Determining One's Strength [YUKI]

The sound of rain pitter pattering against her flattened doge ears wasn't doing much to help Rachael's bitter mood. She wasn't mad, which came as a massive surprise to herself, but rather felt a twinge of guilt and despair with each beat of her already wounded heart. Whenever she thought something like that about her heart, she couldn't help but give herself a mental slap on the wrist. Whether or not it sounded edgy, she didn't care. Somewhere in the back of her head she thought it did, but that wasn't the issue for the most part. What was a bigger problem to the young girl was how she thought that she was supposed to be stronger than this. Yet after all the training she had been through, the girl hadn't grown even the slightest bit stronger. Was she truly at the pinnacle of her power? After seeing how strong Hayden had become and how little progress she was making in the way of spiritual powers, the young girl was feeling both incredibly disheartened, and extremely guilty at the fact she was letting her sister down.

Currently, Rachael was treading through the downtown area of Karakura, the city in which she lived. The rain wasn't heavy, but it wasn't quite light either. It soaked the girl's jacket hair, while her tail remained somewhat dry beneath her skirt. It was truly frustrating that she had forgotten an umbrella when she left home. Even after her mother told her that it was going to rain today, the dog-eared girl didn't think her walk would be long enough for her to experience the rain. Initially she had only intended to take about a 15 minute walk, but before the house she slipped into some more comfortable clothes. Something fit more for exercising than keeping out of the rain. She only threw a jacket on to keep the rain off her for a little bit longer.

As the girl walked, she stared down the mostly empty streets of Karakura with a blank stare. Her gaze was empty and her eyes were half lidded with both exhaustion and grief. Everyone around her was changing, and she was still the same bitter person she had always been. You would think that fact alone would be enough to drive her to change herself, to change with the times so she wasn't so bitter all the time. It would have been nice if she was the kind of person to truly care about anyone but herself. Even when it came to her family, the only reason she kept them around was to keep herself from falling into a sorrowful pit of loneliness. But why just her family? Why did she have to be so picky with other people? Rachael's mind went to Hayden, one of the first people she met while living in Karakura. He was a friend right? Her heart pounded with a feeling of guilt again, this one more powerful than her last. They met twice, as far as the blonde could remember. The first time, Hayden was around her power level, but the second time... the difference was absurd. It would be redundant to ask if it was even truly possible to reach the level of strength, both physical and mental, that Hayden had been at the last time they met. She had felt it, right? That was real? Rachael wouldn't even believe that kind of spiritual power was even possible before that day. And there were still people stronger than him?

Just thinking about how Hayden even got as strong as he did made Rachael's head spin. It was dizzying just to look at his power with her sacred state ability, let alone think about what he could actually do with it or how he even got there. Could she be that strong too? How long would it take? What would it take? It confused the girl to no end as to how one even gained such absurd power. Just imagining herself going through whatever Hayden went through...

Rachael's hands clenched up into fists in anger. This was pathetic. She was pathetic. Standing by while the world passed her by... In the back of her mind, the girl thought about why she should care about what happened around her. The moon blowing up, the leader of the vanguard dying, the return of the Black World which she heard about a while ago... These were only some of the more recent events, but Rachael felt like she shouldn't just let them pass her by. The feeling of missing these events... it wasn't that she cared about them actually happening prior to or after them occuring, but just sitting around and wondering what was going to happen next... It was awful. It filled her heart with shame and misery to know that all of this was happening, and soon her sister...

'No...' she thought, shaking her head. 'I can do something about this! Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, Rachael closed her eyes and gritted her teeth together. There was no reason for her to be feeling so guilty over nothing. There was something she could do. There was always something she could do. But what was it, exactly?

"Stop being such a whiny bitch, Rachael."

The girl muttered this under her breath, and she could feel the blood start to pump through her body faster than it was before. This guilt... This misery... It was all because she was being a lazy bitch. Her parents had never pushed her to do anything when she grew up. She had always been alone when she was younger. Blaise was never around to help with her loneliness. Her mother was the reason she was always alone in the first place. And her father? He died only a month or two ago, leaving Rachael with one less person to care for her. Even with her disgust for other people and company, her human tendencies were to feel sad when she was lonely. It was a messy paradox-like situation, where she wanted to be around people but hated their presence at the same time. Still, she couldn't help it. And if all she had right now was Blaise and her mother, then she would focus on keeping them alive and well within these next few months. With what was happening to her sister, she wasn't going to be able to just sit by and watch the world go by. After seeing how powerful other people could get via their powers, Rachael knew that Blaise wouldn't stand a chance on her own.

Right now, she had to stop her sister from trying to commit a massacre in Karakura.

This wouldn't happen for another few months, she was certain. First, Blaise needed to build up her army of... whatever they were. Rachael had encountered them once or twice before and immediately identified the energies radiating off of them as the same her sister was capable of manipulating. It was dark, corrupt energy that devoured whatever it came in contact with and turned it into a completely lifeless husk. Not only did it devour the energies of souls, but it took the literal energy of life itself to fuel its own existence. Or maybe it just destroyed those energies out of sheer spite. Rachael didn't know, and she didn't care. Her mind was simply wandering once more. Time was of the essence now, and she couldn't afford to space out much longer. The situation right now was set, and her path was clear. If Rachael wasn't able to stop Blaise with her own hands, then her sister wasn't very likely to live too much longer. As far as Rachael knew, she was the only one other than Blaise who knew that she was being controlled by some external force. The Abyss, as her sister called it. That was the entire cause of this problem.

Rachael could feel the hairs on her tail standing on end. Her temper was flaring up once more, whatever traces of guilt and shame and whatever the fuck else all started to fuel her rage. Her legs started to move once more, carrying her body forwards towards the Karakura Forest. She could be alone there. Alone to take her fury out on nature, on whatever it was that would get in her way. It was there that she could finally start to train herself. This time, she wasn't going to stop until she was powerful enough to take on the world itself. As unrealistic as that was, Rachael knew it was best to set unrealistic expectations. Go for the gold, as they say. Or did that not apply here? Rachael didn't give a damn, she already knew what she was going to do. All she had to do was get to her destination and it would all begin.

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Rachael's temper hadn't settled down, and neither had the rain around her. In fact, both had only gotten worse. Power. She needed power desperately, and quick. Months might seem like a long time to some people, but Rachael was in competition with her sister right now. If she took even the slightest break or underestimated Blaise in the slightest, it was over. She would have no hopes of catching up. It wasn't that she knew exactly how much her sister was growing in power, just that she had to overestimate if she wanted to reach her goals and even surpass them. Or at least, it would be easier to do so if she just convinced herself of that regardless of how true or false it was.

With a deep sigh, the young dog-eared blonde unbuttoned her jacket at threw it away, leaving her in just her tank top, gym shorts, and sneakers. The elements were tough, but Rachael was determined to be tougher. Blaise was off creating pseudo-life and Rachael was standing here in the rain like a moron. She better make good use of her time, the girl thought to herself as she took a deep breath. Steeling her mind, the girl closed her eyes and let her mind recede to the inner depths of her soul. This was how people got to their powers right? Rachael didn't know. To her, though, it helped her find the origin of her reiatsu. The center of her soul. From there, she could feel it extending out of her body up to several feet away. It didn't feel like much. Just... empty. Rachael would make sure to fix that soon.

Opening her eyes, the girl took another deep breath and reached a hand out in front of her. Gathering her reiatsu around her body, Rachael focused and attempted to move it to the palm of her hand. It was moving slowly, but it was definitely shifting from its natural place to the center of her hand. Now, she wanted to give it a shape. There wasn't much there, and it was still moving slow as a snail to her, but she was able to make it form a somewhat spherical shape. Emphasis on somewhat. It looked like water, shifting in the shape of a ball. The "ball" was moving in such a way that Rachael questioned whether or not to even call it a sphere. She could barely form it the way she wanted it, let alone keep it that way. The girl felt pathetic. How long had it been since she had done this? It wasn't long ago that she met Hayden, and there were vivid memories from that occasion where she had made a large blast of reiatsu. Not only that, but she had formed a near perfect ball of energy that she lobbed at a group of hostile Hollow that were far too close to Karakura, and were far to hungry to negotiate out of attacking them.

Disgusted with her sloppy work, Rachael swung her hand to the side and threw the ball of reiatsu off to the side. Much to the girl's chagrin, it didn't even stay together. When she released the energy, intending to fire it off like a bullet, it went about a full meter before dispersing into a cone of scattered reiatsu particles. It looked like the girl had thrown a bunch of fireflies with a little bit of a crimson fog that quickly dissipated. While it did look pretty, that was so far from what she had intended that Rachael felt like fucking killing herself right then and there.

Once more, Rachael focused her spirit energies into the form of a sphere in her hand. It was no bigger than a baseball when formed, but Rachael managed to form another sphere. From what she could tell, there was no difference between this one and the last one she had made. Scoffing at her inability to even make basic shapes anymore, Rachael threw this cluster of energy away much like the last one. And sure enough, it disappeared in the same way as the last one. Her temper was beginning to grow out of control, but she didn't even notice. The genetically altered young adult was currently too focused on her inability to do what she wanted to even notice how worked up she was getting.

Again and again, Rachael would try to form a small sphere in the palm of her hand, only to make minimal progress each time. Each time she failed, she threw it to the side, only for it to disperse into a bright red cloud of particles and smoke. With each failure, she was making so little progress that she felt like she could cry. It wasn't until literally an hour later that she could even form a proper ball of energy without it changing shapes into something else. Even then, her spiritual energy was running out, and she was feeling the repercussions of it. Rachael was panting heavily, her eyes were becoming half-lidded, and she was about ready to collapse. The last time she was this tired was... well, she couldn't quite remember. And much to her dismay, the young canine/human hybrid couldn't do much to not pass out. Her legs collapsed underneath her, and as the girl fell to her knees, she could only utter a few words to herself in her own shame and self-loathing.

"Fuck this..."