Angels and Demons

"I'm the same Siren! Except! Now, a Madam." she said gleefully, idly flapping her wings.

"I don't know what happened to my place, or my face. I never do. Who's your friend?" she asked Rose, before walking directly into said friend.

He was six feet tall, and Siren was a few inches short of five, so her face bumped into his mid-torso.

"He's big," came her muffled voice.

For Rose, everything was gone. inside her head, she was back on the battlefield, swords were clanging...so much blood...

"That makes sense," Grim said, his voice quiet. Aquarius was paying attention to the conversation and the reunion with Sevy, but had noticed another one of the angels out of the corner of his eye. Everyone else in the church seemed to have someone to talk to, but she was all by herself. And as conversations progressed all around Aquarius, he began to notice an all too familiar look appearing in her eyes. He saw it in the eyes of Hero and Oracle's chosen, and he was sure her voice would take on that same tone Hero's would when he was talking about the Great War.

"I need to go talk to someone," he told Grim and Sevy. When there was no objections to his decision, he started walking across the church to where the girl was standing. His tail swung behind him, and his now red eyes hesitantly looked into hers as he came to a stop.

"Um, hi," he awkwardly said, not quite sure what was he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Usually someone else from the wars were there, and they would about it with each other in quiet, hushed tones. But he didn't know anything about the battles she must have fought, and couldn't even begin to relate to whatever her experiences were. "You looked a little lonely."

Rose opened her eyes when she heard someone talking to her. In spite of the tail and horns and eyes, this..person didn't seem to be to mean.
"Hi." She said just as awkwardly. "I...I'm Rose Aladorn."

I will admit that it brought me a guilty satisfaction to hear Damascus tell me he'd missed me.

I say guilty, for it was a cruel thing, that he should have to see his loved ones for the last time, every time he saw them. I knew that a good man would not take even small pleasure in knowing he was a part of someone's sorrow.
And yet, the damned feeling hung stubbornly over my heart, hungry, proud, and vile.

"I've been well." I told Damascus, smiling brightly. "You look quite fine, yourself. How are the wings treating you? Are you used to them? I don't recall if your true form had wings or not, it's been such a long time since-"

My heart stopped. I had glanced over Damascus' shoulder just in time to see Engel lower his pistol. It had been aimed... at James.


"Are you seeing this?" I whispered, inclining my head vaguely in the direction of Engel, and his... companions.
Right unsavoury characters they were, one of which had an unsettling resemblance to him. Could it be-?

If it was- God. I was filled with familiar, silent, corrosive rage.

Engel was one of the strongest, most infinitely durable people I knew. For someone to control him the way Boomslang did, they would need his soul, or control over the fate of the only ones he still had to lose.

There was Engel, the bold, the steadfast, dead to all the world. Tethered to a woman with such a boundless appetite for cruelty, the sort that nothing could get past.
I knew the look that wasn't on Engel's face. I didn't know what it was to be bound to a cruel master, or to have lost in love so completely as he had, but I knew fear, and I knew lies.


I looked away as simply and as impersonally as I had looked toward, looking more like a patient in a waiting room than someone who had discovered a brother in a grave position.

In my heart, I feared for him. I was accustomed to lying, but Damascus...

"Whatever happens, we mustn't reveal any connection. If we don't understand the situation, we can only make it worse for him." I told Damascus, carefully.

There was no need to whisper, for thankfully there was nearby chatter to shield us, but I spoke low and even just the same.

Aquarius gave her a small, shy smile.

"I'm Aquarius," he said. He didn't add anything on about being the god of water - his magic wasn't coming to him as easily as it normally could, and he didn't really think it mattered right now.

"I was just trying to remember how I got here." Her wings fluttered slightly and a look of pain came into her eyes.

"But I can't. I just remember...the--the battle." She wasn't sure how much she could trust this..Aquarius, but mentioning the battle wasn't going to give him all that much information, let alone tell him that she was from a different realm.

Der Silberfuchs dropped his head, closing his eyes. Verdammt. Verdammt, Verdammt, Verdammt! Of all the places he could've ended up, with all the people...why did it have to be the people that mattered to him all in one room with Boomslang?

He could still see the look in Genette's hazel eyes, the fear, the confusion...he could remember the greenish glow of Boomslang's eyes in the darkness, watching him...the cold feel of the metal in his fingers...the clicking of the gun as he drew back the hammer...

Engel pushed it away, shoving it back, tying it down. Now wasn't the time. He couldn't afford such emotions here and now.

"My... my wings?" Damascus craned his head around and his eyes widened at the large pair of wings he apparently hadn't noticed before, giving them an experimental flap. "Well, would you look at that!"

He didn't have long to revel in his new form before Boris pointed his attention toward another group across the room. It was... it was Engel! His grin brightened for a moment before fading as he took in the gun.

"Oh..." he murmered. "I wouldn't want to increase the danger he's in. So- so we pretend we don't know him?"

"We'll have to, for at least the time being. We can ask James what he makes of this if we can get the chance to ask him discreetly, but for now, this is all we can do for him."

James took note of the different conversations going on around the room. He decided to wait a moment to interrupt them all, and instead directed his attention to Boris and Damascus. Instead of calling them forward by name he simply waved them over with his hand. He was aware that Boomslang was an enemy of Kratzer, a manipulator, and a person with evil intentions. From what he knew of Kratzer's past - put together in pieces - and from what he could read off of her, that much was clear.

"In my experience, events like this are largely out of our control. It's possible there is something we can do to reverse our condition, but it may be more likely that someone or a group of people are responsible for bringing us here - either putting our souls in new bodies or modifying our own. Both, of course, are equally disturbing in their own right. But all that to say, if someone is responsible for bringing us here, they might be watching, or have a way to monitor us from here. So it would do us good to search the building as a start. And if any of you know someone capable of arranging of all of this, it'd be helpful to let us know. The sooner we identify who or what brought us here the sooner we can figure out how to get back to our respective worlds."

"I don't remember how I got here, either," he reassured her. His smile faltered for a moment. He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to say next in a situation like this, but he luckily didn't have to come up with a way to continue the conversation - one of the men standing near the front of the room had decided to gather everyone together so they could figure out what was going on.

He looked over at Rose, hesitantly grabbed onto her hand, and brought her over to where the group of people was. Once they were there, he let go of her hand and waited for someone to speak.

The angel wearing the tunic thought for a moment, looking at the others present in the room. "Maybe it's Kartiel and Rendra?" he hesitantly guessed. He glanced down at his appearance. "I could see them doing this again."

"...It could have been the bartender from Vodquila," the terrifying demon from earlier uncertainly guessed. He looked over in the direction of some of the other people in the room, holding their gazes for a handful of moments - except for the angel with the scar and the gun, who he quickly looked away from.

"It could have been Magic," Grim said from nearby; Aquarius hadn't realized how close he really was.

The terrifying demon raised an eyebrow as he looked back in his direction. "Isn't that a given?"

"Not magic," Grim replied with a shake of his head. "Magic, with a capital 'M'. There's...There's someone out there who could do things like this, and they're the Personification of Magic."

Aquarius nodded in agreement, then decided that he needed to address a possibility that none of the people present seemed to have thought of. He took a deep breath, looked around and said in the most confident voice he could possibly muster. "Maybe it was a god?" When the angel who had first spoken stared at him, he immediately wished he hadn't been brave enough to speak. "Where-where I'm from, there's gods. I don't know of anyone who could do something like this, but maybe there's one of them in hiding...That's what happened with me..."

Rose listened to all this, and out of all the ideas, she was inclined to listen to Aquarius. She had gods in her world to.

"Why us though? I'm assuming that each one of us has something that...attracted attention. I don't think we chosen at random."
She turned red as everyone's eyes fell on her.

"I suppose the question then becomes what is it we have in common. Or, rather, what did we have in common prior to appearing here. If we can figure out the motivation behind being brought here, it may shed light on the who or the what," Boomslang says.

Melkyael slipped away from the group as they spoke and headed towards the door. Upon reaching it, he pulled the handles to open it, testing if they were locked.

Damascus nodded and looked over at James, who was waving them over. He walked closer to join the group, and as he approached, picked up on some of the ideas they seemed to be throwing out about how they all had come to be in the situation.

"Someone could have sent us here." He started, "but for me personally, things like this happen a lot on my own accord- I could have just as easily sent myself here."

With a pause, he mulled over the strange state his form was in, and how off he felt. "Then again, I've never accidentally given myself wings."

Sevy glanced around at those gathered, the furrow in his brow growing deeper as each new culprit was suggested. How many imposing supernatural figures had these people collectively incountered? It was impressive, by all means.

"I guess it's safe to say that one thing we all have in common is being in situations like this before." He shrugged, glancing at Rose. She was possibly an acception- he didn't know much about her, but from the casual way she questioned Aquarius' idea of gods being involved, he thought it was safe to say that she wasn't new to the abnormal either. "Just saying."