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It was a job he wasn't quite sure he was ready for. Sure, all of the other Great Lords were relatively young, but at nineteen winters old, Ichigo was practically a baby. The softness of youth still showed in the young man's handsome face. You could just barely see it behind the hardness that years of military training had left there. But there was a distinct lack of scars that a more seasoned fighter would have carried. Though his silver eyes glimmered with the light of someone who had been in his share of fights, there was still a vast amount of naivete in them. In short, the tall, ebon haired soldier still looked entirely too much like a boy for any diginitary to take with even the slightest amount of seriosuness. The fact that he looked quick on his reflexes and capable of knocking a man flat on his back in the span of a heartbeat, he surmised, would be enough to at least get them to pay attention.

"Then, of course," the newly christened Great Lord sighed as he rolled up the sleeves of his long, black kimono and brushed the messy strands of his desperately-in-need-of-cutting hair from his eyes. "There's the fact that you look like you haven't slept in a year. Which will either make me look over worked or... well, they'll think I spend every waking hour of the day giving the men new lessons in pain. Only one's true."

Despite how tired the man looked, he still sat perfectly straight as he went about the tedious work of writing out his signature on each one of the new reforms he put out. His mind playing out the events of the previous night while his body performed it's needed function as if it were used to such duality. When he woke up that night, as always, he was outside of his body. Walking through the ghostly nightmare that was Erion's spirit world. Armed only with hyper-sharpened senses and abilities he only knew to use on instinct, he fought the whole night against the evil that seemed to prevalent in the place. One night, it was the malevolent ghost of a forgotten emperor. The next, the monstrous remains of what may have been a servant left to rot and die in the dungeons. It was nothing like the spirits he encountered in the city or even out in the wilds of the forest. The whole thing in general should have bothered him.

What really did bother him was that it didn't. It seemed normal.

The more he thought about it, the more he seemed to behave like a machine. Mechanically, he lifted his brush and wrote out his name and then moved to the next page. So absorbed in being elsewhere and yet aware of what he was signing, that he barely noticed Sai's knock at the door. Some other, unworldly sense, told him someone was waiting behind the door and wanted admittance. Without looking up, the new Great Lord called out in a clear, much deeper voice than he had previously possessed:

"It's unlocked. Come on in."

"Nonsense, Tamakazura-san." Ichigo replied to the man's apology, smiling with all the unintentional boyish charm he didn't know he had and it seemed every female page was swooning over. "It's been so quiet in here today that I'm actually in the mood for company."

It wasn't a lie. The only people he had spoken to at all that day were the generals and a few of the men to get a feel for what they anticipated from him. He had... been shocked to discover that a good deal of them didn't think he would be taking such an interest in the one's who did all the work. It was a wake up call that left the young man wondering just what exactly his mother had done while holding the office for him. They spoke of her like she was cold to the point of cruel. And, when shown her orders, the younger Eboshi had been aghast at the training conditions and and training methods she'd advocated.

The way they acted to his reaction and to his promise that he would be fixing up what was damaged and removing what wasn't necessary showed some accepting him into a tightly knit brotherhood of soldiers while others looked skeptical. He more than welcomed a familiar face and the hope of some friendly conversation.

"The report and changes are nearly finished. If you have time, I'll make some tea and you can wait while I finish up?"