Disclaimer: I am not the owner of any of the here mentioned Bleach characters and I make no profit of them.
Note: Since the lost chapter was kind of a cliffhanger, I decided to update soon, so here's the next chapter.
I got inspired to this by a part of the game "AmericanMcGee's Alice" if any of you knows that^^.
Enjoy the hopefully creepy atmosphere!
Chapter 8:
My mind? What the heck is going on?
Deciding he would find out along the way, Renji started down the corridor in direction of the voices. Zabimaru gripped firmly, he was ready to fend off any sudden attack.
His footsteps created resounding echoes travelling ahead of him. He stopped to listen for the voices. They had stopped. Now and then, the light splash of dripping water filled the silence.
He crept on even more on guard, until he came to a crossway.
Renji looked down to the corridor to his left, then to the right. Both seemed perfectly alike.
Which way to choose?
On a whim, Renji turned left and with a confidence he did not quite feel, trudged on like before.
He strained his ears to catch a sign of the voices returning. And really, there they were, down this alley and louder than before. He started to hurry, although tried to step as lightly as he could.
He was drawing nearer, he could almost understand what they were saying, just around the next corner...
Where he stopped dead, looking at himself.
It was a dead end. At the end of the corridor, a man-high mirror was attached, already stained and slightly milky from old age. Still he could see his own disappointed face stare back at him.
Suddenly, a movement caught his eye.
Renji whirled around, brandishing Zabimaru. It only hit the walls, sending a shower of sparks to the ground.
The corridor was empty. Still, he could have sworn he had seen something in the mirror.
Glancing back, he whipped around again. Nothing.
But clearly, in the mirror, shadows were moving about, just out of sight.
A cold shiver travelled down Renji's spine. What was this place?
He mustered the mirror, perhaps this was some kind of trick? Then his eyes focused on his own reflection in the glass. Did he really wear such a weird cruel smile?
"Yeah, sure. Showing things that aren't there and now my own reflection is behaving strangely", Renji muttered under his breath.
Then he started. The evil grin had broadened, now the Mirror-Renji was pointing back over his shoulder. Just in this moment, the sound of nearing footsteps reached his ears.
For a second, Renji's subconscious considered just panicking. He was in an unknown place, when he had been fighting a hollow moments ago. The mirror was doing odd things and all in all, this atmosphere was just creepy.
Being Renji, he immediately quelled his fear and instead dashed down the corridor, towards the approaching enemy.
Zabimaru's sharp tip stopped only millimetres before it hit the face of a kid. And not just some kid. Was that...him?
The boy shrieked, turned around and bolted back the way he had come in a dead race.
It took Renji a moment to snap out of his stupor. "Hey, wait!", he yelled, hurrying after the child. "Wait up, you, I want to talk to you!"
"You'll never catch me, stupid!", the boy mocked and stuck out his tongue. He had a good headstart.
Damn, was I really this fast as a kid?, Renji wondered. Then a smile tucked at his lips. I'll give you stupid, just you see.
With a flash step, he was ahead of the boy, who ran into him at full speed, knocking them both over.
But before he had a chance to get up, Renji had already caught his arm.
"Now tell me what you're doing here", he said and fixed his younger self with a severe gaze.
"I've done nothing wrong, you ugly bastard, now let go of me!"
"Who're you calling ugly, shorty?", rumbled Renji. Then he calmed his voice. "I asked you a question. I won't let go, until you answer me."
"Fine", said the boy, his red eyes flashing defiantly. "I'm looking for my friends. They've all three just vanished."
Dazed, Renji looked down on him. His younger self yanked himself free and made to run off again.
"You can't go this way", said Renji softly. "It's a dead end."
"But I heard them from over there", answered the boy and vanished around the corner. The clatter of his retreating steps grew fainter quickly.
Renji still sat on the same spot. His friends? Who were they? He couldn't conjure up an image of them, yet he knew he had had friends in Rukongai.
He contemplated whether he should go after the kid. But where would standing in front of the mirror get him?
Instead, he got up on his feet and started in the opposite direction, intent on trying the right corridor.
He had walked on for quite some time, when he imagined he heard the soft sound of sweet laughter. A blurred image swam into his mind. Who was it? Some girl?
Renji felt more than he saw the katana aimed at his throat and parried the blow with ease.
He almost laughed when he saw his younger self standing before him, complete in the white and blue uniform of the academy and a fierce glower on his face.
"What did you do to her?", the teenage-Renji screamed and struck another blow.
Renji dodged quickly and blocked the next swing with Zabimaru.
"To whom?"
"Don't play dumb, you know whom I mean. Rukia, of course!"
"Rukia?", Renji murmured. Somehow, the name sounded familiar.
"You sent her away and now I'm all alone without her", his younger self whined.
Fed up with dodging, Renji jumped forward and forced the zanpakutou out of the boy's hands.
"Now tell me about this Rukia", he said. "I feel like this is important."
"The Kuchiki family took her", the younger red-head said. "I thought you knew that."
At the mention of the name Kuchiki, a sudden searing pang of anger struck Renji. For a moment, his vision blurred by the strength of it. Enough for his younger self to disentangle himself and set off into the darkness.
He moved to follow him more slowly. His head swam while he tried to wrap his thoughts around the shreds of memory.
Rounding the next corner, he found himself in front of the mirror again.
Was there another one? No, Renji realized, this mirror had the same cracks and stains as the one he thought he had left behind. Even the spider's web in the upper left corner was an exact copy.
And inside the glass, shadows moved behind him.
Refusing to look at his reflection, Renji reached out a hand to touch the mirror.
Whatever he might have expected, the surface feeling like ordinary glass wasn't one of them.
He mentally kicked himself for having thought the mirror might have been some kind of mystery door. On second thought, he kicked the mirror instead.
Renji let out a scream of surprise, when the glass shattered and revealed another damp passage beyond.
Renji crept onward, his sword at the ready. The shadows that had lurked inside the mirror, they must be somewhere ahead.
And really, when the fukutaichou continued down the alley, he found that it opened up into a wide dark hall, and there they were: five hollow, their red eyes gleaming.
They had noticed his entry and were closing in on him, their eerie shadows reflected in the highly polished surface of the floor. Their wailing voices rang loud in his ears.
Could he take on all five of them? He already had to parry a sharp pair of claws. Behind him, he sensed a cero building up and quickly jumped out of the way.
Damn, they are too close to extend Zabimaru!
Reduced to fighting them off, the words of his younger selves still swirled around in Renji's head.
Rukia. Kuchiki. And then, another name: Shihana. He tried to make sense of it, knowing any distraction could be disastrous now.
Finally, one hollow made a mistake and came within range. Renji was already bringing Zabimaru down to split the hollow's mask.
Suddenly, the faces of two women swam into his mind. Kuchiki Rukia and Kuchiki Shihana, her adopted cousin! Something seemed to shatter behind his eyes.
With terror, Renji realized, that there were no hollows in this room, but his lost comrades and he was just about to kill one of them.
"Yukaro!", he cried while yanking the sword around so it missed his head by inches and buried itself in the ground instead.
"Amano, Hokatsui, Makisha, Kyuba, wake up!"
For a terrifying moment, the five did not react. But then, as if waking from a long dream, they let their zanpakutou sink and looked around themselves in wonder.
"Darn, Abarai-fukutaichou, where are we?", asked Yukaro, unaware of the fact that he had been nearly killed by his own superior.
"I think this is somewhere inside this fucking Arrancar", answered Renji. "What do you say, let's give him hell!"
Did you like it? If so (or if not) please review!
Coming up next is Shihana's apology and more Reki-stupidity.
