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Celestine fluttered backward in the night sky, clutching the slicer between two hands.  In its gleaming blade, she could see the reflected light of the heavenly city below her.  Beautiful night.  Shame it had to be ruined by the whole 'angelic assassins coming to kill you' thing.
"You know," said Laila casually, "no one has ever defeated a Nocta in single combat before.  Just thought I'd put that out there for your consideration."
"Well, I think you should know that my boyfriend has a particular talent for sneaking up and attacking from behind.  For your consideration, of course."
Laila twirled around in midair, her two blades held in a defensive stance.  Her eyes swept across the horizon, looking for any threat.
"Where?  Where?  Your file said you were single-"
She looked back over her shoulder, saw Celestine madly flying for the Palace of the Divines, and realized.
"Well, damn," she muttered, taking off after her.  "I hope that little exchange doesn't show up on my record."

Seeing that Laila was on her tail and quickly gaining, Celestine dove down into the gardens around the Palace, swooping underneath a marble arch and over a tall hedge.  She touched down in a small plaza with a fountain in the center, looking around worriedly to see where Laila had gone.
She found out in a painful instant as Laila flung herself into Celestine, knocking them both into the waters of the fountain while, miles away, Ael had the strangest feeling that he was missing out on something.
"You can't get away that easily, Celestine," said Laila, pinning down the hand that Celestine kept the slicer gripped in.  "You can't get away, period."
"Comma," said Cel, jerking her other hand out of the water and sending a chlorinated splash into Laila's eyes.
"Heavens damn you!" cried Laila, taking a few steps backward and wiping frantically at her eyes.
Celestine rushed to her feet, slicer in hand.  She checked to see that the ghostly flames were still licking out from its blade, and then lunged for Laila's torso.  The nimble Nocta sidestepped the attack, squinting through irritatingly red eyes.
"You mongrel DSA scum!  Just die already and let me get promoted!"
"Why are you even trying to kill us?" asked Celestine, stepping back from Laila's clumsy counterattack.
"You associate with demons!  You're unclean!" she shouted, continuing to flail around with her slicers, trying to get just one blow in on Celestine.  She hadn't trained for anything this supremely frustrating.
"That's all?  I mean, Ael is a little... odd sometimes, and Des probably sleeps around a bit judging from her reputation, but that hardly justifies killing us!" She accompanied her verbal attack with a thrust of the slicer, which Laila parried with her own blades.
"Heaven was so much better before the DSA contaminated it!  We didn't eat deviled eggs, we never watched Hell's Kitchen on TV, and we sure as heaven didn't listen to rock n' roll music!"
"Not even Stairway to Heaven?"
"Not even Stairway to Heaven!"

"Look, I can't make the trip with you, okay?" said Desdemona, limping and clutching at the bandaged wound on her abdomen.  "If you're so worried about Celestine, just walk to the Palace of the Divines yourself.  I'm not going."
"But Des, you're practically our walking Nocta textbook!" replied Ael.  "We might need you out there!  You have to go."
"Not going.  Feels like I'm wrenching my guts out just to walk across the room."
"You're going.  Besides, you could stand to walk off a few pounds around the hips."
"I'm sexy as I am and you know it," she said with a smile.  Ael cursed under his breath.  She was right and he knew it very, very well.  He had the kind of knowledge that only comes from a career's worth of collecting relevant information, such as the sufficient amount of sway her hips had as she walked away from him and-
'Not now,' he thought to himself, 'not now!  You'll have plenty of time to check Des out later, but that crazy Nocta chick is after Celestine now, and if Cel gets killed, you'll never be able to check her out again without looking like a necrophiliac creep!'
"Well, I'm going to go help Celestine whether you're coming or not!", cried Ael, pointing a finger upwards for dramatic effect.  "I swear, our friend is just across the city, and you're just sitting here in our base!  Well, I'm going to go out there alone if I have to and-"
"You know the Nocta probably keep a bunch of their members disguised in the city for times like this.  Anyone in the city could be one of them."
"Okay, so I might not go out there alone."
The two demons sat in silence for a few moments, pondering what to do.
"Hey," said Ael, "What if I just carry you there?  Would you go?"
"All right, all right, I'll go if you carry me," she replied.
"Now that's what I want to hear," said Ael, turning his back to Des and helping her up onto his shoulders piggyback-style.  He staggered forward a few steps, huffed and puffed a bit, and then stood still again.
"Hey, Des?  That thing about the hips?  I changed my mind.  I think you really could stand to lose a few."
"Shut up and walk," she said with a smirk.
Ael awkwardly trotted out into the street outside the DSA building, propelling himself forward with the thought of how unsexy Celestine would look with a gaping chest wound and a coffin.