When will I see the shore?

HMD post + plotting + misc

face_kick — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 18:49:42 GMT

This is an HMD post for Kuchiki Rukia, currently played at gargleblasted. Please leave con-crit, plot ideas, or anything else of a relevant nature here.

Anon should be on, comments aren't screened unless you request that they be.

OOC: Kuchiki Rukia - Bleach - Mostly Harmless Application

face_kick — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:17:53 GMT

OOC:

Name: Anne
Are you over 16?: Yep.
Personal LJ: tsukara
Email: scarysnakelady@gmail.com
Timezone: PST
Other contact: AIM: thetsukara
Characters already in the game: N/A
How did you find us?: other friends play here.

IC:

Character name: Kuchiki Rukia
Fandom: Bleach
Timeline: post chapter-423 (timeskip)
Age: 100-140 years or so. Looks to be about 16 in human years.
~*Magical*~ abilities and strengths:

- Swordsmanship: about average, for a shinigami of her rank and experience, these days. She’s not great at it, but can hold her own in a fight, even against an expert.

- Kidou: Kidou is a range of spells (from 1, the easiest, to 99) that can be used for defense, combat, or healing. She has quite a bit of skill in kidou, skill that she’s worked for. She can use several kidou in rapid succession, can use some high-level ones with the incantation and has considerable power and control. Her specialties are in binding, healing, purifying and destruction.

- Physical strength and hand-to-hand combat: Rukia is a pint-size powerhouse, able to kick and punch people several times her size with considerable force. She’s about average when it comes to skill in hand-to-hand combat, but again, can hold her own against most experts.

Flash step: Rukia is quite fast with shunpo, a movement technique that allows the user to move faster than the eye is able to follow, getting from one place to another in as few steps as possible, making it seem as if the user has disappeared and reappeared someplace else.

Reiatsu: The spiritual pressure created by the release of spiritual power. Rukia has a large amount of reiryoku—enough to be a seated officer, if her brother hadn’t pulled strings to make that not happen—meaning she can display a great amount of reiatsu, though she rarely does. She is very good at controlling it, and when is she focused or under great stress, it can manifest as floating ice crystals.

Zanpakutou: A zanpakutou is the main weapon of most shinigami, used to fight hollows and perform soul burials. A zanpakutou is both the reflection of the soul and power of a shinigami, and sentient in and of themselves. Generally they have about thre states: sealed, unsealed, or shikai, and full release, or bankai. Rukia's zanpakutou is Sode no Shirayuki. Sealed, it looks like a normal katana. When unsealed, the entire katana, including the guard and hilt, are pure white, with a long white ribbon trailing from the end of the hilt. Its release command is 舞え (mae—dance), and this transformation brings a rush of cold air and possibly fog with it.

Shikai abilities: Sode no Shirayuki has several abilities, called dances.
- Some no mai (first dance), Tsukishiro: Rukia slashes with the blade, and a variable-size circle of ice that freezes anything it touches appears around her target. This circle has influence not only on a flat plane, but extending up as well. This ice can then be shattered, shattering any victims who happen to be trapped inside.

- Tsugi no mai (second dance), Hakuren: Piercing the ground several times with the blade, Rukia then takes up a battle stance while up-flowing particles gather from the pierces. When a sufficient amount has gathered, they fire towards the target in a massive wall of white ice, freezing whatever it strikes.

- San no mai (third dance), Shirafune: If he blade is ever broken, she can use this dance to reforge it out of ice particles—even through solid objects like an opponent. This ice then freezes everything else it touches.

- Juhaku: Rukia stabs the ground with her zanpakutou, and a trail of ice is created, leading to her target, freezing it from the bottom up once it reaches it, turning it all into ice.

(Rukia has not yet achieved Bankai.)

How would they use their abilities?:
Normally Rukia uses her abilities to defend herself and her friends, or for training. While she is not afraid to fight should the need arise, she is not the sort of actively go looking for one. Sometimes she will use low-level kidou, especially of the binding or healing types, either to heal small wounds like cuts and scrapes, or to get obstacles (like, say, obstinate people) out of her way.

Appearance:
Rukia is, tiny, simply put. At only 144cm (4'8-1/2") and weighing in at only 33kg (73lbs), Rukia might not look like much on a first glance. Slender, with long legs and not much to speak of in the chest area, Rukia is also surprisingly strong, and very fit for someone so slender. Her hair is plain black, reaching to about her shoulders, and her bangs are long, often with at least one lock of hair falling in front of her face. Her large eyes are a deep blue, and she is quite pale-skinned. Her movements are typically quite graceful (her techniques are called 'dances' after all), though her expression is often withdrawn and slightly cool.

While she much prefers her uniform, be it for school or shinigami duties, she also favors simple kimono, one-piece dresses (they're one of the few things from the living world likely to fit her), long skirts (though if it's hot she may switch to shorts or shorter dresses)--basically she tends to go for function and comfort over pure fashion, though she does know how to dress nicely. She also doesn't mind going barefoot, and will do so as long as propriety will let her get away with it--probably a result of a childhood spent without shoes.

Background/Personality: (Split into two)
Personality:
Rukia, on a first glance, is a proper and serious Shinigami, graceful and well-suited for her position as a member of a noble house and one of the Gotei 13.

Rukia, on the whole, is a complicated person, strong in her personality while burdened with self-doubt and guilt too. Having grown up without adult supervision for a good part of her early life, Rukia is very independent, usually thinking she can do things on her own--even if sometimes she's wrong. She can sometimes admit when she's wrong, though when she is it's usually very, and therefore serious. And Rukia is very good at serious.

Willing to go above and beyond the call of duty in order to carry out what she is called upon to do. Soemtimes she will doubt the decisions she's made, and take all the blame for anything that went wrong--no matter if it's her fault or not. She tends to keep her self-doubt and guilt locked away, not wishing to burden others with it. She is devoted to her friends and family, though she doesn’t always share her thoughts or feelings with thm. She also has a sense of fairness and equality that she certainly didn't get from growing up where she did--it seems to be an innate quality.

Though she keeps things to herself a lot, Rukia is quite good at playing any part thrown at her that she needs to, making up sob stories or putting on 'cute' voices as needed. She will bicker, fight, and even hit (if needed) with the best of them to get someone to see her point of view, or do what she says.

For all this, she does have a bit of a refined, even girly, side though. Graceful, she often chooses to wear dresses while out of uniform, despite the seeming severity of her appearance based on her looks, especially while in uniform. She also loves bunnies. Really. Really loves bunnies. Even her drawings of people end up looking kind of... bunny-ish, really. Though don't say anything about that part to her, she may get violent.

She's also, perhaps, a bit naive and silly, not about people mostly, but about "modern-day" stuff. This is less-so, since spending so much time in the human world, but there occasional thing still does trip her up. However, Rukia isn't one to let a little thing like not understanding something to stop her from finding out (usually by asking) and, because she is rather intelligent, it usually ends up working out for her.

Because of her small stature, which she hates people pointing out or making fun of, Rukia likes high places, including rooftops, telephone poles and occasionally other people. She also gets quite mad if people mistake her for being younger than she is, or treat her lightly because of her diminutive size.

Rukia is also very clever. She's able to form escape plans, battle strategies and everything in between in a matter of minutes, and then quick on her feet to carry them out. She's not the most skilled, or the strongest, but she is a good fighter when it comes down to it.

Overall, Rukia is a kind, serious person, who tends to hide her feelings, even from her friends, usually behind ceremony, or behind a tough front, but is ultimately loyal, through and through.

Background: (I apologize in advance for the absurd length.)
Once upon a time, two young girls, sisters, died in the human world and were sent to the south Rukongai's 78th district, Inuzuri, in Soul Society, where dead souls are sent. But Inuzuri was a rough and unfriendly place, and the older of the two girls found that caring for her baby sister as well as herself proved to be too much. So she abandoned her little sister, and would never see her again.

This abandoned child survived though, growing up in the slums of Inuzuri, surviving through her own quick cleverness. One day, she came across a group of other kids in much the same situation she was in, stealing water. Helping them escape the merchant whose water they were stealing, she joined their little group made entirely of children.

During this time, she and Renji discovered that they had pretty significant spiritual power--after Rukia just about passed out from hunger in front of a shinigami visiting the district. Through trial and error, they grew stronger and stronger, but Rukia had no interest in becoming a shinigami herself--she wanted to stay with her four closest friends forever, a family.

Ten years later, she and Renji would bury the last of the other three. That was when she decided that, in order to leave that degenerate town behind for good, she and Renji would become Shinigami and live in the Seireitei.

In academy, Rukia was fairly average, in the second class, while Renji was in the top class. Because of this, they began to grow apart somewhat. And then one day, members of the noble Kuchiki family approached Rukia, asking her to join the Kuchiki family as an adopted daughter. With Renji's all too enthusiastic encouragement (though he doesn't truly feel it), she accepts, being graduated out of the academy and into the 13th squad of the Gotei 13.

While initially some people looked down on her for being from the Rukongai, or thought she was just another stuck-up noble, her Lieutenant, Shiba Kaien, treated her as just another squad member from the start, kind (if a bit rough) and 'always on her side' as long as she was part of the squad. His wife Miyako became Rukia's role model, as third seat in the squad as well as being kind, beautiful and intelligent.

And then, one night, Miyako’s squad was killed while on a routine reconnaissance mission by a Hollow. Kaien asked to go after them, Captain Ukitake and Rukia joined him, and the three went to find and destroy the Hollow. Kaien attempted to fight the Hollow on his own, and ended up possessed by it himself. Ukitake tried to take him down, now that he was taken over, but had a disabling attack of his coughing sickness. Rukia, disobeying her orders to run away, came back, without a plan, with nothing but a sword.

The small part of Kaien that hadn't been subsumed by the Hollow forced the joined body to fall onto her upheld sword, a mortal wound. Kaien, in his last moments, apologized for making her go through that, thanked her and entrusted her with his 'heart', before dying. Rukia felt she had done nothing worth being thanked for, and in fact, felt so responsible for his death, she couldn't even bring herself to apologize to Kaien's family when she brought his body back.

A long time passed and Rukia kept working for her division until, one day, they decided to station her as the guardian for a place in the human world called Karakura town. It was there, while tracking a Hollow, she encountered Kurosaki Ichigo. Or, rather, his foot encountered her in the back when she was tracking a Hollow and happened to end up in his room.

He shouldn't have been able to see her, let alone touch her, being a human, but he could and he did. After a short explanation of what she was and what she was doing there (aided by illustrations and which he totally didn't get), the Hollow she'd been trying to track attacked Ichigo's family, attracted by his high spiritual power.

When Rukia was severely wounded in the fight (due to Ichigo being a self-sacrificing idiot) she determined the only way to survive, for all of them, would be to give Ichigo half her powers. Instead, he somehow took all her powers, becoming a shinigami himself complete with a ridiculously large zanpakutou.

Without her powers, she couldn't do her job, and therefore Karakura had no guardian. Her solution? Take the gigai (a fake physical body) Urahara showed up to offer her and make Ichigo do the job. He had the powers now, after all. She showed up at his school as a 'transfer student' the next day, and after a little convincing, the two swiftly settled into a routine of Rukia smacking Ichigo out of his body to go fight on whatever orders she received from Soul Society, picking up allies and friends along the way.

But giving away her powers was a capital offense, and Urahara warned her it couldn't last forever. She realized she was endangering everyone by staying there, and so she left in order to protect them all, especially Ichigo.

But the dispatch team from Soul Society caught up with her--and it happened to be squad six’s captain and vice-captain: her adoptive brother and Renji. Despite her note warning him to stay away, Ichigo rushed to the scene to help her. But both she and Ishida get badly beaten by the two officers. Ichigo keeps trying, long after he should have died, until Rukia decided to intervene by going back with Renji and Byakuya because, if she did, Ichigo might get the chance to live, and she would face the consequences of her actions.

Leaving him bleeding on the pavement in the living world, Rukia was taken first to a regular holding cell in Soul Society’s Sixth Division, and then, when the orders came from Central 46 that she was to be executed in one month’s time, to a prison tower made of reiatsu-cancelling stone, effectively cutting her off from anything happening in Soul Society. Renji lefther there with the information that intruders into Soul Society have been spotted, one of them matching Ichigo’s description.

She heard nothing more until an impromptu rescue attempt, not by Ichigo, but by Hanatarou and Ganju—Kaien’s younger brother. Understandably, he would have liked to hurt her in revenge for that, but Hanatarou stopped him, and Byakuya arriving put a stop to that. Despite her protests, Ganju and Hanatarou went out to face him down.

This fight was interrupted first by Ukitake stopping Byakuya from just killing the two, and then by the arrival of a still-recovering Ichigo. Rukia protested his rescue attempt, and they argued about it. While Ichigo, despite his injuries, did then fight Byakuya, Byakuya wasn’t fighting to his full ability. Before he could kill Ichigo, Yoruichi showed up to knock Ichigo out and take him off to train and heal some more.

Rukia passes out after all this stress (and high amounts of reiatsu after days in a reiatsu-cancelling place with none of her own) in such a short period of time, and is taken back to her cell, to wait for her nearing execution.

When the day arrives, she is taken out to the hill. She senses Renji falling in battle to Byakuya, before Gin arrives. He offers to save her and her friends, and she is caught off guard, wondering why he would do such a thing—except he was only kidding to mess with her. Still, his offer was the first thing in a while to make her want to live again, which makes her angry with herself.

At the hill for her execution, she has only one last request: that after she is killed, to let her friends go. Yamamoto agrees to make her feel better. This granted, Rukia takes her place calmly, at peace with everything, thanking everyone.

Ichigo, of course, was never going to let her die and shows up at the last damn second, blocking the Sokyouku (the execution weapon) with nothing but his zanpakutou. He rejects all her arguments, that he should go away, and that she is resigned to her fate, and prepares to block the Sokyouku’s attack a second time. Ukitake shows up with a shield from the Shihoin that he and Captain Shunsui use to destroy the Sokyouku. Ichigo breaks the execution stand as well, just to be thorough.

Rukia could see that he had become much stronger, even if his planning left a little to be desired. After Rukia refuses to apologize, though she’s clearly grateful, Ichigo throws her to Renji to take her to safety, while Ichigo stays behind to fight off those coming after them.

Rukia, on the other hand, would like to go back and help Ichigo, but Renji vetoes that, informing her Ichigo feels the need to repay her for changing his life—something she still regrets, even though Renji assures her it’s fine, and that people don’t think poorly of her for anything she does. They are stopped by someone unexpected, as Captain Tousen blocks their way before bringing them all the way back to Sokyoku hill, along with Gin and the newly-revealed (totally not dead) traitor, Captain Aizen.

Aizen orders Renji to leave Rukia, an order which he obviously refuses. So Aizen attacks, stopping Renji’s shikai with one hand. Ichigo again shows up at the last possible second, and Renji and Ichigo team up to fight Aizen to protect Rukia. They get their asses utterly kicked. Azien then proceeds to monologue like any good villain, all the while dragging Rukia around by the collar because she can’t move, taking care of any interruptions easily.

Apparently the reason her reiatsu hadn’t returned and she’d become untraceable in the human world was that Urahara had created a gigai that took that away and destroyed her reiryoku, essentially slowly turning her into a human, and had hidden a super-powerful artifact inside her. An artifact that Aizen wanted, called the Hougyoku. He was the one who killed the entire Central 46, he who acted as them to order Rukia’s arrest and execution in order to retrieve the Hougyoku. But since that all failed, he had a back-up plan: a freaky-looking hand thing and some ground-spikes invented by Urahara to “break up the soul’s cohesion”—basically meaning he could stick that hand through her and yank out the Hougyoku he’d been trying to get at, a process which somehow ends up not hurting her.

Still though, he decides he has no further use for her and orders Gin to kill her. She is saved at the last second by her brother showing up and taking the blow for her. Everyone else shows up, and everything seems to be leading up to a big fight, except Aizen cockblocks that too, absconding to Hueco Mundo with the help of some Hollows.

So everyone gets healed by Unohana and, as he’s getting healed, Byakuya thinks this is the perfect time to drop some information on Rukia, about her past. It turns out he didn’t adopt her just because she looked like his dead wife, Hisana—she is actually his dead wife’s younger sister. The sister that abandoned Rukia so long ago in the Inuzuri ended up marrying him, though she never stopped searching for Rukia, even up to her death. When she died without finding Rukia, Hisana made Byakuya promise to keep looking and, should he find Rukia, adopt her and care for her as his own sister—and to never tell Rukia about Hisana, because she felt she didn’t deserve to be called her older sister after abandoning her.

But when Byakuya married Hisana, he broke the family rules by marrying a commoner. He defied those rules again to keep his promise to Hisana by bringing Rukia into the family, and vowed never to break the rules again. But when Rukia was sentenced to death, he didn’t know which vow to follow until Ichigo knocked some sense into him.

The events that had happened convinced Rukia that she should have apologized long ago to Kaien’s family. It turned out that Kuukaku, his sister, after learning the whole story from Ukitake, had long ago decided to forgive Rukia if she said one word of apology to her. Ichigo and the others left to go back to the human world, and Rukia decided to stay in Soul Society for while.

The battle against Aizen and his forces was far from over though. Soon, Rukia is sent back to Karakura, along with several other Shinigami, to help prepare for the coming battle against the Arrancar. She promptly jumps in a third story window, kicks Ichigo in the face, and drags him out to fight with a Hollow. Through yelling at him, she brings back his will to get stronger, because that’s the sort of man she sees him as. Swiftly, she moves back into his life (and into his house, though now it’s his sisters’ room instead of his closet).

There’s soon a minor invasion of Arrancar (Aizen’s new breed of even stronger Hollows). She fights and defeats Di Roy, a minor Arrancar, but when faced up against Grimmjow, she is quickly over-powered, as is Ichigo. The Arrancar are forced to leave, and Rukia and the others are healed by Orihime. Shortly thereafter, Ichigo goes missing, to train with the Vizards, so Rukia and Orihime go train on their own in Soul Society. This training is cut short when Grimmjow and other espada-level Arrancar invade the human world again, and Rukia goes off to help fight Grimmjow again. Shinji, one of the Vizard, helps out, but the battle is ultimately called off by Grimmjow’s superior espada, Ulquiorra.

The battle was a front to distract while Orihime was kidnapped and taken to Hueco Mundo. Though Ichigo, Renji and Rukia want to go save Orihime right away, Yamamoto forbids such a thing, sending Byakuya and Kenpachi to retrieve the ‘away team’ and bring them back to Soul Society.

However, Byakuya’s orders were only to bring them back to Soul Society—not to make sure they stayed there. Rukia and Renji join up with Ichigo, Chad and Ishida in Hueco Mundo and proceed to invade Las Noches, where they split up to look for Orihime on their own.

The Espada Rukia runs into looks like, acts like, and has the memories of her former lieutenant, the man she killed, Shiba Kaien. He manages to convince her it’s him, even getting her to agree to die to atone for killing him, before his request to bring back the heads of her friends convinces her it cannot be him. But still she cannot fight to her full ability against him until she gets him into the sunlight, which melts his disguise, revealing him as the Ninth Espada, Aaroneiro.

The battle is long, and hard fought, as he knows, from Kaien’s memories, how she fights, and exactly what buttons to press to get to her; he even has Kaien’s zanpakutou, plus his own Arrancar power. Rukia nearly ends up losing the fight, impaled on his trident-shaped zanpakutou, out of the will to fight him anymore. However, upon remembering that Kaien had entrusted his heart to her, that his heart was with her, and not with his body, she gathered the last of her strength and reformed her broken zanpukutou with her third dance… right through his head, breaking his mask and killing him.

She might have died herself, when the espada Zommari comes across her while she is unconscious, but for her brother, Byakuya making his appearance. Zommari takes control of her unconscious body in order to fight Byakuya, but Byakuya is able to retrain her without letting her be hurt, and then kill Zommari with his bankai. Hanatarou, following behind Byakuya, heals her first, at Byakuya’s insistence.

She shows up next to take the fight with Rudobon off of Ichigo’s hands, alongside Chad and Renji. That battle goes fairly well, especially when she manages to beat his special tree-like soldier-producing ability by freezing him, as ice kills fruit-bearing branches. And then Yammy barges in through a wall and takes Rudobon out himself, so they prepare to take him on instead.

That fight doesn’t go nearly as well as the last. When Yammy gets pissed off at Ulquiorra’s defeat and releases his zanpakutou (revealing his status as the zeroeth espada—the strongest—instead of the 10th and weakest), the battle goes even more sour. Yammy manages to take down Ishida and Renji and get hold of Rukia, first threatening to crush her, then, after she fires off a soukatsui at his face, simply throwing her at the ground at insane speed.

Like he’s made a habit of so far, Ichigo shows up at the last second, once again, saving her from becoming a Rukia-size splat on the ground. He informs her Orihime and Ishida are safe up on top of Las Noches; but Rukia is more perceptive than that, noting that his eyes don’t look like those of someone who won a battle, or someone ready to go into another to win it, and that his Hollow mask, when he puts it on to attack Yammy, looks different.

She doesn’t get much time to reflect on these observations, since soon after, four captains—her brother, Kenpachi, Mayuri and Unohana—show up. Unohana whisks Ichigo away to the living world to join the battle against Aizen there, while Kenpachi and Byakuya get to fighting Yammy (and each other) and Mayuri, well. Mayuri does his own creepy science thing to get Unohana and Ichigo out.

After the end of the battle with Aizen, which Rukia misses, basically, all the shinigami that were in Hueco Mundo, including Rukia, now with her left arm in a proper sling, come back to the living world to meet back up with Ichigo (who now has a mullet thanks to his latest shonen power-up) long enough to say hi.

And then he collapses, apparently in agony. He doesn’t wake up again for a whole month. It turns out that Ichigo has lost his shinigami powers thanks to that last power-up. He has some reiatsu left, and he woke up once that remnant stabilized, but that too is slowly disappearing. Soon he would be left with none, and thus no ability to see spirits of any kind, including Rukia.

Rukia tells him that this is goodbye, and he concurs as his spiritual awareness fades more and more and her presence begins to fade too. Though they joke, it’s clear this is not easy on either of them. With a last goodbye, she fades from his sight completely, and goes back to Soul Society.

Orrrr not, since, hey, what’s this weird spaceship place and what do you mean Earth’s been destroyed?

Have you read up on how the game works?: The guide plug-in is FlamingFerret; three ways to make money are missions, freelance work and... well stealing or mooching, though technically that doesn't seem like 'earning’ it to me!

1st person sample:
[A young woman who, were you going by human years, seems to be in her late teen years, with black hair, a strand of it hanging in her face, is focused on the Guide rather intently when she manages to turn the video on.

New technology is slightly bewildering it's true, but she has bested it! Sort of.]

Excuse me? I believe they said I could use this to find other people I might know, if they had ended up here as well, is this correct?

If anyone is here from the Gotei Thirteen--or from a place called Karakura-town, please let me know.

After all of that paperwork... I would be very grateful if someone could provide me with directions to the cabins, at the very least.

3rd person sample:
While Rukia was very used to following orders, filling out paperwork, and all the other things that came with the theatre of bureaucracy, she had to admit that itwas all a little bit, well, overwhelming. After all, it wasn't every day one learned the fate of the entire planet, including the living world and Soul Society, had been decided and carried out while you weren't looking.

However, Rukia had learned early on in her life that standing around being confused was a sure way to get yourself into trouble of one sort or another. Better to get moving, make it look like she was doing something. Then maybe the trouble would leave her alone long enough to get her bearings, sort herself out...

And maybe find her cabin too. Where had she wandered to now, she wondered, while she was busy poking and prodding at the "Guide" they had handed her? Right, she could do this... maybe this device had a map of this massive ship as well, that would be very useful indeed. If not, she could always try out that communication program to see if she could find someone to help. And perhaps to see if anyone else had made it on to this floating refuge. After all, if the world was gone... but she wouldn't consider those possibilities right this minute. There was time for such things later, she told herself sternly, focusing back on the device.

She'd find where she was going, find any of her friends who had made it, and figure everything out. And the first step, she decided, was the journal-function, which she brought up after a moment or two of searching, finding herself a quieter corner of this corridor and beginning to record.

Questions?: No, I don't think I have any!
Did you put your character's name and fandom in the subject: Yep.

Fourth Dance: The shattered stage is set

face_kick — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 07:07:25 GMT

[Voice | Public]

[The journal catches a confused, skittering sound, as someone picks it up from where it landed when she fell. She's panting hard, since she's been running, but she's stopped.

There's a burst of static over the feed, a confused noise and then Rukia's voice, shouting out a spell, ending with--]

Red Fire Cannon!

[But nothing happens. Rukia gasps, curses, and there's another skitter and a burst of static as she dodges again.]

Still can't do spells! This town, so many monsters... Ah--!

[More static, with a barely discernible sound of a sword being drawn; and then Rukia yelling--attacking? In pain? Hard to tell with all that static--before the post ends in a burst of static, and nothing more.]

Third Dance: The mask is all I remember how to wear

face_kick — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 07:16:49 GMT

[Public | voice]

[Rukia sounds just like a very, very grateful kid on a holiday morning, what with all these presents. People got her things! When she wasn't expecting anything!]

Thank you all very much for the wonderful presents. And may you all have a happy Lunasa, here at the end of Hanami.

[private | standard security | voice]

[This time she sounds much more subdued. Pensive, almost melancholy. A big change from her bright shiny happiness a moment ago, though she wasn't faking the gratitude then, nor the despondency now.]

Another holiday season away from home again. I hope honorable brother is doing well...

[A sigh as she sets something down next to the journal, then a forced laugh.] Of course he will be. Besides, not as if I can go and check up on him. He wouldn't like it. The court martial aside.

Hmm, Lunasa now... and then Long Night, soon enough. I bet stores in Bellcius are already beginning to sell things for it. And then my birthday... Guess it's that season again.

Well! I got presents, I ought to make the most of them!

[Another thump and the journal cuts off]

[Voice | Serenity] Second Dance: All work and no play, makes Ms. Kuchiki...

face_kick — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:59:30 GMT

Our missions aren't all going to be like that, are they?

Hm, suppose I better get used to this sort of trouble again, shouldn't I?

So. If you're hurt and haven't gotten yourself to the infirmary, make sure you get there before I catch up with you. Any questions?

...I've got one--had anyone seen my shoes anywhere? They're still missing after that blue... thing. Menace. Creature.

First Dance: It's all fun and games until someone gets kicked in the face

face_kick — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:33:58 GMT

[Filter: Serenity]
[Rukia is still figuring out this brand-spanking new journal she only got a little while ago, while wandering the halls and deck of her new ship.]

If it's that button, then, uh. Ah, so that light means...

[Suddenly, her voice changes to something a lot more cheerful and a bit cute.]

Ahaha, do forgive me for not introducing myself earlier. It's been a little busy these last few days, hasn't it?

I'm Rukia Kuchiki, just been hired on for a little bit as your boatswain, pleased to meet you all. I hope we can all get al--

[She stops suddenly. It seems she's spotted someone... familiar.]

Ichigo Kurosaki!

[There's an audible 'smack' of some kind (those well-versed in the nuances of journal violence may recognize the sound of a foot (fortunately, for certain people, not in a shoe at the moment) connecting with a face]

[The post cuts out.]

face_kick — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:13:07 GMT

PLAYER INFORMATION-
Name/Nickname: Anne
AIM Contact: thetsukara

CHARACTER INFORMATION-
Canon Character and Series: Kuchiki Rukia, Bleach
In-Game Name: Rukia Kuchiki
Age: 24
Gender: female
Position & Ship: Boatswain, Serenity

Appearance: Rukia is a petite girl, less than five feet tall with a build to match her height. She also has shoulder-length black hair that flips out at the ends, and a strand that hangs in front of her face, and big blue eyes. When not in uniform, she likes wearing dresses, mostly because it's hard for her to find trousers that fit properly.

Personality: Rukia, at heart, is a modest, graceful, and introverted sort of person, though she also likes being able to be around people. Having grown up by herself for a good part of her early life, Rukia is very independent, usually thinking she can do things on her own--even if sometimes she's wrong. She can admit when she's wrong, though when she is it's usually very, and therefore serious. And Rukia is very good at serious.

When it comes to her duties, or her life back in the military, the life she left behind in Melior, she can be quite serious. If it's not related to her job in the military, quite often she won't wish to discuss it. In truth, she's quite respectful of her adoptive family and her career in the military--but she also knows that going back would not only mean a court martial, but the disapproval of her honored big brother, a thing that would unbalance her entirely.

She's also, perhaps, a bit naive and silly, not about people mostly, but about technology more complicated than a sword, gun and plane. However, Rukia isn't one to let a little thing like not understanding the manual keep her from using new technologies as best she can and, because she is rather intelligent, it usually ends up working out for her. She also has a great love for the sillier of the radio programs and trashy novels, especially those crazy ones where they 'hunt ghosts', getting pretty into them, for a laugh.

Because of her small stature, which she hates people pointing out or making fun of, Rukia likes high places, including airships, planes, and rooftops. She also gets quite mad if people mistake her for being younger than she is, or treat her lightly because of her diminutive size.

Though an introvert, Rukia is quite good at playing any part thrown at her that she needs to, making up sob stories or putting on 'cute' voices as needed. She will bicker, fight, and even hit (if needed) with the best of them to get someone to see her point of view, or if they just feel like arguing with her instead of doing what she says.

For all this, she does have a bit of a girly side though. Graceful, even in dresses instead of a uniform, she's rather elegant sometimes, despite the seeming severity of her appearance on occasion. She also loves bunnies. Really. Really loves bunnies. Even her drawings of people end up looking kind of... bunny-ish, really. Though don't say anything about it to her, she may try and stare you into submission.

Abilities/Weapons:
Rukia, having been in the military for several years, and part of their training programs in both mundane and magical weapons, is fairly skilled with both. She can shoot fairly well, though her preferred weapon is her sword, which she keeps with her constantly. She can also fly a two-seater plane by herself, though her current plane, which she's had with her for quite a few years now, is in more and more questionable condition, due to her inability to do more than basic repairs on it, nor pay for more extensive ones. She's still flying though.

Normally, snow, ice and other associated elements are her specialty when it comes to magic, using many of these with her sword as a focus; she knows other sorts of spells as well, such as bindings. *However*, since an encounter in the Badlands (and with a mysterious science-minded man) a few years ago, her magic has been severely weakened to the point of being nearly useless and doesn't seem to be recovering--she would very much like to find out why and fix this. While she still has the abilities, she simply has no way to power them (passive abilities like sensing magic in the area are still working, though in a reduced state).

Though very small of stature, Rukia is a pintsize powerhouse, given her speed and agility. She's good at both sword play and hand-to-hand--though she prefers having a weapon with her.

She can also draw. Really well. Shut up, they're excellent drawings.

How well can your character hack?: Easy. She received some training in journals and such technology in the academy, but it isn't really her specialty. In fact, without said training, she'd probably not be able to hack them at all.

Weaknesses: First off, and most obviously, Rukia is pretty damn tiny, despite her physical abilities. So while she may be quicker or more agile than someone, she can also be over-powered.

She's also missing much of her magic ability, which she relied on quite heavily before the accident. Even after so long, she's still sometimes tripped up by the fact she *can't* just freeze someone to the floor.

As noted, Rukia ia rather introverted, though she can easily play at being energetic. Consequentially, this sometimes means she doesn't share what she's really thinking or feeling. This can be a definite disadvantage, when she's is sad or depressed, but doesn't want to burden anyone else with it--which can simply cause her more depression.

History:
Rukia grew up, having been abandoned by her sister as a baby, in one of the very worst parts of Solare, already a bad town. She was clever enough, and lucky enough, to survive as on her own as a child, until one day, while spontaneously deciding to help them with a heist, she met a gang of children about her age in the same situation.

Deciding to stick with them, the group worked together so they all survived, becoming something more like a family than a gang on the streets of Solare. During this time, she and another of her friends both showed signs of having latent magical powers, noticed and pointed out by a passing military man. They both decided to stay with their makeshift family though, having silly fun with their newfound powers.

Such things could never last though. Years went by, and they all got older and, circumstances being what they were on such rough streets, eventually everyone but her and her friend had died or been killed somehow.

Rukia finally decided she was tired of such a life, and her friend agreed. They had a way out, and they took it, enrolling in the military academy in Bellcius and both of them getting in on their first try, Rukia in the second class, her friend in the top class.

As the both of them progressed, her friend advanced further ahead of her, and Rukia was left, never feeling quite as close to most of her classmates as she might have been. Not that she would ever admit to being lonely, when her friend wasn't about. Instead, she focused on getting through the academy herself, making up for her small size with plenty of determination and training in magic.

And then, one day, a man from one of the old noble families in Ivona showed up at the military academy, looking for her. It turned out that the man was from the Kuchiki family, and wished to adopt her. Unsure about this, Rukia turned to her old friend from Solare, but he hid his own uncertainty about the situation, expressing that it would be a great opportunity for her, hiding his doubts and fear of not seeing her again with enthusiasm.

She took this at face value, though, and reluctantly agreed to join the Kuchiki clan as the man's younger sister. Immediately, he progress through the academy and into the military was accelerated. Family privilege apparently meant bypassing both the usual graduation exams and unit placement tests. Despite this, she was given an almost menial job, with a rank of sub-lieutenant rather lower than her skills would have recommended her for, because her new brother wished to keep her from being sent on missions that were too dangerous. Not that he let her in on the fact that this was the reason she was ranked so low, or even that he'd pulled any strings at all.

The captain of her small ship turned out to be a rather sickly, though brilliant man, his second-in-command often taking on command duties himself. Due to his friendly manner with everyone, and the fact that he didn't treat her and her new noble status any differently than any of his other personnel, Rukia grew quite fond of him, and of his wife, also an important and well-beloved part of the crew.

And then one day, on a routine patrol in the Badlands, her patrol came back, all dead except for her, and she was unconscious. In the middle of the night, though, something happened, some creature out in the Badlands had taken over her body when it slaughtered the rest of the team, and started to kill others on the ship.

Unfortunately, it got away first--or nearly. The lieutenant requested that he be allowed to go after it himself, given that it had taken over his wife. The captain agreed, provided he and Rukia went too. But when they caught up with the creature, now back in its monstrous original form, the captain told her to let the lieutenant fight the creature on his own, since this, the captain said, was a fight for his pride and that of his wife.

But the fight went wrong: bullets did nothing to it in this form, and before long, the creature had taken over the lieutenant's body instead, turning on Rukia and the captain, who ordered her to run while he fought the creature. However, Rukia couldn't just abandon her superiors in good conscience, and so turned back to help. The creature came after her then, and might have killed her--if the lieutenant hadn't won out at the last second, impaling himself on the sword she had brought out to defend herself in lieu of a pistol.

He told her, dying, that he could leave his heart with her now, echoing something he had said to her before. She took it upon herself to be one of the people that brought the news of his death to his family, blaming herself for it since that day.

After that, another year or so of service passed rather uneventfully. Until the ship got a report of monster activity in the Badlands near Garrettstown. It was a routine extermination that was indicative of a period of increased monster activity during that time. But, since the monsters were mostly easy to take care off instead of real threats, a small flight consisting of Rukia and a few others was assigned that area, to be stationed in Garrettstown and fly regular patrols of the area until the monster activity died down.

After a few weeks of this, the unit stationed there fell into a relaxed sort of routine, flying their patrol, coming back, getting ready to do it all again while enjoying the dubious pleasures of the town when not, technically, in uniform.

It was on one of Rukia's patrols that a plane from the mercenary ship Amadeus happened by. However, the monster this time was quite a bit larger and stronger than what they had been dealing with in the past few weeks. Seeing the other plane seemingly attempt to go after the monster by itself, Rukia panicked, flying her plane in a hasty and dangerous maneuver to get his out of the way. Unfortunately, the monster ended up catching *her* plane instead, crashing it into the floor of the desert.

Fortunately, thanks to her magic, and some quick thinking, she survived, but the plane, including its radio she could have used to call for back-up, was very much history. The other pilot landed, probably to see if she was all right, but as he was doing so, the moster got to her first, and she ended up having to fend it off with her trusted sword for a minute or two. Unfortunately, this was a new sort of monster out in these parts, one that seemed to drain magic power and physical strength. The orange-haired pilot of the other plane made it there just in time, yelling something about his own shipmate. So, convincing him the only way to beat this monster was to let her in his plane and follow her directions, she climbed in.

It turned out, with the help of his (mildly possessed) plane (influenced by his own rather-possessed sword), and a few rather classified magic tips from Rukia, Ichigo, the pilot, was more than able to demolish the monster on his own, flying Rukia back to his own ship, what with her plane in pieces on the desert floor.

But she'd been hurt quite badly while fending off the monster, both physically and, somehow, her magic. The Amadeus, fortunately (possibly) had a mysterious man on board, who promised that the help he gave would have her back to normal in no time.

Except, once she'd been ferried back to Garrettstown, finding her division had been called out to another fight elsewhere, and the next morning when she awoke, she was still no better. Figuring she could feign things for a while until her strength in both forms returned properly, Rukia sought out the rest of her division.

They were all dead or disappeared, the result of another attack of the same sort of monster on the other side of town, to which they had all been called while she'd been on the ship receiving treatment.

Rukia, before having to go back and try and report what had gone so very wrong to her ship, attempted to contact the Amadeus for explanations--only to find that the ship had disappeared into thin air.

Knowing that, at the very least, she would face an interrogation at the last and a court martial at the most for having shared what were still classified military magic implementation secrets, even as simply and necessary as they had seemed in the midst of that fight, to get the boy to do as she'd needed him to.

On top of that, the longer she stayed in Garrettstown, fixing her plane up, the more apparent is was becoming that while her physical strength was coming back up to normal levels, her magic was still gone--she wondered if something that mysterious guy on the Amadeus had done had somehow stolen her magic or something--and she wasn't sure that wasn't a violation of some esoteric military rule as well.

So instead of reporting back immediately, figuring she was in trouble anyway, but might be in less trouble should she come back with answers, Rukia struck out on her own, searching for the Amadeus, the man who had treated her, that ridiculous (and fairly powerful) pilot, or anyone who might know where they might have gone.

Quite a few years later, she ran into none other than the orange-haired pilot, now even stronger than before, on a ship called the Serenity. And even if he can't give her any answers, well, at the very least he can help her fight monsters that seem to keep coming after both of them. And maybe she can pound a few skills into his thick skull too.