Reina Fujii

Hollow

Name: Reina Fujii

Age: Nineteen years of life as a human, one year as a ghost and fifty-seven years as a Hollow.

Gender: Female

Height: Thirteen feet and one inch from the tip of her tail to the top of her head.

Weight: One hundred and ninety pounds

Appearance:
Where once there was beauty, the cruel hand of Death has left little but a monster; the Hollow that was once Reina Fujii sits upon a long, snakelike tail covered in tough scales the colour of drying blood. From the waist up, her form still resembles that of the human woman she once was, but where once there was flawless skin there are now only still more of the scales that cover every inch of her form, and the hollow-hole that rests where once her heart lay. Her hair is long, black as a raven's feather and often falls forward across the mask that shields her face from the world. As to the mask itself, it is little more than a smooth oval, with scatterings of crimson marks beneath the eyes.

Personality:
In life, Reina was vain, intelligent and haughty, though she nursed a sensitivity within herself that few bar her sister guessed at. Now, with her life snatched away, the intelligence and hauteur remain, while the sensitivity has been consumed with hatred for those who have escaped her fate, and the vanity has been buried with unrelenting bitterness for those who have that which was once taken from her. She treats her fellow Hollows with indifference, avoiding them wherever possible, yet is not above working with them should doing so promise to reward her with an opportunity to slake her hatred for at least a moment.

History:
77 years ago, in the city of Shimonoseki, a daughter was born to the Fujii family. A family considered wealthy in both money and influence, the Fujiis lacked for nothing they could have desired, and the girl they named Reina was ever doomed to be spoilt by both parents and her older sister, Aya. In her early years, she grew to expect that anything she demanded would be handed to her, and as she grew into an attractive young lady that expectation only grew. Even in school, Reina, blessed with natural intellect and the best tutors money could buy, found she had to exert only minimal effort get the grades she desired, the grades that proved her better than those around her. But soon, Reina began to grow bored; life without challenges was dull, and where was the challenge for the girl who had everything and had to struggle for nothing?

In her eighteenth year of life, Reina entered the prestigious Yamaguchi Gakugei University, where she commenced her studies into the field of psychology. And here, at least, she found something to entrance her; the study of the human mind was fascinating, yet more so were the ways in which to manipulate them. Having previously paid little attention to her classmates, beyond disdainfully checking that their test scores remained suitably far behind her own, Reina now began to pay attention to them, to speak to them, to flirt with them. And, eventually, to manipulate them. It was easy, almost second nature to the girl, and she might easily have grown bored of it but for one boy, Takahiro Ito. Takahiro was the so-called 'bad boy' of the class, the one that never turned up on time for lectures - if he turned up at all. The one who smoke, and drank, and rode around on a motorcycle. He was also the one person who seemed utterly immune to her attempts at manipulation. As attempt after attempt failed, Reina grew more and more fixated upon the boy, yet never once did she stop to consider the reason why this one failure mattered to her. At least, she didn't until, after still another failed attempt at wrapping the boy around her finger, Takahiro turned to her and spoke four little words; "Wanna get a drink?"

They were the words that made Reina see the truth of it. They were the words that made her understand that the fixation had developed into something more primal. They were the words that changed her life. And, in the end, they were the words that killed her.

For the next two months, Reina and Takahiro were inseperable. Reina all but abandoned her studies, prefering instead to live the wild life with her boyfriend. She drank, partied through the night, rode on the back of Takahiro's motorcycle. More than once, her parents found themselves recieving letters from the University about her suddenly deteriorating performance, and more than once they threatened to cut her off. Reina simply laughed at them. What did she care if they did? She had Takahiro, and she thought they would be together until the day they died. As it turned out, she was right, though perhaps the end came a touch sooner than she might have imagined; it was the day after her nineteenth birthday, and rain lashed down from the skies, leaving the roads slick and treacherous. Reina hardly noticed; she'd argued with her parents again and, worse still, she'd argued with Aya. She never argued with Aya. And yet, on this day she had, and she wanted nothing more than to drive the memory from her head. So she urged Takahiro on, heedless to how quickly they were already going, regardless of how treacherous the roads were becoming.

Takahiro didn't argue. He never did. He simply gunned the throttle, got a little more power out of the engine... and swore as the wheel slipped on the slick road. The next few moments were a whirlwind of pain. The sound of snappy bones and tearing flesh filled Reina's ears, and when she finally opened her eyes all she could see was Takahiro lying broken and lifeless before her.

She died with tears in her heart.

And then, she opened her eyes to find herself standing over her body. Watching as a paramedic rushed up. Listening as they tried to revive her. Mourning as they wheeled the two broken forms away. After that, time passed in a haze, and soon Reina neither knew nor cared how long it had been since life was snatched away from her. All she knew was that she was cold, alone and invisible, a silent form forced to watch in agony as others lived out their lives. Once, on one cold day - it was the 23rd of November, the anniversary of her day of birth - she caught a glimpse of a familiar form laying flowers beside the road. Aya. Unable to help herself, knowing she would be be rewarded with nothing but disappointment, she called out to her sister. And her sister looked up, pale and wide eyed. She had heard. Or she had felt it, at least. For a long while, the sisters - one dead, and one living - simply stared, willing the veil between them to disappear. But, in the end, Aya simply dropped her gaze and shook her head. She couldn't see her, not really.

It was after Aya left that Reina began to feel the pain, the first thing she'd really felt since that fateful day. It began as little more than an ache, yet as time passed the pain only grew stronger, and eventually the girl noticed that the chain binding her to her place of death was changing. Shortening. Creeping ever closer to her heart. Frantically, she tried to stop it, yet everything she tried served only to intensify the pain and, soon, agony wracked her ethereal form as the last few inches of the chain consumed themselves. The change, when it happened, was a blessing; a moment of agony beyond anything she'd ever experienced, beyond even the pain of her death, and then... nothing. The pain was gone. And she had changed; she could feel it, a difference within herself. Turning, she peered into the window of a nearby shop and found herself staring into a featureless mask mounted atop a form that was more akin to a snake's than her own. The sight drew a scream from her, a scream that echoed hauntingly from the mask that clung to her features. It seemed to last forever, and perhaps it might have but for the sudden appearance of a man clad entirely in black. In his hands he held a wicked blade of gleaming metal, and he glared at her with cold hatred as he spoke; "Your time has come, Hollow."

Hollow. It was a strange, meaningless word. And yet, it was appropriate; she was hollow inside. Everything she had once been, she no longer was. Now she was little more than a monster. And yet, monster or no, she had no desire to die again. She acted on instincts she had never previously posessed, snarling a curse and lashing out with her snakelike tail, smashing a vending machine from its mountings and launching it toward the black-clad man. He cleaved it in two easily, deflecting the two halves aside with barely a gesture, yet by the time he had done so she was gone, vanished into a darkness summoned up from the depths of the hole in her chest.

By little more than luck, she had escaped true death, yet had she known what the future held, Reina might have welcomed the oblivion offered by the sword-wielding man.

Emerging from the darkness, she found herself in a hellish realm where an apparently endless desert stretched into the distance. The colours in the world seemed dull and lifeless, drained of their vibrancy by the world around them, and even the sounds seemed muted as they travelled across the eternal desert. For long days, the newborn Hollow wandered, her tail carving a sleek line through the dunes as she pushed herself onward. She avoided those few others she encountered, listening from concealment whereever possible, learning what she could of Hollows, of the creature she had become, and of Hueco Mundo, the world around her. And then the hunger came. But hunger was the wrong word. It was primal and powerful, a longing that was born deep within herself. Abandoning her efforts to learn of the creature she had become,

Reina slithered out into the desert, seeking desperately for something to sate the hunger that gnawed at her. And, eventually, she found it. A soul, that of a child. It cowered in the shadow of a dune, hiding perhaps from whichever Hollow had dragged it to the forsaken realm. Curled up and weeping, it didn't see her until she was upon it. By then, it was far too late, and another piece of Reina's humanity evaporated as she consumed the innocent soul.

In the years that followed, Reina made few trips to the human world, preferring to feed upon those few souls she could find within Hueco Mundo whilst she learnt more of herself, of what she was capable of. The memory of the black clad man, the Shinigami as she now knew him to be, ever warred with her hunger, pushing her toward caution. Only when she truly began to understand what she had become did she consider returning to the world that had birthed her, and that day... was today.

Statistics:

Spirit power: 20
Speed: 15
Intelligence: 15
Fighting skill: 10

Abilities:
Onnen - Reina uses her spiritual energy to draw beads of corrosive venom from within her body. This venom gathers between her clasped hands, only to hurtle outward as she opens her hands toward her foes, spraying them with the burning incarnation of the Hollow's hatred.

Gekido - Similar in nature to Onnen, Gekido draws corrosive venom from within Reina's body. But unlike Onnen, Gekido does not form this venom into a projectile, but instead causes it to seep across her clawlike fingernails, allowing her to inflict burning wounds with each swipe.

Hitan - Technically a defensive technique, the Hitan also draws upon Reina's venom, but actually allows it to seep from the scales all across her body. The main intent of this is to discourage anyone for striking at her, but it can prove an effective method of attack if she is able to wrap her tail around an unwitting foe.


Rp sample:
The moon hung low over Hueco Mundo, bathing the landscape in a silvery glow that made the sands of the endless desert shimmer and sparkle like a scene from a fairytale. But Hueco Mundo would never appear in any fairytale, for it was a forsaken place, a place of suffering and defilement. Here, amidst the dunes of the endless desert, those souls too black, bitter and twisted to pass on lurked, stalking the souls of the recently departed to sate their hunger and stalking one another to sate their rages. For fifty-seven years, precisely thrice the number of years she had lived upon the earth, it had been the home and prison of the creature that had once been Reina Fujii. For fifty-seven long years, she had lingered amongst the shimmering sands. She fed infrequently, only when the hunger became unbearable, and only upon those souls which were unfortunate enough to be somehow drawn into the bleak realm, and never once ventured through the ebon portal of the garganta. Instead she had focused open her other hungers, her hunger for knowledge, for power, and for revenge upon a world that had long forgotten her existence. Though the years passed with infite slowness, each trickle of sand seeming to take an eternity to trickle through the neck of the hourglass, the Hollow spent the time wisely, developing those abilities which slumbered within her monstrous form and honing her hatred with the memory of the Shinigami who had come some very close to sending her into nothingness in the moments after her soul chain had consumed itself. The man's face ever haunted her, stilling her whenever she considered slipping through the garganta and tasting a fresh soul, untained by Hueco Mundo. But it was useful. A focus. A reason to reach for greater power beyond just the mindless hunger that eternally gnawed at her.

"I will kill you," she hissed, speaking the vow that had slipped from beneath her mask every night that had passed in those fifty-seven years. Truthfully, she knew it was a foolish gesture; the Shinigami had likely long forgotten her, and perhaps had already been consumed by another Hollow. Fixating upon him was pointless when there were so many delicious souls lingering beyond the shadowed veil of the garganta. And yet, was it truly foolish? She had often wondered that, as the moon carried on its backwards dance across the black heavens. She knew that few other Hollows held such powerful grudges, yet also she knew that many other Hollows - or those who had not ascended into the greater forms she sometimes glimpsed amongst the sands - were little more than mindless beasts driven only by their hunger. Was it her hatred that marked her out as different? Or was that just a sympton of something else, some elemental difference in her soul that marked her out as different from so many of the Hollows that haunted the eternal desert. In truth, she knew not the answer, but neither did she care; her fixation gave birth to hatred, and from that hatred flowed a power which would forever keep the dread grasp of oblivion away. She would never truly die. The same could not be said of the Shinigami.