Buggered Omens Part I of Chapter III
Title: Buggered Omens - Part I of Chapter III
Author: The Alchemist of Bing
Rating: T
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Germany, mentions of North Italy, France, England, a mysterious Hetalia character that is revealed in the story, and a baby whose identity I will reveal later on; slight (or nonexistent) Germany/N.Italy and England/France
Warnings: Theological theme involving angels, demons, and God (this is all done for the sake of good humor, staying loyal to the style of Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman); mentions of burning hospitals, threatening of old ladies, slight drunkenness, profanity, and Francis attempting to bed Arthur. again.
Summary: Replacing the characters of Good Omens with our beloved cast in Hetalia! The end of the world is afoot and the only ones who could stop it are two silly characters pretending to be the world's icon of good and evil (one of them is an ex-incubus, which makes things even worse), a horseperson with father/son issues, and many other characters who have their own hairbrained ideas on how to create world peace or whatever. We're all doomed.
A/N: Who in the world did I choose for Beelzebub? Ho~boy.
Time Frame: Alternate Universe; but the literal time frame here is the late 20th century or later
Part III
(Of which the Lord of the Flies is introduced, Arthur’s dark side shows, Francis is a drama queen, and they both get slightly drunk around the shop this time. Oh, and he shit hits the fan, for lack of a better, and stronger term.)
It was early in the morning, one o’clock after midnight, and it was still quite dark outside.
Bonnefoy had followed his job to the letter after all, which was a big surprise when he thought about it without balancing his head on the floor. Ludwig looked at the burning hospital before him and nodded to himself, patting his back for another job well done. The records were destroyed from the fire, all traces and evidence of the evil they had done were gone and had just turned into dust. The rest was Francis’ job now, he thought, dreading the outcome. Ludwig had just come back from dropping Feliciano off to their office in hell to perform the rest of the final deed, thankful that the Plan so far was going on smoothly and was nearing its completion.
Dinner earlier had been quite interesting, and it had been so long ever since he had sausages and potatoes like those before. Best sausages he ever had ever since he stayed on earth during the whole World War II business and he had been tempted to taste the strange dish. Briefly, Ludwig wondered what would happen when Feliciano loses the pleasure of human restaurants with their violins and their romantic atmosphere and lovely couples and… especially, their pasta. He never thought the Italian dish would act as a sort of strange opium to fallen angels with the way the smaller man sniffed it all in one go. The way Feliciano ate his pasta was… well, it should have killed him if he were human.
Leading the humans to their end was nothing personal, and planning it himself while making sure everything was going perfectly did not mean that he hated humans. Far from it, in fact, but Ludwig couldn’t help but feel sorry that all this would come to an end. He chanced a look at a closed shop as he walked down the sidewalk and noted a couple of mannequins doing silly poses. He had to admit that humans were an odd bunch, though. Ludwing hummed thoughtfully and continued his way.
A slight droning of a million wings echoed in a nearby alleyway that he was just passing through, and only stopped when a fluttering coat seemed to cover the ancient, hellish murmurs of insects into silence. Everywhere, hell hot fireflies fluttered and burned anything they touched, “The job done?” a voice asked, deep into the dark.
“I did just as our lord commanded,” Ludwig bowed briefly at the man-shaped being that had just appeared, “Beelzebub.”
~~~~~
Arthur was not in a good mood. He hadn’t been in a good mood for a while ever since his fellow demon companion had been absent for a whole day already, and it was not even the demon's so called ‘nap time’ which was scheduled every Friday to Saturday. Today was a Monday. He was bored out of his mind, and the old woman in his shop sticking her nose all over his precious collection of books was not making things easier. Arthur squirmed. If she even dared touch one of his cookbooks she had another thing coming.
The angel’s bookshop did not house mere common books, nor were they just hand-me-down copies written by Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Oscar Wilde, or many different kinds and versions of Bibles that had accumulated over the centuries of mankind. They were not bought out of curiosity or without purpose, they were not collected for the sake of collecting, and they were not sold over for the sake of earning money he did not need. They were there so that Arthur could keep a close eye on them. Bad choice for pretending to be a book dealer, he thought, he should have learned that forcing himself to do good was not the right way to do things.
These books were, for instance (referring to Arthur’s proud list): the first copied text from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes during the alchemy craze back in the day, the Vedas text from ancient India, the first copied scripts of Gilgamesh, Oscar Wilde’s first editions, and a rather nice old cookbook of Roman Recipes called ‘De Re Coquinaria’ by Marcus Gavius which lead back to 4thcentury Rome (Arthur was rather fond of the In Ovis Apalis recipe), to name a few (1). And Arthur, who took pride in his contribution to the Bible and thus worked to collect all the unique copies of Bibles himself (even if Emperor Constantine acted as chief editor of plagiarism over his hard work), had a complete collection of the Bible Errata - a series of Bibles unwanted because of some embarrassing printing mistakes made back in the day when printers were patient men stuck ‘printing’ everything word for word with their quills. These printing mistakes held titles such as the Adulterous Bible, the Lions Bible (Francis was a bit fond of this Bible, along with the Sin On Bible), and the sillier Bug Bible. (2)
His books were all suspended in time. Well preserved and just a bit brown and crackled around the edges with bits of blots that looked like coffee stains in some parts (Francis' fault, obviously), but yes: Arthur had the original copies. Although most of his collection tended to not have been published before they were taken by him, instead these were kinda borrowed straight from their writers’ desks, the original copies replaced by an exact, miracled, duplicate. Therefore you could imagine the amount of passion he felt for his job as a book dealer after all that hard work.
The Metatron, however, would have been displeased to hear that he was not sharing the knowledge that angels were supposed to do. Not to mention if he found out about his penchant for stealing valuable books from their rightful owners. Hoarding material properties was a no-no under the heavenly eyes of good and the Voice of God’s terrifying rusty pipeline. (3)
Unfortunately for Arthur, the woman he was setting his glower upon coughed through the dust, ignored the large mound of rubbish which had appeared on one corner of the store out of nowhere, disregarded all the bats that darted over her head and the rats that had tried to take a nip out of her fingers in the shelves, and smiled over his homemade pastries that sat by the desk which, Arthur refused to admit, acted well when it came to repelling potential customers (some people did try his cooking out, and he enjoyed their reactions immensely, even if most of them gagged after a bite). However, adding more salt to the wound, the woman merely pocketed the questionable pastry dish, which looked like a piece of messed up hors d’oeuvres of cement, dirt and twigs instead of trying it out when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Arthur did not want her to buy one of his books, but he was a gentleman. A gentleman was always kind, polite, and must have infinite patience over things that vex them. Such as old ladies going through their precious books. Other than fancying himself a true gentleman, he was also an angel who was one of the most influential representatives of good on this earth - therefore Arthur was obligated to just skive it off and sell the lady one of his blasted books, be damned his hard work! She was an old woman. What was a gentleman angel to do?
The woman, a lady named Mrs. Flemyng, puffed and placed a heavy book rough and hard on his cashier desk, letting the dust fly everywhere. Arthur stiffened and forced a kind smile on his tight face, “Found a good book, madam?” he squeaked.
She smiled back at him and said, “Oh, I believe this’ll be perfect for my granddaughter, Mr. Kirkland. Perfect for her work, I should say…”
Work? What sort of work did she possibly…
“I really am quite sorry, madam,” Arthur said, as he forced his rage down his gut and wished to have it gone forever, “But I hardly think that this book is suitable for children of your granddaughter’s age to read.” And drool on, he thought. He pretended to clean one of his nails with a thumb in disinterest, but when one feels their brain doing nice little explosions in their skull it was bound to give them a nasty headache. Most people presumed that angels never had headaches, but angels never had any of their collection of books violated before, “Well, how about this book here, Mrs. Flemyng?” he pulled a book from under his desk with a flourish and tried to look innocent, “The Sunneshayn in Russia’s… er,”
The woman squinted over the book, “Ha-Harym?”
“That’s right,” Arthur nodded and let out a nervous laugh, his fingers doing awkward dances over the book as if he had no idea what to do with it (although hitting her in the head with the leather-bound didn’t sound too dark), “It does sound kind of different, but it’s not what you’re thinking at all. Bloody old English this is, eh?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that sort of paper is good for a collage… er… material?” Mrs. Flemyng said, trying to look positive and not horrified at the prospect of giving her own flesh and blood a book about Harems and Russia, “She’s actually older than you think. She’s fourteen, you know.” he nodded again, reminding himself that, yes, he was an angel, and yes, he loved all beings young and old, damn it…
“Well I’m afraid you can’t have this book, Mrs. Flemyng, or I shall be forced to pull your bloody spine out of your maw and chop your blithering head off. Put it on a bleedin’ stake in front of my shop after renaming Soho’s most respected businesses into Vlad the Impaler’s Rare Book Shop of Doom. You lot are all the same - disrespectful bloody bints. What do you think I am, eh? I’m not just some wanker who sells books for brats to… to…”
Arthur inhaled deep and relaxed his pale fist that he had been squeezing too hard. He imagined Francis stuck in heaven, suffering, and suddenly he felt much better. He met Mrs. Flemyng’s shocked expression with her eyes wide, almost popping from her head, and smiled, “Thank you for shopping at Vla-Kirkland’s Rare Book Shop! Have a nice day, madam.” The woman’s face went back to normal and smiled back at him as if nothing had happened, thanked him, gave his cooking a nice compliment, and gave the brown bag which held The Sunneshayn in Russia’s Harym a nice little squeeze.
Arthur banged his head on the desk, and sighed.
__________________________________
Notes:
(1) Boiled eggs
(2) The Bible Errata are actually real, and the Bibles listed thus were the Adulterous Bible, which contained the “Thou shalt commit adultery” mistake, the Lions Bible, with “thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions” instead of loins, the Sin On Bible, which has the mistake “Go and sin on more” than the original “Go and sin no more”, and the Bug Bible with the mistake “Thou shall not nede be afrayed for eny bugges by night” - where a ‘bugge’ was not your common bug spelled in old English, but a ‘ghost’ or a ‘spectre’.
(3) The story of the Voice of God’s preferred weapon was recorded in the original Bible text in the Genesis chapter before it disappeared from the Bible copies we all know today. It consisted of a strange discourse between an unknown, but obviously important angel (who you now know as the Metatron) to God, and reads thus:
25 And an angel who hadde witnessed the falle of man from Eden, as the forbidden fruit strayed upon the wormwood of thy fallen snake, appeared before the Lord in light and brilliance
26 And kindly sayd: ‘O, Lord almighty, youre wisdomme hath showne us the mortal’s will to sin and pleasure thyselfe selfishly
27 ‘Although, shall I twist thy face raw fore thy mistake of bringinge more paperwork into thy office and forcing the four horsemen to proceed their gatherings and bring upon a multitude of swords to be brought unto thee?
28 ‘And shalle I come for ye a rusty pipe I hadde takenne fromme the future and hit upon youre heade next?
29 Kolkolkolkol.’
30 And the angel of the Lord hitte His pate with a rusty pipe.
31 And the Lord retreated away from thy angel in fear.
It was deemed as an obvious error and was erased from history forever.
Edited! Changed some awkward sentences :) If there are any more mistakes, please tell me.
Author: The Alchemist of Bing
Rating: T
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Germany, mentions of North Italy, France, England, a mysterious Hetalia character that is revealed in the story, and a baby whose identity I will reveal later on; slight (or nonexistent) Germany/N.Italy and England/France
Warnings: Theological theme involving angels, demons, and God (this is all done for the sake of good humor, staying loyal to the style of Mr. Pratchett and Mr. Gaiman); mentions of burning hospitals, threatening of old ladies, slight drunkenness, profanity, and Francis attempting to bed Arthur. again.
Summary: Replacing the characters of Good Omens with our beloved cast in Hetalia! The end of the world is afoot and the only ones who could stop it are two silly characters pretending to be the world's icon of good and evil (one of them is an ex-incubus, which makes things even worse), a horseperson with father/son issues, and many other characters who have their own hairbrained ideas on how to create world peace or whatever. We're all doomed.
A/N: Who in the world did I choose for Beelzebub? Ho~boy.
Time Frame: Alternate Universe; but the literal time frame here is the late 20th century or later
Part III
(Of which the Lord of the Flies is introduced, Arthur’s dark side shows, Francis is a drama queen, and they both get slightly drunk around the shop this time. Oh, and he shit hits the fan, for lack of a better, and stronger term.)
It was early in the morning, one o’clock after midnight, and it was still quite dark outside.
Bonnefoy had followed his job to the letter after all, which was a big surprise when he thought about it without balancing his head on the floor. Ludwig looked at the burning hospital before him and nodded to himself, patting his back for another job well done. The records were destroyed from the fire, all traces and evidence of the evil they had done were gone and had just turned into dust. The rest was Francis’ job now, he thought, dreading the outcome. Ludwig had just come back from dropping Feliciano off to their office in hell to perform the rest of the final deed, thankful that the Plan so far was going on smoothly and was nearing its completion.
Dinner earlier had been quite interesting, and it had been so long ever since he had sausages and potatoes like those before. Best sausages he ever had ever since he stayed on earth during the whole World War II business and he had been tempted to taste the strange dish. Briefly, Ludwig wondered what would happen when Feliciano loses the pleasure of human restaurants with their violins and their romantic atmosphere and lovely couples and… especially, their pasta. He never thought the Italian dish would act as a sort of strange opium to fallen angels with the way the smaller man sniffed it all in one go. The way Feliciano ate his pasta was… well, it should have killed him if he were human.
Leading the humans to their end was nothing personal, and planning it himself while making sure everything was going perfectly did not mean that he hated humans. Far from it, in fact, but Ludwig couldn’t help but feel sorry that all this would come to an end. He chanced a look at a closed shop as he walked down the sidewalk and noted a couple of mannequins doing silly poses. He had to admit that humans were an odd bunch, though. Ludwing hummed thoughtfully and continued his way.
A slight droning of a million wings echoed in a nearby alleyway that he was just passing through, and only stopped when a fluttering coat seemed to cover the ancient, hellish murmurs of insects into silence. Everywhere, hell hot fireflies fluttered and burned anything they touched, “The job done?” a voice asked, deep into the dark.
“I did just as our lord commanded,” Ludwig bowed briefly at the man-shaped being that had just appeared, “Beelzebub.”
~~~~~
Arthur was not in a good mood. He hadn’t been in a good mood for a while ever since his fellow demon companion had been absent for a whole day already, and it was not even the demon's so called ‘nap time’ which was scheduled every Friday to Saturday. Today was a Monday. He was bored out of his mind, and the old woman in his shop sticking her nose all over his precious collection of books was not making things easier. Arthur squirmed. If she even dared touch one of his cookbooks she had another thing coming.
The angel’s bookshop did not house mere common books, nor were they just hand-me-down copies written by Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri, Oscar Wilde, or many different kinds and versions of Bibles that had accumulated over the centuries of mankind. They were not bought out of curiosity or without purpose, they were not collected for the sake of collecting, and they were not sold over for the sake of earning money he did not need. They were there so that Arthur could keep a close eye on them. Bad choice for pretending to be a book dealer, he thought, he should have learned that forcing himself to do good was not the right way to do things.
These books were, for instance (referring to Arthur’s proud list): the first copied text from the Emerald Tablet of Hermes during the alchemy craze back in the day, the Vedas text from ancient India, the first copied scripts of Gilgamesh, Oscar Wilde’s first editions, and a rather nice old cookbook of Roman Recipes called ‘De Re Coquinaria’ by Marcus Gavius which lead back to 4thcentury Rome (Arthur was rather fond of the In Ovis Apalis recipe), to name a few (1). And Arthur, who took pride in his contribution to the Bible and thus worked to collect all the unique copies of Bibles himself (even if Emperor Constantine acted as chief editor of plagiarism over his hard work), had a complete collection of the Bible Errata - a series of Bibles unwanted because of some embarrassing printing mistakes made back in the day when printers were patient men stuck ‘printing’ everything word for word with their quills. These printing mistakes held titles such as the Adulterous Bible, the Lions Bible (Francis was a bit fond of this Bible, along with the Sin On Bible), and the sillier Bug Bible. (2)
His books were all suspended in time. Well preserved and just a bit brown and crackled around the edges with bits of blots that looked like coffee stains in some parts (Francis' fault, obviously), but yes: Arthur had the original copies. Although most of his collection tended to not have been published before they were taken by him, instead these were kinda borrowed straight from their writers’ desks, the original copies replaced by an exact, miracled, duplicate. Therefore you could imagine the amount of passion he felt for his job as a book dealer after all that hard work.
The Metatron, however, would have been displeased to hear that he was not sharing the knowledge that angels were supposed to do. Not to mention if he found out about his penchant for stealing valuable books from their rightful owners. Hoarding material properties was a no-no under the heavenly eyes of good and the Voice of God’s terrifying rusty pipeline. (3)
Unfortunately for Arthur, the woman he was setting his glower upon coughed through the dust, ignored the large mound of rubbish which had appeared on one corner of the store out of nowhere, disregarded all the bats that darted over her head and the rats that had tried to take a nip out of her fingers in the shelves, and smiled over his homemade pastries that sat by the desk which, Arthur refused to admit, acted well when it came to repelling potential customers (some people did try his cooking out, and he enjoyed their reactions immensely, even if most of them gagged after a bite). However, adding more salt to the wound, the woman merely pocketed the questionable pastry dish, which looked like a piece of messed up hors d’oeuvres of cement, dirt and twigs instead of trying it out when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Arthur did not want her to buy one of his books, but he was a gentleman. A gentleman was always kind, polite, and must have infinite patience over things that vex them. Such as old ladies going through their precious books. Other than fancying himself a true gentleman, he was also an angel who was one of the most influential representatives of good on this earth - therefore Arthur was obligated to just skive it off and sell the lady one of his blasted books, be damned his hard work! She was an old woman. What was a gentleman angel to do?
The woman, a lady named Mrs. Flemyng, puffed and placed a heavy book rough and hard on his cashier desk, letting the dust fly everywhere. Arthur stiffened and forced a kind smile on his tight face, “Found a good book, madam?” he squeaked.
She smiled back at him and said, “Oh, I believe this’ll be perfect for my granddaughter, Mr. Kirkland. Perfect for her work, I should say…”
Work? What sort of work did she possibly…
“I really am quite sorry, madam,” Arthur said, as he forced his rage down his gut and wished to have it gone forever, “But I hardly think that this book is suitable for children of your granddaughter’s age to read.” And drool on, he thought. He pretended to clean one of his nails with a thumb in disinterest, but when one feels their brain doing nice little explosions in their skull it was bound to give them a nasty headache. Most people presumed that angels never had headaches, but angels never had any of their collection of books violated before, “Well, how about this book here, Mrs. Flemyng?” he pulled a book from under his desk with a flourish and tried to look innocent, “The Sunneshayn in Russia’s… er,”
The woman squinted over the book, “Ha-Harym?”
“That’s right,” Arthur nodded and let out a nervous laugh, his fingers doing awkward dances over the book as if he had no idea what to do with it (although hitting her in the head with the leather-bound didn’t sound too dark), “It does sound kind of different, but it’s not what you’re thinking at all. Bloody old English this is, eh?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, but I don’t think that sort of paper is good for a collage… er… material?” Mrs. Flemyng said, trying to look positive and not horrified at the prospect of giving her own flesh and blood a book about Harems and Russia, “She’s actually older than you think. She’s fourteen, you know.” he nodded again, reminding himself that, yes, he was an angel, and yes, he loved all beings young and old, damn it…
“Well I’m afraid you can’t have this book, Mrs. Flemyng, or I shall be forced to pull your bloody spine out of your maw and chop your blithering head off. Put it on a bleedin’ stake in front of my shop after renaming Soho’s most respected businesses into Vlad the Impaler’s Rare Book Shop of Doom. You lot are all the same - disrespectful bloody bints. What do you think I am, eh? I’m not just some wanker who sells books for brats to… to…”
Arthur inhaled deep and relaxed his pale fist that he had been squeezing too hard. He imagined Francis stuck in heaven, suffering, and suddenly he felt much better. He met Mrs. Flemyng’s shocked expression with her eyes wide, almost popping from her head, and smiled, “Thank you for shopping at Vla-Kirkland’s Rare Book Shop! Have a nice day, madam.” The woman’s face went back to normal and smiled back at him as if nothing had happened, thanked him, gave his cooking a nice compliment, and gave the brown bag which held The Sunneshayn in Russia’s Harym a nice little squeeze.
Arthur banged his head on the desk, and sighed.
__________________________________
Notes:
(1) Boiled eggs
(2) The Bible Errata are actually real, and the Bibles listed thus were the Adulterous Bible, which contained the “Thou shalt commit adultery” mistake, the Lions Bible, with “thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions” instead of loins, the Sin On Bible, which has the mistake “Go and sin on more” than the original “Go and sin no more”, and the Bug Bible with the mistake “Thou shall not nede be afrayed for eny bugges by night” - where a ‘bugge’ was not your common bug spelled in old English, but a ‘ghost’ or a ‘spectre’.
(3) The story of the Voice of God’s preferred weapon was recorded in the original Bible text in the Genesis chapter before it disappeared from the Bible copies we all know today. It consisted of a strange discourse between an unknown, but obviously important angel (who you now know as the Metatron) to God, and reads thus:
25 And an angel who hadde witnessed the falle of man from Eden, as the forbidden fruit strayed upon the wormwood of thy fallen snake, appeared before the Lord in light and brilliance
26 And kindly sayd: ‘O, Lord almighty, youre wisdomme hath showne us the mortal’s will to sin and pleasure thyselfe selfishly
27 ‘Although, shall I twist thy face raw fore thy mistake of bringinge more paperwork into thy office and forcing the four horsemen to proceed their gatherings and bring upon a multitude of swords to be brought unto thee?
28 ‘And shalle I come for ye a rusty pipe I hadde takenne fromme the future and hit upon youre heade next?
29 Kolkolkolkol.’
30 And the angel of the Lord hitte His pate with a rusty pipe.
31 And the Lord retreated away from thy angel in fear.
It was deemed as an obvious error and was erased from history forever.
Edited! Changed some awkward sentences :) If there are any more mistakes, please tell me.