#senjumaru voice: you think i'm wearing this headgear for my health???

[recurring-polynya]

Re: the tags on Sensing Rukia Fighting Aaroniero: Renji the Designated Squad 11 Radio Antenna. It's the hair spikes they help him hear better. Yumichika's antenna are the hair/eyelash accessories. Zaraki doesn't count bc his own electromagnetic reiatsu aura drowns out everything else and this is also why he's always shouting. Welcome to Shitpost Worldbuilding Wednesday With Lexi.

Whether or not this is actually true, I like to believe that this is the commonly held belief at Squad 11 (at least among those who are capable of paying attention through a six-syllable word like 'electromagnetic.') Look at Madarame. His bald ass ain't sensing shit.

Mostly, though, I am enjoying thinking about Renji explaining this to the Nerd Squad at the bar. He is a) quite drunk and b) very earnest, but also, c) a known troll and retired professional liar. No one can tell if he believes this or if he's trying to have one over one him (where "the one" is that he believes this bullshit). This is happening during the 17-mo timeskip, so Momo is substantially recovered, but also drunker than she probably should be, and is also constantly Taking Up Projects. Looking around the table, she realizes that she has the makings of a very good Scientific Experiment.

Over the next three weeks, she calls the three of them up at random times and asks them to tell her where she is, or where some randomly designated person is ("Captain Hitsugaya? He's in his office. He's *always* in his office.") She keeps a big notebook, recording their accuracy.

Unfortunately for science, while they're all roughly equal, Renji is a little better at sensing reiatsu than Shuuhei, who is in turn, a little bit better than Izuru.

Renji is insufferable. Izuru is livid. Shuuhei decides to join the "insufferable" side, because he thought he was going to come in third and is very excited about coming in second.

Shinji spends an hour on the phone trying to convince Hiyori to repeat the experiment in the Living World with Love and Hachi ("You used to be a scientist! Don't you miss doing a science?" "Absolutely not.")

Momo writes a white paper and makes a nice poster, which she presents to the SWA. Nemu rates her a "good methodology and interesting results" and asks if she can have a copy to share around at Squad 12. The Twelfth has a lot of machines for enhancing reiatsu sensing, she says, but no one has really done a deep dive into wearable solutions, because they all hate "going outdoors" and "doing things."

Akon shows up to next Tuesday's booze night because he's decided to try integrating some micro-antennae into his horns. Izuru swears he will murder all of them.

Anyway, as far as we know, we've never been given any sort of explanation as to why Momo cut her hair short during the timeskip, but there's no way to disprove that she did it so that she could gel it into an sick prototype reiatsu-sensing faux-hawk (for science!)

#momo hinamori #renji abarai #the nerd squad #squad 11 #bleach worldbuilding #senjumaru voice: you think i'm wearing this headgear for my health??? #unfortunately the 12th loses a lot of institutional memory every time they get disbanded and half of their leadership gets thrown in muken #is this also why izuru got rid of his awful duckbill haircut (at least briefly)? #'maybe you should try pointing it upwards' renji suggests helpfully #'maybe you should try CENSOR CENSOR CENSOR'