Once the darkness faded and he had walked through the wall, Noah realized he hadn't even done the one-leg-in one-leg-out thing.
He simply walked through the wall instinctively.
It was annoying knowing how easy things could be if he just mastered these powers. He scanned the bedroom; it was wide with a simple bed on a metal frame beside the window overlooking the city.
Noah walked towards a desk and found the brown bag he saw that man holding. That grocery store was likely a front for storing money and drugs. Sure enough, the brown bag held a wad of cash.
The man's laptop had been left on. He was watching some unsavory videos that made Noah frown.
Did he put a camera in her room?
He clicked through the videos, finding multiple non-consensual videos made of women, some were men though. So Noah guessed blackmail.
But then he found other videos. One filmed between the man and some women he blackmailed. Noah's mouth became bitter as he searched.
There were even some videos of him threatening kids and young men at gunpoint and humiliating them.
More blackmail material used for extortion.
Noah found and destroyed all the cameras in the bed, then he heard someone coming.
He nodded and stepped behind the man's closet just as the bedroom door opened. The man walked into the room and towards the cash; Noah slammed the door closed, calling his attention.
He was a short man, arms covered in tattoos, black hair slicked back weirdly. Some would say scary, but Noah had made bigger men cry.
His expression went from cautious to horror in seconds as Noah's flaming head came into view. Before a scream could escape his throat, Noah grabbed his throat.
The man punched his hand repeatedly as he stepped closer and looked over the desk, finding a notebook with the man's name on it.
"Raphael… so Raph, are you prepared to die?"
Raph's eyes went wide with horror. He tried to speak in a choked voice while Noah checked the desk and looked over the room.
"Where do you hide your gun? … behind the bedside drawer?" He dragged the man with him as he spoke, pushing aside the drawer with ease. Behind it was a hole in the wall, and things sealed in a ziplock bag.
He picked them out as Raph pounded his fists against the back of Noah's fiery head.
It was an assortment of pills and keys; behind them was the gun, a simple revolver. Noah flicked open the cartridge.
"Not the best idea to leave these loaded in your home, next to the drugs that induce panic. But I guess I'm expecting too much from a foot soldier, half of you never made it past high school."
He released Raph's throat a bit to allow the man to speak.
"Who do you work for? I'm just a grunt, man, I can't do anything for you. I don't know why they would send one of you after me."
Noah swallowed the first question that came to his mind; he had to play this the right way or the guy would know he knew nothing.
"One of us?" He said in a darker tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He genuinely wanted to know, but with that tone, it would sound less like a question and more like he was offended. The wide circles that were his eyes narrowed and his black flames intensified.
"Wait, I didn't mean it like that!" Raph quickly apologized. "I don't know much about you Phantasms, so I just—"
Noah tightened his grip, remembering something. The demon hunter in the park called them phantasms too.
But he also remembered that he could just possess Raph's body.
It would be faster and he could access memories that even Raph himself might have forgotten about. He turned back to the mobster and became intangible. His hands slipped into Raph's neck, followed by the rest of him.
He stumbled for a moment, getting used to the changing shape of this body, then Raph's eyes flashed green as he took over fully.
He wasted no time, digging through the man's memories for any mention of the Ironfield mob.
He found some interesting things about this world's version of the mob. Like the fact that they had absorbed the mafia years ago and killed Don Marco.
Raph didn't know the details of this, but he heard Don Marco was curb-stomped by Georgie himself and his daughter, Isabel, escaped to Russia.
As for the supernatural side of the mob, Raph only knew that his captain, Isaac Graves, was certainly not human.
Isaac was tall, handsome in an eerie way, sunken blue eyes that watched your every move. Noah watched Isaac take a bullet to the chest and laugh, before crushing the shooter's skull with a punch.
In this world Isaac was even more sadistic than before. He relished in the pain of others and seemed to even miss being an enforcer.
In one memory, he confided in Raph about how he missed kneecapping people from the mafia.
In another memory, they were chaining Isaac underground and locking him behind a vault door, but at his own request. From behind the vault door, the dire sound of metal groaning could be heard.
After this, Isaac told Raph more about Phantasms, saying his Phantasm was a gift from the boss, but it was hard to control sometimes. Then he warned Raph to avoid anything supernatural and never answer questions in his dreams.
But one thing he continuously warned Raph about was any officer with a black metal badge.
This confused both Raph and Noah, who was viewing the memory. What type of cop used a black badge?
Finally, he came to the man's most recent memories. Raph was supposed to meet Isaac at a gas station a couple of miles from here in two hours.
Noah blinked twice, returning to the real world. He looked down at Raph's chubby fingers, then he sighed, picking up the revolver that had fallen to the ground, and holstering it between his belt.
He fixed the cupboard and grabbed the brown bag off the table, stuffing it into his jacket. Then he left the man's apartment, not bothering to lock the door. He wouldn't be returning alive.
When he got onto the street the darkening sky greeted him; it would rain soon. That was going to suck when he was trying to get back home. He grabbed a tarp and threw it over his real body that was still sitting in the alleyway, cringing.
He needed to find a way to safeguard his body when he went on missions like this.
"I really hope no one comes here and takes my dead body. I wouldn't be too surprised in this freaky city."