Lady Gaga songs make for FABULOUS fanfiction. I figured it was high time I took Bad Romance, the pinnacle of her career so far, and made it into a lovely story. I tried to write this to about seven different remixes and realized that most of them suck except the "Dark Intensity" one. Sigh. For those of you who are bad at getting things, the point of this is that each character is caught in a "bad romance" of some sort.
This takes place after the war. Since this is fanfiction, shit got changed. I assume. I actually haven't read past the war other than fanfiction, so I have only the vaguest idea of what has happened. Here's the current state of everyone's powers: Chad still has his, for the most part, but he's lost a lot of strength. Orihime has lost hers completely. So has Ishida. Ichigo has lost Zangetsu and he hasn't heard from the Hollow since then. And what they're doing is soon to be seen. Let's say they're all 19, but considering that Chad always seemed the most mature to me, we'll say he's a bit older and is 21. The Mexican school system is about two years behind most other school systems, so it works if we assume he actually started his schooling in Mexico, which is what I'm doing. Yes, these guys are kind of OOC. Sorry 'bout that.
It had been years since either Chad or Orihime had seen Ishida or Kurosaki – they were Ishida and Kurosaki now, since the last time each had been seen, they had been cruel and vicious. The war had turned them bitter. The two were strong in the way stone was strong – completely immutable until the pressure shattered it. Chad and Orihime were different, always coming back from every hardship without breaking, even if they were a bit worse for the wear. They had even survived the savage things Ishida and Kurosaki had said as they had left; they left independent of each other, though the words they used were nearly identical. Unable to take the blame each imagined they deserved, they blamed Chad and Orihime, and being the way the two were, neither really minded. Orihime cried, Chad placed a hand on her shoulder, and a soulless shell walked away. It didn't really matter which face was attached to it. And then Orihime would dry her tears, Chad would hug her, and they would write for hours, Orihime lyrics and Chad the music, and they would bring it in the next day to the rest of their band Kaidan, who applauded the way Orihime could write about such horrible things despite being a squeamish girl, and the haunting, almost otherworldly melodies Chad developed. And no one ever knew except the two of them. Their music was slowly becoming fairly popular in Karakura, and it was a source of slightly bitter amusement between the two that the people who had forgotten what had happened to them were the ones who identified most with it. The soul never forgets, even if the mind is forced to.
Ishida was sure no one knew where he was. He had changed his name, not that anyone used it where he went, and had fled far from Karakura. The only time he heard "Yurei" was when his equally drunk roommate wanted his attention, usually to tell him where the night's party was. Drinking copious amounts of alcohol and eagerly partaking of any drug offered to him drowned the sense of shattered pride he held – whenever he remembered how awfully he had failed to protect everyone, he simply got as high as he could. Sometimes he had the vague notion that maybe this was a really stupid idea, but he waved it away with a half-empty beer bottle every time. He didn't even really get hungover any more. He would wake up in a strange place, look at whatever leftovers happened to be there with him, and stumble out of the house, apartment, or alleyway, even, and puzzle his way home. He didn't even remember how that part had started, the sex. He just had a vague sense of at one point being propositioned by one of the party-goers that frequented the scene, and being too drunk to care. He was always too drunk or high to care. He'd woken up, felt a vague sense of awkwardness at the fact that he'd lost his virginity to a man whose name he'd never remember, no matter how many times he saw him, and walked out.
Kurosaki, to the rest of the "ninkyo dantai" he was usually found with, was known as Ikari for good reason. Only his frightening anger had saved the remainder of his fingers from the family's only older sister who had taken the first one for drunkenness. The woman, Ryuko, had admired the sheer strength of Kurosaki's rage and had given him the new name Ikari, offering him a position as her lieutenant. Kurosaki had turned it down as memories of the 13 Court Guard Squads crept into his memory, and instead asked for the most brutal, bloody job that the woman could devise. Returning soaked in blood but not much worse for the wear, Kurosaki slowly began to ascend the ranks of Yakuza easily, though without the actual rank, for he refused any official title that could remind him of being a Shinigami. He was more or less Ryuko's equal in treatment, and though he still called her nee-san, she often let him get away with murder. Literally. The Oyabun himself had even offered him sake once, and with the greatest politeness he had ever shown anyone, he refused, explaining his aversion to being considered strong. He was a mindless, savage beast to be pointed at the Oyabun's enemy, not honored as the Oyabun's family. Laughing sardonically, he had said that if the bowl were placed on the floor, he would consent to lap out of it like a dog. The Oyabun thought about it momentarily and placed the bowl on the floor, where Kurosaki did exactly as he said he would. The morning after that, Ryuko had showed up at Kurosaki's door and tossed a leather spiked collar into his hands. "I don't know exactly what happened between you and our esteemed Otou-san last night, but he sends this with his compliments." She grinned at him, spun on the heel of her black stilettos she was so fond of, and hopped into the sleek black sports car she drove. "He wants you to... clear out... one of his clubs tonight. Another family has been trying to move into his neighborhood, and he doesn't like it. He also mentions that you feel free to have as much fun as you want. He's taking a liking to you, esteemed family dog. Don't let him down." The car squealed away as Kurosaki smiled a predatory smile and put the collar on with no small amount of pride.
Of course, as luck would have it, that very club was being played by Kaidan, and Ishida's next party was there. Funny how these things happen. Yet, Kurosaki never noticed the presence of the three people he wanted to avoid most. And they did not notice him. Ishida was too far gone, tripped out on some new designer drug, and Orihime and Chad were lost in playing their most popular song. Ironically enough, it was more or less about losing Kurosaki and Ishida. With the analytical eyes of a predator hawk seeking its prey, Kurosaki picked every rival member out of the crowd and quickly slaughtered each one. No one noticed the blood coating the dance floor or the dead eyes that watched the dancers' feet move as Orihime let out the guttural scream that had made their songs so popular. The sheer amount of pain conveyed in that animal noise was unmistakable. The cheers went up from the crowd as her tears mingled with sweat and she laughed with sick desperation. The masses were cheering her pain. Ishida might have left his glasses home for all he could see of his surroundings. Whatever it was he had swallowed, it was not kind to his eyesight, but rather pleasant to his brain. A funny spinning flatness enveloped him and he giggled with amusement as someone prodded his face down, prone body. Kurosaki shook his head at the blissed out, unrecognizable twit he'd just poked and wandered deeper into the club, looking for the higher-ups that were almost certainly here, dealing cards or drugs. He found them quickly enough, and left with the same easy lope he'd used after shearing clean through a weak Hollow's mask, and his mind never made the comparison.
Ishida woke up in the middle of a crime scene as a cold hand wrapped around his wrist to check his pulse. He jumped up in panic. His mind still spun but he remembered a fairly good amount of the night before, more than he usually did. He apologized bluntly for his passing out, then looked around at the dead bodies mangled accidentally by feet unaware of their actions and blinked in disbelief. The policeman who'd started to take his pulse looked at him with a disdainful kind of pity and took him aside, looking around furtively. "If you don't say anything about this, I'll sneak you out of here. I've seen the crap you're on. You probably can't remember your own name at this point and you'd be a waste of time to interrogate." Ishida frowned, trying to remember his name, and with a dry chuckle, had to admit that it had been a long time since he'd bothered to try and couldn't. The cop, with a shake of his head, pulled him towards a side door and pushed him out of it. Ishida stood up as best he could and stumbled towards a direction that he assumed was home. The sun stabbed at a place at the base of his skull and just behind his eyes as his cracked voice laughed the entire way. He wondered if this emptiness was anything like being a Hollow, and didn't care about wondering about that, eventually deciding that meant he must be a living Hollow. Unable to find keys, he crawled in through a broken ground floor window of his dingy apartment. He got a sick pleasure out of deciding he was a Hollow and figured at least this way he'd have a connection to the life he lost, and it occurred to him that if he killed himself, he would become a real Hollow. It was too early to think about that, though, and as he curled up under a soiled, unwashed bedsheet in a bedroom as dark as a cave, he felt himself drop into unconsciousness again.
AN Part 2: Okay, I'm tired of writing for today so this is where I'm stopping it for now. I haven't decided whether or not Chad and Orihime are gonna get together, and but I know I'm going to orchestrate some kind of fucked up love story between Ishida and Kurosaki at some point. If you have any ideas or suggestions you want to share, feel free. =]