Keigo has always had a love-hate relationship with montage scenes in movies.

While they were basically an excuse to showcase the main hero shirtless and sweaty in an awe-inspiring soundtrack - which was awesome - they also seemed like a cop-out for character development. After watching it for the fifteenth time in yet another generic action film, it got old real fast.

But if his own life was a movie (which, judging by the shit he got himself into on the daily, was not difficult to imagine), the current period he was in could only be classified as the montage phase.

Keigo spent the entire week after signing the contract nursing himself back to health with physical therapy with Dr Lynn, followed by staying at SHIELD office (calling it HQ was a stretch at this point, they hadn't shown him their base since the first time) for the rest of the day actually studying history, and, ironically enough, doing graphic designing tutorials.

"No point of a cover if you've got nothing to show for it", Dr Lynn had said when he asked her, quite incredulously, why he was taking advanced Photoshop lessons. Well, SHIELD didn't use Photoshop, just their hi-tech version that rendered people's faces into different people - for instance. It was both fascinating and immensely horrifying, and Keigo wondered what else this software with no apparent name could do.

"Identification," the good doctor chimed in, smiling sunnily like it wasn't weird at all to hand a teenager the tools that made a fake passport. Keigo only nodded uncertainly before going back to stretching.

The history notes he had to study upon were also mandatory - seeing as he was going to be tested on it like any other school would. SHIELD's reasoning was that since he was a part of the academy, he may as well be treated as such. There were a bunch of other subjects he was supposed to take once his therapy was complete, not only limited to the physical training. They didn't specify exactly what he would be learning, perhaps fully knowing that Keigo would attempt to back out if he knew.

So he did his time, reading up on the history of SHIELD - dated way before World War I, mind you - and Japan's role in it.

Which.

A lot more than Keigo had imagined. Yes, post the second world war the Japanese and USA came to an agreement, but the extent of which they were obligated to share their uh... resources was appalling.

Also really really fucked up.

Still, Keigo knew propaganda when he saw it; specifically in the form of incarceration camps whatthefuck, so he took whatever SHIELD called 'their history' with a pinch of salt, deciding to fact-check some stuff when he got home. Then again, Japan weren't entirely innocent either - Keigo admitted to himself with difficulty. But Yoruichi warned him to be careful, and he wasn't going to make the same mistakes he did the first time he worked with them.

Keigo still felt like reading accounts of scientific experimentation could have been postponed to the next month or something.

Because supernatural experimentation was one thing, Keigo now knew exactly was Urahara had tried to achieve all those years ago, but on humans - well. That was a hard pill to swallow for anyone.

So yeah, apart from binge-studying SHIELD history that may or may not be complete based on how much he was allowed to know, 'graphic designing' classes and physiotherapy, Keigo was mostly free to do whatever he wanted.

Not that he had enough time to catch up to the rest of his life. He stayed at SHIELD a solid seven hours everyday, only to come back home and do his actual school's homework and missed assignments. On the days he did go to school, for however long or little, he was mostly left alone by the teachers; who were surprised enough to think he could have gotten an internship at some big-shot company, but didn't look a gift-horse in the mouth. Then there was the Supernatural Squad, who kept steeling cold glances at him when they thought he wasn't looking, but never once coming up to talk to him.

Arisawa looked like she wanted to murder him most of the time, but he supposed Ryo's fake-concerned expressions stopped her.

It should have hurt more, but Keigo decided to push those emotions aside and focus on what was in front of him.

Which also included occasionally meeting up with Ryo to discuss what her 'online friends' found on the weird incidents occurring State-side - as most of the guys were from there.

(And some in Russia of all places that both Keigo and Ryo tabled for the sake of their sanity. No one wanted to touch Russia with a mile long stick, no sir.)

Keigo didn't tell Ryo about SHIELD - he wasn't an idiot - but had her swear on her life to keep secret anything he did tell her. It was mostly just cyber creep stuff he didn't understand as well as she did. Keigo couldn't quite fathom how he got lucky with the one friend he still had in this tornado of bullshit who just happened to be handy with computers, but he did his best learning as much as he could from her without completely nodding off in exhaustion.

He also had Ryo keep an alert on his assailants after giving her a proper description of their faces. If SHIELD could not figure them out, Keigo suspected neither could Ryo's network, but since he was already asking for so much, adding another task to the pile wouldn't make a difference when it came to paying his dues (something that was made abundantly clear early on when Ryo delivered him a message from her 'friends'; basically informing him that he was lucky they were already conspirsacy investigators, but when it was time, he owed them a pretty penny).

With the new routine in motion, Keigo could only wait for his shoulder to heal completely for more training, and await orders from Yoruichi, since Urahara was "apparently instructed to outsource his task list to people more equipped with dealing with kids", as she'd put it, smirk evident in her voice even though she was in fucking cat form most of the time.

Keigo momentarily forgot about hollows too, for a good while, until another attack - small as it may have been - at Karakura General Hospital had the west wing evacuate. Keigo was simply passing by when it happened. He got a good enough look at the hollow to realise it was small fry, and that some local shinigami would take care of it. He frankly couldn't give a crap if he tried.

(Turned out, Ishida Ryuken still had some spirit juice left in him to completely obliterate the beast - which caught Keigo's eye immediately. It was one thing to abstractly know Ishida's father was a quincy, another to see the guy in action with his own two eyes. He looked absolutely bored, and even more graceful in action than Ishida Jr, which was a feat in itself. So Keigo made a quick note of his stance and spirit-bow or whatthefuckever he used, to give ideas to R&D when he had time. Although he doubted the amount of information would be much help, Keigo still fled when he saw Ichigo's dad - of all people - come to the scene. What the hell was going on with those two?)

So far, Montage Phase (the name stuck and Keigo hated himself for it a little) was going as smoothly as it possibly could, and before he knew it, two weeks were up and he was introduced to the hell that was leg day.

Dr Lynn insisted that his upper body remained at rest for another fortnight, but after, well- "They're free real-estate" she grinned cheekily. Keigo shuddered.

His new trainer had a name, of course he did, and Keigo would remember it one day. But for the timebeing he was called Not-Bando, because he evidently was Not Bando and Keigo had some strong feelings about that. This new guy didn't talk much, even to insult him or anything. Just went on with instructing him to do infinite number of squats until Keigo was whining and sweating and whining some more. And then kept going.

The guy was a goddamn monster.

Still, despite his overly exaggerated complaints, Keigo kept training - not like he had a better choice - and eventually that too, became part of said routine.

Before he knew it, it had been over a month since he signed his contract with SHIELD and Keigo hadn't felt more physically drained in his entire life.

Neither Kisuke nor Fujikawa kept in touch with him since his official start at SHIELD. And there was a somewhat radio-silence from Yoruichi most days (she did monitor his progress everyday, but no world-changing solicited advice was given), which Keigo didn't take personally, simply because he did not have the brain capacity for it after the long hours he pulled at office and school.

It took another week for his sister to start talking to him properly again, and another two for his friend group to be okay around his presence. Keigo supposed that was a good thing. Maybe it was; maybe he'd look into it further when he had the time.

The plus side of the whole situation, Keigo thought one early spring Sunday, was that he was getting strong. Like, proper strong - easily the most fit he has ever been in his entire life, healing shoulder and all. While it wasn't necessarily a testament to his mental strength (Lord knew that was a littering of landmines itself), being able to outrun a winged hollow on your way back from school without breaking a sweat spread a rush of endorphins that kept Keigo going most days. He felt oddly in-tune with his body, more in control of his limbs and it probably showed, because two months into training, Not-Bando simply looked at him with a twitch that might not have been a smile but certainly wasn't a frown, and said:

"I think you're ready for SHIELD training to officially start."

Which.

What.

He had to be joking right?

"No," Keigo said, "No the stuff I'm doing seems pretty official to me."

Not-Bando's not-smile widened, "Think of this as a little test to see whether you were still suitable for SHIELD."

Keigo shook his head, not even bothering to show his incredulity; his drama was lost on these guys. "Nope, nein. I'm not accepting that. I hear you saying things but I have no idea what they mean. Let me live my reality."

Not-Bando shrugged and started packing up. Keigo knew it, the guy was obviously kidding. Psh. Official Scmofficial. Keigo was going well, he was doing fine.

"Wait! Don't just leave! The hell have I been doing all this time?" he blurted out literally 5 seconds later. God- patience- fuck. He needed to work on that.

"Recuperating, for one, and participating in SHIELD's preliminary assessment to know if you were fit for the field agent role."

"Why wasn't I told of this before then? I've signed way too many forms to not be aware of this stuff."

Not-Bando put his bag down, "That's because we didn't want it to influence your natural progression of learning. We wanted to grade your abilities without that looming on your head."

Keigo sputtered. That was bullshit, that was some grade-A bullshit right there. Here he was, busting his ass - practically dying with his stupid new schedule and Macho-Man had the gall to tell him he wasn't even on training-wheels?

The surge of frustration bubbled up only for a second before washing away in defeat like every other emotion when it came to this godforsaken agency. Of course they wouldn't tell him this, why wasn't he surprised- ugh.

"I-I still don't get it," Keigo croaked, "I read my contract like, thoroughly and I didn't see any mention of this in the clauses. I mean I knew... I knew I had more stuff to learn but- you- they should have told me."

Not-Bando gave a deliberate shrug, trying to act like he could relate. Asshole probably didn't even give a shit. "It's protocol buddy, can't do anything about that. Just think of it as an entrance exam. Yours was a special case, obviously, since you didn't have to go through the logical, psychometric and language tests, but it's a similar grading criteria. You're gonna have to talk to your supervisor about the details, but I did what I was meant to and sent a report on your progress."

"My supervisor?" Keigo latched on. There was also the report part - which he felt he should have started with, but it felt like this guy was not going to tell him anything substantial.

"Agent Fujikawa? Didn't he get you in?"

"Uh. Yeah I mean-"

"Good, contact him then. I don't make the rules." With that, his trainer picked his stuff back up and left the gym, leaving Keigo all alone to his thoughts.

"Wait! Did I pass?" he called out, "Did I at least pass? Hey!" No response, just like he'd thought.

The answers to his questions came the next Monday, in front of the marriage counselling reception desk where he was presented with an room number to one of the back offices. Keigo hesitantly followed the now familiar corridor, trying not to get distracted by the slight bustle. It didn't look like an emergency, but people were talking rapidly and power-walking past him so he had to assume something important was going down. The door in front of him was grey and had the numbers 235 written on them in block engravings, quite identical to the many others adjacent to it. He knocked once and waited.

And waited.

Keigo strained his ears to see if he could hear anything, but the background noise was too loud to make anything out of it. He instead gave the handle a jiggle - gasping a little when it pushed the door open. Keigo entered cautiously.

Nothing particularly terrifying greeted him, much to his relief. Just plain-old chairs on either side of a plain-old desk with a plain-old, very much running laptop on it.

Huh.

Keigo scanned the very tiny room again to see if he missed a person but found none. It was empty; he was alone in a SHIELD room.

Except the cameras on either corner of the space, obviously.

Keigo had stopped giving a crap about the cameras ever since he accidentally flashed the entire medbay in his scrubs months ago. He figured SHIELD to be smarter at keeping sensitive information somewhere that wasn't in a boring office on a shitty laptop.

He walked towards the desk and sat behind it. The screen was black, so Keigo moved the mouse around. It resulted in the log in screen of a protected account with an empty field for the password.

Oh, okay.

Welp, he tried.

Keigo decided to wait instead.

And gave up exactly 10 minutes after when no one showed.

It took him another 5 to figure out this was probably another one of their "preliminary assessments".

Ugh. He did not sign up for this escape room bullshit.

Keigo shot a dirty look at the cameras, ensured his distaste was visible from all angles before casing the room for clues of what the hell he was supposed to do.

His crime-drama knowledge only got him so far, when none of the walls seemed to move and the drawers on the desk were locked shit with no keyhole or key in sight.

Laptop it was then.

After fucking around the log in page for some time, sticking his emergency flash-drive into one of the ports and hoping something to miraculously appear- nothing changed except for the password clue that only said SSR.

Keigo knew SSR; it was essentially the birth of SHIELD back in America. It still told him nothing about how the fuck to log in. He had already tried twice, with variations of the organization's acronyms. He didn't want to risk getting it wrong again, in case he "failed".

Keigo sighed and wondered once again if spending time regretting his life choices would magically change everything.

He could always reboot the computer and work in safe mode - or whatever version of it this laptop presented him with. It was 8 am on a Monday and Keigo was all out of fucks to give.

Shrugging, he set on to do just that. It was slightly more unfamiliar, definitely nerve-wracking, with a cautious voice at the back of his head telling him to stop in case this wasn't a test but just someone late to work. Keigo ignored that in favour of attempting to gain admin access multiple times, and failing almost always. The computer decided to restart every time he clicked on the 'Safe Mode' option. Whoever was watching him was having the time of their life at Keigo's expense.

Just when he was about to pull his hair out in frustration, the door to the office opened and in came Penta-Man in all his boring, diplomatic glory. He looked tired, but not as haggard as the last time Keigo had seen him, which was good, he supposed. Or maybe he was just better at hiding when things went to extra shit. It could both of those options and anywhere in between.

"Mr Asano, what are you doing?" the question was asked with utmost professionalism but Keigo could feel the judgement radiating off him. He gave a petulant pout in return.

"Trying to pass your stupid test," he said and forcefully pressed the space bar. The sound of the keys were grating on his nerves now. "Ugh, fine. I give up. What's the password?"

Fujikawa stayed silent for 3 long seconds before shaking his head and taking a seat opposite him - uncaring that Keigo was essentially on the Boss Chair.

"There is no test. You've already passed, remember?" he spoke slowly, as if Keigo was having difficulty understanding basic words. In the mind state he was in, he probably was, but Fujikawa didn't have to say it that way.

"That's not what Not-Bando said yesterday,"

"I'm sorry, who?"

"My trainer," Keigo clarified, "He said that I will officially be starting my training soon, and that this whole spiel I went through for the past few months was just an entrance exam."

"That... is partially true yes. But your circumstances were different."

"Still, I didn't see it in the contract."

"Clause 25, section 8.1, B," Fujikawa supplied, bringing out a digital copy on his tablet in the form of a hologram. Wicked. "-reads that 'the candidate shall be subjected to periodic academic assessments at consistent time intervals in accordance with the agency's standard academic policies and subject to all federal, state, and municipal withholding requirements-'"

"Those referred to examination after the courses, not for them."

"They are all-inclusive. And we didn't want to stress you out by telling you that you were being observed."

"Rubbish. You wanted a lab rat for your new training program or whatever," Keigo shot back, still frowning.

The agent sighed, "Keigo," Ah, there it was again, the subtle manipulation. Very spy of him, "-we are on the same team here. Following this protocol has helped us get the most competent candidates possible for years now. SHIELD only wants what is best for you."

SHIELD only wants what is best for them, Keigo didn't say, but hoped his expression conveyed his skepticism nonetheless.

"I brought you in today to congratulate you on passing your initial assessment," Fujikawa continued, drawing up the report that Not-Bando had sent. Keigo could barely make out some of the words before they were swiped away to see another list, "This is the list of all the subjects you will be taking for the next two and a half years before you start Basic. It's intense, yes, but I believe you will exceed our expectations within all of these areas. We will also set you up with an email and portal for all of your notes, interactions with some alumni with some other candidates around the world and a uniform for training."

Oh. Wow. Okay.

"Woah..."

"That was the reaction I was hoping for," Fujikawa allowed himself a small grin. A grin.

"Woah." Keigo said at that.

"You did good, Keigo. All the courses you have taken since January are in this report that I will send you later today, with feedback. In the mean time, I want to show you something," Fujikawa got up, ushering Keigo to do the same and together they slowly left the office once he hurriedly pulled the flash-drive out of the laptop. Fujikawa raised an eyebrow at that and Keigo raised his hand in surrender.

The corridors were still busy when they got out and took the elevator to the sub-basement level.

Was he being dragged to their headquarters again?

Oh he so hoped that was a case. He would lose his shit.

They left the lift and headed to the garage, where they passed through a dingy emergency exit, climbed some rickety stairs and stopped in front of an automated car elevator. It was out of order, judging by the giant stand that said OUT OF ORDER, and all the panels to the side were covered by a silver box. That didn't seem to phase the agent though. Fujikawa stood in front of it and, to nobody's surprise at this point, began fiddling with the box. Keigo couldn't make out exactly what he was doing, but it resulted in a brief flash of green LED and a robotic voice startling the shit out of him.

"Authorization confirmed. Temporary ID: Charlie, yankee, sex, eight, eight. Confirmed by security support."

The elevator door swished open, and Fujikawa stepped around the sign to enter it. Keigo tried his best to ignore the slow building of nerves he always got when he was being escorted to unfamiliar places by SHIELD personnel. It had been months, and though he was mostly used to their surveillance, entering empty or abandoned areas with spies still gave him the hives.

Hairs on end, Keigo followed the man and let the door close in front of him. They descended lower into the ground, reminding Keigo of the first few times he visited SHIELD. Please be secret HQ, please be secret HQ, he silently prayed. As much as he learned from this organization everyday, Keigo had to accept the constant feeling of confusion and loss at the whole logistics of it.

He turned to look at Penta-Man, who was passive as always. Not giving away a single emotion if he didn't want to. It didn't frustrate Keigo like it used to before, but the unsettling feeling never really went away. He still had no clue what Fujikawa had planned for him, apart from knowing that he had "passed" whatever they wanted him to pass. That might just have led to the worst possible consequence and Keigo wouldn't know until it was too late.

Still, they had been descending for way over a minute now and the silence was getting uncomfortable.

"So... my trainer said I might be suitable for field roles or something else-" Well, Keigo was paraphrasing, but whatever, "Where else would I be put into if I had failed?"

"You would be put through another series of assessments to see where you'd fit best," Fujikawa answered at once, "It would have taken a few more months, but ultimately if all failed, you would be put at admin."

The way he said it, straight-faced as it was, Keigo concluded that admin was dull, even for spies.

The elevator slowed to a stop, but the doors did not open.

"Hold tight now," Fujikawa said.

Keigo jumped when the carriage moved... forward at a surprising speed. He clutched the railing lining the elevator, looking back at the agent appalled.

"Where... How fast... exactly?"

"Very."

Another 10 minutes of awkward quiet had Keigo trying to wrap his head around the fact that he was essentially in a jacked-up mini bullet train. He had even more questions; one could never run out of them when they worked in places like SHIELD, but held his tongue. Instead he felt around for the flash-drive in his pocket again, to ensure it was still there. Ryo had modified it to scrape any basic computer when plugged in, but Keigo wasn't sure if it worked without root access. He would have to check it when he got back home. Hopefully SHIELD overlooked his actions in the office room as nothing more than teenage nosiness.

This time when the carriage stopped, the doors did slide open. Fujikawa walked along the long, grey corridor with bright white lights with obvious familiarity. Keigo stumbled after him, turning to see if the carriage disappeared, but it was only a replica of the elevator at the old building. The door at the end of the corridor had another bunch of panels that needed authentication to open, he supposed.

Keigo blinked curiously when the agent scanned both his thumbs and forefingers on a scanner, followed by a retina check - bit much, if you asked him - and a voice activating code like the one he encountered before. The electronic voice piped up again.

"ID CY-688 confirmed. Welcome to Fujikawa Industries. Fujikawa Yoshiro and Asano Keigo."

Wait what?

The door slid open.

"Oh."