There was a Cynical Man

The young Hollow had been following another of his kind around for days. Every now and again it'd pop out from beneath the white sands to catch some unexpected prey, before it'd disappear below the surface once more. He'd giggled to himself on more than one occasion that the other beast liked to play hide and seek, too. Surely, then, it'd like to play his game! Right?

He'd always followed from a distance, at least two to three dunes behind the bug-like hollow. Just enough that he could make out where it was and where it was headed, but enough that he didn't feel like he'd be spotted himself. Every now and again he'd find himself getting distracted making shapes in the sand, making sand castles, or caught up feasting on some other half eaten carcass, only to find that the beast had moved on while he'd occupied himself. Then he'd rush from sand pile to sand pile until he caught wind of the beast's stench. 

Today was just like every other day he'd been following, except today the trailing was boring. He'd given up paying attention to the prey and instead focused his attention on a rendition of the endless sky. Obviously the picture was whitewashed, as all he had to work with was sand, but Cayo was fairly proud with his little scribbles in the sand. When he turned his attention back to where his prey had been, he found a commotion. 

His prey had put itself in a valley between two dunes, as he crested one of them he could see a stranger standing over his prey. His prey. The other hollow flailed about as he saw its limbs being severed from its body, the man then pressed something into the open wound. He wasn't sure what it was but the man was letting the severed limbs go to waste. His brow furrowed beneath his mask and he marched himself down into the valley.

"Mine!" his voice rang over the hollow's cries. He picked up the closest severed limb as he walked, carelessly beginning to devour it as he approached the man and the other hollow. A fairly large panel flashed into existence between the man and the hollow, separating them and reflecting Cayo's approaching form and the trail in the dune behind him. As he popped the last bit of limb into the mouth hole of his mask, he stamped his foot in the sand and proclaimed again "Mine!"

A vaguely finger shaped form appeared from beneath his sack, seeming to point at himself in the reflective surface of the panel but really meaning the creature behind it. As a dust cloud from his earlier stomping passed in front of his eyes, Cayo began to wonder if perhaps the man before him might want to play his game too.

[WC: 473][TWC: 473]

Levi absolutely could not believe how bad of a day he was having. Hours had been wasted in the desert hunting candidates for research that bore no fruit, and now that he had finally found a worthwhile test subject some brat of a hollow had showed up to bother him.

“Buzz off, kid.” Levi snapped without even bothering to look at the childish voice. “I don’t have time to play.”

He was about to tear off another stinger, when a mirror suddenly appeared in front of him. Levi had to admit he was surprised by that. Both the interesting ability of mirror summoning, and the brat’s stupidity in trying to stand up to Levi with it.

Levi glared at the reflection. With that height, he was definitely a child, but that was all Levi could be sure of. He couldn’t even tell if the kid was a hollow or an arrancar. He stood upright like an arrancar, and he moved like he had a human form under that sack of his. The mask, however, appeared to be whole, and the more Levi stared at the sack the more it looked like flesh. The mask wasn’t just whole either, it was wholly unique. Levi had never seen a hollow mask with that many markings before. When Levi started prodding with his Pesquisa, he started feeling jittery and excited. He was definitely an interesting specimen, whichever he was.

“Alright, kid.” Levi huffed as he turned around. “You’ve got my attention.” Interesting as he was though, the brat was intruding on Levi’s research. “But this hollow is mine now.” If he thought he was getting Levi’s perfect test subject back just by yelling, he had another thought coming. “So, I’m gonna tell you once.” He lifted one finger as if counting the number of chances the kid had to survive this encounter, and then a single, tiny bala no bigger than a dime floated out of the tip. “Back off.”

He snapped his finger forward and the bala shot toward the little monster’s forehead. It had no real power behind it; maybe just enough to knock the kid over if it hit him. With any luck, he would encounter this child at a more opportune time. Or better yet it would knock him out long enough for Levi to finish his research, and take him back too.

WC: 394
TWC: 798

The man's words fell on deaf ears as he gave Cayo a vague warning. Clearly he wasn't understanding; the beast on the other side of the mirror was his plaything and unless he was going to take its place, he could never hope to change Cayo's mind. The child's arm raised to block the Bala headed his way, not that he knew what it was but knowing enough that it was an attack that he should at the very least block. As the sphere collided with his arm he could feel a bruise beginning to form just under the surface of his sack and his arm hurt a decent amount, the bones were perhaps fractured, but he stood firm. 

One of the only downsides to his sack, or the way his body functioned in general, was that he couldn't see exactly where things were wrong. Obviously, he had general ideas as to how his limbs moved in relation to the rest of his body but in cases like this he couldn't see where exactly his body was damaged. The only plus was that he could feel it. Focusing on the areas of pain, Cayo instructed his body to mend itself. He held the bone as the healing began but quickly let it go as he directed his attention back toward the other man. 

"Meanie!" he shouted, the effect almost comical. He was still ultimately a child screaming at someone much older than him, calling them names when they could probably wipe the floor with him but he didn't care. In what felt like seconds dozens of mirrors appeared between hollow and the other man, hovering at first and quickly shifting to form a sort of room with the man at its center. It was likely he didn't know but the man had just invited himself to play a game with Cayo and play he would, whether he liked it or not.

Cayo let the man's heart begin to race inside of his prison and soon to be tomb. He dashed around the outside of the boxy room to where his plaything lay, the boom of sonido likely alerting his prisoner to his movements. He looked at it with sad eyes as all of its fight seemed to be drained from it, the thing laying in a sad heap of flesh that was unappetizing even to him. It was the bastard inside of his box's fault. He'd pay.

The young hollow turned toward the shimmering box of mirrors and walked into the backside of the one closest to him. Diluted colors would bleed from the depths of the mirror before finally coming into focus as the hollow allowed himself to be seen across every mirror's surface. "You take from me, I take from you."

Pointing to his eye beneath his mask, he added. "Eye for an Eye!" 

[WC: 476][TWC: 949]

Levi would curse his luck if he believed in it. Absolutely nothing had gone right today, and now even this worthless sack of hollow child was going to be stubborn and get in his way. It was just a little bit funny though.

“Meanie?” Levi laughed. “Kid, you haven’t seen mean yet.” He tried to ignore the kid. He tried to just turn around and go back to his work, hoping the brat would get the hint.

The brat did not get the hint. The next thing Levi knew, he was surrounded by what could best be described as a cage of mirrors. His eyes widened as he looked around him, somewhat impressed by what he saw. Even among the many interesting powers he had witness from both shinigami and hollow, this one was rather unique. Mirrors were one weapon he had never seen before. There had been a few ice and water powers capable of imitating mirrors, but he had never actually seen a mirror power. Furthermore, this hollow seemed to appear in each and every one of the mirrors, indicating that there was much more to this unique ability that simply putting up a shiny wall.

Levi caught himself grinning as the child gave his childish speech. “An eye for an eye, eh?” He chuckled. “How foolish. How very foolish. Child or no child, I would think all hollows would understand this.” He idly thought back to Ai Shirai, his childish, foolish little pet. She also seemed far too innocent for a hollow. Was it just something about children?

“You know...” He said coldly as bala started floating out of his body. “The rest of that saying goes, and eye for an eye...” The bala surrounded him, two for each mirror. “Leaves the whole world blind.” The bala shot out toward the mirrors, one at each reflected eye. They shot through the air, likely too fast for someone on his level to react. Then they stopped at the very last instant, floating mere centimeters from the boys eyes.

“The point of this saying is that if you get even with someone, they will get even with you, and then you will get even with them, and so on and so on until there’s nothing left.” As Levi gave his little lesson, the bala floated back to him, lazily floating in the air around him. “Of course, we hollows have a rather simple solution. Instead of an eye for an eye, take the head for the eye.” He idly wondered if the brat would even understand, but it didn’t really matter. This next part was the important part, and even a childish hollow was sure to understand force.

Suddenly all of the bala shot at a single mirror, completely obliterating it in an instant. “Don’t get even. Dominate.” Levi said simply. “Luckily for you, your power intrigues me. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m not going to use any bala or cero. I’m just going to use my fists to fight you. That way, we’ll be almost even. If you try to run however, I’ll kill you. If you don’t impress me, I’ll kill you. And if that hollow out there ends up dying before I can complete my experiments on it, I’ll use you instead, which will kill you.” In short, the hollow had virtually no chance of surviving this encounter. That was what happened to a hollow that didn’t know how to pick their fights.

“Now, let’s see just how many tricks you have up in that bag of yours.”

WC: 596
TWC: 1,394

He watched the events play out through every set of eyes in the room, save for the other man's own and yet he didn't finch even the slightest bit when the bala rocketed toward his mirrors. He'd seen other members of his race use the skill but not to the effect that his playmate was using them. He seemed to have a finer control over their movements as they backed away from the reflective surfaces and floated around him. The hollow, obviously, wasn't pleased as he watched the bala shatter one of his mirrors. It wasn't fair. The man was his prisoner, his play thing. What right did he have to break his confines? That was almost as bad as breaking the rules. Almost. 

" 'Kay!" his response was almost too ready. Really, he didn't care what the man thought he could do. His body would rebuild itself again and again, as many times as he ordered it to. The pain, if that's what it could even be called, was only temporary as his body mended the wounds. While he hadn't tried it he was fairly certain that even if his head was taken, as the man had suggested, even that would regrow. That aside, the man had instituted new rules to his game. No 'cero' and no 'bala,' whatever those were. Maybe the projectiles? He couldn't be sure. Cayo wasn't much one for imposing rules on his partners but if this one issued them, surely he would follow through. In this case, it even made the game more fun.

Too often, the games became stale. There were only so many times one could hide or seek before it was just a simple routine. Every once in a while you had to spice things up! Hide and go seek tag was a fun variation but too many of his playmates complained about the pain. 'Our bones are broken' they'd say or 'We can't move!' they'd whine. They were just sore losers. This one didn't seem like the type to pull those cards, which was a nice change of pace.

His sack seemed to balloon to encompass the entirety of his mirrors until the room seemed a room of flesh and without a sound, his image vanished from the mirror's surface. The hollow found himself in a short free fall from one of the upper mirrors, coming down behind the man. A mess of spindly fingers pressed themselves from beneath his sack to swipe an x from both shoulders to both hips. He hadn't accounted for the momentum of the fall so what, in theory, should have been the perfect surprise attack ended rather sloppily. Seeing his opportunity ruined for the moment, the hollow grinned and propelled himself backward into one of his mirrors with a quick, if sloppy, sonido.

"Oopsie!" he giggled, the sound coming out from each mirror's surface as a hand reached from beneath his sack to cover his mask's mouth hole. "Did I get you~?"

"Can you find me~?" it wasn't a game if the other person didn't get a turn. At least, not one that was any fun.

[WC: 521][TWC: 1,470]

Wow, this kid had a serious disconnect from reality. Was he just trying that hard to play tough, or did he honestly not realize how easily Levi could kill him? Even when Levi destroyed his mirror, he only felt a twinge of irritation in his reiatsu. His mask and bag didn’t leave much possibility for reading body language. Regardless, he was far too quick to accept Levi’s offer. The child obviously didn’t realize the danger he was in. Levi would fix that soon.

The boy’s first attack was utterly disappointing. He basically just fell out of one of the mirrors behind him. He probably thought it would be a perfect sneak attack, and he may have been right against another opponent. Levi, however had opened his pesquisa as soon as the hollow had returned to the physical world. He spun around in time to intercept the attack with his forearm, suffering only a set of light scratches. Then he watched as the boy used a rather amateurish sonido to retreat into his world of mirrors.

Levi replied to his question with a slightly amused sigh. “Well, yes and no.” he held up his arm for the boy to see the scratches. He wanted the child to watch them heal into nothing within two seconds. “You’re going to have to do better than that.” Perhaps now he would start to understand his situation. Maybe he would start to understand how outclassed he really was.

Or maybe he would just giggle and give Levi a turn. At this point, Levi wasn’t sure if the child’s misplaced confidence was endearing or just irritating.

It was a good question though. Could Levi even find him among those mirrors? His pesquisa was giving him strange results. The hollow’s reiatsu seemed to radiate from all of the mirrors at once. It was almost enough to give Levi vertigo. If this had been a serious fight, he would have simply shot bala at all of them, destroying the entire dome at once. As it was though, he had limited himself to his fists. He had let himself a bit of a loophole of course, but he didn’t want to use that up just yet. The test subjects reiatsu was still strong, so he still had time to play around.

In the end, he decided he would just guess. Levi closed his eyes for a second, attempting to hide his intentions. If he guessed right, he didn’t want the boy to move before he attacked. A buzz sounded through the air, and Levi appeared in front of the mirror opposite the one he had destroyed earlier, a logical hiding point from a child’s perspective. He cocked his fist back, and threw a rather sloppy bunch at the reflective barrier. Hakuda was hardly his specialty, but hopefully punching through glass wouldn’t require much skill.

WC: 475
TWC: 1,869

He watched the man's fist collide with his mirror from at least a dozen different perspectives, and not one of them flinched. As fist met glass the tension broke the surface, pushing the shards back to scatter them in the sands. Rather than breaking, though, the mirror cradled the fist inflicting scraped and cuts of varying sizes before it reformed itself and the hollow's appearance resurfaced. "Nice. Try. Guy~"

The beast wasn't sure where the phrase had come from but he attributed it to his habit of parroting lines he heard while in the other place when his mind failed to find the proper words on its own. It'd taken a lot of effort to keep the mirror whole, enough that if his plaything paid enough attention he may have even noticed the flicker of the reflections at the moment of impact. He'd had to stop projecting his copies for an instant to keep the one mirror strong enough to hold it together. In seconds, though, he was replicated once more. "My turn!"

'What to do~? What to do~? What~ to~ do~?'

He was outclassed. No if ands or buts about it. He knew that but the man still had to pay. After all, he'd come forward to claim his prey and the man had denied him. It was only right. He had a few ideas about what he could do, little tricks he'd picked up from previous games. A couple he'd even stolen from his other, now broken, playthings! Two most readily came to mind and while one seemed best suited to the opportunity before him, he didn't want the fun to end quite yet. So, the second was clearly the better option despite it being a bit harder to pull off.

The sound of sonido echoed in the space as Cayo propelled himself from a mirror just behind Levi's head. A hand actually pierced his bag this time to swipe at the man's ear as he flew past. It was likely he tried but before the arrancar could get his hand on the hollowbreed another sonido rocketed him into the safety of another mirror. Before he could even move, Cayo shot out again using sonido this time to tear at the other man's lower left leg, his arm having what seemed like too far of a reach for his size. Again, he disappeared into the safety of a mirror before he could be captured.

The process was easy enough for the simple mind of the hollow. Spring from one mirror, swipe, possibly punch, and make off to another mirror. Whatever the thing he was doing to let him move faster came in pretty handy, too, despite his still getting accustomed to the way it worked. The red stains on his sack as it healed from the puncture wounds combined with the metallic scent told him his venture had been more fruitful this time around. Once more should suffice for his turn, but he had to make it good. 

He let himself get a running start, backing himself up into the depths of his mirror almost to the point of exiting the mirror he'd come into before sprinting at the mirror's surface. The resulting image was his form fading from view before quickly reappearing as though an army of him were going to erupt from the reflective surfaces of the mirrors. This time a quick succession of sonido let him bound out from the mirror, and from surface to surface before finally aiming to again rake the arrancar's back. 

[WC: 590][TWC: 2,060]

Well that didn’t do much. Well, actually it had done exactly what Levi had intended. He had intended to shatter the mirror into a million pieces, and it had shattered into a million pieces. Then the pieces all came back together. It wasn’t a total waste though. Levi hadn’t been looking at the other mirrors, but he was sure that if he had been watching them he would have seen the reflections disappear from them while the mirror was being repaired. He thought so at least, because in that moment he reiatsu from the other mirrors had all but disappeared, and focused on the one that was shattered. That meant it took a good deal of effort for the little twerp to fix these mirrors. And that meant he wouldn’t be able to do it many more times.

But now it was the kid’s turn. Levi used sonido to dash back into the middle of the circle. Being too close to one side would have made it too obvious which direction the attack would come from. That would have taken all the fun out of it. Levi stood still in the center, his hands in his pockets, waiting for his opponents next move.

Once again the boy tried to attack from behind, and once again Levi’s pesquisa gave him warning. He smirked as he ducked to the side, hands still in his pockets. He glancing at the clawed arm that protruded from the sack as it sailed past his ear. Now that was curious. It was almost as if the sack was both a container for his body, and part of his body at the same time. Piercing the bag had given him a bit more reach, but it wasn’t quite enough to get a hit in.

Levi smirked as he straightened up. “Is that all you know how to~” Levi was cut off when another charge caught him by surprise, and a set of claws tore through his pants and the skin of his leg. He had foolishly let his guard down after the first attack, assuming that would end the child’s ‘turn’ as it had before. The wound barely drew blood, and would heal within seconds. The fact remained though, he had been wounded.

Levi did not let his guard down this time. He growled in anger and focused on his pesquisa as the hollow prepared for a third strike. Apparently the child was smarter than Levi had given him credit for. He used a diversion tactic on his third go, dashing between the dozens of mirrors as a sort of feint barrage before unleashing his actual attack. The boy’s reiatsu almost became a blur as Levi tracked it with his pesquisa. He dashed through so many mirrors from so many angles that Levi actually found himself being challenged to keep up with him and predict his attack. Unfortunately, when he finally did attack, it was predictably from behind again.

Levi picked up on it just in time. He spun around and aimed a roundhouse kick at the extended elbow of the hollow’s arm. With any luck, he would snap it like a twig.

WC: 526
TWC: 2,395

Confident though he was, Cayo wasn't surprised when Levi's foot met his bloody bone arm. The limb snapped in two as the kick's blow severed the sinew holding the bones together, his hand and lower arm falling to hang outside while the rest of it retreated reflexively back into the depths of his sack. His trajectory off and momentum lost, the hollow fell and sprawled across the soft sands inside his mirror prison. Anger burned in his little green eyes as he glared at the arrancar. His small body shifted inside the sack, righting itself to stand again.

The broken limb was severed as his mind recognized it as dead weight, the sack closing the wound from which it came. There was no chance for him to gain any ground by waiting for it to heal properly. Quick as his regeneration was, it wasn't quite fast enough to repair that bad of a break as quickly as he needed it. The limb could be regrown later. Tendons and blood vessels ruptured as the fleshy substance blocked their proper pathways, the bones then falling with a dull clatter to the floor.

It wasn't fair! He was supposed to win. It was his meal! The man was in his way! His hunger lapped at the banks of his mind. Its waves raged against his conscious mind, reminding him constantly that he was little more than a beast. Somehow that was okay. He didn't care. The hunger was like a warm embrace as he let it onto the banks of his mind. It was a kind of home. He felt insatiable, carnal, feral... whole. Right. His thoughts washed away, his body moving solely on instinct.

Without a word, he picked up the arm his body had just rejected. It would prove useful, if all went well. If it didn't, well, he still had three other limbs with which he could tear the arrancar to pieces. A quick sonido brought him within an arm's reach of Levi, his body already lowered  to swipe his legs in a swift kick at the man's ankles. Taking advantage of any momentary confusion, the hollow tossed the severed limb into the arrancar's face.

With his plaything's vision otherwise occupied, Cayo began instructing his mirrors. Two broke off from the wall to his left, aiming for the arrancar's right arm. If his guess was right, it was the man's dominant hand. Therefore, it would make sense he'd grab for the severed appendage with that hand. If not, two more moved in to take out the man's left leg. 

[WC: 429][TWC: 2,489]

Oh man, that felt good. Levi had a new appreciation for physical fighters. The feeling of his leg going through that brats arm, snapping bone and severing sinew along the way, was therapeutic in a way that was entirely different from firing a bala through it. It did leave a bit of a throbbing in his shin though.

“If I counted right...” Levi hissed mockingly as the scratches the hollow inflicted closed up “that should be the first of three turns I get now. Right?”

Wrong. As Levi turned his attention back to the mirrors he saw the child grab his ruined arm, which he had wisely severed, with his remaining hand and charge again. “Oh come on.” Levi chided with a feral grin. “Didn’t you make these rules your breaking?” The child was losing control, that was obvious. He was used to easy hunts. That was why he called them games. Facing an opponent like Levi was awakening the angry beast within the boy.

Levi jumped over the swipe at his legs, but apparently the angry beast was a clever beast as well. The boy threw the hand in his face before Levi could even land. His hand reached up on instinct to grab the appendage, and his pesquisa picked up on the movement of the mirror. He managed to throw his body back out of the way. He saw his reflection as the mirror whizzed by. His eyes were wide, and his smile had turned into a grimace.

He felt two more mirrors moving toward him, lower. They were aiming for his legs. He realized this, but before he could think to react, he landed and the mirrors connected with his shin.

Pain exploded through his leg and he tumbled to the side. When he hit the ground he looked at his left leg, and realized that half of it was just gone. Halfway below the knee, the limb simply disappeared. But how was that possible? Those mirrors shouldn’t have carried nearly enough force to cut him, let alone sever a limb!

And then it hit him. Those mirrors weren’t just pieces of glass, they were portals! That was why the child had used them in pairs. As the leg entered one portal, it would exit the other and go back into the entrance. That brat had basically used space itself to cut Levi’s leg!

“You will regret that.” Levi growled. Using one of his phantom limbs to balance himself, Levi stood up as if nothing was wrong. Only the missing limb itself and the blood dripping from it were any indication that he was injured. Well, that and the absolute rage in Levi’s expression. The leg would regenerate, of course. The shin was already an inch longer than it had been. That wasn’t the point through. That technique was dangerous, and Levi was pissed.

“Game over, kid.” And with that, bala exploded from Levi’s body in every direction. They wouldn’t just shatter the mirrors, they shot out and busted each individual shard until there was no place left for the hollow to hide.

WC: 516
TWC: 2,911

His plan had worked, at least initially. Blood soaked the sand beneath the other man's wound as his mirrors continued moving after severing his leg. It felt good. He could sense the limb being tossed in an endless loop between his mirrors. Eventually it would gain enough momentum that the force alone would tear the flesh to shreds.  Now what? The game wasn't over, the man was still standing. True, he didn't like his playthings to die but Cayo did like for them to be incapacitated in some way or another. Then again, that was when he had his mind about him to care. Right now he was too far adrift in the sea of his hunger to care about such things. He wanted his meal and he wanted the man to pay. He'd come to stand upright after his attack on the arrancar, his full height still tiny in comparison to the other man's.

With seemingly no effort or warning at all the other man unleashed a volley of projectiles from himself, the kind the hollow had seen others of his kind use before in their hunts. He felt himself being peppered with shards, his mirrors obliterated in the face of the man's attack. The first few hits were superficial, tiny scratches in his sack that quickly healed themselves. As he lost more and more of his connections with the mirrors as they broke, he found more shrapnel flying his way and lacked a way to hide himself from it. More wounds opened up and his blood spilled out to join Levi's blood in staining the otherwise white sands. These wounds took some concentration to close up, as the hollow had to force his body to reject the shards and heal the flesh. 

Perhaps that could be the cause of his allowing a stray bala to strike him. Had he not been so focused on his injuries, a simple sonido would have pushed him out of harm's way. As it was though, he found the attack colliding with his rib cage and spine. The result was a stomach churning series of cracks as the bones broke and the pieces fell down the lower half of the child's skeletal system. With his support gone, the hollow toppled like a sack of potatoes. His sack ballooned outward in a sort of skin pool, the deep red blotch just beginning to seep out from beneath him. Here and there, from the wounds that had yet to close, bits of organs could be seen peeking out from the sack's confines. 

"Jerk." he managed, the majority of his efforts being directed at sustaining his body. He was still angry, certainly, and he'd attack if the other man came close but the child lacked a means of carrying out any plans he could have otherwise made. 

[WC: 471][TWC: 2,960]

When Levi realized that Cayo had been ejected from his little hall of mirrors, his only feeling was frustration that the little brat wasn’t dead. He must have shot out a thousand bala in that attack, and yet somehow the boy was alive?

He was far from uninjured though. He looked like several shards of his own mirrors had pierced his sack, and a couple of Levi’s bala had hit him as well. Levi had to give him credit for his tenacity. How much more did he have in him.

Levi just stood still and stared at him as his leg healed, and as he decided how best to punish him. As the regeneration process finished, Levi took his first step. He put the ball of his foot forward just as it formed, and rolled his foot forward so that the flesh touched sand as soon as it regenerated. He stepped forward with the other foot as the toes came back, catching his balance just in time. He was still seething and trying to decide on the most appropriate and painful way to end the hollow’s life.

“Jerk, huh?” He said darkly. “Kid, you have absolutely no idea just how much of a jerk I can be.”

He stood over the hollow, staring down at the disgusting mess he had become. A pathetic puddle of flesh, trying desperately to regenerate itself back into a cohesive being, not that it had ever been one to begin with. As he was now, Levi could see the thin outline of the malformed body inside the flesh sack. He looked like someone had stuffed a corpse haphazardly into a bag and then just tossed it by the wayside like garbage. A fitting image of a fool who would challenge Levi for a meal.

Wait, what happened to the other hollow?

Levi’s head jerked over to his forgotten test subject to see complete stillness. He opened his pesquisa, and confirmed the infuriating truth.

“That hollow has died.” He growled, before turning to stare into Cayo’s eyes, and releasing his reiatsu a bit, just in case he didn’t understand just how angry Levi was. “You know what that means, right?” Levi reached into his pocket and withdrew a syringe, the last sample of his regeneration serum. “That means you are my new test subject.”

Levi’s Manos Fantasmales whipped forward and grabbed Cayo by every appendage he had, pinning him to the ground long before he could react. “If you survive this...” He said ominously as he used a cero to blow off Cayo’s left leg, the same leg that Levi had just lost. Of course, it took more than just the leg. A huge chunk of the sack was gone as well. “You’ll be the first.” With that he injected Cayo with the serum, just above the injury, and stood back to watch the gruesome effects.

WC: 480
TWC: 3,391

Any attack the frenzied little hollow could have hoped to volley at the stranger was cut short as invisible entities pinned him to the ground. They felt a lot like hands as smaller appendages wrapped around his limbs, making movement of any kind all but impossible. Tiny green eyes struggled to focus as the world around them spun in a cloudy sea of muted colors. Blood loss was beginning to set in despite the fact that his body was regenerating as fast as it could. If something didn't happen soon, he'd pass out from it and eventually die. At this point the only person around capable of helping him was the man, and his help didn't seem likely. 

Sure enough, a new sensation of pain soon greeted the hollow. He heard it before it hit, the whistling sound of air being parted by a projectile. Then he felt the heat. Somehow, he'd managed in all his short life to avoid being hit by one of the energy blasts those of his kind so easily produced. Naturally his flesh struggled to cope with how to best combat the searing heat before, eventually, it was all burned away and along with it, the lower part of his leg. Of course this meant that his sack was exposed, the grisly blackened skeleton inside just poking out while the assorted guts and gore spilled out.

He missed being pricked by the needle. His brain was too preoccupied with the trauma of losing his leg. Of course, if it were any normal circumstance he would have easily made a new one but it had already been so much. He was already so spent. All he wanted, honestly, was a nap. His mind seemed to know and beckoned his consciousness into the depths of his hunger where it could hide until everything was over. 

Then, like a Siren's song, something took hold of him and brought him above his hunger once more. Right into the screaming face of pain. A cry tore itself from the very depths of his being. He wasn't sure what exactly it was but something hurt. In everything he'd experienced this was by far the worst pain he'd ever felt. It was like a burn, itch, and twitch all in one. His body began to thrash beneath the grip of the entities holding him down, trying to do what ever he could to shake the pain. 

The small amount of flesh that hung on to his femur ballooned to three times his size before it shrunk again. Seconds later it ballooned again, spreading the seemingly infected tissues to the surrounding flesh. The process repeated, each time it spread the time between the replication minimized until it was almost immediate. It wasn't long before even the organs that'd spilled out into the sands were spasming and taking part in the cancerous rapid growth.

Cayo could feel it, whatever it was, trying to take him over. It spread throughout his body quickly. Too fast for him to keep track of. Everything hurt so much worse than he'd ever thought it could. He could feel his flesh bloating and becoming something distorted. At this point, he'd expelled all that was inside of his stomach from the pain and tears poured from his still clouded green eyes. It wasn't fair. He didn't want to die. He couldn't. He'd only wanted to eat, to end the hunger. He couldn't die until that was done and even after that there was so much more to do. He just knew it!

He couldn't, wouldn't, let himself die until that was done. There was too much to do yet. His eyes stared out at the man's feet, now fully focused.

His flesh was throwing a mutiny. It wouldn't be controlled, try as he might it was under the influence of something else. Something foreign. The child didn't know what exactly the cause was but neither did he care. He wanted it out. Acting on instinct, one of the only pieces of flesh that had yet to be affected, his sack, began to sew itself back together around the still ballooning flesh of his organs and muscles. It grew and grew until its surface area covered the flesh, concealing it once again.

The hollow wouldn't let it disobey him, his body would be repaired. The sack now began to shrink, the flesh pushing firmly on the organs inside. Like a sponge being squeezed, his organs expelled the serum into the cavity of the sack itself. Aftter making sure they lost the instruction of the substance within them, Cayo forced his organs back to their original shape. Any flesh that refused to comply, he willingly allowed the flesh to necrotize and discarded it. Admittedly at a much slower feat than the serum's effects, his body came back under the hollow's control and returned to its normal size.

Craning his neck to look at the arrancar, Cayo leered up at the man and spit at his feet. There was little he could do under the weight of the entities still pinning him down but nevertheless he called up to the man "Fuck. You."

[WC: 860][TWC: 3,820]