Bleach: Derailed

AN: Rukia's Visored mask would have been Chappy.

[47] You were having a perfectly civil conversation over here!
[41] You could ask if anyone else brought lunch, to feed Cirucci with.
[18] Cirucci mentioned orders. Explaining them might ease tensions.

"We were having a perfectly civil conversation over here!" You shout, blasting through the tense pressure in the air with the sheer weight of your irritation, and leaving a teetering awkwardness in its place. Your sullen glare broadcasts exactly how happy you are that violence is being threatened -not happy at all.

Cirucci Sanderwicci flicks the line she holds in one hand, sending the disc on its end up into her other, and then crosses her arms as her spiritual pressure releases its grip on the soul reapers, most of whom have glistening trails on their necks where sweat had gathered.

Kiyone is an exception, and so is Rukia.

The third seat nods, but doesn't take her eyes off of the special hollow. "You haven't done anything to warrant outright aggression, with so many people at risk." She allows.

Cirucci is even less pleased, if more graceful in her upset. "I'll accept your admission of weakness."

"Not without my limited being released." Kiyone finishes, having paused for dramatic effect. Sure enough, there's a tattoo on her chest, right between her lapels, that represents the seal placed on high-ranking officers when they come to the living world, by the kido corps. At least you assume that's what it is.

Does she think that she can take the Arrancar in a fight, if she gets her power unsealed? Circci seems like she's got a lot of weight to throw around, spiritually. Without false modesty, you've got a lot of power, but pushing it aside didn't seem to strain her at all. And... even if she's a person that you can reason with, there has to be a reason for why the soul reapers are treating her with such trepidation.

With that in mind you step between them. "Hey, hey! What happened to talking?"

Cirucci leans to one side and smirks. Kiyone tosses her hair. Rukia stares at you like you have two heads.

Whatever. "So no killing."

"It'd be a waste of my time to kill such small fry. That's what fraccion are for, regardless." Cirucci sighs and turns away. "I'd dirty myself by even touching most of you."

Rukia trembles, her hand wrapped so tight around the hilt of her zanpakuto, still sheathed, that you can see the individual bulges of her bones and muscles. It could be fear, or it could be her self control barely keeping the girl from attacking. Kiyone is better off, but her face is far grimmer than it has been in the short time that you've known her. Cirucci takes a step away, and then pauses.

There's a thrum in the air, a disturbance that you feel with your heart instead of your senses. The sky above and far away opens up like a great mouth clenched shut, but whose teeth are retracting one by one. A figure steps out, indistinct from this distance but wearing white.

"Ugh." Cirucci groans sourly. "A recall order now, of all times? What a bad joke." Just then Kiyone's phone beeps, and this message is a good one.

"And I have received permission to release my limiter." She says, relief barely tinging her once more professional voice. The tattoo shatters into specks of dust. Someone must have paged for help!

The hollow stops.

The officer draws her sword. Rukia joins her, and a moment later so do all the other soul reapers, you last of all. Zangetsu rests easily in your grip.

"If you're leaving, Arrancar, then we'll have no quarrel." Kiyone says softly. She doesn't want to do this. It's a bad situation.

The inky-haired woman turns around to face you all again. Her face is twisted into a small, almost cute scowl, kept from being attractive by the way her eyes weigh you up. You feel like meat in a supermarket. "I do have a mission, here, and I can't go home without completing it. I am a professional."

"I won't let you hurt anyone." Rukia says coldly.

Cirucci tilts her head. "It's almost sad, how you think that you have any choice in how I complete my lord's instructions. I don't serve you, soul reaper."

She takes four quick steps forward, bats aside your guard with an arm half as thick as yours, but that feels like solid steel, and two knives stab you in the gut! Cold jets into you, into your blood and your body even as shouts and battle cries fill the air -briefly. You can't look up. It's all you can do to stay standing when you hurt so much, like your blood has turned to hungry ice.

It's only seconds before Cirucci is in front of you again, walking away. She stops after a few steps, looks over her shoulder, and says, "You're still standing? That's a first. I suppose you'll probably make it through whatever the ninth cooked up this time, after all. I'd hoped so. It'd be a waste of my only dose, if you don't."

"Why?" You grit out.

"Because I'm a soldier." She says. "You'd think a soul reaper would understand how to follow orders."

Something small and bone-white falls to the ground at your feet, the thing that injected the awful liquid into your body. It's still eating at you, but you don't give in to the pain. You channel it. You combine it with all the worry you have about never seeing your family again, temper it with the hot sickness of worry about your fellow students and the soul reapers behind you, and you straighten your back.

Zangetsu hums in your hand. The sharp ice coursing through you is fire now, heady and intoxicating as you take a step. It feels like the step of a titan, impossibly heavy and momentous. It's the most important step.

"Aren't you going to attack me?" Cirucci asks, but she's behind you.

You take another step back toward where the soul reapers lay on the ground. Some of them are already struggling to their feet, staggering to recover, but you don't see any blood. Are they okay? "You're done." You grit out. "Mission over. I've got to-"

The ground rushes up to meet you.

---

"Sooo... You've got a problem." Zangetsu drawls as you drop onto the side of one of the countless sideways skyscrapers that make up your inner world.

"I've got to make sure that the others are alright!"

The white image of yourself growls. "No. You have to figure out how you're going to stop the hollow energy you got stuck with like an idiot from eating you from the inside out!"

What?

"Hollow energy?" You ask. "Not poison?"

"It'll kill you even more dead than poison, if you don't get a hold of it." Zangetsu promises, dead serious. "And I'm just guessing, here, but it'll probably go after your family next."

"What do you mean, it'll go after my family?" You snap. "Can it get out?"

"It can take over your body. This inner world is metaphorical, but it's still real. Your own zanpakuto can't really kill you in here, but adding hollow energy to the mix changes things up. If the hollow kills you here, then it'll usurp control, take over your body. Given how you're doing so far... that wouldn't be too great, from your perspective." Zangetsu says as he spreads his arms.

You look around, but don't see anything apart from you and Zangetsu. "I've got to find it. Do you know where it is?"

Your zanpakuto spirit takes a step back and smiles a grin so wide it must hurt him, arms still outstretched. Something drips down his cheek -a tear? No. No. More liquid drips from his eye, white liquid that spreads across his face in a growing patch of smooth, white, mask.

"It's already gotten to you." You breath.

He shrugs. "Yeah. I'm trying really hard to hold back right now, but you've got maybe half a minute before I can't stop the hollowfication any more."

"What's going to happen to you?"

"If I'm honest? Dunno. It'll be interesting to find out, though!" Zangetsu's smile takes on a manic edge. "But what the hell! Let's see what happens next. Give me everything you've got. You're going to need it, all of your drive, all of your power, all of your instincts."

You draw your sword. It's not in shikai. "You want me to attack you while you're just standing there?"

"Better now than when I've been hollowfied." He points out. "You could get a leg up, claim more of my power before I stop being a normal zanpakuto. It'd make things easier. There'd be less risk. Who knows what I'll be like once this is done? You could just take my power now."

Will you take power from your partner, by force? Choose one.
[] Do it
[] Don't
[] Refuse violently