Chapter 21: New Blood

Wrath, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth and Envy sat quietly around the Sins' meeting chamber in their thrones. Wrath remained eerily silent, his glowing blood red eyes just staring at his gatling gun arm. Gluttony too sat silently, though he did occasionally glance over to Lust and snicker. It was no secret that she had failed in the mission Pride had set for her and most everyone expected her to fall to Prides power, just as Greed had. Even Wuya herself expected the ultimate punishment from Pride and, knowing that there was no escape, she silently prepared herself for death. Two chairs down Sloth and Envy were whispering back and forth, trying to make sure that the others didn't hear a word they were saying.

"What do you mean you're leaving?" Envy demanded softly. "You can't just leave us! Pride will have Wrath kill you before that happens!" believe it or not Envy was actually concerned for Sloth. She had just told him that she planned on leaving in Seven Deadly Sins after the meeting, leaving her powers behind as well.

"Then I'll escape before that happens." Sloth snapped back. "I don't care about Pride or his plans anymore… and frankly I never did… we don't even know what he's up too anyway."

"You're not getting it." Envy argued. "You can't just runaway from Pride. Even if you escape a first time he will hunt you down, have you killed, have your head brought to him on a silver platter and then he'll burn your head in fire straight from hell!"

"Then I'll die fighting! And at least I won't die as a Sin."

Envy just sighed and shook his head. "Prides not going to like this." He said.

"Like I care."

Just as Sloth had finished speaking Pride appeared in his throne, the eyes on his eagle helmet glowing bright red, a sure sign that he wasn't happy. "Let's get this over with." He spat as his eyes began to dim down. "First off, I believe that Sloth has something to announce." All eyes turned to Sloth.

The red head flinched when she heard Pride speak but ignored it and stood up. "Let's just cut to the chase. I'm leaving the Seven Deadly Sins." Immediately Lust and Gluttony went wide eyed and Envy just rubbed his temple and shook his head. Wrath and Pride remained emotionless. "I'm not going to spend what could be the rest of my life trying to take over or destroy or whatever Pride wants to do to the world when I know that I'm a good person." She stopped their and looked over to Pride. He seemed unmoved.

"You wish to leave our organization?" Pride asked. "You expect us to trust you with all of our secrets and other things we can't risk having found out?"

"Erase my memory, I don't care." Sloth said. "I just want out."

Pride glared at her, but surprisingly his eyes did not begin to glow. With a quick nod he said, "Very well. You may leave at once. Leave the Sin of Sloth behind and return to your normal life. I do not care."

Sloth gave him a confused look. "And what about my memories?"

"Keep them." Pride said. "Like anyone would believe you, knowing your previous life."

"I'm not going back to my old life… I'm starting a new one." With that Sloth vanished, leaving behind an orb of neon green energy where she had been standing. Lust and Gluttony continued to gawk at where she'd been standing, wondering what on this planet could possibly make Pride allow Sloth to leave on a whim.

"Lord Pride, if you don't mind my asking," Lust said, "Why did you just allow her to leave like that. You know we can not trust her like this. We should've killed her on the spot."

"I agree." Gluttony said. "It is not wise to let her go like this."

Pride simply chuckled. "Don't you two worry about her… I have plans." The eyes on his helmet suddenly flashed red as he snapped his attention to the two. "You, particularly Lust, should be worried about yourselves." He paused briefly to allow himself to cool down. "Lust, stand and approach me." He ordered.

Wuya did as she was ordered and stood before him. Knowing that she was doomed she formulated a quick speech in her head that she hoped would lessen her punishment to eternal torture instead of death. "Yes m-my lord." She stuttered.

"I gave you a simply order…" Pride said angrily. "Capture and burn all nine of those annoying monks without fail. And yet you only managed to burn one! You could've taken them all at the same time and yet you made an ass of yourself and decided to make it more interesting by only taking half and letting the anger of the others bring them to you. And worse yet, even with Greed's help, who I never allowed you to resurrect by the way, you were defeated by not all of them, not even half of them, but by a single girl who didn't even hold on of the Xiaolin Elements within her… What do you have to say for yourself?" Wuya opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find the strength to even look him in the face, much less speak before him. Because of this she simply groaned and bowed. Pride smiled devilishly and began to laugh. "Excellent work!" he chuckled.

Confused and disoriented by these words Wuya lost her balance and fell forward. She quickly got back to her feet and looked to Pride directly. "Excuse me?" she questioned.

"I all honesty, Lust, I never expected, or even wanted, you to burn more than one of them. You see, there are forces at work in this universe that control the fate of insignificant beings like them and, as painful as it is to admit, for the time being us. I knew you would only manage to burn one of them and I know now that one is the one I must worry about the most. If the mark you burned onto his back does not take care of him within the next three days then I will. So, to be truthful, your mission was a complete success. You shall have your reward later. Now return to your throne."

Suddenly very pleased with herself Lust bowed and thanked her master before turning and walking back to her seat, both Gluttony and Wrath gawking at her the whole time. "Envy…" Pride spoke. Envy jumped up from his chair and walked to the same spot that Lust had been in. "You struck a deal with Hades himself and, unlike Lust, took the entire team of monks. And set up a series of trial, each of which they defeated with ease. And to top it off you and Hades lost against in the showdown against the Brazilian and African boys. Were it not for your one successful venture in this I would've killed you where you stand."

"And that success would be?" Envy asked.

"After the showdown you kept the mute girl, enraging the one they call 'Rush' and revealing the darkness within him. We could use this darkness greatly to our advantage… you do still have the mute girl, correct?"

Envy laughed. "Yes I do!" he said suspiciously.

"Excellent… you may be seated." Envy did as he was told and retreated back to his throne.

"Are we done here?" Gluttony suddenly asked. "I'm missing a meal here."

Pride quickly turned to Gluttony; the eyes on him helmet flashing red again. "You will speak when spoken too, you insignificant wretch!" he snapped. "Gluttony, Wrath, approach me!" Wrath, being the machine that he was, obediently approached his master and kneeled before him. Gluttony, shocked and confused, did so more cautiously and did not kneel. "I gave you two a simple mission. Track down and capture Jack Spicer… and what do I get? Complete disappointment! You couldn't even capture that pathetic insect? He has the fighting skill of a sick kitten and his robots are mere toys compared to you, Wrath! How do you explain this?" Pride demanded. "Jack Spicer is the only one of them that we are sure of and his capture is of the utmost importance! If there were ever a moment where I was willing to kill the both of you, it would be right now!... in fact…" Pride vanished from his seat and reappeared directly in front of Gluttony. He lashed out and grabbed Gluttony by the throat (which was a bit difficult to find). He lifted the obese man into the air as the neon green aura surrounded Gluttony and his visible flesh began to turn gray and his eyes melt away. When the choking and struggling stopped Pride released Gluttonys throat, letting his armor fall to the ground and his body disintegrate into dust. Pride then turned to Wrath. "You're next." He scowled. "Any last words?"

Wrath stared at Pride with his empty red eyes. Lust and Envy could actually feel the tension building up between the Machine and the master. But that didn't make sense. Wrath was a machine now. He couldn't feel anything or build tension with anyone. How was this happening? "…You'll… never… take… me… alive…" Wrath managed to say before his eyes dimmed down to black and his body fell to the ground.

Lust and Envy stared at Wraths now lifeless body in awe. "What just happened?" Lust asked.

Pride simply snorted and returned to his throne. "Seems he had some freewill left after all…"

"And so seven become three." Lust said, "… I could've sworn that Gluttony would've lasted longer than Envy."

"Hey, I find that offensive." Envy retorted sarcastically.

"Envy, you're dismissed." Pride announced, "Lust, I would like to have a word with you."

LATER

Envy chuckled quietly to himself as he watched Raven glared at him from within the dungeon cell with hatred blazing in her eyes. It had been like this since the day he'd brought her here from the Underworld. She'd just sit in there glaring at the wall and Envy when he checked up once or twice a day. She wouldn't sleep, she barely ate, and Envy would say she wouldn't speak but she couldn't do that to begin with.

"Oh, if only you knew the plans we have for you." Envy jeered at her. "Yes… Pride thinks you'll make the perfect bait for those annoying monks. And I'm going to enjoy kicking the tar out of that friend of yours."

Raven's eyes suddenly snapped open and went completely white. Just as suddenly a golden aura surrounded her body and jumped from her fetal position and charged at him, completely forgetting about the bars that blocked her path. Even so Envy jumped back in surprise. "That aura." He breathed. "So Pride was right… she is one of them… Oh, he is just going to love this." He turned around to leave but looked back at her quickly before teleporting. "You be a good girl now." He joked before vanishing.

Envy reappeared just outside of the great double doors which lead into Prides personal chamber. He'd given very clear orders when the Sins first began that no one was to enter this room without an extremely good reason, such as if there were an emergency they weren't to bother him in there until it became a catastrophe. Even with this Envy figured that the discovery of one of them was reason enough.

Envy took a few steps toward the door and was about to knock. But before he could he hear voices coming from inside and noticed that the doors were already opened slightly. Envy found it strange that he could hear not just Prides voice but also the voice of a woman who he suspected to be Lust and, despite his better judgment, his curiosity got the better of him. He leaned towards the crack between the doors, just wide enough for one of his eyes to look through.

He could barely see the room inside. It was almost pitch black with the exception of a few torches hanging on the walls. The minimal light emitted from the torches revealed strange markings etched into the walls, possibly of some dead language that he couldn't decipher. Other than that there wasn't much he could see other than the foot of Prides bed… and from what he could tell there was a figure (possibly two) laying underneath the blankets.

The next thing Envy saw was Pride walking into view with his arms crossed behind his back. He glanced back over to the bed and sure enough there was still a body lying underneath the blankets. Pride, lucky son of a… Envy's thoughts trailed off as Pride began to speak again.

"So… just two days from now is judgment day… and still we have yet to capture even one of them. This is such a disappointment. I should've known better than to hire those idiots… at least you and Envy aren't complete disappointments."

At these words the person still in the bed got up and walked over to Pride. As Envy had suspected, it was Lust and, to his disappointment, she was fully clothed (as little clothes as she had). She stopped right beside him and looked in the same direction he was, possibly watching something Envy couldn't see. "Hopefully you will do better next time." She said. "Though I still don't see why you didn't whack Envy with the others."

Pride only laughed at her words. "Please… Envy has proved his worth time and again. He is ten times the warrior you will ever be." Envy was surprised at these words and snickered at Lust's disappointed face. "And, unlike the rest of you, Envy was successful on every mission I sent him on, with the exception of Mexico."

Lust just rolled her eyes, "Yeah, all one of them. He's been on the same mission since Greed, Gluttony and Sloth went after the Quasar Cube."

"True." Pride agreed. "But he has yet to fail at that mission, which is more than I can say about you."

Lust glared at him in disappointment but a devilish smirk quickly crawled onto her face. "True enough," she agreed, moving in front of Pride and leaning back into him. "But I've pleased you in many ways that he never could, correct?" Pride just laughed again and agreed before turning his attention back to the unknown objects that were out of Greed's sight. "So," Lust continued, "What are we going to do with these? They look pretty useless to me."

Pride just grinned and simply said, "It's time to bring in some new blood."

Envy backed away from the door, thoughts of everything he'd just seen racing through his head. What did Pride mean by judgment day? What were these things he called new blood? And did Wuya mean what he thought she meant? With all of this, Envy figured that it wasn't a good time to even consider speaking to Pride. "I'll tell him about the girl later." He told himself before vanishing back to his own chamber.

(a/n) so, Sloth has left and Gluttony and Wrath are dead. bet none of you expected that. that was mainly the reason for this entire chapter, other than me just wanting to do a chapter focusing entirely on the Sins. also, now Raven is one of "them" as the Sins call who ever theyre looking for and Pride is hiding something important. anyone wanna guess what this is? and one last thing before I finish, this chapter and the next will take place at the same time (with the exception of the final scene in the next). only 4 chapters to go. even Im getting excited at this point. later.