Author's note: How to succeed at life- 1) instead of actually writing your fucking chapter, procrastinate by watching Persona. 2) instead of actually writing your fucking chapter, read Dangan Ronpa. 3) instead of actually writing your fucking chapter, cry. 4) ? 5) Profit.
Renji almost doesn't go to Sixth Division headquarters on Monday. There are a lot of good reasons to go, the first and foremost being to prove that he is not a coward who's afraid of confrontation. A very close runner-up is the fact that his captain will most assuredly chew him out later if he doesn't. Still, it's a choice he juggles with, because he's feeling especially skittish today.
The hard thing about being the source of gossip is that one has no idea if they've become extra-observant or just extra-paranoid. Maybe when Renji walks down the halls and feels countless sets of eyes boring holes into his back, he's just imagining them. Maybe the low whispers floating through the air like clouds of mist have always been like there and Renji's just never noticed. Maybe he doesn't twitch when he hears a word that sounds like "Hisagi" or feel chills sweep up his spine when he wonders what's going through his subordinates' minds right this second.
Whatever, it's not like it matters. They thought he was trash before for daring to come here from one of the highest districts of Rukongai, and all it took was helping to save Soul Society from mortal peril for that to wear off. This too, shall pass.
He leaves the halls in favor of his office, feeling proud of himself for not slamming the door shut behind him. The room serving as both the captain and the vice-captain's office is drab and dull in its professionalism and smells like dry paper and ink, serving as a reminder of Renji's least favorite part of his job, but it's comfortably familiar.
Captain Kuchiki is already present, seemingly engrossed in his work. It's so ordinary and normal Renji can't decide if he's relieved or irritated.
"Good morning, Captain," Renji says as a usual greeting. "Officers' meeting today, so I won't be staying long. Just checking and seeing if-"
"Abarai."
Renji stops immediately, doing his best not to regard his captain with suspicion. The paranoid feeling hasn't left yet, still creeping around inside his head like a chill in his hindbrain. Byakuya Kuchiki gestures to the front of his desk with a movement of his arm so stiff it seems robotic even for the stoic captain. "Come here, please."
A "please" from Captain Kuchiki. Well golly, let Renji just tack this on his list of "Wonders of the World" and take a commemorative photo and he'll get right on that. Still, he approaches and waits for his captain to continue.
Renji doubts Byakuya has ever done anything without ever thoroughly planning it through. He likes to imagine there's a room in the Kuchiki estate that's just filled with flowcharts and notecards that allow his captain to plan a response in the event of every possible situation. Even so, Captain Kuchiki seems to be working something especially complicated through his head. He calmly holds his gaze on Renji from over his desk, contemplating what to say, or maybe simply waiting for the other to make a first move
Summoning every drop of confidence within him, Renji cuts to the chase. It's not like this can be for any other reason. "Am I in trouble because of what I'm doing with Shuuhei?"
The noble captain's fingers tighten around his pen ever so slightly, as if the question distresses him. He answers immediately, "No, you are in absolutely no trouble. Your business is your own, and it would be vastly inappropriate of me to hold you in a different regard because of your personal life."
There's a pause, but it's so brief Renji wonders if he's imagining it. Byakuya sets down his pen and tents his fingers.
"However, I must ask," the captain says, gray eyes doing an exceptional job at not betraying his thoughts. "Are you and Lieutenant Hisagi Shuuhei truly romantically involved?"
Renji wonders, for a moment, if he can get fired for sleeping with a lieutenant of a different division. That would be an unfortunate reason to go into an early retirement. "Yes, sir, we are."
His expression doesn't change. Renji could just be stating the weather for all Captain Kuchiki is showing. "That is all I wanted to know."
That should be a relief, yet it doesn't make Renji feel much less at ease. He's still waiting for the bad news. He's not disappointed.
"However, the schedule for squad duties has been altered. I will be taking on your duties overseeing training and patrols temporarily, until further notice. You will still be needed for hollow terminations and missions to the world of the living, of course," Byakuya tacks on, almost a little hastily.
"So I am being demoted," Renji summarizes plainly, not minding how defensive he sounds.
Kuchiki's expression hardens. "Were you not listening? I said you have no reason to be punished. If, however, you are determined to contend with me or attempt to construct me as the antagonist, that can change very quickly."
"Okay, so what is this then? I'm not stupid, captain! What, the squad doesn't want me around? A bunch of requests came in for transfers and this was the only way you could keep them here?" Renji pushes, feeling anger boil up inside him.
"I realize this is inconvenient. Not only inconvenient—it should be entirely unnecessary," Kuchiki admits, folding his hands on his desk. "However this is the best I can do, at such a short notice to both keep you in your position and amend the fears of our officers. There are those who see your engagements to Lieutenant Hisagi as grounds for… worries."
"The hell kind of worries can they have about me dating some guy?" Renji demands, wondering what and who he'll have to punch before he calms down.
"I imagine it would be difficult for you to see this from their perspective. It is a very self-centered reason for suspicion after all, but some might take your preferences, coupled with your rank and stature, into account and begin to harbor… anxieties," Captain Kuchiki says, and Renji's about to continue prodding about what the fuck that actually means when he suddenly has a moment of oh, oh.
"Anxieties," Renji repeats, his voice dripping with disgust and he's now sure that he'll have to punch a whole lot of whats and whos. "So now they're afraid I'm going to, like, molest them in the shower, right? What the fuck-"
He gets a hard look from his captain that shuts him up instantly. "Composure, lieutenant. Outbursts like this are exactly why I think it would be best to put space between you and the lower ranks, at least until they reclaim their common sense and can act professionally when it comes to situations concerning their rightful superior."
Renji forces his hands to relax out of clenched fists, swallowing his anger. Of course people couldn't just mind their own business, be accepting like Rukia. He wasn't sure how he was expecting people to react, but it sure as hell wasn't with fear. Does he really look that scary? Do his own men think he'd take advantage of them?
Actually, on that note…
"No one voiced any complaints that I might do anything to the female officers before all this." He points out.
Kuchiki gives him a wry look, a sort of "oh, you" gaze like Renji should know better. "That is correct, Lieutenant Abarai. It is unfortunate, in fact, to theorize that this would hardly even be an issue if you were involved with a woman, even if there was a chance you were using your status as lieutenant to manipulate her. Any uneasiness the women of the division would have had would be dismissed as paranoia. Because this happens not to be the case, it is apparently a source of fear among their male peers."
"But- That's just stupid. Why are people making a big deal out of this? You can't tell me that Shuuhei and I are the only… not-straight people to have ever been in the Gotei Thirteen!" Renji pushes, wanting something to push away this feeling of dread building up with every passing moment.
"I could not give you a definitive answer, but I imagine that many more people are far more mindful about keeping secrets than you," Kuchiki says with a shake of his head. "Were Vice-Captain Hisagi younger than you and you were his mentor- or vice versa- in the traditional way of shudō it might be seen as a different matter. It would be one of you demonstrating your status, the teacher exercising his dominance over the protégé. The fact that you and Hisagi are both mature and roughly the same age makes your engagements seem all the more improper to the general public."
Renji let his shoulder slump, feeling a strange sense of violation. The feeling of having strangers pick apart and code his personal relationship with Shuuhei felt wrong, it felt downright creepy. "So, what? I just have to deal with the weird looks from people from my own squad."
"If that's what it takes to prove to them you are no less qualified for your position then yes, that is exactly what you are going to do," Byakuya answers firmly, clearly not intending to leave any more room for argument. "You are excused to your emergency meeting."
Pushing a man as stubborn as Captain Kuchiki is all but productive. More importantly than that, the longer this conversation continues, Renji increasingly feels like his captain is genuinely trying to help and it's still not enough. Because whenever Byakuya Kuchiki, with his noble prestige and decades of experience and esteemed accomplishments behind him, can't eliminate the problem it generally means Renji doesn't stand much of a chance.
Okay, so Sixth Division wasn't Renji's favorite place in the world right now. What else is new? That being said, it was far preferable to other places where he could be right then. Places where rather than having his emotional and professional well-being on the time, it was merely his physical safety and sense of security that was being threatened. Then again maybe that was just what Renji needed right now.
Ah yes, the laboratories of the Twelve Division, where hopes and dreams go to die along with gods know what else. Renji hardly has time to knock on the door of the sizeable headquarters building before a skittish twink in a lab coat cracks the door open, squinting like he hasn't seen sunlight for the past four weeks. He admits Renji into the building, holding open the door with his back pressed into the walls like he wants to melt into them.
As he walks down the halls trying hard to remember the path to the meetings room he steps into a puddle of something cold and smily and he tries really hard not to think about what that might be. Instead, he picks up his pace until he sees a vaguely familiar room far ahead and relaxes a bit. The room itself looks like some eldritch abomination-type creature swallowed the electronics section of a department store and upchucked it in a dungeon, but he would rather be there than lost in these hallways.
Various monitors sit on the wall, most off but some flickering persistently and spitting static. It smells of mold and decay and the tangy aroma of old blood.
"Hello, is someone there?"
Renji stops, a little put off by the sound of an unfamiliar voice coming from down the hall. This is supposed to be an emergency meeting, isn't it? Where are all his peers, the other vice-captains and higher ranked officers he's supposed to be meeting with? Renji's eyes scan the inside of the room, then glance back down the halls to see if any lab personnel are present. Only when he ducks his head into one of the adjacent rooms does he find a lone figure, the owner of that mysterious voice.
At first Renji thinks that he might be another scientist working for the Twelfth, because he has the same spooked, wide-eyed look about him that many fledglings in the Gotei's most curious division do. He's pale and skinny and looks all around unremarkable, further feeding into Renji's scientist theory. But even the weakest of shinigami admitted into the Courts has to have enough spiritual pressure to prove they can be useful in a fight, and the tiny trickle of reiatsu this kid is flaring in a meek little flurry of fear is barely enough to even register on Renji's radar let alone belong to any shinigami.
Renji looks behind him to see if anyone plans on entering to explain what exactly is going on but no, it's just him and this odd stranger. Renji lifts an eyebrow at the kid. "Uh, hey there."
The soul shuffled towards him, feet stumbling in what Renji first took to be a lab coat, but now realized was a white robe, the kind issued to medical patients as well as prisoners. Please, you have to help me!" He demands in a strained voice, hunching his shoulders like he fears an attack from all sides. "I don't know what I'm doing here, and they won't answer my questions. C-Can you tell me where I am, sir?"
The "sir" throws Renji off, and when the soul approaches him Renji realizes how small he is, barely more than a child. The soul wobbles on his feet and Renji reaches to steady him on instinct.
"Woah there, buddy," Renji says automatically as he puts a balancing hand on the kid's shoulder, although he feels he should be keeping a more professional demeanor than this. It's just so hard to stay focused in the face of a scared child. "This is the Gotei Thirteen. You're safe, okay? Can you tell me why you're here?"
The kid shakes his head. "N-no. I was just on my way home and I think… I blacked out. I woke up in here alone. I'm really scared, sir, I don't want any trouble with the shinigami! I just want to go home."
Renji's not new to how the squads work. If you're given an order, there's probably a reason for you to follow it. And if something has been found deep within the bowels of the Twelfth's' labs, there's probably a very good reason to leave it where it is.
Then again, this is Squad Twelve, and it has never been a large contender for the Seireitei's "Most Ethically Aware" award. These are the people who experimented on the corpses of Quincies and just about any other anomaly they could get their grimy hands on, under the watchful eyes of their greatly detested, but even more greatly feared, captain.
Renji tries to make his voice soothing, tries to remember what he's supposed to do in these situations. Sometimes it's hard for him to remember how to act around normal civilians. "Hey, it's okay! There's no trouble. Why don't we go find someone to talk to about how to getting you out of here, alright?"
After all, if the Gotei has a beef with this kid, they can certainly do better than kidnapping.
The kid smiles, relief loosening the tension of worry on his face. "O-okay. Thank you, sir." He raises his hands to wipe his eyes, and the sleeve of his robe droops down over a bony wrist and a glint of shiny metal.
"What's this?" Renji asks, pointing to the circle of silver around the kid's arm.
The kid folds his arms self-consciously, obscuring the metal. "A r-Reiryoku dampener, I think. The people here put it on me when I got here, maybe so I wouldn't get hungry. I don't know how long I've been here."
And suddenly the idea that this kid's spiritual pressure is too low to be a shinigami is out the window. If a dampener was needed to eliminate his hunger, surely he must have at least a fair amount of power behind him. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that the soul knows how to use it, nor can it be really be that much energy if the kid can't break out of one puny dampener.
Follow up point: why is the twelfth keeping a kid with high spiritual pressure in the labs in the first place? The first place Renji can think of the Gotei sending souls with unusually high energy levels is the shinigami academy, and even that is seen as part of the Court's inner sanctum from civilians.
The kid gives him a hopeless look as Renji's energy glides over the surface of the dampener. "It's no good. It'll just suppress your spiritual pressure too."
"Yeah, maybe if I was a shrimp like you," Renji says with a smirk, beginning to push the full extent of his power into the silver cuff. "Luckily, I'm made of some stronger stuff. Now listen up, cuz I'm gonna take this off for you, and in exchange you're gonna tell me everything you know about what the Twelfth division might want with you, got it?"
The dampener gives a whine of protest as Renji's spiritual pressure floods it, the sparks of magenta flying out of the ring and confirming Renji's suspicion that this gadget might work just fine on a nearly powerless kid, but it's not built to withstand a captain-class assault.
While the dampener sputters resiliently, refusing to give up the right, Renji registers the sound of footsteps outside, progressively getting louder. Renji tenses with the inherent nerves of one who knows he's breaking the rules, but his focus doesn't leave the dampener on the kid's wrist.
"They're coming," the kid says with a shaky inhale. "The shinigami who took me away!"
"I'm almost done." Renji promises, risking a glance back towards the door. "I'm a vice-captain, okay? They'll listen to me. Can you tell me which ones took you?"
"I don't remember. They were big, though, I remember that from when they grabbed me and brought me here!"
Renji pauses, ripping his eyes away from the door to look the kid straight in the eyes. They're green, and full of fear. Renji asks, and he's very careful to keep his tone steady, "That's all you remember? Are you absolutely sure?"
The soul gives him a belligerent look, "Yes! I am, so can you please hurry? I want to go home."
"Kid, this is important. You're completely positive?"
"I swear, I don't remember anything else," the boy pleads, looking confused and offended at Renji's doubt.
Renji clutches the kid's wrist a little tighter. "There were big shinigami and they took you away, is that right?"
"Yeah?" The kid gingerly? admits, looking frightful again. "You know this already! Why are you-"
"Then what happened to blacking out and waking up in here alone?"
The kid's eyes bug out. There's no other way to describe it—they bug out and get so wide Renji fears they'll just pop right out of the socket. Grey irises whirl around the room in confusion, but weren't they green before? "I-I did. I think I did! I don't know!"
"Kid," Renji says sternly, fixing him with a look until the kid is meeting him with those grey-not-green eyes, "What's your name?"
"I'm Yasu… Yasuto…. No, I think it was Tasu-something. I don't remember! Why don't I remember my own name?" The kid looks at Renji, the pitch rising in his voice as his terror mounts. "What's my name? What's my name?"
Renji's response is cut off prematurely by the echo of a door slamming open, of the sharp cling sound of a good dozen swords being drawn, of the frenzied call of "Lieutenant Abarai, please step away from the prisoner!"
"Hey, hang on a second!" Renji demands, bewildered and not at all enjoying the feeling. "Why don't you tell me what's going on here-"
He would have commanded more, specifically something along the lines of an explanation but one of the officers interrupts him with a heavy shove that knocks him off his feet and away from the kid. Renji's back hits the dirt and okay, those violent urges from earlier in the morning have come returned full force.
Faster than the offending officer can anticipate, Renji is back on his feet with his fist clutching the shinigami's collar. Renji has almost decided whether or not it'd be worth it to deck this guy in the face when he hears the sound of metal hitting the floor.
Looking down, Renji watches the Reitsu-dampener roll to his feet, toppling over on its side to lie unmoving on the ground. The kid's arm hangs limply from where the cuff fell off, and he lifts his wrist to his face to inspect the trace of raw-pink flesh the cuff left.
Renji struggles not to gasp when he watches Tasu-something move, because even though the kid's movements have suddenly become slow and lethargic there's a split second when they're not—there's a twitch or a jerk, something so fast Renji's not sure it even happened. Then the kid lowers his hand again and it happens a second time, and it's like watching a glitch on a television screen. A jump in the frames that never was, a movement that goes in two directions at once.
Renji hesitates, still holding the other shinigami. "Kid?"
The soul's eyes jump to attention, looking straight at Renji, but now they're neither grey nor green nor any color Renji can determine. The kid jerks, glitches again, and a crackle of what looks like electricity jolts up and down his body. Not fuchsia, like Renji's spiritual energy when he was short-circuiting the dampener, but inky and black.
"I'm scared, sir," the kid says, and Renji is finding himself having a hard time determining if that's true because one second the soul is crying, tears streaming down his face and mouth pressed into a thin line as if restraining a sob, but then he twitches again and the tears are gone and his mouth is stretched into a toothy smile like that of a predator looking down upon its prey. His voice is garbled and two-toned and grates on Renji's ears. "Please, I just want to go home."
Renji drops the officer's collar, choosing instead to move his hand to his katana, but faster than he can draw the kid moves, too fast to be real, and his hand is on Renji's arm and the black sparks are shooting up toward Renji's chest and everything goes blindingly crimson.
The world goes hazy. It's fuzzy and distant like a picture out of focus, so blurred Renji can't pick away one thought from another.
Gradually, his mind gets a little clearer, a little more aware but it's no less confusing for that. Occasionally he can pick apart a rare fragment of consciousness or two but they're disjointed, meaningless.
He's lost because he read the map wrong and ended up on the wrong side of town.
He needs to get home because his father is waiting for him and he'll be cross is he's late.
He's dying, slowly, painfully, of pancreatic cancer.
He can hear the baby crying, and honey can you get that I got up to feed her last time-
Eyes still closed, Renji furrows his brows. These thoughts—they don't make sense. They aren't even his. But if not, whose are they?
There's a voice, but Renji's still not sure if it's real or a part of the mixed-up puzzle pieces of his mind. "Looks like he's coming to."
"I don't think so, he's still pretty out of it."
"Well we don't have all day! Here, use this."
A foul odor overflows Renji's senses. It smells, perhaps, of hatred and malice.
Renji groans, batting away Ikkaku's sandal from his face. "Dude, that's nasty!"
"Knew that would do the trick. Worked every time when he was still in the Eleventh." A voice that is probably Ikkaku again. "Hey, Abarai, are you feeling okay or are you gonna faint again?"
"Are you feeling shut the fuck up?" Renji bites back with just enough awareness to not care if that made sense.
He blinks his eyes open, and the first thing he's aware of is that the light is way too bright. This probably means he's not on the floor in the Twelfth's labs anymore, or at least has been moved to a more well-lit one. There's something hard and flat pressing against Renji's back, not wide enough to fully support his shoulders so that his arms hang over the side. It's probably a bench or something, and it is killing his spine.
"Renji?" Hey, Renji definitely knows this guy. Shuuhei pops into his vision above him, the light from above giving him a celestial glow as he holds up his hand for Renji to look at. "How do you feel? How fingers do you see?"
Renji gently smashes his palm into Shuuhei's face, pushing the dark-haired shinigami away so that he can sit up. "No need for that, okay? I'll live. I'd do better if someone wanted to tell me what is going on."
Now upright, Renji identifies his new location as a room filled with lieutenants and high-ranked officers. Most seem preoccupied with him, seated patiently on the floor as if they're a class full of students awaiting instructions from an absent teacher, most likely all still waiting for the captains to finish their private meeting.
Rukia seats herself on Renji's bench, "We were hoping you could tell us that. A bunch of Twelfth division's guards carried you in here a few minutes ago, saying you had an accident in the labs."
"Some accident," Renji snorts, lifting his hand to rub the tips into his temple. "Ugh, I was down there and there was this kid… did the guards say if he was okay?"
Rukia gave him a puzzled look. "They didn't say anything else. What kid are you talking about?"
"There was this kid alone in the lab, said he didn't remember why he was there. I tried to help him but the guards came in and told me to back away, and then there was this… weird energy coming off him, and my head—I was thinking things that weren't my own thoughts."
There was probably a better way to phrase that, judging by the confused look Rukia gives him as her only response. Shuuhei looks slightly more alarmed as he turns Renji's face towards him, using his fingers to spread Renji's eyelids and get a good look at his pupil. "Did you hit your head down there? Quick, count backwards from ten."
"Would you get off him, Hisagi? He said he's fine, give him some space." Ikkaku throws in, having slipped his sandal back onto his foot. He gives Renji and Shuuhei a sideways look, only for a second before glancing away nonchalantly. He supposes that it's excusable, given that Renji and Shuuhei's relationship is kinda out in the open right now and also Shuuhei is being just a smidgen too touchy at the moment. It's still a little rude, though.
Yumichika tuts in response, tapping his fingers against his knee. "Now, now, Ikkaku. It's perfectly natural for young lovers to fawn over each other like this! It's almost romantic if you ignore the possibility of Abarai being concussed right now."
"I'm not concussed!" Renji insists, blushing, to his credit, only a little.
Izuru, seated only a little farther behind Yumichika and Ikkaku, has been strangely silent at this time, eyes fixed at the floor. When he speaks up for the first time, it startles Renji slightly. "Whatever happened, it seems like we're about to get an answer."
He casts his eyes towards the door, which do nothing to hide the captain-class spiritual energy barreling towards the room. The doors are flung open by the clammy, pale hands of Captain Kurotsuchi.
Those unnerving gold eyes glaze over the room, fixating on Renji in a way that makes him shiver. If Kurotsuchi gives any indication of acknowledging Renji's discomfort it goes right over his head.
"Lieutenant Abarai," he drawls as if it's a personal inconvenience for him to do so, like the valuable brain cells he's using in order to memorize the name could be better put to use on formulaic equations, or maybe new torture techniques. "I received a memo in the midst of the meeting that you had run into a rather unfortunate situation in my labs. To begin: I commend you for this, since the notification was an excellent distraction from the dullness of the meeting. Secondly, I admonish you for wandering into my labs in the first place! Most of the equipment there is worth more than you are!"
Wow, well excuse the shit out of him.
The scientist-captain sighs melodramatically, finally saying, "And thirdly I must apologize. It seems that approximately 5.7 minutes before your arrival the subject of today's controversy managed to wriggle its way out of its confinements, due wholly, I'm sure, to the incompetence of my staff. Due reimbursement for your troubles will be made, or course. If you ever need anything grown back—a limb, for example—I will be sure to appoint someone to the task. I bid you good day, my peers will arrive shortly-"
Wait a second!" Renji barks, almost wishing he hadn't for the irate look Kurotsuchi gives him. "That kid was a prisoner, right? So why? What's up with the weird spiritual energy? What's happening to him?
Kurostuchi's lips peel back from his long yellow teeth in something between a grin and a grimace. "Well, wasn't it obvious, Lieutenant? He was dying."