The Challenge – Chap. 11

A/N: I knew I had to write a very dark chapter based on the outline that I had written months ago, but ouch, it was difficult to write. It should get better from here on in.

Warnings: Dark chapter with mentions of violence and death. This chapter was originally so dark that I could barely write it; I toned it down from the original on the advice of some very helpful readers.

(Originally posted 6/11/2011.)

XxXxXxX

Loly swung into the room, laughing viciously. "Hime-chan… let's plaaaay," she taunted, circling her prey with narrowed eyes. Menoly followed her, carefully closing the door behind her, folding her arms with a scowl as she stood with her back to the door.

Orihime backed up against the bed. Why were the two girls here? Had Aizen sent them? Or… Her heart chilled… had he manipulated them into coming here? It was impossible that anything went on in Las Noches without his knowledge. Perhaps his second-in-command was powerful enough to hide the truth from him, but surely these Arrancar could not. What did he want them to do? Orihime stared at Loly, who was leering at her now, her one visible eye twitching in furious glee. She could see the hatred in the girl's eye, the burning jealousy. Loly loved Aizen; Orihime could see it. She loved him with a fury that had no outlet, for the man would only use her and discard her.

All Orihime could feel was pity and not fear. This girl was like her. Could she be like this one day, consumed with hatred and fear, driven and twisted by a love which would never be reciprocated, casually manipulated by Aizen to serve his own purposes?

As Loly approached, Orihime waited. She would not fight back, even when Loly punched her in the face. How could she? It would be like attacking her own soul. Her passivity only enraged Loly, who grabbed one of the lamp stands and threw it at her with a force borne of fury, the fury of a woman scorned. Orihime stumbled backwards with the impact, fell to the floor. A profound pain speared inside her belly, and her heart clenched in sudden realization. A beating could cause a miscarriage. Was this how Aizen was going to deal with the inconvenience of a child? By manipulating these Arrancar into beating her up? This way, he would not have to explain to her why she should get an abortion, why he did not want an heir, a rival. He would appear blameless. Her heart chilled further. It was the way he operated.

Gin's words echoed in her mind. "Do I need to tell you how Aizen Sousuke treats rivals?"

Loly grinned and dug her fingers cruelly into the top of Orihime's head, hoisting her up by her hair. Orihime stared at her, eyes intense. Loly was as much a victim as she was, a victim of Aizen's machinations. As they all were. Pity bloomed in her heart as she gazed levelly at the black-haired Arrancar.

Loly's grin turned to a frown and something flared in her eyes. "You…" she gasped. Then she drew back her left fist and punched Orihime even more viciously in the face. "What's with that look on your face?"

"Hey," cautioned Menoly. "You should be a little quieter." She glanced anxiously at the door.

"Shut the hell up," screeched Loly. She stopped for a moment, panting. "I know! I'm going to pull out all your fingernails, one by one."

Suddenly, there was an earsplitting crash and the door exploded inward. The impact of the blast knocked the three of them back from the door.

"Wha—" gasped Menoly. They both turned to look at the smoke and dust gradually settling from the explosion at the door as a figure became visible.

Orihime looked up through eyes watering with pain.

It was Grimmjow.

XxXxXxX

In the dimness of his bedroom, on his large, luxurious bed, Aizen stretched with satisfaction as he unwound his limbs from his lieutenant's. He moved to the edge of the bed, slid his legs out from under the covers, and wrapped himself in a white silk robe. He glanced briefly back at the man lying asleep in his bed, a few strands of silver hair still visible above the covers.

It had been… disappointing. He was surprised, for Gin had been as inventive and playful as ever, as outwardly submissive and inwardly furious as usual. Yet somehow… something had been missing. Aizen frowned thoughtfully. For some reason, his thoughts had kept turning back to the night before, to when he had run his hands through long, thick, auburn hair rather than fine silver hair, had stroked the softness of well-developed breasts rather than the elegant, slim figure beneath him. He had found himself distracted. And it was not like him to dwell upon past lovers.

Musing, he slowly dressed. Could this atypical reaction be due to the fact that she now carried his offspring? Or… was it something else? He pictured her face in his mind and felt himself smiling at the image of her wide grey eyes suffused with hesitancy, her lush mouth half-open after a kiss. She was beautiful, he thought. A delight to look at. And powerful. Unique. A marvelous possession.

Something twinged inside him.

He probed his own mind carefully. It could surely not be… feelings. He laughed to himself shortly. No, that was not possible. He merely was attentive to her now that she was carrying his latest experiment. It was purely a scientific interest he had in her, a natural one, since he had decided it would be an important experiment.

He put thoughts of her aside as he climbed the stairs to his reiatsu-shielded workroom. He had much to do. The final preparations for his war against Soul Society were about to begin.

XxXxXxX

Once in his workroom, he locked the door and renewed the shielding spells before settling down to work. From a hidden compartment in the floor, he drew out a heavily shielded container and placed it on the center of the desk in front of him. He felt once more the gush of heavy, pleasurable anticipation as he slowly whispered the unlocking spells and the lid opened.

The room was at once awash in a dense, alien reiatsu. Within its cushioned lair, the Hougyoku glittered, and his heart pounded with excitement as he gazed once more at the jewel he had sought for so long, for which he had paid such a heavy price. Soon his preparations would be complete. The complex structure of spells to subdue the Hougyoku and enable it to merge seamlessly and permanently with his own body… giving him, at last, all he desired. Immortality… and soon, absolute power. Power such that no one would stand above him.

He set the jewel to one side as he began weaving the next, intricate set of spells. There was absolute silence in the large, elegantly appointed room as he worked.

But then, as he was delicately adjusting a complicated reiatsu structure surrounding the Hougyoku, he sensed an improper alignment. Annoyed, he narrowed his eyes, focused on the problem. As he concentrated, he realized that he had skipped a step and built the spiritual edifice incorrectly. Abruptly, he made a gesture with his hand and collapsed the entire structure.

It winked into nothingness as he sat there, breathing heavily.

He was annoyed. It was not like him to lose focus like this. He began to build up the foundations a second time. But once again, he found himself unable to concentrate on the set of spells he was crafting.

He sighed. Instead of continuing to work, he rested his chin in his hand and contemplated the endless desert beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows in the tower room, musing. It seemed he was far too distracted with this new development, Orihime's pregnancy with his child. There were so many interesting possibilities to consider. It was too bad that his other plans were almost coming to fruition. He would have liked to have more time to contemplate before the action began.

But still— how remarkable it was, to consider this new life. Could it indeed be a threat to him? His eyes narrowed. He would have control over the child during its formative years. That would surely be enough to weave sufficient spells into its being that would prevent it from turning on him. Although… it might be amusing to see if the child would challenge him. Such fascinating possibilities.

It made him wonder, once again, about his own origins, what he himself could have become with a different upbringing. He wondered… would he have been as powerful? Or as alone? For the first time in over a hundred years, he found himself speculating about his own childhood, about the forces that had shaped him into the man he was today. As far back as he could remember, no one had cared for him; he had been on his own.

He had never known his father, but his mother had never hesitated to slap him around, to beat him if he didn't bring home enough money or food on his daily outings as a beggar and thief. There had been many men, as well, who passed through their slovenly hut, most of whom had beaten the young boy too. He was too small to fight back, and his weakness infuriated him. He hated seeing his mother cower and whimper in fear, and he swore he would never be like that. Instead, he schooled his face to calmness, learned to hide his fear. He learned to hide himself, so that often he passed notice. He would watch from hiding as the men beat his mother and did other things to her.

One man had been particularly brutal. He had scraggly, greasy blond hair hanging around a jowly face, piggish eyes, and a cruel, snaggle-toothed grin. He reeked of cheap booze, ripe sweat, with an underlying odor of something foul. The entire room began to stink of excrement as soon as he entered. As the woman cowered in the corner, trembling, begging for mercy, he smashed his fist into her face. The boy shivered. He didn't want to watch this time, but he was trapped in the back room and unable to flee. He had no choice but to watch the horror unfolding before him. All he could do was keep quiet.

She gave a shrill screech of pain and raised her dirty hand to her nose, which was now gushing blood. The man laughed and punched her again in the mouth. This time the boy saw her spit out a couple of teeth, some of the few she had left. She began to cry, miserably and hopelessly.

"So, bitch, are ya gonna put out?"

Still crying, the woman nodded.

"Take off yer clothes."

She slowly reached a hand to her dirty blouse, began to unbutton it. Hissing with impatience, the man stood over her and ripped her last good shirt off her. He repeated the process with her skirt, sniggering. The boy watched as the man threw his mother down on the straw mattress, sneering. Her body was misshapen, wrinkled, scarred and stained. The boy had not seen her like this recently; he hadn't realized she was so old… so used-up.

The man pushed his filthy robes aside and approached her. Then he stopped, snorted. "Turn around, bitch. On yer hands and knees."

The woman hesitated, then obeyed. The man knelt behind her and the boy could not see what was happening.

The woman shrieked in pain. "No!" she cried. She began sobbing again. The man grunted rhythmically, ignoring her cries and feeble resistance.

The boy watched in terrified fascination until finally the man slumped over the sobbing woman. He lay there a few moments, breathing heavily. For good measure, as he got up, he hit her again. "Lousy slut." He got up, pulling his clothes back into position.

The woman continued to sob softly, lying on the dirty mattress.

The boy could no longer stand it. He had no love for his mother, but this callous treatment of another human being was more than he could tolerate. He clenched his fists in anger and a noise escaped him, not of fear but anger; he was furious. No one should treat another person like that, even if she was just a cheap whore.

The man's eye lit upon the boy, and a savage grin split his face. "Hey, who're you?" he asked. "Oh well, don't matter. She wasn't good enough, so mebbe you'll be."

He approached, grinning, and grabbed the boy around the waist and lifted him effortlessly in the air as the small limbs flailed. He slammed him down on his back on the hard dirt floor; the boy's head banged so hard against the ground that lights flashed in his vision and he was momentarily dizzy. The man tore off his shirt and pants. The odor coming off of him was suddenly overwhelming. The boy flailed and fought as hard as he could, but he was small and weak. His face burned with shame at his weakness. The man didn't bother with the bed this time; panting, he rolled the naked boy over on his stomach on the dirt floor. The intense pain of it shocked the boy and he screamed.

The boy sobbed, openly now, his face smashed hard into the dirt floor, as the man assaulted him. He had given up on pride, given up on silence. He felt a deep, staggering shame that was even worse than the horrible pain. He had been soiled forever. He had been helpless, had been used; he had been a powerless thing at another human's mercy.

As the man swaggered out of the hut, the boy lay on the floor, unmoving, for a long time. Then he slowly pushed his brutalized body up to hands and knees. The shame in his mind was gradually turning into something darker, into anger and hatred, hatred that seemed too big to be contained in his small body. And there, in the dark, bloody room, he swore revenge. He swore to himself he would never be weak again, that he would do everything, anything to become strong, stronger than everyone else. He would never be under anyone's control, ever again.

XxXxXxX

Soon after that, he had begun to realize his spiritual power. He had known, even then, what it meant, and he had rejoiced. He had poured everything into developing his abilities, had sought out knowledge with ferocity, had bullied or cajoled others into teaching him a spell here, a binding there.

Then one day, a traveler had come to town. The boy watched from the shadows of a nearby building as the broken-down horse pulled a covered wagon into the marketplace. The wagon stopped at the edge of the main square, and a skinny scarecrow of an old man clambered down from the driver's seat. The boy remembered the man from the past year. People whispered things about him; they said he had power; that he had secrets that he could be persuaded to part with— for a price.

As the man busied himself with tying his horse to a hitching post and puttering around his wagon, the boy approached him.

"I hear they say you're a wizard," he said.

The old man turned. He saw a slender boy with thick brown hair hanging over dark, intelligent eyes; with pale, smooth skin and elegant features. The man's eyes narrowed, and his glance flicked up and down the boy's slim body, noted the unconscious grace with which the boy lifted a hand, brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. His eyes became calculating as he took in the boy's shabby clothes, the mark of a powerless denizen of the Rukongai.

"What of it?" he asked, his eyes darting left to right, along the street, to see who might be watching. His voice was high-pitched, with a slight whine to it.

"They say you sometimes teach others wizardry."

The man wrapped the leather reins twice around the iron post. "Not just anyone can learn those skills. You have to have innate power." His eyes flicked back to the boy's. The boy's face was calm; the man could not read anything in it. He extended his senses. The boy appeared to have negligible reiatsu; useless to him, then. At least as an apprentice. However, there were other uses to which young boys could be put. A predatory gleam shone briefly in his eyes and was extinguished.

The boy said nothing in response, but turned one elegant hand palm upwards. A moment later, a small sphere of brilliant light blossomed in the heart of his palm.

The man raised his ragged eyebrows. The edges of the sphere were remarkably sharp and well-defined. It was rare that he saw such tight control in one so young. And now he could feel the boy's reiatsu, clearly untrained, but heavy with potential. He looked around nervously for watchers. What he was about to do was officially illegal; all training of those with spiritual power was supposed to be done at the Shinigami Academy, and the shinigami did not take well to those who tried to break their monopoly on power.

He jerked his head at his wagon. "Let's go inside and talk."

Once they were both settled on the narrow bench under the taut canvas, he eyed the boy again. "So what do you want to know?"

"Everything," the boy said. "The secret roads to power. Both the light and the dark." His eyes narrowed. "They say you can go beyond what they'll teach in the Shinigami Academy."

The man cackled and leaned back on the bench, his expression calculating. "They say true. I can teach you all you've heard of and more. But the price of these secret teachings is high. How much money do you have?"

"Enough," said the boy with bravado. "Name your price."

The man snickered, then said a figure that he knew was out of reach for anyone who lived in the Rukongai, and saw the boy's eyes flare briefly with anger. "That's far more than I heard you were charging last year."

The man shrugged. "The market was different last year." He paused and looked at the boy again, and a note of greed entered his voice. "But— I might be persuaded to take payment in trade. In labor… or in other forms of payment."

He waited.

The boy considered, those dark, liquid eyes fixed on his own. "You'd want me to work for you? As an apprentice?"

"Yes." He slid closer to the boy on the bench and lowered his voice. He leaned forward, his face inches from the boy's; his nostrils flared at the man's proximity but he stood his ground. "The darkest secrets of power are not easy to come by, but the rewards are vast." He placed a bony hand on the boy's thigh, stroked gently. "You're a lovely young thing. I'm sure we could work something out." His eyes lit lasciviously.

But the boy drew back, his reiatsu flaring almost uncontrollably. His eyes burned with anger, and the air almost seemed to crackle with the force of his untrained power. No. He would never allow anyone to violate his body again, not for any price. The man glared and raised his own reiatsu. The boy felt the energy surrounding him, sensed the control the other man had that he lacked. Once again, he was going to be powerless under another's hands. Furious, he lashed out with raw power, unsure how to direct it, the only guidance his ferocious will that he would never be used again. He would fight back with every drop of his resolve. He prepared himself for the counterattack he knew would come, his eyes narrowed, his mouth grim.

But instead, the man's eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed, half-sliding off the bench. Startled, the boy jumped up, half-expecting it to be a trick, for the man to strike back as soon as he let his guard down. He stood looking down at the man, his nostrils still flaring.

There was silence in the close, dim wagon. The man did not move. His reiatsu was abruptly gone as though it had been snuffed out.

After a moment, the boy went over to him, reached out a tentative hand, placed it on the old man's chest. There was no movement.

The boy had seen enough death to realize what had happened. His heart began to pound; he drew back from the body in dread. His eyes flicked to the entrance flap. With the beginnings of panic, his first urge was to run, flee blindly.

But even as he began to rise, a calmness came over him, the coolness under pressure that would later become his greatest asset. He stopped, considered. Others had seen him enter the wagon; the authorities would hold him responsible if the man's body was found. The man, though unsavory, was still of higher status than a penniless beggar from Inuzuri. He would be charged with murder, and would be hanged. He had seen other street kids put to death for lesser crimes.

Coolly, he pondered various courses of action. Then he rose, jumped lightly down from the wagon. Calmly, he unwound the reins from the iron rail, backed the horse into the main road. A few people were scurrying along the street, but nobody paid attention to him. Then he climbed nimbly up onto the driver's seat and flicked the reins as he had seen others do. Slowly, the old horse began a steady walk forward, heading toward the main road leading out of town.

Once in the forest just beyond the outskirts of the village, he turned down an overgrown path, drove along it for many minutes, the horse clopping steadily on the hard-beaten earth. The silence around him was nearly complete other than the sounds of the wagon creaking and the horse's hooves and occasional snorts. He glanced at the ground; it was dry and hard from lack of rain and would not take tracks. When he had deemed himself sufficiently deep in the forest, he stopped and untied the horse from its traces, flicked its back again to get it to leave. It eyed him placidly, and then began to slowly walk away, back in the direction of the village. He watched it walk out of sight among the trees. When the clearing was empty, he returned to the wagon.

He stopped just inside the flap, his heart beating fast again as his eyes fell on the body of the old man. He forced himself to look away. Surely the old man had a hidden stash somewhere; money, magical tools. He began to systematically ransack the wagon, ignoring the corpse.

But after a good fifteen minutes he had found little, and was about to turn away in disgust, when he stumbled upon a hidden compartment under one of the rugs thrown down over the wooden floor. Heart pounding now in eagerness, he opened it. Inside was a stained calfskin pouch, and beneath it, a dog-eared book. The boy knew what books were, and had even learned some katakana and simple kanji earlier, but he had never read a text, had never held a book in his hands. He hefted the pouch first, and smiled when he heard the clink of coins. Then he set it down and picked up the book. He held the tattered volume in his hands with reverence, opened it.

Inside, on the frontispiece, he could make out the kanji for kidou. The demon arts. Magic. There, in his hands, in dense print, were lines and lines of secrets, unknown wealth far greater than anything else the old man possessed. Far more than anything the boy had ever seen. He recognized instantly that this was the key to his future. He glanced back at the corpse, slumped there in the corner of the wagon where he had hoped to lure a young boy to be his plaything. He felt a strong emotion rise up in his chest, choke him: guilt. Guilt at taking a life.

Looking back on it, Aizen was angry. He had been weak and pathetic then. Why should someone such as himself feel guilt at ridding the world of such a pustulent boil on the surface of the earth?

He had scurried away from the decrepit wagon, checking carefully to make sure he was not witnessed. The wagon was deep in the forest. He knew it would take a long time to find; and by the time it was discovered, no one would care or investigate the man's death. Clutching his precious book underneath his shabby clothes, he ran off silently, heading to an isolated clearing in the forest to examine his prize more closely.

Over the next few days and then weeks, as he puzzled out the closely-written text and began to experiment, his power grew by leaps and bounds. First he tested it out on inanimate objects, on rocks and sticks scavenged from the forest floor. Then, eager to see the results of his power on living beings, he captured small forest animals and tried out his new abilities on them.

Soon, he grew eager for revenge against humans. For his first experiment, he selected the man who had so brutalized his mother and himself only a few months ago.

Aizen still remembered his grim satisfaction as he ambushed the man and knocked him out easily with a kidou spell. He used his power to transport the man back to his mother's hut, where she slept in a drunken stupor from the cheap booze her son had thoughtfully provided her with the night before. There, he began to investigate the many ways he could use reiatsu against a human body.

It was his first lesson in the advantages of fine control of power. At first, he had been clumsy. His power was great, but it had been undisciplined, raw. His victim had died too quickly. His mutilated, bloody body had lain there on the dirt floor of his mother's hut, eyes staring in blank horror up at the agitated boy.

Aizen had had to go to the outhouse to throw up. He had cursed himself as a weakling. Then he went back to the hut and used one of the more advanced destructive spells to incinerate the man's body as his mother snored on. His heart was beating fast, but he was triumphant.

Later that night, in the village square, he had heard a couple of the villagers wondering where the other man had gone, and his heart pounded at first with fear, but then with a new emotion: pleasure. He felt replete with his delicious, forbidden secret.

After that, he had chosen to experiment with the village men, one by one, who had once beaten him. As his power developed, he grew more adept at using his energy to control others, to cause pain, to slowly destroy each of his enemies.

And with each experiment, he felt less and less emotion. Fear, compassion, guilt faded. He only felt dark satisfaction and amusement as his victims cowered in fear before him. His limitations fell away from him as his power grew.

The villagers grew afraid, terrified of the killings and disappearances in their midst. No one in authority cared about the deaths of Rukongai denizens; there was never any investigation from the powerful shinigami who ruled the world.

It was rumored that hollows in the area were responsible; hollows were always blamed for these types of events. The boy merely found that a convenient excuse. He himself had come across a hollow once; it had been a weak, pitiful thing. He had been afraid at first, due to all the terrifying stories that circulated in the village. But he had stood his ground and launched a low-level destructive kidou at it, and to his surprise, it had been destroyed in a flash.

It was the first time he had begun to realize how powerful he might become. Even as a child, a novice in the uses of power, he could easily vanquish one of the greatly feared monsters of his world. In that moment, he realized he need no longer fear anything.

He mostly ignored his mother now. She no longer dared touch him, already sensing something different and fearsome about him. He walked around the village now and took what he wanted. The villagers muttered, but they were afraid of the darkness they saw in the boy's eyes, and they allowed him to take whatever he wished.

He did not know exactly how old he was, but he knew his body looked about nine years old. When he saw the village men whispering about him, and heard with his kidou-enhanced hearing that a group of them were planning to ambush him in his mother's hut that night, he decided it was time to leave.

He gathered up his small store of possessions, including his precious book, and left that night without saying goodbye to anyone.

He had decided to become a shinigami.