Ugly
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Yggdra Union or #367. The story's mine, though, and if you think #367 is scary in her Awakened state, she's got nothing on me when people "borrow" my ideas. Capisce?
She sat on the waiting bench and chewed resolutely on her lip, her nervous fingers worrying the edge of her thin tunic as she fidgeted her wings uncomfortably.
"Don't look so nervous, little sister," Marietta said with a smile that was half amusement and half complacency as she ran her fine-fingered hand down the haft of her heavy quarterstaff. "You're on call, nothing more. The higher-ups know you're not ready for combat or patrol by yourself; even if there should be some kind of major unforeseen disaster and you're to be sent out, you'll have soldiers or Servants assigned to you."
She mumbled something so indistinct that even she didn't know what she meant to say.
"In any case, I'll only be gone a few hours. Hold down the fort while I'm gone." Laughing a little to herself—she couldn't tell whether it was meant to be unkind or not—the archangel turned on her heel and sauntered to the door.
If she were a stronger girl, she might have hated Marietta for her utter and abject self-confidence, her nearly-smug sense of personal pride. Because she was weak, she simply admired the archangel—admired her with a worshipful ardor that was nearly lustful, and envied her desperately, sinfully. Marietta was everything she was not and would never be: Beautiful and elegant and strong and experienced. Whenever she walked into a room, she made an entrance, and was insulted when people didn't notice her. She was tall and lovely with long crisp shiny hair and full curves, which she flaunted unabashedly to the half-stifled moans of longing from every male nearby. She was never defensive, always kept her eyes high, and won her arguments every time she had them. Her tawny eyes would flash and those broad, bright coppery wings would mantle, and her fingers would arch their way to her hips with her high full breasts thrust forward as she demolished others' excuses with debilitating scorn. She was always right, almost arrogantly certain that she was always right, and she always walked out of confrontations with her nose held loftily high and her enemies cut properly down to size.
"Be… careful, Oneesama," she mumbled as her fingers fumbled back and forth across her tunic hem. "Come back… safely."
She was nothing to look at, she knew.
The transformation in its partial state still rested uneasily on her, so she was newly uncomfortable in a body she'd never been quite used to in the first place. Adolescence was cruel to her in broad ways—while it didn't ruin her skin or her voice or wrack her thin little frame with the kind of agony it did others, it had viciously mismatched her features, made her gawky and awkward.
She was tiny and thin, barely inching past five feet on the tips of her toes, with clumsy long thin limbs. Looking at herself in the glass every morning, she saw an unhappy tangle of sharp elbows and knees, a slight waist and slim hips, and nearly no breasts. Her hands were small, her wrists even smaller, so that her digits felt fat and clumsy even so, and tended to fidget and fumble with whatever they held, unable to keep a steady grip. Her uniform white tunic with its frayed sleeves was slit up to her waist, so she wore nothing beneath it; if she'd had more confidence in her body it might have been a freeing or sensual feeling, but as things were it made her feel ashamed.
Her hair was a vibrant fox-red, but disheveled and barely this side of coarse, and it stuck out at bizarre angles, badly framing a face with features as pathetically delicate as those of a festival doll. Her huge blue eyes dominated her face, and they always had a wide and slightly panicked look. Her lips were pale, and tended to be chapped; whenever she'd bitten her nails down to the quick, she chewed at the upper layers of skin that covered them.
Her wings had been white, and the only remarkable thing about her—her feathers had had an iridescent sheen that when she was a child had made her almost lovely. Since the transformation had been effected on her body, however, they'd changed. These wings were smaller, and where before their bones had always felt as soft and fragile as eggshells, they felt as though her skin and muscle had been stretched over lightweight steel frames.
In the stories—and there were always stories, no matter how forbidden—the Grim Angels had wings blacker than pitch. Hers were an even slate gray, the mark of a failure. It didn't matter that none of the others' wings had turned even this much; she hadn't succeeded, and she felt the weight of it like sin burning at her narrow breast. The only part of her wings that were right were the hooked claws that topped them at the highest joint, sharp and grasping and scaly like a crow's toes.
They were ugly.
She was ugly.
She'd heard enough people say so, and she was always dismissed because of it. Even as her master had presented her to the rest of the council of Magi and to the gods as the closest he had come to a success, he'd qualified his description with it.
She wasn't much to look at, he said, and she was dull and often clumsy, but she had the power and she did as she was told. She would suffice, until he had better.
At that time she'd been too frightened to do more than stare at her toes, but when she was alone in her tiny quarters, she'd wept with shame.
He had made her what she was—he'd taken everything from her, even her name—and he dismissed her so coldly, so callously.
"Shut up and stop crying. You're pathetic."
At the voice and its sharp annoyance, she stiffened, her breath catching quickly in fear.
"At least now we'll have the chance, won't we? It'll be time for blood, hot and sharp and delicious. Time to make things hurt."
Squeezing her eyes closed, she clapped her hands over her ears. "Be quiet and go away. I'm not hearing you, I'm not listening to this. Go away."
The image was there in her head, as it would be if she looked into a mirror. That stiff unruly hair as bright and blonde as straw, the deep blue eyes gone ruby and cruel, the cold white feathers, the wicked little smile that played across the little doll mouth.
"Why does it pretend so?" The voice was mocking. "Scared and shrinking and hiding. The hell with that. We can kill. Stop being such a whining, whimpering little ninny and bone up. Use that power. Make them fear us, make them cringe. Then there'll be blood, oh yes; there'll be blood. I like blood. Feels good, tastes good. Make them rue the day." Laughter, mad and contemptuous. "Make them all pay for it."
She curled up where she sat, her knees to her thin chest with her hands over her ears and her wings mantled defensively, and rocked. "Go away. Go away."
The voice pitched up, and as it did the barcode they'd burned onto the back of her neck stung sharply. "Just wait. They'll let me out, you know that. The second you falter, the second you screw things up, they'll trust this body to me. Then there'll be blood, and screaming." A sigh that was nearly happy. "You know what bones sound like when they break, right? It's such a wonderful sound. There'll be lots of that, too. Lots of screaming and begging and breaking and bleeding. Such a hot sweet sound."
And she could hear it—that was the horror of it. She could hear and taste those vivid images, and it made her heart race as her mouth filled, and there were sharp hot pangs that were nearly painful within her; the illusion the voice presented was nearly arousing. It sickened and terrified her.
"Go away. I don't hear anything or see anything. Go away."
The voice didn't reply, but there was cruel, spiteful laughter in her head before the cold silence that made her ears ring.
She opened her eyes slowly, fearing a little that she'd still see the terrible carnage or—far worse—the perverted mirror image of herself before her. There was nothing but the empty room.
She wondered if she was going insane. And wondered if anyone would care at all if she was.
"Subject #367?"
She jerked where she sat, her heart going wild, and whipped around to the door. Her pulses crashed with desperate relief and jarring anxiety when she saw not a nightmare vision standing in the frame, but a high-ranking Servant, his cap pulled low and the shadow of its brim covering his eyes.
Moistening her lips, she stood and bowed awkwardly. "Y-yes, sir?"
"Report to your post in fifteen minutes. There's been activity reported from Ancardia, and we may need to settle it."
She bowed again. "Sir."
The Servant left, and she sat nervously.
Ancardia. It had taken her a moment to place the name. That was one of the islands that had made up Heaven's Gate, she remembered. It was the one that long, long ago, many hundreds of years before she'd been born, the convicted traitor Nessiah Artwaltz had been cast down upon.
"Blood," the voice whispered gleefully. Fighting panic and sickness, she told it more crossly than she'd believed she could to be silent, and it was.
Worry for Marietta sprinted through her mind, along with the abject terror at the thought she might have to go out after all. She barely knew how to use her power, and if her master activated her override programming—she couldn't finish the thought, and shuddered. But there was another thought that trailed at the back of the others, one that made her immediately ashamed.
Even a fallen angel, twisted and condemned and most certainly insane, could be productive, could be determined and steadfast and strong. No matter how futile his actions, that he had the power to try to take whatever vengeance he was attempting made him a far worthier creature than a cowardly, ugly, nameless angel like her.
She stifled the thought as soon as it crossed her mind. She would be punished just for its having manifested, if anyone knew.
No matter how true it had ever felt.
Owari.