Post by Alchemist on Dec 6, 2012 18:00:05 GMT -5
The late hours of the night and early hours of the morning were Alchemist's favorite times of day to visit the human world. They melded together effortlessly as the world was cloaked under a veil of welcoming darkness and quiet. It was the only time he could visit the parks of the human world without making his presence known in some way. He wasn't the smallest Hollow roaming the streets, after all. He dragged his body along with his lizard-like legs, snorting and panting as his large form protested the shifting of weight. He couldn't afford to fly to where he was going; generally the canopy in forested areas would not allow him to land properly, even in areas that could accommodate his size. He pushed through the underbrush, feeling somewhat uncomfortable at the narrowness of some of the passages between trees. After much pushing, stomping, and dragging his way through the forest, he found a suitable clearing in which to begin his training.
"Alright, this oughta do it," he mused with a tone of satisfaction, "Now... let's see how we can do this..."
His goldenrod irises flicked about in his insect-like eyes, closely examining his surroundings. If he was to practice his Desovar, he would need the proper materials. Obviously he had soil... There were trees all around from which to pull bark, and a couple of large rocks that he could probably save for when he was confident in creating his little homunculi. He decided to begin with the most readily-available material, soil. Lowering his massive jaws to the ground, he used the teeth of his mask to scrape up loose mounds of earth. He continued this for several minutes, simply gathering clumps of soil in his mouth until he had produced a hole roughly three feet deep. As expected, the dirt did not have the most extravagant taste, but he endured the undesirable flavor for the sake of his improvement. After all, that was what he was here for.
After a bit of reluctant chewing, he swallowed the gathered earth. He gave a sigh of relief as it left his tongue, feeling it travel through his body and into his tail-like abdomen like a bank capsule through its tube. He recalled when he originally consumed an organic substance, tree bark, and tried to remember how he'd fashioned it into his minion. He focused his energy rather clumsily; while he was familiar with the concept of reiatsu, he personally was not very experienced at manipulating it. His prior summoning of his spawn had been fairly spontaneous--he'd done so without much thinking--but perhaps, he thought, a better result would come from actually focusing on making the ability stronger. Few things did not strengthen with thought and strategy.
For several moments Alchemist felt only emptiness and calm, like one without proper knowledge making an attempt to meditate. Slowly, though, he began to pick up on a tingling sensation. Energy. It moved through his body like impulses through his nerves, though this was much more... well, energizing. As he became aware of this energy, which he assumed was reiatsu, he tried to manipulate it toward his abdomen. Again, this initially ended in failure. After a few minutes of trying, he realized that manipulation of such energy came not from trying to manipulate it per say, but from instinctively doing so. It was much like a baby learning to control its limbs--one did not simply focus on making their arm or leg move, it did so because there was a target in mind, and the body strongly desired a way to move to that target. Once Alchemist realized this, the energy almost seemed to move of its own accord.
Despite the fact that the energy willingly rushed to his abdomen, it did not seem as if much of it was depleted as a churning sensation overtook him. It was as if his stomach was rumbling, however he felt it in a completely different portion of his form. He could feel a small, bearable pain in his abdomen as a small amount of his flesh was torn away to further fuel the technique, and a stronger rumbling sensation as the soil he had ingested was pulled, pushed, and molded by the reiatsu into the familiar shape of his spawn. Once the activity ceased, it was then time to figure out how to expel the newly created creature. Alchemist figured that would be easy enough, and it was; a simple contraction of the muscles in his abdomen pushed the newborn spawn into the open air, where it landed face-first on the ground. He would really have to work on a classier way to go about that...
Before he could begin to contemplate, however, the sensation hit him. The feeling that he was splitting his mind between two separate entities--that he was two different beings at once. It was not an incredibly unfamiliar sensation, but Alchemist was unsure if he would ever truly grow accustomed to it. Once again calming himself and focusing on this new creature that was part of him but simultaneously not, he attempted to manipulate it into a standing position. Once again he found difficulty. He found it hard to view the creature as an extension of his own body, and continued to try and project the desire for action onto it instead of simply causing it to move.
Eventually, he managed to get the alien-looking creature to move; once again he appeared to be over-thinking things. The key to this ability, it seemed, was not to worry so much on making the energy do what he wanted, but facilitating--overseeing--that it went where he wanted it to. The spawned being slowly, almost confusedly raised its arm, reflecting Alchemist's unsure nature. It flexed and relaxed its three-fingered hand, forming a fist a few times before punching the air. Its swing was weak, he knew, but like anything it could be improved with time and effort.
He willed his creation to spread its wings, unable to help the smirk that came to his face. Flying; he could do that. While unsteady at first, the veritable homunculus lifted from the ground and hovered just before the face of its creator. Alchemist willed it to fly about, testing how acrobatic and agile it could be. Like the dragonfly its wings were modeled after, it had acute control over its flight capabilities. It could stop on a dime, fly backwards, and hit top speed mere seconds after propelling from a hovering state. That was good news for the Hollow who valued speed and mobility. Of course, nine times out of ten, he wasn't going to need his spawn in the air with him. Thus, he returned his minion to the ground.
Looking around, he tried to find a good training dummy for his new creation. The rugged bark of the trees would be tough on the skin of a creature made of soil and flesh, and solid rock didn't seem to be the best thing to go around punching either. Thus, Alchemist devised yet another idea. Lowering his maw to the ground once more, he consumed more of the dry earth to create another spawn for his original creation to spar with. He let his energy flow instinctively and was surprised to find out that now that he was more familiar with how to relax and let the energy go where it needed to, it accumulated quicker and flowed more easily. The time it took him to produce the second spawn was reduced almost a quarter, and once the being was expelled from the main body, it landed in a crouch seemingly by nature.
Alchemist willed this new creation to join his original one, standing them across from one another and adjusting their bodies into a fighting stance. It was strange, splitting his attention--nay, his entire consciousness--between three entities, and yet the sensation gave him an odd sense of... freedom. He was these three beings. He could focus more on being the enormous, imposing behemoth that he was, or feel more at home as the mind of a smaller, more human-shaped creature. Still, he did not summon them for a change of identity; they were tools of battle--mere weapons--and he was going to practice using them as such.
"Alright then..." he muttered, causing the two combatants to brace themselves and prepare for combat. "Begin!"
The call to start was wasted when aimed at himself, he knew, but he figured he would try and treat the three gathered organisms as three separate beings as opposed to one collective. The two spawn launched a simultaneous punch with their full strength, both hits impacting the others' jaw. Since Alchemist was still somewhat unused to controlling multiple spawn simultaneously--before, he'd focus on one at a time--the pair followed out the same commands at the same time.
"Hnn... that won't work..." he mumbled, looking between the spawn. Narrowing his eyes, he caused one of the spawn to punch at the air again. The other mimicked the action again, much to Alchemist's frustration. He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how he had gotten this far in his training. He'd stopped thinking about the actions, and instead did them. Making his energy flow was as simple as... moving his legs. With that thought, he raised his legs one by one, bringing them back to the ground with a heavy thud. He noticed that this time, his spawn did not mimic him.
'Huh... now why's that...?' he thought, blinking curiously before settling into thought. Perhaps it was because it was the main body, where his mind and focus was most accustomed to being? If that was the case, maybe he needed to work on displacing his center of focus. But... how would he go about doing that? He tilted his head slightly as he thought. If he focused more on one spawn, then it would naturally be faster than the other. Not to mention he himself would be left wide open for attack. Perhaps...
"Alright, let's all try movin' at once. See how that works out."
He lifted his right leg, taking a step forward. The smaller homunculi seemed to want to move; their right legs twitched with the desire to do so, but they did not complete the action. Alchemist figured this was due to the fact that he was still leaving too much focus within himself. Giving a gruff snort of frustration, he tried again, this time while simultaneously attempting to focus himself within the mind of one of the spawn. He found that in this instance, both he and the spawn would step forward. Progress. That meant that even if his focus was elsewhere, he could still control his own body without really thinking about it. Thus, that led to another logical course of action.
The dragonfly Hollow focused his attention within his minions, splitting it in a manner that was not unlike when it was just him and his original creation. He willed them to face each other once more, then settle into a fighting stance. He didn't bother giving a start command, and instead ordered one of his minions to attack. Instead of the simultaneous strike from before, the second spawn aptly defended before countering with a hard, sweeping kick. This too was blocked, though the strike left a small indent on the reciever's forearm. Alchemist felt no pain from the powerful strike, however; his spawn were not equipped to experience such sensations. They only knew when they were making contact.
Alchemist continued to have his creatures spar, familiarizing himself with their abilities. Their strongest strike was their sweeping kick, striking the opponent with the hardest part of their shin. The attack was fairly slow, though, when compared to their punches and arm thrusts. They had decent blocking ability, preferring to do intercept hits toward their sides using their forearms, and catch and deflect blows directed from the front. They were sloppy fighters, he knew, but since he was not particularly educated in any form of self-defense, and was in no position to practice humanoid combat styles himself, there was little he could do about that.
Even as he thought about these things the spawn continued to fight; he found it much alike to thinking while moving in his own body. It distracted him slightly from the fight, but for the most part it was easy enough. As an experiment, he ceased the movement of one of the spawn and let the other unleash strike after strike upon it. He wanted to test how much torture it could take before it disintegrated. He willed the spawn that was still attacking to unleash kick after kick on his motionless kin, putting indentations into its soil-composed exoskeleton. The target dummy didn't seem to mind, staring blankly as its opponent abused it. A well placed kick decimated its neck, sending its head rolling across the ground before it disintegrated and returned to the soil from whence it originated. The rest of its body continued to stand there idly, despite the fact that it could no longer see or hear. It was literally helpless without Alchemist's guidance.
Surprised by the durability of his creation, he ceased his attacks upon it to test its mobility now that it was sans what would usually be considered a vital body part. It moved with the same aptitude as its headed twin, and could even punch and kick like normal. It was still difficult to control it, however; he had to split his consciousness evenly between them if he wanted to move it, but in order to see he had to rely on his natural body. It was... a strange feeling, one that he was not yet ready to control. In fact, doing so made him somewhat dizzy. Thus, he completely removed his focus from that spawn, ceasing the flow of reiatsu that kept it together and mobile. It immediately disintegrated, leaving him with the spawn that he originally created. He disintegrated this one as well, finished with his training for the night. Now, he needed to think about what he learned.
"Alright... so..." he prompted, letting his legs slide from beneath him as he laid lazily in the grass. "Don't think too hard about things. Figure out how the things happen, then let it happen. Split your focus, but don't worry about having to maintain yourself. Now, as for the little ones... they don't feel pain, so that's good... Their attacks are quick, but fairly weak, and require close range. Oh, but there's always the webbing... we didn't practice that... Another time, I guess. There aren't really any good targets around here... Regardless..." he rambled, letting his mind toy with all that he had learned from his experiments during his training.
His thoughts were soon interrupted by the first pangs of hunger for the night, which immediately drew his attention back to reality. He would have to continue pondering the aspects of his training in-depth later. Now, it was time to put his abilities to a more practical use. With a heavy groan and a horse-like snort, he pulled himself to his feet and began to trudge back through the forest to an area where he could take off and begin his search for innocent souls to devour. His teeth screeched against the top of his mask as he ground them, thinking of all the different flavors of human souls.
"Alright, this oughta do it," he mused with a tone of satisfaction, "Now... let's see how we can do this..."
His goldenrod irises flicked about in his insect-like eyes, closely examining his surroundings. If he was to practice his Desovar, he would need the proper materials. Obviously he had soil... There were trees all around from which to pull bark, and a couple of large rocks that he could probably save for when he was confident in creating his little homunculi. He decided to begin with the most readily-available material, soil. Lowering his massive jaws to the ground, he used the teeth of his mask to scrape up loose mounds of earth. He continued this for several minutes, simply gathering clumps of soil in his mouth until he had produced a hole roughly three feet deep. As expected, the dirt did not have the most extravagant taste, but he endured the undesirable flavor for the sake of his improvement. After all, that was what he was here for.
After a bit of reluctant chewing, he swallowed the gathered earth. He gave a sigh of relief as it left his tongue, feeling it travel through his body and into his tail-like abdomen like a bank capsule through its tube. He recalled when he originally consumed an organic substance, tree bark, and tried to remember how he'd fashioned it into his minion. He focused his energy rather clumsily; while he was familiar with the concept of reiatsu, he personally was not very experienced at manipulating it. His prior summoning of his spawn had been fairly spontaneous--he'd done so without much thinking--but perhaps, he thought, a better result would come from actually focusing on making the ability stronger. Few things did not strengthen with thought and strategy.
For several moments Alchemist felt only emptiness and calm, like one without proper knowledge making an attempt to meditate. Slowly, though, he began to pick up on a tingling sensation. Energy. It moved through his body like impulses through his nerves, though this was much more... well, energizing. As he became aware of this energy, which he assumed was reiatsu, he tried to manipulate it toward his abdomen. Again, this initially ended in failure. After a few minutes of trying, he realized that manipulation of such energy came not from trying to manipulate it per say, but from instinctively doing so. It was much like a baby learning to control its limbs--one did not simply focus on making their arm or leg move, it did so because there was a target in mind, and the body strongly desired a way to move to that target. Once Alchemist realized this, the energy almost seemed to move of its own accord.
Despite the fact that the energy willingly rushed to his abdomen, it did not seem as if much of it was depleted as a churning sensation overtook him. It was as if his stomach was rumbling, however he felt it in a completely different portion of his form. He could feel a small, bearable pain in his abdomen as a small amount of his flesh was torn away to further fuel the technique, and a stronger rumbling sensation as the soil he had ingested was pulled, pushed, and molded by the reiatsu into the familiar shape of his spawn. Once the activity ceased, it was then time to figure out how to expel the newly created creature. Alchemist figured that would be easy enough, and it was; a simple contraction of the muscles in his abdomen pushed the newborn spawn into the open air, where it landed face-first on the ground. He would really have to work on a classier way to go about that...
Before he could begin to contemplate, however, the sensation hit him. The feeling that he was splitting his mind between two separate entities--that he was two different beings at once. It was not an incredibly unfamiliar sensation, but Alchemist was unsure if he would ever truly grow accustomed to it. Once again calming himself and focusing on this new creature that was part of him but simultaneously not, he attempted to manipulate it into a standing position. Once again he found difficulty. He found it hard to view the creature as an extension of his own body, and continued to try and project the desire for action onto it instead of simply causing it to move.
Eventually, he managed to get the alien-looking creature to move; once again he appeared to be over-thinking things. The key to this ability, it seemed, was not to worry so much on making the energy do what he wanted, but facilitating--overseeing--that it went where he wanted it to. The spawned being slowly, almost confusedly raised its arm, reflecting Alchemist's unsure nature. It flexed and relaxed its three-fingered hand, forming a fist a few times before punching the air. Its swing was weak, he knew, but like anything it could be improved with time and effort.
He willed his creation to spread its wings, unable to help the smirk that came to his face. Flying; he could do that. While unsteady at first, the veritable homunculus lifted from the ground and hovered just before the face of its creator. Alchemist willed it to fly about, testing how acrobatic and agile it could be. Like the dragonfly its wings were modeled after, it had acute control over its flight capabilities. It could stop on a dime, fly backwards, and hit top speed mere seconds after propelling from a hovering state. That was good news for the Hollow who valued speed and mobility. Of course, nine times out of ten, he wasn't going to need his spawn in the air with him. Thus, he returned his minion to the ground.
Looking around, he tried to find a good training dummy for his new creation. The rugged bark of the trees would be tough on the skin of a creature made of soil and flesh, and solid rock didn't seem to be the best thing to go around punching either. Thus, Alchemist devised yet another idea. Lowering his maw to the ground once more, he consumed more of the dry earth to create another spawn for his original creation to spar with. He let his energy flow instinctively and was surprised to find out that now that he was more familiar with how to relax and let the energy go where it needed to, it accumulated quicker and flowed more easily. The time it took him to produce the second spawn was reduced almost a quarter, and once the being was expelled from the main body, it landed in a crouch seemingly by nature.
Alchemist willed this new creation to join his original one, standing them across from one another and adjusting their bodies into a fighting stance. It was strange, splitting his attention--nay, his entire consciousness--between three entities, and yet the sensation gave him an odd sense of... freedom. He was these three beings. He could focus more on being the enormous, imposing behemoth that he was, or feel more at home as the mind of a smaller, more human-shaped creature. Still, he did not summon them for a change of identity; they were tools of battle--mere weapons--and he was going to practice using them as such.
"Alright then..." he muttered, causing the two combatants to brace themselves and prepare for combat. "Begin!"
The call to start was wasted when aimed at himself, he knew, but he figured he would try and treat the three gathered organisms as three separate beings as opposed to one collective. The two spawn launched a simultaneous punch with their full strength, both hits impacting the others' jaw. Since Alchemist was still somewhat unused to controlling multiple spawn simultaneously--before, he'd focus on one at a time--the pair followed out the same commands at the same time.
"Hnn... that won't work..." he mumbled, looking between the spawn. Narrowing his eyes, he caused one of the spawn to punch at the air again. The other mimicked the action again, much to Alchemist's frustration. He paused for a moment, trying to figure out how he had gotten this far in his training. He'd stopped thinking about the actions, and instead did them. Making his energy flow was as simple as... moving his legs. With that thought, he raised his legs one by one, bringing them back to the ground with a heavy thud. He noticed that this time, his spawn did not mimic him.
'Huh... now why's that...?' he thought, blinking curiously before settling into thought. Perhaps it was because it was the main body, where his mind and focus was most accustomed to being? If that was the case, maybe he needed to work on displacing his center of focus. But... how would he go about doing that? He tilted his head slightly as he thought. If he focused more on one spawn, then it would naturally be faster than the other. Not to mention he himself would be left wide open for attack. Perhaps...
"Alright, let's all try movin' at once. See how that works out."
He lifted his right leg, taking a step forward. The smaller homunculi seemed to want to move; their right legs twitched with the desire to do so, but they did not complete the action. Alchemist figured this was due to the fact that he was still leaving too much focus within himself. Giving a gruff snort of frustration, he tried again, this time while simultaneously attempting to focus himself within the mind of one of the spawn. He found that in this instance, both he and the spawn would step forward. Progress. That meant that even if his focus was elsewhere, he could still control his own body without really thinking about it. Thus, that led to another logical course of action.
The dragonfly Hollow focused his attention within his minions, splitting it in a manner that was not unlike when it was just him and his original creation. He willed them to face each other once more, then settle into a fighting stance. He didn't bother giving a start command, and instead ordered one of his minions to attack. Instead of the simultaneous strike from before, the second spawn aptly defended before countering with a hard, sweeping kick. This too was blocked, though the strike left a small indent on the reciever's forearm. Alchemist felt no pain from the powerful strike, however; his spawn were not equipped to experience such sensations. They only knew when they were making contact.
Alchemist continued to have his creatures spar, familiarizing himself with their abilities. Their strongest strike was their sweeping kick, striking the opponent with the hardest part of their shin. The attack was fairly slow, though, when compared to their punches and arm thrusts. They had decent blocking ability, preferring to do intercept hits toward their sides using their forearms, and catch and deflect blows directed from the front. They were sloppy fighters, he knew, but since he was not particularly educated in any form of self-defense, and was in no position to practice humanoid combat styles himself, there was little he could do about that.
Even as he thought about these things the spawn continued to fight; he found it much alike to thinking while moving in his own body. It distracted him slightly from the fight, but for the most part it was easy enough. As an experiment, he ceased the movement of one of the spawn and let the other unleash strike after strike upon it. He wanted to test how much torture it could take before it disintegrated. He willed the spawn that was still attacking to unleash kick after kick on his motionless kin, putting indentations into its soil-composed exoskeleton. The target dummy didn't seem to mind, staring blankly as its opponent abused it. A well placed kick decimated its neck, sending its head rolling across the ground before it disintegrated and returned to the soil from whence it originated. The rest of its body continued to stand there idly, despite the fact that it could no longer see or hear. It was literally helpless without Alchemist's guidance.
Surprised by the durability of his creation, he ceased his attacks upon it to test its mobility now that it was sans what would usually be considered a vital body part. It moved with the same aptitude as its headed twin, and could even punch and kick like normal. It was still difficult to control it, however; he had to split his consciousness evenly between them if he wanted to move it, but in order to see he had to rely on his natural body. It was... a strange feeling, one that he was not yet ready to control. In fact, doing so made him somewhat dizzy. Thus, he completely removed his focus from that spawn, ceasing the flow of reiatsu that kept it together and mobile. It immediately disintegrated, leaving him with the spawn that he originally created. He disintegrated this one as well, finished with his training for the night. Now, he needed to think about what he learned.
"Alright... so..." he prompted, letting his legs slide from beneath him as he laid lazily in the grass. "Don't think too hard about things. Figure out how the things happen, then let it happen. Split your focus, but don't worry about having to maintain yourself. Now, as for the little ones... they don't feel pain, so that's good... Their attacks are quick, but fairly weak, and require close range. Oh, but there's always the webbing... we didn't practice that... Another time, I guess. There aren't really any good targets around here... Regardless..." he rambled, letting his mind toy with all that he had learned from his experiments during his training.
His thoughts were soon interrupted by the first pangs of hunger for the night, which immediately drew his attention back to reality. He would have to continue pondering the aspects of his training in-depth later. Now, it was time to put his abilities to a more practical use. With a heavy groan and a horse-like snort, he pulled himself to his feet and began to trudge back through the forest to an area where he could take off and begin his search for innocent souls to devour. His teeth screeched against the top of his mask as he ground them, thinking of all the different flavors of human souls.
