#biis

[nar1vd]

In every universe

[blancdasta]

the last few issues of agent of the bat do suck pretty bad but there is something to be said about jean paul succumbing to destiny and dying the same way his father did

[angelofreprisal]

Azrael’s rogues gallery is unintentionally rather funny to me, because he both inherited all of Bruce’s enemies, but his own universe includes:

A fat old cosplayer

Obadiah Stane but bad

A poor man’s Talia

A pre-YouTube right-wing grifter televangelist

An assorted squad of generic bald muscle men

Poor man’s Morgan Stark

DC’s most woobified pedophile

A forever-faceless jackass hard carried by the colour contrast

A sun-fried evil military Jesus lookalike named Jerry

A drill sergeant cyborg

A drill sergeant who runs his own camp-state

Maybe-or-maybe-not hallucinations of long-dead religious figures

Textbook mad science men

And the third most tragic character in the entire book.

You may not be laughing but I certainly am.

[comicbooktradingcards]

Batman: Saga of the Dark Knight - Series 1 (1994)

#67 Hostage

[nar1vd]

Thief.

[angelofreprisal]

AZRAEL #14

DEMON TIME

PART II: REVENGE

“So this is that ‘Azrael’ that we’ve been hearing so much about, is he?”

“Any idea what old LeHah’s got in the plans department for him?”

“HAH! Believe me, I don’t wanna know and neither do any of you!”

“He went down pretty easily for someone who says he’s an angel.”

“Hey, what can I say, man? Boss makes the best weapons around for thousands of miles!”

“Who’s the bloke underneath that mask, anyway?”

“Might as well try and see…”

“Oy! Don’t just stupidly provoke him, y’all idiots!”

“Not me though, right?”

“Nah, driver man, you good.”

“How’s that knockout gas that we gave him holding up?”

“Doesn’t really matter, Jax, pretty soon his whole body is gonna shatter.”

“Lemme see. We shot him up and hit him with it forty minutes ago, right guys?”

“The watch says so. But hey, what do I know?”

“How much further to the drop-off point, Jax?”

“Twenty minutes or so. We’re just now turning onto the highway bridge.”

The voices seemed to originate from nearly infinite distances away, from the farthest ends of the observable universe, perhaps even further away in the even more infinite expanses of the unobservable universe. He heard them in a metaphysical sense all around him, as faint impressions of human dialogue, filtering down into his head through his mask and his ears and struggling to barely register the conversation of the men above him while his mind had only scarcely begun to recover from his state of complete prior unconsciousness, but in a usually extremely rare moment of sustained thought and conscious careful collected consideration before angrily acting allenarly agilely and apace, he elected to not react in the heat of the moment, to not get right up and move immediately. He remained lying down completely still, spread out all over the metal floor of the seatless back section of the red van and surrounded on almost all sides by weapon-toting gun nuts. Besides, he also just didn’t have any desire to get up in general, both from the lingering effects of the offensive gas attack as well as wanting to conserve all of his remaining energy for a possible in-person confrontation with the one of whom he had a mild suspicion for being the one to order the attack on him. All but one of the kidnappers were dressed in green. They were making use of only the best in top-class weapons and protection. They seemed like they knew that their bullets wouldn’t do him in. Only a select few enemies would know about the defensive nature of his raiments and form specific plans around it. And only one of them resided in America. LEHAH. LeHah was back. But how? He had abandoned the old man in a blazing complex-wide inferno that didn’t come even close to stopping for over an entire day. HOW? HOW COULD HE HAVE SURVIVED?

His body continued to lay down limp for the rest of the smooth roadways that the driver took them down for sixteen of the twenty remaining minutes. The speedy swerves and roaring rolling RUMBLEs felt all throughout the vehicle signaled to Azrael that the car had abandoned the paved and proper highway and was now travelling on a cobblestone roadway with no regard for the safety of anyone in the back of the moving car. Outside of the red van the deforested Gotham highway system slowly began to give way to thick and dark black and green forests sprawling out over the mild hills of thick and dense grass blowing about on the fresh and cleansing winds, and blotting out everything that could potentially lay within the depths. The sun was currently still going down, the skies above the Gotham outskirts a pleasing persistent pleasant peaceable palette of only the most picturesque persuasive passionate patient perceptive painterly palatial palpable panoramic purple, the kind of supremely beautiful night skies that makers of art would be compelled to compose parnassian poetry about after seeing the spectacular sensational scintillating sanctimonious sight even only once. From both above and behind a murder of crows followed the moving van, through the trees, through the rocks, and through the night sky, a foreboding sign of the ensuing danger and merciless slaughter to come. Inside the driver’s section of the car, the compact disk playing the finest of the finest in Swiss eighties art synth, the song once since having changed to a techno love song about road safety, which had been looping on repeat for the entirety of the car ride, the immensely catchy opening grooves having firmly been etched into the heads of all the passengers by that point, and currently the vehicle’s stereo played the following lyrics.

“You know I need it,

To ride in your car.

I know it's dangerous

You're going too far.

I'm always with you

Wherever you go.

This is a sensual,

The way you drive is just sensational

I hate to love you,

Love you all the same,

You know baby,

Driving is a serious game.

You gonna get me a heart attack

Stop it, hold it

Hold it back.”

The crows outside quickly became annoying and irritating, squawking incessantly and attempting to move in front of the van for reasons that they didn’t even know but would most certainly be inane if there were any such motivations at all behind their smug pretentious black eyes. Naturally the van’s windshield and wipers killed large swaths of them as the car drove forward, mile after mile after mile across the secretive and insular path towards their destination with zero turnoff opportunities and very little room to maneuver. “Goddamn crows.” Slim muttered as he stamped his foot on the gas pedal and turned the windshield wipers up to their maximum setting to get the birds out of his sight. “Just fuck off already!” the man in the athletic tracksuit shouted while the murder began to slowly die out one by one while the resulting collective red mess was slowly wiped away and the faint impression of some sort of outer perimeter began to come into view. Soon the van came in through the already opened double iron doors of a fenced-off outer wall topped by two lines of barbed wire and a classic yellow and black warning sign reading the words DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE FENCING. with a set of four black lightning bolts also on the sign to showcase the message for even the thickest of possible heads out there in the world to understand.

“Step on it, willya? Looks like it’s gonna rain.”

“If you haven’t noticed, I've been stepping on it for quite a while now.”

“So call up the boss and ask him for some reinforcements when we land.”

“Reinforcements? What are you, a chicken?”

“Just do it, it’s the sensible and logical move.”

“Fine, fine, fine, fine.”

The quick loud static of the car phone followed that remark and the telephone line to the secretariat croaked alive. “This is Slim. Tell LeHah we’ve got his angel. We’re arriving onto the estate now.” “Of course.” The line hung up right afterwards.

LEHAH. So it WAS him.

“What are you afraid of, getting a little wet?” “Oy, I just catch cold easily.” “We oughta be at the house in less than two minutes. Yeah, this is where the real fun begins.” After this factual confirmation, Azrael quickly summoned all the strength that lingered with him and managed to sit himself up on one knee while simultaneously punching the living daylights out of the blonde wrinkled henchman. One of his legs flew out right behind him and struck the employee with the thin brown hair right in the mouth and caused several teeth to immediately go flying accompanied by a gushing red waterfall. As for the blue-haired surfer dude, the angel in red simply slammed each fist over each of his shoulders to leave him reeling for a good long while. From Slim’s point of view in the driver's seat, a pair of flaming blades seemed to erupt from the metal dividing wall from right out of nowhere, covering up the rearview mirror completely with bright red flames and inciting an instinctual jerking of the steering wheel and pressing his foot down upon the gas pedal even harder than before. “THE FUCK?!?!” Naturally this led to the van spiraling out of any forme of control and speeding right into a thick wall of hardwood trees, the resulting multiplication of physical force jettisoning both Slim and Azrael right out of the left side window, most assuredly shattering the glass on their way out. The man in the tracksuit managed to get himself up, pulled a radio phone from out of his pocket, and started to make a beeline right for the house. Azrael, who had been thrown from the van not onto the decently-soft grassy ground but rather right into yet another tree and currently lay sprawled out on the green terrain but this time on his back instead of on his stomach, did not follow him. From all around him, the wind began to intensify, the air began to take on a tinge of… freshness, and the heavens above began to pour down a sprinkle of cleansing rain, a sign of the torrent to come soon. The audio system of the now-flaring and smoldering car continued to play.

“This is a sensual,

The way you drive is just sensational.”

“I love you.”

“I hate to love you,

Love you all the same,

You know baby,

Driving is a serious game”

"I love you!” “I know.”

"I love you!” “I know.”

“You gonna get me a heart attack.

Stop it, hold it,

Hold it back.”

Over at the Kinsolving household in the dark dining room lit only by tall smoky purple candles emitting a red light of warmth in contrast to the cold purple night sky visible through the windows, Brian Bryan had managed to wander inside and close the door behind him, staggering into the kitchen and grabbing onto the counter for support. The first person to spot him was Selina Kyle, who immediately helped him walk over to the chair in the living room and asked him a gently prying question while Lilhy walked into the room and sat down in the cushion-filled area near one of the bay windows while reading from Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest. “What happened out there, Doctor Brian? I heard gunfire.” “You heard gunfire indeed, Catwoman. Intruders passed by this house… Maybe it was more of the Ventriloquist’s mob men like last time, maybe it was government agents, maybe it was Team Rocket operatives, I haven't got a single clue. SIGH. No sign of Jean-Paul either... They must have taken him... KOFF. KOFF. KOFF. We… We need to get help. Can you possibly—?” “Let me be clear with you, if Azrael was taken down by them, I don’t believe that I would fare any better." “She’s very right, you know.” “Thank you, thank you.” “We have no efficient means of contacting any individual within our area who could possibly be powerful enough to assist our very own Azrael. Much less save him from these mysterious kidnappers. Nor is it at all wise to endeavour to involve the enforcers of civilian law, considering… considering who Azrael is and the deeds that he has done.” “We’ve got to do something, though, right, Miss Lilhy?” “We are doing something and we have been doing something ever since I came to this town. We are patiently awaiting the results of this particular encounter. And we are keeping one thing within our hearts and at the forefront of our minds. He is Azrael. Azrael will persevere for as long as he has he needs to. Before his time comes he will not be taken away from this Earth.”

The rain outside of the LeHah estate had begun to come down upon the property in earnest, and the downpour was expected to come to Gotham City soon before the end of the night. The sky over the house occupied by the three who had come from Algeria continued to remain its beautiful purple hue, while the colour of the area above the complex which housed the revived demon lord took on highlights of a desaturated seafoam-like green in contrast to the grey and black clouds and the clear and colourless water of the rain being blown around on the sharp winds along with the dense and tall grass and in tandem with the waves of the deep blue lake around the right side of the tree-covered residential area. The movements of the air shrieked in a cacophony that sounded like the screams of the damned banshees come from the depths to haunt the world above, and inside the household one Patricia Partridge, the secretary for the entire small but wealthy business operation, found her way up to the second floor of the square-shaped building attached to the mansion’s left side and reached the source of her employment inside the freezing cold metal-walled tile-floored room that lay beyond an open door of thick steel with a fixed and unmoving metal handle with the words MEAT LOCKER engraved upon it in large and bold black letters. “Mister LeHah, we’ve just gotten a call from Slim.” LeHah, now stripped down to a plain white compression t-shirt with green stitches and grey athletic compression sweatpants with green stripes running down the middle of the sides of each leg, looked up from the massive hunk of raw beef that he had been gnawing on, the stains of red cow blood visibly smearing his black and white facial makeup, a few drops of it getting spilled onto his white flat top hair as the top half of his body turned around slightly but quickly to look at the person telling him the news. “Haven’t I told you to never interrupt me while I’m occupied with eating?” “I wouldn’t have come if the news wasn’t of the most important nature, sir.” “Spit it out, then.” “Azrael has gotten away!” “The pompous little backpfeifengesicht has slipped free from my grasp? Of course. No doubt the men I dispatched after him were bested with little to no effort either. I don’t know why I would have suspected anything even the thinnest hair needle close to less from the sharpest and most gigantic hand-me-down red thorn impaling through my side for years in the making. Damned Valleys can’t leave well enough alone, can’t they? Look what they’ve made me do!” “He might still be on the grounds…” “Then that’s what we’ll find out.” LeHah said through gritted teeth before tossing aside his raw beef and stomping out of the full-to-capacity meat freezing and storage room with blood-soaked hands and forearms, his brown-uniformed secretary meekly following behind him into one of the downstairs rooms, a trail of the old man’s blood-stained footprints marking the path behind the both of them, down a flight of metal stairs and into an industrial-smelling room filled with large and oversized computers with equally large and oversized monitors intentionally stylised to resemble upscaled versions of older models of computing technology to suit LeHah’s own antiquated tastes, the doorframe of course being imprinted upon with blood after LeHah pushed open the diamond plate metal sliding door on his way inside.

LeHah sat down in the metal office chair in front of the main flat rectangular custom-manufactured and modified keyboard and monitor and switching on the viewing screen and activating an electronic link to a private network of hidden viewing cameras operated on poles that could be quickly withdrawn and hidden underground in disguise as mere lawn sprinklers. Almost instantly a loud buzz rang out in a notification of warming, betraying the exact location of an unexpected disturbance on the area-wide map displayed on one of the left monitors. While that was occurring, Patrick simultaneously walked in, having noticed the disturbance and also just kind of bored from not having any current assignments. “Microwave sensors indicate that our angelic red friend is approaching from the southeast quadrant.” LeHah began. Patrick then finished with a sneer and a “The area around all that fencing up and out in front of the house is chock-full to the brim with mines. Ain’t no intruder sneaking up on us without some serious damage.”. Patricia said nothing, merely shifting her hands around nervously behind her back and not interrupting them while they talked out loud. The mere fact that there was another Azrael, who had risen up after the one whom she had just begun to love had been snuffed out in a bloody and unceremonious display by the very same old man sitting within that chair right then and there was enough to put her on edge and off guard. But she did have one thought alright at the forefront of her mind. Perhaps justice can truly be served on this day. “If he thinks of fleeing out that way or back through the only road to and from here then he’ll be blown to complete and utter smithereens.” “What about if he decides to take his chances and come for you while he has the opportunity?” asked a mildly-erratically-breathing Patricia. LeHah, not noticing the emotions of the woman, replied his honest intentions. “Then he’ll have to make the acquaintance of… This!” He then pressed a switch on the giant console button keyboard in front of him and a set of tall double metal doors opened up on the leftmost wall of the room, revealing a massive metal conglomeration with an almost atrocious amount of deadly weapons and thick heavy metal armour both built right into it and added onto its many modular attachment ports, ascending into view upon a truly impressive reinforced lift and accompanied by a wall of thin smoke that slightly obscured its initial appearance, before the purely aesthetic smoke began to clear and the cold overhead lighting turned on and illuminated the gigantic dark tan-coloured bipedal frame with clusters of weapons for hands and a cube-shaped boxy head with two long and large rectangular black eye-like sensors all over the front of its mouthless artificial face. Despite being an obvious death machine the design unintentionally ended up being sort of adorable, considering its large pupilless eyes, complete lack of a mouth, and overall over-the-topness.

“What… Is that thing?” Patricia inquired. “Something that we’ve been developing for a few high-powered clients in Ruritania.” Patrick answered. “We call this M.A.K. Mikrowave Aktivational Kombatter. A mechanical masterpiece simply itching to be tested in the field against a top-tier target.” “On paper it’s meant to be considered a tool for keeping the peace, but of course this peacekeeping tool is perfectly capable of reducing a company of the finest and most heavily trained special forces to meaty piles of cheeseburger within seconds. Entire villages, merely a matter of minutes. Armament includes flamethrowers, .50 and .20 caliber machine guns loaded with armour-piercing shells, and a few miscellaneous items such as poisonous gases, bear mace, greek fire, and agent orange.” “No nukes?” “Hey, it’s being worked on.” “I’ve now keyed MAK to the microwave sensors that have detected Azrael on the grounds. It will go right to him.” The second set of double doors in the machine’s hangar opened up and exposed the torrential weather of the outside. The mass of metal and circuits turned around and left the hangar for the designated location of the currently-stationary target, the loud STOMPs echoing throughout the entire section of the house before becoming fainter and fainter as it began to walk in the mud and the grass towards the quarry. “All that we need to do now is wait for the inevitable.”

His throat and his eyes stung him severely as he got himself up on his own two feet and began the process of recollecting himself from the sustained knockout and impacts. His cape and ribbons blew around with the sharp movements of the shrieking night air and his suit slowly began to become soaked by the now-torrential downpour. He remembered: Knockout gas fired right at him after he had been so completely, obviously suckered. Each breath was a hot spray of blazing ash within his lungs, each thought was a writhing pain to process within his current state. His costume needed to come off. Azrael peeled back his heavy and crisp hood and removed his firm and resistant mask, setting it down amongst the grassy blades and allowing his wavy locks to blow around. Around him, above in the expanse surrounding the planet, he heard the shrill CRACKs of white lightning and the ensuing roaring RUMBLEs of the resulting thunder. The rain cooled his skin and soothed his muscles, and soon the pain began to fade away. Water trickled underneath his collar and wet his flesh, and Jean-Paul Valley was thusly reminded of who and what he was when outside of the costume. He had been attacked by unknown assailants and the thing that lived within his soul changed his mind into that of the avenger. Into Azrael. But now he was gone and he was back to being somewhat-plain Jean-Paul. Getting rained on. And feeling good. His body felt a sense of shuddering from a source that he didn’t quite remember, something that affected him in a differing manner than all of the previous pain. Perhaps it had something to do with the gel he had put on earlier, perhaps it had begun to finally take effect. He didn’t really know.

Back in the house, Carleton LeHah, firmly in the chair, switched the live camera feed over to the detected Jean-Paul and zeroed in onto him. “The robot is now close enough. Now I can activate its main armaments and watch this boy’s end.” In the sudden stillness after the initial bursts and crashes of the lightning and the thunder, something came up from the bushes and trees behind the boy. The sound of clanking footsteps in the mulch and the mud quickly got louder and louder and the wooden branches began to snap and break while Jean-Paul turned around to see the giant box-faced hunk of metal motors and tricked-out guns coming right towards him. He was already in motion as MAK’s twenty four conventional machine guns, twelve on each hand, began to hiss to life and the screaming wail of a hail of twenty millimeter bullets trailed after his rapidly moving self. He was now ten feet away from the mask, and his inner nature had been silenced for as long as he was separated from that key. The stuttering metallic rain proceeded to then hit several bombs in the ground and the grassy terrain immediately erupted into a chain of explosions that kicked up clouds of dirt into the air and fired off shrapnel into the wind. Jean attempted to quickly and ungracefully crawl over to where he had dropped his way of changing between identities while the M.A.K. robot switched its weaponry over to the missiles mounted on its shoulder blades, firing off all four of its AGM-114R Hellfire II antitank missiles in quick succession after him, the robotic programming unable to account for the enhanced movements of the target’s body or for anyplace that he could end up going. The ensuing gigantic explosions from the missiles in tandem with even more of the mines turned the ground in front of the mansion into a gigantic destruction zone and lit up the green sky with yellow and orange flaming explosions and murking up the air with gigantic columns of thick grey and black smoke, which all had the unintentional consequence of allowing the frail bespactacled blonde boy to finish scrambling on over to the black, red, and white mask and quickly shove it on and over his head and face and get his hood on right afterwards. And there was only Azrael. The surface of the planet continued to erupt into chaos all around him, but he remained firmly undeterred. He was heedless, he took little to no notice of the fifty millimeter bullets chewing up the terrain around him, nor did he pay any heed to the lightning striking the grass and briefly lighting it ablaze before being extinguished by the soaking rain.

He was a blur, moving far too fast for either the security footage or the detection sensors of the machine’s tracking mechanisms to even have a prayer of aiming at him. His approach was at blazing speed, his resolve was ironclad, and his aim with his flaming custom two-handed Dumasian Ulfberht steel sword was dead-on. With his left hand he shoved the blade right into the left eye of the battle machine’s cubed metal face, right as a concurrent bolt of lightning struck the MAK and rendered the both of them as dark silhouettes for the briefest of seconds against the whiteness of the crackling electrical bolt sent from the heavens themselves. The combat robot managed to get itself up from the attack, but its hopes of killing its target were now even less likely than previously. With its computer systems now fully on the fritz, the automatic remote unit headed right in the opposite direction now that the biggest source of trouble, the superheated sword melting and fusing its wires and mechanical mental engines together, it was completely unable to register that it was heading right for the barbed wire and wooden fence with the large and obvious sign reading DANGER: MINES PRESENT IN TERRITORY. OUTSIDERS DO NOT ENTER AREA. The gigantic hunk of guns and weapons simply stepped right through the barrier and onto a huge swath of even more previously unactivated mines, and it was all over in a series of gigantic explosive flashes. The once-mighty machine was now an unsalvageable smoldering heap. A supreme weapon of war useless in the presence of a single angel. He felt a tingle of triumph and he knew that Jean-Paul’s consciousness had come back to him in some forme or another. Azrael alone would have likely felt nothing.

He didn’t quite know what it meant that he felt kike both minds had managed to seemingly do the impossible and merge together for even a brief period like this.

But he knew that it felt proper.

Peaceful.

From underneath the unfeeling mask and the heavy hood, if one were to take both of them off right at that very moment or in the next period of time that would end up lasting until close to the next dawn, and if they were to take a look at the eyes of the body, they would find that they had temporarily turned a bright and brilliant red.

The temporarily united mind that lay under Azrael’s control began to reason out the situation. LeHah knew exactly where to send the machine of death. He must have had some sort of method to determine his exact location at all times… His eyes quickly wandered over to the surrounding trees and the layer of knee-deep grass, darting between locations attempting to stake something out, finding nothing for a few seconds until… YES! Sensors! Sensors posted all around the area. Almost certainly computer-operated. He remembered his Computer Science major during his days in Gotham University, before the dark times, before all of… this. If he could just knock out the cameras then he could probably knock out the rest of the systems along with it. There were still wires hooked up to that robot’s remains… His hand grabbed onto several long wires in red and white and black and green and wrapped one end of each around one of the sensors, grabbed the other ends, and, carefully avoiding the mines, toughed the four other ends to the electrical fencing that served as the final barrier between himself and the house on the incline by the lake. His insulated golden gloves protected him from the resulting shock, but the sudden electrical surge managed to surpass even his own expectations, and, on the other side of the equation, back in the square-shaped room, the computers and monitors all instantaneously shorted out and the previously-live feed devolved into pure sea blue and black-coloured static. “Something crashed the system.” LeHah muttered. “Sensors, microphones, cameras, all of them useless. Damn… Damn that Azrael…”

Weather of such an inclement nature as what was happening that might was not restricted solely to the area of the inevitable confrontation. The rain and wind had also spread far enough as to cover not only Gotham City proper but also was making its presence known over the Kinsolving house. Back in the living room near the entry door, Selina, Brian, and Lilhy were still seated comfortably in the house with next to nothing on hand to occupy their minds. Dinner had already been eaten together in the dining room’s wooden chairs, the sunlight had fallen a good amount of time ago, and Azrael showed no signs of being anywhere close to coming back. After a few more seconds of the sustained silence, Selina, who had taken off her mask before sitting down with the others, broke the tension. “I asked him if he would like to kiss me.” “And did he?” Asked a supremely bored Lilhy. “No.” Selina replied to her query. “He ran.” “I’m not surprised.” chimed in Brian, who took a brief moment to look up from his copy of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard’s story Fear. “Considering that he was brought up either in a cult or immersed in occultic ideologies I’m not exactly surprised that prudishness was also ingrained into his young and impressionable mind.” The woman in the purple and golden robes outright refused to answer that loaded statement with even a peep. She couldn’t let him have that level of satisfaction. “And speaking of that particular groupe…” Lilhy preemptively winced in anticipation of the topic that he was sure to bring up, feeling like she would rather be pierced through the core by a spectral fist than be faced with the prying and personal question that this pathetic man was about to ask right to her face. “Even after all that they’ve put you through for your entire life you still wear its vestments. Surely now you wouldn’t wish to identify yourself with such a vile and corrupt institution?” The woman next to him, having now been scorned and depreciated all her life, even now by this… this civilian with no knowledge of her past, no right to police her thoughts, and most certainly no authority over her own decisions, held back real and genuine vitriol while her arms clung protectively to her secure and comforting purple and gold raiments, her response delivered with corrosive verbal poison flowing from deep within. “I am unsure of what it is I wish. It is a task of immense difficulty to throw out beliefs held for a lifetime, to unlearn everything which I have always held certain. So, Doctor, I shall not simply abandon the convictions within my heart. This is not something that I will discuss with you again.” Within her own soul, a thought did go through her mind. Perhaps her problems were not so separate from Azrael’s.

“I suppose I should get going.” Selina said as she picked up her bags and began to walk out the door. Naturally Lilhy followed her out and her mind began to calm itself down as her thoughts focused on a subject while her footsteps followed in something resembling lockstep with the woman in the catsuit. “I… I just wanted to issue you a few more thanks for designing to spend your time with us. With… me.” “It’s been especially fun and very romantic, Miss Lilhy. But unfortunately I do have myself a great many other responsibilities to attend to. The cats at home in the penthouse should be getting restless in a few more hours without my attention, you know how it is.” “I don’t.” “Right, right.” “If it would please you I would accompany you to your vehicle.” Soon Seliina had mounted her purple Catcycle and had started its ROARing ignition and was busy with saying her goodbyes. “This house you’ve got is quite a nice one. Yours?” “It belongs to the Gotham city billionaire Bruce Wayne. He bought it for a woman he had formerly felt romantic affections for, name of Sandra Kinsolving.” “I’ve heard of Sandra. Is she still around?” “Unfortunately no. There was an attempted kidnapping a few weeks ago. Bruce Wayne sent Sandra and her personal Nurse Mrs. McFarland to Estonia to forestall any further complications or disruptions of her peace. But she has thankfully made a full recovery from her previous state of regressed age. We are now living here for the foreseeable future.” “That’s good. Give Az and Jean my personal best when they come back. After all… Who knows? I might come back sometime soon~” Withdrawing a piece of folded paper with her number written on it from underneath her bra that she had slipped in there earlier for the sake of the moment, Selina passed it over to a curious Lilhy’s hands, zipped her suit back up, and slipped Catwoman’s suit-connected mask and large durable goggles over her head. “Take good care of yourself, Miss Lilhy. And keep that note with you.” With that, Catwoman sped off into the distance, becoming the recipient of one last kiss blown her way as Lilhy saw her forme becoming smaller and smaller until finally the motorcycle and its rider disappeared into the mystical purple night.

“Humiliating human. That is precisely what you are.”

The deathly chilling voice of the demon Biis rang out in the silent bedroom, the vestments and helmet on the tall wooden clothing hangar having seemingly come to life, the reinforced helmet and heavy gigantic cape appearing before the old man as a green spiritual apparition with a pair of bright glowing red eyes burning like the infernal flames of the underworld. The being in front of the man. its mantle blown about by some unseen secret winds, continued its irate and grating speech. “A machine? You sent a MACHINE to destroy an AVENGING ANGEL?!” While kneeling on the ground before him, LeHah attempted to speak back to him in return, stumbling over his words in obvious distress. “I-I-I-I am sorry, my lord demon Biis.” “We have not yet lost this encounter. Don the vestments that I have gifted you. Allow me to once more possess thee. Grant me dominion over your soul and your body and we together shall annihilate forever the bloodthirsty angel and the pathetic man who burdens his spirit in turn.”

Azrael found his way through the denseness of the woods and the cobblestone pathways up the small winding hills, hacking away through another murder of annoying crows on his way upwards, before happening upon the back entrance into LeHah’s mansion surrounded by dark green forests, underneath a sky fifty shades of green. The cold and heavy rain continued to pour and showed no signs of stopping, the rolling of the nearby thunder clapping through his ears while his red eyes focused firmly on the entry door into the square-shaped industrial section of the house. He could feel the temporary state of joined minds and spirits fading away from him and control of their shared body turning fully to his discretion. But Jean-Paul’s mind hadn’t left him yet. And he could think. It isn’t my job. It isn't too late. That was Jean-Paul’s own thoughts. I could make a bid for control. Turn and run. Get away. Let LeHah and the foul demon whom he serves go unpunished… And then Azrael fully took control back. Go unpunished? Impossible. He killed Jean-Paul’s father. He thought that he killed ME. He is wicked. The vile demonic master whom he claims allegiance to is wicked. The wicked must feel the wrath of Azrael. It is just. It is duty. Evil people cannot go unpunished. EVIL PEOPLE WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED. Azrael's eyes narrowed, he strapped the sword that he had takeno back from the robot back onto his, well, back, his arms found their way to his sides, and his feet dug in before he took a few breaths. And then he broke the door down with a single fist. What he was was pure blackness and no visible light, and cautiously he slammed the door open further and stepped both his feet inside. Right afterwards a flaming shape of blazing light flew right at him, which he managed to swiftly deflect with a simple swatting of his arm. Cold and dim motion-activated lights proceeded to come on following the rapid back and forth movement of the burning projectile, which lit up the area at the bottom of the desaturated blue-grey-bannistered metal stairs against the surrounding inky black darkness, revealing the crouched demon lord back in his chosen ornamentation sporting a huge and ridiculous crossbow held in his hands and aimed right at him and a giant green leather quiver strapped and work at his left hip like a heavy-duty messenger bag.

“Warm welcome to my oldest ancient enemy. I don’t suppose that you would at all be willing to agree to a frank and peaceful exchange of ideas and differences? To reach a settlement and negotiate between the both of us gentle souls?”

Azrael said nothing, merely relaxing his eyes and calming down a tad bit to adjust his state of mind now that the momentary understanding between himself and his human personality had faded. His eyes had even gone back to their usual shining blue without him knowing that they had ever undergone any sort of a change. All that he felt was that something had happened and now it had gone back to its prior state. Biis simply got up, his green tunic, grey mesh pants, huge and heavy steel boots, gigantic leather gloves, huge steel left shoulderpad with the engraved dragon silhouette symbol, and long-jawed and double long-horned tan-coloured helmet becoming more visible in the faint white light from the overhead lightbulbs of the second floor loft while his large, black, and inhuman shadow fell onto the wall and the floor. He then turned his back to Azrael with a small swish of his cloak and calmly and casually made his way up the rest of the staircase with perfect confidence that he wasn’t about to be stabbed the moment he turned around. Opening a wooden door into a darkened supply room with moveable wooden walls that contained a wealth of antiquated weaponry, such as Estocs, Persian Shamshir sabres, Turkish Kilijs, single-handed chopping axes, splitting maul axes, halberds, steel maces, spiked morningstars, Japanese and Chinese glaives, and giant warhammers, he picked up a gigantic intricately-carved double-bladed Nordic-style battleaxe and turned his head around to stare at Azrael, whose caped and hooded silhouette painted him as a void of blackness right in front of the door. “I anticipated that you would not be a rational and efficient reasonable negotiator. This brings me untold levels of satisfaction.” He quickly turned around with surprising speed for an old man weighed down by heavy steel and swung his axe down at him with both hands, eliciting a loud KKKKUTTTing noise as it lodged itself into the floor from the sheer force of the heavy impact, Azrael slipping free from his range a few centimetres before he could be at all damaged. “No negotiations. No discussions. No settlements. Instead only the age-old ritual of total pure and unrefined carnage.” He was promptly kicked in the head by the angel in red, who had rebounded in the blink of an eye while he had been busy with speaking.

Getting up from the reeling blow, Biis looked over to see Azrael having entered into the storage room and taking a large and ornate all-metal French Halberd with a single long axehead, a single grappling thorn on the opposite side, and a single tall and thin pointed spear-like end about one foot long, stepping out of the weapons cache and facing up to him. “So it seems that you have learned a brand-new agility for yourself since we’ve last occupied the same room.” “I have learned a great many things in my time in addition to the blessings of my body. Agility is not a newfound one of them.” Both Azrael and Biis then rushed towards each other with their weapons of choice in their hands and perfectly prime to swing. “And death? Has someone taught you that?! No? My lesson to give then!”

The shafts of both poled weapons clashed and they started to strain and push against one another.

A red foot kicked a green gut right in the softest and most vulnerable spot.

A swing of an axe towards someone’s midsection was only just barely blocked by one of the two golden gauntlets.

A crack of lightning illuminated the black room and both of the colorful figures for a few precious seconds.

The two weapons pushed against each other once again.

The halberd’s grappling thorn found its way to gripping the wooden shaft of the double Nordic axe and after a few seconds of straining knocked it free right into the air.

Another flash of the lightning not only lit up the room but also knocked out the lighting fixtures in the hallway.

A third kick from the red-suited figure knocked the green-garbed figure all the way to the door at the end of the hall and left him crumpled in a heap before he had to duck underneath a giant sharp metal halberd thrown right his way.

Azrael slowed himself down while Biis picked himself up and ran towards the rest of the building. He was in no hurry. He had plenty of time to kill. The old man with the skull paint came upon a door labelled MEAT LOCKER and, with a look of extreme fear painted upon his pale wrinkled face, forced the door open and disappeared inside the still-working adjustable cold storage unit. Several moments followed of pure silence, the tension within the total darkness lingering for a long and palpable stretch. The distant rumbling of the thunder outside was faintly heard by both. A pair of red feet finally walked inside the locker. Their owner was immediately alarmed by the sudden shrieking of “VOLLPFOSTEN!!” as Lord Biis swung a footlong meat hook that he had taken down from the rack down onto Azrael’s right shoulder. Unfortunately for the man in the blood-stained green and silver, the blow merely glanced off of his protective metal armour and left his attacker wide open to a responsive knee to his stomach that caused him to cough up at least a tablespoon of blood and a retaliatory kick to his unarmoured waist. When he attempted to swing at him a second time Azrael’s armblades came out and caught the double-ended meat hook with frivolous ease, before trivially swatting it away and leaving him with nothing to use against him. Azrael lifted his left arm and turned its wrist towards Biis’ face, showing him his own reflection in a mere foretaste of the punishment to come.

He approached the defenseless old man.

Blades out.

Eyes narrowed.

Escape impossible.

THWACK

HACK

CHOP

SCHWAAK

SWISHH

SCHLISHE

ZZZIIP

SHRRRK

Azrael stepped back as he beheld his handiwork, the vestments and armour of the demon lord Biis now tattered shreds of dark greens and browns and scattered chunks of useless steel. As for their former wearer, well, he had been reduced to what he was before. Just a man. A shivering and nude man. The temptation to kill was there, the angel in red and gold could feel it welling up from within his blood. But now it was easier to fight it, to dispel the screaming of every cell in his body that attempted to compel him to annihilate, to snuff out this pathetic creature's soul, to incinerate the defenceless target and be done with it.

But he didn’t.

He lowered his bladed and gauntleted arms to rest at ease at his hips.

The faint thunder grew louder.

He had won, and Jean-Paul had won with him.

Carleton LeHah had lost. Completely defeated. His breath perfectly visible and contrasting against the coldness of the locker that stored the numerous racks of raw meat and game. He had only one thing that he could possibly say, only a pair of words that he could possibly utter.

“I’m cold…”

A SUPERMAN SWINGS HIS BLADE

A VILLAGE BITES THE DUST

AND A CAT AND A BAT AND AN ANGEL AND A GODDESS OF NATURE GO AFTER A MIRACLE

[angelofreprisal]

Here’s a batch of customised Yu-Gi-Oh cards for Azrael and Lord Biis that I whipped up in a few days. I’m ninety percent sure that these spell cards and ritual monsters would be, like, illegal to the tenth power in a tournament.

[angelofreprisal]

AZRAEL #13

DEMON TIME

PART I: RETURN

It was a dream.

The entirety of his consciousness was filled by the vision of red-hot hellfire, the one and only source of light against an all-encompassing infinite void of eternal blackness that stretched on, seemingly forevermore, farther than any living mortal could ever manage to traverse, the panoramic fire serving as the torching and blistering backdrop to another vision, a vision of an irate angel made from the fire itself, the heavenly hooded figure pointing an accusatory finger right at his face, the trails of flame from his dual blades burning blue and white from the even hotter heat, the entire body of the avenging angel radiating a blazing aura of extreme blue flame, streams of sweltering red flame swirling around his body and around his limbs like superheated ribbons or streamers, his eyes a cold and unfeeling white, his cape and ribbons flaring out from behind him like the fargantuan wings of an infernal demon who had come to collect a fallen soul, a soul to feast upon, a soul to torture endlessly in the unending inferno. The punishing one remained unsettlingly still, a being both of flame, producing flame, and utterly bathing in flame. It was his domain, his world, his star system, his galaxy, his universe, the infinite nothingness housed no one but the punishing angel, and the mere man.

It was a memory.

To no avail he attempted to back away from the judging eyes of the flaming figure, each and every last attempt to move even a single one of his muscles led to nothing, every signal given to his body, every command from his brain, all of it together resulted in no movements whatsoever from his structure, he was completely and utterly immobile, he must have been under some sort of sinister savage stygian spell, or he must have been ferociously frozen with feeble fear, petrified by way of petty pathetic pernicious periling painful panic, torpid via trepidation, shuddering while stationary, qualms leading to queasy quiescence, incapacitated from infuriating intimidation.

It was fire and terror and hell and pain and judgement and the hoarse cries of an infuriated avenging angel assassin fixed on bringing about the physical incarnation of his promised holy revenge.

“KNOW THAT MEN CALL YOU LIAR!!”

“KNOW THAT MEN CALL YOU BETRAYER!!”

“KNOW THAT MEN CALL YOU DEFILER!!”

“Okay, we’re in. Scalpel.”

The angel began to finally make his move towards the helpless and defenseless target, slowly approaching, slowly stalking him through the fire. And behind him, behind even the infernal angel, approached a gigantic bat, a bat walking on two legs but with massive unfurled hellish beastly black wings…

A…

Bat…

Man…

The unsteady voice of the green-garbed and green-masked lead surgeon rang out in the grave-silent operating theatre, followed by a small yet precise incision in the top left portion of his skull, followed by taking a pair of stainless steel thumb forceps and precisely removing a particularly nasty chunk of solid flesh from a spot in the outer layer of grey matter where it had penetrated painfully right through the outermost layer of his skin, with at first some level of difficulty, but in due time and following some additional hard work, the entire piece was removed cleanly and without any visible traces of shrapnel to be anywhere found. The damaged tissue was successfully removed in no time and the following stitches were sutured easily.

A great and terrible shadow moving In total darkness behind the angel’s terrible light.

But the bat began to fade, to dissipate from his memory, from his very mind itself. The fading spirit of the bat seemed to fold, to almost completely crush itself underneath its own weight, its own immense size and importance of the self until it was torn apart by jetstreams of pure fire and the entirety of its body was consumed completely in and by a glorious yet horrifying uproar of wrathful inferno as a series of flaming geysers erupted from out of the blackness on which the bat had formerly stood, reducing the once-mighty bat-man to dust and bones, then to a charred black skeletal frame, and, finally, to pure black ash, which the rest of the wall of heavenly fire very quickly and very easily burned down into nothing. There was no longer a bat. There was no longer even a memory of a bat, the vision had entirely disappeared, there was only the angel.

Just the angel.

Just the angel.

Just the angel.

“All right, team, he’s stable.

Thank heavens.

We did it.”

“He’s coming out of it.”

“Quick, Nurse Joy, hand me that clipboard on the countertop, would you please?”

“Here you are, sir.”

“Much appreciated.”

“May I also fetch him the tray of refreshments he requested?”

“I don’t see why not, it's a free country, he likes to poison himself, that’s his own prerogative."

As the pink-haired and modestly-dressed dark-skinned nurse in the long and wide-sleeved smoky grey uniform with the deep green nurse’s apron turned and departed from the room where the recipient of the surgery was in recovery into the adjoining hallway, the head surgeon, a heavily-tanned man with short brown hair and his pine green surgical mask now loosely around his neck, exposing his entire face and mouth, as well as a teal green lab coat and light orange shirt, slowly approached the recovering inpatient, who was currently laying peacefully in his hospital bed underneath the thick and heavy pure teal blanket, seemingly unbothered by the stitches in the skin of his head and the immense amount of white bandages wrapped both over both his wound and his burned-and-scarred-beyond-repair right eye, which had softened somewhat, turned a dark crimson mixed with a lighter, desaturated red, and resembled something like a miniature canyon alongside both edges of the flaming-blade inflicted scar that ran from the line of his hair at the top of his forehead all the way down to just above his lips. The man in the bed did not speak and it didn’t seem like he would willingly speak without a prior provocation, and so the doctor spoke in his place.

“Mister LeHah? Mister Carleton LeHah? Can you hear me?” And he said the man’s name while pronouncing it in this manner: Karl-tin Lay-Haw. The inpatient in the hospital bed began to slowly come back to consciousness and open his single remaining eye, the infinite world of total blackness giving way to the more present world of the planet Earth, which greeted him with the sight of a room with tan floor tiles, faded walls of teal blue, and substantial sunlight filtered through cloud cover to become less harsh and more beautiful shining down upon his body and face through the window next to his bed. Next to him on his left side was a dark wooden bedside table with a series of folded articles of freshly-cleaned formal clothing, and a flat stone plate with a tall glass of room-temperature black coffee brew obtained from the local branch of the Fisk Coffee Stand down in the building’s lobby on top of it. Slowly and with mild stinging pain he managed to sit up under his own power, scooting back to rest his back and head against the headboard and the wall, the faint sound of moving trains across the rail lines high in the city above the residential buildings looking and going along their clockwork routes at cruising but swift morning speeds provided the relieving sound of dull rumbling, before he then turned to look out the window to see a landscape filled with gigantic skyscrapers all over, stabbing into the morning skies like sharpened sticks aimed right for the eyes of god himself, bearing names like Murdoch Incorporated, Grey Industries, McCain Multinational, and Bright Enterprises, as well as other titanic structures less conforming to the typical mould of tall American buildings: a restored medieval house of worship belonging to the eclectic and highly controversial Ragna faith, right across the street from a building reaching higher than most of the others in the cluster visible from the window, the American branch headquarters of the currently-unled Ithavoll Group.

“Do you remember that your name is Carleton LeHah?”

He did. But considering that he had only just now begun to wake up from sedation and a loss of consciousness, he couldn’t find the strength within him to reply at that moment. While the surgeon was speaking to him, the sound of flat Mary Jane shoes echoed closer and closer, a precursor to the nurse arriving back into the room while wheeling in a cart that carried atop its top layer a smooth and flat metal tray bearing his requested cigars and lighters. He figured it would be wise to keep multiple in the case of him somehow needing to be in there any longer than anticipated. The cart was wheeled over to his left bedside table by Nurse Joy, with LeHah promptly leaning over to fetch a lighter and cigar to get back that refreshing smell in the air.

“I’m Doctor Proctor.” The man in the teal jacket continued. “Do you know where you are?” “No.” LeHah muttered irritably in response. “You’re in Vincent Giarrano East Gotham Hospital. I’ve just finished performing some rather delicate surgery on your recent head wound. “What… What sort of surgery…?” The man asked in his usual heavy German accent while wincing in pain as the feeling of feeling began to return to his body. “There was a steel splinter that became lodged in your brain. He removed it.” commented the pink-haired nurse. “How could it have possibly gotten there?” “You don’t remember?” She asked as politely as possible.” “Well…” Doctor Proctor began, “loss of portions or even whole swaths of your memory was anticipated due to the vital and damaging nature of your wound.” He then continued after a sigh of mixed frustration and sympathy. “You’ll probably be able to reclaim a decent amount of it back, but large portions… I’m afraid will be gone forever with no chance to get them back. But moving away from the bad news of the moment, at the very least we have an idea of what happened to put you in this situation. In regards to what actually caused the incident, well, nobody’s sure. Most of the evidence has been annihilated with no hope of salvageing.” The doctor then took a quick look at the grey clipboard in his left hand to check the notes about the man’s recent happenings before he then gave the reassembled story. “There was a massive explosion at an oil storage facility and refinery in Texas that you own. As to how the authorities reconstruct the information…”

Three years ago, the facility in question was in a state of full-blown all-out flaming destruction of any possible life in the area. Numerous holes in the metal pipes containing flowing oil, caused by a barrage of bullets fired indiscriminately by Carleton LeHah himself, with no shirt on his overweight body and the white and black shape of a skull painted over his wrinkled face, towards a quartet of living targets, had led to a practical oilfall of flowing black gold that quickly spread across the floor and spurted onto the walls, which led to the blazing flames of a certain angel’s blades, after a missed attack of his own that landed both blades briefly inside a wall, quickly setting the entire collective oil spill ablaze in almost a single blink of an eye, which led to several walls of pure fire separating LeHah from the opposing forces and leaving him no way to leave through any conventional entrances.

“You were trapped underground.”

After ten solid minutes of aimless wandering around the halls of the complex, he came across the circular metal cover of his only possible hope for salvation, and he clung desperately to it with all ten fingers, before he then began to pull it back with all of the power within his body. Ten more minutes, and all of his straining and groaning managed to finally pay off in his favour, the metal pipe cover finally bending and then flying right off of its reinforced metal screws.. Automatically he practically leapt right inside the entryway and started to make his way through the large metal pipe, designed to support the flow of large volumes of crude oil, which, thankfully for him, had not yet been delivered that early in the month.

“You must have entered into an industrial pipe of some sort…”

Breaking through immense pain and the sweltering heat of the inferno raging above him, which by that time had coated the entire space in fire and made the metal of the pipe a torture to touch with his bare flesh, protected only by his thick off-white pants as every other part of his body that made contact with the red-hot metal, searing his skin with every few inches that he covered.

“And crawled over four hundred yards. That is, over twelve hundred feet.”

The ending of the tunnel was in sight, the much less hot Texan night was only a few feet or so away, he just needed to make it through that final stretch, those last few feet, the home stretch was just in view. He was that close to making it out practically unscathed.

“You had almost gotten to safety when an explosion up in the main refinery went off and rocked the entire complex. It must have cracked the metal in that pipe, and a fragment of it just so happened to pierce right through your skin and your skull, drove it into your brain, right before the explosion travelled through the crude oil left behind in the pipe, caught up behind you, and spat you out in a substantially violent manner.”

The old man in the bed winced again as he attempted to recall what had happened, but he wasn’t able to in any capacity. His short-term memory really was gone.

“That was two and a half years ago. It seems that you had been aimlessly wandering about without a single clue of what you were doing. Firemen led by Captain Kirki recently found you sleeping in one the parking lots of the Wayne Enterprises headquarters while coming back from an emergency.” Finished Doctor Proctor. “That was six months ago. We needed to wait until we were sure that you had regained some level of stability before we could perform your operation.” “Doctor… How bad are they?” LeHah asked with detectable nervousness and apprehension. “How bad are my injuries…?” “You’ve been burned. Extensively. And there’s considerable scarring all over your body, most especially your skin. Plastic surgery can take care of it. Most of it. Some of it. But certainly not all.” He moved over to the table next to the door to the hospital room and put his clipboard down. “But otherwise, your prognosis is for a total and complete recovery.” Nurse Joy finished. “We’ll let you rest now.” And with that last remark from her, the doctor and the nurse departed from the room, Nurse Joy closing the door, and LeHah was left to his own devices, all alone in his bed. Fighting through the physical pain to the entirety of his flesh and of his nervous system that had now fully set in, he pronounced a single name through gritted teeth. The one name that lingered within his mind.

“Azrael… Azrael…”

Simultaneously, back in the front the estate formerly occupied by Mrs. McFarland and Sandra Kinsolving, which by now had been entirely cleared out and moved into by a trio of entirely new occupants, Brian Bryan was sitting outside in a blue camping chair watching the cold breeze of the soon-to-end winter gently move the newly-growing blades of grass about in a soft but fast fashion. Sister Lilhy was just stepping outside from having brought in the last of her few personal belongings, and Azrael was out in the tree-walled forested front yard currently busy with greeting a most peculiar houseguest, that being an actual, full-time, thief.

A thief with quite the mouth.

And quite the lips.

And quite the skin.

And quite the eyes.

And quite the fingers.

And quite the feet.

And quite the chest.

And quite the definition.

And quite the silhouette.

And quite the attitude.

The angel was peacefully standing on one side of the gate, while the thief was waiting with a slight tinge of impatience and moving around on her feet and toes a little, concurrently stretching out her arms with added perforative flair. “I believe this should be satisfactory for the test. All of the vestments are in their proper order. All that's left now to activate a full change is to be attacked.” “I thought simply putting on that costume allowed you to shift between mental states?” “And so did I. But recently I’ve been sensing myself behind the mask more often than when I’ve used it in the past. It might be that Azrael comes out only in combat situations nowadays.” The thief, whose flesh of a deep and irresistibly beautiful brown, compliments of her black and Cuban blood, was visible through the opening of her mask that exposed the bottom half of her face, flicked her black-gloved long-fingered hand towards him, slightly adjusted the translucent black tinted lenses of her large goggles, and fiddled a little bit with the tabless sliding zipper that she moved around with her fingers, zipping up her deep purple catsuit as high as it was meant to go, just a centimetre below the top of her neck, leaving the bottom half of her face, nose and mouth included, as the only exposed skin on her entire body. Her mask, integrated into her full body catsuit itself that went all the way from her feet to her head, covered most of the top half of her head and face, save for the eyes which were protected with the aforementioned goggles, specially custom-designed and reinforced to survive up to a 1200 pound weight dropping onto them without even slightly breaking, the tight material of the fabric also serving the purpose of completely hiding her short black hair from view and potential obstruction of vision, and two large feline ears resembling those of a posh domestic housecat crowned the entire look and served the function of an instant method of identifying the woman who had designed the entire outfit for her personal ‘work’.

At Azrael’s request she had also brought several heavy bags of precious goods which at the moment lay down at her feet, priceless stolen belongings worth several fortunes that she had cheekily pinky-sworn were fakes, of course a blatant lie, meant to check if the weight of worn packs was a factor in combat testing. She also had a black leather utility belt with numerous storage pouches and escape artistry equipment in her possession, which also lay by her feet since it wasn’t needed in the present moment. The occasion for her having come to the house in the first place was twofold. The first was that someone who only told her that he used to be Batman had sought to apologise for “getting off on the worst possible feet.”, said in a truly uncomfortable telephone call that made it evident that the boy on the other end of the line had no idea on how to behave to any civilised lady in polite society. Even she had to admit that she was taken aback when she actually met the boy, most especially taken aback by his senses of fashion and of social interaction. That was, to say, in the hard negatives. When she had arrived from the poorly maintained road leading to the estate by personal motorcycle and picked the lock to the gothic double iron gate she hadn't expected much from its residents or from the meeting which she had agreed to only out of boredom, but even a woman with the high levels of wealth and taste that Selina Kyle had to spare was still somewhat surprised when she was met in the front yard by a blonde boy with the bulk of Batman and yet a face that was uncannily cute, as in adorable, not as in attractive. She had no feeling like that about him. Really. Well, maybe she did. But that wasn’t the point. The other reason that she came to the house was because the boy had wanted to test some things related to what he had told her was his “other self”. Supposedly this other, this alternate soul, was no longer functioning how it used to. Something had happened to both inhabitants of the body over a number of weeks, and she was the only one out of Gotham’s stable of vigilantes in costumes that his civilian identity was willing to trust.

He had been visibly shaking when he offered a polite hand with visible nervousness and he had quickly turned his head away accompanied by a swish of his wavy light blonde hair when she had shaken his hand as if he was incapable of even talking to a woman who wasn’t a stranger for over a five second maximum. Out of his mouth came a wandering and winding “Jean-Paul Valley. We, uh, we’ve met. Though, er, not really on a level playing field and… eh, I’m-I’m sorry for saying all of that about you. I… I’m not Batman anymore, I’m not in that state of mind… you know, if that would help at all…” before he turned tail inside the house and returned with a green shoulderback bag containing his costume which he proceeded to put on over his white shirt and dark blue jeans in a rushed frenzy. “Your usual outfits could use a fashion consultant, but this new outfit you’re sporting is admittedly a cut above most of the other ‘masks’ in the looks department.” “It’s not really a new wardrobe, Miss Selina. I… I built that other suit off of this one, not the other way around.” “Jean-Paul, every aspect of you is pathetic. Adorably pathetic.” He made no reply to that and simply walked off towards the gate.

“I’m perfectly ready, Catwoman. Now attack.”

“Skipping the warmups? Now I know why you’re not good with the ladies.”

Catwoman was still giggling at that remark as she began to dodge all of Azrael’s initial strikes with simple movement and careful application of jumping. While he was certainly fast and provided plenty of power behind every blow, he also wasn’t putting any thought into what his opponent was doing, he wasn’t thinking about just how agile the woman that literally had ‘cat’ in her name could prove to be. Gymnastic stunts that even Olympian athletes wouldn’t contemplate trying, she effortlessly pulled off without even the slightest hint of visible fear. She knew just as well as anyone in the business that fear was a killer of the mind, fear served to hold someone back in life-threatening situations, and if one had not any fear then their own bodies would not hold themselves back. Thus, the purple woman, free from any fear, was able to pull off almost scientifically impossible flips, leaps, and jumping maneuvers to avoid every single hit from the red angel for two straight minutes.

“Is this wise to put Azrael into combat like this so soon after he has regained all of his… faculties?” asked a curious and slightly bothered Lilhy, who, as well as Brian, was now sitting on the stone brick porch watching the combat test as it was happening. “I didn’t put him up to this. In fact he insisted upon it.” he said while observing the movements of Azrael’s limbs and his reactions to Catwoman’s kicks and chops that were light on power but heavy on speed and frequency, more than enough to keep tripping up the objectively much stronger costumed angel and keep preventing him from hitting her back too often. “Supposedly he knows this ‘Catwoman’ from a string of unpleasant prior encounters and remembered how to get in contact with her.” “Perfectly logical. After all, rescuing the now-cured Sandra Kinsolving and being healed by her has brought him back from his quasi-catatonic state.” “And of course there’s so much about his own superhuman abilities that he is not at all privy to.” “About the blessings granted to him by his body and his development.”

While Azrael attempted to leap across a length of twenty feet to catch her off-guard, Catwoman waited until the last possible second to turn it around onto him, jumping a small distance upwards and locking her legs around his neck on the way down, tripping him with single non-lethal twist that knocked the wind out of him, leaving him in a heap on the cold and hard cobblestone driveway.

“The programming that gives him his abilities, the internal rage that activates those abilities, and most of all that damnable system of the order of Saint Dumas, the lifelong hypnotic conditioning and torture that so throroughly twisted his soul.” Brian finished.

While Azrael’s head attempted to sort itself out from the hard impact with the ground, his vision refocused and he beheld a purple hand stretched out for him to take. A hand offered in forgiveness, and a promise of renewal. He took Catwoman’s hand and got up to his feet, noticing some dirt on her suit and timidly reaching out one of his metal hands to brush it off. For a few seconds it rested in the air, Azrael still retaining control over the body, the movements still his own, but he had finally learned at least some amount of Jean-Paul’s restraint, consciously awaiting a verbal signal to clear his potential kindness. Looking down at his hand for those few seconds, Catwoman’s lips then curved into a smile that was filled with less of its previous playfulness and more of a genuine feeling, the slipping down of a previous wall between the two that had begun to slowly break down. “Go on, Az.” The six-feet-plus Azrael then knelt down on one knee, attempted to keep his eyes focused on her core, and began to brush away the dirt on her legs as delicately as he was able to. He didn’t look anywhere else. At all. Really. He didn’t. Probably. Maybe. He might have stolen a sacred look. Towards her… um… her kitty. But he swore he didn't look too long. And after his hand finished brushing the dirt from off of her legs he might have stolen another look. Slightly upwards. Towards her chest. His masked face was met by a pair of black goggles staring down at him and the same smile turned slightly more frisky in nature. “Little boys like yourself shouldn’t be so naughty.” she said while each of her two hands gripped her pair of breasts and another giggle left her lips. The pointer finger of her left hand traced a line down the middle of his face just above his nose, and tapped it with a good bit of force, and she finished with: “You could give a lady the wrong idea about you.” But she kept smiling the entire time, helped him back up, and began to walk with him back to the front of the house.

“So, Azzy, did you get what you wanted?” “For now I believe that I have. I wanted to see what about me has changed by facing an unconventional opponent and I now have a fairly good conclusion.” “And that would be?” “It seems that while my sharpness of mind has returned, the savagery and lack of inhibitions that helped enhance my abilities while I was under that affliction have departed from me.” “I think I can agree with that.” the woman in the purple bodysuit replied. “I would also say that in those particular threads you’re not as strong as when you were… Well…” “I do not mind you saying it.” “You’re not as strong as you were when you were Batman.” Wandering over to a garden hose near the doorway, Catwoman knelt down beside it and removed her mask, revealing the face of notorious self-made Gotham socialite Selina Kyle, crowned with a good amount of sweat by her hairline and underneath her catsuit. Lilhy, who had been watching the entire combat test, automatically wandered her eyes over to Selina, who was busy with unzipping the rest of her suit and shedding the purple fabric to cool down in just her black sports bra and exercise pants. With a quick turn of the hose’s handle she stood up and started to wash herself off from the head down, her hardened muscle definition visible to everyone watching, most especially the woman with the long and snaking locks of deep brown, whose facial expression had gone blank with a recently-registered emotion. The emotion of desire for another. Hands nervously clasped together in front of her chest. Feet slowly began to move forward.

“Hhhhyyyyuuuuhhhh…” Selima sighed heavily. “It’s the tail end of winter out here and yet all that movement and that tight catsuit still makes me get all hot under there. Mind you, that isn’t a complaint.” She finished while taking a large black towel she had brought with her in one of her bags and beginning to dry the soothing hosewater off of the bare flesh of her core and the short hair of a pure black shade grown from her head. “If I understand you correctly, Azrael is beyond human on paper, but in practice his abilities and skills can vary wildly, correct?” a button-down underneath sweater-wearing Brian inquired. “Well…” Selima pondered aloud. “He’s not really what you would call a superhero, he doesn’t meet the qualifications of having been born with or granted any supernatural power. He’s just genetically engineered and programmed. But as you can see and have seen, he’s capable of pulling stunts and strength that even the most feared and dangerous men in the world wouldn’t come close to equaling.” “Yes, yes indeed I have. But only when he was activated by intense danger or emotion.” Azrael then spoke up out of the blue, feeling his spirit slowly dissipating and clearing the way for Jean-Paul to return to the proverbial driver’s seat. “Would it bring you trouble to remain for additional time, feline one?” “Hmm… I don’t think it would.” The woman replied almost nonchalantly while slipping back into her suit and initiated a mix of stretching her body and flexing her rock-hard muscles all over, from her abs to her calves to her deltoids to her triceps. “Provided we could sit around for a fine meal or two, of course.” Brian simply replied: “It won’t be too hard to do that, I just brought over our groceries.” “Then yes, I’ll stay.”

Before everyone could go back through the door Selina was stopped by Lilhy, who nervously asked her “Excuse me, Lady Selina, but… may I request a personal favour from you…?” “Well, I’m in a good mood, princess. You go on and name it.” The nervousness within Lilhy’s body rose up to a shivering sensation, and her voice turned somewhat lower before she stepped a few paces closer to her. “Kiss me. I want you to kiss me.” “That’s it? You don’t need to be so shy about that. Come here, princess.” With that, Selina, despite being notably shorter, brought the other lady over in a warm and tight embrace, pulled her in, and began to feel up her backside through the softness of her long, heavy, and flowing garments, finding the perfect point to lift her, and leaned back slightly to bring their lips together, holding the back of her head with one hand and keeping the other right at the point where her hips stopped and her legs started. Initially taken aback at the feeling, Lilhy quickly adjusted and returned Selina’s passion with equal force, pressing her own lips further against those of the thief and resting her hands on her leather-covered face, gently rubbing her with her thumbs.

It naturally brought a slight tinge of embarrassment to Lilhy to be kissing someone out of her own volition for the first time, but very thankfully for them, they weren’t being watched. One of Brian’s hands had automatically slapped over both of Azrael’s eyes and the other covered his own pair completely, hiding the embracing women entirely from their collective view. Walking Azrael out of the foyer and into the parlour, he simply told him: “Not for us. Learn and know that well.” The kiss went on for no less than two minutes, until finally a bedazzled Lilhy pulled away, her face very visibly the face of a positively starstruck woman with certain realisations and personal truths now fully in bloom. Returning her hands to being clasped together, this time hanging low and loose, she uttered in a low and honeyed tone. “Th… Thank you… Lady Selina.”

Later in the day, after the skies above the countryside outside of Gotham had turned a picturesque pleasant purple palette, after a high-class black limousine had pulled into the driveway of a compact mansion by the side of a large lake of deepest blue, surrounded on all sides by wall after wall of sunblotting Eastern Red Cedar Evergreen trees, currently fresh from a recent rain, with another full day and night of much harsher rainfall forecasted for the following day, Carleton LeHah, having applied a generous application of funding towards the hospital to let him out early, sporting an objectively handsome and well-tailored black suit and pink tie, though he wasn’t yet strong enough of will to get his bandages off, and forced to move on a wooden walking cane, exited the vehicle, which he had insisted on driving himself, alongside his driver, a blonde Irish man with a wild mullet in a similar suit, except in blue, and wearing a pair of thick green shades that blocked his eyes from view, who promptly opened the door of the grey-walled and black-roofed mansion and stood on the deep red carpet in the tan-walled entrance area alongside the two people who has already been there to officially greet him. “Welcome back home, Mr. LeHah.” The blonde man said in his usual self-confident tone. The man next to him, clothed in a tan suit and black tie with a decently-long light brown ponytail that could only be considered a more professional hairstyle because he had bothered to pull it back along with the bangs, added: “Been quite an extended length of time since we all saw you last, sir. Pleasure to have you back, especially in the matters of commerce.” The last one of the impromptu greeting squad to say anything was a woman in a formal two-piece brown office uniform with long and curly hair of a blazing fiery orange, and a dark red hairband, who fought back an internal mix of trepidation and repugnance to maintain her cool before breaking her silence with “We have all most definitely been missing you. Good to get the usual routine back.”

LeHah, whose head still felt like it was on fire everywhere, pointed one finger towards the blonde man in the sunglasses. “I recognise you, Patrick. Good work handling the manufacturing and deliveries in my absence. I haven’t yet found a more loyal man.” “Thanks as always, Mr. LeHah.” “In regards to you two,” the old man continued, this time directed at the man in the tan suit and the fire-haired woman. “My memory does not serve me well concerning the both of you. What were your names and duties again?” “Maxwell.” was the reply of the man with the long ponytail. “You don’t remember me, sir? I’m your, uh, business manager.” “Hmmph. And what about you?” The woman replied thusly: “Patricia. Patricia Partridge. Secretarial duties. I was on a preplanned and preapproved vacation when you… went missing, sir.” “You’ll have to forgive me. I’m not yet up to speed.” LeHah responded. “Remind me, what exact business are we in?” “You used to tell people that we are exporting merchants.” Patricia began. “We tend to not be so fancy.” Maxwell continued. “I tell ‘em we make and run guns.” Patrick finished.

“And speaking of which, things have gone to hell and high water in a hefty handbasket.” said Maxwell while LeHah began to wander into the complex of the main house. “You keep everything we need to know all in your head and that head doesn’t seem to be available anymore. We haven't been sure of who our customers are, what sort of deals we have working…” The old man in the black suit and white bandages began to go up a set of rectangular wooden stairs while clinging onto the drywall banister for support. “Tell me… Is what we do illegal…?” “You… You have to be kidding, right?” asked Patrick. “I… I need time to think.” “You could probably use some.” “In case you’ve forgotten your bedroom is behind the second door to the left.” Patricia added as the three’s employer went up to the second floor before LeHah went into his room and shut the door behind him.

What came into view once he turned back around was the fading evening light filtering in through the tall thin windows and casting their dimming illumination upon a set of folded and prepared garments that, in accordance with a written order from abroad, had been placed upon his bed, sorted with the first items put on placed on the top, and further sorted to have the clothing portions on the right side of the top blanket of the rectangular austere bed and various items of armour on the left side. Of course he didn’t remember ever asking for such items to be custom-made and delivered according to his personal specifications, and naturally he displayed a slight level of confusion at such a display, the nagging feeling that he knew perfectly well what this was, this armour and clothing and makeup. And suddenly a single memory came back to the forefront of his consciousness.

“Well well well, we finally have arrived, have we?”

“Who…?”

He then bore witness to a spiritual green-coloured apparition coming into view from seemingly out of the aether, a phantasmic figure that resembled the appearance of the thick and heavy cape with a quartet of metal fasteners on the right side, the vestment even seeming to be blowing about on some sorr of nonexistent wind, and the armoured bestial helmet with a pair of dual long and sharp horns extending from its forehead that bent upwards at an angle of ninety degrees and a large lower jaw that extended somewhat outwards and from which sprouted two large and sharp fangs on each edge and four smaller fangs inbetwixt them both. The vision’s voice reeked of utter death and carnage, but not in a cold and unfeeling manner, rather, an inflection of passion and a tone of incessant lust for blood, with an added double dosage of petty rage towards the man as his bandages seemed to fall right off all on their own.

“WHO?! WHO?! I am your master and the one to whom you have pledged your life and your soul! YOU WHOM HAST SWORN YOURSELF TO MY EVERLASTING SERVICE!”

“My… master…?”

The memory continued to work itself back into his mind, the memory of a demonic creature of whom he was now the only living servant on all of planet Earth. Driven by the memory and by the bitter rage of the voice he heard from all around the room, he brought the stack of clothing over to an ornate table topped with a dark green shroud with silver trimming sitting directly underneath a black oak-framed silver mirror mounted upon the wall, the sight of the ghostly green presence continuing to be perfectly visible through the medium of the mirror’s reflection. Clutching his hands to his head, LeHah continued to be informed by the infernal voice.

“Garb yourself in my very own vestments and allow me once more to claim possession over your being. And you will know…”

LeHah removed his suit and clothing and began to don the vestments, behaving as if he had almost been put underneath a mystical trance or a form of self-hypnosis. He began with two of his fingers taking black face paint from one of two cylindrical metal containers and marking the sides of his wrinkled face with it, following the shape and bend of his pronounced cheekbones, as well as everything above the top of his neck to below his pair of severely dried lips, all of it entirely coated in pure matte black. He then followed it up by using two fingers from the other hand to cover the rest of his face in pure deathly white, forming the shape of a skull and making a few marks over the black portions to signify a top layer of teeth. His face now resembled the face of a skeletal figure with its lower jaw missing and replaced by a black void underneath the face itself. He then moved on and unfolded a somewhat-thin loose and wide-sleeved pine green tunic and put it on over his bare body, feeling the soft fabric on his own hard flesh while donning the sacred raiment.

“And you will remember…”

The next article of clothing to come on was a piece of substantial solid steel armour, a gigantic customised shoulderpad with the artistic design and black silhouette of a four-limbed long-tailed western-style dragon burned into it, worn via an adjustable dark brown leather strap with a silver buckle, which rested firmly on his left shoulder and attached its strap to one of the loops of the tightly-worn many-pouched leather utility belt with the same kind of silver buckle, but larger that followed, and buckled it tight enough that neither item would move accidentally. Next up, a pair of thick brown leather gloves with decorative mesh rectangles over the back of both hands and four decorative sharp spikes protruding out from the sections of the gloves that went all the way up to his elbows.

“Remember that I rebelled against the order of Saint Dumas…”

He then stepped into a pair of giant steel boots with extra-large metal kneepads, and his hands moved to take from the table the final item, his helmet, which was not made of metal, but rather a hardened outer layer of animal skin dipped in a batch of crystal-clear reinforcing liquids and then dried. The apparition then began to change its forme, altering its appearance into that of a towering, uncannily slender, and otherworldly figure known but to those who had seen its sparse appearances in the lost forbidden legends and the forgotten myths of the ancient world. Its face resembled a combination of a human skull and a reptilian facial structure, it hadn’t any nose, merely a pair of skeletal slits, its deep green skin appeared to be stretched or taut all over, its eyes were two glowing triangles of a pure and pupilless pastel green, it wore the exact same kind of strapped protective steel pad upon its left shoulder, from out of its back grew two gigantic leathery dragon-like green wings, its inhuman jaws bore the same pattern of fangs, and both of its horns bent in the exact same way as was depicted on the man’s helmet.

It was at long last that the aching feeling in his mind was put at ease, for he had finally remembered both the name and face of the one he turned his gaze up towards to see and hear, the infernal master whom he must become on the mortal plane.

The lord demon Biis.

“Remember that they dispatched their holy assassin Azrael after you to take your life…”

He held up the helmet in both of his hands and lined it up with the face of the infernal demon standing before him.

“But I killed him… The first Azrael whom they sent…”

The spiritual figure slowly stepped behind him, his draconic and reptilian wingspan filling the entire space of the silver mirror’s reflection behind the old man.

“And his son, the Azrael who was compelled by fate to follow in his footsteps…”

“He trapped me in that blazing underground chamber…”

He held up his long-horned and sharp-fanged helmet a tad bit higher and his body’s own cognitive focus began to narrow and to sharpen.

“Cut you and burned you and humiliated you.”

He lowered the helmet down onto his face and looked down, and for a moment he did not move. Then, he held his head high and his mouth contorted into a smile sharp enough to give off the impression that its owner was intent on tearing apart wild beasts with his bare hands.

“The hour of revenge draws near.”

“The costume is a part of it, of course.”

Brian Bryan held up Azrael’s signature mask after taking it out from its upholstered double-sized black briefcase while he continued to give his best brief explanation of Azrael’s own nature to Catwoman. “When he isn’t wearing this outlandish getup he’s the same Jean-Paul Valley that’s walking around right now. Somewhat ordinary. But as you’ve seen, when he has it on he can become the human dynamo that can do the great Azrael deeds. This used to come automatically to him. Now apparently he needs to be in a situation of combat for a full change to take place.” He handed the mask over to Catwoman, who while sitting with Lilhy at the fancy candlelit dinner table and sharing with her a bottle of vin ordinare from her collection of glass drinking flutes, took a good long look at every part of it, both outside and inside, finding it to be a hard substance, tailor-made like the rest of his outfit to service his specific body proportions and measurements, and perfectly smooth to the touch. “And that something else is…?” “Buried far too deeply for my shabby skills to uncover, I’m afraid.”

“Uh, hello again, everyone.” Jean-Paul meekly said after stepping into the kitchen from the library. “Ah, Jean-Paul, they were just discussing you.” Lilhy retorted. “Yes… Yes they were…” he nervously replied to her, fiddling with his hands behind his back. “Er… May I… May I speak with you in private, Miss Lilhy?” “You may. And please, try not to be such a trampling mat in polite company.” Planting another kiss upon Selina’s hand as she got up from her chair, the woman in the flowing dark purple followed Jean-Paul out of the back door and into the tree-walled garden with the now-defrosting square pool. “What is it, Azrael?” “It’s just that you were… You were with Selina earlier. And you kissed her.” “And what exactly is your problem with me doing that?” Lilhy asked in a mix of genuine curiosity and preparing for an argument while feeling the breeze blowing her hair about in the cold. “It’s just that… well… kissing strangers isn’t proper. I thought a kiss was meant to be a mark of feelings for someone. But you just did it with her so casually.” “Such an action disturbs you?” “Yes. No. I don’t know. Yes. It isn’t right. She’s just a stranger. She has no right. To kiss you. That way.” “Jean-Paul, neither you nor I have any idea of what others consider to be right and wrong in matters like these. Never once did I set foot outside of the Ice Cathedral until two months ago. Just like how you were denied a normal life for your entire lifespan up until your entire world changed so quickly and drastically.” “I don’t see what that has to do with anything—” “Listen to me, Jean-Paul, for all intents and purposes you are practically a child within an adult's body. Suddenly circumstances have forced you into something that you are not ready for. Adulthood. Confusion is simply natural.” “I’m not confused!” Jean protested against the attempt to reach out to him. “IT’S NOT RIGHT TO KISS SOMEONE YOU JUST MET THAT DAY!” he yelled out in a strained and almost pained tone. He then sighed and turned away. “That’s all that I wanted to say…” trailed his now-much-quieter vocal tone while he slowly withdrew back into the house. Back in the kitchen, Selina, after reading the expression on his face and checking his general attitude, she tested the proverbial waters by asking him one thing. “Jean-Paul, I heard you out there, talking to her and all of that. Did… you want to kiss me? Is that what this is about?” He didn’t give a verbal answer, merely nodding a little. She then grabbed the angelic mask and handed it over to his awaiting hands, before turning back to her glass and telling him. “We should see one another again soon. You go off and do, I don’t know, your angel things."

He quickly went up the stairs into his room and set the mask down upon his bed, realising that there was a slip of white paper inside with the key to an encrypted telephone number alongside a handwritten purple note. Call me sometime when you’re ready. He put down the note, copied the number onto a few pieces of paper, removed his white T-shirt and tossed it on the quilted bed, and moved his left hand to something else on his bedside table, an unmarked small pump filled with a kind of gel. He quickly sanitised his hands and pumped a decent amount of the gel onto his right hand, and applied all of it to the upper half of his left arm, sighing somewhat as he was doing so, trying to keep up a state of denial that he was even doing it in the first place. It wasn’t something that brought him any pride. About half an hour later, after the gel had dried, a black sleeveless crop top found its way over his chest and onto his back, his glasses were cleaned with a large red microfibre cloth and adjusted back onto his face, and the suitcase that he had taken back into the house earlier popped open.

Tight red kevlar bodysuit with feet fully covered and sleeves going up to the wrists.

Light golden top-half-of-chest armour and spherical shoulderpads combination vest.

Belt of the same colour with three darker gold pouches on each side and a rectangular buckle in the centre.

Double black wide-shouldered cape and double dark red mantle combination held together with a decorative golden medallion on the left side.

Black mask with Azrael’s red logo and two solid triangular white eyes and black hood connected to the cape mantle and worn over the mask.

Two-handed Dumasian Ulfberht steel sword inside an ornate embossed leather scabbard and worn on the back via a strap slung over the left shoulder.

And with everything in his arsenal equipped, Azrael began to sneak right out of the house through his window, touching down upon the grassy ground and into the now-vacant front yard.

Meanwhile, back at the LeHah residence, which also served as the home base for his business operations, the office room on the far edge of the second floor with the windows looking out towards the sunset, the manager with the ponytail was sitting in an office chair at a long oak table with a wooden statue of a man being stabbed by a monster and a jointed metal lamp shining white light down onto the surface of the table, of which at its head, in a large metal chair with a back reaching above his helmet’s horns, in front of a set of large large basil green curtains, was seated Lord Biis himself, listening to Maxwell’s update. “We’ve put our army of private detectives onto the case, Mr. LeHah, and the best thing they came up with was something that happened about twenty miles west of Gotham. A couple of small-timers snatched up some psychic chick ‘round two days ago. They said that they were manhandled by some so-called angel punk kid.” Biis simply slapped his hand like a baseball against his fist like its glove, alternating hands and fists each time. “It is him. It is Azrael.”

Brian, who had now adopted plain coloured sweaters as his new fashion of choice, found Azrael outside with his sword out in both hands, swinging the metal blade around in the air in precise movements, moving his legs and arms in a preplanned, tightly-controlled, and almost graceful fashion. Once Azrael turned his way he asked him if it was some forme of exercise. “I suppose it could be called that.” he began to respond. “Its true name is The Devotion To The Most Blessed Saint Dumas Through The Use And Manipulation Of Bladed Weapons.” “No doubt something that was drilled into you by your father or by your genetic programming.” He coughed a little bit and then asked him: “Jean-Paul…” Azrael quickly put his blade back into its leather sheath with very visible attitude and sharply replied to him with: “NOT Jean-Paul!” “Where do you stand regarding the order of Saint Dumas? Surely you realise how corrupt–” “Perhaps it is.” Azrael answered. “But it's the only family which I have ever known in my centuries of existence. The only consistent thing that my spirit has ever had. That is not his conviction, but mine, if you wish to know.” “Quite an old, old problem. The need to become something other than your parents’ child. To become yourself. Once either one or both of you do, you have an even greater task before you.” Azrael leaned his head in and asked “What exactly is that?” “Sooner or later we as human beings will all have to move onwards from what our parents, our mothers and our fathers, have done to us.” “You could help me with that. You’re a psychiatrist.” ‘The worst in the world, as I keep saying. Anyone who consults me should have his head examined. Apologies. Old Joke. Bad joke.”

At the same time, a dark red two-seat van began to slowly drive on the road towards the Kinsolving house, containing one driver in the front and three other men in the back, all of whom were dressed in moss green polo shirts and light blue jeans, carrying top-quality heavy-duty weaponry strapped to their backs like messenger bags, as well as one black man also in the back dressed in a two-piece blue tracksuit with large swaths of red scattered throughout. From the front seat the radio and compact disk player played only the finest in Swiss avant-garde art techno music from an auditory mixtape.

“Evening's young, the night began

Barman brings another beer,

Could ask myself, ‘Why am I here?’

Between the bottles in a mirror

You smiling at myself.

Look in my eyes and start to count

The bottles on the shelf.

I know I could at any time

Get up the chair and leave the place.”

“Everybody ready?” One of the white folks in the back of the van, this one sporting a thin brown casual haircut, asked the fellow henchmen. “Remember, the target is almost guaranteed to be repping bulletproof gear.” “Yeah, but a couple o’ nine mike-mike hits from this baby’ll still take the wind outta ‘im.” replied another white employee with a trashier hairstyle while sleeping his huge gun like a brand-new bat. The other caucasian agent, a blonde man with visible wrinkles and a generally messy hairline, turned his attention to the black henchman in the tracksuit and asked him: “That’s what we’re counting on. Slim, you got your running shoes on?” The red and blue-wearing henchman kicked one foot up and replied, “Man, you don’t understand. I was practically born with my running shoes on!” “All right then,” their driver, a tanned surfer-type dude with blue dyed hair told them after stopping the car. “GO!”

“I don’t mean to make light of your question, lad, but I just can’t answer it.” Brian told Azrael. “Each of us needs to find his own way to his unique identity. Others may point you to a path but–” At precisely that moment a trio of uniformed men emerged from out of the bushes and began unloading their entire clips right toward Azrael’s core, igniting the tune of a powerful and guttural collective ROARing noise, knocking him back a few steps and sending him tumbling right down to the proverbial mat. “JEAN-PAUL!” Brian yelled in complete surprise while the three men casually walked closer to the writhing angel. “Who are you people?” “The guys who are gonna give you all a headache if you talk shit, gramps.” The blonde henchman proceeded to club him right into unconsciousness with the back end of his gun, causing a reactive “Umgh…” from him on his own way down. The agent with the messy haircut remarked “Looks like fancy-pants and loudmouth are both down for the count.” Almost right on cue in response, Azrael then jumped right up and socked him square in the jaws with both fists and made him take his place on the ground, before taking his sizeable and heavy gun and throwing it right at the head of the blonde henchman and knocking him out too. As for the one with the thin brown hair, just a couple of piston-force kicks were enough to send him crashing into the ornate stone fence and flying right onto the grass from the aftershocks. “Hey, Az-raey-el!” Yelled the man named Slim with both hands cupped around his mouth. “Ya think you’re some kinda bad bitch? Then take a chance with me!” Azrael naturally took no time to consider the obvious bait and followed after him, barely not quite able to completely catch up with him, hopping right over the fence and into the trees beyond, before Slim suddenly stopped and put on a protective gas mask, right as the blue-haired surfer dude henchman fired an entire canister of knockout gas foam right at him, expelling the entire contents of the back-mounted container on the poor angel with his weapon’s vacuum-like firing hose and creating a very nice mass of very large and very light blue clouds that Azrael's mask unfortunately didn’t protect him from. Once again, he fell right onto the grass like a huge dead weight with a loud and meaty THUMP. The two still-conscious henchmen, perfectly safe from the unconsciousness-inciting substance present in the air all around them, gave one another a satisfied two-fisted fist bump, and the surfer dude told Slim with a tone of both relief and revelling in victory. “Okay then, load ‘im up into the van.” And from the awaiting red car, the music continued to play as if absolutely nothing ever happened.

“I know I could at any time

Get up the chair and leave the place

I wait for me and my decision,

Between the bottles, that's my face

TV shows, a football game,

I leave the place but all the same

If someone asked me, ‘Hey guy, you,

Where do you go? What do you do?’

I wouldn't know what I could say.”

TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT ISSUE

DEMON TIME

PART II