The guard shook my shoulder and I blinked awake. The blue day angel with jangling silver earrings, gold piercings in her cheeks, and spiked indigo hair looked worried. I noticed the bone-like armor with a glowing aurora-like crest and knew the woman was one of her new personal guard.

"Bolt," she said in a surprisingly girly voice, hand reaching down to pull me up.

"Witchy," I said, stretched, and took it. I'd lain on padded green carpet in a plush jail. I remembered the high security prison for special delicate captives; it was a hotel with steel bars, but a cellblock nonetheless. An alien diplomat larger than Rainy Days stood in an adjacent cell eying us with horizontally slit eyes and crossed arms. The creature's deer-musk scent would have telegraphed her presence, had I not looked.

I also smelled iron, which also smelled like blood.

I'd been—

Leaning against the wall to my left lay a cell door. Steel reinforced, with bars but otherwise resembling a door to a vault, with rods to sink into cement. I'd pulled it out of its frame, powdering cement, bending metal so badly that flecks and chips of grey metal lay sintered across the floor. A rainbow sheen of mostly blue and purple discolored the previously shiny material. The cell number sign had melted.

I'd channeled that much energy! No wonder I'd passed out. My grin turned into a smirk.

I could perform just one miracle. As a kid, I'd been teased I was stupid. But. I could perform its every permutation well. I recalled having thrown that lorry (albeit a little one) at the goons that had ambushed us last year and thought it my high water mark.

A bent rod went plink as it cooled. "Wow."

"Why'd you do it?"

"For her." I looked at Bolt. "She wanted to be with him. I know love when I see it." [The MC] had broken into a prison to free a man falsely imprisoned, her orders protecting him overridden by Director Rainy Days herself. "Wait? What happened?"

"You slept through it all. Love won in the end, not that she'll trust what anyone says on the subject." On the punked-out day angel, her grin looked feral.

"Uh, why?"

Bolt waved a hand. "Long story. It ended well. The door? Why'd you do it? You know she was going to grab the key from the guard. Right?"

Why'd I do it? I'd been moved by her intensity? Some gratitude there, maybe? She protected her own and I wanted to live up to the ideal?

She'd proved I didn't murder that guy, that somebody had pushed him. Which cleared my conscious so I could work on her team, which was why she arguably did the other thing...

"'Love can't wait,'" I said, "and I could see she needed him. She did that for me, once. I had an spousal exclusivity contract [a matrilocal marriage] with my guy, but he didn't understand the exclusivity part. We'd gotten it because we loved each other fiercely, but after awhile I thought maybe it was just me. [The MC] realized our problem got in the way of work, so she fixed it."

Bolt laughed. "Like her to insert herself in the middle of things, not caring what other people would think."

"She told me I could only change myself, not him, then asked if I loved him or the image I held in my head. When I answered, 'Him,' she said 'Love can't wait' and jumped into his house and scared away his current riding partner."

"I bet she loved that part best."

"She did break out in giggles for a few hours."

"That's her, alright."

"We then spent two days talking it out, her arbitrating, not letting either of us leave. He got a bloody nose trying." I giggled at how his pride got in the way and he thought he could fight her.

"Sounds like her. You two still together?"

"I figured out I had to work a bit harder to keep his attention. Discovered he has a romantic notion about pirates."

Bolt covered her mouth, but snorted.

I grinned. "Feel free laugh when you meet him; please, don't tell him why."

"No, no. Absolutely not." She waved a hand.

"We redefined our exclusivity to an ideal. [The MC] pointed out we were only human. Of course, to make her point, she later shoved me into an empty locker room with [a boxer] who I'd been fangrrling over for years. He had a case of nerves." I felt my face heating up and I whispered the rest. "I take partial credit for him winning the championship that night..."

I'd proved myself human, and giggled.

[Author retains copyright]

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