Thea was standing outside in the rain. The Demon seemed to be crying. Of course, Angelina knew better than to be swayed by such things. There was no chance that the Demon was genuinely sad. Thea was alone. Well, not quite alone. Several Echoes were with her. The dog-like one. E1-Friend, was it? That bird. The stupid bull. That swarm of locusts. Angelina didn’t really know their names. She didn’t need to.

“You should learn them,” said Libellula. The little dragonfly that was her symbiote rested patiently on her nape. “Be more like Nep.”

“I don’t need to be like Nep.” It was Nep’s job to know. It was Angelina’s job to kill demons. Nothing more; nothing less. Her wings ground to a halt. She landed before the Demon, all four blades drawn, held in four black-plated hands. The Demon was cornered against a wooden fence. Perfect. “Hello, Thea.”

Thea acted surprised, wiping a tear from her eye. “Hey... Angelina, right? I don’t believe we’ve officially met.”

Angelina ignored her. One stab. The two-pronged blade caught the Demon’s wrist, slicing through flesh and locking her hand in place against the wood. “Nice to meet you,” Angelina said.

“H-hold on, there. Aren’t you being a bit hasty? I haven’t even done anything yet. I’m... I’m going through some stuff. Just...” Thea’s body morphed, becoming younger and younger. “You wouldn’t hurt a child, would you?”

“Try me.” Stab number two caught her other wrist, dragging it out as far as her body would allow her to before sticking it into the wall, high enough to leave the Demon hanging painfully, held up by her arms. “Well?”

“Well,” she gasped. “You’re torturing a little girl.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. Angelina had seen it all before, and had no desire to see it again. “You’re such a cruel, cruel woman. I don’t even want to fight.” The Echoes around the Demon seemed agitated. E1-Friend growled at her, readying to pounce. Surely it would have already, if Thea wanted it to. The Demon was playing with her.

“Drop the act, Demon. Fight me.”

“I don’t want to fight Angels,” she repeated. With each breath, Thea felt tightness building in her chest. And it wasn’t all in her head either. “But I’ve got nothing left to lose now. If you fight me... it’ll be your last. We have purposes... and yours is not to stop me.”

“I try not to think too hard about that stuff. It sounds great on paper, but I think I can kill you just fine.” The third stab slipped through Thea’s ribcage on the left side. Angelina meant to impale the heart and tear it out. But instead, her blade slid out effortlessly, dripping with blood but missing its prize.

“Oopsies,” said Thea. “No heart.” She smirked. “Not there, at least, anyways.”

“You’re really not going to do anything?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Angelina dear. You’ve had ample opportunity to kill me, all helpless like this.” She swung her legs again in the air. “You want me to fight you.” Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen you, you know. You live for the hunt. The truth is, you absolutely love killing us. You love the challenge of dismantling our defenses, of watching us beg for mercy. But I won’t give you that satisfaction.”

This Demon was getting annoying. The words stung. “You’re wrong,” said Angelina. “I simply am obtaining information before I kill you.” But this wasn’t getting anywhere. It was time to proceed with the killing blow, then. No games. Angelina pondered for a second whether the Demon would actually allow her to. But only a second, because she already knew what the answer was.

No.

Thea kicked Angelina’s arm, knocking the blade into the air and catching it in her mouth, crunching the material between her teeth and swallowing the pieces. She pulled her hands out from under the two-pronged daggers, knocking the weapons onto the pavement. Thea blew on her wrists, blowing on her wounds. They stung like crazy, but she didn’t mind. She looked into the sky. It was about time, right?

Angelina hopped back, steadying and drawing blades anew from her hands. “Let’s go, Demon.”

Thea frowned. “You’ve forced my hand, Angelina. I’m sorry.”

E-1 Friend lunged, mouth unwrapping to reveal the three snarling heads inside, swivelling to snap at her. With a quick slash, Angelina sliced off one of the inner heads, which quickly reformed from the sickly black fluid within.

The bull thrashed about. In the tight alley, there was little room to manoeuvre around it, much less surrounded by Thea’s other echoes. But Angelina managed just fine, avoiding the brunt of its momentum and redirecting it into the wall.

And of course, the bird on Thea’s shoulder continued to sing, its shrill song like a nail through Angelina’s skull. “Will that stupid bird shut up?” She threw daggers at it, but kept evading them. She briefly considered taking flight, but the alley was too narrow to allow takeoff. “You know, Libellula, I’d really appreciate it if you could rejig these wings to fold back.” E1-Friend snapped at one of her wings, a little too far away to reach with these arms.

“No can do. It’s part of my biology. What do you think I am, a damselfly?”

“I wish you were. I’m gonna cut them.” She lined up the blades beneath her wings and dragging them upward, tearing the membrane. Clear hemolymph oozed out from the veins, but she grit her teeth and powered through. The four wings floated to the ground.

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“You know, those aren’t easy to grow.”

“Yeah I know. I’m the one growing them.” With newfound agility, she weaved between the bull, dog, and bird, landing several clean strikes that rend the oily black flesh and released the luminous scarlet ichor inside.

Thea watched. Though Angelina was focusing her attacks on her Echoes, between each motion the Angel was eyeing her. Waiting for an opportunity, even after seeing the Demon in action. Even after guessing who Thea was. Though she had denied it, it was obvious that this Angel really enjoyed fighting. She smiled every time the Echoes pressed their attack, laughing when her two-pronged daggers slashed at their skin, constantly muttering to what Thea assumed was her symbiote companion. She thought it was a game. And perhaps it was. A game that Thea couldn’t lose.

A lunge. Angelina’s blade stopped moments from Thea’s face. Her arm was just a little short, with the Echo nipping at her feet. How cute. But the look on Angelina’s eyes was changing from one of elation to frustration. She lashed out more and more violently at her assailants, finally striking true on the bull. With four blades stuck into the poor creature, E1-Taurus found itself torn apart piece by piece and returned to inanimate form, the copious amounts of ichor painting the Angel’s bronze-gold and black carapace with red.

Perhaps this Angel was going to be a bad influence on Quinn.

Angelina focused next on E1-Friend, summoning blades and jamming them into all its mouths before grabbing them all at once and pulling the Echo inside-out. The shattered remains broke into smaller pieces against the asphalt, bits of obsidian and basalt ground into dust underfoot.

The Angel turned now to Thea. The Angel was the exact sort of person Thea didn’t want Quinn to become. Bathed in the blood of Echoes, staring at her with nothing but quiet disdain. Not even rage. Just the promise of certain death. But now, knowing what Ecto had said... what was the point even? For Quinn? It was all inevitable, then. There was no other path, no easy way out. Only blood. The locusts around her began to multiply. E1-Host, preparing to defend their commander.

Angelina stepped forward, and the host of Echoes flew forward, a wall of bodies forming a solid and adaptive barrier around the Angel’s body, preventing any meaningful attack. If any individual bodies were cut or crushed by the motions, dozens more were there to take their place. The endless sea of Echoes.

“You see? It’s pointless,” said Thea. “I don’t know why you wanted to fight.”

“Just let me—”

“I can’t.” Thea pushed the Angel further away from her, letting the swarm of Echoes fly back around her. “You know, you’re a very bloody Angel. You’ve killed so, so many Demons.”

“Fine, you’ve won. Now I’ll be back.” Angelina looked around, taking deep breaths. Thea was blocking the way out of the alley. The rain had stopped. It was... snowing?

Thea also looked around. “Ah, seems like Ecto’s done. Anyways, I should probably end this properly.“

A locust latched onto Angelina’s foot. Then another. The swarm ballooned in size, completely smothering her. Heavy. So heavy. They weighed her down, pressing her against the now-frozen pavement. “Hey, hey, I thought you didn’t want to fight?” The cold was getting to her, too. Muscles were locking up, the carapace growing rigid, hampering her ability to fight back.

“I mean, what’s the point though? If we can’t give you paradise, we can only bring suffering. Why do I even try to be nice? I should just... give in.”

“What?”

The light disappeared from Thea’s eyes, and her voice dropped an octave. “Yes, dear Echo. Why yes. You can have a little snack. A delicious, angelic snack.”

The Echoes began to bite at Angelina, rocky mandibles scraping against the outer shell. Their weight was far too much to push off. So it had come to this. “Sorry, Libellula. Guess I underestimated her.”

“You did well. We didn’t realize who she was until it was too late.”

“If I don’t make it...”

“Don’t be dramatic. You’ll make it.”

Through her shell, she felt the gnawing of countless mandibles against her carapace, slowly wearing through the tough exterior. “Ugh. I wanted to tell her that she really is destined to save the world. Before something like this happened.”

“Nep wouldn’t let you tell her that, anyways.”

“Yeah, and now someone else is going to.” The Echoes’ nibbling broke through the carapace at her joints, reaching the pneumatic muscles within. One by one, she felt the fibres snapping. “This is going to take a long time to regenerate, isn’t it?”

“I’ll take your Anchor and bring you back to Sanctuary 73. It shouldn’t take more than... three or four months.”

“Months? I’ve been eating well. I thought it might be faster than that.” The muscles in her arms and legs were useless now. The locusts were swarming about the tender, exposed areas now, hollowing out the carapace and tearing her up from the inside. “Y’know, Libellula, I love this body, but you really gotta consider the threshold for consciousness. Can’t you set it a little higher so I don’t have to deal with stuff like this. It hurts like crazy.”

“You’ll lose consciousness soon enough.”

“See you in a few months, then.” The creatures were making their way up the central nervous system, now. She could feel them crawling up along her ventral cord towards her brain, snipping apart the tender neurons one by one.

“See you.”

Angelina closed her eyes and waited for the darkness to overtake her.

And Thea remained standing in the cold, watching the little dragonfly make its way back to Sanctuary 73, holding its precious cargo. Her first ‘kill’, so to speak. But she knew it wouldn’t be her last. Not anymore. And how was she going to explain this to Quinn?