I walked into the joint office-space of Azazel, Shemhazai and Baraqiel after a full twelve hours' calming in the wake of my minor breakdown.

I had seemingly underestimated just what a effect intense emotions could have on the way my body shaped itself, since what had meant to be a scream which could vent some of my frustrations had instead become a sonic weapon.

Thankfully that change had reverted once I calmed down a bit, and if I could ever re-produce the effect it could be a useful trick. But it had also successfully deafened a good chunk of all the Fallen Angels in the Grigori, so I had taken the opportunity to hide in my room and calm the fuck down for a while.

Now, with my head on straight, I making slightly more productive use of my time.

Shemhazai and Baraqiel were both looking at the door when I came in, having already knocked and received an invitation to enter. "Ah, good morning Drew." The former greeted me, the latter offering a nod of acknowledgement but not speaking. "I hope you're not here to give Azazel another excuse to get out of his paperwork?"

A lazy "I resemble that remark!" drifted through the door to Azazel's workspace, and Shemhazai's eyebrow twitched.

"Not right now." I replied, shaking my head. "I actually wanted to ask if I could get something to do."

The lavender-haired Fallen raised an eyebrow, and I gave him a mostly blank look. "In the past week I've been stabbed to death, killed a man, woken up as a Fallen Angel, been poked and prodded by a former Archangel, had various Fallen Angels inform me of their intent to string me up with various parts of my own anatomy, had others try everything from offering tours of the building to outright seducing me, and just yesterday I found myself considering it a reasonable response to jump headfirst out a window and fly off - but I ended up causing a brawl that encompassed most of the Grigori, then deafened them all with my own scream.

"If I don't get something to do right now, I am going to snap - and I don't feel like making the extra work for Coretha."

Baraqiel grunted. "Just give him one of the search and destroy missions; he can burn off some steam that way and we can let the clamour quiet down."

Search and destroy sounded really good to me at that moment, and it probably showed on my face since Shemhazai reached into the paperwork adorning his desk and retrieved a small sheaf of papers that he handed to me.

"As a matter of course, we use familiars to scout our various territories on Earth." The Vice-Governor informed me, as I took the papers and examined the picture on the front - which seemed to be a top-down view of some kind of military base. "This is an image taken in New Jersey, in America. Do you notice anything in particular?"

I frowned, squinting slightly at the paper and willing the image to become clearer.

It obliged visa-vis my eyes, and I scanned the picture to try and figure out what Shemhazai wanted me to find - something that only took a few moments.

"What is that?" I asked, disgust probably evident in my voice as I stared at the figure my eyes had locked onto.

It must have been pretty damn big, considering its scale in comparison to the buildings around it; the body seemed vaguely canine, with four legs and a tail, covered in shaggy hair the colour of old blood, but rising from where the neck would have been was what I thought was a top-down view of a shirtless man.

Something about it rankled, creating a similar sensation to the hairs on the back of my neck rising up - if I still had any hairs there, that is. The vast majority of my body-hair had gone with my human body, leaving only what was on my head and one other place. I'd probably be able to change that once I got a better handle on shifting my form, but that was something I hadn't really delved into during my 'training' with Azazel, and it wasn't exactly a priority.

"That, is a Stray Devil." Shemhazai informed me, and I looked up sharply as he gestured to the photo. "We don't know who its master was or what its circumstances are, but it approached the military base two days ago and only a few of the soldiers have been confirmed to have made it out alive - several of them badly wounded."

My frown deepened as I stared at the picture again, Shemhazai still speaking. "Since the Stray hasn't appeared since its entry of the base, we haven't dispatched anyone yet - New Jersey's Fallen contingent are almost entirely based in New York, and they're tied up just trying to keep a lid on that mess of a city.

"But, if you really want a chance to stretch your wings, then this is your opportunity."

I wasn't really seeing the picture in front of me, though my eyes were open and directed at it. Instead, I was recalling my own last moments, considering the muffling of thought and senses that had, at the time, seemed almost peaceful...but that, looking back on them, scared me badly.

Those men and women hadn't had anything like a 'peaceful' demise. When I flipped over the front page, I found a compilation of the information the familiar had gathered, including a list of the casualties and fatalities.

Among those who lived, only two would be able to return to active service. The others were maimed too badly, in some cases missing entire limbs.

The designation of the Stray Devil switched in my mind. From 'potential victim of abusive master'...

To 'acceptable target.'

I looked up from the paper, meeting Shemhazai's calm gaze with conviction. "When can I leave?"

Half an hour later, I was standing on Earth once again.

I took a few moments just to close my eyes and tilt my head back, experiencing my homeworld through my new senses.

It was a minor miracle to feel the wind on my face once again, and compared to the Underworld - where what little life existed there was small and either very good at hiding or very good at killing anything that came across it - the presence of the many and myriad murmurs and musics of mammals and nocturnal birds was like the return of something I didn't even realise I was missing.

Opening my eyes again, I looked around at a world painted in shades of gray and silver beneath the moon. The shadows that would have once confounded me parted easily, the eyes of a Fallen Angel proving more than a match for them.

I swept the area around me with a turn on my heel, getting a feel for where I'd been teleported.

Shemhazai had told me I was going to be placed within the outer perimeter of walls, barbed wire, towers and patrol paths that served as the base's boundary, an extra precaution against discovery by humans. Their agents in the military and government had already been stretched delaying any response to the base's invasion as long as they had, meaning I had only one night to try and do away with the Stray in a fairly non-flashy manner.

With magic that revolved entirely around flashes and bright lights.

At night.

'If some sniper or other soldier-type's decided to go off the rails a bit and keep an eye on this place, they're sure going to get a show.' I thought grimly to myself, finishing my look around and considering where I should make my first move towards.

I was standing on the tarmac of an airstrip, which was fairly central to the base and possessed a control tower at one end, opposite the road to the large, half-cylinder hangars where vehicles and other supplies were stored.

The barracks were on the other side of the base, with the canteen nearby and the sanitation/hygiene area at a similarly short distance. The administration facilities were set apart from that group of buildings, and the armoury was roughly equidistant between the hangars and the barracks.

That was all the detailing that had been on the sketched map which composed the final sheet of paper in the sheaf Shemhazai had given me, and I made the decision to start at the barracks.

The Stray would have likely targeted the highest concentration of humans first.

I made my way across the tarmac, which exchanged itself for dirt and grass before too long, my strides eating up the distance to the barracks until I had a better look at the building. Or, more accurately, the ruin.

The walls had been just about torn down in a lot of places, leaving the roof sagging and a significant portion of the second floor collapsed. There was a particularly massive hole bulldozed in the side of the building that seemed to indicate a point where the Stray had straight-up plowed through it, and when I looked through the hole I found myself thankful that I didn't have a stomach any more and hadn't eaten anything to have thrown up in days anyway.

I still ended up bending over double and retching, though, until I could project a bubble of Light from around my mouth and nose to block out the smell and let me get myself under control without the constant assault.

Standing straight again, I found that my perfect night vision wasn't entirely a blessing, as it let me take in every detail of the deformed, defiled corpses that were scattered hither and yon within.

Crushed, torn, ripped apart and slashed to pieces; parts of the bodies were barely recognisable as human any more, and I doubted anyone would ever have been capable of truly knowing just what belonged to who in the blood-soaked mess. A couple of faces were still recognisable - the only one within casual viewing distance bore an expression which I thought was fear or anger.

Perhaps both.

I scanned the area once more, wanting to move on but not wanting to miss anything, and I made note of the spent casings and discarded (often broken) weapons lying about, along with the deep claw marks gouged into the floor and the craters likely born from astonishing amounts of brute force considering the spiderweb cracks emanating from them.

Then I turned away, leaving the barracks behind to continue my search elsewhere.

The night was still young.

An hour later or thereabouts, I had finished going through the main buildings, and took a moment to lean against one of the steel girders that had once served as support for the armoury's walls.

From inside the walls.

The girder was both exposed and bent at ninety degrees, now - and it was missing several feet from the end, the metal shorn away by supernaturally sharp claws and brute strength.

I took in air, held it, then let it out again. The breathing exercise didn't alter my heart-rate or the amount of oxygen in my blood as it once would have done, but even as a placebo it helped me centre myself.

And I really needed some stability.

I had counted a total of eighty-four corpses as I searched the buildings, each one seemingly in worse condition than the last - both the buildings and the bodies. The piles of rubble were stained red and black with dry blood, white powder that probably used to be bone or concrete mixed into it along with the occasional hunk of meat or vaguely identifiable body part.

Some bodies were properly recognisable, but were still as dead as dead could be. Decapitation, ruined throats, collapsed rib-cages, impalement, rampant blood loss from dozens of smaller wounds that must have been intended to cause a prolonged death…

I shoved the memories to the back of my mind, standing up firmly as the metal of the girder squealed under my hand with my grip. I had searched just about all the buildings on the base, now - the only places left to look were the hangars and the control tower.

'Well, it's a common trope that arrogant antagonists hole themselves up in the tallest nearby building.'

I approached the tower cautiously, willing its walls into focus as I approached and studying them.

The tower was actually in decent shape, all things considered; there was one large 'entry wound' in its side, much like there had been in the barracks, but all other damage seemed to be incidental to that.

I pressed my back to the concrete as I finally reached the building, inching sideways until I was positioned just beside the gaping hole. There, I craned my neck to look inside, keeping my body hidden by the wall to minimize the chance of my being noticed.

I then quickly withdrew once I saw a great, shaggy body lying on the floor, stained and encrusted with the remains of human beings.

I'd found my quarry.

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a breath in and holding it. I remembered all the bodies I'd seen, the images of the survivors, and I imagined all the pain, all the heartache and tragedy the Stray had brought about without the slightest regard.

Two shimmering replicas of a Webley Mk VI revolver snapped into being in my hands, and as I spun around the corner I unsheathed my wings, which began to glow as I projected Light element along their surfaces - allowing them to pull triple-duty as transport, shield and blade.

I didn't bother with some one-liner or other saying that could give the monster time to react. I just let my weapons speak for me as I pulled the triggers, my own belief of 'pulled trigger = bullet fired' allowing me to effectively conjure the Light bullets they were firing without having to focus on them beforehand. A useful little trick of mentality, and one that amounted to quite a lot when I didn't have to reload and I had the trigger-fingers of a Fallen Angel.

The space between me and the Stray Devil lit up like a christmas tree as a horizontal rain of burning projectiles raced forward, the volleys slamming home into the monstrous pseudo-canine flesh of its body and rapidly reducing it to so much smoking meat and ash.

I kept up the barrage for two seconds, digging a rather significant crater in doing so, before strafing backwards with a flap of my wings to create distance, anticipating a counter-attack. Stray Devils' power grew unchecked without their Kings, so I wasn't willing to bet my speed was enough to keep me unscathed.

I kept the revolvers aimed at the hole in the wall as I came to a stop, ready to head left, right or up if I saw motion incoming.

And I stayed that way for several seconds, before frowning.

There wasn't even a noise from the tower; the only sounds were those of the nightlife and the wind in the grass. There was certainly nothing like the primordial, bestial howl of rage and bloodlust I had been expecting.

I narrowed my eyes and focussed, the massive body springing into focus…

And I blinked. "It's already dead?"

I voiced the question to myself, but I was already sure. The holes I had blown in its flesh were barely bleeding, and what did emerge was thick and sluggish, as if it was in the process of drying out already. There hadn't been even a twitch of movement from what I was now sure was a corpse and, to top it off, I couldn't feel anything from the tower when I aimed my fledgling sensory abilities at it.

Somehow, the Stray was already dead. 'And that means something killed it.'

My eyes darted around the base again, narrowed and scanning for anything out of place. It was one thing to hunt a creature the size of a large vehicle; it was quite another to possibly be in close proximity to a completely unknown target with the ability to kill said creature.

I kept my guns up and sweeping around me as I strode back to the tower, flicking my eyes over my shoulder every few steps as I backed into the gap and along the length of the Stray Devil - which I now realised had collapsed in death, rather than sleep. Once I reached its neck area, I glanced sideways, trying to discern how it had died.

...Honestly, it was a bit difficult to tell considering how comprehensively fucked its humanoid torso was.

It was riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes - but beyond that, there were myriad tiny punctures as if flechettes or shrapnel of some kind had erupted from within it, as well as burned and blasted areas that looked like they had been victim to a flamethrower or explosive.

'Did the soldiers do this?' I wondered momentarily, before disregarding the possibility. 'No, if it was vulnerable to small-arms fire like they were using then they would have taken it down easily; they were trained soldiers after all, they could hardly miss a target like this.

'But I'm sure these are bullet wounds…' I considered, frowning at the devastated corpse (it was also headless - decapitated in a way that reminded me very clearly of what happened to melons in test-fire videos). 'So someone came from off the base with heavier ordinance?'

Ordinance heavy enough to kill a Stray Devil though sheer firepower...that thought made my wings shiver.

So, the evidence pointed to there having been some kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger-level gunslinger on the base in the past forty-eight hours; likely one who was aware of the supernatural, considering the odds of someone so heavily armed just happening to be in the area.

'I suppose it fits the world.' I admitted to myself, before looking around the tower's ruined ground floor interior once more, shivering again as I kept my wings raised and curled forward - a kind of protective curtain for my flanks that covered from my waist up to my neck. 'Well, they're likely not here if I haven't found them yet; I'll head back to the extraction point and wait for Shemhazai to-'

Something very fast but not exactly small blew past my nose with barely an inch to spare, crossing my vision so quickly my eyes could barely catch it before the concrete wall to my left developed a new hole and spiderweb cracks.

I froze for a moment out of shock, the thunderous report of a gun firing catching up to the bullet less than second later, before spinning to look out the hole in the tower, finding myself facing a human figure with a smoking gun extended.

"I reckon it's getting a bit close to daylight for one of your type to be lurking 'round these parts." A southern drawl declared, before the click of a hammer being pulled down echoed into the now-silent night. "You'd best be running home, boy."

The man speaking looked like he was in his early-to-mid twenties, standing over six feet tall with an explosively spiky mess of sandy-blond hair that shaded his sunglasses from the moonlight.

Yes. Sunglasses.

Below those there was a dark-green military-style jacket hanging open and fairly loose on his torso, over a tight-stretched, brighter-green tank-top. Then, wrapped over that, was a black bandolier bearing six grenades.

There were two each of two different types of cylindrical grenade, as well as another pair of spherical grenades - explosives I recognised as flash-bang, HE and frag grenades from my rather brief time playing Counterstrike.

Besides that, he was dressed in desert-camouflage trousers, tucked into black combat boots and held up by a belt which boasted several pouches that, going by the theme of things, probably contained ammunition. They were arrayed from near his hips to on either side of the belt-buckle, while on his hips themselves were pistol holsters, one on each side with one occupied, and sheathed knives - again, one for each side.

But the main focus of my gaze was the massive silver revolver held easily in his right hand and aimed right at me - with a side-focus on the brother weapon I could see his left hand resting on at his hip.

I narrowed my eyes, readjusting my wings so they were ready to furl closed in front of me while bringing both my revolvers to bear. "I'm not a vampire and I'm not a Devil, so I'm gonna say I resent your attempt to deny me my right to sunlight." I replied. "And you should know that - unless I'm missing my guess and you weren't the one who put down that Stray."

"If all you supernatural critters have such an attraction to the sun I'd be glad to load you into a rocket and give you an introduction!" He declared, shrugging with his left shoulder. "Besides, ya seen one winged man with glowin' eyes, you've seen 'em all."

My eyebrow twitched. "Well aren't you just a walking stereotype." I riposted. "Why the sunglasses? Did you spend too long staring at a burning cross before coming out here?"

I regretted the words just moments after they left my mouth - but admittedly, my transition from being a pureblood human to something...else, was still a bit of a store point.

And I'd kinda watched Kingsman again not so long before my death.

"Now son," the man said slowly, reaching up with his left hand and removing his sunglasses, revealing dark-green eyes that seemed more like emerald from the hard look in them, "that, was uncalled for."

He tucked the sunglasses inside his jacket, before dropping his hand to his other revolver once again. "I've seen some thing in my time." He declared. "I've seen monsters and spirits, Stray Devils...I've even seen your kind before; for a whole race of light-wielders you're all kinda dim."

My eyebrow twitched again.

"And apart from the rampant stupidity and tendency for turnin' good folks into hamburgers, y'all have only got one thing in common."

There was a blur of motion as his left hand drew the revolver, spun it around, cocked it and then levelled it at me quicker than I could properly track it.

"The looks on your faces when a human fights back."

I barely strafed out of the way in time before the thunderous retorts began, getting myself behind the concrete wall and hunkering down - and a good thing too, since the bullets started tearing chunks out of the wall around the height of my torso.

I counted off the rounds, waiting until I'd heard ten distinct shots - that was when there was a break, so I guessed that was the revolvers' capacity.

I rolled out from behind the wall, coming up on a knee with my wings folded in front of my body and my revolvers up - and found myself staring right at a pinless grenade.

"SHIT!"

I barely got my wings in front of my face before the explosive went off, concussive force and tongues of flame picking me up and slamming me into the back wall of the tower.

I pushed away the screaming damage report from my newest limbs, instead deciding they were too big a target and folding them away to heal as I fired wildly into the night outside to buy myself a moment.

The gunman flung himself sideways out of the bullets' path, out of my line of sight - giving me time to run to the stairwell and head to the tower's second floor.

Once I was there, I hunkered down against the wall below one of the still-intact panes of glass that had served as a significant portion of the second floor's walls, rising slightly to peek over the edge and look down.

I scanned the area, quickly picking out the form of the gunman pacing towards the tower, and put my hands together.

The revolver constructs lost their form and swirled together into a ball of light, which quickly elongated into the form of a Lee Enfield rifle. Swinging the weapon's butt into the glass panel to my right, I stood up with a left turn and aimed out of the pane two along from the one I'd shattered.

'He'll be distracted by the shattered glass - so long as he's looking this way, I should be able to aim for injury rather than death.'

I didn't particularly want to kill the guy. In fact, I didn't want to period. There weren't enough people out there fighting purely for humanity in this clusterfuck of a world, and I didn't want to be responsible for killing any of those.

...Alright, I'd love to pop a cap in Cao Cao, but this guy wasn't Cao Cao, and I wasn't going to try and shoot him for having a piss-poor (and honestly rather accurate) opinion of the supernatural.

So, I aimed for his left leg, figuring there were any number of ways to get around that kind of injury in this world even if I did more damage than I intended to, then pulled the trigger-

But the light-bullet passed straight through where the man's limb had been, as he seemed to suddenly vanish from that spot and reappear a foot backwards.

'...What the fuck?'

I threw myself backwards from the space where a pane of glass had existed before I shot through it, barely getting away from the volley of bullets that started occupying the space I had moments before and then punching holes in the roof.

I ran doubled-over to the other side of the tower, wrapping myself in a thin shroud of Light and throwing myself out a window without hesitation. The curtain of magic kept the glass fragments off me, and I dismissed it when I hit the ground and rolled forward to dismiss the momentum, the rifle in my hands twisting once again.

By the time I had twisted to face the building once again, the shift had ended on an L85 rifle - and as I depressed the trigger a constant stream of bullets started tearing their way through the tower wall and out the hole on the other side of the building.

I kept up the fire for a few seconds, strafing it back and forth across the wall, before I took my finger off the trigger.

There was silence for a few moments - then a duo of explosions went off that demolished the part of the wall I was facing, sending rubble everywhere and forcing me to abandon my rifle-construct in favour of a shield.

The rubble hadn't even settled when that shield came under assault, chunks blasted out of it by high-velocity projectiles as I oh-so-helpfully provided the gunman a big glowing target to shoot at.

I left the shield rooted in place as I rolled out from behind it, running bent over again and hoping that solely human night-vision would be poor enough to let me get some distance so I could plan.

Such was apparently the case, since I made it most of the way to a hangar before a shout echoed across the tarmac. "ALRIGHT, CHICKEN BOY - IF IT'S A DUCK HUNT YOU WANT, IT'S A DUCK HUNT YOU'LL GET!"

'Man, Raynare probably would've flipped her shit at that one.' I considered, utterly unphased by the Fallen-aimed insult.

I shoulder-charged by way into the hangar wall, tearing a me-shaped hole in it and continuing through into the pitch-black, desolate building. Then, once inside, I deployed my wings and shot up to the rafters, where I balanced in a crouch and waited, watching the hole I'd made and the door adjacent to it.

As I waited, consciously making the decision not to breathe so as to remain silent, I thought back to that moment when the gunman had evaded my shot. 'There was no motion blur, like with when he drew his gun; he was just in one position when I fired, and another when the bullet passed through.'

I considered whether I could have mis-aimed or if it was some kind of illusion - but illusionists tended to be certain personality types, usually the quiet ones, and if they were worth their salt I'd never have even perceived them.

There was also the possibility that the entire encounter was an illusion of some kind - but then again, illusionists usually had some kind of standard; they'd know better than to create such an overblown personality.

It was unlikely that I mis-aimed, either. I had the eyesight and hand-eye coordination of a Fallen Angel, along with weapons that had no recoil, no faults in the mechanisms and no weight, with the same applying to the shots fired.

Even with only my basic knowledge of firearm handling could hit a bullseye from clear across one of Azazel's training rooms so long as I had a moment to focus. 'So he dodged - but he didn't move.'

A teleporter of some kind, then - maybe he was a Sacred Gear user?

That could explain his knowledge of the supernatural. In fact, if he was a teleporter of some kind it would also explain how he'd amassed such an armoury. He could have broken into military stockpiles and gotten away scot-free; hell, the supernatural would have made sure to erase the memories of his actions if he was ever caught on tape, since that would be evidence of the supernatural's existence.

So I was fighting a teleporter. That meant I needed to take him completely by surprise. If he had any time to react at all, I'd miss.

That in mind, I crept along the girders which served as rafters, then carefully hooked my knees over the structure before letting my body hang upside-down with my head directly above the entrance to the hangar. 'It's a good thing I don't have blood or a brain anymore, or else this would get really uncomfortable really quickly.'

Still, this should work. I'd wait for him to enter (he'd probably either kick the door down or blast a new entrance into existence, neither of which would affect me), then drop down from the girder directly behind him and knock him unconscious. The sudden shift to close-quarters and the lack of warning of the assault should be enough.

So I hung and I waited, feeling a bit like Batman…

Right until something cylindrical bounced and rolled into the hangar through the hole I'd made. '...Is that a flas-'

A wall of sound was accompanied by a light like a new sun, both contained by the hangar and made considerably worse, and I lost my grip on the girder in the ensuing sensory onslaught.

I had barely enough sense to spread my wings and catch myself in the air before I hit the ground, but as I swept along at ground-level bullets started flying after me.

I'd barely managed to reinforce my wings with Light before a slug hit one massive appendage, immediately sending me into a spin that continued even as I hit the floor, keeping me tumbling along until I crashed into the wall of the warehouse.

"Fucking flashy Americans…" I grumbled to myself (probably - I couldn't actually hear jack shit), forming a knife and slashing a quick exit from the building. I ran from the hangar into the night, shunting away the pain radiating from my right wing but acknowledging I probably wouldn't be getting any more use from it that night even as I drew it back into myself.

I sorted through half a dozen plans in a second, before deciding to double back around. Making some obvious running sounds at the back of the hangar before using all my practiced skill to run the distance along the building's exterior in only a few seconds, ducking back around just in time to see the gunman's back disappearing around the opposite corner.

I figured that would buy me a minute, so I ducked back into the hangar through the same hold I'd made at first, making sure to avoid the scorch-mark so I wouldn't leave any footprints…

I frowned as I stepped around the black mark from the grenade. Something was wrong, here. There was something missing…

"Fool me once, shame on me." A southern drawl spoke from behind me. "But ain't one of you supernaturals managed to fool me twice."

I didn't waste time on my magic or a response, instead abruptly bending over to brace my hands on the floor and rear my legs up to my chest before delivering the best mule-kick I knew how. Somewhat to my own surprise, I connected solidly, lifting the big gunman off the ground and tossing him a few foot onto the grass, where he landed with a thump.

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I formed a pulsating sphere of Light in my hand before tossing it at him and turning to run.

I heard the thunderous report of the gun - I'd expected it; the guy could shoot, and I didn't doubt he'd easily be able to take out the sphere before it got close.

Of course, considering it was the Light magic equivalent of flash-bang, that wasn't the best strategy.

The night became noon for an instant as the construct shattered, casting my shadow dozens of feet in front of me as I ran for the devastated barracks building. 'That'll buy me time as his vision recovers.' I thought to myself as I sprinted. 'But now I need to think.'

Something didn't add up. If the gunman was a teleporter, how had I managed to get a hit on him when he clearly saw me coming? Was there a cooldown on the ability…? Maybe, but that didn't seem right.

Something about that scorch-mark on the hangar floor was nagging at me; some detail, some missing piece that should have been obvious…

I growled quietly as I lost myself in the corridors of the barracks, reaching one of the few parts of the second floor that was still intact and hunkering down inside a doorway to a corpse-less room. I closed my eyes for a moment, pressing my hands to my head and squeezing.

'Think...think! What was it about the scorch-mark? I know flash-bangs leave those behind, it's normal; even if they aren't as powerful as frag-'

I paused. 'Frag. Frag grenades. Shrapnel.'

A half-dozen possibilities sprang to mind immediately, and I began trying to plan a way to prove or disprove them-

Then that damnably smooth voice echoed from outside the barracks. "Peek-a-boo, goosey!"

I barely had time to think an incredulous 'Goosey?!' before the spherical figures of two M69 frag grenades appeared outside the room's window.

I was already diving for the window in the room across the corridor when the revolvers spoke again, and the pressure wave carried me the rest of my journey with the accompaniment of innumerable small punctures and lacerations from shrapnel and rubble.

I crashed through the window face-first, starting to flip as my knees caught on the wall below it during the exit, and hit the ground with my face as bits of the barracks rained around me.

It took me several seconds to muster up enough willpower for me to shunt the pain away, but I did, grimacing at the almost disturbingly painless sensation of small pieces of metal and concrete shifting around inside me as I stood up.

A wet stickiness was obvious on my back, and I resisted the urge to curse.

The phrase 'If it bleeds, we can kill it.' was quite popular in modern days. In this world, apparently, the phrase should have gone 'If you can kill it, it bleeds.' - because even though we didn't have circulatory systems (unless we wanted to anyway), Fallen Angels and Angels still bled if they received a sufficiently grievous injury.

Azazel said it was 'ichor', rather than blood. Which, to be fair, would explain why it was black for Fallen and golden for Angels. It was the same stuff which Gods, Demons and other types of spirit would bleed if they were badly injured, an incredibly magical liquid that was usually defined as the 'substance' of any primarily formless supernatural being.

Like, say, a Fallen Angel.

The fact that I was bleeding meant that between my wings and that last blast, I'd taken enough injuries to actually put me at risk. That made my plan more dangerous - but I was already committed by way of not having any better ideas.

I reformed the Webleys, leaving them dangling by my sides, and waited as the gunman came walking around the side of the building, cool as anything.

I glanced at his bandolier - and seeing the spherical objects there, I revised my earlier judgement, instead settling on the most viable remaining theory. 'Not a teleporter; not even close.'

I had an idea of what I was facing, now. Hopefully I'd be able to use it without getting myself killed, and to that end, I began a count in my mind.

"So you finally found your head to put back on, chicken boy?" The gunman drawled, revolvers still in hand but apparently deciding to see what had changed to make me stand my ground.

"More like I finally put it to good use." I replied. "I'll admit, it took me a while...but I've figured out what your ability is."

"Oh really?"

"Yes, 'really'." I drawled right back at him, absolutely butchering his accent but not feeling particularly ashamed about doing so. "At first, I thought you were a teleporter of some kind, what with the way you dodged my first shot…

"But in the hangar, where your flash-bang went off - there wasn't any shrapnel.

"These eyes," I narrowed them for emphasis, having learned from watching other Fallen do the same thing that it would cause them to glow slightly, "are better than any magnifying glass. If there was anything left of that grenade like there should have been, I'd have seen it.

"But the only evidence was a scorch-mark.

"Then there's your grenades." I continued, gesturing to his bandolier with a twitch of one hand. "You've used three frags, a flash-bang and two HEs since this fight started; but you've still got two of each on your bandolier."

I grinned. "You're not some kind of teleporter or speedster - you're a time manipulator."

There was silence for a few moments, before it was broken by a long whistle. "Well, I'll be damned; one of you critters knows how to use their damn brain.

"Y'know, the first of your kind that came after me did it 'cause they wanted me dead for what I could do?" He pseudo-asked, not waiting for an answer before continuing. "I didn't even really know what all I was capable of back then - not before some pasty foreigner tried to make a kebab outta me.

"I ended up learnin' a whole lot from him before he bought it." The man recalled, not taking his guns off me for a moment. "'Sacred Gears', 'Angels', 'Fallen Angels', 'Devils'...oh man, he just couldn't shut up!"

The gunman sighed. "Well, he was quiet after I stuck a gun down his throat and gave him a lead stomach for his acid tongue."

I didn't say anything as he looked up again, meeting my eyes. "Seems it's the way of things for you supernatural types to go 'round killin' kids for things they don't know about; that or turnin' 'em against their own kind. And I figured out why, too.

"It's cause you're scared.

"Scared of what it would mean if every kid with a power like mine could grow up big 'n strong; scared of what it would mean for 'em if humanity could stand proud and fly free of all the damn puppeteering your kind have been doing all this time.

"Well, this is America. We fought hard for our freedom, and we'll keep fighting for it."

The hammers on the guns were pulled back with dual clicks - I hadn't bothered noting their unready state as an opportunity before, not with how fast the gunman was.

"So, 'fore I send you back to whatever hell you critters are hauling yourselves out of these days, do you have any last words?"

My grin widened. "Two minutes."

The gunman blinked. "What?"

"Two minutes and forty-seven seconds." I elaborated. "That's how long we've been standing here talking.

"Now, I don't know anything about your Sacred Gear - but with what I know of them in general, I'm willing to bet that there's a limit to how far you can reverse your own time. And from that kick I landed earlier, I know there's a cooldown period - probably as long as the time you've wound back."

From the grimace on the gunman's face, I took it that I was correct.

"So that means that right here, right now, it's just us. No causality-dodge, no cover, no ambush." I brought my revolvers up, levelling them at the gunman; he didn't make to stop me.

Neither of us moved for a long moment, before the gunman spoke again. "My name's Maverick."

I blinked. "Maverick?"

"Yup. Just Maverick."

I shrugged internally. "I'm Drew."

Maverick blinked. "Shit, seriously? I thought all you Angel-types had fancy bible names."

I allowed a wry smirk to cross my visage. "Yeah, well, I'm not a very good Fallen, if I'm honest."

"...I think I can see that." Maverick decided. "So, just you an' me, huh?"

I nodded.

"Well then...I suppose I'd better bring my A-game."

'...wait, what?'

With what appeared to be a series of highly practiced motions, Maverick had the revolvers open and the ammo in the air in under half a second. Before the bullets had begun to fall he had reloaded from one of his pouches, and by the time he caught the following ammo the revolvers were closed once more and aimed at me the instant the ejected rounds had been tucked into a pouch.

I stared. "Just how fucking much do you do this?"

Maverick grinned. "Don'tcha know son? American gunslingers're the best in the world!"

For a moment, I saw the man overlayed with the image of another well-built blond; then I saw his trigger-fingers moving, and I didn't have time for rational thought.

During the day I spent with Azazel, I had fallen (no pun intended) into a mindset of pure reaction. I could never have survived if there had been processing time between data input and reaction to that input. So, I erased the delay.

That same state was what I fell into as Maverick's first shot fired, and I brought the Webley in my right hand up, took aim and fired in almost the same time it took him to pull the trigger.

Light bullet and American-manufactured round collided in mid-air - and exploded.

Some part of my brain screamed 'What the FUCK?!' at that, but the rest of me was busy replicating the feat over and over.

It was inhuman. The hand-eye coordination needed, the speed of movement, the trajectory extrapolation...it was all, frankly, monstrous.

But you didn't survive twenty-four hours with an Archangel trying to kill you without shattering a few pre-supposed limiters.

The space between us was filled with the detonations that occurred as the rounds intercepted one another, rather like a fireworks display. Between my Light bullets and Maverick's apparently explosive rounds, there was a near-constant circle of light between us that shifted back and forth as bullets got closer to one of us than the other.

I snatched glances at Maverick's guns when I could, and I quickly noticed the pattern.

'Every five rounds per gun, there's a shudder and he narrows his eyes for a moment. He's using his Sacred Gear to return those bullets to the point in time where they hadn't been fired yet, and by the time the cylinder cycles over the cooldown has reset so he can just keep doing it.'

That left him with effectively infinite ammunition; so long as he still had magical energy he could keep firing - just like me.

A stalemate - but I didn't want to take a gamble on which of us would fall over first in a battle of attrition, or take a risk on not being able to keep up my point-defense for that long.

So, in my low-order-thinking state, I started walking forward.

With each step, my firing solution had to become faster and faster, the trajectories of my shots had to account for my own motion as well as the other rounds', and the difficulty effectively ramped itself up a whole new level.

We had been about ten to twelve paces away from one another when the gunfight started. I had only crossed half that distance when I intuitively knew that if I tried to get any closer, I wouldn't be able to keep up any longer.

I gritted my teeth, eyes darting around for a solution - then hatched one.

It was a stupid idea - a really stupid idea. But I wasn't going to get a better one, so I jumped on it.

I abruptly switched the target of my left-hand revolver. Instead of destroying the round headed for my left shoulder, I instead fired directly at the barrel of the revolver in Maverick's left hand, effectively ruining the gun in return for the shot I then took to the shoulder.

It burned - oh by all that's holy it burned. But I was building up quite the pain tolerance even when I couldn't shut it out, and I forced myself to move through the sensation as I took advantage of the opening.

As I crossed the remaining distance, managing to go under the shot from the right-hand gun by throwing myself into a forward roll, I came up in time to see the ruined gun repair itself in an instant - returning to brand new as if it had never been damaged.

But it had been damaged long enough.

I rose fast, bringing the Webleys up and around in a pistol-whip for the ages, aiming for an incapacitation shot to the side of the head and praying Maverick's possession of a Sacred Gear would stop any potential damage-

Only to find myself missing completely as he leaned back underneath the strike, flipping back on his hands and kicking me in the chin as he went.

I went over backwards, hitting the grass before rolling sideways and getting to my feet again, and when I looked back I found that Maverick had holstered his revolvers. "We here in the US like our guns," he told me, "but we've been makin' knives for a whole helluva lot longer."

He reached to the handles on his waist, drawing the blades out. "CO010 Combat Ready Military Fighter Knives." He declared. "American-made for American use." His left arm came up in front of his face like a fleshy shield, one knife held in a reverse grip; the other was held facing forward at his side. "C'mon, boy; let's see what you're made of!"

The Webleys swirled in my hands and reformed, the grips becoming hilts in my hands while the cylindrical portion of the newly-made weapons extended up the inside of my arms at ninety-degrees.

I spun the tonfa a few times, grateful that my pseudo-biology meant a hole in my shoulder had very little impact on my fighting ability. The weapons were the one-handed extension of my choice to fight with a staff rather than a spear, and I'd ingrained a few instincts with them during my time with Azazel.

Test complete, I raised both in front of my face with the actual striking surface facing outward. Then I considered for a moment, before shrugging internally and deciding I'd probably never get the chance to say this again without someone overhearing I'd rather not. "You've disturbed the peace." I informed Maverick, bending my knees. "Kamikorosu."

Then I launched myself toward Maverick and the fight was back on.

His right hand came forward like a snake, going for a stomach-shot below the guard of my tonfa - but a moment's thought caused the weapon to extend, intercepting the blow and turning it aside as I went for a swipe with my right tonfa.

That hit was absorbed by a suddenly raised leg, which interposed itself between the weapon and Maverick's ribs in time to act as a shield. A hop from the other leg let Maverick reposition to my left using the force of my strike, where he once more launched a stab with his right hand - this time though, his left hand scythed out, the blade of the knife within glinting.

I met the cut with my now-skyward left-hand tonfa while my right hand rotated the tonfa it held and stabbed out at my opponent's incoming wrist.

It ended up passing right through the space where the wrist should have been, and less than a second later the errant blade passed through my out-positioned guard and stabbed into where a human's kidney would be.

There was an organ I wouldn't be missing so dearly any more.

Still, having several inches of metal forcibly inserted into me rather counted as bad time - and I made this known by forcibly knocking Maverick's left arm away with a blow to the inside of his elbow using my right-hand tonfa before using my now-free left hand to slam a blow home on American's ribs.

We broke apart, me grimacing at the stain growing on my plain maroon shirt and Maverick's eyes narrowing as he took deep breaths.

We stared at one another for a moment, then Maverick came back in, this time striking at my stomach and throat simultaneously. I held out my left tonfa in front of me, extending it in both directions to block both knives - but wasn't too surprised when Maverick's position suddenly changed to earlier in the step before impact, where his strike-zones changed to my lower left side and my right shoulder.

I curled my shoulder in before whipping it back out again as the knife came in, knocking it aside and giving me the chance to shoot a blow forward while Maverick's left side was open. Meanwhile, I swept my left tonfa across my body by spinning the handle, sparing myself another puncture wound.

Maverick moved back with the blow I dealt him, diffusing some of the force, but when I went to press the attack he suddenly spun into a sweeping kick, knocking my legs out from under me.

The tonfa in my left hand vanished as I extended that limb to catch myself, and I was halfway through using that point of support to turn a cartwheel when Maverick finished his spinning turn and came up with one of his revolvers in hand.

My entire world narrowed to the mouth of the gun, and my cartwheel became a spin around the axis of my arm as the first two shots came in.

After that he had corrected his aim, so with the strength born of being a Fallen Angel I pushed myself several feet into the air with just the flexing of the arm I had on the ground, thereby avoiding the next two rounds.

Then I was hung in the air, caught in the instant between 'up' and 'down', easy pickings for even a half-decent marksman…

And as he brought up his gun, it was on the exact same line as the Webley construct that appeared in my right hand.

There was the detonation of HEI round and Light bullet between us, and then I was back on the ground and flipping backwards to open distance. I came to a stop at around the same twelve-step distance away from Maverick as I had been at the start of our gunfight, and remained there as the gunman regained his feet.

"Phew…" He panted, blowing out a whistle. "Gotta admit, you've got a better handle on the whole 'hand to hand' thing than the others. None of 'em seemed to have a plan beyond 'stick the weak human with the pointy glowstick'."

I would have chuckled, if he wasn't referencing times when members of the organisation I was currently acting on the behalf of tried to murder him - and with that reaction, I came to a realisation.

I...didn't really want to fight any more. Hell, I hadn't particularly wanted to fight in the first place. 'Or...is that really true?'

I could have flown away. When I ran up the stairs in the tower, I could have just flown out one of the windows on the opposite side from Maverick and gone to the extraction point, leaving him be.

But I hadn't.

I hadn't, just like I hadn't hesitated when I effectively gave Mittelt a death-threat. Just like I had taken this mission because I wanted to vent my frustrations with violence. Just like I was doing exactly that - despite having no reason at all to fight, I was still here, still risking my own life and the life of the man in front of me.

'I didn't used to be like this. I'm sure I didn't.' I looked at my hands - at the Webley construct I was still holding aimed at Maverick. 'What...happened?'

The Grigori expected that someday I would take off my humanity like a suit and cast it aside as clothing I'd outgrown. And that idea was still abhorrent to me…

But I couldn't deny that it seemed to have started already.

"Oh man...there's a look I haven't seen in a while."

I looked up sharply as Maverick spoke, finding him wearing a sombre expression but with a wry grin. "Last time I saw a face like that, I'd just been jumped by a buncha Devils - King tracked me by my Gear, wanted me for his Peerage, you know how that song and dance goes."

The barrel of my revolver trembled. 'Huh - that's funny...I've not been anything less than perfectly steady since I died…'

"Well, he orders them all to attack - but there's this one kid, probably not even able to grow a full beard yet, who hangs back.

"I kept seein' 'im as the fight went on; he never joined in, even when his King got mad and smacked him pretty good.

"So when I finished wiping the floor with the critters and their winged rodent of a leader, I sat down with the kid, and I asked 'im how come he didn't get on in the action and try to take me out. Know what he told me?

"'Because even if I'm a Devil now, no matter how much I want to fight, I don't want to hurt someone who doesn't deserve it.'"

Maverick gestured to me. "That was his expression during that fight; the face of someone who's got a little voice in the back of their head that's always eggin' 'em on, an urge to break and tear and fight fight fight!

"But more than that - it's the face of someone who's human enough to say 'HELL NO!'"

The yell startled me a bit, and Maverick seemed to grin a bit wider. "You've got the wings an' the magic, and you've even got the know-how...but under those feathers I reckon there's someone quite a bit like me."

Those words sank right past my brain with all the force of a bunker-buster. Through the surface thoughts, through the conflict, through all the emotional chaos that I'd been keeping a lid on since I woke up in the Grigori, and right to the very core of me - to place where the existences of a Fallen Angel and a Human mixed like oil and water, rejecting one another constantly for all they appeared as one whole.

Those words reached that maelstrom - and something clicked.

I AM THE SUN IN THE STARRY SKY

WITH A BODY OF ETERNITY, AND A HEART OF CHANGE

A pause.

"What kinda anime bullshit is th-"

A new sun was born, and the world turned white and gold.

A dimension away, a being older than the stars watched as the feathers he had been scanning suddenly began to glow like the sun and lengthened, while something that wasn't exactly music but didn't quite fall into any other category drifted from their surfaces.

Azazel blinked. "What...was that?"

A dimension further away than the Grigori, a human figure with golden hair and eyes of blue sky blinked as he felt the system he had been left to manage...for lack of a better term, shiver.

"Michael?" A voice that transcended all earthly considerations of the word and segued into the concept of Music queried. "Is everything alright?"

The Archangel Michael shook his head to clear it. "Yes, Gabriel."

"Alright." The voice/song replied. "Do come to supper soon won't you? Father's system will hold itself together if you leave it alone for a few minutes."

Michael slumped slightly, his eyes falling upon a creation that would have required several millennia of existence, an understanding of fundamental concepts and a Light element of the Sixth Level to even see. "Sometimes, I wonder…" He whispered to himself.

There weren't words that could describe the experience I underwent when I internalised Maverick's words. Not in any language, human or supernatural, Holy or Unholy. I couldn't have drawn a picture to convey it, nor would music have served. It was an experience that simultaneously went beyond my own comprehension while expanding my comprehension to match, leaving me only partially cognisant of just what had occurred.

The closest analogy was, perhaps, as if I had been existing as only the corner of a puzzle - but that a new piece had just been returned to me, making me...greater.

The words that had rolled off my tongue as if by divine mandate, words I'd never even thought before but that felt like they had been waiting my entire life to be spoken, resonated in my mind like song. Like a mantra, endlessly circling and reinforcing itself. They were mine and in some way I couldn't quite understand they were me.

All of my focus and all my attention was fully drawn by the frankly religious experience, so I didn't even notice time was passing until Maverick's southern drawl spoke up. "Well there's somethin' you don't see every day."

I opened my eyes, finding myself looking at a seriously confused-looking Maverick. "I mean seriously, what the hell?" He asked, looking at something above and behind me.

I turned to look over my own shoulder…

And I gaped.

Eyes wide, mouth open, I stared at the new pair of wings I had grown.

"That...shouldn't be possible." I whispered to myself, barely even cognisant of raising my arm to poke at one of the new appendages until I felt it - both in my finger and in my new wing. "That should not be possible."

"Just what the hell are you, anyway?" Maverick demanded, and I turned to face him - there was the faintest echo of something on my tongue, like there should be something there that I was missing…

But I lost the sensation a moment later and so continued on. "...I'm me." I told him, drawing a roll of the eyes before I continued. "I'm Drew, a teenager who died and ended up becoming the first true hybrid of Human and Fallen Angel. I'm the only one of my kind, a freak of nature that most of this planet will want to kill for one part of me or another.

"And I guess...I'm still human enough to say 'Hell no.'"

Maverick stared at me for a few moments, his expression inscrutable. "...So even the Fallen Angels are poachin' humans now."

I opened my mouth to correct him, but Maverick just kept rolling on. "Well Drew, let me make a proper introduction.

"I'm Maverick - just Maverick - the wielder of the Sacred Gear Kronos Trigger. I'm a born-and-bred American - part of the greatest nation on Earth! And my dream is to one day see humanity standin' on their own!

"But I've got one more goal. 'Cause after seein' that kid, and hearin' about all the reincarnated Devils out there, I made a promise to myself."

As he spoke, Maverick had been growing louder and louder, working himself up until he almost seemed to be looming over me despite the distance between us. Now, he pointed one hand directly at me and shouted. "I'M GOING TO REVERSE THE EVIL PIECES SYSTEM! ONE DAY, I'LL GIVE EVERY REINCARNATED DEVIL THE CHANCE TO BE HUMAN AGAIN!"

His clenched fist stabbed forward, pointer finger extended toward me, and I almost felt a phantom tap on my chest. "Now COME ON! Show me if you're really human at heart, or if I should just give up on Fallen Angels as a whole species of arrogant morons!"

I blinked. "But I...really don't want to fight any more. I mean, I just got another pair of wings and the whole spiritual discovery kinda killed my ang-"

I somehow managed to form a Light-staff in my hands quickly enough that I could spin it and deflect the explosive shot fired at me. "What the hell man?!"

Three more came in quick succession, and I blocked each on the construct. "Seriously, quit it! I don't want to fight you!"

There was a pause - then the six remaining rounds in his revolvers soared forth, and I instinctively spun around, reinforcing one of my new wings and sweeping it across the bullets' flight-path.

They detonated, and I felt something from it - but not much, all things considered.

I unfurled my wing, giving Maverick a look. "Well, if that's how you want to play things…"

My four wings pulled on the air like an arm would pull on a desk, slingshotting me forward and into Maverick's personal space. "LET'S PLAY!"

His guard was only halfway-formed when my staff swung forward, folding him a bit around it and launching the gunman into a bouncing path across the grass.

I followed, running hard and finding it surprisingly easy to keep Maverick's entire body in focus at once. That ease let me pick up on the blur of him bringing his revolvers up, and I angled my lower wings to launch me skywards over the incoming bullets - then re-angled my upper wings to send me back down again, a feathered missile that outsped Maverick's ability to re-aim.

He rolled out of the way of my knees, which blew a crater out of the ground when they impacted, and once again emptied his revolvers at me - but both my left-hand wings extended to shield me, taking the hits with their new durability and the newly-potent Light I layered them with.

Keeping my wings between myself and Maverick, I got up and started to charge, my wings serving as all the shield I needed to weather the rain of lead and fire he sent my way. Behind the feathers, I opened my right hand, a moment's concentration forming a new construct there.

There was a quiet click as the twelve-gauge double-barrelled Remington spun around my hand, and I pointed it back the way I'd come. 'Any second now…'

I was expecting Maverick to rewind his personal time-stream until he was lying behind me once again, thereby taking him around my feathery shield; so I prepared the shotgun with imagined 'soft' rounds that would pack a wallop but hopefully not shred the man like paper.

But for the umpteenth time that night, the American got the drop on me. This time, when there was a momentary pause in his firing.

I waited for him to re-appear behind me, sure he must have used his Sacred Gear…

And instead found myself letting out a shocked yell as something blew through both of my Light-reinforced wings, scattering shards of magic and a spray of ichor into the night.

Two more holes appeared in the same way before I threw all my concentration into constructing the thickest, strongest wall I could imagine in front of me, drawing on my Light element as hard as I could.

The multi-foot glowing construct that appeared gave a crystalline scream as spiderweb cracks spread over its face, the result of its blocking the other incoming rounds - but it held, and gave me the time to pull in my wings, the left two of which had been once more rendered useless.

"What in the fuck was that?!" I demanded as I continued to concentrate on the wall, starting to extend it around myself as a kind of fort.

".500 calibre full-metal jacket slugs!" Maverick declared, cocking his revolvers obnoxiously loudly. "These babies'll put a hole in damn near anything on the planet, movin' or not!"

"How do you even have something like that?!"

"I bought 'em off the internet!"

I resisted the urge to smack my head on the glowing golden wall I had erected around myself to buy time for thinking. "Your country has some seriously fucked-up ideas, you know that?! Just what the hell are people going to kill with those things?!"

"In my experience? Whatever they shoot at!"

'...Touché.

'Okay dammit, my wings can't hold up to that, and I'm not going to bet any of the rest of me can even with the boost. The wall can hold up okay, but I have to focus too hard on it to cart it around, so it's...out...'

I blinked. '...There's no way this'll work.'

I told myself that, because I was sure Azazel would have done something like this already if it was possible, and Shemhazai would never have let him forget it.

But still...you'd never know unless you tried.

So I closed my eyes, gathered my Light element, pressed my hands together…

And I imagined.

"Susanoo!"

It started at the glowing wall-construct.

The craters and cracks smoothed out and disappeared, while the appearance of bricks vanished as the construct rounded itself.

It quickly closed over the open top, creating an enclosed space like a bubble which grew larger and took on new textures, becoming similar to plate armour.

Arms sprouted near the top while an armoured helm extended from the peak of the now-formed torso, a bo staff that was closer in size and girth to a redwood tree held between the hands as they formed.

Then, when the upper body was complete, the entire assembly began to rise as the bottom of the torso extruded legs, plate-armoured like the rest of the body, that carried the hybrid within the torso into the sky.

Within a minute, there stood a plate-armoured warrior with a bo-staff, its head at the level of a five-storey building, staring down at the blond human it faced.

Inside the torso, Drew Campbell opened his eyes - and both he and Maverick shared much the same thought at much the same time.

'That is such BULLSHIT.'

I stared out at the world from within the golden body I had made, feeling the effort of both creating and holding together the armoured warrior, but also knowing that I possessed a greater knowledge and control of my construct than I did of my own body.

'I' spun the bo in 'my' right hand, generating a wind that stripped the leaves and branches from trees at the base's perimeter, then held it firm and focussed on Maverick.

The American was looking up at me with a kind of incredulous expression, and I found that despite the distance and Light separating us I could still hear him speak.

"How the fuck?"

I gave him a toothy smirk. "Fuck you, that's how."

The response I got to that was a hail of bullets that cratered and cracked the Light armour in front of me - but it held, the same thickness and toughness that had been presented in the original wall having remained true for the warrior I had extrapolated from it.

"Now that was uncalled for."

'I' stepped forward, shaking the ground in doing so as the usual 'weightlessness' of my Light constructs was being overridden by my belief that a plate-armoured warrior five-storeys tall should weigh several metric fuck-tons, and swung 'my' bo staff.

'I' deliberately pulled the strike, making sure it wouldn't connect with the American and thus paint him over a significant portion of the surrounding area - but the wind that resulted from the weapon's passage was a blow all its own, lifting Maverick from his feet and flipping him backwards from the force.

He got back to his feet quickly, starting to strafe sideways and keep firing at me - but each shot was caught as its predecessors had been, and 'I' retaliated by spinning the bo once and then plunging it into the ground.

The resulting upheaval of the earth took the feet out from under the gunman, leaving him open for 'me' to kick a skyward-bound chunk of earth in his direction.

"I'd prefer for you to eat shit," I mused as he looked up just in time for the somewhat-disassociated cloud of dirt particles, plant-life and sediment to hit him head-on, "but then again this is America; you've probably done that every day of your life."

Maverick spat out the dirt that had gotten in his mouth, glaring up at me. "Now I know you didn't just diss my home-cooking."

"That would imply I consider the stuff you eat 'cooking' - or 'food', for that matter."

With my elevation to a Second Level Fallen Angel had come an increase in my visual acuity; so, I was able to see the way Maverick's expression went completely flat. "Alright, now you've gone an' made it personal."

In a motion I could just barely track now, the American switched his ammo once more, levelling his revolvers at me. "This is for my momma's cookin' asshole!"

When he fired this time, the effect on my construct wasn't quite the same.

Instead of just blasting craters in the armour, this round seemed to hit and then shatter, spreading the damage over a wider area and resulting in myriad cracks that began to distort my view.

As the volley continued and started digging deeper into the Light, I could see the metal shards spreading wider within the construct and forming oddly fractal patterns like some kind of galactic map.

And just like space, exposure would be deadly.

'I' raised 'my' left arm to cover myself, taking the moment's reprieve to erase the damage done to 'my' torso before turning the shielding arm into a backhanded strike, forcing Maverick to hunker down or get blown away again.

That in turn left him vulnerable to 'my' stamping on the ground near him, the transferred force knocking Maverick into the air and leaving him set up for 'me' to swing the bo-staff through the space just below him as hard as 'I' could.

The displacement of the air hit him like a hammer in the back, but as the vacuum left behind got filled in he was dragged into it, sending him rocketing along like he'd been thrown into a wind tunnel.

Or, like he'd just been hit with a golf club.

"Fore!"

The Sacred Gear user's path ended at the wall of the control tower, where he ended up going through the part of the wall weakened by his earlier bombardment - at which point the supporting walls gave in the ghost, causing the entire tower to collapse.

I stared for a moment, dumbfounded, before eloquently yelling "SHIT!" and running for the rubble.

'I' would be able to dig him out surely, and this was an anime universe; people would be tougher here, right? Plus, he was a Sacred Gear wielder and a tough cookie besides, he'd surely be able to survive a silly little thing like several tonnes of military-grade rubble collapsing on him.

Right?

I sincerely hoped I was right as 'I' knelt down beside the rubble, reaching forward to begin clearing it away-

And then heard a crystalline scream as something dug into the inside wrist of 'my' right hand.

"What?!"

"You thought I was down for the count, did ya?"

I turned to look at 'my' wrist...and found Maverick there, his right hand pointing a revolver at me while his right...was holding onto a scythe?

The weapon's handle was a bit longer than Maverick himself was tall, with a stretched-out reverse-S shape to it. At the head of the weapon a spike swept back and upwards from the 'back', while the blade itself protruded from the other side and extended at least a metre from the scythe with a somewhat jagged curve that matched the serration on the blade's edges.

There was some kind of gemstone set into the head of the scythe between the blade and the backswept spike, glowing an ominous red - a fitting companion to the chain which sprouted from just at the root of the blade, then wound around the scythe down to just about the end of the handle.

The blade glowed red like the gemstone while the rest of the weapon was pitch-black - it honestly looked like it was alive and glaring at me.

Even if it was so fucking edgy I thought I could feel my eyes bleeding.

"Well ya should've thought twice - 'cause there ain't no way I'm gonna die 'fore I've done what I need to!"

Well said, my wielder.

I blinked. "Wait, who said that?"

I did. Can you not see me? Or are those vaunted eyes of yours no better than a magpie's?

This time, I could tell that Maverick's lips definitely weren't moving - but the gemstone on his scythe pulsed with each syllable.

"You're his Sacred Gear?" I clarified, recalling that it was possible for Ddraig and Albion to speak through their gauntlets but not having expected it here of all places.

I am Kronos! The greatest of Titans, the Lord of Time! The father of Zeus and the bane of all Olympus! I am no mere 'Sacred Gear', you wretched excuse for a harpy; know your place!

'Well he's a chatty one.

'But for that scythe to be part of his Sacred Gear, and for the spirit inside it to have apparently awakened or become able to speak…'

My eyes widened. "Did you just achieve your Balance Breaker?!"

"Balance Breaker…" Maverick drawled, rolling the words around in his mouth as if tasting them, before grinning. "Now I reckon I like the sound of that."

Indeed. Kronos agreed. This is the Kronos Trigger's Balance Breaker; Ελέγχου Σύμπαντος!

There was a moment of silence - then, Maverick spoke up. "Uh...don't suppose there's an English translation of that?"

"Universe Control." I replied without thinking - then blinked. "Wait, how did I know that?"

It seems you are less intelligent than I gave you credit for. The scythe scoffed. Are you not even aware of your own ability to speak in tongues? 'Not a very good Fallen' indeed.

My eyebrow twitched. I was allowed to make fun of myself, but frankly I was a little irritated at being lectured by so much mystical wood and metal.

"Well if I'm such a bad Fallen, you'll have no trouble with this."

Maverick blinked, and I almost thought the scythe did too - then the glowing golden fingers of 'my' hand curled inwards as 'I' bent the wrist at an angle utterly impossible for a human being, resulting in 'my' fist closing around the weapon and its wielder.

"Shit!" I could hear Maverick yelling from within. "The hell'm I supposed to do with a scythe like this dammit?!"

A scythe is a weapon both deadly and multi-faceted! Kronos declared, sounding rather defensive. Do not degrade my mother's gift just because you lack the intellect to truly comprehend its brilliance!

"Well I don't know 'bout your momma, but unless you've got some kinda can-opener in ya somewhere I'm gonna stick by what I said!"

"Do...I have to give you two a minute?" I wondered aloud, rather bemused by the two's bickering as 'my' fist remained clenched tightly enough to prevent escape or much movement, but not so tight as to crush or cut off the air supply.

There was a moment of silence where I could barely detect the hum of Kronos speaking - then, Maverick spoke once more, and it was with the kind of confidence that made me brace myself.

"Oh, no need for that...we've got all the time in-"

A kind of insightful flash hit me in an instant, and I instinctively curled up and threw my all into reinforcing the area around me before he finished speaking.

"THE WORLD!"

There was a pause that lasted only long enough for me to perceive that it had passed - then all at once, 'my' right hand and arm came apart in a shower of sparks and slabs of Light that dispersed into the air after shattering, while several deep slashes appeared in 'my' torso.

Maverick was no longer trapped in what had been 'my' right hand, but was in fact hanging from his scythe's handle in front of me, his left hand pointing a revolver into one of the deep slashes. "You ain't the only one who can make references, boy."

Then he started firing, and in the time before 'my' left arm swept across 'my' body and forced him to retrieve his scythe and drop away, he managed to get bullet fragments as close as centimetres from my face.

I grimaced. I didn't think I had enough energy left in me to re-make 'my' arm, and I'd lost the bo when I ran to the rubble of the tower.

'I' got to 'my' feet, launching 'myself' a few steps backward (which amounted to half the length of the base) and trying to think of a new counter.

'Okay - so he's got time-stopping to go with his other abilities now. How do I deal with this?

'Well, that's gotta be draining for him - so attrition would be a possibility...if not for the fact that he can almost totally breach my defenses in just one instance of his ability.

'I can't infiltrate stopped time, since that's nothing like any kind of magic I can actually do and I'm not a Devil whose entire ability to wield magic is based on imagination alone.

'So what can I do that will deter someone who stops time?'

I was still wondering about that when there was a click behind me, and I looked sharply over my shoulder to see that Maverick was once more hanging from his scythe as it was buried in my construct - except this time, he had dug out a crater in 'my' back with slashes, then stuffed his HE and Frag grenades into the space.

"Fire in the hole!" He declared as he freed the scythe and jumped backward, bringing his revolver up and giving me just enough time to make a rapid decision and grab a mental hold of as much of the Light element invested in the Susanoo as I could-

Then he fired, the grenades went off, and my entire world was a confused whirl of sky and land.

I manipulated the Light element I had a hold of with a speed born of panic and reactionary instinct, forming a sphere around myself that bounced upon hitting the ground, rolling madly with me inside until it dispersed with a crash upon hitting a hangar wall.

I wanted little more than to just lay still and rest, but I forced myself to get back to my feet and form the construct that would be needed for me to survive.

My fingers twisted and intertwined, working with and alongside one another as I twisted, bent and wove the Light through the dexterity of a Second Level Fallen - then, when I caught sight of Maverick running toward me, scythe held in his hands, I threw my hands out to let the creation grow, closed my eyes...

And hoped.

As Maverick ran towards the Fallen Human, as he'd designated Drew, he could see the light shining from between Drew's cupped hands.

The American saw Drew's head come up and his hands go forward, saw the light begin to grow, and he reached for the feeling that had come to him while the control tower came tumbling down.

In that moment, with tonnes of rubble bearing down on him, a massive foe that even his beloved American weaponry couldn't defeat alone waiting outside, he had never felt closer to being defeated - and that had been more than enough of a catalyst for his Balance Breaker.

Maverick refused to die. More than that - he refused to fail, to not achieve his dreams. He was going to help raise humanity above its supernatural oppressors, and until he had he was determined that nothing would stop him.

And that will to go against the world took the form of the scythe in his hands and a new ability.

He could feel time, in an abstract kind of way; could feel its flow, could feel the points where objects existed in the 'present' as the echoes of their presence in the 'past' vanished downriver. And more than just feeling it - he could affect it.

Like building a dam in his mind that could, for a precious few moments, hold back the flow of time itself.

He did just that as he approached Drew, maintaining his speed as the world froze around him and eyeing the Fallen Human's latest creation.

Recognising it, he found himself grinning. An interlinked structure of glowing threads that formed a spiderweb of sorts, originating at Drew and spreading outward in a forest of magic.

The kid had apparently gone for something off the top of his head - 'cause if he'd been thinking as clearly as Maverick gave him credit for, he would have remembered just how things had gone the first time someone had tried to use that technique against a time-stopper.

"I guess you weren't all that human after all…" He noted, somewhat sadly, to the frozen man. "'Cause otherwise you'd have learned from his mistake."

And with that, he swung his scythe (and man, was there any less wieldy weapon in existence? Give him some superior American engineering any day) down, prepared to make a point by shattering every single thread before the time-stop wore off-

And instead found himself suddenly blinded, as the instant his scythe broke the first thread the entire structure came apart in a flash that, even if he'd been wearing his sunglasses, would have made them about as effective as paper.

"What the damn hell?!" Was the first thing I heard after unleashing my mess of threads - a mess that had vanished completely now, leaving me perfectly able to see Maverick rolling around on the ground with his hands over his eyes, scythe discarded. "What just happened?!"

"Heh…" I sighed, pulling on the dregs of my Light element to reform the Remington. "You just fell for the same trick twice.

"People who stop time can still see, even though light should be frozen as well; so I guessed that if I set up a flash-bang construct in the shape of an Emerald Web, and you broke it, it would work just fine."

"But that's...that's…!"

"Bullshit?" I asked, spinning the weapon in my hand and cocking it. "Yeah - because you're right; the supernatural has damn good reason to fear humans. We don't follow the rules and we don't slow down; we can accomplish the impossible if we just put our minds to it, always pushing further ahead and leaving the Moonlit World to dog our heels and try to hold on to the leash.

"One of these days...I truly believe a person like you is going to break that leash entirely and let humanity run free."

"...Well said." Maverick finally spoke, laying on his back in the grass.

His vision wouldn't be coming back any time soon, and he knew it. He had no way to anticipate me doing anything, and his scythe was out of reach.

I'd won. Kind of, anyway.

"Hey kid."

"Yeah?"

"You wanna go get a burger?"

I blinked. Looked at the Remington in my hand, at the man on the floor, at the base which looked like it had been hit by a localised apocalypse.

Then I shrugged, dispersed the gun, knelt down beside the gunman and helped him to his feet. "Fuck it, why not. Know anywhere decent nearby?"

"Well, there's this little place in the next town over that I stopped at on the way here; great seats, great food, cute waitresses…"

And Maverick continued to espouse the merits of the diner and American hospitality in general as he directed me to where he had been camping near the base's perimeter, where his vision had returned enough to pack up and get us on the road in his jeep.

I had to admit - the burgers really did taste delicious.

(PSIness11): Maverick is such an interesting combination of things. You've got the southern american charm, the lone gunslinger vigilante, the powers of Kronos and DIO… Yet somehow Teninshigen was able to put this character on paper.

Digital paper, but I suppose the point...Stands!

...Dammit, I forgot to turn on the laugh-track. Oh well.

Maverick was fun to write and a laugh to even think about, but damn if he didn't seem to fit right in among the other characters in DxD. I mean, Issei Hyoudou is basically a joke taken far beyond its logical extreme, so who the hell can complain about a character who has become more than a joke? Not me.

(PSIness11): All the JoJo fans will be satisfied with Maverick, as well as Percy Jackson fans… I didn't even consider having Kronos be able to speak, Teninshigen just put it there. And it worked.

Well if Ddraig and Albion can do it, why not others? And just for anyone who's wondering, Maverick and Kronos will have their own character arcs going on (sometimes) in the background - and there is actually planned back-story to the Kronos Trigger. In fact, just to clear up a couple of things: No, it's not a Longinus. Yes, a Subspecies Balance Breaker will appear later. No, it can't revert other people's timelines. And finally, it does have more uses than have been showcased already...but give Maverick a break, he only had the thing for a few minutes.

(PSIness11): That would be a bit broken even for DxD.

Depending on how far it could go, yeah - but then again, this is a universe containing dragons fuelled by Dreams and the Infinite, as well as every god from every mythology, human mages, just about every supernatural critter imaginable, weapons capable of killing Gods, and Sirzechs 'Human-Shaped Power of Destruction' Lucifer. 'Broken' and 'OP' are very much relative here.

And that should segue nicely into what I think will be one of the most eyebrow-raising parts of this chapter - Drew getting a new pair of wings.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm not entirely satisfied with it; except at the same time, if I were to have Drew remain relevant throughout the entire DxD story-line while still only possessing two wings, the question would then arise of why couldn't any two-wing Fallen with a decent imagination do much the same thing.

Reincarnated Devils can become more powerful and achieve new ranks; Brave Saints aren't touched on all that much in my knowledge of the story, but it's probably fair to say that they can do something similar. So, I'm just going to straight-up say that a perfect Human/Fallen hybrid has the ability to grow more powerful too.

I'll not consider it spoilers to say that this will continue on to its ultimate conclusion of Drew reaching the level of a Twelve-Wing Fallen. But as the trade-off, it's going to be a long time coming, and he'll never be at the right power level to win his battles without having to use his brain.

To re-use my earlier point - if Issei Hyoudou can go from being something that a most of the characters in DxD wouldn't notice if they stepped on, to becoming strong enough to be recognised as something approaching a world power, then I'm going to say I'm justified.

In my mind, no Evil Piece or Sacred Gear is a good enough replacement for human ingenuity and persistence. So even though he'll get more raw firepower as the story goes on, Drew's victories (and defeats) will only come with hard work, quick thinking, and DETERMINATION.

(PSIness11): Undertale fanboy…

-Rant/Justification over. Let's get on to the Reviews!

-Mzr90, Ch. 2 - Giving a human being access to a Fallen's magic is basically like giving them a Holy Lantern Ring; something that can be incredibly useful in the right hands. And don't worry, I'll be working on Spheres now that this is posted.

(PSIness11): I should really work on speeding...

-mslmob12, Ch. 2 - Yes, I'm still doing Music; it's next on my update...eh...let's call it a 'schedule'.

-Blacksword Zero, Ch. 1 - Glad you think so.

-Robynhood13, Ch. 2 - You're not far wrong.

-Lazymanjones96, Ch. 1 - Ask and thou shalt receive.

-The Ultimate Balance Chaos, Ch. 2 - There's no better opening to a training session than someone yelling 'DODGE!' before trying to kill you.

(PSIness11): That's how our writing sessions go, I yell "WRITE!", and he writes. I on the other hand, do jack shit and eat.

-Naruto-Uzu-Uchiha, Ch. 2 - Congratulations, you've earned yourself a cookie :) And yes, in my mind, Fallen Angels' thought processes are basically the same as the average porno plot (my opinion of them doesn't rate very highly). This is a pretty good example of the character progression that's going to happen, though such advances will be fairly far-between; and Drew is going to get stronger, but I never want him to be in a position where he can win without having to think about it. 'Cause that's just not fun to write.

-RevansStories, Ch. 2 - Well, Raynare's well out. Gabriel? Michael would turn Drew into a faint scorch-mark on the floor. And Penueme...I think she turned up in one side-story or something? I'll have to look into her.

-RadioPoisoning, Ch. 2 - Just because it's necessary for him to remain relevant in the plot, Drew will eventually become a powerhouse by DxD standards - but only ever just in time for that boost to effectively only keep his head above water, leaving ingenuity to win him his battles. And also, in the words of Jaune Arc: "Ah, great. Where am I supposed to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?"

-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Thanks for the support! :)

-Greyjedi449t, Ch. 2 - Hope you enjoyed it ;)

-'shadow', Ch. 2 - I'm glad to hear it :)

-Blades of Fury, Ch. 2 - Well, Azazel finds them fascinating. Baraqiel had a kid with one. And...Shemhazai probably gets his opinion from Azazel? … Wow. Beyond that I don't think any of the Fallen named in the series have definitively stated positive views of humanity.

-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Well, you need wait no longer!

-xanothos, Ch. 2 - I hope this was worth the wait :)

-'Guest', Ch. 2 - Well now you don't need to wait any more :)

-'Ibn', Ch. 2 - Oh, if you thought it was escalating quickly before… Anyway, yeah, Drew is going to be imagining his way out of a lot of his problems - a spear isn't exactly a swiss-army knife as far as uses go. And yeah, he needed some R&R - but so far, the universe is rather determined that he won't get any.

-'Rip', Ch. 2 - Oh, now I'm curious; how were you expecting me to portray the Fallen who pretended to be Issei's girlfriend before killing him, kidnapped and held Asia hostage, killed her and stole her Sacred Gear, then claimed it was all for Azazel and got herself killed? (No, seriously, I actually want to know - it might give me ideas for the story).

End of Reviews

Well, this brings an end to the pre-written parts of this story; I'll be back to working on Music of the Spheres now, but I might end up writing parts of this in-between sessions of that. And maybe I'll even write more of Press-Ganging at the same time; because why not.

(PSIness11): Press-Ganging… Haha yeah. The story we write when we want to procrastinate.

See ya next time.

[{Ness's Corner}]

He's just about ready to keel over, give him a while.