Friendly reminder that there are potential spoilers if you don't read the manga; also, I own nothing, although there is another OC somewhere down below.
Intermission Trois
She wouldn't shut up.
So, of course the logical thing to do was to kiss her, wasn't it? And she was quiet for a moment, absolutely and utterly quiet and-
Stiff as a board. Wasn't she supposed to kiss him back? Wasn't that how this kind of thing was supposed to work?
Her hand came up onto his chest, and then both of her hands were on his shoulders and he felt his heart beating just a little faster than it had been before, an uptick in the rhythm it had started beating just before he had kissed her in the first place, a feeling in his chest akin to the one he got when he fought.
And it was fantastic.
Until she pushed him away.
Then she was yelling at him more.
And that—that wasn't what girls were supposed to do after they were kissed, was it? They were supposed to be happy, breathless bundles of joy, right? Not furious, breathless bundles of opinions that was yelling at him.
And then she had mimicked him and that—that had been a piss poor attempt, really. Terrible. Or did he really sound like that, in a weird kind of way? Not feminine, he figured, but all of the 'I lost my arm and completely disregard feelings' kind of way?
Looking back on it, he probably shouldn't have just focused on the fact that it was a terrible impression of him. Maybe then she wouldn't have left him dumbstruck in the hall, storming away from him while all he could do was just stand there and watch.
And completely process what she said, too—six inches, first to know, won't be for a very long time. Why had he even done that? That was the stupidest fucking thing he could have done.
But it was totally worth it, if he was being honest.
Fleetingly, he thought about following her through the halls—and then decided that was probably going to be a bad idea. She was pissed, and she hopefully wouldn't run into any trouble.
Besides, Usagi would likely keep an eye on her when she realized that Kaori was out in the halls alone, whether she was pissed at him or not—Usagi was always keeping an eye on the two of them, and he wasn't quite sure yet whether or not that was a good thing or a bad one.
But he sonidoed elsewhere regardless, intent on avoiding the angry Kaori until it had all blown over without a single word being spoken about it.
The only problem with avoiding Kaori was that she literally never left his rooms—which wasn't too big of an issue, because he was still trying to get used to fighting with only one because, fucking a, he was going to kill Ichigo Kurosaki if it killed him in the process.
Except by the time he got back to his rooms scant hours after he had kissed her, she was sound asleep on the couch in a rather uncomfortable looking position. He debated with himself for all of three minutes before deciding that that was probably not the best place for her to sleep.
He was pretty good at picking up her small, light form with only one arm without waking her up anyway.
But then he realized, after he had placed her on the bed and pulled the blanket over her and moved her things to the corner where she normally kept them, that crawling in beside her probably wasn't the best idea in light of the scene they had caused in the hallway earlier.
So he slept on the couch instead, because he figured it was the right thing to do until this had all blown over.
Someway, somehow, he had always managed to sneak in and out of the room while Kaori was asleep, leaving her food when he knew she would be hungry and want to eat.
He couldn't believe his luck in the fact that he constantly missed her every time he entered the room, and he knew it would have to run out sometime. And it would run out, because things like that don't last forever—and he didn't want it to last forever, because he actually wanted to see Kaori again when she was awake and, well, more alive than she was while asleep.
And it had run out—he had just been leaving a couple of times when she had stumbled out of the room, rats nest of peroxide hair a matted, tangled mess, small hands dashing sleep from her large green eyes.
She hadn't said anything, and he would always frown at her because she always had something, anything to say. And then he would leave like a dumb ass because if she hadn't said anything to him in the first place then she wasn't going to say anything to him at all.
But then the day had come when he was pretty sure she had been sound asleep inside the room, but he had felt the second reiatsu of hers flaring up, seeping out and growing stronger, stronger, stronger.
So he had thought he had better check in on her, just to make sure she didn't do anything terrible to herself.
He had opened the door just in time for her to draw her fist back and punch a wall and that-
Why would she have done that? And who in the fuck had taught her to make a fist because, no, that was not a how a fist was to be made and, no, she could have broken her hand doing that and that—that was not good.
And there was the blood, too—blood that was left smeared on the wall, blood that was dribbling down her hand and sliding down her thin, pale forearm. And that was no good either, because Kaori shouldn't have been bleeding at all.
So he panicked a little.
Or maybe a lot.
And Kaori just stood there, looking at her bleeding wounds absolutely dumbfounded. So he shrugged off his jacket as he hurried over to her, knowing that they needed to contain her wound and put some pressure on it so he could go and get the things they needed and actually fix this before she got blood all over the place.
Grabbing her hand and placing it over her wound he had covered with his coat, he couldn't help but feel like he had missed being in such close proximity with her, and he hadn't completely remembered just how soft her dainty hands were.
And yeah, maybe he shouldn't have kissed her in the first place because the time where they hadn't talked had not been worth it.
. . . okay, so it was worth it a little.
By the time they were done bandaging up her hand and getting rid of the blood, a bit of the awkwardness he had been trying valiantly to avoid had started to set in. And she was looking at him so earnestly, and he didn't know what to say, or even if there was anything to be said.
"So, uh. The kiss."
Those words had put him into action faster than anything had before, he was pretty sure. He couldn't even remember making the decision to move, to scramble away from her in an undignified manner and escape from having to have the awkward conversation entirely.
In truth, he hadn't thought his actions that day in the hall through all the way. Sure, it had started as a way to get her to shut her trap, but then he had realized that he had actually really, really liked it. And he had already known that he really, really liked her. But he hadn't counted on her freaking out, pushing him away.
He hadn't counted on anything being awkward between them.
He had almost been to the door when she had told him to wait, to listen to her for just a minute. And so he had, somewhat grudgingly but partially also because he had missed hearing her talk, especially with the odd way she tended to phrase some things and the way she would babble and lose track of what she was talking about entirely.
The frown had wormed it's way onto his face at the mention of Usagi—he hadn't known the other Arrancar had been to see Kaori, had removed her from his rooms in general and had actually spoken to her about how and why Grimmjow had lost his arm, his position in the Espada, and every last one of his fraccion.
But at least Kaori understood a little more now, even if she had the reason for him kissing her in the first place completely off—but he wouldn't tell that to her, not at all. Nope.
When he turned around to actually looked at her, she looked nervous, toe of her sneaker digging into the floor, her hands clasped behind her back, head down and her eyes decidedly focused on an interesting spot on the floor in front of her. And then she had looked up at him and it wasn't like he could just leave.
So he walked over to her and, instead of kissing her again like he wanted to, placed his hand on her head and called her a fucking dork, because he was no good with terms of endearment and, honestly, even the thought of using them made him want to barf.
They had stared at each other for a moment after that, and he realized not for the first time that he really like the specific shade of green that made up Kaori's eyes.
Her explanation as to why she had punched the wall in the first place was a little weird—he knew about the voice in her head because of weird snippets of conversation he had caught, but he hadn't thought it had a physical form; he had, after all, seen the wall just before she had punched it and there had been nothing there.
He had thought she was joking for a minute, but knew she was telling the truth given the earnest look on her face.
Of course the only thing he could say was to learn how to throw a proper punch.
They had gone back to sharing the bed—he always woke up before she did and left, going out to get food because she was always awake by the time he had returned. It was a little awkward when he had woken up pretty much on top of her, his mouth pressed into her shoulder and his arm draped across her waist like it actually belonged there.
He could only imagine what kind of fit she would throw if she found out he had pretty much been using her as a pillow most of the night. After the first time he had woken up like that, he had told himself that, no, he was never going to wake up that way again-
Only to wake up the same way the next morning. And the morning after that. And the morning after that. It was only then that he finally accepted that what Kaori didn't know really couldn't hurt him.
He hoped, at least.
Usagi showed up in the desert. He had felt her approach, but hadn't actually seen her since he had lost his arm to Tosen. Not that anyone could blame him because when Usagi was mad, she was mad, and she had a long cooling off period. He also knew from experience that if she wasn't mad at you anymore, then she would come and find you.
But in this case, she was only out there for Kaori. Kaori, who had to go and meet with Aizen completely alone—apparently, neither he nor Usagi could attend, which was weird. Aizen hadn't put any sort of stipulation on his meetings with Kaori before, so why would this one have been any different?
Grimmjow just figured he would ask her later what went on in there, and instead went back to focusing on perfecting fighting with only one arm. He was getting the hang of it, actually.
He was pretty sure that the next time he and Ichigo Kurosaki clashed, Kurosaki was going to die.
Usagi came back out into the desert, this time without Kaori. She finished off the hollow he had been working on taking apart easily, a quick cero finishing the job he had been trying to do.
He noticed almost immediately through his anger at her actions that Kaori wasn't there.
"She's back in your rooms," she said with a shrug. "And she's not looking too good—not in the covered in blood, missing seven teeth and, whoops, a broken rib kind of way but. Well. It's more of a shaken, my world has fallen down around me kind of way. So."
That was not exactly what Grimmjow had wanted to hear. "And her meeting?"
Usagi grimaced. "I don't know. She wouldn't talk about it, actually—just wanted to go back to your rooms. I think she's sleeping, but I'm not entirely sure."
There was a Kaori shaped lump in the bed, and that was immediately how Grimmjow knew she was there and hadn't wandered off. He watched as the form took deep, even breaths—he deducted from those that she wasn't sleeping and wasn't trying to. She was simply curled up in a ball under the blanket.
So he did the logical, mature thing.
He laid down on top of her instead of announcing his presence, but rolled off when he was told to. He didn't want her to get mad at him again, and she didn't sound like she was in much of a mood to play any kind of game.
He found it a little concerning when she scooted across the bed and curled up against his chest, but he wasn't going to complain. He knew full well how Aizen could be during one on one meetings, and could completely understand if Kaori had been shaken during hers.
So he was supposed to comfort her, right? She was pushed up against him, so she probably wanted some kind of comfort, right? Being cold couldn't have possibly been her only reason for being so close to him of her own accord, even if there was a blanket separating them. But what if she didn't want comfort? What if she actually thought he was the wall and had thought she was moving over to make room for him?
Then he thought what the hell and draped his arm over the top of her, settling in to sleep.
Of course, things were a bit different when he woke up.
He was always so close to her when he awoke in the morning, arm curled protectively around her waist, face pressed into her neck or her shoulder or—more often than not—the space in between.
He was really, really glad that he tended to wake up before she did, because that. That was not something he wanted to explain. He was pretty sure that, overall, she had no idea about the way he clung to her when he slept; Kaori was a pretty heavy sleeper, as he knew from prior experiences—he could carry her without her waking up, and if that didn't constitute as a heavy sleeper, he wasn't sure what did.
He loved waking up next to her like he did, but couldn't quite help but be curious about what she thought about the situation. She would likely have some choice words, and he would probably delegate himself back to the couch because she would probably be mad at him again.
Her knuckles weren't healing.
Like, okay, yeah, she was human and whatnot, but even a typical human's knuckles would have at least scabbed over by then. But hers—hers were still wide open, scabs just starting to form at the edges. She couldn't flex her fingers without wincing, let alone fully extend them. He did his best to make sure the wounds stayed clean and disinfected.
There was no way he was going to explain to Aizen why Kaori's hand would have to be cut off if it got that point; no way, no how, no. Which was precisely why he wasn't going to let it get to that point.
Besides, one of them needed to have both hands. Three hands between two people hardly worked as it was; two hands between two people? That would be impossible.
And then he had made the mistake of looking up and catching sight of her face. That had been not good, not even remotely; it was his fault it wasn't good, because he kept finding the urge to kiss her again harder and harder to push away.
They were happening more frequently, too, to the point where he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out.
He wasn't sure when his face got so close to hers when he was supposed to be looking after her knuckles again. He knew he probably should have looked away, torn his attention back to her wounds that just weren't healing, but he couldn't. Her eyes were incredibly green, which he had noticed many, many times before, but he hadn't actually looked. They were dark green, flecks of a darker shade he couldn't name spaced out in her irises.
There was a small scar just above her right eyebrow, something he hadn't seen before, though it was typically covered up by her hair.
And she—was she leaning closer to him, or was he just imagining things? It was totally possible that he was just imagining t he fact that she was leaning toward him, lips slightly parted. He hadn't realized when he had done it, but he was half on top of her at that point, his arm curling around her waist, relying on the position she was sitting in to keep him upright.
If he had had two arms, everything would have been much, much easier.
Your lips belong at least six inches away from mine, her voice snapped in his head, reminding him of the hallway incident.
And this? He was pretty sure that this counted as way, way less than six inches.
He hadn't expected her to laugh and push him away when he told her so, a blush blooming high across her cheek bones and burning the tips of her ears. His forehead landed on her shoulder, eyes closed, though he was thankful he dodged the bitchfest she would have had if he had actually kissed her, there and then.
He hadn't expected her to ask him why he had said that, either—because she had said six inches in the first place, and he was going to hold to that.
He looked up at her at the choking noise she made in her throat, shoulders moving up and down so that his forehead nearly slipped off and smacked into the wall.
Her blush was fierce on her face, a stark contrast with her messy blond and brown hair. He was confused; what possible reason would she have had to make that sound?
But then she had called him dense and he knew that that was his cue to move away and move away as quickly and carefully as he could before she bit his head off with another speech about personal space and consent.
It had taken him a few moments to wrap his head around the idea that she actually wanted him to kiss her; like, sure, okay, she had said the words. She had said them out loud, not just thought them to herself. And if that wasn't progress, he wasn't sure what, exactly, was.
So he had to ask again, for clarification, just to make sure. Just to make absolutely sure that she had said she had wanted him to kiss her, just in case he had heard her wrong and substituted her words with wishful thinking. By then, she was looking mortified, completely embarrassed by the words that had come out of her mouth.
It was a good look on her, truth be told.
He was fucking ecstatic, though. It was hard to be slow, to be careful when he leaned in again.
And holy fuck, it was so much better than the one he had stolen in the hall.
But then she jerked her head away from him quickly, smashing it into the wall behind her.
He panicked for a minute—oh, fuck, what did he do wrong now—and then she was shouting, and he was shouting, and her head was in her hands and she was hyperventilating for a minute. He was lying mostly on top of her, arm pinned behind her back. Her green eyes were wide and then embarrassed, a blush spreading across her cheekbones as she fought to explain why she had pulled back.
He was really, really fucking tempted to kill the voice in her head or whatever the fuck it was. Somehow, he was going to kill it.
But not until after he kissed her again.
And again.
And again.
Killing Luppi was almost the highlight of his day.
Getting his arm back came in a close third.
Seeing Kaori's absolute shocked expression as she tried to babble and ask a coherent question at the same time easily took the cake. And he was excited, too, because he was the Sexta Espada again, he had two arms, and Kurosaki Ichigo was probably coming to Hueco Mundo as he stood there, just to get that woman back.
He would kill that fucking Shinigami yet.
The only matter was how, since Ulquiorra seemed to be pretty intent on doing the job himself. And there wasn't a way he could think of that could possibly fix that.
Until Kaori had jokingly said he was great at abducting people. And it gave him an idea, even though it probably wasn't meant to. Because if that woman could give him back his arm and remove the burn from his back, then she could probably fix Ichigo really fast.
And then they could fight and Kurosaki would die, and it would be great.
Two hours, was what he had ultimately promised her. Probably less—it wouldn't be that hard, would it?
He hadn't counted on Kurosaki beating him and breaking his resurrección.
And he definitely hadn't counted on Nnoitra interfering.
He woke up some time later underneath a pile of rubble, still bleeding freely from the wounds Nnoitra had inflicted on him. Completely unsure of how much time had passed, he tried to move, tried to shift the piles and piles of rocks sitting on top of him, only to find that he couldn't.
Which was stupid because he still needed to kill Kurosaki. And then maybe Nnoitra—okay, definitelyNnoitra. Sure, it would probably take more than two hours to do both of those things, but it wasn't like two hours hadn't already passed. What was a couple more?
He knew both Usagi and Kaori were probably wondering where he was, but he had to finish what he started.
It took what felt like hours to finally haul himself out of the pile of rubble and into the artificial sunlight of Las Noches. He wasn't bleeding quite so much anymore, but his wounds ached and.
Well, now he had sand in them, and that didn't help at all.
"What the—fuck. Oh fuck. Oh oh oh oh, fuck."
Usagi was standing over him, her hands in her hair, shark teeth nearly biting through her lower lip.
"Are you seriously just going to stand there, or are you going to help me?" Grimmjow demanded groggily—he didn't remember seeing Usagi show up at all; one minute it was black and the next she was looming over him, panicking.
And her panicking wasn't helping him at all.
"Fuck, shit, yeah, just—fuck, oh my god, uh-"
Everything went black again.
The next time he was fully aware of anything, he was surrounded by white again. The wounds he sustained from both Nnoitra and Ichigo hurt considerably less than they had been before Usagi had stumbled upon him. That probably mean that she had ultimately helped him once she had finished cursing.
Or she had gotten Kaori to do it after dragging his carcass back to wherever it was he was currently lying?
Taking a deep breath, he decided to attempt sitting up, only to realize that that was a very stupid idea indeed. It aggravated the wounds he had sustained both from Kurosaki and Nnoitra—he could only hope that both of those fuckers had lived through their fight because he was going to kill them the second he could move without feeling winded and when it didn't feel like there were pins in his skin.
He got halfway into a sitting position, the movements making it hard for him to breathe. He could feel the sweat forming across his skin, a filmy layer of it that he was used to getting, but only during a decent fight.
Usagi walked in, and he barely caught sight of her though the black at the edge of his vision, all green hair and a worried look on her face. Her bottom lip was bloody, skin in shreds—probably from her biting it, which he had told her all the time not to do because it always ended up the same way.
Did she ever listen to him? No. Of course she didn't.
"Oh, good, you're awake," she said in a rush, perching herself on the side of the bed and pushing him back down on the mattress. "But you shouldn't be moving, y'know? I'm not exactly the best when it comes to patching people up, remember?"
He didn't feel like he had the strength to fight back, leaving him with no choice but to lie back down like she wanted him to. He felt a little better when he was lying down, though he was still winded from the strength it had taken him to sit mostly upright in the first place.
"I found you outside that pile of rubble. It must have taken a lot to pull yourself out, though. And your reiatsu, gosh. It was so low, Grimmjow—I. I thought you were dead, after Nnoitra got there. And Nnoitra himself, he's dead. Gin's dead. Tosen's dead. Aizen was arrested by the Gotei 13. And, of course, Kurosaki Ichigo is alive and mostly well, if you count the fact that he no longer had a lick of reiatsu left anymore."
That was too much to take in at once; it was too confusing, too much to comprehend in his addled state, mind numbed by the pain he was in.
So he asked the only question he could think of.
"Where's Kaori?" he asked, voice sounding weird to his own ears.
Something he wasn't sure he could name flashed across Usagi's face at the question, though she pushed it away with what he knew was a fake smile.
"Shut up and go to sleep," she said soothingly; he felt her thin, cool fingers at his neck, pushing, pushing, pushing down on something until everything went black.
He woke up again, and Usagi was still beside him.
Kaori, though, was no where to be seen or felt, which was weird. Why wouldn't she be there, especially if he and Usagi were in the same room. It wasn't like she could have just wandered freely around Hueco Mundo.
"Where—where's Kaori?" he asked, voice scratchy.
Usagi didn't answer him—she was too busy checking his wounds, too busy ignoring the fact that he was awake to answer him.
"Usagi, where the fuck is Kaori?" he demanded again. Usagi's hands stilled in their ministrations for a moment, her thin fingers shaking.
"Home," she finally replied meekly.
The word hit him like a weight—what the hell did she mean, home? The place where he had taken her form at Aizen's behest? That had to have been what she meant. But why the fuck was Kaori there and not in Las Noches, not in his general vicinity looking worried like he knew she would have been?
"I'm sorry, Grimmjow—I thought you were dead. So I took her home, because if you had fallen then it was hard to tell who else would fall, too."
His throat tightened and he pointedly looked away from Usagi and toward the wall.
All he saw was the indent of where Kaori had taken to sleeping instead.
He was capable of comprehending much, much more the next time he woke up. Usagi was asleep on the floor beside his bed, head pillowed on her arms. Her green hair was dark and greasy, almost like she hadn't left his rooms since she had found him next to the pile of rubble.
So. Kaori was gone. And that—that wasn't something he could change. It was something he wanted to change, but he knew he didn't stand a chance changing it in his current state.
He understood why Usagi had done it, though. He had thought he was dead himself when Nnoitra had come flying out of nowhere with that stupid fucking blade of his, tossing Grimmjow to the side like he was nothing. The difference between them had been one number, just one level of power, but Grimmjow had been exhausted as it had been.
But he should have been prepared for that, just like he had been prepared for Ulquiorra.
He knew he couldn't have counted on Usagi to take care of Kaori if he had died, especially since Aizen had broken her zanpaktou, leaving her practically resurrecciónless. Sure, she could use a cero here and there, and he would be damned if he was going to ask her to kick him, because the last time she had kicked him he had almost wound up with a broken back halfway across Hueco Mundo.
And that was not an experience he wanted to relive, ever.
Ultimately, he knew that Usagi returning Kaori to where she had come from was a good thing.
He just wasn't sure how he was going to talk himself into actually believing it.
He was still awake by the time Usagi stirred, pushing herself up off of the floor with a yawn, bones in her back popping with the drawn out action.
His injuries hurt considerably less than they had the first couple of times he had woken up, and he was much, much more aware of his surroundings this time.
"Oh," Usagi said, eyes darting from him the doorway as if she was trying to judge how far she could get before he could catch her, "you're awake." Her face told him everything he needed to know—she wasn't sure if it was a good thing he was awake, or it spelled certain doom for her.
"Yeah," he said bluntly. He had worked himself up into a sitting position, back pressed up against he wall. He wasn't about to admit to her or himself how long it had taken him to do that much.
At least he still had both of his arms, this time.
"How do you feel?" she asked tentatively, sitting on the floor. He had to look down at her to see her face, all of the crusty, dried blood still on her lower lip, though there looked to be a new layer over the blood he had seen earlier.
"Less painful. But I shouldn't, should I?" He was pretty good at keeping track of time in Las Noches—he had been asleep for maybe three days before he had woken up the first time in his room. Two days at most the second time. And this time—the third time, from what he could recall—was less than twenty four hours later.
He knew his body; he knew how well and how fast he could heal and in how much time. He also knew the extent of the damage Kurosaki and Nnoitra had committed on his person. It all led him to the conclusion that Usagi had done something to help speed along his recovery, however small the amount was.
"Uh, well," she said in a high pitched voice. There was a nervous edge to it, and she tittered, looking everywhere in the room but him. "I guess Nel's saliva has healing properties. So."
He stared at Usagi. He wasn't sure who Nel was, but she didn't mean what he thought she did, did she?
"Are you trying to tell me you had someone salivate on me?"
"Well," she said, rubbing the back of her head and scooting away from him—as far as she could get without making it look like she was trying to get away from him, that was. "Kind of."
"Kind of."
"It was more of a vomit kind of thing," she admitted weakly.
He would have killed her then and there if he could have moved.
Recovering was a slow, time consuming process that he did not like at all. It was worse than when he had lost his arm, because at least he had had Kaori and some kind of goal then.
Now, all he had was Usagi and a general vague feeling of uselessness setting upon him.
Aizen was gone, Ulquoirra and Nnoitra both dead, all of his fraccion gone like they hadn't even been there in the first place. There was no longer a clear, distinct enemy for him to look forward to, and it wasn't much like he could look forward to sparring with Usagi; not any time soon, at least, and even then it would have to be without zanpaktou.
And he couldn't even get revenge on Kurosaki, because that Shinigami bastard just had to go and lose his Shinigami powers.
As far as he was concerned, everything was just blah.
Even after he had recovered fully, the only remnant of that asshole Nnoitra's surprise attack a thick scar on his neck and shoulder, he still slept.
And slept.
And slept.
There was nothing better to do, was there? And it wasn't like he could just go off and find Kaori out the blue—she thought he was dead most likely, from what Usagi had told him, and he had had a hard enough time finding her the first time. Aizen had simply sent him to the general location of where she had lived—he hadn't opened the Garganta himself, so it wasn't like he could actually find it again.
So there was nothing to do but sleep.
"Hey fuck face," Usagi sang, kicking him in the ribs.
He flinched—he had been sound asleep when she had jumped on his bed, only giving him a little bit of warning before she had started talking and assaulting him.
"What?" he groaned, pulling the pillow over his head. He wasn't going to bother fighting Usagi back—it wasn't worth it; she wasn't a noticeable opponent, not anymore.
"Harribel wants to talk to you."
"Tell her to go away."
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because she's, uh, kind of already in here?"
Grimmjow still maintains that he had never sat up so fast in his life. Usagi nearly screeched at his sudden movement, arms pinwheeling as she fell backward off of the bed, landing hard on her butt on the floor.
Tier Harribel was standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her rather voluptuous chest. He could feel her fraccion looming in the other room, all of them likely waiting for the command to jump at his throat and rip it out like the beasts they were.
"What do you want?" he asked, trying to maintain the gruff appearance he had had when he was still a Espada—not that he wasn't an Espada now. It just didn't mean anything, anymore.
She studied him for few long moments—Grimmjow thought he was going to spontaneously combust from the intensity of her gaze.
Why won't she say anything? What does she want?
He hadn't been completely aware that there were other Espada who had survived Kurosaki's invasion, let alone the Winter War after Aizen had fallen. He wasn't sure how Harribel had done it, either, let alone got away from all of the captains of the Gotei 13.
But there she stood, glaring at him.
"I wish to rule Hueco Mundo," she said at length.
He stared at her.
Why the fuck didn't I think of that? he asked himself. The title of King, none of the hassle he had been put through in an attempt to gain it in the first place.
But now that Harribel was there, in his room, aiming to rule Las Noches, he realized that he didn't stand a chance.
He might have, if he had thought of it first instead of moping around, sleeping and spending just a bit too much time stuck on things he couldn't change.
"Fuckin' go for it," he said, lying back down in his bed and pulling his pillow back over his head, back to her. "Just let me go back to sleep."
"You're not going to put up a fight for it?" Harribel sounded almost surprised; Grimmjow knew that all of the other Espada had known his tenancies well—it was fight, fight, fight, win, rule. And that was probably what had prompted Harribel to bring her fraccion with her to his rooms; they would get their hands dirty, all of them pouncing on him at once.
He wouldn't have stood a chance if he had objected, and he told her as much.
She accepted his answer, leaving quietly. Usagi was still sitting on his floor long after Harribel had departed, sitting quietly where she had landed after falling.
Kaori's pillow still sat on her side of the bed, waiting for her to come back when he knew she never would.
He kept telling himself he was going to move it, going to get rid of it—that he would take it out into the deepest, darkest part of Hueco Mundo and light it up with a fucking cero and be done.
When he got around to it, of course.
It had been a year since she had left.
Slowly but surely, word of Harribel's reign spread.
And Grimmjow didn't leave his rooms at all, much like he hadn't in the past year. He was now the second strongest in Hueco Mundo, coming in second only to Harribel, who he knew he didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of beating ever.
Which meant that there was really no one worthwhile to fight.
So why even attempt to pick a fight with weaklings when he could sleep?
Or roam around what remained of Las Noches, once Harribel had effectively began her reign. It gave him great pleasure to see that the remaining Arrancar still cowered from him when he stormed past, Usagi at his heels, razor sharp smile on her face.
He didn't feel much like smiling, so he just scowled at everyone, including Harribel.
Especially Harribel, especially when she told him to do something.
But he would do it anyway, since she had had a low tolerance for him in the first place.
He was still amazed she hadn't killed him when she had told him she aimed to rule Hueco Mundo.
"Probably took pity on you, cat boy," Usagi had said when he had mentioned it to her in passing. There was a sad smile on her face when she had said it.
"Why?" There was absolutely no reason to pity him—he had lived, he had all of his limbs, and only a few massive scars to show for it.
"Because she's a woman and you're pining after something you can't have," she had replied cheekily, bouncing away from him.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean!" he had shouted after her.
The only thing that could have possibly heard him was Kaori's pillow.
He really needed to get rid of that thing.
Later, he promised himself.
Quincies were dicks, man.
Seriously.
They came into Hueco Mundo like they owned the fucking place which they, in fact, did not. They had no right to be there, no right to come in and start killing them off en masse.
He and Usagi had been very, very far out of Las Noches when they had arrived. Harribel had sent him out to find a former Espada, one had hadn't known existed—a Nelliel Tu Odelschwank, which was a mouthful. He had dragged Usagi with him, because she had become his surrogate fraccion since Aizen had fell. She had been before, of a sort, but she hardly ever did anything he told her to.
Thus far, they had had no luck.
And then the invasion of the Wandenreich had begun.
She had grabbed his upper arm almost hard enough to cut through his hierro, eyes wide and mouth agape. "Do you feel that?" she had demanded.
He had cocked his head to the side, confused, halfway through the action of jerking his arm out her grip before he realized that he wanted to keep the appendage and that he would likely lose it with how tight her hold was.
"What-"
"Just feel," she demanded, pointing in the direction she meant for him to search in. Said direction was behind him; he rolled his eyes and complied, just to appease her—she was cutting off his blood supply to his arm, after all, and he was really pretty sure he wanted to keep it.
He rolled his eyes at her, but complied anyway, closing his eyes to use his pesquisa.
He snapped them open again at the sheer amount of reiatsu he could feel rolling away from Las Noches—there were so many of them, things he couldn't figure out a name for, but he could tell that each and every one of them were stronger than Kurosaki had been when he faced him (he found out only a while later that the things were called Quincies and they were Not to Be Messed With).
He could feel his blood boiling beneath his skin, feel a part of him rearing for a fight to be had.
Except he would have definitely lost to Kurosaki had Nnotira not interfered; he didn't feel much like dying, that day.
"Well," he said bluntly, weighing his options and going for the one with the best outlook. "Looks like we can't go back there ever again."
"Grimmjow!" Usagi screeched, stomping down on his foot. He gasped and nearly doubled over in pain; she did that every fucking time and he still had yet to see it coming.
"What?" he gasped out, trying to get away from her before she could smash his other foot.
"Don't say that! We have to help them somehow, you asshole!"
"Why?"
He flinched away from her when he saw her arm come up, hand formed into a fist—a good one, too, because holy fucking shit Usagi was fearsome even without her resurrección.
"Harribel could have killed you when she ascended. Instead, she let you live and have pretty much free reign of all of Hueco Mundo!"
"Yeah, but I had to do all of the dirty work!"
Usagi groaned at him, nearly pulling clumps of her hair out at the roots. "I can't believe you sometimes! You are a lazy piece of shit; are you seriously just going to let them all die?"
"Uh, yeah. Why wouldn't I?"
Usagi looked like she was about to start frothing at the mouth. "I can not believe you sometimes!"
He sighed, looking up at the eternal night sky for a moment. Screams could be heard all the way out where they were, coming from Las Noches. He was mostly immune to the noise of screaming at that point; fighting did that to one.
"They're stronger than that bastard Kurosaki was," he finally told her at length, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "I'd lose to them if I tried to take any of them on."
Usagi stopped pulling at her hair, purple eyes widening to large circles as she stared at him. "That's why you're not helping?" she finally demanded, hands sliding out of her hair. "Because you would lose? What the fuck happened to the Grimmjow that wanted a good fight? Who wanted to be a King or die trying? Where the fuck is that Grimmjow, because I sure as hell don't see him now!"
He stared at Usagi and blinked. He knew exactly where that Grimmjow had gone—away, buried deep down inside of him when he had lost to Kurosaki. Not that he wasn't itching for a good fight; he just wanted a good fight that he couldn't lose.
And against the Quincies?
That was one he was going to lose.
"Let's go find whoever it is we're supposed to find and be done with it," he snarled.
Nelliel Tu Odelschwank, as it happened, was also called Nel Tu.
And she was the little tiny child that had been helping that bastard Kurosaki.
She was also, as Usagi had explained, the one who had vomited on his wounds just days after Aizen had fallen.
He wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do with that information other than shudder at the mere memory of it happening—even if he didn't recall her throwing up on him. He wasn't sure he had ever been so happy to never remember anything in his life.
She was tiny and dressed in a bag and—well, now that he saw her, he could almost place her. But her reiatsu was nothing to talk about in that state, leaking out of her body like there was no possible way they could plug it up.
How had she been a former Espada? It seemed impossible to wrap his head around the very idea. And from what Usagi and Harribel had deigned to tell him, she had been the former Tres Espada—the level Harribel had been sitting at before everything had gone to shit.
But she was a little fucking kid.
A drooly, slobbery little kid who had, at one point, puked on him. That was so not a-okay.
Mainly because she had a nasty habit of sitting on his shoulders without asking and drooling all over his head. And her fraccion—ugh—was easily some of the most annoying arrancar he had ever met, Luppi and Ulquiorra excluded. Not only that, but apparently she had another fraccion; one that had already been abducted by the Quincies.
The only reason he didn't kill him was because Harribel had wanted them alive, too, for whatever reason. He supposed he could have killed them, especially since it had been days since the Quincies had attacked Las Noches. From what he could tell, Harribel was still alive; a majority of the hollows and Arrancar that existed around Las Noches, however, were not.
He could feel the Tres Bestias lurking, waiting for their chance to strike at the Quincies. He could assume that Harribel had sent them away—it was something she always did, putting her fraccion before herself. And now, she was most likely held captive by the Quincies, and the Tres Bestias probably wanted her back.
Of course, if they could create an opening, then maybe he would go and help.
Maybe.
As it was, they were staying as far away from Las Noches as they could; they didn't want to deal with the Quincies. Since Harribel had lost, it was easy to assume that he would as well.
They stayed as far away from Las Noches as possible, but kept moving. Neither Usagi nor Grimmjow wanted to be at the mercy of the Quincies; they could see the sheer amount of dead bodies that had piled up even from the distance they were at, see the sand burning with the sheer strength of all of the Quincies combined.
Nel was getting on his nerves.
"We should go find Itsygo!" she kept saying. It had taken him a couple of times, but he had finally worked out that Itsygo was actually Ichigo, which meant that she wanted them to go and find that Shinigami bastard Kurosaki. Which didn't sound like that good of an idea to Grimmjow in the first place.
"No," he snapped, feeling her arms tighten around his neck. If she was any bigger, he would have called it a strangle hold. As it was, it was simply uncomfortable.
"Itsygo could help!" she insisted. Grimmjow fought the urge to roll his eyes and boot the child in the head because, no, Ichigo Kurosaki could not help because that stupid bastard had gone and lost all of his Shinigami powers.
He was about to tell Nel as much when Usagi elbowed him in the ribs, large smile plastered to her face. "That's a great idea, Nel!" she said brightly. "Why don't you go and get him, then?"
Grimmjow wanted to scream. Sending a small child to go and fetch someone who couldn't actually help them—let alone see them, more than likely—was the stupidest idea he had ever heard.
And yet, Nel and her fraccion went anyway, leaving him alone with Usagi.
Again.
For the kajillionth time.
"Why did you tell her she could go!" he demanded, rounding on her. Usagi threw up her hands, a psuedo barrier between the two of them that was pretty much useless.
"Because you never know what's going to work, Grimmjow. Besides, the farther we can get away from the Quincies, the better. They were just going to slow us down, especially since they want to go and rescue her other fraccion. Not only that," Usagi said with a sneer, "but some of us would actually like to have Las Noches back, whether we'll lose the fight or not."
Grimmjow had to resist the urge to smash her face in.
"Grimmjow!"
He was startled awake; Usagi was shaking him on the shoulder, eyes darting toward the skyline. She looked perturbed, sharp teeth piercing her lower lip yet again.
"What?" he slurred. Why had he thought it was a good idea to take a nap? Naps were super tricky things—you could wake up feeling rejuvenated and on time, or wake up without knowing what year it was and feeling like the dead.
The nap he had just taken easily fell into the second category.
"There are more intruders; a majority of the Quincies left, too, but—but they don't feel the same as the Quincies. The new intruders, I mean."
He pushed himself to his feet, dusting the sand off of his ass and shaking out his jacket. Usagi stood up as well, motioning toward Las Noches.
"The Tres Beastias have fallen as well—twice, might I add." He stared at her—what did she want him to do about it? It wasn't like he could actually do anything about it.
"And?"
She sighed, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly and shrugging her shoulders. "We should probably go check it out? I mean, Harribel is still captive, so it's not like she can look into it. And you're technically the second person in the chain of command, oh former Sexta Espada."
"So you're basically trying to say it falls to me to look into whatever the fuck it is that's going on?"
"Yeah, cat boy. Pretty much. I mean, you know, if you're man enough."
That was a low blow. Then again, every time Usagi was trying to manipulate him into doing something, she used at least one low blow per conversation.
And, like every other time she had manipulated him into doing something, it was working.
"What was that?" he ground out, hand inching toward Pantera. Sure, Usagi might have been the only constant in his life for the past seventeen months, but that didn't mean he was totally against beheading her at any given moment.
"If you're man enough to go and see what's going on over there, fuck face. You wanted to be a King, didn't you? Now's your chance. Go be Kingly, your royal pain the ass."
He glared at her, lips pulled back in a snarl, halfway ready to rip her head off with his bare hands right then and there.
He refrained from doing so, however, choosing instead to turn on his heel and sonido in the general direction of Las Noches.
There were three people that he could see and a Quincy. The Quincy didn't count as a person as far as he was concerned. One of the three people, on the other hand, looked familiar.
It was likely the bright orange hair that tipped him off to the fact that at least one of the new trio had been in Hueco Mundo before.
Usagi came to a stop beside him, breathing labored as she stared out at the scene unfolding before them.
"Okay, good, way to warn me you were going off," she huffed, almost like she had completely forgotten the fact she had told him to in the first place.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever," he said, brushing her off.
He had an idea. Sure, it was a stupid idea, but it was still an idea.
"Hey, Usagi?"
"Yeah?"
"Keep the other two in line for me, yeah?"
"Ye—wait. What."
He was gone before he could clarify, knowing full well that she had heard him in the first place, but had only hoped she had been hearing him wrong.
He sonidoed directly behind the fucker, Pantera in his hand before he could even consciously make the decision to help, slashing downward.
In all honestly, he hadn't meant to cleave the almost already dead Quincy in two. It just happened.
But that blond guy—the one who looked like he had been trying to stall the Quincy while whoever it was made their way into the garganta—looked like he could pose a problem.
Which was why before anyone could react, he held Pantera to the blond man's neck. It had been a very, very long time since any Shinigami had been in Hueco Mundo,
"Don't move," he stated obviously; he recognized the other two who were standing just behind the man—both of them accomplices of that asshole Kurosaki.
"Grimmjow-" the orange haired woman had started, but then Usagi was in front of them, body lowered and tensed in a fighting stance, just like he had asked her to. At least that way she would have someone to kick at other than him.
Unfortunately, there seemed to be a spark of recognition on the blond man's eyes at the mere mention of his name.
"Ah, Grimmjow. You know Kaori-chan, don't you?" he asked.
He felt his pulse spike at the mention of Kaori, but he kept the sharp edge of Pantera up against the blond's neck, hand steady.
"How do you know that?" he asked quietly, completely unsure about what was going on.
The Shinigami smiled, mouth like a razor, waving a hand in Grimmjow's general direction like he was trying to brush the question off. "Well, she works for me. Sometimes."
"So she made it home safely?" Usagi asked brightly, completely ignoring the task Grimmjow had set her to.
"As safely as she could!" he replied; it was almost like he wasn't unnerved by the fact that there was a sword at his neck that, if he so much and breathed wrong, could cut him. "Although she should be out running some quick errands for me as we speak. Though she should be plenty safe doing those."
This—this was a weird development. It had been almost two years since anyone other than Usagi had even mentioned Kaori in passing, let alone quite as blatantly as the man in the stupid fucking hat had.
Cautiously, he moved the edge of Pantera just a little off of the Shinigami's neck; it wasn't like Kaori's presence in Hueco Mundo had been widespread knowledge. In fact, he was pretty sure the Shinigami had come to retrieve the busty orange haired woman from Las Noches in the first place was because she was friends with that asshole Kurosaki.
Which likely meant that the only way he could possibly know Kaori's name—let alone the fact that he and Kaori knew each other—was from Kaori herself. And he figured that Kaori would only tell anyone about what had happened to her was to those she trusted.
He moved Pantera another inch or two away from the Shinigami's neck before sheathing his weapon completely. Because if Kaori trusted him, that said a lot. Kaori, as he knew, didn't trust many people.
"He goes a little haywire and soft when you mention Kaori," Usagi stated, looking over her shoulder at Grimmjow and smiling in a feral manner. "You could almost say it's like he has a soft spot for her."
"Good, good!"
Grimmjow couldn't see how his being soft on the subject of Kaori could be a good thing, let alone the fact that Usagi would turn on him like that could be classified as also a good thing.
"You'll help us, then?"
"Wait. What."
Urahara whipped a fan out of nowhere and held it in front of the lower part of his face, tilting his head forward so Grimmjow could see no part of his face whatsoever.
"You. Help us. Against the Wandenreich, at least—and then you'll get to see Kaori-chan again."
That sounded too good to be true.
"He will?" Usagi asked, jumping into the conversation. Grimmjow almost jumped; when had she managed to stand next to him and completely ignore what he had asked her to do? "Then of course he'll help you! You will, won't you, Grimmjow?"
And it wasn't like he was going to say no in the first place—Kaori was on the line. He just wasn't entirely sure how he felt about helping Shinigami, per se. They were his natural enemies, things he should kill, and here he was, on the cusp of agreeing to help them.
"Yeah," he finally said grudgingly. "Yeah, okay. I'll help you."
Urahara explained a few things to him.
Like how, for instance, he had met Kaori in the first place, as well as the voice in her head. Which had been, apparently, a Shinigami that had worked for Aizen at one point in time. He was also informed of the fact that the main reason Kaori had been abducted in the first place was so that Aizen could rub a whole lot of salt in said Shinigami's wounds.
Girmmjow still wasn't entirely clear on how, exactly, a Shinigami had lost his spiritual form and had wound up in Kaori's head, but it actually made some sense.
Kind of sort of, in an offhanded sort of way.
In return, Grimmjow had to explain everything that had happened in Heuco Mundo over the past two years—his boredom, the general chaos of living ruler less again, his recovery, and the invasion of the Wandereich.
Laying it all out in an explanation just reminded him of how much Quincies were absolute dicks, and how much he never, ever wanted to see another one again.
The next time Grimmjow actually bothered to look around him instead of just standing next to Usagi and staring off into space, Urahara had erected a tent of some sort.
What the fuck did he need a tent for? Like, okay, so they were out in the middle of the desert. But a tent? In Hueco Mundo? Why?
So he walked away from Usagi and toward the tent, curious. He heard voices inside, some shouting, Urahara trying to calm whoever it was down.
He entered the tent without permission or warning, and—
That.
That was definitely the voice of that asshole Kurosaki Ichigo, no matter what Urahara was trying to tell him.
He was going to yell at Kurosaki, tell him to hurry up, to take care of the Quincy assholes so they could fight and so Urahara could make good on his end of the deal they had made, but he was chased out of the tent by Orihime and Sado, the two of them armed with what was arguably his only weakness.
Spray bottles.
They had spray bottles filled with water.
He did not like spray bottles filled with water. Especially when they were trying to squirt him with it.
He was going to murder Usagi for letting that small bit of information slip.
But at least now he had a reason to fight instead of just sitting on his ass.
So. The Soul Society was really, really kind of a weird fucking place.
Like, honestly, he had kind of been expecting the same kind of color scheme Las Noches had had, given the fact that Aizen had come from the Soul Society in the first place but-
He hadn't actually expected so much variation.
Like, okay, so a majority of the buildings were rubble and completely demolished, but he could tell that all of them had been different shapes and sizes and colors. Which was much, much nicer than Hueco Mundo, where it was all drab and dreary and monotone.
Of course, Hueco Mundo was currently not overrun by Quincies like the Seireitei was, which seemed to be the only thing in its favor.
"I came out here to have a good time and I am honestly feeling so attacked right now," Usagi proclaimed, stepping out of the Garganta next to him and surveying the damage. Even though he didn't have a real idea of what, exactly, the headquarters of the Gotei 13 looked like when they weren't damaged, he had a feeling that a good three quarters of it had been flattened by the war thus far.
"And we haven't even started fighting yet," Grimmjow pointed out.
Urahara was no where to be seen, but that was expected—he had called only to tell them that the current Captain Commander of the Gotei 13 had given his permission for two Arrancar to cross over and, erm, help, while he went on ahead to send that Kurosaki kid to wherever the fuck he needed to go in order to resolve everything.
"Okay, kill joy. We should probably remedy that, then? Yeah? Quick, go pick a fight!"
"Why don't you go pick fight?"
"Because you're better at it!" she replied brightly. "I mean, you've always been the one to pick fights. I don't see why this time would by any different. You always know what to say just to get them all riled up and willing to fight, and I can't just go and push anyone's buttons quite as easily as I can push yours."
She had a point—a rather unfortunate point.
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he demanded; he was pretty sure Usagi was trying to bait him again, to make him mad enough so that he would actually go out and do as she had told him. And it was working, too, like it always did.
"I do believe she wishes for you to choose an opponent before an opponent chooses you. Of course, given the state of your reiatsu, two on one should work out just fine."
Wait.
When the fuck had a Quincy managed to get in front of them? And without either of them seeing him arrive?
Grimmjow and Usagi both looked away from each other and toward the newly arrived third party. He was dressed in the white cloak of a member of a Sternritter; nothing about it had been changed at all, from what Grimmjow could see. Of course, said cloak looked just a little long, but that might have been because he was short.
Like, really short. Shorter than Kaori ever was, he was sure—if he was standing next to him, Grimmjow was fairly certain the Quincy's head would only reach the bottom of his rib cage, eye level with his hollow hole.
The other distinctive quality about the Quincy that stood before him was his hair. His hair was bright fuckin' pink. It was a blinding shade of the putrid color and much, much worse than Szayelaporro Granz's had ever been.
Grimmjow was going to stab his eyes out with a fork when this was all said and done—he was pretty sure that the offending color would haunt his dreams for years after they were done.
"And you would be?" Usagi demanded, almost like the Quincy hadn't just jumped into their conversation, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking an eyebrow. Sure, she might not have had a zanpaktou anymore, let alone be able to access her resurrección any longer, but she still had her attitude.
"Sternritter W, the Weight," he introduced himself in a rather dramatic fashion, bowing so his coat flared out behind him. Beside him, Usagi rolled her eyes and sighed in an also exaggerated fashion. "Achim Inholtz."
"Well gee, you sound great and all sweetie, but you're not my type." She flashed him a razor sharp grin, and he recalled—not for the first time—how deadly those teeth of hers were. Of course, he had actually seen her rip out of the throats of a number of adjuchas over the past few weeks with nothing but her teeth.
And. Well, the very memory of it made him more than just a little uncomfortable. He took half a step away from her, almost like he thought she would jump for his throat at any given second.
She might have, too, if he said something that was out of line and just wrong.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, she's into girls," Grimmjow said blatantly. He wanted to fight, and have none of this stupid exposition Usagi had goaded them into. Of course, the more she talked to him, the more they could figure out and exploit his weakness—which, at the point, seemed to be Usagi, arrancar or not. "Me, on the other hand—I would love to have a go at you."
. . . okay. So that might have come out just a little wrong.
But the look on the stupid fucking Quincy's face was worth it, truth be told.
Usagi released a strangled yelp, almost like she was trying to decide between trying to keep her laughter down or to yell at him because, no, Grimmjow, my sexual orientationis supposed to be between us you good for nothing scumbag.
"That is quite . . . odd. But it is no matter; you shall both be dead quite soon."
Grimmjow grinned; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Usagi do the same, bouncing up onto the balls on her feet and down again, hands flexing at her sides. The carnage she was about to help him commit would have nothing on what the Wandenreich had done thus far to the Soul Society.
"Come on, cat boy," the green haired arrancar said airily. "The sooner we do this, the sooner you can get to Kaori."
"Really? I hadn't guessed," Grimmjow said sarcastically, unsheathing Pantera. He would be able to do quite a bit of damage before releasing his resurrección, and an even bigger amount since Usagi was there. Personally, he would have much rather fought the battle alone, just to prove that he could, that he hadn't lost his touch at all, but there was no way Usagi could participate unless it was by his side.
And Usagi, above all things, wanted to participate in this fight; he could tell, just from the way she was rolling his shoulders, the way her eyes were locked on the Quincy in a death stare, the way her lips curled up at the edges and danger rolled off of her in waves. She was probably looking for revenge in a form only she could get, and Grimmjow was only there as a means to an end.
Then they were moving, both of them in different directions but with the same destination, Pantera raised in his hand and Usagi with a foot already halfway in the air.
They were going to win this, easy.
Okay.
No.
Not easy.
So, so, so, so not easy.
He wasn't entirely sure when they had started to underestimate the Quincy—it might have been at the very beginning, when Usagi had cackled at his get up, or it might have been just a few seconds after that when he had threatened to sit on them.
But now.
Now Grimmjow was thinking that maybe, just maybe, they shouldn't have been so quick as to write him off as a melodramatic fool.
Which, the Quincy was a melodramatic fool. He was just a powerful melodramatic fool with really, really good aim. Scary good aim, in fact, with his flail.
Seriously, Grimmjow had thought when he had first seen the weapon appear out of practically nowhere. A flail? The idea that a weapon like that was going to win any fights was just ridiculous, especially given how slow the Quincy had seemed compared to how quickly both Grimmjow and Usagi could move.
Except there was apparently a reason Achim Inholtz was called the Weight.
Because, as the Quincy had deemed it okay to explain, everything he managed to hit with his flail came under his control weight wise.
Which was pretty much why Grimmjow was finding it hard to move his arm, let alone lift Pantera from where the zanpaktou was currently pinning his hand to the ground.
This should have gone a lot better, he thought bitterly, trying to yank his hand out from under the hilt of his sword. It felt like there was a building sitting on his hand. It was not a good feeling, let alone one he ever wanted to experience again if he ever got out of this situation.
Fucking Urahara and his fucking agreements.
On the flip side, Usagi was finding it hard to stand, let alone walk. She had been hit in the leg by the flail and, though it hadn't even broken through her hierro, she was finding it hard to move. As it was, she was leaning against what remained of a building—a building that had been whole when the two of them had entered the Seireitei through the garganta, but had become much less than what it had been before thanks to Usagi being thrown through it a couple of times when she had first tried to avoid the flail.
How the fuck am I supposed to get my fucking sword off of my hand? he thought, tugging on his arm again to no avail.
And then he froze because, of fucking course there was a way to get it off of his hand. He just couldn't quite figure out why he hadn't thought of it sooner. Sure, it would make his arm any less heavy or useful, but at least then he could move.
Although, he had never really tried to release his resurrección in a position quite like this before, so he wasn't quite sure how it was going to work out.
"Grind, Pantera!"
It had been almost two years since he had last used his resurrección, and that had been when he was fighting with the Kurosaki bastard. Now he was fighting for the Kurosaki bastard, and he wasn't entirely sure if it was the right thing to do.
Although it was, in a sense, the right thing for him to do at that time, especially if it meant he got to see Kaori again.
The Quincy looked nonplussed at Grimmjow's sudden decision to release his resurrección, choosing to simply sneer at him with a lip curled up.
"Now I see why she called you cat boy," he said in disdain, looking Grimmjow up and down as the arrancar stood, flexing his hands. He was faster in this form, and would hopefully stay fast enough to keep out of the way of that ridiculous flail.
"Fuck you," Grimmjow spat; he would have jumped at the Quincy then, but he was still mostly unsure of how he was going to avoid the flail. He was fast, sure, and he hadn't been hit quite as hard as Usagi had been—in fact, the only thing that had been hit was his zanpaktou.
So why was he stalling? There was no reason for him to stall.
And that short fucking Quincy was going to be dead meat in no time.
"I thought you were into girls, Grimmjow," Usagi joked, limping up to stand next to him. Her hands were still clenched at her sides, blood smeared across her forehead; she was dragging the leg that had been hit by the flail behind her. It wasn't like she could lift it up; the stupid motherfucker had probably made her leg feel just as heavy as Pantera had felt on his hand.
He was surprised she was still moving and willing to fight at that point. The smile was still on her face though, as fierce and as sharp as ever.
"Let's try this again, shall we?" she asked, a sweetness in her voice that Grimmjow knew was meant in an attempt to temporarily put the Quincy off his guard. Grimmjow would have been surprsied if it had worked, mainly because they were already getting their asses handed to them.
Grimmjow didn't reply—he just moved, hoping the stupid fucking flail wouldn't hit him, hoping he could get in close enough to do some real damage and potentially wring the Quincy's neck while he was at it. He wasn't sure what it was, exactly, that Usagi had planned, especially since she couldn't seem to move easily.
Whatever it was, he was just hoping it would work.
He lashed out with his foot, hoping to catch the Quincy in the head, and missed, hitting the Quincy's upper arm instead. Unfortunately, it was not the one that held the flail.
The flail that was coming in rather quickly toward his head and oh fuck, no-
He could feel a handful of the spikes just barely miss his face as he tried his best to get out of the way. He wasn't sure what could possibly happen if he was hit in the face with the flail, only that he would likely wind up face down on the ground and completely unable to move, ass in the air.
That was not how he wanted to end up at any point. He would never be able to live it down, especially since Usagi would tease him about it mercilessly.
If they lived, of course.
But then the flail hit Usagi in the chest, sending her flying to the side and straight into one of the few walls that was still standing around them. He could see the blood arcing out behind her as she passed him in a blur, feel a bit of the warm substance splatter onto his face.
The flail had actually pierced Usagi's hierro—something he had never seen done before, since her teeth seemed to be the only thing capable of making her bleed.
And that was when Grimmjow knew that he had to take care of this specific problem before the Quincy could even do the other thing Urahara had warned them about—Vollständig. If they were struggling against him without it, then it was hard to imagine how terribly they would be beat if he initiated his Vollständig.
Grimmjow really, really regretted sitting on his ass and sleeping for seventeen months; but it wasn't like he could have actually seen any of this coming. And he wasn't Kurosaki—he didn't have any sort of deep, inner hidden power to tap into, or an abnormal growth rate he could use to his advantage. He had a couple of weeks of intense training, and that was it.
And it looked like it wasn't going to be enough; he could already feel his resurrección beginning to break and fail him, much like it had when he had been fighting Kurosaki, just before Nnoitra had jumped in and effectively almost killed him with a pile of rubble.
In the few seconds he was distracted by Usagi flying at an impossible rate past his head, the Weight had already turned his attention to Grimmjow, flail in the air and moving toward him.
And Grimmjow couldn't quite find it within himself to actually move, seeing as his resurrección picked that moment to return back to it's inactive form, the weight of Pantera nearly dragging him to the ground from it's sudden reappearance in his hand.
He felt it hit him in the chest, right where his heart was. He couldn't feel it pierce his hierro, but it felt like there was something stabbing him in the heart, going deeper and deeper and twisting.
And then he was on his knees, the world sliding on it's axis, his whole body feeling more like a burden than an advantage.
Something about it felt off. As in wrong, very wrong, not right, terrible off. He felt like he couldn't breathe, and everything ached, but he could tell that he was still alive—why hadn't he died? He had been pierced through the heart, hadn't he? He should have been bleeding, been dead, been anything but on the ground feeling sick to his stomach.
"What the fuck did you do?" he demanded in a snarl, trying to push himself back to his feet, searching around with his blurry vision for his zanpaktou. He could feel the wiry brush of the Quincy's reiatsu, and the weak brush of Usagi's own, pulsating as she fought for her life, gasping for air against the hole in her lungs.
But he couldn't seem to feel his own, which was weird. Because he could always feel his own.
Where had his zanpaktou gone?
"Who, me?" the Sternritter asked innocently. "I simply sealed away all of your spiritual pressure. It's locked up tight, and there is no key. You'll never get it back."
Was he fucking saying what Grimmjow thought he was saying?
"Essentially, you're as of good of use as a human," the Quincy said with a laugh. "Which is to say, you're of no use at all."
A human? Was that why he was feeling so weak? Why he couldn't find his footing even if he tried, why his whole body felt heavy and slow, why he couldn't sense the hole that had been a constant in his stomach for so long?
His hand felt heavy as he reached up to touch his right jaw where the remnants of his hollow mask should have, by all accounts, been but-
All he touched was skin.
Bare skin. Flesh. Flesh that was only supposed to be flesh when he was in his resurrección, of which he was currently not.
This easily counted as the worst case scenario for any situation he could ever be in, and he didn't know what he could possibly do about it. There wasn't anything to do about it, not right then and there. And the Quincy had said, after all, that there was no key to unlock his spiritual pressure.
Which probably meant that it was going to be sealed away for the rest of his life, so he could live and age and die like a human.
In the heat of battle, he didn't have time to think about it, let alone contemplate on whether it was what he wanted or not. Because he was there to fight and if he didn't have his zanpaktou or his resurrección, then how was he going to do either?
The Weight seemed to have assumed as much, since he was walking toward Grimmjow; from his position on the ground, he could see that the Quincy clearly had a broken arm and was bleeding freely from multitude of wounds inflicted on him just moments before, though he could still carry and swing the flail in his hand just fine.
"Now, let's finish you off, shall we?" he asked, amused as he loomed over Grimmjow. "How shall I do it, though? Should I smash your head in? Slit your throat? Or maybe I'll just carve my name into your rather chiseled abdomen and watch as you bleed out all over the place. Or should I kill your lady friend first?"
Oh.
So Usagi wasn't completely dead yet, though Grimmjow wasn't quite sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"I would make you watch, of course, though it won't take me very long. She's already so far-"
The Sternritter let out a cry as a shadow leapt over Grimmjow, wrapping it's legs around the Quincy in a death grip. He realized with a start that it was Usagi who had done so; who else could it have possibly been?
She had one hand on the back of his head and the other on his shoulder, face speeding toward his neck an a rate Grimmjow couldn't follow with his eyes.
And. Well.
Grimmjow had said he never wanted to see her tear anyone's throat out with her bare teeth again, and he had meant it, but the universe does this funny thing where it never listens to him.
There was a strangled cry and Grimmjow buried his face into the ground, feeling the rubble biting into his flesh—flesh that could be cut with a puny fucking knife at this point, or even scraped by a rock, holy fuck he was so screwed.
The thump of a body hitting the ground, a gurgling noise as the Sternritter likely tried to say some kind of witty last remark, only to find that he couldn't really talk without any of his throat in place.
"You can look now, Grimmjow. It's over," she said laboriously. He glanced up, amazed he still had the strength to even hold his head up, to find her leaning against what remained of one of the buildings they had nearly demolished in their battle.
There was blood all down her front, straining what had once been pristine white clothes.
"Guess my freaky serrated teeth came in handy for something after all, huh?" She laughed weakly at her own joke, her body barely finding the strength to half heartedly kick the head of the Sternritter she had just killed, turning his face away from her. "After all . . ."
Her breathing was growing more and more labored, spiritual pressure ebbing out of her body like it was leaking.
"Usagi?"
She didn't answer; her eyes were closed, face tilted toward the sky, mouth slightly ajar.
"Usagi?" he tried again, dragging himself just an inch closer to her.
He lost consciousness as her physical form started to break off into bits of spiritual pressure, drifting on the breeze.
He woke up sometime later in an unfamiliar place, on an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. Every inch of his body hurt, and he was pretty sure he was supposed to be dead at that very moment. But it wasn't like he hadn't cheated death before and woken up to massive amounts of pain both physical and emotional, so why would this time be any different?
The walls around him were beige, the ceiling a blurry thing at the extent of his vision. It was not the stark whiteness of Las Noches he was used to seeing, and the sunlight coming through the window was something that definitely foreign.
"Grimmjow?"
Great. The last person he wanted to see, Mr. Hat and Clogs or whatever the fuck his name was—Urahara. Yeah. That was right.
"What?" he demanded in a slur; his tongue felt thick and fuzzy in his mouth, tingly from however long it had been since he had last used it to speak. How long had he been out?
How long had Usagi been dead?
"How are you feeling?"
"Did he fuckin' do it?" he demanded instaed, throat thick. He hoped Urahara would get the gist of the question—if that stupid fucking bastard Kurosaki had done what he was supposed to, or if it had all just been in vain.
He couldn't feel much of anything at that moment except for pain spreading over every inch of his body. Why had he and Usagi had to take on one of the weirder members of the Wandenreich? The one with a sick sense of humor who thought it would be great fun to seal away every ounce of spiritual pressure he had, effectively making him something that resembled a human?
"Yes," Urahara replied quietly. "He did."
"So this agreement you and Urahara reached—what was it?"
He and Kurosaki were sitting quietly in the Shoten, neither of them at the others throat for once.
"Uh. Well. We had another captive in Las Noches. And. Uh. We might have liked each other. A lot. And Urahara, apparently, knows her, so."
Kurosaki stared at him for a long, long minute, almost like he was trying to figure out who Grimmjow could possibly be talking about; Grimmjow figured, though, that there was no way the orange haired idiot could possibly know all of Urahara's acquaintances.
"Her name is Kaori," he tossed out there, trying to see if Kurosaki could connect the dots.
And connect the dots he did, surprisingly.
"Wait—you're trying to tell me that Kaori, little tiny "Kurosaki Clinic! Kozume Kaori speaking, how may I help you?' Kaori, who eats dinner at my house biweekly Kaori, was in Las Noches? With you? When Aizen was there? And she lived?"
"Well, yeah. Of course she lived. Why wouldn't she have?"
Ichigo was looking at him like he almost couldn't believe that he had just asked that question.
"Because it was Las Noches. While Aizen was there. And she was with you."
"Why wouldn't she have lived because she was with me? She's probably only alive because she was with me, you bastard!" Although, now that he thought about it, that wasn't entirely true—he had stuck her there in the first place, and who knew what would have happened to her once the Qunicies had attacked.
So, really, she was probably only alive because of Usagi.
That was not a comforting feeling, because he knew he was only alive because of Usagi.
And Usagi was dead because of the two of them.
Ichigo, on the other hand, was still looking like he couldn't quite comprehend that Kaori had been in Hueco Mundo when he had invaded to retrieve Orihime. Which was understandable, since it seemed that most of the people with large amounts of reiatsu had lived in Karakura for most of their lives and were attached to Kurosaki in one way or another.
And here was Kaori, the wild card. The tiny girl with a knife in her waistband whose head formerly housed a Shinigami. The unknown element with a decent amount of spiritual pressure and the inability to do anything with it. The outsider when it came to the weird happenings in Karakura Town.
Well, most of the weird happenings.
"So, you're tying to tell me that little teeny tiny Kaori spent however long it was in Las Noches with you, and you like like her?"
Grimmjow glared at him.
Maybe he would call of their truce after all, spiritual powers or not.
He could feel her approach.
His pulse jumped a little as he felt the first brush of her gentle reiatsu, which still felt mostly calming to him. In the situation he was in, however, it made him more than little nervous. The other reiatsu—which he had come to accept had, in fact, just been the voice in her head—was completely gone. There was no more feeling of nails being driven through flesh or swallowing mouthful after mouthful of sand.
It was all grass field and a spring breeze and Kaori.
He got jumpier the closer she got to the Shoten, to the point where Ichigo actually slapped him on the back of the head and he didn't even think about fighting back.
He stilled completely when he heard the front door open, followed by the noise of it closing and the sound of hurried footsteps making their way back, back, back.
"I have been out running stupid errands for you all day, and I swear to God, Urahara, if my apartment is covered in sticky notes again-"
He felt his mouth go dry at the sound of her voice, the familiar cutting edge of annoyance hitting his ears just as she walked through the doorway.
Urahara and Ichigo had been right—she was not the Kaori he remembered, but she also was.
This Kaori stood in the doorway, an annoyed look on her face, one hand on the wall and the other on her rather thin hip. Her hair was short and wavy and brown, hanging just above the collar bones he could see poking out from under the collar of her sea green blouse that hung off of her small frame. There were shadows under her green eyes, purple crescents stamped into her skin that spoke of little sleep.
There was nothing about her posture that said she was tired, though—she looked full of energy, one of her feet tapping against the floor, the way her lips were quirked up in an almost smile. Nothing about her spoke of being tired, and he could remember easily the way she could easily sleep for hours and hours on end when she had been in Las Noches.
His eyes glanced at the hand that held the doorway momentarily. Her knuckles where she had punched the wall had scarred over, deep pale gouges in her skin that looked like something had taken a bite out of her hand.
It was then that she seemed to notice that there were more people than just Urahara in the room—her posture changed immediately, sliding from almost predatory and generally angry to one he recognized from their shared time in Las Noches. Her shoulders slackened, losing their stiff set they had been in, her hand sliding off of her hip and stuffing itself into the pocket of her floral pants.
She looked healthier than she ever had in Hueco Mundo, if he was being completely honest with himself. She looked like she had gained a little bit of weight, which was good because she had practically been a skeleton during her stay. But her features had sharpened just a little, cheeks a little more shallow and jaw line a little sharper.
She didn't look like the Kaori he had come to love in Hueco Mundo, but she was.
Her eyes landed on him for a moment, lingering—he could have almost sworn she looked dumbstruck for a moment, what with the way her mouth slackened and her fingers tightened in her pocket.
But then she looked away from him, forcing a bright smile onto her face that she directed at Urahara.
Almost like she didn't see him in the first place.
I know I said it was supposed to be up yesterday, but i literally wrote all of this in less than three days. So. there's that. Please tell me what you thought about in the box is also over 100k now, so whoo! The next chapter might not be up until wednesday. So.
Also, the next one might be the last.