Dreams of Angels, and the Falling Thereof

Remission 1.5

Smoke billowed above the buildings, reaching up like a black tower on the horizon. I raised my hand to block out the sun, and leaned forward to whisper to Bebop, who was in the passenger seat.

"I should feel vindicated, and yet, I just feel sick. You people fucked everything up."

Bebop gave me a sympathetic look. She was in the process of tying her hair into a far more practical bun, fingers moving with practiced speed and precision. In the time since I had fallen asleep, she'd changed into an ostentatious sequin red dress, which fell just barely to her ankles. A slit in the fabric up the side of her left leg, meant to luridly expose just a hint of skin, offered instead only the heavy combat padding beneath. Her mask was just as elegant as the dress, glittering gold and white, and covering the top half of her face. That left her lips exposed, and I could, as a result, see her frown after a second. She opened her lips, as though to speak, just as the truck passed over a bump. The five of us, shoved haphazardly into the vehicle's well-worn cabin, were thoroughly jostled in the aftermath. My head slammed into the shoulder of Proletariat, who had grumpily consented to stuffing herself between Naamah and me. I winced in pain, but said nothing. Within the truck, the smell of gasoline and tar was so overpowering that I had resorted to breathing through my mouth, rather than my nose, lest I be brought to tears by the stinging quality of the air. The smell was getting stronger the closer we got to the column of smoke.

"I'm sure Artemis and Mantra have things contained. Your aunt will be fine." Bebop's voice was quiet, reassuring. I didn't believe her, couldn't believe her.

Once her hair was tied, Bebop held out a hand, and I quickly returned the shining brass trumpet she had told me to carry as we left the building back to her. I hadn't the faintest clue what it was for, but a safe assumption with Masks like this was that the instrument amplified or allowed her to express her power, somehow.

Wrestling with my frustration for just a moment too long, a response eventually came to me. I gestured a hand wildly at the tower of smoke in the distance. "Does that really look contained to you?"

"The fact that the whole town isn't already on fire is pretty contained, as far as those two are concerned. Wouldn't be surprised if it was all ashes by the end of the day" Proletariat snorted beside me. She had traded in her tank top for an outfit composed mostly of leather, from the jacket, to the thick pants that you usually saw safety-conscious motorcyclists wearing, to the heavy boots. Miniature chains dangled from the pockets and belt of the outfit, and her mask was a snarling iron visage complete with upwards-jutting teeth, like a poor recreation of a samurai's mask. It covered the lower half of her face, and gave her speech enough of a hollow echo to disguise it without making her incomprehensible. Her eyes had been ringed with a sloppy pastiche of black make-up, to break up the contours and make her less recognizable.

"Proletariat, this is not the time for that," Cilia chimed in, not taking her eyes off the road. She was in the driver's seat, weaving us between alleys and side-roads, keeping us off of the main road where a cop car would whiz by on occasion. She had kept the suit on, with the mask, though I somehow doubted this was part of her normal costume.

Squeezed between Naamah and me, Proletariat just snorted. She shut her eyes, and sunk back into the leather seat. Naamah remained still, her eyes fixed on something out the window.

"Bebop, hon, why don't you walk us through everything we know again, for Bayonet's benefit," Cilia said, in a tone altogether too condescending for my liking. I wanted to interject that I needed no such thing, but that wouldn't have been the truth. Unlike my kidnappers, I was going into this situation practically blind, which was a recipe for disaster when it came to both Masks and Angels. Regardless, I knew I would have gone to fight the thing whether or not I knew about it. After all, I would have done anything to keep Hilda safe, but this...