My hand is around Kimura’s throat in an instant, and I slam him into the closest wall. A spiderweb of cracks forms behind him but I take no notice. I’m too busy trying to shove this bastard through it to care.

“What. The. Hell. Do. You. Think. You’re. Doing?” I snarl in his face.

Kimura ineffectually grasps at my wrist trying to pull me off. “M-monsters...can’t let-” and that's as far as he gets before my hand tightens down again, cutting him and nearly crushing his windpipe in the process.

“They are not MONSTERS! They had no choice in what was done to them and you think that gives you the right to just end them?!” I couldn’t believe the callousness of the ‘protectors’ of Soul Society. “You don’t get to write them off like that!” I wasn’t asking for a bloodless victory. That would be unrealistic given the numbers and strength of the experiments. But to murder them when they were helpless pissed me off so badly it felt like the walls were shaking with my anger.

A hand appeared on my forearm and I looked over to see a pale Natsumi pulling at my arm. She was covered in sweat and was shaking like she was being crushed by something incredibly heavy.

“Cross...calm down...you’re going to...bring the ceiling down...on top of...us!” She panted out.

My first instinct was to lash out at her as well. Calm down? When the biggest victims of this disaster were being killed by the ones supposed to be helping them? It was only the cracking of the walls as the spiderweb surrounding Kimura widened that made me realise she was being literal about bringing the ceiling down and the walls really were shaking.

I took a step back. Kimura fell in a heap and started coughing roughly.

I ignored him.

Now that I wasn’t in a blind rage, I was able to feel a huge sucking force from the inside of my body.

Something was being drawn into my core and… ignited for lack of a better term causing the pressure on the surroundings.

Was… was I burning Reishi?!

When I thought that I quickly tried to stop the pull coming from my core as fast as possible. Messing around with a fundamental building block of reality without any idea what it was doing to me was not something I was keen to do. I wasn’t an idiot or a mad scientist, thank you very much.

I found the metaphorical valve pretty quickly and slammed it shut. Which was a good thing since in the maybe fifteen seconds since I flipped out whatever had happened to me had raised my temperature so much I was visibly steaming.

What the hell?

I took another few steps away from the other two because, no seriously, WHAT THE HELL?

“I thought... she said she wasn’t... an officer!” Kimura gasped at Natsumi from the floor.

“She isn’t.” Natsumi herself had her hands on her knees in an effort to keep standing.

“She nearly brought down the building on top of us! Only Captains or Lieutenants have that kind of reiatsu!”

“She also said she was not a Shinigami.”

“That’s impossible…” Kimura groaned.

Natsumi let out a bitter laugh. “Impossible seems to sum her up quite well.”

Kimura unsteadily got back to his feet using the wall for support. The motion caught my eye and pulled me out of my repeating thoughts of ’what the HELL just happened?’ and I turned to face him.

Natsumi instantly stepped in front of him, hands out like she was trying to calm down a dangerous animal.

“Wait Cross. I understand you are upset. But we have to dispose of Kanou’s experiments. We do not have a choice!”

That nearly set me off again.

“Explain.” I practically growled.

She took a deep breath and started speaking rapidly. “Right, to start off you know this is not the first time we have dealt with the creations of Akihiro Kanou. The first time around, once we realised the monsters he released were denizens of the Rukongai we took great pains to capture the experiments to see if we could reverse the damage done to them.”

I grit my teeth at the admittance the Soul Reapers had captured the experiments before yet they were killing them now. But I knew Natsumi wouldn’t have brought it up without good reason.

“We had our top scientists in Squad Twelve pulled in to reverse everything. But even past the boobytraps and failsafes Kanou put in to make sure no one learned from his work we found out one more thing that caused Central 46 to declare all his experiments bioweapons to be destroyed immediately.”

I had actually forgotten about that. When it was just my life being threatened because of it and nothing actually came of it, I had stopped thinking about that particular law.

Now I was shifting away from anger and more into uneasy dread. From the sound of it Soul Society did put effort into helping the victims only to find something that made it better to just kill them.

“The scientists found that every one of Kanou’s experiments had the frontal lobes of the brain nearly liquified.” Natsumi continued to my horror. “Even Kisuke Urahara, the head of the Science Division at the time was unable to find a way to restore their minds. So it was deemed more merciful to put them out of their misery.”

My shoulders slumped.

Yeah, that would do it. If there was no person to help behind the creature Kanou created then why risk a capture. It was easier to just put it down.

“That was a hundred and fifty years ago. Could that have changed?” I honestly don’t know which answer I wanted, but I needed to ask.

Natsumi shook her head. “Look at the temples. Just below the hairline.” She pointed at one of the dead experiments.

I crouched besides the one she indicated and brushed the hair back, taking great care not to look at the twisted face at the same time. Right where she indicated was a small scar. Clearly some sort of surgery had clearly taken place. A quick check on another experiment showed a matching mark. I felt a temptation to check more just to hold out hope that not all of them had that mark, but I pushed it aside. Kanou would’ve done it to all of them. Deluding myself otherwise didn’t help us at this point.

“So we all good now?” Kimura asked off to the side. I glanced at him and saw he was keeping Natsumi firmly in between us.

Natsumi cocked her head at me. “Are we, Cross?”

I took a second to consider it.

“We’re good. I should be fine in a fight. Just don’t expect me to help with the ‘cleanup.’ “

The two of them were still watching me warily.

With a huff, I crossed my arms. “I’ll go stand over there.” Indicating the intersection they had come from. “I won’t try to stop you if there isn’t a better way.”

I stopped mid-step. “There isn’t one right?”

Natsumi’s face remained stern, but her eyes did soften slightly. “There is not. Trust me, we tried everything.”

Of course not. That would be too easy.

With a sigh I continued on my way. I didn’t need the nightmares from watching helpless victims murdered in their sleep. Combat was one thing, already beaten foes was something else entirely.

And just to make things even more awkward Natsumi followed me around the corner.

“Something else?” I just wanted to be alone for a bit and try and sort out my thoughts.

“There is another matter.” Natsumi replied somewhat nervously.

“What? And I certainly hope you aren’t going to say we need to take Kanou in alive.” I demanded.

She shook her head. “No, he was declared a traitor over a century ago. We do not expect you to take him alive. This is something else.” she pulled out a small vial of blue liquid.

“You need to drink this.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t do random drugs. I was taught better than that.” I snarked.

Natsumi shifted back and forth on her feet. Something that wasn’t exactly encouraging me to drink a random vial because she said so.

“It’s an antidote.”

“An antidote? To wha-” I was cut off as the sucking force from before started again. This time I could feel the Reishi in the air being pulled in. It was entirely unpleasant, like trying to take a deep breath without actually letting any air in.

I shut it down as quickly as possible but even that took a few seconds and I could feel the heat building up again. Natsumi also was more pale and sweating from the pressure I emitted on the surroundings.

“F-for that.” she gasped.

“You know what that is?”

“...it’s a poison. Captain Kurotsuchi administered it in the case you attacked a Shinigami.” Natsumi said. “It was supposed to overload your body with ambient reishi and knock you out but it seems to be reacting unexpectedly.”

…

…

“You bastards POISONED me?!” I shouted. “When?! And why would you do that in the first place!”

“We couldn’t take the chance with one of Kanou’s creations!” Natsumi exclaimed. “We didn’t know if there was some sort of sleeper agent trigger so a way to neutralize you in a peaceful manner was used. It never would have been an issue if you never needed to attack a Shinigami!”

“So like when I have to fight another traitorous Soul Reaper? What, was I supposed to hope that fainting aggressively at them would beat them?”

“That’s why I am giving you the antidote! I did not know Kanou had subverted the local garrison, so I did not address it till now! Can you please just take the antidote? You can be as angry as you want afterward, but it’s clearly not healthy for you!” She pleaded.

She was right. Whatever I was doing to the absorbed reishi, it was taking a toll on my body. Maybe even my soul.

“Fine, but don’t think for a second we are done with this.” I grabbed the vial, undid the top and swallowed the contents.

I didn’t feel any different, but then I didn’t feel anything before so who knows anymore.

“I did not expect otherwise. However it should wait until we’ve dealt with our current crisis.”

I grit my teeth and stalked past her back towards the way I had come from.

“Hey guys, I finished with the experiments! Are we ready to go deal with this bastard?” Kimura called, turning the corner himself. I just pushed past him and continued on.

“Ah! What's your deal?”

I ignored him.

“What’s up with her?” I heard him asking Natsumi.

“Nothing. Let’s go. We need to finish dealing with Kanou.”

I turned down the hall and continued past the growing puddles of blood. I couldn’t afford to pay attention to them. I was pissed off at the Soul Reapers already, no reason to make myself angrier looking at all the victims Kanou created in his ‘research.’ So in that regard I fully agreed with Natsumi.

Stop Kanou.

I could deal with everything else afterward.