Post by Santa Ajora on Jun 9, 2017 15:11:31 GMT -5
Training for TTP
GRRRRRRAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"
That visceral screech of absolute rage filled the sands as Ajora screamed into existence through a garganta, almost instantly the sands were painted black with the rush of flesh and blood growing everywhere, her body flexing, the flesh exploding from her body as she suddenly unleashed her frustrations and angers onto the dessert around her, a loud WOOMP sounding as the sand exploded upward around her, churning and writhing as everywhere around her the sands were disrupted and tossed about.
She was absolutely enraged. She KNEW she had left for a reason. She KNEW it had been a waste of time, but that smack in the face to her pride, to her self-image, all of it culminated into her own self-loathing. Her inability to function as she wanted. Her absolute hatred for her own weakness and cowardice. And she let out another blood-curtling scream as she stamped her hooves into the ground, another massive shockwave blowing her own viscera away from her as it continued to grow, hissing and screaming as she began tearing the flesh from her body desperately. Several new arms exploding from that flesh as she began ripping it from herself just as quickly as it grew, sobbing angrily as she did so.
"No no no NO NOOOOOOO!" She hissed, her massive chest heaving as she finally stopped, staring off into the distance as the landscape filled with her presence, the very memories of her vow poisoning her mind. The vow to take down soul society. To show that disgusting kuchiki that they had no hope no matter what. And she began to walk, rudging through her own viscera as she felt her thoughts coursing through her. And she saw the bodies of hollows all around her. Caught up in her rage. She hadn't even noticed that in her rage, massive spike sof bone had filled her garden.
She collected them all, various hollows and the like that were just...unlucky. And with those shockwaves they had simply been obliterated, turned to mush that Ajora slowly began collecting into one big ball and then chomped down, continuing to march depressingly through the sands, chewing and crucnhing her way through those dead bodies as she want. Ignoring those that were still alive and struggling on those hard spikes. And wondering why...why oh why was this her fate? To get so close, to come so very very far, only to be thwarted in her hubris?
She walked for what seemed like hours as the darkness of her own depression shrouded her like a heavy cloak. Her shoulder slumped beneath it's weight as though the sky above had split the clouds just to crash down on her body with such tremendous depressive force. She lost attention to her surroundings. Lost the thought to try and focus on...anything at all. What was the point? What WAS she to do? She was torn, ripped away from her grander design. Why was she this way? She had thought herself destined to be powerful. To be....something true and majestic.
It was several long minutes before she even realized something...peculiar. Her flesh....her garden. It had stopped growing. She had been walking on the bare sand for naught but a few hours now and she had not even noticed. Those bright, shining eyes of hers suddenly alert as something called out to her. Something deeper than she could imagine, some whisper not from the outside, but inside of herself. The voice called out and it was her, her own voice, her own ragged sounds and breaths.
Yet it was not a dream. The hanging corpse of a hollow still hung in her hand, and even as she leaned down and tore her teeth into it, rippnig away the flesh and the blood, she felt it's warmth on her tongue. She felt it's death in her soul, the withering remnants of it's own light consumed into her darkness. She was still here... and yet this could not be hueco mundo. Her garden should be spreading. This made no sense. And just as she thought the thought, the words were sewn into existence, an echo of internal contemplation suddenl buzzing to a life f it's own.
"This makes no sense. I know."
And it was HER. Not...not someone, it was Santa. The real her. The True her. The deep dark that had it's lair in her soul, that soft pale skin, the short hair, that scar lanced across her features on one side. As Santa stared, she saw Saint Ajora before her. The hole in her heart, the mask all but entirely gone. The word arrancar did not even exist in her mind. This was her Queen Self. The she who had transcended her own barriers. Her own emotions. Her own suffering. Everything about this woman spoke to her in a language so deep and poetic.
It was no illussion. It was a twist in the string, as if her past and future had bent in half, and she had seen through the fog of time and gazed into her beyond. A time s close she could almost taste it. This is what she could be. This was what she could become, and in such a time as her distraught mind. something so very deep resounded in her echoing confusion. An echo of truth in the wails of confusion. The Saint smiled, and Ajora felt herself shrink from it for it was bright. There was light there, there was happiness. There was a calm that shook her to her very bones that was all she was.
"You are a dead thing. Made in the shape of your own suffering. It is so sad. So unfortunate that this is your existence. You were but a child when you were taken. This is all that you know. All you have ever ever known. You are breaking and it is so very sad. You are giving in. The path was so clear, so crisp, and yet you rip it apart at your feet. your path is crumbling before you because of your rage. That you should despair, when you were so very close to absolved. That hand reached out, and in it Santa could feel it's burning light. It pained her, her flesh twisted and writhed from it's radiance, and she shrank from it.
The Saint frowned, and shook her head, as if knowing what the problem was, and able to do nothing about it. And before her, that vision dissolved, until it was no longer herself before her. She was in a strange place, the sands had been flattened to a clean plane, and up above the sky had been stitched shut, the endless black of hueco mundo crisscrossed with clouds as a monolith rose in the distance. She felt something deep from it's stance. It was many miles away, but even from such a distance she could feel a ringing, a single solid sound that seemed distance-less and everywhere at once.
And then there was a ship. That giant worm of a thing beneath her hooves. She found herself flying between that endless flat and the broken sky. She could feel so many underneath her. Within the ship's bowels. And across from her, she knew that this person was someone important. Not the truth of herself, but still something deep and significant. The arrancar was similar, so....deathly similar to how she'd seen herself. She could see why she had confused them for her. "You were so close to understanding, even closer now. You are significant Santaja. And you have a purpose." She noted, and she held out her hand.
Within that hand was a star, not in light and form, but in it's essence. Her eyes saw a single shard of crystal, but her soul sang of a brilliance that she felt from that monolith. It called out to her and it whispered promise of ease and renewal. IT promised, in it's tiny, inanimate radiance, that she would be reborn. She needed only to reach out and don it. To take that star upon herself, and let it's light suffuse her. This was.. an offer. She had been plucked from her home, and brought to this place. This person was giving her the chance of such a beautiful shape. A beautiful future.
She reached out and took the star in her hand, but as she did, she could not help but wonder something. As she took it from the arrancar, she noticed that they had a star as well. One brighter and more beautiful than hers. And so she asked. "I want that one. I need as much light as I can get. I've been though so much. Please... I don't think this will be enough." She pleaded softly. And the woman seemed confused, she faltered and she stared.
"I know it does not seem like much. But I assure you it will grow. You just need to be patient." she stated softly. And so very suddenly, something about that word twisted into her skull. All at once Ajora was staring, and that stitched sky was no longer above her, but in her chest. In her soul. Patience. Patience is what made her think she could challenge the shinigami. Patience is what had slowed her. This was the easy way out was it not? This light was an out. It was not her way. Not her biding. It was a diversion. Something easier.
"Why should I? IS not patience what I have been for so long?" Came her slow, ragged voice. And so very suddenly,flesh began to grow from her bones. And she began to bleed. The arrancar stepped back, surprised, confused, as suddenly, as soon as that blood began to spill, the entire ship was wreathed in that growing garden. The ship shuddered and squirmed. Suddenly it was staggering, it's flight veered and suddenly they were shifting from side to side. The needles of bone and the muscle and guts that spilled into being all covered her surroundings. And the arrancar before her could not help but step back, her feet slipping on that blood as she fell onto her back.
"Stop! This isn't how it was supposed to be!" she called out. And Ajora heard her as a distant voice. Something small...meaningless. As suddenly a thick bone spike burst up from the ground and split it's way through the arrancar's clothing, stabbing into her back and biting into her spine, not managing to go all the way through, but she still cringed and cried out. Ajora was suddenly upon her, the black void of ulcera bringing her above them as all at once, the flesh opened ina a brilliant winged flower. Her flesh unfurled from her like black wings, a mess of flesh and twisted bones that sprang from her bak as it's only anchor as it was peeled away, and all there was was the bones of her true self, she pointed a hand at the arrancar and flexed.
The shockwave burst it's way through the arrancar's chest, blood spurting from the arrancar's mouth as the shockwave continued, slamming clean through her body and tearing clean through the ship itself, bursting a hole through it's form as it's mouth split open and it screamed. In the shadow of those fleshy wings, Ajora saw the hand that rose to meet her. The sudden whine and burst of brilliance a slight streaked into existence, a spindle of dying star twisting at the palm until it spawned it's youth in a ring around it. A flower of brilliant blue before the bloom exploded, and Ajora moved to the side, wrapping that flesh around her protectively, her form flexing, that flesh separating from her back so that her shroud exploded outward, and even though that cero flor broke through her side, tearing away her left arm, those spikes of flesh and bone still burst outward.
When the exchange was finished the arrancar lay on her back, twitching with a splinter of bone through her eye. Numerous others had sunk shallowly into her form. Ineffectual mostly, but that single splinter had been her undoing. Her body trembled and shook, gathering it's energies to try and fight, even though her brain was short-circuiting. Unable to properly give the commands as her thougths dwindled down. Ajora reached down and grabbed the arrancar by the throat, lifting them from the ground shakily, still missing her left arm, some of her mask had even been blown away on the very fringe, and she staggered as the agony of her own almost-reasure shook her to her core. She squeezed, and she watched as that face turned red, and blood and remnants of eye splurted out around the splinter of bone.
"I tried to be immortal. I thought I could be unkillable. And yet I could have died. I might have had it. Held it in my hand. Felt it in my palm. But I was impatient. You reminded me of this. You and your star."" She whispered raspily, even though the arrancar struggled and choked. Ajora narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, her teeth closing around their head. The arrancar cradled by her tongue, pulling her in, even though that choked throat squealed out the remnants of a 'no', it did not stop the soft crunch of Ajora's teeth as she tore the head from their shoulders, and she swallowed it whole.
The body finally went still, and Ajora could feel that energy bursting through her soul. The suffusing of energy that stitched into existence. She felt the damage of her bones dwindle away, covered up, not regenerated, but still mended. Dulled in pain. She chomped on those arms, those legs, into the belly, and yet she stopped when she saw the star. That brilliant light still shining as she pulled it from what had once been a neck. she stared into it, and she swore something stared back. something that drank in her anger and darkness like a leech, like some endless pit that by sheer gravity caused her darkness to fall in, and leave her with naught but her light.
But her black thoughts persisted. Her darkness clung to her like a child, and even though it still drank of her, it did not unveil her light. She managed to persist. So she lifted it. That crystal star, and dropped it into her mouth, and she consumed it. Even as the ship crashed into the sands below, and the world around her suddenly seemed so loud, she felt a tremble of....vigor. Of so much darkness collected that it seemed to spill into her all at once. And then she remembered the promised shape. She remembered how much she had wanted it. To be normal. To be so.... un-ugly. Not only that. But the shape had been beautiful.
If she had taken it it could have been so easy. She would not feel so disgusting. But all the same. Was that correct? Was that right? Was suffering not her penance? She trembled and quaked, her inner throne that was her heart opened up and she stared down, into the split-open ship. Unto the bodies strewn about. Unto those that had called that being master. that had called them Mother. That had called them Hope. The hope that she had eaten. Her garden had seeded the ship. And so many of them were trying to free themselves. Drowning. Sinking. Impaled upon the flesh of her unintentional making.
The flesh that she could feel. She raised her hand and she grasped control. Control of her darkness. Control of her garden, and of the lives tangled in it's thorny embrace. She FELT the lives within it. She could FEEL their stars. Their lights that had shined. And she KNEW that all of them had taken the easy way out. The path along the dawn so laden with promise. And as she clenched her fist she felt no remorse. Every bit of flesh inside of that ship flexed and squeezed. Bodies burst like cherries, and even the structure of the ship burst below. The bodies of so may. Humans and Arrancar. Even a quincy. She felt them die in her vicarious grasp.
She raised her hand, and the flesh answered the gesture, and those bodies were crushed together. Twisted, broken, snapped, and collected into balls that were brought up to her. And at the center of each she could taste the light. when she bit in and tasted those little stars. When she could FEEL the dying light within, and the darkness that had been trapped inside. She swallowed them up and drank of them, and in that sudden shroud of black she felt this strange land shrink from her. As she murdered and ate, she felt the sands quiver and deny her presence. she felt her mind shudder, and for a while she was unfocused, and when her mind at last concluded it's dizzy spell, and once again she was lucid, she was back in the normal desert. In the sands.
And her meal was there with her. The bodies of the crew strewn below her. And fom the corner of her vision, she could see a hole in the ship's side. And the footprints in the sand. Footprints to a hole in the floor. Into the forest below. and she realized just how little of the crew she had consumed. And her soul shivered with it's face-ripping smile. A gentle cackle croaking from her throat as her wings shook and her tail whipped behind her. Their Admiral was dead. And several of the crew she had consumed as well. So much of it really.
Whatever place had tried to take her in had spat her back out, it had tasted her taint and her darkness, and it had vomited her out like she were a cyst or something equally unclean. She felt her body shudder and inside she could feel those stars, their light she had consumed. and she crooned softly to her belly, and she hushed them back to sleep. It was as if they missed their brothers. And she planned to get them. Looking upon the hole in the sand, she smiled to herself and she began marching toward it. Her body twisting as her soul wound in on itself. And she realized something more glorious.
She looked back in her memories, to the promise of that lovely shape. That pure, easy form. And she recoiled. That was wrong. That was not the right way. That was not patience. She would change her shape, she would change her soul, and she would twist and bend herself into the perfect shape, something sharp and deadly. Something beautiful not from it's purity, but from the way it was cruel and dangerous. The way that her shape ate at everything around her. A perfect culling shape. People would not look at her beauty, though she would have that too, but they would look at her sharpness and cringe.
They would see the stars she had eaten and know that she had made herself this way. That she had pushed away the light and chosen this suffering. Even as her hunger boiled in her belly, she smiled and began to cackle to herself. Mouths grew all over body, and together they all laughed as she headed down into that dark pit. Into her future, and into the cement of her decision. She had abandoned her ambition far too quickly. But that did not mean that she had been right. She had formed her soul in such a gentle way. Soft and caring. she had molded her powers to help others, and for what? Why make a shield if there was nobody to protect? Why hold the door when nobody was going to step through? She had formed her very essence on the idea that there would be others. Others like her. Others in her cause and in her heart.
She would close herself. She would be selfish and greedy. She would never debase herself to the fulfillment solely of others. She found a deeper, much more profound feeling inside of her. A slow, sick growth that made her insides tremble, and made her tail twitch. She would shape herself to kill. To destroy , to consume. She wold throw her shape at others and bend it out of place, twist it, break herself to make herself more perfect. Break off the weakness and keep only the strength. She grinned as she was swallowed by the dark, and in her heart she charted the course of her new goal, her new purpose, her new ideal.
A new soul. And a Perfect Culling Shape.
At start, 6 class 8 hollows consumed
1 class 2 Arrancar consumed
3 class 5 Humans consumed
3 class 5 Arrancar consumed
2 class 5 Quincy consumed
