Chapter Six

Emptiness surrounded him.

How long had it been since anything was done to him?

The silence inside his containment unit was deafening. The fluid blocked his ears and prevented him from opening his eyes. Somehow, the fluid also kept him immobilized. The air that was being piped into his mask had neither smell nor taste. The air wasn't even dry enough to hurt his nose or throat as he breathed.

It was unnatural.

He felt like he was dead, but he was well aware that he was alive.

Sensory deprivation had to be the worst form of torture, especially since you're left alone with yourself. He tried to block the voice in his head, though he knew quite well that he was trapped. There was no way he could escape from himself.

If this keeps up, I'll lose myself for sure!

"Are we going crazy, Goku?"

Get out of my head, you freak!

He could mentally picture his Seiten Taisei form grinning at him with soulless eyes. He could almost feel the clawed fingers curling around his chin. "Your head? I was here first. You're the intruder."

Go away! Get away from me! Goku screamed inside his mind. But the sound was fast drowned by his own sinister laughter.

Goku desperately struggled against his liquid bonds.

"He seems to be having some difficulty, don't you think?" Dr. Ni asked the cute bunny doll sitting on his lap as he observed Goku from his seat beside the computer that monitored all of the Itan child's vitals. The little stuffed animal nodded in agreement on his command. His eyes wandered over to his curly haired female companion who was watching their specimen with guilt-ridden eyes. "Is there something wrong, Dr. Hwan?" the amusement in his voice was not disguised.

The emotion in the female doctor's eyes were immediately blinked away to be replaced by her usual haughty and aggressive character. "Nothing at all," she breezed by him to get closer to the monitors. It was hard to tell whether she was pretending or actually taking down notes about the graphs and line shapes on the screens. "His heart rate and breathing are normal. His body temperature is slightly higher than what you'd expect from a normal youkai or human, but within reasonable deviation..."

Dr. Ni yawned widely, quickly irking Dr. Hwan.

"I'm sorry. Is this boring you?" she snapped irritably as she turned on her heels to face the scruffy-faced scientist. But, instead of the condescending grin of a man, she came face to face with the condescending grin of a stuffed rabbit.

The rabbit's body wagged from side to side as it spoke in Dr. Ni's strange falsetto. "That's all useless information, old lady."

"Useless!" Dr. Hwan screeched in a not-so-doctorly fashion. She clenched her fingers around her pen and tightened her grip on her clipboard.

The little bunny danced in front of her face. "You shouldn't stress over little things too much. That's why you're getting wrinkles all over your face."

Dr. Hwan pushed the stuffed rabbit out of her line of sight with her clipboard. "Get away from me!" she growled. Realizing she had once again lost her temper, she took a deep breath and brushed imaginary dirt off the front of her lab gown. She really should be used to his snide and twisted sense of humor. She set her notes and clipboard down on some free space by the keys of the machine monitoring the breathing. "I'm going to go make coffee."

"Make mine extra strong," Dr. Ni requested sweetly as his lab partner breezed by him again, but this time, to get the door. When the heavy automatic doors hummed open, he added, "But make yours decaf so you'll be more relaxed."

Dr. Hwan made some strange sound that seemed to be out of frustration and resignation, and yet out of pure irritation as she marched out of the room. The door whooshed shut behind her.

When he was alone, Dr. Ni picked up Dr. Hwan's notes. He examined the meticulous handwriting. "She's obsessive-compulsive, isn't she?" he commented, addressing the little rabbit on his lap. He didn't need to read the notes, he knew what she had earlier told him was all that was written there. "She loves to keep track of all the little details, but she still misses the most important part."

Dr. Ni walked over to the machine monitoring the brain waves, clipboard and bunny in his hands. He flipped through the papers on the board, scanning the older notes, and then he examined the violent fluctuations of the EEG on the screen. "We should be finding our lightning soon."

He walked out of the room and down a long and dark hallway. He eventually reached another facility. He placed his hand on a scanner and put his stuffed rabbit's face in front of another. The first scanner scanned his hand print while the second scanner, strangely enough, scanned the rabbit's nose. When both scanners confirmed that the person accessing the room was authorized, the doors slid open and a computerized voice spoke the welcoming message. "Good day, Dr. Ni, Komagoro-san."

Dr. Ni stepped in and the doors closed behind him.

This room had about two dozen containment units in it. Each containment unit had a person suspended in the thick yellow liquid Goku was imprisoned in, but without the aid of better lighting, it was impossible to tell who. The good doctor, of course, was well aware of the identity of the unfortunate beings that were inside the glass containers. This made him smile. He spoke to the little rabbit in his arms, "Things are about to become very interesting..."

"...It shouldn't be long, now."

His words were more an encouragement for himself as Tenpou estimated the distance of narrow mountain paths they had yet to take. He was already exhausted, but if he was correct, they were very close to where Goku was. He tried hard not to lean on the general who had kept an arm around him in order to keep him close and, perhaps unintentionally, warm. He couldn't let on how much he needed to sit down and rest.

But Kenren noticed. The damn observant general noticed the fatigue quickly settling in. "Maybe we should stop here and plan our next move. We sure as hell can't search every inch of these mountains."

"Do what you like, I'm not stopping," Konzen grunted as he walked on, not even slowing down.

Before Kenren could react, he felt a warm calming hand resting on his arm. "He's right. We shouldn't stop," Tenpou stared his general straight in the eye. "We don't know what's happening to Goku. We don't know what could happen if he stays Seiten Taisei too long."

"But..." the protest was quickly cut off.

"I'm sorry, taisho, but that's an order," the marshal doggedly trudged forward. He didn't care if he stepped beyond the protection of the umbrella. It was his fault that Goku was back to his Seiten Taisei form. It was his fault that they couldn't find him last night. He smiled at his own thoughts.

This isn't like me at all.

Goku fought off the images of death and destruction that were being played in his head. Towns he had rampaged in, humans and demons he had killed, and lives he had destroyed with these actions resurfaced in his memory and crashed over him like a tidal wave.

I'm not that killer!

"You kill to survive," golden eyes bore unfeelingly into his own. The voice that rang throughout his entire mind spoke with such certainty. "That's the natural order of things: kill or be killed."

They were affected by the Minus Wave...

"Yes, you can keep telling yourself that," a toothy grin appeared on his alter ego's face. "Even though you killed your Sanzo, Kougaiji, and Ririn who weren't affected. Even though you killed Hakkai long after the wave was gone."

No, you killed them. I would never...

Again. Laughter. "But I am you!" There was an almost compassionate expression on the Seiten Taisei's face. "Now, stop living with this guilt. Forget your name, Son Goku, that is not who you are." For the first time since his limiters were destroyed, Goku felt warmth envelope him. He was in the embrace of his stronger self, wasn't he? "Come and be one with me again. Stop thinking and stop battling with me..."

"...Rest..."

He let it go. He let go of himself.

And Goku stopped struggling.

"He's calmed down," Dr. Hwan observed. She went back to the different monitors to confirm the specimen's state.

Dr. Ni didn't need to check all the monitors, he just needed one reading. He glanced at the brain wave patterns. He knew that his subject was kept in a state of comatose. He had induced it. There shouldn't have been as much brain activity as was being shown on the EEG earlier that day. Now, the EEG patterns were stable. "Yes, it's time."

Author's Notes:

I'm not sure how people are going to take this chapter. It was kind of strange making the Seiten Taisei talk to Goku like that (no one corrected me when I used Seiten Taisen, so I'm confused, what is the correct name of Goku's full youkai form?).

I hope the characters (Ni, Hwan, and Goku, in particular) weren't too OOC.

Thanks for reading this far! I hope you're enjoying yourselves.

-paris