Soul Reaper and the Soul [Aoi]

Lorietka's eyes widened. Just as she killed the hollow, she felt the presence of another, high above. She looked up and a Gillian-class menos appeared through the gap in the gaping hole above. A garganta. She mustered her strength, and wondered if she could even make such a jump- realizing that she could in fact probably use her gravity powers to propel her up there. Thankfully though it seemed she would not even need to; someone else came dispatched the beast with a kido as she prepared to transform, and leap up. She was initially relieved but the relief soon vanished, and was replaced by abject horror. It was a shinigami. Getting involved in such affairs, as her programming mandated, would lead her to have to interact with them sooner or later. She gulped as the admittedly small shinigami managed to fire off a kido that completely neutralized the rather impressive looking Cero of the menos-grande.

The jigokucho crowded the boy. She wondered if, perhaps, there was scope for her to slip away unnoticed. But something different welled up in her. The gillian now gone, and the area totally free of hollows, she began to retain some of her agency. Instead of wanting to protect this shinigami, she wanted to destroy him. He was one of the ones, a member of the organization that committed genocide against her people. She stood, torn, watching him with crossed arms and a look of ire upon her face. This boy was probably younger than her, he might not even have known for christ's sake! He probably hadn't even been born and already Lori was so ready to hate him. She sighed as her arms dropped to her sides. If he recognized what she was, doubtless he would have to try and kill her. But maybe he wouldn't recognize her- had he ever even seen a modified soul before?

"Uuuuuuuhm..." Lori said, trailing off. The gears ticked in her mind. He seemed to be absolutely clueless as to what she was, which worked in her favour. All the same she didn't really fancy helping this kid chase butterflies... She kind of had more important things to be doing. Especially as he was a shinigami. But he was quite cute, and he asked nicely so she supposed that it wouldn't hurt to play along.

"Well there's no more hollows. So what exactly do you need help with?" she inquired. She didn't want to tell him that she knew what shinigami were. As far as she knew, regular old humans couldn't even see spirits like him, which should have immediately marked her as incredibly suspicious but all Aoi seemed to care about were his butterflies. Probably his superior would chew him out for fucking up if he didn't get the butterflies back together; Loretka could appreciate that. She'd had her fair share of summer jobs where it had been exactly the same for her too.

"Do you have, well, a butterfly net or something maybe we could use?" she asked him with a smile. "It would be much easier to capture them that way!"

Gee, this kid was weird. Lori didn't really get this obsession other teenagers had with being "weird" or "strange" or "special". In some ways she guessed she was special and it wasn't all it was cut out to be. She spent her whole life attempting to fit in as best she could, perhaps out of a repressed fear that being different would make her a target, as it had for the shinigami. Aoi didn't seem to like the idea of capturing butterflies with a net, however, and seemed to get irrationally upset at it. So much so that his reiatu started flaring, which made her widen her eyes in surprise. She felt several hollows nearby, and her programming started to tick back towards extermination mode, away from free-will mode.

"Aoi, no! You have to control your reiatsu. You're drawing hollows to us." she cautioned. While many shied away, not all of them were so careful, and she turned around in just enough time to deliver another earth-shattering kick. She was stronger now; just as strong as this shinigami, it seemed. Many hollows meant very little to beings of their strength, even Menos were within their grasp to defeat. The hollows were still prowling around, they had to be cautious not to exert their reiatsu too harshly.

"Come Mr. Soul Reaper. How are we supposed to gather the Jigokucho? Can you call them to you? Maybe I could watch your back while you find them and gather them." she suggested, unsure of how else to go about this.

"Yeah!" she responded chirpily. "My name's Lori-ohhh uhh" she floundered, not sure she wanted to tell him her real name, "Lauren. Lauren Ronin!" If Aoi knew what her name was he might work out that she was a modified soul and that he was under mandate to kill her. She noticed the hollows approaching and her eyes widened. She focused her reiatsu and noticed them getting closer. Damn... She didn't want to have to do this but it seemed as though there was no other choice right now. She pulled her energy from inwards, and suddenly there was a blinding flash. She spun, dazzling in midair, as her drab school uniform was transformed into the racy outfit of long white boots, a ruffled skirt, and a crop-topped, tank top blouse. Finally, a pair of goggled materialized upon her head. She pulled a thumbs up at Aoi, her transformation complete.

"Sounds like a plan, you get the butterflies... I'll deal with these hollows!" she told him, before launching herself into the air, so that she could see the monsters around her. Hopefully she would be able to buy Aoi enough time to get the Jigokucho away from the hollows... She wasn't sure why she was helping this shinigami anyway, but she was committed now. "Alright you freaks, take a load of this!" she cried, and released a huge wave of gravitational energy. The hollows found themselves drawn towards her, flying through the air and screaming with the unexpected motion.

As the first one neared her, she struck it, her arm acting like a horrific buzz saw, completely severing its head and messily parting one arm from its shoulder. It fell down below as another hollow reached out to grab her, but found its very hand torn to shreds. She used her gravitational telekinesis to launch it into the ground at speed, with a large shout of exertion. There seemed to be two left, and they were resisting the force that pulled them toward her. She buzzed as the air around her shifted in currents with her every movement, signifying the huge tidal forces around her skin. She looked towards Aoi, to see how he was doing.

She saw Aoi send the butterflies away to safety. Good, that meant that they wouldn't have to worry about them any more. A hollow had tried to attack him but he'd dealt with it swiftly; he was a shinigami, after all. He couldn't be that incompetent. Suddenly, the hollows that were near her as a Hado Kido incinerated them. Loretka's sensors flooded her brain with information about kido and Hado 33 which she impatiently buzzed away, intent to focus on Aoi. She came and landed beside him, frills and ruffles flapping due to the sudden rush of air of her descent. She felt much more stable with her gravity control powers now, so her landing was smooth, almost florid, or ostentatious.

"Hey, uuh nice one Aoi-kun!" she said with a smile. She realized that her friends had most likely gotten much further ahead by now and she'd have a tough time catching up as was. Perhaps, the Jigokucho safely gone, now was the time to make her mistake, before the shinigami started asking questions. "Anyways I had better run, I'm super late to meet my friends!" she cried, not entirely dishonestly, and snatched her canvas messenger bag up from the floor, shouldering it by the strap, and dashing off, still clad in her ridiculous but simultaneously quite impressive Soul Release outfit, hoping beyond all hope that the young shinigami wouldn't follow her.

Lori was presently trying to run off, to catch up with her friends where she could make some easy excuse for quite why she was dressed in the ridiculous way she was. Lori was a popular girl at school, so she could often get away with occasionally doing strange things and people would just brush it off. Aoi, it seemed, had other ideas. She skidded to a halt. That teleporting thing again! Dammit, why was everyone able to just instantly move from one place to another? She felt a little out of the loop, not to mention worried that she might not be able to escape. She had so much to learn... To learn about herself, her powers, and the other spiritual beings around her.

He was in front of her now, arms outstretched. He issued her a warning. Her heart thudded in her artificial chest. What? She'd helped him... Maybe he had now realized what she was, and was going to turn on her. She couldn't allow that to happen. She felt an incredibly intense dissonance as she felt two sides of herself at war deep within. She wanted to flex her fighting reflexes, prepare for escape if she needed to, but her circuitry was fighting her. It wouldn't let her do harm to a shinigami. She cursed herself, and wondered if she'd be able to overcome it.

"No Aoi, you should be careful." she told him, her demeanor growing suddenly cold. "Lauren is just fine. Now let me pass. I have to go and find my friends, I have lots of class work to do and have no time for silly games." she told him firmly, with a cold flintiness in her eyes. "Maybe when our finals are over we can go to the Arcade." she said, in an attempt to mollify him.

Now he was crying. Oh jeez this was just great. Usually she was a sucker for that, such a cute little boy crying. But she'd not been given a chance to cry when all of the modsouls had been killed. When she lived in fear that she too would be discovered and exterminated just the same by shinigami just like Aoi. She was losing patience and wanted to be out of there as soon as she could as the kid started bawling. Why couldn't she just live a normal life like a normal teenage girl!?

"Why don't you try asking a human?" she blurted out without thinking. Uh-oh that did it. She really was in trouble this time. She activaed her gravity powers and drew all of the dust in the air and ground around them up into a sphere as large as she could, acting like a smokescreen so that she could escape without Aoi being able to stop her, dashing away hoping the dust would get in his eyes and mouth as an added distraction. All she wanted was to get away and live a normal life. She couldn't defend herself against him; her programming was simply too strong.