Post by Levi on Jun 10, 2016 22:16:24 GMT -5
GRISHA, LEVI
[ AT A GLANCE ]
Age / Apparent Age: 245/23
Height & Weight: 5'11" & 200 lbs
Hair & Eye Color:Levi’s hazelnut hair is naturally bushy and wild, and he’s ok with that. He keeps it trimmed up, and washed, and keeps knots and tangles combed out, but other than that just kind of lets it do what it wants. His eyes are hazel, and slightly slanted upward toward the bridge of the nose
Positive Traits:
Fun-loving: Levi likes to play. He likes to dance and play loud music, make jokes, and generally do everything else that his old, workaholic self would have hated. Unless his current task either interests him more, or carries a threat with failure, he might very well stop to hang out with anyone who comes around.
Flirtatious: Hey, ladies like a smart guy right? Levi figures he may as well find out, and if not, whatever. Besides, it’s easy enough to go from his usual humor to flirtatious humor. He isn’t really looking for a committed relationship mind you. It's all just a game.
Academic: Much more than simply “curious” Levi tends to delve deep into any subject that sparks his interest. If, say, he wants to know what a hollow mask is made of, he will read and re-read any book on the subject, consult (or torture, depending) any experts, and if all else fails, find a microscope chip off a piece of some hollow’s mask and see what he can find himself.
Independent: Not trusting anyone means not relying on anyone, and not relying on anyone means being capable of doing everything alone, within reason of course. That isn’t to say he won’t let anyone make his life easier, or even look for help when he knows he needs it. It means that while some arrancar require very specific instructions for every step of a complicated task, Levi is easily capable of thinking on his own. In fact, he prefers it.
Bold: He isn’t necessarily “brave” in that he isn’t about to risk his own skin for someone else. He is, however, bold in the sense that he is willing to take risks to get what he wants. He isn’t easily intimidated by anyone, though he might pretend to be when appropriate. He will stand his ground, and even rush into battle if the rewards are big enough.
Adaptable: Levi’s intellect, independence, and general lack of caring, all make it easy for him to adjust to a new situation. He has to leave his home? Whatever. Everyone he knew is dead? Sucks for them. He has a new boss who has changed the rules on him? He’ll figure them out within a day or two.
Negative Traits:
Indulgent: He drinks, he smokes, he eats unhealthy food, and basically he can’t resist temptation very well. Either that, or he doesn’t care to. Being an arrancar, these things aren’t particularly harmful to him, but they can still be quite annoying to others. More importantly, they can be a distraction from more important work.
Manipulative: In Levi’s view there are two kinds of friends, crutches and tools. He has learned to stand on his own feet, which leaves only tools in the world. He will do or say anything to get another person to think or feel however he thinks will convince them to give him what he wants. No deception is beneath him, from leaving out select information, to stealing credit for someone else's accomplishments, to flat out making something up. He will look in your eyes and lie to your face.
Selfish: Why would Levy bother trying to make anyone else happy? Or keep anyone else alive? Or resist using, destroying, and discarding anyone or everyone around him? Well, there is the fact that word would eventually get around and make it harder to continue doing so when it mattered, but that is pretty much the only reason. Levi is out for himself, and unless a person can be useful to him, he cares more about his shoelace than their life.
Vindictive: There is an old saying “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Levi’s solution is to take the whole head, then there’s no one left to pluck out your other eye. It’s the oldest war strategy there is. If someone is brazen enough to hurt you, hurt them back badly enough that they will never dare to test you again. Besides, it can be kind of fun.
Unreliable: If you give Levi a job he will get it done… eventually… probably… as long as he has sufficient incentive. The downside to loving fun, is loving fun at the wrong times. It isn’t overly rare for Levi to wander off and do something he wants to do while in the middle of a job he doesn’t want to do. Oh, and he lies. A lot. You might have picked up on that by now, but nothing he says should be trusted. This is especially true if he claims he has your back. He may have your back for a moment, but the instant he believes it is in his best interest to do so, he’ll put a poisoned knife in it.
Arrogant: Levi is smarter than most arrancar and any hollow, and he knows it. He also knows that it makes him exceptionally valuable. He knows it a little too much in fact. He isn’t shy about holding this over the head of stupid, brutish hollows that may even be stronger than him, and could get in over his head with this. He looks down any almost all other people; hollow for their stupidity, mortals for their ignorance and short lives, shinigami for their blind allegiance to the laws, and even most other arrancar just because he’s probably smarter than them too.
Bitter: Rarely overt, but always present. Deep down, deep enough he doesn't even acknowledge it himself, Levi hates that the world is so messed up. He hates how pointless it all is, how selfish everyone is. He indulges in this evil, but deep down he hates it all. And deep down, he hates himself for it.
Loyalties: Las Noches and the Primera Espada Octavia. Vaguely. Levi has no real loyalty.
Snapshots:
Levi is born in a French village: 1770
When Levi’s older sister catches the eye of their abusive lord's equally abusive son the family runs away to Paris, hoping to start a better life: 1780
Levi participates in the Storming of the Bastille, killing a guard: July 14, 1789
Levi goes to vote for the kings impeachment, and when two men are found under the podium he cheers as they are lynched, believing them to be royalist conspirators. During the crackdown, his father is shot by the national guard, and dies in his arms:1791
When France is on the brink of war, Levi volunteers for the army. However the first battle is lost, and Levi is shot and his remaining brothers are all killed. The commanding officer is accused of treason. Levi is discharged as a result of his injuries: 1792
During the Terror, Levi accuses several people of being royalist, but after getting a number of them wrong is accused himself of trying to sow confusion and terror. He is arrested and executed via the guillotine. He is purified almost instantly by a shinigami who has staked out the execution grounds: 1793
Levi's friend Nishiki talks him into applying for the shinigami academy: 1832
Levi graduates and joins the fourth division: 1838
After aTova's invasion, Levi abandons his stabilized post and goes to the Rukongai to check on Aki and heal those who need it. While there, he meets a girl named Aki, who he soon falls in love with. Upon returning, he is charged with dereliction of duty and nearly expelled from the Gotei: 2013
Levi catches Aki and Nishiki in bed together. 2015
During the King's Key Eclipse Levi is infected with an inner hollow and thrown through a garganta into Hueco Mundo by Evelyn Evanna: 2015
Levi manages to force an Adjucha named Kaneki to take him to earth, where a patrol would find him and take him back to the seireitei. However, believing that there is nothing left in the seireitei for him, he decides to become a hollow instead. He joins Kaneki's pack: Jan. 2016
Although clouded by his hollow mind, Levi retains his old memories. Within a few months he has regained all of his memories and his powers. He tells Kaneki that he wants more than what he has, and Kaneki helps him become a Gillian. March 2016
The pack revolts against Kaneki. Levi pretends to side with him, but when he turns his back Levi eats him. With his power he becomes an adjucha, and slaughters the rest of the pack. Imeadeately aftarwards he breaks his mask and heads for Las Noches. June 2016
[ ON THE SURFACE ]
Physical Description: At first glance Levi’s thin frame, pale skin and hipster style glasses will give the impression of a simple nerd who has spent too much time inside reading books and not enough time training. At least as long as he’s fully clothed and wearing long sleeves. Underneath the easily underestimated exterior is the chiseled, wiry body of a fighter. He isn’t very big, or quite as toned as his more sword and fist focused compatriots, for example only having a four-pack as opposed to a six pack. Even so, it is obvious that he has not neglected physical training. Levi’s mask fragment appears as four spikes plastered on his jaw, pointing to his mouth. Two on the lower jaw, curving at the edge of the chin, and two, on the upper jaw which curve parallel to the bottom of his nose, which are slightly larger than those on the bottom jaw. His hollow hole is rather basic. It is in the center of his chest, and at the size of a football tends to just barely peek out over any low hanging shirt collars.
Levi usually has a shifty carefree demeanor. Even in tense situations, he often has his hands in his pockets or crossed over his chest and a smile that doesn't go past his face. Due to his reliance on his hollow power and bala in combat, he can afford to look totally unprepared for a fight, and often uses this to his advantage. Levi's natural curiosity and paranoia give him a near perpetual piercing gaze. He seems to be trying to take in every detail of a person's mind and body, searching them for signs of strength, weakness, or deceit. Because he is. His voice is a deep tenor, and he speaks with a slight French accent, tempered by centuries in the soul society.
His arrancar uniform hasn't been customized at all. It doesn’t really matter because he doesn’t often wear it. Levi has a touch of vanity, and likes to stay fashionable. He keeps a rather large, assorted wardrobe filled with very human looking clothes. He also has expensive tastes, and will usually either wear a quality polo shirt with some nice slacks and sneakers, or a button up shirt with a blazer, sometimes even a full three piece suit depending on the situation. The colors vary, and are ever expanding with his collection, but he likes grey and red, and is trying to find at least one of everything in white so he can wear it around Las Noches in place of his uniform.
His glasses, while not actually needed, serve as more than a fashion statement. In human courtrooms there is a phenomenon called the "nerd defense" in which jurors are reluctant to convict defendants wearing glasses. People tend to underestimate people with glasses. They assume they don't have the strength or the spine to be a real threat. They tend to think of them as victims rather than monsters. That is exactly the kind of image Levi likes to have, the kind of image people turn their vulnerable backs to.
Spiritual Description: Levi's reiatsu is a fuzzy mix of black and yellow that is best described as the color of twilight. The smell is bitter-sweet, like strong tea, and it feels cold and gritty. It is an overall unsettling sensation that hints at who he really is beneath the fun-loving smile.
[ BEHIND THE EYES ]
Personality: Levi’s attitude can be summed up in two words; “screw everything.” He has completely given up on any kind of higher purpose. Betrayals and disappointments have left him bitter, selfish, and hollow (pun intended.) He now cares only about his own enjoyment and ambitions, seemingly in that order. He isn’t really capable of trust, and therefore making meaningful connections to others is very difficult. Making it look that way however, is so much easier than he ever thought it would be when he was still trying to be a good person. He will manipulate, steal, kill, and anything else to get what he wants. The only thing that can stop him is if the risks are greater than the rewards.
Levi can actually be a fun person to be around though. Part of his giving up on higher purpose, is that he finds no real reason not to just stop and have some fun; throw a party, joke around, leave the work and seriousness for later. After all, it’s not like he’s saving the world with whatever he’s doing, right? While he would once be intimidated by doing something “wrong” he now can only be controlled by the consequences of his actions. Levi makes a lot of friends, but they rarely stick around long. He meets lots of people, has some fun with them, and then either never sees them again or lets them figure out how selfish and vindictive he really is, and then never sees them again. Of course there are those exceptions when he decides someone is useful enough to keep up the act a little longer, and even rarer exceptions when he finds someone who is just as evil as he is.
A bit of his old self remains in a love of knowledge. These days he spends most of his spare time partying in some way, partly because he never did much before, but he still likes spending some quiet time with a good book. He was always a scientist at heart, and always enjoyed a good novel. He knows his way around a laboratory and a library. He especially likes history, as it is often similar to his beloved fiction, and biology. He can be quite disciplined and a hard worker when properly motivated, it’s just a bit challenging to properly motivate him.
Bottom line, he does what he wants to do, and what keeps him alive and able to do what he wants to do.
Goals & Achievements: Levi doesn't really have either of these things. He never managed to accomplish anything of note except for graduating with good grades and doesn't have any serious ambitions. In the back of his mind he would like to become an Espada, or fabricate a cushy mortal life as a sort of vacation home, but he doesn't care enough to really work for it. At least not yet.
[ GUARDIAN ANGEL ]
Aspect of Death:Cynicism- the belief that human beings, including hollows and shinigami in this case, act only in self-interest. Let down after let down has led Levi to one simple conclusion. There is no higher purpose. Justice, duty, morality, they’re all just superficial, malleable words defined and redefined to fit with the desires of those who spew them. The very minute one definition becomes inconvenient enough, the offending ideal is either redefined or abandoned entirely. The definition that survives is the one enforced with the most power. Those in power believe it because it is convenient for them, those under their authority believe it because to believe otherwise would incur their wrath.
Power: Manos Fantasmales (Phantom hands.) Spectral hands come out of the back of Levi's hollow hole, invisible to the naked eye except as shifts in the air, and able to extend several meters. The higher his skill, the more he can summon.
Zanpakutō: Levi’s zanpakuto is a relatively small bronze dagger that looks like a snake with a pair of rooster wings. The blade is serrated in such a way that it looks like the slithering body of a snake, and straightens out about three quarters of the way up so that the "neck" can serve as an effective handle. The head is rounded and the mouth is closed, with small rubies serving as eyes. Each scale is carved into the bronze over the entirety of the snake's body, with a black outline. The wings act as a guard, and the feathers are just as intricate as the scales. The sheath appears to be made of bronze snake-skin leather, matching perfectly with the rest of the knife.
[ LEGACY CREATED ]
Origin: I was born a nobody. A common peasant in a family of farmers in a French village, basically owned by our noble lord, and considered slightly less valuable than his dogs. We couldn’t gather his wood if we were cold, couldn’t hunt in his forests if we were hungry, couldn’t use the wine-press without paying him, oh, and if he passed by and you didn’t bow, may God have mercy on your soul.
Everything went on as normal until puberty hit my older sister like a cannonball. By the time she was 16 she was smoking hot, and the lord’s son noticed her. He sent us a letter asking for us to send her to him. I know what you’re thinking, he wanted to marry her because she was pretty and be an abusive husband right? Nope. He didn’t have to marry her. He wanted to take her to his castle, bang her, and send her back home, humiliated and ruined. It all would have been completely legal too. Well, shockingly, our father didn’t much like that idea. We all snuck away in the middle of the night and made our way to Paris.
We thought we’d make a better life for ourselves in the big city, us and a few thousand other people. Not exactly. It wasn’t all bad I suppose, at least my sister didn’t get raped. Also my father turned out to have a knack for making shoes, and my mother for making clothes, so we got by. The city still sucked though. Our idea of cleanliness was dumping our shit in the street to get it out of the house, and our idea of healthcare was cutting ourselves every so often to get rid of excess blood. Needless to say, people got sick a lot. We still had to bow down to any noble that walked by too, and every time we did, I prayed that this one wouldn’t see my sister too. Not that it mattered much.
We did ok, until the bread shortages started to hit. No matter how much we made, we just couldn’t afford to eat right. Turns out the body doesn’t fight disease so well when it’s hungry. We went to that city to save my sister, and we ended up losing her, my mother, and two of my brothers to it.
Naturally, we were pretty pissed off at the crown, the nobles, even the church. Hell, we were pissed at everyone and everything. We didn’t keep up a whole lot with the politics, the estates general and all that, but we heard enough to know that even though we were supposed to be equal, the first two estates still treated us like dogs.
We were at the front of the crowd that attacked the Bastille. We weren’t actually trying to get anyone out, we didn’t really care that much. It was a symbol. It was a prison where the king could send anyone he wanted to. It was an abuse of power made manifest. To us, when we attacked it, it was nobility incarnate. I killed for the first time that day, one of the guards. I threw up right on his corpse. We won though. We stormed the bastille and rescued all of the prisoners. All five of them, most of whom were either scum or insane. That wasn’t the point though. We had stuck it to the crown. We would not be ignored anymore.
If you know your history, you know that the republic took over after that and did a lot of crazy political stuff. Like I said, I didn’t keep up with it much. You better believe I showed up to vote for the king’s impeachment though, me, my father, and my brothers. The king had just tried to run away form Paris and raise an army, and we were all officially done with him. Well, it was about to be official anyway. Then we found the guys under the podium.
In retrospect, they seemed like just a couple of crazy guys that had no idea what was going on. At the time though... well we were all a little tense. We lynched them. Well, I say we, I wasn’t really close enough to DO anything, but that’s not really the point. Whether they were royalist or not, killing them sure pissed off the crown. Tensions had been high for a really long time, but no one had actually been killed by the king’s soldiers. When the National Guard came that day though, they came for blood. One of the people they shot was my father. He bled out in my arms as people ran or fought all around us. His last word was “run” so I did.
My brothers and I went back to making shoes. What else could we do? Then we went to war. Apparently some of the other European monarchies didn’t like that we had turned the tables on our king, made him a prisoner in his own castle. They threatened us, showed up at our gates. My brothers and I all volunteered to fight. I wish we hadn’t. I still think that bastard in charge was a traitor, setting us up to lose so that those Austrian sons of bitches could put the king back on the throne. My brothers and I were all shot, and I was the only one that survived. I still couldn’t fight with those injuries though. It ripped straight through my leg. There wouldn’t be any more charging into battle or anywhere else for me. So I went back to making shoes, more pissed than ever.
Whatever you’ve heard about the French Revolution, and the terror, we weren’t crazy. We were paranoid, sure, but we had good reason to be. There really were plots everywhere, mostly from nobles that had left, intending to raise armies and come back. The kings brother did that, the king himself had tried, it was real. But I’ll be honest, I myself was so pissed that I accused people over every little thing. A sad look toward the castle was enough to raise my suspicions. I don’t honestly remember how many people I accused of being royalists, or what the reasons were. There were a lot, ok? And a few of them might have been totally innocent and on the side of the republic. That was the story at my trial at least. I had helped fight at virtually every stage of our rebellion, and then I was accused of betraying it? Falsely accusing people they said, trying to sow distrust and dissention. Ridiculous! But if I’m being honest about it, they were no crazier than I was. They took me to the guillotine. I looked at the crowd as they all cheered for my death. I was infuriated. I was terrified. I cannot describe the feeling of absolute betrayal and despair I felt in that moment, dying as an enemy to those I had fought for my entire life. It didn’t matter to them though. My sacrifices, my life, it was nothing. My usefulness was at an end, and they were after their own revenge. I’d have done the same honestly.
They dropped the blade, and I found myself looking straight at a shinigami. There had been so many executions the poor guy had decided to just hang out right in front of the guillotine and purify us as we died. He didn’t say a word and didn’t waste any time. I just got a glimpse of his sad, dead eyes, the kind of eyes that you get when you’ve already cried out all of your tears. Then he bumped me with the hilt of his sword, mechanically, like a factory worker pressing a button for the millionth time. I can only imagine how much death he must have seen there.
There are no words in any language I know for how weird the rukongai looked to me. I was French, remember? I had never seen or even heard about anything from Feudal Japan. I barely even knew Asia existed. I adapted quickly enough though. Turns out cheap shoes were in high demand in the outer districts. Everyone who could afford them wanted them, and I was one of very few people that knew how to make them. Not to mention mine were of French design so they were also kind of a novelty.
I was also used to being at the bottom of the social structure. As far as I was concerned the afterlife was the same as France. The shinigami were the new First estate, the upper districts of the rukongai the second estate, and I was still stuck in the third. I still hated them; the shinigami, the rich, everyone who thought they were better than us. Better than me.
It didn’t take me long to realize I had spiritual power. I got hungry, not much of a mystery. But I refused to join the shinigami for a long time. Trying to be a hero, fight for a cause, it hadn't worked out the first time. It was hard to try again. I had a friend though. Nishiki, one of my first customers. We hit it off and started hanging out when we weren’t working; talking about politics and why the world sucked. We both blamed the shinigami, the central 46, the nobles, the power structure in general. When he found out I got hungry he convinced me that joining the shinigami and trying to change them from the inside was a better plan than sitting around starving and hating them forever. It was pretty hard to argue with, especially after he “revoked my bitching privileges” because I could do something and wasn’t.
I got in on my first try. Turns out I’m pretty smart. I had never had a chance to get an education before, but while I was in the academy I realized that I loved science, especially biology and medicine. Imagine my surprise to find out the body actually need all of its blood!
Rise to Power: Anyway, I graduated and joined the fourth division. I came really close to joining the third, but in the end I decided that I wanted to find new ways to treat the sick instead of using the same old methods. I got to work, on other peoples’ ideas of course. I was still at the bottom of the totem pole. I still visited my old home from time to time, caught up with Nishiki and saw how everyone was. He would always ask me how the reformation was going. At first it was jokingly, but after a while I started to realize he was actually expecting me to walk in, get involved in the politics and change things. When I tried to explain to him that I was a scientist, not a politician, well there were some arguments. He didn’t understand my life, maybe he didn’t care. He just knew I wasn’t improving his like he expected he to. He let it go though, and we stayed friends. Maybe he thought having a shinigami for a pal would help him at some point.
It did actually. When I would visit he would take me to other people’s shops, people that he was trying to do business with. He didn’t have to eat, so he saved every penny he earned. With a few centuries of work, and some further loans secured by my patronage to richer members of the district, he eventually managed to buy a small farm. I was happy to help him. It was a little hypocritical of us, sort of becoming the nobles we hated, but Nishiki treated his workers well enough. He became a symbol of what nobility should be to me. He gave me motivation to try my part to move up the ladder again.
Then one day I’m carrying some important stuff in some test tubes from one end of the lab to the other, and the entire place just shakes like an earthquake hit. I almost cried when they all spilled on the floor, then I realized that the soul society didn’t get earthquakes. Everyone ran outside and, well, my experiments didn’t seem so important when I saw that a cero had just cut soul society almost in half. I wasn’t stupid enough to go anywhere near the monster that could do that. He was the freaking KING OF HUECO MUNDO I wasn’t touching that. The little mini-monsters that snuck through with him though? I killed a few of them. I had a duty to do, and I risked my life to do it. Stupid is what it was, but somehow I survived.
My real work would come after the massacre was over, and the survivors had to be treated for their injuries. The third division was understandable short on manpower, so people who knew kaido well enough, such as myself, were called in to help them. We were all running ragged, and we were all in the Seireitei. I worked for I don’t even know how many hours straight before I finally got a break and started asking questions. Turns out we were working from the inside outward. The shinigami would all be treated first, then the upper districts, then if anyone was left in the lower districts we would get to them last. I didn’t like that idea. I left, without permission of course, right in the middle of my break and ran to the rukongai, the same district I had woken up in all those years ago.
The scene I found was a lot quieter than I expected. Turns out most of the people there had either been too far away to get hurt, or had been killed on the spot. There were still a lot of people in that painful middle ground though, so I yelled at everyone who could walk to bring me anyone who couldn’t, and got to work. Imagine my surprise when a pretty girl brings my old friend Nishiki up to me. Well, most of him anyway. I was a kaido expert, so I was able to bring his leg back as he introduced me to Aki, the girl that had helped him get to me, and who had bandaged him up before that. She was one of the few people in the district that actually knew a few things about medicine, and had been doing her best to keep people alive until the shinigami got there. It broke my heart to hear how much faith she had misplaced in the gotei. Anyway, she basically became my assistant for the rest of the time I was there, and by the time I left I found myself promising to come back and visit her.
Leaving my post turned out to be a horrible decision on my part. Turns out my boss actually did pay a little attention to me, enough to know that I wasn't at my post. I was charged with dereliction of duty, and nearly thrown in the maggot's next. Due entirely to the fact that I had made sure all of my duties were basically done before leaving however, they decided to give me a slap on the wrist. By which I mean, they fined me a year's salary, demoted me, and let me know that it would be a few hundred years before I had any chance at promotion or raise.
It was a bleak time for me, but it had its upside. I fell in love with Aki, and spent all the time I could get off with her. It wasn’t like working overtime was going to get my career back on track. Even with the worst jobs available, being a shinigami paid pretty well, and before I knew it I was engaged to Aki. Nishiki was going to be my best man. It was a turning point for me. I had basically given up on my career, on ever getting the influence to change things in the rukongai. Aki and Nishiki though, they were my goal now. I couldn't save the world, but I would protect my own. Not even my work could spoil my mood then. At least, nothing I ever expected.
I never thought about how much more money Nishiki was making than me. I never thought about the fact that he was going forward while I was stuck in place. I never thought about the fact that He and Aki were both in the same district while I was stuck in the Seireitei. I never thought about any of it until the day I caught them. Typical story; I get off from work early one day, manage to slip out without my superiors finding me and finding an extra job for me, and run straight home to be with my lady, only to find her and my best friend in my bed.
I was understandably upset. They tried to sell me some BS excuse about how "it just happened." Nishiki left a few teeth behind when I threw him out. I kicked Aki out too of course, but I still couldn't bring myself to actually hit her. That was it though, I just kicked them both out of my place and told them I hoped they would be happy together. Sarcastically of course.
At first I was just numb. I wasn't really angry. I wasn't even sad. I wasn't anything. I went to work, did my work, and went home. I didn't talk about it. I didn't act abnormal. Nobody noticed a thing. It was about two weeks before the pain set in. One more before I first thought about taking revenge. I didn't have much left to lose, but I still didn't have it in me. I started planning it out, fantasizing about it. I honestly didn't think I would ever act on it, until the Ouken Eclipse.
When those portals started opening, I started fighting. It wasn't for the Gotei or for my duty, I was basically over that. I was fighting for my own survival, and working off some hatred. Then, in the middle of that chaos, that battle where anything could happen, where no extra corpse would be suspicious, I saw Aki. Shaken as I was by the sudden invasion of hollows, it took me about ten seconds to realize that it was literally impossible for Aki to be there, and five more to remember that an arrancar on the most-wanted list had the ability to look like whoever you wanted to see. Unfortunately it took me about five seconds to fire a hado spell at her, and the next thing I knew my soul was torn open and I was flying through a garganta. When I woke up in Hueco Mundo, I realized after a while that I had a little something extra in me.
I survived in the only possible way. I avoided any hollow I could, and those I couldn’t I killed. I survived like that for months, and the whole time I had a new voice in my head telling me how screwed I was. Specifically the parts about how the Soul Society had abandoned me and I had thrown my life away trying to do the right thing. Funny thing, he also told me what I had to do to survive. When in Rome do what the Romans do. I ignored him of course, at first. The hungrier I got though, the more sense he made. Turns out hollow meat can cook just like any other meat, and when you are literally starving, it's not half bad.
Ironically, it was that inner hollow that gave me what I needed to escape. Ferocity. Before I had just been a victim trying to survive, but the more the hollow whispered in my ear, the more I listened, the less afraid I became. Eventually I decided to go on the offensive. I went to the menos forest. I nearly died several times. A pack of Menos Grande, especially the kind I was looking for, was still far too much for me to handle. Eventually though, I managed to find a lone adjuchas that looked like a giant skeletal four tailed fox, complete with spiked spine and elbows. An injured, lone adjuchas. One that I could both defeat and reason with, and that’s exactly what I did. I used my kido to beat him bloody, and then made him an offer. “You wanna live?” I asked him. “Then open a garganta to earth.” He asked me why and I answered with a byakurai to the foot. Just then some other hollows show up. Apparently he wasn't quite as lone as I had thought. He had only been left alone for a while because he was injured.
He was already beaten though, so it wasn't too difficult to take him captive. It didn't actually stop the other hollows from attacking me of course, but it did cause them to hesitate, and him to consider his options. He opened a garganta and we both escaped to the mortal world. No language has a word for the exhilarating relief I felt in that moment. In those ten, glorious seconds before reality set in. I was out of Hueco Mundo. All I had to do was stab the adjuchas that I had already beaten and flare my reiatsu and I would be rescued. I would be brought back to Soul Society. I would return to my old life. My old, empty, miserable, life of following orders and getting nowhere. I had fought so hard to escape, and it was all for that?
My inner hollow had a lot to say in that moment. It wasn't the first time we had talked, but it was the first time I hadn't been in survival mode. He reminded me of all the betrayals I had suffered. I reminded him that I was a good person, and he reminded me that I had been about to murder Aki. I reminded him that laws were in place for a reason. He reminded me what those reasons really were. I reminded him that shinigami had actual lives and that hollows had nothing to live for. He asked me what I really had to live for in the seireitei.
"Hey. Adjucha." I spoke to the hollow under my feet, under my blade. He looked at me, quizzically. I can only imagine what must have been going through his head. How strange I must have looked. "What do you live for?" I asked him. He hesitated for a moment.
"For what I want. I once lived to eat. Then to evolve. Now, that is impossible." I hadn't bothered to think much about his injury before. It was just a scabby gash in his leg, a convenient vulnerability. Apparently, it had been caused by a hungry hollow. "Now... I suppose I live for my pack."
I was sold. Yeah, I know, not much of a challenge was it? What can I say, that sounded at least as good as anything a shinigami or a human had ever said. Besides, truth be told, at that point I was just looking for one last excuse.
Call to Action: I guess he meant what he said, because when he saw the shinigami that had just been about to kill him turn into a demonic chicken with Velociraptor legs and a log scaly tail, he did not eat me. He actually invited me to join his pack instead. Can you believe that? I don't know if he figured I would get as strong as I had been as a shinigami and help him, or maybe he was just curious about my transformation. Either way, my first experience as a hollow was the adjuchas introducing himself as Kaneki, asking me if I remembered anything (I didn't yet) and inviting me to join his pack. I accepted of course, I had that much intelligence intact. Kaneki opened a garganta to where we had left his pack, fed them some story about me ambushing the shinigami, and told them I was joining. He was a popular leader, so they went with it.
The first few weeks were rough. Constant hunger, stupidity, basically relying on the rest of the pack to feed me. They weren't too happy about that really, but Kaneki insisted that I would get strong quickly that way, and be contributing in no time. He was right. Besides me and Kaneki there were three other low leveled adjuchas, and two gillian with unique masks. They brought down a lot of big prey, and even the small portion that they let me have was like a feast for a newborn hollow. Within a couple of months, I had grown enough to pull my own weight, and gotten smart enough to think.
It was a strange experience, going from total obsession with hunger to actual sentient thought. I started getting my memories back, piece by piece, and I started realizing that I wasn't satisfied with my life. I wanted something more, but I wasn't sure what. I told the pack about it, and they said I should try to evolve. Kaneki was a bit reluctant. He wasn't sure I was ready, and he didn't want me to turn into a faceless Gillian. The others talked me into it though, and together we talked Kaneki into it.
Everyone spread out and herded a bunch of hollows into a clearing in the menos forest. When Kaneki was sure we had enough, I jumped in. You know how it works, we fought, we killed, we ate, and then we fused. When it was all over there were a thousand voices in my head, but it was still my head. I was a Gillian, with a chicken mask and a unique robe that was torn into hundreds of strands of cloth so that it almost looked like feathers.
Our pack was now very strong. Four adjuchas and three Gillian were hard to beat. Unfortunately, they were also hard to feed. Kaneki didn't have to worry about anything, because he had already been bitten, but the rest of us had to eat or revert to those zombie gillian. As prey became scarce, tensions rose fast. Some of the adjuchas even started talking about taking bites out of each other, but Kaneki wouldn't let them. He should have. One day one of them broke. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen. The proud adjuchas suddenly started crying about voices in his head, screamed, and turned into a big, dumb, mute, gillian.
The whole pack started panicking. None of them had ever actually reverted before, and now everyone was hungry and afraid it was about to happen to them too. I was the only quiet one. I was too focused on trying to think over the voices in my head to get in on the argument. I realized the pack was about to implode. I realized that getting enough food going forward, no matter how this turned out, would be extraordinarily difficult. I thought about the possibilities; the pack losing members and becoming weaker, Kaneki calming everyone down and proceeding as before until it happened again, or worse, being killed in the infighting.
Then they all turned on Kaneki, and I knew the pack was finished. Kaneki, for all his failures, had been the only thing holding the pack together for a while. Without him, this kind of chaos would become common, and we would probably all kill each other off eventually. If there was only one member of this pack to survive it would have to be Kaneki, but there was no way he could take on all the others. I knew what I had to do.
I blocked the first cero that they fired at him. It was the first motion I had made since the fight started, so everyone was understandably shocked. Doubly so when I shuffled over to Kaneki’s side and faced the others. They were so angry, and Kaneki was so thankful. He had been sure that all of his friends had turned on him, that the hollows he had worked so hard to feed, his reason for living, had betrayed him. As the others yelled at me, Kaneki thanked me. He walked in front of me protectively, told me to back him up, and promised that when we beat those traitors he would make me the strongest hollow in Hueco Mundo.
Those were his last words.
In one quick motion I bent over, and bit his head off. The others just stared, stunned at my betrayal, as I gobbled our leader down. They were even more shocked when I turned into an adjuchas myself. This was my solution. I would not allow myself to revert. Ever. I would eat all of them. I would take all their power and hunt for myself. One hollow was so much easier to feed than a pack.
I can’t say it was an easy victory. And I can’t say I came out unscathed. But when the battle was over, I was alone. More importantly, I had and adjuchas’ intelligence. I realized pretty quickly that I wanted more than that. Not just more power, but more to life. I wanted to be more than an animal. In case you haven’t heard, breaking your mask really, really hurts. Oh, but it was so worth it.
[ AT A GLANCE ]
Age / Apparent Age: 245/23
Height & Weight: 5'11" & 200 lbs
Hair & Eye Color:Levi’s hazelnut hair is naturally bushy and wild, and he’s ok with that. He keeps it trimmed up, and washed, and keeps knots and tangles combed out, but other than that just kind of lets it do what it wants. His eyes are hazel, and slightly slanted upward toward the bridge of the nose
Positive Traits:
Fun-loving: Levi likes to play. He likes to dance and play loud music, make jokes, and generally do everything else that his old, workaholic self would have hated. Unless his current task either interests him more, or carries a threat with failure, he might very well stop to hang out with anyone who comes around.
Flirtatious: Hey, ladies like a smart guy right? Levi figures he may as well find out, and if not, whatever. Besides, it’s easy enough to go from his usual humor to flirtatious humor. He isn’t really looking for a committed relationship mind you. It's all just a game.
Academic: Much more than simply “curious” Levi tends to delve deep into any subject that sparks his interest. If, say, he wants to know what a hollow mask is made of, he will read and re-read any book on the subject, consult (or torture, depending) any experts, and if all else fails, find a microscope chip off a piece of some hollow’s mask and see what he can find himself.
Independent: Not trusting anyone means not relying on anyone, and not relying on anyone means being capable of doing everything alone, within reason of course. That isn’t to say he won’t let anyone make his life easier, or even look for help when he knows he needs it. It means that while some arrancar require very specific instructions for every step of a complicated task, Levi is easily capable of thinking on his own. In fact, he prefers it.
Bold: He isn’t necessarily “brave” in that he isn’t about to risk his own skin for someone else. He is, however, bold in the sense that he is willing to take risks to get what he wants. He isn’t easily intimidated by anyone, though he might pretend to be when appropriate. He will stand his ground, and even rush into battle if the rewards are big enough.
Adaptable: Levi’s intellect, independence, and general lack of caring, all make it easy for him to adjust to a new situation. He has to leave his home? Whatever. Everyone he knew is dead? Sucks for them. He has a new boss who has changed the rules on him? He’ll figure them out within a day or two.
Negative Traits:
Indulgent: He drinks, he smokes, he eats unhealthy food, and basically he can’t resist temptation very well. Either that, or he doesn’t care to. Being an arrancar, these things aren’t particularly harmful to him, but they can still be quite annoying to others. More importantly, they can be a distraction from more important work.
Manipulative: In Levi’s view there are two kinds of friends, crutches and tools. He has learned to stand on his own feet, which leaves only tools in the world. He will do or say anything to get another person to think or feel however he thinks will convince them to give him what he wants. No deception is beneath him, from leaving out select information, to stealing credit for someone else's accomplishments, to flat out making something up. He will look in your eyes and lie to your face.
Selfish: Why would Levy bother trying to make anyone else happy? Or keep anyone else alive? Or resist using, destroying, and discarding anyone or everyone around him? Well, there is the fact that word would eventually get around and make it harder to continue doing so when it mattered, but that is pretty much the only reason. Levi is out for himself, and unless a person can be useful to him, he cares more about his shoelace than their life.
Vindictive: There is an old saying “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Levi’s solution is to take the whole head, then there’s no one left to pluck out your other eye. It’s the oldest war strategy there is. If someone is brazen enough to hurt you, hurt them back badly enough that they will never dare to test you again. Besides, it can be kind of fun.
Unreliable: If you give Levi a job he will get it done… eventually… probably… as long as he has sufficient incentive. The downside to loving fun, is loving fun at the wrong times. It isn’t overly rare for Levi to wander off and do something he wants to do while in the middle of a job he doesn’t want to do. Oh, and he lies. A lot. You might have picked up on that by now, but nothing he says should be trusted. This is especially true if he claims he has your back. He may have your back for a moment, but the instant he believes it is in his best interest to do so, he’ll put a poisoned knife in it.
Arrogant: Levi is smarter than most arrancar and any hollow, and he knows it. He also knows that it makes him exceptionally valuable. He knows it a little too much in fact. He isn’t shy about holding this over the head of stupid, brutish hollows that may even be stronger than him, and could get in over his head with this. He looks down any almost all other people; hollow for their stupidity, mortals for their ignorance and short lives, shinigami for their blind allegiance to the laws, and even most other arrancar just because he’s probably smarter than them too.
Bitter: Rarely overt, but always present. Deep down, deep enough he doesn't even acknowledge it himself, Levi hates that the world is so messed up. He hates how pointless it all is, how selfish everyone is. He indulges in this evil, but deep down he hates it all. And deep down, he hates himself for it.
Loyalties: Las Noches and the Primera Espada Octavia. Vaguely. Levi has no real loyalty.
Snapshots:
Levi is born in a French village: 1770
When Levi’s older sister catches the eye of their abusive lord's equally abusive son the family runs away to Paris, hoping to start a better life: 1780
Levi participates in the Storming of the Bastille, killing a guard: July 14, 1789
Levi goes to vote for the kings impeachment, and when two men are found under the podium he cheers as they are lynched, believing them to be royalist conspirators. During the crackdown, his father is shot by the national guard, and dies in his arms:1791
When France is on the brink of war, Levi volunteers for the army. However the first battle is lost, and Levi is shot and his remaining brothers are all killed. The commanding officer is accused of treason. Levi is discharged as a result of his injuries: 1792
During the Terror, Levi accuses several people of being royalist, but after getting a number of them wrong is accused himself of trying to sow confusion and terror. He is arrested and executed via the guillotine. He is purified almost instantly by a shinigami who has staked out the execution grounds: 1793
Levi's friend Nishiki talks him into applying for the shinigami academy: 1832
Levi graduates and joins the fourth division: 1838
After aTova's invasion, Levi abandons his stabilized post and goes to the Rukongai to check on Aki and heal those who need it. While there, he meets a girl named Aki, who he soon falls in love with. Upon returning, he is charged with dereliction of duty and nearly expelled from the Gotei: 2013
Levi catches Aki and Nishiki in bed together. 2015
During the King's Key Eclipse Levi is infected with an inner hollow and thrown through a garganta into Hueco Mundo by Evelyn Evanna: 2015
Levi manages to force an Adjucha named Kaneki to take him to earth, where a patrol would find him and take him back to the seireitei. However, believing that there is nothing left in the seireitei for him, he decides to become a hollow instead. He joins Kaneki's pack: Jan. 2016
Although clouded by his hollow mind, Levi retains his old memories. Within a few months he has regained all of his memories and his powers. He tells Kaneki that he wants more than what he has, and Kaneki helps him become a Gillian. March 2016
The pack revolts against Kaneki. Levi pretends to side with him, but when he turns his back Levi eats him. With his power he becomes an adjucha, and slaughters the rest of the pack. Imeadeately aftarwards he breaks his mask and heads for Las Noches. June 2016
[ ON THE SURFACE ]
Physical Description: At first glance Levi’s thin frame, pale skin and hipster style glasses will give the impression of a simple nerd who has spent too much time inside reading books and not enough time training. At least as long as he’s fully clothed and wearing long sleeves. Underneath the easily underestimated exterior is the chiseled, wiry body of a fighter. He isn’t very big, or quite as toned as his more sword and fist focused compatriots, for example only having a four-pack as opposed to a six pack. Even so, it is obvious that he has not neglected physical training. Levi’s mask fragment appears as four spikes plastered on his jaw, pointing to his mouth. Two on the lower jaw, curving at the edge of the chin, and two, on the upper jaw which curve parallel to the bottom of his nose, which are slightly larger than those on the bottom jaw. His hollow hole is rather basic. It is in the center of his chest, and at the size of a football tends to just barely peek out over any low hanging shirt collars.
Levi usually has a shifty carefree demeanor. Even in tense situations, he often has his hands in his pockets or crossed over his chest and a smile that doesn't go past his face. Due to his reliance on his hollow power and bala in combat, he can afford to look totally unprepared for a fight, and often uses this to his advantage. Levi's natural curiosity and paranoia give him a near perpetual piercing gaze. He seems to be trying to take in every detail of a person's mind and body, searching them for signs of strength, weakness, or deceit. Because he is. His voice is a deep tenor, and he speaks with a slight French accent, tempered by centuries in the soul society.
His arrancar uniform hasn't been customized at all. It doesn’t really matter because he doesn’t often wear it. Levi has a touch of vanity, and likes to stay fashionable. He keeps a rather large, assorted wardrobe filled with very human looking clothes. He also has expensive tastes, and will usually either wear a quality polo shirt with some nice slacks and sneakers, or a button up shirt with a blazer, sometimes even a full three piece suit depending on the situation. The colors vary, and are ever expanding with his collection, but he likes grey and red, and is trying to find at least one of everything in white so he can wear it around Las Noches in place of his uniform.
His glasses, while not actually needed, serve as more than a fashion statement. In human courtrooms there is a phenomenon called the "nerd defense" in which jurors are reluctant to convict defendants wearing glasses. People tend to underestimate people with glasses. They assume they don't have the strength or the spine to be a real threat. They tend to think of them as victims rather than monsters. That is exactly the kind of image Levi likes to have, the kind of image people turn their vulnerable backs to.
Spiritual Description: Levi's reiatsu is a fuzzy mix of black and yellow that is best described as the color of twilight. The smell is bitter-sweet, like strong tea, and it feels cold and gritty. It is an overall unsettling sensation that hints at who he really is beneath the fun-loving smile.
[ BEHIND THE EYES ]
Personality: Levi’s attitude can be summed up in two words; “screw everything.” He has completely given up on any kind of higher purpose. Betrayals and disappointments have left him bitter, selfish, and hollow (pun intended.) He now cares only about his own enjoyment and ambitions, seemingly in that order. He isn’t really capable of trust, and therefore making meaningful connections to others is very difficult. Making it look that way however, is so much easier than he ever thought it would be when he was still trying to be a good person. He will manipulate, steal, kill, and anything else to get what he wants. The only thing that can stop him is if the risks are greater than the rewards.
Levi can actually be a fun person to be around though. Part of his giving up on higher purpose, is that he finds no real reason not to just stop and have some fun; throw a party, joke around, leave the work and seriousness for later. After all, it’s not like he’s saving the world with whatever he’s doing, right? While he would once be intimidated by doing something “wrong” he now can only be controlled by the consequences of his actions. Levi makes a lot of friends, but they rarely stick around long. He meets lots of people, has some fun with them, and then either never sees them again or lets them figure out how selfish and vindictive he really is, and then never sees them again. Of course there are those exceptions when he decides someone is useful enough to keep up the act a little longer, and even rarer exceptions when he finds someone who is just as evil as he is.
A bit of his old self remains in a love of knowledge. These days he spends most of his spare time partying in some way, partly because he never did much before, but he still likes spending some quiet time with a good book. He was always a scientist at heart, and always enjoyed a good novel. He knows his way around a laboratory and a library. He especially likes history, as it is often similar to his beloved fiction, and biology. He can be quite disciplined and a hard worker when properly motivated, it’s just a bit challenging to properly motivate him.
Bottom line, he does what he wants to do, and what keeps him alive and able to do what he wants to do.
Goals & Achievements: Levi doesn't really have either of these things. He never managed to accomplish anything of note except for graduating with good grades and doesn't have any serious ambitions. In the back of his mind he would like to become an Espada, or fabricate a cushy mortal life as a sort of vacation home, but he doesn't care enough to really work for it. At least not yet.
[ GUARDIAN ANGEL ]
Aspect of Death:Cynicism- the belief that human beings, including hollows and shinigami in this case, act only in self-interest. Let down after let down has led Levi to one simple conclusion. There is no higher purpose. Justice, duty, morality, they’re all just superficial, malleable words defined and redefined to fit with the desires of those who spew them. The very minute one definition becomes inconvenient enough, the offending ideal is either redefined or abandoned entirely. The definition that survives is the one enforced with the most power. Those in power believe it because it is convenient for them, those under their authority believe it because to believe otherwise would incur their wrath.
Power: Manos Fantasmales (Phantom hands.) Spectral hands come out of the back of Levi's hollow hole, invisible to the naked eye except as shifts in the air, and able to extend several meters. The higher his skill, the more he can summon.
Zanpakutō: Levi’s zanpakuto is a relatively small bronze dagger that looks like a snake with a pair of rooster wings. The blade is serrated in such a way that it looks like the slithering body of a snake, and straightens out about three quarters of the way up so that the "neck" can serve as an effective handle. The head is rounded and the mouth is closed, with small rubies serving as eyes. Each scale is carved into the bronze over the entirety of the snake's body, with a black outline. The wings act as a guard, and the feathers are just as intricate as the scales. The sheath appears to be made of bronze snake-skin leather, matching perfectly with the rest of the knife.
[ LEGACY CREATED ]
Origin: I was born a nobody. A common peasant in a family of farmers in a French village, basically owned by our noble lord, and considered slightly less valuable than his dogs. We couldn’t gather his wood if we were cold, couldn’t hunt in his forests if we were hungry, couldn’t use the wine-press without paying him, oh, and if he passed by and you didn’t bow, may God have mercy on your soul.
Everything went on as normal until puberty hit my older sister like a cannonball. By the time she was 16 she was smoking hot, and the lord’s son noticed her. He sent us a letter asking for us to send her to him. I know what you’re thinking, he wanted to marry her because she was pretty and be an abusive husband right? Nope. He didn’t have to marry her. He wanted to take her to his castle, bang her, and send her back home, humiliated and ruined. It all would have been completely legal too. Well, shockingly, our father didn’t much like that idea. We all snuck away in the middle of the night and made our way to Paris.
We thought we’d make a better life for ourselves in the big city, us and a few thousand other people. Not exactly. It wasn’t all bad I suppose, at least my sister didn’t get raped. Also my father turned out to have a knack for making shoes, and my mother for making clothes, so we got by. The city still sucked though. Our idea of cleanliness was dumping our shit in the street to get it out of the house, and our idea of healthcare was cutting ourselves every so often to get rid of excess blood. Needless to say, people got sick a lot. We still had to bow down to any noble that walked by too, and every time we did, I prayed that this one wouldn’t see my sister too. Not that it mattered much.
We did ok, until the bread shortages started to hit. No matter how much we made, we just couldn’t afford to eat right. Turns out the body doesn’t fight disease so well when it’s hungry. We went to that city to save my sister, and we ended up losing her, my mother, and two of my brothers to it.
Naturally, we were pretty pissed off at the crown, the nobles, even the church. Hell, we were pissed at everyone and everything. We didn’t keep up a whole lot with the politics, the estates general and all that, but we heard enough to know that even though we were supposed to be equal, the first two estates still treated us like dogs.
We were at the front of the crowd that attacked the Bastille. We weren’t actually trying to get anyone out, we didn’t really care that much. It was a symbol. It was a prison where the king could send anyone he wanted to. It was an abuse of power made manifest. To us, when we attacked it, it was nobility incarnate. I killed for the first time that day, one of the guards. I threw up right on his corpse. We won though. We stormed the bastille and rescued all of the prisoners. All five of them, most of whom were either scum or insane. That wasn’t the point though. We had stuck it to the crown. We would not be ignored anymore.
If you know your history, you know that the republic took over after that and did a lot of crazy political stuff. Like I said, I didn’t keep up with it much. You better believe I showed up to vote for the king’s impeachment though, me, my father, and my brothers. The king had just tried to run away form Paris and raise an army, and we were all officially done with him. Well, it was about to be official anyway. Then we found the guys under the podium.
In retrospect, they seemed like just a couple of crazy guys that had no idea what was going on. At the time though... well we were all a little tense. We lynched them. Well, I say we, I wasn’t really close enough to DO anything, but that’s not really the point. Whether they were royalist or not, killing them sure pissed off the crown. Tensions had been high for a really long time, but no one had actually been killed by the king’s soldiers. When the National Guard came that day though, they came for blood. One of the people they shot was my father. He bled out in my arms as people ran or fought all around us. His last word was “run” so I did.
My brothers and I went back to making shoes. What else could we do? Then we went to war. Apparently some of the other European monarchies didn’t like that we had turned the tables on our king, made him a prisoner in his own castle. They threatened us, showed up at our gates. My brothers and I all volunteered to fight. I wish we hadn’t. I still think that bastard in charge was a traitor, setting us up to lose so that those Austrian sons of bitches could put the king back on the throne. My brothers and I were all shot, and I was the only one that survived. I still couldn’t fight with those injuries though. It ripped straight through my leg. There wouldn’t be any more charging into battle or anywhere else for me. So I went back to making shoes, more pissed than ever.
Whatever you’ve heard about the French Revolution, and the terror, we weren’t crazy. We were paranoid, sure, but we had good reason to be. There really were plots everywhere, mostly from nobles that had left, intending to raise armies and come back. The kings brother did that, the king himself had tried, it was real. But I’ll be honest, I myself was so pissed that I accused people over every little thing. A sad look toward the castle was enough to raise my suspicions. I don’t honestly remember how many people I accused of being royalists, or what the reasons were. There were a lot, ok? And a few of them might have been totally innocent and on the side of the republic. That was the story at my trial at least. I had helped fight at virtually every stage of our rebellion, and then I was accused of betraying it? Falsely accusing people they said, trying to sow distrust and dissention. Ridiculous! But if I’m being honest about it, they were no crazier than I was. They took me to the guillotine. I looked at the crowd as they all cheered for my death. I was infuriated. I was terrified. I cannot describe the feeling of absolute betrayal and despair I felt in that moment, dying as an enemy to those I had fought for my entire life. It didn’t matter to them though. My sacrifices, my life, it was nothing. My usefulness was at an end, and they were after their own revenge. I’d have done the same honestly.
They dropped the blade, and I found myself looking straight at a shinigami. There had been so many executions the poor guy had decided to just hang out right in front of the guillotine and purify us as we died. He didn’t say a word and didn’t waste any time. I just got a glimpse of his sad, dead eyes, the kind of eyes that you get when you’ve already cried out all of your tears. Then he bumped me with the hilt of his sword, mechanically, like a factory worker pressing a button for the millionth time. I can only imagine how much death he must have seen there.
There are no words in any language I know for how weird the rukongai looked to me. I was French, remember? I had never seen or even heard about anything from Feudal Japan. I barely even knew Asia existed. I adapted quickly enough though. Turns out cheap shoes were in high demand in the outer districts. Everyone who could afford them wanted them, and I was one of very few people that knew how to make them. Not to mention mine were of French design so they were also kind of a novelty.
I was also used to being at the bottom of the social structure. As far as I was concerned the afterlife was the same as France. The shinigami were the new First estate, the upper districts of the rukongai the second estate, and I was still stuck in the third. I still hated them; the shinigami, the rich, everyone who thought they were better than us. Better than me.
It didn’t take me long to realize I had spiritual power. I got hungry, not much of a mystery. But I refused to join the shinigami for a long time. Trying to be a hero, fight for a cause, it hadn't worked out the first time. It was hard to try again. I had a friend though. Nishiki, one of my first customers. We hit it off and started hanging out when we weren’t working; talking about politics and why the world sucked. We both blamed the shinigami, the central 46, the nobles, the power structure in general. When he found out I got hungry he convinced me that joining the shinigami and trying to change them from the inside was a better plan than sitting around starving and hating them forever. It was pretty hard to argue with, especially after he “revoked my bitching privileges” because I could do something and wasn’t.
I got in on my first try. Turns out I’m pretty smart. I had never had a chance to get an education before, but while I was in the academy I realized that I loved science, especially biology and medicine. Imagine my surprise to find out the body actually need all of its blood!
Rise to Power: Anyway, I graduated and joined the fourth division. I came really close to joining the third, but in the end I decided that I wanted to find new ways to treat the sick instead of using the same old methods. I got to work, on other peoples’ ideas of course. I was still at the bottom of the totem pole. I still visited my old home from time to time, caught up with Nishiki and saw how everyone was. He would always ask me how the reformation was going. At first it was jokingly, but after a while I started to realize he was actually expecting me to walk in, get involved in the politics and change things. When I tried to explain to him that I was a scientist, not a politician, well there were some arguments. He didn’t understand my life, maybe he didn’t care. He just knew I wasn’t improving his like he expected he to. He let it go though, and we stayed friends. Maybe he thought having a shinigami for a pal would help him at some point.
It did actually. When I would visit he would take me to other people’s shops, people that he was trying to do business with. He didn’t have to eat, so he saved every penny he earned. With a few centuries of work, and some further loans secured by my patronage to richer members of the district, he eventually managed to buy a small farm. I was happy to help him. It was a little hypocritical of us, sort of becoming the nobles we hated, but Nishiki treated his workers well enough. He became a symbol of what nobility should be to me. He gave me motivation to try my part to move up the ladder again.
Then one day I’m carrying some important stuff in some test tubes from one end of the lab to the other, and the entire place just shakes like an earthquake hit. I almost cried when they all spilled on the floor, then I realized that the soul society didn’t get earthquakes. Everyone ran outside and, well, my experiments didn’t seem so important when I saw that a cero had just cut soul society almost in half. I wasn’t stupid enough to go anywhere near the monster that could do that. He was the freaking KING OF HUECO MUNDO I wasn’t touching that. The little mini-monsters that snuck through with him though? I killed a few of them. I had a duty to do, and I risked my life to do it. Stupid is what it was, but somehow I survived.
My real work would come after the massacre was over, and the survivors had to be treated for their injuries. The third division was understandable short on manpower, so people who knew kaido well enough, such as myself, were called in to help them. We were all running ragged, and we were all in the Seireitei. I worked for I don’t even know how many hours straight before I finally got a break and started asking questions. Turns out we were working from the inside outward. The shinigami would all be treated first, then the upper districts, then if anyone was left in the lower districts we would get to them last. I didn’t like that idea. I left, without permission of course, right in the middle of my break and ran to the rukongai, the same district I had woken up in all those years ago.
The scene I found was a lot quieter than I expected. Turns out most of the people there had either been too far away to get hurt, or had been killed on the spot. There were still a lot of people in that painful middle ground though, so I yelled at everyone who could walk to bring me anyone who couldn’t, and got to work. Imagine my surprise when a pretty girl brings my old friend Nishiki up to me. Well, most of him anyway. I was a kaido expert, so I was able to bring his leg back as he introduced me to Aki, the girl that had helped him get to me, and who had bandaged him up before that. She was one of the few people in the district that actually knew a few things about medicine, and had been doing her best to keep people alive until the shinigami got there. It broke my heart to hear how much faith she had misplaced in the gotei. Anyway, she basically became my assistant for the rest of the time I was there, and by the time I left I found myself promising to come back and visit her.
Leaving my post turned out to be a horrible decision on my part. Turns out my boss actually did pay a little attention to me, enough to know that I wasn't at my post. I was charged with dereliction of duty, and nearly thrown in the maggot's next. Due entirely to the fact that I had made sure all of my duties were basically done before leaving however, they decided to give me a slap on the wrist. By which I mean, they fined me a year's salary, demoted me, and let me know that it would be a few hundred years before I had any chance at promotion or raise.
It was a bleak time for me, but it had its upside. I fell in love with Aki, and spent all the time I could get off with her. It wasn’t like working overtime was going to get my career back on track. Even with the worst jobs available, being a shinigami paid pretty well, and before I knew it I was engaged to Aki. Nishiki was going to be my best man. It was a turning point for me. I had basically given up on my career, on ever getting the influence to change things in the rukongai. Aki and Nishiki though, they were my goal now. I couldn't save the world, but I would protect my own. Not even my work could spoil my mood then. At least, nothing I ever expected.
I never thought about how much more money Nishiki was making than me. I never thought about the fact that he was going forward while I was stuck in place. I never thought about the fact that He and Aki were both in the same district while I was stuck in the Seireitei. I never thought about any of it until the day I caught them. Typical story; I get off from work early one day, manage to slip out without my superiors finding me and finding an extra job for me, and run straight home to be with my lady, only to find her and my best friend in my bed.
I was understandably upset. They tried to sell me some BS excuse about how "it just happened." Nishiki left a few teeth behind when I threw him out. I kicked Aki out too of course, but I still couldn't bring myself to actually hit her. That was it though, I just kicked them both out of my place and told them I hoped they would be happy together. Sarcastically of course.
At first I was just numb. I wasn't really angry. I wasn't even sad. I wasn't anything. I went to work, did my work, and went home. I didn't talk about it. I didn't act abnormal. Nobody noticed a thing. It was about two weeks before the pain set in. One more before I first thought about taking revenge. I didn't have much left to lose, but I still didn't have it in me. I started planning it out, fantasizing about it. I honestly didn't think I would ever act on it, until the Ouken Eclipse.
When those portals started opening, I started fighting. It wasn't for the Gotei or for my duty, I was basically over that. I was fighting for my own survival, and working off some hatred. Then, in the middle of that chaos, that battle where anything could happen, where no extra corpse would be suspicious, I saw Aki. Shaken as I was by the sudden invasion of hollows, it took me about ten seconds to realize that it was literally impossible for Aki to be there, and five more to remember that an arrancar on the most-wanted list had the ability to look like whoever you wanted to see. Unfortunately it took me about five seconds to fire a hado spell at her, and the next thing I knew my soul was torn open and I was flying through a garganta. When I woke up in Hueco Mundo, I realized after a while that I had a little something extra in me.
I survived in the only possible way. I avoided any hollow I could, and those I couldn’t I killed. I survived like that for months, and the whole time I had a new voice in my head telling me how screwed I was. Specifically the parts about how the Soul Society had abandoned me and I had thrown my life away trying to do the right thing. Funny thing, he also told me what I had to do to survive. When in Rome do what the Romans do. I ignored him of course, at first. The hungrier I got though, the more sense he made. Turns out hollow meat can cook just like any other meat, and when you are literally starving, it's not half bad.
Ironically, it was that inner hollow that gave me what I needed to escape. Ferocity. Before I had just been a victim trying to survive, but the more the hollow whispered in my ear, the more I listened, the less afraid I became. Eventually I decided to go on the offensive. I went to the menos forest. I nearly died several times. A pack of Menos Grande, especially the kind I was looking for, was still far too much for me to handle. Eventually though, I managed to find a lone adjuchas that looked like a giant skeletal four tailed fox, complete with spiked spine and elbows. An injured, lone adjuchas. One that I could both defeat and reason with, and that’s exactly what I did. I used my kido to beat him bloody, and then made him an offer. “You wanna live?” I asked him. “Then open a garganta to earth.” He asked me why and I answered with a byakurai to the foot. Just then some other hollows show up. Apparently he wasn't quite as lone as I had thought. He had only been left alone for a while because he was injured.
He was already beaten though, so it wasn't too difficult to take him captive. It didn't actually stop the other hollows from attacking me of course, but it did cause them to hesitate, and him to consider his options. He opened a garganta and we both escaped to the mortal world. No language has a word for the exhilarating relief I felt in that moment. In those ten, glorious seconds before reality set in. I was out of Hueco Mundo. All I had to do was stab the adjuchas that I had already beaten and flare my reiatsu and I would be rescued. I would be brought back to Soul Society. I would return to my old life. My old, empty, miserable, life of following orders and getting nowhere. I had fought so hard to escape, and it was all for that?
My inner hollow had a lot to say in that moment. It wasn't the first time we had talked, but it was the first time I hadn't been in survival mode. He reminded me of all the betrayals I had suffered. I reminded him that I was a good person, and he reminded me that I had been about to murder Aki. I reminded him that laws were in place for a reason. He reminded me what those reasons really were. I reminded him that shinigami had actual lives and that hollows had nothing to live for. He asked me what I really had to live for in the seireitei.
"Hey. Adjucha." I spoke to the hollow under my feet, under my blade. He looked at me, quizzically. I can only imagine what must have been going through his head. How strange I must have looked. "What do you live for?" I asked him. He hesitated for a moment.
"For what I want. I once lived to eat. Then to evolve. Now, that is impossible." I hadn't bothered to think much about his injury before. It was just a scabby gash in his leg, a convenient vulnerability. Apparently, it had been caused by a hungry hollow. "Now... I suppose I live for my pack."
I was sold. Yeah, I know, not much of a challenge was it? What can I say, that sounded at least as good as anything a shinigami or a human had ever said. Besides, truth be told, at that point I was just looking for one last excuse.
Call to Action: I guess he meant what he said, because when he saw the shinigami that had just been about to kill him turn into a demonic chicken with Velociraptor legs and a log scaly tail, he did not eat me. He actually invited me to join his pack instead. Can you believe that? I don't know if he figured I would get as strong as I had been as a shinigami and help him, or maybe he was just curious about my transformation. Either way, my first experience as a hollow was the adjuchas introducing himself as Kaneki, asking me if I remembered anything (I didn't yet) and inviting me to join his pack. I accepted of course, I had that much intelligence intact. Kaneki opened a garganta to where we had left his pack, fed them some story about me ambushing the shinigami, and told them I was joining. He was a popular leader, so they went with it.
The first few weeks were rough. Constant hunger, stupidity, basically relying on the rest of the pack to feed me. They weren't too happy about that really, but Kaneki insisted that I would get strong quickly that way, and be contributing in no time. He was right. Besides me and Kaneki there were three other low leveled adjuchas, and two gillian with unique masks. They brought down a lot of big prey, and even the small portion that they let me have was like a feast for a newborn hollow. Within a couple of months, I had grown enough to pull my own weight, and gotten smart enough to think.
It was a strange experience, going from total obsession with hunger to actual sentient thought. I started getting my memories back, piece by piece, and I started realizing that I wasn't satisfied with my life. I wanted something more, but I wasn't sure what. I told the pack about it, and they said I should try to evolve. Kaneki was a bit reluctant. He wasn't sure I was ready, and he didn't want me to turn into a faceless Gillian. The others talked me into it though, and together we talked Kaneki into it.
Everyone spread out and herded a bunch of hollows into a clearing in the menos forest. When Kaneki was sure we had enough, I jumped in. You know how it works, we fought, we killed, we ate, and then we fused. When it was all over there were a thousand voices in my head, but it was still my head. I was a Gillian, with a chicken mask and a unique robe that was torn into hundreds of strands of cloth so that it almost looked like feathers.
Our pack was now very strong. Four adjuchas and three Gillian were hard to beat. Unfortunately, they were also hard to feed. Kaneki didn't have to worry about anything, because he had already been bitten, but the rest of us had to eat or revert to those zombie gillian. As prey became scarce, tensions rose fast. Some of the adjuchas even started talking about taking bites out of each other, but Kaneki wouldn't let them. He should have. One day one of them broke. It was the saddest thing I had ever seen. The proud adjuchas suddenly started crying about voices in his head, screamed, and turned into a big, dumb, mute, gillian.
The whole pack started panicking. None of them had ever actually reverted before, and now everyone was hungry and afraid it was about to happen to them too. I was the only quiet one. I was too focused on trying to think over the voices in my head to get in on the argument. I realized the pack was about to implode. I realized that getting enough food going forward, no matter how this turned out, would be extraordinarily difficult. I thought about the possibilities; the pack losing members and becoming weaker, Kaneki calming everyone down and proceeding as before until it happened again, or worse, being killed in the infighting.
Then they all turned on Kaneki, and I knew the pack was finished. Kaneki, for all his failures, had been the only thing holding the pack together for a while. Without him, this kind of chaos would become common, and we would probably all kill each other off eventually. If there was only one member of this pack to survive it would have to be Kaneki, but there was no way he could take on all the others. I knew what I had to do.
I blocked the first cero that they fired at him. It was the first motion I had made since the fight started, so everyone was understandably shocked. Doubly so when I shuffled over to Kaneki’s side and faced the others. They were so angry, and Kaneki was so thankful. He had been sure that all of his friends had turned on him, that the hollows he had worked so hard to feed, his reason for living, had betrayed him. As the others yelled at me, Kaneki thanked me. He walked in front of me protectively, told me to back him up, and promised that when we beat those traitors he would make me the strongest hollow in Hueco Mundo.
Those were his last words.
In one quick motion I bent over, and bit his head off. The others just stared, stunned at my betrayal, as I gobbled our leader down. They were even more shocked when I turned into an adjuchas myself. This was my solution. I would not allow myself to revert. Ever. I would eat all of them. I would take all their power and hunt for myself. One hollow was so much easier to feed than a pack.
I can’t say it was an easy victory. And I can’t say I came out unscathed. But when the battle was over, I was alone. More importantly, I had and adjuchas’ intelligence. I realized pretty quickly that I wanted more than that. Not just more power, but more to life. I wanted to be more than an animal. In case you haven’t heard, breaking your mask really, really hurts. Oh, but it was so worth it.
