Chapter 210: Arrancar Experiment
It was an unremarkable patch of desert, roughly eighty meters across. Seen from a distance, it looked like nothing more than a shallow, oasis-like depression in the sand.
And inside it.
Small spirit bodies, barely visible to the naked eye, were squirming and writhing throughout — like something out of a petri dish crawling with microorganisms.
Matsushita Yusuke landed and crouched down beside it, studying the contents with the expression of someone examining a culture sample he found genuinely interesting.
"This should be... a reishi convergence point that formed recently?"
As previously established, the inhabitants of Hueco Mundo weren't all simply wicked souls that had been reborn here. A portion of them formed naturally from reishi condensation in the environment.
This was one of those cases. Compared to the other convergence zones he knew, though, this one was still at an early stage of development.
The words had barely left his mouth before something shifted inside his robes. A figure squeezed free and dropped straight into the small pool.
The Hollow alt.
The moment it landed, it got to work. Both hands sweeping wide, it scooped up great fistfuls of the tadpole-like spirit bodies, crushed them outright, and stuffed them into its mouth.
No table manners whatsoever.
"The spirit bodies here... the quality is too low."
That was probably a comment on nutritional value rather than anything else.
Then again, what were you expecting from something that hadn't even finished forming yet?
Matsushita Yusuke laughed and stood up, hands on his hips, rolling his shoulders in a loose stretch.
"Since you're starting from scratch, don't be so picky about it. Build the nutrients back up first and find your footing from there."
Think of it as the new player tutorial.
The Hollow alt didn't respond. It just kept eating.
"So you shouldn't need me around much longer, right?"
The alt nodded without looking up.
"Mm."
It was a native of this world by any definition. Back in its own territory, it could figure out how to develop again entirely on its own. This was no longer something Matsushita Yusuke needed to manage.
A brief exchange to confirm what came next, and he headed out.
His destination was in the completely opposite direction.
He kept moving until he reached what looked, from the outside, like just another stretch of featureless desert on Hueco Mundo's edge.
That was the thing about this world's terrain. It was nearly impossible to read from the outside. It all looked like desert. Without long-term habitation or prior knowledge of what to look for, an ordinary person could wander through it for days and lose themselves completely.
Matsushita Yusuke landed slowly, felt around for a moment, found his target, and pressed his open palm lightly downward.
Hm...
With a resonating hum, the landscape ahead gave a gentle shudder, warping like a mirage before beginning to distort.
An arched structure enclosed by white walls resolved itself into view — his destination.
Disguised through reishi concealment, reinforced and hidden at multiple points. Because he spent so much time operating in Soul Society, Matsushita Yusuke could say with confidence that the Gotei 13's current technical capabilities were nowhere near sufficient to locate this place.
This was the Club's primary experimental facility.
He stepped inside without ceremony.
The underground marble flooring was clean and even, pieced together through the patient labor of Menos Grande. The interior decor was not exactly luxurious, but it had a certain spaciousness about it that earned the word "grand" — and because the layout leaned so heavily toward open space, the whole place had a slightly empty quality to it.
Las Noches, this was not. Not remotely close.
At its core, this was a temporary base Aizen had designed for the convenience of operations and ongoing experiments. Nothing more.
Matsushita Yusuke had barely taken ten steps before two figures came toward him.
Both were dressed plainly. When they caught sight of him, both lowered their heads and spoke with considerable formality.
"Matsushita-dono..."
"Oh, no need for all that. I just came to check in on the experiment's progress. Relax."
His tone was easy. He took a moment to look them over properly.
Judging from appearance alone...
They looked human.
The one on the left had blonde hair and a striking figure. The one on the right was dark-haired with a more composed, refined bearing. Both wore the same crisp uniform in off-white, and the effect gave each of them a quiet, distinct impression that was difficult to put a single word to.
In expression, in bearing, in every visible detail, there was nothing about either of them that separated them from a person.
Finding someone who looked like this in Hueco Mundo — for the history of this world up to this point, that would have been called impossible.
Of course.
If you were only going by appearances.
In practice, Matsushita Yusuke's gaze was quickly pulled elsewhere.
To what remained on their heads.
Something like horns. Milky-white protrusions shaped like a cow's horns, fixed to the left side of each woman's forehead, sitting flush against their hair, conspicuous enough to stop you cold.
Arrancar.
As someone who had taken part in the design process, Matsushita Yusuke wasn't entirely unfamiliar with these newly-born forms of life.
But some things made you marvel no matter how many times you saw them.
He rubbed his chin and studied the two women in front of him, something turning over quietly in his mind. His mouth opened slightly as if he was about to say something, then stayed there for a moment without committing.
Finally, he asked in a careful, tentative tone.
"You two... weren't you the sister pair from one of the earlier experiments?"
A little uncertain, he raised his right hand and drew a circle in the air while he talked.
"I'm fairly sure there were two Adjuchas in bull-form who were in the experimental group at some point..."
He wasn't fully confident about that.
At the time, judging purely by what they looked like, those two Hollows had resembled oversized tanks — size completely out of proportion with anything reasonable.
It was hard to connect them to the two young women standing in front of him right now.
But when they heard the question, both women lit up with something close to delight and spoke at exactly the same moment.
"Yes! Matsushita-dono!"
Both, in perfect unison.
How does a perfectly ordinary Hollow turn human like that after becoming an Arrancar?
He let himself marvel for a moment, then got back to the point. Matsushita Yusuke raised an eyebrow and looked the two over from left to right, and then —
A smile settled across his face.
"The experiment is a success, then. Your human form... you're holding it very well?"