Chapter 4: How to fuck up the 'buddy' system.
"The heart of the matter?"
"Yes, sadly, you heard right. This isn't good."
"What do you mean?" Ikkaku asked Yumichika, strolling closer to the rather ominous unevenly cut signpost.
"You keep causing the dreams to reset. When you wake up you shake off your dreams like they aren't real and like the things you learn mean nothing."
"Dreams aren't real, they're all a stupid story that my own mind's making up. They don't have meaning."
"Why would that mean that they aren't real? Is love fake too? Or anger? These are all products of our minds, stupid chemical reactions that make people kill others and slit their wrists. Isn't that real, Ikkaku?" Yumichika asked quietly, looking a little sad.
Yumichika was right. Oxytocin made people who've been intimate feel attached to one another, it made mothers love their children, even though they are no more special than a frog egg amongst millions of others. Chemicals create those intense emotions that seem so real; They make people lie and swear and wallow in misery. They make people start wars, and if none of it was real, how could it all cause so much damage?
Ikkaku didn't know what to say. Yumichika had never gotten like this before.
"You wake up and just go about your business, Ikkaku, ignoring everything I've told you, and now you're being forced to learn from your mistakes. If only there had been another way... I didn't want it to come to this," Yumichika said a little absently. "You know I have to suffer with you when these stupid dreams of yours turn into nightmares. You think that they don't terrify me too? My god, the things your mind can come up with, it's any wonder I haven't wet myself yet."
Ikkaku sighed, scratching at the back of his neck, still reading the sign in an attempt to convince himself that Yumichika was wrong and that this was just another pun his brain had come up with, which made no sense, because he wasn't good with wordplay, and how could his own mind be able to outwit him? Usually when others told jokes or said things that he shouldn't know in dreams, it caused a glitch in the dreamscape and he would wake up, because everything here was supposed to be a creation of his own mind, just random neurons firing in his brain as he slept.
"Why do you keep staring at that sign, can't you read it?" Yumichika asked with curiosity, still trying to wipe bacon grease out of his hair before it solidified into white glop. Ikkaku was glad that he'd dropped his dreary philosophical mood. Ikkaku hated contemplating his own existence, because it made him feel horribly insignificant and out-of-control of his own actions. Like that 'fate' shit. Puh. Fate could kiss his ass.
Why did everything have to be caused by something else, or influenced by fate or god or the magic-eight-ball Ichigo kept in his room? Couldn't he make decisions just because? He was in control; he wasn't some marionette, forever a puppet to some invisible force's will. That was real. Him, right now, Madarame Ikkaku.
"Hm?" Yumichika asked again, not realizing just yet that Ikkaku was getting all soul-searchy, still thinking he was struggling with reading the sign. "It says 'heart of the-"
"No, I can read it just fine." Ikkaku rolled his eyes, coming back to reality... or something like that. "I was just-"
"Caught in your stupid emotional labyrinth again?" Perhaps Yumichika knew more than he let on, which pissed Ikkaku off. He hated feeling like he was the only one who was confused.
"Okay, listen, you little brat-"
"Shh, no time!" Yumichika shouted, indicating that he needed to hurry and enter the dark and foreboding wood. He suddenly looked quite fearful, tugging on Ikkaku's collar, clinging to his neck, urging him to start walking. "You need to hurry and enter the Bewilderness. Someone's following us."
Had Ikkaku not been intent on following Yumichika's order, he may have been stunned by that little pun and then sarcastically thought something along the lines of 'The Bewilderness? Oh, ha-ha, very clever.' He may have wondered why this had appeared, because he probably wouldn't have been able to think that one up on his own, and then he may have further wondered how on earth his own brain could be smarter than him? He might have then thought that maybe it had something to do with dream-Yumichika being smarter than him too.
But he hadn't and he didn't, because he was too focused on doing what he'd been asked. If whatever was following them was scaring Yumichika, he probably didn't want to meet it.
Ikkaku entered the wood without question at first, trying to not let the facts that the path was overrun and hard to see and that it seemed like he might not come out of there alive bother him too much. This was no ordinary forest; it was indeed wilderness, with scary looking trees and many tangled bushes and brambles. Along with that, there were many other strange objects that were out of place in a forest, such as human world items, books with shredded pages, and other things from his own memories, such as old blood-stained academy uniforms, familiar sake bottles, and Yachiru's dollies. Rangiku's precious necklace was even hanging from a high branch. All in all, it looked as though his brain had thrown all of its junk into this forest.
"Wait, who did you say was following us?"
"Believe me, you don't want to meet him," Yumichika said, looking frightened, cheeks pale. "Just keep going." Ikkaku nodded, ducking under branches that grew out over the path and stepping over protuding roots and weeds that were tangled up with splintered wood and glass-dust. He recognized Yumichika's favorite vase that he'd accidentally broken almost twenty years ago, still feeling a guilty jolt as it crackled under his feet. "Oh, and one more thing. Try not to let anyone else get me; you'd be lost without me, and then you'd never get out of here." Ikkaku withheld a snide comment about Yumichika's arrogance.
"Where's 'here'?" Ikkaku asked, slapping a bug that had bit his shoulder, nearly hurling Yumichika into the dark bushes on the edge of the path as he did so. Things were becoming frighteningly realistic. He didn't usually feel itching or pain in his dreams, or other physical sensations, but he could feel his clothes against his body and the meager weight of Yumichika on his shoulder. Furthermore, he could feel the glass shards crunching under his heels, and an unmistakable wave of nausea rose up through him as he lurched forward over a rotting log that was caked with dirt and term papers from his failed kidou-class. It was beginning to disturb him to be honest, the way he could smell the forest, hear the birds, and feel the mugginess and slight breeze.
"I told you. We've reached 'the heart of the matter'," Yumichika said sincerely, with an air of reluctant patience that one would use on a child that incessantly asked 'why'.
Ikkaku frowned at him. "Yeah, but that's just a phrase. It's not a real place," he insisted. Yumichika just looked at him in confusion and with that expression people get when they think that you've said something awkward or crazy: furrowed or raised eyebrows, slight disgust, slowly looking off to one side with pursed lips. Ikkaku frowned deeper, stopping and looking around. The walls should be flickering and warping because he had just acknowledged that this was a dream out loud, but nothing was happening.
"Ikkaku, do you see that?" Yumichika pointed towards something in the distance, holding another hand above his eyes in an attempt to make his vision sharper. No, Ikkaku didn't see it, whatever it was, because he was busy being confused about why he hadn't awakened yet when they'd verbally acknowledged that he was asleep - that, and he was trying to beat away mosquitoes.
"Do I see what?"
"No, do you see that?" Ikkaku ignored Yumichika's nonsense, following the direction of Yumichika's gesture with his eyes. "That looks like Hozukimaru! Go and fetch him."
Sure enough, up in the far distance, right where the path forked and took a sharp left turn one way and continued straight in the other, Hozukimaru was stabbed into the side of a tree at an odd angle. It took Ikkaku some great effort to pull out because it was really stuck in there, as if someone had lined it up with the trunk and pounded it in with a mallet; he had to set Yumichika down for fear of flinging him into the dark shrubbery.
It was a tree without flaky bark, and was much smaller than the other trees, which wasn't saying much because Ikkaku still couldn't reach all the way around it were he to try. He braced his leg up against the dense unforgiving wood, not even caring that he was pulling hard enough that he would fall on his ass once he got it loose.
Ikkaku finally yanked his sword free, falling down as he had anticipated: with a heavy thud that jarred his vision and possibly cracked his tailbone. As pain shot up his spine and through his hips, he got up with a few colorful words and some horrible aching in his back.
He held his sword up to his eyes, really intent on observing just how detailed his dream had become. The blade of his katana was sharp and shiny, with blood encrusted on it as usual. It even had some of Yumichika's hair - back from when it had been long - worked into the hilt, just as it was on the original zanpakutou. The realism was furthered when he saw the chipped edge near the middle of the blade where he'd nearly been killed fighting a hollow that liked throwing rocks.
Then he wondered why Yumichika's sword hadn't appeared as well; this bothered him a little, even if Yumichika was clearly too small to use it. Come to think of it, there was always something up with Yumichika's sword in his dreams. Either it was absent, in a impossible-to-reach place, or Yumichika was just having trouble with it. Ikkaku could vaguely remember one point where he'd found Yumichika trying to lift up his own sword, which was still normal-sized while its owner was tiny. Ikkaku could remember snatching it, and he had teased Yumichika about his height when Yumichika demanded that he give it back.
It was just strange, and he couldn't put his finger on why this would be a reappearing thing in his dreams.
Ikkaku looked around a little, trying to see if maybe Yumichika's sword had just fallen, or had been covered in dead leaves or other debris, or maybe was miniature to fit Yumichika's small stature, but no such luck. He sighed, leaning back against a conveniently placed sign-post... Wait, a signpost?
Ikkaku turned to read it, fingers on his chin. The left path led to the 'sad-lands', which he assumed were basically the badlands of the Rukongai, and the straight path led to... "The... Bewilderness? Oh good, we're going the right way." Now that he had time to think about it, it finally occurred to him that the name was a little strange. "Is that a pun? I think it's a pun. Hey, Yum-" He turned around to ask Yumichika if that had been word-play, or just to gloat that he'd been wrong about it being 'the heart of the matter', but Yumichika wasn't where he'd left him.
In fact, Yumichika wasn't there at all anymore.
Ikkaku just blinked for a second, wondering if Yumichika had hidden just to scare him into watching him better, but it didn't seem like something he'd do, even if Yumichika was occasionally petty.
Suddenly, with an extremely loud metallic rattle, Shuuhei Hisagi front-flipped out of a chain-laden tree and landed in front of him, taking off down the path without a word. Ikkaku blinked once, mouth open, and then tore ass after him, trying to remind himself that if he talked to him too much, he may lose his precious lucidity and rational thought.
He didn't, however, think to call Yumichika just to make sure he wasn't still in the immediate area. He assumed that Hisagi had swiped Yumichika just like always, and the possibility that he might be wrong didn't even cross his mind.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Get back here! Wait up!" Hisagi was running super-fast, and Ikkaku thought it might be because he thought Shuuhei had an insanely better chance getting Yumichika out on a date than he did. Shuuhei Hisagi was miles ahead of him when it came to romance, and there was no way for him to catch up.
It finally occurred to him that the reason talking to Hisagi here warped his perception was because in real life, whenever he talked to Hisagi he just got so damn irritated and flustered for no reason. They didn't have much in common and had codes of alignment that were extremely different, but Ikkaku had remembered when they'd been friends and part of him missed it. Now that he was a rival for Yumichika's affections, Ikkaku had forgotten that they were bros.
He pledged that when he caught Hisagi, he would only punch him a couple times.
Eventually, when Hisagi was no longer in sight, he slowed down, panting, trying to catch his breath. He shouldn't be tired. This was all an illusion; he shouldn't be out of breath or have aching lungs or still feel intense pain from where his lower back had hit the ground earlier.
"Fuck," he swore, kicking a tree in anger. Yumichika had seriously just warned him not to let him out of his sight. This happened every damn night - Yumichika getting kidnapped, abducted, spirited away, etc. It happened all the time, but still Ikkaku never seemed to learn, and he hated feeling so dense. Worst of all, Yumichika was right yet again.
God damnit.
He started to walk some more, hoping that he might come upon Yumichika again by sheer luck, or something like that. Yumichika would probably show up eventually.
After about five minutes of traversing the dense inhospitable path, he made it to another fork in the road, which gave him two options: One, to the 'orchasms', which Ikkaku assumed were chasms that have something to do with orgasms, or two, to 'the thinking place'... or was it 'stinking place?'... He couldn't quite make it out, since the sign-post had nearly rotted right off its nails.
After deciding that smelling bad was better than going to some weird chasms that he really had no idea about, he set off, noticing that the wood was growing sparser, with more patches of sunlight peeking in through the canopy. The path turned slowly to gravel, mixed in with glass bits and the occasional hypodermic needle, so Ikkaku stepped carefully even though he had on sandals. Soon enough, he came upon a bright clearing that held a cute little cottage with a pair of giant scissors that had been modified into a chimney on its roof.
It was either a barber-shop or a chop-shop, and neither sounded pleasant. Hopefully Yumichika was in there, because Ikkaku was sure that finding him would be the only thing to make entering this building worth it.
After knocking, he peeked his head inside, surprised to see Nemu Kurotsuchi styling Nanao's hair with a big smile on her face and with lots of chatter coming from her mouth.
He quickly flicked his eyes over the surroundings: crooked black and white tiles, hair on the floor, spray bottles, and a wall with a continuous counter and a mirror above it. Nothing really threatening, but a little creepy because of the dust, plaster bits, and the broken lightbulb. It looked like the place hadn't been cleaned in ages, which made no sense, because the girls looked like they were having fun and had been here a while. Maybe they were ghosts, forever reenacting their deaths or something.
He cleared his throat to announce his arrival. When they didn't seem to notice it, he spoke. "Hey, have you guys seen Yumichika?" Nanao turned her head to look at him, and Nemu looked into the large cracked mirror, meeting his eyes with an expression so vibrant and life-filled that Ikkaku had a desire to befriend the real Nemu and do something nice for her, something small. It really was a shame that she was always so dreary and creepy. She just needed someone to be even a little nice to her and show her that there was life other than that of pleasing her never-impressed father.
"Yeah, several times."
"Recently, I mean," Ikkaku clarified, and Nanao pursed her lips, looking like she was thinking, or maybe it was that crazy-look again. Ikkaku was used to people thinking he was nuts, given that he was aware that the manic smile he got during fights was probably a little disturbing, but this was just downright frustrating - he was the only sane one here, so why were people always acting like his rationality was like verbal vomit?
"Yeah, yep, mhm. Try the attic," Nanao said in a thoughtful tone. Nemu pointed to the rickety stairs in the corner of the hair-styling shop, to clarify Nanao's suggestion. Ikkaku checked the attic, but no Yumichika - just a bunch of bats. "Okay, try the basement," Nanao then suggested, looking more sure of herself that time.
Ikkaku crossed his arms, tapping his foot when Yumichika didn't show up in the basement either. "Look, do you know or not? I'm in a ru-"
"Try that closet," Nemu said with a smile that Ikkaku had never seen the like of on the real Nemu's face. Ikkaku conceded and checked the closet, immediately getting a floppy Hisagi tumbling out onto him with a bunch of hair dye packets, Yumichika in hand.
"Glad to see you're normal-sized, now," Ikkaku said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Hisagi replied, staring up at him from where he was spread-eagle on the ground.
Yumichika pulled himself out of Hisagi's hand and started scaling Ikkaku's pant leg, until Ikkaku picked him up sheepishly, a little red from the embarrassment of not following Yumichika's suggestion to watch him carefully.
Ikkaku was persuaded to sit down in one of the twirly barber-chairs, and he was so occupied with getting Yumichika somewhere comfortable where he could see him easily that he didn't notice Hisagi leave, or perhaps just disappear.
"You need a hair cut," Nemu said, putting a finger to her chin in thought, as if she was envisioning which style hair cut to give him. Ikkaku's face soured, temper flaring. "Hm, Hm, Hmmmmmmm, you definitely need a hair cut."
Ikkaku just blinked at her, straight-faced. 'Thin ice, thin ice, thin ice.'
"You need a hair cut... You need to cut your hair... hair cut, cut your hair," she continued choppily, making a little picture frame with her hands. Yumichika rolled his eyes.
"Ikkaku, just-"
"I don't have hair, okay? I do NOT need a hair cut!" Ikkaku shouted at her in ire, then gritting his teeth hard enough to be in danger of cracking them.
Nemu nodded as if he had turned down her request calmly. "Well, in that case." Ikkaku grabbed Nemu's wrist just in time before she cut his throat with the scissors. He'd always thought she'd been a little creepy along with her repressed submissive personality - but that probably had just come from Kurotsuchi.
"Close shave," Yumichika commented, yawning.
"Shut your mouth," Ikkaku snapped in response to the cliché, snatching him up and bursting out of the demented barber shop before the two girls could strap him down and do unspeakably horrible things to him, like making him try on itchy wigs.
After running for a few minutes, he finally slowed down to a brisk walk, passing another sign that pointed him towards what was known as the 'thinking place'. "What the hell was that about?"
"I told you this is the heart of the matter, so obviously you're just going to have to work through your problems. You'd better get used to working things out on your own, because I'm not always going to be here."
"The hell does that mean?"
"It means that you're stuck here until you find the center of the maze." At this point, Ikkaku was used to Yumichika completely changing the subject by answering with things that had nothing to do with his question.
"Holy fuck, this is a maze?" Ikkaku asked incredulously, the facts that Yumichika was going to abandon him and that he was unable to awaken pushed to the back of his mind for now.
"Yes, it's that big," Yumichika commented in response to Ikkaku's shocked face.
"And I can't wake up?"
"Right."
"I just have to solve a problem like usual, right? And then someone'll wake me up like always."
"No. It's like I said: Until you navigate the maze, you can't wake up. This is in real time, Ikkaku." Ikkaku's eyes boggled and his mouth opened and closed uselessly. Minutes that passed by here were real? "You'll be stuck here until either you fix this, or your body dies. So you have however long you think they'll keep you on life-support." Ikkaku began panicking.
"They'll think I'm in a coma! What the hell kind of problems do I have to work through? Is this like that sick game that puppet plays in the living world movie to make people appreciate their lives? Fuck-"
"We'll make it," Yumichika comments. "You'll probably have to rescue me quite a few more times, so get used to having to make decisions on your own. It must be the only way you'll learn."
Ikkaku sulked as he walked through a small town in the middle of the woods. Many of the people he'd met or simply seen throughout his life time were there, giving him directions that Yumichika said were wrong. Of course he got pissy, because the people sounded like they knew what they were talking about, but Yumichika insisted that they were only there to throw them off track.
"What, so everything here is just a test, except you? How do I know you're not fake?" Yumichika looked at him as if he'd asked a really smart question.
"You're thinking too hard about imaginary problems. You need to focus on what's real," he said stoically.
Ikkaku shook his head a little desperately, thinking that Yumichika was just talking more nonsense. In distress over his bad situation, while wondering what on earth was happening to his physical body, he walked along the path that kept winding and going up hills and down. Eventually, things thickened back into dense forest once again, along with debris that seemed post-apocalyptic. It reminded Ikkaku of the rubbish piles that often followed a Rukon district catching fire.
"But I don't know how, I need help, Yumichika," he said miserably, stepping over fallen trees and moss-covered stones, squeezing through the trunks that crossed over the path in a big 'x'. Broken glass crunched under his feet, and he noticed other things, like splintered wood from crates that had fallen out of a net that was still hanging overhead.
He recognized the symbol that was always on those boxes he found near Renji - Yumichika had once told him that Renji dealt in weapons in so-and-so town. Now, when Ikkaku thought of weapons, wakizashi, senbon, and other sharp blades came to his mind, but Yumichika had suggested it was more along the lines of explosives. The boxes had probably carried fireworks or grenades or gunpowder or something.
There was a child's doll stuck in a bush, along with coins and barbed-wire fragments sticking up out of the ground. Some of it was stuff that he recognized, and others he only vaguely remembered. He kept walking a little ways, pushing tree branches up and out of the way of his face, dodging some grimy bottles that had been hung like ornaments from some high tree-limbs. He sat in frustration on another crate of explosives that had been kept intact and shoved up next to a tree. Ikkaku exhaled in defeat.
"I don't know what to do- Yumichika?" He looked around him in a circle, suddenly realizing that the path was gone, not even able to tell which way he had come from. The tree 'x' he'd just come through seemed to have disappeared, turning into just another dark backdrop, typical of dense forest.
"Fuck, where'd you go?" he whined in dismay, checking under each of his feet again, getting down on his hands and knees to see if Yumichika had fallen from his shoulder. He was getting fucking pissed off. The dreamscape was cheating, messing with his head and doing things that made no sense at all! Usually things kept to at least a moderate modicum of rationality.
Ikkaku started panicking at that point, scrambling around on the ground, looking for Yumichika. No, he couldn't be left here alone, stuck forever, never able to go back to his real life. What if he died once his body did? What if his consciousness slowly faded away and he started becoming some wacky nut who lived in the Wonderland of other people's dreams?
The dirt was real underneath his fingernails, the rough ground was real under his knees and palms. This world wasn't pixelated or blurry or surreal; everything was so perfectly life-like that he didn't know what to do. "This is a dream," he shouted, standing up. "Wake up, c'mon. Wake up!" He tried screaming, pinching himself, imagining something completely ridiculous to see if it would cause a glitch, but no such luck, once again. "Wake up, you're asleep," he said miserably, losing hope.
Nothing happened, and Ikkaku sat down in shock.
Yumichika was right, or at least his sick-dream-copy of Yumichika was right. He was stuck here. This wasn't one of those dream tasks where he would take up where he'd left off the next time he took a nap. No. He really honestly could not leave, and would remain asleep until he fixed shit.
Damn that Yumichika, leaving him when he needed help. Ikkaku had always somehow deluded himself into thinking that Yumichika's dream-clone really was part of the real Yumichika, but now he wasn't so sure. Was it just another dream-shade that had been projected by his own mind? If that was true, then how could Yumichika be smarter than him here? At one point, his little helper had shown him how to cheat the dreamscape and get what he wanted out of it, but he didn't remember how, and now he was hopelessly lost somewhere between the Bewilderness, that demonic hair salon, and the thinking place.
How hard he wished that Yumichika would come back to him, not even caring if it was just a random firing of neurons in his brain, because as far as he was concerned - and according to Yumichika-two - he had no body anymore. The thing Yumichika always complained about - Ikkaku 'calling' him - wasn't working either, and Ikkaku began to feel helpless.
He couldn't wake up, and his guide had gone once again. He didn't know what he was supposed to be doing or where he needed to go. How on earth had Yumichika expected him to keep track of him if he was just gonna' disappear out of the blue like that? Was he supposed to hold Yumichika in his hand and keep him in eyeshot at all times? Even that didn't seem to be working. He sighed, leaning back against a tree in misery, before deciding to keep following the path, hoping he could find somebody, even if their advice was completely wrong.
There was no point wasting time feeling sorry for himself. There wouldn't even be a 'himself' if he didn't get a move on.