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Now You Feel Like Number None [Bleach Arrancar Quest]

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[ ] The cracked vessel. Aaroniero had a thousand faces to flow in and out when his enemy thought they had him. The Nemo that was not had embraced her sealed self. These are two lessons you can draw upon. At a moment's notice, you may turn your skin to porcelain, and once bound, crack your way out of it, becoming a fleeting shadow before reforming again. Helpful in escaping restraints of all sorts, but regenerating the outer layer of your skin still hurts like hell.

Oh this is so very nice. Especially since Nemo has had quite a bit of trouble with Binding Kidos before.
 
Omicron said:
The nightmare laughed then, its tentacles bursting like mountain peaks through the underground, black-robed towers marching at its command.

Gods do battle against a thing without name. The walls crumble. As an old king had sentenced your friend to die long ago, now too you have sentenced the old king to death. The poetry of it touches you on an intellectual level, but to be honest, you no longer care about such ancient memories.

You did it.

You killed a world.
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Hey, so among the arrancar, if the Vasto Lordes are the royalty, and the adjuchas are the nobility, and the gillians are the merchants and the base Hollows are the serfs...

... does that make this ending the one where international capitalism triumphs over the old order and destroys the old nobility and organised religion and God himself?
 
[ ] The soul's own hunger. All Hollows have known the pain of their soul chain devouring itself. Even those who forgot can be remembered; even those who have not felt it, can be made to see this bleak fate. If you swallow the blood of an enemy, you may cast a spell which causes their soul to rebel against them, gnawing and biting at their flesh. The spell is more potent against those who contain many souls, but is more terrifying to those who have never felt this pain before.

The more I think about it the more I really like this option. It's a solid offensive option. It fucks up Arrancar and it pushes the horror moth agenda versus Shinigami and the Drifters.
 
so, is it just me, or did even serial killer evil Nemo fall for the thunderwitch? she still killed and ate her, but there was reason her boss tried to seduce nemo using Circcui's face. which is all sorts of screwed up.
 
Ok, i really, really want to know what would have happened with the chase findor and flee to living world votes.

I can halfway guess on the findor one, being someone whos more of a fighter and more standing up for herself, less caring about friendship and connection, without falling into utter atrocity like this vision did. Sort of a standard-arrancar mindset, maybe.

But go to living world? Id have voted for it if it had had a chance, and theres so much that could have been. Was there any chance we would have gotten a nemo who was part of team karakura or something, or was this merely a nemo who wanders with no home, no bonds and no interest in the war?
 
So, it seems like cracked vessel is the most obvious choice here. It lets us dodge out of grapples and ignore some attacks, which may help us to mitogate the trouble our crippling causes with dodging. Also, it makes us utterly infuriating to fight.

DodoDude said:
Also, I get the second two options and how they tie into Hollow Knight (Death animation, and the Radiance) , but what is the connection with the first one?
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I'm pretty sure it ends up just being a DoT. An absolutely horrific one that's basically an auto-immune disease of the soul, but a DoT all the same.
 
Axel Fones said:
The more I think about it the more I really like this option. It's a solid offensive option. It fucks up Arrancar and it pushes the horror moth agenda versus Shinigami and the Drifters.
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Problem is Nemo has to swallow a bit of their blood to cast that spell. That might be a bit of difficulty.

I don't think we can reliable bleed people with Bala and Cero...
 
I'm too jazzed about all of the spells to ever vote for one.
Axel Fones said:
This is my least favorite option because Nemo would clearly use one of her eyes and I'm not super interested in facilitating Nemo's blaise attitude to self-harm. Is the black star disruptible/destructible?
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In terms of self-harm, the second spell is the worst, since it rips off all our skin when we use it.
 
Xexilf said:
Ok, i really, really want to know what would have happened with the chase findor and flee to living world votes.

I can halfway guess on the findor one, being someone whos more of a fighter and more standing up for herself, less caring about friendship and connection, without falling into utter atrocity like this vision did. Sort of a standard-arrancar mindset, maybe.

But go to living world? Id have voted for it if it had had a chance, and theres so much that could have been. Was there any chance we would have gotten a nemo who was part of team karakura or something, or was this merely a nemo who wanders with no home, no bonds and no interest in the war?
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I think they were all going to end in some kind of tragedy, because that seems to be the point.
 
The Phoenixian said:
For this reason, I'm always amused when these options come up: Whether by accident or intent, for someone who hasn't played the game, you're pretty good at making things that tie into Hollow Knight.
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That is because I was the one who wrote the original Nemo vote, heavily inspired by Hollow Knight, and this has kind of set the tone for a lot of things. Even if @Omicron isn't writing with the intention of making things like Hollow Knight, he is writing from the same headspace and working in a very similar paradigm.
 
@Omicron While I loved the dream, i do find it a little hard to believe that the quest would have ended up with us being the cause of the destruction if las noches as it exists.
Very disturbing look of Nemo literally changing herself under a monsters guidance.

Not sure which spell to vote for yet.
Can nemo regrow an eye if she plucks one out? If yes, the sun vote may get my pick.
 
Axel Fones said:
[ ] The soul's own hunger. All Hollows have known the pain of their soul chain devouring itself. Even those who forgot can be remembered; even those who have not felt it, can be made to see this bleak fate. If you swallow the blood of an enemy, you may cast a spell which causes their soul to rebel against them, gnawing and biting at their flesh. The spell is more potent against those who contain many souls, but is more terrifying to those who have never felt this pain before.

The more I think about it the more I really like this option. It's a solid offensive option. It fucks up Arrancar and it pushes the horror moth agenda versus Shinigami and the Drifters.
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Soul's own hunger:

Pros: Basically Stain from Hero Academia.
Cons: Basically Stain from Hero Academia.

Though more seriously, I can't help but feel we've already seen a somewhat souped up version of this spell from the bestias during the Arena fight.
 
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That was glorious and terrible and amazing. Aaroniero with addition of XP is a truly scary thing and the contrast between the Nemo that could have been and the one that is fascinating. As ever you do enthralling work @Omicron .
 
Okay, cracked vessel is my favorite here. It covers a weakness we've directly experienced fuck us over before, it's wonderfully thematic, creepy as hell, and it doesn't require us to somehow eat the blood of an enemy, which is harder than it sounds when we rely on vaporizing our foes rather than stabbing.

EDIT: Also I admit, I really, really fucking want to see a manga-reader omake reacting to nemo just busting out of her skin like a fucking cocoon and running for it.
 
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Yeah, I'm starting to come around to the skin shedding move myself. Our kryptonite at this time is someone pinning us down and then murdering us while we can't move.
 
Omicron said:
You brush your torso with a finger, resting it on each spot where you remember the pain of your wounds. They are only the most visible pieces of you to have been taken away. You tore a friend you badly needed from your side, to keep her safe. You threw yourself wholly into the ways of art and music and etiquette, so that there could be life in Hueco Mundo, and all of that study was training you did not have to fight the battles of life and death.
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So I know this is probably wrong but one can hope a little...did Nemo's innards just heal or does the "wounds" just refer to the phantom wounds from her fight with Nega!Nemo?

Although "visible" is a giveaway I guess.
 
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