Hammering Down the Nails
"Harribel, Grimmjow, Ulquiorra. Would the three of you please stay behind and talk with me for just a little longer?"
Ichimaru Gin stifled a chuckle as the three Espada turned, their faces barely hiding their dread. They sat obediently, putting themselves down in the same seats they had occupied only a few seconds ago. He found it amusing that they took their previous positions without hesitation; even if the three of them were trying to stab Aizen in the back, they still feared him. They still didn't want to draw any attention to themselves.
Even though they were cornered.
Gin's fist held fast on the handle of Shinsou, the wakizashi hidden up his sleeve. He had a hunch that Aizen was going to call Harribel and her boys out during this meeting. He'd guessed right. He wanted to be prepared if they tried to attack before Aizen finished dealing with them, so he'd hidden his zanpakuto in case he needed to strike quickly. The three Espada were dangerously talented with their own blades, but experience had shown him that even the best of swordsmen had trouble defending against an attack that came out of nowhere.
Aizen sat in silence, his chin resting on his palm. Gin was standing behind him, but he didn't need to see his fellow Shinigami's face to know the expression he was wearing. He knew it was a calm and deliberate smile. It was because of Aizen that Gin had decided to make his own grin permanent. As a child, when he had seen Aizen Sousuke for the first time, Gin had found himself both terrified and reassured at the man's smile. He'd quickly realized that a continuous grin could make people assume that he was a friendly man, even when they should have known better.
And when they did know better, it made them fear him even more.
Gin stretched his cold smile a little further as Aizen maintained his silence and the Espada oh-so-subtly squirmed in their seats. He was more than happy to let Aizen drag this out for as long as possible. He'd seen his captain silently suffocate numerous minds throughout his tenure, and it was by far his favorite of Aizen's psych-tricks.
And after dealing with these three crawling under his feet for the past two years, Gin was more than ready to watch them squirm in their last few minutes.
Grimmjow suddenly bolted up, his chair clattering across the floor behind him.
"What the fuck," he growled, pulling his zanpakuto out and pointing it across the table at the two of them. Gin tightened his grip on Shinsou, but Aizen didn't even move at the outburst. Gin knew it would be better to wait until Aizen at least looked uncomfortable before he retaliated. He relaxed slightly.
"Is everything alright, Grimmjow?" Aizen asked calmly.
"Fuck no," Grimmjow bellowed. "Nothin' is fuckin' alright! You've been watchin' the three of us for fuck knows how long now and I'm gettin' fuckin' sick of it."
Aizen sat silently, his brown eyes slowly watching Grimmjow growling. Gin's eyes flicked around the room in their slits, swiftly darting at each Espada. He couldn't assume that Grimmjow would be the one to attack – if the other two were as clever as he supposed, either of them could leap forward and attack while Grimmjow menaced Aizen.
Aizen maintained his stillness. He was watching Grimmjow's every move with mild amusement playing on his face. The blue-haired Arrancar snarled silently as the man who he was threatening all but ignored him.
"Fine," Grimmjow hissed again, sliding Pantera back into its sheath. He held out his arms, leaving his chest open for attack. His snarl had twisted into a grimace, displaying how uncomfortable this vulnerability was making him. The other two watched this outburst silently – Ulquiorra with indifference, Harribel looking unimpressed.
Gin's smile fell.
"You don't fuckin' trust us, huh?" Grimmjow continued, arms still outstretched. "Is that it? You wanna sit there and give us the silent treatment 'til one of us fuckin' cracks, is that it? Well I tell you what, Aizen – why don't you take your head out of your ass and take a fuckin' look around for once? We've been your puppets for two fuckin' years, doin' every fuckin' bullshit assignment you've handed out. Why don't you just send one of us on this little assassination, huh? You don't fuckin' trust me? I'll kill the Shinigami. I'll fuckin' kill Soi Fon. Is that what you want? Huh? Send me out there right fuckin' now or go the fuck back to Soul Society."
Gin frowned as Grimmjow tore another seat out from under the table and sat down, his arms defiantly folded over his chest. The entire atmosphere of the room had changed. The simple fact that Aizen hadn't killed Grimmjow already had given the traitorous trio a boost of confidence. They had stopped squirming.
"I appreciate your offer, Grimmjow," Aizen said smoothly, standing. "But I would prefer to see how Szayel-Aporro fares in his mission. The three of you may go now."
They sat silently for a moment, only Grimmjow's eyes showing shock, before they stood and made for the exit. The door opened and Gin could see Starrk outside, his eyes watching his three companions pass him by before sliding over at him as the door closed. Aizen turned and walked down an adjacent hallway toward his own chambers. Gin followed, his mouth curved into a deep frown.
That was a bluff, he thought to himself as he walked behind his captain. Grimmjow had to be bluffing. Why did Aizen just let them go? He had them under his heel. He doesn't need them at all. He could have crushed them.
"You are displeased with me," Aizen said as they entered his chambers, strolling over toward the window. He turned his head, half of his face glowing in the moonlight. "Are you not, Gin?"
Gin studied his face for a moment, before donning his grin once more.
"What would make ya say that, Captain Aizen?"
"You're thinking I should have taken Grimmjow up on that ludicrous offer of his?"
"I ain't sayin' that at all."
"Then you're thinking I should have killed the three of them," he said, turning to face Gin completely. It was not a question. "You're thinking that I should be worried about them."
Gin stayed silent and kept as much distance from Aizen as he could. His smile fell again. He tightened his grip on Shinsou, still hidden in his sleeve.
"I thought so," Aizen said, turning back to the desert outside his window. "I can't expect you to understand me, Gin. But it's understandable that someone of your level would fear the possibility of a mutiny," he looked over his shoulder, brown iris cold and calm. "But I do not."
Gin bit back a reply, his molars grinding against each other in his mouth. Aizen's gaze remained on him.
"You're scary as ever, Captain Aizen," Gin said lightly. He let Shinsou drop out of his sleeve and he caught it and held it in his hand so that Aizen could see it. He turned and walked out the door, grinning at Aizen over his shoulder. "Scary as ever."
Lilynette shivered as she sat down on a bench, the dilapidated planks wet on the backs of her legs. The thunderstorms had finally moved on after pummeling Osh all night, but the air still held a drizzly mist. It coldly clung to any skin that was exposed. She folded her arms over her body and leaned back and watched Shuuhei argue with the man behind the dingy ticket window. He was too far away for her to hear what he was saying, but his arms kept flipping up at the elbows to punctuate every few words. They had missed the train that Neliel was on yesterday and Shuuhei was trying to figure out how to catch up with them. From the look of things, it wasn't going to be easy.
Lilynette sighed and turned her head away, looking east through the fog that trailed the retreating storms.
She felt bad for Shuuhei, because of how she was treating him. She knew that she was acting like a complete brat and he didn't deserve that. It wasn't even his fault. In fact, he was doing everything he could to cheer her up and stay on her good side, even though he had absolutely no idea what was bothering her so much. It almost broke her heart to watch him try.
When Harribel had come and told her to change course and rendezvous with Neliel, it had ruined everything that Lilynette had worked for since she'd aligned herself with the Terceira behind Starrk's back. She knew that, for some odd reason, Starrk felt like he owed Aizen a tremendous debt. She doubted that her other half would betray him without a good reason and Lilynette had yet to find one that would work. Starrk was kind of unmovable like that.
Lilynette had wanted to rendezvous with Harribel in New Delhi and then try to convince Starrk to join them in attacking Aizen. She figured that if he was ever going to betray that man, she would have to make it out to be an us-or-them scenario. She could at least pose an argument to him and hope that he would think about it. She knew that the odds were still slim that her plan would work, but it was better than meeting him on the battlefield and hoping he would turn traitor in a heartbeat. She knew him better than that. She could toss that wish right in the trash where it belonged.
Unfortunately, it now looked like she was going to have to rely completely on that absurd hope.
And to add to her anxiety about having to confront Starrk in the most inopportune way possible, Shuuhei was multiplying her guilt with every passing second. He reminded her too much of Starrk. Hell, the reason she fell in love with him in the first place was because he reminded her so much of Starrk. They were both cool-headed, intelligent, handsome; brooding in just the right ways and funny only behind closed doors.
She'd once read that little girls fall in love with their daddies. Well, Starrk was the closest thing she'd ever had to a daddy and now Shuuhei was the closest thing she has to Starrk. Watching him made her remember and it was really starting to tear her up inside.
Shuuhei stalked away from the ticket window and passed without looking at her. She sighed and stood, following him off the concrete platform and into the parking lot. They hadn't really spoken to each other in the past few days, and she could tell that he was especially pissed at her today. She was trying to keep her head down and stay quiet, but it seemed that every time she opened her mouth they got into an argument.
As she followed him through the misty morning, she realized why Shuuhei had left the platform. He was looking inside the window of each car in the lot while checking door handles to see if they were unlocked.
"What are you doing?" she asked, knowing the answer already and hating the way the question sounded in her mouth.
"The next train east isn't for another week," he replied steadily, shooting a quick glare over his shoulder before moving to the next car. "So I'm gonna steal us a car. If you have any better ideas, I'd like to hear one."
She held her tongue, despite the violently strong urge to scream at him. He was being nasty, but she knew that he was doing it on purpose. That sort of attitude was not like him at all. Deep down, she understood the he was acting this way in retaliation to the way she'd been treating him. The last thing she wanted to do now was to throw fuel on his fire by starting another fight. The best way to do that was to just keep her mouth shut.
She followed him between two rows of cars, her small shoes stepping around the snails that were sliding around on the wet asphalt. He stopped suddenly and opened the driver-side door of a big white van. He hopped in and flipped the visor down, catching the keys as the fell from their perch. He stuck his head out and smirked slightly, unable to contain his pride.
"Come on," he said. "I don't wanna get shot for stealing this piece of junk."
Despite herself, she smiled and climbed into the van with him.
Yumichika jolted awake, his violet eyes flying open as the train clipped a kink in the track. He sat up quickly, a thin sheet sliding off his chest and down to his waist, the movement causing his head to start throbbing. He groaned and lowered himself back down, squeezing his eyes shut against the harsh light that poured into his cabin from the window. The groaning of the train wasn't helping. Going to bed without any water after drinking an entire bottle of vodka had not been the best of ideas.
Last night.
Yumichika sat back up, noticing that Lisa was not in their cabin at all, much less under the blanket with him.
Did that really happen? he thought to himself quickly, before dismissing the question as nonsense. He could feel the claw marks that she had left running down his back. His core muscles were sore from being overworked for the first time in months. The entire cabin still smelled like sex. It definitely wasn't a dream.
Then where is she?
He frowned slightly at the irony of waking up alone. He'd left half a handful girls in the middle of the night while he was living in New York, so he found it painfully funny that Lisa did it to him. At least he knew that he could avoid the girls he'd ditched – he and Lisa had to share a cabin for at least another five days, so she would have some trouble trying to ditch him completely.
It's not like I did anything to change things between us, he thought as he yawned. Not anything bad, at least.
He stood up, kicking his legs out from the thin bench that he'd shared with Lisa up until some point in the night. He was completely naked – yet another clue that he'd actually had sex the night before. He usually wore something while he was sleeping. He stood and stretched, his back popping in segmented crackles up to his neck.
He leaned down and plucked a pair of denims from his backpack, pulling them up around his waist. He bent back over and grabbed his hundred-dollar bill mug from the floor, noticing that it had spilled over in the night. He reached back into his backpack and grabbed a pink tee-shirt. He pulled it on and grabbed Ruriiro Kujaku from against the wall and slid his cabin door open.
Neliel's and Soi Fon's cabin was right across from his, and the door was open a crack. He knocked lightly and slid it open further, sticking his head in. He saw Neliel sitting on the floor, playing peek-a-boo with a girl that couldn't have been any older than three. The Arrancar looked up at him and smiled brightly.
"Good morning, Yumichika," she said perkily, before blowing a raspberry at the little girl. The child giggled, her wispy black pigtails bobbing up and down as she giggled.
"Hey," he said, his voice sounding gravelly as he used it for the first time of the day. "Where is everyone?" he asked, not wanting to look as though he only cared about finding Lisa.
"Soi Fon went down to the dining car just a minute ago," Neliel said, not taking her eyes of the kid in front of her.
"Okay," Yumichika said. "Who's the kid?"
"I dunno," Neliel replied, holding her hands up and covering the toddler's eyes.
Yumichika opened his mouth but shut it before he said anything else. He was about to ask why she was playing with some stranger's child, but he decided against it. He'd learned a while ago that asking Neliel Tu Oderschvank why she did what she did was a waste of time. He was certain that, half of the time, she didn't even know herself. Her heart was always in the best of places, but he had a sneaking suspicion that her head was not. Or never could be.
He quickly ducked back into his own cabin, rooting through his backpack once more for the bottle of mouthwash he carried with him. He took a sip, chucked it back into the bag, and closed the door. He walked toward the dining cart, swishing the minty liquid in his mouth as he went. He would go grab something to eat. Maybe Soi Fon had seen where Lisa had disappeared to.
He reached the end of the cabin car and knocked on the lavatory door, sliding it open when there was no reply. He stepped in and spit the green mouthwash into the steel basin before turning the water on as high as it would go. He rinsed out his mug and then cupped his hands under the running spigot and splashed his face, the cold water knocking the rest of his hangover away. He straightened up, looked in the mirror, wrinkled his nose at the pungent smell of the room, and stepped back out into the main hall.
"You buy?" an old woman asked, leaping at him with a set of bead necklaces as soon as he left the bathroom. He ignored her and slid open the door that separated the cabin car and the dining car. She had been pestering him about those damned beads for the past two days.
After a noisy step through the accordion connecting the two cars, Yumichika was in the dining car, the smell of meat wafting past his face. Soi Fon was walking up to the counter and Lisa was sitting in one of the numerous booths, reading one of her smutty magazines. The three of them were the only passengers in the car.
Yumichika sat down across from Lisa.
"Mornin'," he said, his voice coming out a little more cheery than he'd intended.
"Mm," Lisa replied after a moment, not taking her eyes away from the magazine in her hands.
"You eat yet?"
A pause.
"Nope."
"Well, I'm starving. You want anything?"
Another pause.
"Nope."
Yumichika watched her read, waiting for some sort of response, some sort of indication that she knew he was trying to talk to her. He could understand her not wanting to act flirty with Soi Fon around, but she seemed to be genuinely disinterested in him being there. He turned his head and looked out the window, his eyes watching the stepped-landscape roll by as they rode through another huge valley. There were dark thunderheads rolling in above them, the massive columns getting trapped on the mountains that encircled the train. A clap of thunder rumbled in from the distance. Lisa turned a page.
Yumichika stood up and looked at her, but she gave no indication of noticing his departure. He scoffed and walked up to where Soi Fon was leaning on the counter.
"What's up her ass?" he asked, propping his elbow on the old wood.
"Lisa?" Soi Fon asked, bowing her head slightly as the man behind the counter filled her cup from a pot of tea. "I thought you two were getting along?"
"Yeah, we were," Yumichika said, holding out his own mug. The man smiled at him with a broken mouth. "But she's acting weird today."
Soi Fon turned and looked at him, her eyes narrowing slightly before her mouth twisted up in a smirk. She chuckled and started to walk back to where Lisa was sitting.
"Oh, Yumichika," she said, snickering.
"'Oh, Yumichika,' what?" he barked as the man began to pour tea into his mug.
Then the train exploded and everything went dark.
Nel Tu skipped through the endless sand dunes of Hueco Mundo, humming to herself.
Tesla had told her that she needed to find some new shelter. He had gone off to train earlier and couldn't watch her as closely as he wanted to. There was a group of Adjuchas that had been sniffing around their old cavern – she was too vulnerable without him, so she needed to have a back-up hiding place if she was ever attacked when he wasn't around to protect her.
Despite her small size, Nel had a large amount of reiatsu. Or that's what Tesla told her. She didn't really understand him when he talked about stuff like that. Sometimes he would talk about some people in his past as if she knew who he was talking about. She would always tell him that he was wrong and he would always get real quiet after doing it, but she never got upset about it.
Sometimes Tesla just got her mixed up with someone else is all. She thought it was funny.
She skipped behind a large rock outcropping, gasping in surprise when she saw a large cave entrance in the wall. She crouched down and peered into the darkness, trying to see if there was anything inside. Tesla always told her that most Hollow hid in caves like this, so she had to be extra careful whenever she got close to one. He also encouraged her to try and detect any Hollow that were hidden, but she didn't know how to do that. She would always just tell him that she would try her best when he told her to do things like that.
She couldn't sense reiatsu or whatever, but her eyes were pretty good. She could see at least a hundred meters into the cave, and it looked like there was nothing inside it. She stood back up and chewed on her lip a little. She knew that Tesla would probably want her to wait for him before she went inside. But she wanted to do this on her own. Tesla was always there, always helping her with everything. For once she wanted to act like a grown-up and do something on her own.
The air around her suddenly felt very heavy, as if the night had draped itself around her shoulders like a great coat. Her knees wobbled and her breath caught in her lungs. She knew for a moment that she was going to fall, that she would be forced to the ground by this heavy sky, but she somehow stayed on her feet.
Was this what reiatsu felt like? Where was it coming from? Who was it coming from?
She struggled to turn around, but removing her feet from where they had been planted caused her to tumble down onto her side. She looked up, her cheek covered in sand as she took in the silhouette of the strange Hollow above her.
"Neliel," the Arrancar said, her voice deep and calm. "Have you really fallen this far? That you can't even stand while simply being close to me?"
"Nel doesn't know you," Nel choked out, through tears, trying to take her eyes off of the blonde demon that towered over her. "Nel doesn't…"
"Yes you do," the woman replied, kneeling down, reaching a gloved hand out and touching Nel's forehead. "You know me very well. And I need you, Neliel Tu Oderschvank."
Another surge of reiatsu tore through her body, drilling into her skull from this strange woman's fingertips. Nel screamed and fell backwards, her back slamming against the cliff-side with enough force to cause the cave's mouth to collapse. And then she was stretching and growing and her clothes were tearing and pulling at her as her long green hair tumbled down around her shoulders. She kneeled over, cradling herself in her own arms as she struggled for breath.
She tentatively looked up at the blonde Espada, who was now walking away from her. The pain was gone. She stood up as tall as she could make herself.
"Harribel," Neliel said to the retreating woman.
"I need you," Harribel repeated without turning around. "Stay hidden until I give you further notice."
With a buzz, Tia Harribel, the woman who had taken her place as the Terceira Espada, vanished.
"Nel!" Telsa's voice rang out from the other side of the rock outcropping. He sounded worried. "Nel!"
He rounded the corner, his eye bulging in shock when he saw that Nel Tu had become Neliel Tu Oderschvank once more. She looked at him in melancholy and nostalgia, a million memories rushing into her mind at the sight of him. She remembered everything.
"Hello, Tesla," she said, her mouth curving up into a warm smile. "It's nice to see you again."
Neliel struggled to wake up. Her head was throbbing. Something wet was dripping onto her face, dragging her up to the surface of consciousness. She tried to open her eyes; her vision was blurry in her left and she couldn't see out of her right. She lifted her hand up to inspect it and quickly pulled it away. Her fingertips were covered in blood. She had a large gash running across her forehead, the blood dribbling over her face, blinding her. She struggled to push herself up to her feet, but a shot of pain blasted through her back, crippling her, forcing her to rise only to her knees. She balled up, her elbows resting in piles of glass as she waited for the pain to subside.
After what felt like an hour, she tried standing once more, the pain in her back resurfacing and rocketing up to her head as she reached her feet. She knew the pain was the gigai she was wearing, the shell emulating the pain her spiritual body should actually feel. But, real or not, the pain was making her head spin. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths, blindly reaching her hand out for something to hold as she tried to steady her wobbling body. She opened her eyes again, wiping the blood out of her right before pressing hard against the gash with her fingertips. Her vision was still slightly blurred, but she could see now.
The train was on its side.
The bottoms of her white tennis shoes were resting on the wall of the cabin. The door to the room was missing. It, along with a generous portion of the wall, had been ripped away, leaving a jagged hole in what was now her floor. The glass window was shattered above her and rain was falling into the cabin, tinkling noisily on the glass that covered the floor. Neliel looked around the small cabin, noticing that her backpack and zanpakuto were missing. With a groan she crouched down and lowered herself through what was left of the doorframe, her feet landing in the rest of the window that had piled on top of Yumichika's door.
"Hello?" she called out, the sound of her voice sounding small and lonely as it echoed through the ruined car. She was answered only by the sound of the strengthening rain as it pummeled the tin walls above her. She could see her zanpakuto's sheath sticking out from beneath a pile of rubble a few feet in front of her. She had no idea where her backpack had ended up. She walked forward, a dull pain beginning to develop in her left hip. She moved her right hand around to it, hoping that putting pressure on it would lessen the pain.
She stepped on something soft and heard a dull crack. After living through numerous battles as an Espada, it was a sound that she knew far too well: the crushing of bones. She leapt back quickly as her stomach knotted within her belly. She tried to look away, but her eyes betrayed her and she looked down at the bloody hand she had crushed under her foot.
It was the little girl from her cabin, her eyes open and blank, her body still and lifeless under the steel pillars that had crushed it.
"Oh," Neliel whimpered as she fell to her knees, her bloodied hand rubbing the girl's cold cheek. "Oh no. Oh no, oh no," she repeated, as though it would somehow revive the toddler. She could feel her eyes growing impossibly hot, like they were going to boil out of their sockets and run down her face in place of the tears that already were. She touched her clean hand to her lips, as if the small action could lessen the anguish that she was feeling in her chest.
And then another sound tore through the air, a deadly noise that she was more than familiar with.
A cero.
She stood up, her fingertips sliding over the girl's eyelids as she closed them forever. Her eyebrows knotted tightly as she strode forward and snatched Gamuza up from the ground. She quickly turned and rushed back to her cabin. The pain in her body was suddenly gone as she leapt up and out of the open window, the cold rain drenching her as she ascended into the slate-grey sky.
She saw Yumichika and Lisa fighting what looked like a pair of Shinigami off to her left. Soi Fon was fighting the unmistakable Szayel-Aporro Granz to her right, the pink-haired Arrancar clashing swords with her friend as a garganta closed behind him. She growled as she saw him, the sound deep and feral and foreign within her throat. She charged forward, whipping her zanpakuto out of its sheath.
Another garganta tore open the cloudy sky behind her. She stopped her charge and spun around, bringing her katana up just in time to block a vicious strike from Wonderweiss Margera's Extinguir. The idiot Arrancar's powerful attack forced her to skid backwards through the sky, her heels digging into the air in an attempt to avoid losing sight of her opponent. Wonderweiss grinned foolishly, his tongue hanging out like a puppy's as the garganta behind him tore and stretched to an impossibly large gash and his favorite monster lurched out of the darkness beyond. Neliel glanced over her shoulder, quickly, and saw that her companions were all busy with their own opponents. She would have to take on Wonderweiss alone.
"Shit," she hissed as Fuura leaned forward and vomited out a stream of Gillian.
author's note
See? I told you the next one wasn't gpnna be too far away. I really wanted to get this chap out tonight. I'm going out of town this weekend (DC for the Stewart/Colbert Rally fuckyear!) and then I'm taking November off for NaNoWriMo. But the next couple of chapters are fights, so I should able to get them out pretty quickly after that.
anyhoo, thanks to jazz as always for being a sounding board and brainstorming buddy. (BTW if you guys like KOTOR in the Star Wars universe, he's writing a pretty dope fic. go check it out.)
Reviews are aaaaaaaaaalways loved and cherished!
off to restore sanity!
jta!~
Hammering Down the Nails - Kaada
