A King's Contemplations
His name is Dio-Rey Barragan Louisenbairn, and he is content.
It was a new feeling, this contentment, and he took his time to examine and savor it as was his wont. He was seated in the privacy of his solar, warmed by the blazing hearth sculpted to resemble the yawning maw of a Gillian giving obeisance to a crown. His crown.
A sumptuous dish lay before him; braised rabbit with onion and a marinade of wine and vinegar.
"Findorr."
"Yes, my liege."
"What did Tanya call this dish?"
"The Princesa named it hasenpfeffer my King", his servant answered promptly. "Originally created by the Germanics of Europa." That name twigged a vague memory, but he let it fall away.
"Hmm. The cook has done well."
"The Palas will be most honored to have pleased you my master."
"As they should."
Paired with it was another pleasing novelty which Tanya had introduced; the rich spirit created from mashed grain, and carefully aged in oak barrels. It had admittedly taken some practice, but the King had come to enjoy the fruits of such efforts. The sub cellar was now stocked with many such barrels, from the fermentation of grape and honey to wheat and barley and potato.
Yes, he was content, enjoying the meal made possible by his heir, his treasured Princesa. Thinking of the child also stirred another feeling which he had never experienced before her birth - pride in another.
Through her deft and multifarious hands, her Cuerpo de Palas, a vision was made a reality. From the lowest privy to the tallest tower, a civilization was born where once there was only death and sand.
His palace-fortress itself was designed to Tanya's exacting specifications by her many obedient servants, raised as a great fortification and a seat of authority befitting his station. Intimidating without being obnoxious. Magnificent but not gaudy. Three tiered walls, each one taller than the last and patrolled by the Escudo at all hours, with deep chasms between which fell straight down into the Forest of Menos.
The outer yard which looped around his demesne was dedicated to a training grounds where he regularly raced his child and engaged in target practice, reducing boulders into fine dust particles. It had been a thousand years since his Gran Caida and Senescencia had seen such use, even if the subjects did not curse and plead for mercy.
The inner yard, conversely, was a place of beauty and color. Lush green trees and aromatic flowers that bloomed in reds and blues and yellows around a meditation pool large enough for a dozen Gillian to swim in. A lovely pavilion was erected to provide shade and comfortable seating amidst the garden air.
In the grandness of his main hall, pale stone threaded with veins of gold made up the great pillars. The floor was polished to a mirror sheen, and the buttresses above resembled the sun-bleached ribs of a great beast. Between gilded braziers hung great tapestries of royal purple bearing his seal of the axe and crown.
Then of course, there was his throne; an obsidian monolith hewn in the shape of an hourglass. Truly a throne worthy of the name, worthy of Barragan.
And yet.
And yet.
For untold ages his existence was a ceaseless mire of numb boredom punctuated all too briefly by temporary periods of violence - typically when an ant scarcely worth notice thought itself above its station. Then they would experience true power before joining the dust and sand of Hueco Mundo.
Rarer still was the challenge deserving of his ire. Twice, in all his long long memory, had he ever experienced a foe who was worthy of recognition.
Then came the Ų̸̢̤̺̳͕̂̈́͛͑̓̄̒̄̍͂̇̔ ŝ̴̢̺̜͂̎ ų̷̨̧̤͕͍͉̳̳̻̭̳̝̝̐͛ͅͅ r̶̬̤̹̱̺͍͎͕̝͎̿̍̽͠ p̵̧̨͕̝̣̜̯̱͚̯̒́̎̂̂̂̓́̃͆̓̋͑̋͘ ȩ̶̬̫̲̹̑̇̔͛͊̈́̀͂̕ ŕ̶̪̜̥̦͙̠̺͋͒̐̽̔̒̉̋̿͘͘.
A wet crunch sounded in his solar, and Redder immediately collected the shards for disposal while Ggia poured him a new glass.
The windows of his solar would have offered a perfect view of his vitalized kingdom, free to behold the tall fields of wheat swaying like waves in a golden vista, but that peace was marred by the hideous edification of that Shinigami's ego.
It leered over the lands of Hueco Mundo like an ossified mockery of taste. He had been told that the grotesque monument was built to surpass the First Division Shinigami headquarters in the Seireitei; he had never seen them, but he knew unfounded arrogance when he saw it.
That mortal thought himself above all, above the true King of Hueco Mundo!
Barragan reined in his anger back in, and sighed at the sight of his now rotten meal and the damage he had unwittingly done to his own chair and table. Pleasant mood ruined, the whole morning was a wash. Worse, he would be scolded by Tanya for wasting the valuable efforts of their hard-working servants.
His Fraccion knew well enough to give their Lord space, Poww moving to collect the trash and Findorr opening the tall redwood doors before he reached the threshold. Except there stood a pair of the gestalt Picaro, the children frozen mid knock and with the wide-eyed look of terror worn by all those who had witnessed Barragan in an unpleasant mood.
They immediately rectified their error however, kowtowing to the King and mumbling their deepest apologies.
"Cease."
His word killed the noise in a stroke, and he halfway considered rotting one of them to improve his mood. Except, then his Princesa would be further upset with him.
The thought displeased him, and so he stayed his hand. Tanya was important to him, of course. She was his heir, and brought much honor to their name. But what was this feeling then?
The Picaro trembled before him, and he shook off the stray thought. "You enter my abode unannounced. Explain yourselves. Your answer will determine your punishment."
The one on the right, a messy thing with a mop of brown hair, presented a small wooden box. "T-Tanya sent us! S-She brought stuff f-from the human world!"
"Oh?"
Ggio took the offering from the whelp and opened it facing Barragan. Within was a lining of red crushed velvet and a number of small wrinkled gold and silver orbs. With pinched fingers, the Master of All-Hollows picked one from the vessel.
"S-She called them Chak-O-Late!" The one of the left spoke quickly, not removing her gaze from the floor. "She said you take the crinkly stuff off and eat it and it makes you happy."
With a raised brow, he peeled away the delicate false-skin to reveal a small dark brown ball. Unceremoniously, it was placed in his mouth, and he bit down.
Eyes that had borne witness to violence and horrors beyond number widened in surprise.
'What is this sensation? This flavor?!'
It was smooth as whiskey, but instead of the pleasant burn and taste of grain and oak, there was a richness that rolled across the palette and provoked an unconscious rumble of…happy.
Once again, the prized daughter surprises her father, bringing home gifts most unexpected.
His eyes fell upon the Picaro, who seemed to have relaxed now that Barragan's mood was not quite so murderous. "Where is the Princesa now?"
"The range!" they answered in unison.
Ah. She had been plying her hand recently, attempting to shape her Bala and Cero beyond the norm. Such dedication was to be praised.
"Then I shall join her. Come."
"At once" answered his Fraccion.
A great many targets would be destroyed over the following afternoon, blown apart with tremendous force or bored through with incredible heat or disintegrated in controlled weaving of entropy. Through it all, the loathing of Aizen Sosuke remained.
At his core remained the bubbling rage that had remained closely guarded for seven decades - a quite familiar feeling, mixed with one which he refused to name and another he struggled to identify.
Damn you, Kaname Tousen. Damn you, Gin Ichimaru. But most of all, damn you Aizen Sosuke.
Should any harm come to his daughter..should the Usurper think Tanya an acceptable sacrifice on the altar of his ambitions..then Barragan would see the Three Worlds rot into nothingness.
After all, what kind of world would be worth living in without her in it?
I was actually messing around with this before Jesse posted the new chapter, lol.
The general idea I had was that Barragan is still a selfish, arrogant, lawful evil monster-monarch, he's also been experiencing some legitimate character development courtesy of Tanya's presence in his..life? Existence.
I also only vaguely recall the HM Arc and what Lost Nachos actually looks like, so I said 'fuck it' and made it ridiculously huge to fit all the farmland and little fiefdoms each of the Espada control (with Aizen of course having his own petty Barad-dûr at the center), because of course they're all going to take advantage of the skilled peons Tanya's offering. Why not?
Other than that, this was mostly for shits 'n' giggles. And yes, I think Barragan would legitimately commit omnicide if he thinks Tanya is dead.
