"...Whoa," Aria muttered as she felt like she was awash in so much information that she couldn't even fathom it, leaving her settling with just breathing for now. "What the hell was that?"
"Cursing, now, are we, lady angel, hmm?" Alastor mused, looking at her with his usual, fully sharp grin, his color having gone back to normal, much to her relief as she then blushed scarlet at how close he was.
"The hell is right!" Angel muttered, holding his head as he sat where he stood, trying to figure out what was up and what was down. "This is infinitely worse than any hangover I've ever had. The hell just happened!?"
"I...dang, I thought it was all just a dream," Aria muttered as she looked down at herself and, seeing she was back to normal, she walked slowly to the rolling chair and sat in it, sighing heavily as she rubbed her temples vigorously. "For lack of a way to explain it without getting absolutely stuck in a mental hospital, we're at the end of a God cycle."
"A what now?" Angel asked again in bewilderment.
"A God cycle, my good fellow," Alastor mused as he played a piano on air, his radio background going into an alleluia chorus before crashing into a sour chord. "It's a mess, to be sure, but it's neither here nor there. Children of God are still that...children. You do remember some of who you are, now, Angel Dust?"
"Well...yeah...yes and no," Angel answered cryptically as he laid on the ground with two arms over his face, two on his chest, while one rested on his crotch, while the other twirled a finger in the air. "I feel like I'm spinning...not the world, me. Plus...so...much...drama."
"Yeah, no kidding," Aria muttered tiredly, but then she felt Alastor loom behind her, his breath against her neck as she bolted from her chair, whirling on him as he smiled in amusement. "Alastor...!"
"Relax, my dear, or do you think I'd move before the right moment to strike, hmm?" Alastor said with a grin as Aria retreated into the one blank wall with the door out of the office to her right.
"No...I know you well enough that, despite it all, you'll play to your strengths with impeccable timing, skill, and unmatched wit," Aria countered, but there was still a marked blush and bother about her as she felt him draw closer to the point of leaning his face devilishly close with her back flush to the wall. "I...uh...just can't forget everything else."
"Good," he muttered low in her left ear as he kissed it before turning around and acting like nothing happened, making Aria just stand there as she felt her temperature skyrocket.
"You two need to get a fucking room, geez," Angel Dust said irritably as he sat up and adjusted his fluffy chest before standing up, revealing he was back in his pink glory once more. "What now, smiles?"
"I'm afraid my disguise is without merit at this point, given the power used to awaken us all," Alastor mused, thinking to himself as he tapped the dusty ground as his radio background tuned in thought. "Perhaps our Lady angel can help enlighten us?"
"Me?" Aria asked, then remembered something as she looked for the feathered serpent and then accidentally stepped on something, making her look down. "Hello? What's this?"
"You find something, Princess?" Angel asked curiously as Aria picked up what she stepped on and found that it was a silver ring with two snakes entertwined. "What the hell is it?"
"It's a snake ring," Aria said as Alastor came and picked it up from her palm, perusing it until a devilish grin grew too wide for his face. "What?"
"Oh, nothing...it's just on your left ring finger, now, my fetching bride-to-be!" Alastor crowed with a laugh as Aria looked down at her right palm, found it empty, and then looked at her left hand.
Sure enough, the ring was on her left ring finger and as she grabbed at it to pull it off, no matter how hard she tried, it wouldn't budge!
"You'll rip your finger off at this rate, so why don't we get back to the matter at hand and try to get out of here in one piece, hmm?" Alastor said with knowing smirk as Aria sighed and then relented, smiling to herself at the gift he'd given her despite how he'd done it. "Now, I originally was using my disguise to hopefully help Aria get to my old nemesis in the underground, since she'll need the information he has."
"Wait, I thought you wanted me as far away from that old angel-demon as possible, Alastor!" Aria said, surprised by his admission.
"I needed you to think I was miles away and I was hoping you would build trust with Andrew by pretending to be him and then we would undertake the adventure together, but given the shadow man is involved, I have to wonder what Andrew's been up to this whole time," Alastor mused as the sound of something dragging and clinking sounded in his Radio feed before going silent. "When I first got permission to use shadow magic on him, I thought it was a clean copy and paste. Turns out that Angel Dust was right. We may have been setup for a fall."
"I fucking told you, but does anyone listen to me? No!" Angel Dust cried out in frustration.
"What do we do?" Aria asked with a serious look on her face.
"First, smile, my dear! I need you to smile," Alastor said with a grin, which was then followed by the sound of a trumpet sounding the call to march from his radio feed. "Second, we take the fight to the shadow man! I'm one hundred percent certain we'll run into him again before the night is through and probably at the most inopportune time, so probably when we're in the basement with our information in hand, but pinned down by my old angel nemesis!"
"Which means I have to take him out with my angelic light, use our wits to escape, and stop Valentino from ruining Angel's sister before it's too late?" Aria asked in a hopeful tone.
"Of course not! That's wacky nonsense!" Alastor said with a laugh as he dragged her to his side and drew her close as his face was too close for her to handle! "You'll be captured! I'll save you, of course, and then Angel Dust and you will somehow help his sister, if it isn't dawn before we finally do!"
"Oh boy," Aria muttered dryly as she hoped it wouldn't turn out that badly.
"Can we move on, now? I'm so fucking bored with this shit!" Angel Dust griped.
"I'm with Angel Dust on this," Aria said as she put her bird disguise back on, focused on the task at hand, and then turned to Alastor. "I think we should move on. What would you say would be the wiser course to go? I was originally hoping to find the celestial access to the official documents from the simulator."
"Such things have been out of demonic reach since the coup all those years ago, my lady Aria, which is why you shouldn't worry about such things!" Alastor commented dismissively with a twirl of his staff as he snapped his fingers as he made the filing cabinet disappear, revealing a very narrow, hidden door. "Brother Flynn graciously let me know about the backdoor, but we must hurry. The licker demon we upset is trying out the door a second time and this time, it won't hold."
"Licker demon!?" Angel cried out, shaking his head as he took the initiative and opened the narrow door, revealing a graciously wider walkway that was dark, but blissfully free of spider webs. "Out of my way, smiles! Ladies first!"
"You don't have to tell me twice!" Aria said hastily as she went through the door after Angel Dust, while Alastor was the last to come through as he pulled the door closed behind him with a snap of his fingers.
"The seals on this door are reinforced with distractor magic, which should hold indefinitely, since it even fooled me until Brother Flynn pointed it out to me," Alastor mused with a thoughtful smile as he dragged a long, black and red gloved finger around the frame of the door as Aria saw a green glow form upon it. "Still...I'll make some necessary precautions!"
"I'm not looking forward to what happened to Nicholas Chapman," Aria muttered sadly to herself, making Alastor look at her with a knowing smirk as Angel Dust led them through the tunnel that kept spiraling down, down, and down into the earth like a corkscrew. "You really did try to warn me...didn't you, Alastor."
"I did, my dear, but you were still ignorant of who he was, head strong, and terribly naive when you demanded to know who he was," Alastor retorted good-naturedly as his radio feed softly played a very slow and sad form of jingle bells. "Which is why I was powerless to stop you as a result. Ignorance tends to make us stupid and head strong. I should know. I almost laid the surface world to waste by raising an army of the undead!"
"You didn't!" Angel Dust cried out in shock, making Aria laugh at the memory.
"Oh yeah! I had to play as a pig in that story, since I wasn't a princess, yet," Aria mused, her thoughts drifting from one memory to another. "You had a lot of people upset in the eternal worlds over that one. I had to jump through hoops just to get the story green lit. No one wanted to help me except for one married couple so close to destroying their marriage, again, it was an absolute travesty. The princess in question vowed to divorce the prince, which would've sent shock waves into the eternal scheme of things. What a mess!"
"I remember that!" Alastor said with a chuckle. "If I remember correctly, their story had to be redone not once, not twice, but three times! The original story doesn't count, of course."
"Are you both going to go on like this, or are we going to actually concentrate on the story we're living right, fucking, now!?" Angel Dust demanded irritably.
"Sigh...Angel's right, Alastor," Aria said sadly as she smiled nostalgically at him. "We're distracted by the memories of our past. We should concentrate on now as much as possible. You know how useless I am when I'm distracted."
"Hmm...but you're so much fun when your...distracted," Alastor whispered in her ear as he drew her into his embrace, making her blush scarlet as he chuckled affectionately before he let her go. "You're right, though. We should concentrate on the matter at hand before this becomes another Neverending story."
"The Neverending story...that really does sum up the endless God cycles nicely, actually," Aria admitted as they continued down, down, down further into the abyss.
The silence between them stretched the further they went down until finally, they came to a door. It reminded Aria of an egg in shape as the wood looked weak like it would shatter at the drop of a hat. As if on cue, Alastor summoned a top hat Aria recognized from his song and dance number with Charlie as he let it fall to the ground. As it landed on the ground, a shockwave of green fire blasted the door into literal confetti as the door made a silly sound of a half-hearted trumpet before fizzling out like a sad balloon.
"...looks like a certain someone made that door just for us," Alastor mused, making Aria nod as she didn't dare say who it was as Angel Dust peaked through, then waved two hands as he nodded to say the coast was clear.
As they emerged from the door, Aria realized an egg shaped hole was where they emerged in a sea of egg foil white walls tinged a sickly green color...like mold had gotten into the paint somehow. The room domed above them at least twenty four feet high, the lights cascading on every tile dim and unresponsive. As Alastor waved a hand to conceal the egg shaped hole to make it look like the rest of the wall, Aria adjusted her red dress nervously as she clicked her beak. She didn't trust the room one bit.
"Too many lights on the walls," Angel muttered darkly as he looked at a very old-looking lab that looked like it had been abandoned long ago. "The lab looks completely deserted."
"Sniff...the air is dry and old...like we're the first living things to be here in millenia," Aria muttered darkly as she perused the long row of books stored on the bottom shelves under the laboratory setup protected by a filmy plastic Aria had never encountered on book bindings before. "Chemically protected books? Limited storage space, obviously, with...sniff...dried out potions and...lick...ugh...half-hearted cookie dough recipe batter."
"The one who procured our door broke out Nicholas Chapman," Alastor said with a sigh as a defeated smile loomed large on his face as he picked up a page from the lonely desk next to the laboratory that was swamped in paperwork. "Here's the proof."
"What? No defeated blare of music or sad symphony to mark the occasion, smiles?" Angel Dust sneered out at Alastor, but there was just the tinkling of bells as Alastor's foot hit a small band of silver bells that had fallen to the floor who knows how long ago.
"...The son-of-a-bitch at least couldn't escape alone," Alastor mused thoughtfully as he picked up the bangle of bells before flicking his wrist to make them disappear, probably storing them away, Aria thought, as she went over to him and looked at the piece of paper.
"It's her handwriting alright," Aria said with a relieved sigh as she read the letter out loud for everyone to hear. "Dear Alastor, Lauren aka Ariathe June, and Angel Dust, Sorry, but it was just too sad to leave Santa Clause aka Nicholas Chapman here to rot until you all saved him. The world needs the Spirit of Christmas more than unnecessary and frankly cruel and unusual punishment. Besides, you guys took so long, he would've actually become a monster, ruining absolutely everything you hoped to achieve. So, I took matters into my own hooves, I mean hands, excuse the typo, and broke him out of cookie prison. Besides, the cookies were so awful, I think you punished him enough with the horrifying baking ingredients. I mean, really, demon cookies!? You guys really need to forgive him for whatever he did because I'm sure he had to do it for a really good reason! Anyway, I brought my own baking powder and undid the evil confections! They were delicious! I would've left you some, but...yeah, by the time you read this, the whole known universe would've moved on without you, so...happy unbirthday instead and keep the jingle bells. You're going to need them really, really soon. Toodles! Love, F.O.P.P.
P.S.
Stay away from the shadow man as much as possible. The guy is suuuper creepy and no joke evil! This means you, Lauren aka Aria! No saving this one! He's the very essence of eeevil! Okay, got to go! Bye!