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Centuries ago, the world flooded. Life drowned beneath an endless sea. To survive, they built floating cities high above the waves; but to outlast, humanity itself needed to adapt. Thus the call of evolution gave way to the humans who began shifting along with their ever-changing, unstable planet. And slowly but surely, they clawed their way back to the top of the food chain.
Yet somehow, despite such rich history flowing through his DNA, Grimmjow still can’t seem to rise above the most trivial of sufferings – like his boss screwing him over for what feels like the hundredth time.
It’s pathetic, really.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
There must be something particularly noxious in his tone tonight, something tangy with just the right amount of unbridled vexation, because the voice on the other end of the line descends right into damage control.
“Now, now, Mr. Jaegerjaquez, you of all people should know we can’t judge a book by its cover! I assure you, that facility is fully operational. With just enough elbow grease it should---”
“I’m here to recover cargo, not play home makeover. And what do you mean, me of all people?”
Kisuke hums like it should be obvious. “Well you know, not everyone assumes blue-haired ruffians are a part of our research department. The number of people who’ve asked if I need help when you storm in during one of your moods is actually quite touching.”
Grimmjow halts mid-breaststroke to scowl and answer with a heated “bite me,” but Kisuke’s too busy chuckling to give a damn; and now there’s also a female voice yapping away in the background. Yoruichi. Perfect, the whole peanut gallery is in the office today. In an act of resolute snubbing, Grimmjow lowers the volume on his earpiece and goes back to glaring at the rickety old base Kisuke’s directed him to for shelter. It’s obviously outdated, rusted over, and he’ll be lucky if the generators are still even there let alone functional. The structure sits drowned and dwarfed on the ocean floor, surrounded by the towering remnants of what used to be skyscrapers.
Current location: what was once known as New York City, New York. North America. Approximately 40,000ft. below the ocean’s surface.
With Kisuke and Yoruichi rendered to a faint buzz in his ears now, Grimmjow takes a moment to scan the area for anything amiss; exactly as he’d been taught during some last-minute training. The gills in his neck flutter with inhuman sensitivity – sensing out for anything odd nearby. They feel what he can’t see, since the water at this depth is dark and murky. The only reason he can see anything at all is due to the currently-glowing nature of his eyes and the illuminated teal markings on his skin. They run jagged out from beneath his eyes and all down his skin, only partially covered by the black fabric of his springsuit. They look almost like lightning.
This is the beauty of evolutionary design. On dry land he’s utterly human in the most “normal” sense, blue hair and all. But in the water, an aquatic state adds razored fins to limbs and additional senses to the nerves. It allows him to navigate the ocean that has consumed the world with ease, lit up with bioluminescence.
Grimmjow’s never been this far down though, never had to utilize this form so in depth. At least it’s mostly instinct. He does notice an odd hum pulsing through the water, feeling like it’s running all around him, through him; but that can easily be due to the pressure levels this deep in the sea. Not sensing anything else amiss, and finally accepting that he’ll be using an overrated metal box as shelter for the duration of this assignment, Grimmjow finally continues descending to the ocean floor.
Somehow, the voices on the radio are still going at it, laughing and prattling on without a care as he nears the bottom. “Hey!” he finally snaps, just as his bare feet touch down in the sand, “get off the line if you’re just gonna pollute it. I can’t hear myself think.”
Astoundingly they actually quiet down, albeit with grumblings, and Grimmjow is permitted to start a proper inspection of the place in peace. He could just hang up, probably should hang up… but he doesn’t. If anything, just so he can keep complaining at Kisuke a little longer before actually getting to work. He hadn’t wanted to do any kind of “field work” in the first place, only agreed to run this one for a cash bonus and extra week of PTO. And the bastard had still had the audacity to pull a fast one on him somehow. His patience right now is thinner than it has been in years.
“So,” Kisuke Audacity Urahara eventually pipes up. “How’s everything looking?”
“Generators look intact… somehow. This place is old as fuck, what the hell is it?”
“Why, they called her Misses Reliable back in the day! Established a couple decades prior when we managed to start exploring further than 20,000ft. again. The department has since moved on to bigger and better bases deeper in the city but trust me, Mr. Jaegerjaquez, the Misses has never failed to keep one of the team safe during an expedition.”
Grimmjow scoffs in response, looking wholly unimpressed as he peeks through one of the base’s thick glass windows. Even in the darkness he can see that its only one room, monitors lining the walls and some desks shoved beneath them. An abandoned surveillance shack then.
Kisuke decides to interpret his silence as satiated submission. “Alright, well, it sounds like everything is working out just fine! Just get those generators running, touch her fondly, and she should be operational within the day.”
“I thought you said it is fully operational.”
“With your skill set, I have no doubt it will be!”
Grimmjow will indeed be pissing in his favorite sake the second he gets back – back working security, where he belongs. “Fuck you. I’m quitting.”
“Haven’t heard that one before,” Yoruichi calls from the background. At least Kisuke has the good sense to hush her this time with what sounds like an office pillow to the face. Because no, it’s not the first time they’ve heard the threat from him – but over the past fifteen months, it’s become undeniably more serious.
“Take your time getting settled and just check back in when you’re ready to head out,” Kisuke tries to soothe. “Take lots of selfies, maybe send a postcard. Oh! And keep an eye out. Data says the megalodons are still nesting further south but even you know how unpredictable fish can be. Just stay sharp!”
Without giving him a chance to reply – or actually quit on the spot – the call drops and the world goes quiet.
“Tch. Crazy bastard.”
Grimmjow spends the next several minutes examining the structure’s entire exterior. He’ll never admit it but it does end up being more intact than he anticipated, still sealed up and everything. All the while, he keeps alert. A pair of vibrant fins, thin and flowy unlike sharp ones on his limbs, replace his human ears in this state – they constantly flick and twitch with every shift in the current. So far though, nothing is even moving except for a few bottom-feeders and some marine vegetation. He hadn’t realized it’d be quite so dead down here.
The strange hum is still in the water though – an unfamiliar sensation that seems to grow stronger and stronger the longer he remains down here. Now that he’s aware of it, it’s harder to ignore. Upon and down, smooth and sewn together, it’s a collection of notes that have no voice but are more than just vibrations. It doesn’t sound like anything biological he’s ever heard of. It’s a song made of nothing but water and by now he’s pretty damn sure it’s not the ocean’s pressure.
But he continues to ignore it for now.
He ends his inspection at the structure’s single door, shrugging off a heavy backpack full of gear and dropping it to the ground – harpoon included. It took a cramped, four-day boat ride and several hours of downwards swimming to get here from Japan. So now he’s left rolling aching shoulders with a grimace, trying to stretch out too-tight muscles. Once he’s inside and the place is up and running, he’ll crash for a few hours before heading out to start finding the lost equipment. Kisuke can deal with his schedule from now on; Grimmjow’s doing him a favor, and it was his own fault for trying to ship equipment during forecasted storms. He---
He becomes aware of his attacker two seconds too late.
He wasn’t able to hear the thing approaching, sense it, anything. All of a sudden, he’s just being knocked to the ground… no, not even knocked. Full body slammed, face first, right into the sand. Nearly two hundred pounds of something heavy and sharp pin him down, swift and relentless; and while Grimmjow proceeds to inhale a lungful of sand, white hot pain explodes down his back. Not teeth. Can’t be teeth. Damn thing’s got claws.
Choking on ocean floor, Grimmjow promptly starts thrashing.
Whatever it is, it’s flexible and fast. When he’s finally able to twist himself flat on his back, Grimmjow can also confirm that it indeed does have claws – but those claws are attached to hands. Human-like hands. His eyes widen as he continues grappling with the creature, kicking and wrestling; and the more he stares, the more he realizes the entire upper half of the thing is hauntingly human-like.
He only manages to get a good look at its face when it snaps a mouthful of pointed teeth in his face; specifically when Grimmjow consequently cracks the hardened fin on his right elbow into its nose. It rears back with a very much human expression of pain and anger twisting its features – which are shockingly and distinctly homosapien in nature – while long orange hair whips around it like a fiery curtain. As Grimmjow kicks it off and scrambles back in the sand, he takes note of its nose and cheekbones freckled lightly with golden scales, and full lips pulled back in a sneer. Only then does he also see its tail – a long and scaled thing where its legs would be if it were human. White and black scales speckled with gold fight for dominance along its length in twisting patterns, until they eventually fade into the smooth skin of its waist.
So it’s not a man, but it certainly looks like half of one somehow.
What the hell.
As Grimmjow finally manages to scramble to his feet, it regains its composure and glowers at him, blue eyes meeting gold. Molten irises sit against black sclera instead of white; but they, too, are hauntingly familiar in appearance and intellect. Instead of attacking again right away, the creature coils up its mutant concoction of both human and piscine muscles. And then it just waits there, gills flaring; ready to spring at a moment’s notice but hesitant for some reason. Weird. Most animals don’t usually hesitate during a hunt – at least, not due to a simple hit to the nose. After a few more seconds tick by Grimmjow scoffs, tightening his grip on his knife as his eyes narrow.
“Don’t tell me that’s all you’ve got, you little shit.”
It startles for some reason, yellow eyes widening as it straightens up more. Like it hadn’t heard Grimmjow’s entire griping session with the office back home before it attacked; which is impossible. The attack had happened too fast for it not to have been snuck up gradually – which, by the way, still meant it was stalking him in a particularly un-fish-like way. Now though, it’s just looking at him like he’s the anomaly here.
Honestly, when it’s not trying to eat him the thing can pass as just another one of Kisuke’s interns; at least from the waist up, with its oddly handsome features all ruffled up in wary disapproval.
Grimmjow exhales sharply as the seconds keep ticking by without further action. Eventually, his lingering look of disbelief turns into something more exasperated as he relaxes his stance. “So that’s it then? You take one hit and it’s all over? Fuckin’ waste of potential.” He’ll never say it was going to win that fight, but there was no doubt it had several advantages here. Why it’s not just waiting and watching is beyond him.
Even when he taunts it, it doesn’t brace itself any further. Dumbass. He can probably take it out right now in one go if he wanted to. It’s lucky Yoruichi had enunciated one particular rule over and over while training him to come down here.
Don’t kill anything until it’s been plugged into the spreadsheets.
Speaking of spreadsheets, surely he’s broken all kinds of records and theories with this find here. And even though he’s head of security and not an actual researcher – regardless of how many times Kisuke offers the position – the thought makes Grimmjow grin. “You’re a real freak, you know that? What the hell are you even supposed to be?”
Of course, he’s not actually expecting the thing to answer; no matter how hauntingly human it may appear. So when the weird hum that’s been running through the water suddenly picks up in volume, rushing into his ears and filling his head, Grimmjow jolts. Within milliseconds he goes entirely rigid – breath hitching, thoughts seizing, his mind starts tingling and fuck he’s seeing stars…
It stops just as quickly as it comes. The song dies back down to a low hum. Grimmjow’s senses slowly return. He blinks slowly, regaining his composure; and once his vision fully returns it’s to find the orange-haired creature staring at him with a quizzical expression. Its gills stop flaring out so wide and fast and that’s hat clues him in. Its makin’ that sound somehow. It must be why he wasn’t able to sense its approach. The hum, the song, had woven into his head and rattled all his senses. And when it’d upped the volume as if to respond to him, it had been overwhelming even in his aquatic state.
Grimmjow considers this for a long moment, before inhaling sharply and steeling himself.
“Alright, you wanna talk instead? Talk. Do it again you weird little---”
The creature slaps its tail into the sand and immediately proceeds to do it again. His ears ache and the harsh white noise renders his whole body numb for the next few seconds, until the song dies back down and Grimmjow is left to try and catch his breath. His eyes are wild now with an odd mixture of shock and curious excitement. The entire research department will piss themselves over the fact that he’s the one that’s found this thing and managed to talk with it.
When Grimmjow’s vision clears for the second time, he’s surprised to see that the creature is wearing a similar expression.
It’s curious.
The song in the water, quiet and manageable at this volume, probes at him gently like an inquiry through the currents. Grimmjow can see now that the notes of the sound match the way the thing’s gills move and flutter. Also, its expression has lost any of the hostility from earlier. Eyes that look as if they’ve swallowed suns watch his every move, but with raised brows and parted lips. There’s no snarling and its tail twitches in inquisition. It is genuinely curious, and it is consumed by its awe. That’s not a look Grimmjow sees often, even in the research department. Kisuke, despite his passion, only brings it out on the occasion of things uniquely bizarre and deadly. Yoruichi reserves it even further. Tessai Tuskabishi is a little more open with the sentiment, easily growing attached to the living discoveries he helps manage; but Grimmjow honestly doesn’t see the vet often at all.
Nel was the one who had worn the expression so consistently – without shame or satiation – that he must’ve learned to associate it with her alone. It reflects a hungry, brazen type of curiosity that lights up the face but blazes in the eyes. She’d probably had that stupid expression on her face even when she’d died.
And now he’s seeing it again on some half-fish man of all things; which harshly reminds him that this isn’t his thing. She was the researcher, not him. This shouldn’t be his find, or problem. Grimmjow stiffens when reality sets back in and the creature seems able to acknowledge the mood switch somehow. Its brow furrows and its soft lips frown. Grimmjow swallows the rock in his throat.
“Alright. Listen, this is what’s gonna happen---”
This time, Grimmjow’s hit from behind when he gets knocked down – and a fresh plume of blood turns the water red.
It turns out, there were seven of them total. The one with the golden eyes, the one that attacked him from behind next, and then five of the new one’s lackies. Two of them had surprisingly gone after the orange-haired one until it was forced to flee. The rest descended upon Grimmjow in a sudden sea of white bone claws, gnashing teeth, and tails strong enough to break ribs with one hit. That’s probably why it hurts to breathe so much right now. Damn it. His lungs ache.
“Grimmjow.”
The urgent voice in his earpiece abruptly snaps Grimmjow back to awareness, sharp and demanding. Oh, right. He called the office right after dragging his bloody self into the old research shack and locking himself inside. It’s Yoruichi’s voice repeating his name, and she must’ve been doing it for a while.
He answers her this time with a groan. “What?”
“I asked how many are left,” she says, sounding more serious than he’s used to. There’s also a lot of muffled movement from her end of the line. Like she’s rushing about doing something.
How many are left? It hurts to try and remember with the way his head throbs, but he can recall gutting one of the bastards with his harpoon. And the orange-haired one, the curious one, tore out the throat of an attacker with its teeth before retreating. So two are dead. Grimmjow had landed a few solid hits on the lanky one that hit him from behind, the one who’d left a deep and weeping wound from the base of his shoulder down to the opposite hip; but it’s still out there now. “Four,” he finally says after far too long. “Two went down. One swam off.”
Fuck. His voice sounds rough and strained and frustratingly unlike his own. Grimmjow swallows thickly and slumps further down in the computer chair he crumpled in.
“Four left. But you said they can’t get inside?”
“Nah.” Huh. He kinda feels like he’s gonna throw up. “Locked out.”
“Good. Just sit tight for a moment.”
There’s a click on the line, like she’s muted herself. “Yeah. Sit tight,” he grumbles.
Grimmjow pulls one hand off the nasty gash near his neck and grimaces at the way globs of blood still cling to his hand – even though the building hasn’t drained and he’s still sitting in dark ocean water. They’d gotten him good, the bastards.
And they’re still out there, waiting for another go at it.
Tired blue eyes drift over to the windows on the opposite end of the room. It’s hard to see through them in the murky darkness, but he can still make out at least one of the fuckers out there. It’s the one that hit his neck, the largest and the fastest of this new group. It’s unmistakable with its skeletal face practically squashed against the glass. It’s missing an eye for starters, the socket full of scar tissues and barnacles. And it has long, straight hair with an even longer, thin tail – both black as ink. Eel-like, snake-like, that’s how he’d describe it. Even its human parts.
It stares at him now with an all-too-human grin, corners of its mouth nearly reaching its ears. When Grimmjow makes eye contact, the black fins of its ears flare out and it opens its jaws to lick a long and pointed tongue across the glass. Disgusting. It’s a sharp and volatile worm. Unlike the one with orange hair, this creep’s unpredictable and animalistically grotesque.
Deciding to ignore the bastard, Grimmjow returns to patching himself up with strips of gauze from his medkit, having managed to at least drag his bag in with him before sealing the door. This would be a lot easier if the generators were on to replace seawater with artificial air; but that’s pretty much impossible as long as those things wait for him outside.
His radio suddenly clicks back to life but this time it’s Kisuke on the line. “And is our brave new explorer still alive down there?”
“You can go fuck yourself. New explorer my ass.” He’s potential fish food right now and this fucker is still trying to get him to switch into the research field. He really should fucking quit this time. “Did you find out what they are or not?”
“Unfortunately not – nothing even remotely compares to what you’re describing. It’s all quite fascinating, really. Injuries aside, you’ve stumbled across quite the find! You got lucky, I’d say. Very lucky.”
His responding silence says “fuck you” far more eloquently than his words could ever.
“Anyways, just sit tight, Mr. Jaegerjaquez! That facility was in tip top condition before it was shut down; nothing should be able to break through the locks and seals. Help yourself to any leftover supplies you can find. Yoruichi and I are already on our way to help with our bizarre new friends.”
Kisuke’s words are starting to bleed together in his head a bit – a painful slideshow that makes his pounding headache worse – but he’s still alert enough to pick up on that last part. “What?” On the way? Grimmjow’s frown deepens and he even tries straightening up in the chair slightly. Last he checked, it took over four days to get to this place from department headquarters. “You guys don’t think it’d be a little more fuckin’ efficient to just tell me how to get rid of these guys?”
“Not at all!” Fucker. “Trust me, Mr. Jaegerjaquez, this will all be under control shortly. Just rest up and keep those doors locked. Oh, and do try not to provoke them more than you already have, hmm? It doesn’t seem to be working in your favor.”
“Provoke the--- Kisuke!”
The line goes dead as the call is dropped. Asshole. Kisuke Urahara’s a crackhead with a degree. A lunatic with a taste for dramatics. Grimmjow knows this, has known it for the entirety of the seven years he’s worked under the man; if he hadn’t known him so well, he’d have long ago mistaken his nonchalant air as indifference. It doesn’t make what’s happening right now any less infuriating though. Grimmjow rips out his earpiece and harshly tosses it away, letting the device float to the ground gently in the water.
It takes a few deep, painful breaths for his frustrations to start ebbing away. Fine. Forget it. He doesn’t know what the researcher’s plan is but he won’t beg for answers; he’ll start figuring shit out for himself. Clenching his jaw, Grimmjow forces shaking fingers to go back to the gauze and his own torn, bloody skin. He easily messes with the gashes through the shredded fabric of his springsuit, hissing as he tries to pack more material in the deepest places.
He’s given just a few minutes to start pulling himself back together when the world suddenly implodes.
It’s a violent and relentless explosion of oceanic voices in his head, howling through the water, far, far harsher than anything the first creature had done when speaking to him. His hands clamp over his ears but it does nothing. He goes blind, stops breathing, and he seizes back in the chair with a strangled sound until the “song” dies down several minutes later.
When it finally fades, he’s left fighting to remember how to think as his chest heaves for breath. Grimmjow blinks weakly back to awareness and it hurts. Everything hurts. As numb fingers stiffly uncurl from his hair, he groggily looks back over to the windows. Black is dancing along the corners of his vision but he can still make out the grinning creature and its three friends all scratching and gnawing at the glass. Their gills flutter and flare as if they’re giggling. The water warbles mockingly in his ears.
“Fuck you.” His own voice sounds distant but he must manage to get the words out, because the black-haired eel presses its forehead to the glass and licks it again.
“Ya hear me, bastard?” Grimmjow repeats, just as the creatures’ ugly song starts picking back up. “Fuck you.”
I’m gonna kill you.
The roaring in his head returns full force, and this time, Grimmjow’s world stays black.
In the haze of oblivion, he comes to an understanding of at least one thing.
She would have loved this.
Danger and all, she would have seen that at least one of the creatures could smile like a sadist and it would’ve made her day. Grimmjow had never protested to the reputation of “kinda fucking unhinged,” but those with any real understanding of the siblings knew Nel was the crazy one. Batshit insane when it came to anything marine. She worked for Kisuke almost half a decade on her own before landing him a job as their head of security.
This shit he was in right now? Just her element. She probably would’ve made earplugs out of her own hair, shoved them in, and gone right out there to interrogate those freaks. That was the kind of audacious passion that’d gotten her killed over a year ago now in the water she loved so much. It was her own fuckin’ fault.
So many fucking people had shown up to the memorial service. So fucking many. He hadn’t even realized she knew that many people in her life.
It was her own fucking fault.
There’d been too many sympathies that day that he didn’t give a shit about. Strangers, nameless faces, all acting like he was made of glass and only their sympathies would keep him together. It was maddening. And it was some redheaded bitch, blubbering at him about how sorry she was and how unfair it was for him to lose a sister, that made him snap.
“Step sister,” he corrected, automatically, callously. She clammed up immediately, with wide eyes full of shock. “So, piss off.”
He then turned on his heels and stormed off through the mud, away from the woman and her painful pities and Nel’s grave.
“We weren’t even that close.”
Not even that close.
What a rotten thing for a brother to say at his own sister’s funeral.
And Kisuke was still foolish enough to try and give him her old job; like it would do any good.
Like she’d even want him to have it after that.
Grimmjow awakens to silence.
The pure kind, the deep kind, broken up only by the natural rustling of the currents against the outside of the building. Bleary eyes open gradually, slowly glowing back to life, and he finds that thinking takes a lot less effort than it had last he remembered. His headache isn’t as bad. Grimmjow exhales a slow breath of relief and lets himself sink deeper into the chair, ignoring the kink in his neck in favor of just enjoying the blissful absence of mental, sensory overload.
It takes him a shamefully long time to realize that the absence of the oceanic songs means something has changed with them.
But the moment that registers, his eyes fly open fully. Grimmjow swiftly jerks upright in the chair, teal markings flaring fully to life again across his pale, bloody skin. Shit. Shit. Still waking, there’s a look of unabashed horror that flashes across his face as he finally notices the ransacked supplies floating around him and the broken window. They broke in. They broke in, and he hadn’t woken up. But… they hadn’t killed him.
Granted, neither did the first one – but that was because it was curious. These aren’t.
They’re toying with him.
This theory is solidified when Grimmjow turns and spots the skeletal eel in one of the room’s dark corners, lounging on an overturned locker with a cruel grin. Its remaining eye roams over the human, sizes him up. Grimmjow curses beneath his breath and sets his jaw, one hand slowly falling to the side of the chair where he left his harpoon gun. His fingers find the weapon still where he left it, and the creature just watches him take it in hand with an even wider smile.
He doesn’t see the others in here, can’t sense them nearby even without their songs, but at this point he can’t trust that determination. He’s fucked up physically and it would be stupid to overestimate his own capabilities right now with his head still feeling like it’s full of sludge. Still – if it really is just this one bastard here with him now, he can take it. Grimmjow turns back to it with his own tight smirk. It looks more like a snarl. “You’ve made a mistake. Didn’t ya hear me earlier?” he calls over to it. “Said I was gonna kill you.”
The thing blinks at him – and then opens its sharp mouth, gills and fins fluttering. The water and his head begin to warble; but this is a different song than before, sharper and more hiccupped.
It’s laughing at him.
Grimmjow braces himself against the sound and holds his breath for a second. Tries to push past the distracting, mocking song of the creature as the hairs on his neck suddenly raise and his finned ears twitch.
Wait. There’s something---
Move.
He springs up from the chair, wounds blazing with fiery pain but he ignores them. He fires the harpoon gun with aim fueled entirely by instinct; but it lands. Cold and sharpened steel crash through the scales, bone, and flesh of the creature who was waiting behind him, one with pink hair and deep scales. It thrashes on the line as Grimmjow closes in on it, forcing his weak body to cooperate as he kicks it right in the face. It hurtles through the water.
He’s reeling the bastard back for another hit when he spots two bodies lying in the furthest dark corner. They’re both piled atop each other; and the one on top has that familiar mess of tangled orange hair, with an alarming amount of blood clouding around it.
It came back.
The sight of it, the realization, distracts Grimmjow long enough for the pink-haired creature to abruptly tackle him hard, teeth sinking into his side. Fresh pain tears through him but he takes the chance to drive his arm fins, slicing and crushing, deep into the thing’s gills. Its head flies back. The water starts to scream around them. Grimmjow rips the harpoon from the creature’s tail and this time drives it towards its chest.
Or tries to. But all of a sudden it’s knocked out of his grip, snapped in half as the eel’s thick tail slams down over his hands. Claws lash out at the same time – grabbing at him, pulling at him, tossing him across the room. He hasn’t even had the chance to hit something before both beasts dart after him.
They’re still playing with their food, but he’ll be damned if he’s eaten before he takes that eel fucker’s last eye for being such an arrogant shit.
They claw and bite and lap up his blood while they toy with him, but he fights back just as hard; even with their laughter screaming in his head and his senses going haywire. He slices with his fins and bites with his own teeth. Tears at their gills with blunt nails and kicks and headbutts and hits them with anything and everything he can get his hands on.
And then he takes another tail full-force to the chest. Something surely breaks this time, and it almost knocks him out instantly.
Blood flies out of his mouth along with all the breath in lungs and he folds. Crashes through the water and smacks across one of the old computer desks before he hits the ground in a shuddering heap. He only stops when he hits the wall and even then, it still feels like the whole world is spinning. He’s left gasping, coughing on the metal floor.
His head feels like it’s full of concrete. He’s fighting to regain control of his own body.
Shit. Shit!
He won’t die down here. He fucking refuses. She lived and breathed this work for years and he won’t get killed his first time trying. She’d never let him hear the end of it.
Grimmjow slowly hauls his aching, bleeding body upright in the water and it takes more effort than he’ll ever admit. The pink-haired creature is hanging back across the room, doubled over its stomach. He must’ve slashed it good and deep with his fins, the appendages coated in foreign blood. The sight brings a small but proud grin to his lips. The eel, however, starts swimming closer out from the shadows, running its slimy tongue over pink-stained teeth. Its jaw is open wide with watery laughter.
“Yeah yeah, laugh all you want, ya ugly bastard,” he huffs out, grin turning cold and sharp. He forces trembling limbs into a fresh fighting stance, the fins of his arms turned out and readied like daggers, eyes narrowed.
No, he’s not gonna die down here.
The creature lunges, and the room suddenly fucking explodes.
White firepower, crackling like lightning and as blinding as a dying star, blasts into the center of the building and knocks both man and beast in opposite directions. The eel gets hurtled to the ground toward its companion. Grimmjow back once again hits the wall. And for a few vital seconds, he can’t see a goddamn thing.
When his vision finally recovers, there’s someone new descending into the building from the fresh hole blown right through its roof. Glowing green markings run along his skin like stitches wherever the black springsuit doesn’t cover, and wild blonde hair swirls around his head like some sort of maniacal halo. Kisuke Urahara is all silence and theatrics until his bare feet finally land on the damaged floor. It’s only then that he shoves a handful of unruly hair out of his face and grins, pointing a long silver staff over at the eel creature with his free hand – like a swordsman, prepping for a proper duel. The end of the staff is still snapping and flashing with white, modified electricity.
“Oh my! Looks like I’ve arrived just in time,” he sings, turning his head to smirk almost sheepishly in Grimmjow’s direction. In fact, there’s an unmistakably rueful look on those mischievous features despite the smile. “Grimmjow.”
“Kisuke.”
The researcher looks back at the two creatures snarling from the one corner, wary of all the bright light. His attention, however, remains on his head of security. “I’m afraid I owe you the sincerest of apologies, Mr. Jaegerjaquez,” he says lightly, one foot sliding back on the ground. Bracing himself. “It seems things have gotten a bit out of hand. But! Rest assured, we’ll handle it from here. Yoruichi, please make sure Grimmjow remains sufficiently incapacitated until I’ve dealt with our unexpected variables.”
“What?”
Out of seemingly nowhere, a dark arm swirling with glowing gold crescents slams down across his neck and pulls him into a chokehold. The strangled sound he makes is indescribable as Yoruichi Shihouin promptly starts grappling at him from behind with all four slender limbs. Fresh waves of pain rock through his body, and they tumble towards the floor.
“Bitch!” It comes out a mere wheeze through half-crushed windpipe, and all he gets for a reply is a familiar cackle in his ear.
Kisuke carries on without sparing the pair another glance, glowing gray eyes instead steadily focused on the eel finally readying itself for another strike. “Hm. It’s strange – Akon didn’t say anything about your kind hunting in schools,” he muses aloud, slowly raising the electric staff high above his head like a spear. The creature’s tail thrashes wildly in response. “And it seems you’re far more aggressive than we anticipated.”
Kisuke’s smile fades away. “What a shame.”
As the eel lunges forward, hot white energy explodes and tears through the room yet again.
By the time Grimmjow finally manages to claw his way out of Yoruichi’s merciless embrace, the chaos has ended. The ocean is the quietest it’s been since his arrival to New York. There are no voices in the currents, and the building has returned to almost complete darkness. Grimmjow lets himself roll over and then just hover above the floor on his back for a bit, chest heaving and basking in the ability to actually think clearly at last. From his peripherals he can see Kisuke poking at the two fresh corpses in the corner with his bare toes, while Yoruichi reaches towards him from the other side.
“Fuck! Get off.” He bats her prodding hands away as soon as she starts poking at the gnarliest wounds along his shoulder and torso, meeting her smirk with a glare. Its only because he’s known her the better part of a decade that he can see the hidden concern in her gaze. But she does withdraw her hands – knowing better than to think just because he’s bloodied up that he can’t bite.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that shade of red on you,” she teases. “Shame we missed most of the party,
“Tch.” No longer on the verge of passing out or throwing up – or well, at least passing out – Grimmjow forces himself into an upright position and swallows down the fire in his nerves. “What the hell is going on?”
“As if Kisuke would let his favorite helper turn fish food without a fight.”
“Oh, so he’s got you sucking up and playing dumb. Please. It’s beneath you,” Grimmjow snaps, ignoring the middle finger flipped up in retort to look at the head researcher himself.
The blonde is uncharacteristically silent and he’s moved on to poking at the other two crumpled bodies, at least this time using his hands. Something in his gut twists initially as he watches mindful fingers roam over the body of the orange-haired creature – but he’s quick to disregard any other reaction immediately. It doesn’t take much thinking to start figuring things out – their swift arrival, the other’s earlier apology, the way it had been odd for the department to lose an entire shipment to a storm they should’ve easily seen was coming.
“You followed me,” he spits accusingly. “You knew these things were down here.”
Kisuke looks over at him with feigned innocence, lips jutting out into a thoughtful frown. But after a moment he sighs with a conceding bow of the head. “Not all of them. Just the one.” His eyes dip back to the head of bloody orange hair he’s currently tugging closer, hands still running along torn skin and scales. Searching, checking, could it still be alive? “But! I assure you, any confidential measures taken were of the utmost necessity.”
“You sent me down here for some nonexistent boxes and couldn’t even tell me they’d have fucking teeth??”
“Mayuri Kurotsuchi has eyes and ears everywhere!” Kisuke cries in pitiful defense. “Akon did us a favor by getting us the leads, but it’d do no good if the boys at the institute heard we poached their data. They would’ve found him first and you know what they do over there.”
Of course he does; but Kisuke also knows that he’s never given two shits about the ethics of federal research. Plus, he’s pretty damn sure that it wouldn’t have compromised the mission further to bring the guy running it into the loop. “Confidential measures” his ass.
They both know he wouldn’t have taken the job if he knew what it really was. What a selfish and stubborn bastard he is.
Grimmjow chooses silence for the next several minutes. He spares neither of them a glance nor response until Yoruichi offers out a medkit; and even then he just snatches it out of her hands and starts patching himself up. Shaking hands fumble with the simplest of movements, no doubt due to blood loss and lingering adrenaline; but when Yoruichi reaches out to help he promptly beats her off.
A swift whack to the back of the head forces him to concede.
Every sting and burn that flares up from her touch hammers in the surrealness of what just happened. He can’t remember the last time he fought so hard, needed his senses so sharp. Can’t remember the last time he grinned with bloody teeth at something that so fiercely pushed him to his limits. No wonder this shit fueled his stupid sister’s adrenaline streak like gasoline. He’s not sure which is worse: that he’s just now understanding it, or that he’s able to understand it at all.
It’s Kisuke that breaks the silence first, his voice suddenly high with excited… relief? “Well! It seems we’re in luck after all.”
Grimmjow looks over just in time to see a white-clawed hand snatch out and clamp right over the researcher’s throat.
Yoruichi’s already moving by the time Grimmjow even processes what’s happening; and when he finally gets his damn limbs to cooperate and swim across the room, they both have the creature restrained. It’s weak from its injuries, which helps; but its golden eyes are wide with animalistic panic as it continues struggling.
“Easy now, easy!” Kisuke shouts, like it’ll actually soothe the creature. Yoruichi has both thighs wrapped around its torso and she’s fumbling to uncap a needle full of sedative. The thing’s tail threatens to knock Kisuke’s head clean off.
“Hey!” His limbs are full of lead but Grimmjow still gets right in the middle of the chaos, grabbing two handfuls of orange hair and yanking back when it tries to take a bite out of Yoruichi’s hip. “Knock it off!”
Blue eyes meet twin suns – and instantly, the creature stills.
Its too-human face goes slack and its expression says its surprised to see him; that it’s in pain and alarmed, and that Grimmjow thinks it might even be pleading for help. After hours of the other creatures’ nasty tongues and hollow, ravenous smiles, it stuns him. His fingers automatically loosen a bit in that tangled hair but it doesn’t start fighting again. Instead, its eyes remain locked onto his face. There’s a split in its parted lips and a dark bruise around one eye, along with more concerning injuries crudely lining the rest of its body. The sigh sends a fresh wave of rage prickling in his veins that he doesn’t even understand.
“Oh my, would you look at that,” he hears Kisuke remark. “He seems rather fond of you, Mr. Jaegerjaquez.”
Grimmjow doesn’t tear his face away from those eyes as surprise morphs into something else.
Relief.
It came back for him after getting chased off, nearly killed by its own kind as a result… Why? For him?
It’s relieved he’s alive.
“This is the first one,” Grimmjow supplies after a moment of silence, not shifting his gaze. “The one that was chased by those other fuckers.”
Kisuke and Yoruichi hum in unison, and there’s a shifting amongst all the tangled bodies. The creature is still rigid, tense, and defensive, but it has stopped struggling. Yoruichi slowly peels off of it and Kisuke sets the staff in his hands back on the ground. After a moment of speculation, the blonde man hums again.
“We’re taking him with us,” he says, and Grimmjow can feel the deliberation of each word being hammered against him. “It seems you’re the only one he trusts at the moment. It would make the most sense for a trusted acquaintance to accompany his journey from here on out.”
This isn’t his problem, this isn’t his job. Grimmjow clenches his jaw and hates how he can’t look away from those curious eyes. “What is he?”
“If the data and my theories are proven correct, he is none other than the next step in human evolution.”
Grimmjow’s gaze snaps up at that. Incredulous. Curious. “Don’t tell me you think they’re humans.”
Kisuke’s glowing gaze is dead serious in the murky water. Knowing. He’s got him. “Don’t you care to find out?”
There’s that look on the scientist’s face right now – the rare one, the hungry one, the one that needs to know anything and everything. The one even the creature had shown him hours earlier and the one Nel always in her eyes.
The one she always said as in his eyes too, just always tucked away and “hidden behind such an ugly scowl.” Like he was scared to be devoured.
“Just one case,” Kisuke reassures, “until we’ve collected our data. Not a permanent position!” Not replacing anyone. “Just him! One case, and you can go back doing your little security thing with no strings attached.”
A quiet song brushes against Grimmjow’s mind, softer than all the others and still curious. His eyes flick back down to the creature’s freckled face, whose golden eyes are wide and searching and concerned. His singing gills flutter gently as he calls out to the human before him…
“You’re the only one he’ll trust I’m afraid, Grimmjow.”
Fuck.
“Fine.”
He can tell Kisuke’s already smiling before the word is even out of his mouth.
So what if it’s unfair to do this without her, to play pretend in Nel’s old life like the rotten brother he is? She’d begrudge him forever if he doesn’t see this through.
“Just one.”
Just him.