WARNINGS: This story will

- have major divergence from canon Naruto plot (events will be changed drastically)

- have an absurd fixation on friendship but not have any sort of romance

- be very crack-like

- be in Grimmjow's PoV- expect cursing, violence, gore etc.

Ignoring these warnings and reading through will give you a headache! Or make your cry angry tears of frustration. Maybe both. You've been warned.

Grimmjow coughed wetly, hating the bitter taste of his blood and the constant throbbing pain of his wounds as he stared up with blurry eyes at the fake blue sky. He vaguely felt spiritual energies clash in the distance but he couldn't figure out who they belonged to.

Or more accurately, he couldn't concentrate enough to figure out who they belonged to.

His body didn't allow him to concentrate.

Amidst the mind-numbing pain he was in, his wounds itched. Fine sand, that had seeped in to his wounds, scraped against his flesh with every breath he took. The worst part, however, was that his shivering body refused to move. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't even get a finger to twitch.

Grimmjow wished he'd retained his high-speed regeneration from his Arrancar days. From what he could feel, his meagre spiritual energy had pooled under his wounds and only numbed some of the pain.

He gasped as a wave of mixed spiritual energy filled the air. The stone structures around him cracked, splintered and broke while the heavy spiritual pressure engulfed his body.

Just as he caught his breath, the blue sky above him, shuddered twice before it exploded in a haze of spirit particles as a mixture of Aizen's and the Hogyoku's spiritual energy emerged from his espada tattoo.

The tattoo on Grimmjow's back pulsed erratically and pulled at his spiritual energy. His sword, which had been lying on top of him, burst in to spirit particles. They enveloped him for a moment before seeping down into him through his skin and towards his tattoo.

Grimmjow howled as his skin stretched, his muscles expanded and his body lengthened even as his tattoo drained away his spiritual energy. Through the overwhelming pain, Grimmjow realised that Aizen had activated some sort of secret back-up plan.

A plan that probably screwed over every Arrancar that Aizen had ever helped create.

"Aizen, you bastard..." Grimmjow gasped as his spine elongated way past his body. He rolled on to his side and watched his hands morph in to large black paws that he never thought he'd see again. "Damn it."

He'd reverted back to his Adjuchas form.

Even so, the Espada tattoo remained, insistently draining away his spiritual energy.

But another foreign spiritual energy stirred awake within him.

A warm and distinctly human spiritual energy.

Grimmjow flinched.

The human girl's spiritual energy emerged from deep within him and clashed with the tattoo on his back. All Grimmjow remembered later was pain, incomprehensible rage and fear before every thing changed.

Loud animal cries replaced the desert's howling winds and hollow screeches. The irritating sand under him became a damp, almost comfortable, grassy ground. Thousands of scents replaced the dead emptiness of Hueco Mundo. And all traces of hollow spiritual energy around him disappeared.

Grimmjow opened an eye and stared at the large trees surrounding him.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, stifling his urge to catalogue every scent and concentrated on his spiritual energy instead.

To his relief, he only found his own spiritual energy. No one else's spiritual energy hid inside him any more. But, his spiritual energy was too low, almost miniscule. He'd never be able to open a Garganta back to Hueco Mundo.

On the plus side, being back in his Adjuchas form had kickstarted his regenerative healing.

He concentrated on his surroundings when his paws felt strong vibrations through the ground. Something, two somethings actually, were headed towards him. Grimmjow stayed still, unwilling to waste his energy needlessly going out to meet them. Soon enough a distinct salty scent heralded the approach of two humans with negligible spiritual power, meaning low spiritual energy.

Grimmjow relaxed. With their weak spiritual energy, the humans wouldn't even see him, let alone bother him.

"We've totally hit the jackpot today!" One of the humans said, "I've never seen a white jungle cat before."

Grimmjow twitched but reassured himself that the humans couldn't be talking about him.

"Really?" A slightly droll male voice said.

"Kagari, it's completely white and it doesn't have fur! Trust me, this one is going to get a fortune. If you could see, you'd say the same thing too," The boy said, and the vibrations from his footsteps increased. "The rich bastards will pay a fortune to have this one in their collection."

Irritated at the human's bold invasion of his space and confused that weak humans could see him, Grimmjow opened one eye and glared, carefully noting the human's dull brown clothes and the odd metal mask that covered his mouth. The boy who'd been inches away from him immediately stopped and eyed him warily.

"Damn it! Looks like he's not completely dead yet," The boy said, a little fear lacing his voice.

Grimmjow felt proud that he'd inspired fear without even moving or making a sound.

The other boy, who stood out of Grimmjow's line of sight, just scoffed. "I can't feel any chakra from it, so it'll die in a few minutes. You know how dumb these wild beasts are. They act intimidating to hide their weakness. Just kill it and get it so we can leave."

Grimmjow snarled at being called weak by a pathetic human.

"Shit! What the hell?" The boy in front of him took a cautious step back. "I think it understands us... maybe it's a nin-animal."

The other boy silently entered Grimmjow's line of sight. He was shorter than the first boy and he moved gracefully even though his eyes were covered with a strip of cloth. "Don't be ridiculous! It's probably just trying to scare you off to stay safe. Besides, no ninja would abandon a useful nin-animal."

Grimmjow ignored the pain encompassing his body even as he healed sluggishly and forced himself to stand. His legs almost buckled but he stayed upright.

Both the humans tensed, pulled out odd knife-like weapons and assumed defensive stances.

"What? Is the dumb beast scaring you?" Grimmjow said, ignoring how his throat struggled with every word. "Planning on running away?"

The first boy said, "Shit! It is a nin-animal!"

"You should have just killed it instead of waiting for it to wake up completely."

"Hey fuckers! Who said you could ignore me when I'm talking to you?" Grimmjow said, suddenly quite eager to rip the humans to shreds. He watched curiously as the blindfolded boy moved his hands, gathered spiritual energy around his fingers and immediately changed it in to something else. When the boy's hands stopped moving, the the newly created energy disappeared and an unusual purple mist filled the air.

Grimmjow breathed it in and coughed up blood. Years of having to deal with Syazel told him that he'd just been poisoned, but he could already feel it being slowly purged away by his regenerative healing.

"See, it's just a dumb animal not a nin-animal," the blindfolded boy said haughtily, "It doesn't even know to avoid normal ninjutsu. Go collect it's body, so we can meet up with Oboro." With a snort, he left the clearing.

Grimmjow snickered and jumped at the boy who'd stayed behind. With a snarl, he pushed the boy to the ground and clamped down on his shoulder till his teeth scraped against bone, confident that he'd nicked an important artery in the process if the spray of warm blood was anything to go by.

The boy screamed, at a painfully high pitch, and stabbed blindly at Grimmjow but the hard plates on his body deflected the weapon easily.

"Mubi!" The blindfolded boy had returned. He threw a handful of needle like weapons at the open wounds on Grimmjow's back with unnerving accuracy.

Every needle that pierced his old wounds left Grimmjow slightly woozy, but he didn't release the boy's shoulder. Instead, he became curious when his captive's spiritual energy increased exponentially and filled the air.

"Hold on Mubi! I'll get it off you," the blindfolded boy said and noisily pulled out more weapons.

Grimmjow looked up when the weapons cut through the air noisily but scoffed when he saw the oddly shaped knife from before heading his way with a paper stuck to it.

The knife's edge barely scratched his plate armour before falling away. But the paper glowed. And inexplicably with a rush of heat, an explosion scorched his side and cracked a good portion of his leg armour.

"Bet you weren't expecting that were you, stupid cat?"

Grimmjow snarled at the smug blindfolded boy ready to retort, but the spiritual energy of his captive peaked. Grimmjow instinctively realized that the boy's soul was struggling to stay inside the weakened human body.

With a pained exhale and a burst of spiritual energy, the boy stopped breathing.

"Mubi! Damn it!"

Grimmjow ignored the exploding projectiles thrown at him, released the dead boy's shoulder and looked up when he heard the rattle of a soul chain. The boy's soul knelt in front of him looking down at his own body in shock and horror.

"What… what happened to me?" the boy tugged at the chain on his chest. "What did you do to me you stupid cat?"

Grimmjow, probably delirious with pain from the continued explosions and his old wounds jumped forward and used his meagre spiritual energy to grab on to the screaming soul. With a frenzied rush of hunger, he swallowed the soul completely.

When he came to his senses, Grimmjow laughed as his limbs moved a little bit smoother. Even his wounds stung a little less as his spiritual power level actually increased by a tiny bit. "Of course! Human souls are spiritual energy as well."

"Souls are weaker than hollows. Maybe if I eat enough and make my spiritual power rise, I could evolve in to a Vaste Lorde just like I planned to do before Aizen came along!" Grimmjow dodged a wave of weapons and said, "But why can you humans see me? Does this mean I no longer only have a spiritual body?"

The blindfolded boy got angrier, probably confused from not understanding Grimmjow's muttering, and his throws became sloppier.

Grimmjow unsheathed his claws and said, "Weaklings like you should know their place. At least, you and your useless friend had some use at the very end."

It took a few minutes of incessant mocking and sloppy dodging against the explosives, but Grimmjow pinned the boy down and forced his soul out triumphantly.

-x-x-x-x-x-

After consuming the two human souls, Grimmjow moved far away to get away from the overwhelming smell of the bodies. He had just settled down in a comfortable patch of grass, hoping his healing would speed up with the spiritual energy he'd obtained, when an overwhelming scent of fox and high spiritual energy filled the air.

Multiple tree branches creaked somewhere above him and Grimmjow frowned as two other distinct scents joined the first. Three humans had stopped somewhere above him, all with very interesting spiritual power.

"Whoa! What the heck happened to that cat?" a very young and loud male voice asked.

"Naruto! That's not just a cat!" an equally loud female voice replied, sounding irritated.

"Those are weapon marks. You think one of the other teams hurt it for fun or something?" The first loud voice said, with just a tinge of fear and disgust in his voice.

Grimmjow stayed silent, for the first time willing to be patient to gain information from his talkative human visitors as he healed slowly.

Branches closer above him creaked and Grimmjow breathed in the other two scents. One smelt vaguely like a mix of fire and blood. The other smelt like the forest itself, too full of life.

Another softer, less emotionally charged male voice said,"Who cares? We don't have time to waste on it. We still need to create a password in case we get separated again."

Grimmjow snorted softly in amusement, when he heard the tinge of uneasiness in that unemotional voice.

"But... we can't just leave it there like that," the first voice said.

"Naruto," the female said, "I don't think it'll appreciate us bothering it especially if other ninja hurt it in the first place."

Grimmjow's healing sped up slightly as he analysed each of his three visitor's unique spiritual energies. The one that smelt like fox had two types of spiritual energy- human and an overflowing non-human one. The one that smelt like forest also had two sources of weak spiritual energy but both were human. The last one's spiritual energy was strong even though it was human. But all their spiritual energy levels fluctuated constantly as it combined with something else.

"Besides, I don't think we have enough medical supplies to patch it up properly," the female said softly.

The unemotional voice said, "I've decided on our password."

"Sasuke, you idiot. How can you just ignore..." The loud male sounded angry.

"We can't afford to get distracted by an animal. Or did you forget that there are ninja trying to kill us?"

"Fine," the loud one said, "What's the password?"

"The nin song 'Nin machine'..." Grimmjow zoned out as the boy talked and concentrated on moving his spiritual energy to heal his scorched side first. Minutes later, he opened his eyes and stood, flexing his leg experimentally.

The three humans above him held their breaths cautiously and Grimmjow laughed. "If you didn't want to be noticed, you should have been quieter, idiots."

"Damn it Naruto!"

The loud one protested. "It can't be my fault completely."

Grimmjow looked up, taking in their appearance in surprise. They were brats. Short brats. The fox-smelling loud one was blonde and wore a blinding orange. A black-haired boy seemed like a failed Ulquiorra and the female looked like a saner Syazel with longer hair.

"You three are different from the previous two." Grimmjow assessed their spiritual energy again and said, "Your spiritual power levels are better than theirs... If I eat you three, then I'll regain my strength sooner. So I'll start with you, little fox-brat."

The orange-clad boy flinched back, and Grimmjow would have laughed and added to the boy's apparent fear, but his ears twitched in warning as he jumped up high. A split second later, thick gusts of snake-scented wind hurled his backwards through rough foliage and finally slammed him against a tree.

As he slid down the tree, the healing gashes on his back reopened as the bark scraped against his still broken armour. Wood splinters dug in to the sensitive flesh of his wounds and hindered his already slow healing.

Grimmjow stood and sniffed the air around him. The scent of snake lingered on the branches that had been pushed back with him but through it all he caught the the fox-brat's scent coming from a different direction.

Grimmjow followed the scent, irritated that his potential meal had been interrupted and his prey had been stolen away so easily. He jumped over large roots, dashed through prickly bushes that snagged on his already irritated wounds and landed in a clearing just in time to see the fox-brat get devoured by a large snake.

"How dare you steal my prey?" Grimmjow roared in anger, jumped up and dug his claws in to the thick scaly hide. The snake hissed and darted it's head to and fro trying to bite and dislodge Grimmjow off it's body.

Even hindered by his wounds, Grimmjow easily dodged it's repeated strikes and clawed different areas of it's large body. When the snake's body shuddered violently, Grimmjow jumped to a tree branch in confusion just as the snake's body expanded comically. But with a final shudder, the bloated snake exploded outwards in a shower of blood, guts and orange-clad fox-brats.

Grimmjow hissed as some of the blood seeped in to his open wounds.

The group of orange-clad brats remained for a split second before most of them disappeared in a puff of smoke leaving behind only one blood-soaked and rancid smelling fox-brat who looked at him and said, "Ah! The hungry cat!"

"What did you do?"

The brat had the audacity to act confused. "I defeated the snake?"

Grimmjow snarled. "Stupid brat! How did you manage to defeat that?"

"With my super awesome skills?" The brat didn't seem scared of him any more and said, "You were trying to kill it too! I heard you when I was inside."

"It was stealing my prey!"

But the brat ignored him and looked around with a worried expression. "Oh no! Sakura-chan? Sasuke?" With an apologetic look at Grimmjow, the boy said, "Thanks for helping me, Hungry cat, but I have to find my friends now."

Before Grimmjow could attack or reply, the brat left.

Grimmjow growled and followed after the boy, irritated that at being ignored as a threat. He discerned the sounds of battle and sped up recognized the snake-scent in the air. He entered the clearing and saw the fox-brat stop a large snake with his body. Grimmjow took a deep breath and yelled, "Hey snake-breath! Just whose prey are you trying to steal?"

The effeminate man, whose spiritual energy outclassed all three brats, looked down from the top of the large snake and scoffed in amusement. "A jungle cat?"

Grimmjow pulled his spiritual energy away from his healing wounds, gathered it in to his mouth and roared. He frowned when instead of being blown apart, the snake's body only obtained deep bleeding gouges.

The fox-brat whooped in delight. "All right, Hungry cat!"

Grimmjow resisted his urge to attack the brat first and jumped on to the newly injured snake, ignoring his blurring vision and the numbness of his back legs.

With a slight momentary spike of spiritual energy, multiple orange-clad brats attacked the man. While Grimmjow felt irritated at the interruption, the effeminate man merely opened his mouth and got rid of the attackers in one swoop via an elongated tongue.

Grimmjow jumped and clamped down on the man's arm triumphantly tasting blood.

The man didn't make a sound.

Grimmjow pulled his meager spirit energy in to his mouth, forming something that vaguely resembled a very weak cero and detonated it at point blank range.

Through the overwhelming scent of blood and burnt skin, the man merely snorted. He opened his mouth again and the long tongue wrapped around Grimmjow's neck and pulled him away from his mangled arm.

With a condescending smirk, the man threw Grimmjow aside and said, "Now that one interruption has been dealt with."

Grimmjow growled as his injured back met a tree trunk yet again.

"Hungry cat!"

"It's time to deal with the other one." The man laughed, a sharp cackle that oozed mockery.

The last thing Grimmjow saw before he finally gave in to darkness was the fox-brat screaming in pain.