We all need more Luppi in our lives.
Las Noches Boulevardiers
"Not being in a hurry" Luppi mused, his eyes lazily skidding over the vast skyline skyline of Las Noches, before gradually lowering to appraise the endless lines of larger-than-sensible architecture rising on the sides of the street "is a wonderful thing."
With a twist of the wrist, he planted his cane in the cracks of the white stone paving the streets of the Hollows' great city. Leaning back on it, body bending and never quite staying still, he turned to face his companion.
"Don't you agree, Gin?"
The blue-haired Shinigami nodded slowly, seemingly paying more attention to the piece of silver-tipped wood in the Arrancar's hand than to anything he was saying. As always, he kept his eyes half-closed and hands hidden in elongated sleeves.
"M-hm" he murmured, in what could pass as agreement.
Undeterred, Luppi smiled and turned back towards the wide boulevard, stepping forward with a studious, sinuous swagger, one hand on the cane, the other hidden in the folds of his robe. After a moment, Gin followed, staying a pace back.
"You would have thought" the Arrancar continued, tone light "that being dead would give the folks some perspective. There is so much to see! Especially in this city!"
He paused and inclined his head towards one of the buildings flanking the street, a half-collapsed basilica of bone-white stone. A few minor Hollows, loitering at the rubble-strewn entrance noticed the attention of the mighty and the moment the Arrancar made a step in their direction, they all skittered away in the manner of insects or other vermin. Gin chuckled.
"See, for example, this here ruin?" Luppi asked, hiding in the shadow of the broken masonry. Though the sun of Las Noches was fake, he still preferred to keep away from its direct gaze. "What do you think of it?"
Staying in the light, Gin surveyed the construction, at least as much as his half-closed eyes allowed him.
"Mm" he dismissed, underlying his point with a disinterested shrug.
"And see" the Arrancar smiled, in the manner of a magician about to perform a particularly eye-catching trick "this is where we disagree. Because I myself think it is really quite special. Just notice how little purpose it has!"
The Shinigami raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, of course nothing in this city makes sense" Luppi nodded eagerly. "But most the time it is not just a ruin! And this here? This here did not collapse randomly, no, no, no such thing. Someone – some wonderful person – built it up as a pile of rubble! Such admirable waste!"
Gin's eyebrow did not lower. As usual, the Arrancar couldn't tell if he was being mocked or understood. Still, he had a point to make therefore he kicked aside some of the broken masonry blocking the entrance - once a part of some sculpture adorning the portal - and beckoned his companion to follow.
There wasn't much of a building left inside: just the steep walls rising up towards the blue sky, and inside of it, a pile of broken stone, half-buried in white sand. In a way, it made an appearance of a project abandoned, as if whoever was constructing it got bored not long after finishing the edifice and then just dumped all other materials inside and moved on. And yet still had enough time or servants to adorn every inch of the interior walls with an impossibly complex weave of ornaments, arabesques and reliefs. Even sanded down by time, they still impressed just with their impossible scope. Luppi's smile widened.
"Imagine you are one of those ants, those Fraccions" he said, allowing the atmosphere of the place to sink ink "always in a rush to do some service, to please someone. And you pass by this ruin every day and never know what you are missing. Utterly, utterly awful!"
Finding himself a nice, sun-soaked piece of the wall, Gin propped himself against it, head hung back, arms folded on the chest. "Mreh" he murmured, unimpressed.
"Oh please, you know what I mean" Luppi chuckled, stepping deeper inside. "If not for our little walk, would you ever see this here beautiful display of our camaraderie?"
The Shinigami pecked his head, brief look of surprise or confusion flickering through his face. Keeping up the magician's act, the Arrancar kicked up his cane and deftly flipping it in hand, pointed the silvered tip at a half-erased ornament on one of the collapsed stones: a pair of serpentine bodies entwined.
"It's you and me" he announced with a faked bow, the trick finally revealed. "A snake and an eel, together."
Gin paused and opened one of his eyes, sparing the ornament a quick glance. Almost instantly, his eyes slid down the rock's surface and focused on another, half-faded piece of sculpture: a fox clutching a snake in his jaw.
"Hm" he murmured wistfully.
"Oh?" the Arrancar's mouth twitched in a smile. "I had you more for an egg snatcher, you know."
"Oh?" the Shinigami mocked both the word and the smile. Briefly, Luppi remembered that in their friendship, murder was never really off the table. Perhaps that was a part of its charm.
"At least you are a good sport about it" he flipped the cane again, tapping its butt against the sand. "Unlike that boorish king."
Gin said nothing, waiting. He knew when a story was coming.
"So" Luppi continued "were you here back when the old king was really playing this overlord thing up?"
Slowly, the Shiningami shook his head.
"Right, right. Before your time. You haven't missed much, to be honest. But what I am saying is that he used to have this… thing where if anyone arrived near his dominion, they had to come over to his" he twisted his mouth speaking the word, as if it was particularly rancid in taste "palace. To present themselves and pay him tribute."
"Mmm" Gin nodded, sharing Luppi's disgust at the notion. The Arrancar beamed.
"And this all reminds of that one Hollow. He was a real snake, I'm telling you."
"Mmm" Gin repeated the strange mumble.
"Fine, worse! He was a lamprey! The wretchedest little parasite: a minstrel. A little wimp, that is, with thin, fragile fingers that are good only for plucking strings. Prostituting his stories to the mighty so that they'd let him live and don't just eat him. You had to know someone like that, eh? Up there?"
The cane swung up, indicating at some unseen point on the sky or perhaps beyond it. Following its arc, Gin raised his head, then slowly pulled it back down in what could be interpreted as a nod.
"Anyway, the little guy loses his way in the desert and does something stupid. Wanders into the boorish king's domain. Mistake made, there is one thing left to so, so he does as he's supposed to and visits the court. Chance is, there's some awful commotion at the court then, all those vassals of the king gathered to praise and please him."
"Heh" the Shinigami chuckled. Or coughed.
"And you know, Barragan throws the worst parties. Sure, nowadays there's some fun to be had, with everyone pretending he's still the king and doing this pantomime no one's fooled by. That's amusing. But back then? Nothing but prostration, genuflection and pompous declarations. Just the dourest thing you can imagine. That Tousen would enj..."
The Shinigami's hand flashed out of the sleeve, finger raised.
"Right" Luppi twisted his smile, cutting the previous sentence in half. "Anyway, the little lamprey fellow, he gets really bored with all that nonsense. Little wimp or not, he still has that song in his heart! Song in his fingers! He can't help himself but to want life, vibrant and vivid, not this… taxidermy he sees. So, when the time comes for him to do tribute, he doesn't do none of that genuflecting, none of that prostrating, none of those pompous declarations. First thing he does is tell the king his are bad and he can't kneel…"
"Oh?" once more, Gin's mumble takes on a mocking tone.
"Well, a minstrel is a liar by trade, so they bit on that. But anyway. He wants to give tribute, too. And what can he give if not a story? So, he strings his lute, coughs once or twice to clear his throat and tells it like this…"
Pushing himself away from the ornaments, Luppi gently slid into a shaft of light coming down through the shattered rooftop, as if a natural spotlight. Mocking the bow of a crippled minstrel, flourishing with his cane, he speaks again, this time voice changed, meeker, somehow younger.
"In the old times, before there was one lord over all Hueco Mundo, there were many little, petty kings, each of them pretending to be mighty and powerful. And to make their power seen, they would each build for themselves a castle high and vast, and there held court."
Pausing the story, Luppi turned aside for a moment, voice back to usual, wry grin on his face.
"Don't tell anyone, but that little lamprey was always a bit on the suicidal side."
"Heh" this time, the chuckle was genuine.
"So he tells: and in those castles they amassed so much wealth, so many weapons, so many servants! Truly, there was no limit to their power and displayed greatness. In the middle of it, they erected for themselves tall thrones, where they would sit and be always praised, always venerated, always knelt to. For there was no end of fools that would debase themselves like the most common harlot just for the promise that one day, they will participate in all of that. And for that, the kings were happy. They had all they could have asked for. No one could threaten them and no one could surpass them! There was, to them, no need to ever leave the throne, and nothing else to do but to live on the throne. And even as the sands of Hueco Mundo blew over the fortresses and buried them deep beneath the desert, the kings were content. From their thrones, they saw no difference between a castle and a mausoleum."
Again, the Shinigami raised his eyebrow, now openly mocking.
"Oh, the Barragan you know would have him dead, that's sure" the Arrancar agreed. "But back then, he was less of a boor. He had a vibrant heart. And so" once more, he adopted the strange, old voice "the king says: little lamprey, that's no story, that's an insult. But the minstrel says, knowing he has one last trick to play: oh, that is not the end. The kings were content! They lived as they wanted to and died as they chose, becoming monuments to their own power But the servants, the sycophants, the glory-seeker? Oh, those poor fools! For, dear king, they were so hungry to be recognized, so hopeful that once those who know what a life well lived is notice them, they too will learn. And in their desperation, they still kneel and bow and prostrate themselves to the unthinking dumb statues of their kings, because that is the only life they ever chose to live."
Stepping out from the light, Luppi exhaled. Gin raised the second eyebrow.
"No, he didn't have him killed. He just exiled him beyond the border of his kingdom, until such a time that he would no longer be the king of Hueco Mundo. I wonder what became of him. I mean, he could return now."
There was a moment of silence, and then Gin gave out a long, pained sigh.
"What?" Luppi frowned. "That was a story, I'm not going to tell you the truth."
"Eh" Gin sighed again, and in an instant, as was his wont, turned to leave and disappear. "I just hoped you'd tell me where did you get that cane."
