Nyah, dislaimer: now GUESS what... I don't own Bleach, whoop-dee-friggin'-doo.
here we go again XD
Chapter 3: after the storm (also known as: I am SO mean)
Slightly disoriented and shaky on their legs, Grimmjow and Ulquiorra trudged to the large black door, the door that would separate them from Aizen's looming presence. Grimmjow considered picking his injured 'partner in crime' up and carrying him out on his back, but he dismissed the thought when he realised he'd probably fall over, too if he tried.
And Ulquiorra seemed to take the situation rather well in his opinion. Okay, he was trembling, and his breath was unsteady, but his movements were controlled and as coördinated as his impaired vision allowed. He looked calm, and he uttered not a single complaint, even if the hole in his head must have been causing him enormous pain.
Some blood was still trickling out of the open wound, and his neck and collar were drenched in the sticky fluid. His right eye was fixed on the ground, that seemed to wobble up and down under his feet. When they had finally traversed through the door, Ulquiorra could feel Grimmjow staring at him, concerned and also taken aback…
'How can he stay this calm?' Grimm wondered. He slowly began to feel a hint of admiration for the slender and rather weak-looking Arrancar.
Once they were in the hallway and Grimmjow had shut the door behind them, they both slumped to the ground, and Grimmjow leaned over to Ulquiorra now that he felt it was safe to speak again.
"Oy, are you all right?" he asked, putting his hand on Ulquiorra's shoulder in a friendly-meant gesture.
His rather blunt but honest question earned him a fiery look from Ulquiorra, who slowly turned his head to face him, a single green orb focusing on him. But Grimm ignored the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach and continued.
"I never thought you could be this rock-hard…Gotta admit I'm glad you didn't freak out or anything." he started chatting carelessly. "Anyway, we're in a load of trouble now...heh." He crunched his teeth into a grin. "Dammit, I bet even you didn't know he could remove our powers like that…bastard…"
His words, that sounded more light-hearted then he felt, brought a shudder over Ulquiorra, who was breathing slowly and deeply, hunched over in pain. Grimmjow continued.
"Well, I can't say I really wished for this to happen to you, but I think I'd have been SO screwed if Aizen would order me to actually…hurt myself. You were great, really!"
As his compliments continued, Ulquiorra jerked under Grimmjow's comforting hand on his shoulder. He crunched his teeth, clenched his elegant hands into fists, squeezed his good eye shut.
The pain and the stress, the way he had fought his own instinct of self-preservation, his severely damaged pride…for now, this was all he could take. Never had he been this outraged, desperate and ready to kill.
Grimmjow fell on his back when Ulquiorra suddenly shoved him away to stand up. He could see the pressure building up in the usually calm Arrancar as Ulquiorra tensed all his muscles in frustration, and then the white shadow unleashed his emotions.
A raw, agonised cry rang in Grimmjow's ears, and it lasted.
Like a captured beast, Ulquiorra howled, yelled his pain into the world. Bottling it up would kill him now…or kill Grimmjow.
Grimmjow was honestly shocked by this outburst. With his eyes widened, his two jaws hanging open, he marvelled at the display. He could almost visualise the negative energy radiating off him, devastating in its pure nature and whirling like a tornado with Ulquiorra as the centre of it.
The castle's walls were lucky that this didn't happen with the Arrancar on full power, or else there might not have been much left of them, or of Grimm, for that matter. In the human world, it could have wiped out the souls of an entire city, but as things were now, Ulquiorra's powers were too limited to achieve anything but alerting Tousen of their presence.
The blind man heard the scream, and he knew that his master had succeeded in removing the traitors' powers. He hadn't felt them at all. Slowly, the justice zealot made his way through the corridors, taking his merry time to get to them…he wouldn't hurry if it was only a matter of time before the big, exhausting plans of Sousuke would commence.
When Ulquiorra had released his fury along with his last breath, the pain in his head rose to a critical level. His body was starting to yearn for oxygen, something that wasn't present in Hueco Mundo. He'd live, but it was beginning to tear his lungs apart. Blood and tears leaked out of his eyes as he went completely limp.
Grimmjow was barely fast enough to catch him. He grabbed his soon to be only companion under his arms and tried to heave him onto his feet again, but when Ulquiorra made a weak movement to the left, he lost his fragile balance and they both fell to the floor. Even if the stone looked blurry and squishy, it was still hard.
After flailing through the air with a random 'Oy!', Grimmjow landed on his outer cheekbone. He had tightly shut his eyes to prepare for the impact, and when he collided with the floor, he heard a strange, dulled rather metallic-sounding 'DING.' Somewhere in front of his nose, followed by a pained 'Ungh!'.
When he slowly opened his eyes, he saw a very familiar bleak horn sticking up in the shining black stone. Grimmjow quickly stood up, and he suppressed a weird giggle rising in his throat…to his sometimes juvenile mind, the scene was ridiculously funny, but the situation made his insides churn with a mix of stinging pity and disgust.
Somehow, Ulquiorra had managed to lodge his horn into a crack in the floor, and he was lying on his side, his neck bent in an awkward, uncomfortable angle. The tortured, helpless Arrancar was pressing his hands against his skull in agony as he tried to push the splitting headache away.
He was holding his breath, cramped from the pain, trying not to move. Finally, a soft 'Ah!' escaped his lips, and he started breathing in and out again, controlled and tense. He opened his right eye, and the world drifted into his vision again. Only then he became really aware of the position he was in.
For a moment, he thought about the best course of action, and eventually he carefully twisted his body around until he was on his knees, leaning on his elbows with his head at a painful 90 degree angle.
Ulquiorra saw Grimmjow looking at him, and he could seethe manwas forcing the corners of his mouth downwards, but they'd twitch up every so often into a silly grin.
But Grimm really wasn't making fun of him…he was trying to get his limbs moving, to get serious, but right now his brain, thrown out of balance and pretty stressed, had other plans.
Ulquiorra ignored him. He should've known that the blue-haired Arrancar would be prone to a nervous breakdown soon, after all he had just gone through a major one himself. He started pushing himself up slowly, but to no avail.L He only managed to crick his neck, but his horn wouldn't budge.
Under the bloodstains on his cheek a blush formed with the little leftover blood he still had, both of extreme embarrassment and a twinge of anger. He bit his lower lip when he tried again, but when it didn't work, he turned his green iris to Grimmjow…
…who had turned his back to the drama and his face to the wall, hammering his knuckled into it while stifling his chuckles and eventually breaking out in a howl of laughter. Ulquiorra, knowing fully well that he was in no position to criticise Grimm's behaviour, sighed warily and for once set his pride aside.
"Umm…I…uh.."
Great gods...he couldn't even say a normal sentence anymore. Desperate to get up again, he felt the blood pressure in his head rising, causing blood to drip from his empty eye socket. Finally, he resorted to a simple, pathetic
"Help…"
Grimmjow heard the pleading word, and he felt it was a clear sign that Ulquiorra was in trouble indeed. Oh, he had hoped that he wouldn't need to help, because he didn't trust himself with…'delicate' matters like this. As he tried to get a grip and holding his stomach, aching from holding back snickers and giggles, he turned to Ulquiorra again.
Wiping the tears out of the corners of his eyes, he crouched down. "I'm sorry…I can't help myself. It's just so frikkin' funny…Now what do I do?"
Ulquiorra hesitated. Then he suggested that maybe the wisest course of action would be to grab his helmet and then pull it upwards in an arc, following the path it had taken when entering the floor.
With shaking hands, Grimmjow placed his hands on Ulquiorra's helmet and clenched his fingers around the thick bony rims of it. Out of common sense, he avoided pulling the black, soft hair into his grasp as he tugged. The horn stuck to the ground, and he pulled harder. Ulquiorra's eye widened when he felt the force, and he readied himself for the sudden release. Grimmjow heaved and hung his whole weight into it.
With a horrible sound, like a car-tire braking squeak mixed with metal on metal screeches, only longer, the horn shot loose. Grimm tumbled onto his back when his force turned itself against him, and finally freed, Ulquiorra
Pushed himself up onto his feet. With a sigh, he felt the blood stream back to its usual place, alleviating the pumping throb in his head. Still wobbly, he helped Grimmjow up, and they were barely standing stable in the blurry world when Tousen arrived.
The two Arrancars were glad he couldn't see them, holding hands and leaning against each other like drunkards.
"What's going on?" Tousen asked loudly. "Why aren't you at Gin's place yet?"
The zealot huffed. "I've always known you couldn't be trusted…and will you LISTEN to me when I'm talking to you, it's not because I can't see you that I can't hear you sneaking off!"
The two victims warily turned to him.
"Oh bummer." Grimmjow remarked sarcastically…Man, he hated that guy.
"Shouldn't we be going now…" Ulquiorra sighed dully.
The sound of beat down acceptation and hauntedness made Tousen wonder what else Aizen might have done to them, apart from making them 'human'. Not that he wouldn't agree with punishing them more…no penalty could be great enough for disrupting justice and the one who carried it out.
While the blind man was pondering and going over his justice mantra again, he heard the noise of a sword unsheathing behind him, and then a bump and the sound of someone falling –again.
At the sight of Tousen, Grimmjow had initially ignored his blood thirst, for his own sake, but then the justice freak had fleshed a smirk, and Grimm had resolutely drawn his sword to kill him. Ulquiorra had evenly resolutely thrown himself at Grimmjow to prevent a disaster. Once more, they were on the floor, and already hurrying to get up. It was becoming a routine by now.
Grimmjow was fuming. He bared his teeth at Ulquiorra, and to Tousen he snarled
"Not – a – word."
Tousen, for once, couldn't quite put his finger on what he had heard (he didn't dare imagine the two Arrancars doing what he assumed he had heard, for he'd risk a fit of laughter), and merely cocked his eyebrows to react on the tussle.
As fast as the shifting floor and their wobbly legs allowed them, Aizen's Espadas strode off to Gin's quarters. When they had put some distance between themselves and Tousen, Grimmjow burst forth in a low hiss.
"What'd you do that for! I could've at least hurt him…" he whispered angrily at Ulquiorra, whom he had given his shoulder to lean on, despite his 'betrayal'. Ulquiorra only stared at the moving floor, eerily calm after his outburst from earlier, and answered.
"Do you really think you could have done anything to him? You couldn't even get close to him if he didn't want you to. His reiatsu is toostrong for us now. Besides, Aizen is probably still keeping an eye on us…even if we can't feel his … attention anymore…"
Grimmjow shuddered slightly. Right… Now that Tousen was out of his sight, he could think more clearly. He realised that Ulquiorra might just have saved his ass.
"Oy…Right. I forgot about that for a sec…" he whispered "Thanks dude."
Ulquiorra noted the use of 'dude' with a hint of dismay, but he was satisfied that the other was finally beginning to understand that losing control would result in possibly very unpleasant things. He began hoping he wouldn't have to watch Grimmjow's every move, especially because keeping his own composure was proving to be difficult enough.
Besides, Grimm had already been a great assistance already…
"Consider it a 'thank you' for helping me… to get my…you know… out." Ulquiorra admitted, casting a glance backwards to see if Tousen was still a few corners behind. The incident hadn't exactly done his pride any good. He hated being indebted.
"It's okay. We're even now, if you insist." Grimm replied quietly.
In total silence, they walked through the halls. Somehow, somewhere in this mess, the 'rivals' had come to an unverbalised understanding, an alliance against a common threat. Even if the Arrancars didn't quite foster any real 'feelings', it was a bit of a comfort to know that they'd be able to rely on someone else if they failed themselves.
Not solitude, loneliness would get to them on that island… they were still Arrancars, and being weakened physically didn't mean they became all human trash, but still… safety is in numbers.
Grimmjow halted at the door of Gin's room. As fox-face wasn't in Hueco Mundo right now, the room was deserted. When Tousen caught up (he had been distracted by some weak hollows on the way -the creatures still didn't leave him alone, so he had to shoo them away first-), he gestured them to go in. In the half-darkness, Grimmjow could recognise a circular pattern on the floor if he concentrated on it. Ulquiorra quickly looked away when he felt a wave of nausea wash over him at the sight of the turbulent painted floor.
"Ichimaru Gin prepared this to transport you both. Step into the circle." Tousen ordered.
Not bothering to retaliate now, both Espada did so, and as soon as they were inside the circle, the edges began shimmering in an intense white light. The room and Tousen blurred even more, enough to hide Kaname's self-satisfied smirk as the two Arrancars began fading. Everything was drawn into the light, and the dreary darkness spilt up in colours known and unknown to them, whirling around and enveloping them. The sickening view seemed to last for minutes, and by the time the unusual transition –it felt like dieing, only backwards- they both had their eyes shut tightly.
Suddenly, finally, gravity kicked in. For the umpteenth time that day, thy slumped to the ground when it caught them by surprise. The world returned to a normal panorama again, the environment stabilised. Their now human bodies were in the right place at last.
phew...at last I get to that point. damn me for not being able to type blindly
anyway, R&R please, I appreciate any comment lots (as long as it's a bit more that 'please update', I like knowing WHY you want me to XD)