Who: Chazaqiel, Doug (NPC). Open. Where: Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan When: Around 1pm, Friday Warnings: Um, rambly Jess? Otherwise nothing at the moment.
At this very moment, two men are trailing along a Manhattan street. Let us take a moment to observe them.
On the surface, neither man seems particularly remarkable. Both are caucasian, brown-haired and appear to be in their early forties. They both work in broadcasting - indeed, they work in the same office. They earn roughly the same salary (although the first man is under the mistaken impression that his contains one or two more zeroes than the second's). They are both unmarried.
The second man wears a carefully-pressed, pale lemon shirt and a clashing tie beneath a shapeless sports jacket that looks as though it would be better suited to a man two or three decades his senior. He is lanky, and slightly taller than the first man, but he walks with a gentle slump which brings the two of them level. He is drinking a green tea frappucino from a disposable plastic Starbucks cup, with some relish.
The first man is better presented, in a coal-coloured blazer and suit pants and an off-white shirt, although any closer observation will struggle not to note the ill fit of the blazer, which gapes around the man's narrow shoulders, or the way the shirt seems to pucker and pinch under the arms. He walks with his shoulders thrust back and makes a pretence of peering into shop windows as he passes them, as an excuse to study his own reflection. He's sipping a cappuccino because he heard they were supposed to be cool. He doesn't seem to be enjoying it much.
Let's look a little deeper.
The first man is not well-liked at work, having been hired less for his skill in the broadcasting area than for the simple fact that his employers could afford nobody else on their meagre budget. He arrives in the office some time after midday, never any earlier, then proceeds to float through the rest of the day playing games on his Nintendo DS and occasionally disrupting production meetings while others research his stories and write his scripts for him.
The second man arrives promptly at nine each morning, never any later, and quickly busies himself with his work. He's not so much disliked as disregarded; the universal consensus seems to be that he's good at his job, but a bit weird. Not in an offensive way, more in a stamp-collecting, bird-watching hobbyist sort of manner. When he has free time (which is quite often, because he's a terribly diligent worker who gets through things quickly), he sometimes plays pranks on his fellow office workers, like accidentally-on-purpose leaving the tap on in the bathroom and switching the use-by dates on the milk in the staff fridge. He's been doing this periodically for nine months. Nobody's noticed yet.
One of these men is a demon. Can you guess which?
When posed with this same scenario, a good half of respondents will go with the first man, largely through a process of elimination. He seems to be the less pathetic of the two, anyway.
The other half, reasoning that this can only be a trick question and therefore the less likely answer must be the correct one, will name the second man.
The first man's name is Doug Bickmore, and he is the nightly news anchor for struggling local television network WNPZ. He's not a very nice man, nor a very happy one, but he is only a man. He's proved popular with the network's small viewership, especially the over-fifties and the grannies, but around the office his name is simply a punchline. They all know that Doug wouldn't know journalism if it punched him in the face, let alone be able to spell it.
He's a bully at the bottom of the food chain, weak and petty, picking on the few who are smaller than he is just to make himself feel slightly bigger.
He has no idea that his favourite (and indeed only) victim, mild-mannered weatherman Charlie Applecross and our second man, is a servant of Hell - a foul, demonic beast who even nows serves the will of Satan, a corrupt Watcher who Fell on account of lust, who betrayed his Lord by exposing humanity to the forbidden arts - is, in fact, the fallen angel and member of the demonic legions, Chazaqiel.
In truth, it's not something he really need worry about. Chaz is used to being pushed around. And besides, he's grown to like Doug. He's the only person at WNPZ who actually talks to him.
Chazaqiel was chatting away animatedly as they walked, Doug trailing just far enough behind to be able to pretend not to know Chaz, should the need arise. "…then my, my - my step-dad just disappears, just - poof! And nobody knows where he's gone. So now my big brother decides to step in and he's all, 'I'm the king of Hell now' and… agh," Chaz's voice trailed off with a sort of strangled gulp as he realised he'd slipped up. His eyes slid nervously to Doug's face. "I-in, you know, the metaphorical sense, I mean. Like a figurative whatsit. That's obviously what I meant."
He needn't have worried himself. Doug had a habit of tuning out whenever Chaz was speaking about anything that wasn't Doug or Doug-related. Right now, his internal monologue was running somewhere along the lines of: This is CBS News with Doug Bickmore… What's that, Brian? Why, of course, I'd be happy to give you a few journalistic pointers. Why don't you stop by the penthouse later and we'll shoot the breeze… Well, Larry, I don't know that I'd describe myself as a hero, haha. Our men and women fighting overseas, they're heroes. Me, I'm just an ordinary guy committed to bringing Americans the truth. Does that make me a hero? Some people say so. But I try not to… Bickmore. Doug Bickmore...
Feeling Chaz's eyes on him, he glanced up now, looking almost thoughtful for a moment. "What do you think of Douglas?"
Chazaqiel's anxious expression shifted into one of utter incomprehension. "What?"
"I mean, you know, Doug Bickmore is okay for these local gigs, but if you want to go national you need some respectability." Doug was tapping his chin pensively now, "Douglas Bickmore. What do you think, does that sound like a newsmanly name?"
Chaz blinked at the mortal a couple of times as his brain grappled with this new, unexpected turn in the conversation. After a moment's pause, he began hesitantly, "It… sounds a bit stuffy, doesn't it? Like, a bit of a granddad name."
This apparently wasn't the answer Doug had wanted to hear. He scowled now, lengthening his stride to push ahead of Chazaqiel. "What do you know, anyway?"
He didn't tell Chaz that that was more or less exactly what his producer had said when he'd presented him with the idea this morning, although Mike had used slightly more colourful language.
"W-well, hang on, when I say 'granddad', I don't mean," Chaz faltered. "I mean, it doesn't have to be a bad thing, necessarily. I quite like granddads. They're old and jolly and they have heaps of stories about the old days and-- Doug, wait up!"
Chazaqiel's frappucino slopped as he scrambled to catch up with his friend.