I am Rai. Atleast, that's who I am now. I was 27 when I returned to Japan, after 7 years in europe. My father was very fond of telling me how dangerous it was for me abroad, but the same day I set foot in Japan again I was run over. The truck was large and I guess I didn't live long enough to have a memory of it. When I sat there, thinking about what to do, a man in wierd clothes appeared beside me. I think his name was Sunshui, but it could have been something completely different and he sent me to Soul Society. Me, myself, had thought I'd go straight to hell. Seems that you can get away with quiet a bit. Anyhow, I almost ended up in hell, I arrived in the outmost part of Rukongai, the 80th district named Zaraki on a godforgotten rain showered day. To my big surprised I found a pair of armguards attached to me as I came to. They were, as I later learned, zanpaktous. I battled my way into the 78th district and settled there. I lived alone and when I ran into a couple of shinigamis, they took me with them to the academy and it felt hopelessly crowded. There were people wherever I turned. The teachers noticed me since I was blessed by twin zanpaktous, the third pair ever, and apparantly it was the only sound zanpaktous ever heard of. One of them took in all the sounds around it, storing it, and then it could replay them as music and the other did the same, but with voices. The sound created could form my reiatsu and shape it into shields
It was pretty much decided to what squad I was going to be assigned to when I graduated. I ended up in the 12th squad, the research squad, under Kurotsuchi Mayuri. My zanpaktous were research objects, since they were so rare both in ability and appearance and I got to test and train with them everyday, all day long. This constant training and communication with my zanpaktous, Sakura and Sayuri, as they are named, led they way to my bankai. It's said that to achieve bankai one have to train for tens of years, but I reached mine after 6. My bankai releases a pair of flaming wings sprouting from my back and makes my swords blaze like hellfire. I kept it a secret since I started to get bored of the 12th squad and all of Korutsuchi-taichous experiments. I was looking for a way to get reassigned to another squad and I found the ability to heal, the music Sayuri created soothed injured bodies aswell as damaged minds and it got me transferred to the 4th squad, the medical and supply relief division. I thought that I had finally found my place in life, or, well, death, but the constanct harassments of the other squads, especially the 11th, who thought that 4th squad members were no real shinigami, got on my nerves and almost daily people could hear me yell carnal curses and threats all over Seireitei. After my 20th fight or so, the taichous though it best for me to switch squad once again and moved me to the 11th squad. I was only there 1 year, but what a year that was. I got to hone my fighting skill and never ever had to keep my temper at bay. Sadly, towards the end I felt a strange force growing inside me, which I later recognized as a hollow, and I left my life in Seireitei for the real world. Urahara-san, the shopowner helped me get the thing under controll. It took 15 long years. And now I'm back!