Katen Kyōkotsu

Katen appears as a statuesque woman with violet hair and a single visible turquoise eye, its partner hidden beneath a black patch, her corkscrew pigtails framed by bangs and crowned with a golden bone headpiece. A cape stamped with a big skull and the pair of blades hangs over a long, deeply low-cut dark dress. Kyokotsu is shorter and more youthful, her chin-length violet hair swept so that only one turquoise eye shows beneath a skull ornament; she covers her lower face, neck, and arms in dark cloth under a hip-length purple coat cinched by a sash.

Katen is sharp-tongued toward Shunsui, needling him and jabbing at his eye whenever he turns lecherous, yet she stays devoted, admitting the two are much alike and vowing to remain at his side until the end; she also urges him to flee foes she judges unbeatable. Kyokotsu, by contrast, is silent and reserved, carrying out her orders faithfully even while parted from her other half, and is said to be fond of hide-and-seek.

Long ago, after Isuzu Ise entrusted the Ise family blade Shinken Hakkyoken to Shunsui for safekeeping, Katen split off Kyokotsu to conceal it. Katen manifests during Shunsui's Bankai duel against the Sternritter Lille Barro, bantering with and steadying her master as he seems to triumph, only to watch him pierced from above by the revived enemy. Later, when Shunsui resolves to return Nanao's Zanpakuto to her, Kyokotsu appears behind the lieutenant holding the sword and afterward draws the wrapped blade out from her own mask.