The sky stretched endlessly above him, vast and impossibly blue.
Ulquiorra floated on his back, pale arms spread wide. He had discovered this phenomenon three hours prior, when consciousness had returned without explanation or context. One moment: nothing. The next: existence.
His bright green eyes continued to stare at the sky. The color disturbed him. This blue was... incorrect. Wrong. The certainty settled in his chest with absolute clarity, though he possessed no memory to support the conclusion.
For a fraction of a second, the sky flickered grey. Ash-colored.
Then blue again.
He did not react beyond a slight narrowing of his eyes.
The water lapped against the bone-white fragment that curved along the left side of his head, a broken mask, perhaps, though he had no recollection of its origin. His slender fingers traced across his bare chest, searching for something absent. Something should be there. Yet simultaneously, nothing was missing.
He turned his head with minimal movement, surveying his surroundings. Water. Endless blue water extending to the horizon in all directions.
Then a sigh, and his body vanished.
The ocean surface erupted in a spray of white foam where he had been. A hundred meters distant, he materialized for a fraction of a second, one foot touching water as though it were solid ground, before disappearing again. Another eruption of spray marked his passage.
Again. Again. Again.
Ulquiorra blazed across the ocean, appearing and vanishing in rapid succession, each footfall creating explosive impacts against the water's surface.
The broken line of the horizon shifted. Not water, but something solid.
Ulquiorra's trajectory adjusted mid-step, angling toward the irregularity.
The island resolved into distinct shapes. Trees. Buildings.
His speed increased. The water beneath his feet no longer merely sprayed—it exploded in violent columns with each impact. The air itself began to distort around his form, pressure waves trailing behind him like invisible wings.
His final step launched him from the ocean's surface entirely as he sailed through the air in a perfect arc and landed on the sand with barely a displaced grain.
Thirty Minutes Earlier
Usopp had been mid-story when Ninjin tugged at his sleeve.
"Captain Usopp! We should go to the beach! You said you fought a Sea King there last week!"
"Yeah!" Piiman bounced excitedly. "Show us where you defeated it with your bare hands!"
Tamanegi nodded with absolute conviction. "We want to see the sacred battleground!"
Usopp puffed his chest, nose rising skyward. "Well, if you insist! Though I warn you, the evidence of that battle may be too terrifying for young eyes. The crater alone was fifty meters wide!"
The three children gasped in perfect unison.
They'd made their way down the winding path from Syrup Village proper, past the last cluster of houses, toward the rocky shoreline. Usopp continued embellishing his tale, the Sea King had grown from ten meters to thirty, and the number of Marine ships he'd saved had mysteriously tripled, when Tamanegi stopped dead.
"Captain..." The boy's voice went quiet. "What's that?"
He pointed toward the horizon.
Usopp squinted, hand raised to shield his eyes from the sun. "What's what? I don't see any—"
A column of water erupted from the ocean's surface.
Then another. And another.
"What the..." Usopp's practiced bravado cracked. The spray patterns formed a line, moving toward them at impossible speed.
"Captain Usopp?" Ninjin's voice trembled. "Is that a Sea King?"
Then a man appeared just beside them.
Not arrived. Not landed. Appeared.
One moment, nothing. The next, a figure stood three meters away from them.
Usopp's scream died in his throat.
The stranger was tall, impossibly pale, skin like bleached bone. Black hair fell across features that seemed carved, beautiful in a way that made Usopp's stomach clench with instinctive wrongness. But the eyes, bright green with vertical slits fixed on them, with the empty focus of a predator observing insects.
Two thin lines, same unnatural green, ran down his face from those eyes to his jaw.
The left side of his head bore a fragment of white material, bone? mask? broken into a jagged, horn-like shape that seemed to grow directly from his head.
A white coat hung open over his bare chest, black interior lining visible with each subtle movement. White hakama-style pants. Black boots, while one slender hand rested on the hilt of a katana.
"GYAAAAAAAHHH!" Usopp finally found his voice, stumbling backward so violently he tripped over his own feet.
The three children scattered like startled birds.
"DEMON!" Tamanegi shrieked.
"MONSTER!" Piiman dove behind a rock.
Ninjin simply ran in circles, arms flailing.
Ulquiorra observed the phenomena unfolding before him.
The long-nosed human kept opening his mouth and closing it repeatedly, producing high-pitched sounds without apparent purpose. The three smaller humans scattered in different trajectories. One circled inefficiently. One concealed itself behind an inadequate rock formation. One fled toward the tree line.
Ulquiorra's gaze swept across the landscape. Before he returned his attention to the long-nosed human, who had begun crawling backward through the sand.
"St-st-stay back!" The human's voice cracked. "I'm warning you! I'm the great Captain Usopp, and I command eight thousand followers!"
Ulquiorra tilted his head a fraction of a degree.
"I've fought Sea Kings! And my punch can shatter mountains!"
A lie. The human's spiritual pressure was negligible.
"I said stay back!" The long-nosed human scrambled to his feet, pulling a Y-shaped implement from his bag. "One shot from my Super Usopp Star will blow you to smithereens!"
Ulquiorra's gaze dropped to the primitive weapon. Then back to the human's face.
"Where am I."
Not a question. A statement demanding information.
Usopp's legs trembled violently. "Wh-where are you? This is Syrup Village! East Blue! And you better leave before my followers arrive!"
"Syrup Village." Ulquiorra repeated the words, testing their meaning, and found none. "East Blue."
Also meaningless.
"Eight thousand followers." Ulquiorra stated, eyes fixed on the trembling human. "Show them to me."
"Th-they're coming!" Usopp's voice climbed another octave. "Any second now! A massive army!"
Ulquiorra's Pesquisa detected that this island didn't possess anywhere close to these numbers of people.
He looked back at Usopp.
"I see no one."
"That's because they're—they're hidden! Strategic positioning!" Usopp waved his slingshot desperately. "Master's, all of them!"
"If I cannot sense them, they do not exist."
Ulquiorra took a single step forward.
"GYAAAAH!" Usopp's arms windmilled. "Okay, okay! Maybe it's seven thousand! The others are sick today!"
Another step.
"Six thousand!"
Step.
"F-five hundred?"
Ulquiorra stopped directly in front of him. Gazed down with those alien green eyes.
"...Three kids?" Usopp's voice barely registered as sound.
"You produce falsehoods." Ulquiorra's tone remained perfectly flat. "Why."
"I—that is—you see, the thing about that is—"
"USOPP PIRATES, STRATEGIC RETREAT!"
He grabbed all three children in a single motion and bolted up the beach path, screaming wordlessly.
Ulquiorra watched them disappear into the tree line.
Three seconds.
Then he walked in the same direction, following the worn path through the trees. The sounds of the fleeing humans faded quickly, leaving only the rustle of leaves and distant voices ahead.
The village materialized around him as the path widened.
A woman exited a building with a basket. She glanced his direction, steps faltering mid-stride. Her eyes widened fractionally before she redirected her trajectory across the street, grip tightening on her basket.
Two males conversed near a doorway. One noticed him. Conversation ceased. Both stared for approximately four seconds before resuming their exchange in lowered tones.
Ulquiorra catalogued each reaction without attempting interpretation. They saw him. They responded. Nothing more.
Except.
Something pulled at him from within, a directionless compulsion.
Find it.
Find what? The absence of an answer frustrated him more than the mystery itself.
The heart.
The phrase materialized in his consciousness without origin or context, it existed there, absolute and demanding.
If he could observe this heart, perhaps then the compulsion would cease. Perhaps understanding would eliminate the void where knowledge should reside.
His scan swept across the village again, searching for anything that might constitute this 'heart.'
Nothing presented itself as significant.
An elderly human swept the porch of his house. Ulquiorra altered his course.
The old man noticed his approach, broom pausing mid-sweep. His eyes traveled upward, taking in the white coat, the pale skin, the mask fragment, before finally settling on Ulquiorra's green eyes.
"Well now." The old man's voice carried curiosity rather than fear. "Don't see folk dressed like that often. You from one of them theater troupes passing through?"
Ulquiorra stopped precisely two meters away.
"Where is the heart."
The old man blinked. Once. Twice. His weathered face creased into confusion, then something resembling understanding.
"The heart?" He leaned his broom against the wall. "You must mean Miss Kaya, I reckon."
The old man pointed toward the hill rising beyond the village proper.
"See that mansion up there? That's where Miss Kaya lives. If you're looking for the heart of Syrup Village, you'll find it up that path."
The old man's sentence hung incomplete.
One blink—Ulquiorra stood before him. The next—empty air.
The elderly villager clattered against the porch. He spun around searching, around to find were the man he was talking to disapeard to.
"Theater folk get stranger every year..." He muttered, retrieving his broom with hands that trembled slightly. A thought occurred: he'd forgotten to mention you needed permission to visit the mansion, but who'd be foolish enough to just barge into Miss Kaya's estate uninvited?
Ulquiorra materialized beside the mansion's perimeter fence.
A voice drifted from somewhere to the side. Familiar—the long-nosed human from the beach.
"—and then the demon lunged at me with these massive claws! Each one the size of a sword!"
Ulquiorra's head tilted fractionally.
He vanished.
"Oh my!" A soft voice responded, feminine and gentle despite its poorly concealed amusement. "That sounds terrifying, Usopp."
By the window stood a blonde girl, resting her arms along the frame. Her pale complexion and the careful way she supported herself suggested prolonged illness. She watched Usopp with gentle fondness despite the obvious fabrication of his story.
"Terrifying? Ha! I've faced worse!" The long-nosed human perched on a thick tree branch outside a second-story window. "My eight thousand followers would've made short work of him, but I told them to stand down. This was personal!"
"So what did you do?" Kaya leaned forward slightly, smiling.
"What did I do?" Usopp's chest puffed. "I used my ultimate technique, the Usopp Rubber Band of Doom! One shot, and BOOM! The demon went flying back into the ocean! Probably scared it so bad it's halfway across the sea by now!"
"I did not flee."
Usopp's entire body went rigid.
Kaya blinked, gaze shifting past him. Her eyes widened as they found Ulquiorra stood on the same branch directly beside him, close enough that Usopp could have touched his coat.
The long-nosed human rotated his head with mechanical slowness. His expression cycled through confusion, recognition, then absolute terror in the span of two seconds.
"GYAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
Usopp lurched backward in panic, losing his balance on the branch, and plummeted with a strangled shriek as he hit the ground below with a heavy thud.
"Usopp!" Kaya gasped, hands flying to her mouth.
Ulquiorra observed the fallen human before his attention shifted to the girl.
Kaya stared at him, frozen with genuine confusion and concern that seemed directed equally at Usopp below and the stranger on the branch.
"Who..." Her voice came quiet, uncertain. "Who are you?"
Ulquiorra's green eyes fixed on her face.
"Are you the heart."
Kaya blinked rapidly. "The... heart?"
Below, Usopp groaned, rolling onto his side. "Kaya, get away from the window!"
"I require information." Ulquiorra continued, ignoring the interruption. "I was directed here. The old human stated the heart exists in this location."
Kaya's brow furrowed, then cleared with sudden understanding. "Someone in the village? They meant... they were probably talking about me. People sometimes call me the heart of Syrup Village, but that's just—"
"You." Ulquiorra stepped off the branch into open air, his foot finding solid ground where there was none, crossing the space between them in a single impossible stride. "You possess it."
Kaya leaned back instinctively, though curiosity and fascination tempered her retreat. "I don't understand what you're asking for."
"STAY AWAY FROM HER!" Usopp's voice cracked as he pulled out his slingshot and aimed it at Ulquiorra.
Ulquiorra's gaze dropped to him briefly.
"Lower your weapon." The words held no threat. Just a statement of a fact. "It is ineffective."
"Like hell!" Usopp's hands shook violently, the slingshot's aim wavering. "One shot and you're done for!"
Ulquiorra looked at him.
Then he turned back to Kaya.
"Please don't hurt him," Kaya's voice steadied, despite the tremor in her hands. "Usopp is my friend. He's just trying to protect me."
"Protect." Ulquiorra repeated. "From what threat."
"From you!" Usopp shouted, though his voice cracked halfway through.
Ulquiorra's head tilted a fraction. "I have stated my purpose. I seek the heart. Nothing more."
"The heart..." Kaya's brow furrowed. "What do you mean by 'heart'?"
"The one you humans keep talking about."
"I..." She swallowed, forcing her voice to steady. "If you're asking about the heart in the literal sense, then it's inside all living beings. It pumps blood through our bodies."
Ulquiorra's expression remained unchanged, though his head tilted fractionally.
"But if you mean..." Kaya paused, searching his empty expression for some hint of understanding. "If you're talking about emotions? That's also called the heart. How we feel things. Fear, love, happiness, sadness." Her voice softened as she gestured toward Usopp below. "It's what makes us care about someone. What we feel when we're scared for them, or when we want to protect them."
"Show me."
"I... I can't show you." Kaya's brow furrowed. "It's not something you can see."
"If I cannot see it, it does not exist."
The words came absolute.
Kaya's mouth opened slightly. "But it does exist," she said quietly. "Even if you can't see it."
"Prove it."
"I..." Her hands twisted in the fabric of her dress. "The heart isn't something physical. It's—"
"Trash."
Kaya flinched.
Usopp's slingshot trembled. "You can't just—"
"If it cannot be seen, it holds no value." Ulquiorra's gaze moved between them. "You speak of concepts without form. Without substance. This is pointless."
"Now wait just a second!" Usopp's fear cracked under anger. "You don't get to call Kaya trash! She's the kindest person in this whole village!"
Ulquiorra looked at him.
Silence.
"Kindness." He repeated the word. "Another formless thing."
"It's not formless!" Kaya leaned forward. "You can see kindness in actions. When someone helps another person, when they—"
"Actions are not this heart you describe."
"That's it!" Usopp's hands stopped shaking. He pulled the slingshot back, lead ball seated in the leather pouch. "Nobody calls Kaya trash!"
The projectile launched.
It closed the distance in under a second, trajectory perfect for Ulquiorra's left eye—
The lead ball disintegrated two centimeters from his eye. No impact. No deflection. Simply ceased to exist, vaporizing into fine dust that scattered on the breeze.
Ulquiorra blinked once.
Then he stood directly before Usopp.
The transition possessed no movement. One location, then another.
Ulquiorra raised one finger, green energy crackling at the tip—a pinpoint of condensed light that hummed with lethal promise as the air around it distorted.
"Let me end your pitiful existence."
The words came flat. Matter-of-fact. As if he'd announced the weather.
"No!" Kaya's voice cracked. "Please don't—"
"What is the meaning of this?!"
A new voice cut across the garden.
A tall man strode around the corner of the mansion, impeccably dressed in a black suit and glasses. His slicked-back hair and perfectly pressed attire spoke of meticulous care. Klahadore, Kaya's butler, adjusted his glasses with the heel of his palm as he surveyed the scene.
◈ ◈ ◈
Author's Notes:
Thanks for reading Chapter 1!
This is my first time writing a fanfic, so if you catch any mistakes, typos or weird sentences, please let me know in the comments. Fresh eyes catch what I miss :D
Got theories? Questions about the story? Want to discuss where this is heading? Comment below!
If you're enjoying it, consider leaving a review.
Enjoy the chaos.