... I may, or may have not overwritten a bit. Tenma is at fault - everything's his fault, including this fic.

Joking aside, this is actually the longest-ever chapter, one-shot or part of a longfic, that I've posted. I'm mildly shook - and the ideas just keep coming, I'm honestly scared I'll end up with with such a bad burnout. The schedule for updates will for now be once a week until I finish Heroine of Silver Age (PJO) - but we'll see how things go with everything that's currently happening.

Also, to address one more thing - this is a revamped and re-imagined version of old Aurora Thunderbolt. It'll still feature a relationship between a Sagittarius and an Aquarius (hence the name Aurora Thunderbolt), but it'll change drastically, with Tenma replacing Aiolos and things slowing down - it won't rush as much to reach the point where Episode G starts (not that I finished it yet... I can't read Portuguese translations. Spanish, I could fight through, Portuguese? No sir - so it'll take time to either find English/Spanish translations or Google Translate my way through half the manga haha).

Shoutout to JupiterGoddess for making me aware of the issue with review posting on old Aurora, and both her and fantasy.92 for welcoming me back to the fandom and waiting for this chapter to come!

The ground was so very, very cold.

Somehow, Sagittarius Aiolos always thought the ground would be warm when he died, whether from the endless hours Grecian sun spent beating it as he died slowly of old age, or from the freshly spilled blood on the battlefield of Athena's army against her ultimate enemy, Hades and his minions. This… he never envisioned this – dying in the middle of the night, being branded a traitor and trying to save his Lady Athena from the madness of his best friends while being mortally wounded by another friend.

Holding with madman's desperation on the last vestiges of his sanity and consciousness, pain from the Excalibur spreading past his shattered bones and tearing his heart apart with a cold and calculated precision he learned to associate with Shura's strikes and tactics, he stumbled to the Parthenon, hoping the Fates would send him someone who would care for his goddess, for he knew he couldn't hold on anymore.

Athena… my Lady…

The tiny infant with a shock of light purple hair, born under the sign of Virgo, was currently asleep, letting out content noises from time to time as she lay swaddled in her blankets Aiolos hastily picked up from her crib when he took her away, adorably similar to his little brother Aiolia at that age. A sweet smile already on her face, undoubtedly dreaming of the wonders and light she embodied and gifted so easily with her mere presence, it gave Aiolos strength to go on, to fight for one more step, one more meter. If he forgot for a moment what had happened to him, Aiolos could pretend it was just him and Aiolia as children after Aiolia had one of his infamous temper tantrums that made their caretakers tear out their hair, Aiolos carrying him around and singing him to sleep since he was widely known to be the only one capable of dealing with the little twerp.

The reminder of how he left his baby brother to the mercy of Saga and Sanctuary only served to make his eyes water and send another bolt of pain into his overworked heart as he clutched onto the bundle of blankets tighter.

Ba-dum. Ba-dum…

Nothing.

With horror, the young Sagittarius Saint realized that it would not be the injuries from Shura's blade that would do him in: it would be his own soldier heart. His family had not had the history of heart problems as far as Aiolos knew, but he had heard stories about the Scorpio Saint that had heart issues – the Saints were still mortals, despite their seemingly god-like powers. They still got sick, and boy, could they die, often in the most spectacular way possible. The records and Aiolos' current state were the prime examples of that fact.

The terrible coldness and pain shot out of his heart down his left arm, the classic sign of the abrupt heart attack. Aiolos gritted his teeth and dragged himself forward a few more steps to the giant rock, his Pandora Box miraculously staying light on his back, as if trying to help his Saint and Athena reach safety. Reaching the rock, the boy collapsed face first on it, his light-brown sun-bleached hair falling everywhere as he cradled the infant goddess under his chest, the last barrier between her and the death he could offer as he kept praying for assistance from Fates.

Please, please, save her, someone please come and help me save Lady Athena!

"Hey, kid!"

Oh thank Goddess, Aiolos thought, mind already descending into murky fog he usually associated with the nights he fell on his bed in ninth House, completely wiped out from endless stream of missions and training and meetings with Pope Shion and spending time with Aiolia. He fought it off for a brief second, determined not to let go of himself until he managed to hand off his Lady properly – his Lady deserved to know her destiny, and if he died before he said anything, all will be for naught.

"Kid! Kid! Hey… are you from the Sanctuary? Are you alright?" A worried male voice came from somewhere in close vicinity, and a rumble of feet running up to him reached Aiolos' ears and mind.

He knows! Aiolos rejoiced – he will not need to explain much, and this was a lucky break he needed right now. He was losing his consciousness way too fast for any detailed explanations he knew he owed to the man he was about to foist the infant off onto.

"A-athena…" he managed to rasp out, gathering all of his strength for one last act for his goddess. "P-prot-tec-ct her… San-sanctu-tuary… not-t s-safe… for A-athena…"

"Athena?" the man's voice asked in disbelief, and Aiolos could understand. No one expected one of the Twelve Olympians to willingly rebirth themselves as tiny babies to help out Earth, let alone find them far away from the place they're supposed to be safe at, but such were the ways of his Lady. "O-okay, I will."

Aiolos' job was now done – Athena was safe, given to someone who was already at least somewhat aware of the role she will have soon, and the Sagittarius Cloth was also far away from Saga's lunacy – no one except those the Cloth and Athena deemed worthy would be able to have it.

Thank you, whoever you are.

Sagittarius Saint would've said it out loud, but the nightmarish cold was getting to him: he could no longer move, simply sinking into the darkness and coldness he had only felt once, when the Cancer candidate Deathmask opened the gates to the hell with his Sekishiki Mekai Ha(Dark Underworld Wave) to demonstrate his mastery of Cancer techniques to Pope.

Deathmask, Aiolia, Shura, Mu, Camus, Aphrodite, Milo, Shaka, Aldebaran… Saga…

Even after everything, Aiolos could not stop thinking about his friends and the Sanctuary. Even with Saga doing what Aiolos previously thought no Saint would ever do, Aiolos refused to lose faith in them. There had to be a way around Saga's insanity, there just had to be!

Casting his own Cosmo towards the heavens, where he knew his birth star shone and would soon fall to commemorate his death, he cried out loud for the entire universe to hear.

Please, if anyone's listening, please, I beg you, keep my friends safe! I'll give you anything you desire, just keep them safe until Athena grows up!

With that, Aiolos lost consciousness and fell into the cold embrace of Death.

"Well, that ended in a disaster and a half," Yelena, the Celestial Guardian Aquarius that was currently on duty, sighed as she watched Sagittarius Saint collapse and breathe out his last breath and with it, his last wish to the stars. Her blue eyes were solid and un-moving, dedicated to watching the world, her House and her celestial siblings, but her heart ached in sympathy for the life lost. She rubbed the gold armlets with her celestial sign on them as she offered her own prayer for the safe passage of the brave soul and turned to the man standing next to her to see his reaction.

"I hate seeing him like that," Tenma, the Celestial Guardian Sagittarius and the second one on duty for that night, spoke and Yelena spotted him discreetly brush off the tear from the corner of his eye.

His brown hair was tousled even more than normal, and a golden arrow flickered in and out of sight in his clenched right fist as he watched the Japanese man, Kido, take Lady Athena away with Sagittarius' Pandora Box and leave Aiolos' broken body in the middle of Parthenon. Even after all those years of living and serving with him, Yelena still found herself surprised to not see him donning his Pegasus Cloth that made him – or well, other him – a legend in her time, exchanging it for the similar clothes as her: a knee-length white chiton, bearing vambraces and shin guards instead of her elaborate armlets and anklets, and a stardust-infused belt and girdle respectively.

"He did his duty to Lady Athena," Yelena told him in a soothing voice, laying a careful hand on his shoulder as to not startle him and provoke a retaliation from the already unstable and emotional Guardian. "He'll be fine."

"No, he won't be," Tenma shook his head as he observed the moon setting, marking the end of their vigilance and the coming hand-off to Virgo Guardian who still had the reign over the days for the next two weeks. "His body didn't dissolve – who knows what will Sanctuary do to him, considering Saga will likely declare him a traitor to cover up for this nightmare."

Yelena winced at the reminder of how merciless Sanctuary could be to its traitors and touched her unblemished neck, free of the scar but not of the occasional phantom pain. She had been surprised her and Integra's bodies had been buried honorably, all things considered – then again Shion might have calculated it'd be better to bury them with honors then to leave their bodies for Hades' minions to pick up later down the line.

Whichever the case, Shion's cold calculation or mercy, Saga would have none for his fallen once-friend, that much was clear. However, there was a way for Aiolos to avoid the fate of other traitors, if one bothered to read through all of the documents the Zodiac Guardians had accumulated throughout the centuries – and lucky for Tenma, eleventh House keepers were obligated to do so during their spare time to better prepare for inevitable rehashed squabbles they would have to judge with Libra keepers.

This will do nicely – Tenma would owe her one, and she would be able to show her face in the Underworld knowing she did everything in her power to fulfill the destiny revealed to her when she was but one of many children vying for any Cloth compatible with a cold Cosmo.

"That is true… in most situations," Yelena said quietly, getting Tenma to look up at her with a renewed glimmer in his eyes. "In our archives exists a document that details under which circumstances are Guardians allowed to leave their post, and it specifically states that in the event of war or upcoming war, when one or more Gold Saints die, their celestial Guardian sibling is allowed to take up their post until the next Saint is found or Cloth is returned to a state in which it can protect Sanctuary."

Tenma's eyes went blank for a moment as their owner digested what Yelena had just revealed to him, before lighting up: he jumped up, the fabric and stardust fluttering around in a cloud as he rushed over to her and fell on his knees. Yelena blinked, taken aback, for she had not expected this type of reaction from her fellow Guardian. Elation, yes; some more clarification, certainly, but dropping on his knees?

"Yelena," Tenma spoke gently, and Yelena noticed his shoulders shake and chin droop, "is this true, or are you raising my hopes for nothing?"

"The document is there, I swear to you on my Master, Lord Ganymede and his good name," Yelena murmured and dropped to her knees as well, the dress pooling around her as she embraced Tenma and let him sob into her shoulder, silently thanking her birth-star she had made the stupid decision to become Celestial Guardian at the death's doorstep, just before she entered the Underworld.

She sometimes hated her peers and their attitudes, but she never felt more accepted, loved, and free to say everything she wanted to say without being preemptively judged based solely on the topic she talked about.

"Then… would you mind doing our vigils alone for the foreseeable future?" Tenma asked her in a hushed voice, as if fearing they'd be overheard.

"I won't," Yelena sighed as she saw the mad shine of joy appear in Tenma's eyes. "You do realize you're going to owe me badly?"

"Nah, I don't care," Tenma waved it off, standing up and helping her on her way as well. "What's my purpose here anyway? My other self reincarnated to be with Sasha again, our two timelines merged at this point, so… the six of us from that timeline are all but useless except this glorified watch duty. I might as well take care of Sagittarius House in Sanctuary and make sure that little Regulus look-alike doesn't get smashed into paste by the mob for his brother's noble cause."

Yelena could not find a single fault in his argument, so she was left with sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose as she wished she was allowed to strangle Tenma. This was completely unnecessary; Celestial Guardians did not do much visibly, but the workload that they had always left Yelena wishing she could just flip everyone off and take a good nap, so how did Tenma plan on balancing his normal duties with being on Earth?

The dumbass probably didn't think that far ahead, which meant she and other Guardians will have to do it in his place. Izo and Francisca will definitely not like it, the stubborn and unchanging bull and goat that they were; Integra, Itta and Hakurei will probably just laugh it off and continue, while Ecarlate, Alen and Albafica will just stay neutral and not care too much, since they liked their posts.

All of them Yelena could deal with. The problems would, of course, be the fifth and sixth Guardians – Kaiser was an annoying stick-in-the-mud that all but asked for a good beating with how he sometimes acted, and Asmita was so unpredictable in his eternal meditation and wise words, it was better to overwhelm everyone else and force him to comply by default.

While she was ruminating, Tenma had already started constructing a bridge to the Earth, golden arrow and bow at ready to pierce through the gateway and transport him down the moment the portal stabilized. She could only wave him goodbye and turn around, because she felt Asmita coming with the sun's rise, and she couldn't let him interrupt Tenma.

You're gonna owe so damn much, you stupid, stupid Sagittarius!

Wasting absolutely no time, Tenma shot the golden arrow the moment he could – despite what the rest of the Guardians thought of him, he wasn't an idiot, nor oblivious to his surroundings. He knew Asmita will be coming at any moment, and he could not afford the guy to catch him; getting into another argument about their tendencies was not particularly high on Tenma's list of priorities. Plus, with the sun rising, Sanctuary's soldiers will be able to easily locate Aiolos' body, and Tenma was not about to let them get their hands on it.

"Hi-ya!"

Taking a leap, Tenma jumped through the portal and fell down like rock, miles and miles above Athens. The moon was still sinking below the horizon, and the sun was only beginning to paint the eastern sky with pinkish glow; it spoke of a beautiful day, with no clouds in the immediate vicinity to spoil the sights. Some of the more stubborn stars were also still visible; like Venus the Morning Star, Polaris of Ursa Minor, the square of the four brightest stars in Pegasus and Andromeda (he still found it insanely funny his constellation's brightest star was actually reclassified as Andromeda's star recently), Fish' Mouth of Pisces and Deneb Algedi of Capricorn.

He wished he could also see some of Aquarius' stars if only for his own peace of mind, but they were all so very faint, they immediately disappeared at the first sign of light. He could do with Pegasus' square, though – his own patron constellation's Cloth had gotten him out of fair few tight spots, and the spirit of Pegasus never quite left him, even after he died and became Sagittarius Guardian.

Now, to get to Aiolos – he had spotted a glimmer of stardust-plated armor pieces not far from the Parthenon, meaning his window of time was getting slimmer and slimmer by the moment. He let his bow dematerialize for now and focused on his back, picturing Sisyphus' enormous gold wings as he fell down, the winds threatening to tear his skin off his face. His Cosmo burst out from his heart to his back and beyond, just like he had imagined, and from the corner of his eyes he spotted beautiful white feathers fly away as his descent stabilized.

Yes! He thought with glee and flapped the pure white fifteen-feet long wings, stopping for a moment in the air to pinpoint Parthenon – not exactly a difficult task, seeing how Athenians of the past made it their business to separate it and Poseidon's nearby temple, Erichteion from the rest of the city and modern ones forbade building things that would mess with or tower over those two buildings. Heart pumping with adrenaline, Tenma dove again, this time with utmost control and precision aiming for Aiolos' prone body and grinning all the way down.

He was not leaving anyone behind, or letting anyone's sacrifice go to waste. Holy War taught him to respect everyone's decisions in regards to their future, but also to make one of his own instead of helplessly standing aside as others threw themselves on the sword of war. The Sanctuary may not know at that moment, but Tenma could see it clear as a day: just like Albafica's death sounded the first bell for the Holy War, Aiolos' death was to serve the same purpose.

This time, however, it was not a Specter who did it, but an act of civil war Tenma could not understand.

Why did Saga give that order to Capricorn, Pisces and Cancer? What provoked him into killing Shion and then not taking responsibility by declaring himself a new Pope? Why was Athena the sole focus of his anger and killing attempt after he got rid of Shion? Some things were just not adding up in his mind, and he desperately wanted to know why. This Athena wasn't exactly his Athena, since Sasha as human vessel died in the variant of Holy War that didn't happen in this timeline, but he still wanted his answers.

Somewhere during his musings, he broke into the lowest part of the troposphere, only about a kilometer above the ground, and was forced to slow his descent drastically – he was a former Saint and a Guardian, but he wasn't going to push the boundaries of his supposed immortality while on duty by running himself into a crater in the ground, thank you very much. Teacher Dohko had made craters in the ground with his body during his training enough times for him to not want to repeat it again.

Thankfully, now with him being so close to the ground, he could actually survey the area, check for any unwanted eyes and see if anyone from the Sanctuary was close enough to Parthenon to be a genuine threat to his mission. As he did so, he spotted a dark shadow rapidly approaching Parthenon – too fast to be walking or running, yet too slow to be blitzing at Saint speeds, even at Mach 1 that was Bronze Saints' upper limit. In fact, they looked like they were -

"Fuck," Tenma cursed with gusto as he rocketed downwards. How could he forget – every time Athena vessel was born, Hades' vessel would also born in the matter of days, and the twin sons of Nyx would be also unsealed by Hades' darling sister Pandora.

He'd rather walk through all levels of Underworld and end up in the Coctyus as a punishment (which was looking more and more likely by every passing day) then let Thanatos or Hypnos take Aiolos hostage. Crashing into the ground right next to dead Sagittarius Saint, he flared his wings out just in time to stop a barrage of black feathers.

"… Pegasus Tenma," the black-clothed bastard in all of his Underworld glory spoke, and Tenma bared his teeth in a grin at the incredulous tone in the god's voice. Serves him right – he had never met him, but he – alternate him – was responsible for Manigoldo's and Pope Sage's passing, so he was automatically on Tenma's do not like this guy list. "How are you still alive?"

"Eh, I'm technically not the Tenma you know," he said, retracting his wings to look the god squarely in the eye. "Alternate universes, merging timelines, you know how things are. I'm now Celestial Guardian Sagittarius, and you need to get the hell away from my brother."

"… alternate universes," Thanatos also let his wings vanish, and for a second Tenma would've thought the god was just an ordinary, if a somewhat pious man going by his black priest-like clothes if he were younger. Fortunately, he wasn't young enough to be fooled like that anymore. "Now that you say it, I do feel a distortion around you like you do not entirely belong. However, the time hasn't rejected you either… No matter. Celestial Guardians are still in operation?"

"Oh yeah," Tenma let his lips stretch even more, not caring how he looked like. "So back off now, leave my brother's body, and I'll forget to mention you to Sanctuary – we can't have Holy War if you and yours get slaughtered before you find the host, right?"

"Do not push me and your immortality," Thanatos took a step forward, taller than Tenma by at leats a foot, and Tenma finally felt what he expected from a god of his caliber – an oppressive, dark Cosmo that bore down on his shoulders like Taurus House pillars he had taken on a do not use a lot of Cosmo dare during the reconstruction. "I am still a god."

"God or not, I'd still fight you any day," Tenma winked, delighting in the look of utter rage that appeared on Thanatos' face. "Too bad we have guests approaching, and I'm pretty sure you lot don't want Sanctuary to know you're already free and searching."

Indeed, as they talked, Tenma had sensed the approach of some vague presences and one very bright and sharply defined, like that of a freshly polished sword – almost exactly what he would expect from a younger El Cid.

Sanctuary had come to pick up their traitor, not that Tenma was planning to play according to the script.

"This is not over by far, Pegasus," Thanatos said through his teeth but backed off, the pitch-black wings appearing on his back again as he prepared to depart. "Do not forget your place and role in this game – you're but a mere watcher, not a player."

"Even watchers can influence the game if they try hard enough," Tenma sassed right back, but the god was already gone, the party pooper who always had to have the last word. "Well, time to take on the fireworks."

Revealing his wings again, as he wasn't above intimidation and a good dose of fear-fueled admiration they alaways seemed to bring, much as Asmita and Alen tried to talk him out of it - although he had to admit having Ecarlate and Hakurei cheering him on the sides was not helping the case – he knelt down next to Aiolos' cooling body to inspect the damage and figure out how much time he'll need to put him properly to rest.

Skidding his fingers over his arms and chest, Tenma had to wince as he read the injuries with his Cosmo: left arm was basically in fragments, right one was nearly wrenched out of its socket, and the sheer number of cracked and broken ribs made him wonder how come the kid hadn't collapsed or died earlier from both external and internal blood loss. Legs were also in pretty bad shape, riddled as they were with holes from Pisces' roses, and several of the lower vertebrae showed signs of overstressing, likely from carrying Athena, his Pandora Box and defending his cargo.

All in all, his body was a right mess he'd need at least a full day to sort out before being ready to bury him: that is, if he manages to negotiate with Saga and other Gold Saints and trainees in that time.

This… might or might not be problematic.

Integra and Yelena's stories left very little to the imagination as to what happened to the traitors of the Sanctuary, particularly if the traitor was highly ranked or well known. While Yelena was spared most of the abuse due to the manner in which she died (Tenma still could not comprehend how a Saint could attack from behind while his opponent was busy with another duel, and apparently the shame that killing brought was enough for people to go easy on her), Integra went through everything except post-mortem ling chi. Being beaten until all bones broke, being dunked into acid, obscenities and curses being cut into her dead body before being paraded around tied to a stick… it made more than one Guardian vomit as she dispassionately went through the story, and no one managed to remain stone-faced.

One good thing that came out of it, though, was the way Tenma saw Shion deal with everyone who protested their honorable burial – he wasn't ashamed to admit he cackled like a loon when the former Aries Saint pulled out the big guns in order to bury them properly. He used everything under the sun: guilt-trip disguised as a stern lecture about honorable ways to kill even if they are your enemy for Yelena, and a mixture of wheedling, sheer bullheadedness and seemingly innocuous reminders of Integra's track record prior to her rebellion that were actually designed to make people doubt everything including their own sanity. The whole mess was so enjoyable, Avenir who had at that time carried the title of Aries Guardian was bullied into making a recording device for later viewing just for those who had night shifts at the time to be in the loop.

Now, he was going to put all of those little tricks and others he picked over the years he served as the Guardian to good use; Capricorn Saint and his entourage was only seconds away from reaching him.

Shura frowned at the mass of white feathers near the back of the Parthenon, almost exactly at the spot he had last tracked down traitor's Cosmo. It had been a bitch of a task to track the body down, mostly due to the fact the dead did not radiate Cosmo, but the Pope wanted the proof of death, and Shura could not find fault in the request. However, as he got closer to the site and spotted the sheer volume of the blood in the tracks, the more the bile crept up from his stomach to the back of his throat.

He's a traitor, stop feeling sympathy for him, he ordered his own heart, but as it was wont to do his heart cared very little for the opinion of his mind; it still mourned the death of a colleague and a man he had once admired and who had taught him proper Greek pronunciation after noticing him struggling through more formal passages every Gold Saint had to memorize and be able to repeat verbatim at the moment's notice, was forever patient with him and didn't belittle him for arriving third to last from the current roster of Gold Saints.

The mass of white feathers unfurled at that moment, revealing the back of a kneeling man next to a lying silhouette for a moment before the kneeling man stood up and turned around. His face was youthful, Shura thought as he made note of the stardust-layered shin and arm guards, but the look in his eyes was most certainly not – if he didn't know any better, he'd think he was staring at the face of one of Heavens' angels, sky soldier about to go to war with him over a traitor, because that body behind him had to be Aiolos.

"Uh… hola?" The man tilted his head, frowning for a second before continuing in Greek. "Sorry, Ecarlate and Rasgado gave their best, but my Spanish is still on strict hi-bye-thanks-sorry stage."

"It's alright," Shura waved the apology off, little surprised the man bothered to greet him in his native tongue instead of Greek that was standard, but still appreciated the effort. "I can understand you in Greek just fine. Now please, step aside; I was sent to collect the body behind you."

"Uh, yeah, no," the man smiled affably as he spoke, but Shura had to take a step back and closer to the foot soldiers he had taken with him just in case. His eyes and posture shattered any and all notions of friendliness and cooperation: Shura could feel the hostility radiating from the man despite there being virtually no Cosmo around him to give him away. "That's gonna have to wait a bit."

"Wait for what? He's Sanctuary's business, not yours," Shura countered, calming down from the initial scare and assuming the 'I'm currently the oldest and most trained Gold Saint' headspace Aio – the traitor had taught him to adapt when dealing with people who would question him purely on the basis of his age.

"Wrong," the man grinned. "He's my responsibility, since he's my little brother."

Little- ?

Shura nearly choked on air. Aiolo – traitor had an older brother, and never spoke about him? Not even Aiolia said anything about having another older brother, and the man did not look Greek at all… in fact, he looked more like a portrait of Master Izo, the Capricorn Saint of the last Holy War and a Japanese native.

"You don't look like him at all!"

"Oy, why does blood relation matter so much?" The man was still smiling, and was finally relaxing a bit, much to Shura's relief. "He's my otouto and I have to, by ancient laws, take care of his body otherwise I'll be punished pretty badly in the afterlife."

"That doesn't matter – he's ours first and foremost, and he has to pay for what he'd done," Shura fired back, spreading his Cosmo and shifting into an attack stance. His instincts told him the other will not take his declaration lying down, and he wanted to be ready to act at any moment.

"Didn't he pay already with his painful and premature death?" The man shook his head and turned away, for which Shura was immensely thankful; he didn't think he managed to quite control his reaction to those words. "You're an astonishingly cruel man, Saint Capricorn. What's your name?"

"Capricorn Shura, Athena's sword and warrior of honor," Shura replied automatically, parroting the first Greek phrase his master had taught him when the Pope confirmed him as the Capricorn trainee and allowed him to pursue the Goat's Path.

"Celestial Guardian Sagittarius, Tenma," the man picked up Ai – traitor's broken body and turned around, all humor and cheer vanishing from his face as he introduced himself. "Archer of the skies and student of centaur Chiron."

"Celestial Guardian?"

Shura had never heard of the title before, but the way the man – Tenma – had said it led him to believe it was a title he was very proud of it, and he bowed to Tenma shallowly, if only to observe common courtesy between foreign entities.

"It's an old tale, so old that even Sanctuary completely forgot about it," Tenma smiled, but the smile did not touch his eyes. "Those that were most worthy, most representative Saints of their birth constellation were granted temporary immortality to help their celestial siblings on their destined paths."

Everything started clicking in Shura's mind: Tenma's unconditional protectiveness of the traitor, the way he was eyeballing Shura, ready to react at the slightest hint of provocation… He was Sagittarius Guardian, and as such was predisposed to take care of everyone born under said sign, even if they were disgraces and traitors.

Unfortunately, Shura was on a mission, and he wasn't about to fail Pope like he had failed to notice the darkness in traitor's heart.

"I will still have to ask you to hand the traitor over," Shura told him, delicately spreading out Cosmo to his right arm, in which rested the spirit of mighty Excalibur, his Lady's blessed sword, ready for anything. "I wouldn't want to start anything over him: he doesn't deserve it."

"Ah, kid, you're so cute," Tenma laughed out of blue, startling Shura and nearly making him lose control over his Cosmo. "Who're you to say who deserves what in life or death? You're no immortal, nor can you read hearts, minds or souls – you're just a soldier."

Shura recoiled at the frank, biting retort, and the company of the men he had brought with him took offense at his words, lowering their weapons at ready and raising their voices.

"Who does he think he is - "

"Apologise to Lord Shura, you -"

"You disgusting traitor, like protecting the like -"

"Traitor!"

"Traitor!"

"Enough!" Shura snapped at them before the cries reached boiling point: the man was still a former Saint by indirect admission, and he didn't think he could kill two Saints in less than twelve hours – not mentally, at least. Ai – traitor took enough out of him to think twice about killing Tenma. "You claim to be immortal; do you claim yourself enough to judge what he deserves?"

"First off, I'm not really immortal," Tenma shrugged, the motion dislodging Aiolos' head from it place and leaving it to loll, red bandana smeared with blood and dirt clearly visible, as well as the unnatural bend of the neck. Had he broken his neck? Shura's stomach churned with guilt. "I can still be killed, but it takes a damn lot more than mortal weapons or simple Cosmo attack from a Saint. Second, yes, I can judge him fairly, because I've been watching him his entire life, and know exactly what he was doing and why at any moment."

"So, your judgement is?" Shura held his breath as he watched Tenma's eyes light up.