When, Where, Why, How?

The sands of Hueco Mundo were still today. Each grain unmoving with no wind to interrupt their rest, they simply stayed put. This is how it usually was, at least where she tended to enjoy her rest. And enjoy it the beast had, for it had gone 400 years uninterrupted. Only now did she wake up, her body slowly regaining feeling, her mind shifting from endless dreams and stirring memories to coherency and sudden acute awareness. The sand engulfed her, as it always had, and as she shifted to crawl her way out from it, the grains finally moved.

First a sharp, taloned claw burst from the sand, then a wing and another claw. Bit by bit she dug her way out from her resting grave, erupting from the ground suddenly and with an energetic vigor. She had to feed, her body told her as much, echoing the primal sensation through her every inch. So just as desperately as she was told, she too desperately rose from the earth. Her torso, then her tail, and with a strong tug that flung sand several dozen meters away, her other wing was pried free from the ground and she stood tall and proud like she always had.

And then in an instant, faster than any normal human would be able to see, she pulled open a rift in space, and stepped clean through.

As it closed behind her, The Dragon was suddenly blasted with the sounds of honking horns and bustling crowds. What was this? What were these things? The curiosity vanished as her body reminded her of the hunger that had gone 400 years unsated. Feed. She could never forget such a word in her life, not because of its simplicity, but for the sheer pain it was associated with. Her maw opened, and she let out a terrible screech that startled the nearby humans, and suddenly they realized she was there.

There was a flap of fleshy wings and another roar, and then suddenly a white, vapor was flung from her body. The people, the buildings, everything that came into contact with it started to be broken down into their base particulates. Her Effluvia digested all matter in the nearby vicinity, spreading outwards to almost a mile in roughly a minute in a hurricane of digestive essence. Buildings collapsed, only to then get destroyed down to their basest of matter, and the people were turned into digested souls that were carried back to The Dragon who devoured the lingering essence en masse.

Once everything was killed or destroyed, she recalled those foul, rotting vapors to her body for them to once more be stored among her scales. And then she left. The Dragon rocketed into the sky and flew away, though not by the power of her hole-filled wings. No, she could simply do that regardless of how ruined her wings were. Once beautiful, yet destroyed thousands of years ago. They never recovered, and she resents that fact, but she came to terms with it long ago.

Landing somewhere open and with fewer people, there was a sudden panic as people fled, yet she was in no hurry to kill and eat them. They filled her belly hardly at all but as long as her hunger was sated for now, she was happy. Her head craned to the side to witness a single boy, or man, or something male at least. Age mattered not, she didn't care, and her two maws, one inside an exposed skull that opened along with her real face, opened to voice something to him in her echoing, ancient, yet still strangely effeminate voice.

"What year is it?"

And so she waited patiently for an answer. Or maybe for him to panic and flee, too? She didn't care which.

It felt strange to be home again, particularly with the memories of his last visit. Nevertheless, there was still an attachment to his homeland, for likely some of the most superficial reasons possible. So, for once, he found himself walking the quieter streets of China, idly scrolling through his phone as he looked up once in a while to keep himself from getting himself or someone else hurt.

A sudden, loud, and abrupt thud, along with the screams and sounds of retreating footsteps caused him to look up, and his eyes widened. He let out a quiet gasp, then a light chuckle, stopping in place to stare at the massive creature that had landed in front of him. Despite the monstrous, almost zombie-like appearance, the dragon was something interesting and impressive to behold.

As it's neck craned to the side and two maws opened to reveal another face within, Vanyel raised an eyebrow. Whatever it was, it sure had a...unique appearance. It was already a miracle as to how it was able to fly with those beaten to hell wings. Maybe it was like Sun Wukong, and it could cross continents in a front flip, or something like that. But, something that he wasn't expecting to hear...was it asking for what year it was. The raised eyebrow lowered, his expression contorting to one of confusion and bewilderment.

"...Uh, 2422. It's near the end of January, and it's the Year of the Horse, if you give a care about that crap. The hell are you asking about the year for?"

The boy she stopped at looked quite different than the humans she remembered, even though every other one she had just eaten looked roughly the same. She must have just stumbled on a weird one. And hearing him say 2422...

"It's been a little over 400 years since I last awoke." She answered, though her voice sounded more like a thoughtful mumble at that point. "Humans don't seem to have changed much in that time. Regardless, they are still food. As long as they are edible, I care not." Though humans were the same, she didn't remember all these flashing lights and honking horns and the strange metallic boxes humans still rode in. Actually no, she did remember that last one.

"What are these things?" She wondered, tapping a nearby car with a family of four still cowering in fear in it. "The boxes, not the people in it. What purpose does that serve?" She really had no idea. The boxes moved but did the people control it? Why did they have to make such loud blaring noises? It was irritating, but she had heard worse.

"And these buildings, why are they so tall? How do they stand so firmly?" Her curiosity was getting the better of her, especially now that she could think without her body screaming at her to eat. If anything there was a bit of childlike wonder in there, but this boy would have to remember who he was dealing with. She was no child. She was a Dragon, and if her talk of eating humans and the boney mask hidden beneath a veil of rotted flesh was any clue, it was fairly clear she was a Hollow.

Vanyel didn't know too much about Hollows -- just that they were something like a mutation of the human soul after death, and they ate the souls of others. So, it was far from him to assume what a regular Hollow's sleep pattern was like, much less the sleep pattern of a giant dragon Hollow with two faces and tattered wings. So, hearing that he, she...it, was asleep for four-hundred years, Vanyel raised an eyebrow.

"Y'know, part of me feels doubtful, but, I've seen and experienced crazier shit than a four-hundred year dirt nap, or a real-life dragon the size of a house."

As it tapped a nearby car, his gaze turned to it, seeing the family cowering within, before he looked back up to the Hollow. This thing was over four-hundred years old, had woken up around the 2020s, and it didn't know what cars were?

"I mean...they're cars. They've been around for a long time, and shoulda been around even when you last woke up. They're just a thing to get you from point A to point B quickly. World's a big place, and not everyone has the luxury of instant portals across the multiverse, or hitting Mach 4 in under a second. These ones probably got some different features and whatnot since back then, but they're still the same as they always seem to have been."

As for the buildings, well...he wasn't really all that versed in construction, so he didn't know all the intricacies of stability with buildings,. So, for a moment, Vanyel tried to figure out the best way to answer and explain.

"Well, I'm not a construction worker, but, probably some kind of special thing that helps the infrastructure. Lots of supports n' shit. As for why, uh...can't really speak for others, but unless it's some big company, my guess is that the guy just had a lot of money to spend. Or he's compensatin'."

"You're right, they were around." She rumbled, eyes narrowing as she stared down at this boy with a mix of curiosity and dismissiveness. "But back then, and still now, they are no more than a thin sheet of metal and glass that does naught to stop me from sinking my teeth into my prey. I couldn't have cared less about their function... Well, except for now."

She clearly knew only a little about humans from experience. Their habits, their mannerisms, it was all still obscure to her. Whilst she would have cared less in the past, there was a strange curiosity that welled up within her now. Just what was all of this? The Dragon had seen it before in the past, but now seeing it in even more sprawling layouts and covering more ground, she couldn't help but be curious. Some of them were abodes, that was clear, but some of them... weren't? Why even need that much enclosed space? And surely there weren't enough humans to consistently fill all of that space.

"Compensate...? Money?" The Dragon mumbled to herself, only to scoff, and then suddenly burst out in a harsh, gravelly laugh. "Humans remain as conceited and self absorbed as always. Pathetic. I must be doing this planet a favor by eating you all by the thousand."

Whether or not that was true, she didn't care. It was an entertaining thought. The idea that even among the few morals she had, it was totally justifiable to slaughter a race in such quantities. Not only from a survival standpoint, but a moral one, too.

"Crazier or not, it's not every day that I spare my food. You should be grateful, meat." She couldn't care less about names. Not his, not even giving herself one. "But... I am curious... You see, I'm not used to my food being able to see me. The last time I paid attention, I know for a fact humans weren't able to see spiritual beings so naturally. What changed? Are you pitiful monkeys finally evolving?" The Dragon couldn't help but click her tongue playfully at that last comment, as if she couldn't believe it herself.

He wasn't all that surprised to see a dragon being so arrogant. Even outside of the European versions of the creatures, dragons always seemed to hold a degree of arrogance to them, even if some were dragons only in name or title, like the Emperor of China, or those who simply used it as a form of representation of imperial power. As the dragon laughed, remarking on how the ever-remaining selfishness of mankind, Vanyel's eyebrow rose.

"Even if you're taking a couple thousand out of the couple billion people on this rock, Hollows sure don't seem much better."

Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't -- but, from his view, these things sure didn't seem to have any kind of moral high ground. Just because there were assholes and tone-deaf idiots in the world didn't really justify the slaughter of thousands, especially at random. Her next monologue and question, however, was something that he didn't really know how to respond at first. He wasn't all that old himself, and he didn't really know the history of the world at large.

For him, the idea of the supernatural and being able to see spirits was something that he had admittedly taken for granted, having been born in a time where the border between the spiritual and the physical was so thin. Hell, he was someone who had been exposed to Demons and Danava prominently throughout his life. The spiritual world had basically become part of the norm by this point.

"Humans always have been constantly evolving and improving, n' always will. I don't know when it all changed, but, I've known about the spiritual world for a good chunk o' my life. It's...pretty much the norm, nowadays. Most of us have seen a Hollow or Demon in some form or fashion."