Cien Granz

Because he is copied straight from Szayelaporro Granz, Cien is virtually a mirror of his template, the one clear giveaway being a tattoo of the figure "100" inked across his left eyeball. In the thick of his duel with Kenpachi Zaraki, streaks of his hair bled to blonde as Yylfordt Granz's influence surfaced within him. His story ends in an entirely new body: reborn through Roka Paramia's power, he returns as a young girl sporting pink and gold hair.

Much of Szayelaporro lives on in Cien, from the same condescension and mockery to a cold scientific bent, and he is crueler still, treating Roka Paramia and the Pícaro as expendable tools and a ready food supply to drain at will. What sets him apart is his hunger for raw power. Where Szayelaporro shed his strength to sharpen his intellect, Cien judged that a foolish trade and set out to gather the fragments his template scattered across Hueco Mundo, dreaming of reclaiming his Vasto Lorde might, ruling the Hollows, or striking back at Soul Society.

His arc is defined by a crisis of self. He first passes himself off as Szayelaporro, only for Mayuri Kurotsuchi to force him to admit he is nothing but a copy, a wound to his pride that pushes him to claim a name of his own, Cien, after the number on his eye. Like Zaraki he comes to relish battle for its own sake, even stripping away the captain's handicaps to face him at full strength, yet when Roka finally corners him with a borrowed death-blow he breaks down and begs for his life, weeping that he cannot die before keeping his promise to fight the Soul Reapers again.

Cien is a creation of Roka Paramia, spun from backup data of Szayelaporro through her Negación threads. He carries his template's memories up to the point before Szayelaporro tore Yylfordt from himself, recalling a past life as a human alchemist, a stint as a Vasto Lorde in Baraggan Louisenbairn's court, and a fall to Adjuchas under Aizen. Rejecting any bond to that identity, he takes the name Cien Granz for himself.

He first surfaces inside the Shinigami Research and Development Institute, posing as the resurrected Szayelaporro and vowing revenge on Mayuri, before Mayuri exposes him as an imperfect mass of Reishi and severs him from the threads sustaining him. Fleeing to Hueco Mundo, he recruits the Pícaro, then crosses into Karakura Town hunting Roka. There his path collides with Uryū Ishida, Sōya Azashiro, and at last Kenpachi Zaraki, whom he drags into a Garganta and battles in his released form, Fornicarás. His reserves ran so deep that Mayuri gauged them above Yammy Llargo's released state, and his winged body, crowned with eyes over a mass of tentacles, let him halt Zaraki's blade with Hierro alone and rain Cero from every limb. Absorbing the final shard of Szayelaporro's scattered power turned the "100" on his eye to "0" and lifted him to the strength of a Cero Espada.

The clash ended only when Roka turned on him. Copying technique after technique lifted from other Arrancar and finally from Ichigo Kurosaki himself, she recreated the black annihilating strike Mugetsu and swallowed Hueco Mundo in darkness. Cien clawed free long enough to seize Don Kanonji, meaning to consume him and recover, but the Pícaro pinned him with Chuchería. As his soul crumbled, Roka offered him a Negación thread; he took it, released at last from Szayelaporro and Yylfordt's memories, and drifted into a peaceful sleep. He is later reborn as a little girl who trains under Ashido Kanō, still bent on one day facing Zaraki once more.