"I wish I had an angel to do my bidding. It's like having an intern." –Viridi to Pit and Palutena, in Chapter 11: Viridi, the Goddess of Nature

Dark Pit didn't think anteaters could be so bloodthirsty. His mission down to the Overworld had notified him of otherwise.

He dodged to the side before the creature's snout had caught up to him. It wasn't exactly an anteater, actually; it just looked and acted like one. It had a long snout that constantly pointed to the ground whenever it fed. Seemingly harmless at first, it was vicious when provoked. It wielded its own long snout like a whip, using it for the offensive towards its enemies. An unassuming creature at first, it pounced towards its enemies in an offensive fashion with its panther-like muscles; lean and tense under its tough skin.

Dark Pit skid to the side, eyeing the creature in surprise. Yes, when it came to this monster, there was a lot more than what met the eye. He wasn't as if he had meant to provoke the thing; there was a simmering danger beneath its peaceful gaze; a soul that unintentionally destroyed all that it touched. Lean muscles beneath a firm, black coat, it was conversely beautiful once you saw beneath all of its fierce glory. Dark Pit was almost sad that he had to kill it soon.

Almost.

Okay, so it wasn't like he went around picking fights with random jungle creatures for fun. As a matter of fact, he had learned to respect the many species of the Overworld. There was an aspect of glorious life to everything that breathed, and that applied to the creatures of the Overworld as much as Skyworld in Dark Pit's mind.

But on the flipside, this wasn't any normal anteater-panther hybrid. It fed on the life force of the plant life of the jungle, specifically its trees. And already the jungle was suffering, Dark Pit reflected, standing in a circle of dead grass and leaves as a result of the hybrid's power.

The creature roared at him, his snout widening unnaturally, its mouth stretching to twice its size of its head before reverting back to normal. Dark Pit clenched his tiger claws and stared at the thing head on, caught in the middle of his hesitation on whether he should attack it first or let it attack him. The latter would, of course, put him on the defensive, something that Dark Pit especially disliked. Before he could make a decision, however, a sharp, belittling voice rang through his mind and broke his concentration.

"Buck up and FIGHT, you lazy brat!" Viridi's voice startled him like no other, and he opened his mouth for a comeback, before the anteater hybrid took its chance to attack him.

Dark Pit was on the ground, the wind knocked out of him and his hands pinned to his sides. "I was thinking!" Dark Pit roared at Viridi as he thought of a way to get out of his predicament.

"Well, stop thinking, and just REACT for once!" Viridi fired back. Dark Pit desperately searched his mind for a solution while his limbs were held down by the monster's weight. Taking Viridi's advice, for once, he reeled back, just as the creature was coming in to chomp on his neck, and reacted, headbutting it hard.

Dark Pit stumbled back, his heart racing, but otherwise free. "You could've gotten me KILLED!" Dark Pit shouted, annoyed.

"Ah, quit your whining," she replied. "I saved your sorry ass, didn't I?"

Dark Pit muttered something rather unsavory before rushing at the creature. He activated his Bumblebee Power, attacking the creature before it could react against him. He surged around the creature, a flurry of attacks directed at its face, body and haunches lightning-fast before the Power ran out.

"Dark Pit, look out!" Viridi warned, and Dark Pit whipped around just as its long anteater-like snout got a hold of him. He was whacked on the head and was sent sprawling, getting a taste of his own medicine as the beast stalked towards him.

"Idiot!" yelled Viridi, as Dark Pit rubbed his head in pain.

"Says you!" Dark Pit spat, trying to get the creature to stop wobbling in his distorted vision. "This is harder than it looks!"

The creature lunged again, and Dark Pit sliced at its flank once more, sending it into the trees to his left. He stumbled to his feet and shook himself off, rushing towards the hybrid while it was down.

"Yeah, right!" Viridi said. "If you'd just remember what I told you during your training—"

Dark Pit paid no attention to her. The fight between it and the creature drove him to focus once more, adrenaline blocking out everything that didn't have to do with the battle at hand.

The hybrid roared again, and attacked Dark Pit with something other than its snout—its claws. Dark Pit was knocked to the ground from his fighting stance and flipped to the ground. Meanwhile Viridi was still shouting in his ears—

"—got to keep your distance! You're too offensive—I told you this before! Offense never works when your enemy is stronger than you!"

"Don't you know how to be quiet?" Dark Pit growled.

The hybrid pounced over to Dark Pit's fallen figure, and Dark Pit did a sweep kick. He sent the creature to the ground while sprouting up off of it himself, and braced himself for another one of Viridi's enlightening commentaries.

To his surprise, none actually came. Dark Pit stepped towards the creature, buckling down at last. He was through playing games. It was late, and he was tired of getting beat up by this life-sucking creature.

The hybrid hissed at him, and rushed towards the angel with menace. Dark Pit could see that the creature was through with this fight as well. But he knew that there was only one way that this was going to end, and he knew that he wasn't going to be the one going down. Dark Pit braced himself to be on the defensive at last, and sidestepped the rushing creature deftly. It ran past him in confusion, snorting in annoyance like a bull before it came in to focus on him once more.

He took his chance at last. He activated his Super Speed Power and dashed. Dark Pit met it with his claws outstretched, and the impact of his Power and the force of his Tiger Claws sent the creature sprawling up into the air. Stopping himself at the base of a tree before he lost control and ran face first into it, he spun around just in time to watch the creature land on the ground with a loud thud. He made his way towards the fallen figure cautiously.

"I think it's dead," Viridi's voice broke through once more.

Dark Pit looked at it carefully. Something about the way it didn't move told him that it probably was.

"It is," Dark Pit said, and he put his claws away. "Well? How did I do?"

"I think I'll give you an 'E' for 'Exceptional'," Viridi replied. "Your overuse of Powers made it seem like you were just lazy and impatient."

"Thanks, Viridi," Dark Pit said, rolling his eyes. "You're too kind."

"I'll praise you when you actually deserve it! There are too many problems in your fighting right now for me to be praising you."

"It's not like I had to go down to the Overworld even when I've gone to bed to defeat your little problem," Dark Pit retaliated. "All I'm asking for is a little appreciation."

There was a pause.

"Whatever," Viridi said. Dark Pit supposed he couldn't push his luck too far. "Besides," she said, smirking. "It's not like you have a choice in the matter."

Dark Pit resolutely decided not to reply. The matter in which he had come to Viridi's service was still a bitter memory in his mind. He took to the jungle's center, preferring to walk off his anger by the light of the full moon while searching the grounds for more threatening monsters to take care of.

"And now that's over and done with," Viridi said, in a slightly more superior tone than before (if that was at all even possible), "But you have to remember, Dark Pit, you've got to learn how to duck, or else your enemy is going to take advantage of you much quicker that that!"

"Say, you know what I think we should do next time?" Dark Pit said loudly, pushing his way through the thick over growth of the jungle. Viridi was really pushing him to the limit this time. It was time she knew what was up, or not at all.

"What?"

"I think YOU should go down there and protect your sorry-ass jungle sometime, and not me! Oh, and better yet, maybe I could shout insults and misdirections in YOUR ear while you're in the middle of fighting!"

Viridi sniffed. "That would be unorthodox. Only angels go down and keep the peace, not gods."

"Oh yeah? Well, I don't believe you," Dark Pit countered. He was making his way down a deep ravine right about now, plants snagging at his toes. Finally he came to the bottom, his feet wet and dirty from the thick jungle plant life.

"There's just too much going on for us up here. There's no way we'd be able to handle everything ourselves." Viridi replied with a superior tone. "Of course, you wouldn't know what it's like. The life of a god is hard."

"You don't seem too busy to me," Dark Pit replied. "If all you're doing is yelling in my ear—"

"And besides, there's a golden rule that all gods must follow," Viridi said, ignoring Dark Pit. "We must NEVER interfere with the humans directly. If there's trouble on the Overworld, then we must deal with it by selecting a hero to take up the burden."

"And why is that?" Dark Pit asked, unable to help being interested.

"Why do you think?" Viridi said. "Gods are simply much more important than angels. If something were to happen to us, order would be disrupted, and chaos would ensue, because we are the ones who keep the peace."

"That's paradoxical," Dark Pit was about to reply, when something immediately caught his eye.

A river ran though the bottom of the ravine, one that Dark Pit was used to washing his face and soaking his feet in its waters. But something kept him from doing it this time. He couldn't explain it, especially by the dark of the night lit only by the moon's shine, but something told him that there was something detrimentally wrong with the river's water.

He bent down, cupping some of its water into his hands and bringing it up to his face. In the moon's light, he could see it better; the river's water was black, and its texture was as thick as mud.

Dark Pit released the water in surprise. He couldn't explain the river water's state, and neither could Viridi. Everything suddenly seemed very surreal, as if the river had frozen time for him in order for him to get a better grasp of the situation. Looking up finally from the river's polluted waters, he looked up, straight to a tree that lived solely on the river's waters. He saw, by the moon's dim light, the state of unnatural decay that the tree seemed to be going through, slimmer and more withered than he last remembered.

A groan from the tree's base made him stop. It sounded like the sound a tree would make under the pressure of powerful winds, but the air was still and thick with humidity. Startled, he looked down, and what he had at first mistook for a set of gnarled roots, he now saw for a girl—slumped, her eyes closed.

"Eden . . ." Viridi muttered in shock.

"Who?" Dark Pit breathed. This unnatural phenomenon freaked him out, more than a little.

"The nymph in charge of this jungle," Viridi said faintly.

Dark Pit kneeled over to her to see if she was alright. Her arms were folded beneath her head, and if Dark Pit had known any better, he might have thought she was resting. The girl was small and emaciated, just like the tree; her skin dark and green like the large leaves of the tree. He put a couple of fingers to her neck, just how Viridi taught him to, to check for a pulse. Her neck was hard, unyielding; the skin not quite feeling like skin at all. Dark Pit shrank back, confused. He could hear her shallow breathing; why was there no pulse?

"It's because she's a wood nymph, idiot," Viridi berated, probably not able to help herself. "And trees don't have heartbeats."

"She must be sick," Dark Pit said, becoming a little worried. He knew that nymphs existed; he'd just never seen one before. "Since she's not tied to her tree."

"I am dying," stirred a voice. Dark Pit almost missed it, the sound like the whispers of leaves in the wind. Eden's eyes opened, and they were as black as the river she drew from. "The earth . . .it's dying."

"It's the river," Viridi told her. "Eden, how was the river polluted?"

"It's not the river," Eden replied weakly. "It's the earth. Someone has polluted the earth, and the Dirty Magic is spreading."

"How does someone pollute the earth?" Dark Pit muttered, at the same time Viridi asked, "But Eden, who was it? Who used this Magic?"

"I do not know," Eden said, closing her eyes again. "All I do know . . . is that they want the earth for themselves."

"Dark Pit, go to the river," Viridi commanded after Eden had finished talking. "And please- don't stick your hands in it again. Take one of Eden's leaves, and dip into the river. We're going to take in the river's water for analysis."

"Okay," Dark Pit said, reaching up to pick a leaf from her branches. Before turning to go to the river, however, he paused, looking at the wood nymph crumbled at the base of the tree once more. "Wait. What about Eden?"

"There's nothing we can do for her," Viridi said bluntly. "Like I said, she's tied to the life of her tree. If we take her in for treatment, her tree might go before she does, and she'll die either way."

"None of this makes any sense!" Dark Pit shouted up to her, indignant. "We come down to the Overworld to protect its plant and wild life! Now, you're telling me that we're just going to leave her to die with her tree?!"

"We can't help her, Pittoo!" Viridi seethed. Dark Pit flinched. He still hated that name, and she knew it. "Not until we can find out what's causing this decay!" Dark Pit remained here he was, Eden's leaf clenched tight in his hand, and Viridi continued. "Part of protecting nature means knowing when to let things go. It's the circle of life, Pittoo. You can't save everyone."

Holding his place a couple moments more, he moved to the river at the bottom of the ravine and dipped the leaf in. Taking it out again, he made sure it had been coated thoroughly with the river ink. Viridi's light shone down on him then, cool and smelling of the garden after a heavy rain, to take him back to the Hanging Gardens. Before his departure, he stole a glance back at Eden, and then looked back to the leaf in his hand, not liking the way it looked at all.

XXX

For some reason, Arlon really freaked him out.

I mean, really freaked him out.

He didn't even know why. There wasn't anything about the Moon God that was actually freak-worthy. But every time Viridi had requested Arlon to the Fortress to discuss matters, Dark Pit was filled with a chilling sense of bizarre.

Yeah, he couldn't explain it either. But you know that creepy feeling that you sometimes get when you meet a person for the first or second time?— the feeling that, no matter how you try, can't shake off? And later you usually realize that it's just you being paranoid about a particular person, about the oddball personality that some distant uncle just possesses. But then you think. What about all of those scary movies, where people ignore their intuitions about a person, and then suddenly wind up dead in the next ten minutes by that same person? It was the same creep factor that Dark Pit was feeling right about now, only heightened, because of the fact that he was actually alone with the guy that gave him the willies.

That's right. Viridi forced him to help Arlon with those wonderful Flage necklaces we keep hearing about. That meant being completely isolated, in the care of this distant, weird entity, for weeks up in the Lunar Sanctum.

"What!?"

You don't even have to imagine his reaction.

Viridi raised her head from her desk, glancing up at him disinterestedly. "Seriously, Pittoo? I thought you'd welcome the peace and quiet up there. Really, it's not a bad place."

"I—I know," Dark Pit stuttered. In his growing unease, he almost forgot to retort, "And don't call me that."

"What's the matter, then?" Viridi questioned, her feather pen falling limp in her hand. She looked up at him from behind her seeing-eyeglasses; she looked like a moody schoolroom teacher, fed up with have to deal with that one student for the umpteenth time. "I need you to take that leaf we gathered last night up to Arlon for analysis. I can't make heads or tails of it. Also, Arlon needs all the help he can get in order to make these necklaces, A.S.A.P."

"Yeah, I get it, but can't you just give to him yourself?" Dark Pit spat. He was feeling especially snappy right now, spawned probably from his uncanny fear. At Viridi's appalled look, he went on to say, "I can help out down here and – train, or something. You keep on telling me not to use so many powers. I'll train without them. I'll catalogue my progress. I'll—do something," he finished lamely.

She still didn't catch the hint. Either that, or she didn't care. She looked at him narrowly. "This isn't going to slide, Dark Pit. I need you up in the Sanctum. Everyday, dozens of trees are being burned down because of the damage Pyrrhon and his infernal dragon are doing."

"I know!" Dark Pit blurted, surprising them both. Viridi blinked. Dark Pit sighed. "I'm fine. I'll help Arlon with his invention."

Viridi quirked an eyebrow. "Are you sure."

"Yes!" Dark Pit exclaimed abruptly. He turned away from her, stalking towards the Arms Altar to choose a weapon for their start journey to the Lunar Sanctum. Really, he asked himself. What was the problem?

XXX

Stumbling onto the platform, Dark Pit steeled himself for what seemed like was going to be hours of torture.

Large, gilded doors opened the way for him automatically. There, in the midst of a dome shaped, cluttered room, Arlon sat, bent over his work, peering into what looked like a magnifying glass.

Dark Pit strode up to him, handing over the glass jar with the contaminated leaf inside of it. Arlon looked up at him at the last minute, about to comment about his presence, until Dark Pit interrupted him.

"Here," he said shortly, insolence framing the bulk of his tone. "Viridi wants you to examine this. We found it down on the Overworld, polluting some river."

Arlon nodded and took the jar, peering inside. He withdrew the leaf daintily.

"Viridi also wants me to help you," Dark Pit said, and with some effort, "here. She wants to makes sure that some progress can be made on the Flage Necklaces, and figured me helping you would speed things up a bit."

"That would make some sense," Arlon said only.

Dark Pit stood there idly, watching as Arlon observed the leaf in detail, turning it over and over until he at last set in on his worktable.

At last Dark Pit couldn't take it anymore. "Well," Dark Pit said, "is there anything you need me to do?"

"Not at the moment, Master Dark Pit," Arlon said to him. "I had been working more on the Necklaces before you had showed up. But for now, I believe I shall be observing this specimen of Dark Magic you've brought me here—for that is what I am holding here, yes?"

"Yeah," Dark Pit said, missing that particular detail.

"I see," Arlon said neutrally, still examining the leaf. "For now, you may sit down in the chair across from me—I shall let you know when I am done with my observation of this specimen for today, and then we will be able to commence with working on the Necklaces."

So Dark Pit sat, stuck with his thoughts that lingered on the wood nymph in the forest, so infected with the dark magic, so that she'd probably die before they could ever figure it out. He waited for Arlon, waited for him to give a chance to help him, so that he could figure out how to stop this plague that found itself in the Overworld. He worried about Pit, worried about him without even realizing it, about his mission down on the Seafloor, and him facing monsters and other dangers. But, most of all, he worried about himself, and about the time that he was spending with Arlon, and hoped beyond hope that he wouldn't die, here of all places, due to boredom and worry.

A/N: WHOA! More action! More intrigue! And, to be honest, coming up with an idea for this chapter, as well as writing it, was IMMENSELY fun to do. Powers! Insults! Theological talks about the gods' purpose in the KI universe! WOW!

I got the idea for the panther-hybrid from the James Cameron movie Avatar. You know the animal the main character, Jake Sully, first fights when he first departs from his group? Before he meets Neytiri? Yeah, that's my model for this hunk of beauty, except more with a tail like a chimeara's.

Just read an article that said the person who decided to remake the Kid Icarus franchise with Kid Icarus: Uprising isn't planning on making a sequel for it. Said that fans may have to wait another 25 years to expect a new game for our favorite angel.