A Manager From Heaven (girlxgirlxgirl)

12. Kill or be killed

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"I can't think, I can't breathe, I can't do anything!"

Tamera Serafina usually takes about fourteen hours on average to finish her mission. Most missions are much shorter than that, others last for a few days. Maybe one or two. But never more. She is a deadly, precise killer and banisher of demons. She is a machine, to put it shortly. Feared since she graduated, always moving upwards, never taking a break, heart as cold as her demeanour.

Hael knows that she's more than that, though. She can see past the occasional headlines she makes in their local newspaper, or the rumours that spread among her fellow soldiers. Tangie isn't just some cold machine, capable of killing even the toughest of demons. She is also a regular angel, with feelings and thoughts and hopes and dreams. She loves, just like we all do. Her heart is filled with love that is locked away, hidden after years of constantly having to press it all down. She looks like a machine because she has been trained to be one, but as her very best friend, Hael knows that there is more to Tangie than meets the eye.

"Calm down, Hael. She is a golden might angel who can handle herself"

And maybe most importantly of all, she knows that Tangie isn't an indestructible object like all her superiors and so-called friends make her out to be.

Tangie lives, and so she can also die.

Tangie breathes, and so she can also get hurt.

Tangie smiles, and so she can also cry.

"You have to do something! You know she has never taken this long to finish a mission. Please, archangel!"

Standing in front of the archangel Appolyon is always terrifying. He's got this glow to him that makes him different from all the other angels she meets on a daily basis. Archangel Appolyon has been an archangel for god knows how long, but he still looks as if he was born just a hundred years ago. Young, energetic, but still calm and always stoic. It's the perfect combination for an archangel in charge of missions to the human realm. He is perfect.

And yet at this moment, Hael hates him and she hates that she has to work for him. He has used Tangie, sucked her dry of her powers. Tangie has worked for him day and night, for the past one hundred years. She barely gets any days off, always coming and going from one life-threatening mission to another. It's a miracle that she hasn't died yet, and they all know it. Still, Appolyon keeps sending her out on their most difficult missions because he knows that she always comes back, and she always succeeds.

(And maybe mostly because she always says yes, and never asks for anything more)

Hael hates him. She admires him, but she hates him. Appolyon has treated Tangie like a brainless soldier for so long. He has drained her out, forced her to go out on one mission after another. It's horrifying to see.

Hael still remembers this one night vividly. Tangie had been gone for a whole two days out on a mission. She came back in the middle of the night and Hael woke up to go see her. In the darkness, sitting on one of their kitchen chairs with her head in her hands. That's what she looked like. And she was bloody all over, some of it her own, some of it a demon's. Her eyes were wide and haunted, her hands shaking. But still she only smiled at Hael, and told her to go back to sleep. She was sent out on a mission just two days later.