Ashido Kanō

Ashido has fair skin, dark eyes, and spiky reddish-brown hair above thin brows of the same shade. His Shinigami robes hang tattered over a white undergarment, and he goes barefoot, wrapping himself in a brown fur cloak lined along the back with five Hollow masks he puts to varied use. Across his face he usually wears a mask shaped like a gazelle's skull, taken from the very Hollow that slew his closest friend.

Ashido is a grave, quiet figure, weighed down for centuries by the deaths of the comrades he could not save. That grief is what kept him in Hueco Mundo, cutting down Hollow after Hollow to avenge his unit and spare the living world. Even so, a lingering sorrow leads him back to the spot where his friends fell to pay his respects, and when he meets Rukia Kuchiki he brings her there too, wishing his fallen companions might once again hear a fellow Shinigami's voice.

Long ago Ashido marched with a Shinigami unit that chased a pack of Hollows through a Garganta and into the Forest of Menos. The clamor of battle drew Menos Grande, whose Cero blasts tore through his squad until only he and one comrade remained; when a Hollow struck that last friend down, the dying man killed it, and a grief-stricken Ashido claimed its mask before slaughtering the rest. He chose to remain, reasoning that every Hollow he felled there was one fewer to menace the living world.

Centuries later he rescues Rukia Kuchiki from a pair of Gillians, tests her mettle with his blade, and joins her hunt for Ichigo's group, guarding her with a shield of fused Hollow masks against wave after wave of Cero. He guides her to his comrades' graves and later slays the forest guardian Teres Holcan. When he finally leads Rukia and her friends to the forest's edge, a Menos horde bars the way; Ashido shields the group, orders them out, and springs back into the Forest of Menos as the passage seals behind him.