notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
[X]Grab anything valuable you still own, and run. Where are you going?
-[X]Open a Garganta into the living world.
-[X]Open a Garganta into the living world.
Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Sinsystems
Patron Librarian
Were there any considerations for a Mantis option?
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
...you mean we haven't already done that?
[X]RUN
-[X]ALL IS LOST, THE SHIP IS SUNK, JUST THROW THE CLOTHES EVERYWHERE AS A DISTRACTION
-[X]ALL IS LOST, THE SHIP IS SUNK, JUST THROW THE CLOTHES EVERYWHERE AS A DISTRACTION
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...the only "Mantis option" in the Quest was you deciding he existed in the first place so no not really?
Anyway, vote called, I'm actually 5k words into the next update.
Ah, Bluff. The real magic of a bard.
pucflek
Verified simpleton
- Location
- Czech Republic
It does include that option though. I mean, unless you added it after it was already done.
The Phoenixian
The Glacier Witch
- Location
- My own little world
why would you rob us of this
Presumably "collapsing into memery" is the sort of nonsense that resulted in this threads brief but beautiful stint as the Di Roy memorial thread.
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
To continue on what went before. Also thanks to @Yaga for consultations. Part 1 is here.
Closer, part 2
There could be no doubt that the field of rubble was Sung-Sun's proving grounds. There were patches of lustrous green glinting in the false sun, where her Ceros melted the pristine sands of Las Noches into glass. The nonsensical tower that once dominated this part of the city now lay in ruin, broken in half by barrages of power. Apacci ran her hand along the edge of one of the broken blocks of masonry, feeling the familiar smoothness where Sung-Sun's poisonous energy ate at the rock like acid. The same power linger in the air. She could feel it, that tangy, metallic taste of her sister going all out. It reminded her of that day in the colosseum where she directed their power against the mindless mass of Szayel's mad creatures.
But in spite of all those marks of her presence, Sung-Sun was nowhere to be seen. Only echoes of her presence remained. Apacci glanced over her shoulder, to Mila Rosa picking through the rubble, and then turned quickly away.
"So she is not here" the lion Arrancar astutely observed. Apacci just spat.
"She's bloody impossible" she said, putting enough raw annoyance into her voice that the underlying concern wouldn't bleed through. "Where the fuck has she gone?"
"I do not know that, Emilou" Francesca replied, helpful as ever.
She nodded at her, then closed her eyes. On a good day, she could extend her senses far beyond her body, and feel the presence of her lover and her sister from miles away. But today wasn't a good day, not by any measure. Francesca's spiritual pressure, still magnified by her bout of anger from their aborted training session, pushed down on her from all directions, and she could not see past it. For a moment, she tried to focus on the remainder of Sung-Sun's power and follow it, but it too vanished into countless, straight paths, some reaching out to the sky, some broken against the walls present and past, some digging into the very soil.
"She put her back into those Ceros" she sighed, opening her eyes again. "Can't see shit beyond them."
She went quiet for a moment, considering. Likely, Sung-Sun just fucked off to some bizarre place with Nemo to do their training there. Made sense, too, given how shooting a Gran Rey Cero under the dome of Aizen's sky was apparently prohibited. Still, as reasonable as the thought seemed, she couldn't shake the feeling that there might had been something else to this strange absence. Her imagination promptly provided her a few images she would rather not see.
"I hate this" she mumbled. After a moment, she heard the grinding of the sand and felt the warmth of Francesca sitting down, close enough to lean against her.
"She is fine, I am sure" she said with conviction, putting a hand on Emilou's shoulder.
"A-ha" she nodded, still frowning. In a way, she realized fully well that her concern was unreasonable to a high degree, and there was something utterly loathsome in the fact that this knowledge did not make it go away. Normally, she'd cope by screaming at Francesca, but she had already gone through that today and it didn't help nearly as much as it normally does. It really wasn't the best of days. "Can you do me a solid?" she asked after a moment.
"Hm?"
"Your Pesquisa's better than mine, no?"
"I think so, yes" the lion replied, a vague sense of pride to her voice. "It comes from inner…"
"Just open it, 'kay?" she cut her off. "Just to make sure."
Francesca sighed, but obliged and a moment later, a shiver went down Apacci's spine as her spiritual senses expanded down the field of ruin. As usual, it was awful enough to make her cringe. No matter how close they got, it never felt good to have a lion sniff her.
"So" she asked, trying to shake off the blasted sense of being in a predator's clutches. "Got anything?"
She hesitated a moment before responding, then spoke, very carefully.
"I think so, yes."
Momentarily, all other thoughts were gone from Apacci's mind. She tensed, like a steel cord about to snap.
"There's someone trapped beneath the rubble, over there..." she added a second later, pointing towards the base of the ruined tower. Before she could explain anything, Emilou was already on her legs, sprinting in the indicated direction, spiked gauntlets on.
"But it is not…" she tried to stop her, but then shut up. The short Arrancar wasted no time. Her fists blurred and crackled with energy, coming down with a jackhammer's force; where they touched, the stone cracked in an instant. But she was not done, not remotely.
"Swiftly runs" she chanted, feeling the power swirl around her wrists and into them. With her will and word, she directed it, down into the fractured stone. For a split second, her voice lowered to barely more than a whisper, even as it rang like a bronze bell. "The river of time."
There was a crackle, a flash of blue and orange, and then the entire block of stone exploded, not into shards or chunks, but powder so fine that Apacci's exhalation scattered it, as if was never there. She did not stop. Her arms came down again and again, until the salty scent of her released power supplanted the echoes of Sung-Sun, and a good half of the rubble pile was transformed into fine sand and dispersed into the wind, revealing a dark opening. Cold air blew from inside, carrying with it the scent of blood and something else, more primordial.
"...it is not her."
She knew that Francesca was right. Whatever lurked below could not be Sung-Sun. Its power was nothing like hers: feeble, faltering and, above all else, hungry. Still, she committed too much energy to freeing it to let it go without seeing.
"I'm going in" she called, and disappeared into the dark, the sound of Mila Rosa's hurried steps and stifled curses following her down.
The tower that Sung-Sun broke had no entrances - in a way, it appeared more like a solid pillar erected high towards the charlatan sky, a useless support for nothing at all. It was only after Apacci entered the ruin that she realized that in spite of it all, it was a tower nonetheless, hollow inside and certainly somehow accessible. She knew that because what she entered was a remain of a den.
Fragments of shattered masks cracked under her heels with dry, popping sound. The light through the forced opening revealed a midden-heap of Gillian cloth, old bone and all the other refuse of an Adjuchas feeding. She bit her lip and took a step back. However powerful it was, whatever Sung-Sun indivertibly trapped under a pile of stone had to be, at this point, starved out of its mind, and it was never a good idea to confront such a creature head-on and alone.
"Why do you... " Mila Rosa groaned, standing behind her "...insist on doing that."
Again, Apacci allowed her senses to expand outwards. The beacon of warmth and power that was Francesca blinded her still, but in the shadows and gloom of a ruined tower, it was less overwhelming - and the creature that kept to the shadows seeped. It was like a bleed, a slow trickle of something inky and foul from a punctured container. She raised her hand, high, allowing a ray of sunlight to catch on the surface of her gauntlet, and then twisted her fingers around it, wrapping it around her fist like a lantern.
Still, she hesitated. Not even because of the danger - a starved Adjucha could maybe get a drop on her and hurt her, but together with Francesca, it would not stand for longer than split second against them. Chasing it into its lair, however, was a pointless endavour, and she stood nothing to gain from it. It was not like it could direct her towards Sung-Sun. More likely, it had been there for last few days, maybe weeks, accidentally trapped by her sister's carelessness in training, slowly going hungrier and hungrier, watching its own body and mind come closer to collapsing again into a Gillian's mindlessness.
And that, unfortunately, was why she couldn't just let it be. She hoisted her blazing palm high and directed its light towards the darkest recess of the den, where the broken vessel lay.
It was a small one, for an Adjuchas, taking the form of a dragonfly the size of a freakishly tall man. A cloak of shiny green and blue was thrown over its lithe body, and the light caught on the filament of long wings peeking from beneath it, shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow. The entire creature glinted like a rare gem, each inch of its body covered with sequin-like scales. In its prime, it had to be beautiful. But little of it remained. Its body rippled and contracted to a slow rhythm, twitching in preparation of the coming collapse. The pool it was sprawled in drank the light greedily, and she recognized the substance - not blood, but raw ichor of many souls, no longer contained and attempting to flee, even though they could never return to a solid form.
Behind her, she heard Francesca swallow a gasp. She herself spat a foul curse. It was the Adjucha that spoke.
It turned its mask towards them - a once-smooth white pane, without features or distinguishing features, now covered in a network of ridges and cracks, as if had been bashed against a hard surface over and over again, and then they heard its voice.
"No more" it spoke in a voice that was once one, and now a reverberating cacophony of thousands souls begging at once "hunger."
***
Francesca sat at her table, head in her hands, and stared at the pile of notes in frustration. Their mix of wild poetry, trance-writing, occult scrawling and notes made in three different hands was never easy to decipher in the best of times, and right now, with Apacci howling in fury and relief and soot-stained, zoned-out Sung-Sun right behind her, it was downright impossible. Still, because of the very same Apacci, it was also necessary.
"Her name" Emilou screamed, and without looking she could see her face contorting in righteous frustration, she could see her hands flailing wildly at quiet, focused Sung-Sun "her name is Ishi!"
"And?" came the serpent's voice.
"And you fucking put her there, you bloody moron!"
"Emilou, can you please let me rest?"
"You'll rest when the ritual is done!"
There was a pause, and Francesca just sighed, loud enough to draw Sung-Sun's attention. She lifted herself from over the pile of papers and turned to face her now more-powerful sister.
"To answer your questions, dear" she said and raised her hand at Apacci attempting to interrupt. She put enough will into it so that for once, the stag Arrancar listened. "In order. There is an Adjucha in the ritual room because you've managed to almost kill her."
The serpent just glared, eyes wide.
"By accident and it is a long story. Not now" Mila Rosa shrugged. "She is bound so that she does not lash out in hunger. She is under a stabilizing spell so that she does not collapse into a Gillian."
"Just feed her and send her on the way. I will owe her" Sung-Sun sighed. "I don't understand…"
"Obviously you don't, you fu…"
"EMILOU!" Francesca roared again, this time not in anger but in exasperation. "Please!"
"Lovers' spat?" Sung-Sun contributed.
"...Cyan" the lioness sighed. "Can you please, please stop?"
"I'm listening" she nodded, and for a moment, Francesca felt absolutely abysmal about the entire disaster. It was clear from the way how her serpentine sister looked that she had one hell of a day - she was bruised and scratched, she wore a new, beautiful vest that was absolutely unlike her previous style, and her power ebbed and flowed as if it couldn't decide whether to explode or implode. Unfortunately, there really wasn't that much time.
"In short" she said, looked at Apacci to see if she was going to be a pest again, and then continued "we have an Adjuchas that we owe a favour. And the favour she asked was that…"
"...we make her no longer be an Adjuchas" Emilou finished. Francesca glanced back at the notes. Sung-Sun nodded slowly.
"And you" she hissed, her words discovering some previously unknown equilibrium between utter awe and utter bewilderment "obviously explained to her that it is not something we have any idea on how to do, and any potential attempt would likely either cripple or kill her?"
"Yes. She insisted."
The serpent hid her face behind a torn sleeve.
"Oh, no you don't get to do that!" Apacci grunted, stepping closer to her. "It's on you, not us. I've just…"
In her head, Mila Rosa saw the future. It consisted of Apacci being Apacci at Sung-Sun retaliated by being Sung-Sun on Apacci. She saw that wheel turn on forever, and decided that now really was not the the time for that. Therefore, there was a need to devise stratagems.
"Emilou, love of my life" she repeated, as calmly as it was only within her ability. "Can I ask you for something?"
"Love of my life?" the stag Arrancar blinked, momentarily thrown off her angry rant, while Sung-Sun just rolled her eyes at the unbearableness of the phrase.
"Yes" Mila Rosa continued, holding onto her attention. "Have you not promised that Shinigami brat some lessons?"
"What?"
"I think it would do everyone much good if you were to go and give them to him now, or possibly just went for a stroll."
Feint made, she straightened and smiled at her, friendly and warmly.
"Why" she replied with a suspicious quint "are you kicking me out?"
Inside, Francesca sighed with relief. It seemed to be working.
"Because" she explained "you are so worked up that in a moment, you will try to punch Sung-Sun, who is currently way too tired to deal with your shit, and who will have to deal with her own shit in a moment."
The slur, coming from her lips, sealed the deal. For a split-second, Apacci looked as if she had just been punched straight in the face.
"So, if you catch some fresh air, and take your frustrations out on him, it will be beneficial to us, that Ishi, and the ritual ahead. Right?"
After a brief hesitation and a fierce internal struggle, Apacci nodded.
"Right."
Francesca waited a moment after she had left, and then turned back to the pile of notes and rubbed her temples. There was something in the notes - a pattern, a new stanza of a poem - that she could almost read. Perhaps a solution, or a step towards a solution to their problem. But not one she could grasp at alone.
"You will need to help me" she murmured, spreading the papers along the table and trying to arrange them in some order that could make any measure of sense "with all of this."
"You know, I've almost died today" Sung-Sun replied in a casual tone. "I'm sure it can wait."
Several possible responses flickered through Francesca's mind, but instead she opted to take a breath in, then exhale.
"It can't, can it?" the serpent realized, and exhaled too.
"No. Not really."
"So" there was a friendly note in those words, about as trustworthy as your average viper "while I was away, Apacci went out of her mind, apparently convinced that I got eaten by a flock of Gillians or something equally stupid, and in that frenzy of worry and compassion decided to adopt an Adjuchas, only by adopting it I mean to rope us into assisting her with attempting to arrancarize it, without having ever tried or even seriously considered it. It will likely kill it. Only if it does, it will be somehow my fault and Apacci will beat me, only she won't, because I'll Cero her stupid head clean off if she tries. Right?"
"Right."
Behind Francesca, a chair scraped against the tiled floor as Sung-Sun dragged herself closer to the table, elbows pressing a stack of notes down. She leaned in, surveyed the scattered papers and, against all odds, laughed.
"This" her finger poked through a hole in her sleeve, pointing at a series of scawls in Apacci's script at the margin of scroll covered in an old, barely translatable script "is a good starting point. Also?"
She paused for effect.
"Today, I've learned that everyone around me is freaking lunatic."
Closer, part 2
There could be no doubt that the field of rubble was Sung-Sun's proving grounds. There were patches of lustrous green glinting in the false sun, where her Ceros melted the pristine sands of Las Noches into glass. The nonsensical tower that once dominated this part of the city now lay in ruin, broken in half by barrages of power. Apacci ran her hand along the edge of one of the broken blocks of masonry, feeling the familiar smoothness where Sung-Sun's poisonous energy ate at the rock like acid. The same power linger in the air. She could feel it, that tangy, metallic taste of her sister going all out. It reminded her of that day in the colosseum where she directed their power against the mindless mass of Szayel's mad creatures.
But in spite of all those marks of her presence, Sung-Sun was nowhere to be seen. Only echoes of her presence remained. Apacci glanced over her shoulder, to Mila Rosa picking through the rubble, and then turned quickly away.
"So she is not here" the lion Arrancar astutely observed. Apacci just spat.
"She's bloody impossible" she said, putting enough raw annoyance into her voice that the underlying concern wouldn't bleed through. "Where the fuck has she gone?"
"I do not know that, Emilou" Francesca replied, helpful as ever.
She nodded at her, then closed her eyes. On a good day, she could extend her senses far beyond her body, and feel the presence of her lover and her sister from miles away. But today wasn't a good day, not by any measure. Francesca's spiritual pressure, still magnified by her bout of anger from their aborted training session, pushed down on her from all directions, and she could not see past it. For a moment, she tried to focus on the remainder of Sung-Sun's power and follow it, but it too vanished into countless, straight paths, some reaching out to the sky, some broken against the walls present and past, some digging into the very soil.
"She put her back into those Ceros" she sighed, opening her eyes again. "Can't see shit beyond them."
She went quiet for a moment, considering. Likely, Sung-Sun just fucked off to some bizarre place with Nemo to do their training there. Made sense, too, given how shooting a Gran Rey Cero under the dome of Aizen's sky was apparently prohibited. Still, as reasonable as the thought seemed, she couldn't shake the feeling that there might had been something else to this strange absence. Her imagination promptly provided her a few images she would rather not see.
"I hate this" she mumbled. After a moment, she heard the grinding of the sand and felt the warmth of Francesca sitting down, close enough to lean against her.
"She is fine, I am sure" she said with conviction, putting a hand on Emilou's shoulder.
"A-ha" she nodded, still frowning. In a way, she realized fully well that her concern was unreasonable to a high degree, and there was something utterly loathsome in the fact that this knowledge did not make it go away. Normally, she'd cope by screaming at Francesca, but she had already gone through that today and it didn't help nearly as much as it normally does. It really wasn't the best of days. "Can you do me a solid?" she asked after a moment.
"Hm?"
"Your Pesquisa's better than mine, no?"
"I think so, yes" the lion replied, a vague sense of pride to her voice. "It comes from inner…"
"Just open it, 'kay?" she cut her off. "Just to make sure."
Francesca sighed, but obliged and a moment later, a shiver went down Apacci's spine as her spiritual senses expanded down the field of ruin. As usual, it was awful enough to make her cringe. No matter how close they got, it never felt good to have a lion sniff her.
"So" she asked, trying to shake off the blasted sense of being in a predator's clutches. "Got anything?"
She hesitated a moment before responding, then spoke, very carefully.
"I think so, yes."
Momentarily, all other thoughts were gone from Apacci's mind. She tensed, like a steel cord about to snap.
"There's someone trapped beneath the rubble, over there..." she added a second later, pointing towards the base of the ruined tower. Before she could explain anything, Emilou was already on her legs, sprinting in the indicated direction, spiked gauntlets on.
"But it is not…" she tried to stop her, but then shut up. The short Arrancar wasted no time. Her fists blurred and crackled with energy, coming down with a jackhammer's force; where they touched, the stone cracked in an instant. But she was not done, not remotely.
"Swiftly runs" she chanted, feeling the power swirl around her wrists and into them. With her will and word, she directed it, down into the fractured stone. For a split second, her voice lowered to barely more than a whisper, even as it rang like a bronze bell. "The river of time."
There was a crackle, a flash of blue and orange, and then the entire block of stone exploded, not into shards or chunks, but powder so fine that Apacci's exhalation scattered it, as if was never there. She did not stop. Her arms came down again and again, until the salty scent of her released power supplanted the echoes of Sung-Sun, and a good half of the rubble pile was transformed into fine sand and dispersed into the wind, revealing a dark opening. Cold air blew from inside, carrying with it the scent of blood and something else, more primordial.
"...it is not her."
She knew that Francesca was right. Whatever lurked below could not be Sung-Sun. Its power was nothing like hers: feeble, faltering and, above all else, hungry. Still, she committed too much energy to freeing it to let it go without seeing.
"I'm going in" she called, and disappeared into the dark, the sound of Mila Rosa's hurried steps and stifled curses following her down.
The tower that Sung-Sun broke had no entrances - in a way, it appeared more like a solid pillar erected high towards the charlatan sky, a useless support for nothing at all. It was only after Apacci entered the ruin that she realized that in spite of it all, it was a tower nonetheless, hollow inside and certainly somehow accessible. She knew that because what she entered was a remain of a den.
Fragments of shattered masks cracked under her heels with dry, popping sound. The light through the forced opening revealed a midden-heap of Gillian cloth, old bone and all the other refuse of an Adjuchas feeding. She bit her lip and took a step back. However powerful it was, whatever Sung-Sun indivertibly trapped under a pile of stone had to be, at this point, starved out of its mind, and it was never a good idea to confront such a creature head-on and alone.
"Why do you... " Mila Rosa groaned, standing behind her "...insist on doing that."
Again, Apacci allowed her senses to expand outwards. The beacon of warmth and power that was Francesca blinded her still, but in the shadows and gloom of a ruined tower, it was less overwhelming - and the creature that kept to the shadows seeped. It was like a bleed, a slow trickle of something inky and foul from a punctured container. She raised her hand, high, allowing a ray of sunlight to catch on the surface of her gauntlet, and then twisted her fingers around it, wrapping it around her fist like a lantern.
Still, she hesitated. Not even because of the danger - a starved Adjucha could maybe get a drop on her and hurt her, but together with Francesca, it would not stand for longer than split second against them. Chasing it into its lair, however, was a pointless endavour, and she stood nothing to gain from it. It was not like it could direct her towards Sung-Sun. More likely, it had been there for last few days, maybe weeks, accidentally trapped by her sister's carelessness in training, slowly going hungrier and hungrier, watching its own body and mind come closer to collapsing again into a Gillian's mindlessness.
And that, unfortunately, was why she couldn't just let it be. She hoisted her blazing palm high and directed its light towards the darkest recess of the den, where the broken vessel lay.
It was a small one, for an Adjuchas, taking the form of a dragonfly the size of a freakishly tall man. A cloak of shiny green and blue was thrown over its lithe body, and the light caught on the filament of long wings peeking from beneath it, shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow. The entire creature glinted like a rare gem, each inch of its body covered with sequin-like scales. In its prime, it had to be beautiful. But little of it remained. Its body rippled and contracted to a slow rhythm, twitching in preparation of the coming collapse. The pool it was sprawled in drank the light greedily, and she recognized the substance - not blood, but raw ichor of many souls, no longer contained and attempting to flee, even though they could never return to a solid form.
Behind her, she heard Francesca swallow a gasp. She herself spat a foul curse. It was the Adjucha that spoke.
It turned its mask towards them - a once-smooth white pane, without features or distinguishing features, now covered in a network of ridges and cracks, as if had been bashed against a hard surface over and over again, and then they heard its voice.
"No more" it spoke in a voice that was once one, and now a reverberating cacophony of thousands souls begging at once "hunger."
***
Francesca sat at her table, head in her hands, and stared at the pile of notes in frustration. Their mix of wild poetry, trance-writing, occult scrawling and notes made in three different hands was never easy to decipher in the best of times, and right now, with Apacci howling in fury and relief and soot-stained, zoned-out Sung-Sun right behind her, it was downright impossible. Still, because of the very same Apacci, it was also necessary.
"Her name" Emilou screamed, and without looking she could see her face contorting in righteous frustration, she could see her hands flailing wildly at quiet, focused Sung-Sun "her name is Ishi!"
"And?" came the serpent's voice.
"And you fucking put her there, you bloody moron!"
"Emilou, can you please let me rest?"
"You'll rest when the ritual is done!"
There was a pause, and Francesca just sighed, loud enough to draw Sung-Sun's attention. She lifted herself from over the pile of papers and turned to face her now more-powerful sister.
"To answer your questions, dear" she said and raised her hand at Apacci attempting to interrupt. She put enough will into it so that for once, the stag Arrancar listened. "In order. There is an Adjucha in the ritual room because you've managed to almost kill her."
The serpent just glared, eyes wide.
"By accident and it is a long story. Not now" Mila Rosa shrugged. "She is bound so that she does not lash out in hunger. She is under a stabilizing spell so that she does not collapse into a Gillian."
"Just feed her and send her on the way. I will owe her" Sung-Sun sighed. "I don't understand…"
"Obviously you don't, you fu…"
"EMILOU!" Francesca roared again, this time not in anger but in exasperation. "Please!"
"Lovers' spat?" Sung-Sun contributed.
"...Cyan" the lioness sighed. "Can you please, please stop?"
"I'm listening" she nodded, and for a moment, Francesca felt absolutely abysmal about the entire disaster. It was clear from the way how her serpentine sister looked that she had one hell of a day - she was bruised and scratched, she wore a new, beautiful vest that was absolutely unlike her previous style, and her power ebbed and flowed as if it couldn't decide whether to explode or implode. Unfortunately, there really wasn't that much time.
"In short" she said, looked at Apacci to see if she was going to be a pest again, and then continued "we have an Adjuchas that we owe a favour. And the favour she asked was that…"
"...we make her no longer be an Adjuchas" Emilou finished. Francesca glanced back at the notes. Sung-Sun nodded slowly.
"And you" she hissed, her words discovering some previously unknown equilibrium between utter awe and utter bewilderment "obviously explained to her that it is not something we have any idea on how to do, and any potential attempt would likely either cripple or kill her?"
"Yes. She insisted."
The serpent hid her face behind a torn sleeve.
"Oh, no you don't get to do that!" Apacci grunted, stepping closer to her. "It's on you, not us. I've just…"
In her head, Mila Rosa saw the future. It consisted of Apacci being Apacci at Sung-Sun retaliated by being Sung-Sun on Apacci. She saw that wheel turn on forever, and decided that now really was not the the time for that. Therefore, there was a need to devise stratagems.
"Emilou, love of my life" she repeated, as calmly as it was only within her ability. "Can I ask you for something?"
"Love of my life?" the stag Arrancar blinked, momentarily thrown off her angry rant, while Sung-Sun just rolled her eyes at the unbearableness of the phrase.
"Yes" Mila Rosa continued, holding onto her attention. "Have you not promised that Shinigami brat some lessons?"
"What?"
"I think it would do everyone much good if you were to go and give them to him now, or possibly just went for a stroll."
Feint made, she straightened and smiled at her, friendly and warmly.
"Why" she replied with a suspicious quint "are you kicking me out?"
Inside, Francesca sighed with relief. It seemed to be working.
"Because" she explained "you are so worked up that in a moment, you will try to punch Sung-Sun, who is currently way too tired to deal with your shit, and who will have to deal with her own shit in a moment."
The slur, coming from her lips, sealed the deal. For a split-second, Apacci looked as if she had just been punched straight in the face.
"So, if you catch some fresh air, and take your frustrations out on him, it will be beneficial to us, that Ishi, and the ritual ahead. Right?"
After a brief hesitation and a fierce internal struggle, Apacci nodded.
"Right."
Francesca waited a moment after she had left, and then turned back to the pile of notes and rubbed her temples. There was something in the notes - a pattern, a new stanza of a poem - that she could almost read. Perhaps a solution, or a step towards a solution to their problem. But not one she could grasp at alone.
"You will need to help me" she murmured, spreading the papers along the table and trying to arrange them in some order that could make any measure of sense "with all of this."
"You know, I've almost died today" Sung-Sun replied in a casual tone. "I'm sure it can wait."
Several possible responses flickered through Francesca's mind, but instead she opted to take a breath in, then exhale.
"It can't, can it?" the serpent realized, and exhaled too.
"No. Not really."
"So" there was a friendly note in those words, about as trustworthy as your average viper "while I was away, Apacci went out of her mind, apparently convinced that I got eaten by a flock of Gillians or something equally stupid, and in that frenzy of worry and compassion decided to adopt an Adjuchas, only by adopting it I mean to rope us into assisting her with attempting to arrancarize it, without having ever tried or even seriously considered it. It will likely kill it. Only if it does, it will be somehow my fault and Apacci will beat me, only she won't, because I'll Cero her stupid head clean off if she tries. Right?"
"Right."
Behind Francesca, a chair scraped against the tiled floor as Sung-Sun dragged herself closer to the table, elbows pressing a stack of notes down. She leaned in, surveyed the scattered papers and, against all odds, laughed.
"This" her finger poked through a hole in her sleeve, pointing at a series of scawls in Apacci's script at the margin of scroll covered in an old, barely translatable script "is a good starting point. Also?"
She paused for effect.
"Today, I've learned that everyone around me is freaking lunatic."
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The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
It still is in our hearts. Never forget our favorite sharkslugman, and how the shinigami iced him with no remorse.
Sung-Sun has had a very tiring day.
Dont worry, my love of Di Roy is part of me always.
- Location
- PA
...I want to see Harribel's reaction to this chain of events.
"Crap, I knew I shouldn't have let them help Cirucci! Now they've gotten some of that old ambition that comprises the hunger back!"
"YAY! ANOTHER BEASTIAS!"
"Yanno, as nice as this is, we kind of had thing with the number three going on here, I'm the Tres, you three are the Tres Beastias, and now it's all outta wack now that you've apparently picked up a fourth member."
"...Maybe...I should finally see about learning some of this Brujera myself." <-that's a thought Harribel probably is constantly dunking under the waves anyhow.
"Crap, I knew I shouldn't have let them help Cirucci! Now they've gotten some of that old ambition that comprises the hunger back!"
"YAY! ANOTHER BEASTIAS!"
"Yanno, as nice as this is, we kind of had thing with the number three going on here, I'm the Tres, you three are the Tres Beastias, and now it's all outta wack now that you've apparently picked up a fourth member."
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Take heart; Di Roy features in the next update!
- Location
- Australia
@Gargulec, the last update showed us that Sung-Sun is not in a relationship with the other Bestias.
- Location
- america
the lion is the lover, the snake is the sister.
well thats what i got out of it.
- Location
- Canada
Hahaha yes, I need more of Apacci angrily trying to help people she just met.
- Location
- Canada
Has the vote been locked yet? I'm so uncertain that I'm even uncertain as to whether I've already voted or not, but I intend to protest this clearly corrupt and anti-transparency system by posting a vote either way.
[X]Chase Findor down into the depths. See this through to the bitter, bitter end.
[X]Chase Findor down into the depths. See this through to the bitter, bitter end.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
NSMS
Probably evil, unfortunately.
- Location
- A rapidly widening tear in the fabric of reality
Kinruush
Who?
- Location
- USA
Wade Garrett
Just trying to do the right thing
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Mmmkay so.
We have the social code and feudal obligation obsessed person with two battle modes: "Stab a single enemy" and "Goodbye, everything in the same zip code".
We have their consumptive moe shipbait perpetually coughing their bloody lungs up subordinate.
And we have their other gender ambiguous hedonistic troll who is considerably more dangerous than you'd expect subordinate.
Did I just describe Yamamoto, Ukitake and Shunsui or Cirucci, Nemo, and Luppi?
We have the social code and feudal obligation obsessed person with two battle modes: "Stab a single enemy" and "Goodbye, everything in the same zip code".
We have their consumptive moe shipbait perpetually coughing their bloody lungs up subordinate.
And we have their other gender ambiguous hedonistic troll who is considerably more dangerous than you'd expect subordinate.
Did I just describe Yamamoto, Ukitake and Shunsui or Cirucci, Nemo, and Luppi?
- Location
- Australia
Cirucci, Nemo, and Luppi. Shunsui's gender is not ambiguous.