The One Where Yammy Gets Wings

[fascinationex]

Content: Prompt fic. Descriptive title is descriptive.

Notes: Prompt received from tumblr user lickoutyourbrains. One sitting, zero editing.

Crossposted to AO3 here

Ulquiorra paused in the doorway. He had answered a call -- not from Yammy himself, but from one of the rank and file arrancar in fear of his life and, more importantly, in fear of the structural integrity of Las Noches' buildings. Rebuilding required time and resources, which disturbed Aizen-sama. It was fine for Yammy to kill números, but best not to break the city. Yammy usually knew this, but when he lost his temper -- Ulquiorra was called.

There was no structural damage, although the noises coming from Yammy's rooms suggested he was eating someone. That was the way of things, and not Ulquiorra's business. But he'd deemed it best to check anyway, and when he came to the door, the true reason he'd been called became immediately apparent.

Inside the room, Yammy's bed was... unexpectedly ecumbered. Upon it was Yammy's own huge bulk and the stains of feeding, yes, but also... a multitude of feathers, huge and white -- not soft, but rather spiky and sharp, like feathers made of the finest, most carefully articulated glass.

Wings. How strange.

Surprise welled up deep in Ulquiorra's mind -- a glint, a flicker, a spark in the dark. He blinked. It stopped.

It would have been sensible -- even uncommonly sensible, for Yammy -- to have sent for him under the circumstances. Ulquiorra was not hostile. Ulquiorra was a known factor. Ulquiorra had wings.

It was not therefore terribly surprising to learn that Yammy had instead been throwing a puerile tantrum until someone else had called for Ulquiorra.

"Your form has changed," Ulquiorra said from the doorway. A change of form wasn't necessarily uncommon. Those were forced upon adjuchas and vasto lorde when they became arrancar, and had been known to be forced upon them again at Aizen-sama's whim -- or Szayel's, if the hollow was unlucky. Aizen-sama tended to bring everyone to witness his experiments, however... and Yammy might easily have been convinced to oblige Szayel through some kind of manipulation.

It could even be somebody else's idea of a prank. Manipulating Yammy was not a particular feat of intellect, after all.

Hearing Ulquiorra's voice, Yammy's big body made a peculiarly featureless noise. It sounded like nothing so much as a low animal grunt.

That was not Ulquiorra's name. It wasn't even a response. Perhaps Yammy was broken -- some violent mutation that had ruined him. Not unprecedented. Unfortunate. A waste of resources. But it was easy to deal with. Ulquiorra's hand twitched toward his zanpakuto.

Ulquiorra experienced a pinprick of some tangled feeling, and, uncertain what it was, he ignored it -- but he thought if this was an experiment of Szayel's and not Aizen-sama's, he would have to kill Szayel as well.

Murciélago slid from its sheath with a soft rasp. Yes. He would finish here, and then ...attend to Szayel. As necessary.

Yammy growled deeper and tried again: "--quiorra."

Ulquiorra paused. Perhaps this was hasty.

"Yammy."

The huge bulk shifted, sending feathers cascading from the bed in a pale, glittering rain. They hit the ground with the clatter of bone.

Yammy's face was changed, to go with the rest of his body. His mouth was perfectly round and spiked with backwards-facing, needle-like teeth. It distorted his jaw -- his whole skull, to a point, including the ridged bone of his mask-- and it was evidently not made for speaking a language that required lips and teeth. His breath hissed, dry and raspy.

"Hurts," he said. There was the smell of feeding on his breath, although the physical evidence had dissipated.

Ulquiorra tilted his head, fast and sharp, expressionless. After a pause he let the haft of his sword go. There was nothing Yammy could do like this, should Ulquiorra decide to kill him. He was too fast, and Yammy was too distracted to move quickly -- and not clever enough to make a ploy.

There was precedent. Arrancar had sometimes been created with forms that meshed their adjuchas and the humanoid shinigami parts ...poorly. But if the functionality met certain standards and the mental capacity was sufficient (a phrase that meant only that the arrancar in question could be controlled), then an arrancar could learn to disregard physical pain and there was no need to kill a valuable soldier in Aizen-sama's army.

At a glance, Ulquiorra could see no particular reason for pain. The mouth was strange, but no stranger than he'd seen on many arrancar.

He considered this. "Where?"

Yammy made another of those inarticulate noises and shook his wing, then flinched.

The wings. All right.

He glided into the room, leaving the door open behind him. It did not matter to Ulquiorra who might pass by and see in. The wings were huge, bigger by far than Ulquiorra's, and structured differently. Where Ulquiorra's wings in his released form were huge and dark and leathery, stretching like colossal clawed hands from his back, Yammy's were pale and gave every appearance of being feathered.

He towered above Ulquiorra even from his perch on the huge bed. The broad, heavily muscled expanse of his back was bare and it seamlessly gave way to the wings -- there was no blood, no jutting bone or obviously malformed knots of muscle. The reiatsu fluctuations weren't significant enough to be painful in themselves, and were probably leftover from this new transformation. What, then, was causing this sniveling?

The anatomy seemed like a bird's. Ulquiorra laid one hand upon the thick humerus bone of the nearest wing and was immediately buffeted by hard bony feathers as Yammy thrashed and roared in pain -- and anger. Always anger.

Foolish. Yammy often preferred to let Ulquiorra do all the critical thinking -- a habit neither had tried very hard to break -- but he was not an animal, and he was not too stupid to understand this situation.

... And the idiot was in over his head, as usual.

Ulquiorra felt another tiny tick of emotion. He knew this one: annoyed. He was annoyed. Distantly. He blinked slowly. It left as fast as it had come.

"Yammy," he chided flatly. "You should at least be able to understand that I am helping you."

"Shut up," snarled Yammy, twitching from head to toe. He managed to say it clearly -- either because it was easier than Ulquiorra's name or because he was better motivated.

Ulquiorra eyed Yammy's shaking back and the trembling and twitching feathers. He could leave him. This could be somebody else's problem.

No. If he left it, it really would end badly for the buildings. He pressed his hand back down upon the wing, feeling the structure of it beneath the feathers. Yammy twitched again but didn't do more than hiss sulkily -- for all his posturing, he knew Ulquiorra was his best chance for help.

"I don't like them," Yammy complained, shuddering unhappily under Ulquiorra's touch.

"If they cannot be fixed, I will remove them." It would not be hard to cut them off.

Yammy grunted. It was impossible to say if it was positive or negative feedback on that proposed course of action. Ulquiorra did not mind either way.

He twitched again when Ulquiorra felt along the humerus -- and he jerked when Ulquiorra found it. And then, again, when he found another one on the ulna, right as it curved away from the joint.

In the space of a few hours, Yammy had grown his new wings, immediately snapped them, and allowed them to heal in exactly the wrong way. Ulquiorra waited for a moment, but the earlier flicker of surprise did not return. No. He was not surprised.

He needed the leverage, so he stepped deftly up upon the bed. It didn't respond to his weight, materials already flexed taut beneath Yammy's huge body. He radiated heat, and the feathers scraped against Ulquiorra's hierro. A lesser creature would be injured by them, he thought. He reached for the ugly, lumpy twist in the bone of the ulna again, feeling Yammy flinch once more.

"Be still," he instructed.

Yammy said something that might have been his name -- not that he could wrap his new mouth around it -- and followed it with a grunt and a, "What?"

Ulquiorra did not give him time to become restless. He wrenched the bone between both hands with a loud, resounding snap.

Yammy howled. And, as expected, he did not remain still. Ulquiorra put one hand on his neck, braced and let his reiatsu unfurl around them both. If he could not find the basic self discipline to remain still, Ulquiorra could make him still.

Yammy snarled and swore and tried to thrash, but in their sealed forms there was no comparison. Yammy was huge and powerful, but he could not defeat Ulquiorra like this -- and certainly would not be able to with Ulquiorra's hands already buried in his new and tender body parts.

His opposite wing flapped wildly and ineffectually. His sharp feathers scraped big deep grooves into the stone wall.

Yes, Ulquiorra thought neutrally, Yammy's wings were not good for flight but they might yet cause somebody some damage. At least they'd be good for something.

Ulquiorra held him there until he wore himself out, and then kept him still until the bone had knitted again.

"Better," he said, flat and serene, when Yammy had subsided into heaved breath and low growling vocalisations. The bare skin of Yammy's back seemed even warmer when his body was so stressed. His spine was in contact with one of Ulquiorra's knees. He felt through his clothes the heavy, strained heat of him.

"Remain still," he reminded him again, shifting his hands back down the bone, past the joint, and to the second misshapen bulge of badly healed bone.

"Fuck you," Yammy said, slurred but comprehensible.

Ulquiorra did not bother to respond to that. Instead he flexed his hands, slow and deliberate, and snapped that bone, too. He could hear the crack with what felt like every nerve and vein in his body.

Yammy bellowed.

Ulquiorra forced him still again: fingers wrapped around the broad back of his neck, knee in his spine, one careful hand still managing the break. His reiatsu was thick over Yammy's, too, a heavy oppressive blanket whose message was clear: stay down.

The thrashing was pleasing in some slow, atavistic way. It wasn't something he felt with his higher intellect, but -- all hollows, no matter how advanced, or how disinterested, had an interest in food. Yammy, despite his size and his own power, wriggled like prey under Ulquiorra's hands.

He could feel someone -- several someones -- outside the room, peering in, responding to the roar of Yammy's voice.

He wondered if they, too, felt the struggling of powerful prey within.

"You're so loud," Ulquiorra said. He sounded annoyed, but he couldn't feel it. He clicked his tongue against his teeth without understanding exactly why.

His reiatsu flared. The presences outside the room jolted and scattered. Yammy hissed another long breath.

Ulquiorra let his wing go. He flexed his hands like talons. He stepped back. It was... more difficult than it should have been.

One step. Two.

He dropped gracefully from the bed and shoved his hands back into his pockets.

Yammy's strange new wings stretched and shifted on their own, joints rolling. The glossy pale feathers slid smoothly together now, working with instead of against each other, all in their correct places. He grunted.

His wingspan was enormous. Ulquiorra tipped his head out of the way of a dangerous sweep of feathers.

"'S better," Yammy admitted. It took Ulquiorra a moment to understand his butchered language, but then he nodded.

"Do not break them again," he suggested. He didn't think Yammy would heed it.

Yammy didn't thank him. Ulquiorra left silently, and ignored Yammy's long, happy groan echoing behind him.