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((And my codings all wonky.))
Name: Kozue Ito Ramsay

Aliases/ Nicknames: Zu, Zue, Ram, Tree
Physical Description:
Kozue possesses some qualities of a typical Irishman-flaming red hair (though his has a feathered layer of black streaks as an under-layer), a light dusting of freckles against slightly tanned skin, expressive green eyes, and a hot temper. Zue is about 6’1”, slender, but lean and muscular which betrays his inner strength.

Zue’s hair is about shoulder-length at its longest point, with his hair cut in an inverted V framing his face. He is hoping that it will be long enough to be pulled back soon as his troublesome bangs are long enough now that they keep falling into his eyes. Those same bangs are also hiding the two steel-grey colored hoop piercings in his left earlobe.

His green eyes are usually bright and twinkling, and easily betray his emotions and inner-most thoughts. There is almost always a smile on his face, even when his eyes are serious and dull. One of the qualities that people may find more irritating about him is that he always manages to find something to laugh about-some reason to smile-even in the middle of a fight.

Zue also has a 5-pronged scar that starts at the top of his shoulder wraps around his left arm, ending on the inside of his wrist, just below the saddle-joint of his left thumb. He tends to keep that scar covered with the long, slightly poufy, sleeves of the traditional shinigami uniform. Zue binds that particular sleeve around the top of his shoulder with a red-and-black cord of braided leather from which his fukutaichou’s badge hangs. Kozue really doesn’t like questions about this scar. He received it in the same duel he won the claw that hangs about his neck, the duel that ultimately resulted in his best friend’s death. The other sleeve has been removed at the top of the shoulder, revealing a well-toned arm.

Zanpakutou:
Name: Hitonomi (‘Bite’)
Command:
Shikai: ‘Sink in your teeth, Hitonomi!’ (Anatano ha , Hitonomi ni shizumu !)
Bankai:
Full Incantation: ‘There is power in numbers, Hitonomi. Reclaim your pack and conquer with the strength of all five fangs! (‘Kono suuji , Hitonomi no tsuyosa desu . Pakku wo sairiyou oyobisubeteno 5 tsuno kiba no tsuyosa wo kokufuku suru !’)
Spirit Form:
Hitonomi originally manifests himself as a dusky-black wolf-silent and stealthy as a shadow with coloration to match. But overtime, as he bonds with Kozue, the wolf will grow more humanoid though the fur will still remain on his legs and he will retain wolf-like features: ears, fangs, a tail, and wolfish legs.
Unreleased:
A wide sabre with a sharply curved tip. The hilt is flat, like that of a katana, with red and black braid that complements Kozue’s hairstyle. A sharp black-colored, metal spike starts parallel to the hilt and protrudes slightly farther from its edge. While this will make performing a konso difficult early on, that particular spike reorients itself in shikai to point at a 45 degree angle. This slightly negates its purpose as a hilt-guard but it still works as an offensive/defensive measure.

Shikai:
The width and length of his zanpaktou increases slightly and the blade takes on a black, almost smoky, hue. Hitonomi gains a somewhat jagged, almost serrated edge, but otherwise no change is directly apparent. However, if Kozue can score a hit on flesh with the blade, the larger and more jagged ‘fangs’ have a tendency to release and drive themselves into the target. There are a limited number of the special fangs however. Also, as stated above, the hilt-guard reorients itself to point more at the enemy than below the hand. ((The release-skill is a gained ability…it does not automatically come from gaining Shikai. Also, overtime, Kozue will be able to fire the teeth with a flick of his blade, sending them toward the target at a high speed.))

Bankai:
Kozue adopts several wolf-like abilities; enhanced vision (though he retains his ability to see color), hearing, sense of smell, faster movement speed, and greater reflexes. He takes on a similar appearance to that of his zanpakutou-spirit with ears, a tail, wolfish legs, and fangs. The fur on his ears is black on the outside with red tufts coming out of the inner part of the ear, the tail is black with streaks of red fur (the reverse of his hair coloration), and his legs are the same mottled black color as Hitonomi’s. Shoes are not necessary with this form though the amplified senses will take some getting used to.

The sword itself changes entirely to a 5 pronged whip (basically a manriki-gusari with five chains all tethered into a spike at one end), much like the one that left its mark on Kozue’s arm, and each prong is tipped by a sharp piece of black metal fashioned in the shape of an over-large wolf’s fang. The base of the whip is a shaped like a stake. Made out of wood, the stake is wrapped with black and red braided leather and silvery metallic accents-the metal tip at the pointed bottom of the stake, for instance.

Each ‘tail’ controls a separate element ((think Captain Planet-Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Heart)), which when used in different combinations, can create interesting effects. But there are a number of catches: in order for any sort of elemental effect to take place, you have to know the initial name of the element ((tsuchi, mizu, kaji, kasai, kokoro)) which fang it is, and then score a hit on the target with all desired fangs. Each tail has a certain number of links on it. Different effects use different numbers of links, as well as ability with the weapon itself. The more experience Kozue has with the whip, or even an individual tail, will give it more ‘life’, though the length of the chains themselves will never actually increase.

While each fang is shaped like a tooth, they are solid obsidian black and quite sharp. Each one is connected to its chain by a silver-colored circular ring at the top of the blade where a normal tooth would meet the gum-line at the rear. The individual fangs each have a different colored stripe on them as the only identifying marker; Earth=Mossy Brown, Water=Cerulean, Fire=Scarlet, Wind=Seafoam Green, Heart=White.

Basic Attacks
(This is also partially telepathic because in order to operate the fangs, you have to have a feel for the attack you want. The words will come with practice and, with mastery, the words may be left behind.)
Earth
Turn to stone, Earth fang. (Ishi ni dengen wo ire , tsuchi no kiba)
Depending upon the size, or strength, of the opponent, the attack will either freeze them completely or make their movements rather sluggish. (Since this is a Bankai attack, I’ll assume I need posting limits as well.) Post Duration: 1 ((But will I be able to increase this number over time after achieving Bankai? Like a ‘1 to 3 posts’ limit, depending upon my target. Espada, Captains, and Vizard would still only be one-if any, Lower ranking Espada and Captains might be 2, and other shinigami would be 3. Though I’m not really thinking of a reason to use Bankai on a non-captain class shinigami besides fighting another Vice who has achieved Bankai.))
Crush them with the bones of the Earth!
Tier-two ability which calls down an avalanche of rocks in an circular area 6 feet across with the target in the center.

Water
Beat them back with waves, Water fang. (Nami tono bi^to wo bakku , mizu kiba)
Like ‘Turn to Stone’, this attack freezes or slows down the opponent, as well as slowing down anyone within three feet of them with a small amount of generated water around their feet. This attack has the same post limit as ‘Turn to Stone’-1 post.
Drown them with your might, Water fang.
This skill generates a waterfall. This is the tier-two ability of the water-fang.

Wind
Push them away, Wind fang. (kyori , kaze no kiba wo pusshu)
As the others, it is a freezing/slowing technique which generates wind to push against opponents within three feet of the target. Wind, Water, and Earth are all more effective when used as combinations, and have similar first tier attacks. This is so that they can be bound and then attacked based off of techniques learned in Kozue’s new form.

Fire
Burn
A fiery red burn will spread out from the fang site like a rash, causing the target great discomfort. Duration=Until removed, and seeing as it’s not a freezing charm, it can be removed almost immediately though the after effects of the burn will probably linger until healed.
Ignite
Just like it sounds-the fang ignites. Initially, this will only create sparks that might catch the target’s clothing on fire but, with experience or skill, may be able to manifest actual flame. Tier-two ability.

Heart
Wipe the blood away, Fang of my heart.
This ability focuses mostly on the psychological implications of being injured. The spilled blood is cleared away and minor injuries will cease to bleed.
Upon myself, Heart fang.
This ability has the power to alleviate symptoms/injuries of others, halving or removing them from the victim and transferring them onto Kozue. Tier-two ability.

Combinations
Tier-three
Wildfire
Wind and Fire
The small wind attack pushes the sparks created by Ignite into a bigger blaze
Tier-four
Hurricane
Wind and Water
The Tier One wind attack amplified by skill and practice and coupled with the ‘drench/waterfall’ tier-two water skill. This forms a swirling ‘hurricane’ of wind and water with the target at its center.
Tornado
Wind and Earth
A combination of the tier-one wind skill and the tier-two Earth skill; this skill causes an amount of earth to fall upon the target, buffeted by the winds.
Tier Five
Column of Fire
Wind and Fire
A column of fire that can be pushed in almost any direction. Highly uncontrollable, the flame dies if the fang is pulled free of the target, unless it catches on something that is actually flammable after its release.

Occasionally Hitonomi will decide to have a bit of fun to get back at Kozue for being so unenthusiastic about kidou that, when the wrong fang is thrown and hits, the effect of that fang will still trigger. For instance, if Kozue was trying to freeze something by combining wind and water ((high speed winds decrease the air temperature enough that water could possibly freeze, in nature)) but he accidentally tossed heart and water, his enemy would be healed but quite wet. A reward for not paying attention because, as the way Hitonomi sees it-nothing should have happened…but something did and if Zu gets a little roughed up because of it, hopefully he won’t make that mistake again! Hitonomi tends to treat Kozue like an ignorant cub as it is.
Special Accessories:

Kozue has two things on him almost all the time; a leather cord with a cruelly hooked claw hanging from its center that he wears as a necklace, and a rock about the size of a half-dollar that is a yellow-gold color and has metallic flakes of gold in it that sparkle when the light catches them. These are the momentos of his fallen friends-kids who never made it out of the slums to become Shinigami. But he, Kozue, did. That was part of the reason he’d never stop fighting-he had three people to fight for because two of them were never going to be there to do it themselves.
As for useful items, Kozue considers his zanpaktou to be useful, even though he does not know its name yet. He also carries around a belt-purse and a small tapered throwing dagger upon his belt over his right hip.

Skills:
For all his smiles, Zue actually does possess a pretty good poker-face because the Shinigami who do not know him very well occasionally mistake certain expressions for others simply because he smiles an awful lot. He also always seems to be able to find something funny in a bad situation-like the fact that one of the hollows they’re about to fight slightly resembles a carrot with ears.

He is rather skilled with his sword as well some of the more explosive kidou-he has more of a flare for Hakudo than Bakudo but if it needs to be restrained, and he’s into it, then it will be restrained-or he’ll waste a lot of effort trying to do so.

Kozue, like many souls, grew up in the Rukongai and so still possesses many of the martial art skills that helped him survive in the streets. But now that he has a blade, he’s quite eager to master all aspects of sword-fighting and hopes to become a great wielder of the zanpaktou.

But, in a way, you could say that his desire to master the sword is a way of compensating for his lack of skill, or interest (that part is unclear), with kidou. He is of the personal opinion that if it can’t be squashed with something sharp and pointy; A. It’s probably not a hollow so why am I fighting it? and B. Yeah…still wondering about A, give me a bit here!

Truthfully, though, Zue’s not really particular about who he fights. Of course, he’s not quite a big enough glutton for punishment to challenge a Captain-yet. He can’t really imagine a situation where he would start a brawl or something else that might get him kicked out of the Seretei, but he does believe in the spirit of competition-as well as training-and will do anything to increase his skills. He draws the line at interfering in duels, however. Kozue would rather fight one-on-one, though he is no stranger to fighting a mob, and believes that it is a breach of honor to interfere in another’s fight unless asked-or if the situation demands it for the personal safety of others.

He’s a fan of strategy, also, but if you can get his temper to flare up then he usually will concentrate more on the blade-to-blade ‘slicing and dicing’ portions of fighting rather than the small minute details such as defense and physical injury.

Abilities:
Kozue is of a more athletic build, more for endurance than quick bursts of speed but he tends to pull strength from somewhere to end battles with cool efficiency.

He possesses a slightly augmented empathy, which basically means he can sort of tell what his fellow shinigami/spirits are feeling. It’s part of the reason he doesn’t like attachments. Things go south and you just can save them sometimes, but he’d feel the pain of separation a bit more than most because it’s almost like he’s sharing a part of the other person’s grief.

The empathy is also another reason why he’s always smiling and always trying to get people to laugh-it’s just easier to deal with laughter and hate than it is to deal with fear, pain, and grief. Love hurts too, but from his distant memories of it, it was a sweet pain.

It also explains his callousness in battle. In order to block out the feelings of those around him, he finds something stronger within himself to drown it, or else blocks it out entirely by refusing to care.

Personality:
Kozue is extremely loyal. He’ll fight to the death for his friends, for they are few. Secretly, he is cold and sarcastic around some of the shinigami simply because he does not feel that he can afford to make any more personal attachments at the moment. Zu has never had many friends, not one he was a human, and not now-though it is his own doing and he would be one of the first to admit that.

If something needs to be done in a hurry, Kozue is the man for the job. He relies, most of the time, on brute strength and pure Irish fury to get things done which generally results in things being dead, yes, but on occasion property will be destroyed. Not that he has much remorse for people in the Sereitei-most of them don’t realize just how good they’ve got it. Seated, or un, this life is much better than that in the Rukongai.

Warm and humorous amongst his friends, he keeps that humor among strangers and enemies, but the warmth is gone leaving a callous and hard man with a smile that rarely meets his eyes. He is a team-player, contrary to popular belief, though he prefers to lead a team rather than follow under someone else. His respect for authority extends to Captains and his fellow squad members only-anyone else can just chuck it.

Biography/History:

Kozue was the son of a Japanese woman studying for a PhD in History and an Irish foreign-exchange student who was trying to write his Doctorate’s dissertation on Folklore in Island Communities. He was referred to her for advice on his paper and he just couldn’t bring himself to leave after that. Up until his death when Kozue was six and one-half, Kyle Ramsay had yet to finish his dissertation, and was considered to be on something of a permanent sabbatical by his professors back in the UK.

Zu spent the majority of his life on beaches and small islands off the coast of Japan’s big island helping his Dad with his seemingly endless research. Though his parents were married, Kyle seemed to be under the impression that if he ever actually finished his paper, then Zu and his mom, and maybe even all of Japan would disappear and Kyle would just wake up in his flat in London-paper in hand-and all of the past 8 years a happy dream.

So instead, Kyle took his family on frequent vacations to islands, because islands were his favorite type of land formation, under the guise of ‘doing research’. But really it was to show his son and wife just how much he loved them.

Zue, being only six or so, delighted in snorkeling, swimming, playing with the other children, and chasing brightly colored tropical lizards on soft, sandy beaches in the summertime. Since he was homeschooled, and most islands were rather temperate, sometimes the summertime occurred at times not usually enjoyed by the other children his age that actually had to report to a school building for their education.

They were about to embark on one such adventure when they were heading out of Tokyo and were t-boned at an intersection by a bright blue SUV. All Kozue ever remembered was a flash of blue and a girl’s face before everything went black. When Zue woke up, he was lying down under some bushes on the side of the road.

Suddenly interested by a broken chain protruding from his chest, he brushed his fingers against it and winced. “Don’t pull,” a voice told him softly and he looked up, surprised to see the girl from the SUV crouched over him. She was maybe 8, and she was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen. Her name was Valerie and their friendship lasted even after they arrived in Soul Society.

He never knew how long it had been before the Shinigami found them, but Valerie had said that similar-looking people had taken her dad and his mom away already by whacking them on the forehead with the back of their swords. This angered Kozue-who were they to take his mom away? So when more of them showed up, he kicked the taller one in the shins and started shouting at them for taking away his mom that he hardly saw, or felt, the sword touching his forehead and only knew anything at all about it because the man merely laughed and ruffled his red hair. “Good luck, kiddo,” the man said fondly as the boy disappeared in a brilliant flash of white light. His friend had already performed the ceremony on the young girl.

Life was tough in the Rukongai, but Zu was lucky enough to meet Valerie, who seemed familiar somehow, and her ‘little brother’ Hugo who was a pasty-looking boy around his age. Together, the three of them formed a family and survived. The beginning of the end was when Hugo died.

He had just…died, quiet-like in his sleep one night. Kozue was sure that he would’ve felt it if there had been any pain. But that didn’t stop the tears from pouring down Valerie’s cheeks. She had been more like a mother to Hugo than a sister, and the loss fell hard upon the young boy’s shoulders as well. He had never had many friends when he was a boy and this was the first time he could remember experiencing loss-much of his time in the Living World had already been pushed out of his mind by survival techniques he’d learned in order to thrive in the Rukongai. Thrive being a relative term.

In the years that followed, he and Valerie aged. Slowly, though, like all the other souls in Soul Society. Zue had already won the claw that he always wears about his neck-a trophy won in a fight with a local thug. Life was mildly uneventful, although he and Val had begun to experience hunger and the ability to manifest balls of spirit energy in their palms.

They were fishing in the river one day when Valerie noticed something sparkling in the water. She picked it up and was surprised to see a medium-sized hunk of a rock that was golden, sparkly, and heavy in her hand. Her eyes met Kozue’s and it was clear that they shared the same thought-money. Nothing but gold could shine so brightly, right? They could-they could sell it and buy their way out of the Rukongai! They could become shinigami together and maybe even serve in the same squad one day. Secretly, Valerie doubted that would happen because she knew that Kozue would never agree to accompany her to squad 4 where she thought her personality, at least, was best suited. She doubted that Kozue would want to putter around and put people back together after a fight.

Unbeknownst to the two friends, however, the rival thug Kozue had bested had been using members of his gang to tail them while he plotted a rematch-an unfair one of course. But when his lackeys brought back reports of a large gold-piece that the two had fished from the river, he knew that the time was now!

Calling select members of his gang together, they went after Valerie and Kozue and cornered them on a footbridge that overlooked the river that had been the source of the mysterious rock. There was a struggle and Valerie was knocked over the side. With a speed born of terror and love, Kozue shot a hand down and caught her-but they were still wet from the river and she was quickly slipping out of his grasp.
“Give me your other hand, Val!” he cried out, his green eyes holding her brown ones as she looked up at him sadly, noting the strain in his face as his knuckles slowly turned white with the effort. He offered her his other hand, but she calmly dug her other hand in her pocket and slapped the golden rock into it.

“Promise you won’t forget me?”

“Don’t let go, Valerie. Please!”

“Promise?”

“Yes, anything you like! Just let me-no!” Kozue cried out in shock. He had been trying to lift her with one hand, using the bar across the bridge to hold his position when she suddenly pulled her fingers into the center of her hand and slipped free from his grip. She hit the water and didn’t resurface. “Valerie!”

His emotions got the better of him then, and his memories of the time directly preceding that are of blood and screams as the gang members fled from his quick and heavy hands.

Kozue had thought that they were out. Thought they had been freed from the Rukongai forever! Why did the world have to take his Valerie away from him? “Why?” he whispered to his scraped and bleeding knuckles as he stumbled into a place that could, hopefully, exchange his gold for money.

What happened next surprised him. ”The rock is fake, kid,” the merchant said with a laugh. Fake? Surely there was some kind of mistake! Kozue explained to the merchant just how many ways he was incorrect-one of these was showing off his fists. But the merchant was not going to be cowed by some idiot teenager with too much testosterone. The troublesome man merely shrugged and pushed the rock back across the table. “Sorry, kid. It’s just a pretty rock.”

“Just a pretty-My friend died for that rock!” Kozue growled but a glimmer of the man’s fear shone in his eyes and, defeated, Kozue swept the rock off the wooden planks and stuffed it deep in his pocket. “As you wish, old man,” he muttered as he left the shop. He had had it with the Rukongai, he would get into Soul Academy or die trying.

((Eh...I'm not sure if this is done yet or not. Imma go battle and come back, kay? XD ))