Payback Time

"Luci?"

Lucifer looked up from the scroll he was reading to raise an impatient eyebrow at his brother, who had suddenly materialized into the library and was now sitting on the pile of scrolls on his table. Gabriel smiled that cheeky little smile before taking the scroll from Lucifer and bonking him on the head with a gilded end, laughing at the comical expression on his brother's face as he slowly realized that the scroll he had been reading ten seconds ago was now being used to bludgeon him on the head.

"Play with me!" the youngest archangel demanded, giving him another hit for good measure.

Lucifer ground his teeth, all common sense restored, and wrenched the scroll from his little brother's grip before he could hit him for the third time.

"Was it really necessary to strike me on the head with scrolls just so you could ask me to play with you, Gabriel?" He hissed, narrowing his eyes at the big blue ones staring back at him.

He inwardly scoffed at his hypocrisy. As a child he used to have no qualms about throwing Michael's sword around when things didn't go his way.

"No, not really, but the face you make whenever I do something that catches you off guard is really funny." Gabriel laughed at the end of his statement, punctuating his amusement at his brother's folly, and proceeded to jump off the table and grab onto his brother's robes.

"Now come on, I'm really, really bored and Raphael was mean to me so I wanna have some payback," he whined, tugging at Lucifer's robes after every three words.

Lucifer stared pointedly at Gabriel. "So your twisted definition of "playing" is "mess with Raphael"?"

The little archangel nodded enthusiastically.

"And what exactly makes you think I want any part in this, Gabriel?" He asked sullenly, rolling up the scrolls on the table and gathering them up in his arms.

Gabriel seemed to give this question some very serious thought, for he let go of Lucifers robes and remained quiet as his brother restored the scrolls to their proper place on the shelves. Lucifer was not at all concerned with the ominous quiet. He would always be thankful for anything that could cause Gabriel to be quiet for more than five minutes.

"Because I know you don't like Raphael as much as I do and because I invented this really cool trick that I wanna try out on him," Gabriel answered confidently, grabbing hold of his robes once more and giving them an even more insistent tug.

He sighed and decided to humor his brother one last time. "Okay, suppose I'm interested in this little plan of yours," Gabriel brightened up at that prospect, but Lucifer help up a hand. "Suppose, Gabriel. I'm saying this as a hypothetical situation."

Gabriel stared at him blankly but nodded even though Lucifer was sure he had no idea what hypothetical meant. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes and shove a scroll on vocabulary in his brother's face and just went on with the conversation.

"Anyway...suppose I'm interested...what exactly is this little trick you "invented" that you wish to try out on Raphael?"

Gabriel pouted indignantly at the heavily implied quotation marks and allowed his wings to carry him up to whisper in Lucifer's ear.

"See, remember that trick you taught me before on how to make things disappear? I found a way to make things disappear and no one'll find them."

Lucifer nodded at this. He left out that little piece of information on purpose, lest Gabriel decide to use it for his own amusement. Apparently, his omission of details wasn't enough to keep Gabriel from finding out how on his own.

"Yes, I get that, Gabriel. What I don't get is how you're planning to use this amateur trick to get back at Raphael. It's not like he has anything of importance that you can hide away. Also, he's stronger than you, so anything you hide, he'll find quickly," he explained patiently, the little interest he had in the subject slowly fading away.

Gabriel didn't seem at all deterred by this and leaned closer. "Thats why I asked for your help. You may not notice it but there's one thing he really, really loves, and we're gonna hide it from him. He'll never find it if you use your powers to hide it. He scared of you too, so he won't even dream of accusing you."

He paused at that, blinking. That...actually made a lot of sense. Gabriel took his reaction as a go signal and whispered his idea into his brother's willing ear.

Lucifer immediately dropped the scrolls and conjured up a mental image of what Gabriel had in mind. Gabriel looked up at his brothers frozen figure and shrieked as he was grabbed around the waist by a madly grinning archangel.

oOo

The eternal peace of Heaven was broken by a blood curdling scream that originated from the Archangel Raphael's personal quarters. Almost every angel within the immediate vicinity teleported just outside the Healer's quarters, but Michael got there before anyone else and blasted the golden door off its hinges. He rushed inside, preparing himself for any threat, only to stop upon seeing only Raphael in the room, wrapped tightly in a velvet sheet, staring at the shattered sheet of glass Michael presumed used to be a mirror.

"Raphael..." he started, cautiously, as if approaching a frightened animal. "Brother...are you alright?"

Raphael turned to him, eyes wide and panicked and complexion paler than what would be considered healthy. "M-My wings..."

Said appendages were being covered by the sheet wrapped tightly around Raphael. Michael's form tensed at the horrifying mental images of what could have possibly happened to his brother's wings, and he gently coerced him into taking the sheet off, hoping to get a look at the damage.

What Michael saw didn't cause him to gasp in horror or disgust, instead, caused him to laugh more than he had ever had in his life.

Raphael's wings were bald.

The offended archangel still hadn't regained his bearings quickly enough to wrap the sheet around himself again before more angels entered his quarters. As expected, the room was soon filled with occupants who were rolling on the floor, eyes tearing up as they shook with pure, unadulterated laughter.

Needless to say, Raphael was not happy.

But Lucifer and Gabriel sure were.

oOo

Three months after "the incident", Raphael was found sporting lightning bolts on his back instead of the usual feathery wings. Only a select few of the angels knew why this was the case, and anyone who dared ask found themselves resurrected the next day with the memory of a very pissed off archangel.

HAHA! That's what you get for being such a mean brother, Raphael. :) Now, this was the by-product of me and my friend wondering why Raphael put up that spark show when he appeared. Then after several reruns of that episode we noticed that they looked like wings sprouting out of his back.

Now why on earth would Raphael have electricity for wings?

Gabriel, you sly little trickster you...