Ulquiorra Cifer.

Seijūrō turned the name over silently in his mind.

Capable of speech. A full name. A clear sense of self.

He had spent decades investigating modified Hollow experiments, had combed through every Soul Society expedition file on Hueco Mundo, and not a single record had ever mentioned the name "Ulquiorra Cifer."

Which meant this Hollow had never been found by the Expeditionary Force. It existed in no one's archives.

He took half a step forward and kept his voice steady, careful not to let any urgency bleed through.

"Ulquiorra Cifer. You said 'the earlier group' just now, you've seen them. When? Here? Or somewhere else?"

Soi Fon didn't stop him, but she didn't lower her blade either. Her eyes stayed locked on Ulquiorra, reassessing his attack posture with every passing second.

Ulquiorra's voice was low. Each word fell like wind-worn quartz in the desert, stripped of everything unnecessary.

"Before. In another ruin deeper in the white forest. I was born in complete form, and it was only after leaving that place alone that I encountered the group you're describing. They moved between ruins, herding Hollows into abandoned bases. Some deformed and died after being fed Reishi. Others were released. You carry the same sealed vials they carried. The same habits with the equipment. I assumed you were one of them."

"I'm not." Seijūrō dropped his voice. "I am—"

"Seijūrō Kidōin."

Ulquiorra finished the sentence for him.

Those dark green pupils turned with excruciating slowness, fixing on Seijūrō's face, the way someone might study a thing they'd caught in peripheral vision a hundred times beside an examination table but never once looked at directly.

"They spoke that name in front of the instruments in that ruin. When I left, I didn't know whose it was. Now I do."

Soi Fon's pupils snapped tight. Seijūrō gripped her wrist with complete calm. He felt the tendons beneath his palm jerk sharply, pulled taut, but he didn't let go.

"They mentioned me. In that ruin, was it recently? Or earlier?"

"Earlier. A much earlier occasion. That man said you were troublesome. That you had interrupted his experimental progress multiple times, and that you had been pursuing his work without letting up ever since that incident in the World of the Living. I remembered the name. I simply didn't know until now that it belonged to you."

Ulquiorra's voice held no ripple of anything. Those dark green slits blinked once, slowly. Seijūrō reached into his sleeve and drew out the black core crystal he'd taken from the hidden chamber, cradling it in his open palm. When he spoke, his throat was rough, scraped dry by desert air.

"That man — does he have something like this? This kind of Reishi core — is he holding another piece? What are they actually trying to accomplish with all these experiments? What does he look like? What did he say? Is there anything about his Reiatsu you remember?"

Soi Fon stared at him. He had been holding himself in check since the beginning, and even now, without seeming to notice, he had drifted another half-step toward the Vasto Lorde.

Ulquiorra tilted his head by the smallest margin. He had heard that half-step. He had heard every question scraped out of a sand-roughened throat.

"Perhaps he does. Perhaps he doesn't. Is knowing this important to you?"

"Very important."

"Regarding the person you want to know about, I can't say more. He has already suppressed Baraggan Louisenbairn. The former King of Hueco Mundo. All of Hueco Mundo is under his control now. One word from him can seal off the entire realm. Any Hollow that knows of his existence and says one word too many will be wiped out. I've been watching you in these ruins, that was coincidence. But I have no desire to bring unnecessary trouble down on myself for your sake. For any Shinigami's sake."

"That person surpasses a Vasto Lorde. His strength stands above true Vasto Lorde-class Menos. Walk into his presence and his Reiatsu will crush you from the inside out. The only reason you're still standing here is that he hasn't decided you're worth dealing with personally."

His dark green pupils reflected Seijūrō's face without pity, without mockery. Just fact.

"You think you're investigating him. But he was here long before you. He understands Reishi better than you do. He understands how Hollows are made far more clearly than you ever will."

Seijūrō's hand lowered slowly.

He understood. This Vasto Lorde wasn't refusing to speak out of indifference. He was weighing a calculation, whether it was worth taking this risk for a group of Shinigami who had nothing to do with him. The answer was no.

But he had already given up the most important piece: Baraggan Louisenbairn. Former King of Hueco Mundo. And whatever came after.

Soi Fon pressed a hand to his arm, voice barely above a murmur. "There's no point pushing further, Sei. He's already told us everything he can."

Seijūrō slid the core crystal back into his sleeve and looked up at Ulquiorra.

He dipped his head, a single nod toward the stark white figure. "Thank you."

Ulquiorra drew his folded black wings tight against his sides and dropped from the ceiling without a sound.

Inverted, he righted himself as he rose, drifting toward the fractured gap in the collapsed dome above. In the moonlight his white form was pale as a dry branch walking out of the white forest, bleached, weightless, without warmth.

One moment before he cleared the gap, his wings stilled briefly.

"We'll meet again, Shinigami. If you're still alive."

"We'd rather a Vasto Lorde not keep us in mind." Soi Fon sheathed her blade.

---

At the edge of the quartz deadwood forest, Coyote Starrk sat against one of the stone pillars with his legs stretched out. His wavy dark brown hair shifted in the wind. His grey-blue eyes were half-open, half-closed, the face of someone who might be asleep already.

Lilynette Gingerbuck stood on her tiptoes beside him, gripping his cloak sleeve, craning toward the depths of the quartz forest. The one eye showing beneath her half-mask was wide and round.

"He's out, he's out, wait, that's not the Shinigami! It's another Hollow! And it's a Vasto Lorde!"

She yanked his sleeve hard enough to drag it halfway off his shoulder.

Starrk was pulled sideways. He let out a slow, weary sigh, pulled his sleeve free, and tugged his cloak back into place.

Ulquiorra folded his wings and dropped silently onto the top of a nearby quartz pillar. His dark green pupils looked down at the two of them without particular interest, these two who had apparently been waiting at the edge of the wasteland for quite some time.

"You're a Vasto Lorde too."

Lilynette craned her neck back and announced it at full volume. "You're really strong! Do you want to come with us? Starrk is way too lazy, being stuck with him is absolutely boring. But 3 Vasto Lorde together has to be way more fun than being alone!"

Starrk didn't move from the pillar. He only raised one eyelid to glance at the pale Vasto Lorde above.

Ulquiorra didn't answer.

His gaze rested on Lilynette's face for a moment. Then it moved away.

Only when he spread his wings again and made to fly deeper into the quartz forest did he drop a remark in a voice that carried nothing at all.

"Not interested. Where you go is your own business." His black wings opened, and he flew straight off toward the far side of the forest.

"Seriously! Another cold one! We finally find another Vasto Lorde and I thought maybe we could actually make a friend! That giant praying mantis last time was exactly the same, we barely exchanged 2 words before it came at us!"

Lilynette stamped her feet and complained loudly at his back, shaking Starrk's arm with both hands.

Starrk swayed like a lizard on a sand dune, dark brown hair falling across half his face. He let out a single lazy sound from somewhere in his nose.

---

"The samples are sufficient. These Shinigami Reishi fragments are enough for cross-comparison at the Technological Development Bureau. Match even one of them to a specific Shinigami and we can identify at least one person directly connected to the modification experiments. Combined with the complete Reiatsu signature in this core crystal, the chain of evidence is strong enough to bring before Captain-Commander Yamamoto."

Seijūrō didn't respond immediately.

He sat down, uncapped his canteen, took a slow sip, and then spoke. "The samples and data go back with us, that's not in question. But Ulquiorra just mentioned Baraggan. Former King of Hueco Mundo. After being suppressed, control over Hueco Mundo passed out of his hands entirely. He has seen the person who suppressed him. Felt that person's Reiatsu. Possibly seen his face. If we can reach Baraggan and get his firsthand testimony — on top of those Reishi samples you're carrying — our evidence stops being circumstantial. It becomes witness testimony and physical proof together."

He paused.

"But the risk is just as real. Baraggan is an ancient Vasto Lorde-class existence. He ruled Hueco Mundo for longer than most things in this world have existed. Even suppressed, he's not something we can take head-on. And he may not even be alive anymore. If whoever's behind this cleaned up after the suppression, we might find nothing but ruins. Or worse, a Vasto Lorde that's been modified, emptied out, no self-awareness left. Going to Baraggan might get us the most direct testimony possible. It might also get both of us killed in the inner circle, and everything we've already gathered buried with us."

Seijūrō switched off the device screen and looked up at the cold moon, fixed in the dead center of the sky. Unmoving. Like it had always been there and always would be.

His Kidō was reliable, long-range precision, area control, matured through years. Soi Fon's Shunpo and Hakuda could handle most close-quarters emergencies. But a Vasto Lorde who once stood at the absolute apex of Hueco Mundo was a different problem. Fighting one head-on was not a strategy.

He ran through his high-level Bakudō quickly, mentally, one by one. If they coordinated, him and Soi Fon together, they could at least buy a window of time. A space to talk.

Assuming Baraggan still had any interest in talking.

"We don't need to fight him. Anyone who could suppress Baraggan is operating well above Captain-class. If the suppression was forced, Baraggan carries resentment for it, that's not a guess, it's a given. The enemy of our enemy isn't a friend. But we can negotiate. We have things he wants: intelligence on the person behind this, the truth of what these experiments are actually building, and the possibility of Soul Society stepping in as a third party. If he's alive, if he still has the dignity and the clarity of a former king, he won't turn away a bargaining chip that gives him a path to revenge."

He turned to look at Soi Fon. "But you're right. The risk is real. We have to choose: go back clean, or take the gamble."

"Either way, we need precise intelligence first. Whether Baraggan is alive, whether we can actually reach him, at minimum, we need to know which region of Hueco Mundo he's in. We also need a temporary base with stable Reishi concentration, somewhere to adjust your equipment before you step into a sealing barrier. The strongholds we used earlier in the outer circle are solid. Round trip is about a day."

He pulled up the abandoned cave coordinates he had marked on the device and pointed out 2 of them.

"These two are closest to the inner circle. They work as backup bases. If we run into other Vasto Lorde on the way, we don't engage. Any Menos that's survived long enough in Hueco Mundo may have seen what changed when Baraggan was suppressed. Safety first. Intelligence second. Direct testimony last."

He raised his voice slightly for the next part. "The Shinigami Reishi we have right now points to one person. That person is not the top of this. Going back now gets us one limb. Not the body."

"Then we go."

Clean and simple.

They split the canteens and the remaining rations between them and buried the gear they didn't need under a stone pile at the edge of the quartz sand. Then Soi Fon broke forward in a sharp burst of movement, and Seijūrō fell in behind her, the two of them pressing deeper into the quartz deadwood forest.

➤ Next: Hollows That Defy Perception

Chapter 54 - Hollows That Defy Perception

Soi Fon and Seijūrō slowed deliberately as they passed through the edge of the quartz deadwood forest.

She exchanged a glance with him. Moving between the slanted stone pillars, she quietly drew a few hairline Reishi stakes from the gear clip at her waist and laid several concealed traps in the sand. The Shihōin family design had originally been built to track rogue Shinigami, step on one and an inverted-penetration Barrier would seal you inside a miniature Bakudō array. She'd had them modified for something else entirely: beings whose Reiatsu was dense enough to be terrifying and whose speed the naked eye couldn't follow.

They moved on. Behind them, a crisp "Ouch—!" rang out, and then the sound of something thrashing and churning up quartz sand.

Soi Fon spun around, Zanpakutō already in hand. Reiatsu gathered at Seijūrō's fingertips.

At the base of a stone pillar, a little girl with short, light-green hair was sprawled face-down in the sand in about the most undignified position possible. The Bakudō formation's glowing panels had locked her entire lower body in place, both legs below the knee wrapped in faint blue Barrier membrane, a sparrow caught in a net. She pushed herself up and flailed several times, but couldn't pull free, and only managed to throw up a wide cloud of quartz sand.

"Wah — what is this thing! Starrk! Starrk, hurry up and get me out!" Lilynette craned her neck and screamed toward the top of the stone pillar.

A lazy sigh drifted from the other side.

A man with dark-brown hair in a slight wave sauntered out from behind the pillar, both hands tucked inside his cloak sleeves. His grayish-blue eyes were half-lidded. He looked like someone who had just been dragged out of an afternoon nap.

He looked at Lilynette, lower body pinned, fists hammering the sand. Then he looked at the Bakudō formation still glowing beneath her feet. Then he spoke.

"Idiot. How do you walk straight into a trap?"

"Who told them to put a trap right where people walk! You didn't notice it either!" Lilynette struggled in the sand for a long moment, couldn't get her feet out, and finally rolled onto her back to catch her breath.

Starrk watched her thrash, hooded-eyed. After a moment he slowly drew one hand halfway out from his sleeve, just starting to bend down.

"Why isn't it that giant bat?"

Soi Fon's voice, cold, from the other side of the quartz pillar.

Her blade was still leveled in front of her, but her brow had furrowed.

She stood just ahead of Seijūrō, gaze locked on the man still lazily bending down and the girl flailing vigorously at his feet.

This trap was one of the Shihōin Clan's purpose-built countermeasures for Vasto Lorde-class targets. The moment it sensed that distinctive high-density Reiatsu signature, it triggered automatically, generating an inverted synchronized Bakudō Barrier. An ordinary Hollow stepping on it wouldn't activate anything.

She'd set them purely as a precaution. That bat had flown off too cleanly, so cleanly that she'd never quite stopped worrying he'd double back. The trap had gone off. But not for the bat. Instead there was an unfamiliar tall man and a child-shaped figure she'd never seen before: fair skin, long limbs, and a high-density Reiatsu fluctuation she could read instantly even buried under quartz sand.

Starrk finally bent down and grabbed the back of Lilynette's collar. Hauling her out, he glanced at the still-flickering Bakudō panels on the ground and said, offhand: "Look at that. Caught red-handed."

"No! This is the worst first impression ever!"

He lifted her from the pit by her collar. Her legs kicked wildly in the air. "Why wasn't it Starrk who got caught! You clearly stepped on the exact same trap, so why am I the only one who got tied up!"

"Because you stepped on it first."

He set her down in the sand. Lilynette scrambled upright, patting quartz sand off her clothes, her expression broadcasting exactly one thing: I cannot believe this.

Seijūrō and Soi Fon fell into combat stances, Hadō and Zanpakutō adjusted to distance and angle, snapping into practical defense before either of the two intruders could rein in their Vasto Lorde auras.

This was likely the first time either of them had seen, with their own eyes, creatures whose appearance was this close to human.

If not for the hole in the man's chest, visible deep within his robes when the wind caught his loose cloak, and if not for the white bone mask covering the left half of the girl's face, they would never have believed these two were Hollows.

Starrk raised both hands, palms out toward them. His cloak sleeves slid down to reveal a sliver of wrist. There wasn't a trace of hostility on his face. His half-lidded eyes tilted up slightly as he spoke in a nonchalant drawl.

"No bad intentions," he said. "I know every time you come to Hueco Mundo. The last few times you came alone, I watched from a distance."

One hand remained lazily in the air. The other had already drifted back inside his sleeve.

Seijūrō and Soi Fon exchanged a glance.

Both of them looked, almost at the same moment, at Starrk's right hand hanging beside his shoulder, the hand that had just casually reached down, hooked the faint blue Bakudō panel at the edge of the formation with his fingers, and pulled. One light tug, as easy as pulling a loose stake from sand. The entire Shihōin heirloom trap came apart.

No burst of Reiatsu. No spell collision.

He had simply pinched the corner of the Barrier membrane and lifted. The Barrier shattered on its own into pale blue Reishi fragments, like scraps of paper scattering in a breeze.

Soi Fon's pupils shrank to points. Since her days as Yoruichi's guard she had spent years calibrating her familiarity with these devices. This trap was Shihōin Clan craft, purpose-built against Vasto Lorde-class targets.

And he had undone it just like that. He was even yawning.

Starrk shook the last fragment from between his fingers, shifted over to stand opposite Seijūrō, and let his shoulders settle.

His grayish-blue eyes stayed half-lidded.

"This time you brought a companion. There's also a black-winged one on top of the ruins, watching you. I watched the whole thing — I just wanted to get closer and see which way you were heading."

He withdrew the hand he'd used to dismantle the trap, like he'd just finished something that didn't matter.

Lilynette took her chance and poked half her head out from beside him. Quartz sand still clung to the ends of her short light-green hair. She raised a hand, and her tone was far more serious than it had any right to be coming from a kid who'd just been thrashing in a sandpit.

"We came to make friends! He's too embarrassed to say it, so I'm saying it for him."

Soi Fon adjusted the angle of her blade, gaze sweeping across Starrk's face.

"Make friends. A Vasto Lorde wants to make friends with Shinigami." Her voice was flat. "He doesn't look like someone who wants to make friends."

"He's just playing it cool!"

Lilynette planted both hands on her hips and jutted her chin out. The eye beneath her half-mask was bright and fixed on Soi Fon.

"He actually really wants to make friends, he's just too embarrassed to admit it! Every time you show up he wakes up, and once you leave he goes right back to sleep, he's never done that for anyone before. What's so hard to get about that? It's like how you like someone but keep playing it off with a poker face, everyone's the same deep down!"

Soi Fon's expression froze. A flush climbed from her neck up along her earlobes, visible by the second.

Her grip on the hilt tightened without her noticing. The reprimand that came out was sharper than anything she used on her subordinates, but the end of it went soft, the force bleeding out before she could hold it.

"What nonsense are you spewing! When did I ever like—"

She stopped. Didn't finish. By then Starrk had tucked his hand back inside his sleeve, and was tilting his head, watching Soi Fon and Lilynette volley sarcasm back and forth without either one backing down. He cut in, unhurried.

"Girls really do find things to talk about more easily, don't they? You two get along quite well."

"Who gets along with her!" Soi Fon and Lilynette turned at the same time, in perfect unison.

Starrk dipped his head and let out a quiet laugh.

Seijūrō stood beside them and said nothing.

He studied the man who was roughly his own height.

That Vasto Lorde-class Reiatsu settled over his shoulders like a warm, heavy blanket, dense and powerful, but without any weight of oppression.

Nothing like Ulquiorra. That Hollow's Reiatsu was cold and sharp, like a blade resting noiselessly against the back of one's neck. This man's was warm and diffuse, like a vast, thin quilt draped over the whole quartz forest, quietly and without effort. No hostility. No killing intent. Not even a flicker of probing.

He thought back to his previous solo runs into Hueco Mundo, and the faint extra Reiatsu he'd always felt at the outer edge. Sometimes on the far side of the ruins. Sometimes in the opposite direction from the Gillian patrol routes. The distance was always too great, instrument precision never enough to pin down an exact location.

He had only known it was there, not too close, not too far, present every single time. Now he knew who it belonged to.

"Every time I've come in and out of Hueco Mundo, there's been an extra Reiatsu along the outer edge. Too far for instruments to pinpoint, but it was there every time, sometimes on the other side of the ruins, sometimes opposite the Gillian patrol routes. That was you."

"It was me."

"You watched for a long time. Why didn't you show yourself?"

"Every time you came, you only wandered around the abandoned base, crouching over ruins and crystals for hours at a stretch. I couldn't think of a reason to bother announcing myself."

He glanced at Lilynette, still grumbling and brushing sand off her clothes beside him. "I didn't plan on coming out today, either."

Seijūrō followed his gaze to the little girl still chattering away beside Soi Fon. He nodded, then looked back at Starrk.

"Your Reiatsu is unusual. A Vasto Lorde-class Menos, dense and powerful, and yet completely without aggressive fluctuation. Different from every other Vasto Lorde I've sensed."

He paused.

"How did you end up this way?"

Starrk was quiet for a moment. His back didn't move from the stone pillar. His grayish-blue eyes drifted, settling on the shadows the quartz deadwood forest cast under the moonlight.

"Evolve far enough, and this is just what you become. Every Vasto Lorde fought their way out from among countless kin, starting as ordinary Hollows, devouring, evolving, one stage after the next. Those who make it to the end can barely fill a handful in all of Hueco Mundo. I know what you're asking. Why don't I care about power and dominion the way other Vasto Lorde do." He paused. "Power, to me, is just for staying alive. Not for proving anything. Once you evolve to this level, there's only one thing I want."

"What?"

"Sleep." He yawned, eyes narrowing slightly.

Lilynette hopped up beside him, pointing at Starrk, loudly calling him out. "He's lying! The real reason is he's so strong that any other Hollow who gets too close gets crushed by his Reiatsu, so all he can do is sleep! There was a whole group of them once — they shattered from a distance — and it scared him so bad he never dared get close to anyone again!"

Starrk reached out and pressed her head down, tucking her entirely behind his cloak. His face kept that same languid, expressionless look. But behind his ears, almost too small to catch, a faint flush of red appeared.

Seijūrō watched the two of them, one a Vasto Lorde too unhurried to bother explaining himself, the other a noisy little girl who would say anything.

No hunger for power. No hostility toward their own kind. Beneath Hueco Mundo's eternal night, one just wanted to sleep, and one just wanted to play.

Nothing in this matched any humanoid Hollow dossier he'd read over the decades. Soul Society doctrine repeated it endlessly: speaking Menos Grande possessed high-order rational intellect, were exceptionally skilled at concealment, and would inevitably leverage that intelligence to seize the advantage in any confrontation. Natural enemies of humans and Shinigami alike.

"Your Reiatsu really is strong." Seijūrō pulled his thoughts back and pushed forward. "You said there aren't many Vasto Lorde in Hueco Mundo. Besides the two of you, are there others?"

"Yeah. Not many. I've met a few; the rest I only know by location." Starrk leaned against the pillar, raising one finger to point lazily into the distance.

"The former King of Hueco Mundo, Baraggan. His territory is to the north. Very far." He lowered his finger and pointed loosely toward the other side of the quartz forest. "And then there's that black-winged bat who was watching you earlier. He's not weak."

"Baraggan." Seijūrō held the name in his mouth for a moment, like he was taking its measure. "We're looking for his territory. Do you know him? Is he a friend of yours?"

Starrk said nothing.

He leaned back against the quartz pillar, grayish-blue eyes half-closed, as though turning over how to phrase something, but in the end he only let out a quiet sigh through his nose.

Lilynette poked her head out from behind his cloak and shook it like a rattle.

"Never met him! He's up north. Every time we passed through that way we could feel his Reiatsu, he has an awful, awful temper, and he bullies everyone. Starrk said he didn't want any trouble, so we took the long way around. And it's not just him either, the other Hollows with decent strength all have terrible tempers too. Some bite at the drop of a hat. Some don't even respect Starrk. Some just roam around picking fights and switching territory every other day, we can't get along with any of them."

Seijūrō was quiet for a beat.

"Soul Society's textbooks need to be rewritten."

➤ Next: In My Eyes