"'Angelic Layer'?" the boy muttered as he looked at the advertisement in the toyshop window. Besides the words, which were in a suitably baroque font, the only thing he could see on the poster was what looked like an egg with angel wings.
Looking around, he sighed. There wasn't a bookshop available and he didn't have anything else to do while he was waiting for the rest of his family to finish their business in the various parts of the shopping centre. He pushed open the toyshop door and saw that there were more posters above some of the shelves - obviously where the indicated toy or game was located.
Judging by the precise location it was well over on the side of the store where girl's toys were customarily stored, he noted. With that being the case, he took a moment to check for anyone in the shop that he recognised - getting teased for shopping among the girl's side would be embarrassing. There were two familiar heads of hair visible over the shelves in pretty much the right location and he made his way towards them.
"Hi Andrew," his mother greeted him. "Did you get everything?"
The boy raised the bag to illustrate success in the hunt for a new shirt. "Hi Mum. Hi Anne."
His sister nodded absently, not taking her attention from the Angelic Layer merchandise on the shelf - it appeared to involve a doll and accessories thereof. Not exactly the sort of thing to catch his eye and he was grateful that there was a good excuse for him to be present.
"Angus is looking at the Lego sets if you want to wait for him," his mother advised and Andrew quickly headed for the other side of the shop and the company of his seven year-old little brother.
.oOo.
That was Andrew's first experience of Angelic Layer. His sister came home with a carrier bag full of boxes and holed up in her bedroom at the far end of the house from him, and he thought no more of it.
A couple of days later, Anne showed off her new doll at dinner and asked if she could take it to compete in some sort of competition at the shopping centre next Saturday.
"That's not a good day, honey," their mother told her. "Dad will be away on work and I have meetings here all afternoon."
Andrew rolled his eyes. That meant not being able to get into the kitchen that afternoon, unless he went out the front door and came all the way around to the house to get in through the kitchen's door, as the only access to the kitchen was through the lounge.
"I can catch a bus," Anne suggested.
His parents exchanged looks. "You're a bit young to go all that way on your own."
Andrew tilted his head to one side. "Next Saturday?" he asked. "What time?"
"Two o'clock," Anne said sulkily.
Andrew looked up at the two adults of the family. "I could go with her, stop at the library on the way. With two of us it would be alright, wouldn't it?"
.oOo.
"I don't need you to look after me," Anne snorted as they got on the bus. "I can manage on my own."
"I know," Andrew told her. Despite being two years younger than him, from their behaviour she was sometimes thought to be the elder. "Look, we stop at the library so I can borrow a few books. We go to your competition and I'll just sit in a corner and read my books until you're done."
"Right, and don't let anyone know you're with me," Anne added. Her status with the other girls would go down, she knew, if they found out what a useless lump her brother was.
.oOo.
Andre was surprised to find out that the competition was actually some sort of tournament and that the dolls, sorry, 'Angels' would come to life on the tables or 'Layers' to fight under the direction of their owners. It was mostly a girl's sport it would seem, but there were a few boys among the group and Andrew didn't stand out too much.
After about half an hour of sitting around, he closed his book and dropped it back into his bag. The games appeared to be underway at half a dozen Layers and he sauntered over to watch the fight at one a safe distance from his sister.
The Angels were surprisingly powerful for their small size - Andrew doubted that a human could have managed to fight the same way without having a good special effects budget. But the little manikins were throwing each other back and forth and moving around faster than he had expected, directed by their Deus through the headsets they wore. At least once he saw an Angel hurled dramatically off the table by the force of the punch that hit it. This constituted a loss apparently.
There were quite a few matches, apparently some sort of qualification round with the best eight Angel/Deus teams going into the quarter-finals. At a guess there were about a hundred people vying for those slots and obviously a number would be disappointed.
One of those number looked to be Anne, who turned around and left her seat abruptly, leaving her Angel to lie on the Layer where it had been defeated as she fled the room. Andrew rolled his eyes. Mature or not, Anne was not one of nature's good losers. She was good at most things and overreacted when she wasn't good at something. Like now, for example.
With a sigh, he walked over and picked the toy off the Layer. Anne had given it long blonde hair and a frilly dress. He wasn't sure if the small size was intentional, but it was a noticeably shorter than most of the other angels. Maybe a bit of wish-fulfilment - their father was tall, their mother broad and while the boys had no problem with being large, Anne might well feel she would prefer to be fashionably petite.
"I'm her brother," he said in explanation, when the judge and the audience gave him an odd look for picking up the Angel. "Was she doing badly? She's not usually so... explosive."
The judge winced sympathetically. "Sixth successive loss on her part," she told him.
Andrew grimaced. "That would do it," he agreed. "I'd better take her home. Sorry for the disturbance."
He dropped the Angel into his own bag and left, quite unaware that Anne would spend most of the next six months trying to live down being his little sister.
.oOo.
"You left this on the table," Andrew told his sister, once he found her sitting on a bench outside the hall.
He held out the doll but Anne pushed it away. "I don't want it!" she hissed. "I looked like an idiot out there."
Andrew shrugged. "I look an idiot holding your dolly," he replied. "Does that balance anything out?"
The girl grabbed hold of the Angel and threw it in the direction of the rubbish bin. It bounced off the edge and fell to the floor, with what Andrew thought looked like an accusing look on her face. "I'm going home," Anne said, after one last look at the Angel, and then headed through the doors towards the bus stop.
Andrew began to follow his sister, then paused and on impulse backtracked to scoop up the little toy. "Don't go looking at me like that," he mumbled as he stuffed her back into his bag.
.oOo.
Their parents, predictably, were unimpressed that Anne had thrown away her new toy in a fit of pique. Thirty minutes after the two children arrived home; Anne was grounded for two weeks.
"I don't know if this makes any difference," Andrew offered once he was sure that they had calmed down to the point that his head wouldn't be bitten off for not making Anne behave, "But I picked this up." He showed them the Angel.
His mother sighed. "Well I don't suppose that it would be a good idea to give it back to Anne. Somehow I don't think that she'll want to play with it again."
Andrew shrugged. "I don't know if it can be sold on," he said. "They seem to be pretty customised. I don't think anyone would want to use one if someone else has set it up already. I could have a look at the handbook; see if it could be reset I guess."
"You might as well," his father agreed. "No harm in looking."
.oOo.
That little conversation left Andrew with a bit of actual work to do the next day, when his mother deposited the boxes of Angelic Layer merchandise on his desk.
The first task was sorting through it to work out what were the core items and which were simply supplemental and could be ignored for now. When he did this he was left in awe of Anne's ability to persuade their parents to spend money on her, and rather unimpressed with her imagination given what she had done with her Angel.
Once he was sure of what he needed to look through, Andrew leafed through the brief instruction manuals included in the packaging, before plugging in the little computer, where the bulk of the information was evidently stored.
It really was a neat piece of work, he noted. It didn't look as if the settings could be changed though - as he paged through the Help files there were several warnings to be sure of what you wanted before finalised the settings on the Angel. If was probably technically feasible to wipe the settings, he guessed, but it would require disassembly and tools beyond those available to him.
It looked as if Anne had put about as much thought into those settings as she had into decorating the poor thing with frills. The Angel had a lightweight frame, but all the settings were for strength and resilience, areas that a lightweight frame was weak in, while neglecting the speed and agility that it could have exploited. It wasn't a terrible configuration, but it was mediocre and would require good tactics to win.
Evidently Anne hadn't come up with those tactics and like many other poor craftsmen, she had blamed her tools.
Andrew couldn't help but wonder whether he could have done a better job.
He frowned as he looked at the costuming pack. And possibly he could have dressed the poor thing better. So far as he could tell the only thing he agreed with Anne on was with her choice of name.
Gabriel was a very appropriate name for an Angel.
.oOo.
"It doesn't look like the settings can be wiped outside of a factory," he reported quietly as he set the table for dinner that day.
His father grimaced. They were alone in the kitchen at the moment, since Anne was sulking in her bedroom and their mother hadn't arrived home with Angus from the church's children's activity group. "I suppose that it makes sense from a marketing point of view," he conceded. "But what a waste."
"There's another competition next week," Andrew offered. "I'll need to take the library books back, so I could stop by and ask if there's any likelihood of selling it on. Do you know how much it cost?"
"Your mother will have the receipt," his father said. "Take it along with you. If you can get a decent price for it, you can keep half - call it an agent's fee."
Andrew brightened. "Thanks Dad. I'll get it cleaned up a bit."
.oOo.
Between school and homework, Andrew was moderately busy through the week, but he jotted down a few ideas on paper at school and managed to find an hour or two in the evening to work on Gabriel. The costume that she had was just silly, but by Thursday he had worked out something that he thought would work better, so on Friday night he put his homework aside until Sunday and borrowed scissors, thread and some needles from his mother's sewing box.
"So much for taking the metalwork course at school," he noted. "I thought I'd get more use out of learning to sew - and I was right."
He'd picked out the fabrics from the one of the supplemental packets through the week, so he quickly sliced off the existing costume, following the seams where he could, and tossed the frilly remnants into one of the boxes for cleaning up later. Then he got to work.
What he had settled on was a simple combination of light blue pants and a dark blue long tunic modelled on something he'd seen in a kung fu movie. He picked a heavier 'armoured' material for the tunic, and then over this outfit, used a thinner material to create a long black trench coat that hung to the Angel's ankles, cutting it into several panels that should flutter around her legs as she moved.
For her feet there was a supplement for making shoes and Andrew used a section of black armoured fabric to make two heavy-soled boots should add to the force of any kicks that Gabriel made. He also cut a section of translucent red plastic carefully and rolled it around a pen to curve it into the right shape for wrap-around sunglasses that he carefully glued into place over her eyes.
The last change he made was her hair. Carefully separating out a relatively small lock squarely at the back of her head, he braided it tightly along its length and tied it off with a tiny scrap from the pants. Then he took the scissors and began to give the Angel a major haircut, leaving only a shock of hair a few millimetres long across most of the head, but with slightly longer bangs to frame the face. It was a striking combination.
.oOo.
The next day, he left the house early and took the bus into town, retuning his books to the library almost as soon as it was open. He'd boxed up all the Angelic Layer material except for the Angel itself and had it in his bag.
The shopping centre was bustling by the time he arrived and girls were already around the Layers, although the competition hadn't started. There was more gymnastics and, if he was right, actual dancing, going on on the tables that there was fighting, sometimes with five or six Angels to a Layer.
"What's going on?" he asked one of the girls. "I thought the tables were for the tournament?"
"Oh, you can rent a headset for a while to practise," the girl replied. "Some of us just do that and then watch the competition. Are you a Deus?"
Andrew shrugged. "Not exactly. My little sister quit and I'm supposed to try to sell her Angel. Not sure if anyone will want a second-hand Angel though."
"You're probably right," the girl laughed. "After all, if you want one you either have your own or want to make one to suit you."
"Thought so. Well, maybe I'll have a go myself, see what it's all about," Andrew said. "Maybe I can sell some of the costuming stuff at least."
The girl looked interested. "Oh? What do you have?"
"Well," Andrew began, as they walked over to the counter to rent a headset. And that was how he managed to sell most of the supplementary boxes on to the girl (whose name was Sally) and her friends for a little more than half of what they had originally cost.
He hadn't managed to sell Gabriel though, and he carefully hooked up his headset, before looking at Sally. "So what do I do now?"
"You Layer In," one of Sally's friends said insistently. "Like this." She lifted her own Angel and declared: "Fighting for Love and Justice: Fairy Girl! Fall in!" and threw the Angel onto the Layer, letting it come to life in the air and land gracefully.
Sally giggled at the slightly horrified look on Andrew's face. "You don't have to say exactly that, it's just a catchphrase to introduce your Angel. As long as you announce her name and say Fall In at the end, you're alright."
"Oh." Andrew frowned. He wasn't much for coming up with witty comments on short notice. After a moment's thought he decided to borrow a line from a song. "Out of the darkness, Gabriel walks into the light," he announced, throwing the Angel gently onto the layer. "Fall in."
Gabriel landed limply on her face.
"Somehow, I don't think I've got the hang of it yet," Andrew observed wryly.
"You have to imagine her moving right from the minute she enters the Layer," Sally explained. "Everyone makes that mistake the first few times."
Andrew nodded and concentrated on getting Gabriel to stand. By the time the last of the girls had done their pose, the blonde Angel had clambered to her feet. It was easier than he had thought in some ways, but harder in others. Literally all you had to do was to think. If he hadn't had to try it once as a mental exercise, he wouldn't have believed how hard it was to form a mental image of the Angel, much less to visualise her moving.
"That's good," said the Fairy Girl's Deus. "Now try this!" She charged her sequined Angel, which had ornamental wings of white lace, across the layer on a headlong charge at Gabriel. Andrew gulped and hastily had Gabriel jump up and over Fairy Girl. He was surprised by how far across the Layer she travelled. Obviously all that strength translated into good jumping distance. She landed in a crouch, coat flaring out behind her and a couple of the girls clapped.
"That's nice," said Sally, "the way you did the coat."
Fairy Girl turned and walked over to Gabriel, who Andrew turned to meet her. "Tag!" the Deus announced, as her Angel poked Andrew's lightly. "You're it!"
Andrew tried to tag her back but the other Angel dodged back easily out of reach. "Right," he growled and started Gabriel running. He found out quickly that most of the girls had lightweight or fast medium weight Angels that could avoid the relatively clumsy Gabriel quite well, but eventually feinted turning to the left and then made a diving tackle that didn't quite reach Sally's angel, Harlequin, but did bring him close enough to tag her on the ankle.
Evading Harlequin, or the other Angels when they became 'It', was another matter, and Andrew quickly found that he had to rely on long leaps to stay ahead of them. He grew quite engrossed in the game and was quite surprised when one of the staff came around and asked them all to vacate the Layer so that the tournament could begin.
"You're not doing too badly," Sally told him as they lifted their respective Angels out. "Are you going to enter the tournament?"
"Er..." Andrew hesitated and then shrugged, "Oh, why not."
Sally beamed and Andrew joined the little group as they headed over to the kiosk that was accepting registrations.
.oOo.
It was a nervous Andrew who sat in the chair on one side of a Layer table. Ironically, it was the same Layer and chair that Anne had stormed away from the previous week. Hopefully that wouldn't prove to be an ill-omen.
There had been half-a-dozen matches on the table already, and as one of the last to sign in, Andrew and Gabriel were among the last to fight their first round. He'd have seven matches to see if he qualified to be one of the quarter-finalists, quite gruelling.
"Out of the darkness, Gabriel walks into the light," he said with feigned confidence as he threw Gabriel onto the layer. "Fall in."
This time the entry went better - he knew to take control in mid-air and had Gabriel flip to land on her feet, although she staggered on landing. There was a ripple of amusement at the slip and Andrew responded by having Gabriel sweep a glare around the audience, her braid swinging behind her in counterpoint. This time the chuckles were appreciative.
"There was a Gabriel here last week," his opponent, one of the other boys playing, told Andrew. "Victor and I won then." He drew back his hand and flung his angel into the Layer. "To Victor go the spoils!" he announced. "Fall in!"
Victor was larger than Gabriel, not just taller but with a broader and more muscular build. Probably a heavyweight frame, Andrew noted - stronger and more resilient than Gabriel, but not by as much as the Deus might expect. No sooner had the match begun than the male Angel charged forwards, moving with a smooth polish that for now Andrew could only envy. He leant back and concentrated on Gabriel.
Victor swerved at the last minute in an attempt to clothesline Gabriel, but she had dodged right into his path and the resultant collision damaged both of them, although Gabriel took the brunt of it, being knocked almost halfway to the edge of the Layer, while Victor simply wound up sitting on his backside, a surprised look on his Deus' face.
Gabriel stood up and Andrew had her briskly dust herself off, getting another giggle from the crowd. Victor charged in again and this time Gabriel avoided him completely, jumping up into the air and coming down in almost the same place, once he had passed. Reaching back, Gabriel couldn't quite land a punch on the still moving Victor but Andrew had her extend one finger at the last minute and managed a light and totally ineffectual tap to the back.
The audience laughed again and Sally called "Tag! You're it!" from behind Andrew.
The other Deus reddened and spun Victor around, closing in more slowly and launching a powerful punch at Gabriel. Instinctively, Andrew had her crouch and the punch sailed over her head. Straightening, Gabriel directed both hands in palm strikes at Victor's chest, a move that picked the big Angel completely off the layer and dropped it onto the back. Although it didn't make up the all the damage that she had taken earlier, it did close the gap a bit.
Andrew hesitated, not sure how to follow up, and Victor used the opening to rise up and threw a flying kick at Gabriel, snapping her head back and sending her skidding across the Layer again. Her damage increased - she was only a single point away from being defeated and she was only a short way from the edge of the Layer.
Victor didn't give Andrew any time to extricate his Angel from the situation. He was on her almost immediately, throwing another high punch. Gabriel ducked, only to find out it was a feint and Victor brought up his other fist in a left hook.
Andrew was never sure if what happened next was intentional or not. As the fist lashed out, Gabriel closed her hands around it and swung herself to her left, against Victor's chest. The larger Angel staggered, unbalanced, and as Gabriel pulled on his arm, Victor continued forwards and fell off the table.
There was a moment of silence and then cheers from around the table. "Gabriel wins!" Everyone, Andrew noted, liked a plucky underdog.
He reached down and picked up Victor, who had fallen in front of him, and lifted him back up onto the Layer. The other Deus had removed his helmet and came around the table to collect the Angel. "Good move," he said admiringly. "You really suckered me in."
"I wish I could take credit," Andrew replied. "But it was beginner's luck."
"Then I'll look forward to a rematch once you've got some experience," the other boy said generously.
They both stepped away from the Layer to leave room for the next contestants, and Sally grabbed Andrew's bicep. "Wow!" she grinned. "That was great! Jack and Victor won last week, and you beat him first time out."
Andrew blushed. "I was lucky," he said.
"Well I hope that that was all your luck," Sally said. "You're fighting me next!"
.oOo.
Sally, Andrew discovered, was not just well aware of how to use the speed of her mediumwight Harlequin (who was complete with multi-colored diamond patterned costume and belled hat), but also had a wicked sense of humour in how to use it. He was particularly impressed, and irritated, when she managed to poke Gabriel in the eyes with two fingers and gurgled "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
With some effort, he kept his temper under control, guessing that she was hoping the psychological warfare would put him off-balance and concentrated on repaying the insult, which he did with a mule kick a moment later, doubling Harlequin over. The game ran out of time before either of them managed to knock the other Angel out and Sally won the match based on damage done - Harlequin didn't hit as hard as Gabriel but she'd managed to land more hits and in total they had tipped the balance.
Andrew shrugged and picked up Gabriel from the table. "Good match?" he asked.
"You're no fun!" she protested cheerfully. "You're supposed to get angry when I tease you like that."
"I crave pardon, milady," he shot back. "I'm afraid all that attention from a pretty girl left me too flustered to summon any outrage."
She laughed. "Flirt."
.oOo.
His mother looked up as he walked in through the kitchen door. "Hello Andrew. Did you have a good day?"
Andrew considered and then shrugged. "Not too bad."
She laughed. "That bad, hmm?" she joked, familiar with his tendency towards understatement. "Did you have any luck with the -"
The inside door opened and Anne poked her head in. "The table's laid," she said flatly, and then she caught sight of her elder brother. "You'd better not have sold my Angel, Andrew."
"Oh?" Andrew asked, mildly. "Last week you didn't want it."
His mother sighed. "Did you manage to sell it, Andrew?"
He hesitated a moment and then replied "I found a buyer. It depends if the price is good enough." The amount he named was twice what he had received for the supplement material.
"Give it back!" Anne slapped him and their mother caught her by the wrist.
"That's enough! Go to your room immediately."
"But he..."
"No buts!"
Anne left, fuming, and their mother turned to Andrew, who was rubbing his cheek and glowering after his sister. "I'm sorry about that, Andrew. I mentioned that you had picked it up last weekend and..."
"- she flew off the handle," Andrew finished. "Oh well."
"I thought you'd be lucky to sell the Angel, from what you said," his mother added.
"I stretched the truth a little," he confessed. "Dad said I could have half the money if I managed to sell it for a good amount. But I'd rather like to hang onto it myself. So I've sold the rest of the stuff, and it comes to half of what I said. I was figuring I could keep her as my half."
"Aren't you a bit old to play with a doll?"
"The competitive side is surprisingly interesting," he admitted. "And you're always saying I should get out more and meet new people."
.oOo.
As he lay in bed that night, Andrew glanced over at the small bookshelf that he had sat Gabriel on, her legs dangling off the edge.
"You could be habit forming," he muttered and rolled over to look away.