The vampire felt the Thirst as strongly as when he was just a fledgling. He thought back on those days of scurrying about like a starved rat, feeding on anything with blood. The memory stopped and a sharp pain and a flash knocked his conciousness back a step. He couldn't remember anything, not even his own name. The realisation winded him, so he clung to the name the teal-armored man had uttered: MANTIS. The other name he had invoked, Crusade, had awoken a sharp hatred in MANTIS. He remembered the enormous Strategos well, in his immaculate white-gold armor and wheat-coloured hair. His icy blue eyes spoke of a man posessed of vision and purpose. This man had plans...

The hatred he felt snapped him back to focus. His assailant had his attention elsewhere...MANTIS felt, more than saw, the armored man's pulsing jugular vein.

The Thirst made the decision for him.

His fully extended fangs pierced the skin, a snarl came unbidden from his throat in anticipation of the coppery taste of life itself. What flowed instead was like liquid fire, concentrated holy energy pounded into him. Memories flowed like the firey energy into his mind, the same as any other time he consumed a victim, but the sheer volume of the memories threatened to crush him. They assaulted his sanity, the mass of memories jumbling into chaos.

He disengaged from his victim, the energy slamming him into the tree once again. He looked blearily at the armored man. There were thousands of years' worth of memories...just how old was this man?

The lavender-haired man had dropped his lefthand gun during the assault, now that hand was being used to cradle his face as he swayed on his feet. MANTIS gasped when he saw his almost-victim, for two white-feathered wings had erupted from his back. This both explained the sheer quantity of memories and how the man had managed to consistantly overpower the vampire.

The teal-armored man was an angel. And MANTIS was in more danger than he had thought.

The winged knight had just begun to regain himself when a voice filled the area.

"Finally found you, Uriel!" the shout came from a boy of no more than seventeen. He was clad simply in a teal yukata and wooden sandals. A battered-looking katana was at his waist. Bleached bangs fell in his mocking eyes that were the deep crimson colour of dried blood. "Nice colour armor, by the way."

A young girl, looking to be about thirteen, stood at his side. She bit her lip at her companion's taunting. "Yaji, quit it." she whispered sharply, her gray eyes flickered from the angel to Yaji.

"Bah, this guy's nothing. You worry too much, Hypha." he rolled his eyes at her and instinctively glanced at the sword she carried. It was a massive, crescent-bladed monstrosity. It's scabbard was a mess of buckles and straps, and the whole ensemble was much bigger than the girl wielding it. "...I still have no clue how you carry that thing."

Hypha let out an exasperated breath and hiked up the side of her gray shirt that kept falling off one shoulder. Yaji had no idea why she held on to it, it was at least three sizes too big and was poorly made...

Yaji looked back to Uriel who had now completely regained his composure. The lavender-haired angel glared at the boy.

"Demon whelp." he snarled and fired off a single shot of his pistol, the concentrated holy energy making a thundercrack as it sped toward it's target.

Yaji leapt into the air, avoiding the bolt by scant milimeters and leaving his sandals behind. He bore down on the still-disoriented angel, thumbing his blade out of it's sheath as he neared his enemy. He executed a perfect iai drawing strike that would have split Uriel from shoulder to hip, if the armored man hadn't used his pistol to block it.

The stressed metal screamed and sparks flew as sword and gun met. Yaji gritted his teeth and, still suspended in the air, removed his right hand from the hilt of his sword. He flexed the hand slightly and claws extended from his fingertips.

"Windslash!" he yelled as he clawed forward, three parallel blades of compressed air arced toward Uriel. The angel flapped his large wings, at once pushing Yaji back and pushing himself out of range of the boy's attack.

Uriel fired two quick shots at Yaji but the boy dodged them easily, his form becoming blurry and indistict with his inhuman speed. His left side was now facing Uriel, he flexed his left hand and claws once again extended.

"Thousand Needles!" the claws shot out from his fingertips, growing to be footlong spines before they sped toward Uriel. They regenerated almost immediately and fired again. It wasn't exactly a thousand, but it was enough to create a veritable hail of the spines.

Without missing a beat, Uriel pulled back the slide of his pistol, a high-pitched humming sound filled the area. He pointed it at the heart of the needle storm screaming toward him.

"Chargeshot!" the blast that erupted from the gun was easily ten times as powerful as the normal shots, it eradicated the spines and knocked the others off course so that they impacted the ground harmlessly. The blast continued past the needles toward the one that had created them, almost catching the boy off guard.

Yaji frowned slightly at his failure, he supposed he would have to start taking the angel seriously. He also began to regret his taunting earlier, as it was likely to explode in his face now. He held his sword in a guard stance and spread his legs slightly.

He brought the sword around in a horizontal slash, perfectly parallel to the ground. "Crescent Wave!" a arc of compressed air hit the holy blast that was threatening to destroy him. Yaji began to grin before he saw that his attack had merely slowed down the angel's shot.

"Cross Slash!" a vertical blade of compressed air struck the first one, forming a rough cross. The pressure of both was enough to completely stop the holy blast, which exploded loudly and sent a cloud of dust in the air between the demon boy and the angel.

Yaji heard the sound of a blade being drawn. He had only seconds to ponder what this could mean before a very angry lavender-haired angel burst through the cloud of dust, wings spread, sword drawn and teeth bared in a snarl.

MANTIS watched the fight for several moments, taking in just how much he had weakened the angel. He felt odd, as if he had absorbed too much holy energy lately. He craved the power of the Dark, and he still felt the Thirst... His eyes fell on the shepherd who had fainted, from the shock of what was happening, apparently. MANTIS chuckled at the weakness of the human animal and stalked toward the prone stargazer, driven by his bloodlust.

A blur of grey flashed in front of his eyes, he ducked instinctively and the sheathed blade wielded by the Hypha girl missed his head by mere centimeters. Even though it was sheathed, it had more than enough mass to have taken his head clean off. He realised he was panting with surprise...and perhaps even some fear.

He straightened and actually looked at the girl standing defiantly before him. Her spiky, disheveled black hair and peasant's garb, as well as her age and small size, made one instinctively underestimate her. But she was wielding a blade that most grown men couldn't even lift, and she wasn't even breathing hard as she held it reverse-handed in only her left hand. Her right hand was curled into a pathetically tiny fist.

She moved forward again, an impossibly fast blur of gray, she jumped and the enormous belted monstrosity she called a sword came at him again. MANTIS blocked it insinctively with is right forearm. He realised his error too late, when he heard the wet snap of his arm breaking. He grunted and pushed the blade roughly away with his left palm.

Hypha seemed to have expected this. She whirled with the blade, moving with the momentum. She transferred the kinetic energy to her right foot as it cracked across the vampire's jaw, snapping his head around and sending him sprawling in the dirt.

MANTIS pushed himself up with his good arm. His other one was broken cleanly, as was his jaw. He groaned and got to a sitting position.

He looked at the girl, she now had the sword resting on one shoulder and was pulling up the collar of her shirt from where it was sliding from her other shoulder.

She hadn't even broken a sweat.