Making All Your Bleach AU Dreams Come True

[leekspins]

Player Plot: Hollow Souls

Premise

Some people believe that the spirits of their departed loved ones still watch over them, and protect them from harm. And occasionally that's true! A soul that hasn't passed over may very well choose to linger in the world of the living, maybe to look after their surviving friends and family, or maybe because they just can't let go of what was important to them in life.

But there's danger for the dead who still try to cling to the living. There's a daemon that dwells in this world, one skilled in deception and knowing when to lay low and avoid being hunted, that can devour the hearts of these lonely souls and twist them into monsters that serve his greed and lust for power. These souls are signified by two ever-present markers: a hole in the chest where their heart no longer anchors them, and a horrible white mask to hide their identities. Otherwise, their bodies and abilities vary wildly. Some can spit acid; others carry a bounty of parasitic creatures that latch onto their victims and explode. These hollowed souls are driven to fill the empty void inside of them, craving the hearts of other souls to devour in a vain attempt to restore what was lost.

And they always come after their loved ones first.

Hollows and You!

WHO CAN GET INVOLVED: Anyone who's ever lost a loved one, whether a family member, friend, or bae, can choose to have a hollow version of the dead pursue your character. If your character has a perfectly happy life with no dead people to angst over, you can still participate. Surely you know someone in the school who DOES have a tragic backstory. Hollow souls can be jealous of their relative's living friends and attack them too in an attempt to isolate their target. Or maybe the hollow soul just isn't picky about who it eats -- when you're starving, everyone looks like a roast chicken dinner.

But what if your character is already dead? WHAT THEN? Well...in that case, the daemon might be very interested in trying to make you one of his hollows, and you can contact me personally to get hella attacked.

WHAT TO EXPECT: Players will be in charge of playing their own hollow souls, but I'll be handling the daemon himself. He's sly, cautious, and unlikely to attack students where he can be seen and/or slain. But those who sneak out after curfew, or hang out in town without supervision, are easy prey. Not only is he capable of devouring souls to turn them into Hollows, he can also make copies of his previous victims appear to wander about and lure meals straight to him. This daemon is extremely dangerous solely because he's smart, but he's not the most powerful creature on the block. He's only been around for fifty years or so, and gains power by devouring souls -- the stronger the soul, the greater his power increase. Eventually he plans on eating his minions whole instead of just their hearts and thus destroying them permanently once they're strong enough to imbue him with a decent amount of power.

Players can take a lot of liberties for how their own threads are played out. A hollow can be restored to sanity if they're significantly shaken by an act of pure love that brings them to their senses. However, unless the daemon is destroyed, they won't be guaranteed to regain their hearts. A restored hollow may linger around their loved ones to protect them, but they're in danger from that point on of being attacked and eaten by the daemon, or even reverting to their monstrous desires if they suffer too much sadness or anger.

The daemon's defeat will be played out once one of two possible conditons are met: One, that it just happens ICly. A faculty member or sufficiently strong student might have just the right powers to kick his cowardly ass and put an end to everything prematurely. Two, when everyone's had time to play out their hollow threads and are ready for a satisfying conclusion to the plot, I'll arrange it so everyone who suffered as a result of his wicked deeds has a chance to go after him as a group and either kill him or drive him back into hiding to possibly emerge again in a future plot.

WHEN WILL THIS TAKE EFFECT: Any time starting now! Each player can handle things at their own pace, and the attacks don't all have to come at once. It could be weeks or months before a hollow ever crosses someone's path. As long as the daemon is alive, he can keep making more hollow souls. Even if he is defeated and you didn't want to miss out, he made plenty of hollows that can still be encountered and that may have eaten enough souls that his death didn't affect the status of their missing hearts. And really, who's to say that's the only daemon capable of hollowing a soul? :3

WHERE WILL THESE THINGS HAPPEN: Anywhere, anytime. The daemon isn't stupid enough to wander freely around campus where a billion well-trained hunters will gut him for lunch, but the other hollows might be too hungry to care about the consequences. You might even run into a hollow while on a mission in another country!


Feel free to plot out emotional and action-packed encounters with each other by leaving a comment. There will also be a comment for those who want to be attacked by the daemon himself!

Comments

Orihime's Brother: Acid Wire

[leekspins]

Orihime's dealings with a hollow relative will share some similarities with canon. But it's definitely not going to follow those events beat per beat, because that's boring and uninspired. So even though I have a general outline, these are just suggestions, and I am wide open to having things go awry!

Phase One: Orihime's brother, Sora, has finally managed to track her down in France. His ultimate goal is to kill her but he doesn't want to eat her soul. He just wants to be reunited because he's lonely. So he'll start causing accidents to work the subtlety angle: she'll be seen with bruises, get hit by cars (WHY PLURAL???), fall down flights of stairs, etc. It'll just seem like she's exceptionally clumsy and accident prone. At this point characters can prevent her from being killed by these totally random accidents and keep her from breaking her neck. To most it would seem she's just unlucky, but it wouldn't be OOC to start getting suspicious after a while, especially since one of the ugly mottled bruises to show up on her leg looks kind of like she got grabbed by a big hand with fingers inches wide.

Phase Two: Eventually he'll just straight up attack her. During this phase, he'll lash out in jealousy against anyone who has positive CR with Orihime. The closer she is to that person, the more brutal he'll be. Someone like Tatsumaki, her best friend, is someone he'll want to rip apart. At the end of this phase, he's likely to just grab Orihime and flee into the woods with her, and she might be missing for quite some time --- days, weeks, even months. Or it could be just a few minutes. That's up to her CR!

Phase Three: The final showdown. This one is absolutely open as far as outcomes and events go. He'll try to kill whoever Orihime loves most (platonically or romantically) if they come for her, and Orihime will absolutely throw herself in front of that person to save them and try to convince her brother to come to his senses. Unlike canon, Sora is not guaranteed a happy ending. It could happen, of course. Orihime didn't have her powers to redeem him in the canon version, but in this one, she does. If Sora is killed before she can get closure for the guilt she's carried, that could have some long-lasting and even permanent consequences for her. In short, plot things out, and I'll see if I can accommodate everyone involved so they get at least one cool moment for their characters.

[shockingblue]

I'm definitely down for having GV do stuff in Part One with her, either by being a bystander to an accident and giving her a hand, or to outright stopping a particularly dangerous one. And it'd work great for the thread they already have going, because it would convince GV to double down on getting her some kind of magical runic protection to help blunt any injuries she gets from mishaps.

...Good thing those materials at the workshop are covered by tuition, as it happens.

If GV and Orihime continue becoming good friends after that, I'd be down for a phase two attack against him as well. And he'd probably go after Sora when he takes Orihime, but Phase 3 can be talked about more in-depth later when their CR shapes up more too.

[leekspins]

I consent to all of these things, that sounds really fun! And the more time they spend hanging out where he does cool things, the more she'll chatter about to her brother's picture to ignite jealousy later on, so he can be there for as many phases as you like!

[tsunderetornado]

Tatsumaki will be all over this, and to allow for more opportunity for Orihime to be missing longer (ie. at least a day), perhaps his violent lashing out can result in Tatsumaki being KOed? Then in the ensuing chaos, people can be trying to protect unconscious Tatsumaki from him along with trying to keep him from taking Orihime.

She is absolutely going to go against any medical advice to stay behind when they go to rescue Orihime, but if she's concussed it will definitely impact her battle performance.

[leekspins]

Oooo, that could be awesome. And Orihime would be frantic to get back and use her powers to heal her, so that'll cause some double anxiety. But yes you can expect Tatsumaki to play some pretty big parts for pivotal events in this!

[tsunderetornado]

Maybe she can try to contact/locate Orihime using her psychic abilities when she wakes up and can semi-focus, but since she's concussed it's like having a crappy radio signal? So she might get 'forest' out of the attempt, but anything more specific than that would have to be left to people who can track via scent or magic.

[leekspins]

Yeah, that'd be neat! Orihime would be able to know how far away everyone else is, but would have a hard time relaying that information. She also might be trying to convince her brother to just freaking chill because she doesn't want him to get hurt or destroyed, and she also wants to know how the heck this even happened to him.

Phase two

[nevernoaction]

I am for Ren trying to defend Orihime if that's necessary. Or him attempting to see if his powers work on Hollows!

Re: Phase two

[leekspins]

I would LOVE that! Honestly his powers could be extremely important when dealing with other people's hollows to give them moments of clarity and peace to realize 'wtf am i doing i'm trying to kill my own sister D8' So he'll have some great moments to shine!

[nevernoaction]

I added my own thing here since you pointed out that Ren would be rather helpful! But this will be a good if scary test.

[spelleton]

hey asshole that's my intern you're making off with

I imagine Ekkehardt would have been teaching Orihime for a little bit but due to him being the way he is, their bond is probably pretty formal at this stage, though due to being a student he is fond of her in his usual detached way. I don't know how Orihime's brother would react to that exactly but it'd be a fun way to kickstart their CR

so tl;dr i can put him wherever you want for maximum drama/cr-building. MAYBE SHE FINDS OUT HE'S A SKELETON AFTER HE WILLINGLY PUTS HIMSELF IN HARM'S WAY FOR HER, WHO KNOWS.

[leekspins]

True, she's pretty respectful and polite around her teachers. Her healing power hasn't been tested all that much so it's probably still low enough that it wouldn't raise any eyebrows (or skull ridges) yet, but I'm hoping that changes in the future. Their CR could be improved in a couple of ways that she'd start to speak positively about him. Helping her find out more about how her power works (she assumes it's healing and doesn't yet recognize that she's rejecting the effects of an event and restoring someone to an earlier point before they were injured), and if anyone ever freaks out about those powers or makes an off-handed remark (no human should be able to do something like that) which leads to questioning her humanity... Those are two big points that would be fun for her to deal with.

Also she'll think it's cool that he's a skeleton. And she'll definitely be stunned if he tries to shield her from something (and ashamed that she didn't use her own shielding power). I am down for this!

Re: Orihime's Brother: Acid Wire

[unpocoloco]

Idk what, if anything Héctor will be able to help with but I'm invested in him being invested in hime so hopefully something!! Worrying seems the most likely since he's not the best with combat stuff.

[leekspins]

Depending on what he's also dealing with from Grand Fisher at the same time, he'd definitely help her out by letting her know what's going on. With the mask and weird form, she wouldn't know right off the bat that he's her brother for one thing. I'll definitely find a way for Hector to do something useful or cool. Especially if he winds up playing the surrogate dad role, that would make Sora intensely jealous at being replaced.

[unpocoloco]

Letting her know should definitely happen and that'll be fun for him to explain how he can apparently see the dead. Honestly he might try and like. Message pass between sora and her in a really vague way BEFORE things go to shit because. damn. been in that shitty Not-able-to-reach-out spot. Awkward and painful dead ahead.

but Fuck Yes at the surrogate dad-ing. And if she knows he's dead he could at least, idk, do something with all his splitting apart tricks to distract Wire for a good .2 seconds before trying to run with hime.

[leekspins]

Hooray for learning hidden secrets! Let's do it! Also, let me know when you want him to meet Sora, and I can set up a thread or a log!

[unpocoloco]

I am good to go whenever! You just link me to whatever you set up.

[leekspins]

Booyah!

[hippocarnival]

Yuya likes orihime enough to keep hanging out with her, so he might catch onto the weird accidents and maybe get pulled in thinking maybe she needs a bit on an eye on her to help her? Esp when it escalates to nearly hit with a car, lol.

[leekspins]

Sounds good to me! I'll make sure he gets some quality time with the dead brother too.