My name is not Palutena.

My real name is ineffable, unpronounceable, and unspeakable by your mortal tonges. You have your different translations, all with different numbers of your earthly syllables. None (except maybe a few) come close. I and all of my subjects are too divine to behold by the mortal eye (which is why they are represented, onscreen, at least, by flying green boogers. Why? Because that's what you look like to us, silly. Boogers that live short, useless lives.)

Only one is seriously retarded enough to live among you.

You've got to admit, he's come along quite nicely. In the two thousand years or so he's been dead, it's been obvious that he's never going to one of our great thinkers. Actually I doubt he has the capacity to fix an inclined plane. Letting him stay idle forever was clearly a waste, so we set him on another career path, a career that, after two thousand years, he has finally come to master.

…Shut up. You know perfectly well I could have gotten out of that myself if I absolutely had to.

Fine. I'll explain. Just for the record.

A while back, I got myself into a bit of a sticky patch with one of my cousins. (We have these family tiffs quite often, actually). In the end, she, err, captured all creatures living in my domain, including me, and shut them all up in, um, Hell.

Being hindered as I was, I only had strength to release one of my subjects. I chose him for his integrity, determination, and… and mostly because he was mute. You see, any sensible person with half a brain would have run to the rest of the family for help immediately, and I would never have heard the end of it. But he was the perfect choice. Not only does he have less than half a brain, but no one in my family understands sign language.

After he had done his bit, I had to reward him a bit. Keep him happy, you know, in case he ever learned to write.

(Yes, I know he has no problems down here. But we have different standards, a different language, and a different writing style. Depending on how good you've been, you may or may not understand later. Knowing you, probably not.)

Anyway, I offered him girls, money, fast cars, et cetera, but he didn't want those. I could have made his wings whole whole for a while, or temporarily turned him into a fish, or whatever the hell that kid really wants. But he didn't want any of that. He just wanted to speak. For good.

When an angel is born speechless or otherwise defective in any way, shape, orform, there's usually a reason. The old ones don't like it when you bend their rules, so this was the one thing I could not do. Besides making him a little smarter, I mean. That would be impossible, even without the old ones breathing over my shoulder.

I stalled quite a bit. He started threatening to get an interpreter, so I finally reached a solution.

I gave him a promotion, the Three Sacred Treasures, and a voice. Then I sent him down to you all where the old ones couldn't find him, he couldn't get to my family, and where he's probably fitting in much better anyhow. I bet he's annoying someone to death with his new voice right now. Oh, and although he has the promotion in name, someone else is doing the actual captaining of the Guard. Hee hee.

You may have seen him. He wears a tablecloth and doesn't comb his hair.

I bet with him that he couldn't pull it off. It appears that I have lost, and now I owe him money. I guess I'll have to pay it. After all, what's a little cash, between friends?

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I love unreliable narrators. I also love the last lines- they make her look like less of a bitch.

3 Jodi