22 — FLAMES
The morning dew ran through the leaves of the mountain forests that surrounded Saori's refuge.
Alice was already on her feet. Heating water and making tea to serve with a cake that smelled too good on a set table.
"Good Morning."
"Good morning, Shun." said Alice. "How do you want your tea?" she asked sweetly.
"Any way you want it, it's great." he replied, taking a seat at the table.
Immediately, crossed Alice's thoughts that Shun had lived the worst he could in his hard years of training; that tea would be great for him anyway as he had never really had a choice. She felt ashamed inside, but hid herself while preparing the infusion.
It was the day after Seiya left for Russia, as well as Shiryu for China. Shun was worried about his friends and couldn't help thinking about his sister too, who had died so close by.
"I'm sure Seiya will be fine." Alice said, sitting down at the table with him.
A young girl comforting a young boy. That's what the scene was in that cozy kitchen. The calm boy's face, but with tired eyes; and the most severe and attentive girl.
"I know. He always finds a way to be fine." Shun replied.
Alice didn't said anything and her gaze was lost in the lake beyond the balcony.
"You've always been next to the Gold Cloth, haven't you, Alice?" Shun asked.
She looked up at him, her determined eyes meeting the weariness of a boy trying to understand the hardships around him.
"Yes," she limited herself to saying, looking away again.
"And next to Saori." said he looking at her. Her reaction came quickly and she looked at him as if caught in a crime.
"We've known each other since we were very young." Alice said taking a sip of her tea.
Shun looked confused.
"I don't remember you."
"I got there a little earlier than you and the others." said Alice.
"I guess you want to be around her all the time to protect her, as she doesn't have any training, right?"
Alice didn't respond and just nodded.
"Shiryu said she fought well in the Caves."
"She thinks she can do anything."
Shun smiled at the sincere comment Alice seemed to have let slip.
"I remember very little of her as a child." Shun commented.
"That's because you all hated me." said Saori, appearing in her pajamas on the threshold of the hallway.
Alice got up and grabbed a mug for her friend.
"I heard you saying that I think I know everything, miss." she said sassy.
"You really do." Alice said and Saori took the mug from her hand.
"I know how to pour some tea for myself."
"Sometimes you don't.". said Alice.
"Mii! You will never forget that one time, will you?"
Shun watched as Alice hid her laughter in her mug, pretending to drink.
"I don't remember hating you." Shun said, lying to Saori.
"But I do." she said, sitting down with them.
"We were just kids…" Shun justified.
"No, it's fine. I wasn't easy either."
"Jab knows that very well." Alice commented and Shun laughed, as he remembered the infamous episode where Saori forced the boy to be her horsey.
"Mii!" Saori scolded her friend. "I hate to remember that."
"We were young." Shun said, softening.
"You are still young." Saori said more seriously. "And you still had to go through the most terrible years."
"It wasn't your fault." Shun said.
Then they were uncomfortably silent as they finished breakfast that morning.
The dawn of the second day began with an emergency call that Saori answered while the sky was almost dark, about to dawn. Alice was already beside her.
After hanging up the brief phone call, she turned on a large, old-fashioned television in the house; she flicked through the channels quickly and sat on the couch watching the news. Shun stood up at the sound. The image showed the Mansion that Saori lived in flames. Burned down. Firefighters trying to contain and put out the fire with their hoses. The building was doomed and, in the images, Saori saw the building dismantling in flames. The fire was violent.
Alice placed a hand on her shoulder while she watched the TV in horror.
"I knew that would be the next target." she commented, her eyes glazed over.
"Is everyone all right?" Alice asked.
"Yes. There was no one there." replied Saori.
The newscast reported that, once again, the arson had been committed by angry fans at the end of the Galaxian War; Saori, although young, knew that the newspaper's narrative was a strategy by the news station itself to hold the Foundation responsible for that. Saori immediately smiled while thinking about it, as she remembered the real importance of all those events that was happening to her. But bureaucratic concerns and the relationship of her Foundation with media outlets still crossed her mind. Something so mundane. She was so young.
She also remembered that this was not the work of angry fans. But just another message. That Saori had already predicted it would happen.
"We're safe for now." she said. "But there's a chance that whoever is responsible for that fire knows that the Knights aren't here."
"Do you think they can attack because we're alone?" Shun asked.
"If we're attacked, then we can be sure it doesn't really matter what we do. Just as we have eyes and ears to keep up with everything that's suspicious in the town, so probably does this organization." said Saori. "But they know who we are. We still don't know who they are."
"I'll be on the watch for the night."
"We can take turns." Shun said to Alice.
They looked at each other worried but resolute.
Two days of peace passed in the mountains, but the atmosphere inside the cabin was tense. The secure line they maintained let Saori know that the entourages from China and Russia were already returning. Which eased their hearts.
Shun started using his own Andromeda Cloth so that the Chain would help him detect anything in his watch, but on his turn nothing came up.
It was in the afternoon of the fourth day, when Alice dawned on guard duty, that she noticed something strange in the forest. First came a brief smell of ash and burning, which she soon realized was from a burning tree. And then two. Three of them. And the fire began to spread.
"Shun!" cried Alice, pulling on her Cloth and stepping forward in front of the house.
Saori came running on the balcony and in the distance she saw that the fire was consuming the trees.
"Don't even think about it!" Alice complained when she saw that Saori had a steel protection on her arm.
But she jumped in beside Alice, triggered the mechatronic arm, and her body was covered in metallic parts of her Steel Cloth.
"We can't let the fire get here. This is the worst place if we want to avoid a fire, we are entirely surrounded by trees."
"Alice!" Shun leaped onto the porch with his Cloth on, his Chain taut.
The three were in front of the shack.
"Shun, I'll take care of the fire." said Alice. "Find who's behind this."
"Leave it to me."
"I will guard the Gold Armor." said Saori.
Alice leapt at immense speed, walked a few meters across the lake's surface and then dove fabulously into its crystal clear waters, only to leap like a dolphin to immeasurable heights, bringing behind her an impossible wave of fresh water to bathe the burning trees, putting out the intermittent fire.
"Go, Nebula Chains!" Shun ordered.
The Triangular Chain shot through the Forest, breaking some logs, and then stopped at the fist of the culprit. Far away. The Circular Chain in his right arm became tense immediately and Shun could see in the distance a torrent of fire advancing violently, using the Triangular Chain as a conducting wire. He would be set ablaze were it not for his mighty aeolian cosmos to blow the fire in the opposite direction while drawing in his Chain back.
The enemy finally revealed itself through the nearby trees. It had a gleaming scarlet Cloth.
"Give us the Gold Cloth and surrender." said his voice of thunder.
"Who are you?"
"I am the Silver Furnace Saint, Babel."
"A Silver Saint?" Shun was surprised.
In the background, Alice's waves lapped the forest.
"It's useless. This is not just any fire. She can spend all day doing that and still won't be able to quench the flames created by my cosmos."
Shun knew his winds couldn't be used here or it would only worsen the devastation. He knew he would have to defeat that Silver Saint using his chains and his cosmos. And there wasn't much time to try to convince him to give up a futile battle, when in fact if anyone was in doubt about the situation it was him and not the Silver Saint.
Babel marched to Shun, purposeful and imposing; he was a strong man and his every step on the grass left a trail of fire.
The forest already had a Dantesque scenario in which the fire rising through the trees mixed with the vapor of Alice's waters, which contained the advance as much as it could, without managing to kill the fire.
"Answer me, who's after the Gold Cloth?"
"Oh, what a silly question." replied the Silver Saint.
He then stopped in front of Shun and ascended a huge cosmos: a bright, warm purple aura. The Cosmo of a Silver Saint wearing his Cloth was immense and Shun was amazed at the pressure he felt coming from that energy. It was a feeling far distant from what he felt in the cosmos of his friends or even in the Black Saints. He realized that his battle seemed already lost.
The purple aura around his scarlet armor exploded in a fire of impossible colors; blue, white, red and orange flames flickered around his body, and through the flames Shun could see only two glowing spheres, which were his eyes.
That impossible fire then moved forward, furious, towards Shun. His Chain immediately protected him with its circular dome, preventing the fire from consuming his body; but the strength was such that the heat so close made Shun sting his eyes and bruise his face with the temperature. The fire dissipated and he was alive. But the rapid Chains spread the flames to the trees around him.
"You will stay alive thanks to that special Chain, but everything around you will turn to ashes, boy. Give up and surrender." said Babel.
It was true. The flames crept through the valley and would soon arrive at the refuge that had the misfortune of being a beautiful house made of wood. In spite of the immense effort that Alice operated in the forest containing the fire with its magical water, clearly they were losing that battle.
Beside him, she reappeared, panting and absolutely soaking wet.
"The fire of this Saint is not normal." she said, gasping for air. "I'm going to finish him off at once."
"Alice, you are very tired."
"Shun, if this battle doesn't end now, then it ends with our defeat." Her look was worried.
"Alice, attack with your waters. I will bind him with my Chains."
She nodded.
Alice dove back into the churning lake and out of it threateningly towards Babel, who barely moved at her threat. Alice's shrill voice rang through the forest:
"Heaven Maelstrom!"
The water she brought from the raging lake enveloped Babel in a violent water tornado.
"Thunder Wave!" shouted Shun.
His Triangular Chain broke like a violent bolt and wrapped itself around the nailed body of Babel, who was receiving Alice's Heaven Maelstrom. Struck by the raging waters and potentiated by the thunder of the Nebula Chain, Babel emerged from the current-enshrouded tornado and landed on the lawn.
"Mii!" shouted Saori in the background.
Alice looked at her friend and saw her struggling with what appeared to be an older gentleman, leaning on a staff. Saori was fitter than the old man, but that staff seemed to contain some cosmic spell that stopped Saori's movements. Alice started to run towards her friend, when Shun felt the flaming cosmos of Babel rekindle behind him.
It was the worst-case scenario.
Alice flew at the old man, preventing him from getting into the house and breaking the spell on Saori. She put herself in front of her friend, but saw Shun in trouble again.
"Help Shun. I know how to take care of myself." said Saori.
Alice was torn.
And in his confusion, Shun didn't notice a terrible trap he fell into.
The fire that had once burned in Babel's fists was now all around him. Surrounded by a circle of fire. Shun still had time to find the Silver Saint's eyes smiling at him. And when he snapped his fingers, Shun saw that the circle of fire had grown in height, surpassing his helmet so that he could no longer see the outside of that inferno.
He heard Saori and Alice's voices calling for him as the flames around him slowly ate up the circle until it reached his feet. The chains spread around him trying to protect him, but he knew they wouldn't be able to contain the fire. He was cornered.
"Give up the Gold Cloth if you want the boy to live." said the old man, rising and leaning on his staff.
Saori watched as the flames slowly closed in the silhouette that burned inside the pyre of fire.
"Shun!"
"Oh, Shun…" Alice lamented.
"The Gold Cloth! For the boy's life." repeated the man.
Saori looked at that old man, his bald head, stained with age, his eyes slashed with a scar and an old ceremonial garment. There was a brief doubt in her heart, but it soon dissipated and she decided to go inside the house.
"Saori!" Alice shouted.
"Shun's life is more important." said Saori, entering the house.
"Very well." said the old man.
"Who are you?"
"Doesn't matter to you." he replied back.
The blaze was even more intense and the pyre of fire impossibly soared into the sky, illuminating the old man's face with force.
"You said you would spare him!" cried Alice when she saw the fire consuming Shun.
"He's still alive! Let's go… Ah, yes, the Cloth."
Saori reappeared with the Urn on her back.
"Free him!" she asked.
"That's enough, Babel!" warned the old man to the Silver Saint.
But the fire was out of control. A terrible phenomenon was taking place in that forest, for the pyre of impossible fires was higher than the treetops. The fire circled on its axis like a slow tornado and sucked up the flames that ate the trees, so that all the fire in the valley joined that great central fire pyre.
And when the entire forest went out to have only that incendiary source, the cyclone of fire intensified and from it sprang a magnanimous firebird that streaked across the skies in a piercing scream before falling in a low flight to explode the pyre of Babel. A wonderful thought crossed Saori's mind.
"Could it be..."
At the center of the floor charred by the flames was a fabulous woman with Shun in her arms.
The braids in a bun, the Cloth gleaming in shades of silver and orange; hot feathers of fire falling from her back like a cape. The entire right arm covered with bandages. The grim, terrible look right in Babel's eyes.
"Who are you?" asked the Silver Saint, confused as to how anyone could scatter his fire like that.
"I am Phoenix." she replied.
It was Phoenix.
"Ikki..." surprised Saori.
The smart old man tried to rip Saori's Urn, but was restrained by Alice, who hit him again.
"Phoenix!" cried the old man and ordered. "Take the Gold Cloth."
Ikki didn't even look at him, extended her finger towards the old man and a small beam of light crossed the distance between them and lodged in his mind. The old man immediately fell to the ground, hallucinating.
Phoenix saw that Babel looked at what appeared to be his master hallucinating on the ground and his eyes became violent to Ikki.
"You'll pay for that!"
His flaming fist flew towards Ikki like a violent blast of fire that Phoenix stopped with just one hand. Babel's flaming technique was left floating in Ikki's right hand; she then used her other hand to manipulate those terrible flames and return it in the form of a wonderful and immortal bird that swept the Silver Saint to the heavens. His body crashed against a tree, knocking its trunk over.
He was defeated. One hit only. His own blow.
Phoenix walked to the catatonic body of the old man who was still struggling near the shelter and dragged him to where Babel's body layed. She stepped on the staff breaking the artifact and said:
"Run away from here and never come back." she said to Babel, who was still alive but clearly unable to fight.
Babel struggled to his feet, lifted his master on his shoulders, and the two of them staggered away. Not without first leaving a threat:
"Don't ever think you've won. This is not over!"
Phoenix didn't answered, for she knew that very well.
She returned to be next to Shun, who was already receiving care from Alice and Saori because of his burns. They broke through when they saw the Phoenix coming back to be with his brother. She knelt in front of him.
"Shun, are you okay?"
"Sis... sister?"
Maybe he was dreaming, but Shun could have sworn there was a smile on that very hard face of Ikki.
And his eyes immediately filled with tears of longing. Shun hugged his sister who could do nothing against that passionate attack. Her stern gaze fell on Saori and Saori no longer saw the hatred burning inside of her.
Behind Saori, Ikki saw three other young kids approaching.
"Ikki."
There was the smile of Seiya, Shiryu and Xiaoling.
Phoenix Ikki looked again at her brother, who was crying in her arms, and wiped his tears. She took a pendant from around her neck.
A star pendant that had written how Ikki felt about her brother. She gave it back to him.
"Yours Ever"
ABOUT THE CHAPTER: I loved to play with Alice and Shun fighting together and also making Ikki return bringing his brother's pendant. =)
NEXT CHAPTER: YOURS EVER II
They are all reunited again and Phoenix Ikki has returned from the dead to the joy of dear Shun. Now that they're together, they finally understand who's behind the attacks.