Chapter One:
The Demons Eat Cherries Under Sakura Trees
"Her nightgown lay upon the snow as it might on a bed sheet, and the tracks that led from where it lay were never of human feet... An empty bed still waits for him as he lies in a crimson tide. Beware, beware, oh trapper men, beware of a grisly bride."
―John Manifold
The fourth squad pansy stood in the doorway gaping at him like a fish.
"The fuck you want?" the captain barked from his hospital bed. The man jumped and stuttered and the captain's waning patience snapped. In the space of a garbled syllable he was towering over the terrified healer. She blinked once before her inferior senses registered his presence. With a squeal, she stumbled back from him and went sprinting down the hallway. Zaraki scoffed and rolled his visible eye at her before flopping back onto the bed.
He lay there fuming for several minutes at the circumstances that had left him a willing prisoner. She'd caught him chasing after Ichigo and before he could blink, he was waking up in a hospital bed and his sword nowhere in sight. A wrecked hospital wing and seventeen almost-casualties later, he was again in a bed, and bound in fifty different kido spells while a certain healer loomed over him with a smile fit for the devil. There was a definite lack of Zaraki-related incidents three days later.
And then there she was, the god-fucking-damn Fourth Squad Captain and his jailer, standing in the doorway.
"Good evening, Captain Zaraki," Captain Unohana said, carrying a vase of pink flowers in her hands. She ignored his glare and glided to a small table before one of the room's two windows and placed the item there. She arranged the flowers to her satisfaction, though they didn't look any better to him after she finally decided to look at him.
The Kenpachi's glare could have melted a Hollow's mask off. It had the opposite effect and seemed to fuel the healer's smile. "You are awfully energetic from what my subordinates tell me. I trust you have been recovering well, then?"
"Give me my fucking sword!" he snarled, sitting up.
"Your wounds are still healing," she said, nonplussed. "Battle may be the only thing you respect, but the regard you give to your body will in turn define your ability to honor meeting blades with a worthy opponent."
Zaraki bristled because she sorta kinda maybe had a point. Unohana chuckled as if reading his thoughts and he released a sigh that dragged from the soles of his feet.
"Perhaps a walk through the gardens will improve your mood?" she suggested. Zaraki grunted noncommittally and settled back down to stare at the ceiling until she left.
A crude, three-pronged indigo hand surged from the tarry black to press flush against the tank's glass. It glowed a faint pink-purple and the tank responded in kind, revealing a red aura covering it from top to bottom. After a long moment, the appendage retracted back into the tenebrous mixture.
...it wasn't the worst experience of his life.
Zaraki continued along the clean stone path, hands folded into his sleeves and face unreadable as he walked through the garden. Cicadas chirped an undulating chorus as gentle breezes caressed flowers and mingled their scents into a pleasant living potpourri.
He sneezed violently and the moment shattered.
The warrior paused when his path split three ways; left, right and straight. Going forward would bring him to the fourth squad's barracks again. He made to turn for the right path when something glinted in the corner of his eye. His head snapped to the empty left path and he heard the whisper of cloth rustling. Left it was, then.
After several minutes he was ready to turn around when his sandal stepped on something with a squish. He lifted his foot and saw a small red smear with a twig attached to it. A cherry? Sakura trees didn't grow fruit….
Curious again, he pressed forward until he came to what he assumed was the garden's center. It was mostly paved and large enough for a small crowd. Further in was a circle of spaced out stone benches, and then in that was another circle, unpaved. In it, underneath a sakura tree, was a small pond filled with koi fish. Two semi-large rocks and a miniature boulder were placed in a naturally artful way beside it. There were cherries and snow white sakura petals floating on the pond.
He didn't miss the vacuum of silence that surrounded the scene.
Debating which of the paths to take next, someone suddenly stepped out from behind the sakura tree's trunk. At the same time the moon was half-shadowed by a passing cloud cluster, casting the stranger in shadow.
"Who's there?" Zaraki demanded, taking a step forward. They turned their slumped head slightly in his direction. He could make out a woman's silhouette in the gloom. She had long, unbound hair that she let hang as a veil over her face and held herself in a detached way, as if in a daze.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked her. She didn't seem to hear him. Annoyed now, Zaraki approached her. When his foot met grass, she flinched away without lifting her head. From her right hand something bright red fell to the ground. It rolled through the grass and came to rest at the pond's edge. A cherry.
He glanced at the pond, her, then to the cherry again.
"Fish don't eat fruit," he said.
That apparently wasn't the right thing to say because she was shuffling away from him, looking ready to bolt.
"Quit being so damn jumpy. I'm not gonna eat a weakling like you."
She stopped, looking uncertain. Kenpachi snorted and made to turn away when the clouds suddenly cleared and revealed his visitor.
"You?" he said in surprise.
The fluid swirled within, a silent hurricane. The tank rattled slightly in its docking station, red aura now a glowing scarlet. Purple lines and strange runes writtenover the tank's outer surface pulsed with dark energy. Over a serpentine eye rune, a crack formed as it lost its unnatural sheen.
He quickly took in her appearance. Her uniform was ripped and tied sloppily at the waist, a far cry from her usual pristine image. Old, brown-stained bandages peeked from underneath her clothing, some hanging in tatters. She seemed to favor her right leg as she was leaning more on her left, her left arm held partially behind her.
"Old man didn't take well to losing, eh?"
She didn't answer him but shook her head slightly in confirmation. Zaraki harrumphed and she flinched again. He sighed at her.
"Didn't ya hear me before, woman? I've got no reason to bother ya," Zaraki said, annoyed at having to repeat himself. She hunched in on herself, still silent. She seemed to be waiting for something.
"Well, did he rip out yer tongue or somethin'? Whatever," he continued without waiting for a reply, beginning to turn away. "I don't care about yer little soap op –,"
Abruptly, she shoved her visible hand forward and opened it. Four cherries, contrasting like bloody drops against snow, sat in her pale proffered hand. Zaraki eyed the offering and shook his head. She took a mincing step forward, hand still outstretched.
"I don't want any," he said, irritated again. She cocked her head as if asking, Are you sure? He jerked his head yes. As suddenly as she'd offered them, she dropped her arm and let the fruit fall at her feet. She began to turn away from him. In doing so, she revealed the sword held behind her back. His sword.
He was lunging forward then, arm outstretched.
"Hey!" Zaraki shouted.
The entire time, his focus trained on her, he hadn't noticed how the cherries floating in the pond blackened and sank, latching onto the swimming koi and morphing them. In that moment, as he reached for his zanpakato, eyeless, gaping leeches leaped from the pond and latched onto him with transparent teeth. The warrior jerked in shock as he felt the needles of their three-inch long teeth pierce him through his reiatsu and scrape against... something.
A silent screech of unadulterated agony rippled through the lab. The trembling tank abruptly stilled, the whirling black vortex inside settled, and the red aura dissipated.
And then an arm blazing with pink-purple power punched through that minute crack, sending out its own, opposite cry into the universe.
Life.
The closest he could describe the sensation was violation. Color bled from his vision as he fell to his knees, the oily annelids' flesh stretching as they suckled on his soul. He felt an unnatural, hideous hunger plunge into him, stealing life with gleeful abandon. It was hatred and desecration, blasphemy and chaos all rolled into one that every aspect of his spirit rebelled against in its simple statement of life against... them.
He wondered how no one could hear his soul screaming across the whole Seireitei.
Zaraki watched as his attacker suddenly jerked her head up and turned it as if sensing something. Doing so revealed her face to him.
"Well," she said in a sibilant voice, "It seems he's broken loose."
Even in his current state, centuries of honing his abilities couldn't stop him from taking in her features. It was the same face, traditionally beautiful and flawless, but there was a hardness present now, a sadistic twist to the mouth as it smirked, the first time he'd ever seen her do so. Whatever festered beneath her skin was not Nemu Kurotsuchi.
What have you done, Kurotsuchi? Zaraki thought.
As if hearing his thoughts, (and with a shock, realized she could) she turned back to him with a smirk. She was there inside him too, feeling and feeding off his pain through her bastardized creations. He raged silently against her. Sensing this she broke into a face-splitting grin, spoiling her beauty.
"No matter," she continued, cupping his chin as a master would the muzzle of a dog. Perfectly rounded nails were suddenly pointed and sharp, scratching his skin lightly and leaving razor-thin lines of red behind as she traced them down his throat. She kept going, eyes following the crimson trail. She parted his robe, hand stopping to rest over his heart. Then she sunk it inside to grasp it like plunging a sword into sand.
The tiled floor was littered with glass swimming in a dissipating gelatinous black. The doors to the lab were missing, along with most of the door frame, leaving a smoking hole in the wall. Down the hall, following a trail of footsteps that seemed to have been branded into the floor, was a man clutching a lab coat shut with one hand. He entered a janitorial closet and headed straight for the sink. He shoved in the drain's rubber plug and grasped both water facets, turning them on full blast. His eyes burned molten gold as he whispered under his breath, and the water quickly turned black. Focusing, he revealed and began the meticulous task of deciphering and destroying the cloaking spell around his target's location.
"Ken-chan!"
No, Zaraki thought as he saw his lieutenant charge at the demon (and she was, for nothing else could describe her), weapon drawn and power pouring off in her wake like a glorious magenta cape.
He felt her pause and loosen her hold around his soul. The Not-Nemu retracted her hand from his unblemished flesh and straightened to face down his second with her vicious smirk. Soul roaring in protest, strength he'd found only once before in the space between Ichigo's descending blade and his first loss in centuries flared for a brief, supernova instant again.
He lunged for the demon just as she ran Yachiru through the heart with his pitch-covered zanpakato.
The shuddering, bone-melting cry of a desecrated Pure had the man doubling over the sink and clamping his hands on non-existent ears. Breathing heavily, he gathered his energy and ruthlessly tore apart the cloaking spell. The water cleared and revealed the scene before him. Uttering a sharp syllable, he disappeared in a flash of cloth and smoke.
She yanked the sword free, its blade bloodless. Yachiru fell to the ground with more force than her small form should. Zaraki stumbled forward, swinging his arm wildly and managed to backhand the woman away. She slammed into the rocks with an oomph, his zanpakato flying from her grip. She sat up and hissed, raising a hand that began to pulse with purple-black energy.
And then she froze, eyes wide and filled with – fear? – before she suddenly threw herself into the pond. It was deeper than expected and she sank from sight. The water clouded into murkiness before clearing again. She was gone.
Ignoring how his body felt like it was crumbling, Zaraki went to his lieutenant and roughly parted her uniform. He pressed his hand against deceptively unblemished skin and felt something twist under his touch. Yachiru whimpered and he pressed harder, willing himself to reach in and tear apart this insidious enemy.
"Don't bother," Mayuri Kurotsuchi said. His bare feet padded softly across the pavement as he approached the pair and dropped to one knee. A painted hand easily removed Zaraki's and replaced it with his own.
"What...?" the warrior slurred, slowly lifting his face to bore into his enemy's. Kurotsuchi ignored his gaze and held himself still in concentration. He tried to push the smaller captain away but ended up only shoving his shoulder.
"Be still!" Kurotsuchi snapped at him. Zaraki glared at the scientist. "I can't cleanse her if you keep being your typical idiotic self, Zaraki. I only have so much time–," the scientist cut off and cocked his head. His nose wrinkled in annoyance and he looked at Zaraki. "I am going to make a deal with you. I will cleanse you both, and in return you will remain silent about tonight's events. You did not see your attacker or me."
They stared each other down until Zaraki conceded with a sharp nod. And then the captains appeared in the garden.
Author's Note: Edited on 04/27/2015. Very minor ones. Like the fact that I carelessly threw in that sakura trees grew cherries (which they DO NOT and I didn't pay attention, durr-da-durr).