The Great Aggravating Wolf [Prequel thread]

If there was one thing that Mirja prided herself on, it was the ability to annoy anyone who she came upon. She found it amusing, and loved to measure the reaction of each person to see how they dealt with getting annoyed. Both the action and the source of their annoyance. It was insightful, like the way she flirted to judge reactions. There was a lot more to her than what most people chose to see, and while it was annoying for her that some people saw the very tip of the iceburg and chose to focus on that entirely, there were other people that could see her for what she really was. And even further, people that she actually cared about and didn't flirt with or try to annoy because she already knew their persona. People like Ibiki, and Hayden, and Niflhiem. Especially Niflhiem. Or Rakki, as she was actually called. Rakkī yajirushi Date. Having been given the exact year, and knowing a lot of smart people, it wasn't hard to find the history surrounding her. Mirja hadn't looked into it too deeply, to avoid finding something that Rakki wanted to hide, but to know her full name was nice.

But, now was probably not the time to be getting distracted from what was going on, a thought that was reinforced when a mighty fist smashed into her face and took her off her feet. Hollow raiding party, surprisingly awesome leader of said raiding party, lives on the line, all that business. She needed to really fix her lack of focus one of these days. Or stop zoning out when she didn't see much in the way of brilliance for the fight she was currently in. And this guy, while pretty good for an Arrancar, wasn't amazing. She had started this fight by annoying the crap out of the Arrancar. Mostly by killing his Hollow pets, but also for calling into question his masculinity, and claiming that he had the Cero equivalent of erectile dysfunction when her Tundra Lotus tore through it with sublime ease, not even leaving a scratch on the Wolf's body. And that was when she sort of got distracted, leading to the punch.

"Do you know how much of a nightmare you people are?
Just appearing, ruining perfectly good plans, interrupting dinner, killing my dogs. I'm going to have to go out and get more Hollows and that means I'll get sneered at by my partners for losing them in the first place. But, if I come back with your head, that might lessen the blow " he rambled. Of course, because who wouldn't ramble in a moment like this? He had such a clear advantage, victory was only a matter of time for him.

This mindset, was not one held by Mirja, however, who got up, dusted herself off, checked her nose to make sure it wasn't bleeding, and then rolled her shoulders. She blew a kiss to the Arrancar and then closed the gap dramatically, sinking a mighty punch into his face and causing an intense feeling of Deja vu as he was blown off his feet and launched backwards, just as she was a few seconds ago. These kind of fights were always so fun. Like contests to see how far you could launch someone.

"Do you know how much fun you people are? Just appearing, crushed perceived thoughts of boredom and giving a girl like me something to do on such a dull day? I thought it would be a full day of meditation, not that I would be opposed to that. But then-" she was cut off by a need to shift herself out of the path of a Bala that was thrown at her. How rude, Arrancar these days had no respect. They monologued and Mirja let them, but as soon as she tried to return the favor, it was all flaming balls of death to the face. A storm of them where thrown in her direction, and then just as she had finished with the twisting and contorting to get out of their way - Grandstanding was for later - she heard him speak. Shame she didn't have the skill to use Shrieking Mountain Wind as a reply. Would have shocked the socks off him.
"Stampede! Rinox!". The release of the Arrancar's Ressecrection was interesting. This fight had finally become something that she could get into. Prepared now against any further attacks, she dropped into a fighting stance and watched him charge towards her.

His form was really well suited to charging, as he seemed to have turned into some hollowed approximation of a Rhino. He certainly had the speed for it, and his thumping feet implied a great deal of mass coming towards her, so she did the smart thing. Channeling her Qi to her fists Spawned her Tulpa arms and thrust them out, catching his rapid charge head on. Her muscles tensed and flexed, the coils snapping out explosively to stop the charge of this guy, but the floor was not so durable, and she was pushed back several feet until the built up sediment proved a solid enough barrier for her to truly stop him. He seemed outraged that she had stopped her, the real fists hitting him with more of the force of an attack than just stopping him. Hundred-Man Gauntleted Fists was always fun. Her palms had sunk into his gut, using his own momentum to assist her strength and knock the wind out of him. Then, following up she brought her Tulpa arms up to the horns on his head and dragged them down into an oncoming knee, rapidly activating Slepnir and firing off their engines to really drive the blow home. She felt his skull almost disintegrate from the blow.

The blows dazed him, knocked him punch-drunk and seeing stars. So she took advantage of the break and crouched, clenching her fist tightly before throwing herself upwards, colliding with his chin and launching him skywards. The magnificent Uppercut nearly tore the man's head off, and that was the end of the Rhino Man. Dissolving into nothing, she let her Tai Chi drift off and turned her attention inwards to see how much she had left. Burning Qi rather than Jing at a low level was something that exhausted her Dantian quickly, even with the Great Ocean Beast type, but she had enough if she had to clash with another right now. Returning to the village that had just been saved, she smiled, shook babies and kissed hands until she got where she was going in the first place. The herbalists shop. It was still intact, the owner still alive, so she dropped off her reagents and the money, and got him to make her an Elixer. She could make them herself, but her skill was still dubious, so she trusted the professionals to do it more. It was strange, how Dantian exliers seemed to be wide and common knowledge despite the fact that Dantians themselves were not. She wondered what they would do to someone who didn't cultivate. Maybe she'd feed Steiner one, and see the reaction. If he didn't explode, she'd have the reason.

He was pretty prompt, and Mirja took the Elixer, consuming it on the spot before going to the house of the mayor and enacting Stoic Meditation on the roof. It was better than making the several hour trek back home just to do this very same thing, and elixers were always most potent when taken immediately. There she sat, cultivating with the boon of the Elixer, and feeling a rise in herself as she refreshed her energy and looked to expanding the boundries. An elixer really did help at this low stage, and she could understand why so many people got the feedback of over-elixiering. This feeling was something you wouldn't want to restrain. But she did. The fight with the Rhino Man wasn't incredibly long or incredibly virile, but every little helped at her level, plus Martial Meditation was always faster than Stoic Meditation. So as she sat there, she felt herself hit a soft wall, made of jelly or something, and then ease through until she broke it, landing in the fourth level of Bronze. She was set to keep going, and get the most out of this elixier, but then she smelled something, heard something, and sensed something, all at the same time.

"There is a lack of Nix here. Did he get distracted or something?" A one armed man commented to the five companions he had. Dragging that amount of firepower to Earth must have meant there was some sort of plan going on. And Mirja loved plans, they made such a great sound when they went snap, crack, and then broke entirely. As a bonus, the man in front seemed to be Monsuier Drooler. Back from his flight on Mirja Air, this was a fantastic reunion. So Mirja closed the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and gifted him, a boot to the head. She even used Saigen to make sure it got through his thick Hierro. Nothing broke, so clearly he had been working out lately, but he still got launched off his feet and slammed into the ground with enough force to shake his brain. She blew a kiss to his five companions, and then took off, keeping her speed low so they could follow with their Sonido. Once they got clear of the village, Mirja stopped and was quickly surrounded in a very efficient formation.
'Need a hand? These guys look like they work well as a team' Hvit put in, but Mirja mentally shook her head.
'I got this' she replied, before deploying an elbow block for the first man who moved in, twisting her head out of the way of a kick from her back, and taking a blow to her kidneys. It wasn't all doom and gloom, she managed to bring down a knife-hand chop on the neck of the man right in front of her, and shatter every bone she came into contact with. The man dropped, but didn't dissolve. Which said something about the level of henchman that Drooler was hanging around with these days.

She broke out of their formation through the hole left by the now nearly dead guy and was rapidly overwhelmed by three Arrancar with radical co-ordination. If she was bigheaded, it would appear as if these guys were trained for her specifically. But she wasn't. Pushed off balance to much to use her Tulpa, she instead lashed out with a gambit, burning a great deal of Qi in the use of her Illusionary Palm and taking a hit from each of them as she dropped her defense. It worked, with the two off to the sides stopping their attack to aid in the defense of the third, and successfully deflecting all of them. But the sheer force that was behind the real palm knocked the middle Arrancar off balance for a second, and Mirja capitalized on that second to blast his chest with a mighty punch from her free hand. He was lifted off his feet by the force of the blow, but before he landed he was grabbed by one of the others and all three Sonido'd away just in time to avoid the Cero that caught Mirja full in the face, and was rapidly backed up by two more Ceros, creating a triplex of Ceroy Goodness that would have really stung, even someone of Mirja's power.

But, Mirja was no longer there. The Co-ordination Cero would instead fry her Shihakusho as she uterlized Utsusemi to escape and then obliterated the man who had fired the first Cero with her Fangs of the Wind. The hit was so dramatic and so powerful that, aided by the wind, there was hardly anything left to dissolve. They didn't waste any time and were on her in a heart beat, the Arrancar that she had nailed with her punch back in the game and oppressing her once again. She couldn't do anything but step backwards and deflect the admittedly very well done assault. The three of them all covered one another, making a perfect net of which there was no escape from. There they met an impasse. Mirja was fast enough and skilled enough to deflect the attacks from the three, but had no opening to pull back and no chance to push forwards. Even with her incredible speed , the three would get a hit in when she took off, and would follow her without missing a beat. And besides, she wasn't going to run from a fight. That would cripple her reputation. So instead she took an offensive defense and rapidly charged God Bashing Blows into her fists, turning a block into a bone-crushing offense.

It seemed to piss the Arrancar off, as he charged her and tried to tackle her. Not having the footing or the strength to actually knock her off her feet, she took it as some sort of suicide gesture to grant an opening to the other two. But they Sonido'd off, implying the same Cero tactic that they had pulled last time. And with the guy latching on to her, there would be no escape this time. The difference was that it was initialized by Drooler, who had really been working out, as he slammed her with a Gran Rey Cero. She was good, she was a sturdy girl, but that level of fire power was something even she couldn't resist while pinned like this. And so she got the full brunt of it. The Arrancar latching to her screamed in pain and dissolved, before she was caught in the crossfire of two more standard Cero. Her skin seered and her body screamed from the pain. She had managed to get her arms up in time to protect her face, but by the time it had ended, they where hissing. Her Territorial Tulpa cleaned up after the attack had ended - it seemed to require a different kind of mindset to the rest of her Tulpa, probably because it was specifically designed for in combat, where as Tulpas were not technically combat techniques, more adapted to be combat techniques - but it never could handle pain.

'Now are you going to let me help?' Hvit asked. Mirja rapidly agreed to that, but before she managed to pull the mask on, she got kicked in the head from one side, a fist under the chin from another, and then Drooler appeared and slammed her into the ground with a vicious heel kick. While Mirja's raw speed was superior, they seemed to be synergizing to a brilliant degree, and that pushed her back with their tactical superiority. Kept her flat-footed and prevented her from using all her abilities. By this point her self control had slipped entirely, and the Beast of Gevaudan oozed out of the mental cage she kept it in, saturating the air with an undiluted bloodlust. An unhinged, nearly psychopathic desire to rip, and tear, and crush, and maul. The sudden feeling caused the two incoming Arrancar to pause for a moment, the deep and foreboding Fear that rippled from her tickling the most primal part of their minds. And with that pause Mirja took advantage, grabbing them both by their throats and slamming their skulls into each other, in a delightful sound of crushing bone and splattering gray matter. She crushed their throats just to be sure and then donned Hvit.

"Well, Drooler. You've succeeded in pissing me off. I will admit there are easier, less painful ways to die. But few are more glorious" She told him, her voice distorted by the Hollow Mask into something straight out of a Nightmare. It was at this moment that he knew, he'd fucked up. So he rapidly drew his sword and spoke quickly.
"Solidify, Kabe" And then she was on him. Like a raging tornado, a rampaging valance, he survived her initial rush only thanks to his Ressurection. He had grown in stature, and immensely in bulk, becoming akin to some sort of hollowfied wall of muscle more than anything. It drove Mirja's anger because it reminded her of Caanan's Trolls. Enhanced by Hvit, each of Mirja's fists were like bolts of lightning, crashing against the ground. She was merciless, and relentless, each blow thrown with her full might and with the desire to kill. The Arrancar affectionately called Drooler was being slowly warn down, his mighty Hierro and his great form indented deeper with each blow from the Wolf. He tried to strike out, to regain his footing, but was met with Mirja's elbow shattering his knuckles. His howl of pain was brought to new heights when a cripplingly precise kick hit his kneecap and split his leg in half. He fell half way to the ground before being caught by Mirja's hand around his throat.

"Goodnight" She told him, before using Tundra Scream to explosively enhance her strength, and then tearing his head clean off, taking the spine with it. It was a vicious execution, and one that was immensely satisfying for her. Discarding the head, she took off the Mask and caught her breath. That, was a good fight. And while riding the coat-tails of her Elixer, she had broken through into the fifth level of Bronze. Soon, she'd have quite a bit of power to play with, if she could push through into Silver. Her celebration was cut short when she heard something, but when she got to the location of the sound, all there was was a closing Garganta. Well, fine, they could keep their secrets. She was off home.