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Yaksha
 THE HOLLOW APPLICATION Name: Yaksha DokujaAlias: Anthropophagus, Forktongue, countless others. Real Age: 2020 Phys. Age: 30 Gender: Male Hollow Stage: Adjuchas Personality: Yaksha's personality is fraught with contradictions, but the best place to start is with his interactions with others. Yaksha is a man who enjoys making a strong impression, and appearing larger than life: He never settles for a simple answer when he can explain his intentions in a monologue that feels worthy of Shakespere himself. He tends to speak quickly, in long bursts of speech that offer little room for interruption, powering forward in ignorance of all opposition. His every action seems to bring to mind an apex predator, enjoying the company of creatures it knows it may -one day- decide to eat. As an exceptionally old hollow, Yaksha has a great respect for tradition and history, to the extent that he takes a purely altruistic glee in sponsoring others, giving them the tools they need to grow and progress, and shaping the new and pliable minds. He surrounds himself with adoring people, striving at every moment to be the most flamboyant or impressive person in the room. He struts, speaks in backhanded compliments, and all around takes a great delight in making everyone around him move at his pace, play by his game, and flounder along hoping eventually things will make sense. His motives are nebulous and ill-defined at best, and he seems to change them each time he's asked, depending on the person asking. Some days he seems to have little interest in anything besides watching humans go about their everyday lives, the same way a person would enjoy working at a zoo tending to the exhibits. Other days, he seems to take perverse pleasure in picking a single human out of the group, and impressing them with insights that span back centuries at a time. Inevitably, such circumstances end poorly, as he leads them to isolate themselves, steadily grow more deranged, and ultimately perform some despicable act destined to lead to hollowfication after death. As best anyone can tell, he doesn't seem to want anything that can be given, simply being there for the experience, and along for the ride. Yaksha's love for humans and hatred for spirit beings nears the level of neurosis on many days, and it is a well-known fact that the quickest way to get on his bad side is to compare him to other hollows, or speak of him in terms of absolutes, as if he were any other hollow. Erudite and restrained to the extreme, Yaksha prefers to think of himself as a very deformed, and very insane, human. His appetites, no different from a street junkie's addiction to methamphetamine. His appearance, no different from Elephantitis. His powers, no different from a fullbringer's unique and unfathomable repertoire. He will often wax philosophical about how life as a hollow -shouldn't- be as miserable as shinigami and even his own kind make it, leading him to seem even more insane than most hollows. Despite all his bluster and arrogance, Yaksha is well aware of his limitations, and how impossible the life he tries to lead is. He seems to move in monumental bursts of energy, like a striking snake able to grasp onto its prey with incredible speed and accuracy, only to lapse into a bout of lethargy and rest afterwards. For Yaksha, however, it's doubt and self-loathing that overcomes him. Surrounding himself with people who trust and respect him, Yaksha is able to remain productive for about a month at a time before he suffers some unexpected snag: He'll drive off a trusted comrade, inadvertently reveal some bit of information that makes him lose face among his 'friends', or otherwise find a way to strain his relationships near the breaking point. Aware of this fact, and unable to help it, it's at these times Yaksha lapses into long bouts of contemplative wandering, trying to ascertain some hidden secret, some part of the universe or existence that eludes him. It's almost always he returns from these events revitalized, able to up the ante even further, surpass expectations, and regain the lost respect he had, for another month. CHARACTER APPEARANCE Height: Yaksha is a whopping 8 feet tall, most of it gangly limbs and torso, giving him an impression much like a piece of clay rolled out longer than it should've been.Weight: Yaksha weighs approximately 225 pounds, giving him an impression that most of his musculature is confined to his chest and tail. His limbs are long and thin, looking far more fragile than they should be, as if he were unused to using them, either for survival or using tools. Physical Traits: Yaksha has a long ponytail of lime-green hair, which remains in place through the use of what looks very much like a scrunchie of variable size, formed of his own reaitsu. As he grows more agitated, or excited, his hair will start to writhe as if it were alive, causing the energy holding it in place to fluctuate. This means that, during most fights, his hair ends up draping over his shoulders and his face, giving him a far less refined appearance than normal. He stands with great posture, almost always looming over others in a not-so-subtle indication of his status: he looks down on nearly everyone he meets. His mask resembles a snake mid-striking motion, like what one would expect to see on a cane, or a photograph. His hollow hole rests center stage as always, but through methods that he refuses to explain, Yaksha has managed to obtain a reddish-brown suit that he wears on all occasions. It's well-tailored, and even buttons up in the front, although he often requests help from others to adjust them as needed, since his clawed appendages are not well-suited to the dextrous work necessary to work a button. Beneath the suit, he wears a vest that is similarly buttoned, of nearly golden yellow. He takes great care of these articles of clothing, taking them off before performing anything he would consider 'messy' work, and always making sure to retrieve them after. For someone as savage looking as him, one would expect a hissing tone, or something high-pitched, but he disappoints on both accounts. Yaksha has a deep, pleasant sounding bass voice that carries with it a faintly British tone. He speaks almost all of his words quickly, but with great care and delight at each one, as if the very act of talking is pleasant for him. He moves with a lot of grace and composure, making sure never to slouch or stumble, always cautious of the damage to his reputation something like that could cause. THE COMBAT INFORMATION General Fighting Style: Yaksha hates fighting, and rarely partakes of it. He truly believes that almost all issues can be solved by conversation or negotiation, and as such he will start nearly every fight attempting to escape, or maintain whatever distance he already has. He plays defensively, hoping his well-rehearsed rhetoric and slippery nature will force the enemy to back off, or find a better way to get what they want.In the few circumstances where Yaksha does fight seriously, it seems to clash with his normal methodology drastically. He'll fling flashy, enormous projectiles with little concern for the surroundings, he'll dive head-first into explosions to get a grab on his enemy, and he'll press every advantage he's given until the fight is over, win or lose. More often than not, this is simply because fighting to Yaksha is a game or a sport, no different from boxing or playing chess. If he's actually volunteering to fight, and hasn't spent a lot of time griping about how pointless violence is, then it's almost guaranteed he's already gotten what he wants at that point, and defeat in combat would be a hollow victory for his opponent. In so doing, Yaksha conveys his own feelings about combat onto his opponent: Violence is always a last resort, and always to be dreaded. He'll do everything he can to snatch away the joy of fighting from his opponents. This includes refusing to beg for mercy, depriving them of their senses, and generally doing everything he can to turn fights from a simple and pleasant test of physical might into a tedious slogfest, forcing them to deal with a constantly changing environment, and reassess their win condition. More often than not, Yaksha just hopes his opponent will get -bored- and pack up, before either party has to die, or be permanently damaged. Strengths: Yaksha's speed is where his talent excels, allowing him to evade and move with little issue out of the way of even very precise attacks. He can turn fatal blows into glancing ones, over and over, while his own attacks slowly whittle away at his opponent in the same way. A close second is Pesquisa: Yaksha maintains strong battlefield awareness, and his biggest competence shines in fights that are bigger than one-on-one. Able to tell without fail whenever one of his allies has created an opening, he'll drop whatever he's doing, sometimes to the extent of allowing himself to be struck, so he can exploit whatever weakness he sees. Weaknesses: Yaksha's Hierro and physical strength leave a lot to be desired. He's far less durable than most hollows, relying on his evasive skills and his awareness of the surroundings to survive. He can rarely land a killing blow of his own, so he prefers to find enemies that are not that strong themselves, or enemies that have already finished a trying battle, and take advantage. Boosts: 2x Speed/Agility. Ability Name: Gross Anatomy Ability Description: Even by hollow standards, Yaksha's body is remarkably pliable. He can fold himself into an area the size of a normal human locker, can bend into angles that most humans would find impossible, and can even allow himself to escape bindings easier than normal. Depending on the amount of energy used, this can range anywhere from allowing him to slip through a doorway built for a 5 foot person by squeezing himself flatter, to reaching a nearly liquid consistency for a few seconds. Ability Name: Shed Skin Ability Description: So long as Yaksha is aware of an oncoming attack, he can focus energy to the appropriate limb, causing the muscles and bones in that area to withdraw into the larger mass of his chest. This leaves a hollow flesh-shell behind, mitigating the damage drastically while allowing an opponent the impression they struck a fatal blow. He can even use this to foil the standard shinigami tactic of slicing off the head first, allowing him to survive by having his mask rest on his neck or torso until a new head forms. Ability Name: Ophidian Overdose Ability Description: A bite from Yaksha leads to effects very similar to a hollow's Acidic Touch, focused far more intensely on the affected area. This can even effect spirit beings like shinigami, making their flesh bubble and turn necrotic rapidly. Dizziness and nausea can follow, as the damaged flesh releases toxins into the bloodstream. In especially extreme cases, where shinigami with weak constitutions don't get treatment quickly enough, it can even cause severe organ failure, and become fatal. Successive bites don't speed up the process, but do make it harder to cure. Ability Name: Eye of the Dragon Ability Description: Yaksha's tongue acts as a vomeronasal organ just like a snake's, and he has pit organs resting just behind his eyes. These two things offer him augmented senses, allowing him to detect the presence of heat in a given area, and to smell pheromones. Both of these things are incredibly precise, allowing him to sense the sudden change in a person's sweat as stress hormones from lying are released, or the subtle changing of heat that would normally imply someone is preparing to either attack or flee. With these extra senses at his disposal, Yaksha is remarkably hard to catch off-guard, or trick. Ability Name: Yamata-No-Orochi Ability Description: Yaksha's trump card, named after the Japanese dragon, his hair exists almost as a separate entity from him, able to move on its own and grab nearby things. Even if he is somehow caught unaware of what his enemy is doing, or snuck up on, so long as his Eye of the Dragon is aware of a predator nearby, the hair will become alert. It can extend towards nearby places, pulling him out of the line of an attack, or bind an enemy if he so wishes. It is normally no harder than one would expect, but if Yaksha is putting energy into it and focusing, it can become as hard as steel, and even able to pierce flesh. He can form it into anywhere from one to eight strands, dealing with opponents separately as he does so. Each strand effectively acts as an additional hand or tail, extending his reach and his sphere of influence dramatically. HOLLOW ABILITIES Average Hollow Abilities: N/A Gillian Appearance: As a gillian, Yaksha's mask was relatively blocky and large, covered in scale-like patterns. His feet were curled inward moreso than usual, and his tongue was forked. Gillian Abilities: N/A Adjuchas Appearance: See Physical Traits Adjuchas Abilities: Gross Anatomy, Ophidian Overdose, Shed Skin, Eye of the Dragon, Yamata-No-Orochi Vasto Lorde Appearance: Yaksha's Vasto Lorde appearance resembles a dragon more than a snake, with three long horns extending from it in a manner akin to a crown. He has thick red markings across every scale on his body, which seem to change each time a person blinks or looks away. Vasto Lorde Abilities: TBD BACK-DROP History: Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.TRANSMIT - Initiate the Kubera Signal RECIEVE - Initiate the Jureichi Frequency - WHAT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAIN HIS SOUL- Initiate the Faustian Protocol - WITNESS - The Outsider. I have a story, sweetling. Would you care to hear? Of course you would. Your kind likes stories. A man was born. From his very birth, he was unnatural. He was a strange child, born in strange circumstances. He should never have existed, but the world is full of those things which should have been impossible. Still, if there's one thing the universe hates, it's an anomaly. Things that don't fit into the mold get broken until they do. Yaksha Dokuja was not always Yaksha Dokuja, but he always was. His father was impotent, his mother distraught. Married off far too young, and to a man who could never give her what she wished for most; a beautiful child. Her husband treated her well, treated her with love and respect. He was a stonemason, good with his hands. He built her a home, and he always did everything he could to please her. The only thing he could not do was sire a child for her. It was also the only thing she resented him for. Over the years resent turned into desperation, which turned into seething madness. She was a good, Christian woman...and she one day went quite mad. She went to an old place where none were meant to go, a place of so-called demons. The demon had once been a god, and had once been fed quite well. But that is another story. She came, and she prayed in the ways abhorrent to God. She said the words, she went through the routine. She was willing to do whatever it took to have a child to raise as her own. The deal was struck. She was struck as well, by the appearance of the demon. They had spoken of cloven hooves and horns. Of smooth voices and exceptional masculinity. They had not spoken of white masks or enormous holes that one could fit a hand through. They had not spoken of the pain and the anguish in each word. They had not spoken of hunger. Of mind-wrenching hunger. They had told her she would have cravings when she was pregnant. They did not tell her what she would crave. Her husband came home one day, but he was not her husband. His rough, calloused hands were not gentle this time. The man she lay down with was not her husband. But she let him; she knew the price that must be paid. She hoped he would never have to know what she had done. In a way, she was right. After that night, he never knew anything again. Her husband passed away moments after copulating with her. Everyone was baffled, but she was shocked beyond belief. Months passed, and her cravings grew stranger. She ate primarily meat, and often meat that should by all accounts have made her exceptionally sick. She never grew sick. She had always been sick. She gave birth with no trouble, and with no assistance. The child came out like it had been made for it. And from the moment he was born she knew that she could never have what she wanted. Her child was born with skin all too fair, with hair as white as snow. With eyes the most disgusting shade of pink. He never cried, he never whined. He simply looked at her with curiosity. She left him outside of the church, and she left without ever looking back. She was always the subject of many stories. Some said she killed her husband and was cursed by god. Some said she was a witch who returned to hell. None of them particularly matter. The child matters. He was raised by the Church, to be a god-fearing, church-attending child. He was raised to learn the skills of rhetoric and debate. He was raised to preach to a flock of new converts. Do you know how hard it is to be an honest God-fearing man when you know the truth, Dear Reader? He was always an odd child. He had little interest in god and in rhetoric. He had a great interest in the old fables and stories, of mythology wide and profound. He learned of the pagan rituals and the many names of demons. He spoke often of seeing the dead, of seeing black-clad angles and white-clad devils. He was a strange child, and the church shunned strangeness. He was given a life away from the public. A life in the catacombs of old scrolls. A librarian in a place no one wanted to visit. There were myriad dead in that place, of all shapes and sizes. They were all quite intelligent, and they were all too eager to have someone who could finally be good conversation. Albus, as he had been known- the charming one who possessed no charm, who had never wanted it- was the only link the lingering dead had to their world. And he was always treated as the lowest of the low. Surrounded by brilliant minds, by people who felt themselves too great to fade, Albus sunk into his own illness. He became obsessive. He grew disillusioned, grew tired of hearing the same old stories...and one day he became part of a new one. A white-clad devil came into the catacombs one night, sniffing for its latest prey. Yaksha was unaware of what to expect, but knew only that being this close to one of those majestic predators sent an electric shock through him. He wondered what it would take to meet one of these things. He began to follow it, his skill in stealth quite laughable. The demon's skill in noticing anything besides its prey even more so. It fled, sated enough for the time. Yaksha's hunger however was soon to become limitless. He sought any reference to these things he could find. He spoke to every soul he could find, and discovered every detail possible. And he realized all too quickly what it would take to meet one in the flesh. He brought with him one of the eldest, most insufferable of souls. He hoped it would be willing to speak to him for as long as it took. Surprisingly, it took almost no time at all. The white-clad creature barreled into the catacombs, seeking another meal. This one was not nearly as dim as the last, and realized almost immediately that there were two sets of eyes upon it. Two beings' attention. One was far more appetizing than the other...but far more interesting, as well. It wished to know more about this thing before him. This human who seemed to look at it with such delight...and who seemed to smell so familiar to it. One could dicker for years as to why the beast spared him, but the simple fact is that it did. Not without a scar...a remembrance. The beast burned his entire left cheek beyond recognition. Yaksha saw it as a badge of honor. He had held his first conversation with a hollow, and he had survived. The problem with greed is that the greedy don't know when to stop. Yaksha studied for another decade, and did everything he could. Finally, he concocted a ritual, using the souls of every lingering being he could find for the bait. It took hours, but he finally succeeded; he drew to him one of the white-clad devils. And he struck a deal of his own. A deal for power and freedom, for a taste of what they could be like. He followed in his father's footsteps, and this time the act was not nearly so benign. Yaksha rode passenger as he watched his body kill half a dozen people before he was subdued. He felt not even an iota of regret over his decision. Even as he was stoned to death, he smiled. And when his body arose, when he was stared down by the being who had given him this freedom, the being which demanded its payment...he still smiled. He smiled even as he tore at the chain that connected him to the pitiful human body he had long ago forsaken. He smiled even as the hole ripped open, at a speed that never should've been possible. He smiled as rigor mortis took over, he smiled as the essence of his discarded heart overtook him. And he smiled as he loomed over his would-be creditor. He smiled even as the thing realized that it had been deprived of its easy meal. It fought savagely, but in the end it simply couldn't subdue the beast. It was as if it had simply been waiting its entire life to become a hollow. It was as if it had been a hollow well before this moment. The fight was never even a fight. Albus died. Yaksha Dokuja lived. And the beast was all too excited to make use of the new opportunity it had been given. It scoured the world, it spread itself wide...and yet for several millenia, the world was simply too small. The souls too pitiful, too spread out. They could never sate his hunger, could never fill the void within him. Time passes. What is time to us? We stand outside. Yaksha frittered away centuries as an informant to any who would have him. A few would-be kings of the vast hollow desert would arrive to strongarm the serpent into being their adviser. One or two, into their shadowmaster. The truly intelligent didn't attempt to force him at all. There could be no good end for abrogating the will of a cannibal, for chaining a wild beast. There could only be a worse end for tying one's fate to a being well known for betraying trust. Kings rise, kingdoms persist. In an infinite space, why shouldn't there be infinite kings? And in an endless game of chess, what better piece to be than a pawn? Relative to the life of an immortal, the lapse of judgment it takes for a pawn to ascend to queen is the blink of an eye. And kings fall. Yaksha Dokuja never wished to rule. Kingdoms yet persist, their old bones plain for everyone to see. And always, always, there is need for a wise man in a court of slavering buffoons. And always always, the cycle continues. It wasn't until the Renaissance that Yaksha could truly feed, and even then it was scant. He ate when he could, gorged when he felt the need. He spread himself across the world, learning as much of he could of the new and fascinating world. The world he wanted to be a part of. The world he had no intention of leaving. He met altogether too much competition, but he had grown good at running and better at lying. Albus had never found any need for rhetoric, but Yaksha Dokuja took to it like a fish to water. He finally began to settle in to the land of the living. Spiritually aware were no longer a mere pipe dream, no longer the exception to the rule. The process, slow though it was, was perfected and sharpened as time went on. Countless people of the time were illiterate, incompetent, and yet exceptionally good at taking orders. And so the time of witches and warlocks came to be. A time of those who spoke profanities against the world, and a time of veritable feast for a being such as Yaksha. And yet moreso than the souls he consumed, the simple experience of being part of something was infinitely sweeter. Finally a niche was found. Mankind expands, the world shrinks. Travel becomes a matter of hours rather than days. And the humans grow more clever, their minds expanded as easily as their territory. A man's grasp now exceeds his reach, and both far exceed the influence of a mere ghost of a man. It was centuries ago that Yaksha's influence began its true waning, with those who do meet him finding him little more than a peculiarity, another ghost amongst countless others. And so the angry dead grows angrier, goaded on by a potential eternity of neglect to look forward to. Speechless mouths open wide in wordless shrieks, and no one listens. Who cares for the mad ramblings of a monster, in a day and age when anyone can pluck out a million monsters from the fabric of history? Now they exist outside of time, too. Yaksha Dokuja is no longer a welcome presence. No longer truly even a spectacle. Now he is little more than a lingering memory, struggling to find relevance. Side Notes: Since that reads so ridiculously, let's go for a quick TL;DR: Yaksha's parents were infertile, so they made a deal with a hollow(?) to have a child. It possessed his father, so as to restructure his tubes so that he could have a child. The extreme hollow taint involved made him born albino, and extremely spiritually aware. Neither parent came out alright at the end, so he was adopted by the local church. There, he spent most of his time arguing religion with the pastor, pointing out none of it fit into the things he saw and heard. He was written off as a demon child, shoved into the archives to die, and survived by talking to ghosts for a while. He fell in love with the hollows he watched eating ghosts, and for -some- reason, likely related to his birth, was able to communicate with them without getting instantly eaten. He finally performed a ritual allowing a hollow to possess -his- body, and went on a wild ride around the town, killing and eating. When he was finally captured, and burned to death, his hollowfication was immediate, and he ate the hollow that had possessed him, thinking it would get an easy meal. Since then, he pretty much wandered the world. Roleplay Sample: How long had it been since Yaksha had fed without concern for propriety, or his status, or anything but the sheer thrill of the hunt? He'd spent so many months and years in the human world, getting by with scant morsels here and there, like a man living on bread and water. It had left him feeling irritable, unable to really think or hold a proper conversation lately. Everyone he met struck him as unbearably boring, and it seemed so very simple to just reach out and snuff them out, like someone pinching out a candle. But he knew that there was no good outcome to something like that; he'd eaten humans a few times, to be sure, but never without good cause, and never without some degree of guilt. In moments like these, with the thought of fresh blood and flesh yielding beneath his jaws, Yaksha went home. Now, as he skulked along the sands, he sensed it, only a few hundred yards off, on the other side of a dune. There were three hollows, all gathered around what seemed to be the decaying corpse of a Gillian. He began to subtly position himself atop the dune, moving with the skulking prowl of a predator who had no doubt whatsoever that it could strike down its prey in a single blow. He had already decided that, if any of them attempted to run, he'd simply let them; it wouldn't hurt that badly to lose one more meal, and the chances of some other scavenger coming to snag his kill before he could actually chow down was too high. So he clamored atop the dune, watching the three of them eating in absolute silence. It was odd, somehow triggering a sense of wrongness in Yaksha's head. Why should these three have some sort of camaraderie? Simply because they were all predators? Didn't any of them understanding what organic solidarity was? I've changed my mind. All three of them are going to die. If I don't get to feast, so be it. There's a lesson they must learn here. This thought completed, Yaksha launched himself from atop the dune, landing with both feet onto the back of the smallest hollow, which resembled an oversized housecat. He felt a satisfying crunch beneath his feet, and reached down with a claw to rake across its head, giving no opportunity for it to recover and join the fight that was to come. Between its now mangled eyes and its broken back, the beast would have no option but to sit there, listening on in pain and fear as Yaksha tussled with its two compatriots. A fitting torment for someone as pitiful as him. As he was leaning down, poised to tighten his jaws around the crippled hollow's neck and crush it, to savor the first taste of a new kill, to get his tanks full for the battle to come, he could already sense as much as see it, in a way that he likely could've never put to words. He leaned backwards, with a fluidity and queer bonelessness that few other creatures could've managed, leaning at very nearly a parallel line from the sands, to avoid an uppercut that had been aimed towards his head, intent to either knock it off entirely or leave him sprawled on the ground, easy prey for the second hollow. He let out a low, delighted chuckle, and lashed out with a foot towards this hollow, which resembled some strange mix between a ram and a gorilla; all thick, heavy slabs of muscle on its upper body, and giant curling horns. But its lower body was remarkably poorly-built, and a single well-placed kick left it flinching for a moment, and gave Yaksha all the time he needed to get back to a full standing position. "You do realize that the entire point of bipedal movement over quadrapedal is that you -don't- let your legs get hit, right?" He swayed backwards, kicking off of the disabled hollow to avoid another sweeping blow, this one telegraphed far in advance. He landed on the sand, and began to rake his clawed fingers through them, letting each individual grain slide against his scales, and focus his mind for the fight to come. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, carefully, watching as the creature took a four-legged stance, clearly prepared to pounce or charge. Pouncing was, in Yaksha's eyes, too stupid a move to contemplate seriously; any creature that size would find itself unable to push away from the ground long enough to get close to him, and even if it did it would need an extra second to orient itself. Easy shot. His tail coiled beneath himself, ready to lash out in the event something -did- come from above, as he met eyes with the meathead. After three seconds, it finally released an enormous bellow, and charged directly for Yaksha...who threw a handful of sand without any hesitation or fanfare, circling around it as the creature let out a snort of frustration and anger. He swiped down with his claw towards one of its tiny, unprotected legs, only for his tail to lash upwards at something he only barely actually saw, batting it aside and eliciting a hiss of irritation. His tail, stinging from the pain almost as if it had just struck a baseball going at 90 mph, had distracted him from an otherwise easy strike, and left his opponent time enough to plant both knuckles firmly on the ground, raising its back legs in a mule kick that once more may have killed him if he weren't quite so agile. Yaksha fell backwards entirely this time, as if he were about to land in water, and for a moment it looked like he was a perfect target for a follow-up strike, until his tail slammed into the ground hard enough to send him careening in a half-crescent, landing a good couple arms' lengths from the hollow. Too dim to realize this, the beast had already turned, and slammed its fist into the sands, sending up a puff of sand that obscured vision nicely. Yaksha, relatively unimpeded by this change, leapt forward, prepared to coil his tail around its throat and simply start choking it out. Once more, his plans were thwarted by a well-placed projectile, slamming into his back and robbing him of momentum. He ended up skidding across the sands, landing a few paces away from the ape-like hollow, and letting out another grunt of irritation. This time, he hadn't been prepared, and he could already guess why. Turning his head towards the sky, he could see a creature gliding past in a slow descent, a pair of flaps attached to its thin, spindly arms slowing its descent. He let out a small chuckle of delight at seeing that, and even clapped for a second, before he had to open his mouth in a huge, grotesque display that resembled a snake with its jaw unhinged, as he shot his head forward to take a bite out of the leg of the ape that had, in what it had probably thought was a great act of subtlety, had walked over within arms' reach as he was looking up. What did he think was going to happen? That I'd look back down, see his eyes, and say 'oh crap'? Oh, gods, this is what counts as my -peer- in this world. He gulped down the roughly fist-sized chunk of flesh he'd managed to tear off the ape hollow, and lashed out with his tail to redirect its fist ever so slightly, as he once more took to his feet. He could already see red fluids staining the sands, and the hollow's expression was one of mingled pain and confusion as it leaned forward for a headbutt. Yaksha never even bothered to dodge, instead simply kicking at its injured leg, forcing it to buckle and turning the forward motion into an oblique angle, that left him faceplanting into the dirt. This time, Yaksha took no chances, never letting his vision leave the sky as he raked across the creature's neck two, three, five times, letting more and more blood stain the sands, until he felt no more struggling. "Looks like your comrades weren't much good at all. Why are you even still here, hm? You can fly. Or glide, at least. And I can tell you're at least a bit more clever, or powerful, than those two are." "You're not nearly as clever as you think you are." "Oh, I disagree. My wits are so sharp, I sometimes fear cutting myself." The only reply to this was another projectile, this time from ground level, flung through the cloud of settling sand the hollow had created earlier. This one landed squarely on Yaksha's shoulder, turning the entire limb as numb as if he'd plunged it into cold water, and making him laugh hysterically. He rose his other hand, opening and closing it as if he were trying to wave, and walking slowly towards the cloud. "How many more of those can you throw? Two? Three? Even if it's five or six, it's a gamble. One-on-one now, and you don't dare try and toss another of those while I'm watching you. Fast they may be, but not so fast I can't see them coming. And frankly, your aim is shit. If I'm paying attention, you won't hit." "You talk too much." This said, another bala was launched, only for Yaksha to duck it entirely, and begin to clamor forward, through the gusts of sand, to see the adorably puff-cheeked hollow staring at him with absolute venom. It had already raised one of its arms in front of its torso and head, as if it were wielding a shield, eliciting a faint exhalation of polite interest from Yaksha, as he began to circle the hollow, trying to get behind it. The creature managed to keep pace with him, always keeping its limb between its vulnerable limbs and its opponent, as he seemed to examine it for some sort of weakness. "That's four. Getting a little worn out? Feeling your limbs grow heavy? My arm's fine, by the way. I can already flex my fingers a bit. I'm only going to get stronger, and you're only going to get weaker. You relied too much on your friends to keep your targets busy. You should've focused more on your aim, and then you might've been able to keep me from getting this close." "Shut up." Yaksha let out a loud, delighted cackle, raking both hands against the sand, before he rose to his full height, long greenish strands of hair leading off from the back of his head like moss. They began to twitch and writhe as he watched the hollow circling, its hand trembling ever so slightly. Keeping any limb steady at that level of elevation had to be exhausting, something that could only be held for a minute or two...and even if it swapped to its other hand, that left Yaksha with a split second to make his attack. He watched the tremors and the hesitation with rapt attention, tongue poking free from his mouth as he did, tail thrashing back and forth. He said nothing else, simply observed and waited. It was nearly five minutes before the hand started to descend, and at that exact moment Yaksha sprung with speed like a striking snake. The hollow, clever as it was, had already raised its other hand to protect its chest and head. But Yaksha's target was nowhere near the chest, or head. With as much speed as he could manage, he clamped his teeth around the descending arm, snapping the bones in it and jerking the creature forward. Stumbling and cursing, it met Yaksha's tail coming upwards, head slamming back into the dirt, as Yaksha let out a low crooning sigh. "God, dealing with hollows is such childs' play." "Then how about you deal with us, eh? It's the least you can do, after messing up our cute mascota." Crap. |
