Disclaimer: This is a site devoted to fan-fiction. I really don't own these characters or places, and am not making any money off of them. If I did, the manga would have shown at least a panel of Grimmjow so we could know he's alive.

Mini-Summary: 13: Barely-recovering Grimmjow and newly-sick Ulquiorra have quite a to-do list, but can they overcome the sheer variety of choices presented to them by a human supermarket? And what psychological trauma could an elevator possibly cause?

Note: Well here's part two. The rest should fit into a third part and not spill over into a fourth. Part two features more cat-like reactions and a hint as to how exactly Grimmjow got sick in the first place.

Also, I'll probably be renaming this story to better reflect the length, since this is clearly not the last chapter. Be on the lookout for the new name when chapter fourteen comes out.

Grimmjow and Ulquiorra's Excellent Adventure, Part Two

Well this sucks. Grimmjow closed his eyes and thought back to the woman's exact request. She'd said "sweet bread" and "red bean paste," he was sure of it. That had sounded specific enough earlier that morning. It was remarkably vague now that he was in the store. This was, in fact, worse than the assortment of reeking toiletries he'd been assigned to get on his last trip here with Szayel. Those had been easy: pick the ones that smelled the least. He'd ended up choosing something that smelled like rolled oats, because it was a scent he could deal with if he ever had to interact with the woman.

This was different. There was a whole aisle devoted to bread and only bread. Did she want it sliced or not? A big loaf or lots of little ones? White, wheat, rye, potato, sourdough, what? Nowhere did it say "sweet" on any of these packages. How was he supposed to know what would constitute "sweet" bread without eating some? And given how decidedly not-sweet those granola bars had tasted that once, he wasn't even sure he'd know "sweet" when it hit his tongue. Gritting his teeth, he eliminated the sourdough based on the name and then stared at the rest of the loaves lined up in their stupid plastic bags.

"What is taking so long, Grimmjow?"

Grimmjow looked over at the end of the aisle, to where Ulquiorra was slumped against a glassed-in display of something round and hollow and topped with garishly colored sauce and rainbow-hued chunks. Ulquiorra's pale skin was an interesting contrast, but he looked like he was wilting right there in the store. "What's taking so long is that I don't have a fucking clue what 'sweet bread' is," he snapped. Maybe it had something to do with oats. Should he get the "Oatnut Crunch?" Was that sweet?

Ulquiorra stirred, standing straight with what looked like a considerable amount of effort. "The name itself should be some indication," he said irritably. "How is it that with a name that specific you've managed to spend this long looking at a range of baked goods without locating the appropriate one?"

"Yeah? You give it a try, asshole." He stepped back and waved a hand at the bread. "None of them say 'sweet' and except for the sourdough and rye, they all smell more like yeast than anything else."

"Excuse me." An elderly woman tapped him on the shoulder and moved past him to give the bread a quick squeeze before snagging a loaf of french bread.

Grimmjow watched her put the bread into her basket. She seemed to know what was what in this aisle. He shrugged, watching Ulquiorra muster up the energy to come inspect the bread himself. It couldn't hurt to ask. Might even save the Cuarta some effort. "Hang on a sec," he called, taking a step after the woman as she started to amble away. "I'm looking for something 'sweet.'" He tried on a grin, hoping it would make his intrusion seem harmless. It wouldn't do at all if she swung her purse at him and screamed. "You got any suggestions?"

She eyed him from hair to boots and then slowly smiled, revealing yellow teeth. "Girlfriend need some comfort food?"

"Er... what?" He wasn't sure whether it was the question that made him feel uncomfortable or if it was Ulquiorra's deepening frown. Either way, he got the impression he'd done something he hadn't intended to do.

"I see," she said with a wink. "Not taken yet. You're a good looking lad. Give it time."

Grimmjow paused, sensing an unpleasantly predatory undercurrent. "Look, I just want the bread, huh? Which is sweetest?"

She reached past him again, this time brushing against his shoulder. She handed him a large bag of something called melon buns and a little red, rectangular card. "Call me," she murmured. "I'm not taken, either." She fluttered her bony fingers in his direction before disappearing down a different aisle.

His eye twitching, Grimmjow stood there holding the bag for a long moment while his mind worked through the exchange. He'd just been hit on by someone's grandmother. He made a good faith attempt to avoid gagging in the store, and looked down at the bag in his hand. It wasn't so much a loaf of bread as it was several smaller mini-loaves, about the size of oranges. He failed to see the connection to melons. Still, it was bread, and some randy old human woman had thought it was sweet. That was good enough for him. Grimmjow looked around for any observers and slid the card between two loaves of pumpernickel before grabbing a second bag of melon buns.

"Why didn't you keep the card?" Ulquiorra asked as they slowly made their way to the other side of the store. "She was obviously interested in you."

Grimmjow detected a fair amount of deadpan mockery going on, but decided not to make an issue of it. They'd already narrowly escaped a fight about birds and cupcakes, and the day was still young. Grimmjow figured that what energy Ulquiorra had needed to be preserved so he didn't end up having to carry the little prat the rest of the way. They could continue trying to snark each other to death when they got back to Las Noches. He glanced over to the side, saw that Ulquiorra was working up a second barb about the damn card, and interrupted before the shorter Espada could get started. "Look, I don't want anyone to connect it to me, okay? Can you imagine the fun Nnoitra would have with that?" He shuddered. He didn't ever want Nnoitra to have ammunition like that at his disposal. The taller Espada was enough of a pest without any misleading evidence. "Anyway, we wasted enough time on the bread, and that was only half the battle. At least with 'red bean paste' we've got a color to help us out."

The color, he soon discovered, was not as helpful as it sounded. Certainly it separated the red bean paste from the black bean paste, but beyond that, the red section of the aisle was lined with tins of varying sizes and labels, all purporting to contain the same thing. There was whole red bean paste, mashed red bean paste, dried red bean paste, skinless red bean paste--the meaning of which he'd rather not contemplate for very long... the list went on and on, and then there were the different sizes of container to consider on top of who made the red bean paste.

Grimmjow felt like hitting someone. Or something. He wasn't inclined to be picky about it at the moment. "Why do they have to make things so complicated?" he asked Ulquiorra. "Why can't there just be red bean paste? Or better yet, just bean paste? Huh?"

Ulquiorra scanned the aisle bleakly, and cleared his throat. "They're just trash," he said. "Perhaps this is how trash seeks to find fulfillment in life."

"With bean paste?" Grimmjow ignored the crinkle of another cough drop being unwrapped and grabbed a tin of each kind. He didn't have the time or patience to debate the merits of skinless vs. mashed, and the sooner they got out of here the sooner they could do the next thing, and the next, and so on until they were home. Anyway, the cab driver had said something about a timer and waiting fees. It would be best to get what they needed and go.

His bribe for the prisoner in hand, Grimmjow walked back down the aisle toward the checkout counters. This part of the operation he'd at least seen before. How bad could it be, anyway? Szayel hadn't had any problems with it except for the argument with the cashier about whether or not he could take the shopping cart with him. Grimmjow wasn't using a cart or even one of those little plastic baskets, so there wouldn't be an issue.

"Stop." Ulquiorra grabbed his sleeve for what felt like the tenth time that day, and Grimmjow narrowly refrained from smacking his mask-less head straight through a display of colorful plastic twisty straws. "You need to drink water."

"What?" Grimmjow turned to follow Ulquiorra's eyes toward row after row of clear bottles. His mouth dropped open. If the scope of the previous selections had bothered him, this one had him seriously worried about the warped mental faculties of the average human. Who needed this many kinds of water? Why did it matter where it came from or which group of people poured it in the bottle? Any water was more than they were used to in Hueco Mundo before Aizen had shown up, and here it rained all the time. Why were humans so damn hard to please?

Ulquiorra released his sleeve. "Szayel says you need to stay properly hydrated." He examined a bottle closely and continued speaking without looking up. "That means drinking lots of water."

Grimmjow rolled his eyes at the unnecessary explanation. "He said the same about you," he countered, "but I don't see you acting eager about it."

"It is both painful and difficult to swallow," Ulquiorra said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Why would I want to drink anything?"

"Because Szayel said so." And in matters of illness, apparently Szayel was right up there with Aizen in terms of having to obey. "Remember? He said it was good--"

"For me, yes," Ulquiorra finished with an exhausted glower. "The same way gargling blue acid was 'good for me' last night."

From the tone, Grimmjow gathered Ulquiorra was feeling a touch bitter about that whole incident. He didn't blame the Cuarta one bit, but that still didn't change his mind about buying water. "Well, I'm not drinking a damn thing unless you do, too." He felt in his pocket for the folded up paper money. "'Sides, we've only got so much money. It's got to last."

Ulquiorra looked up hopefully. "Show me how much we have." He accepted the money and thumbed through it before handing it back with a disappointed sigh. "We'll have enough."

Grimmjow pointed toward the bottles on the bottom of the shelf. "Those are small. We could get two of them and not have to drink as much." If Ulquiorra didn't want water any more than he did--and that sounded like the case--then the offer would be accepted without hesitation. It was still technically following orders, after all, and Grimmjow had always felt that was good enough when there wasn't direct supervision.

After a moment, Ulquiorra picked up a different bottle. "Or we could get three times the amount of water in this one large bottle for the same price," he said, holding out the bottle.

Grimmjow took it and put it back on the shelf. More water sounded like a bad idea. Besides, having a fit of compassion was one thing, but if that fit was followed by voluntary sharing and going further than the letter of the law, well that was a sign of serious decline on his part. "I'm not sharing a water bottle with you. You think I want to get sick again?"

"I hardly think you would get sick just drinking after me, Grimmjow." He picked the bottle up again. "If it were as easy to become sick as that, you'd have gotten this sore throat a week ago."

"How?" Try as he might, Grimmjow could not think of a single instance of sharing a damn thing with Ulquiorra, and for good reason.

"I do taste my own cooking, you know."

Grimmjow doubted it. "Then why haven't you learned from any of those mistakes?"

Ulquiorra bristled at that. "I do not make mistakes in the kitchen. And you are changing the subject once again." He cleared his throat before continuing. "Szayel demands that we both drink water. We can afford one large bottle of water. We will share it," he concluded, pressing the bottle into Grimmjow's hands with something akin to a glare. "It isn't as though I will spit in it, Grimmjow."

"Fine!" He grabbed the bottle and set a deliberately rapid pace to the checkout so Ulquiorra would have to work to keep up with his longer stride.

"And even if I did," Ulquiorra panted stubbornly at his side, "Nnoitra was not affected by your saliva when you were sick." He leaned hard against the counter once they arrived, and cleared his throat a few times. "I don't see how you would be affected by mine."

"I said 'fine,'" Grimmjow muttered, handing a wad of money to the clerk and ignoring the odd look he was given in return. "You win. Shut up, already." If there was a problem with splitting the water between them, Szayel would have said something. And anyway, the gigai was supposed to be some kind of sickness-repelling miracle.

"Find everything okay?" the clerk asked as he rubbed their purchases over a beeping machine.

Grimmjow glared at him.

..........

"Welcome back," the cab driver said as he flipped a switch on the little box in his front passenger seat before leaving the parking lot. "We've got time for the post office before your one o'clock," he suggested.

Grimmjow looked up from where he was settling bread and tins of paste in the seat between himself and Ulquiorra. "My what?"

"Your one o'clock?" The cab driver raised his eyebrows, apparently trying to jog his memory. "Your appointment at the clinic," he tried again. "At one."

"Oh." He handed Ulquiorra the water. "Sure. Whatever." He'd started this trip by handing the man a wad of addresses and a list of places they had to go today. When he'd said he didn't care what order they did stuff in, he'd been serious. At least the man wasn't trying to make small talk anymore. The cabbie's small talk may have been more lucid than the woman's, but it wasn't any more welcome.

He watched Ulquiorra twist off the bottle's cap and take several slow, painful-looking swallows before handing it across the seat, about a third empty. With a sigh, Grimmjow took the bottle and drank as near to the same amount as he could get. He handed it back and met Ulquiorra's questioning look with an expectant one of his own. "Finish it."

Ulquiorra shook his head and pushed the bottle back toward him.

"Look, it was your stupid idea to get the big bottle, so now you're going to have to drink the extra." Grimmjow pressed the bottle into Ulquiorra's hands and held it there. "Serves you right for threatening to force feed me that once."

"I don't want any more," Ulquiorra insisted.

Grimmjow shrugged. "And I didn't want any in the first place. Payback's a bitch. Drink up."

Ulquiorra stared at him for a long moment, his customary frown replaced by skepticism bordering on anger. Finally, he made a small concession. "I would be willing to drink half of what remains on the condition that you do the same." After Grimmjow's nod, he tipped the bottle back and took a few more swallows before eyeballing the contents and holding the bottle out again.

Grimmjow finished it, and screwed the cap back on. "There. We're 'hydrated.' Happy now?"

"Not partic--" Ulquiorra's voice broke halfway through the word and he shook his head with a pained grimace instead of trying to finish the sentence. He looked at the bag of cough drops for a moment, and then shoved it into the shopping bag with the bread. After a half-hearted look out the window, he wedged himself into the corner of the car door and closed his eyes. "Tell me when we get there," he croaked.

Grimmjow watched him for a few blocks, wondering why exactly the Cuarta was so tired. He hadn't been getting any more sleep than Ulquiorra had been, and he was able to at least keep his eyes open. Maybe that red stuff Szayel had given him was still making him sleepy. If it was strong enough to knock Ulquiorra out through his own coughing fits, it was probably long-lasting, too. Maybe it even made him tired in shifts. That would at least explain why Ulquiorra had started off with more energy than he had now.

"Here we are," the cab driver said, pulling up to a curb and flipping the switch back to the timer function. "Package delivery is on the tenth floor."

Grimmjow looked out the window and up the front of an exceptionally tall building. Oh, hell no. "Tenth?"

"Yep."

"...As in ten flights of stairs?" Grimmjow could feel his lungs seizing up just thinking about it. He'd probably die part way up and not be discovered for days.

The cab driver shrugged. "Or take the elevator."

Grimmjow was getting very tired of this human tendency to toss out words like cab and phone and sweet bread and then pretend they weren't at all out of the ordinary. He took a deep breath as a calming measure to keep himself from physically taking his frustration out on the cab driver. His reply was still a bit on the crazed side. "Take the what?"

The man turned around in the seat as though the full force of his incredulous expression just couldn't be conveyed through the rear view mirror alone. He spoke slowly enough to be insulting. "You can take... the elevator... to your floor."

Finally fed up, Grimmjow threw his hands up in the air with a growl. "I don't know what that means!" he shouted.

"You don't know what an--"

"Fuck it," he snarled, grabbing the receipt and mashing at the seat belt until it released him. "Fuck your stupid human words for things that shouldn't exist." Grimmjow threw a fistful of money over the seat at the man and got out of the car. "Stay here with him. If I'm not back by tomorrow morning, send in a rescue party." He slammed the car door for good measure and stalked into the building.

Inside, it was cold. Very cold. And slightly breezy. Deciding it wasn't worth the effort to figure out, Grimmjow looked around for something that resembled stairs. There. Off in that little corner, a sign by a door showed a picture of them. He walked over and opened the door. It led to a set of railed, concrete stairs that zigzagged upwards. It seemed he was at the bottom of a pit full of the things.

The door closed behind him with a dull clang. Where in the main building it was cold and bright, here it was hot, dim, and stifling. He wondered briefly whether these stairs were designed to make people not want to use them. Given all the other weird human shit he'd put up with today, that wouldn't surprise him one bit. Grimmjow gritted his teeth and started climbing.

By the third flight, he was blindly putting one foot in front of the other and using a death-grip on the railing to keep his forward momentum while planning how best to brutally murder the fool who had created these stairs. At least in Las Noches most of the stairs were open to the air and gave you a nice view of the surrounding area and how far you'd come. These were just crammed in a vertical tube with the occasional stair-less oasis to give false hope that the torture was over.

At the fifth of these landings, Grimmjow sat down and tried to figure out how to breathe again. Fuck Szayel for making him do this. If the Octava was so busy with all the sick arrancar, he should have enjoyed a break. The bastard already knew about cabs and phones and shit, and hadn't been stuck in bed with pneumonia for the last three weeks. This should have been him dying in a cement pit with fucking stairs lining the sides. Grimmjow told himself that he was halfway up, had climbed half the stairs already, and should therefore be pleased with himself. It didn't work. The smarter part of him came right back with the fact that having done half of this meant there was another equal portion of this hell left to be done.

By the time he collapsed halfway up the seventh flight, Grimmjow realized he wasn't content to just be swearing at Szayel for this situation, and moved his thoughts on to someone more deserving of the abuse. Fuck Aizen and this stupid package, anyway, he thought. With his creepy "thank-you"s and that dangling bang of of his. He ought to take a pair of scissors to that bang the way he'd chopped off all of Il Forte's hair that once. Grimmjow tried to control his breathing and get back to his feet, but all that happened was that the bellows sounds he was making got louder and he slid down another step. He sent his thoughts directly to Aizen on the off chance that the man was truly omniscient and would overhear his thoughts, strike him down, and put him out of his misery. That's right, you voyeuristic turd! Fuck you!

When he wasn't stricken down where he sprawled, Grimmjow groaned. It figured that the one time he'd welcome a rush of obliterating reiatsu it didn't come. Since his lungs were only slightly on fire by this point, he grabbed the railing and pulled himself to his feet. A glance upward revealed the same view that had greeted him at the beginning of the stairs. He wasn't sure where he'd gotten the idea that there was false hope to be had. No, there was nothing in the layout to give hope of any kind. These were truly designed by a sadist.

After what seemed like an incredibly painful chunk of forever, Grimmjow dragged himself up onto a landing marked by what looked like the number ten when the spots finally cleared his vision. Since he had some time to compose himself before trying to get the package, Grimmjow settled into another barrage of mental swearing, this time directed at an even better target than Aizen. And fuck that shinigami, too, he thought, even his thoughts seeming to come in short gasps. She had started it all, and so what if she did have nice tits. This wasn't worth it.

He looked up at the stairs to even higher levels of the building and wondered what kind of masochist would put himself through that. Ten flights was enough. He couldn't imagine going up fifteen. Or twenty. He'd like to see that fucking bitch of a shinigami do it, though. It would serve her right. She could take her tits and her ass and her feline grace and just shove it all, because he was officially going to kill her when this was over. No sparring session-turned-gropefest was worth this bullshit, no matter how good her fingernails felt clawing at his back.

Grimmjow leaned back against the concrete and wished it was cold in here like it had been in the main building. The only time he could remember his lungs burning like this was when he still had the pneumonia. And he was an Espada, dammit. It should take something more than stairs to do this to him. Stairs alone should not be this difficult, no matter how recently he'd been sick.

He gauged his breathing and figured he no longer looked or sounded like he was near death, even if he still felt like it. This was just going to have to be presentable enough. Grabbing a railing, he hoisted himself to his feet and opened the door. A blissful rush of cold air hit him in the face and he stood there for a moment, savoring the first decent thing he'd experienced on this trip.

A quick glance around the room revealed obviously fake plants, a carpet the color of puke, and a long desk behind which a woman sat staring at the ceiling. Grimmjow made his way to the desk, smoothing out the receipt as he walked. This part should be even easier than the checkout counter was at the store. Hand the paper over, say something about a package, and then leave. Simple.

"How can I help you, sir?"

Grimmjow blinked. She'd thrown the order off. He was supposed to give her the paper first. Ah, fuck it, he thought. I'll just go with whatever happens. "Here." He sucked in a breath, surprised that breathing was still such a struggle. "There's a package," he wheezed. "I want it."

She looked down at the receipt he'd placed on the desk, straightened her glasses, and walked out of sight into a back room, her boredom apparently unrelieved by this request. In a moment, she reappeared with a smallish cardboard box and a binder. "Sign here," she droned.

Grimmjow frowned. Did he sign his name? Aizen's? Did it matter? The woman hadn't said anything about signatures, only about exchanging the paper for the package. Of course, she hadn't said a damn thing about stairs, either. What was the kanji for Aizen, anyway? He'd never cared enough to ask. And did he put a -sama at the end? Was a first name required?

The woman cleared her throat impatiently and drummed her fingers on the box.

He grabbed the pen and scribbled his own name down, then scratched it out and wrote Jack Grimm. He hesitated with the pen in his hand, vaguely remembering an argument about which order the two fake names went in. Was it Jack Grimm? Or Grimm Jack? He couldn't recall what Szayel had ended up writing in the blanks on the clinic paperwork. It hadn't mattered to him at the time.

Apparently eager for the exchange to be completed so she could go back to staring at the ceiling, the woman snatched the pen out of his hand, preventing him from debating any longer or trying to re-correct the signature. "Your package, sir." She left the box on the desk and shoved the receipt into a folder.

Grimmjow picked up the box. For its size, it was pretty heavy. He turned it over in his hands, wondering what was inside. If he opened it, could he get it closed again and looking just like this? Probably not. He shook the box and heard a dull thumping sound from its contents jostling around. It was something solid, whatever it was. Would Aizen notice if the box had been opened? Probably yes. But would he care? That was the real question, after all. Grimmjow stared at the box for a long moment, his fingers itching to tear it open. Unfortunately, as much as it pained him to admit it, Aizen was very likely to care. And he might even go so far as to smile at him, pat his arm, and say something like "thank you for opening the package for me, Grimmjow. I am pleased by your concern for others." That thought was enough to quell his curiosity about the contents of the box. No amount of satisfied curiosity was worth being thanked in public again.

"Anything else, sir?"

Grimmjow turned back to face the desk. He was finally getting some semblance of a normal breathing pattern back, and was in no mood to screw it up again by another trip in the stairwell, particularly if there was a human invention designed to bypass stairs entirely. "Actually, yes. I hate stairs. I think I'm going to give this 'elevator' thing a try."

The woman looked at him with a lack of expression that rivaled Ulquiorra's typical blankness in a way that Grimmjow found impressive. They stared at each other for a moment.

"So where is it?" he finally asked.

She pointed. "Behind you, to the right."

He heard a *ding* from that area, and spun around to see what had caused it. A door was sliding open and a man stepped out into the room. The door closed again. Grimmjow studied the man as they passed each other and saw that he wasn't even the slightest bit out of breath. That had to be an elevator then.

If it would get a man from floor one to floor ten without breaking a sweat, then this elevator thing couldn't be all that bad. Grimmjow looked for a handle, saw none, and then noticed a pair of buttons to the side. Well. He wanted to go down, and there was a button shaped like an arrow pointing down. It didn't get any simpler. He liked simple.

Grimmjow pushed the button, and then cautiously stepped into what appeared to be a tiny, carpeted closet with a metal railing around the walls. Some soft and terribly dull music was playing in the closet, and someone had just sprayed perfume that smelled like dying lilacs. He saw a panel on the wall near the door with easily four times the number of buttons that had been on the phone. Taking a guess, he pressed one near the bottom. It lit up in a cheery yellow color.

Suddenly, the little closet lurched downward, sending his stomach lurching in the opposite direction. Grimmjow yelped and clutched at a railing, dropping the package in his scramble for purchase. "Make it stop, make it stop!" He mashed the buttons randomly, and happy yellow lights came on all over the panel. The closet screeched to a halt with a *ding*, sending him crashing to the floor, and the doors opened calmly as though nothing was at all wrong. The music played on as he sat on the floor wondering what the hell had just happened. Through the open doors, an assortment of people sitting in a lounge area turned to look at him curiously.

It took him a moment to appreciate the lack of motion, and then he resolved to get out of this elevator before the doors trapped him inside again. He'd take the stairs over this shit any day, even if he did have to carry this tempting little box with him. As soon as he'd managed to grab the package, though, the doors slid shut and he was again hurtling downwards, the contents of the box the last thing on his mind. "No!" he wailed, clawing at the doors. "Let me out!" There was a jerk that tossed him back off his feet, followed by a *ding* and the opening of doors.

Once again, he didn't have time to grab the package and get out before the closet started moving. This, he decided while clinging to the railing, was infinitely worse than the stairs. Sure, he could breathe, but if the jerking motions didn't stop soon he was going to vomit all over this god-awful little closet. It was like being on that medicine again, only without the seafood. And instead of carrying his pleas to some master control room like the one in Szayel's laboratory, this thing only bounced his voice back to him. It was enough to inspire claustrophobia.

He counted seven stops and five unsuccessful attempts to flee before the closet finally deposited him on a floor he recognized as the one he'd come in on. There were still lights on in the buttons at the top of the panel, and Grimmjow did some quick reasoning about the potential direction the closet would take next. Going back up was about the last thing he wanted, next on the list to this little incident being witnessed by anyone who could identify him. Grabbing the package with a speed borne of desperation, Grimmjow stumbled out into the main lobby wide-eyed and reeling. The nightmarish contraption sent out a farewell *ding* and rattled upward to capture some other poor, unsuspecting victim.

This package, he thought, glaring at the box in question, had better be damn important. Grimmjow took a precursory look around the lobby to make sure the floor wasn't moving and to pinpoint the nearest familiar-looking exit. He felt a shiver as he noticed additional elevators on the other walls. They were everywhere. Waiting. As with that first stop, people were staring at him as though it wasn't usual to be this jittery getting out of one of those things. The package gripped tightly under one arm, Grimmjow tried to be nonchalant as he picked his way around the leather furniture in the closest thing to a direct route he could manage while occasionally veering dizzily to either side. He'd just about gotten his eyes to focus properly and stop making shit up about his surroundings when there was a loud *ding* just to his left. Spooked, Grimmjow abandoned all efforts at blending in and bolted for the door.

OMAKE: Gentlemen, Place Your Bets:

"So how d'ya think they're doin', Aizen-sama?"

Aizen leaned back on his couch and took a sip of tea before settling a slip of paper in his book. He'd been over it several times already, but since he hadn't had much opportunity to interact with Grimmjow of late, it wouldn't hurt to keep it all fresh in his mind.

He reached over to the plate of cookies on the couch between them and selected a pink one. "I'm sure they're fine, Gin," he murmured. "After all, between the two of them they have both the energy and the logical reasoning to complete this task."

"Huh." Gin brushed crumbs off his lap and reached over to pour more tea. "Tousen says he'll open the box."

Aizen let out a breath that was calmer than he felt. "I doubt that, Gin." Grimmjow was curious enough to do it, yes, but Ulquiorra was there with him. That alone should prevent any tampering.

"Tousen's got 5000 yen on it."

"And you?" Aizen asked mildly, accepting the newly filled mug of tea.

"Oh, you know I'm not the bettin' kind," Gin lied. "What'd ya order?"

Aizen smiled, letting the wagers fall out of the conversation. He thought in unlikely Kaname had placed any bets at all, though he wouldn't put it past Gin. "I thought Ulquiorra would like a food encyclopedia, and Dr. Kazdin has a new book out on defiant children."

There was a long pause. "Think he'll be okay?"

He looked over at Gin, a touch startled by the genuine concern he heard in the question. "Why wouldn't he be? Proper parenting is designed not to be harmful."

"No, Ulquiorra." Gin took a gulp of tea. "I mean, if he was bad enough that Grimmjow felt sorry for 'im..."

Aizen paused, and then took another cookie. "I'm sure they're both fine, Gin," he repeated, almost more for himself than for Gin. "This might even be the start of a budding new friendship between my two favorite Espada."