IX

The Epic Unknown

"You want me to do what now?" I asked, standing in his room. The Espada was doing the usual, you guessed it, writing another annoying report. Two and a half weeks in our daily-or should I say nightly-sparing and he was as emotionless as ever. Though, I discovered, there was always something somewhere. By the semi relaxed shoulder, my best guess was he strolled between his variation of patience and "trash".

"I will repeat myself, go buy more tea," Cifer waved his finished paper, "take this and don't do anything idiotic, though the possibility is dangerously high."

I decided not to comment. Snatching the paper, I walk to fill this delightful new order. The paper turned out to magically morph into a golden ticket to the World of the Living. After one of Szyeal's fraccións outfitted me with a bracelet look-a-like, I was good to go. Supposedly, it held in my spiritual pressure. Break it and I would set off every single alarm and be quickly dead. Then Lord Aizen would come and kill me again. The fracción didn't mention how.

The garganta coughed me up as I stepped back into the World of the Living. It was raining. Why did it have to go all gloomy on the day that I visited? I lifted my hand to catch a wet drop. The drop vanished through my palm and crashed onto the concrete. Right, no "borrowed" gigai today. Probably not ever since they "didn't exist". It was all too tempting to just wander in and swipe another one.

The lazy, zombie-like street was basically humanless, which was fine by me, they did stupid stuff. I traced my previous steps to the Death God's shop. Once again, here I was shopping for somebody that I hated. Though, maybe, I didn't hate Cifer as much as before. Something to ponder later.

The shop glowered down at me as I hurried to the back door. Who knew where everyone was. I had a better chance if I didn't stroll in the front door with a "honey, I'm home!" Probably, it wouldn't roll over very well. Instinctively, my hand grabbed the back door knob and my fingers slid right through it. Non-solid object, I reminded myself, don't forget not of this world either.

The glass tickled as I hopped through, defying any alarm system. The back porch was miserable enough; the mess of boxes and papers were just an added touch. Couldn't any male keep his paperwork straight? I walked through a mountain pile of old bills, it bugged me only because I filed for Zommari, the one exception to the above rule. One sheet out of place, you were fired, I discovered that first hand.

Nobody seemed to be anywhere. Hopefully, I was lucky and everybody was all out for dinner. I forecasted now that they would order another course so they would come home to a non-Arrancar infested house. I still wasn't in the mood for dying, yet.

My feet tapped the floor as I tried not to get lost. The place was a maze, literally, the white doors laughed as I took another wrong turn. I found a bathroom instead of the shop. No tea there. I exited and hoped the opposite turn was correct. I found a bedroom. Magazines, playing cards, and more paper work lounged around on the floor. A magazine called to my attention, why would anyone want a picture of a chesty lady in a swim suit on the front? I stepped forward and promptly fell through the floor.

I forced my trap shut, so my yelp wouldn't escape. The stairs veered up. Falling through them too, I crashed through a pile of boxes and thankfully stopped on the basement floor.
My clear body sat up and my eyes met the creepy look of a teddy bear that had spent a year too many in that box. Scrambling back, I hastly exited the storage closet and from the killer look of that stuffed…thing. I cursed my strange ability to fall through objects and rose to my feet.

"Oh wow," I realized my current location. Somehow, I had ended up falling into Urahara Kisuke's personal lab. There was really no mistaking it. Huge banks of computers dwelled on the walls like mutated bats, their faces showing various statistics and maps. Like the rest of the house, papers bred like bunnies, wasting away on the floor.

I was drawn to the light and my hand came close to the screen. It hummingly displayed the town, tiny multicolored dots scattered everywhere. It didn't take a scientist to realize its purpose. All the spots were people with high spiritual pressure. It wasn't like there was a sign above the screen or anything.

Concentrating, I touched the 'zoom in' button. This was verging on the "stupid" thing that Ulquiorra was mentioning. Ah well, this was interesting. Who didn't want to snoop on everybody's life and not get caught? It couldn't get much better than that.

I squinted closer at the glow."Kurosaki, Ichigo" dot was snoozing at home with the "Kon" and "Kurosaki, Isshin" specks. "Shihoin, Yoruichi" dot was out for a midnight stroll. "Inoue, Orihime" and "Yasutora, Sado 'Chad' " spots happened to be shopping in the same shop. Who shops at 4 in the morning? Obviously, Chad and Orihime.

There were oh-so-many other dots and I wasted-ahem-studied them with most of my remaining time. Surprisingly, even an "Arrancar #3.5" dot stood in the lab. The bracelet didn't hold off all of my scent.

I watched the people go about their daily life, or rather, what they did in the early morning hours in the rain. Wandering off, I didn't feel the panic of hurrying anymore. "Kisuke, Urahara" was on the far side of town. His dot didn't mention that it was coming home anytime soon.

Something disturbing sat on a nearby table. A test tube of blood was propped on a folder. In a lab, this was typical, but what wasn't typical was the big "ARRANCAR #3.5" label. I concentrated my energy to my fingers and lifted up the glass tube. The blood looked normal, but then there was no visional difference between Human's, Arrancar's, Soul Reaper's or anything else that breathed. Wet, red, and typically caused by hurt, yeah, it was practically all the same.

The papers in the folder told a different story, a really different story, I learned. I thumbed through the scientist mumbo jumbo and came to something readable. Leaning back, I started collecting all the word's meaning.

"An Arrancar came to my shop today. Surprisingly, she didn't try to kill me..."blah-de-blah-de-blah, I skimmed and got to the good stuff.

"I conducted the typical tests on the blood, then dug deeper with the more specialized tests that I created for the Arrancar. The basic test showed what I thought, only the body's blood came up. Typical form, whoever made this gigai used the shinigami's as a model and reversed the processes. It even had the Soul Society's signature backwards."

A handwritten table followed the words, numbers and junk that I didn't care about. Notes in red pencil were sprinkled along the side.

"I proceeded with the Reiastu test just for kicks to see how powerful of an Arrancar Aizen had created. Again, this Arrancar was a kitten compared to what he had under his thumb. I couldn't tell when she was in the shop, something with the gigai. Sadly disappointing, but logical."

I frowned. I was stronger than a kitten! I could feel my strength was growing bidaily. Skipped the table with the notes, I dug into the next paragraph.

"Things got interesting. I applied the blood to my Arrancar test. It blew up. Literally, I had to clean the smoke off my face. I tried it again to see if it was a user error. Same result. I tweaked the test for an hour before I was finally able to get results. It didn't match the previous Arrancar's blood. It was different."

By now, I was in the middle of the table. I kept backing up looking for something solid to lean against. I had forgotten once again that I wasn't a solid object. Oops.

"The Arrancar's blood, a sample from before, followed the Shinigami's spiritual pressure pattern. Of course, in reverse, like a Visor's, which is understandable. This blood was different; it followed the reverse pattern of a human. This makes me conclude that the Arrancar would draw from the personality of a human then the power of a shinigami's."

The page ended with another table, this one highlighted and scribbled everywhere. The words "abnormal" swam everywhere. Number collided with words and the words with the numbers into a crazied endless circle.

…was I not an Arrancar?

The screen screamed bloody murder and the papers jumped away from my hands. I glanced at the screen. Another "Arrancar" dot danced a couple blocks away and the "Kisuke, Urahara" spot was shunpoing home at an alarming rate.

I looked at the ground for the papers. Useless. There were too many papers to begin with. Scrambling out of the table, I ran for the stairs. Get the tea, get out and don't get caught, I shoved everything out mind…and tried hard not to think about it.

Thanks to Rose202 and Nizuna Fujieda for reviewing!

Yay new chap-

Disclaimer: This author doesn't own anything in this story except Sola and the plot. So if you steal Sola or the plot then you are a bad person or animal or whatever. May the guilt of your actions haunt you forever even after you past on.

~ :D

*Quinny would like to say, or she is thinking it anyways, that her slightly crazy friend wrote the disclaimer and the most of this stuff, not her.*

My best friend is back if you haven't guessed...

I really have nothing to say now, my friend seems to have eaten all of my thoughts, brains, and ambition on this chapter...I do recall that this a dramatic chapter, things happen...but I can't remember what now... so, do you want to finish it up too?

Fun Fact: Do you know that she stole her FF name from her Bunny? Of course you didn't. Oh no! My secret is out!

ALSO in the end, Sola totally dies! WHAT? Where did that come from?

Really? I was going to say that she meets the seven dwarfs and goes off to sing with them.

Hi oh! Hi oh! Off to work we go, dum de dum du-du dum de dum HI HO *ahem* Sorry, BF, Sola can't sing to save her life.

So that's how she dies...btw you can't sing either.

Thanks, I feel completely supported here.

'Kay so Review, Story Alert, Favorite, or puke if you thought the story was terrible.

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...review? please?