God's Children

No matter how varied they were in power, ability, look, and personality, all of Aizen's created arrancar shared two things in kind. For the first, all of his arrancar shared an underlying string of blind loyalty to Aizen and Aizen alone. They may have varying amounts of fear, trust, devotion, and admiration coloring and classifying their loyalty, but with all external almost-emotions stripped away, the arrancar would die for their master's whim and require little more reason. They were his dogs, and they were a vicious pack held together only by his command. They worked to satisfy their God, every drop of blood and every destroyed body a sacrifice on all of the worlds, all his alters. Sometimes they would turn upon their own ranks, but the arrancar that was destroyed was obviously too weak to defends itself; and therefore, was diluting the quality of his army by its' existence.

All things were done to worship and serve the master. All arrancar knew that basic fact and adhered to it, even if it was only visible if one were to look deep inside the not-soul that kept them glued together.

The second thing all arrancar created by Aizen shared was their very first memory of existance. They all awoke in a white room with no windows and no doors, a room with absolutely nothing except for the overpowering white walls, wearing nothing but their bare skin and mask fragment. At first, they would explore themselves, tenatively running new hands over unmarked skin, pulling at hair and masks, sometimes hurting themselves and acquainting themselves early with pain. These intial explorations were usually blissfully unaware, and the young monstrosities would be amused for a time, until the novelty of being alive wore off and they found their attentions directed around them.

Therein lay the true tests of merit and character. Once their self-conscious curiousity wore off, they would try to understand the world around them, but they would always fail because there was nothing to know. Subconsciously, they would connect this nothing with the same nothing that they used to exist in, and that little, unvocalized fact would scare them more than any horror they would face in the varied duration of their following life. They would be left alone in the room for what felt like an eternity, terrifying themselves into a state of panic in their first minutes simply because they were surrounded by the same nothing they had come from. However, after forever had passed, suddenly an opening would break through the white and in that opening would be their first taste of color, existence, and God.

Aizen was the first thing tangible thing all arrancar saw, and like all young animals they imprinted him as something very important, though he would never teach them to call him father. He would teach them to call him 'master' and style him 'God', and the arrancar accepted it because Aizen was power above all else. His spiritual energy crackled over their young, sensitive skin, and he had the almighty power to break nothingness. Aizen was also the one who first dressed the arrancar, and though the rough brush of the arrancar uniform over hard, but new skin, Aizen gave them their first taste of sensation, of feeling. He pulled them out of nothing and gave them something. He was strength and might above anything else they had ever experienced, and just as nothingness would remain a constant phobia in the back of their minds as each arrancar cultivated his or her own individual personality, they would remember that Aizen and Aizen alone had the power to break nothingness. He was their safeguard against themselves; he was fearlessness and peace in the face of fear and constant internal war.

Aizen had his own reasons for keeping the arrancar in the little white nursery; ones that Ichimaru was probably privy to, but would never share from underneath his eternal smile, same as Tousen knew but would never reveal from under justice's blank stare.

First of all, it would probably be bad for morale if the rest of the arrancar though that God was fallible and made mistakes. All arrancar were intially contained in the white nursery to make sure that they were stable. Early attempts at making a perfect soldier ended in an apparently agonizing dissolution of the failure's physical body that he or she would protest with piercing screams and violent twitching and thrashing. It would not due for the arrancar who had survived their intial hours to see what they could have been, so Aizen kept the birth of each new sibling a secret, refusing to let anyone think he was capable of failing, even as Ichimaru ran a running, banal commentary on how painful the suffering of the one dying in the room had to be.

Secondly, though Aizen would never admit it, he felt a step closer to being the God he postured as when he saw that first look of desperate devotion in his arrancar's eyes. They were looking to anything to save them from themselves, and as soon as Aizen hinted at providing it, they latched onto him with a ferocity that lasted the rest of their lives and gave them reason to exist. He was father to them all, the first thing they saw and the one creature that they postured for and looked to for affections, and that simple fact gave Aizen power beyond any man's wildest dreams. Undying loyalty was a powerful, beautiful thing, and it was so easy to acquire.

But Aizen's greatest reason for giving birth to his arrancar in the little white nursery was to watch them grow. Much like any doting parent would watch their children develop over years and years, Aizen would watch his creations grow from simple, mindless beasts into things that could be moulded into truly dangerous weapons with quite a deal of pride. Watching his arrancar through the one way mirror into the nursery revealed all of the key components of a particular arrancar's personality; it showed how willing they were to learn, and how quick they were to lose composure. The current five members of the Espada had been the ones who had lasted the longest before showing signs of agitation, and had given the most muted physical reactions to slowly being consumed by mind numbing fear.

The current newborn occupying the nursery was rather peculiar, and Aizen found himself staying for the full three hours it took to make sure that the newest acquisition would not succumb to the same imperfections that made his earlier, weaker siblings split apart at their seams. Like the surviving brother closest to him in age, this young one did not seem overly troubled by the white around him (intially), however, unlike his predecessor, he was curious. Whereas the one who had proven worth of being the cuatro Espada had simply sat and stared forward after his intial exploration of himself, this young one continued to test. He dragged long nails down his arm, eyes widening minutely at the sensation that he repeated, scratching himself until Aizen was fairly sure the newborn would draw blood.

The young arrancar had tested himself using his claw-like fingernails on varying wide expanses of solid flesh, even going so far as to the first arrancar to spill his own blood without being in the convulsions of death. The young one had found the remanent of his mask on his jaw to be fascinating, and as such had picked and scraped at it until he opened his mouth wide enough to feel over the tips of sharp teeth, jerking in surprise when he split his not yet Hierro tough flesh. Eyes narrowed curiously at the wound, and he leaned close enough to lick at the sticky red on his fingertips.

Gin laughed beside him. "Well lookat that. Seems like he's found his own way outta white." His smile was broad, tinged with perhaps a fraction more of happy malice than usual. "Bet'cha he's gonna be a handful." Aizen ignored his companion, staring entranced at the young arrancar who lapped up his own blood in an almost feline manner, settled comfortably on the floor, not pacing like many of his siblings had at this point in time.

If he could have truly cared for his creations, Aizen probably would have favored this one. He was smiling when he opened the door, locking eyes with a pair of curious, almost distrusting blues. "Hello, little one." His voice was soothing as he strode toward his young creation, keeping his pace calm and nonchalant. Unlike many of his lesser siblings, this one didn't lurch toward him to grab at his clothing or his legs in order to assure themselves of freedom from nothingness. He kept his relaxed pose, although he did abandon the sampling of his own blood. Aizen kneeled, cupping the young creature's chin in his hand as he examined him, meeting eyes with him, both wary and pleased that the light blue haired male didn't back down.

Ichimaru would often make jokes about the names Aizen chose; not that he cared. They were his arrancar, he would name them as he saw fit. "Grimmjow." He murmured, lightly stroking over the uncovered side of the young creature's face. The arrancar gave a soft rasp, trying to mimick the noise but failing due to vocal cords that weren't fully formed yet, but it pleased Aizen to hear him try. Perhaps he was getting better at creating his arrancar, and though this one wasn't as strong as Ulquiorra, he was still more powerful than at least two of those deemed worthy of the Espada thusfar. As an added benefit, his new Grimmjow had not displayed any overt fears of the nothingness, and yet he followed Aizen out of the room with little more than a slight tug on his chin, keeping close to the God as he left the little white nursery with the small spatter of blood droplets on the floor.

Loyalty without the crippling fear?

Aizen was truly becoming a God, if he had followers as blindly devoted as that. His smile was pleased as he dressed Grimmjow, giving him the welcoming speech filled with his expectations for his young creation. The blue haired arrancar listened intently, occasionally trying to mimic the sounds coming from Aizen's throat, eyes locked on his face with a touch of fanaticism that warmed Aizen's cold, black heart. They were getting stronger and stronger.

He wasn't far from creating an arrancar with little to no imperfections, if his progress continued like this, and he tweaked the few variables that had caused this future Espada to come out bolder, but slightly weaker than an earlier experiment. However, Aizen was fairly sure that Grimmjow would remain his favorite for a while, as long as he continued to develop so pleasingly and Aizen had not mistakenly estimated his potential. He found himself amused at his own thoughts of being settled atop the world's throne far more quickly than anticipated, missing Grimmjow's confused look at why his creator was so pleased, though he gave a face-splitting grin at seemingly having caused his maker pleasure.

His arrancar shared two things in kind, but perhaps if newer siblings could inspire jealousy in the elder ones, they could all develop the fearlessness befitting the warriors and servants of a true god.