Something feels strange. Which is nothing Niki should be all too surprised about, since she has never before gotten her brains blown in and then grown back again, but it still feels like there's something wrong. But there's no time to think about that, because her handler is dying, and she has to muster up the sorrow and pity to keep the waterworks flowing, twinkling droplets transubstantiating into flesh and blood, divinity dissolving into and nourishing the real. The wounds close, but they stay transparent, made out of tears, as does the blood. 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry... ... (And for some reason the crying feels wrong, and that makes her want to cry all the more.)

 Angelic assets, when they're any good at it at all, tend to be very good at crying.

After an interminable time she wakes to find the asset standing over her. Something is Wrong here. She's not sure what, yet. She lets her eyes fall shut again for them moment, exhausted. "Report," she demands, somewhat feebly.

Oh thank the heavens and the Lord and the Prophets and the Light-

Bravo-Three takes a deep, shuddering breath, and wipes at her face, nodding firmly, moving to kneel closer to her handler. It's a bit strange to deliver a report in comforting tones over an anemic superior, but it'll have to do.

"Target-, target lost. Unit was not fit to pursue and instead chose to deliver first aid. I don't know how long it's been. Less- less than an hour. Are you o-" she gulps- "Support should be arriving soon, and. And I have brain damage. I think."

"Do you think you can pursue now?” she asks, absently. There's a twinkling of light in dust that's strangely distracting. Everything feels so dreamlike...

Niki considers that for a second. Is she in fighting fitness? She tries to count verses of Genesis in her head a few times. She goes through half of it in a few seconds, and then tries to count the fingers on her hand. Six or seven. ...That's not right. Eight? No, that's not right either...

"...Not confident, ma'am."

The asset's voice is oddly hollow - what do they mean by brain damage, exactly? She squints. Is their face the right shape?

"We should return to base. It's more important that we get out of here before that thing comes back then pursuing and possibly spending an irreplaceable asset."

Irreplaceable. That makes her feel tingly, but not necessarily in a good way. One side of her mouth quirks up. Her eyes aren't glowing anymore, but there's a tinge in them like a dying ember. It's different. Alive.

"Can- can you move? Ma'am?"

"I can probably stumble. Help me up." It's phrased as an order, but there's the hint of a question, a request. The world feels a little scrambled right now.

She complies, nice and careful, crawling under her handler's shoulder, human crutch. Hopefully blood pressure isn't too much trouble.

Everything is great now! She feels so light!

She sags and passes out seconds later.

Oh no. It turns out angel tears aren't very good at restoring blood volume once the wounds close. There's another trick for that one, and it's not as pretty.

There's no need for a knife or needle. The operation is simple, and an angel's teeth are sharp enough for it. Bite the index finger and offer what flows from it to the patient.

(The blood shines in the dark because it reflects the Light.)

"Sharp teeth! Why do you even need those if you don't eat..."

To hold things in her mouth. To savor them.

"...To help. Please open your mouth."

"You're really weird." She complies though, shutting her eyes.

She does feel a bit weird. There's something tingling that isn't like when she did it in the trainings, or... or before.

It might feel nice, actually. She isn't sure. The blood flows just the same.

Wine has never been so fine, savory and decadent. It makes one crave a bit of bread, too.

It tastes like saffron and woodsmoke and leaves her giddy, the sound of a choir ringing in some sense beyond hearing. There's a bit more color in her cheeks now.

This is usually a little bit more... sober. She feels an odd urge to put her whole finger inside Electra's mouth and suppresses it. Must be the brain damage.

It's holy to share. Don't you want to contribute to a feast? Part with yours and savor-

There's a loud bang and a blinding flash of holy light, an instant of deafening choir and Light that hurts Niki more than it should have, but there's no time to think. Two guardian angels appear at the threshold of the stairs, sans operators, baring their wings, kinetic and coruscant, pointing beams of light around the room. Shock and awe, textbook room clearance. After clearing out each corner of the room, one of the angels approaches the pair.

"Status!"

It's directed at the handler.

They say that in times of crisis, you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to the level of your training. Luckily, her training is very good. She does have a finger in her mouth though, and it takes her a second to back up enough to respond.

"Mission unsuccessful. Target escaped with the aid of an unknown third party. Asset is damaged, requesting assistance returning to infirmary."

The angel turns to Niki, pity on its lips. "Damaged how? Did it spill too much blood? Is it critical?"

She looks down at the ground.

"They didn't teach me much angel anatomy, but I imagine that having one's head blown open is bad."

The angel grasps Niki's skull and inspects it, which she yields to. Some blood staining the back of her head, mixed up with something disconcerting. Turn, turn, turn, until they look into her eyes.

She smiles slightly. An angel's body belongs to another; there's no need for a boundary between self and other, not between the siblings of the light.

But the angel frowns.

"Something's wrong. Let go of her."

She doesn't let go right away. Something's wrong on her end, too, like reaching for the hand of a parent and being slapped away. To her, that's dreamlike. Impossible.

"What- what do you-"

She steps between the angels and her asset. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

The two angels form an L around them, standard procedure to control a subject for capture. They're still for a moment, as if waiting for something--likely radio guidance.

The closer one grasps Electra and pulls-

"No!"

Niki goes coruscant and bathes the basement in light, something fiery, orange, not quite golden. She pulls Electra behind her and spreads her wings.

Mine.

As she's yanked from the guardian's grasp, her shoulder wrenches. She scrabbles at her sleeve, desperately trying to unbuckle the sheath it's holding onto. It detaches with a clatter against too-hard hands, and she tumbles backwards. Niki's fingers have definitely left bruises on her arm. She closes her eyes and prays, hoping that one of the guardians back at base has an answer here.

Angels rarely fight. The Fallen sometimes bicker and lash out at one another, but a conflict between one who has fallen and one who has not happens a few times a century, and conflict between two who have not is a thing of legend. Occasionally two of a lower order will come to a theological dispute, say something rash, and fall to tears--the inclination towards the Fallen is not too different, and it is a pain many of them will gladly avoid causing. The attention of a still holy one towards them, too, can feel agonizing.

(Please look at me. Please come back. We still love you. Even if you can't ever be one of us again, it's okay...)

All this ignores the sparring the AetherOps program forces them through, of course. They need to be ready to push through that feeling.

They look at each other for a moment, at odds. Niki radiates wrongness, something deeply discomforting that they can't quite make sense of. Something dangerous, but not infernal, not the nothing that comes back from a fallen angel. Even wronger, in a more indirect way, is the feeling of using force against another angel--it's deeply embarassing, the kind of thing that would lead to an extended bout of mutual apologies between almost any two angels. But Niki is breathing hard, quiet.

They circle each other, almost theatrical, wings twitching and raising and lowering slightly, fully spread out, Niki taking several steps back not to let the two surround her, pushing her ward back.

"I don't understand," one says, strained, quiet, "but you should submit while there's still a chance. We'll grant you shelter." 'In a science cell' is left unsaid. It comes closer, wary, pushing through the discomfort to extend a hand and touch her wing-

They feel just as wrong to her, now. The new light fills her neurotransmitters with hunger, making her of the new flesh, but the old flesh resists. It will be a while before she understands. What the new light offers her now is the will to indulge-

Niki backhands the other angel across the face with enough power to crack cement, wild, rash, wide-eyed. She looks between her hand and the face of the angel now bracing itself on the floor, bloody. For a moment, neither seem to know what to do or say; what do you do when a loved one strikes out at you? When your wills are, with finality, at odds?

Their handlers say "neutralize". Both the angels reveal their light and try to grab at her, hoping her exceptional state means weakness and she can be captured.

It does not, and she was always stronger. 

Angels don't "rise through the ranks"; they are created for the role they're meant to fill and occupy it for all time. Some come to learn one skill or another, by chance, but they are created knowing everything they must know, and there is not much opportunity for personal growth in heaven. Some guardian angels are healers and attendants, agents of exorcism, of personal growth, stewards of good judgement. All can fight off demonic influence, of course. But some are warriors.

And Niki was raised with the Retribution in her, and the disposition towards a duty to protect; a dutiful love meant for one. It feels different now. It feels bursting and hungry, needful. And easier to get lost within.

She feels really alive for the first time in years. Uncertain, anxious, but alive.

The protocol for fighting another angel is to fight like a human. Fists, elbows, knees, and knives, grappling and breaking limbs. Some take to it better than others. She deflects a grab from one and punches it again, both tentative, now, because it feels so surreal, and when the other tries to overwhelm her while she keeps the other away she pulls out her knife and stabs it in the midsection-

It's ugly. It devolves into a flailing, screaming mess on the ground in seconds, and the wings don't make it any better. Punching, slashing, stabbing, grabbing at wings and twisting them, biting--it ends up being a fight only the most wicked of them can win.

Niki kneels on top of a dead angel, knife sticking into its chin, with another bleeding out hanging off her back. One of her wings is completely broken, twisted to the side and with golden ligaments and bone jutting out, and the other is bent at the middle. The one on her back isn't nearly as lucky, the whole thing ripped out and laying a few feet away from them. It hurts.

And she's so, so hungry.

She's tactically crouching behind the asset - Niki, she corrects, her asset-ness appears to be in question right now. It would be called cowering if she was a civilian, which she's not, so it's tactical crouching. "Niki, hon, you gotta stop this, we'll figure something out, just, stop, please…"

Something is terribly, terribly wrong here. Her eyes flit over the angel's heaving, panting form. Sweat and other fluids drip from her form, droplets falling like crystal tears of some great divinity. She ended them like they were paper dolls.

Stop. Stop what? It's over. She protected her own. That's all there is to it. Bathe in the afterglow-

Niki's light fades to nothing and she lets out a sob, hair mercifully falling over her face to shield her eyes from what she's done.

"I'm sorry. They were- they were going to take you, I'm sorry."

She's not sure what to say to that, so she steps closer, and when Niki fails to eviscerate her, wraps her arms around the stricken angel. "Come on. We have to get out of here." She wipes a tear from her asset's face, letting it trickle onto the shredded wing. "Anything identifying to you specifically here, or do you think forensics could be misled into believing that this was the target?"

She leans awkwardly against the hug. Her hair swishes and she can see her brethren's dead eyes again for a second. A full-body clench and a throaty, agonized sob. This isn't happening. And her handler isn't asking her anything to do with covering up a crime. She should listen and follow orders and everything will be okay.

"The, it's- the punching and the stabbing, with my knife, and- and they knew there was something wrong with me, and my blood everywhere, I don't- I don't think that would be a good idea."

The angel on the ground beside them makes a gurgling noise, twitches, and stops moving. 

OK, no more panicking, only one of them is allowed to panic at a time. "Hush, you. Pull yourself together or we're both getting terminated." She thinks for a moment.

"Two orders of business: One, do you think you can hide whatever's wrong with you long enough that we can fix it? Or is that not an option anymore? And two, can you raze this room hard enough that there's no trace left behind?"

Niki polls her brain damage for a second. She's still very hungry, which is weird, and probably misdirected grief or something. The grief is also there though. But the hunger feels like it's getting worse, and everything about this situation is starting to feel weirder and more distant by the second. She takes a deep breath, and... swallows a mouthful of air, which makes her feel a little better. Satiating. Tastes like glory.

"...I- I think it might be getting worse. And they knew. Before I... made the light. They knew something was wrong. I don't know. I wouldn't bet on it."

She puts off thinking about the second question until she has to answer it, so it takes her a moment more.

"...Very little trace."

"Niki, I need you to answer carefully for me, okay? Do you think that you're going to get better with enough time, or…" She trails off, making a sort of ambiguous hand gesture that conveys very little. Niki probably knows what she means, though.

It hurts to think about that. It hurts so bad. But she closes her eyes and thinks about it with all her brain damage. She wants to say 'I hope so' or 'I don't know', but that isn't the answer in her heart, which feels closer than ever, pressing out of her eyes and ears and mouth, thrumming. Or maybe that's also the brain damage.

She manages a tone something vaguely like 'professional' through a strained sob: "I haven't noticed anything that might suggest I'll get better on my own."

"Let's get moving, then. We're going to get you some help, but we've got to outrun HQ - get yourself healed up, then burn the room." She reaches out a hand, offering a boost.

She jerks her head in a nod and takes Electra's hand.

She could still crush it, even now. Just a small bit of leverage. But it's nice. A little soft. It means something. She looks at it instead of the corpses.

She wants to look at them for a little longer, but she has something to do. Her hand slips away and clenches a bit, crushing air with strength that could bend steel. It feels nice, pulsing into her arm.

"I'll need some space."

She's honestly pretty happy to step away. That vulnerability wasn't easy for her. "Meet me outside, then."

"Okay. Be careful. Their handlers might be nearby."

She looks up, hands raised slightly, palms facing down. Over... them. There's no need to think too hard about that. Breathe.