you'd like to stay in heaven (but the rules are too tough)

are you hurting the one you love

As promised, update every Sunday!!

Friday the 13th, May, 2033

Let us take a moment to understand how we got to this moment. For this, we have to go back about six years, to the beginning of the beginning of the end. For Aziraphale, at least. Not that angels can really end, it's a metaphorical end—but regardless.

It is Friday the 13th, May, 2033, when the beginning of the beginning of the end is released, so to speak. It had been boiling down in Hell for a very long time, a genius idea from the demons that, for once, did not come from Crowley. Heaven and Hell were just stumbling about trying to find their footing back then, only about a decade and a half having passed since the whole presumed ineffable plan went—as Crowley had once put it—pear-shaped. They didn't know what to do with themselves. There wasn't an Anti-Christ anymore, there wasn't a war between Good and Evil, and therefore there wasn't, as far as anyone could tell, anything to look forward to.

It was right about then that both sides seemed to decide they were better off pissing off the other side than waiting around, and went right back to the way they had been before the birth of the Anti-Christ: sowing Good and Evil respectively among humankind.

Beelzebub had been the one to come up with it this time: Arch-Enemies™.

The concept was this: everyone has a soul-match, their inherent enemy, who will oppose them their whole life long from the moment they meet—or perhaps even from before then. The richest man in the country and the most influential communist leader, maybe; or two lawyers who keep finding themselves on opposing sides of the same cases; or even a woman and her father's murderer. Arch-Enemies™ are opposing either in principle or because of some hate-generating event (or events, plural) that they cannot overcome.

Everyone has one. This is partly because people tend to make enemies. It's very natural, and anyone without any enemies was certainly not living their life in any way at all. But for those that truly had no perfect match, well, they were simply matched with someone else who had no perfect match, and no one was the wiser. Hell certainly didn't mind lying, it was one of their core principles.

And in the words of Beelzebub, to roaring applause, "People won't be able to resist finding them. Hatred and chaos! Discord! People will abandon their families and friends! Enemies will murder each other in the streets!"

So, on Friday the 13th, May, 2033, after an extensive ad campaign down in Hell, Arch-Enemies™ was released and the chaos began.

And ze wasn't wrong.

When people's left forearms burned like the fires of hell had pressed a brand to their skin, they had all collectively looked, found names on their forearms, and, with the aid of the internet, figured out what the name meant in less than two days.

Humans knowing who their most hated enemy on the surface of the earth was was a huge blow to peace. Even those who had never met their Arch-Enemy™ suddenly wanted nothing more to get them out of the way, as if getting rid of one's Arch-Enemy™ would clear their path to a long and successful life. They made mobile apps to find each other and arranged to meet. They booked plane tickets one day in advance and flew out to fight, or to talk it out, which often ended in fighting.

Hell was absolutely delighted.

Heaven was beside itself.

Perhaps more importantly, it became entirely clear that if Armageddon was to begin again, Hell had just tipped the scales dramatically in their favor.

On this day, Crowley was studiously not looking at his forearm, which continued to burn and, possibly, blister, the longer he didn't look at it. He had decided he didn't want to know, because he was a demon and demons were the enemies of everyone, as was their nature. What, did he have the whole of Earth's population scrawled across his forearm?