spira_rp | If he wants a fight, well now he's got one

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If he wants a fight, well now he's got one

The Palace felt quiet. A number of the Arrancar were out on a mission with Aizen; only the weak, or the unpredictable, had been made to stay behind, but that number had not, apparently, included Grimmjow. Kadaj and Tayuya had been left to their own devices without him and Yylfordt around.

Three days ago, they'd had a quiet conversation. Kadaj hadn't done much talking, just nodded, and then later in the day had crept into the laboratories down the wing of the Palace that Orochimaru had made his own. Kadaj used to go down there a lot, three years ago. He'd stopped just after the Arrancar arrived. He'd fallen out with Orochimaru once and for all shortly after that.

He emerged from the labs a couple of hours later, showered, and then went into the underground training facility. He didn't come up again for a couple of days, although there weren't really people around to notice, except Tayuya, who went down to check on him a few times.

He'd slept when he came back up, and then went to look for Nnoitra, one of the Arrancar who had been judged too unpredictable to head off to a freshly made Necrohol. He found him in the kitchen.

Kadaj made his way over; an unusual intent certainty in his expression, and spoke quietly. "Want to let off some steam?" His manner was all wrong to be an invitation to spar, but that was what it sounded like, at first.

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Orochimaru felt something he hadn't felt in a long, long time, under the arrogance, and the indignation, and the overwhelming loathing of being reduced to this, a helpless body turning traitor against him, he felt fear. At some point, without his noticing, Kadaj had become... this.

He struggled against whatever force Kadaj was exerting as his tongue rolled out of his mouth, extending almost to its full length. He struggled, too, against the hand that slipped into his clothing, locating a kunai, gripping it to slice.

"Kadaj," he protested, his voice strained.

He got his answer when his arm moved, sharply, slicing his tongue off. Pain shot through Orochimaru, but Kadaj wouldn't even let him cry out with it. He could feel the sweat forming on his own brow as he fought against himself.

Ah~ ... so he was right. The black sludge was part of the game.

So very clever. And what a bankai for Kadaj to have, of all people. He was a once-impulsive child prone to fits of rage and tantrums over the slightest thing. He used to be a boy who would pick a fight with anyone who looked at him wrong. And yet ... he had a slow-burning little technique that took patience, planning and control. It was no wonder he'd needed to mature to use it.

Gin's smile widened as Kadaj put his new abilities to use. made Orochimaru cut off his own tongue. It was about time somebody did that. It gave him the creeping shivers knowing he had that coiled up in there somewhere all the time.

The end was inevitable for Orochimaru, and Kadaj was obviously enjoying himself. Like a cat playing with a mouse he taunted him, keeping the shadow of death hanging over him and drawing out the moments before the killing blow. It was cruel and malicious, but it was no more than Orochimaru deserved.

It took Nnoitra a moment to process the new development.

Kadaj was in complete control of Orochimaru. He wasn't giving up, he just didn't have a choice. He was powerless against Kadaj's technique. There was no defense, no escape, nothing he could do about it.

"Hah!" He laughed, not bothering to hold it back.

It warmed his shrivelled heart to see the bastard at somebody else's mercy. He watched, rapt, as Orochimaru brought his hand up to sever his tongue with his own kunai. The spray of blood didn't faze him, nor did the unpleasantly wet sound it made as it hit the floor. Kadaj's own vicious amusement didn't bother him, either.

The only thing that marred his delight was the unfortunate lack of a scream.

"Hey, Nnoitra," Kadaj sounded relaxed, and slightly unhinged, "any requests as to what else he should cut off?"

A cruel smirk crept across Kadaj's face as he maintained the control. It felt strange to control someone else's body. He could feel Orochimaru struggling against him, uselessly, but he was still struggling, and when he made Orochimaru move he could feel that, too.

He couldn't feel the pain, though. He was glad of that. It meant he could enjoy this.

Orochimaru grunted with effort as he tried to stop his hand moving down to slowly press the point of the kunai into his own crotch. Kadaj was out for revenge, and so was Nnoitra. After his tongue, he'd expected this to come next.

The sharpened edge pressed in, hard, a slow stab, and Orochimaru bit back a groan of pain.

Kadaj wasn't making him hold that one back, however.

A lesser man might have winced or crossed his legs, but Gin was perfectly at home with cruelty and bore the sight of it with his characteristic sneer intact.

He almost pitied him. Almost. Empathy wasn't his strong suit.

Nnoitra smirked at Kadaj's question.

"I can think of a few," he said, looking down at his prone uncle with an expression of amused hatred on his face.

He didn't need to voice his suggestions. Kadaj got there before it was necessary to do so. Part of him burned with jealousy at not getting to do that himself, but he was nevertheless callous enough to be glad that somebody had got there. His pained groan just made him grin.

"You're lucky Kadaj is doing that and not me," he said casually, the rough edge to his voice too thick for his tone to be considered conversational. "Because I'd fucking force feed them to you!"

See how he likes it. Bastard. He looked at Kadaj, regaining his composure very slightly.

"Break his fingers."

Orochimaru's breathing was growing ragged, and sweat beaded his face. His hand drove the kunai in hard, and then dragged it through cloth and flesh in a vicious slice. He wondered what would happen if he blacked out from pain; would Kadaj's technique be broken, or remain in place? Not that he expected it would matter, one way or the other; if he blacked out, they'd simply kill him.

His hand finally drew the kunai away, but the relief was short lived as he was forced to slip the loop of the kunai over his index finger and then pull it back until there was a sickening snap.

He yelled. It wasn't a scream, but it was a cry of pain, and he fought for his self control again as the kunai was removed and he was made to grip the next finger along at the second joint and push until that too snapped.

"Tormenting a weakened enemy," he panted; "how crude."

Kadaj cocked his head, his voice quiet, and that fraction more dangerous. "Yeah," he said, "because there's nothing crude about raping kids." He pointed one of his swords at Orochimaru again, advancing on him a couple of steps. "Nothing at all crude about forcing that," he pointed, angrily, to the severed tongue, "down someone's throat so they stop saying no!"

He was trying to make him angry, Kadaj realised. Hoping, perhaps, that his control would be weakened if Kadaj lost control of himself first.

"It won't work, you know," he said, much more calmly. "The stigma is in too much of you, now. It doesn't matter if I get mad or not." He grinned, brightly. "You can feel it, right? Every moment we stand here, my control gets better, and you have less and less to fight back with."

He lowered the sword again, and looked at Orochimaru, shoulders set. "It doesn't matter what you say; I'm not going to give you that control over me again."

He glanced at Nnoitra, and then took a step back. "He's all yours."

Nnoitra snorted at Orochimaru's taunt. The hypocrisy almost shocked him before he shook it off, mentally telling himself he should expect that of him. He did things to weaken, demean and demoralise people in order to keep them under his thumb, to keep them powerless. He never took responsibility for anything he did. He washed his hands of the pain he caused and kept doing it, moving on to others after he'd broken the one before.

He'd ruined his life. Everything bad that Nnoitra had ever suffered, every disaster, every breath of ill fortune, everthing, could be traced back to Orochimaru's meddling. He'd pushed that first domino and the others had fallen down the line, crushing everything that he was and replacing it with ... This.

Orochimaru had made him what he was and he was about to suffer the result of his interference and utter lack of repentance.

Nnoitra had no interest in torturing a weakened opponent for too long. It wasn't any fun and Kadaj had done what he'd have wanted to. He had taken the lead in turning the humiliation back on him, the feeling of empty helplessness, of degradation, of weakness.

He stepped up to him, his expression unsettlingly calm. "I've been waiting a long time to do this," he said quietly, fixing him with his single eye. The other, uncovered, was scarred over under his Mask fragment, the socket empty and the lid permanently closed. "You should have known this would happen from the moment you heard I'd joined the Arrancar. You should have seen it coming and prepared yourself. I was going to cut you down, you bastard, but you aren't worth cleaning from my blade."

Instead, he leaned in towards him. He was within touching distance, but he didn't lay a hand on him. Instead he extended his tongue and concentrated his Hollow Chakra at the end of it, a small ball of glittering gold. He thought that it was a fitting way for him to die -- he'd seemed so interested in it before. He let his lips twist into a smirk as he thought that. Nnoitra's cero didn't require much in the way of charge time and he fired it from point-blank range.

Orochimaru didn't stand a chance.

Orochimaru's eyes widened slightly as Nnoitra stepped closer. He'd expected that they'd have drawn this out for longer.

How long had Gin been standing there, too?

He looked at Kadaj.

"You look just like your brother," he told him, as Nnoitra's cero gathered, grew...

and then fired.

The change in Kadaj was barely peceptible. His shoulders tensed, his grip on Souba shifting for a moment, and then he relaxed again, just as quickly.

Nothing Orochimaru had to say would have been worth keeping him alive. He'd have never told Kadaj anything he knew anyway.

He looked at Nnoitra, feeling oddly empty and sick. There were the consequences to face, now. There was Tayuya, there was Grimmjow...

There was Kuja, and the rest of the clan.

For Nnoitra, there was Aizen.

He could not be held accountable by anybody else, but Aizen was not going to be pleased. Left behind because he was too volatile, he'd killed a full member of Clan Khamja in his absence. He'd be lucky if Aizen didn't strike him down himself.

It wouldn't matter if he did. He'd done what he'd set out to do. He'd achieve his goal of revenge and, like Kadaj, felt an odd sense of emptiness. There was no sickness, but there were feelings of anger clouding the edges of his thoughts and blackening his vision.

Orochimaru, when he'd looked death in the eye, had turned to Kadaj and spoken his last words to him. He didn't matter, not even at the end. Orochimaru hadn't even addressed him when he'd held his life in his hands. He'd treated him with utter, infuriating indifference. He seethed.

"Send him," he spat, turning his back on Orochimaru's smoking remains.

Well, that was that.

Gin smiled wider when he saw Orochimaru finally notice him, and didn't resist giving him a polite wave before Nnoitra's gold cero vaporized his upper half.

He stepped out of the doorway at that point, ever silent, ever careful to keep his reiatsu turned right down. They were going to spot him now that they were no longer distracted and he'd rather be seen in the open than slinking about in the shadows.

That sort of thing could give a guy a reputation.

Kadaj frowned. He hated Sending people. It was embarrassing.

But he didn't have a choice. Nnoitra certainly couldn't do it, and... well... they'd killed him. They should finish the job properly.

Kadaj stepped forward, before moving into the dance, repressing his own embarrassment about the issue. It was different doing it while still in bankai, wielding two weapons during the dance, but he managed, and the pyrefly that had been Orochimaru was sent on.

Once he'd finished, Kadaj watched the spot sombrely for a moment, before turning, moving to dismiss his bankai before stopping as he spotted Gin.

Nnoitra watched Kadaj send Orochimaru with no small degree of dispassion.

Sending was an art he'd never learned. He wasn't cut out for the Mage Arts, especially white magic. Even so, he didn't look upon the dance with any kind of amusement or disdain -- it was a necessary process, no matter what it looked like.

He didn't notice Gin right away, but Kadaj's silence drew his attention in that direction.

That ... wasn't good. He hadn't expected a witness. Particularly him. While he didn't fit a shred of regret, Nnoitra looked concerned about the consequences of what they'd done for the first time since Kadaj had come to him.

Gin looked at the two offenders without an attempt to disguise his amusement. Well, well, well, didn't they look worried?

Ah, he couldn't blame them.

They had, literally, been caught red handed.

Kadaj frowned, and then held his two swords together, dismissing his bankai. Souba reverted back to her shikai form, and Kadaj's outfit and hair went with her.

"How long were you watching?" Kadaj asked, without looking at Gin as he put Souba away. He really wished Gin hadn't seen his bankai, but of all the people in the Palace, Gin was probably the least bad option. Still, he had wanted to keep that information on a need to know basis.

"Ohhh, long enough."

Gin's smile remained in place. Kadaj was clearly unsettled by the fact that he may have witnessed all of it. That aside, Kadaj should know that, if he had been in a mind to put a stop to what he and Nnoitra were doing, neither of them would have been able to do anything about it.

"Nice t'see that you actually Sent him," he tilted his head slightly. "Got enough Hollows 'round these parts as it is."

The turn of his head in the direction of the still-released Arrancar was almost imperceptible and his eyes, as ever, gave nothing away. He proceeded to happily ignore the narrowing of Nnoitra's eye and the slight bearing of his teeth that he received for his remark.

Somehow, it figured that Gin had witnessed enough to cause trouble. Still, he hadn't interfered, and he'd have been more than capable of doing so.

"He didn't give us a choice," Kadaj said. "If I didn't kill him, he'd have killed me. Nnoitra just got caught up in things. I'd have been dead without his help."

Which didn't explain how it had started, or Kadaj's torturing of Orochimaru afterwards, but was, at least, a partial truth. Kadaj was trying to avoid saying everything, not so much because of Gin, but because of Nnoitra. He didn't want to reveal more than he had to.

But Gin was smarter than Kadaj was, and Kadaj knew it. If Gin wanted to know what had happened in any detail, and why, it probably wouldn't be wise for Kadaj to try and hide it from him.

"Oh, without a doubt," he said, looking from Nnoitra to Kadaj. "Ain't it lucky he came to help you out? I mean, after Orochimaru attacked you like that, it was almost noble of Nnoitra to aid you, don't y'think?"

He showed his teeth in a grin. There was no way that he could have seen Nnoitra 'come to Kadaj's rescue' -- Nnoitra would have had to pass him on the way down. There was no way he could have missed him.

"Orochimaru just didn't know when t'back down, did he? It's not as if y'held him there without giving him a chance to run off with his tail between his legs. Way I saw it, arrogance got the best of him."

Edited 2012-09-04 17:16 (UTC)

Nnoitra's eye went wide and shock stood clear in his expression.

What the hell was Gin saying?

He wondered what he was playing at and what he had to gain from lying about what he'd witnessed -- or hadn't. He knew full well that while they'd killed Orochimaru, they wouldn't stand a chance against Gin. Revenge for a fallen member clearly wasn't on Gin's list of things to do, but ... what he was saying didn't make any sense either.

Kadaj eyed Gin for a moment that lasted just slightly too long before he nodded, gently. "Yeah."

He wasn't entirely sure what Gin was playing at either, but Kadaj knew well enough to know that playing along would be in his best interests. Especially right now. He'd just killed Orochimaru; having Gin back him up that it was self defence would be helpful.

"So what happens now?" He asked, looking at Gin again. There'd be consequences, it would have to be reported, Aizen would have to be told because his subordinate was involved, Orochimaru's will would have to be seen....

The fate of Orochimaru's subordinates, including Tayuya, would have to be determined.

Kadaj felt sick again at the thought.

"All hell breaks loose," he said cheerfully. "Some of 'em are gonna be annoyed that you murdered him, even if it was in self defence, y'know."

Others, not so much. It was one less rival.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, his motives and intentions entirely unreadable. Kadaj had been so very clever to plan all of this out ... he hadn't accounted for the fallout afterwards though, apparently. He was getting better and getting smarter, but he was still a kid. Still selfish. He'd apparently dragged Nnoitra into his little crusade, however willing he might have been, but he hadn't considered how the end of it would affect him. Not that he expected Nnoitra to decline even if he had.

"His affairs will need to be settled," he said, waving a hand. "And Aizen is going to be really quite annoyed at you," he indicated Nnoitra, "especially after he left you here to keep you out o' trouble. That didn't work so well, did it?"

Nnoitra glared at Gin when he addressed him, but didn't say anything. He was right.

Aizen was going to be extremely displeased.

He didn't even have anything to defend himself against the charge. Except that ... well, if Gin said it was self defence and Kadaj agreed with that ...

It wouldn't absolve him, but it would lessen his boss's ire somewhat.

If he wants a fight, well now he's got one

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