Off The Leash/ Yaksha

Crunch crunch crunch.  Crunch crunch crunch.  The sound of jaws snapping down around something fragile was all-too loud, shattering the silence like the sound of ice cracking.  Given the circumstances, it likely spelled death as certainly as it would to one standing on a plane of fragile ice, as well.  The sound continued for a few moments, even after Jean ceased moving.  It was followed by a slurping sound, not unlike someone trying their best to finish off the contents of a can of soda, probing around lazily at the bottom with a straw.  The sound issued from all around at first, with no source in sight.  It went on for perhaps a minute, before it was cut off by a remarkably soft, almost ludicrously normal sound, for the circumstances.

Someone stifled a burp, the sound unmistakable, and coming from perhaps ten feet away from Jean.  It was followed a split second later by someone saying "Excuse me", and the ever so slight shifting of grains of sand.  A creature extracted itself from the sands slowly, a piece of bone still sticking out from its elongated, rounded snout.  Jaws snapped together, bringing it ever so slightly closer into his maw, and his forked tongue looped around it, before swallowing it in a smooth motion.  The creature tilted its head for a second, staring at him as if he were a new form of insect.  Finally, after a long second, a whispery sigh of delight escaped his throat.

"What do you know.  Some nice dinner company.  Sit with me for a time, and speak with me.  You may call me Yaksha.  If you try to run, I'll clamp my jaw closed around your neck and hold you there until you die of shock or starvation.  I'd shake your hand, but I'm not sure your fragile meat casing could handle it.  It's not often I meet human guests.  You're a little far outside of your habitable zone, as the experts of your kind would call it.  I can't begin to imagine how you've been able to stay fed for any period of time."

The creature, lumbering and hulking as it was, sat down across from Jean, assuming a position that was easily and immediately recognizable as the traditional stance of a Japanese, honoring a guest.  His words had come out smoothly and quickly, with a cadence to them that never once changed, whether he was discussing the grisly consequences of running, or the hypotheticals of how a human could survive in a land of ghosts.

"I just told you my name, child!  If you want to know more about me, hearing it from me is hardly the best answer; we all give ourselves far too much leeway when it comes to reality."  Yaksha seemed almost lazy, his tail swishing about behind him, his eyes half-lidded with sleep and his fingers resting in the sand, idly teasing through them.  He hadn't expected an actual conversational partner, but the presence of a human's reaitsu had managed to bring his hunger kindled back to a more ravenous level.  Humans made good meals certainly...but interesting humans led him to even greater meals, given enough time.  There was plenty of rank and file filler, creatures capable of giving him the sustenance he needed to stay sane.  But a true meal had to be savored, and that meant steeping in the right melange of flavors.  He continued to observe Jean, his tongue flickering out slightly, tasting the air, testing it for the right mix of emotions...

Not yet.  No, not quite yet.  This human wasn't ripe.  Surely eating him now would give Yaksha a lovely little thrill, but it'd hardly be enough.  He could wait, until Jean became a meal unto himself.  Until then, he was quite content to let the fodder come flocking, hoping to contest the meal.  So few hollows considered the possibility of passing up a delicacy...which made it all the easier for Yaksha to feed in the impending confusion.  Who would ever imagine he'd go after -them- right away, instead of staking a claim to his meal like a proper predator?

But Yaksha could wait.  He was as patient as a snake, and he was quite happy to wait.

"So tell me, Jean.  How did you get to this world?  And how have you been surviving?  Don't tell me you're a plus?  You lack the proper...vibrance to be one.  And yet a human that doesn't eat or doesn't drink...?  That is quite strange indeed.  Almost as strange as a hollow that doesn't spout profanities and cut off his own nose to spite his face."  He chuckled ever so slightly under his breath, clearly amused by the notion...perhaps by the knowledge that he was a black sheep, or perhaps by the simple fact that humans had managed to devise such lovely turns of phrase while he was spending all of his time simply feeding his needs.

Yaksha's hands clapped together, his eyes wide and his tongue sliding over his teeth in delicious anticipation.  He didn't move for a few long seconds, but when he did there was an entirely different sense to him now; a sense of rising tension, of absolute glee and excitement.  A sense that he had suddenly awoken at the realization of something.  He paced for a moment or two, muttering to himself under his breath, his gangly limbs once more dragging through the sands as he tried his very best to figure out the proper way to say what was going through his head.  Finally he turned, his voice flowing out sweet and rich, like fine coffee or fresh honey.

"A noob!  This is just delightful!  I've always lamented the propaganda flying all around in this day and age.  You know, information control is by far the deadliest form of control in this world.  And the shinigami...ah, but we'll get to that soon.  For now, there are far more important things to learn."  He circled Jean a bit more, his limbs tickling and teasing through the sands, his mouth moving ever faster in a truly animated fashion.

He didn't speak for a few long seconds, simply weaved his hands through the air like a conductor, listening to an orchestra only he could hear.  After a second or two he finally opened his eyes wider, revealing such enormous eyes that it looked like Jean had suddenly looked into a photograph of a snake's eyes, rather than a real eye.  It was picture perfect, every detail easily notable...as the whites slowly faded and wore, turning yellow.  Yaksha cleared his throat, and bowed ever so slightly, his eyes still meeting the human's.

"Allow me to be the first to welcome you, Jean, to the land of the angry dead.  Call us hollows, call us poltergeists, call us demons, the name doesn't much matter."

"Hell?  Certainly not, child!  Hell is another place entirely.  I said the angry dead, not the evil dead.  How to put this delicately, how to describe this...this isn't a true afterlife, but a between-lives.  You've seen that movie Poltergeist, yes?  The lingering spirits of dead individuals, unable to move on due to various wrongs done unto them in life?  It's such a popular story...did you honestly think it didn't come from -somewhere-?"

Yaksha's tone was soft, gentle, chiding without being judging...and he seemed almost to have settled down, now that the topic had begun in earnest.  Something about being able to spread his knowledge with another seemed to calm the reptilian beast, leave him distracted from his hunger and instincts for a time.  Or perhaps it was because he'd already managed to table the notion of feeding for now; this was a matter of investment at this point.  He had already decided this child would be a meal for the future, something to set aside and stake his claim on.  This 'Lillith' could be problematic...but if he did it just right, this mortal would all-but walk into his mouth when the time was right.  He was patient, and he could wait.

For now, he had a job to do, and that job included tenderizing this mortal just...so.

"I was a human too, like you.  About...1500 years ago, I'd say.  It's hard to keep an exact count when you don't celebrate birthdays.  I was slaughtered by my people, stoned to death and accused of being a warlock.  Consorting with demons.  It made me so very...angry.  So frustrated, that my life should end in such a pitiful display.  And so it didn't.  I took on the form you see before you.  Each and every hollow was once a man...until he ripped out his own heart, in the desperate hopes of returning to a world that had left us behind before we were ready to leave it."

His hand slid up slowly, touching against the scaled visage of his mask, before trailing a clawed finger down slowly, towards his hollow hole; the finger went through it slowly, wiggling for show as he sighed wistfully, almost sounding like he was on the verge of tears.

"The mask and the hole.  Both signs of the humanity we left behind, in seeking something more.  We are all the worst parts of man, memories of pain and hunger and cruelty.  And we are all in pain, every day of our lives.  So really, we're not -that- different from you mortals."

"You're getting ahead of yourself, child!  I certainly find a bit of initiative in my students to be refreshing, but you must have context.  Questions like that are...tricky."  Yaksha began to circle the human, his movements relaxed and slow, giving off absolutely no sign of predatory intent or hunger.  He did still want to eat the human of course...and on some level, he even wanted to strike them, to crack open their skull and watch their grey matter splatter onto the sands.  This little child was speaking as if he already understood all there was about hollows, simply because he'd heard the name!  It made Yaksha feel disgusted at the very notion.

He finally settled down in the sand, about fifteen feet away from Jean.  His hand plunged deep into the sands, withdrawing a small, chiken-like hollow that began to whirl its head about furiously, as if trying to determine the sudden disruption to its rest.  Before it could even speak or determine what was happening, it had already been popped into Yaksha's gullet and bitten in half, like one would crunch on a potato chip.  He hardly seemed to notice what he'd done, aside from licking at his clawed fingers for a moment, while he seemed to think about how best to deal with and speak to this little mortal.  He was already starting to grate...but he was eager to learn, and Yaksha certainly couldn't pass up a chance to teach others.

"First, we must discuss shinigami.  Hollows are what you get when humans -don't- pass on, when we steep in years upon years of abandonment, grief, confusion, anger...normally, the shinigami make sure such a thing doesn't happen.  They ensure souls properly cycle in and out of the soul society-which isn't heaven, before you ask.  The Soul Society is an entirely different sort of waiting room.  Most pluses will go through 20, 30, 40 different bodies over thousands of years.  But there are trillions of souls, and not yet even ten million bodies.  There are lines, and there is no small amount of waiting involved.  While you wait to be born, you're stuck in the soul society."

Yaksha once more lapsed into silence, beginning to feel his mind wander.  He'd never visited the soul society, had only barely heard about it from others, but from what little he had heard he could only begin to wonder what it was like, to have the world being run by a military organization.  It certainly sounded like a very unpleasant place to live if you weren't one of the black-clad, from what he could imagine.

"The shinigami resemble humans in nearly every way, and are often found wearing black robes.  They're horribly outnumbered and overworked, so it's natural souls slip through the cracks.  I don't blame them for what happened to me, not truly.  But that's...another topic.  You asked about arrancar.  There exist a certain number of very powerful, very old hollows...ones that decide to regain their hearts.  The very act of becoming a hollow means losing your heart.  The organ, you understand.  We hardly need it.  The heart as a symbol still exists...as the very masks we wear.  And the oldest, strongest of hollows, in an attempt to ape their superiors, may remove those masks.  It's a painful, unpleasant, long process.  But in the end, it helps us to regain a...modicum of our lost humanity.  Arrancar are less capricious and unpleasant as hollows, but far more...unstable.  They are mere caricatures of mankind.  Creatures driven by absolute obsession.  And they're all mad, to their very core."

"Because they're mad, naturally!  Each and every arrancar takes a certain...part of humanity and blows it out of proportion.  Our very existence is defined by being a parody of mankind.  A matron will become obsessive, downright clingy, and may well kill her 'children' to avoid letting them go free.  A warrior will seek battle, for no real reason, simply because it's what he does.  Once that mask comes off, arrancar become all the more dangerous, consumed by a certain portion of their old life.  A certain...name or phrase, something that drives them as surely as the need to eat or drink."  Yaksha sighed once more, a deep and pained sound that seemed to pack a truly incredible amount of emotion into such a small sound.  He tilted his head ever so slightly, seeming to take Jean in a bit more.

"Yes, child.  Hollows aren't like most animals.  Our form is determined by our...thoughts.  Our memories.  And as we refine ourselves, our -idea- of ourselves, we change.  We grow.  I am hardly even a hollow worth note in the grand scheme of things...but when the time comes, when I have properly sated myself.  When the amalgalm of souls within me reaches an event horizon, I will delve into a hive mind of such exceptional depth and breadth that it may well take me years to emerge...far stronger, far smarter, and far hungrier.  Power takes fuel, after all!  Yaksha slowly and carefully lapped at his serrated knife-like teeth, his grin growing ever so slightly larger.

"Turnabout's fair play, boy.  Tell me about...Lillith."


An arrancar that took a liking to humans?  Kept them as pets?  Oh, yes.  Yaksha could use this.  Fair price for another skipped meal, he should think.

"Oh, I highly doubt that child.  You can be quite a bit of help, if you truly want!  Information isn't...useful, or useless.  That designation can only be decided by me personally.  There are so very many little things you can tell me that would mean remarkably a lot to me.  How she walks...what she said to you before bringing you to this place...how she's gone about protecting you.  This Lillith woman is without a doubt quite powerful.  And the more I know about that power, the better!  I mean, let's face it...if she brought you here, it's a safe bet she doesn't want you leaving.  But there must be -so much- in the human world you still want to do!  Things you want to see!  Lillith is being quite selfish, quite childish by forcing you to stay by her side.  And I'm willing to wager quite a lot she's as inconsistent as the mail man."  He laughed, a rich and hearty sound that seemed to hint that his little joke had meant quite a lot more to him than it had to Jean.  Something about this everyday little banter, about terrible jokes...it seemed to calm him, and make him feel better.  The simple act of faking a conversation seemed to transform the beast more with every second, leaving him more composed and less bestial.

"Now take your time, child.  Wrack your brain.  Tell me alllll about that little event!  You remember more than you think, I'm sure!  People remember so many little details they don't feel like mentioning, but I'm asking -very- nicely.  Tell me about Lillith.  Tell me what she looks like.  Tell me how to pick her out of a crowd.  Tell me how she walks, how she talks!  Tell me what she loves, and what ails her!  Tell me every little detail you can think of about your so-called savior!  I can't wait until she comes looking for her little lost pet, and finds him sitting and chatting with yours truly."

There was something frantic to his speech now, an odd manic gleam that had entered his voice, a faint tremor of excitement in his hands.  Lillith was almost certainly strong, but Yaksha was something else entirely, something that went beyond strength.  Yaksha had qualities that turn even the worst situation to his benefit.  It would take a singularly divine presence to fight against the full force of his puissant pulchritude, and with the time to prepare...he was confident he could have Lillith giving him anything he needed, for the forseeable future.

"Of course, child!  Any hollow can get into the human world and leave as he pleases!  The garganta is an act of instinct, the same as a bird's call or a child nursing.  No one teaches us how to do it.  The real question is...do you want to risk Lillith's ire like that?  Certainly she might start growing curious how you managed to escape, and...well.  If she found out you had a hollow's help, that'd hardly end well for me, now would it!?  However..."

He rose slowly, his hulking form almost seeming to eclipse the small human's blocking off the exceptionally large moon above.  He didn't speak for a few moments, simply glancing at Jean as if appraising him, and then rose a hand, wriggling the claws slowly, ever so slowly, with the sense of a man about to undergo an act of exceptional manual labor.  He couldn't deny that there was some purely visceral joy at the notion, that the very idea he was contemplating was sinfully exciting, but he couldn't dare speak that thought aloud.  There were some times where it was better to bite one's tongue, if they wanted to fit in.

"Hollows are a remarkably...instinctual sort.  Our bodies often act without us realizing it.  Amongst all of the ghosts, hollows are best known for having an exceptionally...inefficient form.  We shed spirit energy like a radiator sheds heat.  Nothing too notable right now, perhaps just enough to make your skin prickle and your body feel a touch odd.  But if I were to touch you, even slightly...it'd be like pouring acid on your flesh.  There would be a very notable wound, one that may not heal for weeks.  And my reaitsu would invade your body, doing its damnedest to take hold.  To tear your entire fragile body apart, and leave you as a lingering soul...like me.  But you're strong, child.  Certainly strong enough to handle a simple touch.  And -if- this...Lillith were to track you down again.  She'd find a human who had been savagely assaulted by a hollow, managed to escape or perhaps even slaughter the one responsible...and learn a way back to his world in the process.  Certainly you can't deny this would be a rather...interesting.  Sort of growth.  She may even deign to start putting you on a longer leash, the next time around.  And I'd naturally be right here, to continue our lessons when the time was right."

Yaksha paused just a moment, tilting his head as he took in the child across from him. It was true he had mentioned that phrase, but what relevance did it have here, in the slightest? There was nothing to turn about unto him, nothing at all to repeat.  And the child's paranoia was indeed refreshing; an ever-so-small reminder that Yaksha wasn't going to just get these things handed to him.  He inhaled, letting the rich crisp air of Hueco Mundo fill his lungs, letting himself sink in that delicious miasma of unfiltered reaitsu.  He finally looked back down at Jean, and managed a slightly less toothy smile this time.

"It may surprise you to hear this, but I don't exactly have many...resources to call upon.  Monsters don't build alliances.  I find myself consistently out in the cold, forced to fend for myself.  To rely on my own skills to...persuade, or extract.  To gain whatever meager resources I can.  So let us say that what's in this for me is...a future.  New, bright possibilities.  It's how all business transactions go, in this day and age.  We trade future possibilities for actualities.  We get rid of one or two 'maybes' to find a 'definitely'.  I don't expect anything from you -now-...but it's always nice to have options.  You can appreciate that, no?  The impulsive need to gather up a nice little nest egg, to be prepared for the unexpected..."

He drifted his claws through the sand once more, his tongue sliding over his alabaster lips almost mockingly, as he began to tap his fingers against his chin, seemingly deep in thought.

"So, you tell me child.  In order to...pick up where you left off.  To have the option to return to your pleasant little normal human life.  What would it be worth to you?  What would you be willing to throw aside, to be...normal again?  An arm?  A leg?  An eye?  Perhaps a friend or two...You're free to set the price, Jean.  And it may well be that I'll never lay my claim to it.  But you and I will both know just what it was you placed up as collateral, for your...happy little life.  And to me, that's better than anything I could possibly choose to charge you."