A/N: My Bleach muse! It has returned!
Um… I know that panthers probably can't be found alongside deer….
Oh well. I'm sorry. For the sake of the story, okay?
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Roman Ambition
The villagers had decided that the man with the blue hair was a monster. He was a monster, sent from the depths of hell, with a mission to torment humanity.
They called him Caesar.
Caesar was not his real name. The man did not know his real name, for he had no family to call his own. He might have been given a name, long ago in the distant, inconsequential past. He did not care. The man did not have a name to begin with, so the villagers named him after a warlord who had left death and destruction in his wake. They gave him a name so that they could whisper something to each other as they huddled together in terror.
The man reveled in the fear that the villagers directed towards him. He relished every expression of abject terror he witnessed. He bathed in the atmosphere of weakness that surrounded him, because he derived pleasure from the fact that he was the one causing it.
The man who would be later known as Grimmjow Jaegerjacques wanted to leave an imprint on as many people as he could, and if the entire village remembered him as a demon, he had done what he had wanted to.
The man who would become the Sexta Espada wanted to be someone.
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"Mother!" the boy screamed.
The man removed his sword from the woman's throat, trying to suppress the memories that were flooding his mind.
Hyenas had swarmed their little house. They were hyenas with human bodies and human voices, but they laughed like hyenas and they acted like dogs, so they must have been hyenas.
Blood stained the man's shirt as long lost scenes of a boy long dead played through his mind.
"Why so sad, boy?" the man asked, leering. "She never cared about you. Why do you care?" He kicked the small boy into a wall, paying no heed to the shrill cry of pain that escaped the boy's mouth.
"Go on, run, little boy!" he mocked, "run to your little coward friends, run, run, run! You'll never amount to anything in this world."
The man laughed. "Says you," he whispered.
The man screamed in pain as the knife was driven through his spine. The boy's eyes burned with fire more infernal than hell itself. "Never amount to anything?' he whispered. "Never amount to anything?"
"You never amounted to much, either, did you?"
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As the King rode through the small village, his guards keeping pace by his steed's side, he never really did manage to discover who had slipped the pebble in his pocket. He had read the word inscribed on the pebble countless times before, and he could not fathom why the particular word was inscribed on something as insignificant as a pebble. He could not reason why some commoner had decided to place it in his coat pocket, either.
Stay, it read.
And because the King cast away the stone immediately, because he was the King, not to be disrupted by the rabble of the street, he never did look at the other side.
He never read the words "on guard."
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"Please," the man begged, "I have children, I have a wife, please, please…"
"Five silver coins,' Caesar spat, "five hard earned silver coins that I don't have anymore because of you."
"Please, please, please," the man sobbed, "don't kill me, don't kill me, don't kill me…"
"We've all been in your place," Caesar said pitilessly, "and the only reason I'm where I am and you're still lying on the dirt is because I chose to get up off the ground."
Soft flesh yielded to cold, bitter steel. The steel could not be stopped by anything except more metal forged with the intent to kill. The flesh was utterly useless, only serving as something for the steel to cut.
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The panther was stalking its prey tonight. The prey was unaware that it was about to die.
And with grace that the man had never seen before, the panther leapt, ripping its claws into the deer's back. It clamped its jaws down on the deer's neck, and then it was over.
The panther did not roar its victory to the heavens. It did not begin to messily devour its kill with gusto. Instead, it dragged its kill back to its den, and slowly, meticulously, even, began to dine.
The man who would become Grimmjow Jaegerjacques wondered. The panther was king, but was it trying to become King? Did the panther have any ambition?
No, the man realized. The panther was born King. It did not have to work to rule. It did not have to climb the ladder to the sky, for it had been placed in the sky by God himself.
Then what can I do? What worth am I?
----
The next day, Caesar died.
He had died fighting the castle guards. He had taken down many of them, but ultimately, he had been surrounded and slaughtered.
None of the guards knew what to make of it. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that the man had been insane. Who else who pull off such a stunt?
The villagers celebrated Caesar's death. There was nobody to terrorize them anymore. Caesar would never again murder their husbands and sons, Caesar was gone forever.
The next generation heard Caesar's name spoken in bedtime stories warning them not to go out alone.
In the next generation, his name was used in jokes and festivals.
In the next, it was used in household conversation. It was said along with every other word imaginable. Gone was the fear, gone was the reverence, and gone was any respect.
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They don't care about me anymore.
They have passed me off as just another madman.
I am nobody to them.
I am absolutely insignificant.
Searing pain shot through the man's chest as a hole was torn through his heart, and he became Grimmjow Jaegerjacques, hollow.
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The King went looking for the pebble on the streets the day after Caesar died. Neither the King nor his servants could find the message that Caesar had for the King.
That evening the King's castle shook, and the next morning words, seemingly engraved into the castle wall by an animal, were found.
They will come for you, it read.
The next day the King, troubled and insecure, drank poison.
----
When Grimmjow arrived in Hueco Muendo, he remembered his purpose, and he felt weak that he had given in to despair.
He had resolved, decades ago, to become somebody. He had been blessed with ambition that rivaled that of the ancient Romans. He would succeed.
But in the end, he had not really achieved anything, had he?
It was all, Grimmjow realized, a matter of perspective.
The villagers had feared him, so what. The King didn't care about him, but Grimmjow couldn't care less. He had challenged the King's throne, and to him, that was all that mattered.
Because when a knife hits flesh it always cuts through, but when a knife strikes another knife its true mettle is tested. Grimmjow could rob and murder commoners for all his life, but he would never really know his own worth.
Anyone who had to resort to a lifestyle of preying off the weak, Grimmjow realized, was weak himself. He was weak in his own eyes, and it was his own eyes and his own eyes alone that really mattered.
A man's name could be known throughout the entire universe, yet he might not hold a single shred of self-respect. If a man could not marvel at his own accomplishments, if he could not admire his own strength, if he could not fear his own blade, then he truly had nothing left at all.
Fear me, he had commanded the peasants. Fear my sword. Fear my name. Fear me!
But until Grimmjow could fear the man he had become, there was truly nothing significant about his accomplishments. It was a matter of whether or not he cared about what peasants thought, or what he considered himself to be. It was truly a matter of perspective.
And now, Grimmjow knew why his form in this world was that of the panther. He had challenged the crown. He had swung his sword at the mighty King, and it did not matter that he had died, that he had failed, it only mattered that he had raised his sword against the King. None of the deer rose up against the panther, and that was precisely why they were prey. When Grimmjow attacked the King his title changed from "prey" to "challenger."
And the challenger is always the more admirable man.
For the challenger is the man who dares rise against the King, and so he is brave. For the challenger is the man who knows that he will probably die, so he is fearless.
The challenger is always an infinitely better man than the prey he once was.
And in Grimmjow's eyes, the challenger is the one who is the true King, because he who is born King has done absolutely nothing to reach his position.
And to Grimmjow it was truly fitting that as an ambitious challenger the form he had assumed in his next life was that of the panther, the King.
Grimmjow never preyed on weak humans. He tested his mettle against hollows of his own stature. And he would not stand for a Shinigami, of all things, proclaiming himself King.
So Grimmjow, once again, took the title of "challenger."
And Aizen's obligation, as King, was to stay on guard.
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Review, please. Tell me if Grimmjow's OOC and why. Point out any spelling or grammar errors. And for the love of God, if you praise this thing, USE AT LEAST 10 WORDS. OR ELSE I WILL SEND IN NINJAS.
You scared now? That's what I thought.
The button's down there. You know that I know that you can see it.