[Shinigami] Watanabe, Ichiro

Watanabe, Ichiro
SHINIGAMI
Lieutenant of the Sixth Division


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Personnel File
Age:
340
Birthday: 07/03/1134
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Japanese

Physical Specifications
Height and Weight:
1.8 meters
Eyes: Dark brown
Hair: Black
General Appearance: Ichiro is a slim man, but wiry. His thin face is overhung by a few strands of his long, smooth black hair while the rest is tied back in a traditional ponytail: "traditional" is a common word people use to describe him. His hairstyle is archaic, his face unadorned by white powder or pigment, his dress formal and old. He looks like he could have walked out of a Samurai's painting--anachronistic even for the age he finds himself in. His slender eyes stare with an even, measured distaste that sometimes curls the edges of his thin lips.

Psychological Profile
Ichiro has a steadfast, almost religious zeal towards the institute of law and the lessons of yesteryear: "the rules," he's fond of extolling, "were made by people far less foolish, far more farsighted than we." Even the way he speaks conjures images of mothballs, of rotting paper turning to dust at a touch. He seems too boring a man to remain alive--no one in his Division has a charming or funny story about him, not even when alcohol loosens their tongues. He has few friends, and small wonder: no one likes to be lectured. He has no lovers, and that too is unsurprising... though his lips can form romantic words, their sound is dull and toneless. He is a wilting flower of a man with an iron spine, and his anger is a fearsome thing to behold. His solitary cause is his family--and at a greater view, the Soul Society. He will not see it harmed or even tarnished.
Only one sentimental hobby lends his personality a little color: the man arranges flowers.

Zanpakutō File
Zanpakutō Spirit:
Aiko is a silent child, the kind of girl any solemn family would be happy to never have cause to mention. She doesn't speak--or if she does, she never has to Ichiro--she doesn't blink, and she doesn't laugh. Thick black hair rings her face in a decidedly unfashionable cut, more appropriate for a dress-up doll than a (metaphorically) flesh-and-blood girl of... what, nine? Ten?
She wears a pink kimono with beautiful flower embroidery, but seems certainly too dull to match it: the bright colors appear to suck the color from her cheeks, like it shines brighter than she ever could. Despite her silence, Aiko is known to smile from time to time: she loves to play games, and cherishes anyone who makes time to do so with her. Her wielder, of course, does not appear on this list.

Inner World Aiko's inner world, or the world inside Ichiro she inhabits, is a severe place. It seems all a maze of shoji screens, half their panels torn or ripped. Now and then a three-tatami room can be found with a torn scroll defaced at the shomen and an unadorned table free of food, drink, or entertainment. If you crane your head and cup your ear, now and then fish can be heard splashing--or a shishi-odoshi clattering as it fills with water--but these infrequent calls are impossible to follow. They grow more distant as they are pursued, until they maddeningly reappear in a wholly different direction.

Sealed Zanpakutō Ichiro's blade is a simple one: steel, unadorned, crudely ground. It lacks every refinement he boasts, and seems ready to snap should it block a strong enough blow. The saya is of black, lacquered wood with a butterfly etched carefully on it; the tsuka, a wrapped piece of wood. The ito is a wrap of dark blue fabric torn into a long strip.

Shikai Appearance
"Play, Aiko."

When the release phrase is spoken, a whorl of red threads blooms from the kashira, the pommel of the sword. They move and sway lazily, seemingly affected by a straying breeze--and yet hardly at all by the movement of the sword or the ambient wind.

Shikai Abilities: Aiko is a playful spirit. With the mind of a child she envisions a clash--even a no-quarter, bloody deathmatch--as a lighthearted playroom game. Her favorite game is yubikiri; accordingly, she tugs Ichiro and his opponent into a game of swears. When each performs an attack on the other, they must make a promise--even a trivial one, and as a result a red thread from the kashira binds to their pinky finger. During the fight, these promises accrue: if one is ever broken, or if a fighter fails to provide a new promise before a strike, their mouth and throat fills with needles.
Ichiro always begins this game the same way: "I solemnly swear I shall instruct you fully as to our game."

Documented History
Prologue

There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between a royal successor and a child of the emperor with no line to ascension, as wide as the distance between that of a common laborer and a king. Ichiro was born by another name as the son of the Emperor in the late Heian period of Imperial Japan--but there were reasons, too numerous to count, why he would never hold power. His mother, perhaps, was of the wrong stock. His birth, perhaps, had been ill-portended. His conception, perhaps, had occurred under the wrong moon, or the wrong star, or on the wrong bed, or during a different consort's meteoric rise...
these excuses were given to him before he could even read, before he understood their import. But he had already learned their significance. These excuses meant an early life of abandonment, given cursory education and then left well enough alone to roam the royal palace--the parts of it he was allowed in--to beg his mother's time, and to catch glimpses of a place of wonder on the other side of the walls.

First, he yearned for the kind of revelry he was able to catch colorful glimpses of. How could he not? He wore tattered clothes and ate boiled meat while those in the courtyard over the wall of his small palace adjoinment feasted on sizzling prawns and roasted duck. They wiped the fat on their silken robes and laughed uproariously, then beckoned for a servant--luckier still than Ichiro--to bring them a change of clothes. As a growing boy he dreamed of the slender, paint-faced women who flounced and fluttered like butterflies, and wished with all his might to be one of the lounging men who pinched their sleeves and tugged them into a whirl, or into a kiss, or into their rooms...

At last, he came to hate them.

There was nothing for Ichiro there, in the palace, and he was far from the only one left listless by the decadent age of the late Heian. When he was given the opportunity to leave this place of empty comfort to join the mercenary families made up of other disenfranchised nobles, he seized it like a lifeline. And indeed, the mercenary life gave him comfort, though in those days they were scarcely better than brigands. There in the Taira clan Ichiro began to make a name for himself. He was a footsolder first, and would have been something more had he survived the first of the clashes with the Minamoto. What is there to say about the way he died? Men die, good and bad, at the end of a spear or under the edge of a blade. Sometimes they die before they even see battle, and the specter of pestilence seizes those who escape death at the hands of an enemy...

Relevant Background
Ichiro was born into the Watanabe family at the apex of its power, some three hundred years ago. Although austere, even Spartan, they gave Ichiro what he wanted--the opportunity to be someone. His meteoric rise through the family's internal power squabbles, his peerless marks in the Shin'ō Academy, and his fervent appeal to join the Sixth Division are all tales from a very long time ago, now. He tends not to linger on others' minds: like a light fixture that never flickers, that never needs replacing, he simply fulfills his role. He considers it the height of skill to anticipate what is needed and complete it before the need is even discovered--and so perhaps some of the luxuries you have enjoyed in the Soul Society, or the safety of it, might be thanks at least in part to him.

Whispers do suggest he might, at some point, seek to exceed his station--the leadership of the Sixth is a platform to effect a great deal of change, after all. But despite his searing ambition, he has never once made a play for the seat.
Perhaps he never will.
 
Lieutenant,
Sixth Division
Reiatsu
180
Strength
40
Defense
60
Speed
50
Spirit
30
Stats, Skills, and Powers
Stats
Reiatsu: 180
Strength: 40
Defense: 60
Speed: 50
Spirit: 30

Skills
Weapon Proficiency: Journeyman
Hakuda: Expert
Hohō: Journeyman
Reiatsu Perception: Novice
Zanpakutō Resonance: Novice

Releases
Shikai: KNOWN
Bankai: UNKNOWN
 
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