First update! Thanks so much for your reviews and feedback, they're really appreciated. Don't be scared to say that I suck at writing, because I know I do, but when you do, all I ask is that you're helpful about it please (as well as coherent)? A simple 'This story is good but boring' doesn't really give me any leeway for improvement, and all I really want to do is get better at writing. This is by no means a personal attack, I'm just giving my views on the matter!
On another note, I'm back to school now therefore more busy but I'm gonna try updating this thing at least once a week. Unlucky-amulet, in reply to your review- I know what you mean, food just somehow seems compelling and tastes much better (or sheer creepy) with Ulquiorra sitting there watching you... I also speak from genuine experience.
I hope you enjoy this chapter!
Disclaimer: Kubo Tite owns Bleach, this is merely fanfiction, nowhere near as great as the real thing =]
Welcome to the Jungle
Orihime sat staring at the plate of green mush at the bottom of her feet, having kicked it there just seconds earlier.
"You will eat, Orihime-chan."
'Why is Ulquiorra-san calling me that?' thought Orihime to herself, but then the truth came to her. He was trying to sweeten her up, to get her to eat, so that she could carry on healing the evil and injure the good.
Her mind cast back to her beloved Kurosaki-kun. Orihime wondered what he was doing at that precise moment, and suddenly felt the most painful pang of longing she'd had since she arrived at Los Noches three weeks ago, if the place even had a sense of time, that was. She imagined going home to her friends- to Tatsuki, Sado, Uryuu Ishida- even Keigo the least subtle of all perverts. What she'd give to be able to talk to Rukia, to see Ichigo just one more time...
"With all due respect, Ulquiorra-san, I am not hungry." Orihime started.
"You haven't eaten in three days, woman. By my estimation you are more than hungry."
She looked at him; one of the few times they ever made proper eye contact. He looked quietly livid, but Inoue knew he could do nothing about it, none of them were allowed to touch her.
"Then you are wrong." she asserted, trembling a little inside because of the way his eyes resembled a snake's. She surmised that his tongue doubtlessly was forked too; his whole being reminded her of something you found in Hell-no, worse- Los Noches.
"Oh?" he said, monotonously yet with a hint of menace in his voice, "Orihime," he continued, more seriously and minus the 'chan' this time. "What if I were to tell you a secret- a secret about the room we are sitting in, also known as my bedchambers?"
Orihime didn't like the sound of this, and the pending sense of darkness that was suddenly cast over the situation made her tremble outwardly this time. She tried to stop her shaking hands by hiding them in the space where her legs sat upon the chair, but unfortunately her face still conveyed feelings of fear.
"Then I will listen." she said defiantly, as to not give her emotions away. She looked up at him again, to the same mournful expression.
"Aizen-sama has given strict instructions not to hurt you, and I assume you know this already. Yet--" he started, purposefully stalling the end of his sentence. "what you don't know, is that within private bedchambers, our reitsu..."
She waited for his twisted punchline. The words 'private bedchambers' had been somewhat of an attack, she couldn't explain why, but Orihime had a feeling she was going to get hurt. And then Ulquiorra gave her the terrible news.
"Our reiatsu are masked." He smirked. "Do you know what that means, Orihime-chan?" He was obviously mocking her this time, yet his face remained unreadable, just like always.
"It means you're not as safe as you think. However--" he took one step towards the table she was sitting at. "I refuse to adopt behaviours akin to Jeagerjaques or Jiruga."
Confusion masked Inoue's face, feeling a distant sense of relief that she at least wasn't going to be violated today, but still, the shaking feeling of darkness still surrounded her.
"W-what are you going to do to me?" she stuttered.
"I suggest you don't ask that question unless you are willing to experience the very feeling that is eating up your insides right this moment. I am giving you one last chance, Orihime. Eat."
She seriously pondered it for a minute. After all, he had been right, she was devastatingly hungry for that matter. A whole three days without food was enough to make anyone starve, especially as she'd been so spoiled up to the time of her abduction regarding food. She really wanted to eat, so that she could get over this frightening scenario and go back to her room in solitude.
But no. She valued her principles much more than her desire to eat. This wasn't about satiating her desire, this wasn't superficial, or about weight loss, or about how food tasted in Los Noches. This was about protest. It was about her making a stand against espada, against Aizen. He had no right to take her, to dress her in these clothes, to force her to heal the sexta espada's arm. In the midst of all that, eating was the one remaining thing Orihime had control of, there was no way they were going to take that away from her as well. She would die before she'd become a slave to them in her mind. Her hunger was their poison, their victory, and she wouldn't give in to it. Whatever Ulquiorra had in store for her was nowhere as strong as her resolve.
"I'm not hungry."
And that was her finishing sentence. To this the cuarta espada said nothing for a while, and kept his focus on Orihime. Without warning, the next thing he did was take out his left eye, in an effortless manner. You would almost think it was an everyday occurrence, if not for the fact that it was completely sinister.
"That's a shame." he said calmly, before taking the eye and stabbing it into Orihime's chest, from which a tiny amount of reiatsu was punctured. Orihime gasped, pained at the attack but unable to make any sound. Suddenly, as if someone had thrown a heavy black sheet over her, everything became dark.
Yet, she wasn't unconscious or anything. She felt no pain, but she couldn't see or hear anything either. She couldn't even see herself. She was just a pair of eyes gleaming into the abyss.
"Ulquiorra-san?" she asked feebly, but found that her voice had no function either. She realised that none of her senses were with her. Where exactly was she?
But strangely, she felt a trickle of liquid down the side of her head. It was a cold and sticky substance. It was blood.
How could she feel? Orihime thought that she'd been deprived of her senses.
What she saw next shocked her to the bone. She could see now- she saw too much. She could also hear, but the sound was deafening. The taste in her mouth was acidic and the smell coming from the corpse next to her was so bad that it was unfathomable.
"Kuro- Kurosaki-kun!" she screamed, her own voice tearing up her eardrums like an explosion. It was all she could hear as she cradled the dead body of her former friend in her blood-stained arms. "Kurosaki-kun... how? Ichigo, wake up! You're not dead, you're not dead!" she wailed, continuing to be deafened by what seemed to sound like a distortion of her own voice. "Ichigo, wake up! Please wake up, I'm begging you!
If she thought she wasn't prepared for that, then the next thing she would see was far too much for her to handle. A few feet away, she could see the approaching footsteps of an espada- a female espada.
It was none other than her best friend Tatsuki. Orihime clutched on to Ichigo to try and block out the vision, but found he was gone from her arms; he'd completely disappeared. She scrambled to her feet in an attempt to find him among the darkness but before she knew her balance was thrown off by a pert kick to the back by none other than the present espada.
"Arisawa Tatsuki, segunda espada." she exclaimed in a calm voice similar to the cuarta. "The sooner this is over with, the better."
Orihime dodged as she took a swing with her zanpakto, screaming all the while, on the verge of passing out. The internal emotions the young auburn haired girl was undergoing was beyond traumatic by this point.
"What is the meaning of this? Why did you betray us, Tatsuki-chan? I thought you were my friend! We all thought you were our friend! No... Tatsuki, this isn't real!"
Another sword swing threw Orihime some ten feet away, blood continuing to slide down the side of her face. But like Ichigo, Tatsuki was now nowhere to be seen, nor heard. Orihime could not see her body once more. Instead, she felt a gust of wind coming from some direction behind her. She turned around to see Nnoitra, the quinta espada with a small person in his grasp. It was Kuchiki Rukia, and she had been gagged and bound by her wrists, which had blood emanating from them.
"What's going on?" Orihime managed to murmur, but her voice was silent. She knew that her voice existed, but somehow couldn't hear it. Her breathing quickened as she saw what was unfolding in front of her face. Nnoitra was quickly trying to undress Rukia. He had managed to pull her hakama off, and was proceeding with some difficulty on her inner robes.
Orihime panicked and screamed. She tried running over to Rukia but she had no legs, she tried swatting Nnoitra away but she had no arms. She couldn't even blink. The scene that was occuring before her was beyond her control.
Everything- everything was beyond her control. Ichigo was dead, Tatsuki had joined the espada, and Rukia was coming close to being brutally violated by that disgusting arrancar, and she couldn't even look away.
Slowly, slowly, Inoue felt the darkness dawning in on her. There was nothing now. Her breath become hot and heavy, and she found that her body on return was heaving up and down in desperate need of air. She raised a hand to her forehead, wiping off the sweat. At least there was nothing to look at now, she just stared at her hands, catching her breath.
But there was something odd about the way her hands were formed. Instead of her usual long delicate fingers, the skin on these hands were rough and pale. They were not dainty or feminine, they were more like talons, ready to cach their prey. Something else was peculiar, too. She had the number '1' tattooed on her right palm. Instinctively, she reached for her hairclips, her only defense within this world. Why hadn't she thought of it before? Of course, she could just attempt to reject these events, to reject the scenes playing out in front of her.
But a revelation awaited her, the hairclips did nothing when she shouted out 'Santen Kesshun'. The protective barrier that she awaited did not come. Instead, an oval mirror shaped like what Santen Kesshun would have looked like materialised in front of her. What she saw in the mirror horrified her.
Her hairclips were now the remains of a broken hollow mask. They were shaped in the same way as before, but just white and cracked. She screeched at herself in the mirror, attempting to push it away, but no matter how hard she shoved it kept returning the force and edging closer to her face, so that eventually all she could see was her frantic self screaming and struggling against the mystical object.
"I'm not a traitor, I'm not a traitor! I will never join the espada!" she yelled, giving the mirror one last jab so powerful that it broke, the shards landing on the body of the person she had desperately searched for before. She got up and ran over to him, relieved to see Ichigo's body, albeit unconscious, but before she could reach him she tripped on a piece of broken mirror, and felt herself falling, falling...
Ulquiorra pulled his eye out of Orihime's chest, the action resulting in her slumping downwards onto the floor unconscious, a little blood dripping from her nose. He slotted the eye back into the socket, blinked, then stared at the heap on the ground for a moment, before being intruded on by a familiar voice.
"It looks like you went too far this time, number four." said Grimmjow Jeagerjaques, leaning on the doorframe.