Betray the Betrayer pt 2

When donning her mask, Mirabelle seems to go into a sort of coughing fit. She doubles over as if in extreme pain while hacking and wheezing, before she eventually looks up and tears of blood can be seen streaming down her face. Following in the wake of the blood flow are little pieces of her mask which quickly fall into place before she begins to expel the bulk of her mask from her mouth, as if throwing up. Some of the pieces seem to almost be projectile vomited from her mouth as they come to form the 'beak' of the mask.

As the mask completely forms, it stretches from the top of her forehead all the way down to wrap around the bottom of her jaw. There seems to be no beginning or end of her eyes while wearing the mask. Instead her eyes, while still remaining green, seem to glow in the shadowy pools of the mask's eye holes. There is little definition to the mask in terms of detail. It bears no added color aside from the blood stains from its creation and no intricate details that other masks might sport. While it does lack detail, those who see it up close would be able to note the hairline cracks that spiderweb their way over the entire surface of the mask.

The mask itself seems to hiss as she wears it as air constantly seeps out from the cracks in the mask's surface. Air around Mirabelle seems to waver as she wears the mask, making her seem almost ethereal as she remains the only solid object in her immediate surroundings. Head movements cause the pieces of the mask to grind against one another resulting in a sound not unlike a rock skipping across concrete. Or bones hitting bones, who knows?

Put simply the power is the ability to manifest a target person's memories. Through the shifting air around her, a given target may slowly begin to take note of things moving where there should be nothing but open air. Slowly but surely as Mirabelle advances in her attack, or more simply the longer she wears the mask, the more solid the background distractions become until the memory is a solid layer over the true surroundings.

Sadako's hope is that through this given power, Mirabelle will be able to understand the actions of those who she fights. She knows all too well that Beldame would have Mirabelle blindly follow what her feelings tell her is right and wrong, but she wants her shinigami to be better than that. She wishes for her to see what lays behind the person before her so that Mira will understand why they do what they do. Even if Mira doesn’t agree with the reason for it, They feel she should at least know the reason is there.

What Mira is really after with this power is making them fight on two fronts, like she's had to do for so long. Not only will her opponent have to face her but there will also almost always be the constant threat of a phantom sword swing or punch from decades passed. Or, once she has more control, she can make the opponent face heartache of a loved one's burial while still trying to stave off her attacks.

Death would be a Mercy is the thread where Mirabelle gets her Inner Hollow. This is where she receives it and in my following post we begin to see the seedy underside of Beldame. Any kind of spirit, likely, would have a similar reaction to their wielder being beaten as Mriabelle was but Beldane's anger isn't at the beating itself. It's at he fact that the man before her thought himself better than Mira, that he was so high and mighty that he could beat her down into the mud. The last thing she does in the post isn't explicitly said but she shoves the Inner Hollow away into the depths of their soul. She buries it deep under every other lie she's constructed to help try and protect Mira, right beside the memories of MIra's human life.

Make me Sane is where things really start to heat up again in terms of Mirabelle's Inner Hollow. Everything that Beldame did comes to light and Mira isn't pleased, to say the least. Her confrontation with Beldame seems rather abrupt but given all that she'd seen and the panic on her spirit's face as her lies were being unwound, she couldn't help but know in her heart that what Sadako said was true. She doesn't trust all that the hollow had to say but she found enough proof in what lay before her in the scape of her inner world to believe what she was told initially before leaving.

In Glacial Hymns Sadako has enough guts, despite their budding relationship, to ask why Mirabelle hides her history with Koinchi from Kasumi. Sadako already knows the answer, as he pointed out already that they shared a soul, but they want to forge a bond with their shinigami. They know already that they're stuck being together, why not make something of their time together? As the interrogation ends, Mirabelle is in excruciating pain. She is alone and she knows it, with no one to come in on a white horse and rescue her. She can't help but make a silent plea for help. Even though their initial attempt had been brushed off, Sadako hears her plea and they come to her aid. There isn't much they can do, if anything, aside from ease the pain so that she can remain strong in the face of the commander.

That same sense of numbness Sad Song. Mirabelle hardly thinks about it, if she acknowledges it at all. It isn't until Kasumi preforms kaido on her legs that Mira even becomes aware that the numbness was something other than her muscles being unused for days. As she turns her focus inward she finds that the spirit drifts away from her gaze. She isn't initially sure what to make of it but she isn't unhappy that the spirit went to the lengths it did for her

In A Thousand Steps Mira is finally confronted with having to fetch her blade. Her conversation with Kasumi involves a lot of talk about the schools of Kido and she even begins to recognize how, back in the academy, she'd felt almost alone and so she'd taken to hado. A bit of her pain and tension is eased as she recalls memories of her time with Hibiki but she also makes mention of finally recalling, at least part of, her human life. As she takes hold of her blade, Mirabelle becomes aware of some of the changes it went through with the development of what happened in her soul. It isn't until they're out of the Rukongai that she makes the discovery of her blade being something new to her.
Absit Iniuria would be where Sadako's efforts and Mirabelle's desires finally come together. Sadako had silently been wishing for Mirabelle to take a stand for something she wanted. Her duel with Shigure is something she wanted to prove herself worthy of leading the division, and it's something she found herself enjoying. After she missfires a spell, the same feeling she's dealt with for so long comes back. She begins to feel alone and the creeping chill of doubt as she lays on the ground in failure. Before she can fall too far down the rabbit hole, she finds her hand grasped by Sadako to remind her that they're there. That they care. It gives her the strength to get up and do something. They let her have the confidence to declare to Shigure what she now knows she is.