Mother Nature

The images alone were almost too much for her handle.

Mothers wailed, talking about how they had tried get their children to safety, how they had held them tight, only for them to be swept away by the waters. Men and women of all ages tried to pick through the wreckage, searching for friends and family members, hoping that they had survived the raging waters. Jesse Harper eventually gave up the almost futile attempt to ignore what she was seeing and buried her head in her hands, gritting her teeth in helpless anger as the newscasters paid more attention to the sole American affected by the tsunami in Japan than the Japanese people as a whole.

Why the hell were the reporters just standing there, showing the tragedy instead of actually helping? Yeah, okay, it was news, but that didn't mean that they couldn't get off of their lazy, stupid asses and actually help.

"Horrible, isn't it?"

The woman lifted her head to look over at the archangel standing next to her before she returned her attention to the TV screen.

"Sometimes I think that we forget just how nasty Mother Nature can be," she admitted before she let out a hoarse, weary laugh. "Kind of arrogant of us, isn't it? Most of us don't even think about it, but the Earth has the power to wipe out the lot of us without even breaking a sweat. Just create a catastrophe on a large enough scale and 'poof', mass extinction."

Gabriel cocked an eyebrow as he looked over at the young woman before he reached out and started to rub her back in a reassuring manner.

"That's rather morbid to be coming from you," he commented, and Jesse merely responded with a soft huff of aggravation. The two watched the newscast for a few more minutes before Gabriel settled down on the couch next to the human woman.

"You want to help," he said knowingly, and Jesse gave him a sheepish grin even as she leaned up against him.

"Am I that transparent?

The archangel smirked in response as he waggled his eyebrows. "Nah, more along the lines of I know you that well. You hate seeing people in trouble and not be able to do anything. I think the Winchesters have rubbed off on you a little too much." He tilted his head in the woman's direction as his expression became uncharacteristically serious. "You do know that all you have to do is ask."

A bright smile crept across the younger woman's face, brown eyes lighting up, before she leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on the angel's cheek.

"Thank you," she whispered as she got to her feet and headed for her bedroom, presumably to change into more appropriate clothing. Gabriel watched her leave the living room before he sighed and returned his attention to the idiot newscaster who was focusing more on catching the attention of American viewers than actually giving a flying crap about the people he and his crew were filming.

The Trickster smirked at the television screen, and it was in no way a nice smirk.

"I'd worry more about the people actually there than your job if I were you, chucklehead," he advised the image of the gray-haired man as he snapped his fingers loudly, and half a world away, a pile of mud-soaked rubble collapsed behind the NBC newscaster, liberally splattering him with the foul-smelling muck on live TV.

Jesse came back out into the living room at that point, her long hair pulled back into a low ponytail and a battered brown baseball cap on her head. She was wearing a battered-looking pair of blue jeans – real blue jeans, not the designer crap that so many people wore these days, a durable pair of black hiking boots, a black t-shirt with a blue and white flannel button-down thrown over it, and slightly too-large denim trucker's jacket over the entire ensemble. The woman glanced over at the television screen and cocked an eyebrow at the no doubt fascinating sight of NBC's Brian Williams swearing on air before she just shook her head and grinned. It was testament to just how she was used to the archangel's attitude that she didn't even bother to ask.

"Ready to go?" Gabriel asked brightly as he turned off the TV with the flick of a wrist, and Jesse nodded distractedly as she seized her brown messenger bag from the side table before she headed out to the kitchen. The archangel watched her go before he cocked an eyebrow curiously. "Uhh… what are you doing?"

"Haven't you been paying attention to the news?" she said as she checked her bag to make sure that she had the emergency first aid kit ready to go (being a hunter had rubbed off in more way than one) and that she had her inhaler as well. Once she was satisfied that she had the necessary supplies, she started to load the bag with half-a-dozen water bottles. "They don't have food or clean water in a lot of the areas that were hit. I mean, I know that it's not a lot, but at least I'll be able to help a few people."

He started laughing even as he came up behind the woman and tugged affectionately on the end of her ponytail.

"I think you're forgetting something," he reminded her teasingly. "Archangel, remember?" If the embarrassed flush to Jesse's face was any indication, she had indeed forgotten. "I could whip up a seven-course meal out of thin air for them if I wanted to."

"Oh."

Gabriel smirked as he placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, oh," he quipped even as Jesse became utterly fascinated with the toes of her boots. "Now, let's get this show on the road."

The two disappeared from the little kitchen in Arizona without a sound, leaving only a rustling newspaper in their wake.

It was nothing too major or too noticeable, just the odd, scattered reports of two foreigners appearing literally from out of nowhere to help the survivors. And there were always two of them, a man and a woman.

The stories about them were almost too fantastic to be true. How could one person possibly feed over one hundred battered, isolated, hungry survivors from a devastated fishing village from a single messenger bag? Much less how could she always have a package of fresh rice balls for someone in need, coupled with a sealed container of hot miso soup? How could one man have given every child in the village a chocolate bar?

No one knew who they were. The Red Cross knew of no one in the area, and the various militaries, both foreign and domestic, had all of their members accounted for.

If the stories were to be believed, they spoke flawless Japanese, and they always showed up to help. The tales were all the same, even if they were told by different people in different villages. A mother claiming that the woman had slithered into a derelict house with apparently no concern for her own well-being and against the protests of others, only to emerge relatively unscathed, coated from almost head to toe in foul-smelling mud, but otherwise unharmed, with a young child held protectively in her arms. The man resuscitating an inconsolable man's wife after he found her buried under what had once been their home. Wounds that were most certainly mortal suddenly turned out to be barely even worth bandaging, much less fatal. Family members that had been missing for days suddenly turned up, battered and injured, but alive.

There weren't swaths of miracles, but there were just enough to bring back a little hope. Maybe, just maybe they could survive this. They had been beaten down and broken before, and they had risen back up. They could do it again. And it was easier to believe that they could do so when they faced the gentle smile of the foregin woman as she handed over warm food that tasted so much like the food of their childhood, freshly made and with care. It was easier to believe that they could overcome this as they worked side by side with the strange, laughing man, searching the wreckage for survivors and clearing out a building so they could have protection from the elements.

Food handed out here, heavy wool blankets passed out there… they seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet, nowhere. If someone started to actively look for them, to ask too many questions, they disappeared without a trace.

Those who believed in the kami – mostly the old ones who still remembered how things had been, and still tried to keep to the old ways – spoke of the nature spirits coming to the aid of the people. And those of a slightly more modern mentality spoke of guardian angels. They never asked the couple though, for that would have been rude. Occasionally a child voiced what the adults only dared to think though, and they received an affectionate smile from the woman as she reached out and gently ruffled the child's hair, or a knowing smirk from the man whose smile spoke of both trickery and kinship at the same time before he handed out a sweet.

They gave everything, and asked for nothing as they helped as many as they could.

And if a strange Japanese woman suddenly stormed up from out of nowhere while Brian Williams was filming a disaster area and ignoring the plight of the affected, shrieking something in accented English about how the lot of them were all lazy, heartless vultures right before she hit the American man across the face with a clenched fist and knocked him down into the stinking mud… well, many of them just smiled when no one was looking. If anyone asked, no, she was not from their village. And several of the younger generation took a great deal of glee from the fact that they had captured the scene on their cell phones, just as the golden-eyed man had 'suggested'.

The tsunami that hit Japan on Friday, March 11, 2011, was the worst in recorded history for this century. The death toll has ratcheted up from less than 1,000 people to close to 10,000, and the numbers are still rising. The United States government is asking that Americans not travel to Japan due to both the nuclear crisis as well as the tsunami damage. Even if we can't physically go there ourselves, we can still help them.

I wrote this so that people will remember to keep all of the people of Japan in their prayers. The people over there need all of the help they can get, both divine and otherwise. Donations are needed, but there are a lot of people out there who are trying to scam the good Samaritans. The best place to donate so far, without getting scammed, is to the Red Cross.

PS: I don't know if I'm the only one who has noticed this, but the newscasters that are over in Japan seem to care more about the ratings than actually helping out. Why are they even there if they aren't doing anything other than reporting about 'This horrible tragedy'?

Jesse Harper belongs to me, and no one else. Gabriel belongs to Supernatural, and thus, Kripke.