There is a pit on the outskirts of Las Noches. It goes down for leagues in a seemingly endless spiral, whorled like a carefully crafted horn. No one else cares about this veritable cesspool- for its tiers are coated in vomit, slime, and liquid bone. Not even Runuganga, the sand itself, knows of this place, and that is what makes it so perfect for him. Here, D-Roy’s slipshod imitation of Grimmjow-sama’s style is the real thing. Here, he is the King of Trash, the highest of the low. When he barks an order, misshapen Hollows will ooze and scuttle forward as fast as their mangled amalgams of limbs can carry them. Here, he perches himself at the lip of the crevice and surveys his underground domain like a true ruler.
He knows, of course, that the second he bids his fantasy world of undulating, half-formed bodies adieu for the surface, he will once again be nothing but cannon fodder. Perhaps Ilforte will find him skulking about and take out his own rage in the form of a thorough beating. D-Roy bears the blows in an inglorious silence permeated by the occasional yelp of pain when the volatile blond hits something that has not felt the sting of fist or blade in a while. Somewhere, just at the corner of his shut eyes, images begin to form of a scrawny human boy with a tattered scarf squinting to see a machine by the light of a grimy window. A voice calls, and the boy stands up with a start, overbalancing himself in the process. The edge of his scarf is caught in the whirring gears, and the rest makes D-Roy far more ill than any beating another Arrancar could ever administer.
No, no, he’s not like that at all, he insists to himself, trying not to shake his bangs away from his right eye to reveal the scar that damns him. He’s an Arrancar, and any Arrancar is better than a human or a Shinigami. D-Roy just keeps telling himself that, even as he begs to be taken along to the Human World in hopes that for once, he might be able to do something that would earn him a little attention anywhere outside that damned pit. When they scatter, he doesn’t even stop to consider, zeroing in on the first significant reiatsu he can find. The feeling of his finger just inches from the human’s heart is intoxicating- he wants it so badly that he doesn’t notice the Shinigami until the last second. D-Roy yanks his hand back, letting his grin and big words disguise the fact that he is shaking in sudden want of the pumping organ behind that lone trickle of blood on the human’s dark skin. The banter that follows would have pissed him off on any other day, but he’s by far more concerned with the bizarre lust that overcame him. What could some human possibly have that he would want?
Furious, he lunges forward, hand formed into a perfect blade of iron skin. This new Shinigami is even scrawnier than him, and for the first time outside of it, the pit gives him strength. It’s just like knocking down all the puny Hollows that slink around in it, and her image merges with theirs to the point that he feels just like Grimmjow-sama. His reverie is only shattered by the pure white of her sword as it swirls like a vortex of snow, something he’s never seen as an Arrancar, yet instinctively knows. The ice crackles and begins to climb up his legs, the cold even more shocking than he knows the chill of his own skin to be. Swearing, he breaks free and shoots into the skies, elated for the few milliseconds it takes for him to transition from ground to air. The ring of ice twinkles from below like a pair of eyes, watching him with a coy smile. Before he can so much as finish charging his Cero, it shoots upwards and encases him like a punch to the gut.
Just as the ice fractures, he sees the human boy staring back in one of its shards, not at him, but at a smiling girl his age. She calls out, and just as the all-too-familiar scene of the scarf catching in the machinery begins, D-Roy and the pillar of ice shatter into a substance somewhere between chimney soot and stardust.
So, everyone knows just how much I love D-Roy, in all his appearing-then-dying glory. It was only a matter of time before I finally got my lazy arse around to writing fic for him. A few notes: the pit being referenced is shown waaaaay back in chapter 25 when Grand Fisher comes back to HM. Yes, D-Roy was the first Arrancar ever shown. Secondly, I stuffed in a bit of my headcanon about his human life and death. Basically, he was a worker in a London factory during the Industrial Revolution- just another disposable, unskilled labourer. He was doing whatever when the girl of his dreams, the only one who ever noticed him as a person, waved hello or something. He stood up, his scarf (otherwise known as those teal bandages on his mask) got caught in the machine, and... Need I say more? People actually died this way, and it was not a pretty sight. So his soul took to haunting her, only to watch her grow older somehow, get married, and forget him entirely- this leading to his Hollowfication. ...Yes, I do put thought into these things. I have a theory for a good number of the Arrancar. xD