Ulquiorra Cifer

Slim yet quietly muscular and of average height, Ulquiorra wears a permanently melancholy look, forever frowning beneath thick eyebrows. His hair is short, black, and unkempt, his skin pale, his upper lip black, and his green, cat-like eyes hold narrow slit pupils, with teal streaks running down from them as his estigma. His Arrancar garb keeps to the usual white pattern but adds longer coattails and a raised collar. Traces of his Hollow past remain: the hole rests on his sternum, once positioned at his throat, and the shard of his mask forms a broken horned helm on the upper-left of his head, while the Espada tattoo brands the left of his chest. As a Hollow he was much the same size, masked entirely in white and bearing large black wings low on his back.

Fitting the death aspect he represents, Ulquiorra is detached, skeptical, and hollow to the core, certain that nothing holds meaning unless his own eyes confirm it. He rejects the emotions humans call the heart as pure illusion, telling Orihime that if he cannot perceive such a thing, even after tearing open her chest, then it simply does not exist. That same doubt governs his last fight with Ichigo, whose refusal to yield he cannot fathom, insisting the heart brings only suffering and death, though in his final seconds he seems at last to grasp it as he reaches toward Orihime. Composed almost to the point of ice, he rarely raises his voice, dislikes hurried conversation, and keeps his calm where lesser Espada would rage. A deep loneliness runs through him, born of feeling different from birth, white among the black. His loyalty to Aizen is absolute; he refuses to release his sword or unleash the Gran Rey Cero inside Las Noches because it is forbidden, and he acts only within his orders. Imperious and quick to brand the weak as trash, he is nonetheless neither vain nor sadistic, killing only when duty demands it and even sparing those he is not commanded to slay.

As the fourth Espada, Ulquiorra wields spiritual power so vast that releasing his sword inside Las Noches could level the fortress, his green Reiatsu falling as rain when he transforms. He is a precise, unhurried swordsman who fights mostly bare-handed, a master of Sonído whose speed matches Ichigo's Bankai, and a keen analyst able to gauge an opponent's strength at a glance through his Pesquisa. He fires a green Cero from a fingertip, launches a red Bala, hardens his skin into formidable Hierro, and, unlike most Arrancar, keeps his High-Speed Regeneration instead of trading it for raw force, though it cannot rebuild his brain or organs. His Zanpakutō, Murciélago, releases with the command Enclose, granting him bat wings, longer horns, energy javelins called Luz de la Luna, and the black-and-green Cero Oscuras. Uniquely among the Espada, he can push into a second stage, Resurrección: Segunda Etapa, a form he names True Despair for the crushing pressure it radiates; there he fights with a fur-edged tail, hurls the explosive Lanza del Relámpago, and overwhelms nearly all who face him.