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+--- Thread: A rude Awakening (/showthread.php?tid=6012)
A rude Awakening - Weiss Schnee - 05-11-2017
Weiss blinked a few times, noticing the gray, darkened clouds above her. They seemed so unnatural, reminding her of-
Weiss got up with a start, thinking back to the events of the Hero’s graveyard. There was no way she could have been summoned back to that living hell, right? She’d done her part, and
Looking around, Weiss realized that wherever this was, it wasn’t the Hero’s graveyard. Unfortunately, the looks of this place didn’t make it seem like an immediate upgrade. As she looked around, she saw nothing but cold, hard stone that parted into a muddy mess. To either side of her, petrified trees dotted the area, and their gnarled, twisted appearance seemed to hint they were the slightest bit unnatural.
“Wh-where..”
Weiss looked down to see she was actually sitting in a rough bedroll, and as she clutched at her stomach, she realized with some relief that she was no longer wounded. She felt *incredibly* hungry, but the pain in her back and stomach had receded completely. Someone had taken care of her when she fell unconscious, and then, dropped her here. Recalling what occurred these past few days, she supposed she was pretty lucky. Not nearly as conscious as she might have liked, but… lucky.
Weiss was interrupted from her musing by a fairly deep, crass voice behind her. “Finally, you’ve awoken.”
Weiss turned around to see a blonde-haired man holding what looked like a timepiece. He just studied her with a cold glare.
Weiss got up and dashed for him, one hand seeking to grab his throat, as her eyes widened.
The tall man just casually grabbed her by the face and smashed her into the stone floor, his face completely expressionless as he grabbed out a metallic pill of some sort, ignoring the huntress’s thrashing and frustration. Weiss tried her hardest to get out of his grip, but he seemed far stronger than he appeared, and Weiss, on the other hand, felt strangely weak.
“My name is Fukaku Nayamasa.” The man explained, before suddenly slamming a fist into Weiss’s stomach
The huntress gasped in pain, and her mysterious assailant shoved the pill into her mouth, going so far as to push his hand into her throat to force the pill down. Weiss tried to get up, to struggle, but the man kept one hand on her forehead, holding her down, while the other unceremoniously slammed her mouth shut.
“Swallow!”
Weiss didn’t know what the hell this guy was giving her, but her body betrayed her as she reflexively swallowed the weird pill
“Still feel like killing me?” The man asked, getting up and leaning against a tree.
“O… Oh god. What’s…” Weiss stated with sudden nausea. Whatever the pill was, it had worked, alright. She’d lost the gnawing hunger that had sat with her since she’d been resurrected from the graveyard.
And with the sanity that she’d gained as the hunger left, she realized she’d just tried to kill the man who’d probably saved her life. She had no idea why, exactly, but she’d just attempted to murder him.
“It’s simple, Hollow.” Nayamasa stated. “You are now a monster. And one with poor self-control.”
“Wh… What are you saying?”
Fukaku let out an annoyed grunt. “What I just said. Sometime recently, you obtained something that made you less than human. Now, Saiko has decided to fully activate that with a portion of her own powers, and you’ve become a being that feeds on humanity. As I loosely fit the qualification of 'human being', you just unconsciously attempted to consume me, due in good part to near starvation after your recent awakening ate away completely at what little spiritual energy you had at the time.”
Weiss had to fight hard to stop herself from tearing up, or gasping, or screaming.
“A... monster…” Weiss stammered.
Getting up, Weiss glared. “No! My name is Weiss Schnee! I”m a human! What the hell are you talking about? None of what you just said makes sense! Who the hell are you to call someone a monster!”
Nayamasa just shook his head, running a hand through his hair as though to announce the presence of a bad headache. “Once, you were. Now, you’re a demon that hails from my world - an entity known as a hollow. Why you, who come from a different world entirely, have obtained symptoms from mine, is a mystery. worrying about it won't help you get used to it.”
Nayamasa calmly sat down, his legs crossed, and looked at Weiss with pursed lips.
“As for who I am, my name is Nayamasa Fukaku. My job as a Quincy was to erase that garbage that feeds on humans, such as yourself.” He stated bluntly. “Violent hollows that sought to consume the living of their own will, or worthless trash like yourself that can’t fight their instincts due to their own lack of willpower.”
Weiss’s hands balled into fists again, and she badly wished she could punch that arrogant glare off of Nayamasa’s face. Some part of her knew that she was using that to deflect her own horror, though.
He was right. She’d just tried to kill an innocent person. What the hell was wrong with her? What was she becoming.
“I don’t have that option with you, however - killing you would be meaningless, to a prime, and banishment is only slightly more permanent. Given you seem like an asset to Saiko, it behooves me to instead offer you training, in order to control this aspect of yourself.”
“I-You’re offering to help me instead of kill me out of convenience?!” Weiss asked with more than a little anger.
“Babysitting is usually beneath me, so yes, hollow, I am.” Nayamasa states with an unyielding expression. “Most are so morally changed it would have been a waste of time to do this in the first place. For a weak teenaged girl to manage not to attempt to kill me a second time by now is an unbelievable fluke.”
“Stop calling me weak!” Weiss stated with an answering glare. She knew she should be grateful for the fact this quincy-whatever had spared her life and stopped her from regressing into doing something horrible… but if he was just going to sit here endlessly insulting her, Weiss wasn’t sure if she wouldn’t have preferred death at this point.
“I’ll believe that when you show me any semblance of proof, Hollow.” Nayamasa stated bluntly.
Weiss’s glare didn’t fade. “My name is Weiss. Use it. Or should I just start calling you Quincy instead of Fukaku?”
“You shall call me neither and refer to me exclusively as Nayamasa-san, or Nayamasa-sama, Are we clear?” the quincy suddenly snapped, and Weiss found that, yes, she could find herself hating this guy even more.
“If you call me Weiss… I’ll consider it.”
The angry gentlemen just glared, but Weiss glared right back, refusing to yield. She wasn’t sure who this guy was, but after these past few weeks of being treated like a pawn on a chessboard, she was done dealing with disrespect.
The glare held between the two of them for several seconds, and eventually, Fukaku got up.
“I suppose you’re not completely without backbone, Weiss. Very well, I’ll work with the formality of your former culture.”
Weiss took a deep breath. This man was going to take all of her patience to deal with, but at least she could see something sort of reasonable in him. If you squinted, anyways.
“Now that we have introduction out of the way, Weiss, It’s time to inform you of your current predicament.” Fukaku stated with a glare. Weiss just raised an eyebrow. What was this guy talking about?
“At the moment, if I don’t give you these pills daily, you’ll slowly find yourself craving human souls more and more. Even now, I imagine there’s going to be an uncomfortable buzzing in the back of your mind.” Fukaku stated. “I’m forced to trust that you won’t act on it, but should you decide to, I will make the consequences incredibly painful for you. Understand?”
Weiss nodded, uncomfortable not due to the man’s threats, but to the idea he posed.
“...Is there a way for me to… reverse this? Become normal again?” Weiss asked.
Fukaku just stared point-blank at her. Weiss couldn’t read his expression, but she wasn’t exactly surprised by that given his current actions.
“...You are no child, so there’s no point in lying.” He states finally. “There is almost no chance that such a thing is possible. There is only one entity who would hold that knowledge, if it exists. You’re going to have to get used to-”
“Who? Can we go find her?” Weiss blurted, a little more excited than she meant to be. She couldn’t help herself. In a situation like this, how could she help but wish to pull herself away from this fate.
“The eldest hollow.” Fukaku stated with a touch of annoyance. “One who has brought death and despair for thousands of years. And one who is untouchable by a foolish stripling like yourself at this moment. Saiko Kiga.”
Weiss found herself unconsciously clasping her stomach and wincing at the mention of the name.
“What does she want from me?” Weiss asked with a much lower tone, fear beginning to find it’s way into her voice.
Fukaku looked away. “You were naturally beginning to hollowfy. And you’re the only prime to ever gain hollow-hood outside of some potential arrancar sightings I’ve heard of.” Nayamasa finally stated. “It vexes me, but we still don’t fully understand.” He finally stated.
“We?” Weiss raised her eyebrow.
At that, Fukaku simply grunted. “Regardless… your options are to wait for me to find and apprehend Saiko, assuming I’m not forced to kill her, which is exceedingly unlikely… or gain enough control to go after her yourself. Not to mention that with your current capabilities, you’d be incapable of fighting her evenly, even hollowfied.”
Weiss put up her hands in a stop motion. “Hollowfied?”
Fukaku simply shook his head. “Your first full hollowfication allowed it’s power to flow freely through you, but that curious thing you refer to as aura stopped you from transforming into a beast. Regardless..” Fukaku trailed off, before procuring a small, thin rectangle from some unseen pocket in his robe-like coat and tossing it at Weiss.
Weiss caught it on instinct, only to realize with a sudden chill that it was a mirror.
And she could see her own face all too well.
Familiar pale skin, small nose, white hair… and yellow pupils with black sclera.
The mirror slowly fell from Weiss’s hands. “Oh… oh god.” She mouthed.
“It would have been far worse in different circumstances. In fact… learn to control your spiritual energies, and you might be able to hide that symptom.”
“Spirit… energy?” Weiss asked. “...Nevermind. I… need to call someone.”
“Ruby Rose?” Nayamasa stated.
Weiss’s face turned instantly to a harsh glare. “Why did you say her name like that? How do you know who she is?”
Nayamasa’s face didn’t change in the slightest. “As I have more or less made clear, we’ve known of your hollowfication for some time. We did not initially know, however, if it was you or this Rose girl. In short, I learned of her through association.”
“Well… I’m going to call her and meet her here.”
“Not if you care about her in the slightest.”
“What?!”
Weiss pulled her hand back into a fist. She wasn’t about to listen to this crap from Nayamasa, regardless of what he’d done for her, or what he might say. She wanted to see her leader again.
“A hollow’s initial attractions, after being born and gaining the instinctual urge to feed, are to devour the ones they love most. This is the reason many older couples die in such a short time-frame. They’re consumed by their partner.” Fukaku stated bluntly.
All of Weiss’s anger turned to ice in her stomach, and her body slumped. “...Wh-wh-what are you… N-no. I-I’d never… I’d never hurt-”
“Until you gain control of this power with perfect control, I can guarantee with complete certainty that the first thing you will do to this rose girl, given the strength of your bond, is attempt to consume her by any means necessary.” FUkaku snapped. “Text and calling is fine, but I refuse to allow you to devour someone on my watch! Besides.” Fukaku added, in a lower tone. “Saiko may have designs on her as well. We are uncertain.”
“...I understand that is… frustrating… to you.” Nayamasa stated. “For now, I’ve brought food. Today, you recover your bodily strength. Consider this your break to process the changes in your life. Curse your fate, make arrangements, do what you might need to do to rid yourself of distractions as necessary. Tomorrow, I will require your full attention. If you fail to show results in your training, I will have no problem finding a deep well, chaining you with the most durable materials I can find, and leaving you to enjoy eternity in a dark pit."
RE: A rude Awakening - Weiss Schnee - 05-11-2017
Weiss took a deep breath, resting her hands at her sides. The exercise was simple - Sense Nayamasa’s approach, using her weird spirit senses she apparently had now, and stop his attacks before they bruised her face.
She’d done relatively well in the basic exercises, when she was just trying to sense living things for the first week, but the problem was that Nayamasa, apparently, was really good at hiding his “spiritual pressure”. The whole thing still seemed a little bit silly to Weiss - the way Nayamasa had explained it, everything had a certain life force energy, one that she could now interact with freely. She hadn’t exactly understood every single aspect, but through all of Nayamasa’s little lessons, she was at least able to do some of the basics.
Sadly, the basics did little to stop her face from being covered in bruises at the end of every day.
She supposed she was grateful. She was alone again - no, not alone, she was with a nasty person with an awful attitude, who was determined to make her feel like a five year old buffoon at all times. If he had a ruler to do it with, she was sure Nayamasa would’ve been rapping her fingers with it by now. Still, the training let her focus on something other than her separation from Ruby Rose, and her seperation from humanity, and the chilling questions that she had about both.
She’d apparently made some progress, at least - she wasn’t using so much power that her abilities were lower than normal, at least. But he seemed determined that Weiss needed to master some special capability, one he kept referring to as “hollowfication”.
So far she’d made some progress towards it, and recently, she’d figured out how to fire a small, red trail of energy. Apparently, it was something akin to what she’d fired earlier.
“Cero…” Weiss muttered to herself. She remembered fighting against Saiko in a blurry haze… like a lot of the memory was just blurred and muddled. But she remembered the weird blast thing she’d fired. She’d definitely done all sorts of things like that before using dust, but nothing with that level of raw firepower. Her style was based on skill, and she felt a little bad about using what was such a “demonic” power in the first place, but…
The huntress turned hollow thought back to the fight she had with Okor.
Maybe a little power-
The sudden pain of a sharp blow to the cheek brought Weiss back to reality, and she felt the cold impact of Nayamasa’s boot against her face.
“Useless! You’re getting distracted. Again!” Nayamasa stated with frustration.
“What’s the point! Even if I sense you, I can’t move fast enough to get out of the way in time!” Weiss retorted with a glare. “20 meters isn’t enough with your stupid higenkaker-”
“Hirenkyaku. You will refer to an ancient and respected technique with the honor it is due.”
Weiss just glared for a moment, rubbing her cheek, as Nayamasa looked down with a glare, searching her face for… what? An apology?
Weiss’s glare didn’t soften.
“...Hirenflappu.”
“That was purposeful!”
“Oh, good on you for figuring it out, genius!”
“It’s juvenile bullshit like this-”
“-Oh, I’m juvenile! Have you taken a look in the mirror lately, you Self-entitled narcissist-”
“-I’m sitting here trying to help you master your powers instead of hunting saiko-”
“-Oh, I’m sorry I’m so much of a burden to you-”
“Enough!” Fukaku yelled.
“...Enough. It’s time to move on for this phase of your training, regardless.” Fukaku states with a calmer tone.
“You’ve ran out of time. I can’t trust your hollowfication if you don’t get control of it.” Nayamasa states with a glare. “Like right now, for example.”
“What? I’m not-” Weiss started to object, but then, she could feel it. That sudden ice in her veins, the energy flowing through her body, those painfully high emotions that were suddenly so hard to suppress…
And beneath it all, a buzzing, a quiet thought in the back of Weiss’s head that reminded her of when she first met Fukaku. A quiet noise that wordlessly seemed to be pushing Weiss to consume her opponent.
“Come on. We’re heading further into the temple.”
“...Right.” Weiss managed to squeak out.
Nayamasa was right. Weiss didn't want to keep going without control of this, either.
---
The temple was a small, barren affair. According to Nayamasa, he cleared it himself as a base of operations, shortly after clearing out some monstrous infestation that once dwelt here. Given how quiet Nayamasa was about that affair, Weiss supposed she probably didn’t want to know.
Now, though, they were in a deeper area of the temple complex than she’d ever seen before. She supposed it must have been built into the nearby mountain. If she had to take a guess, they were probably in some sort of hold-out shelter or something. Nayamasa signaled her to stop in the middle of the squared off area, a dark, gloomy affair filled with recently lit torches and
“You have one minute.”
Weiss stumbled for a moment. “Um, I don’t… understand?”
Nayamasa disappeared in an instant, and before Weiss could even see where he’d disappeared to, a cut streaked across her cheek.
“Failure - at evading me, or at obtaining hollowfication - is death. Hollowfying properly will let you continue on.” Nayamasa stated bluntly, as his voice echoed through the halls.
Weiss drew her rapier. Nayamasa’s voice reverberated through the room, and the torches gave precious little light. She couldn’t see Nayamasa, and she wasn’t even sure how he’d just attacked her. Her grip on the rapier tightened.
“Hollowfy.”
The voice reverberated, and Weiss tried hard to focus on sensing her opponent. She couldn’t rely on sound, and her opponent was staying out of sight.
Focus. Breath steadily. Keep still. Be open to the world around you.
Weiss took a deep breath, and a volley of - something - appeared in her vision. Whatever they were, they were fast, and she only barely managed to dash out of the way with a triumphant smirk.
The smile didn’t hold for long, as another barrage came for her from behind - again - and Weiss found herself suddenly dodging arrows by the dozens, coming from every angle - or at least, trying to dodge them. Weiss would dodge one barrage, block the next (resulting in her arm slowly going numb) and jump over the next barrage, only to realize a couple arrows she missed had snuck past her guard and cut along some vulnerable spot or other. Even with just fifteen seconds, she knew she’d gotten herself a nice collection of wounds.
“Pathetic. It seems without holllowfication, you’re completely useless.” Nayamasa stated with a tone of disappointment. “And fear for your life doesn’t appear to be able to motivate you. Or perhaps you’re just so used to losing that the fear no longer touches you.”
“Shut. Up!” Weiss growled, before diving forward to avoid further missile fire.
“You’re just frustrated, It seems you’re a complete failure. Perhaps Saiko’s true focus really was Ruby Rose-”
“What?!”
Weiss stopped, standing in the middle of the battleground, as she pointed her blade straight towards Nayamasa - the Nayamasa she knew was hiding just behind the pillar to her left.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if this goes on, I’ll have to dispose of her too, at this-”
Weiss wasn’t completely sure of what was going on anymore. Her eyes seemed to be seeing through a red filter, and as she charged through the pillar her opponent was hiding behind, she was dimly aware of a barrage of deadly cuts and thrusts she was pushing her opponent back with.
“Don’t. You. dare.” Weiss growled in a strangely distorted voice, before holding up her hand, a shining crimson orb illuminating Nayamasa’s features with its light.
“Fucking. Touch Her!”
The blast Weiss fired next seemed to completely engulf one side of the room. Stone cracked and shattered, leaving a smoking crater that looked like it belonged to a meteor to one side of the room.
“...So that’s it. Pressure.”
Weiss turned around with an angry slash, only to realize…
“Wait, what’s on my….”
“A mask. A hollow mask. It seems. Much like a visored. It just required stakes…” Nayamasa stated with a thoughtful scratch of the chin.
“...what are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’ve figured out what you need to do to master your hollow powers. Given your current sense of altruism, this might even do something for that pathetic lack of self-esteem you’ve acquired, as well.”
“What? I don’t have a-”
“Shut up and listen. Now, the person I need you to contact next is named Dr. Regal…”