Thundercats Ho! [Amaranta, Candice]

It wasn't often that Candice decided to get out of the house and do something that wasn't entirely self-centered. But news had finally reached her ear about a dear friend who had gone missing, and she had to keep up the illusion of being an upstanding citizen from time to time. They'd been doing something that Candi could only consider wholeheartedly stupid and snooping around the ruins of Vastime, so she had half a reason to just leave her be and assume she was dead, but the Giselle had looked at her with those big soppy eyes and that made her want to be a little bit better. Not that Giselle knew exactly what she was doing, she was still too delicate to be heading to a wasteland warzone but the bitch would have insisted on coming anyway.

Compared to most who dared to venture into the veritable hellhole, Candi stood out like a sore thumb. Decked out from head to toe in designer fashion, she looked like she belonged on a catwalk, not the airplane runway that she now found herself on. An abandoned airbase that had once likely been an important military base for the near-forgotten kingdom, only home now to lost souls - and a few less after some opportunists had made a pass at the well-dressed foreigner. But they were small fries, nobodies, so she hadn't even needed to use her lightning to dispatch them. She needed someone who knew a little bit more about what was going on, else she'd have nothing to show for a day's hunting but a couple of broken nails.

"Fucking savages. This was a stupid fucking idea."

Candi exclaimed to no one in particular, the signal on her cell had long since dropped and she was left with nobody to talk to but herself - so why not simply talk to the sky and see if an answer would materialise. That was what the faithful would do, pray to their darling Thunderqueen to send them a gift from across the night sky, but she was not so devout. If she stumbled across something useful then it was her doing for coming this far, she was not about to let anyone else steal her fortune.

"What do we have here?"

Africa had become a veritable source of pandemonium. Wherever chaos and disorder roamed, the Lioness of Rebellion was never far away from what she considered, by all accounts, to be a wellspring of entertainment. Abnormalities of varying degrees, multiple spiritual pressures awakening and expiring without warning.

In a word, it was sheer madness. A madness she reveled in without restraint. At the moment, there was no such conflict to revel in. After all, she had murdered most of the hollow that crossed paths with her, devouring those she found appetizing, grinding the rest beneath her heels.

A hollow's flesh always tasted better after a hunt. Nothing could ever compare to felled prey struggling until the end. Hunting hours passed, and the aimless wandering that accompanied her journey in search of more has grown unbearably dull, but maybe that doesn't have to remain that way for too long. Whoever this loud woman was in the sky, she might prove entertaining. From below the woman, standing on the wartorn plains of Africa, Amaranta called out to Candice with a booming voice, blood painted across her mouth.

"Yo! What's your deal, blondie? Who are you trying to attract in a place like this?"

A pair of vibrant emeralds shifted in Amaranta’s direction, a positively withering stare falling upon the Arrancar as Candi took a measure of her. The skies above darkened for a moment, threatening to bathe these blood-soaked plains with a downpour that might wash away their sins, and then she simply vanished.

It was the dust that kicked up first, scattering in every direction as Candi touched down only a short distance from her challenger. It wasn’t a hard impact though, her sandalled feet brushing against the sand delicately, as for a moment everything was still. Then came the crash of thunder, as deafening as it was obnoxious, that punctuated her arrival and alerted all else that an apex predator was around. Her blonde hair fluttering in the wind, she stood there with her hands firmly planted on her hips as if the ear-splitting cry was introduction enough.

“Something worth my time.” The look in her eye suggested that she still hadn’t found it, “I take it these are your hunting grounds?”

"Heh... Showoff."

Voicing those playful words at her thunderous arrival, the leonine woman took a moment to observe her appearance, gleaming that rumbling spirit pressure emanating around her form. An initial reaction might have automatically declared her little more than a lovely face, but there was something decidedly imposing about the energy radiating around her.

As though she were announcing her existence to these lands, demanding someone offer an audience worth her presence. Something worth her time? Bold words indeed for a stranger, but perhaps there was weight to them. Canting her head to the side, Amaranta assumed a similar posture as she slowly approached the woman. Wiping the trail of blood from her mouth, she responded with a nonchalant air to her tone. The electrifying intro was impressive, but she was the true apex predator here. Thus, she would move only when prompted to move.

"Guilty as charged. What's it to ya, blondie?"

"If you think that's something then you ain't seen nothing yet."

Electricity danced across her fingertips, sparking off to pick at the particles of sand flittering around her. She enjoyed these lawless mesas, where she didn't need to hold back and act all civil, but it also meant that there were not many eyes on her. Which was certainly a downside for someone so bottomlessly self-centered, not that Candi was or anything.

"At least you're confident though, sticking around after all that business with that big hole to wherever. Or did you steer clear of that mess and wait till the heat had died down?"

The Arrancar didn't exactly give off the energy of one with the intelligence to know danger until it smacked them in the face, which was a shame as they did have a decent one for her circumstances. Could she blame herself for looking? Hardly, she was superficial by nature, so maybe that was why she had even bothered to start asking questions instead of just flinging lightning.

"Hell no. I wanted to get involved in the action like everybody else, but there were so many battles going on all at once that I couldn't quite make it. By the time I made it here, any form of entertainment vanished in the blink of an eye. Ever since then, I've been using this place as my hunting ground to sate my appetite."

There was a hint of disappointment in her tone at that admission. Outside of two battles, she was unable to secure another battle worth holding to memory. To a glory seeker like her, that was simply a grave error on her part. After all, she was a predatorial woman by nature. Most of what remained here in the aftermath were scraps. No more, no less. Even so, perhaps the thunderous woman standing across from her could erase her agitating ennui.

"What's your story, blondie? Were you looking to get in on the action, too?"

"So you weren't involved in much other than scavenging. Shame. I can't imagine there's much good to eat round these parts either. Bet there ain't a gourmet restaurant here for a thousand miles, not like that's gonna be your scene either but my point still stands."

The sparks died down a little as Candi came to the abrupt realisation that this random Arrancar wasn't just going to tell her everything she needed to know and more. Sure, there was a chance that she was lying, but the odds felt pretty slim. Didn't feel like her style, and that meant that Candi didn't need to exert herself. A win-win, if you will.

"Not particularly, got my fair share of that back home, but I was looking for someone who might have been caught up in it all. Bit of a wild goose chase, but I think I owe it to her to try." Or something like that.

That emerald gaze turned skyward again, considering whether to just launch herself off again and continue her little hunt. A couple more days, a few more encounters, and she would either find a clue or call it a lost cause. This was an opportunity, sure, but it was only going to remain pragmatic for so long. Still, it never hurt to make sure.

"You know anything about what actually went down here? Like why the hole appeared, or what was really in there? I'd offer you some amount of money in exchange but you don't exactly look like the kinda girl that cashes cheques."

"True enough, but then... I can't imagine anything here would appeal to your pallet, anyway."

The bronze woman continued to survey the woman in silence, observant sapphires studying her aura in silence. There was a noticeable glint of amusement in her gaze, though her expression was far more neutral, curious as to what the woman truly sought if she wasn't here to take part in the action. Even though her answers weren't entirely entertaining so far, housing predictions of her purpose here were far more worthwhile. Of course, the guessing game concluded the moment she revealed her purpose here and presented the offer of exchanging some in return.

"Good question..."

Canting her head to the side, contemplating her words, Amaranta took a moment to walk past her as she gazed into the distance. According to Klein, the hole in the heart of Africa was the source of where all of these abnormalities were rising. Some fought for survival, others reacted violently, but they all came from that single chasm. Even she couldn't quite explain what its purpose was. Or why it existed in the first place.

"Guilty as charged, lady. I'm already being paid to play bodyguard to some rich brat with orange hair I had to rescue recently. Even if I wanted to give you an answer... your guess is as good as mine. To be honest with you... I couldn't give ya a good answer even if I wanted to, blondie."

Sighing softly, she shifted her head back in Candice's direction as she shrugged her shoulders, a lopsided grin across her lips. A smug expression of defeat. Her guess was as good as anybody's at this point.

"The best explanation I can provide is that nothing but abnormal hollows keep springing up out of that hole. All the quincy and soul reapers have been fighting with them for quite a minute now. That's all I know about it. Which is a damn shame. I would've gladly been the first here for a front-row seat to entertainment. The closest I got to a good battle was against two soul reapers, and they retreated like a pair of cowards."

Returning to her prior position, Amaranta posed a question of her own in return.

"What race was she, anyway? No offense, but if she was weak, she might have died already. This place isn't exactly kind to those who can't defend themselves and adapt."

Candice's gaze dropped back down from the sky as Amaranta crossed in front of her, following the Arrancar's posterior as her lips curled upwards into something close to a grin of her own. She wasn't shy about it, nor made any effort to hide it, perhaps it was even done with the intent that she might be caught doing so. Working as a bodyguard, that wasn't a usual thing, and she did so enjoy the abnormalities that life brought her way from time to time.

"What a quaint little job for you to have. Strange place for someone's protector to be, though, out here roaming around looking for trouble." Her tone was certainly laced with a condescending undertone, but that was also just how she spoke most of the time, "What do you even spend the money on?"

Her growing curiosity about Amaranta was an enticing prospect in itself, but there were also some small nuggets of information being presented to her that she had to make the effort to decipher and process. Darting between topics haphazardly, she stood with her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest a little as she considered how best to continue. At the end of the day, one more pair of eyes that were right here in the thick of it wasn't gonna cause any more of a fuss than Candi herself kicking around.

"Human, like me, and she wasn't a pushover either. Not that I'm certain she's still alive, but even some finality on that front might be useful. Pretty small, with blonde hair too, chip on her shoulder. I can probably find a picture, gimme a sec." Fishing her phone out of her top without skipping a beat, she began to flick through the album looking for a photo of the missing Reichsritter. They weren't exactly close enough to hang out that often, so it was probably going to take her a minute, but there would be something from one of the Empire's social events.

"What did you mean by 'abnormal' Hollows, by the way? I've seen my fair share of them, imagine you have too, so what made these weirder?"

"Enjoying the view, blondie?"

The prolonged glance hardly went unnoticed under her expertly trained senses. Even without her watchful gaze, she could practically feel that woman eyeing something in the back. Of course, she simply took it in stride and listened to her opinion on her choice of occupation on earth. Turning back to the woman with a grin, she simply shrugged her shoulders. Quaint? Perhaps... but then, she hadn't exactly envisioned working anywhere or under anyone when she first entered this realm to begin with.

"What can I say? The pay is good, the lady's got a cute temper, and it keeps me busy since we go around fighting hollow. As far as the other stuff... I'm a natural-born troublemaker, baby. My boss understands that much. As far as what I spend the money on... clothing is always my go-to option. Cutting such a fine figure as this, why not indulge myself and see what looks good on me?"

Flexing her arms with a proud sway of her hips, Amaranta transitioned into answering her question about the abnormal hollows here and how they differed from the typical fanfare. Following the woman with curious sapphires, Amaranta momentarily reflected on her inquiry. There were so many battles she had engaged in here that she lost track of most of them, but if there was one thing that stood out about them it was that they all either came out of that hole with sentience and the ability to converse, or they seemed to just defy what constituted the average hollow in her eye.

"In my experience, the average hollow seems to gravitate to whatever they find pleasing to their appetite, mindlessly devouring souls regardless of their quality. These, on the other hand, for some unexplainable reason emerged from that chasm over there without a desire to devour anything. Some were even evolved and developed enough to talk, sentient enough to act on their own. Even beyond that... their abilities seemed to defy what most hollow should conventionally be capable of..."

Finishing that mouthful with a playful exhale, Amaranta sheepishly grinned, waving a hand around as though recognizing how wild and peculiar this all sounded. Still, if there was any doubt in her words, one only needed to spend a few days here to confirm her words with resounding accuracy.

"In other words, they're built funny. Sorry. I'm not really fond of going into boring details like that. Observing them or wandering this place for a day will definitely show you better than I could ever tell ya."