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Abarai Renji
| Name: Abarai Renji (阿散井恋次) Aliases: Stray Dog (野良犬) "Real" Name: Kyle Brothers Room: M42 Age: Apparently mid-twenties, in reality centuries older Hair Color: Red Eye Color: Brown Height: 6'2" Weight: 172 lbs Birthday: August 31, unknown year Other notable characteristics: A great deal of Renji's body is covered with intricate, tribal tattoos. |  |
Backstory
Renji was born on August 31st of an unknown year. He died between the ages of four and six; all he remembers of this is that he was (or had been) ill, and that he was run over by a cart. He ended up in the 78th district of Rukongai, Inuzuri, where he survived by forming a gang and stealing food. That was where he met Rukia as well. They were quite inseperable; the gang of them and their friends were as close to a family as any of them could get. One by one, the other members of the gang died or were killed until only Rukia and Renji were left. Together, they decided to apply to the Shinigami academy, in the hopes of escaping the abject squalor they'd grown up in.
Both Rukia and Renji did well in the academy. Renji was extremely adept at zanjutsu (swordsmanship) and rather inept at kidou (the demon arts). He was admitted to the top class and excelled. It should be noted that Rukia was put in the second class, and was good at kidou, if questionable and zanjutsu. While Renji was happy that they were both pursuing a shared dream, in what little spare time he had, he was distressed at the seperation and emotional distance that their different roles put between them. When Rukia was adopted by the Kuchiki family, he was genuinely happy for her, but also saddened because he doubted that he would ever be able to see her again. In fact, when she met with the Kuchiki family, she told Renji of the adoption in the hope that he would tell her not to go; he feels almost that he betrayed her when he told her that she should do it, that he was happy for her. He let her go because he wanted her to have a better life than he could ever provide for her. The social gap it put between them (noble and commoner) was such that he felt he had to seperate himself from her so that it wouldn't cause trouble. The main reason behind his determination to become Vice-Captain was that would give him enough social standing to be able to resume at least a friendship with her.
Renji began his career as a Shinigami in the 5th division, where he befriended Izuru Kira and Hinamori Momo. Proving to be rebellious and difficult (and therefore a detriment to the plots of Aizen Sosuke), he was transferred to the 11th division, which was renowned for its fighting prowess. The change suited Renji, and he quickly befriended Madarame Ikkaku, who taught him to become an even more fearsome swordsman. Renji rose to the 6th seat of the 11th division; however, driven by the dual desire to prove himself, and a need to be close in some way to Rukia, Renji set his sights on the Sixth division, which was captained by Rukia's adopted older brother. In a stroke of delicious irony, he got his wish and was promoted to Vice Captain of the Sixth... on the same day that Rukia disappeared.
Renji spent much of his time during Rukia's disappearence torn between fury and utter panic. He pushed to be sent to search for her, an action he came to regret. Renji didn't understand Rukia's reasons for disappearing (and in many ways still doesn't) and thus allowed his anger to take over. After Rukia's capture, he continued to hang on to his anger, speaking harshly to her. Eventually, he redirected his anger toward Ichigo, deciding that he was responsible for Rukia's bizarre actions. He was quietly horrified over his own actions, Byakuya's treatment of his sister, and the sentence passed on her. He desperately wanted to rescue her himself, but he knew that he would be unable to defeat Byakuya.
When Ichigo and his friends arrived, Renji hunted the young man down with determination. They fought; Ichigo defeated Renji, and Renji at last allowed himself to say some of what he felt; he begged Ichigo to rescue Rukia. Renji was healed and imprisoned, afterwards. He quickly escaped and hid so that he could train and master Zabimaru's bankai. The process was far more psychologically taxing than anything; he was forced to face his inner emotional tangle and didn't like it one bit.
In trying to rescue Rukia, Renji fought Byakuya and was defeated by him. When Ichigo stopped Rukia's execution, Renji was there to take her in his arms and escape. Later, dragged back to the execution site by the treacherous Aizen, he and Ichigo allied, but were both beaten and critically injured. Perhaps mercifully, Renji was unconscious for what followed.
Zabimaru
Zabimaru (蛇尾丸) is loosely translated as 'snake tail.' Zabimaru is Renji's zanpakuto, his soul cutter. The zanpakuto is a manifestion of a Shinigami's reiatsu or spirit power. In effect, the zanpakuto is a part of their soul and spirit that they can manifest at will and use as a weapon. Thus, the blades are immensely powerful and also have a personality, one deeply linked with that of their wielder. The first step to releasing a zanpakuto's power and bonding more closely with the weapon is learning its name, a task that often involves a psychological battle.
Zabimaru appears, when he chooses to speak directly to Renji, as a Japanese chimera, shown as a baboon with a snake for a tail. As with all zanpakuto, he appears as an ordinary katana in his most basic form. The initial release for Zabimaru is the command "Howl." Zabimaru transforms into a large, segmented whip sword that Renji is able to commit three consecutive attacks with before needing to bring the segments back together for a renewed attack. The sword's segments can also be detached and used to surround and bombard an opponent in a one-shot (but omnidirectional) attack called higa zekko. This is an attack of last resort, as it leaves Zabimaru damaged and Renji mostly defenseless.
Zabimaru's bankai - final release - is Hihiou Zabimaru, or Baboon King Zabimaru. The final release transforms the sword into a massive, skeletal snake; its head is larger than Renji. In the final release, the sword's segments are held together by Renji's reiatsu, which makes this form infinitely more flexible and deadly, able to be broken and reformed at will. The final release also gives Zabimaru the ability hikou taihou, which allows it to fire a beam of energy from its mouth.
Personality
Bad boy on the outside, complete marshmallow on the inside, all-around uncompromising idealist. Loyal to friends, dangerous to his enemies. While he has not been a Vice-Captain for long, he was seated for a significant amount of time, and is used to having his orders followed. In many ways, his personality closely matches his self-title - stray dog. He will defend what he believes to be right to the end, he will protect his pack (and the pack is necessary; he needs a 'family' wherever her goes), and he won't hesitate to turn on someone that betrays him. Renji is adept at fighting dirty, bare handed or not, due to how he grew up. He is an honorable man - for his own definition of honor.
Renji can be extremely standoffish to adults - while he's fairly outgoing, he tends to come across as permanently grouchy. He is much more relaxed around children, and will do whatever he feels is necessary to comfort them if they're upset. For the most part, kids seem to be able to see through the gruff exterior easily.
It's also easy to tell that Renji is a terrible liar - he says very little that he does not firmly believe. His determination is part of what makes him a good leader. When he says that he will not give up, and that there will be victory, it's very hard not to believe him. And when he says that he will protect you with his life... well, it's also hard not to feel warm and safe, at least for a little while.
At Landel's
Renji arrived at the end of a night shift, where he saw nothing interesting. He was quickly given the "real deal" by Ichigo at breakfast in the morning. Since then, he's been seeking to establish a "pack" of people that he can both trust and guard, as well as learning as much as possible about Landel's with an eye toward escape. He has been exploring the second floor with Nowe and Sora, attempting to make a map. On the second night, the small party was attacked by Pyramid Head; Nowe was severely injured. Ichigo stayed behind to distract the monster while Renji carried Nowe away and Sora followed. Renji was able to heal Nowe, but at great personal cost.
Both Rukia and Ichimaru Gin arrived the next day, both of whom have made Renji's life difficult, though for wildly different reasons. Renji attacked Gin in the cafeteria and was subsequently sedated by the nurses. While still under the influence of the sedatives, Rukia found him. Qui-Gon Jinn and Rukia were able to convince Renji that he should try to talk to Gin and see if a truce was possible before simply hunting him down and attempting to kill him.
In a single night, Nowe and Kurosaki Ichigo both disappeared. Needless to say, Renji was less than happy about this situation. Rukia attempted to get him to talk about this and several other issues; it ended with her in tears and him silently promising himself that he would remain nothing more than her friend in spite of his feelings for her, because he convinced himself that pursuing anything deeper than a friendship would only hurt her.
Renji's powers have been severely limited by Landel's. He has been trapped in some sort of gigai (false body) as far as he can tell. At this time, the only abilities of a Shinigami he can use is a dim sense of the spirit of others, and, if he concentrates extremely hard, he can see the spirit threads. He can't access or even speak to Zabimaru, which is a source of great psychological pain and distress for him; he has been effectively cut off from a very important part of his own soul. As a Vice-Captain, Renji is also a powerful wellspring of spiritual energy (Vice-Captains, like Captains, are not allowed to even come to the real world without having their powers limited to ten percent of normal, for fear that they will influence the real world too heavily) and at this time, he can't access any of it, use it, or even bleed it off. At the same time, he is still producing spiritual energy at his normal rate, which is why he becomes hungry and has to eat like a normal human. As one can imagine, this is a very uncomfortable and potentially harmful situation.
Special For Telepathic Fuxx0ring Section
Please do not read this section unless your character is a telepath poking around in Renji's brain.
Also, please note that a lot of this is backstory created by Rukia-mun and myself for the purposes of fleshing things out. (And because we were bored and wanted to RP SOMETHING.) This is so far out of canon it's not even funny.
Nearly anything about Renji is fair game for telepathic nastiness; he has no special immunity to telepathy, though he would perhaps be a tough nut to crack considering how strong-willed he is. He also may be rather odd to deal with, simply because he's at least 150 years old and, you know, DEAD.
Aside from everything in his history, a few more details that may be interesting to those wishing to mess with him:
- Renji can no longer clearly remember the short amount of time when he was alive; his clearest memory is of his death, and of that, only the song that his mother sang to him. This holds a special significance to him; he once sang it to Rukia when she had a severe fever when they were young.
- The names of Rukia and Renji's childhood friends are Daisuke, Jun, and Shu (short for Shuichi).
- Daisuke was the first of them to die, a very small, thin, nervous boy who was often picked on by people outside of the group. He was upset by Renji and Rukia having one of their infamous knock-down drag-out nasty shouting matches and ran off. Alone and unable to defend himself, he was murdered; the body was later discovered by Jun. Renji still blames himself for this.
- Jun died of illness; again there is guilt attached to this because both Renji and Rukia required the majority of the food and water because of their spiritual powers.
- Shu was the last to die; he was killed in a brawl, which neither Renji nor Rukia were able to save him from.
- All three of their friends are buried in a particular spot near a river; Renji wants to be buried there, himself, when he dies.
- While they were training to be Shinigami, Renji kissed Rukia once. She was adopted shortly afterward.
- While Renji comes across as very uneducated (he still speaks like gutter trash for the most part, and writes like someone that was illiterate until adulthood - which he was) he has a passion for reading that only Rukia and a few others know about. He worries that other people would mock him if they knew about his hobby, since it doesn't really go with the rest of his image.
- For the next forty years, Renji spent a great deal of his time watching her from afar, when he wasn't working toward his goal of becoming a Vice-Captain.
- For the most part, when Renji felt the need for physical affection during his years without Rukia, he simply dealt with prostitutes (ones, it should be noted, that were as dissimilar as possible to Rukia, and a few that were male) because he was emotionally unavailable. He has had a fling with Matsumoto Rangiku in more recent years, however, just something for fun with no strings attached. He has also slept with Hinamori Momo on one occasion, which occurred shortly they had graduated from the academy and were in the Fifth division together. They were both quite drunk; she was dealing badly with her burgeoning crush on Captain Aizen and Renji was dealing with the very recent loss of Rukia as a friend. While the incident allowed them to become much better friends afterwards (as sometimes happens) it's something that Renji still feels very weird about when he thinks of it as more than an abstract, simply because the entire reason it happened from his end is because, when viewed through some thick sake-goggles, Momo looks rather like Rukia.
- One of the few exceptions he made to this self-imposed exile was when Rukia was forced to kill the Vice-Captain of her division, Shiba Kaien. He searched her out, and did his best to comfort her, which involved dragging her to a bathouse because she was still covered with the man's blood. He carried her back to the 13th Division grounds after she fell asleep. Oddly, this incident has given several of the poems of WB Yeats (most particularly "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven") a special significance to both of them.
- The day before Rukia left for the human world (and subsequently disappeared for two months) the two of them met up in the woods; Renji had gone there under the guise of training but was actually slacking off and reading - he'd just gotten a new book, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." He kissed her, and she ran away from him. This is the incident that has caused him to resolve he will never attempt to be more than friends with her, because he doesn't want to hurt her.
- While Rukia was imprisoned, he spent an entire night outside her cell, talking to her and attempting to comfort her.
- Generally, if there's a way that Renji can blame himself for something happens because he wasn't there and should have been, or wasn't strong enough, he will.
- When Renji mastered his bankai, it was a much more psychologically than physically painful process. Zabimaru continued to hammer on him until he admitted that his love for Rukia is something he should embrace - if silently - because it is his greatest source of strength, and that he must simply accept the pain that comes from it as part of life and death.
- Renji's tattoos come from Zabimaru; in his own words, they are the indication that he has passed one of the zanpakuto's tests. He was in communication with Zabimaru before he ever graduated. The only person he has ever told this to was Rukia.
- Renji's greatest dream is to have a family of his own; since the only woman he's ever been emotionally interested is (to his mind) permanently out of reach, he's resigned himself to never attaining that dream. It still comes out in his need to "adopt" every kid he comes across.
- At Landel's Rukia and Renji have now admitted how they feel about each other, though they have also been forced to acknowledge that this only complicates things, as they should at least attempt to act as if there is nothing between them, and avoid working together.
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, Jun 29 2007, 1:12 AM EDT
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