I. Personal Information

First Name: Artemis
Last Name: Ruhe
Alias: "The moving shadow"
Gender: Male


Age:  366 (Looks 17)
Birthday: 22nd April
Place of Birth: Austria
Sexuality: Bisexual, preference for women
Reiryoku Colour: Blue

II. Gotei XIII Information

Division: Second || Onmitsukidō
Seat: Captain

III. Appearance

Height: 5' 8''
Weight: 58 Kilograms
Hair: Black, falls down naturally
Eyes: Purple
Tattoo: Tattoo of the austrian flag tattooed onto his back
General Appearance: Art's form is that of a young adult, just reached the age of eighteen. He's been stuck like that for the last 366, although that's hardly a curse. His body is the absolute picture of a hunter, fast, lean but with a small enough frame that he's still able to be flexible. As his shinigami uniform, he wears the usual black hakama and kosoda. His haori is modified, with a collar sewn onto it made out of the same material as the hakai, allowing him to prevent himself getting choked by his targets.

However, under that is where it gets interesting. His right arm is completely covered in special "bandages", something he has trained himself into using like a rope or a lasso for fighting fleeing opponents. his other arm has a few different bracelets, each with a dangling object to warn his opponents that he's coming. He wears these when he's versing those who he truly believes he can afford to give an advantage to, although when it comes to someone he has the feeling that it will be a challenge to beat, he keeps them off. Thus, if he's seen on the job without his bracelets, it's a true sign of respect to the one that he's chasing.

His zanpakuto's sheath is held in a different place to most shinigami. While they keep theirs in their belt, he wears a second sash, pure white, that he slips his zanpakuto into. To pull it out, he puts his hand behind his head and unsheathes. With this in mind, he is rather the odd-one-out when it comes to walking around in the Seireitei. Finally, on his back, he has the Austrian flag from the time that he was still alive inked into the lower half of his back, from just underneath his shoulder blades to just above his hips. This was  something that he got centuries ago, having been born and raised as an Austrian soldier. His loyalty to his home country lasted even past his death, although it seems to have evaporated long ago.

IV. Personality

Personality: Artemis is a strange man for leadership, although in the same way he might be the perfect one. He's an idealist, believing that if something can be done better it should be done better. This isn't quite as bad as someone who suffers from OCD, but he believes that people need to live up to the reputation of the division and that people who don't are letting the team down. However, beyond that he's extremely dedicated to his causes and to the people that he cares about. He will whether hell and high water to help people that he cares about, and if he actually finds a concept worth following, he will follow it through to the end. It was this reason that he was able to survive so long in the second division without giving up hope. He is able to see the entire world as just something that he needs to overcome, and thus manage to avoid being depressed by the injustices and the cruelty that he has to do.

However, he also has a rather bad violent streak. His temper isn't such a problem that it will affect his missions, but he does have a habit of glaring at people who irritate him. More often than not, he will simply flick them between the eyes when this happens, but due to his skill in hakuda him flicking someone between the eyes is enough to make them feel physically sick through vibrations. Among people that he's interrogating, however, this more often comes out as a willingness to torture those who piss him off. If a prisoner gets on his bad side, he will rip them a new one even if they scream and beg. He is rather a bastard in that way.

Likes: Art has a strong fondness for hunting, whether this is hunting actual animals or hunting people. It's something that gets ingrained into your psyche after you've been doing it for long enough, and almost three hundred years is definitely long enough to get it absorbed into your mind. However, past that, he likes being able to make new friends with people, although more often than not he's got a dark motive when he does it. Either he makes friends because he actually likes the people that he's become friends with, or he becomes friends with them in a bid to be able to manipulate them, in a bid to use them to get closer to their boss or their friend. Finally, he likes justice being able to be done, the reason that he's stayed so long within Division Two. He could have left when he gave up on finding his brother and sister, but instead his love of justice has driven him to continue, and has led him to where he is today.

Dislikes: Artemis despises traitors even more than a normal member of the second division. He sees their treachery as a personal insult, and will go out of his way to punish them if he has that chance or ability. Furthermore, he also despises the nobility of the seireitei. His job requires that he shows basic humility around them, but he only does what his job requires him to do and no more since he doesn't want to lose his job. If he was able to, he would personally kick the ass of every single noble within the seireitei. Well, not every single noble, since there are still some nobles who are able to act nicely. however, he would definitely kick the ass of those stupid stuffy, self-righteous fools who see themselves as better than everyone else simply because they're themselves. Maybe this spawns from the fact that he lived his entire human life in poverty, although that doesn't seem all that likely because of the fact that he's been living in relative comfort since he became the captain of squad 2.

Motivations: Once upon a time, Art's motivations were simply to find his brother and sister. He wants to be able to do that, but after so long he knows that it's almost impossible to do, so instead he focuses his motivations on something that he knows is actually attainable. He wants to lead the second division into a new order, where traitors are stomped out rather than simply people that could potentially become traitors. On top of that, he wants to be able to be the best soldier that he can be, spawning from his desire to be a soldier back from his days alive. This is the reason he's willing to put aside his pride and bow to the nobles despite his intense displeasure in the way that they treat everyone around them as if they're inferior.

Fears: There are very few things that Art is scared of, having a long life will do that to you, but there is one thing that he is still inherently terrified of. He's terrified of bears, or rather adult bears. He couldn't care else about cubs, but he comes into a nervous sweat whenever he sees an adult bear, or even a picture of such a thing. It's quite ridiculous, since he's become much stronger, faster and more able than the things that he fears so much, it's really the true definition of a phobia. That aside, he has one small fear, although it's not something that he has any outward signs about. Rather, he's scared about what could have happened to his brother and sister. He doesn't know why he hasn't found them over the last three hundred years, but whatever stopped them from being able to be found must have been skilled, and impressive. Whatever took them from him, beyond the bear, is what he truly fears although he has no idea what that is.

V. Zanpakutō Spirit Information

Zanpakutō First Name: Yamino
Zanpakutō Last Name: Kage
Zanpakutō Element: Shadow
Zanpakutō Type: Kido
Zanpakutō Personality: Yamino is a very strange spirit, acting every part the Imoto-type, treating her wielder like her big brother. This has caused innumerable amounts of conflict between Art and his zanpakuto. Where her master is a sadist who revels in the hunt of those who would betray the soul society, her spirit always acts so cute and cuddly, as if they were brother and sister rather than zanpakuto and master. Generally, whenever Artemis enters the inner world of his zanpakuto, she has this irritating habit of hugging him, which generally results in a very quick and powerful upper-cut to the chin, knocking her off of him. However, whilst they seem like polar opposites, there's an unspoken agreement between the two of them, able to read each others thoughts without speaking it out loud, causing them to be the perfect partners. Their difference and similarity has caused them to be thought of as a yin-yang partnership. What's even weirder is that her personality appears to have no co-ordination with the blade's powers, something that has caused no end of confusion on Art's part.
Zanpakutō Appearance:

Spoiler:

Surprisingly for a zanpakuto like his, his spirit is a female. Not just a female, a girl who looks a little bit younger than Artemis. In fact, she looks so much like him that it's almost like a family resemblance. Long black hair, purple eyes, they probably even have the same tattoo though Art has never been in a situation to be able to check. Her fashion sense is very plain, wearing a reverse of Art's shinigami uniform, where the black parts are white and the white parts are black, linking further to the yin-yang style of partnership they have. The only difference is that she doesn't have the bandages that he has, because "she doesn't want to look like she's hurt, she doesn't want to worry Nii-chan". Despite having such a matching spirit, Art tends to lie about what his spirit looks like. After all, who would take a hunter seriously if it came out that their spirit was a teenage girl?

VI. Inner world

Inner World Appearance:

The inner world of Yamino is something that feels incredibly close to home for Art. There was a forest near his village, where he and his sister used to play during their childhood. The inner world of his zanpakuto seems to mirror that place, except for one main difference. It's always at night, and it's always snowing. It doesn't appear to make any sense why it would be snowing, due to the fact that his sword is a shadow weapon, but whatever the reason is it permanently snows there. There's abandoned campfires around the area if he were to look enough, but nobody is ever there (Nobody can be there, because it's the inner world of his zanpakuto, but it still looks like there should be someone there.) Because of the style of blade, the shadows cast by the fires always seem longer and somehow more inherently terrifying.

VII. Zanpakutō Sealed form

Zanpakutō Appearance:

VIII. History

History: Artemis was born the eldest of three children in a small Austrian village on the edge of a forest in 1647. His mother and father were farmers, they were simple folk but they were a happy family. As he grew older and older, he and his father began to bond to a strong degree, until the point that his father mentioned about the fact that he had been a soldier when he was younger, before he'd met Art's mother and had settled down on her father's farm. When her father had died, it had passed to them, and they were able to have a happy family. When he found out that his father was a soldier, he was ecstatic. A simple kid growing up in the countryside, the military life seemed so grand and pure, and almost heroic, able to protect people that needed protecting and killing people who needed killing. There was nothing that could quite compare to the thrill that he got from hearing about his father's stories in the army. He was even taught by his father, drilled until he would have been able to pass the military exam and get into the armed forces. He was never going to be an officer, but he didn't care.

As his siblings, Alice and Lukas, grew up they began to adventure together through the nearby forest. He was two years Lukas' elder, and five years Alice's. They got on famously despite the age gap, and he was even like a second father to them since their father was too busy working on the fields. Of course, they all enjoyed the stories of the army days, but during the days when someone had to look after the kids, Art did it so that his mother could make food out of the things they were digging up in the garden, thus earning them extra money. However, unfortunately for them, they weren't quite aware of how dangerous the forest was to the people who went inside it. It was actually the forest that eventually got them killed.

Around a month after his seventeenth birthday, Alice and Lukas didn't come home one evening after playing in the forest. Art had been staying at home because there was additional help needed in the fields, but when it came to sundown and they still hadn't returned they knew that something was wrong. Art set out to find them, believing they had just gotten lost, but when he did find them he got more than he bargained for. It turned out that whilst they were in the forest alone, they had stumbled across another occupant of the forest, a giant brown bear. they were ripped to shreds in a moment of bestial fury, and when Art finally found them all he found was their corpses. Taking the family's crossbow, Art went out into the fields to kill the bastard that took his sister from him.... not taking into account that there was a den of bears. the bear that had killed his siblings was the father, but the mother bear was strong enough to rip him to shreds too. He still doesn't know about what happened to his parents, or whether they found his body or not.

The next thing that he knew, he was waking up in the Rukon district. Now, having been born and raised in poverty with his parents, he was no strange to the style of life he was forced into, but he had never lived in somewhere like this before. Hell, he didn't even speak the language that his "family" were speaking. It took until he got a translator to be able to understand what was going on, and even longer for him to be able to learn the language himself. So, it actually took around three years for him to be able to understand them fully, in which time he spent most of his time in his own room, trying to work out what he was going to do. However, in the broken english and Japanese that he did know, he picked up certian things about "death gods" or "Shinigami". He was confused, but if they were gods of death then they might know what happened to his sister, right?

So, with that intent in mind, he came up with a plan to get himself inside the Seireitei. A reaper frequently went around the pubs that was just down his street, and they had bumped into each other a few times. When they met the next time, Art asked him if he would recommend him to become a soul reaper. When the man refused, he attacked, hoping that a display of his physical abilities would be enough to get them interested. Of course, with higher levels of both experience and training than Art, he was beaten easily, but despite that the sheer balls of what he did got the guy interested in him, and over the next few meetings, he was finally convinced to recommend him to the seireitei. Within a month, he was in the academy.

Through dedicated study and frequent attempts at getting approved by his teachers, he finally worked his way through the tuition. It took just under two years by the time that he was in the ranks of the Seireitei for real, and when he was given the chance, he took the second division. He wanted to be a scout, he wanted to be able to be there if they ever found out the location of his siblings, so that he could make sure nobody killed them. He had learned by this time about arrancars and quincy, having covered them in the academy, and knew that there was every chance that they could have become an arrancar. He didn't care at first, they were his family, he cared more about them than about the stupid ranks.  However, despite how many missions to the human world he went on, he never found so much as a clue of their location. After twenty years of searching he became pessimistic about the hunt and even abandoned it after another five years. So, rather than focusing on them, he put all of his care and attention to becoming a good soldier. He had always wanted to be in the army, and now he was. He should be happy about it.  

All the way through this time, he was practicing and honing his own arts. It was during this time that he came into contact with his Zanpakuto's spirit for the first time, and they did not hit it off at all. Art saw the spirit as trying to encroach on his feelings for his siblings, whereas all she wanted was his affection. the more she actively sought for his affection, the less he gave it. they were able to co-exist, he required the sword for his day to day duties, but he never really liked her. She, on the other hand, became more and more of a yandere, getting hurt everytime that he got close to anyone that wasn't her. It was during that time that he learned that there is nothing quite so unromantic as trying to date someone whilst a voice in the back of your head keeps telling you that she's a slut and that she's nowhere near as good for you as the voice would be. They were, perhaps, an odd pair, but they were a pair nonetheless.

Through years of dedicated service he became a ranked member, and after leading a group to assassinate a powerful and influential member of the Quincy army, he was even given the title of Lieutenant of the Second division. He was offered a position as the head guard of the Maggot's nest, but kept to his normal duty of hunting down spirits and potential threats. He doesn't say what the reason was to this day. Still, this was the reason that he was with his captain during the end of his life. they were on a mission together trying to kill an espada. Unfortunately, they did not think to factor in his fraccion. If it had been the espada on it's own, they would have been able to overpower him with ease. However, with the fraccion added to the mix, they were barely able to kill him. Although the espada was dead, a member of the fraccion killed the captain, and almost killed Artemis. He escaped with his life, and went back to the soul society. Normally, that would be considered desertion, but because of the special situation and the job of the Second Division, he was instead rewarded for completing the mission and managing to kill the espada. With the new position open, he was put forward as a candidate for the job.

After a majority vote in his favor, he was named as the new captain of the second division. Taking his new position with his usual air, he modified his captain's uniform not for his own personal enjoyment but because he believed it was what needed to happen for him to be safer, because if he was safe then the people that he was leading would be safer. When you study battles that are lost, there are normally one of three reasons responsible - Poor leadership, overwhelming opposition strength, or simply bad luck. He was going to make sure that he wasn't adding to the list of potential problems for his scouts. Still, his personality stayed the same, even becoming even more jovial. He decided to do what his father would do in this situation - He would not allow himself to become someone other than who he was simply because he was given a fancy title and a badge to prove that he was better than everyone else. Although he was slightly self-entitled as their leader, he was also a lot fairer than the cruel leaders that they had had in the past.


IX. Other

RP sample:

Face claim: Lelouch Lamperouge - Code Geass

Everything seems to be in working order. Word counts are met and RP sample is of strong quality.

I say Approved