Author's Note:
Thank you to Ferris for leaving a lovely, detailed review on this story! It always helps me as a writer to know what parts my readers enjoy; it lets me focus on those elements. Unfortunately, guest reviews don't allow me to reply to the reviewer in person, so I hope the guest who left that review sees this.
Enjoy the chapter! This is the first time I've written from Grimmjow's perspective, so hopefully it comes across well.
Chapter 3: The Law of the Desert
Grimmjow bared his teeth in frustration as he watched Ichigo sprint out of the underground training area like a scalded cat. Return here this afternoon, yeah, like I'm some mewling kit who needs a babysitter, he snarled mentally. He resented being dropped off at Urahara's shoten like a kid who couldn't be trusted not to burn the house down while his parents were away; it was insulting and humiliating. Then there was that glint in Urahara's eye when he promised to entertain the espada – Grimmjow hadn't liked the look of it at all. What the fuck are you planning, shinigami?
His hand clenched reflexively around Pantera's cracked hilt as Urahara took a few steps forward, and he winced. Without his faithful zanpakuto at his side, every step felt unbalanced. The slight weight of the shattered blade on his hip was an unsettling reminder of his current weakness – without Pantera, he stood no chance against Urahara, and he knew it.
"So what do you really want?" Grimmjow demanded caustically, flopping back down on a nearby boulder. He sprawled backwards as though he didn't have a care in the world, though his muscles remained tense and ready to pounce. Even without Pantera, I'm not going down without a fight. It might be a short, one-sided affair, but he didn't need a blade to kill or maim. Try anything, and you'll regret it, he promised silently, glaring daggers at the approaching shinigami.
Urahara smiled genially as he took up a relaxed stance a few feet away from Grimmjow's boulder. Fluttering his fan in front of his face, he purred, "Now, what makes you think I want anything? I just need a few samples so I can create the power limiter. You wouldn't want to lose all of your power, now would you?"
Grimmjow's upper lip curled as he ground out, "You said this would be painless." Battle lust surged through his veins as he considered the shinigami who stood within easy striking distance, mocking him with his careless relaxation. At this range, a cero would go straight through his body, leaving nothing but a smoking hole behind. Urahara smiled guilelessly at him, and Grimmjow's temper flared higher. Who does he think he is? What right does he have to collar me like a pet? If a strand of fear fueled the molten fury, he refused to acknowledge it. I'm a king, dammit!
Then, unbidden, the memory of Urahara's encounter with Ulquiorra and Yammy rose to the forefront of his mind. The harmless-looking captain had easily deflected Yammy's cero, and Ulquiorra had decided that retreat was a prudent move. Grimmjow had called it cowardice at the time. But now, he wondered if the fourth espada had made the right decision. The man in front of him concealed a deep wellspring of power, and the woman-turned-cat by his side was, if anything, even stronger. Either one of them could take me, even if I was at full strength, he decided reluctantly. I guess that makes sense… Kisuke Urahara was the one shinigami who Aizen seemed to respect.
The former captain pulled his hat low over his eyes. "It'll be painless, like I promised; I just need a few drops of blood," he reassured the espada in low, soothing tones, as though trying not to spook a skittish horse.
Grimmjow rolled his eyes. "Okay, whatever," he snorted. A mixture of offense and amusement warred within him briefly, until amusement at Urahara's placating tone won out. "I'm already bleeding, so that's not a problem." He cast a disparaging glance at his shoulder. The gash should have scabbed over by now; he didn't understand why his regenerative abilities had slowed down. Stupid puncture wounds. Maybe the loss of Pantera was affecting him more than he had expected.
Urahara smiled cheerfully. "Perfect!" He pulled out a small vial from a pocket inside of his long green coat. "May I?" He held up the vial, along with a small cotton swab, and gestured towards Grimmjow's shoulder.
The simple request flustered the espada. Why was Urahara asking for permission to retrieve the blood? Even if Grimmjow chose to lash out, the former captain could easily restrain him. Urahara was obviously the stronger, especially since Pantera lay in pieces, so why did he ask for anything? The strong take what they want, and the weak endure. That was the law of the desert. Is this some stupid shinigami custom, or something?
A faint note of sadness darkened Urahara's eyes as Grimmjow stared at him in confusion. "May I collect the sample?" he repeated, motioning again towards Grimmjow's injury.
"Yeah, sure, whatever," Grimmjow muttered, turning his wounded shoulder towards the scientist. Damn shinigami and their damn protocols for everything. The sooner he could return to Hueco Mundo, the better.
Urahara carefully unwound the bloodstained bandages wrapped around his shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the mess underneath. "Yoruichi, can you fetch me that salve from the medicine cabinet?" he requested, prodding at the puckered edges of the gash with a fingertip. "He needs disinfectant immediately; this is already starting to become inflamed. I'm surprised Ichigo didn't realize that – his dad should have taught him that much, at least." Urahara chuckled ruefully. "But I guess I'm not too surprised that Isshin forgot." Yoruichi leapt off of her perch on a sandstone pillar and bounded off.
"He did put some antibacterial stuff on there," Grimmjow pointed out coolly.
The scientist's eyes narrowed. Grimmjow caught a whiff of surprise – and, for some reason, satisfaction – from his reiatsu before Urahara smoothed it back into genial neutrality. "Hmm, interesting," he muttered, poking the wound a bit more forcefully.
Grimmjow bit back a hiss as Urahara's nail struck a particularly sensitive spot. "Since when do bacteria affect hollows?" he asked irritably. Living world maladies should have no effect on a denizen of the spirit realms.
Urahara peered more closely at the wound, muttering to himself. The cool green glow of healing kido sprouted from his fingers and started to sink into Grimmjow's flesh; the espada yelped. "What the hell?"
Urahara immediately cut off power to the kido. "What's wrong?" he asked urgently.
Grimmjow bared his teeth. "That fucking stung!" Stung was too kind of a word; it had felt like a thousand needles were stabbing into his flesh. While he was no stranger to pain, he was fairly sure that healing kido were not supposed to feel like that. When Orihime had restored his left arm, it hadn't hurt nearly as much.
He expected Urahara's scorn for his childish response to the pain, but the shinigami merely frowned. "Now, that shouldn't happen," he murmured. A different shade of green wreathed his hand, and he gingerly touched the reddened edges of the hole. "Does that hurt, as well?"
Grimmjow gritted his teeth. "Yes," he replied shortly. The kido burned like acid, gnawing at already-tender flesh. He cautiously shifted his arm, relieved to feel the muscles respond normally – they ached as if he had just fought an hour-long battle, but they moved.
"Odd," Urahara replied absently, pulling his hand away. "I've never seen a reaction like that." He frowned. "You said that Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck was the one who caused this, correct?" When Grimmjow nodded, the scientist's frown deepened. "I have no record of her possessing a poison-type zanpakuto… this doesn't make sense."
Grimmjow shrugged awkwardly. "Nah, Gamuza isn't poison. Nelliel does have that weird healing spit, but that's about it." At least, as far as he knew. She wasn't the type to poison her enemies, though; she preferred a fair fight. Szayelaporro, on the other hand… He would have infected me with all sorts of nasty shit. Grimmjow rolled his eyes. Fuck, I'm so glad he's dead.
Urahara abandoned his attempts to heal Grimmjow with kido, and began swabbing at the dark crimson blood welling from the gash. As the blood soaked into the cotton swab, Grimmjow stifled a sigh. He hadn't had this much attention paid to his injuries since the time Orihime had healed him, right before his battle with Ichigo.
"Hey, Kisuke, catch!" A round plastic jar hurtled through the sky, narrowly missing Grimmjow's left ear. Urahara snatched it out of the air with a satisfied grin.
"Thanks, Yoruichi!" he called back, popping the lid off of the jar and sniffing the contents critically.
The slender shinigami, back in nude human form, sauntered over. "Don't mention it." She took up a perch on a nearby rock, studying Grimmjow intently. He shifted uncomfortably underneath her penetrating gaze, feeling very much like a mouse under the eyes of a cat. Powerful hollows eyed weaker ones that way when they were debating whether or not to consume them. The implicit threat made him bare his fangs and snarl subvocally, hand returning to Pantera's hilt despite the futility of the gesture.
Urahara's voice cut the tension. "Dear, if you're going to bait him into a fight, please do it after I've bandaged him up," he admonished Yoruichi teasingly. She lidded her eyes and looked away as he swiped a finger through the salve and dabbed it onto Grimmjow's shoulder, smearing it over the puncture.
Grimmjow tensed, expecting more pain, but none was forthcoming. Instead, a cool numbness spread through his muscles, dulling the burn left behind from the kido. He flexed his muscles and grinned fiercely. "What is that stuff?" It worked far more rapidly than the muck Szayel had made for the espada on Aizen's orders after their constant squabbling had left multiple warriors out of commission for the fifth time. For once, Grimmjow hadn't been among their number, but he could still recall the heat of Aizen's fury as the would-be god berated them for their carelessness.
Urahara shrugged. "Just a concoction I came up with. Ichigo and his friends kept getting injured, and too much kido healing can be bad for the body, so I invented this to help their recovery." He screwed the lid back onto the jar and handed it to the espada. "Here, take this. Apply it twice a day – once when you wake up and once right before bed. It should take care of whatever poison has infected that wound of yours."
Grimmjow eyed the jar curiously. The pale cream inside glimmered slightly under the artificial sun, but he couldn't get a clear look at it; a wide label with red, green, and blue stripes covered most of the jar. "What does it say?" he asked, peering more closely at the odd word. It wasn't written in kanji or katakana, and he didn't know how to read romaji, the Romanized version of the language. He wasn't even sure if it was romaji, or some other script.
Yoruichi started laughing, while a faint blush colored Urahara's cheeks. "It was what I had on hand," he defended, glaring halfheartedly at Yoruichi. Grimmjow looked between them, then back at the jar, mystified.
She snickered. "Yeah, because you got Shinji to smuggle you a dozen cases of it when he visited America last year," she pointed out. Turning to Grimmjow, she explained, "It says 'Jif.' It's a brand of peanut butter that, for some strange reason, Kisuke has decided that he adores." When Grimmjow's bewildered expression didn't change, her grin broadened. "Right, you've probably never heard of peanut butter, have you?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued, "It's an American delicacy, at least according to Kisuke. Though I don't know why anyone would eat it, honestly." She shrugged, giving Urahara a fond look.
Grimmjow rolled his eyes. "So long as it doesn't poison me, I don't care," he declared. Though he couldn't imagine that a substance called 'peanut butter' would be too good for him. How do you even get butter from peanuts, anyway? Doesn't it come from cows, or something? Hollows had no need to eat human food, so he had never cared how any of it was produced.
"You don't have to worry about that," Urahara returned smoothly, pink fading from his cheeks. "The only thing in that jar is the healing salve."
"Huh." Grimmjow studied the jar with renewed interest. Maybe this will be useful after all. He glanced up to see Urahara examining the cotton swab, now encased in a clear vial, while Yoruichi had returned to her study of him. "Well, thanks, I guess," he added belatedly.
Urahara waved a dismissive hand. "It was no trouble." He slipped the vial back into a pocket and tipped his head to one side. "Do you want to watch me make the power limiter?" he offered, giving Grimmjow an inviting smile. Grimmjow glowered suspiciously at him, but the enigmatic scientist just fluttered his fan as though he didn't have a care in the world.
"What if I don't?" he challenged, casting a sidelong glance at Yoruichi.
Urahara shrugged. "You can stay down here, of course," he replied, gesturing expansively to the fake desert. "There's plenty of room to train. Just try not to make too much noise!" Judging by the amused look he shared with Yoruichi, that was some kind of inside joke.
Grimmjow decided to ignore it. Stay here, or follow this guy around? The prospect of a long day in the empty desert, with nothing to do, was hardly appealing, but neither was trailing after Urahara like a lost kitten. Then again, I might learn something if I watch him make this limiter. Maybe he'll let something slip and tell me how to get rid of it. That made the decision easy. "Sure, I'll watch," he declared.
An hour later, as Urahara decanted a bubbling purple potion that stunk like a sweaty locker room into a clear glass beaker, he was starting to regret that decision. Urahara hummed while he worked, and the tuneless noise had wormed its way inside of Grimmjow's brain. It wasn't even music, just a monotonous drone that rose and fell in pitch, punctuated by Urahara's incomprehensible mutters as he mixed chemicals and poked various buttons on the arcane machinery scattered about the cramped lab. Grimmjow slumped against the edge of a crowded table, shifting position every so often as Urahara reached around him for more instruments. Several times now, the eccentric scientist had picked up a particular beaker, rod, or complicated metal contraption, only to put it down after a minute of examination and pick up something that looked nearly identical.
"Are you almost done?" Grimmjow grumbled, glaring petulantly at Urahara as he swirled the violet liquid around, staring at it with a critical eye.
The scientist blinked in surprise. "What? Oh, Grimmjow-san, you're still here?" he asked, self-deprecating humor at his own absent-mindedness infusing his tone. "Yes, I should be done soon." He turned back to the potion in his hand, sniffing it and making a face before placing it in a strange machine.
Grimmjow didn't trust his pretense of carelessness. Aizen had always known where everyone was; he would have never forgotten that one of his erstwhile enemies stood in the same room as him. And he respected Urahara. Grimmjow suspected that, had he made any aggressive moves, the former captain would have reacted immediately. After all, you don't get to be the captain of a division by being oblivious. Probably. Then again, there had been nothing in Urahara's manner to suggest that he hadn't been genuinely startled by Grimmjow's question. Even his reiatsu had displayed legitimate surprise. So either he's a brilliant actor, or he really does get so wrapped up in his work that he forgets to be cautious.
Now that could be quite useful. Grimmjow shifted his weight into a more balanced stance, careful to keep his movements slow and unthreatening. He didn't want to actually harm the shinigami – not right now, anyway – but decades of survival in Hueco Mundo had honed his survival instincts to a fine art. Weaknesses always had to be verified; it could mean the difference between life and death, especially against a stronger opponent.
When Urahara didn't look up from his machine, Grimmjow casually rested a hand on the hilt of Pantera. I could send a cero through his back before he could even flinch! he thought incredulously. The scientist had turned away from him, puttering around with an instrument that emitted a variety of beeps and squawks in total disregard for the potential enemy at his back. In the cramped confines of the lab, Grimmjow wouldn't have to take more than a step to run him through. Can he really be that naïve?
Grimmjow tensed. A mad impulse to try and see what happened flared in his veins. He slid one foot forward over the concrete floor, silently pulling Pantera from his waistband.
"You know, not everything has to be a fight," Urahara remarked without turning around. Grimmjow froze. How did he... But Urahara wasn't finished. "It's alright to trust people sometimes. That's not weakness; it makes you stronger."
Grimmjow shoved Pantera back though his waistband and snorted. "Save the philosophy for someone who cares," he sneered, baring his teeth at the back of Urahara's head. "Your stupid shinigami platitudes are useless in Hueco Mundo." He half expected Urahara to punch him for that – he practically wanted him to.
So he was obscurely disappointed when Urahara, without any anger in his tone, replied, "You're free to think that." He still didn't turn around. Instead, he extracted the flask from the machine and poured the liquid onto a flat plate with a number of unreadable scribbles carved into it.
"Face me, dammit!" Grimmjow demanded. "Or are you shinigami all that suicidally stupid?" In the desert, no hollow would give another a clear shot at their back unless they had a death wish, or were extremely confident in their superior power. Even then, it wasn't wise to turn your back on an enemy; it was too easy to get in a disabling blow.
Urahara, however, apparently didn't realize that. He peered down at the plate, gingerly brushing the liquid with a hair-fine needle. The solution hissed and spat smoke, which he waved away with a grimace before returning to his delicate work. Grimmjow shifted his weight impatiently. What the hell is he doing? Bubbles formed in the potion as the espada watched with narrowed eyes, clenching his jaw shut in frustration. He was on the verge of snarling another demand for answers when Urahara finally explained, "This is a critical stage of the process. If I don't keep a close eye on it, the entire solution could be rendered worthless." He gave Grimmjow a guileless smile over his shoulder. "You don't want to be here for another two hours, do you?"
"Fuck that," Grimmjow muttered in response. One hour in this cramped, smelly lab was more than enough. At least Urahara seemed to be implying that the limiter was almost finished; he wouldn't have to listen to the scientist's babble for much longer.
Unfortunately, Urahara's next words dashed his hopes. "There!" the former captain announced cheerfully, setting the plate under a red lamp. "Give it about an hour to solidify, and it should be ready to apply." Grimmjow groaned, and Urahara gave him a sympathetic look. "Don't worry, we don't have to stay down here and monitor it." He chuckled. "That would be rather boring, wouldn't it? Thankfully it's not necessary." He strolled towards the door leading out of the lab, neatly maneuvering around a spindly chair piled high with books. "A nice cup of tea will do us both good, I think," he commented casually. When Grimmjow didn't follow, Urahara paused, one hand on the door handle. "Unless you really want to stay down here."
Again, fuck that, Grimmjow thought, but this time kept the words firmly behind his lips. He sullenly followed Urahara out of the lab and into the main part of the shoten, slouching against the cabinets as the scientist bustled around making tea. The silence stretched uncomfortably long as they waited for the water to boil – Urahara, despite his chattiness only moments before, seemed perfectly content with the quiet.
Grimmjow, on the other hand, could only tolerate so much of it. After the production Aizen had made of serving tea – crappy, watery, bitter tea – at every meeting, he would have been happy to never see another teacup in his life. Thankfully, Urahara didn't seem inclined to make a ceremony out of it the way Aizen had, but it still made Grimmjow long to bury his claws into the scientist. The smug smirk on his face, as though he knew everything and was just waiting for Grimmjow to ask the right questions, didn't help matters.
At last the silence stretched on for too long. "Do all you shinigami have an obsession with tea, or something?" Grimmjow growled as the teakettle finally began to whistle. Urahara deftly snapped open the spout and poured the boiling water into a teapot, sprinkling dry tea leaves over the top. He watched as the fragments lazily drifted towards the bottom of the pot, a small smile tugging at the edges of his lips, while Grimmjow grew more and more impatient. "Well?" he finally demanded.
Urahara chuckled. "Why would you think that?" He languidly fluttered his fan in front of his face, hiding his expression as he watched Grimmjow from under the brim of his hat.
Grimmjow gave him a dirty look. "You know why," he snapped back. "Aizen did the same damn thing, every meeting. We always had to have tea." His lip curled into a sneer. "I thought you were supposed to be some kind of genius who knew everything." When Urahara chose not to respond, Grimmjow spun on his heel and stared moodily at the knickknacks on top of the counter. "Never mind." The scent of brewing tea wafted through the air, bitter and lightly flavored with peppermint – the meeting room in Las Noches had always smelled like that. Grimmjow wrinkled his nose and tried to block out the unwanted memories. Aizen is gone, and he's never coming back. Let him rot in a shinigami prison until his flesh melts away; it'd be a fitting punishment.
Silence fell again as Urahara strained the leaves from the brew and poured it into two porcelain teacups, decorated with a simple flower pattern. He handed one, along with a saucer, to Grimmjow, who accepted with a grimace. At least it smells marginally better than Aizen's slop.
"Sugar?" Urahara offered, holding up a bowl full of sugar cubes.
"Um, okay," Grimmjow muttered in response, hooking two lumps into his cup. Urahara smiled genially at him, motioning for him to take a seat at the low, circular table in the middle of the room. With a mental sigh of resignation, Grimmjow complied. Maybe a customer will show up and he'll get called away, he thought without much hope.
Urahara settled into a comfortable, cross-legged position at the table, setting the cup in front of him and steepling his hands. "What did you think of Aizen?" he asked out of the blue, as calmly as if he was asking about the weather.
Grimmjow froze. "He was an egotistical, arrogant blowhard with delusions of grandeur," he bit out without pausing to think about it. At Urahara's startled expression, he smirked. "What? Didn't think I knew those words?" He'd learned that particular phrase from Ulquiorra, though the supercilious fourth espada had been insulting him, not Aizen. Ulquiorra had added a few other adjectives as well, but Grimmjow didn't bother to repeat those; they meant more to hollows than they did to shinigami.
"And yet you followed him," Urahara pointed out smoothly, disregarding Grimmjow's accusation.
"Yeah, so?" Grimmjow snapped back mulishly. He glared suspiciously at the scientist, mistrusting his sudden interest in a topic Grimmjow would have chewed off a limb to avoid. What the hell do you want now, shinigami? Like he had told Ichigo, during their final fight in the desert, hollows and shinigami were natural enemies; nothing good could come of this line of questioning.
Urahara took a sip of tea, humming in appreciation as he savored the flavor. Grimmjow sniffed warily at his own cup – he wouldn't put it past Urahara to slip some sort of poison into the drink. It didn't smell tainted, but that was never a guarantee; some toxins were undetectable. He'd learned that lesson courtesy of Szayelaporro.
But Grimmjow had watched Urahara prepare the tea, and he hadn't seen the scientist drop anything into his cup. The cups had all come out of a cupboard, full of a dozen identical teacups; the tea had been poured from the same pot. It was probably safe. Besides, if he wanted to poison me, he already had his chance with that salve. So Grimmjow took a cautious sip.
And immediately spit it back out. "How the hell do you drink that?" he spluttered, eying the liquid as though it might leap out and bite him. "It's awful!" Forget about traditional poisons; just serve your enemies some of this! Even Aizen's brews weren't this bad. Grimmjow peered at the teacup with narrowed eyes, holding it gingerly with two fingers. Maybe he did put some sort of toxin in it.
Between the fan and the hat, Grimmjow couldn't read Urahara's expression, but the former captain appeared vaguely amused. He took another sip of tea, with every evidence of enjoyment, before asking, "Why did you join Aizen's army?"
"Why do you care?" Grimmjow snarled back. Why? He was powerful, he was strong; he promised us the world, and we were stupid enough to believe him. He told us each exactly what we wanted to hear, and we waltzed into his trap like naïve little bunny rabbits. The former sexta clenched his hands into fists, reveling in the sting of his nails on his palms. Even I believed him at first. That had changed after the shinigami murdered his fraccion and Tosen stopped him from getting revenge; Aizen's condescending tone after the blind captain severed his arm had been infuriating. At that point, he had remained with the espada mainly in hopes of a rematch with Ichigo… and partially out of fear of the would-be ruler of the universe. Fuck Aizen, and fuck Tosen, and fuck everyone, he growled to himself. I was always better than them. And now they were dead, and he was alive – that alone was sufficient proof of his superiority.
If only he could convince his subconscious of that.
Grimmjow looked up to see Urahara watching him with an unreadable look in his eyes. "What?" he hissed lividly.
Urahara shrugged. "He didn't treat you all very well, did he?" the former captain murmured, regarding his tea pensively. "You were cannon fodder, nothing more."
"What do you know about it?" Grimmjow demanded hotly. He slammed his teacup back into the saucer, sending the lukewarm tea slopping over the side. "Where were you during the war, huh? I don't remember seeing you on any of the battlefields!" When Urahara didn't reply, Grimmjow's lip curled. "That's what I thought. You hid in your comfy little shop, a cowardly turtle in its shell, only coming out when you had no other choice. Did you really intend for Kurosaki to survive his trip to rescue the woman? Or did you not even care?" In Grimmjow's eyes, the scientist's actions reeked of cowardice.
Now Urahara showed some reaction. He tipped his head down, shading his eyes with his hat, but not before Grimmjow could see the sadness lurking within them. In that moment, Urahara looked every one of his hundred-plus years. "I knew that Ichigo could succeed," he murmured, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself more than Grimmjow. "He needed to get stronger before he could face Aizen."
Grimmjow snorted rudely. "Yeah, place all your hopes on the shoulders of a teenage boy. How noble and courageous of you, shinigami." He prodded the saucer with his finger, morbidly fascinated by the way the spilled tea resembled smears of blood. "You know, Aizen respected you," he pointed out without lifting his eyes from the teacup. "Well, as much as he respected anyone," he amended, rolling his eyes. "Why couldn't you have done something about him? Why'd it have to be a half-trained kid?" Again, Urahara failed to respond, and Grimmjow huffed. "Why not those two captains who took out Starrk? Harribel said they were pretty damn strong; why didn't they do anything? Hell, why not the kid's father – he's a former captain too, isn't he?"
Urahara's head jerked up. "How did you know that?" he inquired, a bit too hastily for his pretense of nonchalance to fool Grimmjow.
"It's obvious," Grimmjow informed him disdainfully. "He reeks like a shinigami, just like the rest of you, and only captain-class soul reapers have that particular flavor to their spirit energy. Since he's here, and not back in the soul society with the rest of you losers, he can't be a captain anymore. But he used to be one; it's written all over him."
Urahara frowned, teacup halfway to his lips. He set the cup gently back in the saucer, absentmindedly toying with his fan as he studied Grimmjow. "Did you meet Ichigo's father, then?" he asked curiously.
"Didn't need to," Grimmjow replied curtly. "His scent is all over that house." Shinigami didn't mark territory the way hollows did, but their reiatsu still left impressions on the spaces where they spent the most time.
"Hmm, interesting," Urahara muttered, almost too low for Grimmjow to hear. He sipped at the dregs of his tea, watching Grimmjow over the brim of the cup. The espada shifted restlessly as Urahara settled the cup back into the saucer and dabbed at his lips with a napkin, all without saying another word. Some unreadable emotion glimmered in his eyes – Grimmjow didn't trust that expression at all. It was all too reminiscent of the look Aizen would get right before assigning his espada to some unpleasant duty, mixed with something Grimmjow could only interpret as satisfaction.
Finally the former captain folded his fan and placed his hands in his lap. "You know, I wouldn't have expected an espada to care who he was fighting," he remarked casually. "Why does it bother you so much?"
Grimmjow opened his mouth to snarl back something nasty, then froze. It wasn't as if the affairs of shinigami mattered at all to him. So why was he angry over their actions? Because they're cowardly little shits, that's why, he told himself furiously. But something about that didn't ring true. Before the war began, he would have sneered at their actions as just more evidence of shinigami stupidity, but it wouldn't have bothered him much. He would have gleefully annihilated Ichigo, then gone on his way in peace. Law of the desert: kill or be killed.
Yet the teen hadn't died. Instead, he had gotten stronger and become a worthy opponent, turning Grimmjow's world upside-down in the process. Damn shinigami and their damn 'morals' and 'honor.' Who do they think they are, anyway? Every soul reaper appeared to possess the same arrogant attitude, the same superior way of viewing the world. They need to be taken down a peg or twelve.
Grimmjow hunched his shoulders, ignoring the way Urahara looked at him expectantly. He was not fond of introspection, and the scientist's questions stirred up uneasy feelings best left buried. Dropping a hand to Pantera's hilt, he heaved a put-upon sigh. "Go fuck yourself," he muttered without much heat. "Don't you have anything more interesting to do than sit here and blather at me?"
Urahara's eyes glinted. "You know, if you're that bored, I can find something for you to do."