Wednesday, December 21st, The Midnight Channel (Last Night!)
Who: The Port's Latest Shadow Televisions Stars! And Thousands of Home Viewers!
When: Midnight, Wednesday December 21st
Where: In front of your Television Sets or Streaming NV TV. (Digital Cable? You'll still get the analog effect.)
Summary: Full Plot Details Here
Warnings: Please Put 'em In the Subject Lines As Necessary, Kids?
( Can you set me free from this dark inner world )
When: Midnight, Wednesday December 21st
Where: In front of your Television Sets or Streaming NV TV. (Digital Cable? You'll still get the analog effect.)
Summary: Full Plot Details Here
Warnings: Please Put 'em In the Subject Lines As Necessary, Kids?
( Can you set me free from this dark inner world )
-camera cut to rain, water, men and women running fleeing for high ground, screaming, children falling in the streets, getting trampled, drowning. water rising up and up carrying sheep and children and filth, rising fasterfasterfaster. a single ark sails by and they scream, reach out, call and beg in vain and hope and pray and choke on water and tears-
The man looks up. His eyes burn like stars.]
I don’t understand what the big problem is. [The Voice sends chills down spines, makes skin crawl. It sounds like lightning and revelation.] You whine and cry about bad things and good people. You want to know how this can happen.
[-skies raining fire, roofs collapsing, people screaming in the streets and sobbing as their flesh melts, children crying, heathen altars burning, hookers and pimps falling to their knees in agony, vomiting, the nearly-dead reaching out desperately to trip up the still-living. two cities burning-
Quiet. Strange how He fills that vast, empty room.]
The truth is a lot easier than you think. [He’s so calm, easy. Bone-chillingly imperious.] I wouldn’t expect ants like you to see it.
I don’t care. I never have. [-levees breaking and a city drowns, dozens hundreds thousands swept away in a riot of color and plastic beads and houses smashed to rubble-] Shouldn’t that be obvious?
[A cruelly sarcastic, utterly unamused “smile.”] No. I could never expect you to understand. Ants. Rodents. Maggots inside a worm’s ass.
[-red sea parted impossibly like curtains crashes down, falling, two waves breaking over bodies and horses foaming with innocent terror-]
Hearing you people try to pretend to understand something so much greater than you are makes me sick. Richard Dawkins will burn in Hell with George Carlin and I will laugh to hear them scream, cry, and beg to know- why? [He laughs brashly, the kind of laugh that’s one step from crushing your skull with relish.] I wish I could find the one who first asked the word “why” and nuke them from orbit. [Leans forward suddenly, eyes sparking dangerously, teeth bared.
-Darkness falls suddenly on an ignorant city and it’s horror, it’s monsters and nightmares swarming on men and women and the children who scream and can never ever run fast enough to avoid the disgusting sickening beasts-
He’s pointing at the camera accusingly.] You have no right to ask questions, least of all you and anyone in this worthless pit you call a city.
[-hands groping, grasping, push-pulling a girl a child a woman a man a person down hallways, stairs, into bedrooms offices cars cells dungeons while they laugh, the traders laugh in their suits and finalize transactions and the slaves can only cry and shiver and wish for it to stop-
His gaze hardens.]
I’ve made nothing but mistakes. If only I could home I’d burn it all and start anew. [He finally stands up with a resounding thud, starts approaching the camera intensely.] I’ll start here instead. Every one of you deserves to perish in this city of sin and cruelty.
I have heard this city cry. It cannot be saved. I don’t particularly want to try. So run. You don’t even know what face you’re running from, but run. Turn on each other. I want you to.
I want to see this city eat itself. I want to purge the air of filth.
[There’s nothing at all in this Being’s eyes but hollow righteousness.]
That is my will- and my will be done.
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That thing- that. That.]
No. [Softly, almost stunned, to the empty room.] No. No. [That's not Him. Even in the beginning, He loved them. He knows He did... right?
(even now the memories are slow, it's all caught up- judgment and wrath and mercy tangled together until He can't separate the flood from the rainbow, the dozen times He lovingly forgave Israel weighed against the one time He threw a child to damnation.)
No. He loved them. He still loves them, he's positive.]
No. That isn't me. That's never been me.
[He can't go out there. That would just piss It off more.
...He has to go out there. He doesn't have a choice. That thing is some kind of twisted non-reflection of Him. If it has power anything like Him then the island is in a lot of fucking trouble. Non-interference is one thing, but this? This isn't a fair part of it. Chuck knows he has an obligation to clean this piece of shit up.
Which is why, against every fiber of his better judgment, Chuck gets on his coat and walks right the fuck out into the Darkness to hunt down a God.]
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There was anger too. Bitterness. Rage. He had felt, for longer than he could name, that God had abandoned them. Him. Aslan had said he wasn't forsaken. He hadn't believed him, oh how he'd wanted to. But he hadn't.
And he knew this wasn't real. He did know that. But. It didn't stop what he felt. So he sat there, and shook.]
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All of those orders that he could be following - should be following. Michael should leave his vessel and burn the city with all of its inhabitants to the ground without another thought like he'd done so many times before but he didn't. Instead he passes through the streets, invisible to the five senses, just watching humanity go about their business. Even thinks about trying to find this being that is and yet isn't his Father but instead...
Ignores Shadow!Him.
Well, it's not so much ignoring Him as it is letting God's will be done just as he said it - let humanity turn on itself and he runs. Okay so it's not the best interpretation of the orders to just leave humanity be and to go out into the Darkness risking his own life and those of six other people in order to fix the damn cable wires but he'll take it.
Besides doing it this way also saw to it that the other order was being put to work. HE WAS USEFUL. To the team, to AGI (which would put him in their good graces and allow him to slip in easier), and to the city. It also meant that he didn't have to go against any of his Father's (his real Father, tyvm) orders because Michael's pretty sure God would be pissed if he started following God-but-not-God's "Plan".]
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Anael may never have met the Father, but that didn't mean she was ignorant. There was no mistaking the powerful tone, the endlessness, the might and the utter chill that tears through her. Anna had never felt such instant fear. Even as a child, a human child, struggling to comprehend the memories her young mind could not-- it had never been like this. She felt irrationally paranoid, terrified and suddenly maddened all at once. Mad in the sense that... maybe she'd just lost her marbles. It wasn't real, it couldn't be real.
And yet here it was. Here she was, cowering against the far wall, hands pressed over her ears, terror shaking her limbs and one day she'd garner the courage to apologize to Mercy for blowing every breaker the house was connected to. The sparking, shattering light show of bursting lamps, hall lights popping, the television cracking as if someone had smashed it with a baseball bat.]
No, no... I'm-- [She wasn't sorry. She wouldn't say it. She couldn't.]
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It towers over her, huge and unstable, a shifting projection of His shadow-thing that is only even still in one piece because of Chuck's own raw power. It is unstable, but single-minded in what it sees: Anael.
Anna Milton, the human stain. The deserter.
The disobedient. She's just like him- no, she's worse than him, she had Lucifer's example to look to.
The Thing tilts its head at her, dark and indescribably wrong.]
Daughter.
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She feels like a child again. Small and useless against the darkness of the world, her own father. Not Him, but it relayed over him. Her real Father hated her. Wanted to kill her. Wanted her dead already and why wasn't she? Why hadn't she died then? Why had she been left to live a happy life, only to have it torn out from under her when her second oldest brother decided it was high time he broke the lock on his closet.
So she slides herself up the wall, forcing her limbs to move. She cannot cower before Him, not in the way she had been. He deserves respect in .. some form. Even if she had no right to show it.]
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Then slams her against the far wall as hard as- well, not as hard as it can, but as hard as it takes, hard enough to crack the concrete of the apartment's outer wall.]
You abomination. [The idea of the hate is strong enough to come out roughly, despite the Shadow's outline and stark edges already starting to blur a little with the Darkness around it.]
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The tenderness is ... something she shouldn't have fallen for. But God had been merciful, once upon a time. Maybe not to her brothers and sisters, but to the new children? Or was she such a horrible, disgusting, fallen thing, that it wasn't her having become a human- but an angel torn from their wings, wearing the flesh of a human like a gown. Disgracing it.
Of course he won't be gentle. She'll be lucky to not have a cracked rib or two with the force of the slam, pain lancing from the base of her spine to the tip of her skull. But it didn't hurt. Not really. Physical pain was nothing compared to the sickening name she'd been given. A perfect name.]
I'm sorry! I'm sorry- please! [Was begging beneath her? Probably not. Far above, perhaps. What right did she have?]
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So it's easy for the thing to scoff heartlessly and reach out, shadowy arm impossibly spanning the room to crack her head hard against the ground, to beat her down, breaking ribs, breaking bones, wanting to see the blood run from her eyes.]
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But he promised her. The eldest had sworn to his siblings that he would protect them while they were living in this world for any and all threats. He'd even gone so far as to say that he would protect her from family if the occasion should arise and even though they'd both meant Lucifer this still counted.
So he arrives. Maybe a bit late but the good, loyal son does have to struggle with the idea of standing in their Father's way and put his own life on the line to save Anna. His back is to his sister but he's close enough that she can reach out and touch his pant leg if she can actually move without pain.
He looks over God-but-Not and the idea of just fleeing with his sibling (and without) crosses his mind because HOLY CRAP HE'S ABOUT TO SORT OF BACKSASS A VERSION OF HIS FATHER and that's the scariest thing ever. Still he steels himself and looks at the being in front of him with an expressionless mask.]
This isn't necessary, Father. I will deal with her. [Okay so what he means by 'deal with her' is to heal her up and get her somewhere safe but Anna does meet her end by his hand and his "Father" knows it.]
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And it's really hard to relate the pain of carving out your very essence and soul to the pain of having ribs shattered, bones fractured, hairline splits bursting across the back and sides of her skull. She may not be 'crying' tears of blood, but the shadowed Not-Father will get plenty of it elsewhere. Anna may have the mind of an angel, but the body is still very, very human.
... Michael's a surprise. Or part of one. Daddy's little soldier, come to finish the job? Or perhaps not, considering he's got his back to her, is actually defending her. The abominable daughter and any other dramatic title one could think of- Angels were nothing if not old school. But that made sense; he'd promised to keep her safe, hadn't he? If Anna could find the will to move, let alone do so without aggravating anything, she might have just curled in on herself. It was never just a one-hit-kill, was it?]
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Yes. [The Voice is thin now, losing some of its punch and gaining that unique sub-sensory rasp of Darkness.] You will.
[Ask Michael what the hell that means, Anna. The Thing starts for her again, raising a hand that almost immediately starts dissipating into nothing even as the Shadow creature falls apart and back into the broken television.
The Darkness is still seeping into the living room, though. Creatures could still come through.]
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Michael doesn't turn from God-but-Not, not until the being is completely gone. The instant He is the eldest son turns and kneels before his sister. He lifts a hand to her forehead to not only heal the worst of the wounds but also to send her to a location where the Darkness isn't about to crawl out into the room. It's a large apartment, fully furnished but doesn't look lived in even if it can't be seen as the lights aren't on. Beneath her Anna will find that she's on a large soft bed with all the things a human will need in order to sleep.
After a moment his shadow can be seen lurking in a nearby window, once again his back is to her.] You can stay here for the time being. It's Darkness-proofed and there are no televisions.
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Yet he does now.
This cold, distant, unknowable thing struck him so much, like a punch directly to the chest. He dropped the glass of scotch he was holding and it disappeared before it could touch the ground.]
No.
[He murmurs the word in quiet, stunned disbelief. That can't be Him. That cannot be Him. His Father has done so much and maybe He hasn't done enough. But that thing, that loveless thing with that voice... Balthazar refused to believe it. He wouldn't. He may have left them, but He wouldn't take so much pleasure in the humans' demise, He wouldn't order their destruction at each other's hands. He learned from that mistake the first time, didn't He?
It's not Him. It's not, it's not, it's not.
Balthazar goes out into the night. Because what if it is?]
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Chuck just runs, weaving through the city, sometimes tripping or slowing or stopping to think and feel it. It's the most Power he's used in a while, just this piddly extension of a tiny sliver of awareness.
The thing is that all prophets have that angel radar, so it's only natural for him to start in shock when he can feel Balthazar only a few blocks away. Balthazar, the angel who's probably too distracted to notice him, Balthazar the broken-down son who's lost his way.
His heart sinks like a stone. No.
He runs, not knowing why because if the Shadow already has him then there's nothing Chuck can do without blowing the lid off the whole damn thing. So Chuck slips inside an alley only two short blocks off from the angel, closes his eyes, and feels.
It's easy to feel the Shadow, already new-reformed and keeping pace with Chuck across the street, outstripping him easily to catch up with the baby angel. Chuck is near enough now that it's easy for the thing to stay in one piece, especially with how hard Chuck's concentrating on it and how much of His mind is currently bent towards Balthazar. Perversely, by denying and rejecting everything that He anticipates the shadow has to want, Chuck is helping it stay together and find his son.
The thing, enormous and almost (but not quite) entirely unlike Heaven and might, looms hulking and huge over Balthazar, eyes burning black with hate fixed purely on the angel. This is just one more. Another mistake. Another one like the human-angel. Elsewhere, Chuck is seething to himself, quietly hissing that this thing better not, that it has no right, that it can't it's not Him.]
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