A Heroine, A Deity

Player Info:
Nickname: Myki
Age: 19
Personal LJ/DW: notbantamweight
Method of Contact: Plurk (chezmyki)
Characters Played: N/A

Character Info:
Name: Nanao Ise
Age: 36, physically 6/7
Canon: Bleach
Pull Point: End of the Turn Back The Pendulum mini-arc

Background Info:
History: I'm taking Nanao from just after the earliest chronological time shown in Bleach - the Turn Back the Pendulum mini-arc, which is roughly 100 years before the main storyline begins.

Nanao's early life was not pleasant. Following her traumatic death, she was reborn into the Rukongai (a sort of shanty town for souls without reishi), and her reishi began to grow by leaps and bounds. Difficult to control without proper training, it would build to dangerous levels, and release explosively as a regulation mechanism, often causing major collateral damage to anything that was around her. This resulted in her being shunned by most inhabitants of the Rukongai, and they forced her to the very outskirts of the inhabited areas, where wild and dangerous creatures live, in the hope that a Hollow - which is essentially a corrupted soul - would find her and eat her, thereby turning her into one of them.

This, as you can imagine, did not make for the happiest of childhoods, and left Nanao with a general lack of faith and trust in humanity as a whole. This, combined with her powers (and lack of control over them), precipitated the formation of her cool and withdrawn persona that we see in grown-up Nanao. However, even her control isn’t perfect, and occasionally bursts of emotion come through - and although they’re not always overly extreme, they can be... powerful, especially when combined with unstable reishi.

However, when we first meet her in-series, she’s shown to be a member of the Eighth Division, so that means at some point that she was not only found, but has gone through the Academy, a process that normally takes six years to complete, and appears to have a close relationship with the Vice-Captain, Lisa Yadomaru. It’s stated that one the first day of each month, she comes to Lisa, and they read books together. Extrapolating this, it would appear that Nanao has probably come to see Lisa as a surrogate mother figure, and thus, her ordered execution and subsequent escape at the end of the Turn Back The Pendulum arc would be heartbreaking for the young Shinigami, and it’s likely that she would have retreated back into her shell, so to speak.

Personality: Nanao has been through a great many trials in her second life as a soul, and unfortunately for her, most of them have had negative impacts on her worldview. At her current canon point, her trust and faith in the goodness of people has been shattered a second time; resulting in her becoming extremely withdrawn and nervous. A lot of things have changed very rapidly, and she feels like she's been left behind and abandoned by the upheaval.

This has caused her to turn to the one thing that she knows can't lie to her or abandon her: books. She begins to read extensively, and by the canon point I'm taking her from, she has a good working knowledge of most Britannic/European legends, myths, and folklore, in addition to the military tactics and fighting knowledge she has gained as a part of her Shinigami education. While not a prodigy on the scale of Gin or Hitsugaya, she is certainly very intelligent, and when motivated and willing, can put her mind to excellent use.

However, trying to gain her trust can be an exhausting and difficult process, as this is a child who has been traumatised badly - as one who takes comfort in schedules and order, she finds it hard to adapt to new situations and new people, which results in her anxiety going through the roof, and usually a loss of control over her reishi, which in turn makes people wary of her. It's a vicious cycle, and one that's not easily broken.

Getting her to actually look up at you when talking can be a difficult proposition - as can actually managing to start a conversation. She has roughly two decades of escaping from unwanted situations under her belt, and the academy training to do a bit of damage if cornered. One should not forget that she is essentially now a child soldier, and the creatures she is to fight are quite literally the most monstrous abstractions of humanity possible. The graduation exam from the academy that all potential Shingami (Soul Reaper is an accurate translation) must take is to go on a Hollow-hunting expedition. Even though they are fighting the most pathetic of these monsters, fatalities can still occur - and perhaps fatality does not accurately convey what happens when a Hollow, a corrupted and fallen human soul twisted into some horrific form, consumes a pure soul, or plus.

Now, some of the other members of that graduation group have probably never seen a Hollow before, or heard them. Not felt the foul presence of their reiatsu, nor seen what they can do a living creature. Those are the lucky ones, and Nanao is not one of those people. She has lived for twenty something years on the outskirts of a society who refused to accept her, at constant risk of starvation and Hollow attack. To say she is jaded might be putting it mildly, but at least she understands the risk that Hollows pose to them, and she makes every effort to stay away from the battlefield at every time.

Game Specific:
Arcana: Tower
Justification: The major changes, upheaval and disruption of the end results of the events of TBtP would change how Seireitei functioned - and as a direct result, how Nanao would grow into her eventual role of Lieutenant of the Eighth Division. At the moment, however, she has lost her faith in authority, and having been let down, she retreats into herself; effectively, she imprisons herself by putting on an icy, detached persona and keeping her distance. She's been burned badly, but in a way, it actually gives her more freedom than she had before, in that her constant reading will give her the knowledge and the space to gain powerful abilities in the future.

Samples:
First Person Sample:

{Hello, Prospero! Today when the feed clicks on, the littlest purse owner wielder has a bit of a confused look on her face.}
Uhm, I'm sorry to bother you, but I have a rather urgent question. How do you get a job here?
{She pauses, and fiddles with the fabric of her pants before continuing.}
It's just that I've run out of gift cards and no one wants to take me on as a worker, and I don't know why. Any help would be nice.
{Her voice trails off as she reaches for the device.}
Why do they laugh at me when I tell them how old I am?

Third Person Sample:

She'd slept through the first few "Dark Hours", which reassured those who were staying with her immensely. They all assumed that since she looked so young, she was young, and therefore inexperienced. They couldn't have been further from the truth. As a Shinigami, she had been trained to dispatch monstrous creatures by sword and by magic, and though she was lacking in her magic, her muscle memory was strong.

This time, as the clock ticked ever closer to midnight, she prepared. Dark clothes, to help with stealth. A carving knife, the closest thing she could find in size and weight to her zanpakutou. The lack of her innate spiritual power bothered her, but it was something she would have to do without. She swung out onto the balcony of her hotel room and stared as the few humans still walking around disappeared into coffins.

She'd sworn as a Shinigami to protect human souls from destruction and corruption - and while she would prefer to ignore the battlefield, to simply leave the fighting behind, she knew she could not. She had a power, and she must use it. Something that had been whispered into her mind when she first awoke on this strange and confusing island. Persona. And now, it was time to try and find out what that power was.