bleach - bloodsport pt 2 - incomplete (grimmjow/ichigo)

[askerian]

idk if i'll keep it as a single chapter or cut it downthe middle. anyway the porn scene is fighting me so this is everything before that. 9.5k so already longer than chapter 1. uuugh.

"I find myself having trouble believing a single soldat was such a huge hindrance to an elite squad," Aizen said when it was all over, tone musing and whimsical. A few steps away, Luppi grinned at the orange-haired body sprawled on torn ground.

"Grimmjow knows how to pick them, huh? Too bad he doesn't know how to finish them off."

Nnoitra cackled; Edrad and Nakeem knew better. Aizen made a humming sound of curiosity, stepping casually closer to the body.

Trees and rocks were upturned and torn out for a hundred yards, some still on fire. Delicate desert rose-shaped crystals lay broken in shards. The Quincy squad had been good -- really good. Lots of heavy-hitters, highly trained. But they'd believed they and the Arrancars were competing to take Aizen into custody; so their backs had been wide open when the Arrancars joined forces with Aizen and his guards.

Nelliel had one-shotted Sneer-face-leader through the head; Nnoitra had speared Naranjo's little friend the Imperial Heir through the guts, and then Grimmjow's kill had fucking gone and turned his back on him and blasted them all thirty yards away with sheer force, a burst of entirely unfocused, unshaped power.

Then some Quincy guy with a pink mohawk had snatched command right out of Prissy Moustache's hands despite all visible rank insignias and given the only orders that would have saved them from the trap snapping closed on them.

Grimmjow's kill had stayed behind.

"You're not going to deny it, Grimmjow, are you?" Luppi asked, playfully vicious. "We could all smell him on you. You could have sneaked right into his sleeping bag as we left and he'd have thought you were just after a second round. Tssk."

"It's cute how you're trying to make it my fault for not killing him earlier when you failed to even scratch any of them," Grimmjow replied placidly, eyelids heavy with boredom, and waited until Doctor Aizen was leaning down to take the cross off Kurosaki's wrist to add, "Also, that's not a corpse."

Aizen jerked back; Luppi snatched him with two tentacles and yanked him out of range even as a short lance of golden light burst out of Kurosaki's hand.

"Asshole," groaned the Quincy as everyone tensed up all over again.

"Should have shot him sooner. Your own fault for waiting."

Grimmjow padded closer, tail flicking slowly at the tip as Kurosaki forced himself onto his flank. Grimmjow's arm was still streaked with blood where he'd gouged the side of the Quincy's waist trying to pierce him through. He brought his wrist to his mouth, licked a streak of blood off his armored skin. Kurosaki snorted through his nose, panting harshly, eyes rolled up to watch him. He seemed like he couldn't even lift his head but he might still be faking it...

A real fucking shame Grimmjow was gonna have to finish him off here and now. He'd been so pissed off after that blowjob, he'd been looking forward to a chance to hunt that fucker down and dick him down good and proper. After a real fight, not a 'oh hey I'm gonna turn my back on you because my buddy got scratched and his evac is more important than you trying to yank the spine out of my back.'

Mind, Grimmjow was the one who'd taken him down nice and hard after the barrier went down but he didn't delude himself -- it had only gone down because Kurosaki had exhausted himself. And then Grimmjow had put a single burst of psychic force right through his sternum, and it was all over. Boring.

Kurosaki should never be boring. How dare he.

"Remarkable," Aizen said from a dozen feet away, pretending like he hadn't been caught with his pants down. "How did you avoid the force of the attack stopping your heart and lungs?"

Kurosaki's eyelids twitched and he glanced down at him, but he didn't reply to that.

Wasn't a mystery, anyway. He used raw energy like a shield. And his body had to be used to the density, with the output they'd just seen. Telekinetic shields were usually created outside of things, because matter interfered with gathering energy, but... At this level he sure as hell could afford it.

Grimmjow sank down onto his haunches, balancing on his toes and claws digging into the earth, watched Kurosaki. Kurosaki watched him back wordlessly. Blood and saliva had collected dust in thick streaks on his face. For a moment he wanted to reach out, wipe them off with his hand. The exhausted, tight-jawed, watchful look on Kurosaki's face should only be marred by fresh blood or Grimmjow's come. He would look so nice. Defiant even while half-broken.

But no.

"You gonna finish him off or do I gotta hold your hand?" Nnoitra drawled.

Grimmjow's tail lashed in a slow arc. "Depends, you want your hand back afterwards or can I chew it up and shit it out?"

"No eating teammates," Nelliel said absently as she wandered back into the torn-up battlefield, Pesche at her heels, both of them still shifted up -- though Pesche let it go the second he was amongst the foot soldiers again. "Also, we lost the track."

"Figures," Nnoitra said, sneering.

She predictably ignored him entirely. Frowning, she checked on Aizen with a quick glance, then walked up to Grimmjow's not-yet-a-kill to peer at him, horns canted dubiously to the side. "...Oh. Durable." Her face looked as unenthused about it as Grimmjow felt. "We might be able to use him as bait..."

"Won't work," Kurosaki rasped out, head still laying heavy in the dust. "Won't... come back."

Nelliel crouched down beside Grimmjow, a hand down between her hooves for balance as she leaned down to meet the Quincy's eyes. "Why not? You're very powerful. And the only time I see Quincies leave their men behind is when the whole squad is dead."

He snorted, quirked her a half-smile that didn't even look all that smirky, all that mocking -- that Grimmjow could have taken as the smile of someone hearing a good joke.

"Gemisch," was all he said. Grimmjow frowned.

"The fuck is that?"

Aizen walked up behind them, making sure to stand between Nelliel and Grimmjow. Grimmjow kinda thought Kurosaki was entirely able to ignore the two of them and their no doubt immediate counterattack to spear him up right through the gap. If he was gonna die here, the guy seemed the type to make sure he was gonna finish the mission first.

"What did he say?"

"Gemisch," Nelliel repeated, frowning thoughtfully. "Isn't that a caste, or something? Low-caste?"

Grimmjow's ears flattened on instinct, even before he could fully register the new, intense expression on Aizen's face.

"It means half-blood. Our new friend here is a hybrid. How far up your family tree?" he asked, smiling genially.

Kurosaki's jaw tightened.

"It stops counting after four generations, doesn't it? So... Great-grandparent? Grandparent?" Stubborn silence. Aizen's smile widened. "A parent? At this level of power? Well."

"Why does it matter?" Luppi asked, scowling as he moved to Kurosaki's other side. He'd had to reabsorb a few tentacles already and looked strained maintaining the four he had left. Nnoitra was mostly out of resurrección and so was everybody else but the three of them, but Nnoitra kind of spend his life with one toe in resurrección anyway.

"Oh, there's a reason they're so obsessed with blood purity. Quincy genes are mostly recessive, and baseline humans are psychic nulls. A crossbreed will always be weaker than their Quincy parent. So either this young man is a bastard child of the imperial line itself, or..."

... Or.

Yeah, if the Emperor of all Pure Prisses had sired a half-breed, it would have been smothered in its cradle before the scandal could topple their whole government, not sent off to play with a heir candidate. The whole squad would have firebombed themselves rather than leave Kurosaki and his incriminating genes in enemy hands.

Grimmjow felt a little odd about that, no lie.

The doctor pulled something out of his pocket, held it out to Grimmjow without even gracing him with a glance. "Blood sample, please."

"M' a genetic fluke," Kurosaki growled through his teeth. Grimmjow accepted the sampler, expressionless in the face of this helpless fury.

Then he shoved forward with his knee out, pinning the young man down onto his back right on the burn wound his desgarrón had left. Kurosaki choked, power sparking out of him, kicking up a cloud of dust. Grimmjow's bone armor repealed most of the strength but he could still feel it, a brief heave trying to get Grimmjow's weight off him.

The power died out. Kurosaki flattened back with a breathless whimper, batted weakly at his knee with a single, cross-wearing hand.

Grimmjow wanted to have beaten him up barehanded into this -- this weakness, this exhaustion. This not-quite-surrender. It chafed.

He snatched up his right wrist and pulled it up, stabbed the sampler right in the underside of his arm, pressed the trigger. Kurosaki hissed, his other hand trying to dig nails through Grimmjow's armored thigh -- planted his feet and tried to heave his pelvis up and only managed to press Grimmjow's knee harder into his burn wound, his breastbone into which the dissipating power of Grimmjow's attack must have left hairline fractures.

Aizen read the results of the blood test and immediately started chuckling. Well. Nice to have known you, kid. Grimmjow's stomach fell a little with disappointment. A war prisoner may have been trouble, may have escaped and needed to be hunted down. An experiment wasn't gonna be up for doing any of that.

But they needed to keep the good doctor happy.

He'd gone up to their government for collaboration and then promptly betrayed it, kidnapped untold numbers of low-caste Arrancars to experiment on, sold state secrets he shouldn't even had access to right and left -- done so much shit Grimmjow didn't even have the clearance to gaze upon the folders containing the reports and never mind reading the titles.

Grimmjow knew he was responsible for the drug cocktail that boosted their soldiers' biokinesis, too, that had taken him from a scrappy low-caste asshole from the slums and brought him to the cusp of nobility, but Las Noches had the formula now and governments weren't usually big on feeling indebted. (Grimmjow didn't feel indebted either, or only in the sense that he might say 'thanks' before he plunged a hand through his ribs the second he got the order.)

Genius boy here had to have done something interesting more recently than that. Because now he smiled at Nelliel and told her, "Please arrange for the transport of our new guest," as in they'd had to go to town on a whole elite Quincy squad to protect his lily-white ass and now he wanted their most powerful agent brought right into his secret hideout, and Nelliel said jack shit about it.

Grimmjow didn't say anything either.

(He took the cross off Kurosaki's wrist before he allowed Edrad and Nakeem to move in with their improvised stretcher and stuffed it down his front pocket. Kurosaki glared weakly for two seconds and then let his eyes drift closed.)

--------

"You know Luppi would stop riding your dick if you let him ride your dick, right?"

Grimmjow rolled his eyes. Three fucking weeks of sitting on his ass and Nelliel had noticed he was going stir crazy and taken him up to the top of the secret bunker, for which he was grateful. But now instead of gazing at giant water lilies migrating upriver or the immensely endless sky or some shit she was trying to talk.

"You know Nnoitra would love to ride yours too, right?"

She made a moue, leaned her upper body on the parapet and rested her chin on her ample boobs. Grimmjow spared them a glance, because hey, and then wondered if that didn't hurt.

"Oh, I know," she replied somberly, "but what he says is, he wants me kneeling naked in an apron at his feet as he jizzes all over my face, which he has now mentioned every time he's gotten drunk on this mission and the last time twice. You've got to be some special kind of sick to lust after someone you hate."

... Oh hey look, a weirdass... Birdish. Thing.

Cough.

"Fuck you, you're vanilla," Grimmjow muttered, crossing his arms defensively. Nelliel blinked at him and then threw him a little sideways smirk.

"Alright," she said, almost soothing except she didn't mean it, "I should have said 'lust after someone you despise'."

"I fuckin' despise every single Quincy I've ever fucked."

"Even the half-breed ones?"

Grimmjow would have bristled for real if he'd been even a little bit in resurrección. Upper lip curling up, he glared hotly at her, feeling a lot less amused by the banter suddenly. "Okay, why the fuck are you all over my sex life, Comandante."

It just. Kept coming up. When it wasn't Luppi making comments about his lack of prowess in both the bedroom and the murder grounds it was Nnoitra proclaiming loudly that he'd have gone for the electricity bitch or the fire bitch or any bitch with breasts and Grimmjow had to be daft to prefer dick while Tesra agreed with his mouth and probably sobbed like a baby later on. (Grimmjow didn't even prefer dick. If Kurosaki had blocked his shots with a cunt attached he'd have gotten riled up the same way.)

Aizen's squinty-eyed assistant had picked it up too and kept offering to slip Grimmjow into the guard rotation on the labs, which, fuck him. Grimmjow was a goddamn fracción leader, he didn't do the shit tasks.

He was fucking good and ready to be over it, but none of them were letting him.

"Well, I kind of implied I was getting you alone up here so we could hook up!" Nelliel said cheerfully, turning onto one elbow to watch him.

She was fucking giving him whiplash with this bullshit. He'd hit on her back in Las Noches and she had eyerolled him off. "What the fuck--"

"But actually it's so we're not overheard when I give you your real orders, Espada-hopeful Jaegerjaquez."

She stood up straight, all traces of mirth gone from her eyes. Grimmjow straightened too, without a single thought.

Espada. Fuck. He'd put in his request for induction into those elite ranks months ago; heard nothing back, but you usually didn't until you heard a no. It was only bad if you heard a no fast. His heart sped up. "Promotion mission?"

"Mm-hm."

Fuck. Yes. His claws slid out without thought, fingers curling and uncurling. Eager. "Awaiting my orders, Espada."

"It's easy." She stepped closer, leaned against his side and let her hair slide over the other side of her face, and her voice dropped until the wind covered it almost entirely. "Some parts of the government are so interested in Aizen's potential for new discoveries, they will let him betray us over and over. Our part believes the threat he poses is much bigger than any half-hearted advance we may beg or trick out of him."

Grimmjow started to smile, long and toothy; bowed his head so he could hide it in her hair. "He dies?"

"He dies. Don't worry about the research, someone else is handling that. Your job is to accident him. Make it believable enough for his backers on camera or for whichever spies they've got."

Grimmjow wrapped an arm around her waist and squeezed in sheer glee, though if she or anyone else asked he was just making the hookup cover story believable.

"Right now?" he asked, already starting to plan it out. She wasn't gonna give him hints; an Espada was supposed to be able to improvise. You didn't give them detailed orders, you gave them a target and then you stepped out of the way. He had no doubt that she would be ready to step in and sort his shit if he flubbed it, but it was part of the test for him to manage himself now.

Nelliel laughed at him. "Why not? Take me to your bedroom, stud," she added, smirking, and he found it almost fun to take her hand and lead her down the stairs.

And if it made Nnoitra fuckin' seethe watching them pass him by, all the better.

He'd had an enemy on their knees wearing his jizz, and his enemy had been willing. Suck on that, Gilga.

--

"Hey, Gin."

Aizen's assistant blinked up at him, and then smiled fakely. Grimmjow stuffed his hands deeper in his pockets, hunched his shoulders just a tad. (He didn't want to make it too telegraphed.)

"Yes?"

"Nel wants me to try every task we're handlin' at least once," he said with an eye roll. "You got any openings on the roster?"

The man's grey eyebrows went up; then he smiled harder. "Nel, huh?"

Grimmjow side-eyed him with put-upon defensiveness. Look at this teasable face. Who the hell even had secrets when they had a brand-new lover to be smirked at about.

"Ahhh, I see. Learn your subordinates' tasks so you can direct them better, right? I bet she asked nice."

Short sigh. "Yeah."

"Sure, lemme message Pesche. He was up for guard rotation after Tesra. Tōsen-taichō and his men are handling the regular day to day things, so it's just walking the labs with a fresh eye looking for potential security breaches, you don't hafta touch anything."

Well, wasn't that real convenient. It was a good thing Gin was quick-witted, or else Grimmjow would have had to explain his cover story, and people who explained their lies too much just sounded even more like they were lying. Let people provide their own explanations, though, and suddenly that worked smoother.

He watched absently as Gin typed on a touch-screen integrated into the data tower (no handheld anything in Aizen's labs, bad for data security), and then followed him past the office and through the heavy doors that led to the inner rooms of the bunker.

"It's not very big. Chemicals this way, Genetics that way, subjects pens down the stairs. At this hour Doctor Aizen should be in Genetics."

Grimmjow started building a floor plan in his head, noting down where Tōsen's Seireijin guards were stationed. He wasn't sure where Aizen had found Gin but as assistants went he could have found worse. Damn fast to anticipate your needs, not even gotta word them first --

... Come to think of it, it was real convenient.

"Data retrieval, huh," he mused.

Gin looked guilelessly at him. "Hmm?"

Grimmjow smirked, shook his head. "Nothin'." He wondered if Nelliel would dock points. Managing to find the right guys to help had to be a useful skill too. "Okay, I'll get started. Later, Gin."

--

The bunker had been dug into the cliff from the top, a large vertical shaft, and then expanded to the sides here and there where the rock allowed it.

The bottom of the shaft didn't have individual rooms built in, had been left as a cavernous single space; the containment units stood like glass-walled boxes in a wide circle along the wall between pillars and crisscrossing support beams glittering with force fields. A freight elevator in the back corner made bringing the cages up and down real easy.

Grimmjow started ambling around, crouching here and there to look at the maglev rails under the boxes, the biometric locks keeping them in place. A lot were empty; some had beds with straps on them, with dead-eyed ex-people still breathing along for some reason.

Kurosaki's shoebox was right by the freight elevator.

Grimmjow knew it was Kurosaki because of the hair. Also because it was the only specimen still moving around.

Bed frame twisted into mangled ruins, flattened into the glass angles of the containment unit by unimaginable pressure, mattress and sheets and restrains just so much torn-up fluff packed in every gap.

"Well, didn't you make a mess," he said quietly, more to himself than to the creature that had once been a Quincy. A bone-white, armored face lifted up; gold-on-black eyes found his. Bright orange hair tangled around forward-facing horns and spilled over white shoulders in messy waves, the unchecked growth a typical side effect of careless resurrección.

The glass box shuddered. Debris started flying like a dust storm inside; long orange hair flew to tangle worse. Outside of the box the force field glowed with redirected power.

Then a secondary force field started up. Damn.

He knew the specs on that type of field. They'd hold back a category five psychic blast singlehandedly. Kurosaki needed two of them.

His comm unit crackled. "Finding something interesting with the specimen, Specialist Jaegerjaquez?" Aizen purred unctuously into his ear. Grimmjow had to force himself not to sneer.

"You sure a cat-five field is enough?" he said as he watched Kurosaki stand on wobbly legs. "If he can overwhelm the first he can overwhelm the second."

"You show great trust in his endurance, I see. Not to worry, we linked them up. Any overflow will be passed on to the secondary layer before it can do damage."

"... Yeah, that's only good if the linkage holds up. It ain't what they're made for."

"I assure you my technician is very good," Aizen said with a touch of cool disapproval. Grimmjow was already going into a crouch to check the underside of the box.

He knew very little about force fields, to be honest, apart from how to fuck them up.

One or probably several of the native Hueco Mundo creatures that had contributed to his genes had been desert-dwellers -- and when everything around you was shadowed and cold and every single prey to be had was as white as the sands, you found ways to notice them anyway. People knew that in resurrección his hearing got better, but that was because his ears changed shape, too, and it hadn't been worth hiding. His eyes, now, they didn't seem to change at all.

There were parts of the circuitry underneath the magnetically levitated prison box that were running pretty hot.

He looked up -- found Kurosaki crouched in front of him, mirroring his position exactly, head canted in the same direction. Grimmjow hadn't seen him move. He didn't twitch; it would be bad if he did. His heart kicked a bit though.

Goring horns arcing out before him, brushing the glass; a thick lizardy tail curled behind. White bone spines protruding on his shoulders. The only colors on him were the hair escaping from the bone mask shielding his face and a few deep red trails on his face and chest.

The way he looked at Grimmjow was all predatory interest and zero recognition.

"Did you have to use a fucking sand dragon, though," he drawled past the disappointment.

"I will never again have such a specimen land in my lap. I might as well put it through its paces. Unless it wasn't a one-off and its parents were allowed to breed again..."

-- Maybe a little recognition.

Maybe a pulse of hot power, stretching, trying to outgrow the force field. Maybe clawed fingers screeching on glass, a heavy tail lashing slowly. That maw opening to breathe in deep.

"Too bad the mental load was too much," Grimmjow said, skin slowly hardening under his clothes in pure instinctive reaction. "Nobody's taming a sand dragon, and the guy looks full-out gone."

The cameras hidden in the walls came up hazed an odd not-really-red in his infrared vision. He leaned his upper body a little closer to the cage, bending over to hide the fingers slipping into his front pocket to tug the focus cross out.

Kurosaki tilted his head like a curious cat, eyes glinting gold, and slowly flexed his right wrist.

Grimmjow remembered the way his hand had moved; a practiced flip to get the cross to nestle into Kurosaki's palm and push it so close to his throat that Grimmjow had feel cold static on his skin.

Quincy crosses were weird. They called the metal sterling silver, but it wasn't. Grimmjow didn't like the way it grasped at his energy, tried to reshape, to alter it.

It was definitely gonna get Kurosaki's attention, though, if he had a dragon's senses, even if he stared because it was shiny and not because he remembered.

Grimmjow straightened up, slowly unfolding, and in the middle of his movement, flicked the cross through the force field. The clinking of metal on cement was covered by Kurosaki's sudden roar.

"Couple half-assed welds down there," he said when the ex-Quincy, new Arrancar was done bristling all his spines and growling so low it made the glass vibrate. "It'll probably hold a while but I were you I'd have it redone sooner than later."

He completed his tour of the room, checking out a couple more force fields with an air of boredom on his face and every single muscle he had ready to cut and run at a moment's notice, then he went up the freight elevator. He brought out his pads and made sure to rub his palms against the walls before he left, though. There weren't many predators who could pretend to prey on whatever it was Grimmjow had in his cells, but a sand dragon was a good bet.

--

Hungry. Angry. Trapped.

Hungry. Angry. Trapped.

(It never changed and never stopped and he couldn't do anything about it, he couldn't do anything about the pain and his body being wrong (not wrong) and his mind being wrong (not wrong) and there was nothing to do. So he slept. (Not really.) He (not he) paced and destroyed and destroyed further and why not. What else was there to do.)

Angry. Powerless. So many (enemy combatants) potential prey taunting him just out of reach. Making him sleep and then leaving their stink on him. Always figuring it out when he faked sleep and he faked weakness. Claws too weak to break through and limbs too weak to break through and willpower too--

Huh.

New prey. Dangerous, sharp prey. Watching him like it planned for a fight. Feeling like it planned for a fight. Sharp-and-ready prey with a small shiny thing that (--mine?--) that caught at his (mine!) caught at his attention, that tugged on his space, the air all around him, the -- the distance his tail (tail?) could reach where he knew everything that moved.

"--wasn't a one-off and its parents were allowed to breed again--"

Noises buzzing with meanings he didn't care about, he just cared that this farther-away prey's smell was all over him and how dare it...

(parents?)

... He was an adult, though, so it was strange, this pinch of... Who cared if. If.

Young in the nest. Hatchlings. Two. Clutchmates? No. He was older. They must be his. (... guys had dinner? let me... aw, it's just fireworks... next time that guy at school calls you that, here's how you make a fist.) His clutch, his. Nest.

Family.

The sharp prey threw the shining thing under his cage.

It... Itched. Grabbed. Like it was trying to eat him drip by drip, suck out his power, like it --

(The power is still yours even when being refined, idiot. Don't just let it go.)

Oh. Right. He knew how to do that. He'd been drilled and drilled and drilled until he could do it in his sleep (it was never good enough, never tight and controlled enough, it always --)

(--exploded.)

Ohh. He breathed deep, flexing and stretching his muscles slowly, rounding his back. Making sure nothing was too stiff to move. He felt with his... His awareness of things that were in his space. He felt the buzzing things that repulsed his touch and swallowed his power and tore it out of him. The shining... The cross. Its pull was stronger. So if he reached for it -- careful, gentle, if he let it pull his power through the field and into itself and through itself and out.

If he twisted it into fire.

(His best rating is the most useless. Empathy, three point seven! Telepathy, receptive only -- at least he's not mind-blind. Telekinesis, three-two for power, one for fine control. Pyrokinesis, zero. Let's not even mention the rarer gifts.)

If he twisted it into heat and if he felt along the tingly currents that stole his strength away, and if he heated them more... Hm. Yes.

He crouched down, coiled his tail around himself, and slowly started to work his way through the invisible trap that he could feel increasingly well under him, coming to life in traceries from red-hot to white to molten.

At the other end of the room the sharp prey marked the walls. Come and get me, its heart said, but full of trickery. He was/wasn't the target the sharp prey was hunting right now. Amusing.

He was too angry for amusement right now. But he was too busy with molten things to be angry.

A few moments after the sharp prey had left the annoying prodding hounds came, from the other exit, full of grumpy resentment toward the sharp prey and not enough fear of him.

"Nothing showed on screen, Taichō, and anyway Jaegerjaquez isn't--"

"I do not care what Specialist Jaegerjaquez is or isn't. He is not loyal to Aizen-sama. We check."

Aizen-sama, huh. Dad used that word sometimes but mostly when he was frustrated at jerks, and then he hushed himself and pretended he hadn't said it--

He shook his head, lashed his tail in odd, confused frustration, but then the noisy prey was in front of his trap, full of 'I don't want to but I have to' and nervous, smothered fear -- fear of him, of the other one, the snappish one who felt...

The edges of their spaces touched and then he knew that it knew, that it could feel the tug of the cross and the power he poured out with steady intensity and it was about to call out --

No. (no.)

He threw power into the cross, brutal and fast, maybe too much all at once; he needed to conserve his strength for later but there wouldn't be a later if the the trap didn't break. He jumped up with his limbs curled underneath to protect his belly, with the space around him hardened like a second set of armor; and then he was deaf and blind as a roaring light threw him upwards anyway.

--

Aizen wasn't fucking letting him go.

Grimmjow had done the nosey looking around bullshit for the cameras and the playing along with polite gossip with bored reluctance, and instead of being glad he could get back to work Aizen kept finding excuses to keep fucking talking.

That and Tōsen wasn't here. He'd been made. He didn't know how but he could tell when someone was playing for time. He considered just interrupting the guy's monologue and walking off but that might look too suspicious when they'd been told to be respectful by their superiors.

"... And of course the possibilities of re-hollowifying a born Arrancar are endless, should we only find appropriate gene donors of other races first for the hollow to colonize..."

"We don't call 'em hollows anymore," Grimmjow said blandly. "Kinda anti-PC. Makes it sound like Hueco Mundo ain't a normal world with normal alien things but some hellscape fulla demons that don't deserve to be studied the same. Just gasped about 'n shit. Kinda racist against the local fauna, in fact."

He had the pleasure of seeing the man actually give him a look that, for not even a second, glinted cold and irritated instead of smug.

(To be honest, yeah, the local fauna of Hueco Mundo was horrifying and creepy, and damn straight it was a death world not fit for genteel, civilized humans to live. Any Arrancar worth the name was damn well proud of it.)

"Right, of course," Aizen said with a perfect smile full of understanding and goodwill. Grimmjow hardened the skin under his clothes some more, the base of his spine aching as his tail tried to grow out.

Then the floor heaved up under him.

Grimmjow had been expecting something like this, but he'd had no idea of the scale. He went flying; Aizen went flying; the equipment went flying, the furniture, hopping up and crashing down, spilling experiments and computers everywhere. The lights flickered out; the emergency lights came on, washing everything in urgent red. He landed on a toppled-over metal cabinet, claws screeching for a hold as he realized that the floor was still moving, tilting toward -- fuck.

He kicked off the cabinet, sending it sliding faster toward the hole in the floor. The supports had to have come down because everything in the room was tilted toward it but after a few seconds waiting they seemed to settle -- clattering noises of falling rubble slowly dying down.

"... Doctor Aizen?" he called out, cautiously moving through the red gloom.There was dust everywhere. One of the lab assistants or maybe a guard was sobbing.

Grimmjow considered the chance that the cameras would be down and that the guy would have been crushed by falling rubble... Hm. Not high enough. Aizen came from the Rukon diaspora, Grimmjow had been told, the explosion of barely-more-than-baseline refugees from the fall of the Seireitei two or three decades back; and his only gift was the kind of telekinesis that mostly got used to close the fridge door when you had your hands full. But fear for your life had a way of boosting things up.

He'd be too lucky if all the cameras had gone out at once, too.

Acid bubbling hot in this corner, warm puddling blood and slowing-down sobs over there, shorted-out electronics... "Doc?"

Silence answered him -- and then something exploded again downstairs, Tōsen yelled out, "Aizen-sa--", and then red and gold light washed through the destroyed labs; fire licked through the hole, almost reaching the ceiling.

Aizen was standing at the other end of the lab, unhurt, staring back at Grimmjow. Smiling.

... Yeah, Grimmjow didn't like that. And Kurosaki was about to finish off Tōsen and come hunting for more in a hot second, but Grimmjow couldn't leave it to chance either; the guy might still escape. "Don't move," he said, mostly for the cameras, "I'm coming to get you."

He was fucking gonna get him indeed. Maybe he could trip him through the hole into the still-burning specimen containment area below --

Kurosaki exploded out of the hole in the floor, streaked with grimy smoke and blood. Grimmjow immediately dropped low behind toppled-over furniture, watched as a long dragon tail smashed through debris as Kurosaki whirled to -- oh, to face Aizen.

Well, wasn't that convenient. Grimmjow still started forward to give the impression that he was doing his bodyguarding job.

Armored skin highlighting back muscles closer to steel cables than to gym-bred lumps, a long, lean body -- a runner, a swimmer, something enduring, close to the bone. Serrated spikes rising over shoulders and running down shoulder blades, bladed heels like eagle talons.

Kurosaki had his back on him. Was jumping for Aizen. Grimmjow was faking jumping to Aizen's rescue pretty convincingly but he knew he wasn't gonna make it even if he tried for real, and besides he still needed to be able to go for the exit, which was behind him, once the guy was dead.

It was a bit of a surprise when something slammed into him like a wrecking ball and sent him crashing straight through three cabinets.

He blinked his eyes open -- his mask had come through by reflex but his skull ached bright and deep -- and found a white bone mask with deep red streaks staring into his own, orange hair flying in the backdraft of the expanding fire, maw wide open to bite.

--

This was the prey that had touched him when asleep -- that had made him asleep, that always, always fucking made him stink of its hands. That left his head slimy with the sense-memory of smug satisfaction, of possessive disdain.

(That had threatened his sisters.)

It had to die. The sharp prey would wait. The sharp prey was fun hunting, this one was just. No. He needed to erase it.

A dark cave of a room lit by flickering flames -- not enough smoke to block his view. He kicked off the air hard, claws out; tackled it. Its face twisted in pain, brown hair falling into brown eyes. It stank of the wrong-scent that had been rubbed into him.

Its heart didn't feel smug-surprised-impossible!. It felt fuck-cannot die-what happened who cares I must live, it felt.

Sharp. Serrated-sharp, ferally bright, like unwilling respect and heated desire and how-dare-you/oh.

'Thoumeaux,' he found himself thinking, and was confused -- nonsense sounds, nothing he -- Gremmy Thoumeaux. Some blond, cherubic-faced little... His. Packmate? Squad mate. Like a packmate but not as good, not as chosen. Dead because he'd failed to protect it.

Telepath who had liked to --

Snatching the sharp prey with both hands, he threw himself into a roll. He kicked the sharp prey off him after two rotations, sent it flying (it righted itself in the air, ricocheted away, very good), spat a torrent of fire across the room. He landed on all fours through the smoke, hissing.

He pushed-felt at the space around him, stretched it out farther than the length of his tail until it thinned out too much to offer any useful feedback. Metal planes and burning paper and dead things. Nothing alive.

He wasn't sure if the smug prey would know how to fake that, how to fool him that way. Thoumeaux hadn't, but. He -- Ichigo hadn't known how to do it either, had he? Ichigo hadn't known yet. How to feel the world around him without eyes, just with the -- his, his mind's strength pushing on things just strong enough to feel them, not move them yet. (It seemed odd that he hadn't known how when it was so natural, so easy.)

The (little mindfucking teehee twerp) (my fault, still my fault, still my--) Thoumeaux hadn't known how to fake it. But maybe it could have if it had read it in Ichigo's mind. He couldn't trust it.

"Kurosaki," the sharp prey rasped out, moving warily not-too-close as it scented the area, coughed on the smoke. He checked with a quick pulse-touch -- yes, still the right one -- tilted his head toward it. "What the fuck just--"

"Congratulations on seeing through my illusion," the smug prey said from somewhere there was nothing alive at all.

It kept talking. Ichigo stopped listening.

The room had three exits -- the door, the hole in the floor, the freight elevator. The hole and the elevator only went down into the prisons and the fire, but that level had another door and he knew there was a way to the outside there. (Stairs -- the icon glowing on the wall said stairs).

The smug prey could sneak around him from any angle at all. The more he did nothing and the farther it would escape.

He was sure the sharp prey would survive. It wore proper armor, like him.

He stretched out both hands (no cross, so wrong) and fired long lines of black not-light across the walls. Then he roared, straight up, and brought the ceiling down.

--

"Kurosaki, you fucker!"

Back braced against the floor, Grimmjow kicked a piece of ceiling off his chest; then he crawled out of the gap he'd ended up wedged in, coughing out dust. Where the hell was he now? Even the emergency lights had died; something was on fire half a block away but that really wasn't much light. Electrical devices and scorched masonry cooled down, shading everything down to cool not-grays and touches of lukewarm not-red. Lots of smothered embers under the rubble.

His hand found something cool and smooth -- glass. Plastiglass. One of the specimen containers. Shit, Kurosaki had brought them back down one level. Above him, silence, broken by brief sizzling noises, clattering pebbles as the six habitable levels dug out of the stone over the labs settled their weight.

Something living-hot moved in the corner of his eye. Grimmjow passed a padded hand on his fully masked face, feeling for cracks in the dense bone he'd created. All good. Bruised and battered underneath but his armor was still intact.

He sank himself into the quiet of the hunting mind and started ghosting across the rubble.

He could hear vague echoes of calls, several floors and load-bearing walls away. A muted alarm. A sudden block of concrete crashing onto a containment unit, throwing sparks.

Silence. Stillness.

"It truly is a shame that all those cameras are dead," the warm spot in Grimmjow's vision said with a smile in his voice. "A shame for you, of course. As I have no need to restrain myself any longer."

... So one of the cameras was still live -- or Aizen wanted him to think so.

Probably the second one, because otherwise he would never admit he had more shit in reserve out loud. (And fucking hell but hadn't he snowed everyone with his bullshit 'oh I'm barely rated as psychics go haha' routine.) Stalking in a slowly tightening spiral, Grimmjow noted more blocks of obstacles, more blacker-than-black shadows, cold and dead. More crawling fires under the rubble with all the wires and the upholstery.

"Even more of a shame that my grand experiment ended so disappointingly, and now you are alone with me, Specialist Jaegerjaquez. Or should I say, Espada-hopeful Jaegerjaquez."

-- How the fuck. Grimmjow was jarred into stillness for a too-long second; he threw himself ahead by pure instinct, no reason he could tell except he'd been made, he'd been found, he had to fucking get out of there--

Something exploded behind him, showering the area in shrapnel, cracking against his armor and sending him rolling noisily. He kicked up into the air, grabbed himself with his telekinesis -- no noise, no tracks but he had to shove against the ground at a distance to keep himself up; it was a strain to keep steady.

Kurosaki was dead? No, that was ridiculous. That murder-tank of a primal Arrancar, that impregnable shield of a Quincy. No.

But then why wasn't he attacking. Why wasn't he --

Grimmjow was thinking way too much, and Aizen was a telepath.

Teeth bared in a silent snarl, he gave himself over to the desert beasts his ancestors had seen and gone, this one, that's the one I want in my blood.

Leap down. Circle. Close in.

"Ah well. I don't suppose you'll reconsider your allegiance now... But as it stands I am now out of quite a lot of specimens."

The words were meaningless. The tone told him nothing but more calm smugness, more challenge, trying to lead him to a trap. He could pinpoint the origin of the noise to the square inch, and the body-warmth in his eyes was clear.

Yeah, he'd gotten tricked once. He charged up an array of spears of power with brutal intensity, sprayed the whole area around him with sudden blinding light and stone-piercing rounds.

His heat vision still said there was someone right in front of him, but on the normal spectrum there was nothing. The stone behind it had a neat scorched hole. He slashed his claws behind him as he whirled, twisting his bone armor into a blade coming out of his forearm. Something snagged on the tip, shredded like flesh and cloth. A shallow cut.

All his senses still told him the space before him was empty. He cracked the bone blade off the back of his forearm with a quick snap, flicked it into his other hand, and slashed blind. Something impacted like body armor under cloth, and then his free hand was shooting forward all claws out to snatch up a handhold.

Then the world went crazy with deafening noise, artillery fire and impact pain. Suddenly he was whirling in freefall with his feet on the ground, fit to throw up with motion sickness like he had never known. Hissing between his teeth, reeling from the pain, he hauled the handful he'd caught closer and stabbed the body he could guess at but not know right where it should be putting its guts.

It hit. Flesh, guts. He knew those. The effort he had to put in that. The weight of his body as it caught and then gave under the blade point.

Aizen chuckled in his ear like it didn't hurt at all. "Ah, too bad, my dear," he said gently. "Biokinetic healing is such a fascinating gift, I just had to have it. Now I really can't let you live--"

Grimmjow's body swayed forward with a heavy impact against his back. He couldn't tell up from down with his inner ear fucked with, but he felt the way his blade pushed deeper, felt the sudden, mirrored stabs of pain on his upper arms --

A wet crunch. Wet warmth splashing on his face, body heat all around him, both felt and seen.

A tug on his blade, the body he'd thought was Aizen heaving off it; a body against his back. Holding him. Grimmjow didn't even know if he was standing or kneeling but that didn't matter. He grew a slew of razor blades along his tail, lashed back --

Cracked them against bone armor denser than his own.

Exhaling hot and amused against his nape, Kurosaki minutely tightened the hold of his masked maw on the column of Grimmjow's vertebras.

Oh. Not bullets in his arms, but claws.

Bringing himself to cautious stillness, his back ramrod straight, Grimmjow breathed, eyes roaming the gloom before him.

A body-hot shape was sprawled on the ground before his knees, hot coppery-scented liquid spreading out.

"You son of a bitch," he said, throat raspy with smoke and unwilling admiration. "Did you wait until I had Aizen pinned to steal my kill?"

Kurosaki made a raspy, amused sound in his throat.

Grimmjow's body was a live wire of adrenaline and feral glee. This half-insane primal son of a bitch had fucking tricked him, tricked a projective telepath with a rating of at least four, and now he had him by the back of the neck and it sure as fuck wasn't because Kurosaki thought Grimmjow was a kitten.

The pain from the bullet wounds was gone. An illusion only. His arms, though, Kurosaki's claws went right through the shell to the muscle underneath, anchored in, and it burned.

Grimmjow was either gonna get eaten or get thoroughly laid. He grinned under the mask with all his teeth, grinned with the mask too, serrated jaws cracked open to chuckle harshly through the gap. Then he lashed back with both hands, planting all ten of his needle-claws through the bone and into the meat of Kurosaki's thighs. His biceps screamed in pain but he dug in anyway, teeth gritted and shoving every single ounce of power he had to reinforcing his nape, and still feeling the shell bow under the pressure of Kurosaki's jaws.

The slow, steady pressure of the asshole who could crunch through any time he felt like it and didn't... quite... yet.

"Let -- go!"

Kurosaki let out a low, rolling growl, too light to mean it in any dangerous way. Then he shook his head, rattling Grimmjow's brain. His horn whapped Grimmjow in the temple; Grimmjow was thrown down on his flank.

Free. He didn't waste time sitting up or flipping himself around to face the sand dragon from inside its strike radius; he kicked, shoved at an angle against the floor with all his muscles and all his power to shoot free. He felt a clawed hand skim his tail, just a little too slow to catch a grip.

His body was a live wire, heart thundering, savagely alive. So many imperatives -- escape and report -- make sure of Aizen's death -- not let Kurosaki catch him.

Aizen first. He was a fucking pro, he was gonna be an Espada; he was gonna make sure of his kill. He threw himself out of his zig-zagging path without warning, tail swinging like a counterweight, fell into a deep crouch; Kurosaki sailed over him with a screech of surprise. Grimmjow doubled back, power coursing through his muscles to speed him up.

The smell of blood was everywhere but his eyes had adapted to the weak fire light. He landed astride the body, bone blade stabbing through the spine and heart; yanked it free to -- a hand would do; a finger. Genetic sample, proof, trophy. (Holy shit the guy's face was gone. What had -- fuck, it wasn't just gone, it was cooked-- Kurosaki had cooked his fucking brain while not letting Grimmjow feel any heat at all holy shit--)

He stabbed back down through a little finger joint and Kurosaki landed like a boulder three inches away.

Grimmjow slashed power along his claws at him; it felt like moving through molasses, the air thick and heavy with condensed power. Kurosaki snatched up his slowed-down wrist, eyes gone narrow with displeasure through the mask, and unfolded a long leg from underneath that found Grimmjow's guts and folded him in two. Oof. Teeth bared, he sliced the bone blade through the resistance; Kurosaki hopped back to spare his legs, crouched only a bare body length away.

Stared, head low and horns angled to stab.

Grimmjow made damn sure he didn't break eye contact when he crouched as well and snatched up the detached finger to stuff it in his pocket. Then he crab-walked his cautious way off the corpse.

Kurosaki made a grumpy kind of noise, not really angry; shuffled forward, head tilted as he watched Grimmjow.

His old Jagdarmee uniform was gone and never mind any hospital gown Aizen might or might not have seen fit to offer him, but hardened skin and full on armor plates shielded everything. He didn't feel naked to Grimmjow, or only in the sense that classical statues were naked. But the back of Grimmjow's neck still pulsed hot with the imprint of his teeth and damn if he didn't make a fine statue. Grimmjow didn't let himself glance down.

He'd wanted Kurosaki when he was a half-seen running shape through leaves and exploding golden shields, just another Quincy bastard who kept finding him when no one else ever had. He'd wanted him when he was a Quincy bastard with biting retorts and a calm confidence that Grimmjow desperately wanted to ruin. Now here he was, out of his Quincy bastard mind and into the mind of one of the most dangerous creatures Grimmjow's hell pit of a world had ever spat out -- into that mind but still hanging on.

Grimmjow wanted him still. Damn it.

As he watched, Kurosaki straightened up, long heavy tail snaking through the rubble and dust. Hummed thoughtfully.

Then he sliced the whole arm right off the corpse. There was a crunch of cartilages and then a wet noise of tearing muscles; then he brought it to his face, sniffed it diffidently -- then he held it out for Grimmjow.

... Holy shit.

Yeah, he was -- he was definitely getting laid. Wow.

"Thanks?" he said, feeling weirdly conflicted and not too sure why.

It wasn't about eating an enemy; biokinesis burned through stored fat like nothing else and he was gonna be starved half to fainting when he came out of resurrección as it was, and seriously fuck that guy.

Arrancars didn't resort to cannibalism a tenth as often as outsiders said they did. But the truth was, hollows -- the original inhabitants of Hueco Mundo -- they hadn't been anything like any other aliens Humanity had found before. They looked like it, sure -- there were broad and narrow categories of very similar creatures running around, and sometimes one of them would show up with a tiny version of itself. Easy to assume.

The truth was before humans and their livestock landed hollows had known jack shit about sexual reproduction. They fucking budded -- or they ate and assimilated something else, and repurposed parts of its shape, its abilities, until they ended up with some other design that they liked better.

Sexual reproduction had other advantages, so nowadays they did both.

Arrancars were a lot more human than they were hollow, psychic gifts included -- but biokinesis before Hueco Mundo had always been about faster healing and maybe boosted strength; not bad but not the greatest gift. Not until they'd gained the hollow abilities to devour and assimilate to play with.

Aizen... Grimmjow didn't want to take that smug, manipulative bastard in. Nope. No thanks.

But it... Wasn't... He could make do; he had before.

It was the way Kurosaki leaned down, head canted doubtfully, even though he should have been ravenous; the way he was going to react, when he remembered.

... Also the ceiling was gonna cave in on them any second now.

Gravel rained down from the upper levels, a sudden spray, and then a second one. He chucked the arm over his shoulder, darted in to thwap Kurosaki's skull right between the horns, and shot for the staircase. The little green sign gleamed even through floating dust and smoke.

He got swiped at several times as he launched himself up the staircase, bounding and rebounding off the walls, the broken guardrail, the air at a breakneck pace. Kurosaki batted at his tail several times, tried to catch his heels -- slapped his hip and threw him off course into a wall. His shoulder bumped mortar and then he had a weight on his back trying to push him chest down into the stairs. Growling, Grimmjow mule-kicked back and shot a power blast blind behind himself and somehow wriggled free. Kurosaki's teeth snapped closed much too close to his ear.

Third level -- he burst into the empty cafeteria, vaulted over five or six tables in one go, kicked one backwards into Kurosaki, who actually laughed. Yeah, it was funny, wasn't it, particle wood -- it caught fire with a whoosh and flew back over Grimmjow's head and then he had to dodge low under it and damn well dive through the next doorway.

The official exits were all at the top of the hill; the cliff wall had a few arrow slits to let light in but you weren't supposed to exit through them; none of the windows opened. Apparently no one had told Grimmjow's squad because there Shawlong was, having neatly cut through a dozen feet of rock and several layers of sheet metal to open them a way, with Di Roy right beside him bouncing on his toes. Grimmjow's eyes went wide, seeing the fucking idiots still there, the way they straightened up in relief seeing Grimmjow burst out of the smoke --

"Retreat!" he yelled; Shawlong slipped seamlessly into resurrección and threw Di Roy ahead of himself through the small tunnel. Grimmjow burst through on his heels without slowing down and hoped, seeing them flattened against the outside walls, clinging to the stone, that Kurosaki wouldn't think them worth the bother.

Then he was in freefall over the canyon.

Down by the river on the grass there were the rest of the squad and some of Aizen's minions -- guards, cooks, janitors, whatever. He barely had time to throw Nelliel a hand signal before he cannonballed through the surface.

Underwater, muted almost-quiet, there was a second splash, not even two seconds after his own. He kicked off the bottom to pierce the surface.

Fracción -- intact, the two he'd left behind rappelling down the cliff, the rest with the main group. Nelliel -- starting to move toward the river, like she planned to fight Kurosaki for his life. Nnoitra on her heels with a rising sneer. Luppi wide-eyed and teeth bared, two tentacles already rising -- yeah, he was a hostile little fucker, too, wasn't he.

"Cat five!" Grimmjow called out even as he yanked himself out of the river, gripping the water with his telekinesis to keep it stiff enough to climb on. "Stand back!"

He allowed himself a single look backwards. Kurosaki had resurfaced as well; his massive tail undulated through the water, propelling him like a fucking alligator. He was side-eyeing Grimmjow's squad.

Grimmjow shot a ball of energy at the water in front of Kurosaki, raising a wave taller than he was -- a challenge, a distraction. "Here, you ugly fucker!"

He only thought 'hey, if we ganged up to kill him we might all have survived' once he was already in the woods.

Eh. Probably not. They really didn't have that level of synchronicity.

The forest was quiet and still and they may have startled some animals but Grimmjow was past noticing. All he wanted was to get far enough from his squad that they wouldn't get dragged in, find a clearing, and then take a stand. Fight that monster head on.

Lose, probably brutally. But the idea of testing how far he could go against such a beast made his blood sing.

Fire streaked over his head, catching in the treetops, crowning the forest before him in fire. Grinning fit to strain his cheek muscles, Grimmjow whirled on the spot, bone blade out.