The aide rounds the corner of the only other entrance into the safehouse’s main room and waves “Heyo, Till’s been informed that the muscle squad have gone to check on the civvies, and we’ve got our next mission” They thumb to themself before approaching Ilia.

She ignores them and continues to watch as the soul jumps from gemstone to gemstone, testing every one that has been spread out across the floor. It eventually settles on a finely cut blue stone that’s set into an engraved iron band.

She smiles as she picks it up and watches as the glowing subsides “Now for you to have a name?” The stone flashes a couple times causing her to tilt her head “We cannot call you project caribou—” She chews on her lip a bit before suggesting “Carri?”

There’s a pause in it’s flashes before it emits an almost blinding flash that has Ilia reeling back.

The aide, who’s also left rubbing their eyes, grumbles “You done?”

She shakes her head and squints as she gently slips the too big ring on. They both watch as the metal pulls together to form three small crimps that tightens it onto her finger “Yeah”

“Great” After a long moment of blinking and rubbing, the aide eventually looks at the ring and asks, “What can it do?”

“She says she has extensive knowledge of Biology” The gem gently pulses a couple times “And that she can use that to treat wounds”

“A medic, great!” They continue to alternate between blinking and straining their eyes wide open again before asking “Can she fix my eyes?”

“You are fine” She then turns back to the ring that rapidly pulses, after which Ilia gently rolls her previously dislocated shoulder “Hmm? Oh? I should be fine”

Whilst it pulses, the aide raises their hands to shield their eyes “What’s it doing now? It’s not going to attack my eyes again?”

“She is currently getting worked up about how I am different to what she remembers humans to be” Ilia rolls here eyes at the aide who hasn’t lowered their hands.

They then start patting their cheeks with a hand “What’s touching my face!”

“Carri is” Ilia smirks as they slowly start to panic.

“Why do I feel like someone is looking at my organs!” They then look over themselves and start patting their body all over.

Ilia nods and tries to hold back from laughing “Because she is”

They quietly shout “Stop violating me!” In a high-pitched tone.

“She is not violating, just looking” Ilia gently pats them on the shoulder as she slowly breaks down into a laugh.

The aide takes and holds a deep breath before putting a hand on their hip “Well I hope she likes what she sees because she won’t get another look”

Ilia looks to the ring as it rapidly pulses and collects herself by straightening up “Yeah, that is all-natural, last time I checked. Maybe you should ask Roxie whe—” She then flinches back as the ring emits another near blinding flash of light, then Ilia slowly states “Right, never gonna mention the scary cat woman”

“She’s not that bad is she?” The aide chuckles as they lower their hands and watches as Ilia starts rubbing her eyes.

“She is literally the tallest person I’ve met in my entire life—” Her eyes go wide, and she firmly points at the aide “Also, never eat anything with her that has bones in it. Just do not”

The aide leans back and mentions “Good thing our national dish is ‘blue soup’”

Ilia goes to ask, but just frowns “let us change subject. What is the plan?”

“Well, with Brandon and that off to check on the civilians, we’ve been left with securing the Calga fields”

“Two questions—” Ilia raises the appropriate fingers “Just the two of us? And what the fuck is Calga”

“Yes, just the—” They then count on their fingers “Seven of us, cuz, you know, you’re a one-woman squad”

“Fair enough” She nods.

“And Calga is a coral that’s crushed and dried to produce a spice which is, like—” They raise their hands and shrug “our only export other than muscle”

“Right, wer—” She is interrupted by the aide.

Who quickly comments “left” Triggering Ilia to immediately snicker, to which the aid raises their arms into the air and shouts “Finally! Someone’s laughed!”

“It’s so stupid—” She doubles over and starts asking between laughs “Why was that funny!”

The aide joins her in laughing “Because it was!”

“It was not!” She takes a few deep breaths before straightening up again “Left—” The aide goes to say something but stops once they realize what Ilia said and just points to her as they both go “Ayyyyy”

The aide continues to finger point before rapidly stating “We’re only delaying the prevention of the end of the entirety of the economy”

Ilia awkwardly chuckles “What?”

They freeze and ask, “Too much?”

“Yeah” She nods before turning around and walking up the tunnel out “I guess we’re heading to beach then?”

“Yeah, east side” He points again before quickly following behind.

Ilia waits for them at the bottom of the ladder to ask, “That’s the same side that everyone’s evacuated to?”

“Not a coincidence” They shake their head and give Ilia and pointed look.

They both leave the hatch into an alleyway and set it back in place before freezing as the sounds of two people fighting comes from a street over. Silently signing to her, the aide leads them both through a house as Ilia drops Kyle, Dori and magni into their tar to peek out the front shutters as a man with large metal arms clashes with another with blue skin, three faces and four arms, both wearing dark clothes over something bright and colourful. Both of them are already bloody, with teeth missing and ugly welts, despite that they’re both steady on their feet with wide but glassy eyes.

The hiding pair give each other a look as the others go at each other, madly fist fighting each other until the one with metal arms is grappled, slowly folded backwards where their head is then violently smashed open across the street.

Ilia flees as quietly as she can to anywhere else far enough to vomit without being heard whilst the aide looks away until the thumping stops. Slowly peeking back up to see what is happening, the aide then gasps as the surviving fighter starts clutching their throat as they cough up a crimson bile, all as a hunched over human with limp feathered wings slowly approaches. Their pail and wrinkled face is twisted by a wide grin as they wave a large open bottle which emits a constant note from rushing air, then closes it and lets it float up to join the others that hang off the moss atrium on their back to then proceed to take notes on a notepad that floats in front of them. The aide very quickly scrambles away, drags the still heaving Ilia back out into alleyway, then further away whilst still vaguely heading east. Once they’re far enough away that the aide stops, they help straighten Ilia out and gently rubs her back as she’s given a moment to finish.

The aide holds up her hair as she starts bringing more up “Sorry about that”

Ilia nods and pukes up a few more chunks before wiping her mouth “It’s ok. Would’ve done the same If I didn’t need to puke”

“Perfectly normal—” They continue rubbing her back whilst keeping watch “That was more than a little brutal”

Ilia wetly burps and takes a deep breath “What the fuck was that!”

“Not sure, they were both wearing Traditionalists colours—” They continue idly stroking air despite Ilia going for a small walk about “Even worse, the multiarmed one really suddenly succumbed to the plague and, was that one of those angels?”

She waves her hands at herself “I didn’t see, kinda busy being freaked out by two guys decking each other to death”

“Yeah, totally didn’t forget about that” Their idle air stroking is stopped with a quick smack as they timidly admit that point.

Ilia frowns and gestures back the way they came “Shouldn’t we try and stop them?”

The aide raises their arms in a cross “With that kind of casual mana use?” Then pulls a sleeve down to show a large streak of translucent green that goes from their wrist to past the elbow, showing the bone and everything under their tanned skin “In my professional opinion. Fuck that!”

Ilia’s face slackens as she asks, “What display?”

“They, it, they’it, released some gas and then packed it all back into a bottle without a written spell—” They then raise and shakes their hands at Ilia “That kind of casual mana use is a sign of a Gold ranker”

Ilia lets her posture droop and holds her face to muffle her whimper before desperately asking, “Is there a book on how to recognise people you shouldn’t fuck with!”

“Mostly experience really—” The aide roll their eyes upwards “Though, casual feats of absurdity are a good sign” They then wait for Ilia as she takes a deep breath, to ask, “You good?”

Ilia rubs her face and nods “No, but I will manage”

The aide pats her on the shoulder and jerks their head back the way they came “You can head ba-. I’ll find you somewhere to stay”

“No, I’m helping” Ilia grabs their hand and takes it off her shoulder.

“Alright, now, gimme a minuet to figure out—” The aid’s quick search around is interrupted by a call from the roof.

“Where you are?”

The pair snap around to atop of the nearby roof as the hunched over angel smiles down at them. A fist of bricks then punches through the slate and hits him square in the chest, throwing him backwards and across the rooftop. The aide runs away but at the insistence of Cari, Ilia stays and attempts to climb onto the rooftop.

The aide eventually returns whilst crouched and stage whispers “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Ilia, who’s halfway up the two-storey house with the help of Johnson pushing out handholds, pauses to call down “Cari says that he’s dead”

“Huh? What?”

Ilia resumes climbing “Johnson also says that he felt something crack, like he broke something”

“I repeat, huh?” The aide pulls out a grappling hook, hooks it to the roof and climbs up to Ilia “They were definitely doing gold rank shit, so no way would that have killed them—” They point up to where the angel stood “Injure, yeah, kill? Fuck no! Only, like, one in a hundred people who get to that tear, are not regenerates. And regenerates are a fucking pain in the ass to kill!” They firmly throw their hand at her as they state this.

“I know! But Johnson and Cari know their shit, and the only reason people regenerate before reaching that tear is because they’re too old, or sustain an injury—” She pauses and turn to the aide to ask, “Isn’t it?”

They scratch their chin for a second “Yeah, I guess I don’t know how old these angels can get”

Ilia states, “They’re supposed to have lived during the reign of the old gods” As she reaches the top and looks for a way to climb past the roof’s lip until Johnson slides it away.

The aide climbs up past her and helps her get up onto the roof “Who?”

She grumbles “A long fucking time ago” Then sits down and catches her breath before crawling across to peek closer to the body on the other side of the slanted roof.

“What do you see?” The aide slowly crouches after her.

There’s a long time before she respond, and when she does it’s a shaken mumble “He’s actually fucking dead”

“What?” They move closer and comes up from behind her.

She quietly says, “I can’t feel the presence of a soul”

“He’s actually fucking dead?” The aide quickly scrambles around her and stares in slack jawed awe.

The angel is laying on their side with the atrium shattered across the behind them; their chest is caved in in the rough shape of a fist, but instead of red flesh and blood, the wound in made of white glowing matter which slowly dims as wisps of spirit crawls off it and streams of mana flows out.

“Oh shit. He’s dead” The aide gently pokes it with the hook “Not gonna lie, I pissed myself a little”

“I killed someone” Ilia ignores their comment and begins clutching the pouch that contains Johnsons gem.

“Didn’t that fist do it?” The aide stops poking the corpse and looks to her.

Ilia doesn’t stop staring at the corpse’s pained expression, her hand now squeezing the gem “He’s my familiar. He’s my power. His crimes are mine”

The aide quickly snatches her hands into theirs and smacks them whilst announcing “Floop, flop, whap. I distract you from your bad thoughts”

Ilia snaps to them and blurts out “What?”

“It’s ok. It’s ok” They then pull her into a hug, gently holding her as she freezes “I not gonna whisper sweet nothings to you. I’m not gonna reassure you that he was a bad person. We don’t know, and if you can’t settle your own thoughts, then what are you gonna do if you’re alone” They don’t stop holding her as she grabs some of the fabric of their clothes and buries her head in their chest “I’m just going to be here if you need a shoulder to bite” Ilia growls and punches them in the side, forcing out a chuckled “Owe”

Ilia quietly asks, “Does it ever get easier?”

The aide doesn’t answer immediately, but does respond with, “It depends. If it does, try to pay attention to what you’re losing”