Shun
New Member
Starring Shun as Arashi Ryoujin, that Templar
and Rawb as Selene, that local looney
[ 5117 ]
Lucky Foot Asylum. Whenever someone went in, they never came out. He had heard such rumors and more about the place, about the incidents that had taken place within its doors, the reason why it became deserted, but that was all just hearsay. It was not until a mission report was filed concerning said institution when he was assigned to investigate the matter. With the current peace time, getting a job like this wasn’t exactly what you would call normal.
And with nothing else filling up his schedule, he now found himself traversing between realms.
What do ya know? The legend is true! It is a ruin, the pink-haired youth thought, as the Senkaimon portal dropped him off a little ways away from his destination. Even from this distance, the location reminded him of a haunted house, or perhaps it was just his perception exaggerating his bearings as to how he wanted to picture it. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were plus souls chained to it, and if there truly were someone alive within there, then it would come as no shock if said individual could see him like those other spiritually awakened humans.
“Wonder if there really are any ghosts about though,” Ryoujin said, laughing as the irony of his statement was lost upon him.
As the Templar crept closer towards the entrance gate of Lucky Foot Asylum, a low, creaking noise emanated from the gate itself as it slowly opened.The first thing Ryoujin noticed was that, despite its barren outlook from afar, there were actually quite a lot of trees and plants in full bloom.
The ground was also covered in grass, and though the signs of decay were clearly starting to show on the building itself... it didn’t actually look half that bad.
Off in the distance, near the doors of the Asylum, he could see a young adult woman staring back at him. She was wearing a silk, white nightgown that had undoubtedly seen better days. It was covered in an odd mixture of dried up blood and mud and, despite the fact that her face was clear as day, as such gave off a rather unkempt image.
It didn’t seem to bother the girl whatsoever, though, despite the fact that she looked to be well past her late teens... probably somewhere in her early twenties even.
As her heterochromic eyes - one was a deep cyan, the other a dim emerald - continued to stare a hole right into Ryoujin she smiled softly, before turning around and disappearing into the Asylum again.
Suddenly, Lucky Foot Asylum became bustling with life again.
Things seemed to change pretty quickly. Finding himself lost amongst the many patients, who moments ago weren’t there, he tried to wade his way through. None of them seemed to pay him any mind which was great considering the only individual whom he sought was the woman that had locked gazes with him.
“Hey wait-” Before he could so much as garner her attention, she had vanished entirely. A quick use of Rairaku Takan didn’t seem to be helping in order to discern whether she was alive or not although he did sense something tainted about her spiritual pressure threads, a sure anomaly that told him that this was perhaps who he needed to find in order to put a rest to this case.
Lost in the sea and buzz of activity, Ryoujin ventured further into the Asylum until he finally reached its doorsteps. His auburn eyes scanned the place, staring at something that probably wasn’t even there. Common sense dictated that he book it right then and there, but for someone like him, caution was easily thrown out the window in favor of a more direct and quite possibly life-threatening approach.
Tip-tap.
The sound of footsteps clapping on the ground in synchronization could be heard all throughout the building. As Ryoujin turned around to see what was going on he could see the young woman who had locked eyes with him parading in front of what seemed to be dozens of walking chairs.
She was having... fun, and seemed to be blissfully unaware of the fact that she was being looked at in a strange way by the Templar... or that he was even there at all. Obviously she had seen him before, but to the young girl time was of relative importance. She only remembered that which she did, and forgot the rest.
Tip-tap.
As the thirty-six chairs and their leader, Selene, passed through the hall they soon came to be side by side with Ryoujin. At first it seemed that the train of absurdity would continue, but then...
“Attention, halt!” the redhead commanded and the chairs came to a halt just as she did. “Dismissed!” The chairs disappeared and soon Selene’s attention had shifted back to where the Templar was standing.
Though her eyes had clarity in them, there was still something odd about them... as if they were hiding something deep within them.
“As I look through the propane curtains of my mind,” Selene began, placing her hands behind her back and wobbling about on her feet, “what do my eyes see? ‘Hey wait...!’ Did you mean me?”
Wide-eyed still from the display, Ryoujin took a moment to respond. As to how she had been able to do that, he didn’t know, but it seemed like everyone had their own strange and unique abilities these days. It was then that it registered that she had finally decided to exchange words with him. Had she just said something incoherent about propane curtains? What!?
Shaking his head, he finally said, “Yeah. Before I actually ask you what I came here for, first who are you? And how’d you make those chairs come to life like that?”
To both of their credits, the absurdity and bizarreness extended to both of them. How often are you even asked such a question anyways? ...Chairs being personified- yeah she was definitely a keeper.
“You ask questions I have never sown before,” Selene began, hanging her head slightly as she began to walk from one side of the hall to the other, and back, “why must you protrude upon the eternal wake?
“Can’t you see, you and me, through the great eternity? ‘Who are you?’ ...who am I? Who is this? This is why.”
By now her ‘happy’ face had returned and she was jumping around the room now, circling around Ryoujin as if something superb had just happened. She jump higher, higher, much higher and then... as she assumed the Templar was some knight in shining armour she leapt into the air and...
Plummeted face first onto the concrete floor, laying dead still.
Ryoujin scratched his head. What? Did she expect for him to catch her as if this were some fantasy tale? As he tried to comprehend her speaking mannerisms, he found that he really couldn’t. She seemed to enjoy speaking in riddles, and he had never been a fan of that, not to mention the other idiosyncrasies she displayed.
And wait, why was she awfully still all of a sudden?
Kneeling down to her level, the pink-haired youth nudged her to see if she was still conscious. With no immediate response, he frowned. She couldn’t have died from that. Of course not, it wasn’t that high of a fall, but if she intended on appearing dead, she was one good actor; he would give her that.
Great, you’re hired to investigate, and now it looks like there’s a dead body. What else could go wrong?
Suddenly Selene began to snicker. First it was a subtle noise coming from beneath her concrete-planted face, but it slowly picked up in tone. Slowly it turned into a chuckle, first an almost light hearted variant before soon turning into an almost maddening laughter.
Then came the choking, because obviously laying face first on a solid concrete ground wasn’t exactly the ideal position to be in when bursting into laughter. Still she persisted though, and soon everything that was even remotely connected to the woman in any way began to cry out sounds of laughter as well.
It didn’t take long before even the Asylum itself tore a new one and began to join in on the cacophony of insanity.
Apparently the craziness wasn’t over yet though because as soon as Selene’s laughter began to die down a little bit the ground below her disappeared and she plummeted towards some unknown destination.
This destination was Ryoujin.
“WAHH!” Ryoujin exclaimed, caught off guard. One moment he was right next to her, and then the next, she seemed to have teleported herself..on top of him. Although her landing was cushioned by yours truly, the pink-haired youth wasn’t so fortunate. Rubbing his sides, he found that he couldn’t. Looking up, he noticed the redhead.
“Hey forget I even asked for your name earlier,” he began, “Would you do me one favor though?
“Get off of me!” he exclaimed. Yeah, he was definitely in a madhouse now, and he could only wonder how many traps this infrastructure was wired with. On second thought, no matter how entertaining it might have been to find out, he didn’t want to have to find out.
Clearly not realizing the absurdity of it all, Selene merely exclaimed, “Oh, your grace! How bold of you to chest me in your arms!” Well, not quite, since she was just laying on top of him, but it probably got the point across nonetheless.
“This instrument of everlasting is honoured to be in your guidance, keeper of the spirits, balancer of all that is incorrect to my hands. Selene, is most honoured, god of the overpass!”
Still she remained on top of the Templar, and to make matters even worse she began to sway from left to right as she began to hum an oddly dissonant tune.
“If left is wrong, from right to three, doodeedoodeedadeedee...”
Narrowing his eyes, Ryoujin couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Selene, is it?” he said, grabbing hold of her enough so that he could push her off of him lightly without causing her to think that he was trying to harm her.
“Remind me not to try and help you out again.”
As his gaze fell towards the outside of the Ayslum, he noticed that the other patients were still there; however, something about them seemed off - as if they didn’t even really exist. That would probably explain why they didn’t even bother acknowledging him earlier. And then of course, there was her - the cream of the crop. She seemed to be ignorant until she had referred to him as this “God of the Overpass.”
“Wait,” he said, “How’d you know I was a shinigami?”
Even if the shihakushou gave it away, she could have just thought he was some sort of lunatic too.
From the records, no one had been assigned to investigate these parts, and it didn’t look like this Selene character received a ton of visitors, so in all likelihood, it seemed impossible that she would know about death gods.
“Eeeeeh?” Selene asked dumbfounded, cocking her head slightly to the right. “Shee-nee-gaaah-me?”
Her attention slowly drifted away from Ryoujin as she turned on her nonexistent heels and began to skip away from the Templar, humming a tune with the word, “shinigami”.
“Shee-nee-gaaah-me! Shee-nee-gaaah-me! Shee-naah-geee-mah!”
Soon the young woman had completely forgotten about there ever having existed a man called Ryoujin.
Using his hands to drown out her boisterous humming and singing (not that it was honestly that bad, in fact it was fairly pleasant, but he wasn’t about to sit through some sort of concert that she wanted to hold), Ryoujin could only watch, dumbfounded as she forgot that he was even there in front of her - well now behind her.
As he flash stepped to bridge the distance between them, the pink-haired youth tried to garner her attention once more. Whether or not she was truly paralyzed or had short term memory, she was still the only living testament and evidence to solving this case, and he would need her to find the answers.
“You never answered my question. I guess that doesn’t really matter though.
“But what does is the purpose of my visit. There have been lots of disappearances in this Asylum. The owners themselves including the patients have all gone and vanished off the face of Earth. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that?”
Suddenly the air around them began to chill as most of the colours, most of the life that was bustling through the Asylum began to dissipate into thin air. Chairs that had been parading across the hallway came to an abrupt stop, with most toppling over in the process. Paintings of many men and women turned into torn variants of themselves as the walls began to be smeared with blood stains.
Selene’s humming had stopped and as she turned around there was something different about her. Physically different. Her hair, which had been a brilliant hue of red before, had turned into a dark purple with black highlights near the bottom. Her lips had become black in colour, but those were not the weirdest changes.
No, her eyes were.
Whereas before her left eye was a clear cyan and her right eye a dim emerald, both her eyes had... become something less than regular eyes. Her right eye had completely turned into a cyan colour, swallowing both the iris and the rest of the eye as it turned into a single colour (though if you looked hard enough, you could see a small outlining of the iris still there). Her left eye was different from her right eye in that it was gold... with a black colour surrounding it.
There was a seductive smile on her face as she softly licked her lips. All around them dust began to twirl upwards before a deafening, echoing scream pierced it all and - with all the laughter of a complete lunatic in tow - Selene began to charge at Ryoujin.
As the woman approached him, he learned his first lesson with dealing with mentally instable people. Never, never, never do or say anything that might trigger memories.
Averting her with a small sidestep, the Blood Templar cursed under his breath. Maybe he probably shouldn’t have posed the question so soon, but then again with how she seemed to be ignoring most of his other queries, he was left with no choice. As ill fate would have it, Selene was now under the impression that he was some sort of enemy, and what semblance of her former self was now long gone, replaced by some sort of demon. Her entire physique had changed including her two different colored eyes.
“Hey, all I asked was a question. I’m not out here to get you,” he said, seeing if it would work although he highly doubted it. Moreover, he was now beginning to wish that he had taken the time to learn the Bakudou discipline because right now it seemed like the most opportune time to be equipped with such binding spells if that were even possible for someone like him. It took ages just to get the right feel and become accustomed to using hadou spells, and although his prowess with the demon arts had improved, he was still not on par with more refined kidou specialists.
In any case, it didn’t appear like negotiating or talking with this other Selene would produce much of any results.
“Do you hear that, Selene?” the purple-haired woman yelled as she charged at Ryoujin some more, with complete lack of any directional prowess whatsoever. “He’s asking questions, questions, ahahahaha!!
“Answers are not for the left of the right from the overpass!”
Suddenly the Asylum twisted and turned again as memories of the past began to bleed into it. Former patients, staff, people who had visited it before and those who had visited after the incident.
They all returned in an ethereal form as Selene’s face became more and more twisted with the insanity residing within. She was truly enjoying it.
Although certainly intriguing, the enjoyment wasn’t mutual, especially when he was on the receiving end. It was right then when Ryoujin bore witness to things that no individual should have seen, memories that no one could forget even if they wanted to, things that would drive one mad. And in the spur of the moment, he had received the answer to his investigation without her having to even tell him.
She was behind it all. As long as he was in this Asylum, he was in her domain. Although her stability and movements were lackluster, he didn’t know how far her abilities extended to, and it only took one chord to give her the wrong message as he had seen just moments prior.
As the very foundations of the place began to shift and change according to how this other Selene wanted it to be, Ryoujin jumped back. He would have to stop her.
With her hot on his heels once more, the pink-haired youth stretched his palm outwards.
“Destructive art one, Shou,” he chanted in an attempt to push her towards a bunch of furniture strewn about so that she could lose conscious. If his assumptions were correct, then by doing so, he would be able to get her to revert back somehow.
For the second time today Ryoujin could see Selene disappearing right in front of his very eyes as the realm of reality was bend to the girl, and just like last time he was once again on the receiving end of things.
However, this time Selene wasn’t blissfully unaware of her surroundings and as such was no speeding towards the Templar in an almost childlike impression of a kung-fu kick.
“RAAAAH!!”
A particularly alarmed expression washed over Ryoujin’s features, as if to say ‘I’m screwed.’
Using his hands in order to defend himself against the gut-wrenching kick, he found himself launched back. After all, he was never any good at hand-to-hand combat.
Before he could crash into the plastered walls of the end of the hallway, the pink-haired youth gathered reishi beneath his feet. As it began to pool under them, he kicked off from the wall, leaving a dent behind it as he did so. Launching towards Selene, this time not so weary of how he struck her down, Ryoujin aimed a diving kick of his own.
When she saw Ryoujin coming at her with a kick of his own she had already began her own follow up with an equally flying dash, and then it hit her. And him. A concrete wall smack dab in the middle of the hall.
“Ahnnnn!” Selene cried out in a jolt of pain and... joy as she slowly fell to the ground for the third time this day. She was not only enjoying this little game they were playing, but she was also enjoying the pain.
Perhaps a little too much.
It would be an exaggeration to say that he was truly enjoying this, but he was still driven by curiosity. As to how he could have missed seeing a wall obstructing his path, he didn’t know. Whatever this human was using to hold up the Asylum for so long was obviously working. Had she not been adept, the entire place would have collapsed onto itself by now.
Ignoring the pain that built up from connecting against a wall with his kick, Ryoujin maneuvered around it just in the nick of time to see that the new ‘Selene’ was at her most vulnerable. Using his own zanpakutou, he brought the cleaver down upon her, but in such a way so as to not be a lethal blow. After all, his intentions were only to silence her; he didn’t have the jurisdiction to kill her although something told him that she seemed to have a fetish for excruciating pain even if it involved herself.
“Ooooh, shiny stars!” Selene called out moment before her vision blurred slightly as her hair receded back to its original colour. She was... laughing again, or still maybe. It wasn’t really clear what she was laughing about now. Maybe it was from the pain? Perhaps it was from something else?
Looking intently at her right hand for a moment, she brought it upon her face with a relatively large smack and said, “boop!” while falling down over onto her back again - still laughing.
Slowly the Asylum began to take on its relatively original colourful state, with most of its absurd residents returning. If it hadn’t been clear to the Templar by now... it was now abundantly clear that the entire building, the entire premise shifted with whatever state Selene was in.
It was her playground, it was her home... it was her, she was it.
What did she think this was? Some sort of video game? Again, he was tempted to check on her like the last time to see if she was still on the same page as him, but for good measure, Ryoujin decided against it. He knew the laughter all too well although he only laughed maniacally when he was trying to be dramatic and in the heat of battle. She, on the other hand, seemed to be laughing just for the pure hell of it - it was almost natural for her.
Instead of kneeling down, with the butt of his zanpakutou, he poked her to see if that would help. The last thing that he wanted was to anger her again and make her transform into that berserk demon earlier.
With every prod Selene continued her ‘booping’ sound, and moved her body ever so farther away from the Templar. Why? No one really knew. Well, perhaps she knew... but she wasn’t about to let anyone she did... if she even did to begin with.
Suddenly a small girl appeared right next to Selene and began to pull on her sleeves. “Mistress! Mistress!” the little blonde called out to Selene, who in turn rose back to her feet. “We need to go, we need to go!”
“Mei,” Selene said in a surprisingly soft and sane tone of voice. “When darkness falls upon the propane curtain of our inner sanctum, will you come and find me where I’ll be?”
Without so much as a warning Mei disappeared again after nodding silently, causing Selene to fall face first to the ground once more.
Before he could so much as approach the small girl that Selene had been conversing with in order to konsou her although he honestly couldn’t tell if she was truly a plus soul or not considering she didn’t even have a chain protruding from her chest, she vanished. Not that it really mattered though because it was still to be determined whether if she or anyone else lurking about were indeed plus souls which at this point was questionable what with how many boobie traps this place was infested with. It almost seemed like these so called friends were the victims that had fallen by her own hands.
Shuddering at the thought, the pink-haired youth approached Selene’s still form once more. Was the ground going to vanish again this time? Was she going to reappear behind him? All of these thoughts and possibilities were rampant in his mind, but they were quickly brushed to the side.
“What did that girl earlier mean by we need to go? I’m not an enemy,” Ryoujin said, “Or at least, I’m trying not to be, but you’re making it hella difficult, if ya know what I mean.”
“Wuh...wah?” Selene asked dumbfounded as she stood back up and dusted herself off. As she looked at Ryoujin there was an air of uncertainty surrounding the youthful girl. Cocking her head slightly to the right she continued, “Who are you?”
Ryoujin stood still, mystified once more at what to do. Although normally he was able to respond with a clever comment or two no matter what one said or did, she was honestly making it difficult for him. Furthermore, he felt dazed all of a sudden, a side-effect for being in this house for so long. For that brief moment, he seemed to join in her memory loss, forgetting just what exactly he was sent here to do until finally he snapped out of the trance.
“I’m not really anyone of any importance. I’m a cousin of yours,” Ryoujin began. If she truly forgot faces so easily, then perhaps he would be able to put on a ruse that would actually work. And even if her short-term memory gave him the upper advantage, he was really no good at putting on acts.
“I was, err, concerned about you because I had heard that everyone in this Asylum was disappearing one by one, and I figured you had witnessed it happen.”
“You’re funny,” she responded with a smile on her face, but suddenly her visage grew serious. “I do not have any family. This Asylum is my home, these people are my people. They are my family. Now, please, leave.”
It was for the first time since Ryoujin had entered Lucky Foot Asylum that Selene had spoken a single, coherent sentence, but it was bound to also be the last one she would speak for today.
“Teehee.”
Even if Selene were through with conversing, Ryoujin, on the other hand, wasn’t about to leave so soon. Her abrupt dismissal of him had told him what he came here to find out. Although she never explicitly said it, she had confirmed everything for him.
“I don’t know if I should be insulted or not that you wouldn’t remember your own cousin,” he began, before deciding to stop with the whole pretending.
“Anyways, it was you, wasn’t it? You killed every last one of them. And these people, you talk about? There hasn’t been anyone here for years. You’ve just been delusional all this time,” he said, his hands still gripping onto his soul slayer in case she were to lash out.
“Y-yes...” The first response was a hesitant one, but slowly her hair turned purple again and her voice began to boom vividly through the air. “Oh god yes!” She was laughing like a maniac now, far worse than the time she had laughed the last time in the Templar’s presence. “I watched them all burn, suffocate on their own doomed personifications! Oh, how glorious, and no one ever knew... they thought I was just an innocent little girl.
“Someone they could just up and break... hah! But it takes more than a little sugar coating to break the insanity of one’s demise!”
By now the very foundations of the Lucky Foot Asylum - that was, building plus surrounding areas - began to shook so heavily that it could only mean one thing: it was about to crash right into itself.
Selene didn’t seem bothered by the least... she was, after all, bound to this place, but the death god...
Soon the ceiling caved and debris came crashing down on top of them.
In a suicidal ploy, she attempted to take him down with her, although a part of him felt that she wasn’t even endangering herself by demolishing the Asylum. After all, she was attached to it, and she could just as easily teleport anywhere and escape from being harmed. He, on the other hand, wasn’t exempt from such a fate.
Ruffling his pink hair in frustration as if to say “why always me,” Ryoujin jumped back here and there to avoid having a slab of concrete fall down on top of him. Just as he was about to side- step a large chunk of debris, his legs suddenly seemed to freeze up. Unable to react, the pink-haired youth was launched back considerably.
At this point, he could no longer see where Selene was. Somewhere though, he knew that she was watching, waiting for him to fall victim like the countless others had. By now, the validity behind the rumors was beginning to settle in. Like they said, not a soul lived to tell the tale. If you visited Lucky Foot Asylum, you never came out.
As inspiration seemed to course through him along with his conviction to not die a miserable death, he mustered up the necessary fortitude within him. As his reiatsu flared, the pink-haired youth found the strength to hold his zanpakutou out. Using it like a key, a Senkaimon portal opened up before him. Before the crazed human could so much as pursue him (not that he thought she would since she hadn’t left these grounds for the better part of her life), the Blood Templar quickly dragged his body through, and instantly, the gateway closed behind him.
Selene’s image still appeared at the forefront of his mind. As he stared at the White Walls of Seireitei, Ryoujin cursed under his breath.
“Fuck, why I do always seem to be connected in one way or another to maniacs,” he muttered, exasperated,
Even if the mission had ultimately been successful, a part of him understood that he had failed. He had not been able to detain her although after such a cave in, there was still the possibility that she might have truly killed herself.
Who honestly knew though?
As the dust settled on the destroyed image of Lucky Foot Asylum, there was not a single sign of there having been anyone capable of surviving it. Ryoujin had, of course, been lucky enough to have something magical as a Senkaimon gate at hand, but Selene hadn’t been that fortunate.
She had been bound to the place, but when she admitted her guilt... she was freed from its existence and because of that... Well, the whole place came tearing down.
It didn’t take long before the first local authorities came to check in on the carnage that had occurred. Some were celebrating, whilst others were rightfully so scared. If Lucky Foot Asylum was devastated, didn’t that mean the spirit might come haunt them somewhere else?
Off in the distance a soft, maniacal laughter could be heard before that too quieted down.
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