Not-So-Silent Night II
According to human philosophy, vengeance was a dish best served cold.
Of all the Espada, only Ulquiorra would have been likely to agree with such a sentiment as they each handled emotions differently. Starrk was too lazy to care about vengeance, Grimmjow preferred white-hot rage, and Tia would likely just be quick and efficient with no grandstanding to be had. For Tyn, however, vengeance was a dish best served with the horrifying truth of the situation and marinated in raw terror.
Hiroki had to know what he'd stepped into, had to know the truth of what he was dealing with and of who he had crossed.
Tyn's plan was hazy at best, but it was slowly taking shape as he trudged through the snow; at first, he'd thought about tearing Hiroki's filthy human head off right there at the end of the street in a glorious shower of crimson gore, but that was too quick, too painless…too public. The masquerade had to be maintained at all costs for the safety of the others, so open murder was out of the question.
But if Hiroki were to simply vanish…
The snow-covered sidewalks were mostly deserted as Tyn made his way towards his destination, with Hiroki's unconscious form slung over his shoulder limply. Most people he met during his journey paid the two no mind, but for those few that did there was always a laughing smile and the explanation that his 'friend' had simply drank too much at the bar.
He couldn't decide if people were really foolish enough to believe him or if a lie, even a blatantly obvious one, somehow set their conscience at ease for failing to intervene.
The man over his shoulder groaned, and Tyn grinned as he reached their target; an innocent-looking building, an empty shop whose occupants had left town until after the new year. In Urahara's training chamber so far beneath the earth, no one would ever hear any screams and no one would ever witness any horrors that might happen.
Still, Urahara's place was only a way station on their journey as Tyn had somewhere much more isolated in mind.
The very nature of a gigai limited his true strength, but he still had more than enough to shatter the lock and force the door open. There was a part of him that hated using Urahara's place like this as he stepped inside, especially after Yoruichi's kindness last night, but he had no alternative.
And Kisuke Urahara, for all his genius, had failed to install a security system or cameras since the shop was almost never left unattended. The need had never been there before, as the shop had virtually nothing of interest to human thieves, and if the culprit was nonhuman…well, the police couldn't exactly arrest a spirit being, and the culprit could always blow the shop and all evidence into a thousand tiny pieces as he was leaving.
That wasn't to say Urahara wouldn't take an interest in the broken lock, or wouldn't notice if anything was even the slightest bit out of place; no, he'd begin dusting for fingerprints and likely build some sort of device to identify traces of reiatsu left behind and snoop his way back to whoever was responsible.
No matter what he did, Urahara would know that he'd been here.
He had a plan for that, though.
Tia had remarked earlier in the evening about how his exile had changed him and dulled his mind, how he'd lost his cunning and deviousness during that time…
How very naïve…
His time alone had affected him, but he hadn't lost that much of his mind.
However 'unhinged' he may have become during his exile, he was still a well-honed killing machine, still a devious monster with all the instincts and knowledge of an apex predator. Those aspects of his personality still surfaced every now and then when he needed them most; his battle with Grimmjow, his light sleeping, his brawl with Tia…
If those traits had ever dulled at all, they certainly felt as sharp as ever here and now.
No one hurt a member of his pack and got away with it, no one. Hell, he'd have gone after Aizen had he not been watching over Tia and Starrk, even though he knew it would have ended in a violent, horrible death.
Tyn opened the trapdoor that led down into the chamber and after securing his not-quite-awake-yet prisoner, began the long descent down the ladder.
In the end, Urahara wouldn't be completely convinced of his story, but he'd also lack any concrete proof that Tyn was lying. And afterwards, the shop would very likely have hidden security cameras installed to prevent such a thing from ever happening again.
But that was the future, and in the here and now there was a job that had to be done.
He was still a few feet up from the bottom when he heaved Hiroki from his shoulder and to the unforgiving rocky bottom where he landed with a yelp of pain. Tyn slid down the rest of the ladder's length to the ground, before turning around to face the now-awake human with a chilling grin.
"Where are we?" asked Hiroki, scrambling backwards across the dirt. "Where have you taken me? What are you going to do?"
"Nothing…yet," said Tyn, taking a rather perverse pleasure in watching the human pale at the 'yet' part. "First, I thought we'd have a little talk…make a few things clear."
"Look, I'm sorry, okay?" cried Hiroki, "I didn't mean to hurt her, honest! Please, I'll make everything right!"
"See, the thing is…" said Tyn, removing his Soul Candy from his pocket, "is that you don't really know her. Or me. Or any of us. Unlike you, I want to be honest about what I am."
He swallowed the green pill and popped free of his gigai, savoring the feel of being unrestrained. Had he done this outside, the Soul Society would know about his existence in a matter of seconds and come screaming after him, but down here, hidden away behind the barrier Kisuke built around this chamber…
The artificial soul inhabiting his gigai looked at him for instructions as Hiroki looked confused, unable to perceive Tyn in his true form; as far as the human knew, nothing had changed. Tyn, the real Tyn, stretched his arms and popped his neck for a moment, savoring the freedom of being outside of that damned artificial body before he began speaking.
"I'm not human, you see…" said the gigai, echoing its master's words for Hiroki's benefit. "None of us are. But you can't see the real us as you are now; you can only see our artificial bodies. I'm free of mine now, and my gigai is relaying my every word to you so that you can understand better."
"You're crazy…or high," said Hiroki, slowly getting to his feet. "What was that pill? Some sort of drug? A hallucinogen?"
"We have to hide in false bodies to interact with the human world normally, and to 'protect' it from our very existence…" the gigai continued as the real Tyn closed in on the oblivious human. "Continuous exposure to high concentrations of reiatsu can adversely affect things in the world of the living."
He clamped a hand around Hiroki's throat, easily lifting him off the ground with a smirk as the human struggled to break free from the iron grip of an invisible attacker. Tyn resisted the urge to choke him, knowing it would be all too easy to snap his neck now, and instead simply held him tight and began to focus his spiritual energy into his hand, willing it to flow to Hiroki and effect him.
"High concentrations can awaken dormant abilities in a special few, or allow others to perceive the spirits around them, and even crush the life out of a victim who has no defense against the onslaught," said the gigai as Tyn purposefully applied too much pressure for a brief second, chuckling darkly as Hiroki's lungs seized up and became unable to breath from the dense spiritual pressure that was literally drowning him.
"You need to see my Master…" said the gigai of its own accord as Tyn reigned in his reiatsu enough to let Hiroki breathe once more. "He very much wishes to have a word with you."
The growing terror in Hiroki's eyes told the arrancar that it was beginning to work, that the human was beginning to perceive something holding him at arm's length.
"Almost there, aren't we?" Tyn asked.
"What was that?" asked Hiroki, still pulling at the now semi-visible hand around his throat. "I heard a voice somewhere…"
Hiroki began to struggle more violently for a few seconds before growing very still and looking directly into Tyn's amber eyes in horror, signaling that the human could now see him clearly.
"Can you hear me now?" asked the Espada with a toothy grin as he dropped Hiroki to the ground.
"What…what's going on?" he asked, looking from the gigai to Tyn. "What are you?"
"All in due time, worm…" said Tyn, turning to his gigai. "I'll be back shortly; be waiting on top of the high school for me, and be sure to shut the trap door on the way out…front door, too, if you can."
"Yes, Master!" obliged the artificial soul heading for the ladder as Tyn turned back to Hiroki.
"Now, let's you and me take a little trip…" he said, snapping his fingers and watching a jagged black hole tear itself open in front of them.
"Please, no…" Hiroki begged as he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face now. "Please, I'm sorry!"
Tyn growled as he reached down and seized the sniveling man's shirt collar, hauling him up to his feet and into the black abyss.
"No, you're not. Not yet."
The scenic route had definitely been the way to go.
With the way his stomach was growling now, Ulquiorra was fairly confident that he would be able to force himself to eat Orihime's Christmas dinner and keep it down, and if not, he had a sack full of dinner rolls that would never know the horrors of red bean paste.
Perhaps he could try convincing the woman that he had developed an allergy to that cursed bean paste…
His musings were cut short as he noticed a figure further down the sidewalk and across the street, a suspicious-looking figure carrying another person over his shoulder.
Normally Ulquiorra would have been content to continue on his way and leave the humans to their own devices, but he didn't mind the idea of staying out of the house for a while longer. Besides, more time away now would only increase his chances of being able to enjoy dinner later.
The cuarto increased his pace as he crossed the street and hurried to catch up to the figure, wondering if perhaps he was witness to someone dumping off a dead body. If that was the case, should he report it? It was, as Orihime would say, the 'right' thing to do, but what if the police began asking him too many uncomfortable questions, and began probing too far into the background Urahara had fabricated for him? If they were to discover that his birth certificate and education records were all forgeries, the masquerade could very well be ruined…
Well, he'd just have to find a payphone somewhere and make an anonymous call, then.
Wait a minute… He recognized this neighborhood; this was the way to Urahara's shop!
Ulquiorra had thought the ex-captain had gone to the Soul Society for the holidays, taking all of his companions from the shop with him, but maybe he was wrong. He squinted his eyes against the snow blowing in his face, thinking that perhaps it was Kisuke carrying a gigai over his shoulder…
Except Kisuke didn't have red hair.
And the 'gigai' was Halibel's boyfriend.
Damn it all.
He watched Tyn force the door to the shop open, shattering the lock and vanishing inside as the winds continued to whip the snow around outside, making the disappearing act appear almost like a magic trick. Ulquiorra darted to the front of the shop, pressing his back against the wall and stealing a glance inside only to see nothing.
Carefully, Ulquiorra stepped inside the empty shop and working his way to the back and the trap door that led downstairs, knowing that it was Tyn's most likely destination.
The trap door in question was open when he arrived, and the Espada dropped to his knees and peered down into the hole just in time to see Tyn, the real Tyn, release Hiroki to the ground before turning around to say something to his gigai. It was impossible to make out what was being said from this distance, but it didn't matter; Tyn was obviously planning to kill the human, and there was no way Ulquiorra could allow that to happen.
He didn't particularly like Hiroki, nor did he care about the 'sanctity of human life,' but Tyn's actions could endanger them all; Urahara had made them all agree to a strict 'No Murder' pact when they'd first come to Karakura with the understanding that if they broke that verbal contract, he would inform the Seireitei about their continued existence.
And now Tyn was going to use Urahara's own training chamber as a killing field.
He was about to call for Tyn to halt and descend the ladder when the quinto snapped his fingers and a familiar black anomaly began to tear itself open, an unseen zipper ripping apart the sky and exposing an inky, unforgiving blackness.
A garganta.
He wasn't going to do the deed here; Tyn was going to spirit his victim away to Hueco Mundo.
Damn!
Ulquiorra called out for him to stop, but it was too late; the garganta was already closing and Tyn was beyond earshot.
The dinner rolls forgotten, Ulquiorra dropped his sack on the floor and began to swiftly climb down the ladder, forcing Tyn's gigai to go back down itself or be kicked off as they met in the middle.
"Where is he taking him?" demanded Ulquiorra. "The palace? The Western Dune Sea? The Menos Forest?"
"I don't know!" said the gigai defensively, holding up its hands submissively. "Master didn't tell me where he was going!"
"What did he tell you, then?" asked the cuarto as he pulled out his own Soul Candy and swallowed the pill quickly, allowing his spirit form to free itself from his own gigai.
"Just that he'd be back shortly, and that I should meet him on the roof of the high school!" exclaimed the redheaded faux body.
"I see…" said Ulquiorra, the pieces coming together quickly.
The barrier in the training chamber hid spiritual pressure from the outside world, and while it allowed a portal to go out from the barrier, none could come in.
The garganta technique was a useful one for traveling between the realms; if one knew exactly where he wanted to go, he could open a portal directly to it, unless that location was guarded by a barrier. The high school was not protected by a barrier, though, and with his sonido Tyn could easily make it from the portal to his gigai in a split-second, most likely before the Soul Society could ever detect him.
And even if they did detect him, their radar screens would only register him for an instant, giving a single beep before going silent once more. Anyone looking at the screen would likely think it was just a minor 'hiccup' in the system.
His departure from the human world would never be detected, and his return would likely be just as stealthy.
Clever.
And Hiroki's corpse, of course, would be left to rot in the endless sands of Hueco Mundo, where neither the human police or the shinigami would ever find it.
"Go with him," Ulquiorra ordered his gigai, gesturing to Tyn's body. "One way or the other, I shall return soon. Be ready for my arrival."
"Yes, Milord," responded the pale gigai, bowing as Ulquiorra opened his own garganta bound for the ruined palace of Los Noches.
The night couldn't possibly get any worse.
It was cold, it was wet, it was snowing, he'd just spent the past eight hours in a goddamned fat suit pretending to be Santa Claus and letting a bunch of whiny brats sit on his lap and tell him all about the stupid crap they wanted for Christmas, three of them had actually peed on him, and then Tyn and Tia had seen him.
Just fucking perfect.
If there had been any truth to the holiday at all, Grimmjow would have been willing to pop his Soul Candy right then and make a beeline for the North Pole and leave nothing but charred reindeer corpses and bite-sized Elf bits in his wake.
He pulled his blue scarf around his face tighter and shivered as he trudged his way home through the snow, cursing the entire time. Stupid Christmas. Stupid Mall. Stupid Ulquiorra! Jail would have been preferable to the humiliation of pretending to be a fat pedophile Elf!
At least it was all over now; this had been the last night of the Santa gig, and he was free now.
Of course, Tyn and Tia had discovered his little secret now, which left his freedom feeling a lot less sweet than it should.
He passed an alleyway and caught the whiff of a body in the shadow, something several hours dead and freezing solid in the snow and ice. He smiled grimly, the thought of a hobo-cicle propped up against a dumpster making him feel better already.
The sexta headed into the darkened alleyway, his keen eyes searching for a humanoid shape in the snow. Hell, maybe he should take the hobo-cicle and leave it on Kurosaki's doorstep for him…
"Merry Christmas, jackass…" snickered Grimmjow at the mental image of Ichigo opening his door the next morning, stepping outside, tripping over the frozen bum and falling face-first into the thick sheet of ice covering the concrete of his front porch.
Unfortunately, he saw nothing and with a scowl, Grimmjow turned to leave the alleyway, cursing his nose for misleading him.
And then he tripped.
The snow padded his fall, saving him from the same bloody-faced fate of Kurosaki from his earlier daydream. Still, the pissed-off panther whirled around to see what had gotten in his way and saw the body of an alley cat partially buried in the snow.
A white kitten with blue eyes meowed mournfully, nudging at the body with its nose.
"Looks like you're having a pretty shitty Christmas, too, huh, kid?" asked Grimmjow, getting back up to his feet and dusting the snow off his person as the kitten looked up at him.
"She's dead, junior; better accept it and move on before you freeze to death, too," he added, leaving the alleyway.
He'd only made it a few steps when he heard a faint 'meowing' sound behind him, and Grimmjow turned to find the kitten trudging along behind him, its head barely above the ever-deepening snow.
"No way, kid!" he barked, looking down at his tiny follower. "I ain't got the room at my place, you hear me? Find some other sucker to shack up with!"
"Meow?"
"Don't give me that!" snapped Grimmjow, scooping the cat up in his hands and holding it at arm's length. "I can't take you in, brat!"
"Meow?"
"Don't look at me like that! I'm not the bad guy here; I'm being practical!" cried the sexta as a human walked by and looked at him as if he were insane.
"What the fuck are you looking at, jackass?" bellowed the arrancar, watching the man hurry off down the street. Satisfied that the human filth was gone, he turned his attention back to the cat and pulled it closer to his face.
"Not happening, junior," said Grimmjow, shaking his head slowly for emphasis. "I can't do it."
"Meow?" said the cat, cocking its head as it placed a tiny paw on Grimmjow's nose and managed to elicit a defeated sigh from the arrancar.
"Okay, but just for tonight, you hear me? Just for tonight!"
God damn it.
God damn it all.
How had she been so blind?
Tia slammed the apartment door shut behind her and flung her keys over to the bar in the kitchen, unzipping her snow-laden coat and letting it fall to the living room floor as she made her way to her bedroom. It baffled her as to how she couldn't have seen it coming; working on Christmas Eve, really? He was a mid-level accountant in an office building, not a friggin' doctor!
And she'd very nearly given herself to him…had been there in the apartment with him, had shed their clothes and were becoming very well acquainted with each other's body…and then an unnamed feeling of guilt had stabbed her in the gut and forced her to back away. She'd compromised by putting her underclothes back on, as he had, and staying the night in his arms, feeling even more guilt for having led him on. She apologized profusely in the morning, had promised to make it up to him someday…
And now this…
While she was thankful for her cold feet now, Tia had felt so much guilt at the time…and for what?
She slammed a fist into her bedroom wall, knocking a head-sized hole clean through into the living room.
God, she'd wanted to kill him at the mall, had wanted to tear his very heart from his chest and stomp on it, just as he had done to her own non-existent heart. No one betrayed her, no one! She'd swore after Aizen's betrayal and attempt to kill her that she'd never allow herself to be lied to and used again, that she would be more vigilant in who she trusted…
Damn it all!
If not for the need to maintain the masquerade, for her own sake as well as that of the others, she'd have gladly murdered Hiroki right then and there, coating the entire mall in his filthy human blood.
Fucking hell, it wasn't supposed to feel like this, wasn't supposed to hurt… She didn't have a heart, for the love of God! How could this hurt so fucking much?
It wasn't fair, it really wasn't; hadn't she been through enough with the war? Had she not suffered enough when she lost Sung-Sun, Mila Rose, and Apacci to the damnedable old man? If nothing else, wasn't it enough to have felt the searing pain of Aizen's blade as he so casually dismissed her from his service and spat on the sacrifices she and her fracción had made in his name?
Christmas wasn't supposed to be like this, not according to television!
Everything had been going pretty well, too; she'd been enjoying her time out with Tyn, and—
Tyn!
She'd forgotten all about her roommate in her moment of rage and had left him at the mall…with Hiroki.
Tyn, left alone with Hiroki, with no one to stop him from giving in to the animosity he'd been harboring for weeks now…
Oh, fuck.
Despite how angry she was and how much she wanted Hiroki to pay for his sins in blood, she couldn't let Tyn kill him. She sprinted from her bedroom over to the kitchen to grab her keys and scooped up her coat as she quickly made her way the front door. Once out in the hall, she went into a flat run for the stairs, knowing they would be faster than the elevator and that at the moment, every second mattered.
He did not seem to be anywhere near Los Noches.
Ulquiorra stood on top of the pile of rubble that had once been the great domed palace of Los Noches, having no doubt been destroyed during the last incursion by the shinigami. He had thought Tyn might bring his prey here, but the raptor was nowhere to be seen and Ulquiorra could not feel his reiatsu anywhere nearby, either.
He stretched out with his own spiritual pressure as far as he could, hoping to find the Tyn before he had a chance to dismember the human. He could sense dozens of ordinary adjuchas in the area and a handful of gillians, but nothing…
There, at the farthest edge of the Southern Dune Sea, near an opening that led down into the Menos Forest…
Ulquiorra took a deep breath, inhaling the succulent, reiatsu-heavy air of Hueco Mundo and letting it flood his lungs before he took off, using his sonido and hoping he could make it there in time.
God, Buddha, Allah, anyone, PLEASE! Get me through this and I swear I will never lie again, never cheat on another woman… I'll volunteer for missionary work out in the Congo! Please, anything!
If there was a God, he didn't seem to be accepting prayers today.
Hiroki found himself in a land of white sand and near-total darkness with only a few sparkling pin-pricks of light dotting the sky. To the north, west, and east were endless sand dunes stretching out as far as the eye could see, and just a few meters south was a mammoth cave opening that looked as if it led into the very bowels of Hell itself.
"Depressing, isn't it?" asked Tyn conversationally. "Welcome to the Southern Dune Sea. I spent a lot of my time in exile wandering around this area."
Yes, the exile… During the trip through the black hole in time and space, the garganta as Tyn had called it, the redhead had regaled him with the entire story of what he was, of what the others were, of Hueco Mundo and the war with beings called Soul Reapers… Tyn had literally dragged him the entire way, walking along a path of crystalline ice that formed underneath the monster's feet with every step through the darkness, and on either side of the path lay nothing but an infinite abyss, blacker than the very night itself.
And then they had arrived in this land of sand and despair; Hueco Mundo, the land where the night was never-ending, and Tyn had roughly flung him several meters away, into a sand dune.
"If you look to the north, that way," said Tyn casually pointing it out as if this were simply a friendly guided tour, "you can see the remains of Los Noches… Looks like the shinigami raped it pretty good after we left."
Hiroki glanced as the massive structure that he'd at first mistaken for a mountain, but he could now recognize as a giant pile of rubble the likes of which he'd never seen. Jesus, the palace must have been the size of a city! He glanced back at Tyn and saw heads with white, masked faces peering out from the mouth of the cave now, all looking at him with hunger in their eyes.
"Don't worry about them…" said Tyn, not bothering to look over his shoulder at the other monsters as he kept walking towards Hiroki. "They understand the way the food chain works around here; they know that I'm at the top, and they're not."
"And I'm at the very bottom, aren't I?" asked Hiroki, swallowing hard.
"Well, you're a quick study, aren't you?" grinned the menacing creature with the mostly-human face as he neared.
"Please…" begged Hiroki as he got to his feet, "I made a mistake, I know that now. If you let me live, I swear I'll make it up to her! I'll do anything you say, I promise!"
It bothered him to know that Tia was like Tyn, an undead monster that had once been some kind of ghost; the thought that he had been kissing such a creature involuntarily sent shivers of disgust down his spine, and he saw the disapproval reflecting in Tyn's inhuman amber eyes.
"Plenty of males around here would give anything to have the favor of the Shark Queen as you had…" Tyn said, reaching a hand up to rub his mask-covered chin, fingering a sharp, tooth-like protrusion that came to a stop just a few millimeters short of his bottom lip. "Of the precious few females who survive Hueco Mundo, none can compare to her, and having seen the human world first hand, I see little difference there."
"You're right, you're absolutely right!" Hiroki agreed as Tyn came to a stop arm's length away and slowly moved his arm up towards Hiroki's chest. "She's perfect, and I was a fool! Please, give me another chance to make it right!"
"Make it right?" asked Tyn. "The only way you can make it right now is to bleed for me. For her."
The monster casually flicked a finger into Hiroki's chest, and pain exploded throughout his body as he went flying backwards, bouncing across the rough sand mercilessly. Ten meters, twenty meters, thirty before he came to a stop half-buried in a dune. His chest ached and burned worse than any pain he'd ever felt in his life, and Hiroki carefully prodded at it to see if any ribs were broken.
No, but only barely.
With just a light flick of his finger.
Jesus!
"And she's far stronger than I am…" Tyn was saying as he slowly closed in on Hiroki again. "So powerful, and yet she allowed herself to fall in love with such a weak, disgusting creature… You were never worthy of her time, human."
"I…I know…" coughed Hiroki, spitting up a mouthful of crimson blood onto the white sand. "I'm garbage…I know that now… Please, have mercy on me…"
"Mercy? HA!" laughed Tyn cruelly as he stood over the fallen human. "Look around you! Mercy doesn't exist here! It's survival of the fittest day in and day out! Kill or be killed! There is no mercy, and no one to save you!"
Tyn drew his sword, madness twinkling in his amber eyes.
"This will not be fast," he promised darkly, "Or painless. Not after what you've done."
The redheaded beast drove his sword toward Hiroki's right shoulder, aiming to impale it with such speed that it was impossible to dodge. He'd barely had time to register the blade was even moving…and then it came to an abrupt halt, with nothing but the very tip of the ivory blade piercing his skin.
A figure stood between them now, clad entirely in white, with a pale hand wrapped tightly around the deadly blade of Tyn's sword. Hiroki could see nothing else of his savior save for his back, and the long tails of his jacket danced about on the wind just in front of Hiroki's nose.
"I cannot allow this, Five," said an eerily calm and somewhat familiar voice.
"Ulquiorra…" hissed Tyn as he jerked his sword free. "Stay out of this! He betrayed Tia, hurt her! He has to pay!"
"Is that so?" asked the other man, turning to look over his shoulder and down at the still half-buried human.
Hiroki finally recognized the pale man now and those strange green eyes, noting that he looked much the same here as he did back in Karakura, save for the green lines that looked like tears coming down from his eyes and the bone-like partial helmet covering one side of his head.
"I'm sorry! Please, give me a chance—"
"Regardless of his transgressions, I cannot allow you to murder him. We made a vow not to kill humans when we moved to Karakura."
"Thank you thank you thank you!" babbled Hiroki to his unlikely hero.
Ulquiorra drew his own sword, grabbing the blade with his other hand and slicing it open. The pale monster examined the wound for a second before flinging the blood all over Hiroki's face.
"Smear that into your skin…" commanded Ulquiorra, turning back to face Tyn. "And get as far away from here as you can; my scent should keep the lesser hollows at bay for a while. I will find you when I am finished here."
"Don't do this, Ulquiorra…" growled Tyn, tightening his grip on his own white sword as Hiroki began to vigorously rub the blood all over his face and arms. "You know I'm in the right here. He has to pay for what he's done to her!"
"Had we not all made an agreement, I would let you take your revenge…" said Ulquiorra impassively. "His life means nothing to me."
"Then stand aside!" roared Tyn as Hiroki finally turned and fled into the desert. "You can make an exception this one time!"
"No, I cannot. This is for the greater good of all of us, Tyn; you and Halibel included."
"I won't let you stop me, Ulquiorra… If you won't let me go around you, I'll go through you!"
"You would kill a member of the pack you craved for so long?" asked Ulquiorra, not sounding at all convinced of Tyn's threat.
"I don't have to kill you…I just have to beat you!" exclaimed Tyn, growling as he raised his sword in preparation for battle.
"You will not find it so easy, Tyn," said Ulquiorra, his voice devoid the slightest hint of emotion over the pending fight.
"Don't underestimate me, Four!" spat the redhead bitterly.
"I do not intend to. Enclose, Murciélago!"