#transfem jpv

Returning to the topic of Azrael and how he should steal Utena characters’ looks, tweak his hair slightly and you get magic. Give Jean-Paul a good curling regimen and he can pass as a golden Saionji, apply straightener and we can swap him in Touga’s place (which now has me thinking of an alternate SKU with Azrael in it), and by the ending issues of Agent Of The Bat he has Mikage down to an exact science. Sleep on it and you’ll see I’m right. Honourable mention to my Transfem JPV whose hair is probably just a mix of Kanae and Nanami.

ANGEL INSANE

PART II OF II

EXIT

SPECIAL THANKS TO

@azraelgirly

Jeanne-Paula Valley was forced to wake up from slipping in and out of consciousness by the bitter coldness of the unclean asylum floor, her messy blonde hair spilled in a fan out in front of her, streams of blood from being struck by a giant furry ape-man leaking from her mouth and staining her lips a deep shade of red, sparks of red and black and white emanating from the corners of her eyes, her vision going in and out of focus, even though she could only see the tiled dark green floor of the indoor prison yard and a bit of bangs in her face. To make things worse for her and exacerbate the situation, she didn’t even have her clothes, save her black underthings, for all of them had been stolen away from her and were currently the worn property of a certain white-skinned man with a green mullet, sharp fanged white teeth, dark green eyes, and red lips that perpetually curved into a sickly smile. The joker had been busy with prancing around in her Azrael outfit while she had been unconscious, and now that she was, in fact, awake, she was now able to hear him speaking as well.

“Well, well, well, what a fun evening this has turned out to be! And here I thought that I would have nothing to do tonight but sit around here eating our dead. But nobody was going to show up for the human sacrifice, anyway, so it’s assuredly much of an improvement.”

Turning over to the now-awakened blonde on the floor, he smiled his slasher grin at her and kept on talking.

“Well, now, anyway, whatever shall we do with our most unexpected guests? Kill them, murder them, slay them, or slaughter them? I always did particularly love the word slaughter. It’s laughter… But it’s with an S! How could you not love it? Ah, slaughter is so soignee, n’cest’ pas, everyone? Of course, I’m so soignee, myself, what with these fantabulous new drip and ice and all that fun stuff.”

“Killing them would be a waste.”, muttered the Ventriloquist while carelessly holding her gun.

“I mean, we could eat them.”, the Joker responded. “There’s nothing stopping us from eating them. Plus we’re all here because they falsely call insane murderers, lunatics, and criminals, right? So a bird and a bat with one stone, we get to down our meal, and further confirm our residency in this defenceless funhouse instead of a no-fun boring conventional jail, am I right, ladies?”

“I once knew a really vindictive cannibal.”, came the cry of Socko upon the Ventriloquist's hand. “Up and ate a guy he disagreed with. Ah, what a fine fellow, that Stirk man was. Wonder where he went to. Oh well.”

“But no, seriously, folks…”, Riddler began.

“We can very well use them for bargaining chips.”, finished Mister Freeze in his place. “These odd fellows right down here with us, this pathetic little vigilante and this even more pathetic little doctor… They can buy us our freedom.”

“It might very well work, Doctor Victor…”, replied the blonde woman in the white hat while she struck a cigarette against his armour to light it up. “By now those oppressive fascists they call the Gotham Police doubtless have this place surrounded. Now, I’m just a simple little mobstress, but surely even I could see that we stand much better odds of getting out and free if we have an edge.”

“Ough, it seems we have a disagreement amongst ourselves. Predictable, yes, but utterly disappointing, most especially to me. We are at loggerheads and I don’t have a gun to make you people listen to me. I mean, you would think that being Batman’s biggest opponent would give me SOME swing in here, but NOOO, all of you figurative clowns have to go and be all independent.”

Responsively to the Joker’s whining, Ventriloquist and Socko proceeded to step on over to the centre of the room and take the proverbial stage.

“I know.”, Socko said in the puppet’s trademarked exaggerated, cartoony voice, like an adult woman voicing a male character. “Now you can call us crazy — but not to my face —”

“I can call you a wacky-dacky, a really droll fellow, AND call you late for dinner.”, Joker grumbled.

“ANYWAY,”, Socko continued. “I have just the perfect little solution to solve the conflict problem. Why. Don’t. We…”

The sock-gloved hand pointed right to Two-Face.

“Toss a coin?”

Two-Face, who had been busy with pointing a pistol at the asylum doctor, snapped back to attention and made him turn his attention to one of a total of three blondes in the room.

As the man split in half turned his focus to the centre of the mob, Socko’s owner took over. “Anyone in this general vicinity think that that might be a good idea? Hmmmmmmm, Harvey…?”

“Yes.”, the man with two faces replied as he picked up a coin from his breast pocket. Both faces featured the same relief of a woman’s face, but the side considered to be tails was marked with a nasty scar, induced by a common knife, serving as the physical manifestation of its owner’s own evil.

“Let’s begin with the psychologist and psychiatrist…”, began Ventriloquist, her heels stomp-stomp-stomping on the dark tile floor and carrying her to within breathing distance while she slapped her gun in her hand with an oddly-soothing rhythm. “Now throw your two-faced coin and we’ll see if we need to put a girl away…”

Flippppp…!

The black man’s hand immediately slapped the coin down onto the other hand, the one with scars cut into it, the result of the psychosis of his two halves compulsing him to spread the split even further. A few more seconds of tension as a hush came over the crowd, everyone looking right at him to inspect the result.

His hand slid away from the coin.

He brought his scarred left hand up to his face.

The silver woman’s appearance was undamaged.

“HEADS!”, he proclaimed, to the jeers and the boos of everyone in there except for two of the three blondes, that being the powerless angel in black underwear, and the other being the dazzled and frazzled Harleen Quinzel, who, against all odds, had been overcome with a rushing sense of thrill with being right in the heart of these criminal minds, even while the loonies pointed a loaded gun at her.

“Unscarred side lands Up?”, The Joker asked out to the aether. “Why, ‘pon my word, it did!”

Pointing over to Doctor Quinzel, he smiled and cartoonishly slapped his hand on her shoulder like they were just the best of chums. “Con-grrradulations, sissy! You are now the proud winner of every next breath you take! Courtesy of your good old buddy Mister J! By the way,”, he said as he turned over to face two more faces.

“By the way, Two-Face, are you named after the coin, or did you name it after you?”

Silent treatment from the man in the suit.

“Well, never mind. There are some things a decent man keeps to himself. Now, let’s go about moving right on over to our other contestant…”

Soon enough his face was staring up at Jeanne’s bloodied visage and his annoying mannerisms now turned themselves over to her, while she was powerless to do anything against him, especially considering that she was being held in place by someone whom she had met before; Killer Croc, a dense-muscled man with what Damian had told her was a terrible medical condition that warped his flesh into a reptilian form with a carnivorous crocodile face. They were only the same height as each other due to the croc’s warped spine that made him hunch over, and she could only hope against hope that he didn’t recognise her in time to try and eat her himself. “That is, the chap – or chapette, I can’t really tell – who supplied these boss threads I’m sporting. Say, who is your tailor?”

A dwarf. She thought.

“Not telling, huh?”, the clown prince of crime responded to the air of silence, never something that he liked, not one little bit. “Well, I don’t blame you, Mum’s the word. Though only if you have a mum.”

The look on her face was so miserable and so glum that it could even kill somebody’s illegal spice high.

“Enny-wayy, time to decide the fate of the fashion plate. Give ‘er the old flipperoo, Mister Face!”

Flippppp…!

The other man’s hand immediately slapped the coin down on his flesh, the one with scars cut into it. A few more seconds of tension as another hush came over the crowd, everyone looking right at him to inspect the result.

His hand slid away from the coin.

He brought his scarred left hand up to his face.

The silver woman’s appearance was scarred.

“Well, the plate of fate has sounded once more, and my, oh, my!”, proclaimed Joker while bending over to inspect the coin. “I guess we’ll just have to bury your silent hide.” His voice still retained its always-on comedy as he turned back over to the powerless Jeanne-Paula Valley, grinning even wider and smiling at her even harder, but now it had a different edge. Now not everything was just a joke, now it was cold and chilling.

“But you won’t be able to mind. Matter of fact, you’ll be at peace. Resting in peace.”

Batman had been busy with the finishing touches on stopping a caper done by several of the Riddler’s men in his absence by securely leaving the money with a branch of the city police to give back to the bank, and now he was busy with swinging himself through the air, kicking out his left leg in a jackknife pose configuration while a giant length of corded metal rope kept him from falling down below to his doom at the hands of simple pedestrians. His cape fanned out behind him like a proper set of wings, casting the image of a bat-man in shadow, a silhouette against the moon that cascaded across the skies, gliding through the night, and landing smoothly upon the roof of a Waynetech office building that overlooked one of the only good, clean-looking Gotham streets. He was the sole ruler of the city, he was above them all, both literally and figuratively, he was…

…Standing in the presence of a Vampire.

The woman known only as Nocturna stood there waiting for him, the regal expanse of her intricate black dress patterned with webs of red and grey and white blowing about in the winter night wind, her presence on the roof itself sending out a chill in the air. Initially, Batman tried to brace himself for combat, but he quickly realised that her intention was not to fight.

“What are you doing up here?”

“I have not come to engage in the typical heroic and villainous routine against you. Nay, nay, nay, nay, I have… A different strategy to deal with you. Mostly, because… I need something from you?”

“Spit it out and then get out of my sight.”

Nocturna simply stepped a little closer, closing her pale-skinned hands into tight fists and looking down at the caped crusader through blowing long curly black bangs, speaking to him while the lights of the technological expanse bared the sharp fangs of her canines under her lips.

“Your son. Nightwing. The bird had disappeared in Blüdhaven, and he had not surfaced for a number of weeks. Now he has turned up in the hospital, and he needs to get out if he wishes to have any hope of care for his injuries. You know just as well as I do that Blüdhaven is Hell, no chance to get the resources Dick needs, and doubtless you would want to save your son from such a situation, correct, bat?”

“Of course I would. I would do anything to get Dick back. Point me where to go and I’ll get him out.”

“Good, good, good, good. I shall provide a convenient transportation for you to reach him.”

“Why are you telling me any of this?”

Nocturna simply sighed, and the howling of the bitter winter breeze even cut into her living dead body a little.

“Because once upon a time, I cared enough about you to care about your happiness. I suppose that’s why I want you to save your son.”

With that, Nocturna became a swarm of giant furry black bats, and the Batman was swept up in their embrace, speedily escorting him down to his vehicle in the abyss below, a gesture of compassion from someone who had once been more than just another woman in Batman’s life.

Meanwhile, back in the crowd, a certain ape-man from earlier and his handler were shifting around a little bit, having now become uneasy with how the situation in front of them had played out. The man with the long white beard now had a look of regret upon his wrinkled face, leaning a bit more on his wooden gold-tipped cane than usual, and realising that he may have made a mistake. Sensing his thoughts expressed all over his visage, Charles pronounced out loud.

“Ghadda.”

“Perhaps this should not happen.”, the abbot began. “They will take him. They will mutilate him. They will desfigure and desecrate his corpse. Unideal. I have yet to learn much about his body after death, and now I might not ever get that chance again.”

“Ghadda.”

“Ah, but what if we were, in our infinite wisdom and largesse, decided to spice up how to kill this fellow a little bit here, HMM?”, Joker rambled as he continued on and on. “OI, Ivy! You’re a poisoner, correct? How about you kill him?”

A response was heard from the inside of a cell, the only one with its barrier still not broken through, not for lack of effort, but simply because its occupant, one Poison Ivy, simply didn’t like being out of her environment. In practical terms she was a plant couch surfer and she didn’t feel like leaving her warm, damp, and comfortable nature-filled asylum cell.

“Don’t bother me, clown, we don’t work for you. Don’t get me wrong, I find that one annoying, but not annoying enough to make me move. And don’t make me have to come down there, you would not like it. Now let me nap.”

“I noticed that these here glad rags come equipped with a blade or two.”, the clown-man said as he turned his attention back to Jeanne in a surprisingly good example of verbal rebounding. “Just the proper ticker-ticket for getting or two on the bus, am I right, folks? Or for slicing and dicing a guest.”

Regrettably for him, once he found a way to turn the flame-activation mechanisms on, he was rudely responded to by the mechanical systems with an uncontrollable blaze that immediately set his green mullet on fire.

“YEOWWWWW!!!!!!!!”

“Hmmph. That clown accidentally activated the fire mechanism.”, Brother Khass snarled while the Joker began running around like the crazed maniac that he was, except this time with his head a-blazing.

“Ghadda.”

“Azrael needs to be wearing his garb to possess and harness his full power…”, the abbott continued while kneeling down to grab the Azrael mask undetected from the floor. “But perhaps the mask will be sufficient. AZRAEL, HERE!”

Barely managing to catch the mask in time, Jeanne’s hands automatically flew out to grab it, spending a single second that she didn’t have to look into its waiting eyes, before shoving it on over her head and feeling herself shift away.

“HAAAAAAALLLLPPPP!!!!”, the Joker kept on screaming while everyone was distracted by turning their attention over to him, Killer Croc included.

“Don’t just STAND there!”, yelled the Gray Abbot to the woman in the mask. “You are Azrael! VANQUISH THEM!”

“Vanquish them…”, Azrael finally said, turning her fist over to the crocodile-man and intercepting an attempt from him to claw her arm off.

“Azrael vanquishes…”

After dropping Killer Croc with a sporting tackle that sent him flying into the crowd and a subsequent throw that sent him into a wall, and getting back up with a slightly increased quantity of gusto, the next one up was Two-Face. A shot from his revolver was barely dodged, but a responsive punch right to his clean and unscarred half was definitely not.

“No fair!”, the suited man moaned as he held his eye. “You hit HARVEY! He’s the GOOD one!”

Azrael just kicked him while he was down and sent him into the mob, too.

For a solid moment of about ten seconds, the crowd was simply stunned. Not even Batman started out fights so callously, this one was something different. Too much like the bat for them to not care, but so unfamiliar to all but a few that the assembly of villains was left unsure of what to do. Then, they all became enraged. Supremely enraged. And so naturally, all of them jumped her at once.

While a flurry of weapons and punches and kicks and hair-pulling and all other forms of dishonourable combative tactics were busy being employed by Azrael while scrapping against almost the entire cast of Arkham Asylum’ regular attendees, plus an alternate or two and a newcomer or ten, the Joker had finally managed to put his hair out with the fabric of the Azrael suit, while having accidentally to a corner of the room, wherein the doctor who had just been under the literal gun had been busy with huddling in fear.

“Somebody could have splashed a little water on my hair! I wasn’t even asking for conditioner!”

Then, he began to fiddle with his garments, shrugging them all off while grumbling to the doctor, who was the only one nearby who would listen. “As for the suit, better get rid of it before I discover a nuclear bomb underneath the lapel.”

“Probably… Probably should… Mister J…”, Doctor Harleen said through physical takeover of extreme fear.

“And don’t think it’s any funny business, either, Doctor Harley Quinn!”, the clown said, not bothering to remember what her name actually was. “Haven’t you ever seen a comic strip?”

“I haven’t really…”, she responded, her face distorted from shedding tears of fear mixed in with the sensation of being unable to take her eyes away from the evil of the asylum. She really didn’t quite know how to feel, right there with the Joker, of all people, taking casually to her. She probabl should’ve been dead by now. But she wasn’t. Maybe all of the things that they had said about him wasn’t true. Maybe… he just liked her. She just had to think about it.

“Riddle me THIS, masky!”, Riddler yelled to Azrael while Tweedledum held her down and the man in the bowler hat prepared to swing his reinforced cane right at her head. “When is somebody who hates country boys like a rock groupe? When they’re Smashing Bumpkins!”

Riddler’s question-mark cane connected with its target, knocking her back a little bit, but inadvertently letting her escape from Tewwdledum’s grasp with the difference in momentum.

“That wasn’t really up to my standard.”, the man in green remarked while his back was turned, right before he was the fifth villain to be taken out of the game, by an unamused Angel who had just finished knocking silly the dumb muscle-man and taken Tweedledee out along for the ride.

“I’m Commissioner Gordon. Gotham P.D. I got your call. What’s goin’ on around here?”

The Gotham City Police Department had by then assembled outside of the Asylum, crowded around at the front gate, the wrought iron entrance topped with pointed spikes and emblazoned with reliefs of bats and rats and cats and angels, and so many more creatures, all engaged in a never-ending battle, the fight to the death over all of time. Red and blue lights covered the cold stone fronts of the complex, bathing the atmosphere in blinding lights that only the most insane people on the planet would fall asleep in. Rain by then was pouring down upon them, and the wind was blowing both their voices and their wardrobes.

“Ugh. The inmates are loose.”, replied Doctor Jeremiah Arkham, a man dressed in a black-trimmed cold grey coat with stark white hair pristinely combed to his left side, which was now frazzled with several strands out of alignment as the night breezes blew his hair about, and a pair of thick-framed black spectacles that he had taken off at the moment in exasperation. “The inmates are loose. Fault of some intruder who blazed in hard enough to trip every single one of the fire systems. Which automatically opened all the cell doors.”

“So the patients wouldn’t be trapped.”, finished Gordon while scratching his rough steel-grey mustache and pushing up his dark polarised sunglasses. “Don’t blame yourself, doctor. It was the humane thing to do.”

“While I don’t agree, I do get where you’re coming from, Jim.”, remarked Police Detective Renee Montoya while holding her dark grey trenchcoat and fedora as close as she possibly could to hang onto whatever semblance of warmth she could. Brushing a bit of her curly black hair from out of her face in the sharpened winds, she walked up to the two bosses with an update.

“Nobody’s managed to actually get out yet. Seems to be some sort of hangup in the primary detention block. They seem to be holding some kind of a tribunal. A court of sorts.”

“Perfect.”, Gordon replied. “We send in a S.W.A.T. Team—”

“Maybe not a good idea, sir. We got two hostages. An asylum doctor… and a mask.”

“Someone in a costume, huh? One of those masked do-gooders again. Must be Tuesday. Or Saturday, I forget which one.”

The commissioner sighed.

“It’s never simple.”

“He’s fighting, but not well.”, Brother Khass remarked as him and Charles continued to observe. “Azrael should have disposed of them all by now. The mask alone is not enough.”

“What are you, a bunch of sissies?!”, Joker yelled from the corner while the carnage continued. “He’s just one man with a terrible taste in clothes! LAY HIM DOWN LOW!”

“You must go to his assistance, Charles.”, Khass finished.

“Ghadda Ghadda.”, the ape responded. “You said to me: ‘Remember that I told you of him? How he humiliated me? How he murdered his own brother?’”

“The situation has changed. I now realise that he can help me unlock the secrets of nature, just like you can, Charles. Now help him.”

“Ghadda.”

Charles entered into the mix of the chaos in a combination of running and jumping, crushing at least six different nameless asylum inmates as he started to pulverise the ranks.

“Heathens of Gotham, you are all about to be slain by Charles.”, the abbot began while tapping the hard ground with his Tanzanian blackwood cane to get their attention. “Charles is the true reason why I am in this prison. When I learned of his potency and precision of powerful prowess, I reasoned that he must have been a descendant of experiments that the order initiated. Dumasian Great Apes, a species of experimental enforcers so powerful and yet so unpredictable that they had to be exterminated en masse. But one of Charles’ ancestors must have mated with a normal human woman before the apes were wiped out, and thus Charles’ mix of brute strength from ape genes, blended together with carnage-rending traits from other predatory species, and the restraint and capacity for sentience, sapience, and intelligence afforded by the presence of human Deoxyribonucleic Acid, producing a creature capable of embodying both ends of the spectrum between beast and man. He may very well be the Rosetta Stone of unlocking the key of enhancing human genetics to beyond even Azrael’s power. This affords me the opportunity to undertake experimental studies even the order has forbidden. He and he alone will be sufficient enough in killing you.”

“Oooh, oooh, goody, goody!”, the Joker exclaimed from all the way back in his corner. “A contest! Winner gets to drink the blood of the loser!"

“So then you didn’t come in here to hide?”, asked Azrael while Charles began to run through the mob.

“Hide?”, responded Brother Khass. “From that fool Rollo?”

Charles proceeded to slam his fists down on the floor and send everyone flying.

“A canary could outsmart that witling!”

Gunfire didn’t even make the great ape flinch.

“I am a scientist. My passion is knowledge.”

At that point the only thing protecting the villains from Charles was their numbers, which were dwindling down further and further with each and every successive strike.

“Charles is the greatest secret of the human species, the missing link between the human species and their own potential just out of their reach.”

“Heh. Stone rockin’.”, Doctor Harleen Quinzel remarked as a smile slowly began to return to her face. “Get it, mister J? Stone? Rockin?”

“Hehehaha. Stone. As in rock. Hehehaha.”

“What did… What did Charles do to get himself in Arkham?”, Azrael asked, knowing full well she was not going to like the answer.

“Oooh-Ee-oohh, it was disgusting!”, said the Ventriloquist, nursing a head wound and stopping the bloodflow with Socko.

“All that gore! All that carnage! All those infants!”, Mister Freeze continued.

“The moment I heard about it, I knew I loved the guy.”, the Joker finished.

“Fast, is he not?”, the bearded Ethiopian said concerning Charles while stepping over to Azrael resting on the floor. “And since he has few nerve endings, he is nearly impervious to pain.”

Then he turned back to the crowd and proclaimed: “You have made a grave mistake in electing to trifle with me and my studies.”

“Get your Ghadda fender on that, boyo.”, Charles agreed while simultaneously trash-talking the mob. “Definitely not Marquis Of Queensbury Rules, I can tell you that much. Hauling a pigsticker into the fracas is what I come here to do. Steams my clams, and that is no Ghadda lie. Wave bye-bye to any nice guy, if you can catch my signification and sophistication.”

One more attack came from him, a breaking swipe of his clawed fist that swung right into the crowd, sending them all scattered across the floor in piles of human bodies.

“Ghadda Ghadda.”

“As I said, he is fast.”

“And eloquent.”, Joker interjected. “Actually sounds a little bit like me.”

“Good work, Charles, now get him out of here!”

Instantly obeying, Charles turned around immediately and picked Azrael up by her feet, slinging her onto his back and running back through the now-cleared path, followed by the man in the purple robe trailing close behind them after absconding with Azrael’s other apparel.

“In here, the both of you!”, he shouted, and all three of them were soon enough some measure of safe inside a room accessed by a door inscribed with the proclamation Janitorial Supply Closet, while the pursuing tidal wave of remaining villains bulldozed right on past them through the hallways.

The Gray Abbot quickly presented Azrael with the rest of her suit like a sacred and sacrificial offering, calling upon her to: “Take it. Slay them.”

“Why? There’s no need.”, Azrael responded, the newfound fragile peace of the situation inviting some semblance of Paula to return and let her think a little harder and a little bit more. “Besides, we would still have the Police to contend with, and by now they doubtless have the whole area surrounded…”

“So what’s the deal, Commissioner?”, Montoya inquired while adjusting her hat. “Are we doing to try to do something to save those hostages or are we just going to stand out here all night?”

“We’re waiting for the S.W.A.T. Teams to be in place, Detective.”

“Fair enough. You know, I’m pretty surprised he isn’t here. You know, old pointy-ears, as we call him.”

“Now that I think about it, so am I.”, James retorted. “He must be terribly busy to be ignoring something as big of a deal as this.”

“This place here did always give me the creeps…”, Renee remarked. “I can only wonder what’s happening in there…”

Back in the walk-in supply closet, Azrael was currently busy with rifling through an assorted set of cleaning equipment, sanitising products, tools for covering up whatever gore and blood that the staff didn’t feel like touching all too much that night or day, and, most importantly, a replacement uniform for the janitor employees, clean and white enough to seem like it was still in good condition, with a certified Arkham patch on the top half of its left arm — proof that it was legitimate — and a nice dosage a of pleasant grey trimming along the edges of the worn-out collars and cuffs and lines near the buttons. It wasn’t the prettiest thing out there, but it would definitely do.

“Let me see the suit a minute.”, the avenging angel started as she got her new pair of red-rimmed glasses out of the literal glove pocket and got her mask off. Then she grabbed a random set of ropes — she didn’t even want to know what that was about — and started to tie her now-free hair back as the three in the closet began to hear another set of footsteps; approaching guards.

“You two, get away from the door. Let me try and handle these guys.”

RHAP!!

RHAP!!

RHAP!!

RHAP!!

Soon enough the door was kicked open by gun-carrying men in brown uniforms, pointing their rifles and pistols into the darkness of the room while their black ties flopped around a little.

“COME ON OUTTA THERE NOW!!”

“Gotta be one of the crazies!”

“Or the guy in the suit…”

“Get your pieces ready…”

“Oh, thank Heaven, it’s just you men…”, said a woman dressed in the white uniform, with her light blonde hair wrapped up with a length of black and gold-patterned cord into a messy low bun behind her and with a few bangs hanging out and over her eyes, as well as a pair of oval-shaped red-framed spectacles worn a bit looser than normal. “I was beginning to worry that they had beaten you… Whew, I was afraid to run into more inmates!”

“Who are you?!”, yelled a black-mustachioed guard while shoving his gun in her face.

“Joan Arceuid.”, the woman responded while throwing her hands up in the air in attempted surrender. “I’m an exterminator. I was checking the cells for mice when all hell broke loose. I panicked and ended up ducking in her to try and hide from them all.”

“Hmm, whatever, checks out.”, the guard replied as he put his gun down. “Where did they abscond to, lady?”

“I think it might have been that way.”, she responded as she pointed to the hallway with the most obvious blood spatters and footprints all over the floor. “You’d better hurry, too — I heard that they were gonna kill that Doctor Quinn person.”

“Duly noted. Do you know the way back to the lobby from here, or do you need some help getting back there?”

“Thank you very much, sir, but I should be fine. Down that hall, and to the left, and down another hall and to the left.”

“Sounds about right. Okay then, sorry for the inconvenience."

With that, the brownshirts departed down the blood-spattered hall and left her alone by the closet door. Once a solid minute or two had passed, she went back into the closet and looked upwards into the ventilation duct.

“You can come out now.”

Charles and the abbot dropped out of the ventilation shaft with a mild noise of thudding, and Jeanne-Paula managed to get the rope out of her hair as they did so. While she kneeled down over to get her uniform, the abbot asked her a question.

“Why did you feel that the impersonation was necessary? Do you not claim who you are and your own identity?”

“I don’t see how that’s something you would care about, considering how many times you called me ‘him’.”

“Hmmph.”

“But more importantly,”, Azrael continued before slipping her mask on again. “They were between us and the hole that I made.”

Azrael’s golden hand pointed to a giant hole in the roof that now they could clearly see after walking a few feet across the corridor, the same one that she had cratered when she waltzed into the prison, and had purposely directed the guards away from.

“I did not wish to chance instigating a physical confrontation and getting someone hurt in the process. And by that, I mean them.”

Her attention then turned back to the pockets in her gauntlets, and she proceeded to pick up a Two-Way Wrist Radio and pressed the rectangular button to make it crackle to life, all while holding it delicately with her gigantic fingers.

“Nomoz, can you hear me? Calling Nomoz in the aircraft, can you hear me?”

“Perfectly clear.”, the Dwarfling replied while hovering in his helicopter and hidden behind the darkened clouds, beginning to move in downwards and enter into the view of the cops.

“Pick us up as soon as you can.”

Unfortunately, the helicopter was spotted immediately by Detective Montya, even in the immense wind and rain.

“COMMISSIONER, A CHOPPER!”, she yelled while her finger pointed to the silhouette of a vehicle against the moon.

“I see it, Detective!”, Gordon confirmed while reaching into the inner pockets of his dark brown trenchcoat to pull out a communicator of his own. “We can’t wait any longer!”

His communication crackled up to life as he flared with zeal and emotion.

“ALL UNITS, MOVE IN! I SAY AGAIN, MOVE IN!!!!”

Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop…

“We only have a few seconds.”, the red-garbed angel said while spotting the chopper in the distance. “Abbot, you come along with me.”

“I noticed that you neglected to mention Charles in that particular command, Azrael.”

“He stays behind. End of story.”, she responded. “It was you yourself who told me he was dangerous to an unprecedented degree.”

Brother Khass stood there for a few seconds while leaning on his cane, and he then responded.

“This is the farthest thing from satisfactory. No doubt I would learn very much from examining your brain, Azrael… But from Charles much more is to be learned. The very key to completely understanding the human condition certainly lies with him.”

“Irrelevant to me. You come. He stays.”

Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop-Chop…

The Grey Abbot just leaned over a little bit more, and for a few more precious seconds, looked at her with the faintest hint of regret in his face. Then he pointed.

“Then you force me to choose. It is an immeasurable choice between treasures, but… I must leave with my specimen. BREAK HIM, CHARLES!”

“Ghadda.”

The Great Ape of Saint Dumas pulled his fist back to pound her into pulp, but before he could get the chance to act on that impulse, driven by nothing but the simple yet selfish desire for total freedom to once more act with impunity upon the civilized world, the nearby doors were broken down by a squadron of the Gotham S.W.A.T., or Special Weapons And Tactics, an armoured unit of supposed law enforcement that was more often simply used to gun down criminals to avoid the hassle of the process of a trial, now hot on the trails of a crazed red vigilante and a bizarre pair of folks who came to Gotham from a cult.

“THERE THEY ARE!!!”

“FREEZE!!!”

“ON YOUR KNEES!!!”

“NOW!!!”

CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP!!!!

Azrael was the only one of them lucky enough to jump upwards and soar through the hole in the roof and catch the thick and corded braided rope that Nomoz had let down, grabbing on just in time to look downwards at the grisly sight going on down there.

“Wait!”, the abbot yelled to her from below. “You must help me! You promised to help me!”

Charles said nothing, just looked beyond, arrested with shock.

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

RAT–A–TATT–TATT–AT-TATT--TATT–TA–TATT–AT–TATT–TATT!!

“AUGHFF!!!!”

“EUGHFFFF!!!!”

A swarm of bullets buzzed like a hornet’s nest and tore through the abbot’s clothing and Charle’s fur, riddling right through the both of them and sending the abbot falling down in a pool of his own red blood, mixed with some of Charles’, coloured a sickening blue. The last thing that Azrael saw from Brother Khass was him raising his hand in vain, perhaps to plead for her to assist him, or perhaps to curse her. She didn't really know. What she did know was that her biggest priority in the moment was to climb on up there to Nomoz and try the best that she could to try and find a way to spin this disaster of a narrative at Batman’s feet.

CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP-CHOP!!!!

She just tried her hardest to keep her focus on getting up that rope, a task that was made at least a little bit easier by the soothing rhythm of the chopping blades of the old Army surplus helicopter.

A minute later, a gold-gloved hand touched down upon the metal floor of the craft, and Azrael pulled herself up and in.

Shambling on over to the passenger seat, Paula tugged her mask off, throwing it away down onto the red-carpeted diamondplate metal floor, and getting her glasses back on over her extremely-red eyes. While she panted and wiped a trail of sweat off of her forehead, Nomoz, naturally confused, asked her the following question.

“Where is the ~Feh~ Gray Abbot, Azrael?”

“Dead. Maybe. Or maybe not. The cops, they shot him.”

“You did not rescue him?”

“What’s it to you? Didn’t you say that Azrael does not rescue?"

“Azrael did not rescue. This Azrael evidently does.”

“Shhgghhhhhh… I didn’t fail him. He failed me. Cared more about his wicked experiments than about his own safety.”

“Of course you were not the party to fail. Azrael does not fail her missions.”

Her. He called her… her. Her missions. Perhaps he was learning, after all.

“Even if the Abbot didn’t fail me, I think I still wouldn’t have left with him. Jeanne-Paula Valley, she… I… made a promise to Batman. I promised him that I wouldn't let any of Arkham’s inmates escape. Then, when I was in there, I realised that included the abbot.”

“Was it you who realised? Or Azrael?”

“Both. It was both of us. The barrier between my two selves fell away for a moment.”

She slumped a little in her chair and sighed heavily out loud.

“It felt good.”

The dwarf was silent for a few seconds, before he gave her a mix of a warning and a reminder.

“Sister Lilhy will be angry. Very angry.”

The woman sighed again, this time with a bit more emotion put into it.

“Then she’ll just have to be angry. I can’t worry about it right now.”

A momentary pause followed, and then Jeanne noticed the radio installed into the helicopter’s front seating area.

“Could you put something on while we go back to Gotham? Or we can honestly go wherever, I don’t really care right now, either.”

“I can.”

Nomoz’s fingers flicked the system on, and soon enough the dial was set to a station playing music they actually liked.

“In violent times,

You shouldn't have to sell your soul.

In black and white,

They really, really ought to know.

Those one-track minds,

That took you for a working boy,

Kiss them goodbye.

You shouldn't have to jump for joy!

You shouldn't have to jump for joy!”

A minute into the song, and a sharp-clawed hand touched down upon the metal floor of the craft, and a loud THUD was heard by the both of them, just in time for Paula to turn around and see that Charles had somehow followed them and climbed aboard. She practically didn’t even have time or room to breathe before the great ape picked her up by the foot and threw her out of the craft, while all that Nomoz could do was to keep flying the helicopter and try to pretend that the fear on his face wasn’t there, that the look in his eyes didn’t exist, as the red-eyed Dumasian creature sat himself down in the passenger seat and made himself at home.

“Booley Booley and ‘Pon my word.”, the ape said while grinning his sharp teeth ear-to-ear.

“I’ve never before copped myself a ride in one of these helicopters before, and I must opine the fact that I am assuredly and positively delighted with the experience.”

Meanwhile, under the chopper, Azrael’s civilian half was hanging on, but barely, having caught onto one of the railings with her left hand, and now left to behold the rising light of the night sky and hope against all hope in the world that her arm didn’t give out.

At least the sky was pretty. Twilight was just a few minutes away. That was always beautiful. Not the oppressive light of the day, instead still carrying the haunting and yet comforting darkness of the night.

“Shout, shout, let it all out!

These are the things I can do without!

Come on!

I'm talking to you, come on!”

“Say-Say, old chap, old bean, old pip-pip-cheerio, are you aware of the undeniable fact that we are descending?”, observed Charles out loud.

And, sure enough, they were. The helicopter, piloted by a nervous Nomoz, had been descending, whether consciously or subconsciously, into a clearing in the forest in the sprawling and area surrounding Arkham, where the grass was a dead shade of tan, the surrounding evergreen trees stabbed high up into the sky, and someone could disappear into for ages. Fortunately for all of them, it was by no means an unexpected descent, and the landing was, very thankfully, one with no resemblance of a crash. And so, when Charles got out of the door of the passenger side and beheld the signs of the oncoming light of the day, he was unhurt, save for the small amount of bullets that had managed to pierce through his toughened hide.

“Ah, ‘The dusky night rides down the sky and ushers in the morn—’”

“Not another step.”

The voice obviously belonged to Azrael, who had jumped ship before they had landed, was somewhat hunched over with her fists ready for combat, and the bright red eyes behind those glasses sporting dilated feline pupils and her whole entire body practically trembling with rage.

“Ghadda?”

“You’re going back. I made a promise and I’m going to keep it.”

“Ghadda.”

“They gave you life,

And in return, you gave them hell!

As cold as ice,

I hope we live to tell the tale!

I hope we live to tell the tale!”

Charles turned around to face Azrael, who was once again experiencing that sensation of her two selves being on the same proverbial page, working with one another, not against one another. It was indeed Azrael who was in the front seat, but Azrael alone would not have cared about ensuring that the great ape went back to Arkham, at her fists if she had to. It was Paula’s promise and it fell to Azrael to keep that promise.

“Ghadda-Bool.”, Charles said while his silhouette was darkened by the incoming light, and pointing down to her, almost mocking. “Are you of the lucidity to be aware that I clobbered and cleaned your clockishness free from effort?”

Azrael was not amused and simply replied: “This time it’s not going to be a dirty sneak attack.”

WW

HH

AA

KC

KK

KK!!!!

Charles’ fist struck first, sending Azrael flying back onto the field with a stone-cold punch to the jaw. Still not amused, and despite her head ringing and vibrating from the shock of a giant fist to the face, she still just got up and spit the blood out.

TT

HH

WW

AH

CK

KK!!!!

“Shout, shout, let it all out!

These are the things I can do without!

Come on!

“I’m talking to you, come on!”

Shout, shout, let it all out!

These are the things I can do without!

Come on!

I'm talking to you, come on!”

Azrael’s fist, in response, struck with the sound of a rocket mixed with a piston when it struck Charles’ jaw for revenge, sending him into the dirt and the dead tan winter grass with visible spouts of thick blue blood spurting out of his mouth on his way down. He proceeded to drive Azrael right into the metal side of the helicopter, impacting her with enough force to feel like the Earth itself was quaking from her point of view. Instinct seized control of her and both of her knees drove themselves right into his snout, spouting out even more blood and forcing him to let her go. His next shot when he got up was to her stomach, causing her to spit out another round and load of deep red blood, this time spilling onto and staining the front side of her mantle and spilling down onto the knees. As he proceeded to pick her up by her neck, once more he pulled back his fist, this time preparing to slice her skin open with his claws.

“Ghadda.”

And it was then that the tide turned.

Azrael managed to duck down low enough to avoid the claws of the ape in the baggy pants, taking advantage of his attack landing in the air to strike from down below, slugging him with the side of her fist and her wrist and following that up with a rush of flurried punches that had so much energy and so much passion put into them that they finally managed to something that nothing and no one had ever done to the hulking thing; they left a flurry of bruises upon him and actually drew blood from his furry skin. She kept the chain up with a good KICKCKCK!!!! to the head, a connecting punch to the gut, and another punch to the head.

Charles was left reeling as he stepped back a few paces and brought his pawed, clawed, hands up to his canine snout and held it as it bled, which gave Azrael the opening to take a couple much-needed breaths, reel on her knees for a few seconds, and finally swell up the physical and mental power inside of her to launch a devastating two-handed uppercut to the jaw, with enough force behind to make her own vision violently shake and throttle and black out for a few seconds, coming back to just in time to watch the ape-man soar through the air and come back to Earth with a final mighty THHUUDDD!!!!!!!!

He didn’t move.

Charles was conquered.

The last remaining Great Ape of Saint Dumas was defeated.

His conqueress stood proud against the rising sun. The darkness was now interspersed with the glow of the light, the faint oncoming of the light of day just beginning to make its presence known.

Azrael wiped a trickle of blood from her mouth with her wrist and wiped a bit of the fighting-induced fog off of her glasses with one of the banners of her mantle, and finished up with that just as Nomoz made himself known again as he climbed out of the helicopter and came up to stand by her side.

“Azrael… Your mask…”, he commented, as he held the black and red and white solid mask in his hands, and Azrael realised that she had been present even without the aid of the physical object that let her come up to the forefront.

“Didn’t need it… I didn’t need it…”

But now, the barrier had once again temporarily fallen away, and Azrael could think with Paula’s sense of emotion and compassion, and the red eyes once again managed to prove it. In response to the Dwarfling, the angel smiled, relaxing a little bit in the soothing winter breeze that cooled down her body and her spirit.

“Not as long as I’ve got a promise.”

THE FINAL RAGE

AZRAEL #20

ANGEL IN FLAMES

PART FOUR OF FOUR

CONCLUSION

A PRAYER OF FIRE

A VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO

TOM GRINDBERG

“Get into the ocean, young one, Swim as far away from the island as possible and try your hardest to float onwards to one of the other islands.”

For the first since she had been on the island, Azrael’s words carried a visible hint of distress. Hapu, the girl whom she had risked her own chances of escaping to save from the oncoming inferno, was still safe in her armoured arms, but now neither one of the two of them knew of any possible concrete ways to safely leave. And to make things even worse for them both, the girl’s verbal response to the angel’s concerned directive was this.

“I can’t, Azrael… I can’t swim…”

She shrunk herself by curling up into her own robe and attempted to not think about it.

“I… I never learned how…”

It was afterwards that the two individuals on the beach heard the noises of heavy feet stepping in the Alolan beach sand, prompting the energy angel to turn over to the source of the auditory disturbance, discovering none other than Willy Aoolemake hobbling over towards their location, in front of a sturdy and reliable transportation boat that had been gently bobbing in the waves behind him framed against the bleak red sky, his black left eye having been extended in duration by the previously-inflicted uppercut, and leaning on a pair of wooden crutches with a bandaged head and his left arm planted firmly in a sling.

“KOFF!! KOFF!! Can both of you sit in a boat, at least? ‘Cause if you guys can, I can get us offa the island.”

Azrael then noticed someone else in the boat. A shirtless elf-eared pitiful husk of a boy with a large black felt collar worn like a scarf across his neck and sporting a pair of orange diamond earrings dangling down from both of his pointed ears, a pair of protective goggles strapped to his head above his hair, and keeping completely to himself, with his head laying itself down within his lap, utterly defeated on the inside and the outside.

“Yeah, I got me a fishing boat that’ll do the trick in no time, lickity-split.” Willy meekly continued. “Plenty more than enough room for all four of us.” A few seconds passed where Azrael replied with nothing. “Is that… Me that I see in there?” she then inquired after the silence had passed. “You mean Jean-Paul Valley? Your other half? That’s him. I found him standing around in the dirt and he instantly came over to leave with me. Last thing that he said to me was that he needed to find you first before we could take off. You were too important to him. You can go onto the boat and talk to him if you want.”

Azrael obliged his information.

Carefully she trekked through the shallow waters of the Poni Island beach and stepped herself onto the boat, first off making sure to gently put the girl down onto one of the onboard metal benches before she then proceeded to kneel down upon her left kneecap and, with her left gloved hand, brought up Jean-Paul’s chin to speak with him.

“Azrael…”

“Jean-Paul Valley… You came back for me…”

“I… felt like I had to.”

“You had to?”

“I had to. All my life you’ve been inside me, whether I knew of you or not. And… Even though almost everyone that I’ve met recently on the side of good keeps trying to tell me that you’re an evil invader in my body, a part of me that I need to repress, even after all of the senseless and remorseless killing and murdering and slaughtering that you’ve done while in control of my body… I still don’t want to live without you.”

The avenging angel continued to kneel and listen before him, while the Homo Sapiens specimen seated down upon one of the ship’s metal side benches and then began to realise that tears had formed underneath his eyes.

“I don’t want to live without you! I don’t! Even with all of the trouble you bring to my doorstep, even with all of the times that I hold you back, no matter what may come to us, through blood and death…”

He found the strength within himself to lift his own face up.

“I don’t want to be apart from you anymore! Never again!”

The angel gave a gentle nod for her response.

“What you have said applies to me as well.”

A flash of the blue flame from earlier began to radiate from both of their bodies, the bright and shining auras joining one another and forming a single cohesive flame. Azrael’s hands gently but firmly lifted Jean-Paul’s body up into the air to stand on equal footing with her, and accompanied by a gigantic swelling of the golden power of the island made manifest into the shape of the shocking bolts of bright electrical energy, Azrael’s body began to scatter into superheated energy and melt itself, herself, into Jean-Paul’s body again. When the females cleared, Hapu saw that there was only one body remaining in front of her. Once more the red eyes of a unified Jean-Paul and Azrael, the sign that they had temporarily achieved a momentary state of total, perfect, and complete reconciliation, and had become enabled to operate as a single, cohesive unit without one of them holding the other back even in a subconscious way.

Once again, they felt together.

Azrael quickly looked around and found a familiar red, black, and golden suit. Jean-Paul’s memory told her that he had fetched it from his room in the Orchid compound’s guesthouse before he left the complex with Willy, because he had finally managed to work up the courage and the personal nerve to once more put on the costume, he was ready to operate the suit on his own if it meant that he could have saved anybody else. Thankfully for him, and now for them, there were now only two people on the island that they now needed to save.

“Listen Az, if that’s who you are now, I know that we got off on the wrong foot, but, please believe me, I really am sorry for all of that shit.” was what she heard from Willy. With a wolf-fanged smile the now-restored being replied to him in a calm voice: “You’re forgiven, Mister Willy. Please, take Hapu away while you still can.”

Willy then stepped onto the boat, leaning on another one of the added seats, and inquired unto her in quite a confused manner. “You-You don’t want to go from this place to Melemele Island with us?”

“No. I’m not going to. I’m going back for the doctor and his brother.”

“THAT’S SUICIDE!” was the startled reply of Willy and Hapu in unison.

Azrael then addressed their immensely valid concerns with her verbal reassurance while slipping her suit on, tucking her goggles away into one of her giant left glove pockets, donning the red top half of her mixed kevlar fibre undersuit, shrugging on her golden crop top armour and shoulderpads, throwing on her black masque, and strapping on her heavy-duty golden belt and shrouding herself in her deep black mantle.

“It very well might be. But I need to try. There are people still hunkered down on that island, two people that I have the smallest chance to save from the lava. If I can do it, I need to do it! But you don’t! You can go, you need to go! Please, please just go! Save your own lives while you can!”

With that, Azrael leapt off of the boat and began to run at top speed right into the blazing tropical forest, while inside the boat, Willy kicked the throttle into its maximum overdrive and the two designated survivors began to rapidly speed themselves away from the ashy flame tomb. Quietly, after turning on the vessel’s mechanical autodriving, Willy began to sing.

“Well, I came upon a child of God,

He was walking along the road.

And I asked him, ‘Tell me, where are you going?’

And this he told me.

Said, ‘I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm,

Gonna join in a rock ‘n’ roll band,

Got to get back to the land,

Set my soul free.”

“I turned, then, away from the cool and blue Alolan waters and away to face up to the inferno ahead of me. Away from the vessel of salvation and straight into the depths of hell. Somewhere within that inferno was Doctor Matthias Orchid and his brother Thomas. The good doctor was most definitely insane, quite possibly a genuinely evil man. But he was able to help me in ways that no one ever could have done before… And so I needed to rescue him if I could.”

The infernal blazes had thankfully cleared away huge portions of the tree life on the island, offering up burnt-up free space for her to run, jump, and glide across the ashen rocky gaps as she made her way across the hostile natural terrain of the scared and dying Poni Island to her one planned destination.

“I didn’t have any real plan, just the vague outline of an even vaguer idea: Skirt through all the burning trees and flowers. Seek out a place that the fire hasn’t reached yet. The heat washes over me in fiery waves, dense black smoke stings my bright red eyes and makes its way to the back of my throat. Breathing in this environment is at first a difficulty, then arduous torture, and then a near impossibility. Then finally, I come to what I had been looking for. An area of the remaining Alola forest not yet consumed by flames.”

She looked onwards while perched upon a tree with her left hand forming an amateur visor over her eyes to monitor any possible escape route, spending several of her precious minutes looking around, and unfortunately finding nothing of use to her.

“But I know that molten lava still gushes from the volcano, spreading a blinding blight of devilish destruction that will eventually claim the entirety of the island. I only have a few minutes to think of something, anything. At this point I may only have seconds. I might already be too late. Then, it happens again. I feel Jean-Paul Valley’s lingering self ebbing away, and from somewhere deep within the ugliest, but also the most beautiful regions of my soul, she takes full control… AZRAEL!”

Just barely managing to avoid an imminent collapsing of the grand old tree that she had been perched upon due to a redirected flow of the lava, having carved its way through several brand-new channels within the dirt and stone, Azrael frontflipped her whole way across the nearby chasm of even more flaming trees while the wood and the grass snapped, crackled, and popped behind her in a rush of glorious flames.

“Then, in the distance, I see it. Doctor Orchid’s office. As I began to rapidly approach, I began to return back to being myself again.”

A dwindling Azrael burst through the wood and metal fencing as the fire began to catch up behind her, barreling into the doctor’s office accompanied by visible panting and heaving. Orchid remained peacefully sitting at his alien-looking machinery station, seemingly having done nothing that entire time besides just sitting there and thinking all to himself.

“So, is it Azrael? Or is it the callow Jean-Paul Valley beneath that mask and that suit?”

“Both of us are present. But not for long. The fire has not yet reached the compound, but the wind has begun to shift. It will not be long now before the ash of death spreads to us.”

Blue electrical flames slowly began to swell up from behind Azrael’s pair of hidden bright eyes, while the doctor simply adjusted the position of his unmoving self with his own personal seat.

“We might still be able to reach the ocean at the south side of the island if we get up and leave right now.”

“No. I won’t be going with you.”

“Why in all of the infernal realms of hell not?”

“I will not leave this island without my brother Thomas.”

“What do you MEAN?! JUST A FEW MINUTES AGO YOU ORDERED ME TO KILL HIM!”

“You’re correct. I did order that. But later, after you had left, then I realised just what I had accomplished. My techniques have transformed his very soul from nothing but merely a puling, cowardly, stupid, idiotic, unneeded, fuzzy-minded simple cipher into a magnificent demonic creature who could do credible battle with your own enhanced self.”

He stood up, but only to pace around the room.

“I need to examine him, study him, learn exactly how my methods have altered him. Then…”

His face and body were cloaked underneath the shadows of hell as he continued to speak.

“I shall be capable of performing similar miracles on others… On myself…”

“So you wish to become superhuman? That’s what this is about?”

“FOOL! IDIOT!!” The doctor screeched. “I AM SUPERHUMAN! In WILL, in INTELLECT, in the BREADTH AND DARING OF MY VISION! In everything EXCEPT physical prowess!”

He turned his direction over to his machines, before turning his face back to Azrael’s masked emotionless face, decreeing through gritted teeth: “I will have that, too.”

“Are you aware that next to you a clinically insane raving megalomaniac would probably seem quite a substantial bit more normal if the two of you were to be compared?”

“Whether megalomaniac or not, the truth of the matter remained that he was the closest chance that I had to any manner of personal salvation. For both me and for the woman laying dormant in me.”

Matthias Orchid’s glasses shone with reflection of the red light outside.

“Sacrasm? That’s not something that I would expect from you.”

“To be honest with you, we wouldn’t have expected it either. Until we went ahead and did it, anyway. Now you will impart unto me the information that I need. Where did you last see your brother?”

“Lying in the dirt, right where you left him. You went away and I made another telephone call. I looked outside again after I finished doing that and I found that my twin was gone.”

“Have you any inkling of an idea where he went?”

“Him and his snot-nosed followers live in the hills… They believe that that volcano that is currently causing all of our problems is some sort of goddess.”

“Then that’s where we will look for him”

“We together both ran outside. The moon was high in the Alolan skies, dull as an old penny stripped of its copper shell, dimmed by all the smoke and debris…”

Azrael outpacing Orchid was just a predictable inevitability, letting her clear the way and blaze their trail ahead of them while also being able to make sure that the makeshift natural roadways that she was making ahead of them were safe.

“This is the path he always took.”

“Good. Follow me.”

“As always when action was a necessity in the heat of the moment, Azrael resumed command. But now, Jean-Paul did not entirely vanish from the picture. A small portion of him remained, a quiet, unobtrusive observer. The hellish heat was stifling, the acrid air all but unbreathable. Then, a quarter of a mile up the hill, we heard a cry from somewhere behind a curtain of black smoke.”

“Take me, O Great Mother!”

“That’s him! It’s my brother!”

“The voice had come from around a bend in the worn grass path.”

Atop the high hill was a man wearing green robes and raising his arms and his hands high above his head, gleefully welcoming the oncoming waves of bright burning orange molten lava that were surging towards him.

“There he was, the man we had sought. His mind and his body had been reverted to that of the maniac cult leader who had come to wholeheartedly believe in his own fabricated mythology.”

“COME TO ME, BELOVED GODDESS!! EMBRACE ME WITHIN YOUR HOT, TENDER ARMS!! COVER ME!! CONSUME ME!!”

“In mere moments, he would die a hideous death. But I pulled him up, and then… He hit me.”

WHOKKKKK!!!!!!!!

“The bastard HIT ME!”

Right after Tom had pulled away, he got himself up to his feet and roared in blistering anger at Azrael.

“In his eyes, the insanity that he shared with his maniacal brother. In his body, his retained extraordinary power.”

Swelling up in front of their shadow-covered selves, cataclysmic waves of lava crashed down over the mountain and forged their own channels downward.

“Perhaps it was his madness that fueled him. Or it might have been that he was somehow drawing on the huge, random, powerful golden energies unleashed by the volcano itself.

Impressions: Several glittering tongues of molten red lava rushing at us at blinding speed.

The crackle of dark desaturated olive-coloured burning bushes.

The stench of brimstone.

Lungs filling with soot.

A sudden, anguished grunt.

And Jean-Paul’s compassion needing to be tossed aside in the heat of battle.”

Beginning to once more burn with bright blue, Azrael tackled Tom’s still-smaller body right in his core, sending both of them safely away from the lava for now and crashing right into a wall of solid rock. Recovering, the green-robed man slugged Azrael right in the face and scrambled back up to his feet. Unleashing another slug, he roared.

“You will precede me into the embrace of the warm and loving goddess.”

What followed was a few minutes of light but somehow also heavy skirmishing, all of which seemed to fatigue only Azrael in the end. It was as if the green man had become reinvigorated by the experience while Azrael was still lacking that one special kick, which now meant that all she could do was catch his fists. Until she felt another surge of energy swell up from way down in her heart, and once again she found the strength not only to block his attack but to repel it with a blue-flaming punch right to his face.

“GOFF!! That hurt!!”

“And the pain… The pain that we felt began to fire us up again. But this time it affected me differently than it affected him. He began to transform back into his demonesque appearance and I began to once more radiate those spectacular bright blue flames all around me. It had been triggered by that pain, and now that I was back to having Azrael in my body, it seemed that its effect on us, on me, had been altered to go along with it.”

“Kuhh, that hurt WORSE!!”

“I moved over to try and get to him, but before I could, I was stopped by Matthias, who had caught up ro us, and used his opportunity to suddenly pull my mask right off of me!”

At least Jean-Paul Valley was given the chance to breathe a little bit more now that the mask didn’t inhibit his interpersonal mental processing as much, and so he confusedly decided to look around behind him to find out the source of the disturbance, finding the good doctor himself holding his mask and looking smug.

“WHY IN ALL FUCK DID YOU DO THAT?!?!”

The doctor simply pointed in a random direction to divert his attention off of the problem right in front of them.

“Because of THEM, that’s why!”

“I don’t see what—”

Immediately he was momentarily silenced with a quick strike to the back of his head from the good doctor clubbing him with his own mask, temporarily knocking him away towards one of the now-many cliffs. Thomas Orchid, still bent on death, began to scramble towards one of the nearby lava pits. “Goddess!! GODDESS!! EMBRACE ME, CARRESS ME!!” He was naturally brought back to some forme of reality by the sudden searing superheated splendor of the natural force of lava that singed his clawed right hand as he attempted to reach himself out to meet its waiting death.

“OWWWWWWW!! THAT HURT ME!! THAT REALLY HURT!!”

Azrael, who had taken over the operation of their shared body now that the danger had returned to the moment, got herself up and stumbled on over to Matthias, spitefully forcing her mask out of his hands and holding it underneath her left arm while passive-aggressively asking him: “Am I now going to have to hit you?” “I don’t think so.” was his simple reply.

Meanwhile, back at the edge of the lava pit, Thomas meekly got to his feet and whined. “I don’t think I like the goddess no more.”

“Then, again, Jean-Paul, from within Azrael’s mind, thinking, musing the following:

‘I feel as though all the sad, sorry craziness that has ever existed the world over or ever will exist has congealed into one small spot, and now I am standing in the very centre of it.’

Then, while moving on over to look down below a cliff, Azrael talking on the outside.”

“We can’t go back the way we came. Nor back on any conventional roads. The lava’s covered our path’s completely. We have to climb and hope we can find another route to the sea. But if we wish to survive, we can’t just keep tearing at each other’s throats. Can I exercise even just a modicum of trust in you? Either of you? In one or both of you?”

“Yes, yes. Both. Certainly.”

Within Azrael’s mind, a song surfaced from Jean-Paul’s memory, and, out loud with her inflections and tones, Azrael began to sing it, a small, quiet moment of peace and delivery from the horrors all around.

“I’ll light the fire,

You place the flowers

In the vase that you bought,

Today.

Staring at the fire,

For hours and hours while I listen to you

Play your love songs all night long for me,

Only for me…”

The mask came on, and the three of them began the arduous ordeal of climbing up the rocks to scout for safety.

“Why did you strike me earlier, doctor?”

“It was your fault. You were being brutal to him.”

“Right. He hurt me.”

“Hurt you? Mere hours ago your brother wanted me to stake my sword through your heart!”

“Yes, yes I did. But just now when I saw you fighting him so magnificently—”

“He fought me back in the yard of your compound. Just as magnificently.”

“Did I…?”

“Well, now, all of that’s in the past. Today, I felt something. Something that I have never felt before.”

“I believe that you might be experiencing a sick, twisted forme of what the human beings would call ‘brotherly affection’.”

“All the sad, sorry craziness that has ever existed the world over or ever will exist has congealed into one small spot, and now I am standing in the very centre of it.”

They continued to climb. Higher and higher, as fast as they could go, three small dark black shadows climbing up and up while clinging for their dear lives to a dark grey mountain bearing dark emerald and olive green branches and leaves, and all of it framed against a ruby red sky and a salty sapphire ocean, mingling in with deep and depth-defying black smoke.

“You know something odd, mister angel? I see quite a bit of myself in you.”

“I am not exactly sure if that’s something I would want.”

“From atop that hill I can see a ship passing in the distance, that fishing boat whose unlucky owner had tried his hardest to save me and you when he had the chance, and with him that innocent little girl, who had become caught up in the petty squabbles of her elders with no fault of her own. They couldn’t see me, but they could see the island exploding into flames behind them as they sped away from the inferno as fast as possible. I felt it deep in my bones. They were safe.”

If Azrael could have been on that boat with them, she would have heard them both sighing with relief, and quietly but calmly singing together.

“We are stardust, we are golden,

We are billion-year-old carbon.

And we’ve got to get ourselves,

Back to the garden.”

Azrael then spotted a gap within the rocks upon one of the many unnoticeable but wide natural island cliffs, out of the way but large enough for them all, even the substantially larger Tom, to pass through difficulty-free.

“There… Through those trees… There isn’t any path, but we should be able to pass through there and out to the ocean without any trouble—”

A sudden shaking and quaking of the volcano and the island began to rock the rocks that the three of them had been clinging to, and very soon afterwards, despite their best collective efforts to hold on as best they could, they were suddenly and violently thrown from the rock in unison, falling down flat upon a separate cliff with a few seconds of extremely undignified tumbling. Orchid was the first to rise up, adjusting his halfway-shattered glasses and dryly remarking, “The violence of the eruption must have caused some seismic activity.”

“An earthquake.” Azrael muttered.

“Does this mean that we’re in trouble?” Tom meekly asked.

Azrael looked to her left, and then to her right. The fall had kicked them onto a single gigantic rock pillar directly in the path of the lava flow, maybe only a foot or two above the blaze. They were isolated.

“Yes. Yes we are.”

“Once more I can feel that feeling of Azrael forcing me away from her mind, freeing up space for her to do her thing. But gentler this time. Like she cares more about me now.

She tells me… I tell me… with a gentle murmur: ‘I am not able to do what I must if I must also balance sharing my life force with yours. I apologise, but you interfere with my focus.’

Then she trots back a dozen yards or so, for it was a very big rock, and then, without hesitation, which she might have accidentally done if I were still with her, sprints forward headlong into the danger, leaking that glorious blue inferno all over everywhere she goes, and makes a miraculous leap over the oncoming waterfall of crashing lava, going the distance without losing any speed, and touching down upon another cliff with connections to the mainland of the island while cushioning the impact with her arms. From back on that main rock she hears from the demon Thomas: ‘What about us?’, and she, the vengeful spirit trying to be noble, keeps her promise of trust in them, flattening one open hand, and, with an unprecedented graceful motion, chops down a tall dark berry tree and uproots it, tipping it over the side of the cliff to form a temporary but stable, sturdy, natural wooden bridge for them to use. The brothers don’t need any instructions. They dutifully cross.

As we begin to run for our lives down the adjoining hill, the ground itself begins to shift and quiver beneath us, once more beginning to shake and shiver, as if the true mother, the Earth herself, has become immensely irate with us for escaping her gaping molten grasp. The volcano that is now behind us is a deadening roar, and the poisonous air is acid within our throats. Azrael lets me back into the larger stretches of the mind as she runs and runs, and we know that we are steadily and reliably faster than the flow with our timely advantage. But we cannot say the same for the two brothers, who lag a few feet behind me and aren’t quite able to catch up to my speed and pacing. The superheated melted rocks come for us faster and faster, and even Azrael can feel her own strength beginning to dry up. Slowly I begin to come back to the forefront as the end of the road comes into sight, the cool Alolan beach placed tantalisingly up ahead of us.

Suddenly, I am aware that I haven’t eaten for the entire time that I’ve been on this island, and that I’ve been streaming the not-fun kind of sweat beneath my clothes. Breath explodes from inside of me in gasps, and the muscle tendons down in my legs have turned to gelatin. I have to cool myself down, or elsewise I might just explode. I waste a precious few seconds to get my Azrael mask off, but I don’t have enough time to mess with my hood, and so it just stays on. I sought coolness, but there is none to be found anywhere inside the torture zone. There is only a terrible heat, and a noise, and the world dissolving into chaos. I try to make myself vanish, to replace the mentally-weak Jean-Paul with the resolving force of Azrael, but I can’t. Azrael is not here with me anymore. Her inner strength has been exhausted by all that has recently transpired, now that the energy of the island has begun to fade from our shared body. There is only Jean-Paul Valley, helpless Jean-Paul Valley, fragile Jean-Paul Valley, clumsy Jean-Pail Valley. I have been left to complete this final stretch entirely on my own.

The ocean is in view, I just need to power through these last few famishing feet.

Through the trees.

Through the grass.

Working my muscles to beyond their full capacity.

Just this one final push.

And now sand is under my cheek, my mask has now been discarded and has been thrown aside to rest atop millions of beautiful burnt wheat-coloured grains. I did it. I made it. We are safe.”

The only damage that he had taken was the loss of the right half of his cape. Burned up. He was now a one-winged angel. Small price to pay. When he turned around to look behind him and see if the brothers had made it to safety with him, he saw the two of them desperately running to catch up with him.

Through the trees.

Through the grass.

Admirably quick.

But not quick enough.

Right before his very eyes, Jean-Paul saw them become engulfed in a glorious fiery red and orange explosion. The last thing that he saw of the brothers Thomas and Matthias Orchid was two black silhouettes being blown up into the sky right before being covered in wave after wave of the deadly lava, which was in turn consumed in a screaming, roaring fireball.

Deader than dead.

No possible remains.

“I am safe.

Blink soot and tears out of my eyes. Just stare for a moment or two. See flame and steam and smoke and a once-proud mass erupting into madness beyond repair. See the whole island crumbling. Madness unfolding before my eyes. But nothing human. Nothing demon. Cower into myself from all that’s happened for just a few moments. Begrudgingly get myself up, and shuffle forwards to the sea. Spot a piece of driftwood that can hold me. Like a weary, battered warrior stumbling home from an ill-begotten crusade, I return to the mother of us all.”

The ocean gently lapped around the two of them in soft and cooling dark blue waves, the exploding Poni Island burning against the hellish red skies now firmly in the distance. He lowered his singed black hood to hide his shame and looked up to the masked, cloaked, floating figure that hovered a minor distance above the waves and was looking down at him. She was there, but she also wasn’t.

Azrael.

She appeared to him as a black mass, with two purely white eyes, hiding under a gigantic deep red cloak with frayed and burned edges that gave her single article of apparel a ragged appearance. Her cape and hood flowed in the wind, and from out the bottom of her robe and the opening of the facial area, black smoke was emitted.

“And I find you waiting for me and I tell you a story we already know. I mean, of course we know it, we lived it.”

The red-cloaked black mass said nothing.

“I realise you’re a hallucination. Or, well, maybe you’re not. But regardless of how real you are, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Not to me. It was important to me that I speak. That I bear some kind of forlorn witness to what happened to us back there. I needed to talk to somebody about it, or else, on the inside, I would explode. And you were here. You’re always here. You’re always here for me. It’s a different kind of feeling, actually getting to converse with you like this. I never really thought of you as your own individual person. I always thought that you were… that you were me. And, well, maybe you are… some different kind of me. I can tell you this much… I don’t know. But I know that you’re… well… you’re you. And I’ve kinda grown to like you. I don’t want you to leave me… I want to go the distance with you.”

And once again, the tears began to flow, mixing in with all the ash and soot on his face. Her face… He sighed again.

Great. That was something that he needed to think about, too.

Fine. Just fine, just absolutely positively peachy.

“Sometimes, Azrael, I do envy you. I wish that I could be more like you, and I wish that you could be more like me. I wish that you didn’t feel the need to be so violent, and I also wish that I wasn’t so goddamn weak. Not weak in body, but weak in my mind. In my will. In my soul. I’m nothing but a little boy who revels in his weakness, his mortality. And you… You’re a woman who can accomplish almost anything on your own. I guess I just wish I didn’t hold myself back all the time… hold us back all the time… If you can listen to me, Azrael…”

He looked back up to face the black smoke beast.

“I just want to say I’m sorry.”

There was no response from the red-cloaked spirit of rage, but this time it didn’t really matter. If she had been there to listen to him, then just that alone would have been enough for him. At least he felt a little bit better, alone at night with a spectre who may or may not have even been there hovering next to him, as the driftwood log he was on continued to drift about, alone, in the deep blue Alolan sea.

He remembered something soothing that had happened earlier and began to sing.

“Our house is a very very very fine house.

With two cats in the yard,

Life used to be so hard.

Now everything is easy ‘cause of you…

And our…

I’ll light the fire,

While you place the flowers in the vase,

That you bought… today…”

Azrael #19

Angel In Flames

Part Three Of Four

Save The Innocents

“Was it at that moment that Doctor Matthias Orchid’s mind was finally snapped beyond its breaking point?”

A dark black room was illuminated by the flaming red and white-hot flames emanating from the energy-enhanced body of a vengeful goddess queen, bursting fire and flames from every corner of her body, leaking flames from the gaps inbetween her gritted pointed canine teeth while her huge feline claws gripped themselves around a gigantic club of a steel sword with a two-handed hilt of solid gold bejewelled with shards of solid diamonds that glistened in the blazing light. From behind, the white-jacketed grey-haired doctor raised one hand into the air while he tucked the other behind his back, as if he was lifting her spirit up into the air. “The magnificent raging angel within you is your true self! Let her now come forth and dwell within her true appearance onto our mortal green plane! Set her free to carry out the righteous and holy task that I have given unto her!”

“Or had it happened earlier? Perhaps many years earlier?”

“Let her begin her holy task of blazing vengeance by bringing down the full force of her mighty blade upon that SCOUNDREL, that COWARD, that superstitious PARASITE, my very BROTHER!”

“Well, we’ll never know now.”

“AZRAEL!!”

“And it doesn’t really matter.”

“ARISE!!”

“You KNOW who he is! You KNOW what he looks like! FIND HIM FOR ME!! BRING ME HIS HEART!! FETCH ME HIS SOUL!!”

In response, the bestial Azrael roared with all her might, took a few more steps toward the door, and proceeded to springboard off of one of her three-clawed feet to rush forward outside at blinding speed with a single bound. Meanwhile, in his own state of separation from the angel without, Jean-Paul Valley just barely managed to sit himself up on the table while he became progressively more acclimated to the bizarre feeling of entirely being his own body. But he couldn't just rest. She was on the loose. He began to begrudgingly get to his feet and to stumble towards the door as the flaming being quickly outpaced him to an utterly unequalable extent, at least for him, and left the boy to simply wander around in her dust.

Then, as he stepped into the cool midnight air, Jean-Paul Valley became fully conscious once again. Doctor Orchid’s oh-so-subtle plans to keep the two of them separated had been compromised, kneecapped, shin-lassoed. For, as much as he had wished to distance himself from such a definitive fact, he had been born with beast blood flowing through his veins, and no amount of dissociative dissociation would ever be able to alter that, it was his birthright just as much as it was hers, the only difference between them at the end of the day was that one of them was a rage-driven slaughterer and the other was someone who had always made his best attempt to be a meek and kind individual. Once more he thought about how it felt so oddly comforting to acknowledge that the boy and the angel were different people in minds and in souls, a fact that had now become extended unto their bodies. There were two individuals that had now at long last become firmly separate. But he still couldn't catch up to her, no matter how hard he tried, not helped in any way by his unfamiliarity with the territory around the both of them. But then he scored a break. She stopped moving. She had heard a noise upwards in the blackened night skies with streaking shades of blue that had been mixed into its canvas. Jean-Paul chose to stop, too. There was Jean-Paul Valley, a gentle, innocent boy trapped within a grown man’s body, and there was Azrael, a fierce, formidable, violence-hungry avenger hell bent upon exacting murder. The singular body had become driven to bifurcate, to split into the two identities that he had always been. Together, the two of them observed the source of the disturbance, peering upward, seeking its source.

They spotted six outside aircraft, helicopters from the world beyond, creeping in the heated air across a smoke and soot-streaked moon and, with marks that bore the collective groupe name of LIGHTSPEED RESCUE across their sides in bold red, green, blue, pink, yellow, and grey letters, mingling with the chup-chup-chup-chups of their engines, filtered through a volume-enhancing megaphone that was on occasion broken by the whispering winds, was heard a stentorian voice.

“ATTENTION EVERYONE ON THE ISLAND! YOU ARE IN GRAVE DANGER! THE VOLCANO IS ERUPTING! REPEAT, THE VOLCANO IS ERUPTING, AND THE ENTIRETY OF THIS ISLAND WILL SOON BE ENGULFED IN MOLTEN LAVA!”

Central to the island was the titular volcano, which had ceased its fragile peaceful tension and had now begun to bellow enough black smoke to blot out the stars and superheated rocks began to belch from out of its gaping rocky maw and quickly became launched fast enough to flow right over the dense wild foliage and swiftly creeping over the knee-high flower-filled and tree-bordered grass and mixing in shades of infernal reds in with the blacks and blues up above the clouds. From within his two-person leather seat one of the main helicopter’s two pilots continued to hold the vehicle steady while the microphone for the outside-mounted megaphone was taken and then used by his copilot.

“IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A BOAT OR A PLANE, THEN PLEASE LEAVE THE ISLAND IMMEDIATELY. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY WAY TO LEAVE, THEN GO TO THE EAST BEACH AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE WILL EVACUATE AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE! WE REPEAT!! YOU ARE IN EXTREME DANGER!!”

Down below on other portions of the dark island, the Children Of The Lava had been busy licking their wounds and counting their dead when the message from up on high was delivered down to them in the grass. Several of the green-adorned cultists looked up in confusion at the metal-seated messengers up above, and a few of them bewilderedly asked to no one in particular.

“Is this true?”

“What does it mean?”

“Has the prophesied ash of death finally come?”

“Should we attempt to leave, master?”

Thomas Orchid, who had been busy with catching his breath and with pondering his failure at the hands of some costumed angelic punk with a fancy sword, slowly got up onto his own two feet and answered them thusly.

“We are the chosen children of the most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious blazing volcanic mother, are we not? Our judgement is left in her hands. If it is indeed our most pure mother’s will that we gift ourselves unto her flaming embrace to be consumed by her fiery love, then so it must be. We must remain and wait in humble patience for her ultimate decision.” Then suddenly he had another thought that ame to him in a flash like an instant. “Where is my niece? Did anyone see her enter or leave?” One of the other dazed and confused cultists, a frazzled-looking man with messy stoner blonde hair and an ugly, ugly soul patch upon his chin, answered him after aimlessly looking around for a few seconds. “She told me she was returning to that detestable, wicked Orchid’s camp.” Another cult member, a heavyset woman with shortened black hair and her hood up, added to that statement. “Something about making her peace with him.”

Thomas, having heard that sentence, instantly then became fired up once again, dusting the fresh Alolan dirt from off of his long robe of a desaturated dehydrated green, stood a little straighter, stood a little taller, and at the top of his lungs he bellowed out: “PEACE?! PEACE WITH HIM?! WITH MY BROTHER?! AFTER ALL THAT HE’S DONE TO HER?! NO! NO! THIS I CANNOT PERMIT!”

“He set off after the poor little girl, stumbling down the mountain almost from the top at as high a speed as his tired legs and his sandaled feet could carry him. Competition for the familial love of this ignorant, awkward child was not the sole reason for the enmity between the brothers. In fact, it was, in all possible honestly, not really a reason at all. Rather, in fact, it gave the two of them an extremely convenient, walking, talking excuse to vent and project their inner hatred for each other, that may have begun all the way within the womb that they had once shared, out into the world beyond beyond, wherein it gave them a perverse forme of validation of their senseless squabbles and their personal pettiness now that their familial feud could now have actual, physical, tangible consequences, it was as if their confliction had now taken on a definite meaning.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere on Poni Island, Hapu, having left the flock of green to wonder about through the dense Alolan green of the palm and flower forest that surrounded the Mount Kanelia volcano on all sides, had finally made it onto the dirty little footpath that joined onto the dusty little road that soon enough, in the nick of time, took her running little self right near the Orchid complex, right through the entry gate, and into the sand-covered centre of the complex of straw-thatched buildings, framed in darkest shadows of deepest black against the black and blue and red sky that was quickly and loudly being taken over by the encroaching tint of a bright and pure flaming red. She made her best attempt to look around and physically find her father, but unfortunately, her progress was halted by an EXTREMELY justifiable forme of self-imposed fear. A bestial and feral Azrael, who had been temporarily hypnotised into paying her indivisible attention to the aircraft of the messengers in the sky, and a VERY justifiably timid and shy Jean-Paul Valley, who had now completely reverted into his comforting state of being a total shrinking violet, were simply standing there and staring at each other, hypnotised now by the sight of one another, lost in the gaze of the two selves and completely left with noting to say to the other half of their former mutual shared body. Their silent standoff had thankfully been broken by the untimely presence of the little girl, which, unfortunately for her, now meant that the avenging angel, whose flames had died down to a deep dull dark red, was now preoccupied with focusing its deadly sight right onto her. Her aura of bodily flames began to swell up to an offensive orange, then increased in heat up to a yobbish yellow as the blank fanged expression upon her face began to twist and curl itself into a menacing maw. She drew her blade, which thanks to the golden power, had increased in size to what was now more like a two-handed club in the shape of a golden-gripped steel greatsword, and it seemed like she had now found a new victim to satiate her pent-up violent agression…

But someone stopped her.

She took a moment of hesitation, and then she looked downwards to see who it possibly could have been. What she saw when she turned her blazing gaze downwards was a pair of human arms and hands, Jean-Paul Valley’s arms and hands to be specific, holding her/him back with all of his/her might, audibly straining through anesthesia-imposed drowsiness and weakness to attempt to make a point.

“Please… Dont… Kill her…”

“Uurrgghhuuuuaaaa…?”

“What did that poor girl ever do to you…? Azrael, please… Please don’t do this…”

“Aawwwwhhhhgguurrrrrr!”

“You don’t have to be the bad guy… You don’t have to be the bad girl! Whatever you are… Whatever we are… We can be a good one…!”

With the last of his beast-given physical might he strained as far as he could and his grip against the spectral beastly assassin tightened just as far as it could possibly go.

“PLEASE, AZRAEL!”

In the commotion, the girl had escaped.

“As for that bouncy little girl herself, who knows what could have been in her confused, tormented mind? Perhaps the infernal fire and smoke spewing into the sky filled her with that classical primal dread and prompted her to flee, instinctively seeking the place that had longtime since become the only true home that she had ever known. When her uncle reached her father’s compound, it seemed to be utterly deserted. No guards, no security devices. They had all been ruined during an earlier attack on the facility. He scanned the area, and then… Well, imagine him standing there, suddenly now realising that, for the first time in a great many years, he is alone. Alone without the disciples whose devotion gives him whatever could have passed for courage he has, feeling as small and stupid and worthless as he full well knows himself to be. And then something catches his eye…”

What he saw before him was the sight of a vengeful war goddess being just barely restrained by a blonde man with pointed elf ears and lacking a shirt while wearing a gaudy black collar scarf and large orange earrings, finally spending the last of his bodily strength and dropping down to his knees, before falling over down in the dirt and kicking up some of the dust while on his way down, at that point straining just to breathe. But not dead… Yet… At the rate that this was going, it seemed most certainly like a great possibility that he would keel over and die from all that he had just been put through.

“And then, with panic ripping through him, he runs away from the beast towards the nearest available hiding place, the area his brother uses for therapy. Ducking into one of the straw buildings, he was immediately greeted by a room wherein strange, foreign, alien devices harness the extremely-powerful piezo-electrical fields that are caused by the scraping of the volcanic rocks, be they melted or unmelted, to create tangible representations of our mental hallucinations, phantoms from the subconscious made available for all to see. He feels the sensation of a shudder deep within him, and he sees it! He sees it and he recognises it!”

From deep in the shadows, right out of the fleshy organ space right beneath his ribs and in turn housed underneath the outer layers of his human flesh, erupted a torrent of fire that swirled around his body for a few moments, mingling in with the golden electrical energies that permeated themselves around the room and around the complex, seeing plumes of fire congeal themselves into the distorted shape of a human face, before then building up a body to support itself, dark eyes with flaming cores, gigantic animalistic demonic claws in a gun metal color, and gigantic rippling muscles composed of billions, nay, trillions or hardened dense cords, that quickly began to set themselves in and to turn the colour of the green-robed man’s own skin.

“Recognises it as an infernal swelling right from the depths of his very own human soul…”

The flaming energy forme finally finished building itself up in the room around them, a dull faint light against the thick inky black shadows.

“And he utters a single awed word with a single awed syllable.”

The gigantic hulking creature loomed itself over him, sparking the cowardly Thomas to, for the first time in his entire life, face up to another being.

“Me.”

“In a single moment he is transformed. Transformed not only in his physical human body, but transformed in his inner spirit as well. For if this demonic, powerful being is indeed himself on the inside, then he has no need for any disciples to follow him, he has no need for any goddess to lord herself over him, and he has nothing in the entire world for him to fear.”

Then the Orchid twin’s body was engulfed in the flaming spirit, the great volcanic mother goddess now having blessed him from on high for all his hard work with this newfound power.

“Seeing is believing, after all.”

She had made her anointed a blazing beast and made her minister a flame of fire.

“Better yet, seeing is being.”

That particular day was definitely not Willy’s day, his evening, and now not even his night, as, while attempting to go and check on the good doctor within his personal building, all the while having to now hobble around on a wooden crutch with his left hand in a cast, had to then be stopped dead in his tracks by the appearance of a quite obviously demonic individual with radiating plumes of lava moving themselves around his frame, stamping his way right out the door. Nonetheless, he was not the kind of man who could be stopped just by a scary face, and so he took his free right hand and pointed his pointer finger straight at the green tank-topped, grey-haired, prominent-eyebrowed, green-caped, eyes-flaming, feral-fanged, and muscle vein-raising demonic being.

“You just turn right around and go back to the pits of Hell from whence you came–”

THU-WHACCCKKKKK!!

And instantly he went flying through the wall of a building which instantly rendered him into not remotely being a nuisance anymore.

From right within the room of his own personal office, Doctor Matthias Orchid, who had been on the phone for that entire time and thus been perfectly unaware of the sudden inflections and spikes of the volcanic energy just a couple of feet away, was unpleasantly intruded upon by an unpleasant gigantic lumbering man with ripped and shredded arms the size of half a person’s body, radiating superheated flames that composed themselves into a blazing red-hot aura, and claws that could easily shred through any military metal clenched into fists that break through anything. The doctor was only able to utter a plain, simple “Eh?” before the wall that housed the carved stone entryway instantaneously crumbled away into a million pieces and his attention was forced away from the telephone call and onto the grey-haired being that had clobbered his way right in front of him.

“Well, well, well, well, my snivelling, puling little baby brother! I thought that my so-obviously-inferior twin had simply went away and found a pathetic little hole to crawl into.”

“You have no power over me no more. Now I’m gunna hur ‘chou.”

“Chah. Don’t be daft. Your statement has no meaning. You are in error. You, brother, are an illusion. Somewhere underneath that hideous, shredded, muscled surface is my sad, stupid sibling.”

“An illusion, am I? Perhaps I am. But I have been made powerful by your so-called illusions.”

WHOCK-WHOCK-WHOCK-WHOCK!!

The ensuing infernal uppercut echoed all around the island and the entire complex began to shudder with the force of such a wicked blow.

“My FIST is real. Isn’t it, my brother?”

It was right then that the clawed left fist of the energy demon opened itself up and proceeded to immediately enclose itself around his fragile human neck. Through an afflicted airway and through a set of compromised vocal cords, the physically weaker one out of the two since their birth could only barely manage to say even a single incoherent thing.

“Please… I’m your… Brother…”

The flames of the eyes and the aura of the soul both turned a deep, sinister green.

“Not for long, wicked one.”

Slowly the fist's death grip tightened its surely-fatal hand around his lifeline…

But the angel of death would not turn its blade to Matthias yet.

For it had its sight set on another target.

An embiggened white aura began to purge the darkness.

And then a woman’s voice was heard.

“YOU WILL RELEASE HIM NOW!!”

An equally gigantic shape of writhing white ribbons surrounded by a lethal white flame brandishing a gigantic gold and steel flaming sword slammed itself straight into the chest of the transformed brother at blinding speed, sending out a shockwave that devastated the Earth in and around the island, inciting a contained quake that sent the both of them out the other end of the building. The demon got up with quickening ease, grinning from ear to ear and haughtily proclaiming the following egocentric boasting. “EHEHEHEAHAHAHA!! I’m not scared of you!!” Seeing the opportunity to bail right the fuck out, the double plus ungood doctor quickly scrambled his way out of the wreckage, and left the two of them completely free to fight and fight as they pleased.

Immediately the demon tackled the angel right back, evening the damage, while Azrael, whose size had grown seemingly out of nowhere after Jean-Paul had been knocked down and out, now came to the immensely satisfying realisation that the energy itself had gone out of its way to grow her body even further in strength and in stature, to make her into a force that could counter the infernal demon. Concurrently, while the female Azrael and the emboldened Thomas were still completely busy with using up all of their energy into beating the motherfucking shit out of each other for as long as they lived, having sensed that the flow of energy had been changed, and feeling a very bizarre and tingling sensation all throughout her/his body, proceeded to open his/her eyes and get his ass up, swallow the bile in his throat, part his bangs to the left, breathe in the burning outside air, and run at his top speed towards the compound.

“Imagine Jean-Paul Valley watching his other self in battle, surprised by both of their speed and their strength, the angel of death, and the demon of flames. Their speed, their power, their ferocity, their wrath, their strength. His opposite identity doing even battle with the same foe that had humbled by the tried and true method of the good old blade only a few hours earlier.”

Thomas’ infernal, guttural voice rang out and was picked up by Azrael’s enhanced, flat, pointed ears.

“HURMPH! HAH! YOU’VE CHANGED!!”

Azrael’s glorious mane of thick golden curls fanned out in the wind behind her, visible through several of the pre-formed burned holes within her burned and tattered thick black cape and hood, while at the same time her aura and the flames leaking from her eyes and mouth began to be heated up even hotter, up to their maximum level, burning brighter and brighter until they finally settled into their ultimate state, the hottest colour of the flame, a chillingly beautiful blue.

“AS HAVE YOU, TOO. THOUGH REGRETTABLY IN NO WAY FOR THE BETTER.”

After she proceeded to throw the male demon into the unoccupied buildings for two precious minutes, he proceeded to retaliate by picking up an entire standing building and hurling it right at her. Azrael, in turn, proceeded to draw her blue-flaming double-handed blade and bisect the construction into a flaming mess of nothing. From down below, the doctor shrieked.

“SLAY HIM!! SLAY HIM!! DO YOU HEAR ME?!?! SLAY HIM!!”

“YES. YES I WILL.”

Behind the both of them, with a low and guttural dark delight, spewing out enough thick black smoke even to darken the skies, and accompanied by the massive flow of a huge red geyser of pure molten rock that began to rush across the island and down the rocky slopes, the volcano roared.

“From his own vantage point down in the dust, Jean-Paul knows to a certainty that Azrael is sure to obey. And that he will lose his soul when the angel above carries that directive out. And that Azrael’s soul will be lost with it, too.”

The appearances of the angel and the demon that by now towered above the complex, reaching up almost to the height of that looming destructive volcano, would now, to an outside observer, seem like two burning silhouettes surrounded by gigantic blazing masses of blue and green light, framed against a deathly, demonic, blood red sky.

“But Jean-Paul is nothing but a spectator here, merely a witness and utterly unable to influence any of the events. Then, both Azrael and Thomas are unexpectedly forced to pause as they hear the sound of thunder from the helicopter rotors and the amplified authoritative voice booming down upon them from the helicopter in the heavens echoing across the island.”

“ALL OF YOU ARE IN GRAVE DANGER!! THE LAVA HAS BEGUN TO FLOW!! EVACUATE THE ISLAND IMMIDIATELY!!”

The pilot of the craft, now equipped with a facial oxygen mask and unable to see very much in front of him, could not afford to stay any longer, and thus had to go on his merry way after warning the people below only once. In all the commotion, Azrael had seized her one and possibly only chance to bring a swift end to the battle by slamming her shoulder into the core of his body at maximum power, inciting a green and white explosion that firmly planted the gigantic demon into the dust and dirt. The doctor somewhat-tensely adjusted his thin flat glasses and pointed to his brother's body. “Now, Azrael, O you vengeful goddess of bloodshed and execution of the shameful! Finish your sacred and profane tasque! SLAY HIM NOW!”

“And Jean-Paul Valley is crying ‘NYET! NYET!’ And yet Azrael does not hear.”

“You are actually on the right track to being correct, while Azrael hears, Azrael does not listen. The blade is poised above the back and the head, perfectly ready to strike down the opponent with its blue-bursting blade. But very fortunately for everyone, that attitude changes. He hears the voice of another, a person whom a dissociated Jean-Paul, now on the outside of the flesh, had forced the two-winged angel to begrudgingly spare. He hears the voice of a little girl, wailing in panic.”

“HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME! SOMEBODY PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME!”

It was Hapu, who had been trapped into clinging onto a tree by the oncoming lava flow, left to stay there and watch as the fires of death began to spread out from the flow of the melted rocks, the skies now a hellish red and black and the trees around her becoming just more and more blackened ash.

“DO YOU HEAR ME UP THERE?! DO IT!! DO IT RIGHT NOW!!”

Azrael turned and looked down from her overlooking vantage point at him. And then she looked away. She ran. The being that ran away from the men was not fully Jean-Paul nor fully Azrael, it was a combined sort of being, both with Azrael’s speed and strength, and now, able to feel, at long last, deep within her spirit, a forme of Jean-Paul’s compassion. “Help… Somebody…” the little girl’s voice faintly rang out. Azrael made her way across the untouched black high rocks at record speed, leaping across gaps and cliffs and up through the still-remaining foliage to make her way towards her. And thankfully for that sweet but sad little Hapu, she was caught in the arms of the gigantic-winged angelic being precisely as the tree that she had been clinging so dearly to was consumed in its entirety by the flow of death. Azrael’s bright blue aura continued to burn bigger and bigger, a reflection of the brightness, the heat of her spirit, but it did not burn the scared child in her claws. Gigantic flames of the most brilliant bright blue fanned out behind her as her hauntingly beautiful black wings carried the both of them across an impossible gap of pure lava, and her body left a runaway mark in the dirt as she crash-landed onto a high plane with the unharmed child secure in her golden-gloved arms.

They, against any and all odds, were safe.

For now.

Down on the Poni Island beach, wherein the Lightspeed Rescue emergency helicopters had settled down to collect the people of the island who would willingly go with them, two pilots in light baggy black jackets, one of which bore the name Commander Carter on the back with a red rectangular patch on his left arm, and the other one bearing the name of Colonel Ryan with a larger and metallic grey rectangular patch on his left arm, were still out on the shore looking in vain for anyone else who might have been able to come to them at the last minute through the trees. They had been delaying their flights as long as possible, hoping against all hope that there were more, anybody left who could still have changed their mind and left with the rescue service, but it was not to be, they had asked most of the cultists to come along with them about six times at that point, but it did them no good. They would not leave.

“Are you sure we’ve got everybody, Commander?’

“We don’t. But we’ve got as much as we can carry. We can’t afford to spend any more time down here, the lava is getting too close.”

A small sigh from the blonde officer was what followed, looking away from the brunette helicopter pilot and climbing into his main seat.

“Joel, Kelsey, Chad, and Dana have already left with their choppers. We can only pray that they managed to get everybody off of their portions of the island with them. We have to go right now!”

The other man nodded, got up into his pilot seat, and radioed to him.

“Take ‘er up now, Colonel!”

Azrael couldn’t run as fast with an entire living human being slung in her left arm to concern herself over, and so she just barely missed the last flight out of Poni Island as the choppers began to disappear from sight.

“We are too late…”

“I’m sorry… Azrael, if that’s your name… I failed”

“Do not be concerned. You didn’t fail anyone.”

“I did! I did! If I hadn’t become so scared then you might have been able to find me earlier and we might have been able to get away! I failed Master Uncle, I failed father, and now I’ve even failed you…”

“Young one, please, worry not. Please allow me to attempt to ease your spirit.”

With that sentence, Azrael suddenly began to calm herself down, which began to recede her flames, complete her facial masque, burn her gigantic wild hair shorter, shrink herself down to normal human size, reform her claws and feet back into human-passing limbs, and repair her gloves, cape, and hood back into its normal Azrael shape. From the outside, she was back to normal.

“Do I at least now bring you much less fright?”

The green-robed girl nodded.

The angel followed by sighing.

“What are we to do now?”

“I… I don’t know…”

“Azrael will think of something. Azrael does not turn coward.”

The blue waves of the Alolan Ocean gently lapped against the island's shaky and sandy shore.

“It’s not possible to guess what was going on within Azrael’s state of mind.”

“Or even if such a mind could possibly be anything close to sane in such a taxing moment.”

The voices which had been conversing this entire time continued to drone on and on about the incident, until Sister Lilhy finally managed to end the railroading by concluding her previous sentence.

“Assuming that Jean-Paul Valley has ever been what the human society would consider to be sane.”

Lilhy, who had recently seen quite a bit of personal success in experimenting with flattening and controlling her now-wavy hair, continued stretching her body out on the plush red couch with extreme boredom while absentmindedly splitting her attention between the ex-doctor and her smoking lit cigarette, looking out the bay window right across from the couch and continuing to chat with him in her usual typical disinterested delivery.

“How do you even know any of this?”

“To tell the truth, I know very little about what actually happened. What I’ve been going on and on to you about is what I have had to piece together. Part conjecture, and part what I’ve learned from watching 666 News for these past twenty-four hours. They had quite a splendid interview with Orchid’s man, Willy, you see, and then part what old man Orchid himself told me.”

The tone of Lilhy’s voice took on a slightly more interested and invested tone and her face took on a mild air of personal amusement while she finished with her current puffing.

“You spoke with him?”

“Yes, I very much did. Twice he telephoned me. Once just before his brother so rudely burst in on him, and once again after Azrael had gone and left to rescue his daughter”

“Why would he possibly do this?”

“Why would he do this? Good question.” the brown-haired, greed-eyed man with the large teal button-up long-sleeved shirt casually mused while absentmindedly feeling up his own stubble. “Perhaps the reason is because even though he’s just as nutty as a metric ton of Planter’s Finest, he is still a scientist. I guess he wanted to share his knowledge. I only wish that he had the time to share more with me. Because, well, what he did to Azrael worked in some way.”

Brian sat himself down upon one of the soft upholstered leather chairs right across from the laying-down purple-lipsticked Lilhy and had himself a glass of black iced tea while he continued to explain. “His technique temporarily made his own brother into a superhuman being. He’s reliably cured several other people. If we on the outside world could understand his methods, take them, refine them, use them for ourselves, then we could bring help to those afflicted with multiple personalities, dissociative identities, get a handle on the inherent dualistic nature that is present within a great many of us…”

“What of Jean-Paul? Azrael? What of them?”

A sigh escaped the brown-haired man’s lips.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. The Lightspeed rescue teams went back to the island as soon as they could but they didn’t find any survivors. Just tons and tons of charred human bodies. Corpses. Maybe Jean-Paul Valley, Orchid, and Orchid’s brother are amongst that total, maybe they’re not. Of course, both of us know Jean-Paul is powerful and resourceful, but… I don’t think it’s wise to count on that…”

He was met by a simple answer from the light purple lips of a pale woman whose nails were gripping onto the upholstery of the leather couch from her own emotion like she had intended to take its life.

“NO. What you claim is nothing if not lies. He is alive.”