A/N: Sorry for lateness. School be school. Also I find I don't post a new chapter until the previous one has gotten 10 reviews. Fuck me, right?

Disclaimers: No es mio.

Warnings: Cussing, murder, crimes, rape, gangs, psychopaths, gay relations, blood, and so on. Shit gets pretty real here. You've been warned.

Ulquiorra had removed the hand from his face and now looked at the printed paper with dead eyes. Finally, he leaned his thin body over the table and took it. Listless eyes widened fractionally before the man frowned. He didn't move for a moment before very carefully and deliberately turning the paper over so it was face down on the countertop.

The hacker suddenly stood up. Before Grimmjow knew it, Ulquiorra strode out of the kitchen, into the living room. He saw the hacker bend down and when he straightened up he had his phone in his hand, finger flying across the touch screen, eyes dark.

Grimmjow glanced at the paper on the counter. With quiet steps he approached it and picked the offending material up.

It was a grainy surveillance camera still, shot in bright light. A room. White washed walls with mysterious dark stains. Chains looped through rings embedded in the walls. The gleam of porcelain twinkled from behind a door, a bathroom with a sink.

And there was a bed. With sheets stained with the dark maroon of drying blood.

Grimmjow's head turned at the sound of Ulquiorra speaking in rapid-fire Romanian. The hacker was turned away from the rest of the team, shoulders tense and low words terse.

Another sound caught his attention and Grimmjow glanced at Szayel leaning over the kitchen sink. The doctor was shaking what looked like an unhealthy quantity of pills into his hand. Grimmjow had never seen the blue tablets before. The doctor threw them back, seeming to force them down without water. Grimmjow could have sworn Szayel's hands were trembling as he shakily replaced the cap on the mysterious pill bottle.

"Maybe I don't want to fucking share that with people."

At the sound of english, Grimmjow turned back to Ulquiorra. The hacker's voice had risen marginally, and was filled with a quiet anger.

There was a pause on the end of the line and Grimmjow glanced at the other occupants of the kitchen. Starrk and Nnoitra were standing stoically, arms crossed over their chests, watching Ulquiorra out of the corner of their eyes, or eye in the case of Nnoi. Ishida was looking at the printer next to him blandly. As if it were some cat that had taken a swipe at him without claws. Szayel was uncapping another mysterious pill bottle, fumbling with the lid.

'Okay, that's enough.' thought Grimmjow angrily. He handed the paper to Starrk without looking and strode into the living room.

Grimmjow stopped in front of Ulquiorra, holding his hand out for the phone. Ulquiorra looked up at him for a moment, before glancing at the electronic and handing it over without looking back at his team leader.

Grimmjow put the phone to his ear waiting for Ichigo to speak on the other end.

He didn't have to wait long. A burst of bubbly french tumbled into his ear.

"Why Grimmy! I had no idea you were so hot tempered! Not that I'm complaining, it's very sexy…"

The blue-haired agent's frown deepened as he turned his back to Ulquiorra. "Stop speaking that language."

"I'm sorry, what did you say Mssr. Jaegerjacques? I do not understand this anglais you speak." Grimmjow could practically hear the yakuza conman beaming.

Grimmjow's hand tightened on the phone. "Stop fucking with me."

"I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, Mssr. Aren't we sorry, Shi?" Grimmjow heard a distant japanese curse. "Shiro and I are so sorry, but we do not understand, kind sir."

Grimmjow closed his eyes in frustration. "The fuck do you want?"

His native language flowed off his tongue effortlessly, as if he left France yesterday rather than having not spoken french in years. French was a tricky language to learners, much like english. It was not a phonetic language like spanish, you couldn't just read off sounds. Ichigo's french was good, very nearly flawless, but he was definitely not of french origin.

Grimmjow's french was perfect. Musical even. Perhaps because he had been a choirboy in a catholic church chorus as a child. The nuns that taught the choir had even praised his voice, giving him solos and duets.

Now Grimmjow wished his voice had none of those angelic qualities. That way when he was pissed, as he was now, he could curse in french and not sound like a saint in wolf's clothing.

"Temper-temper, Grimmy. You might just crush Ulqui-chan's toy."

Hearing the japanese suffix mixed in with the mirthful french sounded strange to Grimmjow's ears. He resisted the urge to turn and look at the security camera just over his shoulder and didn't bother relaxing his grip on the iPhone.

"Don't they have rules against the use of cell phones on airplanes?" Grimmjow tasted his traitorous native tongue on his lips. He frowned further, pushing the sense of nostalgia out of his mind. He knew what happened after nostalgia. And he didn't want to remember anything right now. He was fucking busy.

"Aww now, I thought you'd have a little more faith in me than that by now." Grimmjow could hear the fake pout through Ichigo's slight japanese accent. "That really hurts my feeling, you know? Ah well, you really should get back to listening to Ulqui-chan's story." Suddenly Ichigo's french dropped to a playful stage whisper. "Don't worry, you aren't next. But I think you better keep an eye on your little nurse. He looks like he's having a hard time of it."

Grimmjow's eyes darted back to the kitchen. Szayel was propped up against the countertop, upper body mostly bent over the surface, braced by his forearms.

The agent half-turned away. "Listen, Kurosaki."

Grimmjow's voice was emotionless as it could get in his native language. He was tired of this shit. And from the sound of it, Ichigo was going to do this to every single one of them. Fine. He'd play the little fuck's game. But only after he set something straight.

"The second this is over, I am going to make sure you have paid your own share of this." Grimmjow's voice was cold. "Whatever you make us do, you had better be prepared to own up."

If Grimmjow was going to have to tell his story, he was going to make damn sure Ichigo's would be exposed in excruciating detail. He cast a sidelong glance in Ulquiorra's direction. The hacker was facing away from him, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. Whatever Ichigo had said to make the man tell his story down to the last detail must have been extremely personal. Grimmjow knew Ichigo knew his story too. Grimmjow would wager the orange-haired man knew all of their stories. Szayel. Nnoitra. Starrk. All of them. Grimmjow closed his eyes. If he had to pay with his own past to further the hunt…Ichigo was going to have to pay his own personal toll as well.

Grimmjow's eyes opened, crystal clear and ice-cold. "I don't know what the hell you want with me yet but trust me when I say I will find you, Ichigo."

And he would. No prey had ever escaped him. The faint sound of a gun cocking echoed in his memory. Flashes of people, of cities, the reflection of his eyes in a broken mirror. Ice cold and empty. Devoid. Even after being filled, over and over again, with the sight of blood. Enough blood to fill a lake. A river. An ocean. Those eyes had reflected none of it. Only the emptiness of an animal looking for his next kill. His next prey. To fill the infillible void.

"…Know this." Grimmjow's voice was deadly quiet, the flawless syllables dropping like stones into frigid water. "Nothing comes between me and my target." Grimmjow felt a shiver of familiarity along the scars on his back, but he ignored it. "Nothing, Ichigo. I will find you.

"I will find you, Ichigo."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then-

"…Of course…Grimmjow…"

Grimmjow listened to the nearly silent breathing for a moment. He wasn't sure what emotion that mere sound, the syllables of his name, were infused with. It was hard to put a label on the undiluted emotion, like trying to grasp cigarette smoke with your hand.

But to be honest, Grimmjow really didn't give a fuck.

The CIA agent pulled the phone away from his ear, ending the call with a decisive tap of his fingertip. His arm dropped and he stood there for a moment, eyes closed and head bowed, like the angels that had perched on the roof of that old catholic church. He had always thought they had looked foreboding, the unsmiling faces inclined not in prayer, but in contemplation. Unholy thoughts in the minds of those who were least expected to blaspheme.

Devils in disguise.

Grimmjow opened his eyes. He turned, handing Ulquiorra back his phone.

"Grimmjow?"

The blue haired agent didn't look at Starrk. He spared Ulquiorra a sideways glance, knowing he was acting strange. Acting like he had when he had first become an agent. No, even before that, long before he had met any of his team. He thought about how Ichigo made him feel before. Excited. Impatient. Slightly aroused if he had to be honest.

He didn't feel those things right now. He just wanted to hunt Ichigo down and drive his perfect face into a wall.

But that wasn't how it was. For the first time in his life, Grimmjow had the feeling it was him who was being hunted. Even though they were chasing him, Grimmjow knew.

This wasn't just his hunt. It was also Ichigo's.

He just didn't know why yet. The Tensa person, Ichigo, Ulquiorra's past, his past, Aizen. It didn't make sense yet, but he knew they were all connected.

Grimmjow realized his glance at Ulquiorra had turned into a stare. He was staring at the man's open collar. At the jagged lines that encircled his neck.

"You're leaving me, Sexta. How unfortunate."

The head agent opened his mouth, growling lowly, "Kitchen. Now."

Grimmjow didn't follow the wide-eyed Ulquiorra as he returned to the adjuring room. He didn't care that half his team was probably wondering why he was acting so…differently. He stood very still, waiting for his…hunt-lust and anger and disgust and thirst to fade. He couldn't go into that kitchen as Sexta. He had to be Grimmjow. Himself. A human. The kind that had compassion and understood comradeship.

Not a vicious killer.

'Remember Nelliel.' Grimmjow closed his eyes. His sister. Humanity could not be that far off.

Grimmjow opened his eyes. He walked towards the kitchen, glancing at the security camera. He let one blue eyebrow lift quickly and then drop before he had passed into the kitchen and out of the camera's sight. Let Ichigo interpret that as he choose.

Ulquiorra was sitting at the counter again, nursing his expresso, face expressionless. Szayel was a prone form hunched over another counter. Nnoitra was slouched against a surface, his height still allowing him to look down at Grimmjow with his one uncovered eye. Ishida was looking at him as well, standing stiffly with his arms crossed loosely over his toned stomach. Starrk was turned away from him, still looking into the living room, his arms crossed more strongly than Ishida in his tan, leather-beaten jacket.

Grimmjow set Ulquiorra's phone in front of the hacker, next to the again overturned paper, saying nothing. He glanced at the printer. He had a feeling he wasn't going to have to wait very long.

He was right. The printer started up again, turning almost every head in the kitchen. A paper was fed out and Ishida reached forward to catch it before it dropped. The hacker handed it to Ulquiorra without looking.

Ulquiorra took it, setting his expresso down. The man's expression didn't change, dull eyes sidling over to look at Grimmjow. Waiting for a sign.

Grimmjow crossed his muscled arms, looking down at the floor. The kitchen atmosphere was heavy, apprehensive. Waiting.

"Do what you want." Grimmjow looked up, not at Ulquiorra, but past him, to the boringly painted kitchen walls. It was up to Ulquiorra to tell the rest of his story. That wasn't his fucking call.

Ulquiorra looked down at the paper again. He set it down, facing up. Then reached over and flipped the older picture so it was facing up as well, lined up next to it.

"It's not my blood on the bed in the first one." He said after a long pause.

The hacker turned the pictures so they were facing away from him, towards his team members.

"It's Gin's."

Grimmjow stepped forward, looking at the second picture. The grainy screenshot showed the same room and same bed, but this time there was someone on the bed. And the blood was much brighter.

The person on the bed was naked, with pale skin. His arms were tucked behind his head of silvery white hair, one leg languidly hanging off the edge of the bed, looking completely relaxed. The quality of the picture wasn't good enough to see the expression on the man's face but Grimmjow didn't need good quality to know the man was smiling.

As if he didn't have blood gushing from his stomach.

The gash seemed to go from his navel up to the side of his ribcage, as if he had been gutted to bleed out like a pig. From the look of it, the cut was messy, as if the killer had deliberately and painfully dug his knife into Gin's gut before yanking it up and out. Compared to the first photo, the size of the blood stain was smaller, so it must not have been long since he had been stabbed. He might have still been alive. There were red handprints on the sheets that were soaked over in blood in the later picture. There were handprints on Gin as well- on his chest and on his face and neck, drying in his hair. Blood was beginning to drip down the slope of his leg. It had already polled heavily around his crotch and red spots on either side of the man told that his killer had been on top of him, knees on either side, blocking the blood from going down his leg earlier.

Grimmjow could feel his other teammates come up behind him, looking over his shoulder. They said nothing. He said nothing. All of them were waiting for Ulquiorra to continue.

"Gin had a bad habit of leaving his knives stuck in me. He did it a lot during the first week, but I didn't notice until the second. Most times, those who bandaged me took them out and disposed of them. Gin never bothered to keep track, though he loved to use them." Ulquiorra paused. "He loved butterfly knives in particular. After I had been there for two months, he began ordering a different make. Ones with jade handles. To match my eyes, he said."

Ulquiorra's face didn't change, no muscle twitched. He spoke in an almost monotone voice, cold and detached. "…The first time Gin left for business and I was given maid duties, I was ordered to clean a series of storage rooms. In one of the rooms, in a secluded corner of that part of the grounds, was filled with old computer equipment."

The hacker paused to let that sink in. "When I had been kidnapped, I ceased to exist. No information about my past, occupations or otherwise, existed. No one in that place knew what I was…and so no special restrictions were put on me as had with slaves with designated computer access. I was not watched 24 hours a day, or monitored for unapproved access to electronics. I was essentially a rogue hacker. One that didn't make myself known until the very end…"

Ulquiorra reached forward across the table, tracing the space around his butterfly knife. "It wasn't hard to access all the information in Ishida's mainframe since he and his subordinates mostly gathered information, though it took me several months so as not to raise suspicions. It became harder when I Aizen began requesting me almost exclusively, and harder still when Gin took it upon himself to mark my face. After my face reconfiguration, I became extremely popular and it became dangerous to sneak to the computer storage room where I set up my system. But I did it, hiding my 'Four' tag under my face cloth at the nape of my neck. I wasn't the only one with my face concealed, so it wasn't that extraordinary to see a cloaked slave cleaning out rooms and the like."

The hacker's hand hovered over the knife before dropping off to the side, still not touching it. "At first, it was just a way to retain my sanity. I knew very well that it was impossible to escape that place and not have Gin hunt me down for the sole purpose of killing me for disobeying him. When ever I could, I immersed myself in the mansion's system, memorizing every code, accessing any information that I could. Most of the information meant nothing to me. But it was the computers that barely kept me there. Barely kept me human."

Ulquiorra paused again, hand moving to his face unconsciously before he stopped himself and set it back down next to the knife.

"But after Gin made me…more beautiful. As he called it. I changed."

Ulquiorra looked down at his hands. He didn't move for a moment before he tugged on sleeve up, then the other, to reveal his wrists. Scarred, white skin shone back at him.

The hacker brought one wrist close to his face, fingertips brushing over the marred skin lightly. "He told me the only way out was death."

Pale lips nearly touched the inside of the wrist, the two shades of pale skin ghostlike and unreal.

"And I believed him wholeheartedly."

Ulquiorra's hand moved suddenly and swiftly, scooping up the jade embellished knife and flicking it open in a fluid flurry of sleek blade and stone.

"But not my death."

The hacker brought the blade to his face, to his lips, even closer than his wrist had been a second ago.

"His."

Ulquiorra didn't move for a moment, and Grimmjow could see the man was thinking back, green eyes deadly cold as they remembered the moment when he had gone from barely surviving to heartlessly plotting the end of another human life. The blue haired agent felt it again. That shiver of recognition. This time he purposely quelled it.

"It wasn't hard procuring a forgotten knife and concealing it. I was his property, wholly and completely. The 'guards' assigned to me at the beginning and the doctors who attended to my wounds wouldn't even look me in the eyes, or handle me for any longer than they had to. It was not in their best interest to be affiliated with me. I was harmless to them, unlikely to lash out, with little to no chance of making it through the first month. It became worse when Gin kept me, I became something of a plague, a curse to even address directly. Secrets were easy to keep."

"…It took some planing. I had no doubts as to whether I could do it. Strange perhaps. Me, a helpless 16 year old, killing a seasoned torturer and murderer. But I knew it would be the sweetest feeling in the world. Like fresh spring of water in hell."

"And yet…"

The hacker rotated the knife in his hand, rotating it between his fingers. "I wondered if I should."

"Not because I had never killed anyone. Not for my soul, or because I thought killing was 'wrong'."

Ulquiorra's face changed for the first time since he sat down. The corners of his mouth slanted downwards with the inverse motion mirrored in his brow.

"There were times…when I doubted him."

The frown did not disappear as the hacker closed his eyes, shaking his head ever so slightly. "…but it didn't matter. He was going to die, and it was me who was going to do it.

Ulquiorra opened his eyes, level gaze back, and all signs of the frown gone as he enveloped the handle of his knife in his palm. "I just had to wait for the right time, the perfect opportunity. It was nearly 5 months before I had it. I found the hints in the system. Orders ignored, citations made, stealthily encoded exchanges. And finally. One night. The order.

"The encrypted order from Aizen to one of his specialized forces teams.

"'Annihilate for insubordination.'"

Ulquiorra's grip on the knife was so strong the bones of his knuckles looks as if there were going to slice through his skin.

"I was furious."

Grimmjow's eye flicked from the blade in the hacker's hand to his face and back again quickly. Ulquiorra's old anger burned in his voice, unrecognizable in his features. The voice of vendetta, of hate. And of something else…something…deeper.

"I was his. I. Me. No one else's. And for a fucking hit team to get this order, a group of men he had never wronged, had never personally handed hell to? And they would get to kill him? No. There was no way I was going to let that happen. It was my right, as his. His death, his Koumori, his. Fucking. His."

Jade eyes looked as if they would shatter the butterfly blade. Eyes of disgust, of hatred, filled with fury and laced with poison.

Before he deflated.

The hacker suddenly leaned back, his eyes closing as he dropped the knife onto the counter with a clatter.

The hacker's jaw was tense. "God, I still hate that son of a bitch."

Tiredness ached in Ulquiorra's voice, exhaustion, and a the echo of a plea to stop. To not have to keep talking. To go back to how he was before he had stepped into Ishida's house. Just a hacker. Just an agent. Pastless, emotionless, and deathly efficient.

But it was too late. Ulquiorra was different now. Exposed. Stripped of the shadows of mysteriousness that usually clung to every member of Grimmjow's team. There was no going back. And with no place to go back to, the only thing left for him was to finish his story.

Just as Ichigo wanted.

"I had very little time to make my decision, and act on it. The message was yet to be opened and I had to work quickly to manipulate it and secure my chance."

Ulquiorra's hand went to his eyes, pressing lightly on the lids before increasing pressure and covering them completely.

"I changed only one thing. The target. Everything else stayed the same. I had my date. My time. My window of opportunity. Everything was set up. The place was obvious. Though he never slept there, my quarters was where he spent the most time when he was not on business. We would not be disturbed, even though we would be monitored. That room was always monitored, though the information only went to Aizen, as I found in my dissection of the system. So my only audience would be Aizen, the sick fuck…"

Ulquiorra slumped forward, arms bracing himself on the counter before he straightened his spine.

"Three weeks before the date Gin took it to unprecedented extremes. The week after my punishment in the slave hold I went half insane with fever. But he didn't stop. The days and nights blended together, but he was always there, and there was always pain. I remember that time as…a night terror bred with a demon from hell. There are things to this day that make me question my sanity…"

Ulquiorra opened his eyes, a look in them Grimmjow couldn't label. "He acted differently. It confused and frightened me. I couldn't tell if it was the fever or if he really said the things I heard.

"There was one thing I kept hearing over and over again though…" Ulquiorra pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes. "'Hurry. Hurry and save us, my little Koumori.'"

Ulquiorra said nothing for a while, merely holding his head in his hands.

"When I came out of the fever, I was alone in my quarters. I didn't know how long he would be gone, even with the date looming large. But I had two weeks to calm and prepare myself…. "

"So I did."

Ulquiorra lifted his face from his hands, letting one hand drop to his knife, spinning it very slowly with one finger on the opposite side of the blade. His face was closed, blank, emotionless.

"And then it was they day of. Or rather the night." Spin.

"He came in. And 'woke me up' as he usually did. By grabbing me by the neck and throwing me were he wanted me that night." Spin.

"It was business as usual. But at the same time, it wasn't. He was…different. I-"

Ulquiorra stopped, mid-spin, as the printer started up again.

Ishida held out a hand until it was done printing and offered it to Ulquiorra without looking at it again.

The hacker took it, eyes hidden by a fringe of hair as he looked at it. He stayed like that for a while before one trembling hand went to his mouth. After a moment, the hand dropped back to the paper and began folding it carefully. In fourths, in twelfths, in sixteenths.

"If you'll excuse me, I am not going to show you this picture." Ulquiorra's head rose, face empty, save for a tightness him his jaw. "It is…more than personal."

Ulquiorra paused, swallowing shallowly. "All that is left to be said of this story is that I killed him. Too quickly, it felt. I had rigged the system to clear the way for an easy escape. And to send the hit team intended for Gin to Tousen's room instead. I left that place, not knowing whether that part had been executed correctly until yesterday when I saw Sixty-nine for the first time since then."

The man slipped the folded picture into one pocket, pausing before he spoke again.

"I returned to Romania even though my mother was already dead. I knew she wasn't going to last long when I had been kidnapped. My efforts had been too little, too late in the end."

Ulquiorra plucked his butterfly knife off the table, closing it quickly and pocketing it as he spoke emotionlessly and quickly.

"From there I…procured…formal training in weapons and self-defense. The training saved me from being at the mercy of my clients again more than once. I was contracted by the Romanian government once or twice and the CIA caught wind of me. Idiots tried hacking me. Offered a job when they couldn't manage it. I declined the first few times before they adjusted the openness of the contract to my liking. I came to America…it would be three years ago if I'm 20 now."

The hacker stopped there, hands folded in his lap, spine straight and eyes focused on something past the wall of Ishida's kitchen. Completely exposed. Save for that last photograph. The papers in Grimmjow's own pocket seemed to burn and he knew how the man must feel, nearly clinging to that one piece of him. Grimmjow remembered a time when there was no part of him that was his, save his thoughts. And truly, not even those at times. But better for Ulquiorra to be revealed to those who would not think of harming him, than a sadistic psychopath. Still the painfully empty eyes seemed like things Grimmjow should not have been privy to.

Ulquiorra blinked slowly, head turning to look Grimmjow directly in the eyes, as if he could tell exactly what Grimmjow was thinking, forcing him to look back almost spitefully. As if if he had to do this, Grimmjow and his team had to witness it. Every second, every word, every look.

His voice was empty as he spoke up one last time.

"Any questions, gentlemen?"

A/N: Review like Colorful-Crap. I like real reviews with insight and criticism as well as compliments.