Lance's Role

by Thrudgelmir2333

A 'shonen' fic that sequels Next Dimension and Lost Canvas. In 1960, the Pope of Athena receives three prophecies from an old enemy that irremediably set the course of his reign over Sanctuary's tragic history and almost two decades later a Saint of Pegasus finds himself put through the unfolding of a new age of violence caused by the Pope's actions. Please enjoy and review.

72. SS2: The Curse of Hatred - Part 6 of 6

Notable OCs: Pegasus Lance's Saint Generation, Civil War Saint Generation, World War Saint Generation, Daemon Lucifer's Specters, Maiden Elisa, Priam's Black Saints; Cyrulian Refugees

Notable Original Concepts: Mount Olympus Training Ground, Sanctuary Court, Teos Cloth, Athenian Empire mythology, Isle of Gardens, Stardust Prison, Hades' Dark Princes; Desert Beyond, Sanctuary Town Layout & Buildings; Kido Mount; DQI Geography;

Recurring/Cameo OCs of Jenny DeVic: Mrs. Schafurwatt, Cyrus

Recurring/Cameo Concepts of Jenny DeVic: Great Bodyguard Legend, Golden Line Heritage, Sanctuary Orphanages, Andromeda Island's Geography & Tests, Sanctuary Nobility, 88 Knights Festival

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Author Notes:

-This chapter has been betaread by Jenny DeVic. If you like Lance's Role, you'll love her works, too;

-New artwork by Bluefeather/Balasdan has been done for the story to celebrate the completion of the Side Story. Check my profile account for links to it (they're tough to set-up, so keep checking every now and then if they're absent);

-Note regarding Guilty's attacks; rather than try using Google to get crappy Japanese titles, I've decided to just be practical and name all his techniques in English, except for Genma Ken and Hoyoku Tensho;

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Sanctuary,

Papal Chambers

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While it was close to midday on Death Queen Island, it was the opposite back in Sanctuary, where the Fire Clock's hands ticked close to midnight. In the Papal Chambers, where the Hall of Athena welcomed visitors, its study was lit with preoccupation and heartache. Its big door was approached by the caped Aquarius Malta, who politely knocked.

"Come in." Shion's aged voice called out as he was immersed in piles of documents at his desk.

The Aquarius Gold Saint awed at the size of it. "A late night of work, your Holiness?"

"Ah, yes, but I wanted your opinion on a separate matter." He dropped his papers and turned toward the Gold Saint. "What do you know of Death Queen Island, Malta?"

The mere mention of it made even the stoic Aquarius irk. "More than I'd like to, your Holiness. Personally, I think it's a Training Ground we do not require. Kirin has often told me it should be sunk to the bottom of the ocean and… I think I would agree."

"Truly? Did you know that it used to be the home of my people?"

Malta nodded nervously, not wanting to disrespect the sacred mask' purpose by acting like he knew too much about who wore it. While most of his generation could easily tell the Pope was Muvian, that was no reason to acknowledge it directly. "Yes, your Holiness, but… with all due respect, I still think Kirin wouldn't be wrong."

The most powerful man in the world, who could have Malta stripped of all he had for saying his people's old home should be destroyed, sighed deeply and nodded. "My best friend used to say the same. Did you know one of his teachers came from that island?"

The red-haired Aquarius widened eyes. "Saint Dohko? Truly? No, I did not."

"It doesn't come across in his training, no. Even so, Dohko may have better reasons than I do for hesitating to just… be rid of that place. Which makes me ashamed for thinking I should hold on to it more than he does."

This unknown fact made curiosity invade Malta about rumors he had previously heard. "Your Holiness, is it true the Dragon and Libra constellations have ties to the Phoenix?"

"The importance of the Phoenix Cloth far surpasses that of ancient Taoist ties to other armors in service to Athena, Malta; it is also the Cloth that cannot die." Shion reminded him. "If you were Pope… and you waged wars in your youth against the Underworld… and the lives of so many weighed on your decisions, would you not value such an object?"

The Aquarius lowered his head humbly. "Unlike the others, I do not pretend, your Holiness, to judge your principles. I am not Priam. If you spare the existence of Death Queen Island, then I have complete faith in your motives. I need not hear why."

The Pope felt a pang of tremendous guilt suddenly crush him at the sight of Malta's humble gesture. If only he could be honest to these men. If only Shion could say that he had met Ikki in the battles against Suikyo and Odysseus. He knew that the Phoenix Cloth was more vital than anyone believed. If only he could be upfront with his fears of Hekate's prophecies and Sasha's parting advice.

Instead, his ship of the state was forced to sail along, ignoring the calls for help from those in the water that only he could hear. Truly, Dohko was blessed with a better path after the war. He stood up and gazed out his study's window to Athena's valley, specifically the port from which his Bronze and Silver Saints usually departed to head to missions.

"I had Saint Pegasus Lance recently sent there as part of a… humbling effort. I thought exposing him to the harshness of that island would widen his horizons, remind him of what he's meant to do, even as a mere Bronze."

While he had been out for a few weeks, Malta could imagine why. "Sometimes such a gesture is necessary."

Shion turned back to him. "Yet, not two days later, I am sent this letter by Saint Sagitta Nam reminding me of the enormity of what I have done. Without it being predicted, my Saint was forced to penetrate the island itself when I only ever meant him to catch a glimpse of its evil. Nam even sent Saint Nova of Compass to make sure my actions did not end in disaster….Malta… I have sent Pegasus into hell. And why?! Because he's fallible? Because, as Saint Nam put it, he might even be ill? Is this not what Hades does to humans?"

Such comparison alerted Malta. "Your HOLINESS, do not describe yourself like that!" he begged. His eyes even darted left and right, fearing that anyone could be listening to their conversation. "Lord Arles, you are the man chosen by Athena! All your choices, and all your gestures, are guided by her faith in you. You may not see it yet, but one day your decision to punish this Bronze Saint… will blossom into a better future for him!"

At this point, the masked man felt utterly trapped in a cage of his own underlings. Malta said these things with the best intentions for Sanctuary and the Pope, but the Aquarius did not realize that someone like Shion, who was a born and raised Lemurian, saw reason and science before the soft-spoken intrigues of human politics.

"Sanctuary's wisdom will prevail over evil, your Holiness," Malta argued. "You are not alone in your fight against the dark. Saint Nam sending help is merely a sign that everything is under close control of the youths blessed by the Goddess. Have faith in your decisions."

The Pope's hands slid inside sleeves. "Even the 7th sense of the Pope of Sanctuary can't peer into that horrible place. It takes a higher mind than even mine to pierce the walls of hell that guard Death Queen Island." He thought. "Yet, I fear that perhaps a Gold Saint should have been sent…but other than a Virgo, which I do not have yet, who could possibly stop the cruelty of that place without simply killing everything in it?"

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?

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A mere torso of ice-crystalized flesh, missing his legs and arm, Lance floated in the hot darkness, wrapped in the biting thorns of the Phoenix's Genma Ken, his mind was lost after being sunk in the technique's terrible mental assault, and his forehead bleeding from a single, glowing puncture wound. His red eyes were paralyzed, staring at the void, and Lance was entirely unable to understand his sense of self. All he saw were the long years in Mount Olympus racing across his irises, reliving every moment of loneliness, every hopeless breath in the cold, every terror in the endless darkness of the dead trees, and every flight from every wolf attack.

Yet, his suffering was not done.

A loud banging occurred at the most sacred sanctum of his soul, right where the firebird's talons had entered his head. It was like a great hammer of magma clanging at a wall, sounding its clashes throughout his body, his very ego. Yet, though the force was so blunt, its shape was that of a furious bird crying at the obstacle it attempted to destroy; a bright, vast seal of white cosmos with a ritualistic heraldry of a single triangle marked by many zodiacal symbols.

Such a wall held firm; despite every meteoric crash the bird landed on it. It shook with the impacts, making the darkness resonate like liquid. Made from the kindness of a Silver Saint who understood the wonderfulness of the Cosmos, the seal inside Lance's skull resisted the attempts from the Genma Ken to reach his most terrible memories, the moments of his life far worse than anything Olympus had thrown at him.

Finally, after successive strikes, cracks began to appear!

The firebird screeched, sensing weakness and renewing its assaults. With every flap of its wings, it would make itself into gigantic fists of fire and once more fly at the triangle, striking this new fissure with cataclysmic explosions of a crash, making the opening expand! Already, the Phoenix could sense the frail, sensitive emotions hidden inside, making its appetite grow. With these, it could shatter its victim's soul entirely, rather than merely stun them, thus truly landing them in hell on earth. It readied a greater assault and banged once more on it to make it snap all the way!

Yet, as it did, and as the seal gave in, a shearing sound was heard, and the firebird cried in pain, sprayed by the shower of darkness that geysered out! Rather than the delicious intimacy of Lance's most vulnerable self, a choking miasma was being let out from the seal, and Lance himself began stirring in pain, his heart regaining its beat and returning life to his dead eyes!

The Phoenix recoiled, escaping around Lance, seeing its victim's cosmos reappear in an otherwise comatose emptiness. It could not be!

And that very moment, the cosmos exploded with unprecedented ferocity; bashing the Phoenix off with great fury, the tiny spark of ego still left in him burst into trillions of stars in the dark, connecting themselves across thousands of light-years, awakening old thoughts, and memories!

"N-Noah!" he cried out, reliving the most shameful moment of his life as the darkness flooded out of the cracked seal!

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Underworld,

Fourth Prison

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Observing the work done by the Specters to contain the floods of black sludge bursting out the cauldrons of blood, Daemon Lucifer, the Celestial Star of Pride, groaned in irritation at their failure to keep the massive brass containers stable, making the Specters and Skeletons surround him step away in fear.

Down at the work sites, the Skeletons panicked, fleeing from another gigantic collapsing cauldron which made the ground shake as it crashed on the rocky ground, spilling its darkened contents across the fields.

Cerah Heloise couldn't believe what was happening. There was so much Death Queen Island sludge appearing at the Prison out of nowhere that the containers couldn't contain them. What was going on in the surface?

The Skeletons dug their scythes into the sludge masses, dragging several humanoid shapes out of them that resembled Bronze Saints melting into charcoal. Helping them, young Cerah paled at the sensation one of them was still moving, but her borrowed scythe just felt them collapse into broken ash as well before anything could be discerned.

It was utterly sickening.

"What in H-Hades's name are these?! The Black Saints?!" Cerah asked, trying to keep her voice thick to sound male and tossing them over to the corpse piles. She held her mouth to keep from puking at the stench of burned human flesh. "G-Gods, it… s-smells horrible!"

The Daemon Specter stepped close to identify the crumbling remains. "These are the shadows of the Saints of Athena... the Death Queen Island Black Saints. The true Black Saints."

She compared them to the earlier ones that showed up as she trembled. "W-why aren't they going back up like the r-rest from before?"

Lucifer's eyes turned to the Underworld stars, as if to look at the surface world. "… Excellent question."

Suddenly, a distant scream from one of their comrades startled all of them. The countless men working at the 4th Prison turned, fearing some sort of attack by a resisting dead, only to see none other than Bennu Yakos, one of their overseers, keel over and hold himself in pain.

"L-Lord Bennu!" a Skeleton gasped. "What's wrong?!"

Another pointed at him. "Look! His Surplice!"

"H-HELP!" the gray-haired Yakos screamed again. "S-Something's… happening to me!"

Alarmed, the Prince of the Underworld rushed over, followed by Cerah. He gasped, seeing Yakos' Bennu Surplice brimming with purple dark cosmos and breathing on him, as if coming alive all of a sudden!

Was this what Lucifer thought it was? Why now?!

Feeling all the replacement men's eyes on Yakos, Lucifer pointed them back to the cauldrons. "What are you all GAWKING AT?! BACK TO WORK!"

As the men worriedly tried to focus on getting the Prison back in Order, Yakos turned to the Daemon Specter. "P-Prince, what is happening to me?! I was leading the repairs, when a-all of a sudden…"

The red-eyed Prince knelt and held the lowly Specter, studying the Surplice that once belonged to Kagaho and watching it seemingly lose and regain opacity on Yakos' body over and over. "This is undoubtedly the Violence Star becoming active, but why? It's far too soon for the true Specters to return. Even the Judges haven't awakened yet, and Pandora is yet to resurface. I can't let this cause confusion among the replacements…I'm not ready to harness them yet." He turned to Cerah. "Call Judge Griffin Uriah, I want Yakos replaced here with Behemoth Torak, before this gets worse."

Knowing the Prince's secret intentions, the vassal girl nodded obediently. "Y-yes, right away, Prince!"

Then, with a sparkle from the Celestial Violence Star, a shattering sound and a great burst of black fire that washed over them harmlessly, the Bennu Surplice vanished off of Yakos' body!

Left with but his clothes underneath, the Specter gawked at himself "W-what?! My armor! It's gone! What's happening to me?!"

Even the Prince widened his eyes, confronted with the now undeniable truth of what has happening in the Surface. "It can't be!"

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Death Queen Island,

The Burning Swamps

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The ash clouds rumbled on Death Queen Island, beginning their acid rain as the island shook under the new force awakening in it. Immersed in an aura of black fire, the Saint of Pegasus rose from the ground, feeling his body reinvigorated by this mysterious new force.

Guilty's mask stared in disbelief, and his fist closed in hatred. "You fucking punk! I hate you! Why won't you stay dead?!"

Lightning crackled in the background, illuminating the revived Bronze Saint, exposing to Compass the tears of blood on his face and the leftover wound on his forehead shining with Triangle Noah's cracked seal. "P-Pegasus… you're alive!"

Alive but shaken and just as bewildered as the two of them. Lance tried to raise his fists, but the sight of the burning darkness all over himself frightened him! All he remembered was being struck by Guilty's technique. He felt like he got put through the entire expanse of his training in Mount Olympus in a single second, and then….

… Then what? He had the startling impression he saw very briefly things he had long been made to forget about, painful images of shame, trauma, and failure from his younger years in Athens that Noah had locked away. He could feel the scalding, concentrated nail of heat in his forehead trying to get at the very core of his brain but failing to advance. For an even briefer moment, he swore he had felt his entire reality shatter, only for now this shower of cosmos to come bursting out, a third wind to revive his efforts somehow triggered by Guilty's mental strike.

Said third wind had a terrifying shape; his aura, previously a brim of courageous white, was now a murky bonfire of blackness swelling around him in the form of a flame, growing so hot that objects around him were catching on fire. Every dance of its shape felt immersed in black memories, filling his muscles with a resentful strength that promised nothing but to make the world drown in destruction.

Guilty's shoulders shook with a laugh. "Well, look who's been holding back…."

Older and wiser, the hurt Compass Saint stepped away cautiously, knowing the battle would just get worse now. "P-Pegasus, you… you must have unlocked your element!" he assumed, having seen this happen before. It got Lance's attention. "That's the cosmos of Darkness!"

Lance focused as hard as he could, trying to get a grip on these strange new energies. "D-Darkness?… B-but…"

The Phoenix Saint's laughter only got louder, though.

"HA, HA, HA, HA! How appropriate! So that's what the Triangle Saint hid inside your skull all those years ago! The blood tears of a frightened child crying for mom and dad!" he mocked. "That's so pathetic, yet so fitting of you, Lance; the brat wrapped up in his own ego, unlocking the element of a depressed child who can't handle the world's harshness! I feel so silly expecting anything else from you!"

Feeling the name of his role model invoked, Lance snapped to focus on his deranged friend, growling.

Guilty's fire aura returned, dwarfing Lance's dark mirk with a bright blaze that frightened off Compass and made the island shake with the mere charge of it. "You know, for a second, I thought you might be immortal like me… but you just got another lucky break, didn't you? I just have to snuff that fire out again.… I got nothing better to do, anyway. DO fight harder this time, though! I want to feel how much pain you can still cause me before you die!" Guilty sneered, before dashing at Lance at the speed of Mach 5 with a huge fire burst, his hand glowing like a piece of lava.

Lance hesitated, feeling the almighty attack approach him to bury the Saint once more.

Yet, time seemed slow.

He gasped in realization, noticing he could see its movement much clearer now! He detected a huge opening in the technique just over the throw of Guilty's arm that let his defenses wide open. The Darkness flowed down his arm, focusing on his gauntlet in a concentrated mass.

"HOYOKU TENSH-"

Lance roared out a battle cry and countered with a sledgehammer of a punch that swung beneath the arc of Guilty's strike, impacting straight on his face like a blunt cannon shot, stopping the enemy's momentum right in its tracks and shooting him off with a thunderous boom to the horizon! The Phoenix Saint painfully crashed through boulder after boulder, shattering terrain, dragging through the ground, and ultimately tumbling over and rolling into a harder terrain wall.

The sight of the burst of black dust that rolled over both the Saints of Athena stunned Nova.

Even Lance was shocked as his rage subsided, both at his new strength and the obviousness of the flaw in Guilty's technique. He panted as he looked at his Pegasus gauntlet to see it smeared with Guilty's blood and a chunk of the blasted mask sticking to the red marks. The hardship of burning his strength at a level capable of surviving against the Phoenix was gone. Instead his strength flowed freely, feeling dense like lead yet as swift as a shadow. Burning his cosmos, he felt it, with a gasp, rise to unprecedented levels, flowing his hair up and shaking the pebbles on the ground like gravity itself twisted.

"I… I can do this! I can fight him!" he declared before turning to Nova. "You, get out of the Swamps! This isn't done yet!"

Nova pointed at the far-off dust cloud. "But you just shot him across the field! He couldn't…" But he gulped at his own stupidity and just fled. "Y-yeah, good luck!"

Lance turned with gritting teeth at where Guilty was sent flying. "I can feel your cosmos burning! Stop playing dead and c-come fight me!"

Indeed, with an incredible explosion of fire, the rubble that collapsed on the enemy was blasted into the skies, freeing the person underneath. With lava flowing out from released underground pockets around him, Phoenix Guilty climbed out, holding on to a bleeding side of his face where Lance had punched through the mask.

Keeping far away from the two of them, Nova hid behind sets of boulders and felt his hopes dashed away as he saw the enemy regain strength as he returned to meet Lance. "What the hell? He just took a blow to the face that would have killed most Bronze Saints! What kind of monster is he?!"

With blood dripping to the shaky ground, Guilty laughed. "H-he, he, he, he…H-HA, HA, HA, HA… What an interesting turn of events. You never told me had this kind of strength…"

"Laugh all you want; I'm using every speck of it to pummel you to the ground, Guilty!" Lance roared, assuming a battle pose.

The Phoenix liked how Pegasus didn't pretend anymore that Guilty was still his old self. "He, he, how cruel! You really won't call me by my old name anymore? Then again,… there must be some reason your element was Darkness, an element so rare among Saints." He provoked, his one unshattered mask eye meeting Lance's as he still held the broken side up. "Only someone so utterly sick they'd unlock Darkness could talk to their friend like that, after all…."

Was there no end to this bastard's gaslighting?! He was now acting exactly like his teacher. "I'm doing more than that! The next thing I'll break is the rest of that fucking demon face!"

But the Phoenix just laughed even harder.

"What on Earth are you talking about, Lance?!" he then let go of the broken side… to reveal a perfectly intact mask! "Does it look like you've even scratched it yet?!"

Lance's eyes went fully wide with shock!

He looked at his gauntlet, where he had seen the mask piece stuck. It was gone!

"HA, HA, HA, HA, you should see the look on your stupid, ignorant face! You keep amazing me time and time again with how little you understand anything! Don't you see it yet?!" Guilty cackled, burning his cosmos into another charging bonfire and focusing burning energy into his hands. "THIS IS THE PLACE YOU'LL DIE IN!"

With a shilling war shout that made the island more unstable, the maddened Phoenix Saint launched off at Mach 5, sharpening his fiery talons as he thrust them at Lance.

The black-brimmed Pegasus Saint met blow with a blow with thunderous clashes, catching Guilty's hands and pushing back in the ceding terrain with teeth gritting in the effort. The two auras of fire and darkness ground against each other as they tore through the land, fissuring the swamps and making lava streams splash up at the sky like sea waves.

Shielding himself from the lava splashes with his dark aura, Lance rolled to dodge a dive kick from the Phoenix Saint that sunk the floor down with its force. The embers flew everywhere, and the acid droplets stung his skin, even though his Cosmos aura was straining him, but the Pegasus Saint's heels gained enough balance to launch himself back up with a punch that landed squarely with a dark, dense block of cosmos on Guilty's side, crashing through the armor!

For some reason, Guilty seemed especially pained by this, gasping inside his mask and raising his foot to whip Lance off of himself with a powerful kick. The Pegasus Saint stumbled back, stunned, and was then blasted by Guilty with a palm thrust so powerful that it struck Lance with the mere storming force of the air it bashed, sending him crashing through the uneven basalt terrain.

"Is that all you GOT, Greek boy?!" Guilty mocked, clawing his fingers around a dense boulder he found and ripping it off.

Stopping his flight with a landing roll, Lance coughed, reminded that his new Cosmos didn't make him invincible. His senses went full alert when he felt the Phoenix Saint jumping into the air and descending on him!

"LANCE, MOVE!" Nova screamed.

"DIE!" Guilty screamed and swung the rock down to smash the Pegasus Saint.

However, with an explosion of cosmos, the Pegasus Saint struck back, landing a mighty kick on the hammering boulder that completely shattered it, sending fragments flying everywhere. Catching Guilty by surprise, he then burned his cosmos to the max and sent his fists and kicks flying at the monster, striking him repeatedly from top to bottom, cracking the entire Phoenix Cloth.

Guilty's mask dripped blood coughed out from his mouth, and he roared, panickily trying to hit Lance back with an all-or-nothing hand thrust.

But Lance dodged the counter with a vanishing blitz, shouted in mid-air above Guilty, and swung his clasped fists down. "Charge FIST!"

The image of a Pegasus knight in black armor descending on the vulnerable Phoenix with a spear emerged. The screaming Guilty was struck with a massive, overwhelming force that ultimately overcame his Bronze Cloth's defenses, destroying it into clouds of multicolored dust!

The Phoenix Saint himself came crashing down, making the island tremble with the cratering impact, and Lance landed triumphantly nearby, feeling his cosmos cool.

Lance landed and panted hesitantly, feeling hope swell in his chest at the sight of his enemy disarmed of his primary weapon. "I've done it… I've destroyed the Phoenix Cloth!"

Seemingly shaken for the first time since he took up the mask, the demon rose on his feet and beheld himself, no longer hearing his armor's voice in the Cosmos. "M-My armor…! You've… killed it?!"

Lance still had no idea what kind of miracle this new dark cosmos was, but he thanked God for it. It was time to finish this!

The Saint crossed the terrain with a speeding blitz and struck the unarmored Guilty right in the stomach, stunning him with a scream! Pummeling the monster left and right with successive wings, Lance then jumped and crashed his knee right on his mask, sending him twirling around to the floor.

Lance gave pursuit, recharging his cosmos. "I won't let you get off this island!" Dodging a blast from Guilty's trembling hand that went exploding off somewhere else, he struck the bastard once more with a heavy kick, bashing him back into a perfect distance for a finalizing punch. "DEAD OR ALIVE, I'M SAVING YOUR SOUL! PEGASUS CHARGE FIST!"

The black knight launched with a swirl of darkness at supersonic speed, aiming his spear punch for the chest! It struck the monster right above the exposed breast muscle, spraying blood everywhere.

Guilty gasped, his body shaking and his strength oozing out. "…L-Lance!"

The Saint pulled his punch out, letting the wound bleed freely.

The sight of his former friend fatally wounded, no longer an insane threat, filled him with sorrow in that hellish landscape, making his eyes well. "G-Guifi,… D-damn it! I'm sorry!"

"It… it s-should have been YOU!" the monster still hissed, holding his wound and stumbling back. His sight grew darker, and his mind began to lose track of his life, yet he couldn't see past his hatred of this Pegasus Saint. "…S-Should have been Y-YOU…!"

Utterly crushed, Lance could only nod and build up Cosmos. He had to end this before that damn island swallowed them all, and the Pegasus Saint raised his gauntlet for a mercy blow. "I k-know…"

Suddenly, the firebird's talons rose and closed around his wrist, halting his finisher with a braking grip! The force of the dashed shockwaves on, shattering terrain all around them.

Lance widened his eyes. "W-What?!" and he swung his other fist, only for Guilty to catch it with strength that came out of nowhere. Stuck in place, Lance struggled against the supposedly weak Phoenix, but the masked man did not relent, and, in fact, his burning aura returned, strengthening him. "H-His Cosmos!"

And Guilty laughed more and more, making his aura grow hotter and thicker. "You fool! You think you can kill me?! Your nightmare… is just beginning!" and he looked up to the ash-filled skies. "B-BURN, MY COSMOS!"

The Phoenix Saint's body shined and a blunt-sounded explosion of fire then occurred, sending Lance screaming back into the collapsing rocks with a scalded body and wrists. His strained red eyes looked up, and he saw, with immense horror, Guilty once more immersed in raging fire and his cosmos skyrocketing again. Then, the air seemed to grow redder, wind currents began to grow around them, carrying ash and embers all around, circling the Phoenix Saint, who roared as he tightened his chest muscles as if calling a great force of nature unto himself.

Amid this chaos, before the bewildered Saint, the ash began concentrating into pockets of burning coal. Then the coal began colliding together in the air, forming small metal pieces glowing orange with heat. Then, at last, these started sticking to Guilty's screaming body, now burning red hot with cosmos. Little by little, the Phoenix's cry was heard once again, and with a great flash of light, the cosmos around the Phoenix burst!

Lance guarded himself against the debris and looked up, seeing the impossible!

As the flames subsided, Phoenix Guilty was revealed to be wearing his destroyed armor again! Even worse, its shape had evolved; the chest plate had become segmented with the previous golden engraving of wings on it, now fully coloring the lower segment with gold. The belt, greaves, and gauntlets had shifted colors into dark blue. The latter gained a more aerodynamic design with splitting shoulder guards. Only the three golden plume tails and the red crest on the belt remained unchanged.

Guilty beheld his upgraded armor with fascination. "Wonderful… Ha, ha, ha, LOOK AT IT! It's everything I always dreamed of!" He raised his hands to the raging skies as more fire and acid rained. "Thank you, Goddess! Now I know my sacrifice wasn't for nothing!"

Lance, on the other hand, felt nothing but incomprehensible terror. "W-what… What the fuck is going on?! I just fucking ATOMIZED that piece of junk!"

"Don't you GET IT, Lance?! You can't kill me! I'm the Phoenix Saint now! Strike me down, and I'll get back up! Strike my Cloth down, and it will be reborn from the ashes, stronger and more beautiful than before!" Guilty reminded him, raising his fire energies to shocking new levels. "But by all means, don't stop trying! Punch me, kick me, stab me, crush me, bite me! Do everything in your power to bring me down and then some more! I want to get stronger and stronger. For our final battle to be like this great island, a forge for creating the most powerful knight the Goddess has ever had!"

Lance growled, stepping back. "Y-you… YOU INSANE BASTARD!"

Guilty stepped forward in accordance, his head lowering like a hungry predator. "And then when you're dry of cosmos…. When you can't take another step, throw another punch… I want you to scream, Lance!" Guifi demanded, stepping forward to match. "Scream louder than you've ever had! I want you to howl, beg for mercy like I did, and pay for every selfishness you've ever shown me, your closest friend! I want you to grovel at my feet and implore me to stop… so I can say no!"

Horrified to his core and surrounded by a raging geography of fire and lava, Lance braced himself for combat, assuming a new battle pose and refusing to surrender! His mind focused solely on the lesson that experience had taught him about the mere condition of being human; that everyone had their limits, everyone had a weak point to match their strengths!

But… was he even fighting a human anymore?!

Guilty titled his head in an Amazonian smile as if reading his thoughts. "I like that look in you! You have the same terror in your eyes Master had… ah, ah, ah, ah…I think I'll staple it to my wall. That way, I can enjoy it forever!"

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Chapter 72

Side Story 2

The Curse of Hatred – Part 6 of 6

The Greatest Cruelty

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Surrounded by fire and horror, the white-armored Pegasus Saint stared in bewilderment at the sight of his adversary's Cloth raised from death, just like the mask had earlier, wondering what on Earth would he do now! Even with the incredible power of his new element coursing through his veins, all the energy he was putting into damaging his opponent was clearly going to waste if Guilty would just get back up mightier than before, like some kind of walking nightmare.

Yet, as he beheld in horror all the wounds inflicted on Guilty now gone, Lance's crimson eyes were drawn to his adversary's side, where a leftover blood mark on his rib was seen. "That's…!"

Lance's thoughts were interrupted by Guilty's battle cry and the explosive charge of fire cosmos he then summoned, which cracked the ground and shook the island at the manifestation of his new force! With a close-in dash of tectonic force, the Phoenix Saint's elbow struck Lance's crossguard, pressing the Pegasus Saint into the defense! Guilty's leg swept up, stricking his guard further, before a ferocious assault of back-and-forth thrusts of his new blue-metaled talons pummeled Lance, forcing him back.

Guilty laughed as he dodged a counter punch from Lance with a blitz. "Do you see my new speed?!" he gloated, striking the impetuous Pegasus' stomach with his knee, making Lance expel his lung air. Parrying Lance's pathetic attempt to punch him, Guilty struck his jaw and then leaped over the Pegasus to land a dive kick that shot the Bronze Saint off to the ground. "All thanks to you…."

Lance coughed, getting back up and growling in defiance.

"In fact… all of this is thanks to you! You and your SELFISHNESS!" the fire-brimmed Phoenix roared, crashing a knee into Lance so hard it made geysers of lava around them spray into the air. His astonishing new speed once again dodged Lance's counter kick and landed a back-elbow blow on his nape that stunned the Pegasus Saint, putting him on his knees. Guilty grabbed and pulled at his arm, twisting it, and leaned his mask down on his ear. "But I'll let you make up for it… friend!"

Outraged, the pinned Lance crashed the back of his head on Guilty, bashing him off, before charging dark cosmos into a powerful punch and kick combo that struck the left rib before bashing the side of the head, sending the Phoenix Saint spiraling off into rocks, quaking the ground.

Landing, Lance tightened his fists determinedly and rubbed his bruised cranium. That stupid mask was hard as stone. He felt blood drip down his face from his many wounds, which stung with the acid rain. "F-Fuck you! I'll just find some other way to defeat you!"

Guilty just laughed as he climbed out of the crashing rubble. "You CAN'T!" and his cosmos exploded higher than ever before, encasing him in a Phoenix aura that then flew at and crashed into Lance, breaking his guard. "You're just a street punk with a Cloth! You fight for NOTHING! I am the Saint of Phoenix! The immortal knight of the Goddess!"

Lance screamed, assaulted by a merciless combo of fiery punches striking all his unprotected body parts. Volcanic swamps raged all around them as the violence of the match increased. Landing a more powerful punch to the gut, Guilty made the Pegasus squirm, lifting him up to the air as his aura swelled and his plume tails shone.

"You can't even HATE me…Not for real! Because you know this is all your fault! But I'll fix you, ha, ha, ha! I'll teach you all the pain of fire and the dark! But first, you must feel PAIN!" and Guilty tossed Lance over into the rocks, crashing him into rubble, before charging his cosmos down on his tails which rose like scorpion stingers above his head. "Feel the path of Hatred, Pegasus! PHOENIX BURNING DAWN!"

With the cry of the firebird and the illusion of it taking flight around Guilty, the Cloth tails' many plumes detached entirely from the armor, pointing their sharp ends at the collapsed Lance before shooting off like curving rockets, blasting the Saint over and over with multiple, ground-shaking explosions that flared and fumed high into the skies.

Compass Nova trembled in terror by hearing his fellow Bronze Saint's screams behind his cover. He tried to observe the battlefield, seeing Guilty's tails reform in his Cloth with a mere flash of fire and Pegasus Lance wholly immersed in the fire and rubble.

"S-Shit, it's no use! Even with Lance's power up, he can't overwhelm this guy! I… I have no choice!" Compass Nova thought, seeing Guilty's back exposed and gathering his light purple cosmos. "Athena, protect me; I have to step in!"

Guilty laughed, charged balls of fire cosmos, and shot them repeatedly at the chaos in front of him, drowning the Pegasus in flames. He stood back, admiring the swelling explosions, and made his fist clench with cosmos.

"But if you still won't, Lance…. Then I'll just melt you into slag!" He casted the pose before launching a torrent of storms and fire. "HOYOKU TENSHO!"

The new firebird attack, larger and brighter than before the revival, landed squarely on the destruction already caused, making it explode even wider, sending pieces of burning rock flying everywhere and Compass screaming for Lance's name. Even Guilty lowered his hands, thinking it to be the end…

A screeching, shearing sound was suddenly heard like a horrible wind current from hell. The flames began raging and screeching! Alerted, Compass and Phoenix saw a spiral of darkness suddenly swell inside the fire, eating it from the inside out! Eventually, a strained Pegasus Lance with his hand projecting the darkness was revealed amidst the flames being consumed.

Vacuuming the last few dying embers into this cosmic collapse, Lance gasped, causing the great tension of dark cosmos to be released.

The Phoenix Saint seemed impressed. "Not bad… you're learning how to use that element! How could someone as stupid, ignorant, and talentless as you do all of that? I'm very curious…."

Lance merely reassumed his pose, unwilling to answer any of this sadistic bastard's questions.

Meanwhile, Nova snuck around the battlefield, charging his wind cosmos as discreetly as possible and trying to position himself around Guilty.

"Back at The Heart of Sasha, you couldn't do a thing by yourself, even punch a stupid wooden board!" Guilty pointed out, his tone pitching at the end like a schoolgirl recounting a fun story. "Who exactly taught you to fight like this, Lance, if not Kerberos Kastiel?"

"Maybe you just underestimated me, like he did!" Lance growled.

Guilty laughed. "I doubt it. You wouldn't have the vision to understand the cosmos like this yourself! You're too stupid! No, someone helped you… who was it, Lance? That Triangle Saint you love so much? Or did that teacher who abandoned you teach you more than you'd admit?!"

"F-FUCK YOU!"

The Phoenix Saint laughed, amused at how easy it was to get Lance angry. All he had to do was insult Noah or mention Kastiel, preferably both. "So angry… No wonder my teacher saw so much… potential in you. You really do have a lot of the Phoenix left in you, don't you? Even after getting that armor!"

"You think we're alike?! I never massacred people the way you did!" Lance argued. "Even at my worst all I've done is teach murderous fucks like you a lesson! But you?! You're going around saying you'll kill anyone you can get your hands on!"

This, for some reason, made the Phoenix laugh even harder. "HA, HA, HA! Is that so?! So I guess all those lines of yours about ripping my teacher's guts out and wishing you had killed Kastiel were just out of your ass?!" he pointed out, irking Lance. "I guess that's your problem, Lance, isn't it?! You're terrified of what you really are; a selfish coward! You hate your weakness and your hatred for others like a faggot in his closet and play at being angry because the idea that it might all just be banal humiliates you, doesn't it?!"

Outraged but completely disarmed, Lance could only growl powerlessly at these accusations, trying to tell himself these were just the words of an enemy trying to psyche him out.

The Phoenix Saint touched his segmented chest proudly. "But I am not!… I always had real reasons to feel this way. From the moment we met, I could tell my existence frustrated you! I was living proof you weren't the worst-treated puppy in all of Greece. That your problems weren't real! So like a baby, you acted out and drove your teacher away! Isn't that what happened?!"

Compass Nova found his angled spot and began charging cosmos into a large cyclonic form in his hand while observing the fight, praying to Athena that Lance wouldn't listen to this guy.

Meanwhile, Lance steeled his resolve. "I don't know what Athena is whispering into your ear, Guilty, but you don't know anything about what happened to me on that mountain!" He dragged his foot forward and pointed his left palm to prepare his Charge Fist, formulating his battle plan.

"Pah, Athena?! You still think that's my Goddess?!" Guilty asked, genuinely baffled.

Lance's eyes rose. "What do you mean?!"

Guilty laid out hands as a volcanic eruption from the Queen's Mouth took place far behind him. "I serve the Queen, you fool! Suzaku, Rangda, the Goddess, Phoenix! How dense are you?! You think a Goddess as weak as Athena could give me this kind of power?!" and his aura charged as he said this, making the mountains blaze even hotter on the island. "No… this cosmos is the one given from the offering of blood at the altar of the Phoenix Cloth! The only deity worthy of my worship! The only one that didn't ABANDON me!"

Lance gawked. "Whoever the fuck DID THIS to you then turned you into a murderous freak! The Guifi I knew wouldn't say all these things and talk about Nina the way you do! You've been BRAINWASHED!"

But as both their auras climbed for another round of battle, Guilty showed to be adamant. "AH, AH, AH! And aren't you just eaten up by it?! BUT IF YOU'RE SO SURE, THEN BEAT ME, LANCE! HOYOKU…"

Lance exploded his cosmos, immersing himself in descending layers of darkness. "PEGASUS!" And he prepared himself to punch this bastard into the mountains. "CHA-"

Suddenly, Compass Nova jumped out of the rocks behind Guilty, his hand immersed in an authentic cyclone of winds. "PEGASUS, NOW! COMPASS WIND BLADE!" He tossed the gigantic circling shuriken of wind currents, which razored towards Guilty's neck!

Guilty turned over with a Mach 5 motion without a single second of hesitation, like he sensed the intention all along. "TENSHO!" The gigantic fireblast blasted Compass's attack, then the Saint himself, shattering his Cloth to pieces!

"SHIT, COMPASS!" Lance screamed, seeing him landing on the ground with screams and a bloodied body.

"Don't interfere! This is between my friend and me! You think I was just going to ignore you?!" Guilty shouted, utterly furious, focusing cosmos into his hand until it formed a sharp-pointed spear of energy to finish Compass off with. "I'll teach you not to interfere in my lessons-"

But a powerful hand immersed in darkness caught the Phoenix Saint's wrist, pulling him. "STOP IT! YOUR PROBLEM IS WITH ME! That guy came here to SAVE US!"

Growling in frustration, Guilty pointed and thrust the spear at Lance. "He's just as COMPLACENT AS YOU, THEN! EVERYONE WAS! I'll get to you AFTERWARDS!" But Lance's other hand caught the pole, fractioning his gauntlet on its blazing texture. The Pegasus Saint snapped it in half with a roar and a twist. "W-WHAT?!"

Time slowed down, and Lance focused his cosmos like a shrinking vortex into his hand, turning it into a great spearhead of obsidian. "BURN, MY COSMOS! MAKE MY HAND INTO THE LANCE OF THE WINGED KNIGHT! PEGASUS… CHARGE FIST!" His knuckles then crashed deep into Guilty's upper left chest armor, cracking through armor and penetrating flesh, spraying blood out.

Guilty screamed, holding Lance. "Y-YOU…!"

"YOU FELT THAT, DIDN'T YOU?!" Lance sneered, clinching him. The image of a knight piercing a Phoenix's flesh was projected by the clash of their cosmos. "I'm stopping you, Guilty, immortal or NOT!... I'm not letting any of your insanity take a single step off this island!"

Crying out, Guilty burst out of his cosmos, blasting Lance off of him. He held the hole in his armor, feeling it bleed but not heal. "H-How…"?!" His anger took over reason and made the environment around him get more unstable, causing tremors that made the ground split apart. "Y-You miserable PUNK! What right do you have to stand in my way?!"

"RIGHT?! This isn't my right; IT'S MY FUCKING DUTY!" Lance roared. "It's what I became a Saint for! To put a stop to abusive, murderous, hypocritical shits like our teachers! It's what you said WE were going to do; become partners and work together to change Sanctuary!"

This seemed to give Guilty some sudden pause as if, amid all the crimson madness he was sunk under, these words reminded him of something long forgotten.

Landing and trying to balance himself on the increased magnitude of the tremors, tears of frustration formed in Lance's face, but he wiped them off. "We were supposed to be different! But you, Guilty… you just became like them! WORSE, even! You just wanted power! I fucking see that now! You wanted me to hate you?! M-Mission fucking accomplished!"

Launching at Pegasus with a roar and burning talons, Guilty aimed to tear the Pegasus to shreds. "You think you hate me yet?! Without the pain?! HOW WOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?!"

However, with a twirl, Lance dodged the deadly swipes and landed a powerful heel kick on Guilty's side, sending him flying off to the edges of the Burning Swamps, crashing into the rising terrain borders.

"W-What you're doing has NOTHING to do with pain! Nothing to do with Nina or ME or anyone else that's really at fault!" he shouted out, giving pursuit. "Y-You're just punishing others for the sake of it! You're drunk on all your new abilities and using this chance to treat everyone as bad as they've treated you! Well, FUCK YOU! Everyone has bad fucking days! Not everyone goes on a killing spree! You didn't master hatred or the cosmos or become a reforged self or whatever other fucking excuse you wanna throw at me about what happened; you've just gone INSANE!"

Pushing the rubble off of himself, Guilty stood back up, coughing. "W-Well, look who's all spirited… the poor fucked-up Greek boy who had his childhood trauma sewn shut!" he hissed. Finally, his laughter seemed to cease, and instead, nothing but real spite was heard in his voice. "M-Maybe you're right, Lance… maybe I should focus all my hatred on you! Maybe I should take my time cutting you bit by bit until we both find out what you hid inside that seal! Wouldn't that be some quality time between Saint partners?! Like we dreamed?!"

And this is where the genuine sorrow came to Lance as he arrived by Guifi's crater. "I dreamed that! You just wanted payback; even after I told you it wasn't worth it, that it didn't save me from the pain!" Lance's fists shook, thinking of the past. "I should have knocked you out… dragged you out of this island whether you wanted it or not! But I thought…I t-thought…"

The masked teenager stood up straight, dripping blood on the hot, barren ground. "Thought that everything would work out?! That honor would see us through?! That justice would be done?! That you wouldn't let yourself get ambushed so stupidly by my Master?!"

Look who's also full of excuses!

You really ARE dreaming!

You failed me, Lance!

And you should pay for it…

…bit…

…by bit…

…by bit!

A silence cut only by the tremors, geysers, and eruptions followed, where Lance beheld in mourn the voice lost in hatred oozing out of his former friend's mouth. "…No, I thought I could help you get what you wanted. Cause I didn't."

Guilty growled once more, feeling a hesitation he no longer believed himself capable of.

Lance's eyes then narrowed with disdain. "You seemed really happy to be with Nina, you know? I never saw you willing to stick up for someone as staunchly as with that girl. You were my friend, you even saved my life once, and you two made it clear to me that you were the only ones keeping the other from falling apart in this place, so I thought I could help you get it all; Nina, freedom, AND the Cloth."

Guilty growled inside his mask. "What are you trying to say, friend?!"

Lance faced away, though still keeping his guard up. "… I never had the courage to say it, but I looked up to you, Guifi. I wanted to be partners with you. You seemed to be what Noah taught me a Saint was like. I couldn't wait to get the three of us out of this place and make that a reality…." His face then cringed in disgust. "But now look at you! You're just a monster. A killer! Worse than any Black Saint I've ever fought."

Although the demon looked to be laughing, the air around him seemed to heat up, distorting like a hot desert mirage. "You don't want to be saying all those nasty words to me, friend… I might carve them all on your stomach with a knife!"

But Lance only squinted at this. "And you know what?... You don't scare me, either! You fucking coward!"

Phoenix Guilty stood there silently, taking in his offense. The thunderstorms and eruptions raged in the name of the furnace of anger boiling inside of him.

…

A pair of soft, feminine arms wrapped around his neck from behind. "How cruel… You're not going to let him talk like that, are you?"

The Master's scarred fists cringed shut in pure, relentless hatred. "No."

She chuckled, "Of course you won't." and leaned her soft lips into his ear to whisper. "Show him what you can do, my loving Mara…."

…

There was a furious shout, a burst of fire aura, and a thrust of hand that shot a massive beam of flames right at Lance, whose armored hand back-slapped it off to the horizon, letting it explode enormously on the horizon, rocking the entire island. The environment grew even more unstable, cracking bolt after bolt of lightning, manifesting the new Master's fury.

Guilty's aura swelled and focused, swimming down his arms. "You're no better than me, Lance!... You're such a selfish, weak little Greek boy making excuses for his failures! Crying for mommy Triangle!"

The Pegasus' nose cringed in disgust, and he matched the aura rise with his dark one. "I'm not the one sucking at the tits of some evil Goddess!"

The cosmos in the arms began focusing, running through between the fingers into the palms, forming sharp eagle talons of lava-like energy, which he opened and closed teasingly. "Ah, ah, ah… don't worry, I'll show you her affection too….! The true power of the Phoenix Saint!"

Guilty struck a pose, raising his foot and spreading his arms. "ROZAN!"

A sudden stir was felt in the cosmos, and Lance rose his guard! Somehow, he perceived some great unknown mountain along with the Phoenix in Guilty's cosmic manifestation. Was this one of the volcanoes, or…?

And Guilty launched at Lance like a warping beam of fire, startling him. "FIREBIRD TALONS!"

Bursting his aura, Lance counter-launched, intercepting Guilty in mid-air at the speed of sound with a powerful dash punch. "CHARGE FIST!" The impact was deafening, cratering the floor even at their high altitude! "U-UGH, what's going on?! The power of his techniques just went way up! What did he…?!"

The two fighters roared and continued exchanging their fiery and dark blows, creating a cacophony of sonic booms in the air that ruthlessly shattered the terrain, moving across the Burning Swamps with the force of the clashes! The explosive impacts began occurring faster and faster, burning more and more cosmos, casting images of the Pegasus and the Phoenix clashing in the dark ash clouds.

Unbeknownst to them, Death Queen Island screamed; its swamps raged louder and higher while its mountains rained fire from the skies! The acid rain grew thicker, burning their skins and armor. Stimulated by the clash between the two Bronze Saints through the terrain, the last vestige of the Continent of Mu seemed to be coming alive, fissuring new cracks and birthing entire new cliffs out of the ground with the sheer tectonic chaos.

Amidst the chaos, Compass Nova rose from the rubble he crashed into earlier, bleeding and missing most of his armor. He looked up, coughing, and saw the destruction around him with great despair. Between the violent pops of blows coursing through the air, the Queen's Mouth belching authentic showers of lava, and the ground around him changing by the second, he felt trapped in the island's cruel darkness, with nowhere to go even if he casted a Cardinal Net wider than all the Underworld.

Yet, even in those circumstances, the spectacle of cosmos exchanges was impossible to ignore. "They're moving faster than even Mach 5…. 6, 7, 10…. 20! T-This… This shouldn't be possible!" he gawked. "They're just Silver ranks… They would have fallen to the ground exhausted by now,… but t-they keep going!"

A larger clash between elbow and kick blows accentuated his realization, forming a vast star of half-darkness-half-fire struggling against each other that shockwaves through the battlefield, destroying entire columns of boulders and splashing lava away like a meteor crashing in the ocean.

Falling to his knees and holding his head in horror, Compass realized the depths of the trap he was sent to. "I n-never stood a chance! They're both monsters…. M-MONSTERS!"

High in the air, Guilty screamed, trying to tear Lance's throat off amid the blows with his talons, but instead felt dark, puncturing blows crash through his tough skin, making him cough blood out. With a sweeping kick to the side, he taught Lance a lesson in true pain. He tried to sink his claws into his face, but the Pegasus' thick forearm plates parried them once more, creating a fractionating flash of cosmos light that blinded them both.

The Phoenix Saint struggled to move them off. "I'll K-KILL YOU! MAKE YOU PAY!"

With great effort and a burn of cosmos, Lance pushed the talons off and swung his fist in, digging it once again into another spot of Guilty's body, wetting himself with the monster's blood. Though it caused the Phoenix great pain, Guilty still retaliated, slashing Lance's chest before landing a cycling kick over his upper side, axing Lance down on the ground.

Cratered, Lance coughed, feeling himself having trouble burning his dark cosmos. "C-Come on, I have to get up! That's f-four!" Suddenly, he felt Guilty diving down on him and rolled aside with a startle. Exploding his cosmos, he rushed back in with a leap, landing another powerful Charge Fist on the Phoenix's left leg. "FIVE!"

Roaring, Guilty brutally back-handed him, shooting the Pegasus Saint into the lowest sloops of the volcanoes. Clasping his hands together, his cosmos swelled, making his tails rise. "R-Rozan!"

"D-Damn it, what the fuck is he saying?!" Lance growled, wondering what a Ro-zan was. His vision trembled with his strain, but he saw the bright cosmos of his adversary focusing dangerously. "I have to pace myself! If I destroy his armor before the time is right, he'll get stronger!"

"I-I'll make you beg for forgiveness, Lance!" He arched his hands at him. "D-DESCENDING FIRE RAIN!" The black skies then opened up, revealing a shower of fist-shaped meteors of cosmic lava.

Lance irked, finding himself with no escape avenue, and casted his hands out. "B-BARRIER!" The rings of transparent cosmos, swelling with dancing flows of black mirk from his new element and took the initial barrage of blows head-on. His whole body shook with the impacts, and eventually, the barrier shattered, but by this point, the meteors were spread out enough that he had room to counter-maneuver. "CHARGE FIST!"

Guilty tried to step back and counter, but the blow came at him with unforeseen speed, and all he could do was move aside to make Lance's fist strike the side of his mask.

The Pegasus Saint irked; this was not the target he wanted! Spinning around, he roared. "AGAIN!" This time landed his powerful puncturing blow on Guilty's left arm, wounding him again.

Guilty screamed, struck twice. Detecting a sudden weakness of exhaustion in Lance, though, he caught the Pegasus Saint by the leg and launched him down on the floor, smashing him. "A-ANNOYING PEST!" he then focused on the cosmos in his hand. "ROZAN! HOYOKU TENSHO!"

Lance reacted instinctively, blitzing out of the area to let the blow strike the ground instead.

Guilty cackled, feeling pieces of his mask fall off. "H-ha, ha, ha! Can this island take much more of us fighting?! We might destroy it yet, after all, friend! Just like we talked about!"

Holding on, Lance growled. "F-Fuck you! You're not the person I promised to help! You're just a corrupt monster!"

Panting, Guilty stared intently. "I-Is that what you think?! I suppose it is easy to lie to yourself like that…with this mask and all on my face." He then grabbed the cracked side. "Let me shatter that illusion of yours…"

Lance widened his eyes. "W-What are you doing?!"

With a pained roar, as if the mask itself was part of his face's skin, Guilty ripped the damaged chunk off. A lightning bolt crashed behind him as the Phoenix chucked the broken piece, letting Lance behold him.

The Pegasus Saint froze, seeing the familiar eye of crimson. It was crying tears of blood, just like Lance did when his dark cosmos awoke. "G-Guifi….!"

The Phoenix Saint chuckled. "There it is… my old name again. How easy it is to make you eat your words…"

Lance hesitated. Indeed, seeing the brow and eye of his old friend, Lance found himself once again psychologically trapped. "He's trying to psyche me out! I can't let him!" He focused on counting the number of critical blows on Guilty. "I just need… three more. I'm sure of it!"

Guilty smiled. He could tell what Lance was thinking. "I know what you're doing, Lance… It's the exact kind of strategy you'd binge your hopes on…And it's not going to work. You're gonna die before you even get close!"

Tightening his fists, Lance gritted his teeth and charged his dark cosmos. "We'll fucking see about THAT!"

Guilty laughed discreetly, seeing the bright triangle on Lance's forehead beginning to shine. He had a feeling about what this meant; and if he timed his next assault right, Guilty would slaughter this pathetic whelp for good.

As such, he decided to show Lance another trick. "Let's raise the stakes of this little game."

Pointing his hands at the far-off Phoenix Shrine, his cosmos burned, and a set of objects came flying out of it at a high speed. Startled, Lance dodged with a roll, but the two flying discarded swords lifted from the shrine grounds landed in Guilty's hands.

Lance sweated, seeing them immersed with cosmos. "What the… how the fuck did he do that?!"

"Telekinesis…It's amazing what the 6th sense can do, isn't it?" He crossed them, letting them shine with burning cosmos. "I suppose you wouldn't know, dumped on that mountain by your teacher after just a couple of days, HA, HA, HA!"

Lance wasn't impressed. "You think you scare me with a couple of rusty swords?!"

"ROZAN! BURNING PHOENIX WINGS!" The blades became immersed not with fire cosmos, but seemingly with scalding, hot lava that bubbled out of Guilty's palms and dressed the edges, even dripping to the floor.

Lance gulped at the sight of the sizzles. "S-Shit!"

Leaning forward and rattling his new toys together, "Can you see your death, Lance? It's alright, little darling. Your long mountain winter is over." He danced them around, trailing lava everywhere, and then dashed at Lance! "Here comes GUILTY!"

Exploding his aura, Lance did not surrender and thrust his chop hand instinctively, focusing cosmos into a makeshift sword technique. The clash between edges occurred in mid-air once more.

Guilty roared frustratingly, trying to push his swords through. "ARGHH… JUST DIE!" Uncrossing them, he twirled over in a dance of slashes, but Lance packed all of his cosmos into his arms and fought tooth and nail to parry them. The eviscerating dance poked, grazed, and twirled over the Pegasus' defenses, slashing his armor over and over, every crash of edge against armor plate causing an air burst that cracked the ground.

The struggle then escalated, with the two Saints booming into the air at the speed of sound, exchanging sword slashes and swiping punches. Boulders were cut off. Lava fields were sliced up, sending halves of streams everywhere. Even the rainy air was cut, creating vast swathes of emptiness by the sheer force of the Saint's movements. Meanwhile, rattling sounds echoed in the fields along with the superfast movements.

It was in this deadly chaos that Compass Nova stumbled through, trying to find a way out. "P-Please Athena, guide me! S-Save me from this island!" he begged, running through the Swamps and trying to stay clear from the clashes. One burst so close to him that he got tossed aside, floored.

Lance was in no better shape, feeling his chest grazed by cross-slashes and pushed back by its force, but he kept his struggle, dodging a lethal swipe of the blades to thrust his punch in. "C-CHARGE FIST!"

Feeling his arm struck again with another deep wound, Guilty roared with pain and anger and was bashed back, creating an opening! "ARGH, N-NO!"

Lance's eyes widened, seeing his chance! "NOW! I can land the last ones now! Come on, cosmos, BURN!" and his darkness swelled. "GO, SPEAR OF THE PEGASUS KNIGHT! VANQUISH MY FOE!"

Time slowed down in mid-air, and Guilty gasped, looking up to see the projection of Lance's cosmos. He didn't see a Pegasus, though. Instead, the shape that the stars took revealed a truth about his adversary that enlightened him.

Said truth was then obfuscated by the sight of the spear of darkness that Lance's fist transformed into, now speeding at his body at an unstoppable charge, and the Pegasus Saint roared.

{==============|SSII|==============}

In the buried world of the Pegasus Saint's mental realm, the bright, cracked seal of pale blue light kept on oozing the darkness through its wound, bleeding a monstrosity within the young Greek Saint previously kept hidden. This darkness was being pulled out, stretched thin even, by the Saint. It was fueling his techniques and giving him the strength needed to survive.

As the battle in the real world developed, though, this bleeding grew thinner and thinner, sucked dry by the Saint burning it for power. Like a leech on a wound, it had the unexpected effect of lessening the strain on the seal, cleaning it off the dark fingers trying to pry its wound open from the inside.

Eventually, such a point was reached that this bleeding was stretched to its limit, clearing the seal of pressure. There was a particular symbol of it, one of reactive repair, designed by its creator to detect problems in its containment and understand the damage it suffered. It began shining brighter than the other two. This was a signal of its activation as the Cosmos seal finally understood the damage it suffered and how to mend it.

As such, it began coursing new filaments of light down on its wound, taking advantage of no longer being obstructed by the flood of cosmos being poured out to stretch it across the gap and hook, like a cut being sown. Circles and letters on the seal, previously shattered by the Genma Ken, were now being reformed, closing the crack little by little.

Until the entire seal closed shut, fully repaired, and shining anew.

{==============|SSII|==============}

"I-IT'S OVER!" Lance shouted, hammering down his dark Charge Fist!

His dark cosmos suddenly whisk away, leaving him powerless! The Charge Fist lost momentum and strength, and tremendous exhaustion suddenly took over the Pegasus. His mind lost track of all those terrible memories flashing into his head and his balance was thrown off by the powerful momentum he had created for himself, exposing his defenses.

Lance gasped, entirely open for the counter!

Guilty smiled! "HA, HA, HA! YOU'RE MINE!" He swung his blade down on the helpless Pegasus! Lance irked and parried with his forearm, but both objects shattered, breaking his guard. Guilty swung his other sword up, slashing a screaming Lance on the left side of his chest so hard it dug into his body. He tried to release it but felt Lance's hand grab him. "W-What?!"

Charging the last of his vanishing cosmos, Lance dug his fingers into Guilty's arm, puncturing it, before setting off his brimming aura to burst. "P-PEGASUS… B-BURST!"

Compass saw both Saints get consumed by a big burst of energy from this and guarded himself, surrounded by falling rock debris and ash clouds. The two adversaries crashed on the ground loudly, tumbling it.

What just happened?!

Nova trod cautiously in the smoke screening them. He was sure the last thing he saw was Pegasus striking Phoenix, not the other way around, which could mean…

He eventually saw a shape coughing, getting up in the smoke, and even vomiting blood. Nova gasped, knowing the other guy had a mask covering his mouth. "O-OI, PEGASUS?! PEGASUS, did you win-"

The figure hissed and threw his hand, sending the broken sword cutting through the air and lodging itself on Compass's chest with such force that the Bronze Saint was pinned into a rock, breathing coarsely.

"S-SHUT UP!... Y-You useless n-nobody! It is I who won!" Guilty stepped out of the smoke, revealing himself. He was absolutely drenched in blood, covered in multiple, sunk wounds like caved holes that, for some reason, weren't going away. In fact, he seemed to be panting, exhausted from the fighting despite his claims to immortality, and his Phoenix Cloth was cracked all over. "That punk… he was storing dark cosmos all along in his armor and then set it off when its source went away…Just to spite me!"

Compass looked down with horror, seeing the broken handle sticking out of his body. Nova touched it like he didn't think it was real. "W-wha… N-no…"

His whimpers got Guilty's attention. His one revealed eye narrowed in disgust. "L-look at you… I couldn't even turn you Black if I tried now, with all those wounds. Don't worry, though…" he laughed, taking the broken blade out of Compass without any delicacy and holding it high, preparing to cut the Compass down. "Lance will be happy in hell… gone from this island… but your suffering… is just beginning! Ha, HA, HA, HA, H-"

"W-What are you LAUGHING AT?! Freak?!"

Guilty froze. "W-What?! It can't…."

The dying Compass looked up, seeing a bleeding Lance crawling out of the smoke. The Pegasus was holding on to the deep gash on his side and looked about to fall over.

Yet, the Pegasus stood, brimming his original white aura. "S-step the fuck away from him!" He saw the stunned look in Guilty's eye. "That f-fucking look on your face! You a-asshole… You really thought that was it, didn't you?!"

Dropping the broken sword, Guilty was baffled. "Lance… ha, ha, ha, you're still alive?! Are you as immortal as I am or something?!" He burned energy, making his tails float. "What do I have to do to put you to the fucking ground for good?! R-RIP YOUR HEART OUT?!"

Tensioning into a battle stance, Lance could barely see straight, feeling blood drip over his eyelids and having the sensation of more than one Guilty being in front of him. His legs barely stood, and he felt a dense weight in his arms like he had just finished the harshest training session of his life. He shared some of Guilty's disbelief that he was still standing and an incredible frustration that his element was suddenly gone for no reason.

"I'm a warrior, G-Guilty, not just a Saint…and certainly not a c-coward killer like y-you! I don't need fucking immortality or to hurt others to deal with my pain!" he hissed, shaking like a leaf. The memory of the leg Noah once sacrificed for him returned. "I was taught to put my LIFE at stake to defend others! Mount Olympus didn't kill me, and neither will YOU and your SHITTY PHOENIX TECHNIQU-"

A fiery blitz occurred, and a scalding hot hand closed its fingers tightly around Lance's neck, silencing him before pinning him on the ground.

The Pegasus Saint gagged, feeling his throat constricted. His feet kicked Guilty as hard as he could but weak as he was, he couldn't shrug the demon off. His bulging red eyes shook, thinking he could see a woman behind Guilty smiling at the whole thing.

"DO IT! T-Tell me how you're going to save the day, warrior! Like you told me, you'd save Nina! "

Coughing and struggling against Guilty's fingers, Lance desperately tried to breathe, and his free hand searched aside.

The sight of it was hysterical to the maddened Phoenix. "HA HA HA! Look at you, still clinging! Will you bite me as well, like those stupid Sasha brats? Will you get back up over and over, like the Pegasus of old?!" Guilty mocked. "Or is this reality, where your puny destiny runs out, and you just die like everyone else?! TELL ME!"

Screaming in despair, Lance's fingers reached out as far as they could until the tips landed on the banded handle of the discarded sword. His weak fingers couldn't grasp it, though!

Was he going to die?! Darkness started creeping from the corner of his eyes as his consciousness faded.

…and that was when Guilty's fingers suddenly softened, relieving pressure.

Lance blinked, breathing harshly and seeing the demon over himself suddenly paralyzed, seemingly distracted. His one revealed eye was fixated on something that blew over with the island's storming winds right next to the two of them. The Pegasus's eyes turned to see a single, withered daisy.

One of Guilty's hands took it. The demon stared at it, lost in thoughts, feeling the thick ruby wall of burning around his mind suddenly split apart like the Red Sea by the sight of this dying white flower. He thought he had burned them all away, but somehow the force of all the battling must have blown many into the air. It was one of many daisies he had collected off the Emerald Meadow to give to Nina.

Nina… she always loved daisies… used to say they were as pure as snow, which she had never seen... How many times had they dreamed of him taking her to see them?

Focusing the dwindling reserves of his white cosmos, Lance closed his hand tight around the discarded broken sword's handle and brought its shattered edge down on Guilty's right leg, puncturing it!

Guilty screamed in agony, losing sensation in his leg, and was punched off his victim as hard as Lance could manage, sent tumbling over! The Pegasus crawled away and tried to catch his breath as quickly as possible. He wondered what kind of miracle had just happened. Holding on to rocks, he could barely lift himself back up.

Guilty ripped the sword out of his thigh and roared, "Y-YOU FUCKING PUNK! I'LL EVISCERATE YOU! SKIN YOU AND FUCK YOUR CORPSE!"

Burning the last bits of his cosmos into a thin brim of cosmos, Lance turned to face the monster. "Eight!… But D-Damn it! I'm all out of cosmos! I'm not strong enough to penetrate his armor like this! B-But…" and he locked eyes on Guilty's segmented chest plate. "…b-but the last star is right there!"

To make things worse, a furnace of flames surrounded Guilty, rejuvenating his armor and repairing its cracks. The same flames focused down like a vortex into his hand. "I HATE YOU! YOU'VE DONE NOTHING BUT RUIN MY LIFE OVER AND OVER! I'LL CARVE HOW MUCH I DO ALL OVER YOUR BODY, BURN THE FUCKING WORD IN EVERY INCH OF YOUR SKIN! ONLY THEN…." The firebird then projected on his background, once again accentuated by the sight of a mysterious mountain. "Only THEN I'll let you DIE!"

Lance's red eyes widened, spotting on Guifi's charging blow what he needed to do! He braced himself, presenting his armored chest with tightened fists ready to counter. "C-Come and GET ME, then, you COWARD!"

Guilty roared and raised his foot, spreading his arms aside, casting the familiar storm of embers that shattered the terrain around them.

Practically stomping the ground with his set-up step, Guilty's muscles bulged, and his aura burst high as he released a martial shout! "PHOENIX… make my burning hand fly like your wings! R-ROZAN!" He swung a palm of the flames of hell at Lance. "HOYOKU TENSHO!!"

Yet, with a brave step towards the enemy's attack, the Pegasus Saint closed his fist, bobbed aside to dodge the Tensho's spearhead of cosmos and swiped Phoenix's wounded leg with his foot as hard as he could, causing the launched Phoenix Saint to gasp and spin over to the ground, exposing his plume-tailed back!

With a follow-up twirl, Lance's fist rose with a star of white cosmos "CHARGE FIST!" and came down, smashing through the much thinner armor layers of the falling Guilty's exposed back . In a blood-chilling scene, the powerful hand of fire burst through Guilty's chest, coming out the front and spraying blood to the ground!

The two warriors gasped there, stuck in the morbid poses for a second. Putting his foot on Guilty for leverage, Lance pulled his fust out, letting the monster collapse to the ground. "I-I'm sorry."

The Phoenix Saint gagged, losing all sensation in his body. He tried to move it but felt his entire core twist painfully at the attempt, making him drop to his knees. "Y-You…. A-AGHH…"

Lance rolled him over, exposing his many wounds, and counted carefully. He took a big gamble by using an angle through the side of the back so as to avoid the hard spine, but it seems he managed to hit the center in the front anyway.

"N-Nine. T-That was your last Phoenix star point… your last scar at the center of your chest. Just like you told me you were gonna do to your teacher…."

"H-HOW?!" Guilty protested. He had noticed for a while this was Lance's plan, but punching a fully powered Phoenix Saint with enough force to puncture his star points, much less nine times, was nothing short of a herculean task, something he shouldn't manage without that darkness cosmos. "You were…. You were too weak!"

The Pegasus's eyes narrowed. "My eyes are good for more than just making excuses about fucking curses!" he growled. "I saw it, Guilty… the way your Hoyoku Tensho works. When you charge it, you put so much of its cosmos at the front that anyone would be suicidal to try to go for your chest scare head on.… So I thought outside of the box…."

Writhing in agony, Guilty felt his entire body suddenly shut down, losing his mighty cosmos. With his nine star points punctured and his extraordinary dependence on the Curse for his power, a disproportionate amount of energy was cut off, and the masked Master felt as weak as a child. Worst of all, the pool of blood below him grew bigger and bigger, and his armor refused to fix the hole in it, much less push his arm out of his chest cavity.

Lance scoffed, trying to focus on his lament so he wouldn't cry over the sight of his fallen friend. "I really had no idea if it was going to work… but I'd never made it out of Olympus if I didn't learn to take a shot in the dark. You underestimated me, Guifi! You thought you were on easy street now, that no one would ever be able to cause you pain ever again! Well, how much pain do you feel now?!"

"A-AAGGGH! Y-YOU THINK YOU'VE WON?! I'M IMMORTAL! This doesn't change that! Sooner or later, I'll… undo this… and get my Cosmos back! And be stronger than before! And then burn you to fucking cinders!" He then laughed. "D-Do you hear me, Lance?! The Goddess has blessed me! You can't kill me! I'll win a-anyway!"

The Pegasus Saint looked up, alerted to another eruption from the Queen's Mouth. With much effort, Lance then grabbed Guilty by the ankle. "You're right…" and started dragging the Phoenix Saint out of there. "But I think I know how to solve that, too…."

"W-What?!... W-What are you doing?! LANCE!" Guilty then saw the direction they were going, the direction of the most horrible place in all of Death Queen Island, and widened his eye in panic. "N…NO! YOU CAN'T DO T-THAT! I'LL K-KILL YOU! CUT YOUR DAMN HEAD OFF AND FEED YOU TO THE SHARKS! S-STOP! NOOOO!"

{======================|SSII|======================}

The climb to the top of the volcano was long and agonizing. It was every bit as nightmarish as the horrible sight of the Queen's Mouth made it seem like it would be. Air temperatures rose to deadly levels above 120 Celsius, boiling the blood dripping off Lance as it touched the ground instantly. Without the protection of their Cloths of Athena, the blood in the body itself, as well as the eyeballs, bile, and more, would surely be boiling ruthlessly at this point as well.

Assaulted by the elements, the Pegasus Saint wasn't sure he'd live much longer. Reaching another height of the climb, Lance pulled himself up, still dragging a struggling Guilty by the ankle. He finally saw a cavern entrance that could lead him to the mountain's cauldron.

He grimly marched inside.

"L-Lance… I… I can barely see anymore!" the monster begged, detecting the cavern's darkness swallowing them. The hole in his chest hadn't magically healed, leaving trails of red on the ground that quickly evaporated. "W-where are you taking me?"

The Pegasus Saint blocked it all out. He had to do this, or the monster would get back up and kill him.

Eventually, he was welcomed into the cauldron by a wash of hot steam. His eyes widened at the sight of it; a wide, open stomach with multiple overlooking cliffs, that once were used as the equivalent of cranes to lower Cloths into the lava for repairs by Muvians. He stood on such one, the highest of them all, and was given a position to admire the pool of bubbling fire beneath. More than a mere cauldron, it felt like an inferno, where the screams of those dropped into it by generations of cruel Masters still echoed.

This was the place the Phoenix was forged.

This was the place the Phoenix could be undone.

Yet, he stood there, staring at the orange light, much like when he was first ambushed by the Phoenix Shrine's magic when he first failed to protect Nina. Right then and there, he could hear a female voice whispering in his ears, perhaps the same that drove Guifi insane, inviting him to do it, to throw his old friend into the lava.

Horrible wave of energy after horrible wave washed up invisibly from the cauldron's depth, inciting the most brutal sides of his personality. He should just do it! Just fucking do it! Toss Guilty into the fire before he got back up and killed him! Then he could get out of this damn island! This nightmare could end!...

…

… His grip weakened.

… How did it come to this?!

Lance's fists shook, releasing Guilty's ankle for a second, and streams of tears began flowing uncontrollably out of his eyes. The Saint of Pegasus groaned, furious at himself, and he rubbed his eyes, wishing he could rip them out just to stop the pain.

This... this was all his fault!

"L-Lance!" Guilty called, feeling nothing but pain. For some reason, his powers took a long time to recover, giving him a sense of clarity lost when Nina died. "W-what are you doing? Where are we? It's… so hot here… I can barely breathe…."

The voice assaulted his senses as the Pegasus sunk by the wall, diving nose into his own knees, trying to contain his tears. "Why?! Why can't I stop seeing him as ...." Screaming to the top of his lungs, Lance punched a wall of the cavern pass, cracking it with such force that even Guilty was startled. Hammering his fists over and over again, he wailed, "A-AAGGH! G-GOD DAMN IT!"

His punch sunk deep into the rock, making the cauldron shake frighteningly. With the threat of battling Guilty gone, the reality of his failure came crashing down on him. "Y-You were my friend! We were going to change things! Make a better world for us to live in! And I f-failed you! Fucking WHY?! W-Why couldn't I have paid attention?!"

"K… kill me." Guifi now begged. His body jerked, and blood kept pushing out his mouth against the mask, flooding his breath. "K-kill me!"

Lance turned, trapped between hope, grief, and wariness. Was he in such pain? Or was Guifi realizing how horribly he had been transformed? This could be a final trick, but he saw the red in Guifi's eye diminished, and his cosmos wasn't felt at all. "G-Guifi, I'm sorry. I'm s-so sorry!"

"K-Kill me, Lance… C-cause if you don't -" Guilty continued. The red returned to his eye, and he started laughing amidst coughs of blood. "… I'll h-haunt you forever! You won't sleep! You won't rest! I'll make your life a hell just like this island, no matter how far you RUN!"

The perverted casualness with which this was said made Lance pale. Guifi really was dead. Even in a state like this, there was nothing but Guilty left in this husk, the hateful man who wanted to make everyone pay sadistically for his pain. What would Noah do?

Lance stood up, cleaned his tears, and studied his problem; Guilty, the Phoenix Saint, was lying powerless on the floor, seemingly unable to get himself out of the grotesque jam Pegasus put him into.

Clearly, whatever cycle of rebirth that Nina's death put him into was now somehow interrupted, at least for a while, giving Lance total control on how to end this. If Guilty was allowed to live, he would undoubtedly continue his Master's sick ideology in new victims, new Black Saint slaves, and perhaps even a new student.

Clearly, everything pointed to dropping the bastard off that cliff into the lava. Only more suffering could come from doing anything else. Already, he could hear himself concluding it was his obligation to end their match, to Guifi's suffering. To empty the island's throne. Perhaps, he could put an end to Death Queen Island itself. Right?

Right?

A cold chill of realization filled him, and Lance walked off.

Guilty heard his steps in disbelief. "You think you can just… walk away…from all of this?"

The Pegasus paused. "Yes. This is…too much. It's beyond me."

"Ha… ha, ha… That's so FUNNY! HA, HA, HA, HA! You can't escape from this, Lance!" Guilty shouted at him. "You think you're a HERO for sparing me?! You're NOT! You're just weak like you've always been!"

"Maybe you're right!" Lance admitted. His nose then twisted in disgust. "But you know what else you're probably right about, Guilty? That I may have truly been born as a Phoenix… which means killing you is probably just a gigantic trap by whatever monster gave you that mask for me to replace you!"

The insane knight gawked. "W-What?!"

Lance looked around in spite. "And I refuse to do that! This place… it does nothing but drive people insane! Turns them into monsters and makes them kill one another! It should be sunk to the bottom of the ocean! Maybe it was a coincidence that I got sent here at the perfect timing to be part of its fucked-up Saint ritual that turned you into this, but… it's too fucking obvious what it's trying to do now!"

The masked youth shook, his eye tensing dangerously, and he tried to crawl at Lance. "Replace me?… Do you think you could replace me?! A punk like you, who doesn't know the meaning of suffering?! Of HATE?!"

The sight of the Saint trying to move in his condition filled Lance with pity as he gathered his cosmos. "Goodbye, Guifi… I'll leave your fate to this island since you believe so much in what it's done to you. Haunt me from beyond if you want, but remember…" he then narrowed his eyes warningly. "If I ever find out you took so much a step off this island… I'll come back… and throw you down this damn volcano myself!"

"NO! T-THIS ISN'T OVER!" Guilty roared, seeing Lance charge energy into his hand and punch at the wall, collapsing the only way out of the cauldron. He reached out at the red-eyed Bronze Saint as he vanished behind the collapse. "P-PEGASUUUS!"

{======================|SSII|======================}

Three Days Later,

Sanctuary Town,

Lake Neo Kopaida Docks

{======================|SSII|======================}

On another sunny day of Sanctuary Summer, Sagitta Nam sat patiently on a box by the great bay, eyeing the vessels entering Athena's land through the Corinth Gulf mountain canal. Neo Kopaida was a false lake, being actually a body of water connected by a submerged mountain pass to the Corinth Gulf, giving Sanctuary Town secret access to the sea. Today was the day the Trinity was set to return from the Southwest Pacific. He was so anxious about how it went that he couldn't help but leave the office for once and await its arrival by its dock.

To entertain him, he brought a little pocket radio transmitting the ongoing Coliseum games. "And another triumphant victory by Saint Herakles Aguilon! AMAZING!" the announcer cheered. Nam smiled. This was a foregone conclusion. "Saint Aguilon, this is your 35th Summer Game tournament cup win since you started participating in the 40s! Some estimates say you may have won, just in these, over two thousand duels! Tell the Coliseum crowd; to what do you owe your INCREDIBLE record, even at your age?!"

The muffling sound of a huge hand stealing the mic was heard. "You know what I owe it to, Ventura?! I owe it to orange juice, push-ups, Athena, and a burning passion to KICK ASS in the ring! And any jerk wad who thinks they can take my belts can expect a Herculean fist shoved up their ass! WHOO!"

Even at the dock, Nam could hear the crowds cheering multiple street blocks over at this.

The Sagitta Saint sweated. It was like a soccer stadium. He could also only imagine how slighted Aguilon must have felt at the mention of his age, but it was true that most non-Muvians began feeling the first signs of cosmos burnout in their late 30s, while Aguilon was well in his early 50s. Aguilon was so dominant that many games now permitted "Gang up" matches against him just so someone else could take a turn winning.

Seeing a small boat enter the lake through the pass, Nam turned off the radio. "There they are."

As the fishing boat docked, many people began crowding around it, impeding Nam's look at the first people leaving the ship. A lot were there to get the fish, but others were certainly there out of curiosity, having heard the Trinity was sent twice to Death Queen Island.

"Excuse me! Saint business coming through!" Nam politely squeezed through the crowd.

But the words being whispered worried him. "Oh no…"

"Look at that."

"Poor soul…"

Nam finally made it past the crowd and felt his stomach sink at the sight of the coffin being carried out of the ship by the sailors, who asked to be let through. "No…!" he then saw Pegasus Lance following them out, his head sunk down, depressed. Nam approached him. "Pegasus… what happened? How did your mission…go?"

The death look Lance gave him was chilling. "…It was… a success." He declared, though his tone was anything but celebratory. He took a report and dumped it in Nam's hands. "It's all there. I tracked the source of the attacks to Jangotown, on Death Queen Island. They were raiding nearby islands and passing boats for the purposes of sacrifice."

Nam paled. "S… Sacrifice?! How m…"

"Approximately ninety people… maybe a hundred." Lance calculated, based on the piles he saw around the Phoenix Shrine. "I want to say one per constellation, but I'm not certain. It doesn't matter, though. The Black Saints are all dead. The Master was involved in it, by the way. He cooperated with several of them to replace Black Phoenix as a leader."

"What?! Are you sure?!" Nam asked, his loud voice getting the attention of the crowd. "Pegasus… that's a serious accusation. He has a bad reputation, but… but that's treason!"

Lance was too tired to fight these complacent jerks on this, so he just moved on. "There's… a couple of deaths I'd like to report. For burial in Sanctuary. I noted them down." And Lance dumped a clipboard on Nam's hands of all the mission details.

The Sagitta looked it

"Compass Nova. Had an invaluable contribution to the mission, but was killed in action. Suffered multiple lacerations, broken bones, burns, and an impalement by the Master."

Nam scribbled on an empty back page of the report, feeling his heart sink. So, it really was Nova in the coffin… Goddess forgive him for sending him there. He read the rest of the names

"Nina. Last name unknown. Was sexually assaulted multiple times by the Master and his Black Saint cohorts. They then tortured her and had her murdered by a third victim. The corpse was then burnt down. She was a slave on the island Training Ground, thus a subject of Sanctuary."

Nam blinked in shock. "Wait, who?! What?! The Master had a daughter?!"

The crowd increasingly stopped to listen in, horrified. Lance noticed this but didn't care. Maybe it was good they heard what happened. "There's one more. Guifi Taitano…"and at this Lance took a stoic pause, but he sniffed and continued. "I don't have a body for him either, but he was a trainee on the island for the Phoenix Cloth, you'll find his certificate at Heart of Sasha. They… turned him into a Black Saint."

The Sagitta Saint stood there, agape, glancing at the end of the report and the details about it on the written report. "Y… You… Saint Lance, I'm…"

The Bronze Saint robotically continued. "You can cover the funerary expenses with my mission paycheck; I don't mind. Also, I would like to file an oversight claim on that Training Ground. From now on, all missions related to it can be sent to me. I know it's a lot of responsibility, but after surviving this mission, I think I can handle it fine."

The Sagitta Saint gulped, overwhelmed. He thought things could go wrong, but this much?

"One more thing, Sagitta… Next time, if Sanctuary thinks there's a problem on a mission this dangerous and decides to pick someone to risk their lives for its precious Training Ground?" He then shoved past Nam, making sure to really make it hurt. "Send afucking Gold Saint instead!"

Nam stood there, his blonde face frozen by guilt. As the crowd dispersed and the sailors stared at him, asking with their eyes where they could take Nova's coffin, an immense shame filled his chest. He felt brought back to the Civil War when similar tragedies had made him give up the battlefield.

Pegasus was clearly traumatized and was lashing out. In fact, it surprised Nam a bit that he didn't get socked in the mouth just now.

A sailor once told him about people taken to Death Queen Island: Even those who live don't leave the same. Boy was he right.

Nam took a piece of paper out of his pocket, upon which was the contact of a certain Silver Saint that he dug out of the records after his conversation with Nova. Maybe it was time to do something to actually help Saint Lance's mental health. And then give the Golden Zodiac a piece of his mind to go along with Lance's report.

{======================|SSII|======================}

The Next Day,

The Winged Slopes (Saint cabin grounds)

{======================|SSII|======================}

FUCK YOU, PEGASUS!

YOU GOT NOVA KILLED!

SAINT-KILLER!

RED-EYED FREAK!

WATCH YOUR BACK!

Carrying his Cloth Box, Lance stared at the words sprayed in red graffiti all over the door and walls of his stone hut on the Winged Slopes, the smaller hills in Sanctuary where most lowly Bronze Saints resided. Someone had come while he was out getting food in the market to leave these wonderful welcoming words. Having guessed this would happen, he also made sure to purchase some soap and detergent. It was a bit depressing, though, how all the shit that happened on Death Queen Island was somehow, by force of rumor and reputation alone, now slowly being blamed on him.

Leaving his things inside and ensuring his reinforced lock was in place, he headed out, wanting to clear his head. Fortunately, they let him buy a stardust lock. Apparently, these were in circulation because some Amazons feared having their masks stolen.

He opened his hut's mailbox, which also got vandalized, and found a letter from the MMC. Usually, these were sent to summon him for a mission. He hoped this would be confirmation of his claim on Death Queen Island, but instead, apparently, they were asking him to go meet a Saint by the park. "Maybe they don't want me at the MMC office just yet. Or maybe they want to fucking interrogate me. Can't get much worse than this."

Putting on a hoodie despite the warm summer day, Lance closed it firmly around his head to avoid getting attention from the city folk and headed out the Winged Slopes into Sanctuary Town. The park was referred to as close to Third Acropolis, where the docks and markets were located and was a place for families and stressed-out Saints to hang out at.

He reached it as soon as possible, dodging between the busier streets. Since it was a work day, the grassy field with paved pathways and trees was emptier than usual, making him relax.

Okay, then, he just had to find this Silver Saint. He spotted a figure sitting by a bench and headed. Judging from the bulky armor set, it must be Cepheus or something. Maybe he'd get a mission in freaking Andromeda Island to go along with his recent oh-so-pleasant experience in D-

Lance's foot braked to a halt, his heart skipping at the sight of the white-haired head turning to him. "N… Noah?!"

The green-eyed adult stood up and smiled warmly. "Hi, Red... It's so good to see you. Look at you!" Noah greeted, beaming in happiness. "You've grown up so much!" He extended his hands out.

Lance turned his head and shook his head in joy and disbelief that the one person he needed the most, was actually here. He raised his head as Noah waved his hands for an embrace until the teen finally accepted it.

Noah turned downwards in amazement. The last time they saw each other, Red barely reached up to Noah's waist. Now he was up to Noah's shoulders.

"It's okay, Red… I came as soon as I got Saint Nam's letter. Let's talk."

{======================|SS2|======================}

Slowly walking through the park, the two Saints caught up as best as they could. Noah listened attentively not just to Lance's experience on the Phoenix cloth's training ground, which stunned the Silver Saint, but also to everything that happened since they last were together at the door of Heart of Sasha.

"Hera's staff, so that's what happened." The Triangle Saint lamented, their expression solemn. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Not just Death Queen Island, but Mount Olympus, too. If I thought they could ever do that to you, I'd…."

Lance shook his head. "It's not your fault, Noah. It's… this place. You were right; the other Saints aren't like you. I should have understood that." He then remembered that one conversation he once overheard in Sasha, all those years ago, between Thea and Helen. "I found out they hate people like you. That was why you couldn't be my Master. They probably kept you from knowing I was alone in Olympus so that you wouldn't decide to teach me anyway."

However, the Triangle Saint seemed frustrated, like they had had to deal with this all their life, with Noah's green eyes looking away. "Unfortunately, you may be right…I hope you understand why I didn't come clean with it, Red. It's a… difficult thing to explain to a young boy. Sometimes I feel it's hard to get adults to see it straight. It's part of why I try to stay away from Sanctuary Town and do my work elsewhere. I was all the way in Argentina when I was told you just got back from Death Queen Island, of all places. I could… barely believe it."

Lance noticed how steady Noah was as they walked together; it's been years since they last saw each other, and whatever prosthetic the Silver Saint was using, it seemed like was walking much better and more confidently. "Hey, Noah, how do you feel with… you know?"

Noah smiled reassuringly. "Like it's not even gone." The Silver lied, not wanting Lance to be haunted by anything related to his locked memories. In reality, Noah had merely learned to cope with the absence of the right foot. "How about you?"

Lance looked away. "I feel horrible. I'm a failure, Noah. I couldn't even show up at Guifi and Nina's funeral. How could I have let all of that happen?"

Noah stared intently. "Did you get any more… resurgences of that black cosmos?"

"No. Not even during training."

There was a sigh of relief. "Good, that means the seal is holding firm."

The Pegasus Saint, though, felt the need for answers. It was pretty damn obvious that the Dark element emerging was directly tied to Guilty striking him with Genma Ken, and Lance was sure he felt flashes of unknown memories torturing him the moment he got all that power. This meant there was a strong possibility that Lance had unlocked this element in the past, precisely when he very first used the Cosmos.

Thus, Lance stopped and did the unthinkable; he challenged his hero. "You were always really sure I could unlock the cosmos again, weren't you, Noah? Even though I was so old already compared to the rest of the kids. I'm guessing this has something to do with it?"

Pausing as well, Noah held quiet, folding their armored arms with a nervous lip. The green eyes occasionally glanced at Lance's forehead, where the seal was planted.

So Lance continued. "Noah, I feel like I had a strong reason to agree to your seal… but after what happened…." Lance's closing fists shook, and his eyes welled. "I don't want something this awful to ever happen again! And maybe, if I access that power again-"

The Silver Saint answered without a beat. "Absolutely NOT." Noah then pointed him to a seat at a bench they were now walking by. "In fact,… I'd like it if you let me look it over for faults. If it cracked once, then it needs to be reinforced. It's dangerous to let that happen again during a mission. It could get you distracted at a critical moment and kill you."

Lance blinked hesitantly, changing looks between the Silver Saint and the bench. "…Why, though?... Was it that bad? Whatever it was, it helped me tap into an element! It made me strong enough to survive…Noah, what did you hide inside of me?!"

The kind Silver Saint frowned in lament. "Lance, … sometimes strength isn't the right choice. One of life's most difficult lessons is to live with our weaknesses… our limits. After what happened to your friend, surely you must see that better than me."

Lance shook. "But…"

"I want you to stop worrying about what you hid away. You chose to forget it so you could start anew as a Saint. What happened on Death Queen Island doesn't change that. Don't worry, you'll unlock an element someday, Lance. The proper way. You won't need the help of old pains to do that. When that happens, you'll see the real reason why I had faith you'd become a great Saint."

The Bronze Saint's eyes sunk down in shame. He felt all of Guifi's monstrous tirades about the Queen and hatred now rewind in his brain, making all his own words sound way too similar. The Triangle Saint waited without judgment, seeing Lance rub his eyes and gulp to stop himself from tearing up.

To Noah, Lance's frustration was perfectly logical; the Silver Saint didn't really disagree that maybe having access to all that Cosmos would help Lance prevent future tragedies. However, the humble Silver Saint was wise and knew Cosmos was more than just fighting battery. There were consequences to having it that could mark the young teenager forever.

Noah had seen it a million times. Experienced it, too.

"Shit, I think you're right… You're always right." Lance finally admitted, taking a seat. He couldn't believe he had agreed to make himself weaker. "Go ahead, Noah…."

While the Bronze Saint felt sad, Noah beamed in pride. "It won't hurt a bit."

Noah rested their hand on the Bronze's forehead and closed his eyes, focusing on the Triangle Cloth's white cosmos. At first, there was a shivering feeling in Lance's head of having his mind barriers moved through, not too dissimilar to the Genma Ken's starting phase. However, rather than evolving into a hot, punctured nail, it grew into an embalming hold around his mind through the Cosmos which began tinkering with his seal like a skilled craftsman winding and oiling a complex clockwork.

After not too long, Noah let go, sinking his hands into his travel cloak pockets. "That should do it for now. How do you feel?"

Lance blinked, running his hand through his forehead. He tried to think back to his orphanage days, and everything still felt like the same 2-year gap. "The same, I think? Are you sure you did anything?"

There was an amused chuckle. "If you can't tell, that means I did it right. I made it a bit stronger and prepared it for Genma Ken's strikes. It will take something with a lot more firepower than a Bronze Saint party trick to probe your mind now." The Silver Saint scratched his nose embarrassedly. "I must admit when I first made it that I didn't think you'd one day be involved with Death Queen Island."

"When will you be back again?"

With a pained frown, the Saint spoke. "I'm… not sure. I doubt I'll be back in Sanctuary again for another long while. I'm sorry, Lance. Athena forgive me, but this is just not the right place for me."

The teenager saw the looks Noah got and shook his head in understanding. "No, I get it. I barely want to stay here myself. I'm… just happy to see you again." He admitted, hesitant to show any kind of warmness as a man. "Can I ask you something? How do you go on… as a Saint? Don't you hate it? Everyone treats you like shit, don't they?"

Noah thought carefully, as the answer could have long-lasting consequences. "Yes, sometimes I get very frustrated. However… there are things I want to keep doing as a Saint. Leaving Sanctuary would limit my possibilities, not increase them. Don't dwell on that, Lance. Think about the future instead. You worked hard to survive Olympus and Death Queen Island, so give yourself a chance here." The Silver Saint then folded his arms. "Also, I have homework for you."

Lance gawked. "What?!"

The transgender Saint scratched nose coyly, looking away. "Well, if you don't like the sound of that, I'll put it another way; more like a prescription." And then he got serious. "First things first, I want you to pay respect to your… dead friend when you can. Wait until everyone is off the graveyard and do what you must. Especially if you think it still hurts to do so. You must mourn, Lance, not keep it bottled up."

Lance hesitantly nodded. He hated the thought of facing his failure so soon, but if Noah said so, he could at least try. "Okay… What else?"

"This is the hard part," Noah stressed, raising Lance's alarm. "I want you to stick true to the promise you made Guifi, and apply for a partnership program."

Lance widened his eyes. "What?! But he's d… we can no longer-"

"The way I see it, Lance, you promised him you'd become a great Saint and change this place. You're just gonna have to do it without him." Noah rationalized. If Lance had something to focus on in life, it would give him direction. It saved him on Death Queen Island and would save him in the future, for sure. "I'd like to see that happen even more than you getting the Cloth."

Lance turned away, resistant. "But… Noah, there's no one in Sanctuary I want to be partners with! Everyone hates my guts here, and I hate them right back! They think I got a Bronze Saint killed!"

Triangle folded arms disapprovingly. "You're being stubborn. You should give Saint Nam some credit after everything that's happened. He has poor instincts, but clearly, your well-being as a Saint is in mind. Remember, he's the one who called me here."

Lance groaned. "… Alright, fine!" he accepted but then set his foot down. "But if I don't like who they pair me up with, I'm going back to doing solo work!"

Noah chuckled and ruffled his hair in a parenting way. "See? You do have a nice side."

{======================|SS2|======================}

Later that Night,

Sanctuary Town Graveyard

{======================|SSII|======================}

There were two places to bury the dead in Sanctuary's valley. The first and most famous was the Saint graveyard located on the Fire Clock mound's side, where the warriors of Athena who died in combat were set to rest beneath boulders inscribed with their Saint names and highest attained Cloth, facing the Golden Zodiac.

However, over time, across many generations and especially after the founding of Sanctuary Town, there were now many who lived around the 12 Temples that would either never live to see combat (and thus never earn the same honor) or were simply normal citizens who never slept a day outside the valley, but still felt most attached to the lands of Sanctuary Town. At first, in centuries past, these would get carried across the mountains to Rodario's cemetery. Athena's valley was sacred, after all, and its space was limited.

This was, of course, until the first wealthy person died.

Built in the late 18th century, the Sanctuary Town graveyard was the second location in the valley to bury the dead. The cemetery is midway between the Ophiuchus Hospital and the Coliseum, along with the municipal jurisdiction's northeastern limits, so it could have open room to expand.

Waiting till nightfall to visit, just like Noah advised, Lance carried a bouquet of daisies and looked for a specific pair of graves in the memorial service sector.

Eventually, he found them right at the end corner of an unfinished row.

GUIFI TAITANO NINA

Lance left the bouquet between the two small marked rocks and stood there in lonely silence, hands in pockets. He stared with particular intent at the left one, knowing the lie in its name, for Guifi Taitano was very much alive in body, if not in mind. A little thing like getting caved inside a volcano wouldn't stop the new Saint of Phoenix. If he dared to venture out of the island, Lance would be the first to change that…

It was kind of sad that he couldn't even tell the MMC anything else to fill the inscriptions with, like their birthdates, so they could have more normal-looking tombs before Sanctuary turned this into some rich guy's mausoleum. It made Lance sick, but it was like the two were just a pair of miserable souls sacrificed to keep Death Queen Island running. On that subject, while spending the rest of the afternoon with Noah, Lance thought about tracking down and confronting whatever asshole was Guifi's dad, just to see what his face looked like and maybe get him to help with the funeral. Noah, however, advised him against it, saying it was better to let his friend's memory be at peace.

Well, now Sanctuary had its Phoenix Saint. Hopefully, they'd be happy with it.

Half an hour must have passed in complete quietude. The night grew darker and darker as Lance paid his respects. Just like Noah insisted, it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be once he pushed himself to do it. In fact, Lance felt good, like he was doing the correct thing for a pair of people who tried to save him from himself before their tragedy.

It started getting cold and foggy, triggering Lance's cryophobia. He irked and promised silently to come back the next day and walked away. He was a skeptical person, but he felt he owed such a thing to at least Nina, who was, in fact, dead.

He wasn't sure why he picked daisies. At that last moment of the battle, one of them seemed to distract Guifi, giving Lance the shot he needed to turn the tide one last time, so he assumed it meant something for the two of them. He wasn't strangled to death because of it, so maybe that was good enough reason to pick these. Talk about a miracle. He did wish the flower sales girl hadn't stared at him so curiously at the sight of a man asking for daisies.

He looked up, realizing he couldn't see a foot in front of him. "Geez, this mist is thick as a wall. Where's the gate?" Trying to guide himself by the descending terrain, Lance searched for the way out. He kept to the end of the rows of graves so he wouldn't walk in a circle and-

-…. Found himself back on the same two graves.

GUIFI TAITANO NINA

….

Lance's eyes widened. The flowers he left were gone!

A cosmos was then felt behind him! A deep, inhaling sigh was heard behind him. "Wow, these smell so good!" a female voice complimented. "Usually daisies are all looks, but these?"

Lance turned at the voice, clenching fists at the sudden threat! But he then braked his foot in the grassy dirt, feeling his heart stop and his mouth drop in pure shock.

It couldn't be! "….N…. Nina?!"

Sitting there on some other tombstone with her naked feet dangling playfully and the bouquet hugged against her chest, Nina, the black-haired girl of Death Queen Island, captive daughter of the former Master, took another delighted smell off the bouquet!

"Lance, I had no idea!" she swooned, setting it aside. "You really have a much more tender heart than you let people know."

The Bronze Saint could do nothing but stare, flabbergasted. "W-what?! But… but you… YOU'RE DEAD! I SAW YOUR CHARRED CORPSE!" Could he have mistaken it?! But even if he did…!

Getting on her feet, the girl exhaled understandingly. "I suppose this is a shock to you." She then ran her scarred fingers through her black eyes." Here,… maybe this will help you understand."

Lance saw the fingers leave behind a crimson red color in her irises and her smirk evilly.

His instincts reacted immediately; exploding his white aura, the Pegasus Saint shot at her, lunging a fist at her face. He didn't know how it was doing this, but Lance wouldn't let Death Queen Island defile her memory further. "CHARGE FIST!"

The blow struck with catastrophic force, shaking the entire graveyard and making white light flash everywhere. Blood splattered out, and a scream echoed in the air.

Lance stood in pain and trembling horror, his powerful punch stopped in its tracks by a single finger from the girl shining with an orange star at its tip. He had only made her black hair blow a bit with the shockwave, and his fist was covered with his own blood.

"W… W-what?! I struck you with everything I had!"

Her smile vanished, leaving behind a disappointed frown. "…Yes, I can tell."

With a move of a swiftness that made Lance's entire world shatter, her finger left his fist and then rushed right past his forehead before he could so much as blink, striking it with a familiar orange beam before she landed behind him, leaving a shower of orange petals in the air.

Lance's heart beat faster and faster. His mind warmed, invaded by a wash of cosmos hotter than anything Guilty had struck him with.

Her naked feet stepped the grass around his head, and she held hands behind her back, smiling at the sight of him groveling on the floor. "By Gaia, that is quite the seal, isn't it? Well, I may not be able to reach that black pearl inside your mental clam, Red… but that doesn't mean we can't have fun with your many other issues…."

He then screamed and collapsed on his knees, feeling what seemed like nightmares a thousand times more intense assaulted his mind. Breathing and sweating like he had just crossed a hot desert, Lance saw the orange plumes of cosmos vanishing into specks on the grass. His mind rushed to the surface of his terrible dreams on Death Queen Island.

He crawled at her. "Y-you're… ah… you're n-not Nina! You're h-her!"

She held him back by the head with her foot and chuckled lovingly. "You mean the woman of your dreams?"

"You t-took Nina's shape?!" Lance hissed. "How…H-How dare you?!"

"Oh, poor, poor Red…." The girl lamented, shaking head. "You don't get it yet, do you?"

The tone in her words filled Lance with utter horror. "Y-you… you were Nina all along?!"

She nodded excitedly, like she had waited years to talk about this. "Uh-uh!"

"Since WHEN?!"

She rested her finger on her cheek, recollective. "Well,… since always."

He got back up. "Y-You… YOU MONSTER! HOW C-COULD YOU HAVE…?! I…" he tried to say, but his mind couldn't process this revelation, stuck on recalculating everything he had witnessed around Nina.

He had slept beside her, spoken with her, seen her hug and comfort Guifi, and shared stories and meals with them! From the moment they met at the beach to the one Lance escorted her out, he had barely left her side! He would have noticed something for sure! Nothing about this made any sense!

Lance gulped, realizing the truth about that moment at the mountain pass when he felt suddenly weak at the sight of the Phoenix Shrine, making him vulnerable to the Master. "You… you're the one who asked me to check Guifi's Cosmos… You made me look at the shrine! YOU TRICKED ME! THIS WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

The confusion in him seemed to amuse her greatly. "You're giving me far too much credit, Red. You would have seen through this easy disguise if you weren't so caught up with yourself."

"You let yourself… GET HURT all those years?!" he confronted, not daring to bring up the unspeakable things the Queen had allowed her puppeteer Black Saints and the Master to do to her. "WHY?!"

She frowned annoyedly. "Isn't it obvious? I wanted my Phoenix Saint. And after forty years of him roaming my island, it became clear that Guifi's teacher wasn't cut out for it." She looked away in disdain. "I mean, ugh, he was just… so unimaginative."

"WHAT THE F-FUCK ARE YOU SAYING?!" Lance revolted, his body tensing with the fear of what all this meant. "IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE TO YOU?!"

Her young nose rose with dignity. "Joke? Absolutely not! Love and hate go hand in hand, after all, and that pathetic man never knew the meaning of the word 'passion'. He thought something as basic as violence was the key to my heart…So after the hundredth or so failure to honor me properly,… I stepped in."

Lance stepped back, increasingly horrified at the creature standing before him. "You…"

"Mm, mm, I blessed him with a wonderful daughter! Me! Just like Athena I was incarnated as a mortal girl named Nina, who washed ashore on the island one day, and let him 'adopt' me." The Queen recounted as if telling a fun adventure she had. "And can I just say? What a wonderful experience. I finally understand why Athena does this so often. To believe that you can, in fact, die! It's… such an interesting perspective "

"W-wonderful? He… he abused you… beat you mercilessly for years!" Lance recounted, trying to make sense of this. She had to be lying about being Nina! "He and his Black Saint friends raped and crucified you!"

Then the worst possible word came out of her mouth. "So?"

Lance stepped away, feeling like everything he ever believed in was a gag to this creature in front of him. "Y-You're…. How can…you're a MONSTER! What the fuck do you even want?!"

"I want what I've always wanted, Red; to do my diligence to Athena. I keep the shadows of her Cloths properly under my thumb. In return, I get to indulge in my nature, purify anyone destiny sends my way. Perhaps… even get my Phoenix Saint." She then frowned. "But then… they stole you from me, didn't they?!"

The night seemed to get darker all of a sudden, along with the tensing of her tone. "The Pegasus Cloth…Mount Olympus!"

"Sanctuary sent you to that Mountain, hid you from me, and when you came out…You were under that filthy horse's wing instead of mine. And for what? Because they don't understand what I do for Athena." The teenage girl spoke, her eyes sharpening like knives. "… and then, if that wasn't enough, you broke my Guifi."

Panicking at the increasing threat in her voice, Lance demanded answers, now knowing who was causing the mist. "What do you want from me?! LET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"He can barely revive himself anymore, did you know?… You did something awful to him. All his sacrifices were pointless. How can you live with yourself?" she stepped towards him, hands clasped around her back. "You turned me away for that Pegasus… and then you took my knight!"

At that moment, as he stood there to face her, he felt in the Cosmos before not a teenage girl, nor even the Queen she truly was, but a gargantuan pheasant of fire staring him down. Its plume tails danced invisibly and gigantically in the background like great spires of fire, and Lance himself was but a mouse in its nest, crushed by its shadow as it wet its beak and clenched its talons expectantly at whatever foolish move he would dare to make.

Backing away in fear, Lance yelped and fell back, suddenly struck by a telekinetic force that made him trip over a tombstone. She stepped on him with shocking force, as if her foot was secretly a colossal bird's paw, pinning him. "Where do you think you're going?"

Every instinct in his body went full alert at the bizarre change in her voice, which no echoed like out of a throat of an incomprehensible creature. "G-Get OFF of me!"

"You… seemed shocked that I was willing to put myself through a small thing like the sacrifice ritual…You poor thing, the feelings of guilt must just be awful to you." she mentioned. "Do you know what's the best thing I've noticed about your new memory seal, Red?" she asked, smiling with the innocence of a girl with a crush. "It's foolproof."

The bewildered Saint widened his eyes.

Her finger then pointed at his forehead and shot the Genma Ken again, piercing his mind and sending him into another screaming, struggling fit! It was exactly as painful as the first time, unable to access the core of his memories but still striking at his cryophobia, his fear of failure, and many other weaknesses gained after he joined Sanctuary before dumping him in a freezing Underworld river.

Her pinning foot only pressed harder the more he struggled beneath her, like a rat in a bird's paw. "The way my Genma Ken works, it constantly searches for the worst possible fear in a mind, burning paths towards the one memory it can shatter your soul with, so every time I use it, people always just end up… snapping. They go limp…. and my enjoyment ends there."

The terrified Saint felt his heart beat faster and faster. "S-Stop! P-Please!"

The Queen's smile darkened, growing more devious and hungrier. "But you? The things that make you truly snap are locked in a little safe, aren't they? My Genma Ken can't get to them. Which means you can be struck again…."

The finger-thin beam of light struck him again, sending more intense images of old terrors coursing through him. The feeling of the thorny vines caging his mind grew worse, with its thorns digging deep into his brain. Lance screamed louder, clawing at his face.

"- and again –"

Again, a new orange light struck his forehead, invading his most intimate thoughts. The Saint gasped at the air, grabbing his face desperately and screaming harrowingly for the terrible images to stop! "N-NOO!"

"-and again…until the pain makes all of that guilt go away." She finalized, letting out a sigh of relief at the sight of his torment. "Ahh, isn't that wonderful? I feel so relieved. Now you know exactly how she felt… or rather I did. We can have a civilized conversation."

Yet despite the anguish, his bravery did not die. "W-WONDERFUL?! F-FUCK Y-YOU! N-NINA WAS NEVER REAL! YOU BRAINWASHED MY FRIEND! YOU T-TRICKED AND KILLED HIM! I could never… I could never picture something more horrible than what you've done to him!"

She clicked her tongue with a head shake. "No, Lance, you're wrong. I loved him more than Athena possibly could."

He was utterly shocked at such a notion. "W-what?! Loved him?!"

Her young chin held high and proud. "Yes. Guifi Taitano was a forgotten soul until he landed in my arms, doomed to obscurity and powerlessness in a land that hated and ignored him. I'm the first who's ever truly loved him… And thanks to me, he's a new man. My knight, Guilty."

"What the fuck do you want from me?!" Lance roared, exhausted.

She got down to business. "Like I said, you broke my knight, Red… The Black Saints have been sealed by his mask, but your brutish attacks knocked him out of his cycle of rebirth. You took my cake and ate it too, leaving me with nothing… I won't have my Mara for a very long time now. I want you to take responsibility for that."

"FUCK YOU! If you think I'll become your Phoeni-" but a mental force held his throat, silencing him.

"Please be quiet… I'm not done." She demanded. For a moment, Lance thought he felt the same animalistic flash from before. "I know that, deep down beneath that horse's fantasies, you're still a Phoenix…And that I'll bring you under my stars again yet! But I understand you're not… thinking clearly as of now. Until you're ready, I'd like you to hold true to your vow of keeping my Guilty from having reasons to leave my side… and come by my island to play with your friend. In exchange… I'll help you not regret your decision to spare him. That fits us both well, does it not?"

Released, Lance held his sore throat, coughing. "D-Damn you!... F-fine!"

"Was that so hard?"

The Pegasus Saint's eyes narrowed into a death look. "W-Whatever the fuck you really are, wherever you hide, one day you're gonna pay for what you've done!"

She chuckled, seeing the burning in his eyes and causing the mist around them to begin fainting with a mere wave of her hand. "Go on, Red. Live your life. And remember; this was all your fault."

{======================|SS2|======================}

Underworld,

Giudecca Palace

{======================|SS2|======================}

Swirling the wine in his crystal glass with his fingers, Daemon Lucifer stared out the window of his tower room, observing the Underworld landscape. Somehow, after the mess with Bennu Yakos, the influx of Death Queen Island souls entering the Underworld exhausted itself like shutting the water main, giving them the necessary breathing room to repair the damage caused. It still took a whole day to get everything back working, though, and Lord Hades wasn't pleased at all with the setback.

Strange, though, had been the Underworld God's reaction to the incident with the Bennu Surplice.

"Is that so? Well… the one Hundred and Eight stars ARE quite capricious, and the replacements under your command have been displeasing me recently. Perhaps I felt that Kagaho's replacement was not… the preferable option anymore."

The Underworld God refused to discuss this with the Prince any further, and Lucifer knew better than to prod. However, blessed by the Star of Pride for almost five centuries, Daemon Lucifer squinted at this memory, finding it unsatisfactory to explain what happened with Yakos. The silver-haired Prince had never witnessed anything as strange as that sudden disappearance and reappearance of the Bennu Surplice, even during the tenure of Gryphon Vermeer's generation of 'back-ups.'

But that was why Gryphon Uriah, the current guardian of the Book of the Dead, was here to settle. The False Specter set the massive tome down and searched for the entries listing the stars of the Underworld.

He hummed at 'Violence,' which showed Yakos' name still listed. "You were correct, Prince; Yakos was not disqualified as a Specter. The Surplice seems to have simply… lifted off his shoulders for no reason related to the Emperor's will."

Lucifer squinted. "That fucking liar, Hades! I knew it!"

Uriah searched further. "It's strange… because it seems an entry was formed right after his name under the Bennu Surplice," he mentioned, getting the Prince's attention. There were faint marks on that entry as if the book attempted to register a new Specter but was then, for some reason, forced to interrupt the Spell. "It's empty. What could have caused this? Maybe it's some sort of mistake…."

Lucifer scoffed. "What a joke! The Book of the Dead isn't some Harvard data compiler with a bug stuck in it! It's the tome holding the laws and Spells of the Underworld. The magic in it is more powerful than all Surplices put together. It doesn't make mistakes!" he then rubbed his jaw pensively. "But this could only mean that the Surplice was pulled out of Yakos by something… or someone. Gods be damned! What happened can only mean that the Bennu Surplice's true owner is out there already, slowly awakening. It can't be Kagaho! That fool got 'purified' during his battle with Dohko at the Terra Temple! What does this mean?!..."

Whatever the answer was, perhaps Lucifer could find out more once he enacted his plan to invade Sanctuary with the replacements. He would have to tread with a mix of hurry and care as of now, though, for if a new 'true' Bennu was out there, that could mean Pandora's revival and that of the rest of the True Specters were close to follow.

Thus, the clock of war was ticking.

{======================|0|======================}

One year later (1975),

Death Queen Island Waters

{======================|0|======================}

The Pegasus Saint walked up to the ship's upper deck, staying out of the way of the sailors as they brought up a huge net of fish. The weather was clear, the sun shone bright, and everyone was in a good mood. Lance placed the map of the Pacific on top of the table the sailors used to play cards and marked the spots on the map that Shinta and he had already cleared. They had already cleared everything but one last spot.

The mission had been fairly easy. Hunting down Black Saints became a piece of cake after the near-fiasco that was the attack on Andromeda Island (*). Lance's sensitivity to the cosmos had been skyrocketing for the past few months, allowing him to pinpoint the location of Black Saints anywhere he wanted faster than Shinta's chains ever could. As such, the Pegasus wasn't marking those places to help him know what places they had to search next, but more to help him make a progress report later on.

(*) Chapters 9 - 10

After a while, they were approaching its shore. Since Lance had a history of going there all the time, the sailors were becoming less afraid of the place so long they had Pegasus with them. They were actually stopping at a close enough distance to see a tiny Guilty already waiting at the shore, arms crossed. His eyes rolled over to the lower deck to look for Shinta and saw him playing cards at a table with an old sailor and the Andromeda Cloth. The Andromeda Cloth was somehow using her spear and round chain tips to hold her set and had half of the deck scrambled in front of them.

"Is it okay to stop at Death Queen with Shinta still with us?" Pegasus asked him.

Lance blinked, still unused to communicating with his armor. This had been one of the most recent developments for the Bronze Saint; as he began learning with Shinta how to speak through the 6th sense, something Kastiel never taught him, he slowly became able to finally hear his armor's voice. He couldn't help but wonder how useful this would have been in the past, such as the first time he had been on Guilty's island.

"I don't think I have a choice. It's been too long since my last stop here. I don't want to find out what happens if the Queen thinks I'm neglecting my end of the bargain." Lance argued. He started putting the armor pieces on. "Maybe if I had the 7th sense and could island-hop here at my convenience through the water, I'd come alone."

Helping its owner by tightening its lashes on its own, Pegasus continued. "Remember, Lance… it's okay to let others know what we do there."

Heading down for the row boats, Lance groaned at the thought. "Maybe, but I'd rather not. Shinta already tries to make me feel better about every little thing. I'd hate to find out how annoying he'd be if he knew I am 'cursed' and got a Phoenix skeleton in my closet."

Shinta thought hard about his next move as he held a Queen and an Ace.

"Hmm…hit me?" he asked.

The Andromeda Cloth's round tip flipped the top card and revealed a ten of hearts. The sailor, however, became disgruntled and as he revealed a jack and a nine of clubs . "Damn it! You're good." .

Shinta's smile beamed up as he revealed his hand to show the combo that led to a Black Jack. "Cool!"

The aged man looked at the magical armor next to them suspiciously. "If I didn't know you were an honorable Saint, Andromeda, I'd swear your armor is helping you cheat."

Shinta shook his head in horror. "Of course not! We can start over if you want?"

The sailor chuckled. This was the third time the Saint offered to surrender a game lead just to make the old man feel better. He saw Saint Pegasus trying to figure out how to lower the rowboat. "That's okay. I have to go help your friend anyway."

"Oh look, your….. friend is leaving." Andromeda hissed.

Indeed, Shinta saw Lance climb down the steps from the upper deck with the Pegasus Cloth on his back. He seemed ready to go.

Shinta stored the cards and joined the sailor in helping his partner. "Oh, wait up, Lance! Is it time for work?"

The sailor helped Lance find the correct lever, and the two made the gears whir with it, lowering the transport. The Pegasus shifted his eyes nervously. "No, it's okay, Shinta; you don't have to come for this one."

The green-head blinked. "Oh, but… This area is part of the mission charter, isn't it?" You got your armor on, after all."

Lance grumbled embarrassedly. He should have thought of this. He looked over to the beach and saw Guilty waiting impatiently. Had he squinted hard at him, Lance would probably be able to see him tapping his foot.

The Queen had kept her promise. So long Lance kept visiting Guilty once in a while; the demon would stay in Death Queen Island, targeting only those foolish enough to enter his territory, at which point there wasn't much Lance could do about it if they were stupid enough to enter the place. Lance wouldn't have to kill Guilty; he would be at peace, Guilty would have his fun, and both Lance and Sanctuary would have the control they desired over his island.

Considering the nightmare Guilty's situation threatened to become, it was almost an ideal outcome. What would he tell Shinta, though?

"I'm… just going to pay my respects to someone." He half-lied, surprising Shinta while the sailor finished lowering the boat onto the water. "I lost someone dear to me on this island. I won't take long."

"Oh… I had no idea. Of course, Lance, take your time! Do you… need help?"

Lance leaped right into the boat. "No, I'm good."

"See?" asked Andromeda. "He hates you! Or he's hiding something from you. Either way, he doesn't deserve your affection, Shinta. Give it to me, instead!"

"Lance, do you… hate being a Saint?" the Andromeda Saint asked. "When you say harsh things about Athena and Sanctuary… you're just kidding, aren't you? Or is there a… bad reason why you're coming to this island?"

What could he possibly say to this? He just really didn't want Shinta anywhere near that island. He would hate to find out what would happen if Shinta knew the kind of monster he was involved with.

That is, if Shinta didn't just outright start fearing Lance and the problems that came with being associated with the Pegasus. He couldn't let that happen, not just because he promised Noah he would do his best to integrate with a partner, but also because he genuinely enjoyed spending time with the Andromeda.

Shinta made him feel normal, after all.

Lance frowned in lament. "Sorry, Shinta. …but I don't really want to discuss this. I know it looks pretty bad, but trust me, I'm doing nothing wrong… It's just really important that I pay my respects."

The Andromeda nodded. "Okay, I understand."

Him just accepting it somehow made Lance feel worse. "Maybe one day I'll talk about what happened here to him."

Shinta smiled, though. "Come back safe, okay?"

Feeling oddly comforted, Lance smiled. "Thanks."

He stepped on the smaller boat and told the sailor to lower it before Shinta tried to follow him. As he crashed on the water, he picked up the paddles and started rowing. He saw Shinta waving at him from afar but turned his gaze to Guilty. For some reason, after hearing Shinta's words, visiting Death Queen Island didn't sound so bad.

As he reached the shallower shore, he looked at his reflection in the water and saw his own red eyes. Maybe he really was cursed. Maybe those red eyes were the mark of it, and maybe there was no way he could escape the Queen, but things had changed for him since Guifi Taitano's death. Lance was forming friendships, just like he promised Noah he would, and he was growing his abilities the natural, normal way, rather than selling his soul to some Phoenix demon or tapping into the past he left behind. All while doing an okay job as a Saint. Maybe Sanctuary was still a bad place, but it didn't feel anymore like he was completely trapped in an anti-social nightmare.

Unlike the real monster now in front of him.

He looked up to Guilty and saw him holding a scavenged fishing rod.

"You're late… as usual." Guilty chuckled. "Did you bring the bait? HA, HA, HA!"

Lance sighed, stood up, and confronted him. "I'm here." He said. "But you'll have to fight for it."

"Let's have some fun, then, best friend."

Lance stepped on the water and charged his fiery cosmos immediately, unlocked in his battle with Bennu Yakos, making it rival with Guilty's. Guilty threw away the fishing rod and laughed once more. High above them, hiding behind the sun's light, the Phoenix Constellation watched as its two chosen ones squared off again.

{======================|SS2|======================}

Chapter End

{======================|SS2|======================}

Next Chapter: Chapter 73 – Third Arc – Episode 1 – Demotions and Departures

Description: A month has passed since the conclusion of the False Holy War and Sanctuary still reels with the after effects of the shocking attack on its sanctum. Held at the bottom level of the Stardust Prison, Daemon Lucifer, stripped of his armor, is told he has a visit from the Pope.

Author's Comments:

So, the Second Side Story comes to an end. Now I think it's okay to talk about the narrative and behind-the-scenes stuff that I had to hold back until now.

The Death Queen Island Side Story, as you've read it, was largely based off it's V2 version, except dramatically improved in a number of ways. In this V3, the characters are better, the arcs are better, the development is better, the island's setting is much more consistent (you can just tell based off the fact that this time around I was able to make a map of it) and, more importantly, the point and theme of the Side Story are both far more pertinent for the fic and the character of Lance. Everything is just set-up and paid-off much more professionally and it got a lot more input from Beta-Readers to tune it up.

One of the things that definitely improved was Lance's friendship with Guifi. In V2 it was very forced and rushed through and based on superficial similarities. Hell, Guifi wasn't even Guifi back then. He was already called Guilty. There's just so much more work done on his character in V3 that it's not even a joke.

What first inspired me to write this story, back in the day, was not a single thing, but a number of them. Back in 2011-2012, I was beginning to experience the first symptoms of social isolation, anxiety and severe depression; I was starting to rethink a lot of the foundations of my story, particularly the genesis of Lance's character traits; Jenny DeVic had just finished writing the 4th year of her LYKM story of Shun's experience of DQI, where she made extensive use of Death Queen Island and Guilty, and, last but not least, I was a fan of a bunch of different teenage/young-adult oriented animes like Naruto, Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin

As a result I wanted to take my shot at writing something 'dark' and 'hellish', something that defined why Lance is such a big meanie and cynical. I also had been building up scenes at the time hinting they knew each other and then there was just the fact that the Teos Cloth was hidden inside DQI the whole time, so I wanted to explore that idea. In the current version, as you can tell, the Side Story is focused a lot more on Lance and Guilty. Teos isn't even mentioned.

But, that was 2012, not 2022. I'm not a fan of Bleach anymore, though, and I'm no longer depressed (as much), so a lot of the more emphasized aspects of this Side Story in Version felt, at the start of this year of 2022, very juvenile and adolescent. The elements of this story therefore just no longer came naturally to my mind anymore, even if I had 5 whole chapters of it from a decade earlier to take ideas and even paragraphs from. It was challenging to get through this not just because of the wordcount, but because so many aspects just forced me to tap into a side of my imagination that was no longer comfortable with. A big goal of this Side Story was going to be to explore Death Queen Island and its mythos more thoroughly, and despite all you've read, I STILL didn't manage to get through it all and feel like I haven't done a complete job. There just isn't enough room in a written format to do it justice.

This, however, had its positives, because it meant it was a chance to rethink how to present it and its characters. Moreover, at the time I was toying with the idea of publishing the story in AO3, and I though of taking this opportunity to try to make the Side Story double as a Side Story and as an Alternative-Prologue to Lance's Role, so if it feels like the start of this story seems like a potential restart of a lot of things… that's not too far off base, actually. Even now, in Version 3, there are some early things that I would do away with (V3 started more or less in 2014, after all, and I was just a wildly different person back then). Hell, I think "Legends of Sanctuary" is one of the worst things I've ever written for Version 3.

Chapter 73 is falling a bit behind schedule. For the first time in almost a year, I don't have the next chapter done by the time I'm publishing this one, because I had a number of unexpected days off of work and, counter-intuitively, that's actually BAD for my writing because I don't focus so much at home anymore. The chapter is about 95% done, though, so it's no big deal. It just means I won't get as much of a break in the last week of the month and it might be tough to get 13 chapters done this year instead of 12, unlike in 2021. Keep in mind, though, that DQI was rough to get through, so I was unable to accumulate impetus for the first six months of the year.

ANYWAY, please make sure to share the story, review it, like it on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit and generally support this project if you enjoy it.

Also, make sure to check out the Saint Seiya Reddit Discord server, where I'm currently one of the co-admins. Other writers like Jenny DeVic also can be found in it. You can hang out with the rest of the English-speaking SS community and we host several weekly events, like episode streams, games and now a whole new Horror Movie Night themed after the Underworld.