I awoke to the soft whir of machinery and a dark room.

For a minute I had no idea where I was or what happened before the memories rushed back.

I was ambushed!

Adrenalin surged through me, banishing the last bit of drowsiness as I tried to leap to my feet but I ran into two issues. One, I was already standing. Two, I was held in place by some seriously heavy duty restraints that covered everything up to my wrists and ankles so the only thing my reaction did was make me flail against them helplessly.

My awakening must have triggered something since a bright light suddenly flooded the room, forcing me to tightly close my eyes.

Blinking away the spots caused by the bright flash I got my first proper look at the room.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but a sci-fi lab out of the 80’s was not in my top ten guesses. Large banks of monitors hung on one side of the room while giant machines dominated the other. Aside from the center of the floor and a path to the middle of the monitors, practically the whole floor was covered with thick bundles of wires.

The disturbing part was that most of those cables were plugged into the scaffold that was holding me up. The cylindrical metal restraints on my ankles connected to machines I had no idea what their purpose was but I doubted I would enjoy it.

...

Right. Time to leave.

I didn’t want to set off an alarm by just destroying the restraints. They certainly looked like they did something other than just hold me in place, so an alarm set to go off if they get broken doesn’t seem unreasonable.

I focused on the shackle covering my right hand and used Structural Analysis to get an idea of what I was dealing with. And oh man, I did not like what I found. Needles, electrodes, heating elements, and a variety of sensors. All signs pointed to either torture equipment, experimental procedures, or both. Now then, while I don’t use the Alteration branch of my magecraft often outside my workshop, this would be the easiest way to get out since it works exactly how it sounds. It's a bunch of spells that physically alter the state of its target. Simply project my mana outward, encase the locking mechanism, use a spell to shift the mechanism to unlocked and-

“AAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

-and get electrocuted for my trouble. I hung limply from my wrists as I tried to stay conscious. Obviously, whoever captured me was very paranoid about escapes if they had a way to monitor the locks being moved without the right command.

O-okay… finesse didn’t work. Brute force would have to do.

Reinforcing my body to the limit I prepared to yank my hands out of the metal coverings. Just had to not think about how much that first time hurt. Or how much trouble I’m in if I can’t pull out of them…

…

Fuck, why am I breathing so hard?! It was just a bit of electricity!

I’ve been cut several times and even stabbed through the chest, so this shouldn’t be getting to me this badly!

Forcibly calming my now heavy breathing I tensed against the restraints and prepared to break them…

…

…

Okay, just….do it then.

3, 2, 1--

*Thunk* “AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Rather than restrain me until they snapped, the shackles held in place for a little bit before clamps hidden further up the scaffold released and the electricity kicked in. This time, it was not a single blast of electricity but two. The second one being powerful enough that I absolutely blacked out for a second.

When my senses came back to me I saw the final inches of a thick cable receding back into the scaffold while my arms were lifted back to their original position.

So clamps on the restraints that release before they break, and cables to pull the prisoner back into place once they were shocked into a helpless state? Someone had a lot of experience keeping people with special abilities restrained.

Before I could come up with another way to escape I felt a needle jab my wrist and something cold enter my body. A few seconds later my eyes felt heavy and it went dark again.

-o-

“I believe you’ve slept long enough.”

Something hard jammed into my ribs and I jolted back into awareness.

Groaning, I tried to loosen up my muscles which were screaming in protest from both the shocks and from me hanging by my wrists for who knows how long.

“Hurry up. You are wasting my valuable time.”

Another blow to the ribs made me open my eyes.

Standing in front of me was an old man with short slicked back silver hair. He wore a white collared shirt with a red tie covered by a lab coat. Considering the bias towards classical japanese clothing it looked rather shocking. But something else about his appearance was causing chills to go down my spine, but nothing seemed to jump out as to why.

Even if I couldn’t nail down what was bothering me, the man matched the pictures I was provided of Akihiro Kanou. Guess he was alive after all.

“You're awake. Good. Now report, tell me the details of your construction.”

What the hell is this guy asking?

“I see. Command: Me o samashite watashi no nyūsatsu o okonaimasu. Now again, tell me the details of your construction.”

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. What is he talking about? What construction?

Another jab to the ribs made me groan. “Answer him, if you would.”

Looking in the direction of the new voice I saw a blond haired Soul Reaper with a pleasant, but fake, looking smile on his face.

“H-huh.. Guess we w-were wrong. I had money on Kimura being the traitor.” I gasped out.

Yuuto Kiba made no change to his expression. “How unfortunate for you. Now please answer Doctor Kanou.” He proceeded to jab the end of his sheathed Zanpakuto into my ribs again.

I hissed as my abused ribs took another hit.

“I have no idea w-what you are talking about...”

The old man sighed heavily, which brought my attention back to him. “It seems this one dates before the backup as well. What a shame. Reverse engineering takes so long.”

“W-what backup?”

Ignoring me, the doctor sent a look to Kiba, who pulled out a small remote and pressed a button.

“AAAAAAHHHHH!”

“You will not question me unless I permit it. Remember that.” The asshole in a lab coat said mildly, paying no attention that I was hanging limply in the restraints with gray dots swimming in my vision. “Still it would be remiss of me to leave a question unanswered.”

“Some years ago, a brilliant scientist earned the jealousy of his peers. They could not match his genius nor his ambition so they sought to lower him to their level.

They pulled back resources, declared his work failures, and tried to suborn him to their own petty desires. And when that didn’t work, they tried to kill him.

But you see, this scientist was greater than them. He knew they would try to kill him to ease their fragile egos, so he created a plan. A backup. In the case of his death he created a copy of himself. Identical to him in every way using the very best techniques available to him. Only even fate tried to turn against the brilliant man in the end.

When the lapdogs of the Central 46 came for him they destroyed his laboratory. A place of science years ahead of anything they had seen in an attempt to deny the man his destiny, and in their folly damaged the memory banks that contained the later years of his work. The last century of his hard won discoveries… lost to time.

Yet even then, they failed to stop his glorious work. Even with destruction of years worth of memories, the copy survived.”

Kanou started getting more and more animated the longer he talked, he paced in front of me getting more heated when he spoke of the Soul Reapers. Then he spun back to me, jabbing a thumb into his chest.

“I survived.

It has taken me over a hundred and fifty years to return to even half the heights my first iteration pioneered. I have spent a considerable amount of effort reclaiming what was lost to me when the dogs interfered. Unfortunately it seems you also follow what I must now consider the rule for my creations during that lost century. Either the commands only recognize that physical body or the phrases themselves changed for some reason.” He mused.

He paused lost in his thoughts before shaking his head and turning his attention back to me.

“A matter for another time. Let us return to you.” he pulled out a clipboard and started flipping through the papers on it. “You are very likely my last creation before my first death.” Not at all, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. “Even as weak as you are, you are an almost stable merging of souls. It frustrates me that my first death came before I truly managed a perfect merge and now I must take care not to break you and accelerate the degradation-”

“W-what!? What degradation?” I demanded. Kanou calmly glanced back up at me before sliding his gaze over to Kiba. Instantly I was screaming again as electricity coursed through my body. When the pain finally stopped I could taste copper.

“I believe I told you not to question me. But yes, the degradigation. A flaw that exists in all my creations to date unfortunately. You are by far the closest to a complete merge I have managed, yet the ambient Reishi is still grinding away at the connections. Likely you will fall apart within fifty years and perish within a fraction of that, but that should be plenty of time for me to reverse engineer you. Unfortunately, that will still have to wait until the completion of my current project.”

I said nothing as this new information shook me to my core. I was dying just by being in this universe. Kisuke had suspected something was wrong with me just by the limited data he could observe with his own equipment, but he could never narrow down a reason.

But Kanou specialized in this.

It was his sole focus from what I’d been told. There was little chance of him being wrong. Especially when I thought about my arrival to the Soul Society and when I used the hot spring in Yoruichi’s training ground.

The Dangai was a forced corridor through the different realms of existence here. The inside was full of unrestrained Reishi that caused feelings of unease for anyone traveling it without one of the Soul Reapers Hell Butterflies stabilizing it and protecting the user.

The reason I felt so sick going through it wasn’t because some outside energy affected me. It was because without that protection I was almost literally sand-blasting my own soul!

I started feeling nauseous and the rest of my focus went to trying to avoid being ill.

Kanou seemed to notice I was no longer paying attention to him as he started towards the door.

“It seems this is as far as we will get for today. Yuuto, be sure to clean up then meet me in Lab 5. And remember to activate the drainers. No point letting the damage get worse...”

Kiba bowed as the doctor left the room. “Of course, sir.” then walked in front of me.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where your friend ran off to would you? It would save us a lot of trouble.” Even after all that, he still had that plastic smile on his face.

“B-bite me.” I hissed hatefully.

He shrugged. “Worth a try.” He brought up the remote again and pressed a button.

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”

“Ah, wrong button. My mistake.” he said mildly. “Let’s try this one.”

Another button push, but this time a...a not cold feeling washed over me, but at the same time it felt like something had removed a weight from me. Leaving me feeling detached and floaty.

“Reiatsu drainers.” Kiba explained. “They remove all Reiryoku from a person except the bare minimum needed to survive. Can’t have you damaging the equipment with Kido now, can we?”

He made his way to a table and placed the remote next to a white sword. My eyes widening at the sight of it.

“Ah, you noticed. A shame you were captured so easily. I would have liked to see what a spirit tool like this would be like to fight against. Quality ones are so rare compared to all the Zanpakuto we see around here.” He said picking up and waving Kanshou around like it was a toy sword. “But I guess you wouldn’t have put up much of a fight anyway.”

He tossed Kanshou back on the table, making me narrow my eyes at the disrespect shown to one of my swords.

“Well then, have a nice day.”

With that he walked out of the room, leaving me electrocuted, drained, and alone.