Hurrah for all-night benders. If you'll excuse me, the sun is coming up. brain brewakin - breaking. egh.
A little over a year ago, Kurotsuchi Mayuri had used me as bait to catch a hollow. He'd ordered his fukutaichou, a girl I'd become infatuated with at first sight to lead me to an isolated area, probably knowing I was too love-struck to question the chance to be alone with her. When I'd realized what he'd done, even though I was too withdrawn at the time to do more then curse and spit, she had stepped up to stop me. I could see, if only in my imagination, that she didn't like what she had done. But I later realized, in those times I had asked people about her, that she followed her taichou slavishly, even to the point of self-destruction. It was a very stupid thing, building up hatred for someone ten times my age and strength.
When I saw him again, it all came out.
The room shook with my yell. Seals sparked against my skin and I strained against the bindings. Arms, legs, head, even individual fingers…Everything had been meticulously tied down. Kurotsuchi looked on with something resembling boredom as I emptied my lungs.
"Finished?"
Exhausted, the cold inside me returned. I hated that even more, and I sank into it, trying to reach for something that would piss me off enough to tear my way out of whatever was holding me down and throttle the bastard. I dug down as far as I could…and something was waiting. It grabbed me.
"Ohhhhhh…"
The building shook and frost lined the walls, but the seals held. Yellow eyes focused on the hated-thing in front of them, and rational thought slipped away, buried beneath a layer of ice creeping over my face.
"Now that's what I wanted to see."
Kurotsuchi was positively twitching with delight. He could barely keep a proper hold on the scalpel.
"I understand that. But now that he is contained, should not our priority should be to undo what has been done to him?"
The captain's meeting was tense. The battle with the Hikaru/Hollow had nearly spilled out of the defensive cordon and into Seireitei at large. Komamura and Tousen had been close, and were the first at the scene, emerging bruised and bloody afterwards. Aizen and Soifon had also responded, though too late to take part in the battle. Ukitake was still recovering from his injuries, and despite his own, Kyouraku had insisted on attending. They were the only captains present. Yamamoto had decided to exclude the others from the proceedings.
"Unohana-Taichou…" Aizen's eyes were narrowed slightly, though his voice was carefully neutral. "But what do you mean, 'what has been done to him?' Do you know the reason for his…transformation?"
"You knew something like this might happen?" Soifon's tone was decidedly less diplomatic.
"No. I had no idea a situation like this would arise."
"Excuse me, but it still seems like you know a lot more then you're letting on."
Unohana glanced sidelong at Kyouraku. His haori was torn and bloody, and his hat had a gash through it in line with a cut across one shoulder. The other captains were also staring at her with varying degrees of politeness.
"This is not commonly known outside of 4th squad, but Teranaga-san suffers from a strange affliction that effectively cripples his body's ability to produce reiatsu. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, and the subject of much debate among the senior doctors. Later, I confirmed what he told me by consulting the reports made of the ambush against the previous year's student excursion. Teranaga Hikaru was killed in the process of defeating a hollow well-known for performing unusual experiments upon both shinigami and humans with high spiritual potential. His own corpse was found next to the bodies of seventeen students that had each been severely mutilated."
Unohana let her eyes sweep the room, taking measure of each taichou's reaction and mentally filing the information away for later.
"After last night, the conclusion was obvious. I believe his condition was merely one symptom of something that was done to him in his last moments of life, the ultimate result of which we have now seen. I have already directed all information I have on the subject to Kurotsuchi-Taichou, in the hopes it will provide clues on how to undo this transformation."
"Central room 46 has made the examination of the transformative process a priory. Kurotsuchi Taichou has also been instructed to provide a detailed account of the hollowfied shinigami's capabilities."
Yamamoto's gravely proclamation returned the room to silence. The unspoken implications stifled anything further, and the captains were dismissed after a few more meaningless, official proclamations.
Outside, Kyouraku limped into stride next to Unohana, tilting his ruined hat in greeting.
"Are you going to file a formal protest?"
"I fear that would do little in a situation like this."
"But he's your subordinate. You must have some say in the matter."
"I do not intend to abandon him, but until I find a way to change the opinions of Central 46, Hikaru is on his own."
I shouldn't have been able to breathe. It felt like I was drowning in tar, and just enough air was getting through to keep me conscious. The effort alone was agonizing, and my limbs ached from clawing at the mass around me.
There was reiatsu restraining me in some way, a putrid mess that that only made the entire ordeal worse. I had no idea how long I'd been in that state, until a hand reached for mine and pulled me out, coughing and choking on the mess in my nose and throat.
Move! Hurry, damnit!
"Sa…" I looked up, wiping my eyes clear. I'd know that voice anywhere…"Jester?"
No, I'm the queen mum!
The slap wasn't really appreciated, but it was certainly helpful.
Now wake up! We've got a problem, and I won't be here to help you for much longer.
"I…I was walking through Seireitei, and something…"
It took a moment to click. I was in that mental space where my zanpakutou dwelled, but the place was different. Changed. Great blobs of black sludge were falling upwards to impact on the sky, spreading out like smoke. Some sizzled away to nothing, some clung fast. Beneath, the red-veined tiles looked infected with more of the same. I had been pulled from a break in the floor, just one pit among that lay like lesions across the landscape.
Something's in here, with us. I can't fight it on my own. The bastard has help…
"Help? What? What are you talking about?"
Sanguine Jester, in his full glory, was the empty silhouette of a man, framed by gaudy cloth wrappings and a bright porcelain mask. As I watched, the image began to fade away, and the Jester let out a tirade of curses as he began to slip away.
"Jester!"
Fight! That's all you need to do! Take control! Take back your body, your soul! FIGHT!
And then he was gone. But I wasn't alone. I saw what was almost the jester's mirror image striding out of the mist. The expression on the mask was downturned, and the cloth grey, dead of emotion and feeling. The figure carried a sword – my sword.
"What are you?"
I am the Sanguine Jester.
My answer was a raised eyebrow.
And I am taking control. You cannot defeat-
He drew the sword in a flash, blocking my attack cleanly. I didn't know where my own sword had come from – I was sure I had lost it somewhere in the tar. All I could be sure of was that I had an opponent, a weapon in my hand, and a battle to win. There was nothing else to go on.
"You'll forgive me if I don't take your word on that."
As you will.
Whoever-whatever he was, he was good. It seemed like an almost even match, disturbingly so. He anticipated my attacks, and I flowed away from his counters. It really was like fighting myself. The resemblance to the Jester was clear in the way he looked, and opposed by the way he acted, dry and banal in his words.
This is pointless. The battle was decided on the day you died.
"How do you figure that?"
Do you remember this feeling? The chill, the numbness?
"…That hollow…"
Correct. You succeeded in killing it. It succeeded in his intention, as well.
"Bastard did something to me? I knew it!"
I pressed the attack, a moment's anger fuelling the drive forwards.
Ultimately, he was the victor. His death was unplanned for, but irrelevant. It was a point in your favor that had no effect upon the final outcome.
"Then what? What was the point? Was I another experiment then?"
Correct.
We flung ourselves apart. The grey jester didn't seem to be tired, but I felt that I had gained a slight advantage over him, somehow. Fighting him hadn't left much time to think. Studying a book and applying the information was one thing, but making sense out of nothing and weirdness…
The experiment was a success. The parasite implanted within you activated a dormant section of your soul, resulting in my awakening. I am the Sanguine Jester that would have been born had you not become a shinigami.
"So, that makes you what? The Jester's evil twin?"
No. A hollow is not 'evil.'
"Yeah…just base impulses…the mask shields and contains higher, rational thought. Like the Id trying to suppress the Superego."
Very good. An astute analogy. And I am your inner hollow, given voice and form.
The air behind him the Hollow Jester rippled, an image forming. I watched myself walking through Seireitei, being frozen to the ground and approached by Ukitake-Taichou. I saw myself slide the point of my sword between his ribs, the awkward angle slowing the attack and probably saving his life. The Hollow Jester dashed forwards before the illusionary blood hit the ground. I scrambled to keep from loosing my sword, and the images followed us, billowing out behind the Jester like a photographer's backdrop.
As I fought, I watched myself fight the two captains and a rather attractive lieutenant who gave as good as she got, kido-punting me around Seireitei until help could arrive. I winced for Komamura, remembering the gift he'd given me so long ago. Tousen was unreadable, but I caught the word 'justice' and I parried a swift strike with a laugh, trying to focus with images of him in a super-sentai suit dancing in my mind's eye. Somehow, it helped me balance the scales again, finding my footing and returning the flow of battle to something more manageable.
"Looks like it didn't help you all that much."
I saw myself dragged in chains to the 12th division, strapped down in a sealing room. I seethed when I realized that it hadn't been a bad dream – I was under that freak Kurotsuchi's mercy, and I'd heard the stories about him.
Oddly enough, the Hollow Jester didn't press the advantage as I bent over to grab my sides in laughter. The seals weren't enough to hold me. Kurotsuchi went through a wall, his legs kicking in the air as he landed upside-down in rubble.
"Oh, damn! I've…hah hah…wanted to do that-for…a long time! HA!"
The view in the image shifted.
Nemu.
With the parasite's help, I was able to act on base desires, free from the constraints of reason and conscience.
The image of the hollowfied Hikaru followed as he advanced on the girl. I stopped laughing. She was strong. A vice-captain. I was a twentieth seat. Bottom of the barrel. Even with this thing inside me, there was no way…no…way…
That damned, fragile black cloth. The attack wasn't meant to injure. The garment was shredded, showing the white cloth underneath.
"NO!"
The attack was impossible to avoid. I impacted the ground so hard the resulting cloud of debris was a mercy. It partially hid what followed as the jester pursued me, the damned images following him. Researchers were batted away. A sharp blow to the temple left Nemu dazed and helpless. Her clothing was torn away piece-by-piece. An identical strike left me on the ground, staring upwards at the Jester. He stood obscuring the frozen image behind him, a single eye wide with fear all that I could see of her.
"What…did you do to her…"
Nothing. These are not my desires. They are yours. I am not an entity that controlled or manipulated you. I am only the mask, as the bright one is the sword. He can give you power, but I will grant you freedom. Free of useless, self-imposed limitations, I will allow you to find the place you truly belong…
The scythe he carried, grey and dull, concealed what little of Nemu I could see as he raised it for the final blow.
"No…"
The scythe came down.
"NO!"
Metal screamed as the blades met, the point narrowly missing my skull and stabbing into the ground.
"I decided…I decided...I would NEVER let myself be held back again, tied down, beholden to anything. Nothing but the things I chose for myself. Now show me! Show me what I did!"
You desire to punish yourself for your sin?
"It's my choice!"
I threw him off of me, rolling to my feet and seeing Nemu, beautiful, terrified Nemu beneath me once again, my hand reaching for her.
"I fuck up, I get punished for it! That's how it works!"
Pointless.
"Pointless is living without making a single decision for yourself!"
I swept my scythe out, low and wide. It should have made for an easy counter, but it came in fast enough that the jester had to shunpo away to save his legs.
"I accept that you are a part of me. I accept…that I was weak, and that I allowed you to control me. It was my decision to fight, to desire, to chase her, and I will not run from the consequences of my choices. …No matter what."
I look up at the still image, willing it to resume, to show whatever I had allowed myself to do. The image remained still and frozen, Jester resuming his attack with a vengeance.
I was inside my own mind. Everything I'd ever done in this space had been accomplished through sheer determined willpower alone, and everything I could spare told the memory-image to continue.
It was slow, and for a moment, between cuts and parries, I almost missed it. My hand continued it's decent…and stopped again. But Nemu was still moving, gathering her wits, dropping the useless scraps of clothing she had tried to gather and bracing herself against the floor. My hand twitched, but would go no further. Nemu lifted a leg, giving me one single moment of a very tantalizing angle I'd spent more then one night dreaming about.
And then she kicked me square in my FUCKING FACE.
The Image rocked, returning level only to meet Nemu's counterattack. Palm, knuckle, knee, elbow, it came too fast to follow, a rain of blows against the mask over my face. I could feel the impacts, phantom pains against my face. I spat out a chip, tasted the powered bone, cut my cheek as a shard was driven into my skin.
I had held back. At the last second, I had held back and given her the opening she needed. The last thing the image provided was the sight of a half-naked Nemu drawing up a huge amount of reiatsu for her kido.
"And that is why I love her."
This changes nothing. You still-
"I know."
The expression of the Jester's face didn't change when I rammed the point of my blade through the mask, straight between the eyes. I gripped the hilt with both hands, stepping in and sticking an foot behind his before pushing, hard. I fell with him, nailing the mask to the stone beneath and resting for a moment in the pile of rotting cloth.
"I know…that you are a part of me. One part, one half. Heh. The yin to my yang. I am in love with her. I desire her. I am protective, I am possessive. I cherish, I covet. I'm probably an idiot for doing this, chasing a girl I'll probably never catch. …But that's life, I guess."
Sucks, don't it?
"You have no idea."
Actually…
The ground began to rumble, the tar flowing through the landscape boiling up from the cracks in the stone.
Uh oh. Problem.
"Anyone I know?"
It's that damned thing that was stuck inside you when you died.
"That thing is what caused all of this?"
Yep. So what are you…oh. Oh my.
I stood, setting the bright and bloody scythe over my shoulders as the tar coalesced, a featureless worm coiling around we, filling the space within my mind with its mass.
"I accept that there is a side to me that I can never let out. There are things I want to do so badly…I don't know if I'll ever get used to these kinds of choices, the freedom and the consequence that follow. But I have to accept my fault in this."
The worm screamed in rage.
"But I'm not the only one at fault here, as fucked up as I am. You manipulated me. You made me hate myself. You left me unable to help people I cared about."
The ground shuddered, and the kind of power I hadn't felt in a long time began to well up inside of me.
Oh, delicious Schadenfreude incoming..
"You tried to make me hurt someone I love."
The worm tightened its coils, gathering every scrap of energy it had in desperation. The shinigami and its components had finally shaken completely free of its control, and they were all arrayed against it.
You should not have done that…
Kurotsuchi spat as something black and vile was expelled from the last incision. He'd barely managed to keep the subject restrained long enough to begin working when something spurted out over his robe and fell to the floor. It whined and tried to crawl away.
A specimen bottle slammed down around it, and the worm was raised to meet a very strange face.
"Well hello there. What might you be?"
