First Name: elvensong
No Current Last Name (she can be quirky)
Age: 143 in the Manga timeline, (+300 for this forum)
Height: 5’6”
Weight: 135 lbs.
Female
Personality:
She is generally upbeat. However, this has often concealed a secret fear that she isn’t ‘good enough’. She was naturally introverted, but her travels through the Soul Society in search of her family eventually gave her enough practice at speaking to strangers that she no longer was shy. While not brilliant, she is intelligent, and leans more on her mental abilities than on her physical skills in combat. She tends to be analytical in all areas of her life.
In a task, she has the capacity to lose sight of the big picture if she becomes overly invested in a specific goal. But she’s made progress against that flaw and falls prey to it only under extreme stress.
Conversely, that ‘flaw’ has also given elven a tremendous ability to apply herself to a given task. She has used this trait to exceed her reach on quite a few occasions, and went into overdrive during her Academy days. Persistence brought to her the spells that others had mastered through natural affinity... and a totally unprecedented willingness to exercise (complete with endless internal complaints and predictions of imminent death, to liven the tedium) and train in combat skills gave her a respectable and unexpected level of skill in that area. She has developed an interest in acrobatics with gratifying success, to compliment her martial arts training. Due to all those experiences, she’s finally begun to wonder if there isn’t much more to her, buried inside. With that in mind she has begun to challenge herself more and more in hopes of discovering her true reach.
She is tidy, but not fanatically so. She can be swayed by others from her natural course or her instincts due to a desire to please them, but has unbending will when it comes to issues that she believes ‘matter’, especially matters of honor. On occasion, this has vastly surprised someone who’d believed elven was an easy mark!
Relating to others, she is naturally empathic, and had struggled in her early years from occasional abuses of her generous nature. Each time she picked herself up and moved on in life with the determination to never make the same mistake again. Though she secretly grieves the loss of innocence each time, for far too long. Yet, out of concern for the innocent she knows will represent the majority of those she will meet over time, she works hard to adjust her manner in a way that does not make her hard, cruel or insensitive. She will pick at the event in her mind for a few months or years until she believes she understands it fully, from her perspective and from the other person’s perspective as well... and determines with the lightest touch she can manage which errors she made and needs to correct... or personality flaws to be wary of in others. Worse for her than those issues, however, was an inability to find another person who was willing to offer her the intimate friendship and unswerving loyalty she offered others. She has since lowered her expectations, and generally avoided becoming too intense. She’s found much better luck in friends since she did so.
She does not often grow angry, even towards abusers. However, once she does lose her temper she is forced to grapple with another flaw. She does not easily nor lightly forgive. That has caused her to be very careful in allowing her temper to take her over.
And, oddly enough, that care has led her to adopt a rather callous attitude towards the rare few who’ve managed to break that easy-going temperament... in her mind, if they are warped enough and persistent enough to make HER angry, then they DESERVE what they get! It should be said, this place is reserved for people who are determinedly cruel or dismissive of herself and (especially) of others. It generally takes years and unremitting effort to win such a position in her heart... or a particularly heinous betrayal. However generous, positive or kind her personality might be naturally, once you’ve got the bad side of her she can act just as powerfully to the negative. Dismissive, resentful, aggressive, cutting and even cruel. Her natural empathy remains in effect towards those people, and it gives her uncanny insight into the best ways to cast that person into self-doubt or confusion, and she wields it with cheerful abandon and absolutely no guilt.
She has a rather philosophical bent, and believes that everyone’s overriding purpose is to make the world a better place. She reluctantly accepts that some people are just not interested in that world though, and she is not naïve about it. She has decided it is necessary to stand up to evil and to unkindness.
In her childhood, that philosophical bent had given her a rather formal and oddly solemn personality, but her parents had challenged her to develop a sense of humor and she has made that gift of lightness a cornerstone of her personality since then. It amuses her that some people have assumed she is a bubble-head or immature because of it.
She enjoys hobbies of reading, writing and cross-stitch. Upon learning she had won a position in Division 10, she had designed and executed a sampler as a gift to Division 10 barracks, reading “#10 is #1!” and featuring wings of ice (symbolizing their captain) over the slogan, and an entwined Zanpakuto garland (symbolizing their squad) surrounding the bold words. It might NOT have been a good idea to single herself out in quite that particular way.
Appearance:
She is average height and weight. She does not have a particularly athletic appearance; however in reality her muscles are deceptively strong. She would RATHER look tall, willowy and lovely, but them’s the breaks.
Her eyes are an uncertain hazel, slanting towards a variety of colors ranging from green to blue to grey, depending on her mood and the surrounding colors.
Her hair is dark brown, features European and her figure is... again... average. But nice. Her face the same. It is not classically beautiful, but it is pleasing and often other people will find her more beautiful than she is able to see herself.
The anxiety that once dogged her about her perceived plainness ended only when she finally used that philosophical bent of hers, and determined her obsession with a ‘lack of beauty’ must be every bit as vain as a woman fixated by her positive experience in (and following love of) her mirror. This horrified her vanity-hating soul. Instead, she has elected to believe that beauty truly IS in the eye of the beholder... and thus any beauty she has is a gift to her from another human... and the ones who do not see it are not obliged to. It has nothing whatsoever to do with HER then. This has been a particularly liberating mind frame, and now she rarely considers the matter at all.
Sealed Zanpakutō:
Name Kosumosu
The blade is in the Tsurugi form... a straight, double-edged sword hung from the hip from a sash. It shows the distinctive grain pattern common to the steel of fine swords, but with an added feature of peculiar striations, an almost ‘webbed’ appearance running along the blade. The hilt is black wood, wrapped around by the purest white thread. Long white and black ribbons trail from the end of the hilt, somehow never entangling her footing. The scabbard continues the theme with a pattern of white on black. The white roundels running the length of the scabbard are swirled through with black... on closer inspection; each one is an intricate individual cameo.
History/Background:
elvensong died in a Cholera epidemic at the age of 20 in the summer of 1866 that struck St. Louis, USA. Her household was unfortunately located near the harbor, and the family well water was contaminated. Due to a high fever, she died hallucinating that she heard elves singing a hauntingly beautiful dirge. She never forgot the sound of that dirge.
For reasons she does not know, the rest of her family could not be found in her initial home, the Rukongai area 27. She searched there thoroughly for about 5 years. Believing they must have survived the epidemic, she rejoiced. elvensong gradually began a wider search of the Rukongai, adjusting her search to follow the shifting path that the new souls left throughout the 90 districts. This proved futile as well. After roughly 90 years, she had to accept that her family would not to be found within the Rukongai. even under the best circumstances in the land of the living, it was well past the time when at least SOME of them should have arrived. She believes that could only mean that they had fallen to the hallows.
Thus, she reasoned, the only way to recover them would be to purify the Hollowfied souls of her family. She has cultivated at least one good friend in each of the districts, and keeps in touch with them. Should they hear of any new souls holding her family’s name, they will contact her. Once sure of that, she gave up both her earthly names and used the last memory of her time on earth to honor her ‘birth’ into the world of the dead. This is held at the forefront of her mind every time someone calls her name, it is to remind herself to stop wasting her life in the soul society. Filled with a firey resolve, she applied to the Soul Reaper Accadamy and (to her secret surprise, and public delight) was accepted.
She has never held the highest grades in the accademy, but they were always respectable and usually in the higher ranges. Her teachers often commended her work ethic. She secretly hopes to win and hone an exceptional level of skill, and she trains as hard in her off time as she did in her days at the academy.
Stats
Spirit power: 6
Speed: 15
Intelligence: 9
Kidou Mastery: 12
Fighting skill: 13
Overall: 55
RP Sample:
Elven glanced at the wreckage of the battlefield. Humans were swarming the scene, jabbering incessantly; wondering what had caused the strange explosions and damage to the surrounding buildings. It was always so damn frustrating, to watch the humans flock into the danger zone because they simply could not SEE the evil that was barreling down the avenue.
If she didn’t kill this Hollow quickly, someone was going to die.
“That’s IT you freak!” She hollered, dragging his attention away from an oblivious, yet tasty smelling soul he’d been about to eat, “I’ve had enough of your games. Consider yourself DEAD MEAT!”
The stupid thing grinned. “Ooooh, ya... bring it on, tasty soul reaper girl! He waggled his rear in delight. I bet you are a luscious tidbit. I’ve never had one of you guys before.”
He was just standing there, relishing the moment! What an idiot, being so much more pleased to pursue his gloating than the fight... but that was all to the good for her sake, and when he licked his lips she caught him closing his eyes briefly in anticipation. Definitely not the brightest Hollow ever hatched. She used her speed and jumped to his right, hit a utility pole, and kicked herself right over the back of his carapace. Kosumosu flashed in the sunlight as she struck down on the enemy straight on the back of his head.
Just that fast, it was over.
She checked the spirit energy in the area, and found no surprises waiting. That was a relief. Her first battle on Earth had nearly been her last. A small Hollow had nearly ambushed her by hiding under the cover of the massive spirit energy of another Hollow. She still had the nightmares.
But she’d survived, and now another battle was done.
Sadly, that wasn’t the end. The job was just beginning. She sighed and glanced at the curious crowd. Yeah, first step, give them new memories... and quickly before any of them slipped away, then she’d write her report.
She shook her head wryly. When she’d gotten this first chance to go to the world of the living and fight the Hollows she’d not had a clue how much of her time would be spent on administrative paperwork. Hours of tedium randomly punctuated by short spurts of terror. Why had she agreed to do this again?
Lord, if only Kosumosu worked on red tape, she’d be set.
She smiled wryly and jogged back to the crowd.
Subject: Character Bio: Elvensong 
Sun May 10, 2009 7:52 am
