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"Oh, I understand now," Kurotsuchi Mayuri muttered as he pulled a pen and paper from seemingly nowhere, his fingers moving with manic precision as he immediately began scribbling dense clusters of notes, every stroke frantic, focused, as though his thoughts might evaporate if not pinned down this instant.
"Anything else you'd like to add?" he asked without looking up.
Mikami Saiki hesitated before shaking his head, uncertain not because he lacked answers, but because there was something about this man—no, this creature—that stirred a deep, inexplicable discomfort in the marrow of his bones, something primal and irrational, akin to the instinctive dread one felt toward venomous insects, slithering reptiles, or shadowed places that reeked of ancient danger. It wasn't logic that warned him to fear Mayuri—it was biology.
"Alright then. Let's leave it here for now," Mayuri said with a final flick of his pen, scanning his notes with a glance that seemed too brief to gather anything of value, yet his thinly veiled dissatisfaction was unmistakable in the sharp downturn of his mouth and the tightening of his gaze.
From Mikami's perspective, there had never been much useful data to provide in the first place; most of his recollections bordered on Moyu-worship, riddled with excessive admiration and praise for the Third Seat, and ultimately empty of the objective insights someone like Mayuri required. The transcript, though detailed in emotion, lacked substance in measurable output, and out of the entire interrogation, only three concise lines could be considered scientifically relevant: Moyu made a move, the opponent was taken out instantly, and that was the end of it.
Mayuri's finger tapped his temple with a sharp bang, each motion a percussion of irritation as his growing frustration began to boil just beneath the surface of his skin, his expression shifting with a slow, disquieting elasticity—unhinged, erratic, volatile.
"It appears a different angle is required for this interrogation," he muttered, just before his neck twisted in a grotesque, puppet-like arc, turning nearly 270 degrees as though his body had forgotten how joints worked, that eerie rotation forcing Mikami to freeze in place, terror tightening his muscles like coiled wire.
"Now, trouble yourself by telling me—how did it feel when you first encountered a Menos Grande?" Mayuri asked, his voice unnervingly casual even as that hollow-eyed stare bore down with predatory curiosity, each syllable pressing on Mikami's nerves like ice on exposed skin.
That inhuman movement, that twisted posture, that distorted energy—it bypassed reason entirely, tearing into the foundations of instinct as Mikami answered reflexively, the words spilling out faster than he could restrain them. "I-It had overwhelming Reiatsu... The moment it appeared, I was crushed by its presence... I couldn't move, I couldn't think, and my entire body locked up under the pressure..."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
On the far side of the warehouse, Moyu stood silently, his posture unreadable as he observed the proceedings from behind half-lowered lids, aware that what he was witnessing wasn't improvisation or madness but method—Mayuri's mental shift wasn't a sudden break, but a carefully designed procedure. The man had rebuilt his own body into a living research facility, a construct of hidden compartments, organic weapons, and concealed devices, and to him, the flesh wasn't sacred, nor a vessel, but a mutable tool for the pursuit of knowledge. His Zanpakutō, terrifying though it was, often seemed secondary to the body he had honed into something far more monstrous and precise.
The moment Mayuri entered that grotesque state, the spiral irises in his eyes began to pulse subtly, spinning like the calibration rings of some unseen machine, and though his Reiatsu remained deceptively subdued, its influence settled over Mikami like a silk net—gentle at first, but suffocating once entangled. Under that influence, Mikami began recounting the confrontation with Szayelaporro not in panicked fragments, but with vivid sensory detail, the terror and awe of that day flowing from him like ink poured directly from the soul.
Moyu continued to observe, calculating and detached, choosing not to intervene as long as no physical harm was inflicted—after all, if the method worked and Mikami remained intact, there was no reason to stop it.
"Ahhh... Now this," Mayuri said with a tone bordering on reverent as he halted his spiritual pen mid-scroll and pressed it against the notebook, "this monologue is far more informative."
The trance broke like a snapped thread, and Mikami blinked rapidly as he re-entered consciousness, only to find Mayuri's form far too close, far too calm, and infinitely more terrifying than before. Whatever fear he had once reserved for the Menos Grande now clung to this man instead, transferred and magnified by the knowledge that this horror wore the skin of an ally.
Both creatures were monsters. They merely belonged to different breeds.
"Thank you, Mr. Moyu, for your cooperation," Mayuri said as he tucked away his pen and paper, his tone oddly cordial, as though the prior psychological violation had never occurred or mattered in the slightest.
"With this data and the residual Reiatsu collected in Karakura Town," he mused, a gleam flaring to life behind his glassy mask-eyes, "I believe I'm on the verge of a new breakthrough..."
Moyu said nothing, offering only the same impassive stare he had maintained throughout, for as long as Mayuri kept his obsession contained and away from those he cared about, there was no reason for conflict. But even as he watched Mayuri take his leave, notebook clutched like sacred scripture, the unease in Moyu's gut only deepened.
Kurotsuchi Mayuri might have been a lunatic, but he was a calculated lunatic—his madness driven by utility, governed by necessity, and constrained only by the certainty of control. He would never make a move unless he was sure the board belonged to him.
"All things in this world are incomplete," Mayuri murmured suddenly, his fingers twitching and his irises fluttering with wild motion as if tracing invisible formulas, "myself, Mr. Moyu, everything and everyone."
"But precisely because we are incomplete, we have the room to grow. Don't you see? Don't you understand?"
His grin widened, twisting and erratic, his voice hitching and accelerating as his thoughts spiraled further into a frenzy, his words becoming more difficult to track—less a lecture and more a manic sermon delivered to the ghosts only he could hear.
Moyu's brows drew together by a fraction, not in confusion, but understanding. He knew exactly what Mayuri meant.
As head of the Department of Research and Development, Mayuri harbored an almost pathological hatred for perfection—not because he couldn't reach it, but because to him, the very idea of perfection was antithetical to life. To be perfect was to cease evolving, to become static, to die in place. Only imperfection promised growth, and only incompletion offered potential.
With Mikami's trance-ridden transcript stored in his devices and the lingering Reiatsu gathered from Karakura now locked within his tools, Mayuri turned and disappeared into the shadows of the warehouse, leaving silence in his wake.
But that silence did little to ease Moyu's tension.
If anything, it confirmed what he already knew.
That man had not abandoned his original goal.
He had simply rescheduled it.
Because the moment his current research met resistance or ran dry, the first place Mayuri would look next would be Karakura Town.
And the next time he arrived, it wouldn't just be data he was after.
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