Ritsuko Nicklovich [Spiritual-Human 4-1+] [Hazard Rating D]

Life of a Soviet Soldier Boot Camp (1957-1964)

When Ritsuko Nikolovich entered the army, just after she turned nineteen, she wasready to serve. Many Russian teenagers were desperate to avoid the draft, but Ritsuko yearned for an escape from her drab existence—long hours spent looking after her elderly grandmother, afternoons and evenings spent shopping and cooking for her. It was a thankless task that fell to Ritsuko because her mother spent most of her time at work, waiting tables in a restaurant popular with tourists in the Black Sea town of Tuapse, where they lived. 

When Ritsuko thought of joining the Russian army, she dreamed of excitement, of shooting real guns, of making friends, of being part of something she believed in even though the army was bogged down in a terrible, endless war in Chechnya. She saw little downside to joining the army. Her life was stalled anyway. She wasn’t going anywhere with her education. She had never excelled in school, her progress hindered by what seemed to be a learning disability that was never diagnosed or treated. She was not comfortable reading or writing. She had tried but failed to learn welding at a trade school. Her only marketable skill was preparing food, a skill she had furthered with a year in cooking school, and something she thought she might be able to pursue in army kitchens. Having cooked for her grandmother since she was ten, she had developed a knack for using herbs and spices to add zest to usually bland Russian food, and she was adept with the local fish, crabs, and mussels. 

So Ritsuko stepped forward willingly. In this she was bucking a trend. The draft has become unpopular throughout Russia, in part because of harsh, cruel conditions in the ill-equipped and underfunded army, where conscripts are paid the equivalent of about $3 a month, and in part because of the war in Chechnya. Those who do are generally from society’s lower ranks. Education deferrals are routinely available to teens from affluent families. Others tried avoiding the draft by paying hefty bribes to recruitment officers in exchange for being classified as unfit. Some add a drop of blood to their urine samples, in the hope of being thought ill. Some even swallow magnesium crystals, which are said to cause painful stomach ulcers that can lead to medical disqualification. 

A tall, ungainly girl with floppy ears and hooded yellow eyes, Ritsuko was influenced by a childhood spent near a military base but without a man in her life: her father had left the family when she was seven. For years Ritsuko had looked out her bedroom window onto the base and watched the soldiers train. She watched them go through their drills, admiring their precision. She watched them play sports and lift weights and joke around in their off-hours.

“From her windows she could see that the atmosphere was really friendly,” Ritsuko says today in her soft, shy voice. “The soldiers were really friendly. They were not bullying each other, and they were laughing. It was like a family.” She thought they would be her family too.

Ritsuko was assigned to a nearby military base, in Yeysk, for basic training. Yeysk is a port city known for its fighter-pilot training center. A sign at the entrance to the base pronounces it “a blacksmith shop where cadres are forged for the Russian air force.” Ritsuko knew she would never be a pilot (that role is reserved for air force officers with much more training and education than she had), but she wanted to learn how to handle anti-aircraft artillery.

Conditions in the barracks were spartan but ordered. There were no showers, but the soldiers could wash once a week in Russian-style saunas known as banyas. They were given clean clothes and underwear once a week as well. Ritsuko found every day much the same. Up at 6:30, with five minutes to use the toilet, brush her teeth, wash her face, and get dressed. Pull on the scratchy uniform, the portyanki (rectangular pieces of cloth used instead of socks), and the heavy leather boots that didn’t quite fit. Ignoring the blisters on her feet. A clean white strap had to be put in place just inside the collar; no one knew why, but those with a dirty strap were punished. Then it was time to report, salute the sergeant, join the formation, and start to run. Usually it was two miles; sometimes, if the temperature was below zero and the wind was fierce, it was a bit less. Then push-ups—it sometimes seemed to Ritsuko that her entire life was now spent doing push-ups—and more exercises. The meals were bland, providing a reprieve from exertion but little more. After dinner the soldiers could relax a bit, and watch TV or videos of old Russian war movies. Ritsuko could listen to her favorite bands, until lights-out, at 10:30. It was a hard regimen to get used to, but the soldiers adjusted. They joked that they would survive basic training because even Russian generals were smart enough not to kill off their cannon fodder ahead of time.

Ritsuko liked the predictability of military life. She loved learning how to fire a machine gun and anti-aircraft batteries, how to shoot down incoming rockets and missiles. She found out that she was good with weapons—she could destroy a target at 200 yards—and she was happy on the firing range. Blasting away at the target dummy with the vicious AK47 to a more precise weapon such as the Dragonov. It was the first time she had been good at anything other than cooking. She was homesick, but so was everyone else. She fit in; she even seemed to thrive. She even recalls the time showing herself standing tall, obviously proud of her uniform. She felt herself becoming stronger. Developing stamina, courage

The Nightmare is about to begin
However it was all about to change once she arrived in Kamenka, a military base outside of the region she was born in. 

New arrivals are at the bottom of a well-defined hierarchy. Just above them are so-called “old soldiers” or “grand-fathers”—second-year conscripts serving out their final months. Most are no longer willing to make their beds or shine their boots or find illicit booze; they get the new arrivals to do these things for them. Once the officers leave the barracks for the night, the old soldiers take charge.


Ritsuko's misery began on the day she arrived, when she made a seemingly minor mistake in military protocol. She addressed an old soldier who had attained the rank of sergeant with the formal term “Comrade Sergeant,” which had been mandated at the Yeysk base. But soldiers at Kamenka had been told to use a more familiar approach—to call their sergeants by name. The sergeant, angry at Ritsuko's mistake, pummeled her, hitting her everywhere except on the face (so that no bruises would show). Ritsuko eventually smoothed things over with the sergeant, but she was beaten for weeks by various old soldiers whose demands she failed to meet. Her idea of the military as a family evaporated.


She was not simply hit once; she was beaten up. First the sergeant—he hit her in the stomach several times, and in the head, and after she fell he kicked her in the stomach. He didn’t aim, he just kicked and kicked and was swearing at her. Starting the very next day, the old soldiers would give everyone thirty minutes to get cigarettes with filters (which is impossible on the military base), or say, “Get me this much money in an hour, and if you don’t bring it to me in an hour you will be beaten to a pulp.” Which always happened, because we had no money … The base is not in a city, it’s in the woods, so most can’t go and ask for things. People can’t ask the trees for money and cigarettes. The old soldiers and even the officers would get drunk, and to entertain themselves they would wake recruits up in the night. She can still remember all the stools that were broken through beating and hitting. They would make her do push-ups and just beat them for entertainment.

She gave it to her friends for safekeeping. That night Ritsuko was summoned to the boiler room by Ruha and his henchmen. The next day she spent the money on cigarettes, cookies, and candies. The old soldiers found her purchases, seized them, and again hauled Ritsuko into the boiler room for a beating.

That was when her mind broke. The next day, acting on impulse, she tried to escape. She wanted to make her way back to the base in Yeysk, which she had enjoyed so much. She believed that she could return to the target range there, where she had proved her prowess. She walked off the Kamenka base through a park that was not fenced in, but she was caught within minutes. 

Two months later Ritsuko tried again to escape; again she was caught and forced to return to Kamenka. On her third attempt, the following spring, she succeeded, along with another private who had also suffered under Ruha. Eventually Ritsuko reached Saint Petersburg, where she contacted an advocacy group. Legal advisers from the group told her to go to a hospital and have her injuries documented, so that it would be clear she was no longer healthy enough for military service.

Present:
Ritsuko's life was going well for the most part, and began to train with henrex this not only allowed for the two of them to build a relationship but also learn more about one another as a whole; she got a further grasp of the shinobi and how they are a special kind of people they must learn how to live life before taking it away from another. As far as the seal of Eris she finally got it under control by learning from both Mirja and Random demon guy, it was a long and difficult but after a week's of training she got the seal of Eris under control and was ready to become a substitute shinigami and fight for the glory of the Gotei.

However not everything went well as today was the day she lost her quincy powers, after finishing her training ritsuko decided to go to Karakura Town to enjoy the rest of her evening. The evening was relatively well as she enjoyed the wonderful karaoke music, booze, and even food at a restaurant the atmosphere was lovely as many people were cheering,dancing, or drunk out of their minds. Regardless she left the restaurant with a smile on her face and began walking to the nearest hotel to spend the night, however as she continued walking She sensed something was off, the street was too quiet, the lights were on but flickering every so often the atmosphere of the area changed to bright and colorful to despair and there was no one in sight. only the sound of her footsteps echoed across the empty street naturally it would've been another hollow or demon waiting to attack her while she's most vulnerable.

The hollow screamed and ran off only to escape into the night, Ritsuko tried to chase the hollow but her body couldn't move her muscles began to slowly tremble eyesight began to fade, and her breathing getting weaker by the second. It lasted until she was unconscious and the last thing she saw was darkness. She awoke at the same area she was before but the only difference was that it was morning and she slowly covered her eyes as the sun was rising she had no idea where the hollow went but she would have to try again tomorrow and encounter it again. The next day she realized that her powers have dissipated ritsuko tried every possible method even to the point of hurting herself to see if blut vein would activate but rather then be upset or disappointed she embraced it thinking that it'd be a great opportunity to live a normal life again. While she may have lost her powers she still retains martial arts and the wonderful art of ninjutsu and Tai Chi from her friends Mirja and Henrex, although she isn't training as often as she used to she still occasionally uses them as a way to relieve stress and anxiety plus use it for self-defense. 

Today Ritsuko now resides in Karakura Town at an apartment complex in a semi-decent neighborhood, she works as a librarian on the weekdays and greatly enjoys it the silence of everyone reading with the only noises being pages being flipped. In the back of her mind she longs for adventure and excitement of the past but for now that's all gone and she's ready to start a normal everyday life.