A/N and Disclaimer Two-for-One: I, Goldcoinz19, hereby give permission for this parody with recognized character stock (copyrighted by Japanese companies) to become an Office Space themed parody. Note: It is not, 'work safe'.
"Rodriguez's second feature may be a rambling, derivative exercise in gratuitous violence, but its determination to proceed as if the word 'restraint' never existed makes for gleeful entertainment."
Geoff Andrews
In sum: If you haven't guessed by now, this is purely gratuitous crack fiction.
…Las Noches Incorporated, Hueco Mundo, Hueco Mundo…
A land of stark contrasts, the sheer absence of night overhead the absence of anything, the white of the city and dunes below the everything that was.
Palatial, Cistercian, sprawling, was the complex, the palace of the Espada and the presiding magnate and arbiter, overseer of all that went on upon the grounds.
Here in the tower, the thing itself a white gleaming phallic symbol, in the boundaries of a mastery of interior design, architecturally a rival of even Frank Lloyd-Wright, Grimmjow Jaegerjacques stood, one knee crooked, before transparent glass.
He gave it a light push and entered, moving in a locomotive slouch, blue stains around his eyes highlighting the grey as they strove right and left in search of familiar faces.
The cubicles were still empty at this hour, which was, overall, unsurprising.
Grimmjow's legs snapped, white-clad, across the cheap, white polyester carpet, the smell of overheated hardware and day-old coffee an acrid tang in the back of his throat. The Danse Macabre rendered by harpies that gave a voice to the dial-up assailed his ears.
Aizen, soulless as he was, however much he was in quintessence a soul, used dial-up.
Ulquiorra, green eyes in a green painted face, stood off to the side in the longest Nehru jacket of anyone under Aizen's employ. This might have had something to do with the fact that he was also one of the shortest.
He was holding an unseen object in his hands, and motioning with them as if trying to shake pepper out of a pepper shaker.
"Morning, Ulquiorra." Grimmjow grimaced. Ulquiorra was preoccupied.
Grimmjow stood on tiptoe, able to make out the hyogoku in Ulquiorra's hands. Ulquiorra shook it like a magic eight ball that wasn't giving him a 'yes' response.
"This…defective…copy…bastard thing…"
"What's wrong with it now?" Aware that, in spite of the hour on the clock, Aizen had wanted him in early, Grimmjow started to move away from the petit arrancar, and his look of puppet umbrage.
Despite his speed in his release form, he didn't seem nearly fast enough to dodge Ulquiorra, who was standing stubbornly in his path to his cubicle, determined to have someone lament his woes.
"I placed the soul of a hollow inside just two minutes ago. It…it jammed." He looked derisively at the magic eight ball of arrancar-replication, which he held in one slender gloved palm.
"Such a piece of shit." Accepting the risk, Grimmjow sidestepped his superior, raised a placating hand.
"Oh. Okay. Hope that works out for you." He turned, jaw clenched, moving determinedly toward his cubicle.
"Where are you going?" Ulquiorra inquired stiffly. Grimmjow pivoted around as he walked.
"To my cubicle, man." He rubbed his hair, which was almost periwinkle. Pinched his nose. "I've got to get those Windward reports done."
"Oh." Ulquiorra let this sink in, and decided to ask the obvious. "Are you behind, again?"
"No, no; I'm not." Pivoting a second time, he bit his fist. "I'm cool. Yeah." He nodded.
Ulquiorra looked at him with flat, reptile eyes as he swiveled back around again.
"Well." Ulquiorra called back. "Good luck with that."
A few minutes later, the hyogoku made a resonant clang as it was thrown against a file organizer.
"You piece of shit!"
Grimmjow padded into the secure, high perimeter that his office space provided, greeted by a pettish grin, pink hair, and the aroma of fresher, gourmet coffee.
"Hey, Szayel."
"Hey, Grimmjow." Szayel stopped to take an indulgent sip of the coffee he'd poured into his mug. The mug was black on white, and had an Escher bird morphing into a fish morphing into a chromosomal pair. "Did you get that memo about the Windward reports?"
"What memo?" Grimmjow asked guardedly, standing up straight. He had a lot more spine than he looked to have, towering over Szayel when he did this.
"About the new cover format." Szayel told him, motioning descriptively with his hands. His coffee shuddered, threatened to spill on Grimmjow's neatly kempt carpet surface.
"…No." Grimmjow was beginning to find himself irritated.
"Ah." Szayel lifted the coffee to his mouth, and drank it as if it was water and not a stimulant first boiled as a cruel prank somewhere in the farthest back annals of Man. He exhaled happily, smacking his lips. "Aizen's going to have your head for that. Around this place; probably literally."
"What are you up to?" Grimmjow asked, aware that he wasn't. His eyes pinched at the corners.
"Medical." Szayel replied with a cruel snicker. "Got to evaluate some client history. Some future clients." Szayel leaned back, settling his buttocks on a desk that ordinarily belonged to Yammy, spreading his legs out. He set the coffee, however precariously, in his lap, one hand holding onto the handle to steady it.
"Company sent over a lot of coverage papers." He brushed the steam from his glasses with his free index finger, smiling like a pumpkin hacked at its equator for Halloween. "Total hand job there. Worst files I've ever seen."
"Really?" Grimmjow replied, feigning interest. A tear was beginning to bead in his right eye.
"I think they forged half this shit." Szayel giggled. "Bunch of disorganized retards if you ask me."
"Hey; get this." He tried to balance the tip of his toe on the opposite wall of the cubicle, his coffee sputtering in its cup. Grimmjow flinched, turned away.
"The guy who's the head of the company?"
"Yeah?"
"Name's an anagram for 'Mansex'." Grimmjow, who had pulled out his chair, turned his head slowly to the right. He held Szayel's smug gaze for a moment.
"No way." Szayel drummed an index finger on Yammy's desk.
"Look for yourself."
Grimmjow had to. Curiosity is an indefensible mechanism, and inevitable in its compulsion. Mankind is riveted together in ways that are meant to reward wandering, and wandering is in many ways greeted with reward.
Two traits homologous, Grimmjow's eyes peered over the manilla folder as his fingertip lifted the edge and pried it open. He read past the header. His face, which Szayel was reading intently, and responding to with similar intensity, burned with mischief. It was like taking a flickering match and lighting a burner in an old fashioned oven.
Grimmjow's mouth was a row of teeth. Szayel's self-indulgent straightening of his back in aplomb and pomp almost repaid him with a lap full of boiling coffee. His foot slipped, and he swiveled, managing to grip the mug just tight enough to ensure that nothing spilled over and made his day unpleasant.
Grimmjow hadn't noticed.
"Oh man," Grimmjow giggled maliciously. "This is either the worst company ever or absolutely the best."
"I know." Szayel growled with glee.
Eyes gravitating leftward, somewhat fatefully, Grimmjow saw Kaname Tosen's stick-it note, on hot pink paper, written in purple gel pen. Noticeable, if impossible to read.
"Shit!" He made a grab for it, but by then a cold chill ran down his back, and a long, stark shadow settled over the cubicle, rendered incomprehensibly by the diffuse lighting.
"Hey; Grimmjow!" Tosen barked, a-grin, no doubt. Grimmjow walked himself in a circle, stopping to look Tosen full in the face, to what impact he wasn't sure.
"Morning, Tosen!" What Tosen did next gave Grimmjow a start. The man coldly raised his first two fingers, nails toward Grimmjow.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" He inquired, something bruising about the musical lilt of his voice.
"…Two?" Grimmjow's teeth were set on edge, his lip curled under like that of a deceased rock and roller.
"Ah, good." Tosen smiled thinly at him, taking his fingers away. "I was starting to think you were as blind as I am."
"Did you get that memo, Grimmjow, about the covers for the Windward reports?" His voice became low, conspiratorial, almost breathless.
"Uh…" Grimmjow, locked in breath with Tosen, screwed his eyes up toward Szayel, who gave a frantic, helpless shrug.
"Uh…yeah?"
"Good." Tosen sprang back, as easily as he had sprung forward. "We're going to need those by the end of the day."
"Fuck."
Tosen turned, a predatory gleam in the way his lip quirked, a menace about his sightless eyes.
"What was that?"
"Getting right on it!" Grimmjow announced, voice harsher than he had intended. He was inwardly glad for it.
Tosen nodded, appeased.
"Good." He turned and left the cubicle at a swift proceeding pace, one of his sculpted hands on the zanpakutou he had lashed to his belt.
Grimmjow traded a look with Szayel, who seemed deeply sympathetic, if not supportive, and tiptoed toward the edge of the cubicle, leaning out. He could see Tosen, rapidly retreating back toward Aizen's council room.
To his receding back, Grimmjow held up a rather obvious finger.
"Do you see how many fingers I'm holding up?" He hissed. Grimmjow pulled himself back inside the cubicle. "Douchebag!"
"He is." Szayel agreed, looking down at the drops of coffee saturating into the raiment that cloaked his thigh. Following his train of vision, Grimmjow nodded all the more ferociously.
"I know! I hate that guy."
"So…" Szayel kept his gaze down, bringing the coffee to his lips. "How far along are you?"
Grimmjow's bright eyes drew a blank.
"Uh…"
A soft sound ejected from Szayel's lips. A piteous laugh.
"Dude; you are so screwed."
"Shut up. I know; I'm getting on it." Grimmjow slipped back over to his desk, pulled out his chair a few more inches, and sat down, his back turned squarely toward Szayel.
"Well, if you're behind…"
Grimmjow ran his fingers down his face.
"I know." He looked to the white torture of his cubicle's high wall, sighed at the slightly itchy, dense loomed fabric skin that barricaded him from the other Espada.
Grimmjow sighed a sigh of a desperate man that no miracles could possibly save.
"I think…Aizen's probably going to make me come in on Saturday."
…In Which A Leader Calls For Obsequiousness…For Only The Hundredth Time…
Xemnas stroked the silk collar absently, attempting to discern whether the deep burgundy of it blended too much with the tawny amber of his skin, or conflicted with the pale sweep of his bewildered long hair.
"So, how do I look?" He asked not of the mirror, but of the man standing several steps below it, who regarded him with a typical sickly grin.
"Do I look like a gay fashion designer to you?" Xigbar groaned, eye rising beneath his eyelid contemptuously.
"No," Xemnas twisted the lapel of his shirt, so that it cleaved to his skin with less crease around the collarbone, "You look like a gay pirate."
He tightened his tie, which was an olive brown banded with diagonal yellow pinstripe. Behind him, Xigbar tightened his face.
"So," Xigbar began, flipping a black-gloved hand over on the air, palm up. He had made no effort to dress up, style his hair differently, or in any way make himself more palatable.
Xigbar took to pacing back and forth. "What you're basically asking me is…if I was at sea for several months with only men and no showers and a couple of really hot days where everyone's greasy and half-naked, would something like you fulfill my wanton desires as I lay hidden somewhere in the corner of the sleeping quarters crammed against a few other guys in the darkness?"
He paused to look up, working his jaw. Xemnas' yellowish, bulls-eyed eyes were tugged along the very lines of his skull.
Xemnas looked up toward the ceiling, speechless.
"That was frightfully descriptive." He squeaked out at last, stiffening his posture. He looked down beatifically at Xigbar.
"Please don't open your mouth for a while. Actually; just don't be in my presence. If I see you keeping mum somewhere behind me, I'll probably have to freak out."
"Yeah, whatever 'Mansex'." Xigbar grumbled, looking at his shoes. Xemnas' eyes pulsed, growing horrifying large and shrinking far too expressively for his purported lack of emotion.
"I thought I informed you that I'd start cutting out the tongues of those who forgot and called me that!" He sputtered.
"Well, maybe I don't like my tongue." Xigbar retorted, grinning nauseously.
"Don't you test me…"
"Shut up!" Larxene shouted from the corner of the room, where she was carefully curling her cowlick. Her suit was flatteringly masculine, olive brown, though slightly darker than Xemnas' tie and more subdued. She looked at them from under shadowed eyes. "Boss; you're fine. Xigbar's a douche. And I'm sure lots of desperate, cloistered women would find you irresistible."
"I wasn't asking how sexually appealing I was, you nincompoops!" Xemnas bellowed, gripping the lapels of his jacket in an attempt to avoid resorting to the medium of violence. "I was trying to look presentable for a business meeting!"
He turned his back to them in exasperation, straightening the strands of hair that fell into his face, his suit lapel, each cufflink…
"…Who uses the word 'nincompoop', anyway?" Xigbar quipped aloud.
"Fuck you! Is that better, Xigbar? Does your peon-sized little mind understand that?" He glared at Xigbar, saw Larxene twisting her wrist peculiarly in order to achieve her curl.
"You know what? The both of you can get out! I don't need your snide remarks!" Xemnas hissed. He swerved away from them, straightening his cuffs out of view.
"Get me Xaldin, or Vexen… or someone who isn't a complete fuckwit."
"Sheesh." Larxene muttered, setting the curler down and switching it off. "Fine."
She skulked out into the hall, returning less than a moment later with Xaldin, who sneered at Xigbar, who sneered back. Hackles raised.
Larxene elbowed him sharply in the ribs, and pointed to where Xemnas sat at a library desk he'd installed for the effect it would bring to the otherwise dark, amorphous room.
"You called?" Xaldin asked. His suit was charcoal, the suit jacket folded over one of his arms.
"You look like you're going to a funeral." Xigbar sneered, skulking off to the edge of the room.
"Yes." Xaldin whispered back irately. "Yours."
"Yes." It took Xemnas a moment to respond. He was still fidgeting with the sleeves, which were slightly too short. "How do I look?"
He spread his arms out, pulling his chest up. Xaldin scratched wonderingly at his cheek.
"Like a would-be world conqueror in a monkey suit." It was a statement more than a suggestion.
Off in the corner, Xigbar kicked at a wall hanging.
"You're such an asswipe..."
"So; does that mean I look presentable?" Xemnas turned again, attempting a charming smile.
Xaldin grinned fixedly at him.
"Yeah, sure."
Xemnas closed his eyes, allowing one of his hands a little floreo.
"Then you may leave." He said. Opening his eyes, he remembered the others, and pointed to them, finger moving as if checking off an invisible box on each one of them. "Take those two with you. Their insolence is making me crampy."
He clamped a hand on his stomach for effect. Xaldin nodded, motioning for the others with a broad sweep of his hand. He left the room at a well-muscled gait. Larxene followed, sticking her tongue out at the world in general as she went.
A few minutes later Xigbar oozed through the opening, badly bruised over his blind eye from where a book had collided with his forehead. He nodded to himself, biting his lip.
Xaldin politely closed the door behind them.
"WHAT ACORN IN THE HUNDRED ACRE WOOD CRAWLED UP HIS ASS AND GREW INTO AN OAK?" Xigbar hollered.
"Well, if you had any common courtesy." Xigbar bounced around to Xaldin and pointed a coiled finger at him, taking a step closer.
"Oh, you mean like you? I'm sorry if I don't want to stick my head into his BUTT CRACK for the sake of maintaining my EXISTENCE!"
"At least my job description isn't a bathroom code."
"Ooh. A potty joke. How classy."
Xaldin cocked his head, unmoving, like a mastiff preparing to be assailed by a particularly yappy Doberman. Xigbar tensed, teeth bared upward into Xaldin's face.
Larxene stood against the wall, goggle-eyed. The tableau was read much differently, in her mind.
"Um." She looked aside, clearing her throat. Xaldin and Xigbar switched their gazes to her, a discomfiting thought.
She knit her fingers together, pulled them apart. Played with her knuckles, fingertips chasing fingertips over them.
She sighed irritably, and crumpled against the wall, looking back at them, into Xaldin's eyes, taut with confusion, and Xigbar's unreadable but more than likely cynical leer.
"Are the two of you…like, you know, doing one another, or something?"
What made it worse was the motions she made with her hands.
Xigbar turned on heel, an immediate pivot of one hundred and eighty degrees.
"Let's just forget it." Xigbar sighed in self pity as he swept away.
Xaldin just gaped at her.
"That was…" He moved his mouth; words failed to issue. He continued to gape.
"I'm leaving." He told her at last, and turned one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction and started to walk away as fast as his lumbering pedestrian speed could take him.
"God, men are stupid." Larxene told the hall in general, arms crossed. She clicked her tongue.
"Tch." Her eyes opened a shade widely, to Xigbar, who was walking backward down the hall, Vexen moving toward him with his hands clasped in front of his face. Larxene couldn't help but leer at the gold, glittering suit, unsuitable even for a ringleader in a carnival.
He tilted his stovepipe hat to her politely, twirling his cane before tucking it beneath his arm. He seemed to have borrowed one of their interdimensional neighbor's enduring scarves, as well as a monocle. There was a suggestion of lip gloss.
"Well, is everybody who doesn't look like a living mummy and isn't Axel ready to go through my inter-dimensional portal?" He asked, coming to a stop before Xemnas' office.
"I wouldn't have even bothered, you know, patching them up, having nanobots scrub every last trace of carbon from the walls, if I'd known we were visiting them." He added reproachfully, standing coolly in profile beside Xigbar.
"Well, it's not my job to be your personal secretary." Xigbar grunted. His face seemed to flip directions as his head moved in search of a lost target. He spied it well enough, and thrust both index fingers toward it. "That would give that one a little oxygen from the spare moments when he wouldn't have his head tucked under the leader's tailbone."
"Fuck you, Xigbar!" Xaldin shouted blithely, raising what was just barely distinguishable as a middle finger.
"Wow." Vexen stated dryly, chin tucked in toward his chest. "It's really a lion cage around here. What have I missed?"
"Nothing that can't be attended to with a good cortical shot of lead." Xigbar grunted. Vexen's unusually straight eyebrows rose, one after the other, like drumsticks. One of them seemed to do The Wave.
"Don't you mean cortiso--oh, I get it. Tee-hee." He shrugged, a motion that may have required more effort of him, as he did not exactly shrug his shoulders.
"Well, have everyone able meet by my teleporter in oh--five minutes."
"Um," Larxene itched at her collar, pulling her tie with both hands in order to smooth it against her blouse. "I didn't want to like, mention this before…"
She pushed against the wall, unable to look Vexen in the eye in all his antedated frippery. She flailed a hand weakly.
"But we, um, well. We kinda have a, like, key blade wielder for that."
"That's experimental technology." Vexen told her airily, perishing the thought with a wave of his hand. Larxene's mouth unhinged.
"Did you…you did. You just referred to him as experimental technology." Shocked still, perhaps needlessly, she detached herself from the wall and rounded on Vexen, fists balled, face distorted by a pout.
"Your point, miss?" He inquired, smiling thinly in amusement as his bony knuckles met with the polished surface of the intricately inlaid door.
She threw a hand up in the air, crossing her arms, a gesture mimicked by Demyx and Axel from time to time, to greater and lesser degrees.
"God, you're so creepy."
…It's Going To Take Us Away, HaHa…
"Behold my quantum teleportation device." Vexen introduced them to a large … He looked upon it in all of its prodigious hulking a shade paternally, twisting toward them in eerie slow motion, like a ballerina in a music box. He steepled his fingers. "The full title of which is of course Quantuum Unipolar Automatic Light Ultranegative Utility for Directional Extrusion Suspension, or QUALUUDES for short."
Vexen cleared his throat, reaching behind him for something on his worktable. He lifted and held out for them a small gray plastic stylus, onto which was clipped a worksheet and pen. The pen was attached with a springy plastic cord, translucently orange.
Vexen smiled sweetly, batting his eyes.
"Now, I need you to sign this disclaimer before we go in there."
The group, to a man and a fraction woman, gave him a graven, jaundiced look that summarized their blind concurrence, and on a scale, no less, in very large print.
"You're not you, are you?" Xigbar intoned. Vexen smiled quickly, wax features melting into an odd rictus in a vain attempt at proof of innocence.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"You're a fucking clone." Xigbar groaned, covering his face with a hand. "You're sending some puppet machination through this portal to make sure it works properly."
The look upon Vexen's face was one an angel would wear after a near-fatal concussion.
"How do you figure?"
Xaldin, in response, came up quickly, ripped one of the disclaimer sheets from the board with a tear that made Vexen's eyebrows twitch.
He read down, scanned the very bottom, and drew reading glasses from his pocket. Eyebrows pinching in strain, he pulled a loupe from his pocket, and twisted it against his eye, murmuring to himself.
"The part in this disclaimer that says if we're atomized and reconfigured from atmospheric particles that are not our own or turned violently inside out, and in either of the two cases stated survive this, that you are not culpable and we cannot sue." He said at last, throwing the paper back at Vexen.
"I haven't the foggiest what you're going on about." Vexen rubbed the tips of his fingers together as he grinned, possibly attempting to disappear, like the Cheshire cat.
"I hate you." Xigbar announced, making a face. Vexen shrugged. It was not as if it could be helped. Xemnas, for his part, was now standing before the automated door.
He caught Saix's eye. Saix sighed and, with one quick motion snatched the back of the black Batman licensed hoodie Axel had decided was for formal occasions.
"Just to be on the safe side, we'll send Axel first." Xemnas told the room at large, holding his hands out evenly as Saix dragged Axel toward the portal. He turned to face Axel, who was aflame with silent indignation…and had a finger jammed into his nostril.
In one fluid motion, Xemnas pressed the button and Saix, holding Axel by the shoulders, tossed him through. White light crazed across the room, reminiscent of a bug zapper, and the titanium door slats slid back into place.
With much pomp, Xemnas reached into his pocket and produced a phone. Flipping it open, he carefully punched the ten digits needed to arrive at Axel. The phone curiously stopped on the third ring.
"You…inside out?" Xemnas inquired, perhaps superfluously. He nodded to himself.
"No?" The phone, which was compact, silvery and tested multiple times as a thing of indestructibility, was slipped back into Xemnas' pocket.
Their leader made an 'o' with his fingers, which is considered an insult in many Eastern European countries.
"It's good."
"All right." Vexen announced with a sigh to the mob, well versed in recriminating eyeballing, that had surrounded him.
"It's safe."
Xemnas whistled and gave Saix a firm push through the open portal door. The room erupted in another whitish flash.
Larxene shook her head in disbelief, turned to her HR Director, and gestured hopelessly in Xemnas' direction.
"I just can't think about my job safety when we have a leader like this." She told him.
…It's an Occupational Hazard…
"I just can't think about my future in securities when we have such an asshole for a boss." Grimmjow told Nnoitra, in the absence of hope and in the presence of a slight tinge of self-pity. Nnoitra gave him a sympathetic tilt of the head, knocking his fists over Grimmjow's and pulling them back to his chest in a gangster show of support.
"Hang loose, man. Every little thing's gonna be alright."
"Yeah." Grimmjow huffed, staring at the demonic mound of paperwork his hands rested upon, fingers twitching. "Right."
Orihime walked into the cubicle by accident, (or perhaps on purpose, thought Grimmjow darkly) and cautiously backed out. Being Orihime, she reacted too much to the ragged expression on the Espada's pale face.
"Aw." She giggled at Grimmjow like a homeowner might at a cat that had tangled itself up in yarn and was now rolling about the floor mewling piteously. "Poor Grimmjow! You look like you have a case of 'The Mondays'."
Grimmjow's mouth twisted in barely contained horror. Nnoitra, an omnipresent case of too tight underwear making him the most irritable creature dead or alive, scowled as hatefully as he possibly could.
Orihime ended her laughter with a choke, gulped, and ran, possibly for dear life.
"Who says that?" Grimmjow wondered aloud, squinting evilly in the direction of Orihime's retreating form. "What does that even mean?"
Nnoitra pulled himself off of Yammy's desk, knocking papers carelessly to the floor. He pointed at Grimmjow with a skeletal finger.
"You know; if I were you, I'd kick her ass." Grimmjow squinted up at him; shook his head.
"You kick everyone's ass." Nnoitra opened his mouth like an ass-kicking muppet. He crossed his arms broodingly.
"I do not."
"Okay, fine." Grimmjow said evenly, raising a hand. "Name one person you haven't kicked the ass of."
Grimmjow had expected an immediate snap of 'no one!', or perhaps a scoff that indicated how flawed the challenge was. What he didn't expect was for Nnoitra's eyes to mist over, as if conjuring an image of the face of God.
"…There was one person, once…" Nnoitra told him softly. He sighed deeply, ruefully. "I could have kicked his ass forever…"
Grimmjow nodded in agreement. He had those days.
"I know what you mean." He told Nnoitra, a shade sardonically. "I could have beaten Ichigo bloody until hell froze over."
In actuality, he could have done so just as long as Ichigo kept moving. It wasn't fun when you couldn't bat things around that weren't still moving. It was like a very bad game of individual paddleball.
Or his bulletin. Tosen hadn't covered it in post-it notes for weeks, now, and it held nothing for him. He used to enjoy ripping them up with his claws.
"Yeah." Grimmjow continued, discomfited by the nagging feeling that his afterlife was letting him down. Nnoitra gave a nod, head bobbling on a skinny neck, teeth bared too visibly by his overbite.
"You know, man? I don't even know his name."
…The Ones We Left Behind…
"I'm gonna take real good care of you folks, man."
"So; who wants macaroni?" Demyx sang out, entering the room with a couple of steaming microwave-heated bowls balanced against his hip on a cookie tray.
Seated in a straight line against the wall, limbs arrayed however they could, Luxord, Marluxia and Zexion tried to shuffle away from the palpable heat.
Demyx, without aid of an oven mitt, (which he wore to remove the cool tray and threw into the sink) lifted the ribbed cardboard macaroni by a skinny edge. He lost his grip on it, and it plummeted into Luxord's lap.
"Mrrffff!" A muffled Luxord screamed. Demyx's mouth formed a ring of horror and he stepped back sharply, raising his hands in defense.
The rest of the macaroni clattered to the floor and erupted out of its cartons, melting the plastic spoons.
"Whoops. Sorry, man. Dropped it in your lap." Demyx lifted the spilled cartons on the suddenly too-hot-to grip cookie tray, and tripped his way over the writhing Luxord to Zexion.
"Nrfff!" Zexion whimpered through his bandages, struggling to crab walk out of Demyx's eager, psychotically helpful reach. "Nrfff!"
Demyx followed at a crawl, eyes wide, curious, oblivious to the horror of his pursuit in the bandaged eyes of Zexion.
"Dude, where are you going, man?" He tripped over the hem of Zexion's robe, falling forward onto him. "Whoops!"
The flat of the scalding tray hit Zexion squarely in the face.
Demyx climbed over the screaming, violently shaking Zexion, smearing the burning, tingling macaroni on his fingers onto the other man's robe.
He sat up, macaroni dripping from his spiked hair, and watched Zexion claw at the macaroni-coated bandages on his face.
"Why're rolling around like that, man?"
"Mrff-mrff-rff-rff." Marluxia shouted from behind him, managing to barely scrape Demyx's back with a kick. He salvaged a bowl from the floor, contents mostly within, and twisted around on his knees to flourish it in her face.
"Aw," The hot steam bleared Demyx's eyes. "Sorry dude. You want some macaroni too?"
Marluxia yelped and kicked out, trying to find a grip against the wall. She lifted herself up, managed a run before she slipped, falling backwards head over feet on the slick floors and the vehicle of macaroni.
Paper tore away from paper and steam clouded around Lexaeus like mist surrounding a mountain. He regarded Demyx with bulging, yellow-rimmed eyes.
"Thanks for the carbs. I'm going to my room now, to work out for hours on end." He moved slothfully, bound by behemoth muscle, gradually turning his back to Demyx as he gradually took his first spoonful of macaroni with a bubbling spoon.
"Rock on." Demyx told the retreating-so-slowly-as-to-not-be-retreating-at-all form. "That is so Bruce Banner."
Demyx's voice bounced off of the high vaults.
"Hehe. Echoing voice."
…Las Noticias por a Noche…
In the midst of vaulted ceilings much higher than those at headquarters, the organization stood either gob smacked, humbled, or in quiet furor over ceilings being much too damn high for show.
"Wow." Xaldin walked into a catafalque, smoothing his broad hands over the marvel approvingly. "This place is so white, bright, and polished."
Xigbar shrugged a shoulder, as if pretending to listen, deeply aggravated by the showiness and slavish lack of all personality about the place.
"It's like being back in Panawave." He muttered, adding further, in an even lighter breath. "With Xemnas."
Xemnas was pacing back and forth irritably, eyes scouring the walls and the distance of the corridor for signs of life. He had a hand clenched firmly on the edge of Saix's odd, dark green suit ensemble, which was unlike a three piece and still not quite a caftan.
"Where did Axel go?" He hissed irritably under his breath. "He was supposed to wait for us on the other side!"
"Omigod-what-if-we-can't-get-back-oh-no-nooo-the-movie-plot!" Roxas fell over all of a sudden, fingers pressing into the muscles of his face.
He gagged, or gasped raggedly for air; Saix wasn't certain, and then began to bawl.
Xemnas let go of his shoulder. With exaggerated care, Saix walked over to him, and dropped to one knee.
"Roxas." He looked aside, a deep groove forming in his cheek as he frowned. "Pipe down, please."
"But-the-Saix-the-movie-oh-nooo!" Roxas cried in a deep, growling voice of terror, body shaking against the floor.
Saix glanced up, in search of something he could metaphorically cling to. Xigbar shrank away from him with a glare. Xaldin was obliviously admiring the architecture. Vexen's face was obscured by a rather large pillar, and the architecture was as bland as Styrofoam.
"What happened in the movie that disturbs you so much?" He said at last, resigned to sink.
"Maybe you should make him explain things better and tell us what fucking movie he's talking about." Xigbar seethed. With surprising temperance, Saix held up a hand.
"Just let him tell us." Saix leaned over Roxas' quaking shoulders, trying to meet the frightened youngster's gaze.
"What happened in the movie?" He inquired, in a voice stretched diaphanous by emotional exhaustion. (As if that could happen, his brain added treacherously, recalling how Xemnas saw the state of affairs under the veil of strong anti-psychotic medication.)
Roxas sat up and gulped, eyes bulging as he screamed.
"Jackals-ate-people!"
"The dingo ate his baby? What?" Saix waved his hand quickly at Xigbar, and looked back to Roxas.
He sighed in relief.
"Oh. That movie." Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Saix contemplated what could be said to lessen the mortal terror the immortal child was in. The proper words soon formed.
Saix looked down at Roxas paternally, managing a slight, reassuring nod of his head.
"It's okay. Because Kurt Russel isn't here. And, when Kurt Russel isn't here, bad things can't happen."
Roxas looked up at Saix with dishpan eyes.
"R-really?" The elfin, blue-haired member of the organization gave an indifferent shrug, checking it quickly.
"Yes." He told Roxas with a cough, "He got replaced by Richard Dean Anderson, who is much, much cooler. He can't be fed his lines by nasty jackal people."
Brushing his hands off, he helped Roxas to his feet. The boy had a death cling around his wrist, which was putting him off-centre.
"Incidentally, though, if it had been the actual god Anubis, nothing would have preserved them." Saix rambled on blankly, trying to unscrew Roxas' hands from his wrist. "What a god wants, Roxas, he takes."
He winced. Roxas bawled.
"Weeeeeeeeh!"
Xemnas looked up from the game of hangman he was playing with Vexen on the wall. Xigbar threw his hand at his face temperamentally.
"Oh, bajeezus!" Xigbar yelled, bringing his weapons into view. "Good one, Saix!"
His head swiveled around like a cockerel on crystal meth, seeking something to maim, most likely Axel.
"It was a universal fact." Saix protested. He managed to remove Roxas' fingers, sticky with sweat and tears and smelling as they did of fear, and barely sighed as Roxas screamed all the louder and sought the protection of being balled on the floor, arms wrapped around one of Saix's stick thin legs.
He looked down, literally, on the child that seemed to be straddling his foot.
"Roxas. If a god wanted you, that would mean you were somehow special. Right?"
"You're just making it worse." Xigbar scowled, stalking toward Xaldin, who was pacing back and forth nonchalantly, earphones of an mp3 player clotting his ears.
He hesitated, coming to a pause that seemed to rid him of even a heartbeat, wheeled around suddenly, and blurred across the floor to Saix.
Roxas fell over, having been cuffed on the back of the head. A convention that could arguably be found in the lack of supermarkets in fantasy universes.
"There." Xigbar announced smugly. "Much quicker and in less of a need of explanation. Flatten his ass."
"Wait-wait-wait. Here they come." The cry for silence went up like an alarum. Larxene was making impressive ground through a corridor, considering that she was moving at a friendly pace along a tall, white clad man flanked on either side by men not nearly as tall, and also robed in white.
"So that's where she went." Xemnas murmured to Vexen approvingly. Vexen snatched the red sharpie pen away from Xemnas and hid it in one of his numerous pockets.
"What about their child labor laws?" He mentioned, waving toward Xigbar and Saix. Vexen twisted his head around like an owl, sighting upon them as he rapped on his teeth with a pencil-thin finger.
"Ah, crap." He turned back to Xemnas. "You really think they have that policy?"
Xigbar lifted Roxas, cradling him to his chest. Saix brushed his knees off and rearranged the hem of his robe.
They looked around, eyes chancing on a closet.
"I have an idea." They said in unison.
Xigbar and Saix whistled past Xaldin, who had examined his watch and was removing his earphones.
"What…" A door banged shut. Xigbar and Saix sauntered back, whistling.
Xaldin looked at Xigbar from under his heavy brow. Xigbar responded with an overly large and gleaming fake grin, a spark of challenge in his eye.
Saix had begun edging away from the two when Xemnas' mangled Spanish occluded their eardrums.
"Ah! Ole, muchas bienvenidas! Mi companeros. Avante!" The three of them winced at the back of their employer, his hands stretched out in greeting, smiling with politically calculated politeness.
The exaggerated approach was not earning him any favors. Aizen-sama of Las Noches Limited looked drier than a Utah prohibition, like he'd mummified himself alive ages before. Clean, exact, suspiciously handsome, but otherwise as brittle as a dead leaf pressed in a Victorian flower press and left in the Atacama Desert.
He licked his lips, and started to orate. Aizen had lost meaning of the concept of speaking long ago.
"I speak…" There was some moments of small sounds, such as humming, before he resumed that train of thought. "Well, let's see. English. Japanese. Brazilio-Portuguese. Latin. Greek. Ah…"
There was a long pause. (Xemnas had held his breath for a moment; Larxene quickly punched his diaphragm, to ensure that he would attempt to breathe and not pass out in expectation.)
"Ah…" The voice of Aizen drawled. (Xaldin clutched his head dizzily and had to stand against the wall. Saix's eyebrows tangled in his hairline, and Xigbar had to pinch himself to keep from laughing.)
"Ah…" Aizen tilted his head left. (Xemnas tripped over himself, catching himself before he tried to stop the noise by pushing Aizen's sagging jaw back into place.)
"Ah; Buenos Noches?" Xemnas suggested worriedly, rubbing his palms together. Beside him, Larxene nervously squeaked, something that may have been meant as laughter.
Aizen's mouth came to a close.
"Ah, yeah; I speak that, too." Aizen replied loftily. (Behind him, the blind subordinate rubbed at his forehead with his wrist.)
"How quaint." Vexen mumbled acidly. Xigbar's leg crumpled at the ankle from the force of Saix's boot landing on it.
Aizen's eyes began to gravitate toward the noise…
"Well, I'm glad to be dealing with such a…cultured individual." Xemnas inserted, giggling frantically.
In the background, Xaldin had placed Xigbar in a stranglehold, one leg around him like a man wrestling an alligator, and was attempting to tie his mouth closed one-handedly with Saix's cultural sash.
"Yeah, well…" Aizen's eyes tried to run for home. Xemnas slithered into their line of view, holding up his hands and flashing his most Stepford-like uxorial grins.
"They're fine." He clapped his hands together, peeking over his shoulder quickly. Xigbar, mouth gagged, had wrestled Xaldin to the ground, jabbing his elbow in his chest.
Xemnas squinted furiously at Saix, who promptly kicked Xigbar off of Xaldin. Xaldin grunted, and instead of getting to his feet, immediately heaved himself at Xigbar.
His head snapped back to Aizen. "Really; they're fine."
Larxene coughed, stepping backwards and sidestepping Xemnas. He quickly raised a hand, waving it in a figure eight motion in the space she occupied.
Though he showed no signs of it outwardly, Xemnas desiccated in the rays of Aizen's superiority complex. It was a gaze that seemed to go on infinitely without end in sight, the culmination of all the stern, no-nonsense gazes of so many professors and supervisors Xemnas had encountered, all of them treating him like a futile insect, or a necessary burden.
It wore away at Xemnas.
"I see." Aizen stated. His eyes moved past Xemnas, as if moving past a speck of dust. "Yeah…let us get to the office. Yeah…so we can discuss your insurance…"
He paused long, taking in enough air to fill the Hindenburg, it seemed.
"…Policy." And Thus Aizen Spoke. Aizen's blind subordinate quickly came to the fore, extending a hand in the direction of the conference table.
"Right this way, gentlemen." Xemnas followed the subordinate, and was in turn followed by Larxene, who tightly held a grip on Xigbar's ear. Xaldin fell into line behind him smugly, a condition that did not go unpunished by a sharp elbow to his intestines.
Saix detached himself from the wall, removing the lance embedded in a quarter inch of crystal and his sleeve. He caught himself turning, startlingly, toward the door, where Aizen's albino assistant was smiling at nothing--as well as looking directly at him.
"So…" The albino assistant wandered over to Saix, pulling behind him a tuft of red, burned hair, connected to a matchstick thin body broken at odd angles. It looked peculiarly like a marionette, dangling from the albino's hand like that. "I have this here."
With little effort at all, the frail-looking albino, who was smiling in the most off-putting way imaginable, lifted Axel by the hair. He was badly charred, lilac purple tongue hanging out. He was giving off the odor of death, perhaps because he'd been so fully done in.
"Does it belong to you?" Wondered the albino, who seemed unawares of the fact that the corpse was mangled horrifically, in ways that even Xigbar wouldn't have executed.
"Y-yeah. It's our janitor." Saix forced air through his trachea, like trying to breathe through a snorkel for the first time. "He fell through the transporter accidentally."
"Ooh." The albino clicked his tongue teasingly, turning his face toward a hallway that led to cubicles. "Not a good sign."
"Not a good sign at all." The albino repeated. He may have looked at Saix, but it was hard for him to know.
Reading something in Saix's rigidly held frame, the albino pushed at the air with a tut, a gesture that did not mitigate anything, for he did it with the hand that held that held onto what precious little remained of Axel.
"Oh, I don't mean you. I mean that sign over there on the wall." The albino's face slithered in the direction of the cubicle-lined area in front of him. "It's tilted halfway to China. I'm going to have to go and straighten it up."
He raised his hand, the one holding Axel. Saix closed his eyes and shuddered.
"Can I borrow your janitor?"
"Keep him if you want." He told the albino quickly. The albino moved his head like a little bird, inspecting the corpse, which he held out at length, with one ink brushed eye.
"Oh, really?"
"No, not really." Saix sighed, his voice on edge. "Borrow him if you like, but return him to this man when you're done."
Eyes still closed, he waved his finger until it hit roughly the right trajectory of Vexen's glide. Vexen had, upon sight of Axel's body, circled back in.
He took the albino with one hand, lowering Saix's fingers with the other.
"I'll take care of the troglodyte." He crooned, tapping the corpse on the hollowed, charred chasm of the nose sweetly. To the albino, he wondered, "How did he wind up in such a condition?"
The albino gave no indication of even attempting to alter the lines of his face.
"Uh. It was like this."
Halibel wasn't in a decent mood, so having the Sonic the Hedgehog boy slither up from nowhere and erupt from underneath her cleavage was probably enough to castrate him as it was.
She hesitated only because he had tattoos, and his eyes were glowing faintly, and she didn't want to do any extra paperwork because she chose to end its trivial existence.
It was even slightly adorable, if you discounted where it had last planted its face.
"Hello." She offered, giving it far too much leeway and too much of a grace period, she reasoned, just half a second later.
"Why, helloo thar." It replied back, examining her up and down. "Would you like to dingo in my frisky?"
"I have no idea what you just said, but you die."
"That was…a very high quality flashback." Saix replied thinly, pinching his forehead. Vexen, eyes agog, nodded in agreement.
From where they stood, several meters along the nearly endless hall that led to the corridor that led to the conference hall, Xemnas turned to the blind aide beside him.
"So, who is that?" The aide flashed him a look, and then processed the tone. Only one person among even arrancar could generate that sort of tone.
"Ah…Gin."
"He's our…public relations officer and vice president." The aide described diplomatically. He jabbed a hand toward Xemnas, the sudden movement of which made him jump. "Kaname Tosen. I'm the head of HR."
"Oh, how convenient." Xemnas announced, voice oozing smarmily as he lunged for Xaldin's sleeve and pulled him near. Or strained himself trying, at least. "This is our HR Director Xaldin. He doesn't have a last name. To cut our old ties to humanity."
"I'm sure you'll have much to discuss." He added, hand relaxing as Xaldin moved in and shook Tosen's hand.
"The only thing I'm interested in right now is discussing your insurance policies." Tosen told Xemnas coldly.
"Ah," Xemnas' face adopted a compromise of his typical facial freeze of confusion and the soul-crushing dissipation of hope that was worn by Las Noches Ltd.'s unseen faces of employment.
"Well, let's do that."
"Yeah…" Aizen droned, ambling along several paces ahead of them. "To my office. We'll discuss your…policy."
Xemnas and Larxene burst forward eagerly. Aizen held up his hand.
"I only need your…R and D guy…and your HR Director…"
…Souls of a Sister Start-Up…
The tie was slung back over her narrow shoulder, the first two buttons of her shirt undone, revealing the slender warp of her porcelain neck.
"God." Larxene exclaimed, stretching her arms above her back. She brought her hands back down to her face, sucking on a freshly lit cigarette. "I haven't had a good smoke in forever. Vexen and his stupid rules about smoking."
She blew out air happily. Beside her, Xigbar flicked the ash off of his cigarette with his middle finger. He rolled it around between his fingers thoughtfully.
"I know what I'd like to be smoking right now." He announced to the collective at large.
"A pile of corpses?" Saix, the non-smoker, inquired in monotone nastiness. Having a bird's eye view of Larxene's cleavage and an eye watering from tobacco fume was making him moody.
Xigbar looked into the vacuous dark of the sky above them, puffing on his cigarette irritably.
"No, man. I need a blunt. I need about seven shots of some Bacardi gold and one blunt the size of an elephant's tonk."
Xigbar measured the length of his ideal blunt with two fingers. Saix kept meaningfully silent.
Larxene, light eyes agog, almost swallowed her cigarette.
"Are you…" She fought her sanity for the words; sanity was putting up one hell of a fight on behalf of self-preservation. Her eyebrows pinched, another trait she shared in common with Demyx and Axel.
"Sure you're not gay?" She finished at last, desperately, in a tinny voice.
"Or overcompensating." Saix added, clearing the smoke from his face with a hand. Xigbar let one jaundiced eye rove over the two before selecting a target.
"You're one to talk, Mr. Two-handed." He growled at Saix, leaning back against the stairs. "That should be your new nickname. Two hands."
He made a gesture that killed two birds with one stone.
"Quit it!" Larxene shrieked, grimacing as she shielded her eyes. "I don't want to see that!"
"It's so easy to play the straight man with you, isn't it?" Saix inquired dryly. Xigbar threw his hand out, almost spearing Larxene in the process.
"Xaldin told you to say that, didn't he?"
"Hehe." Larxene looked up; Saix's eyes drifed sideways; Xigbar flipped over like a pancake, his eye screwed up in his head.
Eyes daubed with blue paint, at least in seeming, pale hair ruffled by fingers and wind and the good chance of never having seen a comb, the man in white turned his head on its side and grinned with as much wanton, sinful destructiveness as an angel wandering the desolations of hell.
"I don't know who you are, but that's a pretty lively conversation you're having." Submitted the man in white, spinning a set of car keys (on which was an orange, glittery gel tamagochi in humanoid form) around his index finger idly. A straw-colored head bumped against the key ring, bringing it to a halt. A slavering face gawped happily and a moaning giggle escaped from the mouth.
The man in white grabbed the straw-colored, hairy melon and shoved it forward for better viewing capacity.
"This is our babbling psychopath; Wonderweiss." He told them.
"Yeah, we have one of those." Xigbar told him tautly, gripping the steps. "His name's Axel."
The man in white moved forward. There was a fist-sized hole in his stomach, leading to nothing. It seemed wise not to comment upon it, as it would have led to an overlong explanation and the trio were on a random but much-needed break, of all things.
The one called Wonderweiss sidled up to Saix, and began to drool affectionately in his hair.
"Yeah, he does shit like that, too." Larxene mentioned, indicating Wonderweiss with her cigarette. "Only it's because he's a dick, not because he's a…"
She waved her hands a little. Saix lightly pushed Wonderweiss down the steps. Wonderweiss squawked, squealed, and then took the stairs three at a time when he finally stopped rolling.
"I don't know." The man in white admitted.
"Well, he appears to be profoundly retarded." Saix sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Wonderweiss had lunged at him, hands clinging to Saix's knees. He pealed with laughter and tried to push his head into Saix's armpit.
"Maybe." The man in white shrugged a single shoulder, taking the steps at a leisurely pace. "He's officially our janitor."
"What do you know? So's ours." Xigbar cut in brightly, nastily.
The man in white pointed his keys. A car in the white dunes, delineated as a parking space by orange crime scene tape, lit up. The car was silver, half-covered by the sands of the desert in which the shadows walked.
"You drive a Honda Civic?" Xigbar puffed incredulously. "That's not what I'd imagine you driving."
The man in white stuck his hands in his pockets and preened.
"See me in a sports car, huh?" He looked at his slender compact workman's car, his eloquent gaze summarizing his sentiments toward it. "Yeah, I'd prefer a jaguar…"
Larxene shrugged indifferently, moving over as Xigbar's hand nearly collided with her hip. He gave the steps a friendly pound.
"Sit here and talk, man." The man in white cocked an eyebrow.
Larxene sighed, pushing across the crystal step. "We have plenty of room. The seat's even warm." She straightened her tie self-conscientiously.
The man in white shrugged, taking the proffered seat. His long legs stretched across several steps.
The petite girl passed him a lighter and a cigarette. His lip kinked appreciatively.
Behind him, to his irritation, Wonderweiss giggled and groaned, a heavy fabric writhed, and a snort that didn't originate in Wonderweiss recalled him from the relaxation he was just beginning to accept as possible.
A tall, golden-skinned, blue-haired man resembling a vulcan hobbled down the steps, planting himself squarely before Grimmjow. Wonderweiss was slobbering, teeth embedded in the fabric of the man's robe.
He trained an accusatory stare down the row of eyes; from the petite blonde to Grimmjow to the scarred, friendly-seeming cyclops.
"…Anyone have a muzzle for this kid?"
…Muzzles Don't Grow On Trees, You Know…
"Well…" Aizen rambled, at a pace that would have had Henry Kissinger screaming at his fullest lung capacity in impatient rage. He examined the papers before him, all highlighter-neon shaded triplicate sheets. Tosen may well have been the manager as well as the HR Director, given eye-watering brilliance of the pages and illegibility of the templates. "Yes…you all seem like qualified…individuals…"
"It's just that the…coverage you asked for…It's just so…a little…vague…"
"Well…" Said Aizen, bringing his hands together like a yogi offering namaste.
"Here is the rub."
"I'm all ears." Xemnas told him, giggling bemusedly. Aizen might as well have looked at him through a fishbowl.
"Yeah…You…qualify…in some of the…fields of criteria…for…
"We have a quota, here…and you don't have enough employees for coverage."
Xemnas' hand twitched, then outright jerked. (It alerted Vexen, wholly ignored in the corner, that something was happening in the meeting, and he could stop dozing. The titular 'Mad Researcher' looked up expectantly.)
"I have thousands, probably millions, of nobodies at my and my subordinates' command…" He began achingly, eyes closed against the tidal wave of migraine pushing across the beaches of his grasp of formal conduct.
"Well you see…" Aizen broke in. "That's the thing. Without names…social security…numbers…and areas of residence… I can't consider those people…employees. I mean…they don't even have a pay scale?"
"They're mindless slaves." Xemnas protested; Aizen broke him off with his hand.
"There's the problem…there." Aizen drew in a long, painfully long draught of breath. "We as a company have hundreds of drones, but they aren't mindless, per se. Our minions excel at what is known as 'employment'."
"Animal training doesn't count." Summarized Tosen, mercifully putting an end to it. (I could go gay for you, Xemnas thought, you Stevie Wonder braids-wearing Geordie LaForge wannabe.)
"So." Xaldin wondered, rising to the occasion; elbows on the table, fingers pressed against his nostrils. "What do we need to do to get coverage?"
He was covertly jiggling his leg on the leg of his chair.
"You're going to need to hire at least a thousand more employees." Tosen rambled, examining a clipboard that seemed irrelevant that he kept tilted toward him and away from them. "We recommend hiring agencies like the Guild of Calamitous Intent. You may also want to advertise around companies with a high turnover rate, like the Sinestro Corps and Cadmus Labs."
"Shinra Electric Power Company is also a good…pool…for candidates…" Aizen added conversationally. As a man, the nobodies winced, each in their own definitive way.
"Isn't that the company where the majority of the workforce have gone mad, insane, or have died?" Vexen inquired, after straining Aizen's words from Aizen's voice.
"Yeah…high turnover rates…"
"I see."
"That's about it." Tosen summarized, flipping the pages of his clipboard back to front. "Until we see more people on the payroll we can't allow you to enroll in our coverage program."
…Clone Accounts…
"Honestly; what was that?" Xemnas shrilled, waving his hands in the air theatrically. "I…drone on for…what seems like…eternity…so that your mind melts away…like Ang Lee's career…the pacing is like…the first Hulk movie…" He cupped his face in his hand, smoothing down the lines of his cheek, trying to breathe out of his compressed nostrils.
"Well, ordinarily with clone legions, you can afford a little laxity." Vexen offered. Xemnas regarded him over his hand.
"No clones." Xemnas spat. "No clones ever."
Vexen followed on Xemnas' heels doggedly, like a small terrier following an eighty-year-old man's car on a Sunday drive.
"Oh, come on." He pleaded, hands cupped together like Shirley Temple. "They're not that bad. Clone enough of them and eventually you can't tell them apart."
"They turn on you." Xemnas said darkly, glancing at him from the corner of one golden eye. "All clones turn on you. It's just their nature."
"That's preposterous. My clones have never turned on me." Vexen crossed his arms tightly against his chest.
"How would we know?" Xemnas countered. He peered at Vexen, sincerely suspiciously.
Vexen laughed at the scrutiny, and laughed at the supposition while he was at it.
"Because." He said musically, inspecting his fingernails. "Unlike some, I'm not daft enough to leave a weapon out for them when I enter my duplicator."
Xaldin coughed, readjusting his reading glasses. Xemnas twisted away from Vexen on his heel, pressing forward.
"With clones, the genetic material's the same." Vexen continued eagerly. "You get pretty good medical that way."
"The end result is a complete waste of time. Let's just collect the group and go home."
"How about trying a labor union? Or forming one, to get the benefits?" Xaldin inquired. He felt it was due time to join the conversation.
Xemnas shot him a look more cynical than the one he attempted to lower Vexen with.
"Unions are the business equivalent of a leech; they do nothing but suck the blood out of a corporation."
"Well, maybe we should try his hiring policy." Xaldin persisted, attempting reason. "We could get them insured through the guild and tell this stuffy ass bastard to shove it."
"Or we would, if the guild didn't have discrimination laws." Xemnas countered.
"Anti-discrimination laws?"
"Nope. Discrimination laws." He sighed, turning to Xaldin and giving him a look that suggested that yes, he wasn't a total idiot, and yes, he'd attempted this hiring procedure before. "Anyone dead is denied coverage. Apparently undead warriors have an edge or something over a living applicant."
Xemnas turned around meaningfully, and pivoted around again, shaking his fist.
"I'm still saying clones." Vexen submitted. Xemnas nearly chewed off his bottom lip in fury before lunging and throwing his fist in Vexen's direction.
"Enough with the clones! We're not giving your pals on Kamino any business!" He pounded his fist for emphasis and shook his head.
"Those FUCKING things? They CREEP me the HELL OUT!" He spun around furiously and took the hall at a breakneck pace.
Xaldin gave Vexen a commiserative pat on the shoulder. Vexen nodded, patting Xaldin's shoulder in turn in a mirror of the gesture. Xaldin's brow creased as Vexen started to drift down the hall after Xemnas, still patting Xaldin's shoulder.
"Better yet," He unaffixed his hand (there was truly no better way to describe the motion) from Xaldin's shoulder, cupping both hands around his mouth. "Xemnas; may a mention a friend? He can get a deal on a cyborg army."
Xemnas came to a sudden halt.
"Are. They." Xemnas held his breath, an eyeball twitching. "Clones?"
"Actually, no. Enhanced by confusing magi technical armor; yes. But otherwise cloned? Oh no. They're individuals."
Xemnas pointed down the hall to Xaldin.
"Does their insurance policy have anything against cyborg magicians?" He inquired at a yell.
"Not in print." Xaldin called back. He consulted his handbook of Las Noches policy, skimming the pages at a blur. He smiled, holding the book up.
"Better. They have a premium package for that kind of crap!"
Xemnas strode, boots clicking against the crystal floors.
"What are their rates?" He asked, breathless. Xaldin pushed his reading glasses back onto his nose smugly.
"Lower than the policy we were going for."
Xemnas not only ate the canary, but an entire bird sanctuary, considering his look. He clapped his hands together mirthfully.
"Excellent." He made a strange underhanded motion with his arm, giving the air the middle finger. "We'll stick it to that bespectacled bastard."
A man impassioned by thrift, Xemnas clenched both fists, and assumed a pose, a la Che Guevara.
"You call your friend and get me those party clowns, Vexen." He said, perhaps heroically.
Vexen cocked an eyebrow, and started to giggle nervously, the violence of the laughter rocking his waif-like frame and tousling his hair.
"Hehe…what?"
Xaldin leaned over his shoulder and breathed out.
"It was an ill-conceived joke." He murmured in sotto. "Just laugh, but don't laugh hard enough to encourage it."
Xemnas laughed merrily to himself, doing something that resembled the peppermint twist. He held the premium package page open with an index finger.
"Xaldin; attend to the others. Go find Axel first, please. They're not keeping any of my bagatelle."
Xaldin scratched nervously at the peach fuzz on his cheek.
"Uh…we're going to need that back." Xaldin told Gin, who smiled at him, and went back to pushing Axel's body across the floor with a long-handled broom.
"We were getting acquainted." Gin pouted. Axel's body, well acquainted with a broom, spun mutilated arm over mutilated arm.
Xaldin stood there, and counted down from one hundred. Gin had made it halfway across the room, possibly entering a world record for slowest sweeping accomplished by a physically fit undead.
"Oh, I see. Leaving so soon?" His egg-shaped faced fell upon Xaldin, to which Xaldin felt the urge to slice his skin off with an apple peeler.
"Aizen must have given you one of his speeches about an unnecessary staffing." Gin said, unnecessarily. It proved that the torture Aizen perpetrated had been committed on-purpose, at any rate.
Xaldin shrugged; and backed into the wall when he was given an unwanted dose of Gin invading his personal space.
"A key tactic you should always use in HR is limb-cutting. It lets them know where you stand." Gin used the long-handled broom to push Axel to Xaldin's feet.
Gin grinned his delightful grin, matching Axel's deceased, mutilated grin. Xaldin tried to push the vomit back down his throat, stooped to one trouser-covered knee to lift the body, perhaps as a shield.
"I'll…remember that." He told Gin. "Your face will probably come to mind."
…The Company's Motto Is Darkness Eternal…
The menagerie of sounds of laughter at various octaves assailed the ears of Xaldin, Xemnas, and Vexen, as well as the dead, somewhat still intact ears of Axel, who was in Vexen's arms.
Vexen was holding him like the stuffed gorilla won at the fair, a grin of achievement on his face.
"Oh, God, YES!" Xigbar screamed. He was standing at a lunge, hovering over four steps. "ALWAYS AT FIVE IN THE FUCKING--"
"Ahem." Xemnas coughed, albeit icily, suspecting that it was something regarding him. "We're leaving?"
Xigbar crumpled slowly, like a balloon deflating. Larxene tossed her cigarette down the stairs.
"Well," Xigbar threw out a hand to the blue-haired Las Noches employee that had been sitting with them. "We'll catch you later, Grimmjow."
"Yeah, yeah." The man fished for his car keys, ducked his head and put his hand out to Larxene. "Nice meeting you guys."
She took his hand, giving it a sportsmanly shake. He took Xigbar's hand, shook it, and rose.
His blue-limned eyes fell on Xemnas as he stood..
"Hey is that Ma…"
"Yeah, yeah." Larxene cut in quickly. "That's him.
The blue-haired Las Noches employee smiled, nodded several times to himself, and started to descend the stairs.
He continued nodding. Larxene and Xigbar held their breaths, although as to why it couldn't be ascertained.
He passed Saix at the base of the stairs, who was using his claymore to shovel dust into a small divot.
"He's a nice guy." Larxene stated reassuringly, although who she was reassuring wasn't exactly obvious to the other organization members.
"Yeah. A nice guy." Xigbar repeated.
"I'll bet he was." Vexen added, feeling abandoned by the wend of the conversation.
The blue-haired employee moved across the concourse, weaving through the orange tape. He came at last to his car.
The door opened with a dull snap. He adjusted his driver's side mirror, and got in.
"Haha! MANSEX! AHAHA!!" He pulled the door closed behind him.
There was a prevailing silence as the car's lights lit up, the car pulled out of its parking space, and drove off into the desert horizon.
Xigbar tried to whistle, but the cigarette had dried his mouth. Larxene placed her head in her lap, shaking it woefully.
Saix continued to tamp down dirt. Xaldin grimaced, jaw to the side like a typewriter.
A cool wind blew across the desert, scattering sand in fractals.
"…Did he just mouth what I think he mouthed?" Xemnas asked.
…You Left The Water Boiling…
There was macaroni all over the anteroom. It covered the bodies in a cold, translucent orange-yellow gel.
"Hunh. I thought we forgot something." Xemnas said.
…And They Went There, Again…
The room was stuffy, stuffy and dark. Thus it was meant to hold the subject for ten thousand years.
"Hwuh? Hunh? Hunh?" A light, offering escape from the sarcophagus, and eternal repose.
Escape offered a view of the most hideous and paper white of foul compositions of the human face.
"Omigod! Jackal people have captured mee!" Hollered the subject, pushing his hands and feet out violently. "Must escape! Must escape!"
The wretched face had a stick-thin arm, by which it gripped the subject, now squirming, by the waist.
"Hey, keep it down…" Moved the tiles in the wretched face's mouth, what some would consider teeth. It held the subject up for closer inspection. "Hey, what the Hell?"
"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!!" Screamed the subject, now apparently the doomed one. "Jaaaaaackaaaaal Peeeeeople!!"
"What is that fucking racket? I can't concentrate." A shadow fell across the floor beside the wretched face.
"This damned copier. It doesn't work." The shadow added, shaking the shadow of a cube. It came closer, demonic green eyes level with the upside-down face of the doomed one. It too was paper white, but it had a visible protrusion coming off its head that wasn't obscured by a kicking foot or a bit of cloak.
"Noooooo!! Saaaaataaaaan!!" The doomed one screamed.
"What?" The demonic one turned to the wretched face curiously. "What is he talking about?"
The wretched face shrugged. The doomed one, doomed, continued to scream and flail about like a fish.
"Listen, you racist little bastard--just because I am foreign does not automatically make me the Devil." Said the demonic one, raising a finger angrily.
He turned once more to the wretched face.
"We should do you bodily harm."
"Jaaaaaaaaackaaaaal!!" The doomed one wailed.
"Eh. Yep." Agreed the wretched face, face well and thankfully out of view. The wretched face loosed his grip on the doomed one, rolled his shoulders.
"Alrighty. Time to kick your…"A familiar cough cut him off.
"Ahem." The wretched face and the demonic one turned aside, introducing to this theatre of horror the esoteric blond one, who was at the moment a bit apologetic.
"Sorry." He told them, pointing to the doomed one. "We left that here."
He revolved a wrist, blinking furiously, did the esoteric blond one.
"It's…experimental technology."
"It fucken yelled in my face." Spoke the wretched one, determined to exact retribution from the doomed one.
"It's not smart enough to kill. You don't want to kill it." Explained the esoteric blond one. "Because…It watches marathons of Stargate."
"I dunno." The wretched face begged to differ, thought the wretched face did not announce so that openly. "That Samantha Carter is hot."
The esoteric blond one looked upon the wretched face and thus challenged this disputed upside with a dismissive laugh.
"Whatever floats your boat, weirdo." The esoteric blond one said to the wretched face, binding his ka to his lowly argument.
"And you forgot to mention; their theme song kicks ass." The wretched face continued, employing strategies gained from water cooler conversation that the esoteric blond one would have found esoteric.
"Yeah." The demonic one allied himself with the wretched face after considerably long neutrality. "It did kind of begin to suck though." He promptly equivocated.
"Oh, it did." Said the esoteric blond one, motioning to the doomed one, who was now redeemed. "It began to suck mightily."
The doomed one fled as the redeemed one, through a portal that the esoteric blond one had made.
"Like a tunnel through inter-dimensional space." Ulquiorra agreed with a painful nod.
"I'd take offense, but it really sort of did." Nnoitra admitted, also striving to look pained, against the naturally pained look on his face.
"Who are we talking to, again?" He added, noting the air that filled the hall that went unoccupied.
"I don't know, for he left." Ulquiorra shrugged, casting a look of hatred on the hyogoku in his hands.
"Heh." Nnoitra placed his hand inside his jacket, looking down impishly at his comrade. "Ulquiorra."
"Yes?"
"Look what I stole off of Yammy's desk."
He removed his hand from his jacket, holding in plain sight a machine of clear blue plastic and chromed steel. There was a ribbed rubber base to it.
Nnoitra snapped it together twice.
"Oh, that's terrible." Ulquiorra drawled out his words sarcastically. "You should give it back."
"Eh. Fuck him." Nnoitra shrugged. "Let's go burn it."
Nnoitra proceeded down the hall. He barely managed three paces before Ulquiorra placed his hand on his arm, catching him.
"Grimmjow wants us and Szayel to go over to his house. Apparently he has a plan or something."
"Plan?" This was the first Nnoitra heard of it. He tossed his head at Ulquiorra, expression quizzical.
Ulquiorra shrugged, uncertain.
"I don't know. He says it is very 'kickass'." He shrugged again. "Since Grimmjow is kickass, we must assume his plan is pretty kickass, too, and doesn't have any loopholes we never considered, ever."
"That sounds about right." Nnoitra responded. He laughed then, low and stuttering.
"Loopholes. Hehe."
End Chapter Four