She had been right; the evening of Comic Con, Gabriel had sat her down and worked with her on the basics of meditation and focus for at least three hours. Meditation and focus sounded easy when you put it like that but separating out the "voice" or part of her thought process that she could actually project was hard work, and by the end of the three hours her head had felt like it was ready to split open. Best part was that Gabriel said that wasn't even the worst side effect, if she really overdid it before she was used to "stretching her new mind muscle" as he so eloquently put it, she would get the mother of all nose bleeds and possibly pass out. Wonderful. Surprisingly, despite his impatient nature, Gabriel had been a calm and patient teacher, so far. Then again he was also one of the oldest angels, he had to have gained some patience after millennia of dealing with so many younger siblings before he had left Heaven.
If Gabriel had been a patient teacher, well she had certainly been an unruly and impatient student, and she would admit to that. Unlike the aura and soul seeing ability, touch-empathy, and teeth and claws that were venomous to demons, the telepathy was not an instinctive ability; it had to be learned. She was rather surprised, actually, she mused, as she flipped through channels late one December night in the hotel room that Gabriel had put up with her so far. Even her father, who had the patience of one who had spent years learning the art of fighting with a sword, had been hard-pressed at times to deal with her impatience to learn more at a faster speed than was allowable.
Her father had even gone so far as to take her sword away for a whole year and replace it with an old wooden toy sword until she had learned that practice truly did make perfect. Cerberus's mouth quirked up in a bitter smile as more happy memories of her and her fathers' travels during her formative years came rushing in. As always though the happy thoughts took a bitter turn, for such a skilled and patient man to die in such a stupid way was inconceivable.
The sudden appearance of her current teacher blocked her view of whichever sitcom was running on the TV. It might have ended her contemplative mood but she now had to fight the urge to roll her eyes at the not only two, but three giggling blonde's hanging off of him. He just smirked smugly down at her and informed her just as he had for the past five nights that he was going out for the night and would be back sometime tomorrow. The girls though at least changed every night, though the blonde on the left did look rather like the girl from Monday.
Before she had known he was an arch angel she wouldn't have batted an eye at such behavior; now though, she found it kind of amusing the lengths that Gabriel was willing to go to separate himself from the rigid rules and stereotypes that regulated the actions of his siblings living upstairs. If there was alcohol in the room, he would drink it; if there was loud obnoxious music playing anywhere near him, it would inexplicably get louder. If there was a cute girl anywhere nearby, he would try to seduce her, and he usually succeeded. She almost felt bad for the girls, though most of them had their memories altered by morning. After all teleporting from one place to the other wasn't exactly a common place way of transportation for one-night stands.
It had been five nights of this though, and she hadn't gotten a single lesson from him in that time, had hardly even seen him in fact. So as he prepared to magic himself away she sought out that small corner of her mind that held the telepathic voice as he had taught her and flung it in his direction,
"STOP!" He flinched back from her in shock and slight pain at the volume of the message, and the three girls let out shrieks of confusion and terror. It took mere moments for Gabriel to regain his equilibrium, and unfortunately, his fury,
"So you did learn something from my lessons after all then?" he snapped irritably.
"Of course I did, what you taught me of them before you decided to take a week's leave without any warning and leave me here to rot!" she growled in reply with teeth bared, their slightly sharpened tips making the girls cringe back. Gabriel's eyes flashed and he took a menacing step towards her,
"What I taught you? What I taught you?! How about what you were willing to learn sister! Because I was willing to keep working with you but you weren't willing to actually push yourself to learn!" he seethed, voice rising in volume with each word.
"Well I'm sorry if this is the first time since my transformation that I've actually had to learn how to use one of my abilities from scratch!" she snapped back at him. His eyes narrowed and a condescending smirk slid its way onto his face,
"Poor puppy, is this the first time she's ever had to work to achieve something? No wonder Hell was able to chain you up and keep you prisoner. You probably didn't even know how to fight properly because you never learned how!" He was only able to wear his vicious smirk for a few moments in victory before the insult completely registered in her mind and she threw herself at him in utter fury, shifting to her dog form in mid-air as she lunged towards him.
The three girls shrieked in terror and ran for the door, but in one move, however, Gabriel had put them to sleep and also side-stepped Cerberus's angry lunge. She landed across the room and span around to face him only to find 10 images of Gabriel staring back at her smugly. She snarled at him in fury as she realized that they all smelled like him and had a heartbeat, making it impossible to tell them apart using her canine senses.
"My, such a temper on you! I expected better from a centuries old guardian!" One of the Gabriel's on the right quipped.
"True, though I suppose we were wrong to expect so much from a mere childling." murmured another, and she leapt for one of the images, only to have it disappear the moment her claws reached it. She whirled around and went after the one next to the previous, only to have the same disappearing act happen. Both Gabriel's then reformed across the room with twin devious smirks on their smug little faces. She let out a roar of rage and lunged again, and again, and again. Each time she was thwarted and her target disappeared only to reappear and taunt her. This went on for a good 10 minutes before she finally stood in the middle of a circle of unruffled apathetic Gabriel's, panting fiercely. She felt her legs wobble a bit under her, since she wasn't used to this much extended fighting topside.
Her legs shook again, this time visibly, and the Gabriel directly in front of her let out a tsking noise before stepping forward with a warning gleam in his eye, and she let him get close enough to kneel down in front of her. He looked down at her in slight scorn from his place kneeling on the off-gray worn carpet,
"Now then, do you understand? Free or not mutt, you may know who I am and think that you are some hot-shot supernatural creature, but you are not. Here? By my side? You are inferior in so many ways; your temper snaps like a frayed thread anytime somebody makes a vaguely critical comment towards you, your patience for learning is equally thin, and frankly, you've become terribly dependent on others in your time downstairs, no matter what you may think otherwise." She glared up at him and started to bite out a scathing reply but he held up a finger,
"Uh Uh Dearie, let me finish. This is exactly what I am talking about. You've been here for days, you could have left this apartment, gone out, explored, even left if you liked. However, you didn't, instead you sat here like a good little obedient puppy and waited for your Master to come home and tell you what to do. Honestly? I expected more from the Guardian of the Gate. I'm disappointed, I truly am. Pick yourself up Cerberus, walk out that door over there and go find yourself. Once you've done that and can stop whining to me and anyone who tries to help you, you may come back and I will teach you again. Understand?" He held her gaze for what seemed an eternity before he and the three girls were gone in a between one blink and the next with the slight smell of burning ozone lingering in the air to mark their passing. The room was empty, leaving her to change back her forms and bitterly cry her exhausted self out into the smelly carpet.
A/N: Sorry about the delay on this chapter guys, I know its been awhile, and while I still love this story and character, the motivation to write it out isn't always there. So I don't know when the next update will be, but I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, and that y'all have a great rest of the day!