#bugriel

gabriel in his fallen state is a hulking insect-like presence, standing well over 8 feet and with a heavy build. his armor doubles as a carapace and as such is physically part of his body, with tarnished metal and more organic seeming patterns and joints.

the front plate of his helmet is broken off, save for the cross that decorated it (usually), revealing a dark void underneath. a pair of large, layered antennae like those of june beetles conceal this exposed 'face' in a way that gives them the appearance of wings. this void can manifest any number of eyes within it.

The bottom golden trim of the helmet is split and grown apart into stag beetle-like mandibles, and the broken remains of his halo have fused with the rest of the helmet into slightly branched horns that roughly correlate with the original shape of the halo (structurally, its similar to the horns of banescale dragons, with a couple extra prongs growing off the back of the base portion)

the relatively unarmored sections of his body, such as his neck and torso are thickly scaled in a way similar to fuzzy moths, and from his waist sprouts a pair of raptorial limbs similar to that of a mantis or mantis shrimp. the fingertips of his main arms sport claws and his pauldrons have grown somewhat more form-fitting as part of the carapace. his once-pauldrons and forearm plating sport small spikes.

his legs are bug-like and superficially digitigrade, with two hooked claws on each foot. the patterning of his once-knee guards are somewhat visible still.

the tassets around his hips fuse together in the back, extending into a sharp scorpion-like tail, though it holds no venom. the base of the tail is wider and more akin to a lobster or mantis shrimp before tapering off into the more scorpion-esque anatomy.

As a proper fallen angel, Gabriel is an even taller (over 8'6") and imposing figure. His halo has become a set of horns and his wings are shattered and split into four long limb-like appendages (think malicious face spider legs but more weaponized). His armor, or rather, carapace is duller and tarnished looking, with the segmentation between plates being more organically divided. He has a pair of sharp, hooked raptorial limbs (like a mantis) connected close to his waist and his legs are completely rearranged into an insectoid form. The front plate of his helmet is largely missing to reveal what at a glance seems to be a void, though also revealing several spider-like eyes around the still completely intact (and untarnished !) cross that once decorated the helmet. The golden spike has split into wasp-like mandibles and large, wing-like lamellate antennae often cover his face in spite of everything else. The [name for whatever the skirt armor plates are] are fused together in the back and extend into a scorpion tail. also his fingers are clawed.

bro is fucked up  !!

optionally, at some point well into the future a few more changes happen over time:

- his bodyplan gets a little less strictly humanoid. playing fast and loose with it

- exposed "skin" gets a layer of fuzzy scales like a moth

- at least one set of the appendages that used to be his wings finally heal into a new set of cicada- or mantis-like wings

- he no longer has the cross from his helmet embedded into his face

im not yet sure how gabe would react other than it being generally bittersweet !! (unless @presidentbungus has any input there), though he probably wouldnt've been too surprised when it first started studying angels since V2 was just extremely curious all around and initially it just wanted to learn more about them, since that was wayyy before any of end-of-life plans had ever even been relevant. but the whole backup thing is kind of stressful for V2, at least in a 'you need to get this done while you still can' sense. the whole reason phoenix is more of another, separate entity than just V2 resurrected is that I kind of took from the idea of how artificial intelligence works in the mass effect universe, where you can't even transfer an AI to different hardware without fundamentally altering it by virtue of slight variables between different bits of hardware, even when it's presumably identical on the surface, combined with the fact that in my interpretation the Vs computers are neuromorphic and modelled after the human brain and have artificial synapses and everything, so instead it decides to create some sort of esoteric hybrid processor (which takes a lot of trial and error and probably some suspension of disbelief) that'll last for a very, very long time (it's capable of regenerating itself, but puts a lot of strain on the rest of its body's systems, meaning phoenix has to do a lot more frequent upkeep) and then uploading some of it's memories and other archived data to it that it deems important or vital; mostly important events in its life and various bits of info that would otherwise be lost, and then it leaves gabriel the instructions for how to actually swap out the parts and upload the data backup onto it. it really is a sort of bittersweet 'came back wrong' sort of deal because of the inherent differences between iterations, which is something they would need to work out for sure. it's aware that it's a derivative of someone else who it can never truly be, but it doesn't dwell on that because it knows it was created out of it's predecessor's love for it's friend and to make sure someone would be there still with him, it has those memories and has at least part of that connection still.

phoenix is also initially just kind of. off-putting, vaguely. being an angelic machine (or a mechanical angel), it operates at far higher temperatures and its lights are all bleached white and are brighter and trying to output light from any possible place on its body. it's aware that it's not quite the same entity as V2, though it will respond to both that name and it's given designation (PHNX-AM or just phoenix, V2 named it that both to play into the idea of something being reborn from ashes and also riffing off its mechanical nature and angels as messengers). it's generally more hollow and blank seeming at first, though it does start to relearn a few of V2's mannerisms, and as time goes on it eventually begins modifying its body again into something more unique over the course of what would be several lifetimes both for optimization reasons and identity realization reasons. the whole dual nature thing probably messes with gabe for a good while at first, reminding him of things he's lost or left behind