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Chapter 88  Mal Learns The Truth

Even when he\'d met him in person when he first got blessed, he couldn\'t really find it in himself to make a judgement about him. But as he listened to this woman fight the urge to sob while she trembled with anger, he realized the man that he\'d formerly thought nothing of was actually the kind of person he despised most.

Joanne explained that she had gotten a tip about Alex about two years ago, and began closely investigating him and all of his movements.

One night, she was tailing him at a cocktail party in DC, when her body suddenly began to feel heavy and she passed out. When she woke up, she had that strange bracelet on her wrist and Alex Heller was by her side.

Without understanding why, she was obeyed his every command.

Divulging state secrets, covering up his crimes, and worst of all playing house with them as if she were really his woman. The entire time her true consciousness was locked away behind a glass box, able to see and feel everything her body was going through without being able to do a thing about it. It was a miracle from the highers that she was still sane. "I\'m sorry... that\'s awful." Malachi said sincerely.

"Spare me your pity, it only drives the knife in deeper when some young brat like you is looking at me like I\'m broken china."

She finally picked herself up off the floor and began walking towards a wall on the other side of the room. "You aren\'t even supposed to be here, the two of us never should\'ve even met."

"What?" "Those of us who are blessed by archangels are classified as a non threat by the government. If our heart ever becomes malicious or impure then we immediately implode, making any kind of surveillance or incarceration unnecessary. "

As seen with Arthur, there was a small amount of leeway, but it wasn\'t enough to allow Malachi to suddenly go on a killing spree. His heart had to be in the right place whenever he acted, and his soul had to be redeemable if he ever sinned.

If it wasn\'t, he would be incinerated by the very fire that he had been using so freely.

In short, surveying Mal was a waste of taxpayer dollars.

If he ever truly did something malicious then he would die before anyone from the government could even get their hands on him.

While Mal was still wrestling with the fact that he was walking around with a weakness that he knew nothing about, Joanne picked up an entire bottle of liquor and brought it to her lips. There was no way for her to get drunk, so Mal could only assume that she was drinking to feel something other than revulsion. "Then how are you still alive?" He asked.

Joanne put down one empty bottle only to unscrew the lid off another.

"Your listening skills need work. I told you that my body was overtaken, not my heart and mind. That is a world of difference but I still could not use my powers for all of that time. I guess Cassiel installed a failsafe or something..." She muttered. As Mal watched this woman put away alcohol at a speed that would have qualified her for an invitation to rehab, he silently began to put the pieces together. "You brought me in for Alex.... why?" *Gulping noises ensue.*

"...."

*Continued gulping.*

\'...She needs this so I\'m going to give her a second.\'

Malachi began floating in the air and crossed his legs like he was prepared to be patient.

Joanne finally removed the bottle from her lips and wiped her mouth before picking up another one. "Because he hates your guts." "The hell for? I only met him once."

"You rejected him in front of a large crowd in favor of a guild he considers to be less than his own and a woman who has denied his advances numerous times. That is enough."

"...Are you fucking with me?" Mal asked as he stared at Joanne with an expression of disbelief.

There was no way this guy hated him over something this mind numbingly idiotic. Were they in fucking middle school?!

Joanne laughed so hard that liquor nearly came out of her nose.

"That\'s the problem with random people being blessed, kid. When the outcasts of society suddenly gain positions of power, most make it their life\'s mission to fuck over the entire world as revenge for however they were forced to live before they got their powers."

It was the entire reason why the dark angels were founded. Despite what the blogs, and the cereal boxes, and tv interviews would have people believe, cases like Malachi were rare.

Humans have a tendency to be driven by the memory of the darkest times in their life, and the motivation and lessons that they take from that time can very from person to person.

They can become bringers of change who want to make the world a better place despite the tragedies they\'ve endured, or they can become vain conquerors who believe that the highers have finally rewarded them for all of their years of suffering. They view their lives from before as nothing more than a test and believe that their prize for passing is to crush the skulls of those who stepped on them when they were powerless.

It all depends on the personality and the surroundings that they had before they were blessed.

"There\'s more you don\'t know." Joanne said as he searched for more booze. "He tried to kill you on the day of your first gate. He blackmailed Sierra Caligo into sneaking inside and killing all of the monsters the night before you entered and stole all of the drops. The scorpions you fought were just being controlled by her necromancy. And the boss had it\'s powers enhanced by the use of-"

"Wait..."

Joanne glanced over her shoulder to find Malachi with his body engulfed in smoldering darkness and his orange eyes on the verge of turning red. "What you just said... are you telling me the truth...?"

\'Scary...\' Joanne thought humorously. "I am. Are you upset he robbed you or that he tried to-"

"Do you think I give a damn about some trinkets or my own life?"

Malachi\'s feet touched the ground, and he began walking towards Joanne like he was about to explode. "My friends got hurt that day, and they could have died. I thought we were just unlucky but now you\'re telling me that shit was rigged? I\'ll kill him."

The monitors on the walls could no longer withstand Malachi\'s pressure and they all cracked and became dim. The already dark room was now illuminated only by Mal\'s bright orange eyes that were as like a smoldering flame. \'Now I don\'t feel like I should tell him about his girlfriend\'s ex husband... If he\'s this mad now then he\'s likely to run off and get himself killed.\'

Joanne made an executive decision to keep that last bit of information to herself for the time being. "Your enthusiasm is admirable but you cannot kill Alex Heller. Just because you are also blessed by a primordial doesn\'t mean that you\'re his match. He\'s had his powers for longer and is a great deal stronger than you. Even if you beat him in quantity, quality is what matters." Malachi was pissed, but he didn\'t let Director Joanne\'s words go over his head.

He knew full well that the speed at which he mastered his powers was slower than others because he had multiple areas to cover. Bast blessed him with two of her divinities, felines and women\'s secrets, and he was sure that there had to be more to them than just the simple turning into cats and making women honest. There seemed to be a whole slew of things that his blessing from Michael could do, so far his golden flames could not only burn away anything but they could also cleanse souls, sense bodily impurities and bestow invulnerability. His blessing from Raijin had to come with more than simple lightning. How much could he increase the voltage? Could he summon thunderstorms? How far could he enhance his speed before his body was destroyed?

And he didn\'t even want to think about his blessing from Nyx. He had barely even scratched the surface of everything that it was capable of. Her words certainly stung, but that didn\'t make them any less truthful. "So what am I supposed to do? Sit on my hands like the pushover he thinks I am and allow him to live freely? "

"...You think I\'ll allow that bastard to be free after everything he has done to me...?"

Crack!

The empty bottle in Joanne\'s hands turned to dust in her grip as her body began to glow with a golden light.

Behind her back, four large white wings appeared that seemed to chase away all of the darkness in the room.

"Let me make one thing clear. Your petty grudge with Alex Heller is absolutely nothing compared to the hate that I feel for him. You think you\'re mad? Do you have any idea what that man made me do? What he did to me?! FOR OVER A YEAR!?!"

BOOM!

The ground cracked beneath the feet of the two powerful blessed, and Mal realized that this woman was right. While they were both victims, his pain could not be compared to hers. The treatment they endured just had too large of a gap. "He is going to sit in tartarus for the rest of his life, no matter what I have to sacrifice to get him there." Joanne said sternly. Tartarus was the name for an underwater prison located in the Mariana Trench. It was a highly secure facility that housed nothing but blessed, and just like the greek primordial it was named after, it was considered to be inescapable. "Go home, Malachi." She ordered. "You\'re a decent kid so I hope that you\'ll listen to my sincere request and leave this to me." n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Mal fell into a silence as he stared into the face of the director of the dark angels, seemingly searching for any lingering weakness. "What will you do?"

"Nothing for now. I\'ll tell that bastard I have some work that\'s keeping me away from that palace of his for a while as I put together a strike force. Without that bastard Lamont noticing of course." She muttered. Lamont was actually one of Alex\'s men, and his role was to act as Joanne\'s right hand while also reporting everything she did while out of his sight.

Malachi backed away like he was gong to leave, but not before he left Joanne with some parting words. "I know that you wanna handle him yourself and all, but I just wanted to let you know that when things go down I\'ll be there."

"It\'ll be a highly covert operation, you will never know it\'s happening."Joanne said as she rolled her eyes. Malachi chuckled as his body began to sink into the shadows on the floor. "Then I suppose the next time I see you it\'ll be entirely coincidental."

Once he disappeared, Joanne let out a deep sigh as she looked at the dark and empty room in front of her. "Damn it... I forgot to thank him for helping me."