Hot and Cold [Alastor, Hana]

"Nope, why would they be anything more special? The interesting part is that there's more of them."

He wasn't going to explain the statistical relevance of tracking hollow presence but he did think to himself that they ought to put more work into dealing with the bastards. Lotta good people that can't protect themselves down there after all and it didn't sit well with him to not be able to do anything when everything was locked down. He'd like to ring the neck of whatever shithead did that bomb.

"Anyway, no signs of any of our MIA ones that I went looking for. Might be more in the report from the Empire since they got more boots on the ground but I haven't read it."

With hollows being tougher and humans having the means to interact with shinigami, he'd noticed a trend that statistically more shinigami were inclined to go MIA than when he'd taken a gander at past records from way back in the day. It made sense but was damn awful to think that some of the seventh shinigami might be getting taken out by a bunch of shitheads who they were trying to help.

"Interesting is not the word I would use, but…” Hana gave a light shrug before writing a few more details down. With everything going on in Africa, the increased number of hollow were not a surprise. Millions died very suddenly, and who knew how far they would travel to devour souls once they became hollow.

Hana's brow furrowed. "MIA? Who... has gone missing?" she stopped writing and asked, wondering if she had heard of any of them. She hoped that wasn't the case...

This is why she was scribing and not an arithmetician, Alastor wasn't gonna educate the kid on importance of statistics and why she ought to but Alastor quickly

"Sudachi Tae, Yuzu Hien, and Mikan Kisame are the three that disappeared in patrol over the last year in Europe around Italy. Unfortunately no great progress was able to be done into the disappearances until recently but that too much time has passed."

Hana couldn't remember either of the names he mentioned. Even if she didn’t know them personally, they were part of the same Division, so it was still a bit upsetting they were missing in action. She sighed and gave a quick nod. “Understood. Thank you for letting me know,” she said, handing over his report. She had filled everything out except for the section he needed to sign and date.

"I am quite confident I completed the form correctly, but would you mind giving it a quick look over just in case? I have white-out for any errors."

Hana rummaged through her bag, not finding anything at first, and then dug a little deeper. "At least, I thought I had some. I must h-... There it is." Hana pulled out a small bottle of white-out and waited for his assessment.

White out? On an official report document? Nosiree but in actual fact he just knew that if he handed in a report that was so thoroughly formatted and then taken the time to delicately correct any error then he'd never hear the end of it. A man couldn't hand a gorilla a rock and expect her not to beat him with it for laughs.

"Uh huh. Mhm. Yep. Looks good, little lady."

He said with a quick nod of approval. Alastor might've said it looked lacklustre but in the case of patrols, that was good when there wasn't much to report. Meant there wasn't a lot of trouble happening. If it was long or full of details then it probably meant all shit was loose like the case in Africa.

Didn't need another one of those so soon.

"Nice handwriting by the way."

He added to smooth over his nickname with a compliment, in his experience women were quick to focus on the compliment and put the fuse out on their temper - or she could be one of the other types. If she was one of those ones that held a vendetta then he was screwed no matter what he did. Shit luck, if he had to guess.

“Oh? Lovely,” Hana said, putting the bottle back in her bag. She rarely had errors in her reports, but occasionally one would slip through her meticulous proofreading. She also did not seem to care about the ‘little lady’ nickname. She knew she was smaller than many women and that was just fine. Hana would much rather be called ‘little lady’ than something like ‘big girl’ or something akin to that.

“Thank you!” Hana said, clapping her hands together in joy. “I know it is silly to others, but I do work very hard on my style.” Hana stood up and did a quick stretch before picking up her bag. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

"Nah, I guess I owe you something though. Guess I got a spare bit of change around here."

He looked around before sighing, what good was the currency of Soul Society down on Earth? He never carried it- Oh wait. He lived in the 2100s. Phones existed and so he pulled out his denreishinki to begin flicking through and finding what he was looking for. Yep, that was a decent amount. The unseated wage wasn't much but he made do.

Probably ought to start thinking of doing more though. It wasn't pride that made him feel bad that Murasaki earned more than him but she was putting in the hard work and he was kind of slacking. Ain't much of a man if he's out here scraping by and not being driven to make her life a tad bit easier.

“You did promise me a sweet of sorts,” Hana said with a big smile. She was looking forward to enjoying a nice snack. He pulled out his denreishinki, so she waited. She wasn’t sure what he was doing, but waited patiently anyway. When he said nothing more, Hana tilted her head to the side and stepped in a little closer. “You went silent. Is there something else that I may be able to help with? If you are unable to pay, I have no problem with an 'I owe you.' I will hold you to it, though.”

"Huh?"

She pulled him from his thoughts and gave a momentary pout at the interruption. Damn, this girl must be single or something. How was she going to pull him from contemplating the idea that he could be capable of doing more for his girlfriend like that?

"I'm not broke. Just thinkin' about stuff."

He responded and stood up to dust himself off, the shihakusho looked pretty worn with its once straight edges being ragged from hard work.

"I can buy you something. What do you like anyway?"

“I would not have called you ‘broke,’ but between paydays.” Hana said. It might have come off a tad condescending, like it was a term she learned elsewhere and didn’t realize it was offensive. She stood up and wiped herself off as well.

“Smoothies!” Hana’s eyes brightened when he offered her a choice. She looked left, right, and then back to him. With excitement, she tugged on his shihakusho and pointed up the street toward one of the market areas. “Have you experienced one? There is a cafe that sells many different flavors down the street.”