[Aivee] Fragments [Archived]

"Joy to all...none for you." A voice echoes around the the vizard and the girl without a clue as to where it comes from as if it came from everywhere at once. A twisted, cackling laughter from a clown echoes as a tremble in the storm. The hallway begins to twist in a corkscrew as a prismatic haze envelopes the world they are in now. Seemingly out of nowhere, a man dressed like a jester appears before them with right leg up to his left knee and posture straight as his right hand is on his right hip and his posh, left hand rests on his firm chest. A smile was ever present on his twisted face. His reiatsu is strong, but human despite the strength is more than human. He looks upon the girl with an interest. "My my! What a gorgeous little girl! Now where's my manners! I forgot to ask you to walk back home and cook with mommy." He cackles some more before looking at the vizard, "I have to be blunt, but have you been beaten with an ugly stick?"

He raises his left hand from his chest and elegantly above his head as he spins and twists to nothingness before their eyes. "Let's play a game. You win, I let you two go and if you lose, the girl comes with me!" The voice rings through the twisted world the jester created for the two. He even laughs as he sets the deal without consent.

A turn in the breeze. Energy splashed over Carter's face as he felt the hallway melt away along with the hollows. He turned and saw the girl as a grey haze engulfed them and the dog. He stood close to her yet it looked miles away. The grey changed his vision distorting it. Then another energy wave. The grey settled and his vision returned in time to see a outlandish looking male come into view. He was bathed in power and Carter knew he couldn't hold a fight against him in his current state. He was all of spent and he could see it by the amount of sweat that coated his arms an dripped into his face. Even Nacuto felt slightly heavy in his sword arm but something weird was happening. His sweat slowed, his breathing returned to normal, the burning of physical exertion in his body faded and he felt rested. This all happened in the blink of an eye and he was confused to how until he heard the new colorful male say he wished to play a game.

Carter silently accepted the "game" since he had made a pledge to himself to keep the child safe and he would do what he must. He nodded to the male and made a quip, " You sir look like a foolish bird." He knew it wasn't a good come back but it was all he could muster at the moment while he stood ready for this game to begin.

Seeing the girl was riding away on a hollow dog and the vizard is standing still, the jester was smiling for something to come as it was soon enough that the girl riding on the hollow dog runs between him and the vizard more than twice in a moment like a lag was taking over the field. Or so as the vizard will see as the girl only escaped the advantage of being a convenient target for the jester. As along the jester cannot see what the other person is doing, he has no control as to what is going on. The best he can do is to change the colors in the field, making them more psychedelic than before and therefore more confusing for the hollow dog and the girl to see where they are going. Best chance that could happen was her hitting a wall or a window head on and risk injuring herself badly. But the trade off? She would be outside the range of the jester's illusion field by flying out of the school building. Walls are needed for the jester to create the illusion.

However, if the girl stays, the jester would have already tune out her reiatsu and use that to apply his illusions with accordance to the building's map to create walls to lure her back to him.

"Poor lass, not seeing where she is going. She could be flying by us so many times, but too determined to see that we're here. But why are you standing around when I could be there?" The jester speaks before vanishing. The prismatic color fades back to reality, revealing that all along, both the vizard and the girl ensnared by the illusion as the girl was sitting on the floor instead of the hollow dog and the vizard was merely standing near the girl. The voice rings out again, "Do you think I would let people go for this game? The rules are simple, Vizard. Just play along. Oh! To make things interesting! A sin of mankind!"

The colors reappear as a black chain with red haze appears between the vizard and the girl, collaring the girl while cuffing the vizard's wrist. On top of that, a black heavy armor encases the body of the vizard, burdening him into a walk while stimulating his sense of power, falsifying to satisfaction of having greater power. As for the girl, her clothes decays, exposing her in only her undergarments as a black bandoleer with red haze tightens around her chest, simulating a burdened heart of helplessness.

Wasting no time as the land changed from the kaleidoscope of colors and shifting hues back to the hallway it was at Carter pushed upon his Hollows powers to bring out a skill to save the two of them from becoming lost. He exhaled as the the hallways started to morph again and he pushed outwards with his spirit through his feet into the floor boards. Energy snaked under the spongy wood and along the walls glowing like neon violet veins underneath as the land scape changed once more and chains snapped onto Carter's wrists.

Not wanting to disappoint he felt the urge that crept up as the armor placed itself upon him. It wanted him to think he was powerful when it was weighing him down and he wasn't willing to toss his ace in the hole yet so he went with it as the energy tendrils stayed rooted to him under the illusion. Invisible to the Jester.

Carter rolled his shoulders as the metal rubbed against itself producing a metallic ping that echoed in the new illusion. " I'm ready." He said with a cocky smirk that would come from the armors effect as he waited. Looking down he noticed how his weapon existed outside of this armor and not under it.

"Marvelous! And I passed you for a bitch. Oh wait! You are a girl dog in this! Sit! Heel! And Play dead!" The voice rings out as down the hallway, a pair of lights was coming at the two as it blares out its horn like a bus rushing by. It was not long that it turns out that it is a bus rushing at the two with the Jester driving it. "MOVE IT BECAUSE I'M LAAAAaaaAAATE! HAHA!" The Jester shouts out to the slowed vizard and the half-naked girl. It would be an illusion as there is no way a bus can fit into the building without leaving anything destroyed, but with the debris scattering from floor to walls to ceiling, it can pass as real. The Jester can guess two general ways to avoid it; either by moving out of the way or by destroying the bus. Most likely the bus would be destroyed so the Jester uses an illusionary clone of himself to make it look like he is driving when the bus is actually in cruise control.

Either destroyed or evaded, the Jester has more up his sleeves as he was actually underneath the vizard and the girl with two packs of low grade explosives underneath the floor they stand on. The explosive should take down the section like a house of cards, taking the two down with it and injuring them possibly. If all goes to plan, the girl should be badly injured due to the collapse and the vizard alone is able to stand thanks to the armor. Either way or any other way that will be the summary of level one...who knows what level two will be?

The jester had over looked Carter's tendrils which were keeping him connected to that of the real world. The illusion parted earlier and gave room for Carter to lay a line down so he could pull himself back and now was the moment to end this childish mind game. Flexing his feet he thought of a clear sheet of glass come up between the illusion and parting it, half of this fake world went to the right and the other half to the left, the bus was refracted in the glass and a ghost image went to both sides, it wasn't cut in half since it wasn't real. It was a play of lights and energy and energy can be reflected but Carter created a mirror copy of it that would been viewed as upside down now from it's flip in the glass. Now though his main focus was the ghost armor on his body. When he connected his mind and body to the true lucid world the illusion had no more hold over him, simply enough he could shrug the armor off as the tendrils popped randomly through the illusion creating gaps that showed the hall way underneath upon which they truly stood. Pissed now he put his hands out, palms open and up, as he looked to the jester. "Enough games!" he roared as all of the tendrils snapped and shot at Carter's hands, they all inter-wove around one another forming a single strand upon which Carter closed both hands and pulled. The Illusion ripped part as he pulled the tendrils to him, he was pulling the real world in and the fake out. The world around him trembled as the hallway shoved the fake world out and the rotten wood came back to be the backround and floor upon which they stood. The must smell in the air returned and he looked at the jester with his energy tendrils still embeded in the floor and connected to his being.

Abruptly before the bus could touch them, the jester sets off the explosive, causing the entire floor below the vizard and the girl to collapse hard into the first floor, a full ten feet drop of falling wood, splinters, cement, iron and plaster. Suddenly, the bus falls on them and the field around the two begins to become substantially heavier than normal like the bus was the real thing, but it was not. It was due to a natural ability of a Child of Vohlis, "Delori" they called it and unlike regular reiatsu, it has no presence and it causes all matters to become more attracted to the earth below, increasing the gravity to a certain amount of tonnage. The way to tell how big the field is was by the darkened environment within its range of ten to thirty feet in radius. As the bus disappears as it passes into the floor as an illusion, the gravity spike ends and returns to normal.

"Shisome~! All I gave is an offer and yet you choose to defy. What an ungrateful brat! I guess I have to teach you some manners!"

The jester appears before the girl with his both hands ignited with black fire with a red aura; if it is the same kind of energy, then any attack will be a hard hitter type that can send people like the vizard flying out of the building like a person hit by a bus. As for the girl, the jester has another use for her. Unlike any random attackers, this clown as a goal and it is big enough to shape a future considering the troubles he will go through to acquire one little girl. He sees something in her that he wants to acquire for his plans. Without hesitation, he launches a narrow cero-like beam of Delori, outputting five tons of force against the vizard in attempt to distance the vizard from him and the girl who could be injured from the fall. After that, he manipulates the spiritual energy in the air and converts them into Delori. The vizard can sense it as the spiritual presence somehow "dies" around the jester...an unnatural feeling to a spirit like him like facing death without being near it.

The delori forms a barrier around the jester and the girl, separating them from the vizard as the jester kneels to the girl. The barrier is strong enough to withstand superlative attacks as instead of slowing it or stopping it, it forces the attack down to the ground with five tons of downward force, leaving the girl and the jester quite safe inside.

"Now we're in privacy. I intend on recruiting you as a slave. Do as I say and you live in a better future and understand who you are. Disobey me and I'll punish you. I intend to find my way to Eden, a realm of my father's creation and it is said to grant his children with unimaginable power to change the world."

The words of madness spoken in an honest tone. The jester is serious about his intention. With a twirl of his finger, he creates a circlet of black fabric that can go around the person's head. Unknowingly to the girl, that headband is what the jester uses to manipulate people by inducing headaches for undesirable thoughts and inducing relief for desirable thoughts. It is not exactly mind control, but it is more of reinforcing desirable behaviors than forcing an action. The benefits for the girl? It accelerates her spiritual growth by being in passive contact with a metaphysical force, such as the headband. For now, she is normal, but when it calls for it, the headband can induce either pain or relief, either way the result will be the same as she learns her powers and become a powerful ally for the jester.

"I can help you learn of your powers and other spiritual learning, but you have to be willing to help me make the world a better place. That vizard wishes to keep you in the dark until the time you die by his blade for being who you are; take my offer and you can rise beyond him and stay alive as opposed to being a lamb to the slaughter."

The jester holds out his hand that holds the fabric headband to the girl, giving her an ultimatum that either guarantees her life's longevity or pain unimaginable. Mind that being outside the barrier, the vizard cannot hear what the jester spoke of and can only hear what the girl said.