[BiTPR2] Renewed Revolution: Spirit World V

[Frozen_Feet]

"..."

There's a long silence on the other end after Sarah recounts Valentina's fate. It's unclear if the man on the other end is even listening.

Then, finally: "... assault, in Las Noches? Cry me a river. I wouldn't know about it anyway, since I haven't been in Las Noches for... A month? Or two? Lost count. Doesn't matter either way. My 'creations', as you put it, are their own things. If one of them is being naughty, take it up with them."

[Rater202]

"..."

There's a long silence on the other end after Sarah recounts Valentina's fate. It's unclear if the man on the other end is even listening.

Then, finally: "... assault, in Las Noches? Cry me a river. I wouldn't know about it anyway, since I haven't been in Las Noches for... A month? Or two? Lost count. Doesn't matter either way. My 'creations', as you put it, are their own things. If one of them is being naughty, take it up with them."

"Gotta find them, first. You're our only lead on that."

[Frozen_Feet]

"... and what are you planning to do if you find them?"

[Rater202]

"... and what are you planning to do if you find them?"

"Interrogation. Possibly arrest if they lack an alibi."

And killing the pervert in the Wolf-Mask, if he's there, but Mikael doesn't need to know that

[Frozen_Feet]

"Uh huh." The man on the other end sounds incredulous. "Oh well. I'll send some co-ordinates your way. Meet me there. Bye."

The call ends abruptly. Before Sarah manages to call again, the phone vibrates and blings as a sign of receiving a text message.

It has GPS co-ordinates all right... but they're far out. Really far out. As in, Kunlun mountains, Northern border of Tibet and Xianjiang province of China.

But hey, look at the bright sides: there's only one country in between Finland and China. Too bad it's Russia.

[Rater202]

Sarah shows this toSvetlana

"...We're gonna have to back to Hueco Mundo and take a Garganta, aren't we?"


"Probably."

"...So.. how do you say 'excuse me, did you drop this,' in Finish?"

Once Svetlana memorizes the coordinates, Sarah fullbring's the phone to erase the record of the call and text.

[Frozen_Feet]

It goes "anteeksi, pudotit tämän" in Finnish.

...

Sarah should probably stick to English, because she'd sound stupid trying to say that.

Fullbringing the phone to erase the call log was something of an overkill. It has buttons for that. Or, well, a touch screen that simulates buttons.

The four youngsters haven't gone far yet. Sarah's call didn't take that long. If she looks around, she can see through the store windows they've gone back inside to ask the register lady.

[Rater202]

Sarah heads in. "Um, hello? Sorry, foreign, not fluent in Finnish yet. I was here a little bit ago. Uh, I found a phone a little bit away from here, looked like it got dropped by someone in a hurry or something, doesn't seem damaged though...Anyone lose it?"

She holds up the phone.

She's trying her best to sound like a concerned good Samaritan trying to find lost or stolen property's rightful owner, so even if the teens don't understand her words they should get the gist of it.

[Frozen_Feet]

The guys turn around and give dumbfounded looks to Sarah. It takes a moment for the owner of the phone to register what she's doing. "Hä...? Ai, kiitos... Öh, thank you." He snatches the phone from Sarah and stuffs it back in his pocket. The other guys give her thumbs up.

The blonde girl perks up when she hears Sarah speaking English. Because that means she might be a foreigner, and we all know foreigners are infinitely more interesting than people of your own country.

Sarah has a window of few seconds to flee if she doesn't want to stay as the center of attention.

[Rater202]

Uhoh

Attractive but seemingly bitchy girl showing an interest in the weird semi-introverted loaner with a dark past.

Sarah's snuck into enough movies to know that this can only end in one of two ways: She's not particularly interested in murdering a high school while covered in animal blood and she's too young for the other thing.

So, Sarah just Homer Simpsons back out the door.

[Frozen_Feet]

The teenagers just stare in confusion as Sarah backpedals out of the door. As the door starts to close after Sarah, Mr. Sagger turns to look at the blonde girl. "Mistä tossa oli kyse?"

That's the last thing Sarah hears them say.

[Rater202]

And now, all that needs to be done is find somewhere where nobody will notice either a rift in the fabric of space-time or a teenage girl vanishing into thin air.

Assuming that they can find such a place and that no one stops them, Sarah and Svetlana return to Hueco Mundo--not Las Noches--just long enough to Garganta to the location in China.

[Frozen_Feet]

Even taking a shortcut through the void, it is a long, long trip, first back from Finland and then immediately to China. Sarah gets to watch the utter blackness and desolateness of the place a lot today, it seems. When they finally arrive, it's unclear what day "today" even is. In Finland, it appeared to be noon or early afternoon, but when Svetlana and Sarah finally reach the Kunlun mountains, the sky black and starlit.

Hopefully they packed rations.

There are no people here. Unsurprising - few roads run through the mountains and few bother to live this high up a slope. In contrast to Reishi-thick air of Hueco Mundo or the near sea level air of Southern Finland, the air is pretty thin up here. Not that Svetlana would notice, her lungs haven't been in need of earthly air for a long, long time.

The only non-natural source of light is a point of light higher up the slope.

[Rater202]

Rater's preference is not to worry about food unless it's plot-relevant, so let's assume that they have rations covered.

"Ain't been near the mountains in a while..."

"What was that?"

"Oh, uh... I grew up in Appalachia. My home-town wasn't that far from the mountains. Sometimes we'd go hiking the mountain trails... Haven't been on a mountain in almost six years..."

Svetlana hums. "It's a shame that your first time back can't be under more favorable circumstances."

"Yeah"

Of course, not all mountains are created equal. The Appalachian Mountains are relatively small, and regardless it's been a while since Sarah's been meaningfully high above sea level.

They proceed carefully and slowly up the mountain. On the off chance, is there any sign of spirit ribbons showing them where spirits might be?

[Frozen_Feet]

As they approach the light, they are struck by the sensation of the world being wrong. Very, very wrong.

The reason is because they are stepping on a chunk of Rukongai that was first dropped down from the heavens, then transported here by combination of blatantly unnatural means. It's like an invisible border. The sensation is less pronounced for Svetlana, because she's a spirit. But Sarah, wouldn't even be able to see the terrain ahead, much less walk upon it, if she didn't have spiritual power.

And if that wasn't enough... there's a faint but disgusting stench hanging in the air. Sulfur. Burning iron. Burning flesh. It's too strong for this thin mountain air to be of mundane origin.

No doubt about it. This is a place where different worlds have collapsed upon and overlap one another.

The trail ends before a wall, surrounding an old-school Japanese-style castle. Sitting on top of the wall's gate, is a man. His face, arms and torso are all wrapped up in cotton bandages and he has a black biker jacket hung over his shoulders. More detail is hard to discern in the dark. Next to him is a halogen lamp, the source for the light Sarah and Svetlana saw.

"Welcome, ladies, to my humble house!" , the man shouts as a greeting to Sarah and Svetlana. He's surrounded by an unholy tangle of spiritual threads: white, red and.... blue?

[Rater202]

"I take it that you're one of the sin Rostras?"

[Frozen_Feet]

The man shrugs with both palms towards the sky. "Maybe a part of me was. But what's that got to do with anything? You're not here to see me."

[Rater202]

The man shrugs with both palms towards the sky. "Maybe a part of me was. But what's that got to do with anything? You're not here to see me."

"We're here to meet Mikael Rautiainen about the group known as the awakened sin Rostras. If you are part of or affiliated with those individuals than your most certainly what we're hear for."

[Frozen_Feet]

"Sure, sure. If you ladies would be so kind and follow me."

The man picks up the lamp and jumps down from the wall, on the inside yard. As the gate is not closed, Sarah and Svetlana can just walk after him if they're so inclined.

If they do not stop him, he will walk ahead and lead the way across the yard and into the castle. Inside the castle, he leads them to the former dining hall, now restructured into a workshop.

Since there is no illumination other than the lamp the man is carrying, but what can be seen is... well. There are buckets of goo and containers full of noxious chemicals. There are movable fireproof curtains, cylinders of noble gases and arch-welding machines. There are pieces of what looks like human skeleton hanging from a rack, but they're made of metal. There's something that looks like a human arm held in one of the workbenches. Crammed amidst the chaos, is also an anvil and an old-school forge, a barrel of oil for tempering and several unfinished bladed weapons.

In short, it looks like a Do-It-Yourself supervillain lair.

At the back of the room, laid on a stone dais made from mountain rock, is what looks like a badly scorched human corpse. The bandaged man stops before the dais, shines the light on it and beckons Sarah and Svetlana to get closer.

[Rater202]

Sarah summons her armor at this point. It's donned mid-stride as they approach.

"Yes, this is a very lovely corpse, now where is Mikael? He agreed to meet us here."

[Frozen_Feet]

The man beckons at the corpse-thing on the stone dais. "Ah, but my dear ladies... you are looking right at him!"

Looking at it for longer, it's clear the thing is not an ordinary blackened carcass. It is too... smooth. It looks like something out of a Griger painting, as if under the flesh that burned away, there was a bone-thin Xenomorph. It even has a tail. Its eyes are intact, but closed.

More, it looks like something smashed against its left shoulder and tore its arm off. However, someone then... welded? Soldered? The broken pieces back together. Silver glints against black where the cracks were.

Roughly where the heart should be, there is a hole, and in the middle of that hole, attached to the rest of the body with four thin bridges, is a perfect black sphere.

Whatever or whoever this thing was, right now it has neither life nor spirit. Spiritually, it might as well not be there. It's only the mundane rock of the mountain keeping it from falling through the floor. Only a tiny ember of spiritual power remains at the center of that black sphere.

[Rater202]

"Impossible: Even if we hadn't spoken with him this morning, that body is clearly not but a construct and--My child, what are--"

As Svetlana states this, Sarah reaches her armored hand into the hole in the chest to touch the sphere.

As the tip of a silver claw touches the black orb, Sarah uses fullbring on the body and the spear at it's the heart, communing with its soul and the souls of its pieces to learn what this really is.

[Frozen_Feet]

Maybe Sarah should learn to think twice before doing that. Because when she touches the sphere and tries to do that, a flood of memories hits her like a hammer to the face.

When she recovers, if she can recover, she can surmise that this sphere... it is a device made from a piece of another person's Fullbring, to be used by that person.

And certainly, it was a mighty Fullbring! The Red Joker, a wild card power capable of becoming anything the user could imagine, constrained only by their memory and raw energy.

Certainly, if Sarah could use it herself, it would be a mighty tool.

But she can't.

She has no connection to Haroda Tamaki, save for seeing him in a vision. And even if she had... she lacks the power.

The corpse she's looking at... it is, or rather, was, the recreation of another Fullbringer at the height of their power. It was created by the Red Joker, based on the memories and spiritual power transferred over to Haroda Tamaki when he was first unmade and then accidentally improved. But even Tamaki didn't have enough power on his own. The creation of this body, it also used up the power of a volcanic eruption - that of Mt. Fuji, to be specific.

Yet, it still ended up dead.

The hostile intent from Erscheinung Von Geister's Segunda Etapa still lingers on the corpse's wounds, even though it's been fixed.

All in all, this should serve as a depressing reminder to Sarah. She is very, very far from this level of power, the scraps of which she is witnessing. Yet even beings with such power... they can be challenged. They can be hurt. No-one stands on a mountain, untouchable to all existence. Not Jehoel Yurius, who Sarah has seen hurt and in despair in his memories. Not Mikael Rautiainen, who has been reduced to a charred husk. Not Erscheinung Von Geister, who got defeated and sealed by Shinigami for ages, even if he might be free now.

And most importantly... Not Sarah Smith.

[Rater202]

Sarah falls back, landing on her ass.

Her armor vanishes and she clutches her head, obviously pained.

In moments, Svetlana is kneeling by Sarah.

"Sarah! Are you alright?"

"Yeah... 'mfine... Just... Way more information than I expected."

Sarah wipes tears from her eyes and pushes up.

"That's a construct... a Piece of fullbring mixed with another piece of fullbring... And it's been there for a while... So, it might as well be Mikael, but it's not the original Mikael but... Look, it's like the star trek thing. I mean, it's not the original but for all practical purposes... Ah, ****," Sarah clutches her head again, her head's a bit achy from the sensory overload, "But it's not the Mikael that told us to meet him here."

What Sarah doesn't mention is how hungry she is all of a sudden. Mostly becuase she doesn't know why.

"Which raises the question of where he is... Also, you... Bandages... Did you screw heads do anything with dreams in the last couple of weeks?"

[Frozen_Feet]

The bandaged man lets out a sardonic laughter. "You are a stubborn girl, aren't you. Star Trek... heh, I suppose it touches on the same bull crap. With the... teleporters or whatever the Hell they were."

The man looks up and then looks at Svetlana, as if he just realized she is there too. "Oh, right. I forgot. There's a person here who might not know all that crap. Ah, well... imagine a man walking around in a swamp. All of a sudden, a bolt of lightning strikes him dead. At the same instant, another lightning bolt magically rearranges molecules in a piece of swamp into exact replica of that man. Are they the same person? Or are they different? Can that second man be said to be a man at all? And most importantly... "

The man looks at Sarah with cold eyes. "... If two, why not three? Hey girl. You ever figured out how your armor really works? "

At that moment, Svetlana's spiritual senses are overwhelmed by sense of danger. This man, he is not the only one in the building. Hiding in the shadows are 122 other people. Other Hollows. They managed to conceal their presence while unmoving, but now that they've started walking around, it's obvious.

Two signatures step right into the dining hall, from the same door Sarah and Svetlana used a moment prior. One of them is dressed in black hakama, black kimono shirt and a red sesh, its face covered by a bone-white mask resembling a wolf's skull. The other is dressed but torn remains of a black hakama, its pallid upper body bare and gleaming in the faint light. It has way too may eyes and mouths and in utterly wrong places. Its shoulders and head have pieces of bone sticking out of them, broken fragments of its mask, presumably.

Sarah and Svetlana have seen these shady characters before.

The wolf-masked Hollow claps its hands together in excitement. "Oh, but isn't it my Little Miss! Did you come all this way to see me? That's such a sweet gesture from you."

"There is nothing sweet about this" , the other... being... says. Its eyes are all black save for glowing red slits staring at Sarah and Svetlana. In its left hand, it carries two sheathed katanas - one black, the other, white. It extends its arm straight, holding the katanas towards Sarah. "I'm only going to ask once. Rematch? Yes or no?"

[Rater202]

It's a manifestation of my heart's desire at the time I awoke to my fullbring--to avoid harm--created by using my ability to commune with and manipulate the souls of inanimate objects to channel my partially hollowfied... Reiryoku into an object of sentimental value, manifesting my unique powers into the world by transforming that object into a cloak of power that I then clad in, which then becomes my armor. This if Fullbring one-oh-o--"

"My child, brace yourself we need to--"

And then Sarah's stalkers show up.

"God damn it." Sarah says with a palm over her face. She summons her Fullbring once more. "What is your obsession with me and that sword?"

Sarah reaches out and takes one of the swords--both if she can manage it but just the one if it's all she can grab--if only to deny the hollows a weapon.

"I'm warning you now," Svetlana says to the new arrivals. "I am the Sexta Espada and this child is my Fraccione--attacking her could be interpreted as an act of War"

[Frozen_Feet]

In response to Sarah reaching out, the pallid being lets go with its ring and little fingers, causing the black sword to tip and practically fall into Sarah's hands. But it keeps the white sword to itself, dashing backwards. "That's not a yes or no."

The wolf masked immediately steps between it and Sarah, arms spread wide. "Oh, but Lady Espada... I have no intention of hurting Little Miss here. Never had. But, I think, she'll enjoy hurting me oh so very much. So why not let her?"

The bandaged stranger reaches to grab Svetlana's shoulder. It's just a gesture to tell her to stand back - she'd have no trouble dodging it or shaking his hand off. "You bloody well know we don't give a rat's ass about the Espada. Hell, if I still counted myself among the Shinigami, that truce with you lot would make me defect all over again! But...!"

He raises one finger up on the hand that's holding the lamp. "You're a new gal and you don't need to be like the other guys! We had no quarrel with Valentina! We don't need to have a quarrel with you."

[Rater202]

Sarah uses Fullbring on the sword... Is this the one that the wolf-masked-perv handed to her what honestly feels like years ago? The one that he tried to give her again on... that day...

Of course, it is... She can feel it's souls--people souls--calling out... Just like before.

Svetlana, meanwhile...

"Menos, if you had no quarrel my child and I, you wouldn't--wait... One of the Shinigami?" In the dream-world, Koutarou had spoken to what seemed like a vision of a rogue Shinigami... Of course, Svetlana wasn't able to perceive that, so she didn't know the name...

Back at the plot, the gears in Sarah's head or spinning. This Menos, this Arrancar...

He's the one who dragged her to Hueco Mundo

The attack from him and his friend drew the ire of the Espada, leading directly to the slaughter of the misfits just as Sarah was starting to open up, tearing open old wounds and making her bleed anew.

Maybe it's the headache talking... Or her sudden hunger... Or maybe the thin air, but Sarah thinks that the bastard's right about something.

Shortly after Svetlana is distracted by the idea of the seeming hollow being a Shinigami, Sarah takes the black sword in both hands and brandishes it like a club, sharp end pointed towards the wolf-masked stalker.

[Frozen_Feet]

The wolf-masked Hollow takes one step forward. "Yyyeeessss... I can feel your anger!" He's doing that Darth Vader impersonation again. "It makes you stronger! Gives you focus!" It extends one hand towards Sarah and curls it into a fist. "Now strike me down and claim your place as a Master!"

Meanwhile, the bandaged man just lets his hand rest on Svetlana's shoulder. "Yeah. One of the Shinigami. One hundred and six other people too. Plus memories of 108th... that guy on the table." He nods towards the blackened corpse-thing. "Yurius never told you, did he? Some Hollows... they can feel the memories of the people inside them. People they ate. Most don't... because it's exactly that kind of experience that causes them to lose their minds. It's easier to just stomp on the others and be the singular king of the hill. Yurius... he could only do it because deep down, he is unable and unwilling to change. He is and will always be a fish. But... he lost the ability when he became an Arrancar. Must've been a bummer. That's what they don't tell to you new guys... becoming an Arrancar, it's not a straight power-up. It's a trade-off. You always give up something for the things you gain. Not that there's much of value to be lost when you're a Hollow, but still."

[Rater202]

SHUT UP! Sarah screams as she keeps brandishing the sword again, and again, and again...

She gets sloppier with every swing. By the third, she's not even coming close to hitting him.

Sarah, don't! He's trying to goad you into--And then the bandaged stranger goes on his lecture.

"No, that's not... Artificially... That isn't even important right now!"

Sarah's starting to not feel so good, Mister Stark... Must be the altitude getting to her

Svetlana Sonidos behind her when it seems that Sarah's about to collapse.