In my time living through centuries of hunger and battle, I've learned to cope with many unusual circumstances. Still, when Tia came that morning to our cell disheveled and looking like she hadn't had the easiest of nights, I felt an impending sense of dread. She stood there behind the bars, arms crossed, waiting for us to initiate some sort of conversation which wasn't unusual seeing as how she isn't very talkative; even more so since Nel had mysteriously disappeared.
All three of us miss her in some way or another.
Grimmjow and I looked her in the eyes and we saw that shell of hers crack for an instant before she breaks a little. There are tears in the corners of those green eyes of hers but she sucked them back up and moved to the door.
"Aizen-sama has defected and obtained the Hougyoku. He has requested you, Grimmjow to be the second who inherits its power." Her voice was off and it quivered slightly.
We knew it was going to come sooner or later, we weren't going to be prisoners forever and that was fine but for Tia to be as upset as she was meant that something bad was probably going to happen. Looking back, I envy Grimmjow for going first. However, I was an Adjuchas at the time and Adjuchas will place higher value on self-preservation over camaraderie five times out of five. He turned out weaker than me though and I'm jealous of that. I wanted to be lower and he deserved to be higher.
The gate opened and she came in to undo the panther's chains, not mine as well, just his. I didn't care, he could go first and I would follow shortly after. He was the king amongst us after all so he goes and gets a big collar made out of that damned rock around his neck and is taken upstairs. I wish him luck but he doesn't get any; I didn't even know how much he needed it.
They left and time passed.
I have never felt lonelier than that night I spent by myself in that cell with no one to talk to. There was no sound and it seemed as if I was suspended in one infinite moment without hope of curing that feeling of misery that hadn't left since the morning. I couldn't sleep for once and I am left to howl alone.
The next day, Grimmjow comes and breaks the door off its hinges. I wouldn't have recognized him without the jaw and the eyes. At first, when I felt him coming down the cellblock, I thought he was still a Hollow but it was just because the change in his power was so small due to the premature usage of the Hougyoku. He would've been stronger than Tia if he just took his mask off naturally and that pains me to think back on it.
For a while, he just stared at me after the flying gate puts a hole through the wall. I tried to say something but nothing came to mind, he looked worn and his eyes looked their age like they sometimes did. It wasn't anger they held, it was echoes of his great humiliation.
"Aizen's goin' to want you soon," he said in a tone that made me want to abscond to some remote corner of the universe far away from where I was. "I'll help you take that mask off if you want. You'll be stronger that way." I wanted to vomit. Fear must've been written all over my face because the Arrancar in front of me sneered as he cut me loose from those reiatsu-sealing chains. "Fucking coward. You can just go and suffer then." He turned and went after that, looking as pissed off as ever and probably running to experience either alcohol or a woman's body for the first time. I can't blame him, its fine. Alcohol made us friends after I got my position as Primera I think…or maybe that was when the fraccion got us a guitar from the Living World by accident instead of Aizen's tea leaves.
Once he's gone, I didn't move for a while because I honestly didn't know what to do. According to the years we scratched into the wall, it had been about a century that I spent bound in that cage with my powers suppressed into less than mortal quantities.
That was when…I think Grimmjow used to call him 'Foxface'…that's when Foxface showed up out of the hole in the wall with that smile that was almost enough to back me into a corner…almost. He was mostly Shinigami by scent and so I attacked him out of instinct even though my gut told me to stay the hell away from him. My fighting skills were above par for a second-stage Menos back then but that meant very little against a Taicho and so I was subdued within less than a second.
"Easy there, wolf-san. No need to get all riled up, I just came to see ya 'cause Aizen and I thought you might be interested in something your friend back there didn't need any more."
For some reason, I was interested after I sobered up and got wise about attacking Ichimaru. He was with my captor and he wasn't someone I could face as I was then. We headed outside which was simple enough since the prison facility is built into the walls of Las Noches and Grimmjow was nice enough to blast a hole through it…he's had something against entrances and obstructions from as far back as I can remember.
I'm led out to a dune far from the palace and Foxface just stares at me for a minute before pulling out something from his robes and tossing it in front of me. It was the piece of Grimmjow's mask Tousen had ripped off.
I ate it instantly.
This is where my memory starts to get a little hazy. I can only recall bits and pieces, I'm sure Lilynette has the rest. My body got hot and those voices in my head gave me a migraine that no amount of sake could hope to recreate. There was power, lots of it. Ichimaru let his grin drop a bit at the power coming from my transformation.
First thing I do as a Vasto Lorde is look down and see that I've got skin and half the legs that I was accustomed to having; getting taller was a bonus. Finally I could hear myself think too. No more of those damn voices.
"Congratulations wolf-san." I really hate that nickname. "Oh dear but you don't really look like a wolf anymore, do you? Not with those horns on your head. In any case, have fun because Aizen's giving you some time to stretch your legs away from Las Noches for a while. Bye-bye." He gave me a weird wave and flashed back to do whatever while I'm left for the second time in five minutes without a clue as to what I should do next.
Then I noticed the scent in the air.
Hueco Mundo is really is a place like no other. There is a higher concentration of reishi in the atmosphere alone than in all life on Earth and nothing ever puts it to use. It gathers together and forms clouds and as more Hollows evolve, ceros fire, and bodies decompose, the clouds will get thicker and thicker until the reishi condenses for about a month or so every few years. This is Hueco Mundo's rainy season: a time where everything that is able to moves to the surface, drawn up by what's basically liquid food and tries to get to the next level as fast as possible. The result is absolute insanity.
Packs usually disband and every Hollow will be for themselves in blind chaos. There's no light except for the occasional flash of discharged spirit particles from the clouds covering the moon. No one risks using energy attacks because the atmospheric interference will make them blow up in your face more than half the time. Garganta won't work either.
The first downpour started within an hour and I was one of many roaming across the surface but I was the only thing there with a prevalent sense of apathy toward the current situation. Nobody came near me because they think I'll rip them to shreds so I went out to see if I could follow along with some of the Hollows who couldn't see well in the darkness. They died instantly when I got close to them and that annoyed me at first. A couple days later and it just stacked more depression onto my loneliness.
After that, I tried visiting some of the settlements around the surface but they were all vacated due to the storms or because they felt me coming. So I took up residence in one of the sandstone huts after realizing that someone had put up a ridiculous barrier around Las Noches, effectively barring me from where I really wanted to be at that moment. Thoughts of Tia, Grimmjow, and even some of Nel became more common as the rain kept going. That sound of liquid hitting sand and rock is still stuck in my head; almost as bad as those voices.
I didn't see what was so great about being a Vasto Lorde. Maybe Nel and Tia were smart for becoming Arrancar as Adjuchas.
Nelliel was the one that on my mind most of all for one reason or another. At the time, she was the most likely of my three comrades that I would meet out in the desert. There was no way she'd be out there in the rainy season but I didn't know she'd been turned into a kid. She probably went all the way down to caverns below the forest where all the rain pools up and forms underground rivers and lakes.
Tia is from there, she used to talk about how great it was all the time when I was caged up.
Weeks went by in some awful desolate blur and the loneliness is unbearable. Hunger didn't even come often enough to break up the monotony of the rain. One night I got angry for reasons that escape me and I just blasted the hell out of the neighboring buildings with a thousand ceros apiece.
Over the next couple of days following my stress relief, I began to expand on a big 'what if?' I had come up with based on a dream I had of one of the Hollow lizards getting its tail cut off. The lizard didn't grow another tail but the tail grew into a lizard and the two walked along the sand, staying right next to one another. It was a strange idea and even stranger that it worked out in the end. I doubt it can be done anywhere else but Hueco Mundo during the storms.
I waited until my despondency completely overrode my fear of the consequences before heading out to a large dune next to my shelter. It was a bleak day with just a low drizzle; not much was going on except for the occasional lightning and sounds of a distant battle. I focused on the horizon and yanked one the horns off my head so fast that I didn't have any time to stop myself and I felt my power decrease a bit. Next thing I did was gather up all the reiatsu I could and forced it into that piece of my mask.
Worst possible outcome was that I simply got weaker and maybe I could've joined a pack so I guess my nervousness was out of place. Next thing I knew I was covered in some kind of nasty goo and there's a skinny girl in front of me looking down and panting at the sand. She was an Arrancar right from the start and I had made myself one as well. According to Grimmjow, this was a giant 'fuck you' to Aizen since he was planning on making me his Cero Espada with the Hougyoku.
My first words to her are about her name. I damn near hugged that kid when she spoke back to me. "Lilynette…what about you? You got a name? Despite the fact that you were me…"
For a while, I couldn't remember which of us was the original but I found out a few months ago that she can't remember our time before transforming into a Vasto Lorde so I've been rubbing her face in it every chance I get. I should've then too but I didn't know.
I gave her my name. She asked what we should do and I told her that the sky's the limit as long as we stuck together and she smiled at me. We've kept good on that too, going to all sorts of places now.
That night, I slept better than I had ever slept before; wrapped up in some cloth I'd scavenged for us. In the morning, Lilynette wanted to leave and go exploring. I said sure as long as we saw if we could meet up with some others. The clouds had started to dissipate and Hollows wouldn't have been as hostile so it seemed like a plan.
…Not a very good plan because we met up with two groups and they died once I was in spitting range of them. I cursed and sat down. Lilynette shot me a weird look and came off like she was going to cry. She put her head on my lap and I guess he took that as his queue to make his grand entrance.
"Impressive."
I'd already known who it was and I really didn't care the slightest bit about him chaining me up for a century anymore. I'm sure he gave me that time outside of Las Noches for the sole reason of me recognizing that there was no other place for me so I'd bend to his well that much more. And I'll be damned if it didn't work.
"Did the two of you make this mountain of Hollows?"
'Go fuck yourself' came to mind for about half a second but I'd resigned myself and told him that they'd just gone and died on their own. "I see. You seem strong…I wonder…I'm looking for some friends." I'm kind of ashamed to admit that that's all it really took to get me onboard with Aizen and the whole war.
Twenty-four hours go by and I woke up on a mattress with a gothic one tattooed to my hand, a glove to hide it because it made me a little self-conscious, and Lilynette with her hand down my throat. I tell you, she's lucky my instincts aren't like Grimmjow's or she'd be short some appendages by now. And while he's on the subject: I'd avoided him like the plague. There was no way in hell I wanted him to see that I had a higher rank than him and the fact that his mask fragment was used to make me transform is still my best-kept secret. Tia said that he'd calmed down after the first two weeks after transforming and that we shouldn't let our friendship die because we were on the other side now.
So the three of us plus Lilynette starting getting together again. I was introduced to alcohol which is my first love and we did well for ourselves by becoming the second of two groups of real friends in all of Hueco Mundo. Nel beat us with her dumbass fraccion.
All went well for a while; Grimmjow and I obtained an acoustic guitar from a botched resource acquisition mission to the Living World and we taught ourselves how to play and eventually how to repair after Tia tried for the first and final time. Her nails were really something else…but I digress.
Times were good: I wasn't lonely anymore and I got to sleep as much as I wanted too when Lilynette was busy bugging the Tercera or sometimes the Sexta if he was in a good enough mood. Us four gathered up on the roof of the dome nearly every night and traded stories about bullshit missions, certain rumors regarding Aizen's sexual orientation and if he was overcompensating for something, and of course who we hated. Grimmjow usually took point in those conversations with rants about just how much he wanted to kill Ulquiorra who I had never once seen go out of his way to antagonize him. He just hated his eyes and went around blowing up buildings when he was called trash. When I asked him why he let him get to him so much he didn't have an answer. Tia's hypothesis was deep-rooted mental problems; that didn't help any. All Hollows have fucking mental problems.
...Yeah, we had fun just about every day until I woke up with another fist in my mouth in addition to Aizen announcing that we're being invaded. Everything goes downhill from there and no one, including Aizen unless dying was part of some master plan that's still in motion, sees it coming.
My ideal lifestyle was then shot to hell pretty effectively. Just about everyone dies except for the five of us.
Grimmjow's almost done in by Nnoitra after fighting Kurosaki and then the kid's girlfriend heals up good as new. She's either an altruist who has a lot of guts or she's just stupid to risk her life like that. He was plenty pissed off that he owed her again.
Tia's nearly cut in half by our dear leader but she managed to hold her insides in and escaped by Garganta only to lose her mind in the Menos Forest and eat everything she sees for six months or so until she tries that on Grimmjow when he's on his first mission and she ends up as smoking black bones. I was the first person he told about that and the two of us drank a lot that night.
Nel got off easy with nothing close to a scratch and she healed her mask during the process of destroying the Hougyoku with Kurosaki. The only thing that she's lost is her memory except for a few things involving Nnoitra. She doesn't remember our history as friends and it annoys me and Grimmjow sometimes.
And after Shunsui damn near kills us right off, which I'm still a little sore about but he's made up for it with free drinks, Lilynette and I separate into our own bodies and take half the damage for ourselves. We woke up a couple days later in the basement of some awful-smelling candy store to find out that we can either be executed or we can join the Shinigami after some sort of extensive program involving loyalty tests and specialized training.
Nelliel and I jumped on that offer pretty fast and Grimmjow came around once he realized that dying isn't that fun when you do it alone. So we take an oath here, a test there, learn some Kido to the best of our ability or inability in the case of the panther who for some reason has a damn good cero but could only learn three Hadou and something called Shunkou he picked up from that woman he'd been hanging around…he breaks at least an arm every time he tries it. We also gave blood samples to the Twelfth Division for…science apparently.
During the war I'd been jealous of what I saw on the side of the Shinigami. They'd all fought together, not one-man-a-fight like we did which is one of the factors of our brilliant defeat in my opinion.
Joining up with them was the second best decision I've made in my life next to splitting my soul and we've met quite a few interesting people over the course of our testing including the Vizards who I'm on good terms with especially Rose who really knows how to play a guitar I found out. You know...I think they like us Arrancar more than Shinigami now that I think about it.
I'm part of something great now; there's not one thing I could wish for save maybe less paperwork and more time to sleep but that's pretty good considering what I used to gripe about. Lilynette's happier too, she smiles more and she has her own friends to play around with.
I'll stick around here for a long time, black robes suit me better according to my friends after all.
Author's Note: I have no idea why the hell this took me so long to write.
Basically the purpose of this two-shot is to clear up some things in the history surrounding my Grimm/Soi fic Los Pantera while adhering to canon as much as possible. Check it out if you're interested.
On a final note, did anyone else notice that Starrk was already an Arrancar when Aizen found him (unless he looked the exact same after his transformation but I seriously doubt that). Weird, huh?
Yo, press that button down there and drop me a line.
