Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:07:14 +0000
From: Jason Parker <archangelmatthew72@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Angel: Part 14

Author's note: As some of you may have noticed, Part 13
brought the page total up o 103, and to celebrate breaking
the 100 page boundary, I thought I would do something a
little different in this chapter. Firstly, I would like to
thank my wonderful boyfriend who has been with me the whole
way on this. So, Tom, I love you. This one's for you babe as
are all the rest-- *sound of tazer shock* All rigth! All
right! I'll get to the story. In case you hadn't noticed, my
escape was foiled. Plot received an anonymous tip-off as to my
plans and I was picked up before I could even reach the
interstate. *rattles chain* thanks to a certain 'devotee' to
the story (not to the author, mind you) I am currently being
forced to write whatever the imps at Plot and Development cook
up, at tazer point, chained to my desk. I swear, if I ever
find the snitch who turned me in, I will throw you to a pack
of hungry wild pigs and laugh at your screams as your body is
ripped to pieces and-- *another sound of a tazer shock* OK,
OK! I'm writing already! Sheesh!

Disclaimer: This chapter has some rather challenging issues,
and unless you have a religiously open mind, then you might
want to skip this one. It's not that crucial chapter anyway,
thus it's shortness.

* * *
Flashback 1:
What the Hell happened anyway?


	Jason felt a searing pain in his feet and he looked to
the ground. The pattern was still glowing an angry red, and
getting brighter by the second. Before he could react, a
cracking red bolt crashed down from the ceiling and drove
into his chest. It went straight through him into the floor
and he was lifted of the ground. Energy crackled through him
and his muscles stiffened. He threw back his head in a silent
scream as tiny shots of lightning danced across his skin.
The lightening retracted back into the ceiling and Jason was
dropped to the floor in his knees. He fell forwards onto his
hands and silently retched.
	There was a commotion near the edge of the cavern and
Jason raised his head. He felt as if his facial muscles were
frozen in some maniacal grin. He looked straight into Matt's
eyes and saw the fear on his face. His sight seemed to zoom
in and he could make out his own reflection in Matt's eyes.
His own eyes blazed with white fire. He felt Matt's fear and
concern for him like a tangible force. All he could see was
Matt's face, staring back at him, but he could feel the other
people in the room. He felt connected to every atom there.
Their, weight on the floor was like a weight on his back. He
could feel the air coursing around them as if he were in a
wind tunnel. He felt the grooves of their bodies and noted
that one was a woman.
	His mind seemed to move further from himself and he
touched upon their minds. He drifted through Matt's thoughts
first, seeing Matt's concern. His worries. He touched on
Matt's core, his heart feelings and then deeper still. He
caught a glimpse of Matt's essence and it was beautiful and
terrible to behold. He saw Matt's wings, spread out around him
like billowing sails, and covered in almost luminous white
plumage. He pushed deeper, and learnt where it was he had
been. The council he had been taken before was the High
Council of Heaven. He saw hundreds of years of experimentation
and eugenics in the human race, take place in a fraction of a
second. He saw the wars between heaven and hell and how they
had raged since the beginning of humanity. The wars had
spilled over into the human world and been taken up by others.
Jesus had been created to free the world and unite it with
heaven, but hell had too strong a foothold and had spread once
more. None were safe from their deceit. Even many of the
disciples had been influenced, whether they knew it or not.
Hell had engineered the Black Death, to sweep across the world
and eliminate the earthly forced of heaven. Yet it too was
stopped. They feuded and fought throughout time, influencing
humans to do their will. The crusades had been one such war,
with each side, heaven and hell trying to gain the upper hand
through whatever means. Until the humans had been forced to
end the war, or be wiped out. After that, heaven and hell and
agreed, not to directly influence the fate of humanity. He saw
the armies of heaven and hell in ferocious battle, each side
beautiful and horrible in their own way.
	Jason wanted to know more, wanted to know why it had all
started. But Matt's memory seemed not to stretch back that
far. He looked in Matt's mind for God, expecting Him to have
had some role in the ongoing struggle. He was surprised to
find no such being in Matt's mind. There was no God that the
angles answered to. The High Council was the final authority
as far as heaven went. There was more though, Jason could feel
it in Matt's mind. Blank spaces where he could find nothing,
see nothing about Matt. Either someone had erased these
sections from Matt's mind, or he had purposefully locked those
places out. Jason tried to push trough one of the blocks and
felt gossamer strands sweep across his face and then he was
suddenly pulled away.
	His essence spun across the room and pierced the Woman's
head. He saw through her eyes, he felt her anger and tasted
her hate on his tongue. Entering her mind, he tried to pull
back in revulsion as he discovered her identity. Miriam. She
was filled with a bitter rage, and when he tried to touch upon
her core, he felt like he was being dragged inwards. He saw
flames leaping around him and dark shapes swooping through the
darkness that even the great conflagration could not force
back.
	All of this happened in a split second, but for him,
time had frozen. Matt's heart was frozen in mid-beat, his
blood seemingly a solid in his veins. But as he felt himself
being dragged into the flames of Miriam's mind, he felt time
suddenly leap forwards and return to normal. Quite suddenly,
the flames were no longer in Miriam's mind. He felt their
heat pulsing over his body, slowly baking him. He looked
desperately for Matt, but he was gone, along with the rest of
the cavern and everything in it. Then the ground he was
kneeling on gave way and he plummeted downwards towards the
flames.

* * *

	He was rudely awoken by and sharp kick to his side. He
rolled over on the baking ground and felt his blistered skin
scrape against the rough surface.
	"Name." A voice above him insisted.
	He tried to find the speaker and raised his head,
calling out for water. His throat was parched and dry. All he
received was another kick to his side and another, insisting
question. "What is your name?"
	Jason raised his head and peered groggily at his
questioner. It had large wings, and at first, Jason took it
to be some sort of angel. Then his eyes cleared a bit and he
saw they were made form haphazard shards of scrap metal. The
man, or whatever it had been had various limbs replaced by
metallic devices and plates of rusted iron were bolted to his
naked flesh in places. The thing had no genitals, they had
been replaced with a series of wires and what looked like a
small circuit board.
	"Name." It insisted again.
	Jason struggled to his hands and knees and looked about
him, ignoring his companion. He was kneeling on a high pillar
of rock. Far below him, gouts of flame sot up every now and
then from on of the large foundries that dotted the immense
vista. He could make out people hauling metal to the foundries
and carting away the slag for disposal or reuse.
	The sound of buffeting wings reached his ears and he
turned his head to look to the other side of the pillar. Metal
workshops were scattered to this side, with an imposing metal
palace rising above it all far in the distance. The beating of
wings grew louder and a dark form shot up past his rocky
roost. It rose above him and then slowly drifted downwards on
pitch-black wings. Wings of feather.
	The man beat his wings slowly, hovering a few feet from
the edge. Naked from the waist up, his bronzed skin glowed in
the light of constant fires and his jet-black hair tossed
gently in heat waves. He wore tight, black, woven, leather
leggings with a belt of steel rings. It looked unbearably
stifling in the intense heat.
	"What's the delay here? We have an entire days worth of
new arrivals." He addressed the metal winged being that had
been questioning Jason.
	"It refuses to answer." The thing replied as it stared at
Jason through the two metal orbs that covered its eye sockets.
"It requests water, but refuses to give its name."
	"That's what your powers are for you spineless wretch,"
the black winged man snapped.
	The sexless quasi-metal being bowed its head, "We did,
your Excellency. It had no effect upon it."
	Now the newcomer seemed to take interest in Jason. He
stepped onto the rock and spread his wings to their full
extent, creating an even more imposing sight. He grasped Jason
by the neck with a large, calloused hand and dragged him to
his feet. Jason glared back at him and he felt his eyes once
again blaze with their white fire.
	The man's eyes widened in surprise. "You're powerful,
pup." He leaned in and sniffed at Jason's bare neck, drawing
long, deep breaths. He pulled away suddenly and squeezed
Jason's neck harder until he was gasping for breath. "Give it
me, boy. Your full name, now!"
	Jason sputtered a moment and the man loosened his grasp
slightly. "J-Jason Azrael P-Parker." He managed to stutter at
last and the man's eyes widened further in shock.
	He quickly released Jason's neck and, kneeling, folded
his dark wings in submission. "Forgive me. You were not
expected to arrive by this method for a very long time.
Please, accept my humblest apologies."
	The metallic being seemed to look on questioningly. It
shifted restlessly, unsure of what to make of the sudden roll
reversal, it's scrap-metal wings scraping against each other.
The man glared at it angrily. "You will take Mr. Parker back
to earth and send him to wherever it is he may choose. You are
not to question him or his authority." He rose to his feet.
"Again, I apologies for this inconvenience." He turned to take
flight again and then paused. "Perhaps, when the time comes,
you will remember me?"
	Jason stared at him in utter confusion. But the man
seemed to read his silence differently. "Ah, I see," he said.
"I suppose if you weren't impartial, you would not perform
your intended purpose." He nodded at Jason and then leapt into
the air, his powerful wings beating a few times to gain
altitude before he soared off towards the distant palace.
	Jason stared after him. 'What the hell just happened?' he
asked himself. A scrape of metal on metal reminded him of his
remaining companion. He felt slightly odd about taking
advantage of the confusion that seemed to have arisen over his
name, but then he looked at the vista again. It didn't seem
like people generally got treated the way he was being treated
in this place. 'Besides,' he thought, 'who am I to tell them
not to treat me like royalty?'
	He rounded on the still waiting being. "Well? What are
you standing there for? Take me back to earth."
	It bowed its head and prepared to leap into the air.
Jason cleared his throat and it seemed to notice Jason's
wings, or rather the lack there of, for the first time. It
sighed heavily and set down the thin metal sheet it hand been
clutching in one hand. It stood behind Jason and then sprang
into the air, steadying itself with a few beat of its wings.
It seemed impossible that something could fly on such ragged,
mismatched things. Indeed, when it grasped Jason's shoulders
with its claw like feet, he could feel a gentile vibration as
of a motor or small engine. He guesses the wings were more for
balance or show rather than a means of propulsion.
	They rose into the air, leaving the rocky prominence far
below. They moved out over a lake of fire and Jason could feel
the heat even from at what he guessed must be many hundreds of
feet. The rose higher still, and a number of large, swirling,
red and black circles opened into the sky. Occasionally, a
person or two would plummet out of one and fall towards the
ground, only to be caught by several bat-looking creatures and
whisked away to other sites.
	The being carrying Jason headed towards one of the
smaller portals and called down to him, "Where does it wish to
go?"
	Jason thought hard and fast, 'Where could he go, naked
and scorched as he was, and still find a trusting friend?'
finally he chose, and called upwards. "Fiona Sutherland. I
want to go to Fiona Sutherland's house."
	It flew directly towards the portal and then, moments
before the both collided, it released Jason from it's grip and
flung him into the window, before banking sharply and veering
off back the way they had come.

	Jason screamed as he fell through the air into the
portal. He hit it with a wet sucking sound and was instantly
pulled in. Black and red swirled around him as he continued to
fall. And then suddenly, he was falling onto a painted wood
deck, from a height of just a few feet. He hit with a heavy
thud, startling Fiona from a nap she had been taking in the
porch hammock.
	"What the fuck?" she started awake. Then her eyes fell on
Jason. "Jesus Jason you- Whoa! Put some clothes on, I can see
your bits."

* * *

	Ok, so some of you were complaining about little breaks
in the story that had been skipped. Well, the members of Plot
*glares* and Development *spits on the ground* thought it
would be worth letting you in on a few secrets. I thought
about doing that little thing where I ask you questions and
then leave you hanging, but I think they are bringing our
meals now. *scrambles on floor for his bowl*
	You can still contact me at
ArchangelMatthew72@Hotmail.com, but I can't promise that
anything I send won't be edited. Stupid imps. They're not born
knowing how to fly, just how to annoy.