Hey everyone! Hope you are all having a great August and end of summer! Mine has been good! I've got something in the works, a surprise for down the line. What is it? Only time will tell, oooooo~
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"This means someone is talking."
'This means someone is thinking to themselves.'
This means it's a flashback.
*This means it's a sound effect!*
{This means I'm speaking in a different language!}
Angel in a Gilded Cage
Angel had mixed feelings on robots. In proper society, they were either characterized as helpful tools or unfeeling killing machines, often starting as the former and becoming the latter down the line. It was a common concept in much of the science fiction she had indulged in in the past, where they would debate the ideas of humanity in the inhuman, good and evil passed down from creators to artificial life.
For a technopath such as herself, Angel enjoyed a unique perspective on the matter. With how many complex systems inhabited say, one of Yūei's training bots, each having their own voice that she could hear. In the end though, none of them ever changed or varied. Each would play a single note in conjunction with each other, all for the purpose of performing their exact purpose just as they were designed to do. So no, she couldn't call machines alive with that.
There was only one that broke this particular rule, but he was a rather… special case.
In the end, robots were merely tools, completely blameless if they were misused as one couldn't blame a knife held in the hand of a murderer. Perhaps that was the factor behind a sort of kinship she had with them, considering how much of her life she had spent being used like one.
Said kinship she pushed to the side when it came to the ones trying to shoot her down and kill her classmate, whom of which was looking wide eyed back where they came.
"It's gaining on us!"
"I-guh-I know!" Angel grunted out thanks to the pain lancing out from the wound on her back. She blamed herself for getting hit, she had let herself get too distracted to sense their pursuer's approach with her little trip down memory lane. The fact that she had known about Wilhelm's attack drone and still got shot burned almost as much as her shoulder.
She clicked her teeth as she finally put her previous mystery to rest, of what she had sensed while training since yesterday. Wilhelm had been using Wolf to spy on her and gain knowledge of the lodge's layout for the league. The revelation only made her hate herself even more for not mentioning it to teachers and preventing this whole mess in the first place.
Angel shot a quick glance back and quickly spotted the machine keeping pace with them, not that hard thanks to the red paint covering most of its streamlined body, front wings and spoilers and the five glowing orange eyes locked onto her. Some effort was made to give it a style akin to a bomber, alluded to by the snarling shark face decals on either side of it's front chassis and the word kill written on both of the forward wing fins, each having an arrow point right at heras if she would forget where he was going to shoot. Its propulsor jets left blue trails of light as it raced across the night sky.
"{Confirmed hit! Going in for the double tap!}" The drone cheered in a boisterous male voice, sounding like some kind of cocky fighter pilot. The weapon pod on its left wing lit up and fired a small bolt of crackling energy.
Throwing her weight to the side, Angel just barely managed to roll out of the way as the bullet streaked past.
"Aoyama-kun! Hold on tight! This is going to be rough!"
"N-No need to tell me twiiiice!" He cried as Angel folded her wings and they dove. She squinted, trying not to get blinded by the wind or her hair whipping in her face, trying to get as much speed as she could.
"{You can't run from me!}" Wolf taunted with another soundbite, which just made Angel wonder how much time Wilhelm spent giving him voice lines.
She wasn't given an opportunity to ponder this as the drone dove after them, weapons blazing, firing bolt after bolt, forcing her to dodge and weave. Pulling her left arm from Aoyama's grasp, she returned fire.
Sadly, her shots went wide, Wolf barely needing to tilt away to avoid them.
"{Is that the best you've got?}" It asked, following up with canned laughter.
Angel grit her teeth, frustrated at a drone mocking her almost as much as she was at her situation. Normally she'd be able to deal with it almost effortlessly, but having to carry Aoyama made all of her options impossible or difficult. If she wasn't being weighed down and had both hands free, she probably would be able to aim better, hit her target with an increased volume of fire or just disable it with a phasewave. The only advantage she had was that she could feel Wolf's position without turning her head so he couldn't blindside her at the very least.
A troubling dilemma, one that she'd guess was common in heroism. She couldn't abandon her passenger and leave him to die, but she was handicapped in the act of protecting him.
She couldn't keep this going forever. She needed to free her hands.
Angel glanced up towards the sky, filling with clouds of smoke from the nearby fire. An idea began to form, one that she was growing to dislike by the second, but she had nothing else.
"Aoyama-kun, I've got a really bad idea!" She warned her passenger.
"Bad? Why is it bad?" He asked with no small amount of worry.
"You'll see! Just hang on!" She said, flapping her wings and they began to gain altitude. Her back stung with each wingbeat, but she pushed past it, using it to keep her focused.
"{Come here! I don't bite!}" The drone called out, flying after them.
"It's gaining on us!" Aoyama quavered.
"I know!" She shot back, keeping her gaze skyward. Her ears twitched at the sound of humming and an electrical discharge.
"On your left! On your left!" Aoyama yelped. Angel veered right and a bolt shot past her into the black smog ahead.
"Hold your breath and close your eyes!" She said as the roiling cloud grew closer with every second.
Aoyama looked up in confusion and widened his eyes before screwing them shut, loudly taking in a deep breath of air. Taking one last second to squash down better judgment screaming at her, did the same and turned her face away.
Even without her eyes, she knew the exact moment that she hit the smoke. A wave of heat assaulted all her senses, the temperature jumping straight from summer night cool to scorching. She wasn't anywhere close to the blaze raging below, but even the air above felt like she was in a steamer or a sauna, not that she knew what the latter was like. Even with her vision protected as best she could and not inhaling at all, her eyes and nose burned from the harmful particles. She could only hope Aoyama was still following her lead.
Speaking of following, she still sense Wolf below and hear it fire another shot that she evaded with a quick roll. Pretty soon however, it became less of a concern in comparison to Angel's lungs which were quickly being deprived of oxygen.
'Come on! Anytime now!' She pleaded, her wings beats getting weak as her head started to spin.
After several more agonizing seconds, the heat abated and cold air slammed into her. Both she and Aoyama gasped and coughed, blinking away the toxins. Flakes of ash coated their clothes and dusted their hair.
"That was dreadful." Aoyama choked out. "Did we lose it?"
"No, he's right behind us." Angel informed him and hesitated. "Aoyama-kun, do you trust me?"
He quirked his head. "I-I-um, yes? But why do you-?"
She would remember the look on the boy's face for the rest of her life when she let him go. The emotions he went through; confusion to shock, then betrayal and ending with fear. Then he started screaming.
Angel cut her wings and they both began to plummet. Aoyama's frantic cries echoed in her ears as she kept her gaze pointed at the smoke cloud. She clasped her hands, pointer and index fingers together and cocking her thumbs back, just in time for Wolf to emerge from the cloud.
With the hot air from the fire obscuring its heat vision to the point it didn't notice that its prey had separated and one was now pointing her glowing fingers right at it, glaring and eyes burning with anger.
"My turn!" She yelled, target in her sights.
*Pakow!*
Her bolt flew true, splashing against the fin on the drone's right wing. It began to spark and violently shake. "{E-E-E-Error, error! Mayday, mayday! Damage sustained!}" It reported, it's servos straining as it tried to keep itself in the air, but ultimately failing and falling into a spinning nose dive, smoke trailing from its jet.
Angel allowed herself a moment of satisfaction, then turned her gaze downwards to her classmate, crying his lungs out as he plummeted towards the trees below.
Twisting herself around, Angel angled herself towards him and pressed her arms together, pulling herself into a familiar maneuver. She shot through the air like a bullet, keeping her eyes on the blonde floundering every which way in a vain attempt to slow his fall. Only tens of seconds left before he hit the ground.
"AAAH! PLEASE! I'M SORRY! HELP MEEE! I DON'T WANT TO DIEEE!" He wailed as Angel drew closer, positioning herself overtop of him. Not giving a thought to his crazed pleas, she slammed against him, wrapped her arms around his torso and spread her wings.
Aoyama stopped screaming for a second to look up. "Ah! Angel-chan!" He said in relief, then his eyes bugged out when he saw the ground. "AAAH! WE'RE GOING TO CRASH!"
The trees were getting awfully close now. Angel pulled up as hard as she could. Bit by bit they started angling back up. She hissed from the g-force yanking at her face and the strain it was putting on her back. A quick peek from behind squinting eyes.
Good news and bad news. The good news was that they were no longer about to crash to the ground. The bad news was that they were heading straight for the forest plateau.
"BRACE!" She yelped and they ducked their heads.
What followed next was a series of painful sensations and images. First the leaves, then the grasping twigs raked the teens as they shot by. Then the branches as they smashed through each one, dry snapping accompanying each sudden impact. They tumbled through the brush in a tangle of limbs and foliage, grunting and yelping with each hit before finally breaking out of the forest's canopy. A sudden smack against Angel's side pushed all of the air out of her lungs. Her arms slipped and she lost Aoyama, sending both of them sprawling. Seeing the ground rush towards her, she shielded her head. She touched down feet first, a sudden shock of pain stabbing into her leg making her cry out, before her momentum carried her further and she slammed against the forest floor again and again in a wild roll. She kept going for a few meters before finally coming to a stop.
Everything was silent for a split second before Angel began to moan. She ached and stung in almost every part of her body. Planting her arms on the ground under her, she pushed her head up and looked around.
It appeared that she and Aoyama had crashed in another clearing. Noting the ring of stumps nearby, she realized they had actually made it to the spot she had been using to train her phasewave earlier.
'Not one of my more gossamer landings.'
She looked around. "Aoyama-ouch!" She grimaced as she arched her sore back. "A-Aoyama-kun! Are you okay?!"
Another groan echoed in response and the boy in question appeared from a group of bushes, leaning on his heavy stick to pull himself to his feet. He was covered in scratches and bruises, but was otherwise unscathed.
"Bloody and bruised, but whole." He craned his head, popping his neck. "I'm going to be pulling splinters out for weeks. Did you get that robot-plane-thingy?"
"I think so. I just grazed it, but it did go down." She said, getting to her knees and moving to her feet. "The fire is behind us now, so we should be able to make it to the lodge if we head-agh!" She shrieked as her foot rolled and she fell over.
"What's wrong?!" Aoyama asked, stumbling to her.
She pulled up her pant leg, revealing the splotch of purple around her ankle. She lightly poked at it with her finger and hissed. "I-Is it broken?"
"Non. I think it's a sprain." He shook his head before meeting her gaze. "Come on, I'll help you walk."
"T-Thanks." She gasped out while he pulled her up and draped her arm over his shoulder so she was favoring her good leg.
"So… I'm guessing flying is out of the question now?" He asked, supporting Angel in an awkward hobble. She nodded.
"That took a lot of energy out of me. With my leg, I don't think I'd be able to get us off the ground."
"I see." He paused. "I know you don't want to talk about it but… why can't you control that man's machines?"
She shook her head in anguish. "Not this again."
"Non, non, I'm not asking how you know, just… well, why it doesn't work."
Angel hummed in thought. "I guess that's a fair question. To put it simply, I can only control devices that aren't connected to the nervous system."
"How come?"
"Um… okay… uh… so imagine the steering wheel of a car."
Aoyama nodded.
"All machines have one by default. The way my quirk works is that I send my energy into the machine which gives me control, or in this metaphor, a hand on the wheel. I'm sending signals from my nervous system."
His eyes widened. "Now I get it. In that man's case, you can't take control of the car because he already has his hands on the wheel."
"Exactly. The connection I make with machines is foreign and new, so it doesn't listen to me if it's already linked up to someone else that way. As in, they are already in the driver's seat, both hands on the wheel and I'm trying to wrestle it out."
"I see." He nodded again, then smiled at her. "Then it's a good thing we made it so far away, he won't be able to find us now."
"Guess again!"
Their heads snapped back at the dreaded sound of Wilhelm's voice, his tone heavy with synthetic cadence, followed by heavy, thundering footsteps. Something clicked and the cyborg burst through the foliage, running at a speed faster than before. There was the hiss of air and he leapt a huge bound across the clearing, right at them!
Despite her leg, Angel leapt as far to the side as she could, while also shoving Aoyama in the opposite direction. She stumbled and fell on her side. Wilhelm's boot slammed down where the teens just were, sending a spray of dirt into the air and shaking the ground.
Angel's heart leapt as if it was trying to burst out her chest and make a run for it. "H-How?! How did you find us?! We flew so far!"
Wilhelm laughed, enjoying every drop of fear leaking from her pores. "Upgrades birdie, upgrades!" He said, turning towards her and showing off the metal plates and joints protruding out of the skin on his legs. "You like? I got em installed just before you left, courtesy of the boss. Just one step closer to fulfilling my dream of becoming a robot! Can't wait for the shoulder mounted missile rack!
Now…" He took a step forward, prompting Angel to backpedal. "...this little game was fun and all, but now it's time to wrap things up before I get REAL violent."
"N-No! Stay back!" She screamed, throwing her hand out. A hastily charged shot flew out, but instantly got blocked by the man's metal arm. He sneered. "That's cute. Now c'mere!"
Angel whimpered, trying to find any way out. The mechanical fist filled her vision and she shrunk away in fear.
*CLANG!*
She opened her eyes again. Wilhelm looked just as confused, rubbing the back of his head and turning around. Standing there was Aoyama, his heavy stick in hand.
"G-G-Get away from her you, you brute!" He yelled, holding his "weapon" up in a threatening manner. Despite that, his body quaked and sweat poured down his face.
"Aw, I almost forgot about you pretty boy. Though maybe I should call you pretty ballsy." The cyborg muttered in amusement, stepping closer to the smaller boy, towering over him. "Just for that…" He held his arms out and jutted his chin. "...I'm going to give you a deal. Run away right now like a bitch, or go for another swing. But I'm warning you, if you do, I'll-!"
Another clang rang out as Wilhelm's head snapped to the side. Aoyama grunted at him defiantly and swung again and again and again, the dull ring of metal echoing with each strike hitting the taller man's head back and forth. He went for another swing, only for his opponent's robot fist to reach up and grab the knotted end of his club. Wilhelm squeezed and it exploded into bits, leaving Aoyama staring blankly at the stick left in his hand. Wilhelm smiled, his fake eye flashing.
"Congrats blondie! You get to die a hero!"
A dull crack and Aoyama was sent flying back with a steel plated backhand.
"AOYAMA!" Angel screeched, trying to get to her feet but failing thanks to her ankle. Her would-be rescuer lifted himself off his back, holding his swollen cheek.
"There's plenty where that came from!" Wilhelm said, lumbering over and lifting him up by his collar. "Now aren't you a picture? Reminds me of my old man!" He let out a hoot and started slugging the defenseless boy in the face with his flesh fist. Aoyama let out a pained squeal with every blow, blood coating the knuckles that hit him.
"STOP IT! STOP!" Angel cried, dragging herself across the ground, desperately trying to reach him.
Wilhelm paused in his beating to look at her with contempt. "Seriously Birdie? You couldn't stop me back then, you can't stop me now! You think that you're this big hero now because you went to school and kicked some small timers around, but you're not! You're still that pitiful little girl who can't do shit!" He turned back to his victim whose face resembled a bruised tomato, blood streaming down from his broken nose and cut lip, his right eye swollen shut. The villain held his fist out, hovering right over the broken boy's face. "Sweet dreams kid! You'd better hope there's a beauty salon in Hell!" He laughed and cocked his arm back.
"NO!" Angel frantically reached out, helpless to do anything.
Wilhelm was right. She wasn't strong. Once again, she failed to save the person right in front of her. Nothing had changed.
But just as she was ready to resign herself to this fact, a pink blur sprung from a tree and proved her wrong.
Landing onto Wilhelm's back, Ashido cried; "Let him go!" Her hand slapped against the man's face and a torrent of acid splashed all over his head!
"ARGGGGGH!" Wilhelm screamed, dropping Aoyama to try and dislodge the girl piggybacking him, wildly swinging with his arms while the sludge on his face smoked and hissed.
Angel blinked.
She had never heard Wilhelm in pain before.
The spell of dread cast over her shattered and she came to her senses.
"Mina! Grab Aoyama and help me up! We've got to run!" She called out, getting her friend's attention. Giving her mount one last splash of acid, she jumped off his back and lifted their classmate to his feet.
"Come on man, we've gotta go! Can you run?"
Aoyama gurgled and coughed, struggling to speak through his own blood.
"I'll take that as a yes!" She said as she dragged the boy along, who thankfully still retained his sense of equilibrium. They reached Angel and Ashido stooped down to help her up. "Where do we go?!"
"Rrrrrghah! I'm going to feed you your own fingers!" Wilhelm snarled, clawing at the gunk in his eyes, strips of skin sloughing off.
"Anywhere but here!" Angel yelped and the three limped out of the clearing.
Left in his lonesome amidst the stumps, Wilhelm growled as the smoke coming from the acid began to subside.
"Hrrr…brutality…" He wiped the burning sludge away with his metal hand, throwing globules of synthetic skin away. The blue of the fire bounced off the black chrome skull beneath on the left side of his face. The red eye whirred and scanned his surroundings, finally free of obstruction "...set to maximum!"
"Stupid, annoying League of Villains!" Ashido spat from between Angel and Aoyama, helding keep the former on her feet and the latter from running into something. "I just wanted one thing on this trip, a fun time playing camping games with my friends. Is that too much to ask for?!"
"Mina-chan, I agree with you one hundred percent, I really do. But now is really not the time for this." Angel interrupted, receiving a guilty look.
"Right, sorry. Just…ugh, this night is the absolute worst and I'm just trying not to freak out! I was trying to find my way back to the lodge but I got lost."
"Je… te pardonne. It's been a long night." Aoyama huffed, finally sounding halfway comprehensible.
"For some more than others. You guys look like hell."
"Getting chased through a forest fire by a crazed cyborg, his little drone and surviving a crash tends to do that to you." Angel muttered, grimacing as they stepped over a log.
"Speaking of, was that guy really a cyborg? He had the glass eye thing and everything."
"Yes. His quirk allows him to add machines to his body. He's already stolen Aoyama's laser belt."
"Kinda reminds me of an old movie, one where a killer robot was sent from the future. Geez, any other time I'd think this was the coolest."
"We can appreciate it later. Right now we need to get as far away from him as we can. He's going to get back up and chase us. And with those legs of his, who knows how long that will take."
Ashido raised a brow. "Uh, girl? Don't take this the wrong way, but how do you know? He's just one guy. We might be able to take him down if we set a trap. There are three of us."
Angel shook her head, gritting her teeth. "You don't get it Mina. We're in no shape to fight. I can barely walk and Aoyama can't use his quirk. Besides…" She let out a tired breath. "Even if that wasn't the case you can't fight Wilhelm. You can only run and pray that he doesn't find you."
"Why do you sound like you know him?"
The question got another sigh out of her. In a low voice, she retold her half lie(or was it a half truth?) for Ashido's benefit. At the end, the horned girl looked as if she was on the verge of tears.
"My…my god. I'm so sorry. No wonder you look so scared. Running into a monster that kidnapped you as a kid."
"It's… well, it's not alright to be honest. But I don't blame you."
"No, seriously! I feel awful! Here I was freaking out because I was left all by myself while you were getting chased by that asshole!"
Angel paused. "Wait… you were partnered with Izuku right? Where is he?"
Ashido shook her head. "Oh that guy, I swear! We were at the start of the test of courage when the villains showed up. Mandalay and Tiger told us to run for the lodge, but on the way there, that dummy runs off and leaves me alone!"
Angel's eyes nearly popped out of her skull. "He ran off again?!"
"Yeah, can you believe it?! Wait, you can, this is Midoriya we're talking about. I swear, he's going to get himself killed if-!"
"Mina! Why did he run off?!" She pressed, getting a jolt out of the other girl.
"I-I don't know! He booked it into the trees, yelling about Kota!"
"Mon dieu. He just can't help himself can he?" Aoyama shook his head.
"Fricken..!" Angel huffed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Of course he took off at the first sign of trouble, trying to save the boy. She was glad that someone was trying to make sure he was alright, but if she knew Midoriya, it would be anything but simple. "Please be safe, everyone."
"Heads up!" Ashido warned and they all ducked under a low hanging branch, exiting the foliage and coming across another familiar sight; the lake. The water shimmered from the wind, an imperfect mirror reflecting the stars and the glow of the fire in their wake.
"Okay, where to now?"
Angel glanced about, trying to place their location in her head. "If we're here… then I think we can make it to the path leading to the lodge by doubling back around and-"
"Ssh!" Aoyama interrupted, holding a finger up to his lips. "You hear that?"
They all strained their ears and then they did. Behind them, a loud, repeating thumping. That could only mean one thing.
"He's coming! What are we going to do?! We can't outrun him!" Angel whispered, her pulse picking up again.
"Can't you fly us out?!"
"Even if I didn't have a leg down, I couldn't carry both of you!"
"Then we hide! Maybe the trees!" Aoyama suggested.
"I can't climb right now! It'd take too long!"
"There isn't anywhere else to hide!"
Ashido went quiet for a second. "Wait… I think there is!"
Moments later, Wilhelm skidded to a stop in the new clearing. His mouth was twisted into a furious snarl, his breath coming out in heavy puffs. Both of his mechanical eyes buzzed and clicked, the red filter in his vision highlighting the environment around him, leaving nothing hiding in the shadows. Literally nothing, there wasn't anything around him. Not in the bushes or the trees.
Unslinging his shotgun, he stalked forward, head smoothly rotating back and forth trying to find his quarry.
What had started as a little bout of entertainment had quickly devolved into an irritating game of cat and mouse. He knew that he shouldn't play with his food so to speak, but he couldn't help himself. The jobs he normally took were usually after more seasoned combatants. Pro heroes who got on the wrong side of the wrong gangster, or even the gangsters afterwards. Not highschool students. Could he really be blamed for wanting to make things more interesting?
Another point in his defense, this was his employer's asset, the one he had spent the greater part of a decade keeping locked away from the world. It was too much fun to terrorize the girl as she grew up, the way that she would shake at the meer mention of his name, the look of terror on her face when he entered the room. It was exhilarating seeing how he struck fear into someone, ingrained into their soul.
Yeah, he was a sadist, but not near as much as "her".
In any event, he felt that he wasn't to blame that much for what had happened tonight. He didn't think the students would be that much of a threat, making him expect that it'd be a gratuitous slaughter. In his hubris, he had underestimated them, but even then that wasn't saying much. They weren't even that strong, just evasive enough that it was dragging out his hunt. And what did he have to show for it? A damaged drone and half of his face burned off.
'I'm going to gouge that girl's eyes out with her own horns.' He swore.
Turning his head from the treeline, he fixated on the lake. Specifically the tall reeds along the shore.
Perhaps they were holding their breaths under the surface of the lake. It was then he wished Wolf was still functional. His attack drone was outfitted with infra-red and would make finding his quarry a cinch.
Leveling his gun with the water, she slowly crept forward until he was a foot away from the edge and began to wait. If they were in the water, it was only a matter of time that they made a sound or movement surfacing for air.
His targeting system inspected the top of the lake, little ripples being sent by the wind.
There was a flicker in the reeds to the left and his crosshair pinged. With a quick flick of the barrel, he squeezed the trigger, sending a tight spread of buckshot just shy of where the motion originated to flush whatever it was into the open. The night echoed from the blast of the gun and water shot into the air before landing back down, spawning dozens of circular waves.
Everything went silent once more. Chambering the next shell, Wilhelm marched around the side, his weapon trained and unmoving.
There was a small splash and his finger twitched.
A toad hopping out of the water. It turned its beady eyes toward the killer and croaked.
Wilhelm growled, just about to blast the amphibian when his earbud crackled.
"Hey Wilhelm, asshole, you there?" He sneered at the voice, recognizing it belonged to the self important brat with the staples in his face, the one who started the fire.
"Whadda ya want? I'm busy here!"
"We've lost contact with Moonfish. He was fighting one of the priority targets heading along the west path. We need to regroup to cut them off."
Wilhelm grit his teeth, pressing his finger against the bud harder. "Are you fucking with me right now?! I was just chasing three kids, one of them was a fucking priority too!"
"Was? So you lost them?" He questioned in a mocking tone and Wilhelm clicked his tongue. "I don't really care if you want to disappoint Shigaraki, but if he hears that you failed and disobeyed orders, I don't see you getting your paycheck. Get going."
Wilhelm clenched his metal fist. He knew that his secret target was around somewhere, but he couldn't afford to break cover. "Affirmative." He ground out and the line went dead. Giving the lake one last look, he turned and lumbered back into the trees.
The toad croaked again, then hopped away when the three teens emerged from the water, coughing and wheezing. They pulled the hollow reeds they were using for breathing straws out of their mouths.
"I-" Angel hacked up some foul tasting water and wiped it from her eyes. "I cannot believe that worked!"
"I told you!" Ashido laughed, shaking the moisture out of her curly hair. "Who says sci fi films can't teach you anything?"
"Covered in ash, beaten by a villain and covered in dirty lake water. This day is the worst." Aoyama groused, shivering in the cool air.
"So…" Ashido turned to Angel. "...now what?"