Chapter 3

A couple of days later, when Angel's bruises from hitting Yusei's D-Wheel had faded, Crow slung a blanket over her wings and drove her out to a racetrack. "This is used for tournaments," he told her, "but there isn't anything going on right now. You're probably going stir-crazy back at the apartment, so let's get some of that out of your system at a place where nobody will see you."

"Okay." Angel shed the blanket by the simple method of spreading her left wing and then quickly closing it again. Then she stepped out onto the track.

The asphalt was warm under her bare feet. Flexing her talons against it as she stretched, she noted how it felt and considered how hard she could push her feet when she didn't have protection.

I…think my spirit monster toughened up my feet to ensure that I wouldn't need shoes, no matter how fast I somehow managed to run. Angel turned and blinked at Crow. "Do you have a suggestion as to which way I should run? Clearly my wings would have a great deal to do with my steering, and my right wing's out of commission…"

"Um…" Crow went silent as, Angel presumed, he pictured each direction she'd have to lean and how her wing would probably react to the turns. "…Try running clockwise. Your wing will spread upwards, and probably all you'd have to do to get back on an even keel is flap it a couple times."

"Got it." And she turned around and took off running.

The wind in her face caused clear eyelids to close so that she could still see. But just the fact that she'd needed those to close said worlds about how fast she was running. The feel of the wind rushing through her hair and the feathers of her partly-spread left wing…it was just exhilarating.

After she circled the track once or twice, she heard the engine of Crow's D-Wheel. Then she noticed out of her peripheral that he was chasing after her.

Then he pulled up alongside her on her right. "Want to race?"

Well…she hadn't been going at full speed yet… She grinned at him and pushed herself into a higher gear.

And that was when she discovered that she could hold her own in a race against an engine-powered vehicle.

Crow pumped it up enough to pull next to her again and called to her, "If this was a Turbo Duel, you could collect speed counters without a D-Wheel!"

Angel leaped upwards and grabbed the wings of Crow's ride with her feet. "What are you talking about? Sure, I know the basics of dueling thanks to when I made eye contact with both you and Yusei, but I don't even have a deck!"

Crow looked up at her while she held herself poised above him. "Well, we ought to get you a deck at some point. It's almost a rule that everybody here have one and be able to duel." He pulled to a stop where they'd left Angel's blanket, carefully so as not to accidentally throw her.

"I don't know about that…"

"Hey, I think you'd be a natural!"

Angel caved with a smile. "Okay, okay. I might as well." Picking up the blanket, she slung it over her wings again, curling her tail up underneath it. "And as long as we're doing that, we might as well at least attempt to match the cards to whatever my spirit monster is. Someday I'll need to materialize it, and there's no reason not to do so into a card form."

"All right! Let's…" he hesitated, studying her again. "You…still don't want to be seen, right?"

"Right." For now, anyway.

"Okay, I'll…try to buy you some cards that'll match you. You want to run home while I do that?"

"Uhm…sure. I remember the way."

He saluted her with a touch to his helmet and then drove off. Angel stood for a bit by herself. Then she turned and started running.

And promptly got turned around. She'd missed the part where highway turns weren't necessarily in the same place to go back the other way.

"Oh, great." Angel sighed and dropped into a crouch under her blanket. "Now where am I?" Then she looked up towards the top of the highway track. "…I wonder if I can see their pad from up there?" Crouching, she leaped up and caught the rail with her feet. Holding the blanket about herself like a cape and letting her tail droop around her feet, she turned slowly and looked about. "Where…where…there! There it is! I passed it!" She leaped down to the street heading the other way…

…And nearly collided with a car.

The loud honk startled her into dropping the blanket, and she took off running away from it as fast as possible, her left wing flaring as she went. "This world is dangerous!"

Dodging cars, she looked frantically for the exit. "How will I know which exit is Yusei's anyway?"

Then she realized she was being followed. Glancing behind her, she saw a motorcycle – or maybe a D-Wheel, she wasn't sure – staying hot on her tail. Is he just going in my direction, or…

Not letting that thought finish, she leaned and dashed onto an exit. And she sensed that the motorcycle exited right behind her.

Then she rounded several corners, still trying to lose him. Nothing was working.

Finally, she gave up, ran straight up a lamp post and sat down on top, twining her tail around the post for extra stability. She noted absently that her feet were hot and steaming. So I do have an upper limit after all. Once high, she looked around once again. Where…

The motorcycle stopped below. "You can't stay up there forever!" a male voice bellowed.

"Watch me."

"I'm serious! You'll need to eat soon, won't you?"

"I hate being Followed With Intent. If you'd really wanted a friendly conversation, then you should have waved or something when I looked over my shoulder. Go away, I'm not a duelist and I'm not in a good mood."

The stranger below went quiet. Angel wondered what he was thinking. Then, as she glanced down, he turned to look up at her.

And that was when she discovered that while she could see his eyes, she couldn't really catch his thoughts through the visor. Though…the tenor of his thoughts was worrying, seeing as they mostly seemed to center around "how do I get her to get down here?"

She waved her feet, trying to speed up the cooling process.

"I'm…sorry I scared you?"

You should have started with that if you wanted me to buy it. Angel pulled her feet underneath her and stood up on the end of the lamp post, unwinding her tail.

"Hey, you really do need to get some calories after running as long as you have. You sure you don't want to come down? I could pay for your lunch…"

"I'm not hungry right now, thank you." She was just glad that he was too far down to hear her stomach growl. Her eyes measured the distance from her feet to the next lamp post. Is that close enough?...

"Come on, how am I supposed to convince you of my sincerity here?"

Angel didn't even bother to answer that. She just leaped.

She spent the next few minutes running across lamp posts with him chasing her on the street. She was starting to suspect that whoever else this guy was, he was probably working for the guy who'd attempted to capture her back in Chaotia.

Then she spotted a car waiting at a stoplight with the rear windows open, and didn't even hesitate beyond noting that the driver – a woman with long black hair and round glasses – looked like someone who could probably be intimidated into helping her out.

"Wha – "

"Turn right. Just…turn right." She dragged her tail into the confines of the car. It wasn't nearly as roomy in there as she could have hoped.

"Uh, okay!"

Listening carefully, she suspected that her pursuer wasn't interested in giving up. "I don't know why that guy's chasing me when I didn't even do anything except nearly run into a couple of cars."

The woman adjusted her rearview mirror. "No lights, so that's not Ushio…you're probably right to be wary. Where do you want to go?"

"Back to Yusei's place, in the most roundabout way you can manage."

"… 'Back' to Yusei's place?"

"Yeah, I don't want that guy to learn that that's where I'm staying."

"Okay, hang on back there, I'm about to pull evasive maneuvers!"

The next few minutes were spent in silence, except for the woman muttering periodically about how persistent their chaser was. Then she looked into the rearview mirror again. "Can I get an interview when we stop?"

"Why would you want an interview?"

"I'm a journalist, and yours would be an interesting story!"

Angel turned her fierce gaze to the bulb of tail feathers resting next to her face. "…I guess since enough people saw me on the freeway and then running from the motorcycle-guy, I might as well give some information to the press. Just bear in mind, there will be some questions I can't answer. Not won't, can't."

"And can I take pictures, too?"

She sighed. "If you want, but if you get any shots of me right here, I'd rather they never made the public."

"Don't worry, I won't take a picture of you in my car; there's not enough room to get a good shot anyway. Speaking of, is that guy still following us?"

Angel pushed up onto her hands and turned to stare out the back window. Her laser-sharp vision swept the streets…and there was no sign of him. "No. I think we lost him."

"Okay, good. Now…" she pulled into a parking space and got out, looking around. "Which way to Yusei's from here…"

As long as they were stopped, Angel carefully manipulated her tail to unlock and open the door so that she could crawl backwards out of the car.

"By the way," the woman glanced over at her, "you do know those guys can take care of themselves, right?"

She knows Yusei well enough to know who else stays there? Excellent choice, me! "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I want to lead trouble back to their nest."

She nodded. "Makes sense." Then she double-taked and stared at Angel outright. "Wow, I…wow!"

Her glasses made it hard for Angel to judge what exactly this woman was thinking…evidently having anything between her eyes and her target's made it trickier to read minds…but the gist was that she was impressed by Angel's appearance.

Angel sighed. "Well, here's as good a place as any for that interview." She climbed onto the roof of the car and sat down, her tail circling into her lap and dangling between her feet.

"Oh! Okay, um…" the woman leaned into the car, grabbed something – a notepad and pen – and straightened again.

"By the way, what's your name?"

"Oh, right! I'm Carly." She got herself set up to write. "So, um…what's your name?"

"Angelique, no last name; Angel for short."

"That really suits you, Angelique! Um, may I call you Angel?"

"Sure; the guys do."

"Awesome! Okay, so, where'd you come from?"

Angel hesitated for a second. "Are you…aware of Chaotia?"

"Absolutely! Some people come from there to visit here, and they make no secret about the fact that they come from another dimension. They don't pop in and out of existence, to avoid making people nervous they say, but they're perfectly willing to show off their ability to move things without touching them. Can you do that?"

"I…used to. Back in Chaotia, I was a mid-range telekinetic, a Phase Three sending and receiving telepath – that's somebody who can communicate back and forth mind-to-mind over a distance of about a five-mile radius – and a…um, I had duel potential, though I hadn't taken the final…initiation into the dueling world. Since coming here, I've tried to use some of my skills, but my kinetic powers won't work at all, and my telepathy's…um, erratic."

"Erratic? So, wait, can you read minds?"

Angel hesitated again. "On Chaotia, yes I could if the person wasn't suitably shielded. Here, that's part of the erratic feature. For sending, I tried to transmit my thoughts to Yusei once a couple days ago, and he didn't seem to 'hear' me even though I was only standing five feet away from him."

"Maybe he just chose to not react?"

Angel rolled her eyes with a half-smile. "He'd have reacted: I chose to try to send him an image of a naked woman."

Carly burst out coughing, her eyes huge behind her glasses. "Um…um…yeah, that should have gotten a reaction."

"As for reading minds…" She fixed her eyes on Carly's lenses. "The complete truth should be off the record, because I don't want people avoiding me. Got it?"

Carly shuddered. "Got it."

"The short version of my ability to read minds is…I can't anymore. The more extended version is I can't read minds anymore unless…I make eye contact. Then I can see virtually everything in a person's head whether I want to or not."

Carly was quiet for a second as she processed that. Then she stared up. "Does that mean you've been reading my mind this whole time?"

"Like I said, the only way I can avoid reading someone's mind right now is if I avoid eye contact, and I have made eye contact with you a couple times now. However, apparently if there's something between my eyes and those of my target, I don't see things clearly."

"So…you can read my mind, but you can't see everything."

Angel reached over and lightly tapped the bridge of Carly's glasses. "Keep those glasses on. They're good for your privacy."

She giggled. "Okay."

"As for my dueling power, I haven't made any attempt at that. Any other questions?"

"Um, yeah! You didn't mention teleporting in your resume, so…how'd you get here?"

Angel went silent. "I don't know. One minute I'd been trying to get away from a…a masher, I guess, though one with an unusual skill-set that prevented me from reading him…and then the next, I was falling through the sky above New Domino City with all the birdy features you see now."

"You didn't originally look like that?"

She shook her head. "And I don't know how this happened, any more than I know how I got here."

Carly was quiet for a minute. Then she popped back into the car and came up with a camera. "Okay, so I'm going to get a few shots, and the best ones will go into the article. Smile!"

Angel sighed and plastered a smile on her face, hoping it didn't come across as too fake.

Carly snapped a couple of pictures, running back and forth to get different angles. "Okay, can you spread your wings? That'd be an awesome shot that'll prove that they're not fake."

Oh. I forgot to mention that, and she didn't run far enough to my right to see that… "Um…well…" she got down from the car, turned her back to Carly and spread her left wing.

Carly went completely silent, and it took a full thirty seconds before Angel heard the shutter click again. "Um, what happened?"

"I seem to recall mentioning that I was falling into New Domino. I collided with a lamp post; broke my wing."

"Ouch. That doesn't look like a hospital splint…"

"Yusei actually pulled a reckless stunt to catch me while I was falling – I was unconscious at the time, I found out about that later – and the guys did their best to splint it themselves while I was still out."

"Nice guys." She tossed the camera back into the car. "Okay, so time to get you back to them. I'm sure they're frantic by now."

"Um, there was no return time for my getting back to their pad. I was out with Crow for some exercise, and he went to buy some cards for me. I'd told him I could get back by myself…" she felt her cheeks getting hot.

Carly smiled. "Don't worry, I won't tell him if you don't. So, you want to ride shotgun or…"

Angel glanced ruefully over her shoulder at her wings. "If I'm riding in the car, I have to ride in the back, in the same position. No choice."

Carly went quiet for a second. "…If?"

Angel glanced at her feet. "I think I've recovered. I could just run next to you, or behind you, and you could lead me there."

Carly grinned. "Now that will need video! Just hang on, let me set up my camera!"

A few seconds later, Carly started driving again with her phone tied to the rearview mirror and recording behind her. Angel followed after her, waving her arms in hand signals for turns, until they got to Yusei's place.

"Hopefully my editor doesn't immediately write off everything I've taken notes on as being made up."

"If it looks like he's going to, invite me over. He can satisfy his own curiosity, decide that it's not a glorified costume, and move on."

"Great idea!" Carly wrote down an address, gave it to Angel, and then drove away.