Honing the Connection [JTT]

[Kazura Uzaki]

Training for CTP

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Who? Kazura Uzaki, CEO of Uzaki Enterprises, son of the late founder of said company. When? 8am on a Saturday. Where? A specific couch belonging to a specific friend. Why? ... Hard to say why. The offer had been extended to sleep on the couch of this friend at her apartment and he wasn't sure why he had taken her up on it, but for once he felt... calmer. He hadn't slept all night, tossing and turning, hopefully not keeping her up in the other room, but he felt calmer and less... panicked. Less... terrified. He didn't have such a bad nightmare as before, just felt sleepless in a weird location. Plus, he was pretty sure he was allergic to beastie the cat. And beastie's fur was everywhere it seemed like.

When eight o'clock rolled around and he still hadn't slept, Kazura rolled off the couch and started the morning with a bit of body weight exercises. He had already seen Irina leave for her morning jog and had a feeling she'd be gone for awhile... especially if he pulled a favor with Karen his secretary to get Irina into the office for a few hours for "whatever you can do to stall her." Once he knew she was hooked in, he started his plan to make the best blueberry muffins he could. After all, he had promised to make up the whole "saving his life" thing with a blueberry muffin with the crumblies on top.

Step one: Google a blueberry muffin recipe. Top three results: Someone from New York's blueberry muffin recipe, quick and easy blueberry muffins, and to die for blueberry muffins. Gotta go with the third one, even though it would take 40 minutes... Yeah, he had time to have a few tries at it. He had already prepared ahead of time and ordered plenty of blueberries to Irina's apartment through the local grocery delivery service, and he had thought ahead enough to order flour, oil, and eggs as well. He was pretty sure that was the main ingredients. Hopefully she had the other ingredients he needed.

The recipe called for 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. Check. 3/4 cup sugar? Okay, she had to have sugar around here... yup, plenty of sugar. Perfect. Next was... 2 teaspoons baking powder. She also had that, close to the sugar. 1/2 teaspoon salt. Easy. 1/3 cup vegetable oil. Check, already ordered. 1 egg. Only 1? He had ordered like, two dozen. Oh well, plenty of room for error. 1/3 cup milk, or more as needed. He glanced in the fridge, found plenty of milk. Check. And lastly, but not least importantly, 1 cup fresh blueberries. Once the groceries arrived, he had everything he needed for the muffins.

Next, crumb topping. 1/2 cup white sugar. Check, already found that for the muffins. 1/3 cup all-purpose flour. Double check. 1/4 cup butter, cubed. Glancing in the fridge again, found plenty of butter sticks. Hopefully unsalted was fine. Lastly, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. That one took him awhile to find in Irina's spice cabinet, but found plenty thankfully so he avoided needing to go out and grab just one last item for these muffins. There was no time to waste, so he launched into the recipe.

Step one: Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Grease 8 muffin cups or line with muffin liners. He hadn't thought about muffin liners, and Irina didn't seem to have any, so he just greased the cups with cooking spray. That was greasy, right? Hopefully greasy enough. Step two: Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Easy enough, he knew what a whisk was and he just needed to combine dry ingredients. Done. Step three: Pour oil into a small liquid measuring cup. Add egg and enough milk to reach the 1-cup mark. Stir until combined. Pour into flour mixture and mix just until batter is combined. Fold in blueberries. Set batter aside.

This is where things got more complicated. He poured the oil in a small liquid measuring cup, 1/3 cup worth. Then he dropped the egg in, splashing oil all over the sides. He figured that he needed to not lose any oil, so he fished out the egg, filled it back up to 1/3 cup of oil, then gently put the egg back in to avoid spilling. He obviously didn't think about cleaning up the tiny bit of oil that was now dripping down the side of the counters onto the tile floor. He topped off the egg and oil with milk as instructed, then stirred it all together. The egg broke in the process, which he was pretty sure was intentional.

He poured the egg/oil/milk into the dry ingredients, stirred until combined, then did his best to "fold in" the blueberries. Figuring that just meant be gentle while mixing, he plopped them in with the batter and mixed them up a little more, but gently. He set that aside. No sweat, this was going to be easy. Step four: Combine sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon for crumb topping in a small bowl. Mix with a fork until crumbly. Eaaasssyyy. He Soul Commanded the butter to become into cubes, then mixed everything together with a fork as instructed. It looked perfect, to him.

Step Five: Spoon batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling right to the top. Sprinkle with crumb topping. That was easy. He filled up the muffin pan with seven liquid muffins, keeping one portion of the 8 the recipe said it made still in the bowl. For purposes he had for it. Step Six: Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Setting the pan in the oven, Kazura turned the timer to 20 minutes and began to work on the portion of the batter he had set aside. He extended his awareness and reiatsu into the bowl, Tracing the batter and probing its composition.

There were chunks of blueberries alongside egg shells, which probably wasn't supposed to be that way but he didn't have a way to fix it now, they were already in the oven. He ignored that part and instead focused on the way the batter reacted to being poked with his finger, heated gently with a very focused use of Soul Dominance vibrating the batter at various "heats". That's all heat was, anyways, just the molecules moving faster and bumping into each other. For the whole twenty minutes he experimented with trying to "bake" the batter with his Soul Manipulation abilities.

He checked the muffins and they looked perfect, the toothpick came out clean, so out they came from the oven. Waiting for them to cool slightly, he took a big bite out of one of them once it was an appropriate temperature. Bad idea. He nearly cut his tongue and the roof of his mouth with the large amount of baked egg shells that was in the muffin. He spit the bite into the sink, washed it down, and emptied the tin of the rest of the six muffins, setting them aside and ignoring them due to their failure.

Using Soul Command to wipe the tin clean of any leftover muffin, then regreasing the pan with cooking spray, Kazura began to whip up another batch of muffin mix. This time, he broke the egg first and made sure the shells weren't in the batter. When he moved to put the batter in the pan, he slipped on some of the oil that had collected on the floor. With his instincts he managed to catch himself and the bowl before he completely fell over, but the batter went flying all over the counter and floor.

Looking at his watch, he figured Irina would be starting to leave from her distraction soon. Dang it. Wiping up the mess with a paper towel the best he could, the flustered Kazura didn't even think to keep using his powers to clean and instead left a spread out mess all over the floor. He again tried to whip up a fast set of batter, which was easier the third time as he was getting the hang of it. He was adept at Learning, after all. He cranked up the oven to broil, letting it sit at 300 C. That would let it cook faster, right? He nearly threw the pan into the oven and set the timer for 10 minutes.

Trying his best to clean up some more, the oven started to smoke very quickly. Pulling the absolutely torched muffins out of the oven, he let the oven cool back to 200 C and tossed the very burnt muffins next to the egg shelled ones. His fourth batch of mix was ready when the oven was again at the proper temperature. Kazura put another batch of 6 muffins into the oven, set the timer for 20 minutes, and ignored the state of Irina's kitchen to focus on cooking with Soul Dominance. Tracing a cooked muffin, he compared it to the raw batter to figure out what he needed to do to accomplish a fully baked piece of muffin.

He couldn't manage to get the temperature of his Will up to the relative heat of 200 degrees that they were supposed to cook at, so he sharpened his Reiatsu Strength by focusing away from his reserves and into raw power. That seemed to work just swimmingly, so he heated up the muffin mix as best he could by vibrating the batter extremely rapidly. Doing this was taxing, exhausting even, but he had a well cooked muffin to compare it to, even if it contained sharp egg shells. The two muffins he made with his powers were ready about the same time as the ones in the oven, so he admired his work in both the muffin pan and the bowl and set one of each out for Irina to taste.

There was no time to clean, no time to taste them himself as he heard a key enter the lock of the apartment door...

[Irina Davayte]

Training for CTP

At this time of year, Irina had determined that about 6:54 am was the best time to see the deer and turtles in the park, so she had timed her morning run appropriately, happily plunking herself on the grass to watch the creatures play as the sun came up. She had scheduled the day off, as had Kazura, to get some training together. First, though, her Saturday morning ritual: A run around town, watching the animals in the park, then getting a smoothie for breakfast. She watched a young deer struggle to reach an especially green leaf on a branch, and used Soul Command to gently pull the branch where it was more accessible to the fawn. As it crunched it happily, Irina carefully released her pull on the branch, not wanting it to snap back like a slingshot. She was proud to have developed such fine control of objects that were fairly far-off, and glad to be able to use it to make the creature happy. After a while relaxing and watching, she quietly got up and jogged towards her favorite smoothie spot.

Just after taking her first sip of the strawberry-banana-with-extra-vitamin-C concoction that the barista had already known she wanted, Irina's phone buzzed. Puzzled, she read a text from Karen, Kazura's secretary, asking Irina to come in to the office. Sure, she interacted with Karen fairly regularly, but their jobs at UE didn't have a ton of overlap. Still, for Karen to get a hold of Irina on a Saturday morning, something serious must be going on. Or at least interesting. She hoped it was more "interesting" than "serious".

"Good morning, thank you for coming in," Karen greeted her sheepishly, looking up from her computer and adjusting her thick-framed glasses. "Good morning. What's going on?" Irina asked with moderate concern. Karen sighed. "I hate to bother you about this," and this was true; even Irina, with her admittedly low ability to perceive others' feelings, could sense her reluctance, "but I have a problem. Mr. Uzaki asked me to order him more staples, but that it has to be this exact kind, and also, he threw away the box at least a year ago. I know you're in Materials Engineering...Is there any chance you could take a look and see if you can see what's so special about them?" Karen handed Irina a row of about 10 staples.

"Yeah, I can do that," Irina said thoughtfully, thinking that this was a strange thing for Kazura to get so picky about. "Thanks so much," Karen said with relief, and paused before adding "You know how Mr. Uzaki can get sometimes." Irina did. "Eccentric" might be a mild way to describe Kazura's personality. Not to mention, she supposed this might be par for the course for eccentric billionaires. Maybe they all were weird about their office supplies. Anyway, she was happy to help Karen out. So off to the Materials lab Irina went. First she got out her reading glasses and researched to determine what type of metal staples were normally made of. Then she turned to the actual product in question. After checking the color, luster, density, brittleness, and texture of one of the staples, she put away her microscope, satisfied that she'd found the answer.

"Zinc-plated steel. Standard size, both in length and width of the actual wire. They're, like...super regular staples," Irina reported to Karen about an hour after they'd parted. "I think you can give him a box of whatever normal staples you use and Mr. Uzaki won't know the difference." Karen checked the clock on the wall. "Ah, thank you so much for looking into that. Umm...one more thing though... I need to order food for a luncheon between Mr. Uzaki and some investors...Do you know what he'd want?" This was an even stranger request; it didn't make sense for Karen to not know the answer to this question since she took care of this kind of thing all of the time. "I don't know, Karen," Irina said, trying to be as polite as possible, but utterly confused. "It's not like I'm the man's wife." She blinked a couple of times before reluctantly circling back and answering "I'd go with Takoyaki. But not the kind with the bonito flakes. And get extra sauce."

Back to her house it was. Seeing the couch unoccupied, Irina called out "I'm back, how's it going?" She walked into the kitchen and was greeted by a disheveled (but proud) Kazura and an even more disheveled kitchen. Had he tried to paint the floor with batter? She fought the urge to look more closely, but was fairly certain she saw a large splatter on the ceiling. "Oh cool, you made muffins! Blueberry with crumblies?" she asked, carefully focusing on the positive for now. While she was indeed an extremely tidy person, Irina figured there was nothing to be gained by worrying about the mess just yet. "I didn't know people in your income bracket baked," she remarked, taking a bite.

[Kazura Uzaki]

Irina didn't seem too upset by the mess in her kitchen, at least outwardly, so Kazura felt a bit of relief. He knew that it would take him awhile to clean up, and that would be fine, but it was the surprise that mattered. "Yep, blueberry with crumblies. Just... don't try the muffins on the counter over there." He gestured towards about a dozen muffins, half of which were extremely burnt and half of which were normal looking, at least on the outside. "Is... is it okay?" Not sure how to feel about the comment about him baking, he skipped past it and hoped that she enjoyed the gift.

Depending on how she reacted to the muffin, he'd offer her the second muffin. If she liked the first one, maybe the second would be okay. The Soul Command baked muffin. If she didn't like it... he'd probably offer her the second muffin anyways. "Try this one, then. I studied the raw and cooked components of a muffin and used Soul Command to bake it. It theoretically should taste just the same. It theoretically should be just as cooked as the first one. Hopefully that's a good thing." With that, Kazura went to work cleaning.

It was hard work, cleaning muffin batter from the ceiling, floors, counters, and cabinets. He got down on his knees with a sponge and scrubbed the easier to reach surfaces. He wanted it done correctly, not lazily. As he cleaned, he talked. "I've been thinking about what we could do better when connected. That is... if you're willing to do that again. I've named the process Soul Dyad. If we're going to continue to hone that, we'll need to get adept at communicating and reading each other. Not to mention we'll need hover boot flying practice. That was nearly a disaster the first time."

Halfway done with the floors, Kazura popped his head back up over the counter. "Also... you've seen my nightmare. I could use help finding a way to end it. It may have something to do with the Hellion outbreak in Australia that Kitai and Marcus investigated a few years back. I can't imagine whatever escaped from them is no longer a threat somehow." He felt more comfortable talking about it with Irina than anyone else. Maybe Raph would also understand, maybe. But Irina was still easier to talk to for some reason. Maybe because she confronted him more than anyone else.

Finishing up the floors, then quickly wiping up drips from the cabinets, Kazura stood up and began working on the counters. The first step was to throw away the ruined muffins, followed up by wiping up the crumbs from those, and finally get a new sponge in order to work on the batter on the counter. The first one was just too soaked beyond repair with muffin guts. That didn't take as long as the floors, but the ceiling was going to be the biggest challenge. "I'd rather not take a mop to your ceiling. Is it okay if I clean it with Soul Command? I'll be careful and precise." He wanted to ask permission, given it was her apartment, and would mop the ceiling if she asked him to. Even though he'd rather not.

[Irina Davayte]

"Yeah, it's good. Did you try them yet?" Still warm, the muffin was light and fluffy. The crumbles were crispy and crumbly. The blueberries were tangy and sweet. It was good. The idea of a Soul Command-baked muffin intrigued her, and she poked it gently before tasting it. It felt normal. "Wait wait. If you didn't try them yet. let's see if you can tell a difference," the scientist said. Avoiding the discarded batches on the counter as instructed, Irina put one Soul Command muffin and one regular one on a plate, instructed "Turn around," stuck a red toothpick in the regularly-baked one and a blue one in the other, spun the plate on the counter with a flick of her wrist, and said "Okay, which one is better?" As she did so, she ate her own, which, in her opinion, seemed the same as the first (maybe the crumblies were slightly less crispy?), but the blind test would theoretically produce more accurate results. Once Kazura had given his opinion, she'd share which was which.

"Thanks," Irina said while scooping the rejected muffins into the trash without asking any questions about them, "For the muffins. And the gesture. I appreciate it." She worked on wiping off the countertops while Kazura cleaned the cabinets. There was no sense in her just standing there, and she didn't mind helping. She decided not to mention that it would be more efficient to start cleaning the highest point and then work their way down in case crumbs fell. She agreed with what Kazura said: their new technique was worth looking into. ”’Soul Dyad.’ Got it. I’ll add it to the list.” Irina had compiled an actual list of all the techniques she knew about and what they did. ”Yep, sounds like important things to practice, did you have a plan in mind? Something we might want to eye out for is sometimes when I get too focused, the ground underneath me freezes. It’s absolutely useless; it only makes me fall down.”

Irina put on a kettle to start some tea while Kazura worked on the floors. She nodded as Kazura described the problem with the nightmare’s potentially-connected Hellions that Marcus and Kitai had found. ”Yeah, sounds good, let’s look into that.” Once the water was boiling, she tossed in a couple bags of green tea. Irina had never heard of mopping a ceiling, but she supposed that would be as good a way as any to get batter off of it. She didn’t see any problems with the idea of using Soul Command to remove the batter from the ceiling, so she agreed. ”Sure, go for it.” In fact, this kind of task was probably something she should be practicing herself: she had been trying to improve her skill at using Soul Command for more fine and delicate skills. Like lock picking, moving a lightweight cart full of medical supplies without it flying out of control… that kind of normal activity. After the tea had steeped long enough, she poured two cups. ”Here, antioxidants are good for you,” she would inform Kazura if she got any kind of protest about it.

She’d load her dishwasher, and once the cleaning tasks were done, she’d settle into a chair. ”What do you think about turning the downstairs gym into an ice rink, just for today? It’s been about forever since I’ve played hockey. Let’s make some robot opponents or something and play.” She knew it was more of a regional sport that tended to be more popular in cold areas (for reasons she couldn’t fathom. Ice rinks were climate controlled. People were missing out.), so she wasn’t sure Kazura had played before, but she was also pretty sure he’d go for her idea.

[Kazura Uzaki]

To tell the truth, Kazura had yet to try the muffins. The good ones, that is. He had tried the egg shelled ones and regretted it, but he was hoping that fixing that issue would have improved the quality of the treat extensively. Irina one upped him though, daring him to blind taste them to see which one was better. He'd play along, but he knew that as soon as he turned around, he'd know which one was which due to the one being saturated in his reiatsu signature and the other not. But he'd play along, doing his best to suppress all Energy Sensory abilities while she prepared the test and while he tried them. He didn't taste much of a difference, but if he had to guess, the one with the blue toothpick had a more uniform texture.

"I prefer the one with the blue toothpick. More balanced, almost with surgical precision in its texture. Probably the one that I baked by 'hand' and not by oven." Kazura beamed at the thanks he received though. It felt good to do something for someone and be affirmed in the gesture. As for the plan in how to practice, Kazura had a few ideas, but he'd wait until the cleaning and tea was done before he'd go over them. As for the cleaning, he just needed to finish up the ceiling. She had given him permission to clean with Soul Command, so he did just that.

Reaching out with his hand to get as close to the plaster of the ceiling as possible, he gently Willed the liquid batter to thin out until it dripped down. With his other hand, he caught the drips with Soul Command and swirled them around until they formed a nice doughnut hole sized chunk. He hardened it with a final application of Soul Command, slowing down the movement of the liquid until it was solid enough to dispose of in the regular trash. "There, perfect. And just in time for tea, too."

Sipping on his tea in a chair opposite Irina, he listened to her idea of making the Spiritual Department's gym into an ice rink. He'd not been ice skating in... a long time, if ever, so he knew it would take some getting used to but would be worth it in the end if she was going to be making the ground beneath her icy. "2v2, you and me versus some robot skaters? I'm sure we can manage that. I'd also like to work on some sort of emotional code. If we're connected and you sense joy where we should be worried, it could be code for... something. The idea is a work in progress."

Popping the remaining good muffins into a airtight container for later, Kazura removed most of the air before sealing it up so that they'd stay fresher for longer. With that done, he was ready to head into the gym for their training. "Ready to go?" If she wasn't ready for some reason, like wanting to shower after her run or something, he'd go on without her and get started on the robot hockey players. If she came along with, she could help him out with that project before they actually converted the gym.

[Irina Davayte]

She'd been fed and the kitchen was cleaned up, so it was time to move on to the most fun part. 2V2 against the robots was exactly what she’d had in mind. ”Yup, sounds great!” And the “emotional code” was certainly a thought. ”Huh, interesting idea. I’m thinking we might need the help of some kind of meditation guru to literally change a panicked feeling to a happy one, for example…but I think it’s definitely worth exploring.” While Kazura packed up the muffins, Irina applied a fresh coat of deodorant and changed her socks, then she was ready to go.

Irina typically walked to the office, so she’d assume that was the plan. If Kazura followed along, she’d ask coversationally ”So when did you learn to bake? My mom always expected my brothers and I to help cook when we were little, but I didn’t really appreciate having those skills until I was older.”

[Kazura Uzaki]

Walking to the office was not something Kazura did often, mostly to avoid the paparazzi, but he kept his hood of his jacket raised and a pair of sunglasses on and walked with Irina. As for when he learned to bake, he was utterly honest with her. "I learned to bake about two hours ago. Google has my back. It wasn't too hard, just took a couple failed attempts. One just because I was getting rushed and lazy. The other one... we won't talk about that one." Once they got to UE HQ, Kazura checked his email, responded to a few of them, then headed downstairs to the Spiritual Department gym. He tried to stagger his arrival so people didn't get the wrong idea about him and Irina like they had with Yoko all those years ago.

Even still, when Irina passed by Karen in the lobby, she'd wink and whisper, "Not his wife, hmm?" She then hurried away without leaving much time to respond to the teasing. Once the two of them were in the gym, Kazura would start to work on the Robots. "Do you want to primarily work on the construction or programming of the robots? I can do either, but wanted to give you the option." While she responded to that question, Kazura would start preparing the materials they'd want to work with. Some carbon fiber sheets for the sticks, metal for the robots insides, foam padding for the external parts of the robot so "checking" them was possible and wouldn't hurt. That's about all Kazura knew about hockey from memory. You push people on ice and hit the puck into the net...

Right?

[Irina Davayte]

On arrival at the building, after greeting Karen with a "Hi, Karen" that pretty clearly read as "I don't know how to respond to this, so I'm going to pretend it didn't happen", Irina headed downstairs towards the Spiritual Department floors, first precuring her favorite tool box before heading towards the gym. The gym, she noted, needed organized badly. One side had pretty standard gym equipment. Free weights, martial arts stuff (was that a basket of throwing stars?), and some cones and poles that she assumed made up an agility course. Standard enough gym things that could have belonged in a standard gym.

Then Kazura arrived and pulled out carbon fiber sheets, scrap metal and foam padding from what she could only describe as the "random stuff area", and Irina made a note on her phone to inventory what on earth was in this place when she next got the chance. Most of the "random stuff" should be relocated to one of the labs or workshops. The things that fit more into the category of "mad science stuff" then "gym items" could find a more logical home. She wouldn't ask Kazura for input before doing so; she'd fix it first, then share a spreadsheet of what she'd moved where with the relevant team members afterward.

"I would generally rather put my hand in a pencil sharpener than code. I think it's the most boring thing they made me do all through college. And I don't anticipate getting any quicker at it due to being averse to practicing. So...I pick construction if either is the same to you." Technically, her specialty was Materials, but that was part of a mechanical engineering degree, so she was plenty comfortable with building things. She got to work on a base for the first Robot Player. She'd finish the first one and make sure there weren't any major problems before starting the second.

She took a trip down the stairs to her favorite workshop get some wheels that should handle ice without sliding around too much. She added them to a heavy base that allowed the wheels to turn independently, then started working on a frame for the body. She was fine with using wire framing as long as it was coated generously with dense foam, so she got to work with a capsule-shaped body. Sure, she *could* attempt to make it more humanoid-shaped, but she wasn't Michaelangelo, she decided (or whichever artist built sculptures), so her pretty much cylindrical person would do. She coated it in a dense foam, then a fluffier one on the outside. She left a cavity near the base for putting a motor with the computer stuff it needed. She weighted the thing at about 70 kilos, making it roughly human- but not a huge human-weight.

Now she'd better test out how well the first guy (who wasn't really a robot yet) handled moving on ice. She had a couple of options for using her Fullbring to make an icy floor, and neither of them were ideal for this situation. First, she could use her sword to freeze a bit of the floor at a time. The two reasons that was a bad idea were: It would be terribly inefficient, to the point that she wasn't sure she could freeze the whole area before the side she started on was thawed, and more importantly, it would scratch up the floor like crazy. Alternatively, she could throw some icy blasts all over, making a Slushy-textured floor situation. Which would be terrible for playing hockey on. Not to mention, any option that got the actual floor soaked would definitely not be good for the hardwood floors.

So an Engineering solution, not a spiritual one, would be what she needed for this case. It seemed like a shame, since her whole thing was "ice powers", but at least the expensive degree hadn't been for nothing. "Hey, do you have any ideas on how to freeze an ice rink in here without ruining the floor?" Irina called over to Kazura. "I'm going to go find something to seal it off and keep it dry. But ironically, I don't have a great way to make ice in this situation." It wasn't the first time she'd wished she could make more precise shapes out of ice...it was an idea she'd have to look into when time allowed.

[Kazura Uzaki]

Kazura was okay with working on the coding while Irina worked on the physical construction of the robots. Pulling up a e-book on Hockey maneuvers and tactics, Kazura paged through it rapidly and worked on getting very familiar with the sport and its particulars. If he focused, he could theoretically read thousands of words a minute due to his insane mental processing speed, the only limit being the text had to be large enough for him to take it in with his average eyesight. He could scroll pretty fast though, speed reading at superhuman rates. If only his eyes were stronger, he could really intake information at computer speeds. But he was limited in how much he could physically see.

As he finished his reading about hockey he moved to learning a little bit more about programming code. He had experience in coding a VR MMORPG in Zanjutsu Online, but coding a moving robot was a bit different. He had to know what motors were going to activate and what speeds to rotate them at in order to accomplish fluid movements. He studied the chess playing robot from Russia that had recently broke a kid's finger, he studied a few magic trick performing robots, as well as some lego robotic programming toys. He translated the learning into a series of code that would let the hockey robot move in pretty rudimentary "skating" styles with its wheels that Irina had brought up from the workshop.

If he made the wheels turn just right, the lower friction of the ice would let these robots glide pretty well. When he had the movement part down, he also had to work on the hockey playing part. It had to have cameras that could keep track of his and Irina's movements as well as movements of the puck and react accordingly. This was going to be the hardest part. He looked into the self driving cars that had huge camera ranges of vision and worked up a similar system for the punching bag shaped robots Irina was constructing. Now that they could see the entire rink in a 360 degree field of vision, he worked on programming an object detection/differentiation system that could tell when the object it was seeing was the object to avoid (Irina and Kazura) or go after (the puck).

Irina finished the physical construction of the robots and Kazura was still working, but she needed his opinion on how to make the ice rink without ruining the floors. "I can work on sheets of carbon fiber like the hockey sticks with my Secondary Fullbring if you can freeze them. Then I can weave them together with my Fullbring and we can make one big sheet of ice that's suspended off the floor by the outer sides of the rink we also build. Plus, with it just being 2 v 2 I'm sure we don't need an Olympic sized hockey rink." Kazura pondered a moment, though. From what he'd seen of Irina's Incomplete Main Fullbring, it probably didn't have the freezing power to accomplish a large scale such as that.

"We'll probably need to pull out your full power though. How's your training going on unlocking the full potential of your main fullbring?"

[Irina Davayte]

Suspending the rink off the floor was a more complicated solution than Irina would've come up with, but she had no qualms with it. In her professional experience as an engineer, she tended to go with as simple solution as possible. That meant less risk of breakdown and things going wrong. But it seemed that the stakes were low here, and the makeshift ice rink wasn't going to have to last long-term. So she'd go along with Kazura's first idea. A rink suspended above the ground. It was an elegant idea, and would probably even look nice. It would be harder to keep cold, but she'd set that problem aside for later. "Sure, let's try that. What do you think about square-meter panels, about 2 cm thick? We could go thinner if we just set all of this on the floor instead of suspending it. That might help insulate the temperature, too. Toss me a sheet once you've got one together?"

While Irina contemplated things that could go wrong with the suspended rink and how to prevent the issues, she went over to the "gym" side of the gym to locate some hockey pucks. They'd have to find the weak points in the structure. The structures holding the rink up. There would probably need to be more of those than just the corners. The joints between panels, if it was constructed in panels. The ice-on-carbon itself. She would have to think about that more once it was more of a reality than a thought. Anyway, she'd located two pucks at the bottom of a bin. She's call out "catch" and toss them underhanded to Kazura, one at a time. "Not sure if you want the puck to have an electronic component. Looks like you were just planning to program the robots to recognize any generic puck? Anyway, there's one and a spare."

So now, freezing the carbon sheets. It wasn't a concept Irina was entirely unfamiliar with. She was adept at using Soul Command to get objects to do what she wanted, and she figured that, theoretically at least, freezing them should work the same way. Freezing was, after all, just slowing the particles of a material. Not to mention, at times when she got hyper-focused, she had sometimes managed to freeze the ground underneath her. It wasn't something she consciously did; in fact, it had never actually helped her and only caused her problems. Like falling down the stairs and breaking her leg during a training exercise at UE. Which, sure, in a way, had been her own fault. But she wasn't sure she agreed with the concept of unannounced drills in the first place. At least, she figured, there should be an announcement that the staff should expect an unannounced drill sometime in the next month or whatever. But her mind was wandering. Back to the ice rink.

Irina went over to Kazura and took a carbon sheet. "Full power? Hmm, I don't know. I can't say I feel like I've had a ton of growth lately." Although, now that she thought about it, that wasn't completely true. Sure, it was a slow process, but she had been growing in both physical and spiritual strength. She focused back to the carbon, which felt durable and lightweight enough to support a centimeter or so of ice. She activated her Fullbring, then sat down cross-legged and put it in front of her, as if she was meditating. She didn't want to freeze the carbon per se; she really wanted to produce a thin layer of ice on top of it.

She concentrated carefully, tracing her fingers along the surface. She gave it a tiny scrape with her sword, just to see the way it froze, hoping this achievable feat would give her some inspiration or something. Setting her sword aside, she tried to will ice to grow from this area similarly. She felt it begin to spread, and tried to direct more energy to the area. Instead of what she was attempting, Irina cast a firehose-like stream of snow and ice, blasting the panel at 600 stat speed and 400 strength. Some of it blew the panel away from Irina, and some bounced off, moving about 9 meters. "Well. That's not going to work," Irina remarked idly, wiping slush off of her face and eyes. "I'm going to find a mop."

"I think at this point, it might be best to use a few heat pumps for this project instead. We could scrounge up some old freezers and take those apart. Then we could seal up the space under the rink, and keep that part cool. Either way, I think we'll need some plastic drop cloth for the floor. I can go get some; there's some in the maintenance area...Don't ask how I know." She knew from the time she cut a hole in Kazura's office wall and then repaired it. That was how she knew.

Remaining reiatsu: 7400 - 200 (Main Fullbring level 1) = 7200

[Kazura Uzaki]

Kazura really wanted to ask Irina how she knew where the drop cloth was down here, but since she specifically told him not to ask he felt an uncomfortable burning desire to figure out how she knew where it was. An uncomfortable burning desire so great that like a preschooler he fidgeted with the barely contained pressure of the question he knew he wasn't allowed to ask. But before Irina could leave to go acquire the materials to make the ice rink icy through mechanical "traditional" means, first he had to make sure she wasn't just trying to duck out of trying something difficult. "Is it that you would rather build the heat sinks and ice the carbon manually or is it more that you don't want to try hard enough to pull out your entire potential? You are capable enough to Complete your Fullbring, are you not?"

His tone was a mixture made up mostly from honest curiosity with a dash of playful heckling. It was likely that the teasing came out more than he intended but he was honestly unsure of her status on her growth as a Fullbringer. Had she yet mastered the core of her powers or had she developed differently than he? He hadn't been able to achieve Energy Generation until he had Completed his Main Fullbring, but maybe she had developed that capability at an earlier stage in her growth? So he was curious if their paths had diverged somewhere but converged at only that one ability. A truly interesting topic for study if she didn't have the ability to enhance and Complete the core power of her grandfather's hilt.

To be fair though, the jet of icy slush that she had procured just now was different than usual, both in quantity of wintery mix and strength. Maybe her fully realized Fullbring was starting to emerge like a baby bird sending piercing pecks through its eggshell. Small fragments of its form might be stretching through without her Complete transformation occurring. He wondered what else may develop and evolve if she focused and really put effort into it rather than just happening into the changes. So far a lot of her growth had been in more or less unintentional spurts than concentrated study and effort.

Kazura had been exploring his powers from an inquisitive, scientific perspective for quite a few years now while Irina still had her Master's degree as a priority (though if he remembered correctly graduation for that was coming up very shortly). So many priorities between school, her work in the Material Sciences department, the occasional mad Fullbringer or Hollow attack, and keeping Kazura himself eating vegetables and signing important documents (among other duties definitely not in her pay scale) probably was a barrier to focused spiritual growth and experimentation.

Irina probably wouldn't be long getting drop cloth for the ice rink, so Kazura ran a quick diagnostic of the Hockey-Bots programming. When he was confident all of the theoretics were satisfactory he knew it was time to actually test their movements. He ran the Hockey-Bots through an impromptu slalom of cones to test mobility on a standard surface before they moved to the icy terrain. When he was satisfied in their ability to not fall over, move with realistic patterns and rhythm, and to both be able to pass/shoot a puck and keep it close and move down the rink when appropriate. As a finishing touch he made sure the Hockey-Bots could distinguish each other from Kazura/Irina and communicate/work together as a team.

When Irina returned, with or without the drop cloth, she'd find the Hockey-Bots ready to go and Kazura ready to get started. “Would you like to try one more time to fully bring out the most of your Fullbring before we get a bunch of water down here? If the ice is natural it will take natural means to remove it, but if you can create it with your power it will dissipate when you seal your Fullbring. I'd rather the latter option, honestly.” While she worked on trying, or not, he finished up creating the metal panels to Irina's recommendations. The thickness and size was little issue for his Secondary Fullbring nanobots to construct. When they were ready, he set them in a pile next to where Irina was.

[Irina Davayte]

Irina cocked her head curiously at Kazura’s very apparent discomfort. ”It's because of that one time I fixed the hole in your wall. You know, that one time I broke into your office.” It wasn't a secret. Kazura was there on the day she referred to, actually. So Irina hadn't literally meant that he shouldn't ask. To the spoken comment, she raised her eyebrows as if unamused, inactivating her Fullbring to prepare to walk out into the “regular” part of the building. ”It's not that I'm not open to trying; it's just that I know what I can do, and that's not one of the things.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she double-checked her mental list item-by-item. ”It's not on the list.”

This, she supposed, was probably why she was more of an engineer and less of an inventor. Creativity had never particularly been her strong suit. Following instructions? Sure. Troubleshooting? No problem. Finding the best material for a specific task? Literally her profession. But she didn't particularly seek out doing something that had never been done before. And she didn't know anyone else who could shoot ice out of their hands, so as far as ideas…she supposed she was it. ”Either way, I'm going to grab the plastic because there's no way this flooring is cheap and I don't want it to end up all wet,” she added pragmatically. She was, after all, technically the supervisor for this area, so she wasn't going to be shy about taking care of it.

On returning, she'd unfurl a few folds before setting the drop cloth down and using Soul Command to spread out the sheets evenly over the area, playfully giving each a few flaps like a gym parachute as she worked. On the last one, Irina sent it floating a little higher, letting it soar like a bird, then flapping the sides like wings to propel it up and downward before letting it settle down to the ground, like the songbirds she watched in the park after her morning run. She considered the fluid mechanics of this task and how easy it would be to work a lightweight glider if everyone could use this technique to apply a force, rather than adding engines, which added so much weight. This, of course, would be completely impractical, other than for something lightweight like a toy, even if Soul Command were accessible to everyone. But still…there had to be something practical she could use this fine control to do.

But she'd shelve this idea for her own time and get back to the task at hand. ”Yeah, I'll give making some ice myself a try,” Irina responded thoughtfully. She removed her hilt from the backpack that she took everywhere and studied it with a small smile. It looked pretty much the same as it always had: decorative and never really meant for combat, or even fencing. It had some small nicks and scrapes, and she made a mental note to polish those out later. It didn't feel quite right, though, until she activated it, causing her usual icy blade to grow from it, balancing the weight just the way she was used to and giving her hand a pleasant chill.

She thought about her beloved grandfather and how he might possibly be her only family member that she wouldn't be afraid to spill her guts to about everything she'd been up to here in Japan for the past few years. He'd always had a fairly hands-off approach with Irina that, to her, communicated that he believed she was competent. When, as a small child, she'd climbed a tree that was entirely too high, Irina’s grandmother barked that she needed to get down, but her grandfather quietly remarked that if she fell, she'd learn not to do it again (causing the young Irina to scurry down quickly and cautiously). Dedushka would understand how Irina had found purpose and meaning in her work in the Spiritual Department at UE. But all that work entailed would be entirely too much to explain, so she always assumed that it would be a part of her life that she'd keep away from her family.

On that train of thought, Irina had, frankly, kept herself from her family for a while now. She'd always intended to wrap up her schooling and then return home to Russia, but she was scheduled to graduate with her Master's soon, and hadn't made any moves towards relocating. She was kicking around the idea of doing a PhD, but there wasn't much point in that, unless she wanted to do academic research or something. She hadn't applied to any jobs anywhere, although she'd turned down a job offer from a lab at Boeing after she worked under one of the research scientists while researching metals for the body of airplanes during her Master's program. That door wasn't exactly closed, and she still had connections there, but she didn't have plans to pursue them. Her engineering supervisor in the Materials lab at UE showed her where she'd move up to on the pay scale when she completed this level of education, and Irina hadn't said anything to indicate that her plans to return home after her degree, as they'd discussed in her interview to move from an intern to a full employee, hadn't changed. So she supposed if she was going to do it, she needed to get a move on with her plans to return to Russia, because it seemed like she was defaulting to remaining in Japan.

Not quite yet, though, she thought as she traced the hilt gently with a finger. There was no need to jump up and make plans right this second. Or anytime soon, really. She liked her life and her routine in Karakura, where she'd lived her entire adult life. She felt useful and competent and happy. She had a fairly casual group of engineer friends and more connections in the Spiritual department at UE. Irina felt at home here, and the thought made her feel a little empty and sad. At this point, she wasn't sure her family even expected her to return to Russia. But it was still at least her first home, and there were times when she longed for the familiar places, people, language, and culture. Thinking about it, Irina got a little misty-eyed, and her nose started to drip. She took a moment to blow her nose, throw away her tissue, and sanitize her hands (”again, there are too many random items in this gym,” she thought) before focusing back to her Fullbring.

Irina poured more energy into it, and felt the frosty ice that normally covered her arms spread over her torso and legs as well. Her tightly braided hair, which she would normally expect to be a bit frosty, grew spikes on the end, like Irina had dipped it in water before going out in sub-zero weather. And her shoes felt…wobbly. She lifted a foot to examine them, and felt the muscle memory from years of playing hockey as a kid take over, as she found herself balanced on a perfect ice skate. Metal swirls identical to those on her sword sprouted up around her tennis shoes, forming a beautiful little skate that was functionally more like a hockey skate that she was used to than one for figure skating.

Gingerly, Irina tried to cross the room by walking on her skates, thinking that they'd be wildly inconvenient if she intended to ever use this form of her Fullbring somewhere besides a skating rink. But as she did, she noticed each step put a 30-centimeter radius of ice around her. She switched to gliding across the room gently, testing out her mobility. After doing that for a bit, she tried making sharper turns and harder stops. Although she was certainly fit and in shape, Irina felt that she would need to build back the muscles around her ankles to be able to do this for a long time.

She also experimented to see what this new level of power could do with her ice blasts, suspecting that it must be something, else the one she'd produced earlier wouldn't have been so unusually aggressive. Sure enough, she could cast blasts of icy storm with a much greater force compared to before. She used Soul Dominance to scooch the pile of winter she'd produced the the edge of the plastic drop cloth, then glided over to Kazura. ”I figured it out,” she said with a soft smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, still having thoughts of returning to Russia, or rather, not, on her mind. ”See?”

She used her sword to gently score each of the carbon panels Kazura had built, each mark about twenty-five centimeters from the next, and as she did, a thin layer of ice covered the panels. If Kazura asked what was wrong, Irina would say "It's just that I don't think I'm going back to Russia," but if she wasn't asked, it simply wouldn't occur to her that Kazura would notice her change in mood. Next, she would work on arranging the panels to form a rink. She wouldn't need skates right away as she'd accidentally grown her own, but she’d still plan to use a pair when they played, presumably without Fullbrings.

[Kazura Uzaki]

Kazura tried to understand Irina’s perspective of having a list of things she knows she can do and not feeling the need to explore what more she could learn to do but it just wasn't connecting with him. How could she not be curious about what she couldn't yet do? Kazura had always been ravenous for exploring the unknown, for making exist what hadn't existed before, for evolving himself and his power. What was she missing that he had? Curiosity? Ambition? Pride in one's strength and power? Or something less positive, like the fear of being too weak to protect? The anxiety of impending threats in every direction? The sleep-deprivating terror of imminent Apocalypse?? If any of the latter group was all she didn't have then Kazura wouldn't wish her to change or experience any of that in order to be “more like him”.

By the time he had processed that conclusion she had left to grab plastic drop cloth. He found himself alone in the gym with just unfeeling robots and his own thoughts. Had he boiled down his entire being to those six ingredients? Was there any additional part of him? Anything more… noble? Anything more wholesome or honorable? Was he truly just a materialistic, power-mad paranoiac? Gloom hung over his mind and heart as Irina came back in with the plastic sheets. As she laid them out he felt the gloom separate slightly as he watched her play with Soul Command and make the tarps flap as she smoothed them across the floor. The fine control for no other purpose than because she could warmed his mood a few degrees.

”Yeah, I'll give making some ice myself a try.” Within the span of two or three memories Kazura watched Irina release the first stage of her Fullbring with a soft, fond smile stealing across her face potentially unintentionally. Her finger traced the hilt with an air of sentimentality and then her mood seemed to pull a 180 as tears welled up, her nose leaked and she had to stop to blow it before returning to whatever it is she had been thinking of. It didn't take long before Kazura could feel the rush of more reiatsu pouring into the blade and witnessed her first evolution to Completion of her main Fullbring. He witnessed the elegant skates, the spreading of the ice across her body, and the sharpening of the ice in her hair more akin to blades than braids. “Regal” was the adjective that immediately sprung to mind. But there was still something off about it all.

Where was her excitement? Where was his dear friend who had rushed to him giddy to show that she could form a flashbang on the tip of her finger? Even as she gracefully glid over and uttered an unconvincing ”I figured it out. See?” Kazura could only dwell on what he must have done wrong to hurt her so deeply. Wanting to make up for whatever slight he hadn't realized he made and only being able to think of how regal she looked off the top of his head he stiffly and respectfully bowed in response. ”Exceptional, my Lady. You look exquisite. How do you feel?” There really weren't better words he could think of to try to portray he really did respect her and wasn't trying to downplay her strength earlier. Maybe she'd understand he truly didn't think light of her.

When she had frozen all of the panels (impressively quickly) and set them up in the rink area Kazura hurried to finish the outer walls and make sure his Hockey-Bot calibrations still worked on the icy terrain. They did. ”If you feel ready to begin let's start? If you feel confident in holding that stage of Fullbring for a while, that is. The ice will most likely fade when you seal it.” If she was ready he'd get his own skates on and attempt to move with grace, or at least not completely wipe out. Skating used similar ankle movements as hoverboot adjustments but it was still going to take time getting used to. With an unconfident thumbs up he indicated readiness. He activated the Hockey-Bots and prepared to be absolutely wrecked at this sport for a while.

[Irina Davayte]

Irina hadn't realized her drippy nose and eyes that weren't quite teary enough to spill over had made her mood perceptible to Kazura, but she now supposed they warranted an explanation, else he wouldn't be asking how she was feeling. ”I don't think I'm moving back to Russia. At least not soon.” This statement answered what she was thinking, but not how she was feeling, so she made an extra effort to identify the words for her emotions.

”I'm happy here, and I'm proud of who I am here. But it was never my plan to stay, and I miss my family. There was a time when everything I did was motivated by making them proud.” She realized that, in addition to her familiar culture and cherished people, she was mourning the loss of part of who she used to be, as well. It felt better to get to share the burden of her internal conflict with someone else. Irina made a mental note to talk to her parents about her plans as well. She would be sure to tell them about how she felt fulfilled here in her work…as an engineer, of course. She hoped they wouldn't feel too disappointed in her, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew they wouldn't.

Irina then backtracked to Kazura’s first statements. She'd expected more of a “high five, great job buddy!” from her friend, whom she already knew respected her: he showed her by trusting her to take care of things. The less socially awkward response, she decided, would have been to match Kazura's formal tone, whether he was joking around, or what. Or make some kind of joke about tea with the Queen. Something like that. But she let her desire to communicate clearly win over her frankly pretty much non-existent desire to avoid sounding weird, and said ”Are you okay?” she asked with an eyebrow raised in confusion. ”Sometimes I can't figure out if you're joking with me, or being serious, or what.” Honestly, being unable to decipher other people's intentions behind their words had never been a particularly strong suit of Irina’s, but she felt secure enough with Kazura to ask, rather than unconfidently fumble her way through. ”Plus, you look…sad. Anything on your mind that you want to talk about?”

It was time to play, and Irina felt an impish smile on her face. It felt like it had been entirely too long since she'd played…not just hockey, but played around in general. Sure, there was a practical aspect to this: her primary goal was for Kazura to get comfortable with moving on the ice, and now that it was clear that this new level of her Fullbring would freeze the ground around her passively, that was even more important. Secondarily, they wanted to practice working together. But aside from the pragmatic reasons for choosing hockey to train today, Irina was ready to have fun. So she confirmed some rules for the game (Soul Command: cheating. That would put the robots at a wild disadvantage. Any other techniques: also cheating. They wouldn't use Soul Dyad for now, but maybe later. Fouls could be called on either humans or robots. Due to the lack of a referee, if unsure about a call, it would go in favor of the robots.), then she responded affirmatively that she was ready and skated over to the center of the rink.

In the face-off, the robot across from Irina got control of the puck first, so she glided over to take it, hitting the puck back towards Kazura and then moving towards the other goal. Based on the tests she'd run while building, the robot was definitely mechanically capable of skating as fast as Irina, but seemed slightly slower now. If this was a problem, it's programming could be re-calibrated, but from what she could tell so far, that wouldn't be necessary for making a fair game. The robot had demonstrated a quick reaction time in the face-off, making it a challenging enough opponent. Especially because, frankly, she had no idea if Kazura could skate at all. Sure, he was athletic enough, but it was a pretty niche skill.

[Kazura Uzaki]

Well now Kazura just felt awkward. Assuming he had offended her he had made a fool of himself. It just proves what that saying about “Assuming” says. He blushed slightly from feeling so awkward and dumb. ”That's an expected emotion for the situation, I think. Though what I think is shallow in experience. This has been home my whole life. Also, as far as shallow thoughts go I thought I had offended you unintentionally. Hence trying to make it up to you. Didn't want you to think I thought you inferior.” He had to take a moment to think if he was himself okay though. Sure, he had the looming day terrors that could strike at any moment, but the depressive self-worth doubts were still clouding his mood.

Did he even have words he could use to express these feelings though. He gave a noncommittal shrug and just commented ”not anything I have concrete words to use to talk with. Maybe later I'll be able to discuss it.” With expectations for the game set, Kazura unsteadily skated to a supportive position. The Hockey-Bot won against Irina in the face off but she quickly recovered it and passed it backwards to Kazura as she positioned herself for the attack. Not feeling confident in moving towards the puck to retrieve it and send it up the rink to her it was intercepted by the second Hockey-Bot and with Irina in an offensive position the net was completely open and the human team was nearly instantly a point behind. The accuracy of the Hockey-Bots were laser precise which may cause Irina and her handicap to lose utterly.