expunger

Got any feedback? Criticism? Dick-sucking? Suggestions or comments on how I play Raphael? Feel free to leave a comment! Comments are screened, anon is enabled, IP logging is- off.

I welcome crit of all forms, as long as it's constructive, please. This is a hard hat zone.

[Locked from Tom Riddle/Unhackable]

[Raphael, even from the first frame of the video, is clearly not a happy camper. There's too much tension around her mouth, her jaw gritted too tightly, like she's one annoyance away from punching somebody.]

Adstringendum, I have a question for you. [Deadly serious, even compared to normal.] What do you know about Tom Riddle?

[Locked to the angels/unhackable]

[Her demeanor changes further- tense, the annoyance erupting into obvious murderous anger that she doesn't even bother trying to hide.]

Hello, brothers. My first encounter with this event was on Sunday morning, when I was switched with Tom Riddle.

[The kids watching at home might notice a distinct lack of a chain around her neck, meaning a distinct lack of Castiel's Grace. She shifts her shoulders like an angry cat and continues.]

He has taken Castiel's Grace and, with it, made a declaration of war. He saw fit to inform me that any attempt to take back what is not his would serve as such. [Lip curling slightly.] He called it our only warning. Evidently the city needs to be freed of us.

I do not know much about him, only that he is extremely dangerous and twisted. His soul did not feel intact. I have full confidence that he will do something disgusting to it- weaponize it, most likely.

[Gray. The opening shot is all dim gray and dusky, a boring shot of a concrete wall stained with black ash, before too-bright blue-white light knifes through the picture again, causing horrible screaming static for a brief moment. Everything whirls before the PCD lands, now pointed up at a derelict ceiling. From far off, noise can be heard: footsteps, crackling electricity, a low electric tinny and hard breathing. After a long minute the picture shakes again, lifting and turning around to show Raphael's face.

She looks, for lack of a better word, like shit. For an angel she looks exhausted, with faint circles under her eyes. Her skin has a papery quality that is strongly evocative of Lucifer. Face rot dots her hairline and a small spot on one side of her jaw, again very like what Lucifer suffers from. Despite coming out of a terrible event (for which she was a complete hermit, speaking to and seeing no one), there's obviously something else on her mind.]

The Archangel Michael is gone. You would do well to never speak his name again where we can hear it.

[ooc note: anyone going to find her will find her in the Wastes. Yes, even if they poof to her side immediately, angels. She can hustle.]

[Guten tag, Adstringendum. Today's daily dose of lineface angel starts off with fog, fog, and more fog, with Raphael's shape only just emerging through the haze. As muted as she normally is, there's something different today- almost constrained, wilted, a little too tight and a little too quiet. She's sitting on what appears to be the bottom of a set of steps- when the fog clears just a little it's obviously stone steps, like a pyramid or a very tall dais.]

There is a glut of idiocy this week.

[She gestures and the PCD rises, turning to face her at a slightly different angle. Behind her, it shows the stone dais- for that's exactly what it is, large steps of a massive grave, consisting of the huge dais leading to an enormous figure seated in a vast marble throne. The grave is impressive, to say the least. The carvings on it, just visible over her shoulder, are all in a mix of Enochian and Hebrew, including the Hebrew inscription of God's own name.]

It is astounding that any of you can survive on your own in this place, if this is how you handle anything new. [Then her expression tightens more, if possible, something dulling in her eyes slightly.] If you cannot learn for yourself, then know this: the graves should not be destroyed.

[Trust her. It isn't worth it. Her mouth presses into a thin, tense line before the feed cuts out altogether.]

[OOC: she's sitting at the base of fake-God's throne/grave in the middle of a ring of archangel graves, including her own, a destroyed Gabriel statue, a Lucifer mausoleum, and a smoking crater where Michael's used to be. Come bother her, bros.]

[Raphael, this time, looks less like the bleeding pile of shit she did last time and more like a meditative businesswoman with dry skin who hasn't slept in a while. She is seated Indian-style on the floor of what is obviously a run-down house; her normal illusions of nice drawing rooms and furnished libraries are gone. Forgotten, even. There's a tenseness around her eyes, a flickering darkness and she has the distinctive sallow-faced, corrosively-dry-skinned unhealthy look of Lucifer himself.]

I have heard talk and complaints about this latest event. People think they have been robbed of their identities, stripped of their selves.

[She looks vaguely disdainful at the concept, but so contemplative.]

The empty places within us call for something to fill them. Can you not wait a week? If you insist on squandering this.

[A blade emerges slowly from one sleeve until Raphael is holding a short sword in one hand. She brings it up to chest level and holds it gingerly between her two index fingers, so it rotates slowly in the air like a rotisserie.]

We do not know our own families. [One hand returns to rest on her knee, and the sword turns up until it's turn in mid-air like an impossible basketball, the sharpened point hovering centimeters over her outstretched finger.] I find it difficult to divine my motivations for my own actions.

But we have no ties that bind us from action or blinders to shield us from essential truths.

[The sword touches her finger and she looks to it slowly- curiously, like she's never seen it before. It presses down harder until drops of bright red blood well around the blade-tip. Raphael seems fascinated when her blood shimmers and tiny but dazzlingly white beams of light strobe from the small wound. Anyone looking at the sword can see creeping veins of rust spread slowly up the blade.]

In the absence of prejudice, clarity is easily grasped. The irrational contradictions we tolerate fall away.

We are not stripped. We are free.

[PRIVATE to the angels]

[Raphael looks unwell, still. The strange pallor hasn't left her, the unhealthy look that has long characterized Lucifer's corroding vessel. Her eyes are dimmed with something that might be exhaustion, or might be something else. It's strange, that she should use the PCD for this, given her preference for angel radio- but that hurts a little too much to use right now.

Her short message is entirely in Enochian.]

You may know that Castiel is dead. You may not know that I killed him.

That is all you need to know.

[End feed.]

[Hi, Adstring. Have a Raphael.

She looks like shit.

We're talking pale, dark circles under the eyes, like she did when she was human and when three days without eating or sleeping. Or maybe this is the look of someone who's been living on a diet of meth and back-alley blowjobs- it's hard to say. What's easy to tell is the exhaustion, the lines around her eyes, a creeping paleness that, to some, will be recognizable as the same sickly skin tone found on Lucifer when he's been too long without a demon blood fix. She's uncharacteristically sitting down against the inside of the outer wall, and looks like she just lost a fight, with bruises blossoming darkly against her dark skin; they're hard to see in this light, but obvious to anyone who notices. There's blood on her shirt, but none on her.]

I would like today to talk about faith. [There's blood on her teeth she hasn't washed out yet. Raphael pauses, thinks for a moment, and when she speaks they're sparkling white again. She's tense, but it belies the massive amount of pain she's currently in.] Ideas about the divine are obviously shaken by time spent in this pandimensional cell block, but any world worth knowing knows some version of the Almighty.

Tell me, Adstringéndum. What do you believe in?

[Private to Lucifer (added in many hours later):]

Lucifer. Talk to me. In person.


((ooc: This is open to offlines from anybody! She's against the outer wall in the Northeast quarter. NOTE to anybody who can sense evil and good, or darkness and light: Raphael may confuse those senses... more than you'd expect. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.))

[The feed clicks on for about ten seconds of nothing in particular - just a crooked shot of a brown elbow and the sounds of breathing - before a blinding light overtakes everything, and a sound so piercing you'll want to cover your ears and try to physically turn away from it.

A few seconds, and it's gone. When the PCD clatters to the floor, it's pointing just up enough to catch Raphael, looking as surprised as anyone, gazing at her leg. For the kids at home who aren't an archangel or Jinx, the first time anyone has seen the splint on her (formerly) broken leg is right now, when the splint shatters into nothingness and she gets off the couch with inhuman grace. The pendant around her neck from her previous powerless posts is now glowing and swirling brightly.

She looks down herself, flexing her hands like she's never seen them before and breathing in something sweeter than air and for the first time in a very long time, she smiles. Take a picture, kids, this won't last long.

Speak of the devil, and it will appear: after only a few seconds she notices the PCD, and in a disorienting flash it's in her hand before flickering off.]

[Private to Sokka]

My brother tells me someone else inspected him first. I now have more than enough power to do something about this. Someone so unhinged cannot be allowed freedom in this city.