Iehira Hasekura

This article, Iehira Hasekura, is property of Zf6hellion

Main

Iehira Hasekura
Race	Soul
Birthday	August 26
Gender	Male
Height	176cm (5'9½")
Weight	70kg (154lb.)
Blood Type	B Positive
Professional Status
Previous Affiliation	Gotei 13, Soul Society
Profession	Shinigami
Previous Position	Captain of the 7th Division
Previous Division	7th Division
Previous Partner	Kōsetsu
Base of Operations	7th Division HQ, Seireitei, Soul Society
Personal Status
Education	Genji School
Zanpakutō
Shikai	Taigan Raiji
Bankai	Honōkishi Shiraiki Hikimaru
First Appearance
Story Debut	Days on End: Beginning

"Blaze of cooperation."

—Character tag.

Iehira Eizōburō Hasekura (支倉栄三武郎家衡, Hasekura Eizōburō Iehira) is the former captain of the Seventh Division of the Gotei 13, and the first person to hold the position, at the group's founding. Kōsetsu was his lieutenant during his tenure.

Appearance

Sporting neck length dirty blonde hair, Iehira is characterized by his prominent cheekbones and angular eyebrows. He has light amber eyes and red skin. His chin is covered in a light stubble of slightly darker colour than the rest of his hair. His musculature is light and only faintly present across his body though he has equally little fat to speak of. Fitting his former profession, much of Iehira's attire is made up of Western wear, including a fur-felt black Stetson, blackened jeans and shotgun-style chaps as well as cowboy boots with roper heels. Embracing the Eastern style apparel of his comrades, Iehira adorns the white shitagi and black kosode of the Shinigami Shihakushō. He wore a stylized hakama, of reduced size and tattered edges, it was cut open and worn in the style of a half kilt. A brown leather belt, with a simple steel buckle, wraps around his waist with two empty holsters hanging off at either side of him, three straps on the back of the belt hold the sheath of his Zanpakutō. Lastly he wore a white duster, the symbol of the Seventh Division emblazoned on its back like a Captain's haori.

Personality

Iehira could easily be described as lacking a single bad bone in his entire body. Helpful and kind to a fault, he aspires to do all he can for those around him, from protecting the innocent to bringing down those who break the law, even though the meaning of some of those laws escape him. He favours himself the heroic type, always ready to save the damsel in distress and set right the injustices of the world. He took pride in old fashioned hard work, placing little stake in more intellectual matters, thanks in part to what he saw as his own limited intellect. He was illiterate and not much good at maths, forced to leave his paperwork as a Captain to his Lieutenant.

Powers & Abilities

Natural Abilities
Master Marksman: Enhanced Speed & Reflexes: Enhanced Durability: Great Spiritual Power:

Shinigami Powers & Abilities
Expert Swordsman: Shunpo Expert:

Zanpakutō

Taigan Raiji (対岸雷事, Lightning on the Opposite Shore) is a pair of Zanpakutō consisting of a tachi and a matchlock tanegashima. The tachi has a blade of 65cm (2'1"), making it shorter than most tachi but still longer than an equivalent kodachi. It has a black hilt covered by a golden wrap, with the pommel being used as a cap, facing back on the hilt and tied to the wrap to help fix it in place. The tsuba has a curved square shape with heart-like spaces on each of the four corners. The tsuba is primarily black with gold trimming. The scabbard is similar to the hilt, possessing a black lacquered frame with the mounting made up of a golden wrap and a black and white cord that seems to be patterned after chains. The tanegashima is made up of a dark wood frame embossed with various ringed flowers with stylized wind patterns trailing between them, across the entire body of the gun, from the grip to the barrel. Atop the body, running the length of the barrel is a silver plating. The gun's frame is gold, as is its trigger, guard and matchcord. It possesses a simple sight, protruding from the silver plate. When not in use, Iehira can store the rifle on a hoop cut into his captain's haori. As all Zanpakutō are born as singular weapons, the tanegashima is Taigan Raiji's true form, while the tachi was a later manifestation created by dividing its spirit. As this fact isn't common knowledge, Iehira's Zanpakutō is often mistaken for a Constant Release-type, allowing him to confuse those who have yet to see his Shikai. It is a Fire-type Zanpakutō. Sogekijū (狙撃銃, Lit. Sniping Gun): As one would expect, Iehira is able to use his Zanpakutō's gun form to shoot, however, the mechanism of doing so isn't done in any ordinary fashion. Instead of bullets, Iehira molds his own Reiryoku into a charge that travels through the barrel of the rifle and is then fired. The travel time is near instantaneous, but is important for combining Iehira's spiritual energy with that of Taigan Raiji in order to control the power of its shots. An ordinary shot from Taigan Raiji is incredibly quick, so much so, that its difficult to tell that anything was even fired before it finds itself struck. These shots are more like a high-intensity beam than a bullet, and given Iehira's elemental affinity, come with a great deal of incendiary power, capable of burning straight through almost anything. Taigan Raiji can alter these beams at will, turning them into large waves comparable to a Cero or converting them into large artillery-esque fireballs. Each variety of shot from the gun has some degree of impact on its relative speed and firepower, though it varies from case-to-case. Jūjinagi (十字薙, Crosscutter): Iehira scrapes his foot along the back length of his sword, causing the blade to ignite in flames. Raising it, he carves two slashes into the air, intersecting each other and using his Reiryoku, he solidifies the trailing flames momentarily, creating a large X-shaped cross of flames in the air. Pointing his tanegashima at the center of the cross, he pulls the trigger, projecting the flaming slashes as if they were a bullet. They fly forward with great speed and intensity, even maintaining their cutting power, allowing them to cut and burn through enemies and attacks alike. On contact with a surface, the flames can be made to explode, or should Iehira will it, the blades can be separated from one another, falling to opposite sides briefly before further igniting, detonating a massive explosion that consumes everything in the gap between the two slashes. Shikai: Its release command is "Light the Spark" (火花を灯す, hibana o tomosu). Iehira rests his sword on top of his rifle, calling the command, causing both weapons to ignite into flames. With his right hand, Iehira pulls the sword back from the flames, which emerges in an extravagant motion to reveal its new whip-like form. The Shikai consists of its original hilt but the blade is replaced by a long whip cord that passes through 120 individual serrated arrow-shaped blade fragments. In its resting position it appears to be a long straight sword. Shikai Special Ability: As a whip-sword Taigan Raiji can be used to engage in close or long range combat at Iehira's whims, and thanks to its serrated edges, has enhanced cutting power, capable of shredding opponents apart. However, its true ability lies in its whip cord. At a glance it appears to simply be a blackened steel wire meant to keep the whip together, but in actuality, the entirety of it is coated in black gunpowder that is shed from the gaps between segments whenever they are separated from one another. When coming into contact with the Taigan Raiji's blades, the spread out gunpowder ignites collectively into powerful explosions. With expert control of his Shikai, Iehira is able to weave powerful explosions and deadly traps, delaying their ignition until he deems it necessary. The black powder is quite difficult to remove once they attach to something, which even allows him to coat his enemies with them before setting his hapless victims ablaze. In its resting state, Iehira can manually cause the gunpowder to erupt even while the whip is fully collapsed allowing him to wield it as a flaming sword, or manipulate the flames with his Reiatsu in order to fire it as waves and spheres. Additionally, the serrated blades of Taigan Raiji can also cause other objects to ignite into flame, such as the ashes of Kōsetsu's Haishō. Bankai: Honōkishi Shiraiki Hikimaru (炎岸白熱悲喜丸, Incandescent Joys and Sorrows From the Blazing Shore). To activate it, Iehira holds up his sealed gun-and-sword or its Shikai form resting between both of his hands, as if he were offering the blade to someone, before uttering the command. His Taigan Raiji disintegrates, turning into a mass of ashes that swirl around Iehira in two trails before they reconstitute themselves into a pair of large rifles in either of his hands. Both guns are identical to each other and they appear to be a more elaborate form of his sealed Zanapkutō's tanegashima. While much the same as their sealed state, the guns now have a more triangular body as the barrel becomes a triplicate affair, arrayed with two on the bottom and a third barrel above them. The patterns on the guns change, the flowers now replaced with firework imagery and the winds are now changed to evoke the image of smoke. The matchcord on both guns are permanently lit, though the fire does not seem to actually eat through the cord. Though they do not possess them initially, Iehira is able to manifest a bayonet on his guns to allow them to perform cutting and spearing maneuvers. In addition to the guns, Iehira's forearms, hands, lower legs and feet are transformed to a seemingly charcoal-like state as evidenced by the cracks appearing across those areas as he exerts himself. Bankai Special Ability: By jostling the guns of Honōkishi Shiraiki Hikimaru, Iehira causes them to replicate themselves. Described as knocking off excess gunpowder, the particles convert themselves into more guns for Iehira's arsenal, each identical to the main bodies of the Bankai, with the key difference being that they levitate around him. The guns automatically follow and adjust their positions in timing with Iehira's arms and always maintain a relatively static position close to the gun that they spawned from. Guns replicated on his right stay there and vice versa for his left. Replicating these firearms initially will create two additional arms and the number increases exponentially from there with each copy able to produce more of its own, such that shaking his Bankai the first time would grow his arsenal from two (2) to six (6) and doing so again would then take his weapons from six to eighteen (18) guns and one more time would then give him a combined array of fifty-four (54) rifles. There doesn't appear to be an upper limit to just how many guns Iehira can manifest at any one time, and with each one his firepower grows massively, making him both hard to counter and avoid. While his Bankai may first seem incongruent with his Shikai, Iehira explains the difference between them as being a matter of "spreading" and "packing" gunpowder. Kitsuen Sogekijū (喫煙狙撃銃, Lit. Smoking Sniping Gun): The guns of his Bankai amplify his already powerful shooting capabilities and in addition to possessing staggering explosive power, Honōkishi Shiraiki Hikimaru also bestows Iehira with an unfathomable degree of control over his shots, allowing him to modify their flight path even whilst in motion. Sanzen Sekai Fukōkai (三千世界不幸皆, Three Thousand Worlds of Everyone's Misfortune): Iehira holds out his guns in front of himself in a position reminiscent of the kanji for "ten" (十, jū). The sky begins to darken whilst a large horizontal flash of red light appears behind Iehira. A monolithic amount of guns emerge, seemingly fading in to reality around Iehira, forming a ring in the air. As its name implies, the total amount of guns conjured by this effect number three thousand (3,000) in total. After a brief period of build up Iehira fires all of the amassed weaponry in an incredibly powerful omni-directional offensive aimed at a target. The energy of these shots is compressed to the highest degree such that while being entirely made of flame, they emit no heat. While this initial onslaught is easily capable of killing most enemies, it is only a secondary effect to the actual attack. As the beams strike the ground, their energy is passed onto it, infusing it over and over with each shot until all the gathered power has no choice but to explode, uprooting the earth in a titanic explosion of flames and energy.

Trivia

Iehira's original design.

• Iehira is made up of the characters 家 (one's own home) and 衡 (equilibrium). Hasekura is made up of the characters 支 (supporting) and 倉 (granary). His middle name, Eizōburō, contains the characters, 栄 (Glory), 三 (Three) 武郎 (Martial Official).
• Taigan Raiji's name is based on the Japanese phrase 対岸の火事 (taigan no kaji) meaning "fire on the bank of the other side of a river", a term used to describe onlookers who consider a situation someone else's problem.
• Before changes in the Bleach setting altered the scope of its universe, Iehira was named Percy Patrick Munny, nicknamed "P.P". Understandably, he would use the pseudonym "Johnny Law" instead.
• In Japanese, Iehira would speak using the soregashi (某, So-and-so) pronoun, a nameless expression of sorts that was used by Samurai and Ninja during the feudal ages.
• Images on this article were drawn by Luminent-Soul on DeviantArt on commission from the author.

Appearances

• Days on End: Beginning