Name: Nakamura Bachiko
Age: 18
True Age: 129
Sex: Female
Personality: Impulsive, temperamental, strong-willed, forceful; these four words are what best summarize Bachiko's true personality and spirit. While at times she may be mistaken (or even portray herself as such, just to catch others by surprise) as a weak and frail blind woman, her true persona is that of a fighter and a warrior, always ready to ride into battle and smite her enemies. As such, Bachiko was well known (by those who knew her true personality) for her independent and fiery nature, as well as her reckless and headstrong approach to fighting her enemies head on.

Despite her tough attitude Bachiko is actually quite sensitive and gentle, however she doesn't show this side much anymore. As a result, she comes off as a driven woman. She is both headstrong and forthright; following what her instincts tell her, whether her fellow Soul Reapers approve or not. In a fight, she will come out strong and is not afraid to use deadly force when necessary. Bachiko also has a slight tendency to look for a fight rather than just perform surveillance when she is on a patrol. In short, her flight/fight switch has been locked into fight mode, as she sees an enemy around every corner.
Likes: Swamps, her seismic sense, Numajuumaru, tea, oranges, Hot n' Sour soup, using her blindness to her advantage by getting others to pity her
Fears: Vasto Lordes, leeches, being bested in combat, being weak and being unable to "see" should she be incapacitated from her seismic sense.

Character Appearance

Height: 5'3"
Weight: 124 lbs
Physical Traits: Bachiko is a young, somewhat tall girl with a slim, athletic yet well-curved build, with waist-length black hair held up in a bun - thus making them appear shorter than they are. Many people consider her to be very good looking or even beautiful. She has a heart-shaped face with a small nose and big round, filmy pale orbs - a result of her blindness. As she cannot see with them, its hard to discern her emotions from her eyes as it would be most people. They are just empty, as it were.

Clothing: Bachiko does not adopt a wide variety of clothes, being usually clothed in the standard soul reaper shihakushō (which is her main attire when she is on duty), with the small customization of her discarding the white tabi and waraji worn by most Soul Reapers. They are replaced by white ankle warmers around her ankles, and her feet are bare in order to facilitate her extra sense.

When she goes into Bankai, her clothes are seen to warp. They change to a brown-yellow-green combination. This consists of green thigh-length leggings that leave her feet uncovered, with metallic plates across her forelegs, a light brown loincloth with her mid-riff bare. Her upper body is adorned by a light brown sleeveless top with green edges and a V-cut across her cleavage, underneath which another green shirt can be seen, and arm warmers with metallic plates across them on her forearms.

When she is in a Gigai or off-duty, however, her attire consists of an almost exact copy of this Bankai outfit of hers (sewn in order to mimic it because she thought "'t'was cool", only without the metallic battle gear.

Spoiler:
	Bachiko in her most frequent outfit outside of her soul reaper uniform: remove the armor plates - add armor plates when imagining her in Bankai

Accessories: Her hair are tied in a bun with the help of a light brown clip (as shown above) held up with the help of a green headband with two white seashells on either side. She is also seen to wear anklets, albeit only occasionally.

Fighting Style

General Fighting Style: An expert in Hakudo, her fighting style is generally based on Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu, which is a style that is apparently unique to her; using its precise stepping to maintain contact with the ground for her to "see". Her style is unique and thus unpredictable, as her training is unconventional. Her fighting style differs from the other styles in that it maintains a distinct balance between offensive and defensive capabilities.

Bachiko uses a balance of strength and defense to overwhelm opponents, detecting the movements of others through her connection with the earth, thanks to her seismic sense. This sense provides her with a distinct advantage when facing other Hakuda fighters in combat because she can predict attacks as they begin and quickly react, and her speed and skill at Shunpo are also greatly beneficial. Concepts such as listening, reacting, balancing attacks and defense, and drawing power from a stable lower body are a central part of her Hakuda combat style.

Bōjutsu Master: Bachiko's Zanpakutō is a bo-staff while in Shikai form, and as such she is highly proficient in the use of techniques similar in use to that of a bo to take advantage of its versatility when not resorting to the use of her Shikai special ability.

Strengths:

Enhanced Strength: Her main strength is Strength itself. Despite looking like a frail, short blind woman in her late teens, Bachiko is deceptively strong, capable of cracking gigantic boulders with her bare fists. One of the people she sparred with once commented that a single punch of hers feels like a truck slammed into them. She is an expert in the use of her Zanpakutou, while being a Hakudo expert as well.

Extrasensory Perception: Although blind, Bachiko has the (somewhat) unique ability of seismic sense: she uses her spiritual affinity for the earth to "feel" even the most minute vibrations in the earth, including the march of ants several meters away and the presence of trees and buildings. Through this heightened seismic sense, she can visualize where people are, their relative distance to her, and their physical build, but she cannot visualize faces. She could also use the general "blind Soul Reaper" power to sense reiatsu and visualize accordingly, but she is not proficient in its use and thus vulnerable if her connection with the earth is cut off.



Spoiler:
	Bachiko's Perception via Seismic Sense



Shunpo Expert: While not anything spectacular compared to most other proficient users of the Flash Step, she is still highly proficient in Shunpo. Using Shunpo in combination with her ESP, she has shown herself to repeatedly be able to block and dodge dangerous attacks.

Weaknesses:

"The 'nnoyin' Stuff": Kido, or basically anything involving technology. Bachiko prefers nature and the way of the fist and feet; as such, she utterly fails in using the soul reaper spells or understanding how complex scientific equipment works. She can use Kido, but only low level ones that she picked up at Shino Academy. She would tear her hair out if she ever has to go near the damn spells again.

Impulsiveness: She is also rather bashful and as such is known to rush head-first into fights without discerning the threat level first. This often earns her a beating, either from the opponent or from her superiors.

Sense Deficits: Bachiko's Seismic Sense is not without its limitations. First and foremost, it only detects things in contact with the ground; objects floating in water or thrown in the air are undetectable unless they are earth. Bachiko must also be in contact with solid ground to use the sense at all; again, if she is in the air or water, or even standing on a non-earth solid such as ice, she will be unable to sense anything. Sand, although an earth-based substance, is not firm like normal earth, and renders seismic sense "fuzzy" and very imprecise. Uninterrupted contact with the ground is preferred for Bachiko- an object such as a shoe sole interferes with the sense. The sense also has considerably less range than uninterrupted sight. The sense does not allow for perception of facial features or written characters. Also, while Bachiko can overcome most of these deficiencies by using the general "blind reiatsu sensing abilities", as she calls them, used by other visually impaired Soul Reapers, she is not proficient in it, at least for now. Thus, it is easy to incapacitate her if her contact with the earth is broken.

Zanpakuto & Kidou

Sealed Appearance: A regular katana of average length, with a mud-brown sheath and green hilt adorned by golden samurai diamonds. The hilt is a silver, glistening in the moonlight when unsheathed.
Spirit’s Name: Numajūmaru (沼獣丸, Swamp-Beast Ring)
Spirit’s Appearance:

Spoiler:

Spirit’s Personality: Exactly what he looks like. Bachiko describes him as psychotic, and usually acts like a dumb-ass. Comic relief moments between him and his master are not unheard of. However, despite acting like a complete dumb-ass, Numajūmaru is actually very intelligent and tactical. He is also lazy and generally prefers to sleep around and not do anything, in sharp contrast to Bachiko's powerful and headstrong nature. Still, he helps Bachiko when there's a point to it and she really needs his help, and the two seem to have come to an understanding.
Inner World: Bachiko's inner world is a swamp wetland. Its filled with thigh deep marshy water, creepy crawlies and all sorts of other bog things, with trees emerging in various places - some seemingly dead without any leaves, others living with vines and leaves in abundance, but all with a dark and grotesque appearance. Broken tree trunks also float around in the water as well and its rather hard to see beyond a few meters due to the thick fog that surrounds the place. Whenever Bachiko enters the place, she is often greeted by Numajūmaru's dark and ominous laughter, followed by an annoying game of hide and seek before she can actually talk to him.

Spoiler:

Kidou: Ha. Haha. Haaaaa! ... None whatsover. Okay, maybe she can pull off a few basic ones that she learned in the Academy, but so few have seen her even trying that most think she doesn't know any. Bakudō: Sai, Hainawa, Seki, Geki, Hourin and Sekienton. Hadō: Shō, Byakurai and Shakkahō.

Shikai

Call Out Command: "Devour inside the swallowing earth..."
Appearance: In Shikai, her sword transforms into a long brown bo-staff, with three green stripes across both ends.
Abilities: Being a bo-staff, it can be used for melee combat but its main ability lies in elemental manipulation of "swamp" (quicksand, technically, but she simply refers to it as "swamp" or "mud"). From each end of the bo-staff, Bachiko can generate and control quicksand found in swamps. Every arc and slash with the staff creates a large amount of spiritual power which overflows from the ends of the staff, creating a flow of quicksand which she can shape in different ways, usually in the form of waves or streams of the muddy substance. This can be used offensively by assaulting the opponent with the quicksand, defensively by creating mud walls or the like, capture things due to its ability to inhibit locomotion and so on.

Seijin Ouji (Bottomless Pit): By 'immersing' an end of her bo-staff into the ground, Bachiko can produce a variably deep swamp of quicksand which, should her enemy fall into it or come into contact with it, would suck them in. The adhesive quicksand ensnares the enemy's body, making it almost impossible to recover one's strength and escape from the swamp unless their level of power significantly overpowers Bachiko's own. If someone is caught by the swamp created by Numajūmaru and unable to escape, they will sink more if they struggle. However, the swamp can be escaped from if someone has more reiatsu than the amount Bachiko poured into her swamp, and they expel it in a burst. It can also be escaped from by the traditional method of escaping from quicksand, that is, wiggling the legs. The practical size of the swamp itself can vary from a dinner plate to the maximum of ten feet wide and twenty feet deep in Shikai, depending on Bachiko's will, but its usually small enough to hold one or two people as reaching the maximum exhausts her considerably.

Boosts: None in particular.

Bankai

New Name: Dorotei Numajūmaru (泥帝沼獣, Mud Commandment: Swamp Thing)
Appearance: Dorotei Numajūmaru transforms Bachiko herself, instead of granting her a different weapon. Its unique in the respect that a physical manifestation of her zanpakutou becomes nonexistent (her bo-staff disappearing in its entirety) and Bachiko herself becomes her Bankai. On a much more noticeable aspect, this involves a change of get-up. Her soul reaper uniform is instead replaced by the green and beige get-up with yellow touches to it, with her feet bare, as shown in the picture above.
Abilities:

'Swamp' Elemental Manipulation: In this state, Bachiko herself becomes a "Swamp Girl". She can generate and manipulate swamps and mud from her own person, by turning her forearms and forelegs into mud itself. She can only control her own produced mud in this way, not pre-existing swamps should she be in such a situation. However, she can mix her element with naturally occurring ones to magnify her abilities.

Seijin Ouji (Bottomless Pit): Dorotei Numajūmaru retains the use of Seijin Ouji, modified and augmented. Instead of immersing the staff into the ground, Bachiko can create Seijin Ouji wherever she places the soles of her bare feet. Wherever her feet touch, she can create a swamp of variable size, from something small enough to swallow a single person or spreading the muddy swamp over an entire field to swallow up anything she chooses. The swamp thus created, in Bankai, Bachiko claims is truly "bottomless", however its true depth and diameter depends upon the amount of reiatsu kneaded in. It has been seen to be wide enough to cover the entire breadth of, and deep enough to swallow whole, three five to ten storey buildings in a row.

Yomi Numa (Swamp of the Underworld): Same as that of Shikai, but more potent and more effective due to the larger diameter of Seijin Ouji.

Kaihō (Liberation): Used following Yomi Numa. Bachiko expels all of the destroyed remains of what her swamp has swallowed up at once. This is especially good at demonstrating her power. She can also use this offensively, in order to launch destroyed rubble of buildings or objects onto an opponent.

Numashira (Bog Pillar): By creating a small bog around an opponent, Bachiko can cause the bog to release a lime or light brown colored acidic biogas. The gas can choke an opponent and, being acidic, is corrosive, hence it can burn the skin and cause intense irritation. She can also perform a Field version of this technique, where she creates multiple bogs in several places to cover a selected area in the acidic biogas, usually to drive out a hidden opponent. Bachiko herself is not immune to the gas hence has to be a good distance away when creating it, and she cannot control the acidic biogas itself, just its production.

Benomu Gumo (Venom Cloud): By creating a small bog around an opponent, Bachiko can cause the bog to release a lime or light brown colored acidic biogas. The gas can choke an opponent and, being acidic, is corrosive, hence it can burn the skin and cause intense irritation. She can also perform a Field version of this technique, where she creates multiple bogs in several places to cover a selected area in the acidic biogas, usually to drive out a hidden opponent. Bachiko herself is not immune to the gas hence has to be a good distance away when creating it, and she cannot control the acidic biogas itself, just its production.

Boosts: A mere side effect of the increase in reiryoku in Bankai, Bachiko's already impressive physical abilities are further augmented, particularly her strength, which boosts her Hakuda prowess. She has shown to be able to block attacks of other equal ranked opponent's barehanded. Her Shunpo is also boosted due to a considerable increase in speed.

Back Drop

Background: She died when she was twelve. That's about all she recalls about her previous life, ever since then, she wound up in Rukongai District 79, Kusajishi, the North Alley of Loitering Spirits. It was a crime-infested and war torn zone, and ending up there after your death was not the prettiest thing that she needed to wake up to. Regardless, she did, and hence had to do so something about it. Not one to be left behind in the survival of the fittest, she grew up a strong, tough girl, capable of breaking your wrist of you dared even as much as put a hand on her.

She always got into fights when she was younger and one of these happened up coming from a Soul Reaper. Actually, it began when she got into a fight with another woman over a scrap of food. The real situation has been lost to time - this was more than two hundred years ago, after all - but if you ask Bachiko she'd tell you that she found it first and the other woman tried to steal it from her. Not one to let her right go, she got into a catfight. It was during this that a chemical fell into the young Bachi's eyes.

She could never see the light again.

Scared and confused, Bachiko ran away. Most of the people thought she would die out: survival of the fittest, right? Wrong. Bachiko hid inside a cave. She did not go out for days; luckily there was an orange tree around, within safe reach, for her to obtain nutrition from. But she didn't know what to do. The girl couldn't adjust to her loss of eyesight for a few years. Ultimately, however, she began to notice a change. Even at this young untrained age, Bachiko could hear the calling of her Zanpakutō spirit, Numajūmaru. It scared her, because it sounded like an insane cackle at most. For a blind girl, an insane cackle all around her was something that was absolutely frightening. At first she thought someone was mocking her, but when she couldn't accurately determine what was happening, she assumed that she was simply going insane.

Then something amazing happened. She saw a dream, where she found herself in a murky swamp, a demonic look being in front of her. The being told her that she was meant to be a Soul Reaper - and to "Hurry up at it, brat" because she had huge amounts of reiatsu for someone her age, which resulted in her amazing strength, but nowhere to channel it. That was the first time she saw Numajūmaru, waking up and finding out that she possessed a deeper affinity for the ground underneath her feet. The next few decades she spent alone, maturing and culminating a sort of seismic sense. Her affinity with the earth increased; often she noticed that the ground underneath her feet went wet unexpectedly, even though it was solid moments prior. Eventually, learned to "see" through the use of this affinity with the ground, feeling people and other objects through their vibrations, which she felt through the ground via her bare feet.

Eventually, her ever increasing amounts of spiritual energy caught her the attention of a certain Soul Reaper. Said individual took her and thrust her into Shinou Academy, after telling her that her powers showed her potential to evolve from a Plus to a powerful Soul Reaper. She trained in the Academy, displaying her powerful strength and excelling when it came to Hakuda. Unfortunately, while she could kick most people's butts when it came to hand to hand combat, she was average in the other Soul Reaper Arts, even below average when it came to Kido, thus taking her merry time to graduate.

Side Notes: The RP Sample denotes a seen from Bachiko's first meeting with Numajūmaru. She is still blind, but she can see in her Inner World, where this takes place. She just doesn't know that yet in the context of the following sample.

RP Sample:

She could see.

After decades she had spent growing up blind, the dark haired, pale-eyed blind woman had just woken up to something peculiar. It was not the fact that her lower body was wet, with the water covering everything she could see and reaching up till her waist. Or the fact that she could not see the sky - there was no moon, no sun and a few meters off away from her she could barely see anything at all. Everything was enshrouded in a dark, dreary yellow mist. Or fog, whatever it was. She could make out silhouettes of some trees, see others clearly. She felt like she was in some sort of fairy tale, involving witches and ghouls, what with the countless leaf-less, dried up tree trunks about her;- some standing, others broken and floating in the water like planks. Oh, of course, there was that ominous evil cackle in the background.

But none of those were the reason for the utterly horrified look that was on Bachiko's face. Nope; the main reason was: that she could freakin' see!

She hadn't seen for decades!

"AH!"

Her scream did not travel far, disappearing into the mist someone. Following it was a splash sound as the young girl fell back at the shock of seeing her own hands after so long. The result of course, was her landing in the intangible water and sinking. Or sinking as far as she could, as the water was only thigh-deep. Landing underneath the water on her butt, Bachi noticed that this was not the cleanest place to be in. It wreaked, for one thing; for another, now she too wreaked and her body was covered in algae, dead plants, twigs and other things to be found in marshes.

"Gralb!" she choked, swimming up back onto the surface, breaking into a coughing and spluttering fit as she did so.

How could she see, and where was this place? While Bachiko had not exactly been keeping track of the decades, she knew it had been immeasurably long time since she had lost her eyesight in that accident. Now she miraculously had it back, but instead of the cave she had learned to call home in order to hide from the brutalities that ensued in Rukongai District 79, she found herself waking up in this place. A marsh, swamp, bog like wetland - she didn't know much, she hadn't really gotten the chance to see the world at all and she didn't remember a lot of her life before this life. But she knew it was not the cave she was living in. Had someone brought her here? She remembered sleeping...

Wait, she could see for crying out loud!

Another splash was heard as the girl looked in the water. She could not see the moon, nor any stars (assuming it was night, it appeared to be) nor the Sun, but still, it seemed that light was entering her dysfunctional eyes from some place. She saw her reflection in the water. She could see herself, and she was amazed. She looked at her hands, expecting chubby childish hands, but found slender, grown feminine ones, complete with long (rather untamed she would admit) fingernails. Her arms were definitely longer, and as she saw her reflection in the water she was standing in, the first thing she noticed were her pale eyes.

Pale, empty. It was as if she was still blind! But she wasn't anymore! She was healed!

Right?

She then noticed her hair. Her thick black main had grown, to the extent that the ends of it too, were immersed in the murky water, easily going below her waist. They seemed dirty and messy - well, she had been living in a cave - along with her skin. She noticed her skin was paler than she remembered - possibly as a result of living away from sunlight for so long - and traveling lower she noticed that she...

Why were these two round-- "... Oh."

She had breasts. Well, whoa.

She was a woman now. She was still young, in her mid-teens, but definitely mature she realized. Looking at herself from various angles, she looked at her developing curves. She noticed her clothes were different: she did not recall dressing up in this, what was this? It was a green and pale yellow belted tunic, with pants. Looked kinda cool...

"Che, enjoying yourself, hahahaha!"

Had she not already been seated, Bachiko might have toppled to the ground in surprised fright. As she stared at the tree, from which the vaguely-echoing voice had issued, he rediscovered the ability to speak…

"Who – how – what – uh - ?"

…sort of.

A short, but scary, cackle answered her, and suddenly a figure dressed in a coat which appears to be made of fur, dark on the outside and lighter and spotted on the inside (similar to a leopard's), draped over his shoulders like a cape, dark pants and shoes, and an extremely long-sleeved shirt dropped to the ground from the shaded limbs. With the way he wears his shirt, concealing his arms under his long sleeves, it resembles an unbuckled straitjacket. It strode forward, and Bachiko quickly realized it was a tall man with dark hair reaching down to his shoulders, a distinctive wet-looking tuft and a beard in the shape of a whirl going upwards on his chin. He had psychotic-looking eyes with many circles around the pupils, pointed ears, and long limbs. He had a long tongue which was sticking out.

It made for a very frightening picture.

The monster stopped abruptly in front of him, and Bachiko quickly scrambled to her feet, squirming in distaste as she felt her toes embed into context with the murky, sticky mud underneath the swamp water, to face him properly – as much as she could, at any rate, seeing as the long-tongued creature stood at least two feet taller than she did.

They stared at each other for a long moment, with a maniacal grin on the face of the creature. Bachiko began to feel uncomfortable. Then she noticed the stranger's intensely yellow eyes, and she began to feel a bit beyond uncomfortable. Then the stranger shot forward, fisting a hand in the front of Bachiko's robes and yanking her up so that their faces were only inches apart, denoted by a splattering and splashing sound emanating from the water that she was previously standing in. The young used-to-be-blind girl nearly jumped out of her tunic.

"Do you have any idea how aggravating it is to yell yourself hoarse for one whole year and just get ignored?"

Bachiko gaped.

"That was-?"

"Damn right, it was me! One year, Bachi, one year, and you still can't hear my name?"

Bachiko honestly wasn't sure what to say to this.

"Er…sorry?"

The violent demonic figure stared at her as though vaguely surprised. The hand holding Bachi's robes loosened, and the girl slid down from the tips of her toes touching the water, to stand firmly on her own two feet again as the water level once again rose to her waist. She took a shaky breath and rubbed at the back of her neck cautiously, trying to ease the discomfort in the spot where her collar had dug into her skin.

"Sorry?" the stranger repeated, almost disbelieving. "One year of cold shoulders, silence, and orders to 'go away,' and all you have to say… is sorry?"

"Oi! In my defense, I really have no idea what's going on or what you're talking about. Also, that's what you get for cackling like an insane... madman, to a girl who can't see to begin with! Or couldn't... And what is your name, anyway?"

Bachiko found herself mildly surprised she was not scared of the creature anymore. Then again, she had always been a bit too forthright for her own good...

The creature stared at the young girl, before breaking into another bout of insane laughter. "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA! Yer a chip off the old block, aye! Anyways, my name be the whole point of this issue we're havin' – and it's dzzzzzrrrgzzzznnn."

Bachiko gave the creature a blank look, and the taller individual sighed and slapped a hand across his strangely shaped forehead, muttering something that sounded like 'how damn long is this gonna take.'

Well, I believe she's done and ready for reviewal.

Squidward, please don't double post like this. We will know when you are done when you get rid of the WIP in your title or subtitle. Please don't do that again.

Be aware that a gigai must bought with kan. Just letting you know.

While strengths and weaknesses are good, durability and stamina are average because they are not mentioned. Just letting you know.

Yumi Numa I must have more details on. It sounds like an instant kill, which isn't allowed. I'm iffy on your other large scale ability. I don't know. Perhaps more detail on the ability in general.

And that's it. For me anyway.

How can you manipulate the environment? Is it by thought, or does she have to do as you said, use touch the ground with the staff? And that is your area of effect ability, not your passive one. Your passive one just says creates mud. Which isn't saying much. Does the mud have special properties? Can you manipulate the mud in some shape, way or form? Are there any other unique abilities to it? And what is a swamp like? I live in a meadow with hills, I do not know what a swamp looks like or anything. The reason why I'm iffy on your wide scale ability is because of how difficult it is to get out of it. It's borderlined to me. What would help would be a moderate cooldown on it.

And crushing a person to what degree I guess is what I should have asked and how can they dodge it or somehow stop it. And whether or not there is a cooldown for it. Hope that helps. Post whenever you are done with modifications.

Looks good to me now. Just need a second before you can get started in the academy.

Tier: 2-5

Whenever you do get a second, pm Kairu with the character name, tier, and race so that he can add it to the character list.

I like the colors lol but as for Numashira (Bog Pillar) I will be watching when you say choking part for gas they will still be able to breath but may find it difficult . but in that case.APPROVED!