Here I stand

[joinmyreunion]

Kadaj had given Hojo a wide berth.

It hadn't been that hard. Hojo had seemed to be extending him the same courtesy, but Kadaj wasn't taking chances. He'd been vigilant so far about following Even's advice and trying to leave as little trace of himself behind as he could. Nel helped, too, making sure he got his things washed and returned to his room quickly, and his crockery and utensils were quickly washed, or at least put in to soak. She'd bought him some bleach, too, and showed him how to soak his toothbrush and hairbrush in it so that, if Hojo did break into his room, he probably wouldn't get anything useful anyway.

It was weird and unpleasant to try and live while being mindful of everything you might leave behind for someone unscrupulous to collect evidence without your consent, but Kadaj felt like he was managing.

He'd also taken to training his bankai against Yylfordt. Not the full of its abilities, of course; he wasn't about to flash those around in the Palace, but improving the techniques he'd learned while he was out in the world was useful. Yylfordt wasn't as difficult as Kyuzo had been, but he had more brute force to put into a fight, and he used different tactics, even if they did mostly consist of relying on brute force.

Kadaj couldn't beat him consistently yet, but he was getting there. He'd be able to beat Yylfordt without taking a scratch if he used Reunion, of course, but he needed to keep training at dual wielding. He could practice Reunion out in the wider world, away from prying eyes, on Fiends that people wanted destroyed and the Gotei squads hadn't got around to yet.

Still, Kadaj was running up against a snag that he knew was going to be a solid wall in the way of his training. Yylfordt used brute force, yes, and Kadaj had to use his speed to circumvent that, but eventually he'd come up against someone that could use magic, or that he couldn't defeat without using magic himself, and that was when Kadaj was going to struggle.

He could ask Gin. Gin he was fairly sure would have taught him before now if he'd asked, but Kadaj would rather not end up owing Gin a lot of favours, and a part of him knew it wasn't smart to let Gin know every single ability he had in his arsenal. Plus, Gin would probably respect him more for finding another way.

Kuja had tried, but Kadaj had got frustrated easily, and tantrums had usually ensued if Kuja continued to push him, and Kuja's patience had worn thin. Kadaj had ended up learning every one of Kuja's favourite plays and poems by heart, because that was easier than learning to read them, and he'd mentioned no more about learning magic since.

He could ask Aizen, but Kadaj was wary of admitting such a weakness to Aizen. Ienzo wasn't to be considered. Nel was nice, but Kadaj wasn't sure of how she'd be as a teacher, and anyway, going to someone else's subordinates with a weakness was as bad as going to them.

Then Even had come along, and Kadaj had been set to hate him because they'd fought each other in the past, but he'd found that, really, he didn't. Even was a bit stuck up, sure, but he'd also been almost nice in the face of Hojo's interest in Kadaj. Kadaj had since afforded him respect, and Even had been respectful in return, which was new territory for Kadaj. If he was honest, he kind of liked Even, in the same way that he liked Nel.

So it was in this atmosphere of growing respect and the sown seeds of affability that Kadaj, after a training session with Yylfordt and subsequent shower, went to track Even down. It wasn't a safe conversation to have in the kitchen, or somewhere else public, so Kadaj want to find Even in his own quarters. He'd made his home, so to speak, in a distant end of the Palace, where no one else really went. They hadn't known it was here before Even came, or at least, they'd known it was here but hadn't known how to get to it, and had little reason to venture down here now. As a result, the whole area felt like Even. The rest of the Palace was a mishmash of other reiatsu signatures, but here was as definitely Even's domain as Orochimaru's labs had been his, and as Kuja's quarters were his.

Kadaj felt like an intruder in someone else's territory, and he knocked politely when he could feel Even on the other side of a door in that unmistakable sense of glaciers and icicles emanating from beyond it as if you could open it onto winter.

Comments

[thechillyacademic]

Even spent his days and half of his nights either sitting in the kitchen and drinking tea or sequestered away in his new quarters.

He didn't quite have a laboratory yet, but he was getting there. The rooms were spotlessly clean, the tiles were in place where he needed tiles to be and he had finally acquired some fixtures and furniture. The past week had also seen a power source routed in, if not a water supply. That would come later. Power was a better start since it meant that he could work during the night hours, after the daylight had ceased to stream in through the narrow basement windows at the tops of some of the rooms. Water could be carried, power could not.

The wing where his workspace was located was largely empty. The servants quarters were in around the same area, in that the long corridor that stretched from Even's lab lead to the same hallway that one had to travel down in order to reach the stairs down to them, but other than sharing that intersection he was completely alone and he rather liked it that way.

Even had acquired four rooms in total. The central one was spacious enough, but ultimately useless, for it was positioned to act like little more than a hallway. It was also, quite unfortunately, rather irregularly shaped and lacking in any windows. The corridor to the rest of the palace and the three other rooms all connected to that one. The room at the most extreme end of the hall was the largest and was destined to become his laboratory once he had the equipment for it. The third room, an L-shaped affair, was big enough for him to have considered making it into a sleeping area, but he had ultimately decided against it in favour of keeping his room in the palace proper. Being able to separate himself from his work, he told himself, was a good thing. He would find another use for it, no doubt.

The last and smallest of the four, windowless and unworkable before he was able to get a light installed, had been converted into an office. It was there where he was seated at his desk, a notebook open in front of him and a lamp lit against the gloom, when he heard the door knock. His brow furrowed as he finished off the line he was writing. He didn't get visitors. Not even Ienzo ventured down unless he had asked him to and he wasn't sure that Marluxia knew where to find him at all, not from the inside. He got to his feet, leaving his notebook open and the pen on top, and made his way to the hall.

The door between the corridor and his new lair was locked.

He wasn't sure he liked the idea of only a key standing between him and whoever could lurk outside, not after Marluxia's pet had made such short work of picking the lock at Daguerreo, but he had few alternatives at present. He intended to research making Glyphs, the sort that were found in Cloisters of Trials in numerous Ivalician temples, but that wasn't set to be easy. It was a lost art, but he didn't see why it couldn't be found again. There had to be something written down about them somewhere.

With a soft huff he unlocked the door and blinked at who stood on the other side. Whoever he expected to see there, it was not Kadaj.

They seemed to have reached a polite understanding since their initial tense meeting, but Even wasn't sure that mere politeness was enough to have invited Kadaj down to where nobody else dared to tread. As well as being private, it was uninviting. The long corridor that lead out to his quarters remained unlit, like the rest of the wing had been prior to his obtaining a generator, and Even's reiatsu had seeped into the rooms under his ownership like it had nowhere else in the palace. They were not cold, not really, but something about the atmosphere was enough to make most people shiver as though they had been caught in an icy draft.

"Kadaj," he said, surprise as evident in his voice as it was on his face. "Can I help you?"

[joinmyreunion]

Kadaj walked slowly to the sunhouse, deep in thought. He found that he liked Even, in the same way that he liked Nel. Nel was calm, and patient, and kind to him, without talking down to him. Even had been the same, and it had made Kadaj feel like he'd been listened to. They didn't really know each other yet, outside of a few interactions, but Kadaj felt like he'd gained, if not an ally then, a confidante.

It was different to his friendship with Tayuya, which was grounded in mutual experiences and a longstanding crush Kadaj had gotten over shortly before Grimmjow had entered their lives. It was very different from his relationship with Grimmjow, in which Kadaj kept secrets because Grimmjow used his fists before his brain, and while Kadaj mostly trusted him not to hurt him there was always that sense that he was, in some way, Grimmjow's territory. There was Kuja, whom Kadaj adored despite himself but these days trusted little, a fact which hurt and Kadaj didn't want to voice. Then there was Gin. Who Kadaj trusted more than he trusted most of the others, but only in the sense that he trusted Gin to be up to something far beyond Kadaj's comprehension, in which Kadaj may or may not be a pawn, but somewhere along the line of Gin's grander machinations he'd found the time to prod Kadaj in the direction to growing stronger and more independent and more able, even if he hadn't led him down that path by the hand. Which meant that, in a weird way, Kadaj also trusted Gin not to be out to hurt him, although that always left the possibility that Kadaj may be hurt as an unhappy byproduct of something Gin was doing.

There was Nnoitra, who Kadaj had loathed, but their mutual hatred of Orochimaru had brought them together to ensure his demise, and that had fostered geniality between the two of them. The geniality was there with Even, too. It had no right to be, but since Hojo had intruded, and Even had supported him with advice, Kadaj had been more kindly disposed towards Even. He'd had to take some time out to think and accept that their issue with Even, and the berserker, was mostly a game of tit for tat, borne of each side wanting to protect their own against the other. Kadaj didn't actually have any fight with Even, and it wasn't fair to hold a group enmity against the berserker over Even's head when they were no longer associated.

Tayuya had explained about that part. Even and the berserker had split up, and Even had joined Khamja. Kadaj doubted he'd joined solely by his own choice; he'd have been presented with options, and one of them would have been 'or we kill you'. Kadaj was familiar enough with how Khamja worked for that one. If someone in Khamja really, really wanted him, it wouldn't have been a simple 'or we kill you', it would have been 'or we kill you, everyone you love, and everyone they love, and we'll leave you until last'. Even seemed intent on making the most of it, but Kadaj doubted he'd have come running to Khamja as his first choice after splitting from the others, because who in their right mind would?

He was lost in this train of thought when he entered the sunhouse, where Grimmjow and the others who were part of their little group lurked. Yylfordt was nursing his injured pride after being beaten by Kadaj on their sparring session this morning, but Kadaj didn't think the victory meant much, yet. He wasn't yet beating Yylfordt every time they sparred.

Once he did, he'd move on up a tier and try a different Arrancar, which put Luppi next on Kadaj's hit list. Or maybe he'd invite Apache along for the ride in sessions with Yylfordt first. It might be better preparation for taking on Luppi.