A Different World by: Bucky Covington
"Lucifer! What in Father's name are you doing with that fledgling?!" Michael snapped.
Lucifer looked up from where he was tossing little Castiel up into the air and watching him plummet back down to the ground. "Teaching him to fly."
"I don't think he's doing it right," Balthazar, not much older than little baby Cas, commented sagely from where he sat at Lucifer's feet.
"Of course he's not doing it right!" Michael."
"I call it 'creative problem solving'," Lucifer defended his actions, "He needed to learn to leave the ground, I forcibly removed him from it."
Castiel chose that moment to crash to the ground, rolling around in the dirt, clapping his hands and laughing. "Fun! Fun! Fun!"
Michael sighed long-sufferingly and scooped up the tiny fledgling, looking around for his other caretaker, "GABRIEL!" the eldest archangel bellowed, "I LEFT YOU IN CHARGE AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED! GABRIEL! I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING! GET OUT HERE!"
With a strange 'fwapping' noise, Gabriel came crashing/flying through the underbrush. "Hey, Michael, Lucifer, guess what I found?!" the adolescent archangel yelped.
"What?" his brothers (even Castiel) chorused.
"This really awesome fish! I wanted to keep it so I took away its gills and gave it something else so it could breathe normal air!" Gabriel held up the wriggling, grayish mass proudly. "Isn't it cool?" he asked excitedly.
"GABRIEL! Put that back where you found it!" Michael ordered.
"Fishy!" Castiel and Balthazar sang less-than-constructively.
"Father has big plans for that fish," Michael and Lucifer chorused.
"Now put it back in the water and let it sink or swim, circle of life, man," Lucifer.
"No, just leave it up on land since you gave it lungs instead of gills. What's the worst that could happen?" Michael rationalized.
It was a few thousand more years before Michael fully comprehended the scope of his father's plan for Gabriel's weird little not-a-fish. The head archangel has been kicking himself ever since for not seeing it right away. Lucifer is still regretting not fighting harder for Balthazar to toss it right back in the water. Gabriel of course, feels very smug indeed.
