Copy/Paste standard disclaimer about Raziel, LOK, and popular culture references.
A/N: This is really a collection of three very short chapters. I'm leading up to something, but this is a transition full of character development and growth.
Jennifer idly brushed her hand across her game collection. "It's so odd. Before I managed to push your memories back, I tried to raise another character out of the games. It didn't work, and Brightflame criticized me for trying to raise a dead thing."
"What could possibly be deader than me?" Raziel asked. "And what possessed you to try and summon it?"
"I'm not saying exactly, but he was supposed to be breathing and full of life," Jennifer said. "I think that Brightflame meant that I was trying to take something that was only an image. I can feel what she meant, now."
Raziel frowned as she watched Jennifer's fingers search among the boxes. "What are you looking for?"
"Relax, Raziel. I'm just curious about who I could bring through." Jennifer let her fingers linger for a moment before drawing them back in mild surprise. "There's only one story that I can draw from here."
Raziel snorted in depreciation. "Could it be that you only have one good one in that entire pack?"
"Probably," Jennifer said, deliberately ignoring Raziel's cutting remark.
Two days later, a large box arrived by courier. Jennifer briefly examined the label. "That was fast," she muttered as she went into the kitchen to get a knife.
"What is it?" Raziel asked curiously.
"My folks found some of my old stuff the other day, and they emailed me to see if I wanted it. I had to leave it behind back when I was moving around a lot," Jennifer explained as she carefully sliced through the packing tape and pulled open the box. She held up a small doll and squawked, "Rainbow Bright!"
Raziel sat back and watched curiously as Jennifer admired the doll. It had a large plastic head with yellow hair and a vacant expression. Its legs flopped about loosely from the bottom of its blue skirt. The doll had dirt rubbed into the edges of her costume.
Jennifer hugged the doll and giggled uncontrollably. Raziel stared at Jennifer in confusion. She set it down on the floor, but she was still grinning. "She must have been packed away while I was still an innocent," Jennifer beamed happily.
Raziel gently lifted the doll and eyed it critically. It seemed perfectly ordinary. He glanced back at Jennifer, who was again digging around in the box. "She was the lucky one. Most of my other toys didn't survive my destructive phase." Jennifer held a yellow plastic horse in the palm of her hand. Its tail had obviously been ripped out, and one of its legs was cracked nearly all the way through. Its skin was marked with ballpoint pen and nail polish.
Raziel grimaced. "Why did you keep that?"
Jennifer's eyes clouded as she let her memories flow around her. "I could get a new one, but they don't use the same molds anymore. It's almost disturbing that my childhood can belong to a different generation." She dropped the horse back into the box and dug out a notebook. She tossed it aside without bothering to look at it.
Raziel flipped it open to find the pages covered in symbols that he couldn't understand. "Can you read this?" He asked.
Jennifer squinted at the pages, "Sort of, (Why did I write that stuff in Theban?) But I don't need to."
"What does it say?" Raziel asked.
"It's stuff that I wrote down years ago," Jennifer said, shuddering involuntarily. "I can barely believe I was really like that."
Raziel stared at Jennifer, "Like what?"
"Deluded," she said, drooling out the word like a sour acid. "Speaking of which," Jennifer continued, snagging an address book from the box. She quickly flipped it open and tore out a page. Her mouth twisted in a snarl as she ripped the paper into tiny pieces and flung it into the garbage.
"Old boyfriend?" Raziel asked.
"He was never really my friend," Jennifer spat with such vehemence that Raziel was unwilling to ask her any more about it.
She took a cleansing breath and flipped methodically through the address book, pruning out some more pages. "I used to hang with a bad crowd, that's all."
"Why do you keep this book if it brings up such bad memories?" Raziel asked, examining the journal in his hands.
"Because I'm likely to forget," Jennifer said. "I've been lucky so far; none of my lessons have had truly serious consequences, but something really terrible will probably happen if I keep repeating my mistakes."
"And so you torture yourself," Raziel said sadly.
"It's not like that," Jennifer said, snatching the book out of Raziel's hands. She grinned as she waggled it in front of him. "Sometimes I need to be taken down a notch. When I first wrote this, my righteous ego would've crushed your last master."
Raziel snorted in disbelief at Jennifer's wild claim. Nothing could match the arrogance of the Elder God. She didn't even measure up with Kain.
Jennifer tossed everything except for her old doll back into the box and shoved it behind the sofa. "I've had enough for today, though," She set her doll against Brightflame's side.
The dragon snorted and sat up in surprise, her eyes blazing with life. "Don't let it get me!" she screeched.
Raziel caught the frightened dragon as she leapt off the bookcase where she had been perched. The Rainbow Bright doll fell off as well, but Jennifer caught that.
"What did you see?" Raziel asked. He felt a little relief at seeing that the little dragon had finally recovered her strength.
"The black monster! It ate the blue thing. Don't let it get me!" Brightflame hysterically screamed as she squirmed around the back of Raziel's shoulders.
"Calm down, it's just a memory," Jennifer said.
"What is she talking about?" Raziel asked, wincing as Brightflame's struggles drove the tips of her wings into the back of his neck.
"I used to have a dog when I was little, and I remember that it ripped up my stuffed smurf," Jennifer answered slowly. "This doll must have seen it, and Brightflame must have been able to absorb the memory somehow." Jennifer set down the old doll and plucked the dragon off of Raziel's back. "That dog is dead."
Brightflame suddenly went limp from relief and exhaustion. "Keep her away from me. A child's energy is too strong."
Raziel again examined the old doll. He felt nothing but a slight revulsion at its griminess. He shrugged and dropped it on top of the box that contained the rest of Jennifer's past.
Life was again uneventful for a few days. Raziel was on his way to pursue his people-watching hobby again when he noticed the newspaper on a neighbor's welcome mat. The picture on the front was unmistakably Janos. Raziel snatched up the paper and ran back into the apartment.
"Jennifer, take a look at this," Raziel demanded.
Jennifer was still a bit sleepy; she tended to take a full hour to wake up when she had the luxury. She blearily read the headline aloud, "Guardian angel saves child from burning building," she yawned. Suddenly, she snapped to full awareness, "He's going to cause trouble!"
"I told him that he needed to disguise his appearance," Raziel said.
Jennifer examined the picture and story. "At least he wasn't posing for this one. It looks like he didn't stick around to talk.
"This still might be a problem," Raziel said. "I'm going to go talk to him."
Jennifer flipped through the newspaper some more. "Where did you get this?"
"Oh," Raziel said, suddenly remembering common courtesies. He returned the rumpled paper on his way back out.
Raziel had not learned the spell that would transport him into Janos' home. The brick began to show the wear of his claws. The 'angel' was again nowhere to be found. After waiting for several hours, Raziel finally gave up and scribbled a note on a scrap piece of paper he found. He wasn't sure if Janos could read this script, but Raziel knew that he was the only other creature that could get into the tower. Still, he drew his clan symbol into the bottom of the note, figuring that Janos would recognize it.
When he got back, Jennifer was staring into the computer screen. "They figured it out, Raziel," she said without turning. "I'm really glad that the average is only one maniac per area."
Raziel peered over her shoulder at the mass of postings. "So much for obscurity," he muttered.
"Your secret is still safe," Jennifer said. "They haven't even figured out that I'm living in the same area as him, and I'm not going to tell them."
"Still, Janos has exposed himself," Raziel said.
"I suppose that we should just let Janos live with his own problems," Jennifer said. She called up the online version of the newspaper. "Most of the local people don't know what to make of him, anyway."
It later turned out that the town's new 'guardian angel' was acceptably elusive. Janos had been careless for a few days, but he had finally submitted to reason. The number of sightings was low enough that he was still considered a myth. There were a few people who knew that Janos was real, but they had become confidants.
A/N: I did loan my past to Jennifer, (with changes were appropriate,) it's really blatant in this chapter. I didn't realize it at first, but she does have some of the good parts of my identity. I guess I should allow it this time, but be careful of it in the future. Don't worry, this doesn't mean that she's immune to any bad stuff that might happen.