A Lesson In Manners

Koujaku didn't arrive until near four-thirty the next day, her phone smooshed between her face and shoulder as she fought to pull her boots off her feet in the doorway. Her feet ached, her head pounded, it felt as if her spine were going to snap in two and all she really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep until she had to go back to work at four-thirty the next morning.

"No, you don't understand," She snapped, stomping down the hallway and entering the kitchen. "I need that Juugo kid from B-17 to work three days at my store this week so I can get the newbie trained and ready to go by Saturday night." There was a pause as the person on the other end of the line spoke. "Yes, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for training. No, Shiemi's first night by herself will be Saturday if you can push her approval. Awesome, thanks Kaiga, let me know as soon as that approval goes through." Koujaku ended the call and rooted around in the fridge for a moment before she pulled out a bottle of water from its depths.

"Oh man oh man, sleep is calling my muthafukkin name!" Koujaku entered the living room only to find Grimmjow sitting at the couch, television off and a thick book in his hands she recognized as one of the anatomy textbooks from her room.

"Oh man, I totally forgot you were here." The woman visibly deflated, her shoulders slumping and her back bowing. Grimmjow scowled at Koujaku and closed the book around his fingers in an attempt to save his place.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" He asked, blue eyes alight with irritation. Koujaku scoffed and headed towards her room, pulling her work shirt over her head and tossing it onto her bed as she reached for a black crewneck hanging on the door.

"I need to take you shopping before I go to bed. You can't go around wearing Ichigo's clothes forever." She heard Grimmjow walk towards her room, his hands no doubt stuffed in his pants pockets and a scowl on his handsome face. Koujaku ignored him in favor of walking to the dresser along the far side of her wall, pulling the lid of a glass tank and dropping in several crickets from a tiny plastic container sitting next to it. A rather large blue and green scaled lizard moved out from under a dome shaped log and immediately began devouring the tiny insects, his tail slapping against the tank walls whenever he spun around to catch a particularly quick one.

Grimmjow stood in the doorway as he watched Koujaku get ready, said woman rooting around in her closet for duffel-bags and delving into her dresser drawer to extract a rather large wad of money. The Arrancar didn't know much about human currency, but he knew for a fact that someone as young as that woman shouldn't just be pulling money from anywhere – especially wads that large. Koujaku slung one of the bags over her shoulder and shoved the other into Grimmjow's arms as she walked passed him, making sure she had her phone and wallet on her before they left, Grimmjow scowling and Koujaku as if the blue haired individual wasn't following her around like an angry puppy.

The pair caught a bus and headed towards the center of town, taking their seats at the back of the vehicle with Grimmjow near the window and Koujaku taking the aisle seat, her leg bouncing up and down as she fought not to fall asleep and miss their stop.

They eventually got off the bus about four blocks from the Karakura shopping center, Grimmjow trying not to make it look like he was looking at the many tall buildings around them. The only building in Hueco Mundo was Aizen's palace, and even though it absolutely dwarfed the tall buildings in the World of the Living, the many tall buildings in such a small space gave the illusion of being far larger.

The shopping center was busy for a Tuesday afternoon, with people walking quickly from one store to the other, often in groups of two or three. Women talked on phones or chattered happily with their friends, teenagers milled about as they avoided going home for one reason or another. Koujaku didn't waste any time in finding a store and making a bee line towards it, her shoulders hunched slightly as she wove in between the groups of people milling about within the plaza.

They entered a store called Drop Dead, a relatively expensive clothing store owned by some British guy, but Koujaku liked the clothing choices there and figured she had a better chance at getting Grimmjow into these clothes than any other places she would take him to. The store was dimly lit, and heavy metal music could be heard at a relatively respectable volume from the speakers situated near the ceiling. There were three people at the counter, two guys and a woman, that Koujaku recognized as being the manager and two employees. The manager was a tall, heavily tattooed man named Aki, whose polite demeanor often contradicted his gruff appearance. Aki gave Koujaku a smile and a wave, his green eyes alighting at the sight of her.

"Afternoon, Hayashi-san! I saved last season's Gremlin sweater for you! Technically it's ripped, so we can't sell it, but I figured I'd save it for whenever you popped back in." Koujaku wandered up to the counter with Grimmjow trailing slightly behind her, his eyes taking in the sights around him. Anybody else would have mistaken it for curiosity, but in actuality, Grimmjow was taking in his surroundings and plotting various ways to escape if the need ever arose – a habit he had developed whilst in his Gillian form and never quite gotten rid of.

"Oh yeah? Is that something that actually happens, or did you just make that up?" Koujaku asked playfully.

Aki laughed, rich and rolling, before clapping his hand on Koujaku's shoulder.

"Let me go and get it for you." The man then exited from behind the counter, leaving Grimmjow and Koujaku with the other two. The other male was quite a few years younger than Koujaku, his face still holding the roundness that said he wasn't quite old enough to be out of high school quite yet. His brown gaze lingered on Koujaku's slightly taller form, drinking in the careless way she held herself and confidence that emanated from her being. The last person was a woman of short stature who had struck up a conversation with Koujaku, her voice annoyingly shrill to the ex-espada as she gushed about one thing or another. Her gaze then flickered to Grimmjow, and her mouth parted to ask a question.

"Oh Koujaku-chan, who's this?" her pale blue eyes were alight with curiosity and a grin parted her dark face in a cat-like grin. "Is he your boyfriend?"

Grimmjow scowled at the annoying woman, his blue eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Nah, he's a friend of my cousin's. I'm taking him clothing shopping while he's here since the dumb-ass let his clothes get stolen." Grimmjow was surprised at how easily the lie rolled off her tongue without any hesitation, but he didn't appreciate being called a dumb-ass. The other woman looked at him, something akin to pity setting in on her features.

"Oh no, that's horrible! Who would steal somebody else's clothes?"

Grimmjow stared at the girl before turning his gaze to Koujaku, narrowing icy blue eyes at her.

"Beats the absolute hell outta me." He answered. Koujaku just smirked and shrugged nonchalantly, turning her attention back to Aki when he came back with a folded up black hoodie. Koujaku took it and held it up, a pleased grin spreading out across her face when she looked at it. Grimmjow was confused, to say the least, as to why she would be so excited about a sweater with the ugliest creature on it the Arrancar had ever seen before in his entire life. The creature was green, with large eyes and even larger ears, sporting a terrifying grin and lips a shade of red that couldn't be natural.

"That's the ugliest fuckin' thing I've ever seen in my goddamn life." Grimmjow deadpanned, his eyebrows raised and lips pressed in a grimace. Koujaku only shrugged and placed it in her duffel.

"Anyway. We have shopping do to. Go ahead and pick out whatever you want, I'll leave you to it." Grimmjow gave her a blank look. Did she really think he had ever done this before? He wouldn't even know where to begin. The vast majority of his life had been spent as a mindless Hollow before he ascended into his Adjuches form. Even after he had been reborn as an Arrancar, it took a lot of coaxing from Aizen, Gin and Tosen to get him to wear the Arrancar uniform. He didn't know the first fucking thing about human clothing, but his pride wouldn't allow him to tell her that, so he meandered to a rack of jackets, feeling incredibly stupid as he browsed through them.

Many of the jackets in the rack he was browsing through had words written on them in a language he didn't understand, and others with odd looking symbols or wolves drawn on them. At the end of the rack was a soft sweater that had so many holes in it he thought couldn't have been made intentionally and that someone had just left it there. Grimmjow snapped his head up and looked at Koujaku, who was leaning against the sales counter in a bored manner as the young guy tried speaking to her about one thing or another, obviously trying a little too hard to catch the woman's attention.

"Hayashi." Grimmjow barked, raising the sweater so she could see. "Is this intentional? Do humans actually buy this shit?" Koujaku frowned slightly before pushing off of the counter, walking across the store with her arms folded across her chest.

"Yes it's intentional, and yes people actually buy it. You don't need to announce the fact that it's stupid across the store like an asshole." Grimmjow glowered at Koujaku and gritted his teeth, his lips pulling back in a snarl. How dare she speak to him like that! Did she not know that he could kill her in an instant if he wanted?

"I've got half a mind to kill you, woman." Grimmjow growled, shoving the sweater back onto the rack violently. Before Grimmjow could turn and walk away, Koujaku had a hold of his ear and was tugging downward with strength the blue-haired man didn't realize she had. He let out an emasculating yelp as his body was forced downward to come eye to eye with Koujaku, who had an angry – borderline straight up livid – expression on her face.

"You wanna repeat that?" she said lowly. Grimmjow didn't know why, but he felt as if he were being scolded by his mother. Grimmjow scowled and opened his mouth to repeat what he had said, but was cut short when Koujaku gave another vicious tug on his ear.

"Rhetorical question, dumb-ass, you weren't supposed to answer that." Koujaku released his hold on Grimmjow's ear and crossed her arms over her chest again, fixing Grimmjow with an annoyed stare. "Have you picked anything out yet?" She asked, gaze drifting to Grimmjow's empty arms. Grimmjow scoffed and turned his head away.

"Can't find anything I like." Grimmjow lied. Koujaku made a small noise at the back of her throat before her hands were shoving Grimmjow's body around. Grimmjow quirked a brow when he felt her pull the collar of his borrowed shirt down a few inches before yelping and pulling away when he felt her tug on the hem of his pants.

"What the hell are you doing, woman?!" he shrieked, embarrassment warming his face.

"Seeing what size clothes you were wearing so I can pick some shit out for you." Koujaku stated, immediately flicking through a rack of jackets behind her. She pulled out a few black hooded jackets and a wind-breaker before walking over to a shelf with a myriad of pants on it. She shifted through all of them before extracting several pairs of black jeans as well as a few pairs of gray and blue ones.. Grimmjow watched as she seemed to pull shirts and other various clothing choices off of random racks or shelves before her arms were completely laden with many pairs or pants, shirts, and jackets.

"We'll just go ahead and buy all of these, and you can try them on as you wear them. We'll just return the ones that don't fit, although, I highly doubt any of them will be too small for you. Men's clothing sizes tend to be pretty universal these days." Koujaku unloaded the clothing into the counter and the annoying woman that worked there immediately began ringing up the items and subsequently folding them, never breaking concentration from her task as she spoke a million miles an hour.

Before Grimmjow knew it, Koujaku was slinging one of the duffel-bags over her shoulder and tossing the other to Grimmjow, who caught it easily even though he wasn't even looking. Grimmjow didn't understand how Koujaku and the annoying woman got all of those clothes into the two bags (there were a total of fifteen shirts, nine pairs of jeans, several packages of underwear and socks, as well as several pairs of pajamas and a few hoodies) but decided against asking questions he didn't want to know the mundane answers to and followed Koujaku out of the store and back to the bus stop.

Grimmjow could see Koujaku yawn at random intervals, and every so often her head tipped forward before snapping back up. It was obvious that she was tired, but she played it off well by looking at her phone whenever she was on the verge of falling asleep where she stood.

The bus rumbled by and the pair got on it, Koujaku and Grimmjow taking the only two available seats near the middle of the bus. Koujaku bounced her leg up and down furiously, looking more and more tired and irritated as the bus ride dragged on. There was a point where a group of rowdy teenagers got on the bus, milling about near Koujaku and the other door. They were all loud and boisterous, and took up the entire aisle, but Koujaku didn't pay them any mind. Shortly after, the bus made another stop and a young woman got on, her belly heavy and swollen with child. She looked around for a space to sit, but when she saw that nothing was available, she hooked her arm around a pole and set her bag on the ground.

Koujaku got up and made her way to the woman, speaking with her and pointing toward the seat where Grimmjow was. The man looked at the pair curiously when they both walked toward him, his eyes trained on the way the woman held her belly with her free arm protectively.

"Grimmjow, get up." Koujaku demanded. Grimmjow raised a brow.

"Why the hell should I?" He questioned, annoyed that he would have to give up his spot when there was a perfectly good one right next to him.

"Because she's pregnant, asshole. I don't want her to have to sit in the aisle with all those dick-head kids next to her where they could knock into her because they're not paying attention, now get up." Grimmjow grumbled but stood, squeezing out of the seat and allowing the woman to sit down. The woman thanked him and sat down, placing her bags between her feet on the floor. Koujaku patted his shoulder in appreciation and set her bag on the seat, ignoring the look Grimmjow gave her.

"Our stop is almost up, there's no point in sitting down now." She said, sliding her thumb across her phone to unlock it. Grimmjow huffed and rolled his eyes, raising an arm to grab the support pole that ran along the roof of the bus. The bus was mostly silent for a moment (save for the teenagers still being loud and obnoxious) and Grimmjow stared absently out of the window.

There was a slight jolt as they hit a bump in the road, so Grimmjow braced himself so he wouldn't fall into anyone. The teenager closest to Koujaku didn't to the same and fell into her, knocking her phone to the floor. Koujaku gritted her teeth and growled, taking her phone back from where Grimmjow had stooped to pick it up without thinking.

"Watch it!" The teenager hissed, turning to join back in the conversation he and his friends had just been having. His friends laughed, but Koujaku didn't look amused at all.

"The proper term is 'excuse me' when you bump into someone," She retorted hotly. The kid scoffed and turned to Koujaku, an annoyed and haughty expression on his face.

"Says who, lady? You're not my mother." He quipped. Koujaku's face went scarily blank, and Grimmjow knew that the kid had just said something the woman didn't like at all.

"Apparently yours needs to give you an ass-beating and a lesson in manners."

"What did you just say to me?" The kid demanded. Koujaku scoffed.

"Did I stutter?"

The kid looked to his friends, and they each chimed in with their own vulgar replies. The people on the bus were looking at them now, each of them whispering about how rude the teenagers were being.

"I've never hit a girl before, but you're about to be my first." the kid said, pushing up the sleeves of his jacket. Grimmjow grinned, excited at the prospect of a fight. Koujaku didn't look impressed, and casually reached up to pull on the chord to alert the driver to stop the bus, the kids spewing insults all the while. The driver pulled over a few moments later, and as soon as the bus rolled to a stop and the doors opened, Koujaku landed a kick straight to the kids chest, sending him tumbling backward out of the vehicle.

The kids friends all gave shouts, and one even attempted to swing at Koujaku, but she grabbed his wrist and spun the kid around, yanking his arm behind his back so hard he yelled in pain. Koujaku pushed him out and gave a pointed look to the others, watching in satisfaction as they scrambled off the bus as well.

"Fucking assholes." Koujaku muttered, leaning against the pole with her eyes glued to her phone as the bus resumed its course. Grimmjow looked at Koujaku curiously, wondering how she learned to fight, and if she happened to be a substitute Soul Reaper like Kurosaki or if she developed powers just by being around his incredibly large reiatsu. Her reiatsu was large, there was no denying that, but it wasn't refined like Kurosaki's or Chad's. Now that he thought about it, he had never seen her with that group prior to yesterday, so it was probably safe to say that she didn't run around being a goody-goody like Kurosaki and his other friends.

"Hey." Grimmjow grunted. Koujaku looked up from her phone but didn't say anything.

"You run around killing Hollows and shit like Kurosaki or what?" He demanded. Koujaku shook her head.

"Nope." was all she said. Grimmjow's eyebrow twitched in irritation. She could have at least supplied him with a little more information than that! Before he could voice this, the bus stopped again and Koujaku hefted her duffel onto her shoulder and exited.

Grimmjow clicked his tongue in annoyance. He would just ask her some other time then.


Hello all! I know that I said the next chapter would be on July 14th, but I've got all the way through chapter four written up, so I figured that I would get this posted now! (and also because I'm super excited for you all to read chapter three, that one is my favorite so far.)

I hope my American readers had a great Fourth of July, and to my non-american readers or those that don't celebrate, I hope you had a great weekend!