Humiliation, Longing, and Pride
Life's ability to zero in on an unfortunate soul that was already in a bad situation and somehow find a way to make things even worse never ceased to amaze or annoy him.
Being forced to live among the humans like a weakling was bad enough, but working in an environment where that irritating bastard Ulquiorra was still his superior? It was insult on top of injury and the mop in his hand placed there by the pasty-faced prick in question was an even worse insult.
Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez gripped the wooden handle so hard that cracks could be heard forming along the shaft as he growled in frustration at his position.
He was strong, a powerful creature that was born to be a leader among others, a king in his own right…and yet he continually found himself serving others for one reason or another. If the group as a whole was going to continue on with this miserable little charade of pretending to be human, he should at least be given a position of some respect and authority.
Of course, there was no way in hell Ulquiorra would ever allow that to happen…
Muttering a hundred different swear words directed at his supervisor under his breath, the former Espada slapped the wet mop against the dark brown tile of the floor and began to swab back and forth slowly. A tall blonde woman entered the restaurant, leading her young son along by the hand, and Grimmjow literally had to bite his tongue hard to keep from screaming at them in rage as they walked right across his freshly-mopped floor, paying no attention to the telltale bucket of water and the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign he'd put up just seconds earlier.
He scowled as the copper-sweet taste of blood began to pool in his mouth, strongly considering spitting it on the woman and her brat, but a look from Ulquiorra as he rang up their order told him that there would be severe consequences for doing so.
Goddamned scrawny little bastard…
He opted to spit the mouthful of blood into the bucket as the gigai's accelerated healing closed the wound on his tongue and he dipped the mop back into the bucket and went back to swab the dirty footprints off the floor.
"I don't wanna eat here!" screamed the petulant child, "I want to go to WacDonald's!"
"I want you to go to WacDonald's, too, you noisy little hell-spawn," growled Tyn as he momentarily stepped out of the kitchen, holding his ears against the high-pitched shrieking and scowling hatefully at the humans.
The mother looked offended and began to complain to Ulquiorra and though he'd never actually say it, Grimmjow actually agreed with the red-headed raptor for a change; the last thing he wanted in his almost-clean dining room right now was an obnoxious child and a mother who apparently wasn't interested in forcing him to behave. That was a bad combination for a wide variety of reasons, all of which would end with Grimmjow being forced to clean them up.
He chuckled darkly as he considered introducing them both to the deep fryer face-first and then chuckled again when he heard Ulquiorra announce that the cost of the meal was coming out of Tyn's pay for his rude outburst. It was the ultimate win/win for Grimmjow; Tyn got punished and the angry arrancar would undoubtedly do something unspeakably horrible to the brat's food in retaliation.
It only took a few moments for their now-tainted food to be ready and of course, they walked straight across Grimmjow's freshly-mopped floor again as they went to the dining room.
Still behind the woman, Grimmjow hoisted his mop back and prepared to knock the disrespectful human wench and her stupid whelp right out of the store with one mighty swing, straight through the large plate-glass windows and into the busy street in front of the restaurant. For great justice, he went for the swing only to find that his mop wouldn't budge for some odd reason.
"Behave," said Ulquiorra coolly from behind, and Grimmjow forced himself to take a deep breath to try and reign his temper in as the cuarto released his hold on the mop.
For her part, the woman and her child never knew what had went on behind their backs or just how perilously close to death they had come.
Sulking, Grimmjow returned to mopping the floor, stealing occasional glances at the mother and son to burn the faces into his memory; sooner or later, this little farce of pretending to be human would come to an end, and then…
Another evil smile danced across his face as he worked, images of blood, fire, and twisted corpses in his head. It would be so sweet, so gratifying, and so ultimately worth all this nightmarish humiliation he was forced to deal with now.
After all, vengeance was a dish best served with a heaping side of indiscriminate murder and mayhem.
Still, try as he might, he couldn't completely tune out the overly-loud brat and his mother as they ate, with the child still bitching about how he'd rather go to WacDonald's.
"This food is bad!" he whined, "I think they spit on my burger! Look! Is this snot? I think it's snot!"
"Stop lying; we are not going to WacDonald's today!" snapped the mother.
"If you don't take me to WacDonald's, I'm going to throw up!" threatened the brat, and Grimmjow's eyes widened.
"No…no, no, no, no…" he pleaded to anyone that would listen, but neither the mother, the child, or anyone else answered him as the brat ran his finger down his throat and began to gag himself.
"No!" cried Grimmjow loudly, sprinting forward to stop him, but it was too late; the child spewed forth partially-digested hamburger, fries, soda, and stomach acid all over Grimmjow's nice, clean floor.
"Fine!" declared the mother, "If you want to go to WacDonald's that badly, we'll go!"
Grimmjow stood there, fuming… All of his work mopping the floor, the child forcing himself to throw up and ruining all of it, and this ignorant bitch couldn't even be bothered to tell him "I'm sorry my son is a stupid waste of oxygen that ruined your clean floor and I'm an idiotic wench who should never be allowed to breed again"?
The number six had just reached his limit of bullshit for the day.
"Bad fetus!" he raged at the child, pointing at the smelly pool of puke on the floor, "That's a bad, bad fetus, bad! I should punt-kick your scrawny, nasty little ass across town!"
Wide-eyed with terror at being yelled at by a strange and obviously-insane man, the child began to cry as the mother turned red in the face and opened her mouth to defend her spoiled, retarded offspring.
"How dare you speak to—" she began, but Grimmjow whirled to face her and whatever complaint she'd had quickly died on her lips as he turned his fury on her.
"And you, you stupid, silly bitch! I should mop that shit up with your goddamn face! Jesus, how fucking hard is it to actually be a parent and smack the brat around a little to keep him in line? You're a bigger waste of space than he is! I should just do the world a favor right now and kill the both—"
"That is enough, Grimmjow," said Ulquiorra, cutting him off mid-rant by jerking him backwards by his collar, away from the mother and child before his verbal abuse turned very physical and very bloody.
The woman's expression was one of shock and indignant rage and she sputtered about for a few moments before finally finding her voice once more.
"You're all terrible people!" she screamed, "I'm never bringing my family here again and I'm going to make sure none of my friends do, either!"
"Promise?" called out Tyn hopefully as the woman stormed out the door dragging her child out by the arm.
The four arrancar stood in silence for a moment in the now-empty restaurant, looking at the slowly-expanding pool of vomit on the floor.
"Grimmjow…"
The sexta didn't need to be told what to do for once and he as he growled and retrieved his mop and bucket, bitterly watching the others go back to work and leave him to deal with the mess alone. Sighing heavily, he plopped the wet mop down in the center of the disgusting filth and began to swab the tile floor once again.
"I hate my life."
His shift had ended nearly two hours ago, but Tyn found himself feeling more than a little reluctant to go home after last night's unfortunate incident over the cat skin and a few bloodied clothes. So Halibel's undergarments had some bloodstains now, big fucking deal; after all, didn't girls already leave red stains once a month anyway?
He'd asked Halibel that of course, and that had earned him a fist to the other side of his head.
He was now thoroughly convinced that her near-death at Aizen's hands had left her in a perpetual state of PMS; it was that time of the month every minute of every day and it would never end.
And he had to live with her…
Lucky me… he thought bitterly.
Tyn had taken a different route home than normal, a longer one that had taken him by a new strip mall, and there he took his time wandering around from shop to shop trying to delay the inevitable as long as possible. He frowned as he realized that it didn't matter if he wasn't there to screw something up; Tia was likely to yell at him for being late if nothing else.
He'd come up with a couple of mathematical formulas for sharing an apartment with Halibel to try and make things easier.
Angry Tia = Lots of Yelling.
Angry Tia + Peace Offering = Concussion.
There was no middle ground, no way to win; everything he said or did or even thought was wrong and attempting to argue the point only made things worse.
He wandered into a store of "collectables" and wandered around aimlessly looking at small statues and figurines that were hideous beyond words. Who in their right mind would actually buy any of this garbage? He picked up one small statue in particular and took a long, hard look at it, trying to decide if it was supposed to be a dragon, or if the artist had suffered a severe seizure while sculpting it.
Scowling in disgust, he sat the piece back down and headed for the exit…and that's when the katana mounted on the wall behind the register caught his eye, and he walked over to it, entranced.
"Ah, I see you like it, do you?" asked the clerk with a smile, "It's a handmade piece, one of a kind!"
"It almost looks like my zanpaktou…" muttered Tyn as the clerk took the weapon down and handed it over for examination.
"Your what?" asked the confused clerk.
"Never mind," said Tyn quickly, looking the weapon over carefully. The guard appeared to be two curved dragon claws, forming an almost perfect circle; Tyn's own guard was two raptor claws, Deinonychus claws to be exact. The coloring of both the guard and the pommel were gold, though a slightly different hue from Tyn's own, and the scabbard a glossy black, though it lacked the three red streaks down the length of the sheathe that resembled claw marks. Garras Rapaces' pommel also had a six-inch long tassel laden with red feathers that the katana before him was sorely lacking.
I could probably fix that… he thought to himself as he drew the blade slowly, checking the steel for imperfections.
"Full tang, and the balance is—" started the clerk, but Tyn cut him off.
"Believe me, I know what I'm doing…" he said, never taking his eyes off the gleaming steel.
It felt nice and balanced in his hand, though admittedly not as familiar and as perfectly-balanced as Garras Rapaces was.
Still, it was impressive for a human-made weapon and since he was only allowed out of his gigai once a month in Urahara's underground chamber he rarely got to use his zanpaktou anymore…
"How much?" he asked, finally returning the blade to its scabbard.
The clerk told him an absurd number, more absurd than he'd dared imagine.
Tyn staggered backwards, nearly knocking one of the oh-so ugly statues off the nearby display rack. That would be about for weeks worth of pay and if he spent that much money without her approval, Tia would be positively beyond pissed with him.
Stupid minimum-wage job…
He knew Grimmjow's advice would be to steal it, but robbing a store would end up with a lot of unwanted attention directed their way, and sooner or later the Soul Society might take notice…
Sighing, he handed the katana back to the clerk and watched the man return it to its place on the wall before finally turning to leave.
"Home sweet Hell…" Tyn muttered to himself quietly as he entered the apartment and as he turned around to make sure the door was locked he could already feel a pair of angry green eyes boring a hole into his back. He really was not in the mood to listen to too much bitching tonight…
"You're late," announced Tia, arms folded across her chest as she glared at her roommate.
"Bite me," he spat back as he turned and brushed past her on his way to the living room, sitting down at his end of the couch.
"Where have you been?" Halibel demanded, her tone making the question sound more like a hostile interrogation than any type of friendly curiosity.
"What the hell does it matter to you?" growled an annoyed Tyn, "You're not my keeper, you know."
"It matters because you're an idiot. It matters because if you're left alone for too long, you might waste your half of the rent on something worthless again like you did with all those stupid ferns and the humidifier—"
"I can decorate my room however I—" he started, but was cut off abruptly as a hand closed around his throat tightly.
"Don't interrupt me again," warned Halibel before continuing, "It matters because you're impulsive and savage and almost as likely to kill someone as Grimmjow."
She paused, sniffing the air before wrinkling her nose in disgust and releasing him.
"Go take a shower; you reek of hamburgers and stupidity," Tia spat before turning and going into her bedroom, being sure to slam the door behind her with enough force to rattle the walls.
"Yes, dear. Whatever you say, dear," he hissed sarcastically under his breath as he stood up and trudged his way into the bathroom.
A person shouldn't have to dread going home, he mused as he turned on the shower and began to undress. It wasn't right, it wasn't natural, not for humans or arrancars…
He rested his hands on either side of the sink and leaned forward heavily, looking at himself in the mirror. Gigai or no, his mind's eye could still make out his real face in the reflection; the remains of his mask that covered his mandible, stretching back to the hinge of the jaw and up before disappearing into short, spiky, arterial-red hair, the diagonal red stripes on either side of his face that started at the top of his nose and raced their way back down to the back of his jaw, and above those lines sat the predatory amber-colored eyes that could see in even the blackest night…
But what he could see with his mind's eye and what he could see with his actual eyes were two entirely different things, and his eyes showed him the gigai's face, a distinctly human face that had been stripped of all the things that would make him stand out such as his mask and markings, his eyes now a bright green rather than a fierce yellow, and even his hair had been changed to a darker, less-unique shade of red.
Tyn wondered if it was having his true self buried underneath so much human that made him tolerate Halibel's verbal and occasional physical abuse, or if it was his bestial desire to be part of a pack that was overriding his sense of pride and retaliatory nature, or of perhaps he was still stubbornly clinging to memories of how things used to be between the two of them…
He still didn't have an answer to that question as he finally turned away from the mirror and stepped into the hot shower, but he did know one very important fact:
Every man, even if they weren't human, had a breaking point.