A small coffee shop on Earth.

Quagmire, who had been very vocal about making all aware of his logic oriented opinions, now found himself feeling pensive and reserved after revealing such a personal detail of his past regretting it somewhat. He listened to Cassius, while resisting against the urge to grab Danse's headphones, this mortal coil could not help but to cringe at the sound of raspy burst of air pushing through those bone-dry vocal cords. "You insufferable intumescence that dares to claim status among the great ones! You corpse fit for hounds! You came late into a universe you cannot possibly understand, none of you could possibly appreciate!!" A rather harsh insult flung at Maisie, and completely useless and impractical commentary when it came to solving the problems at hand, he turned to Maisie to gauge her reaction, she looked like a cat dazed by headlights. Quagmire sighed and looked at his particle monitor, it being more interesting then Cassius' rants about Maisie's age. Finally the meat and potatoes, she began a tirade about the void, and how it was her home which she had gotten used to , and how she was to this very day mourning it's original state.

Quagmire had not caused the explosion, Danse had the honor of calling it his accident, but he did built the frame work for a universe that made sense with the energy left behind. When the original universe failed, it was as simple as collecting all it's contents into an ultra-massive black-hole and starting over with an induced explosion, when the gods were ready to start once more. He felt vehemently about a need for organization and predictable patterns. It was odd to have Cassius speak civilly but he didn't care nothing would change his opinion that the void has no purpose, or was it that he'd have no purpose if there only the void. There was something else bothering him, igniting in him a great fury towards Cassius though he couldn't put his finger on it. He clicked on his lap-top's touch pad a little more roughly then normal.

The sound of a possessed corpse talking could never have sounded sweeter. Danse now had the rooms attention. Maisie was crying in audible sobs now, Danse swept towards her like the handsomest vampire in a poorly written teen novel, and gave her a grotesque smile, why'd did he even bother, he above anyone else should know dead bodies were stiff from the onset of rigamortis making them very inefficient to express emotion.“You may find it effortless to be in these meat sacks, little magpie, but not everyone here can contain their magnanimous power into a form so weak and small,” He looked into Maisie's watery eyes and Young Quagmire's heart skipped a beat, startling Infinitous, he let out a soft gasp. “I hardly think you a god at all, more a manifestation of a human’s suffering; a coping mechanism. Try to be a little considerate then, shall you, for gods that knew a time of great silence,” Infinitous felt the blood rush to the boy's head, the heart was pounding in the chest, this was the fight or flight mechanism Nyama God of Fauna put in all animals to give them a burst of energy when they needed it most. Infintous was indignant. How could Danse be so disrespectful and patronizing, calling another god inferior pulling his seniority. Infinitous found his mind racing through Quagmire's memories, it was for once quite out of control, not that he was fighting it, the images were as vivid as if he were watching them on a movie screen. He had told, his classmate the 2,344th fact that made Star Trek contradict with reality. They took it as heresy, that afternoon, Quagmire was in agony he was being rediculed "Well Quack-Mire," "Ha! why not call him Crack-mire!" "yeah I like that one better!" "Crack-mire today you're going to get a refresher course on Newton's third law." The mocking words of his classmate's beat his memory like a drum. "You see the reason the weggy is so painful is because your body's mass is being pulled down towards the Earth's center do to gravity, thats a reaction, and well since there's an equal and opposite one to every reaaction, the weggy is exerting force on your buttcrack." He was hearing their cackles, as Danse called out to the barista for some coffee. He would not stay silent bullies were the most irritating thing in all of creation. "DANSE!" He cried out in a higher pitch voice then he would have liked, this body wasn't the best for intimidation.

Danse Mors hears his name from the back of the store and with a moment of heavy silence, rolls his eyes. The tone was unmistakable. In all of Creation, every human being possessed the same tone, usually followed by a tirade; an anthem of the oppressed. He took his sweet time, abandoning his efforts for sustenance and instead, opting for a moment with his own thoughts. Danse forgot how stifling it was in such close proximity with his kind. So much activity and tension as if they could not come together without tremendous force and equal repulsion. He walked back into the room, dragging his feet just to hear the sound of scraping rubber against wood. And there was Quagmire, obviously livid, prepared to give Danse a “what for”. If Death were ambitious, he would have a catalogue of “what fors”. Not only did humans plead for their lives or barter but they yelled at him. They yelled at him for what was natural. If he thought that would change once he put on a skin sack, it didn’t. Even as a human, he was yelled at. Not because he simply took a life that was ending but because he was “creepy” and “kept to himself”. Everything he did seemed to antagonize others. So if Quagmire expected a shudder of obedience or shock, he would never get it. He dragged himself up to Quagmire and looked down, breaking apart the barrier of personal space. “Let me guess,” he snarled, “You don’t agree?”

Infinitous-Zero "Quagmire Jones" The barista must have been breathing a sigh of relief, Danse made his way towards Quagmire, who was satisfied to see that he was indeed responding. Infinitous consciously calmed the body of young Quagmire so that the brilliant mind that was barely capable of holding a insignificant portion of his intellect could think with clarity. Danse was came to a stop irritatingly close to Quagmire, he was sure he was mocking him by making as good an attempt to imitate the affect of the void in this physical plane as was possible, to make things more annoying Quagmire had to look up to meet the taller boys eyes, providing him with another layer of annoyance, this one being unique to the universe he engineered. For an instant he wanted to push Danse back, but that would have been imprudent and illogical, Danse might kill young Quagmire, Infintous didn't want that, and relapsing time would result in the boy dieing in as many times as Infinituous chose to repeat the process until one of them grew tired of the game, in petty vengeance Infitous would have stuffed Danse's corpse into a miniature black-hole forcing him out of the body, the same verbal battle to take place here would have dragged on else where. A clash of deities, was not unlike a dog chasing his own tail. "Let me guess, you don't agree?" "Ugh" Quagmire contorted his face in disgust. "That carcass is starting to stink! If you're going to posses a dead body next time do us all a favor pick one who's flesh has already decayed in full!" In truth young Quagmire's nostrils were to watery and stuffed to smell anything, but he's was running at the max level of pompous little jerk mode now. "Anyways to answer your question of course I disagree that is the most idiotic half brained dimwitted thing I've ever heard! It'll be my pleasure really to correct your stupidity! Do you know of a game called truth or dare Danse? I'm sure some moronic teens might have gone to far on the stunt they might have asked one of their group to

pull, and in a tragic attempt to save face, he or she probably got a visit from you...Well death I DARE you to kill Margret!" Before Danse could react, Quagmire put his finger up to stress a point, it was disrespectfully close to Danse's eyes. "NOT! The mortal she's possessed but luck herself, the force that is fortune. Naturally you can try for all eternity and I have no doubts you'll find it impossible. I might not appreciate her obnoxious influence running a mock in my otherwise perfectly predictable universe's pattern, but you have no right to disrespect another God! She might be an infant to you but she is still your equal, you're no better then those pathetic mortals who are ticks in times and dots in space themselves but believe the universe revolves around them, who then proceed to push around other mortals, in order to reinforce their ridiculous disillusion of being powerful!"

Danse Mors laughed with such force that he felt as if his host was splitting at the seams. He threw his head back, clutching his side, unable to contain the uncontrollable and joyous absurdity of it all. With a strange delight in his step, he swept over to Maisie, keeping his eye on Quagmire. In their true form and being, Infinitous had always mildly impressed Death but in this host, he couldn’t only help but be amused. The true architect of the universe was sputtering like a common mad scientist. “Why don’t I?” he said, hoping to break the spell that both Maisie and Cassius were under. “You’re right you know. I can’t really kill a god but you don’t seem to realize, Quack-I mean Quagmire, that I don’t really kill anything. I’m not the god of killing, murder, disease or whatever suitable deity that actually puts the little trembly things in my hands!” He knelt down to inhabit the same level as Maisie, speaking close to her ear. “I’ve never told anyone this…”he said, more to Maisie than Quagmire, “but Fortune has given me a lot of business over the years. When Fortune does not favor, those little trembly things fall at my feet,” he turns to Quagmire, to include him in his point, venom dripping in his tone, “I claim these little infants and guide them to the great abyss, heaven, hell and every other name they have for it. I take them from a place of being to a place of unbeing. I suppose it’s easy to misunderstand the great art that is Me… but no, I can’t bring a god to the place of unbeing…” he laughs again, but mournfully. He shakes his head, overcome in grief. “I give comfort from immortality but we don’t get that comfort, do we?” he snaps bitterly, tone rising along with his uneven temper, “Or a cage! How about that?! Isn’t that what we do with our own kind? Why don’t I stick our little Goddess inside a cage because I just don’t like her!” He charges towards Quagmire as if to attack, teeth clenched together in a brief moment of rage but the moment dissi

Danse Mors dissipates before he reaches him. “You have no idea what I am or what I’m capable of. I am not a being to be compartmentalized and disrespected simply because you can’t possibly understand what it is that I do!”

Cassius called out in a shrill, high voice, "They'll never understand Death. I don't know why you try. You're boiling your own blood for nothing at all." She looked back and forth between them, completely overlooking Maisie, "Is this going to turn into the same fight we had the last time we pulled the plug?"

Cassius 's thoughts had cleared. It was like some frequency that had preventing her thoughts from forming had been shut off. She felt acute and in control for the first time since arriving.

Danse Mors looks down, holding himself with a sense of righteous insecurity. His mood tempers at the sound of someone understanding him. "I vote we do pull the plug... If the other gods insist on excusing the flaws in their own creation, how can we have an honest discussion? The chaos gods did NOTHING to those pests that they wouldn't have done anyway... To punish our own kind..." he scoffs with such disgust and anguish that one might see it as sympathy for his brethren. "It's unforgivable..."

Cassius spoke with as kind a tone as she could, but her vocal chords were stressed almost to breaking, "I think you're missing the point. We're not better than them. The humans. They got it from us, we didn't do it to them. They are 'made in our image'." She quoted something she'd heard her host body's mother say, and the thought made the bile rise in her throat. While all mortals bereaved her, she found personal offense with the few she had first met upon her escape.

Danse Mors nods in agreement, taking a seat facing Cassius to appear, somewhat, like a united front. It was two against two and Danse wondered how humanity would feel, knowing that the fate of their existence lay in the hands of a quiet librarian and a mad scientist... "This has become about our sins as well... not just your pet project."

Margaret "Maisie" felt a rising thing in her chest. She had stopped sobbing long ago, but was still gasping quietly for air. She couldn't say she was sad to be overlooked. This feeling, an involuntary tensing, and a pressure in her throat. She fought the urge, whatever it was and looked around at the sound of silence. Everyone was sitting pensively, having apparently come to the end of their arguments. She looked from face to face, contemplating what to do. Finally she decided on Danse and, once the urge had subsided and her breathing had quieted, she spoke, her voice breaking as she went, "You think I don't understand God's? I understand you just fine. Why do you think I've spent my whole life as far away from you people as I could? Despite having this great 'providence' over humans you don't really understand what it means to be one. Their meaning and purpose and dignity as beings has no source in you. They've grown out of you. And if you don't respect them you're going to make the worst mistake. Although," she tried her hardest to look Danse straight in the eye, not an easy task, "I think maybe you sympathize with them more than you let on."

Danse Mors was almost surprised by Maisie's audacity as he met her gaze. He raised a brow at her, studying her words with great care. He hadn't a clue how to respond and that singular fact disturbed him. She was right and whether she had the courage to keep to her conviction or not didn't matter. She was right and if she knew what of the others? He had always felt sorry for human suffering and gladly returned them to a place of absence. More often than not, the souls that reached the end of their life needed his help to cross over. They looked to him with a fondness that a child gives to their parent and he smiled on them. They understood. And more than anything, Danse wanted to protect them; protect them from themselves and the gods that believed they knew best. How could he do that if the fragile little souls were constantly pushed back into being, born again and molded to a world that existed only to exploit them? Extinction, oblivion was the only way to protect his favored. “Think about what you’re saying. Does a human being sympathize with a spider or do they swat it once the little bugger starts creeping into their homes? You ask me if I sympathize with a glorified insect? Ha! If human beings truly have no source in me then why would I want them around? You don’t make a good case for them…” He hung his head low, disconnecting from Maisie’s uncomfortable gaze. Instinctively, he held himself, feeling utterly exposed by her declaration.

Margaret "Maisie" snapped her head up sharply, "If you're looking for the source of death and violence, look at your ally! Cassius. Hollow, empty Cassius. If anything I give them a way to avoid her and you. The rules are plain and simple and despite certain opinions," she shot a look at Quagmire, "they believe them, follow them well, and it pays off. I show them the way to stay mortal, to stay on earth, and to stay safe from the cosmic. So they can die a painless death in their own small spaces. It's because of the void that fear exists. The weight of it, the crushing pressing weight." She lost her breath for a minute before continuing. Her voice was still very wet and emotional. "Of course you pay them no mind. You're all much to big to notice the goings-on of those you consider lesser. You only think of the feelings and thoughts of those you consider your equals. But that doesn't mean they don't have value." She addressed the room now. "You've all spent time in their bodies. Most of you for a very long time, but at the very least for the last hour. Didn't you feel your faces flush, feel the excitement stand your hair on end? Didn't you feel yourselves fill with air and see the way the light sparkles off glass? Haven't you felt the greatness of it? We made something fantastic, something that experiences the world as we never could, and you want to dash it against the rocks because the design isn't perfect!"

Danse Mors banged his fist on the table. He banged it again just to make his point. Tragically, he had no point. The most frustrating part of Maisie’s argument was that he actually agreed with her. It was infuriating! He was so absolute in his agenda but he could not help the tiny idea that welled inside his throat. When his host came to him and pleaded for his life, admitted his mistake in casting away his existence, Death he was offended, insulted! He would have extinguished him right then and there if he didn’t need a vessel to make his way to the damn coffee shop. So he gave the boy a riddle to solve and if he did, he’d return to his body. So far, no one won. That was the point of death. But he had his vessel and it was as excruciating as the void and yet full of life. Danse had never experienced life. Immortality was like a stasis; a perpetual state of merely being. The humans flitted from one state to another but as they lived, they lived beyond measure. The way music sounded in his ear, the way food tasted in his mouth, all the emotional responses in his body when he interacted with others. It was an explosion similar to the one he felt when he became Death. It was all so new and fragile. But he couldn’t deter. Death was absolute. What he was doing was right; he needed to remind himself of that. Yet his human heart fluttered in panic. In shame at his own betrayal, he opened his mouth to speak but nothing came. He couldn’t trust himself. Whether it was his own experience or an echo of his host, he recalled the mother of this being, stroking his hair and giving him words of comfort. Without thinking, he lightly touched his forehead where she had kissed him. Suddenly, he realized what he had done and looked around the room, terrified at being found out as if his thoughts could be seen. He stormed off, releasing a guttural scream, “Let it all rot!”

testing, testing

Cassius sprung from her chair, happy for the movement, and chased after Danse. Her muscles shook from their coiled positions as she ran, and there was the joy of relief mingled in with her concern and anger.

Right on cue, Justice enters from the back, clapping her hands to order. “No need to wait any longer,” she calls over the tense bubble that’s inhabited the other gods. She’s dressed in mostly patches of different causes and organizations with clothes thrown on underneath. Her jeans are covered in slogans and her shirt reads, “Meat is Murder”. She wears a military surplus jacket with no lack of patches. A canvas backpack slung over her shoulder and a picket sign in one hand, she leaves nothing to the imagination about her ideals. From her hair, she springs a pen, clicking it obnoxiously as she approaches the table. “First we should appoint a secretary to take down the minutes. I nominate myself as Judge over the proceedings and then after a discussion of pros and cons, we will vote. Agreed?” she says, glancing around the table. Her backpack slams against the floor as she takes her seat at the head of the table. From the overwhelming swell of emotion that hangs over them, she suddenly realizes that a discussion has already taken place. “I brought my gavel,” she remarks, taking out a notepad and a shiny gavel that appears suspiciously like it had been waxed repeatedly, almost obsessively. However her statement fell on deaf ears. “Do I want to know?” she says simply.

Margaret "Maisie" choked a bit on her own spit. She coughed a few times into her arm and opened her eyes wide. She wasn't sure how she felt about this one, or how Justice felt about her. "What exactly did you expect?"

Justice Ashtad Justice heaved a great sigh and tapped her fingernails against the table. “I expect a little decorum which, granted, few gods are really capable of but this IS the fate of the universe. Perhaps we can pull it together?” she says, eyeing Maisie. She didn’t hate her but she didn’t really hate anything. However, the Goddess of Fortune did often mess up her decree of Justice. The occasional mishap of fortune favoring some jack ass with a rabbit’s foot did not sit well with her. “How about this,” she starts, “I get everyone a nice blueberry scone and we all take a deep breath… k?” Justice smiles, expecting the others to fall in line. The idea that any one of them might be older never occurred to her. They had such human faces and vaguely human movements, she saw them like she saw any other humans. She turned towards the back, “Excuse me! Miss!! A round of blueberry scones, please!!” She turned back towards the remaining gods and only just realized the group was rather small. “Where is everyone?”

Infinitous-Zero "Quagmire Jones" Quagmire could of thought that time was relapsing itself because of some error he made in the code, he mused while Danse laughed at him, he wasn't saying anything that he didn't anticipate. Why did he even bother to lecture him? Danse was speaking of how he didn't actually kill how it was the fault of other deities, or circumstances even taking the opportunity to aggravate Maisie further by giving her some of the blame. Still it was death that caused the neurons to cease their bio-electric signaling to one in other, he's the one who detached mortals from the physical plane often against their will, his argument boiled down to the same thing, he was misunderstood, and no mortal or god would ever comprehend his greatness. Quagmire rolled his eyes, but he was snapped back to reality, when he heard Danse call him Quack, he raised an eye-brow, how did he know his classmates in the gifted class called him that? Did he ran into them this afternoon he wondered in a bit of malicious delight. When he realized that Danse was charging young Quagmire, he tensed up with a shot of adrenaline and anger, if he dared kill his vessel, he'd make death reveal his true feelings as forcibly and cruelly as he could. But like a category 5 hurricane that gets snapped back to sea by a cold front his fury was pulled away before it could do damage. Nothing to snuff out, it was prudent of death to not bother. Really Ininitous was far more fascinated with his own reaction, why did he find Maisie's feeling significant enough to defend all of a sudden, as if they were some scientific truth, and did it matter did it have any affect on her conciseness at all? The Goddess in question began speaking and she seemed to have renewed strength. Quagmire quietly sat back down and grabbed his lap top he sifted through his research paper on humanity, there was unforeseen phenomena he had to cover, before drawing a conclusion. "I think maybe you sympathize with them more than you let on." Quagmire snorted i

Infinitous-Zero "Quagmire Jones" Quagmire snorted in amusement, it was obvious death loved life, the evidence was insurmountable, starting with the fact that he bothered to show up rather then apathetically wait in the side lines, like most gods it seemed were doing. "Let it all rot" yelled Danse, and Quagmire snapped his head back up away from the screen. Cassius ran happily to Danse's side, how could this be possible? His calculation of Danse' behavior could not be this inaccurate. He had to be bluffing! Infinitous felt the boys heart flutter again, and he drew in short breath to provide the hungry organ with oxygen, Quagmire physiology was in panic mode again. He suppressed it, Danse was merely playing a cosmic game of chicken he was sure of it. His was thoughts were cleared by the abrupt sound of clapping. "No need to wait any longer," Quagmire knew who it was, without having to inspect the host, it was the Goddess of Justice. This precocious but cocky little girl usually irritated him, in the way she proclaimed to represent order, when it was he who was the true god of order, not the subjective version that humanity had invented. Still for some reason he was pleased by her arrival. “First we should appoint a secretary to take down the minutes. I nominate myself as Judge over the proceedings and then after a discussion of pros and cons, we will vote. Agreed?” However he was not going to spoil this child, by obeying her requests at once simply because she owned a pretty mallet with a shiny reflective surface. Hey took his Rubix cubed out of his bag and began matching the colors.

turned to Infinitous and tutted. "You could have at least maintained some sense of order until I got here. Why does it look like everyone's been shot?" The barista arrived, carrying plates of scones and served those that were present while leaving the rest next to empty chairs. Justice clicked her pen a few more times, needing stimulation for her hyperactive brain. The silence was deafening.

Infinitous-Zero "Quagmire Jones" Infintous smirked as he, matched all the green square together in the 5th dimension. "I'd sooner be able to make sense of 2 and 2 make 5, I think you'll find that order has ceased to exist in this coffee house, what with all the egoistical self pitting, sobbing, and whining about voids long gone. Really Cassius you must feel right at home, this is almost as insane as the actual void itself."

6 if you add Nyama