"I wonder how long will he be sleeping?"
The boy lazily opened his eyes. He was staring at the ceiling, lying on his back on a very lumpy mattress. "Strange," the boy thought to himself, "I wasn't sleeping on a bed..." He sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbed his silver hair to regain its spiky form, and looked down on the clothes he had on. He wasn't wearing the rags that he usually wore; no, he was wearing a heavy, thick, cotton blue robe that was opened in the front, revealing a white shirt underneath. The boy then got up off the bed and noticed how hard it was to walk in these clothes, as the weight of his robes with matching pants took a toll on him. He took a quick look around the room, and from the thick, heavy bars in front of him, along with the dirty stone walls that surround him, he assumed that he's being imprisoned. He wondered out loud, "Where am I?" as he drew nearer to the metal bars that imprisoned him, to see that dozens more of these jail cells line up this dark, drab hallway.
"Finally," the voice that previously woke him up said, "I was wondering how long you were sleeping. You must've been knocked out pretty good." The boy shouted for the voice to "reveal" itself, but only needed to look forward as the next jail cell to have his question answered: Across his jail cell was yet another, but this one had a captive inside. However, it seemed that this person must've been here for some time, the boy wondered, as he's very relaxed in his posture. The captive was merely sitting on the edge of the bed, with his hands in between his thighs, with a slight curve in his back. However, once the boy acknowledged him, he sat up straighter, revealing his clothes as well. But, instead of these thick, heavy robes like the boy, he was very sharply dressed, from his black boots to his black top hat sporting two white feathers with a bluish tint. "My name is Frederic Francois Chopin, but you could just call me Frederic. Tell me, what is your name? What do you go by?"
The boy only stood in silence for a brief moment. He didn't seem to trust this "Frederic" fellow, and somewhat showed it by hesitating. He didn't really asked for the captive's name, nor did he wanted to give his own, but the boy realized that since he had given his own name first before asking for his, he might as well at least give him his own name in return. "Who knows," the boy thought to himself while Frederic was patiently waiting, "maybe this guy knows what's going on." He then reluctantly gave his name, "My name's Hikaru. Hikaru Minomochi."
Frederic chuckled to himself before he proceeded to stand, and then replied, "Hikaru Minomochi... pleased to meet you." as he slowly walked towards the set of metal bars that was separating the two. He smiled at him as he grabbed the bars closest to his chest, to rest his arms comfortably.
Hikaru didn't seemed to care, but replied to the gesture, "Yeah, likewise." However, Hikaru had no idea of the situation he's in, and he wanted to ask to find out. "Hey, Frederic was it?" He paused to see if he had correctly remembered the man's name, which was answered by a slight nod of Frederic's head. Once he got that confirmed, he asked him, "What's going on? Where am I? I don't understand what's going on!"
Frederic replied casually and calmly, "Well Hikaru that makes two of us. You see, I too do not understand this whole situation. Why, I was imprisoned here shortly upon waking up in this strange world..."
Hikaru made a face at that remark as he thought to himself, "Strange world? What strange world... Aren't we on Earth? And what makes this world different from Earth?" He asked Frederic another question, "Strange world? What are you talkin' 'bout?"
Frederic tilted his head to the right ever so slightly before he released his hands from the jail bars and replied, "I figured you might not know anything about it. You were here, sleeping, when I had arrived, not to mention the fact that there are no windows to the outside world." He turned around and paused for a mere second before continuing on, "Speaking of the outside world, we need to get out of here."
Hikaru grinned a little and replied with a somewhat sarcastic tone, "Yeah, no duh. How are we gonna do that? We're surrounded by stone bricks, with no windows, with metal bars caging us in. Unless you know some magic trick to get us out of here, I doubt that..." The boy stopped as Frederic stepped into the shadows of the jail cell, away from that lone, dimly lit light bulb in the middle of the hallway outside the cell, and was glowing radiantly.
The boy watched in wonder and excitement as Frederic gradually grew brighter and brighter, mumbling the words, "There's melody in these words.... listen..." with his eyes closed. Eventually, he was glowing so brightly, that Hikaru had to shield his eyes by putting his right hand on his forehead; however, he saw his birthmark on his right hand, not covered by his usual pair of gloves that he had on, and quickly switched it with the left hand that was inside the robe's pockets. As moments passed by, Frederic suddenly opened his eyes, and with a serious tone in his voice, shouted, "Piu Grave!" and with the conductor's baton in his hand, he slashed at the bars, and a huge amount of visible energy that appeared black (in contrast to his radiant glow) suddenly blasted the metal bars away, as if they were mere toothpicks in a fierce hurricane. Even Hikaru, who happened to stand next to his set of metal bars, was blown back all the way to the back of his cell.
Frederic spent no time rushing over to Hikaru's aid. He jumped over the graveyard of broken metal pieces and landed in his cell, and then resumed running to Hikaru. Hikaru was hit hard enough to get the wind knocked out of him, but not hard enough to do any real damage. He coughed a little as he tried to speak, with Frederic trying to pick him up. Frederic offered a hand, and Hikaru took it after coughing a little bit more. When Hikaru got up all the way, he realized that he must've also damaged his ankle, as a sudden jolt of pain sharply passed through Hikaru's ankle as he stood on it, and started to limp. Frederic apologized, "I'm ever so sorry Hikaru, I did not know that the impact would be so heavy. Here, let me help." as he helped Hikaru hang on to his shoulders, since all Hikaru could do was limp. And since they had just broken out of a jail cell nosily, guards would surely be swarming in to find the cause of the ruckus. Frederic raised his voice a little as he said, "Come on, we must take our leave at once." Hikaru tried to speak, but only gasps of air came out.
They made their way out of the holding cells, and went straight into the guard shack. It had everything, from a small booth to shelter a lone guard, to desks with a single lamp on it, to provide the guard with entertainment in the form of text. However, it was missing one thing: a guard. Hikaru, after finally recovering his breath but still struggling, said in a hoarse voice, "Where's... the... guards at?"
Frederic looked around the room, and shook his head as he replied, "I do not know... Strange... one would think there would be MORE guards if one broke out of jail, not less." Frederic took another look around the room, and spotted a small window over the guard shack. Although the window was small, and only perhaps a streak of sunlight poured in, it was more than enough for what Frederic was about to do. He set Hikaru down and said to him, "Ah, this is perfect."
Hikaru tried to understand what he was talking about when he said that, but Frederic quickly set him on the ground and stood in the tiny ray of sunlight. As tiny as it was, it was enough for Frederic to do whatever he was going to do. He began charging his magic, slowly taking in the sunlight, and started to glow once more. However, in Hikaru's eyes, it appeared that Frederic shone even brighter than the last time he did his magic.
"But wait," Hikaru thought to himself, seeing as it would be futile to say anything under his status, "Why is he using magic for? What is he doing? Better yet, why DOES he know magic?" Hikaru then quickly shielded his eyes as Frederic had shined even brighter, releasing his magic, sending it towards Hikaru. Within a second, Hikaru's body felt rejuvenated, and he was able to stand within mere seconds. He asked, in his regular voice, "What the� How'd you do that?"
Frederic wiped something off his chest and explained, "I was just merely healing you with my magic." He continued to explain, "You see, my magic is always changing depending on how much light is around me. If it's dark..." He paused for a second to take his right hand out of the light and into the darkness and watched it turn purple, like the time he used Piu Grave, and continued once more, "then my magic is damaging. However, if it's in the light, as you just witnessed, then my magic have the ability to cure people of their ailments."
Hikaru just stood there, taking it all in. "Fascinating," he said with a smile, which quickly turned into a frown as the room shook. "Whoa, what the hell was that?" he exclaimed as the "earthquake" quickly threw Hikaru and Frederic off-balance, but not entirely, as they were still able to stand.
Hikaru searched the room the find the cause of the impact, and heard someone, a female if he's not mistaken, screamed from the nearby hallway, "Get off me! Don't you know who I am!?" Hikaru turned to Frederic, who nods in agreement, as he already knew what Hikaru wanted to say. They quickly ran down the hallway, passing by numerous guards lying on the floor, unconscious due to the pain. Hikaru turned to Frederic as they ran to comment on it, "Damn, what the hell happened here?" Frederic replies that he doesn't know, and that they should keep going. "After all," Frederic said, "If someone could take out these guards that easily, then surely this must be a damsel in distress!"
That was not the case. Once Hikaru and Frederic reached the end of the hallway and into a huge, circular room, they see several guards surrounding a single girl. They tried to apprehend her easily with comments like, "C'mon girly, we don't wanna hurt you. We have orders to just keep you in a cell until our boss comes. Don't make us use these weapons." However, this girl didn't want to be kept in jail, and just pulled out a book, and smacked the guards surrounding her so hard, they were all knocked out, even with their heavy armor and helmets. Hikaru and Frederic both agreed to approach this "hostile girl" quickly, and hopefully, painlessly.
The girl saw the pair running towards her, and then shouted, "More guards eh? I'll crush them all!" as she pulled out a big book from the inside pocket of her shirt. She was wearing a small, red lab coat-like shirt with a brown stripe down the middle. Her sleeves were black, and were so long that she had to fasten the ends to her wrists so they wouldn't become a nuisance. She was wearing any pants, but her shirt was just long enough to also be considered a skirt, as they stop short just a little past her mid thigh. The last noticeable appearance was the goggles that she held above her forehead that she quickly readjusted before saying an incantation under her breath with her head down, as if she was praying to herself. As she kept talking, 3 reddish light appeared just above her head, and when she was finished with the incantation, she sprang her head back up and shouted, "Fireball!" The lights above her head quickly turned into balls of fire, and she quickly hurled them towards the heroes.
Hikaru quickly saw the fireballs coming, and shouted to Frederic, "Move!" as he quickly evaded the rightmost fireball by rolling to the right even further. As the fireballs drew nearer to Frederic, he quickly followed suit, and rolled the other way to avoid the other two fireballs. The third fireball barely touched him, but it did touch him enough to leave a burnt mark on his wonderfully elegant clothes. He had dropped his hat rolling out the way, but he quickly picked it up as he saw that Hikaru had recovered enough to approach the enemy, and was just about to strike the girl when Frederic shouted, "No, Hikaru, stop!"
Hikaru turned around and stopped with his fist in mid-air, ready to connect with this enemy who tried to kill him. Hikaru had realized that he was about to struck a female, and didn't want that on his mind. However, the girl had no problem hitting one of the opposite sexes, and when she saw that Hikaru let his guard down, a smirk appeared on her face, and she quickly tried to sucker punch Hikaru. But Hikaru had seen this coming, and not only dodged the attack by bending his back back, he also turned the motion into a backwards handstand, and with his feet, caught her fist, and then slammed her fist into the ground, hurting it enough for her to stay still long enough.
The girl got up off the floor to sit, and checked the hand that Hikaru slammed into the ground. "Ow, you bastard, why the hell did you do that for!?" Her hand was red all over, with some noticeable parts of her hand swollen. She constantly rubbed her hand, because even though it did sting to touch, she found it comforting it rub over and over again. She glared at Hikaru as he got up off the ground to explain himself.
"Are you seriously asking me why I did that!? YOU were just trying to KILL us!" He paused for a brief second to rub his own wrist that he must've accidentally twisted it when he pulled off that counterattack, before continuing on, "What, you expected us to just stand there and get killed?" He then quickly started to dig around the robes he had on for the medicated gauze that he always carried on him, since an accident that occurred in his childhood, until he realized that these weren't his clothes, so naturally, he doesn't have the gauze to help patch the girl up, feeling guilty for hurting her, even if it was justified.
Frederic approached the girl and offered his hand to help her up, that she quickly smacked out of the way without a word towards him. However, she did have a few words to say to Hikaru in response, "Well duh! Besides, it's not like you just expected me to just stand there to be taken to my cell now, do ya!? You saw what happens when you try to take great Rita Mordio to jail!" However, Frederic wasn't going to not help the girl; after deeming that the room was lit enough, he told the girl to sit still for a minute as he said some of his own incantations. The room was lit enough to cast the magic, as he glowed bright like he did before. He assumed that sunlight wasn't really needed, just light. And there were somewhat plenty of lights in this room: with electronic light bulbs surrounding the room, with a huge chandelier hanging high above the room with its ceiling so high, that voices were echoed, having enough light was not a problem.
Hikaru replied to the girl, "You blind or sumthing!? Why don't you take a good look at our clothes then?" The girl took a quick glance at the two's clothes, and realized that they weren't wearing the standard issue armor all guards were required to wear. She quickly looked down, to avoid having these strangers look at her face, at her embarrassment. She didn't realize that they were guards, and knew that attacking them was wrong. Worse of all, she attacked first, and was ashamed to admit she was wrong. And she didn't; she merely turned the other way and avoided the subject altogether.
After Frederic casted his healing magic, the girl quickly turned away, fearing that he was trying to hurt her. She even cursed at him, "Whoa there, what the hell are you doing!?" before she realized that his magic was healing her, as her hand started to hurt less and less, until there was seemingly no hint of the pain left.
Frederic smiled at her, and said, "There, all better." The girl blushed for about a mere second, before she quickly turned away, for obvious reasons. She also quickly said thank you, until she realized something. She snapped back around and took Frederic's hand, looking around his wrist for something. "Is something the matter?" he asked her, as he watched her closely at this strange notion.
The girl then grabbed Frederic by the collar and asked him, "That spell.... magic... how are you doing that? I don't see any bodhi blastia on you! Is it under her cuff or sumthing!?" She then looked under his cuffs like a madman, desperately looking for this "Bodhi blastia." Frederic didn't mind being searched at all; in fact, he somewhat liked it. It was like a monkey trying to find something it had misplaced, and was looking everywhere for it. It was cute.
Hikaru then pulled the girl away from Frederic, stating, "Ok, ok, that's enough. Stop molesting him; usually it's the other way around." She desperately tried to fight him off to keep checking, but the loud metal armor that banged across the stone floor echoed through the other hallways, and by the sound of it, it sounds like there were at least 10 guards, maybe even 20. He quickly let go of her, who then gets up along with Frederic. Hikaru then asked the girl, "Hey, Rita, was it? We got guards coming this way, so let's decide this now: You coming with or not?"
Rita then nods her head in agreement, but quickly explained her reasoning, "Yeah, I'm coming with ya, but not for whatever reason you're thinking of! Besides the fact that I need to get out of here, I owe you one for attacking you. Besides..." she paused long enough to stare at Frederic and muttered under her breathe, "I want to know your secret... just where are you hiding your bodhi blastia...? How can you use magic? Just who are you...?" She then realized something, something that probably should've been realized a while ago, "Hey, hold the hell up! Who the hell are you guys!?"
Hikaru then introduced himself, "I'm Hikaru Minomochi." as he bent over to pick up one of the guard's shields. "I'm sure he won't miss this..." he said to himself as he also took the sword, which was a LOT heavier than he had expected.
Frederic had a more formal introduction, as he bowed slightly on his right knee, "I'm Frederic Francois Chopin, but you could just call me Frederic." He then quickly pulled a special Conductor's Baton from inside his clothes.
Rita just smiled and said, "Well Hikaru... Frederic... I hope you guys can fight, because here they come!" The guards came pouring out of the hallway in an orderly fashion, quickly surrounding the trio. The guards raised their lances and swords up high, and shouted for them to drop their weapons and surrender. Rita just laughed, and said, "Cover me!" as she kneels in her spot, presumably trying to cast another spell.
One of the guards ran towards Hikaru and ordered him one last time to drop his weapons, or face lethal force. Hikaru just shrugs and says, "Ok... you win." as he tossed the shield horizontally at the guard's face, with the impact instantly knocking him out. Hikaru then jumped on top of the guard's body and leaped towards two more guards, in which he slashed one across the chest with the swords before banging the sword at his face to knock him out, and used the hilt of the other to hit the other's body, to shake it up a little, before repeating the same method he used to take down the previous guard. "Man, it's tough to take these guys down when they have armor like this..." he noted, as he starts to break a sweat. He had hardly put a dent into the numbers, unlike the magic users Frederic and Rita.
Frederic had somewhat of a difficult time himself trying to holding up. Seeing as the bright lights could only make Frederic produce healing magic, he couldn't really do anything himself. That is until Hikaru took note of this and tossed an enemy shield at the nearest light fixture, instantly shattering it, allowing the darkness to form. Frederic quickly rushed over there, and even with 2 guards behind him, his magic was far faster to use than Rita's; in fact, he could use it almost instantly. As the two guards approached him, he took his baton and wave it at them, shouting the words "Piu Graves." The guards were then hit with pure blunt magic that instantly knocked them out, leaving their bodies bruised even with all that armor on.
Rita wasn't doing so badly herself; even though her magic takes "casting time," she had a few back up spells that she could use right away to keep the enemies at bay. They usually involved using her book to swing at the enemies with great force from the spells that she used to enhance it. But all she needed was enough time to cast one spell: Tractor beam. After Hikaru and Frederic successfully defended her, she used a spell called "Tractor Beam" to lift the enemies high above her, almost as high as the chandelier, and then she'd released them, with their heavy armor increasing their impact. They were hurt badly, some were knocked out, but the vast majority were hurt enough to be considered out of the fight. The remaining few however were quickly put down by Hikaru and Frederic, as using that spell took a lot out of Rita. She was wheezing out of breath
Hikaru took notice of this, and after checking to see if the room was cleared, she asked her, "Hey, you wanna catch your breath first before we go?"
She just shook her head no and said, "We... don't have time... for that! More guards... will be... coming soon!" She just dug into her pockets and grabbed something out of it. It was a tube with an orange gel-like substance inside that she almost gulped down after ripping it open. Within seconds, her stamina was regained, and she was ready to go. "C'mon," she said without losing her breath, "I remember the way out!" She took off in one direction, and Hikaru and Frederic followed suit.
