"Do you ever wonder why they put 55mph signs a few hundred feet in front of 45mph signs?" Clarice quipped ironically. "Then put a 35mph a few hundred feet further. Seems like a total waste of tax money to build all of those redundant signs."
"If you want to go on a crusade for wasted tax dollars, there are a lot more juicy places to go than the department of transportation," Aria informed her dryly.
"Yeah, but these are the ones I see all of the time," Clarice argued, her eyes full of righteous outrage. "There's even a police car just waiting to pounce when someone waits until the 35mph sign to slowdown. That's total crap. Why don't they put the money into deer fences or something useful?"
Aria couldn't stop herself from giggling at Clarice's antics. She always had something to criticize about the infrastructure when they were driving.
"What about those powerlines?" Aria pointed at the lines parallel to the road. "I thought you were on a crusade to get those buried?"
"Well, why can't they bury them?" she demanded with a scornful glare at the offensive power poles. "They bury the phone, gas, and water lines. Do you know how much money they must spend on tree trimming every year to keep the damn tree branches out of the power lines? And they still lose power every time the wind kicks up."
"Maybe high voltage is dangerous to put underground," Aria suggested archly. "What happens when it floods?"
"Nonsense," Clarice flapped her argument away with her hand. "They could just put them in concrete tunnels with proper drainage."
"I'm pretty sure that would get cost prohibitive fast," Aria pointed out, watching her sister with amusement.
"More prohibitive than constant tree maintenance and lawsuits from wildfire victims?" Clarice retorted, narrowing her eyes when she saw Aria grinning at her. "Besides, think of all of the trees that would still be alive if they weren't replacing power poles constantly."
"That cop is following us," Aria informed her when she finished her tirade. "You weren't speeding, so what's his deal?"
Devon had supplied them with his black suburban. It had tinted windows that he had assured them was below the legal limit. They had all of the seats down to make room for instruments.
"Just pull into a store or something to get him off of our tail," Aria instructed her warily.
"Do you know how much tax payer money it costs to fully outfit a police car?" Clarice asked critically, her twinkling eyes at odds with her tone.
"Seriously?" Aria complained with an exasperated sigh. "Just pull in somewhere already and give those two someone else to go bug."
"The dude driving looks like he passed the physical," Clarice remarked as she studied the police officers through her rearview mirror. "His partner looks like he's been hitting the donut shop a little too frequently though."
"Pull over already," Aria begged, her eyes pleading. "They're going to pull us over for some BS probable cause and then we'll have to show them your ID. I'm pretty sure they're going to recognize us, and even if they don't our names will probably get run through their computer system and get us flagged by the agency."
"Fine," Clarice sighed theatrically, rolling her eyes exaggeratedly at Aria. "I'm pulling over. Happy?"
They pulled into a Subway sandwich shop. Aria groaned as the police car's blinker turned on, following them into the shop.
"Yeah, pulling over didn't help much," Clarice informed Aria dryly.
They parked their car in front of the shop and put it in park. The police cruiser pulled in right next to them, though they had yet to turn their lights on.
"Keep your face turned away," Clarice instructed her curtly. "Most of the media has fixated on your face due to your flamboyant hair, so I'm probably not as recognizable. Pull out your phone and pretend to be doing something."
Aria complied, trying to appear like a screen obsessed human. The cops hadn't exited their vehicle. They appeared to be waiting for Aria and Clarice to exit. Aria focused on listening to the conversation in the car next to them with her ridiculously sensitive hearing.
"I don't think they're getting out," she heard the corpulent cop say.
"That's probable cause enough for me," the leaner partner declared in satisfaction. "Loitering in a subway parking lot."
"You better go into the subway," Aria said quickly. "I'll wait here."
Clarice was already exiting the vehicle, sunglasses and hat on. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she looked significantly different than she had looked in the brief glimpse that was recorded during the biker incident.
"Well never mind, I guess they are getting out," the donut lord said in surprise. "Should we follow her in?"
"Let's wait and see if her friend gets out," the lean one decided. "We don't want her escaping while we're inside."
"What if she doesn't get out?" donut lord asked.
"We'll grab the other one when she comes out," lean cop replied. "If her friend tries to leave, we'll be close enough to prevent it."
"How much do you think they'll be worth?" donut lord asked curiously. "She looked pretty hot. I'll bet they'll pay top dollar, especially if her friend is decent."
"Probably ten or fifteen grand," lean cop replied, sounding satisfied.
"I guess it's just pennies to the people that buy them," donut lord said wistfully.
Aria felt her face flush with rage as she finally understood what was going on.
"Clarice, they're trying to capture us to sell to human traffickers," Aria growled, her hands shaking with fury.
Clarice's head whipped around to look at her from where she stood in line, her mouth tightening.
"I'm not sure how we're going to get out of this without blowing our cover," Aria said darkly. "They're going to try and arrest you as soon as you come out."
Clarice nodded and walked up to an employee.
"Excuse me, can I use your phone please?" she asked urgently. "It's an emergency."
The employee looked at her oddly for a moment, then fumbled with a phone in his pocket and handed it to her.
"Thank you," she smile gratefully and started typing on the phone.
The employee was bright red, clearly not expecting a gorgeous woman to need a hero.
"Uncle Devon, there are some crooked cops waiting outside of a Subway shop to arrest us and sell us to some human traffickers," Clarice said quickly. "Can you think of a way for us to get out of this without breaking our cover?"
"What town are you in?" he asked tersely. "Is it a state or local car?"
"Local," she answered, telling him the name of the town.
"I'm calling the local police department right now," he said grimly. "If the whole department isn't corrupt, I should be able to get some heat on them."
"Thanks, uncle," Clarice said, relief thick in her voice.
"Walk over to the window while holding the cellphone to your ear and stare at the police officers," Devon instructed her. "Make it obvious you are inspecting them."
Aria watched her sister walk up to the window and stare intently at the police cruiser.
"Oh shit, is she talking to someone about us?" donut lord exclaimed nervously.
"Fuck, let's get out of here," lean cop snarled. "It's probably a trap."
The car next to them quickly backed out of the lot and sped down the road.
"They just took off out of here," Clarice told their uncle.
"Good," Devon sighed, relief loud in his voice. "Your mom says your too damn pretty for your own good."
"Don't I know it," Clarice growled irritably. "I wish we weren't trying to lay low. I'd have a long chat with those cops and whoever they were planning to sell us to."
"It's an ugly world out there, Clarice," her uncle said sadly.
"Thanks again, uncle," Clarice ended the call and took the phone back to the plump young man behind the counter. He had been ogling her whenever he thought she wasn't watching, his expression somewhere between disbelief and eagerness.
"Thank you so much," Clarice told him with a winsome smile. "You really helped me out."
"No not a problem," he stumbled over his words as he took his phone back with shaky hands. "Any time at all."
Aria was still feeling an uncharacteristic rage, in spite of the positive energy coursing through her meridians. The thought of the very people meant to protect other people being involved in such a repugnant crime made her burn with fury.
"You okay?" Clarice studied her face, concern in her eyes as she got back into the vehicle.
"I'm not feeling like a very nice angel right now," Aria grated, feeling the positive energy getting transposed into righteous fury.
"You need to stop!" Clarice snapped, putting her hand on Aria's cheek and forcing her to look into her sister's eyes. "Let it go for now. Please, Aria."
Aria closed her eyes and took a deep calming breath, unnecessary as it was, and breathed out slowly. She reached up and put her hand on top of Clarice's. "I was so angry. The energy switched from benevolent to something else."
"I know," Clarice spoke gently. "You were glowing."
Aria's eyes shot open. "I was?"
"Yeah," Clarice confirmed, her lips curling up on one side. "It was pretty hot."
Aria felt the righteous fury vanish as she dissolved into a fit of giggles. "Thanks, Clarice. I really needed that."
"Any time, Aria," Clarice murmured softly. "You're stuck with me for eternity now, so really, any time."
Aria laughed again as Clarice pulled her hand back and started the car. They pulled back onto the highway and continued their interrupted trip.
"We should seriously consider the super hero career path in the near future," Aria told her sister gravely. "If we wear masks, we could totally take out some bad guys. We don't really need cars to get around at the speeds we run. We don't sleep. It's perfect."
"I really want to get those bastards too," Clarice vowed, her eyes full of righteous judgement. "We need to ease into this role for longer than a day though. We've been angels for less than a day and only tested our abilities for a few minutes. We have some growing to do before we go full vigilante."
"Do you think it's the whole police force in this town?" Aria asked with a grimace.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Clarice shrugged, her eyes flinty. "I don't think they could have been as brazen as they were if the rest of the force wasn't in on it."
"That's disgusting," Aria grunted, her lips twisting in revulsion.
"Agreed," Clarice sighed, her eyes burning darkly. "You remember what the trigger phrase was that transformed us, right?"
"To vanquish evil," Aria smiled unpleasantly. "That's right. It's actually part of who we are now. We need to vanquish evil, just like Calypso needs to heal people."
"Let's discuss our new career path with the others when we get back," Clarice suggested, a slow smile forming. "We are going to be avenging angels."
"I like the sound of that," Aria declared grimly.
They arrived at the music store a few minutes later. It was a fairly large store for the medium sized town they were in. As they walked over to inspect the percussion instruments, Aria heard one of the employees near the front of the store speaking to a coworker.
"Damn, I'm taking this one, Max," the employee breathed in appreciation. "Those two are freaking hot."
"Okay, Romeo," Max replied in an uninterested tone. "Go get 'em tiger-," he cut off when he saw them finally and sucked in a deep breath. "Aww hell no, I'll take this one."
They both ended up wandering over, looking more dumbfounded the closer they got. Clarice glanced at them as they walked up, smiling warmly at them.
The two men seemed to be having trouble finding their words as they stared in open admiration at Clarice.
"We have a pretty big list of instruments we would like to purchase today," Clarice told them with a charming smile. "Can we get some help loading it all into our vehicle?"
The two men nodded eagerly, their faces slack.
They spent almost an hour picking out and testing all of the instruments. The two of them had played a few of the guitars before settling on the ones they wanted. Several shoppers had joined the two employees to gawk at them as the two of them put the guitars through their paces. Aria marveled at how much better she could play as an angel. Complicated finger work was no longer something that required her full concentration and every scrap of skill she possessed. It was almost effortless as her fingers flew up and down the fret board, playing in sync with Clarice as they stood facing each other a few feet apart.
When they finished, there was a loud cheer and a few whistles of appreciation. She heard one customer talking to his friend as they walked away.
"There's nothing hotter than a beautiful woman that can tear up a fretboard," the man said wistfully.
"Go get her number," his friend urged him with a push.
"Naw, man, she's taken," he sighed regretfully. "Didn't you see the way they were looking at each other?"
Aria felt her cheeks burn and studiously avoided looking at Clarice as they moved toward the checkout desk. She jumped as she felt someone pinch her bottom and spun to see Clarice winking at her with an alluring smile.
"You are so bad," Aria hissed as the people around them goggled at the display.
"Told ya, man," the man told his friend wryly. "But damn if that isn't hot."
They loaded all of the instruments up, with the help of the two employees. They nearly dropped one of the kettle drums in their nervousness. Aria's hand had shot out lightning fast and caught it before it hit the ground, emitting a gasp from the employee. She remembered kettle drums being heavy before, but it felt as light as everything else did now.
As they drove away, Clarice smirked at her from the driver's seat. "We're not always too pretty for our own good. Look at all of the help we got loading up."
Aria giggled mischievously at the memory. She had always dealt with awkward boys who were tongue-tied and shaky handed before, but it seemed to have gotten a lot worse since their transformation.
"Is there anywhere else we want to go before we head home?" Clarice asked with a raised eyebrow, her sunglasses resting on her head.
"We never get hungry, so no, not really," Aria answered, putting her own sunglasses up on her head. "Aside from the little hiccup getting into town, that went pretty well. Nobody recognized us at all."
"It helps that our features changed with our transformation," Clarice noted with an appreciative grin at Aria. "So. Damn. Hot."
"You still got the cuter face," Aria complained enviously. "Can't I have my hair and your face?"
"I'll trade you faces any day of the week," Clarice agreed eagerly. "Your self-image is seriously warped."
Clarice slowed down slightly as they saw police lights in the distance ahead of them. Aria stared intently, her eyes zooming in to the cruiser several miles away. There was a white Ford Focus with several young women sitting on the side of the road in handcuffs and under the watchful eye of the donut lord while lean cop searched their car.
"Pull over, Clarice," Aria said firmly. They were still a few miles from the incident.
Clarice looked at the determination on her face and sighed. She pulled over onto the shoulder and shut the car off.
"You know what they're probably going to do to those girls," Aria growled as the anger returned, filling her with righteous fury. "I'm not going to let that happen."
"Do you think you could do it without glowing?" Clarice asked with a pained squint. "We don't want word of a glowing super woman popping up all over the internet."
Aria closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down. The cab slowly dimmed as she regained control of her rage.
"What are we going to do?" Clarice asked, gesturing at the cops ahead of them. "Just throw some rocks and knock them out?"
"They'll just do it again," Aria ground out darkly. "They need to be stopped, permanently."
"You're not talking about killing them, are you?" Clarice gasped, her eyes worried.
"No, just making them rue the day they were born," Aria reassured her with an icy smile. "A swift kick in the gonads seems like justice to me, for what they are doing."
"Okay," Clarice nodded, her mouth turning up at the corners. "But fast. We don't want anybody seeing anything but a blur."
"Right," Aria agreed, getting out of her door. "Let's go."
She pushed herself to full speed and almost yelped as her clothing started to burn from the friction. Ignoring it, she moved in on the cops as they prepared to load the three girls into the back of the cruiser. They were moving like molasses to her heightened perception. She kicked the first cop between the legs from behind, launching him over the car. The second cop was already flying from Clarice's kick. The two angels spun to face the dejected looking girls and pinched the handcuffs around the girls' wrists, breaking the bracelet on each wrist. The girls' eyes were just starting to widen from the flying cops after some kind of blur had shot by them with a gust of wind. The next moment they heard their handcuffs drop to the ground in pieces.
Aria took a split second to study their faces. The youngest girl was no older than 13, while the oldest looked about 17. There were tear streaks on all of their faces. The tears nearly sent her into a glowing rage again, but she managed to mentally clamp down on her anger and run back to their vehicle.
"That went well," Clarice noted conversationally. "I made sure to fry the hard drives in their trunk that the bodycams record to, just in case it was able to pick anything up."
Aria watched the cops as they moaned into the ground, curled up in the fetal position. The girls were staring around them in shock. They hesitantly started walking back to their vehicle, looking back at the cops after every step. When it was clear that the cops wouldn't be getting up, they started their car and left.
"Yes, that went well," Aria agreed with a victorious laugh. "We vanquished some evil today."
They both felt a sudden stir in the energy matrix inside of them as something changed. She felt an itch on her back and reached back to scratch it, then froze when she felt the ridges between her shoulder blades.
"I think we might have some wings on the way," Clarice whispered in awe as she felt her own back.
"Yeah," Aria whispered back, her own voice filled with wonder. "We're going to be able to fly."
XXXXX
Calypso flew into their arms as soon as they got out of the vehicle, her eyes filled relief. "I'm so glad you were able to come back safely," Calypso whispered fervently as she held both of them in a hug.
Aria gently ran her hands through Calypso's hair comfortingly. "We're invincible now, so we'll always come back safe," Aria assured her softly.
"It's the bad guys you'll have to worry about going forward," Clarice informed Calypso with a wicked smile as she kissed Calypso on the forehead.
Aria felt a flood of energy building as the three of them held each other closely. What had been a powerful sensation when hugging Calypso was magnified significantly when adding Clarice to the embrace. She closed her eyes as the resonating energy arced through the three of them like a tesla coil. She felt a tingling sensation on her back where the ridges had appeared. The tingling grew stronger, erupting into searing heat. She felt her weight suddenly diminish significantly and a new weight appear on her back. She stared wide eyed as wings tore through Clarice and Calypso's shirts, the tips touching the ground as the tops arced a foot over their heads. She could feel the same wings on her own back, almost like another pair of arms.
"I guess you really are angels," their mother murmured in wonder as she walked out of the house toward them.
Aria released Calypso and Clarice as she turned to face her mother with an exuberant grin on her face.
"I guess we really are," Aria agreed with a delighted laugh.
"We are definitely going to have to find a tailor to custom make some clothing for us," Clarice declared, her voice tight with excitement. "We have freaking wings!"
"Wow!" Calypso gasped, her swirling eyes wide with wonder. "I can't believe it really happened. I've wanted to be able to fly since I was a kid. This is so amazing!"
"The goods are spilling out," Clarice warned Aria with a wink. "We might want to get some fabric to wrap around our shirts until we can get a tailor."
Aria held her shirt up from the front in an attempt to maintain some level of modesty. Clarice and Calypso were doing the same thing, their elation tempered slightly by their nudity dilemma.
"I'll go make some fabric strips out of a robe," the mother said dryly.
"Thanks, Mom," Aria said, following behind.
"Just stay out here for now," their mother instructed her, glancing at her large wings. "You're going to have enough trouble navigating the house with those wings without trying to hold your shirts up."
"I feel so freaking light now," Clarice laughed excitedly, her face radiant with joy. "We're as light as you now, Calypso. I really want to try flying."
"Modesty before mobility," Aria cautioned with barely repressed anticipation. "Let's wait for mom to fix us up."
Clarice was bouncing from foot to foot with eagerness. She finally couldn't take it anymore, launching herself skyward with a powerful leap. Her wings unfurled and she shot higher into the air with each wing beat. In a matter of seconds, she had risen to nearly ten thousand feet above them.
"You're going to be seen by somebody, you goose!" Aria called up to her anxiously, her eyes tight with worry.
"Clarice spread her wings wide to stop her climb, then dove. She flapped her wings to increase her downward velocity, shooting toward them like a falling star. She finally pulled her wings out at five hundred feet and thrust down with a powerful wingbeat that brought her descent to a stop. It felt like a hurricane as the wind from her powerful wings buffeted them like a gale. Aria had to pin her shirt to herself to keep it from flapping away.
"Pull your shirt up, you trollop," Aria called up to Clarice as she gracefully descended the remaining four hundred feet.
"Oh yeah," Clarice laughed, her face filled with exhilaration. She pulled the tatters of her shirt back up just as their mother returned with some fabric strips and safety pins.
"You just couldn't help yourself, could you?" their mother sighed, shaking her head resignedly.
"I really couldn't," Clarice agreed with another exuberant laugh. "You would not believe how fun that is!"
Calypso was watching her with parted lips and excitement in her eyes. She grinned as Clarice's excitement became contagious. Aria could hardly stop herself from launching upward, but she reigned herself in firmly.
"Can you take care of Calypso first?" she asked her mother, smiling at Calypso encouragingly.
Calypso started to protest, but their mother was already wrapping strips of fabric around her and pinning them in place.
"I warned your uncle not to come out for a little while," their mother told them with a wry laugh. "It wouldn't be good for his heart." She sobered up as she worked on Calypso. "How did the rest of the trip go? Any other complications?"
"Maybe?" Clarice replied evasively, her eyes not meeting their mother's. "I guess that depends on what you define as a complication."
"Spit it out, Aria," their mother commanded peremptorily, her mouth tight. "What happened."
Aria gave her mother a brief summary of their run-in with the corrupt cops as she finished Calypso's wardrobe modifications.
"Good," she nodded with fierce approval, her dark eyes flinty. "It's better than what they deserved."
Clarice blinked in surprise, obviously expecting some kind of reprimand. She smiled with relief, raising her eyebrows at Aria in amazement. Aria grinned back at her, knowing she was also thinking about what a cool mom they had.
"Okay, Calypso, hopefully that will hold tight until we can get some clothing designed to accommodate wings," their mother finished with a satisfied nod. She turned to Aria and started working on her.
"Favoritism," Clarice complained bitterly.
"You already flew once," her mother pointed out reproachfully. "So, you can wait."
"Aren't you going to fly?" Clarice asked Calypso curiously. The eldest angel was watching Aria patiently as their mother wrapped and pinned fabric around her chest.
"I'll wait for you two," Calypso answered with a small smile. "It will be more fun if we all go together."
"I hear that," Clarice drawled in a redneck dialect, her eyes sparkling with anticipation.
"I'm going to be the party crasher and suggest that you wait until dark," their mother said reluctantly, clearly not wanting to dampen their excitement. "If someone videos a trio of angels flying around the mountains, it's going to be hard to keep this place hidden. There will be cryptologists and Calypso fans combing every inch of the place."
Their faces fell at her words. She sighed in resignation. "Fine…but at least get up high fast and go far away. How fast can you fly?" she looked at Clarice with a raised eyebrow.
"I'm pretty sure we can break the sound barrier," Clarice replied confidently, bouncing on her toes impatiently."
"Not if you want to keep your clothes on," their mother snorted with a laugh. "Until we can get something more tight-fitting, keep it slow enough to stay dressed. Maybe a few hundred miles."
"Yes, oh wise one," Clarice grinned at their mother as she finally started working on Clarice. "And I only say that with a little levity. You're brilliant, Mom."
Their mother stopped wrapping long enough to pulled Clarice in for a quick embrace before continuing her work. "That's sweet of you to say."
"May I ask about Aria's birth mother and Clarice's birth father?" Calypso asked hesitantly. "I've seen a lot of families over the years, but I don't think I've seen one where the step mother or father shows as much love to their step children as they do to their biological children until meeting you, Emily."
Emily smiled warmly as she stopped working on Clarice long enough to address Calypso, a pleased look in her eyes. "It's just fine, Calypso," their mother assured her. "Aria's mother died in childbirth. Clarice's father died in a car accident when she was two. I met Eric about five years later. Our daughters were the same age and were best friends immediately." She paused and smiled fondly at Aria. "It's hard not to love Aria as if she were my own. She had wanted a mother so badly, and she immediately poured all of her pent up affection out on to me. She was constantly trying to pamper me and could never get enough snuggles. I think I had my hair brushed more in the first year after meeting Aria than I've brushed it in my entire life."
"Mine too," Clarice added with an affectionate shoulder bump with Aria. "I think she was worried we would disappear if she didn't pamper us enough."
Aria was blushing profusely under all of the praise, her eyes darting around. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out as she tried to think of something to say.
"It's okay, Aria," Clarice told her with a gentle smile. "You can accept some flattery. You're one of the most compassionate and loving people I've ever seen, and I love you for it."
Aria felt her eyes fill with quicksilver tears as she pulled her mother and sister into a hug. "You are the best sister and mom," Aria told them thickly. "I really am the luckiest person in the world. I love you both so much. Thank you for making me part of your wonderful family."
Calypso was watching them with an expression of adoration in her eyes as she observed the powerful bonds of love in the family she had been adopted into.
Their mother gasped suddenly as her neck started to glow. Aria and Clarice pulled back in alarm, then noticed her glowing neck.
"Oh no," Aria cried out in dismay. "I'm sorry Mom, we meant to get your permission before we let any angel tears get on you."
Their mother's eyes were wide as she stared into space. The gray in her hair suddenly faded and became black. The wrinkles near her eyes and neck vanished and her features became softer.
"Wow, I feel better than I've felt in decades," she declared in wonder.
"It's just the seed," Clarice patted Aria's shoulder reassuringly. "She won't actually turn into an angel unless she triggers it with the key words."
"I meant to tell the two of you that I think there are different classes of angels," Calypso informed them, her face pensive. "I don't think I'm the same class as the two of you. I think I'm a healer, while you two might be more combat oriented. I'm not sure what other kinds of angels there might be, but the point is that there could be other phrases that will trigger the transformation."
"So, I just have to stop talking for the rest of my life if I don't want to be an angel," their mother noted dryly. "I'm not going to worry about it. If I end up as an angel, so be it." She took a deep breath, then turned to Clarice. "Let's get you finished up."
Five minutes later, they were all modestly covered. The three angels shared an excited look, then leapt into the air and began beating their wings with powerful strokes.
Aria felt exhilaration like never before as she watched the ground shrink away from them. She laughed exultantly as she felt the wind flow through her hair. Within seconds they were above the clouds.
"Keep an eye out for commercial jets and airplanes," Clarice warned them, her voice carrying easily to their sensitive hearing. "Which way should we go?"
"South," Aria suggested, unable to stop grinning.
The ability to fly seemed so natural that she didn't even have to think about it. They flexed their powerful wings and shot off toward the west. Her mother had been right to worry about their clothes staying on. The wind slammed into them like a wall as they blasted forward at near supersonic speeds. They had to dodge a flock of geese as they soared through the skies, dipping in and out of clouds.
It only took them ten minutes to travel a few hundred miles. They saw several aircraft in the distance but easily avoided them. With their telescopic vision they could easily see all of the details on the aircrafts. They stopped about thirty thousand feet above the Appalachian mountains, enjoying the view as they looked down on the peaks.
"Let's go down to the peaks," Clarice suggested, her face suffused with joy. She was gently pumping her wings to stay in place.
"Okay," Calypso agreed, smiling with exhilaration. "I've never been on a mountain peak before."
Aria curled her wings around herself and plummeted toward the peaks. She screamed with excitement as she dived toward the mountains. As she neared the peaks, she unfurled her wings and banked, smoothly curving around the tall peaks and then coasting back up with the air currents above the tree covered peaks. She dropped into a smaller dive and landed with Calypso in a small clearing on the mountain top. Clarice dropped out of the sky from thirty feet above her and landed in a graceful crouch.
"That was beyond belief awesome!" Clarice shouted in glee, her violet eyes dancing with excitement.
"It was everything I had hoped it would be and more," Calypso whispered, a tear forming in her eye. "I'm so happy right now."
Aria hugged her tightly, folding her wings around her and wrapping her in a tight cocoon. "I'm so glad it was so wonderful for you too," Aria whispered as she stroked her hands through Calypso's hair.
They stood inside her wing's embrace for several minutes before the sound of a throat clearing brought them back to the present.
"Yeah, I'm still here too," Clarice reminded them airily. "No need to worry about me. I'm just fine being a third wheel."
Aria laughed and unfurled a wing and pulled Clarice into the embrace.
"That's more like it," Clarice purred contentedly as she wrapped her arms around them.
They stood there for another five minutes as the intimate act of energy exchanging across their meridians melded them into one. It ended when their delicate hearing detected the sound of helicopter rotors in the distance. Aria sighed, reluctantly releasing the other two angels.
She retracted her wings and stared toward the sound of what sounded like a fleet of helicopters. She zoomed in and saw half a dozen military helicopters. Two of them looked like Apache gunships, while the other four looked like cargo and transport helicopters.
"Do you think they've seen us yet?" Aria asked, feeling far less worry than she would have a week ago. It was difficult to feel fear when nothing could hurt you.
"Military scanners and cameras, plus satellites above," Clarice murmured conversationally. "Yeah, pretty sure they see us." She finished with a wave at the sky straight above them.
"Seriously?" Aria deadpanned as she stared at Clarice with a raised eyebrow. "You're waving at the people trying to kill us?"
"We don't know they're trying to kill us," Clarice objected, her lips twitching. "I'm pretty sure they want us alive."
"Yeah, so they can dissect us," Aria growled, her sense of overprotectiveness for Calypso triggering an immediate change in her meridians. The darkening shadows suddenly vanished as Aria began to glow brightly, her violet eyes pulsing with power.
"They've definitely seen us now," Clarice muttered with a sigh. "Chill out, okay? Let's find out what they want before we go psycho on their asses. There might be some young, dumb twenty year old Calypso fans in there who are just following orders. It's not like we can't leave whenever we want."
"I'm trying to chill out," Aria retorted tightly. "But as long as I feel like Calypso is threatened, I'm not going to be able to relax."
"Maybe it's just as well," Clarice grumbled with a sigh. A moment later she flared into incandescent light as well. "At least wait to see what they want."
Aria nodded, holding back the power she knew could vaporize the helicopters flying toward them.
It took another five minutes for the helicopters to arrive. The gunships positioned themselves on either side of them while the transport helicopters dropped repelling ropes followed shortly after by several dozen troops. They took up a perimeter around the trio of angels, their guns pointed at them. Aria could see fear and trepidation in the faces of many of the troops. She listened in to the communications as they troops moved into position.
"The CO didn't say we were attacking angels," an anxious voice spoke into his radio. "There's no freaking way I'm opening fire on an angel. I'm not going to hell."
"I second that," several voices agreed with the first voice.
"Those aren't angels," a cold voice in their earpieces declared firmly. "Those are alien entities that merely look like angels."
"That's bullshit," another voice answered disbelievingly. "They are the spitting image of angels, and they are freaking glowing like angels. I swore to defend god and country, and this is a direct contradiction to that oath."
"Unless you want to be court marshalled, you'll do as you are told," the cold voice snapped angrily. "Now subdue the entities and load them back up."
"Negative," the same voice replied curtly. "I'll take a court martial over eternal damnation any day of the week."
"You bunch of religious morons," a voice laughed as a soldier near the front aimed his rifle at Aria and pulled the trigger. A tranquillizer dart shot toward her at terrific speeds.
Her hand blurred as she snatched the dart out of the air. Deliberately, she pressed the needle against her hand and pushed until the needle broke into pieces.
"I don't think tranq darts are going to work," the man said, sounding much less certain of himself. "She just caught it out of the air and crushed it with her bare hands."
"Why are you shooting at us?" Calypso asked, her voice breaking into multiple channels all around them. "What do you want?"
"Holy shit, that's NOTESTOREMEMBER," one of the soldiers gasped in awe. "I thought it was just internet hype when they said she was an angel."
A voice began broadcasting from a loud speaker on one of the Apache gunships. "Lay down face first on the ground with your hands on your head, or we will open fire."
"You don't have any weapons that can harm us," Clarice informed them coldly. "We will allow you to leave if you do so peacefully right now. Anyone still threatening Calypso by the time I count to thirty is going to be judged swiftly, and harshly."
There was an anxious silence for a few seconds before over a dozen soldier pointed their weapons down and walked away. The remaining soldiers grew more unsettled as they were left to face the glowing angels.
"I'm going to take the pilots out of the helicopters after you do your thing," Clarice told her quietly. "We don't want them dying."
Aria nodded slightly, beginning to grow brighter. The remaining soldiers had a change of heart and pulled back to join the other soldiers. Something about the brightening light seemed to alert a sixth sense of impending doom.
The air was suddenly shattered by the roar of machine gun fire as the gunship opened fire on them. Aria folded her wings in front of her, trying to protect her clothes. Thirty millimeter rounds ricocheted off of her wings for over a minute before the overheated gun finally stopped firing. The second Apache had not opened fire.
Aria felt heat fuse in her eyes as she stared at the tail of the gunship. A second later a blinding white light shot out of her eyes and vaporized the back of the Apache. Clarice launched herself at the falling aircraft and quickly tore the door off. She ripped the seat restraints off of the pilot like they were tissue paper, then pulled him out. It happened so fast that all he had seen was a blur and a sudden impact of G forces as he was pulled out of the falling helicopter. She jumped further into the helicopter and repeated the process for the second pilot, then sprung free of the plummeting war machine with both operators in her arms.
She descended to the ground next to Aria and Calypso, gently dropping the two operators on the ground, where they fell to their knees. The other gunship had been arming it's missile bays after observing the futility of machine gun fire. There was a moment of hesitation when they saw the operators of the other gunship with them.
"Are you guys hurt?" Clarice asked the two soldiers curtly. "I didn't have time to be gentle with you."
Calypso knelt down by the terrified pilots, her swirling eyes studying them intently. "They just have some bruising," she said after a few seconds. "Nothing broken."
"You should probably get them out of here before their buddies fire on them 'accidentally'," Aria suggested with a glare at the other gunship. The transport helicopters had pulled away several thousand feet when the gunship had opened fire.
"I have a better idea," Clarice smiled wolfishly, glowing brighter as she prepared to attack.
The gunship launched several hellfire missiles as Clarice's eyes blazed like the sun. Each of the missiles was vaporized, followed by the armaments around the helicopter. When she was finished, it was no longer a gunship, just a helicopter. The pilot immediately pulled back and started to retreat.
Aria's sixth sense made her look up. A dozen miles away she spotted two F22 Raptors moving toward them.
"We better take this battle to the air, or these guys are going to get killed in friendly fire," Aria suggested briskly.
"Let's go," Clarice agreed, launching herself up with a gust of wind that knocked several trees down.
Aria and Calypso followed her up toward the Raptors, reaching Mach 1 within a few seconds. She swooped out wide and then banked sharply so that she would be paralleling where the Raptors would arrive in a few seconds.
Clarice motioned for her to take the one on the right as she moved toward the one on the left. Her body began to glow incandescently again as she felt righteous fury fuel her meridians with wrath. She flew right up to the cockpit as the pilot tried spinning and banking to lose her. The maneuverability of an angel was so superior to that of the most advanced fighter jet that it wasn't even comparable. She flew so that she was staring at the pilot through the window.
"Get lost now, or I'm going to fry your machine," Aria commanded, her voice layered with an authority and power that easily traveled through the barriers between them.
The pilot's face was hidden by his oxygen mask, but Aria got the distinct impression that he understood. He turned and began flying back the way he had come. She stayed right above him for several seconds until it was clear he was following her directions.
She flew back to where Clarice was leaving the other pilot to return to base as well. Calypso had been following behind them a few miles. They regrouped, hovering in the air several miles high.
"I'm tempted to go satellite hunting," Clarice remarked with a glance up at the skies. "I'm not sure I want them watching us all of the time."
"Do you think they found Uncle Devon's house yet?" Aria asked worriedly, her eyes looking back to the North.
"We'll head back and make sure," Clarice assured her with a grim smile. "Now that it's dark, we should be able to fly lower. I really hate that they can follow our movements when we're airborne with satellites though."
"Do you think they got the message that their technology isn't advanced enough to challenge you?" Calypso asked curiously.
"I seriously doubt they learned that quickly," Clarice snorted a short laugh. "We're talking about the top of the testosterone pile here."
"I think we can all agree that we freaking rock!" Aria told them with a wide grin. "We just took down the US Military without having to kill a single person."
"Yeah, we rock," Clarice agreed with a matching grin. "I feel like we've made it clear that we can handle ourselves. I'm not sure how much hiding is still necessary."
"Really?" Aria stared at her uncertainly. "What about family? They would totally go after family to try and control us."
"Yeah, I suppose you're right," Clarice admitted with a sigh. "But soon, I think, we'll be able to return to the world. We don't have a lot of family to worry about. Just Uncle Devon and Dad."
"Maybe we should split up," Aria suggested, her face worried. "What if they go after Dad? They must have made the connection that the angels they fought today are the same people that were with Calypso during the biker incident."
"Okay, maybe your right," Clarice frowned as she looked at Calypso. "Who do you want to go with, Calypso? Do you want to meet our dad?"
"I've met him before," Calypso reminded her gently. "But I would love to meet him again."
"Oh yeah," Clarice grinned ruefully. "Fifteen years ago seems like a lifetime at this point."
"Yes it does," Aria agreed fervently. "Who do you want to check on, Mom or Dad?"
"I'll let you check on Dad," Clarice decided after a moments hesitation. "I want to see if Mom's accidentally transformed yet."
Aria giggled at the thought of Devon's face if she did transform while he was there. "Poor Uncle Devon."
Clarice laughed as she saw where Aria's thoughts were directed. "Yeah, it's been a pretty crazy ride for him the last couple of days." She took a deep, unnecessary breath, and then pulled them both into a hug. "I'll see you both soon. I know we're invincible but be careful."
"You too," Aria murmured affectionately into her ear. "I'll see you soon."
Aria and Calypso took off into the night, dropping their elevation as they went in hopes of reducing their visibility to satellites.
"Do you really think they will be in danger?" Calypso asked, concern in her voice.
"We know they already knew where Dad was," Aria responded as she beat her wings swiftly. "We are pretty sure they were leaving him alone so that they could see if he would lead them to us. As for the cabin, I'm pretty sure that satellite surveillance is recording all of the time, so they can probably follow our flight footage back to Uncle Devon's house."
"That doesn't leave much privacy to people," Calypso noted disapprovingly.
"They've convinced everyone to trade their privacy for security," Aria informed her with a disgusted shake of her head. "Like Uncle Devon said, total control is every government's dream."
They flew silently for the last few minutes of the journey. Aria was surprised at how well her sense of direction worked from high up in the sky. The dark night was just as bright as daytime to her eyes, so she had no problem following landmarks and highways. At the speed they were flying, it only took them fifteen minutes to arrive at the house she grew up in.
They hovered in the sky for a few minutes to make sure there weren't any stray bystanders that would spot them landing. They swooped down and landed on the porch. Aria knocked on the door. There were several lights on inside, so she was fairly certain he was home.
She heard him grumbling from up in his room. "Who in the world could that be?"
She smiled at hearing his voice. She had missed him fiercely over the last couple of days.
He opened the door and stared at her in disbelief. "Aria?"
"Hi Dad," Aria greeted him with a small grin. "Got room for your little angel in there?"
"Is that really you?" he asked in astonishment.
"Yes, it's really me, you ninny," Aria laughed, stepping forward and pulling him into a tight embrace. "I missed you, Dad."
He gasped as he felt the powerful angelic presence fill his heart with love and comfort. She pulled back and made a shooing motion with her hands.
"Come on, let's get in before someone sees a couple of angels on your porch," Aria laughed, pushing past him.
"Hello, Eric," Calypso greeted him warmly as she followed behind Aria. "It's been a little while since we spoke. How are you?"
He closed the door in a zombie-like fashion as he stared at Calypso in shock. "Calypso?"
Calypso nodded, her expression gentle. "I sang to Aria and Clarice fifteen years ago at the hospital."
Eric blinked again, then pulled Calypso into a fierce embrace as tears began streaming down his face. "Thank you Calypso. I don't think I would have survived if I had lost my little girl."
Calypso smiled softly as she returned his hug warmly, saturating his soul with love.
Aria felt her own eyes become wet with quicksilver tears. She carefully made sure to keep them away from her father until she knew how he felt about immortality.
He suddenly laughed around his tears. "You know, her mother always believed you were the one who healed her," he told her as he wiped his eyes. "I've always been a skeptic, and I couldn't accept that she was healed by magical music. It seems I was wrong about a lot."
Calypso patted his back comfortingly as her aura filled him with comforting love. "You're not the only one with a lot to learn," Calypso laughed ruefully. "Until your daughters visited me a few days ago, I was pretty clueless about almost everything."
"She didn't know her NOTESTOREMEMBER channel was known to the world," Aria told him, her eyes full of mirth. "She also didn't know that she wasn't aging, even after a hundred years. She also didn't know that she was an angel."
Her father took a deep breath as he stepped away from Calypso, wiping at his eyes. "So, you really are an angel," he commented with a faraway look. "I've been reading everything I can online to get an idea of what's been going on with my daughters. I've seen a lot of people claiming that you were an angel, but my skepticism just couldn't accept it. How did Aria become an angel as well?"
"We probably shouldn't tell you that here, Dad," Aria warned him cautiously. "I can guarantee this place is bugged. We're actually here to take you with us in case the people trying to kill us decide to use you as a hostage. Thirty minutes ago, Clarice, Calypso, and I had a showdown with a bunch of military aircraft. We let them go after we made it clear that they didn't stand a chance against us. We figured they would start going after people we love that are vulnerable. So far, they've just been watching you, hoping you would lead them to us."
"Who is this 'they' you are talking about?" her father asked in confusion.
"Apparently, conspiracy theorists were right about a lot of stuff," Aria told him dryly. "In this case, there is a shadow government that pulls the strings of every other government throughout the world and has access to some pretty advanced technology. Uncle Devon used to work for them."
"Your Mom and I used to suspect that he worked for one of the intelligence agencies," her father responded with a frown. "He actually came out and admitted it finally, huh?"
"Calypso was able to destroy the nanobots in his system that prevented him from talking about it before," Aria explained, looking at Calypso fondly. "She really is an angel."
"How long do we have to get out of here?" her father asked warily as he realized how serious the situation was.
"We should probably already be gone," Aria responded as she walked over to look out the window at a van that had pulled up to the curb a few houses down. She could clearly see a man with an earpiece. "It looks like they are here. I might have to make a scene for us to get through them."
"So, what, you're a super hero or something?" he asked her with a half-smile.
"Way more than a super hero," Aria chuckled with a glance at Calypso. "I'm totally impervious to any kind of damage, I have insane strength, speed, vision, hearing, smell, and can fly. Oh yeah, I can also shoot laser beams out of my eyes."
He stared at her with a smile until he realized she was serious. The smile faltered and he watched her with a growing sense of awe. "You're really that powerful?"
"I just caught up to an F22 Raptor and told the pilot that I was going to vaporize his jet if he didn't scram," Aria told him patiently. "Think Super Man kind of powers, without the kryptonite weakness."
He blinked, then shook his head vigorously. "Am I even awake?"
"We'll find out soon," Aria smiled mischievously. "Do you ever have those dreams when you are falling? Cause we're not driving to the safe house."
His eyes widened as she flexed her wings slightly. "Don't tell me you are going to fly me there…"
"I'm going to fly you there," she confirmed, her grin growing. "Don't worry, we already had some practice. Clarice pulled some pilots out of an Apache gunship and flew them safely to the ground after I blasted the back half of it off."
"I really don't like flying," he told her nervously.
"Don't worry, we'll take care of the fear of flying," Aria assured him.
Aria had been watching as a team of gunmen dressed in workers overalls got out of the van and began circling the house.
"Hold that thought, Dad, I need to take care of some bad guys real quick," Aria told him with a roll of her eyes. "It's like they have an endless supply stashed away somewhere."
Aria took off out the door at high speed. She ran past each gunman and chopped them on the neck hard enough to knock them out. It took her less than five seconds, leaving a hurricane of wind in her passage. She was just below the sound barrier with her speed. She knew if she broke the sound barrier, it would probably shatter the windows in houses all over the street.
She returned with a grin. "Bad guys taken care of. Shall we go?"
"I don't know about this," he hedged, trying to back away.
"Oh yeah, first things first," Aria frowned, studying his meridians. There was something interfering with them. "Calypso, do you know what's going on with his meridians?"
Calypso peered closely at him before a look of displeasure appeared on her face. "I believe they are nanobots similar to your Uncle's," she replied disapprovingly. "These ones appear to be for tracking, I think. I will clear them out."
She stood in front of him and began to sing softly. Aria watched intently, hoping to be able to understand what it was that Calypso did to heal people. As she watched, Calypso's meridians began producing a pulsing pattern that seemed to follow the frequency of the notes in her song. The energy never left her body, but as it began forming what almost appeared to be runes, the meridians in her dad's body began mimicking the frequency she was emitting, almost like she was training it. Aria watched the energy in her father's meridians mimic the rune-like symbols until a sudden flash of current arced through his meridians, eradicating the invading nanobots.
"Yeah, I definitely agree that there must be different classes of angels," Aria told Calypso as she finished. "I have no idea how you just did that, even though I could see it. The frequencies you are creating with your music seem to be making some kind of runic symbol that the other person's body tries to match."
"Runes?" Calypso murmured thoughtfully. "That's tickling a memory again. I think it has something to do with language."
"Probably the divine language," Aria responded shrewdly. "There probably is a language that has power over matter, and being able to speak that language gives you that power." Aria looked at her curiously. "You said most of it just comes to you intuitively, right?"
Calypso nodded, her eyes introspective. "I do it mostly by feel. The music is almost a meditative instrument to help me get into a certain state of mind. At that point, I can begin shaping the light by what feels right."
"Let's continue this discussion later," Aria suggested, looking out the window for any other mystery vehicles. "I think it's time to go."
Her father had been listening to their conversation with a bemused expression. He probably still thought he was asleep. She marched him out the front door and onto the lawn. She gave him a bearhug from behind, her hands holding tightly around his chest, then launched them into the air. He let out a startled yell as her wings began pulling them higher swiftly. She let her meridians go to work at calming him, flooding his system with comfort and love. She felt him relax as she began streaking through the sky a thousand feet up, making sure not to go too high. It took them nearly an hour to get to the cabin because of her load, as well as her fear of going too fast with his fragile mortal body. Her overpowering aura had flooded his system with tranquility the entire trip, helping him maintain his calm. They landed in the drive way of the cabin about an hour before midnight. Aria longed to go flying high up in the atmosphere at night when she could just enjoy the stars.
Clarice was out next to their dad in an instant, pulling him into a tight hug. Less than a minute later their mother exited the cabin with their uncle. She walked up and waited for Clarice to let him go so that she could get her hug in.
"I see they've formed a line," their Uncle Devon noted wryly as he observed the still bemused form of her father. "Did you run into any more trouble?"
"Not much," Aria answered with an impish grin. "Just a van full of gunmen that were trying to sneak into the house. I knocked them out before they knew they were under attack."
"From what Clarice has told us, it sounds like you two are an army all by yourselves," Devon remarked with a faint smile. "It's starting to sound less and less like you need our protection and more that you need to protect us."
"That seems to be the case," Aria agreed, glancing up at the night sky with a glare. "We were thinking about doing some satellite hunting."
"You think you can fly that high up?" Devon asked doubtfully.
"I'm pretty sure we can," Aria nodded confidently. "We don't need oxygen, we don't get cold, and there is still atmosphere up there; at least enough for what we need to do."
"The only satellites that are going to offer you a lot of trouble are the ones in low earth orbit," Devon mused, rubbing his chin. "Those are the ones that are going to have all of the high-resolution surveillance. They have so many of them up there now that you are visible to half a dozen of them at any given time."
"Are you talking about the Starlink satellites?" Aria frowned, zooming her eyes in until she could see one of the internet satellites flying past quickly. "I thought they were just for internet."
"Do you really think they would invest that much money so that a few rural bumpkins could get broadband internet?" Devon's eyes were amused. "Those satellites provide internet, but only incidentally. Their main purpose is to offer ultra-wide band support for drones and other robotic gizmos that haven't been revealed to the public yet. I wouldn't expect the next attack by these people to include actual humans. You've shown that they are no match for your abilities, so I expect things to get more exotic going forward."
"Maybe we need to go visit whoever is in charge of all of this nonsense," Aria observed darkly. "Cut the head off of the snake, so to speak."
"Good luck finding them," Devon shook his head, his eyes frustrated. "They keep everything extremely regimented and compartmentalized. Nobody really knows who is really in charge. For all we know, it could be an AI that's taken over already. Some of the decisions they've made over the years make that seem plausible, at least."
"So, we're going to be fighting the terminator?" Clarice gasped as she released her father finally. "Angels against machines! How cool would that be?"
Aria and Devon laughed at her description. Her father was too busy getting smooched by his wife for either of them to enjoy the joke. As he pulled his face back he studied her features in the bright lights of the yard.
"Did you get younger?" he asked suspiciously.
"Let's go inside to talk about this," Devon suggested, looking up at the sky distrustfully. "Too many technologies that can probably read lips or pick up sound."
They all nodded and made their way into the front door. They walked into the front room and found seats. Her parents sat in a two person love seat, her mother leaning over to rest her head on her dad's chest. The three angels sighed as they realized that wings made sitting in conventional furniture impossible. Of course, standing was no longer an uncomfortable position with their enhanced and light bodies. The positive energy coursing through their meridians brought them contentment no matter how they were positioned. They stood facing the humans as they got situated.
"I totally forgot that we need to find some new furniture," Devon muttered in chagrin. "Let me get some of the kitchen barstools."
"No need, Uncle," Clarice quickly forestalled him. "Standing isn't the same for angels. We are super light and don't get tired. We also have this ridiculous euphoric energy filling us with happiness all of the time, so it would be impossible for us to be uncomfortable."
He hesitated but nodded by the end of her words. "That sounds like an interesting tradeoff for not needing sleep."
"You were going to tell me why you look so young?" her father was asking her mother.
"The reason our daughters are angels now is because one of Calypso's tears landed on their hands," she informed him, her head still resting on his chest. "They aptly called it an angel seed. Once the seed is there, it requires a certain phrase to activate it. As soon as the phrase is said, they turn into an angel."
"Okay," he nodded his understanding. "So, angel tears are how angels reproduce."
"We actually have a great theory about just what angels are," she smiled, an excited light in her eyes. "But that's getting ahead of the story. Aria and Clarice were going to ask me if I wanted to be an angel. I was a little hesitant because the thought of immortality scares me. We were out talking in the driveway earlier today, shortly after they grew their wings, and things got a little emotional. One of Aria's tears touched me. Apparently, they have a rejuvenating effect. That's why I look ten years younger."
"More like twenty years younger," he disagreed with a chuckle. "So, you're going to be an angel too?"
"Not necessarily," she responded with a sigh. "I haven't said the phrase that triggered it in Aria and Clarice. We believe there are multiple classes of angels though, and that there may be other phrases that will trigger it. I'm just going to continue as a normal human unless I accidentally say one of the trigger phrases."
"Let me get this straight," her father said, holding up a hand. "Angels don't need to eat or sleep. They are invulnerable. They have super senses, super speed, and super strength. They can fly, heal people, and shoot lasers out of their eyes. Is that all of the abilities?"
"Pretty much," Clarice nodded, looking at Aria and Calypso admiringly. "And they are super freaking hot."
"Oh yeah, the laser eyes seems to be a class related ability," Aria clarified, pointing at Calypso. "She seems to be a healer class, while Clarice and I are combat class."
"So do angels have…I mean do you still-" her dad cut off with a blush, his eyes darting around the room without making eye contact with them. "What I'm trying to ask, is do you, um, still, you know, have-"
"No, Dad, angels don't have a gender," Clarice told him sadly. Her eyes were sparkling with mischief.
"Really?" he frowned, a look of disappointment on his face. "Oh. Well, I guess they got that much right about them."
"She's so full of crap," Aria finally swooped in to rescue him. "Yes dad, we're still very female." Aria turned to stare disapprovingly at Clarice. "You are a bad angel."
"Hey, we've been over both of those points already!" Clarice objected vehemently. "We can't be full of crap because we don't eat," she patted her narrow waist pointedly. "And we're angels, so anything we do is by default, good."
"Then you're a fallen angel," Aria declared firmly. "And fallen angels can be bad."
"Do you need to punish me, mistress?" Clarice pleaded hopefully.
"You are too much," Aria laughed, trying to keep a blush from appearing on her cheeks.
"Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are at it again," her mother chuckled with a shake of her head. "Some things will never change, no matter how much everything else does."
"And now it's going to go on forever," her father observed sadly. "I feel a sense of pity for the future generations that will all have to endure this endless banter."
"I'm starting to see where they get it from," Devon commented in his deep voice with a smirk. He looked at the angels, wincing as the thought of leaving them standing around still seemed to bother him. "You know, all that would be necessary for angel chairs would be a divided back rest."
"It's not like we can't sit on our wings," Clarice informed him dryly. "We don't feel pain or discomfort."
She demonstrated by sitting in one of the other love sofas. She tucked her feet under her and leaned back. Her wings were bent under her as she sat. They stuck out behind her as she leaned back on them in the sofa. "See, we can sit just fine if we want."
"That's not uncomfortable?" Devon asked doubtfully. "It looks uncomfortable."
"Not in the least," Clarice insisted firmly. "Like I said, we don't feel discomfort or pain."
"Do you feel comfort?" he asked curiously.
"Pretty much all of the time," she answered with nod. "And it's not like it's comfort you get used to so that it stops feeling like comfort. We have perfect memories, so we remember exactly what discomfort feels like. We don't need the dichotomy of pain to offset pleasure since I can recall everything as if it was happening right now, sensations and all."
"You can relive any experience you want?" her mother asked interestedly, pursing her lips. "So, if Aria wanted to relive her first kiss, it would be just like she was experiencing it now?"
Aria's face lit up like a sunset as she recalled the memory, feeling Calypso's lips under her own.
"I guess that answers that question," her mother laughed, watching her mischievously.
"Hey, I missed Aria's first kiss?" her father demanded in a hurt tone.
"You sure did," her mother said with an impish grin. "It was so intense that it knocked Calypso unconscious."
Calypso blushed a rich scarlet as Clarice and Devon laughed uproariously, but not quite as vividly scarlet as Aria.
"Look at that," Clarice gasped between bouts of laughter. "Her face is the same shade as her hair!"
Her dad joined in the mirth, laughing loudly with blue eyes full of affection.
Feeling a sense of rebellion in her soul, she turned to the blushing Calypso and pulled her into an embrace, her lips latching onto Calypso's. She felt Calypso's wings wrap around her tightly, shielding them from view as she passionately kissed Aria back.
"Boo!" Clarice cried out disappointedly. "No hiding the show!"
Aria hadn't kissed Calypso since becoming an angel and wasn't prepared for the intensity of the experience. The energy in their meridians connected with a much denser bridge when their lips were together. Energy flooded between the two of them, the exchange almost buckling her knees. She gasped as she finally pulled back, her eyes wide with passion.
"Wow," Aria breathed in awe as she stared into Calypso's beautiful swirling eyes. "That. Was. Amazing."
"Yeah," Calypso whispered in wonder. "Truly amazing."
"Sorry to spring that on you," Aria apologized ruefully. "Sometimes I can be a little willful."
"Do you hear me complaining?" Calypso asked with an enchanting smile.
"Are you aware that you two aren't touching the ground?" Clarice questioned them dryly.
Aria blinked as she looked down. Their feet were several inches above the ground. She reluctantly released Calypso and gasped as she remained in the air. She tried to take a step toward a chair, and she was suddenly floating over to it.
"Every time you experience anything intimate you come away with a new ability," Clarice noted with a curious note in her voice. "Are you unable to walk now, Aria?"
Aria tried to walk to the edge of the room, but she floated instead of walked, drifting silently over. "I'm going to be pissed if I can't walk anymore," Aria fumed, trying to make her legs move independently.
"You need to focus on the difference between floating and walking," Calypso told her helpfully as she descended to the floor and began walking.
Aria focused her intent to walk instead of float. She slowly descended to the floor. She let out a relieved breath as she was finally able to walk.
"Okay, this one's a little weird," Aria observed, her head tilted as she thought about it. "I can't really see a reason to float around instead of walk."
"Then you're not using your imagination very well," Clarice purred seductively.
"Clarice!" Aria admonished her sister sharply.
"What did I miss?" Calypso asked in confusion, her brows creased. "This was easier when I could still hear your thoughts."
"She's just being dirty," Aria declared primly.
"Can you float horizontally, Calypso?" Clarice probed, her eyes wicked.
"I think so," the blonde angel nodded, her face going still for a moment as she focused on levitating. She rose into the air again, then slowly rotated until she was laying flat a few feet above the ground. "It seems to work well. I'm curious if we will be able to use this as part of flight. We wouldn't need to use our wings to hover. Maybe not even to fly."
"Clarice, you are a bad angel," Aria accused, her eyes full of disapproval.
"I know," Clarice admitted with a sultry wink.
"I feel like I've missed the punchline of this conversation," Calypso observed inquisitively.
"I'll explain later," Clarice promised her with slow, sensual wink.
Calypso seemed to finally understand. Her face caught fire, and she quickly rotated back upright and landed on the ground.
"You really are a bad angel, aren't you?" her mother asked with an amused shake of her head.
"One does one's best," Clarice smirked, eyeing Aria and Calypso with a lascivious grin.
"I feel like I need to bathe," Aria complained plaintively.
"I'll scrub your back," Clarice offered with a wink.
Aria finally lost it, giggling uncontrollably at how outrageous her sister was. Calypso smiled fondly as she watched the two of them interact.
"I feel like maybe they should get a room," her father suggested dryly. "Or we should go back to our own room and leave them in peace."
Clarice suddenly jumped to her feet and was gone, leaving a tornado of wind in her absence.
Aria listened intently to see where her sister had run off to so urgently. She could hear the faintest of whines, almost like small servos. The sound suddenly vanished and a moment later, Clarice appeared again. She entered much slower than she had left.
Her parent's and Devon were still in the process of jumping to their feet in surprise.
"Looks like we have a peeping tom," Clarice informed them darkly as she held up the crushed remains of some kind of drone the size of a dragonfly. From what was left of it, the remains looked remarkably like a dragonfly.
"One of their stealth drones," Devon identified the small handful of scrap electronics. "They are usually undetectable because they look and sound just like real dragonflies." He looked up at Clarice curiously. "How did you know it was there?"
"These god-like ears warned me," Clarice tapped her ear meaningfully. "I could hear the little servos inside of it."
"Your hearing is that good?" he asked, his eyes startled.
"Yep," Clarice nodded gravely. "I could hear a spider fart in Asia."
"Thanks for the visual," Aria murmured.
"Any time, Tweedle Dee," Clarice grinned at her. There was some kind of repressed emotion in her eyes that Aria couldn't identify. She would need to ask her about it later.
"Do you think we're under attack?" her mother asked anxiously.
"My sixth sense isn't tingling," Clarice shook her head with a grimace. "Though who knows if that will always warn me. I think we should go scout around."
"Agreed," Aria nodded as she quickly went out of the house. Using her new hover ability, she kept most of her body motionless and ghosted out into the night, hovering a few feet above the ground. She tested the speed of her new hover ability, intent on going quickly. As she did, her body shot forward. She gasped as she realized there was no wind. Somehow, the hover ability negated any wind she would have normally created from her hyper speed.
It didn't take her long to find an anomaly. Several miles way from their cabin there was a semi-truck with a long black box trailer. There were holes all over the trailer where more of the tiny drones were entering and exiting the trailer. Aria swiftly went to the back of the trailer. There was a locked door with a combination pad next to it. She casually grabbed the beams in the door and tore them out to the shrieking sound of tearing metal. She pulled the door open to find a command center with a dozen operatives at desks studying screens as their drones scouted the area. When they saw her in place of the door, they all scrambled to their feet, reaching for weapons.
"Good, now that you're trapped in here with me, let's have a chat," Aria told them grimly.
"Get down on the floor and put your hands behind your head," a man with sergeants stripes shouted at her harshly, his gun aimed at her chest.
"Clearly you haven't been told what happened to the last team that pointed their weapons at me," Aria observed with a dark smile. "I'll give you three seconds to drop your weapons and start answering questions."
She saw the sergeant start to pull the trigger and was in front of him with her hand restraining his trigger finger before he could do more than blink.
"I said it's time to answer some questions," She whispered dangerously, easily removing the gun from his straining hands. "But first, we'll need to deal with some troublesome pests."
"Clarice, can you bring Calypso over here?" Aria called out in her authoritative voice.
They waited for almost thirty seconds before Calypso entered the trailer with Clarice. The other operatives still had their guns, but nobody was firing as she stood in front of the sergeant patiently.
"Can you clean them up, Calypso?" Aria asked gently.
Calypso nodded. She began singing softly, words of power manifesting as runes appeared in her meridians. It only took a few minutes for her to destroy all of the nanobots.
"There, now that your nanobots are gone, it's time to start talking," Aria told the shaken operatives. "Are you contracted to the agency, or are you just regular soldiers?"
"The nanobots are gone?" the sergeant asked, his eyes a mixture of fear and hope.
"They are," she confirmed with a reassuring smile.
There was a collective exhaling of relieved breaths from the other operative at her words.
"We're with the agency," the sergeant answered her, his eyes still fearful as he waited for his heart to stop. When he continued to live, his eyes lost some of their fear.
"What were your orders here?" Aria asked quietly. "Just to surveil us?"
"To gather intel," the sergeant nodded.
"So, try to listen to conversations, map the area, that kind of thing?" Aria prodded.
"Yes, and observe your abilities," the sergeant answered, swallowing hard.
"Are there any other operatives up here on the mountain?" she asked him, looking around the technological room.
"I don't think so," he shook his head firmly.
"How did they find us here?" she prompted.
"They didn't tell us, but it was probably satellite tracking," the man said quickly.
"We are going to have to take those satellites down after all," Aria told Clarice with a grimace.
"There are going to be a lot of satellite internet users that are going to be pissed at us," Clarice pointed out, her eyes full of mirth.
"They'll just have to deal with it," Aria frowned, glancing back at the operatives. "You guys can go now. Let your superiors know that we are coming for them next if we get even a whiff of anyone snooping around the area."
The man nodded, watching them like a mouse watches a cat.
Aria left the trailer in a burst of speed, this time without the blast of air. As Clarice caught up to her, she glared.
"Hey, I want to be able to zip around without affecting the air," she declared bitterly. "That's not fair."
"Well, you know what you have to do to get the ability now," Aria told her archly, her lips twitching.
"It will be a hardship," Clarice sighed exaggeratedly. "But I'll just have to endure."
They were at the outskirts of the cabin when Clarice suddenly wrapped herself around Calypso, wings and all. Aria heard kissing sounds and felt her face heat up. She tried to ignore it, but it was beyond her meager self-control. She looked at the two of them, noticing that they were levitating by several feet.
"Hey," Aria called out in a deadpan voice. "You've sucked so much oxygen out of her that you're floating."
The kissing sounds continued for an additional minute. Aria couldn't stop her cheeks from heating up the entire time. When it finally ended, Clarice unwrapped her wings from Calypso and floated away from her. Her eyes were wide with wonder as she moved around effortlessly without disturbing the air.
"This is so cool," Clarice breathed excitedly. "This is going to totally change how we fly."
"Yeah, no need to worry about the clothes getting torn off of our backs now," Aria commented wryly.
"I wasn't super worried about that," Clarice assured her with a wink. "But the speeds we'll be able to move at now are going to be insane. Let's try it out."
She vanished. If it wasn't for Aria's heightened senses, she would have thought her sister had just disappeared. She smiled, pushing her thoughts in the speed and direction she wanted to go. It was almost like instantaneous travel. There was a blur, and suddenly she was a hundred miles into the sky. She looked up at the stars in wonder, free from the light pollution of the world below. It was marred slightly by the number of satellites flying over head.
She sensed Calypso appear next to her, gasping at the beauty of the starry night. "This is gorgeous."
"Almost perfect," Aria agreed, watching another satellite fly directly over them a few hundred miles away. "I think it's time to remove the eyeballs hovering over us. As she spoke, she began to glow incandescently. Her eyes grew warm, then blasted a beam of energy into the orbiting satellite, vaporizing it. She began moving from satellite to satellite, blasting each one like she was playing space invaders. A few minutes into it, Clarice joined her, grinning as she decided it was a game.
"This is going to take a while," Aria noted after zapping the twentieth satellite. "There are thousands of them."
"Did you forget how fast we are?" Clarice asked archly. "We don't have to wait for them. Also, I don't think we need to destroy them. We just don't want them watching. Let's just tear the camera's off of all of them."
So, saying, she vanished in a beam of light, looking like a shooting star that skipped across the sky. Aria grinned and went the opposite direction. She marveled at her speed as she practically teleported to each place she wanted to go. Within a few minutes, she met up with Clarice on the other side of the world.
"Well, that should take care of the worst of the surveillance," Clarice noted in satisfaction. "Though I think we may need to take out the geosynchronous satellites up above our place too. They're a lot higher up though. I guess it's a good time to find out how high we can go."
"How high up are they?" Aria asked, her tone eager. She would be inspace.
"About twenty thousand miles," Clarice responded, a grin appearing on her delicate features. "You ready to go to space?"
"You know it," Aria grinned back, her smile splitting her face.
"You coming too, Calypso?" Aria asked the eldest angel as she joined them.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Calypso declared fervently, her vortex eyes swirling furiously.
"Let's skip on back to our side of the world and go to space then," Clarice instructed, disappearing in a streak of glowing angel light.
Aria and Calypso shot after her, appearing over their cabin a few seconds later. Clarice gave them a sardonic salute, then shot upward. Aria shared an excited look with Calypso, then followed her sister upward. She felt her speed increase as she mentally plotted how far she want to go. There seemed to be no limit to how fast they could fly. In just a few seconds, they arrived at a large satellite.
"This one's got all sorts of lenses on it," Clarice observed as she studied it. She shifted the large satellite effortlessly and pointed the lens at them. "Everybody say cheese."
"Cheese," Aria and Calypso said together. Clarice grinned and pulled all of the cameras off of the satellite.
"I would love to see the bad guys' faces when they see our faces grinning at them in space," Clarice gloated with a laugh. "Okay, let's take out a few more in the area."
"How are we talking in space?" Aria asked curiously. "There isn't any atmosphere here."
"I noticed that too," Clarice responded, pointing at Aria. "I can see your meridians generating sound waves as you talk. They seem to intuitively help out when they understand what we are trying to do. They are creating an energy channel between us, almost like beaming a radio wave."
"Wow, that's pretty awesome," Aria commented, studying Clarice's energy matrix while she talked. "I can see it too, now that I know what I'm looking for."
They destroyed several dozen geosynchronous satellite cameras, creating a large blind spot over the Western hemisphere.
"Hey, look at this one," Aria called over to them as she flew toward a much larger satellite. It had a grid of twelve squares that were closed, each square around two feet wide. She whistled as she detected the dense elements inside of them. "I think we found some of those nukes they hide in space."
Clarice inspected the space silo curiously, slowly orbiting it. As they watched, a red light began blinking and one of the bays began to open up.
"I guess it has a proximity sensor," Clarice commented as she began to glow brighter. "I wonder where they planned on launching it to when the sensor was tripped."
"Maybe they are just controlling it right now," Aria suggested, her face a mixture of curiosity and concern. "Maybe they've decided to just try nuking us."
"Do you think it would work?" Clarice asked Calypso with a note of concern in her voice. "Could a nuke hurt us?"
"I doubt it," Calypso responded dubiously. "I don't know anything about nukes though."
"I should probably vaporize it, just in case," Clarice decided, glowing even brighter.
There was a blinding flash of light from the missile chamber that turned their vision white for a moment. Aria stared at Calypso's and Clarice's naked forms and started blushing. There was nothing left of the nuclear space silo.
"Apparently they won't hurt us," Clarice smirked, eyeing the two of them appreciatively. "However, they are hell on our clothes."
"We are really going through clothing fast lately," Aria sighed in defeat. "We really need to find a tailor."
Calypso was as red as Aria's hair as she tried to decide if she should try to cover up with her hands. Aria just ignored her own nakedness. Becoming an angel had purified her body and made it beautiful far beyond what her human form had experienced. She found it hard to be embarrassed when she had a perfect body. Even so, it was hard to stop herself from hiding with Clarice leering at her.
"Let's go get some clothes," Aria suggested as she tried not to ogle the other two. "We don't have to worry about wraps or tight fitting clothes now that the wind doesn't affect us."
"Aww," Clarice whined bitterly as they shot toward the surface at speeds well beyond hypersonic. "I was really enjoying the show. That's okay, it's just as good from behind."
Aria ground her teeth as her cheeks flamed bright red. Calypso had her head in her hands as she landed on the deck outside of her bedroom. The two of them quickly entered their rooms in search of clothing.
"Don't be a stranger, you two," Clarice spoke from her own room, knowing they would hear her. "I feel like the show ended way too early."
Aria knew better than to reply, but she couldn't help herself. "Next time we're charging admission."
"Only if I get a lap dance," Clarice countered, her voice full of sensual promise.
Aria heard a groan from Calypso's room and felt herself smiling with amusement. Having someone else to embarrass made the experience less embarrassing for some reason.