Moonless Hunting [Kanae, Ryouko]

The chill of the night was absent against her skin, the warm blood coloured her skin while pooling at her knees. It was a daze, a fever dream, to hover the fresh kill among the shadows of the alley while the experiences of the shinigami were devoured. The scrubbing of the soul to nourish the parasite inside of her that took advantage of her unconscious state.

She gave an uncharacteristic grin through glossy eyes at the body. They were not enough for her, and so in that frustration a hand plunged into the abdomen and crushed the organs with as much strength as this body could muster. Their destruction releasing the individual memories of the physical pieces by destroying them to be absorbed.

Continually astounded by the sheer number of freaks in the modern day Gotei, Kanae thought it best to do her due diligence in surveilling the ones who stood out the most. Somewhat recently she heard tell of a Third Division member who managed to kill some of her peers in an experiment-gone-wrong, yet was still somehow walking about the Seireitei. Kanae had no doubt the woman was on a leash of some kind, but didn't have much information to go on. Only a name: Ryouko Amou. It would be all she needs.

Forcing information out of Gotei members was a simple feat for the Fourth Division Captain. All she had to do was flash them a smile that punctured their minds with images of their own drawn out deaths and they'd spill whatever information they had, in this case the whereabouts of Ryouko. From there it was a simple matter of following the woman for a few hours until dusk fell, when the real fun began. Kanae followed the woman from the shadows, her Reiatsu suppressed in its entirety, and observed the creature that was once a Shinigami kill and began apparently devouring in one way or another, another Shinigami.

Is she stupid? Some random back alley? It's only a matter of time until she's caught. thought Kanae as she watched Ryouko shove her hands into the torn-open abdomen of her prey. Maybe she should show this infant what a real killer looks like. Kanae stepped into the alley about a dozen feet away from Ryouko, and in a blink the entire area was suddenly awash in her deeply malevolent, predatory Reiatsu which held a knife to the woman's throat. In the dark it was as if Kanae's violet eyes glowed, which helped barely illuminate the dreadful smile the corner of her lips had been upturned to form.

"My my, what have we here?~" asked Kanae, her words dripping in blood lust.

It took a moment. Ryouko's body barely reacted to the presence of the captain as she mindlessly tore at the body with purpose. The dreadful feeling eventually crept through the nerves though and into the subconscious mind that caused her to become as still as a statue and look back. There was a blank look before a smile formed.

It conveyed nothing but the emotion of "happy", "delighted", so on. It was the kind of expression that didn't belong to an alert person though where the complex thoughts and personality would give it more character. Her face was happy because her body recognised such an immense piece of nourishment in front of it, the kind that might even fill the empty void inside of her body that plucked at her instincts.

Silently she lunged in a haphazard way, she did not recognise the difference of power, the finesse that an alert veteran would possess over a sleepwalker. She was a slab of meat throwing itself at the knife.

There was just what her body craved in front of her, and so she'd kill it so that she was satisfied.

"Oh dear, this won't do at all." commented Kanae as she watched the young woman first register her arrival then seemingly get giddy at the idea of committing another heinous crime. "Tsk, tsk." Ryouko's haphazard approach would make herself an easy target for Kanae who gracefully sidestepped the woman's lunge. In the same motion she gently placed her left hand on Ryouko's left shoulder and grabbed the connected arm at the wrist. With a quick snap Kanae sought to dislocate every joint in the woman's arm.

Not satisfied with only inflicting some impermanent damage, Kanae tilted her body so her torso was perpendicular from the ground, her left foot now positioned underneath Ryouko's armpit. With a girlish giggle escaping her lips, Kanae began pulling at the unconscious woman's arm, the force of her grip steadily increasing until she could hear that sweet sound of flesh and sinew tearing at her victim's shoulder. Then with one hard tank Kanae aimed to completely tear Ryouko's arm off but...she didn't, stopping just short of dismembering the woman, leaving her arm likely hanging on by no more than a strip or two of flesh.

"Sorry, I remembered I already have two arms. I don't need a third!~" Kanae released her prey then slammed her sandal-clad foot into Ryouko's rib cage to send her careening into the nearby alley wall. Returning to a standing position, the violet eyed Captain watched and waited to see her handiwork.

The sweet embrace of sleep is reassuring and comfortable like a mother's tender arms. However, one has to eventually wake up from this state, pain did what the menacing reiatsu could not. She was shocked awake at the feeling of her arm having pain shooting through it that shocked her awake.

It was sudden, disorientating, and terrifying all at once.

She cried out when her arm was torn and twisted, she'd never felt this kind of pain before except for the accident that almost killed her. This was combat though, wasn't it? A fight and she had never been in a real one. When she was set free and kicked into the wall the young woman looked lifeless.

Her arm was disfigured and dangling off her; there was a deep hole in her stomach from where the foot had connected, her back was broken on the impact with how hard she had been launched, and her head slumped forward so that her hair concealed whatever expression she had.

She was not dead though. Her reiatsu still pulsed and sure enough the damaged parts of her body became obscured in a white light. The obvious one was the hole in her torso that was like a bright white light in the centre of her before it faded and it had been healed. Her torn off arm became like a white silhouette until it showed it recovered, and at last she could lift her head up to stare at the captain with confused terror all over her face.

How did she get here? Where was she? Why was the captain killing this person and her? Maybe this was how they intended to get rid of her. Quietly and among these corpses...

Oh? Is that high-speed regeneration? Surely this creature wasn't one of those impure Hollowfied Shinigami? Was that the result of the experiment she had supposedly caused to go disastrously? It would explain why there were other deaths listed on the report. After healing, it was apparent to Kanae that any killing intent within Ryouko had gone, faded into the darkness surrounding this horrific scene. As she eyed the terrified woman, Kanae thought about how to proceed. Obviously, having caught her in the middle of a murder, she could simply bring her in for questioning. As well, nobody in the Gotei would question if she slaughtered her here and now for the same reason.

But where's the fun in that?

In a blink, Kanae was leaned over directly in front of Ryouko, their eyes meeting in the faint light flooding in from the nearby street. The Captain's hand was gripping hair bunched up atop her prey's head, the strength in her wrist enough to forcefully bend the woman's head back to keep the two at eye level. Now only a few inches away, Kanae drank the fear emanating from Ryouko like sweet nectar. Unable to keep the joy she received from the other woman's terror out of her voice as she spoke, she did so with a smile on her face "Tsk tsk, little girl. Murder is a capital offense in the Seireitei, didn't you know?"

"I... I didn't. I didn't kill anyone."

She broke down into sobbing at the feeling of the captain holding her hair like a vice. She wanted to scream in fear at this woman while the phantom pain blazed through her nerves in memory of its recent trauma inflicted by Kanae.

Ryouko couldn't bring her voice to cry out though. It was the fear that Kanae would silence her by tearing out her throat if she called for help but she was correct as well, covered in blood and the fresh corpse nearby painted a terrible picture. Who would they believe? The captain or her?

"Please, it hurts.."

She begged for the menacing woman to let her go.

The young woman's cries only spurned Kanae on to further tighten her grip. It was still unclear what exactly she was dealing with, and Ryouko's sobbing denial of having killed that man was strange. Upon hearing the complaint of pain, Kanae stood back up and pulled Ryouko by her hair as she turned and took a step toward the still-bleeding corpse. Then, with a yank hard enough to threaten ripping the locks from Ryouko's scalp, Kanae shoved her in the direction of the body.

"I saw you kill this person with my own eyes. Are you calling a Captain of the Gotei a liar?" To prevent any act of fleeing, Kanae placed her foot on the back of one of the woman's ankles and pressed down with enough force to shatter bone. She kept her foot planted without any give, knowing if this creature regenerated again she might try to run after healing. "Look what you did to this poor soul. You're a horrible murderer. Oh, poor girl. Maybe you didn't mean to? Is that it? Is this all just a big misunderstanding, Ryouko Amou?" Venom and contempt dripped from Kanae's tongue as she taunted the terrified girl.

She gave off a small scream as the corpse filled her view. This wasn't real, it wasn't her doing. As the captain expected, her ankle tried to restore itself after it was obliterated but the pain was in the back of her mind from the adrenaline running through her veins and her poor heart beating so fast it might've exploded.

"No no no no. You're not lying but I didn't do it, I swear! I went to sleep and then when I woke up you attacked me."

The attempt to defend herself came out as a bumbling mess. There was blood all over her though and it couldn't all be hers. Did she kill this person? Why would she have killed this person or the ones in her dreams? She couldn't take it, she didn't want to be a killer and she didn't know what she had become. Could she just wake up and this whole situation disappear like a bad dream?

A gentle hand came to rest upon Ryouko's upper back as Kanae bent down beside her. What had just been a malicious presence appeared to soften around the edges a bit, the crushing Spiritual Pressure no longer drenched in killing intent. A voice, softer than before, whispered in the woman's ear "Would you like this nightmare to end, Ryouko Amou? All it would take is a slip..of my...hand..." As she spoke, sharp steel came to press ever-so-slightly against the Third Squad member's neck.

Drops of blood stained the Zanpakuto threatening to decapitate the frightened woman. As the red was reflected in her violet eyes, Kanae came frighteningly close to dropping the act and just killing the woman; or, at least, doing everything in her power to. This thing's abilities were still largely unknown to her, after all. Then, as quickly as it'd arrived, the blade at Ryouko's neck disappeared and returned to the Captain's hip, after which she stood back up and looked down at the mess of a woman with naught but disdain.

"You expect me to believe you killed this man, among others, in your sleep? Ryouko Amou, I will give you one last opportunity to confess. Either that or give me a good reason not to execute you right now." Gone was the forced gentleness from Kanae's voice, replaced once more by bitter hatred.