Happy Holidays to all! Here's a new chapter of my story and more to come (soon... hopefully... darn you busy Holiday preperation schedule, blarrrgh!).
Please continue reading and reviewing. Review especially, that way I know your still reading and loving my story! Thank you to all subscribers and reviewers, ily so!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach. (For Christmas I wished for many Bleach stuff~ wheeeeee~)


"Hmm, well I must say that the clothes makes you two look less filthy and humiliating." Szayel glances over at his clipboard and smirks at us.

"Heh. Why thank you." I rolled and directed my eyes at the towered papers on a table beside me. 'Don't squeal, don't blush, don't stare at his smile~!' It took all my strength to steady my feet and not faint before the pink-haired researcher. I needed to be fearless and keep my cool or else we'll easily be taken advantage of. I had to be strong... for the both of us. Even if that means I have to hide my true feelings for my most favourite character.

"Well then, shall we get started?" Szayel takes a few steps over to the silver vacant table and flicks through his clipboard. "Let's have... Persona, Kaye."

"Wait!" I immediately retorted. 'Kaye can't go first! I don't know what you're going to do with her! What if you end up killing her? What will happen to me? How are we gonna get home together?' I pleaded at him, with grey-filled eyes, a reason why she had to go ahead and be first on this little examination. "Umm-!"

"Yeeap!" Kaye beamed and raised her hand up as if to show she's present. She took two steps past me and turned. "Come on, it's fine, Rie! Don't worry! I can be strong too, okay?" She held out a fist in front of her and brightly smiled back.

'No matter what, I got you to look after me and you've got me to look after you. We'll be strong together.'

These were the words I said to her when we were 8 years old; on the day her Dad's funeral ceremony took place. Her dad had been killed in his hotel room where he stayed at for a short business trip in Moscow. Unfortunately the criminal was never found and this ate Kaye up a lot on the inside. She was unfunctional for a few months but I stuck with her and countlessly reminded her of what I said at that time. By then Kaye became lively and those words of mine became our promise to one another.

I blinked, back from the past. Kaye sat up on the steel table in the middle and started swaying her feet, awaiting for further instructions.

Szayel rolled his eyes and sighed, "I don't see why you made such a big uproar at my arrangement on who I set to start my research on between the two of you. I would have thought this was what you preferred, in so that you can inspect the process of the examination and look after your friend." I blinked. 'H-He's right...' I needed to look after Kaye, and she needed to be strong with me. Right now, in this world, we only have each other; and that means our promise is still in effect.

"Kaye Persona. Lie down." Kaye flinched upon hearing her full name and promptly did as told. Szayel walks around Kaye and goes to the trolley a metre away from the table. I didn't get a good look at the contents on top but I'm pretty sure it had silverware on it. Szayel's back faced me as he fumbles about in front of the trolley. He then turns to Kaye and from where I stood, I noticed he held something oddly shaped with a long thread that twinkled from the lighting. 'A needle?' I immediately recognised the horrendous instrument and before I could interrupt for the second time, Szayel had already injected it on the veins inside of Kaye's left elbow and knocked her out.

"WHAT DID YOU D-!"

"Relax, would you? Hearing you yell once is more than enough. I merely dosed her with anesthetic to perform a safe examination as well as extracting accurate data in her most stabilized state." Szayel huffed and gently placed Kaye's arm back down. Szayel then got to work and prepared the IV on her wrist and took lines of wire with transparent suction cup pieces attached at each end onto Kaye's skin: on her face, under her gown, arms and legs. He switched on a monitor from one of the machines and revealed a trail criss-crossing over at different lengths in this gridded circumference.

I stood my ground and watched with squinted, teary eyes, of his every movement. I didn't know whether to believe my sights, or my thoughts, or even Szayel. For all I know, Kaye could have been dead and Szayel's only pretending with this random setup. I couldn't say anything that would get the Eighth Espada to reassure me that everything was fine and I couldn't very well do anything that might get me killed.

Szayel sighed lowly and crossed his left arm over his torso while placing two fingers on his forehead. "Look, the procedure will take a few hours to be completed. I suggest you quit brooding at that spot and get comfortable over here." Szayel glances at the stool across over him that was placed close to Kaye. I lightly nodded and sluggishly walked on over to the brown wooden top stool with four steel legs. Szayel's amber eyes had been following my tracks until I finally seated myself at the very edge of the stool. Satisfied of me completing his command, Szayel resumed back to writing notes off the unusual graph.

I stared down at Kaye's still body attached with the plastic sucker wires. I held back the instincts to vigorously shake her awake or hit her in the head. But I needed to trust her. I needed to count on her to be strong enough to stay alive through this examination. She's been on this similar situation before: like the time she fell off a tree for following a white pigeon and wound up in the hospital for two days with a broken arm. However this situation is three times as bad since we're in another world, in another place, with another person.
Szayel... I don't know what to think of him anymore. Before arriving at Hueco Mundo I thought of him as the greatest character in the series! Now, I don't know if can trust him since the words he speaks and the actions he does isn't mutual. I have no idea what the guy's thinking.

Szayel walks on over farther to the room and grabs a white tape then arrives back beside Kaye. He spreads open the tape filled with numbers. 'Measuring tape...?' I noticed it was. Szayel started wrapping the measuring tape onto Kaye's height, wrist, head, neck, waist and bust. Well... it was harmless, so I didn't really need to ask him to stop; though the bust measurement might not have been necessary.

I couldn't help but smile at Szayel's concentrated look in this examination. He was really being accurate and in-the-zone of this research and, it was a look I hadn't seen before; so it was definitely refreshing. His face was serious but sometimes in a couple of seconds he would furrow his brows up and slightly tilt his head, looking adorably confused. A finger would furiously tap at times but the rest would curl into any object he possessed including the light tucking of his rare pink hair back behind his ears whenever he found it to be a nuisance on his pale face. And before I knew it, I was already gazing at Szayel.

"... What?" he glances up at me from his papers.

"Huh?"

"You've been staring at me for the past couple of minutes."

I felt my face flush. 'Oh god, I was staring that long? He's gonna think I'm a weirdo now! Oh god, I'm such a weirdo!' I shook my head and waved my hands out.

"Ah! No! It's nothing, really!"

"Has it got something to do with the colour of my hair?"

I blinked. "Ha?"

"I don't see why many hound over it. Just because it's an uncommon shade on a hair, doesn't mean I'm mental."

'Wait, so he doesn't know that I was staring at him because I fancy him, but thought that I was staring oddly at his pink hair? And everyone else always bullies him about his pink hair? And he's kinda self-conscious about it?'
I couldn't help but giggle at his cute misinterpretation. This was a new side of Szayel I hadn't known and I'm really glad I got the chance to see it for myself. My suppressed giggling became a loud chuckle as Szayel looks at me with a soft scowl.

"No, no. I didn't think of it like that," I lightheartedly scoffed and continued with the topic of the conversation. "It's just... well, it's different from Ilforte's and even thought I know a few things about you - I don't get the whole 'pink-hair' part?"

Szayel froze for a second and regained back the idea of me being from another world that knows all about them, in which had slipped his mind for a moment.

"For your information, that's exactly the reason. It's already a misfortune enough of me looking like that idiot. So changing my hair would do us both justice."

"Oooooh, I see..." I nodded. "That answers one question."

"Are you implying that there are more?"

I devilishly smiled and remembered one question many Szayel fangirls still argue on about today. "Where's the Octava's hollow hole?"

I didn't see it clearly since he immediately dropped his head and continued working, but I could've sworn Szayel's face matched his hair colour at the time. It was an impulse of mine that couldn't be stopped, and so, I laughed - out loud.