A/N: Getting near to the climax now! I hope everyone will see out the end with me & thanks for all the comments so far.

Chapter 12: The Weapon

Angel ditched the limo down an alley, hoping no one would notice it with the window busted up like it was. There wasn't much he could do about it now, though, and not much sense worrying about it, he thought. Just another thing to add to the pile of lousy things he'd had to do to get here…

He couldn't begin to imagine how Charlie would take it once she realised what was going on. She was too much like Molly for her own good: far too sweet, far too naive.

Angel shook the thought off, hurrying down the street until he found an empty public bathroom. In the cubicle he opened the up the bag, putting the toilet lid down so he could awkwardly sit down while he changed. First came the wig: long luxurious hair with a pink tint, not unlike his own. Angel made sure it was sitting securely, combing it out to make sure it looked natural.

Next, the clothes. He took off the coat he had been wearing and ditched his usual tux for just a shirt and shorts. Over that he put on a dress, not too fancy but a light one that would be easy to move in, just in case he ran into trouble. He left his high boots on, but cut off the heels. It would disguise the height he usually had and make it easier to run if he needed to.

Disguise complete, Angel left the cubicle and moved over to the mirror. A contact lens in his eye to disguise his heterochromatic pupil. Makeup next. A layer of foundation went over his face and he made especially sure to cover up his extra eyes. He'd done it once or twice before, for clients who wanted to pay for the best without being reminded that Angel was a spider demon. The nostalgia struck him in a funny way. He almost started to laugh.

He wasn't sure why. It wasn't funny.

All that was left was the voice. Angel cleared his throat, focusing on pitching up his voice and using his accent to sound softer. "Excuse me?" he said. Still too low. It had been awhile since he'd done a drag show, after all. He shut his eyes, focusing on assuming his disguise better, wearing it like he wore the dress he was in. Timid. Desperate. "Excuse me?" he said.

It sounded disturbingly like Molly.

Angel looked himself in the mirror. A young woman with long hair and doe-like pink eyes stared back. He picked up the makeup brush one more time, daubing in the tell-tale sign of a bruise just under his left eye. "OK," the voice said softly. "Showtime."

He ditched the old clothes in the trash, taking only the gym bag with the bottle of wine – and the rest of his arsenal of weapons - in it out the door.

Angel had ditched the limo a little ways away from his true destination: the black markets.

A few demons looked his way, giving him the eye, but Angel pulled his arms in, tried his best to look shy and unassuming. It was difficult when he spent every other day smirking and scowling his way through the godforsaken Hell-hole he'd been forced to call home.

Finally he saw what he'd been hoping to see: a sign with two symbols on it – an exterminator next to a spear. It was attached to a house down a side alley, the door left open enticingly.

Angel hurried towards it, looking down the door to see it opened into a little foyer, another sign pointing down some stairs. He took a deep breath, grit his teeth and headed down them, calling out, "Hello? Anyone here?" in his pale female voice.

"C'mon if you're coming!" a grouchy woman called up the stairs. Angel steeled himself, increasing his pace down the stairs. A heavy door was at the bottom, also just open a crack. His eye twitched. Whoever this was, they sure had a penchant for being overly mysterious.

Don't break character, he reminded himself, peering cautiously around the door. "Um...hi. I saw your sign at the door…?"

A crab-like demon with a face full of eyes stared hard at him from her place at a rickety old table. And behind her, glorious glorious paydirt: a mounted rack full of Angel's spears, wicked sharp and shining even in the dim light. "Are – are those...?"

"Yes. Angelic weapons." She folded clawed hands on the table, turning up her judgemental glare and gesturing to the seat opposite her. "Hope you ain't gonna waste my time, honey."

"No, ma'am." He sat down in front of her, reaching into his gym bag and pulling out the bottle of wine, dumping it on the table before her. "I'll give you this – super old, super valuable – in exchange for one of those."

He pointed up at the spears on the wall.

The demon raised her eyebrow. "Is that all?" She pointed up at the wall. "You know how rare these things are? They're up for grabs once a year and maybe not even then, since everyone fights over them."

"Yeah, but…" Angel fidgeted, putting on his biggest puppy-dog eyes and looking up from under his fringe. He gestured to the makeup bruises, trying to will his eyes to fill with tears. "I just can't go back without one of those spears. He's going to hurt me, badly. I have to finish him first, y'know?"

The crab demon was examining the bottle of wine, looking more and more unimpressed. "Mhmm. Who's that?"

"My-my boss," Angel said, gesturing to his eye and looking as weepy as possible. "This? See this? He did this to me."

The crab demon didn't look as sympathetic as he had hoped with the 'bruised wife' act. "And that's it? This is Hell," she said. "What makes you so special that you can come in here demanding a spear for as little as a slap across the face?"

"It was more than any-" Angel stopped, struggling to keep his voice disguised. "He didn't just hit me today. It's been years I've been putting up with him and his bullshit."

"Let me guess. Made out he loved you at first?"

"Not exactly…" Angel brushed a hand through the long hair. "He accepted me more than my blood relatives did, gave me a career, fun parties, drugs, drink...everything."

"Uh huh."

"But he was just using me to make money," Angel said. "Whenever I succeeded at something, he cut me down. No matter how much I made for him, how big my reputation was or how hard I pushed myself, it was just never good enough," he said.

The crab looked up and Angel realised too late that his voice had slipped.

"Yeah?" she said, her tone changing for the first time. "And what else?"

"I...tried to leave so many times," he said, in his own voice. "I kept thinking it'd get better. Sometimes he'd shower me with attention or gifts or whatever. But he was always playing me – making the others hate me so I'd depend on him, makin' me think I was nothing without him…"

He raised his hand, wiped off the bruise makeup. And then the makeup hiding his other eyes. The crab's many eyes widened. "He didn't give me a bruise recently," Angel admitted, looking down at his hands. "One time I tried to leave him, it wasn't nothin' big, just a stupid fight and I felt like I couldn't take it no more. I walked off out of the Studio, an' he pulled a gun on me. He fired and the bullet bounced off a car, took me right here." He gestured to the side of his head, the bone above his eye where a mark had long since healed. "He made such a fuss and I thought he cared. But he just worried about my face gettin' marked up. An' the funny thing is, I still don't know if he was aiming at me or firing a warning shot, all these years later..."

He looked up, taking out his contact lens. "He is gonna kill all my friends if I don't go back." He slipped off the wig, brushing out his own hair. "Please. I can't bear to go back to him. Not even if it means I have to kill him for good to be free."

The crab demon leant back in her chair. She ran a claw down the side of the wine bottle, thoughtful. "You're Angel Dust, right? Nobody had the nerve to leave Valentino before."

Hearing her say it like that, he felt momentarily proud, even as his surroundings were a constant reminder of how crazy things had gotten. "Yeah...that's me."

"You really gonna take an Overlord on?"

"Yeah." He puffed out his chest, the crazy words giving him strength. "I am."

She considered, then picked up the bottle, using her claw to pop the cork off. "It ain't such a bad vintage, all things considered."

Angel brightened. "You mean-?"

"You canhave one of the spears. Anybody asks, you didn't get it from me." She took a deep, deep swig from the bottle, laughed suddenly. "The underworld's buzzing bout you, you know? It's been a long time since there's been an upset like this – nothing since the Radio Demon arrived, probably. People've been takin' bets how this whole thing'll shake out between the two of you."

"Yeah?"

"Gotta be honest, most people didn't think you had it in you to oppose him. They don't think you're gonna win."

Angel puffed up, usual smirk back in place. "Yeah? What about you? You bettin' on me?"

"No." She laughed when he glared at her and smiled toothily. "But I want you to prove me wrong." And she set to drinking herself stupid, gesturing at the wall. "Any one of those is yours."

"Thanks, sweets." He stood, shrugging out of the dress and leaving himself in his shirt and shorts. The spear was heavier than he expected, but it still hide nicely on the inside of his boot. Val had been right about something, at least – his boots were the perfect place to hide a weapon.

"So, what next?" the crab demon asked, already slurring her words a little. "You jus' gonna walk into the Studio and throw that thing at an Overlord?"

"Mm, naw," Angel said, smiling for half a second at the image. It made what he was about to do a tiny bit less terrifying. He pulled out his burner phone and put in Val's number from memory. He still had the damn digits off by heart. "First... I got one last show to give."