The 4th Espada.
4, shi, equidistant in pronunciation to death in Japanese.
There came a moment of deliberation over his life that lasted for a mere fraction of a second. It was the inevitability of death. Not death as in the recycling of souls within the world's cosmic cycle, but the complete eradication of his existence.
But in the end, didn't everything have its own eventual entropy? It mattered little if one was an eternal being, for in eternity laid a non-zero chance for expiration each waking moment. Ulquiorra knew this. The ashen sands of Hueco Mundo was enough of a reminder.
Every time he gazed upon those sands, he felt an inscrutable familiarity. For what reason, he hadn't cared much to discern, it throbbed the aching hole in his chest. His hand would drift to where that sensation was.
What was it that separated him and this eradicated being underneath his feet?
It was that one was alive, and one wasn't.
But they wouldn't be much different should enough time pass. For in death, complete destruction, all souls became equidistant in worth. What would matter about legacy or accomplishment then? What would matter about them if they would all unfailingly be reduced to meaninglessness to the eradicated individual?
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
It was in nothingness he found comfort. In these meaningless sands, there was comfort.
Then, there above these lands was the moon.
Hueco Mundo's moon, forever stationed in its crescent phase and astral palace, stood behind him. It served no purpose, it didn't even emit any light to bathe this tenebrous world, and neither did it orbit, remaining in its place. Worthless, meaningless, those are the words Ulquiorra would describe it.
He felt familiar with it.
Against his opponent, a pitiable creature, Kurosaki Ichigo, he was the selfsame unreachable moon hung in the canvas of black vastness. It was with this immensity he desired to crush the spirits of this soul wholly and utterly.
It was... an endeavoring process.
He crushed him once. Ulquiorra Cifer knew then that he himself was indeed an unattainable goal of defeat, the moon.
...Then again, twice. He still persisted as that celestial object, the moon. One technique in his repertoire (Luz de la Luna) meant 'Light of the Moon,' after all.
And... by the third time—Ulquiorra believed it to be the last—he had come to know why the Substitute Shinigami's Zanpakutō was named 'Tensa Zangetsu' (Heaven Chain Slaying Moon) upon Kurosaki Ichigo's full Hollowfication.
Because even as he might be the moon, the blade sharpened itself well enough to reach beyond the skies and cut the moon.
Ulquiorra Cifer, the meaningless moon.
With his wings clipped, he fell from the skies in likeness to a certain Devil writ athwart religious depictions, and unto the cretin sands of Hueco Mundo. It was where he felt the grains scrape abrasions across his body.
For such a paltry feast, Tensa Zangetsu, that blade, remained unsatiated. It cut him again, and again, and again; last gashing from across the torso, and Ulquiorra truly fell like a marionette cut from broken strings.
It was a trifling humiliation not worth mentioning, because his fate had already been sealed when his head was stomped, and a Cero was before his very eyes. They, the humans say, that right before death, a bright light would flash before one's vision.
For Ulquiorra, the light happened to be red.
Searing, burning, hot. All the words which could describe it, and Ulquiorra did not find meaning in those adjectives. It was just an eviscerating release of Reiatsu.
Yet even disemboweled, all his organs obliterated, he still lived for just a transient moment.
Make no mistake, Ulquiorra did not fear his forthcoming death. Neither did he pay any mind if it were to be mournless. Still, that woman... Inoue Orihime, it was as if she mourned through those trickles of tears streaming gently down her face.
For what end? For what purpose?
Why mourn?
Why mourn for an enemy?
When he reached his hand out, he could see it before his hands. Just barely a glimpse, his eye caught something less fathomable to him than even the endless cosmos.
It was...
...The Heart.
...
...
...
It was by the sands of Hueco Mundo he was born, and now it was by the sands of Hueco Mundo he would return to in death.
***
They wailed, he could hear the sands wail, each grain of them. The cacophony reached a crescendo where it revealed an emptiness sublime, the true essence of a Hollow.
Ulquiorra, on the last vestiges of his existence, couldn't deign to care about the primordial Menos Grande's plight. It wasn't alive by any means, merely, it was an already fading echo of its dusted Reiatsu screaming.
All he had done was think and reminisce.
He still didn't understand what it was, the Heart. The object was before his very fingers, he could have sworn he had discerned it.
Now all was before him was oblivion's precipice, a void that would soon consume him.
For once in his near-emotionless life, he desired something. A strange feeling swelled in his nonexistent body.
He found it ironic.
Him? To desire something?
Yes, he desired it. The Heart.
To grasp it within his cold hands, to feel the beating warmth it emitted, and for the warmth to spread and heat his wan, frozen body. It was a desire unbefitting a Vasto Lorde-borne Arrancar such as himself, of whom represented all that was empty.
He didn't care about that fact.
It was... only the Heart he sought.
So, when he desperately clawed his hands in his absent state with all he could muster, he saw a jewel of amethyst light before him. No, it was more than purple in color, it was like a spectrum of an all blue myriad. A macrocosm existed in a single orb.
It was before his ashes, and his hands... which should have never been capable, touched it.
His chance was renewed in a flash of bright light.
***
Ulquiorra Cifer stared at the moon above, where stars emblazoned the darkened skies of which heaven would reside. It wasn't Hueco Mundo's moon. As a matter of fact, he wasn't in Hueco Mundo anymore.
Baffling.
Words were lost upon him, his eyes darting across the environment he found himself in. There were a plethora of trees jutting toward the dark night, with swaying viridescent leaves befalling the ground.
A million questions ran through his mind, but his attention was broken away to something else.
An enigmatic shadow skulked across the trees that he could see. It was unilluminated by the fireflies and butterflies scattered across the eastern zephyr cascading this land. However, there lingered no Reiatsu he could sense, not even with his once-believed-to-be infallible Pesquisa.
He was unbothered yet bothered at the same time. A paradox he would concur it to be. Instinct told him a lifeform with no emission of Reiatsu was trash amongst trash, but the overall lack of even Reishi permeating the environment felt uncanny to him.
By all means, the grounds he stood upon should be even more a blasted waste than Hueco Mundo, and it wasn't.
His thoughts cut off there when he vaguely detected a white spirit outlined in some sanguine outline traverse through the air. It was shaped in similarity to a 'blob,' if Ulquiorra had to describe it, and it piqued his interest enough to desire a closer examination;.
His arm whisked through the air in a blur, flingers clasping the ghost-like figure. It seemed to release a soundless yelp as he brought it closer to himself. A face was staring back at Ulquiorra, showing an emotion of 'struggle.'
...It wasn't a spirit, moreso a reflection of one's powers, he believed—
"Why, hello, strange spirit!"
A voice beckoned, standing in front of him. He saw who they—she—was. A girl adorned with a black porkpie hat emblazoned with a symbol, and dressed in robes flowy at the arms, and clung tight at the body. Many other intricate details such as flowers varnished her, but it paled in comparison to the red eyes of hers gilded with a golden flower.
"Wow! You're unlike anything I've ever seen!" her voice was filled with joy and life, her movements as wispy as the trails of her arms.
She was close to him in proximity, too close.
Ulquiorra's eyes narrowed.
"...What are you?" he questioned, still sensing no Reiatsu.
Her countenance remained amicable, but her head tilted seldom to the side at his inquiry. A brief change denoting wonder and curiosity.
"What am I? Why, I'm Hu Tao of course, 77th Director of the Wangsheng Funeral Parlor!" She, Hu Tao as now named, placed hand over her chest in an introductory manner. "I should be the one asking you that question. Ah, by the way... could you let them go?"
Ulquiorra watched as she motioned toward the white 'blob' he held in his hand. Without much fuss, he unraveled his fingers and watched in the periphery of his eyes as it flew away; hiding behind Hu Tao.
"Hehe, it doesn't seem to be that much comfortable around you, huh?" Hu Tao chuckled. "So~ if I may ask in reciprocity, who are you? Or, by your own words: what are you?"
***
Hu Tao didn't expect to feel a prodigious weight pressing down heavily upon her shoulders without any forewarning when she decided to take a nightly walk around this forest. The unpredictability of life struck once again! And it brought a great novelty in the exact feeling it gave off.
Evil spirits spread malice and miasma wherever they went, or some form of tangible regret, but this one... How could she describe it?
It felt in likeness to emptiness.
Like a hole in her chest.
It was strange, really, how could something empty be felt? Well, she was feeling it now, so she withheld those questions for the time being.
She dropped all things she was doing—which was nothing aside from walking around—and dashed swiftly where she had come to detect the influx of foreign energy. The closer she came, the more clear it became.
An ocean hung in the sky, alien in the type of spirituality it was.
When she came to finally see who it was, she scrutinized him in full detail, behind a tree as a safeguard of course.
From his skin's pallor resembling an embalmed corpse, to the dark-verdant eyes with markings akin to tear marks streaking down them, and even his outfit—an ensemble full white in contrast to her own more black attire.
Most peculiar of all was the strange... helmet(?) on the left side of his head, with one horn jutting outward. He almost resembled an Adeptus in some regards, but Hu Tao knew intricately that was far from the case!
In conclusion? Certainly, his appearances definitely matched his atmosphere.
Now if only he could turn that perpetual frown of his upside down. Life was too short to be so glum!
Whilst she thought of how to approach the enigmatic spirit, for some reason, her ghost flew ahead of her. She was about to recall it with a muted shout, but just as quickly as it departed, the stranger's hand seized it in a brisk motion.
Hu Tao paused as he watched him analyze it with those cat-like eyes of his. There was no laden malice, so there wasn't a need to be too on-guard, and with his rather tame reaction...
She decided to take her chances!
Stepping in front of him with her usual jubilant attitude, he... Well, she didn't know what his emotions were. His face was an empty pale.
Emptiness, huh? He really, really did not put that sensation to shame.
When he asked her the question of 'what" she was in his monotone voice, Hu Tao couldn't help but feel a taste of irony dab her tongue.
Well, she wasn't one to refrain from answering someone's wishes, so she introduced herself. Afterward, she didn't forget to ask him in kind what exactly he was, either.
So now she stood in front of him, hands casually behind her back, awaiting a response from his stagnant figure. It was awkward. Hu Tao thought of breaking the awkwardness until he finally responded!
He said, "...Ulquiorra Cifer, 4th Espada. How is it that you can perceive me?"
Then, his hand drifted to the collar of his coat. Hu Tao blinked a few times when he unzipped it and revealed a gaping hole just at the apex of his sternum and an ebony 'four' tattooed on his left breast.
Hu Tao, receiving the response, smiled brightly and waved. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you, Ulquiorra, and for your question—"
Before her words drew out before she could continue.
Her attention remained fixated on that hole in his chest, but not for a reason one might expect.
"What is the matter...?" Ulquiorra's features changed very faintly, before his gaze followed her eyes and...
They both were seeing the same thing.
There was a translucent orb inside that hole of his.
"Aha, sorry, sorry," Hu Tao spoke again. "I was a bit caught up in your peculiarities, if you would forgive me. Not every day I'd meet somebody like you! Now, for your question..."
His eyes still didn't turn its attention her way.
"...Uhm, hello? Are you listening?" She leaned forward.
"Impossible," Ulquiorra muttered underneath his breath, still staring at the hole in his chest... or rather, the object in his chest. "How can this be?"
He was still unresponsive to her.
"Hoo boy~" Hu Tao stepped back.
It was going to be a long night.
Not that she minded!
***
A/N: One-shot for now that I wrote in like 30 minutes due to an itch I couldn't help but scratch.
Focusing on other works at the moment.
Thought of doing a Jugram Haschwalth x Genshin or an Ichigo x Genshin, but the latter has already been done twice quite well by other people and for the former, I couldn't really connect Jugram to a character after only getting back into Genshin in recent times.