Post by Victoria on Jan 28, 2018 18:52:40 GMT -5
Iron Fist. Wolf of the Fifth. Ma'am. Officer Aeserninus. Bitch. And numerous other things.
Many titles. Many names. All pointed to her. And they were all just names. They held no bearing. Some gave preconceptions to others about her character and abilities others were formalities or gained by angering someone at some time.
None of that mattered. The woman these names belonged to had no time to worry about what someone somewhere in some division, be it hers or another, thought of her. Duty came before personal feelings and while she was making the attempts needed to become more approachable she couldn't allow the desire to be close to her squad members to get in the way.
At present the officer corp, as far as she was concerned and the Captain may have felt otherwise, was filled with relatively competent people. Most had several decades of service under them which when it came to keeping the less experienced, the rambunctious, and less driven members of the division in order. As for how those men and women ran their squads it was fairly open ended. Some preferred to do everything themselves and others liked doling out duty to those under their leadership to make everyone feel useful and keep the squad busy. Until recently she'd been very much a hands on leader. She did everything that was required of her squad in terms paperwork and making sure everything was ready should they, with or without her, need to deploy rapidly. But something a Quincy had said to her recently had begun to make her think. Perhaps she was in need of finding something to aid her in the task of leading her squad?
It did sound nice, it would certainly free up more time in her day to do the things she often neglected to do or had to do in a much shorter time frame. Sleeping and eating proper meals came to mind immediately. The issue with selecting someone to work within her squad as her second. She couldn't pick just anyone. It needed to be a someone who would follow her orders to the letter and be capable of leading her squad into combat should she ever be needed to guide the overall flow of a large scale combat operation.
But who? She'd spent a couple days to this point going through the roster and eliminating unsuitable candidates. This had all been in the scant free time she had of course. Freshly drawn recruits or those with less than a year in service were the first to go. Anyone with a history of disobedience or being difficult to command went next and the same went for those that seemed to lack the ability to think for themselves. She needed a person who could take orders that may lack specifics and be able to fill in the rest. True, there was something to be said about having soldiers that followed orders to the letter but she didn't need that in her second in command. Nor did she want that.
Sorting out the weaker candidates had left her with a handful of possible options. All day she'd spent meeting with them. Speaking with them and grilling them about command and leadership. And, she sighed heavily as she opened the last dossier, she'd not been to happy with anything she'd seen or heard. Which left this one last profile.
Rubianca "Ruby" Oukami.
New by her standards, but compared to her nearly everyone in her squad and the Gotei was new, but a good soldier. Well disciplined, well skilled in her chosen areas of combat, a few minor infractions from her earliest days in the division and bit of a stickler according to a few abbreviated reports she'd read. These things all came with being young. Which was completely understandable and easily forgiven by the veteran war maker. What mattered most was that did she, at least in the eyes of the wolf, have the potential to be much more and gain a grasp of that stick in the muddiness and dry it out.
She heaved herself upright with a soft grunt. She'd been sitting in that damn chair for hours and needed to move. Stepping out of her office the old one cast an eye to the wounded clerk that sat several paces from it. "Alfonse," she called as she locked the door behind her with a tiny brass key and tucked it into the folds of her chest wrapping.
"Yes, Ma'am?" the clerk said looking up from a book he'd been reading.
"How's that leg wound healing? Feel like taking a small walk for me?" she asked she slipped the tartan shawl she'd spun at her villa over her shoulders and secured it the tiny golden horse brooch she'd had copied from pictures of one sitting in a museum on Earth.
"It's healing well Ma'am. The medics in the third say I should be all healed in about a week but I think it'll be alright to go for a walk with my crutch till then. What can I do for you, Ma'am?" Alfonse said pushing himself up gingerly with his one good leg and with his crutch.
"Go find Rubiance Oukami for me and send her to the small disused training yard on the west side of our division grounds. Tell her it's of a matter thats particularly important and I need her there on the double quick. I'll be there waiting for her," taking a step in the opposite direction of Alfonse Victoria stopped and called over her shoulder, "Alfonse."
"Yes Ma'am?"
"Once you've found Rubiance feel free to take the rest of the evening off," she said before starting off again towards the determined destination. Behind her Alfonse thanked her before he began his slow clunking trip to find his target.
- - - - -
The training grounds she'd told Alfonse to send Rubiance to was much smaller than the ones currently in use by the bulk of the division. Its buildings were maintained well but overall their usage was mostly storage and the occasional frowned upon secret tryst between squad mates. In times long past this had been the primary training ground but slowly as the division grew larger and larger this smaller yard and many like it began to see less and less use. Now when they did see combat it was because someone wanted to practice a skill they were laughably bad at in private or when two people had a particular disagreement and the only way to settle it was to meet here and beat the stuffing out of each other. Such was their now primary use; grudge matches and secrets.
This particular yard had been used for hakuda training back in the day and as such had a surface of raked sand or had, rather, and now tufts of grass sprang up here and there. Besides the gentle rustle of the dead leaves on a nearby tree, that had centuries prior been nothing but a sapling, she could almost hear the sounds of long dead training officers running fresh recruits through drills. Softly she smiled as she found her old spot on the yard thanks to an oddly colored stone in the containing border of stones. Directly in front of the stone and six paces forward. At ease, eyes forward with hands folded behind the small of the back. Back then she'd not have dared to smile as she was now. Doing so would have brought the wrath of the hard assed instructors of her time upon her and she'd have been running miles for days to make up for her show of mirth. The training officers, and this was her opinion alone, were too soft now. Unless it was her that was doing the training of the divisions new bloods.
A soft chuckle. She'd become the growling snapping old dog that had trained her up over a thousand years prior. Oh how funny that was. How she had in a way despised the training officers when she did receive training. So many times when she had been but a recruit they'd just been roughly grouped into ad hoc squads and sent to Earth to engage in savage fighting. It was why she fought as she did now. Brutal and simplistic. Each movement with a definite purpose without unneeded flash or show meant for the single purpose of killing.
It was hard to find many soldiers in her beloved division that hadn't fallen into the trappings of the duelist and dancer styles of fighting. There were some but they too, were grizzled veterans that had seen much combat in their time and learned the hard way by experiencing the danger or witnessing it first hand how the flash or overly dramatic could, in fierce fighting, spell the difference between coming away unharmed or not coming home at all.
That was something she wanted to find out about this younger female she'd decided as she'd walked here. How this one fought. How she went about breaking down an enemy or finding a path around its defenses. True, Victoria could have delayed this meeting till the morrow and simply read a pile of reports ranging from training instructors to after actions to get a mental grasp on this girls skill but that was never as good as having a physical measure of it. And with that measure came a natural assessment of her potential protégées skill. Would Rubiance be a vast ocean of potential? Or would she be nothing but a shallow puddle?
Wc- 1594
Many titles. Many names. All pointed to her. And they were all just names. They held no bearing. Some gave preconceptions to others about her character and abilities others were formalities or gained by angering someone at some time.
None of that mattered. The woman these names belonged to had no time to worry about what someone somewhere in some division, be it hers or another, thought of her. Duty came before personal feelings and while she was making the attempts needed to become more approachable she couldn't allow the desire to be close to her squad members to get in the way.
At present the officer corp, as far as she was concerned and the Captain may have felt otherwise, was filled with relatively competent people. Most had several decades of service under them which when it came to keeping the less experienced, the rambunctious, and less driven members of the division in order. As for how those men and women ran their squads it was fairly open ended. Some preferred to do everything themselves and others liked doling out duty to those under their leadership to make everyone feel useful and keep the squad busy. Until recently she'd been very much a hands on leader. She did everything that was required of her squad in terms paperwork and making sure everything was ready should they, with or without her, need to deploy rapidly. But something a Quincy had said to her recently had begun to make her think. Perhaps she was in need of finding something to aid her in the task of leading her squad?
It did sound nice, it would certainly free up more time in her day to do the things she often neglected to do or had to do in a much shorter time frame. Sleeping and eating proper meals came to mind immediately. The issue with selecting someone to work within her squad as her second. She couldn't pick just anyone. It needed to be a someone who would follow her orders to the letter and be capable of leading her squad into combat should she ever be needed to guide the overall flow of a large scale combat operation.
But who? She'd spent a couple days to this point going through the roster and eliminating unsuitable candidates. This had all been in the scant free time she had of course. Freshly drawn recruits or those with less than a year in service were the first to go. Anyone with a history of disobedience or being difficult to command went next and the same went for those that seemed to lack the ability to think for themselves. She needed a person who could take orders that may lack specifics and be able to fill in the rest. True, there was something to be said about having soldiers that followed orders to the letter but she didn't need that in her second in command. Nor did she want that.
Sorting out the weaker candidates had left her with a handful of possible options. All day she'd spent meeting with them. Speaking with them and grilling them about command and leadership. And, she sighed heavily as she opened the last dossier, she'd not been to happy with anything she'd seen or heard. Which left this one last profile.
Rubianca "Ruby" Oukami.
New by her standards, but compared to her nearly everyone in her squad and the Gotei was new, but a good soldier. Well disciplined, well skilled in her chosen areas of combat, a few minor infractions from her earliest days in the division and bit of a stickler according to a few abbreviated reports she'd read. These things all came with being young. Which was completely understandable and easily forgiven by the veteran war maker. What mattered most was that did she, at least in the eyes of the wolf, have the potential to be much more and gain a grasp of that stick in the muddiness and dry it out.
She heaved herself upright with a soft grunt. She'd been sitting in that damn chair for hours and needed to move. Stepping out of her office the old one cast an eye to the wounded clerk that sat several paces from it. "Alfonse," she called as she locked the door behind her with a tiny brass key and tucked it into the folds of her chest wrapping.
"Yes, Ma'am?" the clerk said looking up from a book he'd been reading.
"How's that leg wound healing? Feel like taking a small walk for me?" she asked she slipped the tartan shawl she'd spun at her villa over her shoulders and secured it the tiny golden horse brooch she'd had copied from pictures of one sitting in a museum on Earth.
"It's healing well Ma'am. The medics in the third say I should be all healed in about a week but I think it'll be alright to go for a walk with my crutch till then. What can I do for you, Ma'am?" Alfonse said pushing himself up gingerly with his one good leg and with his crutch.
"Go find Rubiance Oukami for me and send her to the small disused training yard on the west side of our division grounds. Tell her it's of a matter thats particularly important and I need her there on the double quick. I'll be there waiting for her," taking a step in the opposite direction of Alfonse Victoria stopped and called over her shoulder, "Alfonse."
"Yes Ma'am?"
"Once you've found Rubiance feel free to take the rest of the evening off," she said before starting off again towards the determined destination. Behind her Alfonse thanked her before he began his slow clunking trip to find his target.
- - - - -
The training grounds she'd told Alfonse to send Rubiance to was much smaller than the ones currently in use by the bulk of the division. Its buildings were maintained well but overall their usage was mostly storage and the occasional frowned upon secret tryst between squad mates. In times long past this had been the primary training ground but slowly as the division grew larger and larger this smaller yard and many like it began to see less and less use. Now when they did see combat it was because someone wanted to practice a skill they were laughably bad at in private or when two people had a particular disagreement and the only way to settle it was to meet here and beat the stuffing out of each other. Such was their now primary use; grudge matches and secrets.
This particular yard had been used for hakuda training back in the day and as such had a surface of raked sand or had, rather, and now tufts of grass sprang up here and there. Besides the gentle rustle of the dead leaves on a nearby tree, that had centuries prior been nothing but a sapling, she could almost hear the sounds of long dead training officers running fresh recruits through drills. Softly she smiled as she found her old spot on the yard thanks to an oddly colored stone in the containing border of stones. Directly in front of the stone and six paces forward. At ease, eyes forward with hands folded behind the small of the back. Back then she'd not have dared to smile as she was now. Doing so would have brought the wrath of the hard assed instructors of her time upon her and she'd have been running miles for days to make up for her show of mirth. The training officers, and this was her opinion alone, were too soft now. Unless it was her that was doing the training of the divisions new bloods.
A soft chuckle. She'd become the growling snapping old dog that had trained her up over a thousand years prior. Oh how funny that was. How she had in a way despised the training officers when she did receive training. So many times when she had been but a recruit they'd just been roughly grouped into ad hoc squads and sent to Earth to engage in savage fighting. It was why she fought as she did now. Brutal and simplistic. Each movement with a definite purpose without unneeded flash or show meant for the single purpose of killing.
It was hard to find many soldiers in her beloved division that hadn't fallen into the trappings of the duelist and dancer styles of fighting. There were some but they too, were grizzled veterans that had seen much combat in their time and learned the hard way by experiencing the danger or witnessing it first hand how the flash or overly dramatic could, in fierce fighting, spell the difference between coming away unharmed or not coming home at all.
That was something she wanted to find out about this younger female she'd decided as she'd walked here. How this one fought. How she went about breaking down an enemy or finding a path around its defenses. True, Victoria could have delayed this meeting till the morrow and simply read a pile of reports ranging from training instructors to after actions to get a mental grasp on this girls skill but that was never as good as having a physical measure of it. And with that measure came a natural assessment of her potential protégées skill. Would Rubiance be a vast ocean of potential? Or would she be nothing but a shallow puddle?
Wc- 1594
