Levi's Laboratory [P]

It really was marvelous what the hollow race was capable of when properly organized and motivated. The building Levi was working in now had been little more than a pile of rocks a couple of months ago, and now it was a fully functioning laboratory. Levi had to admit he never could have done it on his own, and even the humans with all of their technology would have been hard pressed to put this together. Then again, he had stolen half of the materials from them, so he had to give them some credit. Wiring just couldn’t be found in Hueco Mundo.

The best facilities ever created were worth nothing without a brain to run them, however. Levi was having limited success with his experiments to say the least. His regeneration serum refused to cooperate, or rather the bodies of his test subjects refused to cooperate with it. Technically speaking he had realized the formula worked perfectly, but without the hollow’s mind controlling the regeneration, it ran rampant.

His latest experiment wasn’t working much better. Levi stood in front of a huge glass cylinder, turning a knob on a control panel very slowly. Inside the cylinder was a dome of energy. Making a force field out of cero energy to match the seireitei’s bakudo based shield sounded great on paper, but his small scale model wouldn’t cooperate. He had managed to make a decent dome out of bala, but it was too easily broken. Cero was what he was going for, a wall that could burn away any attacks, but it was impossible to shape. It just kept exploding on its own.

Recently he had realized that cero and bala, rather than being opposites of each other, were simply opposite forms of the same energy. It was like the difference between ice and steam, the same thing but put together differently. Now Levi was trying to find a middle ground that could have the strengths of both; the stability of the bala and the destructive power of the cero. Naturally, this was very difficult, if not impossible. It was like trying to make water that was as solid as ice but still burned like hot steam. It wasn’t quite as impossible as that though, and Levi was determined to make it work.

Satisfied with the readings on the screen next to the knob he was turning, Levi stopped and moved his hand to push a button on the same panel. a metal tube descended from the roof of the test chamber, and started shooting a small but constant cero at the forcefield model. At first nothing seemed to happen, so Levi’s hand drifted to another knob to the right, slowly increasing the “attack’s” power as he watched both the shield itself and the screen. After a few turns the barrier started to quiver. Deciding it needed a little more stability, Levi turned the first knob to the left. When it was fully stabilized, he went back to the second knob and turned it to the right. Within two seconds the barrier caved in at the point of contact, and popped like a nuclear powered bubble.

Levi sighed and turned the whole machine off. Technically speaking, it worked. It would even work pretty well against an average enemy. But it would be an absolutely massive undertaking to build the device around Las Noches, and to justify that it would need to stop much more than an unseated officer’s zanpakuto, or a gillian’s cero.

It was at that moment that Levi heard his name echoing through the door.

“I’m in here, kid.” He answered. Maybe a distraction was what he needed now anyway. One of the biggest challenges he faced now was working alone. He had access to plenty of arrancar and hollow “helpers” but none of them had enough technical skills to be of much help. Not that Ai was an exception to that rule, but maybe if he bounced some ideas off of her he would get an idea of his own.

“Hey, you wanna see something cool?” Besides, she would probably get a kick out of seeing his experiments. She would probably think of it as a magic barrier meant to keep evil at bay or something. Sure would have been handy against Kirito.

WC: 716

Following Levi's distant summons the little arrancar ventured deeper into what looked increasingly like a place one might find a mad scientist. On either side of her path stood shelves stacked high with buzzing and whirring machinery that occasionally chirped like a bird or buzzed like a bee. As she went further into the main room she spied blinking lights of red and green—she couldn't even begin to understand how such lights worked. Even the vials of liquid attached to the machines here and there seemed foreign to Ai; the empty ones magnified and warped her face as she looked into them while the full ones were clearly where the room's less than natural smell came from.

Passing into the room where Levi's voice had come from, Ai felt a cool breeze of fresh air wash over her. The room she now stepped into contrasted sharply with the main laboratory. The papers were more organized and there were no vials laying about. Rather, the focus the room was a large glass cylinder that could probably comfortably fit a full sized adult. Machines of all sort stemmed from the cylinder giving varying readouts, but Ai didn't pay them much mind. No, instead of wandering about the vast array technology in the room, her gaze came to rest on the man who's features were thrown into sharp relief by the artificial lighting, Levi.

Something cool?

Bobbing her head up and down perhaps more vigorously than she should have, she traversed the distance between her and Levi with some difficulty. For whatever reason, the snake-like ropes of rubber that crisscrossed the floor before connecting to different machines conspired to trip her up. Levi had probably put them there to catch intruders, but Ai was much too smart for that. She danced over a few of them and just barely avoided getting caught up in the last one. 

Now standing beside Levi, she watched intently as he turned a knob that prompted a low whirring to fill the room. For a moment nothing happened and Ai glanced over at Levi who seemed transfixed on the cylinder before him. Was he playing a trick on her?

"Lev—," she started, only to close her mouth mid-word when she caught a light out of the corner of her eye.

Returning her attention to the cylinder she noted that a balloon of sorts had formed in the center. Then, the whirring began again and a smaller metal tube descended down towards the balloon of energy. The tube stopped along with the whirring and silence reigned once more.

This time Ai didn't look to Levi for an explanation, as much as it pained her, she waited. And, for once, her patience lasted—it helped when the wait lasted less than five seconds. What looked to be a miniature cero fired from the metal tube and into the balloon of energy. The two energies competed for a few seconds before the balloon popped into countless small particles reflected in Ai's black eyes.

"That was so fuu-cking awesome!" She finally chirped, looking up at Levi. "Are you making balloon hollow next?"

The swear that the shinigami in the desert had unwittingly taught her felt strange on her tongue and the way she pronounced it made it clear she had no idea what the word meant. Though, in her opinion, it made her sound quite sophisticated. She half hoped to get praise for her much-expanded vocabulary. 
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WC: 569
TWC: 1078

Levi didn’t bother to make any serious adjustments to the machine’s settings before his demonstration. Any progress that was to be made from there on would take much more than turning those knobs. Instead, he just repeated what he had done before, giving Ai a little show rather than performing a serious test.

The girl dropping an F-bomb in her astonishment surprised Levi a bit. It wasn’t that she had used the word, but the fact that it seemed so new to her. Could it be that the local barbarians had actually been watching their language around her? Levi found the idea honestly impressive, even if one of them had finally slipped.

“Why, Ai!” Levi gasped in mock horror, and crossed his arms as if he were angry. The illusion was pretty weak with amusement obvious on his face though. “Where the fuck did you learn that kind of language? That’s for fucking adults like me, not fucking kids like you!” He half laughed as he spoke, jabbing his thumb into his own chest and poking her in the forehead for emphasis. A role-model he was not, at least not by any traditional sense.

“Seriously though, don’t overdo it like some of the local morons, ok?” He said sincerely as his hands returned to his pockets. “I don’t give a fuck if you start saying fuck, but if you fucking start saying fuck ever other fucking word, you’ll start sounding real fucking dumb, really fucking quick. See what I mean? Smart people don’t talk like that. Animals with human faces talk like that. Or, animals with animal faces in the case of pure hollows. You know what I mean.” Levi turned back to the machine with a shrug.

“And no, Ai, this isn’t a balloon. What you saw is a dome made of artificial cero and bala energy. If I can get this to work right, and scale it up, we can have a force-field around all of Las Noches. Or at least each of the castles. That way if we ever get attacked, by another shinigami for example, they will have to blow through that first. And hopefully they’ll get themselves killed trying.” Kirito’s attack had been the talk of Las Noches ever since it happened. Levi was honestly just glad he hadn’t gotten anywhere near Ai, or his laboratory. If nothing else, Levi wanted to get this barrier up and running to put it around his own tower and protect it from any future crossfire. That was still little more than a dream for now though. He had to actually get it to work before he could even think about trying to scale it up. That was a question for later though.

“Anyway...” Levi said as he turned back to Ai. “I’m sure you didn’t come down here for a science lesson. What’s up?”

WC: 476
TWC: 1,192

Bringing a small hand to her mouth, Ai tried in vain to stifle the giggle bubbling past her lips and through her fingers. It wasn’t so much what Levi said but rather how he said it that had so gotten to the little arrancar. His words told of someone angry while his tone and expressions said quite the opposite—it was this contradiction that Ai found so amusing. Finding a hollow breed with any sense of humor had been a challenge for her as far too often the denizens of Hueco Mundo thought humor involved trying to eat her. Word to the wise: trying to eat someone isn't funny.

Recoiling at the entirely unwarranted assault on her forehead, Ai's giggling began to subside and her hand slipped from her mouth to the barely visible red mark on her head. It hadn't really hurt that much: her fair skin just tended to mark more easily than most. In fact, the more she rubbed it the redder it got. Realizing this in her distorted reflection granted by the glass cylinder containing Levi's experiment she dropped her hand to the side once more returning her full attention to the taller arrancar.

She didn't really know what Levi meant about overusing her new vocabulary, but she nodded as if she did all the same. Her face, however, with its creased forehead and slightly narrowed eyes betrayed her true level of understanding. Words were, well, words; who cared if she overused them or underused them? The word police? She wasn't too sure. That said, Levi seemed to be fairly smart so, though she didn't totally understand his point, she planned to take his advice.

A shinigami shield, huh?

"Oh, yeah..." she turned away from Levi when he turned back to her. She tried to make it look as if she was taking a deeper interest in the shield generator, but she probably wasn't fooling anyone.

The news of a shinigami attack had been the talk of Las Noches for quite a while now—even the full-masks ranted about it in their own special language. The exact facts varied from storyteller to storyteller, but from what Ai gleaned a shinigami blasted through Las Noches' dome and only to wreak general mayhem. Now, the little arrancar could put two and two together. She'd talked with a shinigami on the wastes of Hueco Mundo; she'd told him about Las Noches and she'd told him about Levi. The attack couldn't have been a coincidence. 

Steeling herself with a breath, Ai couldn't help but remember what Levi had done to that full-mask when they'd first met. 

"Well, see, um," she fidgeted with the hems of her kimono."It's about the shinigami, please don't be mad."

Great start.

"A couple of days ago I ran into one in the desert. He was looking for someone who'd taken his girlfriend. He promised he wouldn't hurt anyone."

She paused trying to gather her rapidly moving thoughts only for her tone to shift into more of a frenzy.

"He described the kidnapper and it sounded like you so I told him about you, but I also told him you'd never kidnap anyone. You're nice...He said he wouldn't hurt anyone."

Turning back to Levi her eyes swam with confused emotion.

"Levi, you wouldn't kidnap someone's girlfriend would you?!?"

The little arrancar was clearly distraught. On one hand, she might have led a bloodthirsty shinigami to her first friend in Las Noches and on the other she might be standing in front of a monster. Neither option could be called ideal. She simply couldn't believe that Levi might be a 'bad guy', but she had to be sure. The Shinigami had seemed nice too. It didn't make any sense to her. 
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WC: 619
TWC: 1697

Ai’s tone made Levi turn around, and when he saw the way she was suddenly studying his experiment, he knew he was going to need a cigarette. He put one in his mouth as Ai fidgeted with her kimono, and lit it when she asked him not to be mad. He was pretty sure he was about to be mad. What would Ai even know about Kirito? She hadn’t even been in Las Noches when he attacked. Maybe that was it? Was she feeling guilty that she wasn’t there to fight?

Nope. It was not that simple. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. She had MET Kirito. She had TOLD Kirito where to find Levi! No wonder the blue haired twerp hadn’t given Levi’s story any consideration! He already knew who had kidnapped Chie Kira! Worse, Ai seemed to have the idea in her head that Levi kidnapping Kirito’s girlfriend had been immoral. That such a thing was villainous. Perhaps he had indulged her childish imagination too much.

Levi took a long drag of his cigarette, completely filling his lungs with smoke as he gathered his thoughts. If anyone else had just confessed to Levi what Ai had, he probably would have killed them. For some reason, he just couldn’t lash out at her in the same way though. There was something about the immature arrancar that had given him a soft spot for her. Even so, he was livid. He blew the smoke out slowly, calming himself down just a little bit more. He had just lectured her about looking stupid for cursing too much, he couldn’t make himself too much of a hypocrite this soon.

“Ai.” He said calmly as he fixed her eyes with a furious glare. “You’re an idiot.” He flared his reiatsu in his anger. It wasn’t enough to crush her spirit or even paralyze her, but she would certainly understand that she was in trouble. “Did I not tell you that shinigami are our natural enemies? That they want to kill us all? Did you think they wouldn’t lie to accomplish it? That they wouldn’t manipulate you to find a target? That they wouldn’t pretend to be nice?” His words were calm and measured, but they dripped with anger and a touch of contempt. “That blue-haired bastard nearly killed me Ai. Have you met Zettai? Zettai’s a good guy Ai. Kirito cut Zettai nearly in half. He barely survived. Several others weren’t so lucky.”

Levi took a deep breath and reeled in his reiatsu before continuing. “I suppose you can’t be blamed too much for that though. Las Noches isn’t exactly hidden. He would have found us either way. He would have found me either way. Because yes, Ai, I kidnapped his girlfriend, Chie Kira, another shinigami who would kill me and you and all of us given the chance.” The anger ran out and his tone turned to disappointment. He had known Ai was immature, but part of his had hoped she would come to understand how gray the world was faster than this. He had hoped that her hollow instincts would help her to understand without him having to explain it.”
“I kidnapped her because I needed her expertise to build a gigai. I needed her to accomplish my goals, so I kidnapped her and forced her to do what I wanted. That’s how you get things done, Ai. You do whatever you need to do. Especially to your enemy.” Even the disappointment lessened with each word now. He looked at her now like a parent trying to help their child understand the hard facts of life. Was that what he thought of himself as? Some sort of father to Ai Shirai? God help her if she relied on him like that.

“Do you understand, Ai?”

WC: 634
TWC: 1,826

Do you know that feeling when you miss a step going down a set of stairs? That moment your heart jumps into your throat, your palms sweat, and your breath quickens all until you hit the next step? Ai felt much the same way, but her fall was never arrested by the next step. No, instead, she kept falling and falling. She fell past no small amount of cigarette smoke, despair, and guilt. Yet still, there was no end in sight as each word Levi spoke rang like a death knell through the little arrancar's mind. She'd messed up, messed up big time: someone got hurt because of her.

Was this the right time to use that word? Probably.

Zettai, she didn't know him. She didn't know him, but her heart ached. Being nearly cut in half, even for a hollow breed, did not sound like a pleasant experience and worse yet others had died. The worst realization came with a simple fact, had she cut down the blue haired shinigami none of this would've happened. It all could've been avoided, the deaths, the pit in her stomach, and Levi's disapproving tone—all of it could've been avoided had she acted. She had the chance to act, the shinigami had given her a chance and she'd squandered it. 

"He said he wouldn't hurt anyone," she mumbled while Levi continued to speak.

Even as the pressure of Levi's spirit lifted from her shoulders her breaths did not come any easier. The air still felt thick as the taller arrancar worked to softened the edge of his words. To her surprise, her breathing became easier the less she looked at Levi, so she trained her gaze on a point above her friend's head. The strange surroundings made it much easier to keep her focus elsewhere. In particular, she watched a red light blink in and out of existence in a methodical pattern—it was pretty.

She nodded mechanically at Levi's admission to being a kidnapper. Perhaps she should've been shocked and appalled, but her mind still dwelled on the mental image of an arrancar split in two and only known to her as Zettai. She simply accepted what the man before her said with a deadpan face. After all, Levi might have a point: doing whatever it took, that made sense. Sure, it made plenty of sense. Yes, shinigami had a purpose but it wasn't as a friend.

Am I an idiot?

"I...I understand," she dropped her gaze from the red light and back to Levi's face. "I'm sorry, he was just so nice. Maybe it was a different shinigami who attacked?"

It was a vain hope and a single tear tumbled down her cheek that she didn't bother to wipe away.

"But a gigai?" She jumped at the chance to change the subject allowing a bittersweet smile to tug at her features. "Why would we need anything from our enemy?"

Her last words dripped with contempt for the shinigami. Hollow didn't need anything from them. They had proven to be nothing but bad. 

One day that particular shinigami would pay for taking advantage of her. 

One day.
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WC: 522
TWC: 2219

Ai seemed fixated on that infuriatingly naïve argument that “he said he wouldn’t hurt anyone.” It was a stupid, childish thing for her to fixate on. Kirito was a shinigami, Levi had told her exactly what that meant, that they wanted to kill all hollows. It was naïve, and childish, and stupid for her to believe him when he said he wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Except that she was still alive. Except that Levi and Zettai were still alive. That was one thing that had been bugging him more than anything else. He had assumed that Kirito had somehow just not had time to kill him and Zettai. He knew that wasn’t right though. He knew that one of the shinigami must have healed Zettai’s wound for him to have survived. He could only assume that kirito allowed that over some sense of honor, or perhaps misguided guilt. But the really strange thing was that if that had been possible, then there should have also been time to kill Levi, who Kirito hated. He had been telling himself over and over again that something about the Queen appearing had stopped it. But the queen hadn’t been anywhere near Ai. So how was Ai still alive?

“It was definitely not a different shinigami.” Part of him hated to admit that. If it had been another shinigami, then Levi wouldn’t have to confront the fact that it had in fact been Kirito that spared Ai’s life. Another shinigami would have at least been a mystery with mysterious motivations. But there was no mistaking it. “Shinigami rarely come to Hueco Mundo. It’s even more unusual for them to come alone. Plus, I haven’t met anyone else with electric blue hair.” He finished his cigarette as he spoke, idly hoping the calming effects of the nicotine would provide some sort of answer. It did not.

“The gigai is for a pet project of mine.” Levi said as he slid the burning remains of the cigarette into the hole of a long, slender black box mounted to the side of the control panel. “With that, I can disguise myself as a human and interact with them. I’ve been using it to get involved in their criminal organizations and recruit powerful mortals to work for me. I’m using it to get resources for my experiments, and to test them. And I’m hoping to eventually have enough territory and minions to keep tabs on our enemies on earth; the quincy, the KSN, maybe even the shinigami.” The thought occurred to Leve that Ai might not even know who the KSN were. In fact, did she know anything about the quincy? Maybe he should teach her. Maybe... he should show her.

“As a matter of fact I think I could use your help with that.” He said as the thoughts bounced around in his head. It had been pure ignorance that had caused her to fall for Kirito’s lies. Levi realized for the first time that Ai had actually been somewhat sheltered in Las Noches, surrounded by only her own kind and only the more civilized of them. Maybe more exposure was exactly what she needed. “Yes, I think that would be perfect. I can give you a gigai, and you can help work for my syndicate. You’ll get to see the world for what it really is, what our war and our enemies are really like. Yes, I think that’s exactly what you need.” He said with a firm tone that would leave Ai with no illusions that he was asking. “And who knows, if you prove yourself there, I might even make you my official Fraccion.”

WC: 609
TWC: 2,435

A pet project?

Falling silent, Ai listened as Levi spoke. Listening had always been easier for the little arrancar as it required less thinking. One could tune out and coast through the conversation perhaps adding a nod of encouragement here and there while repeating something that had been said as a question. Yes, 'listening' is an important skill that one should consider developing.

In this case, however, something caught her attention: the mention of humans, quincy, and the KSN. Truthfully, she didn't know much about the last two save for the fact that one sounded like a tasty desert and the other like something one would find in an alphabet soup, but the idea of the mortal world piqued her interest. She had been there once, she knew she had. Alas, her memories were nothing more than blurs of green and blue. Green and blue were different, and different was good.

As for being an official Fraccion? Well, there was another word she didn't know the meaning of. Perhaps this was some kind of Italian drink that the new arrivals to Las Noches had been raving about? No, that didn't make much sense; she was an arrancar, not a drink. In the end, it didn't much matter really as, to Ai, it meant a way into the mortal world, which could only be labeled as one thing: an adventure. 

"Wait," she dried the stream her tear had traced on her face with her sleeve. "Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying we would get to go to the mortal world?"

The concept of a criminal organization, gigai, and 'seeing what the enemy was really like' would all serve as a means to an end. The end, of course, being clarifying her blurred memories of the past. The exact form the blurs took on didn't matter too much, but the colors did. As it turned out seeing only Hueco Mundo's black and white wore on the eye quite a bit.

"When do we go?" she asked, excitement slipping into her voice uncontrollably. "What will my gigai look like?"

Once more she asked questions that, though relevant, were probably not all that important. Who cared what a criminal organization did anyway?
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WC: 363
TWC: 2582

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Levi answered with a touch of excitement in his voice. Scenarios were starting to play through his mind about Ai discovering the human world, meeting his other underlings, showing them all how a bank robbery was properly done. It really could be quite interesting.

“Right now.” He answered again, snapping his fingers and opening a garganta right behind him. There was no reason to wait. Well, technically he was supposed to be working on his cero barrier, but that wasn’t going well anyway.

“Like you.” As he answered Ai’s third question, the phantom limb that had been snaking over to grab her gigai from a nearby locker tossed the plain white body at her like a spare t-shirt. “just jump into that, and you’ll look like you would as a human.” Levi put his hand to his chin as a pensive expression stretched across his face. “Although, come to think of it, we should probably start with a little tour without the gigai. Being invisible affords a lot of freedom in its own right, after all.”

Levi turned toward the garganta with a shrug. “Bah. Either way, let’s go. We have a lot of ground to cover before your real work can begin.” A lot of ground indeed. He needed to teach her the basics of human society and technology, show her how to identify quincy and spiritualists, and of course introduce her to the human recruits. As a matter of fact, there would probably be a few in the office he had just opened the garganta too. It was as good a place to start as any.

WC: 274
TWC: 2,709
THREAD EXIT