Post by Darkoda on May 30, 2009 2:35:54 GMT -4
I finally found the interest to make a second character
Hollow
Name: Reina Nightshade (first/last)
Gender: Queen Dragon (Female).
Age: 3100 give or take a couple of decades
Base Type: Vasto Lorde
Reina is a vasto lorde, the top of the food chain among hollows, with all her power packed into a 6’1” frame.
First, her skin itself is a not a standard plain white of lower hollows; instead, it's a very pale cream colour, that would pass for a near albino human in the living world. Her feet are covered in a dark silver carapace running up to her knees, resembling a pair of dragon’s legs, complete with clawed toes. Running along the sides of both legs from the knees up are dark silver scales, which continue past the sides of her stomach to her shoulders, where the run down her arms until they reach her elbows.
Her arms are covered in a similar carapace to the legs that reach to her elbows, each with three claw-like protrusions at the top that resemble arm-guards on gauntlets.
Her back is covered with scales up to her neck, the scales growing thicker at her wings; each with a wing-span of six feet, tipped with a small spike. Of course, as a dragon she’s also sporting a tail, a thick and long one, covered in scales resembling the ones on her arm and leg carapace, the scales at the tip of the tail especially hard, and resembling one of her claws, making it function like another piercing weapon if needed. An odd point about her tail is that its true length is more along the lines of fifteen feet, although she generally keeps it at a more manageable length outside of surprise attacks.
Her mask resembled the top of a dragon’s head, complete with dark silver scales, and a top jaw lines with teeth, with webbed ears, and two horns at the top of her head. The mask itself doesn’t cover the top of her head beyond the horns though. Past the top jaw, scales in the pattern of two claw marks are visible on Reina’s cheeks, and when she speaks, her mouth full of pointed teeth becomes visible. Like a reptile, her iris is thinner and more elongated, a silver colour with white sclera, signifying her returning human characteristics. They have a tendency of glowing pure silver when she's angry or fired up about something, or excited..... yeah they glow a lot. She can control it if she wants to though. Her hair is silver, and quite long, reaching down to her tail easily with some bangs.
Her clothing currently consists of a dark green, backless, tank top, the material resembling the skin on her wings, held in place by straps of fabric that wrap around her neck, and a thicker, scaly carapace that wraps around the sides of her chest, connecting to her wings. Her bottom half is similar; across her waist has a carapace resembling a belt, with the same tough, leathery material stretching down from the belt and both legs, connecting with her leg carapaces at her knees, like a natural pair of jeans.
On that note, her clothing, like her carapaces, wings and tail, are all essentially part of her; just like she can regenerate, they regenerate with her, and with her incredible reishi control, she can manipulate the length of any of them, up to the maximum stated, or simply shortening or removing them when they’re inconvenient.
Personality
Reina is a bit of a puzzle for anyone who wants to try to understand her. On the surface, she's very carefree, taking most things in hueco mundo in stride, always with a smile on her face and that light, playful tone on her voice. In her good moods, she's quite willing to mess around with some other hollows or have a debate about anything she finds interesting.
Even at the surface though, one should notice Reina's voice. It has a childlike quality to it, like someone in late adolescence, but even when she's cheerful, astute people would notice the hint of something more in her voice. People with experience would identify it as the voice of someone who has had something traumatic happen to them, the sound of one who lost their innocence far too soon.
A bit deeper, and you run into her mischievous nature. Reina loves to torment people, especially anyone she finds cute - those people get teased by her as a daily ritual, about half of which will probably have some underlying perversion attached to it. Double meanings and twisting the truth are Reina's forte, and she is capable of sometimes making simple statements sound very, very wrong.
Reina isn't at all just a playful, mischievous girl however. She has a very high sense of pride, to the point that it is incredibly difficult to make her back down from her beliefs unless you can absolutely prove her wrong. She is also far more cunning than one would think at first glance, always analyzing what's going on, and preparing plans to twist the situation to suit her goals. While she isn't bloodthirsty, she will kill anyone she needs to in order to accomplish her goals, no matter who they are. Getting in her way, well people who get in her way have a high tendency to end up very much dead. It takes a lot to anger her, but her anger shows itself in a cold, sadistic fury. She doesn't just kill the source of irritation, she goes through pains to completely crush their spirit, destroying their will to live before granting their desire and ending their lives.
There is a difference between true anger and simple irritation though; annoying her will likely just result in her hitting you, although that might be just as fatal considering that Reina isn't very good at holding back.......fortunately, it's quite hard to actually make Reina angry. Irritation, not so hard, but true anger takes quite a lot.
Reina's interactions with other people are varied. Unlike most hollows, she likes observing (most) human interactions and culture, since they stopped being a viable source of energy to her. Humans create all kinds of cute and fun things and foods to hold her interest. When she gets tired of wandering about hueco mundo she grabs her gigai and heads to the human world, exploring whatever country she ends up in with a childish vigor. Well until she runs into a human that bothers her. Then she kills them, to keep the world free of wastes of life. Considering that she was going to do that to pretty much the entire planet, it's an improvement. While she likes what humans create, she still doesn't particularly like humans themselves. She no longer considers them as a whole as idiots, but she still can't bring herself to like a human on first impression.
How she treats her fellow hollows is dependent on the hollow themselves. The lower class, mindless hollow she doesn't even bother with; unable to hold a simple conversation, focused only on eating. Not to mention that her reiatsu tends to draw them to her like ants and she then has to deal with getting rid of all of them. Really, even if she's in a gigai, if they can't tell when someone is out of their league, they deserve whatever they get. The adjuchas class hollows, she generally doesn't really bother with too much, she will happily talk to them if they appear intelligent, but the more blood-lust driven members find themselves eaten more often than not. She likes wandering around where adjuchas roam every once in a while just to draw out the stupid ones who think they can actually take her, to both improve overall hollow intelligence, and to get an easy power boost. Other Vasto lordes, she actually tends to get along with; there are so few of them, they all practically know each other, and while Reina isn't bloodthirsty, she won't say no to a good fight, and she can actually go crazy on them without worrying about things like killing them, or blasting off limbs.
Arrancar..... they're another matter entirely. Far too many of them seem to get a feeling of superiority that they managed to break off their masks without dying. It didn't help that with her not so tough body, when they attacked, depending on if they were smart about it they could cut her, which somehow made them think they could actually kill her. Obviously, none have succeeded yet. Arrancars are quite filling though, and there was a sadistic joy to be had in showing them just how weak they still were. Shinigami were pretty much the same; annoyingly arrogant, but oh so tasty. It's a rare moment when she runs into a shinigami or arrancar she can actually tolerate, for less to respect or like them.
Reina has a bit of an obsession with cute things. She will either gush over, to latching on to and/or glomping anything or anyone she finds cute, and may make an earnest attempt to take said cute thing to her home. She tries to behave herself when the object of her attention is living. Somewhat anyway.
Reina does not appreciate people getting in the way of her ambitions; this is because she's aiming very high. Reina intends to become a proverbial queen of the hollows, to be the strongest, and to organize the hollows to actually function as a proper power instead of all the bickering within the ranks.
History:
A few millennia ago, somewhere in Greece, in a dank room, a child was born into a life of despair. At the beginning, it was questionable if mother or child were going to live at all, the mother bleeding, and the child born premature, in not the most sterile location available. But after a minute of attempts to breathe, the little girl let out a loud cry - or as loud as you would expect out of a child that was only two minutes or so old. The doctor lifted the child, and wrapped her in some old rags, taking her away. The mother had passed away, leaving behind her debt, and an orphaned child....
Five years later, and the girl was working as a maid of sorts for the same doctor who took her away. To an observer it wasn’t that bad considering how other slaves were treated; at least she had a bed to sleep on and actually got fed everyday as long as she didn’t do something wrong. The doctor’s visitors adored the cute little girl with her long silver hair, even though according to the doctor, she was quite clumsy and injured herself often, thus the bruises covering her body, and she always was just recovering from some sickness that left her looking like little more than a skeleton. If those people could see what happened when no one else was around....well they wouldn’t really care, really anyone who thought about it properly would realise that the doctor’s story was a total lie. Really, just looking at her lifeless eyes would be a clear sign that something was amiss.
The doctor did treat her well enough as long as she met his expectations, but the problem was that no one could meet that guy’s perfectionist standards, for less a malnourished child. And when she displeased him, he of course had to punish her. It was a wonder that he hadn’t managed to kill her yet with all the beatings he gave her. He had put her in charge of cleaning, helping cook, cleaning his shoes, dusting, and whatever else he chose to make her do. The doctor sometimes deliberately gave her a task he knew she would fail just to have an excuse to beat her. Even the other slaves stayed away from her. She had become their master’s favourite punching bag, and while he was focused on her, he wasn’t bothering with them. They used her as a scapegoat, blaming her for their own messes, and letting her take the punishment. The only companions the girl had were the spirits who visited her every night. From an early age she was capable of seeing spirits; it was by their hands that she learnt how to talk and learnt her way around the world, because the doctor certainly didn’t do it. One would think he would consider the child a genius, but it simply made him try harder to break her. Eventually though, she learnt that the less she cried, the less effort he put into beating her. It wasn’t worth the effort if she no longer screamed every time he hit her. The man got tired of disciplining her, and besides working her to the bone, he generally left her alone.
One night, while nursing her latest injury – a black eye for breaking a dish, and learning how to speak some language called English from an old man ghost, she heard a deafening roar. Looking around in interest while the spirit was floating about in a panic, she was quite shocked to see a giant, masked..... thing was all she had to describe it, she would use monster but that was reserved for a certain doctor but back to the subject, the giant animal-thing shot out a tentacle and grabbed the silver haired girl. It looked like it was going to eat her, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel any sorrow over it; so she was going to die, she would just end up as a spirit like her friends anyway. Before she could get eaten though, the tentacle holding her suddenly fell, as though something cut it off. She looked up from her position on the floor to see her saviour, some guy dressed in black robes holding a sword. He then cut the thing’s mask in half, and it broke into a bunch of shiny orbs and floated away. Okay.........
“Umm, who are you?”
The strange man didn’t answer, he just looked at her and muttered something about her crazy reiatsu, whatever that was. Then the man appeared in front of her friend and slammed his sword on her head. The girl watched in shock as her friend vanished before her eyes. Then the man turned to her again.
“I just sent her off to her resting place.” A pause. “Hey kid, want me to save you?”
Save her? The guy was some kind of super spirit so maybe.....maybe she could actually get away from the bastard of a doctor? For the first time, Reina began to feel hope. She nodded her assent, unable to voice her gratitude.
“Tough, like I have time to look out for a little brat. Do me a favour and die already, your damn reiatsu’s so high its drawing in all the hollows here.”
The man walked away, right through the wall, leaving the girl on the ground, staring blankly. The man just gave her hope, then smashed it to pieces. That feeling, it hurt. Hurt more than anything she had ever experienced. She lay on her knees, tears running down her face, just staring at the wall the man walked through.
A fall and an awakening.
After that incident, the girl grew to hate the men clad in black with a fury. Every once in a while, one of those hollows would show up, and the same man who taunted her before would come by and kill it, then complain about her attracting trouble. Her other spirit friends started dwindling as the man kept sending them off somewhere, leaving her alone. She responded by hardening her heart further, and never shed a tear again since that night. That lasted for ten years...
It was on her fifteenth birthday that it happened.
The girl had become basically the doctor’s personal servant, and was having an unusually good day; the bastard doctor didn’t give her much to do for once, and actually left her alone for most of the time. Even when she didn’t organise his clothes to his specifications, he just looked at it, and fixed it himself. Not even a threat. This had her clearly confused. Just what was the man up to?
At night, when she would retire to her room, the doctor called her in to his. On edge, she went in the door, frightened for some reason. Something was telling her that she would regret this night. The doctor walked up to her, dressed in a robe, and instead of hitting her like she was expecting, he moved her away from the door, and closed it, turning the lock. She was visibly nervous now, the man was up to something, but she had no idea what, and that was bad. What could he be up to?
“So what do you want Doctor?”
The man had given up on trying to get her to call him master a long time ago; if he refused to call her by a proper name, then she wouldn’t call him what he wanted either.
“Do you know what day it is today woman?”
Woman? He never called her that. It was little brat when she was younger, then just brat, or depending on his mood much more explicit words. For some reason, she was getting even more nervous, and something in the back of her head was screaming at her to run.
“What’s special about today?”
It was surprising that she able to say that without her voice wavering.
“It’s the day you were born.”
Huh? Did he call her all the way here to tell her it was her birthday? He even not only remembered the day she was born, but told her? Was the man sick or something? The shock must have been visible on her face, because the man started chuckling. Creepy......
“Surprised I remembered that day? Well I remembered, because there was a special birthday present I wanted to give you.”
He started moving toward her, and she instinctively backed away.
“This is the fifteenth year from the day that your mother died giving birth to you. The fifteenth year that you became mine, to pay off your mother’s debt to me.” She was against the wall now, ready to dash around him when he came closer. “But, you need to start earning your keep around here.”
He grabbed her arm when she tried to run past him. The old bastard was faster than he looked, and she didn’t have any chance of breaking his grip.
“What are you talking about; you work me half to death do you not?”
She was seriously considering biting him now but before she came to a decision the old man threw her on the bed. Well it wasn’t the first time he threw her, and she actually had a soft landing for once.... wait why was he undressing? Oh ewww, she didn’t need to see that. The bastard moved with surprising speed yet again, and was on top of her on the bed. He grabbed her by the rag of a shirt he gave her, and pulled her towards him – or tried to anyway, really, it was falling apart anyway, it was a given that he would tear it. He looked pleased about that though.....
“You’ve been working off your mother’s debt; this is how you’re going to work off your own.”
She still didn’t know what he was going on about, but she didn’t want to find out. She slapped him. He backhanded her. Well that was a short fight. He grabbed the rest of her clothes and ripped them off. She kicked him this time, right in the stomach, and this time it looked like it did something. He backhanded her again, and she punched him in the eye. It was the first time she ever fought back against the bastard since she was a child, but desperate times called for desperate measures, even if she knew that he was stronger than her.
“So you want to play woman? Good, it will make this so much more fun.”
It was pretty much a lost fight, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let the bastard walk away unscathed. That black eye was going to go over well with his friends. He did eventually manage to tie her hands to the bed with a sheet though. He leaned in, right next to her ear.
“Scream for me.”
All she remembered past that was pain. She was quite sure she was crying, but screams were one thing that he wasn’t getting out of her. He just managed to find a way to make her hate him even more though, she really didn’t think that was possible but he proved her wrong.
He eventually got off of her sometime later; she lost track of time long ago. She still felt pain, and she was sure that she bleeding, but within her, she felt odd. Normally she was fairly apathetic to the bastard when she wasn’t occupied with hating him, but this time, she felt like there was something within her, straining to escape, wanting her to stop holding it in. The pressure was building on her chest..... it felt like she would break with just one touch.
She felt a hand caress her cheek, as the doctor kissed him on her forehead.
“You kissed me..... a kiss, a supposed act of love...”
A swarm of hollows was gathering at the house, drawn in by the massive spike in reiatsu. It even attracted the attention of a particular hollow, who wanted to see just what was putting so much power into the air...
“At least an act of caring....but as far as you’re concerned, I exist only for you to try to break....”
The shinigami in charge of the area was busy trying to fend off the hollow invasion. There was a lot of them, but they were only weak hollow, nothing that a seated officer couldn’t handle. He was about to release his zanpakuto, when a hand burst through his chest from behind. The figure threw the shinigami off of him, leaving the fool to the masses of hollows. Said hollows ignored the critically wounded shinigami in favour of the building power though. They all charged at the house, ready to tear it apart to claim the powerful soul within....
“I care for you as one cares for a piece of property they own. You belong to me, and if I like seeing you in pain, what are you going to do about it?”
The hollows were all blasted away, along with the majority of the building, from the force of the explosion. The entire area was covered in a malevolent red aura, as a silver haired girl stood in the epicentre. The doctor, always so smug, was shaking in fear, clutching his broken arm. She would have laughed at the irony of the situation if she wasn’t too enveloped in her released hatred to care. She instinctively held out her hand, and a long crimson spike formed. That spike found itself embedded in the doctor’s knee, pinning him to the ground. His screams of anguish as the spike destroyed his kneecap, then burned his flesh, only made a smirk form on her face.
“How does it feel Doctor? You loved dealing pain to me, but you can’t handle a taste of what you put me through.” The scary part was how calm she sounded saying that, like she was commenting on the weather.
She walked up to him, ripping the spike out of his flesh, and gave the bastard a backhand of her own, which sent him flying a few feet before he landed in a bloody heap. She walked up to him casually, and after kicking him onto his stomach, then just kicking him repeatedly, she ran the spear down his back, leaving a burning trail down his spine.
“Can you feel the heat? This spear is burning with a fragment of my hatred for you. Less than a fragment. Imagine being shoved into a container of molten metal. That would feel like an ice-cold bath compared to the intensity of the hatred I have for you. If you took all the dust on the planet, and counted every single speck, it wouldn’t even be a speck itself in the face of how much I hate you, your servants, your friends, your entire family line. Do you know what it’s like to have so much hate for everything that you can destroy a house with just a spark of it?”
She grabbed him by the back of his neck and lifted him with ease, while squeezing hard enough to inflict immense pain. How did she know that? Well the doctor’s screams were a good indication. . He managed to scream louder when she started to push the spike into his rectum.
“Hmm, doesn’t this look familiar? I wonder how you’ll reach to having a rod forced into you and moved about? Mine’s bigger than yours but that’s just minor details.”
There wasn’t much blood. Of course that was more due to the spike cauterizing the many cuts it made than the girl actually being gentle. The doctor was really quite the screamer, and she didn’t know that it was possible for a grown man to cry so much. After a few minutes, she started moving the rod faster; she remembered him speeding up near the end, and finished off by forcing the spike as far into him as she could, which resulted in her performing what was quite likely the first impalement in history. Normal impalements guarantee a slow death, but with the scorching heat of the spike sealing off the pierced blood vessels, he wasn’t going to die anytime soon.
“Goodbye, doctor, I hope that your death is slow and incredibly painful.”
She made it about five feet before her legs gave out, and her body started to acknowledge that it was literally being burnt from the inside out. So this is how she was going to die..... at least she made sure that the bastard doctor was going to die a worse death, even if she couldn’t drag out his pain for fifteen years..... she still didn’t want to die yet though.
The same figure who killed the shinigami calmly walked up to the girl. She lifted herself up, despite the pain, and looked at the new visitor. She looked quite odd, like her entire body was covered in armour, with a cat’s tail, and a cat shaped mask on her face, complete with ears.
“Congratualtions human, your spirit pressure’s out of control, and its ripping your body apart. And you have a bunch of hollows who want to eat your soul waiting outside your barrier. How do you feel?”
“What.....do I care about that?”
“You don’t care about dying a horribly painful death? Man your life must suck.”
“Oh no, I like being bruises battered, bleeding, and feeling like I’m burning to death, my life’s just –“
She never saw the cat girl’s hand move, didn’t even feel it when her head got severed from her body.
The silver haired plus was staring at the cat girl, waiting for her to do something. Said cat girl just stared right back at her, with a large grin on her face, until the silver haired spirit finally gave up and started questioning her.
“Just....who and what are you?” Start with the basics, she was probably another spirit but she had a mask like those hollows. Did that mean she was going to eat her?
“I am Neferi Linderi, Vasto Lorde at your service.”
“Umm...what?”
This was going to be a long night.
Neferi eventually got around to explaining what a Vasto Lorde was, and along with it the entire lineage of hollows. Of course this led to more questions about the spirit world in general, and the newly deceased girl kept Neferi occupied for a few hours explaining everything to her. On her part, the silver haired girl was glad that she finally got someone to explain what was happening to her all the time she was alive, to that explosion she created (she apparently had a massive spirit pressure), and why hollows kept following her around. This of course brought up a question she should have asked a while ago.
“Just why are you helping me anyway?”
“Your reiatsu acts as a magnet to all hollows in the area. I came by to see the fight to devour you. However, your reiatsu’s full of so much malicious intent, the instinct driven minor hollow were too scared to get anywhere near you. I wanted to get to know the person with that kind of power before I decided what to do with you.”
Well that wasn’t what she was expecting to hear, but at least the hollow was honest about her intentions. Her anger was the only thing keeping her from becoming a meal? That worked out well enough for her, since she was nursing a grudge with the world that wasn’t going away until she got even.
“If you aren’t going to kill me..... then will you help me?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“I want to see the world burn.”
“And what do you intend to do about the shinigami?”
“Kill them too.”
“Heh, you and what army?”
“An army of Vasto Lordes. Didn’t you say that the strongest ones can overpower a shinigami captain?”
Neferi looked at the girl, disbelief quite apparent in her posture. The girl didn’t expect to somehow get the strongest hollows to follow her on her mad crusade did she? Maybe she lost her sense of reason in that reiatsu explosion of hers.
“I will simply become a Vasto Lorde myself and gain the power to rule over them. Then I’ll purge this world and let it rebuild with people who aren’t wastes of existence.”
“So, you intend to become queen of the hollows?” Neferi started chuckling at the thought of the kid wearing a crown and leading an army. “You are an odd one, most people would rather not become hollows but you’re rushing to it. Alright then queen, just what is the name of my future ruler?”
“I don’t have a name.” It wasn’t a lie, the bastard doctor never saw it fit to name her, and her unique appearance made it fairly easy for anyone to call her and still reasonably expect her to know that they meant her anyway. Considering the kind of sick mind the guy had, it was probably for the best that she went nameless anyway.
“No name? Then make up one kid.” With that, Neferi jumped into the air, floating towards the few remaining hollows. “You coming little reina?”
“What did you just call me?”
“Reina, queen. If you want to rule, first you got to become a hollow.”
“Reina... I like the sound of that.”
“So....how do I go about becoming a hollow?”
According to Neferi, there were two ways to become a hollow. The first option was to have your soul devoured by one, but in that case, Neferi had no means of knowing exactly where Reina would appear. She would more likely than not become a full hollow immediately, and since she has no loved ones, she isn’t bound to any location. Chances are higher for her to appear in Greece but still, it was a gamble.
Option two was to wait until her soul chain was completely corroded. Reina wouldn’t vanish off to any random location that way, but the chain’s corrosion takes time, and that method also hurts. Of course there was the issue of Reina getting controlled by her instincts when she became a hollow and running rampant, especially since Neferi already told her that she wasn’t going to protect her from her own mistakes. The clear choice in Reina’s mind was to wait for the chain to corrode, after all Neferi probably would keep an eye on her anyway, and she was already used to pain, a little more wouldn’t do anything to her.
Well that’s what she thought until Neferi sped up the process by destroying the rest of her soul chain herself.
It felt like something along the lines of having your heart ripped out of your chest in the beginning, then her logic went to sleep for a bit as her instincts took over. It was quite the show really, without her mind keeping her in control, her hollow body followed her primary desire; genocide. Her rampage lasted for some years, completely destroying entire towns and feasting on the souls of the plus that were released. As her mind started to come back, her attacks become more refined, she beat other hollows into submission, and with her own miniature army, she layed waste to the better part of Greece. The people who actually survived the massacre blamed the monarchy and revolted, other countries saw an opportunity and attacked, and in the end, Reina had managed to cause what would be later known as the Greece Dark Ages.
Five years later, she gained enough control over herself to actually bother to look for Neferi. It wasn’t that hard considering that there weren’t any buildings in her way anymore.....yeah maybe she went a bit overboard. That’s what Neferi told her anyway, while complaining about having to follow her around for five years, and keeping a bunch of shinigami away from her. It was getting an arm cut off by one of the shinigami that managed to wake her up in the end, but not before Reina had surprisingly managed to kill and devour the guy.
“I got an arm cut off? What are you talking about, they’re all there.”
“That would be instant regeneration. All hollows have it but they tend to trade it for more power by the adjuchas stage.”
“Why? It sounds like a useful power to me...”
“If your opponent is stronger than you, regeneration isn’t going to be of any help to you.”
She was keeping it anyway; she liked her limbs attached to her body. As it was, there were so many hollows running rampant, that only third seat class shinigami and up were allowed into the country. Things only got worse when eventually, the supply of plus ran out and the hollows started fighting amongst each other for food. When you’re starving, the hollow with an enormous reiatsu suddenly looks like a buffet even if their reiatsu’s incredibly scary. This benefitted Reina more than anything though; instead of having to go hunt down other hollow for food, they came to her. It never really clicked with the other hollows that her larger reiatsu made her stronger than them, and that suited her just fine.
Eventually, the entire hollow population started to gather in large groups as food became scarcer. With so many hollow together, it was fairly obvious to Neferi what would eventually result, so she spent the last few months drilling into Reina’s head the details of hollow evolution and abilities. She left Reina in the middle of a converging group of hollow with her last message in quite awhile. Come find me in Hueco Mundo when you become an adjuchas. And try not to get eaten.
The conversion was quite the spectacle. All of the hollow, Reina included ended up merging to form a Menos Grande. Unfortunately, becoming a Gillian meant that Reina now had to battle with all of the other minds in order to gain control of the body. This kept her occupied for a few years, leaving the body to run rampant on its own, driven by instinct with no hollow in control. During this time, the body managed to wander off to Hueco Mundo, and spent its time consuming hollows, and battling with other Gillian who tried to eat it. Or something along those lines, there was no way to be sure what was going on when you were only getting glimpses of the body’s actions.
After liberal applications of the mental equivalent of a metal bat to the skull, Reina seized control of the Gillian, and found herself in a forest of quartz pillars. The place was called Menos Forest; the memory gaining aspect of eating a hollow was quite useful for things like this even if she only got general knowledge out of it. Now that she was the one in control, her attacks became far more....aggressive. She decimated other Gillian and normal hollows with a combination of her claws, and her cero – that move was pretty powerful, taking out multiple Gillian in one shot.....she needed to look into that. Maybe she could find time between gorging herself on Gillian and paying visits to random places in the human world to raze a couple of cities. Although from the looks of things, the humans were going to kill off themselves if left on their own. Good, it left her more time to focus on getting stronger.
Eighty years of eating everything that got in her way, and Reina evolved into an adjuchas. She went from the standard lumbering Gillian to a ten foot tall, demonic looking dragon. Or was it a dragonic demon, she wasn’t sure. Either way, a silver dragon, with spikes adorning its back, large claws on her hands and feet, and a long, spiked tail was quite the intimidating sight. And she also had wings, and as soon she learnt how to use them, she was going flying. And she was killing all witnesses to her attempts at flight before then. She didn't need any embarrassing details like that hanging over her head later.
Reina had been an adjuchas for close to two hundred years, this time adding other adjuchas to her diet. The odd thing was that she didn’t even have to go looking for them; apparently they were all drawn to her like a magnet, despite her attempts to keep her reiatsu under control. Granted, it made getting food easier, but still, it wasn’t a good thing to be a giant target to every hollow in the area. Sooner or later, it was going to end up causing her unnecessary trouble. Said trouble came in the form of another adjuchas who looked something like a giant slender feline. If she actually spent time in the human world not blowing it to pieces, she would have known that the hollow was a cheetah. Just like a cheetah, the adjuchas was incredibly fast, and wanted to turn Reina into his next meal.
The fight was basically the cheetah running around, dodging Reina’s attacks and countering, which Reina barely managed to avoid; she was much more flexible than she looked. Eventually, the fight came to a head when the cheetah managed to destroy part of Reina’s wing with a well aimed cero, then used the distraction to rip off her tail with his fangs. Besides the general pain of getting a limb torn off, there was another little detail that Neferi beat into her head about adjuchas and their bodies. Something along the lines of an adjuchas being unable to evolve if they got part of their bodies eaten. Reina was not pleased. To make matters worse, the cheetah picked up on her distress and decided to rub salt in the wound.
“So, demon, what are you going to do now? No tail means no more evolution for you. But don’t worry; I’ll be sure to spare you from becoming a Gillian again. Maybe if you beg enough I’ll even make it quick.”
Reina wasn’t really listening; she was busy trying to come to terms with the abrupt end of her quest. It wasn’t working out well.
Cue second gigantic explosion.
Well this was familiar, this time both Reina and the cheetah were at the bottom of a giant crater, but otherwise, the same glowing crimson reiatsu field was there, and this time, she knew how to use it. The feline was appropriately scared out of his wits, and he just barely managed to avoid a gigantic cero fired at him. The crimson beam ended up carving a gorge through the side of the crater, creating a stream of sand blasting into the sky. Not that he saw that since the sheer force of the blast knocked him away as well, where he was intercepted by a glowing red claw. The sand did little to cushion his fall, especially considering that he got slammed through a quartz pillar first. Those gashes in his body said that the fight was over, and from the look in Reina’s eyes, his death was definitely going to be slow.
“Just.....how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
Despite being little more than a bloody mess, the adjuchas still managed to look at Reina like she was an idiot. “How did you get a cero so powerful, and still keep your regeneration.”
“Huh?” The cat was right; she had her tail back. She forgot about that...... how exactly do you forget you can regenerate?
“Your cero....that blast looked like it came from an arrancar.”
“A what?”
"......How have you managed not to die yet?"
Well it was a fair enough trade; the cheetah explained some more details about hollow live; specifically arrancarization, the espada and Las Noches. He also ended up helping confirming Reina’s suspicions that her cero was stronger than normal – much stronger and showed her that her skin was far too easy to break for her power level. In exchange, Reina didn’t kill him in a horribly painful fashion. It meant that she would likely have to fight the guy again later, but by then she would be ready for him – she still had her demonic reiatsu, now all she needed to do was learn how to call on it at will.
Reina took a break from her hunting spree to actively practice reigning in her massive reiatsu, and working out what powers she had, and how to use them. According to the second cat, all hollows had some sort of special abilities to use to keep them alive; his was his incredible speed and agility. Reina’s seemed to be related to her cero. This was something to bug Neferi about, but she had no idea where she was. How was she supposed to find one hollow in an endless desert anyway?
----------------------------------------------------------------
About 1 mile away from Reina, two Vasto Lordes were having an odd conversation.
“So, you’re watching the adjuchas again Neferi?”
“Of course, I need to keep an eye on my little queen.”
“Since when did you take an interest in anyone, for less some kid with a crappy Pesquisa?”
Neferi couldn’t really deny that claim; really, her little demon child didn’t detect her presence yet, and she’s been watching her for about two centuries. The fact that it took her that long to actually start trying to figure out her ability was also a bit depressing, but she was still learning.
“Since I ran into such an amusing woman.”
“....You sure you aren’t in love with her or something?”
“I don’t know, she is quite the cute girl.”
The other hollow was quite unnerved when Neferi started laughing. Although whether that was because of the implications of that laugh, or that Neferi’s laugh was just evil and creepy, was questionable.
After somewhere along eight hundred years of being an adjuchas, Reina learnt how to wield her reiatsu properly. It really wasn’t that hard, when she actually tried, she was pretty good at sensing the flow of spirit particles. One would think that she would have a powerful Pesquisa, but apparently not; or maybe her ability to estimate power levels was just terrible. Despite that, after a few hundred thousand acts of gorging herself on other hollow, that surge of power she got kept flowing, overtaking her entire body. It felt quite odd to have her giant demon body literally crack apart like a glass sheet then explode. She regained focus at the bottom of the crater she created – really that was getting old now, and first noted her much smaller hands. She quickly found one of the many quartz pillars and did a quick examination of her new look. She was much shorter, back to her human height when she was alive, but she still had her wings and tail. And with the gain of power, she finally noticed a certain reiatsu that’s been following her off and on for near eight hundred years. A very familiar reiatsu.
-----------------------------------
Neferi found herself the target of what was probably the biggest glomp any hollow ever experienced.
“Neferi! Where were you? I’ve been looking all over for you for years! How did you expect me to find you in a desert? What have you been up to?”
There were more questions than that, but between the rate Reina was going at, and the lack of air, Neferi lost track of the questions.
“Reina....you’re squeezing a bit too tight there....can’t breathe....”
She didn’t let go, but at least she stopped trying to crush her lungs.
After their little reunion, Reina did finally get back onto her main goal. First, she had to gather up some of the Vasto Lordes, which was easier said than done. At least with Neferi around, she had a decent tracker, who could actually tell how powerful the hollow was, and if they were Vasto or not.
The first Vasto Lorde laughed himself senseless when Reina proposed her plan. He came around quickly when Neferi asked him to join though. Actually, pretty much all the hollow she met pretty much jumped onboard after Neferi suggested it. They looked a bit nervous about it though, but Reina attributed that to a lack of faith in her. She didn’t blame them; they had no reason to trust her.
After about fifty or so years, Reina had enough of the nomad lifestyle. They were the top class of hollows damnit; they were going to have a roof over their heads if they had to go make one. Reina then proceeded to drag the entire group to a random location in the endless desert and tell them her plan.
“We’re going to build a fortress. I see no reason why we can’t make a decent, at least decently hidden fortress if the arrancar could. Unless you’re telling me that the arrancar are smarter than us?”
Reina certainly didn’t need any lessons on how to manipulate the masses. Everyone who was reluctant before became quite enthusiastic upon the implication that they were inferior to anyone in any way. Ah well, whatever worked. Some of them seemed to have been architects of some sort while alive, and with creative uses of some hollow abilities, and another half century of building, arguing over plans, more arguing.....well they did get it built eventually, an underground palace, rivalling Las Noches in sheer size even though only about a quarter of it was above ground. They didn’t need a bunch of shinigami at their front door every decade. The other Vasto Lorde were pretty pleased with the final result, and they actually started showing Reina some degree of respect.
“And I dub our new city, Las Estrellas! Fitting for the Maestro to reside at the stars isn’t it?”
With living arrangements sorted out, the second thing was to organize the hollow into a cohesive unit. The problem with that was that someone had to take charge for that to happen, and the others didn’t respect her that much, and she wasn’t strong enough to beat them into submission. At this point, Reina turned to Neferi for training techniques. She really should have backed out when she had the chance when Neferi started laughing.....
One hundred years of Neferi’s....guidance, and Reina managed to graduate from her training academy of hell. Well, she managed to survive anyway, which according to Neferi, was not a very common occurrence. That would be a bit less scary if one could tell if Neferi was joking, especially considering that some of her training methods involved throwing her into fights with groups of arrancar and other Vasto Lordes.
Anyway, she was at least a competent fighter now; it was quite annoying losing to her stronger friends every time they fought, since all of them loved to exploit her lack of armour. She wasn’t lacking in stamina, but that wasn’t much help when everyone stabbed you in the lung, or kidney, or stomach, and so on. Really, just because she wouldn’t die wasn’t an excuse to go for the death blows!
“You’re sulking again.”
“You wouldn’t be happy either if people kept using your organs for target practice.”
“What do you expect? Unlike normal people, you don’t go down when you get slashed open. You stitch yourself back together and try to punch a hole through them.”
“Will anyone let that incident die? I did apologize, and he didn’t die.”
“Anyway, you have a visitor. Some arrancar’s looking for you.”
That was new, Reina was quite sure that she didn’t know any arrancar. Every single one she met tended to try to kill her, or irritate her to the point where she ended up fighting them. So who was alive to know her?
“Took you long enough you ditz demon!”
Oh great, him again. Looked like the annoying cat became an annoying broken mask. So he actually made good on his threat to come get revenge someday. Ah well, she might as well get some entertainment out of this.
“Just who are you again?” Three, two, one.
“You....forgot about me....I’LL KILL YOU!!!!”
The guy was still fast, but it was going to take more than a Sonido to hit her. She simply adjusted her tail to catch his zanpakuto inches from her neck.
“I don’t remember you being so temperamental you annoying cat.”
A quick flick of her tail, and said annoying cat-arrancar was then slapped away, making a crash landing into one of the pillars littering the desert.
“I have a name you know.”
“I know, hurry up and release your sword Cheeta, this is already sad as it is.”
The fight wasn’t very exciting, but it was to be expected; a Numeros was not going to stand a chance against a trained Vasto Lorde, no matter how hard they tried. Well certainly not against Reina anyway. He limped away after, with more threats of revenge. In the end, a waste of time. The guy kept coming back every couple of months to fight though. He did get a little better every fight, but then Reina wasn't just lazing about while he was away - her particular ability practically forced her to continuously work on it. Nothing of any particular interest managed to occur for another three hundred years. Then one of the newer members went fooling around in the human world.
It was a peaceful day in Karakura town; nothing was blowing up, and hollows weren’t on the rampage for once. Soul Society wised up, and sent a captain to the town to clean it up before the hollow situation became any worse. Considering that the last shinigami sent on patrol there, a 3rd seat, got killed, no one had any objections to the decision.
This was how the 11th Division captain found himself lazing on a building, thoroughly bored. It had taken barely any time to get rid of all the minor hollows, and he took out the Vasto Lorde that was hanging about without even releasing his shikai. He would have returned to Soul Society already, but the guy said something about his clan avenging his death. It held the promise of getting to fight a real opponent, and he wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity.
A grin formed on his face as he saw a Garganta open in the sky, and unlike the last few hollow he dealt with this past week, the figure stepping out was clearly strong. It looked like the avenger had finally arrived...
Reina glanced at the shinigami and immediately dismissed him; she was here to drag back an idiot member, not play around. Thinking about it, it has been a while since she had destroyed anything in the human world....she hadn’t set foot here since she became a Vasto Lorde.
“Hey shinigami, have you seen a little brat Vasto Lorde running around? About half my height, kinda annoying...”
The captain was staring at her with a blank expression. Did he really think she came here expressly to fight him or something? She had better things to do with her time. Oh, he was laughing about something now.
“That hollow that I killed a couple of days ago? Yeah I saw him. He wasn’t much of a fight.” A manic grin formed on the captain’s face. “How about you, are you going to be any better?”
So, the idiot got himself killed.... “You sound like you were waiting on me to show up so you could kill me.”
“You catch on quick. The Kenpachi of the captains couldn’t be satisfied by such a weak battle; I want to see what the leader of his little clan is capable of.”
The surge of reiatsu put the shinigami captain on guard; he immediately released his limiter and prepared himself, attributing it to saving time in the face of a supposedly powerful opponent. It was not because he was actually frightened by the sheer killing intent within the hollow’s reiatsu. The glowing silver eyes wasn’t cutting it either.
“Fine then, if you want to die so much....” The hollow was fast, but the captain was faster, stopping her hand from piercing through his skull with his zanpakuto. He must have gotten a bit careless though, because he didn’t see the other hand, curled into a fist, hit him in the face. The impact itself sent him back a few feet, but it was nothing impressive. He might need shikai, but nothing beyond that....
“Release your zanpakuto already you arrogant idiot, if I’m going to fight you, at least fight properly.”
“Why would I waste my zanpakuto on a weakling like –“
He had to cut his retort short to avoid a cero. A hollow using a cero was to be expected, but hers packed quite the punch considering that she didn’t charge it. It looked like he really would need to release.
“Instant cero with such power? You might be worth my time after all! Surge, Katamari!”
His zanpakuto didn’t have any aesthetic changes, but the blue lightning curving around the blade was hard to miss. The kenpachi vanished within a shunpo, swinging the lightning laced blade at the hollow. She deflected the first few blows with the spikes on her arms, but one of his attacks managed to make a light cut on her stomach. While that itself was a minor wound, the charge sent through his blade did its job, stunning the hollow. He followed up with a vicious vertical swing, aiming to cleave her in two. He would have succeeded too, if she didn’t bend out of the way in time. She was a speedy one.....
Reina was easily avoiding the captain’s mad swings by twisting her body out of the path of his swings. She had far too much practice avoiding zanpakuto slashes to be hit so easily, although that hit she got did sting. It also healed right after, making it fairly pointless in the end. The captain was visibly getting annoyed, and sped up his swings, one of which managed to hit her in the shoulder. The look of triumph on the captain’s face was short lived however, as Reina grabbed on to his arm, ignoring the shock from his blade, and the captain noticed the silver glow on her other hand just before being engulfed in a fully charged cero.
The silver beam lit up the midnight sky, probably alerting every spiritually aware person in the city that a fight was going on above their heads. Reina glanced at the captain with a neutral expression, her shoulder wound already healing. The captain was quite durable; he took her cero at point blank range and he was still in relatively one piece. He was covered in first and second degree burns, but still capable of fighting.
The captain was panting; he had barely managed to focus his reishi enough to withstand the force of the blast, although it still wounded him. His face was no longer one of manic pleasure, but of focus; he seemed to finally realise that if he didn’t take Reina seriously that he was going to die here.
“Hollow...you are quite the strong one; it looks like I have to put out some effort to beat you. What is your name?”
“Commandante of the Maestro, Reina Nightshade.”
“Eleventh Division captain, Kenpachi Raiza. Now, it’s time to end this....Bankai.”
A massive surge of reiatsu shot out from Raiza, completely hiding him from view. When the dust cleared, the only visible change in him was that his zanpakuto was now yellow, and shaped like a lightning bolt. Reina could feel how much stronger he was now though, and already had a spike in hand to defend herself.
She was barely able to block the swing for her head, and he was gone again before she could counter. It seemed that his bankai gave him a speed boost. He came in swinging again, and it was all she could do to stop his attack from hitting anything vital. As it was, she was getting covered in small cuts, and his blade still had that electric effect to it.
Raiza’s smirk returned full force when he saw that he had the advantage. Jumping away, he swung his sword in an arc and shot out an arc of lightning. Reina simply leapt out of the way, and charged at Raiza, only to have to sonido out of the way just before the same lightning attack struck her from behind. Raiza chose this time to send another wave of lightning at her, but Reina was having none of it, knocking out both streams with a few balas. The spikes of her back started glowing, and unleashed a barrage of bala on Raiza, pushing him to evade the silver shots, which were tearing the city apart. Grunting in annoyance, Raiza charged some reiatsu in his zanpakuto, and released an electric charged wave, slicing through the balas and forcing Reina to block it with her wings. Seizing the opportunity, Raiza shunpo’d behind Reina, releasing another of his energy waves right into her back.
The resulting explosion pushed Raiza back, and sent Reina spiralling towards the ground, bleeding and her body numbed by the current.
“Damnit....what an annoying shinigami.”
Raiza dived after her, ready to try cutting her in two in midair, only to be greeted by a cero. Before the beam even dissipated, Reina twisted her body, throwing the spike in her hand to the right. Her 7 foot spike broke into a hundred 4 foot spikes, covering a few meters and intercepting Raiza, just as he came out of shunpo. The reiatsu spikes tore through his body, the captain only able to shield his face and chest from the shower.
Raiza glared at the hollow, multiple punctures covering his body and leaking out blood. He was lucky that none of the spikes hit an artery, but he was still bleeding out, while Reina’s wounds were closing up. The battle was taking its toll on her too though, her breaths becoming heavier. She met his glare with even more ferocity, and stretched her hand out to the side. Raiza was on guard for any more of her attacks, when her spirit pressure became much heavier in the air, focusing around her body.
“It’s time to end this, shinigami.”
Reina’s entire body lit up in silver reiatsu, wrapping itself around her and shooting off in lightning shaped sparks. The sheer force of the explosion had him feeling the amount of pressure that she was putting in the air, yet all of that reiatsu was only flowing around her, even the stray sparks curving back around her body.
Raiza was staring at Reina, trying to figure out just what she was doing, not taking his eyes off her. It was that, combined with him being a captain that kept his head on his shoulders as he barely dodged a reiatsu coated claw. He back-flipped to avoid another swipe, and just managed to get his zanpakuto up to defend against her attempt to stab her hand through his chest like a dagger. The sheer force of the blow did send them flying into a building though. The look in his eyes was clearly asking just how Reina suddenly got so strong, while his left hand flew up to catch Reina’s other hand from stabbing through his face. A small struggle for dominance ensued, until Raiza started gritting his teeth in pain. It probably had something to do with the sharp stinger protruding from his chest.
Blood was already seeping from his mouth, as his eyes started to glaze over. “Congratulations, you.......won hollow. I...at least died......to someone strong.”
Those were Raiza’s last words before his grip on both his zanpakuto and Reina’s hand went limp, the blade reverting to its sealed state before hitting the ground. While his face oddly showed satisfaction, Reina’s expression just as oddly showed confusion. She was expecting anger and hatred, not for him to be at peace.
What an odd person.....
Still, she devoured his soul anyway; no point in passing up on that kind of power.
((Word Limit; Continued in next post))
Hollow
General Info
Name: Reina Nightshade (first/last)
Gender: Queen Dragon (Female).
Age: 3100 give or take a couple of decades
Base Type: Vasto Lorde
Reina is a vasto lorde, the top of the food chain among hollows, with all her power packed into a 6’1” frame.
First, her skin itself is a not a standard plain white of lower hollows; instead, it's a very pale cream colour, that would pass for a near albino human in the living world. Her feet are covered in a dark silver carapace running up to her knees, resembling a pair of dragon’s legs, complete with clawed toes. Running along the sides of both legs from the knees up are dark silver scales, which continue past the sides of her stomach to her shoulders, where the run down her arms until they reach her elbows.
Her arms are covered in a similar carapace to the legs that reach to her elbows, each with three claw-like protrusions at the top that resemble arm-guards on gauntlets.
Her back is covered with scales up to her neck, the scales growing thicker at her wings; each with a wing-span of six feet, tipped with a small spike. Of course, as a dragon she’s also sporting a tail, a thick and long one, covered in scales resembling the ones on her arm and leg carapace, the scales at the tip of the tail especially hard, and resembling one of her claws, making it function like another piercing weapon if needed. An odd point about her tail is that its true length is more along the lines of fifteen feet, although she generally keeps it at a more manageable length outside of surprise attacks.
Her mask resembled the top of a dragon’s head, complete with dark silver scales, and a top jaw lines with teeth, with webbed ears, and two horns at the top of her head. The mask itself doesn’t cover the top of her head beyond the horns though. Past the top jaw, scales in the pattern of two claw marks are visible on Reina’s cheeks, and when she speaks, her mouth full of pointed teeth becomes visible. Like a reptile, her iris is thinner and more elongated, a silver colour with white sclera, signifying her returning human characteristics. They have a tendency of glowing pure silver when she's angry or fired up about something, or excited..... yeah they glow a lot. She can control it if she wants to though. Her hair is silver, and quite long, reaching down to her tail easily with some bangs.
Her clothing currently consists of a dark green, backless, tank top, the material resembling the skin on her wings, held in place by straps of fabric that wrap around her neck, and a thicker, scaly carapace that wraps around the sides of her chest, connecting to her wings. Her bottom half is similar; across her waist has a carapace resembling a belt, with the same tough, leathery material stretching down from the belt and both legs, connecting with her leg carapaces at her knees, like a natural pair of jeans.
On that note, her clothing, like her carapaces, wings and tail, are all essentially part of her; just like she can regenerate, they regenerate with her, and with her incredible reishi control, she can manipulate the length of any of them, up to the maximum stated, or simply shortening or removing them when they’re inconvenient.
Personality
Reina is a bit of a puzzle for anyone who wants to try to understand her. On the surface, she's very carefree, taking most things in hueco mundo in stride, always with a smile on her face and that light, playful tone on her voice. In her good moods, she's quite willing to mess around with some other hollows or have a debate about anything she finds interesting.
Even at the surface though, one should notice Reina's voice. It has a childlike quality to it, like someone in late adolescence, but even when she's cheerful, astute people would notice the hint of something more in her voice. People with experience would identify it as the voice of someone who has had something traumatic happen to them, the sound of one who lost their innocence far too soon.
A bit deeper, and you run into her mischievous nature. Reina loves to torment people, especially anyone she finds cute - those people get teased by her as a daily ritual, about half of which will probably have some underlying perversion attached to it. Double meanings and twisting the truth are Reina's forte, and she is capable of sometimes making simple statements sound very, very wrong.
Reina isn't at all just a playful, mischievous girl however. She has a very high sense of pride, to the point that it is incredibly difficult to make her back down from her beliefs unless you can absolutely prove her wrong. She is also far more cunning than one would think at first glance, always analyzing what's going on, and preparing plans to twist the situation to suit her goals. While she isn't bloodthirsty, she will kill anyone she needs to in order to accomplish her goals, no matter who they are. Getting in her way, well people who get in her way have a high tendency to end up very much dead. It takes a lot to anger her, but her anger shows itself in a cold, sadistic fury. She doesn't just kill the source of irritation, she goes through pains to completely crush their spirit, destroying their will to live before granting their desire and ending their lives.
There is a difference between true anger and simple irritation though; annoying her will likely just result in her hitting you, although that might be just as fatal considering that Reina isn't very good at holding back.......fortunately, it's quite hard to actually make Reina angry. Irritation, not so hard, but true anger takes quite a lot.
Reina's interactions with other people are varied. Unlike most hollows, she likes observing (most) human interactions and culture, since they stopped being a viable source of energy to her. Humans create all kinds of cute and fun things and foods to hold her interest. When she gets tired of wandering about hueco mundo she grabs her gigai and heads to the human world, exploring whatever country she ends up in with a childish vigor. Well until she runs into a human that bothers her. Then she kills them, to keep the world free of wastes of life. Considering that she was going to do that to pretty much the entire planet, it's an improvement. While she likes what humans create, she still doesn't particularly like humans themselves. She no longer considers them as a whole as idiots, but she still can't bring herself to like a human on first impression.
How she treats her fellow hollows is dependent on the hollow themselves. The lower class, mindless hollow she doesn't even bother with; unable to hold a simple conversation, focused only on eating. Not to mention that her reiatsu tends to draw them to her like ants and she then has to deal with getting rid of all of them. Really, even if she's in a gigai, if they can't tell when someone is out of their league, they deserve whatever they get. The adjuchas class hollows, she generally doesn't really bother with too much, she will happily talk to them if they appear intelligent, but the more blood-lust driven members find themselves eaten more often than not. She likes wandering around where adjuchas roam every once in a while just to draw out the stupid ones who think they can actually take her, to both improve overall hollow intelligence, and to get an easy power boost. Other Vasto lordes, she actually tends to get along with; there are so few of them, they all practically know each other, and while Reina isn't bloodthirsty, she won't say no to a good fight, and she can actually go crazy on them without worrying about things like killing them, or blasting off limbs.
Arrancar..... they're another matter entirely. Far too many of them seem to get a feeling of superiority that they managed to break off their masks without dying. It didn't help that with her not so tough body, when they attacked, depending on if they were smart about it they could cut her, which somehow made them think they could actually kill her. Obviously, none have succeeded yet. Arrancars are quite filling though, and there was a sadistic joy to be had in showing them just how weak they still were. Shinigami were pretty much the same; annoyingly arrogant, but oh so tasty. It's a rare moment when she runs into a shinigami or arrancar she can actually tolerate, for less to respect or like them.
Reina has a bit of an obsession with cute things. She will either gush over, to latching on to and/or glomping anything or anyone she finds cute, and may make an earnest attempt to take said cute thing to her home. She tries to behave herself when the object of her attention is living. Somewhat anyway.
Reina does not appreciate people getting in the way of her ambitions; this is because she's aiming very high. Reina intends to become a proverbial queen of the hollows, to be the strongest, and to organize the hollows to actually function as a proper power instead of all the bickering within the ranks.
History:
Life...sort of.
[/i]A few millennia ago, somewhere in Greece, in a dank room, a child was born into a life of despair. At the beginning, it was questionable if mother or child were going to live at all, the mother bleeding, and the child born premature, in not the most sterile location available. But after a minute of attempts to breathe, the little girl let out a loud cry - or as loud as you would expect out of a child that was only two minutes or so old. The doctor lifted the child, and wrapped her in some old rags, taking her away. The mother had passed away, leaving behind her debt, and an orphaned child....
Five years later, and the girl was working as a maid of sorts for the same doctor who took her away. To an observer it wasn’t that bad considering how other slaves were treated; at least she had a bed to sleep on and actually got fed everyday as long as she didn’t do something wrong. The doctor’s visitors adored the cute little girl with her long silver hair, even though according to the doctor, she was quite clumsy and injured herself often, thus the bruises covering her body, and she always was just recovering from some sickness that left her looking like little more than a skeleton. If those people could see what happened when no one else was around....well they wouldn’t really care, really anyone who thought about it properly would realise that the doctor’s story was a total lie. Really, just looking at her lifeless eyes would be a clear sign that something was amiss.
The doctor did treat her well enough as long as she met his expectations, but the problem was that no one could meet that guy’s perfectionist standards, for less a malnourished child. And when she displeased him, he of course had to punish her. It was a wonder that he hadn’t managed to kill her yet with all the beatings he gave her. He had put her in charge of cleaning, helping cook, cleaning his shoes, dusting, and whatever else he chose to make her do. The doctor sometimes deliberately gave her a task he knew she would fail just to have an excuse to beat her. Even the other slaves stayed away from her. She had become their master’s favourite punching bag, and while he was focused on her, he wasn’t bothering with them. They used her as a scapegoat, blaming her for their own messes, and letting her take the punishment. The only companions the girl had were the spirits who visited her every night. From an early age she was capable of seeing spirits; it was by their hands that she learnt how to talk and learnt her way around the world, because the doctor certainly didn’t do it. One would think he would consider the child a genius, but it simply made him try harder to break her. Eventually though, she learnt that the less she cried, the less effort he put into beating her. It wasn’t worth the effort if she no longer screamed every time he hit her. The man got tired of disciplining her, and besides working her to the bone, he generally left her alone.
Interlude: The men in black
[/center]One night, while nursing her latest injury – a black eye for breaking a dish, and learning how to speak some language called English from an old man ghost, she heard a deafening roar. Looking around in interest while the spirit was floating about in a panic, she was quite shocked to see a giant, masked..... thing was all she had to describe it, she would use monster but that was reserved for a certain doctor but back to the subject, the giant animal-thing shot out a tentacle and grabbed the silver haired girl. It looked like it was going to eat her, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel any sorrow over it; so she was going to die, she would just end up as a spirit like her friends anyway. Before she could get eaten though, the tentacle holding her suddenly fell, as though something cut it off. She looked up from her position on the floor to see her saviour, some guy dressed in black robes holding a sword. He then cut the thing’s mask in half, and it broke into a bunch of shiny orbs and floated away. Okay.........
“Umm, who are you?”
The strange man didn’t answer, he just looked at her and muttered something about her crazy reiatsu, whatever that was. Then the man appeared in front of her friend and slammed his sword on her head. The girl watched in shock as her friend vanished before her eyes. Then the man turned to her again.
“I just sent her off to her resting place.” A pause. “Hey kid, want me to save you?”
Save her? The guy was some kind of super spirit so maybe.....maybe she could actually get away from the bastard of a doctor? For the first time, Reina began to feel hope. She nodded her assent, unable to voice her gratitude.
“Tough, like I have time to look out for a little brat. Do me a favour and die already, your damn reiatsu’s so high its drawing in all the hollows here.”
The man walked away, right through the wall, leaving the girl on the ground, staring blankly. The man just gave her hope, then smashed it to pieces. That feeling, it hurt. Hurt more than anything she had ever experienced. She lay on her knees, tears running down her face, just staring at the wall the man walked through.
A fall and an awakening.
After that incident, the girl grew to hate the men clad in black with a fury. Every once in a while, one of those hollows would show up, and the same man who taunted her before would come by and kill it, then complain about her attracting trouble. Her other spirit friends started dwindling as the man kept sending them off somewhere, leaving her alone. She responded by hardening her heart further, and never shed a tear again since that night. That lasted for ten years...
It was on her fifteenth birthday that it happened.
The girl had become basically the doctor’s personal servant, and was having an unusually good day; the bastard doctor didn’t give her much to do for once, and actually left her alone for most of the time. Even when she didn’t organise his clothes to his specifications, he just looked at it, and fixed it himself. Not even a threat. This had her clearly confused. Just what was the man up to?
At night, when she would retire to her room, the doctor called her in to his. On edge, she went in the door, frightened for some reason. Something was telling her that she would regret this night. The doctor walked up to her, dressed in a robe, and instead of hitting her like she was expecting, he moved her away from the door, and closed it, turning the lock. She was visibly nervous now, the man was up to something, but she had no idea what, and that was bad. What could he be up to?
“So what do you want Doctor?”
The man had given up on trying to get her to call him master a long time ago; if he refused to call her by a proper name, then she wouldn’t call him what he wanted either.
“Do you know what day it is today woman?”
Woman? He never called her that. It was little brat when she was younger, then just brat, or depending on his mood much more explicit words. For some reason, she was getting even more nervous, and something in the back of her head was screaming at her to run.
“What’s special about today?”
It was surprising that she able to say that without her voice wavering.
“It’s the day you were born.”
Huh? Did he call her all the way here to tell her it was her birthday? He even not only remembered the day she was born, but told her? Was the man sick or something? The shock must have been visible on her face, because the man started chuckling. Creepy......
“Surprised I remembered that day? Well I remembered, because there was a special birthday present I wanted to give you.”
He started moving toward her, and she instinctively backed away.
“This is the fifteenth year from the day that your mother died giving birth to you. The fifteenth year that you became mine, to pay off your mother’s debt to me.” She was against the wall now, ready to dash around him when he came closer. “But, you need to start earning your keep around here.”
He grabbed her arm when she tried to run past him. The old bastard was faster than he looked, and she didn’t have any chance of breaking his grip.
“What are you talking about; you work me half to death do you not?”
She was seriously considering biting him now but before she came to a decision the old man threw her on the bed. Well it wasn’t the first time he threw her, and she actually had a soft landing for once.... wait why was he undressing? Oh ewww, she didn’t need to see that. The bastard moved with surprising speed yet again, and was on top of her on the bed. He grabbed her by the rag of a shirt he gave her, and pulled her towards him – or tried to anyway, really, it was falling apart anyway, it was a given that he would tear it. He looked pleased about that though.....
“You’ve been working off your mother’s debt; this is how you’re going to work off your own.”
She still didn’t know what he was going on about, but she didn’t want to find out. She slapped him. He backhanded her. Well that was a short fight. He grabbed the rest of her clothes and ripped them off. She kicked him this time, right in the stomach, and this time it looked like it did something. He backhanded her again, and she punched him in the eye. It was the first time she ever fought back against the bastard since she was a child, but desperate times called for desperate measures, even if she knew that he was stronger than her.
“So you want to play woman? Good, it will make this so much more fun.”
It was pretty much a lost fight, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let the bastard walk away unscathed. That black eye was going to go over well with his friends. He did eventually manage to tie her hands to the bed with a sheet though. He leaned in, right next to her ear.
“Scream for me.”
All she remembered past that was pain. She was quite sure she was crying, but screams were one thing that he wasn’t getting out of her. He just managed to find a way to make her hate him even more though, she really didn’t think that was possible but he proved her wrong.
He eventually got off of her sometime later; she lost track of time long ago. She still felt pain, and she was sure that she bleeding, but within her, she felt odd. Normally she was fairly apathetic to the bastard when she wasn’t occupied with hating him, but this time, she felt like there was something within her, straining to escape, wanting her to stop holding it in. The pressure was building on her chest..... it felt like she would break with just one touch.
She felt a hand caress her cheek, as the doctor kissed him on her forehead.
“You kissed me..... a kiss, a supposed act of love...”
A swarm of hollows was gathering at the house, drawn in by the massive spike in reiatsu. It even attracted the attention of a particular hollow, who wanted to see just what was putting so much power into the air...
“At least an act of caring....but as far as you’re concerned, I exist only for you to try to break....”
The shinigami in charge of the area was busy trying to fend off the hollow invasion. There was a lot of them, but they were only weak hollow, nothing that a seated officer couldn’t handle. He was about to release his zanpakuto, when a hand burst through his chest from behind. The figure threw the shinigami off of him, leaving the fool to the masses of hollows. Said hollows ignored the critically wounded shinigami in favour of the building power though. They all charged at the house, ready to tear it apart to claim the powerful soul within....
“I care for you as one cares for a piece of property they own. You belong to me, and if I like seeing you in pain, what are you going to do about it?”
The hollows were all blasted away, along with the majority of the building, from the force of the explosion. The entire area was covered in a malevolent red aura, as a silver haired girl stood in the epicentre. The doctor, always so smug, was shaking in fear, clutching his broken arm. She would have laughed at the irony of the situation if she wasn’t too enveloped in her released hatred to care. She instinctively held out her hand, and a long crimson spike formed. That spike found itself embedded in the doctor’s knee, pinning him to the ground. His screams of anguish as the spike destroyed his kneecap, then burned his flesh, only made a smirk form on her face.
“How does it feel Doctor? You loved dealing pain to me, but you can’t handle a taste of what you put me through.” The scary part was how calm she sounded saying that, like she was commenting on the weather.
She walked up to him, ripping the spike out of his flesh, and gave the bastard a backhand of her own, which sent him flying a few feet before he landed in a bloody heap. She walked up to him casually, and after kicking him onto his stomach, then just kicking him repeatedly, she ran the spear down his back, leaving a burning trail down his spine.
“Can you feel the heat? This spear is burning with a fragment of my hatred for you. Less than a fragment. Imagine being shoved into a container of molten metal. That would feel like an ice-cold bath compared to the intensity of the hatred I have for you. If you took all the dust on the planet, and counted every single speck, it wouldn’t even be a speck itself in the face of how much I hate you, your servants, your friends, your entire family line. Do you know what it’s like to have so much hate for everything that you can destroy a house with just a spark of it?”
She grabbed him by the back of his neck and lifted him with ease, while squeezing hard enough to inflict immense pain. How did she know that? Well the doctor’s screams were a good indication. . He managed to scream louder when she started to push the spike into his rectum.
“Hmm, doesn’t this look familiar? I wonder how you’ll reach to having a rod forced into you and moved about? Mine’s bigger than yours but that’s just minor details.”
There wasn’t much blood. Of course that was more due to the spike cauterizing the many cuts it made than the girl actually being gentle. The doctor was really quite the screamer, and she didn’t know that it was possible for a grown man to cry so much. After a few minutes, she started moving the rod faster; she remembered him speeding up near the end, and finished off by forcing the spike as far into him as she could, which resulted in her performing what was quite likely the first impalement in history. Normal impalements guarantee a slow death, but with the scorching heat of the spike sealing off the pierced blood vessels, he wasn’t going to die anytime soon.
“Goodbye, doctor, I hope that your death is slow and incredibly painful.”
She made it about five feet before her legs gave out, and her body started to acknowledge that it was literally being burnt from the inside out. So this is how she was going to die..... at least she made sure that the bastard doctor was going to die a worse death, even if she couldn’t drag out his pain for fifteen years..... she still didn’t want to die yet though.
The same figure who killed the shinigami calmly walked up to the girl. She lifted herself up, despite the pain, and looked at the new visitor. She looked quite odd, like her entire body was covered in armour, with a cat’s tail, and a cat shaped mask on her face, complete with ears.
“Congratualtions human, your spirit pressure’s out of control, and its ripping your body apart. And you have a bunch of hollows who want to eat your soul waiting outside your barrier. How do you feel?”
“What.....do I care about that?”
“You don’t care about dying a horribly painful death? Man your life must suck.”
“Oh no, I like being bruises battered, bleeding, and feeling like I’m burning to death, my life’s just –“
She never saw the cat girl’s hand move, didn’t even feel it when her head got severed from her body.
A name and a purpose.
The silver haired plus was staring at the cat girl, waiting for her to do something. Said cat girl just stared right back at her, with a large grin on her face, until the silver haired spirit finally gave up and started questioning her.
“Just....who and what are you?” Start with the basics, she was probably another spirit but she had a mask like those hollows. Did that mean she was going to eat her?
“I am Neferi Linderi, Vasto Lorde at your service.”
“Umm...what?”
This was going to be a long night.
Neferi eventually got around to explaining what a Vasto Lorde was, and along with it the entire lineage of hollows. Of course this led to more questions about the spirit world in general, and the newly deceased girl kept Neferi occupied for a few hours explaining everything to her. On her part, the silver haired girl was glad that she finally got someone to explain what was happening to her all the time she was alive, to that explosion she created (she apparently had a massive spirit pressure), and why hollows kept following her around. This of course brought up a question she should have asked a while ago.
“Just why are you helping me anyway?”
“Your reiatsu acts as a magnet to all hollows in the area. I came by to see the fight to devour you. However, your reiatsu’s full of so much malicious intent, the instinct driven minor hollow were too scared to get anywhere near you. I wanted to get to know the person with that kind of power before I decided what to do with you.”
Well that wasn’t what she was expecting to hear, but at least the hollow was honest about her intentions. Her anger was the only thing keeping her from becoming a meal? That worked out well enough for her, since she was nursing a grudge with the world that wasn’t going away until she got even.
“If you aren’t going to kill me..... then will you help me?”
“Depends on what you want.”
“I want to see the world burn.”
“And what do you intend to do about the shinigami?”
“Kill them too.”
“Heh, you and what army?”
“An army of Vasto Lordes. Didn’t you say that the strongest ones can overpower a shinigami captain?”
Neferi looked at the girl, disbelief quite apparent in her posture. The girl didn’t expect to somehow get the strongest hollows to follow her on her mad crusade did she? Maybe she lost her sense of reason in that reiatsu explosion of hers.
“I will simply become a Vasto Lorde myself and gain the power to rule over them. Then I’ll purge this world and let it rebuild with people who aren’t wastes of existence.”
“So, you intend to become queen of the hollows?” Neferi started chuckling at the thought of the kid wearing a crown and leading an army. “You are an odd one, most people would rather not become hollows but you’re rushing to it. Alright then queen, just what is the name of my future ruler?”
“I don’t have a name.” It wasn’t a lie, the bastard doctor never saw it fit to name her, and her unique appearance made it fairly easy for anyone to call her and still reasonably expect her to know that they meant her anyway. Considering the kind of sick mind the guy had, it was probably for the best that she went nameless anyway.
“No name? Then make up one kid.” With that, Neferi jumped into the air, floating towards the few remaining hollows. “You coming little reina?”
“What did you just call me?”
“Reina, queen. If you want to rule, first you got to become a hollow.”
“Reina... I like the sound of that.”
Hollow Time
“So....how do I go about becoming a hollow?”
According to Neferi, there were two ways to become a hollow. The first option was to have your soul devoured by one, but in that case, Neferi had no means of knowing exactly where Reina would appear. She would more likely than not become a full hollow immediately, and since she has no loved ones, she isn’t bound to any location. Chances are higher for her to appear in Greece but still, it was a gamble.
Option two was to wait until her soul chain was completely corroded. Reina wouldn’t vanish off to any random location that way, but the chain’s corrosion takes time, and that method also hurts. Of course there was the issue of Reina getting controlled by her instincts when she became a hollow and running rampant, especially since Neferi already told her that she wasn’t going to protect her from her own mistakes. The clear choice in Reina’s mind was to wait for the chain to corrode, after all Neferi probably would keep an eye on her anyway, and she was already used to pain, a little more wouldn’t do anything to her.
Well that’s what she thought until Neferi sped up the process by destroying the rest of her soul chain herself.
It felt like something along the lines of having your heart ripped out of your chest in the beginning, then her logic went to sleep for a bit as her instincts took over. It was quite the show really, without her mind keeping her in control, her hollow body followed her primary desire; genocide. Her rampage lasted for some years, completely destroying entire towns and feasting on the souls of the plus that were released. As her mind started to come back, her attacks become more refined, she beat other hollows into submission, and with her own miniature army, she layed waste to the better part of Greece. The people who actually survived the massacre blamed the monarchy and revolted, other countries saw an opportunity and attacked, and in the end, Reina had managed to cause what would be later known as the Greece Dark Ages.
Five years later, she gained enough control over herself to actually bother to look for Neferi. It wasn’t that hard considering that there weren’t any buildings in her way anymore.....yeah maybe she went a bit overboard. That’s what Neferi told her anyway, while complaining about having to follow her around for five years, and keeping a bunch of shinigami away from her. It was getting an arm cut off by one of the shinigami that managed to wake her up in the end, but not before Reina had surprisingly managed to kill and devour the guy.
“I got an arm cut off? What are you talking about, they’re all there.”
“That would be instant regeneration. All hollows have it but they tend to trade it for more power by the adjuchas stage.”
“Why? It sounds like a useful power to me...”
“If your opponent is stronger than you, regeneration isn’t going to be of any help to you.”
She was keeping it anyway; she liked her limbs attached to her body. As it was, there were so many hollows running rampant, that only third seat class shinigami and up were allowed into the country. Things only got worse when eventually, the supply of plus ran out and the hollows started fighting amongst each other for food. When you’re starving, the hollow with an enormous reiatsu suddenly looks like a buffet even if their reiatsu’s incredibly scary. This benefitted Reina more than anything though; instead of having to go hunt down other hollow for food, they came to her. It never really clicked with the other hollows that her larger reiatsu made her stronger than them, and that suited her just fine.
Eventually, the entire hollow population started to gather in large groups as food became scarcer. With so many hollow together, it was fairly obvious to Neferi what would eventually result, so she spent the last few months drilling into Reina’s head the details of hollow evolution and abilities. She left Reina in the middle of a converging group of hollow with her last message in quite awhile. Come find me in Hueco Mundo when you become an adjuchas. And try not to get eaten.
Tonight we dine in hell....okay a desert.
The conversion was quite the spectacle. All of the hollow, Reina included ended up merging to form a Menos Grande. Unfortunately, becoming a Gillian meant that Reina now had to battle with all of the other minds in order to gain control of the body. This kept her occupied for a few years, leaving the body to run rampant on its own, driven by instinct with no hollow in control. During this time, the body managed to wander off to Hueco Mundo, and spent its time consuming hollows, and battling with other Gillian who tried to eat it. Or something along those lines, there was no way to be sure what was going on when you were only getting glimpses of the body’s actions.
After liberal applications of the mental equivalent of a metal bat to the skull, Reina seized control of the Gillian, and found herself in a forest of quartz pillars. The place was called Menos Forest; the memory gaining aspect of eating a hollow was quite useful for things like this even if she only got general knowledge out of it. Now that she was the one in control, her attacks became far more....aggressive. She decimated other Gillian and normal hollows with a combination of her claws, and her cero – that move was pretty powerful, taking out multiple Gillian in one shot.....she needed to look into that. Maybe she could find time between gorging herself on Gillian and paying visits to random places in the human world to raze a couple of cities. Although from the looks of things, the humans were going to kill off themselves if left on their own. Good, it left her more time to focus on getting stronger.
Eighty years of eating everything that got in her way, and Reina evolved into an adjuchas. She went from the standard lumbering Gillian to a ten foot tall, demonic looking dragon. Or was it a dragonic demon, she wasn’t sure. Either way, a silver dragon, with spikes adorning its back, large claws on her hands and feet, and a long, spiked tail was quite the intimidating sight. And she also had wings, and as soon she learnt how to use them, she was going flying. And she was killing all witnesses to her attempts at flight before then. She didn't need any embarrassing details like that hanging over her head later.
Interlude two: Deus ex machina
Reina had been an adjuchas for close to two hundred years, this time adding other adjuchas to her diet. The odd thing was that she didn’t even have to go looking for them; apparently they were all drawn to her like a magnet, despite her attempts to keep her reiatsu under control. Granted, it made getting food easier, but still, it wasn’t a good thing to be a giant target to every hollow in the area. Sooner or later, it was going to end up causing her unnecessary trouble. Said trouble came in the form of another adjuchas who looked something like a giant slender feline. If she actually spent time in the human world not blowing it to pieces, she would have known that the hollow was a cheetah. Just like a cheetah, the adjuchas was incredibly fast, and wanted to turn Reina into his next meal.
The fight was basically the cheetah running around, dodging Reina’s attacks and countering, which Reina barely managed to avoid; she was much more flexible than she looked. Eventually, the fight came to a head when the cheetah managed to destroy part of Reina’s wing with a well aimed cero, then used the distraction to rip off her tail with his fangs. Besides the general pain of getting a limb torn off, there was another little detail that Neferi beat into her head about adjuchas and their bodies. Something along the lines of an adjuchas being unable to evolve if they got part of their bodies eaten. Reina was not pleased. To make matters worse, the cheetah picked up on her distress and decided to rub salt in the wound.
“So, demon, what are you going to do now? No tail means no more evolution for you. But don’t worry; I’ll be sure to spare you from becoming a Gillian again. Maybe if you beg enough I’ll even make it quick.”
Reina wasn’t really listening; she was busy trying to come to terms with the abrupt end of her quest. It wasn’t working out well.
Cue second gigantic explosion.
Well this was familiar, this time both Reina and the cheetah were at the bottom of a giant crater, but otherwise, the same glowing crimson reiatsu field was there, and this time, she knew how to use it. The feline was appropriately scared out of his wits, and he just barely managed to avoid a gigantic cero fired at him. The crimson beam ended up carving a gorge through the side of the crater, creating a stream of sand blasting into the sky. Not that he saw that since the sheer force of the blast knocked him away as well, where he was intercepted by a glowing red claw. The sand did little to cushion his fall, especially considering that he got slammed through a quartz pillar first. Those gashes in his body said that the fight was over, and from the look in Reina’s eyes, his death was definitely going to be slow.
“Just.....how did you do that?”
“Do what?”
Despite being little more than a bloody mess, the adjuchas still managed to look at Reina like she was an idiot. “How did you get a cero so powerful, and still keep your regeneration.”
“Huh?” The cat was right; she had her tail back. She forgot about that...... how exactly do you forget you can regenerate?
“Your cero....that blast looked like it came from an arrancar.”
“A what?”
"......How have you managed not to die yet?"
Well it was a fair enough trade; the cheetah explained some more details about hollow live; specifically arrancarization, the espada and Las Noches. He also ended up helping confirming Reina’s suspicions that her cero was stronger than normal – much stronger and showed her that her skin was far too easy to break for her power level. In exchange, Reina didn’t kill him in a horribly painful fashion. It meant that she would likely have to fight the guy again later, but by then she would be ready for him – she still had her demonic reiatsu, now all she needed to do was learn how to call on it at will.
Reina took a break from her hunting spree to actively practice reigning in her massive reiatsu, and working out what powers she had, and how to use them. According to the second cat, all hollows had some sort of special abilities to use to keep them alive; his was his incredible speed and agility. Reina’s seemed to be related to her cero. This was something to bug Neferi about, but she had no idea where she was. How was she supposed to find one hollow in an endless desert anyway?
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About 1 mile away from Reina, two Vasto Lordes were having an odd conversation.
“So, you’re watching the adjuchas again Neferi?”
“Of course, I need to keep an eye on my little queen.”
“Since when did you take an interest in anyone, for less some kid with a crappy Pesquisa?”
Neferi couldn’t really deny that claim; really, her little demon child didn’t detect her presence yet, and she’s been watching her for about two centuries. The fact that it took her that long to actually start trying to figure out her ability was also a bit depressing, but she was still learning.
“Since I ran into such an amusing woman.”
“....You sure you aren’t in love with her or something?”
“I don’t know, she is quite the cute girl.”
The other hollow was quite unnerved when Neferi started laughing. Although whether that was because of the implications of that laugh, or that Neferi’s laugh was just evil and creepy, was questionable.
The reunion, the organization.
After somewhere along eight hundred years of being an adjuchas, Reina learnt how to wield her reiatsu properly. It really wasn’t that hard, when she actually tried, she was pretty good at sensing the flow of spirit particles. One would think that she would have a powerful Pesquisa, but apparently not; or maybe her ability to estimate power levels was just terrible. Despite that, after a few hundred thousand acts of gorging herself on other hollow, that surge of power she got kept flowing, overtaking her entire body. It felt quite odd to have her giant demon body literally crack apart like a glass sheet then explode. She regained focus at the bottom of the crater she created – really that was getting old now, and first noted her much smaller hands. She quickly found one of the many quartz pillars and did a quick examination of her new look. She was much shorter, back to her human height when she was alive, but she still had her wings and tail. And with the gain of power, she finally noticed a certain reiatsu that’s been following her off and on for near eight hundred years. A very familiar reiatsu.
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Neferi found herself the target of what was probably the biggest glomp any hollow ever experienced.
“Neferi! Where were you? I’ve been looking all over for you for years! How did you expect me to find you in a desert? What have you been up to?”
There were more questions than that, but between the rate Reina was going at, and the lack of air, Neferi lost track of the questions.
“Reina....you’re squeezing a bit too tight there....can’t breathe....”
She didn’t let go, but at least she stopped trying to crush her lungs.
After their little reunion, Reina did finally get back onto her main goal. First, she had to gather up some of the Vasto Lordes, which was easier said than done. At least with Neferi around, she had a decent tracker, who could actually tell how powerful the hollow was, and if they were Vasto or not.
The first Vasto Lorde laughed himself senseless when Reina proposed her plan. He came around quickly when Neferi asked him to join though. Actually, pretty much all the hollow she met pretty much jumped onboard after Neferi suggested it. They looked a bit nervous about it though, but Reina attributed that to a lack of faith in her. She didn’t blame them; they had no reason to trust her.
After about fifty or so years, Reina had enough of the nomad lifestyle. They were the top class of hollows damnit; they were going to have a roof over their heads if they had to go make one. Reina then proceeded to drag the entire group to a random location in the endless desert and tell them her plan.
“We’re going to build a fortress. I see no reason why we can’t make a decent, at least decently hidden fortress if the arrancar could. Unless you’re telling me that the arrancar are smarter than us?”
Reina certainly didn’t need any lessons on how to manipulate the masses. Everyone who was reluctant before became quite enthusiastic upon the implication that they were inferior to anyone in any way. Ah well, whatever worked. Some of them seemed to have been architects of some sort while alive, and with creative uses of some hollow abilities, and another half century of building, arguing over plans, more arguing.....well they did get it built eventually, an underground palace, rivalling Las Noches in sheer size even though only about a quarter of it was above ground. They didn’t need a bunch of shinigami at their front door every decade. The other Vasto Lorde were pretty pleased with the final result, and they actually started showing Reina some degree of respect.
“And I dub our new city, Las Estrellas! Fitting for the Maestro to reside at the stars isn’t it?”
With living arrangements sorted out, the second thing was to organize the hollow into a cohesive unit. The problem with that was that someone had to take charge for that to happen, and the others didn’t respect her that much, and she wasn’t strong enough to beat them into submission. At this point, Reina turned to Neferi for training techniques. She really should have backed out when she had the chance when Neferi started laughing.....
Return of the cheetah
One hundred years of Neferi’s....guidance, and Reina managed to graduate from her training academy of hell. Well, she managed to survive anyway, which according to Neferi, was not a very common occurrence. That would be a bit less scary if one could tell if Neferi was joking, especially considering that some of her training methods involved throwing her into fights with groups of arrancar and other Vasto Lordes.
Anyway, she was at least a competent fighter now; it was quite annoying losing to her stronger friends every time they fought, since all of them loved to exploit her lack of armour. She wasn’t lacking in stamina, but that wasn’t much help when everyone stabbed you in the lung, or kidney, or stomach, and so on. Really, just because she wouldn’t die wasn’t an excuse to go for the death blows!
“You’re sulking again.”
“You wouldn’t be happy either if people kept using your organs for target practice.”
“What do you expect? Unlike normal people, you don’t go down when you get slashed open. You stitch yourself back together and try to punch a hole through them.”
“Will anyone let that incident die? I did apologize, and he didn’t die.”
“Anyway, you have a visitor. Some arrancar’s looking for you.”
That was new, Reina was quite sure that she didn’t know any arrancar. Every single one she met tended to try to kill her, or irritate her to the point where she ended up fighting them. So who was alive to know her?
“Took you long enough you ditz demon!”
Oh great, him again. Looked like the annoying cat became an annoying broken mask. So he actually made good on his threat to come get revenge someday. Ah well, she might as well get some entertainment out of this.
“Just who are you again?” Three, two, one.
“You....forgot about me....I’LL KILL YOU!!!!”
The guy was still fast, but it was going to take more than a Sonido to hit her. She simply adjusted her tail to catch his zanpakuto inches from her neck.
“I don’t remember you being so temperamental you annoying cat.”
A quick flick of her tail, and said annoying cat-arrancar was then slapped away, making a crash landing into one of the pillars littering the desert.
“I have a name you know.”
“I know, hurry up and release your sword Cheeta, this is already sad as it is.”
The fight wasn’t very exciting, but it was to be expected; a Numeros was not going to stand a chance against a trained Vasto Lorde, no matter how hard they tried. Well certainly not against Reina anyway. He limped away after, with more threats of revenge. In the end, a waste of time. The guy kept coming back every couple of months to fight though. He did get a little better every fight, but then Reina wasn't just lazing about while he was away - her particular ability practically forced her to continuously work on it. Nothing of any particular interest managed to occur for another three hundred years. Then one of the newer members went fooling around in the human world.
Showdown in the real world.
It was a peaceful day in Karakura town; nothing was blowing up, and hollows weren’t on the rampage for once. Soul Society wised up, and sent a captain to the town to clean it up before the hollow situation became any worse. Considering that the last shinigami sent on patrol there, a 3rd seat, got killed, no one had any objections to the decision.
This was how the 11th Division captain found himself lazing on a building, thoroughly bored. It had taken barely any time to get rid of all the minor hollows, and he took out the Vasto Lorde that was hanging about without even releasing his shikai. He would have returned to Soul Society already, but the guy said something about his clan avenging his death. It held the promise of getting to fight a real opponent, and he wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity.
A grin formed on his face as he saw a Garganta open in the sky, and unlike the last few hollow he dealt with this past week, the figure stepping out was clearly strong. It looked like the avenger had finally arrived...
Reina glanced at the shinigami and immediately dismissed him; she was here to drag back an idiot member, not play around. Thinking about it, it has been a while since she had destroyed anything in the human world....she hadn’t set foot here since she became a Vasto Lorde.
“Hey shinigami, have you seen a little brat Vasto Lorde running around? About half my height, kinda annoying...”
The captain was staring at her with a blank expression. Did he really think she came here expressly to fight him or something? She had better things to do with her time. Oh, he was laughing about something now.
“That hollow that I killed a couple of days ago? Yeah I saw him. He wasn’t much of a fight.” A manic grin formed on the captain’s face. “How about you, are you going to be any better?”
So, the idiot got himself killed.... “You sound like you were waiting on me to show up so you could kill me.”
“You catch on quick. The Kenpachi of the captains couldn’t be satisfied by such a weak battle; I want to see what the leader of his little clan is capable of.”
The surge of reiatsu put the shinigami captain on guard; he immediately released his limiter and prepared himself, attributing it to saving time in the face of a supposedly powerful opponent. It was not because he was actually frightened by the sheer killing intent within the hollow’s reiatsu. The glowing silver eyes wasn’t cutting it either.
“Fine then, if you want to die so much....” The hollow was fast, but the captain was faster, stopping her hand from piercing through his skull with his zanpakuto. He must have gotten a bit careless though, because he didn’t see the other hand, curled into a fist, hit him in the face. The impact itself sent him back a few feet, but it was nothing impressive. He might need shikai, but nothing beyond that....
“Release your zanpakuto already you arrogant idiot, if I’m going to fight you, at least fight properly.”
“Why would I waste my zanpakuto on a weakling like –“
He had to cut his retort short to avoid a cero. A hollow using a cero was to be expected, but hers packed quite the punch considering that she didn’t charge it. It looked like he really would need to release.
“Instant cero with such power? You might be worth my time after all! Surge, Katamari!”
His zanpakuto didn’t have any aesthetic changes, but the blue lightning curving around the blade was hard to miss. The kenpachi vanished within a shunpo, swinging the lightning laced blade at the hollow. She deflected the first few blows with the spikes on her arms, but one of his attacks managed to make a light cut on her stomach. While that itself was a minor wound, the charge sent through his blade did its job, stunning the hollow. He followed up with a vicious vertical swing, aiming to cleave her in two. He would have succeeded too, if she didn’t bend out of the way in time. She was a speedy one.....
Reina was easily avoiding the captain’s mad swings by twisting her body out of the path of his swings. She had far too much practice avoiding zanpakuto slashes to be hit so easily, although that hit she got did sting. It also healed right after, making it fairly pointless in the end. The captain was visibly getting annoyed, and sped up his swings, one of which managed to hit her in the shoulder. The look of triumph on the captain’s face was short lived however, as Reina grabbed on to his arm, ignoring the shock from his blade, and the captain noticed the silver glow on her other hand just before being engulfed in a fully charged cero.
The silver beam lit up the midnight sky, probably alerting every spiritually aware person in the city that a fight was going on above their heads. Reina glanced at the captain with a neutral expression, her shoulder wound already healing. The captain was quite durable; he took her cero at point blank range and he was still in relatively one piece. He was covered in first and second degree burns, but still capable of fighting.
The captain was panting; he had barely managed to focus his reishi enough to withstand the force of the blast, although it still wounded him. His face was no longer one of manic pleasure, but of focus; he seemed to finally realise that if he didn’t take Reina seriously that he was going to die here.
“Hollow...you are quite the strong one; it looks like I have to put out some effort to beat you. What is your name?”
“Commandante of the Maestro, Reina Nightshade.”
“Eleventh Division captain, Kenpachi Raiza. Now, it’s time to end this....Bankai.”
A massive surge of reiatsu shot out from Raiza, completely hiding him from view. When the dust cleared, the only visible change in him was that his zanpakuto was now yellow, and shaped like a lightning bolt. Reina could feel how much stronger he was now though, and already had a spike in hand to defend herself.
She was barely able to block the swing for her head, and he was gone again before she could counter. It seemed that his bankai gave him a speed boost. He came in swinging again, and it was all she could do to stop his attack from hitting anything vital. As it was, she was getting covered in small cuts, and his blade still had that electric effect to it.
Raiza’s smirk returned full force when he saw that he had the advantage. Jumping away, he swung his sword in an arc and shot out an arc of lightning. Reina simply leapt out of the way, and charged at Raiza, only to have to sonido out of the way just before the same lightning attack struck her from behind. Raiza chose this time to send another wave of lightning at her, but Reina was having none of it, knocking out both streams with a few balas. The spikes of her back started glowing, and unleashed a barrage of bala on Raiza, pushing him to evade the silver shots, which were tearing the city apart. Grunting in annoyance, Raiza charged some reiatsu in his zanpakuto, and released an electric charged wave, slicing through the balas and forcing Reina to block it with her wings. Seizing the opportunity, Raiza shunpo’d behind Reina, releasing another of his energy waves right into her back.
The resulting explosion pushed Raiza back, and sent Reina spiralling towards the ground, bleeding and her body numbed by the current.
“Damnit....what an annoying shinigami.”
Raiza dived after her, ready to try cutting her in two in midair, only to be greeted by a cero. Before the beam even dissipated, Reina twisted her body, throwing the spike in her hand to the right. Her 7 foot spike broke into a hundred 4 foot spikes, covering a few meters and intercepting Raiza, just as he came out of shunpo. The reiatsu spikes tore through his body, the captain only able to shield his face and chest from the shower.
Raiza glared at the hollow, multiple punctures covering his body and leaking out blood. He was lucky that none of the spikes hit an artery, but he was still bleeding out, while Reina’s wounds were closing up. The battle was taking its toll on her too though, her breaths becoming heavier. She met his glare with even more ferocity, and stretched her hand out to the side. Raiza was on guard for any more of her attacks, when her spirit pressure became much heavier in the air, focusing around her body.
“It’s time to end this, shinigami.”
Reina’s entire body lit up in silver reiatsu, wrapping itself around her and shooting off in lightning shaped sparks. The sheer force of the explosion had him feeling the amount of pressure that she was putting in the air, yet all of that reiatsu was only flowing around her, even the stray sparks curving back around her body.
Raiza was staring at Reina, trying to figure out just what she was doing, not taking his eyes off her. It was that, combined with him being a captain that kept his head on his shoulders as he barely dodged a reiatsu coated claw. He back-flipped to avoid another swipe, and just managed to get his zanpakuto up to defend against her attempt to stab her hand through his chest like a dagger. The sheer force of the blow did send them flying into a building though. The look in his eyes was clearly asking just how Reina suddenly got so strong, while his left hand flew up to catch Reina’s other hand from stabbing through his face. A small struggle for dominance ensued, until Raiza started gritting his teeth in pain. It probably had something to do with the sharp stinger protruding from his chest.
Blood was already seeping from his mouth, as his eyes started to glaze over. “Congratulations, you.......won hollow. I...at least died......to someone strong.”
Those were Raiza’s last words before his grip on both his zanpakuto and Reina’s hand went limp, the blade reverting to its sealed state before hitting the ground. While his face oddly showed satisfaction, Reina’s expression just as oddly showed confusion. She was expecting anger and hatred, not for him to be at peace.
What an odd person.....
Still, she devoured his soul anyway; no point in passing up on that kind of power.
((Word Limit; Continued in next post))
