Airports made him nervous.
Julian held back his shaking anxiety by gripping the handle of his luggage tighter, the weathered plastic beneath it compressed with a clicking scrape. It wasn't the first time he had squeezed it with such force; it certainly wouldn't be the last.
Three connecting flights had brought him to the Korean peninsula, two more flights to go before he'd have the soles of his shoes on the yellowed sands of Casey Key. Florida's gulf side beaches would be astounding this time of year and he needed to get his tan to its proper place on his skin.
His hair had started to adopt the color of charcoal as his age advanced, leaving him with a grizzled look that accented the rest of his features handsomely. Lines of stress, laughter, and intense focus gave his face a web work of vast emotional potential. Currently, furrowed lines showed him to be unnaturally interested at the ground some meters away, trying to will the reality around him to hasten and for the airline to start making fulfilling their "Fast, Friendly, and Effective Service" slogan.
A call of his name made him twitch. The nearby terminal personnel beckoning him to ask if he would be comfortable sitting near an emergency exit. Being a Japanese airline, the crew was all trained to speak in English so as to circumvent in-flight emergencies from developing because of cultural norms. Extra leg room? Hell yes. A brief glance went to the woman behind him as he made his way back to the queue; staring in the protection of the crowd so as to not seem unreasonably creepy.
She was tall, probably American, but obviously not a prior service member like himself from the way her eyes seemed too thoughtful, her hair not holding rows of being forcibly shaped, and her stance of innocent wonder; as if scared something was wrong with her ticket instead of innately knowing why she was called to the kiosk. Her immediate acceptance was met with smiles and frantic nodding from the mostly foreign crew. Their forced politeness lost on the girl who reacted as though she had won some sort of airline lottery. Julian smirked, standing a bit more relaxed while he stole looks of the woman who was cheerfully moving to stand beside him at their new position in line.
"Better than a middle seat, right?" Julian's voice was rubbed and chaffed from years of shouting and making himself be heard. No one smiled like she did unless they quick to make conversation. She looked to be just below middle-aged; a college graduate or someone a few years of their first taste of the real world after twenty years of preparing for it.
A raven's wing of black hair glistened of her head in the harsh fluorescent lighting overhead that stopped just at the top of her spine. She wore only a pale white blouse with the first two buttons undone and a tight fitting black skirt that wrapped about her knees in a firm hug. A blue portfolio in one hand and only a rolled briefcase in the other clued him that she was perhaps traveling for an interview, or gunning for a teaching position at an Asian schoolhouse.
"You have no idea. If I needed to sit next to another snoring, balding, and smelly tourist I was going to lose my mind." A tone of a day's worth of gripes came as a grateful sigh when she realized she could finally talk to someone who spoke English.
Julian made a showing of tapping his nose, gripping his hair, and pretending to sniff at his armpit after each of her mentions. Old habits died hard, and his scent only faintly held the wisp of silver smelling cologne combined with neutral deodorant. "Not sure if I snore. Jab me in the neck with that folder of yours if I do." His finger twitched towards her slim portfolio as the line began to move with the boarding.
"No promises. Just let me sit near the window? I do have to finish some paperwork and I'd rather have the wall to write on." A black painted fingernail tapped idly at her held item.
"Fine, but I get your shoulder to lean on after the third hour. There's only two seats on our side." A flopping of his ticket to the air gestured around them while they walked down the sloped umbilical.
"Deal."
Some time was needed to orient Julian's case in the overhead. Carrying everything you owned in life, literally, on your back was bound to cause some clashing with the foreign sized compartments that were clearly not being designed for American bags.
The black-maned woman had less difficulty, as she seemed to traveled lightly. A quick slide of her briefcase underneath her seat soon left her untying her portfolio and immediately setting to work on seemingly chaotic pages of numbers and statistics.
Julian hated moments like this. Clearly she wasn't above talking; but the speed in which she set herself to her work also told him to keep his distance. Women didn't have spikes or bright colors to show when they were poisonous. No, he'd have to make do with blind stumbling like everyone else.
"I'm Julian." He offered, leaning as if to whisper her a secret whilst looking ahead. The motions were clever, and weren't lost on the woman who caught on that they were somehow schoolkids talking during class.
"I'm Mira. Are you going to pass me a note asking if I like you?" There wasn't any room to answer as she continued. "I need to get this done, straight A's are important. Tell me how big your jockstrap is after I finish this, okay?" A lean brought her back to a normal posture and away she went as her pen worked furiously on the papers.
Julian could only shrug. Whatever. At least she seemed willing to chat, eventually. He dug around in his jacket pocket until he found his cap. Turning it, he laid it over his face and leaned back as the safety brief began and the plane started to taxi.
-----
"Do we really have to kill them all?" Tallat asked with a whiny voice. The angel's body was young, curvy, and ripe with all the energies of someone newly created.
"Yes. It's willed." Atara's voice was filled with duty and concentration while she played upon the threads of Chance and Fate to begin the events that would lead to the plane's crash; A technician's faulty inspection tool, a pilot unfamiliar with the route, a cargo door that wouldn't allow proper pressurization, and an engine with a weak blade that would not be able to handle the aerobatic stress once the emergency descent started.
