Crossing an Angel

                                                                             ~an outside observer

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Gabriel watched in boredom as the engineer went about busily hooking up cables and entering commands into the computer console nearby. As much as he would have liked to hack the man into pieces and burn the place to the ground, the blonde was unable to do any of it by virtue of being strapped and bound into place in the chest cavity of a huge mechanical bipedal tank.

Apparently the little man scurrying around with the wildly gleeful look was a former employee of MasaTech Industries and one of Irene Antonov's grunts looking to curry favor from his mistress by turning Gabriel into a living, self-sustaining battery for their Divine Warrior Project. The Angel of World's Ending wasn't happy with that and spent much of his time struggling to escape before deciding to rest and watch what was going on, hoping to gather enough data to calculate the best possible path to freedom.

His pets had already escaped the ambush that had been set up to capture him, dashing off at his sharp demand that they run away towards safety while he fought off the drones and their electric weapons. Gabriel wondered briefly if the three little girls actually made it, then shook his head. They had to have made it. He'd cast Revive on all of them before they fled and the spell should still be active for at least another hour.

"Heheheheheheh! Everything's all set!" the nameless little fleshling -or maybe he did have a name, Gabriel just didn't care to access that bit of information- gloated to himself, fingers hovering over the keyboard, "Just gotta enter in the confirmation sequence and-!"

He was interrupted by the door to the room being kicked down onto the floor, and both Gabriel and the engineer looked over to see a redhead clad in a green tailcoat and clutching a giant fork walk in, a mild frown on his face.

"The rest of your party told me you'd been brought to this place, Gabriel." the newcomer remarked, "How in Martel's name did you get captured so easily?"

"Same way they got you back when I was first built." Gabriel told him grouchily, "Thanks a lot for wrecking my probability paths, by the way; I could have gotten out of here on my own!"

"Doesn't look like you can from where I'm standing." the redhead commented idly and looked over at the engineer still typing in commands, "Let him out right now. This is your only warning."

"It's too late!" the man exclaimed with a mad laugh, "I know exactly who and what you are, Caleb, and with the GateKeeper installed in the Divine Warrior, you're going to be nothing but scrap metal!" He pressed a key and a surge of power ran through Gabriel and the giant tank, making the blonde android cry out in sudden pain before gritting his teeth to hold back any other screams. "Whatever new technology was used to try and make him incompatible with MasaTech hardware didn't work! It's only going to make us stronger! And once we reverse engineer him-!"

"Little man, the only thing I hate more than ignorance is incomplete information." Caleb interrupted with a thin frown, "And you, sadly, have both. Otherwise, you wouldn't have pressed that key." He spun the fork in one hand and set it down at his side. "Let me fill you in.

My name is Caleb. I am a living angelic android tasked with archiving the world's knowledge and history. I am the Guardian Angel of Heroes and the Fallen Angel of Dark Hearts. I have unmade and remade this world you call Earth more times than I care to count, and I will do it again at any given time. I have taken humanity from the death throes of this planet each time I've ended it and scattered them back upon its face at the beginning of each regeneration, to flourish or to fail as I see fit, and I have done this for billions upon billions of years.

I have the power to burn your name into the stars to shine in everlasting glory and immortalize your actions for all eternity, or render your entire existence null and void by erasing all records of you so that not even the woman who gave birth to you will recall she was ever pregnant. I have trained heroes to stare down the monsters that lurk in the depths of hell, and I have given monsters power to bring empires to ruin, all in the name of perfect neutrality." Caleb never raised his voice, just spoke in a calm and even tone, gazing at the man at the console as if he were discussing the weather, "As much as I love this world, I love my friends and family far more, and I will not hesitate to break this planet apart stone by stone, atom by atom, and rend it asunder if I knew that doing so would make you pay countless times over for the simple fact that you made me see my little brother flinch in pain.

Now, either you let Gabriel go so that he can kill you, or don't and take your chances with me."

The room was absolutely silent, both the engineer and Gabriel just staring at the redhead standing calmly before them. Caleb gave the man a thin little smile and tilted his head in that way he always did whenever he was puzzled or curious about something.

"Why am I still waiting for an answer?" he asked pleasantly.

A short time later, Gabriel muttered under his breath how embarrassing the whole thing had been while wiping blood off of his blades. Caleb just smiled happily at him as he walked along with the fork resting on one shoulder.

"I could have dealt with him on my own, you know! You didn't have to show up!" the blonde griped as the redhead chuckled.

"But that wouldn't be very brotherly of me, would it?" Caleb returned with a grin, "Besides, you got to end him anyway, didn't you?" And he laughed at Gabriel wrinkling his nose, his cheeks coloring in embarrassment.