WARNING: Blood, violence, death, child maltreatment, one instance of mild language.

The Emerald

Everyone's Cosmos was raised to the peak of their abilities in such tiredness, and Shun's chain spread around his perimeter and that of the friends beside him. Ikki was, of course, the first one to attack, spreading arms and fingers to the sides and exploding a stupendous volume of fire. "PHOENIX FLIGHT!"

To escape the incoming burns, most of the Saints scattered out. The Andromeda chain stayed, covering Shun and Hyoga in a spinning pod that cut the flames before they could pass through. Forming a trail, Ikki strode off the maelstrom and onto June.

This time he caught her by surprise, kicking her against a distant pillar violently. She crawled up and continued to run around the area, but Phoenix had already charged at his next victim, aiming for Jabu, who got hit in the chin and sent off as well, his Cloth barely withstanding the impact.

An intense sound wave hinted at someone incoming, and it was Seiya with a punch so hard it reverberated thunderously when Ikki parried. The other growled and brought raging fire from below, which forced Seiya to go into a defensive position, some of the surface of his skin suffering burns.

The two ends of the Andromeda Chain came slashing at Ikki's feet, to force him away from Pegasus, and Shiryu approached from the opposite side, nearly taking him with his first kick. The two engaged in a standing battle, but Phoenix had the upper hand the entire time, faster and more balanced, despite the sluggish arms. Knowing this, June gave him a hard time with her whip from a distance to offer Shiryu a greater chance. Once she was able to tie the end on Ikki's wrist to retard him, Dragon seized the chance for a double palm strike to his chest, boosting him skidding on the rocks.

Still, he rolled and got back up, as he always did, but he had to deal with three Saints at the same time. Where Seiya's strikes were the fastest, Shiryu's were the hardest; where both failed, June was there to keep Ikki occupied in some way. Impatient, he swung heavily left and right, filling every attempt with smoldering flames.

At first he had minor successes, but Shun didn't allow his allies to be hurt any further, diverting the blows using the chain to the extent that his big brother became infuriated. "THAT'S ENOUGH!" he screamed, clapped a firestorm, and sent the three nearby fighters back momentarily. He ran at a great speed towards Andromeda, and the chain stopped him in his tracks like a barrier. "You and this damn chain of yours!" Every time the square end came towards Ikki, he deflected it ferociously, walking towards the boy. "You're not a warrior, Shun! You shouldn't be wearing that Cloth!" Shun took steps back, being somewhat ahead of Hyoga. "If you fought to kill me, you would've already beaten me!"

"I don't want you to die!" pleaded Shun.

"HIT ME, SHUN!"

"I won't!"

"HIT ME NOW!" Ikki pumped his arms, and the air around him breathed a barrage of ember that made his brother fall back, still refusing to fight properly. "Fine, it's my fault," he said, looming over him, "I pampered you your whole life, so you grew up too soft." Seeing those gentle eyes persist with such compassion rather than fighting spirit, he raised a finger at one of them, aiming true. "Maybe you will understand once you know suffering."

June had gotten up and leaned to interrupt them, calling: "Shun!"

He couldn't move, seemingly hypnotized by how surreal it was, to see that precious person up close, yet for him to feel like a stranger. "DEMON FIST!" Ikki shouted.

The beam exited out of his index. Instead of it reaching the victim, it hit another obstacle: the back of Hyoga's right gauntlet, who was square enough to reflect it at a single angle. Its mirror finish meant that the light didn't split or lose much of its intensity, and with equal accuracy, he warded the Demon Fist into Phoenix's own sight.

Shock befell everyone that such a thing was possible, let alone that it worked so well. One would've believed that Ikki was a man of mental fortitude, however, he seemed as susceptible to its effects as others, if not more vulnerable than Hyoga was when he experienced hallucinations. The man's arms hanged softly on each side, and he stared blankly at the ceiling, a hollow expression suggesting terrors in the realm of the mind.

He felt swallowed into a cold tunnel, resurfacing inside his child self, tied to a post and being spanked by Tatsumi with a pipe. In the dimly lit garage they were in, a guard kept watch at the only door, making sure that no one would interrupt the beatings. "Making me look like a fool in front of Mr. Kido again! You need to learn a lesson," Tatsumi told him and continued to hit, so Ikki cried out. "It's good you volunteered in your brother's place. He's a mellow kid, but you deserve every punishment coming your way!"

More and more beatings came. "You'd better kill me now," the child muttered.

"What did you just say?" Tatsumi smirked, and so did the guard.

"I said you'd better kill me now."

"Kill you, yeah? I don't need to kill you!"

"If I come back from that hell they're sending me off to, I won't let any of you live," he promised.

The man laughed more openly and hit him more cruelly than before. "What a load of crap, you can't be serious, kid!" He stepped sideways and stood face to face to tease him. "You're being sent off to certain death. You won't survive more than a few days in Death Queen's Island; if you don't die physically, you'll die on the inside."

The sound of a large metal door being slid shut filled his ears. Suddenly he was back in a compartment, curled up in a corner with three other boys, one of which sobbed. The ship was headed to a Polynesian island, where they'd be sent to Death Queen's on a clandestine boat.

Ikki could somehow hear a teenage voice speak, harkening back to another point in his life: "We were thrown about like smuggled merchandise, alongside slaves sold by their families or by human traffickers. There was uncertainty when we arrived; in a way we expected it to be better than the rumors, but it was all spot on. Due to an active volcano, great chunks of the island were covered in traps and igneous rock, and very little flora withstood the ambient. There was little food, and the men we were sent to find had no interest in feeding us, so we had to fish or negotiate with the local farmers. In the first year, two of the three boys who came with me didn't make it. In the next coming years, the other one met an ill fate as well."

His young self stood in front of three aligned mounds, names on wooden crosses hidden by shadows cast by the punishing sun. "I don't think we were ever truly friends. In the situation we were thrown in, you had trouble seeing people as more than mere resources for your own survival — you start seeing yourself that way too if you're not careful, like a tool to save your throat on a bad day or two. The people who lived in that island were those who amassed the most power to thrive in a place so hostile, or the unfortunate ones who had no choice but to serve their owners. Those in between — the middle class, if you will — moved out centuries ago, as soon as they had the opportunity. It's not worth it being in such a place if you're without riches and influence."

Ikki felt himself being vomited out into younger flesh, thus being instantaneously struck in the face by massive knuckles. He felt to a hard marble and coughed. Looking up at the shadow, he saw the image of an incredibly muscular man; he himself had gained hardened muscles of his own in these years, but not enough to get to that level. "Weak," the tan-skinned man said, and it was then clear that he wore a tall, colorful, and menacing mask, bearing a demonic snarl and grimace.

The boy tried to get up, but he was grabbed, rotated, then thrown over the man's shoulder back to the floor, moaning in pain. "How did they expect me to train these boys?" The man turned his back. "You're the only one who survived, and look at you. What a waste of my time."

"Wait, master Guilty…" Ikki called him, struggling to pull himself up.

Guilty was already taking his leave. "We're done for today, this is going nowhere. Be here tomorrow at sunrise again." The sun was beginning to come down in the distance, and the pupil lied back, eyelids feeling too heavy to keep open.

As if in a daydream, Ikki saw a vision of his little brother standing in an empty Japanese street, black drapes covering the sunlight behind. Slowly, pale hands crept out of the curtains from behind, coming closer and closer. "Shun!" He couldn't move to protect his brother, there was nothing in reach. The creature revealed itself more and more, showing how long- and raven-haired it was, and then it grabbed the kid's brown hair. "SHUN!"

He woke up, but when his eyes opened, what he saw was the calming sight of a Polynesian teenage girl, dark skin adorned with brown almond eyes, flowing wavy black hair down to her back, dressed in a light wrap-around dress of muted colors. She had a wet towel in hands, and tended to his many bruises by pressing delicate fingers against them. Even such careful pressure was enough to bring out the tenderness in the wounds. "Hm… did you have another nightmare about your brother?" she asked, her voice the one soothing thing he could hear in those days.

"I did," he answered simply, going silent for a while. "Why are you here? If your master sees you, you'll be in trouble."

The girl smiled. "I've taken care of the pigs and the chickens, I've dealt with the crops, I've cleaned the house… why would I stay in when I can come and see you?"

"Because there's nothing for you to gain by seeing me, taking such a great risk."

She pressed one of his largest bruises harder, as if to playfully punish him, but the expression on her face was more serious. He groaned faintly. "Ever since my family sold me to that man, you're all I have," she said.

"Esmeralda…"

"They call this island hell on Earth, and they're right, yet I always saw a glimmer of hope in the horizon. Every morning when I wake up while it's still dark, I have to break my back over my chores, and I know I will hear insults and scorn from my master and his family. Still, I can stand it. Do you know why that is?"

Ikki shook his head left and right. "Why?"

"If you look around you, there's nothing but rocks and the sea. At first glance, it's as if this arid place has been forsaken by the gods, as if no life can be sustained in it. To the southwest of my master's home, however, I found a field of grass and flowers. Can you believe that?"

"That sounds unlikely," he said arching his brows, and Esmeralda chuckled.

"Imagine… lost in this hell there is life and beauty against all odds. It made me feel certain that if I stood strong against adversity, that glimmer of hope would grow, grow, and grow, until it was a light as bright as the sun's. So I stood strong, and then I met you." Her voice failed, and she wiped a tear off, but Ikki's eyes began to shine as well. She tried to distract her feelings by using the warm towel to massage the bruises some more. "I… I can't give in to suffering, and I must stay by your side. I endured each day in pain, waiting for something good to happen, and then you did — you happened. I believe that we can grow stronger and leave this island one day, together. You're the field of flowers in my personal hell, Ikki."

Ikki held one of Esmeralda's hands in his own, both calloused, one by hard work in a farm, another by sheer violence. "I'll become strong; I'll bring you with me out of this forlorn place, Esmeralda. For everything that you've done for me, and for everything that you mean to me. I swear by my own life, the only thing I have to offer."

Suddenly his body was swallowed back up into the cold, and he was spat out to take hardened knuckles to the face like before. "Still weak," Guilty said, spitting on the floor. The cyclical nature of his training was bothersome, although he knew he had become much stronger. He was visibly bigger, he felt like he had more control over his body and mind than ever, nonetheless, he didn't feel anywhere close to overpowering that man. "You're strong, but this is not enough. Hatred, Ikki! That's what you lack. Rage, fury, hatred! I beat you because my hatred for you burns like a flame inside me. Hatred!"

Having gotten up, Ikki ran at Guilty and tried to strike, but took a large palm to the chest that winded him. His master then threw him to the floor again, using a heel behind his legs and the elbow against his shoulder. To punish him some more, he straddled the boy and resorted to beating him up with jabs from both sides, always on the face, which Ikki could barely block by coiling arms around his head.

"You came all the way here… for what?" Guilty asked him, continuously hitting as hard as he could. "You useless kid! I'll beat hatred into your head!"

Spying from behind the rocks, Esmeralda could no longer stand watching such cruelty unfold. She made the grave mistake of running in and trying to appeal for Guilty to stop. "Stop, you're going to kill him!" she wailed. "You're killing him! Stop!"

Guilty got up and began walking aggressively at her. "This slave girl again? I've already told you to leave!"

When Ikki saw an aura burning around his master's hand, he knew what was about to happen. "Esmeralda, stay back!" He was too dizzied to be able to stop him. Guilty used two fingers to pierce her chest before she could rethink her actions. The girl whimpered, then fell back stiffly on the floor. "ESMERALDA!"

He tried to stand, but lost balance and had to crawl desperately to her. Guilty wiped her blood off his fingers and turned away. "Her owner was tired of her causing trouble anyway. This is probably for the best," he said.

"Esmeralda, Esmeralda… it's fine," the boy said, sobbing in between syllables.

"I-Ikki…" She was frail, gasping for air and drowning within herself.

"I can… I can heal you, it's fine, it's fine," he continued in vain. She breathed faster and faster then finally went limp, eyes kept open in her last moments of suffering. "Esmeralda! ESMERALDA!" He wanted to drown himself too, to die there with her, but he had no strength to leave her side. Burying his face in her chest, he bawled so hard he at times choked. A river of joy poured out with each tear, curling his body in defeat.

"Listen to me," Guilty said, "this is my ultimatum to you... tomorrow. If by tomorrow's sunset you can't defeat me, I won't bother sparring with you again." Ikki had a more pressing matter to care about, and those words were a blur, below even background noise. The man walked off, lamenting how pathetic his greatest apprentice seemed to him.

But said apprentice remained there the whole night through, crying until the evening. There came a point where he thought he had no more tears to pour out, only mourning to bemoan and pent-up anger to lose himself in. It was difficult to leave Esmeralda's side; he knew somehow that, once he got off her chest, he would cease being the person he once was. He slept in that uncomfortable position and the morning came, and so Guilty returned.

The man noted that the boy spent the night the same way he started the last afternoon, and that the girl still bore the same haunting expression of when he last saw her, but there was no more sobbing. "Still here?" Guilty scoffed. "Have you died with her as well?"

His pupil supported his body under the arms, shutting Esmeralda's eyelids as he finally stood. A flaming aura so hot and saturated painted the air around Ikki, distorting all light crossing through it, and it was easy for a trained Cosmos user to sense the absurd amount of energy he so quickly gathered.

"This… this Cosmos!" Guilty said, getting ready to spar. Sparring wasn't on the boy's mind, however; he was intent on taking his life, taking the Phoenix Cloth, and taking the life of all of those he believed to have wronged him and the ones he loved.

So Ikki went onward and Guilty could not contain him, taking dozens of strikes to the chest that took huffs of breath from his lungs. He laughed hysterically at the cathartic sight of what could only be the one and only Phoenix Saint.

"Yes! Yes!" he commemorated before taking a spinning kick hard to the side of the head. As he fell, a crack opened and broke a piece in the corner of his wooden mask. "You've done it, boy!"

Then Ikki, eyes showing nothing more than rage, straddled his master the same way he had straddled him the day before, but his punches were filled with unparalleled Cosmos and force, such that they split the wood fully and revealed the man's features, his silver long hair and the brown tightened eyes. Then he continued, swelling him up with blows, drawing blood from every corner he could.

"Y-you've done it… you've resurrected a new man..." Guilty took another massive punch after saying that "… with this flame of hatred burning bright in you…" and another "… you truly are the Phoenix Saint!"

His right arm erupting with plasma, Ikki growled and pierced Guilty's chest deeply with a spear-handed strike. He took something out of it with a mighty pull, then he almost mechanically stood up, the master releasing gruff laughter as he met death so simply. With the last remain of that man pulsating in his hand and dripping onto the marble, Ikki looked up at the pedestal located the whole time at the edge of the arena. Clouding the morning sun was the box of the Phoenix Cloth, the reason behind his presence in Death Queen's Island.

"It doesn't matter how many flower fields are left in this land, as far as I'm concerned, there are no flowers left here, and no flowers will ever grow again. It doesn't matter if I'm shown the stems and the petals, this earth is as barren as when I arrived." Ikki finished burying a makeshift wooden cross into a mound of dirt, hidden somewhere in the island's difficult terrain. He took a step back and knelt in front of it reading her name, which he had crudely carved on the wood. "Without you, I feel like this place has no more life. It might be for the better… such a cruel world didn't deserve a gem this precious," he whispered. "Goodbye to you, my hope."

As he turned to leave, the sound of dirt shuffling around stopped him, and then cold fingers clung to his wrist. Black drapes covered the sunny sky, but somehow the section around him remained visible, and when he turned, he saw that a delicate arm resurfaced from the burial site, shaking.

Bewildered, Ikki held the hand that stayed him, and a face emerged, that of a frail Esmeralda, eyes sunken yet glimmering at the sight of her beloved. "Ikki!" she said joyously.

"Esmeralda?"

"Oh, Ikki…"

He came down to stay closer to her, her whole torso having come up at that point, but the grotesque wound still open. "You're… alive?"

"I came back for you!" said Esmeralda. They smiled, pending to embrace one another, but as Ikki's realization dawned on him, a darker realization came to the girl. Her brows tightened and she tilted her head, mouth agape in shock.

He raised an eyebrow and asked: "What? Is there something wrong?"

"Ikki? You're not Ikki."

"Of course I am. Can't you recognize me?" There was nervousness in his tone, but Esmeralda seemed fairly certain.

"No, no, you're not Ikki."

"It's me, Esmeralda. I swear!"

"What… what have you done to my Ikki?" She coiled away from his arms, and afraid to scare her, the boy kept to himself too. "What… WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY IKKI?" That scream cut like scissors in his ears, oh how perturbing it was to hear that girl of all people questioning his identity.

"What are you saying?"

She wept, not unlike he did when he lost her. "You're not him," she insisted, "Ikki was the haven from my nightmares, a just man, and he would never let himself be poisoned by suffering, no matter how foul!" He was shocked at all that, because now she didn't see him as who he thought he was, but as an impostor, and since she couldn't recognize him, he was no longer certain of his own self. "You're a monster! A monster who swallowed my Ikki, and now I have no one left!"

"Esmeralda, calm down…"

"How am I to rest if I only prevail as a memory in a monster's soul? How can I remain only as a face in a monster's mind?" The sorrow gave way to revolt. "Forget me," Esmeralda told him, "forget me now, my face and voice. Wipe me out of your past and then I'll rest alone."

"I can't!" More tears pooled in his eyes. "Esmeralda, I can't forget you!"

"Find a way and erase me, monster!"

"Esmeralda!"

The girl's face contorted, blurred out, and melted, the way he feared would happen. Was it worth putting the world out of its misery if he abandoned such precious memories, and if he forgot the hope that made him the man he was? Her maimed body faded back into the mound of dirt, too fast for him to pull it out.

"I can't forget you, Esmeralda! Wait! I can't forget you!" he shouted in vain.

When he came to be, he was back in the Ten Wind Caves, fallen with knees to the floor and hands grasping his black hair. His cries were frantic and coarse, and the other Saints felt sorry for him at that moment.

"Ikki…" Shun said. Hyoga, who was the closest, tried to touch Phoenix's shoulder, but he straightened up and stared back with a haunting expression, cheeks wet and eyes broadened.

"Y-you were right," Ikki said to Hyoga, "what a wretch I am, to claim you're weak for still having tears to cry, then to break down in this manner. There's no one weaker here than me."

Shun crawled to him and lulled him: "Don't be like that. You're not weak for having tears to cry." In the shattered state Ikki was in, his little brother was even able to take him into an embrace for a second, but the man pulled back and looked for comfort in his eyes.

"I wanted… to kill you," he stuttered, then fully embracing his brother like he should've done the first time they met again. "I wanted to kill you, Shun."

"But why? What was the point?" He cried some more and then finally separated, looking in no particular direction. The other Saints began to come closer, Jabu requiring Shiryu's aid to walk. "What was the point of all of this?"

"If you didn't join me, I knew the world would suffer you in its flames, and you would break until you were dead inside. I couldn't allow you to be killed this slowly and deeply, so I decided to do it myself." Ikki was recomposing himself despite it all. "And I… I wanted to do it to all, out of revenge, mercy, anger, and everything in between. I wanted to take the world out of its misery, and take out the ones responsible for it."

"Hey," Seiya came closer to him and looked with a smile, "don't forget we're all orphans too. We went through similar hurdles, and we have no one but each other."

Shiryu nodded and gave his own thoughts: "But if we let our suffering overwhelm us, if we let it define us like you did, it means we've lost our way."

Ikki felt a hand comfort his shoulder, and it was Hyoga again. "You have to use your pain as fuel to grow better and stronger. I know first-hand how hard it is, but it's possible."

"This world is full of the wrong kind of people," said June, "and if we allow ourselves to completely become like them, we'll make things worse, not better."

Ikki's little brother helped him finally stand and gave him a gentle smile, and to him, that made the tears worth it in the end. "No matter what we go through, I believe we can keep being just and kind. Don't let yourself fall into that pit again, Ikki."

Phoenix sighed and diverted his eyes from everyone as best as he could, finding a path between them to separate himself from Shun. "I… need some time," he mumbled. Seiya gave way to him, so he went towards an exit. "You can keep the Gold Cloth. I'll go get my thoughts together."

With some worry still in his mind, Shun felt wrong just letting him go after so long. "Will you come back?" he asked.

Ikki lifted a hand lazily. "I promise I'll come back some day, dear brother."

Seeing that man leave without continuing the fight gave them great relief, and Seiya fell back to sit on the rocks. "Jeez, that was a hell of a day, wasn't it?" he said.

Jabu nodded at the golden bow left behind. "We have all the pieces back again, so I guess we're done here."

"Yeah, but it almost feels like this wasn't about the Gold Cloth at all," Seiya replied, "even though it was our goal in the end." The others thought a bit and nodded before they decided to gather the parts and leave the caverns.

They didn't see a sign of any Dark Saint, let alone Ikki, and experienced no additional obstacles throughout their return. Seiya waved back at Tatsumi and the others once they were in the view of the minibus, and it was already afternoon. They were relieved to see the Sagittarius Cloth back, but above all, to see all the Bronze Saints safe and sound, as injured as some had been.

Two figures, however, watched from higher ground, hidden amid the leaves of Aokigahara. Although it was impossible to tell who they were in the shadows, their outlines hinted at them wearing Cloths, if not a similar kind of armor. "So every single one of them made it," one said, the voice of a man.

The other one had a much more gentle tone, much less virile, albeit still masculine. "Except Phoenix, that one seems to have died with the other Dark Saints."

"But Phoenix was a proper Saint too, strong enough to be considered on the level of Silver Saints, so we could be treading dangerous ground here."

"They weren't evenly matched," the other one disagreed with a snicker, "those Dark Saints were weak even for their kind, and multiple Bronze Saints against one, of course they would beat him."

"Regardless, they came out alive. You should take the intel back to Sanctuary."

"What do you want me to tell them?"

"That the Kido traitors have the Sagittarius Cloth again, and we have a window to snatch it once the Pope says go."

"Right, I'll see you in the coming days," he said, leaving at an ordinary speed first so as to not oust their location to the enemy, and only increasing it with the aid of Cosmos much farther in the distance.

The man who stayed looked more closely at the situation, watching them loading up the pieces into the Gold Cloth's box, then back into the minibus. "Even Cygnus turned to their side," he whispered. "What's going on here?"