"Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull. Why is nothing interesting?"
Mayuri Kurotsuchi was in a bad mood. After all, there were only so many times you can perform cat-organ transplants on your subordinates before they go to the Captain-Commander to complain of your infringing Soul Rights and the experiment ends up shut down. It just so happened that this scenario was precisely what had just happened, and for once Mayuri was at a complete loss as to what to do next.
"Nemu!" he shouted, swivelling his chair to face the door through which his Lieutenant emerged.
"Yes, Master Mayuri," she said in a monotone, quickly dashing over to her Captain. "What do you need?"
Mayuri waved his arm lazily. "Entertain me," he postulated, sitting back in his chair and observing his daughter eagerly.
Nemu nodded. "Would you like me to do the Drill Dance?" she asked, clicking her elbow and tilting her head horizontally.
"As entertaining and informative as it was to watch how fast Akon could run away the last time, I have already seen the Drill Dance," Mayuri pointed out, yawning.
"We could experiment on Rin Tsubokura?" Nemu suggested helpfully. "He's in the laboratory right now and his lungs are still pristine..."
"That experiment has been officially shut down by Captain-Commander Yamamoto," Mayuri uttered in disappointment. "Something to do with 'you can't give your subordinates feline brains, it's against their Soul Rights' or some such nonsense. Personally," he added, a smirk creeping onto his face, "I think I did them a favour. They became far more intelligent once I disposed of their original brains."
"I quite agree, Sir," Nemu said placidly, still standing to attention.
Mayuri glared at Nemu. "You're so boring!" he yelled, suddenly seizing her plait and bashing her head against his desk. "Don't you have any good ideas?"
"I'm so sorry, Master Mayuri," Nemu said quietly, as soon as her father had allowed her to stand back up. "Why don't you get up the data from the bacteria you planted on Uryu Ishida and see if he's doing anything interesting?"
Nemu winced slightly as she saw Mayuri's arm reach out towards her scalp again, before being surprised as he patted her genially on the head. "That's a good idea!" he announced, turning on his big monitor and bringing up the relevant information. A long string of numbers appeared on the screen.
"What do these numbers mean, Sir?" Nemu inquired, earning herself a reproachful glare from Mayuri.
"Did I create you to be stupid?" he asked wearily, dragging up another programme. "Fine, I can use an interpretation programme to tell us what the Quincy is seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting, in addition to providing insight into his senses of nociception, equilibrioception, proprioception, and the like."
Mayuri finished talking and brought up a rough image of Uryu's vision on the screen. "Pah, a girl, how boring."
Nemu peered closely at the screen, upon which a slim girl with long, reddish-brown hair had appeared. "Master Mayuri, that girl is the one who was accompanying Ishida before your altercation in the Soul Society."
Mayuri's eyes widened in interest. "So she is," he noted, as Uryu's gaze shifted and the Kurotsuchis were treated to a view of his feet. "Oh, look, Nemu, it would appear as though the boy's pulse is speeding up slightly."
"Your bacteria can tell us that?" Nemu asked in quiet wonder, as Mayuri rolled his eyes.
"Of course they can," he spat, bringing up an assortment of sliders on the screen. "I made my bacteria to be as good as my current technology allows them to be. They spread out over the boy's body and latch on, synchronise until each one is aware of where it is in relation to each of the others, and then they gather as much data as they can from their kinetic energy and send it back to us. Absolute marvels," he said, glancing at Nemu. "I think of them like the children I never had."
"What does that make me?" Nemu asked calmly.
"Just think of them as your younger siblings," Mayuri shrugged. "Ooh, look, the boy appears to be in a classroom."
"Is it possible to turn the volume on? I think the girl is speaking," Nemu suggested.
"Stupid question," Mayuri chided, before turning to one of the sliders on the screen and dragging it to the right. The brunette girl's soft voice filled the room.
"Thank you for letting me borrow your tape-measure, Uryu!" she said enthusiastically, as the Quincy's gaze was once again directed straight down at the desk.
"It was no trouble, Orihime," the boy said, the bacteria flagging up the too-subtle-to-hear fluctuations in his voice's timbre.
Mayuri excitedly pointed out another read-out on the screen, indicating that the temperature of the boy's face had suddenly shot up, and the screen was suddenly, briefly dominated by the sight of a slim hand as the boy pushed his glasses further up his nose.
"I have an idea!" Mayuri announced over the sound of the girl's wittering in response to Ishida. "I programmed the bacteria to act on my behalf with the correct stimulus!"
"What exactly do you mean, Sir?" Nemu asked, as Mayuri rolled up his sleeves.
"Proprioception!" he declared. Waiting until the boy once again raised a hand, Mayuri suddenly flipped a switch and Uryu's fingers missed his glasses by about an inch, shooting up his nostrils instead.
Mayuri collapsed into laughter as Nemu watched all of the numbers on the screen increase, and they heard the sound of Orihime giggling.
"Oh, Uryu, you're so clumsy!" she said cheerfully, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Uryu's pulse increased even further and he stared at a square of fabric on his desk.
"Yes, silly of me," Uryu responded, quietly. "I'm just going to return to my sewing now."
"You do that, boy," Mayuri said, his fingers hovering over another set of switches.
Mayuri waited until the bacteria indicated the presence of a needle in Uryu's fingers, before flipping the same switch and watching as the boy's pain metre spiked before quickly switching to a different dial and turning it up all the way. The spike on Uryu's pain metre suddenly shot off the scale. "Nociception next!"
Uryu screamed in pain and the view on the screen was ungainly thrown upwards, towards Orihime, who was standing next to the Quincy looking worried. "Are you okay, Uryu?" she asked, her eyes wide with fear. Mayuri turned the dial back down and the screen became steady.
"I just stabbed myself in the finger," Uryu said, uncertainly. "It doesn't hurt anymore."
Orihime frowned. "In that case, it probably didn't ought to have hurt that much in the first place. Would you like me to heal you?"
Mayuri watched as the bacteria on Uryu's face indicated his temperature rising even further. "No! No, I'm completely fine, Orihime," Uryu said, standing up. "Don't worry about me."
"Ugh, this is getting boring, too," Mayuri exclaimed, slapping his hand down on the desk and hitting a large button by mistake. "Whoops, that was equilibrioception," he said, as the view on the monitor began to waver until a large crash, the sight of broken glasses on the floor blown up on the screen and the compressed bacteria on Uryu's nose indicated that he had faceplanted on the floor.
Mayuri heard the sound of Orihime gasping and saw her gently tilting Uryu's head upwards, before she grabbed his hand and dragged him upright, clamping him to her side. The view on the monitor was still all over the place. "Let's get you to the nurse, Uryu!" she declared.
"Oh, look," Nemu said, dully, pointing out the boy's ever-increasing pulse hitting triple figures.
"Well, it looks as though he's about to have a heart attack," Mayuri said indifferently, turning off his computer at the plug. "Well, he's of no use to me dead. Let's go and kidnap somebody from the Fourth Division; Yamamoto never said anything about experimenting on anybody else's subordinates."
Author's notes: This idea just came to me when I was going back through the Hueco Mundo arc and reached Mayuri's fight with Szayelaporro Granz. For the record, I actually can't stand Mayuri, I can't forgive him for what he did to Uryu's grandfather (and then rubbing it in Uryu's face), but I will admit that he is very fun to write. :)