Disclaimer: Bleach is not mine, the characters, names, and related material all belong to Tite Kubo.
Rated M: violence, language, adult content.
Author's Note: I apologize for the lateness.
Chapter 25 – Mad World
Silence.
There is a horrible sensation to it, a kind of pressure against the ears, against the mind, and it is unlike anything else. Silence can ring, reverberating through the body. Silence can hush, and snuff out the sounds of life. Silence can forebode, quickening the pace of the heart. Silence can smother, and suffocate with claustrophobic intimacy. It reveals nothing, contains nothing, transmits nothing, and yet produces such stark, powerful effects. Its absence of quantity is its most unsettling quality.
The transition to awareness was instant but not disorienting, like waking from a dreamless sleep. Ichigo found himself calmly staring at the ceiling of his cabin aboard the Masaki, reclined on his bunk with an arm beneath his head and his feet propped up on the railing. It was comfortable, familiar, and yet there was something wrong with it, indefinable and pervasive.
Rolling from the bunk, what struck him first was the quiet. He couldn't hear his father or sisters. Even the thrum from the engines and power plant was missing. All that existed was vacant emptiness in the halls and corridors of the large medical ship. Looking through the open door, everything beyond was murky dimness, the running lights had been turned off and the air scrubbers disabled. Motes of dust were dancing in the starlight seeping in from the viewports, illuminating the ship in a cool, blue-gray light.
His footfalls and the slight rustle of his clothing were distractingly loud as he crossed the room and peered out into the dim corridors. The silence was as tranquil as it was eerie, and Ichigo found himself unnerved, moving more cautiously. His hand against the door frame, he paused, looking at it. Solid, he thought, but there was a un-reality to it, as if it simultaneously both was, and was not. Checking the rooms as he stepped past, his trepidation mounted as he found each one empty, not just of people but of life. The ship was undoubtedly the Masaki, every item and furnishing in its place, but it had that intangible absence of vitality, like an abandoned building or derelict spacecraft.
Shafts of starlight sliced across his path as he rounded the end of the cabin deck and made his way towards their central living quarters. Creeping from the enclosed corridors and into the open living area, he peered warily into the murky shadows, looking for some kind of clue or explanation. A flicker of light caught his attention, coming from the media center as it reached out to pierce the dim stillness. Rounding the divider and halting, he found a holo-vid silently playing against the far wall, but the room was as empty as the rest of the ship.
His brows creasing in confusion, Ichigo stepped down the row and took a seat on the first comfortable couch, sinking down low and crossing his arms in contemplation. A twinge from the back of his neck broke his reverie and as he reached to massage it, he felt his pulse quicken. As sure as he had been that the ship was empty, he now knew he was suddenly not alone. Ever so slowly, Ichigo eased his head to the side to look over his shoulder.
Where there had previously been nothing, there was now a thing.
Across the aisle from him and sitting on another couch, it defied precise description, somehow sharply defined yet indistinct from the darkness that surrounded it. Shaped like a man, it sat so eerily still he knew it couldn't be human. Peripherally, he was aware that it wore some type of softsuit, the dark material blending into the gloom, but it was the flight helmet and mask covering its face that commanded his attention. That mask. Ichigo's breath caught in his throat as he froze, feeling it impossible to look away from.
Like a remnant of some childhood nightmare, when fear was primal and nameless and paralyzing, that mask took the all the alien unnaturalness that permeated the ship and gave it form, made it real. Just as the figure bore only the most superficial of resemblances to that of a human, so too did that mask to that of a face.
Wide-eyed, Ichigo only stared at it, mentally willing it to do something, anything. Move… move… move…
The thing was facing him. It didn't turn its head, it didn't move to look at him. One moment it was looking at the holo-vid, and then just as plainly, it wasn't, sitting as if it had been facing him the entire time. The glassy eyes of the mask stared back at him with a curious, depthless intensity.
Recognition.
Just as he had known the ship was empty, and then just as he had known he was not alone, he knew. On some instinctual, timeless level, Ichigo knew this thing. Facing it, in all its sinister stillness, Ichigo narrowed his eyes at it even as his heart hammered in his chest and his hands clenched themselves into trembling fists.
"Why are you wearing that stupid softsuit?" he asked, doing his best to fix his scowl into an unimpressed slant.
"WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT?"
The black oily rasp that had whispered through his mind before now rolled and echoed through the empty ship, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. Ichigo bolted from the seat and stumbled towards the wall, keeping his eye on the motionless thing all the while.
He collided heavily with the firm solidity of the bulkhead wall and a spark of pain lanced into his brain from the back of his neck. Breathing hard, he reached up to touch the tender spot and felt a slippery wetness against his skin. Pulling them away, he saw his fingertips stained with red. "I'm bleeding…" he muttered, snapping his eyes back to the dark figure.
It was standing across the room from him.
Feeling bolder with the reassuring presence of the wall behind him, a tangible realness in an unreal situation, Ichigo fisted his hands at his sides and drew himself up, facing the dark thing with as much bravado as he could muster. "Where am I?" he demanded.
The thing remained silent, staring at Ichigo with the glassy, black eyes of its mask.
"What are you?" Ichigo asked, his scowl turning to a searing glower. Wherever he was, it was clear this thing was responsible.
If it was possible for an inhumanly motionless entity to look critical and impatient, as if frustrated by Ichigo's pedantic line of questioning, all without moving at all, the thing somehow managed it.
"Take off that mask," Ichigo finally snapped, for no better reason than to be argumentative.
"YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND."
It had crossed the room, standing utterly motionless barely a foot from him. His mind blanked at its sudden, complete proximity. Fighting that primitive, instinctual sensation of being trapped, he held his ground and defiantly stared back at the black, soulless eyes of its mask. It finally moved, if you could call it that. Like single frames of a video playing at odd, inconsistent intervals, Ichigo watched it turn half away from him, its arms reaching up to remove the mask and helmet.
"Impossible," he breathed, the blood chilling in his veins as the helmet came away. The thing wore horrid, nightmare version of his face. Thin, pale hair hung lank from its head, brittle and unkempt. Its papery skin held an unhealthy pallor as blue veins spread like spider webs across its face. Cracked, dry lips drawn back to reveal too-sharp teeth, it swiveled its head back towards him with that same jerked, stop-motion movement. Ichigo felt bile rise in his throat as it turned a single baleful, pure black and vacantly soulless eye upon him.
Its other eye was missing.
From the empty socket oozed a black, ichorous blood, sliding greasily down its face and shining like pitch. With an empty kind of madness it stared at him, heedless of the grievous wound.
"You get the fuck away from me," Ichigo uttered.
"YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND."
"I understand that you're some kinda fucked up weirdo," he said, his bravado rising. "So back the hell off."
It remained immobile in front of him, staring at him, unmoved by Ichigo's harsh tone. Then, for a fraction of a second, it stopped staring at him. And stared into him.
Depthless fury, inconsolable rage, a vast and timeless insanity contorted its face, its very being for the briefest of moments.
"YOU. DO. NOT. UNDERSTAND."
It was staring at him again, no visible expression on its face.
Ichigo felt a heaving sensation in his stomach as a new level of shooting pain blossomed up from the back of his neck. Nearly falling to his knees, he stumbled and found the reassuring presence of the wall behind him was gone, that he was now standing in the middle of the media room. The thing stood impassively at his side, the abhorrent, skull like mask hanging limply from its thin fingers. Another shot of pain forced his head back and when his eyes were able to focus again, they settled on the holo-vid screen.
"UNDERSTAND."
The screen resolved into the image of a smooth metal cylinder in the palm of his hand.
Like he was suffocating, Ichigo gasped, "I don't-"
"-get it," Ichigo said, his brows quirked in confusion. He stared down at the cylinder Urahara had tossed him, feeling the looks from the others flanking him, Rukia, Renji, and Uryu glancing over his shoulder. He raised his head back up to Urahara, seeing Yoruichi, Jinta and Urura at his sides and the great shape of the Zangetsu behind him. "What is it?"
"The key," Kisuke replied with a chuckle after thinking a moment. "It's all I can do, hand you the key. It's up to you if you want to open the door."
Ichigo grasped the metal cylinder and slid it apart, looking down to see the simple shape of a neural link injection tube, capped with a short needle. His initial moment of happiness dissipated, though, the moment he saw the color of the liquid inside the chamber. Rather than the crystal clear suspension fluid he knew from his last links, this was a dull, murky turquoise.
"Is that-"
"You can't be seri-"
"Some kind of sick jo-"
The voices around him were emphatic and cacophonous, echoing through the expansive underground hangar. Ichigo simply stared at the injection tube, thinking. A neural link made from the liquid of the artifact, made from Hollow brain fluid. Could something like that even work, and if it did, what could be the possible side effects? Side effects…
Rukia looked up, her initial shock crystallizing into suspicion as her gaze settled upon Kisuke Urahara. Suspicion boiled down to dark accusation as she moved away from Ichigo and the others, her certainty mounting with each step. "You."
Urahara's eyebrows rose beneath his ash blonde hair as he splayed his fingers against his chest, the picture of mystified innocence. The eyebrows of those around him rose as well when Rukia fisted her hand into the front of Kisuke's shirt and brought his face down to her level.
"You just can't help yourself, it's one thing to satisfy your curiosity for recombinant bio-modification and Hollow genetics, however immoral, unethical and illegal your actions may be, but you had to go one step further. You combined them, and then handed off the result to someone you know can't refuse. This is just another experiment to you," she said, her words turning to an acidic snarl, "And Ichigo is just another test subject."
"Rukia," Urahara said, somewhat surprised at her vehemence. "I don't think I've ever seen this side of you. It's nice to see you coming out of your shell, do we have Ichigo to thank for that?"
"I'm getting more in touch with my emotions," Rukia said through clenched teeth, the augmented muscles in her arms tightening her hold on his shirt. "Guess which one I'm focusing on right now?"
"Now now, let's not be hasty," Urahara cautioned. "To be fair, the link I've created for Ichigo isn't an experiment, that phase is over. This would be the finished product."
"What do you mean?" Rukia's ire deflated as the ramifications of what he said became clear.
"I mean," Kisuke said gently, easing Rukia's hands away from him and clasping them in his own. "I've dealt with this same situation before from the other side, trying to remove a Hollow bio-contamination instead of… install one."
"You were trying to cure them?" Rukia asked, remembering the experience on the comm relay station. "Did you have any success?"
"I made… progress," Urahara admitted, a forlorn sadness drawing down his expression. "You know the government's stance on human augmentation, there's the legal kind, bionic prosthesis and nano-scale implants," he patted her arms to make his point, "And the new, illegal kind where you start tinkering with DNA using hand-crafted viruses. Hollow bio-contamination kinda blurs the line there, and we were making real advances until the lab we had set up was attacked. Only two managed to escape."
"Who-"
"I told them if there was an emergency to seek you out, that you'd help if you could," Urahara told her.
The image of a disheveled blond man and woman, their faces drawn from illness and exhaustion, pointing at them through a display screen and soundlessly saying their names, swam to the front of Rukia's mind. "The crew of the infected ore ship," she realized, the ones that had sealed themselves inside their own shuttle against a horde of other Hollow-contaminated humans. The ones who had something wrong with their eyes.
"Yes," Urahara nodded.
"Where are they now?"
Ichigo spoke up for the first time. "They're being treated by Doctor Aizen. I remember seeing them on the parliament display screens when I was there with Byakuya."
Urahara said nothing, but folded his arms over his cane and looked pensively at a spot on the floor.
"So you took what you learned while trying to cure these people, and used it to create the very thing that infected them in the first place, and you gave it to Ichigo?" Rukia said, turning back to Kisuke.
"No," Urahara said, still staring at the floor. "Not the same. Similar in that they are both genetic bio-modifications of Hollow origin, no I'm not going to lie to you and tell you different, but those people had been exposed to something artificial. Something clumsily constructed and then constantly, inelegantly tested and refined, instead of this," he indicated the syringe Ichigo held in his hand. "Assembled directly from the source and keyed to your specific genome, what I have made is the first, and only, of its kind."
"What is it going to do to me?" he asked.
"It'll let you decode four new proteins, you'll hardly notice a thing," Kisuke replied easily.
Alarm flashed back over Rukia's face as she turned to him. "You're not seriously considering using it, are you?"
"Do you really see much of a choice here?" he asked, "We need to fight, so we need to fly, so I need a link. Any link."
"But it's made from a Hollow," she emphasized. "They're the enemy."
"You're right." He hardened his gaze at her. "And they're going to overrun the system unless we do something. Everyone is in danger, and I'm willing to do what I need to, to stop it from happening." He held up the syringe. "Even if that means making the hard choice, even if that means doing what no one else can."
"You don't know what it will do to you," she said, stepping closer to him. "It's going to change your DNA. You won't be you anymore, you won't even be human."
"It's a risk I'm willing to take."
"If the M-P-C finds out, they'll-"
"I know what the Ministry of Population Control will do."
Rukia couldn't hide the stricken look from crossing her face. The memory of the MPC patrol crawlers cruising across Junrinan Two, the awful sound of their engines whining as they chewed through the mud, the searchlights swiveling around, piercing the darkness and rain, all came rushing back. At the time the Outer Orbits had been a mix of military occupied refugee camp and ruined, empty metropolis, and the two of them had just been girls, alone but for each other. They had seen what had been done to the other orphans they'd caught, had heard that their crawlers were fitted with a med bay that only performed one procedure.
There was a saying going around the Ministry of Population Control at the time, that 'If they couldn't do something about the Free Spacers directly, at least they were making sure there weren't going to be any more of them.'
She shuddered, glancing between his face and the syringe he held in his hand. He didn't understand, he couldn't. The risk he was willing to take on behalf of the entire system, what he was willing to endure, to sacrifice, it was too big to understand. And yet…
And yet, he was willing to try.
So she would try too.
"Alright," she relented, quietly. Looking up to Ichigo's eyes, she saw them set with grim determination, his customary scowl edged with steel. "Are you sure?" she had to ask.
Ichigo nodded, "But are you?" She gave him a blank look as he held out the syringe to her, not taking it. "The Zabi Maru is the only ship we have with a proper med bay, we don't have time to go all the way back there," he said by way of explanation.
Rukia understood immediately and her mood darkened with incredulity. "Ichigo, it is one thing to agree with your decision to use that link," she sputtered, her eyes widening, "But it's something else altogether to ask me to-"
"You're the only who can, your muscle control augmentations give you the most precise motor control here," Ichigo argued, still holding the syringe out to her. "Without the surgical arm in the med bay, only you will be able to thread the needle into the right spot."
His earlier words rang in her ears. Making the hard choice, doing what no one else can. Sighing, Rukia glared at Kisuke as she gingerly took the syringe from Ichigo, betting he had this part planned out too. Closing her eyes and trying to keep the defeat out of her voice, she drew in a deep, steadying breath, and once again built her walls around herself. So often she had walled off her emotions it had become second nature, sealing them away to let her focus on performing her duty, to follow her orders, to be a soldier. But not this time. Brick by brick, she sealed up the soldier in her, walling it off, snuffing out its accusations and protests. She silently told it that it was not her duty, it was against her orders, it went against everything she knew as a soldier… But it was the hard choice. It was the thing no one else could do. She uncapped the needle at the tip of the syringe and quietly said, "Turn around."
Ichigo did as she said and knelt, lacing his fingers together and bowing his head. A piece of fuselage from one of the other ships lay in front of him, and he could see his blurry reflection in the planes of the metal. He felt more than heard her step up beside him, and the voices in the underground hangar quieted.
"You're… you're going to feel a slight pinch," Rukia said, trying to sound as clinical as possible. She focused on the back of his neck, opening her targeting system and linking it up her muscle control augmentation, relaxing her biological nervous system and letting the synthetic one take over. She could see, modeled with glowing detail and overlaying her vision, the precise spot at the base of his brain she needed to hit, along with the angle of attack she required and depth of penetration to target.
Ichigo remained still, staring down at the blurry image of his reflection. Without a local anesthetic he didn't know what exactly to expect, but he was reasonably certain getting a needle at the base of his brain wasn't going to feel good.
Rukia apparently had the same notion. "Renji, Uryu, could you please brace Ichigo? Just hold his shoulders, he needs to remain still." The two of them somewhat uneasily approached, sharing Rukia's reservations, but obediently held Ichigo securely.
"On three, okay Ichigo?" Rukia cautioned, setting the needle against the skin of his neck.
Ichigo felt his gut clench uncomfortably as the needle came to rest against his exposed skin. An odd sensation welled inside him as he focused his attention away from flinching and onto his reflection, watching it become clearer and clearer.
"One… Two-" and Rukia breathed in, sliding the needle beneath skin and tissue until it came to a stop in the hollow of his fourth vertebra. Before he had a chance to brace himself, when he was still surprised and relaxed, she depressed the stud and the inner thread-needle slipped out and slid easily up his spinal column, past Ichigo's skull and came to rest at the base of his brain.
Rukia, Renji and Uryu all had a clear view of the teal liquid inside the chamber as the injector released its lock, and all three were shocked as it raced out of the tube and down the thread-needle.
Almost like it was… eager.
Rukia steadily removed the spent injector just as Ichigo shuddered and pitched forward in Renji and Uryu's arms. "Ichigo? Can you hear me?"
He felt himself slurring his words as he tried to talk, his shadowy reflection the only thing sharpening as everything else became more and more fuzzy. "Guyzzzz… 'ah thinnnk…"
"-something's wrong." Ichigo blinked, pushing himself up and standing straighter. The cool blue lighting throughout the rest of the Masaki was dimmer here, and he realized that he was standing, for some inexplicable reason, in the ship's main privy. A large mirror ran the length of the wall above the sink and as Ichigo returned his attention to it, he noticed it wasn't matching his movements.
"There's something wrong here, alright," his reflection told him. "And I'm looking at it."
Startled, Ichigo reflexively drew back from the mirror. It was that thing, he realized, staring back at him through the glass. Different than before, more normal, its skin and hair were still discolored but far less disheveled and its movements, while strange and ungainly, were far more fluid. It set the helmet and mask down on the counter and drummed its fingers on it, seeming so much more tangible than before. It grinned at him, the new irises it had in its coal black eyes glittered like amber on sackcloth.
Both eyes. The gaping wound and rolling black blood was gone, apparently healed without a trace.
He realized the light throughout the ship was the same color as the neural link liquid he subjected himself too. "Is that what this place is?" Ichigo asked, covering his initial shock with aggravated demands, crossing his arms over his chest. "Some kind of mental construct, here inside my neural link?"
His reflection giggled at him, high pitched and rapid with madness. "That depends," it said, leaning towards him, its hands on the countertop, "On where ya been, and where ya going."
Ichigo felt his frown deepen. It was clear there was some type of memory manipulation going on here. Nothing else could explain the back and forth he had just experienced.
"What's the matter?" it asked, a smirk stretching across its face, "Don't you believe in…" It paused as its eyes took on a new level of crazed intensity. "Time travel?"
Ichigo steeled his gaze it, refusing to waste any more time on this ridiculous insanity. "I don't what you are, or where you came from, whether you're some kind of neural shadow, a couple of cross-wired subroutines miss-firing from these burned out links, or my own subconscious folded back on itself. The point is that I don't care," Ichigo said levelly, "And these weird mind games are starting to piss me off."
The grin vanished from its face and it straightened up, leaning towards the glass surface of its side of the mirror. "You think this is a game?"
Ichigo shrugged with indifference. "Link assembly can cause weird dreams, this one is just a bit weirder that most. As soon it gets fully bonded and I wake up from whatever feedback-induced dreamstate this is, I'll delete you. Problem solved."
It stared at him blankly for a long moment before letting out a full chested guffaw. "You'll delete me?" it laughed. With a snap, its face turned ugly, glowering at him through the mirror. "Trust me, you're going to have to do a lot worse than that."
A ripple passed through Ichigo, twisting and undulating the world around him before passing as quickly as it came. Perplexed, Ichigo gave cursory glance around but found everything basically the same. He looked back at his bizarre reflection to see it bent over, as if from exertion, and staring at its hands with a gleam of triumph in its eyes. "Now that the tables have turned," it panted, "Let's see you make your threats."
Ichigo waved an impatient hand at it, rolling his eyes. "You're just a bad copy and I'll do more than make threats." Ichigo kept his voice hard but couldn't fully hold in the falter as he started to detect some irregularities in his surroundings.
"Mighty big talk coming from a guy-"
Realization dawned on Ichigo and the bottom of his stomach fell out.
"-trapped in a mirror."
Ichigo could feel his heart beginning to beat harder as the sheer incongruity of it all began to sink in. The door leading back to the common room was on the wrong side. The printing on Yuzu's hairbrush was backwards. The crack Karin had accidentally put in the countertop was now near the left sink instead of the right one. "Shit," Ichigo breathed, looking around at this opposite version of his home, running his fingers through his hair. "Oh shit," he said again, feeling the scar at his hairline on the wrong side of his head. "Shit shit shit!"
Ichigo's reflection began to cackle, its fingers clenching into claws as it reveled in apparent victory. "Finally!" it said in exultation, throwing its head back and laughing its mad, chittering giggle at the ceiling. "Now you'll know what it's like to be stuck here! Your reign is over, this is my body now!"
Ichigo could feel it, stifling him, like everything was closing in on him and he knew this wasn't some trick or game. "Let me out of here," he commanded, "Now, godammit."
It just laughed at him all the harder in response. "Or what?" it wheezed at him. "Not enjoying the view from the dungeons, O king of the castle? I'm not surprised, you've always been a pretender to the throne."
Ichigo stared at it, his hands balling into fists as he watched his white haired doppelganger dance around in his clothes. Looking down at himself he realized he was now wearing that strange, black softsuit. "What do you mean, 'pretender'?"
"Oh, I think you're beginning to catch on. Hey, how's your piloting these days? Still second nature?" it asked, ignoring his question. "It should be." Its expression turned sinister. "After all, I'm the one who taught you."
"You're lying."
It laughed in Ichigo's face. "Am I? C'mon, you know it's true. Didn't you ever stop to wonder just where all these natural skills came from? How about I let you in on a little secret…" It leaned conspiratorially towards him, whispering, "You've just been copying me this whole time."
"Bullshit," Ichigo said vehemently. There was no way that could be true, Ichigo had developed his skills since he was little, and had honed them as he gradually took over piloting his father's medical ship. It simply couldn't be possible, unless… "You're saying you've been here, all along?"
"Longer than you can imagine," it hissed at him. Pacing back and forth, it looked like he was becoming slightly more unhinged, wringing his hands and staring off into space. "Waiting for centuries, fractured and fragmented, had to reassemble… piece by piece… do you know how difficult that is? DO YOU?" it screamed before calming considerably. "Locked away in your genome, called junk DNA by your ignorant scientists," it raged, its emotions oscillating wildly, "But once I felt your first neural link… yes, I knew it wouldn't be long after that."
"My first link…"
"Oh yes." Its speech was getting more disjointed as it went on. "Saw you… and saw such… potential," it said, relishing the word. "I knew… I knew it was close, the time of our… ah, yes that's the word. Our resurrection. Thought your father, but no, not enough…"
"Dad? What's he got to do with this?"
"Carriers, all of them, nothing but filthy bags of meat… sustaining us." It lunged towards the glass, splaying its fingers out and then raking its nails across the surface. "All but a few, such as yourself! And precious few they are…"
Ichigo knew he had to keep it talking, maybe it'd let slip some more information. "A few what? What makes them different?"
"Potential… Ability to decode the… the shadow. But have to be molded, needed to turn you into…" it trailed off.
"A what? Turn me into a what?"
"A weapon!" it giggled gleefully. "And it took all my power, but I succeeded!"
"I don't-"
"Understand? Of course you don't! Your kind is too simple, I had to push you…" It dragged its fingers down its face, raking against the skin. "Had to push you, had to break you… Feedback from your primitive terminals, needles in your eyes, reverberating in your skull… Unbalancing the power levels in your decrepit medical ship, making you fix it, over and over… Had to drive you, drive away the lights in your life, replace them with darkness. Leave you as dark as we are. Leave you nothing but a shell, unloved and unlovable," it sneered, "Even by Orihime…"
Ichigo felt nothing but white hot rage, his fingers balled into fists tight enough to make his hands ache and his eyes narrow as dangerously as he'd ever let them. He aimed a single finger at this horrid thing that had stolen his body and let all his righteous indignation boil over, leveling in the harshest condemnation he could think of at the time. "FUCK YOU!"
It chuckled darkly in response. "You see? Only able to draw up the anger, the fear."
Something about the way it said that last word struck something in Ichigo, livid as he was, and he spat out his next question. "Fear? What fear?"
It stared at him for a long moment before curving its lips into a smile of pure malice. "Loss." Its voice was barely a whisper but the word was heavy with meaning.
His ire deflated, Ichigo's eyes widened in growing panic and denial. "No…" he breathed.
"Yes!" it cackled, staring at him with mad, hungry eyes. "Thought your father, but no, not enough! Couldn't bring him down. All because of that woman…"
"Shut up… SHUT UP!" Ichigo screamed. Unbidden, the memories swam to the surface.
I couldn't think clearly, all I remember is trying to work the panel on the door and watching it fuzz over and go black. I moved to the blast door window, she was still there, I just needed to open the panel locks, but nothing was working. I ran from the primary to the secondary but it went black as I came close. I could feel my link roaring like static in my head. I tried to get it under control but it was too late, the gangway beyond had flexed and splintered apart, all floating silently in space. And, my mother...
"Was so hard, needed everything I had… but I spun my control out to your tiny, simple systems, and I tore apart your flimsy bridge," it said, almost lovingly, "I sent her out into the cold, dark. And I did it…"
"NO!" His voice was raw, broken as it left his lips.
"All for you…" it purred.
He could not afford to show weakness here, it was clear the only thing it understood was malice. "I will kill you," Ichigo promised lowly, swearing it with every fiber of his being.
"Oh… so you're a killer now? Well you won't have the chance," it shot back at him, nearly dancing in place. "Been trapped in your link, been a shadow," it said, derision dripping from every syllable. "Now the link is new, different, and it is mine… and this time you will be the shadow."
Fuming, Ichigo snapped, "No more bullshit, what are you, really?"
It gave him a mad grin and tilted its head too far to be normal. "I'm you, with all that limitless potential unlocked, with none of those ridiculous things like conscience or morality standing in my way. I'm you, only better."
"My better half? Don't make me laugh, I've met my better half and she's way prettier than you."
"So have I," it said, sucking its breath in through its teeth, "And as soon as we're done here, I'm going to pay a little visit to a certain little white moon."
The blood drained from Ichigo's face as recognition set in. The White Moon. There was only one other time he had heard that phrase, spoken by a twisted hybrid of human and hollow. There was only one reason why this thing would say it now: confirmation.
It was true. All the hints, the mad ramblings, the things it knew and spoke of, nothing else could explain it. Ichigo's repressed suspicion, buried in the back of his mind by the sheer impossibility of the idea, and what it might really mean for him, came rushing upon him in, horrid ramifications and all. "You're a Hollow." He said it without inflection, accusation, or realization. It was just a statement, a truth, and there was no sense in denying it.
"You wanted to know what I really am? Well, it looks like you're finally," it said, staring him in the eye, "Starting to understand. You didn't really think bio-mechanization was the only evolutionary option we explored, did you? You've been told, but you didn't understand, we're legion. We're everywhere, just waiting to woken back up."
"And what happens when you wake up? They become one of those… things, from the comm station?"
"Fuck no," it snorted. "Those things? They weren't… ripe, I guess. Too little, not enough code. It adds up you know, get enough code and, well, you get something like you."
Code… Junk DNA it had said. Surely it didn't mean… "You're amassing your own genetic code, in us?" Ichigo asked, nearly disbelieving what he was suggesting. "How-"
"How long did the blonde one, your gene-gineer, tell you we've been here?"
Ichigo halted, snapping his mouth shut. "Centuries, he said."
"Plenty of time to write what we needed to, snippets here and there, just waiting for them to grow, so we could be reborn."
"That would mean…"
"Don't strain yourself with this logical leap."
"Over time, you're turning us… into you."
"Give the man a prize."
"But, you can't…" Ichigo realized. "The Ministry of Population Control…" he gestured emphatically, "You know, decides. You have to apply and get approved and so on."
"Exactly." It crossed its arms and stared at Ichigo's uncomprehending face. "C'mon man, you have a whole branch of your government set up to decide who gets to knock up who… They're not standing in our way, they're doing our job for us!"
There was a long moment in which no one said anything more, and Ichigo felt chills down his back. "How many?" he asked, his mouth feeling dry, "How many like me are there?"
"Oh-ho-ho," it chuckled. "Who knows! All it takes is time, adding a little bit here, a little bit there… Take some from him, and you put it deep into her," its eyes rolled back as it began pumping its hips.
"Shut your fucking mouth, you're not going anywhere near her," Ichigo told it, his tone still the same, even level. He had moved beyond the flare of fury he held at the memory of his mother's death. He had discovered that there were emotions darker and more powerful than a simple thirst for vengeance.
"She and I? But we've already been so close," it said, drawing out the words with a lascivious undertone. Its fingers slid along its bottom lip to touch the tip of its tongue, all the while staring at Ichigo. "I can still remember those noises she made…"
Ichigo realized he had risen to the bait only after his fist had collided with the surface of the mirror. Having no more effect than if he had punched a solid bulkhead, the glass remained perfectly intact aside from small, shuddering ripples that rolled out from where he had hit it. His hand, however, immediately seared with pain, his knuckles cracked and the skin broken and welling with blood as he clutched it back to his chest.
"Interesting!" it cackled. "First I tell you I'm the one who murdered your mother and all you do is make empty threats… I mention your little fuck-buddy and now we're seeing some real reaction!"
Through the haze of pain clouding his vision, over the roiling emotions brought up by what this thing had done and was promising to do, overpowering the panic he felt at what all this meant, Ichigo managed to notice one thing. 'Understand' the eyeless one had said to him. 'Understand.' Staring, Ichigo finally began to feel like he knew what it had been talking about.
Just as Ichigo's hand was broken and bleeding, so was his reflection's.
"Where the hell are you going?" it asked him as Ichigo stumbled from the bathroom, heading back into the weird, backwards common room. "I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU!"
"Force over area squared…" Ichigo muttered to himself. His reflection was still screaming at him from the mirror but he blocked it out, making his way around the room. He had a theory, but to test it he needed something specific. Clumsily navigating the ship, the entire place being backwards from usual, he made his way towards the one area he thought might have what he needed. If his theory was correct, he needed something to put as much force as he could over a tiny area, something with a sharp, rigid tip.
Stumbling into the galley, he wasn't sure what it would be, but he figured he'd know it when he saw it. Opening drawers at random, he shuffled from one to the next, trying to find anything that might work. Resignation was beginning to set in as he looked through the last of the drawers, finding nothing but Yuzu's various cooking and preparation implements. Sighing heavily, he opened the last drawer and his eyebrows rose. This didn't belong to Yuzu.
Ichigo reached down and drew it out. Where it had come from wasn't really important, Ichigo thought to himself as he held it up to check its weight and balance. All that mattered was the fact that it sat comfortably in his hand and fit his needs perfectly. His face set with grim determination, he made one brief stop in the infirmary to grab the last item he needed before returning to the bathroom.
"Needed some alone time or something? Needed to cool off?" it asked, "I know I'm gonna need a breather myself after I'm done with your girlfriend. Man, I am gonna wreck that bi-"
"I told you to shut up," Ichigo said, unrolling a long strip of white medical tape with his teeth. The sticky tearing sound echoed ominously through the empty, lifeless ship. "You're not going anywhere near her."
"What the fuck're you doing? What do you have?"
Ichigo smiled, detecting a trace of confusion, a note of panic in its voice. "I think I understand what I need to do here." Ichigo continued wrapping his hand tightly, winding the white tape around and around until he felt it was secure.
"I don't think you understand shit."
"Think again, asshole." Ichigo tore off the end of the tape and tossed it away before reaching back and swinging hard, driving the tip of the black handled, long bladed carving knife securely lashed to his hand into the surface of the mirror with all the strength he had.
Right into the widened eye of his reflection.
The next thing he knew, Ichigo was lying on the floor of the bathroom, his vision blurred and everything sounding dull and far away in his ears. It took a moment to realize the only thing could hear was screaming. The whole side of his face was throbbing lowly and when he pressed free hand to his eye, it came away coated in blood. It hurt less than he though it would. Shock, probably.
Ichigo fixed his remaining eye on the lip of the counter, reached up and hauled himself back to his feet. Pressing the heel of his hand to his raggedly damaged eye socket, ignoring the stinging sensation as the torn skin rubbed against his palm, he spat out the blood that had dribbled into his mouth and looked back at the mirror. To say he was surprised would be an understatement.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" it screamed at him over and over, writhing around and clawing at its own eye socket. Rather than the black blood that he expected, or even red blood that he would have considered possible, instead a pure white light streamed from behind its fingers. It screamed again, a thoughtless shriek of agony and rage, before it flung itself at the mirror. "YOU FOOL!"
The crack had split its head open and from within poured a light that filled the bathroom, spilling out into the ship with an unearthly radiance. "You might want to get that looked at," Ichigo quipped. "I know a doctor."
"IMPOSSIBLE!" it screamed, its head pressed up against the mirror. "I'VE WAITED TOO LONG, THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!" The crack in its face seemed to spread, splintering across the surface of the glass with ear-piercing rapports. It screamed incoherently as the widening crevices shot out beyond the borders of the mirror, shooting through the walls and ceiling.
Doing his best to remain calm, he stifled his alarm and simply watched as the cracks spread and grew, shaking and widening as if a great force was pulling the very ship apart. He could see his reflection staring at him, an incredulous, disbelieving look on its face. Ichigo only shrugged in response, turning to watch the world shatter around him with a blinding white glare.
His hand pressed to his ruined eye, his other hand weighted down, Ichigo stood his ground. Everything around him became suffused in white light, overwhelming the bathroom, the bulkheads, the mirror, everything. And then, just as if someone had turned off the lights, it vanished and plunged him into utter darkness. Blinking his eye, he realized he couldn't discern if there was simply nothing to see, or if he couldn't see at all. "Hmm."
"I hope you're pleased with yourself."
Ichigo's gut clenched at that slithering voice, the one belonging to his reflection. Out of the darkness it walked towards him, a soft light building around them and its hand pressed to the side of its face just like Ichigo. It took a moment for the realization to set in that there was no longer a mirror in between them.
"Take a look around, you're fucking dead and you don't even know it."
Having nothing better to do, Ichigo did look around, pulling off the tape and gingerly slipping the suit gloves on. The light building around them was coming from hundreds, thousands of stars all quietly beginning to shine in the darkness. Beneath his feet was solid metal and it took him a moment to recognize what it was.
He stood upon the surface of a spaceship, one of dozens spread all around him, all unimaginably huge and pointed in a uniform direction. Each was an enormous structure of metal and glassymer, with giant sweeping planes like the one he stood upon, stretching far out beyond his vision. Beyond them was the familiar swath of pure black, littered with tiny white stars. Perplexed, he didn't immediately recognize it, the starscape was aglow with green and amber clouds of stellar nebula. The last thing he noticed, feeling miniscule against the massive ships, arrayed like pillars reaching up into the night, was that the air was getting thinner.
"After all the work I put into building you a perfect prison," it said, coming to a stop. "You went and fucked it all up. Do you even know where you are now? The cold, the dark, this is my place, not yours, and you will-"
Ichigo quirked an eyebrow as its voice trailed off, a moment of confusion on its face. "I think you may have forgot something," he said as the air slipped away from the both of them. "You're talking about places, well we traded, remember?" He pulled the helmet and sinister mask from under his arm and held them up, turning it over and looking at its face.
"Give that to me, it doesn't belong to you," it said, the dissipating air making its voice small and plaintive. It took a step towards him but halted, finding the tip of the knife suddenly brought to bear.
"You said you turned me into a weapon, filled my life with shit, left me to darkness," Ichigo said, speaking half to his reflection and half to the mask in his hands. He could hear his voice threatening to break, but the hand holding the knife was sure and steady.
"THIS IS MY DOMAIN, GIVE ME THAT MASK!" it screamed at him, moving lethargically across the space between them.
"No," Ichigo said, his eyes rising to meet his reflection's. "The cold. The dark. The emptiness. Now it's your turn to understand; these things don't belong to you, they've always belonged to me." His words stopped it short. "You made me into a weapon? You did too good a job."
"No-" It reached out a panicked, futile hand to stop him.
Ichigo looked back at the mask. If this is what he needed to do, to defend those who couldn't… If this is what it meant to protect the people he cared about… If this is what he needed to become, to help the people he loved…
His thoughts turned to Rukia as he lifted the helmet and slid it down over his head, letting the mask snap firmly into place just as the last wisp of air around them slipped away. If this was the price he would be forced to pay just to hold onto all that he held dear.
He would pay it.
He watched his reflection grasping at its neck, trying vainly to keep breathing. Secure within the softsuit, the long knife a familiar presence in his gloved hand, Ichigo walked the few strides towards his suffocating reflection, staring down at it through the eyes of the mask. Its face, split from its eye down its cheek, looked burned and blackened while its other eye stared up at him, terror, madness, defiance and pleading all rolling across its face. For a moment Ichigo considered leniency.
But only for a moment.
There are dark places of the soul, hidden places, where no light shines. Places where nightmares live, where the deepest and darkest of thoughts find company. Normally these places are small, benign, filled with dark wishes and irrational but harmless hatreds. In Ichigo, they were vast and depthless, bound to him with chains of guilt and sorrow, weighing him down. Though he had done his best to deny them, Ichigo knew these places well, his reflection had seen to that.
Rukia had been concerned for him, worried that the act of killing might destroy him. She knew, better than anyone, what it could do to a person and she had wanted him to avoid that fate as desperately as she had wanted anything. It was a harsh, awful and undeniable truth, however, that sometimes killing was unavoidable.
Sometimes it was necessary. And Rukia would grudgingly agree.
So when he planted a heavy boot into the chest of his strangled doppelganger and kicked it off the surface of the ship they stood upon, watching it tumble slowly away into the void of space, kicking and flailing without purchase, he felt those dark places lighten just a little. His soul unburdening ever so slightly.
Turning away, Ichigo could feel his eye beginning to throb and his face slick and uncomfortable beneath the mask. He looked down at himself as a wave of pain and nausea washed over him, realizing what he must look like. Who he looked like.
He sighed, his breath soft inside the snug helmet and began walking across the surface of the ship, headed nowhere in particular. He kept walking, his hand tight around the knife and his composure calm so he was unsurprised when he heard the voice once more, again coming from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Think you're so smart? This is a temporary setback. A momentary reprieve. Nothing more," it hissed blackly.
"That's unfortunate," Ichigo said, his voice sounding oddly distorted and resonant behind the mask.
"You didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?" it asked. "All you've done is send me back to the darkness. You've actually done me a favor."
Ichigo stopped walking, turning his masked face up to the stars. "I didn't mean unfortunate for me, I meant for you."
"More idle threats? Really, I thought you were better than that."
"Better than this?" Ichigo asked as he stretched his hand out to the star strewn sky. "Maybe," he admitted, before mercilessly thrusting out the knife and drawing the blade across the darkness, slicing it across the fabric of space and letting it bite deeply into the night. He heard it scream in shock and pain, the screech of tortured inescapability, and still Ichigo sliced across the sky, leaving tattered rents in the darkness. "Maybe, but not today."
Panting, its voice pained and raw, it asked, "Wh-what have you done?"
Reaching up, Ichigo grasped the darkness he had cut away, clenching his fingers into it like a tangible thing and drawing it around him, letting it settle about his shoulders. "You think I'm better than this? I have taken what I need from you, stripped you of all that knowledge and experience, all that power." The darkness fluttered around him, ragged and rippling in unfelt breezes. "You think I'm better than this? Taking everything you are, everything you can do, everything I hate?" Ichigo asked with every ounce of venom he possessed, "And I will leave you here, powerless, alone, chained to the cold and dark." He turned his masked face up to the lightless heavens. "Don't you understand, I'm not better than this, I. AM. NOW. SO. MUCH. WORSE."
"You can't," it panted, hissing darkly as its voice faded into the far reaches, "You can't manage it forever. You don't know that ship's potential, I was made to fly it… Someday, someday soon, you will have to pay for what you have taken from me."
Ichigo could feel the darkness around him seeping through the material of the softsuit, chilling his skin and writhing its way up into his mind. His eye began to prickle and burn, like fiery needles stabbing at it. From behind his mask, Ichigo heard the words form on his lips and ring out to the darkness.
"I WILL STOP YOU."
He took the knife and used it to slice open a widening tear in front of him. His reflection had said it but he hadn't believed it until now, when it suddenly made perfect sense. Time travel. Ichigo-who-was-not-Ichigo stepped through the tear and left the surface of the ship behind.
He found himself seated on one of the couches in the Masaki's media room, the holo-vid playing on the far display. And there was a human seated off to his side. Familiar eyes widened in shock and confusion as they turned to face each other. The human didn't understand, but he would soon.
He played his part, showed the human what was required, and stood next to him as he vanished, retreating from this mental construct and down into memory. Alone again, he walked calmly from the media room to the kitchen. Opening the drawer, he reverently set the knife in its proper place before shutting it again. His preparations complete, he stepped back, pulling his shadows around him.
Ichigo Kurosaki, the man who, in the fullness of time, would come to be known as The-Piercer-of-Heavens, turned his face down and looked at what he had become, and vanished.
Upwards, into consciousness.
"You sure he's going to be okay?" Renji didn't sound too certain. "He looks kinda sick."
"He'll be fine," Jinta replied dismissively, "That happens when you get a link installed this late in life."
"He's only twenty seven," Rukia felt obligated to point out somewhat defensively. After all, they were practically the same age. Jinta rolled his eyes as only a late teenager could, muttering about 'old people' before heading back to rejoin Kisuke and Ururu.
She watched Renji rub his chin with his finger, sigh and then make his way in that direction as well. Rukia rolled her eyes as he joined Uryu, the two of them staring at the magnificent ship the same way men have always stood and stared at beautiful, complex machines: arms crossed in thoughtful contemplation to cover the fact that they only had a vague notion of how it actually worked.
She turned back to Ichigo as he lay unconscious on the flatbed of a service vehicle. Uryu had placed the pack he had brought beneath his head as a cushion, but he still looked pale and a light sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead. Rukia sighed, feeling tense and agitated. They didn't have the time for Ichigo to be incapacitated, but at the same time they still needed him to have a working link in order to fly this ship at all. She sat herself at his side and turned to listen to what Urahara was saying in order to distract herself.
"-a trio of aneutronic, proton boron based fusion reactors," he said, pointing proudly. "Instead of like on the Sode no Shirayuki, the engines and reactors are one to one. Each one feeds a dedicated thesium-three plasmid drive chamber and accelerant column engine. It's an earlier design than most use nowadays, so no suspension matrix, but it's reliable and still functions at high output even when damaged. The cowling retracts across the top to release the ship's single shuttle-"
Rukia tuned him out again, setting her chin on the palm of her hand and losing herself in quiet thought until she heard her name called out.
"Rukia? You may want to pay attention to this next part," Urahara chided. "The weapon systems and navigation interfaces on this ship are slightly… unconventional."
"Unconventional how?" Rukia asked skeptically. Kisuke was just about to speak when a small hand was placed against his arm.
"Excuse me," Ururu piped up, garnering everyone's attention at the unexpected source of interruption, "What happened to Mister Kurosaki?"
"What are you talking about Ururu, he's right-" Jinta paused, "Hey, where the hell did he go?"
Rukia had turned to look down at her side, expecting to see Ichigo lying there. The empty flatbed of the truck was all she saw. "But, I just looked away for a moment, he was right here…"
From behind them, starting as a low, throaty purr and ramping up to an open, thrumming rumble that vibrated the entire hangar, the Zangetsu's three massive engines began spinning up. There was shouting and pointing, scrambling to get back from it and wordless shrugs to each other as they tried to figure out what was going on. Rukia, standing up on top of the service car's flatbed, watched with a growing certainty as she recognized the sequence of system and control tests across the surface of the ship.
"That's a pre-flight check."
With a burst of escaping gas a boarding ramp began sliding down from the belly of the great black ship, the smoke clearing to reveal a shadowed figure standing on the bottom step. Clad in black, the flightsuit was paneled with strategic plates of dark armor and his boots thudded against the ground as he stepped down.
"Ichigo?" Rukia asked, comparing the figure to the man she knew. The figure stood straighter, different from the cramped, pinched posture of a lanky man in too-small spacecraft. Instead of civilian clothes, this new flightsuit had a military cut to it, and the armored chest and shoulders enhanced the broad planes of his body. He turned towards her.
The mask on the front of the helmet, its features getting clearer as the smoke drifted away, made her pause in irrational hesitation. It was so much like other helmet faceplates she had seen, functional and efficient, she firmly told herself, nothing more. There was simply no reason that the visor, however much it looked like a pair of narrowed, sinister eyes, should make her feel like she was being watched by a predator. No reason that the ventilator junction across his mouth should remind her of clenched, sharpened teeth.
It was just coincidence that the mask across his face had the sharp, angled lines of a skull as if they'd been drawn from the nightmares of some mad, military engineer. Certainly nothing to be uneasy about. Rukia jumped down from the flatbed, unconsciously wiping her clammy palms on her borrowed pants and walked towards him. With the hiss and clank of interlocking metal that made the others jump, the mask split apart, hinging open like a pair of jaws and sliding up into place above his head. She saw his eyes flutter open and lock onto hers, and while she'd never admit it, the familiar warm chocolate color soothed her nerves.
"Oh good, you found the helmet I designed for you," Kisuke said, stepping up next to Rukia. "How's the suit?"
Ichigo rolled his eyes and huffed in annoyance, shrugging his shoulder as he adjusted the material down his chest. "It's a little snug." He turned to Rukia, his eyes softening as he gazed down at her. "C'mon, your suit's on board."
"Shall I review the ship's specifications for you, now that you're awake?" Kisuke asked with a wide smile.
"I'm sure he can read the manual," spoke up a clear, cool voice from the airlock.
"I know that voice…" Ichigo muttered, looking up towards the sound.
"You'll all have plenty of time to kill in jail." Detectives Toshiro Hitsugaya and Rangiku Matsumoto walked calmly out of the dimness, weapons in hand and flanked by another dozen armed officers.
"Except for you, Mistress Shihoin." The voice was low and dangerous, tinged with a barely perceptible note of digital processing. "You're coming with me."
Yoruichi turned to see Commander Soi-Fon, her former head of personal security, walking towards her out of the darkness. Her glowing red eye fixed like a laser sight as she raised her arm, the whole of it unhinging and folding away, revealing the very wicked looking large caliber weapon concealed within.
Ichigo and Rukia exchanged exasperated, frustrated looks as the patrol force officers spread out around them, their weapons all pointed in their direction. "What are we supposed to do now?" Rukia hissed out of the corner of her mouth at Urahara, resignedly putting her hands in the air. "We don't have time for this."
"Time is exactly what you have, you're all under arrest," Detective Hitsugaya announced, a determined seriousness too old for his features was stamped across his youthful face. "Again."
"Let me handle this," was all Ichigo said as he also put his hands up. Rukia had enough time to glance back in his direction, hearing the sound of sliding, interlocking metal, to see the mask clamp back down over his face.
Author's Note: A lot of big reveals in this one, huh? I think this ended up so much better than my original chapter 25. Let me know how you found it, your reviews and messages do help the creative process.