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 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.

"Yeah," Kadaj replied, just a fraction testily, "I know that part."

Kuja. Kuja was going to be the worst bit.

And Kadaj had all the reason in the world to be pissed at Kuja, too, but couldn't bring himself to manage it. Kuja had brought him here, into a viper's nest, at fourteen years old, and let Orochimaru at him. He had to have known what Orochimaru was like. He had to have known what Orochimaru would do, and Kuja had made no effort to prevent it. As if Kadaj, back then, hadn't been a walking ball of anger and complexes, and Orochimaru wouldn't worm his way in through them.

Had Kuja known what Orochimaru planned for Kadaj in the long run? Probably not. Tayuya didn't think any of the clan knew, though they might have had suspicions about something. But Kadaj couldn't stay pissed at Kuja over any of it, even if he probably should.

It was Kuja's reaction that Kadaj feared, because it was Kuja's reaction that Kadaj couldn't be sure of, and had the potential to sting.

Tayuya's response... He knew what that would be. That was going to hurt, a lot.

Grimmjow's too, because of the risk he'd put Tayuya at.

He scowled, but kept a lid on his emotions as he moved to retrieve Kusanagi. "Aizen should take the long view," he said, with a hint of irony, "Orochimaru stabbed him, started on Ulquiorra, and Wonderweiss, picked a fight with Nel," Kadaj trailed off, smirking a little. "The Arrancar might get in less trouble now he's out of the way for good."

He looked at Gin again. "Not that he'll be in a good mood about it anyway, but it might be less of a headache for him in the long run."

And now Kadaj had hold of the only sword in all the world that could slice an Arrancar like butter. He couldn't think of anyone he thought it would be safe to hand it over to.

"You might just be right about that," he conceded, looking from one to the other again. "But he still won't be at all happy that one of his subordinates is partly responsible."

Oh, he saw Nnoitra deal the killing blow. Kadaj had to know that.

"Though ... I'm sure you'll take full responsibility. Nnoitra was only backing you up when you were in trouble, after all."

Kadaj wouldn't get into as much trouble as Nnoitra. Death by other members was a well-known hazard for those in Khamja and they were all powerful people. When pushed .. bad things happened. And ... Orochimaru had clearly pushed Kadaj. Didn't he say he'd seen him refuse to back down? A subordinate of another member would not be extended the same amount of leeway.

Kadaj's attitude to the whole situation amused him. He really didn't have any remorse, did he? Gin wouldn't have expected Nnoitra to have any, but Kadaj..? Orochimaru was close to Kuja, someone he cared about. That ... would have repercussions and he still didn't show any signs of guilt. Interesting. So, the kid did have limits that he could be pushed to and some that could be broken. That was news.

"So what are y'going to do now?" He asked, sounding only half-curious.

He didn't miss the fact that he was taking Kusanagi, either. That was a hell of a dangerous weapon for someone like Kadaj to hold, but ... just perhaps ... it would be safer in his hands than anyone else's. Aizen would be disappointed that he didn't manage to get his hands on it after Orochimaru's demise, but it was something he'd have to put up with. It was hardly going to be willed to him was it?

Edited 2012-09-04 22:28 (UTC)

Nnoitra dismissed his Release as Kadaj and Gin talked.

His Hollow's Chakra flared and then quickly faded. His scythes dissipated along with his additional arms and the horns. His Mask Fragment disappeared entirely as he bypassed Shikai and went back to his natural form.

His missing eye, still exposed by the lack of patch, looked much more grizzly without the bone around the socket to obscure the worst of the scarring.

He dragged his fingers through his hair, feeling slightly drained after the experience. The fight wasn't as harsh as he'd expected, but the whole thing had left him feeling slightly exhausted and numb and it wasn't out of guilt. That the two of them seemed to be talking half in subtext didn't help, even if they did seem to be subtly planning or arranging ... something.

"Take the blame," Kadaj answered, honestly. It had been his plan anyway, but he hadn't banked on a witness to complicate things. "Kuja needs to be notified," he said, dispassionately, "and Illua."

After that....

His motorbike was already ready to go. It had been since just before the Arrancar had left. He'd told Tayuya he was just going to leave, on the quiet, without Grimmjow to try and stop him or get some idiot idea about challenging Orochimaru into his head. All he'd have to do was last Orochimaru out, and then he could come back....

Except that he couldn't last Orochimaru out. Not really. If it wasn't this time, then in three years they'd go through it again, and again, and again.... He wouldn't be able to dodge it forever. Sooner or later this fight was going to have happened, and Kadaj wanted it to be on his own terms, when he stood a chance.

"I'm sure Aizen will find out when he gets back," he added.

Boy would that be fun. Kadaj felt a pang of guilt for leaving Nnoitra to it, but there was no way he'd be able to stay in the Palace. Not with Tayuya. Definitely not with the rest of Orochimaru's subordinates, who would all be gunning for Kadaj after this.

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shoottokill - 2012-09-06 14:41 (UTC) - Expand

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