BECAUSE RP NEED: Fab Four RP (Ko and Fu)

[Setting: Feel free to quirk however you wish. So far the setting is, bizarrely, a church in which farmers and peasants in some number (200 or so) are fighting a small handful of knights (20 or so). This is bizarre, especially to Astrum who knows they should be doing mercenary work in space as the Fab Four. Read on!]

CLANG CLANG CLANG.

Astrum opened her eyes. Vaguely before her on icy marble floor she could see shapes moving at each other aggressively. Their feet - and there were a /lot/ of feet, and many pairs of shiny, dark legs - were making a massive amount of noise. She felt as though she were being compacted in a junk yard with all the clanging and clashing of metal on metal, and metal on marble, and the drum-beat of boots and shoes.

Not to mention the noise and the yelling!

She realized suddenly that she wasn't dreaming, and sat up, tugging her hand to move it before her protectively. But it didn't move. She was bound by her wrists and - with a swift wiggle of her feet - ankles. Nothing hurt enough to constitute a wound, but her foggy attempts to remember how she'd come to be in this dark nook in a crowded room full of people in battle, were in vain.

Being that she didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, she watched the proceedings of this strange fight. Where she'd come from, people fought with guns, or with a magical source, or biological weapons - something sensible. Here, there were honest to goodness knights-in-armor - something there was little of in their space age - battling what looked to be a band of farmers, of their fighting tools of hoes and spades were of any indication. There were more farmers, certainly, about thirty to the knights handful, but it was definitely peasant blood that was stinking up the marble room.

Where in all heaven's name was she?

And why couldn't she remember a damn thing about how she got there?

"Back, you fiend!" she heard someone shout abruptly from the middle - the words pointed and decipherable among the outcry of unintelligible noise. Immediately, though she only vaguely knew the direction from which the voice had echoed, she strained her eyes against the gore and fighting for a blond she knew she'd recognize.

Blast it all, she knew that voice.

"Lie!" she called out, and then realized it probably would have been better not to draw attention to herself. One of the knights looked over at her and began to come her way.

Until he had an all too familiar knife in his throat, of course.

"Hello, blight of my eyes. Did you miss me?" Lie said, shoving the heavy metal body behind him where it fell into that mass of fighters with a crash.

He was in the most absurd, bizarre getup - with his wine doublet, creamy ruffle, gold accents and long, fitted black tights, he could have played the part perfectly of a noble of King Arthur's court. (The fact that he looked like he belonged here, with all his flamboyance and sexual swagger, did not /really/ surprise Astrum that much.)

"The hell are we?" she asked, annoyed that he seemed to be completely nonplussed - after killing a man no less. After all, she herself was still in her mercenary uniform of standard issue - and all that polyester was as alien as it got to this weird old Earth charade.

"Tell you in a minute - come with me," he said, his speech as rapid as she was used. At least he wasn't affecting some stupid accent.

She motioned with her bonds. "Untie me."

"Actually, since you're so damn slow, it'd just be quicker if -" He grinned. His violet eyes glinted.

She groaned.

That's how they came to be: Lie running rapidly down a side corridor, half sliding on the marble, Astrum over his shoulder like some stolen bride, complaining loudly all the while. She was a little surprised to see people fighting in the corridor as well, but after seeing how fast Lie could run they mostly ignored them. Which was good - she may be bound, but she was more like a cannon than a bride with her magic.

"We're just going back to where Ishika and Asrafel are," he told her as they slipped around a corner. "They're right in this room here."

"Fighting?"

"They were when I left to find you."

She braced herself for a bloody scene.

Waking up because your partner was shaking you vigorously was unpleasant.

Waking up because said partner was also yelling was even more unpleasant.

Hell was waking up because of the aforementioned factors above and combining that with a pounding headache, yelling, and the unmistakable song of war and music of death. It thrummed in her veins like a deep drum, driving her fully into consciousness. Red eyes snapped open, pupils dilating with the sudden rush of adrenaline, and then constricting again as the world slowed when an incoming blade pierced the neck of a man slightly above and to the left of her, if the sudden gurgling was anything to go by at least. Her lips pulled up into a snarl, exposing inhumanely sharp teeth. Vaguely she recalled hands being loosed from constricting chains, and a soft clinking as a single choker was placed back on her neck.

In the back of her mind she heard but did not hear Lie saying something about retrieving Astrum, nor did she take particular note of Asrafel deftly stepping out of her way with a look of grim acceptance. All she knew was that war was calling to her and that it had been far too long since she had been loosed from the oppressive cage that she had forced upon herself. Darkness spread to her sclera, and markings scrolled on her face, she laughed loudly as nails hardened to claws and teeth lengthened to monstrous proportions, glistening in the low light offered by high windows. It didn’t matter to her just whose throat she had just sank her newly grown fangs into, relishing in the surprised scream of agony and drinking deeply of the horror when she ripped her head away and a bit of trachea and artery followed her. Blood dripped from her face, but that didn’t matter, she needed to sate this sudden need to cause terror, pain, death, and all these mortals, with their fragile little flickering lives, were all fighting anyway.

Why not simply help them along?

Yes, why not?

The unbalanced laughter that bubbled from Ishika’s throat had Asrafel cringing, even as he moved among the fighters, light fingers taking jewelry he recognized as Ishika’s. It had been so long since he had witnessed Ishika loose the fight of sanity to her powers, and now he remembered why he had been so damned afraid of her for the longest time.

He had told Lie that he would take care of things on his end, but watching his not-so-secret-secret love move with that careless ease as she snuffed out lives left and right, he realized it would be Ishika doing the taking care of things.

He didn’t even know how the hell they had gotten here, wherever here was exactly though, he couldn’t tell you, or how Ishika had managed to knock herself so far into hibernation that she didn’t just blow up the entire continent when her seals were removed.

Hell, he didn’t even know how the fuck they had gotten them OFF her.

That would require a Fae and knowledge of items of power, and Asrafel hoped to high hell that there wasn’t a Fae working against them right now, because that could and would complicate things so very much.

“DEMON!! MONS-“

The voice was suddenly cut off by a soft choking sound when his mouth was suddenly very much occupied by an arm, hand holding a good portion of the poor bastard’s spine, and Asrafel forced himself not to comment about fixing any backproblems in the future. Not that these heathens would understand the reference.

“Oh yes,” Asra muttered, pocketing an earring off a hapless knight whose head went flying seconds later, “because screaming your head off will get you ignored and let you live longer. Gods dammit, did they HAVE to divvy up the loot?! I swear… if I have to dig through corpses again Ishika…”