Shakti Bansuri
From Inga no Kusari wiki
| Bansuri, Shakti ♀ | |
|---|---|
 Unseated, 2nd Division | |
| Date of Birth | 15th November, 1748 (263) |
| Place of Birth | Small Jungle Village, Bengal |
| Zanpakutō | Asannamara |
| Player | Shakti |
| Shinigami | |
Contents |
Appearance
Shakti is surprisingly tall from someone from the region of Bengal, and from the 18th century. Standing at roughly 170 cm, Shakti's body has adapted to speed and agility, which means that there is very little excess bodyfat and her muscles are compact. Due to this, Shakti is far from well-developed, but she's definitely not flat either; she's not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but opts for a top that might minimize whatever undesired movement running around could cause.
Mainly, her uniform is a sort of an imitation of the 2nd Division Captain's but heavily modified to allow Shakti near-unhindered room for movement. The top is backless and sleevless, the sleeves replaced with long gloves that extend to her elbows. Her pants are loose with two small openings near her hips, they're kept up by a white clothbelt and the pantlegs are slightly puffed out, especially under her knee where they're met with tight, white legwarmer-like accessories that cover Shakti's shins (and hide shinguards used for both defense and to put a bit more 'oomph' to any kicks she does). Her shoes are soft but durable closed black slippers, with a sole specifically designed to muffle the sound of steps and keep the foot protected.
Her hair is stark white and actually goes to about her hips when unbound, but due to the nature of her work she keeps it coiled tightly at the back of her head and kept in place by a dark red scarf. Her eyes are icy light blue and almost always half open, giving off the vibe of chronic disinterest.
Over the top half of her face, she's painted a black stripe under her eyes and crossing the bridge of her nose, with the area from there to her hairline painted with a dark red facepaint. A single streak of the red paint goes down from her lower lip and to her chin as well, and she may occasionally draw a black cloth over her lower face during missions. Shakti's skin is the color of dark brown, proving a rather stark contrast to her hair and eyes and the few strips of white in her otherwise black outfit.
Personality
Shakti is a highly logical individual. As such, she has managed to create a sort of multiple-personality disorder for herself, even if it's not so much as a disorder as it is an improvement. Shakti was briefly detained in Maggot's Nest in early stages of her training because she was having no difficulties hurting her fellow students on a whim or otherwise harassing them, and while there she had time to think and reflect. When it was time to evaluate her, it was noticed that she had managed to lock away her malicious intent, will to hunt, kill and hurt and other negative emotions and had willingly created a second personality, nicknamed "Sheikah".
Shakti was found fully in control of her both personalities, and as such, was allowed to resume her training, just under probation. As a result of that division, Shakti's default personality comes off as a little lifeless, quiet and withdrawn, if not a little testy, and her subservient personality "Sheikah" comes off as a murderous psychopath who delights in the torture, especially mental, of her targets and actually has fun by tearing the target's world apart little by little before she gets to the target to finish the job. Added bodily harm directed at the target is a plus, though.
Both identities are cool and calculating, and Shakti is always aware of what happens when either one is at forefront. Granted, "Sheikah" is a lot more destructive than Shakti (not to mention vocal) and basks in the primal impulses of a human mind, often referreing to herself as a wild dog existing solely to tear others apart. She also seems to see other people as the same, but thinks them hypocrites for not acting on those impulses. Shakti honestly doesn't care one way or the other what other people are, as long as they keep out of her way. The only thing that separates her from an outright villain, however, is that she makes an effort not to go torturing people without a good reason. It'd be her neck on the platter in that case...
History
Over the course of history, feral children have been a relatively unknown phenomenon but not one that is unheard of. Many stories are at least partially based on truth, and even though many feral children have been in the public eye, so many more never see another human being for as long as they live. Such is the case of one nameless human child born in the Bengal area of South Asia. She was born in a village near the outskirts of a dense forest close to the highlands of the region. Only a few months after the girl was born, the village was ransacked by bandits, and the baby and her mother fled into the forest.
The nameless girl remembered very little of her early childhood, but by the time she was 8 years old (not that she knew how to count that), she was already alone, the woman dead and all she knew was that she could never go out of the forest, and that she knew how to make tools. In the jungle, the nameless girl grew, fighting for survival among the tigers, elephants, pythons, macaques and a wealth of other animals, eating when and where she could and what she could, and eventually she was able to ingest raw meat from creatures she had killed and from the fresh carrions she sometimes ransacked after the tigers had eaten their share.
As days melded into one another, and the only clue that time was really passing was the fact that the girl's body changed from time to time and she was forced to skin a few of her prey to fashion some sort of protection to her hairless body. Undergrowth was nasty to crawl through naked. She used a stone knife to hack away her hair when it grew too long, developed a very good muscle structure thanks to hanging off of trees and hunting near barehanded, used her head to make weaponry, home, defense systems and other things to ensure her survival, but she never developed a language to use and communicated very much like the other animals, with grunts, shouts, screams and screeches.
Her psychological growth was stunted as a result of not having other members of her species near her, and she relied heavily on her instincts: eventually, by the time she had been in existence for roughly 20 years, the nameless woman had become just like the other hunters of the jungle: a near emotionless killing machine whose day was a steady routine of wake up, hunt, change nest, eat, hunt, fight something, find a place to sleep for the night.
It was around this time the nameless woman experienced her greatest triumph. She fought and slew a large male tiger who tried to drive her out of her area. She survived, though with a large clawmark on her stomach. It wasn't long until the wounds became infected and the fever rose, forcing the woman to seek shelter. After she lied down to calm herself, she begun feeling confused, angry and dizzy, and fell asleep. When she next woke up, the monsoon season had started, and the last thing she ever saw was the rain coming down on her jungle home: she closed her eyes, never to open them again. She passed away in peace, only a day before a party of explorers would've found her and the corpse of the tiger on their way back to the closest village.
When Shakti woke once again, all her previous life had vanished from her memories. All she was left with were her instincts and some other small things, like a large clawmark on her stomach for some reason. She made her home in the 48t, 49th and 50th Districts, slowly learning how to speak, how to behave near these creatures like her, how to utilize her body to the maximum capacity. It was around these districts that she found people that were a bit more like her than others. She couldn't explain it, but these dark-skinned, dark-haired people were somehow more familiar and comforting than the light-skinned people.
The music she heard, the scents she smelled, they all seemed so familiar but she couldn't place them. It was from these people that she learned to speak better (some of them claimed to be from a place called "India", wherever that was...). She actually learned two languages, the one most other people in this place called Rukongai spoke and then the language these 'Indians' spoke among themselves. One kind family unit even gave the girl a name and attached her under their surname. The nameless one was now Bansuri Shakti, even if she rarely slept under their roof. It was still nice to belong somewhere...
Every now and then, especially when angry, Shakti seemed to radiate reiatsu at a higher level than a norm Rukongai inhabitant did. It was noticed after a while, and a shinigami or two recommended that she try and apply for the Academy soon. Shakti was hesitant and didn't want to apply, but she was eventually drafted into the Academy after a crafty shinigami cajoled her into signing the application sheet. Though after the courses started, that's... Where things got bad. Operating on her instincts, and when put into a competitive and physical environment, the girl developed into a problem. She freely and without remorse bullied, tortured and harassed the other students, most always mentally rather than physically. At first it was hard to pin on her, but eventually there were enough people complaining about her and she was sent to Maggot's Nest for detention and to await psychological evaluation.
There, Shakti had time to think (as much as one has when surrounded by weirdos and crackpots worse than yourself) and she came to a conclusion: she wanted to become a shinigami. It was the best outlet she could have for her urges, and she could do it according to all the rules. It was at this point she started a two-month task of remolding her persona. By the time of the evaluation, she had successfully (albeit a little roughly) separated her negative traits and feelings into another, much more lethal identity she was fully in control of.
The evaluation took another two months or so, during which she worked on her identities more and was eventually allowed to return to the Academy, though on probation and under the watchful eyes of the teachers: she was also transferred to classes that focused on knowing the human body inside out and how to manipulate it. Shakti completed her training without fouls (although some people still tried to pin unrelated events on her) and graduated, joining the 2nd Division, partly because she was ordered and partially because it was what she'd aimed at to begin with. Her first months in the 2nd prompted her to start developing a technique that could, theoretically speaking, combine hakuda with kidō...
Combat
Strengths
- Expert of Poisons: Assassination is her game, and poisons are among her favourite weapons. As such, Shakti has an impressive knowledge of poisons and anti-venoms.
- Torturer: Sad but true, Shakti knows numerous ways to... "Interrogate" her targets if need calls for it. She especially specializes in psychological torture, and she's able to read her targets well and find weaknesses to strike, use to her advantage or otherwise exploit fairly fast.
- Deathly Silent: One of Shakti's specialities is her ability to move swiftly and silently, to blend into shadows and mask her reiatsu. This requires a good physical fitness, as she needs to jump and move without the help of reiatsu.
- Assassin: Being trained for mainly assassination work, Shakti is good at handling most weapons and is good at making improvised weaponry: if it's not nailed down, she can probably use it somehow to finish her target off. Included in this is also the knowledge of the human anatomy to a point where she could, in theory, kill you by just poking you right.
Weaknesses
- Prolonged Close Combat: It's not as if she's bad at close combat, it's just that she's taught to strike fast, strike hard, and vanish right after. She has stamina, but she can't take too many hits in one battle before it's time for her to retreat.
- Strength: She's not a hard hitter, but she tries to remedy that with rapid succession of punches with varying results.
- Proud: Solo is her thing. Others just get in her way, and as such, she has a hard time working together with people and asking for help.
- Sadist: There is no question about it, Shakti has a sadistic streak. This also means that she really can't pass up a change to mess around with someone's head if the opportunity presents itself, even if it might endanger the mission.
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