"It's always the same thing," Jessica mumbled to herself.  She slouched in her chair, watching feed after uneventful feed.  It was a good job that Taeyeon had sent a gift basket for her, otherwise she would have possibly fallen asleep.

“What is, Jessica?” Inara asked.

Jessica turned to look at the Star Watch Leader.  Inara was taller than Jessica, a good half-a-head taller.  Her copper hair flowed in curls to the middle of her back, and she looked like a real hippie earth mother; her light dress a mixture of chocolates and greens.  Her bare feet made sure that she could pass between Angels without making a sound and disturbing their observations.

“This,” Jessica waved her hands in front of the monitors.  “It doesn’t matter how many missions we have, every feed is always the same.  It’s always people just going about their totally uneventful lives.  People being with families, eating with them, heading off to schools, obligatory declarations of ‘love’ when they leave.  None of them have any idea how short life can be.”

Inara nodded sagely.  “That is true, my dear,” she agreed, taking a seat next to the cadet.  “But did you know how short your life would be when you were on Earth?”

“Of course not,” Jessica defended.  “I didn’t know any of this existed!”

“And neither do they,” Inara smiled softly.

“But …”  Jessica struggled to argue as Inara helped herself to one of her treats.

“I understand,” she comforted.  “Nobody there seems to truly value their life.  They only know that they exist, that they live, and yet they know nothing about actually living.”

“Exactly!”

“So, what do you plan to do about it?”

Jessica furrowed her brow in frustrated thought.  Nothing came to mind.

“Jessica, you have to remember how you were in your mortal life.  You knew nothing about Angels, the Academy, or even the Fallen.  You made the same mistakes you are chastising others for making.”  She sighed as Inara continued.  “It’s only now that you are able to know the true value of life.  It’s only now that you know the true meaning of life.  That you know the real purpose.”

“Do I?” Jessica huffed, sipping her drink.

“You of all people do,” she chuckled.  “Taeyeon has sent you here often enough.”

Jessica sighed, defeated in the argument.  Love.  Love was the one thing that tied the world together.  Love between family members.  Love between friends.  Between colleagues.  Partners.  Idols and fans.  Neighbours.  Even to deities.  It manifested itself in many ways, from raw unadulterated passion, to pure unconditional devotion, to blind adoration to nothing more than a silent respect.  It was now as an Angel that Jessica knew just how important love was.  It was now that she knew how important hate was, too.  In her life, she was told how much hate should be ignored, how wrong it was.  Now she saw things differently.  Now, hate was a powerful tool, but it was highly volatile.  It was hate that gave people passion to make changes.  It was hate that gave people reason to fight for what they believed in.  It was hate that united groups together and created movements and resistances against wrongs in the world.  Used correctly, it was a force for much good.  Used wrongly, as it often was, it would result in suffering, anguish, and pain.  This was a lesson that many still struggled with, even long after they had become Angels.

“Look there,” Inara pointed at the monitor of the child sleeping in his mother’s arms.  “He is possibly not even one Earth year old, and his heart is one of the purest you could ever find.  He loves his family.  He doesn’t know why, but he knows they look after him, they feed him, they protect him, and they shelter him.  Because of that, he knows they are here for him.  He equates that with love, even at that age.  And her,” she pointed at another monitor of a young woman sitting at a bus stop in the middle of the night, crying into her hands.  Another person was sitting nearby, entirely unconcerned with her emotional state.  “She equates it with loyalty.  She equates it with compassion.  She’s probably been betrayed.”

Jessica nodded.  “Her boyfriend said he wanted to see other people.  He then told her he already had been.”

“Ah.  Human relationships.  A complicated area.”

“You say that like you’re an alien,” Jessica joked, reaching for another snack.

“To them, we are,” Inara smiled.  “We’re not human, so we must be alien.”

“Weren’t you human once before?” she teased.

“I was, but I’m not any more.  And there is little I can do about it.”

“You could if you … you know,” Jessica answered, not entirely comfortable with her suggestion.

Inara laughed.  “Don’t worry, my dear.  I have no intention to jump for any human.”

Jessica sighed.  “So what is love?” she asked.

“It’s everything you know, and nothing you could ever imagine, all at the same time,” Inara prophesised.

“Mom used to tell me that a lot.”

“Mothers usually do.  They tell you how it appears in the most unexpected of places, and how it changes you in ways you could never foresee.  And they’re usually right.”

“Most of that is because their love turns out to be some drunk guy who thinks ‘You smell like trash, can I take you out?’ is the perfect chat up line.”

Inara laughed again.  “I have no idea what that means but it’s still funny,” she smiled.

“So … if love is so fantastic, why doesn’t everyone look for it?”

“Because they equate love differently,” Inara calmed herself down.  “They don’t know the true value of love.  That’s why it can be hard for an angel to stop from falling in love.  They quickly learn the fastest way to find out whether love is true or not.”

Jessica sighed again.  “The look.”

“Exactly.  The way they look at you shows if they love you or not.  When they see you as the only person in a crowded room.  It’s even more special to an Angel because humans can’t see us, and the one that can …”

“Sees our soul,” Jessica finished and looked to her lap.

“Exactly,” Inara smiled and put her arm around the cadet.  “And you always fall for the cute guy.  The guy who catches your attention.”

“So why can’t I catch his?”

Inara pulled her into a hug.  “Because you’re not meant to.  He shouldn’t catch your eyes.  He’s meant to catch you.  It’s why falling for someone is the most dangerous thing about being an angel.  It’s either absolute perfection or absolute hell.”

Jessica mulled her words over.  “How will I know which it is?” she asked hesitantly.

Inara took a deep breath and stood upright.  “I wish I knew,” she admitted.  “But I know you will find out.”  With that, she walked away, leaving the cadet to her thoughts and her feeds.

-----

Three uneventful check-ins had passed for Omega Unit, and Sooyoung had become quite bored.  She had taken to playing solitary observation games, counting objects, creating patterns, predicting the colours of passing vehicles, or the genders and ages of passing visitors.

Yuri was also becoming restless, pacing along her stone platform, looking around to see the vast uneventful plains of nothingness.  The scenery remained the same, but she maintained her resolve and kept to her post.

Hyoyeon was becoming even more restless.  She had taken to moving from plinth to plinth, running and somersaulting from stone arch to stone arch.  Occasionally, she would climb to the ground and walk in a wider area, before returning to her post.

Sunny, on the other hand, was neither bored nor restless.  She took the quiet lull in activity as a chance to meditate and prepare herself with her art of Tai Chi Chuan.  When one imagines a person practicing Tai Chi, one might depict an often elderly person dancing to Chinese music, slowly transitioning from position to position, occasionally using fans as effective props.  However, Sunny had trained to use this in its more combative, martial form, and had learned to combine it with Karate, Wing Chun and Choi Kwang-Do.  Her excellence in her Martial craft had earned her a place as Sensei in her classes to angel cherubs – angels who had not been given the opportunity to inhabit Earth the way she had been “fortunate” to.  The cherubs were full of questions about life on Earth and longed for the chance to explore the planet, but Sunny was not so sure that Earth was such an awe-inspiring place.  Still, she knew how important it would be for these young angels to achieve their dream, and did little to dissuade them otherwise.  Her katana lay on the stone platform as she practiced her kata, her eyes closed, her limbs moving in near perfect fluidity through the air.

“Hey, Shinobi,” Hyoyeon’s voice barked over Sunny’s earpiece.  “Cut it out!”

Sunny slowed to a halt, her arms outstretched, her left leg bent and pointing outwards and her left foot resting on the inside of her right thigh.  “You seem to be content playing hopscotch over there,” she countered, taking a deep breath and pushing her arms above her head.  She was in her element here.  The quiet surroundings in the middle of Earth’s nature, coupled with the spiritual legends of the site of Stonehenge made her feel more in touch with her inner spirit than ever before.

“Hyo, stop teasing her,” Yuri ordered.  “If she wants to be a dancer instead of a warrior, then that’s her decision.”

“Thank you,” Sunny smiled, placing her foot back on the stone and her hands to the middle of her chest, palms together, elbows outstretched.

Yuri rolled her eyes and continued with her watch.  “You have your ‘butterflies’ with you?”

“Always,” Sunny answered.

“Good,” Yuri nodded.  “We don’t know what we’re up against.  You might need them.”

Hyoyeon shook her head and left the pair to their activities, returning to her impatient observations.  “Can someone please wake me up when things get heavy?” she asked.

“We’re just out here as dummies,” Sooyoung moaned.  “Once the others save the day, we’ll be back up there and have to watch them take the glory, with us taking some token gesture of ‘gratitude’ for being there ‘just in case’.”

“Soo, that’s not right,” Yuri corrected.  “We have a mission here.”

“Yeah,” Hyoyeon added.  “As stone guards.  Clueless ones at that.”

“Hyo.”

“No, Yuri, face it.  We haven’t got a clue what’s happening here.”

“Hyo.”

“There is no reason for us to be in this fei wu place.  It’s just rocks and grass.  Nothing else.  Not a thing!”

Sunny knelt to her right, her left leg stretched behind her, her head bowed in front of her.

“And then we’ve got ‘Yoga Jedi’ over there,” Hyoyeon continued, “prancing about like she’s some ninja fairy.”

“Hyoyeon, stop it,” Yuri ordered.

“I’m sick of this already!” Hyoyeon ignored her.  “We’re supposed to be on a mission.  Why aren’t we missioning?  Why aren’t we scouting?  Why are we just standing about on these gorram rocks, watching the sun fall?”

“Because orders, ben dan.”

“Guys,” Sooyoung started.

“I’m a what?”

“You heard me, now stop complaining.”

“Guys!”

“Complaining? You qing wa cao de liu mang.”

“Guys!  Ni men dou bi zui!” Sooyoung shouted.

“What?” Hyoyeon and Yuri turned to look directly at her.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Sunny hasn’t moved since you two started arguing.”

The pair gazed at their fourth member.  Sure enough, she remained in her kneeling position, head bowed down.  Her left hand was outstretched, and her right reached to her waist.  The trio looked at her.

“Sunny?” Yuri broke the silence.

“Something is getting heavier,” she whispered.