A/N: I was bored. Boredom plus internet access equals drabbles, generally. Dengue fever aftermath plus boredom plus internet access equals insane drabbles.

In the mysterious palace of Les Nachos, a great horror awaits... greater than stale jalapeno peppers, than mouldy salsa, than soggy chips - nay, worse than all of these, I say -

Oh, wait. That was a typo.

In the palace of Las Noches waits a single human girl from the Living World. Currently, she is a prisoner under the care of the Cuarta.

She is also somewhat bored of waiting to rescue, and formulates secret-agent plans to escape that James Bond would be proud of.

Just as she is putting the finishing touches to her plot, and gets up to start tying together sheets in the traditional manner - using Tsubaki to cut the bars, she thinks, can wait until last, or someone might notice their absence - her jailor opens the door.

Ulquiorra's face is expressionless as always, dark tear tracks running down from his eyes.

"Woman," he says. "Aizen-sama has use of you."

Orihime stands, straight-backed. She will not cow before any monstrous hollow or pale-faced arrancar. She will keep her nerve.

"Very well," she replies, and follows him docilely. For the moment.

(Plan G - springing a surprise attack on Ulquiorra, then convincing him to defect by using her womanly wiles - can wait. At least for the moment.)

(On the journey, she wonders whether perhaps, if she takes Ulquiorra out into the sunlight, he might sparkle. He's pale enough to be a vampire - does he get enough vitamin D? What do arrancar need to survive? Obviously, lower hollows might require eating souls, but possibly arrancar evolve beyond that. And where would the food go, or did it just leak out through the hole in his neck and did he need a special pipe put in so it didn't come out-)

He swings open the door, and the thoughts come abruptly to a halt as she is faced with a kitchen.

"Woman. Aizen-sama has declared that you cook for the time being. Hogyokou is resting for the time being. Do not entertain any thoughts of escape; I will be waiting outside, should you attempt to leave."

Orihime nods demurely, concealing the exuberant thoughts in her head. They had strawberry jelly, probably, and sprinkles and smoked fish and Spam and kimchi if she was lucky, so now she could try out all her new recipes and plan R -

("Are you honestly trying to tell me," Yamamoto began with disbelief, "that the cause of death of every single person in Las Noches, with the exception of the Octava Espada, was food poisoning?"

"Apparently the girl served what was referred to as an Inoue Special. The Quincy brat seemed to be aware of what that meant; apparently her cooking is somewhere on par with that of Rangiku Matsumoto. I managed to obtain a sample of the food she prepared, actually. The combination causes sensory overload."

"And what, precisely, happened to the Octava?"

"...I acquired him for, shall we say... research purposes. I'm sure the results will be quite fascinating-")

Szayel Apporo Granz was not, currently, very happy, and was languishing on a dissection table, insofar as such a thing was possible. 'Splayed out' would probably have been a better word, were it not for the fact that he never splayed. Splaying was for inferior specimens, not himself. He was a scientist, and more importantly, he was perfection. Perfection simply did not do such ungraceful positioning.

(Although he was really starting to rethink the whole 'perfection' thing.)

Regrettably, he was starting to wish he hadn't suddenly felt the urge to identify the components of the Inoue Special... although he wasn't entirely sure that would have been a better death. Probably less protracted, at any rate.

"Now if we could just redo that test, but with hyaluronic acid bathing the wound instead of acetic acid - "

It took a considerable quantity of self-control not to scream...