More Dangerous Weapons [SOLO]

[Raphael Laurent]

There were so many things that he needed to work on; he needed to understand more about this weapon of his that he hadn’t practiced with, he wanted to experiment more with this fullbring aspect and finally he wanted to create his own technique. He knew about his weapon, had managed to summon it when fighting alongside that shinigami, the one that he was quite sure was a captain, but might not’ve been he didn’t know. Furthermore, he knew that there was something additional to his abilities than what he’d awakened but he hadn’t been able to figure out what yet. Knowing what he did, and what it was that Luca was wanting to do, Raphael had to work harder and harder to get strong enough to truly protect the rest of the world.

That was why, once again, he was so far out in the wilderness, training on his own, so that he could actually try and find a way to be strong enough. But there were so many issues with training on his own. One of the reasons that he kept waiting for Luca to try and come back. He wanted to know how strong the young man had become from his special training session within the Seireitei, as well as know how the rest of the infiltration went. He was pretty sure, though, that his friend wouldn’t be happy with the fact that he’d given information on Luca. “You gave me up” were the words that kept dancing in Raphael’s head. Would they be friends, once all was said and done?

The question, though, was would Luca ever really understand why exactly Raphael had given him up? Stripping down to just his underwear, Raphael inwardly frowned, highly doubting that the man would really understand. The last thing that he wanted was any kind of war, at least not until there were enough powerful humans to be able to actually stand against the shinigami. There were many other issues and operations that could be undertaken to further their own knowledge. Possibly Kazura would favor more learning of the spiritual beings.

He tossed his clothes into a pile just below his jacket and stared at the ring that he’d held for just about all his life. Memories tumbled around in his head of the times with the ring, the moments when some kinds had tried to steal it, when Brian had hidden it from him… The memories, both good and bad, were certainly a fascinating combination and the feelings that surfaced with the memories made him a bit annoyed as well as happy.

His fingers slowly closed in, and he focused on the ring, on the feelings of insecurity that had welled within him that day. He wanted to be better than Brian, stronger than him. He wanted to be stronger than even Luca, but he had to take things in baby steps. He had goals and simply wanting to “be stronger” didn’t accomplish any of them. With a quiet flash of light, his fullbring activated and he quickly found himself with a gauntlet upon his arm. But the question was, what was he supposed to do with it now? He remembered that Luca had fired a beam of quasi-radiation from his weapon, so obviously Raphael’s did something, but the questions were what did it do and how did he activate it…? Worse still, there was an odd feeling in his right eye, and he couldn’t exactly tell what was going on. It was a little hard to see, or rather the world was grey and there seemed to be some kind of particles that appeared in blue and each one seemed to be heading down towards the ground.

He closed his left eye and his vision went entirely gray. Then, upon opening it, he could both the normal and the gray world. He walked shakily over to the nearby lake and then looked into it. There he could see that his right eye was covered in a blue flame that seemed to completely cover it and his hair had turned white. Was this…part of his fullbring? Then what was its purpose? Once more he closed his left eye and looked out at the world. His vision rested upon a fairly large stone and suddenly the blue odd particles lifted. He held out his glove, slowly and the stone suddenly lifted, with the particles circling around it. He pointed forward and thought of the stone going forward. The blue that surrounded the rock suddenly reoriented towards the mountain and the rock launched itself forward, rocketing about as fast as he was, and as the farther away it went the faster it began to go, before suddenly crashing into the mountain.

Fascinated, he took a few steps forward, looking at where the rock had hit. He could see that the blue particles that were originally pointing at the mountain were now pointing down again. Once more he closed his left eye and focused, looking at a nearby tree and watched as, yet again, the blue particles shifted and stopped pointing down. Holding the gauntlet out at the tree, it lifted up and when he pointed down towards the nearby forest, the particles pointed towards the forest and launched intself towards the other trees, crashing into and tearing through them, before calming down particles pointing towards the Earth.

“Vertex?” The word he uttered seemed to have come to his mind, unbidden. While the word didn’t lacked true context, it seemed to match the power of his fullbring and, once more, he felt a bit bad that he didn’t tell Luca about this earlier. Not like it would’ve changed anything. Really, had he even wanted to go to the Seiretei? No. Not really, but Luca had and Raphael himself had simply been curious. Yet he’d gone along with his friend’s plan and then had given the shinigami the information to find him. Why? Prevention. There wasn’t enough power on their side, versus the shinigami side, and so there was no way for the fullbringers to win any such assault. Raphael hated it, but he’d had little choice. Luca would admonish such a decision, but Luca wouldn’t be able to understand; he couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Unsummoning his weapon, he focused his rage at what he felt was Luca’s stupidity and created the accretion disc of the hollow seed but much more powerful and then, throwing it forward, he changed focus. There was a moment where the disc moved forward and then suddenly it transformed into an enormous two headed dragon that roared and launched fire into the air. But still he was not satisfied. Panting as he was, he dismissed the dragon almost immediately, the creature staring down at him before finally vanishing. He needed a new weapon, a new sword as mankind had always designed.

Soul Dominance was one of his newest weapons and it allowed him to manipulate even down to the molecular. He knew that he could find a way to breathe fire, even remove the head from surroundings to create weapons of cold that could be used to strike at enemies but it wasn’t being taken far enough. As a matter of fact, he felt like there was more to be done, further that one could push such power, to truly make Soul Dominance a terrifying thing. He knew much about what soul command and soul dominance could do and one of the most important things that it could do would be tearing things apart, a breakdown of the structures. While it could be used to rebuild, he felt like he needed to focus on the destructive aspect of it and with a denser core of reiatsu, it could also be used to tear apart the reishi structures of spirits.

This in mind, Raphael got to work. First setting up his tent, he planned on being out here for a few days, along with a small ring for a fire. His tent was set beneath several branches of surrounding trees, the fire pit was out in the clearing and not much farther away was a small lake with a smaller waterfall feeding it. He gathered a bunch of sticks and rocks, sat down and picked one up, knowing that he would first need to perfect the process of simply demolecularizing things instead of simply reshaping and controlling them. Thankfully soul dominance would help, but still he would have to figure out how to eliminate exclusively…and that would take time. A great deal of time. He had it, though. He would spend hours if he had to. Luca would do his training and Raphael would do his own, both held their own dangers and Raphael was only slightly unsure of who’s training would be harder.

[Raphael Laurent]

He opened his eyes to the sound of the rain upon his makeshift shelter. He’d been camping out for a few days, hoping that his request for a few days off had been accepted. It was already morning, but with the combination of rain and failure, Raphael didn’t really feel like getting out of bed. He’d tried so many times over the last two days that he had often collapsed from the resulting loss of stamina that he’d utilized. He’d nearly fully mastered the use of his fullbring, at least his first one and still the feeling that there was more to his power lingered in his mind.

While he had no fighting style to speak of, Raphael still practiced random movements ones that he had watched his mother teach Brian. It wasn’t anything special, they’d mostly been basics from some old fighting style he’d heard of once before but that she knew so well. The rest of his combat style was almost entirely improvisational. In some ways that helped him, especially against others that didn’t have specific combat styles, but he knew that in the spirit world most people had something. Almost everyone was probably some kind of expert in one martial art or another, something that was concerning. Sure he was stronger than the average person, but he wasn’t some kind of superhuman. Well, not in that way anyways.

Lying in his sleeping bag in his makeshift shelter, he held up his hand and flexed the fingers a few times. He couldn’t figure out why, with all of his underestanding of the usage of Soul Dominance, that he couldn’t figure out quite how to get this new technique of his down… Figuring that there was nothing else for it, he pushed himself out of bed and placed his hand on the ground, the door to the cave he’d made from the surround rock opening. Soul Dominance and Soul Command, the two techniques were incredible. It was some crazy form of magic, but he wanted to know how much he could do with it.

Laughing to himself, he realized how much he “wanted to do” in his head, but on how little time there realistically was to do so. He’d spent two entire days simply trying to activate this new technique of his only to fail spectacularly. What else could be part of his powers? What else could he possibly awaken to, for some new kind of understanding? Already he’d had to admit several new things that he didn’t want to. One was that both shinigami and normal souls were, in their own way, quite close to human and led entirely new lives. He still disliked the fact that Luca wanted the power of those people but that was his decision and, in the end, his mistake. Raphael hadn’t been able to dissuade him from it, so they’d gone. He’d gathered interesting information about the soul society but, what was it that he’d been hoping for? He wasn’t entirely sure.

The realization that he’d not really had any big goal, unlike Luca, burned his thoughts. He was angry with himself for not wanting anything more, for simply surrendering. Should he have fought, though? That would’ve gone against who he was. Luca and he had different ideals. Where Luca wanted power, Raphael wanted knowledge; where Luca had wanted to transcend his humanity by any means, Raphael wanted to grow within it. That was the simple fact of life. They were two different people and, while he understood that emphatically, trying to reconcile his lack of ambition for power was proving difficult.

“I’m not a conqueror, I’m not a warrior. I’m just a human! Yet look at Luca! What does he want to do? He wants to become like the Shinigami and use their power to transcend his humanity!” So? What business was that of his? What was he going to do, yell at Luca like the guy was a kid? He was younger than Raph but it wasn’t his place to interfere in Luca’s affairs. He needed to find his own way to become more than human or at the very least push his power to a comparable fair. Perhaps this was his drive. He’d always needed someone to compete against in order to drive himself forward. First it was Brian and now Luca. He loved the fact that he had two such people to push him forward. But, at the same time, that brought his brother back to the forefront of his mind. While he knew that the quincy could convert others, that was the last thing that he wanted. He didn’t know how his brother was getting along…but he didn’t want to think that he could be watching right now.

His brother’s laugh still echoed in his head whenever he thought about their last meeting. Brian had kicked him to the ground. After announcing that he was going to the Vandenreich, Raph had run after Brian, begging him not to go, that something didn’t seem right with them. Brian had kicked him to the ground and had shouted about how Raph didn’t even have any spiritual abilities, so he had no right to say anything. When he’d tried to argue the case further he’d heard his brother activate his spiritual weapon and Raphael was staring down the business end of his brother’s bow before he knew what was going on.

Brian had laughed at him when he’d tried protesting further, the laugh of a madman or, in this case, a blind man. This emperor was the only one that could do anything about the state of the world, after all. Knowing that such religious fanaticism was dangerous, Raph attempted to argue with his older brother. His pleas, of course, fell upon deaf ears and, even to this day, Raphael wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but no longer surprised.

Luca was similar to Brian in one major aspect: they both seemed willing to die for their own aspirations, Brian’s some misguided belief that this emperor could make everything better and Luca that the Shinigami were the key to more power. Both of these were misguided, in their own way, but Raphael had failed them both. The difference, however, was that he might still be able to help Luca grown in a way that he had not been able to assist Brian. It was this desire that burned brightest in him: the power to help those that really needed it, whether it was mentally, spiritually or physically. He had no way of being certain, but he felt like Kazura agreed that Luca’s obsession with the Shinigami and their power was not a good sign.

He smacked himself back to reality, since the rain pelting his head didn’t seem to be doing the trick. He didn’t have the time for such reflection. Where Luca wanted power, Raphael would focus on control. Turning his face to the sky, he felt the rain hitting him and sighed with a bit of relief. There was a calming feeling to the water, the way that it hit his face and cooled his emotions… Something in him demanded to know what it was that he wanted from all of his efforts in this spiritual world.

Sighing, he reached up and placed a hand over the pin on his jacket, sighing. He could still remember when his mom had given him this pin, telling him that this was a symbol of a clan of quincy that had long since passed from the world. It had been her clan, she’d said, who’d been destroyed for working so closely with fullbringers instead of force conscripting them. Given what his mother had said about the Vandenreich, it didn’t surprise him and it made him happy and slightly proud that he was wearing it. There was a blinding flash of light and suddenly there was what appeared to be a Ceratosaurus skull flying around him. It looked at him, eyes flashing white and then blue, before going back. It floated up and down then orbited around him, but didn’t seem to be able to do anything else.

“What are you? Are you part of my power, too? You don’t seem to be able to do anything…” He sighed. “I feel like, when it all comes down to it, the time that we have should be spent becoming stronger and stronger. Or, really the time that I have, I suppose… It can get hard sometimes, little…skull…thing.” The thing simply watched him from time to time and otherwise floated around him, but only seemed to last for a few minutes before finally fading away and turning back into the pin. Picking it up he examined it. It was…like a second fullbring. Though it didn’t do anything right now, he had a feeling it could, if nurtured. “Alright, then. Let’s get to work.”

[Raphael Laurent]

He sat there, staring at the water’s edge, pondering the answers to what it was that he was looking for. He’d been learning as he’d gone on, little by little over the last few days and he had theories as to what it was that he was missing: Control. While he understood the power of Soul Dominance quite well and had been learning the strength of his fullbring, he didn’t have full control over the power of Soul Dominance. He focused harder while staring at the small lake in front of him. He’d been working on his Fullbring for the last few days; the first few had been nearly exhausting, but by the fifth day he was able to use it, reliably, for several minutes before it became too much for his stamina.

By now, he’d stopped focusing on using his weapon and had been focusing on the more elemental aspects of Soul Dominance. The full blown manipulation was one of the more dangerous aspects of their powers and he needed complete command of it in order to truly surpass his own limitations. The problem was that the finite control he was wanting would only come with an intense amount of thought and focus. Thus the meditation that he was undergoing.

As he focused on it, without hand movements, he concentrated on the water flowing upwards and moving towards him as it would’ve if he made the movements for it. It bubbled for a few minutes, then began to lift in a small stream and after creating a three foot long band of water, he forced it to orbit around him, spinning slowly at first and then moving faster. Then, he gave a small breath on the orbiting band and it all suddenly froze solid. He focused harder as the frozen band spun around several times and suddenly the band exploded into dozens of different shards of shards of ice still spinning around him. He pointed at the lake and suddenly the shards all pointed forward and launched at the water, like a machine gun.

Then he held up a hand and focused on the air above it and breathed towards it. The air above his hand started to heat up before it suddenly transformed into a ball of fire and he held it together with his focus. Slowly, he lowered his hand away from it and focused on holding the sphere together and then he began to breathe in and out and in and out allowing the fireball to expand and contract with his breath. Then he raised his other hand and flicked the orb, causing it to splinter into several different smaller orbs that fired off into the water, a hissing sound going out as they hit the water. But he needed more control, it wasn’t close to enough control…

He focused more and more, energy surrounding him and he put his hand on the ground, slowly raising his hand and creating a miniature version of himself. With a careful hand, he felt the grooves and engravings that were the details of this smaller version of himself. Then, once more, he ran his hand over it, slightly unsure of the next bit of details that he was adding. He wasn’t amazingly strong, but as he slowly carved out more and more details until, eventually, it looked basically exactly like him. He looked at it and sighed. Obviously what he needed was strength, not control. He needed to find a way to get some more power. With a tap of his foot, the dnormous shelter he’d made collapsed and he picked up his bag. It was that time. He’d have to head back to work today. It was the end of his time off, but he’d had a good time, but it was time to head back to work, now.

[Col Arana]

I count 28 paragraphs for a total of 140 TP