Disclaimer: Ah! My Goddess and all related characters are the property of Kodansha LTD. and ADV Films. No copyright infringement is intended. This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only and no money has changed hands. The story and all original characters are the sole property of the author and may not be used or archived without permission.
AH! THE GODDESSES AND THE ROMPING ANGELS!
By Darrin Colbourne
The angels gathered high above the temple grounds and looked out over the surrounding area. "It's incredible!" Cool Mint said in the angels' special language. "I didn't know there was so much to see in the surface world!"
"It's really amazing!" Noble Scarlet piped up. "My goddess took me with her when she was meeting her friend and I got to see the most wonderful things!"
"I want to see everything!" Spear Mint said. She pointed in a random direction. "Let's go see what's over there!"
"Oh," Cool Mint said, "but I think we should go that way!" She pointed in the exact opposite direction.
"Should we split up?" Gorgeous Rose wondered aloud. "Perhaps we should go our separate ways and meet up again after we've seen what we wanted to see?"
"Oh, No!" Holy Bell called out. She clasped her hands together and pleaded with them. "Please! Let's stay together? At least at first. I think we'd have much more fun, and we have all day, so if we want to split up later, we can."
The other angels considered it, then World of Elegance smiled at Holy Bell and nodded. "Okay! Then that's what we'll do!" She felt, as the eldest goddess's familiar, it was up to her to take charge of the group. "And we'll start by going to the city! Everybody follow me!" With that, she spun in the air and dove like an attack plane on the center of Nekomi.
Holy Bell giggled at the sight and imitated her sister angel. The others just sighed, but then Noble Scarlet shrugged and said "Oh, well," then they all hurried to catch up.
Even though it was a Sunday, Nekomi, like any city, was busy. It was the morning rush, less intense than on weekdays, naturally, but people still needed to get to some jobs. Stores had to be opened and public transit stations and vehicles had to be manned for people who didn't have time to take care of things they needed to any other day of the week. It was a normal morning, a welcome sight to a town that had seen its share of abnormalities.
Little did they know that the next abnormality was making a bee-line for the town proper.
The first witness was a little girl, up early and daydreaming while looking out her bedroom window. One moment all she could see was the other apartment building across the way. The next, the angels ended their dive and streaked away down the street, dead center in her field of vision. The girl's eyes went wide, then she ran to her parents' room. "Mommy! Mommy! A bunch of angels flew past my window!"
Her mother, dozing peacefully until the intrusion, groaned, "Please, Hijiri, it's Sunday. Let Mommy sleep in a little before you start fibbing."
Hijiri stomped her foot. "I'm not fibbing!"
Asleep as she was, Mommy couldn't hear the shouts of the people on the street that would have confirmed Hijiri's sighting. For another person, it was the shouts that alerted him. He was just fitting the key into the lock of the store he owned a little ways down the road when the shouts from people in the street made him look that way, then he looked up when he saw them pointing. He didn't have the best eyesight, but it looked like something was flying low and in formation toward him. He put on his glasses and tried to make the objects out. Is the Defense Force having a demonstration? He wondered, then he screamed as six female-shaped, ephemeral, winged objects streaked by overhead almost close enough for him to touch!
He was still watching them recede as a woman screeched her car to a halt beside him. "Did you see that?!" She called out to him.
"I did…" the man said, unsure of himself.
"Well, could you tell what they were?"
"I don't know, but I think the one in the lead was painted black and white…and I could swear one of them was trailing roses and vines!"
Meanwhile, as they streaked along, Cool Mint was paying as much attention to the people as the people were paying to her and her companions. "This is wonderful! I mean, I know that there are lots of people in the world, like there are lots of goddesses in Heaven, but to actually see so many of them at once is breathtaking!"
Maybe, but Noble Scarlet had her favorite. "I want to see Sentaro! Big Sisters, can we please go and see Sentaro?"
"I think that would be great!" Holy Bell said.
"We have time," World of Elegance said, "but first there's someone I want to see!"
Gorgeous Rose flew up beside her. "Elegance, what are you planning?"
"Nothing! Nothing at all!" Elegance said, but the innocent smile she said it with morphed into a mischievous one when they neared their destination, a tall, luxury apartment building. She pointed to it and said, "There it is!"
The angels streaked toward the building and then around it until they got to the right side, then World of Elegance led them straight up to a specific window on the penthouse floor.
Standing in her bathrobe, sipping morning tea and looking out her bedroom window, Sayoko Mishima brooded about the downward spiral her life had fallen into ever since Belldandy had come into it. This is the week I beat her once and for all, she thought, it has to be. It's been almost two years and my life has been a wreck since I first met her! That can't happen! I'm Sayoko Mishima, dammit! In my family's name I must conquer that foreigner and regain my position as Queen! I just need to figure out how…
As she thought, something startled her as it flew into her field of vision. She yelped and dropped her teacup, then gasped when she realized what it was. Floating just outside her window were six beings that looked for all the world like angels.
She took a step forward to get a better look. Most of the angels were blonde and, well, angelic looking, but one of them was bizarre. She had black and white hair and black and white wings and black and white, skin-tight clothing, but what made Sayoko take a step back was that this angel was coming closest to the window. When her face was about an inch away, the Black-and-White angel smiled prettily and waved.
"Um…good morning?" Sayoko said as she waved back nervously.
When she was done waving, the angel straightened up, threw her shoulders back and puffed out her chest, right in Sayoko's line of sight. Before Sayoko could figure out the point of that action, the angel leaned in, smiled again…then stuck her thumbs in her ears and wiggled her fingers as she stuck her tongue out. She held this pose for a full ten seconds before backing off triumphantly and falling below Sayoko's line of sight. The other angels gave her a confused look, then looked at Sayoko, then they all shrugged before they descended as well.
"What was that all about?" Sayoko wondered aloud. She looked down and saw her teacup. It hadn't broken, but it was overturned and spilling tea all over the rug.
Sayoko frowned at it. "Well, obviously, it wasn't strong enough anyway," she muttered, then she turned away and went to see if she still had a full bottle of Jack Daniels in the bar.
Gorgeous Rose confronted World of Elegance as they fell out of Sayoko's sight. She crossed her arms and said, "You made us fly all the way to this building just so you could do that?"
"Yep!" World of Elegance said. It was hard to do, because she had her hands over her mouth while she giggled uncontrollably.
"What do you think your goddess would say if she knew you played such a prank?"
"Are you kidding? I can't wait for Mistress Urd to find out I did that! She'll probably laugh herself silly!"
Gorgeous Rose and Noble Scarlet rolled their eyes. Spear Mint just continued to look confused. Holy Bell looked back up toward the apartment. "Oh, I hope she's all right," she said. "She looked so sad before she saw us…"
Cool Mint was preoccupied with something going on down on the street. "Hey, isn't that one of those traffic officers?"
The other angels looked down to where she was pointing. On the street, a lone female traffic officer was writing out a ticket. Idling next to her was a sports car with an impatient looking man sticking his head out of the driver's side window. The officer was speaking as she wrote. "…may seem harsh, but it's important that everybody follow the law and not drive at any speed they like."
The look on the man's face went from "impatient" to "disgusted" as she lectured, and finally he came to a decision. "Screw you, bitch!" he exclaimed as he sat back in his car, gunned the engine and peeled off.
At first the officer was flustered by the action. "Hey! HEY!" She called after him. "You can't do that! You come back here! You're Under Arrest!"
The angels saw the whole thing. "He can't do that!" Cool Mint said indignantly.
"That wasn't nice at all!" Spear Mint said, just as indignantly. "She's just doing her job!"
"Well, I suppose you're right," Gorgeous Rose said rationally, "but lots of humans are like that, and since they have free will, there's nothing we can…"
Rose stopped because she realized she was talking to empty air. Cool Mint and Spear Mint had crash-dived to the street long ago. They pulled up a few feet from the surface and on either side of the traffic officer, then rocketed down the street after the sports car.
The driver of said car was tooling his vehicle down the street like an illegal drag racer, weaving in and out of traffic around cars driven by old ladies and various other pansies. "Stupid bitch cop," he muttered as he casually barreled through a red light, "thinks she's giving me a ticket. My family can buy and sell her." he was feeling smug, so he smiled smugly as he glanced over to the passenger side window…
…then his jaw dropped when he saw it. It being an angel, an angel with one wing cruising along through the air while keeping pace with his car. He turned his gaze back to the road, sure he was hallucinating. Sure, that is, until he glanced out his own window and saw yet another one-winged angel pacing his car on that side! They were twins, both very pretty, and both staring at him very angrily.
When they sunk below his field of vision, he thought the strange encounter was over. That hope was dashed when he felt his car rise off the of the ground! He screamed as it flew high into the air and turned around.
Meanwhile, the traffic officer was wondering what she should do. She had intended to pursue the scofflaw, but then those strange things flew past her, and she'd been unable to do anything while racking her brains trying to figure out what she'd seen.
Her answer came a few minutes later as the sportscar returned - carried fifty feet off the ground by two angels with only one wing apiece. Was that what I saw? The officer wondered.
Cool Mint and Spear Mint descended and dropped the car in front of her. The impact was hard enough to activate the air bags and crack both axles. The mean driver was safe, but he wouldn't be driving anywhere for a while.
Having done their duty, Cool Mint and Spear Mint landed on the sidewalk by the officer, came to attention and saluted her. Not knowing what else to do, the officer came to attention and saluted back. She then nodded and smiled. "Thank you very much!" The angels nodded, then spread their wings and flew up into the air. Everyone on the street watching noticed they were joining up with other angels, and they continued to stare in awe. After a moment, the officer managed to turn away and resume lecturing the scofflaw, this time with lots of yelling.
Gorgeous Rose did some lecturing of her own. "What was that about?" She asked the twins. "Human beings have free will, remember?"
"True," Cool Mint said, "but today so do we!"
"Right," Spear Mint said, "so we don't have to let people get away with breaking the law if we don't want to!"
"So there!" Cool Mint said.
World of Elegance applauded. "I thought that was great! Do it again! Let's go in the garage and get Sayoko's limo!"
Noble Scarlet was getting impatient. "Can't we go see Sentaro now?"
"Sure," Elegance said, "if you can find him."
"Okay!" Scarlet beamed and flew high into the air, then shaded her eyes as she searched for Sentaro.
"Why did you tell her that?" Rose said to Elegance. "Even if she does find him, he's just a little boy. Since today's not a school day, he's probably still asleep at this hour!"
"All right, so we'll go and look in on him and make sure he's sleeping peacefully. Honestly, Rose, do you not get that today is 'We Can Do What We Want' Day?"
"Of course I get that, but we have to be reasonable about some things since we're not in Heaven. I think we should…"
"I found him!" Noble Scarlet shouted out. She came back to where the other angels were hovering. "I found him!"
"Is he awake?" Elegance asked.
Scarlet nodded emphatically. "Yep! He's riding his bike!"
"Well, that settles it. Lead the way."
"Okay!" Noble Scarlet streaked off in the direction of the sandlot she'd found Sentaro in. The other angels were right behind her.
"Say…who's Sentaro?" Cool Mint called out.
World of Elegance grinned as she answered, "Sentaro is Mistress Skuld's Boy-friend!"
Noble Scarlet whirled around in-flight to chastise her big sister. "Elegance! You're not supposed to say that!" World of Elegance just giggled.
"It's true," Gorgeous Rose muttered. "I've often suspected it, but now I'm sure of it. You're all as crazy as your goddesses. Thank goodness my goddess is perfectly sane."
Spear Mint looked at her as if she had two heads. "Right. The goddess in the fetish clothes that likes to whip people with thorny vines is perfectly sane."
Gorgeous Rose just stuck her tongue out and looked away.
Sentaro Koanishi had hit his stride. It was his third lap around the makeshift course and he'd managed to get the feel of every hill and valley. He could judge how fast he needed to go in each stretch practically at will, which meant his senses were sharp enough for the Nekomi BMX Rally next week. At the moment he was coming up on the biggest hill on the course, so he pedaled harder to build up power and speed. He was airborne as he crested the hill, so he concentrated on orienting himself for the landing on the slope below.
Unfortunately, that was the exact moment something in his peripheral vision distracted him enough to make him turn and look. His eyes went wide as he saw six angels watching him, and the smallest was smiling at him and waving.
Of course he landed wrong, and his bike went tumbling. He would have too, but powerful arms pulled him away from it before he could get hurt and held him aloft by his shoulders as he watched it crash. When he looked up the littlest angel was looking at him with concern. "I'm okay." he said, and she smiled and relaxed a little. "Say, you're Noble Scarlet, aren't you?" She grinned and nodded. "You're bigger than the last time I saw you." He said as he smiled back, then he looked to the left and up and saw the angel holding him up on that side. "And you're Holy Bell, right? Skuld's sister's angel?" Holy Bell smiled and nodded, then Sentaro looked to his right and saw the black and white angel. "I've never seen you, but Skuld told me about you. You're her other sister's angel, and you have a long name…let's see…it's Lots of Elegance, or something like that, right?" World of Elegance giggled and winked at him, letting him know it was close enough. Then she and Bell put him down.
Sentaro saw the other angels come closer. "Are they friends of yours?" He asked Scarlet. When she nodded, he smiled at the others and introduced himself. "Good Morning. My name is Sentaro Koanishi. Can you tell me your names?"
The angels looked at each other for a moment, then the one with all the roses smiled and used her vines to scratch kanji in the dirt at his feet. "'Gorgeous Rose," Sentaro read, then he looked back up at her. "So that's you?" She nodded, then pointed at the twins and did some more writing. "Cool Mint and Spear Mint." He looked up at them. "It's nice to meet all of you!"
With the introductions done, Sentaro walked over to his bike, stood it up and began to inspect it. "It looks like it's okay, but I'd rather have Skuld here to look at it." Then he had a thought. "Noble Scarlet, do you know as much about bikes as Skuld does?"
Scarlet thought about it. She was supposed to be part of Skuld's soul, after all, so maybe that meant that Skuld's gift for machines was part of her as well. With that thought in mind, she flew around Sentaro and the bike. As she inspected it, everything that her goddess might have thought about the mechanisms came to her, and soon she stopped in front of Sentaro, smiled and flashed him the "OK" sign.
Sentaro was relieved. "That's great! I think I have time to get a couple of more practice laps in before I have to go home, so…" He reached into a jacket pocket as he spoke, then looked surpised and searched all his pockets. "It's gone!" He looked around. "Do any of you see a stopwatch around here?"
The angels looked around, then Holy Bell flew a few feet away and picked something up out of the dirt. She showed it to Sentaro. It was an old stopwatch.
"Oh, no!" Sentaro said. The cover of the watch was cracked. He took it and pressed a button on the side and listened to it. "It's broken," he sighed. "It must have gotten damaged when it fell out of my pocket. I usually like to time myself when I do a practice run. This sandlot isn't as long as a real course, but by riding it and timing myself, I can see how long it would take me to get through stretches of a real course, and I can estimate what my overall time would be." He sighed again, then he blinked as he had another thought. "Say, is there a way one of you could time me?"
World of Elegance beamed and nodded emphatically, then used her magic to conjure a baseball cap for herself and a giant, gold-trimmed hourglass. She grinned and held the hourglass out for Sentaro to see.
Sentaro and Holy Bell blinked. Noble Scarlet slapped a hand to her forehead. The twins shook their heads and Gorgeous Rose rolled her eyes.
"Um…I don't think that's gonna work…" Sentaro said with a nervous laugh.
Holy Bell took the stopwatch back from Sentaro and held it out so Noble Scarlet could put her hands over it. Together, the angels combined their power to repair it. When they handed it back to Sentaro, he beamed. "You fixed it! This is great!" He handed it to Scarlet. "I'm going to do two more laps around the lot. Can you time me?"
Scarlet nodded and smiled as she took the watch, then she followed Sentaro as he went back to his starting point. The other angels followed one by one. World of Elegance was last. She shrugged as she realized no one was going to use her hourglass, then she made it and the cap disappear and hurried to catch up.
Sentaro got on the bike at the starting line he'd drawn in the dirt. He looked at Scarlet and said, "Okay, I'm ready." Scarlet set the watch and was about to signal Sentaro to go, but they were both distracted by World of Elegance. This time she appeared in Sentaro's field of vision wearing a racing model outfit and holding a giant green flag.
Noble Scarlet looked up to Heaven. Why do I have to be related to her? She asked the Almighty One.
Sentaro just chuckled. "Okay, Elegance. You can start me."
Elegance grinned and started waving the flag above her head. Scarlet shook her head and reset the watch. When she was ready, she pointed at Elegance, who dropped the flag with an energetic flourish.
Sentaro took off, powering down the first grade and building momentum to take on the first obstacles of the course. All the angels were flying behind him, cheering him on. He imagined what the sight would look like to the average onlooker. This is cool, he thought. I wonder if Skuld sent them all here to look out for me? Whatever they were doing here, he found their presence encouraging, and it made completing the first lap seem effortless. He started to feel the effort as he went through the second lap, but he didn't lose any speed, even as he went over the steep hills. As he approached the finish line, he noticed that Gorgeous Rose was waiting for him. Now she was wearing the racing model outfit and holding a giant checkered flag. He grinned. I guess she and Elegance are rivals. It was his last stray thought before he crossed the line. Rose waved the flag with gusto when he went by, then all the angels gathered around him and cheered when he brought the bike to a stop.
"Thanks, you guys," he said. "I was really encouraged by having you all with me. I'll bet I did great with my time." He looked up at Noble Scarlet, who descended and showed him the time on his watch. He grinned at the digital readout. "That's fantastic! That's my best time since I've been practicing in this lot!" He smiled at all the angels. "You really did help me out." With that said, he took the stopwatch and pocketed it. "I better go. Mom says it's okay for me to get up early and practice, but she wants me home in time to have a decent breakfast. Scarlet, is Skuld going to see me race next week?"
Scarlet nodded confidently. She knew her goddess had planned to both watch the race and do something with Sentaro afterward.
"Okay! Well, I hope you all can be there, but if you can't, it was nice seeing you today." He got on his bike and rode out of the lot. The angels smiled and waved at him until he was out of sight.
"There," World of Elegance said to Gorgeous Rose, "That was fun after all, wasn't it?"
"Okay, fine, it was," Rose admitted.
"I think it was fun because we all did it together," Holy Bell said.
"I agree!" Cool Mint said. "What should we do next?"
"I know," Rose said. "Let's go shopping!"
"Shopping?" Spear Mint said. "But don't we need money for that?"
"Not if we're window shopping," Elegance said. "Mistress Urd does it all the time. We look at stuff we see in the shop windows and wish we could buy what we want."
Spear Mint looked skeptical. "That doesn't sound like fun."
"You'll think differently when we do it," Elegance said. "Come on! We'll go to every shop in Nekomi!" She took the lead again, flying back to the center of Nekomi with her sisters and friends trailing behind her.
Back at the temple, the morning was progressing in an almost normal fashion. Belldandy was making breakfast for everyone in the kitchen. Skuld was in her room reading the manga she'd gotten back from Peorth the previous day, and Urd, Peorth and Lind were sitting around the table in the common room playing Blackjack. The winner would get to decide what they would watch on television. All the goddesses were wearing moon rocks on strings around their necks and none were experiencing any ill effects from being separated from their angels.
Keiichi was outside the temple house, pacing back and forth on the porch and imagining what kind of trouble the angels could get into. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. He rushed back inside and went into the common room. "Isn't there some way for you to keep track of what they're doing?" He said to the goddesses playing cards.
"There are plenty of ways," Urd said, "but we're not going to use them."
"We have to trust them," Peorth said, "or else it's not really their day."
"We just have to have faith that they'll be fine and won't do any permanent damage," Lind said, then she smiled and threw her cards on the table. "Ah! Twenty-one!"
Peorth and Urd goggled at the cards. "No way!" Peorth said. "That's three in a row!"
Urd looked at Lind and frowned. "Liar! You said you'd never played before today!"
Lind shrugged. "I haven't played it before today! I guess I'm just lucky!"
"Well, I think you cheated!"
"Now Urd," Belldandy called from the kitchen, "you know better than that. If she won three times, she gets to pick what you watch. Those were your rules."
Urd crossed her arms and pouted. Lind just smiled. "She's absolutely right. So now tell me how to work the TV mechanism."
"Hmph! You get to pick what we watch and you don't even know how to work the TV," Urd muttered. Then she sighed and said clearly, "Well, you turn this knob to turn it on and this one to change the station." She demonstrated and they found themselves watching the local station's morning news show.
Lind and Peorth came over to the TV. "All right then," Lind said, "what should we watch?" She turned to Urd. "What do you think?"
"Don't ask her," Peorth said indignantly. "Then she'll be deciding what we watch!"
Lind shrugged. "It's just that I don't watch TV, so I don't know what's good."
"Well, neither does Urd! She just watches it all the time because she's lazy!"
"That's not it at all!" Urd said. "I'm simply researching the nature of human beings through their entertainment!"
"Now who's lying?" Lind asked.
"Wait! Quiet!" Keiichi said suddenly. The goddesses looked at him angrily, but he pointed at the TV and said, "I think they just said something about angels…"
Then they all turned to the TV as the newsreader said, "…and now we'll go to our correspondent Reika Tanaka, who's live in Downtown with our exclusive report. Reika?"
The scene switched to a pretty woman in a dark suit standing on the street in downtown Nekomi holding a microphone. "Thank you, Isoroku. Good morning, everyone, and as Isoroku just said, I'm here with an exclusive report: There are angels in Nekomi. That's right! Beautiful and strange angels have descended on our town and have been witnessed by many, including this reporter. They flew over my car like a flight of fighters right down this street, then they stopped there," - she pointed away and the camera panned over to an apartment building - "and seemed to accost one of the tenants…"
Keiichi blinked. "Isn't that Sayoko's building? What were they doing there??"
The camera came back to Reika. "And then they destroyed this man's car." She reached out of frame to her right and pulled in a well-dressed man in a neck brace. "His name is Takuro Inoue. Mr. Inoue, can you tell us what happened?"
"I was truly frightened," the man said, trying his best to act like a shocked victim. "I was just driving along, minding my own business, when these two wrathful, one-winged archangels picked up my car and tossed it around like a plaything! I was lucky to escape with my life!"
"They destroyed a car!??" Keiichi screamed.
Lind was about to say something, but another female voice on TV beat her to it. "That's not what happened at all!"
"Ah," Reika said, "here's another witness, Traffic Officer Jun Himeki." She moved over a little more and the camera followed her until a pretty traffic cop was in view with her. "Officer Himeki, can you tell us what happened in your own words?"
Officer Himeki smiled into the camera and said, "Well, the angels were not wrathful. They were very nice. He was trying to escape my custody, and they went after him and brought him back to me. They obviously understand what it means to be good citizens and obey the law."
Lind smiled and turned to Keiichi. "There. That sounds more like my girls."
"So you're saying they didn't destroy Mr. Inoue's car in the process?" Reika said.
Officer Himeki suddenly blushed. "Oh! Well, actually…they kinda did."
Lind covered her mouth with both her hands as her eyes went wide.
The camera focused on Reika again. "There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Nekomi's angels: Helpful Spirits or Destructive Agents of Vengeance? We report, You decide! The angels were last reported heading toward the Nikashi district, so next we'll…" Suddenly there were shouts and screams and Reika looked off camera. "Wait! Something's happening! Nonomi, get this!"
The camera panned to the right and up, just in time to catch the angels streaking overhead, flying back down the street they originally appeared in. They flew to the opposite corner and turned left and out of sight.
The camera came back to Reika. "It's incredible! You've seen it here, live! There were no camera tricks! Those were actual angels coming back to where they first appeared, and now it looks like they're headed for the shops on Yanada Avenue! We're going to follow them and we'll stick with them all day if we can. Maybe we'll even get an interview, and you'll see it all right here, so please stay tuned!" With that, Reika Tanaka ran down the street with her cameraperson following behind.
Urd turned down the sound on the TV, then she, Lind and Peorth turned to look at Keiichi. Belldandy, who'd come into the room when he screamed about the car, turned to him as well.
He was not happy. "So, us dumb humans will think they're swamp gas, huh?" He said as he glared at Peorth. She blushed and giggled nervously.
Urd put on her prettiest smile and said, "Well, Keiichi, there is a bright side. If the news people really do try to keep up with them, then we'll have a way to track their activities without us goddesses interfering with their day. That's a good thing, right?"
Keiichi just glared at her, then he groaned and left the common room, presumably to go to his own bedroom. Skuld came into the common room a moment later. "What's the matter with him?" She asked, then she saw the other goddesses gathered around the TV. "What's going on?"
The others looked at her, then at each other, then they all smiled.
"Our angels are having fun!" Belldandy said cheerfully.