Mission Log
Title: “I QUIT!”
Characters:Hitsugaya, Hinamori
Location: Epsilon 3, Creeping Limit, Captain’s quarters
Timeframe: The day after the morons’ drunk journal postings.
Status: Closed
Warnings: …overly emotional Momo? Abuse of the color pink? Abuse of the words “idiot” and “moron”?
Momo just couldn’t take it anymore. Her patience, her understanding, her ability to brush off just about anything and everything that was negative and unusual had finally reached its cracking point. She just wasn’t sure she could handle any more of this. Really. She wasn’t.
Her fingers curled around her very pink wrench as she stalked up stairs and towards the room she knew Hitsugaya would be doing paper work in. Well, he had better be there doing paperwork because she was up to her eyeballs in lack of patience and if she had to hunt any further for him she would be probably start screaming.
Her engine room was pink. First it had been blown up, destroyed, abused, taken apart by people she didn’t know, put back together, and now… it was pink. A tiny twelve year old girl had broken her by using the color pink… on everything.
And she… she needed to get out of this place or she was going to go insane. She brushed fiercely at her eyes; she was done crying and being upset, really. The whole ‘I have nothing left to do but cry’ thing was gone, over with.
Her engine room was pink. The one place that she worked her butt off to keep running, moving, hours upon hours of work… was now covered in a layer of pink that would take her hours and hours to get off.
She refused.
He was going to fix this because she was leaving.
She didn’t bother to knock, just walked right on into his room. At this point it didn’t matter anyway because she was pretty sure she had his habits down and if anything potentially embarrassing had been going on in his room he would have the door locked.
She slammed the door behind her because she needed to vent some frustration and annoyance and… and…
She threw the wrench on his desk, right into the middle of his paperwork. Her favorite wrench, the wrench her father had given her three days before his shop had exploded, the one thing that she had been able to keep with her through everything that had happened in the last five years.
“I quit.” She paused, that hadn’t exactly been what she meant to say, but ‘I am leaving you need to find a new mechanic’ while much nicer didn’t really carry the same weight…. I quit it was.
Paperwork.
Hitsugaya's life revolved around paperwork. With the Creeping Limit's overhaul nearly done and ready to take on cargo again, he had stacks of things to do. More supplies needed bought and stowed, more expenses needed calculated and sent it to Gotei. (Old Man Yama would never find out about a few of these things; some things had been paid for out of Hitsugaya's own account, and… well, he was sure he didn't know where half the parts in his engine room had come from. Contrary to popular belief, he was not stupid and could pick out new parts from old; Hinamori must have some good contacts to get that amount of new parts for next to nothing. That, or she stole them. He didn't know which he preferred to believe.)
The crew had been quiet; his lieutenant and cook were most likely sleeping off hangovers. Yachiru being quiet, though… that worried him. It mean she was doing something, and her doing something on her own usually spelled doom for the Limit. Hinamori was… well, he wasn't sure, but after their night on the town, he hoped she was holed up somewhere doing something quiet and not stressful.
Unlike him and his paperwork detailing just how much this overhaul had cost him personally. He checked over his statements and sighed. It'd take awhile for his accounts to catch up to this expense. He sat back in his chair, hand rubbing his face.
His hand was still on his face when his door burst open, something landed square on his desk with a loud thump and an irate voice announced "I quit."
What? Huh?
He peeked through his fingers, hand dropping as he blinked at the very bright pink wrench-turned-paperweight. He recognized that wrench; last time he'd seen it, he'd been washing blood off of it before handing it back to Hinamori. He was rather fond of that wrench, seeing as how it had become an impromptu weapon against pirates.
And now it was pink?
"Hinamori," he said slowly just because he didn't know what else to say, "your wrench is pink."
He just had to point it out didn’t he. She knew her wrench was pink! It was evidence that practically her whole engine room was pink. Pink and frilly and painted and…
She sniffled.
She wasn’t going to cry again! She refused! She had already had a nice little venting session in her engine room; Yachiru was upset about her mouse’s very tragic death to Haineko… who had dropped it in her lap, in her engine room that was pink, which had been blown up….
Okay… she was crying again.
She blamed him.
“I know it’s pink!” that was not a wail, it wasn’t. “Everything’s pink.” She slapped her hands over her mouth before she said something that would get her into trouble, not that it mattered because she had just quit her first actual real long term job.
…
She was not crying! She tried to breath around her hand and it just came out as some stifled noise that probably sounded horrible.
She didn’t care. It was his fault anyway.
Hitsugaya blinked slowly at her reaction. Everything was pink? Which everything, pray tell? Before he could think to ask - he would really kind of like to know where the pink was - she clapped her hands over her mouth and…
Oh, dear Lord, she was going to cry. She was crying.
Crying was not good. He didn't do crying. Hastily, he stood up. (Why, he wasn't sure, but it just didn't seem right to be sitting at his desk while she stood over him, stifling tears.) She was crying. Ok. He could deal with this. Just… remove the impetus for the crying, right?
She was upset over the pink wrench (and other pink things she hadn't indicated yet). His hand closed over the wrench and he picked it up, ready to stow it behind his back, before he actually thought about what he was doing.
All right… standing in front of a crying woman holding a pink wrench behind his back might seem incredibly moronic.
Then it clicked. Pink. Quiet. "Yachiru…" He sighed. "What'd she do now?"
What did she do? Could he not figure it out? A pink wrench! Where did she keep her wrenches? In her engine room! It was a pretty basic conclusion that if one wrench was pink then there were a lot of pink things in the engine room right?
She didn’t realize she had dropped her hands and was … well twitching (had to be from watching him twitch so much) until her fingernails reminded her that drawing blood by squeezing them that tightly was a bad idea.
She took a deep breath. Calm Momo, she must be calm. Never mind the tears, the sniffling, and the way she wanted to bang her head against a wall.
“The whole engine room is pink!.”
So it didn’t come out calm at all and stomping her foot hurt, but… she was upset.
Ok, so she was stomping her foot and still crying and practically wailing about her engine room being pink... and she was really upset, wasn't she?
She'd even stolen his twitching.
Kusajishi was going to pay for this. "That idiot girl," he muttered. Betting, painting... Paint remover. She'd be unpainting the engine room before the end of the day. With help from his moron lieutenant and cook.
Yeah, he was distracting himself from the sniffling woman.
Deep breaths, Captain. You can do this. Reduced to giving himself a mental pep talk. Oh, yeah, this was started out just grand. "We'll deal with it," he told her.
That should appease her, right? He was on her side and he take care of things. There you go. She could quit crying now.
We? Where was this we coming from? Did he miss the part where she walked into his room and threw down the wrench and told him point blank that she quit? She had enough money from the last few months to hang out on a planet of her choice for a bit and then go find a job somewhere else, or start hoping on ships again. Of course, with this listed as part of her job experience she could probably get a job anywhere she wanted.
She twitched.
“We? What we? I quit!”
Quit? What? Wait... quit?
No way in hell. She was... she was his mechanic. His mechanic. Not anyone else's. Not any other ship's. The Limit's. That's all there was to it.
Now to convince her of that.
Quitting? What had he done? It was his fault somehow. He knew it. "Quitting?"
She should, maybe, try calming down first? He held up his hands, not realizing he was waving the pink wrench in her face, and spoke quickly. "Not we so much as them. I'll get paint remover. They'll remove it. You can supervise if you want."
Momo stepped forward and yanked the wrench out of his hand. Obviously, he needed clarification on this. “You see this? This is not the only pink tool and lets not even get started on what the rest of your engine room looks like.”
She would have thrown the wrench back at him because he deserved it, but it was her favorite wrench. “And that is after I have spent most of my life on this ship fixing it, Yachiru blew it up once, you blew it up, pirates really blew it up! I work and I work and I work and it still gets blown up. And now it is pink!”
“My tools, your tools now, are pink! She painted the tools!”
She was pacing now and her hands were flailing, but at least she had stopped crying for the moment. Had gone into something of a mini rant. A rant that… well… pretty much just laid it all out there. “And lets not even,” she whipped around and pointed at him. “Start talking about the things there saying about me on the journals, to other ships. If it were true it would be one thing, but it isn’t!”
Okay there were the tears again.
“So yes, I have to leave or I am going to get gray hair or die of lack of sleep and stress… or something!”
Oh… well… He blinked at her, mouth gaping a little as she yanked the wrench from his hand and started to rant. And rant. And keep ranting.
This… wasn't just about the pink, was it? She started in on the journals, and he winced. He sometimes forgot that she hadn't really ever seen Matsumoto at her worst; he was a little desensitized to the teasing (though it could really get to him sometimes), but Hinamori? Hinamori had been subjected to the worst the crew had to offer. He was used to rumors; after the minor breakdown he'd suffered after hearing the one about just what he'd done for Old Man Yama to get to the Limit, he'd learned to either ignore them or beat heads in, whichever seemed more appropriate at the time.
He eyed the door she'd slammed shut; probably wouldn't be the best time to point out that this would just engender even more rumors. Ayasegawa would see to that.
And then… then she was crying again. He had to do something, before those morons cost him his mechanic and left her with no sanity whatsoever.
Ok… time to swallow his pride. What pride he had left. He would have just offered her a raise - he glanced at the expense reports - if he had money left. God, they'd such a run of horrible luck. He opened his mouth and honestly didn't know what to say. "Hinamori… I…." All right. Time to shut up and sort through things.
He would kill those idiots for upsetting her to the point of wanting to leave. Hung-over or not, his next stop after sorting this mess out was wherever Matsumoto had collapsed. Angry, he was getting angry… not good. It'd spill over onto Hinamori and that wouldn't help matters any. He took a deep breath. "None of us are paid enough for all we've had lately. Trust me." Right, that was probably the wrong thing to say, but honestly, it was all he could think of.
Momo stopped and blinked at him. He was comparing how much they were getting paid now? She took a deep breath, obviously freaking out in front of the captain was bad. He was going to think she was a lunatic who couldn’t hold a wrench properly.
Not that it mattered because she was quitting. But she wanted something that resembled her pride and dignity left to her when she walked out the cargo doors. Really. She did.
She opened her mouth once, twice, before slamming it closed and settling for glaring. She was not going to get into a competition to who had the worst job here, really she wasn’t.
“I know that!” She refrained from stomping her foot only because it would be childish and she was working hard on not being childish at the moment. He already thought she was crazy. “I just…” she gave up with a groan and buried her face in her hands, ignoring the wrench that was pressing against her forehead.
Obviously, she hadn't quite gotten what he meant. (He wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he was pretty sure it was an attempt at commiseration. Maybe. It was at least something to say.) She buried her head in her hands, and Hitsugaya grimaced as she almost smacked herself with the wrench. Without really thinking about it, he reached up and plucked the wrench from her hands.
He sighed. "I'll make sure they know how upset you are." He set the wrench down on the desk, eyeing it for a moment. Yachiru was handy with paint; he hoped she was half as good with paint remover.
They'd know how upset she was the moment she walked out the door, though. He… he really didn't want to think about that possibility. Had they really driven her away? And how much of it was his own fault?
Goddamn it, but what could he say? That he'd beat them into the ground for her? That he was sorry? That he knew full well that his crew were insensitive morons? He didn't know. He honestly didn't know, and it was killing him.
He really didn't do tears well. Really.
He was going to make sure that they knew how upset she was uh. She glared at her pink wrench, that he had taken, and stuck on his desk before she peeked at him through her fingers. For what the journals? Did he even read the journals?
Best be specific then. She wanted it real clear as to how upset she was. Really. She did.
“Make sure you tell Yumi that we are not sleeping together,” she was keeping her hands firmly tucked in front of her face because in front of her face meant he could not see her blush. She swallowed, “and I am not pregnant so he can’t be a grandpa. And inform Ran of the same thing… and …”
She was calming down now… but still… no she wasn’t. “And you can’t be mean to Yachiru,” pacing again, she was pacing again, “because Mew Mew died today thanks to Haineko and she is upset about this.” She whirled, “trust me I would have talked to her, but her dead mouse was dropped in my lap when Ran’s cat set it there, with Yachiru sitting right next to me.”
… moving back to mad now.
She pointed at him again, “I am going to have gray hair because of you.”
"I know what they said on the journals," he said, nearly growling. That had not been pleasant. "I was waiting until they had gained some coherency before laying into them. It's been my experience that anger is wasted on the drunk." He glared at her. "Honestly, did you think I'd just let all that slide?"
Great. Yachiru's mouse was dead. That would not be pleasant to deal with, if only because Yachiru would insist on revenge and try to kill Haineko. Then Matsumoto would be up in arms… and, hell, he should lock his crew up and be done with it.
And she was mad at him, blaming him. "Oh, of course. Blame me, because every single bit of it is my fault."
Momo snorted, “I don’t claim to know what you’re thinking at any given time of the day! Or if you even pay attention to that idiocy!” She wasn’t trying to snap at him… it just came out that way. “But I have had it up to here,” she jerked her hand over his head just so he could get the illustrated version of her temper, “with it. There is nothing to base those rumors off of! It would be different if there was!”
She stomped her foot. “And I can not take having my engine room messed with or blown up again!”
She paused, oh hell she called it hers again. It wasn’t hers anymore it was his! Her shoulders slumped forward, “its pink,” she muttered miserably.
Her engine room, was it? If she still claimed it, there was still hope.
Even if she was starting to irritate him.
"I'm still not exactly clear how I'm at fault here," he told her. "And I've not touched a damn thing in there since the console blew in my face." Now, on to the next thing.
"They are idiots. I'm paying attention, and I am going to take care of it." Oh, he'd take care of it. One word to Matsumoto about how upset Hinamori was, and he was pretty sure Matsumoto would bend over backward to accommodate the poor girl. Morons. Idiots. He snarled.
He turned to his desk, rummaging through the mess there. He had to have something left. He pulled out his wallet, eyed it, and pulled out the card tucked into it. Normally… this went against everything he believed. He did not, as a general rule, just hand over access to his accounts, but he rather doubted she'd take company right now.
Besides, he had idiots to deal with anyway.
He sighed as he held out the card. "Take it. Go out. Buy all the ice cream you can handle. Buy a shirt to replace the one that was torn yesterday." Please don't spend too much or you'll break me. "Just… get out of the ship for the day. By the time you get back, the engine room will be cleaned." He looked at the floor; he really didn't want to think of this next thing, but… he had to, since she'd the one who brought it up. With another sigh, he looked up at her again. "If, when you get back, you really decide you need to leave us, I'll talk to a few people and make sure you have a place to go."
He glanced at the card again. Taking a chance, yes… but, really, what else could he do? If she wasn't back by the time the sun set, he'd put a hold on the card and start looking for a new mechanic.
Besides, if she took it upon herself to clean him out, there wasn't all that much left right now.
Momo took the card on reflex and blinked at it and the named that was neatly inscribed on the front. Hitsugaya Toushirou. He was bribing her… with ice cream. With his money and his personal account.
She blinked at it, barely registering whatever he was saying about finding her a place to stay. She shook her head, “I don’t need your money to buy ice cream,” she thrust it back at him. She felt guilty accepting something like that from it. She didn’t think he was trying to put something over her head so she would owe him or anything at all like. “I would feel guilty,” she clarified. They had a habit of misunderstanding each other and she didn’t want him mad at her because she refused to accept his offer just because he thought she was being stubborn.
Lord knew it was a nice offer, as paranoid as he was he probably didn’t just hand over his bank account card to anyone. She chewed her lip when he didn’t immediately answer and glanced at the door… “you will have it all cleaned up?” she asked hesitantly.
He raised an eyebrow as she thrust the card back, and took it gently, before setting it back on the desk next to the pink wrench. That particular wrench, he'd clean himself. He knew good and well how attached she was to it. (He'd also never admit to anyone he actually had grown a little bit fond of a piece of metal. Hitting pirates over the head with it seemed to cement an inane fondness for it.)
If I have to do it myself… "Yes, the engine room will be taken care of. Every last bit of pink." He paused, quirking a brow. "Can't guarantee getting rid of the black spot…"
Now… Ayasegawa and Matsumoto… She didn't seem all that worried about Yachiru, but… well, he was not happy with the girl either. "There are certain members of this crew," he said - and he was starting to growl again, "that will come to regret last night."
Okay… so he was angry to and she was starting to feel rather sheepish about barging into his office and throwing the equivalent of a hissy fit in front of him. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose tightly in a vain hope to stave off the headache that lingered being her eyes thanks to her crying fit.
Ice cream… he had said she could leave the ship and go get ice cream for as long as she wanted. She had plenty of money in her bank accounts (even with the parts she didn’t tell him she had bought) for an ice cream binge. She open her eyes and blinked at him suspiciously.
So he had figured out (had to be from the other night) that she had a weakness from ice cream did he? She sighed and dropped her hands; she guessed that it was one of the least of her worries at the moment.
“All right,” she said finally. “I will… go and eat ice cream.” There was really no point in denying that, that would in fact be her first action once she stepped foot off the ship. “And… you will handle… the journal thing… and my pink engine room.”
"I will handle things," he assured her. He really would not tolerate such idiocy from his crew; they'd nearly drove off his mechanic. (A mechanic he'd actually grown quite used to having around.) Yachiru… Yachiru was hard to blame; sometimes he wondered if she actually didn't know any better. But no matter how drunk Matsumoto and Ayasegawa got, there was no excuse for the sheer stupidity they'd pulled.
Speaking of… "I'll handle it," he repeated. "And you'll come back?"
She nodded carefully. “Yes, I will come back.” If he was going to take care of everything else and basically just… fix it, then yes she would come back. She did… after all like the ship when people weren’t running around saying things and her engine room wasn’t pink.
She was going to have to look for gray hair later.
She scrubbed at her face to clear the tear tracks from her cheeks and nodded again.
“All right,” she offered him a wane smile. “Sorry… for interrupting your paperwork then.” She would be embarrassed after she ate her ice cream. Later.
Hitsugaya waved away her apology. As far as he was concerned, she was one of the last people who needed to apologize. "Don't be," he said. Besides, he probably needed an interruption; this paperwork was hell. Never mind the interruption had been in the form of crying, threatening-to-leave mechanics.
He sighed and turned back to the paper. She would come back; she said she would. She'd supplied him with punishment for the morons and adequate impetus for them to actually be sorry. He knew good and well that Matsumoto and Ayasegawa would (hopefully) be beside themselves once they heard she had come that close to leaving. He just needed to get paint remover. He pulled the chair out, but wrapped his hands around the back of it without sitting. Still more needed said, he thought. "For what it's worth, Hinamori, I apologize for not being able to reign them in before they…" Yeah, ok, she got the point. Apologies were not his thing.
But, of course, neither was crying women, but he'd dealt with that today, too.
She shook her head rapidly. “No, it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t let it get to me.” Her smile turned hesitant. “Would you like me to bring you anything back?”
It was after all something she could offer to do for him since he was offering to fix everything for her. If he wanted some vanilla ice cream or something she could totally swing that. Or lunch maybe… she didn’t spend her money on anything other than tools since all the basics that she needed were here on the ship.
“Lunch or something?”
Hitsugaya was shaking his head before she finished speaking. No, this trip was to get her off the ship. No letting her worry about what he needed or hurrying back with food for him. "I've got lunch covered," he said. He'd pick up something while he was out getting paint remover.
"You go," he told her. "Let me deal with the morons."
He pointed at her. "And don't come back for a few hours."
Momo nodded and raised her hands to ward off anything else he might say. “Several hours, eating ice cream, I got it.” She opened the door to his office and hesitated for a moment before nodding again.
“Thank you.” And then she scuttled out as quickly as possible.
Ice cream it was.
He watched her go and sighed before picking up the card on the desk and placing it back in his wallet. Apparently, he now had things to do.
Paint remover must be bought, after he swung by the engine room to see just how bad it truly was. Idiots must be dealt with, after he returned with the paint remover. Morons, nearly chasing away a much needed member of this crew.
He eyed the wrench still sitting, in all its pink glory, on the desk.
Wrenches needed cleaned.
A few minutes later, he left the room himself.
Characters:Hitsugaya, Hinamori
Location: Epsilon 3, Creeping Limit, Captain’s quarters
Timeframe: The day after the morons’ drunk journal postings.
Status: Closed
Warnings: …overly emotional Momo? Abuse of the color pink? Abuse of the words “idiot” and “moron”?
Momo just couldn’t take it anymore. Her patience, her understanding, her ability to brush off just about anything and everything that was negative and unusual had finally reached its cracking point. She just wasn’t sure she could handle any more of this. Really. She wasn’t.
Her fingers curled around her very pink wrench as she stalked up stairs and towards the room she knew Hitsugaya would be doing paper work in. Well, he had better be there doing paperwork because she was up to her eyeballs in lack of patience and if she had to hunt any further for him she would be probably start screaming.
Her engine room was pink. First it had been blown up, destroyed, abused, taken apart by people she didn’t know, put back together, and now… it was pink. A tiny twelve year old girl had broken her by using the color pink… on everything.
And she… she needed to get out of this place or she was going to go insane. She brushed fiercely at her eyes; she was done crying and being upset, really. The whole ‘I have nothing left to do but cry’ thing was gone, over with.
Her engine room was pink. The one place that she worked her butt off to keep running, moving, hours upon hours of work… was now covered in a layer of pink that would take her hours and hours to get off.
She refused.
He was going to fix this because she was leaving.
She didn’t bother to knock, just walked right on into his room. At this point it didn’t matter anyway because she was pretty sure she had his habits down and if anything potentially embarrassing had been going on in his room he would have the door locked.
She slammed the door behind her because she needed to vent some frustration and annoyance and… and…
She threw the wrench on his desk, right into the middle of his paperwork. Her favorite wrench, the wrench her father had given her three days before his shop had exploded, the one thing that she had been able to keep with her through everything that had happened in the last five years.
“I quit.” She paused, that hadn’t exactly been what she meant to say, but ‘I am leaving you need to find a new mechanic’ while much nicer didn’t really carry the same weight…. I quit it was.
Paperwork.
Hitsugaya's life revolved around paperwork. With the Creeping Limit's overhaul nearly done and ready to take on cargo again, he had stacks of things to do. More supplies needed bought and stowed, more expenses needed calculated and sent it to Gotei. (Old Man Yama would never find out about a few of these things; some things had been paid for out of Hitsugaya's own account, and… well, he was sure he didn't know where half the parts in his engine room had come from. Contrary to popular belief, he was not stupid and could pick out new parts from old; Hinamori must have some good contacts to get that amount of new parts for next to nothing. That, or she stole them. He didn't know which he preferred to believe.)
The crew had been quiet; his lieutenant and cook were most likely sleeping off hangovers. Yachiru being quiet, though… that worried him. It mean she was doing something, and her doing something on her own usually spelled doom for the Limit. Hinamori was… well, he wasn't sure, but after their night on the town, he hoped she was holed up somewhere doing something quiet and not stressful.
Unlike him and his paperwork detailing just how much this overhaul had cost him personally. He checked over his statements and sighed. It'd take awhile for his accounts to catch up to this expense. He sat back in his chair, hand rubbing his face.
His hand was still on his face when his door burst open, something landed square on his desk with a loud thump and an irate voice announced "I quit."
What? Huh?
He peeked through his fingers, hand dropping as he blinked at the very bright pink wrench-turned-paperweight. He recognized that wrench; last time he'd seen it, he'd been washing blood off of it before handing it back to Hinamori. He was rather fond of that wrench, seeing as how it had become an impromptu weapon against pirates.
And now it was pink?
"Hinamori," he said slowly just because he didn't know what else to say, "your wrench is pink."
He just had to point it out didn’t he. She knew her wrench was pink! It was evidence that practically her whole engine room was pink. Pink and frilly and painted and…
She sniffled.
She wasn’t going to cry again! She refused! She had already had a nice little venting session in her engine room; Yachiru was upset about her mouse’s very tragic death to Haineko… who had dropped it in her lap, in her engine room that was pink, which had been blown up….
Okay… she was crying again.
She blamed him.
“I know it’s pink!” that was not a wail, it wasn’t. “Everything’s pink.” She slapped her hands over her mouth before she said something that would get her into trouble, not that it mattered because she had just quit her first actual real long term job.
…
She was not crying! She tried to breath around her hand and it just came out as some stifled noise that probably sounded horrible.
She didn’t care. It was his fault anyway.
Hitsugaya blinked slowly at her reaction. Everything was pink? Which everything, pray tell? Before he could think to ask - he would really kind of like to know where the pink was - she clapped her hands over her mouth and…
Oh, dear Lord, she was going to cry. She was crying.
Crying was not good. He didn't do crying. Hastily, he stood up. (Why, he wasn't sure, but it just didn't seem right to be sitting at his desk while she stood over him, stifling tears.) She was crying. Ok. He could deal with this. Just… remove the impetus for the crying, right?
She was upset over the pink wrench (and other pink things she hadn't indicated yet). His hand closed over the wrench and he picked it up, ready to stow it behind his back, before he actually thought about what he was doing.
All right… standing in front of a crying woman holding a pink wrench behind his back might seem incredibly moronic.
Then it clicked. Pink. Quiet. "Yachiru…" He sighed. "What'd she do now?"
What did she do? Could he not figure it out? A pink wrench! Where did she keep her wrenches? In her engine room! It was a pretty basic conclusion that if one wrench was pink then there were a lot of pink things in the engine room right?
She didn’t realize she had dropped her hands and was … well twitching (had to be from watching him twitch so much) until her fingernails reminded her that drawing blood by squeezing them that tightly was a bad idea.
She took a deep breath. Calm Momo, she must be calm. Never mind the tears, the sniffling, and the way she wanted to bang her head against a wall.
“The whole engine room is pink!.”
So it didn’t come out calm at all and stomping her foot hurt, but… she was upset.
Ok, so she was stomping her foot and still crying and practically wailing about her engine room being pink... and she was really upset, wasn't she?
She'd even stolen his twitching.
Kusajishi was going to pay for this. "That idiot girl," he muttered. Betting, painting... Paint remover. She'd be unpainting the engine room before the end of the day. With help from his moron lieutenant and cook.
Yeah, he was distracting himself from the sniffling woman.
Deep breaths, Captain. You can do this. Reduced to giving himself a mental pep talk. Oh, yeah, this was started out just grand. "We'll deal with it," he told her.
That should appease her, right? He was on her side and he take care of things. There you go. She could quit crying now.
We? Where was this we coming from? Did he miss the part where she walked into his room and threw down the wrench and told him point blank that she quit? She had enough money from the last few months to hang out on a planet of her choice for a bit and then go find a job somewhere else, or start hoping on ships again. Of course, with this listed as part of her job experience she could probably get a job anywhere she wanted.
She twitched.
“We? What we? I quit!”
Quit? What? Wait... quit?
No way in hell. She was... she was his mechanic. His mechanic. Not anyone else's. Not any other ship's. The Limit's. That's all there was to it.
Now to convince her of that.
Quitting? What had he done? It was his fault somehow. He knew it. "Quitting?"
She should, maybe, try calming down first? He held up his hands, not realizing he was waving the pink wrench in her face, and spoke quickly. "Not we so much as them. I'll get paint remover. They'll remove it. You can supervise if you want."
Momo stepped forward and yanked the wrench out of his hand. Obviously, he needed clarification on this. “You see this? This is not the only pink tool and lets not even get started on what the rest of your engine room looks like.”
She would have thrown the wrench back at him because he deserved it, but it was her favorite wrench. “And that is after I have spent most of my life on this ship fixing it, Yachiru blew it up once, you blew it up, pirates really blew it up! I work and I work and I work and it still gets blown up. And now it is pink!”
“My tools, your tools now, are pink! She painted the tools!”
She was pacing now and her hands were flailing, but at least she had stopped crying for the moment. Had gone into something of a mini rant. A rant that… well… pretty much just laid it all out there. “And lets not even,” she whipped around and pointed at him. “Start talking about the things there saying about me on the journals, to other ships. If it were true it would be one thing, but it isn’t!”
Okay there were the tears again.
“So yes, I have to leave or I am going to get gray hair or die of lack of sleep and stress… or something!”
Oh… well… He blinked at her, mouth gaping a little as she yanked the wrench from his hand and started to rant. And rant. And keep ranting.
This… wasn't just about the pink, was it? She started in on the journals, and he winced. He sometimes forgot that she hadn't really ever seen Matsumoto at her worst; he was a little desensitized to the teasing (though it could really get to him sometimes), but Hinamori? Hinamori had been subjected to the worst the crew had to offer. He was used to rumors; after the minor breakdown he'd suffered after hearing the one about just what he'd done for Old Man Yama to get to the Limit, he'd learned to either ignore them or beat heads in, whichever seemed more appropriate at the time.
He eyed the door she'd slammed shut; probably wouldn't be the best time to point out that this would just engender even more rumors. Ayasegawa would see to that.
And then… then she was crying again. He had to do something, before those morons cost him his mechanic and left her with no sanity whatsoever.
Ok… time to swallow his pride. What pride he had left. He would have just offered her a raise - he glanced at the expense reports - if he had money left. God, they'd such a run of horrible luck. He opened his mouth and honestly didn't know what to say. "Hinamori… I…." All right. Time to shut up and sort through things.
He would kill those idiots for upsetting her to the point of wanting to leave. Hung-over or not, his next stop after sorting this mess out was wherever Matsumoto had collapsed. Angry, he was getting angry… not good. It'd spill over onto Hinamori and that wouldn't help matters any. He took a deep breath. "None of us are paid enough for all we've had lately. Trust me." Right, that was probably the wrong thing to say, but honestly, it was all he could think of.
Momo stopped and blinked at him. He was comparing how much they were getting paid now? She took a deep breath, obviously freaking out in front of the captain was bad. He was going to think she was a lunatic who couldn’t hold a wrench properly.
Not that it mattered because she was quitting. But she wanted something that resembled her pride and dignity left to her when she walked out the cargo doors. Really. She did.
She opened her mouth once, twice, before slamming it closed and settling for glaring. She was not going to get into a competition to who had the worst job here, really she wasn’t.
“I know that!” She refrained from stomping her foot only because it would be childish and she was working hard on not being childish at the moment. He already thought she was crazy. “I just…” she gave up with a groan and buried her face in her hands, ignoring the wrench that was pressing against her forehead.
Obviously, she hadn't quite gotten what he meant. (He wasn't quite sure what he meant, but he was pretty sure it was an attempt at commiseration. Maybe. It was at least something to say.) She buried her head in her hands, and Hitsugaya grimaced as she almost smacked herself with the wrench. Without really thinking about it, he reached up and plucked the wrench from her hands.
He sighed. "I'll make sure they know how upset you are." He set the wrench down on the desk, eyeing it for a moment. Yachiru was handy with paint; he hoped she was half as good with paint remover.
They'd know how upset she was the moment she walked out the door, though. He… he really didn't want to think about that possibility. Had they really driven her away? And how much of it was his own fault?
Goddamn it, but what could he say? That he'd beat them into the ground for her? That he was sorry? That he knew full well that his crew were insensitive morons? He didn't know. He honestly didn't know, and it was killing him.
He really didn't do tears well. Really.
He was going to make sure that they knew how upset she was uh. She glared at her pink wrench, that he had taken, and stuck on his desk before she peeked at him through her fingers. For what the journals? Did he even read the journals?
Best be specific then. She wanted it real clear as to how upset she was. Really. She did.
“Make sure you tell Yumi that we are not sleeping together,” she was keeping her hands firmly tucked in front of her face because in front of her face meant he could not see her blush. She swallowed, “and I am not pregnant so he can’t be a grandpa. And inform Ran of the same thing… and …”
She was calming down now… but still… no she wasn’t. “And you can’t be mean to Yachiru,” pacing again, she was pacing again, “because Mew Mew died today thanks to Haineko and she is upset about this.” She whirled, “trust me I would have talked to her, but her dead mouse was dropped in my lap when Ran’s cat set it there, with Yachiru sitting right next to me.”
… moving back to mad now.
She pointed at him again, “I am going to have gray hair because of you.”
"I know what they said on the journals," he said, nearly growling. That had not been pleasant. "I was waiting until they had gained some coherency before laying into them. It's been my experience that anger is wasted on the drunk." He glared at her. "Honestly, did you think I'd just let all that slide?"
Great. Yachiru's mouse was dead. That would not be pleasant to deal with, if only because Yachiru would insist on revenge and try to kill Haineko. Then Matsumoto would be up in arms… and, hell, he should lock his crew up and be done with it.
And she was mad at him, blaming him. "Oh, of course. Blame me, because every single bit of it is my fault."
Momo snorted, “I don’t claim to know what you’re thinking at any given time of the day! Or if you even pay attention to that idiocy!” She wasn’t trying to snap at him… it just came out that way. “But I have had it up to here,” she jerked her hand over his head just so he could get the illustrated version of her temper, “with it. There is nothing to base those rumors off of! It would be different if there was!”
She stomped her foot. “And I can not take having my engine room messed with or blown up again!”
She paused, oh hell she called it hers again. It wasn’t hers anymore it was his! Her shoulders slumped forward, “its pink,” she muttered miserably.
Her engine room, was it? If she still claimed it, there was still hope.
Even if she was starting to irritate him.
"I'm still not exactly clear how I'm at fault here," he told her. "And I've not touched a damn thing in there since the console blew in my face." Now, on to the next thing.
"They are idiots. I'm paying attention, and I am going to take care of it." Oh, he'd take care of it. One word to Matsumoto about how upset Hinamori was, and he was pretty sure Matsumoto would bend over backward to accommodate the poor girl. Morons. Idiots. He snarled.
He turned to his desk, rummaging through the mess there. He had to have something left. He pulled out his wallet, eyed it, and pulled out the card tucked into it. Normally… this went against everything he believed. He did not, as a general rule, just hand over access to his accounts, but he rather doubted she'd take company right now.
Besides, he had idiots to deal with anyway.
He sighed as he held out the card. "Take it. Go out. Buy all the ice cream you can handle. Buy a shirt to replace the one that was torn yesterday." Please don't spend too much or you'll break me. "Just… get out of the ship for the day. By the time you get back, the engine room will be cleaned." He looked at the floor; he really didn't want to think of this next thing, but… he had to, since she'd the one who brought it up. With another sigh, he looked up at her again. "If, when you get back, you really decide you need to leave us, I'll talk to a few people and make sure you have a place to go."
He glanced at the card again. Taking a chance, yes… but, really, what else could he do? If she wasn't back by the time the sun set, he'd put a hold on the card and start looking for a new mechanic.
Besides, if she took it upon herself to clean him out, there wasn't all that much left right now.
Momo took the card on reflex and blinked at it and the named that was neatly inscribed on the front. Hitsugaya Toushirou. He was bribing her… with ice cream. With his money and his personal account.
She blinked at it, barely registering whatever he was saying about finding her a place to stay. She shook her head, “I don’t need your money to buy ice cream,” she thrust it back at him. She felt guilty accepting something like that from it. She didn’t think he was trying to put something over her head so she would owe him or anything at all like. “I would feel guilty,” she clarified. They had a habit of misunderstanding each other and she didn’t want him mad at her because she refused to accept his offer just because he thought she was being stubborn.
Lord knew it was a nice offer, as paranoid as he was he probably didn’t just hand over his bank account card to anyone. She chewed her lip when he didn’t immediately answer and glanced at the door… “you will have it all cleaned up?” she asked hesitantly.
He raised an eyebrow as she thrust the card back, and took it gently, before setting it back on the desk next to the pink wrench. That particular wrench, he'd clean himself. He knew good and well how attached she was to it. (He'd also never admit to anyone he actually had grown a little bit fond of a piece of metal. Hitting pirates over the head with it seemed to cement an inane fondness for it.)
If I have to do it myself… "Yes, the engine room will be taken care of. Every last bit of pink." He paused, quirking a brow. "Can't guarantee getting rid of the black spot…"
Now… Ayasegawa and Matsumoto… She didn't seem all that worried about Yachiru, but… well, he was not happy with the girl either. "There are certain members of this crew," he said - and he was starting to growl again, "that will come to regret last night."
Okay… so he was angry to and she was starting to feel rather sheepish about barging into his office and throwing the equivalent of a hissy fit in front of him. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose tightly in a vain hope to stave off the headache that lingered being her eyes thanks to her crying fit.
Ice cream… he had said she could leave the ship and go get ice cream for as long as she wanted. She had plenty of money in her bank accounts (even with the parts she didn’t tell him she had bought) for an ice cream binge. She open her eyes and blinked at him suspiciously.
So he had figured out (had to be from the other night) that she had a weakness from ice cream did he? She sighed and dropped her hands; she guessed that it was one of the least of her worries at the moment.
“All right,” she said finally. “I will… go and eat ice cream.” There was really no point in denying that, that would in fact be her first action once she stepped foot off the ship. “And… you will handle… the journal thing… and my pink engine room.”
"I will handle things," he assured her. He really would not tolerate such idiocy from his crew; they'd nearly drove off his mechanic. (A mechanic he'd actually grown quite used to having around.) Yachiru… Yachiru was hard to blame; sometimes he wondered if she actually didn't know any better. But no matter how drunk Matsumoto and Ayasegawa got, there was no excuse for the sheer stupidity they'd pulled.
Speaking of… "I'll handle it," he repeated. "And you'll come back?"
She nodded carefully. “Yes, I will come back.” If he was going to take care of everything else and basically just… fix it, then yes she would come back. She did… after all like the ship when people weren’t running around saying things and her engine room wasn’t pink.
She was going to have to look for gray hair later.
She scrubbed at her face to clear the tear tracks from her cheeks and nodded again.
“All right,” she offered him a wane smile. “Sorry… for interrupting your paperwork then.” She would be embarrassed after she ate her ice cream. Later.
Hitsugaya waved away her apology. As far as he was concerned, she was one of the last people who needed to apologize. "Don't be," he said. Besides, he probably needed an interruption; this paperwork was hell. Never mind the interruption had been in the form of crying, threatening-to-leave mechanics.
He sighed and turned back to the paper. She would come back; she said she would. She'd supplied him with punishment for the morons and adequate impetus for them to actually be sorry. He knew good and well that Matsumoto and Ayasegawa would (hopefully) be beside themselves once they heard she had come that close to leaving. He just needed to get paint remover. He pulled the chair out, but wrapped his hands around the back of it without sitting. Still more needed said, he thought. "For what it's worth, Hinamori, I apologize for not being able to reign them in before they…" Yeah, ok, she got the point. Apologies were not his thing.
But, of course, neither was crying women, but he'd dealt with that today, too.
She shook her head rapidly. “No, it’s not your fault. I shouldn’t let it get to me.” Her smile turned hesitant. “Would you like me to bring you anything back?”
It was after all something she could offer to do for him since he was offering to fix everything for her. If he wanted some vanilla ice cream or something she could totally swing that. Or lunch maybe… she didn’t spend her money on anything other than tools since all the basics that she needed were here on the ship.
“Lunch or something?”
Hitsugaya was shaking his head before she finished speaking. No, this trip was to get her off the ship. No letting her worry about what he needed or hurrying back with food for him. "I've got lunch covered," he said. He'd pick up something while he was out getting paint remover.
"You go," he told her. "Let me deal with the morons."
He pointed at her. "And don't come back for a few hours."
Momo nodded and raised her hands to ward off anything else he might say. “Several hours, eating ice cream, I got it.” She opened the door to his office and hesitated for a moment before nodding again.
“Thank you.” And then she scuttled out as quickly as possible.
Ice cream it was.
He watched her go and sighed before picking up the card on the desk and placing it back in his wallet. Apparently, he now had things to do.
Paint remover must be bought, after he swung by the engine room to see just how bad it truly was. Idiots must be dealt with, after he returned with the paint remover. Morons, nearly chasing away a much needed member of this crew.
He eyed the wrench still sitting, in all its pink glory, on the desk.
Wrenches needed cleaned.
A few minutes later, he left the room himself.