For a split second, Warren felt he was looking at “Angel.”
A moment later, it hit him.
Those wings weren’t feathers but metal, and the ring above her head wasn’t light either—it too was a construct of colored metal.
“Who are you?”
Angela wasn’t in much of a mood to chat.
After all, “Mercy’s” Guardian Angel ability only let her fly toward a teammate, not soar wherever she liked.
She said quickly, “Thank you so much for saving my life, but right now the most important thing is landing safely, don’t you think?”
Warren Worthington III nodded and, full of questions and curiosity, flew toward the ground first.
News spread fast at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—naturally, since the school was full of gifted mutants, including telepaths like Jean Grey and plenty of others with sharp senses.
At the slightest stir, word would race through the whole school in no time, and soon a crowd was gathering toward the field, eager to see what “Angel” had gone off to do.
Half a minute was enough for a crowd to form on the field.
The teenagers craned their necks curiously, and the moment they made out what was happening in the sky, they gasped.
“Whoa!
Is that another ‘Angel’?!”
“Is that Angel’s little sister?”
Two winged angels flew through the sky, both with golden hair that gleamed in the sunlight, their flight postures alike enough that it was no wonder people asked.
Warren Worthington III landed first, folded his wings, and waited curiously for the stranger’s answer.
Angela landed right after.
Once her feet were planted firmly on the ground, she retracted the ionic light wings behind her, the white metal feather-frame contracting inward.
She steadied her breathing, straightened her Valkyrie swift-response suit a little, and then bowed to her “savior” across from her.
“Thank you again for saving my life. I’m Angela Ziegler. You may call me ‘Angela,’ or ‘Angel’—that’s what my old comrades liked to call me.”
Warren Worthington III froze where he stood.
The scene turned a little awkward.
Angela looked at him, puzzled.
The blond young man’s face was full of questions, yet he showed no sign of speaking, so she had to glance to the side, trying to find someone who could take control of the situation.
As expected, she followed the gaze of every teenager present to the middle-aged man seated in a wheelchair off to one side.
A fierce-looking, burly man pushed the wheelchair into the crowd.
Seated in it, Charles Xavier smiled and greeted Angela, clearing up her confusion at the same time.
“Hello, Ms. Angela. I’m the headmaster of this school, Charles Xavier. You may also call me ‘Professor X’.” The blue-eyed professor smiled and winked.
“This is Warren Worthington III. He has a nickname, and I imagine that, with Ms. Angela’s intelligence, you’ve already guessed it?”
Angela looked at the wings behind the blond young man, connected it to his inexplicable stiffness after she’d spoken, and grew awkward in turn.
She’d barely arrived and already gone and shared a name with someone.
“I’m guessing… it might be ‘Angel’? What a coincidence.”
Warren finally snapped out of it and nodded with a slightly stiff smile.
“Hello. I’m Warren—Warren Worthington III.”
And then he went quiet again.
Angela had no choice but to look once more at the man who called himself “Professor X.”
The “considerate” Charles Xavier smilingly picked up the conversation.
“Ms. Angela, if you don’t mind, could we have a talk? I’m quite curious why you appeared in such a way… though of course, a lady has every right to keep her secrets.”
He was so easy to deal with that Angela felt a little embarrassed instead.
The lie she’d prepared in her heart turned over a few times, and by the time she was seated in the headmaster’s office, the answer that came out had taken on a different shape entirely.
“As you saw, the reason I fell out of the sky is that I was caught in a massive explosion—”
Angela tactfully left out the cause of the “massive explosion” and continued without changing her expression.
“After the explosion, I appeared in the sky. I’ll venture a guess that perhaps the energy of the blast punched through the ‘wall’ between space and time, dropping me into another world. If you’d care to look into whether an ‘Angela Ziegler’ exists in this world, I think you’d have your answer soon enough.”
Charles Xavier didn’t follow up on Angela’s words with any investigation.
Instead, keeping his gentle smile, he said mildly, “I believe you, Ms. Angela.”
Angela couldn’t help being startled, and said almost reflexively, “Mr. Xavier, isn’t it too hasty of you to extend your trust so readily?”
Over her years in Overwatch, she’d long grown used to agents investigating, probing, and testing one another again and again before they’d hand over their trust.
Not everyone would entrust their life to “Angel” at first sight; more often than not, the people who’d only just met her doubted whether a woman armed with a staff and a Caduceus Blaster could shoulder the crucial support-and-healing role on a squad.
Charles couldn’t help laughing.
“Ms. Angela, would you rather I locked you in a room and interrogated you?”
“Of course not, it’s just…” Angela hesitated, unsure how to describe how she felt.
When she’d wanted to join Overwatch back then, both leaders had vetted her seriously.
The tolerant, upright Morrison had courteously asked her to demonstrate her abilities, while the stern, no-nonsense Reyes had simply frowned and said, “I have my doubts a surgeon can handle the job of an Overwatch agent”—until she drew her gun and dueled him from the top floor all the way down to the bottom, and only when both of them were down to a sliver of health did Reyes relent.
Now this Charles Xavier was the leader of a school too, a school that already had people with wings.
It went without saying that most of the other students weren’t ordinary either.
In a position like his, how could he be so tolerant and naive?
Wasn’t he afraid she’d come here to cause trouble on purpose?
Listening to her inner voice, Charles nearly laughed out loud again.
“Ms. Angela, I believe you’re a kind person.
Until you have somewhere new to go, why not stay here a while?”
Angela was startled again, then said, very embarrassed, “This is really far too much trouble for you.
If there’s anything I can help with, please don’t hesitate to tell me—if it’s in medicine or biology, I think I can be of some use.” To strengthen her case, she trotted out her degrees.
“I once earned doctorates in clinical medicine and nanobiology, and I have some insights in both theory and practical application.”
Charles Xavier said curiously, “Nanobiology?”
“It’s the application of nanotechnology in the field of biology.
It can dramatically improve the treatment of disease and injury.” Angela glanced again at the man’s legs and ventured, “For instance—suppose your legs weren’t like this from birth, but were caused by a disease or injury acquired later…
perhaps I could heal them.”