I have the wonderful anacoana to thank for giving me a muse to write off of. I've been working this for a while but I'm no where near done - too many ideas in my head - but since she was kind enough to let me use her idea for Unwanted and Unexpected Gifts for my own fanfic for Bleach, I want to see how at least the first chapter sells.
Usually, I'd wait a few days - a week or so - to see the reviews that came in. I didn't do that with all of my stories at the beginning because reading them made me want to update as fast as possible to see what would come next. I haven't felt that way in a long time. Thank you to the first four reviewers for letting me feel that again. Here's the next chapter.
Grimmjow's hands were sweating as he licked his lips in anticipation. This raid was huge; they had to be successful in it or else the entire case may be trashed or handed to another team. His team was in place along with two others and every single agent there was itching to go in. Grimmjow shook his head in amazement. The men they had been tracking were smart in the fact that they knew how to cover their tracks. Paper trails were few and far between not to mention that the ones they found that weren't bouncing around the world's satellites were even rarer. As much as Grimmjow loved a hunt, this one was simply annoying him to no end and he was far more than ready to end it.
The assholes he was trying to find were known for drug dealing, arms dealing, theft, and unfiled slave trades. Adding kidnapping had obviously been seen as a logical step to them when they kidnapped a rich –influential – man's eldest child six months ago. Grimmjow's team had been given the case initially but the warehouse a tip had led them to was huge. A couple extra teams were expected to be present in the current situation. Who knew what fire power they could be going up against?
"Let's go," Starrk, Grimmjow's team's head, yawned into his microphone that was audible in every earwig that each agent wore.
"You heard him!" Nnoitra, a fellow teammate of Grimmjow's, yelled.
Grimmjow smirked and moved in, gun ready. As soon as he was in the warehouse, his nose was assaulted by the stench of liquor, sweat, popcorn, and blood. As his piercingly blue eyes fell over the room, his nostrils caught the smell of alcohol and iodine. The smells mixed together oddly and almost naturally as he surveyed the area that was completely empty save for the rushing agents.
"Clear!" he called as his eyes found absolutely nothing. Others called out their calls of confirmed safety. Starrk locked eyes with him and nodded toward a door. Grimmjow nodded, approaching the door first almost gleefully. As much as he hated basements and attics, he couldn't contain his excitement. Something told him the case was busting wide open today and if he had to go into a place where he could possibly get pinned, he didn't really give a damn.
"Ready?" he asked in a whisper to Ulquiorra. The short, pale, eerily emerald colored eyed man nodded and he shifted his gun slightly. Grimmjow nodded and kicked the door open to reveal a long corridor that lead to separate rooms. If there was anything he hated more than attics and basements, it was tunnels that wound in and out like labyrinths that it was always best to have someone to navigate for you. There was no where to hide except around corners and it was only natural that the ones that were being pursued knew the tunnels better than anyone else.
"I hate tunnels," Ulquiorra muttered.
"You're not alone," Starrk replied, his hand at his earwig. "Toshiro and Rangiku are saying there are rooms there that may be for storage or any number of things. We take it slow right?" He lifted his brows questioningly at Grimmjow and Grimmjow nodded easily.
"Then let's do it," Grimmjow hissed, taking an anticipating step forward.
"Watch for traps," Starrk warned paternally. Grimmjow held back the urge to roll his eyes in annoyance at the tall brunette. Like he needed to be reminded when he had been at the last hideout of the men they were chasing. The house was now a hole in the ground and Grimmjow still set off the metal detectors at work. Damned copper pipes. Grimmjow loved his job at the Bureau and all but he would have liked to not be known as the guy who set off every alarm at the damned doors. That incident was yet another reason why two extra teams had come along with theirs. Extra men could mean faster responses if something went wrong.
His steps were quick yet cautious as he went down the hall. He stopped at the end at the last door, Ulquiorra and Starrk on his heels. Starrk looked back to find teams of three at the other doors. He singled and doors slammed away from their hinges loudly with thundering bangs. Heavy footfalls tumbled to Grimmjow's ears as Ulquiorra and Starrk took the lead into the room they were in front of. As he followed, his stomach clenched oddly and his nose suddenly went into high alert of the smell for blood.
"Clear," Ulquiorra sighed, his gun falling to point at the floor. Starrk called the all clear out the door and his yell was followed by a chorus of the same call. Grimmjow's nose was still twitching from the smell of blood and possible infection. Grimmjow kept his gun ready at his hip but kept both hands on it. Something wasn't right and he didn't know what it was.
"Anything?" Starrk asked the other two team leaders – Kenpachi and Byakuya – from the doorway. Both answered negatively. "Damn. See what you can find." They both nodded, their eyes glowing with understanding at his impatient tone of voice. Both knew how horridly important it had been to try to catch the men they were chasing. They left silently and easily, going to their business.
Starrk left the room to help organize the forensic bit of the raid. Cameras with large flashes were dragged from cases and forensic kits were broken out and snapped open. Latex gloves were snapped onto hands of varying sizes and Grimmjow couldn't help but feel like an orchestrator of justifying chaos. Chaos that brought justice was an interesting way of thinking of it but he felt it fit well. He snapped the latex gloves into place as soon as he holstered his side arm. He trudged back to the room he'd been investigating, a camera in his hand and a kit in the other one. He snapped pictures quickly but efficiently, documenting everything where it was in utter chaotic perfection. He tried to ignore the conversations that rang out around him as he worked, his body itching to find out why the room was rubbing him raw.
"Sir!" Nnoitra called. "We found dismantled cages that were probably left in a hurry – maybe while they were leaving? – and evidence of a fighting ring."
"A fighting ring?" Ulquiorra asked, his attention still seemingly focused on the scene he was sketching carefully with artistic ability and infallibility. "What now? Illegal fight clubs?"
"Who knows?" Starrk shrugged. "They may have been at this longer than we originally estimated. The kidnapping may be proof of that."
"Who's fighting though?" Nnoitra asked as he stood from collecting a sample of something from the wall outside the room Grimmjow occupied. Grimmjow snapped a few pictures, his lens catching something his eyes missed; a pool of red that seemed to be originating from the wall rather than a body. He let the camera drop to his chest and cocked his head at the new find.
What really got Grimmjow though was that he could have sworn he heard something soft. He narrowed his eyes as the others spoke.
"Again," Starrk replied, "who knows? It may be the members of the cell or it may be the illegal slaves they have."
"You guys are loud," Grimmjow growled as he glared at them all. A couple smiled at him in a silly fashion when Grimmjow glared harder at them and the smiles disappeared.
"What is it?" Ulquiorra asked, his pad falling to his hip. Grimmjow shook his head and waved them off. He growled at them to shut up and work and returned to his own.
The others worked their way down and around the hall while he stayed put, the room seemingly becoming his claimed space for work. He took multiple pictures, did multiple sketches, and filmed multiple times. It was like he couldn't bring himself to leave the room and his blue eyes kept falling on the pool of crimson that was clotting slowly. He bit his lip and pulled the camera up to his eyes again and snapped a few more photos. A flash hit the wall opposite the door in such a way that Grimmjow's eyes finally caught a rectangular outline.
He dropped the camera slowly and placed it onto the ground. He stepped slowly over to the wall and tapped at it softly until he heard a hollow thump. He tapped again and received the same hollow thump back, this time, accompanied by a pained moan. He cocked his head and pulled his knife from his belt, slipping it into the cracks and edging it outward. He called Starrk easily as he pried the fake wall from its place.
"What is it Grimmjow?" Starrk asked as he opened the door.
"I found something," Grimmjow said quickly. He flicked it open as soon as he could and strangled the gasp the threatened to escape his lips. He heard Starrk's own sharp intake of air as the discovery literally rolled onto Grimmjow's feet. Grimmjow dropped to his knees and cradled the body of a boy in his arms gently.
"Call a bus!" he bellowed back at his teammates as he slipped the knife back into its holster. He all but ripped the FBI jacket from his torso to reveal the bulletproof vest he wore. He wrapped the jacket over the boy's heavily injured frame. He heard Starrk shout for an ambulance before the tall brunette rushed to his side to assist with the kid.
"Jesus!" Nnoitra gagged at Grimmjow's right. He too pulled off his jacket and fashioned a pillow from it before rushing back out to help the other agents and guide the EMTs.
Grimmjow couldn't help but feel like Nnoitra had left for another reason other than that. He didn't blame his friend for wanting to leave what was in Grimmjow's arms to Grimmjow and Starrk. The youth, who could only be seventeen if not eighteen, wore worn denim shorts and nothing else save for random, misshapen wrappings of bandages. The bandages had been wrapped loosely and without care over the youth's arms, legs, neck, and chest. His knuckles were torn and bloody but in better shape than his wrists or palms. Grimmjow couldn't tell weather or not the boy had been fighting back or attacking first. His torso was bruised badly, indicating broken ribs, his bottom lip was split, and half his head was wrapped in dirty bandages. Whatever hair he had was well covered by the bandages. The bandaging was setting him off all on its own due to it all being old.
What had really struck Grimmjow were the obviously fresh wounds that littered every open bit of skin. He could only assume they were whip marks due to their shape and size but something about them was off. He came to the conclusion from his own memories of old pictures of whipped slaves but the marks were wrong in so many ways. Some were jagged around the edges and others started narrow but ended when large chunks of skin and muscle were suddenly gone. It was like some bastard had put shards of glass and bone into the braids of the whip. He chewed his lip and watched as Starrk murmured curses left and right.
Weary eyes began to flutter open suddenly but slowly. Grimmjow leaned over the youth while Starrk bellowed back to find out what was taking so long.
"Kid?" Grimmjow asked.
Brown eyes looked back at him in a haze. Grimmjow bit his lip with worry. The youth was no where near coherent and it was dangerous to push him now. They could lose evidence if he pushed. It was so important to get evidence but this kid was human.
"Easy," he said, patting the kid on the least injured cheek. He'd just have to settle for what he could. "My name's Grimmjow Jaggerjaques. I'm FBI. You're safe now…Do you understand what I'm saying?"
The youth's eyes wandered until he nodded painfully. Grimmjow smiled at him, purely glad that he was responding at all. The kid gazed at the room hazily and confused. Grimmjow's hand continued to stroke the kid's cheek reassuringly, and the teal haired agent was glad that Starrk was shouting out the door. He was surprised as a shaking hand gripped his collar firmly, pulling him back to the boy's beaten face.
"Tasukete," the boy whimpered, tears dewing in the corners of his amber eyes. "Tasukete kudasai!"
"Easy, easy kid," Grimmjow soothed. He began to wish he'd gone into the Yakuza rather than Mexican cartels. As far as Spanish could get him, Japanese was uncharted territory. He only recognized it due to his helping Harribel learn it when she went undercover in the Yakuza. That had been years ago and she was rusty now. "Shit…Starrk! I need help!"
The youth's grip tightened, blood oozing from his wounds and pooling in Grimmjow's coat and tear after tear beaded down the kid's soft looking cheeks. Grimmjow shushed him softly and gently but he continued to repeat the two words over and over. Starrk turned and rushed back to take the boy into his own arms in a gentle hug. The boy began sobbing as soon as Starrk had him in that almost loving hold. Starrk sighed and shushed the boy with practiced paternal tones.
"I'll take care of this Grimmjow," Starrk stated calmly as he began to rock back and forth calming the kid as he did. "Help the EMTs get in here."
Grimmjow nodded and left to follow his orders to the letter. In minutes, the boy was swept onto a gurney and loaded into the back of the ambulance; completely out cold, tear tracks still visible on his dirtied cheeks.
"What he saying?" Grimmjow whispered to Starrk as soon as the bus left in all its clanging glory. They were both walking back to the warehouse to take more pictures of that room. Grimmjow wasn't feeling up to going back in there since the kid's plaintive whimpering for something Grimmjow couldn't figure out. He only asked Starrk because the tall brunette had spent more time helping Harribel study and had at least retained some of what he helped teach.
Starrk looked at him and then back at the gates through which the ambulance had just left. His gray-blue eyes seemed more tired than usual and Grimmjow couldn't help but think back when the man had lost his wife a few years back. He had been left to raise his little girl, Lilynette who secretly worshiped the ground her father walked on.
"He was saying 'Please help,'" Starrk translated. He continued onward as Grimmjow stopped to turn back to the gate, his hand over his mouth as tears began to stream down his sculpted cheeks.
I should have known that, he thought. I should have known.
Tasukete = Help
Kudasai = Please
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