The ! Series is a set of vignettes intended to fill out and explain the events of the ? Cycle. This includes a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, as well as certain events in Heaven while Haagenti is completing the prophecy in Hell. Fools Rush In takes place between the events of In A Chicago Diner and The Fortunate Fall. Special thanks to Casca and Moe for the idea and the inspiration. -EDG Fools Rush In "It had been nice," thought Dominic as he sat at his desk in his Cathedral, watching his servitors mill restlessly about in pursuit of justice and the relievers dart back and forth across the Hall in pursuit of each other, "before the Fall, when 'a day like any other' actually applied to Heaven." He was considering a particularly difficult case: it looked as though he was going to have to explain to Jordi yet again how it was possible for servitors to gain dissonance in the honest pursuit of their Archangel's Word, and that it was really bad form to cast them out when all they had been doing was wearing clothes and making sure the door to the pet store was locked behind them after they'd released all the puppies. It was to his alternating joy and chagrin, but not to his surprise, therefore, when the Archangel of Creation burst through the doors. "Dominic!" he cried. "Look what I've-" "Enough," said the Archangel of Judgment in a voice cold enough to freeze ice. "I am not particularly interested in what you have found, and I am not particularly interested in what you have done. It is a fact that for forty-four years, eight months, seven days and two hundred twenty-nine minutes, you have been absent from Heaven and have derelicted your duties. You have encouraged your servitors to violate their new masters' orders and, in fact, have given them no particular orders of your own. You -" "Enough," repeated the Archangel of Creation in equally icy tones. "How dare you? How dare you judge me without even bothering to learn what I've been doing?" His voice was rising in volume with each word. "How can you possibly know how to consider my actions without knowing what those actions were?" "Eli, I-" interrupted Dominic, only to be interrupted himself. "I WAS NOT FINISHED!" roared Eli, his face red with fury, his voice carrying to the farthest reaches of Dominic's Cathedral. Even the relievers stopped their game of tag to stare, wide- eyed and open-mouthed, at the wrath of the Archangel of Creation. "You have done nothing but persecute since you were given your Word! You have outcast an entire Choir of angels simply because they did something you cannot! You have judged the oldest Archangel there is simply because he won battles you were disallowed to participate in! You have driven our last prophet from the Eternal City because her chosen representative on Earth happened to die! And now me? What will you do to me, Dominic, offer to destroy my soul? All I have been doing is getting back in touch with my Word, travelling Creation and remembering what it means to be a Friend of Man. What have you done in the last forty-five years, Archangel of Judgment, besides persecute?" Dominic was taken aback. "Eli... I don't-" "You're damned right you don't." Eli sighed and ran his fingers through his unruly brown hair. "I'm sorry, Dom. I had no right to yell at you like that. All I'm saying is that you need to walk a mile in a man's shoes before you judge him, okay? That's what Gabriel's boy said two thousand years ago, and it's still true today." Dominic, to Eli's thorough and eternal surprise, nodded. "Very well. You have made your point." The robe shifted slightly, and Eli felt a hollow appear inside his soul - one which was almost immediately filled. "You now have," said Dominic slowly, "one of my Vessels. I now have one of yours. I will bind myself into it, for a year and a day, posthaste. However..." The Archangel of Judgment paused significantly. "I require the same of you." Eli blinked. "You want me to stay out of Heaven for another year?" "And a day," Dominic agreed. "When you have learned what it is to be penitent, you may return." "I can dig it," replied Eli. "I can dig it. When do we start?" "Now," said Dominic, and abruptly both Archangels were on Earth, sealed into their respective Vessels. Eli had become a cleric apprentice, with ashes in his hair and on his face and brown sackcloth robes reaching to the ground, tied with a fraying rope; Dominic was, to all appearances, a yuppie decked out for hiking, with a mop of blond hair and sharp, tanned features. "How does it feel?" asked the Archangel of Judgment. Eli paused for a moment. "I could get used to this." "Go," said Dominic, "there is a Role awaiting you. As for myself..." He looked at Eli and smiled widely. "There's a diner I've been meaning to check out."