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V1 plummeted onto the pulsing terrain of the arena, their arm dislodging with a heavy metallic thud. Their movements were sluggish and labored, and the longer this fight went on, the more they’d be forced to mend themselves over and over; they began to feel hopeless.
Before V1 could dwell on their despair, Gabriel’s greatsword plunged into the flesh right beside their head. They made no move to avoid it.
“Have you abandoned mission, machine!?”A voice from outside V1’s line of sight shouted—a beautiful, crystalline sound that left a lingering resonance.
With fragile strength, V1 lifted themselves, supporting their upper body with their left arm, considering that their right had detached. When they looked up, their gaze fell upon the holy figure hovering not far above them, and after a moment, V1 realized that they weren’t dead yet. It would have been the obvious outcome, but it wasn’t happening. Why was that?
Gabriel planted his feet back onto the ground, sizing up V1. Pathetic, he thought.
“You’re an interesting contraption, I must admit. You possess a strong will, but it is not enough.” Gabriel retrieved his blade by hand, walking over to withdraw it from the ground. He glanced over at the machine, which was still eyeing him without making any attempt to fight back, and showing no sign that it was planning to.
“Go on, make your move, machine. I’ll allow it.” Gabriel’s voice was unnervingly calm but still dripped with his usual arrogance. He was clearly deep in thought, though V1 couldn’t interpret his tone, even with his integrated ability to analyze opponents.
Hesitantly, V1 stood up from the ground, a faint buzzing emanating from something internal. They lacked sufficient fuel to reattach their arm, a fact that gnawed at their synthetic consciousness with frustration. They glanced over at Gabriel, who still was uncharacteristically quiet, actually waiting for them to make a move–to do something.
With that thought pushing them forward, V1 shook off the remnants of their hopelessness. They didn’t hesitate, nor did they expect to survive; but if they were given the chance to refuel and to potentially defeat Gabriel, they would seize it. Without another moment of hesitation, their fist drew back and…
A loud CRACK resonated through the air, breaking the tense silence.
Gabriel had moved with lightning speed, his palm catching the robot’s fist mid-punch. The force of the strike had been strong enough to draw blood from Gabriel’s hand.
“Your kind knows nothing but hunger, yet you lack the capacity to succeed. Pathetic. I stopped your pride with a single hand!” Gabriel scoffed, shaking V1’s fist. “I felt no power in that strike, machine.”
Gabriel released his grip on V1, letting out an amused huff. His gaze moved down to his bleeding palm, and in an attempt to further humiliate the machine, he held his hand out.
“Do you see that? A scratch. Go on, machine.” Gabriel urged, observing as V1 remained motionless. Who would have thought that an object could experience embarrassment? Humiliation? That moment of hesitation in V1’s movements lingered in Gabriel’s mind. He didn’t even realize that the robot had approached him, grabbed his hand, and pressed it against its chest.
When he felt the disgusting heat of the machine, he snapped back to the present situation.
“Ugh… Is this enough to keep your gears turning? Let us finish this battle,” Gabriel said as he pulled his hand away, reluctant to heal his opponent too much. He couldn’t quite understand why he had given the machine a chance to replenish health in the first place.
Before he could dwell on the thought, he felt a bullet strike him–not in his helm, but in the exposed, vulnerable seam of his armor where his shoulder connected to his torso.
His wings flared, lifting him back into the air. That shot pierced through what was left of his pride, especially after allowing his enemy to heal. That loss of pride ignited a surge of rage within him.
Luck, he thought, it was only luck.
A dance of battle, the most intimate of dances.
Gabriel spun in the air, sending Splendor straight towards V1. They might parry it, or they might get hit. Dances are usually rehearsed; the beauty of battle lies in its unpredictability, a constant push and pull. That’s what makes it intimate: you create the routine as it happens.
V1 glided across the sarcous ground, a disgusting squelching sound echoing behind them as they aimed their railgun at Gabriel after hearing the charge signal indicating it was full. Naturally, Gabriel teleported to a different spot the moment they fired the railgun. V1 felt the kickback jerk their arm, but it was nice to have their right arm back in action.
“Pathetic!” Gabriel taunted, lunging towards V1 in a flash of gold.
V1 failed to parry the attack, and a sharp stinging pain–or the mechanical equivalent–echoed through its chassis as Gabriel’s blade sheared off a part of its wing plating. Fuel levels were critically low.
They needed to get closer to Gabriel.
In an attempt to refuel, V1 slid beneath Gabriel’s follow-up strike and tossed a coin into the air. With mechanical precision, V1 fired its revolver. The bullet struck the coin, ricocheting perfectly into Gabriel’s unarmored thigh, and from the wound, blood erupted.
“Fuck-!” Gabriel gritted out.
V1 dashed into the spray of crimson liquid. The blood washed over their porous armor plating, sealing any lacerations, including the damage to their wing.
Gabriel kicked at V1’s head, his voice betraying his fury. “You shall not touch me, filth!”
V1 stumbled backwards, but was replenished enough to move with the same haste they normally exhibited in battle.
Even as Gabriel swiftly moved and flew throughout the arena, striking V1 down after being shot, he couldn't shake the image of V1's hesitation before using the blood on his hand earlier. He recalled the embarrassment and hopelessness that V1 seemed to feel—a mere object experiencing such emotions. It was almost laughable. Almost.
Gabriel moved with careful precision, dodging almost every attack–whether it was a bullet or a parry against his own strikes.
Finally, V1 was running low on fuel. The battle was taking longer than intended, and V1 just couldn’t get a parry. Its fuel wasn’t dangerously low, but it was close.
V1’s movements became more sluggish, and their visuals became more disoriented, blurring with most movement. They needed blood, and they needed it urgently. And at that very moment, Gabriel's blade pierced through their torso, damaging internal functions and plating, pinning them to the ground amid the meat and sinew. Instead of retrieving Splendor immediately, Gabriel landed heavily on the ground, creating a loud stomp.
The sight of V1, too weak to even pull a blade from its body, was repulsive. It made Gabriel’s stomach churn and caused his heart to race.
What in the Heavenly Father’s name was wrong with him?
Gabriel scoffed as he focused back on the current situation.
V1 lay there, barely clinging to “life”, but not completely gone. They couldn’t comprehend why they hadn’t been slaughtered yet. They didn’t understand. It made no sense to it.
With the little power they had left, V1 turned their head to observe Gabriel through their lens. He seemed to be deep in thought once more, and, just like the last time, V1 found themselves unable to understand what he could be thinking.
“Disgusting. A vile perversion of God’s design.” Gabriel stood still, motionless. V1 yanked at the blade’s hilt once more.
“Save your power,” Gabriel said, his voice decrescendoing. “You are but a parasite out of fuel.”
V1 appeared so helpless. V1 struggled like a human might, but it wasn't truly human. It was both enticing and repulsive. It was disgusting. It was vile. It filled him with rage. It made every fiber of his being so unbearably hot. It was infuriating.
Gabriel approached with long strides, his gaze fixed firmly on V1. How could something so lifeless and metallic provoke such frustration?
"I should twist the hilt. I should end you." Gabriel moved to grip the sword, tightening his hold. This made V1 attempt to sit up, but of course, it failed, pinned down by the blade.
Gabriel stared down at V1 for a moment longer—helpless, injured, and vulnerable—before leaning his weight onto his greatsword, driving the blade deeper.
“So much fury,” he began, “such endless slaughter… all wrapped in a shell that shatters at my blade.” His voice dropped to a near whisper.
V1 lay there, its chassis torn and its drive nearly extinguished. In a desperate attempt, it pulled out its piercer revolver, only for Gabriel to stomp down on its arm.
“You just can’t help yourself, can you? Here I have you pinned down, and you still want to push your luck.” Gabriel clicked his tongue as he pressed his foot down harder. Perhaps he did it because he wanted V1 dead, or maybe he was just trying to convince himself. Either way, stomping wasn’t an effective way to achieve that goal.
“I am the Righteous Hand of the Father!” Gabriel suddenly exclaimed in an unexpected outburst. “You are no better than I!”
“Why can't I pull the blade out? Look at me, you disgusting machine! You've reduced me to...ugh!” Gabriel kicked at V1's arm, straightening his posture once more, the blade still lodged in V1's torso. “You are just a parasite! You're nothing but steel and stolen fuel! But look at me; see how I cannot bring myself to end you! You’re a plague to me! Tell me why your sickness has spread from my eyes into my hands!”
His outburst was met with silence; of course, that’s if you don’t count the whirring of V1’s temperature regulator.
"You enjoy this, don't you? You take pleasure in making a fool of me." Gabriel scoffed.
Not long after completely releasing his grip on the sword’s hilt, Gabriel knelt beside V1, using one arm to pin its wrist to prevent it from harming him. V1 looked weak, with a blade lodged in its chest, barely functioning, and likely awaiting death. Yet, to Gabriel, V1 looked perfect.
“I can feel the heat radiating off your armor. It’s disgusting. Intoxicating.” Gabriel raised his other hand to V1’s head, his gauntleted fingers curling around the sides of the machine’s face.
After some time, Gabriel pulled his hand away from the head of V1, suddenly aware of what he was doing. He let out a scoff, this one softer than the last. He reached for Splendor and withdrew the sword from V1’s chassis with a grating sound, clearly revealing the gaping hole in its chest.
The lightweight layers of V1’s armor peeled outward like flower petals, exposing the machine's raw, layered anatomy. Somehow, it was still alive, albeit barely. Whatever remained inside V1 was clearly struggling, emitting an uneven, rattling hum.
Gabriel’s gaze is fixed on the gaping, smoking wound he has created in V1’s chest, and he cannot describe the overwhelming surge of heat that rushes through his veins. It isn’t the heat of battle; it is something heavy and suffocating.
His posture slumps as he leans over V1, who has yet to make any attempt to fight back against Gabriel.
It’s beautiful—infuriatingly beautiful. Gabriel wishes he could think of anything but its beauty.
“Look at you,” Gabriel said, drawing a long, shuddering breath. His voice was nothing more than a faint murmur. “I can see the very pulse of your creation.”
V1 watched Gabriel’s body language from where they lay, feeling damaged and unbearably weak. Gabriel appeared… calmer. It was strange. Just earlier, Gabriel had been yelling at V1 about concepts that V1 struggled to fully understand or simply didn’t find useful to consider. Now, however, all that anger had been replaced by something much gentler.
“How… frustrating. The council demands your ruin. My fading light craves your blood. Yet, my flesh—my wretched, treacherous flesh—demands this.” Gabriel leaned back on his haunches, his hands resting on his knees. Even with its arm now able to move, V1 remained still. Perhaps Gabriel had somehow beaten all the fight out of the machine.
The revelation struck Gabriel with overwhelming force: before him lay the great terror of hell, split open like a sacrificial lamb, utterly devoid of the strength to lift even a single limb. It was a grotesque vision, a nameless rot that stirred something deep within him, an unsettling acceptance he couldn't fully deny.
Tenderly, Gabriel reached out to explore the puncture, tracing the jagged edges of the blue metal that framed the gaping hole with the gentlest of touches. As he spoke, his voice softened, “It’s like a crown embracing your core—a crown I shaped with my own steel.”
He shuddered at the fact.
Slowly, his hand delved deeper into V1, probing past the crown of his destruction. The first thing Gabriel noticed was the intense heat emanating from the machine. How fragile had this supreme weapon become? First, it abandoned its grand design, and now its very defenses were buckling beneath him. The frantic whine of its cooling systems felt entirely inadequate for the sudden, suffocating heat gathering between them. As his hand explored, his gauntleted finger hooked underneath a cluster of blue “nerves,” and with a deliberate tilt of his hand, he pulled upward.
A violent tremor rippled through V1’s chassis as Gabriel pulled the wires taut, sending a sudden, intoxicating rush of heat straight to its core. Its internal fans whined to a desperate pitch, straining under the pressure, unable to vent the agonizingly sweet temperature climbing inside its every plate.
Gabriel felt the sudden surge of heat radiating from V1’s open hull, sending a wave of warmth straight down his own spine.
The air was thick with the sharp, tantalizing scent of ozone, mingling with the oppressive warmth of overstrained systems.
A low, frustrated groan rattled deep within Gabriel’s chest as the sheer, suffocating weight of his own arousal fully set in. It was an agonizing, unbearable torment–the way that profane machine made him feel. A heavy, throbbing heat flooded his veins, thickening beneath his armored plates until his own regalia felt like a suffocating vice against his suddenly engorged, aching flesh.
That intoxicating pull of V1 was no longer a temptation; it was a wildfire, igniting a dark, swollen desire that clawed at Gabriel’s throat and made his thighs tremble where he knelt. It was a carnal hunger his body absolutely refused to ignore for another second.
Gabriel’s gaze never left V1’s as he deliberately reasserted his presence. With a slow, grinding friction, he slid his knees forward, hoisting his frame over V1’s body until he found himself straddling its hips. As he sank his weight firmly onto V1, his lower plates pressed hard against the machine, capturing nearly every frantic vibration of V1’s engine.
“You are a walking pestilence…” Gabriel rasped, the words hitching in his throat. His voice was completely stripped of its holy majesty and reduced to a breathy purr. “I want to break you… I want to rip your chassis apart piece by piece, but God help me–” a trembling shudder ripped down his spine, forcing a low whimper to escape from Gabriel’s throat, his hips grinding heavily against V1’s narrow flank, his lower plates strained against his own arousal. He never finished that sentence.
V1 lay entirely unraveled on the fleshy ground–a machine forged for war, reduced to a vessel of pleasure. Even pinned beneath the bulk of Gabriel’s armor, and even as its exposed nerves and weeping wires were curled into and ruthlessly pulled, V1 couldn’t break its fixation. Every agonizingly slow tug of Gabriel’s fingers forced V1’s mechanical spine to arch violently into the touch, but it remained hyper-focused on the dark dried smudge of the archangel’s blood from earlier, teasingly out of reach.
V1’s hand twitched uselessly against the gory floor, its fingers clawing into itself in a desperate, whimpering spasm of starvation. Above it, Gabriel roughly clenched a tight bundle of internal cables, pulling them taut. In response, V1’s engine let out a pathetic, high-pitched whine. The vibration nearly rocked its entire frame simply from how hard the engine was struggling to keep the dying machine alive.
“Does it hurt to stare at it, machine?” Gabriel panted out, his words fracturing as his hips drove down in a blind, desperate rhythm against V1’s smooth, pinned thigh, the throbbing weight beneath his armor pressed hard against the machine’s frame. “To see… the very fluid that could save your failing, pathetic body?” A ragged huff broke from underneath his helm, his lower plates sliding flush against V1’s flank. “What a miserable, defective joke you truly are.”
Gabriel let out a low, shuddering growl, his hips pausing their desperate grind just long enough for him to make a choice. With a flick of his wrist, his armored gauntlet cut into thin flesh exposed at the seam of his palm. The reaction was instantaneous–thick, vibrant crimson welled from the wound, heavy droplets splattering onto the cold blue plating of V1’s chassis.
He offered no mercy in the gesture, pinning V1’s head firmly against the ground, jamming his bleeding arm over the machine’s desperate plating. The hot fluid struck the porous armor and vanished a heartbeat later, pulled into the dark blue metal as V1’s systems automatically drank in the offering.
“Drink it, parasite,” Gabriel rasped, his voice a thick, ruined whisper right against V1’s face as his hips rolled against V1’s thigh, unable to keep still for another second. “Suck the very life from my veins, leech. Gorge yourself on my divinity until your engine screams.”
Every vibration and hum of V1’s overdriven engine hammered directly into Gabriel’s length through armor.
He leaned down further, pressing his chest flush against V1’s open hull. His gauntleted hand still held the machine’s head down, and his arm still dripped his blood.
Gabriel watched the fluid pool in the grooves of the blue plating, his breath catching in his own throat. The sight of his own blood staining the machine–and V1 eagerly devouring it–was a beautiful, blasphemous torment.
“You are horrible, machine,” Gabriel mumbled, a low, shuddering whimper escaping his throat as his hips rolled forward in a heavy, desperate tilt, his movements much more sluggish compared to earlier.
The ruthless friction of V1’s smooth plating coaxed Gabriel’s inevitable release with agonizing precision. A desperate, weeping sound muffled right against V1’s hot exterior. Gabriel could feel it now: the thick, unyielding tension coiled deep in his veins, transforming into a heavy, pulsing heat beneath his armor that threatened to shatter his very being.
“You’re foul,” he whispered, his voice fracturing. His breath fogged the interior of his helmet in uneven, rapid bursts, hot and trapped.
Seeking to crush the sensation, Gabriel drove his weight down harder, burying his pelvis flush against V1’s flank. He barely registered the crushing grip V1’s hand had on his thighs, anchoring him securely and forcing his body to take the full, unfiltered brunt of the machine’s internal tremors.
Gabriel’s hands flattened against V1’s newly repaired chassis, his fingers clawing uselessly against the metal as his hips rolled in a final, blind, messy tilt.
A sharp, breathless gasp caught in Gabriel’s throat as the coil inside him finally snapped. His chin dropped to his chest, his hips locking in a final, deep, trembling press against the machine. A heavy, blinding wave of heat surged beneath his armor, leaving him spent against V1’s unyielding form.
Slowly, the fog cleared from his mind, replaced by the crushing weight of reality. He had not just succumbed to temptation; he had completely unraveled on top of a mindless, blood-fueled appliance. The Judge of Hell, the Right Hand of the Father, had just spilled his holy essence against a pile of scrap metal he was explicitly commanded to destroy.
A sudden, violent wave of shame seized his chest, tightening until it choked him. It wasn’t just anger; it was a profound, suffocating humiliation that demanded immediate, absolute erasure.
With a harsh, blinding flash of holy light, Justice and Splendor materialized directly into his white-knuckled grip. He didn’t pull back. He didn’t give the machine time to remember its original purpose. Driven by frantic desperation and fury, Gabriel drove the blades downward in a single, fluid strike. The holy steel sheared through the machine's neck joint with a clean precision.
Sparks erupted in a shower, casting harsh shadows across the carnage of the arena before fading into dimness once more.
V1's optic lens flickered once and then went completely dark. The internal tremors of its chassis ceased instantly, leaving the room in a heavy, echoing silence.
Gabriel slowly rose to his feet, his limbs still vibrating with a mix of residual heat and adrenaline. He stared down at the decapitated, silent husk of scrap metal at his feet. The deed was done. The transgression was erased.
Gabriel cleared his throat in the now-empty room and adjusted his armor with a stiff, embarrassed jerk.