The Audit

It was over . . . all the wonderful experiments, the sweet succulent flesh, the shiny machines, the pungent chemicals . . . all of it would be gone after today. The normally jolly and good natured cannibal Kiseichū had his face buried into his robes, hiding from his problems in a way that was very childish but served to give the disturb Shinigami a way to handle the soul crushing disappointment of having everything he loved and cared for ripped away. Of course this response was a slight overreaction on Kiseichū’s part, but the man had never been one for having a sound calm mind. The reason the mad scientist was having such a break down was because of the Audits. Recently the K had come to the conclusion that there were several areas of it programs that were wasting resources, one such area that came up was the Sapphire Cross. Due to this evaluation the higher ups had decided to begin an Audit of all the Sapphire Cross’ personal and their projects in order to best decide which areas of research were a dead end and a waste of money and time and which were worthwhile. This announcement had of course sent waves of panic through the scientific community.

At first Kiseichū was more than confident he wouldn’t be audited because his work was clearly superior than all those around him and they higher ups knew it. So imagine the surprise and dismay felt from the butterfly fearing cyborg thing when a faceless member had delivered a message to Kiseichū informing him that he would indeed be audited, and not by some random pencil pusher either! No, Kiseichū was being audited by none other than Alfonso Gunter Reinhold that Evil Bastard who was the leader of the Sapphire Cross. You see, out of aaaaaaaaaaaall the different researchers at Sapphire Cross it was determined that Kiseichū wasted the most amount of money and resources . . . almost triple that of the number two offender. This qualified him for an extra special audit that seemed to not only determine his continuance as a researcher but his very existence. Still fairly confident at this point, knowing that he had made SOME strides in research, Kiseichū set out to collect some of his various experiments in order to demonstrate to the evil bastard how much of an asset Kiseichū was to the Sapphire Cross. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to Kiseichū, during the night there had been a massive power surge through the K research divisions that resulted in a multitude of machines being reset. This in turn meant that all of the biological research being done by Kiseichū was lost when the containment systems rest and liquidated all the assets. This basically meant that the only thing that Kiseichū had left to show his boss was the I-Hand, and that was still only in its beta stages.

“ITS OVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR," Kiseichū wailed deep into his dark laboratory. With some sniveling and a single tear, Kiseichū began to walk around his lab patting all the machines and handling all the beakers, saying heartfelt good byes to all of them. With some he stopped and reminiscent about a particularly volatile experiment and other he gave only the most cursory of salutations, especially to that one beaker in the corner; things were still awkward between them since that . . . incident. With his rounds completed Kiseichū walked to the front of his lab and knelt in front of the elevator. Slowly he reached into his robe and pulled out a flask filled with a bubbling red liquid. “It’s time . . . Goodbye my lady science!” With these final words Kiseichū pulled the cork out of the flask and spit it across the floor before downing the entire solution in one big gulp.

Kiseichū was stunned as a blue robotic . . . hedgehog? . . . Hedgehog broke down the door to his laboratory and began to float over to him. The being began to speak by Kiseichu was already gone, his fear overwhelming every single other one of his sense. This was it, the time he would die! The higher ups must have decided that he was no longer and asset to the K, that his debt was too large to be worked off in any other fashion besides the taking of his life and they had sent this blue mechanical hedgehog to do it! Which, in retrospect was odd . . . a hedgehog as an instrument of death, Kiseichū made a mental note to investigate the deathly properties of hedgehogs on the off chance that he managed to survive this encounter.

Even as the solution began to take effect and Kiseichū’s reflexes began to slow and his stomach began to roll the creature kept talking and slowly Kiseichū began to regret his earlier decision to poison himself. It seemed not only was Kiseichū going to survive this day, but he was getting a promotion to Lieutenant and a transfer to the newly formed copper cross, Mmmmmm copper . . . The thought send a slight wave of hunger coursing through Kiseichū before he puked. Spewing his guts and whatever the hell he had drunk all over the floor, and collapsed in the puddle of his own vomit. There he lay . . . for a moment just to absorb what the blue mechanimal had said, after all it was a lot to take in. Just seconds ago Kiseichū had been more than confident that he was about to die, but no! He had been given a THIRTY-SEVENTH CHANCE!!! Kiseichū began to giggle into the puddle of his own vomit in excitement, giddy at what this might mean, and accidently sucked some of his spittle down his wind pipe. The Shinigami jerked to life and began to flail over the tables and machines of his laboratory, couching and beating his vomit stained chest. Kiseichū tried to answer his new commander between coughing fits, “It’s a pleasure to me-blarg, hack, cough,- meet you sir! I am sure that we will –splutter, hack, choke- get along just fine.” After beating a few more times on his chest Kiseichū managed to get ahold of himself. He cleared his throat and straightened his robes some before going into an extremely deep bow to Metal Neo. “I will be more than happy to show you around my laboratory and explain some of my projects too you siiiiiiiiir . . . ummmm, what is your name exactly?” Kiseichū let out a little nervous laugh and blushed, it was obvious that whoever this was they were powerful and potent especially if they had been put in charge of a Cross but Kiseichū simply didn’t pay attention to things like that. “Bah, never mind, we can save the introductions for later! Now let me show you my projects! BWHAHAHAHAHA!” The rather cheesy evil laugh was accompanied by an even cheesier evil smile.

With no more delay, Kiseichū turned and pranced down in between the rows of machines until he reached a collection of pods that had recently been vacated. There was still some odds and ends lying about but nothing that could easily be presented to anyone for anything, “Heh, as you can no doubt tell . . . my laboratory is in a little disarray.” Kiseichū pointed at the various things askew and broken with a very wide and sweeping gesture, it would have just been easier to say that the entire laboratory was broken. “Any who, these pods once contained the main project that I’ve been focusing the majority of my time upon.” Rather forlornly Kiseichū looked down at the pod he was standing in front of and began to caress it, “However, do to the system cleanse last night they now contain nothing. Originally these pods held a collection of extremely weak and small hollows. They were suspended freely in a reishi gel to ensure they didn’t starve. Of course I had a point to doing this, a rather ingenious one if I may so.” At the point in his explanation Kiseichū actually climbed into the pod and lay there with his arms across his chest. “I was having a picnic the other day, a delicious picnic with fresh meat and homemade bread, when I sat down my food for only an instant! As soon as I turned my back the sandwich was covered with ants! ANTS I SAY! The appeared out of nowhere and soon managed to overtake me and carry away my food. Now as I lay there wrapped up in my own panic blanket I said to myself ‘Kiseichū, you are an idiot being over taken by something as small and weak as ants’. And that’s when it hit me!” Kiseichū leaped out of the pod, taking a thick coating of the reishi gel with him, and ran over to a nearby table and grabbed some blueprints. “Ants are remarkably weak beings in proportion to ourselves, and yes they have numbers but that is not what makes them so dangerous! No, its control.” As this last word escaped Kiseichū it was turned more into a growl that sheared away the carefree appearance that Kiseichū normally had and replaced it with the demented and dangerous man he was. “Ants are organized, the have a hierarchy through which they operate with they’re queen in control. Now as I pondered this I remembered something else. There exists in our world a population of beings that when compared to ourselves could be considered weak. They crawl over every surface and even the best attempts to exterminate them are futile.”

Kiseichū unbuttoned his robe and threw it over his shoulder into the pod behind him, exposed the pale scared skin and sinewy muscle normally hidden. Kiseichū then stalked over to his bed area and grabbed a black leather bound journal and brought it back to his new commander. “Imagine was we could do, if we could control the hollows? Of course they already have a basic hierarchy when you get to the most powerful levels, but the grunts? It’s everything for itself! Imagine what we could do if we harnessed this source of power. We could have an army at our disposal, a never ending army! Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg.” Kiseichū let out a deep, dark chuckle “If we can tell them where to fight and die, we can tell them what to eat. We could force these hollows to devour each other, to evolve. We could force these hollows to become more and more powerful! At each evolution our control would deepen and become stronger. If we pursued this alley of thought for long enough, we could make a Vastro Lorde level hollow that is completely under our control. But, there is an . . . issue”

Kiseichū slumped to the ground and buried his face in his hands, “At every turn I have been defeated . . . the issue is how to control them. Half of it is already solved.” Kiseichū pointed to a small silver worm like machine that was sitting on the table he had gotten the blueprints from. “That will eventually be the thing that will control the hollows but the technology is not enough. It needs another element, another spiritual aspect before it will begin to control the hollows.” Kiseichū turned and clawed his way up the side of the pod, “Just the thought of the magnitude of the problem before me makes me tremble.” For several minutes Kiseichū stood there in silence with the hedgehog, pondering the great mystery before him.

As the silence stretched and began to fill the room it was suddenly broken by an abrupt snort from Kiseichū, who then erupted in raucous laughter. “I just remembered the greatest joke!” He snorted again before turning his back on the empty pods and the mechanical animal and began to skip to another part of the laboratory, “I have other things as well that I am sure you will want to see!~” Kiseichū let out another snort and giggle.