A resonating shudder shook through the room. Mike sat up quickly, blinking in shock. He looked around; a fine dust of stone was twinkling down from the ceiling. Behind him, he heard Angel murmur something, and slump further against the wall. She started to slide down the smooth surface. Soon she was lying twisted across the cot.

Mike smiled at her uncertainly. She certainly looked like a goofball while she was asleep; her hair had become tousled and shook up as she fell. Carefully, he stood up. Moving to the front of the cot, he gently adjusted the cot out from the wall. With the motions, Angel fell back, settling into a comfortable position.

Huh, he wondered in awe. If Winnie ever really wanted to beat Angel, all she'd have had to do was find her aslee-

Another thud suddenly rocked the room, making the one that had woke Mike seem a mere blip. He looked around in confusion, the pipes by the sink rattled. Another hail of pebbles fell from the roof.

Beside him, he heard Angel sit up. She looked around, dazed.

Mike put his hand against the wall to steady himself. "What… what the hell is going on outside? Does this world have earthquakes?"

As the throbbing subsided, a sound separated itself from the background noise. "zzzzzHelpzzzzlower cafeteriazzzzneedzzzz" he heard a spat of words, isolated in static. He saw a blinking red light, and made out his radio, buzzing in the dimly lit-gloom. With a cry, he dove down to retrieve the instrument.

"Yes! I'm here," he yelled into it. "What's going on outside? What's all that rumbling?"

As he picked it up, the static fell back a bit, as it the reception had suddenly improved. Mike was able to make out several distinct phrases in the gloom. "Mikezzzzneed youzzzz…We're being attacked, we need you to come…" he heard Winnie's voice bark into the radio urgently.

"Attacked?" he replied. "What's going on? Who's attacking us?'

But Winnie continued as if she hadn't heard him. With a jolt, Mike realized she hadn't. The walls of this room were so thick that his reception was being heavily disrupted.

"ZzzAlbert Lecherzzzdeceiving us. He's not a NPC, Mike. He's a human, hezzz managed to stay in this worldzzzthough he follows the ruleszzzz beats up normal studentszzzvicious, he's trying to take us all down, we needzzz"

"Fred! WINNIE!" Mike answered urgently, but it was useless. He heard the sound of a storm of gunshots, screams of pain, and desperate yells over the radio. When Winnie's voice came again, it was broken, fading, possessing a weakness he'd never heard from his leader before.

"Mike-zzz-using other NPC's against us-zzz-very wrong, we can't fight, we're getting slaut-zzzzzzzzzzzz…

"Please, Mike, we need your help. I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can-zzzz- I don't know-zzzz-we can last."

Mike gazed at the dead radio in his head with total horror. He heard a rustle behind hm.

Angel had stepped off the cot. "Something is wrong," she confirmed.

He lowered the receiver. "Something… I don't know, but something's happened to my friends. Something happening outside, something horrible. We have to get out there!"

He appraised the cell door frantically. It was like nothing he'd seen before at the school. Instead of the wooden panels of the classroom door, it had been forged out of solid steel plates. The greenish-grey metal gleamed at him in the dull lighting, showing no weakness, no way of budging the colossus. The metal looked… queer. It didn't quite fit in with the reality around it. Mike was reminded of the guild's makeshift cannon, how the created material had seemed out of place in the tunnel.

It was no use. He couldn't think of a way out of his prison. He slumped against the wall, clenching his fists. Right now, his friends could be dying, fighting their enemy-

"Mr. Carter," Angel spoke suddenly from behind him. "Are you all right?"

"It doesn't matter… there's nothing that I can do, anyway."

Angel regarded, him, her gaze unreadable. "If I can… I would like to help. Is there anything that I could do?"

Several moments of renewed-hope later, Mike was pressed up against the wall, giving Angel plenty of room. "Just show me any tool you can create, that we might be able to use to get out of here," he asked again, eagerly.

Angel nodded again, and her brow furrowed in concentration. "Guardskill: Hand Sonic," she murmured, and flickering blue light flashed in the cell as a conflagration of spinning pieces of program. Flickering ones and zeroes blossomed around her hand, quickly forming into the familiar shape of her weapon.

As soon as the weapon had formed, Angel leapt. Screeches leapt off the walls as metal bit into metal. But every time Angel's metal struck, the door glowed with the same form of blue light, strange polygons forming as the two objects collided. Her strikes didn't even leave a dent.

Mike's head sunk to his chest. "It's useless."

Angel regarded her creation. "This guardskill was never intended to be an offensive weapon. I made it purely for self-defense. I doubted it would be of use."

Mike straightened. "Wait, self-defense?" Glancing at her weapon, a memory returned, one of his earliest. Meeting Angel under a high moon, and getting himself skewered. "Hey," he spoke up, "do you remember what happened when you first met me? You probably don't, but-"

"Yes," she replied immediately, nodding. "I remember. You seemed very confused, and then you made that odd request."

"Exactly! Well, if that misunderstanding hadn't happened, if you hadn't stabbed me, I never would have thought of you as an enemy. I wouldn't have had any reason to." He rubbed his head, thoughtful. "Wouldn't that have been weird? I would have chosen your side! I could have been with you, instead of fighting against-"

"No," Angel broke in softly. "That does not happen. For as long as I have existed in this world, no human has allied with me." She looked down at the cold floor. "Whenever someone tries to make friends with me, they… disappear. The pattern has been, whenever someone has begun to slow down and accept this life, they are obliterated. Everyone… everyone who was friendly to me… has done so."

Mike's mouth hung open as he tried to comprehend. His imagination, active as usual, was happy to oblige.

He imagined Angel, laughing between classes, in the middle of a clump of friends. They walked into their next class, but one of them paused at the door, and when the others turned to look, the individual was simply gone. At lunch, Angel treated herself to Chupa Curry with her friends, and one of the, in the midst of jokingly trying a spoonful, also vanished, leaving the spoon to clatter to the table. One by one, all of Angel's friends passed on. Apparently, you passed on from this world if you simply accepted a normal school life. So all of Angel's friends would have left her, leaving her all alone.

That must be really tough, even for an angel, Mike worried. And then the Battlefront came along, and she had start using guardskills to defend herself… I wonder if she can even talk to God. It would certainly fit in with what I know about him if he just left her here, left his angel all by herself.

Arg! This is all so screwed up! This whole world is one big cruel mess, how could any of us be expected to deal with this?

Angel's soft voice interrupted his worries.

"Version: Two," she murmured. As she spoke, the ethereal glow returned, and the metal protruding from her wrist glowed, and suddenly lengthened, until it possessed the size and shape of a lance. The point of the weapon scraped the sides of the cell as Angel turned to Mike. "This weapon was designed for facing large opponents," she explained. "It's thinner and lighter than the original, and allows for easy maneuvering."

"Oh… but, I don't think that'll really help us now."

She nodded. "Version: Three." As she spoke, the lance began to glow as white as smelting metal, and suddenly stretched and condensed into a new form. A wicked trident grew out of her arm, the triple prongs barbed and leering. She glanced at it. "Hideous… isn't it?"

Mike stared at the demonic appendage in shock. "Um… it's cool. But… do you have anything else?"

Angel huffed. "Yes. Version: Four." The gruesome appendage dissipated, and reformed into a gigantic, bulbous flower. Strangely shaped pink petals were scattered over it half-hazardly, with the grey steel below bleeding through all over. It looked like a child's drawing, made into metal.

"I tried to make a flower," Angel said anxiously. "Do you think it looks cute and lifelike?"

Mike stepped back. "Um, honestly, no. It's actually kinda creepy."

"Oh…"

Mike paused. His imagination, stimulated into overdrive, suddenly caught on something. Wrapping itself around the shard of an idea, it spun, and spun some more. "Hang on," he said. "I've got an idea."

Beneath the school, miles of tunnels stretched in an unmappable warren of paths. Pipes clanged, mice scurried. The Guild claimed the underground as their home, but even they could not account for every inch of its depths. There were none among the Battlefront who could.

Ten fingers intertwined. Eyes blinked, seeing without light.

Humans were curious creatures. They wandered around, caught in their tiny goals, petty missions and small dreams.

Two lips split in a knowing smile. However, all of their efforts couldn't escape the simple reality. The will of the Creator would be done.