Name: Kurokotsu Dokueki
Age: 350
Visual Age: 38
Years since Entrance into the Gotei 13: 250
Gender: Male
Division: Twelfth
Rank: Captain
Appearance: Kurokotsu wears the standard black robes of the Shinigami, as well as the long-sleeved white haori of his squad. Most people think him to be an imposter more often than a proper Captain, due to how standard his attire is. He wears everything in a very standard manner, down to the sleeves of his haori reaching down to his hands and interrupting his fights. In his mind, if he dies, he wants the haori to be as neatly set out as it was for him. He keeps his strangely-shaped Zanpakuto attached to a small ring on his pale blue obi.
Due to his training first as a member of the fifth, and then in the twelfth, his body is largely without musculature. Only once he accomplished Bankai did he begin physical training, such as running laps around the Seireitei or training with the other squads. Due to getting out of his division more often and not being afraid of the sun, Kurokotsu has gotten a bit of a tan, when compared to about a hundred years ago.
Although he has dark brown eyes, very few people have actually seen them often enough to recall the shading. He often has his hair in the way, the black locks rarely staying tucked behind his ear like he tries to do. If he expects a long fight or plans to spend a fair amount of time on an invention, he'll tie it all back in a ponytail so it stays away from his eyes, but that doesn't happen often enough for him to walk around with it as such.
Personality: Kurokotsu is best described as an intelligent individual. He tends to avoid showing this intelligence though, so as to fit in better with those he must work with. He knows how to act less intelligent than he is, or how to trick others into believing most of his ruses. With his position as Captain of the Twelfth Division, he slowly learned how to further flesh out his deceitful tendencies. He creates objects which allow him to seemingly weaken or amplify his spiritual pressure, whichever is needed to hide best among others. Never afraid to take a calculated risk, Kurokotsu is more of the leader who delivers orders, and then sneaks off to best assist his squad of fighters. He can sneak up behind someone as their ally, and then quickly stab them in the throat the second they stop paying attention, if they can't catch onto his trickery quick enough.
In the average day-to-day life in the Seireitei, though, Kurokotsu doesn't lead his division as much as he knows he should. He prefers to let them figure out for themselves what to do, and often has to put the pieces back together when someone really screws up.
Fighting Style: Kurokotsu relies on a fusion of his deceit-oriented fighting style, the ease with which he can make repeated slashes with his blade, and his exceptional knowledge of kido. Rather than stay far away and work on spirit chants, though, Kurokotsu tends to use chant discard and replace that missing strength with the force of his Zanpakuto. If his foe fights from afar, Kurokotsu will use tripwires and bursts of energy hidden on the ground to trap his target.
Background: As a human, Kurokotsu was the kind of person who always knew the answer to a question, yet never felt compelled to tell anybody else what he inherently knew. Due to this, he went through his entire life without a single friend, simply because of his unwillingness to help others out. This character trait caused his early downfall on the summer of his twenty-fifth birthday, when he was stabbed repeatedly by an angry teenage male because he 'acted superior', at least in the words of that child.
In death, Kurokotsu attempted to fix the flaw that caused his untimely death. He went through the various districts, only ever stopping at one for two or three days at most. As he went along, he learned gradually of the struggles that existed in each one. Some of what he saw gave him hope, such as when he saw a district that tried to help each other survive the Hollow assaults it found itself in the middle of quite often. Others, though, broke his heart. One time, he saw a young child stabbed through the chest because he stole a simple kimono from someone outside his own district.
It was with all of this new information that he decided to try his luck at the shinigami academy with a group of talented people he found during his excursion. Out of the five he went in with, only two actually had the power to make it beyond the initial tests. However, he found it relatively difficult to stay with them as he had said he would. He focused on kido, and they both gravitated toward zanjutsu, leaving them at opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to how they trained.
He was only able to keep his word by waiting for them to need his assistance at kido manipulation. The instructor those two shinigami-in-training worked with in zanpakuto techniques had insisted they each learn at least one spell so as to tie the enemy down. This is where kis knowledge was finally tested, having to teach two people who knew nothing about bakudo spells how to do a relatively advanced one. With his nose buried in books, though, he figured out the best choice for them to work at. Despite it being relatively high, at sixty-one, he made them practice Rikujokoro. As he had told them, spirit chants made all kido techniques easier to control than the counterparts which had none
His own instructor realized what Kurokotsu had done, and was rather impressed. The amount of research he conducted was more than the average student would ever do, especially for someone else. So Kurokotsu was told to attempt healing those injured by hado techniques that backfired. He tried to learn those techniques, but couldn't quite figure out how best to use his reiatsu to help others, not until he finally finished the academy based largely off of his expertise in strategy and kido.
With his training in consideration, he was placed directly into the fifth division. It wasn't until one day when he was seen healing people injured in sparring matches that he was able to have someone he could call a teacher. The lieutenant of his squad back then saw his promise and helped him cultivate his techniques for about fifty years, until he rose to third seat, the only one in his squad to have done so without knowing the name of his Zanpakuto.
Once he learned how to release his Zanpakuto though, the Captain of his division realized how little he fit in, considering the odd nature of his Shikai. With that, he was shipped off to the twelfth division and quickly rose through the ranks there, until achieving Lieutenant. It was then that he began his training to learn Bankai, after being told by an old friend of his exactly what had to be done. He trained and spoke with his Zanpakuto daily, normally in lulls during missions and assignments.
While it took him longer than the average Shinigami to finally achieve Bankai, he was absolutely thrilled when he did. He was even promoted to Captain, seeing as how the former leader of squad twelve was looking to remove himself due to his old age.
The
12/3/2013, 6:23 am by 
