Heyoooooo! In a fit of restlessness, I decided to take requests for Wacky AUs on my Tumblr. All the slots filled up pretty quick, so if this is something that interests you, please consider following me at recurring-polynya !

Anonymous asked:
Request: RenRuki; Mad Scientist!Renji shocks Frankenstein Monster!Rukia with electricity to test the endurance of Mikasa's heart

I am not quite sure who you mean by Mikasa- I am guessing either Masaki or Hisana? I really enjoy making Renji into Byakuya's beleaguered minion in any universe, and I was extremely charmed by the idea of the latter, so that's what I went with. I supposed this is a little less "Mad Scientist" and a little more Ticked-Off Postdoc, but a crumbling castle on a moonswept cliff? In this economy?

CW: Some detailed discussion of building a monster out of body parts. It's not intended to be scary or gross, but just wanted to be on the safe side.

I should have finished my dissertation, Abarai Renji thought to himself, irritably rubbing at the nicotine patch under the collar of his shirt.

Education-in-perpetuum was a rich kid's game, though, and when he'd had to choose between a paying entry-level gig at Kuchiki Biotech or a continued monk-like existence grading freshman papers and scrubbing out the autoclave, he'd followed the money. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, working in industry. Eating food that didn't come with a seasoning packet, living in an apartment that had both heating and air-conditioning, the indescribable luxury of a monthly transit pass. Yeah, it stung a little when Kira and Hinamori sent selfies of themselves at that conference in Berlin, and later, in their stupid graduation get-ups, but after seven years of working his ass off, of being on time every day, of covering his ink and minding his manners, Renji had been noticed by Kuchiki Byakuya himself, the reclusive CEO of the company.

"You were a student of Dr. Aizen Sousuke?" Kuchiki had asked, his cold grey eyes skipping past Renji's carefully knotted tie and spotless lab coat to linger on his bandana and the cover-up smudges that protruded from beneath it. "The cephalopod neurophysicist?"

"That's correct."

"His work on artificial chromatophores was stunning."

Right. That.

"Er, the camouflage stuff wasn't my area of interest, but I have a couple of friends in that area if you're-"

"You studied nervous system regeneration. But you did not graduate."

Renji had tried not to look surprised, because his supervisor had warned him that Byakuya liked to try and surprise people and then judge them for being surprised. Byakuya had probably just dug up his resume from HR prior to this interview. "That's right. Well. About the nervous system thing. I did graduate, just, y'know, ABD. That's not even true, I wrote about half a dissertation. Maybe two-thirds." His mouth snapped shut. Kuchiki Byakuya definitely did not want to hear about his two-thirds of a dissertation.

"I read your article in the Journal of Zoological Neuroscience, the one about using a donor octopus brain to reanimate a dead specimen? I assume you wrote it. You were listed as second author, but it was not rife with Dr. Aizen's usual bloviations. It was excellent work."

Renji had failed in his attempts to keep from looking surprised.

"I am starting a special project that could use a man of your expertise. Dr. Shirogane spoke well of your time here, and felt that you were ready to take on the role of primary investigator." Byakuya looked at his extremely expensive watch, as though he were already getting bored of this meeting. "It is a small project, a one-man project, and I am afraid it will not produce any sort of publishable results. In fact, I will require you to sign a number of non-disclosure agreements, should you accept. But it is a very important project to me, personally."

Renji could still remember the excitement, the feel of his heart stuttering in his chest. He imagined telling Kira and Hinamori about the personal project he was doing for the wealthiest biotech entrepreneur in Japan. He felt smart. He felt important. He felt like industry was finally paying off for him.

Two days later, he found out that this project involved grave-robbing.

It turned out that Kuchiki was a widower. His wife had been a kind, beautiful angel who had died of complications from cystic fibrosis at the tender age of 34. Despite everything, her heart has been very strong at the time of her death. So Kuchiki kept it, y'know, like a normal person. And then he found one of his employees, a guy with big muscles and no family and a lot of student debt, and asked him to make a new body to put that heart in.

That was three years ago. Since then, Renji had acquired his own sub-basement laboratory and a used pick-up truck. He had a lot of middle-of-the-night meetings with Kuchiki, where he got used to delivering absolutely deranged progress reports in a calm and conversational tone. He'd taken up smoking again, but then he had to quit because Kuchiki didn't like the smell. He stopped seeing most of his old friends, in favor of his fabulous new friends, like Isane, the nervous assistant mortician at the hospital, and Hisagi, who worked down at the funeral home and drove a hearse like it was a Shelby Cobra. His new best drinking buddy was a guy named Akon, who worked over at Kurosutchi Heavy Industries and was building some sort of cyborg daughter for his creepy boss.

And now he had her.

Maybe she'll turn out to be better than a dissertation, Renji thought, contemplating the girl-thing floating in an antifreeze bath in his sub-basement lab.

She was small, in part because the original Hisana had been small, but also because regrowing the nervous system had been the hardest part, and the less he had to grow, the better.

At first, he'd put a fair amount of effort into making her look like Hisana, but Byakuya never seemed to give a crap about stuff like that, so Renji started to take a few liberties here and there. An athlete's limbs (well, more like three different athlete's limbs) gave her a lean and powerful build, instead of the wispy slenderness of her predecessor. He'd been very picky about the eyes, but his patience had paid off when he scored a stunning pair from Ishida, a bitter med student who had a part time job in the university's dissection sample acquisition department. They were deep blue, nearly verging on purple, like a starless sky. Renji wasn't very good at suturing at first, and the big, clunky stitches that held her mismatched parts together were a little jarring. Renji had come to rather like them, though. She wasn't a perfect, flawless angel. She was a pile of lost potential, cobbled together and given a second chance, and he liked that she wore that openly on her skin. If she didn't like it, well, he could always offer to take her down to his tattoo place.

The only thing Byakuya had objected to was the brain.

It was a criminal's brain, or at least that's what Byakuya said. The brain had belonged to a teen girl who'd been caught shoplifting, and in her attempt to make a break for it, darted into traffic. It was extremely fresh, though. The girl died in the hospital and Isane called him right away. By the time Byakuya even found out about it, Renji already had the brain nestled in among the little baby human-octopus hybrid nervous system he'd been growing, so there was nothing to be done. Renji had assured Byakuya it would be fine, she wasn't going to remember anything about her old life anyway. He did not mention that he'd done a fair bit of petty theft in his youth, and he'd turned out… well. Never mind.

He'd turned out to be an insane person, actually. A person who flaunted the rules of ethics and nature. He was an actual, real-life, mad scientist (ABD). Well, assuming all this worked.

In the morning, Byakuya was expecting a demonstration. The demonstration. The part where Renji pulled a lever and sent enough voltage surging through that precious little Kuchiki heart to bring Byakuya's new sister to life.

He'd run and re-run all the individual organ tests. Reviewed his check list three times. Read and re-read all his notes. It was either going to work, or it wasn't. If it worked, he was a genius, a mastermind. Kuchiki would give him a pat on the back and a big bonus and he was also going to start addressing Renji as Doctor Abarai, dissertation be damned.

If it failed, Renji was going to be lugging his belongings to the curb in a cardboard box.

It was now 2:16am.

If he went home, he'd just stare at the ceiling for four hours, but at least he would be able to shower before he had to face his moment of doom.

You could just do it, he realized. Pull the lever. Pull it right now.

Byakuya would be pissed, of course, he wanted to be there for the Big Shock, but if it worked, he'd be so happy to have a living, breathing, undead sister that he'd probably overlook Renji jumping the gun. If it didn't work, Renji would have those four hours to troubleshoot.

The more he thought about it, the better the idea sounded. He honestly wasn't real sure what kind of mental capabilities, if any, his monster girl was going to have. If she woke up spitting and clawing, he was okay with that, but Byakuya might not take it so well. Yeah, it definitely made good sense to give her a boot up now, so there were no surprises in the morning.

Renji stood up, and strode over to the portable generator he'd rigged up over the weekend. His hand hovered over the switch. He was gonna do it.

No.

In a minute.

He walked back over to the cold tank and plopped down in the chair sitting next to it, where he often sat when he had Serious Thinking to do. She floated serenely an inch under the liquid, her pale skin tinted blue, her hair floating in a cloud around her face. The cold was necessary to keep her organs in stasis, and it's not like she could feel it, but he felt a little bad about it anyway.

"Hey, there," he said softly. "It's me. Renji. We've been through a lot, you and me. I'm gonna turn you on, in a minute. I'm not sure how it's gonna go. I've been kind of a screw-up my whole life, but you seem pretty perfect, so may we'll even each other out." He chewed the inside of his cheek. "Another guy is gonna come by in the morning. He's rich and powerful and has, like 17 cars. He's gonna be your brother, and if you can be a convincing enough person, he's gonna treat you like his sister and you'll be set for life. But I want you to know that even if you're a failure, even if you try to eat my face or something, that I always liked you. Hopefully, I'll still get to see you a lot. But if not… I just wanted to let you know that I'm only giving you up 'cause I gotta, not 'cause I want to." He breathed out through his nose. "Kuchiki's probably gonna give you some flowery princess name. He's never told me. But a while ago, I started thinking of you as 'Rukia.' I don't really know where it came from. I think it means 'light.' So if you don't like whatever name he gives you, you always got that one to fall back on." He slapped his knees and stood up. "Enough of this! It's time for you to get up."

Once again, Renji stood, gripping the on switch in one sweaty hand. "Here goes nothing," he declared, and flipped it.

First, there was a hum, which gradually raised in pitch until his ears rang. The needle on the voltage gauge climbed steadily. A few wisps of Renji's hair began to stand on end. Rukia's body bucked.

And then, with a loud crack, all the lights went out.

Of all the things he had double and triple checked, the power supply to the generator had not been one of them. Renji groaned, and scrolled through his phone, trying to find the stupid flashlight app. He only had 6% battery, which meant it was going to last about sixteen seconds. Fortunately, his lab was on an isolated circuit, so hopefully, he hadn't knocked out power anywhere else in the building.

He had his phone pointed the wrong way when he turned the app on, and it immediately blinded him. "Ah, crap!" he exclaimed.

As he was blinking the stars out of his eyes, he heard a splash and he realized that he might have actually managed to bring Rukia to life before the generator died. He dashed over to the bath frantically. If she tried to get her own oxygen mask off, she might drown. Renji scanned liquid with his flashlight, but it was murky with bubbles. He couldn't see anything. Had she sunk down to the bottom? He was practically leaning over the tank when he felt a hand on his arm that was so frigid that it burned, even through his lab coat and the shirt beneath it.

Slowly, Renji panned his already-dimming flashlight around, keeping it pointed at the floor, in part, so he didn't blind her as he had himself, and in part because… well, because…

"Hi," he said, as a pale face swam into view.

"Hi," she repeated in the exact same inflection.

She could talk. She had speech, or at least repetition abilities. Renji wanted desperately to take notes, but he was frozen. "How do you feel?" he asked.

Those big, dark blue eyes blinked at him. "Cold," Rukia replied.