It's the Doctor!

Yoruichi seems just about ready to respond to our question when you hear a voice, a slightly squeaky but very familiar tone ringing in your ears, “Ah, Johnny my boy, it looks like this horrible curse hasn’t affected you at least.”

Your head snaps toward the location of the sound, your eyes gradually lowering until they happen upon a chibified version of your grandfather, “G-Grandfather? You too!?”

The old man gives you a sad nod and a tired sigh, his fingers brushing along the edge of his massive beard as he speaks, “It seems that sometime this morning there was a report of a large explosion coming from the Genryusai estate which then proceed to flood almost all of Soul Society. It looks like aside from yourself, the rest of us have become…well to put it bluntly, little plush dolls of our former selves.”

Still locked between outright confusion and gut busting laughter you respond, a very queer smile on your lips as your brain tries its very best to comb through this new mystery, “Actually…last night I was pulled into another world again but this time it was with Free-hime and Kyokotsu-hime.”

“Ah yes, the werewolf Amazon and one half of your sword spirit,” Your grandfather muses as her strokes his beard, “how were they able to accompany you?”

With a shrug you sigh, “I haven’t the slightest clue but…we did eventually run into some trouble.” Your grandfather gives you a silent rise of his eyebrow, a signal for you to continue which you take with slight trepidation, “We ended up in a wasteland that apparently razed to the ground by nuclear weapons. Something like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only this was on a world wide scale.”

You a sad nod your grandfather mutters, “Nuclear weapons…it’s been quite a while since I’ve heard of those…”

You lower your head as one of your hands sheepishly rises up to scratch at the back of your neck, your mind remembering how your grandfather served during your original planets World War for the side of the Allied powers America in its 442nd regiment. You also remember how his extended ‘family’ had lived in Hiroshima all the way up to the end of the war, their bodies never being recovered while your grandfather watched helplessly from a hospital bed. “Grandfather…I’m sorry,” you mutter but the old miniaturized man only shakes his head with a soft and sad smile.

“Don’t worry too much about it Johnny my boy,” he says with a chuckle, “now what were you saying about this dimension you traveled to?”

Nodding you continue your story, telling your grandfather of the lore and history of the wastelands, of your predecessor, of everything that you learned, saw, and most importantly what you brought back with you. “And then I woke up to all of this,” You mutter as you wave to Unohana and Yoruichi, the two of them floating by your side with wide eyes as you finish your tale, “I have no idea what happened after I activated the spire but I still have the urn and apparently I was surrounded by plant life when we came back so I’d like to think it worked…”

“Interesting,” you grandfather says with honest curiosity, a familiar tint hovering in his expression as he speaks, “And how well endowed is this Lyons-san?”

Gritting your teeth a bit you growl, “Grandfather…no hitting on my girls.”

The old man simply chuckles in that perverted little way of his before he straightens himself up, one hand wiping away the thin trail of drool from the corner of his lips as he speaks, “Well, while that story may be an interesting one it does not seem to be the root of this situation.”

“I agree Grandfather,” you say with a nod, “thankfully, Blair-chan was able to determine that the source of it was something magical, possibly even kido and magic fusion based.”

As surprising as the information is your grandfather takes it in stride, his head nodding as he speaks, “Interesting…judging by the fact that you are still here I am guessing Blair-san was unable to locate the source?”

“Yes,” You nod, “Blair-chan suggested we contact Shinigami-san from her dimension and ask him to put us in contact with Doctor Stein, apparently she is intimately familiar with magic and how to trace it to its source.”

“Very well,” your grandfather agrees, his aged body turning and hovering off with surprising speed, “Then come with me, I still have the mirror in my quarters after speaking with Shinigami-san…quite an interesting fellow I must say.”

Chuckling a bit you nod, “Tell me about it…”

Before long you along with Unohana, Yoruichi, and your grandfather are standing before the towering spectacle of the aged mirror, the communicative reflective surface fogging up instantly as you release your hot breath onto it. With a few quick strokes you write the pattern on the glass and in no time you find yourself face to face with a very familiar white bone mask, “Ah! John-kun, what a pleasure to see you again!”

Bowing slightl your smirk into the mirror, “Likewise Shinigami-san, how have you been?”

“Oh just wonderful,” The cloaked man says with a voice almost brimming with mirth, “My little sweetheart called just a few minutes ago! I have to say you are doing wonders with her John-kun, she’s so focused on your she hasn’t had time to worry about her symmetry obsession!”

Chuckling a bit you feel a bead of sweat drip down your brow, “I-Is that so?”

The man gives you a full body nod, that white mask of his moving with the bending and twisting of his cloaked form as he laughs, “Yes, yes it is! But onto the important matters…I hear you have been having trouble with magical spells in the area?”

“Yes, apparently some sort of spell turned everyone into…well I’m sure you’ve seen already,” you mutter as you glance back at the girls and your grandfather, shrunken and hovering in place.

“Yes, Yes I have. It is a shame Medusa-san and Eruka-san are unable to fully utilize their magic in this form or else you would have no need of Stein-chan,” Shinigami says with that jovial tone of his, “But as they say, them’s the breaks!”

“Eh heh, true,” you say with much less enthusiasm than Shinigami, apparently seeing his daughter really put the man in some kind of good mood, “So, as we discussed before I left it would be no problem for me to transport Stein-san here but when will I get to meet her? We are in a bit of a hurry…”

“Hmhmhm,” Shinigami chuckles, his body leaning to the side as he softly whispers into the mirror, “Quiet John-kun…can you hear that?”

You strain your hearing as hard as you can, your ear nearly pressed to the glass of the mirror until at last you hear something. Bit by bit the sound grows louder, the once near silent whine of some undecipherable noise gradually growing into the familiar clicking and clacking of a wheeled desk chair rolling across tiled floors. You watch with wide eyes as the rolling sound gets nearer and nearer, Shinigami-san stepping to the side and allowing you to watch as the door to the room bursts open and a woman with short silver hair tumbles into the room from atop a four wheeled and what appears to be stitched together desk chair.

With a soft grumble the woman slowly stands from the ground, her body coming to full height as she sullenly tips the chair back onto all fours, “Dammit…one of these times I’ll get that right.” Without a single second of hesitation the woman spins on her heel, her pristine white and stitched together lab coat swirling around her trim and athletic body as she faces Shinigami-san and you. From the brief glimpse you get you notice that the woman’s form and figure is rather curved and gently sloped, her trim body leading from a very wide set of hips and beautiful ‘bubble butt,’ along a generous hour glass waist, up to a small but perky chest. The woman’s face is lean and her eyes hold a perpetual state of drowsiness beneath a mat of cutely mussed silver hair. However, you can't help but notice the woman appears to have a massive black screw jutting through her head, something that she idly turns for a moment before her hands begin quick and almost invisible movements.

With speed and practiced grace the woman reaches into her lab coat and retrieves a cigarette, a small butane lighter flicking to life and giving the end of the cigarette a quick light before she flicks the lighter closed and quickly stuffs it into her pocket. With smooth and silent grace the woman walks up to the mirror, her lips clamping around the end of her fire stick and taking a deep drag of smoke. When the woman reaches the front of the mirror you notice her eyes seem to spark with life, those brilliant golden orbs looking you up and down as Shinigami’s voice speaks out, “John, this is Doctor Francine Stein, one of the best meisters to ever come from this academy. Doctor Stein, this is John Genryusai-Doe, the Deadman Shinigami.”

This causes an odd light to fill Francine’s eye, those yellow iris’ of hers gleaming with something wild as she speaks, “Damn…what a fine specimen…it’d be a shame if I couldn’t dissect him a little~”