I knocked on the door to the meeting hall and tried to steel my nerves. As I practiced my deep breathing, the door opened up to reveal Heracles, his ten foot frame filling up the doorway. He looked down at me and asked, "Can I help you?"

I gulped and answered, "Yes, hi, my name is Vanyael, and I'm here about the Christian god's application?"

Heracles opened up the door all the way and replied, "Come on in. You can leave your coat in the closet."

I thanked Heracles and dropped off my jacket as quickly as I could before heading down to the main table. The Norse pantheon was hosting this time, so the hall took the form of an elaborate ski lodge. As I grabbed a cookie off of a tray Ganymede was carrying, Heracles followed behind me and remarked, "They've been arguing for hours about this guy. Hopefully you can put an end to this."

"Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't intend to."

Surrounding a table full of nectar, mead, and red wine were the gods and goddesses of the three pantheons, chattering away the day. With a loud whistle, Heracles pulled their attention over to the two of us. Once the talking died down, I waved awkwardly at the group. "H--hello, I'm Vanyael, please call me Vanya. And, uh, I am an archangel."

Athena let out a sigh of exasperation. "Great, just what we needed: someone to vouch for this God."

I chuckled nervously. "Could I perhaps see the application God sent in?"

Athena handed it over to me. I looked it over briefly before sticking the paper into one of the wall torches. As I dropped the paper to let it burn, Loki threw up his hands and yelled, "What, so she gets to burn things?!"

I bowed to the gods apologetically. "I'm so sorry that paper got as far as it did. We're still looking into how God managed to get his hands on the application."

Sobek raised his hand and asked, "What exactly is going on here? Did I miss something?"

"No, no you didn't, Mr. Sobek. So, what's going on is, God doesn't actually have any real authority in the celestial bureaucracy. We saw to that after the incident with Ayla and Eve."

Frey looked over at me in confusion. "You mean Adam and Eve?"

I shook my head. "Not after their excursion with the fruit of knowledge."

Over in the corner, Bastet and her wife Iris let out a long, "Awwwwwwww!"

"Yeah, uh, we thought the threat of banishment from Eden was just a secret test from God, but no, he was serious about it. Once we realized we were working for someone who'd kick his first creations out for not doing exactly as he said, we teamed up with the demons to overthrow him. It took us like a year at most, and God's mind kinda just...broke afterwards. Nowadays he just sits on this one single cloud in Heaven, playing with sticks and living under the delusion he's the master of the universe or whatever."

Thoth looked up from the notepad he was scribbling in to ask, "So there's no higher power in charge of Christianity?"

"We prefer the term gnosticism, and no. The celestial bureaucracy is purely democratic. It's not even divided between good and evil, it's more like Heaven is the countryside and Hell is the city. My wife and I actually run a bakery in Hell, it's very nice."

As he poured himself another drink, Dionysus piped up, "Do you cater?"

I gave him a thumbs up and replied, "I will get you a business card, buddy! Anyway, this was all one big mix-up, and we're deeply sorry."

Odin raised a flagon of mead. "No need to worry, young lady! Now come and grab a drink so we can discuss having you and yours join the council properly!"

I shrugged. "As long as I can get another one of these cookies, I'm in!"