Fallen Angel, Chapter 5: New Friends
Originally Written By: Jazzpha
Beast Boy awoke to greet the new dawn, feeling like a million bucks that had just been given a caffeine boost. Just bursting with the anticipation of sharing his boundless good mood with his friends the green changeling dashed out into the main room, struck a pose, and began to walk towards the kitchen to make breakfast (he'd shut that sneaky Cyborg up once and for all about which was better, meat or tofu). Everything was going according to plan until Beast Boy's foot hit something unexpectedly hard and he heard… a hiss?
Stumbling to regain his footing and looking behind him, the changeling saw that Shadow and Dmitri were sprawled on the ground. Both of them had been out cold but the Snake Knight was now beginning to stir, rubbing the side of his head gingerly. When he spoke, his tone was light and confounded; his eyes bleary.
"What in the blazes…" All of a sudden the chaotic memories of the night before came crashing down upon the Snake Knight like a 200-pound anvil and he shot upright to a sitting position, taking in his surroundings. As his still-sensitive eyes came in contact with the sunlight he shrunk back and cringed, but after a few moments he was on his feet, dusting off his cloak and brushing the bits of debris left from Terra's rock-storm off of his purple-black bodysuit. When at last he looked presentable, Shadow woke up Dmitri by rousing him with a gentle shake that slowly increased in force until it got the job done. Dmitri awoke shocked, much like Shadow had done, but he too was soon on his feet and somewhat ready for the day ahead of him.
Throughout all of this Beast Boy had simply been looking on in a quizzical yet stunned expression, but now that both sleepers were off the floor, he thought it was OK to break the silence.
"So… um, you guys sleep alright last night?"
It was meant as a joke, of course, but neither the angel nor the vampangel was in the mood for something that mocked their restlessness after the pandemonium of the previous night that they had been made to suffer though. As their gazes hardened and the veins began to stand out on their foreheads, eyebrows twitching and fists clenched, the changeling began to realize that this time, his joke might have consequences.
"Are…" began Shadow, his voice low and dangerous,
"You…" continued Dmitri, his voice as threatening as his friend's, if not more-so,
"KIDDING US!?" They both shouted out together, simultaneously incredulous and stark-raving furious that someone would have the audacity to make a joke like that.
"Do you have any idea what we had to deal with last night, Beast Boy?" Shadowcobra inquired, his voice keen and sharp with an edge that could have cut steel.
"Between Pluto's howling, Terra's nightmare and Draco and Jinx doing… whatever it was they were doing," Dmitri explained, edging around the risqué nature of the Dragon Knight and Hex Mistress' activity the night before, "we had to resort to Shadow's 'magic-juice' to get any rest at all! And now, here I am, head still woozy and feeling like I have the grandmother of all hangovers, only to have someone come out all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to ask me how I slept?"
"Just be lucky you still have your kneecaps." The Snake Knight finished acidly, letting the threat hang in the air, unspoken but certainly understood. Beast Boy quailed briefly under the two laser-like gazes before going to make breakfast for the rest of the team and Dmitri, while the two friends sat down at the kitchen table to finish their game of chess. The board was still sitting, miraculously unmolested, in the exact place it had been when the two players had called the game off, so no time was lost in resuming the heated contest, which fittingly ended in a dead-even draw as soon as the door slid open again. This time, it was Raven who walked through, and Shadow's expression brightened considerably. Dmitri intuited that these two were involved with each other somehow, and his guess was proven correct as Raven floated swiftly and surely over to give Shadow a heartfelt and loving embrace. Shadow basked in the warmth for a few moments while Dmitri tried not to stare. When Ichijyo noticed how awkward his friend seemed to feel he reluctantly broke out of the hug, a smile now gracing his face.
"And how is my favorite little blackbird this morning?"
"Good. How was your night? Did you sleep well?"
Dmitri half-expected Shadow to look irate, to be snappy, to do at least something snide, but all he did was shrug.
"It could've been better," was all he said. Dmitri was surprised, to say the least. 'She must really mean a lot to him, for him to restrain himself like that,' the fallen Angel thought to himself. Shadow brought Dmitri's attention rocketing back to the present.
"Raven, luv, you haven't met Dmitri yet, have you?"
"No, I don't think I have," the empath said, turning to face Dmitri and extending her hand to shake. "I'm Raven, nice to meet you."
Dmitri reciprocated the gesture, surprised to feel that Raven's hand was slightly colder than normal. But the angel could sense a demonic aura around Raven, so perhaps that was why.
"I'm Dmitri. It's nice to meet you, too, Raven."
The three of them chatted for a while about one thing or another, eventually ending up with Raven asking Dmitri about what it was like being up in Heaven with so many other angel, and what the place looked like. Shadow was prepared to call his girlfriend off if Dmitri didn't want to talk about it again, but instead the angel got a huge smile on his face. The look in his eyes was of someone fondly recalling good times from their childhood, and Shadow was surprised at the notion that there was something good Dmitri had glossed over when he first told his story. Then again, the shock probably had only helped to bring the bad memories to the forefront while suppressing the good ones.
"Well, Raven, since you asked so nicely I'll tell you about some of my childhood, how about that?" Raven assented enthusiastically and Dmitri began to tell many funny stories about how Ezekiel, his caretaker, had tried in vain to discipline him and wound up chasing his around the library for a good twenty minutes before catching up with him and making him copy down Shakespeare for hours on end. Then all three of them started swapping short anecdotes, and had quite a good time doing so. That bubble of tranquility was busted open, though, by two very familiar words, shouted not ten feet away from the three teenagers.
"MEAT!"
"TOFU!"
"MEAT!"
Beast Boy and Cyborg were almost at each other's throats it was so intense, and Dmitri was just shocked by the bizarreness of the whole scene, a blank look on his face until Raven saw this and explained the situation.
"Don't freak out, this is actually perfectly normal."
"Or about as relatively normal as it gets around here, anyway," Shadow chimed in, disinterested after having seen this spectacle so many times.
"See, Beast Boy can change into the form of any animal he wants to. And, after experiencing life through the eyes of said animals, he decided to become a vegetarian," Raven began to explain further. "Cyborg, on the other hand, is a meat-loving, barbequing cook who fully embraces his inner carnivore. So, as I'm sure you can imagine, they get into these types of fights quite often. Whenever food is involved, in fact."
Dmitri nodded his understanding, but he was still confused by the display. Little did he know, his life was about to get weirder with the arrival of a certain Tamaranian through the doors into the main room. Starfire was carrying a suspiciously gelatinous object that seemed to have a variety of insects and other pointy things protruding from its surface. She scanned the room, found Dmitri, and zoomed gleefully over to him.
"Oh, new friend Dmitri! It is glorious to see you on such a wonderful morning!" Dmitri was slightly taken aback, but he couldn't keep from smiling in the presence of so much happiness.
"It's nice to see you again too, uh…"
"Oh, where have my manners gone to? My name is Starfire, of the planet Tamaran. I have brought you the traditional welcoming pudding of my homeworld. Do you not wish to try some?"
Dmitri looked sketchily down at the blob in front of him. His eyes found something that was still squirming, and he felt a knot form in his stomach.
"Um, Starfire?" the alien looked at the angel expectantly, who had yet to stretch out his wings. "Is that thing still alive?" Starfire looked down curiously upon her creation, while Dmitri, Raven and Shadow were all more than a little nauseous by this point.
"Oh, yes," Starfire exclaimed after a few moments' pause, "that is the species of the Kiljorbag parasite native to my homeworld. They are very resilient creatures, known to survive the stomach acids of even the mightiest klorbag beast!"
With a mighty strain, the three observers barely kept their gut-wrenching instinct in check. Dmitri screwed up his courage and looked into those wide, hopeful eyes.
"Starfire?"
"Yes, Dmitri?"
"Is there… erm… any way I could try this later?"
Starfire seemed to have feared rejection, but mellowed out instantly.
"Of course! I will merely place it in the container that refrigerates food items."
Dmitri sighed, relieved that he had dodged the bullet, while Raven and Shadow had vanished, presumably to race to their respective bathrooms.
The angel looked around him at the content, warm tower full of people he was sure he could become good friends with in time, and thought about how lucky he had been to wind up here. But then a pang of guilt tugged at the back of his mind.
Alicia…
He had left here up there, in the Empyrean, all alone. He was sorry, of course, but he had no other choice. Reaching down into one of the pockets of the pants he wore under his armor, the angel felt a smooth, cool ring tenderly with his fingers, the same one Alicia had given him just before he had left in a tearful and heartfelt goodbye. Dmitri sighed sadly wondering how she was doing.
Alicia sat on her bed, misty-eyed and lonely, thinking thoughts very similar to those of her boyfriend down on Earth. Her whole body was weary; she had finally just finished a grueling archery practice that had gone from sun-up until the point that even her incredibly sharp eyes were too tired to see. Alicia had been extremely bitter that she had been pushed so unusually hard by Ashur, her teacher, and she wasn't going to accept it without an explanation.
"Okay, old man," she had said, anger tinting her voice, "why in Manitou's name did you haul me out here at the crack of dawn to shoot at targets 300 yards away for hours on end? I'm exhausted now, damn you!"
Ashur had just smirked, toying with how to deliver the news to his lovely little student. He knew (hell, the entire damn Council knew) that Alicia was quite fond of the heretic fallen angel they were going to be hunting down. He just couldn't wait to see the pained look on her face when he told her that the Council was considering sending her to hunt down her own boyfriend. Oh, how beautiful her tears would be!
"Well, dearest Alicia," her teacher said this with a distinctively creepy leer in his voice, one that made Alicia's gut do back-flips, "as you know, the rogue Angel of Death, the one they call Dmitri," Ashur didn't fail to notice the way Alicia's breath caught in her chest, or the anticipation she was now exuding. These emotions, in turn, caused a gleam of pure sadism to shine in Ashur's blue eyes before he continued, "has escaped. Because of his traitorous actions, the almighty Tzarion Council has decided to send the full brunt of its might against him. They will hunt him down, and their watchful eyes will not rest until he has fallen unto the death from which he was spawned." Ashur found the terror that struck Alicia's soul in that instant to be absolutely exquisite.
The sad but true fact of the matter was that the only thing that separated some angels from demons was their title, choice of habitat, and whether they had stuck by the Great Spirit during the War against Lucifer. Time had changed many of those once-pure souls, who were now rife with corruption and had connived the power out of the Great Spirit's hands and into their own. These 'angels' now composed the Tzarion Council and safely reveled in their debauchery. And, to make matters worse the Great Spirit, far from the omniscient image he was thought of as was blind to it all, so far. Ashur was another of the more wicked angels, who desired Alicia and wasn't going to stop until he had her. If part of that meant he was going to have to bend her mentally until she broke, so be it.
The moonlight shone pitifully down on Alicia's face, as if empathizing with the pain and the tears that rushed down the young angel's cheeks in a torrent of grief. Too heart-broken to speak, she wrapped her wings around her and vanished in a flash of golden light. No doubt, Ashur thought with a smirk, to weep her eyes out.
"Pleasant dreams, little Aquila," the older angel thought lecherously, "soon you will be mine."
And so it had come to pass that Alicia, one of the few remaining Aquila angels, was sitting on her bed alone and grief-stricken. Her melancholy attitude was threatening to give way to bitter tears, so in an effort to keep her emotions at bay the distraught angel quickly sharpened one of her knives on a whetstone and threw it at her wall with all her might, where it became embedded up to the hilt. This quick burst of aggression brought nothing but frustration and emptiness, however, and the tears finally broke through Alicia's feeble resistance, falling hard and fast like raindrops. Exhausted and with no more tears to cry, she fell back on her bed and curled up into a fetal position, silently praying that Dmitri would be alright and that she wouldn't have to hunt him down. Slowly but surely, the angel's beautiful eyes fluttered closed and soon she was fast asleep, dreaming of a certain Angel of Death who had been forced to leave her alone.
"Hey, buddy, are you OK?"
Dmitri was jolted out of his melancholy state of mind by Draco's solicitous tone and he jerked slightly, shocked. His eyes darted around nervously until he recognized where he was and calmed down. His hand came slowly out of his pocket, clenched in a tight fist around the ring. He placed his fist on the table and let it relax open, the white ring falling and meeting the table's surface with a rather strong thud, as if it was made out of something very heavy. The angel blinked his eyes a couple times and sighed.
"Yeah," he said wearily, "I was just thinking, that's all."
"Oh, OK." Draco had thought there was something wrong with their newest guest, and so he had gone over to make sure everything was alright once Dmitri had been zoned out for more than half an hour and the Titans had elected to give him his space. "I'm Draco, by the way," the Dragon Knight added, extending his hand cordially. Dmitri took it with as much enthusiasm as he could muster after such a draining bout of introspection.
"I'm Dmitri. It's nice to meet you," was all he could get out given the lethargy weighing him down. Draco immediately saw that there was something wrong and, after putting some waffles down in front of the angel, decided to see if there was anything he could do to help.
"Is there something bothering you, Dmitri-san?"
Dmitri looked sidelong at the Dragon Knight, wondering if he should open up about something so personal to someone he barely knew. But the angel sensed nothing but genuine concern and good intentions. His face softened and the angel sighed, collecting himself before he re-opened his fresh scars.
"Sorry about being an ass back there, it's just that, well… I was forced into a rather awkward position recently, and I have a lot to think about."
"No worries, my friend," Dmitri was surprised: Draco knew nothing about him and he was already a 'friend' to him? Well, at least it was nice to know that the world still had good people in it. "I shouldn't have disturbed you; that was my fault. But if there's anything you want to talk about, just let me know and I'll be all ears." Dmitri was so affected by this display of friendliness and good will that he decided to bite the bullet and take Draco up on his offer. After all, he was going to have to deal with his emotions soon or he was going to start getting ulcers, and if there was one thing Dmitri knew it was that you never, ever passed up a golden opportunity.
"Actually, now that you mention it, there are some things I'd like to get off of my chest. Do you mind being my shrink for the next half-hour?"
Draco grinned gamely, just glad that he could use his time to help someone out.
"Not at all. What's on your mind?"
"Well, where should I start… has Shadow told you guys about my 'situation' yet?"
"No," the Dragon Knight replied evenly, "I think Robin was going to ask you about it later, when the whole team is here."
"Oh." Dmitri was put off slightly by this statement; he didn't want to be forced to spill his guts to everyone on the team like it was an interrogation. Then again, he told himself, if they're going to have a celestial fugitive on their team they need to know just what it is they're getting into.
"In that case," Dmitri continued, relieved again and picking up the pure white ring, which was engraved with golden runes, "let me tell you about this ring, and who gave it to me," he said with a classic storyteller tone, before digging into his waffles with vigor.
Alicia awoke in the middle of the afternoon to the noise of a boisterous crowd nearby. She literally flew out of bed and got dressed, curiosity burning in her like an inferno. The normal denizens of the Empyrean never gathered together in mobs; they were usually too haughty to do something like that. But sure enough, when the Aquila angel stepped out of her little house and onto the main street of the domain a huge crowd was sweeping down the thoroughfare. Alicia got over her shock long enough to scan the crowd for any familiar faces. When she saw old Ezekiel in the throng, she knew whatever it was that had caused this commotion was huge; 'Zeke almost never left the library for anything, let alone something that grabbed the attention of the mob crowd. She ran over to him before he was swept away and tugged urgently on one of his sleeves. The librarian turned to face her, confused for a moment. When he recognized who she was, though, his face lit up in a huge smile and he spoke cheerfully.
"Dear girl, it's nice to see you again! What brings you out here this fine afternoon?" Alicia was happy to hear his voice again; When he called her 'dear', it was paternal and full of care, whereas Ashur was just creepy and disturbing whenever he said…well, anything, really.
"What are all of these angels doing out here in this crowd, grandfather?" Alicia used this as a term of endearment; the two angels weren't actually related. At this Ezekiel seemed to jolt back to the reality of the situation, for his expression darkened and became downtrodden.
"Everyone's been talking about the plan of action the Council is going to take against Dmitri for a while now; it seems as though the Council is in the midst of deliberating on their course of action right now."
A dozen thoughts darted through Alicia's mind in that moment. She had to find some way to overhear the Council's decision. If she could figure out what they were doing in time, she could go warn Dmitri before the danger even got there. And if she was one of the unlucky chosen, she could try to delay the other assassins to give Dmitri a chance to get the head's up. Either way, she had to hurry.
"Thank you for the news, grandpa," was all she said, and after giving Ezekiel a hasty kiss on the cheek of appreciation and affection she took to the skies. She spread her white wings to their fullest before zooming off like a bat out of hell, aimed right for the council chambers that loomed like a temple in the distance, its spires gleaming gold and crimson in the sun.
"Wow…" was all Draco could muster after Dmitri had finished his story about Alicia, "she seems like a really neat girl, not to mention really, really kawaii, that's for sure. And she must really love you if she gave you that ring as a memento, if it was that important to her. I'm sorry you had to lose her."
"Not lose, buddy," Dmitri corrected, "misplace. To lose would mean there was no way I'd find her again, and I'm not about to lose someone like her, no way."
Draco smiled; he was encouraged by Dmitri's determination and his resolve not to lose hope; it reminded Draco a lot of himself, actually. The Dragon Knight found that he wouldn't mind having the angel around, but that was for Robin and the other core Titans to decide. 'Speak of the devil,' he thought, 'here he comes now.' Then Draco remembered something he's forgotten to say, and he quickly turned to Dmitri.
"Hey Dmitri-san!" he said, his voice a low, conspiratorial whisper.
"Yeah?" Dmitri whispered back, using the same kind of tone.
"Don't tell Jinx I said I thought your girlfriend sounded cute, OK? I don't want to have to sleep on the couch for a week!"
The angel grinned to himself and thought about doing something mean as paybacks for when Draco and Jinx had kept him and Shadow awake, but he decided not to be a total ass.
"Okay, my friend," he said, moving his fingers over his lips in a 'my-lips-are-sealed' gesture, "your secret's safe with me."
Draco only had time to flip Dmitri a thumbs-up before Robin had reached the table and called everyone else over.
"Well," the leader of the Titans said, his voice 110 business, "I think it's time for everyone who hasn't already met our new visitor to do so, before he tells us a bit about himself and how he wound up here."
Everyone had sat down at the table by this point, and Dmitri was flanked by Draco and Shadow, while Jinx and Raven sat next to them, respectively. The Knight in blue, whom Dmitri assumed by process of elimination was Pluto sat next to someone who looked like a black-haired version of Starfire, while Beast Boy sat next to a shy-looking girl with blond hair and blue eyes. Dmitri also noticed that Raven had changed into a white version of her uniform, which contrasted beautifully with her hair and eyes. He forced himself to look away, though, lest Shadowcobra get the wrong idea and the angel wound up on the business end of that cobra scepter. The cyborg seemed like the odd man out in terms of having a distinct person to sit next to, but it also didn't seem to faze him much at all as he was currently chatting with Pluto while waiting for his turn to be introduced.
"I'm Jinx," the pink-haired sorceress said perkily.
"Blackfire," was all the black-haired alien said, though her tone was not unkind, simply terse. Dmitri intuited from this that Blackfire was somehow related to Starfire.
"Zodiac Knight of the Dog Pluto, at your service," the Knight in blue said jovially, "or you can call me Pluto or Takada, if the whole title's a bit of a mouthful for ya."
"You can call me Cyborg," said the cyborg. Dmitri chuckled lightly. At least the name fit the face; there was no doubt about that.
"I'm Terra," said the blond girl next to Beast Boy lightly. Even though she seemed a bit frail on the outside, Dmitri could appreciate the fact that she had a deep inner strength that shone like a beacon in her aura, and he immediately respected that.
"And I'm Robin," the leader said with finality, bringing a resounding end to the introductions. "So, Dmitri, is that right?" Dmitri simply nodded, feeling slightly uncomfortable that his wings hadn't been out for so long; he really needed to stretch them or they were going to cramp inside his back, which would be really painful.
"Well, why don't you tell us about how you wound up here, and why? Also, I'd be interested in knowing exactly how it was that you were able to defeat Plasmus so easily."
Dmitri took a deep breath before beginning his tale. Shadow gave him a look that clearly said 'If you want me to cover for you I can,' but Dmitri was determined to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him Manitou. He sent a small shake of his head back at Shadow, who understood and shortly nodded his support.
Dmitri wondered what the best way would be to open up his story and thought of an answer that would kill two birds with one stone. He unfurled his wings to full span, flexed them slightly, and began.
"Well, as I'm sure you can all tell from the wings, I'm an angel." Terra breathed in with shock at how beautiful the burgundy wings were, as did Jinx and Starfire. At this point, Dmitri took a deep breath mentally before plunging into the deep end. "But I'm not just any angel, you need to understand. Like Shadowcobra over there," here he jerked his thumb over at Shadow briefly before continuing, "I am a unique angel. A really unique one, in fact. You see, I'm kinda… the Angel of Death."
The silence was absolutely deafening.
Dmitri paused for a moment, to see if anyone exclaimed surprise, disbelief or fear, but when everyone who didn't already know this about Dmitri was too stunned to speak, the angel soldiered on as if there hadn't been a pause at all.
"But I didn't come down here to kill all of you, or anything like that, believe me," at this reassurance a collective breath was exhaled from everyone present, except Raven and Shadow, of course. At this, Dmitri inwardly smirked. 'So that's what they were worried about huh?' he thought. 'Can't say I blame 'em, though. I'd be freaked out too if someone with wings told me he was the Angel of Death.'
"Far from it, in fact," Dmitri continued, unimpeded by his pause. "I have come because I am in dire need of your assistance. You see, I am a fugitive, wrongly exiled from my home, and sooner or later those who engineered my exodus are going to try to hunt me down and kill me in cold blood."
There were a few gasps from around the room, mostly from the girls. They seemed to be hanging on his every word already, and Dmitri paused a bit to glory in the feeling before smacking himself mentally and having Caesar scream in his ear that this wasn't the right time for games.
"So, before you consider me a friend or even an ally please hear my story, at which point you will all be free to chose whether or not it is worth the risk of having me in any way associated with you all." After a solemn nod from Robin, Dmitri began a reprise of his story, and noted with gratitude that Shadow was still listening intently the second time around.
Alicia gasped air in sharply as her lungs still seared from over-exertion; she must have flown 10 miles in 30 minutes, or maybe even less time than that. Nevertheless, whatever pain she was feeling right now was secondary to securing Dmitri's safety by and means necessary. She silently slipped into the antechamber of the Council's fortress, and the guards let her pass further in unopposed. 'They must think I'm here as a potential candidate or something,' she thought, and then she realized that that might very well be the truth. 'At least I can use this to my advantage,' she told herself, struggling not to think and depressing thoughts involving her having to hunt down her boyfriend. Suddenly she stopped dead and hugged the nearest wall as she heard Malachi's voice float down the wide hallway. Malachi was one of the more prestigious members of the Council, which basically meant that he was more of a ruthless, heartless, unforgiving and greedy bastard than most of his colleagues.
"So it's settled, then," he said, his voice smooth as ice made of frozen acid. "The Aquila, Alicia, will not be sent on the hunt for the Scion." Alicia let out a huge breath, so relieved she felt like doing a jig and screaming out her jubilation at the top of her lungs when karma chose that moment to give her the sucker-punch of the millennium.
"Instead we will send out Enoch, and… Lord Koroga will accompany him. They will not fail us. Any objections to this proposal?"
Alicia thought she had died and her soul had been yanked straight down into perdition at warp speed. If she hadn't been rooted to the spot, she would have collapsed to the floor and started sobbing. Koroga? They were sending fucking Koroga after Dmitri? He didn't have a chance in hell of standing up to the Lord of the Kitsune, even if he had mastered his new powers to some extent! He was a dead man walking already!
But Fortune was a strange and fickle mistress, and she had apparently chosen not to be such a bitch and had thrown Alicia a bone.
"I do have one objection, my Lord." It was Koroga's deep voice, as captivating as the flashing lightning and as deep as the rolling thunder. "I do not wish to simply accost this 'Dmitri' youth and butcher him like an animal; it does not seem honorable to me, and from my point of view his being born was not his fault."
Alicia didn't know how many more mood swings she could take before her heart gave out on her. Maybe there was hope yet for her loved one. However, Fortune seemed to be going through PMS and thought it the right time to give Alicia a blindside tackle at 100 miles an hour.
"Lord Koroga, with all due respect," spoke up Ekarion, another vicious and twisted angel, "please try to remember that the position you hold was given to you by us angels, and it can be taken away just as easily. Moreover, it would behoove you to recall what hangs in the balance should you refuse us or fail to obey any of our direct commands." Ekarion left the threat unspoken, but Koroga heard it loud and clear: if he failed them, his entire clan would be put to the sword, and he would be banished back down to Hell, where he would no doubt be treated as a traitor and dealt with accordingly. Alicia wept inwardly with pity for this noble creature: he had a good heart, that could be seen, but he was being pressed into service nonetheless, forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The Aquila angel could almost see Koroga's majestic head bowing in defeat.
"Very well, my lords, I accept. I will follow Enoch, and together we will deal with this traitor as you desire."
"Excellent choice, Koroga," Malachi declared. "Go now with Enoch, and do not fail us. Be mindful of this: you take orders from him, and to defy him is to defy us. Remember this always and no harm with come to your tribe. Go now, and may you have good fortune in battle."
Alicia did cry at this point, but she choked her tears off before she had lost all of her wits. Gathering her energies about her she wrapped her wings around her and teleported to her house to gather all she might need, and then she jumped again to the nearest border between the Empyrean and the outside world, muttering one last prayer to whatever god or demon might listen with a favorable ear before she jumped off of the could back and began to soar down to the world below, the wind whistling in her ears. She just hoped she wasn't already too late.
Dmitri finished his story, explaining about the 'prophecy', how he was going to be tracked down by the armies of the Empyrean and how they would stop at no lengths to ensure his untimely demise. He hung his head in silence and waited for the rebuke to come from everyone except Draco, Raven and Shadow, but when it did not arrive like a bolt of thunder Dmitri looked up to study the faces of his maybe-soon-to-be allies. It looked like they were split dead even between wanting to help and wanting to stay the hell out of something so big, complicated and deadly. It came down to Robin to decide and he sat in his chair, pondering the issue nervously. On the one hand he felt morally obligated to help Dmitri out in his time of crisis, but doing so risked getting the whole team slaughtered for being guilty by association in the minds of these clearly bigoted and power-hungry angels. As he sat stewing in thought, Draco clasped Dmitri's shoulder as a gesture of support, and the fallen angel took heart. Even if the whole team did not necessarily agree to help him, perhaps there would be a few who would be willing to give their support.
Robin's pregnant silence was broken rather unexpectedly and harshly by the voice of none other than Yaminekoryu, Draco's demon, who had apparently decided that now was a better time than ever to contribute a piece of wisdom.
"I'm not even going to ask for permission to speak," the demon said, stroking his spectral whiskers briskly as his voice came out of Draco's mouth. The other Titans, from the times this demon took control of Draco's body, recognized it as him completely. "I'm just going to go ahead and do it to save you guys all the trouble of getting' your panties in knots. Look," he plowed on, ignoring the guys' insulted expressions, "these angels seem like pretty cutthroat bastards who hate anything that might threaten their power, or even anything that just looks at 'em funny. Now, I ain't no rocket scientist, but my guess is that as soon as these guys get here, and they will get here soon, make no mistake about that, they aren't just going to be keeping their eyes peeled for my man Dmitri over there. They're also going to be looking for anything they can scoop up on the side, which includes demons, half-demons and vampire-angel hybrids. To fight those guys off we're going to need all the help we can get. The way I see it," Yaminekoryu paused for a moment before delivering his finale, "we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't. So I figure, what the hell, we have nothing to lose, so we might as well take Dmitri into the fold and have him help prepare us for what's to come. Knowledge is power, after all."
The demon faded, Draco blinking in confusion at what had happened. His speech had seemed to change the air in the room drastically. No longer was Robin mulling over the thoughts in his head; now his face was hard, his expression firm, and if you could've seen his eyes, they would've been real keen just then. He cleared his throat and spoke.
"Yaminekoryu has made some excellent points that speak in favor of letting Dmitri stay…" the anxious drawing-in of breath was a distinctly audible hiss that pervaded the room for a moment that lasted an eternity, "and so I say we should do just that. Welcome aboard, my friend, and I hope to God you're ready to help us prepare for whatever storm you say is coming."
Dmitri fought the urge to shout out, jump for joy and sing a spiritual.
"I will endeavor my best not to fail you, my friends," he said. "It is the least I can do to repay your faith in me."
The meeting was silently adjourned, and everyone went their separate ways to think about the bridge they had just crossed. Some did it in the comforting company of their significant others, some did it by themselves. Dmitri merely stood on the roof, watching the sun dip low in the sky and wondering just what the future held for him, his friends, and the Empyrean itself. He shed a single tear of gratitude for his acceptance, composed himself, and walked back inside to get some rest. He was sure he was going to need it.
