Post by Kufuku Wasureo on Aug 12, 2021 11:45:52 GMT -8
This was about as close to breaking the rules as he had come.
The silence was an old friend of his, like so many other things. His eyes didn't even need to be open for him to find his way through these woods. Not that they were all the same, but the deep woods of the Appalachian sung to him in ways things sometimes did for patrols. Under his foot he felt the remnants of a gouge in the wood. His gouge. Reaching out with his hand to the right, he felt similar faded scars in the bark of the pine and smiled. His thumb curled a bit, digging into the scaled bark and keeping the wound fresh. "Maybe this was one of my favored haunts in the most recent?"
Of course there was no response for him, but Rei didn't expect any at this point. Even if there had been some words, they would have meant nothing to him right now. Such was the way.
The shinigami reached into his pocket and pulled free what looked to be a small stone, oblong and a little flat. He pressed against one of the faces of it, and felt it warm in his hand as the circuits and machinery rumbled to life at his command. This little thing was the only reason he wasn't strictly breaking the rules right now. The routine was simple. The ninth collected data on hollow appearances, the twelfth analyzed the data to come up with potential locations of nests or gateways, gave this information back to the ninth who then passed it on to the eleventh to assign a patrol or hunting party for the area. All he'd done was ride along with the data after its analysis this time. He hadn't lied. The twelfth had something new for testing by those with weak detection. A small and inconspicuous device that worked to detect the spiritual wavelength of hollows and silently inform its carrier with vibrations or heat. The heat was actually just a byproduct of the machine's workings, but they figured the increase in heat was about as good an indicator as anything else.
He was supposed to pass this off to the eleventh for field testing, but left that out of his explanation. Instead he'd just handed over a couple other prototypes and held on to one himself. It was not unheard of to test inventions out manually after all. And he had to come up with some excuse to be out here. If you look at a picture of a possible hollow haunt and think 'home', you followed that instinct.
At least, that was his way.
It was a hollow, right? Not just some other spiritually heightened beast that had a taste for human flesh? The points of attack were spread across the globe, but the pattern was the same. If it was just a beast, it had a means of getting around as good as any hollow. This area actually had some of the fewest disappearances that could be associated with this style of attack and had been overlooked as a possible main den for the creature. It made sense. Better to hunt close to home so that you could escape to safety quickly if things didn't go your way. But instinct still told him different. He knew himself, even the most basic hollows were not as stupid as the shinigami would have him believe. If you could tear open the fabric of the world and step wherever you pleased, why would you keep your kills close to home?
Just made it easier for other hunters to find you.
"Even if nothing's here, its nice to be back home for a little while." Rei mused. "The smell of this place, the sounds . . . I might actually remember something concrete this time."
The silence was an old friend of his, like so many other things. His eyes didn't even need to be open for him to find his way through these woods. Not that they were all the same, but the deep woods of the Appalachian sung to him in ways things sometimes did for patrols. Under his foot he felt the remnants of a gouge in the wood. His gouge. Reaching out with his hand to the right, he felt similar faded scars in the bark of the pine and smiled. His thumb curled a bit, digging into the scaled bark and keeping the wound fresh. "Maybe this was one of my favored haunts in the most recent?"
Of course there was no response for him, but Rei didn't expect any at this point. Even if there had been some words, they would have meant nothing to him right now. Such was the way.
The shinigami reached into his pocket and pulled free what looked to be a small stone, oblong and a little flat. He pressed against one of the faces of it, and felt it warm in his hand as the circuits and machinery rumbled to life at his command. This little thing was the only reason he wasn't strictly breaking the rules right now. The routine was simple. The ninth collected data on hollow appearances, the twelfth analyzed the data to come up with potential locations of nests or gateways, gave this information back to the ninth who then passed it on to the eleventh to assign a patrol or hunting party for the area. All he'd done was ride along with the data after its analysis this time. He hadn't lied. The twelfth had something new for testing by those with weak detection. A small and inconspicuous device that worked to detect the spiritual wavelength of hollows and silently inform its carrier with vibrations or heat. The heat was actually just a byproduct of the machine's workings, but they figured the increase in heat was about as good an indicator as anything else.
He was supposed to pass this off to the eleventh for field testing, but left that out of his explanation. Instead he'd just handed over a couple other prototypes and held on to one himself. It was not unheard of to test inventions out manually after all. And he had to come up with some excuse to be out here. If you look at a picture of a possible hollow haunt and think 'home', you followed that instinct.
At least, that was his way.
It was a hollow, right? Not just some other spiritually heightened beast that had a taste for human flesh? The points of attack were spread across the globe, but the pattern was the same. If it was just a beast, it had a means of getting around as good as any hollow. This area actually had some of the fewest disappearances that could be associated with this style of attack and had been overlooked as a possible main den for the creature. It made sense. Better to hunt close to home so that you could escape to safety quickly if things didn't go your way. But instinct still told him different. He knew himself, even the most basic hollows were not as stupid as the shinigami would have him believe. If you could tear open the fabric of the world and step wherever you pleased, why would you keep your kills close to home?
Just made it easier for other hunters to find you.
"Even if nothing's here, its nice to be back home for a little while." Rei mused. "The smell of this place, the sounds . . . I might actually remember something concrete this time."
