Editing Warhammer High (section)

==Angela's flight==

Sleep wasn't coming. Angela knew it. Sleep hadn't come to her in nearly three nights, and it was beginning to catch up to her. She smiled as effortlessly as ever with Victoria, and even managed to laugh through her asinine jokes at Lupercal's expense. But then, that's why she did it.

Opening the doors to the balcony of her loft high in the spires of Terra, Angela looked down at the planet below. Skycars and bulk lifters flitted through streets and thoroughfares above the ground, and she could hear the din of humanity normally abated by the sound-blocking armorcrys of her windows. Armorcrys, they thought it would protect her, from the myriad things lurking out there in the night. She knew what awaited her...what wanted her, hungered for her. Angela would never let it have her, but she vowed she would do everything she could to tempt it.

Angela felt a breeze come from outside of the towers, swept up in gulf currents so ancient that they may have been formed centuries before even her greatest father was conceived. She then cast another glance at the windows. Their paltry protection meaning so little to her. She may as well have been nude in the open, compared to what awaited. She let the gossamer of her nightgown fall from her shoulders. Angela feared no voyeur, as none existed from her perch high on the tip of the spire. She was alone up here. Completely alone. She slipped on the sculpt-formed bodyglove as if it weren't there, its every curve molded to her physique. Looking over the starline of lights stretching below her, she felt small, and inescapably sad that, as bright as those lights were, she could never be with them from here. Could never touch them. Could never...she leapt.

For a young girl to leap from her spire in the dead of night was sadly no strange occurrence within the Imperium, in fact it seemed to happen with an unpleasant regularity, albeit it was because they were joined by countless other lost souls. It was unusual, however, for these so-called suicides to then gain momentum and begin moving horizontally.

Angela twisted and flexed, using her lithe muscles as counterbalances and ailerons. In the same fluid thought cursed her father for not blessing her with his full vestigial wings, and pitied the Astartes who had to make jumps without even her diminished physical attributes. Then again, she had always found their style to be rather graceless, simply leaping from point to point without any semblance of nuance or precision. While she was by no means and skillful as her father, she could fly veritable circles around anyone else with her pack. It was a miracle of design, forged on Mars by the Fabricator General himself. It was a specially-crafted jump pack that blew air that did not burn through her wings, giving her the control she would have had naturally, had she been born as her father had, while giving her a similar element of speed. At first, when she received the gift, she thought it was a wonderfully selfless thing. Years later, she surmised it was likely because the old mechanical lecher probably still had functioning biological remains. Pushing that aside, she dived into the morass of the city below.
The city was teeming with activity, as the planet always was. Busy with the continuation of the grand Imperium of Man. Always a chauvinistic term, she thought, and wondered why her great father, as wise beyond measure and devoted to equality as he was, had decided on such a luridly masculine title for his empire. As she juked and spun between passing skycars, she let the question fade, realizing that he always had a satisfactory answer to every question she had ever asked.

Angela asked herself as she felt the wind whip against her face. Why couldn't she rest? What was keeping the deep caress of sleep from reaching her? Would great father know? Certainly he had to. Just as she ruminated over dodging Adeptus Custodes flak fire to speak with her primogenitor, a shriek startled her back into the real world.

Angela dove down, following the origin of the yell with her enhanced hearing. It was a familiar voice, albeit through the filter of screaming. She peered down. There, in one of the alleys interconnecting the numerous skyports overlooking a data collection manifold, was a man, nearly into his sixties, standing over the knocked down form of...her heart nearly burst in her chest. Angela swooped down, her neural links to the pack nearly fusing as her mind sent one message over and over: faster.

The man smelled of liquor and guilt, as if he knew what he was doing was wrong, but was either too inebriated or too dumb to care. He cast a rolling glance at her, through blurry eyes.

"You. You got a pretty face. You're next after cutie down here," he gestured with his thumb to the downed form of the girl who looked like...she charged.

The man would have had no chance of stopping her even if he was sober. As it was, there was no challenge at all in what she did. A quick stab to his throat with the tips of her fingers silenced him. As he reached for it, her outstretched palm collided with bridge of his nose, shattering it, and sending shards of pain through him that no amount of liquor could dilute. She could have killed him then, right there, but opted not to. For doing what he did to who he might have, this man was going to pay. He charged at her, his liquid-fueled bravado cutting through the blistering pain. She ducked each wild blow as if they weren't even coming towards her, like a fighter whose opponent was bribed beforehand to throw the match. Angela stepped back, each blow missing wide, but forcing her away to avoid the man's tumbling girth. She heard the girl yell about the edge of the port, and how she was coming dangerously close to it. Perfect. She cast a quick glance behind her to gauge the distance she had left to go and, dodging four more poorly aimed punches, grabbed the mans wrist mid-swing, like a dancer, and spun him around, trading postions...and her position was on the edge of the port. She held him, the thin patina of grease on his wrists causing the the material of the bodyglove to slip. He began pleading, through the blood and bone. Swearing to never to do it again, swearing on every relative the bastard likely never knew or had. Angela tilted her head and let the man see the girl on the floor, see what he had done, what he was about to do, and let him fall. Angela heard him scream until he passed through the cloud cover.

Angela then sprinted back to the girl and picked up her chin which was blue from the beating.

"Is..." the name caught in her throat. The girl was the same height, weight, size, and even had a similar voice to the person she thought the girl was. But it was her face. While her girls' face had eyes that were widely set apart, like planets preparing to collide, this girl's eyes were narrowly set and bloodshot.

Foolish. Utterly foolish, Angela thought, for someone with their lineage to be beaten around by some plebian drunkard? It was inconceivable, but she'd gone anyway, gone looking for... she stopped. As she looked in the eyes of the girl she had saved, who was blubbering incessantly about thanks and praises she would give to her, Angela clasped the girl tightly, shutting her up. She leaned down to the girls ear and whispered, "thank you." The girl said nothing, too stunned by recent events to create a response.

As Angela powered away, back to her spire in the lonely skies, she understood why she couldn't sleep. She wanted something. No. She needed someone. And she was going to get it, before the thing in the dark got her. 

As the servants opened the door to Angela's room, they found an open back door, a worn bodyglove, and Angela resting comfortably in her bed.