The Guardian Angel

Narrative

      In Guardian Angel: Darkness Falls, Gabriella is taking on increasingly powerful demons with her powers.   Her boss Alestor, the demon who had been hiding out as a human for twenty years running his pizza parlor, is acting as her mentor to train her.  Gabriella has begun skipping classes and falling behind in school to dedicate herself to stopping demonic conquest.  

      Gabriella has begun to struggle immensely with her bipolar disorder and suffer from great social anxiety due to her ability to always sense the emotions of everyone around her and the fear of the demon battle she has become entrenched in.  She goes to a psychiatrist who prescribes her benzodiazepines to help her cope with the anxiety.  The medication helps at first, but due to the immense anxiety she constantly feels she begins to take more and more of the medication to help her cope but quickly becomes dependent on the medication and develops a rather serious addiction.  Seeing his best friend struggling with this addiction, Raphael becomes worried and decides to talk to her about it and starts trying to help her quit.  The help is going well, and Gabriella realizes that she is in love with Raphael.  She tells him, and he returns her feelings.  

      They plan a romantic first date, and all is going well until Asmodeus shows up, meeting Gabriella face-to-face for the first time.  He tries to kill her, but Raphael leaps in front and takes the blow himself.  Gabriella turns invisible, and holds Raphael as he bleeds out.  Asmodeus can no longer see her, and so he leaves. Gabriella is left kneeling, heart broken, at the side of Raphael’s lifeless body and begins to weep in a confusing mix of anger, sadness, and a deep hatred for Asmodeus and all demons.  She vows to kill Asmodeus and all of his minions.  Alestor reveals that the origin of her powers is from Asmodeus’ powers that blasted a portal to earth.

      Raphael’s death sends Gabriella suddenly spiraling into a deep depression as she grieves the loss of her best friend.  Having lost the will to go on except for her need for vengeance, Gabriella stops taking her bipolar and anxiety medications and stops going to see her therapist refusing to talk about what has happened.  She then begins to isolate herself from the outside world, drops out of college, and dodges every call she gets, talking to no one that she doesn’t have to. Alestor has become quite attached to the human race and has formed a kind of father-daughter relationship with Gabriella.  Seeing that she is in a deep depression over the loss of Raphael, and is attempting to bottle up and contain her emotions, Alestor does his best to try and support her.  

    Gabriella, struggling with contempt, tries to remind herself that she has always used her powers to fight and help others for the greater good, never hesitating to show mercy when she could and always making sure to avoid any collateral damage and unnecessary harm.  

      Unfortunately, she becomes so focused on her hatred towards Asmodeus for killing Raphael that she is able to think of nothing other than her burning desire for vengeance.  Her hatred becomes so strong that she is unable to contain her emotions and spirals out of control.  With nothing on her mind but vengeance, she begins to run down and slaughter every demon she can find, her ideals and the ‘greater good’ be damned.  As she lashes out in a rampage of rage annihilates nearly all of the demons in the city as well as anyone who got in her way, human or not, caring nothing for collateral damage.  Asmodeus meets her in the wreckage, and she fights him furiously, hardly caring if she is wounded or dies as long as Asmodeus dies first.  She succeeds, her powers of light overwhelming Asmodeus.  

      Gabriella is left feeling hollow and dead inside, and she doesn’t know what to do next, her grief still strong as ever.  She keeps trying to find and kill every last demon in the city, training and searching tirelessly.  Alestor becomes very concerned, and confronts her after a demon-hunt about what she has become, reminding her that Raphael would not have wanted this for her.  As the smoke clears and the dust settles, she drops to her knees, covered in blood, mortified by what she had done and the harm she had actually caused.  Her enemies defeated and her ideals compromised, she decides to swear off using her powers.            Alestor comforts her by telling her there is hope for her always, and recounts how he too was once crazed and murderous, but that he changed when he found his true passion for artisanal pizza.  

     Gabriella returns to her regular therapy and begins taking her medication again, now taking Benzodiazepine only when she needs to.  Scarred by the trauma and needing to move on, Gabriella realizes her sound cloud has recently begun to boom in popularity and decides to pursue her possible music career.  

    Instead of training to kill, she now makes music to channel her grief and trauma and spread the message of compassion.  Her fan base grows, and she begins to recover, and feel fulfilled.  Eventually, she is able to perform at a small club, and finally experiences the joy and admiration of others that she has always longed for.  She dedicates her first song to Raphael.