Shopping wit

“Did you really have to hit me?” Michael complained as he and Alice walked down the street. According to Alice, they were on their way to Ralph's, some kind of store thingy that sold food, which was apparently the stuff they ate, which Alice called eggs. “That really hurt, you know. I think my nose might even be broken.”

“Serves you right, saying all that weird stuff to me.” Though she said this, Alice absolutely refused to look his way for some reason. Her head was turned, staring at something on the other side of the street.

“What's wrong with what I said?” asked Michael, confused. He thought people enjoyed being complimented. Whenever he led his armies into battle, he always told them they did an excellent job afterward. They seemed to like that. Why didn't she? It must be a girl thing. All Gabriel had done when he complimented her fighting skills was huff and look away, too. “All I said was that you're―”

“I know what you said,” Alice cut him off, her tone cracking like a whip. “And I don't want you saying it again. You got me?”

“No, I don't got you. Why don't you want me saying it again?”

Alice stopped, forcing him to stop as well. He peered down at the girl to see her head tilted towards the ground. She was staring at her feet, he noticed, one of which had taken to drawing a figure eight along the hard, gray walkway. He would have asked Alice what that stuff was, but, well, he still didn't want her calling him an idiot.

The girl mumbled something, which he couldn't hear. Frowning, Michael leaned forward. “I'm sorry, did you say something?” She mumbled again, louder this time, but still unintelligible. “Do you think could you enunciate a little more clearly? I couldn't―”

“I said I don't want you saying something like that because it's embarrassing! There! Are you happy now!?”

Michael reared back as the girl shouted in his ear. He stumbled several steps, his ears ringing and his mind jumbled. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the ringing in his ears decided to be stubborn. It refused to leave.

He stuck his pinky in his left ear. Maybe if he cleaned it out, that would work. It didn't, but by that point, the ringing had faded and he was left blinking as his balance found itself promptly restored.

“I-I'm sorry, but could you repeat that? I had a strange ringing in my ear and couldn't hear you.”

“Are you having it out with me?” Alice growled, her voice throaty and menacing. “Because if you are, I swear to God, I'll―”

“First, please do not use the Lord's name in vain,” Michael said, holding up his hand. “Second, why would I be having anything out with you? I was simply asking you to repeat your words because I couldn't hear them. Which is strange because I'm sure you were shouting.”

Alice, upon hearing his words, flushed red and looked away. “Y-you were obviously hearing things. Now come on! I have to do some shopping, and I don't want to waste anymore time standing around here.”

“But you were the one who stopped walking,” Michael pointed out. His words earned him a fist to the head. “Samkiet!”

“Stop talking and start moving!”

~The Archangel Michael~

Michael had never been to a place like Ralph's before. Granted, there were a lot of places he'd never been to, even up in Heaven. But, out of all the places he'd visited, Ralph's took the cake for the weirdest of them.

Considering he had been to Hell several times, that really said something about how weird the place was.

To start, the place was big. Like, really big. It was almost as large as a Greek mansion, which were quite spacious. The floors were made of white and black tiles arranged in a checker pattern, and the ceiling could be seen hovering high above his head, with a number of steel girders and large metal tubes running amok of its surface.

That did not make the place strange, however.

What did make it strange were all the aisles. Rows upon rows of aisles filled with shelves. It reminded Michael of a library, which they actually did have in Heaven. Reading was a favorite pastime of most angels, you see. Yes, even Michael. He could often be found in the anatomy section...

… Don't ask.

Anyway, the place reminded him of a library, except where a library had books, this place had food. At least, Alice called it food. It didn't look like those eggs they'd eaten. There were aisles filled with cans, aisles filled with colorful-looking and strangely shaped objects, aisles filled with boxes that looked almost like picture books but weren't, and aisles filled with vials of strange liquid. The place had aisles with all kinds of things, all of which were unfamiliar to him.

Because he wasn't familiar with anything there, he did the only thing he could.

Followed Alice's lead.

“Grab that cart and follow me,” the girl ordered.

Michael did as told, grabbing the strange object made of metal with the large basket and wheels, and trailed behind her. He shivered a bit as the texture of the floor changed from carpet to tile. At least it wasn't as bad as that gray stuff, which was hard and hurt his feet, but it still caused him to jolt due to how cold it was. They began walking up and down the isles. Micheal would stop when Alice stopped, and watch as she would grab stuff and toss it into the basket.

Wanting to be helpful, Michael grabbed a can they were passing and tried tossing it into the basket. Alice slapped his hand, causing him to yelp and drop the can to the floor.

“Don't touch anything,” she said, ignoring the way Michael had to shake out his now red hand. That really hurt.

As they continued walking through the store, their cart now almost have full, Michael began to notice something.

“Hey, Alice,” he said, frowning at another couple he saw passing by. “Why are these people staring and pointing at us?”

Alice stopped what she was doing and looked at him, her hands still holding onto the colorful red box with the rabbit and a lot of strangely shaped objects. “What?”

“These people.” He gestured to some of the people around them. “Why are they all staring at us? Are we doing something wrong?”

Alice took a look around them and finally seemed to notice what Michael was talking about. Everyone within seeing distance of them were observing and pointing at them. They were also whispering. Michael wondered what they were whispering about.

He also wondered why Alice was turning red... again.

“Alice?”

“L-let's just hurry this up,” the girl stuttered, walking a bit faster, her head staring at the ground.

“A-Alice, wait up! Alice! Alice! Wait for me!”

~The Archangel Michael~

Standing in the checkout lane, trying to bury her face in her hair, Alice could honestly admit that she had never felt so humiliated in her life. Even now she could feel the people around them staring, pointing, and whispering. She had never cared about people staring at her before, so you'd think she'd be used to it.

But then, this time things were different, weren't they? That's right. Because standing next to her, in all of his toga wearing, barefoot glory, was a crazy man who groped women and thought he was The Archangel Michael.

Alice could not hear what was being said about them, but she knew it couldn't be good. Humans never had anything good to say about other humans. Why else would people spend so much time and effort vilifying movie stars and airing their dirty laundry?

Even the cashier, a rather chubby woman who could stand to lose a pound or twenty, with dirty red hair drawn up in a messy bun, and watery blue eyes peering out from underneath thick and obviously fake eyelashes, glared at them with a look of incredulity. Thankfully, she seemed more focused on staring at Michael, who didn't appear to even notice, but Alice still felt the eyes looking at her in stern disapproval.

“Your total comes to $65.89,” the woman, whose name tag dubbed her as Clarissa, said. Alice winced, already feeling her wallet lighten, as she pulled out the cash and gave it to the cashier. She got her change, got her groceries, and then hurried out of the story.
She didn't bother getting the receipt.

“What an interesting experience this was,” Michael said. He walked next to her, his long, powerful strides easily keeping pace with her shorter, faster ones, even though he was the one pushing the cart. “I've never done this shopping thing before, but it's actually kind of fun. There are so many interesting places and people there.” He then looked up at the sky. “I wonder why they don't have stores in Heaven?”

Alice felt like strangling him. Could he just stop talking about Heaven like he'd actually been there? Just for a second? That's all she was asking. That wasn't too much to ask for, was it?

“Maybe when I get back, I can ask Damabieth to build some stores,” he mused, and then realized something. “You probably don't know who Damabieth is, since he doesn't show up in the bible very often. He was originally the angel in charge of naval construction, but he did such a good job creating ships that God asked him to be Heaven's architect. These days, whenever someone from a new era dies, he's the first person they meet. Damabieth likes to be thorough in ensuring that Heaven's architecture contains a proper mix of ancient and modern buildings.”

“Really?” Alice couldn't even dredge up an eye roll in that moment. She wanted too, though, because that statement really did deserve one. “How interesting.”

“I guess it is. I've never really been to the first Heaven, which is actually where all of the more modern buildings are. Heaven is divided into seven parts, you see. The first, second, and third Heaven are where all the humans live. I've only ever paid long-lasting visits to the third Heaven, because they have the best hot springs. Hehehehe...”

An image conjured itself within Alice's mind, one that showed Michael hiding behind the wall of a hot spring, peeking through a hole to the other side, peeping on the female angels relaxing their after a long day doing... whatever it was that angels did. She felt white hot surge of rage well up inside of her, one caused by the man walking with her.

“Yefefiah!!”

Her anger was such that she ended up slamming her fist on top of Micheal’s skull.

“What was that for?” he asked, rubbing the large bump now climbing out of his hair like a small hill.

“That was for being an idiot,” Alice snapped. “And what's with those weird noises you keep making whenever I hit you?” Her nose scrunched up cutely. “They sound almost like names.”

“Weird noises?” Michael tilted his head, his expression blank and kind of stupid-looking.

“Never mind.”

They ditched the cart upon reaching the sidewalk, taking the bags of groceries out of it and beginning their walk back to Alice's apartment. Because Michael was the male, Alice ended up foisting most of the bags on him. He didn't seem to mind.

“Come on,” Alice grunted, walking faster. “Some of these groceries are perishable. We need to hurry up or they'll spo...il...” She trailed off, her eyebrow twitching. “Hey! Are you listening to me!?”

“Look at all these buildings. There are so many of them, and they're all packed so tightly together. Look! There's hardly even a foot of space separating them.”

Michael was, quite obviously, not listening to her. He looked a tad too busy admiring the architecture and how tall the buildings were. You'd think he would have been used to them by now. He did just see them half an hour ago when they were on their way to the grocery store.

“Hey! Pay attention to me when I'm talking to you!”

“Even though some of these buildings remind me of a few in the third Heaven, the way you guys set them up is so different.”

“Would you stop talking and pay attention to me?!”

“I wonder if it has something to do with the clouds? All of our buildings are built upon the clouds, you know, so we they can only be placed in certain parts of Heaven. It wouldn't be smart to construct a building over nothing and have it fall to earth. But that doesn't explain why all of the buildings here are packed together so tightly.” Michael grinned as a thought occurred to him. “Damabieth is going to be so jealous when I come back and tell him about all this.”

Alice watched as Michael more or less ignored her in favor of staring at the passing structures with the wide eyes of a child. Her right eye, which had been twitching violently, gained a friend.

Her left eye began twitching as well.

“Temeluch!”

Given her anger, it didn't come as a surprise when, a few seconds later, Alice stood over a twitching, groaning pile of flesh that had, at one point in time, been known as Michael. The toga wearing man had steam rising from the crown of his head, and the large lump that had grown there from the last time Alice hit him a few minutes ago had grown to the side of a small mountain. The fist that she had used to strike him was in front of her face. It was still shaking with the after effects of her rage.

Because Michael had been carrying the vast majority of the groceries, they, too, had spilled all over the road. Several fruits, apples mostly, were rolling down the street.

“Now look what you made me do! My groceries are everywhere!”

Michael just groaned.

~The Archangel Michael~

Fortunately for Alice's tight budget, they managed to reclaim all of the lost groceries before they could get too far. Those apples would need a damn good washing before she would even think of eating them, but that couldn't be helped.

“Just set everything on the counter,” Alice instructed Michael, who appeared somewhat dazed. Maybe that smack to the head had done more damage than she originally thought?
“R-right.”

Michael stumbled into the kitchen, where he began slowly setting the bags on the counter. Alice followed him and also set the three bags she held in her grasp on the counter. The bags held all of the delicate foods: eggs, milk, food in glass jars. Things that could break easily if dropped.

It was a good thing she'd been carrying those or she would be out of some of her most important ingredients.

“So, uh, what do I do now?” asked Michael, looking awkward. After getting her pound of flesh, the young woman had refused to speak with him. Every time he asked a question or made a comment, she would just look the other away. She was apparently upset with him, though he couldn't figure out why.

“You'll do nothing,” Alice said with a noticeable snap to her tone. “Just sit over there in the living room while I organize the groceries.”

Michael thought about arguing, but he really didn't want to get hit again, so he just nodded and walked into the living room.

Because the room had no furniture, there was nowhere to sit. Michael sat himself down on the floor, his back leaning against the wall, his body turned so he could look out the window.

Earth was a lot different than Heaven. While he recognized some of the buildings from those few times he had to fly through the first Heaven, everything else about this place was different. The way humans did things confused him, which he supposed might have more to do with his own lack of experience at interacting with others than anything else.

The truth was that Michael wasn't exactly what most people would call a social butterfly. His early life had been spent fighting against Satan's forces to protect God's creations. After Lucifer had rebelled and joined Satan, his task grew to encompass more than just fighting, but also to become the leader of God's armies. Most of his life revolved around war. Fighting one battle after another, with barely a pause in between. It was no wonder, then, that his only interactions were with those few angels he knew in God's army.

It also explained why most of his friends were angels that had fallen. Azazel, his former roommate, had gone off and sexed up a human, causing God to cast him out. Kokabiel went crazy and began lusting for blood, which meant he'd been kicked out of Heaven as well. Really, the only two angels he could say he knew were Rafael, who served as his messenger on the front-lines, and Gabriel, who was his second in command, though such a thing might have been hard to believe.

His battle against the forces of Hell had only slowed down within the last one-hundred years or so, and it had only been recently, like, fifty years or something, that Michael had been allowed any free time. Before that, when he wasn't fighting a war he was training for war, and when he wasn't training for war, he was training other angels for war.

It was no wonder that he picked up peeping as a pastime.

He blamed Azazel.

“Alright.” Alice walked into the room, clapping her hands free of imaginary dust. “I'm all done.”

Michael looked up at the girl, taking a moment to admire her from this angle. She had chosen to wear black skirt that rose high on her thighs. From where he sat, Michael could almost make out her panties.

“Zarall!”

Not even a second after he started staring at her, Michael felt a sharp pain cracking against his skull as something that could only be the fist of a furious female smashed into his head with all of the force of a raging maelstrom. He soon found himself lying facedown on the floor, Alice's attack having knocked him for a loop. The girl in question stomped off. He could feel the vibration of her booming footsteps growing lighter as she moved farther away.

“I'm going to take a shower,” she declared. He looked up, blinking several spots from his eyes, to see Alice standing in the doorway to her room, glaring at him. “If you dare peek on me, I swear I'm going to kill you.”

“You shouldn't speak about killing others so easily,” Michael informed her. For such a nice, kind girl, she said some awfully bad things.

“Like I care,” she snapped, and then slammed the door to her room shut.

Michael lay there for several seconds, wondering what he should do. The temptation to peep was strong in him. He really wanted to see what was underneath those clothes. From what he could tell through the mass of fabric, Alice was a beautiful young woman. Sure, her boobs were a little small, but small boobs didn't necessarily equate to an unattractive figure.

Her chest may be tiny, but there was something to be said for her lithe body. Alice's figure had a strange femininity to it, one that Gabriel, in all her bodacious, big-breasted hotness, simply didn't possess.

He wondered why. Alice and Gabriel acted a lot like, thinking on it. Both were quick to anger and even quicker to violence. They both had a powerful right hook. And they both seemed intent on thinking the worst of him. Yes, they really didn't act too differently from each other.

So, why was Alice different?

Deciding to find out, Michael made his way into Alice's bedroom. He paused for a moment, standing in the doorway, his head cocked. He could hear the sounds of the shower running, which meant that Alice was likely all stripped down by now. She was probably standing under the spray of the shower even as he stood there, with millions of tiny droplets running down her body, caressing her pale skin, causing it to glisten and sparkle within the light as steam rose up all around her. He could just see it now, her wet figure in all its glory, water trailing a path across her small chest and flat stomach, dripping down her pelvis and into the v of her crotch and across her lovely thighs and calves down to her dainty little toes...

“Hehehehe.” Giggling, Michael wiped the drool from his mouth and proceeded further inside of the room.

Alice's bedroom resembled the living room, in many ways. Like the living room, the bedroom was devoid of almost all types of furniture. It didn't have a dresser, or a nightstand, or even a bed. In fact, the only piece of furniture in there that he could see was the beaten up old table and the ragged-looking chair.

As he searched the place, moving his head left and right, he spotted something over where Alice must sleep. Lying on what looked like a blow-up mattress were a pair of fresh clothes: a black blouse, black shirt, black bra, and most importantly, a pair of black panties.

Momentarily forgetting the reason he came in there, Michael knelt down next to the mattress and grabbed the pair of panties with both hands. He stretched them out, studying them the kind of intensity usually reserved for the battlefield.

They were quite elastic, these panties. And black. And lacy. The material looked almost like a strange kind of gauze. It was partially see-through, and it would no doubt only hide a bit of her body, the most sacred part of a female.

“Hehehehe, oh Alice, you naughty girl.”

Unable to resist the temptation, Michael brought them to his nose and began sniffing them. Alice had a wonderful scent. She really did. Which surprised him because angels, being the perfect beings that they were, should have smelled better. But he'd stolen Gabriel's panties before, and their fragrance wasn't half as good as Alice's.

As he continued inhaling the scent of Alice's panties, his eyes now closed, a loud cough from somewhere to his left caused his eyes to snap open.

He looked towards the door leading into the bathroom. It was open now, and standing within it was Alice. Her long, wet hair, clung to her face in a way that Michael couldn't help find enchanting. A towel wound itself around her chest, showing off the tops of her creamy white cleavage, and stopping just above her thighs, allowing him to see long, lovingly crafted legs.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice calm, eerily so. For reasons that he couldn't fully understand, Michael felt almost like a storm was brewing, and this was just the calm that came before it.

“Uh.” Michael tried to come up with something to say that wasn't the truth, but he couldn't. “Sniffing your panties.”

“Why?”

“Because they, um, they were there?”

“I see.”

Michael looked into that calm face, those dark, hooded eyes. He took note of the way her hands were clenching and unclenching, as if imagining something being squeezed between those deceptively delicate digits. He saw the vein pulsing on her forehead, throbbing in a manner that he could only describe as angry. And yet, still, Alice looked utterly calm.

“You're going to hurt me now, aren't you?” he asked.

“Yes.” Alice nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“Would it help if I said I'm sorry?”

In response to his words, Alice's fist found itself planted violently on the crown of his head.

“Sabathiel!”