Twenty-three years ago, the world as we know it almost ended. Mass destruction of souls tipped the metaphysical balance in ways that would have collapsed the cycle of life and death, creating a world with neither. It may have been a better world, especially for those who fear death, but it was averted. Things did and still do remain as they are. Chad did not save the world himself, but he was there supporting his friends along the way, recognized for it in some ways as others went unnoticed, and that was fine. Since then he’s found footing in a boxing career, becoming world renown after more than a decade in the ring.

But for all his strength, he has so much buried within that hasn’t seen the light of day. The part of him that burns to fight has grown cold as hard fists are covered in padded gloves. The part of him that flourishes from helping others has withered under the spotlight. The devils in his shoulders are whispering to him to seek something more, and he is one chance encounter away from listening.

An off-handed reference to Bleach in the Discord channel discussing this experimental game in this lineage left me wondering: how could I make it work? While most of the setting would be relatively difficult to incorporate due to its deliberate distance from Earth’s society and human perception, Chad is what’s called a Fullbring, and can use his powers without turning into a ghost that’s invisible to most people like the majority of the rest of the cast. And he’s also Chad. Bleach is a favorite story of mine, but in a cast of phenomenal characters, Chad is at once among the main cast and is only passably fine. The 'Yamcha' of Bleach, if you will. Part of my aim would be to expand and focus on a relatively secondary character in the source material. An angle with which to do that is his age. Comics are cyclical, rebooting characters and moving their storylines forward in time (Captain America was once displaced from WWII by only a couple decades…). But manga start, go for their length, and end, with really popular ones continuing on in some fashion (Bleach included as we wait for its continuation after a tease several years ago now). To represent this, I set the Bleach timeline at exactly the length it is in canon. The main conflict of Bleach concluded in 2003 over 20 years ago, the epilogue set 10 years later too long over. While he has so much context to his backstory, in the RP he’s a gentle giant who’s boxing career is leaving him cold, his superhero career being born out of an intersection of the fighting he enjoys (at odds with his defensive pacifism) and the kindness and will to help others that are so central to who he is. In rediscovering the self he hasn’t touched since high school, he’ll rediscover the strength he tempered alongside his friends, and perhaps see some inner devils along the way.