Post by Nanami on Oct 13, 2017 0:16:00 GMT -5
She came hurtling into the world a few feet above the ground. With the last of her fleeting strength, she shut the gate closed behind her ensuring that, for the moment, she would not be pursued and then she hit the sand hard. The sensation of the rough dune grinding against her bare skin was the last sensation she could recall before she passed out.
She drifted into a cold silence, no voices, no vast still ocean, no blood-soaked battlefield. She recalled the memory of their presence, Sumizori, and Shirazayagami but they felt like faint echoes, distant and unapproachable. She languished in that place, and felt her strength spill from her, unable to open her eyes, unable to pull herself upright.
It was foolish of her, after all, to try to confront Kasumi, to put to test her strength of conviction. She'd let her careless heart misguide her and in so proving her own strength she ended up wasting it. She could feel them around her now, hours must have patched and the vultures gathered. Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds of Hollows who had picked up the scent of the fading Shinigami. Easy prey and a meal, unlike anything any of them had had before. Numbers made up of the bold and ambitious, shadowed by the weak looking to pick the scraps.
A presence within her welled, Shirazayagami breaching the surface of her soul. Nanami trembled, lacking the strength to cry out. "You don't have the strength to wield me," she soothed, while her presence alone pressed at the Nanami's fading strength. "We need not waste our final moments in a needless struggle. I have little to offer, but the gift of peace."
The presence faded and Nanami was left unpressed, but the offer was clear. She could have final moments free of conflict, free of the misery, pain and suffering. What other choice did she have? What use did burning the last of her strength in a pointless battle serve?
She could feel a few clawing their way towards her still unmoving form. Sniffing the air to catch the scent of the pool of her own blood that had soaked deep within the sands of the waste. Those bravest were close, indistinct forms with ravenous appetites.
She enclosed her hand tight against the sand, dragged her fingers into a tight fist and everything around her went still.
Sumizori had given her all in a final bid to keep Nanami safe. Had let go of two thousand years of anger and misery and protected her when by all rights she should have hated her. Two thousand years, a partnership defined by her ignorance, by her hatred of Sumizori finally overcome. And all for what?
it was all to bleed out in the sands of another world. To be picked apart like common carrion, food for the belly of the meaningless and irrelevant. To prove that she existed merely because she existed, for no other reason.
It would be true if she was still the type of soul afraid of her own shadow. It would be true if she had not faced down the demon inside and admitted its place alongside her. Didn't the smell of blood in the air delight her? Didn't the terrible pain she had been numbing herself to make her feel so alive? Wasn't this all
so
fucking
FUN!?
She had been waiting all along for them to get close. She pulled herself upright, staggered with barely the strength to stand as the first Hollow made its bold and final decision to strike out at the dying Shinigami. It descended upon her, fangs bared. She let them sink into her and grabbed its body with both hands. With one mighty effort and with a scream that seemed to dwarf all the Hollow gathered, a scream that seemed to shake the very world around them, she ripped it apart. Felt its blood and viscera spray against her, splash against the ground and join hers, soaking deep into the dunes of the wasteland.
Every creature who had gathered for the feast made the most simple evolutionary decision, a group split down the middle between fight or flight. With her blade, and hand like claws, she worked her way through all of them. She fought and hunted down every last one that had gathered until she could not feel a living thing around her no matter how far she looked.
It was a chorus, a delicately orchestrated piece of music. Screams of pain, roars of fury, the sickening sound of blade cutting through sinewy flesh, the sound of cracking bones all punctuated by the splash of blood across the sand. She hadn't had a chance to compose like this in a while.
She became the monster that lived deep down inside of her, the monster that she existed as centuries before she even knew of the Seireitei. With every blow, with every desperate struggle for a life that resolved in her favour, as blood coated her, her blade, the sand, everything she felt her strength return. She felt Sumizori's presence renewed as she laid the slaughter before her like a sacrifice.
She descended into the monster without fear, not because she had to, not simply to survive but because this was who she was. A switch had been flipped, but it was her who flipped it, and it would be her who would flip it back.
When the bloodshed ended, when silence returned to her own little corner of the Hollow world, she sat in the midst of the carnage calm. She sat with folded legs on a flat stretch of sand, the blood delicately cleaned from her face, from her hands, and then with great care, she cleaned the blood from her Zanpakuto, which she then placed neatly across her lap.
Nanami was whole once more. Sumizori's nature brought with it many gifts, one of which was the Hollow power of regeneration. She had been healed, all save for the long white scar which snaked from her waist all the way up and along her face between her eyes. A souvenir of her encounter with the Captain Commander's Hebi.
She smiled faintly, how appropriate.
After a time, a long time where the sands stay still, where the sensation of the battle faded to a memory she clambered to her feet and began making her way across the sea of sand.
There was so much more work to be done.
1061/14
She drifted into a cold silence, no voices, no vast still ocean, no blood-soaked battlefield. She recalled the memory of their presence, Sumizori, and Shirazayagami but they felt like faint echoes, distant and unapproachable. She languished in that place, and felt her strength spill from her, unable to open her eyes, unable to pull herself upright.
It was foolish of her, after all, to try to confront Kasumi, to put to test her strength of conviction. She'd let her careless heart misguide her and in so proving her own strength she ended up wasting it. She could feel them around her now, hours must have patched and the vultures gathered. Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds of Hollows who had picked up the scent of the fading Shinigami. Easy prey and a meal, unlike anything any of them had had before. Numbers made up of the bold and ambitious, shadowed by the weak looking to pick the scraps.
A presence within her welled, Shirazayagami breaching the surface of her soul. Nanami trembled, lacking the strength to cry out. "You don't have the strength to wield me," she soothed, while her presence alone pressed at the Nanami's fading strength. "We need not waste our final moments in a needless struggle. I have little to offer, but the gift of peace."
The presence faded and Nanami was left unpressed, but the offer was clear. She could have final moments free of conflict, free of the misery, pain and suffering. What other choice did she have? What use did burning the last of her strength in a pointless battle serve?
She could feel a few clawing their way towards her still unmoving form. Sniffing the air to catch the scent of the pool of her own blood that had soaked deep within the sands of the waste. Those bravest were close, indistinct forms with ravenous appetites.
She enclosed her hand tight against the sand, dragged her fingers into a tight fist and everything around her went still.
Sumizori had given her all in a final bid to keep Nanami safe. Had let go of two thousand years of anger and misery and protected her when by all rights she should have hated her. Two thousand years, a partnership defined by her ignorance, by her hatred of Sumizori finally overcome. And all for what?
it was all to bleed out in the sands of another world. To be picked apart like common carrion, food for the belly of the meaningless and irrelevant. To prove that she existed merely because she existed, for no other reason.
It would be true if she was still the type of soul afraid of her own shadow. It would be true if she had not faced down the demon inside and admitted its place alongside her. Didn't the smell of blood in the air delight her? Didn't the terrible pain she had been numbing herself to make her feel so alive? Wasn't this all
so
fucking
FUN!?
She had been waiting all along for them to get close. She pulled herself upright, staggered with barely the strength to stand as the first Hollow made its bold and final decision to strike out at the dying Shinigami. It descended upon her, fangs bared. She let them sink into her and grabbed its body with both hands. With one mighty effort and with a scream that seemed to dwarf all the Hollow gathered, a scream that seemed to shake the very world around them, she ripped it apart. Felt its blood and viscera spray against her, splash against the ground and join hers, soaking deep into the dunes of the wasteland.
Every creature who had gathered for the feast made the most simple evolutionary decision, a group split down the middle between fight or flight. With her blade, and hand like claws, she worked her way through all of them. She fought and hunted down every last one that had gathered until she could not feel a living thing around her no matter how far she looked.
It was a chorus, a delicately orchestrated piece of music. Screams of pain, roars of fury, the sickening sound of blade cutting through sinewy flesh, the sound of cracking bones all punctuated by the splash of blood across the sand. She hadn't had a chance to compose like this in a while.
She became the monster that lived deep down inside of her, the monster that she existed as centuries before she even knew of the Seireitei. With every blow, with every desperate struggle for a life that resolved in her favour, as blood coated her, her blade, the sand, everything she felt her strength return. She felt Sumizori's presence renewed as she laid the slaughter before her like a sacrifice.
She descended into the monster without fear, not because she had to, not simply to survive but because this was who she was. A switch had been flipped, but it was her who flipped it, and it would be her who would flip it back.
When the bloodshed ended, when silence returned to her own little corner of the Hollow world, she sat in the midst of the carnage calm. She sat with folded legs on a flat stretch of sand, the blood delicately cleaned from her face, from her hands, and then with great care, she cleaned the blood from her Zanpakuto, which she then placed neatly across her lap.
Nanami was whole once more. Sumizori's nature brought with it many gifts, one of which was the Hollow power of regeneration. She had been healed, all save for the long white scar which snaked from her waist all the way up and along her face between her eyes. A souvenir of her encounter with the Captain Commander's Hebi.
She smiled faintly, how appropriate.
After a time, a long time where the sands stay still, where the sensation of the battle faded to a memory she clambered to her feet and began making her way across the sea of sand.
There was so much more work to be done.
1061/14