Ryuuhime was born in 1966 in Takamatsu, the capital city of Kagawa Prefecture in Shikoku, Japan. Being a port town, her father, Takeo, worked as a fisherman, and raised her on his own after her mother, Hana, left her husband ten years prior after three years of marital strife. At the time of her leaving, they’d asked a three year old Ryuuhime who she wanted to stay with, and she’d chosen her father. But it was rough with only one source of income and Ryuuhime acting out at daycare and at home. Word got out around the neighbourhood about the troubled child, and most parents had their kids avoid her, which only made her act out more, as she could not cope with the loneliness or the bullying. 

Takeo attempted to homeschool her, but he was in over his head, and was quickly overwhelmed with the material and the responsibility. He hadn’t graduated high school, instead having left in the tenth grade to help his own father with the family business before he died. He couldn’t teach her anything. 

Takeo was forced to take his chances with public school again, and Ryuuhime started elementary school in the fourth grade. That’s when the phone calls started. She didn’t play well with other students, nor did she listen to teachers, or any authority for that matter. Though she caused so much trouble, she excelled in her classes and liked to work hard, and so Takeo weighed his options and decided he could handle her fighting with other students and giving her teachers a hard time if she kept her grades up.

In order to keep up with rising living expenses, Takeo had to work more hours, and by the time Ryuuhime entered middle school, she wasn’t seeing her father very often, and this led to her doing more and more drastic things to try getting his attention, such as chopping all her hair off, painting her bedroom walls bright orange, and stealing a bicycle from the local daycare. However, it felt like the more trouble she got in, the more hours he took. It seemed there was nothing she could do to get his attention anymore, so she stopped seeking it.

By the time she was applying for high school, and after she had many doors closed to her for her poor behavioural record, Takeo had no idea what else to do with her. He sought his mother’s advice. Many years prior, when Ryuuhime first started receiving conduct forms, Chiyo had given her son a pamphlet on the Shikoku Girls’ Reform School that boasted an 85% improvement in behaviour by graduation. Chiyo insisted that what Ryuuhime needed was structure, discipline, and obedience.

What she found instead was Anika Kei, a half-Japanese delinquent who latched onto Ryuuhime and wouldn’t let go. Her mother had abandoned her with her father when she was young, and it left her resentful. Finally there was someone who understood what it was like to deal with a father who didn’t know you at all (but pretended he did), with the void left behind by an absent mother (but it’s not like they wanted a mom anyways), and with a society that forced girls to deal with their problems quietly (when no one heard them if they didn’t scream). 

Anika had a tongue piercing and liked to trick boys with fake dirty pictures. She was the one to teach Ryuuhime how to do her eyeliner thick like a raccoon, and taught Ryuuhime how to threaten other girls into giving her their accessories. She taught Ryuuhime to throw a punch, and she taught Ryuuhime all about how to kiss and flutter her eyelashes and raise her skirt to show a little more skin.

They became prime targets for Rika Daiju, the sukeban of the girl gang, “The Crimson Dragons of Kagawa.” A second year with crimped orange hair that she claimed was a botched bleach job, Rika had been in and out of schools since the sixth grade, which she frequently boasted about. She claimed she sought to destroy the world of men and would only accept the strongest and most ferocious of followers. Those who wished to join The Crimson Dragons had to pass a rigorous and deadly initiation that deterred most. Ryuuhime and Anika were more than happy to prove themselves, who desperately sought the respect of their older peer whom they greatly admired.

The initiation involved driving a motorcycle as close to the edge of a cliffside as the driver was willing to go while racing another Dragon, but there was a maximum distance from the edge of the driver was allowed to stop, and any greater would be considered an automatic failure. Anika just barely made it. Ryuuhime needed to make a scene. The one she raced against, a third year named Jun Yama, slowed to a stop right before she drove off the edge. Ryuuhime, determined, not only sped up as she approached the edge, but then she flipped off of the bike, launching it off the cliffside, and turned to strike a cool pose as the bike exploded behind her in a ball of flame. With everyone’s jaws on the floor, it was no surprise that Rika gave Ryuuhime the position of Lieutenant right then and there. No one contested that decision.

Ryuuhime spent her high school years shoplifting and selling those goods at much higher prices, getting into gang fights on the street, causing trouble with other schools and bullying students into giving her their money and expensive possessions, and even going so far as to be involved in selling prescription medications on the street. 

The deeper involved she got, the more her grades suffered, and the more her relationship with Takeo degraded. She would go out late at night with The Crimson Dragons without telling him where she was, bumming cigarettes off adults who they could convince to buy it for them. Every time she came home with more injuries, Takeo would get on her case about it, driving her away from him more and more. He wouldn’t understand her feelings, he belittled her, always treating her like a little girl throwing a tantrum. Even if she knew how to express her feelings, him looking down on her made her unlikely to want to, ever. She received an in-school suspension but she broke the terms, and Takeo had to beg and plead for her not to be expelled. Punishing her always made things worse. She refused to stay around long enough to talk to him. She took money from him. She threw a family heirloom at the wall and smashed it. That was the one thing he still had from his father who’d died in his youth. He was at his rope’s end. 

The temptation to give up on her was strong, so strong in fact, that he actually did, and when he did, Ryuuhime stopped coming home for some time, instead staying with Rika and her older sister, Nana. For weeks she and Rika came back to Nana bringing home a new guy every night. They never asked any questions, though Rika once made a comment on her sister having no other choice when there were no trustworthy men out there to keep around long term. 

Ryuuhime never planned on going back home, except she heard Takeo had been injured on the job, and couldn’t bear to stay away. She didn’t want him to be hurt. After all this, she didn’t hate him, even though the day she’d left, she screamed at him that she did. When she visited him in the hospital and saw his leg in a cast, she was overwhelmed with worry, and yelled at him for not being more careful.

At that moment she was finally able to tell him her feelings. She wanted him to spend less time at work and more time with her. She didn’t want him to treat her like a kid, nor like an adult, but like a person. She wanted him to take an interest in the things she liked and get to know her. He promised her he would try, and then he made her promise him that she was going to leave The Crimson Dragons. She told him she had one last thing she needed to do first, and then she would tell Rika she was leaving. She meant it.

A rival gang from the Tokushima Prefecture, The Kimono Girls, were overstepping their boundaries. Their leader had grown cocky, and The Crimson Dragons planned on intimidating them back to their weak-ass school, but things did not go according to plan. They met up late at night in a town that sat directly on the boundary between the two prefectures. Fighting words were exchanged. Someone threw a punch. Someone else pulled a knife. It didn’t matter who did what. Ryuuhime acted on instinct. She jumped between Rika and her assailant, and the fight broke apart when the blade caught Ryuuhime in the side. Neither gang wanted to stick around when a witness yelled about calling the police, but Rika and Anika stayed with Ryuuhime long after she lost consciousness.

Ryuuhime died in 1983, at seventeen years old. She was in her final year of high school.

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She is an expert practitioner of Kendō (剣道, Way of the Sword).

She is an expert practitioner of Kidō. She excels particularly in Hadō (破道, "Path of Destruction"). Expert practitioners possess considerable knowledge of Kidō and its various forms, and can use mid-level spells to great effect even without incantation, though they generally use incantations for higher-level spells to ensure maximum power. Most lieutenants and captains possess this level of skill in Kidō.

She is proficient practitioner of Hakuda (白打, "Hand-to-Hand Combat"), a close-combat style of fighting, in which one is unarmed and uses only one's body.

She is at an expert level of use of Shunpo (瞬歩, “Flash Steps”), a movement technique which allows the user to move faster than the eye can follow.

Her blade’s name is Kihatsu-en (揮発炎 — Volatile Flame). It is created from the kanji 揮発 (kihatsu) meaning “volatile” and 炎 (en) meaning “flame.” 

In its unreleased form, it is a simple katana kept in a sheath that was designed by Ryuuhime’s father, Tetsugaya. The sheath base is black. A bronze dragon wraps around the upper third. It is not painted, but sculpted on. The hilt is black with bronze base, and decorated with a bronze charm attached to a red tassel. The charm is the combination of the kanji for “east” and the number forty, as in, their home, district forty of East Rukongai, and was made by Tetsugaya for both Tadakatsu and Ryuuhime as a joke that they would forget about him without it.

Kihatsu-en’s release command is, “Riot!” (“Boudou da!”) The released form of Kihatsu-en is a double-sided glaive. Ryuuhime’s zanpakutō is a fire elemental, though she tends to use the flame to propel and add momentum and force to her strikes rather than cause burn damage. The power is quite explosive.

The spirit of Kihatsu-en takes the form of a grotesque and skeletonized vulture. Its wings are rusty with blood and soot, whole pieces of its flesh are missing or are dropped in its movements, and its inner world is tinged with the pungent stench of decaying flesh. It is constantly falling apart and rebuilding itself in the same and other spots. Parts of it can disappear and pop up from anywhere else, though it has the ability to call them back. 

Kihatsu-en holds grudges, blows things out of proportion, is spiteful, vengeful, and plots against others. It’s easily hurt, sensitive, and always assumes the worst of others. Kihatsu-en speaks rudely. It doesn’t use honourifics, nor does it care about titles or wealth. One must earn its respect, or suffer through its unbearable attitude problem. In fact, on more than one occasion, Ryuuhime has complained that Kihatsu-en behaves like a bratty, rebellious teenager with it’s “Whatever, man” and “I don’t care.” It likes to hoard things that it thinks are cool, such as knives, gemstones, and insects. It thinks gold and jewelry are frivolous and gaudy, and has a great dislike for what it considers foppish and greedy behaviour.

Kihatsu-en is the manifestation of Ryuuhime’s envy, jealousy, and inferiority complex. On good days, it is cooperative, but on bad days, it’s like nothing can satisfy it, and it refuses to obey commands. Ryuuhime’s interactions with it are explosive, volatile, violent, and charged with her insecurity. It says things it knows she’s thinking to purposely set her off, and it does so because it enjoys making her angry. But it also does it as a way for her to be self aware and to challenge her toxic ways of thinking without having to provide that council itself.