They were the elites, of course. Ikkaku and Yumichika were two of the best fighters in the best Company in the 13 Court Guards. Intelligent, confident, and ferociously strong, they were champions.

Inoue was their little sister. She was everybody's little sister.

And here, now, she had just fallen from the sky. How odd indeed.

"Lose this?" Yumichika held her hairpin up so it glinted in the sunlight.

"Yumichika! Ikkaku!" Orihime half-sang, half-shrieked as she launched herself at them for a hug. The black-haired man elegantly dodged her, while Ikkaku pinned her arms behind her back.

"Orihime Inoue, you are under arrest for defecting to the Espada," Ikakku told her grimly.

"What?" Orhime yelped. "They captured me! I'm no traitor!"

"Ikkaku, you shiny-headed moron!" a beautiful woman smacked Ikkaku so hard on the head that he dropped Orihime. She made a mad grab for her hairclip, murmuring her command so that a triangle of sunlight kept her from falling to the ground. Orihime spun on the platform to face the woman now standing in the air before her. Voluptuous lips, strawberry blond hair, and copious cleavage graced the attractive woman before her. "You know my Hime would never trade sides, you idiot."

"Matsumoto," Ikkaku looked annoyed, "You know as well as I do that there's a warrant out for her arrest."

"If you even mention it again, Baldy," Rangiku snarled in elder-sisterly rage, "I'll force feed it to ya. Got it?"

"Got it," Ikkaku muttered in defeat.

"Are you unharmed, Miss Inoue?" a cool voice came from behind her. A slim blond man that Orihime vaguely recognized as a vice captain stood gravely, evaluating her.

"Rangiku, you shouldn't intervene on— OW!" a man Orhime recognized as Shuhei Hisagi had his reprimand cut off as Rangiku elbowed him in the gut.

"Orihime is our friend, you idiots," Rangiku roared. "She saved us the first time Aizen messed with us, and she can help us again!"

Grimmjow dodged blue arrow after blue arrow.

"For God's sake!" Grimmjow roared furiously. "I am on your side!"

Uryu's jealous rage blinded him. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair.

"You will never lay a hand on her again!" he bellowed, a blue arrow clipping the tips of Grimmjow's bangs.

"The hell I will, you stupid brat!" Grimmjow launched a cero angrily.

"What could Inoue see in you?" Uryu shouted.

"Oh, will you shut—" Grimmjow grabbed the bespectacled boy's head and slammed it into a wall "—up?"

Uryu tumbled to the ground, not stirring.

"God, these humans are fuckin' annoying!" Grimmjow snarled to no one in general. A powerful and cool spiritual energy appeared behind him.

"You just now noticed this?" Ulquiorra asked disdainfully.

"Where are the other humans?" Grimmjow asked suspiciously.

"…They aren't dead," Ulquiorra looked slightly uncomfortable at the question. Grimmjow barked with laughter.

"Explain that to her," he smirked.

"Do you think her to be unharmed?" for once, Ulquiorra's question was tinted with concern as opposed to patronization. "Do you think she was able to help herself?"

"I hope so," Grimmjow shook his head. "Or else I'm in some deep shit with you, huh?"

"I believe I will let the humans take out their anger on you before I will kill you, if that's quite all right with you," Ulquiorra held out his hand, summoning a portal to another dimension.

"Did you just make a joke?" Grimmjow gaped incredulously.

He swore he saw the corners of green-eyed Espada's mouth twitch, but decided it was just his imagination. "Let us find her," Ulquiorra murmured with the tiniest hint of willfulness, and Grimmjow nodded with determination. The two Espada stepped into the lighted portal and out of Las Noches forever.

I didn't want to go a full year without updating ^^; 363 DAYS! Wow! It seems like about a decade since I last touched this project! So much has happened to me! So many new experiences!

(The Uryu scene was influenced from the weirdest conversation I had with my good buddy, who is completely determined to propose to this girl he only knows through online college and is going to meet for the first time this May. While I listened to his gushiness, I appreciated his happy naïveté, though I felt like KOing him, and Grimmy acted out that particular fantasy for me xD )

I haven't read Bleach since February, so the remaining bits of this will be out of the current canon. Sorry, it's just reached that point in Shonen, where it's all "Bad guy upgrades! Good guy upgrades! Dramatic monologue!" times about a billion. Tell me when it's over, if it ends before I finish this story.