My dee my it's been a hot second since I've updated hasn't it? School and work have just been kicking me in mein lady-balls. Author-chan is sorry. But honestly, expect more delays with the way this year is already going -_-
At some point in this I started writing in first person. I tried to go back and fix it but if I missed anything, just know it's from Jane's perspective and I'm sorry. So here s the human names I used
Sealand - Peter
Liechtenstein - Lillie or Liz
Wy - Jane
Australia - Jett
America - Alfred
Russia - Ivan
Finland - Tino
Sweden - Berwald
Switzerland - Vash
Germany - Ludwig
Hungary - Elizabeth
Estonia - Eduard
The cluster of newly assigned angels burst through the doors to The Hall of Magic in excited delight. Each one wore an un-maskable smile on their face, a blue sash over their torsos to hide their emblems, and carried a bag containing their bow and temporary arrows inside. Peter watched with delight as one of the boys he'd been impressed with during testing skipped up to his parents ginning ear to ear; the boy shared some quick words with them before jumping in the air and tossing his sash to the side, giving his family the big reveal. His mother and father began to flip through a pocket-sized emblem guide until they landed on one they liked. They studied the book, studied the patch on their son's breast pocket, and finally the mother squealed and sucked the boy up into a possibly bone-crushing embrace. Upon spotting Tino and Berwald, Peter's smile widened more if such a thing were possible and he hoped to receive a similar reaction.
"Peter!"
"Did you pass?" it was Berwald who spoke. An unfamiliar angel who was standing next to Peter side stepped and nearly fell into the other direction mumbling something about feeling sorry for him and his dad being so mean. The blonde only giggled and nodded, having long since grown used to Berwald's hard glare and deep voice.
"Oh that's amazing! What'd you get? Show us!" Tino gleefully demanded, clapping his hands together. His wings puffed up in anticipation as the new-angel in question paused for dramatic effect. What felt like decades later, his grin reached its peak in size and he flipped back his sash with full confidence. Tino, having immediately recognized such an iconic symbol, gasped and held a hand over his mouth. "Oh, Peter!"
"Angel of Hope," Berwald confirmed before nodding. His face did something that Peter had come to recognize was the man's best attempt at a smile. "Congratulations."
"So," said Jane, who had walked up with her elder brother, Jett, lingering behind and sash completely off, "I guess you're a real angel now."
"FINALLY SO!" Peter cried, jumping a foot in the air as he screamed out laughing.
"Oh, an Angel of Confidence! What joy! Who will you be training with, Jane?" Finland asked, leaning forward to study her emblem.
"I have two mentors. Alfred Jones and an Ivan Braginsky. Jett says Alfred is distantly related to me, so, that's good."
"What about you, Peter dear? Who are the other Angels of Hope?"
"There are none!" he stated with triumphant glee, "Joy, Determination, and other Angels similar to Hope have been combining their powers for the last decade to make up for the Angel of Hope who was allowed entry to Heaven before me. So now, I'm the one and only! I'm going to train with an Angel of Joy."
"Which one?"
Peter smiled, and Tino needed not ask more. Given that he was an angel baring the sun of Joy on his breast he couldn't feel anything other than such at the thought of training his young one. He imagined Peter's unwavering smile as he struck an arrow into his first patient. Maybe he would let him stay a bit longer than was usual and allow Peter a glance at the effects of his arrow of hope on the lucky soul. The boy would probably fly 'round the earth an back in excitement! Lost in thought, Tino didn't notice the small blonde girl wander up to Berwald and tap his leg.
"Yes?"
"Oh. Sorry! I- I just...have you seen mein bruder? He was supposed to-"
"LILLIE!" The girl in question spun around to see her cousin, or perhaps her half-brother, it had never been cleared up, running towards her waiving triumphantly. "Lilz, I've been looking all over the place for you!" he said panting, as he finally reached her side. Lillie wondered for a moment how she had failed to see him, considering his glistening, silver hair and crimson eye-color.
"Where is Vash?"
"He sent me to come get you, Lillie!"
"So, let's go!"
"Where is Vash?"
Lillie knew her brother, and she knew one thing for sure about him, it was not like him to be late. Punctuality he seemed to value second only to his privacy. Today, he was not only late, but he seemed to lack presence at all. Had that really been the case, he would send a slew of other angels to retrieve his sister before he even considered sending her cousin-brother. He bore the emblem of a party popper, signaling he was an Angel of Fun, yet somehow very few angels tended to have an ounce of fun in his presence. Her brother was of the other majority.
"Like I said, he sent me to pick you up."
"Why didn't he send Ludwig? Where is he?"
"Well, you see, there was a bit of a situation," Her albino cousin-brother paused to scratch his head and heave a sigh, prepping to tell a story in what Lillie presumed would be the way Vash described as 'wasting his time and draining his infinite life'. "There was this woman, and she was stuck in a bit of a bad relationship. Her boyfriend is very abusive and makes life hard for her and her daughter, basically. So, Vash went to go handle it, Angel of Strength that he is and all. He forgot to claim it when he went, so Ludwig also went to handle it. Not only were they there but Elizabeth, and an Angel of Confidence. So, all at once they struck the woman without realizing each other, and under the influence of strength times two, courage, and confidence, the woman literally threw her boyfriend out and scared the neighbors so badly they called the cops on her. She got arrested. The four of them were called before the Angels of Angels for having caused more harm than good unto an innocent human."
"What? D-Do you think he'll..." the girl's face twisted into concern as she stared at the ground.
"No, no. He'll be fine. He'd be in trouble if he did this on his own but it was all four of them. Since they're all on trial right now, the awesome me was sent to get you!" He poured out a line of his ridiculous laugh before petting Lillie on the head with a grin.
"Oh. Okay," she let out a sigh of relief, "would you like to see my emblem?"
"Oh yea! NO! GOODNESS NO!"
"Uhm?"
"Your brother will probably kill me if anyone finds out before he does."
"You're probably right," the small girl replied with a giggle as the duo finally walked off from Jane and Peter's family, on the route home. "I hope he's proud of me."
"He'll be proud of you if you get Angel of Sleeping. Don't worry 'bout it Lilz." A small, yellow, messenger bird that had rested on his shoulder let out a chirp of encouragement and Gilbert raised a finger to pet it. The girl smiled lightly and tugged her ribbon out of her hair, only to replace it on the other side. Yes, he would surely be proud. As she felt a dust of blush rise to her cheeks, she began to shuffle through the papers she had been given trying to busy her brain.
"Do you know a Von Bock?" she asked, carefully reading the name from a small card amongst her stack of information.
"Nope. Why?"
"He's the angel I'm set to train with," she flipped the card over and found his contact information. She would have to get her brother to phone him later. "I hope he's nice."
"Lilz, he's an angel," Gilbert retorted. And thus, they laughed.
"Hello. My name is Ivan," an unrealistically tall man said, leaning down. Perhaps it was just the way he blocked the sunlight from hitting his face when he did so, but his smile changed and almost looked demonic to the poor child he was leaning over.
"I-I'm Jane," she extended a hand and willed it not to shake, "newly appointed Angel of Confidence". They shook, and her second mentor, another Angel of Confidence jumped in and shook her other hand with such vigor it set her off her balance and she fell into him. The man in question, wearing an unwavering smile, rounded-square glasses, and not seeming to mind his one aggravating cowlick promptly lifted Jane off her feet and held her suspended in the air.
"Name's Alfred!" he all but screamed, "nice to meet 'cha kiddie! I'm super excited to have an underling, dude!" Jane studied how from his human life he was clearly American. That meant he couldn't have died more than 300 years ago, which made him fairly young amongst the angels. Maybe he wouldn't be the best person to train with if he hadn't even been here for 5 centuries like most.
"Set me down already," she snapped, crossing her arms. Alfred did as he was asked and Jane took a moment to smooth back down her white skirt. These were surely the oddest angels on the planet. A man who, despite the heat of being so near the sun all the time, wore a full trench coat and matching white scarf with cloud boots, and another who seemed oblivious to his boisterous attitude. Then again, that was kind of the way her closest brother, Jett, was. She had still decided she hated him, but couldn't stop the small frown-smile that planted itself on her face when he started jumping in circles shouting in excitement at her presence. Ivan, who was still smiling, managed to look irritated.
"Have you ever been to the surface, Jane?"
"No."
"So, dude, this is like your first landing?!"
"I'm not a 'dude'," she responded, flipping her ponytail with endless sass, "and yes, it is."
"Oh, dude," he cried, excitement making him seem to ignore Jane's distaste, "I absolutely love flying on the surface! You feel so free with that much space to roam! Can we go now? Can we Ivan? Let's go now!"
"We ca-" but before Ivan finished his sentence, Alfred had grabbed Jane by the hand and began tugging her in the direction of the drop-off. As she neared, Jane felt her confidence draining - not a good sight for an angel of her type. She'd never felt very comfortable flying at all, actually. When she was just getting her wings in, Jett had tried several times to take her to the drop off with the other kids so she could get in some good flying practice, and the girl always refused calling it stupid or pointless. She learned the bare minimum she had needed to pass the flight tests, and other than that, she stayed on her feet.
Their group grew exponentially closer to the drop-off, a crisp, fine-cut edge to the clouds they had been walking on that led to levels of Earth's atmosphere, lower down clouds, and eventually the surface. A knot twisted her stomach into several painful poses and Jane tugged away from her captor. Alfred and Ivan glanced back at her with equal confusion.
"I..."
What could she say? She didn't want to go over the edge? She was too scared to fly to Earth and do her job? Her face twisted as she tried to find the right answer and the girl grew into herself, closing her stance and wrapping her arms over her chest. Her thoughts were halted by a beeping noise coming from a device she had been given from one of the magic angels. She pulled it out and looked. A little, green dot flashed on the screen a bit of a ways away from a white dot.
"The white is you," Ivan explained, leaning over her shoulder and pointing to the device, "and the green is a human who needs your help."
"Right..." Jane commented, glancing at the sign reading 'WARNING: Drop-off into Human-realm. Exercise caution.' "because humans can't feel confident without us."
"That's not entirely true," Ivan commented, straightening up and smiling yet again. "They can, it's just sometimes, they need a little extra push." He pulled an arrow out of thin air and eyed it. "I wonder if these things will ever hurt them." There was that demonic smile again.
"We gotta go now. There's not much time before opportunities pass to guide people," Alfred spoke. He was standing at the edge with one foot already over the edge. There was no need to claim the mission since all three angels of confidence where on it at once. Jane took a deep breath, and tried to remember what exactly her brother had told her. Something about..oh...yes. "I was scared at my first drop-off too. The trick is, just don't look down." She sighed, taking a few steps towards the ledge and ignoring the butterflies in her stomach. How had Jett always been able to read her so easily? She spun on her heel and looked at Ivan, who was behind her. She saluted him, and allowed her body to fall backwards off the ledge. Someone, somewhere, needed her help. She was an angel of confidence, and she was going to have some herself even if it killed her. She couldn't just leave some poor, sad human to not have any hel-
Holy crap.
Oh no.
Oh! NO!
OH GOODNESS GRACIOUS NO! An ear-splitting scream filled the skies as the young angel lost herself. Wind whipped through her hair, tossed her skirt in 45 million directions, chilled her skin, and the blackness she was seeing from having her eyes closed didn't seem to help. She opened them, and saw her home, the cloud-island she had grown up on, getting ever and ever smaller as she fell away from it. Her eyes snapped back shut and she screamed again, clutching into herself. Angels couldn't die. Hurt themselves, sure, but not die. Regardless, the girl became a cannonball sailing through the air, hoping the pose and level of tightness at which she held her eyes shut would keep her organs from floating out of her body as it felt they would.
"JAANEEEEE!" She hadn't heard the initial call over her own screams or the whipping wind. She knew she should open her eyes, and look over at Alfred, who was calling out to her. He would talk to her in Falleng, a language the angels had developed using only their hands and facial expressions. It was the best way to talk considering their deafness at the wind, but she couldn't will herself to do it. She tried to focus on what he was saying, rather than the horrible disoriented feeling she felt having no footing as her cannon-ball body began to slowly spin in circles.
"IF YOU...'T LIKE...LLING...O..EN...YO...WINGS!"
The young angel immediately put the message together in her head and outstretched her body. Before she could process the new fear of not being enclosed, a set of white, luxurious wings sprouted from her back and caught the wind - too much of the wind, actually. She soared high over the heads of Alfred and Ivan, who had fallen after her, and screamed again, trying to regain control. She teetered and tottered for a while before finally feeling comfortable. The cool wind dusted between her feathers and she finally opened her eyes again. They had fallen out of the clouds and by now where thousands of feet over the ocean. Alfred and Ivan quickly caught up, taking flight beside her. She glanced at Alfred first, who was laughing. He raised his hands and said to her in Falleng:
"So, you don't like the feeling of falling?"
"I'm an angel," she signed back, "it's only natural. We're meant to fly."
"Well," Ivan signed, joining the conversation, "We don't have much farther to fly. The human in need is actually quite close to the drop-off." With two bold flaps of his glorious wings, Ivan led the trio to the green dot. They landed in the ledge of a closed window, and Jane took a moment to appreciate her ability to phase through objects in the human realm. It was a little strange to be inside a window, but the invisibility coupled with this made an angel's job so much easier.
"We're early," Ivan commented, taking a more comfortable seat on the ledge.
"Early how?"
"This way," Alfred said, pointing at a woman standing in the room we were half inside, "we get to see the lead up to why the human needs confidence. I like being early." Jane looked down into the room and spotted a human lady, perhaps mid-twenties in age, pacing around in a small corridor. She was saying something to herself over and over in a language none of the three understood.
"What's she on about?"
"I don't know," Ivan said, pulling a device out of the air. Jane looked over her shoulder at her own carrying bag and wondered how long it would be until she learned to fabricate items instead of having to have them on herself to use them. He started to fiddle with it. "This is probably somewhere in Europe, based on where the base was when we fell. I'll see if I can't get my translator to work." As Ivan messed with it, the young angel grew bored of the woman and turned to Alfred. He was somehow her brother, or uncle, or maybe distant cousin, and the two had had shockingly little interaction despite that. She waited for him to look back at her, and then quietly inquired him.
"Do you like being an Angel of Confidence?" He nodded, and Jane raised an indignant eyebrow prodding for more. When Alfred caught on to this fact, he smiled and went on.
"I just like being able to make people feel like that."
"Like what?"
"Like...you know... confident! Okay, no, that's stupid. Just feeling like they can do anything. Like they can help, be that the world or themselves. Like they're not completely useless, and like their ideas and feelings are valid. This feeling of 'I'm the hero!' and now I get to save the day! You know?" Jane looked from Alfred to the woman and let a side-ways grin grow on her face. She did know. Suddenly, the woman's speech became clear.
"Uhm, , can I just...I just need to... if I could have a moment of your time...I..." she sighed and ceased her pacing.
"Translator's working."
"Dammit Julia," the woman commented, smacking her own face lightly. She sighed again, "maybe this was a mistake." The woman frowned and Jane realized, suddenly, Ivan and Alfred staring at her.
"She needs a bit of a confidence boost don't you think?" The young one nodded, and waited a tad confused.
"Okay, give it to her then!" Alfred cried, clapping. Jane's stunned expression said it all. Ivan reached into her bag and pulled out a small bow, made to fit her exact height. He handed her then a red and white arrow with the confidence emblem on the head of it.
"First," Ivan commented pointing to a dial on the bow, "You need to pick how much confidence you will give her. Level 10 is enough confidence to do something big, say, kill a lion with your bear hands." His smile creeped-right-up as a gruesome image of such filled Jane's head. "This is a small thing it seems, so maybe level 1 or 2 would be better, da?" Jane nodded, and shifted the dial from 5 down to 1.3. She looked back up again at Julia and raised her arms, strung the arrow, and took aim.
"Dude, whoa, aim for Julia not the freaking floor," Alfred stated, laughing, causing an embarrassed blush to dust Jane's cheeks.
"I KNOW! The best places to aim are the heart, head, and in the back between the shoulder blades, but anywhere on the body is effective. I did my study, you know." She flipped her hair in sass, and re-aimed, right for Julia's chest. A shaking arm strung the arrow back as far as it would go, before she released. The arrow whipped through the room, and landed right above Julia's breast. She seemed unaffected by the arrow and after a moment, it faded away into pixelated nothing. Julia then bounced off her seat, smiling beautifully.
"No, Julia!" she said to herself, taking steps towards a door she had been pacing outside of before, "You can do this! You deserve this promotion! Just go in there and do it!" she burst the door open and stated a much better version of her earlier rehearsed speech. " , may I have a moment of your time?" It was polite, yet assertive, and caused Jane to smile as Mr. Bot seemingly invited her in and Julia closed the door behind herself. A rough clap on her back roused her attention.
"You did it!" Alfred was smiling and eating something as he spoke, but it was encouraging never the less. "I bet she totally feels like a hero!"
"Yes," Ivan stated, leaning forward in such a way the sunlight failed to hit his face again. His smile distorted into a look of insanity, "She has all the powe- no, confidence, she needs now to conquer the world, and watch that loathsome boss of hers writhe in pain!" A moment of silence overtook the three as Ivan was lost in thought and Jane and Alfred stared at him, appalled. His smile softened into friendliness again. "We get going now, da?"
"Sure, dude." Alfred stood, and outstretched his wings, smiling at Jane. "I could do this all day!" He jumped off the ledge and flapped, gaining height in the air. His two accomplices were quick to follow. Jane giggled from the back of the group and felt she too, could do this all day.
So I really was going to go into Japan's part of the story now, but like, I just couldn't. This is already quite long cause I had a lot of little details I ended up throwing in, as I often do. Like I said, I'm using the stories of the young angels to secretly teach you information you will need for later about the angel world. It works best for them because, naturally, they'd be a little confused. There's no reason for Japan to go around affirming these things. In the next part I do have a teensy tiny bit to cover with Liet, but HOPEFULLY, the main freaking character will finally make his appearance.
In this chapter I tried to make it clear that despite Alfred and Ivan being the same kind of angel, they have different approaches. Alfred wants to make people feel heroic and Ivan wants to make people feel powerful. Did that come through? That s kinda the way it is with a lot of angels. They put their own spice on their job. This is really all I have to say so thank you for reading!
Please review! :)
