Azaliya Pankratikaya Yurnayevna

*― You're watching all the time; you think you're closer but you're not
― Don't try looking in; please don't force me to lie!
― Might think that I'm being cruel; not playing by your rules
― There's nothing I can say; not gonna change my mind
― I learnt to play by my own rules
― You'll only see what I let you
― What I let you*

**Azaliya Pankratikaya Yurnayevna** (アザリヤ・パンクラティカヤ・ユルナイェヴナ, *Azariya Pankuratikaya Yurunayevuna*?) is a recurring character in *Bleach: Mirrored Planes*. She is unofficially known as the second-ranked Schwarzeritter after tentatively allying with Soul Society as well as the self-proclaimed protector of Russia.

## Background

Azaliya Pankratikya Yurnayevna was born as **Yekaterina Petrovna Romanova** (イェカテリーナ・ペトロヴナ・ロマノーヴァ, *Yekaterīna Petorovuna Romanōva*?), the only daughter of Peter II of Russia and his fiancée, Princess Maria Alexandrovna Menshikova; she is also a Quincy as the Russian imperial family as well as the close families in which their spouses are provided from are of pure Quincy heritage. Peter, upon being crowned Emperor of Russia, was given a fiancée in the form of Princess Maria and Peter had fallen in love with Maria. Despite being younger than her (at the time of their engagement, Peter was 11 while Maria was 15), Maria accepted the Emperor's love and even before they married, they had consummated their relationship, however, due to numerous misdeeds performed by Maria's father, Prince Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, Maria's engagement with Peter was forcibly broken and she followed her father into exile. Unfortunately, this was when she would find out that she was pregnant with Peter's child.

Upon her father finding out, he immediately attempted to return to Moscow to appeal for his daughter but they were stopped when they encountered the dragon who called himself Bahamut. As part of his whims, he used his powers to place a strong hypnotic spell on both Aleksandr and Maria, however, interestingly, Maria was not affected; she had a constitution that made her exceedingly resistant if not outright immune to the spells of the dragons. Amused, Bahamut instead left Maria with a gift: multiple vials of his own blood. He instructed her that if she wants to make herself and the child in her womb more powerful, she should consume a vial for every month of her pregnancy. As she was three months' pregnant at the time, she was given seven vials with one to drink immediately and the rest for monthly doses.

As a final favor from Bahamut who declared that Maria was the first human to have entertained him so much in centuries, Maria and her hypnotized father were dropped off to their final location of exile in the barren wastelands of Beryozovo, Siberia. There, Maria gave birth to a girl, who she took to naming Yekaterina, and as her father was Peter, she was given the patronymic middle name of Petrovna; her surname was taken from Peter's royal house as while Maria never officially married Peter, she still considered herself his wife and as such, made it a habit to refer to both herself and her daughter as members of House Romanov. Yekaterina's most notable memory of her mother before her untimely death from smallpox a year after her birth was of her constant apologizing of the fact that she could not give her daughter the affluent life of a royal that she should rightfully have. In her mother's will, Yekaterina received her mother's Quincy Cross, the main weapon used for members of her race.

With the deaths of both her mother, grandfather, and grandmother (she had died before she was born), Yekaterina was entirely alone. She was subsequently adopted by Pankratiy Yurnayev, a close friend that her mother had made, and given the new name of **Azaliya Pankratikaya Yurnayevna**; ironically, not many people who lived in Beryozovo took to calling her by her new name as they much preferred to refer to her as the princess she was (and should have been). Upon growing older, she eventually understood why the people of Beryozovo liked calling her a princess: they wanted to have someone more material to laud as their ruler (primarily due to the massive distance between the city and the capital, Moscow, the hold on the citizens in the outskirts like Beryozovo is extremely thin). Azaliya liked being treated as an important person so she didn’t really mind being elevated onto a pedestal, however, she found it hard to hold a normal conversation when her conversation partners kept trying to keep their language as formal as possible.

At the age of seventeen, Beryozovo was attacked by a dragon who had somehow escaped from Reverse London while being chased by witches. Azaliya questioned the witches and with the help of a little translation magic, the witches managed to inform her of the danger of dragons and advised her to escape, however, she could not do so, especially after the dragon began wounding her extended family. Using her mother's Quincy Cross, Azaliya invoked her powers in true life-and-death combat for the first time and managed to bring down the dragon. Unfortunately, she was unable to escape unscathed and she received a lethal wound. The witches who had come tried their best to heal Azaliya but they said that she had little chance of surviving as she had received a fatal dose of dragotoxin, enough to kill two hundred grown men ten times over. However, thanks to both her natural resistance to dragotoxin inherited from her mother and the vials of Bahamut's blood that her mother drank during her pregnancy, Azaliya miraculously survived much to the great surprise of the witches; seeing as their job was done, the witches spoke their farewells to Azaliya and returned to Reverse London.

Azaliya's survival came with an interesting side effect: she gained draconic powers. Azaliya’s immense power was worshipped throughout Beryozovo and she was considered to be a god, especially after she did not age a year past 24 for decades. She retained the same appearance while everyone else around her grew older and older before passing away; as a result, she had begun surviving over generations upon generations of people. At some point in her life, she encountered and dueled a Shinigami who was being extremely and unrepetantly rude to both her and her dependants. As such, she killed him in a duel and looted their immature Zanpakutō, making it her own. As someone who lived in the outskirts of Russia, Azaliya was not too affected by the First and Second World Wars as well as the event known as the Thousand-Year Blood War. Instead, she was approached by Soul Society for her involvement in the death of a certain Shinigami some eighty years prior to the end of the Thousand-Year Blood War. Azaliya confessed to her crime but refused to be brought in as she had to protect her little kingdom from the grasps of dragons who had constantly and consistently appeared with frequency thanks to her having been poisoned by dragotoxin (her very own body acts as a beacon that attracts dragons). The Soul Society decided to make a compromise; in exchange for mutual non-aggression, Azaliya will provide assistance in the elimination of dragons from Japan and participate in the conflict against the pro-fusion faction. While Azaliya never voiced her qualms, she legitimately could not care about the nature of the factional conflict; as long as she is able to protect her hometown of Beryozovo, she has no interest in the affairs of others.

## Personality

Azaliyaーor more accuratelyーYekaterina was a noble lady through and through. Despite not knowing her parents (outside of the one year she had with her mother before her untimely death), Yekaterina carries herself with the air of a true noblewoman. Her sublime mannerisms is part of the reason why she was so lauded as a local “princess” (and later on, a goddess). She carries herself with pride and poise and refuses to back down for anything concerning her personal beliefs. As a result, she can be extremely stubborn about the wrong things (this is rather uncommon but has occurred before). If she had been born in the court of Moscow, Yekaterina would certainly have one day become the Empress of Russia. In accordance to this, Yekaterina prefers to use her actual name of '*Yekaterina Petrovna Romanova*' instead of the new name she received from her adoptive father; while she is grateful for the new name, she wants to act like the princess she is and should be. All of Russia recognizes Yekaterina as a rightful heir to the throne but she always refuses to take up the throne and instead elects to protect her home from the shadows (some unsavory folks required more *convincing* before agreeing to leave Yekaterina alone).

Contrary to what one may think of as '*normal*' behavior for nobles, Yekaterina is a true practitioner of '*noblesse oblige*' in which she carries herself with the mentality that she is one of the strong and therefore, she should wield her powers to help the weak. This is especially so with the people of Beryozovo who had raised her with great love and care after losing her only family; she thinks that there is no other way for her to pay the people back for their kindness. Despite having been told multiple times by the populace that Yekaterina should spread her wings and leave, Yekaterina refuses, preferring to remain in Beryozovo and protect it from danger; this may sound counterintuitive considering it is Yekaterina herself that attracts danger to Beryozovo in the first place thanks to her having been marked with dragotoxin.

As she had no one to properly explain the emotion, Yekaterina is rather inept in dealing with romance. She had never once experienced the emotion called '*love*' even with the many boys she had encountered in her long life; none of them ever fully gave her the feeling of her heart '*skipping a beat*'. The most she knows of love is from the many stories she had read over her life. In recent times, she liked using what the Japanese refers to as '*shōjo manga*' as reference material to study the emotion. Despite understanding that most of the situations in these stories were heavily exaggerated, Yekaterina also understood that some of them can be replicated in real life to some extent. For Yekaterina, she wishes to be swept off of her feet by a '*prince on a white horse*'; this is rather understandable as due to her imperial lineage, Yekaterina could not possibly accept a man who does not carry a level of pride that can match her own.

## Abilities

### General Abilities

From birth, Azaliya possessed immense potential. Due to her mother’s natural constitution that rendered her immensely resistant to the temptations of dragons as well as Bahamut's blessing in the form of the seven vials of his blood (which was, to put it simply, extremely concentrated **Reiryoku**), Azaliya is completely immune to any form of dragotoxin. Thanks to being fatally wounded by a dragon at the age of seventeen, she also artificially gained draconic blood from the fact that the great amounts of dragotoxin that had invaded her body began mingling with the rest of her body. As a result, despite being a Quincy, Azaliya has developed an enormous resistance to the poisoning nature of Hollows that would normally instantly sentence her to death, however, this is still merely a '*resistance*'. To put some numbers on her resistance, one could say that Azaliya is around 40% immune to Hollows; of course, there is an absolute limit to how much she can tolerate and that is not a limit that Azaliya is eager to test.

As a side effect of her resistance to Hollows, Azaliya is naturally immune to most if not all poisons and venoms. Aside from her natural immunity to most toxic substances, Azaliya received a high-level education even if she didn't actually finish said education; considering she never had a full proper education in the capital city of Moscow, it is a great mystery to note at how incredibly intelligent Azaliya is. She also possesses lightning-fast learning abilities and is multilingual. Including her birth tongue of Russian, she is capable of six more languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Japanese. Aside from her mother tongue, her favorite language out of all the ones she had learned is Japanese and it is this admiration of Japanese (and by extension, Japan itself) that played in her decision to keep the name of her Zanpakutō Japanese instead of naming it something in Russian.

As an **Echt Quincy** (純血統エヒト, *EhitoJunketsutō*?), Azaliya inherited immense power especially the Quincy-specific ability to weaponize the natural **Reishi** found everywhere in the realms. To signify her status as Quincy, she wears the standard white uniform, however, after tentatively allying with Soul Society, she began donning the black haori of the Shinigami. Yekaterina uses her mother’s **Quincy Cross** (滅却十字クインシー・クロス, *Kuinshī KurosuMekkyaku Jūji*?) to manifest the armament **Heilig Bogen** (神聖弓ハイリッヒ・ボーグン, *Hairihhi BōgunShinseiyumi*?); the ammunition for this bow is the **Heilig Pfeil** (神聖滅矢ハイリッヒ・プファイル, *Hairihhi PufairuShinsei Metsushi*?). She is an extremely talented archer and it wouldn't be an understatement to say that she was blessed by the gods of archery themselves.

Azaliya has developed a unique '*spell*' for her archery that she took to naming **Pfeilregen** (プファイルレーゲン無限矢熱雷, *PufairurēgenMugensa Netsurai*?). By gathering an enormous amount of Reishi into her Heilig Bogen, she creates a '*storm of light arrows*' that thunders from her countenance and assaults everything beneath her, courtesy of her ability to fly via **Hirenkyaku**. While not necessarily a requirement, Yekaterina likes to use the command phrase "***Scatter.***" (散れ, *Chire*?) to invoke Pfeilregen. An item that was included in the final testament of her mother, Azaliya's uses a Sanrei Glove and after secretly meeting members of her family, she evntually learned how to use it for self-training purposes. By doing so, Azaliya has already undergone the endurance training forcibly provided by wearing the glove for over a century and a half.

Yekaterina also is in possession of a **Schrift** (聖文字シュリフト, *ShurifutoSeimoji*?), specifically, **D - “The Decorum”**. This talent manifests as **Mystic Eyes** as the ability takes root in her eyes; the specific brand of Mystic Eye Azaliya possesses is the **Mystic Eyes of Correction** (矯正の魔眼, *Kyōsei no Magan*?). '*Decorum*' is a word that is derived from a Latin word that means "right, proper"; it is a principle of classical rhetoric, poetry and theatrical theory concerning the fitness or otherwise of a style to a theatrical subject. '*Decorum*' can also apply to prescribed limits of appropriate social behavior within set situations. For Azaliya, the definition of this word manifests as the ability of '*commandment*' as she is '*forcibly correcting*' the people who meet her eyes so that they can behave in the set of '*right and proper principles*' that Azaliya carries herself. Azaliya's Schrift is only fully effective on those who have lesser amounts of Reiryoku than her, however, since she is a direct descendant of the Romanovs and also has draconic blood flowing through her veins, Azaliya has simply never encountered a person who can resist her commands. Azaliya is also capable of using her Schrift on immaterial objects; for example, she is capable of manipulating the weather by ordering the wind patterns to change albeit her changes are only within the immediate local vicinity and her changes can also be forcibly overridden by an opponent's technique that is capable of affecting the weather (e.g., fire-, wind-, water-, or ice-element attacks).

### Reiryoku and Reiatsu

Being an Echt Quincy as a direct descendant of House Romanov, Azaliya already possesses a decent amount of **Reiryoku**, however, thanks to the boosts granted by the half-draconic composition of her blood, her base reserves were increased hundredfold. Before the dragon dealt her a fatal wound, Azaliya's Reiryoku was only potent enough to evoke small flames and crack a boulder with a punch but currently, she is capable of creating firestorms and shattering the same boulder that she could barely crack with naught but a single flick. Her **Reiatsu** is also similarly exponentially increased in potency whereas prior to powering up, it took everything she had just to make a person dizzy (and sometimes, they just weren’t affected) while presently, she is able to knock someone unconscious with but a single sharp glance.

### Zanpakutō

Azaliya's **Zanpakutō** is sourced from a Shinigami she fought and killed with her taking the **Asauchi** from the Shinigami's corpse; the blade carries the name of **Amatsumuraka** (天津叢火, *Heavenly Gathering Flames*?) with Azaliya learning the full true name of the sword and achieving its Bankai in but three days. Through imprinting herself onto her Zanpakutō, the blade morphed from its original form as a *katana* into a blackened longsword. Both blade and hilt are darker than the emptiness of the night and in accordance with the Oakeshott typology, her Zanpakutō would fall under the classification of '*Type XIIa*'. Despite being a longsword, the blade possesses a swept hilt similarly to a rapier as well as an elaborately designed crossguard; the crossguard appears to take the form of two mirrored valkyries.

Azaliya's **Shikai** has the **Kaigo** (解号, *Release Command*?) of "***Scatter and burn!***” (燃え散れ！, *Moechire!*?). It unleashes the power of fire the Zanpakutō had sealed away and thanks to the immense amounts of Reiryoku she possesses, she is capable of igniting massive amounts of flame. For the duration of the **Shikai**, her Zanpakutō is soaked in flame and the blazing aura of this weapon immolates anything and everything that is in the path of Azaliya's sword swing, incinerating it into nothing more than piles of ash and engulfing the surrounding landscape in a blazing firestorm; the heat of this firestorm is intense enough to scorch the sky and consume the clouds. Unlike most other Zanpakutō, resealing Amatsumuraka does not deactivate any ability already used against an opponent; for example, in a fight against multiple opponents, Azaliya makes use of **Jōkaku Enjō** (城郭炎上, *Fortress Blaze*?), a technique in which she creates an immense wall of flames meant to encircle and entrap the opponents in a massive sphere of fire. The sphere of fire does not extinguish even after resealing her sword and will only extinguish if attacked by an immensely powerful Shikai of opposing elements.

As previously mentioned, Azaliya can ignite everything in creation with but a simple wave of Amatsumuraka. She took to naming this technique **Taimatsu** (松明, *Torch*?) and this technique is capable of turning everything into ash. In addition, Azaliya can control the flames themselves, choosing what to burn and what not to burn, as well as the overall intensity of the flames. More subtly, **Kagerō** (陽炎, *Heat Haze*?) is a technique she developed to create mirages to fool opponents. A technique best used in the frozen landscapes of Siberia, she can invoke exceedingly convincing illusions and since they use the natural light of the sun and the cold air of Siberia, it cannot be dispelled until something forcibly changes the local weather (the hold of Azaliya's Schrift, **The Decorum**, does indeed extend to immaterial objects and as a result, natural weather patterns are subject to her commands).

#### Bankai

Azaliya's ultimate technique is her **Bankai** (卍解, *Bankai*?) which carries the name of **Amatsumuraka Jikūnagi Ryūken** (天津叢火時空薙竜剣, *Heavenly Gathering Flames Space-Time-Cutting Dragon Blade*?). The complete unsealing of her Zanpakutō results in the normally orange flames she produces to discolor into a deep midnight black, the same hue as her sword; the black flames also reside within Azaliya’s blade via the technique, **Kien Banshō** (氣炎万象, *Blazing Universe*?) and only appear outside of it should she command for the flames to burn out. Her main technique after fully unsealing her Zanpakutō is **Amaterasu** (天照, *Heavenly Illumination*?), the name she had given to the lacquer inferno. By thrusting her weapon forward, she can instantly ignite anything that is within her line of sight; this technique can only be dodged by a person who is highly skilled in any of the high-speed movement techniques...

## Trivia

* Azaliya's character appearance is that of Monochrome Princess from *Arcaea*.
* Azaliya's character themes include: