Chapter Text
When Raphael rejoins the group, it's to find Adam locked in a staring contest with Jim.
The baby's seat is on the table across from the boy's math books. The air between the two of them is wavering from the pressure of the extranormal energies being relayed by their unblinking regard, while Gabriel and Beelzebub and Aziraphale all supervise. Or just watch. Raphael's not sure.
He goes over to Aziraphale.
"Do you know where Crowley kept his tools?" he asks.
Aziraphale, distracted, waves vaguely.
"I'm not sure, my dear. Perhaps in the Bentley?" he suggests.
Raphael nods in thanks and heads back out of the library, since the others seem to have whatever it is they're doing well in hand. He heads over to where the Bentley is parked past the hedges, waiting patiently for them to their finish their affairs.
"Hello, Bentley. Do you know where my tools are?" he asks, even though the Bentley can't speak. It might still be able to indicate a direction.
There's no response. Oh well, he didn't entirely expect an easy answer anyway.
It's starting to rain. Raphael glances up and sees a thick, dark line of clouds on the horizon. The ground is still wet and littered with puddles from the last rainfall. He circles the Bentley, wondering where it might hide a kit of celestial tools. He would have sensed them, he felt, but then again, if Crowley had such things he'd probably take measures to hide them. Slip them into a pocket dimension, or change their shape or size, disguise them as something else...
Raphael pauses at the boot of the car, and the spare tire there behind the license plate. But it's just a tire.
His gaze drifts down to the plate itself.
'NIAT RUC'?
'CURTAIN' backwards.
What's behind the curtain?
Raphael reaches forward and grins as the letters gleam beneath his touch.
"Oh, there you are... hello, my darlings!"
With a careful hand he reaches into the license plate, grasps something, and tugs it free. When he straightens up he finds himself holding a large black tool box, with the name 'A.J. Crowley' embossed in gold on one corner. He nearly opens it on the spot, but then his fingers slip against the lock in the rain, and he thinks the better of it. He climbs into the Bentley instead and opens it there.
A giddy laugh escapes him as he confirms, with delight, that this is exactly what he's looking for. Scroll, crank, manual, diagnostic tools, brush, wrench, hammer, measuring bowls... they're all here! Everything's accounted for! He almost pulls out his crank and his diagnostic tools on the spot.
But then it occurs to him that something might go wrong. He doesn't know what could go wrong, but lots of things have been going wrong, and he also isn't even completely sure what he's looking for or what might happen if he finds it. Something go awry if he's reckless, so he should probably at least talk with Aziraphale before he does anything.
So he contents himself with running his hands over them for now. Then he considers, and puts the trumpet in the book box as well, for safe-keeping, before he closes the whole thing shut and gets back out of the Bentley.
His foot immediately lands in a puddle, and he grimaces as the water soaks into his sock and up the leg of his trousers.
Thunder rumbles in the distance.
That's a lot of atmospheric activity. He frowns, squinting at the sky. Lightning flashes on the horizon. No matter how far he looks he can only see rain clouds. He hadn't looked before, but it occurs to him that the planet shouldn't be doing that. If he squints right Raphael can see clear around the curvature of the earth, and it's... it's all storm...?
Still looking up, he sets his toolkit onto the hood of the Bentley, snaps it open again, and takes out two of his diagnostic tools. He tosses the sphere up, letting it levitate in front of him, and then taps it with the rod. A low chime sounds and the sphere whirls and whirls, gathering up samples with enough intensity to produce a small vacuum effect. Raindrops vanish into it. Raphael lifts the rod and frowns as it glows an ominous red.
He's starting to develop a suspicion. He doesn't like it. He hasn't like most suspicions he's developed lately, and has liked most of their outcomes even less.
The sphere stops whirling and also turns red. Raphael grabs them both then checks his manual, to where the results are scrawling themselves across a crisp off-white page. The rain slides harmlessly from it, but pools in the bottom of the tool box, so he absently pulls the lid over without clasping it shut.
When he's finished he puts the rod and the orb back away again and lets out a long breath, before looking disapprovingly at the sky.
Someone's trying to flood everything.
Not just here, but everything. The whole planet. One great big storm, with far more precipitation than the biosphere ought to normally produce. The planet has been suffering from a damaged atmosphere and increasing climate change for a long while now, according to the diagnostics. It's in dire need of maintenance and a concerted effort to rectify several imbalances, but with a little work it's still got loads of time left in it and no reason for this kind of planetary scale climate event. This is something else. If anything the planet's been dryer overall than it's supposed to be.
Which means that this is the result of divine - or infernal - intervention.
When Aziraphale told him the flood story, he mentioned that God had promised not to do it again afterwards. Raphael has stopped being surprised by a lot of Heaven's actions, but he doesn't think it would fit for them to renege on something so clearly stated by the Almighty Herself.
Which means the other side's probably doing it, since Satan almost certainly never promised not to do a big flood sometime.
Heaven must have noticed it, and they're not stopping it either.
So Gabriel's probably right. They've probably realized that Jim has gone missing, and now they're starting to force things. It doesn't matter if it's even feasibly in the Great Plan or not, since Heaven and Hell both can use the same argument which Crowley and Aziraphale once did, which is that it's part of the Ineffable Plan instead. Hadn't Metatron done basically that in Heaven, when he'd argued that the events of the failed apocalypse and Gabriel's defection ultimately led to Raphael's return, and his ability to sound the trumpet?
It's anything goes.
He shouldn't be surprised, and he isn't, but he's something still like surprised. Appalled? Appalled.
Well if they think he's just going to do nothing and let them...
Raphael rummages through his toolkit until he finds the pump. He marches over to an empty patch of field near the library and sets the pump up, stretching it up and up until it towers in a thin line over Tadfield before rooting it securely in the ground and turning it on.
He nods with satisfaction as it starts to move, and then he sets up the exit point. It can't be too far away, but that's fine, there are plenty of nearby options. He wishes he had another. This one won't be able to catch everything, he used to only use it to remove water which got displaced onto planetary bodies that weren't supposed to have any at all.
Still. See them have an easy time trying to flood the Earth while he sends more than half the water to Mars...