Ack I'm so sorry for the lack of updates recently. Didn't I say I was busy (doing nothing at all)! I'm a beautiful butterfly that can't be tamed!
Gabriel frowned.
This, in itself, was not particularly unusual, because Gabriel's face was one that was not really made for smiling. Neither his square jaw, nor his towering frame, nor his blonde hair slicked back to within an inch of its life allowed for any visual representation of happiness or good cheer. Rather, his countenance was suited almost exclusively to various shades of disapproval (he could do Scorn particularly well; in fact it was so potent that even God quailed before it sometimes).
What should be noted, rather than the actual frown, was the reason behind the frown. What Gabriel had noticed, and had been puzzling over, for the past five minutes, was that it seemed he had made a mistake in his Accounts.
For the sake of clarity, two things must first be explained. First: Gabriel's Accounts had less to do with currency than they had to do with inventory. For time immemorial, Heaven and Hell have been in possession of a number of Divine Manuscripts (or Divine Paperwork, as these things are commonly known). Among them are the Archives, which are a detailed (and slightly biased) recording of every occurrence that has ever happened since the beginning of Time, the Book of Fate, in which anything that is written is fated to come true (although this had to be locked away once God lost the Eraser of Fate), and the Accounts, which contain the number of souls that have ever entered Heaven and Hell respectively, complete with dates, names, times, places and miscellaneous information too vast and plenteous for the human mind to comprehend.
The second thing to remember is this: Gabriel never made mistakes.
He snapped the book shut and concentrated his gaze onto a patch of unsuspecting wall, which began to smoulder slightly. The last time an angel had made a mistake in the Accounts, there had been a mess. It had worked out alright in the end, and the resulting human holiday was quite pleasant (although involving rather too many pumpkins for Gabriel's liking), but the escape of several thousand souls from the Otherworld was not a prospect that sat well with him. So far his Accounts were only off by two, but things could escalate quickly and the issue was best nipped in the bud.
He snapped his fingers impatiently. Beside him, the fabric of reality crumbled like cheap mortar. He stepped through the inter-dimensional rift and into Filing.
Filing was, for the most part, unchartered territory by anyone who wasn't Gabriel. To the naked eye, it looked much like an infinite, ethereal plane consisting of stacks upon stacks of filing cabinets reaching up to heights invisible from the floor, each cabinet containing the particulars of every single soul who had ever been born on Earth from the beginning of time, typed neatly on single-line paper. To Gabriel's expert eye, however, Filing was an infinite, ethereal plane consisting of stacks upon stacks of filing cabinets reaching up to heights invisible from the floor, each cabinet containing the particulars of every single soul who had ever been born on Earth from the beginning of time, typed neatly on recycled single-line paper.
He had no real idea, of course, where to begin. The Accounts in his hands showed only that one soul was missing from Heaven, and one from Hell. There were details of each and every one of Heaven's residents, but these were useless to him as there were literally billions of names; it would take him far too long to go through the vast Filing cabinets to pick out which one was missing. A better option, he reasoned, would be to ask for assistance. As much as Gabriel was loathe to appear in any way weak, his unwillingness to add to his already impressive blood pressure meant that he would rather endure the indignity of having to ask for help in doing his job.
He stepped back into his corner office, Spartan and no-nonsense despite its huge size. One soul missing from Heaven, and one from Hell. As far as Gabriel knew, Hell had been managing is own Accounts for the past few millennia. He had, he realised, no clue what the employees of Hell (now childishly renamed Corpse Corps) had written down in their ledgers. The answer to his questions could very well be somewhere under his feet. Perhaps he had misunderstood the situation. Gabriel never made mistakes, it was commonly known. Therefore it was entirely plausible that had a mistake indeed occurred, it may have been Hell's fault, not his. Perhaps Hell had been sloppy with its documentation and made a slight oversight; this would clearly have accounted for the confusion. He furrowed his eyebrows at his abused wall, causing the wallpaper to crackle gently.
There was no need, he reasoned, to shuffle in requesting assistance; he was well within his right as the Bookkeeper of Heaven to forcefully enquire after Lucifer's records (for the sake of accuracy, at least; if he was going to continue to balance out his accounts perfectly for the next few million years, he deserved to have access to all sources of information available). He could, theoretically, demand to see Hell's paperwork, since everyone knew Hell was sloppy with its work ethic, and in the process perhaps try to find more information about the truant souls.
With a quick word to his secretary that he would be busy for a while, he spun on his heel, spread his wings, stepped out of the window and soared.
Feliciano drew invisible patterns on the tabletop with the tip of his finger. Around him, busy demons bustled back and forth, not actually doing anything constructive but appearing very impressive nonetheless. He eyed the phone, willing it to ring. To his disappointment, it didn't.
(One might, at this point, recall the events of a previous and very similar story involving zombies. To put matters into perspective, the beginning of the Almostocalypse had been caused by an innocent telephone call. Francis, the Transporter of Souls, had given Feliciano a call with instructions to carry on with the Transporting while Francis himself went on holiday. Through a basic but entirely predictable misunderstanding of technology and the way it worked, Feliciano thought it was actually the telephone that was speaking to him, and so completely missed the fact that he was meant to take over driving the ferry across the river Styx. The resulting backlog of souls had no choice but to return to their corpses, causing them to rise from the dead, hungering from human flesh, trying to open the gates of the Otherworld to free their kin. Understandably, this caused a great deal of chaos and additional paperwork.
The humans, adaptable bunch that they were, forgot about the incident within a week, but Feliciano now knew the importance of being able to correctly handle a telephone and was, needless to say, getting very good at answering the thing. In fact, he was beginning to rather enjoy it.)
He'd been bored for a while now. His friend Alfred (not a bad fellow, for an angel) had already called yesterday, and Francis was busy as usual, so it was really getting very dull. The other demons didn't seem interested in having a chat, either, so, much like a fiddly tropical plant, Feliciano was starting to wilt from the lack of attention.
When the sliding doors opened and an angel strode in, Feliciano's joy was only slightly dampened by the scowl on the newcomer's face.
The angel approached the front desk, and Feliciano peered at his shiny nametag. "Hello, Gabriel! Oh gosh, Gabriel, you're really important, aren't you? I hear your name all the time, although it's not always nice things, in fact it's almost never nice things at all, ahaha. It's weird, you look just like what I was expecting, except that I thought you'd have longer hair. What brings you here? Are you here for a visit? Shall I get some coffee?"
Gabriel wasted a few precious seconds standing around with an eyebrow raised. "I am the Winged Messenger of the Skies and the right hand of God. Please, do not address me as though I were some low-level harp-slinger, Mister…" he took a glance at the hastily-written placard on the desk, "Feliciano."
"Sorry, Mister Gabriel," Feliciano offered his sweetest smile. "I'm a little new, so I've never met anyone from high up before. Did you still want that coffee?"
"I do not want your coffee," replied the Archangel tersely. "I need to have a word with your Accountant. Who keeps record of the entrance of souls into Hell?"
"It's called Corpse Corps now, you know," said Feliciano good-naturedly, taking the opportunity to admire Gabriel's biceps. Thunderous expression aside, the man wore a toga well. "I don't know who handles our soul count, but there's a Head Clerk downstairs who writes everything down when people come in in a black book. His name is Gilbert, you can find him in the lobby. Maybe that will help?"
Gabriel nodded his head in thanks and headed to the elevator. As pleasant jazz music filled his ears, he thought with a sniff that Hell had changed a lot in the past century. The last time he had deigned to Descend, it had taken three washes to get the smell of brimstone and sulphur out of his uniform. The change, although bizarre and entirely misleading, was actually quite welcome. At least, Gabriel thought, it was clean and he wouldn't have to worry about getting any ash on his pristine white toga.
The doors slid open. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness (the black-on-black-on-black decoration was entirely inefficient, albeit stylish). Almost instinctively, he headed towards the lit table lamp, the only source of light in the void of nothingness.
Behind the lamp sat a slightly myopic-looking albino with Cerberus at his feet. Gabriel cleared his throat. Cerberus wagged its tail in greeting and the youth, clearly not a demon, turned to him and grinned.
"You ain't dead, are you?"
"I am an Archangel. And you, I believe, are the dead human Gilbert."
The grin widened further. "How'd you know? You come here to hit on me, big guy?"
Gabriel pursed his lips. "Hardly. I simply remember writing the receipt for your exchange. You died in October two years ago, and were subsequently employed in Hell, although I don't particularly care as to why. I was told you've been keeping a log of souls. I need to see it."
Gilbert snorted. "Shit, no need to gush, I can see you're enamoured with me." Handing over his log book with one hand and scratching Asther's ear with the other, he peered at Gabriel's nametag. "So, what are you doing all the way down here, G…Gandalf?"
Gabriel scowled. "That is not my name. My name is written very clearly on my nametag, as you would see if you'd take two seconds to look. Have you noticed any inconsistencies in your Accounts recently?"
"Accounts? Like, my paycheck? Are you from the IRS? I didn't know I was getting paid for this, I should probably get a credit card or something-"
"The Account for souls," Gabriel sighed in irritation. Honestly, why employ a human when the entire species clearly knew nothing of the inner workings of the Otherworld? "My records show that there is a soul missing from Heaven, and one missing from Hell. I was hoping that the discrepancy might be a result of an oversight on your part."
"Why my part? Why not yours?"
Gabriel spared him a withering glance but did not deign to respond. "Your logs are terribly messy. Why have you written and crossed things out so many times? What a terribly inefficient use of paper," he muttered under his breath, making Gilbert chuckle sheepishly. "These entries only date back to July. I'd like to see the rest, please."
"Sure thing, Garry." The log book changed hands. With a soft clack, Gilbert turned his placard over on his desk. On the other side, Gilbert assumed, was a short and elegantly-worded message that the receptionist was out and would be back shortly.
Hell's concept of documentation was…lax, at best. While Gabriel's filing space was near perfect, the Accounts of Corpse Corps were less a collection of files than a jumble of loose sheets of paper. The paperwork was, Gabriel had heard, in the process of being transferred into softcopies, which he had to approve of (in theory, at least) because it seemed an efficient way to save resources. This meant, however, that half-finished ledgers were everywhere, centuries-old documents were lying around collecting dust, and the electronic transferring had basically come to a complete halt because nobody had thought to tell Gilbert that he should be the one doing the work. Gabriel could almost feel his molars disintegrating as he ground his teeth in irritation at the mess; he knew Hell had always been fairly laidback about order, and when asked, demons would try to shift the work onto each other until nothing got done, but this was just appalling.
Gilbert, somehow not seeming to sense this frustration, simply coughed at the dust and shrugged. "It's like a hobo's armpit in here, and it gets on my nerves, but like Hell am I gonna go through all this shit just to clean up somebody else's mess. Come on, I keep my stuff in the corner."
This corner, as it turned out, was fairly organised, immediately making Gabriel respect the new Head Clerk just a little bit more. Resolutely ignoring the rest of the room, he thumbed through the earliest of Gilbert's entries. Frowning deeply, he settled himself on the edge of a box and quickly scanned each page in the log book.
"I apologise," he said finally, waving the book in front of him. "It's embarrassing to admit, but I'm not familiar with this language. At this rate, I'll never be able to figure out the source of the problem. I wonder if there is some form of translation somewhere?"
Gilbert snorted. "It's pretty weird that you're speaking in English but you can't read it, dude. Do you want me to find you like, a dictionary or something?"
Gabriel balked. "English? Some of these letters don't even look real."
"Excuse you, I have messy writing, okay?" Gilbert snatched the log book away and held it to his chest in mock defense. "It's not my fault you can't read."
"I can read perfectly well, but anyone would have trouble deciphering your attempts at hieroglyphics!"
That startled a laugh out of Gilbert. "Hiero- you take that back! Your name may be Gumball but you're bitter as hell, you know that?"
"My name is not Gumball!" Gabriel snapped, throwing his hands up. "I refuse to deal with you any longer! I am filing a complaint!"
Gabriel paid no attention to Gilbert's snickering or Cerberus's attempt to engage him in play as he stormed back to the mezzanine floor. Feliciano, initially cheerful, quailed immediately upon seeing his expression.
"Uhm-"
"Your Head Clerk is an imbecile," Gabriel hissed, fingers leaving dents in the countertop from the force of his grip. "He stands there with gibberish written in his books, trying to convince me that I am illiterate. Is this his attempt at mocking me? Are all the employees of your establishment this ill-mannered?"
Feliciano, who had slowly sunk lower and lower into his chair until only his eyes could be seen over the top of the counter, looked around for assistance. None came. He risked glancing back at the infuriated angel only to find a glare boring holes into his skull. He squeaked.
"He's not trying to be mean, he just doesn't like to tell people he's not so good at reading."
"Are you telling me that your Head Clerk cannot read?"
Feliciano sat up warily. "Didn't you know? The only reason Mr Lucifer brought Gilbert here was to annoy the customers."
"What?"
"He's dyslexic," Feliciano said with a nervous smile.
To his credit, Gabriel only screamed a little bit.
Having a dyslexic doing your paperwork aggravates not only bad souls, but angels as well. It's a two-in-one plan that Lucifer just couldn't pass up! You might wonder if the people in Hell don't sometimes get irritated with Gilbert, but the truth is that nobody in Hell ever does their paperwork anyway, so it's really not that much of an issue.
Looking at Gilbert's personality, you'd imagine he'd be sort of a slob, but it's actually canon that he's just as much of a neat-freak as Ludwig. Who knew?
Fun fact; it's always been a headcanon of mine that while Feliciano makes pasta to die for, Romano's pizza is unbeatable. After a bit of searching, it turns out that the modern pizza originated in Naples, which is, in fact, in the South of Italy. So Romano's specialty really is pizza! Hooray!
I really don't like the name Lovino. Lovino sounds like Bovino which makes me think of cows and it just seems...very unattractive for a stylish/grumpy Italian. I'm going to stick to Romano. Romano-Feliciano interactions make me exceptionally happy.
Please please please review! It would absolutely make my week if you did and...to be honest this is literally one of the few things keeping me going right now ahaha. Thanks for reading and drop me a line!