Notable OCs up until now that I own: Pegasus, Centaur, Cancer Lance; Andromeda, Cepheus Shinta; The Dark Princes; Heracles Aguilon's Silver Saint Generation; Taurus Daniel's Gold Saint Generation; The False Specters; Sarah; Abaddon(YI); Crane Yushira; Triangulum Noah; Terrestrial Star Guards;
Notable Original concept (until now): Dark Prince Specter Rank; Teos Cloth, Daemon Surplice; Dark Angel Surplice; Pegasus Temple; Sanctuary Town; False Specter Condition; Dark Calling; The Black Abyss (YI); Fukusu Yari Ken; Aspects of Life; Aspects of God; Ultra-speed; Hyper-Speed; Sage of Rozan status; Sword of the Four Paths(YI);
YI: Yet to be formally Introduced, but already mentioned. It's just to claim dibs on the character/concept.
Recurrent/Cameo OCs belonging to Jenny DeVic: Cassiopeia Cassandra; Behemoth Torak (Toruk); Mrs. Schafurwatt
Recurrent/Cameo concepts belonging to Jenny DeVic: 88 Knights Festival; Golden Line Heritage; The Great Bodyguard legend; The Sanctuary-sponsored orphanages; Andromeda Island's geography
Author notes:
Please enjoy and review.
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"He was born in Japan, like all of us, and was known among his peers for his kind heart, pacifism and resolution to protect his ideals and those he cared about to a level rivaling Shun's. His seemingly harmless appearance though, hid a force to be reckoned with even among the Saints of Athena.
He held an important role in the terrible conflicts that embroiled Athena's Holy Land prior to Saga's seize of power and he was Pegasus Lance's first real friend in Sanctuary. His name was Andromeda Shinta Akiyama."
-Dragon Shiryu, to the Saints of Bronze, describing the major figures of the 20th Century Age of War
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Golden Zodiac Secret Passage
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Andromeda Shinta broke out a cold sweat as he reluctantly followed Lance inside the cavernous staircase leading to the innards of the mountain the Twelve Temples. It was a scary looking tunnel with stone brick walls and torches, like a catacomb passage of a medieval castle. Lance led the two, keeping his distance from the sound of footsteps of the Papal Guard regiment that they followed inside that place.
"Lance, do you know where we're going?" Shinta asked nervously via the 6th sense.
"No, but I guess this is just some sort of shortcut to one of the Temples." answered Pegasus. "They won't let us go through the front door, so I guess we'll just break through the basement."
Shinta trembled. "Maybe we should go back! If we get caught-"
Lance took a finger to his lips. "Keep your voice down, Shinta. Look, if you want to go back, then just go back. I know I asked you to follow me, but you can just turn back, you know?"
Shinta frowned. "You know I can't do that. What if you get in trouble? Besides, you're always saying that I should man up? If I left you here I would be a coward, but if I came with you then I would be a friend, right?"
Lance sighed. Why is Shinta always worried more about others than himself? He kept his red eyes up on the staircase's dark end, looking for an exit. "This is being way too easy. There must be some sort of trap or alarm only the Papal Guard knows about." He deduced to himself. He started taking looks at the stairs steps and rocks for any sort of discoloring, strange shape or position. "If only the Papal Guard knows about this, they must use this to transport the servants out of the Golden Zodiac or to intercept enemy troops during invasions." He whispered.
"Oh, I see! But why were those guards using it now? Is something happening in the Golden Zodiac?"
Lance rolled his eyes. "It's a shortcut, Shinta. They're using it because they're lazy."
Shinta's face went red. It did sound convenient to be able to go through that passage than cross the endless steps between the Temples all the time. "Lance, why do you suppose they take so long to cross the normal stairs? I mean, the guards can all travel at the speed of sound and I heard the Gold Saints move even faster than Mach 5." he asked. "My Master said the stairs between the Temples had defenses against super speed, but he never told me what kind."
Lance thought hard. "Actually, I don't know either. I think it's some sort of 'blessing of Athena' that was placed on the staircases. I heard about one guy who tried to blitz through two temples with super speed and after moving for a whole minute just found himself back on the Aries Temple. I guess the fastest way to go through the whole damn thing is either through shortcuts or just plain, old running. I feel bad for the Pope's messengers, honestly."
Shinta covered his mouth to contain a giggle. It was indeed a terrible situation for anyone who had to spend hours running across the endless stairs of the Golden Zodiac to deliver letters to the Gold Saints and the Pope, but picturing it in his head just forced a smirk on his face. He kept his eyes on the tip of his chains. He wasn't sure if the Andromeda Cloth would consider the guards a threat, but if she did she could point in their direction and help the two Saints pass undetected. "Lance said he was starting to get better at detecting people's cosmos, didn't he? Maybe that's enough for now." Shinta then saw that the stairs seemed to split two ways. Following the sound of the Papal guard footsteps, Lance took the right and Shinta followed promptly. "This place is a labyrinth." He realized.
"Stick close to me and don't make any noise. We'll be alright if we follow the guards." After a while of silence and a couple more avoiding the wrong staircases, Lance detected light at the end of the tunnel. "C'mon, I see the exit." The two Saints rushed through it to the outside. They both covered their eyes but after adjusting to the light, they found themselves on a steep mountainside path.
Shinta gasped with the sight of four temples below them. "You were right, Lance! It really is a shortcut." He exclaimed, excited. His smile faded away, though, when he realized there were too many guards moving around in the stairs between the fourth and fifth temple.
Lance grunted in frustration as they took cover behind a rock. "Damn it! All of that for nothing." He muttered. "I guess you were right, Shinta. We better head back."
Before they could turn around, the sound of unsheathing swords was heard. "Hold it!" a man shouted. Both Saints widened their eyes as they realized the Papal Guard division they followed inside the tunnel had hid next to the exit and awaited their arrival to capture them. "Saint Pegasus and Saint Andromeda, you are under arrest for trespassing on a Golden Zodiac pathway reserved for military access."
Shinta gasped and raised his hands up immediately, but Lance kept his cool. "I am part of the military. We both are!" Lance reminded them. "We're a rank above you, too, remember?"
The Papal guard leader opened his mouth to answer but was caught a bit off guard. "…Don't sass us, kid! We are authorized to arrest Silver and Bronze Ranks on just cause. C'mon, let's go!"
"What just cause?!"
"Nii-san, don't-"
Lance ignored Shinta and went into the offensive. "We were just following you guys around after we saw you sneak inside a secret passage in this mountain. Who the fuck would have guessed it was an authorized path? For all we knew, you guys had dug the tunnel in the mountain and were using it to sneak inside one of the Temples to try to kill someone."
"Aw, don't give me that bullshit-"
"What are all of you doing?" a high pitched voiced asked, interrupting the guard. Lance and Shinta widened their eyes in shock when they saw a little blue eyed kid with brown, curly hair wearing a classic Sanctuary trainer complete with protection pads on the knees and shoulders confronting them. "I heard a bunch of noise from the Temple."
The Papal Guards backed off a bit and lowered their arms. "Trainee Aiolia, don't be concerned. These two Saints followed us through a passage and we are apprehending them." He explained.
Aiolia widened his eyes at the sight of the small cavern on the mountainside which was now being sealed closed by one of the guards. "A passage? I didn't know about it being there." Aiolia narrowed his blue eyes and turned them to Lance and Shinta. "Is this true? What were you trying to do, huh?" He tightened his fist and made cosmos burn in it. "Are you trying to attack the Golden Zodiac or something?! Don't think you'll get away with this. I'll personally take you down if you dare to attack the Temples of the Gold Saints."
Shinta quivered but Lance only felt like laughing at the kid. "Yeah, right, that's precious coming from someone looking up at me."
"HEY!" Aiolia screamed.
Lance ignored the protest. "Don't waste your bravado, kid. Like I said to these men, we had no idea this passage was an authorized one." He lied. "We were just minding our own business when we saw a group of armed men sneaking inside the Golden Zodiac's mountain innards through a passage no one knew about. Besides, it's not my fault they were careless enough to be detected while using it. What if I was a Specter or a Black Saint? We would have killed these men, walked inside like fucking kings and massacred everyone in the Leo Temple before the alarm was even raised."
Aiolia staggered. "T-that's not the point! You guys can't be here." he insisted. "I'm afraid I'll have to take you guys under arrest."
Lance scoffed in indignation. "The hell you will! You don't have that authority. You're just a trainee, aren't you?" Pegasus protested. Like hell would he let himself be taken to jail by a five year old.
"Lance, stop it!" Shinta finally set his foot down. "Don't make things worse, okay? Let's just go with them quietly. We don't have a choice anyway and I'm sure we can explain what we were doing."
Lance sighed. He wasn't a fan of when Shinta was right. "Ugh, fine." He then readdressed Aiolia. "Look, all I want is to find out what the Pope is doing by gathering all the Gold Saints like that to 'discuss my future'. We're not here to kill anyone, for Christ's sake." He accentuated. Aiolia took note of the expression since the trainee and the guards, unlike Shinta, were unaware of Lance's Catholic upbringing. "Hell, Shinta over here was trying to get me to turn back the whole way because he was worried about this precise situation unfolding itself upon us. Even if you're going to blame someone, blame me, not him!"
Shinta widened his eyes. "Lance, you don't have-"
"Shut up, Shinta, I know what I'm doing!" he interrupted. He looked Aiolia right in the eyes. The red-colored stare made the kid stagger almost unperceptively, but young Aiolia pulled himself together and refused to look intimidated by the Bronze Saint. Without breaking eye contact with the kid, he readdressed Shinta. "As an Andromeda Saint, I know you're used to make sacrifices for others, but as a Pegasus Saint I'm more than ready to take on all the weight and responsibility by myself if I have to."
Aiolia widened his eyes, "wait, you're Pegasus Lance? Oh, I see what's going on. My brother told me about you. He said the Pope really was holding a meeting about the Pegasus Saint." He explained. The Bronze Saint's identity wasn't immediately obvious because Lance wasn't wearing his armor.
"So you know about it! Do you know what it was about?" asked Shinta, seeing an opportunity to settle the matter. "Is Lance in trouble or something?"
Aiolia shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry, but I have no idea."
"Aiolia, we have to take these two under custody." One of the Papal guards reminded him. Since Aiolia wasn't a Gold Saint and was merely living and training at the Leo Temple, they could address him without any title.
Aiolia raised his hand. "No, wait, I have an idea. Take them to the Pope's chambers instead. I don't really know what the procedure is when one of the Saints happens to stumble upon a secret passage to the Temples, but I know enough to know that it's… un-orth-o-dox." He pronounced, having a little trouble saying the long word. "I'm sure my brother-" Aiolia then halted his tongue and rephrased. "I mean, I'm sure the Gold Saints will know what to do."
Lance widened his eyes. Had his bogus story about them thinking the Papal Guards were invaders worked after all? "So you'll take us to the Pope's chambers?"
The Papal Guard leader grumbled. "Don't set the fireworks off just yet, punk. We might really not have a just cause to take you down, but it'll be a snap of fingers for the Gold Saints to come up with one on the spot. Besides, Aiolia can only decide your fate like this because he's under the Sagittarius Saint's protection."
Lance smiled and winked at Shinta in success. Shinta smiled widely, happy that they were able to fix the situation and get what they wanted without any fighting. "Thank you, Aiolia." said Shinta.
The kid scratched his head and excused himself. "Hey, I didn't save you guys or anything, okay? You will still have to face the Gold Saints now, so I might have just made things a whole lot worse for you."
Shinta shook his head and insisted. "It's okay, you defended us and you did what you thought was best. Are you trying to become a Saint?"
Aiolia glanced away, a bit embarrassed. "Well, yeah. I might not look like it, but I'm pretty powerful. My brother is too. He's so strong he can beat anyone!" he boasted.
Lance and Shinta let themselves be grabbed by the guards and escorted out of there. Lance spared one last look at the child. "You're a brave kid. I could have just killed you and the guards if you pushed me too far, you know?" he commented, dryly.
Aiolia only narrowed his eyes to reaffirm his determination. "Don't underestimate me just because I'm so young! I can fight and I can protect this place just as well as any Saint. My brother taught me that it's okay to be scared but that I can and should be stronger than that fear. I…" Aiolia raised a fist. "I'm not scared of you!"
"Your brother did? Well, you sure seem to depend on him a lot, don't you?" Lance wondered out loud. He thought about his friendship with Shinta. "Maybe he'll be willing to take mine off my back, too."
Shinta glanced at him. "What do you mean, Nii-san?"
Lance shrugged. "Oh, nothing." He then turned back to Aiolia and gave him some advice. "Don't bite more than you can chew, Aiolia. There's a difference between being brave and being-"
"Being stupid, I know!" Aiolia interrupted, having heard the same saying a thousand times from his brother and Saga. "But when the Specters really come, I'll be here protecting this place and they shall see the best of me before I fall."
Shinta saw Lance stare at the child. He knew Lance well enough to see the Pegasus Saint was hiding the fact that Aiolia had impressed him. The foot soldiers pushed them to move forward. Both Saints turned away from the kid and silently marched up the flight of stairs.
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Present time, at the Pope's halls
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Shion removed his mask just enough for him to be able to squeeze his hand under it without revealing his face to the crowd and rubbed his tired eyes before replacing the black, red-eyed ornament. He was clearly waiting to remember all important details and think of a good start for his tale before continuing his speech, wanting to be as clear as possible to the six Gold Saints.
"As a result of his actions against Saint Kastiel," the Pope spoke "I punished Saint Lance immediately. As a way to teach him a lesson and counter his rebellious nature, I condemned him to fulfill assault missions for Sanctuary. It was my intention to teach him how to fight for Sanctuary and to expose him to the kind of people we fight against so he could learn to respect and value our calling. As such, I am responsible for kick starting his professional career in Sanctuary. I ordered the Mission Management Center, the building assigned to organize the attribution of missions to Saints, to send all Silver Ranked missions directly to him. It was… a foolish choice on my part."
The young Aries Saint widened his eyes. "Why is that, your Holiness?" asked Mu. In the eyes of the Lemurian child, his Master couldn't possibly fail. "How could it be foolish?"
Shion's hidden expression became grim as he recalled the past. "Unfortunately, after four months, I only kept receiving increasingly worrisome reports regarding Pegasus and the results of his missions. There was always a high rate of death around him, particularly among his targets. He was forced to work solo because no Saint was willing to take a mission with him. His attitude also became worse as he became increasingly aggressive, being involved in an ever increasing number of town tussles. Eventually, I decided to have Bronze Saints stalk him in his missions so as to keep his actions under surveillance and confirm whether or not the rumors building up around him were true. People talked of violence and corruption about him. Bronze Saints sent to follow him kept returning to Sanctuary beaten up by the red eyed Pegasus Saint. Many believed it was a matter of time before he turned on Sanctuary and became a Black Saint."
Shion took a small breathing pause and continued. "However, I didn't give up just yet and kept on sending Lance to harder missions and increasing the surveillance around him. Unfortunately… after a mission to the Black-Saint-infested Pacific archipelagos, Pegasus Lance returned to Sanctuary Town's harbor with two innocent victims; a dead young girl and the Bronze Saint of Compass who had been watching him in that particular mission. Pegasus Lance's report claimed that he was innocent and that both victims were caught in the crossfire." Shion then halted his tale, reflecting on the major headache that Lance's situation was back then. The Saints of Gold drank his every word, each forming their separate opinion of the scenario being described. Shion looked at the ceiling, still silent, and joined his hands behind his back as he returned his attention to his listeners.
"To counter this streak of unacceptable behavior, the answer came to me one day" said Shion "in the form of a file containing the personal data of a recently promoted Saint of Bronze, along with a recommendation letter from his Master. The Saint had just graduated from the Andromeda Island's training grounds, carrying none other than the Andromeda Cloth itself."
"You mean Andromeda Shinta, right?" Aiolos concluded.
"Yes. I was rather intrigued by the boy, especially after reading his master's letter of recommendation. In it, the Cepheus Silver Saint detailed every aspect of the boy's personality, as well as his experience on the Indian island."
"I've read that file AND the letter." interfered Kirin "Is it true what they say?"
"Absolutely, Shinta's personality is just as his Master describes it."
Saga saw the Capricorn Saint grow flustered. "Wait. What do you two mean?"
Kirin scratched the back of his head. "Well, to put it simply, Saint Shinta and Saint Lance's personality and tastes are completely unlike each other."
"That's an understatement, Kirin." said the Pope "Lance and Shinta are complete opposites. They had almost nothing in common back then."
"Yeah, the chances of such extremely different personalities actually getting along were supposed to be about one in a million." Kirin muttered.
"And that's exactly what caught my attention." Shion exclaimed, tightening his fist in excitement. "Immediately, I discovered the solution to Lance's problem just when I was about to give up on him. It was a very far-fetched solution, but I remember thinking that it was better than any other option considered so far."
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Chapter 4
First Arc
Episode 4
Meet Shinta
Part 1 of 2
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A year and a half before
Late May of 1974
Sanctuary Town Harbor
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Eleven years old Andromeda Shinta walked along side Saint Sagitta Nam and listened carefully to his instructions. It was his first mission and he wasn't sure what to expect. His green eyes looked at all the ships in the dock. They were mostly fishing and merchant vessels of varying size. From what he understood, Saints assigned to do missions, especially Assault ones, rode them to get close to the target location more stealthily.
Sagitta Nam looked over to him and saw him trying hard to stay concentrated. "Are you nervous, Shinta?"
The Bronze Saint smiled nervously. "Y-yeah, a bit. You said I would work with someone, right?"
Nam nodded, but did so in a flustered way. "That's right, but I thought your Master, Cepheus Guardnia, had you perform a couple of undercover assignments in the Soviet Bloc and in southern Africa. You shouldn't feel so apprehensive."
Shinta quickly nodded. "Yes, I know, but Assault missions are different, aren't they? I heard they involve a lot more… direct action." He phrased, as Master Guardnia told him to avoid telling other Saints and foot soldiers about how much he disliked violence. "I would very much like if I kept doing Undercover-"
"Shinta, you remember why you signed yourself up for Assault missions, right?" Nam asked.
Shinta didn't answer right away. "… Yeah, I do. If I want the database privileges, to find my family, I want, I have to be ranked Silver and I can only do that if I get stronger, right?"
The blonde Silver Saint nodded. "That's right, Shinta, and you won't exactly move up in the world by disguising yourself and busting crime rings and human right violation groups. You need to get out there and get some real combat experience. Many Bronze ranks have moved up in the ranks due to these assignments. In fact," Nam then cringed a bit. "The guy you're going to work with is a Silver Rank already, even though he's still a Bronze Saint. You could learn a lot from him… I guess." he reluctantly said. He still couldn't believe the person they paired the poor kid with.
To make things worse, the team was set up by the Pope, who actually took the time to personally sign the needed paperwork. Even if Nam tried to protest against the decision, it would be in vain. Shinta would probably have his Master to thank for this, as the Cepheus Saint wrote a recommendation letter to both the Mission Management Center (MMC) and to the Pope. The King of Andromeda Island probably filled His Holiness' head with how great a guy Shinta was and how he would probably be a good influence for Pegasus.
They reached the ship Shinta was supposed to embark on. It was a modern looking merchant vessel, large when compared to most of the fishing ships but only about half the size of the large container ships that were usually seen loading crates in normal cities' harbors. Sanctuary's economy was efficient, but a small one which didn't need to carry around countless sets of huge crates. As a result, most Sanctuary sponsored merchant vessels carried all of its small cargo in the lower deck so as to not attract pirates or Black Saints.
Both Saints stopped by the vessel's entrance. Sagitta Nam gave the Andromeda Saint his personal profile. "Show it to your partner and to the captain so as to prove your identity." He watched Shinta look over his pretty new personal data, all processed and with a brand new updated picture of him. "Be polite and contribute as much as you can."
"Hu-uh, okay, Saint Nam, I'll do it."
Nam stared at Shinta's eyes and felt worse and worse about leaving him with his new partner. "Look, Shinta; the person you'll be paired with… he has a bad reputation in Sanctuary."
Shinta widened his eyes. "What, really?"
"Yeah, I mean, he beat up his Master in front of everyone just a couple of days after getting his Cloth and he keeps getting into trouble with everybody." He revealed, shocking the Andromeda Saint. "Don't piss him off, okay? Just do everything you can to make this mission go as smoothly as possible. I'm going to talk to the Golden Zodiac and see if I can get the Pope to pull you into another team."
Shinta blinked, surprised as he was that he would get such a summary of his first mission partner. "It's okay; you don't have to do that. I don't believe he can't be that bad. Even if he beat up his Master, I'm sure he has his own side of the story. Everyone in Sanctuary has been really nice to me so far. I'm sure we'll get along just fine." Shinta bowed. Nam saw the people that were walking nearby turn their eyes to the green-haired Saint. "Thank you, Saint Nam, I'll-"
Nam interrupted him by raising two fingers. "Two more things, Shinta; first, don't do…that." He warned, referring to the bowing. "If you want to be polite, either shake hands with your friends or salute your superiors. Don't use any honorifics either like sama or sempai, or whatever. Your Master must have told you that Asians are not well seen in Sanctuary, right? Japanese get it the worst."
Shinta's eyes saddened. "Yes, but-"
"Don't attract attention to the fact that you're from Japan, Shinta. Trust me, it's for the best." Nam advised him. "Your partner will read your file so he'll know anyway, but don't let more people than necessary know about it. Secondly, do you have any valuable objects with you that you always carry around for any reason?" The Andromeda Saint nodded as an answer. "Try to keep it hidden, even from your partner. Flash it around too much and you might suddenly lose it."
Shinta stared at Saint Nam for a bit, honestly surprised that he would be confronted with such warnings. He nodded once more, anyway. "Alright, Saint Nam, thank you for everything, I promise I'll be very careful and that I'll do my very best." The Japanese Saint then rushed inside the large merchant vessel.
Nam waved back at him and let out a saddened expression. "Poor kid, why did he get paired up with Lance? I wonder what the Pope's thinking."
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Lance patiently awaited, the Pegasus box between his back and the outer wall of the ship's bridge cabin, as the sailors walked back and forth, making all kinds of preparations for departure. He had just received his most recent assignment, but he was also told that someone would be joining him on the mission, much to his frustration. After all, Lance preferred to work alone, like he has so far.
A sailor passed in front of him, ignoring the teenager, and Lance decided to interrupt whatever he was doing of so much importance by calling to him. "Hey, you!"
The sailor froze in place and turned around, facing rather reluctantly the notorious Bronze Saint. He was a young man not nearly as tempered-looking as all the other sailors. Pegasus immediately noticed that cadet was apprehensive towards him, clearly sweating in nervousness with Lance's blood-red eye stare.
"Is it going to be much longer?" asked Lance, impatient "If we spend too much time hanging around here, the Black Saints will figure out that we are on to them before we even leave this blasted port!"
"W-we still have to adjust a few things, Saint Pegasus." the sailor answered, stuttering "But we will leave for the Atlantic as soon as possible!" With this, the soldier saluted Lance and walked away rather hastily.
Lance didn't blame him. After Kastiel's defeat, the Bronze Saint gained a rather feared reputation among the Sanctuary's staff. People would turn away from him on the street, avoiding to having to talk with him at all, and the only people who would approach him were soldiers carrying assignment letters and the stronger Silver Saints who were still unafraid of him.
Yet, for all his desire to keep on working solo, he started feeling curious about whom Sanctuary was pairing him up with. It was probably some experienced Saint who wouldn't be wary about working with Pegasus. The ship was still docked in the Sanctuary's town port and Lance could easily see all the people, soldiers and Saints around and try to guess which one would be his partner for that mission. After what happened in his mission to the Pacific Islands, though, Lance was shocked that Sanctuary was really willing to place him on a team.
Lance rested his arms on the ship's fence and recalled that mission, as well as returning to that very same harbor with two body bags in tow. It had been two months since it happened and since then he leveled up from being called a punk to being called a murderer. More and more, the possibility of Sanctuary letting him go sounded scarcer.
Suddenly, the door leading to the inside of the captain's bridge opened at Lance's right, revealing none other than the captain himself who closed the door behind him. "So, you are our passenger."
Lance squinted at the man. He could just taste the fear in the man's voice. He stood up straight and faced the captain in the eyes. "Yeah, that's right. There is one more, however."
"Yeah, yeah, I know...We will be heading to the Atlantic and then south, towards the island. We will stop at a distance of a kilometer from the shore and then you and your partner can borrow one of our rowboats. After that, you'll have to wait two straight days until we pass through the island again. If you miss us, you'll have to row your way back here. Agreed?"
"That won't be necessary."
The captain raised a brow. "Excuse me?"
"Those pick-ups are usually needed for stealthy returns to Sanctuary after assault missions. However, there will be no danger of capture or revenge from the Black Saints after their defeat that would justify such a thing, because I intend to wipe out this particular group of them entirely." Lance explained. "In other words, we'll just use the speed of sound to get to the Canary Islands, then to Morocco, then Sicily, then Italy and, from there, back to Greece. Is there a problem in that?"
Lance detected a hint of relief in the captain's eyes despite the seaman's apathetic face. The man was much older and experienced than Lance was, having been tempered by decades of dealing with storms, pirates and bad fishing days. Lance's red eyes alone, however, were enough to send a shiver down the spine of the man who was already used to handle overpowered humans like the Saints. He probably wanted the least amount of contact with the Saint as possible.
Sea crossing using super-speed was a common Saint trick. So long as they moved around islands and didn't attempt to cross the whole damn Ocean at once, the Pegasus Saint and his colleague would be fine. "No, no, not at all!" he excused "Alright, then... We'll depart in ten minutes. This is the key to your cabin. Enjoy the ride." Lance nodded, accepting it and examining the number 32 inscribed on it. The captain walked away from him, heading for the other end of the ship while shouting orders back and forth at the 'lazy shits' that composed his crew.
The Pegasus Saint walked over to the bow of the ship to stay out of the way of the soldiers. They were starting to get the ship to move, so he guessed the other guy was already in the boat. He put down his Pegasus Cloth Box and waited patiently.
"Hum, excuse me," someone called "Are you the Pegasus Saint?"
Lance's red eyes turned over and widened, in front of him stood a young, green eyed person, no older than twelve or thirteen years old, with curly, emerald hair growing past the neck and a matching green shirt to boot. The face had surprisingly delicate traits for a Saint but the Cloth Box confirmed the person's Sainthood.
Shinta saw Lance stare at him for about ten seconds with a dumbfounded look on his face and the Andromeda Saint wondered if there was something wrong. "You're Saint Lance, aren't you?" he asked once more, offering his hand to shake. "It's so nice to meet you! My full title is Andromeda Shinta Akiyama. I hope we can get along-"
"What the hell are you doing?!" Lance asked, revolted.
Shinta's eyes widened. "Hum, w-what? What is it? Did I do something wrong?"
"YES! Where the FUCK is your mask?!" Lance exploded, standing up and covering his eyes. "Jesus Christ! What the hell are you trying to do; we're going on a mission, not a fucking date!"
Shinta's face became a full red and his eyes welled up. "W-what?! NO! I'm NOT a girl!" he shouted with an insisting tone, as if he's had to do it a hundred times before already. He hated when people confused him with a girl. Even if people said he looked pretty, he still felt horribly embarrassed when this happened. He grabbed Lance's hand and placed his personal file on it. "H-here, take a look!"
Lance uncovered his eyes. "What, you're not?" he muttered. He examined the paperwork Shinta gave him.
File 2
Name: Shinta Akiyama
Gender: M
Birth date: 09/09/1963; Virgo Sign
Home country: Japan
Training grounds: Andromeda Island
Master: Cepheus Guardnia
Status: Andromeda; Saint of Bronze
Lance reread the info and looked back and forth from the attached picture to Shinta's face about five times. Lance realized he made a serious mistake. He rubbed his eyes and wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed by the fact that he confused Shinta with an Amazon than by the fact that, for a moment, he thought she was pretty. "O-oh, I see. Sorry, I guess…"
Shinta nodded. "It's okay, you didn't mean it. I just really don't like it when people say I'm a girl." He then forced himself to smile and offered his hand to shake once more. "Like I said, I hope we get along."
Lance read the rest of the file, eyes going left and right with increased speed as he skipped contents after contents. After a while, Lance reluctantly squeezed his hand around Shinta's. Even then he felt like he was hand shaking an Amazon since Shinta's fingers were so thin.
Lance's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Did the Pope order this or something?" Lance calmly asked. He just couldn't get over how scrawny and feminine-looking his new partner was. "I'm sorry but is this some sort of joke?"
Shinta shook his head. Saint Lance was probably worried about his lack of experience. "No, not at all, you see, I was recently promoted." he explained. "I just got my Bronze Cloth a couple of months ago, so I really don't have much experience in these kinds of things, but I'm really strong!" he assured, clasping his hands. "I can defend myself in combat, even though I don't like fighting."
Lance tried to answer this but found himself a bit loss at words. "They're teaming me up with this girly looking pacifist from Andromeda Island? Are they serious?" he wondered to himself, revolted. "Do you even know what you'll be doing with me today?"
Shinta excused himself. "I'm sorry, but no, I'm not sure." he said. He genuinely seemed embarrassed by this. "I know we are going to an Atlantic Island to look for Black Saints, but not much else."
The Pegasus Saint folded his arms. "…Have you ever even seen a Black Saint? Do you even know anything concrete about them?"
Shinta brightened up. "Oh, yes, I know. 'Black Saint' is a term used to refer to any man or woman who uses the power of cosmos for his or her own independent and dangerous desires, rather than following the authority of a recognized cosmos faction such as Sanctuary or Asgard." He explained, giving the textbook description taught to him by Master Guardnia. "There are many kinds of Black Saints. Most are simple criminals, rebels, pirates or raiders who know of or use cosmos and or anti-cosmos armor such as foot soldier equipment or an actual Cloth." He added proudly that he still remembered his lessons, but then he lost his smile. "But I haven't really seen one or faced one in combat, though. Like I said, this is my first mission."
Lance sighed angrily and rubbed his eyes. "What the hell is going on? Why did they pair me up with someone so fucking 'green'?" he thought. Shinta looked at him as if he thought he had said something wrong. His innocent puppy eyes only made Lance feel even more disgusted. "Look, just go talk to the captain so he'll know who you are. Don't forget to show him your paperwork." He ordered. "I'll call the shots in this assignment. Do you have a problem with that?"
The Andromeda Saint quickly shook his head, intimidated by Lance's glare and not wanting to be an obstacle. "Oh, no, not at all, thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'll be right back." He then rushed off for the ship's bridge.
Lance sighed again before walking towards the stairs leading to the cabin rooms, which he climbed down as the roar of the ship, announcing its departure, was heard. Lance walked down the hallway of the lower floor before he reached cabin 32, which he opened with the key supplied by the captain rather hastily.
Lance practically slammed the door behind him. He rubbed his forehead and tried to digest his frustration. He saw a two floored bed and realized he would have to share his room with Shinta. "Oh, great…"
As if to pin the nail on the coffin, someone politely knocked at the door. Lance looked at the door and went to open it but then he stopped, suddenly hearing the sound of a key being entered on the other's side keyhole, twisting and opening the lock from within the mechanism. An unlocking clink was heard before the door slowly opened, revealing Shinta, who peeked inside the room and saw Lance. "May I?" he asked.
"Yeah, yeah, sure!" Lance said, moving towards the bed and sitting on the lower floor, claiming it "The room is also yours, anyway..."
Shinta entered the room and quietly closed the door behind him, removing the key from the keyhole and storing it inside his pocket. Shinta nervously waved at Lance, smiling "Hi..."
"We already greeted each other."
"Yeah, but...we didn't have a chance to talk."
The bell of the ship was heard, signaling the departure, and both Lance and Shinta started feeling the first movements of the ship as it left the Sanctuary's dock. Shinta pulled the chair of the desk and sat on it while Lance, instead, laid down on his bed and closed his eyes.
Shinta's expression saddened. He grabbed his arm and bit his lip. "Listen, I'm sorry if I'm causing any discomfort in you. Are you used to work on your own?"
"That's right." Lance instantly admitted. "And I don't see why exactly that should have to change!"
Shinta ohed sadly, realizing what kind of person Lance was. Shinta was hoping he could get along with his first mission partner, but he guessed it wouldn't be that easy. Still, Master Guardnia taught him that things should just be taken slowly with introverted people if you wanted them to open up a bit on their own, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. "Saint Lance, I was hoping we could work well together." Lance ignored him and even turned away from the Andromeda Saint. Shinta frowned sadly at this. He dropped his Bronze Cloth Box next to the Pegasus one and this seemed to catch Lance's attention. "Oh, I hope you don't mind."
Lance shrugged his shoulders and went back to whatever he was thinking about. "I don't care."
The green haired Saint felt discouraged by Lance's tone, but decided to let it go. His eyes then caught the sight of Lance's Cloth Box's lid moving. Shinta watched, delighted, as the Pegasus Cloth slowly lifted the lid of its box on its own and peeked at Shinta's face. It seemed to hesitate for a bit, as if nervous or surprised about something. "Who are you? Are you Lance's new partner?" Pegasus asked.
Shinta nodded. He concentrated hard and responded with the 6th sense. "Yes, it's nice to meet you, Pegasus."
The red gems that represented Pegasus' eyes stared at Shinta for quite a bit, shocked, as he recognized the face of the Andromeda Islander from someone he had met long ago.
The lid of Shinta's box also opened up a bit, pushed upwards by a spear-tipped chain. The Andromeda Cloth's pink mask saw the Bronze Saint Shinta was working with facing the other way, completely ignorant of the conversation they were having. "Well, if it isn't Pegasus. It's been a long time since you've come down from your Temple to linger with the other Cloths." Its round-tipped chain silently tried to infiltrate Pegasus' box so as to poke him, but the white armor just closed its box tightly. Andromeda scoffed indignantly. "Hey, don't close on me! Open up!" she protested, tipping her spear chain against the box repeatedly.
Shinta smiled as he saw the two Bronze Cloths interacting. Pegasus seemed really shy, completely different from his owner. "I don't think he wants to play, Princess."
"Fine, stay there!" Andromeda gave up. "Shinta..." She sweetly called. "Do you want to play hangman again? I'm really bored. We now even have someone here to be the hanged one." She suggested slyly, referring to Saint Lance.
Shinta gasped. "Oh, no, I won't let you do that." He 'shouted', firmly. "It wasn't fine to do that with my class mates in Andromeda Island, so don't think it is okay to attack Saint Lance like that."
Andromeda's chains slowly moved around Shinta's body and neck in an endearing manner. "Oh, come on, it will be fun, 'little brother'." She called, exerting her influence on the Japanese boy. "I mean, if you get all the letters right, Saint Lance will be just fine, right?"
Shinta wavered just a bit with the sweetness and innocence in her voice, but shook his head to reaffirm his position. He had fallen for this one before. "No means no!" he set his foot down. Shinta didn't let go of his stern look until Andromeda slithered her chains back to her Box. He really hated depriving Andromeda of her favorite game as he didn't like boredom either, but Andromeda only liked really twisted games that usually involved chocking, impaling or beheading someone.
He really liked, though, when she referred to him as a little brother because it showed how much she really liked him. During his first days in Sanctuary after returning from Andromeda Island, she had been his only real company. He felt terrible for forcing her to behave like this, but he had no choice. "We can play cards latter if you want to." This seemed to raise Andromeda's spirits, but Shinta knew it was for the wrong reasons. "But no death penalties!"
"ARGH, you're no fun!" Andromeda 'screamed'. "What's the point of playing 'go fish' if you can't pierce the lip of whomever fishes thrice in a row with my spear end? What, are we supposed to do? Just go on keep wrongly guessing each other's cards? That's what idiots do!"
Shinta cowered a bit in face of his Cloth's frustration. "Why do you want to pierce their lip so much, anyway?"
"It's supposed to be IRONIC!" she yelled at him. Shinta could be really cute with how naïve he was, but sometimes he could be really, really irritating, too. The Bronze Cloth saw Shinta scratch his head in confusion. "It's like when a hunter is stalked by a rifleman or when a lifeguard drowns."
Shinta folded his arms in intrigue. The Cloths of Athena really seemed to have a taste for ironic deaths. Master Guardnia had told him about dozens of tests in the Paths of the Bronze Cloth that recreated mythological events and usually involved some cruel, ironic demise in case of failure. He had been told that the Hydra Saint, for example, would have his arms cut off and be buried shoulders up, however this was done, in a particular test's failure scenario, as a reference to how Hercules killed the mythological monster.
Why, Shinta himself had four main tests in his Path of the Andromeda Cloth and they were all so elaborate and cruel that the Japanese boy was forever horrified by Sanctuary's so-called traditions, but maybe it really was the same for every Saint.
Shinta turned to the Pegasus Saint. "Saint Lance," he called, and Lance seemed to narrow is eyes for some reason, probably irritated by something. "During your Path of the Cloth, did you have to face an ironic death in one of your Tests?"
Lance raised an annoyed brow. "What, 'ironic death'? What the hell are you talking about?"
"You know, like when a lifeguard drowns or you get stalked by a rifleman." He phrased. Lance probably wasn't sure of the meaning of 'ironic', too. "I had a couple of situations like those. Were your tests ironic, too?"
Lance stared at Shinta with the most dumbfounded look on his face. He rubbed his eyes. "…Ironic? I…Look; I don't know what the hell you're talking about, what fucking tests?!"
Shinta quivered at the shouting. "I-I mean the tests of the Path of the Bronze Cloth. You know, like the pretest you take for the Master to see if you're worthy and then the formal tests that are set up for each Bronze Cloth's Path. For example," he explained "I had a pretest that involved me jumping across several cliffs while tied to a friend just so that I could train under Saint Guardnia. Then so that I could have the Bronze Cloth, I had to pass, in Andromeda's case, four tests starting from my third year. Didn't you have those?"
Lance squinted at him. Shinta quivered further and wondered if he had somehow insulted Saint Lance's intelligence. "The only thing I had to pass through in Mount Olympus were packs of wolves, blizzards, robbers, Black Saints and a fucking ghost!" He made clear. "I have no fucking clue what you're talking about with ironic deaths or tests."
"Oh, I'm… I'm sorry." Shinta apologized, sweating bullets. The look on Lance's eyes was so stern. He imagined their training experiences were wildly different. "I didn't mean to touch a nerve. I guess I just wanted to compare experiences and find out a bit about you. I'm really sorry I offended you." A tense silence then followed in which Shinta felt his eyes well up at the sight of Lance's angry face. He forced himself not to cry. "What… D-do you want to talk about something in particular?"
Lance's mouth dropped. What was wrong with this kid? "NO!" he yelled before turning his back on the Japanese kid and laying down on his bed.
Shinta's eyes saddened. He went to sit on his own bed. "O-okay, I see… I was just hoping we could talk a bit because we won't arrive at the island until tomorrow, but that's okay..."
Lance turned over in his bed so as to face the wall. He grunted a curse to Athena for punishing him with such a partner. He could just somehow tell that the newbie was about to cry without even looking over his shoulder at him. Deciding to just have patience, power through the mission and request his solo missions back as soon as he returned to Sanctuary, Lance closed his eyes and worked on falling asleep so Shinta wouldn't feel the need to attempt further conversation.
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The next morning…
{======================|0|======================}
Shinta woke up with the sound of the ship's bell. He stretched his arms after one of the roughest nights he's had in weeks. Sleeping in a boat always brought him memories of being taken to Andromeda Island.
While the place turned out to be much better than he thought, the experience of being six years old, traveling on that dark fishing boat knowing he took him to his training ground, a known island of death, wasn't exactly forgettable. He'd much rather sleep on the back of a jet boat like when Master Guardnia would take him and the other Andromeda Islanders to visit the farm in Ethiopia that supplied them with food.
Daylight was already coming from the small window on the door and illuminating the room, forcing the boy to block it with his hands as his eyes still tried to adjust to the lightning.
"Good morning, Saint Lance." he wished to the Pegasus Saint without even looking at his partner's bed.
Shinta didn't get any answer and turned his gaze to the upper bed to find it empty. It was neatly made and was completely absent of a Pegasus Saint of any kind, making Shinta blink twice with confusion. Shinta then saw that Lance's Cloth box was still lying right next to his and he deduced that Lance woke up much earlier and took the trouble to not wake him up.
"Well, it was nice of him not to make any noise,"Shinta realized "but I wonder where he's gone to."
"If you're looking for that man, he went upstairs." The Andromeda Cloth explained with a bit of spite in her voice.
Shinta noticed her bad mood. "What's wrong?"
The female Cloth groaned. "Nothing; I just haven't had any luck getting through this pony next to me and your new partner was immensely rude to me this morning. I tried to draw his attention with my chains so that I could talk him into playing hangman with me, but he just kept staring at me with the most stupid look on his face before storming out of here as if he just saw something crazy. Seriously, some people!"
Shinta sighed in relief. "Oh, thank goodness he didn't accept. I would hate to wake up with him being hanged by you from the ceiling." Shinta then headed out. "I'm going to find him. If anyone comes in, don't kill them, okay?" A furious rattling of chains inside the Cloth Box was heard just before he closed the door.
Shinta, bent on finding Lance, left the room and walked up the stairs leading to the surface of the ship. Once there, Shinta started hearing the cheers of sailors coming from the other side of the ship and curiously walked towards the deck. There, he found a huge crowd gathering around something and heard the sound of punches being thrown from the middle of the people. Shinta widened his eyes in alarm and rushed ahead; had Lance gotten into a fight with someone?
Shinta suddenly felt worried about his newest "friend" and started trying to squeeze his way between the sailors, apologizing as he bumped against them. He bumped into a larger sailor. "Oh, excuse me."
The man took offense. "Hey, don't try to shove in, kid! Are you looking for a fight, too?"
Shinta backed off nervously. "I… I mean, no, I don't want a fight."
The sailor didn't seem to enjoy Shinta's answer as he squinted harder at him. Someone grabbed Shinta's shoulder from behind and dragged him back. "What are you doing?!" Lance shouted at his ear. "Do you want to piss someone off? They're trying to watch a fight."
"Lance!" he yelled, cheerfully. "What's going on here?"
After bumping against a lot of people, they both finally got out of the mass of humans and Lance grabbed him by a spot on top of the ship's superstructure. Lance pointed down at the mob. "They're having a boxing match."
Sitting next to Lance, Shinta looked back at the crowd and saw two sailors striking each other in the middle, roused by their friends and co-workers to earn their money. The larger sailor attempted to punch the smaller one, who easily dodged and countered with a powerful uppercut, hitting the huge man right in the jaw, stunning him for a while. The fight went on and Shinta noticed that Lance was clearly amused by it, smiling as he studied both fighters skill.
Shinta remembered his manners. "Good morning Lance!" Shinta said, cheerfully.
"'Morning" Lance just answered, refusing to look away from the fight.
Shinta smiled. Lance didn't seem to be in a bad mood and even answered him back politely. Maybe today they could hit it off better. He saw one of the sailor's body turn around completely with the impact of the punch he just received, making Shinta cringe. "Why are they doing this?"
"They're betting money on each other. It keeps them entertained."
Shinta looked back to the fight and flinched a little when the larger man was suddenly knocked out by a side punch, as if sharing the man's pain. Most of the sailors complained, paying their bets, as the unofficial referee announced the winner, as they all expected the larger one to win. Two other men then took their place and started going at it with each other as well, causing the cheers to resume as the defeated sailor was dragged out of the "ring" by his disgruntled friends.
Lance smirked. "See that, Shinta?" he asked. "That's what happens when you try to use your own size in a fight too much."
Shinta nodded. Lance was clearly enjoying the situation, but he just couldn't take it. "How can they enjoy this?" asked Shinta, visibly bothered by the violence "They're hurting each other."
Lance looked at Shinta for the first time during the day, surprised by the boy's opinion.
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "It's just sport! They're just trying to blow off some steam from the last trip."
"What do you mean?"
"Imagine being stuck on a boat with no one but men that you're sick and tired to see all the time, doing absolutely nothing but sailing and be bored while surrounded by sea from all sides." Lance asked. "They just got back from a trip to the other side of the world and, just when they thought they could take a rest and see their friends and family, the MMC had them transport us right away to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Why do you think that guy earlier was so pissed off by the sight of you?"
Shinta imagined himself in such a situation but, aside from the boredom problem, he didn't see any reason to go insane and start beating each other up. "I thought he was just really bothered because I bumped into him. Why does the captain let this happen? I don't know much about sailing, but… shouldn't they be doing knots or something?"
Lance stared at him for a bit as if Shinta said something stupid. It was a look that Shinta had seen on people's faces a lot over the years. "Look, mutiny is rather common if the captain keeps pushing the men without giving them a chance to rest."
"Mutiny?"
Lance sighed. "Yes, the men revolt!"
"Oh, I see!"
"That's why the captain is doing the men a favor. The men are kept entertained for a while, making the occasional bet, before they all go back to work."
Shinta nodded in accordance, taking the lesson in. "Have you seen any «mutiny»?"
Lance scratched his head. "Well, there was this one time...I had to beat up the entire crew to put them in line."
Shinta seemed horrified by Lance's answer, his mouth opened and eyes widened. Lance noticed this but didn't care. "But what if the captain was being unfair?" he asked.
"That's not the point, Shinta! The point is that they went against orders and endangered the mission! They were ready to throw me and the captain overboard! I beat them up because I had to!" he practically shouted. Shinta didn't seem any less horrified. "Damn it, Shinta! It was either me or them!"
The Andromeda Saint gave in to him. "Well, okay, but you could have just warned them to give up."
"I DID warn them! It's not my fault they don't give a shit!" said Lance, genuinely upset. "In fact, NOBODY does! They just come and pick a fight and then I'm the one who has to give all the answers! I'm the one who's a fucking delinquent!" Lance then kicked the iron ship fence they were standing in front of. "DAMN IT! I just wish people would just stop talking about they don't know SHIT about!" Shinta saw Lance sigh loudly in frustration and rest his arms on the fence he just assaulted.
The Andromeda Saint looked around and realized the Lance's commotion attracted a couple of concerned or scared pairs of eyes. Lance really did seem to make people uncomfortable. His occasional swearing even startled Shinta a bit. He's met a couple of Saints who did it so casually, but Lance really seemed pissed off whenever he said any bad word.
However, Shinta couldn't help but feel some sympathy towards Lance. Shinta, too, hated when people would just assume things about him, like him being a girl or too weak to be of any use or resistance. Suddenly, as if to justify said presumptions, his seasickness started acting up and Shinta started to feel dizzy. He trembled in discomfort, grabbed his stomach and moaned in pain.
"...What's the matter?" asked Lance.
"...Oh, it's nothing..." said Shinta, smiling weakly. He really didn't want to pass on those bad presumptions to Lance. "I'm just feeling a little sick, that's all...I usually do fine on boats, but when they go so slowly… There's just something about all the shacking that makes me want to-"
Lance backed off in startle. "Hey, don't puke all over me! Or all over the sailors! Here," Lance pulled out a cylinder from his left pocket and grabbed Shinta's left hand, placing the object just above his palm and opening it with the thumb. From it, a single, light orange pill fell on Shinta's hand and Lance stored the recipient inside his pocket again. "Take this pill. I was keeping in stock a couple of months ago, but I don't need them anymore." ordered Lance. "It will ease the seasickness."
Shinta smiled and swallowed it in a single gulp, not thinking twice. "I...I don't feel any different."
"Give it some time!" Lance then bumped his stomach with his fist, making him grab it in pain. "And man up already! What are you going to do if you have to fight on a boat? What if we run into Black Saint pirates and they try to board us, huh?"
Shinta looked past all the harshness. "…Thank you, Saint Lance. I'm sorry I forced you to spend a pill on me."
"Whatever!" Lance answered, looking away from the boy. "I told you I don't need them anymore. I just don't want the captain to complain that you puked all over the bridge's windows..."
Shinta then realized something. "Well...you could have just told me to puke over the fence to the sea, right?" Lance didn't answer. Shinta smiled, feeling glad to have found a kind side deep within the cold Saint. "Saint Lance?"
Once more, lance seemed to tremble in irritation for some reason. "What?"
"Do you think it's going to be tough on the island?"
Lance glanced at him for a second "Are you nervous or something?"
"Yeah, a little bit."
A fifth and a sixth sailor both entered the makeshift boxing area, the winner of the previous match being patted on the back by those who bet on him and cursed at by those who didn't. Lance decided to ignore the next match and answer the kid's question. "Follow my lead and you shouldn't have anything to worry about."
"Ok, Saint Lance."
Lance's teeth gritted. "Stop calling me that!" he suddenly snapped.
"Huh? Does it bother you, Lance? It's just that-"
"I said, don't call me that! We're of the same goddamn rank!"
"But-"
"Don't call me 'Saint', EVER!" Lance then began to storm off. "I'll see you when we're ready to take off from this boat! Until then, leave me the hell alone!"
Shinta's widened eyes couldn't stop staring in shock at his new partner. The Andromeda Saint what just happened. His expression saddened. "I'm sorry..." he muttered, almost to just himself.
Lance stopped, sick of the tense air between them. "It reminds me of my 'master', okay?!" he shouted.
Shinta widened his eyes in shock. "What? Your Master?"
Lance gritted teeth and kept looking away. "He always made me call him Saint Kastiel, too. He said it was a sign of respect to superior ranks and teachers. It just pissed me off immensely, but I did it anyway." He confessed. "It didn't do much for my attitude in his perspective since he dropped me in that mountain anyway! I don't like Sanctuary, I don't like the other Saints, I don't like Athena and I definitely don't like being reminded of that asshole's lessons!"
Shinta narrowed his eyes, intrigued and confused. "Why not? Why do you hate so much to be reminded of your master, Lance?"
"Why the hell do you think I don't like it?!" Lance exploded as he turned back. "Haven't you heard all those stories about me getting back from the death trap he left me on and humiliating him in front of everyone?! Haven't you heard about how much I fucking detest my own Master, like some ingrate, godless piece of shit?!"
"I haven't,," Shinta confessed. He looked down to his own lap and clasped his hands on it.
Lance stared at him in disbelief. He exhaled loudly in exasperation, leaned against a rail and rubbed his eyes. "After only two weeks, he abandoned me in the training grounds of Mount Olympus, saying that I was going to die anyway. I hate that man!"
Shinta gasped. "He...abandoned you? That's so awful!" Lance said nothing to answer this. Suddenly, Shinta's sadness turned into guilt, as he realized what Lance went through and how he was feeling. Shinta had the kind, supportive Cepheus Guardnia to help him. He always stood by his side and helped him when he needed while nobody helped Lance. Shinta looked away from Lance, feeling guilty. "I'm sorry, Lance. I promise I won't call you 'Saint', anymore. I wanted to show you that I really appreciated your help and that I respect you. I really wanted to get along with you and I guessed I tried a bit too hard. I promise I won't tell anyone about this conversation." He vowed. Master Guardnia had told him many times he should keep talks like these to himself so as to respect the trust people had in you. "We're complete strangers to each other and I forced you to just confess something like that. I'm really sorry."
"I don't need your sympathy." Lance spat. "I just need you to stop pissing me off."
Shinta nodded. "Okay, Lance… Can I just call you by your name?"
"Just...Fine, I don't care." The Pegasus Saint shrugged off. "So what else did they tell you about me? Have they told you I'm an evil bastard who dances around corpses, drinks the blood of my enemies and like to rape little girls?" Lance insisted. "Or are you too naïve to know about rape, too?!"
Shinta looked up at him in horror. "They… have, but…" he hesitated. Lance sounded so angry, like someone who was sick of having been bullied all his life. Shinta could really relate to that, even though just a little bit. "I don't believe any of that. I don't believe you've really done such a bad thing."
{======================|0|======================}
Later that night
{======================|0|======================}
Lance shook hands with the captain as Shinta hopped into the small boat, Cloth box on his back and ready to leave. Above them, a particularly dark night stretched towards the horizon, illuminating as little as it could the two men making the final preparations.
"Remember." warned the Captain. "At 2am two days from now, I'll pass by the island again. If you are not in the vicinity, I'll assume that you are both dead and report back to the Sanctuary as such! I don't want my boat to be in the vicinity of a Black Saint HQ any longer than it has to."
"I already told you that you don't have to!" Lance snapped in frustration. "We'll be island hopping back to the main land so don't bother shitting your pants about getting back here."
The captain groaned something between teeth, angered. "I might just not do that, then!" he thought to himself.
Lance hopped into the boat, placing the Pegasus Cloth box on the metal floor and sitting on one of the ends. Shinta waved at the captain as the latter one lowered them, wishing him the 'goodbye' and 'thank you' that Lance conveniently 'forgot'. The chains holding the boat dropped it as soon as it was lowered enough, and the boat crashed with the water's surface. Lance picked the paddles and started rowing away from the boat, then helped by Shinta who also grabbed a pair of paddles.
The ship then sailed away without ringing its bell so as to not call any attention from the island.
The two of them kept their silence. Shinta sensed an opportunity to finally break the ice with the Pegasus Saint with something positive, but he was unsure how to do that. It was pretty clear that talking mainly about his past was not a good idea. Maybe he should ask him about something he liked?
The Andromeda Saint thought hard. Lance did seem to like fights and analyzing them from the way he commented on those boxing matches earlier that morning. He also detested Saint Kastiel. Shinta then realized that it was actually pretty amazing that Lance, a Bronze Saint like him, got out of a dangerous Training Ground after just four years of independent training tough enough to take on a seasoned Silver Saint.
"Lance, how did you beat him?" he asked, genuinely curious. He normally abhorred fighting, but now this subject just picked his curiosity. He took care not to mention the K-word directly. "How did you beat Kerberos? Were you really that strong when you returned from Olympus?"
Lance seemed surprised by the sudden change of subject. "Well, I…Not really, but I didn't get lucky if that's what you're wondering. I didn't know anything about his fighting style prior hand so I had to be very careful and analyze all his moves right on the spot." Lance then smirked when he recalled how easy it became to figure out Kastiel's strategies. "Usually Saints focus on the combat techniques they are taught by their Masters and martial arts and they don't go much beyond that. Kastiel's strategy was pretty much taking advantage of circular momentum and how scary his mace heads were. He would spin them around to pick up the burning cosmos in his weapon before hurling them in a variety of ways."
Shinta nodded and even smiled a bit as he recognized this strategy from seeing Master Guardnia fight with the star-headed chain of his Cepheus Cloth. "So, how did you figure out his weak points?"
Lance rubbed his chin. "Well, it became all about dodging his chain swings and, because they were so heavy, they created opportunities for me to position myself carefully to attack. It was a dangerous game to lure him into positions I could take advantage of, though. I almost got my head smashed several times. I realized his cosmos would turn red whenever it was accumulated to its maximum so I knew when I had to be careful." Lance then skipped right ahead for the end. "His last technique used that red cosmos to create a round sphere of energy around one of his spheres. The objective of that is to reduce the risk of missing by making the weapon 'larger'. This allowed him to put a bit more effort on attack power, too, as he wasn't so worried about missing. I had a technique, thought, perfectly suitable for that."
Shinta smiled as he saw Lance just blurting out words without realizing it. He really did seem to like talk about fighting. If Shinta himself wasn't so opposed to it, he would probably be able to engage him in hours of conversation about it. "Why is that so? What kind of technique is it?"
"It's Barrier. It's kind of a simple name, but it's fine for my purposes. It looks like a normal protective field, but it is actually composed of several cosmos rings of different sizes stacked in front of each other in order to form a semi-sphere in front of me. The rings in the front take in the energy, give in under the pressure and pass it on the ones behind. This disperses the energy of the blow away from me in all directions and makes the barrier shatter completely, but it also robs the attack of most of its force." Lance then smirked devilishly. "You should have seen the look on his face when the mace end of his chain just fell flatly on the floor after trampling all over my Barrier. It was priceless!"
"Oh, I see, that's so smart!" Shinta awed in admiration.
There was one serious flaw, though, but Lance kept that to himself. "Barrier doesn't work at all on concentrated attacks. The only reason Barrier worked on Kastiel's Hell Bash was because the increase of the impact volume created by the thick layer of energy also meant that the force of the steel ball was more spread out throughout said volume. Had Kastiel attacked me with a normal steel sphere, I would have died."
"I have a couple of defensive techniques as well, but they're not that elaborate." Shinta continued.
Lance shook his head as he suddenly realized how much Shinta got him to talk. "Well, they better work against Black Saints because you're about to head for a den of them and I won't save your life." Lance then shrugged. He wasn't used to talk so much so light-heartedly with someone. He looked over his shoulder and saw the dark island awaiting them. "They will have no mercy on you or me. If they can, they'll kill us on sight. We'll arrive at the beach soon and after that, it's enemy's territory."
After a while, Lance and Shinta both saw the island at the distance, and the two Saints started rowing faster towards its direction. It was mostly tropical, with a large mountain rising from between the woods in its western side and a beach barely visible due to the darkening night sky.
Lance looked up and saw clouds covering the moon. "Let's hurry." said Lance "Before we are spotted by the Black Saints."
Shinta sweated a bit in nervousness and gulped. Nothing in Andromeda Island had really prepared him for this. He decided to just follow Lance's lead, trust in the Andromeda Cloth's instincts and generally do his best. Hopefully, they would come out victorious and no one would have to get hurt or die.
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Chapter End
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Next Chapter: Meet Shinta Part 2 of 2
Release Date: 20th July 2014
Description: The two Bronze Saints infiltrate the island and Lance lays out the plan for their assault on the Black Saints. Upon taking it into action, though, things don't go so well on Shinta's side.
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Author's Note: In the original script of the story, Andromeda Shinta, believe it or not, was not meant to be. Creating him was the solution for a problem that arose around Lance as I wrote the first version of Lance's Role, that problem being that he interacted with no one asides from the Pope and a couple of Saints. The choice of him being a pacifist came from it being a nice personality to drive out Lance's thoughts and opinions into the open by generating some conflict between the two of them, the choice of him being a Saint came from the need for him to be someone who could keep up with Lance's pace and the choice of him being an Andromeda Saint was…well, to say it was random doesn't really nail it, but I guess it was because I thought someone with Shun's fighting style would combine well with someone with Lance's.
Those of you who have read the second version are probably wondering how that can all of this be, considering Shinta's interactions with the main antagonist of the second Arc. Well, let's just say that that touches one of the main reasons I decided to revamp the story into a third version: to correct retcons!
Shinta turned out to be a rather popular character and his importance, character development and personality will be mostly conserved in the revamp, though I will probably try to focus on making him a bit more three-dimensional, as I will do with other characters.
