Title – Kneel to the Baboon King
Author – c2t2
Part – 1 of 3
Rating – T for mild violence and brief mentions of sex
Disclaim – No own Bleach, no money.
Credits – Thank you to Junko for cheerleading, and just generally being awesome! The title is from the Bleach manga chapter of the same name.
Summary – Renji battles the elements, his zanpakuto, and himself. Sequel to "Curse of the Zanpakuto", but I don't think it's necessary to read CotZ to enjoy this.

AN: LOTS of interesting tidbits can be found on my livejournal, (username squizbee, or find the url in my profile)

-.-.-

Kneel to the Baboon King
by c2t2

-.-.-

Renji was the first student out the door after the final lecture.

His classmates tittered that the mad dog was finally off his leash for the summer, but Renji was too far gone to hear them.

He barely made it to the edge of the grounds before he was forced to stop. There he doubled over, trembling arms braced against a tree, and lost this morning's breakfast.

He was heaving his guts out. Renji was seeing spots as his vision faded.

He had lost Rukia, and Renji learned that he had personally killed a house full of orphans.

Another hot wave of nausea took away his ability to think, and sweat broke out on Renji's forehead and back. When his reason returned, his thoughts were no more optimistic than before.

Darkness clawed at the edges of his mind.

"You," he spat.

And the deep, rumbling voice inside him answered.

-.-.-

Renji's feet were yanked out from under him, and he fell through the ground.

His body plummeted through an alien sky. Damp, putrid air rushed with thundering force around his body as the unfamiliar landscape below zoomed towards him. As he reached the trees, Renji braced his arms in front of his face in a futile attempt to protect himself. All the air was immediately knocked from his body as a thick branch slammed into his ribs. He tumbled toward the ground, strong branches bruising him and slender branches leaving stinging slaps. He had barely slowed when he hit the muck below.

Renji plunged through a foot of stagnant water and sank deeply into the foul muck below. The ooze trapped him, filling his clothes and crawling into all the crevices of his body. The more he struggled, the more trapped he felt. As the slime oozed between his toes and crawled up his nose, Renji began to panic, and with a final frantic thrashing, he somehow pulled himself to the surface, gasping desperately for air, alternately wheezing and gagging on the stink of the slime that covered him.

Once the panic subsided and he could breathe normally - as normally as he could with a cracked rib - Renji tried to take stock of his surroundings. Beneath the trees, the swamp around him was so gloomy that the light barely penetrated the very air, leaving everything a hazy sickly green. He could see clearly for several paces; then everything faded and darkened until the shadowy shapes of looming trees blocked his view. The air was thick, hot, and completely still. Not a breath of movement anywhere.

And the place stank.

The air was a nauseating combination of stagnant water and rotting things. It smelled like the places the pipes from Seireitei dumped their sewage into the Rukongai rivers. The taste of the slime in Renji's mouth was so vile that he thought he would never be rid of it. He scraped his nails across his skin, trying to remove the bulk of the absurdly heavy muck that was weighing him down. He stumbled a few steps forward, only now realizing that he had been slowly sinking into the water, the surface felt like it was crawling up his thighs. The awful stuff stuck to his ragged clothing and sucked determinedly at his bare feet, trying to cement him in one place. Renji grabbed a low-hanging branch on one of the trees and hoisted himself above the stinking water before the stuff could pull him back down again. The effort made his cracked rib scream in pain, and the flaky red bark was sharp and stained his hands and feet, but it was still a vast improvement over the slime below.

Renji balanced on the branch and looked around. Now that his heart had stopped pounding quite so loud, Renji could hear again. The swamp was nearly silent, but now that his breath had slowed, on the very edge of his senses, he could hear a faint roar in the distance. It was not the birdcall that had haunted him in Inuzuri, but the sound was unnerving in the same way, and Renji wanted to get away from this place as soon as possible. He slapped a mosquito that landed on his neck and pulled himself to his feet, balancing on the branch, one hand stabilizing against the trunk, the other cradling his aching ribs.

First, there was something he needed to do.

"All right," Renji snarled, his voice quiet and vicious. "Get out here and face me, you filthy ape."

Across from him, a pale figure stepped out from behind a tree far too slender to hide its bulk. The creature balanced effortlessly in the dark snarl of branches, its glowing yellow eyes turned their full force directly on Renji.

"Renji," the baboon rumbled in a familiar voice. It was one of the two voices that had been plaguing him for nearly a year. "It is hypocrisy for you to complain of filth."

"Foolish child," hissed the other, also familiar voice, and Renji saw a white snake slithering up the baboon's back to hover over its shoulder.

The baboon was mostly white, save for graceful dark stripes winding down the ape's powerfully muscled shoulders and arms. Somehow, the snake was the baboon's tail. They were the same thing, one being.

While the creature had no visible effect on the environment - no stirring in the air or ripple in the stagnant water below - somehow, it radiated power like nothing Renji had ever encountered.

Renji absentmindedly shook off a trail of ants crawling up his calf.

"Murderer," he whispered the accusation, trusting the thing to hear it. "Monster. Child-killer. Trash."

The snake hissed a terrible laugh, and the baboon rumbled, "We are part of you, Renji. You insult only yourself."

"I would never have killed my brothers. I would have rather died." Renji spat. He waved away a cloud of gnats that had sprung up around him.

"Your nature will manifest, whether you call on it or not."

"My nature is disease? Murder?" Renji was becoming furious, on the edge of shouting. He had to raise his voice above the terrible buzzing hum, which had grown steadily louder.

"Your nature, Renji, is to reach for power when misfortune approaches."

"THERE WAS NO MISFORTUNE UNTIL YOU SHOWED UP." Renji shook his head for emphasis, hoping his loose hair would dislodge the biting flies attempting to land on him. The bone-rattling hum was growing until he could feel it in his teeth.

"There would have been. That is certain. Likely, the Inuzuri plague dissuaded a worse calamity."

"YOU KILLED THE CHILDREN!"

"Learn to control your power, and next time you will be able to help instead."

"IT WAS YOU!"

"No, Renji. It was us."

"I would rather die than work with the monster who murdered my family!" Renji had to shout now, to be heard over the deafening buzz.

"Then stay here, boy, and let the insects have their way."

At this, Renji looked around.

While he had been distracted, the air, the water, the trees, everything had become packed and crawling with insects. Swarms of flies, mosquitoes, and smaller biting things swarmed through the air in dark clouds. Beetles of all sizes and colors swarmed over the tree, hiding the red bark from view. Ants swarmed up his bare feet and over his hand and up his wrist, biting as they went. Glittering black specks, too small for Renji to distinguish, covered the stinking ooze below him so thickly that the water had become an undulating black mass.

Renji yelped in shock and jumped to try and shake off the things crawling up his limbs and biting his exposed skin. He choked and coughed, gagging as he felt gnats fly down his throat with every breath. Renji lost his balance and fell again into the filthy water below, feeling a tickling itch as he crushed the blanket of insects on the water's surface before plunging through into the muck. This time, Renji was not so deeply buried that he lost his bearings, and sprang back to his feet in moments, again clutching his side as pain shot through his body from the cracked rib. He covered his nose and mouth with the edge of his shirt and frantically looked around. Picking the direction where the swarm seemed lightest, Renji started blindly stumbling in that direction.

Renji had to keep moving, never taking more than a moment to plan the next step, or else he would sink into the muck again until it trapped him and held him immobile. If that happened, he knew he would die the most unpleasant death imaginable.

Hidden roots in the water tried to trip up his feet, and patches of undergrowth were so thick that Renji was forced to flee in a winding pattern around them.

The slime from Renji's jump into the ooze clung thick and heavy. It weighed him down and enflamed the bites covering his skin, but at the same time it seemed to thwart the worst of the biting insects. He was afraid to imagine what the skin beneath must look like; his Inuzuri rags had offered little in the way of protection.

For long minutes, Renji's mind was fully occupied with getting away as far and as fast as possible. He lost all sense of time, and his mind drifted as he began to move on pure instinct. The pain of the cracked rib slowly eased, and the bruises and bites that covered his body faded in a dreamlike haze. It may have lasted for days, or weeks, or even months. The sun in this place did not seem to move, so the light never changed, and Renji never seemed to grow hungry or thirsty. He had no internal sense of time and no external way to track it.

Gradually, Renji's mind began to resurface. The insects had fallen behind. Soon, not even a lone mosquito could be heard nearby, and Renji collapsed, heedless of the reeking slime, and took a moment's rest.

"What the fuck," Renji called out to the trees around him. It was not a question.

He sensed the beast was still around, and he knew his demand needed no clarification.

Instead of the deep voice of the baboon, the cruel hissing of the snake rang out around him, "Weak! Pathetic! You started to give in, to wallow in your misery. You stopped moving forward." The creature suddenly materialized in front of Renji, looming over him. "If you ever wallow in self-pity, you deserve to be devoured by the swarm." Renji was treated to the baboon's huge yellow fangs bared inches from his face – wet and gleaming in the dim light. The snake continued, "No, if you are ever this pathetic again, we will devour you ourselves, you wretched child."

The baboon roared to punctuate this statement, its breath even fouler than the stink of the swamp around them.

Renji bared his teeth right back at the baboon. "Are you saying I'm going to be stuck here forever?"

"Your stupidity will be your downfall, Renji," the snake hissed - as if that was any kind of answer.

The beast vanished into the gloom once again.

With effort, Renji pulled himself out of the muck and looked around. Was he imagining things, or was the dim swamp a bit brighter than before? Renji automatically took a few steps to avoid being trapped in the slime. Was the ooze slightly less heavy, less viscous? Wait... one thing was certain - the water was shallower. When he arrived, Renji had been wading through water and slime deep enough to cover his knees. Now, the stuff barely reached the top of his shins. Was it possible that he was actually getting somewhere? Renji looked ahead, and caught a glimpse of something through the foliage that had him scrambling for the nearest climbable tree. Renji pulled himself up the winding trunk, and soon he broke through the canopy.

There.

A mountain rose out of the mist. It looked... clean somehow, wholesome - not like this festering swamp. Renji felt a rush of relief, and leapt back into the ooze with a splash, forging ahead with renewed energy.

Having a goal and a faint hope of escape lightened Renji's heart considerably, and his hatred of the beast in the shadows diminished a great deal.

"So, I guess this must be the 'inner world' the zanpakuto sensei kept talking about." The creature didn't reply, but it was the only company Renji had, and he didn't really mind. "Of course the place is a total dump. I just can't catch a break, can I? The inside of my soul is rotting stuff, stinking slime, and bugs. Figures. Earlier you said something about my power being tied to misfortune? Well, I believe you. I'd be nuts not to. Story of my life." He walked in silence for a while. Now that he was paying attention, Renji could see the terrain changing noticeably. The slime dropped to ankle-height, then to cover the tops of his feet, and finally it was a thin film that squished up through his bare toes. Renji was amazed by how easy it was to move. He had nearly forgotten what it was like to walk on dry ground.

The powerful hum of the insect swarm vanished completely.

The upward slope gradually steepened. The trees changed from cypress and tangled mangroves to towering hardwoods. The loam was soft, but blessedly dry.

Renji stopped and flopped onto his back with a grateful sigh. As his mind drifted, Renji nearly dozed off before a thought jerked him back awake.

"Hey, how long have I been here anyway?" he asked the air, "And what's happening to my body on the outside?"

The baboon's deep rumble echoed eerily through the air, seeming to come from all directions. "Time passes differently in this place. Only a single week has passed in the outer world."

"...the fuck? How did I not die by now?"

"There is no need to concern yourself. I have kept your body alive in Inuzuri."

If that statement was supposed to reassure Renji, it had the opposite effect, "I don't remember giving you permission to use my body. Let me out of here!"

Silence.

"Are you listening to me you brain-damaged monkey? I said LET ME OUT!"

There was a flicker on one side of the clearing, and Renji lunged.

Nothing. But he was close, he had to be. Hell only knew what the creature had been doing with his body while he was trapped in the swamp, and Renji was desperate to get out of here. Every time he caught a movement on the edge of his vision, Renji took off after it. He soon realized that he was being deliberately led, and just hoped it was to an exit. To Renji's surprise, the chase ended in a small clearing. The beast stood in the center, towering over a small pool of water in a stone basin.

"Look."

Now the damn thing was barking orders at him? Despite his annoyance, Renji's curiosity got the better of him and he approached the basin, leaned over, stared into the water.

Renji saw himself.

It was not his reflection. The Renji in the water was moving through the dusty streets of Rukongai. As he watched, the image grew, becoming impossibly detailed, filling his vision until Renji felt like he was there, floating through the streets.

The other Renji continued, uninterrupted, through the Rukongai slums.

He looked like shit.

Well, sort of. He had to admit the image-Renji looked healthy... impossibly, he looked even stronger than when he left academy for the summer. And… was his image taller? Ah, crap. Renji badly stood out already; towering head and shoulders above everyone else was just unnecessary.

His body's apparent health was the only good thing to say about the scene.

The Renji in the vision wore hakama so tattered and bedraggled it barely maintained his modesty. The rest of his body was bare, and his hair was longer than ever, a wild snarl matted over his shoulders. The expression on the other Renji's face was simply... inhuman.

"Stop it!" Renji shouted to the creature controlling him. "Let me out, this is wrong!"

There was no reply, and Renji watched helplessly as frail, huddled figures scattered as the image stalked through the dusty streets. It walked into a building, seemingly chosen at random, and Renji made a small, horrified sound as he saw a woman standing over a cutting board next to a bubbling pot. The image simply walked up and grabbed a sack of rice as if it belonged to him - as if he didn't notice the knife in the woman's hand, the knife she had been using to chop vegetables. Renji shouted a warning as the woman in the basin lunged at Renji's image, "Let go of my food, you red-haired ape!" and Renji stared in shock as the knife broke against the image-Renji's skin.

The knife broke against his skin.

…What?

Renji shouted again as the image used one hand to pick the woman up by her throat, pinning her against the wall and baring its teeth in her face. The woman's pupils shrank to pinpoints and she sobbed in terror. Trapped in his mind, Renji was roaring for the image to let her go, and at the beast to let him go, back to his body. The image-Renji dropped the woman and carried out the sack of rice, never looking back.

Residents of the Rukongai slums were tough, and the woman rallied quickly. Renji could faintly hear her screaming after his image, "…Barbarian! …Savage! …Brute! …Animal! …Beast! …Monster! …Demon!"

Renji closed his eyes and tried to sense what was trapping him here, tried to figure out how to fight the beast and regain control of his body.

Suddenly, his movements were just as trapped as his will, and Renji opened his eyes on the mountain to see the creature looming over him, pinning Renji to the ground with one hand. He struggled, but the beast held him down without effort.

"Weak." the snake hissed.

"You really are a demon, aren't you?" Renji choked out around the weight crushing him into the loam.

"...So weak," the snake continued.

"We are a reflection of your demon soul," the baboon's rumbling voice revealed no trace of emotion.

"...We will make you strong."

The creature dissipated into a black cloud, and vanished.

Renji leapt to his feet and took off up the mountain. He didn't know exactly where he was going, but he had to get out of this world. The slope steepened, and the loose gravel at his feet often caused him to backslide, losing hard-won ground. As he climbed further, Renji spotted a small structure at the mountain's peak.

It seemed as good a goal as any. Renji glanced behind him. The stinking swamp below had shrunk to a featureless expanse of green, stretching to the horizon. There was nothing for him there. Renji turned, and climbed on.

By now, the rocks were treacherous and the slope was so steep that Renji was unable to stand upright unassisted. Weathered stone crumbled under Renji's grip and broke beneath his weight, clattering off the slope and then crashing far below. It was a miracle he did not fall. He was so focused on finding secure hand and footholds that once again he lost all track of time, and even stopped cursing the beast who had killed his friends and now held him prisoner. The next thing Renji realized, he was at the mountain peak, the building directly in front of him.

Renji felt a sudden and inexplicable dread. Something terrible was waiting for him on the other side of that sliding door. Whatever it was, it was giving him a serious case of the creeps. Goosebumps swept over his skin and he couldn't suppress a shiver.

He was not ready to find out.

Renji walked around the building, telling himself that he was inspecting it for clues about what was inside. There was nothing remarkable, save the quality of the materials.

Renji knew 'fancy' when he saw it. The graceful lines of the paper walls and the tiered roof were complemented by the gleaming wood and well-swept grounds.

Nobody in Inuzuri ever had sliding doors or rice-paper walls. Inuzuri residents hung tattered blankets over wooden doorways.

Renji felt oddly embarrassed that the inside of his soul seemed to like pointless symbols of wealth. He would bet the floors inside were fresh tatami. Before Academy, Renji had never stood on anything but dirt.

Inspection complete, Renji returned to the entrance, and stared. Somewhere nearby, a thrush cried out.

Renji stared at the ricepaper door. Long moments passed.

"I'm not stalling, I'm trusting my instincts," he said to the air. Where had the beast gone, anyway? That way he could at least pretend he was talking to someone else.

Renji had never considered himself a coward. He was used to risking his life on a daily basis. Being forced to steal food meant endless games of high-stakes tag. Not remotely a coward. Nope.

Renji fidgeted uselessly. Once again, the call of a thrush echoed through the clearing.

He needed to go inside. He wasn't even fooling himself at this point.

Renji mustered his courage, braced himself, and – hoping nothing would call his bluff - aggressively stormed through the door.

Two steps inside, Renji's bluff shattered around him and he stared like an idiot.

Renji thought he'd been ready for anything. He had imagined everything from an army of enemies to a swirling black void, but he had not prepared for this.

-.-.-

It was ordinary.

The inside of the building was simple and boring. There was one huge room that greatly resembled the training halls of the Academy.

Wooden floor. Wooden walls. High ceilings. Empty.

Almost empty.

Something hung on the far wall directly opposite the door, the highest place of prominence. It was some kind of weapon.

Renji approached it warily.

It almost looked like a sword, but Renji could see strange joints in the blade, and knew that it was something else. It was serrated, razor sharp. Wicked hooks jutted from the ends of each blade section. Renji could tell by the aura around it that this was the thing that had kept him from entering the building.

It was… evil.

That was the best way to describe it. Evil… and thrilling. The closer he got, the more the weapon seemed to scream in its thirst for blood. It would feed on the pain of its enemies, tear them to shreds with a savage glee. Merciless and cruel. Should Renji try to wield this... sword, it would turn on him if too much time passed since the sword could devour an enemy.

"You have got to be kidding me," Renji said to the air. "There's no fuckin' way."

"You deny yourself," the baboon rumbled directly behind him, making Renji jump. He still wasn't used to the beast's tendency to appear out of nowhere.

"Coward!" the snake snapped, "Fool! You deny the shape of your soul!"

Renji was losing his patience, "Listen, pal, I think you got sorted to the wrong guy, cuz this ain't me."

"Pathetic," both voices said at once. Renji decided he'd had enough of this thing, and spun, combining his own strength with the momentum into a powerful backhand. It was more of a brawling move than an official hakuda, but the beast was huge, and Renji needed all the power he could generate if he wanted to damage this thing.

His fist met only air. Renji found it absurdly easy to follow his momentum back into a ready stance. The dojo was nothing like a prison cell or a trash-littered Inuzuri alley, and Renji spared a moment of annoyance at the foolishness of students training in such a hall. Hakuda learned in places like this would be useless in a real fight.

"He tries to fight us!" Renji couldn't be sure, but he thought the snake was laughing at him.

"You are unworthy to wield us, boy." The baboon bared its fangs at Renji once again. "You've called yourself a stray dog for so long that you've become one."

"Disappointing," the snake whispered again. "We are forced to endure a wretch like you. Better that you die and we find a wielder with the will to fight."

Renji had some idea what he was supposed to do, and by now he was angry enough to do it. Renji leapt to pull the serrated weapon free, intending to rebound off the wall and tear into the beast.

When the blade was in his hands, everything stopped.

He stopped moving midair, the creature was completely still on the floor. The breeze on the mountaintop vanished.

The only thing Renji could hear was the pounding of his heart, as the blade dissolved in his hands, and the world around him dissolved with it.

Part 2 will be posted later this week.