Raya

Raya (ラヤ, Raya lit. Friend), real name Adam Dracul Krähen (アダムカラスドラクル, Adamu Dorakuru Kurahenu lit. The Red Earth of The Devil and The Crow), was once a member of the Vandenreich but has left it after an incident that took place 7 years ago. Since then he began a new life with a new name, residing in the Human World hoping to try leaving a life as a normal human and forgetting about his Quincy life but has ended being a homeless man but still has no regrets for leaving.

He is the adoptive father of Uriel and later convinces her that Izumi Akemi is her mother which begins his unnofficial family and life as a father for Uriel. Raya is the overall main protagonist of Bleach: Black &amp;amp; White.

Appearance
Raya is a fairly muscular man in his 30's, his facial characteristics are long shaggy black hair with bangs at the front, red pupiless eyes that always appear half way closed, showing a somewhat bored and relaxed expression, compared to being half asleep but also to being hopeless, stubble growing around his chin and upper lip and his most distinctive feature is his carefree smile that rarely fades away, that with his relaxed eyes make him look as if he is tired. He wore a pink bandana on his forehead with blue beadings on it that hides a straight scar on his forehead, but is not hidden by his bangs.

As for clothing, Raya has a poor looking attire, being a brown ragged longcoat that reaches to his knees with long sleeves and some black stains visible mostly at the end of the coat which apears to be have some scratches as well as torn a bit, after having the right side of the coat torn off, primarily the sleeve, when it was stitched back together, it was stitched by a varying number of colorful pieces of cloth, a silly appearance for Raya to bear, which he does. Under his coat, he wears a black outfit, consisting off a black polo neck sweater with his left sleeve torn off, black trousers with a rope instead of a belt tied around his waist, and finally black shoes.

Back before leaving the Vandenreich, Raya had small differences from his current appearance, he wore the traditional Quincy clothing consisting of a white robe with blue linings, his hair was shorter and not so messy like how it is now, he also had no stubble on his face.

Personality
Seeing the death of his loved fiance has had a large impact on Raya to traumatized him, making him slowly develop and odd personality, hiding his sorrowful and hopeless feelings under a carefree and always happy smile, though his eyes say otherwise. He became a complex and hard to understand individual, and while he has a very poor life style, is a Quincy, wears ragged and dirty clothing, Raya always stays positive and optimistic about his life, always smiling and never having any negative thoughts about what could possibly happen to him. He is also very kind, though doesn't tend to show such kindness to strangers, such as when he saved a stranger woman for thugs he didn't show much desire for a thank you or further treating her kindly, simply allowing her to leave and later muttering his catchphrase "Annoying".

Raya doesn't wish to carry any burdens nor any responsibility, making him somewhat of a slacker, evidence by his poor parenting, not looking after his adoptive daughter, Uriel, good enough, which led to her being attacked by a Hollow and the revealing of her true nature. However, Raya is a very caring father, treating Uriel like a real daughter even after knowing she only seeked comfort from him because of his physical resemblance to her real, now deceased, father. When he is bound to take some sort of action he always mutters "Annoying", showing his hate for carrying burdens or having to do things he doesn't wish to do and is forced to.

A darker side of Raya has been seen on occasions, it being a merciless fighter who would even break his enemy's limbs without showing any mercy, he would even attack women who he sees don't deserve to be treated kindly. He is also quite fearful, being able of striking fear into his enemies, such as Samael who is a Togabito who endured Hell's punishment for over 100 years and knew no fear, Raya also taunted Samael asking him if he's scared, much to Samael's annoyance and anger.

Raya shows some degree of hate towards his race, the Quincies, not wanting to do anything with them and forget everything about them. That was shown when he was confronted by his former disciple Jack Mamoru who came to take him back but Raya refused to do so. For some unknown reason, Raya hates the Quincy: Vollständig to the degree he calls it "disgusting".

Raya appears to not hold back at anything, doing things without a single sign of shame or regret, this also shows his fearlessness, an example for that is in his fight agaisnt Samael, he fought him even though he knew a Togabito is stronger than a Human can ever be, yet still went to fight him head, even after losing to him once. He doesn't mind help in battle as he accepted Kaenjin's assisstance against Samael.

Raya apparantly has a deep fear for his past, being traumatized by such events that he saw before his eyes and even felt with his hands, to the degree that simply remembering his past years and days in the Vandenreich cause him to fall into deep panic and begin sweating as well as hard breathing. Simply mentioning things that would remind him of the past can make him fall into deep fear and it would take him a while to calm down. Raya attempted to abandon his past and forget about it as if it never happened, but fails so by the ongoing nightmares and it had become harder after seeing the same area the incident had took place, restoring the trauma back to its place as if it is a fresh wound, however, Raya appears to be capable of handling it better than before.

One emotion that is truly rare to be seen with Raya, is anger, always appearing extremely patient and calm, angering Raya would be near impossible. No matter how many time he is insulted, no matter how badly treated he is, Raya simply smiles and shrugs such things off without a care in the world. However, that does not mean angering Raya truly is impossible as there are a few times where he is infact angered, the only known things that can anger him are, he displayed a small degree of anger against Jack when he brutally beated him, though it wasn't complete anger as he immediately calmed down later, this may hint that Raya is prone to get angered towards other Quincies much quicker than he would towards anyone else.

As a result of watching black comedy movies from a young age, Raya has developed a dark sense of humor, though not freely expressed around people he is in good terms with, Raya has shown it when he appeared to enjoy Samael's fear of him, as well as slowly crushing an Arrancar's skull, it should be noted that Raya smiles much wider when in battle, evident of when he began to attack Jack he smiles maliciously, possibly hinting some bloodlust or a sadistic nature. Raya tries to not show too much of this side of him, as it usually frightens those around him, most notably Jack.

Raya believes he has inherited his father's bad luck, from having hated his entire life from the very beginning, being confined in his large maze of a house and restricted from leaving it, after growing older not going by his father's expectations, later even losing his loved one and finally ending up a homeless man after leaving the Vandenreich. Each of the many misfortunate things that have happened to him made him strongly believe he did infact inherit his father's bad luck, while only few bad things occur to him on a daily basis, such as getting the time wrong, ending up fighting inhuman enemis against his will and even becoming a father when not prepared too, are few examples.

He can simply be delusional, as most of the time, his "bad luck" is a result of bad timing, such as forgetting what day it is and missing an important event, not having a watch and as a result doesn't know what the time, which results in him being chronologically late to important things many times.

Belief
While it is seen that many Quincies refer to the Lord, after seeing how he was spared but his fiance had died, Raya's belief in the omnipotent entity known as "God" slowly faded through the years after leaving the Vandenreich behind. As a result, Raya no longer believes that such a thing as "God" truly exists, and due time began to lose faith in other religious terms such as Angels, Demons and locations such as Heaven and Hell, even after being said that Samael is a Togabito from Hell, Raya still doesn't believe in such things. Showing a strong disbelief in such things that can't be easily taken back even after being revealed to the actual thing.

His disbelief in such things proves as a very strong trait in his personality, and also his fearlessness, not fearing nor believing in God, Raya fears nothing, as not fearing a being of omnipotency makes it so that he shouldn't fear anything at all. Even though he rarely prays for his life to keep being as they are, a normal life of a homeless man with no relation to the spiritual world whatsoever, after his wish wasn't granted after having to be a parent, getting new info of what the Vandenreich is planning and getting involved in spiritually related things again, Raya's disbelief in any kind of deity at all has completely faded, having absolutely no belief and no religion, describing it as being "free" from having to do things that a culture would demand to be done.

The main reason behind this, isn't simply because of his fiance's death, but also due to how he realize that God doesn't exist as time passed, he slowly began to lose his routine of praying towards God, and as years passed he no longer felt the need to pray and simply decided to stop.

Introduction
That Homeless Guy From The Alley Way

Disciple Arc
The Start Of A New, Awkward, Family

Appearance From Back Then

Spying And Stalking Are Different

The Day It Was Announced In

Final Decision, End Of Discussion

Uriel Rescue Arc
New Friends And New Enemies, Nothing Old

An Old Place And Nothing Else

Clash Between Three Forces

The Truth For The Family

Life And Death On The Battlefield

Death's Arrival Is The Climax

Equipment
Quincy Cross (滅却十字, mekkyaku jūji; lit. "Destruction Cross"): Despite strongly despising his own race, Raya still keeps his Quincy Cross tied as necklace around his neck. Raya's Quincy Cross is in a shape of a pentacle tied on to a chain. It serves as the center of Raya's spirit weapon which gathers the reishi around it and forms into Raya's weapon.

Seele Schneider: A thin, silver colored weapon that can be used as arrows by Quincies, that Raya has only one left with him, and just like his Quincy Cross, he does not use it's abilities but merely uses it as a weapon for self defense, since he doesn't wish to use his Quincy powers. It was last destroyed in his fight against Samael.

Powers And Abilities
Master Hand to Hand Combatant: Since he left the Vandenreich, Raya has gotten used to unarmed combat and has become highly skilled in it, being able of even fending off against a Hollow without the use of his powers, also since he doesn't wish to kill Hollows so that he wouldn't cause any further damage to the balance. Raya doesn't have a specific fighting style, since it mainly involves quick punches and kicks to the enemy in areas such as the neck or the stomach, it can also be called playing dirty since he also kicks under the belt when fighting males. If Raya's fighting style were to be compared to one then it would most likely be the closest in resemblance to mixed martial arts as he does use different fighting styles, that he either knows of, learned or coincidentally used a move similar to said fighting style, and proves himself to being a highly dangerous opponent in close combat, even able of fighting another spiritual being using only unarmed combat and his raw speed and strength with ease.

Archer: Being a Quincy, it can be safe to say that Raya has some skill in archery, though his current level of skill is unknown, as he doesn't use archery very often. He has shown to fire an arrow from his spirit bow in order for the explosion to lift him higher, it should be noted he did that without looking, showing some skill.

Expert Swordsmanship Specialist: Having keeping on Seele Schneider wit him, Raya shows some skill in swordsmanship. He was able of standing on par against Jack who is a master swordsman and fend him off, he also fought Samael using his Seele Schneider, though it was destroyed in the battle.

Master Spearmanship Specialist: Raya's favored weapon and form of armed combat is with a spear, using a long double edged spear as his spirit weapon, Raya is highly skilled in the art of spearmanship being able of overpowering even large Hollows and slaying them from a certain distance, he is even able of cutting through several cero blasts while their charging and slice the Arrancars in half at the process. When using his spirit bow's scythe form, he also fights with it similar with how he fights with a spear, since the only known difference is the scythe's blade that has grown from the spear's body, and he is careful not getting injured from the scythe's blade or get near it.

Keen Intellect: Even though he doesn't apear that way, Raya holds great knowledge of the spiritual realms and beings, mostly with Quincies, which allowed him to develop his own techniques to be able of countering every possible Quincy ability. A prime example for that is that he names all of his own original Quincy techniques in Italian, since other Quincy who do know German could know the meaning behind his technique's name.


 * Multilingual: Being born half German, half American, being raised in Italy and moving into Japan in his teenage years, Raya knows a total of four languages, German, English, Italian and Japanese, he can speak, write and read these four languages without a problem. He was forced to learn the first two languages by his parents, learned Italian from birth and learned Japanese sometime after moving to Japan.

Reiryoku Absorption &amp; Manipulation: Raya, like all other Quincies, primarily absorbs spiritual energy from the atmosphere, and have an easier time collecting this energy in environments with higher concentrations of spiritual particles, such as Soul Society or Hueco Mundo. To a sufficiently powerful Quincy, there is no difference between spiritual particles and spiritual energy as a source of power. Raya can use the reishi he absorbed to form weapons and shields for defense and offense.
 * Hirenkyaku Master: A Quincy technique that allows one to travel at high speed by riding on the flow of reishi created beneath Raya's feet. Raya has once been able of overpowering his enemies with the high speed that left after images and made him apear as if he's teleporting, attacking his enemies from all kinds of different directions.
 * Platform Manifestation: An instance of Hirenkyaku that allows the user to create a platform of reishi under their feet. It can be used in the Garganta, and Hueco Mundo. Though the great reishi Raya has absorbed allows him to create, what he calls, a 3-seconds long platform under his feeReishihand.jpg to soften a fall.
 * Reishi Hand: Raya is capable of manipulating reishi and forming it in a shape of a large clawed hand and soldifying it and use it for both offense and defense. Raya can create up to four hands and control them through simple hand movements. Each reishi hand is much larger than Raya and can carry up to three people at once, the are only hands and they float in mid air.
 * Blue Flames: As a former Vandenreich member, Raya knows the creation of the blue flames, which are actually condensed reishi that can burn things that usually burn, like the rocks of Hueco Mundo. Raya has shown limited use of the blue flames, though he can easily create blue flames to attack an enemy, though the process of creation takes time.
 * Reishi Combustion: By condensing the reishi inside a spirit or an object made of reishi and releasing it all at once, Raya can cause the reishi to combust and explode into a small yet lethal in close range explosion. While anything made out of reishi, including a spirit's spiritual energy, can be affected by this, it recquires concentration on the area that Raya wishes to combust, however, this ability is still very useful, even making the liquid reiatsu of the Gintō to explode, which is easy enough to combust that it doesn't need much concentration.

Gintō Expert: Raya's skill in Gintō hasn't been fully seen yet, but he has shown to be capable of using it to purposes other than simply attacking and he is capable of chanting an incantation with ease.
 * Fliegen (飛ぶ, Fly): A simple spell that needs only one silver tube, after chanting the incantation, a blue beam fires from the tube in a direction upwards and doesn't stop. It is presumably weak as it only grazed Raya when it passed him but was able of cutting spiritual threads.
 * Incantation: "Kneel forth and rise, soaring the skies and the heavens" (定めるひざまずくと上昇、空、天の高騰, Sadameru Hizamazuku To Jōshō, Sora, Ten no Kōtō)

Enhanced Strength: Raya's strength has increased through the years of using only his own raw skills instead of his Quincy powers which resulted in him having remarkable strength that exceeds human expectations, he can easily lift and throw cars, throw rocks with exceptional speed and even break the limb of a person with ease though he says he "snapped it like a twig", he was also able of breaking an Arrancar's skull with one hand and not much effort, breaking the Arrancar's mask as well.

Immense Speed &amp; Reflexes: Since he did not use any kind of enhancement to his speed with any Quincy powers such as Hirenkyaku, Raya has developed a nearly inhuman degree of speed, agility, stamina and reflexes, being able of easily leaping over cars with ease and jump to high grounds with small force, as well as having powerful kicks with the strength of his legs, and combined with unarmed combat and his strength, Raya is a highly dangerous opponent even without Quincy powers, having lightning reflexes, dodging large number of attacks. Enhanced Durability: Raya's body is much more durable than it apears, being able to whistand powerful attacks and emerge unscatched from them, as well as fight for a long period of time without resting. He was able of emerging with small injuries on his right arm after being hit by several powerful attacks from Samael.
 * Master Acrobat: Raya is also highly athletic and acrobatic that he even calls the city he lives in his own "playground" being able to move on top of buildings and climb them with ease, treating it as a mere hobby, and since it is all his own raw skill, Raya can overpower his enemies in power using his acrobatic skill in unarmed combat. He can easily climb building in a very fast rate and reach the top in a small amount of time, and since he is a quick thinker, Raya is quick in finding a route for escaping an enemy, seen when he tried to escape Uriel, but failed.

Immense Endurance: Raya has proven to be tolerable towards pain, as he was able of continuing fighting even after being impaled in the back by many blades by Jack and still gain victory, though it should be noted he used Difesa which lessened the impact as well as the fact that Jack held back against his former mentor. Also, against Samael, he fought him again in a rematch shortly after losing to him before and being impaled in the stomach, but still won, though it should be noted Kaenjin helped him.

Spiritual Awareness: As a Quincy, Raya is still capable of seeing and sensing spiritual beings, such as Hollow, spirits and Shinigamis alike.

Immense Spritual Power: Despite Quincies not being able of emitting spiritual power, Raya has mentioned that despite not using his Quincy powers anymore, he has been absorbing reishi from Hollows and from the atmosphere for the last 7 years, and said that if he were to use it constantly it would last for a whole year.

Spirit Weapon
Heaven's Arch (天国のアーチ, Tengoku no Āchi lit. Arch of Heaven): The name of Raya's spirit bow, which is formed from the reish he absorbs on to his cross and uses it to form the spirit weapon. Raya's bow doesn't have any special features, as it apears as the standart metallic bow used by high skill Quincies, though the area where the arrows are fired from have a pentacle shape just like Raya's Quincy Cross. Raya's bow apears to have other forms aside from just a bow.
 * Bow : The primary form of Raya's spirit bow, which is infact a bow that Raya can use to perform several kinds of attacks.
 * Heilig Pfeil (神聖滅矢 (ハイリッヒ・ブファイル), Hairihhi Bufairu; German for "Holy Arrow", Japanese for "Destroying Arrow of Sanctity"): Just like the other spirit bows used by Quincies, Raya is capable of firing arrows from his spirit bow, that are the typical Quincy arrows, though he was shown using it once to make the impact of an explosion push him upwards, implying it has great power.
 * Aasfresser (スカベンジャー, Sukabenjā lit. Scavenger): Raya fires one arrow at his enemy, that later spreads into several smaller needle-like arrows, either by getting hit or by itself. The small needle-like arrows cause small explosions once the reishi is condensed and released all at once causing the explosion.
 * Spear: The second form of Raya's spirit bow. A double edged spear that one tip of the spear has the pentacle shape of Raya's cross around the sharp end, and is Raya's favored weapon.
 * Ende (終わり, Owari lit. End): Raya throws his spear at his target with full force, then reishi begins to flow from the tip of the spear and quickly engulf the spear's entire body in reishi, increasing the spears strength, once it hits the target it erupts into an explosion but the spear remains unharmed despite the big deal of damage.
 * Energy Beam: Much like how he can do with his scythe, Raya can fire a beam of condensed reishi at his enemies, charged at the tip of the spearhead's tip and fired with great force and explodes on contact, causing severe damage and destruction.
 * Scythe: The third and final form of Raya's spirit which is his favorite used form. A long scythe with a long and wide blade in one said, and a pentacle shape around the sharp tip of the other end. Raya fights with the scythe the same way he does with a spear.
 * Hau Ruck (ハウラック (どっこい), Haurakku lit Heave Ho): Raya's usual technique to use with his bow's scythe form. Raya begins turning his scythe around repeatedly while generating a strong reishi flow on the scythe's blade. After several turns, Raya swings his scythe in great force at his enemy, sending a ring composed out of reishi which moves in a circular rotation and cuts through what it touches. It also has other kinds of variations such as:
 * Blue Flame Enhanced Hau Ruck: The same technique as the regular Hau Ruck, with the difference of Raya condensing the reishi to create the blue flames of the Vandenreich. Once it is fired, things around it in a certain radius catch on fire and begin to burn, it also leaves a trail of blue flames burning the ground. Once it comes in contact with the target it explodes and engulfs the area in flames.
 * Multiple Blade Extension &amp; Retraction: The scythe's blade is not the only one there can be, Raya is able of manipulating the reishi that constructs the scythe in order to grow multiple scythe blades from nearly any part of the scythe and furhter extend them in lengths, this greatly assissts Raya in battle as he can attack enemies by surprise using this method of attack.
 * Energy Beam: Much like how he can do with his spear, Raya can fire a beam of condensed reishi at his enemies, charged at the tip of the scythe's blade and fired with great force and explodes on contact, causing severe damage and destruction.

Quincy Techniques
Bloccare (ブロック, Burokku lit. Block): A technique created by Raya. By touching a spiritual being or item, Raya uses reishi to block the flow of reishi of said spiritual being or item, thus not allowing them to use any spiritually related techniques or attacks, however the major flaw of this technique is that it is only affective as long as Raya is touching his target, which means that the minute he lets go off of his target, the reishi flow will return back to normal. This can also be considered negation because it does stop the target Raya has touched from using any spritually related abilities, as well as stopping the current ability used by a spiritual being, for example, it can block the reishi flow of a Quincy using Ransōtengai thus "negating" the technique and rendering the Quincy powerless to use it until Raya let's go off him.

Rompere (破る, Yaburu lit. Break): Another technique created by Raya and can be considered a more advanced version of Sperren. This technique has two usages, one is when Raya touches a being that its body is completely combosed out of reishi, such as Hollows, he immediately causes all the reishi to be seperated thus seperating a body part of said spirit, making it apear as if it got broken, this is also usable on reishi composed areas, such as Las Noches, using the technique on the floor, causing it to break. The second way of using it is against other Quincies, since the bodies of Quincies aren't composed out of reish but are Humans with spiritual powers, so instead of seperating the reishi of the body, Raya disrupts the flow of reishi within a Quincy making it difficult for a Quincy to control his/her powers related to reishi, which is practicaly every power used by Quincies, with a disruption in the flow, though it is temporary for a maximum of a few minutes.

Difesa (防衛, Bōei lit. Defense): A simple technique in which Raya condenses reishi into a circular form of a disk and uses it as a shield from attacks. The shield's size can be shifted and changed into forms similar to a dome or a larger shield in size. The shield is quite durable and can whistand a few hits but will evantually break but will scatter into reishi and into the atmosphere which would allow Raya to absorb them again. He has shown being able of summoning it very quickly even without saying the name of the technique.

Trivia

 * Raya's appearance is based on Zenjuuro Saotome from Beelzebub, with some minor tweaks.
 * Raya is half German (Father) and half American (Mother), but ironicaly he wasn't born in neither Germany nor America but was born in Italy, and later move into Japan until joinning the Vandenreich.
 * Raya's favorite manga from when he was younger is the sports, boxing manga Hajime no Ippo, which is most likely what drove him to being a capable unarmed fighter, even before his defection from the Vandenreich. Also, Raya has a deep urge to continuing reading the manga but cannot because he has no money and lives in Brooklyn which doesn't sell manga.
 * Raya appears to be known in Brooklyn as "That Homeless Man From The Alley Way".