Number two - i hope it's not poo!

Phoe
xxxxx

Chapter 4

The next couple of days were pretty boring for the new start, getting shown the equipment and thanking his stars that he'd always had an affinity with machines or else he'd be lost when he was supposed to be a trained tech. He was shown how to manipulate the cameras as well as contact the various heads of staff and what he had to report on and what he had to make note on. The place seemed like a fairly efficient machine and he did little more than watch people walk along corridors and leave and enter rooms. Some rooms were without CCTV but all public areas including the entire grounds were under surveillance. It did mean there were lots of feeds to keep track of and Ichigo just shadowed Deroy for the first day, the younger man being very enthusiastic and keen to teach him the ropes and be overly helpful. He ran about fetching Ichigo refreshments, offering him chair to raise his bad leg and fetching his crutches when he needed them. It was sweet to start with but it didn't take Ichigo long before he knew exactly what he was doing and would kind of like to just get on with it. The kid did talk about the company and some of the other guys, giving Ichigo an insight into the characters around him.

"You've got to watch out for Zommari and Yammy, they're the two that will hurt you just for a laugh. Yammy is kind of like the pimp around here and if you want a girl he's the one you need to go through but he's also total douche about it."

"What's he done? Did he go for you?"

Deroy shook his head violently, looking down at his shoes. "No, there was a cute girl I was just talking to, she was really sweet but Yammy wouldn't let me see her any more, Grimmjow didn't want me to actually tag her and Yammy just started to taunt me with her, Grimmjow had to step in eventually but I've still never seen her again."

Ichigo didn't know what to say but he filed the little titbit about Grimmjow away, he was protective about his employees. The tenth senior officer seemed worse and worse with every bit of information he heard about him.

"Not everyone is like that, you never see him but Starrk is pretty cool, he's like an uncle to all us low level peeps, keeping an eye on us even though we're not his, he's one of the ones Grimmjow would trust us with if he had to go away for a bit. And Tier is alright, she's number three and a bit of a hard ass but she's fair and stopped Zommari sinking his hooks into Tesla, he's with Nnoitra's group, really nice guy. And there's Szayel, you've obviously met him, Nnoitra will tease you but he's not cruel. Have you met Ulquiorra yet? Scariest one here, honestly."

Ichigo was concentrating on a large black skinned man who was hovering at the edge of one of the feeds and had been standing there for a little longer than someone should. He called it his spidey sense but his cop instincts were tingling telling him this guy was up to no good and it meant he wasn't really listening to his younger colleague. "Deroy, who's this guy? Does he have any reason to be hanging round Septima's area?"

Deroy got up from his seat on the far side of the screens and stood at Ichigo's elbow, following his finger to the man he was talking about. "That's Charlotte, he's one of Barrigan's. And no, not as far as I know." Deroy walked over to the records folder, pulling the furthest right one out and bringing it back over to Ichigo, flicking through to the end and placing it on the arm of the comfy chair, running his finger down one of the sheets. "Grimmjow wants to get us Ipads to do the notes but until the big boss okays it we're still stuck filing them. Last week at the same time Charlotte was there, he met up with Dordoni, he's one of Aizen's lowest, not affiliated with one of the ten divisions. He usually just works the streets. Why is one of Barrigan's group meeting him in a corridor?"

Ichigo was watching the man at the corner of the screen, seeing him suddenly move until only his shoulder was in view. His arm moved onto screen occasionally, gesturing like he was talking to someone and Ichigo watched the other side of the screen, sitting a bit straighter as a second hand came into the picture, this one had a paler skin than Charlotte's, still not white though. "What does Dordoni look like De? Is he Spanish descent?"

"Mexican or something like that I think, maybe further south. He's an asshole, I've never really spoken to him."

"He's there, can't see him yet, where is the next cameras down both ways?" Ichigo watched Deroy flick the console so that the two screens either side of the one they were watching had the same corridor. The one on the left had a pair of shoes in its upper left corner, the feet shuffling around. "Who took that note? Is there any other days when they have been seen? Is there any info about where they go after?"

"Shawlong took the note, can't see anything on the other days but someone else might not have noticed, Shaw is a bit thorough. He's noted that Charlotte left the compound after, not stopping anywhere and Dordoni left as well but as a different door, taking a different road. He noted it as suspicious but not high enough to bother Grimmjow with, do you think we need to bother him with it?"

"Bother me with what?" Grimmjow had walked in the room when they'd been scrutinising the paperwork.

"Hey boss, Shiro's noticed something a bit suspicious." Deroy made room for the boss next to the injured man, Ichigo starting to stand up until Grimmjow put a hand on his shoulder.

"Stay in your damn seat and show me." Ichigo looked back at the screens to see the three they were watching now empty of people.

"De, where have they gone?" Ichigo shifted his leg down and perched at the edge of the screen, his keen eyes looking out for the two individuals. "Is that Dordoni?" Ichigo pointed at a man with black hair and a moustache and small beard, it might be wrong to stereotype people but he looked like the man Deroy had been talking about.

"Yep, that's him boss. He's heading back the door he left by last week. Shiro, flick to 197, that's where Charlotte went last time."

Ichigo grabbed the control, flicking one of the screens to the designated camera and sure enough, the large framed man with long black hair was just leaving through a door. "Well, officially a pattern, too close to be a coincidence."

"Right Cagney and Lacey, what the hell is going on?" Grimmjow was finding it a bit amusing how excited the other two were but he'd spotted the pair his team were watching and those two were not good news together.

"Shiro spotted Charlotte hanging about near Zommari's base and we looked it up, he was there last week as well, meeting up with Dordoni, and then he spotted someone else off screen with him, we traced them to the exact same exit points as last week as well. We think it's a bit suspicious."

Grimmjow looked over at the undercover cop flicking through the log book, stopping every now and again as he traced his finger through the hand written notes. "There is note of Charlotte meeting up with Dordoni three weeks ago by Illfort I think, they weren't in this corridor but it might have been a precursor to these meetings."

"And what made you think something was up in the first place?" Grimmjow was a little impressed he'd noticed something while still learning the ropes but he realised it was the cop's standard setting to assume the worst, especially in a place like this where the whole thing is illegal.

"My spidey senses were tingling, it seemed a bit odd for someone from second to be hanging around seventh."

"You're spidey senses?" Grimmjow chuckled, glad the guy hadn't called them his cop senses.

"Yeah, one of my friends always called them that when I took giant leaps of faith and came up trumps. What are we going to do about this?"

"Nothing, we'll wait till next week and see if they do it again, maybe set a little close range surveillance in place before hand, I'd like to see if anything is exchanging hands."

Ichigo blanched at doing nothing about it for a week and when he relinquished the chair to Grimmjow for his shift, Ichigo didn't go far, sitting himself on the floor at the filing shelves so he could access the logs without moving. Deroy got him a coffee, black no sugar while he worked and fetched him a note pad before he left for the day. Ichigo sat and tracked both men's movements over the last few weeks, reading through endless notes of very boring nothings, finding out that Nnoitra had a little visit from his blond friend three times a week and that the mysterious Ulquiorra rarely left his room where there was no surveillance at all. All Ichigo knew about the fifth officer was that he was head of IT and Grimmjow hated that they had to work so close together, not getting along with the other senior officer at all. Deroy had mentioned Ulquiorra a couple of times and each one stating his dislike but Ichigo wondered if he was just parroting his boss a bit. Ichigo hadn't heard anything tangible except the man was exceedingly good at his job and that didn't seem to be a reason to hate him, unless he was catching them being not so good at theirs.

In three hours Ichigo managed to trace several more incidents involving the two suspects and was about to present it to Grimmjow when he realised that this wasn't his main focus, he shouldn't give a damn that someone was screwing about, he should be concentrating on Aizen and his comings and goings. It was the cop in him that couldn't back down from this issue and he'd got in trouble for it back at the station a couple of times. It had proved valuable more than once however when Ichigo's hunches had come up.

Ikkaku trusted his word above even Byakuya's and that caused issue as well. The pair of them went against their boss often, Ikkaku not willing to even consider the possibility that Ichigo was taking things too far. Ichigo wondered what his friend would think of his current predicament including his injuries. The bald man would probably bust his way in if he knew Ichigo had been basically getting tortured and they'd have tried to fight their way out again, probably being successful. Ichigo sniggered at the thought of the two of them against the world, it would make a great cartoon.

He ran his hands through his spiky hair, wincing at the unwashed feel of it. He hadn't been for a shower since he left his own apartment four days ago and after two days of hell he was decidedly grimy. The trip in the dead pool had washed off a lot off the sweat and blood but he doubted the water was particularly clean and just the thought of the pool made his skin crawl. He rubbed at his bare arms as he remembered the feeling of nothingness overtake him, the inescapable blankness that his drugged system couldn't fight. They'd injected him with something before dumping him in the pool, Ichigo running through a few songs in his head, hearing them only through the vibrations in his bones as he sang. Then he went around his body, tensing and releasing muscles just to have some sensation but as the drug worked its way into him, he lost more and more control over himself. His skin began to tingle after what felt like hours, like things were crawling on him and he didn't know if it was the drug, if there actually was something on him or if it was the effect of the deadening and he couldn't move to find out. All he could do was float, spread out on his back until they came and got him. He had curled into a ball when they took him out, running his hands over himself to just feel, his body screaming with the sensations.

Hands on his body jerked him back to the present, his head jerking up to see Grimmjow kneeling over him. Grimmjow grabbed his arms and held his wrists away from his arms as he looked down, a scowl over his face. Ichigo looked down at his hands for a second, seeing his fingernails tinted red which made him look at his arms. The exposed skin had been rubbed until the capillaries wept, little red spots all over his upper arms dribbling fine lines of blood. Grimmjow just shuffled him round, pulling him onto his knee, being careful of Ichigo's splint before just holding him, uncaring that one of the bleeding arms was pressing against his white shirt, he had plenty of them.

"I've got you, you're out of the pool and in my arms. Can you feel me?" Grimmjow felt the other man nod, making Grimmjow hold him a little tighter. "You have to call for me if you feel like this, you need grounding, reminding you're not there and that you can feel. Remember, I'm your teddy bear alright?" Ichigo chuckled in his grip, the long fingers grasping his white shirt.

"What am I though?" Ichigo pushed himself up, he had wanted to ask over the last two days since they'd been intimate on the sofa but hadn't wanted to seem like the chick.

"You're my sexy Spiderman." Grimmjow laughed out loud at the look on the other's face, grabbing Ichigo's hands before he could hit back in retaliation. "Anyway, you've been busy, did you find anything interesting?" Grimmjow lifted the smaller man up, guiding his injured leg gently so he was sitting between Grimmjow's spread legs, the notes on the floor between them. Ichigo reached down and lifted the pad up.

"Well, I think they get together three times a week, at different points, but the same points on the same days. Whoever Shawlong is, he deserves a raise. He's noticed all the little just off camera meetings and that makes me think someone in your department is involved as well. So the other teams know where your blackout points are? Or have they just managed to work it out."

Grimmjow frowned as he scanned down the dates and times, noticing other people with descriptions of clothing and skin colour, never a face but Ichigo wouldn't be able to name them anyway. "So we're looking at about four people involved, you've got two names and they're all around Zommari's area? Well that points to drugs, it's the only thing down there worth anything, I just wonder why Charlotte is involved, wonder if Barragan isn't paying enough. Oh and handily enough there is a scheduled meeting tomorrow, sounds good, I think I might pay them a personal visit, see what they're up to. You can get some popcorn if you want to watch. Anyway, you'll get to meet Shawlong in about five minutes, he's due for night shift this week and I'm sure he'd love to hear you recommend a raise."

Grimmjow was correct, the other man arriving for his shift punctually and entering the room after a polite knock. He was older than Grimmjow and about two inches taller but he didn't have Grimmjow's broad shoulders and muscular looking body. He looked down at his boss with the orange haired man between his legs and didn't say anything, even his face didn't give away what he was thinking.

"Evening Shaw, this is Kaito Shirosaki, or just Shiro. Shiro, this is Shawlong, the one you so admire." Grimmjow grinned as Ichigo elbowed him in the gut. Grimmjow pushed himself to his feet before reaching down and lifting Ichigo onto his good foot from under his arms. Ichigo blushed at the treatment and looked at the floor as he held onto the shelves as Grimmjow went to fetch his crutches.

Shawlong approached him and held his slim hand out for him to shake. "I am pleased to meet you Shiro, I have heard good things about you, some of which I wish I hadn't. I heard about your initiation. If I can assist you in any way as you recover then please do not hesitate to ask."

Ichigo took the offered hand and looked up at the taller man, giving him a small smile. "Thank you Shawlong, I'm alright though. I have had worse."

Grimmjow remembered looking at the man in the police station as he sat bare chested with the IT tech fiddling with him for the tracking bead. The young man had four rather large scars decorating his upper body, one on each shoulder, one in the centre of his chest and one right through the centre of his six pack abdomen. They told a story of a harsh life and were probably the reason he was such a hard ass when it came to pain. All four were silver now and with the man being twenty seven it meant he got them when he was a lot younger, probably in his teens. He would have to ask the younger man his story; maybe he'd tell his own, the long scar going down his front, just to the left of centre from his collar bone to his hip.

"Shiro here has spotted a suspicious pattern, something you noticed as well I think from reading the logs. Charlotte, Dordoni and at least two others meeting up around septima's area."

"Yes sir, I have been keeping an eye on it but have been unable to track intent or any concrete wrong doing. Are you prepared to take steps sir?"

"I am, we have tracked the pattern and they will be meeting tomorrow as well, I think a little visit from Five and Six might be in order."

"You're going to let Nnoitra play as well?"

"Well it would be rude not to, I don't want to be accused of crossing any lines, it is his job to keep the peace around here."

"Yes, and how ironic that is. Well sir I think our new companion needs to get that leg raised, he is shaking just standing there. Shiro do you require assistance back to your rooms?"

Grimmjow looked back at the cop, seeing the fine tremble in his good leg as he stood supported on the two crutches. "Shit Shiro why didn't you say anything? Come on." Grimmjow went over to the man but Ichigo shrugged off his help and moved himself on his own power, his face set to keep any trace of difficulty off it. He gave a brief but polite good night farewell to the tallest man before leaving ahead of Grimmjow. "He is such a stubborn fool, Szayel knew he'd over do it."

"Well perhaps your own stubborn nature would come in handy sir. It is not my place to say sir, but with Illfort trading places with Rage, do you think it a good idea to be pursuing a new interest? Especially one that will be unable to defend itself against one of our more aggressive colleagues?"

"You'd be surprised at what that guy is able to do, even with a fucked leg, and Rage won't hurt him, I'm sure of that."

Ichigo made his way to his own rooms, a bit pissed for some reason and very tired, he just wanted to be alone for a while and he hoped Grimmjow would take the hint when he wasn't in the bigger man's rooms. He'd been given a much smaller suite to his boss as expected but it was clean and held all the amenities he'd need, his own toilet and shower along with a large room with a double bed and small sofa with a TV to one side of it. Grimmjow had separate rooms for his bedroom and living space but he was a senior officer. For a low level such as himself, to even have his own room was a bonus he hadn't expected.

He went straight to the bed, dumping the crutches on the bottom before sitting, holding his bad leg so he could just roll back, lowering his leg onto the three pillows already in place at the bottom of his side. His knee was fucking killing him but he had to suck it up, he couldn't let on to anyone that he was too injured to continue his assignment, not even Grimmjow. He didn't want babied by the man.

He was a bit confused about his relationship with the older man, if it even was a relationship. He was attracted to him, liked him as a person and definitely enjoyed his company even when they just sat or lay together. In fact when they had been sitting in the office, him cradled between Grimmjow's powerful thighs, it had felt good and the man hadn't been ashamed to hold him like that in front of his other workers, Shawlong not even batting an eyelid at their position.

Ichigo bit back a groan as he heard his door open, clearly the man didn't take the hint and had followed him to his rooms.

He pushed himself up and turned towards the door, his congenial attitude snapping to his usual scowl at the stranger in his room. He took in the appearance, making some quick judgements of the man's strengths, knowing immediately who it was, even if he'd never met the man he'd seen him several times on the screens now.

"I am disappointed; you have a reputation that is clearly exaggerated. You are actually quite little aren't you?" The tall black haired man laughed out loud as he went over Ichigo's frame as he stood up, one crutch clutched in his hand. The other had clattered to the floor on the other side of the bed, he would have to put up with just one.

"All reputations are exaggerated. Can I ask why you are in my room? I don't believe we've met."

"We may not have met boy, but you know fine well who I am. You've been twittering poison into your idiot boss's ear and my name has been involved. Just be glad I came here alone, you'd be dead by now. I just wanted to meet the great and powerful Shiro who had so destroyed all those tests that broke us. How did you do it eh? What did you take before that helped you through?"

Drugs, how many things came back to drugs in this shitty place. "Like I need help to beat those tests. Now get the hell out of room before my idiot boss comes and kicks you out."

"Oh don't worry, he'll not be here for a while; a little distraction might have come up on the screens keeping him in the office for at least ten minutes. What a shame, no knight in white armour for you."

"Oh you thought I wanted him for me? No, it was for you."

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