Member
HeMandaddy
Fallenreaper
Lord Zee
Force and Fury
King of Rats
Crimson Flame
DracoLunaris
Ti
YummyYummy
Crusader Lord
With the others following with relative swiftness, the commander made his way to the center of the city, the rain pouring down on him and his group. Eventually he stopped, midair at first before momentarily closing his eyes, so as to locate the reiatsu signatures of the other shinigami. His subordinates...his comrades. Everyone seemed more or less fine, which was good. Of course, he had absolute faith in them, so he hadn't truly been worried. Nonetheless it was best to keep a keen eye on the lay of things.
This in mind he opened his eyes and glanced over the city proper. He could detect a number of hollows here and there...an odd amount. Perhaps something more was going on.
At that thought he narrowed his eyes. He made a rather troubled noise before he shunpo'd downwards and to the roof of an eight story building where he decided to stay for a time, knowing the others would follow swiftly behind. “Now, who would like to gather the hollows? Corral them in our area. Lure them as it were.” He glanced back at Jinzo, Yubina, and Daigo, smiling slightly as he did so.
It almost seemed like he intended this to be a contest among the three as well. To see who could gather and slay the most hollows in addition to their already stated mission directive. Yes, for Taikou was rather unlike the Commanders before him as he preferred to foster a sense of camaraderie with his subordinates, rather than merely create a relationship consisting only of fear, respect, and awe. It was more wholesome and he liked to think that it decreased the chance of any...meaningful squabbles among their ranks.
Still, he hadn't been the Commander long enough to know if his efforts would truly pay off. So, as with all things, only time would tell.
Unbridled Potential
Intermission
Kairi's Adventure
Kairi's Adventure
Meanwhile, in another castle, Kairi slipped into a gigai, bought some gum, and then slipped out, heading for the coordinates in earnest after she had done so. She came across a well-appointed manor - two stories, with a private shrine in the back and completely walled off. There did not appear to be any security thankfully.
Looking at it with a fair measure of boredom, the lieutenant hopped over the wall so as to more easily access the shrine. The coordinates would have put the urn somewhere in or beneath the shrine. Perhaps it had an underground burial chamber or something. Not that it mattered to her much. Walking in she searched for an entrance to the chamber - largely empty, just a small memorial against the far wall with some incense laid out. It was still smouldering - somebody came here regularly. There was a sliding door recessed in the wall down a set of stone stairs, with a very obvious lock set in it.
Seeing the stairs, she made her way down them, her eyes falling onto the lock. “Man, this is hilarious. I could break this with my pinky finger. In fact…” she reached out, curling her pinky around the curved bolt of the lock and pulled snapping it as she pulled it against the door at an angle, so as not to damage the actual door.
This act proceeded to trigger the alarm anyway. Modern technology was inconsiderate that way. The room beyond, besides being filled with noise, looked to be a small combination office and storage room for the shrine itself - there was a desk and several cabinets against the far wall. Hung next to the door was a traditional painted scroll, depicting a figure representing the Moon crying islands into being in the frothing sea below.
Well that was annoying, she thought, as she pushed the door open and walked into the rather loud room. She took a brief moment to search the place, and for like two seconds, admire the scroll, before proceeding to ransack the desk and cabinets. The urn was nowhere to be found - just a bunch of paperwork, most of which looked to have to do with somebody’s will. The coordinates from the kido were right about in the room though - she should have seen the urn the moment she stepped inside. It had to be in here.
“Well this is annoying,” she muttered before she suddenly got a bright idea. She glanced at the walls until her eyes fell on the scroll. Walking up to it, she moved it aside to see if there was anything underneath. She was rewarded with the sight of a wall safe with an electronic lock. It was a pretty large safe too - nearly half as tall as she was, and just as wide. There was definitely room for an urn or two in there, amongst other things. The tricky bit would be opening it without damaging the urn - her control over her own strength was immaculate, but predicting how pressurized steel would bend and break was a touch more difficult.
“Hmm,” she said, thinking a moment. Eventually she shrugged and drew her zanpakuto. “Let your body be my shackles and my mind be your will, Shūryō-jiku(終了軸 'Terminal Axis'),” she said and in but a moment she had donned a pair of bladed knuckle dusters, between the spikes of which there were orange spheres. Almost lazily she let her knuckle make contact with the door. She waited a few seconds, and then tapped the hinges and the lock. An orb settled into each hinge, merging with the material, the same occurred to the hinges. After a moment of contact with the main body of the safe she used the rest of the orbs, locking it in the place and form it was in. She then moved out of the way and activated the other effect of her zanpakuto onto the orbs connected to the hinges and lock.
Immediately the door was torn off of the safe, flying into the wall, before it fell to the floor. The orbs reformed in front of her weapons, before she sealed her zanpakuto and looked inside the safe, the main body no worse for wear. As expected, there was the urn - or at least, something that might have generously been called an urn. It was little more than a large metal tin with a clasped cap on top. A picture was taped to its side with a message in permanent marker written on it - showing a man holding the urn at some scenic overlook, possibly somewhere out of the country by the looks of the terrain. The message itself was faintly troubling.
'Ashes scattered in New Zealand, November 4th, 2016. Peace be with you.
Kairi stared at the message blankly. “If I had not just said we had to protect humans...I may have killed this one.” She began turning away from the destroyed safe, before she got an idea. Walking over to the desk she procured a permanent marker, and then wrote, on the note ‘Your ancestors are unhappy with your actions. You have disgraced us.’ She made sure to use a bright red marker. She also drew arrows on the wall next to the safe to further direct attention to it. She then put the marker away, sat on the desk and waited a few minutes to see if anyone would show up due to the alarms.
As predicted, a mere three minutes later two very nervous looking police officers huddled into the room, squinting around anxiously before they noticed the wall safe and the message.
“Shit.” They both said simultaneously.
Kairi smiled as she saw them look around, anxiety clear in their body language and expressions. She sat and watched. The place was clear, she was invisible. She mostly wanted to see the look on the owner’s face when he read the message. If the police officers even tried to remove the note, she would, with a huge smile on her face, punch the wall with a fraction of her full strength, causing it to form small cracks in a roughly crater-like fashion. Thankfully (or unfortunately), they did no such thing - one left, possibly to explain what they had found to the owner, while the other simply stood guard. A minute or so later the alarm stopped blaring. Another two minutes and the owner - the same man as was in the picture, dressed only in a night robe - shuffled angrily into the room and gaped in shock at the message on the wall.
Seeing the man enter, Kairi decided to fully commit to her act, mostly to see if perhaps the message had been a lie. If the man had even a small amount of the ashes, and any old urn, then it could probably trick the hollow. If not, well, they’d just have to beat it into submission.
Win/win. Drawing her sword she cut the tip of her finger, not even wincing at the action, before sheathing the blade. Then she realized, belatedly, that her blood would be invisible too. “Shit, uh.... Guess the marker will have to do.” Picking it up off the desk--which to the humans looked like it was being lifted by an unseen force--she began violently and sloppily writing jagged letters across the wall until it spelled ‘RETRIEVE THE ASH.’ She smiled at her work, glancing back at the humans.
“Ok, I’m out.” One of the police officers said flatly, turning around on the spot and walking straight out of the room. The other one, to his credit, only began backing out slowly as he reached for his radio and began calling in to the local precinct to report…
“A...a violent intrusion! Somebody is in the domicile and tearing the place up, but we can’t see them…”
The owner simply stared in bewilderment at the flying marker, he read the message with nothing but confusion on his face. “The ashes are gone! That whore’s remains had to be disposed of before the will was read! That was the only way-” He broke off and began to splutter in a mixture of fear and rage, a paroxysm of anxiety.
“Oh wow, poor guy. I wonder what kinda woman she was. Too bad I don’t care about his feelings,” she smiled, and there was an evil look in her eyes as she threw the marker, channeling a little energy into it. It struck the wall and pierced an inch into it, sticking there. She had hopped off the desk, using shunpo to close the distance between herself and the man, before she lifted him off his feet and pushed him/threw him into the wall, making sure he stayed pinned there.
“Man this is too good. If a captain ever saw me doing this I’d be in sooo much trouble.”
She grinned and pulled the marker from the wall with her free hand, her other hand keeping the man pinned to the wall by pressing against his chest. The pressure would be at least mildly painful. Meanwhile she wrote, at a feverish pace, on the wall next to her.
‘HOW DARE YOU!’ She followed it up by crossing the phrase out and drawing numerous jagged, messy lines with the marker. This was far too fun. Both of the police officers were gone now, leaving the owner to choke, suspended against the wall. “Damn you nosy spirits!” The man spat. “You killed her entire family anyway! I just inherited the damn stuff! She’s not even a direct relative by blood! What do you care?”
That left her a bit at a loss. The guy didn’t have what she needed, but he seemed like kind of an ass, so she casually decided to throw him into the desk. She then wrote on a wall again, this time as calmly and precisely as possible.
'Two days.’
Following this, she poked his finger with her sword, drawing blood on it, and then sheathed the zanpakuto, before she stood in the doorway to watch his reaction.
Regardless of what he decided to do or say, she wrote one final thing on the wall. This she wrote right under the previous statement.
‘Your disgrace will be punished.’
She then grabbed the urn, using shunpo so it appeared to simply vanish outright, only to reappear on the wall outside of the man’s view. She was laughing as she jumped down from the wall.
She left and wandered around until she managed to locate some rather small life signs in the form of a rat colony. She killed all of them before placing them in the urn, and then departed again. She found a factory with a furnace, located something to put the rats in--the workers having left for the night--and figured out how to turn it on, incinerating the rats to ash. She extracted the ash, placed it in a freezer for few minutes, and then poured it into the urn. The ash would be room temperature.
She then headed back to her allies, popping in a new piece of gum as she did so. She couldn’t wait to see if the hollow noticed the difference.
