A One and a Two (Shiro/Rukia)

Well, today was supposed to be the first one with Shiro around. Was Rukia excited about that? No, not really. It probably would have been better to give him another year or two in the Academy before he was out in the field, but oh well. A deal was a deal, and besides, her Captain had already gotten so excited about a new member and had all the paperwork handled. A real go-getter, that one.

...Hm. He should've been here by now, actually. Did he oversleep? Nah, there was no way. He wasn't that stupid, right? He might've gotten lost, though. With a small sigh, Rukia stood to go look for him. If she was lucky, he'd be right around the corner when she went to go look, but when had she ever been especially lucky?

"Not anymore, unfortunately."

The dry tone of Rukia's voice ultimately did well to hide the fact that she was, frankly, glad to see that he'd actually showed up. Less because she was necessarily happy to see him, and more because it would probably make her look like a complete idiot if she made the Captain get that excited, and do all that paperwork, for no real reason. Sighing to herself as she rubbed the bridge of her nose, Rukia looked once more to Shiro before gesturing for him to follow her.

"You haven't ever been down to Earth before, have you? It's a little more advanced than things up here, though if you've kept up with the Captain Commander's modernization efforts in the Rukongai then you'll have a decent idea of what things are like."

"Oh, nothing at all."

Rukia rolled her eyes at his description of their patrol. That wasn't exactly right, now was it? She wouldn't really bother correcting him on that one, if just because she didn't quite want to start a back and forth with him over something as ridiculous as whether or not they're partners in crime.

"Since this is your first time down there, we've got an easy patrol. Metropolitan, just a small part of Switzerland. Most of central Europe is fairly calm right now, no major conflicts or anything, so it'll be a good opportunity for you to get learning. Hope you brought your homework."

Honestly, Rukia had started formulating a quip about his vocabulary, but she realized that one might have been a little too much of a low blow. She was fine with giving someone a hard time about things they should have known, but the idea of a major city was probably entirely foreign to someone like Shiro.

"Good to hear. On the bright side, city patrol means your first outing should be pretty easy. Camping out isn't an option, so odds are we'll just set up in some hotel or another. Of course, we didn't actually used to stay down there for long enough to need anything like that, but the Captain's methods get pretty good results, so I'm not going to complain."

It was still incredibly strange to Rukia that the 7th Division just stayed down on Earth for such long stretches of time. She was used to that getting you in more hot water than you'd ever want. But, that was just part of getting old, huh?

"Depends on the hotel. Some of them are pretty cheap, but we'll be in one of the wealthier parts of Europe, so it should be fairly nice. You're lucky, these Europe assignments used to be a lot less relaxed a few years ago."

Rukia almost laughed at the simplicity of his assessment, but the fact that he was honestly right did make her stifle that down to a quiet chuckle. It would be pretty lame to just die, especially on an assignment like this. His lackadaisical attitude honestly might do him well in the field.

"Anyway, we shouldn't be down there more than two weeks, I don't think. It's not a super populated area, and a lot of the bigger threats are taken care of by now."