Tempting Fate (Open to 1)

“No, no, no. You’re not who I’m looking for.” The woman complained, leaping from Hollow to Hollow, using nothing but her martial skills to batter them out of her way. She wasn’t surprised that they wouldn’t leave her alone, her being on their home turf and all but Chizuru had honestly hoped to have come across someone a little more…interesting? Still, at least she was getting a chance to get rid of some of the rust. Teaching was fun but it did leave her own skills to be just a little neglected.

It always felt great to be in Hueco Mundo, as odd as it might have seemed and the smut writing lesbian couldn’t help but feel the inner Hollow within her stir a little. Oh, she had perfect control of it these days and one tug of her internal leash was enough to force the beast into submission but she felt it nonetheless. Now all she needed was to find a suitable candidate to put a leash on among the sands…Well, perhaps not that far.

She was, however, looking for a little entertainment, not to mention inspiration and that more than anything was the reason why she’d decided to make the long trek through the garganta. Sometimes a little danger was enough to stir the muses after all and if she was lucky, maybe she’d find a friend to spend a little time with.

Like a dog, Auerbach had been digging through the sand. The faint pulse of his fractured zanpakuto leading him to nothing the past few months, not that he could tell. Time in Hueco Mundo... It would be disorienting for someone with all of their faculties in check. And unfortunately enough, the arrancar was in no such position.

"Stupid sand." Auerbach emerged from a dune with negative flair, half stumbling before he could manage to stand. The moonlight cut across his freakish frame, a shake of disheveled hair sending particles flying haphazardly. As he began to right himself, a hollow careened into the dune beside him.

Immediately, he panicked.

Scurrying directly ahead, no attention was given to Auerbach's surroundings, only the disorienting distant racing of his heartbeat. It was, in that fashion, that he found himself in front of Chizuru; a broken toy in an endless sandbox, completely unawares of who, or what, he was looking at. He could not sense her as a hollow, or an arrancar - Oh!

Still some distance from the woman, his posture poor from the running, Auerbach slowly stepped forward, a bright curiosity swirling in his eyes. "Are you a... hew-man?" The arrancar's head tilted with the word, still alien to his tongue.

“Hmm?” Chizuru replied, turning around to watch as the curious fellow spoke to her. He was definitely an Arrancar and for a moment or two she was briefly on guard but the way in which he talked sort of helped her relax a bit. She didn’t detect any hostility in his voice and if he wasn’t going to be then why would she? Sure, she’d beat up a few Hollows but they hadn’t been hospitable or anything. With Arrancar it was always a little more complex or at least she thought so.

His question to her was a bit more complicated than it seemed and she took a little bit of time to figure out the best way of explaining it. Her kind weren’t too common after all and she had no idea how much he knew about the different races. Still, she’d do her best, trying to sound as friendly as she could. “I’m known as a Vizard. I got powers that Shinigami use and I’ve got a few that you guys use too. I do live in the human world though.””

She’d crouch, attempting to make herself less threatening. “My name’s Chizuru, what’s yours?”

Auerbach blinked, fleeting signs of intelligence passing in his eyes. Thoughts rattling around his head like a storm, trying to place what the woman was saying with what his 'father' had left him. Shinigami are .... making countermeasures, Garganta .... new specimen ... Like TV static, it trailed into noise, causing the arrancar to squint with confusion.

Her body language was certainly more inviting than many he came across, enough to set the hair on the back of his neck at ease. A shallow breath from the processed thoughts, chilled from the echo of memory.

"That is, interesting?" An attempt at being polite, his confused tone betraying any intention. Rather, he'd plow onto the next topic of conversation. This one, he had been putting in the practice for. Standing at height with clacking joints, he extended a hand, bearing with it a wide, naïve smile.

"I'm Auerbach, nice to meet you, Viss-or-ed Chizuru." Whether or not she'd shake his hand, a question barreled from idea to speech with another tilt of the head. "Have you observed any of my partitions?"

The Vizard chuckled slightly at his seemingly puzzled reply to her explanation. She wasn’t offended or anything like that and simply took his response for what it was. Chizuru had to admit that she was rather curious about the individual before her. He was clearly an Arrancar but there was something different, not just about the way he spoke but his behaviour as well. It was as if there was an almost childlike quality to him. Curious indeed in the mind of the woman.

Chizuru would return to her full height as he approached, shaking his hand warmly as he stretched his arm out towards her. She pondered where’d learned to perform such a humanlike act but that wasn’t for her to ask, leaving that particular question to the side for now. “Nice to meet you too, Auerbach.” She’d reply cheerfully.

Instead, she’d ponder over the one that he posed to her, causing her to raise an eyebrow. “Partitions? I don’t believe so. Partitions of what?”

"Partition. A segment of a whole, divided by a commonality or otherwise sorted." Auerbach rattled off the definition with an almost robotic tone, his eyes unblinkingly locked to Chizuru's as he did. Snapping out of the momentary trance with a blink, he gestured vaguely with his hands, caging them together in front of his chest. "Looks like... A box?"

Auerbach's head tilted in the opposite direction, staring at the empty space between his fingers. "Odd. No edges. Empty, but not?" He continued to question himself, dropping the gesture as he scampered backwards, situating into a squat on the sand, arms supporting in front. "Is hard to detail. I can find them, but hurts."

His nose scrunched, a smell somewhere far away to another part of him - never not disorienting. "Part of me? Or parts. Organs, I think." All the arrancar really knew was how it felt to reconnect with his organs, whatever else his maker had recorded tending to vacate his memory quickly; come back in odd spurts of lividity.

Her smile faded as she listened to him speak, attempting to connect the dots in terms of his origin. He spoke about himself as though he was a machine of sorts, one that had yet to be fully built, like a computer that was missing vital parts. To hear a sentient being speak in such a way was startling and while the Vizard did a good job of not allowing her dismay to appear on her face, she was sympathetic to his plight. The natural question to ask would’ve been just who’d have been sick enough to do such a thing to the Arrancar? To leave him in such a state.

It was one that she didn’t ask just yet though, wary of accidentally upsetting her new friend. Instead she’d take a more practical approach, a smile soon enough returning to her face. “I’ve never quite met an Arrancar like you before Auerbach but I’ll happily help you with your search for a while if you like. Are there any potential dangers when you find your partitions? Like, are they defended by Hollows or something?”

Whatever expression the woman made did little to influence Auerbach. Aside from extreme emotion, it wasn't like he could tell anyways - easier to understand a hollow's emotions, with how few in number they were. Anger, hunger, sadness, but concern? Dismay? Alien. Auerbach mirrored the woman's smile with one of his own, lopsided and toothy. Fading into near nothing as he spoke. "Sometimes. Can be anywhere. And hollows can be mean."

A sad look crossed his face, before lighting back up, his smile returning. "It's okay, though! I can't die. Like.... Oop, then zoom!" The arrancar attempted to make some gesture representing what he meant, a confused nest of fingers moving in odd patterns that ended up looking insane. In no small part, because it was. "Another hard to explain." Auerbach pouted slightly, a hand scratching at the back of his head before he returned to the moment.

"But help! Yes!" Pulling the fragmented zanpakuto from his back, Auerbach stood to height, swinging it wildly into the horizon, smiling wide. Stopping as he pointed east, a faint tingle racing down his arm. "That way?" he questioned aloud, turning to face Chizuru. "That way!"

It wasn’t easy to always get a grasp on what he was trying to say but Chizuru believed that she could figure it out with time. She was rather amazed by his claim that he was immortal in a fashion and the Vizard couldn’t help but wonder just how on Hueco Mundo that came to be. It wasn’t natural but the more she pondered about Auerbach, the more she realised that perhaps that was just it. He wasn’t natural but a being who was created differently.

“You can’t die? That’s quite some power you’ve got.” She’d reply, condensing her thoughts into a short sentence or two. “There aren’t many who can say that genuinely.”

When the topic returned to helping him out with finding his missing parts, Chizuru would smile and turn towards the direction he was pointing his weapon at. “Alright then. Lead the way and let’s find this partition of yours. I’m right with you.” She wasn’t intimidated by the fact that there might be opponents in their way, given the fact that Chizuru was training on a few before the two had met.

As they moved, she’d ask him. “Do you know why your partitions are spread all over Hueco Mundo?”

Moving to the woman's pace, he slid Luz onto his back, the blade continuing it's slight twinge. She was slow, compared to the pace he usually scattered the sands, but he didn't mind. Company made the time all the better, in his eyes. "Power?" he commented back, a faint curiosity. "Never thought of it like that."

Chizuru's question was met with a pause, as he sorted through memories. What Auerbach could remember varied from day to day, generally speaking. The darker the memory, the less likely - but he remembered his father. Even if only through clips of his recorded voice and clinical lights. That gave some insight to the woman's question; now whether or not the arrancar could form it into words?

"It's like..." He motioned with his hands as they walked together in his picked direction, one palm cupping into a circle as he tried to push the opposite through. "Shoom! And whoom!" He opened his hand on the opposite side of the hole, gripping on his forearm with the opposite hand. An attempt at mimicking some kind of explosion? Portal? It was hard to decipher, as he dropped his arms back to his side.

"That was a long time ago. Hard to..." Auerbach tapped the side of his head, the sound comparable to an empty coconut. "Yeah." His tone saddened slightly, as they crossed more of the desert, and a small building came into view over the horizon. It snuck out of the sand like a finger telling them off, and as it caught his eye, Auerbach picked up the pace, to an almost comical degree.

"C'mon!"