KATSUROU AOI

His life started not from tragedy, but from a beautiful miracle. There was no death, only birth. Coming into the realm of the Soul Society, a baby born to two wealthy merchants whom operated within the walls of the Seireitei itself. However what little peace would have came from this pseudo-noble lifestyle was a foreboding curse. For the higher you are, the harder the descent.

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The young boy had grown close to the Shinigami, and close to the first districts. His life had been sheltered, his knowledge of the cruelty of the world limited by his poor adolescent veil. Where he had heard stories of the evils of hollows, he never once could have imagined that they were far succeeded and much less sinister than the evils of their own mankind.

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Things often happen; things that change a man. At the tender age of only thirty years old, his life would change dramatically as the events occurred that would come to shake his very being. The veil was drawn off, and his eyes were to be opened to the true nature of the world.

His father by some unknown means had managed to cross the wrong side of a well connected man along his way within the gates of the Seireitei from the first numbered district of the Rukongai. The underbelly of the glamourous walls were to be revealed as cleverly hidden threats went unheard and unheaded and safe passage was allowed for the father of the young boy to continue his harmless dealings to the shinigami marketplace.

However, it would not be so harmless for Katsurou Aoi as the young boy had went off to play with his friend Rika, the girl whom was like a sister to him.

Smoke had risen from their small little square house. When he made it in the house. His mother lay dead on her bed. Blood dripped from her mouth, cloths ripped. And a large wound at her chest. Murdered. Warm tears of course flushed down his cheeks as he observed the cold, slightly dimming light of his mother's image. Without though he ran ran forward. Laying his head into her chest. Blood smothered the young man's face as he did not as much flinch. Why had this terrible event happened? That was all his brain could rack up before the dark black smoke started to fill in. The fire had reached them with the help of the raiders. He knew he needed to go. Forget his things and go. But couldn't. How could he have possibly leave his mother to burn? He could not leave the one who cared for him, who gave birth to him. At first she tried to drag and push her. Albeit useless. He tried to take the mat on which she lay. Pointless. The smoke got thicker and the fire closer. With a final goodbye and a kiss to his mother's forehead. He ran; but far to late.

Caught outside, pushed to the ground, a blade pierced his chest. His breathing labored as they lifted the young boy high over their broad shoulders. The words of a ransom being paid by that disrespectful businessman was all that buzzed within the young injured boy's slowly deafening ears. He faded from consciousness before awakening to a harness that constrained his being to the center beam of the new housing he found himself within.

Here he remained for a whole week. Fed nothing while the men feasted on scraps they had managed to find within the tough and hardened 54th district in which they were now located and operated from. The boy had already felt the fatigue of his own coming to power, a reiatsu burned within his gut that made him [unlike those around him in his home district] require food rather than have it as occasional treat upon want.

However he thought he would have been saved, however wrong the boy would be. His father walked through the door, in his hand the ransom fee he wished to pay for his son's life and freedom. However it was in the conversation that followed would truth of the cruelty of man be realized.

It was not his abductors that held true evil in their hearts but it was his own father. Using and manipulating the residents of the lower districts, harassing and threatening them with illegally obtained hollow bait [which he obtained though shinigami contacts] and ransoming their safety for goods to sell to the seireitei. This revelation shook his core as he found out the truth behind his own father and the very events that conspired and resulted in the death of his mother.

His bonds freed, the men then attacked his father, whom had managed to defend himself properly, however the hollow bait shattering from his pocket during the struggle. The abductors unconcious, Aoi's father injured, and now a swarm of hollows descending down upon their location, the realm of hell in the young boy's eyes were opened.

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There was no law within the Rukongai he had learned. No shinigami presence beyond the first few districts. The walls truly separated the noble elite from the struggling souls. The hollows arrived as his father reached out, turning to protect his son, only to have Aoi himself pick up a small tanto blade from the hands of one of his abductors, thrusting the blade into his father's back without so much as a flinch or tear. The only words muttered by the child as he stared at the white masked beasts he had only heard about in stories was this: "Monster".

He described not the hollows but his own father.

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He fled from that place and returned home. Alone. He was lucky enough however to be adopted in by his friend Rika's family. And there he stayed until his powers grew. Over time he managed to be accepted and scouted into the Gotei Jūsantai's academy at the age of eighty-seven. His goal, to bring about change within the rukongai.



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Where the academy took 6 years to complete, Katsurou Aoi was a force the likes that had remained unseen for generations. Managing to graduate in half the time, rumors had spread fast about this new "prodigy kid". His work and skills managed him placement into the Second Division itself, where he was recruited into the Onmitsukidō. Here he would serve proudly for twenty years before being promoted to Fukutaichō at the age of 120

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It was during his tenure as Fukutaichō, at the age of 124, did Katsurou put forth his efforts into an elite squad led by himself  to do what the Gotei had failed to do, or at the very least overlooked in their duties: to protect and enforce law in the districts. Rukongai was not to be forgotten, they were to be protected. Their journey outside of the Seireitei not only helped diminish a percentage of crime within even the harshest of districts such as the 80th, Zaraki, but also helped to improve the relationship between the souls and the shinigami themselves.

Recognized for his efforts,  the prodigy kid continued on the fast track to his own glory. Through hard work and determination, he managed to obtain bankai, and with the sudden death of the former commander of the Niibantai from illness (while Katsurou was only One-hundred and Fifty-Eight, Katsurou was found to be the suitable replacement despite a few of the taichō themselves disapproving due to his relative young age and being the youngest taichō in many centuries if not the youngest. However passing the trials set forth to him, and his now tenure as the taichō of the niibantai, so far his record and respect has remained subtle or generally positive.