The Cockatrice Crows [Resurreccion/milestone] (WIP)

The cockatrice is said to hatch from the egg of a rooster that has been incubated by a toad. The monster that cracks through the egg is a hybrid of a snake and a rooster, and is said to be so poisonous that it can kill with a simple glance. This is Levi’s resurreccion.

His mask fragment wraps around his eyes like an opera mask, leaving perfectly circular holes through which one can see that his pupils have turned yellow, and his sclera are black. The nose is covered by the beak of a rooster, the top of which is even with his lower lip.

His torso is covered in a black trench coat with bronze colored buttons. A pair of scaly, bronze colored legs peak out of the bottom, each with three clawed toes in the front and one in the back. There is a slit in the back of the coat through which a black reptilian tail pokes out. The tail is half as long as Levi is tall, and usually curls around his feet.

There appears to be a cape made from dozens upon dozens of black shreds of cloth falling from his shoulders down past his knees, covering his arms. This is an illusion. Levi has no physical arms in his released state, as his hollow hole now goes sideways from shoulder to shoulder. These ribbons are actually an evolved form of Levi’s Manos Fantasmales, now forming the feathers of his wings. If one looks closely, they can make out the tiny hands at the end of each ribbon.

Although there are more of them, this initial form offers no advantages over the arms they replace. They can, however fuse together and extend to reform Levi’s original power, save for the invisibility. In exchange for that small advantage, Levi gets three new forms for his spectral limbs to take; the heads of a rooster, a snake, and a toad. Ultimately this is still a mere aesthetic change to his original power.

The new power is a poison that breaks down reiryoku. The rooster head breaths a cloud of the poison, which takes the same color as Levi’s reiatsu. The snake head can inject it with a bite, like venom. The toad head spits tar-like globs of the substance.

The rooster’s gas simply weakens anyone who breaths it. The more they inhale the more they realize that their own reiryoku, the very power that makes them special, is dissolving within them. The poison also has the ability to dissolve reiryoku constructs such as barriers, but in this form, it is quite ineffective.

The snake’s venom form is much more potent, but also much more isolated and easier to avoid. In practice, it can cause a sort of spiritual paralysis, in which the victim finds it difficult or impossible to build up reiatsu in the affected area. A kido user might not be able to fire spells from an affected arm, and a warrior might not be able to gather enough strength for an effective punch.

Lastly, the toad’s slime is most effective at breaking down constructs. It can melt through barriers and block spells. It can also be spat on opponents to hinder them from casting spells or using certain powers, much like the snake’s venom. If a cero user gets their hand covered in the goop, it will dissolve any cero they charge in that hand. The energy will eventually burn it away, of course.

Enough exposure to the poison can have long term effects, effectively robbing a person of their powers. If enough reiryoku is dissolved, it will take quite some time to build back up, and during that time it can seem like it never will. There are many factors to recovery time. The most important are how much poison they were exposed to, the strength of their soul before, and the same factors that allowed them to manifest their powers in the first place.

Levi first appears in Lost in the Twilight Hall as a potential Fraccion for then Tercera Espada, Robert Muhle. His motives for doing so were simple and selfish; he wanted protection, comfort, and a chance to indulge his scientific curiosity. In his conversation with Robert he shows who he is to start; cynical to the point of believing that no higher purpose, even a “natural order” exists, bitter at his old, gullible self, and not easily intimidated even by someone far stronger than him. Even with the fear of death gnawing at him, Levi never backs down from their banter, and even rips his own hair out in Robert’s hand to look him in the eye. He does, of course, refrain from saying anything too stupid.

His time in Robert’s employ is short lived. Soon after he joins Erasmus launches his invasion of soul society, and Levi participates in A Hunt in the Chaos. The obsession that led him there is two-fold; he wants research from the fourth division for his own experiments, and he wants a gigai for no other purpose than to play around in the human world. He is forced to retreat before he can reach the fourth division, but on the way out he kidnaps a shinigami scientist, Chie Kira. In Welcome Home Levi brings her to what is left of Robert’s castle, and puts her to work building a gigai for him.

While Las Noches is dealing with a power vacuum, Levi spends his time having fun in the human world, and helping Chie Kira build his gigai so that he can have more fun in the human world. Unfortunately for Levi, he lets his immaturity make him careless. In Humiliation and Opportunity he comes back to find Chie Kira missing, and a rigged gigai left in his lab. Levi spends a little time wallowing in the humiliation of such a stupid mistake, until Rufino Tauro arrives and gives him an opportunity. Levi is at first very wary of this new arrancar, but weighing his options he decides that swearing fealty to the new queen is his best option.

When Levi first meets Ai Shirai in Hello he believes that her childish nature is an act. Even so, it peeks his curiosity, and he decides to save her from a pack of hollows that set a trap for her. She has the audacity to say Levi owes her for killing her prey, and he tries to bully her as he would any hollow. Her response is to demand a game of tag, and Levi finds himself immensely enjoying this simple game. He ends up taking the young arrancar under his wing, intending to use her as a minor pawn.

Levi meets his first real challenge when Kirito invades Las Noches in Sandstorm and Clash at the Gate. Even after teaming up with Zettai Tekina, Kirito pushes Levi past his physical limits. A question arises in the midst of the battle. What is Kirito’s motivation? Why is the man so dead set on his suicide mission? Kirito claims it is for justice, honor, and Chie Kira. Levi refuses to believe any of that. His cynical worldview demands a more selfish motivation; pride, vengeance, hatred, or at least to get his girlfriend back. The fight ends with Levi passing out from exhaustion, still desperately trying to figure out the answer.

After this encounter, Levi finds that his old hobbies don’t appeal to him as much anymore. Assassinating easy mortal targets for crime lords and blowing that money in night clubs used to be all he lived for, but now he finds himself feeling strangely bored and empty. Petals of My Choice starts with Levi pondering this change, until he senses the reiatsu of a Quincy and decides to pay her a visit in the hopes that some company more on his level might fill the void. A funny thing happens while he is asked what he would do with his powers. In order to sell his story Levi is forced to forgo the cynical lies he usually tells himself, and in an effort to quickly come up with a lie, ends up telling the truth. He wants to protect his own world. In these words he finds his answer. He wants to build his own world and keep it safe.

Levi decides to take an easy route, and build a criminal empire in the human world. In A New Hobby Levi forces his way into the office of the Yakuza boss he has been working for, humiliates his security, and demands to take over their operations in Karakura town. Recognizing Levi’s obvious superiority, the boss gives Levi what he wants.

With a new sense of purpose, limited though it is, Levi divides his time between building his criminal empire, and his scientific responsibilities as the new Segunda Espada. Ai comes to check on him in Levi’s Laboratory, having heard about his part in the battle with Kirito. Levi takes the opportunity to show her one of the experiments he is working on, and joke with her about a new vocabulary word she picked up. He doesn’t even realize that he is having an honest conversation with her, without any kind of manipulation, deception, or intimidation.

Things turn a bit awkward when Ai admits that she told a shinigami that matched Kirito’s description where Levi was because she could not believe that Levi would kidnap someone. Levi is angry at her, but where in most he would see betrayal worth of death, in Ai he sees a stupid mistake in need of education. He sees a foolish innocence that needs to be taught how cruel the real world is. Levi gives Ai a gigai, and has her join his syndicate, the Desenmascarado.

Levi would never expect Kirito to need a favor from him, but that is exactly what happens in Big Memes In Little Karakura. One day, Levi is sitting in one of his warehouses, talking to the man he still allows to be his boss, when in walks Kazuto Kirigaya. Levi taunts Kirito with the body count that is sure to come of them fighting, but the fact that the body count would include his own men and his warehouse, along with the fact that he may very well lose, keeps him from attacking as well. Luckily, circumstance provides Levi with a much better way to get his revenge. Kirito in on the run, and in desperate need of a new life. Levi agrees to supply a gigai and gainful employment. In doing so he effectively enslaves Kirito. He also asks him why he spared Levi and Zettai when given the chance to kill them, but Kirito is unable to give him an answer.

It all comes together in I am Poison. Levi brings Ai along to tour a possible base of operations in Germany, when the deaths of two unfortunate quincy attract the attention of the queen.