Retsu Unohana

Youthful and slim in build, Unohana carries herself with blue eyes and dark hair that she binds into a single thick plait hanging along the front of her torso. She dresses in the captain's black robes but fastens them with an obi in place of the customary sash. In centuries past she let the braid hang loose as a ponytail instead, and during her duel with Kenpachi Zaraki she finally frees her hair completely, baring an old scar across her collarbone that he carved into her as a boy. Rather than tuck her sword through her belt, she slings it over one shoulder on a cord or entrusts it to her lieutenant, Isane Kotetsu.

Everything about her outward manner soothes: she speaks softly, addresses even enemies with courtesy, and rarely lets panic or worry show. Her devotion to duty is absolute, yet it never stops her from mending almost anyone who bleeds before her, allies and adversaries alike, which is why she counts the Visored among those she will save. That gentleness is precisely what unsettles others, for members of the eleventh company and her fellow captains alike quietly dread her. Once her buried history as the founding Kenpachi resurfaces, the calm falls away to reveal her original self: a woman thrilled by the crossing of swords and willing to win by any trick, hidden blades included. In her rare idle hours she hikes the outlying districts to gather medicinal herbs, favors boldly flavored food, and presides over her division's flower-arranging club.

Long ago she took the name Yachiru and was reputed to be the most monstrous criminal the Soul Society had ever known, having mastered every school of swordsmanship in existence. Genryūsai Yamamoto came looking for her, and she became one of the thirteen companies' founding captains, personally shaping what would grow into the eleventh division and holding the title of Kenpachi before anyone else. To keep her opponents alive and prolong the fights she craved, she learned the healing arts from Tenjirō Kirinji, a discipline that would eventually make her the greatest medic in the whole of Soul Society. Roughly a millennium before her death she stood with Yamamoto against Yhwach's invading Quincy.

Her love of battle had all but faded when she stumbled upon a feral child destined to become Kenpachi Zaraki. He wounded her on sight and rekindled the joy she had lost, and though she was left standing, she understood he was the stronger of the two and better fit to carry her old title. She later stepped down from the eleventh company to lead the fourth, and across the long conflicts that followed, from Aizen's betrayal to the war against the Wandenreich, she served as the Gotei's steady healer, tending the fallen through her Zanpakutō, Minazuki, a colossal one-eyed ray that swallows the injured to cure them.

When Shunsui Kyōraku called on her to forge Zaraki into a weapon strong enough to face the Quincy, Unohana led him into the prison's deepest vault and embraced her forgotten savagery once more. Again and again she cut him down and healed the wounds, deliberately stripping away the limits he had unknowingly placed on himself, unveiling the offensive form of Minazuki, whose blade dissolves into a blood-like fluid, to press him further. She fell only once he grew strong enough to end her life, dying with a smile, satisfied that she had drawn out his true self at last. Twelve years on, a rite meant to lay her remains to rest instead cast her down into Hell, where she took up the name Death Sword.