"In the beginning, we were nothing but base animals!" Cried the chaplain. He was old - nearly sixteen - and his stilted waddle about the rooftop was proof positive that he had either been really lucky - or really good - to survive that long. Whichever it was, he had clearly survived some harrowing shit.
Which is why all the squabs loved to listen to the jackass talk. There was a certain 'realness' to everything he said. As though any effort to contradict him would require - at bare minimum - for the other party to have experienced just as much or more as the old man.
Jeeves had never had that problem, but at this point in his life, it could probably be argued that he had seen some shit, which annoyed him to no end.
"Even after she came, we were still lesser. We knew enough to know that we did not know! We knew only what was required of us for the mission!" The Chaplain continued. Jeeves cringed and did his best to shield himself from what he knew would happen next.
"For the mission!" The squabs cried out on que.
"I was there at the beginning. All of senior command was there! We faced countless trials! We fought many battles! We toppled Gods using only our talons, our guts, and our fearless drive to achieve The Mission!" The Chaplain cooed, gesticulating wildly with his extended head and neck, and expanding his wings to show the injury on the right one.
The one that ended his career as a flier.
"For the mission!" The squabs cried out, clearly not understanding the suffering, and sacrifice inherent in what they were giving themselves to. Of what they so desperately pined after. They extended their own mostly featherless wings in poor imitations of a true salute, and a wave of mostly yellow wings sprung up, enough to almost block his view of the Chaplain had he not been much larger than all the children present.
These squabs… they couldn't have been more than a couple of days old. Jeeves couldn't help but feel like this just wasn't what they should be doing right now. They should be running around slamming into walls like the annoying pests they were. Not… this.
But well, he supposed that was why he was here in the first place.
"And when we had achieved enough, she blessed us again! We were risen! We were given Knowledge, and Power! We were made her Angels, that we may smite her enemies, and guide her lessers to safety! We were made her Demons, that we may torment her opponents! We. Are!" The Chaplain all but screamed.
In truth, it wasn't like that at all, and most of high command knew that. Sure, Jeeves was as devoted to her as any other good pigeon, but the truth of the matter was, she hadn't given them anything but an opportunity. An avenue to something greater. It was less uplifting and more a quid pro quo. And Jeeves had spent every day of his early career doing his damndest to pay back that uneven bargain. He wasn't ungrateful. He wasn't stupid. But they had taught themselves how to be organized through magazines and television shows, glimpsed through darkened windows. They had an innate knowledge of her words, whenever she spoke to them - but they did not know english. They did not know how to organize, or what to do most of the time at all. Back in his day, they were just crying kids, desperately trying to find meaning and guidance in a world that was suddenly much more scary for their understanding of it.
So yeah, he loved her as much as anyone else. But he didn't think she was an all loving being, or an all knowing one. He did consider their relationship symbiotic. They did stuff for her, and in return they were sheltered in her coop. No predators could approach them here. No human dared attack them. They were fed, healthy, and safe. There were three times as many squabs around as he could remember surviving back… before.
And that, he would fight to protect.
Jeeves got so lost in his own thoughts on the matter that he barely even noticed when Chaplain finished his pontification, nor did he notice when the preacher ushered the squabs away to be cared for by whatever squad was on that duty today.
He did notice when Chaplain shocked him from his reverie by speaking to him.
"So, what can I do for you today Ace?" Chaplain asked him in a seemingly pleasant tone.
"Don't-! Don't call me that. I'm not an Ace anymore." He bit out. Chaplain knew this. Jeeves knew he knew this.
"Of course you are! Why, if you would just return to your god given mission I'm sure-" Chaplain began, so Jeeves cut him off by swatting him in the side of the head with a wing. It wasn't as hard as he could have hit the other man, but he wasn't trying to hurt him. Just shut him up.
"Do not. Call me that." He seethed.
As one might expect from airborn creatures, his kind had been immediately drawn to any kind of media explaining how her kind did battle in the skies. They had very quickly hit upon the fact that flyers who took out enough enemies were dubbed 'Aces'. The greats. The warriors of the skies.
The most prolific murderers their kind had to offer.
He much preferred Jeeves. 'One Who Served Others'. He thought it was much more fitting for what he wanted to do with his life, now that he had finished his service. He still had to run missions of course - they all did - but only the squads saw regular combat. Jeeves much preferred reconnaissance and surveillance to what he was doing before.
Not that Chaplain saw it that way. Not that any of them saw it that way. His superiors, they all saw his behaviour as disgraceful. As though his dislike of the mission - no matter how gruesome - made him a monster somehow. A deviant.
Sometimes, he even thought they might be right.
But if that was the case, then he couldn't be the only one. He had seen things during the Pipe Wars. Let a rage and a fury overtake him that had him leading his team further and further into those dark dank expanses, hunting creatures that shouldn't exist. Things that mocked her form, and tormented her people when they hid in the dark and the wet places.
Jeeves hadn't even realized that he had pushed too far until he was the only one left.
Ironically, he was lauded a hero for that one. Even though he really didn't feel like one.
"As you wish Jeeves." Chaplain replied with a flutter of his wings and slight puffing up. It was the human equivalent of a dismissive eye roll - not that anyone but he really understood that. While everyone else was busy trying to find bigger and better ways to kill each other, Jeeves had been studying. Learning. He understood the nuance of human behaviour and expression better than any other Pigeon.
And he planned to take advantage of that.
"So. What do you want, if not to return to her light?" Chaplain asked grouchily. He never liked being told to shut up - even when he really should.
"I'm putting together a team." Jeeves said immediately, driving straight to the point.
"Of what, cowards?" Chaplain sneered at him.
"No. We're going about this all wrong. You want us to do her bidding? Then we have to help her people - not just smite her enemies, which, by the way, she's perfectly capable of doing on her own." Jeeves insisted.
"Heresy!" Chaplain spat, rearing up to try and and spear him through the heart with a talon. Chaplain was never the best flyer, but get the guy in close combat and he was a monster. Jeeves didn't wait for him to finish the maneuver though. He wrote that manual. Thus, before he could be attack, he flapped his powerful wings, using just a tiny bit of the allotted power he got from the Great Coop, and blowing the preacher away with a gust of wind. Before the other man could get up, he sprinted over to him, not wasting the time required to get airborne - a rookie mistake - and stomped one of his feet over Chaplains neck, not hard enough to kill him, but definitely hard enough to let him know that what he said next would decide if the Dove's were gonna get involved or not.
"Listen, you raised me, so I'll let that go - but you shut up and you listen to me. I'm starting a new wing. I'm gonna find the best of her kind, and I'm gonna nurture them. I'm gonna smooth the way. I'm gonna glide into heaven knowing I left her an army." Jeeves said, his crooning shifting into a pitch he had rarely had occasion to use since losing his squad and refusing command of another.
"So are you in, or are you out?" He finished, stepping away and letting the other Pigeon rise.
And that is how Jeeves got the clout with High Command to even try his crazy idea. And the very next day, his branch was formed.
The Guardian Angels.
In a building not all that far away, Blasto stared blankly at the sewer grate that should have been disgorging his creations into the lab.
Should being the key word, because for a while now, everything he sent into the sewers died. Or at least, he assumed it died. It certainly never came back, which was as good as dead to him. Worse, actually, because it meant there was evidence he was here just laying around in those tunnels.
Frustrated and tired, he pulled the sewer grate in the basement of his building shut, withdrew a cannabis gummy from his pocket, downed it, and set to the task of growing another batch of foragers.
Honestly, things were supposed to be easier in this bloody city!
A/N: Since I know someone will ask, no the Pigeons can't speak english. But they understand it, and can communicate with each other, so consider this as only understandable because it's from Jeeve's perspective.