Veles Aurion
From Inga no Kusari wiki
| Aurion, Veles ♀ | |
|---|---|
 10th Seat, 13th Division | |
| Date of Birth | 24th June, 1987 (24) |
| Place of Birth | Rukongai, Soul Society |
| Zanpakutō | Asauchi |
| Player | Veles |
| Shinigami | |
Contents |
Appearance
Personality
Let's not mince words - Veles likes fighting. She loves it. She is addicted to the business of ruining people's faces, having found little else to do at an early age, and thus growing up engaging in constant swordplay with her fellow citizens. It's been a major focal point of her world for much of her life, more a lifestyle than a choice. She revels in the mayhem that she invariably seems to cause wherever she goes. Much of her personality reflects this obsession, causing her to be blunt to the point of rudeness, poorly mannered, and unladylike to the extreme. She is quick to draw her blade, quick to rush into battle, and slow to realize the possible consequences of her actions outside of the possibility of getting cleaved in half. To put it as simply and bluntly as possible, as would be her wont: Veles is not a nice person.
Complicating matters, her moral code is - abysmal. At best. Maybe it was growing up in a particularly bad part of the Rukongai, maybe it's just that her natural predilections laid that way, but Veles quickly learned to lie, steal, and swear like the proverbial sailor, or perhaps more accurately, the average pirate. Absconding with a loaf of bread or fleeing the scene of her latest debacle in a thin trail of blood; as long as she survived, so what? If she didn't get caught, it'd all blow over. Besides, if they really didn't want the food to get stolen, they wouldn't be displaying it in easy grabbing distance. She has no problem defending her thoughts on the matter in an appropriately surly manner; Veles is no diplomat. While she doesn't have an innate problem with authority figures, she also doesn't like being told what not to do on the principle of the thing; she'll obey, but probably with a few choice comments under her breath.
Her lifestyle defines her, to a degree, but so too does she define it. Abysmal as her moral code may be, she still has one; Veles absolutely believes, to the very core of her being, that Soul Society is worth defending. To the death. She'll happily voice a laundry list of complaints to anyone in earshot if appropriately riled up, but there's an underlying current of pride, perhaps a hint of rough and poorly-articulated love. For all its flaws, it's still her home, and while she wouldn't mind a bit more fighting going on here and there, better that Seiretei exist in order rather than anarchy. She doesn't really go on about it, but Veles has an abiding respect for the members of the various divisions - yes, even the Kidō one - for putting their lives on the line for those who cannot defend themselves, no matter their individual reasons. Captains, especially; they - or more accurately, their positions - embody the core of what she feels is right with Soul Society, and her degree of fascination borders on a slight obsession. She knows full damn well that she is by no means well behaved or skilled enough to hope to actually earn a Captain's seat herself, but harbors no real enmity. Maybe a bit of jealousy, not that she likes to admit it to herself or anyone else.
While she doesn't really hold to a particular philosophy, per se, Veles strongly feels that anything worthwhile is worth working towards. How she managed to work it into her otherwise-abysmal moral code is anyone's guess, but she holds as tightly to that concept as anything else; she'll lie and steal for survival - or out of boredom - as necessary without the slightest bit of compunction, but as soon as she sets her sights on anything that qualifies as worth working for - she does. For her, it's as simple as that. Taking shortcuts or outright cheating simply cheapens her inevitable success, and therefore such methods are entirely pointless. What exactly differentiates something worth working for from something that isn't tends to vary, and not even she could really define the difference - for her, it's obvious. If it wasn't worth working for, she wouldn't know that it was worth working towards, after all!
On a related note, Veles isn't actually that obsessed with winning. Not that anyone likes losing, of course, and she's pretty competitive, but she's had to endure it enough times to get used to it. Much like an old friend who drops by to visit every so often, she's had plenty of practice in failure, and has grown to be a fairly decent loser - if there's not much she can do about it, she can at least be graceful about it, or at least as close to graceful as the spitfire Shinigami ever gets. Giving up, though, is not in her repertoire. The difference between losing and giving up is philosophical at best in many situations - a Hollow certainly isn't going to spare you if you admit defeat, to use the simplest example - but it's immensely important to her, after a life of sparring and her own failures in multiple areas.
Failure happens. It's a fact of life. Veles wasn't born a child prodigy or a genius - she had to work for what she has, and she went through a lot of shit along the way, along with a lot of spars lost. Thing is, or so her philosophy goes, you can generally just try again later. A loss isn't so much a loss as a temporary setback; if you learn from the experience, it isn't even really a setback, just a different path. The moment that you give up, though? Then you have truly lost. When you give up, you accept failure and mediocrity, betraying the ideals that shaped you into what you were.
Admittedly, this nice-sounding philosophy falls apart a little when dealing with Hollows, who don't really give much of a damn if you "lose" or "give up" so long as they can crack open your skull like a fucking walnut and devour your tasty brainmeats, but she isn't likely to dump the concept anytime soon. That's not necessarily a good thing; partially a result of this philosophy and partially just because she's naturally stubborn as hell, Veles can be a bit bull-headed at times, refusing to give up or back down even when the outcome is obvious. It's as much of a character flaw as it is a strength, but it's her. She can't very well go against what makes her, her.
While she's unswervingly and unabashedly loyal to her friends, that is somewhat mitigated by the slightly less positive fact that she doesn't really have that many in the first place. Getting past the brusque exterior doesn't really unlock a sweet and caring young lady underneath - Veles is still in possession of a pretty calloused personality and a tendency to say exactly what she thinks regardless of whether or not the other person wants to hear it. She hasn't really spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to change herself to make her company more palatable, though the thought has crossed her mind more than once; she just doesn't know where to start or how to go about it, and is fairly independent to boot. Trying too hard to make a bunch of friends reeks of dependency, and so she's been sitting on the issue for some time, consistently putting off the problem whenever it comes up in hopes of it magically solving itself. Make no mistake, though: while blunt and grating at times, she does hold her few real friends in high regard and does make an effort to show it, though how to go about it is another of those things she generally sticks on the backburner and regularly decides to figure out later.
She tends to be woefully out of date when it comes to modern events - she didn't actually notice the last couple invasions of Soul Society, which is probably not the greatest job reference of all time - but Veles actually has more than a passing bit of interest in history. Legends, folktales, factual recounts; she isn't quite as worried about whether or not they actually happened as that they're interesting to read and pass themselves off as history, though she does tend to gravitate towards the real stuff if she's going to bring it up in conversation. Mentioning that her hobby is reading weird old folk tales doesn't really sit well with her, and while she doesn't outright hide it, neither does she really volunteer the fact. Probably about as close to tact as she'll ever get.
History
Tragic past? Fuck that. Deep emotional scarring caused by traumatic events? If you discount etiquette lessons, hell no. Parents slain at the age of 3? Not for lack of trying, but they're still kicking. Parents divorced? Not quite; they're a loving couple, though that's probably more because they bonded after having to deal with Veles as a baby than due to anything else. To be perfectly honest, there is no single obvious, commonly known solution to the loose cannon that is Veles; she never underwent the sort of horrific tragedies that ought to lead to such a lifestyle, much less such a personality.
The truth, as it so often tends to be, is more boring than the speculation: she was bored. That's really all there was to it, rumors be damned - there wasn't much to do in the area she was born in, and a friend of hers taught her something of swordplay at an absurdly early age. While not a prodigy, she found herself drawn ever closer to the path of the blade as time went by; there were plenty of other bored children around who didn't object to fighting with wooden swords, and even some of the older children would deign to beat the ever-loving shit out of her if she kept at it long enough.
She learned quickly, devouring every bit of rudimentary (and usually flawed) zanjutsu that she observed. Again, she was not a prodigy, but even an imbecile would learn after having those lessons beaten into them so many times - and there was no shortage of people ready and willing to give in to her prodding and insults and happily fight her in order to beat some sense into her.
She lost. A lot. Let's not kid ourselves; a child isn't going to be taking out the best non-Shinigami unofficial swordsman in the Rukongai with any degree of regularity unless they're a prodigy the likes of which the world has never seen. Veles was relatively skilled, granted, but she still got the tar beaten out of her on a daily basis. However, she never gave up, and she learned from every loss, replaying and refighting the battles in her head until she thought of something else that she could have done to try to eke out a victory, then trying it out on the nearest willing opponent. Sometimes her ideas worked, sometimes they didn't, but she never admitted defeat - to play second fiddle was unthinkable.
Over the years, she cobbled together an amalgation of numerous fighting styles, a twisted mockery of each that emphasized functionality over aesthetics. Having trained herself to be ambidextrous, albeit with a light focus on her right hand, she eventually grew competent at holding a sword in either hand, two hands, or one of a number of eccentric positions that, while not necessarily more useful than commonly-used positions, certainly served to make things interesting; holding the sword underhanded allowed her to bring it up fairly quickly to block a downwards attack from an opponent and still have a hand free to strike their arm, and being able to toss her sword from hand to hand and use it equally well in either was useful to demoralize incompetent opponents.
While it lacked the subtle refinement of real sword styles, it was hers. Being young and not especially responsible, not to mention not quite the favorite person of many people, she had very few things that could be truly called her own; having her own sword style, even if it was technically inferior to a "real" one, was one of her proudest achievements. No less an achievement, but generally lumped into the style itself, was her ability to finally manifest her Zanpaktou: to the shock and awe of absolutely fucking no one, it was a short katana. What were you expecting, a laser battleaxe? No, she finally had her sword; not one of those cheap mass-produced crappy imitations that she had been forced to use so many times before, not an ill-fitting or needlessly heavy sword that slowed her down. It was hers, something that no one could ever take away from her, and she was as proud of it as humanly possible.
When she eventually made it into the Shinigami academy, her years of fighting translated dubiously. The academy frowned on deathmatches and preferred to let both students walk away from fights without any real harm, a far departure from the brutal (albeit generally nonlethal) style she preferred, so she was forced to learn a degree of restraint that proved more difficult to grasp than even Kidō: every part of her instincts screamed to take every advantage in a fight to end it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Whether or not she liked it, she could at least recognize that the training would make her a better fighter; the academy taught her new aspects of stances and swordplay that she had never even thought of while creating her own style, and she set herself to the task of mastering and adding them to her bastardization of zanjutsu with relish.
It was perhaps to no one's great surprise that she eventually came to excel at zanjutsu, though trace amounts of hakudo had long since been integrated into her combat style. Equally unsurprising, she was abysmal at Kidō; her history studies varied, as she enjoyed learning, but rarely managed to keep her attention focused through the entire class. As a result, her grades varied wildly; only in zanjutsu was she reliably competent.
Fortunately, it was enough to pass. Not pass with flying colors, not even pass with any particular awards, but pass. It was the second greatest achievement of her life, trumped only by her sword style/Zanpaktou dual mastery several years back: she had earned it through her own work, not by stealing or being given it out of pity. In a heady rush, with little but her sword, her own unique style, and the clothing on her back, she was accepted to the thirteenth division the next day.
It was not in the fabled Eleventh Division. It was not a Captain's position. It was not the position of Lieutenant, nor was it even that of a seated officer. To be frank, she was nothing more than one of the faceless mooks that any good villain tears through like tissue paper before eventually being stopped by the hero of the story; she was competent enough for a new Shinigami, perhaps even a bit above average in swordsmanship, but nothing like what she wanted to be. Nothing at all.
But, that was alright. Everything worth fighting for took work, and she was willing to dedicate her very existence to proving that.
Combat
Strengths
Veles adheres to two major tenets in her battle philosophy; hitting hard, and hitting fast. Being unpredictable helps too. She sticks to a customized form of kenjutsu that stresses a fluid, reflexive approach, rather than brute strength. While she much prefers to stick to lightning fast strikes and jabs to kill the opponent with a minimum of fuss, she is fairly skilled at breaking the offensive mindset quickly to move into a defensive stance, or even mixing the two; one of the many benefits of having a Zanpaktou light enough to make extremely quick stance and position changes viable. It helps that her style is basically just a bastardization of so many different legitimate styles that it's really quite difficult to "read" her per se; the hodgepodge of moves string together naturally enough for her, but there is very little in the wise of an actual theme to get used to and be able to predict.
Weaknesses
The quick movements and mobility of her style, paired with her slightly small blade, means that she is rarely able to meet the opponent in pure strength unless able to use Reiatsu to bolster her strikes. In order to avoid such wasteful practices, she generally uses speed and half-blocks to avoid attacks rather than simply blocking; it is far easier to simply deflect the enemy's strike off course or simply move out of their way than it is for her to match the strength often put into those same strokes by her opponent. Additionally, being unpredictable is great and all, but there is a reason that real sword styles exist - hers may be original, but it's still full of flaws and the occasional awkward transition. The originality comes with its own set of problems; if an opponent can stay on their guard and adapt to her style, its greatest strength melts away, leaving behind flaws to exploit.
Also? Veles is stubborn. This has been mentioned before, but it's worth bringing up again - even if clearly outmatched she's liable to stick around and try her best anyways, consequences be damned. It's also most likely how she'll die some day, something she generally avoids thinking about. While she has no real problem with the concept of working in a team, she doesn't really have all that much practice in actually doing it, nor is her mindset especially conducive to it; independent and headstrong, she's liable to jump in anyways and expect her partner to keep up, rather than making a serious effort to work with them.
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