A light rain is falling onto the wastes of Jubilee; still falling, if indeed it has ever stopped. The ground is beyond saturated, colorless mud and desolation as far as the eye can see, and the rain only promises to intensify. A bleak horizon is broken only by a low, equally colorless fueling station nearly invisible in the murk.

Raguel stomps around in it, his shoes making schlock, schlock noises in the mud, and if he realizes it's raining he pays it no attention. He felt something: perhaps no more than the stirrings of a wildly overactive imagination, but this was oddly familiar. By long practice he's learned to sort the instinct from the white noise and confusion that clouds most of his mind, and Raguel has always trusted his instincts.

[From here.]

Raguel is very good, but he is not River Tam; in a physical fight his movements are strong, quick, but he lacks her unerring instinct, the unthinking grace.

At first it had been only four Reavers, then five, then all too soon it was ten... and twenty. Too many. A firestorm to destroy them all would also have destroyed any evidence remaining here, and would potentially have broken the Shé Xuán apart.

He'd searched it. He'd been ready to abandon it. But Destroying The Evidence is a repulsive idea that has been long entrenched in the very core of him. It was becoming clear, however, that he wasn't going to have a choice if he wanted to be around to find his target.

But then the flood had - suddenly - lessened. The nearest dock had been damaged when Raguel's skimmer had been rammed away from it, so that the moment he'd pulled the airlock's lever down to admit a torrent of madness and violence, the ship's air had begun venting out through a fracture. The Reaver ships had begun a sluggish process of undocking and abandoning their fellows; the lack of air had finally reached a critical point and one by one those on board fell, gasping, to the floor.

There'd been one more major change in the look of his surroundings. The door to that bizarrely well-organized room must have locked when it had swung closed, because he'd found a hundred new marks on it; dents and scuffs and    smears    were all over the door and extending for several feet around it. He'd gone to check the room again (stepping over a few new corpses) and found everything inside as he left it, with one exception. The strange stick with the button on it, abandoned on top of the folders, had retracted its prongs.

"Uh huh," he'd mumbled, and pocketed it.



There had been two inhabitable moons in an escape pod's range of the ship when it had been attacked, he'd remembered. One of them was a sparsely populated mining colony. The other was a moderately populous border moon with a budding economy and a promising climate.

He'd headed for the mining colony in the battered flagship. If you were going to crash-land a vessel (just as he was) on a moon, the last thing you wanted was pictures of it beamed around the 'verse by some technologically shrewd wunderkind. The colony might not even have had electricity, let alone have recognized the Shé Xuán from broadcasted pictures. If he'd been planning this sort of thing, he couldn't have wished for a better place. And it was beginning to look as though ELIZABETH RYDELL had planned this down to the second.

--

She does not stay long on either of the moons, but there are traces of the escape pod to be found there if you know what you're looking for. It's been disassembled, then certain parts melted down and 'found' in one of the mines with the rest of the ore. From there she leads him on a long trail winding from one planet to another, using a string of different names that he discovers when he bothers to check. But there are very few places that are not covered by surveillance of some kind; certainly not the places that ELIZABETH RYDELL frequents, and not all of them have been erased. They aren't centers of commerce, but there are crowds or centralized food and shopping, there are electronic eyes and there are people. Someone's always seen her, and Raguel doesn't have to rely on electronic records alone to know where she's been.

He knows what she looks like: young, fair complexion, blue eyes, hair falling in reddish-blonde waves past her chin. As the weeks pass, it falls down to her shoulders. She never cuts or colors her hair, which he finds odd. She's smart, that much is clear, but she's not a professional. Careful, but still makes mistakes. Moves around, but doesn't disappear. She relies on the kindness of strangers that she never trusts with more than a heavy bag, never for more than a moment. And she's finally found a place to settle down when Raguel arrives to highlight where she went wrong.

Raguel doesn't like being this close to the Core if he can help it, but business has taken him there and he always follows business, even when it runs.

The location means he finds himself in the bar of a larger club than usual, trying to dig up some information on the particularly fleet-footed, paranoid target who'd jumped onto the nearest ship and fled for the Core. Raguel had watched the ship take off, then went to find something to eat before following. More interesting if you let them get a head start. But the chase that began with the border planets has led him to this dive, all sleek screens and dust-free furniture, and he's never been what you'd call comfortable with luxury.

He didn't bother wishing up any nicer clothes as he doesn't intend to be here long. He's in the middle of a nice chat with the shapely bartender about what she had for breakfast (he could almost see it, with a neckline that dipped that low) when he sees a still image of Crowley come up on the video newsfeed behind her.

He's already entertained some vague ideas about stopping off on Lavinia as long as he's in the neighborhood, so to speak, and if Crowley isn't at home then there's little point in him going by and scaring the Bentley employees. Besides the fun of it, of course.

He turns up the silent feed with a gesture, and the girl behind the bar disappears with some loud excuse about power fluctuations and nosy customers. Completely absorbed now, he doesn't notice.

"...ship's location is currently unknown," says the reporter, "but it is now feared that Bentley Aeronautics' flagship, as well as its CEO, have fallen prey to the very Reaver collective the group was following to Amesbury."

Five minutes later, he's waving Southdown Abbey.



After Aziraphael comes into the room, sits down, dismisses his messenger, fiddles with the reception, and can't reasonably occupy himself with other minutiae, the fact that Raguel hasn't actually said anything becomes much more conspicuous. When Aziraphael looks up, Raguel is watching him and twisting at the hem of his fraying shirt. Finally he leans in, anxious eyes searching the angel's face.

"Do you know?"

Crowley,

Keep an eye out when you're in the bar in the next couple weeks. There's a new patron who's got some specialized weapons to take out demons and he's used them already.

Blue eyes, blond hair, can't be more than 14. Wears a lot of white. He's trigger-happy and has a good aim. Lucky thing that I am what I am, for once. Security knows about it and they're keeping an eye on him.

Raguel

(after this)



Sallie,

Don't think I can visit your time, but if you're tired of the Observation Window and you'd like to come to mine, here are some ideas. I don't go out much. Anything look interesting?

Raguel



There are several touristy brochures accompanying the note, all touting various places to spend a pleasant afternoon in and around Los Angeles. Griffith Park is the top one, but there's also the Queen Mary, Mulholland Drive, several art museums, and Mann's Chinese Theatre.

Want to know what Raguel (un_fallen) thinks of character X? Get 'em here. You can have the present or future version if that's the way your multiverse turns, or Famine (die_tician) if you prefer. Famine's opinion, though, is likely to be kind of one-dimensional. ;)

Somewhere in the vicinity of New Melbourne, Raguel is brokering a deal.

They're a ragtag group - all the unsavory types he's used to dealing with (except maybe for one sandy-haired kid in the corner, panic in his face, as green around the gills as anyone he's ever seen). This many weapons, that many bags of grain - and the sellers want weapons a lot more than they want grain, that's clear enough. They do seem to have quite a few weapons of their own, though.

Raguel is about to comment on this – even here, no one would dare to contradict him - when a door opens up on another planet and his head splinters apart.

"Again," he growls, knees already hitting the floor.

The dealers begin arguing - the 'mediator' is down, sick or something. At least a couple of them stare at him curiously, but make no move to help.

Flashes of Crowley, pale as a ghost, looking anxious. A roaring sound over the gunfire, and sickly fog blurs his vision.

Voices escalate. A few shots are fired, then there's the sound of people scrambling behind crates, running out of the room, more yelling, more shots. Raguel, lying between the two groups, doesn't hear much of it.

Mal, Kaylee, Gabriel Tam - they swam in and out of focus and then Crowley is speaking to him again. Him.

"Go home," he snarls from the ground. "Tianshi."

Phantom feathers tug on him from behind. There's a voice in his ear, many voices, one voice. He stares around, seeing only fear on the faces of his friends.

And suddenly, he can feel something separating him from the other. It's not gone, but it's muffled - behind a paper wall. He can't see it. Thinking his own thoughts is just a little closer to possible.

"Get out," he hisses at the kid who's nearest to him, now cowering behind a crate and holding his gun wrong. The kid looks at him with wide eyes and doesn't move.

Raguel pushes his upper body off the floor but doesn't get very far before the ragged gunfire picks up again and a stray shot takes him right in the neck. He curses loudly at the culprit, too weak to make either the wound or the pain vanish.

Using the edge of the nearest crate, he manages to climb all the way to his feet amid the flying bullets. Blood from the wound streams down over his collarbone and begins to soak his clothes, and in a flash of lucidity he sees the kid with the gun staring at him in terror.

And in an instant, the terrible duality in his head has vanished.

"That's it," Raguel mutters viciously, and for a fraction of a second there is a flare of light blindingly strong and crimson and hot – hot like the core of the sun. And then it's gone.

The walls have melted slightly and warped, making the whole warehouse bow outward. The grain and the guns are gone. And there's not a trace remaining of anyone else who was in the room.

Well, that kid probably would have gone bad, anyway, he thinks, collapsing back to the floor. With only people like that to guide him - it happened. Sort of.

Raguel stays in the room for a while longer, elbows on his knees, head down. He half-expects some kind of retribution, but it doesn't come.

Bits and pieces of the encounter do, though. The time before and after. And suddenly, urgently, he needs to go and visit Crowley.

There's still quite a lot of blood on his shirt, but before he even thinks of wishing it away, Raguel sends a note back to Galadan. Enclosed is the wooden 'G' the messenger had been carrying in his pocket. It's a little stained now, but otherwise good as new.


You really shouldn't trust Gi Saeng with your packaging as he tends to make stops to hand-pick the stars for his next kiddie porno. Makes things late.

He dropped this at some point.

Made sure your package was delivered. The mail must go through, isn't that what they used to say? Guess you wouldn't know.

So, you're doing the security for Tam Tam's press conference. Good luck with that.


That last is just a little joke.

Raguel can't stifle the onset of snickers as he sends it off.

When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that's the best
When they lay me down to die
Goin' up to the spirit in the sky

After his horrible conversation with Mal all those weeks ago, Raguel went for a walk. It wasn't outwardly any different from the usual; he walked through the city because he didn't know what else to do. He'd tried sitting in his room but soon began to hate the walls of the place, and the repeating Los Angeles motif of cheapness and cardboard was pleasantly numbing at first. But then he came to the dentist located over a bail bonds shop - a juxtaposition that looked oddly familiar until he realized it was next door to the church where he'd kept his sword. Its stained glass was dark and the walls silent this weekday afternoon. He couldn't remember why he'd decided to keep the thing there.

The next building he passed was a Chevron gas station blaring 'Spirit in the Sky.' He went back to his room for the rest of the week.

When he emerged again, the outside smelled like smoke and a haze hung over everything. Something big was on fire and the hushed atmosphere, the people wearing masks, the air of impending danger matched his mood perfectly. He hesitated a moment, taking it all in.

Well, he wasn't going to the rescue this time. His presence was probably doing more harm than good anyway, and he never liked Los Angeles. Let the whole damned place burn.

Raguel turned his back and started the long walk out of town.