FicWad

/Whoosh/.

A hand shot out and cut off the ball's downward arc. A quick dash across the concrete court, a nimble spin, a jump, a flip of the wrists.

/Whoosh/.

The ball swept cleanly through the old, rusted hoop before returning to his hands as if drawn by an invisible force. He dribbled the ball around the court, feinting left and right against his nonexistent opponents. He turned, raised the ball over his head, and jumped again.

/Whoosh/.

The sun's rays beat down upon him in delicious waves of heat, and he could feel his skin prickle and grow damp with sweat, the same sweat that made the hair on his head stick to his forehead and neck in clumps and his shirt cling in wet patches to his back. His breathing had grown deeper and faster from the exertion, his blood rushed through his limbs in response to his body's demand for fuel, and in his chest he could feel the solid pounding of his heart, an echo of the ancient rhythm of the universe itself. This body felt heavy, sluggish and exasperatingly clumsy compared to his own form, and he knew that most of his kind found the idea of being imprisoned in leaden flesh incomprehensible at best. Even Class 4s, who worked on the lower planes on a regular basis, avoided immersing themselves in the morass of physical matter as much as they could. Still, he found that the human body had its own unique intelligence, as well as a ferocious will to live that had nothing to do with the mind inhabiting it. The many, varied methods it used to ensure its survival fascinated him. It was uncomplicated in its purpose and single-minded in its pursuit of its goal, and if treated well it served as the perfect vessel for the realm it was designed for. Each human's physical body was a marvelously ingenious piece of bio-engineering in its own right, and he would be the first to admit it.

He scowled. Too bad he couldn't say the same about the human itself.

His hands moved above him, and for a moment, the ball hung in mid-air, a fiery orange shape rippling in the glare of the mid-afternoon sun. There was the slightest stirring in the hot, still air, a barely perceptible flicker above the metal hoop that his dulled human vision would have missed completely if he hadn't sensed the presence the moment it arrived, then--

Whoosh.

"What do you want?" he asked tersely as he retrieved the ball and dribbled it around the court.

"Nothing," answered a voice that his temporarily human ears alone could not have heard. "I'm just watching you play. You got a problem with that?" it added, and despite its challenging tone he could hear a hint of uncertainty behind it.

/Whoosh/.

"Watch, then," he said indifferently. "The sooner you get bored, the sooner you'll go away and leave me alone."

To his mild surprise, the voice made no attempt to scold him about his rudeness. After an all too brief moment of silence, it spoke again. "So, uh..." It paused to clear its throat. "Um, so how're you doing?" it said in a rush.

If anything, the voice sounded even more unsure, and he kept himself from smirking at this uncharacteristically wishy-washy behavior. "Fine," he said, never breaking his stride.

"I--I mean, how're you feeling?"

"Okay."

"'Okay?'" the voice echoed disbelievingly. "That's all you've got to say? 'Okay'?"

He moved from side to side, dribbling the ball between his legs, before driving toward the hoop once more.

Whoosh.

"You wanted me to say something else?"

The voice sputtered. "W-well yeah! I mean, after what happened back there and--and Sir being summoned to a Gathering and, ah..."

It trailed off, lost in the unfamiliar terrain of diplomacy. He stopped in the middle of the court, still idly dribbling the ball, and looked up at the apparently empty space above the backboard. His inner sight took over, and he glowered at the girl sitting atop the backboard with her legs dangling on either side of the hoop, her magenta hair spilling over one shoulder and onto her lap from its high ponytail, translucent pink wings quivering nervously, ruby-colored eyes glaring right back at him in embarrassment and defiance. She was dressed in a baggy pair of cargo pants, sneakers and a white T-shirt with the words "Too Sexy for My Shirt" printed in eye-scorching pink on the front. Not for the first time, he wondered at the mysterious way their materializations always took on the appearance of the current fashions. Must have something to do with the thought-currents, he mused. Practically everything had something to do with the thought-currents, anyway.

Human thought-currents. For a bunch of unthinking, unfeeling, unforgivably inconsiderate brutes, humans produced an insanely huge amount of thought-currents. And that/, he thought as the familiar resentment churned like hot acid in his stomach, /is the reason for my entire existence. To clean up the mess those stupid humans leave behind until the Powers decide to get rid of me.

He pressed his lips together to keep the bitterness from spilling out, then lowered his eyes from the girl's fierce ruby gaze, raised his hands and jumped.

/Whoosh/.

The ball bounced once before he caught it again. The girl sighed. "Listen, Kai--"

"Gaela, what part of 'leave me alone' didn't you understand?" he cut her off, exasperated.

The girl's brows snapped together. "Hey, you! I'm not sitting here for my health, you know. You could be a little nicer to me," she yelled reflexively.

He spared her a dry glance. "Yeah? So why are you here then?"

"W-why shouldn't I be? I can go anywhere I want, can't I?" she spluttered furiously. "I don't have to explain myself to you. There's no rule that says I can't--" She gasped suddenly, her hand flying up to her mouth, eyes wide, cheeks burning.

He straightened, the ball held in front of him like a shield against the emotion writhing like a live thing in his chest. His eyes glittered strangely. "You're right. My apologies," he said mockingly. "There's no rule against bugging the black hell-slime out of me. Gotta savor the moment, though; I probably won't be around long enough for you to bug."

Gaela looked stricken, and for a moment he regretted his harsh words. "Kai, I'm sorry. I was worried about you, and I--I thought maybe you'd like some company right now, and, well ..."

He turned away before she finished speaking and began to run, pounding the ball underneath his hand. He leaped up, arm reaching out as he soared through the air, and--

/Fwoosh/.

The backboard shivered from the impact of the slam dunk. He hung from the hoop for a second, then dropped to the ground and hunched over to catch his breath, so that all Gaela could see of him was his sticky mass of dark hair and sweaty back. "You can stay," he said between pants. "Just don't say anything, okay?"

"I--okay," Gaela replied meekly.

He looked up at her and gave her the ghost of a smile, trying to convey his gratitude at her awkward offer of companionship. Oddly enough, she blushed and turned away, making him frown in puzzlement. "What's with you?"

"Nothing," she snapped. "Just play your stupid game, all right?"

He shrugged and retrieved the ball, and for the next few minutes there was nothing but the squeak of his shoes against the rut-filled concrete, the rhythmic pounding of the ball, and the all-pervading noises of the metropolis. It was almost...almost peaceful. He could almost pretend that today was just an ordinary day, that he and Gaela were simply taking a break from work and that any moment now the rest of the team would show up, then Sir would summon them and blithely ignore their half-hearted protests as he put them on dispersal and decontamination duty again. He could almost forget that he had just been accused of Reckless Endangerment and Improper Use of a Physico-Etheric Projection and a bunch of other charges, pulled out of duty and slapped with an indefinite suspension, and was now waiting for Sir and the other Powers to summon him and deliver his sentence.

Almost. But despite the body he was wearing now, he wasn't human, and so couldn't fight off the truth with some comforting lies and pleasant illusions. It wasn't allowed.

He narrowed his eyes and lifted his arms, numbing fury and sick despair racing through his body with every heartbeat until he felt as though he were moving through water.

/Whoosh/.

"You're so good at that, you know," Gaela spoke up, her voice wistful.

He sighed inwardly. He supposed he ought to be glad that she lasted all of--what? Six minutes? Must be a record for her. "At what? Basketball?"

"No, dummy," she replied, frowning. "That. Manipulating physical matter and holding it together for longer than a couple of hours. Just handling etheric matter for long tires the muddy ashes out of me. How do you make it look so easy?"

"It is easy," he said, knowing that it wasn't. Not for most Class 4s, even counting his teammates. But by the Light he really didn't feel like talking right now, much less deliver a lecture on dealing with the laws of the physical plane.

/Whoosh/.

"It is not!" she countered. "C'mon, Kai, we all know you're the best in our team. I mean, we all began training at the same time and now you're teaching the rest of us! Admit it, you taught Yvenjon that cute trick of diffusing astral voids, didn't you? I don't believe for one flash that that mudhead figured it out for himself--"

"Hey, I heard that!"

There was another faint ripple, a few feet above the ground at the edge of the court. Kai and Gaela both turned toward the boy who sat cross-legged in mid-air. His rich chestnut hair was styled to look like those artfully mussed-up hairdos several young actors had been sporting lately, and he was dressed in a body-hugging, short-sleeved shirt made of stretchy silver material that brought out the silver highlights in his wings, and a black pair of jeans so tight Kai was relieved that Yvenjon wasn't the one occupying a physical body at the moment, or else he couldn't have sat like that and not be rolling around in pain the next minute. Black leather boots, a silver chain around his throat and a pair of dark glasses completed the ensemble. From the corner of his eye, Kai saw Gaela slap a hand over her forehead and mutter underneath her breath, no doubt something unsavory about somebody's obsession with men's fashion magazines. If this had been any other day, Kai knew he himself would have likely reacted the same way; the thought sent an unexpected pang through him, and he found himself blinking to get rid of the sudden blurriness.

"Oh joy. It's Mr. Universe himself," Gaela said sourly.

Yvenjon pulled his dark glasses off, revealing striking blue eyes that practically glowed with mischief, and gave her a sparkling grin. "Hello yourself, Mouth. I can't believe you talk to other people about me when I'm not around. You could have told me you were that interested in me, Gaela. You know I'd never turn you down, although I'd have to staple your lips together first."

"I'd rather diffuse live NA shells for the rest of my life," Gaela spat, glaring down at him. "And what in luminosity is that outfit you're wearing? You look like a two-bit gigolo, for Light's sake."

Yvenjon's grin widened. "You mean this?" he asked, patting his shirt. "It's called minimalist elegance and understated sexiness. Then again, uncouth sprites like you probably wouldn't recognize good taste if it kicked your legs out from under you."

"He saw it in Q Magazine." The air beside Yvenjon shimmered slightly, and boy and a girl appeared, standing side by side. For some reason, their materializations always made them look like a pair of children. The boy's dark blue hair curled about his head like one of those cherubs in the famous painting, and his normally cheerful amber eyes appeared rather strained, despite the determinedly mirthful smile on his face. He was wearing a loose yellow T-shirt, a baggy pair of shorts and leather sandals, and as he spoke, his turquoise-tinged wings fluttered sporadically, another nervous tic that betrayed his inner anxiety. "He said it looked cool," the boy said with his usual earnestness.

Gaela's eyebrow twitched. "Q Magazine?"

The boy nodded.

"Isn't that a gay magazine?"

The boy nodded again. "It was the latest issue," he added helpfully.

Beside him, Yvenjon groaned. "Ren, what did I tell you about unnecessary details?"

Ren glanced over at him, looking worried. "Um, that they're unnecessary?"

"Exactly."

"Wait a minute, you read Q Magazine?" Gaela, fighting desperately not to snicker, gasped theatrically and fixed him with a teary-eyed stare of mortal hurt, a hand lifted to her mouth. "Why Yvenjon, how could you? We're your closest friends. You could have told us, although of course we would have figured it out eventually--"

"I'm not gay, you brownie barbarian, or is this just some sludge-brained way for you to get me to prove it to you?" Yvenjon continued to parry Gaela's teasing while Ren added to the racket with his insincerely abject apologies and faux-innocent wringing of hands. Kai found himself turning away from the all-too-familiar sight. It hurts, he realized dully. It shouldn't, but it does. The bickering, the good-natured pretenses, the easy camaraderie and deep trust behind the occasionally tedious banter...

...and he'd thrown it all away. He'd thrown all this away, and for what? For what?

"They're doing it for you."

He looked up at the quiet statement, and met Imaya's dark, still gaze. She was the smallest member of their team, and the most enigmatic. Her pure white hair, which was every inch as curly as her brother Ren's, streamed down her back in luxuriant mermaid tresses, rippling gently in an unfelt breeze. A thick white strand fell over her face, partially concealing a pair of violet eyes so dark they were nearly black. She wore a white party dress, with puffed sleeves, a frilly collar and a full skirt over several layers of petticoats. She even wore white stockings and a pair of white ballet flats with pom-poms on top. She would have looked exactly like a little human girl all dolled up for a grand birthday ball, except of course for the pair of indigo wings at her back, but her eyes belied her youthful appearance. Those violet eyes looked old, far, far older than any vain human chit's, and nobody except Kai and Sir himself could hold her silently knowing gaze for long. She rarely spoke or showed any emotion, but when she did speak, it paid to listen; Imaya's fathomless violet eyes pierced through the mists of illusion, and her soft words cut through lies like a hot knife through butter.

Kai's lips twisted as the two of them listened to the cacophony of argument, counter-argument and intermittent apology. They're not even trying to be subtle about it, the idiots. "I know," he answered. There had never been a need for too many words between him and the white Faerie.

"Was it worth it?" Imaya asked, her violet eyes holding his with unusual intensity. She, too, had been shaken by the past events.

Was it worth the sacrifice he made, the sacrifice he was forcing all of them to make? Was the life of that damned, broken, utterly useless human worth betraying his team, disappointing his mentor and losing everything that mattered to him? Kai's eyes grew shuttered, and in one of those especially rare moments, he broke away from her gaze, lazily dribbling the ball and moving into another game of one-on-none. "No," he finally bit out.

Imaya nodded once, acknowledging his answer. Then she cast her eyes down upon the ground, her hair slipping over her face like a flowing curtain, hiding whatever it was she was feeling. "You're hollow, Kai. Incomplete." Her voice dropped to the barest whisper. "It frightens me."

Hollow. Incomplete. He ground his teeth together until his jaw creaked, trying to fight off the familiar fury and resentment and yes, the cold, weakening terror. His feet pounded the concrete as he rushed toward the metal hoop, ball held high for a lay-up.

/Whoosh/.

"Imayaaa!" Yvenjon whined, catching the tail-end of their conversation. "You could at least try to help us instead of spouting all that gloom-and-doom slime of yours."

"Who's going to be our leader now, Kai?" Ren asked plaintively, giving voice to something that was worrying them all.

"Don't be stupid," Kai replied absently, completely focused on his game. "Sir is our leader. You're not going to lose him."

"You stop being stupid," Gaela snapped, angry now. "You know very well what Ren meant. Sir's our captain and our mentor, yes, and we love him to bits. But when we're out there in negative-astrality, just us against the shells, the voids, the mal-incarnates and everything else, it's you we turn to when we don't know what in black filth we're going to do next. It's you who shows us how to fight and how to find a way out again, who tells us we're being a bunch of panicky idiots and not to lose our head. Who's going to do that now, huh? Who're we going to look to now?"

Her voice cracked, and she dematerialized, only to reappear right in front of him, her ruby eyes shimmering with emotion and her cheeks streaked with the tears tough, strong-minded Gaela would never have shown in any other circumstance. Her stance, her entire aura in fact, demanded an answer from him. Nothing he could say, though, was the answer she wanted to hear.

"Gaela..." Ren whimpered, agonized at the confrontation he'd inadvertently triggered.

"Hey, listen, back off a moment, Mouth--"

"Shut up, Yvenjon," she cut him off, still staring at Kai. "I want to hear him speak. I want to hear what he's going to say."

"No, I mean it. Back off, Gaela. We've got a problem." The seriousness in Yvenjon's tone crept into their awareness, and they looked over at him. The brown-haired Faerie grimaced and pointed. "We're not alone anymore."

They followed the direction of his gaze, and Gaela swore. Distracted as they were by the ongoing drama, neither Gaela nor Kai sensed the approach of several humans and their Faeries. The humans were adolescent males from the squalid, over-crowded shanty-town surrounding the derelict basketball court. Their patched-up, ill-fitting clothes and thin bodies were a testament to their grinding poverty, and in their hard, shadowed eyes Kai could see every act of cruelty and neglect they have had to endure all their lives. They appeared to be members of the same gang--the tallest carrying a basketball under one arm--and as one they eyed Kai up and down, wearing varied expressions of dislike and contempt.

The tall one with the basketball strode over to Kai until he was towering over him, nostrils flaring as he stared him down. "This is our court, shit-bag. Beat it."

"Oh sludge," Gaela moaned beside him. "Dematerialize, Kai. Right /now/."

"Are you insane?" Yvenjon demanded from the sidelines. "They've already seen him. How do you think they're going to take it when he disappears into thin air right before their eyes? Ren, can you create a distraction? Enough to give him time to leave without a fuss?"

Ren gulped audibly. "I can try."

"Don't," Kai said underneath his breath, calmly meeting the human's hostile gaze. "I can handle this." His voice was pitched too low for the human to hear, but an odd wind-current carried his order to the rest of the team. Gaela groaned, recognizing an onset of one of Kai's strange, bullish moods.

"You listenin' to me, dumbass? I said, beat it." Scowling, the human stuck out a hand and shoved Kai backward, hard enough to make him stumble. The rest of the gang cheered him on, and the human smirked, encouraged by the accolades. Kai easily regained his footing, however, and continued to stare at the human with an almost bored expression. His gaze shifted to the space above one of the bony shoulders, where an orange-haired, yellow-winged Faerie was hovering uneasily, watching with increasing dismay. "One of yours?" he drawled to the Faerie, who looked badly rattled, as if only just realizing that Kai wasn't human, he merely looked like one.

"Yes," the Faerie answered after a beat. "He's my charge and therefore under my prote-wait a minute, I know you! You're Arkaion Windancer! What in all luminosity do you think you're doing, materializing on the physical plane? You've been suspended--"

"You must be good if you've been saddled with someone like him," Kai went on almost conversationally, ignoring the stream of abuse the human was spewing at him. "Level three, probably recently promoted, am I right?"

The Faerie stiffened. "Yes. Don't you dare try anything."

This time, Kai ignored him, focusing on the human who had once again planted a hand in his chest and pushed. He took two steps back, then smiled coldly, lazily bouncing his basketball from hand to hand. "You could ask me nicely, you know," he remarked.

The human looked at him as if he was crazy. "Fuck you, whoever the fuck you are."

Kai noticed the human's Faerie wince, and his smile widened to shark-like proportions. He held the basketball in front of him with both hands. "Catch," was his only warning before he flung the ball at high speed toward the human's stomach.

"Oof!" the human grunted reflexively, folding up into nearly half, his own basketball falling away. He had a moment to look bewildered when he realized that the basketball had not hit him--had, in fact, vanished completely--before Kai was in his face, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him in the air. "Listen to me, Kevin, because I'm only going to say this once in your miserable, goddamned life," Kai hissed, lapsing into the human's speech patterns and finding vicious satisfaction in being able to curse back in human, almost as much satisfaction as seeing the human's face go slack with surprise at Kai's use of his real name. "You're all over the place like a train wreck to hell and right now your life isn't worth the spit to say your name for the police report. You've been snorting more shit up your nose than a public toilet, and one of these days you're going to find yourself playing dress-up for your roommate in jail. But you know what, Kevin? You know all the shit your parents told you and all the shit you told yourself? They're lies, every single fucking last one of them. Lies, and you believed them. They told you you were worthless and stupid as fuck and as bad as the devil's own mother, and you fucking believed them simply because it was easier to! Well, it's time to wake up, Kevin, because somebody very close to you is looking out for you and caring about you, not that you've ever bothered to thank him and shit. It's time to wake up, Kevin, and make some better choices in your life. You've been dreaming and lying to yourself but that's over now, because now you're going to have to /wake up/!"

With the last two words, he released the human so abruptly that he tripped over his own feet and fell hard on his rump on the concrete court. His companions gaped at the sight of the shorter boy felling their leader with ease, while the human's Faerie rocked and moaned and whimpered in helpless outrage. Kai stood over the human, his face wiped clean of all expression except for the chilling glitter in his eyes. /For someone like you, I lost everything/, he thought, the fury raging within him, exulting in this chance to avenge his humiliation, to drive away the terror, the guilt and the withering, crushing shame. For someone like you, I wasted my life.

Wasted? No. I simply served my purpose until my defects showed me up. 'Wasted' implies choice. Something you have and I don't.

By the Light, how I hate you humans.

"Who the hell are you, man?" the prone human asked him in a thin, quivery voice. Kai noted, with another sweet stab of pleasure, that he had gone as white as chalk.

Gaela, who was closest to him, saw the strange little smile bloom on his face, and drew back, going pale herself. "Oh no," she muttered. "Oh no, Kai, don't do this. Not again, please."

Kai ignored her, going instead to the human and reaching down to offer a hand to help him up. The human wavered, then accepted the help, fortunately unaware of the slight edge in Kai's smile. "I'm just a messenger, that's all. Someone who knows the truth better than you do."

"Please, Kai. No more breaking rules, you can't do this anymore--"

"C'mon, you--a messenger?" The human's eyes grew impossibly big, and his mouth dropped open. "You're not--you're not an angel, are you?"

Kai smiled again, his inner sight scanning through the confused tidal wave of thought-currents radiating from the human until he found what he was looking for: the one thing from his childhood that the human still believed in, no matter how much he denied it to his buddies. With expert ease, Kai drew the thought-current out like a thread, winding it loosely around him so that it hovered around him. He was fully aware that he was once again about to commit an Improper Use of a Physico-Etheric Projection, and probably Causing Unnecessary Mental Turmoil in a Human and Reckless Endangerment as well, but was too far gone to care. After all, what the filthy slime else did he have to lose? "An angel?" he murmured thoughtfully. "Well, Kevin, if that what it'll take for you to believe me..."

In the next instant, he wrapped the human's thought-current around him like a cape and willed particles of etheric matter into the shape and appearance of the human's most treasured image. At the same time, he let his own physical body dissolve back into the air, revealing himself to the human in his true form, with a few slight modifications. His once-dark hair lightened to sun-kissed gold, his formerly brown eyes shifted to a brilliant emerald green. With a spark of amusement, he found himself wearing a red plaid shirt over a black T-shirt with a stylized skull and cross bones in front, a pair of jeans with a tear on one knee and a red bandanna tied on the other, and a battered pair of Doc Martens. Fortunately, the modifications to his appearance pretty much ensured that the human would not notice the alleged angel's somewhat inappropriate choice of attire. A pair of magnificent feathered wings, sparkling bluish-white in the sunlight, unfolded behind him with impressive grandeur, conveniently hiding his own greenish-gold wings. A golden halo above his head, the golden harp under his arm and a stream of eldritch light completed the "angel" image. The wings flapped once, lifting him in the air, where he appeared to be melting into the light. He raised his hands as if in benevolent benediction, and bit his cheeks to keep from exploding into unangelic gales of laughter at the look on the human's face.

The humans on the ground were eating it up. He fiercely suppressed another urge to laugh, looking down on the goggle-eyed expressions of the humans in the presence of a "holy apparition." "Remember what I told you," he couldn't resist adding, making sure to sound gracious and otherworldly, until he faded at last out of human sight completely.

He found his teammates eyeing him with varying expressions of horror and resignation. Before anyone could say a word, the communicator attached to his earlobe buzzed slightly, and a narrow, transparent band of yellow appeared over his eyes, allowing him to see the visuals of the message. "I have to go," he said to his teammates, his voice toneless once again. "I'm being summoned."

He vanished, leaving behind his four rather stunned teammates. Yvenjon broke the silence with a sigh. "Well, there he goes. Ren, time for some damage control," he said, indicating the mesmerized humans.

As Ren went to work, Gaela appeared beside Yvenjon, red-faced and nearly weeping with frustration. "I can't believe he did that!" she ranted. "As if he wasn't in so much trouble already--is he suicidal or just stupid?!"

Yvenjon shrugged. "Only Kai can answer that. But still--" he grinned suddenly, and let out a low, appreciative whistle, "--what a way to go, huh?"





--------------------------------
Some Notes:

I made some corrections to the first part, specifically to Kai's abilities. He's Class 4 with Class 1 abilities, not Class 3. I kinda mixed up my Faerie classes a bit.

Er...although I am aware that I haven't really spelled out what the classes do. Er, oh well.

Once again, thank you for reading this, and for reviewing!