Ch. 3: The METEOR ながれぼし!

"There's no need to frown, Ulquiorra-kun. Just let go of gravity and join me."

Ulquiorra jumped up and down to grab Aizen's suspended ankle. His expression didn't change. At this rate he would never learn to skywalk.

"Remember, Ulquiorra. It is not the earth that's holding you down, it is you who clings to the earth. When you cut that most childish of attachments, then there is only one direction left to go: up." A pack of cirrus clouds shined clear against the dome of night. A good omen?

Ulquiorra screwed himself for that liberating leap, but he only tripped in midair and fell facefirst back into cold hard reality. Rubbing the sand from his eyes with malformed hands, he felt frustrated enough to finally ask the question that had been bothering him since they began their training at noon when the moon hovered just over the horizon--its lowest point. Aizen had promised he'd learn to fly along with the moon. The question: "What's up there anyway?"

Sousuke didn't hesitate to reply, as though he expected young Ulquiorra to understand immediately. "A vast vacuum that's ours to fill. To rule. To eliminate."

"But... what does that mean?"

Aizen shook his head and sighed. He often forgot just how unenlightened his progeny remained, even after so many cycles of natural selection. "I'm sorry, little one: sometimes I fail to acknowledge that the concept is generally beyond the capacity of mere mortal imagination. But worry not, for when you become an adult it shall seem as though you'd always known."

"...Okay," said Ulquiorra. "But when will that be?"

"When you pull your sword from inside your soul."

"But..."

"What is it, Ulquiorra?" said Aizen, plummeting to earth alongside his patience. Hovering just above the rippling sand, he regarded Ulquiorra as a great mother vulture would its plump, expendable chick. "Let us set aside idle talk for later. Catch me if you can. Now or never!"

"But I've already unleashed my sword!" he blurted, afraid he would lose Aizen forever.

"...What?" Aizen's tone turned sharp, antagonistic. The avuncular glint in his eyes vanished utterly. He touched down and strode towards the boy at once. "Ulquiorra, is this true?"

"I don't know its name yet, but I… I…" Ulquiorra's fists strained at his sides and let it all out. "When you called me and I opened the door and you weren't there I thought you must be in trouble and I traced you to Ichimaru-sama's bedroom and I had to open the door somehow…!"

Aizen scowled. "So you unleashed your sword at that moment and unlocked it?"

Ulquiorra nodded.

Aizen smirked. "You foolish child. I promised you I'd hand out your sword the next day."

"But you never did!" Ulquiorra managed to object before his breath shrank suddenly back into his windpipe.

"Ulquiorra-kun, did you think such an insignificant accomplishment would be enough to impress me? To 'save' me? Did you think disobeying me—disrupting my plan—was worthy of praise?"

"N-no, n-never disobeyyyy," Ulquiorra choked.

"Ulquiorra."

The espada lay barely conscious on the sand, his tiny body shuddering with every rasping attempt to answer. The haze of the desert seemed to boil around him, and he was swallowed by the peculiar sensation that his skin was peeling away.

Aizen said it again. "Ulquiorra."

"A-Aizen-sama..." For a split second the distant overwhelming image of his master falling backwards into the sun (the sun!) burned the backs of Ulquiorra's retinas, but he could not cry. He blinked and glanced away, and the sky laughed redly at his weakness. In this realm sound was color and sight was blindness. The rasping continued, an unpleasant sensation; he opened his eyes once more. Blackness and whiteness. Three blurry fledgling fingers were reaching for the sky. His left hand. The rest of him was numb.

The sun laughed at him and spat on him, then all sound stopped. The sweat on his skin was sizzling. His chest was slowly emptying of air as his pupils rolled back--Ugh!

Sousuke's voice carried as though he were holding Ulquiorra up to his mouth by the ear. "I have rent the spirit matter around you. You can no longer properly breathe." He could hear Aizen's lips brim with terrible mirth. "Ulquiorra... this is the vacuum. This is Death!"

The night broke over them again, and the imaginary sun bled away. Aizen, breathing hard, relaxed his grip around Ulquiorra's throat and let him clatter like a blade with an unnoticed crack. Ooph! It had apparently taken a considerable amount of effort not to go all the way with the defenseless espada. But Aizen Sousuke was not unmerciful. His hakama flapped violently in the wind. "Get up," he said, barely audible, "and I shall forgive you."

But Ulquiorra never hit the sand; he was levitating inches above it. "Aizen-sama, Aizen-sama!" he exulted between gasps, "I did it!"

"Of course you did," Aizen smiled. "Only those who meet Death firsthand are truly prepared to let their inhibitions fall away. Of course, some who commune with Death choose to run rather than embrace. You made the correct decision today. Skywalking is the first step to learning outright flight."

That may have been the case, but Ulquiorra didn't think he liked it. It was unnecessary drain on his spirit energy, he surmised. It was illogical—you could just sonido you wanted and it would take less effort than fl-flying! It was a reckless excess. It was freeing. It was scary.

"Rise, Ulquiorra. Rise with me."

Ulquiorra gulped. He lay immobile over the sweeping sediment as Aizen ascended unto glorious nothingness, becoming smaller and smaller, disappearing into the clouds. He was a meteor, burning up. He blinked through a bead of sweat. He couldn't bring himself to—no, he didn't want to follow. Then realization struck him with dizzying clarity:

He no longer wished to evolve. He merely wished to cling, to subsist as he was, to be caught up in the swirl of events on the surface, like any unambitious bottom dweller who enjoys life.

He let himself plop back onto the sand, and as the little grey grains played by his face, he smiled for the first and last time.

"Ulqui-"

"Aizen-sama," he interrupted, having lain there for a while. "I don't think I'll be flying. And I don't think I'm going to be eating hollows anymore, either."

Ulquiorra didn't know how the shinigami would react to this bold statement. He didn't much care. What would happen, would happen. He didn't take his eyes away from the moon in the sky, for all else was dark.

To his surprise, Aizen didn't get angry or scoff at his defiant remarks. He laughed. Openly, without a hint of the bloodlust or morbidity that characterized every other such instance. This was an anomaly. Ulquiorra shifted himself to rest on his white elbow and gazed up at his master.

"Oh? Your eyes are so round, little one." Aizen sat himself down next to Ulquiorra and parked his chin on his fist. "You remind me of myself when I was younger, Ulquiorra-kun."

"H-how? In what way?"

"Haha…" Aizen tousled Ulquiorra's unhelmeted half of hair. "Why don't we spend the rest of this lovely evening walking through that history I promised you earlier? Like when I ate my first hollow…"

"You ate a hollow!?"

"More than one! I ate an entire hive of detached Gillian remnants, which could no longer recombine, but needed to stick together for survival. I was experimenting, rather crudely, on becoming half-hollow, some seven thousand years ago during my seminal travels in Hueco Mundo…"

"Wait, you're going too fast, Aizen-sama! Start from the beginning," Ulquiorra frowned.

"Glad to see you so eager again!" said Aizen. "I'm afraid if you don't push yourself harder you'll never actualize your potential to become my prime espada. Though I believe I know what you're trying to do."

"What do you—"

"Start at the beginning, eh?" Aizen faced his putative protégé and flashed a familiar smirk. "Which one?"

-- -- --

Urahara snapped his uchiwa fan shut and called the meeting to commence. "All right, everybody, I assume you all know why we're here."

"Yeah!" shouted Renji. "To kick Aizen's bastard ass!"

"I couldn't have put it more succinctly myself, Abarai-san, but please do refrain from slamming the table with your fist a second time. Call me kooky, but I do prefer my priceless tea sets intact."

Someone who suspiciously sounded like Ishida snickered softly in the shadows by the refrigerator. The lamp swiveled overhead, casting its orange beam back and forth across the circle of those assembled. Ichigo looked embarrassed by association. "Oh, er… sorry about that," said Renji, scratching the back of his mane before sitting politely back down.

"That's okay, isourou--the table's big enough to withstand your puny girly punches."

"That's enough, Jinta. No more calling Abarai a freeloader!" Urahara tilted his hat to cover his eyes and bared his pearly teeth. "Even though he is one," he concluded.

"God, Kisuke, just get on with this damn thing. I have pressing matters to attend to elsewhere."

"What, like fixing your bra?"

"Your butterfly said this was urgent, you jack—"

"So just turn into a cat. I don't see what the big fuss is."

"You don't see most things that are right in front of your face!"

"Settle down, you two, we're not here to declare alpha status," Hitsugaya grumbled. "We're here to learn."

Urahara tactfully apologized, and then asked if everyone was comfortable in their respective seats. Ishida returned to the table with a fresh glass of orange juice. Renji picked his ear with his pinky. Rukia was affecting the solemn observer, and Chad was blending in by not belonging. No surprises on any of those counts. Ichigo regarded Urahara with puzzlement. What Yoruichi had said just accused him of was a pretty serious attack on his character; in Ichigo's mind, this last jab was way too personal to be simple knee-jerk trash talk, or playful banter. If Yoruichi had told him that he didn't see things right in front of him, he would most assuredly take umbrage. And yet there Urahara was, cheerful as ever, cracking wise and assuring everyone of the awesomeness of his super unbeatable plan. Just when you think you've got somebody figured out…

"All right, gang, before Shihouin-sama starts to prattle on and on about duties and lost wages, let's get this show on the road. I've got here, in my hands, a deck of cards with the faces of each of our most notorious arrancar friends. I'm going to pass one card face-down to everybod—except for you, Soi Fong, 'cause you're already eyeballing me as though I were some horrid mole rat—and on the count of three I want you to take a peek at your new buddies. Three, two, one! Soak them in. Study them. Now put 'em back face-down!"

Ichigo slammed his card on the table and crossed his arms, trying to remember details of the arrancar on his card. Blue hair, definitely male, sword strapped against his lower back… but he couldn't remember what his face looked like. Wait, was his hair even blue, or had it been purple and he just couldn't make it out in the relative dark?

"So, any observations? Yes, Ishida, is it?"

"My arrancar, at least, seemed to have his hollow hole about eighteen centimenters below where his heart should be located—is that just a mutation or defect?"

"Excellent question, Uryuu! No, I'm afraid that is no defect; it is a little quirk I designed into the hougyoku as a sort of scientific watermark. Every arrancar with a displaced hole is evidence that I contributed, however indirectly, to his creation."

Awkward silence.

"…And now, to distract from my awkward admission of guilt, I'll pick one of you at random. Eeny, meeny, miney, Ichigo! Ball's in your court!"

"Uh, my guy was sorta buff for a baby, had blue hair, I think, and… uh… come back to me?"

"No problem, except I won't. Maybe I should rephrase the question: Any useful observations?"

"I'm observing that I'm out the door unless you start the damn story," said Hitsugaya. "Stop stalling."

"What's this all for?" asked Yoruichi.

"Well, I was trying to demonstrate how all these infant arrancar of Aizen's seem to share regular characteristics—such as the displaced hole (thank you Ishida), the shattered mask, the humanoid shape, and so on. However, back when I was researching the phenomenon of half-hollows, none of these features had been ironed out, or even outlined. We simply had no idea what a genuine half-hollow looked like. They could have been the size of ducklings, or sported multiple heads."

"What's your point?" cut in Soi Fong with undisguised scorn.

"My point is that this was all still experimental, and while I do shoulder most of the blame for this fine mess, I want you all to understand that my intentions were pure. How was I to know I'd been writing the blueprints for the manufacture of a massive army to serve a blood-lusting megalomaniac? So, uh, try to empathize with me a bit, all right?"

"I can't speak for anybody else, Urahara-san," started Ichigo, "but I'm willing to forgive everything if you answer me just one question."

"Name it, my good man," said Urahara, who had begun to fan himself.

"When I was wasting away in the pit, utterly helpless to do anything but watch my spirit chain nibble away at itself, were you deliberately attempting to make me into a vizard?"

Urahara moved to open the window. "Heh heh, is it just me or is it getting a bit muggy in here?"

"What is a vizard?" grunted Chad.

"A half-hollow, only the other way around. Answer the boy's question, Kisuke," said Yoruichi.

"Yes, answer his question, Urahara-taichou," Soi Fong parroted.

"The depth of my clemency hinges heavily on your next words, Urahara-san," said Hitsugaya.

"All right, all right," Urahara conceded, sitting back down, "I can feel the general drift of opinion whooshing away. Just don't all maul me at once. Listen, I honestly don't know what I was trying to do with you, Ichigo—test your capabilities, get high off your suffering, whatever, in the end it's all the same, right? Yet I can tell you, without a hint of hesitation, that creating another half-hollow was the absolute farthest thing from my thoughts. Still is. Anybody dissatisfied by this response?"

Yoruichi smiled. "Sounds like vintage you."

"Yeah, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm just relieved I'm not your pawn after all," said Ichigo.

"So are bygones, bygone?"

"We're cool, for now. But no repeat offenses. I'm afraid that's the death penalty," Ichigo joked.

"Glad we could come to an agreement. I'd shake your hand, but since I'm too lazy to go all the way around to your side of the table, I'm just going to ask the folks on my right to pass this handshake down to him. Yoruichi, pleasure."

The atmosphere of the room lightened up substantially, though whether that was because of Urahara's charm or because Matsumoto had just entered fashionably late carrying several gourds of sake, was anybody's guess. Okay, it was pretty obviously the sake. Nevertheless, Urahara was happy to replay his story to his kind of audience—a forgiving, receptive, oh so slightly inebriated one.

FLASHBACK

"Yoru, you can't leave! You're the CAPTAIN!" Urahara sulked, twiddling his thumbs with mechanical perfection on her partially-made bed. "The orders come from you, don't they!"

"Kisuke," she responded testily as she slipped on her mobile corps vest in front of the mirror, "you don't seem to understand how this captain business works. It's not a license to do whatever you want. The robe comes with obligations."

"Yeah, yeah, I know—to your subordinates, to Seireitei, to Soul Society and earth. I get it. But surely you don't have to take every single mission that falls in your lap!"

"If I want to assert myself amidst this vain sea of egos and testosterone, yes, I do. And by the way, Kisuke…" She reappeared like a flash behind him and, snaking her arms around his chest, leant into his ear. "Unless you want to prove that robe really is too big for you, I suggest you assert yourself as well. I'm going to be away for a long while. Why don't you look for some friends besides me?"

She traced the number twelve on the bare portion of his scrawny nape, and the next thing he knew she was gone, the only clue of her departure the gentle breeze that now played against the curtains. God he loved that woman.

But now that he was in the Gotei 13, surrounded by… people… he realized it wasn't considered normal to obsess over an only friend. The thought of having "friends," in the plural, had never occurred to him before his inauguration. It was simply too much to thrust on him all at once!

"Okay, that's it—no more moping!" Urahara told his reflection, which looked rather handsome with a five o'clock shadow. "I'm going to get up out of bed, brush myself off, stride right into that jolly old sun, and mingle!"

With a huge grin plastered on his face like his life depended on it, Kisuke fitted on his new white beach hat from off the nearby jacket rack, indulged in a nice stretch, and plopped back into bed, burying his face into Yoruichi's pillow. He inhaled her distinctive catwoman smell as a parched nomad might greet an oasis.

Then an idea struck him. If he simply interacted with the various folk outside until he discovered people who shared his interests, as he assumed other people wangled it, it would waste a lot of time to make relatively few friends. However, if he devised some method of drawing said like-minded people to him, he'd reel in plenty of friends while saving tons of effort! It was time for the First Annual Seireitei Science Fair!

Captains could do that, right?

--

"Urahara-taichou, I must say it is an honor to meet you in person! Youngest ever head of the research department! You're a true genius."

Kisuke shook the young man's hand and humbly deflected the compliment. "Nah, it's easy once you set your mind to it. But thanks, uh…"

"Ah, how rude of me! I'm Aizen, Aizen Sousuke."

"Oh, that's right, Shinji's lieutenant! Come to think of it I don't see you two together that often. Are you enrolled in some other organization too? Ah, forgive me, sometimes I'm so nosy… I'm still kind of new at this," Urahara smiled, scratching his head. "So how do you like the fair so far?"

"It's amazing! I think the exhibit of your experiments in particular has inspired me to pursue a career in the sciences, though I doubt I'll ever reach your level of brilliance."

"Oh, you know what they say: no one's not a master at what he loves," he rebuffed, embarrassed. "Or something."

"Urahara-taichou, I couldn't agree more."

"Uhp, seems I'm wanted elsewhere!" Three wide-eyed fanboys were pulling on his arm and demanding he explain his theory of particle resonance. "Catch you later, man!"

The man left Sousuke with a favorable impression of pliability, but this easygoing attitude did not always translate into "easy to manipulate." Aizen would have to monitor the man more closely if he had any hope of prying away the secrets of the notoriously cautious man. Aizen would have to make him believe he's his comrade. For Urahara was correct—no one's not a master at what he loves. What Aizen wanted to become, however, was a master of what he loved.

--

"Aizen-san, swords by the door! And hand me the triclorophenamine. No, the bluer beaker, not the one that sort of looks green. Yeah, that one."

Urahara's private laboratory, where Aizen was currently "moonlighting," surprised him by its sparseness. "More time fretting over appearances is less time getting to the bottom of things!" Kisuke had laughingly admonished when he'd first brought it up. Over the weeks the wooden shelves gradually became stocked with more and more bubbling beakers, many of Kisuke's invention, but that must have meant that he was only able to acquire such chemicals due to his high rank.

"That's partly why I took the job," he assured him.

But then how had he conducted his experiments beforehand?

"Nature is the beginner's stockroom, Aizen-san. It was She who supplied a lost and bored little boy with Her fascinating host of treasures, and She who guided him to a life of, ahem, public service. And now the little boy hopes he's been fruitful enough to make up for Her valuable time!" he joked.

Is that why he wore a green lab coat? As a tribute to Nature?

"Yes. Except for the hat. That's for the ladies to admire."

Urahara may have been perfectly content treating Nature as a wonderfully replete storehouse, but Aizen wouldn't tire until it became his personal playground.

"Thanks. Triclorophenamine is a tricky one. Normally it's one of the most inert of all fluids, but when held by one's left hand for more than a few seconds it becomes positively explosive! …Suppose I should have told you that before I asked you to hand it over. Oh well. Observe, Aizen-san, what happens when we pour a single drop of it onto the ground pollen of a night blossom indigenous to Zaraki!"

"Why, what happens?"

"We're about to find out!"

The force of the reaction knocked Kisuke smack into the wall behind him. "Puh!"

"Urahara-taichou, are you all right!?"

"Yeah, I'm okay…" Kisuke picked himself up off the laboratory floor and rubbed his eyes. "Man, stuff got everywhere…"

"Taichou, your coat…"

"Was gunning for a cure for spirit narcolepsy, new, stronger stimulant… and irony nearly knocked me unconscious!"

"Taichou, your face!"

His vision refocused and he looked down at his coat. Perfect white lines! "How captivating! The Zaraki pollen must have attacked the foreign agent in waves of repulsive spores with split-second reaction time! And so uniform… That must be how it spreads itself around! Or how it protects itself from pollen-eaters like hell butterflies! Needs more research! Look, dude, it's so acidic it ate the green right off the fabric of my clothes, like bleach! But then wouldn't my face be burning right now?"

The pollen had clearly affected his skin the same way, as a broad white line ran down each eye. Kisuke felt his face with his fingers, pinched some of the pollen's residue, and took a whiff. He figured out instantly why it didn't hurt. It was a powerful psychotropic drug.

"Urahara-taichou!"

"Aizen-kun, where did you get that pretty unicorn?"

"Huh?"

"Yay! I'm dancing! I'm dancing!"

"Okay, calm down. You're just hallucinating."

Urahara lifted Aizen up by the collar with improbable strength. "How can I be calm when the stars are so naked?"

Aizen struggled to wrest himself free of the jumpy captain's grip. "Okay, maybe they're not hallucinations. Maybe you're just insane!"

"You're right. Naptime!" Urahara was asleep before he hit the floor.

Watching almost affectionately as his boss began to suck his thumb in his slumber, Aizen could think a hundred uses for this new Bleach, and none of them involved treating spirit narcolepsy.

--

Ulqui yawned.

"Will that all be all for today?" asked Aizen.

"I don't really understand where this story is going, Aizen-sama. Perhaps we should postpone it for another night?"

"Yes, you're correct, Ulquiorra-kun. It does a soldier no good to keep vigil for too long. Exequias!"

Two appeared before him and genuflected. "Your orders, my liege."

"Keep watch while I retire. Some spirit energy is fluctuating in the vicinity, but I can't pinpoint its location. If it's an ambush or a reishi bomb, you contact me immediately, understood?"

Little Ulquiorra rubbed each eye with his good hand. "W-what's going on?"

"Don't fret, it' probably nothing. Occasionally Las Noches is host to some unusual, seemingly originless outbursts of energy. Often they manifest as harmless auroras. But one can never be too sure."

"It's coming from over there," Ulquiorra stated, pointing.

"Oh? But how can you be so sure?"

"It's Yammy. His old Adjuchas shell is beginning to reject his soul. Either he'll revert back into a Gillian or he'll…"

"Disintegrate. How interesting." It was getting chilly, so Aizen tucked his arms inside his sleeves. "What are you going to do?"

Ulquiorra pulled his sword from within his own soul and swore, "I'm going to save him."

Yammy's Adjuchas form morphed and bubbled painfully on the dark sands, a creature in fatal flux. He would have to time his strike just right. Ulqui raised his sword even above the tip of his helmet's horn and plunged. The unrecognizable beast that was Yammy howled, but Ulquiorra was grown up enough now not to need to cover his ears. The Hollow began to form a basic skeleton up and around the blade as though it were a spine, and when the last vertebra slid into place Ulquiorra swiftly flicked his sword away from Yammy's inky innards.

"What is he supposed to be?" Ulquiorra looked quizzically upon Yammy's strange carapace.

"Some cross between a lizard, a gibbon and a cockroach."

Ulquiorra couldn't tell whether that was a joke. Yammy growled and pawed the sand, glowering with deep red slits on the sides of his face. "Seems he can't talk yet."

"Were you planning to demand his subservience to you for this act of compassion?" Aizen asked.

"I wont need to give any orders. Once he re-evolves back into the Yammy I remember, the subconscious suggestion that he owes some debt to me will enforce itself."

"He won't be the Yammy you remember, little one. When he evolves again he will take the form of a human adult, instead of that of an infant. It's entire objective of this exercise."

"But then how will I become an adult, if you don't graft my mask back on with Hyogyoku like you did with the others…?"

"You're my experiment to see whether I can cut out the middleman, so to speak, and correct errors without having to revert the subject back into its original form."

"Oh."

Ulquiorra didn't like the idea of being an object to be used to collect data. He didn't like the idea of being a Kisuke.

--

"And that's my story," finished Ulquiorra.

"What!? You never got up to Hollowification, you just stopped at some anecdote about pollen or something," Ichigo accused.

"But that's an integral part of the story. Much more important than technical discussions of particle splicing. It's the story of how I inadvertently invented the chemical that would give Aizen his ludicrous power (unbeknownst to me)."

"…You said that was the end of the story," said Hitsugaya.

"No, I said that was the end of my story. Next, I'll tell you what I've been able to uncover of what my first apprentice, who quickly quit his position with me afterwards due to 'scheduling conflicts,' did with my concoction behind my back. Next is Aizen's story."