grey days and grey streets same faces that same release
Character: Sarugaki Hiyori
Series: Bleach
Timeline: Somewhere shortly after chapter 237 ("Good bye, halcyon days.") of the manga, because - there's no better place to nab any of the present-day Vizards from, in my opinion.
Wiki Us a Bio/History: wiki is magic and delicious
But in case that's not enough, here. Have a thing.
(NOTE: As a general rule, I've tried to avoid putting in qualifiers like "probably" except where the events are too opaque to judge one way or the other, as I believed it more important to provide a coherent, sensible retelling of events that also offered some insight into the character's mindset, but there are several moments where it was simply impossible to pretend I was operating on anything but conjecture, and I've tried to either leave such supposition out, or where possible to indicate that it is such by the use of the aforementioned qualifiers. Any further embellishment is merely the product of my sadly diseased mind.)
The deck is stacked against Sarugaki Hiyori and she knows it; if her current state of being wasn't bad enough, there's her entire life before that even happened to consider. Admittedly, in the beginning (or what this story chooses to consider the beginning) wasn't so bad - she worked her way through the ranks of the Shinigami of the Gotei 13 till she ended up lieutenant under Hikifune Kirio, captain of the 12th Division, a position (and captain) she loved dearly, by all accounts (including her own). Life was good. Hiyori was in a position she enjoyed, doing work she enjoyed, working for someone whose company she enjoyed.
And of course she beat up Hirako Shinji (incidentally, the captain of 5th Division) on a regular basis, as she seemed to feel was her prerogative. He never seemed to stop her, at any rate; if anything he kept finding ways to further encourage her abuse, or at least she kept finding ways to be annoyed with him ... between the two of them, the difference isn't exactly clear. Aside from Hikifune-taichou, Shinji was probably the closest friend Hiyori had in Soul Society, which explains a lot about both their personalities right there.
Sadly, Hiyori wasn't the only one who liked her captain, and Hikifune found herself abruptly promoted ... to the 0th Division, the "Royal Guard". Which meant 12th Division needed a new captain, and Hiyori wasn't qualified for the position yet. (Or she turned it down. Hiyori's not saying which one because either way would make her look bad.) Enter Kisuke Urahara, former third seat of 2nd Division.
Hiyori's relationship with her new captain didn't get off to a very good start. (If Hiyori had known the hell associating with Urahara was going to put her through, she'd have kicked him in the balls with her zanpakutou instead of her foot.) As if his distastefully pleasant attitude wasn't bad enough, his status as a former member of 2nd Division was even worse - Hiyori didn't trust him and didn't like him, and given he belonged to the division most skilled at espionage and backstabbing, she felt justified in disliking him from the start (even if she really just didn't like him because he was replacing Hikifune-taichou).
Matters were not helped when, shortly after becoming captain, Urahara began "redecorating", literally (with a hammer) and figuratively (with an idea). To Hiyori's displeasure, the figurative part involved her assistance. So it was that Hiyori accompanied Urahara on a visit to the Special Detention Center, the so-called "Maggot's Nest", encountered the shinigami Kurotsuchi Mayuri, and learned the true meaning of "withdrawal" from the Gotei 13 (hint: the word is a lie). In the process she discovered what a truly unpleasant and disturbing person her new captain was, something she's never really forgotten since then, much less let him forget.
Fast forward nine years - with Urahara's plan set firmly in motion, the Soul Reaper Research Institute was well on its way to becoming the fixture of the Seireitei that it would one day be under Mayuri's leadership, and unfortunately for her, Hiyori was right there from the beginning. Right in the thick of it. Carrying around lab equipment for Mayuri. Her official position was "Laboratory Head", which supposedly implied having a more active role in the process, but what it ultimately boiled down to was Hiyori carrying around equipment for Mayuri. She hated it so very much. It did, however, pay extra, so it wasn't all bad. (The extra money, in fact, was the only reason she took on the job, but that's supposed to be a secret, so DON'T TELL ANYBODY.) When an emergency envoy from 9th Division came requesting support from 12th for their investigation into the disappearances at Rukongai, however, Hiyori balked at being handed yet another fetch job, only agreeing to it because Urahara convinced her she was the only available trustworthy candidate for it; she'd grown to trust her unpleasant captain's opinion more than she was willing to admit in the nine years they'd been working together up to that point, and didn't want to disappoint him.
(If either of them had realized the consequences of her acceptance at the time - well, they'd have done it anyway, because Urahara was too cautious and Hiyori too headstrong for it to have ended any other way. She wouldn't have left her fellow shinigami to suffer like that, not at all. Not at the time, anyway. Things change.)
She didn't know it, but she was walking into a trap, and one she would never be free of again, one laid by Aizen Sosuke. By the time she arrived the 9th Division was no more, felled by some unknown force. Gone, but not dead - at least, not their former captain and lieutenant, who had instead undergone a horrible transformation - they had become Hollows. Hiyori couldn't leave them to suffer that fate, but neither was she strong enough to overpower Kensei's enhanced strength and stop him.
Which was - unfortunately for everyone involved - when reinforcements arrived, led by Shinji, allowing Hiyori the chance to recover her breath. Not even Kido, the so-called "demon arts", proved strong enough to restrain their former allies, and the shinigami began to realize that subduing their friends would take a great deal more effort than they had hoped.
It was, however, getting harder for Hiyori to catch her breath, not easier.
Like something clawing its way up and out her throat, a constant gnawing that wouldn't go away, only intensifying as the fight wore on, until finally she couldn't keep it back any more and she snarled for Shinji to let her go but of course he didn't understand.
By that point, as far as Hiyori was concerned, it was too late. If she remembers any of what she did - of what happened, after the bone-white mass poured out of her throat and molded itself to her face, to her and the others - she refuses to talk about it. (One hazy moment of coherent recollection - the sight of Shinji, too, undergoing the same transformation, just before a sharp pain in her chest and then darkness took her completely.)
It was only afterwards she learned they weren't even meant to survive, that Aizen planned to kill them all to eliminate the evidence of his experiments so he could continue on with his plans, that Urahara's timely intervention was the only reason they continued to "survive".
Events passed in a haze for her for a long time after that - Urahara's exile to the human world, his refinement of his research into the use of gigai, the creation, initial use and failure of the Hogyoku, and the long years of insensibility trapped behind the feral mask of a Hollow.
The Hogyoku was intended to bridge the gap between Hollow and Shinigami, and eventually Urahara learned how to make it do just that; how he did it isn't something that Hiyori really cares to explain, if she understands it at all. It doesn't matter to her. When she finally regained her senses, she was an outcast, just like the others Urahara had "saved": she would be spared the fate of becoming a Hollow, but while she was insensate Soul Society had judged her worthy only of immediate execution. They would never fit in with humanity, most of them probably didn't even know how at first, but until they could find a way to get out from under the doom Soul Society had passed on them, they were trapped there, whether they remained in their gigai or not.
They never really forgave Urahara for bringing them back only to give them over to a fate almost worse than death, in some ways. They certainly never forgave Aizen for using them as guinea pigs and expendable resources. But it was undeniably true that their fate had, bizarrely, freed them in as many ways as it had also restricted them. Idiosyncrasies that had been somewhat tempered by their roles in Soul Society flowered without the social restrictions to keep them in place. While in Soul Society, they were allies, some perhaps closer than others; under their shared situation, the outcasts became family - or, well, the closest thing they had to it, anyway, which was close enough - "nakama" means a lot of things that family ought to mean but doesn't. And the human world had its share of benefits - cool clothes, hot music, Shonen Jump, and porn. They couldn't hate the new life they'd carved out for themselves, nor the two men responsible for creating it - whether their respect and gratitude extended further remains to be seen, but as Shinji put it, they owed their power "to Urahara ... and to Aizen." Eventually the outcast Shinigami/Hollow hybrids came up with a name for themselves: Vizard, "the masked army". It stuck. Content in their new off-the-radar, abandoned, pariah status, the Vizards watched, and waited, and prepared.
None of this (serious, heavy duty, frightening) shit really stopped Hiyori from beaning the shit out of Shinji with a well-aimed sandal when the mood struck her, though. Some things not even Hollowfication and traumatic relocation can change.
And so it went for roughly a hundred years.
Then Kurosaki Ichigo showed up, that fucker, and the Vizards finally decided to get off their ass and do something, as this was apparently the signal they were waiting for (among several other signals, less important and interesting to the Vizards than Ichigo's existence). "Something" was "convince Ichigo he had no choice but to join them" and "something" didn't entirely work the way they'd planned, because in true Ichigo fashion training him was more than they bargained for and they didn't get much worthwhile results out of it (especially in Hiyori's opinion). Mostly because the little twit had no stamina and the climax always came so soon - but we're discussing Hiyori's training methods for drawing out Ichigo's Hollow side, not sex. It took them nearly 70 minutes to draw out Ichigo's Hollow side and help him get it under control - and he only managed to retain his mask for 10 seconds. The remaining time they associated with him they spent teaching him how to retain his Hollow abilities for longer periods of time. Which, as mentioned, drove Hiyori insane because she was not a very patient teacher and Ichigo's mastery of his abilities was rudimentary and weak at best.
Her mood was not helped by Ichigo's friend Orihime showing up and putting the fear of god, however accidentally she'd done it, into Hacchi, and only worsened further when Hacchi informed the other Vizards that Ichigo's friend's abilities bore disturbing similarities to their own power. There wasn't anything they could do about it, though, except watch and wait. And train the stupid strawberry some more.
Until the next stage of Aizen's plan went into action and all hell broke loose right on their doorstop, and the Vizards had to reveal themselves to the world they hated to keep their territory safe.
After that Ichigo wasn't their problem anymore. So they returned to their status of invisibility, for however long it would last, and prepared. Things were about to get very tense for a short while and they had to be ready.
(Of course, the Vizards being the Vizards, no amount of obligation could stop them from going about their daily routines and being a bunch of weirdo goofballs if they felt like it, and they probably did.)
Basically Hiyori's life, summed up: Get into shit. Survive. Get into more shit. Survive. Hope like hell the next shit doesn't stink as bad as the earlier shit. Get into shit anyway. It's had a very formative effect on her view of life as she knows it.
Elaborate, if necessary: Little is known about the Vizards or their activities between Urahara's "rescuing" them from execution in Soul Society and their outreach towards Ichigo, and frankly they all seem to like it that way. Too much attention, after all, would mean their cover was blown and Soul Society would be breathing down their necks, and they don't want that. The Vizards are a colorful group of characters, but they prefer the shadows and sidelines - where people won't notice them until it's too late. They've got the time to be patient (though honestly you wouldn't know it from talking to most of them). What is for sure is that they've encountered Aizen and Urahara at least once in that time frame. They represent an uncertain but invaluable trump card in Aizen's plan, and whatever role they intend to play in the upcoming confrontation, Urahara probably knows what it is already and has his own reasons for not interfering.
What's for damn sure is that they have their own agenda in play, one not entirely in line with any side's goals, and given their capricious nature it is impossible to be sure where their allegiance will truly lie in the final battle. It's clear enough to an extent - they will not allow themselves to be lorded over by any system of rules or rulemakers. They prize their self above all else, and not even prior commitments are allowed to interfere with that.
Hiyori is the most openly foul of the Vizard, utterly unmannered and coarse, showing blatant disrespect to all manner of authority, civil or otherwise; such personality traits go hand in hand with being as brave and often foolishly rash as she is. She was the Vizard to finally provoke Ichigo into unleashing his Hollow for the first time since failing to protect his friends, after all. She fights dirty and she plays dirty and she's not above escalating casual argument into physical abuse for any reason. Her primary abuse victim will always be Hirako Shinji, but there will always be plenty of targets for her violent interjections. She reserves special antipathy for shinigami and human alike, after all, and if a couple of them end up sidelined because she got a little too rough for their tastes, well, that's their problem, not hers.
Somewhere underneath the anger and rudeness there is a core of loneliness and regret, as there is for all the Vizard, but the only person besides the other Vizards who would understand its presence and meaning is Urahara and she's never really let him get close again after what happened. It's not the kind of loneliness that lends itself well towards reaching out to other people - it's the kind that feeds better on itself, by lashing out, instead.
Part of her name - "saru" - means monkey, after all, and if you're not part of a monkey's tribe and you try to get too close it'll fling its shit right in your face. That's Hiyori's personality in a nutshell, cheerfully flinging her shit in your face just for breathing the same air. She's a natural-born brat and proud of it and she'll never stop being one because it's who she is and she'll cling to that identity even if everything else about her life has never, will never, be the same. She's a tenacious little shit. She has to be.
What are they bringing to Nuadoria?: Her zanpakuto and the clothes on her back. A sparkling personality. The ability to violate a man's anus with her pinky finger. That's about it, really.
Third-Person Sample:
"You can't buy that beer." The clerk over the counter looks at Hiyori with half-lidded eyes and a raised eyebrow and she seriously thinks ventilating his face with her zanpakuto would only make the hideous thing look better. His voice is nasal and whiny and she half expects him to make a "gonk" noise when he laughs. If he's capable of laughing. He looks too stupid for that.
"I'm old enough." She snaps the words out harder than she planned to, because it just makes the kid look at her with something like pity and she came off like she was trying too hard, not like she was serious. "Ring it up alfuckingready, I don't have the time to sit around and argue this."
"Can't, you're not old enough." Little shit's enjoying the power trip, she thinks, and her hand twitches up towards the hilt over her shoulder. "If you keep pressing the issue I'll call security."
"Are you shitting me?" She stares at him and the disbelief on her face is naked as the ass of a baby, she bets. "The security in this store's a fucking joke, don''t bother. I could kill you and they'd stay behind the cameras jerking off to it."
That's why she likes shopping in a shithole like this, anyway. It sucks but it's cheap and she's been coming to this place since the manager was in fucking diapers, it's her store and now there's this new kid being a dick because he's on a power trip and nobody could stop her if she just reached out and took this brat's head off.
Nothing she'd like better, but the beer's going cold. The kid stares at her like she's grown a second head, but she's got better control than that now so he's just frightened of her. Nothing special; he should be, and she smiles as he reaches for the phone to call security, the manager, who the hell cares which one.
She swipes the groceries off the counter in the seconds between his frantic keypad-punching and takes off out the door like a rocket on fire, whooping and shrieking while she crams her score into a bag she grabbed on the way out. Let 'em know what she's done, she doesn't fucking care. They can't stop her. Nobody can.
"Shit, I just saved us a couple, three thousand yen this week." A smile sliiiides its way across her face. "Fuckin' right, you don't ask a girl her age, dipshit."
She laughs to herself low and quiet as she makes her way home.
First-Person Sample: |voice|
--hey Lisa, I got your porn --
[pause.]
--right here. Shit. [the sound of someone setting down a bag of groceries, followed by the low sound of a sword sliding slowly from its scabbard.]
Yeah ... whatever you're fuckin' playing at, I ain't buyin'.
Series: Bleach
Timeline: Somewhere shortly after chapter 237 ("Good bye, halcyon days.") of the manga, because - there's no better place to nab any of the present-day Vizards from, in my opinion.
Wiki Us a Bio/History: wiki is magic and delicious
But in case that's not enough, here. Have a thing.
(NOTE: As a general rule, I've tried to avoid putting in qualifiers like "probably" except where the events are too opaque to judge one way or the other, as I believed it more important to provide a coherent, sensible retelling of events that also offered some insight into the character's mindset, but there are several moments where it was simply impossible to pretend I was operating on anything but conjecture, and I've tried to either leave such supposition out, or where possible to indicate that it is such by the use of the aforementioned qualifiers. Any further embellishment is merely the product of my sadly diseased mind.)
The deck is stacked against Sarugaki Hiyori and she knows it; if her current state of being wasn't bad enough, there's her entire life before that even happened to consider. Admittedly, in the beginning (or what this story chooses to consider the beginning) wasn't so bad - she worked her way through the ranks of the Shinigami of the Gotei 13 till she ended up lieutenant under Hikifune Kirio, captain of the 12th Division, a position (and captain) she loved dearly, by all accounts (including her own). Life was good. Hiyori was in a position she enjoyed, doing work she enjoyed, working for someone whose company she enjoyed.
And of course she beat up Hirako Shinji (incidentally, the captain of 5th Division) on a regular basis, as she seemed to feel was her prerogative. He never seemed to stop her, at any rate; if anything he kept finding ways to further encourage her abuse, or at least she kept finding ways to be annoyed with him ... between the two of them, the difference isn't exactly clear. Aside from Hikifune-taichou, Shinji was probably the closest friend Hiyori had in Soul Society, which explains a lot about both their personalities right there.
Sadly, Hiyori wasn't the only one who liked her captain, and Hikifune found herself abruptly promoted ... to the 0th Division, the "Royal Guard". Which meant 12th Division needed a new captain, and Hiyori wasn't qualified for the position yet. (Or she turned it down. Hiyori's not saying which one because either way would make her look bad.) Enter Kisuke Urahara, former third seat of 2nd Division.
Hiyori's relationship with her new captain didn't get off to a very good start. (If Hiyori had known the hell associating with Urahara was going to put her through, she'd have kicked him in the balls with her zanpakutou instead of her foot.) As if his distastefully pleasant attitude wasn't bad enough, his status as a former member of 2nd Division was even worse - Hiyori didn't trust him and didn't like him, and given he belonged to the division most skilled at espionage and backstabbing, she felt justified in disliking him from the start (even if she really just didn't like him because he was replacing Hikifune-taichou).
Matters were not helped when, shortly after becoming captain, Urahara began "redecorating", literally (with a hammer) and figuratively (with an idea). To Hiyori's displeasure, the figurative part involved her assistance. So it was that Hiyori accompanied Urahara on a visit to the Special Detention Center, the so-called "Maggot's Nest", encountered the shinigami Kurotsuchi Mayuri, and learned the true meaning of "withdrawal" from the Gotei 13 (hint: the word is a lie). In the process she discovered what a truly unpleasant and disturbing person her new captain was, something she's never really forgotten since then, much less let him forget.
Fast forward nine years - with Urahara's plan set firmly in motion, the Soul Reaper Research Institute was well on its way to becoming the fixture of the Seireitei that it would one day be under Mayuri's leadership, and unfortunately for her, Hiyori was right there from the beginning. Right in the thick of it. Carrying around lab equipment for Mayuri. Her official position was "Laboratory Head", which supposedly implied having a more active role in the process, but what it ultimately boiled down to was Hiyori carrying around equipment for Mayuri. She hated it so very much. It did, however, pay extra, so it wasn't all bad. (The extra money, in fact, was the only reason she took on the job, but that's supposed to be a secret, so DON'T TELL ANYBODY.) When an emergency envoy from 9th Division came requesting support from 12th for their investigation into the disappearances at Rukongai, however, Hiyori balked at being handed yet another fetch job, only agreeing to it because Urahara convinced her she was the only available trustworthy candidate for it; she'd grown to trust her unpleasant captain's opinion more than she was willing to admit in the nine years they'd been working together up to that point, and didn't want to disappoint him.
(If either of them had realized the consequences of her acceptance at the time - well, they'd have done it anyway, because Urahara was too cautious and Hiyori too headstrong for it to have ended any other way. She wouldn't have left her fellow shinigami to suffer like that, not at all. Not at the time, anyway. Things change.)
She didn't know it, but she was walking into a trap, and one she would never be free of again, one laid by Aizen Sosuke. By the time she arrived the 9th Division was no more, felled by some unknown force. Gone, but not dead - at least, not their former captain and lieutenant, who had instead undergone a horrible transformation - they had become Hollows. Hiyori couldn't leave them to suffer that fate, but neither was she strong enough to overpower Kensei's enhanced strength and stop him.
Which was - unfortunately for everyone involved - when reinforcements arrived, led by Shinji, allowing Hiyori the chance to recover her breath. Not even Kido, the so-called "demon arts", proved strong enough to restrain their former allies, and the shinigami began to realize that subduing their friends would take a great deal more effort than they had hoped.
It was, however, getting harder for Hiyori to catch her breath, not easier.
Like something clawing its way up and out her throat, a constant gnawing that wouldn't go away, only intensifying as the fight wore on, until finally she couldn't keep it back any more and she snarled for Shinji to let her go but of course he didn't understand.
By that point, as far as Hiyori was concerned, it was too late. If she remembers any of what she did - of what happened, after the bone-white mass poured out of her throat and molded itself to her face, to her and the others - she refuses to talk about it. (One hazy moment of coherent recollection - the sight of Shinji, too, undergoing the same transformation, just before a sharp pain in her chest and then darkness took her completely.)
It was only afterwards she learned they weren't even meant to survive, that Aizen planned to kill them all to eliminate the evidence of his experiments so he could continue on with his plans, that Urahara's timely intervention was the only reason they continued to "survive".
Events passed in a haze for her for a long time after that - Urahara's exile to the human world, his refinement of his research into the use of gigai, the creation, initial use and failure of the Hogyoku, and the long years of insensibility trapped behind the feral mask of a Hollow.
The Hogyoku was intended to bridge the gap between Hollow and Shinigami, and eventually Urahara learned how to make it do just that; how he did it isn't something that Hiyori really cares to explain, if she understands it at all. It doesn't matter to her. When she finally regained her senses, she was an outcast, just like the others Urahara had "saved": she would be spared the fate of becoming a Hollow, but while she was insensate Soul Society had judged her worthy only of immediate execution. They would never fit in with humanity, most of them probably didn't even know how at first, but until they could find a way to get out from under the doom Soul Society had passed on them, they were trapped there, whether they remained in their gigai or not.
They never really forgave Urahara for bringing them back only to give them over to a fate almost worse than death, in some ways. They certainly never forgave Aizen for using them as guinea pigs and expendable resources. But it was undeniably true that their fate had, bizarrely, freed them in as many ways as it had also restricted them. Idiosyncrasies that had been somewhat tempered by their roles in Soul Society flowered without the social restrictions to keep them in place. While in Soul Society, they were allies, some perhaps closer than others; under their shared situation, the outcasts became family - or, well, the closest thing they had to it, anyway, which was close enough - "nakama" means a lot of things that family ought to mean but doesn't. And the human world had its share of benefits - cool clothes, hot music, Shonen Jump, and porn. They couldn't hate the new life they'd carved out for themselves, nor the two men responsible for creating it - whether their respect and gratitude extended further remains to be seen, but as Shinji put it, they owed their power "to Urahara ... and to Aizen." Eventually the outcast Shinigami/Hollow hybrids came up with a name for themselves: Vizard, "the masked army". It stuck. Content in their new off-the-radar, abandoned, pariah status, the Vizards watched, and waited, and prepared.
None of this (serious, heavy duty, frightening) shit really stopped Hiyori from beaning the shit out of Shinji with a well-aimed sandal when the mood struck her, though. Some things not even Hollowfication and traumatic relocation can change.
And so it went for roughly a hundred years.
Then Kurosaki Ichigo showed up, that fucker, and the Vizards finally decided to get off their ass and do something, as this was apparently the signal they were waiting for (among several other signals, less important and interesting to the Vizards than Ichigo's existence). "Something" was "convince Ichigo he had no choice but to join them" and "something" didn't entirely work the way they'd planned, because in true Ichigo fashion training him was more than they bargained for and they didn't get much worthwhile results out of it (especially in Hiyori's opinion). Mostly because the little twit had no stamina and the climax always came so soon - but we're discussing Hiyori's training methods for drawing out Ichigo's Hollow side, not sex. It took them nearly 70 minutes to draw out Ichigo's Hollow side and help him get it under control - and he only managed to retain his mask for 10 seconds. The remaining time they associated with him they spent teaching him how to retain his Hollow abilities for longer periods of time. Which, as mentioned, drove Hiyori insane because she was not a very patient teacher and Ichigo's mastery of his abilities was rudimentary and weak at best.
Her mood was not helped by Ichigo's friend Orihime showing up and putting the fear of god, however accidentally she'd done it, into Hacchi, and only worsened further when Hacchi informed the other Vizards that Ichigo's friend's abilities bore disturbing similarities to their own power. There wasn't anything they could do about it, though, except watch and wait. And train the stupid strawberry some more.
Until the next stage of Aizen's plan went into action and all hell broke loose right on their doorstop, and the Vizards had to reveal themselves to the world they hated to keep their territory safe.
After that Ichigo wasn't their problem anymore. So they returned to their status of invisibility, for however long it would last, and prepared. Things were about to get very tense for a short while and they had to be ready.
(Of course, the Vizards being the Vizards, no amount of obligation could stop them from going about their daily routines and being a bunch of weirdo goofballs if they felt like it, and they probably did.)
Basically Hiyori's life, summed up: Get into shit. Survive. Get into more shit. Survive. Hope like hell the next shit doesn't stink as bad as the earlier shit. Get into shit anyway. It's had a very formative effect on her view of life as she knows it.
Elaborate, if necessary: Little is known about the Vizards or their activities between Urahara's "rescuing" them from execution in Soul Society and their outreach towards Ichigo, and frankly they all seem to like it that way. Too much attention, after all, would mean their cover was blown and Soul Society would be breathing down their necks, and they don't want that. The Vizards are a colorful group of characters, but they prefer the shadows and sidelines - where people won't notice them until it's too late. They've got the time to be patient (though honestly you wouldn't know it from talking to most of them). What is for sure is that they've encountered Aizen and Urahara at least once in that time frame. They represent an uncertain but invaluable trump card in Aizen's plan, and whatever role they intend to play in the upcoming confrontation, Urahara probably knows what it is already and has his own reasons for not interfering.
What's for damn sure is that they have their own agenda in play, one not entirely in line with any side's goals, and given their capricious nature it is impossible to be sure where their allegiance will truly lie in the final battle. It's clear enough to an extent - they will not allow themselves to be lorded over by any system of rules or rulemakers. They prize their self above all else, and not even prior commitments are allowed to interfere with that.
Hiyori is the most openly foul of the Vizard, utterly unmannered and coarse, showing blatant disrespect to all manner of authority, civil or otherwise; such personality traits go hand in hand with being as brave and often foolishly rash as she is. She was the Vizard to finally provoke Ichigo into unleashing his Hollow for the first time since failing to protect his friends, after all. She fights dirty and she plays dirty and she's not above escalating casual argument into physical abuse for any reason. Her primary abuse victim will always be Hirako Shinji, but there will always be plenty of targets for her violent interjections. She reserves special antipathy for shinigami and human alike, after all, and if a couple of them end up sidelined because she got a little too rough for their tastes, well, that's their problem, not hers.
Somewhere underneath the anger and rudeness there is a core of loneliness and regret, as there is for all the Vizard, but the only person besides the other Vizards who would understand its presence and meaning is Urahara and she's never really let him get close again after what happened. It's not the kind of loneliness that lends itself well towards reaching out to other people - it's the kind that feeds better on itself, by lashing out, instead.
Part of her name - "saru" - means monkey, after all, and if you're not part of a monkey's tribe and you try to get too close it'll fling its shit right in your face. That's Hiyori's personality in a nutshell, cheerfully flinging her shit in your face just for breathing the same air. She's a natural-born brat and proud of it and she'll never stop being one because it's who she is and she'll cling to that identity even if everything else about her life has never, will never, be the same. She's a tenacious little shit. She has to be.
What are they bringing to Nuadoria?: Her zanpakuto and the clothes on her back. A sparkling personality. The ability to violate a man's anus with her pinky finger. That's about it, really.
Third-Person Sample:
"You can't buy that beer." The clerk over the counter looks at Hiyori with half-lidded eyes and a raised eyebrow and she seriously thinks ventilating his face with her zanpakuto would only make the hideous thing look better. His voice is nasal and whiny and she half expects him to make a "gonk" noise when he laughs. If he's capable of laughing. He looks too stupid for that.
"I'm old enough." She snaps the words out harder than she planned to, because it just makes the kid look at her with something like pity and she came off like she was trying too hard, not like she was serious. "Ring it up alfuckingready, I don't have the time to sit around and argue this."
"Can't, you're not old enough." Little shit's enjoying the power trip, she thinks, and her hand twitches up towards the hilt over her shoulder. "If you keep pressing the issue I'll call security."
"Are you shitting me?" She stares at him and the disbelief on her face is naked as the ass of a baby, she bets. "The security in this store's a fucking joke, don''t bother. I could kill you and they'd stay behind the cameras jerking off to it."
That's why she likes shopping in a shithole like this, anyway. It sucks but it's cheap and she's been coming to this place since the manager was in fucking diapers, it's her store and now there's this new kid being a dick because he's on a power trip and nobody could stop her if she just reached out and took this brat's head off.
Nothing she'd like better, but the beer's going cold. The kid stares at her like she's grown a second head, but she's got better control than that now so he's just frightened of her. Nothing special; he should be, and she smiles as he reaches for the phone to call security, the manager, who the hell cares which one.
She swipes the groceries off the counter in the seconds between his frantic keypad-punching and takes off out the door like a rocket on fire, whooping and shrieking while she crams her score into a bag she grabbed on the way out. Let 'em know what she's done, she doesn't fucking care. They can't stop her. Nobody can.
"Shit, I just saved us a couple, three thousand yen this week." A smile sliiiides its way across her face. "Fuckin' right, you don't ask a girl her age, dipshit."
She laughs to herself low and quiet as she makes her way home.
First-Person Sample: |voice|
--hey Lisa, I got your porn --
[pause.]
--right here. Shit. [the sound of someone setting down a bag of groceries, followed by the low sound of a sword sliding slowly from its scabbard.]
Yeah ... whatever you're fuckin' playing at, I ain't buyin'.