Post by Kufuku Wasureo on Aug 11, 2021 9:20:27 GMT -8
Shinigami
Basic Info
~Balance Through Order~
Name: Kufuku Wasureo | Aliases: Kufu, Rei, Wasu, KibaChronological Age: 50
Biological Age: Late Twenties
Physical Info
~Order Through Law~
Hair: In low light, Rei's hair appears black, though when expose to anything stronger than a single candle, it is revealed to be a very deep blue. He generally does not keep it styled in any particular manner, simply pushing it back out of his face to fall behind him in an unkempt mane. When he does require a little more control in his hairstyle however, he will take the longest locks and weave them together in a braid that will be kept over his shoulder. Oddly enough he also lets some of it fall into his face to one side which mostly conceals one of his eyes. This style is most often adopted when he must inhabit a gigai. Whether up or down though, he sometimes takes to wearing small hair clips with either flower or bone motifs in his hair.
Build: Rei is a fair height at 178 cm, and fills out his frame fairly well with muscle. He does still tend towards the lighter side for his height though at only 72 kg. This isn't to say he's starving himself to achieve the shredded look he sees some of the other recruits of more combat oriented divisions strive for. He has a healthy amount of fat under the skin which keeps his musculature mostly hidden unless he's expressly exerting himself.
Uniform/Clothing: For the moment, much to his annoyance, Rei has to keep to the dress code when it comes to his uniform. No cosmetic alterations, at least none that he leaves visible on the surface. Hidden on his undershirt over his heart is a small sewn in design of flowers around a skull of an unknown creature. Whenever asked about the design, unless caught with it by a superior, he will say he did it himself, and that it just feels right. If caught by a superior, he will state that his little sister does it without his knowledge and he has been unable to prevent her from doing so but will remove it as soon as he is dismissed.
When off the clock, Rei generally spends his time in the most casual of outfits that he has observed out in the world of the living. Namely, he will throw on some jeans and nothing else unless he plans on going out into the Rukongai. And even then this will only see the addition of a plain tee. He very deliberately refuses to wear socks or shoes of any sort in his off hours, and sometimes even when he is on the clock if he thinks he can get away with it. Which isn't often in a lab.
Gigai: As a gigai is meant to be a disguise, while it looks much like Rei, he does have a few alterations to make it seem like a wholly different person from who he really is. In it he wears glasses, he almost always has his hair braided, and he wears very clean, tidy, and well pressed clothes. Usually some black slacks, a white dress shirt, and a vest with a red front and black back. He will even wear socks and very nicely shined shoes. He despises being in the gigai, but is always able to tolerate it for any extended length of time because he knows he can jump out of it whenever he needs to.
Extras: There are two almost excessively striking features which will mark Rei out from a crowd. The first are his scars, mainly along his arms and chest, though he has one situated right across the bridge of his nose. These are all from before he joined the Gotei Thirteen, and thus are beyond most commonly employed healing techniques to remove. And even if they could be, he would not allow it. The one place scars are wholly absent from is his back, and any injuries suffered there are given the most attention if he has his way.
The far more apparent thing to set Rei apart from the general populace are his tattoos. Another remnant of his time in the Rukongai, the tattoos mark him out as having belonged to one of the small gangs that try to snatch up any spiritually potent individuals. Where some see them as a shameful reminder of an ignoble past, and might even go so far as to encourage him to conceal them, Rei refuses. The tattoos show who he once was, which informs on who he is today. If he did not have them visible, he would not be acting as himself.
Spiritual Info
~Law Through Society~
Zanpakuto: For soon to be obvious reasons, the true appearance of Rei's zanpakutou is kept under wraps. It is not so much a tightly guarded secret as he is sure his captain has shared the details of what was done to his weapon with the other captains. However, given the reverence with which some people might hold the zanpakuto, Rei does not go about telling just anyone. At least not anyone he doesn't find interesting. And even then he does not reveal its true capabilities frivolously. Only when he is alone with someone he intends to kill or knows can keep a secret will he call out his weapon's true name.
To put it simply, Rei's zanpakuto has been grafted to his very bones. Melted down after fully bonding with him and applied to his skeleton in a highly experimental procedure with the goal of increasing synchronicity between spirit and wielder. At least, this is what he told his captain. And it wasn't fully wrong, it was with the goal of increasing synchronicity, he just failed to disclose that it was for the purpose of increasing his own synchronicity. To Rei, it just didn't feel right to have a source of power that was not physically a part of him, and thus the thesis, the research, the proposal and the volunteer.
To keep up appearances, he does still carry around a simple blade of steel with a customized guard inscribed with the image of a crescent moon.
Zanpakuto Spirit: 餓鬼 | Gaki, Hungry Ghost / Hollow - Hollow does not often make a visible appearance to Rei. Instead, within the inner world, it will most often manifest as a whisper on the wind. It will whisper advice, past exploits, knowledge hidden by thousands, maybe millions of years, but it will always be just too faint for Rei to make out completely. This leaves him to only go on what he can observe, infer, and understand on both an academic and instinctual level. For some reason this pleases Hollow, particularly the instinctive part.
When it does choose to show itself, Hollow never maintains a consistent appearance. The only uniting factors between the myraid of forms is a white, skull-like mask, and a hole that carves clear through the body visible somewhere on the head or torso. Hollow has shown itself as a massive falcon creature that can strike and kill in one fell swoop at high speed, an ape creature that could rip a limb clear off the body as easily as a man tears a sheet of paper, and even a massive constricting serpent that also revealed at the end that it had deadly venom.
Hollow provides no direct guidance to Rei. When it manifests physically before him, it is always silent, and it will never directly comment on his current thoughts and situations when it is a whisper on the wind. He can ask the wind questions all he likes, but they will never answer him. Only carry his words right back to him after some time and he has already forgotten. And as for the beasts, they are little better, merely acting as their instinct dictate. Defending their territory and acquiring food. If he is killed by a beast, he wakes back up in that instant on the sands with not but the wind for company once more. However, if he overcomes the beast, then though he may not get answers, the winds will be just a little bit clearer for a little bit longer,
Inner World: A shifting landscape of sand, dead trees, and an encompassing black sky with two unmoving moons that hang above. In this world there is no sound save for the blowing of the wind which moves the sands, and there are no colors save for two sources. One's eyes and one's blood. You could walk for hours and feel like you've gotten nowhere, or take a few steps and look up to see that the moon is impossibly closer to you than when you last looked. Sometimes one might see the glimmer of light off in the distance, and feel the wind at their back as they pursue it, moving faster and faster the longer they pursue it. Other times it will be much the opposite. The wind will push, the sand will bite, or perhaps there will be something far worse in your way and the only way to get past is to take it down. But yet there is still the allure of that light, and if it wasn't worth pursuing, why would you even take your first step?
Historical Info
~Society Through Death~
The Past:
"You know that feeling you get in a dream? Where you know on some instinctual level that you're just in a dream because some thing doesn't feel totally right? I've never felt that when asleep."
By the time those first "pure souls" managed to sally forth from their court to do something about those entities that seemed to spring from nowhere to fall upon them, that thing was old, and but one of many. But still the first. He could speak, if he could be bothered. Had a name, if he remembered it. His shape resembled that of the shaman that in life he had hoped would see his body off to the other side, whatever it held, but upon his head was the skull of a great cat, with a smaller feline mask hidden within the mouth from which he looked out on the world. None could suffer his wrath, should it be roused, but he could not be suffered to live by those that came after him. They wanted his power. Either for themselves, or spread back into the cycle of death and rebirth. Millions of souls by that point, all returned to where they "rightfully belonged". On that life, his eyes closed. Hunger is what defines all things, in one way or another. Hunger for sustenance. Hunger for shelter. Safety. Progeny. Life itself. And yet nothing defines a being quite so much as it does for the hollows. That horrible, all consuming thing that devours all that they were and leaves but the barest scraps from which they might try to put together something approaching a new sense of self. Or perhaps they will simply lose to that hunger, and be nothing more than a beast, roaming to and fro and consuming all that falls along its path until nothing remains. It was this hunger that no doubt defined the first hollow to walk the lands of the living and the dead, and it is this hunger which permeates Rei's earliest memories. He does not see much at first. Just the dark. He feels the cold against his side from the rolling wind, and yet he doesn't. The scent of char and blood fills him and is consumed by the hunger. He is already moving, towards the scent, and towards the light. He crests a hill, and there, surrounding a mote of light and heat are three creatures. There is recognition for a moment before that too is consumed. Already he is coiling, tigtening, then springing and reaching out, his body and mind extensions of the gnawing hunger for souls.
These three men, lost far from their tribe and near starving do not see the shadowed beast with mask of bone cresting the hill at their backs. The chill that hits them only encourages them to pull their fur cloaks closer around their bodies, little warmed by the extra they took from their missing fourth companion they struck down mere hours ago so that they might not have to share his kill with him. One did notice the man to his left drop back as though taken by sleep in an instant, and he saw the shape and size of the phantom pawprint before him in the moment it snuffed out their fire.
These three men, lost far from their tribe and near starving do not see the shadowed beast with mask of bone cresting the hill at their backs. The chill that hits them only encourages them to pull their fur cloaks closer around their bodies, little warmed by the extra they took from their missing fourth companion they struck down mere hours ago so that they might not have to share his kill with him. One did notice the man to his left drop back as though taken by sleep in an instant, and he saw the shape and size of the phantom pawprint before him in the moment it snuffed out their fire.
And then once more, they opened. He, no it, was different. A different beast. A different mask. A different power. The hunger though, the hunger was the same. It knew itself. Preserved itself. Where it did not exist was a black void in the mind, for the hunger only retained those things attached to it at the time it was first snuffed out. And so it would be. Hunger, and then nothing. Hunger, and then nothing. At times he might even move from hunger to hunger. If he was too weak and consumed by another of his kind, his younger brethren, then he would blink, and wake again, looking down upon the swiftly disintegrating remains of the shell he'd once inhabited. He fell by fire, by steel, by man and by spirit. He was a he, a she, an it, a they, a multitude and always so very, very alone. He lost track of the names, would use an old one where the current form had no attachment to it. While man decided what version of the singular god was the correct one, he decided on a singular name. A title, if anything. He was the first, he was certain. There was so long with the hunger that the souls of men and pure ones could not suffice and yet he had nothing better to eat. He was the first, and one who stood above all as the first was the king, yes? So he would be the king. The King of Hungry Ghosts.
And then he, or she at the time, fell to a shinigami's blade fifty years ago. She had been running. Getting too close to that point again. The point where the lessers would amass to hunt her. The Witch Doctor she called it. Missing limbs. Bleeding. She could recover, but she needed to eat first. Humans were weak, but she had learned much of them over the whole of their existence. Not to be underestimated, and some among them would sate her. Heal her. She had barely taken a step when the blade came down as an executioner's axe. Perhaps poor luck. Perhaps they were waiting. Perhaps they had been following her. The fact remained that her eyes closed as they had so many times before, but not without a smile. She knew she would wake again. She would feel the hun-
"Why do I eat so much? Why wouldn't I? This is my proof. Proof I'm alive. Proof I exist. Proof this all isn't some big dream I need to wake up from."
Fifty years ago, a soul appeared in the rukongai with the distinguishing features of raven black hair and brilliant, almost jewel like red eyes. Nearby, other boys were playing with a ball, kicking, throwing, and carrying it back and forth in some inscrutable pattern. The boy felt . . . curious. He wanted to know. More than who he was, where he was, or what his life was to be, he wanted to know about this game, and about the ones playing it. But he also felt afraid. Of what, he could not say, but then he felt the wind on his back and heard something like a whisper just beyond his left ear. He could not make out all the words but "go" was among them, so he did.
It was some thirty years before Rei first felt the gnawing of hunger in his gut. He heard a name in a dream, or at least something he thought was his name. He'd found a family, or little sister rather, in Suki, a girl that looked a little younger than him even if she said she'd been hanging around the Rukongai much longer. They didn't have much, but with sleight of hand and honest work, they put together a cozy little place that they could return to every night to sleep in safety. Safety lost when Rei reached out, thinking with his gut more than his head, to snatch and scarf down the pork bun of a passing gangster. His ribs were starting to crack from the kicks he received from the gangster and his friends before their boss called them off. They made him an offer, and he took it. Rei was curious, not about the gangters. He had learned of them already in those thirty years, and while they had him in the dirt, he already knew what would happen. Join them, he'd get food, and his sister would be left alone.
No, his curiosity was about something far more important than gangsters. It was about the hunger, and why it felt like something missing had finally clicked into place and made the world real.
At first, he worried for his sister when he wasn't around, and made sure to teach her all the places to attack and to not stop fighting for even a moment. After all, he understood gangsters. It wasn't that she never had to use what Rei taught her, even with how often he managed to head things off at the pass. It was that when she finally did, he realized he never had to worry. At least it explained where all his scraps went. He hadn't been eating them in his sleep after all.
Once hunger took hold, growth was rapid. Of power, of mind, and of body. Rei and Suki were the left and right hands of the boss when the shinigami cracked down on their gang. Neither of the siblings resisted, were restrained, and brought in. Before even having their options laid out before them, they agreed to the one they'd hoped for. Enrollment into the Academy, and eventually recruitment into the Thirteen Court Guard Squads. Suki did not have nearly the hunger of her brother. She had further to climb in terms of power, and took the lessons to heart, as well as the different manners of the seireitei. Rei, on the other hand, had grown far more in power. At once brash and young and old and set in his ways, he would power through whatever task was in front of him, finding his own way to the right results, even if it wasn't the proper means. It was here in the academy that he was exposed to books, and a different sort of hunger took over him. He had always been curious and would be more than happy to talk with someone who knew more than he did in the Rukongai. He and Suki had talked well into the night for months after they decided to become family, her lessons on everything she knew abut the world only coming to a close when one or the both of them passed out. And yet the Academy taught him there was so much more to know, so much even his sister hadn't known, and it was not uncommon for Rei to get in trouble for stealing large volumes of books from the library.
Five years ago he was accepted into the Twelfth Division, where his hunger to learn and research could truly be put to use. Some thought he was a shoe in for the eleventh, especially given his background, but the want to know won out over any battle lust he felt. He had completed his bond with his weapon, but felt there was something wrong. In his dreams, the whisper of the wind was wholly inscrutable now. The beasts that had hounded him in his youth that he had begun to fight back against were now only ever seen from a great distance. Even when he ran to start the engagement with them, he could never get any closer. Acquiring his weapon, pooling the power of his soul into something other than himself had weakened a connection that had existed since he'd first opened his eyes. He was sure of it. So he studied, and researched. He thought of it as a man might, but could not get anywhere.
And then he saw his first hollow. Out on a patrol, accidentally mistaken for part of the eleventh, he hunted his first beast. And as he watched it, fought it, killed it, he had never felt hungrier. He had never felt more awkward with a blade in hand where the hollow moved about and attacked so fluidly with limbs that were its weapons. As it laid dead before him, the hunger was not subdued, and he thought about it on instinct and finally he understood.
"A beast's fangs belong in its maw, not in its hand."
One year ago Rei finally finished his thesis. He had the research, the numbers, the annotations, and the hypothesis. He put it up, and he volunteered to be the one to undergo the procedure. He waited. And he waited. And he waited longer still. Six months ago he woke in a hospital bed with vague memories of receiving a letter the previous day. His body didn't feel much heavier, but there was a notable change. But like the hunger, it felt right. There was a name upon his lips, and he stood to walk over to the mirror of his bathroom and speak it. He watched the red of his eyes shimmer to gold, the slow crawl of his tattoo over his body to form a blackened skeleton upon his skin. He felt the sink start to give way under his grip, and snapped back to reality, sealing away his blade's- Snapshot: N/A
