I'm sorry that I'm taking forever to update this story but this story has been giving me some grief. Somehow something isn't quite working. However now that I'm in the third and final part, I think I should be able to write it better. Things become dark from here on and will soon become dark enough that I would have to change the rating to M. In fact the second part of this chapter might be a little disturbing to some of the more sensitive readers. This chapter doesn't have Ulquiorra in it but I still like this chapter.

On a lighter note, I've published my new Ulquihime Lost in Time. Do take a look.

Chapter 19

After staring at her expressionlessly for a few moments Grimmjow spoke, "What the fuck have you consumed?"

Orihime's head snapped up "Eh?"

"I know humans get high on any fucking thing, alcohol, grass and powders. So which of those did you have?"

"Grimmjow! I'm serious," she said irritably.

Grimmjow shook his head, "Wait! Lemme get this shit straight! You come here looking like you've seen the worst fucking nightmare of your life, and then you tell me to take you to a place that's worse that the bloody amalgamation of all your fucking nightmares and then you want me to believe that you're fucking serious? Are you totally out of your fucking mind?"

Orihime sighed apparently prepared for the tirade, "Look Grimmjow, I understand …"

"Do you?" Grimmjow snapped, "Do you really fucking understand what you're asking me to do? Assuming that I will agree, which I will not, Ulquiorra will kill me. And I'm technically already dead, so he'll kill me again!"

Orihime opened her mouth once again trying to explain but Grimmjow ploughed on resolutely, now pacing across the room in agitation, "If by some freaking chance I do manage to get you into Hueco Mundo without killing you, do have any fucking clue what awaits you? The place is fucking teeming with Hollows, Menos, Adjucas and Vasto Lordes. And each of them is much more fucking powerful there than they are in the world of living. Reishi flows in the very air. Unafraid of any Shinigami punks, the hollows run bloody unchecked. If I take you there, all you'll have is a fucking Adjucas defending you. Alone I can handle it, but when I have to take care of you, I don't know how fucking useful I'll be because honestly chick you'll be a fucking deadweight. I may still be able to handle the Hollows or the Menos but the moment I'm faced with another Adjucas or a Vasto Lorde, I'll be in a fucking pinch. I …"

"Grimmjow," Orihime interrupted him, "I'm not going to be a dead weight."

Grimmjow let out a mirthless laugh, "Yeah! Because Ulquiorra has been training you to withstand reiatsu? Let me put things into fucking perspective for you! While in the world of living, we have to suppress our reiatsu. Even if we let it spike to the highest level that is sustainable in this world, it still wouldn't be all of our power. Ulquiorra, for example, even at his highest will be at 60% of his total strength. If he pushes his reiatsu any further, everything around him will fucking implode. While training you, he uses even less than 10% of that 60%. Do you get the picture? What I mean is, if in Hueco Mundo his strength is 100 bits, then you've only witnessed 4.8 bits of it, at the most. Do you even fucking understand? And the worst fucking part is Ulquiorra isn't the strongest resident of Hueco Mundo. There are three other Vasto Lordes. Starrk, Barragan and Hallibel, all of whom are at least at par if not more powerful than him. A mere whiff of the air there is sufficient to kill a human being. Do you really fucking think I would take you there?"

Orihime sighed, "Grimmjow, look at me. REALLY look at me."

The blue-haired Espada whirled around to face her, annoyance writ large on his face. He glared daggers at her and opened his mouth to start another rant but paused, his eyes growing large, "What the bloody fuck?"

Orihime sat in silence as she let Grimmjow process what he was witnessing. He continued to stare at her for a while before sitting next to her, "How the fuck has your reiatsu risen so much?"

"I just learned some very disturbing things about myself," she whispered.

"Like?"

"I … I'm not a human," she added in a nearly inaudible voice, "Not completely. I… I'm part Shinigami."

Grimmjow sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "That … that makes a lot of sense. But it also raises a whole fucking set of questions again."

Orihime nodded, "I know. And that's why I want to go there. Something tells me the answer lies in Hueco Mundo."

Grimmjow sat there, looking at something that only he could see, "Human-Shinigami hybrid huh? You've seen your Zanapakuto?"

Orihime nodded and Grimmjow's eyes raked over her person, "I don't see it."

At that she called forth her Shun-Shun Rikka. Grimmjow sat stunned as she demonstrated its powers to him one after another. At the end of the demonstration he gave a low whistle while the fairies returned to their vessel.

"Wow," he said slowly after a while, "Do you have any fucking clue what this means? A Human-Shinigami hybrid is rare. Very, very fucking rare. There have been very few cases. You … you might just… wow."

After a long period of silence Grimmjow spoke again, "I have like a million fucking questions. Can I ask?"

Orihime nodded, and he immediately started rattling off, "How did you find out? Does Ulquiorra know? Why do you need to go to Hueco Mundo? Why the fuck was your reiatsu so low and how come has it risen so much so suddenly? What the bloody fuck is going on?"

She bit her lip as she took time to phrase her answer, "I found out through a combination of dreams and information that my Shun Shun Rikka provided. Ulquiorra doesn't know yet. Things are a little… weird between us right now. I need to go to Hueco Mundo because the answers I seek involve Ulquiorra as well and he's lived in Hueco Mundo for centuries. I'm not entirely sure why my reiatsu has risen all of a sudden and why it was so low to begin with. And honestly, I myself don't know what the bloody fuck is going on."

Grimmjow sat in stunned silence as he processed everything Orihime had just told him.

"This is the reason why could see the spiritual beings and the reason Hollows attacked you from a very young age. A Human-Shinigami hybrid soul is very rare and powerful. They would definitely want to consume something like that," he mumbled after a while.

Orihime nodded, "Although, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I stopped seeing them suddenly and then started seeing them again, equally suddenly."

Grimmjow turned to look at her, his cerulean eyes absolutely serious, "Urahara Kisuke."

Orihime bit her lip thoughtfully, "So you reached to the same conclusion?"

"There is no other conclusion to reach to anyway," he replied, "He must have suppressed your reiatsu somehow. Think about it. After the attack on your family, when your brother took you to that mysterious man, you stopped seeing Hollows. I can't think of any other person who'd do something like that. Do you?"

Orihime smiled a little, "Oh that mysterious person was Urahara Kisuke, Sora confirmed it."

"Your brother?" Grimmjow asked. When Orihime nodded he continued, "Then let's go to Urahara Kisuke. I can track him; I've had his trail for a bloody long time. We can get all the answers we need you won't have to…"

"NO!" Orihime screamed, "I'm not going to ask that man for a single answer. When I meet him, I will have all the facts with him. I won't let him blindside me with useless facts. I want to throw them at his face and watch as tries to squirm his way out from the web of lies and deceit."

Grimmjow raised his blue eyebrows, "I knew you didn't like him but the way you're speaking of him, I think you fucking hate him."

She sighed deeply, "Till now, I was merely annoyed with him. The reason I wanted to build my reiatsu was that I wanted to face him without fainting. It was a matter of stupid pride. But things have changed."

"Changed how?"

"I … I discovered a few more things about myself," she answered hesistantly.

"Like?"

Taking a deep breath she continued, "Ulquiorra and I were lovers in a past life."

Grimmjow gaped at her, "Are you fucking serious?"

Orihime nodded, "He was known as Tsuruga then and he was a skilled warrior, but he was human. We belonged to rival families that had a bloody history. I recollected it all in a dream. Till now, I was treating this as an embarrassing bit of information and I kept it to myself. But this morning, I saw something very disturbing."

When Orihime's silence prolonged, Grimmjow probed, "What?"

"I realised that Tsuruga had a Shinigami friend who betrayed him. This friend of his told his family about our liaison. And this was what led to Tsuruga's death," she ended in a low voice.

"Fuck," Grimmjow muttered.

Orihime nodded solemnly, "I need to know why and how Tsuruga became Ulquiorra. I need to know what exactly he had to go through because of that bastard."

Grimmjow remained silent.

"You'll take me there, won't you?" she pleaded.

The hollow sighed deeply, "I know I'm going to regret this. I just know I am."

Admittedly Orihime didn't know what to expect but whatever she had imagined, her journey to Hueco Mundo had been much worse. If it hadn't been for Grimmjow, she was fairly certain that she would, at the very least, been split into two.

Grimmjow had advised her that they travel in the night. He had asked her to meet him at a park and preferably after she had thrown off her babysitters. He didn't want Ichigo or Rukia to follow them and Orihime had to agree. It would be inconvenient to say the least. Neither of them were much worried about Ulquiorra following her because he was diligently avoiding her anyway. He would come to her every day for the training sessions and then, promptly leave to locations undisclosed. The training session themselves were filled with awkward and strained silences. So it wasn't really a surprise for her to find that Ulquiorra was now nowhere to be seen. Grimmjow assured her that he was in Karakura town, although very far off at the moment.

Grimmjow didn't tell her, and in her current agitation, it seemed to have slipped her mind, but as soon as the Garganta closed, both their reiatsus would vanish from the World of the Living. That meant that Ulquiorra, Rukia and Ichigo would instantly know that they were gone. He just hoped that they wouldn't readily jump to the conclusion that they had gone to Hueco Mundo.

Once Orihime was certain that she'd shaken off Rukia, she quickly reached the park where Grimmjow stood waiting. He was in his Adjucas form.

"Ready?" he asked and received a vehement nod from her in reply. He snapped his fingers and slowly the air in front of them started to tear. Orihime had never stood so close to a garganta and the first thing that struck her was the smell. It wasn't a putrid or offensive smell, in fact the smell was faint but there was something about it that made her shiver involuntarily. If Orihime were to describe the scent she would have said that it was cold, clammy, faint and strangely enough, dark. In short, the garganta reeked of Death.

Grimmjow held out a black clawed hand which Orihime took demurely. He tugged her and pulled her against himself. "Stay close," he said in her ears before stepping in and closing the garganta.

Instantly they were plunged into absolute darkness. Orihime tightened her grip on his arm as Grimmjow led her down a path she couldn't see. With the sense of vision rendered useless, her other senses heightened and much to her disconcertion she realized that there was nothing beneath her feet. Grimmjow appeared to be guiding her on thin air.

"Grimmjow!" she squeaked, "There's nothing beneath us!"

"You're walking on Reishi," he answered calmly, "Now shh! You don't want to attract attention."

Orihime wanted to ask whose attention could she possibly attract in a garganta, but decided against it; moments later though, her question was answered. She heard some things hiss loudly. A feral growl sounded right next to her ears and that scared her. It was a growl unlike anything she had heard before; it raised the hairs on her skin. The thing that had let out the growl drew in a rattling breath and almost instantly the snake-like hissing and spitting stopped. It was then that she realized that the growl had been let out by Grimmjow.

She had barely processed that information when suddenly the air around her became chilly. She felt Grimmjow pull her closer as the space around them started to constrict.

"Shit!" Grimmjow muttered, "They realized that there's a non-hollow."

Before Orihime could asked who were 'they', Grimmjow picked her up like a sack of potatoes and started to run. She could feel disembodied hands trying to claw at her but Grimmjow was faster. Not only did he parry most of the hands, he also continued to run. Orihime's heart was thumping loudly and for the first time in a long while, she was genuinely scared.

Unexpectedly a couple of hands grasped Orihime's arms and she let out an involuntary scream. The hands felt squishy, gooey and at the same time bony, as if she was held by a rotting corpse. Instantly some more hands materialized out of nowhere and grabbed her, pulling at her. She fought with all her might but it was in vain. She felt Grimmjow grasp her waist and a tug of war ensued between him and the hands. Orihime felt like she would be torn into two as neither was willing to let go.

Suddenly she felt Grimmjow let go of her. She was about to scream when she realized that the hands too had let go of her. It was then that she realized that she was falling and falling fast! The clammy smell of the Garganta was gone and she had regained her vision and all she could see was a white waste land and she was falling, unobstructed and uninhibited. Instinctively she called out her Shun Shun Rikka and a shield appeared beneath her, breaking her free fall. The shield slowed her down and she landed on the ground with a soft 'fump'. As the shield dissipated, someone landed right next to her. She turned to find Grimmjow standing up, having gracefully landed on all his fours.

"How did you manage that?" she asked brushing off sand from her clothes.

"Manage what?"

"Landing so smoothly?"

He grinned, "I'm a Panther. I always have a smooth landing."

Orihime smiled shakily, "Thank you for helping me in the garganta. That was scary."

Grimmjow's expression grew serious, "If that scared you, maybe you should turn back."

Orihime's eyes widened, "Meaning?"

He turned to face her and said, "It may sound clichéd, but know that I mean it when I say, 'Welcome to Hell, baby'."