Nnoitra feels like he's eaten something bad.
It's a shame, because he's usually in his best mood when he's covered in so much blood he's actually warm with it, even out on the open ocean. But today he clenches and unclenches his long fingers and the blood gets thicker and cooler and tackier and his stomach flips over all sharp and melodramatic like he's never been on a fucking boat before.
They limp away from port, which is arguably worse than limping in. They stopped for supplies, after all, and they sure didn't get all of them before everything went tits up and they had to run.
There's a storm on their heels, too, one Nnoitra can taste all heavy and electrified whenever he draws a new breath. Licks of wind whip up the waves and the deck and rigging creak with the roll of the water beneath them.
It's not a good time to weigh anchor. But for once Starrk has actually made a decision, and nobody – not even Barragan, who sees every event as a new opportunity to hoard power – is willing to contradict him while he wears that grim expression and, you know, actually decides on things.
Lilynette is conspicuous in her absence right now, and Starrk is…
Even Neliel is eyeing him warily, and Neliel usually doesn't have the good sense the gods gave a goldfish.
Nnoitra flexes his fingers again. The blood makes a soft noise unsticking. Blood dries fast and it lifts easily from flat planes of skin – but once it dries in the lines of his palms and around the edges of his nails, it takes forever to wear away.
Grimmjow's still kicking up a loud, hysterical fuss at Ulquiorra on the main deck, spitting and snarling, but not everybody goes to pieces in a crisis. There're plenty of hands to trim the sails and get them moving properly on course. That's lucky, because the wind's not really on their side just yet, either – running downwind will ram them right back into the docks.
The sails have to be trimmed in tightly for this kind of sailing. Nnoitra eyes the rigging for a few seconds. Boots thunder on the deck and the ship rocks and the rope and wood creaks.
"You could help," calls Harribel over the encroaching storm, giving him a judgmental stare over her line.
He abandons any thoughts of helping as soon as she suggests it, and she turns away. The long tails of her hair whip against the wind.
(Immediately, three separate voices rise in response, demanding to be allowed to help her.)
Nnoitra ignores them all in favour of staring aftwards.
The blood cools quickly. Nnoitra's a messy killer. He's pretty much covered in it. The polearm he favours (in much the same way most people 'favour' their eldest sons) has a fantastic grip. It never gets slippery. Idly, he twirls it. The whistle it makes is soothing.
Somebody yelps, which suggests to Nnoitra that somebody got too damn close.
The docks are getting further and further away. He can see them huddled, squat and grey – between the ominous grey of the sky and the slightly bluer grey of the water. It's all very… grey.
"Shit," mutters Nnoitra. His stomach executes another acrobatic twist. He clutches the polearm more tightly.
The marines, ironically, won't follow them onto open water. They all know it - it's why they retreated like this.
Las Noches is not a big ship, which makes it seem even more ludicrous that nobody's following. She's fast, though, and what Szayel can do with a single gun deck over time – and with enough indulgence, over that time, from the rest of them – is the stuff of nightmares.
Nightmares, and, apparently, after-action marine reports. Somebody should tell him. He'll be flattered. Szayel is annoying, though. Generally speaking, as soon as Szayel opens his mouth all Nnoitra hears is the sound of a man begging real earnestly for a beating.
He stares longer.
It's strange to see - even to think of - Starrk without Lilynette. Nnoitra has made his share of tasteless digs about their relationship, but seeing him alone is like seeing him without an arm.
…Starrk isn't the one who had to be dragged out of the melee and back on board, though.
"They've got half our crew!" yowls Grimmjow again, finally dislodging Ulquiorra's grip. Ulquiorra, predictably, doesn't answer – he flexes his fingers like talons where Grimmjow has clawed at them. He stares, blankly, for a second. And then turns back to do actual work.
Ulquiorra is a spooky little shit.
He's also annoying, but in a very different way.
(A lot of people are annoying to Nnoitra.)
'Half our crew' is a lie anyway. Las Noches is crewed by more than thirty pirates, and they've lost, like, four. All that's pissing Grimmjow off is losing Nakeem and Yylfordt at once. Nnoitra'd be pissed, too, if he thought he was going to spend any amount of time alone with Shawlong and Di Roy, but that's what you get for recruiting dumbasses instead of focusing on your own strength.
Nnoitra's only ever had Tesla.
…Look where that got him.
The docks are even smaller. Thunder rumbles distantly. Won't be long now.
Grimmjow's problem is that he thinks it all has to mean something. To Grimmjow everything is another step on the path to greatness, to empire and dominion and – something. Nnoitra does not make a habit of listening too closely to Grimmjow because most of what he says is bullshit. But he is ambitious, so certain he's something special, and that means everything's gotta mean something, or else what's the point?
Of course, Grimmjow's delusions of grandeur blind him to certain obvious facts, ones Nnoitra feels like he was born knowing. There's no greatness, no future, no meaning at all. Pirates are just thugs who happen to be clever enough to flee to the sea and make themselves a moving target. They're not thin on the ground.
One's pretty much like another.
And so Nnoitra knows he can pick up another sweet-faced cabin boy at any disreputable port.
("Midshipman," Neliel corrects him, every single damn time, like Nnoitra literally means 'cabin boy' and isn't just saying it for the humiliating sexual implication of it.
It's like she thinks he doesn't know Tesla was poached from an actual ship of the line with ranks that people give a shit about and all those cute naval trimmings.
The rank is meaningless on Las Noches, but Nnoitra's a practical guy. Tesla was well and truly ship-broken when he picked him out and said: 'That one.'
Tellingly, Tesla never turns a single hair about whatever Nnoitra wants to call him.)
Losing a couple of crewmen isn't the end of the world that Grimmjow evidently thinks it is. It's inconvenient, hell yes. It's it's fucking annoying, and if Nnoitra had the option he'd kick the shit out of the marines and then kick the shit out of Tesla for getting into this mess to begin with, but –
They fled the marines and they left Tesla behind. And Lilynette, Nakeem and Yylfordt.
Grimmjow rages and for a moment Nnoitra watches hin. His fingers twist in his sleeve and his stomach twists into knots.
Then he scoffs and turns away.
"The hell are you sneering at?" Grimmjow snarls, whirling on him. "At least I still have people left!"
This, at last, rouses Nnoitra to some real feeling. It's too close to what he's been thinking. "Just… shut up," he says flatly. It's startling to realise how tired he sounds suddenly.
"Make me," says Grimmjow, smiling in a way that's all teeth.
Nnoitra doesn't actually care to fight Grimmjow much – he knows he'll win, and then he'll have to kill those two remaining weak idiots who trail Grimmjow around, too… There's not much point in killing someone weaker than him. What's that gonna prove?
It's easier though, Nnoitra thinks, narrowing his remaining eye. Certainly Grimmjow'll have an easier time if he can take all his helpless rage out on someone else and not think too hard about how much of a failure he is. That alone almost makes Nnoitra walk away – which would be a first – but…
Nnoitra doesn't need to fight Grimmjow, no. But he can feel some of that helpless rage bubbling up his own throat, burning like bile. Nnoitra smiles anyway. His long fingers clench and unclench on the haft of his polearm. He's already covered in blood, what's a little more?
"You're nothing special," he drawls, spinning the weapon lazily. He widens his stance. Breathes. "But I'll do you a seriously big favour and kill you anyway."
And they say Nnoitra's not a nice guy?
He can see it in his mind's eye already, the way he's gonna splash Grimmjow all across the deck.
He'll make Shawlong and Di Roy clean it up after, rub their noses in it a bit. Nobody will stop him from doing what he wants with them, either, once Grimmjow's dead. They won't last long, he can't stand them and impulse control never was Nnoitra's strength, but since Tesla is–
He's not thinking about that. For now it's killing that's captured his imagination. Just – snap. One moment it'll be all Grimmjow, yelling and screaming and carrying on, all that ambition, all that fierce energy and rage, and the next – nothing. Fresh red meat cooling on the deck. Lucky it's threatening rain, really. Cold water's just the thing for fresh blood.
Nnoitra can feel his stomach starting to settle as his focus narrows. It's a good feeling, warm and familiar. He licks his lips.
Grimmjow moves first, the low rasp of drawing steel and rapid steps slapping on the wood of the deck: one, two, three, like a thundering heartbeat. Nnoitra could track him with his eye closed – which is lucky because he immediately veers toward Nnoitra's blind side, like everyone does.
Nnoitra uses the advantages conferred by his weapon and his reach and meets the strike with his own blade at a distance, throwing the blow off course with a twist. Metal screams over the wail of the wind and the crack of the half-trimmed sails.
Grimmjow withdraws, steps back, recovers.
Somewhere close by he hears Harribel curse and the short direction she gives to Apacci to get her out of the way, but Nnoitra's attention is focused on Grimmjow. He's circling now, like a cat creeping stealthily closer with pricked ears and twitching tail. Nnoitra reads him like a map: the set of his broad shoulders, the tense of his abdominals, the shift of his weight from toe to toe.
He's right there, waiting, when he next lunges, shoving his curved steel blade against Grimmjow's sword, twisting a little at his own wrist – the movement is referred all the way up the pole, and by the time it gets to Grimmjow's sword it's yanked off course again.
Grimmjow gets impatient after that, and the next flurry of blows relies more on speed and strength of arm than any actual strategy, so each one is easily diverted with another steely clang.
"Take this seriously!" Grimmjow bellows, and he puts on a burst of speed, dipping beneath his guard and coming up with a short, vicious slice.
Nnoitra jerks back – fast, four short steps, a scuffle and clatter of boots on the deck. He's painfully aware of the mast and careful not to put any of the standard rigging in his way. He bares his teeth and flips the pole, sweeping the big steel head of it across the space in motion that burns all through his shoulders and arms.
He sees the moment Grimmjow sees the danger: his eyes widen, his mouth twists. His sword rises but it's already too late and the huge heavy blade of Nnoitra's weapon is flying toward him with a soft whistle in the air–
"ENOUGH!" There's the screech of protesting steel and a flutter of green hair. His polearm meets Neliel's sword. The impact sings up Nnoitra's arm.
She comes out of fucking nowhere.
She faces Grimmjow with her hand raised to block a blow from him, but it's empty – in the other hand her sword is drawn to block the downswing of Nnoitra's blade. One-handed she's not quite strong enough to block it properly, but the angle of her sword sends the steel edge screaming to one side. Its sharp tip smacks into the deck and leaves a gouge in the wood next to her ankle.
She doesn't even look at Nnoitra.
He feels his mouth twist.
"Enough," repeats Neliel, angling herself so she can see both of them now. Grimmjow gives her a glowering, mutinous look.
"There's no call to fight like this," she says, much more calmly. "We're all upset about our losses today."
"You didn't lose anything," says Grimmjow, flat and resentful and – surprisingly dangerous. It's a good look on him, that bleakness in his face. Nnoitra likes it for a change.
It helps that he's right for once – it's not as though Neliel has anything to be upset about. The two men she keeps like stupid, yappy dogs came back hale and whole – hard not to, since they spent the whole fight screaming like women, then scurrying and cowering. Maybe that's what's fucking Nnoitra's stomach up: watching grown men act like frightened bilge rats on a sinking ship.
He doesn't know why she keeps them. They're a waste of food and fresh water. But it's just like Neliel to bring her dumb fucking charity cases aboard a pirate ship.
"We all lost crewmates, Grimmjow," she says, with so much earnest sincerity she can't possibly be lying. Predictably, the expression he's wearing wavers. Soft, pathetic bastard. "It's normal to be upset… but there's no reason to fight among ourselves."
"Don't make me laugh," hisses Nnoitra, who is so far from laughing it's turned a full circle and become sort of ironically hilarious. He feels sick all over again. "It's a fight, there's not meant to be a reason for it."
Nnoitra heaves on his polearm, dislodging it from the deck with a grotesque crack. She's right there, sanctimonious and interfering – and why is it that she thinks she has any right to talk here, anyway?
He bares his teeth and takes a swing at her.
Nnoitra barely catches it – there's the thump of a boot on the deck, a flash of light on the edge of her sword, a lock of green hair trailing on the wind. The head of his polearm swishes through nothing at all where he expected flesh and bone, and then there's a hard, loud crack, a moment of blackness and stars in his vision, and Nnoitra's head slams into the mizzenmast. He can feel the roughness of a rope wrapped around the wood scraping on his jaw.
Neliel's breath is hot on his neck. Her fingers are fisted hard in his hair. His eye patch falls askew and he can feel the sting of salt air on the tender scars beneath.
Neliel's sword gleams at his neck. Say what else you want about Neliel – and Nnoitra will, because she's a smug fucking hypocrite – but her sword is always sharp and clean. She takes good care of her tools.
He meets her eyes with his remaining one. He can feel the fine edge of the blade on his skin and he arches, just a little, into its cold touch.
He thinks about what it'd be like to have her lean in, put her weight against the sword, split his skin like the skin of ripe fruit and spill all the flesh and juices down his neck, down his chest, hot and fresh and sweet–
"Go on," Nnoitra says, unsmiling. He knows he's breathing hard. He knows his eye's wide.
There's a flicker of something in her face like for once she's actually contemplating it, but –
"You're off your game," she says, low enough that only he can hear. "And you weren't, an hour ago."
Nnoitra snarls. "Fuck off."
She pulls her sword back – how like Neliel, always pulling her punches, so afraid to put her back into the blow. She's going to regret that one day. Nnoitra will personally make sure of it.
"Like I said," she says, with a damning degree of sympathy. "We're all upset right now."
Her fingers unclench in his hair and withdraw, and Nnoitra finds himself shaking with rage and nausea, with his knees weak and sweat on his brow. She's gone before he can work up to a proper howling rage and, perhaps wisely, she takes Grimmjow with her.
"I'm gonna kill her," he hisses, staring at nothing. His hand's tight on his polearm and his knuckles have gone white.
"Can you, though?" drawls a voice from somebody on the other side of the mast. "She's quick."
Nnoitra turns his head and catches a flash of pink. It's Szayel leaning there, casual and unconcerned with his arms crossed, like this wasn't the site of a vicious brawl thirty seconds ago.
"I'll figure something out," Nnoitra promises.
They have a meeting. It's stupid, but it's the least stupid way of all the other stupid ways to make decisions.
They meet in what, in another life, might have been the captain's cabin – on Las Noches it's sort of hilarious to think that the captain might need to be in an actual dedicated room to sleep. The space below the quaterdeck on Las Noches is used for stupid damn meetings instead, with eleven of them all crammed in there in the swaying light from a lantern on a hook.
Meetings on the ship do serve a purpose. Las Noches isn't one ship with one leader and a consistently clear command structure, exactly – it's the cooperative effort, for a certain value of 'cooperation', of eleven separate lawless mongrels who happen to share territory on one big-ass boat. Starrk is, nominally, in charge for two reasons: firstly, when he's riled he is the scariest man on the ship; secondly, he is way too apathetic to abuse this power.
Starrk likes meetings a lot more than Nnoitra does. He likes them, Nnoitra suspects, mostly as an alternative to doing any actual work. If he's lucky, someone else will make all the decisions for him.
This one is …different.
Starrk's already made a decision, for one. That's never happened before.
"Going after them would be suicide," says Barragan. He's old and crusty, with lined skin that sags and drips with wrinkles and hair the off-white of newly trampled snow. And, having lost nobody of his own, he predictably wants nothing to do with the major risk Starrk's plan represents.
If you can really call "ambush the marine transport, somehow rescue prisoners," a plan.
"I'd prefer not to leave any of them to marine justice," says Neliel, whose brows are knit together. Nnoitra can't repress his scoff. Justice. Yeah, that's the sort of shit Nel believes in. She ignores him, as is her way. "If you're going, I'll come."
"No." And that's Harribel, who continues under the delusion that anybody wants her opinion. "There are others whose welfare depends upon me. I won't risk them."
"No," says Ulquiorra. He doesn't elaborate.
"Coward!" snaps Grimmjow, into the awkward hanging silence.
Ulquiorra's eyes shift from Grimmjow to Starrk and back. "No," he repeats. He has a dead eyed stare a fish would envy.
Starrk tips his head, acknowledging that 'no' is a complete sentence, and it does answer his question.
Grimmjow's a yes, obviously – and just as obviously, Zommari is a resounding no. Yammy's a yes, Aaroniero's a no – predictable, since one likes to fuck shit up and the other's an absolute coward.
That's a no overall, then, Nnoitra thinks, tapping his fingers on the haft of his polearm. It's him and Szayel, and everybody knows Szayel hates conflict… in as much as risking his own interest is concerned, anyway.
"What do you think?" Szayel asks, even though he hasn't given his own answer either.
"They're nobody special," Nnoitra says, feeling the words tug at his mouth. He can feel Grimmjow coil with tension and rage and he tightens his grip on the weapon. Even as he says it, he wonders if it's true. "Just followers. They're replaceable." Everyone is, in the end.
"Mmm," says Szayel, eyeing Nnoitra speculatively from behind his lenses. They reflect the light inside the cabin with an eerie glow. "And yet you've only ever had one. Well," he rolls his eyes dramatically, uncrossing his arms and clasping them behind his back instead. "Even if it's only an object… even animal will get attached to something familiar."
That's… true. Maybe it's natural to feel this …unsettled without Tesla. He's just used to him, is all.
Nnoitra frowns, feeling the pull at the scars over his empty eye socket.
It doesn't matter anyway.
Nnoitra still feels queasy. He knows that finding someone worth killing will erase all the complicated mess in his head. And if he does somehow get Tesla back – a bonus. Probably. He thinks.
He isn't enjoying …whatever this shit is. Is this a feeling? It might be a feeling. He rubs his mouth. It's disgusting.
At least if they do go after the marines he'll get to crack some fucking heads.
"Yeah, I'll do it," he decides. From the corner of his eye he sees Neliel twitch – presumably him voting the same way pisses her off. That's an extra bonus. Anything that upsets her is okay by him.
"Perfect," says Szayel, in a voice purring with pleasure, like he's just won something that nobody sane would have let him look upon, let alone touch. "That's a yes from me, too."
… and Nnoitra remembers belatedly that one of those prisoners is Szayel's older brother.
Huh. Who'd have thought?
Barragan makes the singlemost unimpressed noise a human throat is capable of.
The vote's been won, though. Nnoitra finds himself looking forward to it.
It's not immediate, of course. If they could afford an all out assault on a marine base they'd have taken the fight to them to begin with. No, this one, they have to plan.
Las Noches waits in the water, hidden behind a tall spike of land on the coast. It's one of those quiet, little-known coves beloved by smugglers – probably the ones who smuggle rum and sugar to the marines, if Nnoitra thinks about it. He's not dumb enough to think that anybody might be morally unassailable, but least of all officers of the crown.
They'll have to load their captives onto a ship at some point – they aren't morally unassailable but they are very attached to their procedures, and that means taking infamous captured pirates back to the mainland to be hanged.
The wait lasts two days. Starrk dozes, uncharacteristically restless, with one eye open. Grimmjow yells and paces and scares Di Roy half to death. Even Shawlong watches him warily.
Szayel is… excited. The opportunity for field testing makes him crazier than usual and he's wild and glassy-eyed and sharp around the edges. Everybody avoids him when they can.
Nnoitra feels like the eye of a big, big storm.
He's unsettled and discontented, but he's still. He sets himself on Las Noches' bowsprit, one leg dangling, balanced and… it's okay. He has nowhere else to be yet. So he stays there.
Usually, when Nnoitra gets like this, Tesla does something stupid and he has to stop and kick his ass. He doesn't get the chance to settle.
Now, though… Now his skin dries out in the salt and icy wind, so his lips crack and his joints creak, but his remaining eye is fixed and he can't find the energy to move. Not until there's a fight to move him.
Time passes. They wait two days in which Starrk gets weirder and weirder and Nnoitra loses six or ten hours in there somewhere, the marines do put forward a ship. They've waited that long not just to wait out the storm but also to be sure Las Noches is gone. Now their ship inches cautiously into the ocean.
"Their prisoners are aboard," says Ulquiorra to Starrk, but without any effort at keeping his voice down. It carries on the breeze.
There's no inflection in his voice and nobody asks him how he knows. There's never a good answer to why Ulquiorra knows stuff, but he always does.
"We can intercept in," a pause, while he tilts his head toward the wind, "an hour. Maybe more. Not less."
Nnoitra tilts his head, feeling his stiff hair spill across his face with the movement. The salt has dried in it.
Slowly, and with a number of oddly pleasant cracking noises, Nnoitra unfolds all his stiff long limbs, curls his fingers around the haft of his polearm and climbs down from the bowsprit. Finally.
His boots thump on the deck.
"Wait until they're committed, then weigh anchor," Starrk is saying, rubbing one hand across his face.
Order given – not exactly his natural state, that – Starrk heaves a sigh and turns away again, heading for the cabin.
He's lost his gloves somewhere in the intervening days. There's a tattoo on his hand that Nnoitra hasn't seen before. It's hard to think of Starrk caring enough about anything to get it put on his skin, but then – Lilynette is gone and Starrk is not at all himself. It's like part of him's been excised along with her, and all that's left behind is empty holes with sharp edges.
Nnoitra likes him better. He almost makes sense, like this. Nnoitra knows he's not the only one whose restless energy is starting to build, to shift and focus.
Anticipation unfurls in Nnoitra's guts and for the first time in days he's neither lethargic nor sick.
Starrk stops mid step and pauses. There's a beat of silence and even the waves are quiet for a second. His voice is a slow, tired one, but it carries: "Tell Szayel to ready the guns." There's a pause, another sigh: "And hoist the colours."
Nnoitra smiles. For once in their lives, everyone obeys.
And then they go to fuck up some marines.
Boarding hostile ships is work. Nnoitra doesn't mind it. As per their plan, Grimmjow is a fine distraction for a good half of the crew. He's screaming and shouting and dragging Shawlong and Di Roy with him, making a huge mess at one end of the deck.
But marine ships are overpopulated. They all come boiling out of the woodwork like roaches begging for a big boot to stomp on them, all confused by the screaming and the smoke and the reek of some vile gas so new Szayel hasn't even named it yet. There's still plenty of wet work leftover for Nnoitra. It's cathartic. He feels better for it.
He could do without the company.
"I admit this will work fine," Neliel says, covering her mouth with her collar, "but did it have to be so…"
"So what?" Szayel prompts her mildly. He sounds ready to take on her criticism, but in Nnoitra's experience Szayel is never actually open to constructive criticism. He just wants more details so he knows exactly what to slip into a person's dinner.
"So …on fire," she says, and coughs.
"Yes," Szayel says. quite heartlessly. "It's perfect."
Nnoitra beheads a marine with a casual swing and pretends he can't hear them. After a few moments, the roar of his own blood and the soothing rhythm of practiced brutality make it a reality. He can barely even hear the screaming, so Szayel whining about his own misunderstood perfection doesn't really rate.
He runs out of bodies before he runs out of energy, which is actually a very common tragedy in Nnoitra's life.
Any captives, they expect, are probably in the hold where the cargo should go. When they descend below deck they can hear somebody whimpering behind the sturdy door. It is, predictably, locked.
"Let me–" Neliel pulls some delicate silvery instruments from her sleeve and crouches before the door, peering at the lock on it. "Alright, we can do this in just a minute or two. Szayel, do you have us covered?"
She says it like Nnoitra couldn't take out this whole ship singlehandedly. He glares down at her back.
"Of course," says Szayel, and gives Nnoitra one of those long, speculative looks with his golden eyes gleaming in the dimness.
Nnoitra twitches.
"Get out of the way," he, and he ignores it when Neliel tries to protest.
"Nnoitra–"
He's given her exactly as much warning as she needs.
He looks the door over, takes two steps and kicks it down in a shower of splintered wood and steel banding. Then he storms through.
"You didn't have to break it down," says Neliel, but it's distant. He's not paying any attention.
Behind the door the captives being shipped are all chained together in a line. It is dark but the rustle of bodies makes it seem like there are scores of them. The hold smells like piss and, more predictably, like vomit. It's hard not to get seasick if you're stuck below the whole time, he guesses.
Nnoitra sees Yylfordt first, because his long golden hair stands out like a beacon, even dirty and tangled, and he's clinging to Lilynette like she's some kind of childlike, unhappy talisman. He ignores them both, following the heavy links of chain with his eye –
"Nnoitra. Sir." The voice is hoarse, but recognisable.
And – Tesla is there.
Nnoitra's grip on his weapon tightens until he hears something creak. It might be him.
He looks – he's mostly fine, but he looks bad, Nnoitra decides. The injuries are superficial. The dirt will wash off, and so will the blood from his nose that's dried on his mouth and jaw. The whimpering isn't Tesla – isn't any of their crew, luckily for them. It's some sobbing wreck in the far corner, which is also where most of the piss-and-vomit miasma is concentrated.
"Ah, you found him," says Szayel, materialising at Nnoitra's side. He produces what looks like a pair of giant scissors with a pressure gauge attached to them.
Nnoitra blinks. He's moved forward somehow, heedless of the mess of bodies and discarded rope and broken pieces of old crates. His involuntary forward momentum has brought him within grabbing distance of Lilynette and Yylfordt.
He can hear Neliel pick her way across the room to Nakeem, moving gracefully through the bodies like a heron stalking its prey.
"Took you long enough," hisses Lilynette, and Nnoitra glances down at her at last.
He wonders if it would hurt her feelings to know how close the vote was.
"We're late because we were gonna leave you," he drawls down at her.
"Don't be stupid." Lilynette rolls her eyes. She seems thoroughly uncowed.
She really is a kid, Nnoitra thinks, annoyed. Who else is this certain?
Yylfordt seems more ambivalent. He looks up at Nnoitra from where he's forced kneeling between two other chained bodies, and he does not look much as though he views Nnoitra as a choice saviour. Instead his expression is wary. Nnoitra suspects that means he's a lot smarter.
"…Brother," he says in a voice gone husky, shifting his gaze from Nnoitra to Szayel.
Nnoitra ignores them, disregarding Lilynette's annoyed yelling when he leaves without freeing her. He strides forward towards his own – toward Tesla.
"This is a surprise," Yylfordt murmurs somewhere behind.
Nnoitra kicks a prisoner in the thigh, hard, and forces him to move out of the way with a yelp and a garbled curse – forces the whole line of them to move, really. His boots make a hollow clatter as he walks.
"Grimmjow is making a distraction," he hears Szayel say with a sniff. Whatever the bizarre scissor thing he's brought is actually called, its limbs give a very distinctive pneumatic hiss when he uses it. Distantly Nnoitra registers this too, but he's looking at Tesla.
His eye patch is gone, exposing that his eye is actually missing, just like Nnoitra's. He is annoyed to see it. What the hell is the point of taking a man's eye patch? What the fuck can you hide under an eye patch?
Nnoitra doesn't know if they have a spare. His mouth twists. He stops in front of him. He looms.
"Nnoitra," says Tesla, looking straight up at him from his knees. It's a good look on Tesla, actually.
"Tesla," says Nnoitra, in a voice that he hardly knows. He sounds rough. He sounds angry, in a way he… hasn't heard before.
There's a steely shhhhnk from behind, and the thump of metal upon the wooden floor. Just like that, Yylfordt is wearing a matching set of ugly bracelets rather than proper cuffs.
"Cut mine," says one of the other captives. "Hey, cut mine–"
Everybody ignores him.
"Here," says Szayel, even as Nnoitra hears Nakeem's irritating voice rising louder somewhere back there – and Neliel's, too, in her sweet, earnest counterpoint.
Tesla rocks to his feet as soon as he's free of the chains, rolling his ankle in circles like his foot's gone to sleep. "Thank y–"
Nnoitra grabs him by the hair and by the collar of his undershirt, fists his hands – the hair slips, too short – and drags him in. He hauls him close and, rather angrily, tucks his head over Tesla's and mashes his face against the top of Tesla's head.
He breathes. His hair smells like… warm, dull oil, sweat, a little rusty with blood now. It drowns out the reek of the hold, and it's also familiar and weirdly soothing. Nnoitra puts his mouth against it and inhales.
"You are an idiot," he says, in a voice harsh enough that Nakeem flinches away from him. He can see him from the corner of his eye now, slinking away to hover behind Neliel. Running scared of his own fucking rescue, Grimmjow must be so proud.
Tesla doesn't even blink. "Aa," he agrees peacefully. He goes pliant and relaxed under Nnoitra's hands, and he doesn't move to push Nnoitra away.
Nnoitra shoves him. "Go."
He goes, following behind Szayel as he sweeps Grimmjow's dumb followers out. Lilynette gives the hold one last expressive scowl.
"Hey," says one of the other captives. "Are you gonna–"
Nnoitra kicks him without even looking down. He might have the wrong captive. Who knows. "Shut up."
Neliel is fooling with the manacles she took from Nakeem, fascinated and distracted, heedless of how it tugs on the men chained to the other ends.
Nnoitra eyes her. She's not paying the slightest bit of attention, and picking the locks didn't break the shackles like cutting them did. He's almost certain he can just–
"Hey!"
– snap one around her wrist.
Neliel will need both hands and a specific angle to pick the lock, unless she does it with her teeth.
"Nnoitra," she says, sounding exasperated. It's like she doesn't believe he'll really leave her there.
"Are you coming?" Szayel sticks his head in through the door.
His eyes flick over the scene. There's a pause and then they settle on Nnoitra.
"…We need to go," he says, as though he hasn't even seen Neliel there.
"Yeah," says Nnoitra.
He turns and heads for the door.
Neliel tries to follow. He can tell that much because she yanks on the chain and sends one of the other prisoners sprawling with a loud clatter and several a vicious curses. But the chain ends where it's bolted to the side of the hold, so–
He leaves her there in the dark, yelling after him in a voice of steadily increasing panic.
Nnoitra wonders how long she'll yell before admitting to herself that she's really been left behind. The thought warms him.
When they emerge into the sun – which lights, gently, the reeking smoke and glows in their hair like a halo of ash – Nnoitra wraps his free hand around Tesla's arm, for once not worrying too much about the implications. He wants to, and Tesla belongs to him and won't stop him – won't even try. If anything, he leans in.
They collect Grimmjow and leave for the relative safety of Las Noches, and the ship smoulders behind them.
Obviously, they're missing one.
"Neliel," says Starrk, brows furrowed. He seems a lot more like himself with Lilynette right there.
"Was she even on the ship?" Nnoitra wonders aloud.
Starrk blinks. "She should…"
"She went with you!" Yells one of her hangers on – Nnoitra knows their names, but he never remembers which one belongs to which and honestly that's sort of a point of pride by now.
"Did she?" Nnoitra asks, smiling. "Mm. Tesla, did you see anything?"
"No," says Tesla, without even so much as a pause.
"Of course he'd say that!"
"She was there," Lilynette says, with more bullheadedness than self preservation. "I didn't see where she went, though."
Starrk heaves a sigh, like it's all too much to deal with, but now that she's said it he persists. "Did you see her?"
"I was on the other side of the ship," Grimmjow shrugs, glancing aftwards toward the smoking marine ship. Yylfordt is standing there with his mouth in a mean defensive smile, but Nnoitra can see Nakeem edge closer to Grimmjow's shadow. Idiots.
He ignores his own death grip on Tesla's arm in this assessment. He just wants to know he's not going anywhere, now that Nnoitra has put a truly stupid amount of work into getting him back.
Starrk's attention drifts from Grimmjow to Szayel, whose eyes flick from Grimmjow to Starrk to Neliel's pair of idiots to Nnoitra and back.
"Didn't see a thing," he says blithely, pushing his spectacles back up to settle properly upon his nose. "Are you sure she boarded?"
"Very sure," drawls Starrk. But he looks at the burning wreckage as it gets smaller and smaller, drifting away.
Finally he decides, as everybody expected he would, on the path of least resistance and greatest number of naps.
"Let's get out of here before reinforcements arrive. Lilynette," he adds, and she trails after him with her pale little fingers stuck in his coat, strangely obedient and oddly silent.
Behind them, the marine ship is no longer smouldering – now it burns, red and orange, and belches huge unnatural plumes of smoke into to darkening sky.
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