Incarcerated (Solo)

First Week

Things had gone over well, for the most part. Though he interacted with no one else, he was learning his way through the prison. He had plumbed deeper into it, explored the recesses he could, and mentally mapped out his own small territory for himself in the deepest, loneliest part. He could even feel as his mind began to slip, as each night was terrifying, filled with fear and nightmares. The whole prison was fearsome to him, and for the most part, he stuck to his own area.

With nothing to do, he remained there, in the dark recess of the prison, and worked on something he had never bothered with; reiatsu control. His control was weak to begin with, as his reiatsu had been like a mood indicator, as Gina had told him once. But now he was getting better, able to bring it down to a condensed form. He found it amazing what he could do with one hundred and sixty-eight plus hours of free time to do nothing but go mad. He had even formulated something he thought was a nifty technique to himself. By focusing hard enough, he could condense his reiatsu into a hardened form around his right index finger for about a minute at a time, in which he could etch things in the stone of the prison’s walls. Or perhaps, he thought, he had not actually controlled his reiatsu at all, and was instead imagining he could do so.

He even found that, lurking in his territory, he could find and talk with Afe, the girl who lived inside of him. Sometime while wandering the prison, he had found that there was a swamp down there as well, exactly the same as his inner world. But he found that besides Afe, himself and the prisoners, there were other monsters in there as well. He had once been wandering, and stumbled across a wolf. The wolf had chased him while he shrieked in fear and ran through the prison. And there were monsters in the dark, glowing red eyes with hands that reached out to claw at him. Sometimes, when he looked at the prisoners, he could see the eyes burned onto them, see their shadows rise up from the ground and swallow them in darkness, turning them into monsters. For that point, he avoided the others.

He found that his own territory in the prison had been lost, and that a swamp was slowly growing up and through the prison, that a world to another place had been borne into the prison, and there was no escape. He had seen prisoners stumble into the swamp, never to return, but the monsters were growing. And he made note; these monsters were not the hollows that Soul Reapers were supposed to fight. These beasts were made of darkness, bore no masks either, instead having bodies covered in eyes.

Third Week

This was hell. The prison he had come to was no more. The prisoners here had all been consumed. He was alone, except for Afe and the wolf; he was the last living creature in the prison, surrounded by monsters. Afe was his only comfort, there to talk with him, but the wolf seemed immune to the place, hunted him relentlessly through the maze that was this swamp. Monsters would sometimes reach out for him, grabbing after him, eyes trying to penetrate his soul, forms trying to absorb him into themselves. He fled in fear, afraid to touch them lest they infect him too.

Meanwhile, in the realm of the sane, the prisoners had begun to become agitated by their new companion. The man, though strange to begin with, had become less than favourable over the past three weeks. He had remained to himself in the beginning, but as time had gone on, his reiatsu eventually stabilized to a glow around himself, which was initially thought to be a good thing, until he had begun running through the compound screaming for his life. He had babbled about wolves and monsters in the beginning. Sometimes he would stand in a crowd and talk with himself, to himself. It was unnerving. Then later came the seclusion. He had changed somehow into a further madness. Guards had been called in to help, but when they approached, he fled. He somehow became super-conscious of his surroundings, and had started to avoid anything alive. But now, pressing into the fourth week, they had begun to fear for themselves after they heard that he had attacked fellow prisoners. Guards still chased him down the corridors, but now he had turned violent.

He prowled with his kimono half off, his reiatsu super-condensed around himself, exuding an aura of madness. Some swore they saw demons when he was coming for them. Jito Inoue was his first victim. He had accidentally fallen into the danger zone around the man and lost his mind as well, screaming about something evil lurking and hungering in the prison. Later, Jito had become restless and stalked the prison at all hours, until his mangled defenseless body was found with its throat ripped out. And his internal organs expelled and flung around.

It was frightening how one person could do this. But Jito was not the last. Sato, Sakado, and Iro later were found in much the same way. Some had escaped, swearing that the young man was a monster more than a man. And he had become unclean, covered in dried blood and turned to a feral and mangy appearance. A guard, full of bravado and too proud of himself was also found murdered in the same way. But the monster among them was beginning to show signs of more intelligence.

Sixth Week

He had come to terms with his own powers. The monsters could not infect him. At first, he had watched as the wolf attacked one of them and repelled the beast. He had come to try the trick as well, and had been successful. The monster retreated. And after multiple times, he eventually found himself successful. He wasn’t sure how many of the monsters he had killed now, but it wasn’t enough. There were too many. He had to kill them all. They all had to die.

Even Afe had left him after that point. All of her urgings to run away instead, telling him that they were not danger to him, telling him that they were just as afraid of him as he was of them. He assumed that she too had been devoured by the monster. Unfortunately, he had no idea that the real monster, who had indeed devoured her, was himself. Eventually, afterwards, he had come face to face with a greater monster. This one felt different. It felt stronger. And it was, as he knew, Ira, the king of these monsters.

“I’ll kill you!” He roared at the top of his lungs, and lunged forwards.

But his enemy was not as weak as those from before. This enemy sidestepped his lunge and planted a fist to his gut. When he had fallen to the murky water that was the ground, he felt as the beast approached and kicked him in the side, then picked him up by the throat and punched him in the stomach again and again. He curled up against the monster’s arm, and wormed his way around the next blows. He was in agony, but he managed to bring a leg up and wrap it around the beast’s arm, and brought his next leg up to kick the monster in the head. The beast’s head snapped back from the blow, and he fell over into the murky waters. He searched for the head, and sunk his teeth into the monster’s throat, being sure to finish it off. The monster proved no real challenge. But he had a skin that was so tough. He felt around, managing to get a grip somewhere and tore the flesh from the monster, and then wrapped it around himself. He felt warmth from the thing, and power. And then he fled into depths of the swamp again.

“This is getting dangerous.” One of the guards said to the other, standing over Yamada’s corpse. “He’s killed one of our own. We’re going to have to step up our game now. It’s either us or him.”