Infected Waters I

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

PAIN

>>"S-Shimizu-sama... are you alright? Should I call a doc-"

"I'm fine!" Kawa shouted as she frantically searched her desk for another bottle, only finding more empty bottles with one drawer pull after another. Upon the last drawer, her frustration and pain tolerance reached their limit and she yanked the handle with such force, the drawer not only came completely out from the desk, but upon losing her grip, smashed straight through the window behind her. Beyond bearable levels, Kawa lifted her leg and with a rage-filled scream, snap-kicked the desk, tearing the wood in two and knocking the papers, clips, pens, and several other desk items onto the floor.

>>"Shimizu-sama! Please, hang on; I'll go get someone right away!"

The voice called out, though seemed distant as it then fled the room to find aid. Kawa fell to the floor, grasping her head as she felt the familiar burning sensation within her eye expanding to her forehead and cheek.

Breathe... just breathe...

Kawa attempted to recall the pain-counseling sessions she took and took one sharp breath after another as her eyes remained fully open, unblinking. She found herself along the floor, sprawled out and convulsing, reacting to each pulsing shock of pain that rain up and down her spine as she continued to squeeze the sides of her head, hoping to bring some form of ease to the intense experience. With her chin resting against the cold floor, she could only fight against the convulsions and spasms her body produced in response to the pain.

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

BLOOD

"HAAH... HAAAH... HAAAAH..."

No relief in sight...

Kawa took in a sharp breath as she lifted the item, and again the shock came, forcing her to stab the floor once more in response. Each beat of her heart pulsated another violent pain and another violent shock against her skull, threatening to crack under the immense pressure. Her free arm peeled against the broken boards beneath her broken, pained body while the other still gripped that item ever close and scraped it repeatedly against the floor.

"HAAAAH... HAAAAAH... HAAAAAAH..."

Stop...
She wanted it to stop...
The pain...
It was too much...

Once more, she raised the letter opener. Tears streamed down her face while blood pouring down her arm as it lifted. However, Kawa tilted her hand just a bit...

Stop the pain...

The pain; it was too much, too intense. The only way to get rid of the pain was to distribute the pain elsewhere. Pain distribution... and... with a tilt of her wrist, the letter opener turned. Within the metal object's shine was the only tangible vision her sight could take; her eye... the infection was spreading rapidly; not only within her eye but spreading across her entire face, paling her skin to almost a dead-like white color with blackish-violet cracked lines webbing across her features.

STOP THE PAIN!!

She just needed to stop the pain... to stop the pain, she just needed to stop feeling... to stop feeling, she just needed...

"HAAH... HAAAH... HAAAAH!!!!!!!!"

ENOUGH

To stop feeling, she just needed to stop... She just needed to stop everything.

"AH... AHHH.... AHHHHH!!!!!"

With a single thrust of the letter opener, blood sprayed the floor... and a lifeless body soon fell...

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

HELP

There was reasoning behind why the noblewoman wasn't going to her own Captain for this subject matter. Not only was she, surprisingly enough, very hard to get a hold of or rather, a moment for a sit-down private meeting, but Kawa didn't want to express that the patient she was about to speak about was, in fact, herself. This Captain, however, she sought out specifically for obvious reasons. A folder stacked with medical records rested safely under her right arm as she walked down the halls of the Gobantai. Most of the divisions seemed to be set up with similar, if not identical systematization, so it wasn’t difficult for the elder woman to find her way around.

Her mock case study was solid; it referenced an older case, Quinn's in fact. Since she was going through the very same Hollow-poisoning as him but at a far slower rate, the experienced doctor was hoping to get a final judgement from a Captain's point of view now, of all times, after everything that's happened with the former Captain, Aizen-Taicho, the sudden and rather brutal death of her former lover would perhaps have a different outcome in the present than in the past. Names were removed, of course, as with most material used in either medical articles or as teaching reference material. In the end, Kawa had been unable to filter out the Hollow poisoning and Quinn had briefly undergone the process of Hollowfication… before he was immediately executed.

Would things be different now? There had been no formal announcement on any changes to the Laws of the Gotei, but there was a solid sense of leniency recently…

“Hirako-Taicho,” Kawa called out to the man, catching him briefly in passing by through one of the hallways. She had heard that the recently reinstated Captain was a bit less than... informal at times, so she had hoped she caught the man in his spare time, or at the very least, in between responsibilities. As such, she kept her announcement brief. “Do you have a moment to spare?”

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

PLEASE

“Just another doctor of the Fourth,” the medic recited the line as though she had said it a million times as a hand was placed at her back, guiding her along his current route. It didn’t take a profiler to tell her that the tall, neatly groomed man would likely not require the paperwork tucked under her arms, and seeing as time wasn’t on her side as well as the fact that this man seemed to be one of those ‘get to the point’ kind of personalities, she didn’t bother wasting her time with any sort of buildup and kept it as short as she could.

“I’m currently doing a medical case study on a case from several hundred years ago, for a class I teach, involving Hollowfication,” Kawa began to explain, referencing briefly the paperwork under her arm with a light turn and shrug of her shoulder. “At the time, not much research had been done on Hollowfication, and as current laws state, any patients exhibiting Hollowfication-like symptoms are set to be terminated on sight. However, I’m required to update all case studies and I’m uncertain if, should the case have happened now, if the outcome would change.”

It was said that this very Captain had once gone through the Hollowfication process, along with a variety of other former Captains and Vice-Captains. Hirako, Shinji was the only individual among those who was granted his status back as Captain. The current laws seemed murky over the past couple of years, and while the process was still very much written as law, the enforcement seemed… stagnant at best. The details, however, would be in her pitch and scenario, so Kawa made certain to choose her words very carefully.

“I can see I may bore you with the medical jargon, so I’ll summarize it to keep it short and to-the-point,” the doctor stated as though the scenario rolled off her tongue… which it did, in a sense. “The patient we received was hospitalized after confrontation with a Hollow and then proceeded to exhibit signs of Hollowfication. Back then, there wasn’t much to go on, but current research estimates that the patient was roughly in the third of six stages of Hollowfication; Hollow-skin emesis, without full mask-formation. Patient was then t-terminated before any further stages could be expressed.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. No. It didn’t matter, there was absolutely no reason to suspect anything. Fumbling of words happened all the time. Steel; steel your expression, Kawa… that’s it… just like every day…

And just as her thoughts ran, her face showed no emotional response and remained in her normal, melancholic and often bored expression. Eye contact was made with her right eye when she asked her next question, her left of course blocked by her eyepatch. Beneath, she could feel the burning sensation of her infection spready; each individual nerve felt as though they were exploding repeatedly to the beat of her heart with her currently ridiculous dosage of pain killers doing absolutely nothing to extinguish the pain. Nevertheless, the pain was not expressed; it never was. And as she spoke, once more, her features did not flinch.

“Basically, I’m asking if the scenario were to play out today, would anything be different. The manner in which it was handled, a time-table difference… any information you can provide will help me with the study.”

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

EXPECTATION

"Expected, yes," Kawa nodded her head briefly when the Captain turned to face her. Her right eye focused upon the taller man's own two, her other covered by a medical eye patch, though one obviously customized in a slightly more stylishly appealing manner. "With the sudden rise of their sightings, research for both the Jūnibantai and Yonbontai have increased exponentially to find out the exact cause. I'm not surprised the laws have not held any revision other than a small footnote quickly added at the end of the page for you and company."

Mostly true and certainly not attempting to express any form of sarcasm at the notation of the Vizard's freedom being granted. Nevertheless, Kawa's demeanor and expression of humor could always be interpreted as more brash, half-hearted, or just simply sounding like a wise ass. In accordance to the first part, Kawa's entire wing had been dedicated to rare infections and patients unable to be properly diagnosed by other doctors of her division. Due to the reports of increased Vizard activity as well as their numbers, research on the exact process was only given specifically to the 12th. The 4th, however, was given a bit more limited access to data research and exactly what could be said, how it could be said, proper verbiage, so forth and so on. At the moment, Kawa held no filter... like normal, but obtaining the Captain's attention by not beating around the bush and going straight into the simple mention of 'Hollowfication' just to get that skeptical focus on her subject matter would help her in the short run rather than the long.

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

STRAYS

"See one, kill on sight; plain and simple, right?" Kawa lifted one arm up in a shrugging motion, palm face up, then lifted the other as she followed herself up. "It's always been pretty black and white, right?"

Her left hand turned though obviously due to a brief pause in conversation and rubbed her covered eye slightly over the patch; the irritation was certainly starting to become more than just an itch and far more of a burning sensation. A forced yawn escaped her lips in an attempt to cover her action to have it not seem so obviously connected to their current conversation. When relief finally came to her itchy eye, that index finger lifted upward, as though an idea had popped into her head and was simply following up on the simplicity of the law.

"While on the field, however, things are obviously not always black and white," Kawa continued, though began to tread very carefully with her words going forward. She didn't want to appear over confident, too well-informed, nor did she want the Captain to pass any judgement of negativity upon her obvious attempted stance on their currently debated subject. "And the same can now start to be said for patients of the Fourth..."

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

FINAL APPROACH

"Thus, it returns to defining exactly when and what is determined as the first stage of Hollowfication. We have many determining factors now, and exactly when termination would be called upon seems to be left at the judgement of the highest authority at the scene." Her bottom hand then began to tap the bottom side of her other a couple of times, hoping to keep the emphasis going.

"Yes, they are to be killed on sight. However; a patient expressing early symptoms, ones that, perhaps, can lessen, slow, or even neutralize the infection prior to spreading... being able to determine exactly when the process begins, when infection turns to Hollowfication, exactly when our knowledge of healing and modern medicine can no longer aid the patient... defining that gray area of Hollow poisoning, parasitic, viral or blood infections that are theorized to lead to that first step," Kawa's brows pinched as her hands lowered to her side. A single brow twitched, uncharacteristically unnoticed by the normally ever present and cursedly ever aware doctor.

"This is an area of expertise in which isn't found in any of our medical books. Captains will use their own judgement and proper instructions aren't clearly outlined. I'm aware that such a subject is taboo and often shunned upon, and our current Taicho seems to enjoy indirect answers. The only one with even an inkling of understanding exactly the process in full, without going to some creepy purple pervert, is you, Taicho."

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

TREATMENT II

Six agonizing hours, the doctors worked on filtering and restoring the poisoned and corrupted spiritual core within the elder noblewoman. For over a century, Kawa had become all too familiar with the overall processes; twice a year for the rest of her life, should they never find a cure for her condition, she would have to become a life-time patient of the very hospital she worked. While having repeated this process for so long that it was now like clockwork to her, only over the past year did her personal doctor request an additional session, making the twice-a-year mandatory sessions into three times. Six hour-long sessions were now extended to eight, and this particular session was now passing the ninth-hour mark.

Being the compulsive, autocratic, patient-slash-doctor that she was, Kawa had immediately attempted to seek out further information, and while she wasn’t directly kept in the dark, she was given the often used ‘It’s nothing to worry about’ or ‘because of your unique situation, for this is type of treatment we've begun to spend more time focusing which extends the-yada, yada, yada.’ She wasn’t naive; hell, you learned that kind of narrative in your first year of studying medicine. Kawa understood exactly the reasoning behind the added sessions, which was why her childish protests had lost their merit starting last year, her subconscious fidgeting during their sessions became more focused, and her relaxed attitude toward her own case brought about a more serious and abrupt change.

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL-ALMIGHTY

SHIMIZU, KAWA

VIZARD

DIAGNOSIS

>>"Hello Shimizu-hakase."

Despite being Kawa's personal doctor and assistant, the younger Nanami had started addressing the noblewoman with a more superior honorific ever since she had joined the Yonbantai. Kawa had to always correct the doctor. Ever since they first met in the Academy, Kawa had attempted to express quite heavily her desire to be called by her given name and with no honorific; she hated honorifics, both being referenced by and using them. While Nanami would promptly correct herself, the habit of such exchanged dialogue only continued throughout their lives, to the point where it near replaced a standard greeting among both colleagues and life-long friends. This was, however, the first time in quite a long time that Nanami had used Hakase as an honorific.

And also for the first time, Kawa did not correct her.

"Nanami…"

>>"Please, have a seat."

… … …

… … …

Silence…

Uncomfortable silence…

As Kawa stared at Nanami's worried gaze, their eyes never coming to meet. With her hesitance, fidgeting hands… she already knew what she was going to say. The treatment wasn't working as well as it had in the past. Perhaps extending their sessions would decrease her symptoms, perhaps more anti-infection injections could help combat the already rapidly spreading poison...

Maybe they could seek more experienced healers from the Kido Corps...

Maybe they could seek aid from the Jūnibantai...

As though those options hadn't already been covered many years ago... many decades ago. Nothing changed. She knew. She already knew the steps they were going to try and take. It was just an endless cycle, but this time... this time, she knew.

She always knew...

VIZARD | ALMIGHTY-LEVEL-ALMIGHTY