by K.A. Rose

Good Omens characters et cetera are copyright © Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, 1990. Dogma characters et cetera are copyright © Lions Gate Films and View Askew Productions, 1999. Used without permission.

As a writer typically for AU fanfiction, I am very surprised, possibly even proud, to announce that there are no fan characters in this work. The possible exception to this may be Ellen, since she didn't get a name or any lines in Dogma.

This story contains 1) frequent foul language, 2) depiction of alcohol consumption, 3) some suggestion of nonromantic sexual interraction between males, 4) some suggestion of nonsexual romantic interraction between a male and female and 5) American-bashing. Have I covered all possible angles? If any of this offends you, you have the option of either turning back now or proceding to read. Keep in mind, however, that by ignoring these disclaimers, you waive your right to flame me on any of these points.

Additional disclaimers: 1) I am American and 2) I'm not Christian.

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Part 1 - They Call It a Pub, I Think
 
 

    Bethany Sloane drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She was anxious and upset, partly by the fact that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car, and that's always something Americans are put off by at first.
    Ellen was burbling in the back seat, kicking her heels.
    All Bethany knew for certain was that she was somewhere south of Oxford. The damn map wasn't any help, and the best she could ascertain was that she'd missed a turn somewhere, and she was presently by no stretch of imagination anywhere in London. Which was where she was supposed to be.
    She sighed. It always happened that way, didn't it? You tried to go somewhere on vacation, thinking it'd be a great opportunity to relax, and you got lost and ended up being frustrated as hell because things weren't working right. It ended up being even worse than where you came from.
    And, as she often found herself doing these past few years, she wondered what a certain distant relative would have done, or thought, or felt. And of course, she never really had an answer, because she'd never met him and only knew about him from books. Mostly one book. A big one.
    After The Incident a few years ago in New Jersey, Bethany Sloane had gone back through The Book with a newfound admiration. You always have a different perspective on a historical figure when you discover you're related to them, however obscurely. It made a person proud, nearly boastful. Although Bethany never mentioned her relation to anyone because she was certain it wouldn't be received well.
    People tended to look at you weird when you said you were the great-grandniece of Jesus Christ (to the thirteenth power). And it was more effort than it was worth trying to explain it.
    Even if you could, they probably wanted you to demonstrate it by walking on water or some crap. Bethany had never been able to get the hang of that. Frankly, it was a happy chance that hereditary drift still permitted her to sanctify water. Or turn it into wine, when she fancied.
    As she drove, Bethany sighted some houses far down the road, near the horizon.
    Squinting, she could see a sign that said, in faded letters, the name of the town. Tadfield. That was a nice name.
    Maybe she could ask for directions.

    Elsewhere, a pair of ghosts were arguing.
    They looked surprisingly solid for ghosts. They lacked any sort of blue, smoky effect, they were not even slightly transparent and they had to open doors to enter rooms. Hitting them would result in your fist impacting solid flesh, although it would also result in them getting mad at you and delivering a few swift blows in return. And these would hurt. Very much.
    "Goddammit. Do you know where this is?" the blonde-haired one demanded. He indicated to a street sign. And then the street. And the cars which were expressly not driving on the right side of the road. And the people walking by them gabbling in unfamiliar accents.
    "It's London," the other, darker-haired one replied weakly.
    "Hell yeah, it's London! I thought we were going somewhere in America!"
    "Look," the second ghost said impatiently, "all I said was 'not Wisconsin', remember? There's a hell of a lot more places in the world than Wisconsin."
    "We could go anywhere in the world for our lunch break and you pick London?"
    "How bad could the beer be? Really?"
    "It's London!"
    "What the hell's your problem? It's just London!" The dark-haired one added sourly, "Christ."
    Their names were Loki and Bartleby. They were former angels.
    It's sort of a long story.
    Loki sighed, still looking at the street sign. "Where in London are we, anyway?"
    "Dunno. Can't read this map for shit." Bartleby folded it up, pocketing it. They both wore the clothes they had had on shortly before The Incident, which was a small comfort. You got tired of wearing white robes all the time. Well, nearly white. Sort of an eggshell, really. Only people in Heaven got the actually white garb.
    "We could ask."
    The crosswalk sign to their left lit up, and a small cluster of pedestrians began to walk forward.
    "Ask what? Where's the nearest bar?"
    "Pub, I think. They call them pubs over here." Despite their ethereal existence, and the fact that they had lived in Wisconsin before it was called that, and that the settlement of white Westerners there was actually a recent development by contrast, the two had a distinctly American mindset.
    "Whatever."
    Among the crowd of crosswalkers now arriving on the street corner where Bartleby and Loki stood, there was a fair-haired, pale man who didn't look particularly unordinary, if you chose to ignore that his clothes were out of date. He brushed Loki's shoulder as he walked past him.
    "Excuse me," he said, not looking up. He kept walking.
    "No problem," said Loki automatically, glancing at the man once and then looking back at his companion. Then his head snapped back towards the retreating figure. His eyes widened. "Bartleby," he said in a terse voice, not taking his eyes of the pale man. "Do you know who that was?"
    "Hm?"
    "Holy shit, man, do you know who that was?"
    "Um...?" Bartleby stared at Loki in polite incomprehension.
    The man --although Loki was now assured in the fact that this was an ill-fitting term-- was nearly out sight. Loki started after him immediately.
    "Hey!" Bartleby said, following. "Where are you going?"
    "Do you remember the kid that lost his flaming sword?"
    "What? What the hell does--"
    Loki was growing impatient. He had been walking fast before but now he was starting to trot. "The one who lost his sword, around the time the humans got kicked out of Eden."
    Bartleby paused. Ancient, crusted-over memories were being drudged up. "What, that shrimp?" he asked incredulously.
    "Yes!"
    "What about him?"
    "That's him!"
    Now Bartleby was jogging alongside Loki. "You're shitting me!"
    But the phrase was mostly for formality's sake. An angel's intuition was seldom wrong, especially when it had to do with other angels. And six thousand years and various changes in appearance had done nothing to make the pale-haired being's identity any less evident.
    The angel turned a corner. Bartleby and Loki followed. He went down a street and entered a nondescript building. Bartleby and Loki followed there, too.
    Neither of them gave much notice to the black vintage Bentley parked outside it.
    They opened the front door. Loud conversation poured out into the already noisome streets, along with an almost sickeningly dense scent of heavy drinking. The sunlight made it hard to see within, so the two ghosts entered, the door shutting behind them.
    "Not the kind of place you'd expect to find an angel," Bartleby remarked dryly, scanning the pub. It was an actual pub.
    They sighted him over by the bar. And grinned.
    "Oh yeah. That's him," said Bartleby, as the two weaved between sitting and standing patrons. "Sticks out like a sore thumb once you spot him."
    Both were currently ignoring the fact that there was another interesting aural presence in the pub, somewhere along the back wall.
    "Good ol' Aziraphale. Do you 'spose he'll remember us?" Loki said.
    "Let's see," Bartleby said brightly.
    At the bar, the pale-haired being graciously accepted a pair of tall drinks. He was about to turn to return to his table with these, when two hands clapped down on his shoulders. He gave a small jump in startlement.
    "Aziraphale!"
    "Nice to see you again!"
    He turned his head around, smiling politely. His thoughts went, Let's see, American accents...
    "Why, Bartleby and Loki!" he said, with forced cheerfulness. There was just a hint of nervousness in his voice.
    All angels knew each other. It was like a fraternity, minus the copious amounts of drinking. For the most part.
    He turned fully, looking them up and down. "You're looking very well... Er..." Aziraphale gave a look of confusion. "I thought you were dead."
    This wasn't really the mild statement that most humans would perceive it to be. Angels didn't often die. As it happened, Bartleby and Loki had been the first. This didn't do much to tarnish their reputation because, as it was, they were also the first angels to be condemned to Wisconsin for the entirety of human existence. Something like that is hard to dent.
    "Oh, we are," said Loki, quickly.
    "We're on our lunch break," explained Bartleby.
    "They have you working somewhere?" Aziraphale inquired. The two ghosts noticed he kept glancing off to his left.
    "Purgatory," Bartleby said miserably.
    "Janitors," Loki added, just as despondently.
    Aziraphale forced a sympathetic nod.
    Both Bartleby and Loki had been angels for a very long time, and even after their banishment still retained the attributes they had had in their jobs as a Grigori and an Angel of Death, respectively. So when Bartleby told of their new positions, both of them had the look of pain on their faces attributed to those who will never, ever Be The Job or even like it, and that even if it could be a lot worse, from their perspective they failed to see how.
    "So!" Loki burst out brightly, changing the subject. "What've you been up to?"
    "Oh, you know how it is, dears. This and that," Aziraphale said in a bland voice. He added, cordially, "Well. It really was nice seeing you two again. It's good to see you back at work and all that. We really must catch up some time." And then he started to move past them.
    Bartleby put his hand down forcefully on the angel's shoulder again. "Do you know how often you get lunch breaks in Purgatory?"
    Maintaining his polite demeanor, Aziraphale said, "I don't distinctly recall--"
    "Once a year. If you work extra hard. We didn't even get one last year because Loki got caught solving complex math problems on a chalkboard."
    "How about we catch up now?" Loki suggested.
    "I'd love to, dear boy," said the angel, who didn't want to at all, "but I'm afraid I have a previous enga--"
    Bartleby persisted, "When's the last time we saw each other? About 3000 BC? C'mon, man..."
    "Let us buy you a drink," Loki went on.
    "I already have one, thanks--"
    "Well, we'll buy you another," said Bartleby, clamoring desperately for some sort of conversational foothold.
    "How kind of you," said Aziraphale. He was beginning to lose his patience. "Thank you for the offer, but that's quite all right."
    "God, you even act English," said Loki in slight amazement. "How long have you been here?"
    "Not that long, really. Only a few centuries. Other parts of Europe before that. Now, if you please--"
    "Jesus, they made you a permanent operative? That's gotta suck. Hey, that's kinda like the position we were in," Bartleby said, grinning.
    "Not really," Aziraphale said coldly. I didn't lose virtually all my powers and have to sit in the same tract of land for entire millennia, for a start, he added mentally.
    "What's taking so long, angel?"
    This was a new speaker. Three sets of eyes turned to him, all assuming they'd been addressed.
    Crowley's forehead crinkled. When you were a demon, there was something unsettling about three angels looking at you all at once.
    "Oh," Aziraphale said, relaxing at the sight of him, "just some old friends." The way he said it made clear that the term "friends" was to be used lightly.
    "Gotcha," said Crowley, accepting the glass Aziraphale extended towards him. He relaxed a little himself. No one had poured holy water on his head and he took that to mean that the two surplus angels hadn't figured him out yet. And angels, once you ascertained they didn't know who or what you were, were tolerable folks, as far as holy creatures went. Crowley paused before taking a sip of his drink, to transform the beer into something more palatable.
    Neither he nor Aziraphale ever came to a pub for the drinks, after all. It was simply for the solitude that could only be found in a very crowded place.
    Bartleby and Loki were still staring at him, but now it was in paralyzing astonishment.
    "I... know you," Loki croaked, pointing weakly at the demon. It had been difficult enough digging up six thousand-year-old memories to recall Aziraphale, and now the ghost was having to go back into the dim and distant past long before the Earth had even existed. His brow furrowed, as he said experimentally, "...Flight classes, under Zadkiel?"
    Crowley started to look nervous again. "Er, no," he said automatically, not caring whether or not it was a truthful answer.
    "Wait, I know: fencing class, two semesters. I think you dropped out early--"
    "I really don't think we've ever met," Crowley said hastily, looking away. "Come on, an-- Aziraphale."
    "Hold on, I think I've almost got it--"
    The demon had started leading Aziraphale back to their table in the corner. He was murmuring something Bartleby and Loki couldn't quite catch.
    Loki followed, continuing, "Wait, no, I'm really sure I remember you during choir practice way back near the Beginning." Bartleby trailed after him.
    "Um, it was very nice seeing you two again," Aziraphale repeated kindly, facing them, while Crowley took his seat. "We would hate to intrude on the rest of your lunch break."
    "Have you always been like this?" Bartleby demanded suddenly. "You used to be such a wimp! You'd do whatever the higher angels told you!"
    Aziraphale took this into consideration. "I don't now?" he asked finally.
    Bartleby gave Loki a sharp nudge, still glaring at Aziraphale. "This guy here used to be a Power, goddammit. You're just a Principality."
    When in doubt, pull rank.
    Crowley, leaning forward across the table and giving Bartleby a sideways look, said, "Excuse me, but if I'm right, and feel free to correct me on this," (said in a voice that wouldn't look highly on being corrected), "the key words there are 'used to be.' Am I right?"
    Loki turned to his companion. "Is it fucking written on my face or something? This always happens."

    Around the same time, God started setting up a croquet game in His personal English garden.
    She got bored after a while and decided to skip off for some skeeball instead.
    It would have been a regrettable move, if God was in the habit of regretting anything.

    Ghosts don't have the same powers as the bona fide supernatural, so they couldn't wish into existence a free table to sit at. Eventually they managed a real one, though, that happened to be vaguely in view of the two actual supernatural beings sitting in the corner.
    Bartleby brought their drinks, sitting down next to Loki. Loki was staring intently at Crowley, his brow furrowed in thought.
    "Doesn't he remind you of someone?" he asked, as Bartleby slid his glass towards him.
    "Not really."
    After they'd become human, and shortly before they'd died, Bartleby and Loki had lost the powers they had held as angels. This meant that Bartleby --a Grigori, also known as a Watcher-- had lost his ability to see into souls, which he rather missed now. It had been an unparalleled means of voyeurism; the only thing coming close to which having been Fox television shows.
    As ghosts, their aural powers were severely limited, almost nonexistent. The most either of them could figure out was that Crowley was supernatural in some way. He couldn't be actually, thoroughly evil, otherwise he'd stick out like a giant red dot amid a blue field, if only because anyone so preoccupied with being evil never got around to being a convincing human. And he couldn't be thoroughly holy because, as former angels, Bartleby and Loki were still able to pick up on things like that.
    Even Aziraphale had barely showed up on Bartleby's radar. Although the ghost was wondering if the fault in this lay entirely on his end.
    "What d'you suppose they're talking about?"
    "Seems to me, a business deal. Or something like that."
    Loki snorted into his beer. "What sort of business does someone like Aziraphale have?"
    "Shh," said Bartleby, now staring himself. "I'm lip-reading."
    His companion gave him a sidelong look. "You can't lip-read, you dumbass."
    "Shut up. Yes I can."
    "Like hell."
    "Fuck you. Right there? The guy with the sunglasses said 'arrangement.' Bet my life on it."
    "You're already dead."
    "Oh yeah. Forgot," Bartleby said, not paying much attention. "But look, little Aziraphale just said 'politician.'"
    Loki rolled his eyes. "He's a Principality. You could have guessed that."
    "Jesus Christ, do you have to be so skeptical?" asked Bartleby, turning to glare at him. "You're just pissed, aren't you? That the sunglasses guy just marked you for what you are, just like that." He looked back at the seated pair, continuing, "So whatever kinda being he is, he's got a sharp eye..." The ex-angel's brow furrowed. "Uh..."
    Loki could almost see the lightning bolt appear over Bartleby's head.
    "I wonder what's with the sunglasses. It's indoors. And there's not a lot of light..." Bartleby went on, sounding distant.
    "Old friend," said Loki, putting his glass down, "I think you've hit upon something."
    "I'm offended, Loki," said Bartleby, looking hurt. "You know there's no one in my life but you."
    The blonde-haired ghost went very, very still. He stared straight ahead, without blinking or breathing. He didn't need to do either, but had done so out of habit until that point.
    "One joke deserves another, Loki," his companion said hurriedly, as he realized his jest had fallen dead in the air.
    "I wasn't joking," Loki said coldly.
    Bartleby went back over the words. "Oh. Fuck, sorry."
    "S'all right," said Loki, taking another sip of his beer.

    A fly landed on Dog's ear. He twitched it, and the fly buzzed away. It landed again, although it may have been a different fly, and Dog twitched his ear again to get it off. This went on several times.
    Birds tweeted in the apple trees around the house.
    In the yard, his master was watering the grass with a long green hose, the water trickling out lazily in a thin stream. Dog didn't bother to watch him do it. It had gotten boring after the first few hundred times.
    Dog, Satanic hellhound that he was, didn't age. Even if he was prone to it as normal dogs were, he knew with a measurable amount of certainty that he wouldn't age anyway, thanks to his master. And no one in Tadfield would ever comment on the fact that Dog never aged. His master saw to that.
    Unconsciously. That was the thing. His master never gave any of it any effort. He knew what he wanted his life around him to be like, and that's how it became. Automatically.
    So when the master finished with school, he'd gotten a job that allowed him to keep living in Lower Tadfield. He'd bought a house that hadn't existed before, with a good view, the sort that no one else in town got. It was a little apart from the other houses and was far away from anyone that might complain of his bringing over his old friends at all hours for small, but loud, get-togethers. He kept it fairly clean, although it would be fairer to say it kept itself clean. And he never had a problem with insects in the summer or drafts in the winter.
    The master kept watering the lawn. Dog flicked another fly from his ear.
    There was a sound of tires on the road. Dog looked up immediately. Satanic hellhound though he was, he loved chasing cars.
    It rolled to a stop beside his master's white picket fence. A young, dark-haired woman leaned out of the open window.
    "Hi! Excuse me?"
    His master looked up from the grass. He smiled congenially at the woman.
    "I don't mean to bother you, but could you give me some directions? I'm kind of lost."
    "You're American?"
    "Oh. Yes," the woman said, looking as if she was debating whether to be embarrassed of this fact or not.
    "Are you attached to the air force base round here?"
    "Oh, no. Didn't even know there was one. Um..." She bit her lip. "This is gonna sound stupid... I'm supposed to be in London right now."
    His master laughed. The woman laughed too, a little nervously.
    Dog was beginning to smell something about the woman that the small, scabbed-over evil part of him didn't like. He wished he knew what it was.
    Because whatever it was, it was in the back seat, too. It was stronger there.
    His master gave the American woman directions. The woman nodded, and repeated them, to be certain. Then Dog assumed they got off on some other subject because, shortly after, they were laughing again.
    "Thanks for your help," said the woman, after their laughing had subsided. "It was nice meeting you, Mr...?"
    "Young. Adam Young," said his master, giving her a warm smile.
    "Bethany Sloane." She gestured towards the back seat. "The one back there is Ellen. She can't talk, but I'm sure she's thankful for your help too."
    Adam leaned over the fence, peering through the glass of the back window, saying, "Ah, you've got a little--"
    And then he stopped.
    The whole world stopped, in fact.

    Aziraphale looked up. The pub had gone silent.
    This in itself is strange, but not entirely implausible. There are times when a pub will go deathly quiet because someone had said the wrong thing or drunk out of the wrong glass, but that was different. A keen ear could still hear the creaking of chairs, the breathing, the beating of hearts-- the slow, imperceptible groan of growing hair follicles, if you were really paying attention. Humans didn't have it in them to be silent. They made noise simply by being alive. Even after they were dead that sometimes didn't stop them.
    But now the pub was completely, utterly silent. He looked at the patrons. They were standing completely still, as if not so much real people as wax replicas. Convincing ones. And in all different poses. In mid-step, mid-gulp, mid-breath, mid-blink.
    He heard an irritated, growling hiss from beside him. "Someone's frozen time again," Crowley said, sounding annoyed, but not particularly surprised.
    "What do we do?" Aziraphale asked.
    "Walk out without paying."
    "Now, really--"
    "Some day, angel, I'm going to teach you to have a sense of sarcasm. I'm making it a personal goal." Crowley stood up, straightening his coat, and moved out from behind the table. He weaved through the immobile humans, taking care not to touch them.
    Aziraphale got up, complaining, "But you really are leaving without paying!"
    Crowley stopped and grinned at him. "Sarcasm can be pretty literal at times." His gaze turned to the table of the two ghosts, who were frozen like the rest of the patrons. The demon arched an eyebrow. "How come they got caught in it too?"
    "They were still here? Hrm."
    "But, look, they're ethereal like you, aren't they?" Crowley persisted, not to be diverted.
    Aziraphale looked slightly embarrassed on Bartleby and Loki's behalf. "Formerly ethereal. They became mortal and died. They're part of the environment now." Aziraphale looked questioningly at his counterpart. "Don't you recall that business in America a few years ago? Concerning a church?"
    The demon appeared in thought. "Was there any genocide involved?"
    "Initially, although He fixed that right up."
    "Ah," said Crowley, nodding in sudden recollection. "Yeah, I read the reports on that a while back. It was dry reading. I didn't get very far."
    They looked at the two ghosts pensively.
    "One recalls that the last time that time was stopped, it had been a very tricky business," Aziraphale remarked.
    "Oh yes," Crowley agreed.
    "Took a while to sort out."
    "Mm-hmm."
    "Would've been easier if the people on the job had had some help. Assistants of a sort, to take care of errands and such like."
    "Yeah."
    Aziraphale paused. "They're not exactly Heaven's best, though. They're not Heaven's anything anymore. And I know they've calmed down since that mess in America, but..."
    "You could always tell them that if they don't help, we just freeze them again."
    "It seems a little strict. Especially coming from an angel."
    "I'll say it, how about that?"
    Aziraphale beamed at him. "You're so sweet, really."
    "Don't you even start." Crowley walked around behind the petrified form of Loki, running his hand along the back of his chair. "Anyway, you owe me for it. That's always how we've worked." He placed his hands on Loki's back. "I think it's time I cashed in on that second Arrangement of ours, personally."
    The angel frowned. "I'm not sure if that's quite fair, dear boy..."
    "It's not just for this. You've noticed I've been pretty easy with the favors these past few years, haven't you?"
    Aziraphale spread his arms. "But that's the thing! We only did it a couple years ago!"
    Crowley decided not to argue about how often humans engaged in it. The angel was probably well aware of the statistics at any rate. Instead, he bent over, close to Loki's ear, and started to whisper something vaguely occult. He stopped halfway through the first verse and glanced up at Aziraphale.
    "Well? You too. Get the other one."
    After a few minutes, or what would have equaled a few minutes if time was still running, Loki snapped his head up. And by doing so hit Crowley full in the face.
    He spun around in his chair while Crowley staggered back.
    "Crawly!" he exclaimed accusingly, eyes wide. "You're fucking Crawly!"
    "Hhwha?" Bartleby said, as he reanimated as well. He looked around. "Oh. I was wondering why our bodies had stopped."
    "Your minds were awake, weren't they," Crowley groaned, rubbing the reddening mark across the bridge of his nose. His glasses lay broken at his feet. As he looked at them, they faded into the inert, gray state of everything else around them. Well, that was a bitch. "Watching and hearing the whole time. Aziraphale, why didn't you mention this?"
    "I didn't know," Aziraphale said helplessly.
    The rules encompassing the dead were more than a little obscure. This was due mostly to the fact that they seemed to change on a day-to-day basis, depending as much upon humans as anything in Realms Beyond. The fact at the present moment, as far as either Crowley or Aziraphale could gather, was that a ghost's physical body, being a sort of psuedo-real replicate of their original, was subject to time as with any living creature. Their minds, which belonged to the aforementioned Realms Beyond, were not.
    This could change at a moment's notice. Or would, if moments existed presently.
    Loki was getting up from his chair. "Crawly! Jesus Christ, of all fucking people...!"
    "It's Crowley," the demon said firmly, holding up his hands. His acid yellow eyes with the thin, vertical slits looked not so much evil as just nervous.
    "You're the fucking reason all of us are in this mess!"
    "Excuse me?"
    "Don't be stupid, you know what I mean! You're the one that fucking tempted Eve, man! You brought on all of this shit with the Earth, and us getting put on it, and--"
    "Quiet."
    Loki stopped. It hadn't been a loudly spoken word, or even one with much force in it. In fact, it sounded tired, upset, and not up for dealing with whatever pointless, six thousand-year-old arguments Loki wanted to drudge up.
    "Answer me this," said Crowley, standing up to his full height which was, actually, fairly tall. "Do either of you know why time's stopped?"
    "No."
    "Good. Then we're all on the same page here." The demon snapped his fingers, and was then surprised when no new sunglasses appeared on his face. "Damn," he said, "I can't move material about?" He sagged. "I hate time freezes..."
    "You've got another pair in your car anyway," said Aziraphale. "And as you were saying...?"
    "What's there to say? Someone's mucking about with time, and people that do that are a nuisance to Above and Below." He glanced at Bartleby and Loki. "Not sure about In Between, though. What's your people's stance on that?"
    The ghosts looked at each other. "We really haven't been there long enough to pick up," Bartleby said hesitantly. "I'm guessing that whatever pisses you guys off, pisses us off too."
    Bartleby felt very weird speaking for Purgatory. It wasn't as if he was a natural member of it. It was like being a recent immigrant and getting selected as your new country's diplomat.
    "Right. So we're all in agreement, then. Let's go find who's doing this."
    "Wait a second," said Bartleby, holding up a hand. "Why do we have to get involved? The four of us? There's plenty of other angels and things on the planet, aren't there?"
    "Moral obligation?" Aziraphale suggested, knowing it didn't have much of a chance.
    "How about keeping your jobs?" said Crowley, knowing that his idea did have much of a chance. "Hell doesn't want time messed with, neither does Heaven. It needs to be put a stop to, ha, so Aziraphale and I are in it automatically. You two say that Purgatory's not happy with it either--"
    "But there's others that can do it, man," Bartleby insisted. "All over the world. And you're not even sure where it's all coming from, right?"
    Crowley turned to Aziraphale. "See, this is why Purgatory isn't very popular."
    And then the world changed.
    The closest approximation to how it changed would be to say it exploded, but this is inaccurate. Although for those standing near the epicenter, it felt about the same way.
 

TO BE CONTINUED

Part 2 - Vladivostok, 12 Kilometers

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