AN: Can't really say I'm that proud of this chapter. Its short and mainly consists of background info, which is important but a bore to write. The only part of it that I do really like is the flashblack which, along with all the other flahbacks, becomes more understandable in chapter 9. Chapter 7 "What?" Grimmjow asked, keeping his slight amount of confusion out his voice. "Espada," the manager rasped out weakly. "What the hell is an Espada?" "Not what, who. Who is the Espada? They're Souske Aizen's top ten." Souske Aizen. Aizen. Aizen. He knew that name…he'd heard it before. The image of the letter flashed through his mind. Aizen…that was the man who had sent the letters to Nel. The one who'd been asking for her to come back. The one who had messed up her life. And the one who had taken her away from him. So did this mean…was Nel… an Espada? Grimmjow pulled the man even closer, glaring down into his eyes. "His top ten?" he barked. "Explain." "I-I don't know much m-man-" "Then tell me what you do know." For a moment the manager was quiet, trying unsuccessfully to break his gaze off from Grimmjow's. When he realized he couldn't, he whimpered slightly before speaking. "All…all I know is that Aizen's collected a bunch of people to do his bidding for him and he chose the best ten to be his Espada. They're ranked from weakest to strongest starting at ten." Grimmjow tumbled that thought around in his mind. "So she was the third most important, huh? It shows their rank?" The manager nodded weakly, face beginning to turn blue from lack of oxygen. For a moment, Grimmjow dully considered just letting the man pass out, but in the end he let him go at the last moment from some sense of pity. "Tch," he let out, dropping the man to the ground, listening to his deep breaths of air. "Pathetic." Walking out of the room, he shut the door behind him, acting as if everything was normal. He had things to do, people to learn about. That person in question being the one, Souske Aizen. The moment he got home, he was on the computer again, this time knowing exactly what he was searching for. Aizen. He got on Google, simply typing that one name into the search box and coming up with over 300 articles involving the man. He clicked on the first, opening to a man with brown hair, brown eyes, a charming smile, an expensive suit, and an overwhelming aura that commanded power. The article was titled, "Hueco Mundo Expands across the Globe" and had the picture of the man he assumed to be Aizen cutting the ribbon of the newest Hueco Mundo Corporations building. Mainly it talked about how they were opening up new buildings in all the fast rising economic powers in the world like India and Russia. They went on to talk about how much profit the new sites would bring to the company, but never exactly what kind of services the company provides. The second article was about how Hueco Mundo was wiping all these other companies off the map with various lawsuits. Apparently, all the companies were wronging Hueco Mundo in one way or another and got sued horribly. And still no mention of what exactly Hueco Mundo was bringing in their main money for. He went back to the search page skipping from page 1 to 37 at which the articles became increasingly more interesting. Despite the nice clean front the company put up, it appears that they weren't as innocent as everyone believes. Every company has a scandal at some point or another, but they were under too many suspicions for it just to be a coincidence. The thing was, they were so influential in the business world that no one really had, nor were brave enough to take the risk of bringing the company to court for anything. From what Grimmjow could tell, Hueco Mundo was under major suspicion of having some more underground criminal ways of bringing in their money to fund all their projects. The more radical articles claimed that Aizen was some kind of drug lord who was hiring hit men to take out anyone who got in his way, while all the others just stated that their was a connection between Aizen and criminal activity, but due to lack of evidence, it had all been settled outside of court. Bottom line: Aizen was up to something serious and he had the connections to be sure that no one could take him down. To even try and mess with him was an incredibly rash and irresponsible idea. Well, no one ever said Grimmjow wasn't either of those. After hi initial searches of both Souske Aizen and Hueco Mundo Corps., he tried what had really been bothering him since he'd had the term reach his ears. The one thing he believed he wouldn't be able to find anything about was the one that concerned him the most. So he clicked search after typing in one six letter word: Espada. His general search came up with a bunch of crap. Nothing that was coming up had any sort of correlation with Aizen or anything even seemingly illegal. Everything was both innocent and irrelevant. By the time he'd found an article that was of some use to him, his eyes were burning, mouth dry, and he was in desperate need of taking a leak. And yet he was too far gone to care. He'd found it; he'd found the overlap. The article was about the first building Hueco Mundo had ever set up; a hospital type building that presumably had most of its floors located blow the main building. The fact that Nel had been, and possibly is once more, an Espada, along with the idea that this was some sort of hospital, made him nearly positive that this is where she must have fled to after her fake death. He figures this place must have been something of an Espada headquarters, seeing how difficult it was to find any sort of information on it and that their were presumably underground floors. So now, all he'd have to do was find its address, which shouldn't be difficult with the help of Google Maps and Yellowbook. Green. It had become the end of him. It was the worst color. It was his favorite color. And he kept waling into it everywhere he went. He wanted to get away, he had to. And in the end, all he did was walk deeper into it. The trees in the park, the grass, and even the lamp posts were that atrocious color. They taunted him; they tortured him. And he couldn't get enough. So he sat there for over an hour, brooding, not even getting up to leave when it began to rain lightly. Not like it mattered anyways. He could withstand it. What he couldn't stand was how he kept running into her. "If you stay out here with nothing to protect you from the rain, you'll surely catch a cold." Speak of the devil. He'd know that voice; it's childishly soft and high pitched tone contrasting dangerously with her obscenely obvious womanesque figure. His only hope was that she hadn't seen that painting and if she had, that she wasn't able to tell what it was. He growled, under the false hope that if he simply ignored her, she'd go away. It didn't work. Instead of leaving as he had so wished she would, she took a seat next to him on the bench, shifting the umbrella in her hands so that it somewhat covered the both of them from the rain. She sat silently next to him, staring straight ahead, much unlike her persona in their first encounter where she could not understand the meaning of the words 'shut up'. He wasn't sure which was worse: her talking so much he couldn't think or her being so quiet that his mind was left to wander to places that he'd rather it not be. "Grimmjow Jaggerjaques," she said softly, her words nearly washed out by the rain. "That's your name, correct?" Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. The new mantra of his life. Ignore. That's all he had to do. "I saw it," she spoke her voice, just as soft as moments before. He could feel her eyes boring into him, piercing through his entire being. Vaguely he wondered if by it she meant the painting, which was an idea he immediately pushed out of his head. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. "That's how I found out who you were. Because I saw that painting in the exhibit." "I don't know what the hell you're talking about." There it went. He talked. He spoke. He couldn't ignore it. He couldn't ignore her. There was a moment of silence, before she just had to break it. "Possibly so, but I find that very unlikely. I said your name was Grimmjow and you failed to deny that fact. I was already aware of the fact that you were a painter and soon after meeting you I saw a painting that bore an uncanny resemblance to me. A mass of green and a splash of pink. I liked it." He let out an annoyed growl prepared to go anywhere that she wasn't, when she said something that stopped him. It wasn't anything that was specifically substantial and it was already blatantly obvious after her last set of comments…but for some reason, it stopped him. "Contraire to the unfortunance of our first encounter," she had said, "I am not stupid." He snorted, not saying anything and this time she didn't break the new silence that they created. I t was peaceful, calm, serene. They must have sat there for hours, not saying anything to each other. The rain had came and gone and it wasn't until the sun had began to set that he felt her make a move to leave. She made to walk away before turning back to face him, a light air of amusement dashed across her face. "You do realize the main reason I knew about all this was because when I was at the exhibit, you were there too, refusing to sell the painting to anyone for any amount of cash. But if it makes you feel better, I understand your reasoning. The work was too magnificent for what any of them had planned for it. But next time, if you're going to use me as your inspiration, I'd prefer if you'd ask me beforehand." He snorted once more, still refusing to acknowledge that she had anything to do with the painting. "You're crazy woman." Her brows furrowed before her face settled into a more mischievous smirk. "Most likely so."
AN: I feel like I'm writing a prequel and the sequel all in the same story at the same time, but I guess I need it because it keeps me interested and brings in some Gimmjow/Nel romance...kinda. More importantly though, I've just finished writing the part of the story where Grimmy and Nel finally meet up (which isn't happening for another...at least 5, maybe 8 or 9 chapters). I'm so proud of myself.
