Etude for My Funeral [Violet, Verdada]

"I'm making believe that you're in my arms
Though I know you're so far away
Making believe I'm talking to you
Wish you could hear what I say"

How much time had she spent working on scaling this down?
All those dead test subjects. Figuring out how to filter it. Reduce it. Adjusting the intensity. Thanks to all of that testing, as well as Catherine's involvement, she'd managed to find as way not just to control the severity of the effects, but she had a good idea of how to apply safety measures.

Next she had worked on scaling it up. Finding out just how much energy she could crank to deal as much mental damage as possible. Of course she hadn't QUITE expected that Snake to show up and go leaving her with a little present. She'd already spent the better half of the day dissecting the area that she'd been bitten and studying the remnants of reiryoku that clung to the flesh. But that was a project she'd have to continue later. She'd scaled up. She'd scaled down. Now it was time for work on control.

"And here in the gloom of my lonely room
We're dancing like we used to do
Making believe is just another way of dreaming
So till my dreams come true"

A nice busy Japanese city. Takamasu. Sure, huge portions of it were all fucked to hell. What city didn't have major damage these days? But she found herself a nice little cosy corner. Not in the center, but with enough traffic for her purposes. She sat on the corner of the street and smiled to herself. She sang as she gently tuned her guitar as she eyed the intersection infront of her. The objective of this experiment was to work on focus and targeting. She'd manipulated her voice before. Now was a matter of seeing if she could effect an intended area, but leave others within earshot unaffected.

She set her eyes on the line of cars that was watching a group of businessmen cross the road and smiled just a bit wider. She finished tuning her car and her voice rose just a little, and in that moment, she focused her voice towards that line of cars. A slight tingle forming in her chest as her spiritual energy seeped into the words.

"I'll whisper "Good night", turn out the light, and kiss my pillow
Making believe it's you"

The effect wasn't immediate, sat first they simply sat there, along with a few bystanders, and she briefly felt a tinge of annoyance. Where those outside of the zone being effected? She'd made so many adjustments... But eventually those that had stopped just kept moving.

And then a sound of a revving engine cut through the silence. Just as those businessmen started to cross, one of the cars gunned the engine and slammed straight into the crowd. A sudden panicked cry spread out and shot through the people nearby in fear and shock, as that car streaked into the intersecting traffic, and promptly was shanked by a passing bus. And before anyone could do any more than scream, several more of the targeted drivers gunned it into the traffic or the existing accident. A few of them promptly beginning to bash their heads into their own driver-side windows. Slowly turning their faces into bloody pulps as they dashed themselves to death against the hard glass.

The smile on Verdada's face widened just a little even as she stopped playing. A few more drivers had been effected than she'd intended. But this was so much better than she'd expected this to go~

Violet scrolled through her phone while walking along the sidewalk down the street when the sound of screeching tires caught her attention. She looked up to see cars going nuts, driving into crowds without a care. She was lucky enough not to be the direction they were going, but the scene was horrific. People scattered, screamed, or they were being hurt. Normally, Violet’s instincts would have told her to run, but no, not this time. She was done with running away when she could help people.

As more cars drove into crowds, something pinged at the back of Violet’s mind. She wasn’t that good at this, but she could have sworn she sensed something. She made it to an alley and it was like something crawled up her left side. Looking down they alley, she saw a woman with a guitar sitting there with a wicked smile on her face. There was something about, specifically in that smile… ‘She did this, didn’t she?’

Violet's phone was already in hand, so she raised it and rapidly snapped a picture of the woman. Turning on her heel, Violet began run-... No, she stopped and turned back to the woman down the alleyway. If she ran, this woman could get away, and if she really was the cause of that chaos... she needed to be dealt with. "You did this, didn't you?" Violet called out, pressing record on her phone though it only hung casually from her hand. "I felt your energy when those people began driving into crowds. What exactly do you think you're doing here?"

"Everything Stays, right where you left it. Everything stays, but it's still changing.
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly,
In little ways, everything-"

Her brows raised slightly, having moved on to the next song, she paused when she looked up and spotted some edged out little harlot staring at her. A phone? She lowered her guitar for a moment and gave a blank look to the woman as they gave that biting accusation. She glanced past them for a moment and furrowed her brows a bit at the absolute wreck that was at the intersection before her attention drifted back to the girl, and then their phone? She rolled her eyes and chuckled softly at that, a sigh spilling out of her as she raised a hand, showing off the hole in her palm. The one that marked her an arrancar.

"Look kid I'm just playing music for cash. Nobody wants to hire me ever since that fucking shit in the COL. If you wanna get your little views harrassing arrancar, can ya pick someone else?" She responded with a voice that was heavy with fatigue, letting the circles under her eyes really show as she raised both hands in surrender. Tired, downtrotted. And it wasn't like she looked well kept either. She practically looked homeless, especially with the guitar setup.

Violet stopped about ten feet from the woman, assuming it was enough distance to get a confession heard on her phone. “I highly doubt that, especially since I could sense your energy all the way from the street,” Violet said confidently. Her confidence wavered, however, when the woman mentioned something about "views." Raising an eyebrow, Violet placed a hand on her hip. “Views?” she asked, genuinely confused. She wasn’t pretending to be innocent—she had simply not realized that she had been caught so easily. The idea of recording this conversation didn’t even register as something like filming for a YouTube video.

Verdada ignored that question and looked back down to her guitar, continuing to gently tune the instrument. "It's called spiritual pressure, any creature strong enough gives it off. Never been good at suppressing mine." She noted tiredly. Adjusting the tune ever so slightly. But mentally, she was focused on that phone.

"Should I say hi to your little stream? Tch. I know you humans are still getting used to us being around. But my advice: If you ever ACTUALLY find an arrancar doing no good. You know, instead of trying to frame them. You better run. Most arrancar aren't as weak as I am. And they'll just peel you open like a banana if you annoy them." She murmured, certainly her recent run in with Safira? This girl would be paste if she tried pulling something like that. She clearly wasn't very smart. But good. If this really was a stream, if she embarrassed her enough, they'd just stop streaming.

"Stream?” Violet questioned, once again genuinely confused, but this time she pushed it off when the “frame” comment came about. The "stream" she mentioned was probably yet another thing she didn't get because of her idiotic childhood. Oh well. “So, you’re expecting me to believe that it wasn’t your spiritual pressure, Arrancar, that just caused those people to go crazy and drive their cars into a crowd full of innocent people? I highly doubt that. Besides, that sadistic look on your face when I entered the alley was evidence enough for me.”

Violet raised the phone to face this woman for a few seconds. Doing so, she got the woman's appearance recorded. "Even if I'm wrong, I'll be reporting this anyway. Then, if you're seen at another incident like this, they'll be able to connect it to you. If I'm wrong though, you clearly have nothing to worry about." Violet ended the video and shoved the phone back in her pocket. Not stupid enough to turn her back on an Arrancar though, Violet began backing away, keeping her eye on the woman.

So. She wasn't streaming this.

She gently finished turning the machine head on her guitar, a slight adjustment to the tuning as she closed her eyes and lightly ran her fingers along the strings. "Lets say you were right. You think, that someone who can use their spirit energy to make something like that happen, is someone you should ... walk up to and confront?" She asked with a tilt of her head, her voice dropping an octave as she stared the woman dead in the eyes, a calm smile returning to her face after a few seconds as she chuckled to herself. "If I really did do all that, don't you think you'd be dead? You really should be more careful." She hummed, gently strumming her guitar a few times, pausing as she seemed to find a melody she liked. Before she began to sing.

"The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life are free
The stars belong to everyone
They gleam there for you and me"

The melody was incredibly old. It was likely a song that the woman probably didn't even recognize, but then again. That wouldn't be the greatest of the concerns. She was still working on directionality. But with them this close to eachother? It wasn't hard to focus all of that energy on Violet. It would be subtle at first. But slowly, and terrifyingly, her energy would resonate through those lulling notes, infused with her aspect of death to instill an instinct that usually only ever was triggered in times of sheer and unadulterated desperation. When one recognized that they were not going to make it, and that others might be in danger. In even the simplest of social beasts, this instinct existed, to isolate themselves in the ultimate way.

Suicide.

And in that moment, Verdada slooooowly pushed up the intensity of her spirit energy in her song, to see at just what point the girl would start to succumb to it's influence.

That sounded and looked like a threat. The direct eye contact made Violet feel very uncomfortable, like she clearly made a mistake. She should have never approached this woman. “I, uh…” she stuttered, slowly pulling her phone back out, planning to just call the police out right. However, the woman began to sing and something shifted…

'But why...' Violet thought as she was so suddenly overwhelmed but an old feeling, an urge to just end her existence here and now. Why not? If she finally didn't exist, everyone she knew would be better off... especially Vanyel. The weapon appeared in her left hand, in the simple form of a pistol. Violet brought the gun up, placing the barrel under her raised chin, sliding in index finger over the trigger... 'He'll be fine...'

The melody rang clean and true, and in truth, she was enjoying the flow of the song, and it was only when she heard the click of the hammer prepping that she glanced up and spotted the look on Violet's face, that hollow, bored out look. The emptiness that had struck her so deep. It was fascinating to see it up close. Usually it was so violent. Hollows would tear themselves to pieces. The drivers had slammed themselves into crashing. She'd never had one of her subjects have an available avenue that was so ..... easily viewed. Truth be told, she had expected the girl to turn around and start bashing her head against the nearest wall, how lovely that she had such a graceful means of ending herself.

"And love can come to everyone
The best things in life are free"

And just as she was putting pressure on that trigger, Verdada stood up, and that song was just.... a song. She continued to sing, and as she did, she moved in and gently shifted her guitar, using the head to lift Violet's chin, forcing them to look her in the eye as eliminated the flow of spiritual energy, allowing that instinct to subside within the woman, and she watched them closely. Curious to see. Would she know what had happened? She had more or less deigned that it operated off instincts, so she presumed that there would be no loss of memory or confusion. It would simply be as if Violet realized exactly what she had almost done. But well... predictions and practice sometimes didn't match up, and so she watched the girl very closely as she gave that chin another tip with her guitar. Smiling as she finished the song and reached up, gently grasping the woman's chin.

"I think you should think about your actions sweetie~ I've been saving up for a phone you know. S'why I'm out here singing my songs. But yours looks real nice. Why don't you hand it over?" She ventured, tilting her head, as she then let her hands drop back down, resting over the strings. "Or... should I sing another song to make it worth your while?~"

That smile widened.

Right as she was about to end it all, the feeling was suddenly gone. The shift sent chills all over her body and her breathing became heavy. She looked down to the pistol, her hand shaking. 'Why did I just... I thought I was over all that. I was doing so well, so why... ' she thought, her gaze slowly rising to face Verdada as the woman spoke again. Violet hated the look on her face. 'It had to have been her... What a horrid...'

Violet's eyes widened in horror, her phone slipping from her hands as if she relented it to this woman. The rush of fear Violet felt when she realized what kind of abilities this woman must hold sent Violet rushing out of the alleyway. In a full panic, heart racing, Violet darted from the alley, utilizing a rather pathetic steigen to help her reach the street. From there, Violet kept running, leaving the insanity of the situation behind...