Into the Lion's Den

[universaljanitor]

Who: The Tenth Doctor universaljanitor and anyone and everyone frequenting Purgatory!
When: February 27th, just before evening sirens
Where: Purgatory
Summary: After Jubilee told him where to find Gabriel and maybe a few other 'angels of the lord' The Doctor forced Rose to help him whip up a few batches of cookies and cupcakes before raiding the candy aisle to prepare a sort of offering in exchange for some information. In other words? Skeptical Doctor is skeptical.
Warnings: Gabriel. .... aaaand probably language and rudeness and general crazy antics. WHO KNOWS! Its a bunch of angels, a prophet, maybe a scattering of humans and meta-humans, and one oh-so-curious alien.

The doors to Purgatory were practically slamming open that night, just a bit before sirens, as a tall, thin, suited figure made his way into the bar with a grin on his face and baskets swinging from both arms. He looked a bit out of place, really, more like he was coming to or from a business meeting that happened to double as a picnic than some bar just before the Darkness was set to creep in.

It didn't take long for him to make a grinning bee-line for the bar, hopping up on a stool before setting the baskets down on the ground, reaching under the lid of one before he came back up, pulling out a wrapped up plate of frosting smothered angel shaped cookies and plopping it on the counter in front of him. And, well, why stop there? Plate after plate came out of the baskets. Cookies and cupcakes and bowls full of candies and chocolates, some shaped like angels and harps and horns and crosses, others simply generic brands of sweets.

Someone had to notice, eventually. Especially as he simply sipped on the banana daquiri he ordered and spun around and around on his barstool, taking in the atmosphere and eying everyone in the bar. He was severely hard-pressed to believe actual Angels were here, but he might as well give it a shot, right? Benefit of the doubt and all that.

"Sorry, hi, yes, hello!" ... or he could just shout at the entire bar. "If I were to ask if anyone had a halo would there be a response? Yes? No? ... I'll even take a forced removal at this point," he paused, then, before holding up the plate of cookies and whoever happened to be looking at him, no doubt like he'd officially lost his mind. "I have cookies!"

Comments

[universaljanitor]

[Anything but human. Nine hundred years at least under his belt. Five billion languages stuffed in his noggin. The entire history of just about every race on every planet in every galaxy in the entire universe stored in his memory.

Not to mention the two hearts beating steadily away in his chest.]

Oh been told that all my life. 'Stick a cork in it'. 'Watch your mouth'. 'Being rude again, Doctor'. Tell you what though, always leads me somewhere interesting.

[He reaches out, completely unabashedly nicking one of the cookies meant to be an 'offering' of sorts, talking in a muffled mumble around the crumbs.] People are so used to hearing and telling lies, the truth just seems to be regarded the same. Come of as rude and dismissed more than anything else.

[paterelohim]

[Bemused:] Look, if you want to talk about the Cassandra burden of truth, I'm your guy. But you can't just start yelling about halos around here, man.

It's tacky.

[universaljanitor]

Wh- ... Tacky? Really? [He scrunches up his face, rubbing at his chin and cheek in thought.]

Well, it was either that or go off on a tangent about wings and harps, but those seemed even worse.

[paterelohim]

Harps? Are you high?

[Then Chuck steps back with a groan, dragging a hand over his face in exasperation.]

Let me guess, someone told you an angel's here and you had to come see. Right?

[universaljanitor]

Exactly! [Oh, wait.] Not on being under the influence, mind. Can't quite get under it, with how my body works.

Yes, angels... [He puffs out his cheeks, humming low under his breath] Figured it was a bit of a long shot. Didn't quite believe her when she said Gabriel was actually running a bar.

Not that big on religion. Always an explanation for it back in my universe. Alien landings on various planets, visitations from more advanced humanoid civilizations, bringing technology or war. Becoming gods. Even life on Earth was formed from the backwash radiation of a spaceship exploding.

[Oh. Welp. He hadn't meant to go on that much of a tangent.] Ohhh but never mind that; Gabriel! Wouldn't happen to know where to find him, would you?

[paterelohim]

[Chuck can't quite hide a mildly offended lip curl at some of that. Life forming from backwash? Ugh. Talk about delicate princess sensibilities He didn't know He had. He folds it into the "wtf are you on" bemusement pretty well, though.]

Hold on, hold on. I'm not letting some crazy person see my boss just because he wants to.

And- uh. Yeah. In our world? Religion's the big game in town. I'd strongly advise an open mind if you want to keep barking up this tree.

[universaljanitor]

Open mind! Exactly! Brilliant! Why I'm here! [He's grinning again, that same daft grin that makes him seem that strange mixture of insane and a little slow, almost.] Recent believer in magic, actually. Figured I might as well go with the whole shebang and deal with the angel issue as well.

[He does sober a bit, then, tonguing the roof of his mouth and raising an eyebrow at Chuck.] However, I'm not insane. Well, maybe a little bit. But its better that way, isn't it?

[paterelohim]

Well- I guess as long as you have a lid on it.

[Shut up, it's true.]

Nobody's completely sane, not with what life puts us through.

[Said fairly casually - because Chuck's accepted the fuckery that is his life - but with a tone that implies that Chuck's general level of "well, that's life" doesn't exactly line up with normal.]

[universaljanitor]

[There's something about this man that's having the Doctor's mind working as well. Not on the level of His mind, of course. But there was just... something. Some little, nagging bit of his mind, the psychic bit as well as a sliver of his ability to read facial cues and pick emotion from speech when there was need for it.

Almost as if there was an age to this man beyond his years. But that was common with those who lived in stressful environments, now wasn't it?

So, he raises his glass, solemn for a moment. Serious.]

The insanity of life, and the wonders that come from the heartache of it all. Don't suppose a bartender can drink to that, so allow me. [And he forgoes the straw, just taking a gulp or two of his drink, before putting it down, grinning again, the moment gone as his mind jumps to the next topic.] Right then! Angels! The ones you know don't weep, do they?

[paterelohim]

[It's common for Chuck to give off a Wise Beard Man vibe. Living as he does, with the knowledge of angels and prophecy and the visions of Heaven in his head, with lives violently lived and four dozen deeply personal life stories and histories and motives all in his head as intimately as if he lived those days and years himself, instead of just writing about them...

Age beyond his years. Yeah. There's some age of the cynical kind in how he smirkingly drinks to heartbreaking insanity and laughs out loud at the question.]

Yeah, uh. At this point, I'm convinced they all go home and cry into their teddy bears every friggin' night.

Actually, for real, though? Not really. I've only ever seen one of them cry once and it was that whole manly single tear thing.

[universaljanitor]

[Once the Doctor wraps his mind around the whole prophet thing for Chuck, he'll definitely understand that whole Wise Man vibe. They're peas in a pod, these two. Lonely Gods, hated by their family, their people for doing what needed to be done.

The only difference is... well, the Doctor's not really a God, and at least a good handful of Chuck's kiddies are still running around wreaking havoc.]

Single manly tear? [He is so very much guilty of that. Not that he'll ever admit it.] Well, not exactly the weeping I had in mind.

See, back home, back in my universe, there were these creatures. Statues, when you were looking at them, assassins when you weren't. They took the form of angels, always hiding their faces. Weeping Angels. Nasty things. Annoying.

[paterelohim]

Dude, that's some straight-up Lovecraftian shit.

[Chuck really shouldn't look as fascinated as he is, but holy crap. Talk about good horror fiction material.]

They only moved when you didn't look at them?

[universaljanitor]

Lovecraftian...? Oh, fellow with Cthulhu, right? Arthur Jermyn? Love his works!

[His grin fades, though. Into a look of annoyance, now.]

So long as you looked at them they had a sort of temporal lock on them. Any other time? ... Well.

They feed off temporal energy. The displacement and energy caused by a life taken. But they don't kill you. They simply send you through time, so the life you were going to live in your original timeline no longer exists. They fuel themselves on the potential life they ruined.

[paterelohim]

[Oh, Doctor, you know just how to grab this wayward God's attention. Feeding on potential life? Chuck leans in, trying hard to disguise that hunger for knowledge in his eyes.]

That means the victim's still alive, though, right? They can live out the rest of their life just- in a different time.

[universaljanitor]

[Comes with that whole lonely God territory, unfortunately enough. Well, that and, the Doctor does know what makes a good story. So, he's grinning, leaning in as Chuck does, as if he's about to tell him a really good secret]

Oh they live out their life well enough. Just a few centuries before they were ever born. The Angels then feed on the temporal energy that's left over. What's left behind before the person's time line shoots back to whenever they've sent them.

The Universe's kindest killers.

[paterelohim]

[He chews on that for a second, turning it over and over in his head. On the one hand it honestly doesn't sound that bad - if a load of bad sci-fi bullshit - but on the other...]

Honestly, that's crueler to the loved ones than to the victim themselves.