A/N: I've started a new story called Street Magic, an UlquiHime fic! ^^ I ship Orihime with too many people, but settled with Ulquiorra for that one. This chapter is goofy and light-hearted... sorta... yeah.
Animals
Ggio is contemplating going over to the kitchen and getting some of that sake Yoruichi was drinking earlier – apparently it was good for dealing with plummeting spirits and misery. He just gets up to leave, running a hand through the scruffy, black hair under his mask when she stirs and mumbles something. He stops in his tracks. She groans and sits up, blinking her eyes open, and he returns to the chair, a worried expression on his face. "You okay?"
"I feel like shit," she grumbles, reaching over for the bucket and without warning, throws up again. It takes Ggio off-guard and he politely averts his eyes, half to avoid watching her empty out the contents of her stomach into the bucket. She's done, and she spits into the bucket, wiping her mouth savagely with the back of her hand. "I deserve that."
"No, you don't," he insists sullenly, "it was my fault. We might have both forgotten, but it was my fault I dropped the Gikongan dispenser near you while you couldn't see, or find your actual one. I'm the one to blame. Not you." She doesn't answer, just sits there in silence while washing out her mouth with the glasses of water on the bedside table - Kisuke really had thought of everything, and he clears his throat uncomfortably. "Well, I'll, uh… go up to tell the others, and maybe help out."
He gets up to leave and almost makes it to the door, when he hears her murmur, "It's not your fault." A thin, but strong and firm hand grabs his wrist. "Don't go," she says in a small voice. She intends to grasp his wrist and just – stop him from leaving but she'd misjudged and ended up pulling him over, sending him toppling. He yelps and regains his balance, propping himself up on the side of the bed with an arm. Their eyes meet and he swallows.
Their noses almost touched and yet neither of them moved. 'Damn it,' he thinks, hardly daring to breathe, 'She's not just some pretty ornament to look at.' And yet he couldn't bring himself to make a move. 'Fuck it, I'll know if she doesn't want me if she moves away.' But they stayed like that in their awkward silence, and then, without thinking, he leaned forward tentatively and their lips met. Miraculously, she didn't back away or reject him.
In fact, she leans into him, kissing him with more passion than he had begun with, and soon enough she has her arms wrapped around his neck. He dimly notices her lips are surprisingly soft, but there's several loud thuds and suddenly they pull away, gasping to retrieve their breath. Soifon suddenly looks mortified, burying her face into her hands. "Ugh... I'm such a fool..." And she begins laughing mirthlessly, and it sounds oddly liked choked sobs. "I shouldn't have... Should have never... Dammit!" she snarls into her palms. "I'm once again the useless damsel because of a stupid mistake, and I had to rely on you to lug my useless body here!"
Her shoulders are shaking. Ggio is frozen with shock, the gears in his brain whirring as he tried to process this. "Y-you - "
"A-and then... this happened!" She shook even harder. "I can't believe I actually started liking you, sometime, I can't even," her hands drop to her sides and she shoots a hateful glare at the bedcovers. A tear rolls down her cheek as she mutters, "No... No, not again..." And she buries her face in her hands again. "I'm such a fool..." She begins to smack her own head. "Fool, fool, fool..."
"What of me?" Ggio demands.
"It's not your fault," she mumbles. "I-it's my own stupidity... I'm sorry." And she turns away from him shamefully. Ggio is dumbstruck, unable to move.
Kisuke's voice floats down the stairs, laced with sullen undertones. "Ggio! I've got the, um, prototype ready!"
Ggio turns away and stands up, stretching his limbs. "Well, I guess I'll just go then..." He makes his way to the door. And this time, she doesn't try to stop him.
He meets Kisuke near a low trapdoor. "Everything alright?" Kisuke asks, brow furrowed in concern. "She's not still unconscious, is she?"
"No, she's fine," he answers a bit too moodily. Kisuke raises an eyebrow but doesn't pursue the topic.
He clasps his hands together. "Well, I've got the little machine ready, and could you be the one to test it out for me? Yeah, get out of your Gigai, you won't need it for this..." The Ggio replica falls to the ground, lifeless, while Ggio examines his Arrancar uniform. "I have no idea where the others are..."
"Sure."
"Alright then! Down the ladder we go, into a cavern. I've refined it a little, but I, ah, I'm mostly using it for storage." He grins sheepishly. "You might find a pile of odd stuff in there." Again, there's a loud banging noise that sounds like giant hailstones crashing into a metal trashcan lid. "What even...?" Kisuke opens the trapdoor for Ggio and the Arrancar drops down the ladder, landing on a rocky pillar. He moves out of the way just in time for Kisuke to drop down beside him, landing ungracefully on his rump. He stands up and rubs his backside, and then - "Grimmjow, what are you doing?" Kisuke cries, scrambling over. "How did you get down here?"
The blue-haired Arrancar shrugs. He's found a drum set and is experimentally smashing the ride cymbal with one of the drumstick, causing them all to wince. "I found this, and saw it somewhere else... I figured this place was, uh, abandoned." And he gestures over to a small overhang where a black lump hangs from it. "And Ulquiorra got into far more trouble than me!" he snickers. "Dipshit-Emospada got turned into a bat!" He howls with laughter. "Who woulda thought that one of your old contraptions down here actually worked?"
"What the fuck," Ggio says finally. His misery is one of the last things on his mind as of now as he leaps off the pillar. "How even..."
Grimmjow shrugs. "No idea. But I can do this now." He bangs on the drum set, stomping on the bass drum's pedal and Ggio winces. He doesn't seem to notice. "Hey, d'you think I could smuggle this into Soul Society? I've got plans for it," he grins wickedly.
"Nah, there was a story about how a lieutenant smuggled a motorcycle into Soul Society and got his ass whooped by the higher-ups," he shrugs. They look at Kisuke flapping his arms at the bat hanging down from the overhang, and go over to investigate. The bat - Ulquiorra's present form - was covered in shaggy black fur with wings covered in a fine black fuzz. It turns to reveal a face resembling one of a flying fox, or a fruit bat - even though one would have thought Ulquiorra to be more of the vampire bat type. He blinks, the same slitted, vivid green eyes still there but the tear lines gone.
"What have you done, Urahara?" he asks flatly. Kisuke stares, then bursts int wheezy giggles. Ulquiorra's voice is strangely high-pitched and squeaky, and he sounds extremely weird with that voice. It's hard to believe that this fluffy flying rat is Ulquiorra, the fearsome fourth Espada. "Do not laugh. I will smite you."
"Oh, you're too cute!" Kisuke chortles, flapping a hand. "Don't worry, you'll receive special training for you to be able to get out of that form."
"Good - "
"Good heavens, what the fuck happened?!" Yoruichi's cat form is bristling at Kisuke's feet, tail lashing around in the air. "Ulquiorra?!" She stops bristling in favour of sniggering behind a raised paw, very un-catlike. "No, don't train him, leave him like that!"
"Get me back into my original form, I command you," Ulquiorra says. "Cero Oscuras!" But a small black blast, emanating from the thumb claw of his wing, quickly dissipates and everyone starts laughing again. Ggio can almost forget his anguish in the midst of this lighthearted moment.
"Oh, Ulquiorra, what have you done?" Kisuke roars with laughter. "Think about what's gonna happen if Inoue-san sees you like this!" Ulquiorra's eyes widen ever so slightly, his already slitted pupils dilating further into narrow black lines.
"Get me out of this form." And he dives at Kisuke, wings flapping wildly while he utters a piercing screech over and over again, limbs flailing. Kisuke stumbles around, yelling, and Grimmjow rolls on the floor, laughing. Yoruichi isn't helping Kisuke either, instead laying on the ground comfortably while Kisuke yells, "Not the hat! Anything but the hat!" Ggio snorts and moves forward, kicking Kisuke's legs out from under him and dragging the screeching bat off him. Ulquiorra hisses and thrashes violently while Ggio curses, a stream of colourful language issuing from his mouth. Eventually Ulquiorra quiets down, lapsing into a sulky silence while Kisuke tends to the scratches on his face. Ggio gladly relinquishes him to an overly-reluctant Grimmjow, who protests. Ulquiorra states that he doesn't want any of them touching him and Ggio tells him to suck it up and deal with it.
"You will pay," Ulquiorra glowers at him, wings hanging at his sides awkwardly while Grimmjow looks as if he wants to sink into the ground. "Unhand me."
"I wish," Grimmjow snarls.
"Ladies, ladies, settle down." Yoruichi hops onto Kisuke's shoulder, tail flicking at a white cube laying on the ground. "Ulquiorra, where are your clothes? The animal transformations don't need clothes," and an obviously lecherous smirk crosses her furry face, "and they have to be somewhere." Ulquiorra probably blanches from underneath the fur. If he was in his humanoid form, his deathly pale skin would have probably turned even whiter.
"Over there," he mutters, waggling a wing in the direction of a small, bunched up pile of clothes. "Useless bat form." Yoruichi snorts. "Come with me. And Ulquiorra, you can go now but don't claw Kisuke's face out again." Grimmjow is more than eager to get the bat away from him; he practically flings Ulquiorra into the air while the Cuatro-turned-bat screeches and flails wildly, unable to gain balance and plummets to the ground, landing unceremoniously in a heap at Ggio's feet. Ggio snorts. The former Cuatro was rarely unprofessional.
They followed Yoruichi to a box, lined with cracks and edges, and through the cracks pulsated blue-purple energy. They all led down to a round crevice in the middle of one of the sides and they all peered inside, where a small shard of what looked like semi-translucent blue-purple stone rolled and rotated around, lines of blue and purple Reiryoku swirling and moving over the shard. It was connected to the white cube by strands of Reishi of the same colour, and all three Arrancar seemed uncomfortable in close proximity with it. It seemed familiar, and even Yoruichi seemed unnerved. "Well then... The two of you, place your palms on the opening, Ggio first because he's closer... Yeah, that's it."
Ggio gingerly reached out and places a palm over the source of the energy. It definitely felt familiar now. Unpleasantly familiar, reminding him of Aizen's reign, and a sequence of transformations. He's dimly aware of Yoruichi telling him to absorb some of its energy, and he does that. It's really unpleasant now... familiar too... "Whoa, what the hell?!" He's jerked back to reality as he finds his body shrinking, bones cracking and shifting as he lurches forward, buried in oversized clothes. He opens his mouth to yell something but instead a rough, gravelly meow escapes his mouth - muzzle. Definitely a muzzle, covered in tawny brown fur. He dimly registers Grimmjow's astonished exclamations and Yoruichi's calm, level voice. And then he twitches the long thin limb on his ass - what the fuck, a tail?
He yowls in delight, knowing he has a tail again, then he wriggles out of the limp white cloth restraining him and hurtles out into the open. "This is crazy!" he cries, then stiffens. He can talk, and his voice is about an octave higher like a regular cat. Now, he's heard of how cougars sound absolutely ridiculous, but his voice... Grimmjow's slapping his knee and Yoruichi ambles up to him, sniffing.
"You're bigger than me," she says enviously, stalking away. Ggio snorts. He's a large feline, covered in shaggy, matted, tawny-golden fur with tufted ears and a long furry tail. One would have thought he'd be an actual sabre-toothed tiger, but they were bulky and not build for speed, evidently, instead being ambush attackers. Ggio's is more lean-built and streamlined, and whereas the sabre-toothed tiger, or Smilodon, has a stump for a tail Ggio's tail is long, almost as long as his body, and covered with the same brown fur. He supposes it must have something to do with his other physical form. If he was an actual Smilodon, he would have been bigger and more bulky, not small and fast... But at least his Tigre Estoque El Sabre corresponds to the more animalistic qualities of a Smilodon Hollow. He still has the fangs though, and they feel slightly awkward, hanging over his bottom lip and chin in a massive overbite. Oh well. He'd get used to it. But his mind lingers on Soifon's offhanded rejection, making his ears flatten slightly.
"Okay, Grimmjow, your turn," he says simply, flicking his tail. Grimmjow narrows his eyes and jerks his hand forward, absorbing some of the energy. He then hunches forward, letting out an earsplitting screech that has Ulquiorra flapping wildly and flying away, uttering wheezy, high-pitched growls. Grimmjow takes the form of an even larger feline, with rounded ears, the same icy blue eyes and a bulky, muscular body covered in fine black fur. He snorts and wriggles out of his Espada uniform, which is in turn slightly easier - it was just a small jacket - and harder - his pants caught on his altered hind legs and claws. He wriggled and thrashed until Yoruichi came forward and hooked her claws at the bottom of his hakama, helping him get out of it.
"This is wicked," Grimmjow growls happily, and they all jump. His own voice is deepened, becoming the rough, raspy voice of a wildcat's roar, not unlike Yoruichi's, but Grimmjow's altered voice is deeper. "Fuck yeah!" Yoruichi's ears flatten in obvious envy. A black cat - and larger and even more intimidating than she is!
The two large felines sniff around, exploring their new forms while Ulquiorra lays on his back in the dust, flapping his wings aimlessly, looking like he's seen all the horrors of the world in the span of 5 minutes. Yoruichi sits, exasperated, on a rock and lets them get used to their new forms.
Meanwhile Soifon appears suddenly, still dressed in Tatsuki's borrowed clothes and sits on the side of the large pillar. Kisuke clambers back up and they exchange a few words, but she's content to just sit and watch, knees drawn up to her face and nose buried in her arms. She eyes the three felines, two black blobs and one pale brown, as well as the black speck wriggling around amidst the dusty ground. So that's what their form is like. She wishes she could turn into a cat, but Yoruichi's talent was probably inherited from the Shihoin line, whereas the Feng Clan was just an average, regular, lower-class clan, servants to the Shihoin Clan and assassins, the whole lot of them, minus a few exiles who failed the exam and were cast out. They still had the family house though, but it had probably fallen into disrepair as Soifon hated visiting that place.
She stiffened. She'd forgotten about visiting her dead brothers where they were buried... The date was coming up soon and she was stuck in the Human World... But then again they weren't staying for long, so she'd just be able to visit them when she got back. She would visit her mother, apologizing for being a difficult baby, one that caused her death when she was born... and her father's grave? She was surprised at herself for having not trashed it yet and set it on fire. Perhaps she'd do that. It sounded like a good plan.
Back at the training area, Yoruichi flicks her tail in indignation. "Alright, ladies, get up!" she roars, and all three of them perk to attention. Ulquiorra crouches, ambling over awkwardly on unsteady hind legs and thumb-wing-claws. "Are you used to your new form now? Yes? So now you have to show me how good you are at combat in your new form. Alright! Kisuke," he perks up and hurries over, "get the inflatable Gigai. They'll need something to fight and it might as well be inflatable clones of you, minus the scratches."
Over at the pillar, Soifon snorts. She can hear Yoruichi, and might just ask for an inflatable Urahara Gigai to practice her combat skills on too. She then dropped the idea. Yoruichi might get the wrong idea and tease her mercilessly about something from years back, back when... She doesn't want to dwell on it. She had enough of thinking about it with Ggio around, she didn't want to linger on... when she loved Yoruichi, and not in the family sense. Old crushes died hard, and it had taken her years of getting rid of it, replaced by bitterness. She knew she didn't have to be so harsh with Ggio, but... she didn't want a repeat of being betrayed and left behind, and that might just happen someday... Arrancar didn't have hearts anyways. So they couldn't love, could they?
She watches as Yoruichi trains the Arrancar in their new forms until they can actually control their new body fully, and they swipe at the Gigai, Kisuke wincing as he sees his 'beautiful' clones getting sliced to pieces. Ulquiorra stares at him directly in the eyes, slitting the Gigai's throat with a claw slowly and tossing it away as far as his tiny form can throw it. Kisuke cringes. Yet Soifon's mind dwells on the horror she felt seeing Ggio's Gigai lying lifelessly on the floor in front of the trapdoor, then realizing it was just the Gigai... how foolish. Hours probably pass, and Yoruichi's now instructing them on how to transform back.
"'Kay, so you're now enveloped in the energy you absorbed... Now release it... It will still be there, but just distance your consciousness from it. Like, tell your Zanpaktou spirit to stop rolling around in it or something," she adds when Ulquiorra hops over and whispers something. Ggio tells Tigre Estoque mentally to stop playing with the funny Reiatsu.
'I'm not playing with it, boss, it feels too weird and... eugh. Sure, I'll get away from it. It seems like it's meant to be with us or something...'
"Done? Now, you'll - wait, argh!" She averted her eyes and Soifon dropped an f-bomb, whipping around and covering her eyes with an arm as three very naked Arrancar crouched on the ground on all fours then straightened up, groaning. She didn't see any of it, thankfully. There was a moment when they seemed to realize they weren't covered in either clothes or fur anymore, then colourful language as they covered their crotches and dived for their Espada uniforms, struggling to put on fundoshi and hakama. Ulquiorra looked positively mortified.
And all the while Kisuke watched on in plain horror, hands lifted halfway to his eyes. "Fuck, I can't unsee that."
"Yeah, uh," Yoruichi ceased averting her eyes. "That happens, so... er... yeah." She snorts. "Not that any of you are actually bad-looking anyway," she smirks. "Stop the puppy-face, Kisuke," she says irritably as Kisuke pouted. "Now get your not-so-furry asses up there! And hopefully you can rescue the Shinigami, wherever they are." She locks eyes with Soifon and seems to smile reassuringly. Soifon nods and climbs up the ladder before the other three Arrancar can. "Amateurs," Yoruichi grumbles jokingly.