The Punisher

The Punisher, otherwise known by her alias as Sakura Kojima (小島桜, Kojima Sakura), is a powerful entity that serves as a judge of souls and Hollows as well as a punisher for rogue spirits and entities within the spiritual world. She serves as one of the central antagonists in Bleach: The Children of Izanami, initially one of the series' protagonists.

Under the guise of Sakura, she has assisted in the initial battle of the Ahijados-Yūrei War in where cult members engaged law enforcement.

Appearance
The Punisher's appearance is relatively humanoid. She is a young, Caucasian woman with a somewhat slender build, light orange hair, and blue eyes. The fact that her body is somewhat slender and suited for a lady disguises her ability to fight brutally to great effect. She commonly wears a red kimono with a yellow butterfly sash tied around her waist. The kimono reaches down to the thighs, revealing knee-high high-heel boots. Her expression is commonly formed into a sly, calm-headed expression the majority of the time. Her appearance can make her seem boyish to some.

Personality
The Punisher is a rather dark, twisted individual. Her motives and actions are fueled by a desire to learn about, toy with, and destroy the psychology of the mind both for her own amusement and to perform her duties as judge to optimal efficiency. She is a cunning and manipulative woman, commonly putting on facades of human emotion in order to shift the situation and attitude within her favor in given situations. A trait that is considered to be normal attitude is carrying herself in a sly, calm, and casual manner. Some of these traits are akin to the mythical succubus.

The Punisher actively socializes with Souls and humans alike. In this manner, she holds a rather tomboyish and assertive attitude. Despite her status, she has a habit of indulging in events and things that are looked down upon by the good society (such as drinking, gambling, etc). She is a skilled seductress, even allowing herself to to fall into the hands of sexual needs. This stems from a high masochism and sadism level; she revels in pain, relishing it as it is inflicted onto herself as well as others. This addiction to agony is commonly displayed in combat, when she constantly jeers her opponents and goads them to deliver devastating injury on her person. However, this is also demonstrated in her re-union with the Reaper. Her bloodlust is insatiable, and her hunger for death is fueled by her duty as the afterlife's executioner.

Unlike her fellow cult members, despite her inhumane nature of violence and death, she is not without her own personality weaknesses. Because of her overwhelming desire for pain, she feeds on it like a drug and seems to teeter on the line between rationality and insanity. Often, when she goes too far with her punishments, the Monitor is forced to restrain her and remind her of her mission. This very same addiction to pain causes her to have an opposite view of the positive feelings of the soul. She is quick to reject kindness and gentleness in the fear that it would make her weak and helpless. This fear, in turn, has caused somewhat of a paranoid attitude when it comes to gentle souls she encounters. Although she never admits it, she has an overwhelming fear of such individuals and will do whatever it takes to stay away from such.

The Punisher, even under the guise of Sakura, has expressed a nihilistic attitude towards towards existence. Despite her faking desire to see them all die for Bokyaku, she openly mocks Daisuke's idealistic attitude much to his chagrin. She sees humanity as a corrupted and sinful race, treating every sentient being as expendable to the very end. This nihilistic attitude, combined with her own manic addiction to pain, slowly builds up an antagonism towards Daisuke.

History
The existence of Red Sun spans back to the beginning of early Japan by Izanami-no-Mikoto and Izanagi-no-Mikoto. After giving birth to the incarnation of fire Kagu-Tsuchi, Izanami died and was sent to the realm of the dead. Izanagi was so enraged and grieved by her demise that he killed Kagu-Tsuchi. Although Izanami was in the world of the dead, she could feel the newborn's death as if it were her own. At that given moment, she felt grief, rage, and betrayal at Izanagi for taking the innocent life. Her feelings caused her to become disillusioned with the fate of humanity and consume the fruit of the underworld. Upon consumption, it is said that her flesh was ripped from her body and formed into separate entities.

One of those entities was Keibatsu (刑罰, Punishment). It is said that Keibatsu was born with barbed wire wrapped around and slicing deep into her wrists in a manner similar to hand-cuffs. The first thing she felt was pain, and because of her newborn state of mind, she recognized it as a sort of gift for being alive. After she was deemed the judge and punisher of corrupt souls by her mother, Keibatsu would continue to wear the barbed wire in an effort to continue feeling the agonizing pain of the thorns slicing into her wrists again and again. Because of feeling the excitement of seeing corrupt souls struggle, beg for mercy, and break down in the face of their judgement, she deemed their pain too be far more exciting than her own, and she had the barbed cuffs removed.

Portraits of her with the barbed cuffs can be seen on propanda posters created by radical cult members.

Synopsis

 * Unknown Start

Joining As One Arc

 * Bleach: Joining as One Arc: Signs

Children of Izanami Arc

 * Children of Izanami: Initialization
 * Children of Izanami: Confirmation (mentioned)

Ahijados Arc

 * Los Niños de Izanami: Inicialización
 * Los Niños de Izanami: Confirmación
 * Los Niños de Izanami: Despertar del Infierno
 * Los Niños de Izanami: Contención

Powers & Abilities
Master Zanjutsu Specialist: The Punisher's sword style is best described as one of ferocity. Her strikes and movements are bold and direct, proving to be unnerving to hesitant opponents. It is also unpredictable, and she hakes a habit of shifting her attack patterns in order to unbalance her opponents even more. Her way of swordplay focuses on offense rather than defense. It is said that she channels her very emotion into her attacks, effectively enhancing the power backed behind each blow.

Decimating Shinsei: As one of the deities of Red Sun, the Punisher possesses decimating amount of Shinsei energy within her. The corruptive, dangerous, and destructive nature of her energy is enough to wither even the strongest of opponents who cross her path. It is also said to have been felt as "menacing" by Daisuke Hayate. As with her bretheren, she is a dark Shinsei user.

Genius Intellect: The Punisher exhibits a heavy knowledge of how the mind works, using any and every way in order to manipulate it to her advantage. It is not uncommon for her to use psychological warfare against her enemies in order to expose their own hidden doubts and fears as well as break their concentration and destroy their resolve. This is not limited to mere words alone; she will use physical actions and assault in order to add insult to injury and bring her opponents down to a more vulnerable state.

Haya Master: The Punisher tends to use her speed commonly, but in an unpredictable manner that matches her sword style. Her skills with Haya allow her to appear and re-appear suddenly to the trained eye, catching them even further off balance than she would've with her zanjutsu alone.

Immortality: The Punisher has an infinite life-span, being born at the times of Japan's birth. She has lived for thousands for years under the influence of Izanami like all of the other children born from the goddess's flesh.

Immense Strength: Despite her deceptive build, the Punisher is capable of achieving feats of godly strength. The way in which she commonly utilizes this is through hand-to-hand combat and blunt physical trauma. Only a few fist and leg blows from her is necessary to cripple and kill her opponents, including stronger ones. She is capable of withholding her strength when it proves necessary. Likewise, one sword swing from her is enough to wreck the earth underneath her and unleash a large fissure that can extend for miles.

Immense Endurance: Being an entity of Soul Society as well as a deity, the Punisher is capable of withstanding attacks and injuries to her person that would kill any human. An example of this is when she was struck down by 666 with a direct blow to the chest. She was also able to take a stab through the side and continue defending herself against the relentless assault of Jaaku Ketsurui.

Immense Durability: The Punisher possesses a tremendous amount of resistance to some forms of attacks and weaponry. In her duel with Masanori Kawahiru, she caught his blade bare-handed before shattering it without any damage done to her hand.

Taigen
Senkoku (宣告, Sentence): The Punisher's Taigen takes the form of a scythe weapon, resembling her control over Hell. The staff is colored a complete black, with a small cylinder of grey where it ends and the red-black blade begins. The blade itself has a split going down from the tip to the base, stopping near it. The base is unusually jagged and spiked.
 * Taigen Special Ability: Not Yet Revealed.

Transformation
During a radical transformation due to the unknown Demon originated spell of merging, the two of them became a being of powerful proportions, radically exceeding the strength any Soul Reaper Captain can achieve, who's sole motivation is to punish all realms, both the World of the Living and the Spiritual Realms for their sins and crimes. It also took on the name, "Harbinger" as the entity referred itself in this mannerism.
 * Unrivaled Spiritual Power: In this form, Harbinger has ungodly high power. Because of this, anyone within a close vincinity could be confused about where Harbinger's real location is, hence its ability of being able to ambush Hana due to its constant High Pressure exuding the atmosphere around them.
 * Monstrous Strength: Harbinger upon its awakening, has achieved a high amount of physical strength, such as to the point where it was able to stand-toe-to-toe with the Slayer, a Hankami who's renowned for his own monstrous physical strength, even going as far as forcing him back with a single shove one-handed. He also managed to follow up with a ability similar to Oni Headpoke Hakuda technique, gathering a large amount of physical force behind one flick of a finger, throwing it at an enemy with prejudice in the form of a golfball sized pocket of pressurized air, albeit was blocked by a timely defense by the Monitor.
 * Zanjutsu Mastery: Shown during its battle with the Slayer, it was able to stand on even ground, additionally with eyes closed, which was once shown as a trademark that Sakura had when fooling around with Daisuke in a sparring match, without much stress or effort into its fight against him. Later shown, Daisuke launches rapid high-powered and rapid strikes, all of which are caught by Harbinger's blade, its keen eye not missing a mark.
 * Energy Manipulation: During his bout with the Slayer, Harbinger was able to redirect a large fissure of energy thrown by the Hankami, with almost relative ease then following up what could be assumed as a variant of Kurai Geijutsu fueled, by its personal energy, before throwing back a crimson fissure of its own twice-fold in strength with little to no difficulty. It was then perturbed enough to launch a devestating energy fissure attack against Daisuke without much effort at all, albeit a few seconds to charge, filling up the sky and taking two follow-up Bankai techniques to break through it.

Trivia/Behind The Scenes

 * The Punisher's unofficial theme songs are S&M by Rihanna and Forgive Me by Godsmack.
 * During a sparring match with Daisuke, the Punisher had her eyes closed the duration of the fight while apparently toying around with him. Later on in the story, the Harbinger (the resulting fusion of Sakura and Bokyaku) has its eyes closed while fighting the Slayer.

Quotes

 * (To Daisuke Hayate and Kukkyōna Hayate) "War.... is just another product of the corruption that is within the spiritual and physical world. Everyone who engages in war is guilty and deserves to be punished, no matter who they are, no matter what the reasons. In that sense.... the three of us aren't so different. We've fought.... we've felt the pain.... and we've taken lives. We all take part in the dance of death, and we can never stop. Not now.... not ever."
 * (To the Hanta Master) "A life....p...p...purpose....? Sounds like...you're just using me for your own personal tool...!! It sounds to me as if you prefer to play with fate...and that's something beyond your hands, demon... There are bigger things here than you... and I.... something that you could never hope to understand with your current knowledge.... if you continue on as you are.... then the consequences that will befall you will be far more than what I could've ever done to you....!!"