Rokuro Cecil
From BluWiki
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| Rokuro S. Cecil |
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| Age: 32 (Appears 18) |
| Class: Ninja |
| House: Red |
| Themesong: Original Prankster - The Offspring |
| Powers: Invisibility |
| Rogue Shinigami |
Contents |
Background
You are not always dead when you die - just as you do not live for every moment you are alive. It's hard, these days, to recall life before that example of irony. To recall life beyond my first death - for if I live and breathe now, then death must follow. A death more permanent. One that, perhaps, I may learn to avoid through reminiscing about the life I lost.
Life
Thhe story began in Rio. Not one of the many rivers, but the famous De Janeiro. In January. Yes, I was born in the month of January in the River of January, Brazil. It is a nation that represents a quilted patchwork of colour, a veritable melting pot of races that still don't quite get along. I had a little something different in me. Sure, I had the usual Mulatto stock, on my father's side. Mother, though...she hailed from Okinawa. My father, an experienced expatriate, had met her there and the couple had fallen deeply in love - despite the taboo of their miscegenation. She was thrown out from her family, but she gave birth to a new one, first in me, then a year later to the twins and finally little Rosa the year after that. However, that's all boring shit, isn't it? I mean who reads an account of the life of an ex-Special Strategic Service operative of the Soul Society and wants to learn about first embarrassments, first loves, first hobbies, and schoolground tussles?
Splendor Sine Occasu
When I was still young and intelligent conversation, critical thought, and analysis were still mostly beyond my eager reach, we moved to British Columbia. Specifically, to an Island - Victoria. It was, in a word, paradise. My early memories are fond ones - of running through trees and leaping from boulder to stump, of cliff dives into crystalline cold waters and kayaking past the dorsal fins of travelling orcas. All, mostly, with my mother. My father still had his job, a job that demanded constant travel. An international business that involved both my parents, for the phone would often ring beyond the witching hour, and vague, unofficial faxes could be seen printing their way slowly into existence.
Growing with the seed of human curiousity firmly planted and nourished on fertile ground, I learned how to unobtrusively mind business that was as of yet not mine. Then again, parents should never keep anything from their children. I learned that my parents were operating something highly illegal. That they had reason to fear law enforcement officials and many others besides. That underneath the gloves, my parent's hands were covered in blood.
You might think that such a discovery would lead to a teenaged outrage of epic proportions, but the fact remains that these were my parents we are talking about. I looked up to them and I suspect, I still would. Some say that there is a marked trend between the professions of parents and their offspring. The sons of Doctors inherit the clinic, the sons of Financiers inherit numbers and the sons of Cops inherit the badge.
I inherited the blade, the garrote, and a light foot.
Adjusting to the Dark
Few parents are truly fooled by their children. Those that are merely fool themselves. My parents were not in the habit of cultivating habits like that. In their business, it tended to be lethal. It did not take long for them to figure out I was on to them. They were not particularly angry. If anything, my mother was excited. Her family, it seems, had been so much more than just another Okinawan clan. They had been ninja.
As the generations came and went, fewer family members were inducted into their intrafamilial secret society. My mother was one among a handful - until recent years. They had come after her, in Brazil - but my parents had expected that and had laid a trap that sprung as it was designed to. Still, for fear of random factors, they had decided to relocate to Canada. As for the business? My mother used her old contacts, and my father made new ones. Contacts who often needed inconveniences taken care of discreetly. My father had obtained his experience working for the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência and provided the firepower and political savvy needed to run the business. My mother worked from the shadows, preferring the old tools.
I am not entirely sure how old I was but I do know I was still in Primary school. Nonetheless, my parents seemed to think I was old enough to begin learning the ropes. In fact, they figured that the earlier I learned the basics, the easier it would be for me to enter the business. No one ever suspects a young assassin.
First, they worked me day and night with a series of tests on top of what I learned at school. They were both physical and mental, ranging from scaling cliff surfaces to spotting openings in simulated 'job' situations. After a month of what must have been the most tiring stretch of my life till that point, my parents took me out kayaking like we used to go and discussed my future role. They had assessed my strengths and weaknesses, and had determined that I was more suited to be trained under my mother, under the cloak and wielding a dagger.
Newly Stained Hands
I had discovered my purpose - just as my parents had discovered theirs. There was a beauty to this profession, a finality of power that was intoxicating. Okay, I wax with false depth. I don't really see things that way. I never had the internal Zen that my mother practiced, nor the cold pragmatism of my father. Unlike them, I was not motivated by the profit or even the beauty of a well-executed mission. No. I was in it for the sheer thrill of outsmarting and outfighting another human being. For the fun of the kill. They didn't realize it at the time, and neither did I, but I wouldn't kill as a professional. I killed like a blood-stained murderer.
They never saw it coming, all those first victims. I knew that all of them had been involved, in some way or other, with the underground. These were not men whose guilt could be questioned. They were drug runners, rival professionals, crazed psychopaths or power-hungry leaders all. That was the code my mother made us follow. It was never wise to kill a mockingbird, apparently.
As for me? It was not fun. I found and continue to find no joy in tracking prey. The wolf kills a deer for food, not for joy. He kills for practicality, because it's a question of life and death - because he must. The jaguar fights and kills the crocodile because it was in his territory - because its presence, its bold challenge, annoyed him. Plus, it's fun to go head to head with a fellow predator and emerge victorious. When predators are your prey, then, and only then, are you at the top of the food chain.
I learned these facts alongside everything else an adolescent learns. I was taught how to move without sound, to dance without being seen, to run along a rain gutter with an uncanny finesse that assured ignorance on the part of security that never considered the improbable. I had killed twelve men by the time my death came, before I had time to grow into the shoes I had already stepped into.
Death
Not only were my parents aware of what transpired between men who lived in the shadows - they were aware of what went on in-between the shadows and the things that dwelled there. I just happened to be one of those things. There was a rumour, you see, that my father was not quite human. One that I picked up on. One that explained something about the way people never did quite notice me when they should have. About how I never seemed to get sick - as long as I avoided excessively bright lights. Ever. I never recalled going to the Doctor, in life. It made me realize I was so much more than these mere mortals.
I had forgotten that I, too, was mortal.
And when Jurassic Park was a hit, a man named Salvatore Riina was arrested before I got to him, and the first Pentium chips came about, I was reminded.
You would think that I would have seen it coming. It was usually my advantage, after all. This dichotomy between child and killer, and the lines that blur and make the word 'dichotomy' redundant.
I had a cousin whom I doted on like I never did with the twins or little Rosa. She was a wee thing, about ten years my junior. She must have been about six at the time, I guess. I was working out in the woods behind our cliffside home one night, going through my usual training regimen. Bouncing from tree to tree, without making a sound. Going through the usual combinations with my twin blades and cutting firewood that way.
Then she came, humming in that shrill voice that only belongs to girls that age. She had her little stuffed pony at her side, dragging the bedraggled thing along the ground, her hair covering her tiny face. Smiling, I walked up to her.
There was a sharp pain in my left hip and there it was. The hilt of a blade dug deep into my flesh, those delicate fingers whitened from holding onto it.
A smile, a flash of teeth. The nictating membrane of a feline. The girl had stabbed me!
Acting without though, I yanked the blade out and chased after the girl and her pony. My little cousin. She was fast, unbelievably so. Preternaturally so. We moved from tree to boulder, from boulder to heather, the hole in my pelvis throbbing through it all. Then she stopped. She collapsed, and got up looking back at me with large, confused eyes. A doe blindfolded and released without the blindfolds to the glare of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.
I stabbed her puny heart - felt that natural pump struggling to work as it flushed blood everywhere.
Then the realization. She had been possessed. And the thing had left her. And I had killed her...
Scared and angry with thoughts that had no form, I ran. Ran through the pain, the tears, through feeling, hoping to hide from the truth, to run from it. Then she caught up. Still dead, but not really dead. Moving with an alacrity beyond even what I had witnessed earlier. She had come to exact her revenge.
It mocked me, drawing out my death. One minute incision at a time, it jerked me around as I tried desperately to fight back, to rely on the speed and cunning that I had only earlier this morning thought unparalleled.
And failed.
Somewhere in the distance, I saw a pony with eyes the colour of the northern lights - and nictating membranes.
Death arrived, a crimson lover whose abominable embrace squeezed me to sleep.
Personality
Rokuro is defined as a bit odd by many who know him. He's not a loner, and does enjoy company though most do get a sense, even if it's only a hunch, that he's laughing inside. Always. He can be erratic and unpredictable, often doing things on a whim and does often get garrulous enough to have a teacher or prefect tell him off. Of course, he can never resist a good prank.
Powers and Abilities
Rokuro was once a highly skilled member of the Special Strategic Service section of the Soul Society, a department serving under Office #3, which reports directly to the Adjutant and as such has the skills appropriate to that profession.
In addition, his Shunpo is rumoured to come close to challenging the legendary Shihōin's.
His Zanpakutō, Ranmyaku-Shokkou (Chaos Weaver), has a confirmed Shikai, whose release words have been rumoured to be "Kemuri Denpa, Ranmyaku-Shokkou!" (Spread Smoke).
People
Random
Rokuro eats marmalade by itself.
