Grimmjow sat idly on his bed, scanning for the thousandth time over every piece of information he'd gathered on Ulquiorra and his friends. There had to be something in there, some key that would let him in to Ulquiorra's life. He'd actually written a list down, but now he had it memorized. It went as such:

Ulquiorra

Chad

Ishida

Ichigo

Wears a lot of black

Shops at Hot Topic

Maybe likes tea

Mexican

Speaks Spanish

Ulquiorra stays with him a lot

Drinks a lot of coffee

Orphan

Goes back to Mexico once a year for his abuelo's deathaversary

President of the handicrafts club

Takes archery lessons

Wears glasses

Dad is a surgeon

Dad is a doctor

Maybe bleaches his hair

Annoys Ulquiorra a lot

Takes Krav Maga

Grimmjow hated that, out of the four people on the list, the one he knew the least about was Ulquiorra. He must have been done with school, because he didn't go to one. Grimmjow had spent so long camping out, trying to learn about what Ulquiorra does, but he was always inside and rarely ever came out. It was clear to Grimmjow that Ulquiorra had been picked on as a kit, and that explained why he was normally alone. He was more comfortable that way.

Then Grimmjow, desperate (yes, he knew he was desperate) to learn something about his mate's life, started looking into his friends. The one he looked at most was Chad, since Ulquiorra seemed to spend most of the time with him. Chad was pretty quiet, so Grimmjow guessed that Ulquiorra was too or they wouldn't get along so well. Honestly, Chad seemed like a good person, one who would risk his own health for his friends. Grimmjow was glad that someone like that was there for his Ulquiorra.

Ishida and Ichigo were less interesting, and yet still somehow Grimmjow knew more about them than about his mate. Because Ulquiorra was his mate, he knew it; he could feel it in the way the air got lighter when Ulquiorra was around, in the way that his normally balled fists relaxed just at the sight of hat sweet face. No matter what his father said, Grimmjow would never give up on Ulquiorra, nev-

He jumped, immediately going rigid as if preparing for a fight as his bedroom door burst open. It was his father, and Grimmjow could tell from the frantic look in his eyes that this had nothing to do with any anger left simmering from their fight a few days ago. "Dad?" he asked, feeling the sinking in his gut that told him how very, very wrong something was. His father, despite his temper, always knocked first.

"Grimmjow. Grimmjow, are you alright?" his father asked, striding forward and clasping Grimmjow's face in both hands, making him look at him as if he needed reaffirmation that his son was still there.

"I'm fine, Dad," Grimmjow answered, grabbing one of his father's large, warm, calloused hands and looking at him. "What is it? What happened?" He saw his father's tan lips purse, trouble overcoming the worry in his face. That was never, never a good sign. Grimmjow's dad was a big guy, one with a lot of brute strength, one who was rarely ever troubled by anything. Thoughts of Ulquiorra were momentarily pushed away. Grimmjow's father let his hands drop, and immediately Grimmjow missed the touch; how long had it been since he and his dad had gotten the chance to just be together? Between work, hunters, and Ulquiorra, far too long.

"Son," his father said, shoulders slumping as he carded his hands through his short, prickly hair, "son, the hunters infiltrated the manor." Grimmjow shot up.

"What? Where are they?" he asked frantically, feeling his feet move into a position from which he could take on the world. His father gently tried to push him back down.

"Gone," he said. "We've searched everywhere, but even the weredogs can't catch any sort of a scent. Wherever they were, however they got in, they're not here now."

"Well- is everyone okay?" Grimmjow asked, his mind turning to the multitudes of weres who lived in this massive house with them. His father's face fell, and he rubbed his corded neck without looking at Grimmjow. Grimmjow could sense that there was reluctance in his stance. "What?" Grimmjow said, immediately on edge. "What is it?"

"It's- it's Luppi," his dad admitted. Grimmjow felt both nervous for the news and, at the same time, relieved; he hadn't known Luppi very well at all, except that he was hella annoying.

"The wereoctopus?" he asked. "What happened to him? How bad is it?" Grimmjow's father's mouth twitched down heavily at the edges, as if something weighty was sitting in the creases of his frown.

"They killed him, son," he said. Grimmjow's eyes widened; that was a hard hit. Sur, he'd threatened to kill Luppi once or twice when the turd had pissed him off, but the hunters had actually done it- and had managed to get into the manor to do so. And then gotten out without a trace, baffling even Starrk, who was the lead weredog on the tracking team. "His body was found just a half-hour ago. It was already cold- he'd been dead for hours."

"Well-" Grimmjow started, mind whirring to find some way to deny it, "well, are we sure that it was hunters? He could have just done something stupid and wound up dead." His father shook his head.

"No good," he said. "He was killed with a hunter's bullet." Grimmjow felt the only hope he had get crushed. Hunter's bullets were designed specifically to put a hole in a were, their dynamics making them pointed like the tips of a sword and able to fly faster and gain more velocity so they could penetrate a were's thicker, tougher stuff. Hunters had been specially making them for generations, in secret forges that no were could ever find. There was no way Luppi could have gotten a hold of one.

"But…" Grimmjow stuttered, "but, where was his body found? Was it outside?"

"No, son," his dad stated. "He was found in his room."

"In the center right wing?" Grimmjow asked. Where had all the air gone all of a sudden? "How did they get that far into the building?" Dad sighed.

"I-… I don't know, Grimmjow," he admitted (his father, admitting something like that, in his room, one fist clenched- how much worse could this get?) as he rubbed his neck again. "Not a single person heard, smelled, or saw anything at all."

"How do you miss a human walking through the halls?" Grimmjow asked, the familiar feeling of his roiling emotions getting thrown into the fire to fuel a more regular feeling for him; anger. "How do you not hear a gunshot?"

"Calm down, Grimmjow," his father warned.

"Calm down?" Grimmjow said. "Calm down? A hunter just waltzed right into my house and killed one of my people! Hell no, I'm not gonna calm down!" Grimmjow's father, in a curveball emotional throw, smiled a little, looking kind of proud, and even though Grimmjow didn't know why it still felt good to make his father feel proud. That didn't quite quash his anger, of course.

"Don't worry about it for now, son," his dad said, setting a heavy hand on Grimmjow's shoulder. "They're gone now, and we're upping security in here. It's almost nighttime, why don't you take Cirucci, Nnoitra and Neliel and go hunting?"

"Aw, dad, do I have to take Nnoitra?" Grimmjow asked.

"No, you don't," dad smiled fondly, chuckling a little. "Just make sure you take somebody else. How about Cuulhorne?"

"The gay guy?" Grimmjow scoffed. The last time he'd gone somewhere with Charlotte Cuulhorne he ended up listening to that weirdo mutter on about beauty and his 'perfect heart.' Oh, and roses. Don't forget about the roses; their nectar is the purest and makes the smoothest honey… or something. Grimmjow caught his dad's look. "Eh, o-okay, good idea. I'll take him." His father smiled a little again.

"Alright then, have fun," he said. "I'll let you go find them. Be careful."

"Will do, Dad," Grimmjow said, rolling his eyes as his father headed out his large wooden door. "See ya when I get back."

"You bet," his father said. "Oh, and Grimmjow- you called them your people." With those words in the open and a big smile on his face, he left Grimmjow wide-eyed in his room. Out in the hall, he grinned to himself. It looked like his baby boy was becoming a reliable man.

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Grimmjow walked out into the cooler night air, hands in the pockets of his jeans. The green-haired Neliel was the first to look up from her sitting place on a stump, and she motioned to the other two weres that their leader was coming. Grimmjow sauntered over to them easily as Cirucci, an Italian chick with purple ponytails and a weird purple tearmark under one eye, stood up and put her hands on her hips. Grimmjow didn't think the clown-like painted tear looked as classy as Ulquiorra's tattoos.

"There you are!" she said indignantly, her one leg lax as she leaned on the other. "We've been waiting for you!" Grimmjow cocked a brow and curled his lip up just a little in a wry, canine-showing smile as if to say, 'Oh, really? I hadn't known.'

"Yeah, well, I'm here now," he said, stopping in front of them. "Are you ready to- oi, Cuulhorne! What's wrong with you?" Cuulhorne was sitting a yard away or so, his back turned on the group so that all anyone could see was his way-too-long hair. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, and he was shaking. Then he suddenly shot up and spun around, screaming hysterically.

"I apologize, Grimmjow-sama!" he screeched, "but I cannot- I cannot- look at… look at… that!" He pointed backward to Cirucci, whose eyes widened indignantly. She glared.

"What was that?" she yelled, grabbing Cuulhorne by the collar and shaking him. He screwed his eyes shut.

"Ah! Ah! No, I mustn't stain my beautiful eyes with such horrible color-clash!" he cried. "Purple with any orange but pastel is so ugly!"

"Whaaat?" Cirucci demanded.

"That shirt!" Cuulhorne said. "It's burnt sienna."

"What of it?" Cirucci said, shaking him so hard that his neck almost audibly snapped back and forth. Grimmjow glanced at Neliel, but she just stood watching in her queer, semi-emotionless way. She wasn't going to step in.

"Oi," Grimmjow said, taking initiative.

"And the v-neck!" Cuulhorne cried. "Oh, the v-neck! A square cut neck would flatter your chest so much more!"

"Oi!" Grimmjow said again.

"Why're you thinking about what flatters my chest?" Cirucci growled angrily.

"Oi!" Grimmjow shouted, taking a step forward toward the dueling two.

"Of course I think about it!" Cuulhorne shouted. "You so often wear such ugly things that I can't help but think about it!"

"Why you little bastard! Say that one more time, I da-" Grimmjow took a deep breath a stretched his jaw to its farthest, his lips tight over his gums and his white, white teeth glistening in the almost full moon as he yowled. Everyone jumped, the sound of a top-notch predator's battle cry sending ice through their veins. It was a feeling that Grimmjow had only felt a sparse few times, but one that he didn't hesitate to press on others, and it always worked. The two stopped fighting, and as his noise dwindled he allowed his mouth to shut, purposefully letting his teeth to clack together menacingly. There was silence as he looked around and them. A part of him reveled in the fear in his eyes; the only other hunter in the group was Cirucci, and she was far from being the top of the food chain.

Grimmjow shoved his hands back in his pockets, 'tch'ing. "Jeez, I hate when people don't listen to me," he grumbled, stepping past them to the side and into the dense forest. "Well," he called, "now you know what my distress signal is. I don't care what my father told you, but stay off my tail. I don't hunt in packs. Let's go." He could feel that the group wasn't particularly pleased with the way he bossed them around, but there was nothing they or anyone else could do about it. He would be their boss someday anyway.

He kicked off his tennis shoes, leaving them haphazardly strewn by a tree trunk as he raked his nails down the bark to mark it. He immediately felt a sort of homing device lock onto that one tree out of that whole forest, a nifty little built-in tool that he and every other were was born with that allowed them to always make their way back to any marked sight. He pulled his navy blue t-shirt over his head, lumping it with his shoes on the grassy ground. Those two items were the only items Grimmjow had to remove, the only two that wouldn't change when he did, and now came the best part. He grinned wildly.

He leapt into the air, his muscular form morphing as muscles detached from one another to connect to different ones, his bones becoming like clay, and some unseen ancient hand molding them. His spine, which always felt incomplete in his human form, blossomed and stretched out behind him into a prehensile tail as his skin rippled and sprouted sleep black fur that held a tint of the blue that was his natural. His teeth lengthened in his mouth, claws forming inside pouches of skin. He landed on his front two paws.

He stretched out his lean panther form, opening his mouth widely and allowing his rough tongue to curl as he yawned reflexively. He stood straight up and shook out his back legs one at a time as he sniffed around for traces of prey. The scent of a small group of deer still lingered on the budding leaves, and Grimmjow's mouth watered. They weren't too far off from where he was; he could almost see them through the thick trees, their light brown hides broken speckles between the trunks. There were three, maybe four of them. His blue eyes dilated.

There was a fluttering of wings, and Grimmjow looked up to see a peregrine falcon with grey-purple wings perching on one of the many high branches. Grimmjow rumbled a growl her way, a warning: I told you to stay away. Cirucci didn't move, just puffing out the speckled white feathers on her chest in a display of defiance. Grimmjow bared his teeth, his ears pulling back and lying flat against his skull- all signs to Cirucci, and it was the only warning he would give her.

She remained on the branch, looking a little bit like she thought that Grimmjow couldn't reach her; then again, it was hard to tell on a falcon's face. But, whether she believed herself invulnerable up that high or not, Grimmjow had no intention to let her think that. He crouched for a split millisecond before using his powerful legs to rocket forward, his speed exceeding that of what Cirucci could fly as he sprinted to the tree. He didn't stop for a second, launching himself into the night and allowing his retractable claws to unsheathe themselves and dig deep into the tree with as much ease as he had run across the ground.

In an instant he was at her branch, snapping his teeth as he let go of the trunk. He snarled, and Cirucci squawked as his deadly jaw nearly caught her feet. She had taken flight, and it was velar that it she had waited another few moments to do it Grimmjow would be eating were instead of deer. He landed on the now-empty branch smoothly, still growling up at Cirucci as she flapped wildly well above the trees, cawing at him disdainfully. He snarled again, crouching as if he were to go for her, and she quickly steered herself away on the light breeze. If he'd had the facial muscles to smirk, he would have.

He realized that there was a tenseness in the air, the tenseness of prey listening with pounding hearts for something they thought they'd heard. It was the deer; they must have heard Grimmjow's threatening noises. Grimmjow froze, stilling every muscle as he caught sight of his meal through the branches- he had been right about how many there were, only four, and one of them was a foal. Very newly born, still just a little wobbly on its legs and with its white spots showing up bright on his back, a perfectly weak target. Grimmjow overlooked it.

He set his sights on a doe of medium size with enough muscle to be firm but enough fat to be tasty, a nearly perfectly proportioned meal for an animal like Grimmjow. There would be some left over, but Grimmjow could take it back for it to be smoked into jerky for when animals were scarce. The deer slowly went back to eating, and Grimmjow quickly leapt onto a branch on a tree rather closer to the unsuspecting deer without making the leaves so much as rustle in his wake. The art of silence, while incredibly difficult to master in human form, came natural to him like this.

The deer below stayed oblivious to his presence as his tail flicked back and forth behind him. He, from thirty feet above them, could just about see his trajectory down. He had caught a lucky break; not only were the deer unbelievably close to the tree he was in but he was already in the tree to begin with and didn't have to climb it, which always left him in plain sight until he got into the branches and always made a little too much noise. He crouched down, surveying the whole scene over one last time before getting into the perfect position.

He pounced, propelling himself off the branch to soar in a perfect arc, his front paws stretched out in front of him as the wind of his flight lay his short, soft fur against his skin. He didn't roar or yowl despite the instinct to, knowing that it was one of the reasons that wild non-were big cats only caught one out of ten prey animals. Instead he stayed completely, almost angelically silent, feeling his knife-sharp claws spring out; and then he was on it.

The other deer scattered, kicking up dust with their cleaved hooves in their frantic attempt to escape, but the one doe was pinned. The hooves thundered, and the terrified hostage kicked her own legs wildly against the air. Grimmjow could smell the adrenaline, the fear, wafting into his nostrils as his teeth sunk into his quarry's skull. He crunched down, a massive cracking sound reverberating as the bones caved under the force of Grimmjow's bite, a hot flood of blood, brainmatter and the occasional shard of bone sweeping into his mouth. The deer twitched, once, twice, the last electric charges passing through its nervous system after death.

Time to eat.

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Grimmjow returned to his tree, in a form that allowed him to walk upright on his two hind legs and unscrew the top of a mayonnaise jar with his opposable thumbs, wiping the cooling blood off of his mouth. A bee buzzed by his head annoyingly, and he swatted at it in warning. He didn't hit him, but passed close enough that the current of air sent the insect careening. "Stop it, Cuulhorne," he demanded pitilessly, bending down to put his shoes back on and ignoring that Neliel was grazing a little too close to his shirt. Even in sheep form, Neliel was too smart to try to take a bite. Grimmjow pulled the shirt over to him just in case.

Cuulhorne still buzzed by his ear, the perfect place to make an infuriating sound. Grimmjow frowned. "Dammit Cuulhorne, go away! Or at least morph back, you're annoying like this," the panther said. Cuulhorne buzzed indignantly, but must have considered it wise advice as he darted in an odd zigzag pattern over to Neliel, who put up with him stoically. Grimmjow grabbed his shirt and shoved his arms through the holes, stretching the fabric out over his arms and starting to pull it over his wild hair. "Hey, where the hell is Cirucci?" he asked, delving his head into the tight darkness, pulling the bottom of his shirt down over his hard-formed abs.

"I'm not sure," he heard a soft voice say as he squeezed his head through the collar. Neliel, in human form, was sitting Indian style on the flourishing grass, her honey colored eyes silently observing. It didn't seem to bother her at all that she was in her panties.

"What, did you not have any shape-shift clothes clean?" Grimmjow asked her, straightening out his shirt.

"I thought my clothes were shape-shift clothes," she replied. "I was wrong." Grimmjow rolled his eyes to the sky; how typically Neliel to not double check and end up ripping her clothes to shreds when she changed.

"Whatever," he said, starting off; he found himself putting his hands in his pockets the way Ulquiorra did. "Let's go. Cuulhorne, shift back and carry the rest of that deer." Cirucci could find her way back on her own.