Chapter Text
Grimmjow emerged from the Garganta, leaving the cold and empty void between dimensions behind in favor of the cloying, humid warmth of summertime Karakura.
The sun had only just set here in the human world; the last of its rays still peeking out from behind the horizon and painting the sky in vibrant tones of orange and red. The smell of sunbaked brick assaulted his senses, and straight away Grimmjow felt grateful to have left his black shirt behind in the much-chillier Hueco Mundo. Even wearing just his jacket, the humidity still got to him almost right away, and he had little doubt that he would be dripping with sweat within the hour.
The tear in space behind him closed as Grimmjow jumped down from the rooftop on which he’d emerged, and he touched down on the pavement below with inhuman agility and lightness, never making so much as a sound. He proceeded to saunter down the street with all the unhurriedness of a man who hadn’t just fallen from two stories up; calm and with his hands buried in his pants pockets. The chirping of crickets resounding between the housefronts all around him was kind of annoying, but not enough so to get to him. He was in too good a mood for that.
After all, he’d been biding his time for weeks just to get the chance to finally get away from the rebuilding efforts and come here, and Grimmjow was far more excited about it than he cared to admit, even to himself. Tonight, he was gonna get what he’d been promised all those months ago. It’d been one thing after another lately that had gotten in the way, but now, he was here to collect, at long fucking last.
Aizen was in a straightjacket, that bastard Quincy Emperor had been chopped to pieces and made into a new Soul King, and Las Noches was finally starting to become something close to habitable again. There were no megalomaniacs, world-ending disasters or slave-driving Arrancar women around to keep him from getting what he wanted, this time.
Only problem was, what he wanted didn’t appear to be home.
Grimmjow halted in front of the Kurosaki clinic, crickets chirping loudly in the background as he stared at the large sign hanging over the building’s entrance.
Unbelievable. Un-be-fucking-lievable.
Grimmjow had dragged his ass all the way over to the shitty human world for the express purpose of meeting him here, and Kurosaki had the sheer gall to not be present. If he hadn’t already been planning on having a fight to the death, Grimmjow would have killed him for the sheer rudeness of it all.
Still. Even if Kurosaki wasn’t home, his family sure was, if the Reiatsu coming from inside was any indication. And Grimmjow couldn’t think of a better possible way to lure that overprotective fuckhead out of hiding. He cracked his neck and broke out in a wolfish grin. His fingers twitched as crimson energy sparked between them. A Cero should do just fine as far as motivation went. Hell, he wouldn’t even need to hit anything. A warning shot alone would suffice to have Kurosaki breaking the sound barrier on his mad dash back from wherever the hell he’d fucked off to.
The shadows cast by the setting sun were stretched out by the ominous, crimson glow of Grimmjow’s Cero, crawling over the hot asphalt as the sphere in his palm grew, and—
“Oi!”
Grimmjow stiffened, the Cero flickering in his palm. He knew that voice.
“What do you think you’re doing?!”
Slowly, Grimmjow turned to face the new arrival. “Ringin’ the damn doorbell,” he snarked. “The fuck’s it look like I’m doing?” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not Kurosaki.”
The stranger wearing Kurosaki’s skin worked his jaw, eyeing the Cero with trepidation. “I—no. I’m not. I-I’m Kon. I’m the Mod Soul you met at the Soul King’s palace, remember?”
Grimmjow stared at him. “…The what?”
“Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you forgot!” Kon whined, forgoing a lot of his earlier discomfort in favor of gesticulating dramatically. It was incredibly disturbing seeing Kurosaki’s body acting like that, even knowing the kid himself wasn’t in it. “I was this giant, stuffed lion at the time?” Kon tried, using his hand to show how tall he’d apparently been. “Kinda looked like a bodybuilder?”
“That sounds fucking retarded,” Grimmjow monotoned.
“Hey!” Kon cried out in indignation. “Don’t blame me for that; that was all Creepy Clownface’s doing!” He abruptly broke out in shudders, shiftily looking from left to right as if he was expecting this ‘Clownface’-guy to come jumping out of some bushes at any moment now. Once again, Grimmjow couldn’t help but feel off-put by the very much un-Kurosaki-like behavior. “I swear, I just keep getting violated by these old, crazy scientist type-guys! Why couldn’t it at least have been cute girls doing the violating?!” Kon lamented, and Grimmjow felt his patience wear thin.
“I’d have been fine with cute girls!” Kon went right on, too caught up in his lamentations to notice Grimmjow slowly aiming the Cero in his direction instead of the house’s. “Hell, even when I finally get myself a body with a working dick attached to it, I’m still not allowed to have any fun! Tell me; how is that supposed to be fair?!”
“Just how the hell did you get your stuffed mitts on that body?” Grimmjow interjected, pouncing on Kon’s little slip of the tongue like it was wounded prey. The guy froze up, eyes going round as dinner plates when he finally noticed the Death Ray-to-be that was pointed right at his face. “I seriously doubt a weak little pissant like you managed to take it from him.” Grimmjow stalked closer; Kon backing up until his knees knocked into the brick planter flanking the clinic’s entrance and he fell ass-first into the shrubbery.
“I-I-I’ve only got it on loan!” Kon squeaked, holding out his hands in surrender. “Just until Ichigo comes back! You know, kinda like how you shouldn’t leave a car in the garage for months on end if you’re not planning on driving it?!”
Grimmjow held the crimson orb of death right up in Kon’s face, and the guy stopped his babbling, swallowing audibly. “I’m only gonna ask this once, Mod Soul,” Grimmjow gritted out. “Where. The hell. Is Kurosaki?”
Whatever Kon was about to say in reply, it stopped mattering once Grimmjow felt the bite of live steel being pressed right up against his jugular.
“If you’re looking for my son, I’m afraid he’s unavailable,” a man with a deep voice and one hairy-ass forearm spoke from behind Grimmjow. “Whatever issues the two of you have, you can fight it out between yourselves some other time. For now, I suggest you stop threatening the wellbeing of my son’s friend and body both.”
Grimmjow clicked his tongue. “I fucking knew your Reiatsu felt weaker than what it really was,” he grumbled. “Figures the kid’s father would be a goddamned Shinigami.” Grimmjow allowed his Cero to flicker out, and Kon fell all the way back into the bushes behind him, going limp from sheer relief.
The pressure of the sword’s edge against his Hierro lessened, and Grimmjow took several cautious steps backward with both hands raised, before slowly turning around and coming face-to-face with the Kurosaki patriarch. “…You’re a lot fucking hairier than the Kurosaki I know,” he remarked.
Loud, billowing laughter followed his proclamation, but Grimmjow was under no illusion that the man was at all distracted or in any way vulnerable. This guy was strong. A lot stronger than he was making himself out to be. Grimmjow was pretty sure his neck was bleeding, even.
“So my kids keep reminding me,” the elder Kurosaki said, cheerfully enough. “Name’s Isshin. I’m gonna take a wild guess and say you’re Grimmjow—my son’s mentioned you once or twice. If the hair alone hadn’t given it away, then the jawbone Mask and attitude problem sure would have.”
Grimmjow bristled. “The fuck’s Kurosaki telling you about me for?” he demanded.
“Who knows? But it’s a good thing he did,” Isshin said, never dropping his smile. “If I hadn’t known who you were, I’d have cut you down like a dog in the street.”
Grimmjow swore he felt chills running down his spine.
“Or cat, I suppose,” Isshin went on, absently rubbing a hand over his scruff-covered jawline. “Not much of a difference, really. I’ve found all Hollows tend to go out much the same way once a Zanpakutou runs them through.”
Isshin clapped a hand down on his shoulder, and Grimmjow just about jumped right out of his fucking skin. “Reschedule your playdate with Ichigo for another time,” Isshin suggested, even though it sure as shit didn’t sound like a suggestion to Grimmjow. He could feel the man’s burning-hot Reiatsu sear the top layer of his Hierro, even through his jacket. “For now, I suggest you go and cool off in that desert of yours for a bit.”
After one last, painful squeeze, Isshin let go, and the only thing that stopped Grimmjow from Sonido-ing way the fuck back and out of the guy’s immediate reach was his pride. “…When’s Kurosaki gonna be back?” Grimmjow asked, doing his best to inject his voice with a nonchalance he sure as shit wasn’t feeling right this moment.
At that, Isshin’s razor-sharp gaze grew clouded for the first time since he showed up. The question had troubled him. Interesting. Just what the hell was going on with Kurosaki? It didn’t look like he’d gone away on a simple trip.
“…I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you,” Isshin responded, after a pause that dragged just a tad too long. “Could be tomorrow, could be a month from now.” ‘Could be never’ went unsaid, but Grimmjow heard it loud and clear nonetheless. “You’re welcome to check in, every now and then.”
“I don’t need your fucking permission to do anything, Shinigami,” Grimmjow sneered, already turning around to leave.
“I suppose not,” Isshin allowed. “But just to be clear, Arrancar…”
Searing Reiatsu fell on Grimmjow like an anvil, the already-hot Summer air becoming sweltering.
‘…Point a Cero anywhere near my daughters, ever again, and I will burn you alive where you stand, friend of Ichigo’s or not.”
To hell with his pride. Grimmjow kept his mouth shut and got the hell out of there, never once looking back.
So, now what was he supposed to do?
Grimmjow had seated himself atop the roof of one of Karakura’s taller buildings, one leg folded beneath him while the other dangled over the edge, heel occasionally bumping into the window below.
He was not sulking. Absolutely not. The second-most-powerful Arrancar in existence did not fucking sulk. If he was getting any enjoyment from listening to the couple on the top floor worry about their window being haunted, then that was completely unrelated to the situation and not at all an attempt to make himself feel better.
Kurosaki wasn’t in Karakura anymore, that much at least was obvious. The kid was wasteful enough with his Reiatsu that a small army of lesser Hollows could have lived off of it without ever needing to hunt. And from the troubled look in his father’s eyes, Grimmjow doubted he’d gone somewhere he could come back from easily.
He hated getting sidelined like this. Being denied what he’d been promised. Pretty much getting told to fuck off, really, if not in so many words.
His fingers dug into the flesh of his own biceps. But what could he do about it? Go look for the brat himself? Isshin sure as shit wasn’t going to be forthcoming with answers any time soon. Never mind that if he came anywhere near the man’s daughters again tonight, he’d probably get straight-up fucking murdered. The only other Shinigami that had given off such a ‘certain death’-vibe to Grimmjow had been Aizen himself.
He had no leads, and no one who was liable to give him any. Maybe that green-clad Shinigami with the cane would be willing to point him in the right direction, but that guy wasn’t the type to give anything away for free, and Grimmjow wasn’t sure his help would be worth the inevitable cost.
...Unless.
Grimmjow sat upright as he picked up another familiar Reiatsu signature. There was one other person who was likely to know where Kurosaki was. And she’d be much easier to persuade into talking than anyone else here. Even if not, he could always turn her into a bargaining chip herself…
With a wicked grin that just about split his face in half, Grimmjow got to his feet, accidentally kicking in the window below and drawing screams of terror from the flat’s inhabitants. He blurred into Sonido, and was already halfway across town before the shards of glass could even hit the ground.
He rocketed through the air at full speed; a mad dash fueled by single-minded determination as he homed in on the girl’s Reiatsu. He dove for her apartment building, still split on whether he’d be banging on the door to get her attention or just breaking right through it without ever slowing down, when—
“Oh, there you are!”
Grimmjow swore he felt the soles of his boots burn up from the friction as he tried to slow down from near-supersonic speed to a full stop in one-and-a-half seconds flat. An unruffled Orihime Inoue stood in her open doorway, her long hair briefly fluttering in the draft Grimmjow’s little stunt had kicked up.
“I was just wondering when you’d show up,” she elaborated, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Come on in.”
With that, she turned around and walked right back inside, leaving the door open behind her. Grimmjow could only blink owlishly at her retreating back, never even being given a chance to speak. Dazed, confused and more than a bit angry but too damn curious about just what the shit was going on to care, he followed her inside, not bothering to shut the door.
Once inside, he found her already sitting down at her living room table, two empty glasses and a pitcher full of iced tea standing ready. It was one of those typical Japanese tables, too; square-shaped, tiny as shit, and way too fucking low to the ground, so that you had no other choice but to sit on the damn floor like a savage.
Subsequently, Grimmjow loomed over her when he used his tried-and-true ‘start talking or die’-staredown technique, but he wasn’t having much luck. The brat just stared right back at him; eyebrows raised expectantly. Neither of them said so much as a word. The only sound was the clinking of the ice cubes floating within the pitcher.
As the seconds ticked by, Grimmjow couldn’t help but feel that the first one to break the silence would be losing the staredown. He was getting to be just the right combination of pissed off and impatient for him to not really care, however. “What the fuck is this supposed to be?” he finally demanded, his brusque voice reverberating against the walls of the tiny apartment.
“Sit down first,” Inoue insisted, ignoring his question. “Have some tea. You must be thirsty, what with the heat outside.”
Grimmjow felt a vein in his temple swell. Hog-tying her and using her as a bargaining chip for information from someone less irritating was fast becoming difficult to resist.
“You want to know where Ichigo is, don’t you?” she asked, just when Grimmjow’s temper threatened to boil over. His entire body stiffened when she spoke Kurosaki’s name, and Grimmjow cursed himself for not managing to hide his reaction. “So sit,” she repeated.
Grimmjow gritted his teeth. With a huff, he let himself collapse onto the stupid, tiny pillow below him, the living room floor shaking when all eighty kilos of him plopped down on it. “Start talking,” Grimmjow demanded, hissing the words out from between clenched teeth.
“First, tell me why you want to know,” Inoue countered, without missing a beat. “What are you planning to do, once you find him?”
Grimmjow really wasn't liking the way she managed to stay in control of this whole exchange. “I’m gonna fucking kill him, obviously,” he sneered.
“Hmm.” She considered his words, tapping one finger against the corner of her mouth. “You’re not really giving me much incentive to tell you, you do realize?.”
A muscle in Grimmjow’s cheek twitched. “How’s this for incentive, then?” he growled. “You can either tell me what I wanna know now, or you can tell me after I’m finished pulling your guts out with my bare hands.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” she stated with conviction. “Not over something this petty. And besides…” her grey eyes met his own dead-on. “...A threat only works when you’re capable of following through on it.”
Grimmjow felt himself snap.
He shot forward, one hand slamming down onto the table while the other reached for the girl’s collar, fingers curling into claws and moving faster than a human’s eyes could possibly follow—
“Shiten Koshun.”
Only for his hand to slam right into an orange barrier.
“I reject.”
With a flash of light, the shield disintegrated, but not before doling out a vicious retaliation that left Grimmjow’s right hand mangled and spurting blood. Grimmjow was too shocked to even feel the pain. “What the hell,” he uttered tonelessly, staring at the girl with eyes wide as blood dribbled onto the too-small table. She hadn’t even fucking flinched. “You were letting that bitch Loly slap you around without even putting up a fight less than a year ago. When the fuck did you decide to grow a spine?”
“When I found that I didn’t like being the damsel in distress,” she replied. “It seems to make things awfully hard on my friends when I go and get myself kidnapped.”
Grimmjow could only gape at her.
“Sit back down and have some tea,” she insisted yet again, not batting an eye at the growing puddle of crimson that was staining her living room table. “I’ll fix your hand if you do.”
Setting his jaw, Grimmjow pretty much let himself drop back down, crossing his legs and settling into a mulish, forward slouch. With a glint of satisfaction—one that was soon hidden away underneath a placid smile—Inoue filled their glasses. As soon as his was full, Grimmjow snatched it away and downed the whole thing in three unnecessarily large gulps, refusing to watch as Inoue used her nonsensical powers to restore his hand to its prior state.
“Kurosaki promised me a fight,” Grimmjow broke the silence, slamming his empty glass down on the tabletop. “Said he’d give me one whenever I wanted.” Inoue’s eyes were on him as he spoke, the girl listening intently. “I’ve gotten a hell of a lot stronger since last time. I know for a fact that Kurosaki has, too.” He clenched his newly-healed hand into a fist. “I wanna see how I measure up.”
Inoue regarded him for a bit longer, then averted her gaze. “...That might be difficult, with Ichigo as he is now.”
Grimmjow sighed deeply. Fucking figured it’d be like that. “He went and did something stupid again, didn’t he?” Grimmjow asked, running a hand through his hair in exasperation.
Inoue let out a soft chuckle. “For what little time you’ve spent together, you already seem to know him quite well,” she elaborated in response to Grimmjow’s raised eyebrow. Her fingers tapped against her frosted glass of tea in a methodic pattern. “Alright then,” she eventually decided. “I’ll tell you what’s been going on these past few weeks. And after I do, you can decide for yourself whether or not you still want to see him.”
Grimmjow’s head was spinning.
Time and time again, he tried to wrap his mind around the tale Inoue had told him, yet it straight-up failed to compute.
It just couldn’t be true. Couldn’t be possible. It was too goddamn stupid for it to be possible, and yet…
And yet when he thought of Kurosaki—stupid, self-sacrificing, goddamn Hero Complex Kurosaki—Grimmjow almost couldn’t imagine it not being true.
“I take it this isn’t what you were expecting, Grimmjow-san.”
Urahara Kisuke stood beside him, looking even scruffier than the last time Grimmjow had seen the man. Thick stubble covered his jaw, and his eyes were underlined by dark, severe-looking circles. Grimmjow didn’t pay him any mind. He was too focused on the sight before him.
Here, in a secluded corner of Urahara’s gigantic underground training room and warded by at least three separate layers of Kido barriers from what Grimmjow could tell, was where he’d finally found Kurosaki. He didn’t know what to make of the fact that the Shopkeeper had brought him straight here as soon as Grimmjow told him he’d been sent by Inoue. Like they’d been expecting him to show up.
Kurosaki was seated on the ground, his back resting against one of the many rock formations that littered the basement, two swords laid out across his lap. His hair had grown longer since their last meeting in the Soul King’s palace: orange locks almost reached down to the kid’s shoulders now, and his fringe fell down in front of his eyes like a curtain with his head bent as it was. He looked like he’d just fallen asleep there.
Grimmjow knew better than to believe it was as simple as that. “...I can’t feel any Reiatsu coming from him,” he remarked, unable to tear his eyes away.
“No. You wouldn’t.” Urahara bent down and picked up a pebble from the ground. He threw it at Kurosaki in a lazy arc, and Grimmjow was shocked to see the air around his still body ripple and distort as a black-and-red… something, lashed out and reduced the tiny stone to dust, a fraction of a second before it would have bumped into Kurosaki’s chest.
“Kurosaki-san appears to be subconsciously suppressing it to an incredible degree,” Urahara explained. “When anything that could be seen as a threat comes near however, it erupts outward in a concentrated burst, almost like an automated defense. I would advise you to keep your distance.”
“...Inoue said that she and the rest of Kurosaki’s little posse could get close without getting torn to shreds,” Grimmjow countered.
“Yes, but only so long as they did not attempt to move him,” Urahara said. “We would have taken him somewhere more comfortable at least, if we could. As for how he might react to the presence of someone less… amiable shall we say, such as yourself…”
Well now that just sounded like a challenge. Throwing Urahara’s warning to the wind, Grimmjow approached the unconscious teen with rapid strides, merely throwing up a hand to shield his eyes when the crimson maelstrom that was Kurosaki’s Reiatsu ripped through the space between them and tore at him like a hundred shadowy talons.
Just as soon as it had begun, the onslaught stopped again, and Grimmjow grinned, squinting one eye closed when blood began to trail down from his freshly-split eyebrow. It was gonna take a hell of a lot more than a stiff breeze to kill him. “The fuck kinda bullshit is this, Kurosaki?!” he demanded loudly, taking advantage of the momentary calm to draw nearer still. “You go and promise me a rematch, but when I come to collect you go all sleeping beauty on me?! Didn’t think you were that big a pussy!”
Another torrent of Reiatsu came rushing toward him; less controlled than before and somehow angrier-looking, too. It split the earth open on its way to Grimmjow and cracked the rock Kurosaki was resting against, and Grimmjow was forced to block with both arms, feeling the scarred skin on his forearms get shredded all over again, courtesy of the exact same orange fuckhead as last time.
Flaring his own Reiatsu, Grimmjow tore through the wall of force and finally, his fingers closed around the collar of Kurosaki’s uniform. “Don’t ignore me, shithead!”
“Grimmjow-san, don’t!” Urahara warned from the background, only to be ignored once again.
Kurosaki’s Spirit Energy moved to encircle the both of them, so potent that it appeared as something almost tangible; a deadly, writhing halo of black and crimson that snapped at Grimmjow’s heels. He yanked hard on the teen’s collar and lifted him up to eye-height, the teen’s head lolling back like a ragdoll’s as he did. The swords that had been laid over his lap clattered noisily to the ground.
“Naptime’s over, Kurosaki!” Grimmjow crowed, jostling him back and forth for emphasis. “Enough with the brooding martyr-bullshit! Snap out of it already so I can beat some fucking sense into you!” When that didn’t get him the response he wanted, Grimmjow reached out with his free hand and grabbed a fistful of orange hair, using it to yank Ichigo’s head forward. “Are you listening to me, asshole?! I said-!”
Kurosaki’s eyes shot open, and the world stopped moving. Horribly unnatural, bright yellow irises set against pitch-black sclera, like twin moons adrift in a sea of shadow pinned Grimmjow in place.
“Y’er loud.”
His voice was two octaves too high. His expression was twisted and wrong.
This wasn’t Kurosaki.
Grimmjow opened his mouth, but no sound came forth other than a single, choked gasp. The larger of Kurosaki’s two swords—the giant meat-cleaver that had been lying on the ground not half a second ago—was now sticking straight through Grimmjow’s midriff, his Hollow Hole cleanly bisected by the massive blade.
“King gets cranky when he doesn’t get his beauty sleep,” the thing wearing Kurosaki’s face purred, its gaze full of savage amusement as Grimmjow’s vision blurred. “You don’t wanna wake ‘im up.”
Grimmjow’s grip loosened, Not-Kurosaki landing on his feet without Grimmjow to hold him up any longer. He tried to back away, but the creature wouldn’t let him, and it grabbed a fistful of his jacket to pull him back by.
It felt as if his entire body was about to split in two when the creature yanked him closer, the sword in his stomach slicing him open ever further as Grimmjow was made to slide along its length, straight toward the wider half of the blade.
He couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t work.
It hurt. It hurt so goddamn much. Fucking hell why did it have to hurt so much?!
“And yet, ya came all this way just ta see ‘im,” Not-Kurosaki crooned, baring its teeth in a grin in response to Grimmjow’s silent scream. “It’d be a shame to send ya back home empty-handed.” The creature leaned in closer; the glow of its eyes the last thing Grimmjow saw before the world around him dissolved into a blood-red haze. “...Why don’t ya go and say hi, first?”
The ground beneath his feet gave way, and then Grimmjow was falling—tumbling helplessly through the scarlet maelstrom that awaited him below. The horrible pressure of the sword inside his gut disappeared and was replaced by a gaping emptiness that was easily just as bad, but at least allowed Grimmjow to vocalize the scream he’d been forced to hold back until now.
For a horrible, nauseating period of time that felt like forever but couldn’t have been more than seconds in reality, Grimmjow felt himself being pulled in a million different directions. He lost track of which way was up, his Reiatsu senses going haywire, and right when he felt like he might just throw up for real if it went on any longer, the world snapped back into place.
Except… it wasn’t really the world. It was a world. A world he had never seen before in his life, and one he, nor anyone else barring Kurosaki himself had ever been meant to enter.
Unable to slow his fall in any way, Grimmjow rocketed straight through the pane of glass that had rapidly come up to greet him, and crash-landed smack-dab in the middle of a sideways skyscraper.