Prompt: Write a ficlet about an extremely evil super-villian doing something completely normal. (Not sure if this is the exact wording, but this is the basic idea.)
The sweet scent of pancakes slathered in a thick layer of syrup with a dollop of whipped cream was absolute heaven to Gin's nose. His stomach growled, complaining that it had been several hours--since six o'clock in the evening yesterday, in fact--since he'd eaten anything, and even then, the "family meals" at Las Noches (1) were a bit... questionable. Especially since the majority of its occupants did not actually eat real food.
Which is why it was so surprising to smell such a welcoming aroma wafting up from the general direction of the typically untouched kitchens. Occasionally Tousen would use them to make some vegetarian mush of some sort--Gin shuddered to think of it--but the only other person who ever used it was, well, himself. None of the Espada (2) could cook, and most of them were banned from the kitchen anyways, after the last disastrous attempt to bake cookies instigated by a very bored Szayel Aporro.
Honestly... mad scientists should not be allowed to handle food. Gin had been stuck with girl parts for almost a week.
Padding drowsily over to the large white door and pushing it open, Gin opened one bleary turquoise eye and peered around the bright room, searching for whoever was making a decent attempt at breakfast on such a slow morning.
At first he didn't see much, and then... he caught sight of brown hair, slicked back immaculately, and white clothing with an apron tied over the front--a pale pink and green one, to be precise.
It couldn't be...
"Captain Aizen?" he asked hesitantly, cautiously, "Is that you?"
Responding to his soft, slightly slurred voice, the man in the apron turned, balancing a very large plate with a stack of perfectly golden, crisp-but-not-burnt pancakes in one hand. Looking closer, Gin could see that there were blueberries dotting the soft-looking pancakes, staining them with deep blue. His mouth positively watered.
And then he remembered who was holding them and who had cooked them... and wondered if perhaps Szayel Aporro had slipped something into his evening tea last night. Because that couldn't possibly be his Captain standing there in a pink and green apron cooking pancakes at freaking six o'clock in the morning.
No. Way.
Sans the new addition to his wardrobe, Aizen looked every bit as unruffled as usual, a smug little smile on his deceptively handsome face, that annoying little curl of dark hair still hanging in front of narrowed brown eyes. "Good morning, Gin," he said almost cheerfully, setting the plate down on the table that made up the center of the large, polished kitchen. "I was just making myself something for breakfast. Would you like some?"
How was he supposed to respond to that? Was this some sort of trick? Gin wouldn't have put it past Aizen... and considering the fact that (albeit secretly) he was plotting to betray the man all along, the lingering abstract posibility of Aizen having somehow plucked the traitorous thoughts from his head with a convoluted kidou (3) spell was all too present in his thoughts. To accept or to not accept...
Except, on this fine morning, his Captain didn't appear to want to give him a choice in the matter. Four large, beautiful pancakes were stacked up before his now wide-open eyes and plopped down in front of an empty chair at the table, a bottle of maple syrup desposited as a supplement to the confectionary hallucination. "Have some," the brown-haired man more ordered than requested. Following that, he practically shoved Gin down into the empty chair, handing him a glittering fork and knife.
Hesitantly, one eye still on his irratically-behaving Captain, Gin began to drown the pancakes in syrup. "You seem very... cheery... this morning," he commented lightly. "Why blueberries?"
"I wanted blueberry pancakes," Aizen replied simply, sitting down to his own already-prepared plate and digging in with a gusto unbefitting of the reining King of Las Noches. It went against everything Gin knew about his former-Captain. Then again, he'd never really interacted with Aizen at such an early hour. Hell, in the hundred years or so that he'd known the man, he could never even remember seeing him eat!
Gin was learning new things everyday. Not only was Aizen an insufferable morning-person, but he liked orange juice and was apparently very good at cooking. Not that he should have been surprised... there were very few things that Aizen wasn't good at.
It's just... the all-powerful aspiring King of the Soul Society (4) and ruler of Las Noches didn't seem like the type to even bother learning to cook.
Halfway through his plate (Gin was eating with just as much gusto and far fewer manners than his former-Captain), the sound of the door opening drew him out of his thoughts. Plastering his most irritating smirk across his face, Gin turned to face the newcomer, only to see a very rumpled-looking Tousen in the doorway.
The black man had never come across as the type to even leave his bedroom without being perfectly groomed, yet the every-present shades were absent and his hair was braided in one messy tail thrown haphazardly over one shoulder. The man yawned and sat down at the table beside his two fellow ex-Captains as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do.
Aizen held out the plate of still-warm pancakes. "Would you like some, Kaname?"
Gratefully, the dark-skinned man accepted the plate, using his other hand to cover up a yawn. "Thank you, Sousuke."
What the Hell is going on?
Following that, Tousen poured himself a nearly-overflowing glass of orange juice and unrolled the latest edition of the Seireitei Communication (5) from where he'd tucked it inside his kosode (6), handing it over to Aizen--Where did Tousen get that from?--who flipped it open to the popular action-adventure novel, Warning of the Twin Fish, reading it with apparent intensity.
It was the strangest thing Gin could ever remember seeing, and he'd seen some pretty strange stuff in his more-than-a-century of existence.
Another knock on the door marked the timely appearance of Ulquiorra. Green eyes stared blankly at the scene before him, no surprise on his face. Is everyone in on this but me? Gin wondered. Sure, he didn't usually leave his quarters until well past eleven, but how could he miss something so bizarre?
"Pancake?" Aizen asked, offering it to the Espada, which it itself was strange (as Ulquiorra did not actually eat human food, but rather human souls).
"No thank you, Aizen-sama," was the bland reply.
Aizen shoved the plate with the remaining three pancakes into the Cuatra Espada's face. "Give them to the Inoue girl, then." The only other person in this hellhole who isn't a soul-sucking demon, Gin silently added.
Ever the faithful servant, Ulquiorra disappeared in a white blur with the remaining pancakes, leaving Gin sitting uncomfortably with his two comrades and an emptied plate, not knowing what to say.
Ten minutes ticked by... twenty... and then Aizen rolled up the Seireitei Communication just as the hands of the clock hanging over the stove reached six-thirty. Dirty plates and silverware were taken to the sink, where Gin expected them to be discarded. Instead, he watched in disbelief as Aizen actually began to hand-wash them beneath a waterfall of sudsy water.
I have to be hallucinating... this is not happening...
Meticulously, Aizen then dried his plate and silverware with a spotless dish-towel--he hung it on a hook beside the sink when finished--and replaced them carefully in their assigned cupboards and drawers, taking extra time to make sure they were all lined up in perfect rows and columns so as not to upset the older man's OCD-ness.
The apron was discarded on a chair, and as Aizen walked past, he set a hand on Gin's shoulder. The younger man barely managed to keep from flinching. "You should eat breakfast with us more often," he was surprised to hear. "Belgian waffles are on the menu tomorrow." And then he was gone.
"Did that just happen...?"
He hadn't realized he'd even spoken aloud until Tousen responded with his typical annoyed voice, clearly having gotten over his morning fatigue after a refreshing, not-so-healthy breakfast. "If you bothered to get your lazy butt out of bed before noon, you would not be so surprised."
Okay, maybe he's not quite past the morning fatigue stage. Did Tousen just say the word "butt" out loud?
"..."
Tousen, too, stood and cleaned his dishes in the same meticulous manner as his predecessor. When he left, Gin found himself sitting alone in the vast, empty kitchen, wondering if he should perhaps pinch himself. Then he would jolt awake to find that he was actually still dozing in bed and all of this was the result of ingestion of a strange experimental hallucinogen concocted in Szayel Aporro's labratory...
Pinch.
"Ow!"
He blinked.
He did not wake up.
Oh Kami (7), it wasn't a dream! The world is ending! Gin just couldn't wrap his head around it! Finally, the silver-haired man decided it was better to just forget all of this had happened and go back to his normal morning schedule. I'm never leaving my room before noon again.
Note: A lot of them today
(1) Las Noches: literally translated to mean "the nights", but it's really just the name of a very big palace in the middle of the desert where these characters randomly live in Bleach-verse.
(2) Espada: evil lackeys of Aizen, the main antagonist. They number from 1 to 10 (in Spanish)
(3) kidou: spells used by Shinigami (that's what these characters are)
(4) Soul Society: Bleach-verse interpretation of the afterlife
(5) Seireitei Communication: magazine/newspaper published in the Soul Society
(6) kosode: rough equivalent of a shirt, only one side folds over the other... hard to explain, just look it up if you really want to know
(7) Kami: Japanese word roughly equivalent to "god", though it more closely means "divine"
Finally... finished...
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