In-A-Gala-Da-Vida (Part 1: Meanwhile, Thousands of Years Ago)

Heaven was really big.

Even with the flyer, Aqua was having trouble figuring out where to go in it.

She’d only been a demi-god a couple hundred years now and so was far more fresh faced than even the angels she passed on her walk through the halls. It was scary, and without a guide it felt like some hallways went on forever. She’d already interrupted several soul transfers opening the wrong doors, tripping into angels with paperwork, or just generally being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. It was almost too big, but Aqua HAD to get to the location on the flyer.

She looked down at it one more time to reaffirm herself. Goddess tryouts were today. The goal of any lesser or demi-god was to get on the ranking and finally have humans that worship you. Some were created into power, but others had to work for it. However it had been tough for Aqua to get a foothold, always being **** to do menial paperwork or just ‘get coffee’ for bigger Gods who promised her the life she wanted. This was her chance, a tryout to become something more.

“Scuse me,” Aqua asked an angel, who ignored her. “Sorry, can I ask-?” Again, the busy angel just passed her in the corridor, “Oi! Can you help me!?”

“Hm?”

The person she’d screamed at hadn’t been an angel, it was another lesser goddess. The girl had green eyes to match the wonderful leafy plant life teaming from around her body. Her clothing choices were minimal but she seemed perfectly comfortable in her own skin, being slightly smaller than Aqua and currently leaning on the bannister of the corridor. Out of everything she’d ever seen, Aqua had never before witnessed anyone smoking in Heaven.

“The hell did you want?”

Aqua gulped, kind of intimidated by her annoyed glare as she continued to smoke. “U-uh, I was just looking for directions?” She was sweating after her voice went quite quiet near the end. Watching the other woman’s movements with the intent to run if anything got scary.

“Fair.” She nodded, flicking the last of her cigarette off the side of the railing and into the infinite cloudy abyss below, “Lemme guess, these shithead angels AIN’T GIVIN’ YA THE TIME A DAY!?” Her voice had become quite loud at the end, barking at the nearest pair of angels who flinched and flew off at her anger. “Where ya headin’?”

“Oh! Uhm, here.” Aqua shunted the flyer towards the other girl, who looked at it with vague interest. “I want to become a Goddess!”

The other girl clicked her tongue, frowning at the flyer. “Seriously? After the shit Divane pulls on a daily basis, you wanna join in on that malarkey?”

“Well, I don’t really know what malarkey is…” Aqua admitted, “But why wouldn’t I want to be a Goddess? They have worshippers! They have angels to boss about! It sounds amazing!”

As she shared her afterlife goals, the other girl just laughed. “Sounds like you’re gettin’ into this for tha wrong reasons! Hahaha!” Her laugh was loud and pronounced enough to throw her head back and make Aqua annoyed.

“Oi. It isn’t that funny. Don’t you want to be a Goddess too? This competition will let you meet Divane herself!”

Her laughter petered out rather quickly at that statement, and though a frown began to grow the plant woman quickly began considering her words, “Oh yeah? Ol’ Divane, huh?” She mumbled, looking over the flyer again, “Hmm… you know what, I think I know which room this is being held in.”

“Really?! Can you show me?!” Aqua excitedly grabbed her hands.

“Yeah, yeah, that was implied already.” The other woman smiled while shaking her off, “Follow me, girly.”

“Thank you so much! And it’s Aqua, by the way. I’m a lesser kind of water goddess.”

They shook hands as they walked, “Gaia. And if you couldn’t tell…”

Their hands didn’t let go as the plants around her opposite wrist began extending upwards, latching onto something in the corridor above them and dragging the pair to the higher floor. It was a terrifying yet temporary experience for Aqua as they were both suspended over the endless cloudy abyss before finally landing on the solid ground of the upper floor.

“Plants are my thing.”

“C-cool… n-nice to meet you…” Aqua nodded, now on shaky knees, “That was scary…”

After laughing it up a little more, the pair began chatting away. “So, where ya from?”

“I work in the upper Heaven soul care department.” Aqua explained, slumping her shoulders at the memory. “It’s sooo boring up there! All the souls do is float around the void and experience bliss. Why do I need to be caring for them?! They’re eternally happy!” She yelled, shaking her fist upwards to the, assumedly, apartment location. “How about you?”

Her new acquaintance shrugged, “Ehh, I’m more of a free agent. I go where I’m needed.” said the girl, growing a tobacco plant and paper from her two hands before rolling it up, “I may head down to the mortal realms a lot to assist bigger projects. New planet life, or healing spirit trees, that kinda shit.”

“Wow! I’ve never been down to the mortal world! Is it any fun?!”

The greenette smirked at the memories, “Yeah, humans can be a riot. I got this tattoo from one future Earth, see?” Rolling up the plants on her arm, Gaia showed off a Japanese katakana on her right shoulder, “Means ‘soup’ or ‘dirt’ I forget which one I asked for. I was pretty pissed at the time.”

Eyes shimmered at the ink, “Woah, that’s super pretty! But, uh…‘pissed’?” Aqua asked, confused by the odd word choice.

“Totalled. Hammered. Shitfaced.” Gaia offered, though none were taken by Aqua’s lack of knowledge, “Drunk, girl. I was very, very drunk.”

Her eyes widened in understanding, “Oh. OHHH! That thing that gets so many humans killed!” She said while clicking her fingers, “What’s that like? Is it fun?”

“You seem to care a lot about crap being fun,” Gaia commented while snapping her own fingers, two pieces of flint growing just in time for a sparking flame to light her cigarette. “You know you can have fun wherever, right? Check it.” Stretching her foot out, a long thin tree trunk suddenly shunted out from her foot, instantly tripping a few angels who had been walking.

“Hahaha! See? Now THAT’S fun!”

Aqua hadn’t really seen people’s misfortune before, being stuck inside a pure white void with souls filled with bliss… so she couldn’t deny that the schadenfreude was pretty funny. Giggling at the way the angels that had been rude to her earlier were now scrambling to pick up the paperwork they’d dropped.

“Yeah, I see you smiling over there. Me thinks you n’ me’ll get along great, Aqua.” Gaia slapped her new friend on the back, “Stick with me and I’ll show you how to have some real fun!”

“O-okay! Let’s do it, Gaia!” Aqua beamed, happy to have her first ever friend be such a cool lady.

The two finally found the right hall the flyer had described and quickly entered the large doors. Inside was one of the many meeting spaces for new arrival souls, but this time it was full of various demi-gods and lesser deities. It was fairly crowded, with a lot of different sized beings all facing the same way in a large clump. Following their line of sight showed that there was a large stone stage that had been erected just for this event, almost looking like an ancient Greek’s amphitheatre that those human philosophers loved so much.

Gaia and Aqua shuffled through the crowd to try and get a better look, having arrived just in time for the event to have started. A bespectacled girl in a business outfit with long flowing green hair walked on stage and stood up to the microphone.

“H-hello, everyone!” She nodded to the crowd, adjusting her glasses a few times trying to stop the light getting in them, “I-I’m Palutena! Nice to meet you all, and thank you for coming to our recruitment event! I-I am here to introduce your host, the magnificent, the magnanimous, the meticu-”

The light was suddenly cut from Palutena who just mumbled before clearly running off stage yelling, “L-LADY DIVANE!”

Spotlight was unneeded for the sudden appearance of the one woman they all knew. Instantly pandering, she ran her hand through her hair and posed over and over again. The crowd erupted with cheers who all just ate up the fanservice with glee. Including Aqua, though Gaia just sarcastically clapped.

“Hello, my darlings~! How lovely to see so many enthusiastic lessers here!” She said while gracing the microphone, “The business with the Heaven-Hell war has left us with slightly fewer deities than we’d like,” The lady explained, “So, you lesser gods are all finally having a chance to prove yourselves! You’ll finally move up the ranks and get your own religion!”

The crowd was elated, the rumours of the recruitment had been disbelieved by many, but this was coming right from the horse's mouth. A real, legitimate way to become a deity without having to battle in the eternal arena or save a God’s life. Divane was clearly enjoying the cheers, revelling in her announcement before shushing the crowd gently.

Grabbing the mic from its stand, Divane looked over the crowd proudly, “Look at you all. We’ve all had a rough time, between the war of Heaven and Hell, and then those nasty rumours that there are demon spies in our midst-”

“What?! Unheard of!” Yelled someone from the crowd that Aqua couldn’t see, “That is preposterous! No one could have ever infiltrated the great gates of Heaven! Moi will personally start a task **** to find any and all spies that may or may not be here!” They yelled before rushing out of the room.

“Hm, interruptions are annoying, but brave of that masked denizen to take up the cause,” Divane ran her hand through her hair in triumph at her inspirational words, “Anyway, as it is me who will be hosting this contest, I want to make it more fun than simply ‘scanning your worth’ or something lame like that.” Her body language and tone ramped up once more, her inner showman bursting forth as more spotlights hit her light-filled being.

“No, nothing so boring for the Gods under my power! To become a deity, you shall have to win the most magnificent talent contest in the afterlife! Hosted by me, obviously~!”

Murmurs in the crowd began picking up. Doubt and confusion seemed to be spreading around the gaggle of godlikes, including the one that Aqua had met. “A talent contest? That’s a bunch a’ bullshit. It’s godhood, not a fucking human prom king.”

Aqua kept quiet, half because she didn’t want Gaia’s anger to rise any higher, and the other because she actually thought the contest sounded like fun.

“Round One of the contest shall occur in a hundred years!” Divane spoke, and the crowd’s whispers grew in shock, “Very soon, isn’t it? My apologies for springing it on you so suddenly, but we really do need to get things moving around here. Besides, you all wish to become a divine being under me, so a little harsh deadline should help grease those creative wheels so to speak~”

“Only a hundred years?!” Aqua hissed in pain, “I don’t even have an act! Maybe I should sing? O-or like spin plates? What do you think she likes?” She turned to her frowning new acquaintance.

“I think she likes being a bit-”

Before she could finish her sentence, Divane yelled out once more, “GO NOW! I will see you all back here very soon!”

And with that, the giant woman strutted off behind the stage, leaving Palutena to start handing out registration papers. “P-please submit these to my office in the next decade, o-or else you won’t be able to compete!” Some left before even picking up the paper, but after getting one, everyone in the hall began shuffling back out to the eternal corridor. The mood was mostly confusion and fear, though some excitement at the idea was still sparking through the crowd.

“GAH! I need to be a Goddess so badly… but I’m so talentless!” A girl with wind for hair yelled as she was consoled by a girl with five eyes. “Do you think I have enough time to learn how to throw axes?!”

“Hehe, good luck with that,” A barbarian looking girl with swords jammed into her back walked past looking mighty cocky. The wind deity whined even louder through the tiny tornado that she was creating.

Gaia and Aqua just waltzed right past them, clenching their registration forms a little tighter while they walked together out the door and down the corridor.

Growing a new cigarette for herself, Gaia just frowned at the paper, “What absolute nonsense. Why can’t that shitty Divane just take her role seriously?” She sighed out a long exhale of smoke towards the abyss. The temptation to burn the registration form was fairly high on the plant girl’s mind.

“I dunno… it could be f-!”

She caught herself, but Gaia gave her a half lidded eyeball look back, “You were gonna say ‘fun’, weren’tcha?”

“M-maybe…?” Aqua couldn’t really look her friend in the eye at first, “But… Why can’t it be entertaining? It’s a competition to be the best, but I’m not the strongest or the bravest, so I could be the funnest Goddess!”

“You’re happy with being known as a Goddess of Party Tricks?” Gaia smirked back, though seeing the girl’s growing determination did make her relent, “Alright, you have fun with becoming Divane’s puppet. It ain’t for me though.” Aqua hadn’t realised but there was a set of wooden stairs that had grown up the side of the eternal corridor just for Gaia to stand on the balcony over the edge, “See you around, Aqua.”

“You’re not going to compete?”

“Nah, that life ain’t mine.”

She was still walking on the bannister, and Aqua couldn’t help but feel like she didn’t want to say goodbye so easily. “D-don’t you want to show off to Divane? Anyone and everyone will be watching the big finale! You could do anything!”

“I just said it wasn’t my-” Gaia paused, thinking about something. Aqua tilted her head at the silence, but then from her crouching on the bannister position, Gaia turned to face the bluenette again, “Hmm…y’know…you make a compelling argument. Maybe I could show off a bit…”

Aqua’s face lit up, “Really?! You’ll compete?!” She was practically jumping with happiness, “Yay~! Someone to practise with!”

“Alright, alright, cool your jets.” Gaia waved off her overenthusiasm a little, “We don’t have long to get our acts together, but I’m sure we can show that big titted idiot the power of some real Goddesses, right Aqua?”