Post by Chandre on Nov 8, 2017 18:52:44 GMT
Chandre was lying in wait, standing on the outstretch branch of one of the many trees that decorated the Menos forest. The lady hollow had come to this place to hunt, and in truth the only game that roamed this wood was the Menos Grande from which it drew its name. Now, one might be inclined to think that Chandre was here for a meal, as so many other hollows were. For an adjuchas such as herself, the lumbering, slow and stupid creatures made for an easy meal, far easier than a fellow adjuchas, and almost as nourishing. However, Chandre had long since surpassed the need to go through the brute force motions of hunting prey for sustenance. This particular hunting trip was for something a little harder to acquire, raw materials.
Chandre fancied herself an artist, one of a wide variety of arts be it painting, singing, acting, or the more practical arts of constructing useful trinkets. All of these things needed raw material, and today she was in need for her next art project, which she could scarcely wait to build. First though, raw materials.
Chandre could see her prey wandering closer to her, she had been drawing this one further and further away from the ‘pack’ that Menos tended to congregate in. Just at the edge of their senses, she had changed her rietsu to feel like that of a shinigami. Most menos are stupid enough to believe that a single shinigami is no threat, and ALL hollow know that the black clad swordsmen taste unmistakably wonderful. This one was Chandres’ target, a straggler, one she could get close enough for it to catch her scent without alerting the rest of the herd. It had split away without a second thought, and Chandre had matched it’s pace, her rietsu leaving a seductive trail in her wake for the Menos to follow.
Chandre had no doubt that she could fight and kill a dozen of the massive hollow, but she wasn’t so wasteful, nor was the slaughter of the creatures her goal. She sought to capture the beast, which was an altogether more difficult procedure, one that would have been all the more cumbersome with several more of the beasties trying to take a bite out of her. Thus, her plan was hatched and she had her lone Menos Grande nearly upon her, which she was glad to see. With a graceful hop, she began to plummet from the great height of the tree branch to the ground far, far below. She landed softly and darted around the to the other side of the tree from her prey, the massive trunk just as wide as the unwitting black cloaked monster. Chandre had chosen this tree to spring her trap for that very reason; it was just the perfect size to hide something the size of a Menos Grande behind it. Chandre took mere moments to grow to a height equal to that of her prey, and as the Menos rounded on her, expecting some petite shinigami snack, it found a Hollow just its size, fist reared back. A look of surprise is a hard thing to emote when your face was a porcelain mask, but this particular Menos managed a gapping look of shock just before Chandre cold-cocked it and it fell to the ground with a colossal crash.
It was always complicated, the use of living Hollow materials in the construction of her art projects. Hollows were curious creatures, and in their death, they tend to evapourate into nothingness. As this would defeat the purpose of harvesting raw materials, Chandre had to be meticulously careful in extracting anything she needed. To that end, she had created a very special place, a surgical theatre just for her use with this behemoth creature. It hadn’t taken too long, nor a great deal of effort; ever since she had created her own pocket dimension, making infrastructure for her projects was a simple task. She had designed a surgical lab, and the device at the heart of her home had set to work creating it. At the moment, the unconscious Menos Grande she had subdued lay strapped to a steel table about as long as a cargo ship. Dozens of steel and titanium struts lifted the table to working height for Chandre, each strut as wide as a six lane highway. The Menos was held down with similarly over-sized clasps around ankles, wrists and neck, the thing laying helpless before her. She had also taken the precaution of a muzzle, a thick cage around the Menos’ head to prevent it from opening its maw, firing a cero or trying to take a bite out of her. She was likely too powerful for it to actually hurt her, or gnaw successfully through her Heiro, but as with all projects, safety first.
For the purpose of her work she had maintained her own Menos sized height, it would have been much more cumbersome to try this procedure at her usual stature. She actually found herself very curious about the general anatomy of the creature before her, was the cloak it work a type of skin? What would she find when she removed it? Does it even have nerves in the conventional sense? This last question was the most probing, as she was actually hunting for this creatures’ nervous system as her raw material. The electrical qualities of this thing must have been impressive considering its size, the power output needed to move gargantuan muscles as quickly as such a thing did was considerable.
Shall we get started then? She said to herself, a scalpel of sorts forming in her fingers. It looked dainty in her hand, delicate, she had to remind herself that she was wielding something the size of truck. Everything is relative she supposed.
The surgery had gone more or less flawlessly, the cloak coming apart hadn’t stirred the Menos, so Chandre had to assume it was ancillary to its spiritual being not unlike a shinigami’s zanpactou. Not truly part of the anatomy, but something still tied to it on a spiritual level, though with admittedly much much less functionality. When she started to cut and peel back the pale, thick skin however, the Menos woke up in full, unapologetic fury and agony. It thrashed and roared as much as it could while bound as it was, the muffled cries coming from the muzzle seemed so much softer a sound than the large hollow should be able to produce. The thrashing was easy enough to deal with, Chandre could produce as many hands and limbs as needed to keep the areas she was working on steady. She had started with the left forearm and worked her way up and right until the entire torso was exposed muscle tissue and veins. She had decided that the sensory tissue, what felt pain and the like, was too fine, not enough bandwidth to carry the charge she needed and therefore not worth harvesting. What she wanted was the command nervous system, that which issued the orders to the muscles and reflexes. At the size she was, these biological ‘wires’ were as thin as gossamer, but at her usual height they’d be as thick as rope, and there was more than enough in the Menos to manufacture dozens of pieces. She decided to gather enough material for four or five of the devices she had in mind, better to have spare in the event that she made a mistake in the manufacturing process, or to repair future damage.
Over the course of the next two or three days, she carefully removed the thread like nerves from the Menos, carefully depositing the material into vats that sat on the table. She had some of her Vetruvian Homme creations delicately cleaning and winding the harvested neural fibre in the vats, the protein rich fluid keeping the fibres alive and well for storage. The creature itself had long since stopped resisting, the pain becoming a facet of its existence now, nothing odd or out of the ordinary about it. She could swear she heard sighs of relief when she finished excising any particular length of neural fibre, probably the Menos enjoying the sudden lack of nerves to send constant barrages of pain to its mind. When she had dutifully harvested everything from its left arm and pectoral area, she had decided she had pulled out enough and looked down on the hollow, it seemed to give her a strangely pleading look. If the thing could speak, Chandre wondered what it could be pleading for. Would it ask for a quick death, plead for its life, ask her to continue taking the pain away in thin strips, or just curse and bark meaningless threats of vengeance? She didn’t know, but for some reason she seemed to care, felt… something, which was odd. How many times had she removed what she had wanted from a hollow or human, taken days or weeks to delicately remove organs, blood vessels, eyes or whatever raw pound of flesh; only to leave the rapidly dying creature without a second thought? She wasn’t numb to their plight, she just genuinely didn’t care; it was inconsequential. Must she be remorseful that these things are destroyed painfully to allow her art to live? No, it wasn’t needed; her art would come to life whether or not she cried in the corner or just snapped the neck and moved on. Why then, did the strange, piercing gaze seem to hold her so?
You have made me ask questions, mes ami, that I did not think I needed to ask. She said, resting a hand on the forehead of the Menos, a twitch of recoil under her touch rippled through the massive body. Questions I must answer… another day. She said, grabbing hold and quickly ripping the head from the body with a single jerking pull. The steel struts and table seemed to cringe and groan from the sudden force, but relaxed as the body atop the structure began to vanish. Chandre peered into the eyes of the Menos as she held its head aloft in her hand, frozen in that pleading, pained look. She thought it was beautiful.
Chandre © All rights reserved, 2015-2016.
Chandre fancied herself an artist, one of a wide variety of arts be it painting, singing, acting, or the more practical arts of constructing useful trinkets. All of these things needed raw material, and today she was in need for her next art project, which she could scarcely wait to build. First though, raw materials.
Chandre could see her prey wandering closer to her, she had been drawing this one further and further away from the ‘pack’ that Menos tended to congregate in. Just at the edge of their senses, she had changed her rietsu to feel like that of a shinigami. Most menos are stupid enough to believe that a single shinigami is no threat, and ALL hollow know that the black clad swordsmen taste unmistakably wonderful. This one was Chandres’ target, a straggler, one she could get close enough for it to catch her scent without alerting the rest of the herd. It had split away without a second thought, and Chandre had matched it’s pace, her rietsu leaving a seductive trail in her wake for the Menos to follow.
Chandre had no doubt that she could fight and kill a dozen of the massive hollow, but she wasn’t so wasteful, nor was the slaughter of the creatures her goal. She sought to capture the beast, which was an altogether more difficult procedure, one that would have been all the more cumbersome with several more of the beasties trying to take a bite out of her. Thus, her plan was hatched and she had her lone Menos Grande nearly upon her, which she was glad to see. With a graceful hop, she began to plummet from the great height of the tree branch to the ground far, far below. She landed softly and darted around the to the other side of the tree from her prey, the massive trunk just as wide as the unwitting black cloaked monster. Chandre had chosen this tree to spring her trap for that very reason; it was just the perfect size to hide something the size of a Menos Grande behind it. Chandre took mere moments to grow to a height equal to that of her prey, and as the Menos rounded on her, expecting some petite shinigami snack, it found a Hollow just its size, fist reared back. A look of surprise is a hard thing to emote when your face was a porcelain mask, but this particular Menos managed a gapping look of shock just before Chandre cold-cocked it and it fell to the ground with a colossal crash.
It was always complicated, the use of living Hollow materials in the construction of her art projects. Hollows were curious creatures, and in their death, they tend to evapourate into nothingness. As this would defeat the purpose of harvesting raw materials, Chandre had to be meticulously careful in extracting anything she needed. To that end, she had created a very special place, a surgical theatre just for her use with this behemoth creature. It hadn’t taken too long, nor a great deal of effort; ever since she had created her own pocket dimension, making infrastructure for her projects was a simple task. She had designed a surgical lab, and the device at the heart of her home had set to work creating it. At the moment, the unconscious Menos Grande she had subdued lay strapped to a steel table about as long as a cargo ship. Dozens of steel and titanium struts lifted the table to working height for Chandre, each strut as wide as a six lane highway. The Menos was held down with similarly over-sized clasps around ankles, wrists and neck, the thing laying helpless before her. She had also taken the precaution of a muzzle, a thick cage around the Menos’ head to prevent it from opening its maw, firing a cero or trying to take a bite out of her. She was likely too powerful for it to actually hurt her, or gnaw successfully through her Heiro, but as with all projects, safety first.
For the purpose of her work she had maintained her own Menos sized height, it would have been much more cumbersome to try this procedure at her usual stature. She actually found herself very curious about the general anatomy of the creature before her, was the cloak it work a type of skin? What would she find when she removed it? Does it even have nerves in the conventional sense? This last question was the most probing, as she was actually hunting for this creatures’ nervous system as her raw material. The electrical qualities of this thing must have been impressive considering its size, the power output needed to move gargantuan muscles as quickly as such a thing did was considerable.
Shall we get started then? She said to herself, a scalpel of sorts forming in her fingers. It looked dainty in her hand, delicate, she had to remind herself that she was wielding something the size of truck. Everything is relative she supposed.
The surgery had gone more or less flawlessly, the cloak coming apart hadn’t stirred the Menos, so Chandre had to assume it was ancillary to its spiritual being not unlike a shinigami’s zanpactou. Not truly part of the anatomy, but something still tied to it on a spiritual level, though with admittedly much much less functionality. When she started to cut and peel back the pale, thick skin however, the Menos woke up in full, unapologetic fury and agony. It thrashed and roared as much as it could while bound as it was, the muffled cries coming from the muzzle seemed so much softer a sound than the large hollow should be able to produce. The thrashing was easy enough to deal with, Chandre could produce as many hands and limbs as needed to keep the areas she was working on steady. She had started with the left forearm and worked her way up and right until the entire torso was exposed muscle tissue and veins. She had decided that the sensory tissue, what felt pain and the like, was too fine, not enough bandwidth to carry the charge she needed and therefore not worth harvesting. What she wanted was the command nervous system, that which issued the orders to the muscles and reflexes. At the size she was, these biological ‘wires’ were as thin as gossamer, but at her usual height they’d be as thick as rope, and there was more than enough in the Menos to manufacture dozens of pieces. She decided to gather enough material for four or five of the devices she had in mind, better to have spare in the event that she made a mistake in the manufacturing process, or to repair future damage.
Over the course of the next two or three days, she carefully removed the thread like nerves from the Menos, carefully depositing the material into vats that sat on the table. She had some of her Vetruvian Homme creations delicately cleaning and winding the harvested neural fibre in the vats, the protein rich fluid keeping the fibres alive and well for storage. The creature itself had long since stopped resisting, the pain becoming a facet of its existence now, nothing odd or out of the ordinary about it. She could swear she heard sighs of relief when she finished excising any particular length of neural fibre, probably the Menos enjoying the sudden lack of nerves to send constant barrages of pain to its mind. When she had dutifully harvested everything from its left arm and pectoral area, she had decided she had pulled out enough and looked down on the hollow, it seemed to give her a strangely pleading look. If the thing could speak, Chandre wondered what it could be pleading for. Would it ask for a quick death, plead for its life, ask her to continue taking the pain away in thin strips, or just curse and bark meaningless threats of vengeance? She didn’t know, but for some reason she seemed to care, felt… something, which was odd. How many times had she removed what she had wanted from a hollow or human, taken days or weeks to delicately remove organs, blood vessels, eyes or whatever raw pound of flesh; only to leave the rapidly dying creature without a second thought? She wasn’t numb to their plight, she just genuinely didn’t care; it was inconsequential. Must she be remorseful that these things are destroyed painfully to allow her art to live? No, it wasn’t needed; her art would come to life whether or not she cried in the corner or just snapped the neck and moved on. Why then, did the strange, piercing gaze seem to hold her so?
You have made me ask questions, mes ami, that I did not think I needed to ask. She said, resting a hand on the forehead of the Menos, a twitch of recoil under her touch rippled through the massive body. Questions I must answer… another day. She said, grabbing hold and quickly ripping the head from the body with a single jerking pull. The steel struts and table seemed to cringe and groan from the sudden force, but relaxed as the body atop the structure began to vanish. Chandre peered into the eyes of the Menos as she held its head aloft in her hand, frozen in that pleading, pained look. She thought it was beautiful.
