So, firstly, the change from the canon: In one small bit of the original TMC, Paige encounters a group of witch hunters that proceed to try to ritually execute her due to her possession of Moon's token and her supposedly being a "Rotten One." I worked this into Angeline's obsessions, Paige's importance to Atlas/unexplained healing factor, and Blair's mutters in TMC on her "old friend" to give this as an explanation.

Secondly, this'll be a double chapter day. Y'welcome.

Thanks for your continued reading!

….

Paige had no divine coincidence to save her. She woke up, planning to get breakfast in the meal hall for the first time, and had to face the consequences of her actions.

… She walked into the room. Nobody tackled her. Students were chatting, eating, joking about…

Paige grabbed a small amount of food, and sat down at an empty table, beginning to eat.

"Hello? Team leader?"

A rough voice called out in her direction. Paige ignored it and continued to her seat, despite the proximity.

"Team leader Paige?"

Paige looked up. "What? I'm not in a team with anybody-" she mumbled.

…

koff-koff- ahem…"Blair. What did you DO?" she asked.

Blair leaned over the table she was going to sit at, grinning delightedly. "I had a talk."

They were all sat at a table.

... Everyone.

Paige had her meagre plate of food, Angeline was opposite her, hand held on the table, casually over it in a diagonal dissecting it. Blair was next to her sister, and opposite her was Brandon, who sat there apathetically, his hand resting in Angeline's.

Paige took another bite of food.

… Angeline glared at her.

Paige glanced at her. "What? Cat got your tongue?"

…

…

Angeline stuck her finger into her mouth and rammed it twice.

"Paige. I haete you."

"Don't say that to your leader. She knows what she's doing."

…

Paige took another bite of food.

…

...

Paige mumbled back. "Haf yo tu Angi."

Brandon turned to tap at the side of her plate soundlessly. "… I expected better of you, Paige. Angeline, can you explain why you hate o-"

Angeline smiled, before bashing her face into the table.

She leaned up after five consecutive impacts.

"I haate the fact that you made my sister a heartsick Paigesexual. That's not mofing on, or being ae good person." Angeline said, poking at her tongue occasionally.

Paige choked and looked up. Blair smiled angelically.

"I… do you need my help with anything more important, Blair?"

Blair laughed. "Patience. I'm not going to get in the way of your love. I was just overexcited!"

"…and she had been rather unregulated after her sister left, despite my best efforts." Brandon gestured with a finger.

"-and she's 99% still attractaed to the wife of heir sister." Angeline muttered.

"-and mad at my sister for ruining my plan to meet my crush." Blair said.

"-and you triaed to eat heir."

"I…In an entirely normal way!" she clarified. "Anyways, you're a hypocrite!"

Paige sighed and slumped down to lie on the table. "Girls? This is serious. I'm trying to actually help Blair with her -"

"Don't you dare." Angeline hissed in perfect enunciation.

Paige directly looked at her older sister in law. "-and Angie's going to help."

…

"Probably Brandon too, since he was an engineering freak that just oh so casually made Saw for young madwomen in his basement." Paige added as an addendum.

… This caught their attention. Brandon decided to deliver his say, slowly speaking through his rasping mouth. "Paige. I'm not sure I'd want to evict my sister in law from here. She's a good kid. She deserves some peace in the afterlife."

Paige stared at him for a while. He was looking good for a spirit that really shouldn't have been here.

"Brandon, were you talking to Angeline before I got here?"

He nodded.

"Brandon. One: That isn't the afterlife, it's my own personal dimension/purgatory/mindscape. Two: Blair murdered you, mate. You really think she deserves a good afterlife? Angeline, drop the fist of rage?"

"I'm not letting you kill her. I wanted her to live a long and happy life."

Paige smiled, clasping her hands together. "You both still want that for her? Are you willing to vouch for her?"

Both grimly showed their assent.

"Good to see everyone's in agreement. Let's get cracking, shall we?"

..Paige stood up, and the spirits followed, obvious confusion on their faces. She began to walk along the school halls, and recited her plan, ignoring most other people. "I'm going to be in a lecture in ten minutes or so, so I need all you to prepare your parts you want me to play, since it's pretty hard to get away with this level of work on the second day of teaching without lots of preparation. We most likely have to wait a while until I get enough money for parts-"

Angeline took charge, wrestling with her mouth in a hasty adjustment.

"kkkkkkk-glekkkk-Love. Lovely. Get back. I need to get some clarification."

She approached Paige as the two others left quickly, slinking back until they faded away in the sunlight of a window. Angeline straightened her jaw.

"Paige."

Angeline spoke fast, but not viciously. "What in the world are you trying to do?"

Paige thought of a hardback journal, and spun it in her head.

Angeline watched it rotate, staring like a hawk, until she halted and watched the woman in front of her. "I see you can at least picture Elucidations on Life and Soul."

…

…

Her eyes widened after she heard the words she had just spoken, slowly mouthing the title under her breath.

… Angeline started stuttering and clutching at her head. "Wait…. Stop there…You…Y…"

Angeline just gave up on human coherency and fell apart, revealed flesh glistening as she quietly rasped, "You're brae-brii-nging…. Heir.

…

Heir. Heir baek."

Paige nodded. "You can't really live a long and happy life without a life in the first place, can you?"

Angeline stood still, thinking.

She glanced at Paige, as knitting herself back together-

-as she slowly understood.

…

"You said you needed Brandon for part of it. Machine?"

The reply was instant. "Mannequin using her soul."

Angeline laughed, and Paige cringed back.

"HA."

"That's ridicu-"

…

…

"T…Wait."

… "That… could work. Yes, it completely removes the main alchemical baseline butitalreadyworkswiththepersonalattattacthmentfollowingBaurillardan…..a…a…"

Angeline gaped and looked straight in her face with a smile of joy.

"I…It can WORK."

Paige rolled her eyes. Why wouldn't it work?

"You're not trying to torture me? We are, honestly, going to make her a real girl? Why? What gives you a reason to do this?"

"I don't know if it's going to work in fulfilling the deal she made, or if she's going to be forcibly removed, but I was planning on this working to save her, Angeline."

…

Angeline was still laughing softly. Her over-saturation to insane events appeared to be beginning to give her an immunity, though it dissolved after her mind recognised the words spoken.

"Paige. You never said anything about making a deal with my sister."

… Paige decided to just get the whole thing off her chest. "What's my ability?"

Angeline paused her glaring.

"…You... can commune with the dead."

"I didn't have this ability to interact with you all until way after I met you in person, Angeline. When I got it, I was expecting to meet you, since it only works on what I personally killed, and I only got you. I was assuming Brandon had a low chance to be here somewhere, since I was still attached to him because I use his weapons, but I never found him until he just sat down at the table with you."

… Angeline watched her face for something, and, by the look of dawning horror, must have realised that Paige was being truthful. "I thought you kept her here in the afterlife because you wanted me to be tormented by my failure to bring her happiness."

"Yeeeah… no. If you somehow missed it, that place isn't your heaven/hell afterlife. It's my ability. You see, after I got this ability, I lost the passive support of my previous supernatural support goddess."

The two women stood there. One stared in shock, the other quietly embarrassed at her... colleague's behaviour.

… "Your… what?"

Paige grimaced and gave her the low down on the Maiden. "I had a minor goddess appearing every so often forcing me to save people."

…

…

"Goddess?" Angeline whispered.

"Yeah. Long story. You feature prominently as the main object of murder."

Angeline stared in disbelief. "I…. was what?"

"Angeline… you were there for most of it. Stop being so unsettled. It already passed."

She shivered, horror struck and shaking.

"She, the goddess I had with me, came back yesterday since her goal to "save everyone" appears to include your sister, despite her already being good enough. Blair... seems to just have been told to keep being a good person."

Paige thought about that for a few seconds. "Actually, that's not too difficult at all. She's most likely going to be fine."

Angeline snapped away from her horror. "What do you mean by 'good enough already.' Paige?"

"The afterlife. Her version of it, I mean. The good one with the gates of white. She held my hand all the way there."

"You're saying my sister… did it." Angeline whispered.

"Ayup."

"She did it, against everything I caused that screwed her over and got right into the afterlife. Then… then a completely separate deity decided to rip her out of it? …What kind of deals does this bitch even make?"

…

… Paige looked away.

…

…

"Mephistopheles." Angeline grimly muttered.

"Not that bad. She's just an idealist that never listens to 'No', unless she feels like it."

"Explain, Paige. How is that different than inevitable destruction of the soul?"

"Well… her deal was the reason I met all of you in the first place. "Save Everyone" was the specific thing. Then she fucked off to wherever she came from and didn't come back in any real communicable form until my daughter turned 13."

…

…

…

Angeline spoke, calmly, with a long blade of steel under her tone. "No… I came back when your daughter turned thirteen."

…

…

…

Paige slowly raised her eyebrows.

"Angeline. I was peacefully raising my daughter when you came back."

Angeline clutched her face and groaned. "What the hell does that have to-

-No."

She tore at her face and stared at the floor, "I returned after you stopped saving people, right?"

Paige nodded.

"God damn it. My sister's made a deal with a god with a savior complex. Paige. How in hell am I going to be able to convince her to work with me again if she has to complete this deal to get saved by you first? The fact that she was deemed good enough by Him didn't count? How can she… The last time I tried this… you came in and everything went horribly! What would ever convince her to come back and do it all a second time?"

Paige thought about it for a second.

…

…

"Tell her that if she does this, she can talk to Faunus?"

…

"Who? You… don't mean the god, right? This is a person?"

"According to Blair…they're a gift from a loving god up above, so graceful they make angels cry, absolutely beautiful… Trust me. It'll work. If you thought she loved me, I got nothing on them."

…Angeline turned to leave as Paige checked the time. "Really? How are we sure it won't fail?"

"Angeline. I think we just have to let her actually make her own decisions and live, you know what I mean?"

…

Angeline steeled herself, and nodded once.

"Good. I'll see you after class, Mrs Hardy."

"Woods. I hope you're right." she whispered, a mere breath of sound that faded in a moment.

Paige turned away, and so Angeline Hardy returned to the void once again.

….

… She was walking quite fast, so she arrived with four minutes or so to spare. As she reached the door, she smiled faintly.

"I heard that, you know. If you want to talk to someone, you can just do it in here on off hours, Mrs Woods."

Paige went in, and greeted her associate. Port called her down to his desk, and she took a glance at his papers for the day's lecture.

"Okay, okay, will do.

…

What's this? Leviathan?"

"What? You don't want to hear the tale of the young team with the 49 identical boats?"

"I find it amazing that you think anyone wouldn't."

Port thought for a second. "It is a rather good story. Would you mind doing the scribing as I give the lecture?

She blinked, and was at the board in a moment. "Scribing chalk prepared, Sir!"

They chuckled at their humour, and faced the students starting to trickle in early.

It was a new day, and Paige was ready.

….