The Demon Gunwoman [Open | Las Colonia]

The heat that pulsated inside La Fragua was something that took Zettai many months to get used to. At first, he could only work for an hour each day before it was too much for him, and the sweat poured down his shirtless chest when he finally ran out to cool off. Now, though, he practically lived inside the forge. It was so rarely he went outside that he occasionally grabbed a shawl to wrap around his chest, the outside air now too cold for his comfort. Despite this, he wasted no time dropping everything and running outside when a young reptilian burst into the main doors and shouted for Zettai’s assistance. As he dashed out onto the smooth, cobble-glass road, he immediately understood what was happening. Still a bit away from the actual disturbance, he could feel the sudden blasts of energy burst into existence, and then one of his citizens disappearing.

Gritting his teeth, he burst straight into the air, his entire body glowing green as he propelled himself off the roads and buildings beneath his feet. Using sonido, he locked onto the point of disturbance and dashed at high-speeds toward it, drawing Herramienta from his back mid-flit. Rage building inside of his chest, tightening his ribcage with every breath, Zettai burst out from behind a building and roared. With his shout, he lowered himself down from the air and touched the ground, though the green aura did not fade. Instead, it grew stronger until it enveloped the entire block around them. Booming from every feasible surface, his voice radiated from his aura. ”Retreat To Your Dwellings. This Will Be Over Soon.”

As quickly as it had appeared, the green cloak disappeared as quickly as it had come. Civilian hollow scrambled to their dens, the street clearing quickly and efficiently. This was something they had practiced. ”Not every hollow here is a warrior. Some have other uses. If you wish to fight someone, I suggest you look for those that feel mutually.” Addressing the intruder, Zettai raised his clean, unscarred arm. He had worked so hard to convince his people there was more than this. More than fighting to answer your questions. He had spent so long telling them that they would be okay. It was time to put his money where his mouth was.

The tizona in his hand trembled with excitement as the arrancar lifted it as high as he could before releasing his grip on the ornate hilt. Immediately emblazoned with his aura, it raised up above them both, repelling from Zettai himself until it was a good fifteen feet above them. Orienting itself so the blade was pointing at the opposition, Zettai got a good look at his would-be target. There was something about this hollow that pinged the arrancar, but he wasn’t quite sure what. ”Explain your actions. Now. If I find your answer lacking, I will not hesitate to retaliate.” To back up his words, a large cero began to charge at Herramienta’s tip, the energy coalescing above him casting shimmering, dancing emerald light across a city-block radius. The time for play was over. The time to stand was now, and Zettai would not falter in front of his people.

----

WC: 538

If you stomp one wasp, the nest would definitely stir. It was definitely the case, and exactly how it all intends for the Arrancar. With one down, the group in the background were hesitant in swarming over their fallen brethren. With her gun out, smoking and cocksure she remained still, waiting for the reaction, that
nice pin drop that would start the delightful day that gifted to her.

It came, and with it, her smile arose with a crooked arch. The familiar air around the new arrival, not just the air of authority and respect among the residents of this pointless town, it was that being who asked her the question long ago. How did it go, she mused? Didn’t she said along the line that she would become the road to dictate where and when. Her head rolled to the left, brazening her smirk into a sinister, self-satisfying grin.

“Funny. You’re all too quick to paint the hollow as weak and innocent,” She spoke softly, but remorseful. She cares not about her actions. It doesn’t matter for her if the fallen Arrancar lived or died – most likely dead considering her aim and the brutal mind-set woven by her existence as a hollow. A tap of the fragment of his hollow mask guised as a band like eyepatch with the barrel of her revolver, “ever thought that your actions deviate against our existence?”

Zettai know full well what he’s doing. He spelled it out for her at their last meeting, but she finally knows that he really meant every word. She can hear his words uttered back in the day, even the violent flare of his reiastu of the once confused Arrancar was deeply embedded into her mind and rightly so. She found something for her to pass the time. She is going to ruin him.

With a dried scoff, covering her mouth with the back of her hand holding the revolver she took a step forwards the intriguing car.

“I did it just…” she shrug, cutting off her line of thought and glanced back at Zettai before finally continuing, “because I found this little theatre interesting. Tell me, how long it took you to build all this? I do wonder if it will take twice as fast to raze it all down to the ground and turn it all into a road.”

Suddenly A.H took notice with a wicked grin that the corpse would suddenly catapulted back into its rightful standing posture, the violent shuddering gasp of bewilderment followed by the kneejerk recoil and the pierced and tattered fabric swiftly woven back to its original shape. A.H let out a disgruntled sigh, muttering lightly to her as she knew what it meant.

“Nine seconds…” All it took for the Arrancar to lay deceased before springing back to life with the full brunt of her power, she stood still, the coat acting as a cape helped hide her posture as she felt suddenly weak from using the power. If she wasn’t pale faced, she would have been after exploiting the insanity of her power.

“So, Turns out that big boy is alive after all. Shocked, but alive,” she let out a wry grin. “Let me ask you this: Are you a car or a driver?”

It all come full circle as A.H found herself possibly in the cauldron, waiting to be boiled by the aggression from the residents of Las Colonia.

[word count 571 | 1017]

”I remember you, now. The arrancar from Earth. The one who couldn’t think past her own feet.” Eye narrowed, he barely held his rage in check, barely stopped himself from blasting her to smithereens. ”Don’t be so quick to judge my motives and actions. I do not paint them as weak.” He sneered at her, a vile taste bubbling on his tongue. ”I paint them as individuals. You came in here and started picking a fight. Nobody asked you to start throwing shots. Maybe, just maybe… they’re uninterested.”

As he spoke, the hollow that AH had gunned to the ground began to move, before hauling itself back up. A thin coating along it’s skin reflected the falling light from Zettai’s overhanging cero. ”You see? No one here is weak. Some of us are just strong in different ways.” As if to punctuate his words, said regenerated hollow conjured a cero in it’s hand that seemed to drip down with raw, dense power, before launching it straight into the air. Not many hollow flew, so it was the one place you could shoot a beacon without fear of injuring a fellow citizen. ”Your ‘natural ways’ are a stepping stone. Are you still blind to that? Fighting is just a means to an end. But what is your end? What do you fight for? I am not deviating from your path. I merely got to the end before you did.”

A deep, emerald-hue glow crackled to life along Zettai’s skin, slowly at first, but then awakening into a mad churn. When A.H repeated a question that Zettai once asked her, he couldn’t help but grin. Interesting. She was definitely more responsive than she had been those many moons ago. Perhaps she could be redeemed after all. ”That’s my line. But. I have a different answer, now. I’ve learned since then. Have you?” Raising his arms up and then throwing them down toward his feet, the aura that floated over him followed suit, launching from his body and delving deep into the dirt. His grin only growing, Zettai tightened his fists against invisible reins before hauling them back into the sky.

Pulled by the Absolution Wave, a hollowglass box rose from the sand beneath them, cracking the road slightly before outright puncturing through it, sending a plume of glass chunks and sand into the air. Settling the large box on the ground, Zettai cleared his throat to bring A.H’s attention to him. ”You want to see someone who is here for the sake of fighting? You just had to ask.” With a wave of his hand, the back panel (the one facing A.H), dropped to the ground, revealing its contents. ”I’ll go easy on you and allow you the opportunity to experience as many fighters as you can, one at a time. However, if you stray from your bout with your intended combatants and attack any civilians, I will give every individual in this place who wants a taste of your flesh due rights to it. Do we have an understanding?” With that, his champion stepped out of his ‘taxi’.

Truth be told, Zettai didn’t keep his friends in hollowglass coffins deep underground. There just so happened to be numerous dwellings and offices below the surface, and this particular ally was in one of them. As previously discussed protocol dictated, Zettai was to bring him to any skirmishes within the walls as quickly as he could, and nothing worked faster than the ol’ “Surprise Coffin Pull”. Regardless, it made for an excellent show of power, and he was hoping it would help to intimidate A.H a moment and cause her to falter, allowing Zettai to ascertain her true usefulness, and, if necessary, decide what to do with her.

----

625/1164

The front of the box, facing the demon gunman unfurled before her. From it, a dense, thick smoke-like vapor poured from it's innards and spewed out into the world. The fog of war rolled over the ivory sand and glass, throwing itself into the black sky as if a veil to conceal whatever lay inside this coffin. The obsidian silhouette of a man sitting within the center of this box, meditating it seemed. As the smoke cleared the man was revealed in full color; clad in tattered azure garbs and trousers that barely covered his exposed, tan body and muscular physique, clad in scars and brands etched into his skin from a hundred years of war. The most notable, being the long horizontal scar upon the bridge of his nose that stretched from cheek to cheek; one of the most defining of this man's features was none other than the laceration from a shrapnel wound forever bound to his stoic visage. His long brown hair pent up into a volumous ponytail thick like a lion's mane. A tamed, trimmed, but rough beard clung to his jawline and around his plump lips. The man's appearance was ragged like an outdoorsman or a veteran, yet despite his rugged  looking self, he was quite handsome with a body and physique toned to the peak of human conditioning and fitness. His eyes opened to reveal sepia hues that glittered in the light of the moon, and the sage looked upon the shotgun senorita with a baleful gaze filled with a seething malice. His eyes were still as death and fixed only upon the woman's own eyes, as if gazing deep into the endless pit which could have housed a soul. Despite his heart piercing eyes he wore a calm, almost friendly smile. Upon the sage's lap was his zanpakuto sheathed in it's ornate leather scabbard. Atraerus grabbed hold of it, and stood before the woman as the final vestiges of fog rolled from beneath his feet into the sky.

As the rays of the moon settled upon his eyes, there seemed to be a strange, ominous golden glow emitting from deep within them. He rolled his shoulders with arms clad in an ornate silver armor, with the right side holding upon it an intricately layered pauldron of ornate, decorate plates. Beneath them were leather straps and belts which held them to his arms and extended into fingerless gloves. Upon his back were two pouches, one filled with paper strips and the other with kunai, but this was information unbeknownst to her. The dogged sage brought his sheathed katana to his side, never wavering in his stance and without a hint of hesitation he stepped forward out onto the cobbleglass of La Colonia's streets. He slowly brought his left hand to his right, and his fingers coalesced around the ornate guard of his timeless zanpakuto, drawing it slowly in almost a suspenseful manner. The steel sang as it slid across the innards of the scabbard, each small bit of the blade letting off a bright shimmer as the moon's rays passed over it's ever elongating surface. When the tip of the blade was finally drawn, the sword let off a soft hum like a gentle ringing that echoed across the whole of La Colonia. The rogue shinigami's reiatsu poured off of him like steam, the translucent aura purging from his shoulders and his joints as his spiritual pressure lifted small pebbles and loose gravel around him as if he had his own gravitational orbit. The scabbard of his armament clung itself to Atraerus's waist as if magnetically pulled into his center of mass, and impressive display to say the least. Within an instant, however, the spiritual pressure and reiryoku around him seemed to vanish, and the pebbles around him dropped back onto the floor. His sword continued to let out a soft, pleasant hum as it's blade vibrated slightly, warm to the touch. He cracked each individual finger in his right hand slowly, and methodically as he rolled his head counterclockwise as if to loosen the muscles in his neck.

The warrior finally spoke, and though he addressed Zettai, he kept his gaze focused only on her. His voice was unlike anything the woman had heard before; carrying with it the enchanting, sonorous tone like that associated to a choir of angels. Yet, beneath his beautiful vocal melody of a voice, was a nefarious undertone that seemed to let out a gutteral, demonic growl like that of a monstrous incubus. The mere sound of his vocals seemed mythic in proportions, the sage was surely nothing to be trifled with. 
"You can atleast knock, before summoning me during my meditation time, Zett. I was in the middle of something, you know." Then, after pausing for a brief moment, he addressed the woman in front of him. He took a glance at her gun, the deceased hollow, her breasts, and then back to her eyes again after his short period of eye-wandering observation. 
"And you, must be why he decided not to knock. My, you are beautiful~...."  Zettai could almost immediately notice the change in Atraerus's usually friendly tone to something far more hardened and callous. His words were almost haunting and lingered like a looming echo within the mind of anyone who came across the sound of his otherworldly voice. Atraerus had many talents, and his ways with words were certainly one of such. His smile never ceased as he continued with his conversation, but never stooping to egotistical bravado as most would. This was the woman who had intruded onto La Colonia's soil with ill intentions. He couldn't necessarily blame her given that a city populated by arrancar, shinigami and quincy could prove quite the potent threat if allowed to continuously grow and blossom. He took another glance at her gun, guessing that it must be her zanpakuto; which was rather outlandish in his mind. He had never seen a gun zanpakuto, and his smile widened at the prospect of it's uniqueness and originality.

In an uncanny way, Atraerus seemed much more powerful and focused after prolonged meditation with Mokumokuren, as if his senses were pressed to their absolute limits and beyond during and after their constant sessions. It was apparent that he was still in that 'zone' that comes with his focused meditations and training with his zanpakuto. He reached behind him, taking hold of a kunai and bringing it back in front of him, twirling it with his index finger inside the ring beneath it's pommel end.
"It's not polite to walk into someone else's home and start killing people, you know, but that's alright." His choice of words were rather ominous as he rose his zanpakuto, pointing the tip of the blade towards the woman with his arm fully extended. He brought his left hand over top of his right arm pointing the kunai towards her like a dagger, wielding the sword-kunai combination in a sort of akimbo-like stance. He widened the distance between his stance and bent his knees slightly, digging his feet into the ground whilst compressing reiatsu beneath his feet which was apparent by the way the dust and gravel wobbled and vibrated beneath him. His eyes returned to gaze deep and magnetically into her own, and the veteran spoke to her again.
"You got past the bouncer, so now that you're in the club, you might as well dance with me..."
Atraerus's smirk widened with a suave charm in his smile. 

“If you say so,” Zettai words nothing but a feeble attempt to puff and puff, but unlike him. It was the Gunwoman that will blow the house down. She rolled her only eye, when he claimed that her victim was not as weak as she thought out to be. That may be the case…if she chose to. Her power bordering on the realm of godhood and she wouldn’t change it for anything else.


“Your sentiment is touching; you’d make a great human being with that precious mindset. Shame that your heart is missing,” her feigned words were cruel, just after the last syllable tainted the word, she cracked open her smug grin. What does Zettai, the ‘mayor’ of Las Colonia feels when he witnessed his realm crumbled and shattered into ruins – perhaps she should give that a try in the far future. This had now become her new personal plaything and no one and she means no one gets to destroy her plaything.


Her only working eye were half shut and head tilted, gazing at the Mayor of Las Noches droning on about how Arrancar can shirk their primal instinct, their constant longing for something that was never there. She wanted to create further discord into these silly minds of his. After all, it was his mind that’s defective, not hers.


“Sooner or later, they will feel that little pigsticker prodding at the back of their mind, pricking and harrowing till they will snap.”


And they will snap, it’s merely within their nature. It just the matter of when. Even she, an arrancar struggled to delve into her urges. Her right hand trembles, itching to pull the revolver from her leather holster. The weather today was calm, not a single blow of wind that ruffles her kilt – just calm. So it wasn’t surprising that the new and sudden arrival kicked up sand-dust, clouding the black coffin that arose from the ground. Intimidating it may be, but not to the war worn Arrancar who clawed and blasted her way to get where she is.


But she felt deflated when the coffin opens. The dust settles and disappointment looms over her face. The grin that she brazenly revealed shifts to a stoic stare. Followed by a pealed sigh, but it wasn’t for long. The arrival of the impending fighter and his appearance revived the expression to a wicked grin. He was a Shinigami. A dry laugher drowned the arrival speech, but the moment he opened his mouth and turned it in a painful excuse of courting. A.H made her expression clear with the drop of her grin to stoiciness and allowed her drawn revolver and a single shot fired at the unknown Shinigami.


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