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gabriel-gabdiel · 3 months ago

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【Draft】 Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 7: Electric Youth

Florante Galang has to deal with angels and demons left and right, particularly his fellow classmates.

Will he be able to save them from turning into demons and instead bring them to the light? Especially when he learns about the nature of the Candidates of Ascension or Corruption.

People, places, and things only exist to you because you perceive them. Whatever you see, hear, taste, smell, and feel make up the world around you.

If you were to talk to someone and listen to them, they become part of your consciousness. They become real.

However, the things you couldn’t perceive before weren’t necessarily nonexistent. They might seem unreal to you because you were unaware of them.

Like the tree that fell in the forest, with no one to hear its drop.

In turn, they could exist separate from your awareness, perceived by others. As long as they could be seen by someone, even by themselves through sentience, they exist.

With that said, what about dreams? What about those afterimages of your subconsciousness shaped by your experiences in the real world, reflected back to you in a unconscious or even half-conscious state?

Were these people, places, and things that were purely invented by your imagination real? Even if they were perceived by no one else except you and your mind’s eye?

Could it be possible for the things invented by your mind and limitless imagination to become real? Or were they just vague shadows of half-remembered past memories emerging from your subconscious depths?

Like a reflection of the moon on a pond or the lights of stars from billions of light years away that had probably died an eternity ago.

Like an echo mistaken for a voice. A lie mistaken for the truth.

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

Wait, so Florante's classmates all got superpowers like him? They're all Candidates to become Elected as Archangel Gabriel (or some other angel/demon)?

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 7: Electric Youth

***

Florante Galang made a wry face as he crinkled his nose. ’Susmaryosep. Here we go again.’

Yes, he remembered how he came with Isaiah Pascual to this Ortigas singing or talent contest to save their classmate Regina Mariano from awakening her powers care of another demon, like the one from Makati.

To stop the both of them from becoming monsters.

But why should he save them though? They were so mean to him. Isaiah betrayed him. Regina humiliated him. They were just some of his bullies in school.

Not his worst bullies, but he wasn’t exactly friends with them. Then again, he wasn’t friends with anyone. He was a friendless loser.

He’d rather save that blackened stranger back at Makati than these people. The people that he allegedly killed, if his dreams were truly his memories.

Why should he save his former best friend or friend whom he gave the “Ick” and just stopped being friends with him?

Even though he felt his heart rejoice when Pascual started talking to him again, just like the good ol’ days.

Regardless, he should do the right thing, right? He should take the higher road and punish his bullies by being better than them and saving them.

He’d save them from turning into fallen angels or demons or something even after the abuse he took from them.

Prove to himself that his dream journal version of events was false. He didn’t actually take revenge on his bullies with his newfound powers.

He didn’t actually become Magneto when he should’ve become Superman.

One thing was for sure. It was about time the wimpy kid took a second look at that dream journal of his.

***

A building somewhere in the middle of Ortigas, at J.V. Avenue and about a stone’s throw away from Ultramall…

Florante didn’t have the chance to notice anything else when he realized a van headed their way, flying. Vehicles left and right were being hurled amidst confused screams and many people running away from utter bedlam.

The vehicle, a wrecked jeep or Pajero SUV, spun and slid, on the verge of colliding with them all—Flor Galang and two Isaiah Pascuals.

Wait, two Pascuals? Was he seeing things?

It was silence for one long second before the screaming began again. In the sudden anarchy, Florante could hear more than one person shouting out names.

But more clearly than all the yelling, he could hear someone shout his name.

“Florante, look out!” a voice from behind them said.

Their world went topsy-turvy, and Florante wasn’t sure if the Minion form of the demonic and geometric pyramid Regina Mariano had transformed to was responsible for what had happened.

The next thing he knew, he saw darkness blanket his vision just before he heard the shattering crunch of a car folding around a truck bed.

He then realized he’d been wrapped in a cocoon of vines from head to toe. The green tendrils receded from his person before he attempted breaking free of them on his own.

He then got up from the ground in time to see his classmate Jennifer “Jenny” Tolentino entangling his other classmate Isaiah Pascual with those same vines, a trickle of blood flowing from her forehead, her signature glasses missing.

For those who were just “tuning in”, Jenny was capable of accelerating the growth of vegetation and mold, among other strange powers like healing and the like.

For she was an angel on earth in human guise, just like Florante. Just like Isaiah and Regina. Just like that foreign blonde judge in the talent competition they were attending earlier.

“Jenny…!” blurted out a confused Florante, not knowing what to say.

“Flor? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Flor noticed his voice sounded strange. He tried sitting up, and realized she held him against the side of her body with surprising strength, which made him blush.

“Be careful,” she warned as he struggled. “I think you hit your head pretty hard.” Florante then became aware of a throbbing ache centered above his left ear, like a second heartbeat.

“Ow,” he said, surprised.

Jenny giggled then sighed. “You broke your promise, Flor,” whispered the smirking girl, the words filling Galang with shame and dread.

Florante gulped, his apology stuck in his throat.

He could’ve lived a normal life without worrying about battling mindless demonic monsters, but he couldn’t leave things well enough alone.

‘That’s not true! It’s Pascual who couldn’t leave things well enough alone! I’m innocent!’ he protested in his head.

'We’ll talk about this later,’ Jenny answered telepathically, which still startled Florante despite knowing better.

From right beside himself and Jenny Tolentino, Florante saw double. Two Isaiah Pascuals, to be exact.

So he wasn’t seeing things.

“Wha…?” Galang trailed off. The second Pascual, he realized, was the one who asked him to watch out. So who was the first one…?

The fake Isaiah cackled then shifted form back to the gorgeous blue-eyed Hollywood blonde from before in an instant. She was Miss Georgia Spelvin, if Florante recalled correctly.

His speed. His movements. His voice. However, this was the first time they’d probably met.

“J-Jenny…?” murmured a concerned Isaiah, who stared back and forth at Florante and Jennifer. “Wait. Since when were you two friends? Also, she has powers too…?”

Flor grasped for words. He didn’t know what to answer. He didn’t know where to start. Should he mention that they were the avatars of angels? Or that they could transform into mindless monsters?

The geometric form of Regina had started singing again, and things beyond Galang’s ken started happening all around them at once.

Glass and debris flew along with random body parts, which made Florante look away, thankful he hadn’t shifted to his multi-eyed Ophanim form that literally saw everything before him.

Such sights would’ve driven him mad. Then again, weren’t they no better than the disaster Jenny and him averted back in Makati?

On one hand, he also made his promise back in Makati to forget about these angels and demons. On the other hand, his former best friend and his not-girlfriend ended up being just like him!

How could he forget or deny something that ended up so unforgettable? So undeniable?

He had no time to think. Cars and vans flew everywhere as though it were “Back to the Future Part II”. Along with people and debris, which was more along the lines of a disaster movie. Or the film, “The Exorcist”.

The world looked like it was ending once again as Regina sang her bleak dirge with no regard to human life. Without a single thought left in her mind.

Flor wasn’t sure if Regina was 'still there’. If there was anything left of the classmate who used to tease and mock him.

***

“Asmodeus,” was what Jenny called the Pascual imposter instead of his name. An imposter who somehow also mimicked the real deal’s abilities, judging by what happened earlier.

“Raphael. Long time, no see. I’ve heard you’re in town from Mammon,” said Georgia Spelvin, who also name-dropped her demonic comrade. “I see you’re still playing around with the newborn Ophanims.”

Even though Georgia was forced to go back to her human avatar form, sharp horns jutted out of her forehead.

The demon Asmodeus was known as the king of demons in the legends of Solomon and the construction of Solomon’s Temple.

His story featured variously in Talmudic stories where he served as the king of the shedim. The Quran cited to a “puppet” in the Story of Solomon, which according to the mufassirūn (authorized exegetes of the Quran) referred to the demon-king Asmodeus (Sakhr).

Back then, all the King of Demons and the Personification of Lust cared about was killing the husbands of a woman named Sarah because he desired her.

Asmodeus killed a total of seven of them, one after the other, every time during their wedding nights with Sarah, making her seem like a Black Widow or a Preying Mantis that ate her husbands after mating.

'I will have her and no one else will,’ was the sentiment behind the lust demon’s actions. However, that was ancient history.

The current holder of the name and legacy of Asmodeus—the gorgeous Georgia Spelvin—was a devilish shapeshifter who could mimic anyone’s face. Or even their talents and abilities.

Raphael’s memories of Asmodeus’ history were vague and Georgia was of a different race entirely, but Asmodeus’ current avatar had a strong resemblance to Sarah.

Like a Caucasian version of the Ancient Jewish Sarah. Maybe. Or it could Raphael’s imagination.

“Stop rifling through my memories and fight, Raphael,” said Georgia with a toss of her blonde locks.

“What are you doing to my classmates?” Jenny, Archangel Raphael’s current human host, demanded. “Leave them be, demon.”

The demonic Spelvin smirked with a spellbinding sneer.

“I’m doing to them something you should’ve done a long time ago, Darling. I’m rousing them from their slumber so that they could evolve and fight for their survival. Survival of the fittest.”

Jenny harrumphed. “Or you just want to corrupt these youths and turn them you’re your Minions, correct?”

“Perhaps.” Georgia’s beatific smile widened reached to the edges of her cheeks, which split her face apart before she literally spewed another Jennifer Tolentino.

Or rather, a Jennifer Tolentino with horns and a tail instead of a halo of angelic might.

“How sure are you that this child is the one who’ll become a full-fledged angel?” drawled Spelvin. “What makes you so sure he won’t end up corrupted into a demon like the rest?”

Georgia, who now looked like Jennifer, took sudden command of the vines, which prompted the real Jenny to summon a separate set of vegetation, the kudzu grass—an invasive species in the United States but native to East Asia—to combat the commandeered vines.

“Let’s see them fulfill their true potential, these Electric Youth.”

***

So many things happened all at once that Florante could barely have any time to react or do something. Anything, really.

The geometric speaker that was Regina’s Ophanim form, a biblically accurate angel beyond imagination or description, kept singing a haunting song that made the surrounding area and the unfortunate souls surrounding it seem to crack and decay.

A song celebrating the end of death and pain, for another Old One had awakened.

Beside him, compelled to save their classmate from herself, Pascual also started to change as well, his frame turning into particles and waves as though he were phasing in and out from the physical world.

Florante wasn’t sure, but he could’ve sworn he overheard Isaiah say, 'If you’re not going to help me then I’ll save Regina myself!’

Or he didn’t overhear that. Not over all this noise and chaos. He telepathically heard his former best friend’s sentiment. Perhaps even felt it without him thinking of a single word.

An abstract version of the Romeo and Juliet play happened right in front of Galang, its two main protagonists played by his classmates that had transformed into eldritch horrors of unknowable origin.

What looked like a trapezoidal glass building as viewed by a fisheye lens emitting vibrations that also warped the space around it played the role of Juliet.

A school boy wearing the Fatima High uniform who phased in and out of existence, as though his very essence separated into waves and particles of light played the role of Romeo.

The two cosmic playthings toyed by fate itself crashed unto each other like Godzilla’s atomic breath would against Tokyo’s many skyscrapers.

Or how paint would splatter on the canvas of a Jackson Pollock painting.

Or how sailors enchanted by the sirens’ call crashed their ships right into the jagged rocks of the shore and the cliffs, luring them all right to their doom.

It was as indescribably violent as it was violently indescribable.

Also, should Florante follow suit and change himself? A named demon was after his classmates who wanted to turn them into demons themselves.

Should he be stopping them from transforming then?

Everyone else was changing into one thing or another, and even their surroundings felt like it approached the event horizon before collapsing unto itself into dense dust and darkness, where even light couldn’t escape.

Why did Jenny want him to stop awakening as an angel again? He couldn’t completely remember. Every time he awoke, it seemed like it was from a dream.

Why was it a bad thing to turn into his Ophanim form? He could barely stand a chance against the Living Spaghetti and the Walking Octopus Tendril when not in Ophanim form.

Something gut-wrenching stopped him from transforming like the rest of them. As though that was the trap.

Just like Mammon before her, the demoness Asmodeus was pitting two Ophanim against each other, even though she probably felt like Florante did that Isaiah had a crush on Regina.

Did she want them to kill each other? Or just corrupt them both so they’d turn into a demon like her?

What would happen if they turned demonic? Was this surreal hellscape of death and devastation supposed to become real if that happened?

***

Of course, Asmodeus would try to use Raphael’s vines against her. The angel avatar expected as much from the face-stealing identity thief of a demoness. They were so predictable.

However, the kudzu drowned the vines from the other Jenny into a sea of leaves and foliage, with showcasing its ability to outcompete native plants due to its aggressive growth habits.

Spelvin harrumphed as the kudzu absorbed her black aura of demonic energy, which made the horns on her head shrink in size. “Clever girl. You planned this, didn’t you?”

Jenny didn’t bother responding. She instead gave a mighty tug at the kudzu that bound Georgia like a green cocoon. The more she attempted to corrupt the vines, the more of her energy it absorbed, making it grow.

It was Jenny’s little Chinese finger trap against mimics and power-stealing entities.

Georgia thought that just because she could copy Jenny’s powers, she could use her plants against her. But Tolentino was one step ahead.

Scowling, Georgia shifted forms yet again, her skin melting from a female form to a male one. This time she became Florante Galang.

“For an angel, you’re quite devious,” spat Spelvin with venom in her voice.

“For a demon, you’re quite gullible,” replied Tolentino in turn, adjusting her glasses.

Jenny took one look at the concerned, innocent expression on the second Florante’s face and she ended up disoriented again as she stared into his gold-colored eyes.

“Is this devious enough for you, Darling?” crooned Georgia with Florante’s voice before licking his lips. “You seem to have taken a liking to the young man.”

Jenny rolled her eyes before untangling the kudzu and whipping the sea of vines towards the imposter Flor. “It’s not what you think. We’re not like that.”

The two then saw the real Florante make a wry face, which concerned Jenny.

Georgia chuckled under her breath, and there was an edge to that sound. “An ancient angel like you and you’re acting coy like the schoolgirl you pretend to be.”

“Oh please. Don’t try me,” said Jenny, only for her to notice Flor telepathically eavesdrop on them both as she hurled her kudzu towards the other Flor.

Georgia then did what Florante was unwilling to do—turn into his Ophanim form of a giant eye surrounded by flaming rings that also had eyes. All-seeing. All-knowing.

These multitude of eyes disintegrated each and every kudzu that came into their path like a forest fire powered by gale winds and the dry season.

“…This person is delusional and has no redeeming qualities. He’s a loser. He isn’t a real Candidate for either becoming an angel or a demon.”

“…What?” said Jenny, taken aback by Florante’s words. Or rather, Georgia’s assessment of Florante.

Georgia Spelvin unleashed the full, devastating power of Galang’s multitude of fiery eyes on Jennifer, with them staring seeming laser holes right through her body and soul.

Flashes of Flor researching Jenny’s origins came to be, along with the late realization that he’d been stalking her all the while with the delusion that they were soulmates.

The other Florante shivered with goosebumps on the nape of his neck as a sense of dread filled him, keeping him from acting. Distracted by multiple things happening at once.

“You’ve made a mistake, Raphael. Florante Galang is trash. A weakling. A coward. Completely corruptible. Irredeemable. Not even worth turning into a Minion like the rest of the Candidates.”

***

Amidst being overstimulated by multiple events happening around him left and right, Florante remembered why he was there.

He was supposed to help Pascual save Mariano from herself. To stop them from becoming monsters.

Regardless, the Ophanim form of Isaiah Pascual—his body engulfed in pure light, as though he were a walking humanoid ray of light that contrasted the being of darkness that Florante fought before—zipped into action.

Going at the speed of light. Beating out the much slower speed of sound that affected whole streets, gas stations, vehicles, humans, and buildings. A shining light that defied the Song to End the World.

The shining Pascual split off into multiple pinpoints of light, moving at top speed and swarming the building-sized Ophanim self of Regina, blasting her pyramid body like a missile assault from World War II.

Isaiah, a being of light, went up against Regina, a being of sound.

Her sound waves couldn’t catch the light waves and particles of Pascual as he traveled across the nation and back, the sole projectile to her oversized mothership yet it looked like she was being bombarded by hundreds or even thousands of shots.

Or, at the very least, that was how Florante interpreted the impressive light and sound show before him. He might as well be looking at an abstract painting or white static on a television set.

He couldn’t even read Pascual’s thoughts anymore as his former best friend became a creature of instinct, reflex, and desire. Instead of sentient thoughts, Isaiah became a walking pile of pure emotion packaged inside a humanoid case of plasma.

Over and over, he attempted to blast through the geometric Ophanim form of Regina, but he held back for fear of killing his beloved for real.

Big mistake. Changing sound frequencies, Mariano belted a new hymn. A sickening one that made Isaiah’s body of light quiver and blink in and out of existence, like a faulty light bulb.

Regina somehow came up with a song that, instead of shaking the world, created a vortex before so dense it absorbed all the humanoid light missiles Isaiah shot at her.

Like rays of light unable to escape the event horizon of a black hole. Like water forming a whirlpool around the bathtub’s drain.

However, Isaiah escaped the black hole, circling around the perimeter of the floating tipped building block of glass and metal that was Mariano, away from the reach of her maelstrom of discontent.

Was this the only way to save Regina though? Fight her to the death as a Godzilla-sized monster and a walking energy being?

Didn’t that work for him and the crawling darkness he fought in Makati? 'That’s right. I fought another monster back then too, and discovered he was just a kid like me…’

Which meant the flying spaghetti monster he first faced off with was human as well. Humans turned into monsters. Or angels. Or demons.

Florante “overheard” Asmodeus call them all Candidates though. Candidates for what? Senate President? The Presidency of the Philippines?

Also, if they were candidates, was this how they were supposed to get votes? A duel to the death, only the strongest could survive? Also, who was voting for whom?!

'You’re all Candidates of Ascension. Or Corruption,’ revealed Georgia, who had just turned into Florante’s Ophanim form of an eye surrounding by rings of eyes and fire, their gaze atomizing every plant-based weapon Jenny tried wielding against it.

'Among the Candidates, only a handful will survive to become full-fledged named avatars. Maybe even less. Maybe even just one,’ said Asmodeus telepathically, finally tuning into Florante’s headspace like a radio would to a radio station.

Probably the exact thing that Jennifer didn’t want to happen.

“He’s a sensitive, stubborn, and naive boy with a short temper. Prone to lash out in anger. More like tantrums, really.”

Florante’s other self—his Ophanim form derived from a shapeshifting Georgia Spelvin—told him in his voice this time, making it sound more like a confession.

“Even with his powers, he’s no match against his own bullies. Even if he laid it all on the line and used his Ophanim form, which is nothing special among the Candidates!” cackled Georgia.

***

Georgia then focused turned her attention towards Jenny.

'Why do you trust this boy? He stalked your address and could’ve kidnapped you or worse for all you know.’

'Do I look like I’m scared of him? He only tried finding out more about me because, as he suspected, I’m much older than I look. His dreams weren’t dreams. And we really are both angels.’

'Oh please. He stalked you because he’s in love with you. He’s enamored by you, like a little lost puppy following around the human doting on him! ’

'Enough, Asmodeus. Stop reaching.’

Jenny tuned out Georgia’s attempts at mind invasion—it was not a superpower of hers, it was an inherent ability of all angels and demons to probe each other’s minds, with some minds more probe-able than others—to consider the jumble of inexplicable chaotic images churning in her mind.

Like the she-devil that she was, Asmodeus probes the mind and uses half-truths and lies to manipulate people to her bidding. Unlike Mammon, she was more hands-on with her manipulation.

This was Asmodeus’s modus operandi. To bring utter chaos and to pick apart the pieces in the meantime, bombarding her enemies with white noise and overstimulation. Attack on all fronts like a blitzkrieg.

Her plant weapons kept getting burned or even atomized by the optic blasts from the all-seeing eyes of Florante’s Ophanim form that Georgia had copied and made her own.

She kept healing the wounds inflicted on her by those mystic eyes, but otherwise she couldn’t come close to damaging Georgia’s cloned Ophanim form.

“…He’s also friendless. He’s shy and doesn’t know how to socialize. People think he’s weird at best and obnoxious at worst,” continued Georgia aloud in Flor’s voice.

However, Jennifer already knew all that. She knew from the start.

Despite it all, she had faith in Flor. Because she had already encountered him in the past and saw what he… was capable of. Or who he truly was.

As though she read ahead of the book. Or fast-forwarded to the end of the Betamax or VHS tape.

However, as Florante finally moved to face the music and his transformed classmates, his special move—his so-called “Light Array"—barely dented Regina’s Ophanim self.

Or perhaps it was already her Minion self, with her succumbing to the temptation and corruption of the infamous Asmodeus him(her)self.

What was the difference between an Ophanim and a Minion? Probably the same difference between an angel and a demon (or fallen angel).

A Minion was an Ophanim giving into their instincts, going wild, and leaving all their sense of self behind, unable to return to their human (avatar) selves. No better than a beast or monster.

Meanwhile, no matter how far Jenny ran and hid among the rubble, the fake Florante’s Ophanim kept blasting her with withering stares of crushing concussive force. If she didn’t have healing powers, she would’ve died a thousand deaths by then.

Also, every plant she planted to go up against the Ophanim got destroyed by the same crushing force.

What was she supposed to do now?

"Is this your champion, Raphael? This weirdo? This stalker? This nerd? This LOSER?” mocked Georgia. “And what a champion. Why, without his powers, he probably couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag!”

From there, new plants emerged somehow from the crumbling concrete and asphalt, sprouting like bamboo up to three and a half meters tall.

Or rather, like course grass that only grew in tropical or subtropical regions, but thanks to the influence of Raphael, they could grow even on the snowy alps or the middle of Siberia.

It made the whole area look like Mother Nature had reclaimed it after years of abandonment, with grass growing everywhere.

As usual, Georgia made the Ophanim form of Florante stare at the plants to oblivion with the crushing force of his multi-eyed stare, the concussive force of her borrowed eyes crushing the plants like in a blender.

This was a mistake. She just shot into talahib grass, also known as wild sugarcane grass. Through Jenny’s powers, the grass grew large enough to produce floating white fluffy seeds. Thousands of them.

Jenny could’ve produced dandelions or cottonwood. The effect would’ve been the same.

Despite not having a respiratory tract, the eyes of the fake Florante’s Ophanim self were irritated by the seeds, probably a psychosomatic effect of the real Florante’s asthma.

With a sneeze, Georgia was forced to transform back to her “original” buxom blonde Caucasian self.

***

“Light Array! Light Array! LIGHT ARRAY!” Galang kept shooting pinpoints of concentrated energy from all ten of his fingertips (and thumb-tips).

However, his puny attacks paled in comparison to the impressive humanoid energy missiles that Isaiah shot out from his lightspeed self, and even. those failed against the density she summoned around her.

Regina’s newest song served like a pseudo black hole or planet with huge gravitational force, which no light could penetrate through.

God. Damnit. Florante might as well not have done anything at all. He made as much difference as before, when he was frozen from action.

He wanted to prove Georgia wrong and Jenny right. That he could take on his classmates and save them like he did that man of darkness back in Makati.

He did save that guy, right?

How did he defeat the last monster he faced again…? Wait. That monster. The monster with a face.

The monster was an Ophanim. Or Minion. It was a man. With a name. And a life. Just like him. He knew he refused to kill him and found a way to end their fight spurred by no one.

Could it be, whether Ophanim or Minion, all those who were unfortunate enough to become the avatars of angels tend to lose their goddamn minds whenever they transformed into that biblical form?

They were no better than animals? Barely sentient? A slave to their instincts? Was this the reason why he was yet to see Raphael in her Ophanim form?

Meanwhile, Pascual ran a literal ring around the Regina “building”, which with the warped space around her making her look like a spherical planet, made them appear like the Planet Saturn.

The ring Isaiah made then started becoming smaller and smaller, like a razor slowly surrounding the denseness, intending to cut through it and Regina’s Minion form.

Galang had to save them. Mariano was forcing Pascual to kill her. Somehow, by instinct, Florante knew that this was not the way to save her. That either way, Asmodeus would win. She’d corrupt one or both of them.

Just as Florante made the decision to risk it all and transform, Georgia chided him, this time with her sultry voice instead of his whiny voice.

“You don’t stand a chance. Why should you? You killed them both when they didn’t stand a chance, you coward,” she said. Almost hissed like a snake. “They were among the ones you murdered!”

Unlike Mammon back at Makati, Georgia was more hands-on with her attempts at corrupting young Ophanim, wasn’t she?

She continued poking, prodding, and needling Flor even as the bespectacled Jenny mercilessly stabbed her gut with a bamboo shoot, her skin turning red. Her horns growing out of her forehead as she transformed into her demonic form.

“Like a coward, you’re only brave when you have the advantage. You killed them when they didn’t have powers. Now, you’re facing a more level playing field.”

“Flor, don’t listen to her!” said, almost begged, Jenny, driving the bamboo shoot and making it grow. Bamboo was already extraordinary at growing in its natural state, so it practically exploded at Asmodeus.

Flor’s blood ran cold. Georgia read him like a book. Again. It felt like the world went still, actually. Froze like someone had just hit the pause button.

'Like a victim of bullying, you became a bully yourself as revenge against those who oppressed you. You became them. But not exactly, right?’ the spirit and presence of Asmodeus persisted even as her Georgia Spelvin body went through a gruesome demise.

Cringing, it was then that Florante realized that Pascual and Mariano had stopped their monstrous battle against each other.

The Minions, or perhaps Ophanims now that they had somehow regained their senses, went still and paid close attention to the telepathic conversation they were also hearing.

'No, your pent-up feelings of bitterness made you worse than them. Made you into a murderer. An eye for an eye? No, they spat on you and you took their lives for the temerity of insulting you. Of humiliating you.’

Belatedly, Florante realized that Jennifer was protecting him from this when she practically sacrificed herself and told him to live a normal life, just as he told the Ophanim he saved to do the same thing.

He now had to face the consequences of his actions. So what his dream journal hinted was true. It was all true.

He was the bad guy. He was no Superman. He was Magneto. No, Magneto had justified villainy. He fought for things greater than himself by any means necessary.

Florante? He fought for things smaller than himself. The pettiest things. Not to undermine the seriousness of bullying in schools or anything, but it didn’t justify someone to commit murder.

He was an overreacting spoiled brat throwing a dangerous temper tantrum after he was gifted powers for some reason, resulting in the deaths of his classmates.

All because of his inability to socialize. All because they rejected him.

The laughing stock of their school got his revenge, but the price of his dignity was an arm and a leg, which only confirmed their suspicions of him.

His myopic rage had resulted in this. He hoped it was a “No Harm, No Foul” deal since it all ended up a dream, but apparently a dream after all.

He’d already lost the respect of his peers, only for his fantasies to murder them turn into reality, thus making him retroactively deserve all the abuse he’d gotten and then some.

***

The two Ophanims that had been rampaging all of Ortigas and were in the cusp of destroying the S.S. Ultramall had shifted their attention towards something else. Or someone else.

Meanwhile, the cringing, embarrassed, and altogether guilty Florante could only look sheepishly at what had become of Isaiah and Regina. Two of his multiple murder victims.

He had the audacity earlier to consider not saving the two, but he had to so that he could be better than his two bullies.

Granted, he thought such thoughts at the time when he still felt his memories of murdering his classmates was a wish-fulfillment fantasy he had to vent his frustrations for being eternally bullied at school.

Maybe it would’ve been better if he just killed himself instead? So he would’ve protected the lives of his bullies and ended all the bullying at the same time.

Somehow, that suicidal thought only made the Ophanims—no, the Minions—react violently at Flor. As though lashing out from getting whipped.

Mariano shrieked at Flor, which produced what looked like an earthquake but was actually resonance that made everything crumble to dust and pebbles. Or bits of bone and giblets.

He summoned his halo of energy as his dense shield against the sonic assault, only for him to get a supersonic boom from the glowing Isaiah’s around-the-world punch.

This sent him crashing through multiple walls, his willpower the only thing keeping his spine and rest of his bones from breaking through the sheer force of Isaiah’s attack.

The message was loud and clear. Now that he knew the truth of their origins, he shouldn’t dare play victim now.

A murderer shouldn’t pull a 'Woe is me,’ to his victims to turn around their victimhood on them, especially when he somehow managed to justify their bullying of him in hindsight.

Regina’s Minion form then sung a new song. A very specific song. A song to end Florante Galang.

From there, Galang couldn’t breathe. His eyes went watery. In between blinks, he began wheezing. His asthma had also acted up.

Could she do that? Could she sing a song that activated his asthma? If Flor could laugh, he would’ve. But that would also worsen his asthma.

Thusly, the energy from his halo flickered along with his flagging spirit. Gasping for air he could not breathe.

If he weren’t an angel avatar, he would be dead by now.

Ineffectually, he shot Lightning at them. Bombarding them over and over with millions to billions of volts of electricity while he also used the strikes to charge and heal himself. Help him catch his breath.

The man who was the fastest thing alive outran the lightning before they could land a strike, the bright arcs that looked like cracks on a dark wall illuminated by sunlight could not catch him.

Meanwhile, the subsequent thunder from the lightning strikes got amplified into sonic booms with blockbuster-level blasts thanks to Regina changing frequencies with her song again, turning Galang’s power against him.

They truly were the Electric Youth at that time.

Mariano then continued singing her Song to End the World, with the intention of taking Florante with it.

No fair. They double-teamed him. He was also avoiding turning into an Ophanim himself for fear of getting corrupted and becoming a Minion of Asmodeus.

Flor then ended up crashing into the forest of bamboo that Asmodeus became, the bamboo stalks helping break his fall and cushion his battered body.

The bespectacled Jennifer saved his life once again. Ugh. Could he do nothing right on his own?

Grabbing hold of his bruised arm, Florante gingerly got up from his bed of bent and snapped bamboo shoots, breathing hard. Wheezing hard. Every breath feeling like he sucked in broken glass.

Jenny Tolentino then telepathically told him, 'Don’t you dare break your promise, Flor! I called you Gabriel from the start because I believe in you.’

***

The winded Galang looked up and saw Jenny. His guardian angel. She knew he had a crush on him, but even though she didn’t return his feelings, she didn’t reject him either. His only friend.

A second Jenny Tolentino, Georgia, stabbed the first in the back with a bamboo shoot, much to Flor’s horror.

He couldn’t look away in anticipation of the bamboo shoot exploding into another green forest

However, his guardian angel didn’t into a red splotch amidst the sea of green. Asmodeus forced Jennifer to make her halo shine brighter and unfurl her wings to prevent her human form’s demise.

However, Asmodeus anticipated this too. She summoned the mindless Minions—the corrupted Isaiah and Regina—and made them focus their powers on Jenny.

On their precious classmate after they’d been robbed of their free will.

To ensure she couldn’t get out of this in one piece even though she was a named angel who apparently won her Election or Candidacy of Ascension as Archangel Raphael, the Minions attacked her at the same time as Georgia Spelvin did.

Like Death Insurance. The opposite of Life Insurance—they insured that he died instead of lived.

As the flood of bamboo shoots speared Raphael to the ground, pinning her sea-colored wings like an ensnared bird in a flurry of blue and green feathers, Regina sang her black hole song at the hapless cherub.

Around Jenny and the spherical denseness that threatened to grind her bones to dust, Isaiah spun over and over again, creating a bright ring around what now looked like a miniature Planet Saturn.

“No, don’t you dare! STOP! NOOOOO…!” screamed Florante with asthmatic wheezes, his eyes streaming with tears, but it was all for nothing. “I can’t lose her again! I can’t lose Jenny AGAIN!”

Ironic, seeing that another Jennifer floated beside him, none the worse for wear. A false one that Asmodeus shapeshifted into, but still.

Florante clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white, arcs of electricity flowing through his glowing body as the energy from his halo spread across it.

Before him, a diamond creature that looked more like a spaceship than a living being, singing songs that changed reality in every way possible.

By changing pitch, volume, resonance, melodies, and harmonies, she could cast a spell through sound waves and vibrations every which way.

She had a song that could induce nausea, vomiting, excretion, and cardiac arrest.

Even a song that could shake the Earth to its very core and kill all life on its surface by shifting plate tectonics or inducing volcanic eruptions on even dormant mountains.

Everywhere else, like flashes of fireworks, was the lightspeed man known as Isaiah, his afterimages surrounding him everywhere as he traveled approximately 300,000,000 miles per second.

Or rather, 299,792,458 miles per second in the vacuum of space. It’d take him 8 minutes to travel from there to the sun. 16 minutes to travel to the sun and back. Faster than greased lightning.

A man of lightspeed and a woman of pure sound. Two viable candidates for the election on who would ascend the throne and become the next Archangel Gabriel.

With a lip lick and a gulp, Florante said words of power that belied his coarse voice. “Kidlat at Kulog (Thunderbolt).”

Unlike Kidlat (Lightning), the Thunderbolt combined lightspeed electric energy of lightning and the supersonic whiplash of thunder in one move. Light and sound together.

Isaiah avoided the concentrated laser beam that cut through the sound waves of the monolithic speaker behind him that was Regina Mariano, only for him to slow down from the ensuing dense sonic boom that followed.

For his 299,792,458 miles per second happened in a vacuum. He ended up much slower going through states of matter, whether it was air, the atmosphere, or solid objects. Or a sonic boom.

This allowed Flor to shoot five of his signature Light Array bullets with one fling of his hand, one bullet for each fingertip.

The first four shots, Pascual outran. The fifth shot hit him on the chest, instantly shattering the layer of light that covered his body, exposing his human form once more.

He thusly stumbled into the wrecked ground with successive, sickening thuds.

Meanwhile, the same sonic boom that blasted a huge hole right into the previously impenetrable shield of the Minion Regina with the force of huge gale winds tearing right into her monstrous geometric form’s proverbial guts.

Instead of singing, Mariano cried in terror as her unstable Minion form started collapsing unto itself.

That was the power of the Thunderbolt. Weaponized thunder that magnified the destructive force of a laser-focused bolt of lightning.

And before Asmodeus in Jenny’s form came forth and stabbed Florante with another bamboo shoot that could instantly grow into a bamboo forest, she stopped cold and stared at the barrel of five guns.

Or rather, five pinpoints of light shining from his other hand. His other Light Array. However, instead of normal energy bullets, he focused his powers to create five Thunderbolts in his fingers.

The energy from his halo flowed even more as the winds around them approached gale speeds, with Florante serving as the eye of the brewing storm.

A typhoon full of lightning bolts that all struck his halo and aura like it were a lightning rod, infusing him with the Might of God, or at least Zeus from the Greek Mythology or Raijin from Japanese Mythology.

Galang wasn’t sure if that was enough to kill an Ascended Avatar like Georgia Spelvin, but at least she stopped short of attacking further. He certainly got her attention.

He knew he wasn’t any match against her, much less Mammon from before, but even so, he wouldn’t want her to get away with using his classmates as puppets. Even though they were his bullies from before.

From there, disembodied voice telepathically relayed from the heavens:

'You can’t beat a man who doesn’t care about pain, failure, rejection, loss, disrespect, and heartbreak. He’s here to win.’

"Jenny…?” thought Florante before he grinned. 'I knew you survived!’

The fake Jenny Tolentino then shapeshifted back to her avatar form, Georgia Spelvin, as she surveyed the damage Florante had done to her corrupted Minions.

With a shrug and a smirk, Georgia said, “Congratulations, Raphael. Your champion has won, Darling.”

To Flor, she confessed, “I didn’t think you had it in you, kid. So be it. You might just be the next Archangel Gabriel. I will be looking forward to your development. Til next time. Au revoir.”

The manipulative she-demon then blinked out of existence, leaving Florante to fend for himself.

As though roused from a nightmare, the asthmatic let his guard down and relaxed, taking deep wheezing breaths before spitting out phlegm and blood from his mouth.

It was then when Florante deactivated his typhoon-like powers and let the skies clear that he realized what had happened to poor Jennifer Tolentino.

Like a floating transparent gelatinous blob or jellyfish was Jenny’s Ophanim form. Their two mindless classmates really were close to killing her for real.

The Minions forced her to revert to her biblically accurate angel form: A single-celled organism, but the size of the sky.

’Metaphase,’ Flor wryly thought, identifying the phase in mitosis Jennifer’s cell was in, recalling the lesson they were discussing just earlier in the day but what felt like a year or two ago.

'Metaphase,' Flor wryly thought, identifying the phase in mitosis Jennifer's cell was in, recalling the lesson they were discussing just earlier in the day but what felt like a year or two ago.

If Jenny had her human form right then, she would've slapped Galang upside the head. That was not applied learning.

***

Isaiah Pascual awoke from the rut and crater on the ground he slept in, out like a light, after going toe-to-toe against Florante Galang.

Rivulets of sweat poured from his face afterwards as he got up and dusted himself off.

'...Oh shit,' Pascual thought. What he meant to think was, ‘Ohshitshitshitshitshitshitshit…!’ to infinity instead.

Isaiah realized that Florante remembered. What Flor thought was a dream he knew now was reality. Or it had actually happened before it became nothing but their collective imagination.

This was a problem. ‘What is that dangerous kid thinking now?!’ thought Pascual, feeling existential dread.

He was barely aware of himself as an Ophanim, Minion, or whatever (if he was unaware, he was being a Minion), so it look that last hit from the Light Array to jolt him awake, if a bit confused.

A few seconds later, he gathered his thoughts and realized what had happened. To his horror.

His classmate Flor had awakened again and was about to kill them all again. Again. And again. And again. Again, again, again.

In a blind panic, Pascual summoned his powers in an attempt to stop his glowing classmate, only for him to realize the one thing he could use to stop him wasn’t working.

Isaiah wriggled in futility at the approaching Florante, the man on fire with a blue tinge, his legs, arms, and body broken. His quickness did quickly heal his numerous wounds, but ironically it wasn’t healing them fast enough. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

Pascual then became aware of another’s presence. Last he remembered, they were there to rescue this person approaching them. His unsaid first-time crush and their classmate, Regina Mariano.

"The NERVE of that guy!" said Regina, which made Pascual’s jaw drop. Or it would’ve dropped were it not broken shut into lockjaw position. Goddamn, that was why Isaiah loved that woman—her spunk even the face of an unstoppable monster!

Florante Galang—or the supposed reincarnation of the Archangel Gabriel (so Isaiah heard)—turned towards the commotion Regina made along with Isaiah, who could only watch paralyzed. Unmoving. He had a mouth but he could not scream.

"I had nothing to do with him and he did this to me?" Regina turned towards Isaiah and screamed at him, acknowledging his presence (which he appreciated).

He couldn’t answer back though, so she had to turn her attention back to the fiery horror awaiting them.

Pascual prayed to whatever God or Gods existed to help them survive the typhoon of rage approaching before them. Regina thankfully had powers like he did, so she could probably stop their insane classmate.

He could feel his bones heal very quickly compared to normal human healing but very slowly compared to his survival instinct of needing to run away.

Before them strode the reincarnation of the Archangel Gabriel. A Pacific storm that destroyed everything he touched.

Like a simile about dissimilar things. Like pretentious writing attempting to be serious. Like a walking contradiction.

Therefore, he clenched his muscles and flexed them together so they could individually fix and set his broken bones together in closed fractures, acting like a wriggling container that kept his skeletal frame from falling apart.

Meanwhile, beside him, the tomboyish girl matched Isaiah’s energy and flexed her own muscles as she screamed louder and louder, her voice reaching whistle note range. Ultrasonic screams beyond the range of human hearing.

Her screams reverberated within a huge flowing firmament that doubled as the heavens above it, like an oceanic body of water but suspended in the air, flowing in waves. Like rain in the sky that would not fall.

“Come on, Florante or Gabriel or whatever your name is! I ain’t afraid of you! COME ON!”

The halo from Florante’s head he wore like a crown of light spread across his body like a regal cape. Like unfurled wings.

“Be not afraid,” Galang said to his banshee classmate. Famous last words.

“…I’M NOT!!” she shouted back with a shockwave blast of sound that destroyed everything around them but barely fazed Archangel Gabriel’s most likely human reincarnation.

The truth could pierce through him, but not any of her lies.

“Do not lie to me,” Florante said with glistening eyes. “We’re all angels here. We can read each other’s minds. Know each other’s feelings.”

“For a nerd, you sure love playing dumb!” said Regina with a trembling voice. “YOU killed US! You were the one who did the crime! You did this to us! And you’re the one who thinks you’re in pain? You’re a narcissist! A school shooter! A murderer! DIE! PLEASE DIE!”

None of her previous attacks could even touch Flor, but every syllable of that next sentence stabbed him like daggers that kept him from advancing, making the screeches shoot through his raging storm of aura until it went dead silent.

***

Florante Galang felt a swell of encouragement from his classmates as he took a knee. ‘Just a little more,’ he heard their thoughts.

So that was confirmation. Finally. he was getting sick of denying the event happened. That he dreamed it.

The incident when he killed his bullies wasn’t a dream, a nightmare, a delusion, or a fantasy that never happened, but reality that turned his First Year St. Francis of Assisi bullies into Candidates of Ascension as the next reincarnation of Gabriel.

He could feel them. Their fear. Their panic. Their indignance. Their hatred. He could feel each and every one of those emotions from them, emanating like toxic radiation.

The rest of the world might forget what happened, but his bullies all remembered. And now they had one more witness: Him, the perpetrator who did it in the first place.

"…Do I deserve to be bullied?" Flor asked, holding back tears.

“Whu…?” started Regina with unmistakable confusion, only for her to remember her bearings and shout, “FUCK YOU! Don’t act like a victim now, you murderous son of a bitch!”

Flor didn’t want to believe he was capable of murdering his classmates, but the evidence was undeniable.

In fairness, he didn’t even kill the whole class. Just several specific individuals. His bullies. An eye for an eye. Or perhaps a life for an eye.

He looked up, preparing for a finishing blow or an attempt at one as he stood up again, bleeding this time from Regina’s stab wounds she used in self-defense, only to see her hesitate too.

“You’re lying,” she said, trailing off. “I’m one of your bullies?! When did I bully you? Wasn’t I just collateral damage to your other bullies???”

Oh, she read his mind and her attack stopped. Florante didn’t even mean to telepathically talk to her. He finally spoke for real to communicate what he remembered.

“You called me a fetal alcohol syndrome baby in front of the class. That became one of my nicknames and made my bullies laugh at me,” Flor confessed with an image of what happened flashing before his eyes.

“…No, I didn’t. I don’t remember any of this. You must’ve imagined it.” Regina said after a pregnant pause.

Flor searched her feelings and found that she told the truth about her not remembering. “It happened, you just—"

“—No, I didn’t forget, IT NEVER HAPPENED!” she insisted with another mortar-shattering sonic shout attack, but it didn’t affect Florante at all.

She screeched harder, but the sound waves wouldn’t penetrate his bleeding body, which already started to heal. It bounced back to her and pushed her back instead.

They then both felt emotions of worry and panic rise from their nearby prone classmate Isaiah, who flew off the handle himself into a whirlwind of punches at Flor to defend Regina from him.

Florante shrugged off the simultaneous attacks and said, “I’m not lying. It really happened. That’s why you were one of the people I killed, Regina.”

This infuriated Miss Mariano enough to blow both Flor and Isaiah back with her own reverberating aura.

Her halo or corona of power exploded after hearing Galang’s words, as though he said the exact wrong words to her that triggered her true potential.

Regina Mariano became a personified concept or a walking emotion, and that emotion was righteous indignation.

“It’s real? THAT WAS YOUR REASON?! You gave me the DEATH PENALTY for SHOPLIFTING? Nothing you did was JUSTIFIED!”

Florante’s breaths became ragged at the display. He wheezed of guilt. His asthma acted up again. He was reaching his limits.

He read Isaiah Pascual’s mind as he saw him hesitate too. Isaiah wanted to assist Regina in stopping Florante too, but he didn’t want to get in his crush’s way.

“SHUT UP! She doesn’t know about that…!” shouted Isaiah to his former best friend, which made him apologize. “Sorry. My bad, Pascual.”

Galang turned his attention back to Regina in time for her to slap him, her aura the size of a building and in the shape of a geometric cube: In the shape of her Ophanim form.

The slap would’ve crushed anyone or anything else.

Florante could read no thoughts from her now. Just raw emotion. Justified emotion, as far as she was concerned, of being killed for nothing.

Isaiah stopped moving beside him, and for that one instant they felt like the best friends they were before.

By reflex, Flor’s halo resisted Regina’s halo, thus keeping him alive as the already ruined streets disappeared into nothing, and what was once a city block with a shopping mall, gas stations, cars, people, and more turned into the surface of the Moon.

It was a flat desert landscape as far as the eye could see, but it changed in seconds into a valley. Then the Grand Canyon. Then Hell, with volcanic eruptions everywhere.

Florante asked himself aloud, “What am I fighting for?” even though he barely hear himself talk.

Regina answered his rhetorical question with words so loud the whole universe could hear them. “THE HELL DO I KNOW?!”

The rest of her words were thoughts instead. 'If you’re sorry you killed us, stand still so we can kill you!’

Florante was truly sorry. Maybe he should do what she said. He felt her thoughts falter in the end though when she realized the gravity of what she said.

She then told herself, ‘If this guy can kill us, I can kill him. It’s no big deal. It’s self-defense,’ to reassure herself.

Florante considered doing what she told him to do. If he wasn’t even born, he wouldn’t have killed them over something so petty. It made sense.

This was his victims’ second chance at life. He had no right to defend himself, so he better not do so.

However, dully, he could feel the worry from Isaiah grow. Feel his helplessness looking at them destroy one other.

Florante should stop being so selfish and die.

Wait. If he died, there was no guarantee that Regina would turn back human. Could Jennifer help Regina become human once he was gone?

Jenny was forced to turn into her Ophanim form trying to save him earlier from that full-fledged She-Devil Asmodeus. She was left vulnerable.

Jenny had to heal herself first before she could heal Regina, and by then it might be too late for Regina to undo her corruption.

“PLEASE!” was the unheard shout of Pascual to the unseeable nothingness that only Florante noticed.

Galang had to save Mariano now instead of later. He had to be the one to do it too, because Isaiah lacked the power to do so.

The two half-formed angels-to-be hovered above the bottomless canyon they created together, holding each other back. Darkness above. Darkness below. Light in the middle.

They were their own source of light, so they went about things by feeling rather than by sight because their own brightness kept them from knowing what they were looking at.

It was tough for Florante to talk to Regina. The girls of his class avoided him like the plague. The only few people who interacted with him are boys.

He didn’t know how to talk to girls, especially if they were one of his bullies. But he persevered.

“You deserve to be bullied!” was Regina’s stab at the dark upon hearing him call her his bully.

So what was he facing? Pure determination. Regina Mariano was pure determination in human form. Stubborn as he’d always known her. Strong. Compelling. Righteous. Gorgeous. Tomboy.

A concept turned flesh. Miss Mariano always did the right thing. As long as she believed she did so, nothing could stop her.

So that meant Galang was in the wrong, or she believed so. She would only stop if she believed she was in the wrong instead.

So Florante pushed back the haze of emotion with cold, logical thought questioning her actions. “I’m not in the wrong.”

Regina answered back. “Yes. You. Are. Weirdo scum.”

They then went back and forth.

“I’m sorry for what I did. Please stop this.”

“No. You can’t trick me. You’re a demon that needs to be destroyed. You’re evil and deluded. You’re only sorry you got caught…!”

“—No tricks. I give up.”

“HAHA! As if/ You’re only saying that because you don’t want to die.”

“Yes, I don’t want to die.”

“See?”

“Don’t I have the right to not want to die? I don’t want you to die too.”

“Wha, don’t do the crime you if you can’t do the time! Also, stop lying! You don’t want me to die, but you killed me? Isn’t that a contradiction? JUST DIE ALREADY!”

“I’m sorry for killing you. It won’t happen again.”

“It sure as hell won’t because I’m gonna kill you! So die, you selfish—”

“I would if I could, but maybe there’s another way. Why not have both of us survive?”

“Only one of us will. Don’t worry about me. You’ll be the one to go.”

“…If you kill me, you’ll become a monster like me.”

“No, not at all. Heroes kill villains all the time. I’m stronger than you and Pascual, so I won’t give in to temptation. I’ll use my powers for good and stop you from doing evil. I need to stop you to keep you from hurting others. Killing others…”

Another disturbing thought occurred to Florante while Regina remained distracted.

According to acclaimed American satirist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "True terror is when you wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

Florante felt that terror right now. Almost as palpable as the fear and loathing Regina reflected back at him.

***

To Be Continued…

In the 1996 Frasier episode "The Show Where Diane Comes Back", Frasier and Diane reconcile their differences and part on good terms. This chapter has the same tone as that episode.

The first incarnation of "Fantasy of Evolution" in my mind back in the early 2000s involved Gabriel De Angeles (currently Florante Galang) ending up seeing his best friend J.D. (reminiscent of Isaiah Pascual) dying because of the War of Angels and Demons.

Also, yes. The Ophanim/Minion form of Regina Mariano is reminiscent of Ramiel the Geometric Angel from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Fascinating how stories and creations change as you yourself develop into a person and as an author, huh?

Farewell, Abdiel

#fantasy of evolution #angels #demons #asmodeus #evangelion #ramiel

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