It was late in the evening in Soul Society when Excelsior Rhodes received his orders.
He had fallen asleep while meditating, a common occurrence when the exertions of his day-to-day duties overlapped with the amount of rest he normally required. At first, he had believed that the message for him, contained within that black little butterfly resting on his nose, was just a dream, but when it persistently would not go away despite his best attempts to ignore it, Celly resigned himself to opening his eyes and accepting the fact that he was, unfortunately, now awake.
"Yes, what is it,” he intoned quietly. A single hand rose with an extended index finger, upon which the butterfly quickly landed and flapped its wings once. Then once again.
His silver eyes showed little expression, but the lines of his jaw were quick to ripple either in disgust or in anticipation. With a sigh, the
shinigami drew himself up to prepare, stifling a quick yawn. He chose to wear his standard uniform with one new addition; the
koutaizumi ribbon he had acquired from his Division was carefully wrapped around his right hand and upper forearm with the appearance of a silver gauntlet up to his elbow.
At his left side, Celly fastened his blade, wrapped tightly around a layer of cerulean silk. He sighed, brushing away the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes, before departing. Despite his placid movements, the loud noise produced from the way he closed his door displayed the depths of his irritation.
I was sleeping, he thought to himself.
He mulled over the background of events. Though he had been in Rukongai, wandering around and being generally useless while such large, catastrophic incidents occurred, the dossier provided through his butterfly messenger had provided some context. Apparently, some other great evil was ‘unleashed’ upon the world, causing many deaths before erecting a monstrous structure in the middle Tokyo. How any of this actually made sense to Celly was beyond him; he had been forced to replay the information over and over just to make sure he actually understood it properly.
A tower. In the middle of nowhere. That humans have decided to claim without knowing its purpose or function. The thought brought his eyebrows together in a furrow and a sneering look of disgust to flash upon his face. The whole thing was so nonsensical, so
random that Celly couldn’t help but feel slightly pissed off.
I mean, a random being of immense strength just ... decides to become awakened and kill lots of things ... before building ... a tower?
He stalked off towards the
Senkaimon pondering such thoughts. Fellow
shinigami avoided his path not because he was of any real danger, but because he recently began to project an aura of extreme disinterest that conveniently encouraged people to move along as quickly as possible.
A tower, he thought.
... I don’t know. I don’t care. Let’s just get this done.
* * *
His arrival at Tokyo was uneventful, but Celly had a feeling that the subsequent events would not be so easy to undergo. Without any particular guidance, he decided to move towards some of the more metropolitan areas, the tower skyscrapers where men decided in town halls and board of directors meetings that they were important- generally more important in their own minds than through the grand scheme of things.
As he neared some of the lit-rooms (with some even having their own occupants), Celly decided to activate the wonderful ability of his new toy. While he had expected it to take only a few minutes for him to decide upon an appropriate spiritual disguise, the actual process took much longer. In the back of his mind, Celly couldn’t decide what sort of animal was nocturnal, could move around fairly freely, and would not attract a great deal of suspicion.
He decided a bit later that he would become an owl- he was seemingly rewarded for his decision by spying the glowing pale prison of some sort of makeshift trap or cage. Given what he knew, Celly surmised it was probably the
other Tenth Division member that had initially been sent to sniff out some answers. Perhaps the humans had taken this affair with a degree of overcompensation like they always did and thought he was a new avatar of foe or some other disastrous time bomb waiting to happen.
Owl-Celly flew through the air, although in truth
shinigami-Celly was running on thin air from place to place, stopping erratically go hopefully give the illusion of an owl’s organic flight path. In truth, Celly’s erratic pattern was more because his degree of inexperience manipulating earthly laws of some kind or another.
When he began to hear voices, he stopped quickly, trying to ascertain who was speaking, what they were speaking about, and generally other kinds of information. He surmised that he probably slipped past several guards- not because he was particularly good at sneaking around, but because the world saw him right at this point as ... an owl.
Hoot hoot, Celly thought to himself. A sudden flash caught his eyes, and the cage was gone.
Celly frowned. Something didn’t feel right. He continued moving slowly, keeping his body in the shadows though anyone who would look would just see a majestic owe with grew and brown plumage and dark brown eyes.
Hoot.
He could tell from the trajectory of the voices that they were probably below him or around him or somewhere, so he kept quiet and silent. Occasionally, Celly would shift his weight closer but with the growing lull in conversation he chose not to be too brash and just wander right in. Biding his time, Celly began to take deep, slow breaths, just in case anything bad happened.
Just in case. He hoped not, but you never know with these things. Specifically, you never know with humans.
".... Swap. .... Juicy about ....”
He strained to hear more details, but had to move in closer in order to do so. Crouching low to the ground, Celly continued to move just a little closer each time, making as little noise as possible.
What a weird owl he was.
Hoot hoot.
[1037/1037]
