Post by Moriko Abe on May 30, 2017 19:26:09 GMT -5
ABE, MORIKO
SHINIGAMI ACADEMY 6TH YEAR STUDENT
[ AT A GLANCE ]
Age / Apparent Age: 101 / 18
Gender: Female
Height & Weight: 5'4" and 124lb
Hair & Eye Color: Pink, sloppily-cut. Small ponytail on the left of her head. Long bangs down the temples. Baggy, orange eyes.
Positive Traits:
Negative Traits:
Loyalties: While Moriko has no particular love for them, she looks up to the Gotei and respects their authority.
Snapshots:
[ ON THE SURFACE ]
Physical Description: The first thing people tend to notice about Moriko is her permanently exhausted look. Slumped shoulders, baggy eyes, and a grouchy expression. Her hair is straight-cut, clearly by someone with no experience as a hairdresser. It's a faded-out pink color, whereas her eyes are orange, creating a most unusual color combination. Her eyebrows are the same pink color as her hair, but otherwise unremarkable. Moriko's ears are pierced in five different places, including the lobe. She wears steel rings in her earlobes, and simple steel stud piercings in the other four pierced spots.
If Moriko ever bothered to take care of herself, she would probably strike a pretty figure. Her body is slender, though her muscles are well-defined. She possesses the curves of a well-developed young woman, possessing a sizable chest and shapely hips. However, rather than carrying herself with confidence and grace, Moriko might as well be a shuffling zombie. She blames her breasts for her back-aches, but the reality is that her constant slump isn't doing wonders either. Her prettiness is also blemished by large burn scars scattered across her arms from the armpits down.
Clothing-wise, Moriko generally wears the simple Shihakusho when doing her work as a Shinigami. When enjoying her free time, Moriko enjoys tinkering, making her an outlier in the strongly traditional Gotei. When tinkering or out to do strenuous things, Moriko wears a sturdy, leotard-like garment with a collar, which covers everything that absolutely needs to be covered. However, for the sake of wearing pants, Moriko wears a pair of baggy green cargo pants. If she doesn't tie the belt tight enough, the pants sink down to her thighs, revealing small gaps of skin between the waist area of her leotard and the hem of her pants. She wears protective gloves and detached sleeves to conceal the majority of her burn scars and to protect herself during her work. Moriko almost always wears a pair of thick protective goggles on her forehead or face. Originally these were for her
Spiritual Description: Moriko's reiatsu is at a mostly normal level for a Shinigami recruit. During moments of intense combat or hostile emotions, it manifests itself as a deep purple aura, occasionally flickering with bluish flecks. The flow is somewhat wild and erratic, displaying the irregularities inside of her own thought patterns. Otherwise, the aura follows her body's own outline and has an almost flame-like consistency, visually. If Moriko fully vents her power, it invokes a vague sensation of threat emanating from her.
[ BEHIND THE EYES ]
Personality: Moriko was never a particularly social individual. While possessing a generally friendly disposition towards most people, Moriko rarely seeks out social interaction. Even in the Shinigami Academy, she prefers to stay in her room, tinkering away with whatever she got her hands on. Moriko is a diligent student, one with good grades across the board and notable skill with her Zanpakuto. When not tinkering or catching up on her standard Academy studies, she's studying her preferred subject; the soul. Its construction, its inner workings, the cycle of life and death, these are all different facets of her greatest interest and obsession.
While Moriko hides it well and never speaks to anyone about it, she's obsessed with the concept of reconstructing a destroyed soul. Her parents were killed before her eyes by Quincy, one of her few memories. This destroyed their soul, making it impossible for Moriko to ever reunite with them in the afterlife. Due to this, she grew obsessed with the idea of rebuilding her, ignoring the Frankenstein-like implication. The murder of her parents inspired a grudge in Moriko. After almost a century, Moriko still has a deep, almost instinctive hatred of Quincy.
Despite being friendly, Moriko is easily frustrated. This is only enforced by the fact she rarely sleeps enough, making her quite grumpy. It's not unusual for her to carry on a normal, friendly conversation, only for her expression to immediately shift to a bemused frown when she runs into a roadblock with her work. While she'll still treat people in a friendly manner, she might not want them around, in which case she'll request for them to leave her alone. While not quite an introvert, Moriko appreciates her alone-time a lot.
Goals & Achievements:
[ GUARDIAN ANGEL ]
Zanpakutō Spirit: As a sixth-year Academy student, Moriko has yet to fully imprint on her Asauchi. Moriko does not have a Zanpakuto spirit yet. However, once Moriko learns to communicate with her Zanpakuto, she will learn that its name is Karitoru-mono. Literally meaning "the thing that reaps", it's a name that fits her Zanpakuto's appearance and power. The spirit takes the form of a decrepit old woman, with bent back and wearing no more than ragged, black robes. The spirit is thin to the point of being beyond emaciated, being nearly-literally skin and bone, with her face being no more than the skin stretched across her skull. Her hair is white and wispy where she still has it, and hangs down at irregular lengths. The spirit lacks her right arm and left leg, using a peg leg as a replacement for the latter. Karitoru-mono's appearance is supposed to represent the wear and tear of Moriko's lust for revenge, the ugly hatred of almost ninety years. At the same time she seems to serve as some kind of guide for Moriko. While Moriko gets hopelessly lost in the endless sprawl representing her obsession, Karitoru-mono moves around with complete freedom. She knows the way through Moriko's inner world despite its complex and nonsensical layout, and guides the girl around with little known reason.
Karitoru-mono often behaves like a cranky old grandmother, though one with a goldmine's worth of wisdom for Moriko. She staunchly and regularly advises her wielder that her obsession is a fool's errand, and that by seeing every step in life as a step towards this goal creates a dangerous tunnel vision. However, should this advice devolve into an argument with Moriko, which it often does, Karitoru-mono is often the first to end the conversation, usually telling Moriko that if she wants to run straight into her grave, she's allowed to. Karitoru-mono constantly hints at hidden answers within Moriko's inner world, which is why Moriko and Karitoru-mono travel through the complex when performing Jinzen. However, Moriko and Karitoru-mono's conversations always descend into some kind of disagreement before they reach their goal, and they end the Jinzen communication as a result.
Nonetheless, their relationship is not unfriendly. Karitoru-mono happily advises Moriko on other issues, which they can generally come to an agreement on. However, only when the subject is Moriko's obsession that Karitoru-mono guides her along the cold metal hallways of Moriko's inner world. Moriko is aware the journey is most likely more of a spiritual thing than a regular walk towards a destination, and that they'll never get there until Moriko accept Karitoru-mono's advice. However, Moriko continues to refuse, preferring to go down her chosen path. She'll need more than a cranky old woman's advice to move away from that.
Inner World: Moriko's inner world is an endless sprawl of clockwork, like a factory stretching off into eternity. Seemingly useless gears power machines without known purpose, and pipes carry steam to and fro without aim. The terrain is dangerous. While there are many walkways and platforms, falling off could send one down a long way, or worse, into the crushing teeth of a pair of massive gears. Damage to the pipes or gears does not seem to stop the factory from working, but can be dangerous, as the steam is under high pressure, and the gears are ramshackle at best. The risk of getting seared with steam or crushed under a falling chunk of metal are very real, should Moriko end up in conflict with her future Zanpakuto spirit. The inner world reflects the unstable sprawl of Moriko's obsession and the knowledge she gathered surrounding it.
Power: Moriko has never spoken to her Zanpakuto spirit. Currently it is still an Asauchi, thus lacking any special power. However, once unleashed with the command: "Harvest, Karitoru-mono!" and taking its Shikai form, the Zanpakuto unleashes its power. Every time the scythe's blade strikes flesh, it drains a portion of the target's reiryoku, causing the wound to wither and open further. Additionally, this drained reiryoku is instead imbued into Moriko, allowing her to heal her wounds and restore her energy. This power stems from Moriko's obsession with the cycle of life and death.
Zanpakutō: As it stands, Moriko's Asauchi is a simple katana with a 25" blade. The hilt is wrapped in black cord, and the guard is a simple brass circle. Once Moriko unleashes her Shikai, the weapon changes from a regular sword into a scythe. The s-curved handle is as tall as Moriko herself is, and has a single grip two-thirds down from the blade. The shaft is made out of a black wood similar to ebony. The blade is a silvery color, and gleams slightly even when no light is directly cast onto it, and is about 35 inches long.
[ LEGACY CREATED ]
Origin: Born to a happy Japanese couple at the height of World War 1, Moriko led a simple, equally happy early life, as the war itself never moved into Japan. Her father a businessman, her mother a nurse, you can't really get it more mundane than that. Still, they loved each other, and for the first 13 years of her life, Moriko was satisfied. However, all good things come to an end. Shortly after Moriko turned 13, she and her parents got into a terrible accident. Thanks to her father's lucrative business, they'd been able to buy an automobile. However, on the way home from a trip to family, her father didn't see a sharp corner in the pouring rain. Bad visibility, slippery roads, and her father's lacking reaction time combined into a devastating crash that sent Moriko and her parents hurtling down a mountain.
The sudden, violent nature of their deaths was impossible to accept for the family. Rather than realize their death and pass on, the spirits clung to reality, refusing to believe their demise had already happened. The three proceeded to haunt their old home, in blissful denial of their own deaths. However, as all lingering souls, hollowfication constantly encroached. Being bound to a location, their home, they were difficult to find by all those who prey or seek such lingering spirits. While the young Moriko remained ignorant of their situation, her parents slowly started to realize the truth. Unbeknownst to Moriko's spirit, her parents started down the path to becoming demi-hollows.
It was then that they were discovered by someone coming to investigate. Not a detective, no - a man come to their home to see whether the spirits of the recently-deceased inhabitants hadn't lingered. Finding the two hollowing parents, already far gone, the man didn't bother to ask about their situation and drew his weapon - a bow of light. Absorbed in their deteriorating mental state, her parents stood to face the man. Moriko, however, fled. Once outside, she decided to look inside. What followed was a blinding blast of spiritual power. The girl could barely raise her hands in front of her face, but that, combined with standing at the edge of the blast, saved her life. Weeping in both mental and physical agony, her arms now severely burnt, Moriko fled. Perhaps the man chose not to follow her, since she hadn't been hollowing yet. Perhaps she'd evaded him through miraculous luck. In the end, however, he did not find her.
Now lost, Moriko wandered her home town. No longer bound to her old home, though, she became easy to sense by the Shinigami assigned to look after the town. Mere days after the incident, the Shinigami found Moriko and performed Konsou on her.
In Rukongai, Moriko had lost most of her memories. She was just another soul that arrived in the afterlife. However, there was one thing she remembered: a bowman, mercilessly obliterating her parents. Originally, this knowledge caused Moriko to spiral into depression, realizing her parents had been murdered, unaware that they'd been going Hollow. Her depression caused her to make a home away from public view, in a tiny room inside of a ramshackle building. She was little better than a squatter, but nobody bothered to kick her out. For months, she made her living scrounging for food in trash heaps at night, preferring to avoid the daylight and other people.
This would not last forever. It wasn't long before the locals noticed the little girl surviving off garbage, and finally one of the local bakers caught her in the act. He made her an offer: If she could deliver some buns to a customer in the morning, she'd get some freshly-baked bread for herself. Moriko, having forgotten what good food tasted like, accepted the offer. The next day, she ate well for the first time in her new life. From that day on, Moriko became a bit more sociable, regularly doing odd jobs for the locals to feed herself. She made few friends, though. For many, many years this was a satisfying living.
It took almost four decades for her to talk to someone about her only memories. It was then that she actually learned about what the bowman had been: a Quincy. A being capable of destroying souls. For a short while, her depression returned. She'd already had low hopes of seeing her parents again, but now even those hopes had been dashed. However, the desire to see them again soon changed into an interest in the idea of reconstructing human souls destroyed by a Quincy. Due to her lack of knowledge about the workings of the soul, Moriko believed it had to be possible. Over the years, this interest devolved into an obsession: even when she learned it was, in fact, impossible, she convinced herself that people just hadn't tried hard enough.
Moriko decided the time to stay a quiet recluse was over, instead coming out into the open more often and integrating with her society. She was going to stop being some kind of hermit, she had to gain contacts, she had to learn all she could about Shinigami and Quincy. Her sudden determination growing from the seedbed of her mixed hate for Quincy and love for her parents, caused her spiritual power to rise. She desperately desired to gain entry into the Shinigami Academy, and her own drive empowered her. Though it was desire that formed the core of her development, hatred caused it to truly blossom. This change initially went unnoticed by her, but at some point a Shinigami visiting her part of Rukongai noticed her Reiatsu. This resulted in Moriko getting invited into the Academy.
Rise to Power: Upon joining the Shinigami Academy, Moriko's consuming need for revenge started to wither slightly. She now had actual responsibilities and tasks to carry out, material to study, and training to perform. In the first year already, the distractions of her student life ended up taking most of the energy she'd devoted to gaining information and getting to know her environment in the past. Even in the first year, her grades were stellar, ranking among the top of her classes in some. Through the years, Moriko continued this trend, never failing a test. She also grew more familiar with her peers, developing friendships and acquaintances. Her greatest desire, to see her parents again, was muted. There were other goals she had in mind, now. However, the desire never disappeared, and was always in the back of her head. It was her end goal. It was what she was doing all this for. As her exams closed in, so did Moriko's focus once more. She was close to finishing the first step. Failure was not an option. However, the expectation is that Moriko will continue the trend, and pass with flying colors.
Call to Action: (NOTE: All information past this point is speculation. Moriko has yet to leave the Shinigami Academy at this point in time.) As was her wish, Moriko later joined the 4th Division, under the Research department. Due to her use of the 4th Division's resources for her research into soul reconstruction, her goal was eventually discovered by the Division's higher-ups. While a few voices called out in curiosity and interest, for the most part her idea was met with either disbelief, apathy, or straight-up ridicule. Moriko was hardly the first person to dream of accomplishing such a reconstruction, and all her predecessors had failed as well. This did not deter Moriko; instead, it drove her to request all the information the Division had on the subject. Now with a treasure trove of information at her fingertips, Moriko descended deeper into her unhealthy fascination with soul reconstruction. Though not making any practical advancements in her research, Moriko eventually discovered a number of new facts about the construction of the soul and how it works. However, despite finally getting some recognition from her peers for her work, the lack of tangible results deeply frustrated her. As a result, her supposed treasure trove became a trash heap, and her compulsion to study the subject even further has started to affect her regular Shinigami duties.
SHINIGAMI ACADEMY 6TH YEAR STUDENT
[ AT A GLANCE ]
Age / Apparent Age: 101 / 18
Gender: Female
Height & Weight: 5'4" and 124lb
Hair & Eye Color: Pink, sloppily-cut. Small ponytail on the left of her head. Long bangs down the temples. Baggy, orange eyes.
Positive Traits:
- Driven
- Friendly
- Inquisitive
Negative Traits:
- Grumpy
- Obsessive
- Reclusive
Loyalties: While Moriko has no particular love for them, she looks up to the Gotei and respects their authority.
Snapshots:
- Moriko's birth to loving parents and a stable home. (Age 0)
- Moriko and her parents' deaths in a car accident. (Age 12)
- Moriko's hollowing parents are destroyed by Quincy, while Moriko escapes. (Age 13)
- Moriko is found by a Shinigami who performs Konsou, sending her to Rukongai where she becomes a recluse. (Age 13)
- Moriko becomes obsessed with developing a means to restore a destroyed soul. (Age 52)
- Moriko encounters a Shinigami in Rukongai, and is enlisted to join the Academy. (Age 95)
[ ON THE SURFACE ]
Physical Description: The first thing people tend to notice about Moriko is her permanently exhausted look. Slumped shoulders, baggy eyes, and a grouchy expression. Her hair is straight-cut, clearly by someone with no experience as a hairdresser. It's a faded-out pink color, whereas her eyes are orange, creating a most unusual color combination. Her eyebrows are the same pink color as her hair, but otherwise unremarkable. Moriko's ears are pierced in five different places, including the lobe. She wears steel rings in her earlobes, and simple steel stud piercings in the other four pierced spots.
If Moriko ever bothered to take care of herself, she would probably strike a pretty figure. Her body is slender, though her muscles are well-defined. She possesses the curves of a well-developed young woman, possessing a sizable chest and shapely hips. However, rather than carrying herself with confidence and grace, Moriko might as well be a shuffling zombie. She blames her breasts for her back-aches, but the reality is that her constant slump isn't doing wonders either. Her prettiness is also blemished by large burn scars scattered across her arms from the armpits down.
Clothing-wise, Moriko generally wears the simple Shihakusho when doing her work as a Shinigami. When enjoying her free time, Moriko enjoys tinkering, making her an outlier in the strongly traditional Gotei. When tinkering or out to do strenuous things, Moriko wears a sturdy, leotard-like garment with a collar, which covers everything that absolutely needs to be covered. However, for the sake of wearing pants, Moriko wears a pair of baggy green cargo pants. If she doesn't tie the belt tight enough, the pants sink down to her thighs, revealing small gaps of skin between the waist area of her leotard and the hem of her pants. She wears protective gloves and detached sleeves to conceal the majority of her burn scars and to protect herself during her work. Moriko almost always wears a pair of thick protective goggles on her forehead or face. Originally these were for her
Spiritual Description: Moriko's reiatsu is at a mostly normal level for a Shinigami recruit. During moments of intense combat or hostile emotions, it manifests itself as a deep purple aura, occasionally flickering with bluish flecks. The flow is somewhat wild and erratic, displaying the irregularities inside of her own thought patterns. Otherwise, the aura follows her body's own outline and has an almost flame-like consistency, visually. If Moriko fully vents her power, it invokes a vague sensation of threat emanating from her.
[ BEHIND THE EYES ]
Personality: Moriko was never a particularly social individual. While possessing a generally friendly disposition towards most people, Moriko rarely seeks out social interaction. Even in the Shinigami Academy, she prefers to stay in her room, tinkering away with whatever she got her hands on. Moriko is a diligent student, one with good grades across the board and notable skill with her Zanpakuto. When not tinkering or catching up on her standard Academy studies, she's studying her preferred subject; the soul. Its construction, its inner workings, the cycle of life and death, these are all different facets of her greatest interest and obsession.
While Moriko hides it well and never speaks to anyone about it, she's obsessed with the concept of reconstructing a destroyed soul. Her parents were killed before her eyes by Quincy, one of her few memories. This destroyed their soul, making it impossible for Moriko to ever reunite with them in the afterlife. Due to this, she grew obsessed with the idea of rebuilding her, ignoring the Frankenstein-like implication. The murder of her parents inspired a grudge in Moriko. After almost a century, Moriko still has a deep, almost instinctive hatred of Quincy.
Despite being friendly, Moriko is easily frustrated. This is only enforced by the fact she rarely sleeps enough, making her quite grumpy. It's not unusual for her to carry on a normal, friendly conversation, only for her expression to immediately shift to a bemused frown when she runs into a roadblock with her work. While she'll still treat people in a friendly manner, she might not want them around, in which case she'll request for them to leave her alone. While not quite an introvert, Moriko appreciates her alone-time a lot.
Goals & Achievements:
- Achievement: Finished her first five years at the Shinigami Academy with grades constantly in the top 20%.
- Goal: Graduate from the Shinigami Academy with top-level grades.
- Goal: To join the 4th Division and perform extensive studies on the subject of souls.
- Goal: Obsessed with reconstructing her parents' Quincy-destroyed souls.
[ GUARDIAN ANGEL ]
Zanpakutō Spirit: As a sixth-year Academy student, Moriko has yet to fully imprint on her Asauchi. Moriko does not have a Zanpakuto spirit yet. However, once Moriko learns to communicate with her Zanpakuto, she will learn that its name is Karitoru-mono. Literally meaning "the thing that reaps", it's a name that fits her Zanpakuto's appearance and power. The spirit takes the form of a decrepit old woman, with bent back and wearing no more than ragged, black robes. The spirit is thin to the point of being beyond emaciated, being nearly-literally skin and bone, with her face being no more than the skin stretched across her skull. Her hair is white and wispy where she still has it, and hangs down at irregular lengths. The spirit lacks her right arm and left leg, using a peg leg as a replacement for the latter. Karitoru-mono's appearance is supposed to represent the wear and tear of Moriko's lust for revenge, the ugly hatred of almost ninety years. At the same time she seems to serve as some kind of guide for Moriko. While Moriko gets hopelessly lost in the endless sprawl representing her obsession, Karitoru-mono moves around with complete freedom. She knows the way through Moriko's inner world despite its complex and nonsensical layout, and guides the girl around with little known reason.
Karitoru-mono often behaves like a cranky old grandmother, though one with a goldmine's worth of wisdom for Moriko. She staunchly and regularly advises her wielder that her obsession is a fool's errand, and that by seeing every step in life as a step towards this goal creates a dangerous tunnel vision. However, should this advice devolve into an argument with Moriko, which it often does, Karitoru-mono is often the first to end the conversation, usually telling Moriko that if she wants to run straight into her grave, she's allowed to. Karitoru-mono constantly hints at hidden answers within Moriko's inner world, which is why Moriko and Karitoru-mono travel through the complex when performing Jinzen. However, Moriko and Karitoru-mono's conversations always descend into some kind of disagreement before they reach their goal, and they end the Jinzen communication as a result.
Nonetheless, their relationship is not unfriendly. Karitoru-mono happily advises Moriko on other issues, which they can generally come to an agreement on. However, only when the subject is Moriko's obsession that Karitoru-mono guides her along the cold metal hallways of Moriko's inner world. Moriko is aware the journey is most likely more of a spiritual thing than a regular walk towards a destination, and that they'll never get there until Moriko accept Karitoru-mono's advice. However, Moriko continues to refuse, preferring to go down her chosen path. She'll need more than a cranky old woman's advice to move away from that.
Inner World: Moriko's inner world is an endless sprawl of clockwork, like a factory stretching off into eternity. Seemingly useless gears power machines without known purpose, and pipes carry steam to and fro without aim. The terrain is dangerous. While there are many walkways and platforms, falling off could send one down a long way, or worse, into the crushing teeth of a pair of massive gears. Damage to the pipes or gears does not seem to stop the factory from working, but can be dangerous, as the steam is under high pressure, and the gears are ramshackle at best. The risk of getting seared with steam or crushed under a falling chunk of metal are very real, should Moriko end up in conflict with her future Zanpakuto spirit. The inner world reflects the unstable sprawl of Moriko's obsession and the knowledge she gathered surrounding it.
Power: Moriko has never spoken to her Zanpakuto spirit. Currently it is still an Asauchi, thus lacking any special power. However, once unleashed with the command: "Harvest, Karitoru-mono!" and taking its Shikai form, the Zanpakuto unleashes its power. Every time the scythe's blade strikes flesh, it drains a portion of the target's reiryoku, causing the wound to wither and open further. Additionally, this drained reiryoku is instead imbued into Moriko, allowing her to heal her wounds and restore her energy. This power stems from Moriko's obsession with the cycle of life and death.
Zanpakutō: As it stands, Moriko's Asauchi is a simple katana with a 25" blade. The hilt is wrapped in black cord, and the guard is a simple brass circle. Once Moriko unleashes her Shikai, the weapon changes from a regular sword into a scythe. The s-curved handle is as tall as Moriko herself is, and has a single grip two-thirds down from the blade. The shaft is made out of a black wood similar to ebony. The blade is a silvery color, and gleams slightly even when no light is directly cast onto it, and is about 35 inches long.
[ LEGACY CREATED ]
Origin: Born to a happy Japanese couple at the height of World War 1, Moriko led a simple, equally happy early life, as the war itself never moved into Japan. Her father a businessman, her mother a nurse, you can't really get it more mundane than that. Still, they loved each other, and for the first 13 years of her life, Moriko was satisfied. However, all good things come to an end. Shortly after Moriko turned 13, she and her parents got into a terrible accident. Thanks to her father's lucrative business, they'd been able to buy an automobile. However, on the way home from a trip to family, her father didn't see a sharp corner in the pouring rain. Bad visibility, slippery roads, and her father's lacking reaction time combined into a devastating crash that sent Moriko and her parents hurtling down a mountain.
The sudden, violent nature of their deaths was impossible to accept for the family. Rather than realize their death and pass on, the spirits clung to reality, refusing to believe their demise had already happened. The three proceeded to haunt their old home, in blissful denial of their own deaths. However, as all lingering souls, hollowfication constantly encroached. Being bound to a location, their home, they were difficult to find by all those who prey or seek such lingering spirits. While the young Moriko remained ignorant of their situation, her parents slowly started to realize the truth. Unbeknownst to Moriko's spirit, her parents started down the path to becoming demi-hollows.
It was then that they were discovered by someone coming to investigate. Not a detective, no - a man come to their home to see whether the spirits of the recently-deceased inhabitants hadn't lingered. Finding the two hollowing parents, already far gone, the man didn't bother to ask about their situation and drew his weapon - a bow of light. Absorbed in their deteriorating mental state, her parents stood to face the man. Moriko, however, fled. Once outside, she decided to look inside. What followed was a blinding blast of spiritual power. The girl could barely raise her hands in front of her face, but that, combined with standing at the edge of the blast, saved her life. Weeping in both mental and physical agony, her arms now severely burnt, Moriko fled. Perhaps the man chose not to follow her, since she hadn't been hollowing yet. Perhaps she'd evaded him through miraculous luck. In the end, however, he did not find her.
Now lost, Moriko wandered her home town. No longer bound to her old home, though, she became easy to sense by the Shinigami assigned to look after the town. Mere days after the incident, the Shinigami found Moriko and performed Konsou on her.
In Rukongai, Moriko had lost most of her memories. She was just another soul that arrived in the afterlife. However, there was one thing she remembered: a bowman, mercilessly obliterating her parents. Originally, this knowledge caused Moriko to spiral into depression, realizing her parents had been murdered, unaware that they'd been going Hollow. Her depression caused her to make a home away from public view, in a tiny room inside of a ramshackle building. She was little better than a squatter, but nobody bothered to kick her out. For months, she made her living scrounging for food in trash heaps at night, preferring to avoid the daylight and other people.
This would not last forever. It wasn't long before the locals noticed the little girl surviving off garbage, and finally one of the local bakers caught her in the act. He made her an offer: If she could deliver some buns to a customer in the morning, she'd get some freshly-baked bread for herself. Moriko, having forgotten what good food tasted like, accepted the offer. The next day, she ate well for the first time in her new life. From that day on, Moriko became a bit more sociable, regularly doing odd jobs for the locals to feed herself. She made few friends, though. For many, many years this was a satisfying living.
It took almost four decades for her to talk to someone about her only memories. It was then that she actually learned about what the bowman had been: a Quincy. A being capable of destroying souls. For a short while, her depression returned. She'd already had low hopes of seeing her parents again, but now even those hopes had been dashed. However, the desire to see them again soon changed into an interest in the idea of reconstructing human souls destroyed by a Quincy. Due to her lack of knowledge about the workings of the soul, Moriko believed it had to be possible. Over the years, this interest devolved into an obsession: even when she learned it was, in fact, impossible, she convinced herself that people just hadn't tried hard enough.
Moriko decided the time to stay a quiet recluse was over, instead coming out into the open more often and integrating with her society. She was going to stop being some kind of hermit, she had to gain contacts, she had to learn all she could about Shinigami and Quincy. Her sudden determination growing from the seedbed of her mixed hate for Quincy and love for her parents, caused her spiritual power to rise. She desperately desired to gain entry into the Shinigami Academy, and her own drive empowered her. Though it was desire that formed the core of her development, hatred caused it to truly blossom. This change initially went unnoticed by her, but at some point a Shinigami visiting her part of Rukongai noticed her Reiatsu. This resulted in Moriko getting invited into the Academy.
Rise to Power: Upon joining the Shinigami Academy, Moriko's consuming need for revenge started to wither slightly. She now had actual responsibilities and tasks to carry out, material to study, and training to perform. In the first year already, the distractions of her student life ended up taking most of the energy she'd devoted to gaining information and getting to know her environment in the past. Even in the first year, her grades were stellar, ranking among the top of her classes in some. Through the years, Moriko continued this trend, never failing a test. She also grew more familiar with her peers, developing friendships and acquaintances. Her greatest desire, to see her parents again, was muted. There were other goals she had in mind, now. However, the desire never disappeared, and was always in the back of her head. It was her end goal. It was what she was doing all this for. As her exams closed in, so did Moriko's focus once more. She was close to finishing the first step. Failure was not an option. However, the expectation is that Moriko will continue the trend, and pass with flying colors.
Call to Action: (NOTE: All information past this point is speculation. Moriko has yet to leave the Shinigami Academy at this point in time.) As was her wish, Moriko later joined the 4th Division, under the Research department. Due to her use of the 4th Division's resources for her research into soul reconstruction, her goal was eventually discovered by the Division's higher-ups. While a few voices called out in curiosity and interest, for the most part her idea was met with either disbelief, apathy, or straight-up ridicule. Moriko was hardly the first person to dream of accomplishing such a reconstruction, and all her predecessors had failed as well. This did not deter Moriko; instead, it drove her to request all the information the Division had on the subject. Now with a treasure trove of information at her fingertips, Moriko descended deeper into her unhealthy fascination with soul reconstruction. Though not making any practical advancements in her research, Moriko eventually discovered a number of new facts about the construction of the soul and how it works. However, despite finally getting some recognition from her peers for her work, the lack of tangible results deeply frustrated her. As a result, her supposed treasure trove became a trash heap, and her compulsion to study the subject even further has started to affect her regular Shinigami duties.
