The angels, their task of averting Armageddon complete, rose to heaven from all over the city. Most rose with a holy light that rang of silver chimes. Others rose with a whimper from broken bones and fiery bunny-induced third degree burns. It was only as the angels rose, and Billy fell, and Steve and his friends remained on Earth, that Jack understood exactly what he’d done.

   “Ooooh,” Jack said, rubbing his chin. “Right. Right, yeah, yeah. Can’t beat on anyone without a good outcome coming of it. I beat the crap out a you, and now you lose your express ticket to damnation.”

   “Looks like,” Steve said.

  “Well that just puts a damper on my day.”

   As Jack kicked at the dusty pavement to vent his frustration, a noise like the snapping of lumber echoed from the other side of Jackson Square. “You! You break Ivan table! Now Ivan break you!” shouted the Russian table-maker.

   “Huh?”

   Ivan ran as fast as a beaten Clydesdale, holding a table leg wide as a tree trunk above his head. Ivan screamed righteous fury and made to put the table leg into whatever orifice would most readily accept it on Jack’s angelic person.

   “Uh,” Jack said, hesitating, “you have a nice life, Stevey-boy.” With that, Jack took to the air, fleeing the square as fast as his two wings could carry him.

   Ivan had just about reached Jack when the angel topped the cathedral spire. The table maker then stopped in front of Steve and his companions. With a roar and a curse at the table-wrecking angel, Ivan hurled his table leg with a grunt as booming as the shot of a cannon. The table leg sailed through the air and struck Jack in the back of the head, knocking him out of the sky.

   “Ivan would say hello, but have business. Is good for health,” Ivan said to Steve, and charged at the downed angel. He had half a dozen thinner table legs in a holster at his back, and bared one of these in each hand before pouncing on the angel.

   “I don’t really want to watch this,” Steve said as Ivan began pounding the angel into the pavement.

   “I do,” Gore said.

   “Come on,” Dawn said, picking Steve up, “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

   Gore agreed that, given the circumstances, he no longer desired to use Steve’s spine as a nun-chuck. This was the greatest compliment he’d ever given any creature mortal or eternal. Steve was quite touched by the generosity, and that he didn’t have to make due on having his spine turned into a martial weapon.

  After a couple weeks of gumbo-induced rest and relaxation in one of the cheapest hotels in New Orleans, Evy flew the group of demons home. The St. Louis airport welcomed them back with pristine visions of the Arch. That stainless steel passageway marked the gateway to exploration and new beginnings. It also made a too-tempting target for Gore to take the controls and fly through. This was the perfect time, it seemed, for Gore to experience falling from five thousand feet into the Mississippi River, and after much struggling with the plane’s controls, that’s exactly what he experienced when Evy shoved him out.

   The first thing Steve did when he got back was check on the apartment. Everything seemed in order. Everything seemed still. Everything seemed as if he had never left, save that the restaurant Burney had accidentally torched was an empty lot. The rubble had been cleared, and a few birds had taken up nest in the Gore-shaped hole that still decorated the apartment’s living room. Thankfully they had plywood for the hole to be repaired, and Evy was able to relocate the birds to a safe location inside a park. Of course, Dawn had to shoot one with a bee-bee gun to even out the balance of good and evil this act created, but it was still an honorable deed, all things considered.

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   While Steve felt the need to go to work, it no longer seemed to possess the same appeal. And as he finally found the strength to face his boss, and what would most likely be the dressing-down of his career in advertising, Steve limped into the Purity Advertising office.

   Strangely, there was his job. Just waiting for him. No fuss. No questions about where he’d been. His boss merely looked nervously out the window when Steve walked into his office. “Yes, you still have your job,” was all Steve’s boss said before ushering Steve back to the cubicle Steve had so recently vacated.

   Job once more his, friends back to their normal routine, Steve stood with his world once more returned to balance. It was like the whole thing had been a reversing of Dawn’s scales, and he felt like a weight pasted into the center. It made him uncomfortable.

   “Hey Damien,” Steve said, walking past his old kinda-friend’s cubicle.

  Damien was laser-eyed to his video game. Pixelated armies played out grand battles while Damien directed the players across the globe where to strike.

  Steve put a few things from his desk into a little box. It wasn’t much. Pictures. A stress ball. A tiny goblin frozen in ice from the inner circle of hell Gore thought belonged in any respectable office. Steve was taking these things home. He wanted out of the office, out of advertising. Or probably, just out of this place. Most important of all, Steve took his painting. That little abstract painting that had given him so much pleasure.

  Placing the painting in a box all by itself, Steve felt he could toss the contents of everything else he was carrying out the window. All that mattered was the little abstract painting. And he wanted nothing more than to place it wherever he wished.

   Steve’s task was done. He had essentially failed at it. But he owed that person he had apparently failed one last acknowledgement. “Hey, Damien,” Steve repeated, standing behind the antichrist.

   Damien realized that Steve was there. Still, he looked at nothing but the game. But with one hand on the keyboard, Damien offered Steve the greatest of gestures he could possibly give, raising his right hand for a full two seconds, motioning a wave, and promptly returning to the game.

   “You’re welcome,” Steve said.

   When Steve got home, Dawn was standing outside the door arguing with a man who was delivering the last of what appeared to be the most ornate dining room tables imaginable. Woods of cherry, oak, and black walnut, all carved and stained with the hand of a true master.

   “No Burney, you cannot touch them,” Gore said, striking Burney’s hand.

   Burney screamed.

   “I get to break at least one. It’s only proper,” Gore said.

   “What’s all this?” Steve asked.

   “My exercise equipment has arrived!”

   “They’re not for breaking, Gore,” Dawn said. “Here.” Dawn handed Steve a piece of paper.

   The paper had handwriting of a strangely gracious nature, written in thick black ink. It read, Dear Steve. Much apologies for what break car. Ivan know was Ivan brother Dmitri who what break car when crash into dragon and crush into pieces. Was very fun what watch, but not nice thing what do. So Ivan break Ivan brother Dmitri legs. Is okay, though, because Ivan brother Dmitri learn how make chair for what people disabilities. Ivan brother Dmitri make disabilities chair, legs get cast, is good for health. Anyway, Ivan sorry. Please accept tables as payment for what broke car. Sell tables, make moneys, use moneys for what buy new car, is good for health. Or have giant buffet what with lots of baby back ribs and baked beans. Is your call.

  Steve read the letter to his friends.

   “P.S. please call Ivan if you what choose do buffet. Much tables be in your future, Ivan,” Steve concluded.

   “So we’re breaking the tables, right?” Gore asked.

   “We’re buying a car. Ooh! Let’s get scooters!” Dawn suggested, clapping her hands.

   Burney screamed.

   “Hovercarts don’t exist, Burney,” Steve noted.

   “These tables are so happy-happy,” Evy said, having returned from the post office. She had been busy job-searching and getting a change of address form. There was an apartment available in Steve and his friends’ building. Evy’s rainbow costume had been cleaned, and she wore it proudly amidst the hell knight, the tortured soul, the Judge, and the half-demon. “What will you do with them?”

   “Sell them,” Steve answered with a smile.

   “And then what will you do?” Dawn asked.

   Steve thought for a second. “Who’s up for tacos?”

  The End