Dance, Night, Wind
It shook through him gradually, virulent and pernicious and oozing like the first burn of plague-fever. An itch in the back of the mind. Bad dreams. Night sweats that left the sheets of his futon damp and clinging. After-images of memories superimposed over reality, distorting colour and perception. At first, he put it down to a series of chain migraines – after all, the pulsing thud thud thud agony of his heartbeat in his temples distracted from the unreality of the situation as such a pain would waylay any man. That was… until he felt her. The chill of dead fingertips at his wrist. A puff of breath against his ear that had the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
Takasugi regained consciousness quickly, the sound of his alarm waking him as it always did. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, the previous days exhaustion lingering – no matter how much he slept, ever since he was called to be the 12th Division’s pet science experiment, ‘rest’ did little for him. It wasn’t so much the memories of his gradual recovery that stole away his energy, either. There was something foreboding about the very idea of turning in for the night (day?). Almost as if something was waiting for him, in dreams, in his mind. Like he was forfeiting, giving up some part of himself whenever he closed his eyes.
The drugs the 4th Division had given him to ease his sleep helped knock him out easily enough, but he still felt the same creeping unease when he finally did wake in the evening – it was like there another layer of skin plastered to his own, thick and nerveless and oily. Artificial. And the cold, set in and rigid like a dead thing…
He shook himself as he rubbed his bleary eyes again – time to hit the showers, and then? He had questions he couldn’t bare to ponder without a drink.
-
With a huff, Takasugi sat himself down at the table in his new office, steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of documents in the other. He hadn’t yet found the time to decorate – hell, there hadn’t been much time for anything since he had been forced into a Captain’s haori and sent on his merry way. He supposed he understood, in a way – wartime was never too far away, and a good General made sure his reserves were stocked in the event his baskets spilled too many eggs. It was entirely possible. There hadn’t been a successful reconnaissance mission to Hueco Mundo in weeks and morale was at an all time low. It was difficult to motivate soldiers when even their leadership fell in bloody heaps around them. Takasugi swallowed roughly, mug clinking against the desk as he set it down. Yes, he understood that all too well, somehow. It wasn’t like he could remember his life, but he had enough clues about his reaction to certain stimuli to fathom his death wasn’t a clean matter, and that was of course enough for him. That, and the unfinished tattoo that stretched out across his body.
He rifled through the papers that had been left in a box by his door, a deep frown forming on his face. Attendance reports. Reviews. Requests for his men to be assigned to the South wall on an evening – something about an uprising from the Southern Rukon Districts? Were even the citizens of Soul Society unhappy with their lot? Shaking his head humourlessly, he set the papers down alongside his mug – the backlog he had been left with would take more time than any organised Captain could dedicate, and his Division had been left without leadership long enough that the documents had since gathered dust. He would have to delegate. He would have to delegate a lot.
He clapped his hands together to rid them of the dust and sneezed loudly, the sound echoing down the corridors of his Headquarters. He would have felt bad if he hadn’t have known the rest of his Division also kept the same backwards hours as himself. Taking a sip of his coffee-
“Taichou...”
- he promptly spat it out again, luckily managing to avoid drenching his workload. The woman stood in the doorway frozen, her expression caught between horror and surprise. Takasugi coughed as he pounded his chest with his fist – if he hadn’t woken his Division up before, he certainly had then.
The woman ran across the room in a panic. Slamming both hands down on top of the desk, she almost knocked over the mug of coffee. Takasugi cringed as he moved it away – Central Chambers would have his hide if he managed to destroy his Division’s documents on his first damned day, and it was the last in the pot. “Takasugi-taichou are you alright!? I’m so sorry, the door was open and I thought…!”
“It’s alright, really...”
“Are you okay!?”
To say the evening had started without a headache… “I’m fine. Now, what’s the problem?”
The woman paused, frowning, before her face lit up in recognition. She proudly handed over a sealed envelope, and Takasugi cringed to see the wax seal of the chambers glisten, barely dry in the time it had taken to be delivered to him. “Orders sir!”
This woman… an overachiever then. Or perhaps simply over excited. The delivery of priority orders were hardly left to random shinigami.
“...Right.” Takasugi replied tonelessly, hardly looking up from his desk. The woman frowned again at his lack of enthusiasm but Takasugi couldn’t quite bring himself to correct the miss-step. It was his first day as Taichou and impressions were vital, but so were maintaining decorum and manners and she hadn’t so much as knocked before barging into his office. And she had too much damned energy for 2am. “Well then… Hand it over.”
“Y-yes Taichou!”
“What’s your name?”
“Suzuki Mai, sir!”, she replied. He couldn’t quite ignore the slight shake in her voice but chose not to acknowledge it.
“And are you one of mine, then?”
“Yes sir! I graduated from the Academy and was assigned to the 3rd Division last week!”
Takasugi glanced down to the envelope in his hands, brows furrowed in thought.
“Good evening, Suzuki Mai. That will be all for now.”
He didn’t watch as she left. Pushing a thumb under the lip of the envelope, he broke the wax seal, wondering at where his anger had come from. The sensation of not-there phantom nails at his throat, ice-freezing and dreamlike replied to the silent question. Perhaps he was even more exhausted than he thought.
[1/?]
The Senkaimon snapped closed behind him with all the finality of a book slamming shut, the bright glow of the light behind faux paper windows fizzling out to nothing but dark as it dematerialised. Landing lightly atop a shelf of spirit particles as to not disturb the sand underfoot, Takasugi looked down on a small village of simple sandstone and rock from atop a high dune. It was his first solo excursion into the material world. With nought but silence and the chill of the evening air to welcome him, he unfurled his orders and squinted at the words in the gloom.
A simple investigation into the high amount of souls suddenly vanishing in the area, with very little time between them and with none having the Burial performed on them. A high amount of human deaths wouldn't usually concern Chambers, but to have the souls simply vanish? Even the ones with little to no spiritual talent? And... all males?
It was a strange set of circumstances, to be sure, but the newly minted 3rd Division Captain couldn't think of any 'proper' reason for this assignment to be allocated to a Captain. Besides the testing of the 12th Division's newest toy, he mused. He supposed Chambers found it amusing to dump so much responsibility on a man that was little more than fresh out of the Academy, even if his raw physical talent was artificially boosted to a high degree. He supposed they had a healthy amount of curiosity regarding his effectiveness in the field. He supposed they wanted to make sure the 12th Division had made good on their no doubt substantial investment. He supposed it would be amusing to purposefully fudge the assignment just to spite them. He wouldn't go so far as to say his treatment had nullified his drive to be a better man, to bring more good to a world that needed the careful hand of a soul shepherd - but the idea of purposefully yanking his leash and making those bastards fall flat on their face was almost enough to make his resolve waver. Just a little bit, anyway.
He shook the thought away, opting to ignore the temptation and distraction. No doubt he would receive a far more severe reprimand than the 12th if he failed, anyway.
The chill of the night air burned on the inhale as he made his way downwards towards the village, the little pinpricks of slowly dimming lanterns hung in every other window guiding him. The quiet jarred him even more than the evening cold and brought with it an eerie contrasting blanket of calm and foreboding - a mausoleum for strangers in the dark and solitary cold. With no technology to artificially prolong their waking hours, the village had retreated after a hard day of labor and trading and not a soul, living or otherwise, walked between the huts. If it hadn't been for the dying lights illuminating the chipped whitewashed walls and the rippling of varying (yet extremely low) amounts of spiritual pressure, he might have felt truly alone.
[2/?]