Tōsō

Tōsō (闘争, "Strife"), also known as "Nomad" (遊牧民, yūbokumin), is a male of unknown age and origin. More of a myth than a historical person, he has been roaming the since a thousand years.

Appearance
Tall and broad-shouldered, Tōsō is a middle-aged man possessed of a supremely honed physique. His complexion is tanned. He has a square-shaped face with sharp, solemn-looking features and a straight nose. His fairly short, straight dark brown hair are upright, unkempt with some strands hanging upon his forehead and interspersed with streaks of grey. Additionally, he has got a thick short boxed beard of the same colour. There is a vertical scar that cuts through his right eye and eyebrow ridge, surrounded with old burnt tissue. His remaining eye is grey.

The usual attire consists of a simple kimono not unlike the shihakushō of the Shinigami, if rather worn. The left sleeve is torn off to expose the vambrace of his Zanpakutō upon his forearm. To conceal his features, Tōsō habitually wears a dark grey cloak with a hood on top. In addition, he wears ordinary white ' and '.

Personality
The current disposition and worldview of Tōsō is a monument to the person he used to be; a gravestone.

He was a naive idealist, believing he could instigate change for the better. He hoped he could make the world a better place, to combat millennia of poverty, persecution, avarice and war, drive them into a corner and extinguish them to create a utopia. An inherently unavailing struggle, the futility of which he was discovering slowly but surely, in small and overwhelming doses, ever eroding his innate benevolence and geniality. He used to be sanguine, enchanted by the lofty and noble ideals of royalty and wise sages. He was patient, understanding and trustful, finding strength in the company of others and always striving to lend them his strength in return. He was astonishingly merciful, seeking a modicum of good in the hearts of the most vile of villains.

But he experienced disappointment. Profound disillusionment and betrayal. His hopes were vanquished, his dreams broken, his bonds tampered with or severed. He realised the folly of his goals. So he turned away from the embarrassment of his early life and committed himself to serve what he had previously perceived as forces of evil. Deceived once more with half-truths, twisted facts and blatant lies to the cause of somebody else, believing it was his own. He became ruthless and arrogant, believing himself superior to the people he used to serve. Methodical and uncompromising. With his moral restraints undone he believed he could change the world himself, by force, that he could remove the tumour of nobility festering with corruption and bring common people the freedom they wanted. And to achieve that he slaughtered hundreds, cutting a bloody swath through many a battlefield and ravaging many a city with no hesitation. A vigilante and an unfettered punisher, so he thought, in fact the pawn of a different party that time around.

Be that as it may, with every sacrifice he made and each paroxysm of pain that contorted his body in physical, mental and spiritual agony, he gradually realised he was still being used. In the end, inevitably, there came the day of epiphany that shaped him into the person he has been ever since. A shadow. From that day onward he has no ties and no restraints. His Zanpakutō, the sole trustworthy and reliable companion that has invariably offered succour at the times of greatest joy and greatest despair, is his only company. They are together, two against the entirety of existence. After sharing so many hardships, so many defeats and disappointments, they cast away every single ideal they once held. They are no longer good nor evil, but what perhaps they were destined to become from the very beginning - a force of chaos.

Tōsō still has honour. He still has some values. He does not torment the innocent, or the wicked, he does not attack unprovoked. Instead, he roams the Soul Society, attempting to enlighten others to its profound flaws, the depravity and injustice they lead to. To convince them that the world is beyond saving, that no change but the utter devastation and a new beginning is enough to bring forth eternal bliss. If he finds people he deems misguided, he grants them the chance to deliberate upon his revelation. If he finds people who decide to strike him down, him, the herald of a new age, he removes them as obstacles on the way of progress. People may observe him from a distance, walk alongside him or cross his path, the only path. Whatever happens, he proceeds ever onward, unabated, a juggernaut. He does not trip, he does not sway, he does not take turns or shortcuts. He has seen the light at the end of the tunnel and that is his singular destination. To him, the world as we know it is but an illusion, a disgusting and decaying façade that conceals the true world, in all its unadulterated glory, with skewed notions of right and wrong. People may follow him there - or perish.

History
In a time before there was the Gotei 13, there had been war.

Only that is certain. In that time, so they legends say, lived a particular boy. An amiable child wading through the blood and stench of outermost Rukongai districts, unaffected by abuse and poverty. For the boy knew there was good in the world, and so he sought it. He had power, fearsome power, one he wished to employ in the service of law and order. His dream seemed to come true once he was recruited by the Balancers of Souls, the supernatural beings who governed the entire spiritual realm with their unimaginable might and powers. For he had power, and they craved that power.

Many years he spent on training. Possessed of truly peculiar qualities, he had to overcome, or circumvent, many profound limitations in order to fully harness his tremendous might. But he had wise and experienced teachers, ones who told him of the very ideology and values he sought: nobility, stability, happiness. He made friends and acquaintances, surrounded by like-minded people who strove to accomplish similar goals. Moreover, he was endowed with an asauchi, the seed of a supernatural weapon, the foetus of his future closest companion. He was praised and scolded, encouraged and criticised. With labour and meditation he conquered numerous challenges imposed upon him. In the end, he became a warrior ready to fight for the better world he dreamt of.

But he was only a warrior. One of the many, his talent notwithstanding. He participated in countless wars and battles, fought criminals, invaders and monsters, defended cities and palaces. He was the clenched fist and a risen guard of the Soul Society, the bastion of benevolence and hope. That was what he was led to believe, at least. For his noble commanders and superiors had power and wealth in mind. His companions wanted glory, status, or each other. The warrior began to struggle, mentally and spiritually. He witnessed the contrast between wealth and poverty - forever unchanged, he witnessed immoral deeds and heard devious words. He saw through the veil of ostensible honesty and perfection placed upon the bloated, rotting mass of base instincts and primal desires that were the real motivation of everyone around him. More than that, he was betrayed.

In the midst of training and battle he found love. Pure, innocent love. One of his companions, a noble woman of similar disposition. They became close. Often, they discussed about the future and their aims, coming to realise that they shared so much. But the young warrior held his ideas dear to him, and was ready to devote his all to the pursuit of them. Conversely, one of his best friends, a reliable ally and indefatigable rival, proved willing to forget about mission and values for the sake of carnal pleasure. The kind of closeness that the woman craved, and was offered, but not by the young, idealistic warrior.

Everything seemed to lose meaning. Friends were rivals, nobility were tyrants, sages were fools, the people were cattle. Villages and cities were hives of scum and villainy, palaces - monuments to greed and vanity, lofty sayings and philosophies a thin disguise for hypocrisy. The young warrior became distant. No longer he wanted to associate himself with any of those, now seeing them for what they truly were. In the end, however, he found himself facing a mighty warlord, one of the greatest enemies of the alleged order the warrior had been so valiantly protecting so far. But the warlord was no vicious brute. He fought, be he spoke as well, his words conveying an electrifying truth with them. He was an enemy only to the corruption that reigned supreme in the mockery of Heaven. Corruption he wanted to excise, whatever the cost. As such, the warlord extended an offer - and the young warrior abandoned the travesty of his former life to embrace his harsh truth.

Convinced there were no rules to restrain him and no lies to fool him, the young warrior prepared to wage war upon Soul Society. Not the concept of it, no, not the people of it, but the cunning demons at its reigns and their mindless hounds. He did not hesitate and he did not relent. Mansions and palaces were ruined, their guardians slaughtered, their owners murdered. Billows of smoke rose to the sky, the clamour of brutal war resounded across plains, villages and cities, the flames of his revenge cast a crimson aura upon the ones who had wronged him. With the power of his Zanpakutō, the only aspect of his previous life that did not as much remain unchanged but changed with him, he sought to remove the tumour of falsity once and for all to uncover the pristine world beneath. But he had been deceived, again.

His new comrades were not warriors but savages. They raped, pillaged and burnt. Nobody was safe from their animalistic rage. In the process of removing the corruption, the warlord displayed ample corruption himself, taking the wealth, servants and daughters of fallen nobles and their subjects for himself. The young warrior heard explanations, but paid them no heed. Inevitably he realised that in his quest to cleanse the world with force he had indeed become the very thing he sought to combat in the past - a ferocious, uncompromising villain. He was devastated. Once again, he was used, ignorant of the manipulation until he had been too far gone to escape from the clutches of despair. But there was always more despair to dispense in that olden world.

For his former best friend and his former love continued to fight their battle, encountering him many times across various battlefields as an enemy. And, in the end, the young, infuriated warrior slew the friend-traitor in a duel that cost him one of his eyes. One that brought no satisfaction, but confusion, shock and a feeling of emptiness. Because for all his shortcomings and misdeeds his old friend did fight for the sake of good until the bitter end. While he vanquished him, the young warrior felt wrong. In his victory, he sufferred a horrible defeat.

And yet that was not the end. The warrior descended into a state reminiscent of catatonia and left his warband and the devious warlord. On his exile, he detached himself from reality to seek purpose in the midst of incomprehensible chaos. During that time, his former love sought him and approached him. She knew what he did, but she remembered well the genial idealist and strove to extract him from the depths of madness. They were together on that day, but immediately afterward he left to consider her words. The woman, on the other hand, had her duties. Soon afterward she fought in a grand battle, one that threatened the stability of all of Soul Society - and lost. The warlord personally faced her and bested her in battle only to unceremoniously kill her. She was one of the last defenders of the alleged peace and order in the entire realm, and the warlord was ready to claim his ultimate victory.

That was when the young warrior returned.

He had intended to return to her, apologise to her and everyone else. Work strenuously to compensate for the damage and suffering he caused, the havoc he wreaked. He thought, he could turn back to the lesser of two evils to slowly but surely mould it into the shape of good. He returned, with his conviction restored, to see that lesser evil in ruins and his only love dead. On that fateful day, he changed for the final time. It was a profound change, one that redefined his very existence in a sudden revelation. For what he gazed upon was pure, incomprehensible chaos.

A notion well-known to him. He had been experiencing it, witnessing it, suffering and wielding it for as long as he could remember. Both he and his Zanpakutō realised there was no order, no certainty, no sense to be found in a world like that. They perceived the ultimate lie present before their eyes - that the world they thought of as real was a mere illusion, a façade, an artificial abomination. A gestalt of supposed truths and concealed lies created for the semblance of order in a world of chaos. And they saw that chaos in all its glory. Beneath the veil there it was, sublime, inviting, devoid of the enforced hardships and hypocrisy of the simulacrum.

In a last throe before the death of his old self, the young warrior then clashed with the warlord. Perhaps to avenge the death of his beloved, perhaps for betraying him and forcing him to betray himself, perhaps to grant him the honour of being the first to witness the real world alongside him. A long, difficult, epic duel, for to threaten the whole of Soul Society the warlord had to boast power beyond imagination. But not limitless, and in the end, he fell. With his disembodied head in his hand risen toward the sun, the young warrior addressed everyone present to reveal the truth of his revelation, to speak of the primordial chaos that was the beginning and so would be their end. His last act was to bury the body of his beloved, only to depart without a word, his destination unknown.

And while his accomplishments, status, crimes and even name have been lost to the oblivion of time or excised altogether due to profound shame he had brought upon his old masters, he may well be more than myth. His tale perseveres amongst the external districts of the Rukongai, the very place he allegedly hailed from. The only accounts of his existence, both of his rise and downfall as well as continued up to recent memory. People speak that he still roams the world, seeking to convince others to his worldview and to smite those that offer resistance to the emergence of chaos. And in those accounts, not privy to the full knowledge of his being, he is habitually referred to with a moniker, one that reflects what he came to be the epitome of - "Tōsō", that is strife.

Trivia

 * Tōsō was conceived as a reference to Saitama of One-Punch Man fame. In that both are temporarily idealistic heroes who arduously strove to ultimate power only to find themselves profoundly disillusioned with reality. One of the major differences between them, though, is the fact that while Tōsō does exhibit outstanding physical fitness, a large(r) portion of his total combat prowess stems from his skill and special ability.
 * Another reason for his creation was a self-imposed challenge to craft a genuine Hakuda Grandmaster, and a character hopefully in the same league as the greatest powerhouses of this wiki, such as Seireitou Kawahiru, Raian Getsueikirite, Satō Shingen or Hiroya Ginkarei.
 * The deconstruction of first a typical idealistic shōnen protagonist and a dark fallen hero on a quest for revenge come from another fictional character of the author's make, one slated to appear in a work of original fiction sometime in the future.
 * His theme is audiomachine - Nomad.