Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach, nor make any money from this fan-made fiction.
8. Ew, Bugs!
The city of Budapest was both the strangest and one of the safest places to be after the conclusion of World War Three. America and what was left of her allies were victorious, but that didn't mean dimensions stopped colliding and corruption diseases had ceased. On one hand, the city was rife with corrupted matter from the incursion, and the cultists were particularly difficult to eliminate in comparison to previous quarantine zones. On the other, the cultists were less of a direct danger to the citizens since a strong bond had formed between them and the civilians during the war. As it was, the quarantine was only barely supported by the current local government—the national one was nonexistent in practice—due to some of the council members being former cultists who's lives were saved and eyes opened to the truth as a result. Originally the corruption wing of one hospital was all that was allowed to operate.
Usagi was convinced the quarantine was a bad idea and, as a member of the cult called HiMi, she was designing the next coded email for her fellow 'brothers and sisters'. She looked over the colour options for the brain and was about to choose grey when sudden pain in her left arm made her scream in agony. More of the hive mind insects had hatched within her arm, and with just a little more time and she would join her older sister and the others who were already ascended, but seeing the look on her grandmother's face—who had just broken into her room with remarkable ease—that wasn't going to happen if she didn't immediately run away from home.
This was never going to happen, however, since her grandmother, Orihime, already had her good arm held firmly.
"Usagi, why didn't you tell anyone about this? You know what happened to Fuji. We need to get it treated. I'll—"
Usagi watched as her grandmother's eye caught the holographic screen and saw what she was working on.
"I see," Orihime darkly muttered, the bangs of her long, white hair giving off an ominous feeling.
Usagi watched, confused and worried, as her grandmother thought something over and came to a decision of some kind while still keeping her good arm in a vise-like grip.
"Grandma, what's—"
Orihime cut Usagi off and activated her watch to make a call. "Hello, Fuku?"
A short pause was followed by another woman's eager voice. "Orihime? How are you?"
"I'm fine, but—I know it's been a while but what hospital are you at? My granddaughter..."
It was an embarrassing thing to be marched through the streets, but Usagi also learned something about her grandmother she hadn't known: her fellow HiMi brothers, the ones she did see on the streets, were powerless to save her; there was some kind of invisible barrier keeping them away. Of course, Usagi originally tried to get away, but being dragged on the ground was even more humiliating so now, with scraped jeans, she walked beside Orihime to the hospital. Once they got there it only took ten minutes for a woman wearing a white lab coat over freshly-stained surgical scrubs—who looked like she was in her early forties with bright orange hair—approached them with a warm smile.
"Hey, Orihime," the woman said before turning her attention to Usagi. "I'm Dr. Fuku Kurosaki, I hear you're in a lot of pain. Usagi, right?"
The pain in her arm surged again as more eggs hatched and she, for the second time, couldn't help the scream that escaped her lips. "J-just leave me—ugh—alone!" Once the pain died down Usagi could feel the heat of tears as they leaked out of the corners of her eyes. She looked towards her arm where an orange gelatinous mass that had replaced the muscle and fat in her arm under her skin; it was extremely obvious now, especially the green bruising where she had tried to massage it yesterday.
"Wow, that really is a lot of pain," Fuku remarked, a faint frown of concern appearing on her face. "We'll get you to an examination room. I'll get you diagnosed and treated in no time." Fuku also called for an "emergency intake" to be set up at all entrances through her bracelet phone. Was the hospital that busy?
None of Usagi's protests were acknowledged and, like her grandmother, Fuku seemed to have a strength that didn't match someone of her stature. She was pulled into an elevator, her grandmother walking with them, and forced to get off at the third floor and ultimately enter into an available operating room with all the latest equipment. It would have looked cool if not for her circumstances, though the lack of surgery robots was notable so maybe it wasn't an operating room?
Fuku grabbed what looked like a potato with a screen in it and treated it like a scanner. She looked at the nearby holo screen as numbers, images and bars moved around.
"Oh, wow, a new mutation. Still, the nest structure, eggs, and exoskeletons are identical to something I'm familiar with, so removal shouldn't be anything unusual. I'll call an assistant and get on with it." Then she turned specifically to Orihime and asked her to step outside the room for a talk.
Usagi didn't even try to see if she could hear them, instead looking for something she could use as a weapon. Because of her arm, she could feel her HiMi brothers and sisters approaching, and if she could escape and make it to the HiMi safe-house, they would admit her to the ascendancy room and she would be free to join Fuji when the time came. She picked up a small oxygen cylinder and waited for Fuku to enter. Unfortunately, Fuku had somehow surprised her and she became sleepy.
Usagi woke up some time later, strapped to a fridge cart of some kind, angry, scared, and unable to feel the HiMi brothers and sisters she felt approaching the hospital earlier. Did they run away once her arm was treated, or were they captured and forcefully treated as well. Did they get killed? All these thoughts stopped when Dr. Fuku looked at her with an easygoing smile—as if it was a normal Tuesday—that was suspiciously disarming.
"Hey miss cultist, I've been asked by Ori—your grandmother to show you why you may want to quit your cult." Aside from the verbal slip, even her voice came across without indicating any kind of concern. It didn't quite match what Usagi remembered of her first interaction with the doctor.
"Is that so?" Usagi asked, raising the pitch of her voice and trying to play along. "Whatever do you mean?" she asked in an all-too-sweet manner. If she could get out of here she could get another insect from the HiMi hive and start the process over again.
"György," Fuku breezily called out, "please bring in Exhibit A."
A man in stained scrubs pushed a tray through the open door and into the room; it had a sheet covering it, though some orange, red, green and brown staining could be seen from whatever was underneath it. Once the man left and the door was closed, Fuku dramatically pulled off the cover to reveal a shoulder and arm just as orange, bloated and glowing as hers used to be, and full of insects that, for some reason, didn't move. Fuku grabbed a scalpel and used the back of it to gently push on the skin of the forearm; it moved like jello and the spot turned a tad green, which made Usagi a little queasy when a couple drops of red, orange and green fluid squirted out from the shoulder joint.
"This is your old arm. The insects inside of it had turned it into their nest, converting enough of your arm into what's basically a giant pulp fruit." She cut the skin and some orange liquid came out along with blood. "As I cut the skin and some of the pulp beneath it, you can see the sugary protein fluid that feeds the insects. It's quite easy to make a mess, as you can see. The insects create tunnels by squeezing between the pulp—"
Usagi threw up, her breakfast of oatmeal making its way to the floor.
Fuku giggled. "Oh, what a shame, I still have so much more to teach you."
Usagi growled. "You're sick in the head! Why would you show me this? And that's not my arm, my arm is still connected to me, if you hadn't noticed."
"Oh, but it is your arm? I know it's hard to see, but if you look down you might see there isn't even a scar on the new one."
Usagi looked down where the orange straps didn't cover and saw what Fuku was getting at: her arm looked perfectly normal with no scarring. It went against everything she knew about medical technology. "That's not enough proof." There had to be a trick; maybe it was a cleverly disguised robotic arm? The new ones were capable of interacting with the nervous system and acting like a real one.
Fuku's eyes gave off an unnatural light before she went to the door and opened it, pulling in a large cart with a body under some sheets. Once the door to the operating room was locked, she pulled the cover off to reveal a perfectly accurate clone missing one arm and it's associated shoulder. It even had her birthmark on the right side of its hip.
Usagi reeled backwards and her fridge cart tipped into the white, ceramic wall finish. Her pupils shrank and she locked onto the body in front of her. "Th-th-th-th—That's... that's impossible!"
"Oh?" Fuku asked, her smile and tone still easygoing, "do you not believe your own eyes?"
"But, but, but..."
Fuku shook her head and sighed, her easygoing persona act straining as she briefly wondered how their friend Rukia was so much better at convincing people with objectively more obvious acting. She decided to take things a bit more seriously. "Look, this is a special favour for Ori—your grandmother, and quite frankly, if not for her, I was just going to replace your memories."
"My grandma told you to do this?" Usagi began to panic once the other key words registered. "Replace my memories?!"
"Your grandma only asked me to show you why corruption diseases are bad in the hopes it would get you to quit your cult; I chose this method. I'm just trying to get this information through your thick skull. Your reaction was hilarious, though."
Usagi glared at Fuku. "You've got a twisted sense of humour."
Fuku smiled proudly and bowed theatrically. "Thank you, it comes with decades of treating stuff like your arm." Her tone shifted. "In all seriousness, you were about a month away from the rest of your body being like your arm. That's how dangerous these diseases are."
"So what?" Usagi calmly asked. "That's called ascension. In a month I'd be part of the hive mind—the next stage of evolution."
Fuku smiled, though it came across as sinister. "Mendax Mens Insectum, also known as the Lying Mind Insect. Each one works like a node, and as a whole, they can mimic the host's mind, and will continue it well beyond the host's death. I'm afraid all those who have 'ascended'"—she said while using air quotes—"are dead or on death's doorstep. It's a pitiful and painful way to go."
"I don't believe you!" Usagi yelled, tears leaking down her face as she rocked her fridge cart so much it began to slide down the wall and land on its back with an uncomfortable thud.
Fuku's brows furrowed, her smile turning into a frown. She shook her head and sighed. "Alright," she said ominously, "since you're Orihime's grand kid, I'm going to give you a reason you can't doubt. Just wait a bit." Then she let out a sinister chuckle. "Oh, right, you aren't going anywhere. Just lay there for a while and cool off."
Usagi pensively waited an hour before Fuku got back into the room; she was holding a painted wooden badge with a skull on it. Fuku righted the fridge cart before, without warning, punching the badge into her. This sent her flying backwards and tumbling through something. It took several minutes to catch her breath before she was able to realize her limbs were no longer bound. Just as Usagi was going to celebrate her freedom, she noticed where she was and how no one in the live operating room had noticed her. Then she saw who they were operating on: it was one of her HiMi brothers. One doctor was sticking hypodermic needles into darkened areas and injecting something while another cut those spots open and used long tweezers to pull out eggs, larvae and insects. The third person was vacuuming out the fluids.
It was gross, but there was no mess; besides, she needed to rescue her brother. She moved to act when something stopped her with a clinking metal sound. She looked down to see a chain bolted to her chest and followed it back to where Fuku—now looking to be in her twenties and dressed in black robes with a sword mounted behind her—held it in her hands just before it went through the wall behind her.
"I'm gonna have to stop you there," Fuku said, "besides, the further you leave the more likely this chain is to break and then you'd die."
"What?"
Fuku sighed. "As you are experiencing, I've moved you out of your body for a little while. So, what do you think?"
"What is this? What did you do?"
"I told you. Anyway, this is the truth. You, me... your sister... We're all souls that inhabit bodies, and as an expert on the matter, I'll tell you normal souls are not capable of becoming a hive mind. If the insects take over, you die, and all that's left is the bugs. Is any of this tracking in your mind?"
That couldn't have been true. If it was, then just what was the purpose of all she had done? In a rage, Usagi threw a punch with all her weight behind it, only for Fuku to easily catch it. Her other fist was caught just as easily as her knees lost their strength and the realization kicked in and memories of her sister Fuji flooded her mind. Screaming was accompanied by tears and snot and Usagi didn't even pay mind to Fuku, who was now kneeling next to her and physically supporting her. The heartbreak, loneliness and anger blurred together until she vividly dreamed of her sister; the projected memories were different, where they were once happy, sadness now crept into the corners of Fuji's eyes.
The next morning Usagi woke up sore and thirsty and still strapped to the fridge cart. She wasn't in the operating room, but wherever she was it was empty of all furniture, save for four blue curtains and the wall fixings for electrical outlets as well as vacuum lines, oxygen and other plumbed functions. Usagi tried to concentrate on her dreams before they slipped away, hoping to figure out when and why Fuji had chosen to join HiMi and why she decided to ascend. Those fading memories were quickly becoming a source of frustration.
The doors flung open and Fuku walked through with a man who looked her age with equally bright orange hair (both in their forties). Fuku looked relieved while the person beside her stared at Usagi and scowled. It was quite the intimidating scowl, which caused the rest of Usagi's unsuccessfully recalled dreams to disappear entirely, leading to her own scowl.
"Good morning," Fuku began cheerfully, "how are you? The person with me is my husband, Dr. Ichigo Kurosaki. Your grandma will be here shortly."
Usagi didn't quite pay attention, however, as she was still scowling at Ichigo. Sure, the man didn't mean to chase away her precious memories, but he still had. And why was he scowling at her to begin with?
"Fuku," Ichigo asked, finally turning away from Usagi, "is that a fridge cart?"
Fuku's beaming smile was almost infectious as she confidently crossed her arms and looked up at her husband. "Yeah, what do you think?"
He didn't seem too impressed as his scowl deepened and he crossed his arms and creased his lab coat. "You do realize we have the ones that are meant to carry people, right? We also have mobile beds with straps."
Fuku uncrossed her arms and moved her hands to her hips, though the expression on her face was just as proud as before. "But this was so much more in-theme to the eerily calm mad doctor persona I was going for yesterday! And I... kind of forgot."
Ichigo smiled, chuckled, then sighed as Fuku giggled and moved to remove the straps holding Usagi.
With Ichigo not staring at her and the bindings undone, Usagi focused on getting up as she came to a realization. "Dr. Fuku, about yesterday... if my sister... I know her body was buried, but is it possible her soul is still with the hive mind?"
"We could take a look," Fuku answered, "but you'd have to tell us where your hideout is. Well, we would like your cooperation in helping us break up HiMi, anyway."
Usagi, not wanting to lose another person she considered a brother or sister, didn't hesitate for a moment and within a week HiMi had been cleaned up, cured and disbanded. The hive mind within the ascension room did have a couple of souls hanging around it according to Ichigo, but Fuji's wasn't one of them. There was a celebration party held, and Usagi was invited to it. She met with many of the people who raided the many hideouts and headquarters and came to realize many of them were family members of former cultists. It was weird such a large part of her life was no more, but the gratefulness of those she met helped affirm it was for the best.
She was also rebuilding her friendships with as many of the former HiMi members as she could; one of them had even asked her out on a date.
A/N:
So, that's the official end of the main story, but there is an epilogue on the way to explain what happened between Ichigo and Orihime who did get married and have a divorce.
I really don't have a lot to say here, other than I'm so happy this story is finally done and I can get back to other projects (once the epilogue is out, which should be shortly).
If you don't care about the epilogue, I'll just say it here: thank you for reading the story and I hope it was interesting and a little off-putting. If not... well, thanks for reading this, anyway.
Have a great life and may God bless you,
SomethingAncient