Coyote Starrk

A relaxed slouch and a perpetually tired air define Starrk's presence as much as any single feature. His dark brown hair falls unkempt to the base of his neck, split down the middle by a central part, and a faint goatee shadows his jaw beneath a pair of blue-gray eyes. He dresses in the standard white Arrancar coat, its black trim offset by a raised collar, cinched at the waist by a black sash worn in the fashion of a matador, with his hands kept in white gloves. What survives of his Hollow mask is a fanged lower jaw resting against his throat, his Hollow hole opens on his breastbone just below it, and the numeral that marks his rank as the first Espada is tattooed onto the back of one gloved hand, the left, normally kept out of view.

For all his rank, Starrk is defined by lethargy, dozing away much of his time and rousing only when Lilynette forces the issue. As the strongest of the Espada he shows no appetite for command, content to let Baraggan Louisenbairn direct the battle at the fake Karakura Town, yet beneath the idleness lies a sharp, observant mind that reads a situation quickly. He carries none of the cruelty or swagger common to his peers. His deepest wound is loneliness: because his raw presence once snuffed out the Hollows around him, he came to envy weaker beings who could gather in groups, and he tore his own soul in two simply to have company. He rarely speaks to anyone but Lilynette, and though he first appears indifferent to his fellow Espada, Baraggan's death and Aizen's cold dismissal of it visibly drain his will. Insisting he has no stomach for vengeance, he keeps fighting only to spare his remaining comrades, and even in combat he offers his opponents Love Aikawa and Rojuro Otoribashi a chance to flee rather than die.

Long before the Espada existed, Starrk was a single Hollow whose spiritual pressure ran so high that others perished merely by drawing near. Craving the closeness that weaker beings took for granted, it split its own soul apart, and the two halves became Coyote Starrk and the child-like Lilynette Gingerbuck. The pair wandered together until Sosuke Aizen discovered them seated amid a mountain of Hollows that had died from proximity alone. Impressed and hunting for allies, Aizen invited Starrk along, and Starrk, sensing a man who could stand beside him without dying, agreed. He rose to become the Primera, embodying the aspect of death called Solitude, though his power was judged too vast to unleash inside Las Noches. Deployed to the fake Karakura Town, he eventually squares off against Shunsui Kyoraku and later the Visored Love Aikawa and Rojuro Otoribashi. His release, Los Lobos, is unique among Arrancar: rather than a sword, his strength is sealed inside Lilynette, who becomes a pair of pistols he fires as blue Cero, culminating in the relentless barrage of Cero Metralleta. He can also draw solid blades from his bandoliers through Colmillo and, by recombining with Lilynette, scatter their shared soul into a pack of exploding spectral wolves called Camarada. Baraggan's death robs him of his drive, yet he presses on to protect his own and overpowers both Visored. Just as he moves to finish them, Shunsui strikes from within his own shadow. Trapped in the captain's game of Irooni, Starrk lands a telling blow of his own before Shunsui calls the color black and slashes clean across his Hollow hole. Falling from the sky wrapped in his own blood, he recalls Aizen and the birth of Lilynette, grasps at last that he was never truly alone, and dies as he strikes the ground.