It's nice to know that the fic that you aren't real sure of is actually good. Thanks, guys. You brightened up my day. In fact, this chapter has been almost ready since the day I uploaded the second chapter (since the prelude doesn't count). Yay.

Got my all straightened out; no more angst! At least, not for that…

Linger

Chapter Three

Enter Cael Wolff

Cael

I hate people.

Generally, I get along with certain individual human beings. Generally. But the general majority of the populace within my encounter radius provokes every little hateful thought in my twisted mind. Like my current bus buddy, Moe. But I'll elaborate more on that when the time comes.

My current home is in Denver, Colorado. However, due to the fact that I was just recently transferred to the plant in Los Angeles and therefore uprooted very suddenly, I have to move every possession down to my new apartment in said city. Fortunately, I am engaged, and my fiancee is arranging for the formal move of our larger possessions later on in the week. However, that means that she gets to stay in our nice little house while I get to sit on a dank, dingy, rattling bus that reeks of piss and vomit with my ever-faithful bus buddy, Moe.

Which brings me back to my original point. I hate people.

Moe laughed, his snaggletooth shimmering in the gray light. "Dude, that is so freakin' awesome!"

I glared. His breath reeked of something dead. I assumed it was of the last person he sucked the life out. "…What?" I muttered as I tried to block the stench of death from my poor nostrils.

"Your name, dude!" he replied cheerfully, his snaggletooth still gleaming at me. My eyes widened as I saw it wink at me. "You're name's freaking 'Wolf'!"

Snarling, I turned my head to give my nose a reprieve from the putrid reek. "No, my name is 'Wolff'. Two 'f''s."

Despite the spelling, the nomenclature coincidence was too much for Moe's brain, so, of course, he began to howl. "Hey, hey dude!" he began with his snaggletooth in full view, "I'm callin' you, dude! Awoo! Awwwoooo!" He laughed as my anger fermented. "Dude, whenever your phone rings, do you like, howl at it?" When I merely glared at him, he laughed again and continued his horrible howling.

Unfortunately for Moe, he had no idea that I suffer from uncontrollable rage. Whenever something -or, as is the usual case, someone- pisses me off to my "breaking point" (as my psychiatrist put it all those years ago) I tend to become… a bit violent. Enough to the point where I now have medication for said rage, but unfortunately for Moe, I left it back in Denver.

My clenched fist flew on its own into Moe's temple, making his newly injured head smash into the bus window's thick glass. The surprised yelp he gave out was stifled by the sound of the glass window shattering, which made the bus screech to a swerving stop. The other passengers stared at me in horror as I stood over him, his head covered in dark blood. I then realized that I was panting, Moe's blood was on my fist, and that the bus driver was slowly taking out a stun gun.

I sighed and let my fist relax by my side. "…I guess I'll be walking, huh?"

…………

Angelus

It still haunts me. The Nameless.

The dreams were more frequent back in the old days, when I was still in my own dragon form. When Caim's death was still fresh on my mind. Now, however, they've lessened significantly. Still, even though they have dwindled to a mere couple a year, their potency is still quite disturbing.

Although I may have "evolved" into a more humanoid shape than I ever thought I could become, I still have draconian attributes: some magic, my eye color, my senses in general, my physical strength, and more importantly, my memory. Dragons' memories are far more detailed and accurate than fuzzy human memory. Which is why when I have those memories infiltrate my dreams, I can smell Caim's blood saturating the air around me, feel his limp body draped over my abused scales, hear his staggering gasps for air… and even watch helplessly as his eyes glaze over. I wake up in a pool of sweat and tears, my slender hands almost clawing at my face.

I had just woken up from just such an occasion.

I sat up in my satin bed, panting. I glanced down to my still shaking hands, dismayed at my own weakness. Snarling, I threw a pillow at my wall, furious that I wasn't strong enough to withstand those awful nightmares that relentlessly plagued me. It wasn't just the imagery that caused my rage; it was the emotions that I felt during Caim's death. I felt them all over again, the hate, the confusion, the fear and the anguish. The feelings that no dragon should ever feel for a human.

I closed my eyes as my breathing returned to its normal pace. I had admitted to myself long ago that I missed Caim, the damn lunatic. It certainly explained why my subconscious repeated those memories as I slept. Sighing at the thought, I glanced at my closet door, which was slightly ajar. Pale moonlight gently shone on a leaning object inside my closet. As my gaze rested on the illuminated metal, a soft, nostalgic smile graced my lips.

The sword felt scarred and light in my hands; in a normal woman's grip, however, she would have had to lift it with both hands. Since Caim's sword held magic in its steel, it had resisted the test of time rather well, considering it was either in my mouth or a large backpack. The blood of Caim's victims still stained the otherwise silver blade, giving the sword a scarlet gleam in the faint moonlight. The finely hand-crafted hilt was marred and almost broken, thanks to Caim's carelessness. A deep rift that cut across the hand guard to the actual blade in a diagonal ravine was the main scar, probably from one of the Empire's heavily armored, pole axe-armed guards that dwelled in the flying fortress.

I set the sword down in its spot by the closet door and went to my empty desk. I opened the top drawer, and, after rearranging a few papers inside, found what I was looking for. I removed the small piece of black armor and held it up to the light thoughtfully. A small piece of Caim's breastplate no larger than my hand, it was the only other memento of him other than his sword. I lowered my hand back down to my chest and looked the shard over. It was a small puzzle piece far from the rest of its mates.

A light beeping from my bedside table jerked me out of my reverie, causing me to drop the shard of armor back into its drawer. I sighed once more and reached back into my closet not for Caim's sword, but for one of my suits.

Today was, after all, a workday.

…………

Cael

I stood, at long last, in front of the Universal Land Titling building with my suitcase full of stuff, four tickets for "disorderly behavior" that collectively amounted to $1500 (I hit a couple of arrogant pot-dealers, a bitchy old lady and a hot dog vendor) and a half-empty bag of Cheetos. I took in a deep breath of victory; I had made it in one piece.

Triumphantly, I strolled into the lobby, where a redheaded lunatic with glasses assaulted me with questions. "Who are you? What are you doing here? What's in the bag? What are those papers for, are you a government spy? What do you want?" He glared at me through his black-rimmed spectacles, his mouth set in a deep scowl, expecting an answer.

"Uh…" I replied intelligently, "I, uh… I work here?"

The man scowled. "I need to see some ID."

I cocked my brow as I scanned over his shirt. He had a beaten name badge that read "Arthur", but no security badge. "And why, exactly, should I show you anything other than a lewd finger gesture?"

The Arthur guy seemed shocked, and then, in a total flip of personality, hunched his shoulders and clasped his trembling hands. "I, uh… Well… I uh…"

Footsteps echoed to my left, to where I saw another man about my age. He had missheveled sandy brown hair, bright blue eyes (which, strangely, reminded me of my fiancee's) and an equally bright smile. My stomach churned. I never get along with happy people.

The new guy clasped a hand on Arthur's shoulder, hard enough to where a grunt came out of the redhead. "Badger, why don't you go back to your cubicle, eh?" the new guy suggested amiably in between smacks of his gum. "I think Angela wants to talk to you."

Arthur's eyes widened in fear. "W-why? I-I-I-I did everything she told me…"

The new guy shrugged and my mind furiously tried to unravel why in the hell did this Arthur respond to "Badger". "Dunno," the new guy replied casually. "I think it's something about the expense reports. Did you finish yours?"

"Badger's" eyes widened even further to comical proportions and without another stammering word, he rushed into the maze of cubicles. New Guy chuckled and turned back to me, smile on full. My stomach churned again with dread. I really didn't want to add to the $1500 ticket mound I already had…

After a moment of looking me over, New Guy held out his hand for me to shake. "Hiya. You must be the new transfer, no?"

I merely nodded and kept my hands firmly in their respective pockets. One thing I knew about happy people is that they don't know when to let go of my hand. New Guy quickly took the hint that he wasn't trapping my hand in his Vulcan Death Grip of Happiness, and put it back into his own pocket casually. "Cool, we need another guy ever since Angie bagged Lillian. But then again, Lillian wasn't really that great an asset anyway. I mean, she was nice to look at, but that's pretty much it." He paused for a while, I suppose to allow me to introduce myself, but I didn't take it. I wanted to get to my cubicle as quickly as possible before another violent outburst came.

He took a couple of steps back and glanced at the cubicle maze. "All right, dude. Just so you know, I'm gonna give you the run-down of this place. There are more than a few empty cubicles, since Angela doesn't believe in an 8 hour workday, but you need to pick your space wisely." He pointed to the general direction of the bottom left corner, where Badger had disappeared. "Badger is over there. There are plenty of reasons why you shouldn't sit beside him." He pointed just above Badger's cubicle and chuckled. "Napoleon is over there."

I leaned a bit away from him, narrowing my eyes with scrutiny. "'Napoleon'?"

New Guy laughed again and nodded. "Yup. He's an angry midget. Well, not really a midget, he's 5 feet tall, but he may as well be one. And I think I saw a couple of world maps with X's on certain cities…" He laughed at my expression, which was something akin to amusement and horror. "Yeah. So you probably don't want to sit there."

He pointed to the other side of the maze then, and commented airily, "That's where Lillian used to work. It's probably your best bet, but it's right outside Angela's office." He shuddered.

My eyebrow quirked again. "What's wrong with her? Whenever I watch someone talk about her, it's as if she's a poltergeist or something."

New Guy shook his head, eyes wide with terror. "She's the ultimate bitch. But not only is she a bitch, she's a SMART bitch. She'll rip through you one side and down the other, and when you try to fight back, she'll pummel you back down and grind you through a meat processor."

"Sounds bad," I replied coolly as I made my way to my new cubicle. I shoved the "disorderly behavior" tickets into my pocket, half-listening to New Guy as I briskly walked.

"Bad?" New Guy repeated, "Bad? She's one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse! She has this policy that you can't ask her a question while her computer's booted. Oh, and she has a little sheet of paper in her desk."

"And that's out of the ordinary how?" I replied, keeping my gaze forward.

"It has all of the names of the people she's fired, plus a time next to it." I turned my head, giving him a confused glance. "It's her record for firing someone! She actually keeps track!"

Despite the nonsense coming out of New Guy's mouth, I found my empty cubicle, sat down and began to unpack my things. New Guy leaned lightly on one of the walls and sighed. Apparently, he caught on that I could take care of myself. "Fine, then," he sighed. "I guess I'll put you down for this space. Name's Jim. People like to call me 'Pika' though."

I paused in unpacking to look at him. "Why?"

He shuffled his feet sheepishly as he summoned up the courage to answer. "Because I… still like Pokemon. And that I really hate Pikachu. Raichu is so much better."

I shook my head and threw a stapler at him, which hit his arm. "Get out of here." As he left, I sighed and ran my hands through my hair. What a conglomeration of misfits! A bipolar guy named "Badger", an angry midget named "Napoleon", and a little moron named "Pika". Then there's my new boss, who is supposed to be Satan's wife or something. I allowed my head to roll and rest on my right hand. Well, at least it wouldn't be boring.

I would just go out of my mind, is all.

…………

Angelus

The greatest hour in the day is not when I get to leave, but when I get off for my lunch. The reason being everyone tries to bombard me with questions and I have the opportunity to practice my aim with my faithful staple gun. As soon as I walked out of my office, Pika bumped into me, earning a squeak from the kid. He tensed up like a little mouse and pointed meekly toward Lillian's old desk. "The… The new guy's here."

I stared at him for a long, torturous moment, enjoying how he squirmed under my gaze. Finally, I smiled and said, "Thank you, Pika. Did you get his name?"

Pika shook his head. "No… He's… not much of a talker. Kind of an asshole, really."

I gave him a disapproving glance and looked down at my watch. "I suppose that'll go down on your permanent file…" As his bright blue eyes widened with horror, I gave him a cheery smile and made my way down to the new victim. "Enjoy your lunch, Pika."

I left him standing in front of my office to go and meet Lillian's replacement, my walk becoming a little bouncier. New meat was always fun to play with. I rounded the corner and looked down to the transfer, and for some reason, my head began to pound. It couldn't be…

The shape of his head, the way he leaned over on his desk, the color of his hair, his scent, everything… was the same… I stood there, shocked, as he finally noticed I was there and turned to look at me. I flinched as I saw his dark blue eyes, those same ones that always glazed over in my nightmares. He leaned back in his chair and looked me over, and after an awkward moment, raised a brow. "…I suppose you're Angela?"

Hearing him say a bastardized version of my real name sent pangs of guilt and anguish through my chest. I quickly recomposed myself and gave a curt nod. "You suppose correctly. You're from one of the Colorado branches, correct?"

He nodded and I couldn't help but see Caim in his place. Usually, souls don't affect what the body appearances are, but there are the occasional exceptions… I jerked myself out of my flurried thoughts as his eyebrow inclined further. This wasn't Caim. This was a reincarnation of Caim. Two different people. I cocked my head to the side and asked, "Your name?"

He leaned back a bit and smirked. "Cael. Cael Wolff."

…………

What a sucky way to end the chapter!

By the way, you should know that Pika is Nowe's reincarnation, and Napoleon -who you have yet to formally meet- is Gismor. Angelus didn't know either of them in this timeline, so there's no way she'd know.

So Angie meets Cael. And Cael is Caim's reincarnation. Whoop.

Ja!