Post by Jukuma on Aug 25, 2011 0:04:13 GMT -4
Vizard
Name: Shimogare Toko (Shimogare is shortened for the word 'Winter', while Toko can either mean 'endless' or 'bed').
Gender: Female.
Age: 559.
Ranking: Council Member #4.
Physical Description: Visual Reference.
Toko has the appearance of a good looking young adult woman; while not a stunning beauty that shines in the crowd, she is still a very charming and attractive girl overall. She does, however, seem to have a very unorthodox sense for fashion that would strike as odd to most people. Measuring about 5'6'', she doesn't stand out as an imposing person; she has a slender figure with decent curves and an average-to-big bust size. She has long black hair that, if let loose, would reach as far as past her knees; while this is one of the aspects of her appearance she tends to change on irregular intervals, recently she seems to have settled to wearing it by having the front bangs tied together and pointing upwards, though still some hair does fall down on the sides framing her face. The back of her hair is tied into a high ponytail that is also divided into several sections as it goes down with weird hairpins depicting emoticons. It is easy to tell that she does take care of her hair and, in the weird occasions where she lets it down, she will even give off the impression she comes from the old Japanese royalty. She has light brown eyes and thin eyebrows to accompany it to give out the impression of a composed woman. Although her eyes are quite big considering her Asian heritage, the rest of her facial features don’t stand out that much. She has a small and round nose and the same goes for her ears. Though she does own piercings and likes to wear them, she often forgets to put them on in the mornings, so it is rare to see her wearing them. She doesn't tend to wear makeup, but does take care of her hair and skin with a variety of products.
Having abandoned long ago the Shinigami uniform, clothing has become another aspect of her that is in constant change, but in general she prefers wearing simple and little clothing. Currently she wears an informal, gray tank top shirt and a pair of jean shorts along with tennis shoes. Among some of the accessories she has probably the most notable one is a necklace with two metal plates like the ones given in prison, although these don't feature any kind of code number and instead sport a logo that looks loosely like a samurai helm. When she has to carry her Zanpakuto around, she includes a leather accessory that straps around her left thigh and has a belt-like extension that will hold the sword; it's uncomfortable and it forces Toko to constantly have her hand resting on it in order to keep it from shaking, but then again that's part of the point for it. Although this can be considered her general formula for dressing, sometimes she can be quite unpredictable for the daily routine going as far as suddenly showing up with a one-piece and hair completely loose saying she felt too lazy to do her hair in any way. These, however, are extremely rare occasions.
Her Hollow mask, like many, takes on skull-like characteristics and its basic appearance can be summarized as an intimidating and scary vision. It completely covers her face, but has two thin slits for eyes to allow vision; however, they are small enough to make it hard to make out her eyes and, mostly, they can only be seen when her glowing, purple eyes look back at you. There is no particular feature for the nose, but she doesn’t have trouble breathing normally. The mouth consists of three lines of teeth that extend far back; the second line of teeth (some sort of weird extra between the upper mouth and the jaw) usually attaches itself to the upper part when Toko opens her mouth. Finally, and probably the feature that stands out the most, is that the upper part of the mask, which completely hides her forehead, extends diagonally backwards and up in some sort of really long and wide horn. Its tip, however, doesn’t have a pointy end, but rather some sort of a semicircle reminiscent of an open fan.
Personality Toko is an intriguing and extravagant woman, to say the least. Whatever little thing crosses her mind is a mystery to even her closest acquaintances; she might be looking at flowers as if she is hypnotized by them when in reality she is thinking about icebergs and rainbows. This is not due to some sort of mental complication or lack of attention syndrome, but rather is simply caused by how quickly her mind seems to process things and link subjects between each other. The end (and only noticeable) result however, is still that it is hard for her to lend her attention to practically anything or anyone and even during active conversations she seems to get lost in thought about something completely different to what she is being told and even loses track of what she was saying. What bothers people the most though, and also the reason why everyone can tell her mind is somewhere else, is that she often begins to whisper her thoughts to herself and is too absorbed to remember she isn't by herself. Needless to say, this has driven most to label her a weird person, which wouldn't exactly be an inaccurate assessment. Nonetheless, she can still jump in surprise when people break her trance and will be genuinely in shock if they even tell her they know what she was thinking about, completely oblivious of the fact that she was pretty much saying it. This, added to the fact that she usually carries herself with a calm and composed attitude gives everyone the impression that she is extremely carefree about pretty much anything and a hardcore airhead beyond help. This is not actually the truth as she believes there are many things that could meet improvement in her life, starting with some of the relationships she lost when abandoning her Shinigami origins.
Toko seems to give importance to things that are usually irrelevant and concentrates on the little ones, often missing the big picture; again, this is partially due to her lack of attention. Many times she will sit down, bend her body, stretch or do other casual things and expose herself in front of other people doing shameless poses without even realizing it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as some people would look at it) she doesn't tend to stay still for long and chances like that show up numerous times a day. This still doesn't mean that she will disregard important things and will act with all seriousness when talking about matters to her or other people, even to the point that she will pay close attention to what she says or hears; however, her getting serious is an extremely rare sight to begin with so it’s not like many people could give credit for this. She will also become more attentive when she fights seriously and her awareness will be directed to all sorts of details, including her opponent's dominant hand, range and other attack properties of his/her weapon, surroundings, etc. She is also characterized by a very powerful curiosity that will drive to the exploration and research of many things, always in search of something new and exotic. Then again, it is not very hard to surprise her, as she is still unfamiliar with many aspects of the new world she resides in having in mind she wants to understand everything about it. While she is a fighter and has obviously engaged in countless years of practice to become as powerful as she currently is, she is not very fond of inflicting pain to others so long as she can empathize with them to some extent. That extent is small, as it could be said she can only fight ruthlessly against Hollow who have already lost all sense of self, while fighting anyone else who can express suffering, including Arrancar, already puts some strain on her. This doesn’t mean she will hesitate or freak out in the middle of a battle, but she will try to avoid delivering a slow and painful death all she can; this has lead to her disliking her Zanpakuto, which she will unleash only when it is completely necessary. This attitude has caused a few instances of instability inside of her already.
She enjoys listening to music and is usually seen with headphones with a volume high enough for others to listen without much effort; not surprisingly, it is impossible to reach her once she is like this. As to what kind of music she listens to, she is as random about it as everything else about her, but at least she will stick to one genre at a time instead of listening to heavy metal and then suddenly switching to soul; generally though, she prefers soothing music. She regrets the fact that she never gave herself time to learn how to play any kind of instrument or any other skills to use as hobby, for that matter. She enjoys eating snacks of any kind and reading manga, as any kind of reading without illustrations will be hard for her to get into due to her hyper-active mind. Her favorite food is yakisoba, and the one she hates the most is cauliflower; as for drinking, she can almost always be seen with coffee, be it an actual cup of steaming black one, or a cold one with milk from a vending machine. As for races, she is not known for exerting much hate on anyone of them; she is thankful to all the members of the Masked Syndicate for taking her in and teaching her how to control her Inner Hollow to a more stable state, and since she is not familiar with any Vizards outside of them, it can be said her demeanor towards them all is a friendly one. She is also fond of Shinigami despite knowing that some of them might consider her a traitor to the Gotei 13, this being because she was for a long time one of them and didn’t leave them because that was her wish to begin with. Although she knows that not all of them are evildoers, she does not trust Arrancar in general and considers them the enemy, having an “attack first, then ask questions” policy going for them.
History:
Living Days
Toko was born and raised in Kyoto during the Muromachi period; her real name remains unknown. Prior to her birth, her father was a ronin that traveled through Japan with no particular destination and was simply trying to avoid any conflict with the law or anyone who would condemn his lack of loyalty to a house. During those travels, he met a commoner woman he fell in love with and, after months of trying to win her love, he finally convinced her to accompany him in his trips. Though his skills were average among samurai, his intelligence and cunning personality allowed him to protect his lover and himself by engaging in the least possible amount of battles. When years began to take a toll on the two of them, they decided to cease their adventures and settled in Kyoto, capital of the Ashikaga house at that moment, to form a family and live in peace. Not wanting to leave the path of the sword, Toko's father posed as a former samurai of the house that had retired due to age and managed to stay under the radar with only minor rumors starting up. Nonetheless, all the years he had spent as a ronin had made him paranoid and he believed that a conflict could break out at any moment, so when Toko was born, he decided she should be instructed to become a capable warrior as soon as possible, since he no longer could protect his family.
Toko's training began at a young age and it proved to be rougher than most. Though the tradition for the onna-bugeisha (which was a discipline her mother had attained while traveling) was to learn how to use the naginata and knives, Toko was taught how to use not only those but also the katana, kusari-gama and even the bow, since her father was more concerned with her well-being than traditions and wanted to prepare her for all sorts of situations. That made her embark in a path to become a complete and powerful warrior, but it also required her to be training non-stop even during her childhood. Not contempt with the life her father had chosen for her, Toko confronted her father a number of times and went as far as threatening with leaving the house, but never actually carried through with it since she realized she was indeed loved. Her father used to say she had the potential to be great, but lacked the attitude to do so. Nonetheless, her skills did increase at a faster rate than whatever her parents had witnessed and even earned some recognition around their area. Her talent became evident when she sparred male samurai and emerged victorious most of the times despite using different weapons in each battle, which earned her respect from many who went as far as calling her a true samurai despite being a woman. This would actually return to haunt her, as many recognized her fighting styles as foreign and the previously small rumor of her father being a ronin grew in credibility. Although her ability seemed to have peeked soon after and she ceased to engage in battles openly after realizing the rumors that were being spread, these did not recede.
Cracked Egg
By that point, the Onin war, a civil war involving the Ashikaga and other daimyo that also marked the beginning of the Sengoku period, broke out. This didn't actually have a direct impact in the family, as by this point Toko's father was too old to assist in battle and the situation wasn't dire enough for her and her mother to be sent into the battlefield. However, it soon became evident that their side was fighting a losing battle and her father grew uneasy with the situation. He continuously proposed the family to once again travel Japan not as ronin, but as merchants or any other farce that would allow them to escape the situation; however, he and his wife had lost their youth a while ago and it was evident that if the followed nomadic life like that, they wouldn't last long. Though Toko recognized the fact that Kyoto would fall, she trusted that, in the worst case scenario, civilians would be pulled out of the place before the enemy reached them and denied her father the plan of leaving the house. By this point, it was already recognized as true by many that Toko's father had been a ronin before making his way to Tokyo and it soon reached ears of the military, who confirmed that the man had never served the Ashikaga house. Though the family was aware that the attitude towards them was getting colder and presumed that their background had been leaked, they remained unconscious of exactly how much the rumor had grown by that point.
Just as had been predicted, the section of Kyoto they resided in was going to fall, and it no longer fell to chance. Knowing this and deciding to give up his section, general Ouchi Masahiro, one of the Yamana generals who was in charge of a generous section of Kyoto, came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to burn his own area of influence in Kyoto and leave his post. That section happened to be the one where Toko's family resided. Of course, civilians were evacuated as the houses were burnt and in theory, casualties were minimal; but unfortunately this was the time when Toko's father's days as a ronin were going to get back at him once and for all.
Having witnessed the houses burning down but receiving no explanation, Toko asked his father to seek shelter and, after agreeing on a meeting spot, left the house for a few minutes in order to see what was happening. Instead of doing as his daughter told him, Toko's father remained in the house, looking for something he claimed to need before they left and ignored his wife's pleads of leaving the place right away. His obsession became lethal when the first to arrive to the house was not their daughter, but a number of soldiers who were incinerating the residences. Though the soldier's mission was to warn civilians before burning their houses, when they recognized the man as the ronin the rumors spoke of, their intentions changed and they decided to take fate in their hands and give the man the death he should have received a long time ago. Toko's parents were locked inside the house, which was burnt with them inside; being too old to escape now, both of them could do nothing but watch in fear as the flames consumed their memories and eventually their lives. After realizing her parents were not coming to the meeting point they had arranged, Toko went back to her home only to find it already in flames; her attempts at entering the place to save her parents only resulted in receiving several burns and after realizing no one responded to her cries from inside the house, she broke into tears as Kyoto burned. When the flames were extinguished and Toko was able to search the remains of what was once her home, she saw with her own eyes the corpses of her parents; the father was holding onto something. The object that had delayed the man long enough for the soldiers to arrive, the object that his dead hands were still grasping with the strength of a mortal soul, was the sword that he had owned since his days as a samurai, still saved in its beautiful scabbard, now covered in ashes. Understanding why the man had taken the sword, Toko took it with her and left the place with a broken heart.
By the time the Onin war came to a close, Kyoto became nothing more than a city ignored by the gods where anarchy was the only ruler; Toko still remained in the place by keeping a low profile and tried to aid others who were in a similar situation to hers. But as expected, it was impossible to go through this without engaging in a fight sooner or later and eventually Toko became no exception. During one of his daily routines of looking for stray children or other survivors who had been left behind, she was surrounded by a group of hoodlums after any possession she had, and not only her material properties. She defended herself using her father's katana, and even though it was the first time she used a real weapon in a real battle, she overpowered her opponents with little difficulty. However, after she made her first cut to flesh and heard with her own ears the screams of pain of her opponent while blood ran down the blade of her weapon, her hands became unable to move and her entire body began to tremble. She practically didn't even notice when her chest was impaled nor when countless swords rained down on her again and again and again, painting her body in red until no one could recognize it. In the end, her father's assessment was true: she lacked the attitude to be a true warrior.
Between Black and White
Once Toko died, she did not become a Plus soul due to the regrets she held for not being able to stand beside her family during their last moments, which resulted in her becoming a Jibakurei. She became bounded to the remains of Kyoto and was unable to leave the place out of her own accord without even knowing what was happening. Forced to witness day by day the atrocities happening in Kyoto now that there was no ruler in place, she came to believe she was in Hell and that the spectacle in front of her was her punishment for not being able to move on with her life after her parents' death. As days went by, her sadness turned into resignation and she accepted her situation and agreed to the punishment she had placed on herself. She didn't know that coming to terms with something like that meant more danger for her, as she was unaware of the existence of Hollow and Shinigami yet; at that point, she was a static target for whoever came first to get her: a Shinigami that would grant her salvation or a Hollow eager to feast on her soul and taint it. Luckily for her, the first one to show up was a Shinigami, an old man going by the name Shodomaru who didn't hold any kind of high-rank, but did possess many thousands of years of experience behind him. However, to the man's dismay, Toko was already a Jibakurei strongly tied to the Living World, and he was not able to perform a Soul Burial on her. Instead of giving up, Shodomaru continually attempted to convince Toko to let go of her regrets day after day while performing his daily duties, but the woman ignored him most of the times. Even when he explained her everything about Shinigami and Hollow, she still wished to remain in place, claiming this was all part of her punishment. Days turned into a few years and eventually Shodomaru's visits became a common ritual in which he not always tried to convince Toko to leave the world of the living. Eventually, the subject disappeared entirely and they would pass time by playing shogi or talking about their history.
During one of their conversations, Toko asked Shodomaru a question: "Hey, if I became a Hollow... would I be able to kill them (Kyoto's hoodlums)?". Though the Shinigami suspected the influence of passing that much time in the Living World without a Soul Burial was turning her into a Hollow and that her question reflected the first step towards her transformation had started, his answer was composed and truthful: "Them and the generals who caused this; you would definitely be able to kill them all. Then, even if you were caught by Shinigami, you would just be purified and forget everything". Toko didn't respond to this in any particular way and as a few days passed, she didn't seem to be taking any steps towards speeding up her transformation, but neither did she accept the Soul Burial yet.
Shodomaru found himself in a tough spot when, soon after Toko's intriguing question, when winter had stricken, he received a notice from Soul Society warning him that a powerful Hollow responding to the name Gluttoner had been identified in a few occasions and his actions indicated he was moving towards his area. Having in mind that Gluttoner was not a Menos, but simply a particularly powerful normal Hollow, reinforcements for Shodomaru had very low priority and he was asked to at least hold the monster off until he could be granted the help he had asked for. Theorizing that the Hollow was very likely after Toko, since her reiatsu had grown and seemed to resemble that of another Hollow, he decided to keep a close eye on the girl and protect her, as he now cared for her in a fatherly way. Gluttoner did eventually make it to Kyoto and openly confronted both Toko and Shodomaru, confident in its power and eager to devour both of them. The Hollow proved to be too much for the Shinigami and in a matter of a few minutes, he had been beaten half-way to death; nonetheless, Gluttoner still seemed to be unable to deal the final blow to the persistent man, who continued to get up and try to separate the Hollow from Toko. However, in the end, it was impossible for Shodomaru to hold his own solely with willpower and he was sent half a kilometer away by the Hollow, making him pass out in the process. Free to do as it wished, Gluttoner moved on to attack Toko, who was closer to it. Using absolutely all the skills she had attained in life to extents she didn't even know she had, Toko was able to escape from the Hollow and distract it for enough time to allow Shodomaru to wake up and join in the fight again, catching Gluttoner by surprise and gaining a very needed advantage; however, by the time he did, Toko had already been pinned down and a great portion of her had been devoured, her body already morphing into that of a Hollow. The fight continued while Toko began her transformation and in the end, thanks to the advantage he had gained with the surprise attack, Shodomaru emerged victorious, although with worse wounds than Gluttoner and a sure death sentence carved on his body. With every single bit of energy he had left in his dying body, the Shinigami approached Toko. The girl was in a pain she hadn't experienced ever before and, while she didn't scream, her face reflected both the suffering and fear she was going through; as a hole opened where her heart was and a mask began forming on her face slowly, Shodomaru simply looked at her in the eye. He didn't need to say anything for Toko to understand what the man wanted to say; trying her best to ignore her pain, while tears ran down her barely present face, she spoke in a fainting voice.
"I always thought this was my punishment for not moving on in life... why did it take me this long to realize... I was making the same mistake?" The mask on her face ceased to form for a second, but it did not subside. "I don't need more blood... to have peace."
Shodomaru did not respond to her with words, he simply smiled and, not even knowing whether he would be successful in what he was about to do, he once again attempted to perform a Soul Burial. This time, he was successful and, before Toko became a Hollow, her soul was sent to Soul Society. Knowing that her soul had managed to be purified before it was too late thanks to her strength, the Shinigami was able to die with a smile on his face. His last thoughts were that he was proud and contempt of the life he had had.
Toko appeared in Soul Society naked and with part of the snow from the Living World surrounding her, as it was transferred along with her. She was found by a slightly aged woman who took her in her house and gave her the name Shimogare Toko because, as it seemed to her, the girl seemed like she was sleeping on a bed made by winter itself.
The Road Forward
The woman who took Toko in later introduced herself as Shosei; she was married to a Shinigami who had long ago ceased to visit her and, while she hadn't received any notice from Seireitei, she had come to believe in her heart that the man was already dead (she had no reason to believe he had abandoned her). Though Shosei initially lived in Inuzuri (78th District of Rukongai), once she found Toko and decided to become her guardian until the girl adapted to life in Soul Society and could fend for herself, she decided to move to the Hokutan District (3rd West District of Rukongai) temporarily. Even nowadays, Toko does not know exactly what kind of means the woman used to move up so many Districts, but has made assumptions she'd rather not talk about.
Helping Toko out became an immense ordeal once Shosei noticed that the girl had hunger, which was a sign that she had the power to become a Shinigami. That, added to the fact that she had retained some residual memory, including most of her lessons in fencing, made Toko a potential candidate to become a skilled God of Death; however, even when explaining all of this to her, Shosei did not force her to leave Rukongai and in fact hinted on wanting the girl to stay. Toko didn't know why the woman was sacrificing so much for the sake of a girl she had found not so long ago, but instead of suspecting her, she also became very fond of her soon and decided to stay together. Even without Shosei as a factor in her decision, Toko just didn't wish to engage in fighting as a Shinigami as the simple idea of putting her existence on the line terrified her. Even simply adapting to the new environment proved to be nearly impossible; the two women needed to have some sort of stable income in order to get by in the environment they lived in. Although Shosei’s savings could keep them there for a while, the truth was she had never predicted before the ordeal of having to, on top of everything, buy food to get by. Even then, their biggest ordeal had nothing to do with that.
They both managed to get jobs and life became steadily but slowly easier for them, but soon, word came around the whole District of their origin (particularly Shosei’s, as Toko was still something of a newcomer to Rukongai all-together) and this proved to be bad news. It actually took two whole years for Toko to realize this, but her adoptive mother was being victim of a serious case of harassment which she had been trying to hide from her in order to keep her from worrying about it and be able to lead a life as normal as possible. After coming back early from work, Toko found an unknown man in the house, forcing himself on top of Shosei, who couldn’t defend herself. As a newfound anger invaded Toko, she saved her and, remembering once again the teaching she had received in life, she severely injured the man, only stopping once Shosei managed to calm her down. In a display of unrealistic kindness and naiveté, she treated the man’s injuries and let him leave while Toko remained dumbfounded and confused.
“It can’t be helped that we hurt people from time to time,” she explained once she had finished treating the man. “But I would like that, when you make such decisions, you are ready to properly think and account for it instead of just looking away.”
Toko quickly understood what Shosei meant as a warning on how to react to the incident, as they were both painfully aware that they would no longer be welcomed in the 3rd District. However, being more concerned about the huge burden she had unknowingly placed on Shosei for such a long time, Toko decided to no longer remain passive and readied herself for what was to come.
As predicted, Toko was soon targeted by some of the villagers who were aware that she wasn’t as harmless as her adoptive mother. Fully knowing that she was being followed, she lured them unarmed outside of the town into an uninhabited area, where she knew they would reveal themselves and attack her. And as predicted, a small group of young villagers approached her with clubs and sticks of the sort. Although she held her ground very well for a while, Toko’s specialty was not hand-to-hand combat and she didn’t have at hand any of the weapons she had been trained with, and this eventually lead to her being hit in the head from behind and falling to the ground while losing consciousness. As the group of villagers began to stand up and close up on her while grinning, she curled up as everything around her began to lose color.
“It’s fine.” She heard a voice inside her head as time completely stopped for her. “When something like this happens, it’s fine if you close your eyes and cover your ears until it’s over… kehehehehe…”. Before even fully understanding what the voice was saying, Toko did as suggested and soon the world around her became completely black. And yet, she somehow knew what was happening, as if she was being told by someone.
The next instant, Toko felt as if she was waking up from a dream. She discovered with horror that, somehow, she had beaten up her assailants until her hands were dripping with blood while unconscious, confirming that what she thought was a nightmare was actually real. Miraculously, none of her assailants was dead, but some of them had received permanent injuries and there were craters on the ground. She had apparently done things that completely escaped what she could do with her strength, which lead her to assume this was work of the power she possessed and her inability to properly control it. She began to panic as all things came into place and fell to her knees, but before she could lose control of herself, she remembered what she had been told by Shosei and realized exactly what she had to do. Leaving only a letter to her friend, she took off to the Shinigami Academy with the clear determination to take control of whatever kind of power rested inside of her so that something like that didn’t happen again.
Cloudy
Having spent most of her time in the Hokutan Disctrict, it was treated as Toko’s origin and no one was ever told that she had actually first resided in Inuzuri, which helped her avoid the discrimination she had met before moving out of Rukongai. In fact, she found out that she actually fitted right in with the rest of the potential Shinigami and, even though she had at first started her training with a sense of tension and impatience as the memory of her loss of control remained fresh in her mind, she eventually grew confident and even calmer about it as she witnessed her own power take shape and direction. She was one of the best when it came to swordfights and she also quickly learned the basics of kido; nearing the end of her training and by the time she officially became a Shinigami, she was still among the very best when it came to swordplay and her kido were also worthy of being praised by the elite, as they had grown to be on par with her prowess with swords. Not to the surprise of anyone, it was publicly announced a year before her graduation that the 13th Division had taken an interest in her and were offering a seated position for her upon her completion of the Shinigami training. Before this was made official, however, Toko was first required to gain some field experience and was hence taken into the Living World along with other top trainees who had also been offered seated positions and an instructor to fend off regular Hollow. The project went smoothly, but other than allowing her to actually have some first contact with Hollow and advanced group tactics in practice, it didn’t aid much. Nonetheless, people treated it as if three sessions of this had automatically accustomed her to be on the frontlines.
She was instantly promoted to 10th Seat as soon as she entered the 13th Division, where her fellow squad members were surprised with her ability and the raw potential of her reiatsu, which was reflected in her enormous Zanpakuto. Although many of her teammates admired her for these qualities and her quick intrusion to the seated ranks, the more veteran fighters there saw her as the representation of a flaw in the system: she had neither experience fighting Hollow outside of a controlled environment nor had she demonstrated the necessary leading skills to keep her comrades organized in a dangerous scenario. And it did hold true that she had been promoted based on theoretical performances and how she operated when she was the highest ranking official was completely unpredictable and could put the lives of her subordinates in danger. Among the ones who had most strongly opposed her rise to a seated position was Geirin, a veteran Shinigami who had offered over a hundred years of his existence to the service of the 13th Division as the 3rd Seat. The man was a huge influence in the Division, as he had a great number of feats behind him and had earned the trust of his companions over the years, so when he spoke up against Toko’s terms of arrival, a huge portion of the squad seconded him. The poor woman, being a newcomer and still completely unaccustomed to the way the Division worked, let alone on the level of officers, was never truly aware of how precarious the situation was for her. Her attitude of disregard towards her surroundings and sidetracked mind (which was already present in her to some extent, albeit not as accentuated as in the present) was also the cause of personal resentment from Geirin, who denied she had any kind of leadership skills at all.
Nevertheless, Toko’s results in the academy were far better than the majority of the squad members, and the argument that she could meet the standards of the position she was given with only a few months of fieldwork kept her there, to the dismay of many. She was, however, sent to missions that wouldn’t normally require the presence of a seated officer (like exterminating a low number of regular Hollow ranging from 4 to 6) and it became apparent even to her that Geirin’s unrelenting arguments against her had had an impact in the way her superiors viewed her. Realizing she didn’t have enough support to do so, she did not complain at the time and her case seemed to be forgotten by most of her comrades for a while. For many months, she engaged in minor missions that only grew easier as she completed them one after the other; although at first she would simply barge in by herself and eliminate the threats before the rest of the members in her group had to take any action, she was taught by some of them how to act like a leader and mobilize them properly. She proved to be a slower learner in this aspect than when it came to straightforward fighting, but she still managed to master the basics of mobilization tactics in a true hazardous zone in time and, little by little, she began to receive the support of more of her comrades. The more time that passed, the harder it became to deny that Toko was becoming more worthy of her position, which only exasperated Geirin even more; needless to say, the man still thought of her as a runt and would continue to do so until she spent at least a dozen years in the division (although she didn’t have the chance to stay that long in Soul Society to begin with). It was around that time that she awakened her Zanpakuto and forged a bond with Chigatana, effectively proving that she deserved a chance to prove herself to the rest of the 13th Division. It should be noted, however, that her connection with Chigatana was very superficial at this point and, given the Zanpakuto’s tendency of speaking in an abstract manner Toko wasn’t accustomed to, she wasn’t able to understand that the presence she was driven to control when she enrolled as a Shinigami was not her Soul Reaper, but rather a second entity that lived inside her, albeit with still too little of an influence to actually become evident to her yet.
Toko’s chance to demonstrate that she was indeed already worthy of being an officer finally arrived in the form of an assault mission against a Gillian-class Menos Grande that had appeared in the Living World multiple times in a specific area. Toko’s mission, along with a few other unranked Shinigami, was to annihilate the Hollow before it had the chance to further disturbance among the souls that crossed the zone. While it was assigned as a regular mission, it was like a secret known to everyone that it was actually a test for her and everyone was already fully aware that she would pass it with flying colors. Even Geirin, who had been playing the prosecutor role against her for a while now, was aware that the mission was as good as completed and had to admit that even he was gaining trust in her; nonetheless, he decided to follow Toko’s squad without his superiors knowing, mainly to witness with his own eyes her performance and to ready himself to give an apology should she emerge victorious; he would, of course, not intervene, just watch from a long distance. Toko and her squad didn’t take long to find the Menos and engaged it in combat right away, demonstrating good communication skills in the process. Although the creature proved to be a more troublesome foe than expected, the lucky factor that there weren’t any other Hollow to hinder the operation eventually allowed the 10th Seat to approach the creature enough to actually wound it. After a couple of minutes, Toko was already at the height of its head to deliver the final blow; however, something unexpected occurred while her sword penetrated the creature’s white mask.
She had been taught that, when a Zanpakuto cuts a Hollow, it is actually just purifying it of its sins in order to allow its passage to Soul Society, but what she heard as Chigatana drained the life out of the monster didn’t sound like salvation in the least. Screams of agony attacked her mind, mixing with each other and creating a terrifying chorus; every single soul inside of the Menos cried out to her in resentment, plea and confusion. In front of her, the vision of a mountain of countless spirits in agony trampling on top of each other violently stretching their arms in an attempt to reach her appeared. Her eyes widened as she experienced the strongest fear she had felt for as long as she had existed, and her screams blended with the ones of the soul in the Menos. The only one who responded to her desperate shriek was the same that had shown her this infernal scenario: her Inner Hollow.
Toko’s Inner Hollow emerged once again and went berserk on the spot, demonstrating power that surpassed even that of a Vice-Captain. Thankfully, since it still didn’t have enough influence inside of Toko’s mind, the manifestation only lasted a few seconds and in the shape of one lone, gigantic cero that engulfed the entire area, including the Menos and, collaterally, her comrades. The Hollow was completely obliterated and, miraculously, there were no Shinigami casualties; however, some of the squad members were left in such a state they wouldn’t be able to hold a sword for many years, if ever, and Geirin had been able to witness the spectacle from a distance, understanding that Toko was not the Shinigami he had almost been convinced to believe. Toko had lost consciousness, but some of the remaining squad members hadn’t and Geirin was not able to finish her off without any witnesses (the survivors that remained awake hadn’t been able to tell that the explosion of energy had been caused by her and not the Menos); he tried to have hope in her and avoided seeing killing her and the rest of the witnesses as a necessary solution. In addition, he was well aware that if he tried to expose her, he would most likely not be taken seriously due to him having a history of confrontation against her and the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be at the scene to begin with; hence, he remained a quiet audience and began to lose sleep at the fear that she would lose control once again. On her side, Toko had realized upon her awakening that something much darker and horrible than Chigatana lured inside of her and she reverted to the state of fear and desperation that had pushed her to become a Shinigami years ago, only now she was able to comprehend how massive the force she was trying to control was. During the time she remained in medic care, she had time to meditate over things and gather the determination to continue growing and trying to remain in control, but the terrifying words the Hollow left her with still resonated inside of her head.
“You are just a shell breaking down.”
Ashes
Years went by as Toko continued to hone her skills in order to secure the control of her body and she showed effective results. She managed to become 4th Seat after ten years and was able to fully utilize the skills of Chigatana’s Shikai. She had become a charismatic leader and a decent commander, the past complains of her inexperience now long forgotten. There hadn’t been any more instances of her Inner Hollow going berserk again, although it was mostly because she avoided getting involved in scenarios that would prompt that outcome and had also strengthened her resolve and no longer feared fighting Hollow or any other opponent to the same extent. She was still not confident enough to take on the Hollow and had decided to first attain more power and, if possible, even get to control Chigatana even more and learn Bankai. She was not aware that Geirin knew that there was an uncontrollable entity inside of her and that she could go berserk at any time, so she thought it would be possible to get the situation under control without the necessity of having a great portion of Soul Society panic over it.
Geirin had lost a great deal of the charisma he had once had; the paranoia he had to live with as he kept on fearing Toko and the constant state of alert for a chance to reveal the nature of what lied inside of her was eating away at him and it affected his demeanor towards others. Even more so when it became increasingly obvious that she would soon replace him as the next 3rd Seat; she simply had much more raw potential than him and it was evident she was material for something greater, like a Lieutenant or even a Captain, and 3rd Seat was merely another stepping stone. The thought of having such an unstable person take over him as a greater leader sickened and terrified him and he convinced himself that it was necessary to eliminate the threat as soon as possible, completely giving up on the hope he had tried to maintain for so many years. While he still had the power to match her, he began to orchestrate a forceful scenario in which, at the very least, he would be able to reveal her true colors.
The plan was set into motion and he made up a mission that consisted in having both of them and a few members of the Kido Mastery Division being sent out to eliminate a small group of Gillian-class Menos that had appeared somewhere in the Living World. In reality, there were no such Hollow and the rest of the kido masters that went with them were fully aware of Geirin’s intentions and had agreed to his plan. Once in the assigned area, the kido masters pretended to be using an advanced Hollow-tracking spell when in reality they were charging up a high-level box-barrier in which to trap Toko. She completely fell for the trick and soon found that the defensive properties of the spell were far above what she could handle and, before she could figure out how to escape, the plan entered the second stage. Geirin broke a Hollow bait inside of the barrier and soon an entire army of Hollow began to enter the confined box in increasing amounts. It was at this point that Geirin’s intentions were revealed to Toko; the plan was for her to completely exhaust herself with the coming hordes of Hollow and eventually have her Inner one resonate with the others, repeating what happened during her first fight against a Menos. By the time that happened, he had predicted that a Captain or another authoritative character would show up to see why he had taken so many officers on a fake mission and take control of the situation; in other words, he was risking being labeled a traitor in order to expose Toko. Even if it took them a while to get there, the point of having more people there was also to restrain her long enough. Although she fought well for a long while, eventually Toko was unable to keep up with the hundreds of Hollow (and after a while a few Menos) aiming to devour her and Geirin’s plan came to fruition when Toko’s blood-covered body became rejuvenated by the Inner Hollow. However, after that point, nothing went as expected.
With a single swing of her Zanpakuto, Toko’s Hollow was able to cut down the army of Hollow coming at her and the barrier encasing her at the same time. Before Geirin realized that the Hollow’s strength had surpassed its own limits from ten years ago and was now almost on the same level, if not equal, to a Captain, the massacre had already begun. She showed no mercy; none of the casters were able to finish the first verse of their incantations before they either had a limb cut off or over half of their bones broken. Geirin was the only one who was able to show some resistance, but he too had his arm, leg and tongue cut. Toko’s Hollow showed unparalleled cruelty and sadism as she tortured the Shinigami by cutting small pieces of flesh off of his body, enjoying every single second of it while letting him know how much the tears running down of his face turned her on. Thankfully, due to her tendency to enjoy torture before killing, she was not able to deal any final blows before Toko gained control of her body again and fled the scene. But in the two minutes the Hollow had been in control of Toko’s body, she had managed to make Geirin experience the most disturbing and horrifying fear he had felt in the many hundreds of years of existence he had been around.
“N-Not… a Ho…llow” were his parting words to a now defector Toko before losing consciousness.
Winter
From Toko’s perspective, what happened inside of her head while Geirin fought her Hollowfied self were not any prettier than what was going on with the Shinigami. Toko was forced to engage in combat with her Hollow who, despite not being able to materialize a Chigatana of her own, completely dominated the battle and soon had her broken and unable to fight. The Hollow then proceeded to try to literally devour the spiritual manifestation of Chigatana in an attempt to merge with it. However, in the process of it, the Zanpakuto was able to make a partial combination and force Toko to get control of her body, delaying the advance of the Inner Hollow but in the process substantially losing influence in the inner world to her.
Hence, Toko was able to escape the scene before taking any lives, but was perfectly aware that she could no longer go back so Soul Society, as even if she was able to prove the Hollow was responsible for what happened and it had also been forced out of her, she had demonstrated to be a dangerous person to anyone around her. She began to wander the Living World as her stamina escaped her body due to lack of sleep in fear she would never wake as herself again. Although she kept trying to hide herself and escape the authorities going after her, she soon began to wish someone would finish her off once and for all. After a while, when she barely had the strength to move, she was found by a squad of soldiers who she didn’t even bother to identify before giving up and being taken somewhere by them. To her surprise, once she finally began to understand her surroundings, she found out that the ones who had taken her in were not Shinigami, but spirits who, like her, had to deal with an Inner Hollow but actually knew how to control them (to varying degrees). They had apparently caught wind of her circumstances and, even though they hadn’t been looking for her, they decided to take her in once they found her. Although they knew the terrible things she had done while manipulated by her Hollow, they understood her situation as many of them had to go through similar things. Once she finally comprehended that she was being helped and that she had found people willing to give her a hand in the lone war she had been waging for so long, Toko was able to sleep, while thinking she was already dreaming.
Toko grew accustomed to the environment in the Masked Syndicate and was able to rest slightly assured being aware that there were people able to support should her Inner Hollow try to take control of her once again. It still remained true that, with Chigatana out of the picture to aid her, she had to get stronger to once again set things in order inside of her mind. To make this possible, she was trained by some of the elite members of the syndicate and was even able to learn Bankai in time for a final showdown against her Inner Hollow.
With the three entities inside of Toko all practically merged together, a chaotic battle between her and her Inner Hollow, each wielding almost fully mastered copies of Chigatana, commenced. The battle reached magnitudes Toko herself didn’t know she was capable of matching and her inner world, and consequently her sanity, shook as it threatened to break down completely. In the end, however, Toko emerged victorious after impaling her Inner Hollow’s heart and sinking the sword against a wall.
“You don’t get it…” the Hollow said, showing a calmed face without a smile for the first time. “Eventually, I’m destined to hatch out of you”.
“No” Toko responded with a smile “Even if you hatch, you will sleep until I tell you to wake up”.
Sanity began to come back to her mind as her and Chigatana’s influence stabilized. She has ever since continued to provide support as a member of the Masked Syndicate until she was promoted to Council Member.
Recent Events
Toko took no part in anything related to the invasion of the Shinigami in Arrancar territory and is aware of the Horror Vacui’s existence and objectives only as much as any other member of the Masked Syndicate is. She is still trying to remain under the radar of the Shinigami and as far as she knows, none of them are yet aware she joined the Vizard. She has recently begun to take more aggressive action against Arrancar, mostly due to the conflict having escalated to greater magnitudes and she, along with the rest of the Masked Syndicate’s Council Members being sent on more tasks.
Additional Info: Since I believe History should only give the facts (and because adding all this hassle would only make it more chaotic than it already is), I decided to explain where Toko's Inner Hollow came from here instead of the previous section. I doubt it's hard to figure out that the crucial moment for this was when she was partially devoured by the Hollow Gluttoner; at that moment, because the Shinigami Shodomaru interrupted the devouring process, she didn't become instantly a Hollow, but was still on her way to becoming one for sure. Since at the exact moment the Soul Burial was performed the process of Hollowfication hadn't ended, technically, Toko was still a Plus soul, as she had accepted her passing to Soul Society at that moment. Normally, after being purified with the Soul Burial, any traces of a Hollow would be left behind; however, the Inner Hollow (or the starting phase of it) took residence in a weakness (fear, if you may) it had noticed inside of her persona, which would be her guilt towards inflicting pain to others. Since she never really had to exert this at first as her main intentions were to have a peaceful life with her new guardian Shosei, the Hollow remained in a dormant state. As she became more of a fighter and inflicting pain became a necessity, the Hollow began to gain influence, and the rest, as it goes, is history.
Also while I’m at it, and for anyone who actually bothered to read the history: yes, the suspicious mean Shosei used to move from District was prostitution, and Geirin is named like that ‘cause I recently played Devil Summoner 2
.
Finally, Hollow baits are not my invention, Ishida used one in the first arc when he challenged Ichigo, look it up. Just saying ‘cause most might forget about it since it’s old.
((Note: Character limit hasn't been reached yet, but if I didn't divide it here, her Zanpakuto section would be cut, so I decided to do it here for the sake of organization.))
General Info
Name: Shimogare Toko (Shimogare is shortened for the word 'Winter', while Toko can either mean 'endless' or 'bed').
Gender: Female.
Age: 559.
Ranking: Council Member #4.
Physical Description: Visual Reference.
Toko has the appearance of a good looking young adult woman; while not a stunning beauty that shines in the crowd, she is still a very charming and attractive girl overall. She does, however, seem to have a very unorthodox sense for fashion that would strike as odd to most people. Measuring about 5'6'', she doesn't stand out as an imposing person; she has a slender figure with decent curves and an average-to-big bust size. She has long black hair that, if let loose, would reach as far as past her knees; while this is one of the aspects of her appearance she tends to change on irregular intervals, recently she seems to have settled to wearing it by having the front bangs tied together and pointing upwards, though still some hair does fall down on the sides framing her face. The back of her hair is tied into a high ponytail that is also divided into several sections as it goes down with weird hairpins depicting emoticons. It is easy to tell that she does take care of her hair and, in the weird occasions where she lets it down, she will even give off the impression she comes from the old Japanese royalty. She has light brown eyes and thin eyebrows to accompany it to give out the impression of a composed woman. Although her eyes are quite big considering her Asian heritage, the rest of her facial features don’t stand out that much. She has a small and round nose and the same goes for her ears. Though she does own piercings and likes to wear them, she often forgets to put them on in the mornings, so it is rare to see her wearing them. She doesn't tend to wear makeup, but does take care of her hair and skin with a variety of products.
Having abandoned long ago the Shinigami uniform, clothing has become another aspect of her that is in constant change, but in general she prefers wearing simple and little clothing. Currently she wears an informal, gray tank top shirt and a pair of jean shorts along with tennis shoes. Among some of the accessories she has probably the most notable one is a necklace with two metal plates like the ones given in prison, although these don't feature any kind of code number and instead sport a logo that looks loosely like a samurai helm. When she has to carry her Zanpakuto around, she includes a leather accessory that straps around her left thigh and has a belt-like extension that will hold the sword; it's uncomfortable and it forces Toko to constantly have her hand resting on it in order to keep it from shaking, but then again that's part of the point for it. Although this can be considered her general formula for dressing, sometimes she can be quite unpredictable for the daily routine going as far as suddenly showing up with a one-piece and hair completely loose saying she felt too lazy to do her hair in any way. These, however, are extremely rare occasions.
Her Hollow mask, like many, takes on skull-like characteristics and its basic appearance can be summarized as an intimidating and scary vision. It completely covers her face, but has two thin slits for eyes to allow vision; however, they are small enough to make it hard to make out her eyes and, mostly, they can only be seen when her glowing, purple eyes look back at you. There is no particular feature for the nose, but she doesn’t have trouble breathing normally. The mouth consists of three lines of teeth that extend far back; the second line of teeth (some sort of weird extra between the upper mouth and the jaw) usually attaches itself to the upper part when Toko opens her mouth. Finally, and probably the feature that stands out the most, is that the upper part of the mask, which completely hides her forehead, extends diagonally backwards and up in some sort of really long and wide horn. Its tip, however, doesn’t have a pointy end, but rather some sort of a semicircle reminiscent of an open fan.
Personality Toko is an intriguing and extravagant woman, to say the least. Whatever little thing crosses her mind is a mystery to even her closest acquaintances; she might be looking at flowers as if she is hypnotized by them when in reality she is thinking about icebergs and rainbows. This is not due to some sort of mental complication or lack of attention syndrome, but rather is simply caused by how quickly her mind seems to process things and link subjects between each other. The end (and only noticeable) result however, is still that it is hard for her to lend her attention to practically anything or anyone and even during active conversations she seems to get lost in thought about something completely different to what she is being told and even loses track of what she was saying. What bothers people the most though, and also the reason why everyone can tell her mind is somewhere else, is that she often begins to whisper her thoughts to herself and is too absorbed to remember she isn't by herself. Needless to say, this has driven most to label her a weird person, which wouldn't exactly be an inaccurate assessment. Nonetheless, she can still jump in surprise when people break her trance and will be genuinely in shock if they even tell her they know what she was thinking about, completely oblivious of the fact that she was pretty much saying it. This, added to the fact that she usually carries herself with a calm and composed attitude gives everyone the impression that she is extremely carefree about pretty much anything and a hardcore airhead beyond help. This is not actually the truth as she believes there are many things that could meet improvement in her life, starting with some of the relationships she lost when abandoning her Shinigami origins.
Toko seems to give importance to things that are usually irrelevant and concentrates on the little ones, often missing the big picture; again, this is partially due to her lack of attention. Many times she will sit down, bend her body, stretch or do other casual things and expose herself in front of other people doing shameless poses without even realizing it. Unfortunately (or fortunately, as some people would look at it) she doesn't tend to stay still for long and chances like that show up numerous times a day. This still doesn't mean that she will disregard important things and will act with all seriousness when talking about matters to her or other people, even to the point that she will pay close attention to what she says or hears; however, her getting serious is an extremely rare sight to begin with so it’s not like many people could give credit for this. She will also become more attentive when she fights seriously and her awareness will be directed to all sorts of details, including her opponent's dominant hand, range and other attack properties of his/her weapon, surroundings, etc. She is also characterized by a very powerful curiosity that will drive to the exploration and research of many things, always in search of something new and exotic. Then again, it is not very hard to surprise her, as she is still unfamiliar with many aspects of the new world she resides in having in mind she wants to understand everything about it. While she is a fighter and has obviously engaged in countless years of practice to become as powerful as she currently is, she is not very fond of inflicting pain to others so long as she can empathize with them to some extent. That extent is small, as it could be said she can only fight ruthlessly against Hollow who have already lost all sense of self, while fighting anyone else who can express suffering, including Arrancar, already puts some strain on her. This doesn’t mean she will hesitate or freak out in the middle of a battle, but she will try to avoid delivering a slow and painful death all she can; this has lead to her disliking her Zanpakuto, which she will unleash only when it is completely necessary. This attitude has caused a few instances of instability inside of her already.
She enjoys listening to music and is usually seen with headphones with a volume high enough for others to listen without much effort; not surprisingly, it is impossible to reach her once she is like this. As to what kind of music she listens to, she is as random about it as everything else about her, but at least she will stick to one genre at a time instead of listening to heavy metal and then suddenly switching to soul; generally though, she prefers soothing music. She regrets the fact that she never gave herself time to learn how to play any kind of instrument or any other skills to use as hobby, for that matter. She enjoys eating snacks of any kind and reading manga, as any kind of reading without illustrations will be hard for her to get into due to her hyper-active mind. Her favorite food is yakisoba, and the one she hates the most is cauliflower; as for drinking, she can almost always be seen with coffee, be it an actual cup of steaming black one, or a cold one with milk from a vending machine. As for races, she is not known for exerting much hate on anyone of them; she is thankful to all the members of the Masked Syndicate for taking her in and teaching her how to control her Inner Hollow to a more stable state, and since she is not familiar with any Vizards outside of them, it can be said her demeanor towards them all is a friendly one. She is also fond of Shinigami despite knowing that some of them might consider her a traitor to the Gotei 13, this being because she was for a long time one of them and didn’t leave them because that was her wish to begin with. Although she knows that not all of them are evildoers, she does not trust Arrancar in general and considers them the enemy, having an “attack first, then ask questions” policy going for them.
History:
Living Days
Toko was born and raised in Kyoto during the Muromachi period; her real name remains unknown. Prior to her birth, her father was a ronin that traveled through Japan with no particular destination and was simply trying to avoid any conflict with the law or anyone who would condemn his lack of loyalty to a house. During those travels, he met a commoner woman he fell in love with and, after months of trying to win her love, he finally convinced her to accompany him in his trips. Though his skills were average among samurai, his intelligence and cunning personality allowed him to protect his lover and himself by engaging in the least possible amount of battles. When years began to take a toll on the two of them, they decided to cease their adventures and settled in Kyoto, capital of the Ashikaga house at that moment, to form a family and live in peace. Not wanting to leave the path of the sword, Toko's father posed as a former samurai of the house that had retired due to age and managed to stay under the radar with only minor rumors starting up. Nonetheless, all the years he had spent as a ronin had made him paranoid and he believed that a conflict could break out at any moment, so when Toko was born, he decided she should be instructed to become a capable warrior as soon as possible, since he no longer could protect his family.
Toko's training began at a young age and it proved to be rougher than most. Though the tradition for the onna-bugeisha (which was a discipline her mother had attained while traveling) was to learn how to use the naginata and knives, Toko was taught how to use not only those but also the katana, kusari-gama and even the bow, since her father was more concerned with her well-being than traditions and wanted to prepare her for all sorts of situations. That made her embark in a path to become a complete and powerful warrior, but it also required her to be training non-stop even during her childhood. Not contempt with the life her father had chosen for her, Toko confronted her father a number of times and went as far as threatening with leaving the house, but never actually carried through with it since she realized she was indeed loved. Her father used to say she had the potential to be great, but lacked the attitude to do so. Nonetheless, her skills did increase at a faster rate than whatever her parents had witnessed and even earned some recognition around their area. Her talent became evident when she sparred male samurai and emerged victorious most of the times despite using different weapons in each battle, which earned her respect from many who went as far as calling her a true samurai despite being a woman. This would actually return to haunt her, as many recognized her fighting styles as foreign and the previously small rumor of her father being a ronin grew in credibility. Although her ability seemed to have peeked soon after and she ceased to engage in battles openly after realizing the rumors that were being spread, these did not recede.
Cracked Egg
By that point, the Onin war, a civil war involving the Ashikaga and other daimyo that also marked the beginning of the Sengoku period, broke out. This didn't actually have a direct impact in the family, as by this point Toko's father was too old to assist in battle and the situation wasn't dire enough for her and her mother to be sent into the battlefield. However, it soon became evident that their side was fighting a losing battle and her father grew uneasy with the situation. He continuously proposed the family to once again travel Japan not as ronin, but as merchants or any other farce that would allow them to escape the situation; however, he and his wife had lost their youth a while ago and it was evident that if the followed nomadic life like that, they wouldn't last long. Though Toko recognized the fact that Kyoto would fall, she trusted that, in the worst case scenario, civilians would be pulled out of the place before the enemy reached them and denied her father the plan of leaving the house. By this point, it was already recognized as true by many that Toko's father had been a ronin before making his way to Tokyo and it soon reached ears of the military, who confirmed that the man had never served the Ashikaga house. Though the family was aware that the attitude towards them was getting colder and presumed that their background had been leaked, they remained unconscious of exactly how much the rumor had grown by that point.
Just as had been predicted, the section of Kyoto they resided in was going to fall, and it no longer fell to chance. Knowing this and deciding to give up his section, general Ouchi Masahiro, one of the Yamana generals who was in charge of a generous section of Kyoto, came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to burn his own area of influence in Kyoto and leave his post. That section happened to be the one where Toko's family resided. Of course, civilians were evacuated as the houses were burnt and in theory, casualties were minimal; but unfortunately this was the time when Toko's father's days as a ronin were going to get back at him once and for all.
Having witnessed the houses burning down but receiving no explanation, Toko asked his father to seek shelter and, after agreeing on a meeting spot, left the house for a few minutes in order to see what was happening. Instead of doing as his daughter told him, Toko's father remained in the house, looking for something he claimed to need before they left and ignored his wife's pleads of leaving the place right away. His obsession became lethal when the first to arrive to the house was not their daughter, but a number of soldiers who were incinerating the residences. Though the soldier's mission was to warn civilians before burning their houses, when they recognized the man as the ronin the rumors spoke of, their intentions changed and they decided to take fate in their hands and give the man the death he should have received a long time ago. Toko's parents were locked inside the house, which was burnt with them inside; being too old to escape now, both of them could do nothing but watch in fear as the flames consumed their memories and eventually their lives. After realizing her parents were not coming to the meeting point they had arranged, Toko went back to her home only to find it already in flames; her attempts at entering the place to save her parents only resulted in receiving several burns and after realizing no one responded to her cries from inside the house, she broke into tears as Kyoto burned. When the flames were extinguished and Toko was able to search the remains of what was once her home, she saw with her own eyes the corpses of her parents; the father was holding onto something. The object that had delayed the man long enough for the soldiers to arrive, the object that his dead hands were still grasping with the strength of a mortal soul, was the sword that he had owned since his days as a samurai, still saved in its beautiful scabbard, now covered in ashes. Understanding why the man had taken the sword, Toko took it with her and left the place with a broken heart.
By the time the Onin war came to a close, Kyoto became nothing more than a city ignored by the gods where anarchy was the only ruler; Toko still remained in the place by keeping a low profile and tried to aid others who were in a similar situation to hers. But as expected, it was impossible to go through this without engaging in a fight sooner or later and eventually Toko became no exception. During one of his daily routines of looking for stray children or other survivors who had been left behind, she was surrounded by a group of hoodlums after any possession she had, and not only her material properties. She defended herself using her father's katana, and even though it was the first time she used a real weapon in a real battle, she overpowered her opponents with little difficulty. However, after she made her first cut to flesh and heard with her own ears the screams of pain of her opponent while blood ran down the blade of her weapon, her hands became unable to move and her entire body began to tremble. She practically didn't even notice when her chest was impaled nor when countless swords rained down on her again and again and again, painting her body in red until no one could recognize it. In the end, her father's assessment was true: she lacked the attitude to be a true warrior.
Between Black and White
Once Toko died, she did not become a Plus soul due to the regrets she held for not being able to stand beside her family during their last moments, which resulted in her becoming a Jibakurei. She became bounded to the remains of Kyoto and was unable to leave the place out of her own accord without even knowing what was happening. Forced to witness day by day the atrocities happening in Kyoto now that there was no ruler in place, she came to believe she was in Hell and that the spectacle in front of her was her punishment for not being able to move on with her life after her parents' death. As days went by, her sadness turned into resignation and she accepted her situation and agreed to the punishment she had placed on herself. She didn't know that coming to terms with something like that meant more danger for her, as she was unaware of the existence of Hollow and Shinigami yet; at that point, she was a static target for whoever came first to get her: a Shinigami that would grant her salvation or a Hollow eager to feast on her soul and taint it. Luckily for her, the first one to show up was a Shinigami, an old man going by the name Shodomaru who didn't hold any kind of high-rank, but did possess many thousands of years of experience behind him. However, to the man's dismay, Toko was already a Jibakurei strongly tied to the Living World, and he was not able to perform a Soul Burial on her. Instead of giving up, Shodomaru continually attempted to convince Toko to let go of her regrets day after day while performing his daily duties, but the woman ignored him most of the times. Even when he explained her everything about Shinigami and Hollow, she still wished to remain in place, claiming this was all part of her punishment. Days turned into a few years and eventually Shodomaru's visits became a common ritual in which he not always tried to convince Toko to leave the world of the living. Eventually, the subject disappeared entirely and they would pass time by playing shogi or talking about their history.
During one of their conversations, Toko asked Shodomaru a question: "Hey, if I became a Hollow... would I be able to kill them (Kyoto's hoodlums)?". Though the Shinigami suspected the influence of passing that much time in the Living World without a Soul Burial was turning her into a Hollow and that her question reflected the first step towards her transformation had started, his answer was composed and truthful: "Them and the generals who caused this; you would definitely be able to kill them all. Then, even if you were caught by Shinigami, you would just be purified and forget everything". Toko didn't respond to this in any particular way and as a few days passed, she didn't seem to be taking any steps towards speeding up her transformation, but neither did she accept the Soul Burial yet.
Shodomaru found himself in a tough spot when, soon after Toko's intriguing question, when winter had stricken, he received a notice from Soul Society warning him that a powerful Hollow responding to the name Gluttoner had been identified in a few occasions and his actions indicated he was moving towards his area. Having in mind that Gluttoner was not a Menos, but simply a particularly powerful normal Hollow, reinforcements for Shodomaru had very low priority and he was asked to at least hold the monster off until he could be granted the help he had asked for. Theorizing that the Hollow was very likely after Toko, since her reiatsu had grown and seemed to resemble that of another Hollow, he decided to keep a close eye on the girl and protect her, as he now cared for her in a fatherly way. Gluttoner did eventually make it to Kyoto and openly confronted both Toko and Shodomaru, confident in its power and eager to devour both of them. The Hollow proved to be too much for the Shinigami and in a matter of a few minutes, he had been beaten half-way to death; nonetheless, Gluttoner still seemed to be unable to deal the final blow to the persistent man, who continued to get up and try to separate the Hollow from Toko. However, in the end, it was impossible for Shodomaru to hold his own solely with willpower and he was sent half a kilometer away by the Hollow, making him pass out in the process. Free to do as it wished, Gluttoner moved on to attack Toko, who was closer to it. Using absolutely all the skills she had attained in life to extents she didn't even know she had, Toko was able to escape from the Hollow and distract it for enough time to allow Shodomaru to wake up and join in the fight again, catching Gluttoner by surprise and gaining a very needed advantage; however, by the time he did, Toko had already been pinned down and a great portion of her had been devoured, her body already morphing into that of a Hollow. The fight continued while Toko began her transformation and in the end, thanks to the advantage he had gained with the surprise attack, Shodomaru emerged victorious, although with worse wounds than Gluttoner and a sure death sentence carved on his body. With every single bit of energy he had left in his dying body, the Shinigami approached Toko. The girl was in a pain she hadn't experienced ever before and, while she didn't scream, her face reflected both the suffering and fear she was going through; as a hole opened where her heart was and a mask began forming on her face slowly, Shodomaru simply looked at her in the eye. He didn't need to say anything for Toko to understand what the man wanted to say; trying her best to ignore her pain, while tears ran down her barely present face, she spoke in a fainting voice.
"I always thought this was my punishment for not moving on in life... why did it take me this long to realize... I was making the same mistake?" The mask on her face ceased to form for a second, but it did not subside. "I don't need more blood... to have peace."
Shodomaru did not respond to her with words, he simply smiled and, not even knowing whether he would be successful in what he was about to do, he once again attempted to perform a Soul Burial. This time, he was successful and, before Toko became a Hollow, her soul was sent to Soul Society. Knowing that her soul had managed to be purified before it was too late thanks to her strength, the Shinigami was able to die with a smile on his face. His last thoughts were that he was proud and contempt of the life he had had.
Toko appeared in Soul Society naked and with part of the snow from the Living World surrounding her, as it was transferred along with her. She was found by a slightly aged woman who took her in her house and gave her the name Shimogare Toko because, as it seemed to her, the girl seemed like she was sleeping on a bed made by winter itself.
The Road Forward
The woman who took Toko in later introduced herself as Shosei; she was married to a Shinigami who had long ago ceased to visit her and, while she hadn't received any notice from Seireitei, she had come to believe in her heart that the man was already dead (she had no reason to believe he had abandoned her). Though Shosei initially lived in Inuzuri (78th District of Rukongai), once she found Toko and decided to become her guardian until the girl adapted to life in Soul Society and could fend for herself, she decided to move to the Hokutan District (3rd West District of Rukongai) temporarily. Even nowadays, Toko does not know exactly what kind of means the woman used to move up so many Districts, but has made assumptions she'd rather not talk about.
Helping Toko out became an immense ordeal once Shosei noticed that the girl had hunger, which was a sign that she had the power to become a Shinigami. That, added to the fact that she had retained some residual memory, including most of her lessons in fencing, made Toko a potential candidate to become a skilled God of Death; however, even when explaining all of this to her, Shosei did not force her to leave Rukongai and in fact hinted on wanting the girl to stay. Toko didn't know why the woman was sacrificing so much for the sake of a girl she had found not so long ago, but instead of suspecting her, she also became very fond of her soon and decided to stay together. Even without Shosei as a factor in her decision, Toko just didn't wish to engage in fighting as a Shinigami as the simple idea of putting her existence on the line terrified her. Even simply adapting to the new environment proved to be nearly impossible; the two women needed to have some sort of stable income in order to get by in the environment they lived in. Although Shosei’s savings could keep them there for a while, the truth was she had never predicted before the ordeal of having to, on top of everything, buy food to get by. Even then, their biggest ordeal had nothing to do with that.
They both managed to get jobs and life became steadily but slowly easier for them, but soon, word came around the whole District of their origin (particularly Shosei’s, as Toko was still something of a newcomer to Rukongai all-together) and this proved to be bad news. It actually took two whole years for Toko to realize this, but her adoptive mother was being victim of a serious case of harassment which she had been trying to hide from her in order to keep her from worrying about it and be able to lead a life as normal as possible. After coming back early from work, Toko found an unknown man in the house, forcing himself on top of Shosei, who couldn’t defend herself. As a newfound anger invaded Toko, she saved her and, remembering once again the teaching she had received in life, she severely injured the man, only stopping once Shosei managed to calm her down. In a display of unrealistic kindness and naiveté, she treated the man’s injuries and let him leave while Toko remained dumbfounded and confused.
“It can’t be helped that we hurt people from time to time,” she explained once she had finished treating the man. “But I would like that, when you make such decisions, you are ready to properly think and account for it instead of just looking away.”
Toko quickly understood what Shosei meant as a warning on how to react to the incident, as they were both painfully aware that they would no longer be welcomed in the 3rd District. However, being more concerned about the huge burden she had unknowingly placed on Shosei for such a long time, Toko decided to no longer remain passive and readied herself for what was to come.
As predicted, Toko was soon targeted by some of the villagers who were aware that she wasn’t as harmless as her adoptive mother. Fully knowing that she was being followed, she lured them unarmed outside of the town into an uninhabited area, where she knew they would reveal themselves and attack her. And as predicted, a small group of young villagers approached her with clubs and sticks of the sort. Although she held her ground very well for a while, Toko’s specialty was not hand-to-hand combat and she didn’t have at hand any of the weapons she had been trained with, and this eventually lead to her being hit in the head from behind and falling to the ground while losing consciousness. As the group of villagers began to stand up and close up on her while grinning, she curled up as everything around her began to lose color.
“It’s fine.” She heard a voice inside her head as time completely stopped for her. “When something like this happens, it’s fine if you close your eyes and cover your ears until it’s over… kehehehehe…”. Before even fully understanding what the voice was saying, Toko did as suggested and soon the world around her became completely black. And yet, she somehow knew what was happening, as if she was being told by someone.
The next instant, Toko felt as if she was waking up from a dream. She discovered with horror that, somehow, she had beaten up her assailants until her hands were dripping with blood while unconscious, confirming that what she thought was a nightmare was actually real. Miraculously, none of her assailants was dead, but some of them had received permanent injuries and there were craters on the ground. She had apparently done things that completely escaped what she could do with her strength, which lead her to assume this was work of the power she possessed and her inability to properly control it. She began to panic as all things came into place and fell to her knees, but before she could lose control of herself, she remembered what she had been told by Shosei and realized exactly what she had to do. Leaving only a letter to her friend, she took off to the Shinigami Academy with the clear determination to take control of whatever kind of power rested inside of her so that something like that didn’t happen again.
Cloudy
Having spent most of her time in the Hokutan Disctrict, it was treated as Toko’s origin and no one was ever told that she had actually first resided in Inuzuri, which helped her avoid the discrimination she had met before moving out of Rukongai. In fact, she found out that she actually fitted right in with the rest of the potential Shinigami and, even though she had at first started her training with a sense of tension and impatience as the memory of her loss of control remained fresh in her mind, she eventually grew confident and even calmer about it as she witnessed her own power take shape and direction. She was one of the best when it came to swordfights and she also quickly learned the basics of kido; nearing the end of her training and by the time she officially became a Shinigami, she was still among the very best when it came to swordplay and her kido were also worthy of being praised by the elite, as they had grown to be on par with her prowess with swords. Not to the surprise of anyone, it was publicly announced a year before her graduation that the 13th Division had taken an interest in her and were offering a seated position for her upon her completion of the Shinigami training. Before this was made official, however, Toko was first required to gain some field experience and was hence taken into the Living World along with other top trainees who had also been offered seated positions and an instructor to fend off regular Hollow. The project went smoothly, but other than allowing her to actually have some first contact with Hollow and advanced group tactics in practice, it didn’t aid much. Nonetheless, people treated it as if three sessions of this had automatically accustomed her to be on the frontlines.
She was instantly promoted to 10th Seat as soon as she entered the 13th Division, where her fellow squad members were surprised with her ability and the raw potential of her reiatsu, which was reflected in her enormous Zanpakuto. Although many of her teammates admired her for these qualities and her quick intrusion to the seated ranks, the more veteran fighters there saw her as the representation of a flaw in the system: she had neither experience fighting Hollow outside of a controlled environment nor had she demonstrated the necessary leading skills to keep her comrades organized in a dangerous scenario. And it did hold true that she had been promoted based on theoretical performances and how she operated when she was the highest ranking official was completely unpredictable and could put the lives of her subordinates in danger. Among the ones who had most strongly opposed her rise to a seated position was Geirin, a veteran Shinigami who had offered over a hundred years of his existence to the service of the 13th Division as the 3rd Seat. The man was a huge influence in the Division, as he had a great number of feats behind him and had earned the trust of his companions over the years, so when he spoke up against Toko’s terms of arrival, a huge portion of the squad seconded him. The poor woman, being a newcomer and still completely unaccustomed to the way the Division worked, let alone on the level of officers, was never truly aware of how precarious the situation was for her. Her attitude of disregard towards her surroundings and sidetracked mind (which was already present in her to some extent, albeit not as accentuated as in the present) was also the cause of personal resentment from Geirin, who denied she had any kind of leadership skills at all.
Nevertheless, Toko’s results in the academy were far better than the majority of the squad members, and the argument that she could meet the standards of the position she was given with only a few months of fieldwork kept her there, to the dismay of many. She was, however, sent to missions that wouldn’t normally require the presence of a seated officer (like exterminating a low number of regular Hollow ranging from 4 to 6) and it became apparent even to her that Geirin’s unrelenting arguments against her had had an impact in the way her superiors viewed her. Realizing she didn’t have enough support to do so, she did not complain at the time and her case seemed to be forgotten by most of her comrades for a while. For many months, she engaged in minor missions that only grew easier as she completed them one after the other; although at first she would simply barge in by herself and eliminate the threats before the rest of the members in her group had to take any action, she was taught by some of them how to act like a leader and mobilize them properly. She proved to be a slower learner in this aspect than when it came to straightforward fighting, but she still managed to master the basics of mobilization tactics in a true hazardous zone in time and, little by little, she began to receive the support of more of her comrades. The more time that passed, the harder it became to deny that Toko was becoming more worthy of her position, which only exasperated Geirin even more; needless to say, the man still thought of her as a runt and would continue to do so until she spent at least a dozen years in the division (although she didn’t have the chance to stay that long in Soul Society to begin with). It was around that time that she awakened her Zanpakuto and forged a bond with Chigatana, effectively proving that she deserved a chance to prove herself to the rest of the 13th Division. It should be noted, however, that her connection with Chigatana was very superficial at this point and, given the Zanpakuto’s tendency of speaking in an abstract manner Toko wasn’t accustomed to, she wasn’t able to understand that the presence she was driven to control when she enrolled as a Shinigami was not her Soul Reaper, but rather a second entity that lived inside her, albeit with still too little of an influence to actually become evident to her yet.
Toko’s chance to demonstrate that she was indeed already worthy of being an officer finally arrived in the form of an assault mission against a Gillian-class Menos Grande that had appeared in the Living World multiple times in a specific area. Toko’s mission, along with a few other unranked Shinigami, was to annihilate the Hollow before it had the chance to further disturbance among the souls that crossed the zone. While it was assigned as a regular mission, it was like a secret known to everyone that it was actually a test for her and everyone was already fully aware that she would pass it with flying colors. Even Geirin, who had been playing the prosecutor role against her for a while now, was aware that the mission was as good as completed and had to admit that even he was gaining trust in her; nonetheless, he decided to follow Toko’s squad without his superiors knowing, mainly to witness with his own eyes her performance and to ready himself to give an apology should she emerge victorious; he would, of course, not intervene, just watch from a long distance. Toko and her squad didn’t take long to find the Menos and engaged it in combat right away, demonstrating good communication skills in the process. Although the creature proved to be a more troublesome foe than expected, the lucky factor that there weren’t any other Hollow to hinder the operation eventually allowed the 10th Seat to approach the creature enough to actually wound it. After a couple of minutes, Toko was already at the height of its head to deliver the final blow; however, something unexpected occurred while her sword penetrated the creature’s white mask.
She had been taught that, when a Zanpakuto cuts a Hollow, it is actually just purifying it of its sins in order to allow its passage to Soul Society, but what she heard as Chigatana drained the life out of the monster didn’t sound like salvation in the least. Screams of agony attacked her mind, mixing with each other and creating a terrifying chorus; every single soul inside of the Menos cried out to her in resentment, plea and confusion. In front of her, the vision of a mountain of countless spirits in agony trampling on top of each other violently stretching their arms in an attempt to reach her appeared. Her eyes widened as she experienced the strongest fear she had felt for as long as she had existed, and her screams blended with the ones of the soul in the Menos. The only one who responded to her desperate shriek was the same that had shown her this infernal scenario: her Inner Hollow.
Toko’s Inner Hollow emerged once again and went berserk on the spot, demonstrating power that surpassed even that of a Vice-Captain. Thankfully, since it still didn’t have enough influence inside of Toko’s mind, the manifestation only lasted a few seconds and in the shape of one lone, gigantic cero that engulfed the entire area, including the Menos and, collaterally, her comrades. The Hollow was completely obliterated and, miraculously, there were no Shinigami casualties; however, some of the squad members were left in such a state they wouldn’t be able to hold a sword for many years, if ever, and Geirin had been able to witness the spectacle from a distance, understanding that Toko was not the Shinigami he had almost been convinced to believe. Toko had lost consciousness, but some of the remaining squad members hadn’t and Geirin was not able to finish her off without any witnesses (the survivors that remained awake hadn’t been able to tell that the explosion of energy had been caused by her and not the Menos); he tried to have hope in her and avoided seeing killing her and the rest of the witnesses as a necessary solution. In addition, he was well aware that if he tried to expose her, he would most likely not be taken seriously due to him having a history of confrontation against her and the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be at the scene to begin with; hence, he remained a quiet audience and began to lose sleep at the fear that she would lose control once again. On her side, Toko had realized upon her awakening that something much darker and horrible than Chigatana lured inside of her and she reverted to the state of fear and desperation that had pushed her to become a Shinigami years ago, only now she was able to comprehend how massive the force she was trying to control was. During the time she remained in medic care, she had time to meditate over things and gather the determination to continue growing and trying to remain in control, but the terrifying words the Hollow left her with still resonated inside of her head.
“You are just a shell breaking down.”
Ashes
Years went by as Toko continued to hone her skills in order to secure the control of her body and she showed effective results. She managed to become 4th Seat after ten years and was able to fully utilize the skills of Chigatana’s Shikai. She had become a charismatic leader and a decent commander, the past complains of her inexperience now long forgotten. There hadn’t been any more instances of her Inner Hollow going berserk again, although it was mostly because she avoided getting involved in scenarios that would prompt that outcome and had also strengthened her resolve and no longer feared fighting Hollow or any other opponent to the same extent. She was still not confident enough to take on the Hollow and had decided to first attain more power and, if possible, even get to control Chigatana even more and learn Bankai. She was not aware that Geirin knew that there was an uncontrollable entity inside of her and that she could go berserk at any time, so she thought it would be possible to get the situation under control without the necessity of having a great portion of Soul Society panic over it.
Geirin had lost a great deal of the charisma he had once had; the paranoia he had to live with as he kept on fearing Toko and the constant state of alert for a chance to reveal the nature of what lied inside of her was eating away at him and it affected his demeanor towards others. Even more so when it became increasingly obvious that she would soon replace him as the next 3rd Seat; she simply had much more raw potential than him and it was evident she was material for something greater, like a Lieutenant or even a Captain, and 3rd Seat was merely another stepping stone. The thought of having such an unstable person take over him as a greater leader sickened and terrified him and he convinced himself that it was necessary to eliminate the threat as soon as possible, completely giving up on the hope he had tried to maintain for so many years. While he still had the power to match her, he began to orchestrate a forceful scenario in which, at the very least, he would be able to reveal her true colors.
The plan was set into motion and he made up a mission that consisted in having both of them and a few members of the Kido Mastery Division being sent out to eliminate a small group of Gillian-class Menos that had appeared somewhere in the Living World. In reality, there were no such Hollow and the rest of the kido masters that went with them were fully aware of Geirin’s intentions and had agreed to his plan. Once in the assigned area, the kido masters pretended to be using an advanced Hollow-tracking spell when in reality they were charging up a high-level box-barrier in which to trap Toko. She completely fell for the trick and soon found that the defensive properties of the spell were far above what she could handle and, before she could figure out how to escape, the plan entered the second stage. Geirin broke a Hollow bait inside of the barrier and soon an entire army of Hollow began to enter the confined box in increasing amounts. It was at this point that Geirin’s intentions were revealed to Toko; the plan was for her to completely exhaust herself with the coming hordes of Hollow and eventually have her Inner one resonate with the others, repeating what happened during her first fight against a Menos. By the time that happened, he had predicted that a Captain or another authoritative character would show up to see why he had taken so many officers on a fake mission and take control of the situation; in other words, he was risking being labeled a traitor in order to expose Toko. Even if it took them a while to get there, the point of having more people there was also to restrain her long enough. Although she fought well for a long while, eventually Toko was unable to keep up with the hundreds of Hollow (and after a while a few Menos) aiming to devour her and Geirin’s plan came to fruition when Toko’s blood-covered body became rejuvenated by the Inner Hollow. However, after that point, nothing went as expected.
With a single swing of her Zanpakuto, Toko’s Hollow was able to cut down the army of Hollow coming at her and the barrier encasing her at the same time. Before Geirin realized that the Hollow’s strength had surpassed its own limits from ten years ago and was now almost on the same level, if not equal, to a Captain, the massacre had already begun. She showed no mercy; none of the casters were able to finish the first verse of their incantations before they either had a limb cut off or over half of their bones broken. Geirin was the only one who was able to show some resistance, but he too had his arm, leg and tongue cut. Toko’s Hollow showed unparalleled cruelty and sadism as she tortured the Shinigami by cutting small pieces of flesh off of his body, enjoying every single second of it while letting him know how much the tears running down of his face turned her on. Thankfully, due to her tendency to enjoy torture before killing, she was not able to deal any final blows before Toko gained control of her body again and fled the scene. But in the two minutes the Hollow had been in control of Toko’s body, she had managed to make Geirin experience the most disturbing and horrifying fear he had felt in the many hundreds of years of existence he had been around.
“N-Not… a Ho…llow” were his parting words to a now defector Toko before losing consciousness.
Winter
From Toko’s perspective, what happened inside of her head while Geirin fought her Hollowfied self were not any prettier than what was going on with the Shinigami. Toko was forced to engage in combat with her Hollow who, despite not being able to materialize a Chigatana of her own, completely dominated the battle and soon had her broken and unable to fight. The Hollow then proceeded to try to literally devour the spiritual manifestation of Chigatana in an attempt to merge with it. However, in the process of it, the Zanpakuto was able to make a partial combination and force Toko to get control of her body, delaying the advance of the Inner Hollow but in the process substantially losing influence in the inner world to her.
Hence, Toko was able to escape the scene before taking any lives, but was perfectly aware that she could no longer go back so Soul Society, as even if she was able to prove the Hollow was responsible for what happened and it had also been forced out of her, she had demonstrated to be a dangerous person to anyone around her. She began to wander the Living World as her stamina escaped her body due to lack of sleep in fear she would never wake as herself again. Although she kept trying to hide herself and escape the authorities going after her, she soon began to wish someone would finish her off once and for all. After a while, when she barely had the strength to move, she was found by a squad of soldiers who she didn’t even bother to identify before giving up and being taken somewhere by them. To her surprise, once she finally began to understand her surroundings, she found out that the ones who had taken her in were not Shinigami, but spirits who, like her, had to deal with an Inner Hollow but actually knew how to control them (to varying degrees). They had apparently caught wind of her circumstances and, even though they hadn’t been looking for her, they decided to take her in once they found her. Although they knew the terrible things she had done while manipulated by her Hollow, they understood her situation as many of them had to go through similar things. Once she finally comprehended that she was being helped and that she had found people willing to give her a hand in the lone war she had been waging for so long, Toko was able to sleep, while thinking she was already dreaming.
Toko grew accustomed to the environment in the Masked Syndicate and was able to rest slightly assured being aware that there were people able to support should her Inner Hollow try to take control of her once again. It still remained true that, with Chigatana out of the picture to aid her, she had to get stronger to once again set things in order inside of her mind. To make this possible, she was trained by some of the elite members of the syndicate and was even able to learn Bankai in time for a final showdown against her Inner Hollow.
With the three entities inside of Toko all practically merged together, a chaotic battle between her and her Inner Hollow, each wielding almost fully mastered copies of Chigatana, commenced. The battle reached magnitudes Toko herself didn’t know she was capable of matching and her inner world, and consequently her sanity, shook as it threatened to break down completely. In the end, however, Toko emerged victorious after impaling her Inner Hollow’s heart and sinking the sword against a wall.
“You don’t get it…” the Hollow said, showing a calmed face without a smile for the first time. “Eventually, I’m destined to hatch out of you”.
“No” Toko responded with a smile “Even if you hatch, you will sleep until I tell you to wake up”.
Sanity began to come back to her mind as her and Chigatana’s influence stabilized. She has ever since continued to provide support as a member of the Masked Syndicate until she was promoted to Council Member.
Recent Events
Toko took no part in anything related to the invasion of the Shinigami in Arrancar territory and is aware of the Horror Vacui’s existence and objectives only as much as any other member of the Masked Syndicate is. She is still trying to remain under the radar of the Shinigami and as far as she knows, none of them are yet aware she joined the Vizard. She has recently begun to take more aggressive action against Arrancar, mostly due to the conflict having escalated to greater magnitudes and she, along with the rest of the Masked Syndicate’s Council Members being sent on more tasks.
Additional Info: Since I believe History should only give the facts (and because adding all this hassle would only make it more chaotic than it already is), I decided to explain where Toko's Inner Hollow came from here instead of the previous section. I doubt it's hard to figure out that the crucial moment for this was when she was partially devoured by the Hollow Gluttoner; at that moment, because the Shinigami Shodomaru interrupted the devouring process, she didn't become instantly a Hollow, but was still on her way to becoming one for sure. Since at the exact moment the Soul Burial was performed the process of Hollowfication hadn't ended, technically, Toko was still a Plus soul, as she had accepted her passing to Soul Society at that moment. Normally, after being purified with the Soul Burial, any traces of a Hollow would be left behind; however, the Inner Hollow (or the starting phase of it) took residence in a weakness (fear, if you may) it had noticed inside of her persona, which would be her guilt towards inflicting pain to others. Since she never really had to exert this at first as her main intentions were to have a peaceful life with her new guardian Shosei, the Hollow remained in a dormant state. As she became more of a fighter and inflicting pain became a necessity, the Hollow began to gain influence, and the rest, as it goes, is history.
Also while I’m at it, and for anyone who actually bothered to read the history: yes, the suspicious mean Shosei used to move from District was prostitution, and Geirin is named like that ‘cause I recently played Devil Summoner 2
. Finally, Hollow baits are not my invention, Ishida used one in the first arc when he challenged Ichigo, look it up. Just saying ‘cause most might forget about it since it’s old.
((Note: Character limit hasn't been reached yet, but if I didn't divide it here, her Zanpakuto section would be cut, so I decided to do it here for the sake of organization.))
