Yue

29th October

14:21 GMT +1

"…pretty sure Catherine wouldn't share that opinion."

"Why, what was wrong with it?"

Donna frowns at me as if I've said something bewilderingly stupid. "You deliberately picked a fight with your audience, then you had to use your ring to make them stop shouting."

"Yes, exactly. They had to stake their colours to the mast, then have me play a recording of an angel saying that the things that made them do that actually weren't a problem. Meaning they are, by their own terms, in the wrong."

"They don't think like that, Paul."

"True, but like the fellow in 'Thank You For Smoking' said: I wasn't after them. Unless I suddenly converted to.. some branch of Christianity or.. started my own, I was never going to keep the Christian religious right's approval. But I could give them a platform to publically demonstrate their hypocrisy, so that's what I did."

"Alright: I don't think like that."

"Do you believe that I should have let Satanus kill Blaze?"

"No."

"Do you believe that I should have helped Blaze hide somewhere where she would continue to help people damn themselves to sustain her magic?"

Donna sets her jaw. "No."

"Do you think that I should have killed her myself? Because Adom-."

"Paul."

I twitch my mouth, giving the impression that I'm trying not to laugh. "You're getting really good at doing the 'Diana' voice."

"I'm basically a clone of her. I can probably do her exact voice."

"I'll make sure to get you larger bras for Christmas, then."

Her eyes widen very slightly. "I-. Er, no what?"

"Okay, but I've seen Diana's old pictures, and if you're basically a clone-."

"Would you offer to get Kon a bigger jockstrap!?"

I blink. Yes, but… "Kon.. isn't ever going to grow, so, no. He also prefers boxer shorts-."

"What do you mean?"

"Er, Kon, not going to grow?" She nods. "It's because of how the genomorphs assembled his chimeric tissues. His hair gets longer, and.. eventually it'll go grey-" Probably. "-but that's about it. He'll always be shorter than Kal-El. Actually, he'll.. probably end up being the shortest man on the team. Unless Helios decides to do something about it."

"Why haven't you?"

"Because he's healthy and happy. I can use my power ring to.. alter people in all sorts of ways. But… I'm.. still surprised that Kon works as well as he does-. You know, as a biological organism. Of all the ways I could think of to.. alter him, none of them were… There isn't a solution that's simple and good. Nothing that just fixes the problem. Inasmuch as being at the lower end of 'average' height is a problem."

"And… What about Match?"

"Minimal chimerism. And I think Jor-El might be going to remove that. Aside from the eyes, he'll end up looking just like Kal-El."

"Okay." She nods. "But none of that makes it okay for you to make cracks about my breasts."

"I wasn't making a crack, I was making a light-hearted observation. Based on the similarities-."

"Well don't do that either."

I nod. "Noted." We begin our descent onto the volcanic soil of Mount Etna. "Am I allowed to make comments about shaving, on the grounds that I know Kon and Kal-El shave?"

"I'll.. allow it." She lands, just ahead of me. "Can we go back to talking about you offending three major world religions and how that isn't a good idea?"

"Actually, we'd moved on to how it offended you, which was why I attempted a light-hearted deflection. But alright: what do you think I should have done?"

"Asked Zauriel if you could have a fruit when you saw him in the Garden of Eden."

"So you don't have a problem with the Gabriel part of the story?"

"Yes, I have a problem with it, but that had already happened and wasn't anything to do with you. I don't… There are places that have compulsory organ donation and I don't mind that, so… Using his wings when he can't use them any more isn't necessarily bad."

"Alright, but what happens after he says no?"

"He said that he didn't have a problem with you giving her the fruit. Why would he say 'no'?"

"Because he doesn't have the authority to say 'yes'. Regardless of what he thinks of the idea-" And I'm momentarily reminded of many years ago when I worked at Asda, and a man asked me why I wasn't discounting nearly out of date fruit. "-he wouldn't do it without appropriate authorisation."

Her shoulders tense slightly. "And you don't think God would let you save a demon?"

"I don't remember him saying anything about getting orders from any god. Zauriel said that he was going to inform his king."

"Yes. That's God."

"No, the way he spoke about his god was different to the way he spoke about his king. And he directly stated that his instructions did not come from the Mind of God."

"Maybe if anyone had heard the full transcript I'd know that! This is the problem with anyone telling you what you should have done: no one knows everything you know! You don't tell anyone!"

"Not.. unreasonable. But you need to understand, the Source is not some.. sort of.. super powered Morgan Freeman. It isn't Highfather Izaya, who can do a decent impression of what most people think when they hear capital 'g' god. No one really knows why it does things or -beyond certain obvious things- that it's even what's doing them. I wouldn't even want to claim any degree of certainty that it created the Silver City."

"The Source? That's what you call God?"

"That's the most common name across the universe for the singular almighty divine power, believed to in some sense be physically located on the other side of the Source Wall. 'God' is a fairly generic name, easy to confuse with the class of being that the Source is not a part of."

"Okay, let's… Leave that. Why don't you think Zauriel's king would have said 'yes'?"

"Because Fawcett City. Because.. every atrocity ever committed, including the ones committed by them. I don't know what instructions they're operating under, or what they consider an appropriate time to intervene, but I've got enough evidence at this point to determine that it isn't the same as the one I use."

"Am I..?" Hephaestus waves his right hand as we look around. "Intruding? I thought we had a meeting, but to be honest this sounds a whole lot more interesting.