CHARACTER RECLAIMS

[powersthatbe]

From now until endgame, Synodiporia is closed to new applications. However, players who dropped or idled characters but who do not have a behavioral strike against them may reclaim characters at any time. Dungeons and app windows are no longer necessary. Simply comment below with "I'd like to bring [character (username)] back!" And we'll take it from there. Players already at 3 characters who wish to bring back a 4th or 5th may do so so long as they're current on AC. Players wishing to bring in characters above 5 may request special mod permission. If you are uncertain if you qualify to reclaim, please email us at synodiporians@gmail.com and ask!

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[tealeafs]

CANON HISTORY: I'm sort of briefly skimming over some things to keep it from being super long, but if there's anything unclear, please just ask!

As far as Chizuru used to know, she's lived in Edo in nineteenth century Japan with her father all her life. During the series it's revealed to her though that she used to live with the eastern demon clan - the Yukimura - in a village before it was destroyed by humans. Only Chizuru and her twin brother Kaoru managed to escape the slaughter of the clan, but were seperated slowly after. Kaoru was taken in by the Nagumo family while Chizuru was taken in by the half demon Kodo Yukimura. Over time Chizuru forgot all about those times, the fact that she's a demon and her twin brother since she was still so young when it all went down and Kodo just told her that he was her father. So instead Chizuru grew up normally among humans from that point on, often taking care of the house since her "father" was a doctor who often left her there by herself while she tended to the house and waited for him to come back.

Until one time he didn't come back. Chizuru, of course worried by this development, disguised herself (unconvincingly) as a boy and set out to find her father who had gone to Kyoto. She managed to immediately run into a group of ronin (warriors who don't belong to any specific domain) and was cornered by them until the ronin were killed by others. Not that this development improved her situation by a whole lot, since her "saviors" didn't seem to be all there. They were laughing wildly while covered in blood, their hairs white as snow and their eyes glowing red. Chizuru was however saved a second time by a group of men from the Shinsengumi - an organization who served the shogunate and kept the peace in Kyoto. They took down the white-haired men, but since Chizuru had seen it all go down she was a liability to the group. After all, the white-haired warriors were actually rasetsu, a kind of vampire-like people with enhanced strength who have urges to drink blood and practically go crazy because of it, and the fact that the Shinsengumi were experimenting with these kind of warriors on orders of the shogunate was supposed to be kept a secret. It's why the three men - Toshizou Hijikata, Hajime Saitou and Souji Okita - decided to take Chizuru with them to their headquarters to find out just how much she had seen.

While she was interrogated there they however found out that she wasn't a boy and that she had come to Kyoto in search of her father - the exact same father who had just happened to help the Shinsengumi with the rasetsu experiments and had recently gone missing. For this reason the group decided to not have Chizuru killed but instead keep them with them so she could help them look for Kodo.

Although she was nothing more than a definite outsider at first, the girl started growing closer to the members of the group (mostly the captains since she couldn't really interact with the rank and file soldiers) over time. And in turn Chizuru only felt more indebted towards the people who had kept her alive, keep her fed and gave her shelter and who she talked with and slowly became more and more friendly with. She tried to do more and more her best to help them out whenever she could, even helping in key battles like the incident with the Ikedaya inn, where she ran across town just to be able to deliver a message to Hijikata. No matter whether it were big things like that she could do or small things like making tea, she just did her utmost best to try and help the group out. And although the captains tried to keep the information about the white-haired men she had seen on her first day in Kyoto a secret from her at first, eventually Chizuru found out about that as well.

But that wasn't the only thing she found out about. The Shinsengumi started repeatedly running into a man called Chikage Kazama who claimed to be a demon - and who claimed Chizuru was a pureblooded demon as well, which came like a complete surprise to her since she didn't remember anything about the early years of her life. Moreover, Kazama wanted to claim Chizuru as his wife since female demons with pure blood were so rare, and it was only the Shinsengumi's protection that prevented her from practically being kidnapped by him straight away.

The conflict with Kazama reached a climax while the Shinsengumi were trying to protect the magistrate's office at Toba-Fushimi. Chizuru went with Inoue to get reinforcements since it was practically an impossible battle for the Shinsengumi who were up against much more modern warfare like guns and cannons, but on the way they instead ran into Kazama. Inoue tried to fight him but was instead - to Chizuru's horror - killed by the demon, but just as Chizuru was about to try and fight him herself Hijikata stepped in to protect her. It's practically impossible for any human to actually stand a good chance against a skilled demon in a fight though, so the whole thing led to Hijikata taking the ochimizu (water of life) that would change a human into a rasetsu so he would actually stand a chance against the demon. However, it was still not entirely enough, and Yamazaki took a killing blow in Hijikata's place to protect the man before the battle ended without a victor.

Chizuru was crushed by the sadness over the deaths and the guilt of Inoue having died protecting her and Hijikata having thrown his life away by taking the ochimizu to protect her, but they still had to keep moving on. The girl travelled along with the rest of the Shinsengumi only to see them lose more and more of their numbers, including Kondou who surrendered and sacrificed himself to save Hijikata. Since Kondou and Hijikata were so close it was a huge blow to the latter, but Chizuru still tried to do all she could to be there for Hijikata and console him, telling him to not blame himself over Kondou's death, even if it was mostly fruitless. But that didn't mean that the girl gave up in the slightest - she remained at the man's side, trying to take care of him and even letting him drink her blood whenever his bloodlust as a rasetsu would play up.

But even so, circumstances just seemed to get worse and worse. Okita died fighting after having been sick for so long, Saitou decided to stay behind to fight an impossible battle and both Sannan and Heisuke used up all of their life span as rasetsu and turned to dust. Even Chizuru's own father died when they found him again at the castle in Sendai - he had been making a group of improved rasetsu there just so he could restore Chizuru's clan again to its former glory, but in the end all the rasetsu were wiped out and Kodo himself died while protecting Chizuru.

Even though the Shinsengumi had been such a big and bustling group before, it was practically down to just Hijikata and Chizuru at this point. Not to mention that the soldiers that were left fighting on the side of the shogunate were practically pushed more and more into a corner to a point where it was obvious they were just going to lose the war. But Hijikata didn't stop fighting and so Chizuru didn't stop following him where he'd go - until Hijikata himself told her to stop. Even though she tried to plead with him, he told her to not come with him to Ezo and left her behind alone on the mainland. Thanks to a little help from Ootori and her own stubbornness though, Chizuru was able to make it to Ezo all the same later and meet up with Hijikata again, refusing to leave him alone this time. And it's with that action that Hijikata gives up his own stubbornness and tells her that he needs her and wants her to stay with him - that he's in love with her.