Beasts For a Price (JT, Closed)

[Raphael Laurent]

Raphael watched, waiting quietly as first Kimko asked a quetsion and then as the drunkard shouted and yelled about getting a lot of money. In truth, he wished that he could see the look on the man’s face when he arrived and realized there was nothing where he’d been sent to. Nodding, he watched the drunk stumble away, carrying his other bottles of liquor. He hoped the man wouldn’t continue drinking, otherwise he might be seeing a shinigami much sooner than he was anticipating. But…that was also speaking as someone who’d been seeing them for years. Not that it mattered all that much.

The quiet and the calm swept over him, and he took a moment to breathe in the air. But sighed a bit, concerned. “But why are we dealing with hostile shinigami? I agree with you that this doesn’t make any sense. But also…are you alright? You seemed to get a little…overzealous, there. I’m not one to judge mind you, but if we’re going to solve this, we need to work together and I need to know that I can work with you.” He paused for a few seconds. “The one thing that I’m concerned with is why would they attack a human? Don’t get me wrong, I could easily handle them, but why would they brazenly attack someone? Now, if you combine that with you’re missing hollow then we’ve got a bigger problem.” He scratched his chin a bit. “You said that this hollow has been hunted for a while. But if that’s so, then why would they be so nonchalant about having captured such a dangerous hollow?”

Raphael stoped when he heard the the moan from behind him and sighed. He hadn’t wanted to kill them and was glad that he hadn’t. When she then muttered about questioning him, Raphael nodded, but not wanting to take any chances, made a quick gesture with his hand. Suddenly the cement around the shinigami softened and he sunk down, until his hands and legs were completely covered. Even if he wanted, he wouldn’t be getting out of that. Raphael smirked, just a little bit, before turning back to Kimiko. “So how do you want to handle this? Good cop, bad cop? Normal questioning? Or do we need to get a bit more…” He held up his hand, a lavender ball of energy forming in his hand. “Persuasive?” He wasn’t above further damage, if it was needed, but he was also not above potentially inflicting pain on someone that had already attempted to kill him.

[Nakajima Kimiko]

A moment of calm briefly passed after the drunkard stammered away from the scene, leaving both the Shinigami and the Fullbringer alone to contemplate the mess they were now facing. Kimiko was glad that the man had finally decided to leave, seeing as he was clearly becoming more of a bother than anything else. What was once a person that could potentially help them understand what was going on had rapidly turned into an annoying liability that would have gotten them all killed had they not been strong enough to properly face his attackers, and he had turned so frustrated at Raphael by the time they were able to take care of them that any information they could have extracted out of him had practically slipped away. Although the swordswoman pitied him for his wretchedness and apparent inability to keep away from alcohol for the night, there was a part of her that just found him to be a nuisance. With him now gone, she could focus on the matter at hand.

The problem was that the matter at hand was nothing short of overwhelming. Before, it was just a Hollow that was hard to find, but now, it's a matter of dealing with hostile Shinigami that apparently do not hesitate to kill Humans for whatever reason. What was the plan, their goal? What would the death of a lone drunkard complaining about anything and everything bring to them? The questions ran on and on, and the further they went, the more concerned Kimiko became of it all. She truly hoped that this was not the case at all, but from the way things were going, she couldn't help but think that that Hollow, Faraday, is connected to these Shinigami in one way or another that is not advantageous to it in the slightest. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more a specific theory was starting to take the greatest amount of attention within her mind: the idea that the Shinigami have captured the Hollow for their own gain.

Eventually, her thoughts were interrupted by Raphael's own concern. With a few blinks, she stared at him as though she was suddenly awoken, and with a look of surprise, she paused. "Y-Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, don't worry about it, I just fight like that... I'm sorry if I was weird or anything," she reassured quickly after she eventually fully put herself into the conversation, blushing a bit in embarrassment both for the fact that she was quite literally called overzealous by the equivalent of an ally and because she was downright caught off-guard while she was analyzing their situation. This ability of hers to completely disconnect herself from everything around her to just think about things is definitely starting to become a bit bothersome. Perhaps that is something she will have to look into in the coming weeks. Maybe she could ask the old spirit in her blade what he thinks about that matter during their daily session of shogi.

Fortunately, they were able to move somewhat rapidly away from the subject once Raphael spoke of the Hollow and the Shinigami's nonchalant attitude regarding it. It allowed Kimiko to chase away her feelings regarding her overzealous self in battle with a brief sigh, one that also allowed her to move away from focusing too much on the pain she felt from her light wounds. "They said they outright killed it, not captured it. That's... what bothers me the most about all of this... It's like they didn't think it was a big deal that was worth reporting to everybody else," she said as she pondered about it all again, this time openly. "Faraday isn't some super powerful Hollow or anything... but he isn't one that you just cut down like all the others. My superiors didn't... really tell me what kind of power it had, but they said it was strong enough to overpower a lot of people in my squad. Aside from maybe that Kunio guy... there's no way that people from the Seventh would have been able to take it down so easily. Hell... they don't really deal with Hollows, usually."

It was then that the wounded revealed his presence to them. Upon hearing his moaning of pain, Kimiko watched quietly as measures of precaution were taken to make sure the rogue officer would not even so much as attempt to attack them. The man in question was unsurprisingly to resist any of this as his body partially sunk into the road, now rendered completely immobile. There was no way for the swordswoman to tell what was going on, but all she could say about it all was that - despite being lame magic - it was a pretty useful tool. Even so, it seemed that trapping him like this and potentially hurting him more by moving him around like this wasn't enough for Raphael who went to suggest literally torturing him to get info out of him. "No. I'm sure normal questioning is gonna be fine," she told him right away with a sharper gaze, one that was just sharp enough for him to make him understand how she felt about that particular line of questioning. Although it was true that she did not care about the man's injuries, dealing him any more damage than he already has really couldn't be any more dishonorable.

"Uuungh," the trapped man moaned again as he stood there in his prison of cement, clenching his teeth as his consciousness fully came back to him. As he realized his condition, a tinge of fear appeared in his eyes, then shame. He was obviously not happy that he was stuck like this. "D-Damn it..." he tried his best to act tough despite his situation, clenching his teeth as he stared at the two questioners. "You stupid Squad 11 thug...! If it wasn't for you and that laser beam asshole...!"

Kimiko turned her head towards him in that moment with a disapproving expression. "Man... it's only been a few seconds since you woke up and he's already calling us names..." she sighed before she approached him and crossed her arms. "Alright, so let's make this quick... Can you tell us what you guys were really doing here?"

The imprisoned man clenched his teeth harder as the questions were told, his eyes quickly moving about towards his surroundings. It looked like he was attempting to either find a way out or call for help. Unfortunately for him, there was absolutely no one around to do so, not even his leader. "We... We were really just patrolling the area!" He pleaded as he looked away from Kimiko's gaze. "That's all!"

[Kitai Yoru]

104 paragraphs, 520 TP awarded