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It had been two days since Grimmjow left, and he’d come back to find Las Noches absolutely smashed to shit.
Droves of arrancar were being herded into the main grounds of Las Noches proper and slaughtered, from the looks of the blood on the sand and piles of dead. The lie of a bargain, Grimmjow’s gut told him. The illusion of value, same as Aizen had used. Aizen had let the lie linger a lot longer, though. These assholes, they were slaughtering cattle by the hundreds. Arrancar, vasto lorde, even gillian if they came too close. Their blood might be different colours but it all smelled the same to his sharp nose.
Well, fuck it. Harribel had been the one to insist that Grimmjow personally break up some stupid adjuchas skirmish so far outside the perimeter of Las Noches that it looked exactly like what it was: a fuckin’ thin excuse to get rid of him for a while. He didn’t have a lot of complaints about getting out into the free air and silence, but while he’d been too far out to do anything about it, a shitload of quincies had come down and beat the entire evolved population from end to end.
Including Harribel, which pissed him the fuck off. Not because he gave a shit, but because if she was gonna send him away she needed to be ready for anything. And she hadn’t been anywhere near close to that, judging by the bloody shitshow he was looking at across the dunes. He could sense the dying sparks of her tres bestias further out in the sands, probably trying to avenge her.
So much for the night queen of Hueco Mundo.
Guess that left a position open, once those blue-blazing assholes in white were dealt with. But judging from the one reeking of tainted hollow reiryoku about to dismember what felt like a shinigami but didn’t look a thing like one, surrounded by the familiar feel of a young human woman that had once done him some real favours, Grimmjow had a stirring sense that he could get some answers if he acted before the mutated quincy killed them.
Well, to hell with it.
It wouldn’t be the first enemy Grimmjow had struck from behind, and it sure as fuck wouldn’t be the last.
“Shit!”
The not-shinigami didn’t mince words, which Grimmjow liked, but his stupid green-striped hat tipped him so far into idiot territory that he considered jamming Pantera through his skull anyway.
Instead, he kept the blade pointed at his face, watching how his captive tried to gather his limbs into position enough to use a shinigami’s speed. Flash step, or whatever they liked to call it. Grimmjow cocked his head and tilted Pantera’s edge further down towards his carotid artery, where it pulsed visibly to his inhuman eyes. Caught, the moron grimaced politely and raised both palms in surrender.
“Please don’t kill me, Arrancar-san. We came in aid of your people. We share a common enemy, and I mean no harm to you and yours.”
Grimmjow snorted. “You can’t harm me or mine, shinigami. There’s just me, and my sword to your stupid fucking neck. Tell me why you’re here with Kurosaki’s woman.”
Still kneeling, the shinigami’s eyes widened in realisation. “You’ve met Kurosaki-san? And Inoue-san? Then you’re one of—”
“Call me Aizen’s arrancar and this conversation ends real bloody.”
“—one of the foes that Kurosaki-san fought when he was here last! Inoue-san, Inoue-san!” The idiot started waving behind himself, too cheerfully unnerved for the situation. Grimmjow had met idiots before, and this one didn’t fit the criteria. A king wearing a jester’s hat, if he had to guess. “If you’ve finished healing yourself, please come and say hello. My current blood volume would appreciate it greatly!”
Lip curling into a sneer, Grimmjow didn’t budge an inch as a familiar figure emerged from behind the rocks, a useless arrancar kid cradled in her arms. Her face was wide open with recognition and entreaty.
“We’re not your enemies, Grimmjow,” Kurosaki’s woman said, the first words she’d said to him in almost two years. “This man is Urahara Kisuke. He’s the one who taught Kurosaki-kun almost everything he knows about fighting. We did come to help, but—” Her mouth jerked down into a fearful grimace, the likes of which Grimmjow had never seen whilever she thought Kurosaki would come and save her. “I think we’re all under attack. Everyone. And Soul Society wants Kurosaki-kun to fix it. Please let us go. I’ll heal everyone I can before we leave.”
Whatever Inoue Orihime was, whatever powers she possessed that Aizen had wanted to get his hands on, she wasn’t a liar. That much Grimmjow could accept as fact, the same way Kurosaki’s morals meant he’d never let a soul in trouble go unaided. Even Grimmjow’s. The thought heated his blood with anger and old shame. Maybe he was in an interesting position to repay that debt.
“Heal them all from the strongest down. I want warriors first,” Grimmjow ordered. Gratifyingly, the woman hopped-to, boosting the kid’s limp form on her hip to run down across the dunes. He’d seen her make life from red paste before. She’d get their ranks up from under themselves. The moment her golden glow bloomed across the sand, Grimmjow turned back to the smiling shinigami’s face.
“The one behind the tall dune. Call him down.”
Urahara Kisuke didn’t even twitch. “Sado-san, now is not the time for your strength. We’re in the presence of an extremely vigilant ally.”
“You sound like Aizen.”
“Is that so?” Kurosaki’s mentor smiled with a glint in his eyes. “I think Aizen sounds like me.”
The prickle of instinctive caution at the asshole’s confidence was all that stopped Grimmjow from seeing just how well he’d take the separation of his head from his shoulders. Watching him back just as carefully, Urahara Kisuke seemed to come to a sudden conclusion, clapping his hands lightly together. Grimmjow’s nostrils flared in anticipation of a shinigami kidou attack, but no light erupted between his hands. At his neck, Pantera hadn’t wavered a single millimetre.
“You are remarkably predatory, aren’t you?” Urahara marvelled. “Pure, cold killer instinct. You’re the epitome of what we call hollow, if I may say so. Perhaps we might have something to offer each other, if you’re interested in defending these lands.” Gesturing out to the destruction of Las Noches, the shinigami had the fuckin’ gall to look sad about it. “At the very least, I can tell you who the enemy is, and what it wants.”
Intelligence like that would be valuable. But Grimmjow hadn’t been joking when he said the asshole sounded like Aizen. Flattery, soft words and a sword—or bone-crushing reiatsu—to follow them up. And nobody said Aizen’s name so calmly unless they were at least as strong as he’d been.
“Urahara-san, I’m going to help Inoue with the wounded,” a deep voice said from the top of the sandy dune he’d been sensing another human from. A big human, dark-skinned with two strong arms, judging by the concentration of reiatsu gathered in them. Help, huh? “They may not all be receptive to her offers to heal them.”
“Bullshit,” Grimmjow said flatly. “There isn’t a hollow in Las Noches that doesn’t know her name by now. She’s a fuckin’ legend.”
“Oh?” Urahara said, his eyes lighting up with interest. “Could you tell me more about that? Kurosaki-san and his friends have been extremely tight-lipped about their time here.”
“Fuck off.” Bizarrely, the human on the dune gave him a thumbs-up for that response. “I won’t kill you, but get the hell out of here. Hueco Mundo isn’t hospitable to shinigami, even ones waving a white flag.” He smiled savagely at the sensation of alien reiatsu starting to converge on Inoue Orihime’s position. Foot-soldiers. “But you’ll be a damn sight better off than those quincies are about to be.” He sheathed his sword in two clean movements and stepped away. There were more quincies down inside Las Noches that still needed putting down, and he had an urge to kill something that could scream.
“Please, let me assist.” Even on his feet, Urahara Kisuke didn’t make an imposing figure in casual green cloth. Almost exactly the same height as him, though Grimmjow eyed the geta on his feet with some suspicion. “It may surprise you to know this, but I am a former captain of the Gotei 13.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore.” The quincies down below were cannon fodder at most. Nothing like the bastard that had pulled the tres bestias' pet into himself. “Suit yourself.”
“I always do.”
Sharing the killing ground wasn’t unfamiliar to Grimmjow, but he ignored the parallel. If nothing else, he could see what Kurosaki’s mentor was made of.
Twenty minutes later, the sand was drenched in quincy blood.
Grimmjow stared around them at the array of limbs, heads, torsos and general fucking viscera that littered the sand, some still twitching with dying nerve endings. He could only claim about a half of the kills. Fuck, he’d almost lost his own head ducking the bright red light of the shinigami’s blade. The fucker had mowed down his portion of the enemy force like he’d driven a wheat harvester through them.
“Mm!” Urahara nodded with satisfaction, hands on his hips. Almost carelessly he wiped a speckling spray of enemy blood off his own cheek. “That was rousing. Don’t tell anyone, but I carry a lot of repressed rage. I quite enjoy a little violence sometimes, but sadly, it’s simply not where my true strength lies.” Turning to Grimmjow with cheerful energy, he pointed further into Las Noches. “Is it true Aizen stole a lot of Seireitei technology over the years to set up operations here? I could use some of it.”
Memories of wall-to-wall machines and pale blue light of camera feeds sprang to mind, and for the first time Grimmjow wondered if this asshole was where Kurosaki’s capacity for surging growth came from. That, and his unpredictable ability to piss him off with zero notice.
“Yeah.”
“Regretfully, it appears the citadel is entirely caved in over the grand entrance.”
“Yeah.”
Urahara’s eyebrow was twitching at the corner, but he didn’t lose his smile. “Might there be another entrance to the lower levels that the quincies didn’t know about?”
Grimmjow smiled wolfishly. “What’s it worth to you?”
By Hueco Mundo rules, it was the juncture where a threat would be made against him. Application of force was the only thing to get anyone moving among the hollows. Kurosaki would have lost his temper already. Kurosaki’s teacher just beamed at him.
“An offer to bargain? Excellent! I’m at your service, ah…” He hesitated. “I don’t think I got a full introduction from you, come to think. Grimmjow-san, was it?”
“Just Grimmjow. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.” When Urahara’s eyebrow quirked expectantly, it took a breath to quell the urge to try to kill him. “Former sixth espada.”
“Only six? Well, needs must, I suppose.” Sheathing his sword, Urahara took off his hat and swept a bow. “Urahara Kisuke, owner of the Urahara Shop and former captain of the Gotei 13’s Twelfth Division. Among other things. This new threat is positioning itself to bury us all, Grimmjow-san. I do hope we can count on the strongest Las Noches arrancar left standing.”
“I really don’t give a shit.”
“I hope you will,” Kurosaki’s woman said distantly, coming into view with too many familiar faces standing behind her. Arrancar women, mostly. Stragglers, soldiers, even some vasto lorde. Her voice grew stronger with the closure of distance, her brown-eyed gaze steady with a resolve he didn’t remember seeing last time. “If we don’t help each other now, I don’t know what happens next.”
“She’s right.” Aizen’s two sycophant aides crept forward with chins low against their chest. They looked horrified to even be in the woman’s presence, eyes showing white all the way around. The pigtailed one, Loly, jutted her chin just enough to meet his eyes. “I hate this, and I hate you and I hate her most of all, but we need an alliance that can make a difference.” Her eyelids flinched in remembered fear. “They’re on another level, Grimmjow. You killed that one after he was hobbled by Ichigo and the tres bestias. You won’t kill the next one alone.”
“So?”
Her face contracted in incredulity. “So I’m sick of us dying. Why should it always be us? Used and destroyed for shinigami wars? Shinigami hate? We didn’t even know these quincies!!” The yellow-haired arrancar put a hand on her shoulder that she angrily jerked away from, eyes streaming furious tears. “Again and again we think we’re becoming strong, and for what?! We can’t even hold out against someone else’s wars! I fucking hate this! Let’s kill them!!”
Grimmjow’s lip curled against his own will. “For Aizen?”
Loly Aivirrne darted a glance over at Kurosaki’s woman, who was staring directly at him like the weight of the world was on his fuckin’ shoulders. Bullshit. But Loly ran a hand over her own face and chest like she was looking for something, her small white teeth clenched hard. Teeth that he knew had been sharp before Aizen had wrinkled his nose at them.
“Aizen-sama isn’t coming back to save us. Harribel either. We need to save ourselves.” Loly squared her shoulders, chin sticking right up. “You’re the strongest of us left. You must lead us!”
The crown. Bestowed at a time when nobody better was there to wear it. Grimmjow laughed hard and harsh, revelling in the expression of their idiot faces falling into dismay. Protection? From Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez?! Why should he protect the same fuckers who snickered when his fraccion was slaughtered because of his orders? Who laughed when Tousen amputated his arm, who tried to barter with the useless coin of flesh when he was squaring with the ones he owed?
“You can all get fucked,” Grimmjow said clearly, to every hollow standing behind the human woman’s shoulder. “You’re alive because of her, which means you should be dead.” Three strides forward to her shoulder and he was in all of their faces, snarling close and carnivorous. “You don’t get to make demands of me. I get to make demands of you.”
Mila Rose, standing tall and angry behind lesser hollows with her sisters, convulsed her mouth from a twist of disgust into grudging respect. The stone loyalty of a soldier. The worst part was that when she spoke, he could feel the fucking power of Tier Harribel’s orders behind it.
“Then make your demands, Grimmjow. In the absence of Harribel-sama’s rule, by strength, by claw and fang, we must bow to you. Until she returns.”
And there was the leash. Not Aizen’s, not Harribel’s—the one he wanted for himself.
How the fuck had he ever convinced himself it was a crown?
“So bow. And then die, because I’m not saving a single one of you.”
“They’re ready for you to take control,” Urahara said behind him, making old man noises like he actually needed that stupid cane. “Why won’t you?”
“I wanted to lead an army, not protect a bunch of losers.”
“Some might say leadership is the requirement to do both.”
Grimmjow glared out at the nightscape, its familiarity upended by ruined white sand dunes and the shattered egg of Las Noches’ pale dome to his right. “And that’s why I never challenged Harribel’s rule. Fuck them. I hope they die.”
Sitting at his side with the exaggerated aches and groans of an old man, Urahara Kisuke handed off his cane like it was nothing. Grimmjow grabbed it in curious reflex, feeling a hot, furious protest of his lifeforce so close to the zanpakutou’s own. Benihime, he’d called it. Tipping his open palms under it, he handed the cane back to the stupid bastard, not even sure why he’d do such a thing. He’d never give Pantera to a stranger.
“It’s a criminal waste of Inoue-san’s powers to ask her to heal so many people only to abandon them to a suspected second wave of quincies.” Urahara’s eyes slid to the left. “Were you lying to them? I won’t judge. I lie all the time.”
“I don’t want to lead,” Grimmjow said harshly. The night sky and its dunes stared back. The air stank of quincy blood. “I want to kill the enemy.”
“So do both.”
“How? These idiots have loyalty and no strength.”
Urahara slapped Grimmjow’s knee once. “Malleable clay, soft as butter in a time of complete uncertainty and fear. Loyal to you by necessity, but they acknowledge that you’re the strongest of their ranks. What would you do with them?”
Them. The list was long enough. Harribel’s fraccion, Aizen’s aides, a bunch of numeros that managed to survive and some fucked up looking things following around what he was sure was the bawling arrancar kid that had been with Kurosaki when he’d almost died by Ulquiorra’s strike. None of them meant shit in strength. None of them could watch his back.
What to do with them? Nothing. He had no use for them.
But Las Noches did, and Las Noches was home.
Unfolding to his feet, Grimmjow turned and headed to Mila Rose and her sisters over on the furthest visible dune, his hakama hem catching in every sweeping step across the sand. His pointing finger at her face made her stand at attention, though no red light at its tip ever came. There was a sickening light of angry hope in her eyes.
“Let’s talk,” he said. “Fast.”
“As you wish.”
“I fucking hate you.”
Mila Rose’s chin lifted.
“I know. Give me your orders.”
Sickening. Their loyalty was something else. His fraccion would have done the same. Shawlong—
“Listen close. Do everything I say. Argue and I’ll kill you. Get it?”
Mila Rose’s brow creased in anger. Fists clenched in it. Her two sisters, eavesdropping assholes they were, joined her shoulders and nodded belligerently.
“Harribel-sama didn’t like you, but she respected you,” Sung-sun said plainly. Her usually placid gaze was burning. “Until she is back, or until she is lost to us, we will obey you.”
Apacci glared. “Use us wisely, Grimmjow. Or we will bite you as hard as we can, at the moment you’ll never expect—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Grimmjow bit the syllables out one by one. “Threats come from winners, not losers. And you lost. You all lost. You left a busted arrancar kid and two vasto lorde to defend Harribel. Where the hell were you!?”
Mila Rose jerked straight, soldier straight. Her eyes were brimming unexpected tears.
“She told us to go out. Far out. Further out to the perimeter than we’d needed to go before. We tried to get back in time.”
Grimmjow’s gut started to cool with the stone ice of realisation.
“How good is her ability to sense reiatsu?”
“She’s a shark, Grimmjow—Grimmjow-sama,” Sung-sun said, like she wanted to spit but couldn’t. “She senses prey and predators alike long before we can even catch a glimpse of them. I think—she wanted to protect us all. But she couldn’t. Our enemies were simply too strong for her to hold off on her own.”
“And as much as we hate to admit it,” Mila Rose said gravely, “she wanted you to succeed her if she fell. Those were her orders, if she ever met defeat. Our loyalty falls to you, and the kingdom of Las Noches with it. However it exists.”
A throne, handed to him. Grimmjow bit through his own lip grinning at the spiteful gift of it, because Harribel knew him too fucking well. Bitch. He’d kill her twice once he freed her from the quincies.
Before that, he had to be the king of Hueco Mundo.
“Get the surviving ranks in front of me to receive orders.”
The tres bestias’ eyes widened in startled hope. Purpose, even if it came from an inherited leash.
“Yes, Grimmjow-sama!”
Fuck all of them.
The dunes had been peaceful and silent since the remaining hollows had moved within the citadel. Loly and Menoly had taken Urahara Kisuke to the back entrance that would let him find the lower depths and whatever machinery he could find. With that done and the squealing wounded of Las Noches gone under, Grimmjow had nothing to worry about for a while. Nothing but quincies and their king, and why the hell Kurosaki’s mentor Urahara Kisuke talked like he knew a lot more than he wanted to let on.
“Hello again.”
Grimmjow’s gut tightened against his spine as a familiar reiatsu approached with no fear whatsoever, right up until she was folding right down next to him in her stupid human clothes. He didn’t bother to answer her.
“Thank you, by the way.”
Grimmjow’s teeth grit hard.
“Kurosaki-kun was right about—”
“Shut up.”
“Oh.”
Half a metre away, legs folded up. No defence. One cero could—why had Kurosaki—fuck.
“Why isn’t he here?” Grimmjow grit out. The woman, Inoue, lit up like a lantern at sunset.
“He was. Kurosaki-kun was called away around two minutes before you arrived.”
Grimmjow felt his entire face fall against his will.
Two minutes.
Two years and two minutes.
Kurosaki had been—
“Where is he now?” Grimmjow asked numbly. The scar on his neck pulsed like a second heart. Inoue, Orihime, whatever she called herself, pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them.
“Seireitei, but I think he needs us. Me, and Sado-kun.” She inhaled hard. “But I think if he can have you as well, we’ll be so much better. You’ll make him so happy. Even if he won’t notice it right away. And your…strength, will be a big boost to us.”
“Say what you mean.”
Inoue fell completely silent. Across the sands, Urahara Kisuke was returning, covered in fine grit and smiling like he’d struck gold.
“I applaud your assistance, Grimmjow-san, I truly do.” Urahara’s expression crumpled in confused triumph. “Those women knew all of Aizen’s secrets, to a truly horrifying degree.” He pulled out a heavy blue pouch from behind his back that sagged with weight. “Jerky, anyone? It’s highly nutritious for all races. Very high in protein.”
“Please,” Inoue begged, “I haven’t seen meat in a week!”
“Oh my,” Urahara replied, fisting his jerky and depositing it into her waiting hands. “How can you heal without meat?”
“I think my rikka might be vegan,” Inoue replied with full cheeks. Grimmjow wasn’t sure what vegan meant, but he didn’t take any food. When he saw the little arrancar kid looking on hungrily, he gestured in irritation and tried not to notice when she beamed in confused terror at the sight of him while stuffing food in her mouth. Kid had no emotional regulation.
He was still thinking that when she padded over and dropped a giant piece of dried meat onto his bent knee.
“Here, Grimmjow-sama.” The kid smacked the food like it was a prized gift and nodded at it, her curling green hair jumping with the motion. She didn’t seem to have any idea who she used to be. Her toothy little smile dropped the bottom of his gut in ways he couldn’t explain. “You can have some of mine, so long as you don’t try to kill me!”
She was so clearly Nelliel, the original number three espada Nelliel. He’d noticed the first time he’d seen her, but this was the first time he’d had a chance to properly wonder about it. It didn’t look to be a covert transformation. She didn’t seem to know who she was—especially if she was calling him Grimmjow-sama.
A number three outranked a six, if she could return to the warrior she used to be.
“Thanks,” Grimmjow said, grabbing the dried meat to chew on. When he scruffed her head in approval, the kid gripped her own skull in wonder and beamed back at him in amazement. “Wanna rule the world?”
“No,” the kid breathed, looking at him with star-struck eyes. “Do you?”
Did he?
Sure, once. Then the entire world had crashed down around them, leaving stardust and quincies in its wake.
“She’s quite an enigma, isn’t she?” Urahara said, thumping down next to him in a small spray of sand. “All that innocence and loyalty. But you won’t take advantage of it, will you?”
“Not my style. Might be yours, though.”
“Oh.” Urahara dipped his head. “My days of soliciting blind obedience are done. It’s never worth it.”
Grimmjow’s mouth hardened. “She’s an espada, you know.”
“A—”
“Tres.”
“Espada three—”
“Her reiatsu needs stabilising. Her mask was split. Make her whole, and you won’t need me.”
Urahara jumped to his feet in an instant, eyes wide on the kid. Grimmjow didn’t look and sure didn’t tell himself it mattered. Freedom at any cost. A leash wasn’t power.
She’d be an asshole when she was restored, but she wouldn’t know the moments before.
“You’re an accidental good person, you know.”
“What’s that.”
Inoue stretched her arms high and long, longer than he thought she was capable of. Behind them, a tent was beaming light and life and power, a golden glow of hope shining out its open flaps. Even to him, it looked like a beacon of home. Kurosaki’s woman, Inoue Orihime, didn’t even look back at it. Her eyes were all for him, bright and knowing as she looked up at him. Grimmjow wondered if he could get away with murder at that point.
“It means,” Inoue said warmly, “that your sense of honour means you’ll always do the right thing, because your principles can’t be compromised. Black and white. You chose white.”
“I didn’t choose shit,” Grimmjow said flatly.
“Your heart did.”
“I don’t have one.”
“I saw your eyes when Kurosaki-kun said he was fighting for his friends. For me, for all of them, he was going to take us all home, and you—” Inoue broke off, catching her own breath for an instant, but she didn’t stop. “I saw in you the regret that you didn’t do the same. It’s what defeated you. But now you can.”
Grimmjow glared out into the lifeless desert.
“You don’t know me. You don’t know what I want.”
Throwing her hands down into her lap, Inoue Orihime smiled and dipped her head.
“Kurosaki-kun would have loved to see you. But Soul Society called him up before any of us could sense you.” Pulling a long breath through her nose, she tipped her head to the unpolluted black sky. “I hope he’s okay. They pull him up like he’s—” Stopping herself, her eyes crinkled in a pained smile. “Can I ask a favour, Grimmjow-san? An awful one, one that even Urahara-san’s deals can’t override.”
The answer for that was primal, and easy. She was as simple as night and day.
“Depends what you want, and what you can give me.”
One hand combed through her long hair. Nervous.
“Would you—make sure you see him? Kurosaki-kun. You don’t know it, but he’d—he’s…” she took in a deep, sharp breath, “he needs to see you again. Alive, strong, angry, happy. Let him see that, please. Stay alive that long, at least.”
Grimmjow’s brows hit his hairline. “Why?”
“Because he regrets not coming back to find you. After Nnoitra.”
She rambled on with more explanations and details, but Grimmjow was deaf to them all. Kurosaki had fought Nnoitra in the moments before he lost his senses, and he’d woken up to silence in every direction. Had Kurosaki—
“Does he think I’m dead?” Grimmjow asked suddenly, and the woman covered her head pre-emptively and nodded.
“Sorry!”
Well, fuck.
“Come with us, Grimmjow,” said Nelliel, grave and tall and extending her hand like the offering of god. The horned bracelet on her wrist was thick and obvious. “I believe you could help us.”
“Fuck you,” Grimmjow replied, reclined back on both elbows in the sand. “You go. Save the queen, Tres. She might even fuck you for it.”
Nelliel’s hazel eyes blazed with moral disapproval. Grimmjow didn’t care. He turned his eyes to Urahara Kisuke, who was waving a hand at them as he ran down one of the front sandhills.
“Please, please!” he called, lugging a sack of fresh technology over his shoulder, the two ugly vasto lorde following him. “Both of you, I’d like to make separate offers to engage both of you!”
Grimmjow didn’t even snort as he watched Urahara slam into Nelliel so hard she was smashed back into the wastes. She’d agree to anything if it sounded like justice. Even if that justice was a lie, but hell if he was going to enlighten her. She’d bowed to Aizen, let her bow again. Urahara would use her however he needed to, just like Aizen did. He turned away and headed out towards the open sands of Hueco Mundo.
Hands caught him at either elbow, one strong and one weak.
“Sorry,” said a deep voice, and he sounded it.
“Not sorry,” said a high voice, elated and alive with it. Inoue squeezed as hard as she could, which wasn’t hard at all. “Want to fight?”
“No,” Grimmjow said honestly, before he could even think of a fun answer. “Get lost.”
“I really want you to join us.”
Tilting his head in the other direction, Grimmjow turned to Sado. “And you?”
“Don’t care. She does, and I trust her.” The arms around his said the weakness of his character was made up for by his strength. Asshole.
“What the hell do you want me for?”
“I told you. Kurosaki-kun thinks—”
“I don’t give a shit about Kurosaki.” He sounded so sincere about it he actually managed to loosen the arms around him, leaving two humans bereft and aimless behind him. “Follow me and I’ll kill you.”
They were idiots, but they knew how to survive. No footsteps dogged him as he stalked further into the night.
Peace and quiet, finally. Now he just had to shut up the voice inside him, still roaring in outrage.
Quincies in Las Noches. Quincies in Soul Society.
Quincies still fucking breathing out there somewhere, trying to conquer reality itself.
Not his problem, Grimmjow told the voice. Let the shinigami handle shinigami problems. Let Nelliel rescue Harribel. None of that had a damn thing to do with him.
Except Kurosaki Ichigo was out there somewhere. Getting stronger with every new battle, the way he’d done each time he came away from a skirmish with him. Fighting the quincies that had almost eradicated Las Noches’ arrancar population completely.
Was he just going to sit around and do nothing, just to stick it to Nelliel and Kurosaki’s little friends?
The answer was clear, but he didn’t have to like it. Tipping his head back, Grimmjow scowled up at the crescent moon.
“Fuck.”
It had been ten minutes already, and Grimmjow’s heart was still pounding.
Kurosaki.
That son of a bitch. He’d recognise that voice anywhere—but what he sure as hell hadn’t counted on was that Kurosaki remembered his just as clearly, even through the tinny shit of whatever speaker Urahara had ripped out of the bowels of Las Noches. But he had, and it had provoked a reaction so strong they’d kicked him out of the entire fucking tent with handfuls of salt chasing him, like he was some kind of bad spirit come to haunt them.
Kurosaki was still alive, still remembered him, and he was one trip through the garganta away.
Soul Society.
There was no way in hell Grimmjow could hold back now.
“I hope you don’t mind the white lie of having secured your assistance I told back in there,” Urahara said as he left the tent, forearm up to brace the flap overhead. “Or your rude eviction. Kurosaki-san must concentrate on his task at hand, and from what I just saw, you’re an incredibly potent distraction to him. I wonder what that means for our chances of coming to an agreement? I do have several things I might offer you in exchange for your dedicated commitment to helping us. For instance…”
Grimmjow was only half-listening, still replaying Kurosaki’s reaction in his head, over and over. The adrenaline rush of recognition flared in his bloodstream. He hadn’t been able to see his face, but he could imagine it: pupils dilated with shock, lips parted, fists clenched and no way to use them. Or maybe an instinctive reach for his sword. Anything but happiness, so Inoue could go ahead and eat shit. Happiness wasn’t the kind of feeling people had when they saw Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez coming.
Definitely not shinigami. Well, they’d just have to get over it in a fucking hurry.
Soul Society wasn’t going to know what hit it.
“Grimmjow-san? Did you hear anything I just said?”
And neither would Kurosaki Ichigo.
“I’m in.”