Devil In A Midnight Mass [CLOSED]

[pharaohking]

Characters: Shinji Hirako, Anthy Himemiya, Muguruma Kensei, and later Penelo
Content: Someone comes out to play, and it wants blood.
Setting: Initially, Shinji's quarters
Time: Following the string of "oshit!" posts. Evening-ish?
Warnings: Creepiness, violence, angst. Oh, and a Hollow.

Comments

/sobs back

[anthypants]

Anthy’s limp body offered no resistance. She had been here before, it was all familiar, electrifying, and she knew what she would feel, the breathless slam, too fast to anticipate, the impact of the floor. It wasn’t fear she felt but dark elation. She should feel guilty, but she didn’t yet, because this was her world, so familiar. Re-emerging into it was ecstatic. At last, at last things were finally stripped to the bone. There would be no more hiding. She no longer felt strange to herself, she felt alive, and very, very real.

The fingers closed on her throat and she did not try to smile but the muscles in her face pulled slightly, a Mona Lisa look. Her green eyes were calm. The shock had thrown open a gate inside her and now she too was transforming. Pinned to the floor she finally felt herself coming into her full strength, the ghosts of the old places her power had once been rising, fragile and ephemeral like the shine on a soap bubble. That was still what she was. A witch! A devourer, the devoured. Drawing strength from chaos, from growth and destruction. She lay at his feet, and accepted everything about him equally. It didn’t matter to her. Nothing else about her was real. She was not a person but a conduit for power, the force that froze the last leaves in winter and the force that burst forth the first buds in springs. She gave of herself freely.

"Of course," she said softly, with what air she had. "Do what you please."

Even as her breath was cut off she felt a deep sense of peace, resting in a place far beyond ordinary madness. This was what intimacy was to her, what it had always been, a struggle between life and death laced with violence, cruelty and vulnerability. This was the way things had been with her brother. She felt closer to Shinji than she ever had before. Now, whatever happened, a question had been answered. She would no longer wonder what would happen if she scratched his surface.

a;sdghfdks

[pharaohking]

Ebony eyes scoured her face, taking in the details like a predator admiring its fascinating catch. Unblinkingly, it watched her inquisitively, the prior violence inflicted on her long forgotten. Her gaze was confidently met, those honey eyes mixing in with the green and forcing them onto another plane of intimacy unknown to the Hollow. For all technicalities, it was still Shinji's body. Still his eyes -- however darkened now, as though someone had dripped black ink into them -- and still his hair and lanky frame. That hand curled around her neck was his.

But even so, he wasn't the one controlling its movements.

It leaned down some, that bony frame coming in closer to her body. If he'd been trembling before, he was significantly more still now, and that breathlessness had left his voice. Instead, it'd been replaced by an unpleasant sort of arrogance and conceit, and a distorted quality through which his words were tainted.

Anthy was very interesting to the Hollow, in the way that a foreign object would be. She was a human, but it could sense she was no ordinary one. From her strange behaviour and lack of resistance, it found curiosity, and from that curiosity came a desire to want to destroy everything that Shinji found beautiful in her. Because it was sickening. This infatuation with her was truly and utterly disgusting. Blondie didn't want her dead, of course. Who would? She was a pretty little thing. Strange, but interesting.

Slowly, those lithe fingers circling her throat fell cold with a creeping chill.

"You know..."

And they tightened--

"That's pretty tempting."

--to grip to choke.

[anthypants]

Anthy could feel the trembling in his body as she breathed shallowly, not fighting but taking in air as the hand allowed. It was his hands, his fingers, and she accepted what they might do to her. The look he gave her felt electrifying, almost as if another pressure pushing down on her body, a current she couldn’t, didn’t want to break away from. They were his eyes, set in the inky blackness of night. They were his eyes, and she was glad they were his, because in a moment like that, it was comforting to look at them. Her air was getting short, and the world was starting to dim around the edges. His eyes were the only thing she focused on, everything else was disappearing. Her own blazed defiant adoration and possession, even as his grip tightened further.

If this had been her first time, she might have panicked. But it was not, nor her second nor her third. She was used to her brother Akio choking her in all sorts of fashions and moods, among other things. Oddly, she found herself noticing the slight difference in the feeling of it, the shape and size of their hands was different, and it wasn’t quite the same the way the pressure was applied. That was the last thought she had before a sort of trance overtook her. She entered it automatically, a way of forcing the body to keep still, even if her lungs would continue to move on their own.

Her consciousness faded back, even as the magical energy in her body continued to amplify and grow, seeming to wake from a long slumber, reacting in some basic instinctive way to the state she was in, possibly trying to preserve the tissues of her body even as they lost oxygen. She didn’t know, but the feeling was familiar, as was the decent into darkness. She was not afraid, for it was useless to be.

[pharaohking]

It watched her in quiet contemplation. As she struggled for air -- if you could really call it struggling, when it seemed like she was only just managing -- there was a sort of odd obsession reflecting in those irises. But at the same time, it was indifferent. Nonchalant, almost. The Hollow was a little unimpressed with how she failed to resist, and without a sound, it tightened its hold as it pushed up from its crouch.

"You really are stupid," the masked creature remarked in disappointment as it unleashed the massive wave of reiatsu it'd been keeping locked away. The pure intensity of its power shook the room, pervading the air with a very dull ring as it knocked items to the floor and forced the bed to shudder in its place. Outside in the hallway, the lights flickered out of control.

The door slammed shut violently from the force, rattling in the doorframe, and the Hollow stood with Anthy's throat caught in its unforgiving fingers.

"Stupid, just like him."

[anthypants]

Anthy was not really aware of what the hollow was saying to her, and was only peripherally aware of being lifted off the ground. She was still ignoring the things happening around her, letting her mind be blank when a wash of magical energy rolled over her like a crushing tidal wave.

Her own magic reacted, and though very dimly conscious she could feel that strange joining place in her chest that had been the seal of the Sword of Dios, if that artifact even existed anymore. It was the first time she had felt it clearly since the night the curse had been broken, not just the pain, but all the little lines and places it connected to rest of her magical energies. Still intact. The magic inside her seemed to grow and grow, until it was a net of magic that she fell into as her consciousness slipped.

[pharaohking]

And had the Hollow really cared about whether or not the girl had a magical abilities, he might've flung her onto the bed to rid of whatever that flickering image was, but it didn't. Instead, it only tightened its grip marginally on Anthy's throat.

Somewhere to their left, the lamp shook off the nightstand and crashed loudly to the trembling floor.

and here comes Kensei ):

[kirekaze]

And just at that same moment, a familiar voice roared from outside the room.

"Blow, Tachikaze!"

The closed door burst open right after that shout, the force of the thrown hadouken sending splinters and sawdust flying into Shinji's room. Kensei wasted no time for such things like melodramatic entries; immediately he launched himself into the offence the moment he broke the door down, lunging forth for an attack as he brought up his elbow and jabbed him hard right on his (it's) bone-covered face, attempting to knock his now Hollowfied friend's grip off from the woman.

/cries harder

[pharaohking]

If the Hollow was startled by the sudden entry, or even by the yell, the body language wasn't there. Still it held onto Anthy, seemingly unphased even as the shattered wood from the door rained down. There shouldn't have been time to react with how quickly Kensei had issued an attack, but somehow, in that split second between when his elbow should've connected with the boning of the mask, Shinji completely vanished from sight.

And not only him, but Anthy as well.

The next they appeared, they were next to what used to be the door, the girl now tucked underneath his arm, and sword, which had been propped against the wall, clutched in the opposite hand.

It tilted its head, as if tempting Kensei to try again.

[anthypants]

Anthy could not recall exactly when she begin to lose consciousness or regain it. The world tilted, colors changed, there ceased to be a normal sense of up or down. The whole time, strange magic buffeted her, things she couldn’t make sense of or really understand. Dim impressions that could have been imagination. Noises that didn’t quite make sense to her ears and then there was a change in pressure, something felt different. Eventually she was able to locate where she felt that pressure. It was no longer around her neck. Instead she was wrapped up, feet off the ground.

She didn’t try to move that much, she still had enough instinct not to fuss. Instead she simply tried to get her bearings, blinking her eyes until things started to focus. There were two legs, it was a person...Those were definitely Kensei’s pants, weren’t they? Anthy hoped this was a good sign.

[kirekaze]

Kensei stumbled a little, his footsteps faltering momentarily as he felt his intended strike meeting against nothing but air. Instinct taught him better than that, and the silver-haired man quickly used the momentum of his stumble in order to turn back around to where the Hollow's presence was felt.

It took almost everything within him to not rage out in anger on the spot the moment he properly laid his eyes on Shinji--no, the Hollow--just standing there as if everything was fine when it clearly wasn't. Everything was messed up and screwed up, words couldn't even begin to properly describe how Kensei felt about this whole thing. But he shoved those thoughts aside from now, keeping his own confusion under a tight lid as he raised Tachikaze and narrowed his brown eyes at his opponent. He didn't bother hiding his rage, for once; he wanted to be angry, to be mad that Shinji lost control of his Hollow when just over a month ago he had chided him for having pulled out his mask. Sure, this was a different thing altogether, but he still couldn't help but feel a stab of rage and a swell of anger forming in his gut. Just. Why?

His voice was a quiet cut in the tense silence that had settled in the fray, voice trembling just slightly notably with restrained hate as Kensei spoke. "Let them go."

[pharaohking]

Unblinking eyes glanced back at him, observing him quietly. The contrast between the two was almost stark: one seething with anger, the other statuesque and seemingly unable to understand the words that spilled from Kensei's lips. But slowly, without a word, the Hollowfied blond released the hold on Anthy to let her slide harshly to the floor below. It didn't care about her any longer, for an opponent had risen, and it was time to take them out.

Something of a faint energy crackled around him before he vanished once again, appearing a foot before the other man with the hilt of Sakanade thrust at his abdomen.

[anthypants]

Anthy hit the ground for the second time that night. This time was slightly less worse than the first, and she felt more normal somehow, if slightly disoriented. Reset, like a clock.

She hardly had time to wonder whether she should move away or lay still when she saw Shinji, still possessed, appear next to Kensei in a sudden attack.

[kirekaze]

Shit!

Kensei barely had enough time to react before he felt the hilt of Shinji's zanpaktou--Sakanade, his mind recalled helpfully--slamming into his abdomen with bruising force. The strength used was more than enough to throw him off balance, stumbling backwards as his mind lost focus for the moment due to the abrupt blow onto his midsection.

Not that that was going to stop him so easily though - Kensei quickly regained himself before the Hollow could land a blow on him, Tachikaze humming as he gathered a hadouken in between his cupped palms and let it loose in a roar of violent, raw magic towards his foe.

[pharaohking]

The blond unsheathed the blade before the blast of magic could connect, and his form flickered for a moment before disappearing. Rather than hitting its intended target, the hadouken sliced through the forgotten sheath that fell in Shinji's place and slammed into the nightstand just behind, effectively burning the front side with the heat of its energy.

Suddenly, he appeared behind Kensei, close enough to touch.

"Tag, you're it," it hissed against the man's ear before once again vanishing from sight.

[kirekaze]

Kensei let out a mental curse in his mind as he saw his attack failing (not that he had expected it to succeed given the fact that he was facing Shinji... or rather, the Hollow that was inside Shinji), and was attempting to make a turn around to try for another attack when he felt the blond behind him. His blood froze entirely--the natural reaction of any human who found themselves facing something that was nothing short of a monster.

Not that he was fully human himself now, but the point still stood... somewhat.

He turned around fully now in order to face his foe, but by the time he did it had already vanished from sight - but not from mind. The Hollow was deliberately letting it's energies leak out as it made it's way off the ship; a fact that made Kensei swear once, softly. This was seriously the worse-case scenario... and to make it worse, he knew that the thing was purposefully taunting him out. He knew, because there was a beast within him that was just like the demon he was facing right now; the monster in the mask of stark-white bone.

Biting down on his lip, Kensei turned back around to give Anthy a look - he couldn't afford the time to try and help her - and hissed as he vanished as well in a burst of magic, activating his shunpo as he made his way after the Hollow.

[penny_dancer]

Penelo had seen the posts and knew that Shinji was in trouble. She tried to get to his cabin, but the closer she got, the harder it became to walk; eventually, she had to stop until the insane pressure let up. Then she ran down the hall.

There was no Shinji, just Anthy. Penelo hurried over, worried. "What happened, Anthy?"