Case 3 :: We could be Heroes(Raphael) [Open pm first]

Vance felt good. He was stretching his arms over his head and he had his usual accompaniment of stuff and things. He got out of his rental car at the Police Headquarters at K City and rolled his shoulders. Twice he had been called into the place for something that couldn't be explained. Though it was Vance's job to explain it away with bullshit so now he was walking back into the building with a yawn. Officer Akai was in her office and she looked at Vance really annoyed. Vance gave her a glare as she got up and walked over to him. "You won't believe this." She said as she looked him over and handed him a file.

Vance opened the document and looked at it. "Oh, I totally do." The madman said cackling as he read the names of the witness list again. "Where did you put him?" Vance asked the officer as he laughed to himself and looked her over. She pointed to the interrogation room across the hall and Vance smirked happily. He walked over to the interrogation room and put down his case to open the door and walk inside, sliding the case in front of him as he laughed hysterically.

He pulled out his phone and turned on his White Noise Generator as he looked at the man cuffed to the desk. "GREAT to see you again, Mister Laurent." Vance said laughing and smirking happily as he pulled out his laptop and put it on the table. "Tell me something I want to hear. Cause I have a feeling this has to be a much better story." Vance said tossing the photos on the desk after his laptop was set up.

~Items ::
Ginto (3) :: Extra Shots (1) :: Pill (2) :: Phone (1) :: Laptop (1) :: SeeleX1 (2)

Well, Raphael’s luck had to run out sooner or later, though admittedly he’d been hoping it would be later as opposed to sooner. He wasn’t sure if the firemen, random passersby or Joe, Sam and/or Harold had been the ones that had told the police, or anyone else, what had happened, but after many misadventures, he’d finally been caught. The charges, of course, were completely idiotic: arson, willful destruction of private property, despite Raphael explaining that he’d worked there for the last several months and practically owned the place. They hadn’t cared. What mattered was that the human whose eyes had glowed purple had been arrested and the potential nightmare for Karakura would soon be closed.

He’d tried explaining that it hadn’t been him, that gangs must’ve started the fire while they were in there, a story which apparently Sam had corroborated, but it hadn’t mattered. They didn’t really want him for the destruction of the warehouse, what they wanted was to see the man that had ripped the warehouse off its foundation behind bars. He wasn’t looking forward to it, after all, officer Akai had been the one to assist in his processing. If there was anything that he wanted to use his powers for, it was to wipe that smug grin off of her face. He didn’t understand why she had to be such a bitch about the fact that he was back.

Yet who to his wandering eyes should appear, but Vance, the man with the case that had freaked Raphael out so much the first time that they’d met. And yet as he entered he was already laughing like a madman, cackling about something that Raph didn’t quite understand. Yet before he could even ask, the man immediately went into his routine, setting up the white noise generator and laptop before tossing pictures onto the desk. The pictures were of Raphael himself, glowing purple eyes and all. Fuck. He’d been hoping no one had gotten pics. But he wanted a story? Sure, why the hell not?

“You want a story?” Raph asked, nodding a bit. “Ok. How about a Shinigami that I had agreed to work with to collect some information on them, deciding to use me to smuggle poison to kill his own kind?” The headache was building and Vance would be able to sense a discernible rise in energy. “Then, he comes back to the warehouse you both agreed to use, in order to set it on fire?!” The table between them bent slightly in the center. “Or, OR, how about after doing ALL of this he tells you that he’s doing this to HELP YOU?!” The cuffs that had been holding him disintegrated in the center, freeing both of Raphael’s hands. “How’s that for a goddamn story, Vance?!”

Vance kept cackling as Raphael talked.  He really couldn't believe how fortuitous he had been recently.  Apparently his plans to obliterate universes were exactly what Earth wanted to happen cause aside from the useless people that were his kind, things just kept DROPPING INTO HIS LAP like free candy.  "So, so let me get this straigh-hehehe.  You, oh god this is BRILLIANT, you trusted a Shittygami!  Then, then get this, the smart guy goes ballistic when he gets betrayed.  Oh god it's like watching a dam sitcom! Hahehehehe.  Oh lord, you crack me up."  Vance said with a laugh, he obviously didn't care that Raphael was unbound.  

"An unbound PSIONIC?! Do you even BEGIN to understand the implications of what you are?!"  Vance laughed again as his mind raced faster than Raphael could read it.  Though bits and pieces came through, mostly designs, plans and ideas.  Concepts, a werewolf girl, genetic manipulation and a myrad of other terrible ideas and devices streaming around in his head.  Though Raphael would get a slim sight, like something in the distance of Vance's actual power, it vanished quickly.  "YES, YOU GET IT DON'T YOU!?  You are an UNBOUND GOD AMONG MEN!"  Vance continued laughing in his cackling evil voice.  

"Alright, so tell me about this pajama teenager who wanted to smuggle poison back to its dimension. Please tell me you have some of the poison left too, cause EVERYTHING would be PERFECT if you did."  Vance said smiling and looking at Raphael with his evil grin.

Vance’s cackling was getting on Raphael’s nerves, it was just grating on his ears, and it just kept going and going and going. “Yes, I’d trusted a Shinigami. And yeah, sure it was a stupid idea, but at the time I wasn’t sure what else to do and he provided a pretty good gig.” Yet it was just more laughing. Raphael’s response was quickly going from angry and annoyed to concerned and more than a little freaked out. It only got worse as they continued speaking. He was leaning far back in the chair, trying to push himself as far away from Vance.

“The implications of what I am?” Raphael replied. “I’m a human fucking being!” The table between them cracked a second time, splitting down the center. Yet it wasn’t from true rage but from concern, from fear. The things that were beginning to process through Raphael’s mind, concerned him. What the man could do, what he might’ve planned to do, some of the things that he wanted to probably do, Raphael tried to push himself away from the table a bit further. He just felt the annoyance biting at him.

He got to his feet. “I’m not a god among men! I’m not a god among anything!! I’m just a human, Vance!” The chair went flying back and smashed into the wall with enough force to embed it into the wall. “You don’t get to tell me what I am! You can decide what YOU are, but when it comes to me you can keep your goddamn opinions to yourself!” He heard the doorknob start to jiggle and he held his hand out to it, both knob and door practically jamming shut.

“He was a normal shinigami. Black pajamas, spirit sword. What the hell else do you wanna know about him?” This time, though, Raphael smiled. “And no. The poison was destroyed, either by the fire or by me when I…snapped, as he described it. Sorry to spoil that one for ya.”

Vance finally managed to get his cackling under control. He was however, not in the mood to listen to Raphael's childish tantrum. Unless it got him what he wanted. Which was an issue because he didn't want to have the young man get inside his head before he had messed Raphael's up to the correct point. Vance listened, though he hadn't a clue why, it was mainly to let the man get passed the frustrations. "You just broke cuffs apart with your mind, humans don't do that, no matter how much you want to be. Plus, humans suck, not as much as extra-dimensional beings but still pretty bad. The world has stories of people with power, might, beyond anything considered human. They get called demi-gods, angels, superheroes, take your pick the word changes over the course of history, the idea doesn't."

Vance stated with a shift as he shifted in his chair wondering to himself as he tapped the desk and looked around the room as Raphael got near the door. "You really think they're going to let you walk off this time?" Vance said with a shift, he was wondering how to push Raphael without potentially harming himself. Which seemed a lot harder than he thought it would be. He figured if he kept pushing him, Raphael would probably be able to rapidly evolve, unfortunately, doing so near Vance was probably the WORST decision Vance could make. So instead he changed tactics.

"Humans need to touch door handles to get them pissed off at them. Calm down and sit down. You need to relax and think rationally. Instead of emotionally for once. You said the shinigami was basic, anything identifying about his mannerisms? How about his look? Any markings? What did the butterfly with him look like? Since you are so desperate to ignore truth, how about we try for remembering details instead?" Vance said looking at Raphael and ushering back to the table.

He opened his mouth for a second to speak back against the “humans can’t” speech but decided against it. This man was so up his own ass with his own conviction that humans sucked, it was as sickening as it was annoying, though Raph was up his own ass about how being human was great. “You’re right that there are tons of stories about super powered humans, demigods and angels. But that’s all that they are: stories. There are no real humans, regular humans, that have any kind of superpowers or are possessed by anything like that. I would think you, of all people, would know that.”

With a light sigh, Raphael calmed himself down. Getting that upset, blocking the door with force? It made no sense. “No, I don’t think that they’re just going to let me walk out of here, but I don’t want them to come in here while we’re talking. I don’t think they need to.” The doorknob jiggling continued, and now there was knocking. Though it calmed down after a few seconds. Raphael wasn’t going to suffer anyone to get in here for this talk.

“Notable things? Hm… Bit of a beard, penchant for smoking, no real discernible physical things… Though the butterfly with him was a black and orangeish. It wasn’t the usual black and red that I’m used to.” He thought for a bit longer. “Hair was unkempt and a bit messy, and black. Had cigarettes everywhere. Glasses.” He shrugged a bit. “The butterfly was the only weird thing, honestly.”

"I can prove Werewolves exist, same with Penny Dreadfuls, and because of you ESP. So, obviously those stories are true. They say fiction is rooted in reality." Vance pointed out, getting really annoyed at Raphael's apparent childishness. He was ignoring sound logic cause he couldn't deal with the reality, that reality itself, was actually kind of exhausting to deal with. Like a child that couldn't look past its classroom because that's the world that mattered too it and nothing outside seemed to care.

The details that were prominent about the shinigami, were two-fold. The first was that the shinigami in question had an odd butterfly. Which had interesting implications but without scanning it, Vance wouldn't understand what it did. The more defining one was smoking. If it could smoke, then interdimensional beings could make extradimensional cigarettes, which had all kinds of horrifying implications. It was also a trait that Vance hadn't seen in a shinigami before, which was interesting. He pulled up a set of images on his computer screen. One of a young man about the same age as the shinigami he was asking about, though he wasn't scruffy, one of the female werewolf, and one of the man in question, though Vance didn't know it. Sure enough, the man in question was standing and talking to a hollow that looked a lot like a turtle.

"Any one of these?" Vance asked.

He sighed. This was really starting to take its toll on him and it seemed that the longer he was in proximity to Vance, the worse the voices and headaches got. The other man, however seemed to quickly turn the tables to a different subject. That and the doorknob jiggling stopped. Either they decided that he knew what he was doing and not to bother him, or they decided that whatever was going on wasn’t worth it. Raphael knew, though, that Vance was right and he wasn’t just going to walk out of the station. There would be too much to fight through, were he to try and hurting these people wasn’t right, they were just doing their job.

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, as Vance laid out a bunch of pictures of different Shinigami. One he didn’t recognize, but one of them he knew right away, was Yuki. And the final, the one that was burned into his mind, was Watari. He watched the pictures, looked from one to the other, pretending to study them. Then, finally, he tapped on the picture of Watari, watching Vance for his reaction. This would tell Raphael whether he was right, or whether he was wrong about Vance, and about his want for the Shinigami in general.

“That one,” Raphael replied. “That’s the one.”

"Recognize the others? If so tell me about them." Vance said as he turned the laptop back to himself and began typing notes onto the file on SM-00812. Which Vance didn't know but was Watari. Vance avoided emotion as he thought for a moment. He was wondering what he could do now. He could use Raphael some more but staying near him was dangerous for a good number of reasons. So, Vance shifted his weight and finished typing before pulling a file out of the bag. It had a number of things in it, but what he was interested in was the pictures of the Quincy he had seen.

He handed the two pictures, which were filtered so that only the human visages of his targets were on them and handed them to Raphael. "Recognize either of them?" He asked, Vance was going to use Raphael for more information while he could, the Artificer had some other ideas for the young man but he wasn't sure how to speak to his thoughts. "Any other inter-dimensional beings you have met and what you can tell me about them." Vance asked as he looked at some of the files again thinking about what to ask Raphael that wouldn't trigger an unbound psion from destroying half the city.

A bit disappointed, Raphael watched Vance, studying him as best he could while the man typed random shit and who knew what else into his computer. Raphael’s headache was there but it wasn’t as pronounced, nor was it killing him nearly as badly as normal. He was just a bit annoyed. Vance simply sat, typing away at his computer with whatever he was doing. There was a bit more to tell, but how much to reveal? Should he tell Vance what he knew? Everything? There was so much, though. Well, he WAS the investigator.

Raph nodded, looking at the pictures again. “This one.” He tossed the picture of Yuki towards Vance. “She saved me from a pair of hollows. The two hollows kept calling me Cicero and said they were going to save me. Don’t ask me what’s up with that, cuz I really don’t know. One was a lion like hollow, controlled lighting and had boosters on its back with lightning blades, second was this giant egg hollow that could close up and shot a bunch of lasers everywhere. Otherwise I haven’t had any dealings with interdimensional creatures. I’ve learned a lot about what humans can do, or at least what I can do. Do you have any other questions for me?”

"Yep, hang on." Vance answered Raphael in a surprisingly nice tone. Because he was helping, it seemed very likely that Vance cared more about that than the people he had gotten attacked when he unleashed the hollow bait. Vance hoped Raphael wasn't reading his mind when that slip and went back to typing, covering his mind in designs for gadgets just in case. He reached up a few moments later and rubbed his chin with his hand as he pulled out another picture.

This one was of a human, specifically a human female with the message Identification indicator of HF-O-x103. "Have you ever met her?" Vance asked Raphael as he gave the young man time to look at the picture. He knew her name, but nothing else. Vance cared because of something else. Her name was Janus, and she, like Raphael, was a demi god that Vance wanted to experiment on. Then he also pulled out a picture of Nyla.

"If you see her, I want you to call me immediately." Vance stated.

He watched the man as Vance said that did have more questions and procured another two pictures and laid them upon the table, pushing them in front of Raphael. He picked the two pictures up and started looking at him. The first one, the one that read HF-O-x103, was certainly fascinating and he spent a good minute looking over it before finally shaking his head. Then he picked the second one up and started going over it slowly, but eventually he had to shake his head on that one as well. “Sorry to be a disappointment, this time, but I don’t know either of these two. Never seen them or spoken to them.” He slowly looked up at Vance. “Why? What’re they to you?”

But he picked up the picture of Nyla again, and looked it over a bit more closely, before throwing it onto the table. “You want me to call you immediately?” he looked at Vance a bit closely. “Why do you want me to call you immediately? What, did she hurt someone? Is she to be arrested or something else like that?” He sat there for a moment or two, looking at the pictures on the table. “Are they of special interest to you or something? They can’t matter all that much, unless they’re extraordinarily strong.” He was trying to force Vance’s hand, though the man did seem a little too intelligent for that. Still, he had to do whatever he could. The man was dangerous, in some way, and Raphael couldn’t determine who he was a danger to.

"Nothing more than problems for other humans."  He stated pointedly nodding his head and going back to making notes.  Vance was dangerous, but mostly to himself if he wasn't experimenting on something.  Most of the time though his experiments were purposeful, like getting the city attacked.  He had ideas and more concepts of gadgets but he needed more time to deal with them.  Vance didn't seem to care about pandering to Raphael's little game of learn nothing so instead he just answered, he figured it was more confusing that way anyway.

"They're not anything to me, they're just dangerous in a completely different way."  Vance stated giving Raphael a bit more to think about.  "Yes immediately, neither one of them hurt anyone.  It's the kind of reality bending they represent.  I mean, this one."  He said pointing at Nyla.  "Is human and potentially HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of years old.  Humans aren't supposed to do that, but what if she could be used to grant everyone immortality?"  Vance stated to Raphael.  Like Raphael symbolized new studies and broken belief in things like ESP and telekinesis, the other Quincy represented that immortality was achievable through technology.

Raph was a bit disappointed, though he did his best not to show it. Vance was intelligent, so realistically, there was little chance that Raph would’ve gotten something from the attempted exchange, but at the very least he’d tried. Yet how would they be nothing but problems for humans? He looked at the pictures again, staring intently to try and figure out just how they might be problems for humans, yet for all his trying he couldn’t think of a good reason.

“Reality bending?” he looked at the second photograph. Raph suddenly took on a far more interested, though odd tone as he looked back at Vance. “Did you ever see Jurassic Park? Don’t get me wrong, the idea of living for much longer than only a measly hundred years? Love it, but immortality? Would you really want to live forever? What if trying to make people immortal only worked on people like you and me? What would you do with such a life? Would you pursue further and further things like normal people do? Or would you use such a life to make yourself stronger, consolidate your power? Then there’s always the Shinigami factor to think of.”

Raph sighed. “Sorry. It’s certainly an interesting thought, I won’t lie. The idea of living for much longer than normal appeals to me, though. If I DO see her, then I’ll make sure to give you a call. I’ve got your number saved to my phone in case something…interesting happens. Thankfully, not a lot interesting does.”

Vance nodded then thought about what Raphael said. To him most of this didn't really matter so far as Vance wanted to study something, which was always far more important to him. Without study he couldn't come up with new ideas on how to use varying wavelengths of power in conjunction with ideas or chemicals. "That's all I can ask. Vance stated politely, he really was getting sick of Raphael's woe is me, next time he would summon a few hollow on his face or something just on general principles.

"Well anyway, take care of yourself, I have to go beat the shit out of a guy who's dealing on my street corner." Vance stated with a cackle before tossing Raphael a small tube, it wasn't a ginto tube, it was just a normal tube for reiryoku. "If you need practice using telekinesis. Make it orbit you by the next time we see each other." Vance said as if giving a student homework. He continued cackling and left the room. A few minutes later, without reasoning, an officer came in to let Raphael go...