A/N: The majority of this fic is crack as it is. It's one of my attempts at writing non-insert fanfiction. I think it turned out alright, considering I was exposed to supposedly poisonous paint fumes the day before I wrote this.
Have fun reading the stupidity conjured by my idiot brain.
Las Noches Academy was indeed a very grand school, almost as hilariously ostentatious as its founder. It stood tall and erect in the midst of a very plain district, in a very plain town, and did its best to make the very plain town look a little less… well, plain.
And it did a very good job of that, too.
It it wanted, he thought to himself with the slightest amusement, the school could have placed itself next to the grand Macy's shopping center with their grand Christmas displays and glittering windows—the shopping center, the pride of the town's decorations at the peak of its beauty. And Las Noches would have dwarfed the mall entirely with its great, white sides and elegantly carved egg-and-dart patterns in the gentle curves and artistic contours of the impeccably pale stone.
But alas, the entirety of the Academy could not walk itself over to the main shopping district, or it would have done so already. If only for Ulquiorra's entertainment.
Said boy, Ulquiorra, was fairly intelligent in his own mind. He took pride in that high and mighty rank that was the coveted fourth top spot of his class. He was, if he might say so himself, extremely well-rounded and well-learnt, just like the school he was taught in and just like his father before him, who attended the very same Las Noches Academy and was perhaps more regal than the founder himself.
The grandeur of the massive Las Noches Academy was costly, and the school was in short an extremely expensive place to be, regardless that it unfortunately it could not walk itself around to amuse its inhabitants. Nevertheless it was one of the most prestigious schools in the country. Hell, it was probably in the top five ranks of the world.
And so, regal, intelligent, fourth ranked student Ulquiorra Cifer in the school was expected to give them a good performance, study with all his soul, and then go out as a handsome, charming man to conquer and dazzle the world. Just like his father before him, who had been top student and graduated valedictorian. Best of his class and not only that, but the best of the entire highest class of humanity as it was then.
It just so happened that the regal, intelligent, fourth ranked student of the school was currently sitting through a top-notch AP Biology course. He should have found it interesting, because it had taken thousands of dollars to get him into this school and thousands more to keep him there. As if to further draw him in, that mysterious organ known as the heart was supposed to be involved in this course. He'd learnt since grade school that if there was a heart involved, there were bound to be some interesting facts lying amidst the muck of what inept instructors usually threw up on the board without a second glance.
Learning was a very complicated process indeed. It was singling a single golden needle out amidst a mountain-high stack of equally yellow hay. There were teachers who didn't teach jack and teachers who knocked the wind of out you with every word they spoke. There were the useless subjects and the brilliant courses that one was almost obligated to take.
Learning, education in its core essence, was simply an enigma.
Ulquiorra should have been very piqued by this twist of psychology, of what made learning so possible and so close to the human grasp, and he should've been extremely interested in what kind of processes went on behind the curtains of what these prestigious schools called "education". Especially what Las Noches called "education". They claimed impressive record time of being able to shape a cowardly, blunt-headed child into one of the most beautiful, well-thought breeds of the human race.
Ulquiorra was simply baffled by this claim, or at least he had been once upon a hell of a long time ago. There was no way, he had thought then, to get that smart in so little time, and there was absolutely no way even places like this huge, massive dome of a school could tame the wildest children. But he would expect nothing less from such a smartly-acclaimed and renowned academy, even if said academy had no legs to walk around on its own to Macy's.
This should be the most profound time of his life. The time in which he grew from a headless child into an intelligent man. He should be trembling in his seat with the anticipation of such a transformation.
Education was life, after all.
Ulquiorra Aizen shifted in his chair. He twisted his neck slightly, working the crick of out his spine, and then settled down. He stared at his notes for a half a minute, then scratched his name out with his pen and wrote it once more, neater than before. Then he erased the whole mess and shifted in his seat again.
And yawned.
One of the best students in Las Noches. He'd worked hard to acquire that position, and he was happy with it. In fact, he should be working harder—climbing up past Harribel, Lilinette, and then Starrk. He should have been eagerly planning out his strategy to conquer the academic ladder and perhaps planning world domination in his free time. What third-year high schooler didn't?
It was an intriguing idea. But adequate and most likely to turn out a complete waste of his time, which would then lead to infuriating regrets; and finally, imminent boredom.
Ulquiorra hated adequacy.
He absolutely hated boredom.
And all he knew at the moment was that he was irrevocably, inevitably bored.
He pretended to be paying strict attention to the incompetent teacher who was still sitting, cross-legged on his desk and looking like he'd come out of an overrated comedic reality show. The bright, red hair tied up like a pineapple and sticking out obnoxiously from the back of the teacher's head did nothing to help ease the hilarity of his already ghastly appearance, and neither did the tattoos plastered across the front of his forehead. How did the school ever find it reasonable to hire someone like this?
Good help really was hard to wheedle out of government pay these days.
Ulquiorra took his two moments to observe the instructor, and decided in the end that he didn't care in the least about the man who was stumbling through his "welcome back to another school year" speech. It was obvious the bumbling redhead hadn't taught a year in his life, anyways.
Ulquiorra yawned again.
Even if it was the very first day of school, of his third year (which frankly should have been far more exciting than this) he couldn't bring himself to care. Sitting here in his pristine white uniform and with the very best textbooks and the very best material before him should have been a godsend, because not a lot of Gods were considerate enough to provide their subjects with the very best education possible in this rotten world.
His father was a God of sorts, he reckoned. A smart man so capable of twisting the world between his index finger and thumb. He should have been trying to aim for that same position, to be able to manipulate the world to his liking. It was every man's dream to own an empire, and it was why every man sought out the sweet knowledge that could only be uncovered in places like Las Noches.
He supposed he was well on his way there.
Ulquiorra got top grades, excellent recommendations, and a cold demeanor to fit in alongside his remarkable intelligence and reputation. The students and teachers of the school respected him, and few were stupid enough to degrade the Ulquiorra Aizen, son of the renowned Aizen Sousuke, who had graduated from Las Noches Academy with such outstanding grades and was now at the top of the hierarchy of humanity.
Anyone would kill to be him.
He was living the life. Expensive school, expensive white uniform to match expensive white walls, and a guarantee that one day he too would be able to, metaphorically, rule the world. Just like his father.
After all, education was the greatest charmer out there; It was supposed to be one of the most intriguing journeys in the world, a process that turned dull-witted children into suave and beautiful young men and ladies. And there was nothing in the curriculum that he hadn't already learnt on his own time. Hell, even if he didn't pay attention in class he would still ace the exams.
He really was set for life. He knew that just as much as everyone else did.
And just one thing—that one thing—was missing. The one of many things that somewhat would fill up the hole in his heart. An unattainable wisdom that would put his heart at serenity, that would enlighten him to the furthest ends...
… If only he'd gotten a window seat to ease his boredom.
School passed by too slowly.
Finally he was free.
"What do you mean you're bored?" Szayel stared up at him over the frames of his ridiculous hot pink glasses, and Ulquiorra was at last forced to acknowledge his classmate's existence.
Well, if Szayel's here, it's not really "free". More like out of the frying pan and into the fire.
… Pink glasses.
Ulquiorra would've laughed at the sight of the boy with his pink hair and equally pastel-coloured glasses if he hadn't seen Szayel so many times that he'd grown bored of the other boy's appearance in the story of his life.
If Ulquiorra's life was a book, it had to be the most tedious novel out there.
"What's there to be bored about?" demanded Szayel, crossing his legs and looking all the more feminine in his white Las Noches uniform. The outfit looked tailored to fit him, seeing how well it defined his lanky, thin form. Several girls swooned over the rich, high-esteemed students sitting in the corner booth of the ice cream parlor, and Szayel spared a moment to send what he obviously thought was a dashing wink towards them.
Ulquiorra took no notice, instead pulling Szayel's inquiry apart word by word and letter by letter.
"Everything," he droned at last, leaning forward on the table and placing his head in his arms. "Absolutely everything."
Even the ice cream parlor they were in, decorated shamelessly with pink and purple streamers and at the moment musically intonated with the continuously rising and falling gossip of freshman students, was boring. There was simply nothing to do there but eat ice cream and listen to Szayel, and perhaps listen to ice cream and eat Szayel—wait, what?—and Ulquiorra wasn't particularly interested by any of those ideas.
More like utterly horrified.
Szayel looked fairly concerned, if the terrified gape he offered Ulquiorra was anything to go by. "Ulquiorra, you're kidding, right? Are you bored? Are you joking? You have to be! How can you get bored in a place like this?!"
Ulquiorra gazed up from playing with his ice cream to stare at his pink-haired friend with all seriousness. He assessed the frantic boy and detected that aneurysm was very near in Szayel's future. But he had no inclination to enlighten his friend to this, seeing as it would be all the more interesting to see the other's reaction to an unexpected heart problem rather than an expected one.
"I don't like ice cream."
It was partially a lie. It wasn't that he didn't like ice cream-he just didn't like strawberry ice cream. But honesty made things much less fascinating and much more adequate, so he left it behind in lieu of a more interesting pursuit.
"No! Not that! I meant your status quo! Your step on the social ladder!" Szayel clutched at his head and his ridiculous hair. "Your ability to do whatever you want and not get fried out by the authorities because your dad has money! Right?"
"If you want to rob the local university's science lab, Szayel, then go do it yourself. I told you already, I'm not going to help you." Ulquiorra fixed him with an unappreciative glare. "I will not tarnish my family's reputation."
"But, Ulquiorra! Jesus, you're starting to sound more and more like Kuchiki Byakuya every day..."
The sixth best student in the school. Ulquiorra found it slightly condescending to be compared to the long-haired Kuchiki, who found life far less boring than he did, but he didn't complain. Szayel often demonstrated his lack of tact tact, or at very least he appeared to be lacking when faced with the sharpness of Ulquiorra's analytical skills.
As usual, his idiot friend, rambled too much. Ulquiorra wondered how his own brain hadn't sizzled out yet from listening to the broken pink-haired record rewinding and repeating itself over umpteen times. If only he could find the proper needle and stab Szayel the right way with it, maybe broken human player would finally shut up for once.
"It's easy…" He paused, plastic spoon in his mouth. He sucked off the last of the ice cream off of the pollution and swallowed before extracting the danger to the earth from between his lips. "... I got bored."
Szayel bore another look of horror before dismissing the entire thing, likely to pretend that the exchange had never happened. Instead, he turned down to blink into a copy of a well-written, award-winning scientific text about quantum mechanics and high-energy physics.
"Have you read this book yet?" asked Szayel, eyebrows knitting together in thought. "It's good. And definitely not boring."
"I read it." Ulquiorra held up his fingers for count, splaying them wide before the enthusiastic scientist for the other's visual pleasure; he wasn't sure if Szayel could see in what he was sure were bone glasses. Were those just for decoration, or did Szayel really need sight aid?
The question boring, so he opted to not answer it.
"Thrice."
"... You could always watch TV," suggested Szayel, taking a bite of the boring vanilla confection that matched the shade of their overly boring uniforms. "It's how most of my family passes the time."
"My father says it kills your brain." Ulquiorra lifted his head to stare up at Szayel. "Is that why your family never notices the explosions coming from your basement? Have they all gone brain-dead?"
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffed Szayel. "There are no explosions in my lab. I prefer the cleanest work environment possible."
"Pity," Ulquiorra sighed, lowering his head again. "I was certain you were running experiments on humans at some point." Szayel looked baffled at this accusation, but Ulquiorra ignored him and drawled on, fingering the spoon of his strawberry sundae. "You could have somehow helped erase my memory with that scientific gibberish of yours. And then it'd at least be amusing for a week or two to relearn the entire world as it is again.. no, strike that. Three weeks, more or less."
"Is that an invitation?" A look of fascination and childish glee spread across Szayel's face, his lips spreading in a wide grin. "Here you are, offering your express permission your body for my experimentation! Can I? Can I?"
"I'm sorry," Ulquiorra blurted, snapping his head up to sip at his soda. His throat was beginning to feel parched at the mention of becoming Szayel's exclusive, experimental guinea pig. "I think I'll reconsider. I'd rather stay bored to death like this for another decade rather than subject myself to your debauchery."
"... Are you sure?" Szayel pressed on, not taking note of Ulquiorra's stab at his sexual orientation. Clearly he took no offense, or Ulquiorra was right on the spot.
He liked to think it was the latter. Because, regardless of the circumstances, he was always right.
Ulquiorra let out a silent groan, rubbing at his temples; he had a migraine from sitting here and listening to this brilliant moron of a genius for so long. It must have been several hours since they entered the parlor. Why hadn't the sunlight faded into dusk yet? He glanced down and checked his tediously expensive watch.
The round and adequate face declared that three tortuous minutes had gone by.
… Lovely. My mind must be growing so pathetically out of use that I can't even tell time anymore.
"They don't sell cookies here, do they?" asked Ulquiorra, putting down his soft drink and turning his eyes towards the menu behind the counter.
Cookies were good; they weren't as boring among other things, and they kept his energy up. And they tasted heavenly. Yes, cookies were good things.
Cookies were the salvation to mankind.
Szayel blinked. "No. Why, want some? I brought a few to school, but I didn't finish them yet—"
"Not if they're made by you."
Szayel looked rejected at Ulquiorra's immediate decline of his services. Then, as if in curiosity, the pink-haired boy tentatively held up his science book, fearing refusal. "... Want to borrow my book?"
Ulquiorra sighed as he stirred at his half-melted ice cream, then scooped a spoonful of the strawberry treat and shoved it into his mouth. He considered the offer.
If only to ease the boredom.
"Sure. Why not."
"God damn it, Ulquiorra, not again."
Upon hearing his brother's rugged sigh, Ulquiorra tilted his head with little interest, staring calmly at the taller boy. He crossed his arms and stood his ground, demanding: "What?"
Grimmjow tossed his arms up in the air, flailing them wildly and eyes filled with panic so overdone it had probably come out of the oven black and ashy as charcoal. "Not again!"
It was unclear what Grimmjow meant by "not again". Ulquiorra peered at the blue-haired teenager with some fascination, trying to work out the mechanics of the younger boy's mind with whatever enthusiasm he could muster. He had done this many times before, of course, but there was no harm in repeating experiments. As Szayel had eagerly exclaimed many times.
Two seconds later he finally finished turning the cogs of Grimmjow's mind back and forth, examining them until he could clearly map and diagram each ridge of the wheels turning in his brother's head.
All reports came back negative.
There was simply nothing entertaining to play with in Grimmjow's brain. Ulquiorra wrinkled his nose in disappointment and eased back into the hard chair at the kitchen table again, shutting his eyes and searching his own mind for a way to remedy his boredom.
Then he asked, quite simply as to be better understood by what was clearly a creature of lower intelligence: "What do you mean 'not again'?"
Grimmjow's nostrils flared, and the younger boy stomped his foot against the kitchen tiles. He was fifteen, yet acted the part of a two-years-old.
Ulquiorra would find it amusing to torment him if Grimmjow hadn't been the same person he was since he had been that young. It would only drastically emphasize just how boring the world was, and just how very slow it was at changing.
The little-boy-who-had-not-changed-since-two was now yelling: "I am not making you cookies!"
… Oh. Well, that was going to be a problem. That meant that mankind was not going to get its salvation after all.
Ulquiorra sat back and blinked for a moment, absorbing the information as slowly as he could and chewing at the bitter thought. He paused for a second or two, took another to blink incredulously, and saved the last for glaring coldly at Grimmjow. He demanded, with what he considered sufficient coolness in his voice: "What do you mean?"
Grimmjow twiddled his thumbs and bent over his maths homework, expression declaring that there were only so many conjectures as to why one could not bake cookies for his older brother every hour, every day, since the beginning of summer, and, as far as he was concerned, since the beginning of Time.
This left Ulquiorra perplexed. Why his little brother would refuse to make his daily treats was clearly something that was very profound. Grimmjow's ability to make cookies was no doubt a motion set into the grand scheme created by the God of all great things and possibly the only benefit meant to come of Grimmjow's existence.
The source of Ulquiorra's cookies and sole life force was something not meant to be meddled with at all.
"I said," Grimmjow growled, and Ulquiorra cocked his head, "I'm not going to make your goddamned cookies!"
"Language, Grimmjow." The younger one gave a start and an infuriated snarl, flushing as their father made his way briskly into the kitchen, one hand clutching at a briefcase and the other grasping at his cell phone. Aizen, home from work and looking confident and elegant as ever, set the case down and proceeded to make himself comfortable in the third chair, watching the exchange between his children bemusedly. "Now, what's going on here?"
Grimmjow raised an eyebrow as he huffed, returning to the steady process of scribbling down some down-to-earth nonsense onto his maths sheet, and Ulquiorra stood, eyes narrowed in annoyance. "He won't make me cookies, Dad."
"I can't. I'm doing homework," Grimmjow said pointedly, gesturing at the paper in front of him. Aizen snatched the sheet away from the boy, a playful smirk growing on his face and earning a yelp of protest from his second son. Grimmjow grabbed at the paper, and Aizen turned in his chair, away from his younger child, to scrutinize it further.
Ulquiorra liked his father. Aizen was far from boring, with his even more impressive deductive skills and mind-jarring intelligence. It was a pity that the older man was far too busy for constant conversation.
"Are you sure this is your homework?" When Grimmjow gave out a wail of "yeeees, Dad!", Aizen let out an amused scoff. "Where's your work?"
"..." A moment of thoughtful silence from Grimmjow. And then, slowly, as if uneasily certifying the truth in his own words, he said: "I did it in my head."
"Redo it and show your process," said Aizen calmly, slipping the sheet in front of Grimmjow, who groaned in protest. Ulquiorra huffed in irritation at being ignored, and Aizen turned to glance up at him. "What is it, Ulquiorra?"
"Grimmjow won't bake me my cookies."
"How goddamned old are you, anyways?!" barked Grimmjow, which brought another firm cough from his father. The child stewed in his misery before settling down again, picking up his pencil and spinning it between his index and middle finger, a scowl forming on his face.
"Grimmjow won't bake my cookies," Ulquiorra repeated for the sake of tormenting his little brother. In the background, Grimmjow made a strangled sound that was somewhat reminiscent of a dying chicken.
"Do it yourself!"
"You know that I don't know how. And I know that you know that I don't know how."
"Then learn! Emo freak!"
Aizen had just opened his mouth to lecture his son about calling his older brother an "emo freak" when his cell phone gave a sharp trill. The older man sighed in dull anticipation as he flipped the phone open and held it to his ear. "Head of the Hogyoku department, Aizen Sousuke speaking."
"Dad!" The brothers wailed in unison, and their father winced, quickly clasping a hand over the mouthpiece.
"Grimmjow, do what your brother says."
"But, Dad!" shrieked the younger boy in protest.
"Grimmjow, fourteen divided by three is not seven and a half. Check your work again," Aizen added briefly before returning to his phone call. "What the hell are they are they teaching at that school of his?" Ulquiorra thought he heard his father mumbled under his breath as he sidled towards the quietly staircase.
He let out a smirk of triumph and satisfaction as Grimmjow grudgingly stood from his seat and headed over to the pantry, pulling out a bag of flour. He gave his older brother a look that clearly said: Goddamnmit, Ulquiorra, I hate you.
It was to be—tediously—expected of Grimmjow.
It looked like there was no hope for this world after all.
… What on earth to do.
Ulquiorra paced his room and wondered. He wondered why Grimmjow hadn't finished the cookies yet. When he was finished wondering about that, he wondered about the lack of homework to keep him busy. Then he wondered if wondering was at all adequate enough to satisfy his boredom. He quickly finished with that thought though, and he started wondering about adequacy for a moment before he remembered that he hated adequacy.
Although there wasn't much he could do about it now.
He had just started, as a last resort, to wonder about the weather. That was when he noticed the odd shape of a figure lurking outside his window.
He stopped pacing immediately and stared at it in fascination as said figure shifted back and forth once, maybe twice, and when it began to move in wider sweeps he realized the form was in the shape of a human.
What the hell? Did Grimmjow climb onto my balcony? If he's trying to give me a scare, he should know it won't work.
Because the boy had done it so many times before that it simply wasn't interesting anymore. However, the angry reactions Grimmjow gave to his failures at sneak attacks were slightly more amusing than his tactics themselves.
So Ulquiorra strolled briskly over to his bed and sat, staring at the point of entry and waiting for the blue-haired teenager to spring through the unlocked window and scream his presence. Then, he planned to not react in the slightest. Perhaps that would send his little brother into a glass-shattering ragequit and give him something to watch for a while.
It seemed worth a shot, at any rate.
So caught up in his usual expectations was he that he didn't move when the figure pushed the window open and moved silently past the curtains, taking the solid shape of a person—a boy perhaps as old as he was, with bright orange hair and dark brown eyes narrowed in speculation of the room. The boy looked up at the ceiling, then at the dull cream-coloured rug, and snorted in dislike.
Ulquiorra froze; this wasn't what he was expecting. Then he realized: Holy shit. This isn't Grimmjow.
He sat motionless on the bed and stared at the boy, who drew up to his full height with a few mutters of annoyance, giving Ulquiorra time to do a quick analysis. The intruder was about three or four inches taller than him, give or take, and dressed in an out-of-date, black, Japanese-styled shihakusho that Ulquiorra had never seen before. Not even those of the last generations wore robes like that.
His mind was beginning to skip around to uncertain conclusions.
Maybe it was a burglar? But Ulquiorra really couldn't see how any burglar could get away unnoticed with bright orange hair like that. Which explained why Grimmjow had never once shoplifted before in his life, for fear that his bright blue hair would give him away as the culprit.
Ulquiorra sized up the bright-haired stranger. Could he fight the other off, with that height difference? The orange-haired kid didn't seem too badly built, and since the short of the two hadn't had a full assessment of his skills, Ulquiorra might turn out to be the one at a disadvantage. Was it safe to approach?
And why, why, did the other boy not seem to notice that he was sitting there? Some shit burglar he was.
Ulquiorra continued to sit, still gaping at the boy who had come through the window and trying to comprehend.
The orange-haired intruder turned his head, then blinked curiously when he saw Ulquiorra gazing intently at him. Then he drifted over, the swagger in his step all too confident, and fixed his on the shorter boy.
"... Yup. This is the right place," he said in such a confirmative tone that Ulquiorra almost started to wonder if he was here to make a pizza delivery.
Oh. Yes. That's what this is all about, Ulquiorra's mind declared triumphantly. He's merely here to make a pizza delivery!
He reveled shortly in his victory and his well-done deductions, praising himself for reaching such outlandish conclusions that could be reached by none other.
Then he realized that pizza could not be delivered by one who had climbed up to his balcony without said pizza and without a way to get said pizza up to his room. Aizen probably hadn't called for a delivery, anyways, or he'd have told Ulquiorra so to ease what he knew was his son's quickly building boredom.
Was it at all possible this boy was here to deliver his pizza ninja-style?
… Nobody went through such efforts for pizza. No one.
So "this is the right one" was a phrase that didn't sound all too welcome to his ears. Ulquiorra would've flinched or demanded an explanation had his words not been stuck halfway up his throat and his body paralyzed in shock.
This was way too out of the ordinary.
This was not at all adequate.
And it was certainly not boring.
There was a pause in which Ulquiorra wondered whether he should reconsider his wish to the God of all things about his want for a means to alleviate his boredom. Then an uncertain: "... Hello?"
The most casual greeting from a stranger who had scaled his balcony and broke into his room. Although he couldn't really say "break in" because he'd left the window unlocked. But anyways, it was trespassing, and Ulquiorra didn't like his privacy disturbed.
The boy scanned Ulquiorra up and down, inspecting him from head to toe, then waved his arms in front of the brunet's face. "Heeeey. Fall over! Lie down or something… go to sleeep! C'mooon, I don't have all day!"
Ulquiorra sat through two minutes and fourteen seconds of this one-sided dialogue.
When the intruder finally seemed to succumb to the harsh truth that Ulquiorra was not going to react to his urging, he drew a thick, brown leather notebook from his pocket. He flipped it open and, stopping midway through the heavy tome, squinted down at whatever was written there.
Ulquiorra stared at the title of the book: "Monthly Collection: April" and realized that what he had been taught in Las Noches for the past two years did not help him with his predicament in the least.
… No, he did not like the situation he was in at all. And he hadn't been taught to deal with such emergencies! He would have to have his father write to the principle, Baraggan. Now, what would he have Aizen say?
"Hello, this is Aizen Sousuke. I'd like to ask that you teach your students to prepare against orange-haired intruders climbing onto their balconies and trespassing into their homes. Then please instruct them in witty ways to reply when the stranger begins to attempt to strike up stupid dialogue with them. Thank you."
Right. Like the Academy would ever buy that shit.
The stranger was speaking more to himself than to Ulquiorra at the moment: "I don't get it. He's supposed to die—was supposed to die two minutes ago. So what's up with this?" Ulquiorra tried to process the stranger's words and failed miserably. "Did they file this in the wrong book? Or maybe it's the wrong time. Wrong month, probably. Who the hell dies on their first day of school?"
The boy snapped the notebook shut and leaned over until their foreheads almost touched, inspecting Ulquiorra too closely for the shorter's liking. "He doesn't look healthy, anyways… too pale. Probably going to keel over anytime. Should I just wait?"
Ulquiorra chose this time to regain his composure—at last, he griped to himself—and thrust his hands forward at the stranger, hitting the other directly in the face. Score one for Ulquiorra, because hell was he going to let this intruder get out of his room.
He was going to sue the bastard and give him lifetime in—no, forget prison.
This guy was going to go to hell.
"Get the fuckaway from me!" He heard Aizen call his name from downstairs and froze. "Shit," he cursed, looking around for some sort of weapon in case self-defense was needed on his part.
His lamp sat innocently and invitingly on his desk, halfway across his room, and Ulquiorra leapt off the bed and did the ten-foot trek to reach it. He thanked the Lord that the thing was battery-operated, and he lifted it and prepared to strike the orange-headed youth if needed.
The intruder looked immobilized enough, sitting on the floor with his legs splayed and rubbing at his nose indignantly, but Ulquiorra didn't like to take chances. He raised his voice in a very manly shriek: "Dad! Dad, there's a stranger in the house! Dad!"
Yes. He was feeling very manly today, thank you very much.
There was a pounding of footsteps, and Grimmjow burst through the door, still in his blue apron and a metal tray laden with chocolate chip cookies in hand. The poor boy didn't freaking know how to react to a home invasion, for all the horror and action movies he'd watched.
"What is it, nii-san? Are you okay?!" Grimmjow shouted, nearly dropping his cookie tray and turning back and forth in search for said stranger, a frantic look on his face as he tried to pinpoint his target. The younger boy's eyes stopped as they swept over the orange-haired boy, his eyes narrowing dangerously. Then he scowled. "You bastard."
Ulquiorra was about to agree with his brother—after all, said bastard had climbed the wall to break into his room, and not even to deliver pizza—when Grimmjow stomped over and snatched the collar of Ulquiorra's shirt angrily in a fashion that reminded Ulquiorra of romantically rejected women and overdone soap operas.
"What do you think you're doing!? Worrying us like that, damn it! We thought you were in trouble!"
Ulquiorra stammered in protest—a very un-Ulquiorra thing to do, he noted bitterly—before protesting: "B-But that… that… that thing! It's right there! You saw it, didn't you?"
To solidify the evidence to his words, he pointed at the boy, only to hear a scoff and chuckle that certainly was not his brother's.
"It won't help," drawled the apparently invisible orange-haired bastard, floating up into the air, looking very smug when Ulquiorra's eyes widened in horror at having a floating apparition in his bedroom. "They can't see me. I guess that's somewhat relevant to the fact that I'm not really even a part of this human world." The apparition had the nerve to stick his tongue out at Ulquiorra, who in turn could only think to bristle angrily. "So nice try, dumbass."
"What the hell?" Ulquiorra demanded to the boy that no one else could see. Grimmjow murmured something about his older brother finally snapping and how the government desperately needed to lower the amount of homework given to poor, suffering students.
The door squeaked open, and Aizen's calm, light footsteps signified his entrance into the room.
Ulquiorra must have looked hilarious to his brother and father, clutching a desk lamp like a baseball bat and shouting at the ceiling.
He continued to shout at the orange-headed brat, heedless of Grimmjow's demands of what he was on and how much of it. "What are you talking about? Answer me, you orange-headed moron!"
The brat merely phased his head through the ceiling to peer up into the next floor like the physics-defying apparition he was, ignoring Ulquiorra entirely.
"Ulquiorra?" Aizen sounded concerned, a tone of uneasiness in his voice, and Grimmjow reported: "He's seeing things. I think whatever it is on the ceiling. Maybe it's deformed, orange-haired Spiderman."
"Yeah—no, not Spiderman, you moron! A kid! A kid with bright orange hair. It's right there," said Ulquiorra breathlessly, turning to his father and brother and pointing again. "There! Can't you see it?"
Meanwhile, the apparition started to move about the room, laughing bemusedly to himself, and Ulquiorra took a step away from its general direction. "Geez, you really don't get it. They can't see me. I'm invisible. What will it take for me to get through to your head, human?" The apparition cocked its head mockingly and chortled again.
"... I think I'm cracking." And if Ulquiorra wasn't, then his voice definitely was, because the words were hoarse on his lips and his throat dry. He shook his head and turned away from the giggling orange-haired ghost-thing, for lack of a better word, and blinked up at his father. "Dad, am I cracking?"
"Maybe from boredom," Aizen mused, sitting himself down on his son's bed and gazing worriedly at him. "Has anything happened lately to particularly stress you out, Ulquiorra?"
"No."
"Have you been… doing anything detrimental to your health?"
Maybe talking to Szayel. "No."
"I'm just going to leave these here," Grimmjow said loudly, plunking the tray of cookies on Ulquiorra's desk and making his way noisily out of the room, slamming the door shut.
"... No," Ulquiorra echoed again. "Unless hanging around with Szayel Aporro Granz counts," he added in an undertone. Aizen dismissed this.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah. I'm sure, Dad."
Aizen clapped his hands together, looking pleased with the answers and nodding in satisfaction. "You're clean. Carry on. Do your homework, get some rest, a nice shower. Just settle down and sort it out on your own, however you want to."
Ulquiorra blinked disbelievingly at the older man. "How do you know that I'm 'clean'? Why aren't you carting me off to the psychiatrist right now? What kind of dad are you?" he demanded, but he was aware that the harmless banter just for the sake of it. After all, Aizen was highly knowledgeable and hardly ever wrong about anything, much less his sons' mental states.
At least, Ulquiorra hoped so.
"I know the pain of never-ending boredom," smiled Aizen, patting his son's shoulder with a comforting hand. "When I was your age, I had an imaginary friend, too."
Aizen? Having an imaginary friend? The thought was unacceptable. But here his father was, confessing it to him.
So Aizen had been bored to death by Las Noches Academy as well, Ulquiorra guessed. He had half a mind to scream in horror at the fact that Aizen had sent him there knowing that he would most likely die of the adequacy and non-too-adventurous curriculum.
Ulquiorra's eyes moved just slightly to trail the orange-haired enigma around the room. Hell no—he was sure that thing was not imaginary. He had hit it right in the face, just minutes ago, with his own hands. It was solid, and it was real.
"Really?" he asked, not wanting to seem to out of it, and he resisted the urge to shout to the apparition when it began to sniff with far too much interest for his liking at the tray of chocolate chip cookies on his desk. "Uh… what was its, um… name?"
"Gin," Aizen said with a tint of playfulness to his voice. "Clever little bastard, he was. He thought he was funny, and he was convinced to make me see it his way. Wouldn't you know, he once switched out all my boxers for thongs." His father's eyebrows furrowed in unpleasant memory of the hateful day, and Ulquiorra laughed lightly. "Needless to say, I was… well, perfectly tempted to kill him, if he'd not convinced me he were already dead. Inconvenience was his specialty."
Aizen was being too open for his son's comfort. But Ulquiorra was curious."Where did he get thongs, anyways?" he asked as the apparition licked a single unfortunate cookie at the edge of the tray. He'd have to remember not to eat that one.
"No idea. But at the end of the week, I found all of my underwear hidden under my bed. Under my bed the whole time, can you imagine. Gin got a good thrashing for that one," Aizen shivered in memory of what was possibly the most traumatic week of his life, and Ulquiorra wondered what his father's reactions to seeing a nice pair of thongs would be. He'd have to try that out the next time he got bored. "He was laughing at me all the while. Throwing sly little hints at me that he knew I'd never understand."
"Huh… So. How was he?" Ulquiorra realized the implications of his inquiry and revised it hastily: "In terms of boredom-curing."
"He was good," Aizen admitted. "But when there were two of them, it got significantly worse."
"Two of them?" Ulquiorra could see one getting much too out of hand. But two? Was his father truly a closet nutcase? "Was the other one…?"
"Awful," his father groaned. "I hated Kisuke. Hated him." Meanwhile, the apparition was beginning to gnaw subtly at the cookie it had licked; apparently it had taken a liking to the confections. "But I was terribly bored out my mind at that time of my life. Their presence helped me out considerably." Aizen thumped him on the back again. "So I'm sure you'll be able to work out some arrangements with that friend of yours. Perhaps he as well will ease your boredom."
"I'm not sure about that. But if it's short-term, maybe," Ulquiorra said carefully, trying to dissect his father's words. Thank God that Aizen didn't take him for a lunatic and send him to the nearest mental asylum. "How long did, uh, Gin and Urahara stick around?"
His father had gotten up, moving towards the door and opening it to make his exit. The brown-haired man glanced back in curiosity at his son's inquiry before replying coolly: "A good twenty or thirty years," before leaving and shutting the door behind him.
Ulquiorra sat still on his bed, the apparition now inhaling a third cookie, then a fourth and a fifth.
"Well, shit."
Now he'd definitely need more cookies.
"I'm a shinigami."
"A what?"
"A shinigami," said the apparition as it picked up another cookie from the tray and bit a chunk out of it. Ulquiorra reached out and slid the nearly empty tray back towards his end of the bed, hovering over it protectively. Where there were a good forty cookies, there were now a mere twenty left. The orange-haired, self-acclaimed shinigami wrinkled its nose in thought. "God of death, soul reaper, all that pizzazz. Whatever you humans like to call us. A pyschopomp, I guess you could say. Engineer of the river Styx, Conductor of the Train of Death. Something like that."
This was too much to take in after hearing Aizen's traumatic thongs story. But it was making sense: "... tempted to kill him, if he'd not convinced me he were already dead."
That was what his father had said... Ulquiorra was beginning to wonder whether or not Gin and Urahara had been shinigami as well.
"So you're Death itself?" he probed, looking for answers.
"Nah," the apparition said, chewing fondly at its cookie. "There are way more of us. Thousands. I'd be too honored to say that I was the only Death out there. But," it—or he?—said, brightening, "I guess you could call me that, if you wanted. God Death? Shinigami-sama? The Death?"
"No," said Ulquiorra briskly, picking up his own cookie and biting into it indulgently. God, Grimmjow's baking was marvelous. He had to convince the younger boy to make sweets for him more. "It'd boost your ego too much."
"Aw," whined the shinigami, snatching another one of Ulquiorra's cookies before their owner could stop him, "you're not a very nice guy, are you."
As the psychopomp, shinigami, Engineer, Conductor, whatever he called himself chewed at his cookie, Ulquiorra peered over to bed to glance at something he'd noticed quite a long time ago. The object had slipped from the apparition's robes and onto the floor when Ulquiorra had less than subtly punched him in the face.
He got off the bed, startling the death god slightly with the unexpected movement, and picked it up.
"What's this?" he asked, turning the face of the stone, dark grey pentagon engraved with a very Death-like design towards The Death. "Nice design," he remarked, turning it over to observe the sharp-toothed skull engraved into the rock.
"Hey!" The miniature Death protested, lurching forward, all his consideration of the cookies gone. Ulquiorra had to catch the tray before it was shoved off the bed by the shinigami's unnecessary grab for the pendant—if that was what it was. "That's mine! I can't go back to my world without that badge!"
"Calm down," Ulquiorra said—or was about to say before his mind processed the new information. It hit him there and then. "Wait, what?"
The orange-haired Engineer of Styx whined pathetically before leaning back on his haunches on end of the bed. "I can't go back to the Spirit Realm without it. I'll be stuck here until you give it back—well, actually that wouldn't be too bad," amended the soul reaper, waving a cookie in the air. "These things are pretty good. What are they?"
"Cookies," Ulquiorra said, barely comprehending the apparition's words before he sat down on his end of the bed again. "They're called cookies."
"Anyways, they're great," said the shinigami, biting into the one he currently held. "I'd stay here for a long time just to eat these."
"They're not going to be good for you if you eat so many at a time," snapped Ulquiorra, which somehow brought the orange-haired soul reaper back to alertness. "You'll probably contract diabetes and die a miserable death."
The other sat at attention and smacked a fist against his palm in revelation. "Aha! That reminds me of something."
The shinigami dug his leather notebook out of the folds of his robe, flipping through the yellowing pages as Ulquiorra's hand on the string of the badge tightened warily.
"Here," he said, thrusting the book up towards Ulquiorra's face so that the boy found his nose literally shoved into a page. "Read this! It's about you!"
Clearly he thought Ulquiorra would be delighted at being granted a look into a passage of Death's personal diary entries. The brunet stared before extricating his nose from the book and wrapping the strong string of the badge around his wrist, much to the shinigami's displeasure. Then he sat down and eased the small book into his lap, reading the lines etched with sharp, black ink.
Ulquiorra Aizen, Human. Died April 1st at 2340 of asphyxiation.
Well, wasn't that shocking. He, the Ulquiorra Aizen, so extremely bored of school and of his life, was going—or had been about—to die. On the first freaking day of school. Wasn't that nice?
It was the next line that really got him.
Further details of death: Choked on a chocolate chip cookie at 2337. Led to a very slow, excruciating death three minutes later.
Ulquiorra nearly flipped the book in unbearable anger. "You're telling me I nearly died by choking on a cookie?!"
"..." The shinigami contemplated it. Then: "Yeah."
Ulquiorra seethed, then shifted the book on his lap. "Will you be forced to stay in this world if I keep your book but not your badge?"
"No," the shinigami said with moronic sincerity, not understanding Ulquiorra's contemplation on how best to keep a shinigami captured. "Although if I go back without it, my superiors will chew me out. Rukia doesn't like it when I lose my book of Death."
"So... about your badge."
"It's what helps me extract the entirety of the soul out of the body when the person dies." Well, this shinigami was unusually cooperative. Then again, Ulquiorra wasn't about to set him on the way of righteousness. "Usually, they're still connected to their human body by a few threads, and the badge is supposed to help severe the connection and then transfer them over to the Spirit Realm." The apparition knitted his eyebrows in further pondering. "So… I guess... it's maybe supposed to be a ticket from the Spirit Realm into the Human World and vice versa. Either way, everyone's told me that it's what I need to get back and forth."
"You didn't realize this until now," said Ulquiorra flatly.
"Yeah… but… I just need it back. Please?" He stared at Ulquiorra with such a pleading expression that the human was tempted to give in to his sentiments and hand the badge right back to the shinigami.
But Ulquiorra wasn't a very sentimental person anyways, and at the thought of what this could mean, he found a smirk curling his lips all too menacingly. "Nope. No way in hell, Shinigami."
"What?!" demanded The Death, flailing backwards onto Ulquiorra's bed and proceeding to throw a full-out tantrum worthy of a teenage boy who'd been deprived of his Internet.
"But," said Ulquiorra firmly, drawing the other's attention again, "I'll give it back if you're good for a while. Honestly, I just need something to keep me not bored, and you're probably the best solution. For now."
The apparition sat up and nodded, eyes wide with genuine honesty. Ulquiorra went on. "If I get bored of you at some point, I'll return your badge to you and you'll be free to go. However, you are not to cause me trouble like those other friends of yours did for my father. Understood?"
The miniature Death nodded again. Ulquiorra was tempted to pat his head, throw a cookie in the air, and shout: "Fetch!"
Instead, he opted for a more respectable approach. "What's your name? Seeing as we're going to be together for a very long time."
"Ichigo," the other said, extending his hand. "Kurosaki Ichigo, god of death, psychopomp, mini-Death, Engineer of Styx, whatever you want to call me."
"Ulquiorra," he replied, reaching out to shake the mini-Death's hand. It was cold and less solidified than he'd expected; like plunging his hand through cool air that was almost condensed into water, but not quite. "Ulquiorra Aizen. Third-year high school student, fourth best student in my school. Possibly interested in world dominance."
"Nice to meet ya, Ulquiorra." Ichigo curled up on the bed and stretched himself out luxuriously, eyes half-lidded with drowsiness. He was looking very pleased with the deal. "So. What's first on our agenda of easing you out of your boredom, Mr. High and Mighty?"
"We're going to my school."
Ichigo blinked up at him from his comfortable spot. "School? In the human world? That's interesting." The Death yawned widely and didn't elaborate.
"Will my classmates be able to see you?" Ulquiorra was careful to fish answers out of Ichigo. He didn't want any trouble on his hands. Less boredom was not worth the cost of more predicaments to deal with.
"Nope. It's kinda funny. You're the only one who's been able to see me in years. Last one was this cute little guy, this tiny kid who was two, give or take… he had fluffy brown hair and was pretty fun to push around." Ichigo giggled and rolled over on the bed, looking pleased with the recollection. "His name was… S… 'Sou'-something. I don't know. He tried to follow me around for forever. His spiritual awareness must have been really good."
"That's nice," said Ulquiorra, ignoring The Death's flashback, turning the badge between his fingers and not really paying attention.
"I think two of my higher-ups... not sure who... went to stay with him in the end," Ichigo shrugged, eyelids drooping with sleepiness. "Cute little guy… I kind of miss him. Anyways, get some shut-eye, Ulqui—we gotta go to school tomorrow, right?"
"Good point... Hey, Ichigo?"
"Nnh?"
Ulquiorra's smile widened. "Are you any good at haunting classrooms?"
School was just about to get much more interesting...
... Wait. Hold that thought. Hadn't he been about to die that night? Ah, now he remembered.
Ulquiorra stood, picked up the tray of cookies, and tossed the remaining sweets out the window.
Take that, Death!
"Are ya sure this is a good idea?"
"I'm sure."
"Ya sure?"
"I'm very, very sure. It's good for my son; he'll have someone to play around with. Now, why don't you go to the other room and let me sleep? I have to take the children to school tomorrow."
"Nah, that's no fun."
"Please. Just leave me alone for tonight… too many bad memories."
"Sousukeee," whined the death god, rolling onto his stomach and bouncing insistently on Aizen's bed. "I'm bored!"
"Get the hell out and play with your other friend," growled Aizen, burying his head into the sheets. "Please. I'm tired… None of your games tonight, Gin."
"Sousukeeee!"
"No!"
The silver-haired mini-Death groaned in disappointment as he flopped over onto his back and phased through the mattress. He peeked out from under the bed as Kisuke poked his head straight through the closet door and grinned at his fellow Death. "He's not being very fun tonight, is he?"
"Nope," sighed Gin, smoothing his robes down as he floated out from under the bed and headed straight up for the ceiling, moving through the solid material and poking his head up through to Grimmjow's bedroom. "He's tired. Says he has ta take the kids ta school tomorrow. He don't bother askin' me, but I think school's a hassle, it's gonna make all the children bored anyways. Just look at Ulquiorra."
"Don't worry, Ulquiorra's got a decent pet on his hands recently. Now c'mere and help me hide all of Sousuke's boxers, Gin." Kisuke smiled wickedly and slipped back into the closet. Sousuke sacrificed stopping the ordeal in exchange for a few more moments of desperately trying to get sleep. "He'll never know what happened to them."
Gin snickered from his spot in the ceiling and drifted back down to the closet, where he phased through to join Urahara inside. Apparently they were under the impression that Aizen couldn't hear their scheming.
"Will you stop if I let you play with my clothes?" demanded Sousuke, still buried in the sheets and seeking just the smallest bit of solace.
"No!" chorused the two mini-Deaths from his closet.
Clearly they derived some sort of sadistic pleasure from torturing one of the greatest men in the world. He only hoped that his son had ended up with a more serene, cooperative spirit.
But all one of the greatest men in the world wanted to do now was sleep. He could save his questions for Ulquiorra tomorrow.
Sousuke turned over onto his stomach and tried to suffocate himself with his pillow.
Oh, what education does to the young.
A/N: I'm really lazy to write a second chapter to this, but hopefully it was amusing enough for now. ;D Please review if you enjoyed it, and offer criticism! I love criticism. Flames are welcome, but I'll just fling them back to Hell where they belong. Because Hell = fire, get it? Oh ho, I make myself laugh... BWAHAHAHAHA... *sniff*... hah...