Lost in the twilight hall (tbtp)

Levi thought about making his argument that deception and reliance on others were simple, calculable tools rather than an abstracts source of “strength” but decided not to risk angering the Tercera further over simple semantics. “True enough, I suppose.” He idly responded, instead.

Levi found it increasingly difficult to keep his cool as the Tercera continued his condescending rant. The man was beginning to remind Levi of the arrogant bullies he had hated so much at the academy. The kind that just thought they were perfect and everyone else was worthless no matter what facts got in their way. The kind that thought being able to swing a sword really hard meant they were better than a kido prodigy, or bakudo experts who thought they were gods even though they could accomplish nothing on their own. The image of an overgrown bully solidified itself as the Espada grabbed onto his hair and stole his glasses, and actual mirror of an event that had happened with he was a freshman at the academy. Then he had been afraid of those who were just a little stronger than him, afraid of the pain they could inflict on him. But that was when he was a shinigami.

Levi grit his teeth and pulled his head forward, leaving hair and a chunk of scalp behind in the Tercera’s grip, and coming eye to eye with the man who in this one forgetful instant, he saw as just another bully. “I am no failure.” He growled slowly as his regeneration put the skin and hair back where it belonged, allowing only a spare few drops of blood to run down his neck and sully his collar. He stepped away and picked up his glasses. He had to calm down or he really was going to get himself killed. He took a deep breath and whipped open his glasses with a flick of his wrist. Perhaps answering the Tercera’s questions would provide enough of a distraction to save his life, and remind Levi why he was here.

“These are for show.” He confessed as he put them back on. “Left-overs from my past life that I use to get people to underestimate me. Humans call it the “nerd defense.” “I call it a fringe benefit. The real reason I keep them around is as a memento of my shinigami life. A reminder of how weak, and naïve, and stupid he was. A reminder of all of the reasons why I chose to become an arrancar.” Levi’s tone evened out as he calmed down, until eventually he sounded like he was talking to a superior again.

“I’m sure you don’t actually care about my whole life story, so here’s the synopsis. I believed in and fought for several causes, ranging from national revolution to simple friendship and romance. Each time I ended up working for the people preaching the cause, and each time they used both me and the causes itself for their own gains and then threw them away when it was inconvenient. Except I never put that together until I was infected with an inner hollow.” Perhaps he should have said that shinigami never figured it out until he was infected with Levi, but this was not the time for semantics. “The shinigami are the same. Their laws and “protecting the balance” rhetoric are made by the higher ups to keep their pawns in line. Now maybe I could have stayed there and used the system like they did, eventually climbing the ranks until I was at the top tying everyone else down in the red tape, but A: being a vaizard would have made that extraordinarily difficult, B: there were certain things I wanted to do that I still couldn’t do because of their politics, and C.” Levi realized he had been ranting when he reached this point and had to pause for breath. He had honestly thought he was over this anger, but the truth dawned on him only as he said it. “Even imagining myself at the top, the whole system disgusts me.

“So instead of resisting the inner hollow, I decided to embrace it. I didn’t fail to walk your path Tercera, I simply started down a different one.”


WC: 709
TWC: 2,004