Post by Akito on Aug 28, 2021 1:28:57 GMT -8
Shinigami
That I might understand the best I can
How bold I was, Could Be
Will Be, Still Am
By God, Still Am
That I might understand the best I can
How bold I was, Could Be
Will Be, Still Am
By God, Still Am
Alias: Among his more personable peers Aki is a rather common shortening of his name, a fewer subset referring to him as “Red” after his hair color. Happily, he will answer to either or most other nicknames. Those names given to him mockingly need not be given the attention their speakers so desperately seem to need, though.
Chronological Age: Unknown
Biological Age: Appearing in his mid twenties certain expressions add an air of youth or age depending on the context. Most often he has a habit of tapping his chin when considering something with a wide-eyed enthusiasm that is particularly childish.
Division and Rank: 7th Division Recruit
Personality: Quaint and Quiet, soft spoken but not mild. Akito tries but not always succeeds in thinking before he speaks and tries to do so with his heart guiding the words chosen. He tries his best to be a gentle, kind person and often can appear goofy or in rarer moment innocent. His time, often, is spent out in the city proper reveling in the people that inhabit it or the children that he seems to target him for their games and his willingness to go along with them. He indulges in hobbies that reveal a creative nature and insight that while not intelligence does sometimes surprise others. These are as he is known and shares even in those fewer, singular private moments with others.
In these ways, manner, and approach to his duties it is easy to see a weak man. Mercy and Patience share a common ground, and wisdoms that ought not to be ignored.
Do not wake the Lion.
Physical Info
-The One Below All-
-The One Below All-
Hair: Given how easily it is to identify Akito at a distance he isn’t much use in stealthy situations. He doesn’t fuss with his hair overmuch; the wavy crimson length hangs loose and to the middle of his back, coincidentally makes him extremely easy to pick out while on patrol. The children of the Rukongai quickly realized this and use that fact to do as children are wont to regardless of how much he (falsely) protests their treatment.
Build: Aki does not cut an imposing figure, really. His height (5’9) is perfectly average and his physique is a slender one, perhaps a little undernourished. He strikes a balance between lean hunger and muscle tone that he seems perfectly content with. His limbs are a little longer than typical but otherwise there is little notable about the conditioning of his body besides, perhaps, being a little pale.
Uniform/Clothing: His uniform aside, which has little in the way of accents currently besides a few ribbons or little trinkets from his patrolling and his haori when he can get away with it, he tends to feel most at ease in a style that lends itself more to the edo period or those close to it. Deeper colors, or shades of blue, are preferred but far from his only palette in his dressing room. The lack of difference in style might detract from such things. There is also the obviousness of his forearms and fingers mostly taped (and poorly executed at that) which he was allowed the dispensation for based on medical reasons.
He does favor, as said, a haori a few shades off of his hair color that has a patterned trim in dark gold and the already present color of the thigh length jacket.
Gigai: While not having had a reason to use it as of yet they insisted that he be…fitted, if that is the word for such an odd thing, for one should he need to visit the mortal realms. Stylistically he chose two sets depending upon whatever gods forsaken reason that stand at different ends of the spectrum.
Again he seems to favor a particular piece, a parrish-blue tailed waistcoat that he makes fashionable use of either way and runs to knee length to the sides of his thighs.
When choosing otherwise he approaches a fairly standard acceptance for suits in his own way. His vest of course, a white dress shirt, dress shoes, and slacks to match the color of his vest. Rather he opts out of a jacket and instead chooses to roll up the sleeves on the dress shirt and, in this way, seems someone in their Sunday best preparing for a long and arduous labor than the relaxed businessmen that otherwise seems favored by certain peers. Oddly, while a gigai temporarily allows him otherwise to be unconcerned with it, he chooses to wrap his forearms and hands as he does with his typical uniform.
Extras: There’s no getting around certain physical aspects when it comes to Akito. There is his ever present limp, which he seems acclimated enough to not notice or concern himself with even when pointed out. It does slow him down, but his duties (as he carries them out) rarely require speed. There is also the matter of the burns. The cause of his limp, his left leg, is the most obviously damaged. The scarring runs from below his ankle to up past his hip on that side of his body. To a lesser extent there are erratic patches that dot his body here or there but none as ill treated or problematic as those to his arms. Infection worked its harm and he lacks any real resolution to the damage it caused save management. Salved bandaging and slow, if awkward treatments are often the best outcome in that regard.
Spiritual Info
-And The One Above All-
-And The One Above All-
Zanpakuto: Sealed, his blade is often as noticeable as he is, but not for the use of a weapon. In many ways it looks a straightened and well crafted staff of polished wood that one might miss the bits of embossed metal on that form the end cap, pommel, and ferrule that would identify it as a blade. Lacking a tsuba or a curve it is not a typical katana used by shinigami but an straight and solidly built odachi that, from tip to pommel, is only slightly shorter than its’ wielder.
Zanpakuto Spirit: Akito has never seen the blade spirit. He hears it clearly, wearily and as sweet a voice that some times is only barely different than his own. Others it is clarion, a demanding and omniscient thing that comes not as a bellow or a rueful cry, but as a god does to those it deigns speak. He hears it as a rattle of chains, from the depths of his inner world, always behind him and never before. And in each aspect the words that come unbidden are always the same.
“Speak the words and be free.”
Inner World: Difficult to describe in anything but feelings. It is darkness, not empty, but always looming, always obscuring the paths and structure that house it almost always. Its floors are uncomfortable, never allowing one to settle in a spot too long for the rocks and sharp sensations that prick and prod. In its’ shade, buildings perhaps, never complete but never absent of a presence. And always there feels to be more, higher, some place that cannot be reached unless the crumbling and craggy walls can be surmounted.
Not always. Sometimes there is light. By gods is there light, a sickly blinding radiance that cannot be looked past or dismissed. The sound of chains, always behind and never before, crumple to the floor in a sound of metal coiling against a material that is not stone and in that terrible roaring moment there is weightlessness and bliss in that otherwise cavernous place.
Power: Not spoken lightly, and even when choosing to, Akito almost never uses the full name of his spirit and opts instead for a shorter title if he must use it at all. The half-awake power is still preferable to the fullness of its strength and even if not in that glory it still is pleased enough to be used. When called a small grouping of white embers appear in the general area around Akito. In the half awake state they must be given direction with the released blade but to compare the celestial fire to a simple spark is a grave underestimation. The tiny stars are alive as much as anything and drawn to lifeblood and spiritual matter. Fully awakened they will seek out targets independently and envelop them in roiling napalm like waves of white-black fire upon contact as opposed to the severe if quickly resolved burns of the half-release.
Historical Info
You’re the Words I Promise I don’t mean
You’re the Words I Promise I don’t mean
The Past:
One cannot miss or recall a thing they are empty of. Akito, to his best remembrance and to the probing of others, accepts he became aware of himself one day on the edges of the Kouya and without a beat started towards the city. Cracks in the foundation welcomed him inward into the lower districts where acclimation was a quick and violent thing. A desire for food had led him into the depths, and until the moment came he needed it he hadn’t even been aware of the weapon in his hands. Inevitability deprived him of such disregard. He took, to live and to be, and did so without weighing morality in doing so. Even his name was taken. He has the privilege to lament now that the man whom had it no longer needed it.
Little wonder then when his eventual Division sought him out. It did not go well, as first meetings go. He reacted as he had learned, not feral but more instinct than man. And when one released their blade in order to end the resulting fight he too, mimicked the action though the words were his own and the name is one he refuses to speak so casually ever again. The resulting blaze was kind to neither him nor those involved, nor the residents that were unlucky enough to be near it. While startled, wounded, it was the gravity of what went on around them and the toll that moved Akito then. It may have been what redeemed in him some ways when casting the sword away he flung himself into the fires to undo as much of the damage he was responsible for.
Survival had not bred cruelty into him, as much as it tried. Not for those that had done no wrong, at least.
Even the initiating squad, intending only to drive them off at first, was one of his foremost concerns. Things had escalated too quickly without his meaning to, and he did not want their deaths any more than any other. He paid his price, to the point that wounds and exhaustion claimed him before the situation could be resolved. The only surprise was that he woke up at all. He had only stories about the shinigami before that moment, and unsurprisingly few of them were nice ones in the lower quarters. True, it did involve some imprisonment for a time and a number of unpleasant situations and conversations but they were…not what he had been told.
It took time to rehabilitate him from what he was to what he would be, ease him into the man he is now. A large part in thanks to the efforts of those he now works with. Some may not forget his beginnings but they can be forgiven for that even if he can’t. Beyond those exceptions he has enjoyed their company from his recruitment to his current simple existence.
It all seems distant and fuzzy anymore; not that he dwells on those moments much more than anything else. There is only the present and the duty that he has made such a primary part of his life. Even those parts he dislikes most of it are for a good cause more acceptable than drove him initially. In that he has found a sort of contentment that is all too elusive.