The New Law | Open [Rated-M]

He didn't hide, there was no way he could even if he wanted to after all, not when he was well...he. The talent for suppressing his pressure was something he could only manage with the exceptionally dull and in this case, he doubted that this party was very much in that category though he had no actual evidence to confirm this. Her behavior just reminded him of someone who was too confident to be able to be caught off guard so simply...so Garra just let it 'go off'. A bit like a sensual firework, his presence announced itself as he exited his flesh like a cicada splitting from its husk. It wasn't his real body, that was perfectly preserved and stored elsewhere as he knew almost by instinct that today was a bad day for it. A facsimile, a false body but one identical to it to the point where the only distinction that could be made was by his own memory. He'd rather have used one of his own but Tova's models were much better though, frankly speaking, his body and a gigai were quite similar. They were in essence and reality the same thing but his sympathy and personal attachments made one into a treasure while the other was garbage. The situation was similarly polarized. The Octava disliked Quincy, immensely so due to personal troubles with all the members of their race he'd met with, but he more disliked the wasteful habits of a Shinigami who was well outside her bounds.

Garra knew her, whether she knew him was another story entirely. During his time in the Soul Society, dolled up as a woman and wearing an alias as tightly as his new flesh and gender, he spent some time in the jails and came to know a bit about the people around him. At least to know there names and little else. Kiriko never came to visit him despite his status and he suspected it was either out of ignorance, her attention focused solely on capturing new prisoners, or out of some sort of misguided (and yet perfectly well placed) fear of a woman behind bars who was powerful enough to free herself...and yet chose not to. All part of the plan really but this meeting? His eyes gazing down at a wasted corpsed while his reiatsu billowed out like blood intermingled with the snapping, tearing, ripping, and screaming of the 'doctors' who were in his way? This was unexpected and above all...unplanned. 

He, knowing one step out of bounds would ruin his access to information, was not happy about that. Unfortunately he was much less happy about anyone killing the specimens in his petri dish for no good reason. Garra didn't mind when humans killed each other or when his Hollow brethren killed them or even when Shinigami killed them in the line of duty, that was pretty normal and part of the course. He only took exception when someone killed a SPECIAL human and when they had no reason to do so...that irked him. Usually, he let it slide, it was easier than punishing everyone who displeased him based on a set of laws they couldn't reasonably be expected to know...but not this time. Kiriko, the little girl that had stepped into his territory and made herself a nuisance did so with far too much glee and far too much abandon. If left unchecked....well...

Protecting a country over the centuries made one quite aware of what were the warning signs of a serial killer...and this one was poised to throw his entire laboratory out of sync. Adimus would likely become involved at some point, this was his charge after all, but he wouldn't wait for that. By that time she might've caused damage to the breeding stock of empowered humans or otherwise left a lasting mark on them...or worse. Hurt an Ailith. Actually...to be more honest, in the back of the Arrancar's mind he really didn't care about any of that nonsense or else he'd have killed a million men every fortnight for justifiable reasons. It was the fact that she was so cocky about it, the fact that she was a Shinigami, the fact she was a woman, and the fact that above all...she'd forced him to eat a second hand meal.

Yes, in truth, HE had wanted that bite. She took it from him.

Hollows are, among other things, infamous for their hunger. Less infamous but of far greater importance, they should be noted to react very poorly when they lose a meal. 

Garra was a patient man however and simply waited for her to finish, watching her from the corner of his eye in his mortal flesh until she'd finished, all the while biting his tongue to avoid any undue aggression and when she'd left the corpse to the ambulance and professionals he sprung. She'd walked right past him, a face in a street window, an unassuming sort of fellow but his anger marked him. She was a Shinigami but her instincts were not dead, there were suspicions that once she passed by she knew. He wasn't hiding. He wasn't human. He was on the hunt and now there were two predators in one place...a fight for dominance would ensue. So he took his time, walked slowly, walked into the alley, left his flesh, tore apart the medical staff who were nothing but playing doctor to a corpse and unfit to be men of medicine, devoured the corpses soul and all, and when he'd finished with all that mess in record time?

Stepped out of the alley.

If she hadn't noticed yet, she did now. His aura was impossible to ignore, the blood that stained his lips was only one spot among a bloodied history that was etched into the very fabric of his being. Marking the streets with tendrils of blood that dripped from the alley down into the sewers, draining out like tributaries from the river Styx itself, Garra had announced his presence in more ways than one. Now he intended to add yet another as his eyes narrowed, he adjusted his white suit and hat, and he spoke aloud. 

"I don't remember inviting anyone else to dinner...Its alright though, you brought a side dish I see...Shinigami."

[Word Count | 1065]

[Growth Points | +21]

[Total GP | 21] 

She felt it on her periphery, the whiplash of a massive reiatsu that made no attempts to even dampen itself. Eyes darting she caught sight of a body in the crowd, a man, alone. He passed her without even looking, and she felt that pressure cascade around her like the force of a waterfall. Kiriko paused on the pavement, unable to move properly as the pressure slid across her body and pushed downward like the greatest of gravities. The last time she had felt something this far beyond her own self had been when Tova had attacked. Kiriko had thought... thought that she had gotten stronger since then. So why?

Her thoughts circled as the man turned the corner into her alleyway and suddenly she could breath again. Like an angry hornet's nest that had been stirred people wandered around her frozen body, buzzing irritatedly. This was why she hated humans so much. They were petty, and they had the senses of ants. They couldn't even realize something so powerful it could crush them with a sigh was around, they just kept going on as if their next dinner was really the most important thing in life.

Pivoting smoothly Kiriko debated her options. Smarter to back away and slip off while that thing was doing whatever it wanted in the alley. Smart maybe, but not quick enough, as whatever semblance of control was thorn asunder and the Hollow-breed revealed its blood covered form to her eyes. The sound of people continuing to talk, to chat on the phone and scream as they saw the blood pooling on the ground, it was so gratuitous. So noisy. She wanted to squash them all out, to create true silence, just so she could think for once. In peace.

Aneue rattled like the sabers of war, the bones of her skeletal army clacking and shaking as the noise filled her mind with dissonance. Such anger for a sword spirit. Aneue didn't like that someone had messed with her game. Kiriko wasn't sure she liked it much either. Taking someone else's toy was rather rude, didn't matter who you were. “I don't remember inviting anyone to my show Arrancar-san,” her voice was quiet, deadpanned. As hard as it was to breath through the miasma of this man's reiatsu she stood tall and unapologetic in the stream of blood. Kiriko's pride demanded no less.

She didn't understand why he was here, and that was important. He had to have a reason, things like him didn't just act mindlessly. That was left to the more unevolved cousins of the Hollow-breed. The anger lancing off of the man was palpable, and Kiriko glanced into the blood splashed alley to try and assess what she had done to create such wrath. There was nothing but shrapnel and pulp as far as she could see and Kiriko turned her head slowly back towards the Arrancar. “You interrupted something, did you have a reason for that Arrancar-san?” she posed the question, ignoring the flow of people who raced around in a frenzy at her back. Perhaps this being had more spiritual energy then she had, but that meant nothing. Kiriko was smart, smarter than most. She wasn't afraid of someone like him, standing their all smug in his own power. As if he could intimidate her.

Aneue scoffed, her fingers pressed against Kiriko's insides as the spirit glared at the man who dared try and scare her Imoutou. She soothed the sword with a quiet internal shush that only served to make Aneue soften her irritated rattling as the skeleton paced back and forth. He thought this was a blood show? She'd show him blood...

Kiriko ignored the zanpakutou's ranting as best she could, one hand wiping a speck of blood off her sleeve as she stared patiently. “I'm assuming you must because of your demeanor. Did I do something against your wishes? Or wait, was that one yours?”

WC: 658 | GP: 13 | Total GP: 42

His brow lowered incredulously, they were always like this it seemed. It was like the number of Shinigami he sent back to them charred, broken, and without vital organs was something that they just continual forgot to teach themselves about. There really was no hope for them at this point, they didn't even want to avoid it. Garra was spending a lot of his time and a lot of his effort to determine what it exactly was to be like them, what it was to know their world and their culture, to know if they were worth saving when it all came down to it. The survival instinct was dead. He knew she felt it, she couldn't be oblivious to the tidal wave that he carried with him...she could've run. She wasn't paralyzed. Or maybe she was but she wasn't now. Running would've earned respect, maybe enough to spare her the price of her actions but as it was now it was only a cruel reminder of their function in this world. Food. If they could be anything else they did a marvelous job of hiding it beneath a facade of instructional dependence and suicidal tendencies...

And best of all here she was pretending what she did was art of some sort. Like her doing something a 3 day old Hollow could manage in his free time was worthy of praise. A child lashing out with out her parents to curb her behavior was not something to admire. Kiriko took crayons and wrote on the wall and then seemed so proud of it that it was downright offensive to a man whose father lived, breathed, and died for art. This wasn't a show. It was an example of poor decisions and dead reflexes confronting an Arrancar that wanted nothing more than to crack her skull open like a coconut and see if burning the word 'theater' into a hemisphere helped with her views on the subject...

"You've got a lot of nerve calling suicide performance art. You're acting outside of your own laws, I'm fairly certain Quincy are to be brought in alive and excess casualties avoided..."

His sense of humor always soothed him, it brought his rage from a boil down to a more sensible level of 'just angry' which helped him focus on opening up his lips. Many Arrancar made an exaggerated sucking but he had no taste for it, parting his lips only a fraction and inhaling slowly but with visible determination...not visible in his face, but rather in the wind and the silencing of the previous din of noise as the denizens of this country found themselves quickly liberated of their souls by having them ripped and torn from them. Intangible barely humanoid chunks of reishi tore out of every visible person and quite a great deal more in the area that were not visible to either party here, some souls fought him but it didn't matter...if he couldn't tear them out wholesale they were ripped into manageable pieces and then brought to him. Thousands, maybe a million, souls and their corresponding particulate pieces were drawn into his breathe like the air was a sheet of music and the flecks of what used to be 'human' were the notes.

It did make an unusual and unique sort of melody to it, a subtle whistling interspersed with a quieted howling of pain...and the thud of bodies too of course. Garra knew he couldn't rip the Lieutenant's soul out so easily, it would be undoubtedly uncomfortable for her considering if he snapped his fingers and dropped an oceans worth of acid ontop of her she'd be dead already.  An action that required real effort would be nothing short of agonizing really but he'd never tried to rip a Shinigami's soul out properly with this sort of ability so maybe it would kill her outright...hard to say. That would be rather anti-climactic though and he sincerely hoped that she would live through at least this much. There were things he needed to do to her first. Terrible things. Mostly including getting a proper meal out of her...

Maybe she knew Kaido...that would be nice. 

Back to the moment though the sea of screams had quieted into a storm of bodies strewn haphazardly about, some crumpled into crashed cars, some fallen out of windows, others dead in their coffee cups or fast food trays, it was really a bonanza of dead men and women. A few children too, unfortunately. Garra was not fond of killing families but if they all went at once...that was an acceptable compromise to him rather than let a single one live with the stress and pain of losing everything important to you. This was a matter which he was personally aware of and he would similarly not subject anyone else to it. As far as he knew though Kiriko wasn't the type to have anyone waiting at home for her, she was alone in a world full of corpses.

"I'd call this quite an excess, wouldn't you? Now that I'm quite positive you're having a bad day, down to business. I'm prepared to offer you a one-time offer of flesh for flesh, if you refuse, every bit of energy you make me waste comes out of your hide. The same conditions Ichigenka got prior to his unfortunate accident involving incineration and loss of internal organs...don't make me fight a woman. Just come here, I'll take a few bites and we'll call it even, you're a much better catch than Quincy garbage...I think that's fair. Don't you?"

Seisoku chimed in, as was starting to become his habit, filling his mind with voices that were not tangible or audible to anyone else.

"She won't agree to it. Why offer?"

"Because I'm better than them, because we are merciful."

"She deserves nothing of the sort and you have no need to make concessions..."

"I don't. I have a want. I'm upset, I'm angry, but I'm always angry."

"And what if she does come over and offer herself for your consumptive pleasure? You'll just let her go?"

"Thats the plan."

"But she'll say no!"

"Also the plan. When she does she'll have no one to blame but herself, when she's broken in a hospital bed she'll realize that my conditions were uncharacteristically kind for a Hollow."

"Currently she'll think you're toying with her."

"Most likely but I am, I want to see the response. That will help me determine why shes confident. Perhaps this is the type of situation she needs."

"Well if she needs bodies and an angry Hollow you're a bit lopsided aren't you?"

"True...but then its fair to both of us. A regular Shinigami and Hollow throw down. An old school classic in which I take home the gold for a third time with someone of note."

"We'll see about all that but I doubt you're wrong..."

Gonzui (two action) restores +20 Stamina in two posts

She listened patiently, but the words this thing was spouting had to be a joke. Was he trying to be funny? That didn't make much sense, and she knew that her own inner laughter was disproportionate to the words spoken. She wasn't an idiot after all, the guy, he was so powerful he probably killed people when he rolled over in bed. But something about him, he was just... laughable. She didn't like underestimating an opponent, especially one that she could feel had greater brute strength than herself. And so Kiriko kept her face plain and didn't react to the questions posed instead she braced herself for action. Fight or flight, in this situation running seemed smarter but she couldn't get herself to turn her back on the beast.
 
Her focus was laser thin and she noticed the shift in his stance as he inhaled deeply, an odd action since he shouldn't be winded at all as they were just standing. Soon she felt the correlation though as the souls of everyone around started to fluctuate and ripple before being sucked out into the air, their empty carcasses dropping like dead cows all around her. There wasn't even a struggle, just that slip of the soul and the falling of bodies. Her own body was rigid and straining as she fought against the pull that seemed to make her insides shift and wriggle with glee. She wouldn't let them escape though, and instead Kiriko clenched her muscles and grit her teeth until he was done sucking. The souls had all disappeared right into the creature's maw, was he really such a monster then? She didn't feel scared so much as impressed. Reaching out with her senses Kiriko could tell he had effected a massive area when doing this. All those dead bodies... just laying there... flesh and bone forgotten. It seemed sad, didn't it? Aneue certainly thought so.
 
Kiriko smiled grimly as her head swiveled to spot the hundreds of bodies laying around her. Such an opportunity, and it wouldn't even be her fault... The chance was too much to pass up. Kiriko had a new found bond with her Zanpakutou spirit, the two of them had come to an understanding of their familial relationship. But despite learning straight from Aneue's mouth what her powers entailed it was almost impossible to find the right time to release her Shikai. In Seireitei she couldn't for fear of someone tracing the power back to herself, as free as they were with Gilgamesh off messing around she still couldn't make too many people disappear without bringing down questioning of the kind she really didn't need. But here? The bodies were already dead, so who would care? Certainly not the dead humans, they should just be glad someone had come around to use their deaths for something greater. At least it wasn't a waste, right?
 
“I can't believe it,” she whispered to herself, giddy with apprehension. Her attention wasn't even on the Hollow anymore but instead her sword which radiated pleasure and power. Softly caressing the sheath she gripped the hilt of her Zanpakutou and pulled it free smoothly. “Arrancar-san, thank you so much, I never get the chance to do this...” she murmured a bit louder, with a feverish tint. Her movements felt so smooth, like she was drifting along a path already drawn out in the air. “Rattle Gaikotsu-Aneue,”she giggled and it was a release of everything inside her. Every tension she had been withholding. Kiriko let her sword's blade drop towards the earth, plowing downward until the tip met with the ground. Instead of slicing into the pavement though the black metal burst into a fountain of tiny glowing motes. Silver light washed over her body as the motes drifted and floated on air currents all around her. Then the blade was gone, entirely transformed into tiny lanterns as some of the floating dots coalesced in her hand. Solid bone formed in her grip, a long bladed naginata built from fused skeletal remains. The edges honed and glittering in the glimmer of her Shikai.
 
The light didn't stay put though, it kept roving, drifting outward as the motes climbed towards the bodies laying around. It started slowly but soon sped up as everywhere the silver glow touched flesh began to slip off and into the air. Like the dried up husk of an old vegetable the skin of the humans lifted and floated away, drifting skyward as sheets of muscle and fat and sinew peeled off the bodies as if someone was shucking corn. Eerie goblets of red filled the air around them until as far as the eye could stretch there was only the picked over bones of millions of skeletons.
 
And then, a finger shifted, a toe wriggled, and an arm reached out for purchase. With life breathed into the collection of bones each skeleton pushed off the ground and came to their feet, a walking, rattling, army of white. They surged and stumbled coming to surround her and the Arrancar, the millions of stripped bodies pressing tight around until it was a thick crowded street once more. Kiriko stared at her creations, the weight of her naginata in one hand, and she giggled again. Emotion bubbling up from her throat as if it was carbonated water and someone had shaken her so that it would fizz out nonstop. So beautiful, it had been too long since she had seen the effects of her Shikai. Too long.
 
Aneue chittered, a pleased gleam in the spirit's voice as she lovingly praised each soldier that had joined her army. Kiriko caught the tail end of the Arrancar's last sentence as he finished speaking, she had been so focused that she had almost forgotten his presence entirely. But his offer, it was so odd. Did he not appreciate what she had just done? Taking his wasted mess and turning it into a garden of bone? “An excess? What are you talking about, this is wonderful!” she looked at him sharply, as if concerned, “Arrancar-san, are you alright? Aren't you supposed to ]like it when people die?” And then he kept talking, still spouting the most absurd sentences as if random words could come together to create meaning. But... They did have a meaning, and his sentence was almost a challenge. “Take a few bites?”she muttered in curiosity, uncomprehending until she had repeated the very words herself. “You want to bite me?” The glee from her Shikai had yet to fade and her veins were full of sunlight and elation, she simply had no room for caution after the high of her release phrase.
 
She had expected him to want to bite her, but had rather been thinking the Arrancar would charge her without asking. Was he some sort of masochist, trying to be polite? She shook her head at that folly, before shrugging one shoulder. He wanted to try and take a chunk out of her? She'd let him try, if nothing else it would get her back into striking range. “Alright Arrancar-san, I will honor that. You have given me such joy today that I should be gracious in return,” she smiled a razor gleam as she waded into the skeletons that filled the street between the two of them. Pushing between hips and shoulders she stood a few feet in front of the monster and held out her arms, “It's only fair if I activate my own 'Hierro' though, right?” she joked before reaching deep inside herself for the energy that always lurked. Calling up her reiatsu there was a burst of angry crackling as her Shunko aura formed solidly around her body like a protective coating. The dark purple energy licked and nipped at the sky with fierce abandon until she reigned it back down to a slow broil. Kiriko wondered herself, could a monster like this really dent her skin? If he could she didn't deserve the unblemished status of her body. She was getting so much stronger every day, weakness couldn't be tolerated. Perhaps a painful lesson would get her own muscles in gear, and besides, it wasn't as if he really had a big chance of injuring her gravely. He said bite, such measly attacks would be too weak to risk herself. If the Arrancar wanted to really hurt her he should have just lunged across and started a fight. She didn't have the patience to wonder why he was being so strange.
 
WC: 1419 | GP: 28 | Total GP: 70

First Action: Shikai Release

Second Action: Shunko Activation