Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]

I. Starting Off Easy

You are Nemo Elcorbuzier, Arrancar of Las Noches, servant of Lord Aizen, and you are reaching the end of a journey.

Your feet hit the silvery sands of the Hueco Mundo, and you feel yielding under you. A familiar sensation so absent in the sun-lit world. You turn and wave your hand as a goodbye, but already the great spider that carried you so far is scurrying away, somewhere away from the ever-present threat radiated by the walls of the fortress.

Las Noches stands before you, its walls so tall as to swallow the sky. It is a construct so vast it never registered to you as a building; rather it is a feature of the landscape, a mountain made by hand. Hands like yours.

You pass the great gates and flinch behind your mask. The sudden shift from endless night to endless day is jarring; you see blue skies above your heads, clouds even, and you know they are false but your body believes their lie. You are not fond of the day.

They say the dome of Las Noches has its very own sky because the sun is Lord Aizen's eye; that wherever fall its rays Aizen can see. It is always day in Las Noches because there is no respite from his gaze.

Or perhaps it's just Aaroniero messing with the underlings' minds.

The fortress is far too vast for convenience - far bigger than warrants the number of personnel in Aizen's army. It takes you hours to reach your destination, at which point you really wish you could have invited the spider Hollow into the walls. Eventually you arrive at a wide cylindrical building of grey-white stone, windows pierced at seemingly random intervals through its walls by some demented architect.

Enough with walking. You pause below the wall, assessing the height to the window you want to reach; it has a scarlet scarf blowing lightly in the wind, put there by you weeks ago as a reminder. You crouch, tensing your body, and kick the ground.

You don't fly - but you jump good. You hit the walls a dozen yards or so up, and immediately start running. Your cloak billows behind you, parting in two like great moth wings. You start losing your footing and falling back. You push yourself harder in response, a swift kick letting you cross another ten yards in one moment. To any onlooker you would appear to have simply teleported from one spot to the next.

You paddle a little on the last few yards, starting to lose your ground, but you reach the window in time. Your hand darts out and you grab the ledge, then pull yourself up. You land in the room a little less gracefully than you'd hoped, and give a quick and nervous look around to check that nobody saw it.

You're alone in the room, of course - this is Las Noches, density one Arrancar per square mile at best. Your improvised bedroom-apartment is all yours with no one to contest it, but by the same token there is no one else to help you put it together. You had to grab items where you found them… sometimes with a little sleight of hand. But you're happy enough with your little nest. The bed is made up of layers and layers of silk stolen from the nest of some kind of caterpillar-Hollow, and the furniture varies between pleasantly-shaped rocks found in the desert and the odd colored squares typical of Las Noches' architecture. Your curtains, you stole from the human world in one of your rare ventures out.

You take off your wing-cloak and hang it on a nail you hammered by hand into the wall. Then you sit on a rock that's more a suggestion of chair than anything, and brush the silver sand from your uniform.

In fact there is entirely too much of the damned stuff. Your feet whisper faintly with every motion. Sighing, you pull off your boots and shake them, letting the silvery grains fall out onto the ground until they're empty.

Aw, now there's sand on your floor. How will you ever get it out? You don't have a broom. You're not sure anyone has a broom in the entirety of Las Noches; it seems a bit too mundane for the grand designs of the Espada.

You hear a faint giggle, and your head snaps in the direction of the sound.

"Oops, I've been made," says a feminine voice, and the intruder steps out from behind a curtain. It's Esmeralda, a slender Arrancar with short, dark hair and a tired look, her mask covering half her face. How long was she here?

"Oh, I saw your brave attempt at climbing."

You let your head droop, crestfallen, and she giggles again.

"Don't worry. I certainly wouldn't have managed to even reach the window if I'd tried that, so you're already doing better than I am. You'll get the knack of it in time, I'm sure."

You sigh again. You appreciate her reassurance, but you've always been terrible at the raw physical aspect of being an Arrancar. Your Sonido in human form is just shameful.

But really, that's besides the point. She's just trying to distract you from the obvious question, that being what she was doing in your room when you weren't there! You give her a suspicious look, frowning.

"Oh, don't be silly. You know how long it takes to get there from the gates. Someone spotted you and told me, and I knew you'd come here, so I came to wait for you."

Well, it's not like you don't appreciate the company after all these days in the desert. The loneliness is rather consuming. You give her a fond smile, stand up from your rock and take off the scabbard at your waist, laying it on a table… Is that a table? You don't remember if you decided it would be a table, a nightstand or a chair.

Look, it's a featureless white square frame. It could be anything. You have to use your imagination.

"I wouldn't get settled back in so soon, actually," Esmeralda says with a contrite look. "I didn't come here just to say hello - I actually have orders."

Oh, goodie. You can't even catch some rest, it seems.

"Look, you know how it is. Ever since Lord Aizen came back it's been hectic. Well, he hasn't been, obviously, he's just always so… stoic and calm, like he isn't really doing anything. But around him everything is in a rush. I think the Espada are running out of Arrancars that are, uh…"

Disposable. You'd bet they still have their own Fraccion longing about not doing anything much, but they "can't spare them." So the work gets foisted on the unbound like you.

"Don't be like that. We all do what we can for Lord Aizen and the Hollows as a whole."

You shrug noncommittally. Your thoughts on the matter are complicated.

"Be that as it may, we have several orders from various Espadas, and they're all very insistent that I grab the first Arrancar to step through the gates and throw their task at them as a priority over the rest."

And here you thought she liked you.

"Don't look so glum, it also was nice to chat! Anyway, Granz wants to talk to someone about catching a deserter who ran off into the desert with, I quote, 'valuable scientific data.' Aaroniero wants someone to… go hunt a Hollow? I can't see why we'd do that anymore, but whatever. Oh, and…" She swallows nervously. "...King Barragan needs a scout to check on some rumors he's heard? And they all assure me that this is very important business, but apparently not important enough to send one of their Fraccions. Well, that's not fair, Aaroniero has no Fraccion." She leans conspiratorially towards you. "I think he ate the last ones they gave him."

You breath sharply, something like a laugh that died on takeoff. Esmeralda shakes her head.

"Honestly, I think they're just bored and like seeing us scurry around at their beck and call. Anyway, seeing as you can't be in three places at once, you should go see one of them and when the others complain I'll say that the other had already snatched you before I could tell you about their so-much-more-important business."

Sounds like a plan to you. You'll go meet...

[ ]Szayelaporro Granz, the mad scientist, who wants you to find a deserter with stolen scientific data.
[ ]Aaroniero Arruruerie, the cannibal Gillian, who wants you to hunt down a Hollow of particular interest to him.
[ ]Barragan Luisenbarn, the deposed king, who wants you to investigate rumors concerning a lost item.