Evolve or Die (P/Chandre)

They crashed through the walls of the abandoned building, Chandre tumbling along the old derelict floor as rubble rained down around her. One of the shinigami had turned her sword into something, a strangely shaped mace that flung fire balls of some kind. A part of Chandre wondered how it worked, how it siphoned the shinigami's rietsu and filtered it, changed it into some sort of flame. It was the curiosity in her. It wasn't the part she needed right now. Her fingers grew long and pointed as she lashed out at the ground, digging in her talons and heaving with all of her strength. A massive slab of concrete came up from the floor, which Chandre flung at her attackers, though they managed to get out of the way easily enough, shunpo Chandre though they called it. She had Sonido.

She appeared with one of the shinigami, wrapping her arm around the shinigami's leg, lifting and slamming them against the wall with all her might, which was considerable. The cinder blocks in the wall shattered like glass, crumbling dust making a smoke screen as Chandre ran, the mace wielding woman flinging a fire ball. Chandre barely managed to get out of the way before the searing heat erupted in an explosion. Chandre swung around a steel pillar, her hand outstretched as a fiery stream of her own blasted forth, trying to give her opponent a taste of her own medicine. This shinigami seemed wily though, deftly getting out of the way as Chandre tried to follow her with the line of fire. Combat, it would seem, was an exercise in frustration. Chandre only met with some relief when her Vetruvian Homme came rushing through the hole in the wall, belching out a blast of water that doused the woman shinigami, flinging her against a wall. The attack seemed to mirror the mace wielding shinigami, an excellent example of her Vetruvian Homme's ability to make the antithesis of it's opponents attack. Her creation was about to turn and re-engage the other two shinigami now that it's mother was relatively safe, but was met with a very fierce counter attack. The shinigami's blades dug into it's torso, her piece of art howling in pain, it's twisted limbs flinging desperately to try and catch a lucky blow. It didn't go so well, one of the shinigami coming in and removing her Vetruvian Homme's head, the lopsided, toothy maw cut in half. Her creation stood there a moment before the candle flame in it's chest vanishing in a small puff of smoke. She saw the colour drain from her art, becoming an off white wax statue and nothing more, a moment of pain and murder caught in perfect definition. Chandre quickly darted forward and down, diving down the hole she had made in the floor when she flung the slab of concrete. She sought out the shadows, somewhere small, out of the way, hard to find

Chandre was running down the nearly vacant streets of this old district of Karakura, trying to head home, somewhere she considered safe, a place to rest. Creating two powerful Vetruvian Homme like that so soon after one another was exhausting. She needed to stop, recharge, eat something too if she could. She didn't think she had the time though, the fight seemed to linger in the air, the sound of blades and explosions from the old decrepit buildings echoed on. She had to be five or more kilometers away by now, but she could still hear it, which meant she was still far, far too close. She didn't know how long their ability to track went, but if it was anything like her own method of hunting, they'd be able to close in on her rietsu within a few minutes at this rate. She had to pray that her work would keep them busy if not kill them, but she didn't delude herself, those four shinigami were powerful, and on her own she doubted she'd be able to take them on, and she was more powerful than even her latest masterpiece. Her rationalizations were dishearteningly confirmed when the unlit candle on her crown came back to life, the little flame signalling the end of her Vetruvian Homme.

She needed to escape, find somewhere to hide, get away. She managed to run, sonido helping a bit, back to a part of the city with people in it. The streets weren't filled with people, but there was enough to get lost in. She changed her shape, becoming shorter, broader at the shoulder, changing her clothes as well. She became a man, probably in the mid thirties range, balding brown hair and stress lines from too much time at the office. Her outfit was a simple suit, not very expensive, wrinkles and dirt on the pants, clearly she was being paid much, but still was expected to keep up an appearance at work. Now, she was something she disliked even more than physical conflict, she was mediocre, uninteresting, she didn't stand out at all, she wasn't special or beautiful. Still, she was hard to spot, and being alive was at least slightly preferable to being ugly. To pick her out from the dozens of other cubical slaves that meandered the streets, just let off from working a job that asked too much and gave too little, it was a nearly perfect camouflage. Nearly.

For ever little detail that said she was a standard, boring human, clinging pointlessly to a life that seemed intent on destroying them, she had one thing that set her apart. Her soul was not something she could change so easily, nor could she hide it very well right now either. All of the uses of her powers let loose a signal that was like a beacon for those who could sense rietsu. Right now, she was caked in the after-taste of her energy, like a scent wafting from her body, she may as well have left them a trail of bread crumbs to follow. It didn't matter right now though, worrying like this wouldn't help, she needed to get back to her lab, there was a soul or two she was keeping there for an after work snack, and if she could gather her things and get away before the shinigami caught up, all the better.

Chandre had to change tactics, she broke off the french sabre from the KLA, ordering it to make a katana as similar to the zanpactou these shinigami wielded as possible. It was done in short enough order, but she knew she couldn't keep confusing these shinigami as she was now. Her physical form was the only thing she could change, on the inside she still stuck out like a sore thumb as a hollow. That was what had to change.

The fight started, her sword clashing with theirs as she darted around the tunnel, her visage changing from their injured comrade to one of the two that came down to back up their commander. The hesitation in their sword swings was just enough for Chandre to be able to avoid being hit... too often anyway, but it wasn't enough to fight back. She looked at them hard, not with her eyes, but with her senses, trying to taste their rietsu, remember what their very blood tasted like. She could change her body like it was soft clay, malleable in her hands and changeable to her whim. Her rietsu however was like iron, she could press and pull as much as she wanted, but it wouldn't budge. She needed to try a different tactic. Instead of trying to make her rietsu more like one of these shinigami, she needed to try and at least make it feel similar enough to a shinigami in general. They all felt different enough if you looked hard enough, but they were the same, like different shades of red. Chandre tried to make her soul red, tried to wash over the usual, brilliant emptiness, replace it with something else, something like these shinigami. She tried to imagine what it was like to be them, coming out here to slay hollows, to defend the innocent souls. She remembered the righteous anger of the female commander when her friend was hurt, and Chandre mirrored it, felt it in her soul. How DARE some filthy hollow hurt a shinigami? They were a unit, a part of a whole, and every one of them different, but for one to be hurt, the whole shinigami organization felt the shudder. She could feel the anger and fear in them, the anger pushed her to fight these hollows, the fear kept her keen like the edge of her zanpactou. She imagined that these things she was fighting had a hole in their chest, that their faces were masked and that their rietsu was the tainted dark ugly abyss she dedicated her life to extinguishing. For a moment, she could have sword that they had switched places, instead of three shinigami and one hollow, it was one shinigami and three hollow. She felt for her soul and felt the distinctive ring of a shinigami, still her own soul, she was Chandre Boucher, but she was a shinigami for certain.

The confusion was born anew in her attackers as she quickly shifted between them, keeping her rietsu like a shinigami, copying their sword swings and kata, her face a vision of the righteous anger and confusion they had. It was only a moment or two in the dark tunnel before she heard the clash of two swords, behind her, the shinigami uncertain of who they were fighting. Chandre took that instant to run, darting around the shinigami she had clashed blades with and diving into the barred vent. She hurried through, rounding a corner just as she felt the heat of a fire chase after her. She came crashing through the pipeline in the janitor's closet of a retail store, reforming as a hollow fully, the metal of the pipe still glowing red from the heat. Chandre lay there panting, realizing that she had just changed her rietsu! She felt around outside, there were humans still out, the sounds of shock and concern, likely for the mysterious damage to the road and sounds of fighting. She did it again, trying to fill they abyss in her soul with 'humanity' this time, the concerns for their own life, an ignorance to how wide the world was, a kinship in the herd. She felt it, her soul become similar to one of the teeming endless masses of humanity, small and weak, but infinitely complex and full of wonder. This was easier, perhaps because she was getting used to it, or perhaps because she was once human herself, but she stepped from the store, a human in every way. She was in the body of a young woman, early twenties, dressed for a chilly night like this one, eager to get home from all the insanity.

Chandre pulled her power together, designing another Vetruvian Homme, but she wasn't pushing herself this time, it was a Vetruvian Homme of more standard fair. Still powerful, but not the adonis she had forged earlier this evening. She needed her power intact, needed it for something she wasn't certain would even sort of work, but it was the only option she really had. She looked on as the shinigami walked closer and closer to the service entrance to the library underground. They were mere steps from her door, from her home and her lifes work when she released her Vetruvian Homme. It was a serpentine creature, six muscular arms, and it wielded Chandre's keratin lattice assembler to make it's assault more dangerous. She would have loved for her creation to deal with the shinigami, but she doubted that even the more higher evolved Vetruvian Homme she could make would fair well against all four of them, even if two of them were heavily wounded. No, this was a diversion, something Chandre was using to bide for some time to set up her real plan. She snake like creature sprung at the group of shinigami, focussing on the wounded like a true predator, take the weakened out from the herd, the ones that couldn't run as fast or attack as hard. It made a wonderful mess of things, and that was all Chandre was hoping for. She took a seat at a desk in the computer sciences building that looked out at the plaza, across which was her home and the shinigami facing off against her creation.

She closed her eyes and started working more earnestly on a theory she had been idly playing with over the last few weeks. Her art was life itself, creating something that breathed, with a heart beating in its chest and a mind buzzing with thought. Unfortunately, that meant she had mixed success at best when it came to matters with inorganic matter. She found actual clay clumsy and tiresome, stone unrelenting and messy, even paints lacked any real flair for her to enjoy the finished product. For all of this, Chandre wanted to give the soulless rock and clay a life of its own, a chance to breath and think. She wanted to infect the dead with life.

To that end, she had tried to re-apply her powers to make life from her breast, and make something so very alive that it imparted the will to be art with a simple touch. She had a theory that a correctly... altered Vetruvian Homme or Madonna Litta would be capable of delivering this effect. They wouldn't be alive themselves like her usual creations, just a sort of mobile container meant to spread the wealth. She focused, concentrated her rietsu, the very essense of life giving energy, formed something like the candles she used to impart life on her creations, but altogether different and more raw. It felt like a small sun buried in her chest, one that she encased, tried to shield and protect. The end result was odd, not something she was really expecting, but honestly she enjoyed the allegory. This little vessel for the life she sought to create took the form of a baby, a small, round faced child that she cradled in her arms as it came into being. It opened it's eyes and Chandre knew she succeeded, for the little creature's eyes, mouth, nose and ears shone as if it held a small sun nestled of it's tiny head. Chandre held the infant up like a proud mother, only to be surprised again as a pair of small angelic wings sprouted from its back, strong and ready to take flight.

Mon enfant.