Editing Warhammer High (section)

==Angela Grows Up==


A faint wind crossed the grass behind the mansion that afternoon.  Some quiet sounds of grass mowers and passing vehicles echoed past its façade and holofield, but they sounded muted behind the field’s protection.

Angela, thirteen-year-old daughter of Sanguinius, lay facedown on the thick green grass.  She was cradling her head in her hands, trying to talk without her voice breaking.  It wasn’t easy.  She was in a lot of pain.

“That rough, was it?” her cousin Miranda asked in sympathy.

“It hurts, Miranda,” Angela said miserably.  She drew her wings as close to her body as she could out of pure instinct, even as her fingers dug into her hair.  “How…how are you dealing with it?” she asked into the grass.

Miranda shrugged, helpless.  “It doesn’t hurt.”

“At ALL?” Angela asked incredulously.  “I mean…I know you’re stronger, but…this is agony!” she wailed, fighting back the pain in her head.

Miranda stared at her beautiful cousin, her own heart aching.  “Angela…where does it hurt?” Miranda asked, trying a new tack.

“It’s…” Angela searched for words, then whimpered as the psychic pain returned.  “It’s like when you hit your arm on something sharp…a lancing pain in a specific place, not…oh, hell, that hurts,” she groaned, cradling her head.  Her wings trembled for a moment as the pain flared back up.  “It’s like a needle stuck in my head,” she whispered into the green rolls of plants.

Miranda, whose third eye was taking on a peculiar shine, looked sadly at her cousin.  “How did you make it through school today?” she asked quietly.

“I didn’t,” Angela whimpered.  “I came home with tears in my eyes.”

Miranda blinked back a tear of her own.  “I’m so sorry, Angela,” she said.  “I wish I could help.”

“Everyone I’ve asked said it will pass soon,” Angela said miserably.  “But…soon can’t come fast enough.”  The pale blonde laced her fingers behind her head and tried to relax, but the spike of manifesting psychic power in her brain ripped a fresh line of agony through her young body, and she gasped in pain.

Miranda’s powers manifested in the same way as Angela’s but for whatever reason, be it her eye acting as a focus or simply superior training from her father, she wasn’t wracked with pain.  She just found it intensely creepy, and tried to ignore it unless she felt she needed it, which hadn’t happened yet.  The redhead lay down beside her cousin and stretched out on Sanguinius’ luxurious lawn, watching the haze overhead.  “Let me know if I can help,” she said quietly.

“I will,” Angela promised.  She reached over and quickly squeezed her cousin’s hand.  “Thanks.”


The hours passed.  Angela’s knuckles turned back to their normal hue as her death grip on her throbbing head faded.  “It…it’s easing, I think,” she managed.

Miranda glanced over at her.  “Can you feel anything new?”

Angela slowly raised her head from the grass and wiped loose blades from her face.  “…Do you hear that?” she asked.

Miranda cocked her head and listened.  “I don’t hear…”

“Shh.”  Angela turned her head to face the house and pushed off the ground with one hand, twisting at the waist to stare at the mansion.  “What…what is that?” she asked, staring intently at the house.

Miranda listened hard, but all she could hear was the wind.  Then it hit her.  “Angela, can you hear this?” she asked.  She focused for a moment and arced a tiny spark of psychic power between her fingers.

Angela’s head whipped around, waving blonde hair everywhere.  “What the hell was that?” she asked.  “I saw…or heard or something…what was that?” she demanded.

“That was your extra-sensory perception coming alive,” Miranda said.  “That ‘sound’ you hear from the house is your father’s presence.”

Angela turned, very slowly, and drew herself up into a cross-legged position.  She stared at the house again, her eyes wide, perhaps even frightened.  “It’s…” she started, before trailing off again.  “Wow.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty complex, isn’t he?” Miranda asked.  That was understating it somewhat.  The faint psychic shadows of the people on the street out front were completely insignificant compared to the raging typhoon of psychic power inside Sanguinius.  The rippling ‘sound’ of his passing through the building, no doubt freshly returned from the Palace, was cutting through the background noise like a chainsword.

The door opened as Angela sat up.  Sanguinius himself, no doubt sensing his daughter’s pain recede, looked about the lawn and spotted them.  “Angela, dearest, there you are,” he said.  “Miranda, hello.”

“Father,” Angela said eagerly, scrambling to her knees to rise.  He gestured her to stay.  As he made his way over to her, Miranda rose and popped her shoulders, sensing her presence becoming superfluous.

“Feel better tomorrow, huh?” she asked.

“I’ll try,” Angela said.  She looked up at her cousin and smiled at last.  “Thanks.”

Miranda headed back through the house to her waiting bicycle.  Sanguinius passed her with a nod on his way to his daughter, who was now kneeling in the waving grass.  The wind was picking up considerably, now, and it was blowing the clouds away.

The giant warrior was clad in a shimmering robe of light yellow over red, but all Angela was seeing was a fiery vortex of energy racing through his physical form.  Her eyes weren’t blind, but suddenly, she was seeing something new.

“Dad,” she said quietly.  “Is this what you see?”

Sanguinius smiled.  “No, little one, it isn’t.  If you can believe it, you’re not quite finished.”

“More?”  Angela winced.  Getting this far had hurt.  It had hurt a lot.  Sanguinius noted her discomfort and offered a sympathetic look.

“Little Angela, please just bear with it.  The next part isn’t painful so much as…unnerving.  Even frightening.”

The two of them stared at each other until Angela asked the question.  “Um.  How?”

Sanguinius sighed.  “You will be presented with certain temptations.  Some will come overtly, like the desire to use your powers to harm people who dislike you, or read minds and emotions of those all around you.  Others will be more…subtle.  Impulses.  Dark dreams.”

“And…how is that scary?” Angela carefully asked.  “I’m already…you know, fairly powerful…I never feel like I should be abusing my authority or Royal connections, Father.”

“I know, little one, and I’m proud of you for that,” Sanguinius said gently.  “But I speak of something more…base.”  He drew his legs beneath him and knelt facing her, realizing with a pang how slowly she was aging compared to him at the same age; and yet it felt like she had been learning to walk only days ago.  “You know of the more depraved aspects of the Warp, of which I have warned you, don’t you?” Sanguinius asked, his tone turning darker.

“I do,” Angela said with a shiver.  The stories he had told her of his own battles with the lesser half of existence had been terrifying.

The towering Primarch lifted one hand to his daughter’s cheek.  “Little one, please believe me when I say that no impulse or drive you ever feel from your powers should be acted upon,” Sanguinius said slowly.  “Do you understand?  Daemons and their ilk do not need to appear in the flesh to twist normal desires into service and zealotry.”

Angela’s new senses alerted her to a streak of pure, black hatred running through her father at that moment, and she shuddered against his hand.  “I understand, Father,” she said.

Her father finally smiled again.  “Do you know,” he said, his tone lightening considerably, “how many strings I’ve had to pull to keep the Sisters from transporting you off to the City for training?”

Angela managed a weak grin.  “No.”

“I’ve had to fend off calls from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica perhaps…seven or eight times now,” Sanguinius sighed, sitting back on the grass and gazing up at the sky, and looking nothing like the Angel of Death.  “It was only after Magnus personally told them to stay their hands that you and Miranda were saved from the City.”

Angela cocked her head.  “Saved?”

“Saved,” Sanguinius said heavily.  “Were it not for your parentage, you would both have been…isolated for mutancy.”

Angela shook her head.  “Well…thanks, father.”

Sanguinius nodded.  “You understand, little one, that this means you will have to be trained by either myself or Brother Magnus, instead,” he cautioned.

His daughter bowed acceptance.  “I do.  Thank you again,” she said.

The sound of the wind picked up as the breeze fluttered the two Blood Angels’ feathers.  Angela shivered as the cold air puckered her arms, and she scooted over to sit where her father was blocking the wind.  “Father, as long as we have a moment, may I ask you something about this?” she asked, gesturing broadly at her head.

Sanguinius nodded.  “What are the little…lines that hold things together?” Angela asked, struggling with the words.  It was all still so new!

“Those…hm.  No two psykers see the universe in exactly the same way, you know,” Sanguinius hedged.  “If I were to wager…I’d say that they were probably the ties between the Warp and the real world.”

Angela’s eyes unfocussed as the wash of unearthly color over the world swam in and out of her second sight.  “It’s…they look fragile,” she said nervously.

“They aren’t,” Sanguinius promised.  “It takes something terribly powerful to break them.”

Angela knelt again, this time rubbing her temples.  “It’s…hard to see normal things with this Warpsight over everything,” she admitted.  “Will it get easier to focus?”

“It will become much easier to focus,” Sanguinius said solemnly.  “Simply understand that what your Warpsight allows you to see was always there, it was simply not possible to detect consciously.  Your powers will awaken, slowly and, it seems, painfully.  But they will clarify your sight.  For all that, you had ought to remember: your normal senses are no less important.”

“How do I tell what’s coming in through my Warpsight and what’s real?” Angela asked, waving a hand at the shimmering lights that danced over the world now, lights that just couldn’t really be there.

Her father opened his hand and clenched it again, and as he did, the lights around him faded somewhat.  “What you must do is remember, little one: the world of the mortals is fixed and immutable.  What is put in place stays there.  The Warp is not.  Discerning the real from the nonreal will be easy with practice,” he reassured her.  “What is difficult is telling the simple Warp illusions from foresight.  That is a skill even I have not yet mastered.”

“Really?” Angela asked in surprise.  The sky was growing darker yet, and she shivered in her exercise shorts and tank top.  The complex fabric ties and folds that accommodated her wings weren’t exactly keeping out the cold.

“I would caution you to avoid relying on anything your Warpsight shows you until you are trained properly, little one,” her father said.  He placed his hands on her shoulders as she scooted closer to him on the grass.  “Are you feeling better?”

“A bit, yes, thank you,” Angela admitted.  “But it’s getting very cold out here.  I hate how fast the pseudoweather changes this time of year.”

Sanguinius smiled regretfully.  “I will never agree with Father’s decision to make the whole world a macro-hive.  I miss what little remained then of the old world.  It felt like there was so much to uncover.”  He rose to his feet, and Angela did too.  “Still.  We can discuss this more inside, if you’re uncomfortable.”

“Thanks, Father,” Angela said.  At the threshold, however, she paused.  Her Warpsight was flaring.  “Wait…”

Her father glanced back from the door of the luxurious manor.  “What is it?” he asked.

She slowly turned to stare out over the yard.  “I…Father, what does it feel like when you’re being watched?”

“I can not truly relate it to you, but…” Sanguinius trailed off as he realized what was happening.  “For what it’s worth, you are being watched.”

Angela stared over her shoulder at him.  “What?”

Her father gestured to the fence that separated the manor’s yard from the neighbor’s.  The neighbor’s son, Michael, was just clambering over it, disregarding the gate between them a mere fifteen feet to his left with a determination that always made Sanguinius roll his eyes.  As soon as he landed, he came running.  Sanguinius closed the door behind himself as he entered the house, granting his daughter a measure of privacy.

The lanky young noble skidded to a halt in front of the porch, and looked up the few small steps from the ground to the plastic deck.  “Hey!  Are you alright?” he asked immediately.

“I’m fine, yes, thanks,” Angela said, trying to conceal her shock.  Mike’s thoughts and emotions were a roiling cauldron in his physical shell.  It was distracting.

“You missed school today!” Mike said worriedly.  “Are you sure you’re fine?”

Angela kicked herself mentally.  “I’m fine.  Really.”  She smiled shyly.  “Thanks.  Um, did I miss anything?”

Mike shook his head.  “I don’t think so.”  He was much more modestly dressed for the season, with a rather expensive outfit for climbing over fences.  Angela flushed a bit as he finally offered her a grin in return.  “So did you level up, or whatever?”

“Mike, my brain metamorphosing is not a video game,” Angela giggled.

“But you gain new powers as you acquire experience!  That’s pure video game logic!” Mike pointed out.

Angela pretended to ponder the point.  “Well, now, that is true,” she admitted.  She hesitated.  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t make light of it, though, Mike.”

Mike’s face fell.  “Sorry.  I’m just worried about you.”

Angela felt a completely alien – but energizing – rush of sensations echo through her Warpsight.  She ran her hand over her forehead, trying to clear the haze, and an image of Mike sliding his hands around her waist and drawing her into a hug appeared in her mind.  She opened her eyes to see Mike simply standing at the base of the porch, looking up at her with concern etched on his face.  “Angela?” he asked.

“S-sorry,” Angela said, trying to figure out what had just happened.  “I think I saw something.”

Mika shuffled his feet.  “Um.  Can I, uh, can I come in?  It’s getting really cold out here.”

His friend pushed the door open behind her and beckoned him in.  “Sure, come in.”

Sanguinius was already upstairs, Angela sensed, but her mother was back from work now too, and was sitting in the study closest to the main door to the manor.  Angela elected to just sit inside the door on the thick carpet, sitting on her knees and ankles so her feathers didn’t brush the carpeting.  Mike sat across from her on the carpet, sprawling on the floor.  He stretched and rubbed his elbows, trying to restore some heat.  “How are you not freezing in that outfit?” he asked, gesturing at her minimal attire.

“I was, actually,” Angela admitted.  Mike stared at her, then laughed.

“Putting on a brave face?” he asked.  “Nice.”

Angela didn’t have anything to say to that.  She was too busy watching him change.  Where outside his sense in the Warpsight had been a bit tumultuous, now it was quite placid and stable, and the vortex of light in him was symmetrical.  He sat up a bit and stretched again, then sank back against the side of a chair.  As he did, the vortex barely shimmered, but as he turned to look at her again – and his eyes lingered on her lips – it suddenly flickered unearthly colors.  “So, what are you up to this weekend?” he asked, and his vortex shifted colors again.  This time it was almost like it was…trying to hide behind itself?  Nothing made sense yet.

Angela tsked in frustration.  “Uh, just sticking around here, I think,” she said.  “I don’t want to be seen in public, if I have another attack.”

Mike nodded glumly, and the tremors of…what?  Thought?  Emotion?  Whatever it was, the tiny ripples in the vortex of light in him dimmed.  “Sorry.”  The tremors returned, a bit less energetic.  “Can I drop by to see how you’re doing?” he asked hopefully.

“Of course, Mike, you can come by whenever you like,” Angela said.  The tremors flittered again, and again they were maddeningly different.  She sighed aloud at the nonsensical behavior of her new senses.

“Something wrong?” Mike asked, instantly all concern again.

She shrugged angrily.  “I just can’t get my senses to line up.”

Mike grimaced.  “I wish I could help.”  He suddenly looked up at her eyes again, and his vortex lit up with a new color.  “Maybe I can.”

“Huh?”

“I know you pretty well, right?  And you’re…you know, having trouble seeing what’s going on, right?” Mike asked, excited.  “Well…can you just…you know, spend the day with me and focus on that, and let your new…powers I guess, just align themselves on their own?”

Angela stared at him.  “Are you…asking me out?”

Mike blinked.  “I, uh…huh.”  He coughed, blushing.  “Guess it did sound that way, didn’t it…” he muttered.  “Uh, we don’t have to…”

“Because I’d love to.  I have to spend my time doing something other than wondering what the hell is going on around me,” Angela said firmly.

Michael perked up immediately, and his vortex – what was it?  His soul? – flickered a whole rainbow of colors.  “Great!  But, uh, you said you didn’t want to go out in public...” he reminded her.

“We can stay here, then,” Angela said.  “If it starts to hurt again, I’ll just talk to Dad and see what he can do.”

“Okay!”  Mike beamed.  Angela found the flickering of lights in his soul accompanying his sudden euphoria quite a bit less distracting, all of a sudden.  Maybe familiarity was the difference after all.

On an impulse, she rose to her knees, waddled over to where her friend was sitting, and squeezed her arms around him in an awkward hug.  He stared over her shoulder into the soft white feathers on her wings, stunned.

“Uh, A-Angela?” he managed.

“Sorry, but…I need to see something,” she murmured.  He relaxed his shoulders as her frigid skin, still chilly from the icy winds outside, pressed against his bare hands.  He reflexively squeezed back, and she flinched in his hands as he brushed the base of her wings.

“Sorry,” he said, desperately hoping she wasn’t paying any attention to him below the waist.

She wasn’t.  Her eyes were screwed shut with intense concentration.  She was staring into the vortex at the heart of him, trying to map it, to understand it, before it drove her mad.  “Mike, I’m sorry I missed class,” she whispered.  “I know you were counting on me for the Bio project presentation.”

“Hey, forget it, Morticia was in today, so we had enough people to do the thing,” he said.  The faintest taste of the air of the school bio lab brushed her tongue as he said it.  Was it a memory?  Even as she wondered, the image of her cousin Morticia, gangly and sickeningly thin, appeared.  She was reading from a cue card as Mike stood behind her.

Angela gasped in Mike’s ear and threw herself backwards from him.  She toppled from her knees and fell onto one hand, bruising her wing on the chair behind her.  “Shit!” she managed.

“What?  What?” Mike demanded.

“I…I saw into your mind for a minute there,” Angela said.  She clapped her hand over her mouth, nearly retching.  How perverse had she been?  How horribly invasive?  “I’m…I’m so sorry,” she said through her hand.  “Mike, I’m so sorry!”

“Easy, Angela, I didn’t feel a thing!” Mike said helplessly.  “I…you didn’t do anything!”

Angela managed to fight back the impulse to vomit in revulsion.  “Mike…was Morticia wearing a green jacket over a white frilly shirt today?” she asked tremulously.

Mike blinked.  “Yeah…but you saw her before you went home, didn’t you?”

Angela shook her head again.  Her eyes were wide and shaky.  “No, Mike.  I haven’t seen her in days.”  She sank onto her side, sliding her hands over her eyes.  “Oh, no, no, no…”

Mike dropped onto his side, trying to make eye contact with her.  “Hey, Angela, snap out of it!” he said urgently.  “Tell me what’s wrong!”

She buried her face in her hands again, trying not to snap at him.  “Mike, please!  I just…I just fugging read your mind!  That’s…that’s beyond wrong!”

“And you can’t control it!” Mike said, starting to feel a little angry himself now.  “Look, I live next door to Lord Primarch Sanguinius!  All of my parents’ coworkers are Navigators!  I’m used to being around psykers!  They can’t even read your mind unless they’re actively trying!”

“I just DID!” Angela bit off, finally glaring at him.  Their eyes met-

She saw him standing up and storming out.  She saw him staring at her with pained eyes.  She saw him lean in and kiss her.  She saw him gripping her by the shoulder and trying to shake her loose of her funk.  She saw him try to pull her upright.  She saw herself reach out and try to slap him.

Her mind spun and twisted with the overlapping and contradictory actions.  She choked on a sob.  “This is so scary,” she whimpered.

Over half of the possible actions disappeared in an instant.  His vortex dimmed.  His face-how could she even still see it? – got closer as he hesitantly leaned into her.  “Okay.  Okay, Angela, stay with me, alright?” he asked.  “Just…stay with me.”

“I’m trying,” she said.  “I’m so overwhelmed…it’s so frightening…”  Tears stained the carpet under her head.  “Mike, please don’t leave, alright?”

Mike shook his head.  “I wouldn’t.”  The number of visions of him leaving instantly narrowed to a few.  She squinted her eyes, staring into nothingness beyond him.  She tried so hard to see what was coming, but the futures tangled and mixed and tore.  Some were grotesque, even violent…his slapping her senseless and leaving forever, and a few of her unleashing her psychic power, and unthinkable things of those natures.  Most, however…

Her wings were aching.  She had clenched them so tight that the bones were rubbing against each other through the feather and skin.  She forced them to relax and tried to see into the visions that soothed her.  Specifically, the ones where he stayed, and his manner was gentle and non-judgmental.  She stared into them, trying to see which ones had her taking the initiative, and saw one she liked.

She very gradually rose up from the floor, wincing as her bruised hand brushed the ground beneath her.  He was beside her in a moment, trying to help, but she distractedly brushed him aside, and to her alarm, some of the more promising visions disappeared.

Angela looked up at him, trying to make eye contact with him again, but as suddenly as switching a lightbulb off, all the visions, all the vortices, all the colors were gone.  She blinked, but they had faded away.  The little lines that held the world together had faded into nothingness, her father could have been anywhere, and all she could see was a handsome boy with a worried look and outstretched hands.

“Mike…I don’t know anything,” she said heavily.  Her powers had faded until the next, no doubt even more agonizing psychic shockwave.  She leaned against him as she sat beside her, and buried her face in his shoulder.  “I’m so bad at this,” she mumbled.

Mike awkwardly tried to shift her to a position that didn’t have her wings digging into his arms, but she didn’t notice his discomfort.  Once he was settled, she silently slid one arm and one wing around his back, pulling him close.  “I need to take this one step at a time,” she said.  She sounded exhausted, and felt disappointment weighing her down.  She looked up at him, tucked into her wing’s crock.  “Still on for this weekend?” she asked.

If she had had her Warpsight available, she would seen his vortex flicker a bit, in a way she would have liked.  “Sure,” he said gamely.  “I’ll be here.”

Angela’s bare shoulders slumped.  “Thank you, Mike,” she said quietly.  She leaned against his shoulder and let the minutes pass.