After breakfast was just leisure time since classes start tomorrow. Goddard and Paxton were waiting in their room, passing the time discussing riddles and the like, when their door suddenly opened.

   Standing in the otherworldly doorway was the angel boy Alciel. He seemed annoyed about something, and the brothers briefly wondered if something had happened to push their plans forward.

   "Your sister says 'Hello'," Alciel stated, a breif flash of anger disappearing in his monotone.

   "What did she do this time?" Goddard wearily asked, warming an expression of benign disapproval.

   "She tried to steal some of our robes."

   "What would she want with Star Student robes?" Paxton questioned.

   "Probably easier to get around without suspicion," Goddard stated, "less questions from the teachers. Where is she now?"

   "She's being held for questioning," Alciel answered.

   "What?" Goddard asked through grit teeth.

   "We needed to make sure she wasn't a demon," Alciel said, "and considering the company you keep," he nodded to Mini, "we couldn't rule it out."

   "Where is she?" Goddard demanded with clenched fists.

   "She's in an isolation chamber, being questioned."

   "WHERE."

   Goddard's unflinching demand gave Alciel a small shock.

   "I-I can take you to her," Alciel offered.

   "Do it."

Paxton kept a steady eye on Alciel, giving the impression that he was 100% on board with this. In reality, Paxton was giving his brother a sideways glance as to why he would antagonize their greatest asset in the future demon war. He understood the importance of Christina and her part as the Sin of Greed, but wasn't getting the angels on their side a little bit more important?

   Alciel took the peeved Goddard and wary Paxton through the school, delving deeper until both of the brothers were certain they were lost. The trio arrived at a blank wall that Alciel placed a hand on. It moved away like all the other doors, revealing a wide area with dozens of star students bustling back and forth. They were working on machines that looked like floating solar system projects from an amatuer project at a science fair.

   "I don't see her," remarked a surly Goddard.

  Without a word, a random star student approached the brothers and handed them a pair of glasses with green tinted lenses. Paxton looked at the glasses in some confusion, then shared a glance with Goddard.

   "Put them on," Alciel told them.

   Paxton slipped the glasses over his ears, then drew back as the entire room suddenly overflowed with lights. There was a screen on the wall that was playing a live feed of the entire school, taking an almost impossible number of cameras into account. The solar system control panels suddenly came to life with buttons and pads being deftly worked by the angels.

   "What the hellion?" Goddard swore, a sentiment shared by his brother.

   "Filtered light," Alciel explained, "it keeps the humans from truly learning about how to work our equipment. The ultimate way to keep a secret, is to make sure you are the only one who can see it."

   Goddard removed the glasses and saw the same mostly empty room with start students who were just messing around. Putting the glasses back on, he saw displays, controls, and machines that couldn't have possibly worked in real life.

   "This is amazing," Paxton admired, following Goddard's experiment. "You said it was filtering light?"

   Goddard ignored everyone and approached the screen with the hundred views and started analyzing them. There were windows showing the outside forest, some showed the grounds of the academy, and some revealed rooms he had never seen before.

   "What is this?" he demanded.

   "That's the watcher's post," Alciel explained, "we have post visions everywhere to feed a live visual around the embassy."

   "So this is all live?" Goddard asked, confused.

   "Yes, why?"

   Goddard pointed to a window near the top right where two of the children were vapidly kissing. They were pushing at each other like they were trying to become a single entity.

   "Oh my god!" Paxton exclaimed.

   "Yeah, that happens quite frequently," Alciel explained, watching with a slight sneer of disgust. "Human hormones go nuts and fluctuate like mountains and valleys until-"

   "That's Barrot and Liz!" Goddard exclaimed.

   Barrot and Liz sloppily made out, going at each other like pure animals.

   "Did that ever happen in your world?" Paxton asked.

   "NO!" screeched Goddard, clearly distressed by this revelation. "They're siblings!"

   "I thought they weren't related?"

   "Their half-siblings!"

   "Half?" Alciel questioned.

   "Same father, different mothers," Goddard told his bemused compatriots.

   "Do they know that?" Paxton asked in defense of the mutually loving siblings.

   "No, but that doesn't make it any better!" Goddard practically screamed.

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   "Where's Christina?" Paxton asked, returning the whole group back to the topic at hand.

   "Over here," Alciel pointed, leading the boys as Paxton dragged his brother away from the shocking scene.

   They arrived at another flat wall which was revealed by a glowing border through the glasses. There was also a title over the door, but it wasn't in a recognizable language.

   "So that's how you know," Paxton said, flipping the glasses once more to see the difference.

   They entered the room, except for Goddard, who was paralyzed by shock just outside the door.

   Christina sat in the middle on a chair that rose up from the ground. Her hair was mess, missing in some places with silver streaks that had never been there before. Blood flowed steadily from her mouth and ears, with her eyes seemingly lost in a void. She looked straight through Goddard, her face wrecked with wrinkles as though she had been aged by fifty years.

   "What did you do to her?" Paxton asked, going to Christina's side and placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

   "Forced telepathy," Alciel answered. "We were trying to extract information from her directly, but her mind was resisting. We had to use force, which caused the-"

   Alciel suddenly flew into the back of the room after a punch from Goddard landed squarely on his jaw. The angel hit the wall hard, stunned from the impact as Goddard assaulted his greatest ally with a barrage of berserk hits. The boy's magic was on high, pulling out every bit of strength and speed he could.

   He was trying to kill Alciel.

   Paxton was also stunned by the sudden shift, but he got out of his shock after the fifteenth time his brother socked the angel in the face.

   "YOU BASTARD!" screamed Goddard as Paxton quickly sorrounded his brother and put him in a restrianing lock. "YOU MONSTER! I'M GONNA KILL YOU! I'M GONNA SHOVE MY FOOT UP YOUR ASS AND FEED YOU TO DOGS LIKE A SPIT!"

   Goddard struggled against his brother, who wished he had gone for a choke hold to stop the swearing.

   Other angels entered the room, amazed to see Alciel pressed against the wall with a single scuff on his cheek. Some of them got their hands on Goddard, forcing him down enough that Paxton could release his brother without fear.

   Goddard continued to scream and curse through the angels, who dragged him out of the room.

   "Don't torture him!" Paxton yelled after the angels, unaware if they even heard him as Goddard was dragged out of sight.

   "Why would your brother do that?" Alciel asked, feeling his barely damaged face.

   "He loves her," Paxton mentioned, gesturing to the half-alive girl in the chair.

   "Oh," Alciel stated, understanding his error.

   "Can you undo what you've done to her?" Paxton asked, closely inspecting the theif.

   "It will take some time," Alciel said. "Forced telepathy is not a pleasant experience, and selective memory deletion is a very delicate process, but it can be done.

   "I mean heal her," Paxton told the angel.

   "The way she looks? Yeah, that's no issue. You'd be suprised how drastically the body can change by altering the mind."

   "That's good," Paxton said with a soft voice, "because if you couldn't...."

   Alciel noticed the trailing voice, so he looked up to meet the boy's gaze.

   What he saw was an abyss that drowned him for a moment. The angel suddenly felt cold as he was trapped in an endless void that drained the color from all things and swallowed the light. He was lost, completely devoid of sight and sound, as if his senses had stopped working.

   "-she wouldn't be able to save the future," Paxton finished.

   Alciel snapped out of his vivid hallucination to say, "O-of course. She's one of this 'Sin Squad'. Can't have a missing member."

   "Can I trust you with her?" Paxton asked, looking up at Alciel with a trusting smile.

   Alciel matched Paxton's gaze, then was swallowed up by the void again. His entire world drained, leaving only the innermost workings of his own body to ascertain his status as 'alive'.

   "Can I?" Paxton narrowed his eyes.

   "Y-yes, of course," Alciel repeated, "she'll be in good hands."

   "Good," Paxton announced, putting a gentle hand on Christina's head. "I'll go see if Goddard has calmed down. He's probably going to be in a mood for a while."

   Alciel nodded, so Paxton walked out.

   Through his innermost thoughts, the angel barely noticed that Paxton was still wearing the glasses that gave him sight over the angel's technology. He opened his mouth to say something, but something splashed into his eye.

Wiping it away, the angel noticed for the first time that he was sweating profusely. Moisture had covered his forehead and even collected in his palms.

   Extremely confused as to his reactions, Alciel collected his reactions: darkness, loss of sense, cold sensations, sweating-

   "Was I... afraid?" he asked himself, looking down at his sweaty hands.