Big Ben's Got Some Growing Pains [Rampage]

[Yaksha Dokuja]

There were many places around the world that people would describe as creepy, particularly when they hadn't been trafficked in some time: A movie theater or a bowling alley, when one was closing up at the end of the day, was almost horrible to behold.  One could imagine a projector cutting on without warning, or something coming onto a screen without warning...or even worse, something coming off of a screen.  Whether high up above, looking down into the rows and rows of empty seats as they turned off the lights, or when doing some last-minute fixes on the ground floor, anywhere that people expect to be well-trafficked seems to take on an air of unease when it's suddenly become neglected, even only for a short period.  People call them 'Ghost Towns' for good reason: Mankind always has a habit of making ghosts where none exist.

Then again, they do say the dead outnumber the living.  How many cases need to actually be verified for that to be true, in the end?

London's beloved clocktower hadn't been in use for almost two years, trafficked only by workmen and a few of the elite of the city now and then, to oversee the efforts and write a few checks...or make up some absurd reason to hold off on payment a little longer.  In the end, people really don't change much anywhere you go, or anywhen you look.  It wasn't a ghost town, not that anyone would dare to say.  The people servicing the place had been there for quite some time, coming and going.  It wouldn't be unfair to say they knew the place as well as their own homes after the time they'd spent knocking holes in walls, and dredging out the corpses of birds, or racoons, or in one memorable situation, a child's beloved puppy with a tag on the collar reading "Scoodles".  It had in fact become a recurring joke amongst the workmen that "Scoodles" was the oldest and angriest of the spirits haunting the old structure.  Whenever a tool was misplaced, somewhere no one remembered putting it, whenever someone was a little late coming back from the bathroom, whenever someone banged their hand or cut themselves, it was always 'Scoodles' to blame.

Which just goes to show how resilient humanity is as a species.  A lone man, asked to stay an hour after everyone else has left his place of employment, will start jittering and jumping at every thing, cutting corners and seeing ghosts everywhere he goes.  Three people, asked to spend time in the company of no one but themselves for over a year, would be perfectly at ease, and would laugh heartily at the notion of ghosts or goblins, relentlessly scouring away even a hint of superstition from whichever of them was getting jittery at that particular moment.  Mankind, as a species, knew the truth of the world quite well.  They'd proven it, scientifically.  Humans were nothing more than their component parts, the soul didn't exist, and there was nothing you could call an afterlife.  All of those sorts of things could easily be replicated, by stimulating neurons in just the right way.

Men, on the other hand, individual men, knew the true truth.  That there were always things science couldn't understand or explain, that each of them remembered a time when science held no sway over the world.  Each of them remembered when they were monkeys, too scared to look up lest the sounds they were hearing would notice they'd been noticed, and take that as their cue to strike.  Each of them held deep in their heart some truly impossible deed that they, to the end of their days, were unable to explain away.  They talked about it only with those they knew truly well, and only after enough alcohol to make them confident their statements would be taken on their own merits.  If mankind, as a species, could simply learn to be as clever as men, then even the angry dead would have a run for their money.  But the collective IQ of a group is always that of the dumbest member, divided by the amount of people present.  If only man could know -every- ghost story, -every- urban folktale, could piece together -every- shred of the supernatural in the last year alone.  They wouldn't be making jokes, that's for sure.

A small purplish-black wound opened in the bell-tower of Big Ben, without any concern for whether or not it was scientifically observable, or whether or not it made a sound: Trees may not make a sound in the absence of ears, but that which made it fall exists independent of observation.  It's far past too late to pull the covers over your head, little one.  That trick only works when you're too young to know better.  And so it was, that a creature of approximately the shape and size of a crocodile slipped out from a place that couldn't possibly exist, and began to climb the roof.  It had made a few trips here in the past, when its mind was its own.  It needed no reason, besides curiosity: Big Ben was by far one of the most interesting cultural pieces of the last centuries, and seeing before anyone else the renovations made?  That was the sort of thing that made ghosts stick around.  At first.  Then, it became easier and easier to forget what really mattered, besides jealousy.  Why should life be wasted on the living, they ask?

Your guess is as good as mine.

The first of the three workmen entered the room, carrying a beer; quite illegal, but they always made sure to clean up after themselves, and it was the only thing to make working in the dusty, dingy, miserable environment bearable.  Besides, who was going to report on them?  Scoodles?  So he entered the room, toasting to nothing, and taking a deep swig.

"God save the Q-"

The prayer was cut short by a tail lashing down from above, skewering him just behind the neck.  He fell to the ground, beer bottle shattering and shoving shards of glass about three feet into the soft tissue of his belly and hips, tearing open his kidneys, his stomach, and his small intestines; he voided his bowels and emptied his bladder simultaneously, his his body didn't move in the slightest after the first moment.  Instead, he stared down, helplessly, at his own body, and the chain connecting it, as he felt the stiff white material of a tail that felt like it was modeled after a chainsaw piercing his spine...which was odd because he could see his spine just fine from here, and it looked untouched.  He reached up one hand dully, a shimmering memory of a beer bottle in his hand, as he groped at the tail, muttering faint whispered pleas.  As he did so, a head craned down from above, filled with more teeth than a shark's, and eyes of lemon yellow that were simultaneously hideously cunning and totally unfocused: It looked like the creature in front of him gave him as much recognition as one would a photograph of a person, instead of a real one.

"Couldn't you at least let me have my beer first?"

No reply; the creature simply slipped forward, biting him in half at the hips, and slurping down the upper half.  At the same time this was happening, two more workmen were walking into the room: One fanned at his nostrils, kicking the body.

"God dammit Marko!  You're gonna get us all fired, you dim bulb!  We had a good thing going here!  What'd you do, down five beers before getting here?  You fuckin' lush!"

At this punctuation, he pulled back his foot, kicking Marko's body...and feeling far less resistance than he expected.  No exhalation of surprise, no attempt to guard his soft bits, and no movement at all.  It was like kicking a rock.  He paused, crouching down, and rolling over the body, before a hand flew to his mouth, covering his shock: The amount of damage to his body was more extensive than anything he'd seen outside of his TV.  He could see bones, with bits of glass glittering atop them, and he could even see foaming bubbles of what he assumed was stomach acid, as he rose to his feet, drawing the biggest hammer he could find from his toolkit with shaky hands.

"Hey uh...Crane?  Stay back.  Go find the nail gun.  Don't come in here 'till you do."

"Why?  What'd Marko break?"

"Don't fuck with me, Crane!  I said go get the nail gun!  No jokes!  I'll explain later, for now you need to get a fuckin' weapon!"

"Christ..."

The witness wiped at his mouth again, trying desperately not to look at the body and failing.  He burped a couple of times, then set his own beer down...before picking it back up and downing the contents in one long gulp, after a moment's contemplation.  It made him burp again and left his stomach feeling like a pit of hot nails, but it kept his hands steady, and let him get a proper two-handed grip on the sledgehammer.  He'd used it to good avail, smashing down concrete and plaster alike.  Whoever did this would drop with one good backswing, if he had any chance at all to swing it.  And if Crane got back soon enough with the nailgun, anyone trying to rush him would regret it.

"I know you're out there!  Come here and fight me like a fuckin' man!"

The only reply was a faint puff of plaster dust from just behind him, as the creature dropped from above, element of surprise...not gone, but dwindled.  It was hard to consider this hunt even remotely fair, when the opponent couldn't see it.  It circled him, waited for him to notice the fresh tracks forming in the plaster dust.  It didn't -have- to interact with it, any more than it -had- to stand on the rocks it was on.  But it wanted to see the moment of horrible realization on his face as this human realized he was in over his head.  And as the sledgehammer fell from the workman's hands, the sound of three pounds of iron striking the ground drowned out by a shriek that one never would've expected from a man that size, the hollow sprung forth, sending him towards the ground with the same ease as the first.  This time he didn't even get a chance to speak, before it snapped his spinal cord between its teeth, slurping down the entire spine like a stiff noodle.

Crane came last, seeing the devastation and depravity before him.  He only barely had time to take in the pile of blood and feces, before there was a sound of a snarl, just behind his ear.  He turned slowly, nail gun at the ready, as he stared into the darkness, speaking in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Scoodles?"

The only reply was a hot exhalation, and another crunch.  This done, perhaps five seconds passed, before the hollow once more skittered up into the rafters, chuckling to itself.  This had been a nice distraction, a pleasant amouse-buche, but it had far bigger plans for today.  There would be shinigami in record times, now that he'd struck.  But he already had his own plans for how to keep things interesting.  Even now, barely occupied as he was, he was thinking a few steps ahead of the opposition.

For the first time in almost two years, Big Ben's bell rang.  Without fanfare, without anyone's permission or even a polite warning, the bell rang.  And with that, the hollow spoke for the first time, in a voice that was far more refined and rich than one would expect.  He sounded like he'd just finished reading the wine list, and was ready to start discussing appetizers.

"Breakfast is signaled with a silver spoon."


Consumed: 3 Class 8 humans

[Irene Palmer]

Moving around London wasn't something that Irene usually did despite living in the massive city for over a single year now. Although she didn't travel much that didn't mean that she never did. One such time when she left the confines of the church that housed her gray soul was now. As she rolled the wheels on the chair that was now her prison she heard the sound of something that she hadn't in centuries. London had once been her home when she had been human and thus she returned here when her time as shinigami was put to an end.

Now she heard the sound of the city bell ringing once again. She had once heard that very same sound centuries ago all throughout her life yet now blind and bound she heard it for the first time and knew that something was afoot. She had decided that she would no longer play a role between good and evil yet allowing herself to be blind to events around her would only invite the destruction of the city that had once been her home. It would take her a minute or so to actually reach the base of Big Ben. She wasn't able to sense reiatsu anymore yet she could smell it. There was blood above and something that smelled less than pleasing was in the center.

[Connor Greaves]

A minutes after the incident in Big Ben, a portal opened in a back alley in London. A set of ricescreen doors moving of their own accord, revealing an unusually tall man, dressed in dark black robes and a white mask, with a sword hanging dangerously at his hip. The man silently crossed the gateway's threshold, entering the Human World yet again, on another mission, though not for the Shinigami for once. The man reached into a pocket, pulling out a smartphone, before bringing up a couple of messages he had received from the people of squad twelve.

News from Earth was a scarce thing in the Soul Society, not often checked with the exception of major events. Rare was it for something like a mysterious triple homicide in a country the Shinigami usually ignored. Not for any biased against London, it just did not have anywhere near the hollow attacks that Karakura did, or the amount of powerful souls required to get their attention. At least, not after the Quincy, anyway. Regardless, this was not something that would normally draw the attention of the 'All Knowing' Gotei Thirteen, seeing as most souls ended up with them regardless.

As luck would have it, however, one of the techies had just so happened to glance over at the monitors at just the right time to see what appeared to be a hollow attack going on in London. Normally this still would not elicit much of a response, but a certain Soul Reaper was heading out to the world of the living anyway. They had caught him just in time to send him on his first hollow hunting mission, instead of whatever other location he had requested to be sent. A minute or two to change the destination of portal later, and here was Connor Greaves, ready to try and slay a hollow.

The man sighed, as he used air ground to get on top of the nearest building, leaving the doors to close and vanish as easily as they appeared. This was the first mission Connor had been on that actually had him hunting anything other than lost Plus Souls, so he was a tad nervous about active combat. The last time he had been forced into combat was a disaster, with him accidentally blowing his arm off. The only reason he had survived was because his opponent had pitied him and chose to leave him for the Gotei to pickup. It was mortifying, if only to him.

As he reached the top of the building, he noticed that, no matter how disgusting a city was at its core, looking at it from above was always a sight to see, no matter how many times he had done so. The lights shone through the blackened night sky, revealing all the hopes and dreams that these cities had been built on. And often crushed beneath it. He paused briefly, taking in the sights of a place he had yet to see, before remembering his mission. Checking his phone once more for directions, he sped off towards the tower called 'Big Ben'.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Stats and Skills}Stats


Strength- 200
Speed- 250
Reiatsu Strength- 50
Spiritual Pressure- (210+50%) 315
Senses- 50
Instinct- 50
Energy Sensory- 0

Dark- 100
Light- 0


Skills

Strength of Will- 1
Weapons
Swords- 1
Weapons
Guns- 1
Street Fighting- 1
Acting- 1
Disguise- 1
Crafting- 1
Charisma- 1

[Yaksha Dokuja]

Already he could sense newcomers to the scene: A few humans just outside were already making their way up the stairs, more curious than concerned.  He could smell each of them, sense the warm blood running through their veins, and the pitiful reserves of spirit energy they carried: Barely enough to qualify as a sip, but enough sips put together could easily quench his thirst for a few moments.  All of these thoughts bubbled across his hindbrain without ever asking his mind for input, with the same natural ease a person would tie their shoes after doing it a thousand thousand times.  He clamored to the top of the belltower, slipping out through the walls; it offered about as much resistance as a piece of cheesecloth, before he was outside and looking at the world proper.  His gaze scanned over the area, tongue flicking out multiple times to catch any hint of resistance.

Resistance.  The resistance was growing ever more tedious with each passing day.  Yaksha was losing soldiers as quickly as he recruited them, the souls in his amalgam being fickle and capricious things: The moment they felt confident they could strike him a telling blow, they'd take it.  Even if it meant that their own being would be torn asunder an instant later, they seemed unable to stop themselves.  It was disappointing, seeing how viscerally incompetent his own constituents were.  Was it the result of being digested and stripped of their identity in the stomach of a hollow?  Was it simply that the world was that full of meaningless people, with nothing of value to contribute? 

He stood before an army of shadows, against an army of shadows, stuck between a rock and a hard place.  It was an amazing thing particularly in how -boring- it was.  Yaksha had seen wars before, and this was no real war.  This was like trying to stand between two raging oceans, and direct their energies somewhere productive.  Watching new eddies and ripples form, over and over, approaching some tiny outlet of souls and plucking from it his newest soldiers.  Each of them, as insubstantial as a memory, simply stared at him blankly, waiting for something to give them back a 'self' to have a sense of self-preservation.

His head turned, snapping with as much force and speed as a whip, to orient on the smell of a shinigami nearby.  It was something he'd detected a few times, a threat he was always preparing for somewhere deep in the back of his mind.  He'd run mock battles in his head so many times in the last centuries that it wouldn't even be inaccurate to say he could defeat most unseated shinigami in his sleep.  And now, with his mind totally consumed elsewhere, his body simply reacting with the savagery and force of instinct and desperation, that claim would be put to the test.  His eyes met the shinigami's, tail thrashing back and forth faintly, even disappearing into the substance of the belltower a few times.  It opened its mouth, but instead of a roar or screech of challenge and dominance, it let out a dry crackling hiss, more like a rattlesnake trying to scare off an intruder.  Its tail slowly pointed itself towards one of the windows, where a silhouette could be seen.  Its teeth bared, it simply sat and watched him, clearly prepared to strike down the civilian if it spotted any action from him.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Battle specs}
---------Stats-------------

Strength: 60(40)

Speed: 100(75)

Spiritual Pressure: 80
Reaitsu Strength: 75

Light Aura: 25

Dark Aura: 75
Instinct: 150(225)

Senses: 50(75)

Energy Sensory: 50(75)



Skills:

[Memory] [1]


[Calm Mind] [1]


[Focused Eye] [1]


[Battle Analysis] [1]


[War Strategy] [1]


[Battle Focus] [1]


[Learning] [1]


[Strength of Will] [1]


[Analysis] [1]

[Irene Palmer]

It had been sometime since Irene had been even near a battle of the spiritual nature. In fact it had been at least over a year. When she had first arrived back in London she had come across a shinigami who she had spoken to briefly. Other than meeting that shinigami Irene little more than a year from the present had clashed against a Hollow that had been seeking to devour several children. Irene may no longer fight on either side yet innocence will always remain neutral behind her fog of gray.

She continued to sit in her prison outside of the front of Big Ben focusing on what she was sure now was a Hollow. She could still smell the overwhelming amount of blood inside of he bell tower. This Hollow though was moving around at a fairly active pace while giving off what felt like a warning. Almost as if he was giving anyone who could actually see him or even fight him a chance to turn the other way. It took a moment for her to realize why he was making such a noise though. She ha been preoccupied with the Hollow and overlooked the fact that now there was a shinigami as well.

Listening as best as she could she gathered information. The shinigami was getting closer yet wasn’t running along the surface of London. Instead he ran through the air above. It was faint yet she could hear its breathing although why it was so difficult to pick up she couldn’t tell. As he got close enough that combat between the two may actually start to be a problem Irene could tell the shinigami was male. His scent was far to gritty while the bold impact of the muscles beneath his skin gave off the odor of what Irene remembered so many men during her time as a human. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she would remain here as a guard against the spiritual world and the world of the standard humans. This Hollow wouldn’t be allowed to eat anymore humans, but the shinigami in Irene’s mind was fair game.

[Connor Greaves]

And there it was. In the distance, he could see the hollow he had been assigned to dispatch. Due to the lightning and distance, he was unable to get a good look at the lost soul, so he could not say much about it. Still, it was good to know he was headed in the right direction. So, it seems that 'Big Ben' was a large clocktower attached to some other building. Hopefully this would not turn into a game of hide and seek throughout the place. As he grew closer to the building, he was left with a difficult choice.Should he enter though the entrance of the building and risk getting lost or led into a trap that the hollow might have set up?

He chose not to do that. Instead, he continued running through the air, and found himself a window closer to the top, just under the clock face. "Hado Number one: Sho." He spoke to himself, as a wave of pressure slammed into the glass, breaking it, and spraying a hail of shards inwards. He had chosen to enter above where he had saw the silhouette, mostly because he had no idea what the capabilities of the hollow were. The highground might be helpful to him, or it might be a hindrance. He supposed he would find out momentarily, as his entrance was far from subtle, and more than enough to attract its attention.

Sho: 50 Reiatsu
Total Reiatsu Remaining: 3,100/3,150

[Yaksha Dokuja]

There was the sound of breaking glass a few feet below, and that itself was all that saved the human Yaksha's tail had oriented on: They turned their head towards the sound, taking half a step, and in that space managing to move just barely out of the way of his tail, which shattered the glass just behind him as well.  The people inside had already been put on guard, uncertain if they should've been preparing some manner of public service announcement, or instituting a curfew, when these two explosions of glass broke a ruminative silence.  The lead investigator, a man with a well-coiffed mustache and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses that made him resemble an odd cross between a walrus and a racoon, was already charging down the stairs with wild abandon, shouting something about bringing in armed guards.  Yaksha distantly heard the phrase "MI6" before he skittered inside, lashing out a tail and stabbing the last unfortunate man to leave the room in the spine.  He fell over, tangled in his own feet, and began to crash down entire flights of stone stairs, as Yaksha's throat elongated to gulp down one more unfortunate soul.  His corpse, against all logic and reason, landed at the very edge of the window the shinigami had burst his way through, hitting the head against the windowsill hard enough to split it open.

And with that, the hunt had begun in earnest.  Yaksha's mouth opened, hissing eagerly while the body circled the stairwell, waiting to see if the shinigami would try some clever attempt to outwit it, to outmanuever it, or if he'd just come charging up and try to go toe-to-toe with a creature that every instructor reminded new recruits was about as dangerous as a tank and a dirty bomb put together.  Its eyes blinked slowly, carefully, and its legs bunched beneath it, prepared to move with explosive speed at the first sign of any unexpected intrusion.  Its tail thrashed back and forth, saliva dripping onto the floor in patterns only it could see, leaving phantom imprints of ectoplasm, or spiritrons, or anima, or any other number of dozens of terms.  In any language, it was the same thing though: It was a declaration of war.  Right here, on a continent most of the Gotei had forgotten for too long, a monster was thumbing its nose at the very forces that were dedicated to saving mankind from the things that went bump in the night.

And inside, a lone figure, one who had been stuck inside himself for so long that he would've given his entire kingdom for a mirror, just so he could remember something about himself but black and white hues.  His mind remembered a time before this, but only in abstract and incomplete terms: It was like a man who was born blind trying to describe the concept of color to someone who had lost their vision at the age of 30.  He plunged a hand into the maelstrom of ink around him, drawing out a significant amount and beginning to scrawl a small stick figure on his own arm.  It was hard to notice, even to his well-adjusted eye.  It looked like black on black, like someone had taken a -slightly worse- quality of pitch-blackness and splashed it over a mere dark blue or purple, hanging in the air.  He inhaled, suddenly feeling a surge of energy through his form, and in the enlightenment he reached down, grabbing another handful of ichor, scrawling over its other arm.  It couldn't see above, as its own limbs began to warp and creak, the faint sound of muscles and ligaments stretching in ways never meant to, even for a ghost.  Unbeknownst to anyone, least of all himself, Yaksha struggled to -become-.

Consumed: One class 8 Human

[Connor Greaves]

It seems that Connor overestimated his aim, as it appears that the hollow was somewhere on the upper levels. It was a shame, because that would likely make this all the harder. Connor was still a tad nervous about all this. It reminded him of something out of a horror story. Why was it that hollow chose the creepiest locations to hunt? Or did the locations become creepy because they were there? Food for thought, though probably at a later point in time, as he could hear something coming down the stairs. It was an odd noise though, sounding less like an animal and more like-

A body tumbled down a nearby flight of stairs. A human body, one that was likely a member of the local law enforcement if the armor was anything to go by. Connor felt his vision twist and pulse for a moment. He could feel his body twitch at the sight of the fallen human. The head of the man had cracked like a melon, a red mess spilling out and staining the ground underneath it. Red. So much red. Connor had seen people die in front of him before, heck, he was responsible for most of them. But they were never innocent. Not like this man. This man did not deserve this. His head shot up towards the stairs, body shaking in rage at the thought of this hollow toying with him.

There were few times where Connor was genuinely angry, where he actually wanted to kill something.

This was one of those times.

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." He called out, a slight tremble to his voice. He was shaking in anticipation for the fight. Connor drew his blade, the sword letting out a grinding hiss as it felt the air once more. "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." He sped past the corpse, determined to avenge him, and save his soul form the gut of a hollow. He knew hollows were dangerous, and that this was beyond foolish, but he was too angry to think clearly at this point. He ran up the stairs, skipping four steps at a time with his inhuman strength and speed, broadsword in both hands at his left hip. He was ready to strike at the hollow the moment he saw it.

[Yaksha Dokuja]

He barreled up the steps, taking them four at a time, with speed that the hollow could scarcely ever hope to keep pace with normally: he was already working on getting his feet on the ground when Yaksha's legs finished bunching beneath him.  The hollow launched itself, giving off that same dry rattling hiss...and as it did, space seemed to warp around it, deleting a significant portion of the space between him and Connor.  He appeared in the face of the shinigami faster than he had any right to, and his tail was already moving in that direction, aimed at approximately throat level; it probably couldn't have done much worse than a stiff jab, giving him a sore throat for a day or so, and maybe making it harder to speak, but that alone was enough when he was moving in one direction, and the shinigami was moving another.  Connor was all upward momentum, a bullet coming straight out of the chamber.  The only other force acting on him was gravity, and even that was a bit of a joke when it came to beings such as him.  So when a man who had invested all of his muscle mass and not insignificant will into upward force, who had expected his feet to hit a solid surface, to suddenly and -violently- feel a horizontal vector added to his movements, it was almost guaranteed that the outcome would go the way he predicted: He'd keep going up, and away.  Straight through the window Yaksha had shattered, back into the open air.

And far away from where Yaksha wanted to be.  Connor could keep on sieging the fortress as many times as he wanted, it would not serve him any advantage in the slightest.  Yaksha had been stalking this building for weeks, watching the people come and go; had crawled floor to floor, until his body instinctively knew every turn to make to get where he wanted to go.  He could've stepped into any solid wall or ceiling and been confident that he'd end up in a familiar place, prepared to continue this conflict with the home field advantage.  To coin a turn of phrase, he knew this place like the back of his hand.  It was a fortress he could play a game of cat-and-mouse in near endlessly.  The only limiting factor was his damnedable appetite!  Even now, as he was trying to find the quickest and most reliable way to get the shinigami out of line of sight, he was already thinking ahead to how he could corner and consume the next soul to fuel this wretched panging hunger inside of him.  A blessing and a curse, certainly: All he needed was the smallest head start, the faintest fraction of a lead, and he could resume his hunt.  But if even one thing didn't go as planned, this would start to turn into an extraction job far too quickly.

[Connor Greaves]

The hollow was a crafty one, using the dark and its knowledge of their surrounding to its advantage. A clever strategy for any situation, proving that this was far from mindless a mindless beast. The way it moved and attacked certainly proved as such. The spirit launched itself at him, with Connor responding by slashing at it, intending on splitting it in two. He did not get the chance, however, as something extremely strange happened. The hollow seemed to... warp towards him, appearing before the Soul Reaper far faster than he had anticipated. It lashed out at his throat with its tail, clearly intent on either beheading him, or stabbing through his neck and windpipe. Quite the vicious creature, he had to admit.

Either outcome was unacceptable for the man, as he responded with the upwards swing of his sword at the tail of the hollow. This hollow was fast a fast one, and would be able to kill any normal human with ease... But Connor was far above that of a normal human, and the attack that the hollow threw at him felt slow. So his balde met flesh, cutting through the appendage with ease. The tip of the tail flew through the air, landing somewhere above and behind the two, well out of the stairway.
Connor, now with his weapon above him, brought the Zanpakuto downwards, attempting to behead the lizard-like hollow, or simply cut it in two.

[Yaksha Dokuja]

The element of surprise seemed to be inefficient to the task at this point: though Yaksha was able to cross the distance far faster than one would predict, even from his previous movements, Connor's arm was faster still, slicing off the tip of the tail that was aimed to slam against his throat.  It was sent careening up and over, landing on the floor behind them, and thick blackish blood began to extrude from the appendage freely.  The hollow gave a furious shriek, its own head beginning to pull backwards towards the center of mass, an insane display of flexibility that would've put a bobblehead to shame.  The blade swung back down, landing against his shoulder and lodging itself into the flesh, while Yaksha's mass slammed into Connor with about as much style or precision as a man being launched from a cannon.  He hadn't expected to need to tackle the shinigami, and even if he had his own knowledge of the ideal form was tenuous at best.  Even so, a reptile his size weighed a few hundred pounds, and all that force was concentrated on sending Connor slamming into the ground beneath him.  Of course, the shinigami did have a choice, since the floor was simply hard stone...he could've let his body go directly through, like it was made of fog, and ended up a floor below.  Leaving the hollow time to retreat and work out a new plan.  And with his sword, almost certainly.

All these thoughts went through the reptilian hindbrain of Yaksha as he let out a second anguished squeal, his free hand tightening around Connor's own in an attempt to crush bones and rend flesh enough to leave the option of extracting his own sword impossible.  In a contest of sheer strength, it would be no contest, but each of Yaksha's fingers was like a tiny dagger, and they were trying their hardest to excise every patch of flesh or muscle they could get close to, even as its shoulder tried to pin him to the floor.  It was purely animal ferocity, instinctual viciousness telling him that unless he could disable and destroy this potential predator in a split second, it would become too much strain and too much of a loss of potential meals to warrant continuing.  Its tail was still flailing about, and the bleeding had already stopped for the most part, the end of his tail beginning to round out like it had happened days ago, instead of moments.

Inside of his wartorn mind, Yaksha looked down to see that about three centimeters of tail was just gone, without warning.  It was a strange sensation, like losing a toe, and it temporarily made him pitch forward.  The swirling vortex of souls rose to meet him, making it seem like he had tripped just as high tide was beginning.  He had to slam his hands beneath himself hard enough that he felt it in his bones, a painful impact that was as physical as it was cerebral: something was happening on the surface, and it was starting to become a distraction.  Down here, he couldn't afford distractions from his war games, which were becoming increasingly intricate.  It was now less chess and more shogi, a multi-layered game where the capacity for game-changing moves increased with every passing second. 

He was finding it easier as time went on to pin down the main offenders, a few small phantoms that kept popping up over and over.  Like guerilla tactics, everywhere they passed by they began to sew increasing discord.  But now that he knew what to look for, he could also see the warning signs.  He'd identified them, one by one, and he was already formulating a plan to crush the next one that appeared...only to see them -right in front of him as his body began careening this close to the sludge that threatened to completely consume him.  His heart was pounding, and he was almost ready to call a ceasefire...if he had any certainty whatsoever they'd acknowledge even a moment's peace to figure out what was happening outside of his own head.  He had to trust that his survival instincts were strong enough to save him while he worked on ensuring he'd have the focus he needed in the next few years to start actually making a difference.

[Connor Greaves]

The battle was going fairly well, if one were to ask him. He had managed to not only cut off a piece of tail from the hollow, but he had also managed to score a cut to its chest. This was certainly going better than his fight with the arrancar, that was for sure. But his opponent was far from dead and gone. The lizard started thrashing about in visible, and very audible, agony. He had not been expecting such a thing, and was thrown down the stairs by the overgrown reptile. It was a painful trip down, that ended with him slamming into a hard concrete with an angry hollow on top of him.

This was getting dangerous, as his opponent was trying to grapple him, grabbing his wrist with their... talons? Claws? Sharp fingers, sharp fingers were wrapped around his wrist, digging into his flesh. The shinigami let out a cry of pain, and almost released his weapon from the pain. He tightened his grip, however, knowing better than to lose his sword. His free hand went straight for the hollow's neck, wrapping his own fingers around its throat. Connor was weak compared to most other shinigami, especially to the thugs in squad eleven, but his strength was enough for this.

Using his superior strength, he wrestled the lizard off him, choking the hollow as Connor rolled the beast onto its back, and he himself onto its chest. "Give... me.. back... my.. sword!" He grunted out, trying to angle the sword to its throat, but not being able to without losing his hand. He kneed the scaly fiend in the gut, trying his best to get it to release his hand. If he managed to do so, he would jump off the beast to get into a more favorable position, with his zanpakuto in hand. If not, he would have to try and choke the masked menace into submission before killing it. One thing was for sure though; a visit to the fourth squad was a must after tonight.

[Yaksha Dokuja]

A hand clamped down on the hollow's throat, almost tight enough to break bones.  It would've been terrifying if he weren't already pinned down and as good as disarmed.  Instead, it was just agitating: He was pushing his own advantages too well, and he clearly had no intention of leaving unless he wiped Yaksha out entirely.  It was not at all like a fight between hollows, or predator and prey.  This was an attempt to slaughter, a relentless reaction that only humans could pull off.  The hyper-predator, the pursuit predator.  It was a phrase many used, but few understood what it really meant.  The shinigami continued to struggle, prepared at any moment to turn the tables and end the fight then and there.  Every fiber of his being was screaming at him to take the blade and run, to do whatever it could to just buy a little more time and escape.  Its body tensed, energy beginning to coil around its head.  Every lizard instinctively knew the dangers of being caught by the tail, but not by the head.  That was a little too concerning for any reptile: anything that had its head around your throat would kill you no matter what you did.  But retreat was becoming too appealing an option.

If you run, you'll never stop.  That's what pursuit predator means.  You should know that by now: it's engrained into your very core.  There is but one option to combat the pursuit predator, and that is superior intellect.  They will -always- find you again, and they will -always- pick up where they left off.  There will be more of them.  They'll push you exactly where they want you to go.  The longer you run, the harder it gets, and the closer they come.  If you turn tail now, they win.  It'll be marked in decades and centuries instead of seconds or minutes, but running from a shinigami -is- death.  There's only one choice left to you: Make -them- run from -you-.  Show them that the price of your hide is too high to justify the reward.  And in time, they'll begin to get the message.

The voice sounded sleepy, half-distracted, like it was coming from a person on the other end of a very poor phone connection, someone who was almost certainly woken up by the conflict before them.  The eyes began to alight again, and the reiatsu he'd been focusing on his throat began to push itself even further down: it felt very much like when someone swallowed down their own bile after a small bout of nausea, but he managed it all the same.  As he did, his head seemed to elongate and stretch horribly, ignoring all concept of conservation of mass and matter.  All of a sudden, like a child rolling a piece of clay longer and thinner, his head shot forward, teeth sinking forcibly into the shinigami's collarbone on the offending limb.

The needle-like teeth in his mouth ground against bone, giving him a visceral rush of excitement at it happened.  He could feel spots in his vision, his consciousness threatening to fade, but that was fine: the opponent was in a position every bit as bad.  If the damage continued, he'd probably lose his right arm entirely, and the damage to his skull as they tumbled down the stairs was probably enough to cause whiplash and a concussion.  He'd be struggling to avoid passing out too, and now he was risking an arm in the process too.  It was a matter of endurance now: Yaksha only needed to pass out last, and the win would be his.  He could enjoy the rest of his meals in peace, and then go somewhere else to rest for a year or two, letting his wounds scar over.  He'd cornered the predator effectively, and forced him into a direct confrontation.  If he let himself die right now, then it'd be a disgrace.

So he'd grit his teeth, quite literally, and keep on pushing until he felt that grip loosen.  Whether due to the muscles in his arms being unable to receive a message from his brain anymore, or because the shinigami was finally too worn out to continue the fight.

[Irene Palmer]

The both of them truly were starting to get very loud. Irene had been sitting at the entrance of massive clock tower since the start of the clash between this serpent Hollow and the masked shinigami. Irene although she couldn't see nor was she in sight of either of them the Failure could tell that the Shinigami was wearing something over his face. From the way that his voice sounded that is as simple as that while the Hollow simply moved like a serpent and thus it more than likely at least to some degree possessed the body of one.

The fight between the two of them Irene had believed wouldn't have lasted all that long. She had thought that one of the other would simply kill the enemy fairly quick yet these two for the most part seemed to be pretty even. As the both of them fell from the higher sections of the tower that Irene didn't wish to surmount in order to play any sort of role in what was going on, she finally rolled the wheels of her chair thus carrying herself into the center of the first floor in view of them both. "So much noise. So much blood, sweat and ignorance."

Irene would stop several feet away from the both of them laying her hands across her waist. Both of them would be able to see that she bore a mask over her eyes giving away that more than likely she could not see. The wheelchair would more than likely give away that movement wasn't something the Failure could do all that well. "Cease this pointless conflict and leave London now, the both of you. Do not drag your needless violence to another part of the Human World." Irene warned the both of them. Neither would likely listen though. Should either of them attempt to attack or flee Irene would lift her hand and cast Geki towards them in order to inflict paralyzes upon them.

Remaining Reiatsu: 1030/1050
Geki: {2x} (-20)

SPOILER: Click to show

{Stats & Skills}Strength: 25
Speed: 50
Spiritual Pressure: 70 (105)
Reiatsu Strength: 450 (675)
Instincts: 125
Senses: 100 (300)
Energy Sensory: 0
Healing Expertise: 0
Light Aura: 100
Dark Aura: 0

Kido: 1
Charisma: 1
Analysis: 1
Calm Mind: 1
Battle Analysis: 1
Mental Incantation: 1

[Connor Greaves]

As the hollow bit into Connor, he could not stop the yell of pain that he made. This was bad, this was very bad. Connor could barely think straight with all the pain he was in, and all because of this hollow! No... he could not blame everything on it. He had been over confident in his victory, so assured of the fight ending in his favor, he lost sight of his foe, or at least that he was not invincible. If he had been more careful... But there was no point in thinking of what he had done wrong, not yet at least. He needed to beat this hollow, this animal, right now, or he was dead.

He removed his hand from the neck of the lizard, before socking it right in the mask. The teeth snapped off, and its head whipped downwards, leaving the bone fragments embedded in his shoulder. Moving as quick as he could in this state, he grabbed the thumb-like claw of the creature, and snapped it backward, breaking it, and its grip on his wrist. Getting some solid footing on the ground, the Soul Reaper kicked off with shunpo, sword in hand. His back slammed into a wall with a thud, likely adding to what was shaping up to be a sizable bruise, but at least he was out of the melee for the moment.

He sure had made a mess of things with this mission. He loathed to think of the chewing out he was going to be receiving by the time he got back to the Seireitei. But first, he had a hollow to kill. This was not going to be easy, as he could feel his neck start to get stiff, most likely from his fall earlier, and not to mention how screwed up both his arms were at this point. He could barely feel his right arm from how much pain it was in, let alone swing it. His left was little better, what with the large gashes in his wrist. Holding the sword was growing difficult. It was hard to tell how much blood he had lost, so it was probably too much.

'Maybe this can be the thing to finally kill me.' He thought with, his mind filling with a sense of serenity. This might be it. Through his own mistakes, this might be the thing to end him. He wanted to go out fighting, and now was as good as ever. He readied his stance, ready to take this ugly reptile with him, when all of a sudden, a new voice was heard. He turned towards it... only to find something that no one wanted to see. A good distance away was a wheelchair-bound woman, wearing old victorian era clothing, with a blindfold over her eyes.

This was no ordinary woman, however. This was a failure, and something he instantly took a step away from. He had never seen one before now, but the signs were near instantly recognisable. Failures were some of the most dangerous beings ever seen. Unmatched spiritual power, and a tendency to explode if things went South for them. And now she wanted them to stop fighting. Connor felt his blood boil at her comment, however. "P-pointless!?" He said with a stutter. How dare she call this fight pointless! "That-that blindfold suits you, i-if you think killing a hollow is p-pointless!" His breathing was labored, he was in worse shape than he thought.

He could not stop now, not when he could stop this hollow from killing anymore people! He needed to keep this world safe, and the hollow had already proven a threat to humanity. If he let it live, then who knows how many more it would kill? No, he would stop it, right here and now! Ignoring her words, he charged at his foe one last time, dragging his increasingly heavy sword behind him, ready to cleave the hollow in two, at the cost of his own life if he had to. That was when he felt something slam into his side, making him instantly crumple down, like a puppet that just had its strings cut.

Blade fell from his weakened grip, and he dropped face first into the floor, mask saving him from scraping against it. That felt like Kido. He knew the feeling of them from his time in the academy. But the only one who could cast Kido was a shini-no, a Soul Reaper. Could failures cast Kido? It was clear he lacked all the information on the dangerous race. But it was also clear that he could not move. He was at the mercy of the woman. Would she let the hollow kill him, or would she force the hollow to retreat? All he knew was that he would be unable to continue this fight, even when he regained control of himself once more.

Shunpo: 50 reiatsu
Total Reiatsu Remaining: 3,050/3,150