments take her to the Fifth Division, where she speaks briefly with its captain about various topics. Jasper Aizawa
Unpretty Dreams – Hazuki finds herself visiting the Academy once more, this time on official business. She encounters Rania Odette, a Shinigami without a division. Rania Odette
Blank Spaces on the Map – Having found a document that shouldn’t exist while overseeing the formal emptying of the First Division, Hazuki decides to pay a visit to the new captain of the Fourth Division. Shun Minamoto
Clarion Call – Commander Chinda’s announcement that the now-empty First will be housing the half-breeds known as Vaizards forces Hazuki into action. Shinigami
My Little Captor Can’t Be This Cute – Fully intent on earning herself another promotion, Hazuki engages a fugitive in conversation—and proceeds to beat him senseless enough to bring back to Seireitei. Shinpei Minamoto
The Edge of a Colossal Blackness – With Shinpei Minamoto in custody, Hazuki finds her new captain, who is suitably impressed with her work and decides to promote her to lieutenant. Shun Minamoto
The Monster at the End of the Dream – Time is a flat circle

Groundwork
The Devil You Know – Bearing both news of Jasper Aizawa’s defection and the wounds he gave her, Hazuki interrupts the first Captains’ meeting under the new regime. Captains
REM I: Happenstance – A dream.
A Brooding Gloom in Sunshine – Hazuki issues a formal challenge to the Captain of the Third Division. Miyuki Wakahisa
He Who Can, Does. He Who Cannot, Teaches – Hazuki’s study of old research is interrupted by a junior member of the Fourth who wants to prove her worth, and Hazuki recommends a course of action. Shizuka Kiriyuno, Shun Minamoto
Watching Watchers, Potential and Risk – As part of her taking inventory of the Fourth Division’s assets, Hazuki meets and reconfigures an AI, though finds it untrustworthy and expels it from the division. Munin
Parallel States – In progress. Hanabi Enyo
Settling In – With the engineering team clamoring for more hands, Hazuki assigns a new recruit to the Fourth to help them, and gives her a short tour of the Fourth Division’s laboratory. Chie Kira
Common Ground – In progress. Rania Odette
Great Precision and Considerable Bitterness – After handing off a testing schedule to the Gotei’s pet Vaizard, Hazuki decides to take the opportunity to put some theories into practice. Nagisa Chinda

Buildup
An Immense Snake Uncoiled – In progress. Tokiyo Fujikagi
Gallows Pole – A (very!) brief exchange of words between Nagisa Chinda and Hazuki at Sōkyoku Hill. Nagisa Chinda
Time Stands Still – sigh
Not a Definite Mistrust—Just Uneasiness – Hazuki tells her captain precisely what she thinks of his moronic plan and ultimately resigns as lieutenant of the Fourth Division. Shun Minamoto
Daydreams – In defending the Fourth Division, Hazuki comes across a fellow Shinigami and dispenses some advice. Kasumi Shinoda
Replacement – Hazuki takes what is hers. Miyuki Wakahisa
Do I Have What It Takes? – Hazuki attempts to illuminate the finer points of being a part of the division under her command but is cut short by an urgent matter requiring her attention. Minoru Kamizawa
Replacement, pt. II – Hazuki appoints a lieutenant. Walkren Dekharr, Seiryūko Akamine

Of the above, only three are incomplete: Common Ground with Rania, where the gist of the thread is quite evident despite it not being officially complete, Parallel States with Hanabi, which suffered from her lengthy inactivity though most of its significance is already established, and of course An Immense Snake Uncoiled with Tokiyo, which is trundling along at a steady, albeit somewhat slow pace. Out of the three, the only one that I foresee anything unexpected occurring in given that there is potentially a lot more ground to cover is the thread with Tokiyo.

So, let’s strike—as Hazuki herself would—to the heart of the matter: Hazuki started at an advanced stage, and while many of the elements of the lower tiers of BGP have been touched upon briefly, I don’t enjoy waffling and with the exception of a relatively short period at the start of Hazuki’s lifespan on BG, I have attempted—and in my mind succeeded—at weaving many of these elements into threads that have otherwise primarily included elements of the BGP tiers for which I am making this request. As Base GP on Bleach Gotei serves as a rough indication of a character’s progression, the middle of the “Captain”-tier is the closest match to where Hazuki is. Prestige is not far off, and I can say that between now and the Prestige request, all Hazuki’s threads will be intimately linked to the themes her Prestige will address. The groundwork, so to speak, has been quite thoroughly laid, and what remains is building to the crescendo and the crescendo itself. More on that later—for now, suffice to say I view my Second Release and Grandmastery requests as a form of early milestones, as they have been integral parts of Hazuki’s development—and dare I say it, in establishing the elusive “distance” between her first and current iterations. Furthermore, many of Hazuki’s earlier threads serve to accentuate just how different the Seireitei of her childhood and the Seireitei as we know it have become.

Hazuki’s introduction, and many of the threads that followed, have been intentionally misleading. My Prestige request will cover this in greater detail (much, much greater detail), and in the interest of making this a quick review I’m going to be as brief as I can. Her appearance was sudden, her rise to prominence swift; a byproduct, no doubt, of her advanced start but also, I think, of her drive: she spent no time faffing about, instead engaging directly with her superiors in order to better position herself for a string of promotions. Hazuki is, as some characters will certainly have noticed by now, all business, and while some know this better than others (Shinpei, Miyuki, et al.) it’s become obvious even to those who haven’t been poked with the sharp end of her most prized possession. Her relationship with her former captain has been a professional, efficient, and ultimately impersonal ordeal that started off on better terms than it ended on, and while a little malice has certainly shone through from time to time, Hazuki has maintained a fairly neutral stance on most things at least as far as interpersonal relationships go. There’s been some friction, of course, with certain individuals (mostly ones who outrank her, ironically) but she’s managed to get by with what appears to be her eye on the prize—or a prize, shrouded in mystery as it may be.

And it is that prize that drives Hazuki, keeping her cold and distant, allowing only the odd peek beneath the thick veneer of solid ice that she has erected around herself. While she has risen from a nobody to lieutenant and further on to captain of her own division, these things have served as means to an end that she still pursues rather than ends in and of themselves: her time in the Fourth was largely spent constructing a very particular sort of tool, and the next step up the ladder took her to the Third—at first glance an odd fit for someone like Hazuki, but putting her in control of an asset that none of the other captaincies have access to. Her career has been a series of fortuitous steps taking her ever closer to her elusive goal rather than an attempt at raising her standing—it’s obvious Hazuki cares little for the prestige of captaincy, else she might deign to actually wear the haori that signifies her new rank. It is quite clear that she’s far more interested in what the opportunities her new captaincy allows than the status of her elevated rank. In fact, she even goes so far as to ruminate on her unsuitability for the position, but vows to do her best for as long as she has to occupy the Third’s command.

Shun and Shun alone seems to have figured out at least the basic idea of what it is Hazuki is playing at, though he hasn’t quite been able to piece together the full picture just yet. He has seen Amaterasu, Hazuki’s ambitious surveillance project, for what it truly is, just as he can no doubt imagine why Hazuki chose the Third when the Fifth was just as open to her and would no doubt have suited her far, far better.

Her psychological developments, while initially successful—a Shikai rivaling the power of Bankai, for example—have taken a turn for the worse as Hazuki now finds herself with a worsening relationship between herself and her Zanpakutō spirit. The two are at odds with how—and indeed whether or not—Hazuki should proceed: Sakurazuki urges caution and reflection but Hazuki stubbornly barrels on at full tilt, so caught up in her hunt that she has stopped noticing the smaller details along the side of the road. Almost myopically she pursues her goal paying no mind to the situation developing around her—the Hollow invasion was nothing to her but a momentary distraction in which she met one of the only other Shinigami in Seireitei whose age comes even remotely close to her own. Whatever she may have claimed her work in the Fourth was in aid of, the statements are beginning to ring more and more hollow, proving Shun ever more correct in his assessment of her.

Hazuki has lied—a lot, it seems—though never blatantly; her lies are lies by omission, and while she has reached out to a few individuals it seems her most irreconcilable difference thus far is with the Vaizards. Hazuki is openly and unashamedly antagonistic against Nagisa Chinda, and the focus of her efforts seem inextricably linked to the half-breed condition, pausing only briefly to attend to her duties and responsibilities.

Having long since established herself, and now with her most recent developments in mind, it is clear to me Hazuki is roughly in the middle of the 4,100–5,000 BGP range: she has begun her path to Prestige, she has suitably developed a slew of relationships with various people, she is defined to the point where I’d wager anyone who’s read her material would have a rough idea of how she might react to any given situation, she is beginning to cultivate a new batch of relationships as well as further develop existing ones, and above all her inner conflict is about to come to a head. Where this leaves us is what’s to come: I have a number of threads lined up to build up to Prestige, there is Prestige itself and the immediate aftermath of that event. As Seireitei’s pet Vaizard we can expect Nagisa to feature in said buildup, as well as the second generation of acquaintances to further serve to define Hazuki within the scope of her current situation and ordeals, such as Kasumi and Walkren. Most importantly, however, it is what Hazuki does with her time and how she develops her relationship with her Zanpakutō that will weigh heaviest in further development, as she is closing in on what she’s after and it’s only a matter of time before that clash inevitably occurs.

In closing, I suppose I should take the time to state that as always I’ve chosen to focus as much as possible on quality over quantity, just as I have attempted to keep Hazuki’s development in many ways as organic as possible: with her origin and destination hazily defined I have strived to make sure that whatever occurs in between these two points has been reactive. There was a time when I “made plans” but those times—and those plans—are no more, as instead I have elected to go where the situation takes me, all while maintaining the only true bearing worth a damn: keeping in line with my character and how she would act in any given situation. I find bending over backwards to accommodate some grand scheme agreed upon beforehand distasteful and as such I have done all I could to avoid such behavior at least in my own writing.

I’m certain you have questions for me, have at it.