By the time I was on my way to the central square- a circle, honestly, that otherwise lived up to its name- I was quite nervous about this whole 'RC' thing. The note had said to meet at eight without specifying morning or evening. Had I missed it already? Plus, the whole idea of this whatever being named 'RC' bothered me too. Like race-car? Remote-controlled? Remote-controlled race-cars. Those were all I could think about.

It was no surprise that I felt sick by the time I sat down on a bench in the square. I have a ridiculous list of fears, phobias, and general things I'd rather not deal with, and the concept of waiting for a meeting I had already missed triggered my anxiety like hell.

It was seven thirty. I couldn't resist being early, just in case, but had nothing now to occupy me but my thoughts. And the three large skyscrapers that circled part of the square, with their large screens of advertisements and news shows. I didn't care much for gossip, but there was a clock in the lower corner of each screen. I listened in via the speakers situated in my bench.

"...Next we turn to Chief of police Leon Yates for more on this story." The anchorwoman was saying. I didn't actually know her name, but I saw her almost every day during morning announcements.

The camera switched to another man. "It's likely this was just a case of violence motivated by a personal reason. All evidence we've found suggests Velseiel's attacker was most likely to be one of his friends, drunk and upset over a lost gamble. There's no need for alarm, Raphael promises he will be just fine."

The camera switched back to the woman, but before she started to speak, I noticed Amy jogging towards me, followed by a few other kids her age.

God. I forgot they traveled in packs.

"You're early." She said. "But, uh, this is Julie, Ivy, Aspen, Alex, and Remiel." She spoke far to fast for me to place names to each face.

"Slow down. Who's Julie?" Amy pointed at one of the boys, a slightly older kid who looked like he was getting ready to head to a school semi-formal with his suit. "You're Julie?"

"It's short for Julian. Julian Kaiser barJulian Occasio."

"What." Was all I had to say to that name. I knew a lot of angels were naming their kids odd things, like 'wire' and 'pheasant', but Julian seemed to be a demon.

"You haven't heard of me then?"

"...I'm supposed to have heard of you? Sorry." I apologized on reflex. But really, if I had heard his name before, I would have known it.

"Not really. But my dad's Julian Occasio, and you know how lax they are in Hell about changing your last name, so he decided to name me after some fictional character I've never heard of. Not sure why."

Occasio was a name I knew to place, mostly because you had to be in a coma to not hear it constantly. He was a self made rich man who somehow bought the government not long after the peace deal. I'm not really sure how it worked, but he essentially was the current leader of Hell.

"Ivy is this one." Amy said distastefully, waving to a girl who looked a lot like her with a sarcastic expression. The girl gave a fake yawn. "My cousin." They both had long and terrible manes of dark brown hair, but Ivy at least seemed to brush hers, tying it up into a braid.

I didn't have any comments to make, so I let Amy continue.

"Aspen." She gestured slowly and dramatically towards a girl with dyed blue hair. She had an ensemble of clothes that would have looked tough on someone a bit older, and her leather jacket featured gold embroidery in angelic. Likely, she was a kid of a fallen angel.

"So is Julian the only one of you with a last name?" I said. My nerves had died off the moment I had seen their little gang, and now I was talking in the half-amused tone I reserved for younger kids. Honestly, no matter how rude I sound when describing them, I do like freshmen.

"No. Ivy has the same last name as me, and Aspen's last name is Waythrough."

I didn't bother pointing out Amy had never told me her last name. "Waythrough? So she's definitely angelspawn."

"I'm getting there!" Amy said, all excited. "Anyways, then there's Alex. Alexander Scott."

"The second!" The boy added. Alex was a dreadfully common name these days, even though the previous leader of Hell's death was generally celebrated as a holiday. "He was my father." A lot of parents and children claimed that, hoping to seize rights to the money Alexander had left behind. This one actually did look a lot like Alexander. He even had the same sort of dark grey and fur-lined coat on.

"And this is Remiel." She pointed to a red-head kid. Probably a pure blood angel then, as rare as that was. There were only like eight female angels for certain unexplained reasons, but you'd be hard pressed to find an angel naming their halfbreed child an angelic name. They were too stuck up about their naming culture to do that.

"Right." I said, nodding. "So what do you want with me?"

Amy paused, and then grinned. "We're RC! The Rainbow coalition! Together, we have two hellhounds, and two pure angels, an angel from two fallen angels, and a halfie,. A full spectrum of representation, the RC aims to create change and justice and leave our mark on the society of Hell!" Amy rattled off her speech like it had been rehearsed carefully.

I smiled and probably gave a small laugh. "Okay, okay. Who's who then?"

Amy looked shocked. "Me and Ivy are the angels. You know, don't we kind of look it?"

I shook my head. "Not really."

"Well, we are. Right from the most noble house of Lexington." She seemed very proud of her family name. It took me a moment to place it.

"Oh, like the top angels. You're two of their kids."

Amy seemed further irritated. "My name is Amrael, most loved, the single daughter of the-" She started rattling off some angelic words so fast I couldn't even try to dissect their meaning. "Michael!"

"Oh, yeah, I know him."

Vaguely. The arch-angel Michael was nothing like the Christian one- or, maybe I should take a step back and say 'the angels were nothing like the Christian ones'. Or any other culture's angels, for that matter. Sometimes I thought I heard them toss around words like 'principality' or 'ophanim', but they seemed to do so at random. Only seraphim seemed to carry the technically accurate weight it should have.

Michael was the arch-angel seraph, the leader of the angels. A whole bunch of angels really loved him, and then there were waves that hated him, and then there were fallen angels that also loved or hated him... he seemed to be one of those people everyone had to have a sharp opinion on. You couldn't be neutral about Michael Lexington. It just wasn't allowed to happened.

I had never seen him before on TV, or really heard much discussion about him beyond 'oh yeah, Michael, that asshole' from some of my coworkers. The little I knew probably wouldn't be appropriate to relay back to his daughter.

"That's a very uninterested response." Amy said. "Anyway, we need you to go to Earth and find a few people for us because we're not allowed outside of Hell."

I sighed. I could feel myself smiling. A lot of people like working with grade-schoolers, but I was drawn more towards middle and high schoolers. They were annoying as hell, often, but their bravado was admirable. "Sure. Who are we looking for?"

"Well!" Amy turned for a moment to look at her gang with excitement. "The end of the cycle festivities is going to have this big showy meeting. And we wanted to surprise everyone by rounding up some special guests for the night. So we need you to track down Alexander Scott, Mannie Avila, Malphea, Hih, Lucky Lexington, uh, couple others as well."

"That's quite a lot of people to bring on as guests."

"Just Alexander and Mannie then." Alex said. "We don't really need your aunt and Moll's kids."

"It'd be cool though." Amy said. She turned towards me. "Do you know about them? My dad hates his sister, and tried to kill these kids, so if I brought them on stage he'd probably freak out."

I snorted. She was doing this just to rebel against her father? Honestly, it figured. "What about the other two?"

Ivy was stone cold in her speech. "I know you're new to Hell, but honestly, you don't know what's so important about Mannie and Alexander?"

"No, I know the whole Alexander thing. Never heard of Mannie though. And you guys do realize Alexander killed himself fourteen years ago, right?"

Ivy spoke again. "Well, from what I've heard behind closed doors, he isn't actually dead."

"Fine, he faked it somehow." I said. "How do you expect me to track these people down?"

"Once you're on Earth, and asking around, you'll find them. That's why you're so special- Martin, is it?"

"Oh. Yeah. You want me to just run up there right now? Maybe they'll find me if I stand still long enough."

"This'll work!" Amy exclaimed. "Ug. Look, we have a hideout down in the Eastern block, north-west quarter, street one. The building still has 'CFA' on the door. Come by if you need any help or whatever."

"So you do want me to go right now?"

Amy looked at me with shock. "Yeah. Right now. Come on, this won't take very long."

She turned around on her heel, and the rest of the Coalition turned with her.

I was left alone, and with enough spare time that I reconsidered my position. Amy and her gang were cute and all, but probably shouldn't be sneaking around and asking adults to track down dead men. I decided the most responsible thing to do was alert her father of her actions, and let him handle it from there.

Except her father was exceedingly famous, redefining the concept of a cult celebrity. This would make it both easier and harder for me to track him down.

Angels had been placed in apartments throughout the city, with the intention of not creating one or two neighborhoods devoted to them. However, certain districts had been claimed by them anyway. One neighborhood- it's name too laborious and too filled with cardinal directions to recreate here- was home to a traditional angelic bathhouse. It was the only one in the city. I hadn't ever been there, but it was one of those places you heard gossip about anyways.

The place was open to demons, but few came by. The place was always too littered with some of the more loyal angels for that. I figured if Michael wasn't there himself, one of the angels would know how to contact him. Assuming they'd even speak to me.

The building the bathhouse was in was actually three apartment buildings stuck next to each other. Walls had been torn down to create one large and long room that was converted into a tiled bathhouse.

Angels littered the premises, characterized by their long and unmoving stares, and the fact that so many of them were attractive. I always felt kind of inadequate around them, seeing as most were fit and eternally youthful men who had two hundred years of wisdom to work off of, and I could stand to lose a few pounds and had never learned to lace my shoes.

The attendant by the door didn't speak to me as I went in, so I figured it was free. The next area was a sort of locker room. While I wasn't planning to bathe, I thought it'd probably upset them if I went in fully clothed. I was really too self conscious of my body to take off my clothes around other people, and debated simply waiting outside the door for a few hours instead. I didn't have any swim clothes either, so I was left in my underwear. I quickly wrapped a towel around my waist and hoped that sufficed.

As I was doing so, an angel came up to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I about leapt in the air because holy shit who grabs a stranger by the shoulder when he's undressing?

"Traditional, vis?" The angel said. "Tuesdays and Thursdays." The angel then left.

Right. Angels bathed naked because they came from some elitist fake roman society where sexuality didn't exist. Except it obviously was free to exist now, meaning they only did things traditionally a few days a week.

God. This stupid idea of telling on a freshman for skipping school was going to kill me.

I took off my shorts as fast as humanly possible and rewrapped the towel. Considering I wasn't actually going to get into the water, this was probably unneeded move. I guess I was just afraid that angel would come back again.

I entered the bathhouse and tried not to make eye contact. There was no way every angel knew every angel, but they probably could tell I wasn't one of them. The bathhouse was arranged so that there were these tiny little pools everywhere, so one might hang exclusively with their friends in groups of about ten. At the very back, there was one larger pool for those alone.

I realized if I really was looking for Michael- and I might as well, considering I was 'in too deep' at this point- I did have to look down. And around.

There were more naked men than I had ever seen in my life, and it sort of made it hard for me to concentrate. I was still determined not to make eye contact, but they all seemed to be staring at me. Probably because I kept wandering aimlessly and not finding a place to get in.

There were a few women here, and a few demons as well. I heard my voice suddenly from among the mumblings of angelic. "Martin!" I looked over and found an angel I recognized, one of Halbeth's friends. "What quid are you doing here?"

"What?" I said back without thinking. Angels were constantly mixing their languages, often with nonsensical results. I had never studied latin, but people assured me that was roughly what they were speaking. Except worse, and terribly inaccurate. The only thing I knew was 'vis' mostly because every angel couldn't stop using it. It meant something like 'you see', and many threw the sound in at the end of all of their sentences.

"Come here." I didn't know the angel's name, but I was thankful I had a destination to walk towards.

"Hi." I said when I came to his pool. Several other angels were also sitting in it, and they made space for me. I made no movement to join them.

"Come sit." The angel said.

"No, I'm leaving soon."

A couple of the other angels picked up a conversation in angelic. My stomach turned, imaging they were likely making fun of me.

"I've never seen you here before."

"I don't plan to make a habit of it. I'm looking for Michael."

Someone laughed. "He's not going to see you."

"...Yeah, I should have figured as much. I just wanted to tell him I saw his daughter today, and I thought he should know a few things about what she told me."

"Michael-car doesn't have a daughter." One of the angels said.

"Okay, so there's someone running around pretending to be his daughter. That's a huge crime to you guys, right?"

The half of the group that was listening to me was quiet. "Look, vis, if you want to see him you can ask if he wants to see you. He always take the first private room for his own."

"Thanks." I said, looking over at the far wall. A few unmarked doors were spaced across it.

I walked over. Honestly, if the stares were terrible before- and they were- they got worse as I approached the door. I wasn't just a demon now, I was a demon who was trying to speak to Michael for some insane and inane reason.

I knocked on the door. There was no answer, so I put my ear to the door and tried again.

People were speaking in angelic on the other side. Were they ignoring me? I knocked for a third time.

Someone got up and came to the door. "What estne?"

"Uh. I'm here to talk to Michael?" I didn't have much more of a creative excuse.

The door opened immediately, surprisingly enough, and I was ushered in quickly so the door could be closed behind me.

There were five other people here. Michael was immediately recognizable in that he seemed to be the center of attention. Two women sat next to him, both seeming distinctly familiar, while the other men were all facing him.

He did not stop speaking for even a second when I entered the room, and did not look up at me.

"Oh." One of the girls said. "How'd I miss you entering?" She pointed towards me. She seemed to be a demon, though she had been speaking angelic. It took me a moment to recognize her- stupidly, I was distracted by seeing her naked. But she was definitely Christina McKean, one of those famous people always topping the tabloids. I wasn't really sure what she was famous for.

The other woman also may have been a demon- she had long red hair, and numerous scars that appeared to be halfway hidden through plastic surgery. I wasn't as sure about her identity, as I really rarely watched the news. I think she had a role in the government.

Michael stopped to look at me. He wasn't really... anything. He had white skin, somewhat tanned, and a swob of blond hair that he parted into one large swoop. He looked like this conservative christian kid I had once met in college who went to bed at eight thirty every night and thought woman shouldn't be allowed to wear shorts.

"What's up." He said. He had these really blue eyes that I guessed were nice enough, but honestly stood as the nicest looking thing about him. He didn't really glare at me like the other angels though. He seemed normal.

"I... ran into your daughter yesterday and today. She was trying to get me to find some people for her on Earth specifically to annoy you? Also she was likely skipping school."

"Not my problem." He said. "She lives with her mother, right? So not my problem to sort through. If she wants to fuck around, whatever, I don't have any responsibility."

So he was the classic 'absent father' type, huh? It was weird to actually remember he was a father though. He looked like a teenager.

"Who did Amy-" Christina pronounced it 'Ah-may'- "Want you to gather anyways?"

"She had this huge list. Her aunt, I think? And these kids. And then Alexander, who I tried to tell her was dead, and then someone named Mannie as well."

Michael sighed. "God, if you see her again, tell her I'm over Lucky. And the kids. And whoever the hell Mannie is."

Christina looked half bemused at Michael. "You're not." Then she turned to me. "But tell Amy that anyways, okay? We don't want anything to go wrong during the celebrations."

"Sure, okay. I guess I'll do that?"

"Tell her to stay in school, also!" Christina added as she thought of it. "And that she really needs to come by and talk with me again."

Michael mumbled something in angelic. Then he looked harshly at me. "Don't talk to me again, if you ever see me. It will not end well."

The red haired girl shushed him mid-way. "Don't threaten people, Michael. You know you shouldn't do that."

Michael sighed and turned his head up in exasperation. He said something in angelic. Curses, if my memory served me correctly.

"Don't use that word." Christina scolded.

"I'll just go then." I said. Michael snapped his fingers once, and again caught my eye. He didn't say a word, but the threat was understood.

He looked normal, but I became under the impression he was a chained up dog waiting to break free.