Mortal Inferno [Aina/Safira]

"Help them? They're already dead."

Safira mused, she'd seen the old plane crash happen and it's a damn shame that it happened in her neck of the woods. Other countries would want to snoop, the balancers would come and the like. May as well pick it clean in the process though. She looked over from the coast of the crater, water and more water like a wonderful moat. How were they already dead? It wouldn't matter if they died because they'd be pluses except they weren't.

The toxic reiatsy of Safira hitting at the distressed souls that had recently parted, the poison taking root in them and eroding their chain of fates rapidly until if Aina looked around there were silhouettes of newly made hollows standing over her but unable to approach with Safira's presence.

"See? They've already succumbed to become hollows."

The arrancar explained off-handedly, acting as if this had happened naturally and she had not turned them into hollows herself.

What should we do? Oh, darling that is just too much and the serpentine arrancar's lips curled up in a grin. This one was a real jester and a half, right?

"Well, I don't know what you're going to do but I know I'm going back over there."

Safira's thumb shot up to point in the general direction of the makeshift island that was the only thing in Brazil nowadayd for the most part. She could probably expand it but what need was there? The island served more than enough for her needs of a popular holiday resort.

"You can come along or you can play with the hungry hollows, that's up to you."

"Feel bad for them?"

It was a question with a hint of confrontation to it, after all she herself was a hollow. Even if she existed in this human form that didn't change the fact she'd spent millennia as one of those creatures that Aina decidedly pitied. The serpentine lady turned on her heel, stopping their little train and ignoring her request for aid too. There was a more pressing matter to correct about this girl.

"Now, why would you say that?"

Did Aina have any capacity to empathise with a hollow? Had she known their physical pain and instinct to hunt and devour? Yet she had the audacity to sympathise with them like they were deserving of it. What nonsense, to pity another soul because they had changed into something else. Would she view a shinigami in the same light? The poor soul that once had a human life, lost it all and started anew to become one of the very beings that called themselves a God.

How peculiar to fear death in this day and age, Safira thought that the whole process was trivial now. Though also problematic, prey was difficult to acquire now that everything was public and she hoped that the shinigami found it just as much of a struggle to convince wayward souls to move on now that their loved ones could see and watch them be torn from their hands post-mortem.

"Doesn't sound that crazy to me. After all, as far as any of you humans were concerned in my days death was just to be taken by a Quincy."

Kind of, humans rationalised to themselves everything beyond death. Some right and some wrong. At the end of the day though no human that wasn't spiritually aware was ever truly able to have certainty about their existence.

"You sound like you're biased about it. I've felt nothing but satisfaction upon becoming a hollow. It's the path of freedom, the power to revolt against a system of arrogant gods that want to keep a delicate quota. Though a little human like yourself probably doesn't get it, never walked in their shoes for a day let alone centuries."

Safira explained, reprimanding the little gnat who seemed to view compliance as positive. Anything that was compliant to her was positive but if Aina rejected the hollows then there was only two other paths to walk. The shinigami or the quincy, and even the latter was little more than a more troublesome human for the shinigami.

"Unfair to me? That's quite naive. You occupy a system which is only beneficial to a small group of souls called shinigami, you said yourself that you're a plus so shall I discuss the worth of your existence? You are a statistic, a soul that exists to live or be culled to keep the scales level. I am a hollow, we exist to tip the scales and deny that reality."

She mused at the purple-haired soul who seemed so content. Safira would've thought that the unrest would last longer since the world had become spiritually aware, not because people were in mass hysteria as their way of life broke down but the fundamental nature of them being water going in circles.

No one cared what each drop was worth when it was all just a flowing current but each hollow was a drop that mattered, a drop that tried to destroy the pipes that the water was running through.

"You shouldn't think of it as being unfair to me, it's unfair to you."

Safira used the explanation as a means to mask her thoughts on what she was trying to twist for an explanation to what it was like to be a hollow. Aina was right, not many hollows enjoyed the change so how did she make it sound all wonderful?

"Well, I suppose it depends on how you look at it. A soul that willingly becomes a hollow retains their ego but one that goes unwillingly develops a new sense of self to cope with the change. So I wonder, how do you want to die? Become a hollow and retain yourself, become one that doesn't, or have a shinigami purify you and try to survive in the Rukongai as a slave to aristocracy?"

How does a human think nowadays when they know that there is life after death, and the pathways it might lead to, are so transparent to them? She wondered if human children who once spoke about their careers in schools now also spoke about what they wanted to be when they died as well.