Good evening all, and thanks for watching :) Sorry for the long delay in following up, we experienced a nasty two week posting glitch.
Thus, without further adue...Thursday, part 1 - Where Szayel is being...gentlemanly?
(I worry so...)
Thursday, 4th of July
Occupation Month 6
3.03 am
She pressed the back of her fingers to her lips, and let out a shaky breath; it was the best she could do to keep the tears from starting to flow. Her hands felt frozen and numb, as if she'd kept them in a bucket of icy water, and her heart felt pretty much the same. She even wondered how it was still beating.
She certainly did not feel like it was.
So much suffering, Unohana thought, completely hiding her face in her hands. So much loss…
And for what purpose? She'd bitterly wondered. What had been achieved?
Ichimaru Gin was unharmed; the explosions had not touched a single hair on his head. Out of three different charges…Not a single one had even come close.
What the explosions had done, however, was injure fifty seven others, only six of whom, Unohana reminded herself, had been part of Gin's guard contingent. The rest of the victims had been no more than unfortunate passersby, people who'd picked an accursed hour on an accursed day to go grocery shopping, or simply take a stroll through the marketplace…
Had they thought of this? She wondered, feeling that her sorrow was mercifully beginning to morph into rage. Had they considered who else they would harm, when they had decided on the time and the place of the attempt? Had they not thought of all those who would be caught in between…
Had she thought of them?
Unohana shivered, knowing all too well that she hadn't – not until the moment when she'd walked into the main reception room of her division to find countless bodies lying on beds and hastily stretched out mattresses, not until she'd smelled sulfur and burned flesh, not until she'd stood over many of them and not been able to recognize them, not because she had not seen them before, but because, in the end, an odd protective mechanism in her mind had caused them all to look exactly like each other…
Question: What are one's chances of being burned alive while shopping for onions?
Answer: As big as anybody else's. We are all exactly alike.
She leaned her elbows on the table before her, hiding her face in her hands, and wondering what the others, the nameless and faceless people outside of Sereitei's walls were thinking, at that very moment. Were they thinking of stopping…this, whatever this was - not resistance, Unohana thought, but merely pitiful unrest, that did no more than demonstrate its utter lack of bite each and every time that it surfaced? Were they thinking of what options would be left, if they did stop?
Sereitei was all but impenetrable and more trapped within itself than it had ever been before; it could do nothing for itself, and nothing for Rukongai. Without the explosives, which at least allowed passage to those outside the walls, the world would lie still, simply awaiting to be devoured; time would pass and the plague of white masks would quietly spread, at first over the Sereitei, but then over Rukongai and then, Unohana thought, into a human world that was unaware its heavens were emptier than ever before…
They could not stop trying.
They needed to stop failing. She needed to stop failing.
Though her hands were still not under her control, she pulled the vial rack she had been poring over close, and pleadingly looked at it, as if the chemicals could understand their own importance and stop misbehaving. She could not focus, but she could not look away either, and though her stomach turned violently, she discovered that, at that very instant, she missed Mayuri Kurosuchi as if the man had been her lover.
She swallowed dry, closed her eyes and counted to ten, forcing artificial focus. She would keep trying, she told herself, though the rebellious voices in the back of her mind already rose to tell her that she would never succeed. That she already knew she would fail again, and that perhaps this time, her failure would not only harm, but also kill innocents.
Still, her hands carried her through the motions of their own volition; the chemicals mingled exactly as they should have. She did not even take precautions – once the colour of the substance in the vial changed, she simply placed it back on the wrack, and once more counted to ten. The miniature explosion occurred in perfect timing, releasing the perfect amount of heat. The glass did not shutter, and her fingers were not even blistered.
I don't understand, her mind screamed.
Everything was undeniably, defiantly perfect – except, fifty seven people lying in the room just above hers told her that it was not. Something was wrong, and far from being able to replicate it and adjust, she could not even find what it was…
'Re-chan.'
She turned and stood at the speed of lighting, her body faster than her mind, realizing that this time, he could not possibly have missed it, and that he did not need to see the vials behind her to understand what she was doing, what she'd been doing from the very beginning.
'Szayel Aporro,' she tried to speak up, but only managed to whisper.
He did not approach, and the heavily pressurized door hissed closed mere inches behind his back.
'There is nothing that guarantees that I shall break a security code more than trying to keep it secret,' he said, in a deceivingly calm voice. 'Some people count sheep, I break 128 bit encryptions before going to sleep.'
The door locked itself, several inconspicuous beeps assuring that all the outer world protection systems had fallen back in place automatically. To what use, Unohana thought, feeling her knees had begun to tremble. The danger was already inside.
'But,' he continued, his voice turning chillingly cheerful as he advanced with his hands clenched behind his back, 'I did not come over to tell you that. That you already knew, and perhaps just disregarded in the flurry of your other…preoccupations. No, Re-chan, I came over to share other, more entertaining facts that you might have missed during the excitement of the day.'
She drew back, realizing that she was trapped against the bench she'd been sitting on, which was bolted onto the floor, only when its cold edges bit into the back of her knees.
'It would seem like our Rukongai friends have gained a mild hint at organization,' Szayel Aporro beamed, noticing that she was terrified and stopping a few feet away.
'What do you mean?' she asked; the tremor in her voice was so strong that the words could barely be made out.
'Indeed,' Szayel merrily chirped. 'At roughly the same time that they attempted to blow up Ichimaru Gin, they staged an attempt on one of your fellow captains…'
'Who…' Unohana managed, leaning back on the table and almost knocking the vial rack over in her desperate quest for balance.
'Ukitake Jūshirō of the 13th,' the Arrancar shrugged, seemingly not paying attention to the fact that her face had lost all trace of colour and that she'd stopped breathing altogether. 'And he was not as lucky as our friend, Ichimaru. Oh, Re-chan,' he continued, with growing, childish excitement, 'you should have seen this – it was fabulous!' the Octava exclaimed, with a little clap, even as Unohana's body grew limp and fell back to the bench. 'A gorgeous symphony of damage: sufficient kinetic energy to shatter bone, and sufficient thermal energy to completely clear flesh. Not only that, but the chemical damage was so well placed that the various mingled parts were still deliciously sizzling when we found them…'
She let out a whimper and bent over, hiding her face in her hands. The insane mask of childish excitement vanished, as did the mad light in his eyes.
'Just kidding,' Szayel Aporro said, his golden stare suddenly dull and cold.
Unohana looked up, but did not manage to speak, as if the vortex of feelings and emotions had rendered her a prisoner – she did not know whether she was frozen in terror or relief. She merely sensed that heavy, cold lead had replaced the blood in her entire body, and she sensed the tears that had begun to flow as if they had been coursing on someone else's face. The same sensation, she oddly thought, as water running over a latex glove.
'He's alive,' Szayel Aporro said, gently. 'Your concoction failed again.'
He approached, and stood over her for a second, making her feel precisely as what she was. A helpless insect caught in a spider's web.
'Move over,' the Octava said.
She let out a sharp breath, that had sounded exactly like a reaction to sudden and poignant physical pain. The Arrancar took a deep breath in his turn, then smiled in a way she could not recognize – something awkwardly mechanic, shy and unpracticed, an expression that made him look unbearably young.
'Let's have a look at this,' he whispered, delicately placing his ungloved hand on her shoulder, but decisively pushing her to the side. Unohana obeyed mechanically, allowing him to insinuate his frail figure between the bench and the work table. She turned to face the vial rack in her turn, and looked at it in open wonder, as if she had seen it for the first time.
'This had me stumped for a long time too,' he distractedly began, lifting one of the vials and narrowing his eyes to focus on its consistence. 'Did you mean for the attacks to actually be suicide attempts?' Szayel asked, his attention fixed on something well other than the heart rending meaning of his words.
'Gods, no,' Unohana whispered.
'I thought not,' he nodded, then looked up at her with a little grin.
He's not thinking of anything…she suddenly realized, not knowing whether to feel happy or even more terrified. He exists in a consequence free glass bubble, where nothing but processes and technical solutions has even the most minor bearing. He's not thinking of anything but how to fix this.
'The problem we have here,' Szayel softly began, his hands replicating her earlier motions as if he'd done them a thousand times as well, 'is that this works.'
The miniature explosion occurred again.
Ten seconds reaction time, Unohana dully thought. Ten seconds, not one more, not one less; sufficient time for someone to target, fling the vial and shadow step away to safety. That was what she'd meant to do. Ten seconds…
'Perfect,' she whispered, and he conceded with a small shrug.
'Perfect,' Szayel Aporro repeated. 'But why is it perfect, Re-chan?'
'I don't know,' she breathed. 'I don't know, Szayel Aporro,' she repeated, allowing the frustration she felt to simply burst out. 'I have tried it a million times, I promise, I've varied the concentrations, the proportions, everything, it simply always works, and I have no idea why…it's perfect, but at the same time, it clearly…'
She swallowed dry, struggling to continue.
'It clearly is not. I don't understand what I am doing wrong, or what they are doing wrong… I have attempted to replicate the varying reaction times, but every time that I do it, it is simply perfect in all aspects. I don't understand…'
'It's alright,' he soothingly said. 'You are approaching the problem correctly. Which is good,' he suddenly reflected, 'since otherwise I would become very, very annoyed with you. I really hate it when bright people approach problems in an inept way.'
She nodded, feeling rather sheepish but nonetheless frighteningly at ease.
'Relax for a moment,' Szayel Aporro prompted, swiftly moving the vial rack out of her reach. 'You should never try to conduct chemistry experiments in an excitable state,' he seriously scolded, eliciting a pained smile at the sharp irony of the fact that the words had been uttered by one who seemed to be in a permanent state of excitation.
But he only looks like that, Unohana thought. He never is.
'You are approaching the problem correctly,' he kindly repeated. 'You said that you have separated it into components, and that you have altered each individually to see what is causing the variance in the reaction time.'
'Yes,' Unohana nodded.
'The method is correct, but you've failed to see one of the components.' Szayel followed, making her frown and drawing her attention to the vial rack. 'No,' he corrected himself, 'I am using unhelpful vocabulary. It is not a component, it is rather – a factor, and the reason why you have not found it is because you are only looking at the chemicals.'
She shook her head in incomprehension.
'The reason why this is perfect, Re-chan,' Szayel continued, allowing her to reach for the rack, 'is because conditions are perfect.'
'What?' Unohana sharply asked, looking at the Arrancar as if he'd suddenly transported by her side from a parallel universe.
'Yes,' he shrugged. 'This room has controlled temperature. It is always at 27 degrees Celsius, with variances of no more than a tenth of a degree. Your components are therefore always at that temperature…may I?' Szayel asked, reaching for the vials. She nodded in fascination. 'Please step back,' the Arrancar smiled, picking up one of the component vials and beginning to rapidly rub it between his hands. 'This,' he grinned, keeping his motions to a fast but steady rhythm, 'might be slightly unpredictable.'
It was – when, but a few seconds later, he added the two components together, the reaction occurred in a perfectly wrong way. The chemicals mingled, shifting to a color that Unohana had never seen before, and both retreated with just a split second to spare before the vial exploded into a fine cloud of cutting shards.
'Hee,' Szayel chuckled. 'For all of the things that I've done, causing laboratory explosions never, ever loses its charm!'
As if his enthusiasm had been contagious, Unohana felt her lips shaping into a pained smile.
'You're such a child,' she thought and whispered at the same time. Szayel Aporro chuckled again, but his amusement soon faded. She could all but see the insidious tentacles of consequence stretching about his glass bubble, and beginning to crush it; somehow, the mental image made her cringe, just like the sound of his hydraulic syringes.
'The reason why your people are blowing themselves up, Re-chan,' he softly said, 'is because they are carrying the components close to their bodies, perhaps under their kimonos. During the journey, they adjust to body temperature – 36.5 degrees Celsius, almost ten degrees higher than the test condition temperature. This causes everything to catalyse much faster; reaction time is decreased…'
'And it blows up in their hands,' she whispered.
He contented himself on a stern nod.
'Yes,' he gently said, at length. She looked away, yet again beginning to shiver. 'Don't be too harsh on yourself, Re-chan. This also only occurred to me today, and to be thoroughly fair, I was not artificially constrained to laboratory test conditions. It was the Ukitake incident…'
'Is he alright?' Unohana asked, biting her lower lip.
'He is alive, and will be alright,' Szayel answered. 'But his attacker was nervous, and, because of this, he came very close to succeeding.'
'How so?' she inquired, slowly shaking her head.
'He fidgeted,' the Octava shrugged. 'He must have hesitated whether to go through with it or not – so, even though he probably carried the components just like the rest of them, he must have taken them out and held them at outside temperature for quite a while, thus slowing down the catalyst.'
Yes, she distantly thought. Deciding to murder a man one once loved must have taken some time…
Finding that she had nothing to add, she tiredly strolled back to the worktable and sat down, to blankly stare into a distant corner of the room.
I guess that concludes the lesson, she thought. I guess that concludes everything.
She felt calm, and her hands had finally stopped shaking; the same deceitful defense mechanism that had shielded her heart when she'd first gazed upon a room filled with burned bodies fell in place, drowning all her senses into a deep, light feeling of peace.
'I am quite cross with you, Re-chan,' the Octava said.
Unohana nodded in acceptance; he had every right to.
'When did you realise…' she began, lifting her chin and allowing her glance to complete the question.
'A few hours after you started,' Szayel Aporro answered. 'The internal sensors detected the thermal energies released by the explosions. You should have put them offline. But then, I…'
'…you would immediately have known I am hiding something,' she said. 'When will they come…' she began, then, for a fleeting moment, lost her voice. 'When will they come for my…'
Her courage faded yet again, and she pressed her eyelids together.
'Ulquiorra was here today,' she continued, keeping her eyes closed. 'I assume they will be here in the morning.'
'I think I might be in love with you,' Szayel Aporro said, dryly, after a long minute of painful silence.
She looked up, the utter disbelief at having heard the words shattering to the shock of the look on his features – which not only cast no doubt over the honesty of the pronouncement, but also on its sheer lack of scientific relevance.
'I am experiencing a vast array of unpleasant symptoms,' he added, in an oddly reproachful tone, as if attempting to tell her she had willingly infected him with a particularly vicious strand of the flu; the woman gently shook her head, feeling trapped amid concern, amusement, and disbelief.
'I find this terribly distracting, and I don't like being distracted,' he continued, with a childishly rebellious frown, 'I specifically hate being distracted when I am on a project. As such, they will not be coming – I will not allow a decimation to break the focus of this Division, your focus, and more pointedly, my focus on the task at hand.'
'But how can you keep this hidden?' she asked, feeling her very heartbeat had frozen and slowed. 'Surely, Ulquiorra will see the connection between the attempt on Ichimaru and the one on Jūshirō, and the New Central will ask you to investigate the connection. You will not lie to Aizen, for…'
'I will do anything it takes to complete the trans-gene crossing,' Szayel Aporro stated, with terrifying detachment. 'But no, I will not lie to Aizen-sama for you, should that situation ever arise. It will not, or not in a future near enough to endanger my project. As for Ulquiorra, he can see no connection because the Ukitake incident has not been brought to his attention – the only people who have knowledge of it are you, me, Hanatarou, and a fourth party that is equally interested in keeping it quiet.'
'Is it someone you trust?' Unohana whispered.
'No,' he replied. 'But it is someone who desperately needs to trust me.'
She nodded, yet again accepting his words for true, and feeling utterly crushed by all that had passed, by his words, by the thin, faded whimpers of the energies in the room above, by his actions…then, for a moment, chose to forget about the men who stood above them both, allowed herself to slip free of all consequences, and drift into his world.
'I have abused your trust,' Unohana said, gently. She could not bring herself to utter that she was sorry; he did not seem to want her to, and she did not wish to lie.
'In a sense,' Szayel responded, still standing at an awkwardly correct, pointed distance, as if he'd been afraid of her physical proximity. 'I never asked you about it, thus, you never lied.'
'I faked…' she began, feeling so insanely relieved that she actually chuckled.
'The April spectrograph reports, yes, yes,' the Arrancar laughed in his turn. 'And you even had enough of a sense of humour to make me syntethise a molecular compound that not only employed every piece of laboratory equipment in this room, but actually remained stable for a couple of hours before miraculously losing integrity. I repeated that particular experiment six times, I'll have you know.'
'I know,' she said, this time truly laughing at loud. 'I just somehow imagined you would have fun.'
'You were quite right, I did,' he simply shrugged.
'You could ask anything of me now,' Unohana suddenly said, insisting to meet his glance and keep her eyes locked to his.
Szayel Aporro nodded, then took a step back as she rose to her feet.
'I probably will, very soon,' he said, withdrawing yet another step – something she could not quite place stirred in the depths of his eyes, strangely assuring her that they were not speaking of the same thing.
Unohana remained still, understanding that if she continued to approach, he would retreat to the ends of the earth. She felt warmth and sorrow at the same time, and with the same bewildering intensity.
I truly like this man, she thought, the self admission smoothly coming into shape and causing her no discomfort within the confines of the glass bubble.
She did not doubt his brief declaration; in truth, she realized, berating herself, she should have sensed it far sooner, and she probably would have, had she not been distracted by so many other things – and though she knew all too well that she should have felt either disgusted, threatened or concerned, she merely felt warmly flattered. In fact, Unohana thought, giving him a shy smile, she felt slightly insulted at the fact that he was not even expecting her to respond to the words, let alone think her capable of taking his feelings into consideration or even reciprocating to some extent…if not with the same feelings, at least with the affection that she clearly felt at that very instant.
'When did you realize that you felt this way, Szayel Aporro?' she kindly inquired.
'An hour after you fitted me with the reiatsu suppressing device and allowed me out of seclusion.' He dryly responded, giving her the feeling that he was about to quote the exact time in the day. 'You asked me for information on a digestive system misbalance – a bacterial infection, in fact, and you acted upon the information without…'
'…questioning,' Unohana approved, smiling at the memory. 'I trusted you…'
'You trusted my expertise,' the Octava nodded; she unconsciously took a step forward, only realising that she had done it when he hastily drew away once more, not in fear of the Shinigami, but in fear of himself. 'Retsu,' he said, defensively lifting his palms. 'You misunderstand. I do not feel that I care for you, I know I do,' Szayel Aporro added, raising two fingers to indicate his temple, 'My thoughts stray at random times, and I focus more on your approval and circumstances than I believe is either correct or necessary, in a manner that I am sure you would find neither flattering nor reassuring.'
'I am not in denial, Retsu,' the Octava, said. 'I know you would like to think that, or that there must be some sort of confidence disorder lurking in the depth – I have studied your pathology as you have mine, I am sure, and I understand this is the conclusion you will inevitably draw. It is the wrong conclusion nonetheless; you are simply projecting and assigning me moral qualities I assure you, I do not possess. I am not being generous, I am merely being practical.'
'I will truly not let anything get in the way of this project,' he continued, noticing her glance had grown uncertain. 'and I will require far more of your assistance than until now. Please attempt to focus on the task at hand and cut all distractions to a minimum.'
'Will you not ask me to stop?' she asked.
'No,' he said. 'It is in my nature to recognize and honour single minded, passionate pursuits; it is, after all what I personally live by. I could, indeed, order you to stop, but you would not, and I do not want to be focusing on spotting deceitful behavior. It would be a waste of my time, as well as yours.'
The Octava once more clenched his hands behind his back.
'Besides, it should be an interesting contest,' he said, to no one in particular. Unohana frowned.
'Contest?' she echoed.
'Indeed,' Szayel Aporro responded. 'You will have to progress more before I will deem it necessary to find a countermeasure to your formula, but when the time comes, I shall certainly spare no effort in doing so. That too should be…fun.' He distantly added.
'Do you not fear that Aizen…' Unohana began to question.
'The process of creating a natural means of creating hybrids is far more important to Aizen-sama than the efforts of your resistance is,' the Arrancar answered. 'He cannot succeed at it without me – plus, the task of investigating and dealing with these attacks is not mine. It is within the remit of the Omitskido, and Ulquiorra Schiffer has yet to request my assistance in anything more than telling him whether these compounds were created by Shiba Kukkaku.'
The woman unwillingly sighed. 'Unhelpfully literal,' she guessed, with a minute shrug. He simply shrugged in return, giving her another painfully awkward smile.
'You know what the consequences of being caught will be,' Szayel Aporro said, 'and you should not think yourself under my protection. I will simply ignore your extra curricular activities, and maintain plausible deniability.'
She slowly nodded.
'Please retire, Re-chan,' he concluded, in a voice that suddenly sounded tired. 'You can resume your adjustments to the catalyst in the morning.'
Despite his words, the feeling of warmth would not subdue, and though she shuffled towards the door, Unohana felt as if she'd left her heart behind. She looked over her shoulder as the door drew aside, meeting his oddly dreamy glance.
'Thank you,' she said, softly. 'For everything you've said and done tonight.'
Ice swiftly grew in his eyes.
'Did I say something wrong?' she sincerely asked. 'If…'
'The reason why I sleep with Kaname Tousen,' Szayel Aporro interrupted, suddenly sounding furious, 'is because I find guilt far more arousing than gratitude.'
Unohana swallowed dry.
'Goodnight, Re-chan,' he repeated. She nodded, and withdrew.
The door slid shut behind her, and, despite the noise of the sealing hydraulics, she could still distinguish the little characteristic hiss of one of his syringes. For some reason, Unohana thought, it was even more painful tonight.
Up Next - We are missing one of the riders of the apocalipse...could it be Grimmjow, perchance?