Hiyori Sarugaki

Standing barely over four feet tall, Hiyori is easy to underestimate on sight. A crooked fang juts from one corner of her mouth, the detail that earned her the nickname snaggletooth from both Ichigo and Shinji, and a trio of small freckles sits beneath each of her eyes. Her blonde hair is bound into stubby pigtails, the bangs pinned back with a cluster of clips, and she favors a red tracksuit striped in white over a plain shirt, finished with yellow flip flops. The first character of her surname decorates the jacket, and she slings her sword across her back.

Weariness has crept into her features since her Soul Society days, leaving shadowed lines under her eyes. Back when she wore a Shinigami uniform and her lieutenant's armband, her pigtails hung longer and loose, and the hair clips were nowhere to be seen.

For all her size, Hiyori runs on a short fuse and settles most disagreements with her fists or a flying sandal. Shinji Hirako absorbs the worst of it, serving as her punching bag and occasional human shield, a habit that reaches back to their Soul Society years even though he outranked her then. The abuse masks genuine attachment, and when the Hogyoku began forcing her Hollowfication she shouted at him to keep clear of her rather than risk him.

Courtesy is not in her vocabulary. She bristles at almost everyone, picks fights on a whim, and rarely wears any expression but a scowl. The lone exception was her original captain, Kirio Hikifune, whom she adored like a mother; Hikifune's departure wounded her badly and left her refusing to warm to the replacement, Kisuke Urahara, no matter how patiently he reached out. She professes to despise Shinigami and Humans alike, and though she drilled Ichigo without mercy, she never once got him to address her respectfully, while she peppered him and Shinji with insults like dumbass.

Roughly a hundred and ten years before the present, Hiyori held the lieutenant's post in the Twelfth Division under Hikifune, and stayed on when Urahara inherited the seat. She greeted him with open contempt, branding him a sneaky killer for his Second Division and Onmitsukido background and rejecting his authority outright. Urahara wore her down slowly, walking her through the grim realities of the Nest of Maggots and recruiting the imprisoned Mayuri Kurotsuchi to help found the Shinigami Research and Development Institute, where Hiyori worked as a lab manager and feuded with Mayuri over rank.

Her life unraveled when Aizen's secret Hollowfication experiments swept through the Ninth Division. Sent to investigate the disappearances, Hiyori was set upon by a Hollowfied Kensei Muguruma, saved by Shinji, and then began transforming herself. Urahara and Tessai Tsukabishi tried to reverse the process with the Hogyoku but could not fully restore the victims, and the Central 46 condemned the group to execution. Yoruichi Shihoin spirited them away, and Urahara resolved to build Reiatsu-masking Gigai so the eight afflicted Shinigami could escape to the Human World and rebuild their lives as the Visored.

In the present day she helps Shinji court Ichigo Kurosaki into their ranks and takes charge of hammering his inner Hollow into submission, sparring with him mask to mask. When the Visored march on the fake Karakura Town to confront Aizen, she cuts down Menos, fights beside Toshiro Hitsugaya against Tier Harribel, and then, goaded past reason by Aizen's taunts, charges him only for Gin Ichimaru to slice her in two at the waist. Retsu Unohana later pieces her back together. During the Thousand-Year Blood War she helps Urahara reopen the path to the Soul King Palace and battles the towering Gerard Valkyrie in Wahrwelt. A decade after the war she is still chasing trespassers, shooing Kazui, the young son of Ichigo and Orihime, out of her home.

As a former lieutenant, Hiyori is a fierce, unpredictable swordfighter and an equally dangerous hand-to-hand brawler, folding vicious kicks into her sword work; her signature moves include the rapid stomping of Gatling Mad-Stomping, the sandal strike Super Harisen Slipper, and the overhead cleave Suikawari. Her Zanpakuto, Kubikiri Orochi, transforms on the command Chop Cleanly into a serrated cleaver. Donning her horned, skeletal Hollow mask floods her with extra strength and speed and lets her fire a sustained red Cero, though she can hold the mask for only three minutes at a stretch. She once took the longest of any Visored, sixty-nine minutes, to conquer her inner Hollow.