A/N: Weird AU-esque idea I had a long time ago that I had finally written down. Follows the idea that the Mashin are just the repurposed souls of previous Magic Knights because Cephiro must always have its protectors.

Like most things, it started slowly.

Fuu had wondered about it for some time, as she had for most aspects of Cephiran culture.

In fact, in her later years, she was revered as one of the most knowledgable people on Cephiro, having written many books on the policies and history of her adopted land, along with having transcribed many of the legends of the land.

Including the legend she lived.

Anyway.

She had wondered about it for some time and finally took her quandary, as she usually did, to her mentor, Guru Clef.

"Guru? What do Cephirans believe happens to them after they die?"

He looked at her with confusion, "What do you mean?"

"Well," Fuu paused, carefully thinking over her question, "on Earth, many cultures believe in an afterlife and the concept that each body contains a "soul". This "soul" is a similar to how you view the strength of heart here, as it is one of the most powerful forces on the planet,"

The Guru nodded, absorbing this new information and encouraging her to continue.

"So I was wondering; what do Cephirans believe?"

The Guru paused, glancing around the garden they occupied. Fuu had grown accustomed to his method of answering, usually with metaphors or slight misdirection, as most wise figures do.

"The best way I can think to explain it, my dear friend, is to say we return to the land." The Guru finally answered, gazing at the sky.

"But Clef, I've never seen a funeral here. What do you do with your dead?" She asked. She and her friends had spent many centuries here. Their families on earth had long since passed, their grandchildren had grandchildren, it is the way it goes. But never, in all her time here, had she seen a Cephiran funeral or even a Cephiran death.

"When our Princess died, do you remember what happened? That bright brilliant light that flashed around her?" he asked.

She nodded. Centuries later and it was still difficult to discuss the circumstances of her and her friends arrival to this land.

"What you were seeing, was her Will becoming eternally apart of Cephiro. Even as the Pillar, with her Will already so entwined with this country, she, like every creature here, returned to it. Our bodies disappear but our Will remains."

Fuu let the information settle in her mind.

"And the Magic Knights? What of them?"

The Guru chuckled quietly, "Honestly, I do not know. Those stories, if there were any, are lost to us. I suppose only the Knights know."

They did not discuss it again.

Soon, Fuu started to notice feathers everywhere she went.

Usually trailing after her.

One morning, she awoke to find, not one pair, but two pairs of oddly familiar green wings jutting from her back.

In a panic, she rushed from her room to find Hikaru and Umi, hoping that maybe she wasn't alone in her transformation.

She wasn't.

From Umi's shoulders jutted a pair of large, leathery wings, simliar to those of a bat's.

And Hikaru…well Hikaru had a tail.

A bright red, busy tail.

From there, they rushed to find Guru Clef.

He examined their new appendages as they stretched and experimented with them before finally speaking.

"Fascinating."

"Don't just say 'fascinating,' you ancient midget! What's happened to us?" Umi yelled at him, having grown beyond tired of his avoidance of their questions.

Hikaru, being Hikaru, seemed unbothered by her new growth, and had fun running in circles, trying to catch it.

Fuu took to stretching her wings out and wrapping them around her so that she may examine their feathers more carefully.

"Well to be perfectly frank, you boisterous woman, I don't know what's happened to you." The Guru yelled back.

They continued their bickering for quite some time before Fuu finally spoke, loudly and clearly, "I have a theory."

Both of them paused their arguments and Hikaru looked up from her tail.

"We're becoming the Mashin."

"What?" Umi laughed, not because she thought her friend's theory was improbable, but because something about the idea frightened her.

"The Guru and I have discussed Cephiran deaths as of late, and we realized that there was no tale or any sort of account as to what became of the Magic Knights, those saviors from another world, upon their deaths. Granted, there was very little known of the Knights until we came, but the idea of each group of Knights becoming the next Mashins seems fairly probable." Fuu rationalized, simultaneously accustoming herself to the new muscle groups in her wings.

"But we abolished the Pillar System!" Umi retorted, in a bit of a panic, "And the Mashins left with Mokona; we have no need for new ones!"

"I don't think we'll act like that. I think we are to defend this land and those who love it as we did in these new forms. We are not of Cephiro, Umi, you know that. To expect to die as a Cephiran is…well I hate to seem cruel, but it's foolish at best." Fuu stated, almost disturbingly calm.

"To exist for forever? That's our fate? How can you be so calm about this?" Umi yelled, well beyond hysterical.

"Well the fact that we've even begun these transformations means that–"

"We're dying." Hikaru said suddenly, having been silent through out this discussion.

Fuu sighed sadly, "I'm afraid so."

Umi, from the shock of this, collapsed into a chair and did not move for some time.

Hikaru and Fuu left her there, not knowing what to say or do to ease her mind to the idea.

None of them knew how long they had.

But they made of the most of it.

Fuu looked at it as sort of the next step in her afterlife.

Cerphiro, she often thought, was very similar to the Christian idea of Heaven; every day was perfect, you were surrounded by people who loved you, you got to live a life of happiness, safety, and peace. So what comes after that?

Admittedly, she never thought her After-Afterlife would be the rest of eternity as a giant, green, four-winged bird, but she doubted very much that anyone could accurately guess what the After-Afterlife had in store.

As it turned out, they had two more years before the transformation was complete.

And to this day, the Mashin of Cephiro continue to guard their beloved home.