Layla Vital

"Master of the crowd'" - Snakes

"You'rre ashamed of your sexuality? Why? Shame is just a way people can contrrol you. Be prroud of yourr body, indulge, hab lots ob sex. We'rre alrready dead anyway, rright?"

- Layla Vital

Layla Flourine Vital (レイラ動態, Vital Raira) is a Vizard of mixed Filipino and Irish descent. She is the newly appointed Co-Captain of the 3rd Division alongside Zhao Xiang after the initial shadow invasion. Layla is also a Visored, and was a part of the second group exiled by the Soul Society (Sometimes referred to as the Visored 2.0 or the Baby Vizards by the original group). The Vizards 2.0 were asked, along with the other exiles of Soul Society, to return and help combat the Shadow. Before her exile, Layla was the 3rd Seat of the 3rd Division under Reagan.

Though Layla is polyamorous and is known for straying far away from commitment, she has found herself in a psuedo- relationship with another shinigami, Sauria Tsalagi. She was one of Hattori Fuu's private students. Layla is the department head of the Close Quarters Operations department of the 3rd, and her partner is her co-captain ---

Appearance
Layla is a lithe, graceful Visored with tanned skin and a presence that demands attention. Though short, Layla carries herself with an air that demands attention, a trait learned during a long dancing career. She has long, wiry muscles and a 'washboard' stomach that give her body a toned and subtly powerful appearance, and has a well-proportioned build with somewhat wider hips than average, strong shoulders, and a small B-cup bust. Her limbs are rather long and quite graceful for her height, and her feet and hands are heavily calloused (her feet moreso, and can be described as rather disgusting looking). Her skin, for the most part is quite smooth, and she barely gr ows any body hair. However, her skin is marred by a deep knee-surgery scar on her right kneecap and a long, straight scar that runs the length of her left leg from her butt to her heel. This scar causes her to walk with a very subtle limp, though normally people don't notice unless they had seen her walk before recieving the scar. She also has a small, colored tattoo of a perched cardinal on the inside of her right wrist.

Layla's face is somewhere between oval and triangle shaped with a small, slightly hooked nose. She has a full bottom lip and slightly thinner top lip, and her green-hazel eyes have an obvious upturn, and are heavy-lidded and narrow. Layla's hair is her most striking feature: it is a vibrant red with the tips dyed pure white (the red is a little bottle enhanced as well) and is cut into wild layers that give her a lion's mane appearance. Most of her hair is swept back, though she has a chunk of bangs that hang over her forehead. Her hair is naturally hard to tame, and reaches the middle of her shoulders. She often wears it down, but in combat she often pulls it into a loose ponytail.

Layla wears a heavily modified uniform to suit her preferred style of combat. Her Captain's haori is sleeveless and in the new style, with true blue piping and inner lining for the 3rd Division, as well as the Visored insignia. Her obi has two dark blue stripes, and she wears a thin blue armband around each of her arms signifying her postition as the CQC Department head. On normal bussiness days, Layla wears two layered tank tops, black over light blue. She never wears normal hakama; instead she wears baggy black pants that end just below her knees that look like somewhat tighter, shortened hakama, held up by her striped, white obi. She wraps her legs and feet in white cloth as well, her left all the way up to her butt and the right just up to her thigh. She uses the cloth on her feet as her footwear, and rarely wears actual shoes. She also often wears two feather earrings in each ear, one grey and one blue for each. She wears her zanpakuto tucked into the right side of her obi.

During her exile, Layla's normal outfit consisted of light-wash skinny jeans and loose fitting tops. Her hair was a bit shorter, and she often wore large, obnoxious earrings and belts. Layla, even currently, is rarely seen without a cigarette in her mouth.

Personality
Layla is what one can only describe as 'cool'. She is generally very mellow and laid back, almost seeming apathetic at times. She is, despite her language handicap, very outgoing and charismatic, and is very easy to get along with. Without meaning to, Layla often finds herself the center of attention, as she naturally knows how to draw attention to herself. (Her appearance also helps her stick out). She is completely self-confident, though this sometimes crosses the line into vanity.

Layla is a capable leader, which is why, despite her relatively weaker abilities in comparison to some, she was still chosen as a captain. Layla is charismatic, and her laid-back demeanor makes her approachable and easy to get along with. She draws people to her naturally, and knows exactly how to garner and direct attention. She is decisive and rather quick thinking, and works well under pressure. Layla is used to people relying on her, and can shoulder a lot of responsibility with minimal stress. Her biggest problem is her tendency to seem apathetic at times, and many think she doesn't take her job seriously. She does tend to keep away from unnecessarily stressful situations, and tends to not get very worked up over anything at all. She is slightly apathetic, and has a hard time understanding other people's stress because she rarely experiences it herself.

Socially, Layla is extremely outgoing and really can't stand too much inactivity. She keeps many friends, and an even longer list of past lovers. Layla dislikes commitment, and doesn't keep relationships for long. In fact, she has only had a couple stable relationships and doesn't see herself ever settling down. She simply prefers the single life, and is quite a heartbreaker. It takes someone with a similar personality to her own to get her to settle down for long, and she dislikes people that are too clingy. Normally though, Layla is flirtatious and isn't shy about that fact. She flirts shamelessly with everyone, including the head captain (Fuu, not Yamamoto). She won't flirt, however, if she finds the other person stuck up or boring, and she has inherited a strong distaste for people who complain often or who are overly arrogant.

In combat, Layla is as relaxed and confident as she would be performing. If she can help it, she tends to not engage an opponent unless she is relatively certain she can win, or at least be of use to the battle. If she knows an opponent can beat her easily, she finds it a waste of time and resources to engage them, instead choosing to observe and stay away until she gets backup. When fighting, Layla prefers to take her time, dancing around her opponent so she can analyze their movements and strengths before she even bothers to actually attack. Her battles tend to drag on, as she relies more on agility and wearing down her opponent, and she can be an incredibly frustrating opponent.

Layla is easily absorbed in whatever task she is currently involved in, completely limiting her focus for that specific task. It comes from her training as a performer: She had to learn to block her audience out and focus solely on the routine, and it has proven to be a difficult habit to get rid of. She has a tendency to completely ignore anyone who tries to get her attention.

The downside is that Layla, although quite friendly, has an issue empathizing with other people. She is somewhat selfish, and can get caught up in her own life easily, tending to forget others for short periods of time. She doesn't care what others think of her, and doesn't stress about anything, but usually forgets that very few people are like that and tends to be quite blunt. She is a bit careless with other people's feelings at times, and has a hard time understanding other people's stress and feelings. It takes her a while to catch on when someone is upset, but once she gets it she will try to understand and make them feel better.

History
Under Construction

Natural Abilities
Hakuda Master:  Layla's preferred skill is unarmed combat. She fights using the dance-like style of Capoeira, a style she started as a human for fun and started practicing seriously in death. Her excellent awareness of movement and eye for choreography make it easy for her to copy other martial arts techniques and styles, making her own style unpredictable and fluid. Her high agility, flexibility and acrobatic ability allow her to constantly move in battle, never seeming to come to a full stop, and her high awareness makes dodging even faster opponents quite easy for her. She relies on agility and speed more than power, and can easily wear opponents down as they attempt to land a single blow on her. She is most often seen employing break-dancing moves and relies mostly on kicks. Layla can be an incredibly frustrating opponent to fight because she is nearly impossible to hit.

Zanjutsu Expert: Although it's not her preferred method of combat, Layla is proficient with her blades. She was trained by Hattori Fuu, and as such shares aspects of her style and her hard training. She doesn't practice with her blades nearly as much anymore, preferring to fight unarmed or using her shikai, but Layla still retains enough skill to put up a good fight. She finds she only really struggles against actual masters of the art.

Perfect Physical Control (High agility and Flexibility): Layla is a master of her own body. She has perfect control over her movements and has achieved near perfect flexibility. Layla can perform physiological feats that seem supernatural, even to shinigami, thanks to her many years of learning fine-tune control and manipulation of her own body, pushing herself to the limits of human flexibility and control. Layla's grace and agility make her nearly impossible to hit, and her unorthodox fighting style only increases this. This physical control extends to normal bodily functions, and she has perfect breath control (useful with her zanpakuto) and can actually, to an extent, control her own heart rate.

Great Spiritual Energy:  Layla has strong, Captain-level spiritual pressure on par with low-level Captains, and has higher than average control over it. It manifests itself as thick reddish smoke. She is currently training to increase her capacity to be on par with her Co-Captain.

Kido Expert:  Layla knows the base amount of kido required for Captains (from Yamamoto's regulations). She prefers Bakudo, and enjoyed it enough to put some serious study into the art; though since mastering her Bankai she practices kido less often. She specializes in lower-level explosive spells and barriers.

Shunpo Expert: Again, Layla knows the base amount of hoho required to be a Captain, but rarely uses it, relying on her own natural ability and spatial awareness. She is nearly impossible to hit in the first place, so she has no need for it, and if an opponent tries to escape she rarely gives chase anyway.

Weaknesses:  Layla is not very durable: she isn't used to getting hit, and a few solid blows landed on her can bring her down. She can also get easily worn down with successive smaller blows. Layla also is affected by the shape and size of her weapon- it restricts her movements somewhat, limiting her agility. She can't quite move as well with her released blade, which cuts into her strongest ability. Finally, Just like a performance, Layla tends to block out anything that isn't her immediate goal, making her focus in battle very narrow. This makes battles with more than one or two opponents difficult for her, and though it's very hard for her first opponent to sneak up on her, someone else can catch her by surprise.

Zanpakuto
Pinuno at Alagad (リーダーとフォロワー, (Rīdā to forowā) Leader and Follower) Is Layla's Zanpakuto, and an air/heat-type. In its sealed state, it exists as a Daisho katana and wakizashi pair. Originally, Pinuno at Alagad existed as a single blade named Sayawan Ibon (踊る鳥, (Odoru tori) Dancing Bird). During a particularly difficult battle Sayawan was snapped in two and Layla was severely injured. The trauma of the injury was so bad it affected Layla mentally, prevented the blade from repairing itself, and the spirit was pulled into two nearly identical physical beings, with seemingly distinct personalities. However, both beings were simply two sides to the original spirit's personality, rent apart by the trauma of the injury. The broken pieces of the blade were later repaired and formed into two distinct blades. However, the blade's shikai remained essentially the same, except that the blade's abilities had polarized to either end of the weapon.

Sealed, Pinuno is a  is a 61 cm katana with light blue handle wrappings and a light blue tassel hanging from the butt of the sword. The blade's metal is an abnormally pale silver. Alagad is a 45.7 cm wakizashi with a deep red handle wrappings and tassel, and the metal of the blade is a dark matte grey. This handle is actually hollow, and Layla uses it to store cigarettes. Both blades have very small square handguards, and the handles are wrapped in a way that covers the rayskin. Layla wears both blades tucked into the right side of her obi.

Originally, Sayawan Ibon was a 114.3 cm nodachi that Layla wore across her back. It had a pale, desaturated red handle wrapping and a blue and red tassel at the end of the handle. The metal of the blade was a typical silver color, however the end half of the blade was matte.

Spirit:  Originally, Sayawan was a tall, androgynous humanoid with disproportionally long, feathered arms and long legs ending in elegant bird talons. Their hips and upper legs were also coated in feathers, and they wore a stylized bird mask with a fringe of feathers. All Sayawan's feathers were vibrant blues and reds, and their skin was a slightly darker shade than Layla's.

Currently, Pinuno and Alagad are essentially identical to Sayawan, however both seem do have been desaturated of color and appear rather dull, the reds and blues just barely showing. Pinuno's coloration has also become much lighter, their skin almost pure white, and Alagad has become quite dark, their skin a deep greyish color. The two move in synch, and almost never move separately from one another. When not speaking, the two continuously dance with each other.

Retaining their original personality, Pinuno at Alagad are extremely quiet and contemplative, and are also rather shy. They rarely talk, but when they do they speak in unison in voices that could be male or female. Pinuno is slightly more aggressive and talkative, whereas Alagad is very reserved and hesitant.




 * Shikai: Pinuno at Alagad's command is Dalhin ang iyong mga kasosyo at sayaw (あなたのパートナーとダンスを取る, (Anata no pātonā to dansu o toru) Take your partner and dance) When calling on her Shikai, Layla utters the command, holding both swords butt to butt, and smoke erupts from the handles, morphing the weapons into a single, 196 cm double-ended naginata . One end has a short, dark, matte grey blade with a collar of red feathers, and the other has a longer, light silver blade with a collar of light blue feathers. The handle is wrapped in different shades of grey cloth. The shorter blade constantly emits black smoke and the other end emits white smoke


 * Shikai Special Ability: Pinuno at Alagad's main ability centers around the manipulation of air molecules and the smoke emitting from the blades, changing the elemental concentration and kinetic energy to form smoke, remove oxygen, and create heat.


 * Malikmata (蜃気楼, (Shinkirō) Mirage): This is a passive ability: it allows Layla to manipulate the smoke her blade is emitting. She can make it thinner or nonexistent, but she mainly uses it to thicken and conceal her movements. Layla also can freely manipulate the smoke's path, and can direct it to conceal and cover what she wishes.


 * Malikmata Iban (蜃気楼鳥, (Shinkirō Tori) Mirage Bird): The longer Layla stays in battle, the more smoke her blades produce and surround the battle. At this command, if there is enough smoke, it will all condense behind her and form a large, swirling bird of prey that will attack her opponent if they stop their over-ground movement. As soon as it attacks and is repelled or defeats the opponent, it will disappear.


 * Mabuhay (息をする. (Iki o Suru) Breathe): Layla can manipulate the air around Pinuno's end of the naginata, allowing her to solidify and sharpen the air molecules around the blade, which she can use to extend it's reach up to 91.4 cm. The solidified air molecules remain invisible, making the attack difficult to avoid. She can also use the ability to thin the air around herself and her opponent, and can remove the oxygen in the immediate area. The ability can be used for up to an hour, but it also prevents Layla from being able to breathe.


 * Sindihan (点灯する, (Tentō Suru) Light up): With Alagad's end of the blade, Layla can affect the kinetic energy of the air molecules around the blade, thus affecting the heat. She can use this to superheat the air within four feet of the blade, combusting them. (Like how an engine works). She can vary the power of the explosions, but they can reach the explosive power of C-4. Layla herself is protected from the concussive force of the blasts. Her opponents, however, are not.

Bankai:  Paraiso Ng Mga ibon Sayawan (踊る鳥の楽園, (Odoru Tori no Rakuen) Paradise of Dancing Birds). To release her Bankai, Layla rapidly spins the blade until she is completely concealed by smoke. She states 'Bankai', and the smoke suddenly collapses to her feet, then swirls up and rises behind her, forming a 9' phoenix. The naginata grows, both blades growing three feet longer and two feet wider, and each grows a second small protrusion at the base. The handle gets an 's' like curve, and the feather collars become much larger. Both continue to emit the same colored smoke, but more of it which mostly feeds into the pheonix. Layla herself sprouts blue and red feathers along the undersides of her arms, making them appear as small wings.


 * Bankai Special Ability: Under construction



Hollowfication
 Hollow mask:  Layla's mask is skull-shaped with wide eye sockets and lionfish-like boney fringes around the whole mask. The mask is white with bright blue markings. Under the mask Layla's sclera turn black, and her pupils change to gold. Layla's mask limit has been trained up to three minutes, and summons her mask by running two fingers down the length of her face.


 * Power Augmentation: Donning her mask, Layla recieves a boost to her Shinigami powers and gains access to her hollow abilities.


 * Cero: Layla's Cero is bright red and most often fired from the bottom of her feet (from a kick). The blasts are short and rather short-ranged for a cero, but highly explosive upon impact.
 * Enhanced Endurance: Layla's normally lackluster durability gains a noticeable boost with her mask, and she can withstand much harder attacks and more injuries than without it, and generally gains a much higher tolerance for pain.
 * Enhanced Physical and Spiritual Strength: Layla's strength also gains a noticeable boost, both her physical strength and the strength of her spiritual pressure to around the strength of a higher-level Captain.
 * Enhanced Speed: Layla's natural agility becomes even more inhuman with her mask, granting her speed of movement that is almost impossible to track.
 * Inner Hollow: Layla's inner hollow has named herself Cardinal, after Layla's tattoo. Cardinal is manipulative and highly intelligent, but also exceedingly lazy and self-depreciating. During her first battle with Layla, she decided to just give her powers over, finding it more beneficial for both of them. Layla thinks she is incredibly depressing, as all she does is mope around her inner world.

Quotes
"This is dribing me up de hall! ...Down de wall? Ai yah, you know what I mean...."

(To Hattori Fuu): "You know, I can think ob some...activities... that could help you relieve some of that tension....Ai-yah master, I was just kidding! ... Please stop glaring at me..."

(To Reuben Rockwell): "Baby Bizarrds eh? Ha-ha! I like it. Since I am 'baby', I guess that means you hab to take care ob all de paperwork~"

(To Sauria Tsalagi): "Look, I know I'm a shit at rrelationships. And I'm selpish, too much to let go of what I do now. But I also can't get you out ob my mind, and I know what that means... It means that no matter how much ob a selpish bitch I am, I will do whateber it takes to keep you arround at the end ob the day."

(To her subordinates):  "Yes, some ob us arre bizard, and many ob us arre not. But the Captain Commanders gave us an orrder, and that was to shut yourr mouths about Hollow-hybrid trraitors and enemies. We arre all on the same team, and we all werre bepore our banishments. We hab a common enemy, and a common backgrround, so take all your ignorrant, coniving horrseshit and keep it out ob our barrracks. Go get drrunk and beat the shit out ob each other on yourr leabe days, otherrwise I'll send you strraight to Commander Hattorri. No, not Commander Regan, no one would get off that easily!"

Trivia

 * Her theme song, according to snakes-on-a-plane, is Suga Suga by Baby Bosh.
 * Layla is incredibly superstitious, and performs many seemingly strange rituals and has weird advice for gaining luck. This includes Filipino myths, and more mundane ones like tossing salt over her shoulder and knocking on wood.
 * Layla has an oral fixation; she always needs to be chewing on something when not smoking, whether it is gum, a pen, or her own fingernails. She is horribly addicted to nicotine, and generally is never seen without a cigarette in her mouth.
 * Layla speaks with a heavy, difficult to understand Fillipino accent, and despite having spoken English for most of her adult life, many euphanisms and metaphors go straight over her head- this includes sarcasm. She also often attempts to use slang and common sayings, only to butcher them.
 * Has an obsession with obnoxious accessories and shoes.
 * Layla's preffered cigarettes are Lucky Strikes.

Credit

 * All art belongs to http://snakes-on-a-plane.deviantart.com/
 * Sauria Tsalagi belongs to http://dragonofthesand.deviantart.com/