Punishment

Michael woke up sometime later, groaning in pain. His head hurt, his face hurt, his body hurt. Really, everything hurt. Sometimes people ask you where it hurts. Michael, in that moment, thought the better question to be “where doesn't it hurt?”

The answer was nowhere, of course. It hurt everywhere.

Which would make sense, as he'd just gotten the holy Heaven beaten out of him by a cadre of female angels.

Some people say “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” They would be wrong. It was actually “hell hath no fury like a woman who's been peeped on.”

It didn't help that he had been peeping on a horde of women.

After the ringing in his ears stopped, Michael finally realized where he was. If the large, ornately designed Corinthian columns did not tell him, then the ginormous thrown upon which God sat did. People called this place the Court of Heaven, but that was just an euphemism. Heaven had no court. God was judge, jury, and executioner.

“I demand justice!”

Blinking the spots from his eyes, Michael looked to his left, where he found himself staring at a pair of very lovely legs covered by a mid-thigh length bathrobe. They were pale, but not unhealthy pale. More of a fair pale. They were also very, well, leggy. There was a lot of leg to look at, and all of it was perfect.

He could stare at those legs for hours.

At least until they inevitably drew his eyes up.

Which they did.

After passing an equally perfect rear end (which was, most unfortunately, covered by a bathrobe), Michael looked up, up, up past a set of slender shoulders, an elegant neck, and onto a face that had literally been created by God to look perfect. Full, high cheek bones that contained a rosy hue, luscious red lips, a soft chin and regal features reminiscent to a fairy tale princess, Archangel Gabriel stood before God in all her sexy glory.

Well, maybe not all of her sexy glory. She wasn't naked, but that was besides the point.
“Justice?” a voice boomed.

Micheal’s attention was drawn from Gabriel to the gigantic throne upon which an equally gigantic figure sat. The throne, made from pure gold and decorated with intricate patterns that Michael knew were created in the shape of geometrically correct Galaxies, was, like all things made by God, a study in perfection. The man on top certainly didn't do things half-assed.

The archangel of the sword then looked at God himself. He couldn't really see much of the ruler of Heaven, mainly because all that could be seen of God was his silhouetted.

Michael knew the reason for that. While mortals believed God to have taken on the form of man, and that they were created in his image, the simple fact was that God had no image, no form. God was a concept. The concept of all creation. Born from nothing, the concept that had become known as God was the being who created everything. Beginning and end. Life and death. All things were one with God and God was one with all things. That was how it had been since the concept of Creator had been born from oblivion, and that was how it would remain until the darkness came back to claim everything.

“Yes,” Gabriel said to the jeering of several women, “justice.”

“And what is it that you want justice for?” asked God. “Does this justice have anything to do with Michael, covered in bruises, beaten and battered, and even now trying to stare up your bathrobe?”

Michael “eeped!” when Gabriel held a hand to her bathrobe, preventing him from seeing up it. That action wasn't the reason he “eeped” though. No, the cause for his mouse-like squeak was the vicious glare that Gabriel sent him when she did this. If looks could kill, Michael knew he would have been dead.

“You are correct, My Lord,” Gabriel said, hissing. “Michael is indeed the person we are seeking justice from. He has committed a grave sin.”

“A sin, you say?” God said. “That is a grave accusation. Do you have proof?”

“He was peeping on us!”

“That perverts a peeping Tom!”

“We caught him spying on us in the hot spring!”

“Down with the pervert!”

Many calls rang out, all of them either vilifying what he did, or demanding repentance. One of the angels there even began chanting “off with his head!” showing that she had clearly watched far too much Alice in Wonderland when she had been alive.

“Peeping you say?” God rumbled.

“Yes.” Gabriel nodded gravely. “Peeping. We caught him peeping on all of us while we were naked in the hot springs.”

“Ho? I see, I see.” God moved on his throne, shifting his position until he was leaning against the left armrest, his right hand coming to rest against his head. “Tell me, Michael... was it worth it?”

The question caused every single angel there, sans Michael, to fall flat on their faces.
As for Michael, well, he just gave God a large, perverted smile and a thumbs up. “It was worth every bruise, broken bone, and black eye I received.”

“You only have two eyes, you know.”

“And it was worth both of them.”

“I see. Well, good on you, I suppose. It is always nice to have a hobby, or so I have been told.”
Gabriel was the first to recover. “Don't encourage him, My Lord! This man is nothing but lecherous fool! He was peeping on us! He has committed a grave sin upon all of angel kind and must be punished!”

“Don't you think you're going a bit far, Gabby?”

“Shut up, Michael!” She spat. “And don't call me 'Gabby!'”

God was silent for a moment, then rumbled again. “Yes, I suppose you are correct. Archangel Michael has indeed committed a grave sin. Peeping goes against one of the many commandments that I wrote on the tablet I had given to Moses and commanded he give to his people.”

“No, it isn't!” Now it was Micheal’s turn to shout.

God paused. “It isn't?”

“Of course not! You only created ten commandments! Thou shalt have no other god before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is in earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not take the name of my Lord thy God in vain. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Honour thy father and thy mother. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. And thou shalt not covet.”

Michael knew the ten commandments by heart. He had been there when God had given them. That was back when he was younger and not perverted, so he had been able to focus on the act of God giving Moses those commandments at the time and not the group of half-naked, dirty women several miles below.

Upon Michael finishing his task of listing off the ten commandments, God leaned back on his throne. “Hmm. How odd. I could have swore I also put 'Thou shalt not peep' on them as well. I wonder, perhaps I had actually written twenty commandments, and Moses simply dropped the other ten.”

“No, he didn't! There were only ten commandments!”

“Ah, well then, I guess you are correct. Still...” God rubbed his chin. “I believe peeping would fall under 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' wouldn't you agree?”

“No.” Michael shook his head. “Adultery is the voluntary act of sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not his or her spouse. There was no sex involved and I'm not married, so I didn't commit adultery.”

“Hmm...” God made thinking noises, which caused the court to rumble and shake. “Yes,” he said, finally. “You are correct again, Michael. You did not commit adultery.” God then “turned” to look at Gabriel, who was standing in the same spot she had been, gaping like an idiot while Michael and God debated what was and wasn't one of the Ten Commandments. “I am sorry, Gabriel. But I'm not exactly sure what you want me to do. He did not commit any sin, so...”

“Did not commit any sin!?” Gabriel shrieked, snapping out of her stupor at last. “He peeped on me and the other angels here! He was caught blatantly ogling our naked flesh! He saw the most sacred places on our bodies! And none of us are married to him! Surely, that is a sin of the highest order!”

“Yeah!”

“She's right!”

“OFF WITH HIS HEAD!”

God raised a hand for silence, which he got.

When God wanted silence, you gave God silence.

“Hmm...”

More thinking noises.

The pause was longer this time, too.

“Michael,” God intoned, his voice stern. “I am sorry, but Gabriel and the others are right. Though you have not broken one of the Ten Commandments, you have still sinned.”

“What!?” Michael was gaping now. “But you just said that no sin was committed! Don't go back on your words now!”

“And because you have sinned you must be punished.” God ignored Michael. “Therefore, I have decided on an appropriate punishment for you to repent for your sins.”

“When did you decide on this?!”

“You shall hereby be stripped of your title as Archangel.”

“WHAT!?”

“The only way for you to regain your title is to prove that you have truly learned your lesson.”
“What lesson am I supposed to be learning here?!”

“Furthermore, you shall be henceforth cast out of Heaven until such a time as you have fully repented for your sins.”

“You're sending me out of Heaven!? But all I did was peek on a couple of women!”

“From now on, you shall live on earth as a human. This is my punishment!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Michael saw Gabriel, her lips curved upwards in a delightfully sexy yet vicious smirk. He growled at her. “Gabriel, you are such a―”

Michael never got to finish what he wanted to say.

Because the clouds that he was standing on had, quite suddenly, vanished. And he didn't have his wings out.

Michael, former archangel of heaven, descended to earth with a loud, keening wail.