(Reviews will be used for turkey stuffing)
It was dark all around. Everything was so alien. Where had everyone gone?
There he was, strapped tightly to the operating table. His arms and legs bound, the bright halogen spotlight aimed and hovered over him, illuminating every action he made. Daunting eyes watched him squirm, watched him struggle to free himself, but did nothing to aid his escape from this terrifying ordeal. Screams and pleading did nothing to change their apathetic glares into sympathetic ones. He was merely a test subject to them; any remorse in their actions, or thought of friendship was thrown out of the window. If he had pores, he would be sweating bullets right about now. If he had a digestion system, he would have…well…you know…
"P-please…I'm begging you…" he attempted to reach their humanity again, hoping that he could bring them back to their senses. "What about all of the good times we had…? The laughs and smiles we shared? I'm your friend, aren't I?" Several of them looked at each other suddenly. Taking a deep breath, his hopes were dashed as their actions were sped up two fold. "HEY!! What's the big idea, you JERKS!!?" Squeaking again as he struggled against his restrictions, the lion plushy growled and relented to his instincts; his futile attempt to gnaw off his cotton-stuffed arm was countered with a flick against his button nose. "OW!" he yelped against the relentless attack.
"Oh, give it a rest, you washed up chew toy…" one voice groaned. "Can't you just stop whining already? This is probably going to be the only time when you're actually useful, you know…" arching an eyebrow with the utmost confidence radiating from her crisp blue eyes, the young teenage-looking girl brushed a hand through her blonde hair, which draped just over her shoulders. Wearing a light pink v-neck sweater over a purple blouse, she finally rested her hands on her hips, which was dressed in the cloth of a knee-length matching skirt. "You really should've understood that by now."
"Just because I can't teleport, or have crazy hallucination powers doesn't mean I'm useless!" the plush screamed back. If it weren't for the leg and arm cuffs, it definitely would have gone flying off the table to attack her. "I'm here on the home front, keeping a watch on the kids and making sure that help gets to where it needs to go! That's a lot more than you can ever say you've done, you hussy!"
"Hus-hussy!?" A vein quickly popped out of the blonde girl's forehead, and she lunged to tear apart the restricted Kon. "Why you little…" she herself growled out angrily and in futility, as the two larger gentlemen easily held Ririn back from attacking the lion plushy. "When I get my hands…on you…l-let me at him!!" she demanded.
"Please, Ririn, try to keep calm…" dressed in a snazzy suit and wearing one large circular monocle piece over his right eye, one of the gentlemen chuckled nervously over the present argument. "…don't make Nova send you away!" His purple top hat tipped slightly on his head, messing up the blonde and black locks of hair that he had so painstakingly "permed" for his appearance.
"…" the gigai clad mod-soul named Nova kept silent. Simply restraining one of the girl's arms took two of his, keeping the red-haired gentleman from being able to zip up his mask in a stressful situation like this. His furry leather jacket was getting quite ruffled from Ririn's crazed attempt to draw cotton.
"You're lucky that they tied me up!" Kon continued to heckle her, "Or I'd have…"
"Oh yeah!? Well…"
"Bring it on, sister…!"
"Now, now, everyone; no need to get so hasty!" Walking into the room with a wide smile on his face, the green and white stripped hat wearing man finally made an appearance after being so late. A black shihakusho was loosely draped over top his dark green kimono as he approached the four mod-souls, waving a single paper fan as he got closer. Following closely behind him, a much larger—and very muscular—man wearing a small pair of rectangular framed glasses and an apron over a white short sleeved shirt carried a single velvet pillow. As large and intimidating as the mustached man was, it was a bit of a ridiculous sight to see him handle such a small thing.
The squabble ended as quickly as it started; the three gigai wearing mod-souls stepped back and lowered their heads over the fact of embarrassing themselves in front of their creator. Kon however, wasn't quite as reclined to settle the argument. "Yeah, that's right! I win!" he snickered with the grace of a schoolyard bully, "I-" a single wooden frame smacked against his head, eliciting yet another howl from the lion plush.
"Now then, shall we begin the procedure?" Urahara, ignoring Kon's pained cry, reopened the wooden frame of his paper fan as the giant named Tessai arrived while still holding the pillow. Placed upon it, a single round green orb of a gikongan sat in the middle.
"But, wait…." Kon whined out again, "Why the heck does it have to be me!?"
"Well…" closing his fan once again, Kisuke Urahara put on a thoughtful face as he tilted his head in thought. Despite all of this, the green bucket-hat stuffed over his blond hair shadowed his eyes, retaining the look of a mischievous deviant. "I can't test any of the other mod-souls, since we need their skills to track down the main culprit…" At this, Ririn stuck her tongue out at Kon, who frowned and returned the favor with the red piece of cloth in his mouth, "…and testing on a human is just out of the question…"
"Oh, so you're saying that testing on animals is just dandy to you!?" Kon exclaimed, sounding somewhat appalled by Urahara's explanation. "So what about building another gigai? Or just get some other stuffed doll?"
"We tried that too…" the man countered the argument, "but it seems that with the way it was engineered, this particular mod-soul can only be placed into living people…but as I said before, that's out of the question." Tessai, who suddenly appeared next to Urahara, wordlessly produced a Chappy bunny plush toy in one hand, and the green gikongan pill in the other. Placing the pill into the doll's mouth, he shook his head as the green ball refused to react as any normal gikongan would have. "Although it's a fairly simple matter to reverse, I'm afraid we just don't have the time…" Urahara feigned a sigh as Tessai approached from behind again, presenting the pillow and placing it onto the operating table. "I guess living things will have to do, ne?" suddenly smiling, the blonde man unceremoniously took the pill and shoved it toward Kon's mouth.
"No…way!" Kon tilted his head out of the way, causing Urahara's first attempt to miss. He dodged the next few more times, somehow managing to maneuver just in time even while restrained.
"Hmmm…" the Shinigami-turned-shop-keeper pondered his next move, scratching his chin as he did so. Suddenly, he opened up his mouth in a gasp, and smiled widely. "Oh, Rangiku, so nice of you to join!" he waved beyond Kon's field of vision, causing the plush to strain and turn his head to see.
"The Valley of the gods is here!?" Kon exclaimed with wide eyes and an exuberant tone in his voice, "Whe-" his mouth suddenly stuffed with Urahara's hand, he gagged and attempted to cough out. The man's hand though, was quite tightly cupped over Kon's mouth, keeping the mod-soul from spitting out the pill until its movements gradually slowed down to a stop and his eyes closed.
"Hmmm…?" Urahara slowly removed his hand, causing Kon to snap wide awake, and spit the gikongan out. With the skills of a ping pong master however, the blond man smacked the pill back in with the wooden frame of his fan, and watched as the doll choked into unconsciousness once again. Leaning in close, Urahara watched suspiciously if the doll was faking a second time.
Opening its eyes slowly, the lion plush tiredly groaned out as it looked around at its surroundings. With a sharp hiss, it squint its dark button eyes because of the bright overhead light, and immediately turned its glance to the side, staring right back to the blond man in front of it. It blinked several times, not being able to recognize the face at first. "Did it work, then…?" Ririn, curious about the procedure, tilted her head to the side to catch a good view, as the other two mod-souls tried to tip toe over Tessai's large frame.
Seeming to have recognized his face, the lion plush opened its mouth as if to say something. "K-kazu…?" it asked in a drastically different voice, most notably a feminine one. Suddenly, its eyes focused more, now realizing that the blonde man in front was not who it thought it was. "...no…who are you?" the female voice demanded.
"Ah, so you're the mod-soul, hmmm?" he replied in an apathetic tone, grinning over the success of his hypothesis. "So…do you know where to find him?" Urahara countered her question with his own.
"…?" the lion plush furrowed its eyebrows for a moment, before scowling back at him. "I…have no idea what you're talking about! Now, tell me where I am!" she demanded, straining against the restraints. "Eh?" ceasing its efforts to escape, the possessed doll looked over its limbs, and with wide eyes, shrieked in girlish terror. "W-what happened to my beautiful arms!?" it exclaimed, and it looked downward and shrieked even louder. "What the hell happened to my hot body!?" Devastated by this revelation, the now 'female' Kon stared at the five people standing around the table, looking for some answers. "Who the hell's the one responsible for putting me into this dopey stuffed doll!?"
"Oi, I'll let you know that this body is so eye catching to the ladies, that I have to beat them away with a stick!" a familiar whine of a more masculine—though by how much was quite uncertain—voice that came out of the doll's mouth.
"K-kon…?" Ririn asked, taken by surprise that she heard the other mod-soul's voice.
"What? No way! I'm Suzume!" the female voice shouted out from the doll's mouth, looking quite angry for being mistaken for someone else. "Who would honestly walk around with such a stupid name like that!?"
"It's not my fault!" Kon whined back, "Tell me, don't you think that 'Kai' would've been such a cooler name for me?"
"W-what's going on!?" confused, Cloud holding his head between his hands exclaimed in confusion. Adjusting his monocle, he watched as the doll began to argue with itself.
"Such an annoying chick!" Kon complained to the others, "Where is she, anyway? She better be hot!" swinging his head about, he looked around the operating table in search of the other voice with which he had been arguing with. "Come on, where is she?"
"Are you serious?" Suzume arched the doll's eyebrows upward in sheer disbelief, "Are you honestly that stupid?" Taking a pause from bickering, the doll noticed Urahara's close proximity to it as he looked over with his eyes, merely inches away. "Hey, give me some space, buddy!"
"Yeah, back off! I'm trying to have an argument here!" Kon added, but suddenly gasped upon some realization. "N-no way…" he shuttered breathlessly, as the eyes of the others reflected the sentiment, making it worse for him to deny what was happening to him for much longer. "…"
"Kon, now…calm down…" Cloud tried to raise his hands reassuringly, as Ririn and Cloud watched on with astonishment, and Urahara and Tessai stared observantly.
"Interesting…it seems that the effects are quite different when possessing a doll that already has a mod-soul in it…" the former president of the Shinigami Research Institute commented on the results of his experiment.
"P-p-'possessed'!?" Kon finally screamed out, and struggled against his restraints even more and in a more crazed fashion. "Help me! I'm possessed!!" again, he tried to gnaw his arm off in a vain attempt to free himself. "Gah!!" he sobbed out when he realized that his teeth were blunt and useless in cutting anything, "Somebody help me!!"
"Hey, cut it out!" Suzume screamed back, quite irritated by Kon's screaming, "You're really starting to piss me off!!"
"Quick! Get a phone book, and call an old priest and a young priest! If they refuse to come, tell them that 'money isn't an object'!!"
Author's Notes: In case you don't remember, the crew managed to snatch Suzume's gikongan and were researching it around Chapter 15. Seriously, the questions you guys ask can so easily be answered if you re-read through the story (raising my hit-count)...ignore the parenthetical comment, please! 'Where are the rest of the characters?' and 'Why are we stuck with three Anime-only mod-souls, Kon, an OC, Urahara and Tessai?' you ask?
Geez...they're all in RadiantBeam's (now completed) story, Over and Over again, of course!
-BTW, does anyone else have the problem of having to use the [Source tab in order to make things Bold, Italic, or Underlined? It's pretty annoying...
...legalities...
All characters are based in an post-Aizen AU where Ichigo and Rukia got...it...on! Which the canon story is created by Tite Kubo
Suzume was created by Typewriterman.