One Week of Hell

by Grinch1234

Summary:

In which Ichigo graduates high school and doesn’t want to go back, so he gets Grimmjow to do the high-school-based mission instead. A horrible decision, really.
Featuring Grimmjow, Class 1A being confused, Aizawa being Tired, Urahara messing around, and Ichigo living his best life.

Notes:

lmao idk anymore yall. I wrote this on a whim then realized I was in too deep to not finish it off.
Lemme know if there's missing tags, my brain is currently mush so I may have missed something
Also full disclosure I’m not done watching the anime yet but I’ve read enough fanfic that it should fill in the gaps lol

Hope you enjoy the silliness!

“Grimmjow, please?”

“No.”

“Come on, I even said please!”

“And I said no.” Grimmjow, busy doing push-ups (one of the many human exercises Ichigo’s strange father taught him), ignores Ichigo as the other groans his complaints.

“But I just finished high school, I don’t want to go back! Come on, do it for me?”

Grimmjow’s eyes narrow. That sounds suspiciously close to begging. Which means bargaining is on the table.

“Why would I do this?”

Ichigo brightens. “I’ll fight you at full strength next time.”

“You do that already.” Grimmjow’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you?”

The soul reaper hums thoughtfully and avoids the question. “I’ll buy those cat treats you like.”

Grimmjow pauses his exercises to look up and glare at him. Ichigo winces. Grimmjow huffs. “Your sister buys those already.” He goes back to his push-ups.

“Really? Huh, I guess that makes sense. Yuzu does like having everyone’s favourite snacks on hand.” Ichigo shakes his head. “Anyway, uh, I’ll let you nap on my bed?”

Grimmjow raises a slim blue eyebrow. He is currently exercising in the bedroom and already naps in the bed whenever he wants. Ichigo, having realized the same thing, is frowning hard.

A moment passes, then: “Fine!” Ichigo flops onto his back, shuffling so he can tip his head and meet Grimmjow’s eyes. “What do you want?”

A smirk twists Grimmjow’s lips. Things are going exactly to plan.

Slowly, he sits up. Ichigo follows. They are both sitting on the floor, neither has their swords, yet the room is just as tense as if they were sparring.

“I get to pick what we watch for every movie night for the next year after I’m back.”

Ichigo stares. Blinks. Then stares some more. His lips part. He snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head as if waking from a dream.

“Wait, seriously?”

“Yeah.” Grimmjow quite likes movie night. The only problem is that sometimes Ichigo picks something the human actually wants to watch, which ruins the main point of movie night: the head scratches Grimmjow is entitled to. But if he picks out something more to his own tastes (nature documentaries, mostly), Ichigo is quickly bored and thus gives more attention to the head scratches. As he should. He should be honoured to have Grimmjow’s head rest in his lap for the occasion and should give good head scratches appropriately.

“Alright, deal!” Ichigo exclaims, sticking his hand out. Grimmjow knows this one. They shake hands.

“I’ll go talk to Urahara,” Ichigo declares, rolling to his feet and heading for the window. “He’ll deal with all the paperwork. Thanks a lot, Grimmjow!”

As Ichigo hops out of the window and rushes off, Grimmjow smirks to himself: he just earnt Ichigo’s favour for a while and extra head scratches. Quite the productive day.

 

Maybe Ichigo was onto something about this not-wanting-to-go-to-high-school thing: Grimmjow has been in this classroom for four seconds and is ready to murder someone. Though, to be fair, he normally wants to murder someone.

Still, the kids are all looking at him. His lip curls into a sneer. Dumb brats. Why’re they staring like he’s some kind of zoo animal?

“Class, this is our new student, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez,” the dark-haired teacher says in a tired voice. “He is here for— well, as an exchange student, I guess. Please do your best to help him adjust to UA.”

None of the students say a word. They are all still staring at him. So is the teacher, Grimmjow realizes belatedly.

“What?” He snaps. His hand settles on Pantera’s hilt, then drops. He promised Ichigo he wouldn’t kill any of the students. Though, judging by the limited strength in their spiritual energy, he wouldn’t want to dirty her blade with their blood anyway.

“Why don’t you introduce yourself?” The teacher suggests.

“You just did that,” Grimmjow retorts.

“What’s your quirk?” Some green haired brat asks in a tentative voice. Grimmjow curls his lips back from his fangs and delights in the way the kid flinches and looks away.

“What school did you go to?” Another kid, one with those funky eye things that the quincy has, asks.

Grimmjow pauses. He was told something about this.

“Juvie,” he declares boldly, nodding to himself. That sounds right.

However, as the students shriek and the teacher sighs loudly, Grimmjow realizes that bastard Urahara played him again.

“You were in jail?!” Oh. So that’s what ‘juvie’ means. “Is that why you’re so old?” One blond kid gasp.

Grimmjow shoots the brat a sharp look. “I’m sixteen. Obviously.” The room goes silent. Someone coughs. It’s clear no one believes him, but whatever. It’s a lie anyway. All part of that cover story thing Urahara gave him yesterday. Grimmjow skimmed the stack of papers shoved into a file folder, then decided he didn’t care and ripped the pages to shreds — so Yuzu could use them as kindling. He’s considerate like that.

“Why don’t you take a seat.” It is not a question. While Grimmjow does not take orders from anyone, he did agree to this. He has to play along — to some degree — for at least a little bit. Otherwise Ichigo will know Grimmjow wasn’t competent enough to take over this stupid mission, and that would count as losing, which Grimmjow doesn’t do. Ever. (Fighting against Ichigo doesn’t count anymore since they hardly try to kill each other these days.)

Ignoring the empty seat and desk near the door, Grimmjow stalks over to the other side of the room, stopping next to the seat in the far back corner near the windows.

“Scram,” he huffs, narrowing his eyes at the kid occupying said seat.

The dark-hair girl blinks up at him, doe-eyed and confused. When she doesn’t move fast enough, Grimmjow’s hand settles on Pantera’s hilt again, a silent threat. Though he is pretty sure said threat flies right over her pathetic little head.

“Jaegerjaquez—” the teacher starts, sounding thoroughly exhausted.

“If I have to waste my time here then I’m sitting in the sun. So move it, brat. Or beat me in a fight.”

“I-I don’t want to fight!” The girl gasps. “We’re classmates!” She swiftly collects the things that are set out on the desk — paper, pens, and pencils, Grimmjow remembers these from when Ichigo was finishing high school — then grabs the bag lying at the floor and vacates the seat. Excellent. Sun-warmed seat perfect for napping acquired.

The girl takes the seat on the other side of the room and Grimmjow drags his newly won chair closer to the sunny window before sprawling into it and closing his eyes, ignoring the tiny, pathetic glares being shot his way by the students.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the teacher starts in a low voice. He suspects it’s supposed to be intimidating. “This conduct is not acceptable at UA. If this continues, I will contact your parole officer—”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow scoffs. “Good fucking luck dealing with Urahara.”

The teacher looks at him, then squints at the pages in hand. “It says here your contact is named Kurosaki.”

“Fucking bastard,” Grimmjow growls, talking about Urahara, as he quickly sits up properly in the stupid plastic chair. “Don’t bother him. I’ll behave. I guess.” Bah, how boring. The deal with Ichigo was that he would attend, not be a model student or any of that shit.

Though he has heard that being too un-student-like (like missing too many classes, Ichigo) can get one removed from the school. And if he gets kicked out, then doing the whole looking-for-weird-souls thing that he, Ichigo, and Urahara came to this world for will be much more difficult. Somehow. Grimmjow still isn’t sure why a school is involved, but whatever. He’s here so no point complaining now.

About ten seconds into the ‘class’ part of the day, Grimmjow really starts to get why Ichigo was so adamant about not going back to high school: it’s boring as hell. The teacher is going on about a test on some laws that don’t mean shit to him cause he’s dead, and the students are all paying attention like the goody-two-shoes they are.

Well, Grimmjow took a sun-side seat for a reason. The sun is pleasantly warm against his skin and basking in warmth always makes him a little sleepy. So, since he does not think anyone here is a threat — and Pantera would warn him if anyone was stupid enough to attack — Grimmjow lets his head flop back, closes his eyes, and conks out within seconds.

 

About two minutes into Aizawa-sensei’s homeroom announcements, Midoriya hears a strange noise. He ignores it at first, thinking it’s just Mineta being weird again, but it keeps going. After a minute or so, unable to help it, he twists in his seat and peeks over his shoulder. Then stares.

The new transfer (from prison?! Midoriya has so many questions about the legality involved in allowing a convicted criminal to join a hero class part-way through the year), Jaegerjaquez, is completely asleep. And is snoring, which is the noise Midoriya can hear. The most startling part of this should be that it is kind of impressive that the transfer managed to fall asleep so quickly. But — and this is the part that has Mina, Jirou, and some of the others giggling quietly — Jaegerjaquez snores like a kitten. Which makes no sense. A guy that big, brutish, and rude should not have cute kitten snores. That defies all logic!

Well, maybe Midoriya judged him too quickly. It was a startling first impression to see a guy who looks more twenty-five than sixteen in their class, let alone carrying a sword on his hip and wearing a strange bone-like mask on his face. Though some (Iida) were likely more concerned that he was wearing an all-black getup rather than the UA uniform.

Midoriya shakes his head. He should know better than to jump to conclusions and judge people before getting to know them. He nods firmly, turning back to face the front. After class, he’ll apologize to Jaegerjaquez and try to make friends with the new student.

 

School isn’t so bad, Grimmjow decides, upon waking from his nap when the bell signalling that it is noon rings. Granted, for some people it may get boring to sleep all morning and all afternoon, but, as an arrancar and former panther adjuchas (not cat, nor kitty, no matter how much Ichigo teases), Grimmjow knows the value of enjoying the days when he can waste time lazing about in the sun.

“Jaegerjaquez!” A somewhat shaky but determined voice calls out. The class goes quiet; Grimmjow can feel their eyes lock onto him.

Glancing to the source of the noise, a green-haired brat with strange soul-energy about him, Grimmjow scoffs and looks away, ignoring the attempt to get his attention. None of these pathetic, weak humans deserves a singular speck of his time.

“Hey, Jaegerjaquez! Do you want to eat lunch with us?” Greenie keeps talking. Grimmjow stares out the window. Being blatantly rude usually works to deter all annoyances.

Well, minus Ichigo. But whatever. That worked out alright; the human is a good fighter and is even better at head scratches (the two most important qualities in a person, really). But he’s already got an Ichigo, so he doesn’t need any other humans bothering him.

After almost three minutes of pestering, a soft-looking brown-haired girl grabs greenie’s arm. “Come on, Deku. I don’t think he wants to eat lunch with us.”

“But—”

“We can invite him again tomorrow.”

Greenie sighs. “Okay. Good idea, Uraraka.” Finally they leave him alone.

Well, alone with the teacher, whose dark eyes narrow as Grimmjow shifts in his seat, popping his back, and flicks his legs up onto his desk. For a normal human, such a sprawled, twisted position would surely ruin their spine and any chance of comfort. For Grimmjow, he hums contently and closes his eyes, more than ready to keep napping away.

His eyes snap open. Before he realizes what his gut is warning him about, his hand lashes out and grabs something — a strange cloth thing that was flying at him.

Grimmjow squints at the cloth, then follows it back to the teacher, who seems a fraction more surprised than tired.

They stare at each other for a long moment before Grimmjow — without blinking first — cocks his head and asks, “Was that supposed to be an attack?”

“A reprimand, actually,” the teacher replies, his voice steady. “Your conduct has been most disappointing thus far. UA did not accept you here for you to sleep. This chance at rehabilitation classes is supposed to be for your benefit.”

Rehabilitation? Grimmjow nearly scoffs, before remembering that such a laughable idea likely comes from that document Urahara wanted him to read. Part of the cover story and all that.

Trying to go along with it, Grimmjow opens his mouth to apologize and half-heartedly agree to try harder in class or whatever.

“Fuck you. You’re too pathetic to give me orders.”

Well, that wasn’t what he planned to say, but it certainly is just as effective and much more truthful.

The teacher’s face goes stony. The cloth-weapon-thing is drawn back; Grimmjow lets it go.

“One more incident this week, whatever it may be, and I am contacting your parole officer.”

“Whatever,” Grimmjow scoffs. After the initial shock of finding out all his ‘misbehaviour’ will be reported to Ichigo, not Urahara, Grimmjow realized one very important fact: Ichigo is technically here on vacation — something about avoiding soul reaper duties for a while — so he is not likely to answer any phone calls. Besides, Ichigo practically begged Grimmjow to do this mission for him; he doesn’t get to complain about his methods after the fact. So, who cares? All the teacher has on his side are empty, useless threats.

With that, Grimmjow is left to doze peacefully for nearly an entire hour before the students trickle back in from their lunch break. Thinking about lunch, Grimmjow hums thoughtfully. They are in a strange, hollow-less world. How is he supposed to eat? Ichigo would be mad if he went around eating humans. Well, maybe that’s something to ask about later. Urahara probably has some sly solution that he failed to mention to anyone else.

When Grimmjow cracks an eye open, he finds the students still shooting curious little looks at him. He nearly growls so that the curiosity turns to fear, but refrains. See? He’s totally capable of playing at being a student.

Notably, however, is that they are all wearing blue. Before, they had grey. The blue is just as ugly, really, but Grimmjow sits up straight, letting his feet thump to the floor, and blinks. Why would they change clothes in the middle of the day? That seems so impractical. Other than being hideous, there was nothing wrong with the grey outfit.

Then a pile of blue is dumped on the desk his feet just vacated.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the teacher says in a sharp tone. “Your gym uniform. Go change into it.”

Looking from the ugly pile of clothes to the teacher, Grimmjow slowly raises an eyebrow. He scoffs. “Already told you, you’re too weak to give me orders.” He kicks the table lightly, causing the whole thing to tremble, and the blue uniform to flop pathetically to the floor. “I’m not wearing that.”

“Last warning, Jaegerjaquez. I will contact your parole officer.”

“I fucking dare you to.” Grimmjow grins, showing off his fangs. The teacher looks away first, a furrow in his brow.

“Um, I know the colour isn’t for everyone, but the UA gym uniform is actually really comfortable, not to mention the material used is designed specifically for improved ventilation, flexibility—”

“Shut up,” Grimmjow sighs, already wishing he could at least give this annoyingly talkative green-haired brat some sort of injury that would shut him up for a good while. Maybe a concussion or a decapitation. Either works. “I don’t give a single fuck about your dumb-looking uniform. I didn’t sign up to wear that thing, so I’m not wearing it. Simple.”

No one harps on him to wear it after that, so, when he follows the kids outside for whatever they do, he is quite contently still wearing his own clothes. As such, since it is rather warm out, Grimmjow tugs the zipper on his top down. Doing so allows more of his skin to be hit with sunlight, which is always pleasant.

It also causes the kids near him to gasp.

Grimmjow furrows his brow and glances down at his chest. His hollow hole isn’t visible (he was able to get away with being himself and not shoved into some stupid gigai cause of some nonsense with spirit energy in this world. He didn’t really listen when Urahara talked about it). The scar on his chest is the only thing the kids could be surprised about. Odd. When Ichigo was this age, he certainly had scars. Though, Ichigo is not exactly the best example of a regular human.

“Got a problem?” Grimmjow snaps, eyes narrowing as a red-haired kid stares for too long.

“No, not at all!” The kid replies earnestly. “I mean, I want to ask how you got it, it’s a real manly scar, but I don’t want to be rude. We’ve only just met this morning.”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes. “Not a single spine amongst you,” he mutters under his breath. The girl with purple hair and weird ears flinches.

A moment passes where they walk vaguely south. The kids are still staring at his scar. Grimmjow is still ignoring the lot of them. Then some skinny blond guy runs over to them, grinning in a far too cheerful way.

“Hello, Class 1A!” Blond guy does a double take when he looks at Grimmjow. His beady little eyes flick to the teacher. “Ahem. I take it this is our new transfer student, Aizawa?”

“Unfortunately.”

The blond guy nods, then straightens his back, marches over, and claps a hand on Grimmjow’s shoulder.

Grimmjow’s eye twitches. His fingers ghost Pantera’s hilt.

“Greetings, young man! You probably know me as All Might, but you can call me Yagi while we are on campus. My, that is quite the scar you’ve got there! If you ever wish to heal it, just let someone know and Recovery Girl can—”

“Fuck off.” Having had enough, Grimmjow jerks his shoulder out from the man’s deceptively strong grip and glares at him. “I kept this scar on purpose. And if you ever touch me again, I’ll rip your fucking arms off.” Figuring that is a fair warning, Grimmjow steps around the stunned man and stomps off. The students, having stopped to watch the confrontation, are still, so he heads vaguely south like they were doing before.

It only takes a few minutes of walking to gather in a weirdly realistic fake cityscape. The weird part is not that they have an entire fake city for the school — for all he knows, maybe all schools do that — but that there are no souls inhabiting it. That makes the place seem eerie, in a strange way.

The annoying blond man starts talking about teamwork, exercises, and a group activity, so Grimmjow promptly stops listening and begins scouting the best spots to nap. So far his options are the rooftops of the buildings, or the grass that surrounds the cityscape. The rooftops are nice since they are high up, but if they are somehow involved in the thing the brats are doing, then Grimmjow wants to be nowhere nearby. But if he naps on the ground, people can bother him. Such a dilemma.

A small, grubby hand grabs his wrist and tugs.

“Hey, do you want to be my partner for the exercise?” The short, pathetic-looking kid with weird balls on his head asks. “Everyone else has default partners by now, but I’m one of the most popular kids in class, so I’m willing to let you be my friend.”

Grimmjow distantly hears the words. He is much more focused on the hand that is still touching him.

Slowly, he looks up from his wrist and locks eyes with this fool. The brat doesn’t notice and keeps talking about how cool he is. Grimmjow lets a small amount of his spiritual pressure flicker out as a warning. While some of the students nearby stiffen and shoot worried glances his way, this kid doesn’t react whatsoever.

So, having given two very clear warnings, Grimmjow grabs the kid’s wrist and snaps it in a single swift squish. That gets the kid to stop yapping about himself. The kid screams and clutches his hand tight to his chest as big, watery tears blubber down his cheeks. Grimmjow scoffs.

“Jaegerjaquez!” The dark-haired teacher snarls. Then, under his breath at a volume Grimmjow only hears thanks to his arrancar-level hearing: “Dammit, I knew it was too dangerous to risk bringing a criminal here!”

Grimmjow shifts his stance. From the energy and the glare he is getting from that teacher, he might actually get a fight — however brief — today.

Instead, still glaring at him, the teacher whips out his cellphone, jabs numbers harshly into it, then lifts it to his ear. Grimmjow has all of five seconds to feel smug before he hears a small click and Ichigo’s voice going, “Hello?” Fuck. Ichigo actually did answer the phone. So much for being on vacation.

Needless to say, Grimmjow does the smart thing and promptly tackles the teacher.

Shrieks of alarm rise from the ever-watching peasants, whom Grimmjow continues to ignore, as he does his best to not actually hurt the teacher while trying to wrench the phone from his hands. Unfortunately, the teacher is a more stubborn bastard than Grimmjow gave him credit for, so swiping the phone is proving more difficult than it should be.

“Uh, I can hear vague fighting noises, so I’m just gonna come over.” Upon hearing phone-Ichigo’s statement, Grimmjow hisses. He scrambles to his feet, dusts himself off, and yanks the teacher back to his feet too. He scans the teacher quickly, nodding when he finds no injuries, then turns to the purple-haired kid who is still crying.

Grimmjow takes two steps toward the kid to tower over him. “Stop crying,” Grimmjow orders. “Now. Cry after if you need to, but you’re fine. It’s only a broken bone anyway,” he mutters, turning away from the kid who has stopped crying — though mostly from shock at being told to shut up, Grimmjow suspects.

“Uh, is anyone else really confused?” A kid with weird elbows asks, scratching at his neck.

“All of you shut up!” Grimmjow snaps. He realizes he has been pacing and quickly halts. He spins to the dark-haired doe-eyed girl with the ponytail. She seemed reasonable enough earlier when giving up her seat to him this morning. “You,” he points at her. “Do you learn language courses?”

“What?” The girl blinks, baffled, then nods. “Yes, we had English this morning.”

“English,” Grimmjow repeats. “Okay. That works. If he asks, tell him I participated in English.”

“What?” The girl repeats. “If who asks—”

Sensing the approaching spiritual energy, Grimmjow has just enough time to raise his hands into a block in front of his face before Ichigo’s foot slams into them. The blow causes Grimmjow to slide back a couple feet: not enough strength to be a real attack, but rather a playful greeting.

“Hey,” Ichigo says, landing on the ground. He is wearing causal human clothes: black, tight pants and a light blue shirt that almost matches the shade of Grimmjow’s hair. “What’d you do to make them call me day one, Grimm?”

“Nothing,” Grimmjow lies expertly. “I’ve been perfectly behaved.”

“Really?” Here Ichigo glances to the class, who, like usual, are staring at him. “Is that, uh, true?”

Grimmjow doesn’t dare try to glare any of them into submission (lying for him) as looking away from Ichigo is just as good as admitting he already broke school rules.

“H-he answered some questions in English?”

Ichigo seems just as surprised as Grimmjow is. Ponytail girl actually lied for him. Huh. Guess she’s got some guts.

Then Ichigo’s eyes narrow. “Grimmjow, you can’t speak English.”

“Sure I can.”

“Knowing how to swear is not the same as fluency. And if you knew English, you would’ve helped me with my essays last year. So, busted. What’d you actually do?”

Grimmjow makes a grave mistake: he allows his eyes to flick aside. That brief moment is all it takes for Ichigo to know he is lying.

“Did you hurt anyone?” Ichigo asks. He suddenly sounds very tired. Grimmjow bites his lip, steadily refusing to feel guilty.

“No.”

“He broke my wrist!” Blob-head wails, holding out the bent-at-an-odd-angle joint.

Ichigo narrows his eyes.

“It’s only a single bone!” Grimmjow protests. “That hardly counts as a real injury!”

In the past, this is when Ichigo would draw his sword and try to beat morals and whatever into him. Now, Ichigo knows to do something even worse and a hell of a lot more effective: his shoulders slump, his lips turn to an unhappy frown, and he crosses his arms over his chest. “Grimmjow, I’m very disappointed in you.”

Grimmjow nearly whimpers. That’s not fucking fair. Disapproval from a single human should not matter at all. But it’s Ichigo. And, as always, the rules are always different when it comes to him. So that stance and those words hits deeper and harder than if Ichigo impaled him with Zangetsu.

“But—”

“Nope, not listening right now. Go sit in the shade and think about what you’ve done wrong.”

Grimmjow fumes, but, as his head scratches are on the line, stomps over to the shaded part of the cityscape and slumps down, sitting with his back to the wall. He does his best to look like he is not pouting. An arrancar of his status and strength does not pout just because a human reprimanded them.

 

Midoriya is so confused. He has no idea what is going on anymore. One second Mineta is bawling, crying over a broken wrist, the next Jaegerjaquez is tackling Aizawa-sensei to the ground and grappling, then Midoriya has to grab Kacchan so he doesn’t jump in. Then, like a switch flipped, Jaegerjaquez is suddenly trying to pretend that he’s been a model student all day. Which he hasn’t. Asking Yaomomo to lie for him somehow only makes that worse.

Then some orange-haired guy zips in out of nowhere, kicks Jaegerjaquez in the head, and proceeds to start chatting with him like they are buddies. At least Aizawa-sensei and All Might look equally confused. Midoriya doesn’t feel as out-of-the-loop that way.

Still, when orange-hair turns to face them with a cheery smile after sending Jaegerjaquez to what seems like a kindergarten corner time-out, Midoriya tries to smile back.

“Sorry about all that!” The guy says. “If Grimmjow gives you guys more trouble, just let me know and I’ll wrangle him. That’s kinda my job these days.”

“You’re his parole officer?” Aizawa-sensei asks. “Kurosaki?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me. Sorry, guess I should’ve introduced myself before jumping in like that, huh?” He laughs sheepishly. “Whoops. Anyway, since I’m here, best to clear up a few things.” Kurosaki turns to Aizawa-sensei. “I’m planning to stop in every couple days to make sure things are going smoothly. I figured I’d do so after school hours were over, but we’ll see. Might do a random in-class check to make sure Grimmjow is awake and paying attention to classes. Uh, what else did I need to tell you? Oh, right. As part of his, uh, community rehabilitation, I’ll be taking him on Sundays. To do rehabilitation stuff. Yep.”

“Is that cleared with Nedzu?”

“The principal? I think so. Well, if that’s everything, I ought to head out— Oh, right!” Kurosaki snaps his fingers and shifts to address the class at large. “Couple of important Grimmjow-survival facts before I go—” Survival?! “—don’t touch him, don’t get into his space, don’t touch his sword, and don’t touch his food or possessions if he has any. It’s kind of like dealing with a stray cat, but don’t call him one. That never goes well.” As he lists things, Kurosaki ticks down his fingers. When he gets to the last one, he still has one finger left unticked and frowns at it. “Oh, right. Don’t challenge him to a fight. Please. For all our sakes. Just don’t.”

Midoriya shoots a glance Kacchan’s way. He looks far too curious about that last point for it to lead anywhere good.

“Any other information we should have received before today?” Aizawa-sensei asks dryly.

“Eh, that should be the important stuff. If I think of more, then I’ll let you know. Well,” Kurosaki pauses, his warm eyes flicking Yaomomo’s way, “I’d certainly like to see him make some friends. But he’s really bad at that, so, uh, tread lightly.” Kurosaki nods to himself. “Okay, that should be it. Feel free to leave him in the shade till he comes back of his own accord. But yeah. I was in the middle of ordering a sundae, so I’m going to get back to that. Bye.” With that, Kurosaki flashes away just as fast as he appeared.

Midoriya’s jaw drops. He was paying closer attention this time, yet the man still vanished! Some kind of teleportation quirk, maybe? Either way, he would love to find out. Teleportation has so many interesting uses outside of the immediate obvious ones: what about transporting items alongside yourself? Or simply sending items from one place to another? That would be a valuable tool for, say, transferring money between banks. Or anyone valuable goods, really. Armoured cars are the most attacked vehicles on the streets—

“Deku?” Uraraka whispers. “You’re mumbling again.”

Midoriya slaps a hand over his mouth as his cheeks flush red. “Sorry!” He squeaks.

As All Might tries to gather their attention for the heroics class activity that afternoon, Midoriya finds his gaze slinking over to Jaegerjaquez. The transfer is slumped against the wall, looking downright miserable. Like, one-second-away-from-crying miserable. Midoriya frowns, tearing his gaze away before Jaegerjaquez catches him staring. He knows that expression well, having seen it in the mirror every day in middle school and quite a number before that too. Maybe Kurosaki was onto something about Jaegerjaquez really needing to make friends.

Well, good thing Midoriya already vowed to try his best to befriend him! Instead of waiting for lunchtime tomorrow, he’ll just do something nice today! Like help Jaegerjaquez settle into the dorm. Surely the transfer student will need help unpacking!

Confident in his idea, Midoriya gives his full attention back to All Might, shifting from toe-to-toe with renewed energy.

 

Grimmjow’s totally cool brooding is ruined nearly two hours later when an angry kid stomps over, crosses his arms and sneers down at him.

“You’re weak,” the kid states bluntly.

Grimmjow’s eyes narrow. “What’d you say?” His tone is a growl, a very clear warning to reflect and change the answer.

The dumb blond brat doesn’t heed the warning. “I said that you’re weak. For all your talk and postering, you let that orange-haired dweeb push you around like a fucking wimp.”

Slowly, Grimmjow stands. He looks down at the kid, using all six feet and one inch of height to his advantage. There are a couple things that Grimmjow hates more than anything else. At the top of that list is losing. Next is having someone assume he is weak, and thus would lose. Right below that, maybe even tied, is when someone insults Ichigo. This brat just did two of those three things.

“Back off, kid,” Grimmjow warns in a low voice.

The kid scoffs. They are slowly gaining the ever-watching eyes of the rest of the class. The teachers are marching over, clearly intent on stopping what they assume will be a fight. As if. If Grimmjow were to attack, he could kill them all within moments. Nobody here could stop him.

“H-hey, Kacchan? Maybe you should take a step back and—”

“Shut the hell up, Deku!” Angry blond kid snaps at Greenie, who must be Deku. A fitting name for an annoying brat. “I know what I’m doing. This guy ain’t anything special, and I’ll prove it.” The kid grins almost manically. Sparks pop in his hands. Grimmjow nearly laughs: a couple of sparks aren’t anything compared to a cero.

“But Kurosaki said not to challenge him to a fight—”

“Who the hell cares what that useless nobody had to say?! If I wanna fight, then I’ll fight!”

“But Kacchan—!”

“Apologize,” Grimmjow says softly, his fingers flexing at his sides.

“What?” Angry kid glares up at him.

“Apologize,” Grimmjow repeats.

The kid scoffs. “Fuck no, I’m not listening to some push-over with cotton candy hair—”

Moving faster than the kid can react, Grimmjow grabs the kid’s arm, twists it behind his back, and uses that leverage point to slam the kid into the ground hard enough that he gasps as the air flies out of his lungs.

“Apologize,” Grimmjow says for the last time, the word more growl than anything at this point. “Kurosaki could kill you all without trying, so don’t you dare insult his strength.”

“Fuck off!” The kid twists a bit, realizes he cannot break Grimmjow’s hold, and blasts the sparks from his hands. The attack hits Grimmjow’s chest but does no damage. It takes more than that to scratch his hierro.

While Grimmjow would love to dislocate this kid’s shoulder — Ichigo made it clear that breaking bones is not allowed — the dark-haired teacher is close and clearly about to grab him, so Grimmjow releases the bratty blond and takes a couple steps back. He hooks his thumbs onto his belts and smirks as the teacher glares at him.

“Jaegerjaquez, this is your final warning,” the teacher says in a sharp voice. “If you continue threatening or hurting my students, you will be expelled. Expulsion violates the conditions of your parole so you will be sent back to juvenile detention. Am I making myself clear?” At the point the teacher’s eyes are glowing red and his hair is standing on end. Guess that means he’s being serious.

“Sure.” Grimmjow shrugs. Not like any prison they’ve got around here could hold him, but the point is clear: if he gets kicked out of the school, his deal with Ichigo is off and he can kiss his year of movie night head scratches goodbye.

Wait. Does that mean he has to be nice to these pathetically weak humans? Grimmjow glances at the assembled children: most are still watching him carefully, but they are a lot warier and afraid than they were this morning. Which is what Grimmjow would prefer. But if being rude and aggressive (so, his normal self), is going to ruin this mission thing, he may need a backup plan.

…The only problem is that he has no backup plan. At least not a good one. Being (ugh) nice to all these humans is out of the question. Well, if he keeps ignoring them all, naps more, and thus avoids any interactions that lead to him breaking bones, then it should all work. Hopefully. Important things are on the line here and he cannot afford to mess up any worse than he already has.

 

When the school day is officially over, the teacher pulls him aside after class to yap on about rules and detention and some other stuff Grimmjow doesn’t care to listen to. After twenty minutes, the teacher finally lets him go free — well, free as in the teacher marches him to the dorm room he apparently has to stay in and basically shoves him inside with a warning that there are cameras installed that will alert a nearby teacher if he breaks any rules.

Then the door is shut behind him and Grimmjow realizes he missed a very important part of this whole ‘dorm’ thing: all the kids live here too. Which means they are going to be around, annoying him, all the time, not just during classes.

Great.

Most of the class is in the common space and glance his way when he enters. Immediately, Greenie leaps to his feet, determination clear on his face.

“Jaegerjaquez! Do you need help unpacking?”

“No.”

“O-oh. Do you, uh, want a tour?”

“No.” Grimmjow looks around the building. The common space is large and open. He can sense kids above him and it looked pretty tall from outside. He scowls. “Fine. But make it quick.” The kid lights up like a glowstick and bobbles his head eagerly.

“Okay!”

As he follows Greenie out of the common room, Grimmjow spies Ponytail making tea. His eyes narrow. That’s an expensive brand, one that Yuzu and Karin like to get when they can swing it.

Grimmjow tunes out Greenie as he blabs on about some hero thing and homework and a bunch of other useless stuff. All he wanted out of this was a brief guide to the space, not any small talk. In any case, he pays close attention to all the spaces Greenie leads him to. A laundry room — useless given Grimmjow has one outfit and only trusts Yuzu to clean it properly — two shower rooms separated by binary gender, the kitchen is apparently connected to the common room (not that Grimmjow needs a kitchen for anything), and the most important spot, the bedrooms. Each student gets their own room and there are only a handful of rooms on each level.

As it turns out, they gave Grimmjow a room on the fifth floor, the highest floor, at the end of the hall. At first he thought this was a bad plan, but it’s actually not horrible: if he were to go on a murderous rampage, then, assuming he started from this room, those in the floors below this have a better chance of running out of the building before he gets to them. Theoretically. In practicality, he is much too fast for any of them to outrun.

Greenie talks some more about the other people on this floor, which Grimmjow doesn’t care about since he plans to never interact with them, then once again offers to help Grimmjow unpack.

“What aren’t you getting?” Grimmjow snaps. His patience levels are at zero after listening to that much chatter. “I don’t have anything to unpack, so scram.”

“O-oh. I’m sorry!” The kid squeaks. “I didn’t mean to be rude—”

Grimmjow decides to test his new room by stepping inside and slamming the door in the kid’s face. A panicked yelp sounds. His lips quirk up.

Figuring the kid will now leave him alone, Grimmjow does a slow tour of the room. It is a decent size and has a balcony, which is nice. He opens the balcony door and leaves it cracked to let fresh air in. The room is also equipped with a small separate space with a toilet and mirror, and a closet.

The only interesting item to be found in the room is the giant, black beanbag chair set into the corner. Since no one is around, Grimmjow allows his eyes to soften ever so slightly. It is clear who put this here, and it was not any of the school staff.

Quite happy to break in the new purchase, Grimmjow flops into the beanbag chair, humming contently as it melds to the awkward sprawl his body contorts into. Ah yes, these are the best human invention of all time. He rubs his non-hollow-mask cheek against the material, pleased that it is adequately soft and kind of smells like Ichigo.

Obviously, Grimmjow settles in for yet another nap. It’s only proper: he has to test out his new beanbag chair.

 

This time Grimmjow is awoken by swift, harsh knocking on the door. For a moment he is in a fine mood, assuming that it’s Ichigo coming in through the balcony. Then he realizes the knocks are coming from the hall-side door.

His decent mood curdles.

“What?” Grimmjow barks.

“Hey there, buddy!” An awkward laugh and small oof are heard. “So, uh, it’s dinnertime. We drew the short straw— er, we were sent to invite you down. Bakubro makes a mean dish, so—”

“Go away,” Grimmjow snarls. “I’m busy.”

A small pause, then: “Doing what? You just got here and Aizawa-sensei didn’t assign any homework today.”

“Sleeping.”

“Oh. Okay, fair. Uh, come down when you’re hungry, I guess. I’ll try to save you leftovers, but Kirishima usually eats whatever’s left—”

“Hey! That’s not true!”

“—especially if it’s Bakubro’s cooking.”

“He makes real manly food!”

“Uh huh. Whatever you say, Kiri.”

Footsteps tap and steadily grow quieter. Finally. That took far longer than it should have, but at least he avoided having to go downstairs and interact with all the kids again.

 

The next time Grimmjow wakes, it is only a few hours later and is for a much better reason: his eyes snap open the moment he feels Ichigo’s spiritual pressure approaching.

He gracefully (with slight scrambling and face-planting) gets off the beanbag and is out on the balcony before Ichigo arrives.

“Hey,” the soul reaper says seconds later, perched on the balcony railing. He has a small bag slung over his shoulder. Grimmjow’s eyes lock onto it immediately.

“I don’t know how you did four years of school,” Grimmjow says back. “I’ve been here a day and slept through most of it, but it’s boring as hell.”

“I actually did twelve years of school. Wait, thirteen? I did have to repeat a term… Uh, math was my bad subject. But yeah, I can’t believe I still have to do four more years when I go to college.”

Grimmjow’s eyes narrow. “You never mentioned college before.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “When will we fight? You were always too busy when you were doing high school.”

“We’ll figure it out, I promise!” Ichigo hops off the railing and pats his shoulder. “I didn’t say anything before since I wasn’t sure I was going to go, but Dad, Urahara, and Rukia talked me into it.”

Without waiting for an invitation, Ichigo slithers past Grimmjow and heads into the dorm room. “Hey, this place isn’t too bad! Could use a TV, or some shelves, but it’s got decent space.”

Grimmjow follows Ichigo inside, leaving the balcony door wide open behind him. He lets Ichigo poke around: there’s nothing to find in here, but this is one of those human things that Grimmjow can’t stop from happening, so he flops onto the beanbag and waits it out.

Thankfully it only takes a couple short minutes for Ichigo to finish his snooping. Grimmjow has nearly dozed off in those few minutes, but he is quickly jolted to the present when a bag hits him in the face. Ichigo snickers, so Grimmjow glares at him, but his attention is too stuck on the bag to truly reprimand the human.

Wasting no time, Grimmjow unzips the black bag — now recognizable as one of those bags humans wear on their backs to school — and peers inside. He hums contently upon spotting the three important items inside: a comb, a blanket, and a black hoodie that has orange hairs on it, proving (as if the scent didn’t) who this belongs to. There is also a school notebook and a package of pencils that Grimmjow is going to pretend do not exist.

Grimmjow is tempted to grab the comb and fix his hair as it has gotten messy after all his naps today, but instead chooses to set the whole bag aside.

He glances up at Ichigo, who is watching him almost nervously. “Are we fighting today?”

“Ah, no. I didn’t bring Zangetsu; didn’t want the school to think I was dangerous or something.” Grimmjow nearly snorts. As if Ichigo needs a sword to be dangerous.

“Okay.” Having figured that out, Grimmjow hops to his feet and promptly grabs Ichigo around the middle.

“Grimm—!”

It takes little effort to shift their weight and make them fall onto the beanbag. Ichigo wheezes, half-trapped under Grimmjow’s weight, but a hand settles in his hair after a moment so Ichigo can’t be too bothered. Or surprised, for that matter.

“I shouldn’t stay that long,” Ichigo says. “Urahara said—”

“Ignore him,” Grimmjow mumbles. Ichigo’s nails have started scratching his scalp, so he would prefer to not move or think about things right now. A soft noise —definitely NOT a purr — rumbles in his chest.

“If only that worked,” Ichigo laughs. “But he has a point. It’ll be difficult to deal with the fallout if the school catches me staying the night. An hour or two here and there I can get away with, but a whole night would be pushing it.”

“Just give an excuse,” Grimmjow thinks he says. He’s not sure how coherent his words are anymore. “I was gonna kill someone or somethin’.”

“Hmm, I’ll think about it.”

Grimmjow huffs and twists his head to bump Ichigo’s chin. That tone and line means that he is most definitely not thinking about it and has already made up his mind but is just saying that to be nice. Fucker. As if he can get away with shit like that. Grimmjow knows all his tricks.

He only gets a measly two hours of cuddles before Ichigo extracts himself from Grimmjow’s claws and darts off into the night with promises to visit again soon.

 

Grimmjow genuinely has no idea how humans do this multiple days in a row every week for years.

Day two of the mission. It hasn’t even been a full two days, and he’s napped for most of it! Yet school proves to be horrible in new and awful ways: namely, the English teacher who is making it his top priority to be as loud as possible, thus preventing Grimmjow from being able to nap the hour away.

Truly an infuriating villain like no other.

So, Grimmjow is slouched in his stupid plastic chair, glaring daggers at the board as the loud human scribbles stuff onto it. He’s saying something, probably a useful something, if one cared about this class.

Then he turns around to face the class and Grimmjow doesn’t look away. They make eye contact. The teacher grins.

“Do you want to answer, Jaegerjaquez?” The sound of scribbling pencils and pens halts. Grimmjow’s eyes narrow. No teacher has dared call on him to participate.

“No.”

“Aw, come on! Just give it a try. How would you translate this phrase?” He taps the scribbles on the board.

Grimmjow leans back in his seat, curls his lip, and— he pauses. After yesterday’s events, he is already close to being kicked out. As far as he knows, cursing a teacher out, even if it’s in English, is not exactly proper student conduct. A frown settles on his lips.

Reluctantly, Grimmjow squints at the board. He can hardly read the teacher’s writing. Plus, as Ichigo reminded him yesterday, he is not fluent in English.

But fuck it, he’s not losing to a goddamn word problem.

“The car—” He starts and stops. He can practically hear the kids’ shock with how loud they are gaping at him. His teeth grind together. He doesn’t know the next word. Wracking his mind, Grimmjow thinks back to what he does know about English: namely, the stuff he heard Ichigo complain about last year. He wrote a bunch about a guy named Shakespeare, which Grimmjow still doesn’t get. All that guy did was write stuff and die; he couldn’t fight at all, so what makes him so interesting? Allegedly, it’s got something to do with words, characters, good stories, and whatever ‘iambic pentameter’ is. But it doesn’t seem like any of that is going to help Grimmjow beat this question.

“It’s okay if you don’t know, little listener,” the teacher says in a gentle voice that makes Grimmjow’s hackles rise and his hands start to turn black.

“Fuck off,” he snipes immediately. “I know it.” Then he pauses and glares at the board some more.

“I just don’t want to answer,” Grimmjow mutters after a moment. He glances around the room: some students quickly snap their eyes away as if they weren’t staring, but Ponytail is watching him carefully. They make brief eye contact. Grimmjow juts his chin in her direction and leans back in his seat. “Ponytail wants to.”

Ponytail proves yet again to be useful and quickly translates the phrase on the board. Her English is crisp and fluent; loads better than Ichigo’s.

The teacher frowns a bit, but after a quick, “Well done, Yaoyorozu,” moves the class along.

Grimmjow makes sure to keep his eyes shut for the rest of the morning, even if the teachers are too loud for him to nap through.

 

That afternoon — after having yet again ignored Greenie about the ‘come eat lunch with us!’ offer — Grimmjow finds himself at the fake cityscape again. He fully intends to nap on a roof today, but then he hears something interesting.

“Get ready to lose, extras!”

He narrows his eyes. Whatever the tall blond man is saying must somehow include an element of victory. Weighing the options (napping vs winning whatever it is), Grimmjow hums to himself. The tall blond man glances his way, so Grimmjow juts his chin up and stares him down from across the way.

“Uh, Jaegerjaquez, was it? Do you plan to participate today, young man?”

“I wasn’t listening,” he says bluntly. “How do you win?”

“Ah, today we are playing a game similar to tag to replicate—”

“Don’t care,” Grimmjow interrupts. “How do I win?” Killing the entire class is likely not the answer. Unfortunate.

“Well, the winners will be decided based on whether Group A manages to evade capture vs Group B who will have capture tape. Group A will comprise of the smaller portion of the class and they will have to work together to evade Group B. If even one member of Group A evades capture until the end of the hour, then Group A will be the winners—”

Grimmjow nods confidently. “So I just have to capture them all.”

“W-well that’s not quite—”

“I’ll be generous and give the brats a five-minute head start,” he declares, promptly sitting down on the grass.

None of the brats run. Tch. They’re losing valuable time here.

“Jaegerjaquez,” Greenie starts hesitantly, “What’s your quirk? Pitting yourself against the entire class is a crazy idea.”

“Quirk? Napping, I guess.” Grimmjow shrugs. The look on Greenie’s face is pained. “You’re down to four minutes. Get running, mice.”

The students look to the blond teacher, who shrugs. “I suppose we can try this for a few minutes, then move onto the planned activity? Aizawa did say that our new student has not been participating much in class.”

The kids glance around amongst themselves, before a redhead shrugs. “We might as well. If anything, it’ll be a good warm-up!”

“Yeah, Kiri’s right!” A pink girl says cheerfully. “Let’s have fun with it.”

On that note, the kids head into the cityscape, giggling and joking amongst themselves as they trot out of sight. Grimmjow grins. These fools are about to learn that they should take him seriously.

“So, can I knock them out?”

The blond teacher shakes his head frantically. “No! No injuries, please. Here, I’ll give you the capture tape. You just need to get this on them for them to count as captured.”

“Oh.” That’s a lot easier. Just stick a piece of tape to them? Bah, even the weakest of Ichigo’s soul reaper friends could do this.

Once the five-minute count is up, Grimmjow stands, cracks his back, and his grin turns feral. Even if it’s not the same — he can’t kill — this feels a little bit like a hunt. Some of his prey ran pretty far (for a human) in those five minutes. Too bad for them it won’t matter.

Using sonido, Grimmjow arrives at the first of the students and smacks their back hard enough they yelp and topple over, a piece of white tape waving in the air where it’s stuck to their shirt.

Too easy.

Grimmjow rolls his eyes, but doesn’t feel like wasting his time on weaklings, so he keeps using sonido. It’s hardly a workout. A spar with Ichigo would be so much better. At least this is a little more interesting than English class.

It takes four minutes for Grimmjow to ‘capture’ all the students. And that’s only because he took a short break to scout the rooftops to see which is best for napping.

By the time the kids drag themselves back to the starting point, Grimmjow is standing next to the blond teacher, a bored look on his face.

“What the hell was that?!” The angry blond kid from yesterday marches up to him like he’s hoping for a fight. Grimmjow would oblige (pound the kid’s skull into the ground and prove to these insects that he’s lightyears stronger than them), but he’s pretty sure fighting the students will get him kicked out, so it’s not happening. Whatever. It wouldn’t be a good fight anyway.

“Kacchan, calm down!”

“I am calm!”

Greenie and the rest of the class also look pretty confused though.

“What?” Grimmjow asks. They don’t look scared or annoyed or anything, just confused. For some reason that bothers him.

“You said your quirk was napping,” Greenie says.

“So?”

“What the hell was that?!” Blond kid shrieks. “That was not napping!”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“You lied?” Ponytail asks that and she sounds sad. Or disappointed. Whatever it is, Grimmjow is starting to hate this entire conversation. He won. Anything else shouldn’t matter.

“Jaegerjaquez has a physical enhancement quirk,” the dark-haired teacher says. Grimmjow blinks. He didn’t realize the other teacher was here now too. “According to his files, it’s called Sexy Muscle Hunk.”

“What?!” Grimmjow snarls alongside the rest of the class’s exclamations. His spiritual pressure flares as he envisions grabbing Urahara’s scrawny neck and wringing it.

Dammit, maybe he should have read the file Urahara gave him. If he had, he could have nipped things like this in the bud. By kicking down Urahara’s door and threatening to destroy the entire shop, as one does.

“…You don’t know what your quirk is called?” The strange invisible kid asks.

“Of course I do. It’s—” Grimmjow thinks quickly, then realizes this is an easy answer. For this world, quirks are what they call their powers “—called Pantera. That bastard Urahara is messing with me again.”

The teacher sighs loudly. “Does that mean these official documents have been tampered with?”

Fuck. Grimmjow blinks. That doesn’t sound like a good thing to agree to. “I don’t know. Ask my parole officer.”

Sighing one more time like he would rather be five hours into catching up on his sleep debt than here, the teacher pulls out his phone and calls Ichigo. Well, at least this time it isn’t strictly Grimmjow’s fault.

The conversation is quick and Grimmjow is distracted by how the sun is sparkling off one kid’s cape, so he misses his chance to eavesdrop.

“He said that the documents are correct.”

“WHAT?!”

“And warned me that you are not fond of the name and prefer a different one.”

Grimmjow’s teeth grind together. Someone is going to die for this. And it’ll be Urahara. Or at least his store windows. Repeatedly.

“I-it could be a lot worse,” Greenie tries, sliding up to Grimmjow’s side.

Grimmjow snarls, punches the kid in the face, and proceeds to learn that detention means he has to sit in the classroom while the dark-haired teacher is there for an extra hour and a half after school is over. They both nap, so it’s not that much of a hassle.

 

The evening and night suck. Somehow, despite being used to spending hours alone in the desert, secluding himself in his room is dreadfully boring. Grimmjow blames Ichigo. He got too comfortable being around the soul reaper’s family so now he’s used to having people annoying him near-constantly. How low he’s fallen.

The room is too small and delicate for him to do anything fun, like practice bladework — Pantera has been awfully quiet and bored lately — or much else, so Grimmjow resorts to cycling through the exercises Ichigo’s father showed him. If nothing else, they serve to remind his muscles that they exist and are not allowed to get weak during this lull. Honestly. Who knew a soul reaper mission would be so dreadfully boring?

(Ichigo did. That bastard. No wonder he was so quick to trick Grimmjow into agreeing to do it.)

 

The next morning, a Wednesday, finds Grimmjow yet again in the classroom on his way to dozing off.

Or rather, that’s how it’s supposed to go.

Instead, there is something on his desk and he is not sure what to make of it.

Carefully, he pokes at it. His finger sinks in easily. It is soft and almost fluffy. His brow furrows. Normally, when things like this happen and he encounters some human thing he does not understand, Grimmjow goes to Yuzu. Ichigo and Karin will make fun of him first, then explain, while Ichigo’s father skips the explaining part and just laughs. But Yuzu isn’t here.

Frowning, Grimmjow squints at the blob. It’s bright blue, almost the shade of his hair. He watches it carefully, waiting for it to move. When it does not, he squints closer and checks for spiritual pressure, which it does not have. It should be obvious that it is a lump and has no spiritual pressure, but he learnt his lesson there: the lion doll at Ichigo’s place got quite upset when he stepped on it, thinking it was non-sentient. Apparently the lion is Kon and part of the family and whatever else. Grimmjow still threw it out the window when it wouldn’t shut up.

Through the entirety of the first three classes, Grimmjow pokes, prods, and generally tries to figure out what the hell this blob is.

Then, halfway through math, he discovers that it does a thing: It is not a solid object at all, but in fact is a bunch of strings all looped together. Delighted (and physically squishing down any happy-purring noises his chest and throat want to make), Grimmjow yanks at the one end of the string repeatedly. It is much longer than he excepted. The loops soon end up draped over his arms and shoulders as he continues doing his best to disassemble this thing. Surely once he has torn it apart, he will understand its purpose.

The bell rings to signal lunch and he hardly hears it, occupied as he is.

“Hey, Jaegerjaquez? Do you want to get lunch with us today?”

“I’m busy,” Grimmjow replies. Can’t Greenie see that he is doing very important things right now?

“Are you, uh, stuck?”

“No.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Grimmjow looks up from his blob. Greenie and his three friends (soft-girl, quincy-eyes-boy, and half-burnt-boy) all seem confused. That happens a lot.

Anyway, it should be obvious what he’s doing: “I’m winning.”

“Against a ball of yarn?”

“That’s what this is called?” Grimmjow mutters, frowning at his blob. “Huh.”

“Let’s leave him be,” half-burnt-boy says in a flat voice. The others argue for a little but give in and leave Grimmjow alone.

 

When the class returns an hour later after lunch, Grimmjow finds himself in an embarrassing predicament: he did too well winning against this ‘yarn’ and is somehow stuck. He has no idea what happened. One moment he was unraveling the string then the next it got looped around his neck. He tried to untangle it, got his left arm stuck, then got his right arm stuck trying to free the left.

Which means when the kids walk into class, Grimmjow is fuming. He doesn’t want to break the yarn since that would be admitting defeat, but he doesn’t seem many other options here.

“Do you… want a hand?” Ponytail was the brave one and came over. Her big doe-eyes are concerned, but Grimmjow is nearly certain she is trying not to laugh. He scowls.

“I’ve got it right where I want it.” Grimmjow wriggles around and falls off his chair, landing shoulder-first onto the ground. Dammit. That didn’t help at all; if anything, it made the yarn squeeze him tighter.

Ponytail bites her lip. Okay. Now she’s definitely trying not to laugh at him.

“Here, let’s get you out of that.”

“Yaomomo, don’t!” Someone hisses.

Ponytail ignores the warning. Grimmjow goes still as her tiny, delicate hands come near him— but she doesn’t touch him. Her hands nimbly weave and pull the yarn, but she takes caution and never once actually touches him. Slowly, the tension in Grimmjow’s muscles recedes.

When it’s done, Grimmjow gets off the floor. He leaves the pile of loose yarn there. Maybe he’ll battle the yarn again tomorrow. Now that he knows its tricks, it should go better.

Ponytail is watching him, nervous.

Grimmjow huffs. “What’s your name again?”

“Yaoyorozu Momo, but everyone calls me Yaomomo. You can too, if you want.”

Grimmjow grunts. He won’t be doing that. They aren’t friends. He is saved from having to explain that fact to the girl when the dark-haired teacher comes in and tells them to go outside.

Since Grimmjow didn’t get his naptime this morning, he goes to the rooftop he scouted yesterday and naps there. There are some clouds, but it’s not too bad. Still warm enough to be pleasant, even if one kid almost steps on him in the middle of their afternoon activity.

 

That evening, Grimmjow is faced with a difficult choice: stay upstairs and avoid all the children or go down and see Ichigo. That bastard came in through the front door and, judging by the way he hasn’t moved to come upstairs in the last five minutes, is trying to force Grimmjow into coming down.

He stays seated on his beanbag. Fuck that. This is a game of chicken, of who will cave first, and it won’t be him.

But then five minutes pass. Ten. And Ichigo is still down there, chatting with the kids. Grimmjow bites his lip. Last time Ichigo only stayed for two hours.

Slowly, a plan comes together: Ichigo might not want to come upstairs, but he also won’t want to fight and possibly get someone caught in the crossfire. Which means Grimmjow can just go get him. He’s physically stronger, especially so when Ichigo is not using bankai or any of his other abilities. A perfect plan.

Grimmjow stomps his way down the stairs and scowls when he finds Ichigo sitting on one of the cushioned armchairs in the common room. The TV is on and he’s laughing at something one of the kids said. Some of the girls are even blushing as they stare at him and his arm muscles — displayed thanks to the sleeve-less shirt he’s wearing. Grimmjow’s eyes narrow to slits.

“Hey, there you are! I was wondering when you were gonna come down, Grimm.” Ichigo grins and waves him over. “You didn’t tell me your classmates were so fun! I’d have visited a lot sooner if I knew.”

“Are you sure you should be visiting at all?” Greenie asks. “I mean, is that part of your job as his parole officer?”

Ichigo freezes for a second. “Oh right. Haha. Yep. Totally part of the job.” Grimmjow nearly rolls his eyes. That couldn’t have sounded more suspicious if he tried.

Grimmjow stalks over to the armchair, eyes narrowing as he judges his target. If he can grab Ichigo quick and throw him over a shoulder—

“Don’t even think about it,” Ichigo says in a pleasant tone as Grimmjow gets within arm’s reach. “I brought you something and you’re not getting it if you do it.”

“I don’t care.”

“You sure?”

Though he scowls and his eye twitches, Grimmjow caves. So, instead of carrying Ichigo off, back to his room, he slinks over and settles sideways in the soul reaper’s lap. This way is the easiest for being able to rest his head on the comfy spot of Ichigo’s shoulder while still getting head scratches. Some of the kids gasp, but Grimmjow really doesn’t care. He’s getting his cuddle time and present and none of them can do or say a thing to ruin this.

One of the kids, the one Grimmjow broke the wrist of, opens his mouth. Grimmjow tense. Clever fingers start scratching that nice spot at the base of his neck. Grimmjow misses the next five minutes of conversation.

When he gets control of himself, he cuts off his rumbling purr and swats Ichigo’s hand away with a hiss.

“Someone’s grumpy,” Ichigo says.

“Gimme the present.”

“Hmm, I dunno…”

Grimmjow scowls and, asp-quick, nips Ichigo’s ear with his fangs.

“Hey! Cut that out.” Obviously Grimmjow goes to do it again, but this time Ichigo shoves a hand into his face and pushes him back. “Okay, okay. Here.”

A small rectangle-shape wrapped in black paper in set in his lap. Grimmjow hums. He pokes it and the thing shifts. Curiosity piqued, he rips the wrapping off with quick swipes of his claws and frees the item inside. As he sees it, he knows that, were he in his resurreccion form, his ears would be perked up. How embarrassing.

“You’re welcome,” Ichigo says. The human is clearly proud of himself and Grimmjow says nothing to imply otherwise. In his hands now rests an entire bag of his favourite cat treats. He licks his lips and shoves the bag at Ichigo’s chest for him to open. Bags can be tricky and Grimmjow may have a tendency to cause them to explode and scatter their contents everywhere, so this way is easier.

Knowing how this goes, Ichigo opens the bag and hands it back. Humming happily, Grimmjow bonks the side of his head against Ichigo’s cheek. Gently. Ichigo’s human bones are a little frailer than his soul reaper ones.

“What, no ‘thank you’?” Ichigo teases. His fingers are ghosting the small hairs of Grimmjow’s neck.

Grimmjow meets his eyes and pops one of the treats into his mouth. He bites down on it hard enough it crunches audibly.

“Point taken,” Ichigo snorts.

 

Midoriya kind of thought Jaegerjaquez was in trouble when Kurosaki showed up. But now they’re cuddling (???) on a chair and Jaegerjaquez is eating whatever candy Kurosaki brought him, and Midoriya is so lost.

Sure, Midoriya has never met anyone else from juvie before, but he didn’t think this was how it worked. Plus, Kurosaki doesn’t seem to know anything about Jaegerjaquez’s record or what his job as a parole officer is supposed to be. Nor is Midoriya convinced Jaegerjaquez is sixteen. There are too many things that just don’t line up and it’s making this entire situation incredibly suspicious.

As much as he doesn’t want to admit it, it may be time to stop trying to befriend Jaegerjaquez and start figuring out what’s really going on. Even if he is what he claims to be, who’s to say that he isn’t part of the League of Villains? Sure, Kurosaki seems too friendly to be a villain, but Toga seems perfectly nice up until she tries to stab you and drain your blood.

Ultimately they’ve had too many close calls with villains this year for Midoriya not to investigate. Just in case. Maybe he’ll find exactly what he should — a juvenile record with Jaegerjaquez’s name, quirk, age, and offenses all listed — but if he doesn’t… well, Aizawa-sensei would surely love to know.

After Kaminari swipes one of the candies Jaegerjaquez is eating and starts gagging, to which Jaegerjaquez grins, making Midoriya think Kaminari was not nearly as sneaky as he thought, Midoriya deicides to do it. Lips pressed in a thin line, he declares that he’s going to bed and sneaks off upstairs to the goodnight calls from his friends. Once shut in his room, he sets his laptop up and begins digging.

 

Grimmjow spends the morning realizing that he cannot defeat the yarn if it starts off in a loose pile, a weakened state, so he sets to returning it to its original form. Such a thing has proven easier said than done. It’s been over two hours and he’s struggling to figure out how to loop the yarn back onto its smaller blob-self without it looking loose and horrible.

“Hey there, listener.” Great, now the annoying loud teacher wants something.

“Go away, I’m busy,” Grimmjow snaps. He doesn’t dare look away from the yarn, less it think he’s giving up.

“Just came to let you know that we’re starting a group project. There is an uneven number of kids in the class, so you can choose whichever pair you want to work with.”

Grimmjow, reluctantly, looks up from the yarn. He stares the teacher down for five long seconds, trying to gage if this is something he actually has to do. When the teacher doesn’t back away and leave him alone, Grimmjow scowls.

“Fine.” Without another word, he stands up, bundles the loose yarn in his arms, and marches over to where Pony— Yaoyorozu is sitting with another girl. The pink one. They seem a little surprised at his arrival.

Deciding that he doesn’t care about whatever a ‘group project’ is supposed to be, Grimmjow hops onto Yaoyorozu’s desk (ignoring the papers he sits on) and dumps the yarn there. He doesn’t say a word. The girl looks at him with a puzzled expression, then at the yarn. Hesitantly, she reaches out and takes the small blob. Grimmjow’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t stop her. He watches with close attention as she begins looping the string around the blob, slowly winding it back into proper shape.

“Sooo, any ideas for the project?” Pink girl asks. Assuming she is not speaking to him, Grimmjow stays quiet and keeps watching as Yaoyorozu puts the yarn back together.

But no one says anything and he realizes she is looking at him, waiting for an answer. Grimmjow blinks. He was not paying attention to what they are supposed to do, nor does he plan to do it. Attending school is already hard enough, he’s not doing the work that goes with it too.

“Talk about why Shakespeare sucks,” Grimmjow mutters before he realizes he is answering her question. Pink girl grins and Grimmjow suddenly feels like he has fallen into some kind of trap.

“Oh? What don’t you like about his work? I mean, it’s a pain and a half to read even a translated version, so I totally get it, but what are your thoughts?”

Grimmjow looks to the yarn. Yaoyorozu is still slowly weaving it into a single, large blob. He sighs.

“Ichigo talks about him too much,” he grumbles.

“Ooh, tell me more. Who’s Ichigo?”

Grimmjow frowns. “You met him.”

“What? I’m sure I’d remember meeting someone new.” Pink girl frowns, tapping her chin with a pointed black nail. Grimmjow narrows his eyes. Her nails don’t look like claws, yet they don’t look not like claws either. Weird.

“You all talked to him yesterday,” Grimmjow says, now a little worried for these kids’ memories. Well, he hasn’t even hit any of them in the head, so if they got brain damage, it’s not his fault.

Pink girl gasps, her eyes going wide and a hand flying to her mouth. “Wait, Ichigo is Kurosaki?!” Grimmjow nods. “Omg this changes everything. Okay, okay. So, like, did he make you do a project on Shakespeare or something? Is that a juvie thing?”

“What? No. Ichigo had to write papers about him last year. For high school. So he was too busy to fight.” Grimmjow scowls. “I had to ask fucking Nel to spar.” And he’s never living that one down. Nel doesn’t spar, she just yaps and blabs the whole time while dodging Grimmjow’s attacks, asking so many questions about Ichigo and him that Grimmjow threw the fight so he could leave. He threw the fucking fight. It was that bad.

“Oh. Kurosaki just graduated? Huh, I kind of thought he was older than that. Hmm, he is kind of cute though, does he have a girlfriend?” There’s a gleam that Grimmjow doesn’t like in pink girl’s eyes. It’s sly, like this is yet another trap he cannot avoid despite having recognized it.

He answers anyway. “No. And he’s not allowed. Wouldn’t have enough time for me if there was some dumb girl hoarding his attention.” Pink girl squeals, but he is too busy thinking about this to worry over her reaction. If Ichigo started seeing some girl, Grimmjow would probably need to kill her. It would bother him to no end if Ichigo started smelling like someone else. She’d steal all his time and attention and sit snuggled into him—

Steely blue eyes narrow to pinpricks. A girlfriend would get Grimmjow kicked out. He’s almost certain of it. He wouldn’t be allowed to stay in Ichigo’s house anymore. There would be no more lazy days with Ichigo’s family, no more helping Yuzu make dinner, no more teaching Karin how to properly scratch someone’s eyes out, no more playfully smacking Isshin when he’s being annoying. No more movie nights.

“Hey, are you okay? You’re kinda… growling?”

Grimmjow blinks, drawing himself out of his head and to the present moment. His forearms have shifted, the human-looking hands swapped out with the feline-esque ones from his resurreccion form. He is, as pink girl pointed out, growling in a low, angry rumble.

Annoyed both at himself for losing control of his emotions and at the girl for pointing it out, Grimmjow tucks his hands under his arms, hiding them, and hisses at her.

“Oookay then. Changing the topic.” Pink girl clears her throat and holds up a piece of blank paper. “We need a to write a one-page story using proper English grammar and stuff. I was thinking it would be fun to write about a person sitting in a park observing stuff around them. I don’t think we’ll run into any big, technical words with an idea like that. Any thoughts, Yoamomo?”

At this point Yaoyorozu finishes the last loops on the yarn and hands the fully reformed blob back to Grimmjow. He immediately tunes out the rest of the conversation in favour of attempting to demolish the yarn in its entirety.

 

To his immense embarrassment, Grimmjow does not defeat the yarn. Once again he finds himself stuck in it. This time, when the kids return from their lunch break, Grimmjow has managed to get his head, both arms, and a leg trapped. He is, also once again, on the floor. He’ll never understand how this happened, but it is infuriating.

Someone snickers, Yaoyorozu sighs and starts over to help him get unstuck, and—

“Tch. Fucking weak,” the blond boy with the angry red eyes scoffs. He is looking down at Grimmjow, a sneer on his lips.

A flash of his spiritual pressure shatters the yarn. Kind of a shame, he did want to defeat it, but getting off the floor, grabbing the boy by the collar, and hoisting him a few solid inches off the floor feels much better than defeating the yarn would’ve. Maybe. Unless he finds another yarn and defeats it, Grimmjow may never know for sure.

“Jaegerjaquez!” The dark-haired teacher barks. “Put him down right now!”

For a moment Grimmjow considers just throwing the kid out the window. That would save so many headaches.

But his fingers uncurl and he lets the boy drop back to the floor. With a scoff, he turns his back on the boy and stalks over to his seat, slumping into it and staring out the window. What he sees makes him freeze.

“Heroics class is outside, Jaegerjaquez.” It’s a pointed order to join the kids as they file out of the class wearing their dumb blue clothes.

Grimmjow shakes his head.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the teacher says, sounding thoroughly done.

“I don’t go out in rain,” Grimmjow snaps, his shoulders hunching. “I’ll stay here till the rain stops.”

The teacher sighs. “I’m not paid enough for this. I’ll send someone to sit with you, I guess.”

Five minutes later, someone comes into the room. Grimmjow scowls. He foolishly thought the teacher meant to call Ichigo and have him come here. Instead, some woman wearing tight clothes and a smirk is sauntering over. She comes right up to him and sits in the chair next to his.

“Hi there. I’m Midnight. You should know that already, but you’ve hardly paid attention during art class. Or any class, from what I’ve heard.”

“I don’t care,” Grimmjow replies bluntly. “Go bother someone else.” He closes his eyes and pretends to fall asleep, but his hand never strays from Pantera’s hilt and his muscles don’t relax enough for him to truly nap. There is something about this woman that is putting him on edge. He doesn’t like it.

Then he hears her shift, sigh, and it hits him: it’s her scent. There’s something wrong with it. Something too sweet and dangerous.

His eyes snap open and he has Pantera drawn in a split second, leveled at her neck.

“Get out,” Grimmjow growls in a low voice.

The woman is frozen, not so much as daring to breathe.

“Now.”

Proving to be wise, the woman scrambles back, away from the blade, and puts several feet of distance between herself and Grimmjow. Then she halts without leaving the room. Her hand grips her thin sleeve. Grimmjow rises from his plastic chair. Pantera is steady in his hand.

“Listen kid, you need to put that sword away. I’m not sure why Aizawa let you keep it, but you need to stop right now. If you don’t then I’ll be forced to consider you as a danger and put you out.” The woman is serious. That much is obvious.

Unfortunately for her, Grimmjow doesn’t do well with people thinking they can tell him what to do. Especially since this woman seems to think that she can beat him — and easily, at that.

He sheathes Pantera, much to the blade’s disappointment. The woman, while having a dangerous scent, is not a true threat. She doesn’t have enough spiritual energy for that.

Grimmjow takes a single step forward. The woman rips her sleeve and pink dust scatters into the air in a wave. A fan is in her other hand. A quick flick of her wrist sends the pink dust swirling his way. Grimmjow snarls then snaps his lips shut, determined to not breathe it in.

His claws itch. He glances around the room. It is still raining outside, so jumping out the window won’t work — not that he wants to run, but Ichigo will be mad if he fights this teacher and gets kicked out of the school.

Looking back to the woman, Grimmjow finds her advancing slowly. The cloud of pink dust is growing thicker by the second. His lungs are starting to ache. There has to be a good solution, one that will work to get this over with and not get him kicked out. Something… some plan…

His lungs burn and tears prickle at his eyes. His resurreccion claws are back.

“Come on,” the woman croons, “don’t you want to take a nap, kitty?”

Grimmjow roars.

Doing so causes him to inhale the pink dust, making his vision go wobbly, so he dashes over to the woman. He feels his claws grow wet, hears a sharp cry, and allows a cruel smirk to twist his lips before he blacks out.

 

Ichigo never realized how great vacation could be.

Sure, he’s had some vacations before where he and his family will go off and do something. Picnics are a common family outing, especially on nice days since Grimmjow enjoys sitting in the sun. But even then Ichigo had to be aware and vigilant, careful of any hollows that may be drawn to his spiritual pressure.

But when the vacation takes him to an entirely new world where there are no hollows, things are much easier. He doesn’t need to keep an eye open at all times. He doesn’t need to worry. He can do anything without fearing the consequences of relaxing.

As such, over the last few days Ichigo has indulged himself a bit more than normal: he went to the theatre for a production of King Lear, ate at a bunch of cool restaurants, explored the city, and visited some museums and theme parks. He wanted to go to see a movie, but Grimmjow really likes movies and might get upset if Ichigo went without him, so he refrained. Maybe he’ll see if Grimmjow wants to watch something on Sunday.

Anyway, the attractions are different than his home world — a lot more ‘hero’ coded — but whatever. It’s still vacation and none of this is coming out of his pocket: Urahara gave him a credit card he said came from Rukia which means it’s actually from Byakuya, so Ichigo can spend whatever he wants and never need to worry about the cost. It’s great.

Right now, he’s strolling down a sidewalk on his way to a local park, bubble tea in one hand and box of donuts in the other. A perfect afternoon, even if it’s sprinkling. The rain isn’t bad though, so Ichigo is not deterred from his plans to wander about the park eating his snacks.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

Ichigo frowns. It buzzes again. He looks to his hands. Each is clearly occupied.

The next buzz has him shrugging. While it could be the school calling since Grimmjow did something, he doubts it. It’s raining so Grimmjow likely tucked himself into a corner to wait out the weather. Ichigo knows the arrancar and this weather means he’ll be grumpy, but it’ll be fine. Hopefully. So that means it’s probably just Urahara and there really isn’t any point answering that man’s phone calls. He only calls for weird reasons, like suddenly wanting to know what size and brand of underwear Ichigo wears (to this day Ichigo isn’t sure if that was a prank or if his underwear all got replaced. He doesn’t want to find out).

The final buzz rings out. The phone goes silent. Ichigo slurps his bubble tea and is very glad he agreed to come to this world.

 

Midoriya has never heard Aizawa-sensei swear so much before.

This should be a bad thing, but it is also kind of fascinating. After all they’ve been through as a class — the USJ, Hosu, the training camp, Kacchan getting kidnapped and rescued — this is the incident that makes Aizawa-sensei swear in front of them all.

To be fair to their teacher, this is a pretty bad situation.

They were in the middle of an exercise when Aizawa-sensei and All Might got calls saying that they were to go to the nurse’s office immediately. Naturally, as the class cannot really be trusted to continue training without supervision, they all came along. That and they were curious.

Perhaps it would’ve been better if they stayed outside.

When they got to the nurse’s office, Aizawa-sensei started swearing in a low voice, as if hoping they wouldn’t hear but unable to hold back this time. All Might looks pale, like he might throw up. Many of Midoriya’s classmates look the same. He kind of feels that way too, but also kind of numb and distant, like everything happening before him is a movie and he’s just watching.

Jaegerjaquez’s hand is lodged in Midnight-sensei’s stomach. The boy (man?? Midoriya still isn’t sure) is asleep, likely due to Midnight-sensei’s quirk. His chest rises and falls in even beats. It seems criminal for him to sleep so soundly when blood is leaking down his wrist and from the corner of Midnight-sensei’s lips. Her body is shaking, her face too pale.

“I can’t pull his hand out,” Recovery Girl says to Aizawa-sensei in a soft voice. Despite the tone, everyone from Class 1A is being so quiet that they all hear. “I did a quick scan and it showed that his fingers are hooked in her ribs. Forcing his hand out like this… she wouldn’t make it.”

Aizawa-sensei sucks in a sharp breath. “I’ll call Kurosaki,” he says. “He seems to know how to calm Jaegerjaquez down. Maybe he can help.”

They all wait with bated breath. The phone rings once, twice, thrice, then finishes. Kurosaki doesn’t pick up.

Aizawa-sensei stares numbly at the phone, then hits the numbers in again and holds it to his ear. His hand is shaking.

A moment later his hand drops to his side. They can all hear that it rung out again.

“There was another number in his file.” Aizawa-sensei’s voice is shaky. “For emergencies.”

“I’d say this counts as an emergency,” Recovery Girl says.

They all wait — what else can they do? — as Aizawa-sensei dials the number and tries another call.

Midoriya almost cries when he hears the click signaling someone picked up.

“’ello?”

Aizawa-sensei wastes no time. “You’re Jaegerjaquez’s emergency contact, correct?”

“Yessir, that’s me.”

“You need to come to the school immediately. He attacked and brutally injured a teacher who is now in critical condition.”

“Oh dear. That does sound like a right pickle. Let me grab a few things and I’ll head over.” The man hangs up.

Recovery Girl clears her throat. “We must keep in mind that it is very likely this contact cannot do anything to help. If that is the case, I will be forced to perform surgery. By opening Midnight’s wound further, I will be able to extract Jaegerjaquez’s hand without causing further damage to her internal organs. All Might, call the nearest hospital. Have them ready an emergency room and send an ambulance over. We ought to be prepared.” Her wrinkled hand pats Aizawa-sensei’s arm and she whispers something that Midoriya cannot hear.

Only two minutes pass before a man strolls in, weaving between the members of Class 1A who are blocking the door. He’s wearing a striped green and white hat, traditional clothing, and wooden sandals. He also has a cane in one hand and a black bag in the other.

“Oh dear,” the man drawls as he takes in the scene. “What have we here?”

“How did you get on campus—”

“Tsk, tsk. Looks like Kurosaki owes me money again,” the man says, interrupting Aizawa-sensei. “I told him his arrancar wouldn’t be a good fit here. Oh well. No one ever listens to silly ol’ me.”

The man busies himself fussing with the bag he brought in and withdraws a pink shirt that has bunnies on it. “Good thing I came prepared,” the man muses.

He drops the shirt onto Jaegerjaquez’s face. Three seconds pass, then Jaegerjaquez’s eyes snap open, he snarls loudly, and he bites the shirt. Hard. Midoriya never noticed how sharp his teeth were until they were shredding some poor girl’s pyjamas.

“There ya go,” the man says. “Now be a good boy and take your hand outta that girl’s guts, mkay?”

Jaegerjaquez makes a growly-sound and jerks his hand out of Midnight’s stomach. Recovery Girl motions to Aizawa, who scoops her up, and they hustle out of the room to meet up with the ambulance that is on the way.

That leaves Midoriya and his classmates with All Might, this new, strange man, and Jaegerjaquez, whose eyes look crazed and nearly feral. It doesn’t help that his teeth are still lodged in the pink shirt, shaking it like a dog with a chew toy.

“Now, now, let’s calm down,” the man says. “Kuchiki isn’t here.” Jaegerjaquez’s growls grow louder. “No, silly, she isn’t with Ichigo either. Now get a hold of yourself or I’ll start filming.”

Apparently that counts as a proper threat of some kind since Jaegerjaquez sobers up immediately. The shirt falls from his teeth to his lap and he looks away from the man.

“There we go. Now, tell ol’ Urahara what happened this time. I’m sure I’ll be talking to the principal here soon.”

Jaegerjaquez huffs. The pink shirt gets thrown at the man — Urahara? — who catches it out of the air and drops it back into the bag he brought.

“Fuck off. I’m not telling you a damn thing.”

“Aw, don’t be like that! We’re buddies, aren’t we?”

“No.”

“Not even after all I’ve done for you?” Urahara pouts. “I took you in, practically raised you, and this is how you repay my love and tender care—”

Urahara is cut off as Jaegerjaquez punches him in the face. Midoriya gasps. He knows Jaegerjaquez is rude and mean, but to hit his own father figure?

“I already told you to fuck off!” Jaegerjaquez snarls.

“What will I tell your mother?” Urahara groans as he clutches at his bleeding nose.

“I don’t have a mother!”

“Gasp. I’m telling Yoruichi what you said. You’ll be in trouble then— ack!”

Midoriya watches alongside the rest of the class, flabbergasted, as Jaegerjaquez grabs Urahara by the collar and starts dragging him to the window.

“Can you at least open the window first this time?” The man grumbles. He goes limp in the hold and doesn’t try to free himself.

Jaegerjaquez tosses him through the window hard enough the glass shatters. The man tumbles out of sight. The expression on his face as he does so is more bored or exasperated than anything appropriate, like fear. With a huff, Jaegerjaquez rubs his hands against his shirt as if touching Urahara is so gross he had to get it off as soon as possible.

“Good riddance,” Jaegerjaquez grumbles.

“You!” Midoriya starts. His fists are shaking. He doesn’t know if he wants to cry, punch Jaegerjaquez or shake him by the shoulders till he sees sense. “You threw your father out the window!”

Jaegerjaquez groans. “Fucking hell, that bastard isn’t my father. I don’t have one of those. Urahara is always saying weird shit.”

“You still threw him out the window!”

“Yeah. He doesn’t leave unless you get rid of him. Like a roach. Huh,” Jaegerjaquez flexes his fingers, only now noticing that one hand is covered in blood. “So did I kill the bitch?”

The flat way he asks that, like he doesn’t care if he took a life, makes Midoriya shudder. That is yet another point to the idea that he could be a member of the League.

“They took Midnight to the hospital,” All Might says, squaring his shoulders. “Recovery Girl will save her, so you needn’t worry about having a life on your conscious, dear boy.”

Jaegerjaquez scoffs. “I don’t care. If you ever leave me alone with her again, I’ll make sure not to miss her heart.”

It is only as Jaegerjaquez’s hand settles on the hilt of his sword that Midoriya realizes something important: Jaegerjaquez is bluffing. He could have killed Midnight-sensei easily with that blade. Something must have happened, spooked him, and he lashed out. But he didn’t mean to kill her. Slowly, some of the tension fades from Midoriya’s locked muscles. They haven’t heard Jaegerjaquez’s side of the story; maybe there is an understandable explanation for all this.

Midoriya presses his lips into a determined line. He’ll finish looking into Jaegerjaquez’s past, figure out what happened today with Midnight-sensei, then report his findings to Aizawa-sensei. There is something more going on here and he will get to the bottom of it, no matter what that conclusion may be.

 

Grimmjow realizes he messed up. The fact that Urahara came here to mock him proves that. However, he does not think that leaving him in a room with a strange mouse-looking creature is a good idea. It’s been four days since he got here and he is getting quite hungry. His tongue flicks out, wetting his lips. This mouse may not be a hollow, but it would bleed warm and red and taste delicious.

“So, Jaegerjaquez,” the mouse starts, its tiny hands clasped together. It leans forward, making it even easier for Grimmjow to smell it. It would probably taste like… meat. Whatever. It would still be delicious.

The mouse leans back. Its eyes look worried. “Jaegerjaquez, you’re drooling.”

“I’m hungry and pissed off, so make this quick, mouse.”

The mouse nods hesitantly. “I hope you understand the circumstances here—”

“The circumstances are that you have about three minutes before I decide to eat you, so hurry up.”

The mouse’s fur fluffs. Grimmjow grins wickedly. The fear in its scent tastes delicious.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the snack stammers, “this kind of behaviour is unsuited for UA. We may have been unable to get a hold of your parole officer earlier, but please bear in mind that we are reporting this incident to Kurosaki. Do not make it worse for yourself.”

Grimmjow stops listening. If Ichigo is on vacation, happily ignoring his phone as Grimmjow predicated he would, then that means he should get a break too. And that means not bothering to half-heartedly pretend to care about all these stupid school rules. Sure, maybe eating the mouse-principal is a bad thing, but fuck it. He’s an arrancar. What are they gonna do, slap handcuffs on him and toss him in a cell for murder? He could just snap the handcuffs and break the bars.

Deciding to go for it and ignore all possible consequences, Grimmjow licks his lips and shifts his weight to his toes—

The door opens. Grimmjow snarls lowly as a fucking dog walks in.

“Am I early?” The dog asks gruffly.

“Just a bit,” Mouse squeaks. “I have not yet explained the mandatory counselling Jaegerjaquez will be obligated to attend.”

Counselling? Grimmjow’s eyes narrow to slits. He doesn’t know what that means but it sounds tedious.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the mouse continues, facing him with flat fur and not nearly enough fear, “this is Hound Dog, our school’s guidance counsellor. We had always planned for you to meet with him as part of these rehabilitation classes but given today’s events… we decided to start now. You will be obligated to meet with him—”

Grimmjow laughs. It is not a nice sound.

The mouse’s fur is standing on end once more and the dog looks tense.

“What is it?” The mouse-principal asks.

“If you leave me in a room with that fucking mutt, it’ll be your fault when I rip him apart.” Grimmjow grins, showing off his fangs. The mouse looks appropriately afraid.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the dog starts, his voice a low growl in a way that makes it seem like he always talks like that and isn’t particularly angry, “I know we have not yet met, but I promise—”

“I hate dogs,” Grimmjow says bluntly. He and dogs never end well. Ichigo wanted one for a while, talked about how great a dog would be for company and exercise — as if living in the Kurosaki household doesn’t provide both of those — so Grimmjow went along with it for a bit. The puppies in the videos Ichigo showed him were cute.

Then they went to a pet store and all the dogs immediately decided they hated him. They growled and barked and bite like he had killed their families (which he hasn’t, he doesn’t bother going after such weak prey), and it was an incredible nuisance. Three of the dogs Ichigo wanted to look at bit him. Three! And since he was in the stupid gigai Urahara made for him, the last one actually drew blood.

Ichigo had to drag him out of the store before he got over his shock and returned the favour.

Then he talked with Karin about it and learned yet another important fact: dogs take up space. Ichigo wanted the dog inside the house, which apparently means on the bed. Grimmjow is not sharing his space with a filthy dog that thinks it’s better than him. What’s so special about a dog anyway? All they do is sleep, eat, and cuddle. Grimmjow does all that. And he talks. And fights. He’s way better than any mangy old mutt.

Needless to say, it did not take long before Ichigo gave up on the idea. His friends, the redhead with the healing powers and the one that punches Ichigo all the time, got a dog together. It’s a tiny black thing barely the size of Grimmjow’s head that doesn’t bark so much as yap and slobber as it licks everyone’s faces. Very gross. Ichigo just goes over to their place to see the dog and seems happy enough visiting one that Grimmjow does not complain when he comes back smelling like the dog. That just means a shower and extra cuddles are needed, which Grimmjow is good at providing.

In any case, he does not like dogs and dogs rarely like him, so this is all around just a horrible idea.

“Yeah, no. I’m out.” Grimmjow stands. It only takes a couple quick steps with sonido to get outside, which is when he remembers why he planned to not be outside this afternoon: it is raining. He is now wet.

Growling up at the sky for daring rain on him, Grimmjow quickly moves to the dorm house. The kids are all there by now so the twelve down in the common room all get to witness it as he slams the door open hard enough it shatters and stomps inside, dripping. A furious scowl darkens his face. He hates being wet.

He marches up to Yaoyorozu. “I need a phone.”

“What for?” She slides back a step. Oh. Right. He did gut their teacher, huh? Whatever. She didn’t even die; it’s not that big of a deal.

“I’m wet,” he says in a flat voice. “I’m calling Ichigo.”

“Oh. Uh, okay.” She hands her phone over and Grimmjow types in the one human cell number he bothered to learn.

It rings twice before Ichigo picks up. “Urahara, I’m not giving you any information about my body, so—”

“I’ll kill him,” Grimmjow snarls, a dark timber pitching his words down. The students around him gasp.

“Oh, hey Grimmjow. Didn’t know it was you. What’s up?” Okay. Apparently they’re ignoring that Urahara is doing weird stuff again.

“I went in the rain.”

“Gotcha. I’ll be there in five.” Ichigo hangs up, so Grimmjow hands Yaoyorozu her phone back with a sharp grunt of thanks. She looks vaguely confused, but Grimmjow has bigger problems.

“If he comes through the front, tell him to come upstairs,” Grimmjow instructs any of the listening bees. He doesn’t care who talks to Ichigo, just that someone does. With that, he stalks upstairs to his room on the fifth floor and sets to stripping out of his wet clothes. A scowl twists his face as the cold water trickles from his hair down his spine.

When Ichigo makes his way in through the unlocked balcony, Grimmjow is standing nude with the black hoodie in his hands, debating putting it on now or not. He doesn’t want it to get wet, but he’s cold.

“I figured you’d stay inside,” Ichigo comments. There is a bag on his shoulder. He sets it down, takes out a huge fluffy white towel from inside, and throws it at Grimmjow who quickly sets to burrowing into it.

“Gutted a teacher. Almost ate the principal. Gonna kill the dog if he talks to me again.”

Ichigo blinks. “Wow. I ate a twelve-pack of donuts and feel pretty sick now.”

“What an eventful day you’ve had,” Grimmjow mutters as he scrubs at his hair, furious that the strands do not dry immediately. He doesn’t mind showers since that usually implies he is in charge of everything to do with the situation. But when the weather decides to fuck everyone over for the sake of the environment and plants and whatever, it’s a real nuisance that no sane person enjoys. Hence why Ichigo was outside voluntarily.

While Grimmjow battles with the towel and the general concept of being dry, Ichigo gets into action. He tugs multiple blankets out of the bag he brought and starts setting them in place on the beanbag chair. Four thick, heavy, warm blankets may seem excessive, but when combating Grimmjow’s grumpiness and the cold, there is no such thing as too many blankets.

By virtue of threatening to gut another teacher, Grimmjow manages to convince Ichigo to stay the night.

 

Friday brings a whole new set of problems. Mainly that it’s been, like, five days and this mission still isn’t over. What a complete waste of time.

In any case, Grimmjow is minding his own business, glaring out the window (since he’s supposed to be paying attention and may get expelled for sleeping, which is totally unfair), when a flash of something red catches his eye. He snaps his attention to the front of the classroom. Nothing.

He turns back to the window—

There!

Attention fully on the board as the dark-haired teacher lectures in a droning voice, Grimmjow stares down the front of the class. The red… thing is not visible, but he’s sure it’ll be back. And when it is, he will defeat it. Somehow. Whatever it is.

The red dot flashes into sight, directly onto of the board the teacher is writing on.

Grimmjow attacks.

The class screams as his claws tear through the board as easily as melted butter. Grimmjow ignores them — he is getting rather used to do that — and checks his claws. No red dot. He didn’t get it.

A scowl darkens his face as he whips his head around, eyes narrowed as he scans the room.

“Jaegerjaquez!” The teacher snarls, “what are you doing?!”

“Shut up, I’m hunting,” he hisses back. Grimmjow makes sure to not blink. Any chance he gives for the red dot to escape is a mistake on his part.

“Hunting what?” Yaoyorozu asks after a tense, silent moment.

Grimmjow doesn’t want to admit that he cannot find his prey, but maybe one of the kids saw which way it ran. “The red dot. Did you see it?”

“You’re fucking with us, right?” One of the kids starts chuckling, but it fades off when they realize Grimmjow is entirely serious.

Next to him, the teacher sighs. The red dot appears on the teacher’s desk. Grimmjow snarls viciously and pounces.

The desk cracks under the force of his attack, but does not break entirely. Grimmjow stares at the spot where his hands are pressing against the wood. Carefully, he lifts one hand and peeks under it.

“WHAT?!” He snarls, suddenly furious. His forearms shift to those from his resurreccion, his claws digging into the wood. How could he have missed it again? This doesn’t make any sense!

“I’m too fucking tired for this,” the teacher mutters behind him. Grimmjow ignores the man. He is busy trying to figure out how the hell he is losing to a red dot.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the teacher says, drawing his attention. “Look.” Following where the teacher is pointing, Grimmjow finds the red dot is on the window. “It ran outside.”

“Fucking coward!” Grimmjow snarls, setting chase. Someone screams as he crashes through the window, trying to grab the red dot. It vanishes again. He growls angrily and sets to hunting it down.

 

He returns to the dorm late that night, fuming. He did not find the red dot. Not a single glimpse of it! How fucking pathetic.

Any kids he comes across take one look at the fury written on his face and wisely move out of his way.

 

Grimmjow rolls off his blanket-piled beanbag Saturday morning feeling like shit. For one, he’s still pissed he couldn’t catch that fucking red dot. For another, it’s almost been a whole week, absolutely nothing soul-related has happened, and he is ready to be done. Maybe if he destroys the school that’ll solve everything and they can go home.

In any case, he learnt from Ichigo that Saturdays do not have class, so he is fully prepared to leave the dorm building (off the balcony, obviously) and go find somewhere to train. His muscles are stiff and it feels like he hasn’t drawn his sword in years. Maybe he’ll get lucky and slice the red dot in half by accident.

Then his nose twitches.

“What the…” He trails off, glancing at the hall-door. Something smells good. While he wants to investigate, the good smell is coming from downstairs, where he can hear the brats congregating.

Fuck it. Yesterday fucking sucked and he wants whatever it is that smells nice. Those losers aren’t stopping him.

Grimmjow stomps downstairs, scowl etched onto his face, and glowers at the kids gathered in the kitchen.

“The thing that smells good, I want it,” Grimmjow declares. The kids, all eight of them, blink and stare. Yaoyorozu sets down her teacup.

“Well,” she starts, “Bakugo is making breakfast, but it’s not quite done yet—”

“Not that,” Grimmjow interrupts. He points to a kid he doesn’t recognize who is holding a small dish in their hands. “That. Give it.”

The kid blinks. Whispers something to Yaoyorozu. Her brow furrows.

“That’s catnip.”

“So?”

“Well, it’s for—”

“Don’t care, I want it.” Should he be worried about consuming something new and weird? Probably. But fuck it, it smells good and it’s not like it’ll kill him.

The kids exchange looks. The dish gets handed to Grimmjow. He gets one moment of glee then takes a proper sniff to investigate the substance and promptly blacks out.

 

“Hey guys, good morning—” Midoriya freezes as he comes into the dorms after his morning run. He blinks. Did he enter some weird twilight zone?

Yaomomo, Kouda, Sero, Kirishima, Kaminari, Jirou, Mina, and even Kacchan are laughing.

The reason for such an odd occurrence is quite clear: Jaegerjaquez is practically glued to Yaomomo’s side, arms looped around her and face shoved into her hair. And he’s purring.

“What’s going on?” Midoriya asks, a little scared of the answer.

“We think he’s, uh, high.”

“What?!” Who brought drugs?? They’re UA students! If Iida finds out, he’ll have a heart attack!

“Off catnip.”

Midoriya blinks. Somehow that makes the situation even more confusing.

“Should we call Aizawa-sensei?” Midoriya suggests, wringing his fingers. “Or someone else?”

Somehow, that catches Jaegerjaquez’s attention. Blue eyes swivel Midoriya’s way, the pupils blown out three times their regular size.

“Ichi?” Jaegerjaquez mumbles. He starts looking around. A sad frown pushes onto his lips. He sniffles and mumbles something inaudible before planting his cheek on Yaomomo’s head, still sniffling sadly.

“Are you… okay?” Yaomomo asks softly.

Jaegerjaquez starts bawling. His hug tightens and Yaomomo winces.

Then, without explanation, the room shudders. It’s a violent burst of pressure, so sudden and sharp Midoriya is not alone when his knees buckle and he falls to the ground. Yaoyorozu and by proxy Jaegerjaquez are the only ones who remain standing.

Long seconds pass before the pressure lets up.

Just as Midoriya has gotten to his feet, wondering what on earth happened, the dorm front door is flung open hard enough it slams into the wall. Something cracks.

“Grimmjow?!” Kurosaki, cause apparently he’s here now, calls.

Jaegerjaquez perks up. He stops crying. He shoves off Yaomomo and flickers out of sight with a couple strange happy-sounding noises.

When Midoriya catches sight of him again, he finds that Jaegerjaquez has tackled Kurosaki to the floor.

“Come off it, Grimm,” Kurosaki hisses. “You almost cracked my skull again.”

The only reply Kurosaki gets is very loud and content-sounding purring. Jaegerjaquez has latched onto Kurosaki like a koala and is— Midoriya blinks, certain he’s seeing wrong. It looks like Jaegerjaquez is licking Kurosaki’s neck.

“What the hell.” Kurosaki twists to peer at them. “What’d you do to him.”

Kouda lifts the dish of catnip. Yaomomo points to it, and labels it as such.

“Oh. Shit. Huh. Guess I owe Urahara money.” Like that explains everything, Kurosaki shifts to hug Jaegerjaquez back and starts petting his hair. The purring grows louder.

If Midoriya wasn’t already eight-five percent sure they were lying about this whole situation, this moment would confirm it: Jaegerjaquez has some kind of cat-mutation quirk, not a pure physical enhancement quirk. That’s the only plausible explanation. Plus, that makes everything else line up. The napping, the growling, the yarn incident, the chasing the red dot thing… just everything.

It still doesn’t make any sense why they would lie about his quirk, but Midoriya is sure it’ll all make sense eventually. Most likely when it’s revealed Jaegerjaquez is actually in league with villains. For now, Midoriya decides that he doesn’t want to get involved in whatever is going to happen with a Jaegerjaquez who is high (regular Jaegerjaquez is enough of a handful), so he retreats to his room to work on an essay.

 

At this point Ichigo is pretty sure he lost two bets with Urahara, so he’s now wondering what that means for his personal life and general privacy. He is not broke, but is now trying to save for college, so Urahara will surely offer some other way Ichigo can pay off those bets, and he isn’t sure he wants to know what that will be. It’ll be nothing good, that’s for sure. He might trust Urahara with his life, but never with, say, his social security number.

In any case, that will need to be a problem for later.

Right now, Ichigo has one very cuddly and affectionate Grimmjow to deal with. Not that Grimmjow can’t normally be cuddly and affectionate, he just usually shows that he cares in different ways: not pulling his punches in a fight, baring his back or throat, being overly aggressive to anything that could be a threat towards Ichigo or his sisters. Sure, there are definitely times when Grimmjow latches on and demands cuddles or attention, but those moments are rarer than the aggression.

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo tries, “come on, let’s go to your room.”

Grimmjow keeps licking his neck, content to ignore all words and common sense. His tongue is kind of scratch, but it’s a feeling Ichigo is used to by now.

“Dammit,” he mutters. He lets his head tilt back, trying to think, but all that does is allow Grimmjow more access to his throat, which the arrancar happily claims.

While Ichigo has no problem being affectionate in public, Grimmjow is less inclined. His pride will be wounded if Ichigo lets them stay here on the floor where anyone can see.

But no one ever accused Ichigo of having plans that were too good and thought out, so he says the first, incredibly stupid, thing that comes to mind: “Come on, Grimm. I think Rukia is in your room, let’s go say hi.”

The happy purring cuts off immediately. Blown-out eyes stare at him for a long moment, then Grimmjow disappears in a burst of sonido.

“Shit.” Ichigo smacks his forehead, scrambling to his feet and rushing up the stairs after him. He is by no means slow — Yoruichi would be ashamed if his shunpo was anything but awesome — but Grimmjow is fast. By the time Ichigo gets there, the room is already half-torn apart and Grimmjow is growling deep in his chest.

Way to go, dumbass.

Shut up. He does not need Zangetsu’s commentary right now.

“Grimmjow I was just kidding, Rukia isn’t here.” His words do very little to stop Grimmjow’s claws from shredding the wall he is working on. For a moment Ichigo wonders why Grimmjow is checking the walls for Rukia, then realizes that is also his own fault. He let Rukia stay the night in his closet once, for old time’s sake.

They don’t speak of that night anymore.

Sighing, since this really is his own fault, Ichigo flops onto the beanbag, leaving space for when his arrancar decides to join him, and settles in to wait. Grimmjow is too stubborn to listen right now, but maybe the prospect of cuddles will eventually entice him to stop destroying the room.

 

When he blinks his eyes open, his head hurts, his hands itch, his eyes ache, his nose stings, and he can feel Ichigo’s heartbeat against his cheek.

“The hell happened?” Grimmjow asks, his voice coming out raspy, like he spent the afternoon screaming.

“So, don’t tell my dad cause I’m sure he’ll try to get it for you for Christmas if he knows, but I’m pretty sure you can get high from catnip.”

“Oh. That was high?” He frowns. “I just remember feeling… weird.” Too bad. That catnip stuff smelled really good. He still wants to know what it tastes like.

“Right.” Ichigo’s voice is stiff. Grimmjow’s eyes narrow.

He pushes himself up and looks down at the soul reaper. Ichigo’s eyes flick away.

“Did I hurt you?” He asks, voice serious. Obviously Ichigo can take care of himself just fine, but Grimmjow knows he can be vicious.

“No, it’s not that.” Ichigo still won’t meet his gaze.

“Then what is it? I did something.” That much is clear. Grimmjow frowns, frustrated with himself. Normally when he upsets Ichigo he knows why: he ate a human soul, hurt one of Ichigo’s friends (either physically or emotionally, each needs a different apology), threatened to kill the wrong person. Those things he knows and can understand why Ichigo doesn’t want him doing that. But when he has no idea what he did wrong because his own fucking brain is mush, it’s harder to deal with.

Ichigo sighs, still staring up at the ceiling. “It’s nothing.”

“Tell me.”

Silence.

Grimmjow snarls, deep in his chest, and grabs Ichigo’s throat.

That gets a reaction.

Eyes flooding black and gold, Ichigo snarls back, just as loud and hollow-like as Grimmjow. His hand slaps Grimmjow’s away hard enough it stings. There. Now they’re speaking the same language.

“Tell me,” Grimmjow says again. “What did I do?”

Ichigo takes a deep breath. His eyes slowly leech back to normal; Grimmjow is almost sad to see the gold leave. It’s a pretty colour.

In a quiet voice, Ichigo answers. “You asked if I was going to abandon you and get a girlfriend.”

Something clenches in his chest and Grimmjow forgets how to breathe. His eyes go wide. Shit. That stupid, selfish worry was never meant to be vocalized.

Ichigo glances at him, grimaces, then looks away again. “So you didn’t just say that cause you were high.”

“Listen—”

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo interrupts, his voice shocking serious. “Do you honestly think I’d do that?”

Grimmjow must stay quiet a second too long since Ichigo sighs and stands up.

“No. I don’t,” Grimmjow snaps. His voice is a pitch too high to be angry.

“It’s getting late,” Ichigo says. The bastard still won’t look at him. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Without giving Grimmjow time to answer, Ichigo flash steps out of sight.

Grimmjow reacts very appropriately. He screams and sets to finishing what his earlier self started. The walls were ugly anyway.

 

Come morning, Grimmjow feels like shit. The walls of his room are practically shredded, scratched to hell and back thanks to his claws. Not that it helped any. Looking at the mess, all he can see is visible proof of his own weakness. How pathetic.

Suddenly unable to stay in here a moment longer, Grimmjow stomps for the door—

He doubles back and grabs the hoodie Ichigo left. Given how they left things last night, Grimmjow is unsure where they stand. So, he’s going to wear the hoodie today in case Ichigo decides to take it back later.

Hoodie on, Grimmjow heads out into the hall and immediately locks eyes with Yaoyorozu as she exits the room directly across from his. He didn’t know that was her room. Her eyes look sunken thanks to the dark bags under them.

Grimmjow shoves his hands into the pocket on the hoodie and grunts softly, hoping she accepts that as an apology. He kind of forgot there were kids around trying to sleep when he was busy… remodeling his room last night.

When he gets downstairs, Yaoyorozu following him, Grimmjow spies the person he wants to see the least.

“Urahara,” Grimmjow growls.

The annoyance looks his way. “Oh, hey there. Don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying a little snack.” The shopkeeper goes back to eating what looks like some poor kid’s breakfast. Yaoyorozu eyes him suspiciously but skirts around to go get her tea from the kitchen.

“Whatever.” If Urahara wants to be ignored, Grimmjow can do that. It’ll be easy.

Before he gets one step, Urahara speaks up again. “Actually, now that I think about it, I do have a reason to be here.”

Grimmjow’s reflexes are the only reason he catches the small, suspicious grey sphere thrown at his hand.

“The hell is this?”

“Breakfast.”

Grimmjow narrows his eyes but sniffs the marble-like thing. It smells like a hollow.

“Is this going to kill me?”

“Probably not.” Urahara finishes the poor unattended plate and leans back with a content sigh.

Grimmjow stares at the sphere. He can fell Urahara’s eyes on him, which means this is likely very untested.

“Fuck it.” He pops it into his mouth and swallows before he can overthink it.

Shockingly, he does not immediately die.

Instead, he can feel it as the compressed hollow soul is absorbed into his own. He blinks, a bit taken aback. It’s almost as good as eating an actual hollow.

“The hell is that?” He asks. But Urahara is already standing, cane in hand, preparing to weasel out of any explanations, like always.

“I could explain, but I doubt you’ve got enough chemistry knowledge to understand. Buh bye now, have fun on your date.”

“What date?” But Grimmjow’s angrily snapped question only meets empty air. “Fucking bastard,” he grumbles, glaring extra hard at the place Urahara just left.

A kid comes out from the kitchen with a piece of nearly burnt toast. “Hey! Where’d my food go?”

Grimmjow sighs and walks away. Someone else can tell the brat that leaving food unoccupied and unguarded is basically an invitation for someone to try stealing it.

 

Grimmjow isn’t moping, but he must not look happy either since, despite sitting on the most comfortable of the chairs in the common room, no one approaches him. Good. Maybe they have more self-awareness than he thought.

However, he only gets maybe forty minutes of not-moping time before the dorm doors swing open and Ichigo walks through. His steps are determined and his eyes glint dangerously.

“What?” Grimmjow snaps, his hackles rising. Given how Ichigo left last night, he figured the soul reaper would be mad today.

“It’s date day.” Greenie, obviously eavesdropping, chokes on water. “We’re going to spar, go see a movie, and have a picnic if there’s time. Sound good?”

Grimmjow waits a moment, sure there is a catch, but nothing follows. Well, who would be dumb enough to say no to an offer like that? He hasn’t fought in nearly a week; his claws are practically brittle from lack of blood.

“Only if you go all out,” Grimmjow says, a wickedly feral grin stretching his lips. “If you hold back, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Yeah, I know.” Ichigo sounds fond. “Now come on.”

Grimmjow trails Ichigo out the dorm, then as he zips away faster than the human eye can follow. Last night left him frazzled and uncertain, so a spar is just what they need. Lay everything out on the table. Scratch, claw, bite, and bleed until they understand each other again.

Ichigo brings them somewhere he must have scouted earlier since it is a wide-open space with no human or animal life anywhere nearby. Good. If anyone is dumb enough to get in the way, it will be their own fault when Grimmjow kills them.

“Ready?” Grimmjow just glares back in response. “Yeah, okay, fine.” Ichigo rolls his eyes, then slips into hollowfication. His left eye goes gold, the colour bright against the black marking on his face. A single horn just out from the side of his head. Ichigo rolls his shoulders, hefting a white blade.

“Better?” Ichigo asks. He sounds mocking, but Grimmjow knows he is just as excited for this fight. Almost a whole week is far too long to go without sparring.

“Much.” Grimmjow goes into resurreccion and snarls, flexing his claws.

Then they move.

In the years since Aizen, their spars have become much more playful. Teasing banter is commonplace and they somehow came to a silent, mutual, agreement to not kill each other, so killing blows — real ones with intent and strength behind them — are rare.

So, when the first strike of Zangetsu snaps through the air aiming straight for Grimmjow’s throat, his blood sings. He may not want Ichigo to die, but a real fight where they don’t hold back and trust each other to survive… that’s the kind of battle Grimmjow lives for.

He twists out of the blade’s path and strikes back with an attack of his own. Had Ichigo not moved fast enough, Grimmjow’s claws would have ripped his guts out.

They both leap back and take a moment. Grimmjow knows his smile is feral and his sharp teeth are on full display, fully embracing all his instincts. Ichigo is the same. For all he pretends to be human, the moments like this, where he lets go and allows himself to be vicious and predatorial, these are the moments Grimmjow likes best.

A single beat passes, then they’re at each other’s throats again. Sparks fly as claws clash against steel. Then again and again as they move faster and faster, caught up in an instinctual dance only the two of them can follow.

Zangetsu snares his flesh, dipping past his hierro to draw blood, but Grimmjow ignores it. He fights, wild and uncaged, until his own claws come back bloody, a strip torn down Ichigo’s shoulder. He laughs. Good. Now they’re getting somewhere.

Time loses meaning as they fight. The ground trembles from the strain they’re putting on it. Any nearby weaklings would’ve long been crushed dead thanks to the heavy spiritual pressure they’re exerting.

“Do you get it yet?” Ichigo says as they leap apart for a quick pause. His words are heavy as he pants for breath. Grimmjow is not in any better shape; if anything, his sides are heaving just as much and he’s bleeding more.

“Get what?” Grimmjow flicks wet, shiny blood off his claws. His shoulders ache and his arms are starting to tremble with each strike he has to block.

Ichigo makes a small, frustrated noise that is almost a snarl. “That you’re the only one I fight like this.” Grimmjow blinks. His eyes widen as Ichigo’s words really sink in. “So why would I want a different partner when I have you?”

Grimmjow’s throat bobs. He just stands there, staring dumbly for a long moment. Long enough that Ichigo hefts Zangetsu to rest the long blade on his shoulder.

“Oh,” Grimmjow finally manages to say.

Ichigo snorts. “I kind of feel like a moron now,” the soul reaper says. “I’ve been calling you my boyfriend for over a year and you didn’t even think we were together.”

Grimmjow opens his mouth to refute that, then pauses.

Ichigo misinterprets his silence. He winces and averts his eyes. “Sorry. Do you, uh, not want me to call you that?”

“…Did you tell that to Kuchiki?”

“Rukia? Yeah.” Ichigo’s brow scrunches.

“Good. Keep doing that.” Grimmjow suddenly feels quite pleased with this turn of events. Fucking Kuchiki and her meddling. “Yuzu told me that boyfriend is a claim, so that means Kuchiki can fuck off and not bother either of us anymore.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes. He seems much more at ease now. “She’s still my friend, Grimm.”

“I swore I’d eat her if she ever showed her face again.”

“I mean, I guess you could try. But I’m not helping if she freezes your ass in ice.”

Grimmjow frowns. He hates being cold.

As he opens his mouth to continue brainstorming ways to kill the bitch, he senses a presence coming close to them. He yanks his spiritual pressure in and Ichigo, catching the same thing as him, reels his in too. It might not matter (Grimmjow won’t care if they happened to crush some moronic human to death), but they should at least see who it is first before killing them.

“Hey there!” A cheerful voice calls from above them. Glancing up, Grimmjow grins wickedly. Just as he was starting to feel hungry, a bird appears. What luck.

“Hey,” Ichigo replies. While the soul reaper appears at ease, Grimmjow can see the tension in his shoulders. He is just as angry at this interruption as Grimmjow is.

“So, I feel bad asking, but which of you is the villain?” Bird guy looks between the two of them, bushy blond eyebrows furrows. “Or are you both villains? Cause I can arrest you both if that’s what’s going on.”

Grimmjow has no idea what the bird is talking about. Considering Ichigo looks less surprised, maybe he paid attention and read the information packet Urahara gave them about this world.

“We’re, uh.” Ichigo stops and glances at him, as if trying to figure out how to reply.

Rolling his eyes, Grimmjow sneers up at the bird. “We’re boyfriends,” he says confidently. “And you’re ruining our date.” With how the bird’s face goes as red as his feathers and his wings miss a beat, dropping him a few inches in the air, Grimmjow decides that he quite likes being a boyfriend. It doesn’t hurt that Ichigo is staring at him with wide eyes, a faint dusting on pink on his cheeks. Yeah. He can definitely get used to this boyfriend thing.

The bird recovers quickly. “Oh! I see. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t fight here. This is private property and you’ve destroyed quite a bit of it.”

Grimmjow frowns. He looks to Ichigo.

“No,” the soul reaper says immediately.

“I didn’t ask yet!”

“No, you can’t eat him.”

“But he’s a bird.”

An eyebrow arches. “Are you admitting that you’re a cat?”

Grimmjow’s scowl darkens. His claws flex, ready to draw blood for that insult. He is not a cat! He was a panther adjuchas and that’s different!

The bird laughs awkwardly. “Buddy, if you try to eat me then I’m definitely arresting you. You know I’m a hero, right?”

“Am I supposed to care?” Grimmjow’s tail snaps at his ankles, suddenly eager to hunt this new prey. The bird has big wings. Maybe he’s fast.

Ichigo sighs loudly. “Come on, Grimm. They have a big movie theatre, so let’s just go watch a movie.”

“Actually, I’m going to need you guys to come to my agency for a bit. There’s gonna be some paperwork to fill out for the destruction of private— hey!”

Without waiting for the bird to finish, Grimmjow and Ichigo both run, but in separate directions. Ichigo starts to shunpo away, while Grimmjow leaps at the bird, his claws shredding through feathers that are frantically tossed into his path.

“Dammit Grimmjow!”

He ignores Ichigo and takes another swipe at the bird. The bird is quick, his wings and feathers help him zip through the air, but Grimmjow is faster. It only takes seconds, seconds the human cannot keep up with, and Grimmjow’s hand is around his prey’s throat. He grins viciously as his claws dig in, drawing blood—

He yowls as pain bursts across his scalp.

“Drop him. We’re leaving.”

“Fucking let go!” Grimmjow snarls, trying to dislodge Ichigo’s hand from where he has grabbed a fistful of long blue hair. Ichigo just tugs again, gentler this time.

Reluctantly, Grimmjow drops his hold on the bird. As he thought, Ichigo lets go of his hair. Grimmjow scowls at the soul reaper, smoothing a hand over his hair as if that will help his stinging scalp.

“It better be a long movie,” Grimmjow mutters, pushing past Ichigo. This time they both run away, leaving the bird to stare at now-empty space in utter confusion.

 

Grimmjow strolls into the school Monday morning, quite pleased with himself.

After the movie — a three-hour documentary on desert animals — Grimmjow… convinced Ichigo to let him stay the night. It was quite easy. All he had to do was sit in front of the door, blocking Urahara from entering the hotel room he and Ichigo have been sharing for the duration of the trip. Urahara gave up after three hours (or, more likely, got bored and decided to go bother some other poor fool), so that meant Grimmjow got a whole night of cuddles. Maybe he’s getting spoiled from spending so much time with Ichigo, but it is much easier to doze through a night when he has Ichigo’s heartbeat as background noise.

In any case, he is in a good mood. A good mood that is quickly ruined when he enters the classroom and remembers that he is, in fact, still stuck here. It’s been a whole week now, what the hell is he even waiting for? Grimmjow is confident someone would let him know if he missed whatever he’s supposed to be looking for, but still. A whole fucking week.

“Jaegerjaquez,” the teacher snaps the moment they make eye contact. “You weren’t at dorms last night.”

“Nope.”

“Where were you? This is an unauthorized—”

“With Ichigo.” Grimmjow suddenly feels pleased again. “My boyfriend.” He hears multiple students gasp. A small, jealous part of himself is very smug. He rather likes throwing that word around. It makes people understand that Ichigo is off limits and that Grimmjow is allowed to kill anyone (especially Kuchiki) who gets too close.

The teacher’s eyebags suddenly look three times darker. “Are you being serious? You can’t date your parole officer— you know what, I’m too tired for this. Let’s get homeroom over with. Jaegerjaquez, we will talk after school.”

“Whatever.” Grimmjow walks over to his window seat, dropping a box of tea leaves (paid for by a Kuchiki, which is annoying even if it’s the less bothersome one) on Yaoyorozu’s desk as he goes. He strolls past so quickly she cannot question him, closes his eyes, and gears up to nap the morning away. It’s been a whole week. He no longer cares if he gets expelled for sleeping.

 

The afternoon comes far too slowly, but Grimmjow is glad to be outside again. It’s a nice day. He has no idea what activity the kids are doing or why it’s in the trees, near the giant wall that’s built around the school, but he can see a tree that’s got a sturdy branch high in the air that is perfect for napping.

Just as Grimmjow is about to climb the tree and settle in for the afternoon, a loud boom sounds. That’s his only warning before the wall near them shatters. He grins. This just got interesting.

 

Midoriya gasps as the gate explodes.

“Shigaraki!” He growls, lifting his fists. One for All flickers green around him. Then he spies Jaegerjaquez squinting at the villains as the entire League and a bunch of nomu file onto campus through the giant hole in the wall.

“Get behind me!” Midoriya says, grabbing Jaegerjaquez’s arm and tugging the other student behind him. Sure, Jaegerjaquez was fast and did well enough in that one exercise he participated in, but this is different. These are villains. Class 1A has experience that Jaegerjaquez does not — not unless Jaegerjaquez really is part of the League. Midoriya has found very little information on the transfer, not even a juvie record, so he still isn’t sure what Jaegerjaquez’s deal is.

But the blue-haired man scoffs.

“This is a fucking joke, right?” He steps out from behind Midoriya and flickers out of sight, reappearing at the front of the class, ahead of Aizawa-sensei and All Might. Putting himself on the front line. Midoriya’s anxiety over the imminent fight grows.

“Jaegerjaquez, get back here!” Aizawa-sensei snaps. His wise words are ignored.

“Hey,” Jaegerjaquez says, addressing the League of Villains. “Do you fuckers know what you’ve done to me?”

Toga squints at him and tugs Shigaraki’s sleeve. “Do we know him, Shiggy? I don’t remember him being in Class 1A before.”

“How should I know? I don’t think he’s familiar. Whatever. We’ll just kill him too, I guess.”

Jaegerjaquez laughs. Well, to call it a laugh is generous. It’s more of a manic cackle than anything else. Chills slither down Midoriya’s spine.

“Now that’s funny,” Jaegerjaquez says once he’s stopped laughing. A feral grin is on his lips. “You think you can kill me? I was hoping for a challenge, but you’re nothing but pathetic worms. I had to wait an entire week pretending to be a student for this!”

“Wait, so you’re really not a student?” Midoriya asks.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jaegerjaquez gives him a sharp look. “Do I look like a fucking student?”

“Well…”

“Yeah. Exactly. It was a dumb plan to begin with. Though,” he snorts, “I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Anyway,” Jaegerjaquez turns his attention back to the League. Still grinning, he draws that sword of his. “I really want to go home, so I’ll kill you quick. Be grateful. Ants like you aren’t worthy of this honour.”

Before anyone can warn Jaegerjaquez that attacking the entire League head-on is a bad plan, there’s a black and orange blur that catches Midoriya’s attention before solidifying into Kurosaki, who is now at Jaegerjaquez’s side. He’s wearing black clothing Midoriya doesn’t recognize and has a massive sword strapped to his back.

“Fuck off, Ichigo,” Jaegerjaquez grumbles. “I had to do the school, so I get to kill them. It’s only fair. Go sit over there and stay out of the way.”

“I won’t get in the way,” Kurosaki protests. “Besides, I’m just here to remind you not to kill the humans.”

Jaegerjaquez scowls. “Those are your rules, not mine.”

“Grimmjow, come on. Don’t be like this.”

“…What about that one?” He points his sword to Spinner, who looks insulted. “Don’t like the way he’s looking at me.”

“No.”

“What about him?” This time Jaegerjaquez points to Hound Dog. “I really hate him.”

“No,” Kurosaki says. It sounds too fond considering they are discussing murder.

“So I only get to kill the weird soul creatures?”

“Yes. Now you’re getting it.” Kurosaki pats Jaegerjaquez’s shoulder. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

“Fuck off, I’m not a tiger.”

“It’s a saying.” Kurosaki shrugs. “I’ll stay here and make sure the humans don’t die. Have fun, don’t make me stop you from killing the wrong people.”

“Please,” Jaegerjaquez scoffs. “Like you could.”

Kurosaki snorts. “Right. And who was it that ate dirt yesterday?”

“Can’t hear you,” Jaegerjaquez snipes back, “busy killing humans.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Before Midoriya can figure out what on earth is happening, Jaegerjaquez turns his sword, grins so widely even Toga takes a tiny step back, and says, “Grind, Pantera!” causing a huge wave of pressure to explode throughout the courtyard, sending all those (Midoriya included) down to their knees. The only ones who are unbothered are Kurosaki, who looks bored, and Jaegerjaquez, who looks—

Midoriya’s jaw drops. He was so right. Jaegerjaquez does have a mutation quirk!

Jaegerjaquez is still grinning ferally, but it fits his face more now that he looks half-cat-ish. It’s kind of strange that his hair got so long though.

“Right then. Let’s get this over with and go home.” He flexes his fingers — paws? Claws? Midoriya isn’t sure what the right terminology is anymore — and does that flicker-y thing where he vanishes from sight and pops up somewhere else.

Expect this time three nomu are sliced to pieces in his wake.

Midoriya is not the only one gaping. To take down three whole nomu that quickly is incredible, even if the manner is rather gory and violent and heroes should not kill so easily.

“Sloppy!” Kurosaki calls.

“Like you could do better!” Jaegerjaquez snarls. “Your bladework is shit!”

“Watch your left!” Kurosaki says in response. There are no villains to Jaegerjaquez’s left, which he seems to know considering the very loud scoff and pointed eyeroll Kurosaki receives in return.

That’s when it hits: Kurosaki is heckling Jaegerjaquez. For some reason, they both aren’t taking this fight seriously. They are joking around with each other. They get that these are villains, right? High-level, dangerous villains?

Considering Jaegerjaquez is sneering at the villains and taking them out so easily and quickly Midoriya can hardly follow and Kurosaki keeps shouting a combination of insults and teases, no, they do not get it. Maybe Jaegerjaquez is not in league with villains after all, but he certainly can’t be sane either. If anything, Midoriya is just more confused than before.

At least Shigaraki seems equally confused. In mere moments, the small army of nomu that the League brought to aid their attack are in all lying in bloody ribbons on the ground. Jaegerjaquez flexes his claws. They’re dripping.

“Kinda reminds me of sushi,” Kurosaki says. He doesn’t seem nearly disturbed enough for the amount of gore that’s leaking onto the forest floor.

“Fuck sushi,” Jaegerjaquez hisses. “Tastes like shit.”

“You’re only saying that cause Rukia likes it.”

“So?”

A snort. “You’re impossible. I’m not going to let you kill one of my best friends, so you’ll have to deal with her eventually.”

“Well, maybe I’ll get Nel’s help.” Midoriya has no idea who Nel is, but, judging by the way Jaegerjaquez’s face scrunches like he’s bitten into a lemon, he doesn’t like them much.

Kurosaki tips his head back and cackles. “Yeah, sure. Good luck with that.”

“I’ll get her to distract you.”

“Uhuh. Sure. So you’re totally okay with it if she hugs me?”

Jaegerjaquez stills. Another shiver runs down Midoriya’s spine. This is worse than when they faced Stain. He wants to step back, but his legs won’t move.

“Yeah, I figured,” Kurosaki says, smugness clear in his voice. “Now hurry up. Even Renji would be done this by now.”

“Fuck you,” Jaegerjaquez snarls. But he does turn back to the League. The few remaining nomu — two high ends — don’t last long. It feels like he blinks and Jaegerjaquez has moved past them. The nomu fall into pieces, sliced up like prime steak. Midoriya’s stomach rolls.

“That it?” Jaegerjaquez asks. He sounds disappointed.

“I think so. I can’t sense anymore—”

“You’re shit at sensing anything.”

“—so I’ll contact Urahara to make sure. Then we can go home.”

Kurosaki tugs a cellphone out of some invisible pocket and dials a number. Jaegerjaquez wanders over to his side. Midoriya pretends to not notice it as Jaegerjaquez licks the blood off his claws.

“You!” Shigaraki is shaking with fury. His teeth are gritted. “You stupid npc! You aren’t allowed to kill my nomu!”

“Just did. Now fuck off, brat. We’re done here.” Jaegerjaquez turns his back to Shigaraki. A stupid move. Midoriya’s eyes go wide and he prepares to shout for them to move, get out of the way, anything, but it’s too late. Shigaraki dashes forward, an arm outstretched.

Midoriya knows he is too far away to help. Even with full cowling, he can’t push Jaegerjaquez out of the way in time.

There’s a flash of movement so fast Midoriya cannot separate the colours to make out what happened.

Then Shigaraki screams, reeling back clutching at his wrist, and Midoriya sees the severed hand hit the dirt.

Kurosaki flicks the huge blade Midoriya didn’t even see him draw, knocking blood off it before he sheathes it across his back again.

“I had that,” Jaegerjaquez mutters. “Besides, what happened to not killing humans?”

“He’s not dead.” Kurosaki’s voice has a dark tint to it that Midoriya has not yet heard. It’s terrifying. “Besides, he wanted to hurt you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I know.” Kurosaki goes back to his phone, lifting the device to his ear and tapping his sandaled foot against the ground impatiently.

Midoriya and the rest of 1A can do little other than watch, shocked, as the League of Villains grab their injured leader and retreat through a warp portal. Just like that, they’re gone. That’s it. It only two men to drive back the entire League of Villains. Not that Midoriya can blame the League for retreating. He wants to run away too.

There’s another blur, and this time it’s one Midoriya recognizes.

“Hawks!” The cheer runs through the class, everyone glad to see a hero they know and trust arrive on the scene. Not that they don’t trust Aizawa-sensei, but having a top three hero there boosts morale.

“Hey kiddos— Hey! It’s you two again!” Hawks lands and points an accusatory finger towards Jaegerjaquez and Kurosaki. “You ran off before. You still need to come with me. We’ll have to add evading law enforcement onto the destruction of property charges—”

“It’ll be murder if you don’t shut the hell up,” Jaegerjaquez snarls, taking a single threatening step towards Hawks. The hero’s feathers puff up.

“Hey now—”

“Knock it off, Grimm,” Kurosaki says as he gets off the phone. “Urahara is on the way. Do you really want him to get a video of you eating a bird?”

“Dammit.” An unhappy frown settles on Jaegerjaquez’s lips. Midoriya can’t help heaving a small sigh of relief. He trusts Hawks could win in a fight — his stats are awesome and he isn’t top three for nothing — but these two unnerve him in a way no other villains ever had. If they even are villains. That part still isn’t totally clear.

Hawks shoots the odd pair a long look before glancing at the dead nomu and grimacing. He heads to Aizawa-sensei and the two begin to talk in a lower murmur Midoriya can’t eavesdrop on.

Only a minute or two pass before someone else is arriving on the scene. Climbing in through the hole in UA’s wall is that same guy from when Jaegerjaquez hurt Midnight-sensei. He strolls in, casual as can be, and hardly does more than glance at the nomu — and Midoriya thinks he only does that to avoid stepping on any of the remains.

“Whelp, looks like we’re all done here, boys!”

“Fucking finally.” Jaegerjaquez, Kurosaki, and the strange man all converge in a tight huddle. They mumble amongst each other for a moment, then a huge black tear splits the sky, like some kind of Halloween smile.

“Let’s get outta here.” Jaegerjaquez leads the way as the three of them walk into the black abyss — the portal? — without regard to any of the gaping faces watching them go.

“Hey, wait!” Hawks yelps, suddenly frantic. “You guys can’t go without—” The black portal snaps shut. The three of them are gone. The air is still, the sky empty. It’s as if they were never here to begin with.

Midoriya blinks to made sure he really isn’t imaging things, then turns to his friends.

“So, now what?” He asks. As one, the class turns to Aizawa-sensei, who sighs loudly and mutters something about really needing another coffee.

 

Stepping out of the garganta and into Urahara’s shop, Grimmjow remembers that he swore to break all the windows. He grins and gets only a single step before Ichigo’s hand grabs his and he is suddenly being dragged out of the shop.

“Okay bye!” Ichigo calls, a frantic note in his voice.

“Hey now, don’t run off just yet! Remember those bets you lost?” Urahara trails after them as they march out of the shop.

“Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Too bad, cause I remember them clearly. Don’t worry, I am quite content to take payment in a non-monetary form. The soul society has informed me that there’s a disturbance in soul activity at, well, another high school—”

“NO!” Grimmjow and Ichigo shout at the same time.

“Aw, come on! It’ll be fun, I promise! They think they’re magic, it’s hilarious!”

“No, no, no!” Ichigo repeats, stomping for the door faster now. “No more high school! I graduated, Grimm did a whole week, we’re done!”

“We’ll see about that.”

Grimmjow doesn’t like the mischievous smirk on Urahara’s face. Just for that, he slams the door extra hard behind them and shatters the hinges. Urahara’s wail is a delightful sound.

Once they have started down the road that leads back to Ichigo’s house, Grimmjow speaks up. “So, we’re not doing that, right? I’m not being a high school student again.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not either. The soul society has so many people who could go, they can just send someone else.”

“Good.”

They walk in relative silence until they reach the Kurosaki home. Then they step inside and Grimmjow immediately hears Karin shouting at Isshin for being dumb about something, and Yuzu shouting at them both to stop shouting in the kitchen. Ichigo lets go of his hand to go join Karin, yelling at his father without having a clue what the argument is about. Just arguing for the hell of it.

Grimmjow smiles. It took a fucking long time, but they’re finally home.

Notes:

Thanks for reading!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of GrimmIchi Adventures