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In the deserts of Hueco Mundo lay a large canyon. This canyon had once served as the base-of-operations to a group of rebellious Arrancar and Hollows who had long since been slain by the Arrancar of Las Noches. The smell of death was always thick in the air but despite this the canyon's atmosphere was always calm and serene, bestowing peace of mind to all of those that sought it. The canyons were home to a large system of tunnels and caves that - although no life was present - was filled with the ruins, remains and still intact objects which belonged to it's former owners. At the bottom of the canyon lay an ever present sheet of new sands blown down from it's tops and the moon light gave a certain beauty to the place.

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Zankairou the large animal-like Arrancar who had newly been bestowed the rank of Novena (9th) Espada, was returning from a short battle royal in the Living World. A Garganta opened it's deep black maw high above a canyon and Zankairou soon stepped out of it. Unfortunately the black maned giant had forgotten that standing on air actually required attention and soon found himself plummeting toward the water-deprived land mass. "GAAAAAHHH!" He screamed as he flew through the air, his arms and legs outstretched and trying to mimic a swimming motion - to no avail. The average Arrancar and even Shinigami would have simply balanced themselves on the air using Hoho or something similar but Zankairou wasn't the average Arrancar no, he was much less intelligent and rather bad when it came to aerial tricks. As one could expect Zankairou smashed into the sand at the bottom of the canyon - the sand exploding into the air around the shock wave his body created through the vibrations that had erupted from his connection with the ground.

A large mass of sand covered Zankairou and took at least some effort for him to sit up. Bustling out of the sand and coughing up a small portion that had entered his mouth, Zankairou lay still for a moment - feeling something on his face. In some awkward fashion the sand had attached itself to his chin like some sort of beard. "The heck?" Zankairou questioned aloud to no one in particular. Touching his chin revealed what he was feeling and he made haste to remove the sand - the result was some sort of sand-stubble covering his chin. Which with time would probably fall off. Wasting no more time with this sand Zankairou climbed to his feet, listening to the sand slide off of his body like water. "Wait... where am I?" Zankairou uttered a second question which actually had some intelligence involved. Now the only problem that remained was figuring out where he had landed as it sure wasn't Las Noches.

Looking up as he heard the friction of a blade against it's sheath and the rather unusual sloshing of water, Zankairou's left eyebrow raised and his right lowered a little as he saw a child-like being in front of himself wielding a large broadsword with an exceptionally bright blade - it must have been polished extensively to keep in such a condition. While Zankairou didn't really pay much attention to this child's features he could tell that the child was at least female and of Arrancar lineage, after all a soul of a human wouldn't have the ability to hold such a heavy sword dead or not. Eventually climbing to his full stature and raising his arms to stretch his body, it at last dawned on him that the girl had asked him a question. "Me? I'm Zankairou Barragielle Den'jaron! The newly appointed Novena Espada!" Zankairou spoke, his voice as always was gritty and rough but held an unusual excitement - the norm for Zankairou's state of mind.

"Wait a second, if I've never seen you before - don't that mean I outrank you? Who are you?!" Zankairou quickly phrased his own question to the little girl. Looking down on the girl and her sword he wondered if she was going to try fighting him, Zankairou was happy to oblige in such matters the time or place didn't matter to him and he always enjoyed a fight. In a few moments after those thoughts entered his mind he started to feel a small tingle in his back. Neck strain. It was the problem with being taller than the average being and this girl being smaller than the average person sure didn't help - he was quite tempted to tell her to grow a few feet if that was even possible.

While Pamba identified herself, Zankairou finally decided to come up with a solution to the height difference between the both of them. Quickly pulled off by kneeling down. His feet still on the ground of course and his knees bent outward and his arms coming down to rest on them. At this point Zankairou was closer to Pamba's height which aided his neck pains for now and would most likely end up giving him leg pains when his legs finally started to chafe from the chain mail he was wearing. When Zankairou's one track mind finally came back to Pamba she was saying something about a mission and if Zankairou could go home. Home? she probably meant Las Noches which was way to white as far as homes go at least. It really was in dire need of some decorations, like a nice blood splatter here and there and some corpses and disembodied limbs to spruce it up. Shaking his head to rid himself of pointless thoughts on decorating Las Noches so that he may return to his little Arrancar friend. "Well if I knew where Las Noches is then I'd be there already" He responded. As was probably obvious at this point Zankairou wasn't the best when it came to things like teleportation as the Garganta mess up no doubt pointed out - of course he could fall back on the utilization of Sonido but he usually reserved that for fighting. "So this mission of yours? What do ya need to do?" Posing another question for the child-like Pamba, after all it would give Zankairou something to do today rather than lounging around Las Noches - or being lost all day.

"I told you, I don't know where Las Noches is." Zankairou affirmed himself to Pamba's own affirmation. Was she deaf? - yeah that had to have been it, being hard of hearing meant Zankairou would have to raise his voice so Pamba could hear him - seemed like as good idea as anything else. Before Zankairou could say anything else Pamba was trying to assert a start to violence. "Ho-oh, you wanna fight huh?" Zankairou spoke with his voiced slightly raised which could have come off as anger given his speech patterns. Zankairou quickly jumped to his feet once more and shook his body to rid himself of all remaining sand attached to his clothes and such. Like a flood of testosterone coursing through his veins, Zankairou became excited and gave a few small hops - his feet never left the ground though. Soon Zankairou swung his fists in a three punch pattern over Pamba's head. "I'm always up for a good fight!" Zankairou pulled back his arms and cracked his knuckles ready to see if Pamba actually attacked or if she gave up - if she gave up it would have been pretty annoying as the excitement would have cropped up for no reason at all, only to be drowned out by disappointment.

Zankairou stood still as if his body was almost rooted to the ground. This was something of a curtesy Zankairou performed which consisted of allowing his opponents the first attack as it was - in following with his highly stupid philosophy - a way to feel out the opponents - as Zankairou would usually do by beating his enemies with his fists, allowing them to hit him should have allowed them to feel out himself. But the initial attack hadn't hit him it wasn't an actual attack just the illusion of an attack to disguise another one. Seeing this Zankairou decided to retreat, jumping backwards from these tendril-like appendages that had shot out from Pamba's wrist, he continued until he had made it at least a small distance away from Pamba and hopefully the range of her attack. "Those are some sneaky little tools ya got there, but you'll need to try harder than that!" Zankairou shouted his taunt before smashing his fist into the ground - erecting a large torrent of dust and sand in what seemed like a fallacy of logic it was actually an improvised mimic of what Pamba had just done. From behind the sand that was masking his visual appearance, Zankairou fired a single Bala through the small sand strom - which illuminated through the sand as it exited it and shot towards Pamba. In either case this was going to be fun.

Bursting out of the remaining sand that had yet to fall to the ground, Zankairou charged after Pamba although his running speed was considerably slower than the force of the Bala pushing Pamba - a curse of having a large body it seemed. Zankairou stopped for a moment as he watched Pamba end up floored on the ground while his Bala cascaded off in the wrong direction where it exploded. Zankairou's ever present grin grew slightly, this was going to be a great fight, or at least Zankairou was believing it would be - he hadn't much chance to fight more intellectual types unless they had the attitude of the average comic book villain which was sadly very few and usually always on paper. Before making any moves Zankairou was then witness to Pamba's self mutilation which seemed easily idiotic in Zankairou's mind until the limb was replaced in an almost instant fashion. "Would you look at that? - This just keeps getting better" Zankairou muttered to himself before he outstretched his arms and raised his head and bellowed out a roar - it helped keep Testosterone out of the way. As soon as the roaring stopped, Zankairou's charge begun anew - closing the distance between himself and Pamba. Zankairou swung his fists down on Pamba's shoulders in an attempt to smash her into the ground - however it all depended on how Pamba reacted that signalled how Zankairou would follow.

While Zankairou's attack was supposedly about to come to fruition he was unfortunately the victim of an explosion. Apparently Pamba's limbs not only carried tentacle like appendages but were highly explosive as well. Although Zankairou's body didn't carry such secrets like Pamba, his body did hold it's own advantage it was extremely durable - a more robust counter to Pamba's rapid regeneration, he still took the damage that was inflicted upon him it was just hard to cause him to actually feel the pain or even care about it. As the explosion finally came to an end and a large cloud of dust and sand engulfed the nearby area, Zankairou stood inside it his body now covered in a large assortment of scratches, scrapes and burns and steam rose from his upper body. Zankairou of course gave no hint of care to his body's state and went on the offensive once more. His large fist shot forth from the dust cloud aiming to catch Pamba's head in his palm. His free hand however started to draw his Zanpaku-tou, there had been enough testing by this point and it was time to get serious.

Watching Pamba's struggle to break free of his grasp on her head didn't really entertain Zankairou all that much after all it was usually a sign that the fight was about to end with Zankairou crushing the head of his victim through his grasp. Before long Zankairou could feel a twitch like feeling on his palm - his pain receptors were slow and had trouble reacting to whatever Pamba was doing with her head, so the pain seemed a lot more duller than it should have. But this was no problem for the long haired behemoth as he had already planned to go on with a little something else. His palm begun to emit a light blue glow no doubt blinding Pamba if she dared enough to look at it - but she should have been well aware what it was. While this somewhat race for time (In Zankairou's case to get him disconnected from his opponent and in Pamba's case - not to have her head blown off) had only started, Pamba was already ahead as whatever was in those vein-like weapons was being pumped into Zankairou's arm - his body's immune system not seeming to respond to it and whatever anti bodies contained within him were not enough to counter act these fluids.

With his sword now unsheathed and the possibility that he could attack with it but instead he used it to repel Pamba's own blade that was going for his legs. As the blades clashed, sparks started to fly out in every direction from the friction of the metals but it was obvious Zankairou's focus wasn't on his blade as his arm was being pushed back and his defense starting to fall apart. By this point however, it didn't really matter as the Cero being created in his palm started to react to the fact that the vein's from Pamba's head ran right through it's orb-like shape in order to get into his hand, this caused the Cero to explode almost immediately - the effects it would have on Pamba would be tremendous if she was unable to pull away but it caused it's fair share of pain on Zankairou's end. His Hierro - although strong - was not able to take this second Cero as his body, already racked with injuries further doubled. His burns increased in size alongside others and the various scars and scratches on his body became deeper or grew in length while more were added as well. The most adverse effect however was on his left arm. The flesh had burst and evidence that various blood vessels in his arm had popped, the bone was the only sturdy object in his arm that remained as all the muscles and other internal parts had been liquefied. Before the bicep could bleed Zankairou to death it would have been noted that the Cero had cauterized the wounds so that no blood would be leaving it.

Standing quite a ways back from the initial explosion (It had pushed him back a nice bit) his left arm simply flopped to his side lifeless, his armoured leggings had broken and become loose - even certain parts had been destroyed - as the ornate armour was simply an accessory on Zankairou's part, it held no quality in actual defense. To fit along side this even Zankairou's vest and wrist bandages had been burned to a crisp - ash crumbled off of the remains before Zankairou forcefully removed them with his remaining arm - his Zanpakutou rested in the ground in front of him during this occurrence. Despite the pain that Zankairou had to have gone through he showed no signs of distress or pain through his body language or his face, he simply had his ever-present toothed grin on his face.