"Are you three back?" her mom's voice called up the stairs.
"Yeah, mom," Clarice shouted down, her tone full of mischief. "Things got a little heated with the three of us and we need some new clothes."
Her mother paused for several seconds of considering silence. "Aria, can I get a more honest version of events?"
"They detonated a nuke next to us in space and it vaporized our clothes," Aria answered, sounding muffled as she tried to figure out how to get a shirt on with giant wings attached to her back. She finally gave up and settled for using a bra. She vowed they were going to find a tailor as soon as shops opened in the morning.
Her mother's voice rose several octaves as she spoke again. "They detonated a nuke next to you?" she demanded in astonishment.
"Yeah, they did," Aria confirmed as she exited her room in a pair of white pants and a bra. "We need to find a tailor today, first thing."
Her mother looked up at her from the second floor steadily for a few seconds before her lips started twitching. "Nice bra, Aria."
"So help me Zeus, I will fly you into the sun if you make fun of my wardrobe," Aria growled threateningly.
"I wouldn't dream of it," her mother declared innocently, her eyes wide with sincerity.
"She's rocking the bra look, eh?" Clarice commented with an appreciative whistle as she exited her room. She was in short Levi cutoffs and a black lacy bra of her own. "It's amazing how hard it is to make normal clothes work with wings."
"I'm going to the library to find a tailor," Aria announced as she hopped over the stair railing to land lightly next to her mother. "This is not my new look."
"It's going to take a few days for a tailor to make new clothes for you," her mother warned her, eyes full of repressed mirth. "That's assuming they aren't backlogged. It could be weeks."
"I'm pretty sure when an angel flies into the shop and requests a rush job, they'll be accommodating," Aria responded confidently. "After the last twenty four hours, I'm pretty sure the secret about angels is out of the bag."
"You're just going to fly in to a tailor in broad daylight, in the middle of a city?" her mother questioned her dubiously. "In a bra. Do you really want the first YouTube videos of you to be an angel running around in a bra?"
"Luckily, I move fast enough that nobody is even going to see me until I'm in front of the tailor," Aria answered briskly as she walked down to the library.
"Are they back yet?" her father's voice called from the veranda.
"Yeah, they're back," her mother called back wryly. "They're having wardrobe issues."
Aria blocked out the rest of the conversation as she focused on the screen in front of her. After opening up a new browser tab, she noticed the headline in the news feed. She clicked on the top link and began to read.
ASTRONOMERS BAFFLED BY MYSTERY LIGHTS APPEARING IN THE SKIES ALL AROUND THE WORLD
People all over the world recorded an unexpected lightshow in the skies last night, and astronomers are struggling to supply an explanation. The lights were moving so fast that they appeared to be solid lines being drawn in the night sky at times. A brief Starlink outage occurred when the lightshow began, but SpaceX claims it was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the lights in the sky. Jerald McCormick, an astrophotographer who was capturing a comet at the time of the lights, managed to capture the best image we've seen yet of the light source (image below). Internet denizens have likened the source of the light to a winged person. Due to the speed of the objects and the distance, the images are blurry and indistinct, but one of the images depicts what appears to be an actual angel.
The light show culminated with a brilliant flash that lit up the ground over North America. The flash has been compared to nuclear explosions recorded during Operation Fishbowl in 1962, where the military preformed high-altitude nuclear explosions. Experts claim this explosion occurred much higher up than those in the 1960's.
Given the internet's fixation on Calypso and the claim that she is an angel, many denizens believe she is battling a shadowy organization that has allegedly been trying to kill her. Additionally, footage from earlier that night claiming to film a military encounter with three angels has been making the rounds. The footage is grainy due to being shot at night and is far from the supposed encounter. It does show three distinct figures, one of whom appears to have shot beams of light into the military aircraft, destroying at least one and damaging another.
One of the entities appears to have red hair, leading people to speculate about the woman who was seen with Calypso the day she resurrected a biker who had died in an accident. The woman, now revealed to be Aria, along with her sister, Clarice, made headlines again when their apartment exploded from what authorities claimed was a gas leak, despite there being no gas to the building. Aria and her stepsister, Clarice, have disappeared from public view, along with their mother. It is widely believed that the three of them are residing in secret with Calypso at a safe location. After making the connection between Aria and the red-haired angel, a YouTuber going by the handle of PlanetCommander has speculated that they are all three angels.
We have reached out to the pentagon for comment, but have not heard back at the time of the release of this article. A spokesperson for the pentagon announced that an Apache gunship had crashed during routine training in the Appalachian mountains, but that there were no fatalities.
Televangelists continue to label Calypso as a false prophet or fallen angel, in spite of her track record of healing sick children. One prominent televangelist went so far as to suggest that the children were being subjected to a kind of possession rather than healing, and that all of the children healed by Calypso should undergo exorcisms.
As strange as things have become over the last week, I think it is safe to say that more surprises are on the way. Check back here, at theshadowearthdotcom, to find out.
Aria absently tapped her chin after finishing the article. It seemed that a lot of people were already convinced that Calypso was an angel. She skimmed through some of the comments curiously.
Borked4life-> I was outside early this morning and saw the lights shooting all over the sky. It was insane! I thought there was an alien invasion going on or something. I did see some bright lights really high in the sky that looked just like that energy beam that took down the helicopter. Either there's an alien invasion going on right now, or there really are angels duking it out in the heavens. I feel stupid even saying it, but I saw those lights with my own eyes. It makes a believer out of you.
DarkTtimeOfTheSoul-> I'm one of the soldiers that was involved in that video. They never told us we were fighting angels. They claimed they were aliens. I was twenty feet away from all three of them. The power of their presence was unbelievable. Most of us turned around and left because we refused to fire on them. We all recognized Calypso and knew she wasn't an alien. We're all facing court marshals now, so I've got nothing left to lose for disclosing this. The power they had was so superior to our technology that it isn't even comparable. They could have vaporized all of us after the gunship unloaded all of its 30mm rounds on them. Instead, they saved the pilots after vaporizing the back of the Apache. The pilots of the other Apache were ordered to fire on them with hellfire missiles, even though the pilots from the other Apache were with them. They vaporized all of the armaments on that Apache without destroying it. They were purposely not killing anyone. They moved so fast that they may as well have been teleporting.
I know most people probably won't believe this, but I had to tell my story. The US military wanted us to fire on angels, and we said hell no!
533!NG-!5-B!3L3V1NG-> Me and my sister and friend were saved by these angels. We got pulled over by some cops and they were planting evidence in our car. They arrested us, even my 14 year old sister, and were putting us in their car when a blur shot between us and the cops. They both went flying over the top of their car. They looked like they'd been kicked in the nuts super hard. Our handcuffs just broke into pieces after the cops were beaten. One of the blurs stopped in front of me for a split second and I immediately recognized Aria's red hair. She had violet eyes, like Calypso. I don't know why they were there or why they decided to save us, but if you are reading this, thank you!
Aria felt a warm glow in her soul as she read the latest comment. It was nice to see that the girls had gotten home safely. She felt a sudden need to continue helping people, almost like a compulsion. She wondered if this was how Calypso felt about healing people. Maybe it was hardcoded in angel DNA or something.
She glanced at the next comment down and facepalmed.
GODISGR8-> I can't believe you have all been fooled so easily! Jesus warned us of false prophets, false christs, and false angels that would perform wonders. You have all been deceived! This isn't rocket science people! These are wolves in sheep's clothing luring you down the path to hell, and you people need to WAKE UP!!! REPENT of your foolish choices and return to Christ. CHRIST IS KING!!!!!!!!
Aria snorted derisively. Apparently, she was a wolf who was pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. She felt a sudden urge to howl at the moon and laughed at herself. "What a funny world we live in."
She finally focused on the task at hand: finding a tailor. She spent the next hour visiting website after website. She wasn't constrained to local shops, since she could travel to anywhere on earth in moments. She ran into an immediate problem as she realized she couldn't search using the word 'tailor', or all that showed up were suits. The thought of angels in suits resulted in a sudden fit of giggles as she imagined uptight, corporate angels with sticks up their asses. No thanks.
She finally had to search for custom costume shops, which inevitably led her to the West Coast. She found a woman in a rural Northern California town who specialized in custom costumes that were made to accommodate wings. She gritted her teeth and called the number, stamping down on her introverted nature.
"This is Tamra," a woman's voice answered on the second ring.
"Hi, Tamra, my name is Aria," she greeted the woman warmly. "I'm trying to find someone who can make clothing to accommodate wings."
There was a pause on the other end for several seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was cautious.
"I can make costumes to accommodate wings," Tamra informed her slowly. "How much activity would the costume be getting? I mean, will you be wearing it frequently?"
"All of the time," Aria replied, smiling slightly as she thought about how much 'activity' they would get. "There would be three different sizes, with ten shirts for each of the three sizes."
She heard the woman's breath catch as she spoke and frowned, wondering what she had said to illicit such a response.
"Would you be looking for exotic dress, or casual?" Tamra asked, her breathing slightly elevated. "And how durable would they need to be?"
"We could probably use some that are extremely durable," Aria told her thoughtfully. "Just casual linen for most of them."
"How soon would you be able to come in a for a fitting?" the woman asked faintly.
"Faster than you could imagine," Aria responded with a smile. "Right now, if you want."
"Is this really Aria?" she asked in a whisper. "The one with Calypso?"
Aria froze, suddenly realizing why the woman had been so out of countenance. She must have suspected from the moment Aria gave her name.
"Um, yeah?" Aria admitted hesitantly. "Will that be a problem?"
"No no no, not at all," she assured her, words spilling out at high speed. "Nothing wrong with that at all!"
"Okay then," Aria spoke mildly. "Would that be okay if we swing by right now? We're kind of stuck wearing bras for tops until we can get some new clothes. Our last set of clothes got incinerated by a nuke that detonated next to us. My sister won't stop joking about being in the bra club." Aria tried to make the conversation as light as possible to put the woman at her ease.
"That really was you last night?" Tamra murmured in awe. "Were you really fighting some shadow organization?"
"In a manner of speaking," Aria acknowledged dryly. "They've been causing us trouble, so we destroyed all of the cameras on their satellites so that they couldn't track us anymore. We didn't want to ruin everyone's satellite internet, so we just settled for tearing off the camera arrays. I'll tell you all about it in a minute. Let me grab Calypso and Clarice. We'll see you in a minute."
"O-okay," Tamra stuttered, her voice full of anticipation. "See you soon!"
"You two ready to go?" Aria drawled lazily. "Or are you going to buckle down on the bra club?"
"No, I'm ready to go," Calypso said immediately, her voice easily carrying from her room down to Aria's sensitive ears.
"Fine," Clarice sighed in a put-upon tone. "But only because I'm excited to see what she can make."
Aria went up to her balcony on the third floor and joined the other two.
"Where does she live?" Clarice inquired, eyeing Aria calculatingly. "And can you find her house from the air without a GPS app to guide you?"
"That's the best thing about perfect recall," Aria smiled in satisfaction. "I only had to look at the map once from Google Earth and I remember exactly where it's at. She's about eighty miles outside of San Francisco in a rural little town."
"Let's boogie," Clarice grinned, launching herself skyward. Aria followed her up a few thousand feet, then launched herself into hyper-speed. She arced across the continent in a few seconds. Tamra's house sat on five acres of wooded land. She had a fenced in garden in the back and chickens bobbing around the front yard. It was a moderately large house that included a pool on the side of the yard. Tamra was standing on her front porch looking up at the sky expectantly. She let out a startled squawk as they shot down from the sky like a lightning bolt to land right next to her.
"Hi Tamra," Aria greeted her with a welcoming smile. "This is Clarice and Calypso. It's nice to meet you in person."
Tamra held out a shaky hand and Aria took it gently.
"Hello, Tamra," Calypso stepped forward and embraced the woman warmly. "How's Adelle doing?"
Tamra stood, frozen as Calypso's loving embrace wrapped her in its warmth of love and comfort. She went completely limp in Calypso's arms, her face radiating contentment. Calypso let her stay there for several minutes. It probably would have gone on longer, but Clarice got impatient.
"Did you have a loved one that Calypso healed?" Clarice inquired gently.
Tamra finally came back to herself and stood up on her own feet. "Yeah, she healed my niece." She finished with a sad note in her voice.
"Is she okay?" Calypso asked, concern heavy in her voice.
"She's been missing for over a year now," Tamra whispered, her face filled with anguish. "She was walking to a friend's house for their fourteenth birthday, but neither of them made it there. We spent months working with the police and FBI, but they just couldn't find any kind of trail. She had only been free of her cancer for a few months when it happened."
"Do you have anything of hers that has her scent?" Clarice asked intently. "Even if it is old."
Tamra's eyes widened with sudden hope as she looked at Clarice. "Yes, I have her jacket still hanging in my mud room."
"Take me to it," Clarice instructed briskly.
She led them into the mud room at the front of her house and pulled a medium girl's jacket down from a peg. "She wore this a few days before she disappeared."
Clarice took the jacket and inhaled deeply before handing it to Aria. She inhaled deeply as well, cataloging the unique scent, then handing it over to Calypso as well.
"We'll go find her," Clarice informed her comfortingly.
"Can I offer you some of the wing fitted tops before you go?" Tamra asked, staring at their bras. "They won't be a custom build for your measurements yet, but they should work."
Aria smiled gratefully. "That would be wonderful!"
"Okay, fine," Clarice sighed with exaggerated reluctance. "I guess it's time to give up the bra club."
Tamra led them through several rooms filled with automated cutting tables, fabric storage shelves, and giant print plotters until they reached a room with racks and racks of costumes. She went straight to a soft leather sleeveless shirt and looked at Clarice appraisingly. "I think this will fit you. It might be the tiniest bit tight in the chest."
Aria felt her face turn pink as Clarice removed her bra and stood bare chested in front of them. Tamra showed her how to detach the shoulder buttons so that the divided back could go up around her wings. It did fit snuggly, pushing Clarice's breasts together and displaying a generous amount of cleavage. It had a high collar with a small zipper in the neck. Clarice looked amazing in the outfit. It hugged her narrow waist line before ballooning out to cradle her large breasts, with a cutout to display her cleavage. She whistled at herself in the mirror.
"Damn, this looks awesome!" Clarice praised Tamra's handiwork with an appreciative smile.
"Yes, it certainly does," Aria agreed, blushing slightly when Clarice winked at her.
Tamra had already turned around and fetched another shirt. It was almost a match to Clarice's, except it was green instead of white.
Aria self-consciously removed her bra and hurriedly pulled the shirt on. Tamra buttoned the sides up above her shoulders. The chest was less tight on Aria's shirt, much to Clarice's disappointment. She gave another whistle as Aria inspected herself in the mirror. The green sleeveless shirt had golden scrollwork that curled around her breasts and up the high collar. It had laces she was able to cinch to tighten the waist.
Tamra had a third shirt for Calypso, this one a brilliant white with silver scrollwork around the bodice and a cutout in the chest to display her generous cleavage. Calypso looked angelic in the bright white garment. She also got a whistle, making her blush to her roots. Tamra chuckled at her bashfulness.
"Okay, we'll be back with your niece shortly," Clarice promised Tamra confidently. "Hopefully her friend too."
Tamra eyed them hopefully as they went back through the house to the front yard. "Do you really think you can find her based on her scent?"
"You wouldn't believe how powerful angel senses are," Clarice assured her with a pat on the shoulder. "See you soon."
The three of them shot off into the skies, then split up taking different directions. Aria flew toward LA while Clarice flew inland. Calypso went North, her angelic face full of determination.
It only took Aria a few minutes of shooting across the bottom half of California to locate the scent, near Hollywood. She tracked it to a large mansion in Beverly Hills. She decided to fetch the other two angels before she made her assault of the mansion. She sped back over to the direction Clarice had gone in a few seconds. It didn't take long to find her sister. Since becoming an angel with her sister, she had felt a sense for where she was at all of the time.
"Found her," Aria announced, her voice grim. "Let's go get Calypso."
It took a few more minutes to find Calypso, who was up near Seattle when they found her. Aria led them back to the mansion in Beverly Hills.
She landed on the front porch and casually jerked the locked door out of its hinges. A large, vicious looking dog standing twenty feet away took one look at them and turned tail and ran. Aria followed the scent until she found a stairway going down. She went into the basement and followed the scent to a dead-end wall. She punched a fist into the brick wall, leaving a hole behind. She reached through the hole and grabbed the wall, then pulled it outward. There was the sound of tortured metal as it was ripped off of a thick track. Dust filled the air as she tore the secret door down. It led down more stairs. Aria could hear crying in the distance. Her normally loving energy field transposed into righteous fury as she guessed the cause of those tears. She bolted down the stairs in a blur, taking in the main room at a glance. There was a desk at the end of the room with a large chubby man holding a gun as he stared toward the stairs anxiously. Aria had removed the gun from his hands before he even knew she was there. There were doors in the walls of the room at ten foot intervals. The crying was coming from one of those rooms.
Clarice had already torn the door off of the wall by the time Aria had apprehended the now unarmed man. A naked fifteen year old girl was curled up on a thin mat, crying with broken hearted despair. The room glowed like the noon day sun as Aria lit up with incandescent rage.
"Who else is down here?" she grated at the suddenly terrified man.
Calypso was squatting down to talk to the girl. She stared up at Calypso in shock, her crying forgotten. She had bruises all over her face. Her wrists and ankles were swollen from what were probably frequent restraints. Calypso's eyes filled with tears as she stared at the state of the girl, suddenly understanding one of the world's most cruel realities.
Clarice didn't wait for the man to reply. In a flash of movement and deafening noise, all of the doors were torn off of the walls. There were three more naked girls, one as young as ten. Aria could feel the heat in her eyes building up as she stared at the terrified man in front of her. She knew there was no way to let him live, no justice that would be served by leaving him to the court systems. With the wealth these people had, they could buy their way out of prison. The heat in her eyes reached ignition, and the man in front of her was suddenly vaporized.
"Your safe now, my darlings," Calypso sang softly as the girls stared from their cells at the angels with hope-filled eyes. "No evil will ever visit you again."
Aria heard sound somewhere else in the house far away. She smiled grimly at Clarice and Calypso. "Calypso, can you do anything for them? I'm going to finish exterminating the vermin."
Calypso nodded as Adelle finally overcame her shock and flew into Calypso's waiting arms. The girl's tears vanished as the overpowering cloak of Calypso's love surrounded her.
Aria flashed out of the room soundlessly, flying up the stairs and toward the place she had heard the sound. She recognized the actor as soon as she saw him. He was a regular Emmy Award winner. He blanched as he saw the brilliant light that was Aria suddenly appear in front of him. Her eyes grew brighter as she stared at him with pure wrath.
She could see the guilt in his eyes, the realization that his end was nigh. He made a desperate cry, falling to his knees to beg for his life, but his knees never reached the ground. He was vaporized instantly. There was no indication of what had happened to him, no burn marks on the ground, not even a mote of dust left behind.
She listened carefully for any other sounds. The rest of the mansion appeared to be empty, aside from the attack dog cowering in the back room. She zipped through all of the rooms anyway, just to make sure.
She returned to the hidden basement when she was finished, feeling no remorse at all after having taken two human lives. The four girls were surrounding Calypso, their faces filled with awe as she sang to them. Besides Adelle and the ten year old, there was another fifteen year old and a girl that looked around seventeen years old. The oldest of the girls had long blonde hair and finely sculpted features on a face that didn't miss being beautiful. She was several inches taller than Clarice and Aria. Her beautiful face held haunted eyes that were deep blue and had seen too much. They all had bruises and swollen wrists and ankles. Calypso's eyes were filled with quicksilver tears as she sang, her soul still heavy with the weight of what horrors humans could inflict on each other. Aria marveled as Calypso's healing music began emitting runes that were mirrored in the four girls. Their bruises, wrists, ankles, and less visible wounds were healed as Calypso's song completed.
When she finished the song, the four girls were in a state of trancelike euphoria.
"Let's get back to Tamra's and regroup," Aria suggested, her face sympathetic. "We need to find the homes for these two as well."
Clarice fell in beside her as they guided the four girls up the stairs and onto the lawn.
"You okay?" Clarice stared into her eyes compassionately, any hint of snark or sarcasm completely gone. She reached up and tenderly touched the back of her fingers to Aria's cheek. "This was pretty bad."
Aria didn't trust herself to speak, so she just nodded, looking down. Clarice gently reached out and raised her chin so that she was looking into Clarice's loving eyes. "I'm sorry you had to deal with this, Aria."
Clarice pulled her into a comforting embrace. As Aria felt Clarice's loving energy exchange with her own, she felt renewed strength and determination. She took a deep breath before, releasing her sister.
"Thank you, Clarice," Aria whispered, her gratitude flowing across to Clarice on powerful waves of authority. "I love you, Clarice."
A brilliant smile lit up her sister's face as she stared back at her. "I know you do, Aria. I love you too."
Aria took a deep breath and then addressed the four girls. "We're going to fly you to Adelle's aunt's house. We are angels, so you are completely safe flying with us."
The girls looked excited as they watched the angels expectantly, with only a hint of fear at the prospect of flying.
"I'll take Adelle and her friend," Calypso offered with an affectionate look at Adelle.
Aria nodded as she took the seventeen year old. She opened her arms and embraced the girl, just as the other angels were doing. Once their systems were flooded with love and comfort, she levitated off of the ground, holding her passenger securely. Calypso did the same, ensuring they were both secure in her arms. Aria was grateful that they had upgraded their flight ability so that they were wind resistant and no longer needed to use their wings to fly.
They quickly rose up out of the metropolis, gathering speed slowly to avoid harming their passengers. It took them almost twenty minutes to return to Tamra's house. The constant flood of love and comfort their angel embraces offered was soaked up eagerly by their troubled passengers.
They landed in Tamra's front yard. She was waiting for them, her hand to her mouth and tears streaming down her face. She rushed forward with a low cry and embraced her niece tenderly.
"I suppose we are at the right place for some extra clothes," Clarice noted, glancing at the growingly awkward girls.
"Yes, let me get some clothes for them," Tamra gushed, releasing her niece. "Follow me, young ladies. There are clothes of all sizes in here."
She led them into the fitting room, and they were clothed in short order. They looked like they were going to a DnD game, but at least they were no longer naked.
"Where were they?" Tamra asked quietly while the girls were dressing.
"Beverly Hills," Aria answered grimly. She told Tamra which actor would never be disgracing the screens again and she gasped.
"I never would have guessed he could be such a monster," Tamra muttered, her eyes flashing with rage. "I hope he rots in a cell, assuming the court systems will do their job."
"There isn't enough left of him to be rotting anywhere," Aria told her bleakly. "Or his toady that was managing them."
"Good!" Tamra growled fiercely. "If only the rest of them could fry too."
"They will," Aria assured her with a smile that made her shiver. "None of them will escape anymore."
"Lexi, can you tell us how you came to be in that place?" Calypso inquired of the oldest girl softly. "Is it safe to contact your parents?"
She stared at Calypso in surprise when she heard her name. A shadow of fear crossed over her face when she mentioned her parents and Aria felt the heat of fury rise up in her again.
"Are they how you ended up there?" Calypso asked gently, holding the girl's hand comfortingly. Warmth and love flooded into her from Calypso's touch.
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. "They said it was modeling work, and that I needed to accept that this was how the world worked," Lexi explained as tears spilled down her cheeks. "They said the money they got for it would go toward my college tuition. I never saw them again when they left."
Aria made a mental note to track Lexi's parents down.
Calypso pulled her into a comforting hug. She let the girl remain in her arms as they continued their discussion.
"Do you remember how you came to be there?" Clarice asked the ten year old girl with a compassionate gaze.
The girl nodded. "I was walking home from school yesterday when an old lady told me she dropped her glasses in the back of her van and couldn't find them," the girl had a self-loathing look as she continued. "She was acting like she couldn't see at all, and I felt bad for her. When I got in the back to look for her glasses, a big bald guy pulled me back and stuck a needle into my neck. I woke up in that place today. They had stolen my clothes, and nobody would answer me when I asked questions. The fat guy hit me really hard when I started screaming for my mom."
The girl's eyes were red-rimmed from all of her crying, but she was smiling as she looked at Clarice. "I prayed that god would send an angel to save me. I prayed that Calypso would save me. I knew she was an angel."
Clarice shared a look of intense relief with Aria. The poor girl had not been subjected to the same cruelties the other one's had yet. While it would always be a traumatic moment for her, it was far, far less than it would have been. Aria thought about how fortuitous the chain of events that had led them to the little girl was. She felt an odd sense of gratitude to the shadow government for nuking them. If they hadn't vaporized her clothing, forcing her to go and seek out a tailor, that little girl would be in chains at the hands of the vilest of monsters.
"Let's get you home to your parent's, shall we?" Clarice told the little girl cheerfully. "Do you know what your address is?"
After getting the girl's address, Clarice opened her arms and the girl ran into them, wrapping her arms around Clarice's neck. They shot up into the sky and vanished.
"We'll take you two back to your parents now as well," Aria told Adelle with a warm smile. "But first, can you explain how you ended up in that place?"
"A cop car pulled up and told us we were under arrest," Adelle answered, her eyes hollow as she remembered. "He put handcuffs on us and drove us to another cop that was driving a van. They took us to a warehouse where some bald guy came and took us. We've been stuck in that place ever since."
"It's time to do some housecleaning," Aria growled, her body lighting up as the need to vanquish another vile human pushed her toward the edge. "After we take you home, I'm going to visit the police station and take care of any cops that were helping those men capture you. I will make sure you never have anything to worry about ever again."
Lexi waited with Tamra while Aria and Calypso took the two friends home. Whatever healing Calypso had done had been as much for mental scarring as it had been for physical injuries. They descended into a crowded subdivision and landed at a small house with an economy car in the driveway. Aria walked up and knocked on the door, ignoring the stares of the few people who were walking down the street. Two cars had pulled over and the drivers were holding their cell phones up.
The door opened and a middle-aged woman answered the door with a wary expression. She gasped when she saw Aria, her eyes growing wide. Then she saw her daughter and she gave out a low cry and rushed forward to embrace her, her eyes filling with tears. She laughed as she cried, overwhelmed with emotion. Aria let them have several minutes to reunite before she lightly touched the woman's shoulder.
"We need to talk in private," she told the emotional mother with a meaningful glance at her daughter. The mother nodded, moving back inside the home. Aria and Calypso followed, with Adelle's friend. "Calypso, maybe you can get Adelle and her friend to show you around while I talk to her mom?"
Aria stared into the woman's Aura, finally seeing the branding that Calypso had claimed contained a person's name. Something must have changed in her understanding of spiritual energy, because it had never made sense before.
"Eilleen, we need to talk about what your daughter has been through," Aria told the woman quietly.
Eilleen's eyes filled with tears again as she realized what Aria was hinting at. She nodded and they went into one of the bedrooms. Aria explained where they had found her and in what state. Eilleen fell to her knees with her face in her hands as she wept bitterly.
"Calypso has offered some mental healing for your daughter and her friend," Aria informed Eilleen comfortingly. "Most of what she remembers will seem like a bad dream, rather than something with emotional attachment. The local cops are the one's responsible for your daughter's abduction."
Eilleen raised her face, rage and shock painted on her tear streaked face. "The bastards that I was working with to find her are responsible?" she hissed venomously.
"Yes," Aria nodded, her body growing brighter with her own rage. "I'm paying them a visit after we drop Becky off with her parents."
"What are you going to do?" Eilleen asked, doubt and hope in her voice. "What can you do? They are the law, after all."
"Think of me as a higher law," Aria replied grimly, her face as bleak as an executioner. "They will share the same fate as the bastards who were holding your daughter."
"Won't that get you into a lot of trouble?" Eilleen stared at her worriedly, her cheeks damp with her storm of weeping.
"We've been dealing with much bigger fish than rogue police departments," Aria assured her with a slight smile. "We already had a showdown with the US military and helped them understand that they are no longer the super power around here anymore."
Eilleen watched her with a kind of hesitant hope. "Are you really angels?"
"Yes, we really are," Aria nodded with a wry smile. "But we never have, nor do we now, serve a deity. The religions have made up their own ideas about angels based on their historical interactions in times past."
Eilleen studied Aria with cautious optimism. "So, all of that stuff about heaven and hell is just made up?"
"I'm assuming that is the case," Aria shrugged noncommittally. "I do know that we have spirits. I can see the energy matrix your spirit generates throughout your meridians. However, what happens to spirits after your physical body dies is outside of my realm of knowledge. Calypso might know more, but it's hard to say."
Eilleen sighed discontentedly. "On the one hand, I wish hell existed so that these horrible people could burn. On the other hand, the idea of needing the constant threat of judgement to force you to be a good person has always bothered me. Can't people be nice to each other without the fear of punishment?"
Aria let out peals of laughter at Eilleen's assessment. "I have thought the same thing many times, Eilleen." She held her hand out to the kneeling Eilleen and gently pulled her up. "Calypso really has healed her mental scars as well. The horrors your daughter experienced will be far less traumatic than they would have been."
"Thank you so much for bringing my baby back to me, Aria," Eilleen said gratefully, her eyes shining with tears. "I had given up hope that I would ever see them again."
Aria pulled her into a hug, charging her full of love and comfort. Eilleen gasped as the powerful emotions filled her being, clinging to Aria as her soul hungrily drank up the positive feelings. She held her for several minutes before Eilleen stepped back. She stared at Aria in awe, her face radiating wonder.
"You really are angels," she whispered, a hand covering her mouth.
Aria nodded once with a warm smile. "Eilleen, we're going to take Becky to her parent's now. After that, I'm paying a visit to the local police station to find out how deep the rot goes."
Eilleen nodded slowly, her eyes still filled with wonder.
"Do you know how to contact Becky's parents?" Aria asked hopefully. "We really lucked out that you were home, but I want to make sure that Becky's parents are available."
"I'll call them right now," Eilleen enthused, rushing out of the room to get her phone. "They both work in town and shouldn't take too long to arrive."
Aria nodded as Eilleen quickly called Becky's mother.
"Hello, Eilleen, how are you?" a voice asked with a note of concern. Aria could hear the subtle undercurrents in her tone, evidence of a deep sadness.
"Kate, I need you to come to my house right now, no questions asked," Eilleen told her firmly. "Can you do that for me?"
"What's wrong?" Kate's voice was alarmed.
"No questions," Eilleen reminded her, unable to keep the jubilation out of her tone.
"Okay, I'm on my way," Kate replied, a sudden spark of hope in her voice.
"Tell Ben to come too," Eilleen added quickly.
"Have you heard something about our baby's?" Kate asked, her voice breaking as she spoke.
"Just come now," Eilleen answered, a smile in her voice.
Aria smiled as Eilleen hung up the phone, her eyes full of joy as she witnessed a long overdue reunion.
Adelle came running into the room with Becky, their eyes filled with excitement.
"Calypso is NOTESTOREMEMBER!" they told their mother excitedly. "She played my keyboard and made a song up in just a few minutes!"
Aria felt a brief pang of sadness, realizing the girls had been imprisoned when the rest of the world found out about Calypso.
"Calypso, this is the second time you've saved my daughter's life," Eilleen declared with an emotional smile. "If there is ever anything I can do for you, anything at all, please do not hesitate to tell me."
Calypso smiled angelically and pulled her into a warm embrace. "The best thing you can do for me is cherish your beautiful girl," Calypso whispered fondly.
They heard the sound of honking outside of the house. Eilleen frowned as the honking continued and moved to look out the front window. She gasped, her eyes going wide.
"What in the world is everyone doing here?" she asked wonderingly.
"Is there a crowd out there?" Aria asked shrewdly, her heart sinking.
"There are cars backed all the way up the street and there are people all over my lawn," Eilleen exclaimed in bewilderment. "What in the world is going on?"
"I think that's our fault," Aria admitted with a sigh. "Quite a few people saw us land here and then come into your house. Word must have gotten around."
There was the sound of sirens as a police car weaved through the traffic jam. When it arrived in front of their house, two policemen exited the car and started barking orders for people to keep moving. It was a useless gesture. Nobody budged.
Adelle and Becky walked into the living room to look out the window as well. When they saw the policeman, they both went rigid with sudden terror. Aria walked up to the two of them, her form visible to the people outside of the house.
"Were those officers involved in your abduction?" Aria asked them quietly.
Adelle nodded quickly, her eyes staring fearfully at the policeman.
Aria felt her core ignite as blazing fury filled her for the second time that day. She walked out of the house and toward the cops. People were staring at her with awe, their phones held up to record. She marched up to the cops as they turned to see where the brilliant radiance was coming from. When they saw her glaring at them like an avenging angel, their eyes grew wide with sudden fear.
"Your job is to protect the innocent," Aria told them, her voice layered with authority. "You have tarnished your souls with your heinous acts. Selling children to human traffickers is one of the lowest forms of human depravity. Make better choices in your next life."
As she finished speaking, her eyes blazed brightly and a beam of pure energy shot into both cops, vaporizing them instantly.
The people in the crowd pulled back fearfully when they saw the two men vaporized. When Aria's glow diminished and she became her normal color again, they relaxed, surging forward again to try and get a closer look at the angel.
A middle-aged woman was pushing through the crowd as she tried to reach the house. When she finally broke through the press of bodies and came face-to-face with Aria, she pulled up short with a gasp of surprise. The moment only lasted a moment. Becky came running out the front door toward her mother with a squeal of delight, tackling her into a fierce embrace. Her mother was suddenly sobbing as she clung to her daughter, crying and laughing as she tried to squeeze her tightly enough that she would never disappear again.
"Oh Becky, where have you been?" her mother sobbed as she pulled back long enough to look into her daughter's face. "I never thought I would see you again."
"We were saved by angels, mom," Becky told her mother with a brilliant smile. "They just tore the doors off of our cells and vaporized the men hurting us."
Her mother's eyes went wide as she realized where her daughter had been. She closed her eyes as tears poured down her cheeks, pulling her daughter into a much gentler embrace. I'm so so sorry, Becky," she choked out in an emotional voice. "I should have been there to protect you."
"It wasn't your fault Mom," Becky patted her mother's back comfortingly. "There were some cops that arrested us and took us to those other guys."
"Which cops?" her mother's voice was suddenly sharp and her eyes wrathful.
"They were standing there a second ago," Becky pointed toward the cop car. "But Aria vaporized them with her eyes."
She looked over at Aria again, suddenly realizing once again that there was an angel in front of her. "You saved my baby?"
"Me and Calypso and Clarice, yes," Aria nodded with a gentle smile on her face.
Calypso came out the front door with Eilleen and a sudden roar filled the air as everyone in the crowd cheered. Aria grinned at the healer as she came to a startled halt. It was easy to forget that she was the most famous musician in the world. She had a lot of fans, and this was the first time anyone had ever seen her in public.
Calypso gave a shy wave and a smile, producing another roar from the crowd.
"We probably better go," Aria spoke into Kate's ear to be heard over the cheers. "But I wanted you to know that Calypso healed your daughter of both physical and mental scars, so the last year will seem like more of a bad dream to her than a real experience."
Kate studied Aria's eyes as her own brimmed with tears. She finally nodded, mouthing a thank you with her heart in her eyes. Aria wrapped her arms around mother and child, instilling love and hope before walking back to where Calypso was watching her adoring fans with a light blush on her cheeks.
"I'd say it's time to go now," Aria informed her with a small smile. "Wave goodbye to your fans."
Calypso glanced at her sidelong with a one-sided smile, then raised one of her arms high and waved. The crowed whistled and cheered with renewed vigor. The two of them launched into the air at speeds just below the sound barrier. Everyone's head jerked upward to stare at them as they quickly flew away.
"Back to Tamra's?" Calypso inquired with a questioning look.
"Police station," Aria growled, her face like a thundercloud. "It's time to find out how far the taint has spread."