Chapter 14

"And so I lay my body to sleep, I close my eyes; foreswear my soul the Goddess' to keep…"

Fragment of a child's prayer, Book of Regeneration

A/N: Yeah… I'm back… kinda. Anyway I hope to get another chapter up today, we'll see how it pans out, I'm only averaging one day a week... which kinda bites, but ah well, when things get better I'll be online more. Chapter motivated by the you tube movie by KratosLover1 titled "Real Angels of TOS", I love that movie and it kicked me out of my writers block after I saw it. I know you're reading "Shards" Kratos Lover, but if you read this, thanks for the hand!

Raising

Rene sniffed the air. The smell of gravy, potatoes, and roasted chicken made her mouth water, the sights of the food she smelled just mere inches away was too much. She reachedout for the food once again, and then brought her fingers to her mouth and sucked on the small burn that the thin stream of lightning had left on her creeping fingers.

"Rene," Yuan's eyes glinted with humor. "Leave the potatoes alone. Mer Z'eh, has not concluded his prayers over our dinner."

"But...!"

Yuan only gave her a long look and she sighed and grumbled a few not so nice things about lightning magi. She knew he'd hear every word, she meant him to hear every word, and picked out some of the nastiest words she could make in angelic and used some of her worst grammar. And Yuan glared and writhed, and dared do nothing to her because if he disrupted the "ritual". Well if Z'eh thought them both "unfaithful" that would be bad, it would… how had Yuan put it? "Potentially upset the already flawed foundation which Z'eh used to maintain mental stability" something like that, whatever it meant. Why foundations and Z'eh had to keep her from the mashed potatoes though….

There was another sizzle of lightning mana, Yuan put one finger to the steel table and sent out another thread of electricity across the decorative steel pattern that ran across the white stone. Yalping, loud enough to shake Z'eh out from his prayers, Rene made a thin watery smile curl her lips.

"I singed my hands on the plate." Rene shook her hands then blew the abused tips of her fingers.

Yuan smirked, pleased with her tact, and his fingers twined together to make a roof over the false chapel of his hands. He closed his summer sky colored eyes, bowed his head so that his hair fell over his face and obscured his expression, every motion mimed those of a devout Martel worshiper, and with a sigh Rene muttered a quiet spell to heal her hands and bowed her head, taking a simular pose.

"Mer cor us'il, Yuan." Rene grumbled into her hands.

In reply, Yuan firmly kicked her chair. She winced at the jolt, and then quieted down. If she was nice, maybe she would get to eat, but if she kept being bad...

She cracked an eye open to guage Yuan's mood, he was definatly not happy,but he wasn't so mad that he was going to make her skip dessert... Not yet anyways.

Yes, it was definatly time to play nice.She closed her eyes and scrunched her face up to pray to whatever gods were listening that Yuan didn't get too mad. After all she didn't want to miss the promisedblue berry pie.

X

Yuan rolled his eyes, but offered his hand and Rene's small fingers slipped around his own.

"You are a very messy little girl." Yuan sighed as he lead her to the bathroom so that she could clean off the mess of sticky blue that was all over her face. "I take it your forehead was hungry as well."

"Hmmm..." Sleepy, full, and content, this child was a better picture of true angelic beauty then any of the falsity that Cruxis could ever pump out. She looked up at him with slightly dazed green eyes, and the Seraph smirked and ruffled her silken locks. Then he pulled a hankerchief from his pocket (a mortal nicety that he found he needed more often then not withsuch a smallchildunder foot) and whiped her forehead. Yuan whiped away the blue goop that had somehow found it's way to make a third eye on her forehead.

"Never mind."

He said those words not to silence the childish explaination, no, he would have -much to his own shock he discovered- liked to listen to whatever her young mind would forge as an excuse or as a story to explain the strange blue spot. He stoped her, silenced her from the all too real fear that she'd fall asleep on him.

"I thought children your age got sugar rush." Yuan murmurred.

"Mother used to say..." Rene yawned. "That elves get sleepy when they eat sweet stuff, and I'm more elf then hu-" She yawned again and Yuan chuckled.

"I was much the same when I was your age." He opened the door to the bases' privy room and ushered her inside. "Clean up, you're a mess Imp, then ..." Her green eyes sparkled with curiosity and he smiled for being able to see that curiosity. She never showed what she was thinking to Z'eh, at least not everything, he took comfort in that. "If you're awake enough I'll tell you a few stories about how things were when I was your age."

"You mean when dragons walked across the earth?"

"I am not that old." Yuan growled. "Now in, clean up."

"Yes, Sir." Rene rolled her eyes and Yuan growled something about sarcastic little girls getting zapped. She ignored him, like always, and closed the door. From the noises within, she was playing with the faucey, and he sighed, children, and thier games. The world was a game to children, they made their world -no matter how bitter, how empty- as fun as they could.

Yuan jolted out of his thoughts as the door hissed open, and the giggle was warning enough that he looked up... and recieved a dose of what was probably icy cold water right in the face.He winced at the sensation of the water sluggishly sliding down his face, tried to scowl, but the sensation was so damned distrating that he cringed and had to wipe at the liquid just to make the feeling go away.

The door hissed closed, then clicked as it was locked from the inside.

"Rene..." Yuan growled, "You will open this door, right now young lady."

Her only answer was what he was begining to think of as her "evil giggle".

"Damn it, Rene!" Yuan snarled, punching the magi-tech steel. "Open the door!"

"Make me."

"I swear I'll Indignation Judgment the door if I have to..." Yuan clenched his black gloved hands and then forced them to relax, trying not to will lightining to form around his fingers and batter down the door with raw untamed shards of Volt. "You will not want to be in that room when I count to three Imp. One..."

The door unclicked, hissed open, and Rene ran so fast she was all but a green blur. What the hell had happened to her sleepiness... Then he remembered, remembered that time two thousand and some odd years ago when he and Martel had slipped into a bakery and had eaten a whole apple pie. Exhaution, lethargy as the elvish blood tried to absorb the surpluss of sugar then... Then almost like flicking a magi light switch, energy, boundless energy as human blood surged to the surface and caught the sugar and set a fire in the mind and limbs that was best called "sugar sillyness".

"Oh, by Kratos' twisted pantheon..." Yuan looked at his ward, at his hyper sugar intoxicated ward and put a hand to his throbing temples while Rene ran around like an over exsited hyper child that... she was... "She'll outgrow this." He muttered to himself, or perhaps for once he was praying that she would. Yuan watched in numb horrer as she zipped around the room. Then she was behind him, there was a tug on his cape...

"Can't catch me!"

Rene ran off, and his cape went with her.

"What the Hell..." Z'eh poked his head out fromhis room down the hall, he looked at the giggling green haired child then looked at his "Master", his dark eyes clearly puzzled.

"Don't ask, just get back to whatever you were doing!" Yuan snarled, then strod after the child, purple lightning crackling around his hands. "Must not kill Tethe'alla's Chosen." He growled, banishing the lightining with a great force of will. "It's my fault, I gave her the pie, I shouldn't have, I should have known better..."

"Yuaaaan!"

The Seraph followed the mocking voice, turned a corner and froze when eh saw that she'd somehow put the cape on. Despite himself he smirked. It was far too short for her, almost a fourth of the black fabric dragged on the steel floor, and he had to admit the black clashed outragously with the white shirt and pants that she was so fond of wearing. She had worked her hair into a hastily raised pony tail and crossed her arms in front of ehr chest. He stare at her, head tiped to the side as she walked up to him using a bizzare step that might have been considered regal in her sugar clouded mind.

"There you are Rene!" She snapped up at him, trying to make her voice as husky and deep as his, and faild miserably on both counts. "Go do something you hate, like practice magic or read boring history books, being miserable makes you smart!"

From behind him Z'eh began to snickure. "That's one damn sarcastic kid your raising."

Yuan whirled on his heal, without the cape swirling behind him however the gestures dramatic value was greatly reduced. He reached up with one black gloved hand and glared. It wasn't quite up to par to say Krato's "make rocks curl up and die" glare, but then the effect might have been ruined by the fact that half his face was obscured by his long blue locks. Still, his ice blue eyes turned to slits, malicious intent licked upon the shattered ice like fire light would lick the edges of a broken glaciar, and Z'eh had the sense to grip the hilt of his sword and look worried.

"I am not raising a sarcastic..." Yuan snapped.

"Then who is?"

The bandit's face looked more vulpine when he bared his teeth in a grin and scrunched up his eyes with whicked mirth, obviously a foot gave the mana a very false sense of security. Lightning crackled around the Seraph's fingers, and the ex-bandit went pale and decided to find somewhere else to go at a dead run. Dead man's run... Yuan toyed with the idea of casting the bolt, but in the end -with only a slight grunt of discomfort as he reabsorbed the raw mana-Yuan clenched his fingers. Lightning sputtered between his fingers, the raw force of the spell made his arm spasm and he caught the scent of burnt leatherglove as black smokewafted between his fingers. He shook his hand out to dispell the last annoying tinlges, then he grimly marched after his charge.

"You are in trouble young lady!" Yuan snarled, his mind scrambled franticly as he strove to recall how Martel would punish Mithos when the brat was acting more annoying then usual. "Y... you're going to be grounded if you don't give me my cape in five seconds!"

And there was the quandry, he had to hope that Rene would be able to override her sugar induced silliness, because if she didn't give him back his cape he was going to have to think up some type of punishment that was vaugly grounding-esk.