With the Captains suffering casualties and heavy injuries on their side, all hope seemed to be lost... until Shinji Hirako appeared, along with the rest of the former Shinigami. Though the aid of the Vizards certainly helped to draw the battle in their favor, it seemed Aizen's power alone proved too much for them.
"I remember," Stour said, grinning. He recanted the tale, and Kaki looked nervously away. She didn't want Hotaru to know too much about what had happened - and too much was really anything at all. She already knew her sister would be asking questions that Kaki wouldn't want to answer. "Luckily for you, only one of us acts like an insect."
Stour seemed to pause, his eyes widening. Kaki frowned - was he going to blow up? Would it be the end for Stour?
It was gas.
Kaki dropped her candy - all of it - on the ground, and stood, dumbfounded. Hotaru had straightened out and stepped back cautiously, doe-eyed and frightened. It took only a moment for Kaki to realize what had transpired, and then she laughed.
"Ahhh! That was awesome! I wanna try," Kaki laughed, breathless and choking by the end. "Hehe...Hotaru - Hotaru - gimme some pop rocks."
"No!"
"C'mooon, he got to try it."
"Does purple always taste like happy?"
"No, purple always tastes like grapes," Kaki said, looking to Stour with a tilted head. Surely he didn't think that grapes tasted good?
Character List "Let's eat, Grandma!" "Let's eat Grandma!" Commas save lives.
"What was awesome? Is that a thing that people can do? It's like a cero without having to rebuild buildings afterwards. Kaki, you dropped all your candy!" Stour said, clearly experiencing a sugar rush, and looking to Kaki and Hotaru as Hotaru was refusing to let Kaki have pop rocks. "So wait, grapes taste like happy? So many flavors in this bag...."
He trailed off as he slyly handed Kaki the rest of his poprocks. He grabbed another fruit snack. Orange? "What's the orange one?" He asked, popping it in his mouth. He smiled immediately, eyes lighting up. "Okay seriously what's the orange one?!" Purple might taste like happy but orange tasted amazing. Like nothing he'd ever had before. And he'd eaten lots of things.
Our bed becomes a grave before we blow ourselves away!
"Is that a thing that people can do? It's like a cero without having to rebuild buildings afterwards." Stour said, quickly adding that Kaki had dropped her candy. She laughed, and started to pick it up, and then continued walking while throwing pouting glances at Hotaru. However, Hotaru did not have to concede. Stour slipped his opened bag of poprocks into her stack of candy bars. Kaki grinned, but knew that she still needed the cola to make it work.
"So wait, grapes taste like happy? So many flavors in this bag... What's the orange one?"
"Orange is supposed to taste like oranges. I don't like grape or orange. I like red and blue," Kaki said, glancing to Stour's bottle of cola. She wanted to sneak it, but Hotaru was watching her. Maybe she'd seen her receiving the poprocks?
Hotaru followed quietly, unwrapping a lollipop and sticking it into her mouth, letting it rest between her teeth and inner cheek. She was indeed watching Kaki, particularly her hands. Kaki wouldn't make a grab for the cola if Hotaru didn't take her eyes off...but so many sweets...
Character List "Let's eat, Grandma!" "Let's eat Grandma!" Commas save lives.
"What is oranges?" Stour asked, not realizing it was a plural word, and sounding like an idiot as a result. "I like them. I think. My favorite was the red one, but I can't eat them anymore. They remind me of something... bad."
Stour offered the bag to Kaki, making a surprisingly smooth move of hiding the cola behind it, though Hotaru still may notice the lack of cola, as things like that don't just disappear. Then, suddenly, Stour wondered if they did just disappear, and dismissed that thought immediately. Of course they didn't, they were just humans, they couldn't make disappearing containers. But that would have been awesome.
So, in his experiences with human food, he had learned that spicy meant bad, apples were people, cherries were shinigami, and that oranges were questionably delicious, he still wasn't sure. A very strange day, he decided, wishing he had grabbed more random snacks to experiment with. Such strange flavors. Humans just thought of everything.
Our bed becomes a grave before we blow ourselves away!
"Oranges are...orange, round fruits," Kaki said. "I...I don't know how to describe them."
She accepted the bag and cola with a grin, and Hotaru's nostrils flared at the suspicion that something had just been handed to Kaki. She said nothing, aside from clarifying Kaki's vague answer. "Oranges are orange citrus fruits," she said. "Humans enjoy them."
Kaki, while her sister spoke, produced a few pop rocks in her hand and dropped them into her mouth. When Hotaru shot her a glare - the kind that meant 'don't do it, no matter what you do, just don't do it' - Kaki slouched. The pop rocks were already in her mouth, and they tasted bad.
"What's that?!" she shouted, pointing vaguely across the street. Hotaru looked, and Kaki took a long swig of cola. She didn't like it either - it was bubbly and fizzy and yuuuuck. "Oh gro--BURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP."
She blinked, holding her candy close to her stomach, not noticing that she had spilled a large amount of cola. "Wow. That was intense."
"I told you not to!"
Character List "Let's eat, Grandma!" "Let's eat Grandma!" Commas save lives.
"So orange is... a color, and a fruit... that is orange? Okay..." Stour sighed, shaking his head. "So you can just call things by their color? Like apple would be green?"
Stour watched as Kaki attempted to stealthily eat the poprocks, followed by her about to call the cola gross, before she was cut off by the explosion. Kaki called it intense. Hotaru got mad. Stour laughed.
"It's fun, Hotaru, you should try it," Stour said, looking at the mess Kaki had made. "And I didn't think it was that gross, Kaki."
Stour shrugged and went to grab another fruit snack, but he realized he had given them to Kaki. "Coooould I have my fruit snacks back? I want more purple."
Our bed becomes a grave before we blow ourselves away!
Hotaru snatched the rest of the cola away, though she didn't drink any. Instead, she tilted it to the side until its contents spilled down into the street. "That's quite enough."
"Awww," Kaki said, "But it's fun."
"So you can just call things by their color? Like apple would be green?"
"Ne! Ne! So Hotaru's black and I'm green then," Kaki laughed, knowing that it was absurd. Of course you could call things by their colors, but she was pretty sure the color orange was named after the fruit and not the other way around. Maybe. "And Stour-san's purple."
Hotaru sighed, and added, "Would that make Adan-san blue?"
"Oh yeah!" Kaki agreed, nodding with a sure smile. "And we're Aosawa, so that means we're all blue."
The older sister smiled, and laughed softly behind her hand, before returning to her candy. There was no more cola, so her sister and Stour would be doing no more burping. Except the kind that came on its own occasionally.
"Cooooooould I have my fruit snacks back? I want more purple."
Kaki obliged, handing Stour the bag. "You should try the chocolate. It tastes good."
Character List "Let's eat, Grandma!" "Let's eat Grandma!" Commas save lives.
"That was my stolen soda, and I expect you to pay me back for it," Stour said, putting on his best angry face, but laughed too soon after. "Ah, who cares. It was weird anyways. All of this is actually kind of weird."
"Purple hair makes you delicious, apparently," Stour laughed. "Awesome. Wait, that's the right way to use 'awesome', right? I've been trying to learn to use words better."
Stour grinned as he took his snacks back, immediately grabbing a purple snack, before tilting his head to Kaki, as she suggested chocolate. "What's chocolate like?" He asked, assuming he was about to be forced to try it regardless of the answer.
Our bed becomes a grave before we blow ourselves away!
"Human food is indeed strange," Hotaru agreed. "But it is not too different from the food in Soul Society."
"I don't remember the food in Soul Society," Kaki said, shrugging her shoulders as she looked through the pile of stolen candy. If Rydia were around, she thought, they would be able to just ask her, and she would take them. But she wasn't. "The food in Las Noches was gross though. Like eating toothpaste but without the mint." As she spoke, she sifted through the pile to find a plain chocolate bar. She bunched her arms together and stopped walking, pausing to shift it to the top of the pile.
"Chocolate's like...like...um..." Kaki glanced to Hotaru. "What's chocolate like?"
"It's a sweet, easily melted dessert," answered the dark-haired girl. Kaki handed the chocolate to Stour with a smile. "Stour-san, would you mind breaking a piece off for me?"
Character List "Let's eat, Grandma!" "Let's eat Grandma!" Commas save lives.