I know like no one reads this, but one person did ask me to write another chapter so I did. So...I think I want to write a third chapter as well!
I groggily woke up in the dead quiet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and I lazily rolled over on my side. My fingers fumbled around blindly for some article of clothing. I groped for the white under robe from my shinigami uniform and hastily slipped it on; while simultaneously crudely running my hand over my mussed up hair. Captain Kurotsuchi's lab was always so dimly lit, which made my vision impaired exponentially. A small pill capsule perched on the edge of one of the cluttered counters caught my eye. I had never seen it before. Curious, I squinted at the label. It read: ANTI-REPRODUCING PILLS. My face contorted in befuddlement while carefully rotating the capsule, its contents softly clinking around inside.
"What the…what is this?"I whispered to myself, half-yawning.
"What are you looking at?" a familiar trance-like voice demanded roughly in my ear. I jolted in surprise and lost grip of the capsule and foolishly fumbled with it until I got a hold of it again. I was thoroughly shaken up and downright flustered by his sudden arrival, but I knew better than to just blurt out, "What the hell?! Don't do that!" That is, unless I wanted another involuntary parasitic experimentation session.
"C…Captain Mayuri…Deepest apologies, my inquisitive nature led to this. But…what exactly is this?" I asked timidly holding up the bottle. Mayuri swiftly plucked it from my shaking fingers and scrutinized it. Meanwhile, I failed to keep my eye from wandering over him. He still didn't have his extra accessories or his mask. And all he was wearing was his captain coat. "Uh…um, sir are you…going to put…?"
"Bottoms on?"He finished hardly, looking me in the eye. I gaped stupidly again.
"Er, yes Mayuri-Sama," I replied my burning face shooting downwards. I was almost embarrassed by my request and I hardly even had hope that he would listen to me.
"Fine. As you wish Hitomi…"he grumbled and roughly shoved on his pants although they were inside out. "There, happy?" I nodded vigorously. Then he suddenly started cursing and pacing rapidly in circles.
"What is it that troubles you Captain?"I asked, a little alarmed. He gave me a grave look.
"It's…those pills. You were supposed to take them. I was supposed to give them to you before our…"-long pause-"experiment…"He replied.
"Oh. Well, what do those pills do?" I asked, now fumbling my fingers in anxiety.
"Well, they're designed to prevent the process of conception of a new intelligent being through the process of intercourse," he answered flatly. I nodded numbly.
"So basically, they're supposed to prevent me from getting pregnant when we had sex?" I inquired bluntly, raising an eyebrow.
"If you want to put it that way, then yes," he verified, wincing.
"But I didn't take the pills," I clarified.
"Yes, I forgot to give them to you. I guess I was…caught up in the moment of our experiment," Mayuri replied, failing to keep his voice from getting a tad higher. A long and awkward pause ensued after his statement. "So...did you enjoy what we did?" Mayuri asked. DID I?? I made a weird face. I mean, what kind of question what that?! The answer should be obvious especially to him, him who noticed every detail down to the last cell. And it should be even more obvious since I was all over him at the time and still asking for more. As I mulled over it for the umpteenth, I could feel my cheeks beginning to tint with red. "Well?" he pushed for a reply. I pretended to develop a sudden fascination with the ground and replied meekly,
"Well…yes…" My expression went soft and content and I dared to look up at him, to look at my captain in the eye. "Pleasure it…it makes me grateful that I can feel things. It makes me feel whole and less like I am composed of individual parts. It's what kept me clinging to you, what kept me there all night, and is what had me reach an all time personal high. And as a pursuer of knowledge, I feel ten times wiser in the field of pleasure and life without analyzing a single thing, but more of simply taking in the experience. For it seems like the best way to pay for a good moment…is to enjoy it." I made a light, half-smile, contemplating my next words. "How about you, Mayuri-Sama…did you enjoy it?"
For maybe the first time in all the years I had known him, Kurotsuchi Mayuri looked embarrassed. "Yes, I did…"he answered in a low voice, averting my gaze. An intensely awkward moment separated us. Now what? We had just both admitted that we liked what we had done. Did that mean I had feelings for my captain? Absurd! Everyone would think that I had sniffed up way too many chemicals high in pH levels or something. No one could ever like a captain as creepy or cruel as him right? I was seriously becoming more disturbed by my own feelings by the second and if that wasn't enough I was starting to feel almost sick. This feeling that I was going to throw up felt like this was coming from something entirely different from hearing this news. But, no, the sensation that I was about to upchuck something was seriously rising and was out of my control. My eyes frantically scanned for a wastebasket or anything of the sort. I spotted one in a corner, sprinted there, and ungracefully emptied the contents of my stomach.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Mayuri asked bewildered. "I…I had some valuable materials in there!" I threw myself on the floor in front of him and gave a deep bow so that my nose was touching the floor.
"Please Captain Mayuri, a thousand apologies! I-I…I couldn't help myself…"I finished helplessly. By my last word I had become half-hysterical for reasons I could not understand.
"Rise Hitomi," I could hear him order above me. I slowly looked up and got to my; and I could see that his face didn't look as infuriated as I imagined. My hand came up to my face to discover wetness on my cheeks. "Drink this," he told me, holding out a glass. I didn't even take time to hesitate and gulped it down. That was just one of the things you picked up, an unspoken rule in Squad Twelve. If you wanted to live long, you tried to stay out of the way or just did what you were told; chances were that whatever you were asked to do would be better that what you would be forced to do if you didn't.
This time things turned out good for the liquid that I had been asked to drink was quite minty and certainly made me feel better.
"Thank you Mayuri-Sama I-"Then lips were shoving and pressing mine deeply. I tried to gasp in surprise, but the position I was in did not allow for that. When he pulled away I was left breathing raggedly. Mayuri plucked out a clipboard from behind.
"So, what kind of reactions did that produce? Come on, tell me," he prompted.
"I….uh whoa! What the hell were you thinking?! I don't think you were doing it right either. At all. That was way too forceful!" I snapped at him growing flustered.
"Hmmm…okay," Mayuri scribbled down something, not even phased by my reaction. "And what do you feel like doing now?"
"Um, well the way you just did that…wasn't very, well what's the term again? Oh yes, 'romantic' or 'loving'," I replied. "More gentle, slower. Please."
"Oh all right," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. This time he took my face in his hands and slowly advanced on me before a kiss. His arms around me and the rest of him were pressing against me. When did he learn to do that? Once he pulled away he was quick to restart his questions,
"Let's go over this again. Quickly now, what kind of reactions were produced?"
"I had feelings of want, like a drug I wanted to taste more but I knew was bad for me. But, also something intense, burning, and consuming yet also…pleasurable," I replied automatically. Of course as always, without warning, he grabbed me by the shoulders and threw me on the ground.
"Ow! Jeez, be careful!" I mumbled to him, squirming on the floor. He lowered himself to hold me down and looked down at me. Then out of nowhere he slaps my face very hard.
"Be still Hitomi, damnit!"He growled at me, still struggling to keep me under control.
"I will… if…. you stop hurting… me!" I gasped, terrified. Now I had no idea what his intentions really were but I was instead feeling a swirl of great pain and confusion. Mayuri ignores my remark and starts pulling off and at what I'm wearing and everything else. By now I'm screaming and crying.
"What's the matter with you?!"He yells at me giving me another hard slap. "We did this last night, what's so different now that-" My captain turns slightly to notice that now others have been in the lab with us, probably just entering recently.
"Captain? That you? What are you doing?!"A voice demands, I recognize it as Akon's. "Were you…were you going to…?" Without his mask, Mayuri's face and all of its telltale emotions are exposed; he goes red in the face and starts to look very flustered.
"No no! It's not what it looks like at all! It's research…research…"he trails off trying to defend his actions. It doesn't help that I'm still gulping down sobs and curling up to cover myself. The other squad twelve members all narrow their eyes and gives disgusted looks at our captain in unison.
One of the female lab workers bends down to cover me with a robe and gently says to me,
"You'll be all right…poor thing." She adds another nasty glare at Mayuri. Mayuri looks utterly confused and helpless and as much as I hated what he had just tried to do with me, I felt kind of sorry for him. Gripping the edges of the robe, I wrap it closer around the contours of my body and scoot over to lean against a wire-lined wall. I hear someone order,
"Hey, someone send a report to the Commander General!" There is more rustling of lab coats and shinigami robes and people scatter about and more arriving to the scene. I feel myself sinking lower and lower, feeling my cheeks searing my face and trying to hide my guilt under my robes. If something was about to be reported to the Commander General, the issue must be serious and dire. Some shinigami of the Punishment Squad were abruptly at the scene seizing Mayuri, dragging him away. He didn't even resist. Were they going to punish Mayuri harshly? Was he going to lose his Captain position, get kicked out, or even executed? My normally composed mind had become even more frenzied, gulping and choking the situation down in horrid thoughts. Mayuri would hate me, no more than hate. This was horrendous. And my entire fault. Right? Wasn't it?
All my time serving in the twelfth division I have been conditioned to never question my Captain's intellect. Do it. Do what he says. It's not an option. Unless you consider death or severe experimentation your other option… Was I just patronizing my Taichou's actions by blaming it on my insubordinate behavior? Or was it really my fault? As intelligent as my brain was, had I really failed to distinguish the amount of control Mayuri-Sama had over it? I felt dirty. I had done it with my own captain, refused to do it again, and now was allowing him to be punished for it.
In twenty-four hours I had gone from intellectually-respected individual to a SLUT. Slut. Slut. Slut. At least in my own mind anyway. The word echoed and rang around in my head, branding myself. Stop! STOP! STOP!!
"Stop!!" I screamed. I was unaware that my last mental "Stop" had come out loud. My white arm was outstretched and my golden eye wide; people ogled at the sight of my arm. Everyone froze. I brushed away a few loose strands of brown hair from my face and cleared my throat. "Stop…it's okay…"I said in a low voice. I expected it to croak out weaker, but instead it reverberated quite clearly. One man instantly protested,
"Are you saying let him go Hitomi? He just committed a serious crime against you! It's about time this creep was caught! In fact as punishment we should--"
"I said stop! Do you not know the meaning of such a word?!" I snapped. "The word stop is a verb which can be taken in the meaning of ceasing to do something or make somebody cease doing
something. Do you understand the concept of something so simple or do I have to go into further detail for someone who's stupidity by far outnumbers his rank?!" I was infuriated, pissed with a mean glow in my eye.
"Hey wait! But don't you think--"
"Shut the fuck up! I am witness to Mayuri's own acts and we were indeed conducting acts of experimentation. What such a subject we were researching is none of your fucking business. Now if some of you might still object otherwise then here," I countered standing, opening up my robe, and exposing my bare self. I could see their eyes growing big at my unsightly nudeness; where my white arm began and ended as well as the numerous scars and mutilations tattooing the canvas that was my skin. I sealed myself back up in my robe, sauntered over to a filthy lab tray, and plucked up a surgical knife. Then I admired its sharp edge and shining surface for a few moments before I sawed off my own little finger on my normal hand. The warm blood sopped all over my hand and onto the floor. The hurting was unbearable forming welts of tears in my eyes and causing me to whimper a little. However, there was something about the wicked pain that was in a twisted way, intoxicating. "Besides, I think I'll be needing my Captain to construct me a new pinky," I replied, grinning maliciously. By now I was definitely crazy. The others gawked at me with horror and subconsciously released Mayuri.
Mayuri reluctantly made his way to me. He was silent. Our golden eyes just stared at each other.
"Soo…do have any painkillers for me? Because the intoxicating feeling of the pain is starting to wear off. I'm not sure if you know what I'm talking about exactly, like how one could actually like self-mutilation and all but--" He held up a finger to silence me.
"I know EXACTLY what you're feeling," he replied quickly, a small hint of a smile on his mouth. "Believe me, my own body is proof of this." Mayuri ran his hand over the numerous scars and stitching on his skin. He turned to the group of people. "Now for the rest of you…SHOO! Get out. NOW! This never happened," he yelled at them, threatening them with a blood-crusted scalpel, waving it around in their general direction. They scurried off in audible whispers and obvious glances.
"You know…they're going to talk a lot about us," I forewarned him.
"You say it like I care. Have I EVER cared about what people think of me?" he responded in an obvious tone.
"Heh, no. Guess that would explain how you dress and what you do a lot," I replied, smirking and trying to contain my own personal amusement from this revelation.
"That's what you'd like to think. Simple-minded beings often label or categorize others in an attempt to simplify their existence. Or in other words: make them seem less complex," Mayuri said, raising the spot where his eyebrow should've been.
"Hmm…by the way… why did you shave your eyebrows off?" I questioned.
"Simply because I felt like it. And well partly…because they're just another tell-tale sign of emotion. They are of no productivity to me," he answered. My own face twisted and I retorted,
"Emotion no productivity to you huh? I guess neither of us can say that anymore, at least after last night…" I could tell he was about to declare me an insolent fool or an impudent dunce, but there was no real valid point he had against that statement. His face got hard and he looked away.
"I think…we should get properly dressed and ready for the day's work…"he suggested in a distant voice.
"Um…good idea," I said, gathering my things.