Grimmjow scoffs, rolls his eyes. Arguing with Ulquiorra never achieves anything. The hollow’s practically brain dead. Obedient. Like he doesn’t have a single thing he wants in the world other then to complete one menial task after another after another after another after— It would drive Grimmjow mad. A life like that.
No drive. No goal. No pleasure. No… Hueco Mundo offers little, Grimmjow takes what he can, where he can. Why would one want anything less?
Ulquiorra drags another snarl from his chest, “Aizen didn’t take me in, I’m not some fucking stray.”
Grimmjow was here first. This was his territory before it ever was Ulquiorra’s, his fucked up shinigami tainted extended pack. Grimmjow doesn’t want it, but it’s still his. Ulquiorra’s cocky. Thinks he’s something special because he is a Vasto Lorde, he would have struggled the same way Grimmjow had, just because it wasn’t recent… He’s so fucking pretentious.
He grinds his teeth together for a moment, before dragging himself back under control. Slipping up too much, showing too much emotion, that’s vulnerability he doesn’t need to be revealing. Not to someone like Ulquiorra.
Instead of fixating on his own irritation and anger he turns back to Ulquiorra, determined to pick apart Ulquiorra’s motivation. There has to be something underlying his actions. Even if that something is simply that the hollow can’t function without some stronger being ordering him around. Some people simply aren’t meant to lead. Where would Grimmjow be if his fracción weren’t such people. If mountainous Edrad and bone-shaking Nakeem weren’t content in following him rather then pursuing power alone.
Well. In all likelihood, he would still be here. They would be dead between his jaws. But his journey to here would have differed and Grimmjow doesn’t regret his life before now. Mostly. He wouldn’t seek to change it.
Grimmjow stares at the bug-eyed bastard as he tries to pin down the thread of his own logic, before finally asking, “What do you get out of it?”
Easier to cut straight through to the heart of the matter. If he lies, Grimmjow will know, and can remove another possibility from the equation.
“Did he not? Is it not Lord Aizen who suffered you to remain here? In your base hollow state, I daresay even some of the numeros could have simply handled you as a Menos. Such is the divide between arrancar and Menos. What else would you call his adoption of you and your fraccion into Las Noches? His gifting you the safety from regression in the form of an arrancar?
Or do you mean to expect me to believe that you somehow attained this by anything other than the whims of Lord Aizen?” He asked calmly, that face of his almost seeming to draw as close as it ever did to an actual smile. Seeming amused by the implications of Grimmjow refusing to acknowledge what he’d been given.
“I think, Grimmjow, that you have no actual interest in what it is that I want.” The Arrancar stated plainly enough. “The fact of the matter, is that in addition to being far more powerful than you. I also owe none of that strength to Lord Aizen. If nothing else, I imagine you envy me. Or perhaps despise me. Whatever permutation of jealousy is floating around in that skull of yours.”
