OK, here's the final version of Chapter 1.  Tell me what you think.  

I need some advice for some later parts of the story.  Please check the end
for details.


Oh! My Brother!

All Oh! My Goddess (Ah! My Goddess, Aa! Megami-sama, whatever) characters
owned by the people who own them.  I'm poor, don't sue me.

***

Did I mention I really hate Mondays?  I don't mean like some people hate
lima beans, I'm talking a full fledged, berserker rage, MUST KILL kind of
hate.

With my job, you'd think I'd get over it.  I mean, they don't care when I
work, just as long as they get their 40 hours a week out of me and I'm
there for every meeting.  Nice, hey?

Unfortunately, my PRICK of a manager sets our weekly meetings at 8:30
Monday morning.  That means I'm up at 6:30.  I used to get a kick out of
seeing the sun rise, now it just pisses me off.

Anyway, enough with the ranting.  So there I am, sitting at my computer,
wishing death upon my manager and the corporation in general while I read
my email.  At my side is my ever-present bottle of Diet Coke.  Most people
snicker at it, but when they realize that I drink about two liters a day,
they shut up.  Some people have coffee, I have my cola.

So I'm looking at my mail, and I find this message:

   Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 08:18:36
   From: Goddess Relief Office <helpme@relief.heaven.gov>
   Subject: Your Request
   To: Christopher J Angel <cangel@comtel.ca>

   Your request for aid has been granted.  A representative 
   will contact you at the earliest possible convenience.

   Goddess Relief Office

I read it a few times, and then did the same action I reserve for all goofy
email messages.  I filed it with the delete key and promptly forgot all
about it.

Not the wisest action, now that I think about it...

***

The true meaning of that little message didn't hit me until later that day,
when I was trying to make my dinner at home.  Emphasis on trying.  I'm a
pretty lousy cook at the best of times, and I tend to eat out a lot to
compensate.  The one thing I can make, however, is pasta.  And what do you
need for pasta?  Boiling water.

Needless to say, I was pretty damn surprised when a barely teenaged girl
climbed out of the pot and fell into my arms.  I was even more surprised
when she screamed and hammered me on the head with her overgrown croquet
mallet, knocking me out.

I woke up a few minutes later, laid out on the couch.  The shrimp was
screaming into the phone.  The first thing I wondered was how the hell a
five-foot-nothing kid who probably weighed 100 pounds at worst got a
six-foot-four, 250 pound giant like me from the kitchen to the living room.
 The second thing I wondered was if that call she was making was local. 
The third thing I wondered was why my head felt like someone had been using
it as an anvil.

The kid was cute, I'll give her that.  She was wearing some weird red and
white clothes that looked like a cross between formal clothes and a lab
coat.  She had these weird markings on her face, a blue-yellow rounded
triangle on her forehead and two similiar marks on her cheekbones.  Her
hair was long and black and ran down to the small of her back.  The cowlick
she had going was a riot, though.

Me, being the rational and eloquent guy I am, groaned and said, "What the
hell is going on?"  The kid saw I was awake and said something into the
phone, and hung it up.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said.  "I was surprised!"  She
looked disgusted and muttered something that sounded like "I've got to stop
doing that." 

I put my hand to my forhead and winced at the round bruise I felt. 
"Umm...before I call the cops, who the hell are you and what the HELL is
going on?!"

"I'm the Goddess Skuld, and I'm here to grant you one wish," she said
formally.

A bit of my mythology classes came back to me.  "Skuld?  As in Urd,
Verthandi and Skuld?  The Norns?"  I was shocked.  I was amazed.  I still
hadn't clued into that wish portion.  What can I say, sometimes I'm dense. 
"You've got to be joking."

"That's BELLdandy," she corrected pointedly.  "One cough and everyone takes
it as gospel.  So what do you want to wish for?"

Like I said, sometimes I'm dense.  "Wish?  Oh...yeah."  I thought for a few
seconds.  "What can I get?"  Hey, I'm no idiot most of the time.  I was
going to avoid the 'w' word like the plague until I decided.

Skuld sighed.  "Anything you want.  You could wish to be rich, or to be
popular with women, you could even wish to end the world."  She paused. 
"But if you're that kind of person you wouldn't get a wish."

The concept stunned me for a moment.  "Well, I wouldn't want to end the
world, that would kind of include ending ME, wouldn't it?"  The idea of
criteria for wish-getting was kind of intriguing, but something else
bothered me.  "Hey, if you're the goddess of the future," I still hadn't
quite got the handle on that, "shouldn't you have better things to do? 
Like worrying about creation or something?"

Skuld smiled brightly at me.  "Nope, we've got Yggdrasil to do that, it's
got more than enough processing power."

If I was a dog, my ears would have perked.  "Processing power?  The
universe runs on a computer?"  I liked that idea.  It seemed somehow
comforting to me, until I remembered computers crash.  "What happens if it
crashes?"

"Bad things," Skuld said simply, in a tone that suggested she didn't want
to talk about it.  "Now what do you want?"  She asked impatiently.

I was silent for a long time.  What do I wish for?  I mean, I had to assume
it was real, it's not every day a kid jumps out of a pot of water.  I kind
of felt that I should be careful, since what I wish for could change my
life.  The idea of being irresistable to women appealed to me.  I wasn't
exactly a date magnet after all.  But the romantic in me made me stop. 
Something to improve myself?  I dismissed that just as quickly.  If I
became better in some way, I'd want to do it myself.  Every time I came
upon a wish I liked, something held me back.

I finally shook my head.  "I don't know.  I can't really decide."  A
solution occured to me.  "Maybe you can tell me about some of the wishes
you've seen, that might help."  Hey, if you can't come up with an idea,
steal someone else's.

Skuld smiled.  "Who could it hurt?" she said.  She started to tell me of
various wishes she had seen people make.  Some of them were ridiculous,
some of them made far too much sense (although the concept of Bill Gates as
a wish recipient still gives me shivers).  Skuld finished by telling me
about Keichii Morisato, and the wish he made with her sister, Belldandy.

Let me tell you a little something about myself.  I like kids, kids like
me.  Especially the ones between the ages of around 8 and 14.  (No, not
that way you sicko.)  They're fun people at that age.  I mean, older than
that and you have to start treating them like adults, younger and they're
too little to understand you.  But that age is fun.  As Skuld talked, I
found myself forgetting her godhood (or goddesshood?) and just treating her
as a young girl.

NOT one of the wisest things I've done.

When Skuld finished, I couldn't help but ask her some questions.  I guess
'big brother' mode had kicked in.  "You really care for your sister, don't
you?"  Skuld nodded wordlessly.  "You're afraid that this Keichii guy is
going to make her unhappy?"  She nodded again.  "Skuld, you respect your
sister a lot, let her make her own choices.  From what you tell me, she and
Keichii love each other a great deal.  Think of it as gaining a brother,
not losing a sister."  Skuld smiled at me, and not thinking, I said the
words that changed my life.  "You know, I wish I had a sister like you."

Skuld almost screamed as she suddenly began to glow with a brilliant white
light.  She floated of the ground, energy flowing around her and through
me, filling the room.  The energy shot from her straight up into the
ceiling and into the sky.  Must have been quite a shock to the people in
the apartments above mine.

Skuld floated back to the ground.  "Wish approved," she said, disbelief on
her face and in her voice.

I did the most logical thing for me to do at that time.  I fainted.

***

Now, one of my favorite things to do is sleep.  Well, that's not quite
true.  I like GOING to sleep.  Sleep itself is no great hell, it's just an
8-hour blank spot with commercials.  Waking up is kind of fun too, except
when you're woken up by loud noise.  Like oh, say, an alarm.  Or in this
case, two women and a girl arguing.

I cracked open my eyes.  There was Skuld, involved in a shouting match with
two of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen.  After all I've gone through
I'm still struck by that every once in a while.  

The first one my eyes focussed on I figured had to be Belldandy.  She was
shorter than me at about five and a half feet.  She had light brown hair,
and wore what was, well, housewife clothing.  The whole nine yards, from
the apron to the pretty frilly dress.  She had beautiful blue eyes and
similar marks to Skuld on her face, but the one on her forhead was a long
diamond.  The hair spikes that looked funny on Skuld worked on her.  The
first word that came to my mind was 'angel.'  She was purity personified.

The first word that came to my mind when I saw Urd was 'hot.'  Other words
quickly followed that one, but I don't think they're for public
consumption.  If Belldandy was purity personified, Urd was sexuality
personified.  She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and somehow looked
nude at the same time.  She was built like a model, correction, like a
model WISHES she was built.  She had dark skin, silver hair, and her
forehead marking was of an inverted triangle.  That cowlick thing the girls
had looked, well, erotic on Urd.  Suffice it to say Urd could make the Pope
think impure thoughts.

While I was watching the shouting match, this shrimp of a guy showed up. 
I'm secure enough in my manhood to say the guy was pretty handsome.  Hell,
if being as short as him was a price to pay for looking that good, I'd have
paid it in a minute.  To be truthful, he looked like he was in his mid
teens.  He had black hair.  I figured he was that Keichii guy.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not obsessed with height.  It's just that
when you're as tall as me you get kind of used to having a crink in your
neck from having to look down at people.  As a result, your first
observation on meeting anyone is their height, especially in relation to
your own.  (But then, almost everyone's shorter than me.  I'm the only
person to get away with calling Thor 'Shorty'.)

Back to the arguing trio, who had stopped and were looking me over.  Time
for some witty reparte from yours truly.  "Uh...hi?"  Urd gave me a kind of
sulty grin.

"At least he's cute," she said to Skuld, who shot her venomous look.

That one rocked me.  Let's be honest here, Fabio I wasn't.  I was white
like a sheet and freckled all over.  My nose was too big, my ears stuck
out, and I wore some THICK glasses.  I've had girls tell me I'm kind of
handsome, but cute never came into the conversation.  Not to mention the
fact that I was pretty overweight.  I didn't have some big beer belly, but
I'd say roughly 20% of my body mass was fat.  So what did I do?  I laughed.

I guess it was hysteria.  Well, give me a break.  I just discovered gods
exist, quite a shock for someone in the 'not sure' camp like me.  Not to
mention I just met Norse gods, of all things, hot ones, and that I just saw
a pretty impressive light show.  Add on to that the fact I just woke up
somewhere I had never been before.  Add to that the fact that the hottest
woman I had ever seen in my life just called me cute, and you'll have a
general idea of what I was going through.

The goddesses watched me, shocked, as I continued to laugh, eventually
running out of breath and silently shaking.  Eventually Urd sighed and
slapped me, bringing me out of it.  "Thanks," I said as I caught my breath.
 "Someone mind telling me where the hell I am?  And what's going on?" I
asked, barely containing the hysteria.

Urd answered me.  I could tell from her tone she wasn't impressed with the
concept.  "Congratulations, Chris.  You're a god."

I fought down the laughter that was rising up in me, and my ribs thanked me
for it.   Keichii, I noticed, gaped.  I opted for confusion.  Hey, when all
else fails, be an engineer.  "Wouldn't that fall under the same heading as
'ending the world'?  A wish that would be not approved?"

Skuld scowled at me.  "Yeah, but with your stupid slip of the tongue, it
got through the approval process."  I was in her bad books again.  I didn't
notice, the engineer in me was still focussed the problem in front of me.

"It scares me that a wish like that got through the process."  I shook my
head in dismay.  "That means either someone programmed Ydggrasil shoddily,
something is very wrong, or it wasn't a mistake."  Let's just say, at the
time, I knew quite a bit about programming very complex systems.  More on
that later.

"It's not the programming," Belldandy said sharply.  Urd looked at her with
a bit of surprise.  I didn't find out till later that the current version
of the code was Belldandy's last project.  I guess someone was a little
defensive, hey?

Engineer Chris was still on a roll.  I'm a bit single minded at times. 
Nobody's perfect.  "And since people aren't supposed to be able to wish for
godhood, so..."

"Something is wrong," Skuld concluded.  Like her words were a cue, there
was a bright flash of light from outside, and thunder rolled.  The
goddesses and Keichii ran out to the back yard.  Curious, I followed.

They were standing around what looked like a plaque on the ground.  As I
got closer I realized the words were burned into the ground.  "What's it
say?"  Keichii asked.

"Notice to Urd, Belldandy, and Skuld:  Return to Heaven immediately and
report to Me upon arrival.  Bring Christopher Angel with you.  Signed,
Kami-sama," Urd read.  She suddenly grinned.   "PS.  Yes, Belldandy, you
can bring Keichii."  Belldandy blushed.

Skuld grabbed my hand and began dragging me into the house.  She was pretty
strong for a kid.  She took me into the bathroom, where a bath was drawn. 
"Come on, let's go."  She jumped into the bath, and disappeared THROUGH the
water.  Surprised, I toppled forward.

I've travelled with a lot of gods and goddesses, but no one's medium
bothers me as much as Skuld's.  It's the most terrifying and uncomfortable
experience I've ever had to go through.  If you ever want to know what it's
like, go find a swimming pool, find the 5 meter diving board, and jump off
feet first.  There's a moment of almost complete weightlessness right after
you hit the water and right before you come back to the surface.  To me,
anyway, it's disorienting.  Travelling with Skuld is like feeling that for
five minutes straight.  My surroundings were not big on my list of concerns
when we got to Heaven.  Keeping my lunch down, however, was.

Belldandy, Keichii and Urd appeared beside me.  Urd gave me a look of
sympathy.  "Next time grab a lift with Belldandy.  It's easier on the
stomach."

"Thanks for the advice," I said, and regained control of my stomach.  I
finally decided to look around, and was stunned by what I saw.

Belldandy tells me He must have been trying to impress me, since I've never
seen Heaven look like that again.  It makes sense, I suppose, since it's
not every day a new god shows up.  For my part, I think He was trying to
impress Keichii.  Dads always want to impress (and terrify) their
daughter's boyfriends, right?  He won't confirm or deny either theory.  The
popular opinion is it's both.

Words just can't describe what I saw that day properly.  Imagine a great
city, each building made of the purest platinum, glowing with a light just
shy of blinding.  Gods and mortal spirits mingled with abandon.  Everywhere
I looked, there was happiness and beauty.  We stood on a wide road, and
Valkries lines the street.  At the end of the road, there stood a great
golden palace which gave off a warm, cleansing light.

Well, words can't describe Heaven, but they can describe Valkries.  Take
your perfect woman.  Put her in shining silver armor that's anything but
protective and just shy of indecent.  Give her a big, nasty looking
halberd.  That's a Valkrie.  What can I say, Heaven was a NICE place.

We walked down the street, and reached the palace almost instantly.  We
were greeted by Valkries at the gate, and led through halls lined with
great works of art.  (Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Norns' is still one of my
favorites.)  After a few minutes of walking, we were finally brought to
Him.

Whatever Heaven may look like, the Head Office always looks the same.  Take
a 20 meter by 20 meter room.  Paint the walls white.  Put a picture of the
earth from space on the wall away from the door.  Put a plain ash desk in
the room, with a computer terminal at one side, and a gumball machine on
the other.  (Don't ask.)  Put a big, comfortable looking velvet swivel
chair behind the desk.  That's the Head Office.

In the chair sat Him.  Kami-sama.  God.  Jupiter.  Buddah.  You name a
supreme being, that's Him.  At that time He was in His Odin form.  He
reminded me of an offensive lineman.  He had a long, bushy, grey beard,
that flowed into His long hair.  He wore stained battle-leathers, and an
eyepatch.  His craggy face was neutral.  I expected someone taller.

OK, maybe I AM obsessed with height.

"Greetings, my Norns.  Greetings, Keichii Morisato, beloved of Belldandy." 
I noted Belldandy blushed again, and there was a twinkle in Odin's eye. 
Keichii was speechless, awed by the being before him.  Hell, I was
speechless.  "Greetings, Christopher Angel, God of Moments, brother to the
Norns."

"God of Moments?  What does that mean, oh Lord?"  Odin's eye twinkled at my
words, and I grimaced in embarrasement.  There I was, making a fool of
myself in front of the most powerful being in creation.  Not the type of
first impression you want to make.  "Forgive me, do you have a prefered
form of address?"

Odin smiled.  "Please, whatever you are most comfortable with,
Christopher."

I don't know what made me say the next thing I did, but apparently, it was
something right.  I just suddenly grinned and said, "Sure thing, Boss."

Yep.  You heard me.  I just called Him 'Boss'.  Belldandy and Skuld gasped,
and Keichii looked an inch from fainting.  Even Urd paled.  Odin laughed,
long and hard.

"Boss!" he roared.  "Excellent.  'Boss' it is," he said, and slipped back
into his calm demeanor.  "You, Christopher Angel, are the God of Moments. 
That period between Past and Present, Present and Future, Future and
Forever."

Sounds neat, don't it?  It probably would have had more of an impact on me
if I wasn't an engineer.  Not thinking, I blurted out, "Isn't that kind of
impossible, Boss?"  He smiled a bit wider at 'Boss.'  I think He gets a
kick out of the way it scandalizes the other gods.  I humor Him. 
Obsequeousness probably grates on a guy after a few millennia.  "I mean,
the Present is precicely that, the crossover from what will be to what
was."

Odin's smile shrank a little, and he sighed.  "You're thinking like a
mortal."  *Shut up and play along.*  I shut up and played along.  Did I
mention He's telepathic?   He turned to the others.  "You will be
responsible for training him with his powers.  For this reason, I have
lifted your suspension, Urd."  He gave her a stern look.  "Do NOT
disappoint me."  He turned to His terminal.  "You are dismissed."  The
goddesses bowed, and I emulated them.  Keichii was still frozen.  Just
before we left, He called out.  "Belldandy, please stay for a moment."  She
helped Keichii out of the room and re-entered.

We waited for a few moments until Belldandy exited the office.  She was
blushing furiously, and was trying not to look at Keichii.  I figured it
was one of 'those' talks.  THe Valkries started to lead us out of the
castle.  As we passed a mirror, I caught my reflection.  What I saw was the
straw that broke the camel's back.  I screamed in horror.

The person looking back at me from the mirror wasn't me.

***

OK, here's what I need some help with:

Where to put Chris's Class?  I can see arguments for each Class.  Class 3
would make sense since he's a new god.  Class 2 or Class 1 would arguably
work better, since one of Chris's duties/titles will be 'Protector of the
Norns' (hey, what are brothers for?).

Thanks for the help.

--
Christopher Angel
cja124@mail.usask.ca      http://www.engr.usask.ca/~cja124
-The road to hell is paved with good intentions. -Old proverb.
-People forget that the same road leads to heaven. -Response