Bleach is owned by Tite Kubo, meaning it does not belong to me. I am in no way, shape, and/or form claiming to be the owner/creator of these concepts, though I do claim any characters not apart of the original Bleach storyline (such as Aporro [in character, not name] and Vicenta Acere) mine. As such, I would appreciate fellow authors and readers to give credit where credit is due and not steal any of my characters and/or concepts. Thank you, and have a pleasant day.

Vicenta leapt from the top of one dune to the next, soaring high through the air on each bound so she could thoroughly scan the ground beneath her and make sure she was following the picture map that was folded over in her hands.

According to her map, she was already two-thirds of the way there. If she continued on this course, she may actually get home four hours earlier than expected…

Vicenta twitched and met the ground solidly, crouching slightly and gluing her hand to her zanpakuto as her senses reflexively expanded.

She wasn't alone…

…Well, saying that now would indicate that she'd been alone up until that point, so rephrasing it would be a wise decision: She wasn't the only high-power being in a fifty foot radius.

The moment she'd stepped off of the sands that covered the entirety of the underground complex she called 'home', she'd become the subject of many a curious and worried stare and prodding.

Still, it hadn't really worried her. The Adjuchas had kept their distance, none of them coming so close that Vicenta could see them or actually be able to measure their power levels.

Now, though… She knew the further away she got from home, the more the power thresholds of the Hollows around her would increase. That was why she was willing to resort to using Gavilan Pintado so quickly; she was already anticipating a fight, no matter how much she would have preferred to avoid it.

When she'd been stationary for nearly two minutes, Vicenta continued her trek, tucking her map away and keeping low to the ground, her hand still on her zanpakuto.

She was certain she was on a straight course, and she wanted to get to the PAPA unit and back within the territory of The Sanctuary as quickly as possible; her innate Hollow senses were irritating her and making her far more paranoid than she was comfortable with. Vicenta knew it was bad when she couldn't combat her own instincts…

The young Arrancar shuddered and pressed lower to the ground, making herself as flat and aerodynamic as possible and shooting forward.

Briefly, she wondered if she should have asked for an escort…

But then she saw a large, circular form of black on the horizon and the thought fled her mind.

Almost halfway there…!

Slit, heavily lidded eyes watched dispassionately as the small blur of black and white shot across the sands of its territory.

So, this was one of the Broken Ones…? An Arrancar…

…It hardly looked impressive.

In fact… it looked absolutely pathetic.

If this was the 'next evolutionary stage' as some so-called wits labeled it, he, this Hollow, this Vasto Lorde, wanted nothing to do with it.

Though human characteristics were supposed to, amongst their kind, be something of an indicator as to how powerful one was, this girl looked almost utterly human and had no striking features in her reiatsu. She felt about as powerful as an Adjuchas, which wasn't really saying much in his eyes.

Just because Vasto Lorde was the last evolutionary stage before all one could become after was an Arrancar didn't mean the stage, in and of itself, didn't have different levels…

The same could be said of all of the other stages, though it wasn't physical characteristics that were the display of these inner-stage levels.

It was power.

There were weak Gillian, and there were strong Gillian.

There were weak Adjuchas, and there were strong Adjuchas.

There were weak Vasto Lordes, and there were even strong Vasto Lordes.

And everything in-between…

It was just a matter of perspective.

The weak always viewed the stronger as just that; they never really took the time to differentiate between strengths, especially not in the heat of the moment.

But the strong… they had time. Patience. Skill. Experience.

And from what he could tell, this girl…

…Was comparable to the weakest of the weak Adjuchas.

And these were the enemies? What a fucking joke. This girl was so weak it actually made him feel guilty to even consider attacking her.

Fuck it.

He wasn't about to tell the others or make any sort of proactive move…

…Not that he was planning to in the first place.

It was naptime.

The Vasto Lorde leaned back in the groove he'd created in the sand dune, crossing his grey-skinned, muscular arms over his chest and letting the thin, flagella-like tendrils that had started waving around him in his agitation relax and flop against the sand, where they turned white and blended in.

As soon as the girl left, he'd nap.

For now, he'd keep a close eye on her and make sure she didn't do anything too stupid.

After all… that pod that had started this mess in the first place had fallen into his territory.

Vicenta fell down onto her butt beside the PAPA unit and leaned back against it, panting.

When she'd seen how close she was, she couldn't help getting overly excited and had pushed herself too much, and now she could hardly stand…

It was a good thing Grimmjow wasn't here, or he'd never let her live it down.

Sighing heavily and feeling more than slightly sheepish, Vicenta eased her backpack off and unzipped it, pulling out a water bottle and snapping the top off. Her eyes wandered the expanse of desert before her as she drank and, briefly, Vicenta felt the urge to hunt…

But she refrained.

Being a half-breed, she did have urges to hunt and devour Hollows and, at times, even members of her own kind (especially when she was incredibly infuriated), but it was the very fact that she was partially human that made it so easy for her to refrain. To an extent, the very idea disgusted her to no end.

However, she also couldn't deny that, to her taste buds (which were decidedly Arrancar), Hollow flesh was… delicious.

Coupled with the fact, though, that Arrancar didn't have to survive on Hollow alone, and the fact that her mostly human stomach couldn't handle large amounts of the substance because it couldn't turn high amounts of reishi into usable energy in one sitting, she suppressed the urges and stuck mainly with the human-style foods served in the cafeteria.

…When she remembered to eat, that is.

More often than not, she stayed in her lab for long periods of time and skipped meals without realizing it.

Vicenta grimaced when her stomach gave a watery gurgle, realizing that she'd done the very thing she was thinking about once again.

Which was why it was a good thing she'd come prepared.

Sighing and snapping the top back onto her water bottle, Vicenta brushed her hair out of her face and reached into her pack, pulling out a nutrition bar and opening the package. She flinched when she bit into it. The granola itself wasn't all that bad, and the raisins were a nice addition, but her father's added nutrient pellets were dry and burst into little, bitter, powdery bits that coated her mouth and left her tongue feeling grainy…

Healthy as she knew it was, it was nasty.

Still, Vicenta dutifully ate the entire bar, along with four more, chasing the bites with sips of water every now and then, slowly to make sure she didn't cramp her still sore muscles.

When she'd finished and had adequate time to rest, Vicenta stood and pulled her toolkit out of her backpack, turning towards the PAPA unit and moving to climb the side.

She froze, though, when something caught her eye.

An indentation in the metal, not far from where her head had rested against the large, curved surface.

And it wasn't just any indentation… it was clawed. Zygodactic; two long, bird-like toes in the front, and two slightly shorter in the back. Just a little under a meter long…

The digits themselves were thin, but (and this was based on a very limited analysis as she only had an indent to go on) had left individual groves in the metal beside the indentation itself, indicating muscles. Awkward as the mental image was to make, one thing was clear; these feet were strong. The length from the innermost joints on the front two digits to the innermost joints on the back indicated a large, well-muscled leg, as well, though the toes were too close together and the feet far too narrow to be able to support anything too wide.

What she was looking at was the foot of something incredibly tall and lean, and probably incredibly fast.

And Vicenta definitely did not want to meet it.

She had to get out of here, fast.

Flipping her toolkit around and wrapping it around her lithe waist, Vicenta clipped it into place like a tool belt, bracing her hands and feet against the black metal of the large PAPA unit and starting to climb up the side.

Once at the top, she knelt and pressed her hands against the pizza pan-sized circular panel directly on top and pushed down, the panel giving way like a giant button and clicking when it sank a few inches. She kept one hand on the panel and leaned back as it rose, hinges on the other side lifting it up before swinging it outwards and out of the way.

Underneath was a square-shaped distribution board with a digital watthour smart meter beside it. All of the circuit breakers were flipped to the 'off' position and the screen of the meter was blank, the areas around both devices singed and the plastics involved melted.

Vicenta ground her teeth, taking a screwdriver out of her waist toolkit and starting to unscrew the metal plate that held the distribution board in place.

Beyond all of the wires and microchips that were beyond that board was the PAPA unit's black box, located towards the center of the machine, which hopefully hadn't received any damage.

It really shouldn't have… it was encased in both elastic and inelastic protective barriers, including a special smart jelly that was supposed to absorb shock.

Theoretically speaking, the black box should be perfectly fine.

Of course, ceros had a habit of making the theoretically impossible possible.

She just hoped that science wasn't, once again, going to have its ass kicked by the spiritual plane.

Vicenta peeled back yards upon yards of wiring, pulling a serrated blade out of her toolkit and starting to saw away at the multicolored cords.

Fond as she was of this unit, this had always been a problem with it came to maintenance with it; the sheer number of wires that it took to keep it functioning and performing all of the necessary functions to keep it useable.

Vicenta sighed.

Human sentimentality had kept her from being able to toss this unit aside, and now she had to pay for it with extra work.

…Not that she minded.

She, in a strictly scientific sense, loved this unit, and was glad to see it fulfill its purpose to its best extent, no matter how it ended.

She just hoped it would serve her one last time and show her what had happened to it…

Finally, the wires ended and Vicenta came to a hard plastic case the size of a breadbox.

Keeping the serrated blade out, she stabbed into the edge of the case and started sawing, hindered somewhat by the smart jelly. Still, she managed to work through it quickly, and when she had one side of the casing opened she started to tear into the squishy, pale yellow gel to get to what was underneath.

The black box.

It looked small and insignificant, small enough to fit in one of her hands, but it was the brains of the whole, two tonne monster beneath her.

Data of outside stimuli went in, millions of courses of action were processed, and the best one went out for the main body to act upon.

Records of these stimuli were meticulously saved and filed away, any information more than five days old was packaged and sent back to the main computer, Meryl, and the old fragmented data was cleared away completely to make room for new incoming data.

The moment the PAPA unit had been violently attacked and had, as a result, lost complete power, the processes within the black box would have halted completely.

If she were to plug it into a new power source and upload the last recorded data, she would know what had happened to her unit.

And, if only for the sake of knowing and soothing her mind, Vicenta just had to know what had happened. Her conscience wouldn't let her drop this.

Sighing sadly, she reached down and grabbed the device, pulling it out of the saddle and permanently ending the usefulness of the large, two tonne, black metal sphere she was sitting in.

"Sorry, PAPA…" Vicenta mumbled, reaching out and stroking the wires, "And thank you…"

After taking a moment, Vicenta reached up and grabbed the protective case she'd set on a ledge above her, slipping the black box device inside and locking it shut. Holding the box in one hand and climbing out with the other, she sat down on the sphere and slid down, landing on the sand next to her backpack and packing up.

All she had to do now was get home before anyone found out she was go—

"Vicenta…"

Vicenta froze, feeling her face go cold as she paled. Swallowing hard, she looked up with wide, terrified eyes and faced her mother and her mate, both of whom looked absolutely livid.

"Young lady…" Aporro growled lowly, her upper lip quirked up on once side in a snarl that showed her teeth and her amber eyes glowing a dangerous yellow as she lifted her hand and pointed to the young Arrancar, "Your ass… is grass."

Fun in The Sanctuary~!

Kinky…

"…Hey, Szayel." Aporro purrs suddenly, making the scientist snap out of the pre-sleep doze he was in, "You won't believe what Vicenta asked me today…"

"Hnn…" Szayel rolls away from his mate, burying his face into his pillow and grumbling, "What?"

"…She wanted to know where your tattoo and Hollow hole are." Aporro smirks widely when Szayel appears above her instantly, his hands pinning hers to her sides and his face millimeters from her own.

"You didn't tell her, did you?" Szayel drawls icily, his tone vaguely threatening but a flicker of apprehension that only Aporro, with her years of experience in observing her mate, would be able to see.

"Of course not, dearest." Aporro drawls back, though with a much more heated tone as she reaches between Szayel's legs and traces the black marking, the gothic font design on the inside of his left thigh, precariously close to his scrotum. "Only I am allowed to derive pleasure from that information…" Her smirk widens when Szayel buries his face against her neck, biting down and using her flesh to stifle his moan.

"You bitch…"

They both laugh, then the tone immediately changes and their hands flash out, both drawing their respective zanpakuto and chucking them at the open bathroom door, making the blades sink into the stone.

"Vicenta…"

"Grimmjow…"

"Get the fuck out." Aporro and Szayel growl out at the same time, identical sadistic smirks spreading across their faces as two blurs, one blue and one black, speed out of the room.

"Now…" Aporro turns her attention back to her mate, her hand crawling up his thigh and slipping around his waist, "About your hole…"

"APORRO!!"