Ai Spy [Closed | Ai]

Levi had not been around for quite a while. His business in the human realm ran itself, so he was not much missed there, but Las Noches was another story as his diminutive protege was finding out. Having grown bored with the human world without Levi to keep her company, Ai followed a particularly large Hollow to Hueco Mundo. Once back in the familiar land of white sand and black quartz trees she moved over the dunes with ease and towards the complex of castles. If Levi were to be anywhere then he would be in his lab, right? 

Right.

A few full-masks tried to follow Ai in her travels, but she left them, quite literally, in the dust and she soon arrived at the place she had come to call home, Las Noches. From the little arrancar's perspective, the place had not changed in the slightest. That said, she did make one wrong turn and had to backtrack before she finally made it to the lab. Once again, the building looked just about the same. The only thing that she found offputting was the distinct lack of arrancar or even arrancar around the building as if it had been abandoned.

Pushing whatever worries welled up in her head to the back, she stepped into the lab. What first struck her as she walked down the long hallways was the lighting felt...off. Some lights flickered while others were completely dead—Levi would never have let any of this happen. As she neared the first of his labs the little arrancar's heart raced in spite of herself. For the first time she allowed herself to doubt the idea that Levi would be in his lab. The idea quickened her steps until she was nearly running through the halls.

Bursting into the main lab rooms her small footsteps echoed this way and that over the dead and dying equipment. His desk was there, the mess of papers was there, and one of the lights still worked there as well, but no Levi. Drawn into the next room by nothing more than waning hope she ran from experiment to experiment remembering the times she watched Levi work at each station with a fondness she did not ever remember feeling before.

She nearly ran right past one particular experiment involving large glass tubes, but something caught her eye, some not right. As she drew nearer it looked as if there was some kind of creature in one of the large tubes. In the light of dying electronics, she could just make out a crumpled figure. Cupping her hands against the glass she looked into the tube and tried to get a better look at whatever it was.

"Hello?!?" She unknowingly called out the same exclamation the creature within had called out earlier. "Hello!"

With any luck whatever it was knew where Levi had gone...

Tubes began to shift and twist as the child stood on unsteady legs before turning to scan the walls of his prison. Whatever material the tubes were made of held true as they were twisted almost completely around as the hollow finally found the source of the response. It had been preceded with the echoing sound of footsteps pounding on the solid ground of the lab but the face that peered in through the glass was a familiar one. The realization pressed a single word from Cayo's chapped lips. "Friend!"

Knowing enough to unwind the tubes attached to himself before rushing to his side of the glass opposite Ai, he did so. Reaching the arrancar the ghastly outline of his skeletal hands materialized from the depths of his sack to press themselves against the glass. The earsplitting sound of bone on glass tore through the air as the child rested the top of his mask against the tube, trying to get a better view at his friend. The ceaseless hunger had taken a momentary backseat thanks in large part to his excitement of seeing the woman. "Ai~!?"

"Feel-" the girl was his friend first and foremost. Before his mind let him concern itself with why she was in the place he was, essentially, tortured it immediately demanded he inquire about her situation after their initial meeting. She'd left him feeling ill. "Better?"

"What do-" with the important question out of the way and it's answer surely coming, the young hollow let concern show in his eyes as worry for her immediate safety set it. It had been so long since the other arrancar had shown up, what if the bastard chose now of all times to appear? The situation wouldn't be good. Despite his small capacity for higher thinking, Cayo knew that much. Ai had to save herself. "-ing here? Must leave."

"Save self!" his voice dropped to a hushed whisper, his sack stretching as he brought a finger before the mouth of his mask in the universal 'shh' sign. "Danger! Bad man may come soon. Run!"

[WC: 347][TWC: 780]

Recoiling unconsciously from the figure that appeared from the large mass of tubes, Ai took a hurried step back. Whatever sat within the chamber no doubt belonged there, because the little arrancar could not identify it as anything she’d ever seen before. It seemed to be some sort of living skeleton judging by its hands. Perhaps it was one of Levi’s forgotten experiments? Yes, that was probably it, the taller arrancar had always been working on the ‘next big thing’. That said, she wasn’t totally sure what creating a tube laden skeleton would do for do for the world.

Hearing her name, however, she squinted at the creature as the gears in her head worked on overtime. It wasn’t so much that she had forgotten Cayo, but rather that he looked so different. His time in captivity had not been kind to him, so it took the arrancar a moment more than it should have to put two and two together.

“Cayo?!” she questioned and drew closer to the chamber once more. “Yeah, I’m feeling much better.”

The full-mask’s outburst that followed did nothing but confuse Ai causing her brow to furrow. Levi’s lab was probably, in her only slightly biased opinion, the safest place in all of Las Noches if not Hueco Mundo. She’d spent countless hours just watching Levi work and not once had the pair been interrupted by anyone brash enough to interrupt the work going on therein.

“Don’t worry about it,” she chirped, unperturbed by Cayo’s frantic tone. “There’s no one here.”

The little arrancar drew away from Cayo’s prison and made her way to a large control panel near the center of the room.

“Hold on I’ll get you out of there…”

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that Ai never bothered to learn anything about the machinery in Levi’s lab. Sure, she’d watched Levi, but she never really learned all that much. This realization dawned on the little arrancar as she stared down at the complex panel. Lights blinked here and there; two dials whizzed this way and that, and a few levers sat idle as if asking to be pulled—suffice to say Ai had no idea how to proceed.

Luckily, a small detail like incompetence never deterred the arrancar from trying anything. So, she proceeded to flip switches, push buttons, and pull levers with an increasing fervor. Responding to her unpracticed hands, the lab lit up with light one second before it turned pitch black in the next and then light again. Vents opened here and there producing a low whistle, which mingled with the rising mechanical whirr. It seemed that each combination of levers and buttons she tried did everything but release her friend.

“Don’t worry, we’re almost there,” she called out more to herself than to Cayo.

Pressing another random series of buttons, she glanced over at Cayo’s prison and, much to her delight, found it retracting into the ceiling leaving the full-mask to walk the world once more. Leaving the control panel behind her she dashed over to her friend.

“See? Nothing to it,” she stated with a shrug as if she had some idea how she managed to release the full-mask. “How’d you get stuck in there anyway?”
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WC: 537
TWC: 1017

"Bad man!" he called after the arracar as she backed away from his prison. It was clear she didn't take his warning seriously but her reassurance that things were fine, likewise, didn't sit well with him. The man had set him up here to die. Surely he'd be back soon. "Run!"

As she flicked switched and turned knobs on the panel outside the cylindrical cell, there was little more the hollow could do than sulk and worry. If the man came back and found Ai at the helm of the panel he'd surely go into a rage. She couldn't take that. Though, he supposed, neither could he. He cared for his friend, he knew, but if it came down to it he'd have to ensure his own safety before he could worry further about hers. As the glass tube slid back up into the ceiling and the other, smaller tubes retracted from his sack he was pleased to see that such measures wouldn't be needed.

"Thank." his gratitude seemed halfhearted as his eyes floated from her to the various corners of the room. Some instincts never really left, no matter how long one was locked up. He knew from experience that any decent hunter would be hiding in the shadows of the room. As he rounded out an initial sweep of the room, he let himself crack a small smile beneath his mask and look at his friend once more. "Happy free."

"Man trapped me. He's was tall. Light hair. Thing on face." the child brought his hands out from his sack to make a pair of glasses out of his fingers. "Not think mask. He's was verry mean. Stuck needles in me. Me thinks he rans some kinda tests."

He let himself begin to drift outside the circle that had been his prison, he found his legs were surprisingly steady. Though it could have just been his sense of determination to leave the place before the man came back. The idea of facing the other arrancar again made his skin crawl and blood boil in equal measure. "Come! Let's play~"

A grisly black hand waved over  the back of the sack as Cayo looked back toward Ai. It was the briefest of pauses but long enough for his stomach to drop as he saw his prison from the outside for the first time. Seeing the sheer number of dangling tubes that had been implanted into his body, and having a vague idea of how small he really was was sickening. Each tube had to have been connected somewhere to extract something, or for some other purpose or another. None of them were just for show.

The hand disappeared back into his sack as the hollow turned on his heel away from his friend and the sight behind her. He continued his march toward what he hoped was the exit trying to muster the ability to feign excitement without really knowing why.

[WC: 492][TWC: 1,272]

Tall, light hair, glasses, and a distinct interest in running tests? Yeah, that sounded an awful lot like Levi to the little arrancar, but it couldn't be him. No, it simply couldn't be him. The scientist Ai knew wouldn't lock up a friend and perform tests on him. It had to be someone or something else. Perhaps a shape-shifting hollow who took over in Levi's absence in the hopes of trading on his already established reputation? Or maybe Cayo had just been seeing things? Yes, that was probably it, Levi wouldn't do anything so cruel and inhumane. 

"Oh well," Ai winced at the tubes behind Cayo that still dripped with fluids. "Whoever it was isn't here anymore."

She paused for the briefest of moments before continuing.

"No one is."

It then dawned on Ai, Levi might be gone, like really gone. After all, if he wasn't in his lab where could he possibly be? So, when Cayo offered to play a game a smile spread over the arrancar's face, but it quickly disappeared. For the first time in a long while, she found that she didn't want to play a game. How could she play a game with Levi still missing? She had to find him, games and fun could wait.

"Cayo, wait!" her small voice echoed about the empty lab as she chased after the full-mask. "I can't play right now. I have to find somebody, he got lost somewhere."

She pointed down the opposite hallway of the one Cayo had started down.

"If you want to leave just go down there, I'm going to stay a bit longer and look around."

She had to find Levi. He was here somewhere among the mess of lab equipment. If she looked just a bit longer she'd find him, she was sure of it. He was buried in some book oblivious to the world, they'd be laughing about the mix up in a few hours. They had to be, right.

"Sorry," she added before turning back into the forest of machines and wires.
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WC: 340
TWC: 1357