DEAD MAN'S APPRENTICE
AUTHOR: Zpan Sven
E-MAIL: Zpan(underscore)Sven(at)hotmail(dot)com or zpan(dot)sven(at)gmail(dot)com
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Saint Seiya, only the characters of my creation, this story, and the alterations I have made to the characters, histories, ect. No profit is being made from this; this is being written solely for the enjoyment of myself and others whom like to indulge in the scenario of 'what if?'.
AUTHOR' NOTES: One of my infamous 'What If?' fanfics, where I take some of my ideas, an inserted character or two, the plot of an anime and throw them in the blender set on puree just to see what happens. Currently a one-shot but if I get enough feedback, I'll expand on it.
"Some believe it is the ability to speak that separates us from the animals…"
'I think, there for I am…'
:Our minds are as one…:
SUMMARY: Aioros is dead, a literal ghost, but he's not given up. He will protect his Goddess...he just had to find some help to do it in the form of a child who could actually see him. What's this? A dead man taking an apprentice?
RATING: T (will go up if continued)
WARNINGS: Mentions of violence, the occasional swear word.
GENRE: Action & Adventure/Drama/Supernatural/Humor
ARCHIVE: FanFiction(dot)Net, FicWad(dot)Com, Zpan Sven's Works, others please ask
Just because he was dead did not mean Aioros was going to give up, not when the Goddess needed him. Unfortunately, because Saga was now masquerading as Pope Shion and declared the Sagittarius Saint a traitor, the only Saint he could approach in this new ghostly form would send him straight to Hell. Of course, Aioros suspected the young Cancer Saint would probably have done so irregardless; thanks to the training the boy had undergone to traverse the boundaries between the living and the dead he was hardly what many would consider sane, even for a Saint. Maybe if the previous Cancer Saint had actually been sane too, the training wouldn't have had such an impact and it probably would have stopped that disturbing tradition the boy had taken up of making masks out of the faces he killed like his late Master...
Wandering around the Kido mansion wasn't much better, not by far. He was the ghost of a thirteen-year-old Greek.
In Japan.
And he only spoke Greek, English, some French and Spanish. He knew not a single word of Japanese.
At all.
He did encounter other ghosts in his wanderings. Most only spoke Japanese, but some spoke enough English for them to actually have an informative conversation about his new state of being. It was from them he learned how few people could truly see and hear the spirits of the dead and not see mere flickers of them. Of those people, an even rarer few were actually able to channel the ghost in a voluntary possession, acting as an intermediary between the living and the dead.
Heartened by the existence of these people, he began searching for a potential medium. However, most he found were out and out frauds, scamming people who were desperate to contact their dead loved ones. Those he found with actual ligament abilities spoke very little to no English.
Standing at the side of the crib of his infant Goddess, he sighed glumly. So far she had been the only one to see and hear him, but that seemed to be changing as her power grew dormant to hide herself away from Hades's agents.
He couldn't protect her like this. As he was now, Aioros had no real power or strength – he was a collection of Cosmos with a consciousness but nothing more and anything he could do was limited greatly. One weak hit that a Bronze Saint could shake off he was all he was capable of at the moment along with pushing or throwing around a few random objects. It was beyond frustrating to be forced into the role of a mere spectator...
The days seemed to blend together for Aioros as he followed the young Goddess around through her daily routine. As an infant, she didn't really have an active schedule. Restless after a couple weeks, Aioros began to wander around again, this time exploring every inch of his Goddess's new surroundings in great detail. Being dead, he no longer needed to eat or sleep; as a result he had extensively mapped the interior and exterior of the mansion, along with the vast grounds of the Kido estate in about two weeks.
In doing so, he learned the weaknesses of the Estate's security and found numerous hidey-holes that would attract the interest of curious children. These he kept in mind, just in case Saga's people found out about her before she Awakened to her abilities while he lacked his physical body; he would be able to act as a guide, he was certain.
Afterward, for the first time since his futile search for a medium, he began to venture away from the Kido estates, learning about the area around it. Sometimes he'd drift aimlessly; one such time, he found himself in what he learned was called a museum, ending up quite ironically in an exhibit dedicated to Ancient Greece. The familiar artifacts, so like what could be found in his and the Goddess's true home of Sanctuary made him immensely home-sick.
It made him internally curse and rage against Saga; because of his greedy ambitions, Aioros was reduced to be a wandering spirit and the young Goddess had been driven from her home and into a dangerous world without protection from her loyal Saints. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair. There was a Holy War coming in only a few short years!
Tearing his eyes away from a painting of his Goddess, he found his gaze meeting a set of eerily familiar green eyes. For all of a moment he thought it was Aiolia until he was able to process the rest of the child's appearance – curly light brown hair the same shade his had been, an exotic mingling of Grecian and Asian facial features, and the fact the small child was dressed in feminine garb, the white and pink of her floral dress accenting her naturally tanned Grecian skin.
And she was looking right at him.
Aioros had become somewhat used to people looking through him, but this little girl who was only a couple years older then his Goddess, was looking at him as though she could see him quite clearly. If his heart was still beating, he was certain that the organ would be beating in his chest at light-speed.
Numerous thoughts raced through him, the top two being that she could really see him while the other revolved around why she looked so much like Aiolia and himself. The resemblance was eerie, but then again he knew next to nothing about the origins of his parents' families save they were Greek by nationality; the only thing he knew about his father was that the man had once been a Saint trainee who had ended up becoming a Guard. The man had died shortly after Aiolia's conception and their mother had told them that they looked almost identical to their father.
But the odds! The sheer odds!
The elderly Japanese man who held the little girl's hand called what Aioros assumed was her name – Yumi – which made her finally look away from the ghost of the Sagittarius Saint and up at the elderly man. When Aioros saw them leaving, panic raced through him. No, no, no, he couldn't lose this possible connection to his family and the world of the living!
And that was how he ended up following them home. It was there he discovered that the elderly man – the grandfather, it turned out – had married a Greek woman in his younger years. The woman in question in the various photos looked like little Yumi, like Aiolia and himself. Of course, then he met the Grandmother's ghost, who still lingered well over two decades after her death. It was from her he found the answers to many of his questions, such as that she once had a young nephew who he greatly looked like that had vanished a long time ago, a boy who had the same name of his father.
He also found that Yumi wasn't just being instructed in the Goddess's own language by the ghost of her grandmother, but that the girl was also a Sagittarius. And the tiny child had a remarkable Cosmos lying dormant under the surface, just waiting to be tapped and harnessed.
That was when he was struck by the idea for his bold plan. There had never been a female Gold Saint before. No Saint had ever been trained by a ghost either, not even the Cancer Saint.
And Aioros? He intended for Yumi to be the first on both counts.