Here it is, Divine Contract chapter 8 finally! Thank Roniyuy for this since she got on my case and made sure I updated. Also she is now my BETA reader and has helped to make this chapter as good as it is. Those who hate spelling mistakes should be exceedingly grateful. lol. Anyway, just a message to everyone. I've created a forum... basically i think its called "Challenges" or such, and is a forum where i hope people can put down their ideas for Noir fanfiction that they can't carry out, for whatever reason. Also for those who want to see particular fanfiction. Use this forum to offer ideas, or to challenge people to write certain fanfictions. So whether you're a reader who wants to see an alternate pairing, or an author who wants a challenge, try looking at the forum. I explain it better in the rules section.

Scripture VIII -

SAINT MICHAEL,
the Archangel,
defend us in battle,
be our defense against the wickedness
and snares of the devil.

May God rebuke him,
we humbly pray;
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into Hell Satan
and the other evil spirits
who prowl about the world
for the ruin of souls.
Amen.

Mireille's awakening was sudden, shocking even. Her eyes jolted open yet her body did not move except for a quick glance around to collect herself. She was still in their shared apartment, the warmth pressed against her back told her that Kirika was still there as well. Yet even as she lay back down and tried to relax, something would not let her close her eyes. There was a chill to the air around her, that unmistakable feeling of being watched was pervading her senses, making it impossible to fall back into a deep slumber.

Opening her eyes again she took a more detailed look around the apartment, it was still deep night outside, yet the street lamps and car lights were painting a light blue pattern on the ceiling of the apartment, giving a dim but noticeable light with which to see by. She was lying at the edge of the bed with Kirika clinging behind her, preventing her from looking behind her, though she knew there was a solid partition there anyway. Perhaps not four meters from their bed was a spare mattress on the ground, with two figures lying within covered by a single large blanket. From the sounds of their breathing, Mireille knew that Ramiel and Malyssa were deeply asleep. Apparently it was only her who had awoken.

There was little reason for her to be so either, though it was not an exact science, people who had to be aware of their surroundings at all times often developed almost a "sense" of what was near them. Even more strongly within their own homes. It could not be explained past the way a person would instinctively know that the sound they heard was someone entering their house, rather than from animals or a door slamming. Being an assassin, and always being so highly strung, Mireille's and Kirika's especially, sense was honed strongly. It was telling her that no one else was in her apartment. No sounds, no presence, no change from when she had gone to sleep. But still... there was something.

Cautiously Mireille climbed to her feet, careful to not let Kirika wake up, though from the slight hitch in the Asian's breathing she had done so anyway. The girl remained still however, seemingly content to pretend to be asleep. Mireille didn't mind of course, Kirika did not want to leave herself vulnerable by falling asleep without Mireille with her. Whilst in Kirika's arms, Mireille knew that any threatening gesture she might make would instantly wake the Asian up, this way they both knew what the other was doing, even whilst asleep.

Standing, Mireille looked around but found nothing out of the ordinary, sighing she sat back on the bed again. I guess I'm just wound too tight right now. A sudden cold chill hit her and she rubbed her arms to fight it off.

The sound of a heavy footstep crunched against her wooden floor.

Mireille's eyes did not even finish widening before they hardened, and she propelled herself from the bed, Walther P99 in hand. Before she even made it to the divide in the partition, Kirika was beside her with her Beretta M1934 held ready, both silenced.

Dodging around the partition end they both instantly shot three bullets at the blurry shape in their living room. Even as the first bullet fired Mireille idly thought how if Ramiel had chosen this time to use the bathroom then he was in for a nasty surprise. The blonde's only warning of attack was a quick blue flash that seemed to shoot from in front of the figure, acting like a shield and knocking the bullets aside, not a millisecond later something hard hit her and sent her reeling to the ground.

Acting on instinct she flipped herself over as Kirika might have done and pointed her Walther at the figure, and paused. Kirika was standing still, though her position was worse than Mireille's. The tall figure had her pinned against the partition wall, one hand on her gun, and the other holding what could only be described as a glowing light blue sword to the underside of her chin. Damn it, a stand off... not now. She cursed to herself.

"What the HELL is going on here?" A feminine voice called out before a dark black shape appeared from nowhere and tackled the figure from the small Asian. Mireille quickly took aim at the mass that was Malyssa and the mysterious figure and pulled the trigger, after all, Malyssa could survive one or two hits. The gun clicked empty. Impossible! Her eyes widened as she noticed a telling lack of weight in her hands, her being too occupied to notice it earlier. Surely enough her magazine was empty. If she wasn't so sure of herself she might have said it had fallen out. Is this person so fast he could dodge the bullets, reach me before I can think, knock me back whilst at the same time discharging my magazine from my gun? The way Kirika was also looking at her own gun confirmed it to be so. Damn.

"Shi-" Malyssa tried to curse but was cut off by the meaty crunch of her body being thrown into the wall at an inhuman speed. Mireille readied herself and prepared to charge into a battle she knew she couldn't win, after all there was nowhere to run from here. Before she could charge though a voice cut her off.

"Lord!" Ramiel cried out in shock.

Everything stopped.

"Ahh Ramiel, you are here, that is good." the figure said in a deep voice, inhumanly deep Mireille thought to herself. It was more as though the voice was spoken out loud and straight into her mind as well, like two voices overlapping perfectly. "All of you, I mean you no harm, I was merely startled and reacted badly to your attacks, I apologize."

"Yeah.. sure.." Mireille managed to get out, too surprised at this turn of events to be herself. After all, how often was it that a potential enemy defeated you all then realised he was actually not there to do it, and then apologised to you? What luck... if Ramiel hadn't recognised this man...

"Gahh! Bastard, who the hell do you think you are? I'll rip your Fing throat out!" Malyssa screamed angrily as she pulled herself from the floor, Mireille was glad the neighbours had moved out a while ago.

"I did not introduce myself I see. Very well. My name is Michael, I am an Archangel of the Divine." Both of his voices were full of confidence as he said this, making Mireille wince at the words. Oh lord... an Archangel, this just gets better and better. If he is here to kill Ramiel, or if he decides to kill Malyssa then I doubt he would let Kirika or I walk away.

"Oh..." Malyssa spoke in a suddenly rather quiet tone of voice. Obviously she did not fancy her chances of ripping his throat out as being rather good anymore.

"So why have you come here?" Mireille asked in as polite a tone as she could, she managed to keep it from sounding like an interrogation through some effort of will.

"I have come to explain some things to you. Also to answer some questions if I can. The entire world is in a precarious position and I feel you might be able to stop its demise. Or at least delay it." Mireille swallowed a sigh before it could come out and looked to see what Kirika thought of the situation, she was met with Kirika's quick glance, signaling that the young Asian would prefer to let her deal with the situation. How can the entire fate of the world rest on our shoulders... this is like some crazy novel or game. Except there is no guarantee that things will play out to a happy ending...

"So what can we do to help? I'm sure you're aware of our occupation." That and the lack of morality it entailed... after all, she was fairly sure assassins were not tolerated in heaven. If she'd known of the existence of heaven like this, she would have chosen a more acceptable path in life!

"I am, and yet it is said even the smallest wolf can take down a lion, especially when he catches it off guard, say if its attention were to be held by something else...Us perhaps..."

"Except that their attention is already on us, they have tried to kill us already." She fired back. The room was still far too dark to make anything out so she could not gauge his reaction to her statement, though she guessed from his silence it was surprise.

"Is that so..." the voice murmured, making Mireille curse, if even he were unaware of it their chances of finding out more information were slim indeed. "This is troubling news, as you can see I am not often kept informed of events nowadays. Allow me to tell you what has transpired in Celestia these past few days..." Mireille noticed Ramiel perking up at this. At least they would get the answers to some of their questions this night. The figure waved his hand to the side, causing light blue sparks to fly from it menacingly, instantly Mireille and Kirika took a step back and sought for a weapon. Inside Mireille was cursing herself for not having used the conversation time to reload her gun. Fortunately the sparks began to fade before coalescing into a colourless orb of light, which floated to the ceiling before stopping.

"Merely a light for us to see by." The tall man spoke. Mireille calmed down after noticing that Ramiel and Malyssa were both still calm, apparently used to such things. Mireille took the opportunity of light to inspect the Archangel. He was tall, well over six feet but within the range for a normal person. So far no Angels had seemed to have any inhuman physical qualities past their wings and eye colours. At least she could assume they would not have to fight any monsters from old movies. His face was covered by a dark grey hood, like a cowl. It was the same type that Ramiel had attached to the back of his collar, apparently something all Divine Angels used to hide their faces. Despite her natural skepticism she had to conclude that it had some magical properties, for despite the thin hood everything within it was an oily black. Not shadow, just pure inky black nothingness. His clothing, or armour, was in the form of what looked like an old European breast plate made of dull bronze. She was surprised to see that it was completely plain and held no religious symbols or arcane scrawling. The fronts of his thighs were covered by thick pads of bronze as well, ending above his knees where dark grey trousers that looked like silk continued down to heavy looking dull grey boots with metal shod on the end. He did not even have his wings out, in face the only thing about him that looked Angelic was a bright white cloak he had buckled around his shoulders and draping down his back like a cape. It seemed a little long however for at least three feet of it pooled behind him on the floor.

The only material weapon he seemed to possess was a small dagger on his left waist. Of course with his seeming ability to create anything from nothing, like the light and the shield that had stopped their bullets, she supposed he did not need much else... This was obviously a rare skill, or one only the higher ranked angels had, since Ramiel was still forced to use a kitchen knife he had found in their drawers, having apparently lost his weapon when he crashed into their lives.

"So." Mireille opened, "What is happening in the great beyond?" She couldn't bring herself to say "heaven" it just seemed too unreal and almost corny to say that.

"As you may or may not know, Celestia was ruled by the Seraphs, however that is in the past since Seraph Metattron was murdered two years ago. Since then it has been ruled by the four Archangels, Myself, Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael. This has gone on for two years, until just a few days ago, when Gabriel made a "proposition". He claimed that we were divided and weak as we were, and needed a single governing body to make decisions, since we Archangels are better as warriors than as strategists. So, the Divine Council of Celestia was made, governed by eight high councilors." He was about to continue but Mireille interrupted him.

"If you were the strongest left, does that mean the High Councillors are weaker than you?" That seemed unreasonable, since surely in a society like that the strongest should rule?

"Yes it does. They are all of them individually weaker than an Archangel. The parameters for their being chosen were high power, so that any two of them could hold off one of the Archangels, and other qualifications. Such as certain age, intelligence and a drive for success. Simply speaking they are powerful, but were mainly picked for their ability to rationalize and to theoretically lead us to better times. Also it would free up the Archangels to fight in the war, where we can be best used. The Theory was perfect..." He trailed off.

"But the practicality sucked, eh?" Malyssa finished with a grin. Mireille had to wonder why most Angels sounded so gramatically correct, whilst Malyssa sounded so ... human.

"Power." Kirika spoke, making everyone look at her. "They wanted power." Mireille nodded to that, it was obvious really. Give anyone that much authority, especially if he were to be ranked higher than those more powerful than him, and he would be corrupt.

"Not at first, but yes when they realized the power they held they became... though not corrupt, less than moral in their choices." The Archangel continued. "Though their aim was still the defeat of the Fallen and the victory of the Divine, the methods they began to use to achieve this, though brilliant, were disrespectful. Such as sending out a small armed force with no warning of an enemy ambush, sacrificing them so that they could spring an ambush on the Fallen who caught them. As I said, it was a good plan and won us a battle, but willfully throwing away Divine lives like that. Not to mention that those lost were all young, obviously judged "expendable" by the Council. Such bartering with lives is not what Celestia stands for."

"So why not overthrow them?" Malyssa asked curiously, "As I recall each of the four legions is loyal only to their Lord, it's not as if this Council could order your execution."

"It is not so simple. Gabriel supports the council wholeheartedly, he only sees the victories and not the lives lost, whilst Uriel simply follows their orders... he has always been like that. So both of them would oppose a revolution. Raphael... he... uhh..." The being tapered off, shocking Mireille slightly. It seemed simply all too strange to imagine an Archangel, the HIGHEST of the Angels at this time, stuttering. I guess they're all human inside, or what we call human... I wonder if they think we're Angel inside?

"Raphael.." He started again, "It is not good. Basically Raphael was furious with the idea and stormed off, shortly after a quarter of the Angel population vanished from Celestia." There was a moment of silence in which Ramiel's jaw seemed to drop. Malyssa broke it by bursting out in laughter.

"You mean Rapheal buggered off with every man he had," she managed to get out between bouts of laughter. She continued to laugh loudly before wiping a tear from her eye. Although Mireille could not see inside the Angel's hood, she could tell he was frowning.

"Yes. He did. I wish I had listened to him and opposed this from the start but I did not. So it is now one Archangel versus two, so I cannot do anything and do not intend to. Celestia needs to stand united."

"So why come here then?" Mireille questioned. "It's obvious that this new council has decided to kill Ramiel for some reason, but what use do you have for us?"

"Yes, Ramiel is to be killed because he did not come back from his mission, they believe he may be a spy, and now his running from the Gate Guardians has ensured his fate for them. As such you cannot be seen with him by any Angel not of my order. I have ordered all my men to wear a thin light blue armband ion their upper arms. Any Angel without this is a threat to you. The use I have for you though, is to kill certain individuals. Simple, yes?" Mireille nodded, this she knew, exchange of services. All of a sudden things seemed more reasonable that she was in an area of her expertise.

"What would we receive for our help? Also who would we be killing?" She was loathe to give up her search for the Soldats at this time, but if they were being hunted by Fallen Angels then they also needed as much information as they could get on them.

"I will offer money and also information on the Fallen and their activities. It has also come to my attention that you are being bothered by a faction known as Les Soldats. Not only can I obtain information for you on them, but I can also exert some pressure on them to cease their hostile activities. For a while at least." Mireille felt her mouth become dry, if he could do all that they would HAVE to help him. Having the Soldats back off for a while whilst they dealt with this new threat was simply too good an opportunity to miss. "As for who you will be dealing with. The targets will mainly be human, though it is possible that Fallen could be with them. However a clean shot to the head will kill them, and with a Divine and a Fallen of your own you should not run into too much trouble. What say you?"

"I say we need time to think on this, is there a way we can contact you?" Though in truth she knew that they practically had to do this, she still wanted some time to look for any strings to his generous offer.

"Not easily, this will be the last time I can see you. However... Fine. Look out of your window to the north," Mireille did so and saw another apartment flat. Tomorrow night I will send an Angel to leave a folder in a trashcan by the front door of it. Pick it up, it will be the first mission. If you wish to help me then complete it, I will know when it is done. On the bottom of the instructions will be a note detailing where the next pickup point will be. Though money will be entered directly into one of your bank accounts, information will be with the next mission objective. Do not worry about any Fallen intercepting it, if the info is never in a place, check the trash can again for the next few days, I will personally make sure this never fails in the long run, is that acceptable?"

"Of course." Mireille replied easily, it was simple enough, though e-mail would have been simpler she assumed that the Divine Council might be able to track it. "You do realize that we may not accept this?" She questioned, wanting to make sure he knew this was their choice.

"Yes, if the first job is not completed within three days I will assume you did not accept. Or if you do not visit a drop point I will also stop leaving them. Is that all?" Mireille thought to herself, yes, that really was all they needed. She would discuss the offer later with Kirika, though she knew the Asian's input would be minor. It might also be best to ask Malyssa, to see what her employer wanted of them. After all, I work for reward, not a place on God's supper table.

"Yes. Thank you for giving us this information. Do you want to see him off Ramiel?" The young Angel nodded almost immediately and left with his Lord. Mireille knew he wanted to ask what he was supposed to do, a cast away from his legion by legal standards but still under his Lord's command.

"Kirika?" The small girl nodded, "Malyssa too, come sit down... we need to decide what to do here."

Deep inside a quiet library late at night, a figure was bent over a computer, typing madly whilst looking at the flickering screen. Yet another court case coming up where one of the force was to be charged for indecent assault and police brutality. It would of course go the same way as always.

Judge D'Estaing quickly glanced around as he heard a soft thumping sound. However the darkness remained still and he turned back to his computer, shutting it down before snapping his briefcase shut. Standing, he turned around. The sudden appearance of the figure in front of him made him stumble backwards, hitting his back against the low desk and knocking him to his knees.

"Damn it. What the hell do you think you're doing? The library is closed!" He snapped angrily, annoyed at being caught off guard like that. Raising his eyes he observed the person to be a young woman judging from the hair, which was a strange magenta colour. She was dressed in a long dark green coat of some sort that wrapped all the way around her body.

"I am Noir, and you have upset the Soldats." His eyes widened and his heart began to beat faster as he saw her hand draw a knife from within her sleeve.

"No wait! plea-" His words were silenced by the painless feeling of something sliding between his neck. Though there seemed to be no pain he still panicked as he felt some warm liquid slosh onto his chest, making him feel cold all over. Looking down he could only watch in horror as his lifeblood poured out over him, drawing him slowly and mercilessly into death.

Chloé watched him dispassionately, making sure he was very well and dead when he finally stopped squirming. Though she did not show it she was in fact worried and a little disturbed. Not at all for the corpse of a man in front of her, but rather for what was missing from the scene. Namely the pretenders who called themselves Noir... or the pretender. It seemed there had been a complication... for their plans to back fire so severely. Still, it was no great loss. All three of them were after all in Paris, and Chloé knew from Altena where they lived.

"I guess I'll pay them a visit tomorrow. No doubt they will be anxious to receive information on the Soldats." Not to mention that I'll be able to see her again...

After all this time...

A hollow flap of her coat was the only sound made as she vanished into the darkness and ghosted out of the library. Leaving the wide open eyes of Judge D'Estaing to stare sightlessly at where the girl who killed him had once stood.

Right, thats it for now, hope you enjoyed. Sorry it id again MORE exposition, but action is coming up. Anyway, please check the forum out and use it some? I mean i would like to see what challenges or ideas people have that they might want to share.