Hey, people, back here again. I know I don't update much but... I try, people, I try! So, thank you to all my reviewers, I'm very glad you like this fic, and...

"SHOWTIME!"

Chapter 19

Sins and Thoughts

Woods of Aphrodite, small forest outside Athens, Greece, one day after Siegfried's arrival in Athens.

The girl was hunched over in the middle of the beautiful, beautiful woods, consuming the flesh of one of the deers that Aphrodite's clan held so sacred and at the moment was nothing more than a bunch of meat to her. She wanted to mouth prayers over the corpse but didn't. Aphrodite could keep the deer's soul. She just wanted its flesh.

She bit into it, hungrily, and wondered briefly what sort of god would consider a animal sacred. Weren't humans the highest animal of them all? Wasn't it stupid, to consider something so great that a starving human could not eat it? It was one thing to think of an animal as "unclean" and not eat it (no one wants to eat dirty things, after all), but for an animal to be sacred? What kind of thinking was that? Aphrodite must really be nothing more than an oversexed bimbo to think that these deer were anything but dinner. Even the damn wolves of the forest didn't hold them sacred- and if there was one animal in all the woods that could even come close to being sacred, it had to be a wolf. Maybe that should be the sacred animal of Aphrodite. The wolf. An animal that greatly enjoyed all the pleasures of life- eating, drinking, and screwing. Wonderful aphorism for the goddess of love.

She thought how funny it all was as she gorged on its flesh. Here she was, sister to the most famed hero of Greece, eating the uncooked, raw flesh of one of the mightiest gods' sacred deer and thinking thoughts that bordered heavily on blasphemy. She smirked.

Her whole outlook had rather changed in the past few days.

There was slight movement. Baring her teeth almost like an animal, she leaned out slightly, to look and see who was on the path before her. A man, with thick black hair and a pair of nunchuka attached to his belt, passed by. Something about him seemed very familiar- hadn't Sophitia mentioned something about a man with black hair before? An Oriental, somebody who really liked those strange nunchuka weapons? Somebody who was always drinking, if she recalled correctly...

She shook her head as the man passed by. No. Couldn't be him. His face was white- no ruddy, rust-colored complexion of the sort that always followed a heavy drinker around, like a shameful tattoo, wherever they went. This guy looked young, healthy and strong. And, as Cassandra watched him, he did not have the one thing that Sophitia was always going on about when she mentioned him.

He did not have the two companions that always accompanied him. Neither the Chinese girl, the swordswoman who somehow always seemed stronger than she looked, or the monk, the strange quiet man who walked softly, talked softly... and carried a big stick.

Settling back into the small, naturally-made cave she had hid herself in (with the front covered in ivy and thorn, it was invisible from the small path in the forest), she continued eating her meal. She'd only thrown up part of it twice. She could stomach more.

The Soul Edge in her pocket gleamed. People close to madness were so much fun to screw with.

It laughed as she ate her food and gagged.

Outside Athens, Greece, same time.

After getting their weapons back from the guards (Raphael had constantly kept looking over his, as if he expected to find a flaw, and glared at the guards until they left; Ivy finally told him that his sword was okay and could he stop brandishing it at everybody they met on the road already?) Siegfried and his companions set out to sojourn forth. Finding information on Cassandra had been ridiculously easy; everyone knew the story in town, it seemed, and it was spoken of in tones of greatest sorrow and pain. It seemed that little Cassandra had went just a little nuts after her sister left, and for some reason had just went down into town one day, killed a bunch of monks (the stories kept getting bigger as they went along; the bounty paper said she was wanted for only two murders, but so far the party had heard numbers ranging all the way from ten to a staggering eighteen), and left, lugging a big piece of stolen gold relic behind her. The effect of these tales on the party was... odd, sometimes.

Raphael especially seemed to have troubel with the more oturageous lies- trouble, that was, keeping his mouth shut. Raphael had actually burst out laughing as one old man, spittle in his mouth, described the sight he'd seen of "Cassandra, runnin' to beat Hades, laughin' fit to cry, going down that street and into the sun wit' a big gol' statue of Ares on her back!". When asked "what's s' damn funny?" by the old man, Raphael had went on to say that it had been a temple of Aescuhl she'd robbed, not a temple of Ares, and besides, he'd seen some Ares statues, they were huge, and if she could lug one of them around, should they really be trying to fight her? Still laughing, the swordsman had walked off, leaving a very bad old liar to chew his lip in frustration and befuddlement, and his companions torn between soothing the old man's damaged ego, walking away with Raphael (and chuckling along in time to boot), or simply staring at Raphael's back in wonder. In the end, they all attempted to do each; Siegfried and Kilik ended up half-bellowing " Hey, we believe you, he's just like that" while Ivy said " You are a bad liar, old man," and then all three stared at Raphael and finally ran to catch up with him. Siegfried believed he'd never been so thoroughly flustered in his life.

" What got into you, Raphael? " Siegfried said, as they caught up to him. After Raphael's quick and simple decision to go along with them to fight the only currently-operating organization of world-domination-bent maniacs in the entire world , he'd watched Raphael carefully, even in his sleep (the town had excellent inns; quite nice, if expensive; Siegfried's purse was noticeably lighter now), and this outburst was not helping Raphael's image as a sane man. In fact, Siegfried had begun to suspect that Raphael was not all that greatly sane at all. " That... wasn't like you."

For some reason, this made Raphael utter one giggled snort, then sober up quickly, saying, " Yeah, I know. It's just... for some reason, that was the most moronic statement I have ever heard. It's just... he got the god wrong, he got the temple wrong, he even got the damn time wrong!" Again, Raphael started laughing, big, chuckling snorts that concealed barely restrained glee over the old man's stupidity. " I mean, everyone else in town said it happened at night, and here he goes, this old man, telling us she ran off into the sun!"

For a moment, Siegfried could only stare at Raphael, before a few weak chuckles of his own came out. He said, " Okay... Now I kind of get it, but..."

Raphael finally stopped laughing and raised his head. " Oh," he said, sighing theatrically. " I'm sorry about that, but truth be told, there's nothing I like better than a bad liar. They're so much fun." Still sighing, he clapped Siegfried on the back. " Sorry about that, lad! I'll try to keep my mouth shut from now on."

Siegfried nodded to him and wondered who in the world he'd just teamed up with. Ivy, behind them, raised her eyebrow, wondering what in the world Raphael was going on about. But Kilik...

He just watched as Raphael went walking off, whistling, into the sun.

A bad liar...

Kilik thought for a moment. Then, an idea occurring to him, he thought,

Are you one yourself, Raphael?

He wondered.

Somewhere in China. Same time.

No thoughts, no memories, no pounding in the brain. No worries that, if it had not been for the great guardian angel that had appeared, she might have failed to kill Inferno. No remembering that, whatever might happen, she had not been the one responsible for the rescue of the entire world.

That's what XIanghua liked. One day without all those thoughts was a damn good one. And today looked to be a marvelous day, at least according to her calendar. People, ministers, random commoners, and nobility were passing through today, and she was going to be spending a busy day of state as she dealt with them all. The High Priestess of the land, she called herself "miko", a Japanese term she had heard a visiting samurai use once and rather liked upon hearing it. It was something outside China, outside her family, outside her home... but she never thought about why that was important to her. Or the fact that it was a demon who had sparked such desire in her.

Oh, damn Inferno. Damn him in whatever thousand-damned hell he currently inhabited. Damn him again, for the confusion he'd caused. Damn him for making her lose her way.

Forget the pain he'd caused others; damn him for her.

Damn him for making her doubt.

Xianghua shook her head and readjusted the French-made rings on her fingers. She would not think thoughts like that; not today. Not when so many visitors were arriving.

She stepped outside and into the main hallway of the small castle she lived in; the servants bowed and scraped the floor as she passed, and she nodded to each of them. She was, in her own way, much like a saint of the Catholic religion she'd heard so much about lately; someone holy, gifted by God (or the gods, depending) with some kind of special gift that made them above the sins of ordinary men. Xianghua thought that the Catholics were right about that last, at least; she knew for a fact that people themselves had no holiness in them at all. Hell, if anything, people had unholyness inside them; there was nothing good about humanity, or its soul. If nothing else, she knew that as truth. Nothing good in humanity anymore, or before, even, or after. Nothing good about humanity at all.

And that fit, right? After all, no one talked about her old sword anymore, but they'd all known it was holy. At first everyone had thought it was a gift to her, for her good- but didn't she herself just admit that she wasn't good? After all, if she had any good in her, wouldn't it have fought the demon? Wouldn't it have killed Inferno, instead of listening to him?

No. She wasn't holy. The sword was. It had not been God's gift to her, a "reward" for being such a good person- it was just the opposite. The sword had been sent to make her good. And in the end, she'd failed, and the sword had been taken away from her. They'd went their separate ways in the end. She'd went on to become just another false prophet in a world full of false hope, and the sword and the Truth it represented were forgotten in the depths of time. But in the final, final end, it was God who won out. A false prophet in a world of thousands was forgotten; one holy sword of truth could be forgotten, but it would still exist regardless of what the majority thought of it. That was the real power of God, then; He existed regardless of whether people gave a damn or not. He really was there.

She shook her head again, the English shawls wrapped up on it flapping lightly in the wind. Why was she thinking these things? She wasn't even Christian, and she didn't want to think those thoughts, and oh God if He was real then she'd failed Him and she'd fucked up fucked up fucked up...

She shook her head and kept walking down the corridor, an elegant figure in blue, priestess dress, and inside her mind was a whirling convention of darkness, fire, and rain. And in her head, she wondered if there was just too much judgement that could be put on her head if she had fucked up, and if God was real. And then she wondered what priests meant by salvation, and if certain parts of the Bible they talked about were meant for certain people. And if a certain part of those certain people were those who thought they were holy, and if it was those certain people of all the certain people who needed to understand forgiveness and God and the fact that they were not good people most of all. And she wondered if it was hypocrites who went to hell and not the politicians. And if it was those most true to themselves and most honest with their own faults that got saved. And if she, insane, was starting to learn more than she ever had in all the days she had thought herself sane.

She wondered why all her own family had talked about was how holy they were, because of their bloodline, and she wondered if blood really meant a damn thing at all. And if maybe she should have been born of cursed blood, so she wouldn't feel like she had her head held up high and wasn't looking down at her feet and seeing the great big ass pit in front of her. And then she thought that somebody born of cursed blood might at least have been looking down, feeling downtrodden, even, and seeing the pit skirted it while someone else fell straight in. And she wondered why she wondered these things.

That night, when all the visitors were gone, she developed a splitting headache in her left temple and kept it an entire week. At the end of that week, Astaroth arrived, and she had far more worrisome troubles than an aching head.

But in her head, she kept thinking about sinning, and holiness, and forgiveness, and maybe if there really was a God above it all. And somehow, that thought scared her most of all.

R & R please!