His palms struck the edge of the circle, setting it alight in shining blue, a shade of blue so bright and pale it was almost a colorless white. Unbelievable amounts of power spun through the circle on the floor, huge bursts of power exploded from my body and the bodies of the two creatures beside me. I felt faint.

The sparks blackened with existential rot, Shou Tucker’s eyes widened comically as the Transmutation hilariously and suddenly began to detonate. One of my palms was pressed as hard as I could press it against the paint. That periodic itching, that sustained annoyance I had grown accustomed to in the many months since my arrival, turned into a blazing agony.

I remembered weeks ago, approaching Mustang and asking for help. I remember asking him to put circles on my palms. At the end of the day, we only ever managed a concept – a rough painting of ink on either palm of what I wanted to see, and even then the details didn’t feel entirely right. That was a different story here and now. Voices screamed in my mind, a jungle of flaming agony that roared and spun in thousands of cumulative detonations.

Violet light seeped through the cracks between my fingers, the thin crevice between my palms and the floor. That same, corrupting light… and in the opposite hand, that light was golden and almost holy in its nature. Shou was screaming, I heard him screaming – we weren’t in his laboratory anymore. We were in a broken train station.

High above us, the thing that mothered my fawk of a Zanpakuto adjusted its hands on the three whistle-flutes that were its mouths and ears. Steam blasted out from every hole along its body, reminiscent of a strange engine. The hands withdrew from the whitles and reached down, all six of them, to grasp the struggling form of Shou Tucker.

His mouth opened wide, he wasn’t screaming anymore. His glasses slid off his face and his body melted and shaped itself into something different. It was turning into a brick of steel and iron, a Gate to nowhere but his very being.
The incredible titan that would birth my Zanpakuto opened its chamber-mouth and reached out with its many tongues to wrap around the Door that once was a man named Shou Tucker.

It looked like a floppy disk slowly being inserted into an old computer, being dragged by thousands of cords dripping in black ichor and wide eyes and screaming mouths. The Door tried to open. It was kept shut and silent. The floor beneath me collapsed and I saw, hanging high above me, the fawk-headed man with a Brooklyn accent. “See you on the flipside.” He adjusted his cap.