“Ey runt, up an’ attem!” The shout barraged my ears. Looks like Wrath was in charge of waking me up today. Would it kill them to just let me use an alarm?

“Good morning Wrath, what’s the time? 7:30? Time to get ready then.” I took of my pajamas and got on my corduroys and flannel, seems like another work day today. On my way to work I noticed an odd pile of white down at the crosswalk, it looked like it was a foot tall and pure white. Odd. It looked like Wrath paled a little near the pile as we passed by. At the receptionist desk I was greeted once again by Tom, it’s always nice to start the work day with the smile. It was a little slow today as there weren’t that many requests, to pass the time I worked on programming a little bubble screensaver. I got around 20 calls that day, most of them being short ten to twenty minute calls, with one taking an hour and a half, and two others taking taking about 50 minutes each. The small calls were generally short little glances at the manual to find the issue, whereas the long ones were actual errors that I had to step them through. Lunch was roasted lamb with some pickled cabbage, steamed carrots, and mashed potatoes. Tiffany, Taylor, Chase and I talked over some of our calls. Chase would sometime talk over his customers so he often overlooked some of their issues and had to start over from the beginning, Tiffany came across a rather elderly user who couldn’t figure out how to auto-connect some wires, and Taylor didn’t really have any calls that were too memorable.

The smell of coffee still lingered around me as I left the office a little after 5:00, and as I strolled back home, I noticed that the homeless people on the street had rather fuller donation cans then normal, and for some reason I felt compelled to donate $50. I’m not too frugal but I normally donate a lesser amount, but that urge felt oddly… unnatural. I wonder why I felt I had to do that, well it’s not too important. As soon as I stepped into my apartment the first thing I did was dial up uncle Cedric. “Hello Uncle, Joseph here.”

“Ah, good afternoon Joseph, did you just finish up work?”

“Yeah, got some calls in and generally happy clients. So I was wondering about what I should do regarding my father.”

“Ok, what I need you to do is head back to where you used to live with Alec. Once you get there I want you to bring back anything you think might be relevant as to why he acted the way he did.” I felt like this was going to be a rather late night. Since the farm was so far away I decided to order a taxi, it’s a shame dad decided to sell his car for my schooling.

The fields were barren, looks like nobody’s bought the place yet. Let’s hope the locks weren’t changed yet. As I slowly took my steps up towards the house, I realized that I was trembling. This was where my mother died, where I selfishly had my father move into the city. Where my childhood crumbled away. My old life. I hate this place. As I put the key into the door, I let out a slight sigh of relief as the door unlocked. It felt like the house hasn’t changed at all, a one-level house with two bedrooms, and a dining room openly connected to the kitchen and living areas. I decided to check out my room first, just like it used to be, kind of small with a nice window near my old bedside. The bed was much too small for me now, time sure flies by. As I turned to walk towards my parents room, I noticed a slight bulge of feathers coming out from underneath the door-frame, they looked just like the ones I saw at the street corner in the morning. I opened the door and entered the room. It felt like I entered a place I shouldn’t have. There were piles of the feathers all over the room, and I saw an unusually large pile atop the desk in the corner of the room. I opened the draw and found piles of papers, most of them looked like bills, but upon further inspection it seemed like they were actually confirmations of donations of large sums of money. The amounts were ludicrous for a farmer, it seemed like he either kept past papers or he kept some money from when he was the CEO. The timestamps on the papers favored the former. This seemed important enough. I grabbed all the papers in the drawer and tried to turn on his computer, it turned on but I didn’t know the password. I took the computer tower with me as I believed that there could be more details in there.

The taxi driver I called for the way back seemed curious about the paperwork and computer tower but didn’t ask any questions. It was a rather silent drive back as I flipped through the documents. By a rough estimate it seemed like my dad has donated slightly over 10 million dollars in total to various charities. What the hell was he thinking of spending his money like this instead of on his family or his work? Finally arriving back at my apartment at about 10:00 pm I called Cedric. “Hey, it’s Joseph, I found some crazy stuff back at the farmhouse. My dad’s spent over 10 mil on some random charities.”

“Good lord, so he was still doing that.”

“Wait what do you mean ‘still’? When did this happen before?”

“Well the main method your father used to blow the company was through charities and giving great deals to rival companies that were horrible for us, along with giving away some company secret techniques and work statistics. It seemed like he wasn’t even himself.”

“Wait did you happen to see any sort of pure white feathers in his office or anywhere around him?”

“No, what does that have to do with anything?”

“Sorry uncle, I was just wondering, I guess not.” out of the corner of my eye I see Wrath perk his head up at the mentioning of the feathers.

“Well, there had to have been something, perhaps-”

**click**

“Wrath what the hell was that about?”

“Listen kid, did you say something about feathers? What did they look like?” there was a slight tremble in his voice and it seemed like he was almost sweating.

“They looked like something off an eagle, but they were all pure white. Why do you ask?”

“Ahhh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck FUCK *FUCK*. THEY’RE HERE ALREADY?” Wrath was shaking now.

“Wait hold on calm down. What are you so worried about?”

“Kid you don’t get it, we’re screwed. If we can’t get them before they find us I don’t think we can fight back.”

“Who are they?”

“The Seven Heavenly Virtues. From how your conversation was going it seems like we’re dealing with Charity. God damnit, Greed’s gonna flip his shit when he hears about this. First off, where did your old man work?”

“He was the head of a tech firm here in New York city.”

“Fuck do you know if your dad ever stopped being insanely charitable?”

“Well it seemed like we got some nicer things when I was about 8 years old. Maybe he stopped a little while before then.”

“Shit that's one hell of an after-effect. How much did your dad give away when he was CEO?” “About $800,000 in pure cash, I’m not sure how much in assets and skills.”

“Well that explains the after-effect duration, your dad got hooked by that bastard into some extremely charitable acts.”

“Wait but then why did it eventually stop?”

“Oh, that was because your dad lost his position where he could donate a ludicrous amount of money. My best bet is that Charity is still lurking around the city, trying to get all the people he can to donate in any way possible, beneficial or not. Those bastards can get so engrossed in their own virtues that it corrupts them.”

“Wait so it wasn’t my dad’s fault that he blew the company’s money?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Your father was still the one who gave away the money but he was under a strong influence from a virtue.”

“That’s great, I’ll call uncle Cedric and let him … no, he can’t see you guys and I doubt he’d believe me that dad was under the influence of a corrupt heavenly being.”

“Now you’re seeing it, the only thing we can do is try and find that jackass and knock his shit around.”

“Isn’t there any other way, I mean charity isn’t all that bad isn’t it?” “Sure, just throw away all your possessions, I’m sure it’ll work wonders to be homeless and penniless.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And I’m not sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, this guy’s a virtue, your mind wouldn’t last a second.” I sat there for a moment, thinking of something I could do. Going up against something like that seems impossible, but there has to be some way. Some way that I could calm this guy. “I don’t know why you’re trying to talk diplomacy around me, I say we knock his lights out. End of story.” Maybe that’s all I can do.

“Okay ,so let’s settle what we know first, have you seen any places that have angel feathers around them? You’re the owner of the book, and as a human you can mediate between virtue and sin. We can’t see the virtues and they can’t see us, all we have is a vague feeling when one of us is nearby another. You, you can see the spiritual forms of all of us, so you can also see their feathers right? Those bastards shed all the fucking time, and they’re vessels do as well while they’re under their effects.” I guess those feathers in my parents room were actually angel feathers then. Wait.

“I normally see a small pile of feathers on my way to work but today it seemed pretty big, and it was getting bigger.”

“Shit, did you feel oddly charitable when you were near that pile.”

“Now that you ask, yeah. Instead of donating the usual five bucks to this homeless guy on the street I almost instinctively gave him $50.”

“FIrst of, never mention you doing that around Greed, secondly, it seems that Charity has gotten bored and is now targeting random passersby in the area. Which means we need to work fast.”