Notable OCs up until now that I own: Pegasus Lance; Andromeda Shinta; Heracles Aguilon's Silver Saint Generation; Taurus Daniel's Gold Saint Generation; Daemon Lucifer;

Notable Original concept (until now): Pegasus Temple; Sanctuary Town; MMC; Sanctuary Forts and Outposts; Sanctuary Court & Nobility;

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 and tests; Golden Line Nobility;

Author Note:The 'Meditation of the Oracle' test is a trial Andromeda Shun goes through in the fanfic 'Love You Kill Me' by Jenny DeVic. All the important details are covered by this chapter, so you don't need to check her story to understand what is going on between Shinta and Shaka.

Please enjoy and review.

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"There are four tests that need to be passed in order to obtain the favor of the Andromeda Cloth. Generally speaking, Cloth tests don't need outside help, but the second test for the Princess' armor requires the assistance of the Gold Saint of Virgo, for its tests the spiritual strength of the trainee.

Unfortunately, there is currently no one guarding the sixth Temple. The last Virgo Saint was murdered back in 1962 and there have been no replacements since. Shinta needs someone to administer the 'Meditation of the Oracle' test to him so as to cleanse his karma through an elaborate spiritual dream state.

The best thing to do seems to be talking to Andromeda to work out a solution. She's stubborn but she'll listen to her Father. Maybe she won't mind having the Cepheus Cloth evaluate Shinta instead.

As for whomever the next Saint of Virgo may be... I just hope the next Saint of Cancer doesn't go crazy and kill him, too."

-Cepheus Guardnia's personal notes on Shinta Akyama's fourth year of training, dated February 1972

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Two weeks later

Sanctuary

Virgo Temple

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After roughly an hour of climbing up stair steps, Andromeda Shinta finally found himself standing before the huge doors of the Golden Zodiac's sixth temple with the training request papers in hand. He had made up his mind following Lance's departure to China and formalized his candidacy for the Silver Cloth. While Lance had been allowed to immediately get the armor and conduct the battle test to gain its favor, it had been mostly because there was no Cancer Saint to provide the necessary three years of training and because Lance was already a full-fledged Silver Rank when he got out of Mount Olympus.

Shinta's story was different, though, Nebula Storm aside, his battle proficiency and mastery over the cosmos only amounted to that of a Bronze Saint, so much he could barely move past the Mach 1 speed. Moreover, it seemed as if there was a new occupant to the sixth House, one Shinta would now have to convince to provide him with a full year worth of tutelage.

Just as his Pegasus friend predicted, Shinta was able to shave off two out of the three necessary years by citing his career as part of the Andromeda-Pegasus duo, going around the world taking down Specters and Black Saints. All things considered, Shinta's record was sort of impressive for a Bronze Saint; within two years he conducted over forty missions, two of them involving Terrestrial and Celestial Star Specters. Sagitta Nam, upon looking at the record, had even commented Shinta had the candidature pretty much in the bag and that the new Virgo Saint would have to be crazy to kick him out his door.

Still, Shinta felt apprehension as he knocked at the huge entrance. When a Gold Saint was recruited it was always big news, but the details were always concealed from the public. What kind of person awaited him inside? All he knew was that whomever it was, he or she was the first in over a decade to occupy that house and that the Pope got out of his way to go personally fetch that person. Shinta walked inside and felt the closing doors wrap him in the Temple's inner darkness. He instantly started looking for the glint of gold plate protection he had gotten so used to seeing since Lance got promoted.

For a while, as he walked deep into the temple, all he saw was the same empty halls him and Lance had seen the first time they walked through that temple. It didn't seem like that building had any new residents. The sheer lack of furniture, the abundance of candles and Buddhist statues gave the place a very spiritual atmosphere and the silent monks and seers of hooded faces and cloaked figures that discreetly passed by every now and then seemed more like wandering ghosts.

Shinta approached one in search for guidance. "Excuse me, where can I find the Gold Saint of Virgo?" The hooded monk didn't utter a word and instead just pointed at a door concealed amongst the many pillars supporting the Temple. He then walked out without so much as giving Shinta enough time to discern a face under the hood. "Uh, thank you."

The Andromeda Saint followed suit, crept out by the ambiance of what he could only describe as that of a tomb's inside, and knocked at the indicated door. It opened without anyone as much as touching it.

"Come in." someone welcomed from the inside. Shinta closed the door behind him. He seemed to be in a small study containing a desk that was now being moved away by the Temple's servants. In fact, it seemed as if the entire furniture was being picked up and thrown out the window. A small boy of long blonde hair wearing the glittering armor of Virgo was apparently the operations.

A butler of the Temple seemed to be protesting against this. "Master Shaka, you cannot do this! These porcelains and cases are of finest quality and have been in this temple since the time of the late Virgo Saint."

"Then the late Virgo Saint was too materialistic." argued six years old Shaka, who mercilessly directed the servants to take away the beautiful Asian vases and statuettes in the room without so much as opening his constantly closed eyes. "The rooms of my Temple will not have such frivolous things; they'll be places of purity of mind and spirit. My meditations won't be disturbed by the temptations of silk, candy and Chardonnays, no matter which Gold Saint, noble or faithful gifted them. Anything that comes to this temple will be sent to charity."

Shaka then snapped his fingers and Shinta was forced to get out of the way of a pair of men bringing in huge pink colored plates shaped like petals that would be built into the Gold Saint's lotus meditation throne. The Gold Saint sighed loudly and walked away from all the movement in the room.

Shinta took his chance to address him. "Excuse me, I'm here for-"

"You're the Saint candidate for the Silver Rank, aren't you?" interrupted Shaka as he accompanied the Bronze into the main halls. "Well, I suppose I'll have to fulfill my new obligations to Sanctuary, for I am Shaka, the new Gold Saint of Virgo who will instruct you on your path."

The certainty in the child's voice astonished Shinta. Back when he had seen Mu at the Pisces Temple the Andromeda Saint found out that there was apparently no age limit for the Gold Cloth, but even so it was so shocking to see someone so much younger, shorter and of higher-pitched voice than himself wearing such a powerful armor and talking so confidently. He was starting to see why the Cancer Saint was still so freaked out by hanging around Saga and the others.

Still, he made an effort to look past it. He was sure the child before him was just as powerful as any of the adult Gold Saints. "Yes, that's right, Saint Shaka. I hope I won't be taking your time."

"That remains to be seen."

The Andromeda Saint pullet out his record. "I brought my resume. I know it usually takes three years of training, but I've been told I can cut it short by investing my years of Saint work."

Shaka, however, once again without even opening his eyes to look at it, dismissed the files with a wave of his hand. "There is no need for that, Saint Andromeda. Bureaucracy is pointless when I can perfectly sense the maturity of your heart and cosmos. I am not interested in mission records, either. My standards are of a... different nature."

Shinta blinked. "How so?"

"Naturally, I'll be looking at your karma."

Once again, Shinta was taken aback. He was not surprised someone inhabiting a Temple so filled with Buddhist and Hindu figures and scriptures would value things like spirituality and religion, but was so as the fact that such an important evaluation would be left with such a standard. It brought a smile to his face, though, for he realized it was the first time since he was brought to Sanctuary that he encountered a test not based on violence or sadistic ingenuity.

Shaka smirked all of a sudden. "Oh, is this delight I sense in you?"

The green-haired teen chuckled. There really was a lot more to Shaka than it met the eye. "Yes, but your eyes are closed, Lord Shaka. How could you tell?"

"Much of one's state of mind is imprinted on the cosmos. My 7th sense tells me everything I need to know about the world around me." he enlightened. "Under my tutelage you could learn more about that... provided your karma is clean, of course. The Pope has advised me to be tolerant towards the ignorance and impurity of those still in the dark, but I desire not students who do not share a semblance of my ascension. Hold out your hand."

Shinta promptly obeyed and the Gold Saint merely rested his own just over it, barely touching the candidate to his teachings as if to avoid contact with any potential filth. A small expiration was heard from Shaka and Shinta could somehow tell the Gold Saint was concentrating so he remained quiet. Deducing that the Indian child was somehow scrutinizing his spirit, Shinta did his best to emulate his stillness.

It was not the first time the Japanese youth had been exposed to the supernatural side of Sanctuary's tests. Andromeda Island had been a treasure cove of mysticism and magical traps. His second test, the 'Meditation of the Oracle', involved fasting in the desert for forty days on top of a black dais while getting in touch with the spirits of the Island. He had been told by Master Guardnia after completing it that he was originally supposed to speak with the Gold Saint of Virgo, rather than the ghosts of a fallen royal family, but that the lack of thereof at the time forced the Cepheus Saint to seek alternatives to appease Princess Andromeda's standards.

He wondered how old Shaka was at the time and how that evaluation would have occurred should a Virgo Saint have been available.

Doubts started popping in his head as he thought about these things. Just what kind of standards was Shaka putting him up to? How high was the bar set before him? Though there was nothing physically going on, the Bronze Saint also had the sudden impression someone was intruding in his thoughts, spying on his deep, darkest secrets as the child just stood there with a hand hovering over his own. How was this even possible without any cosmos being burned?

Well, maybe it would be fine. Shinta always did his best to be as kind as possible. Surely his karma wasn't too dirty, was it? He knew little of Hinduism and his knowledge of Buddha was entirely derived from Japanese religious tradition, of which he only had a few years of experience. In fact, it would not be far fetched to say that he knew more of Greece and Ethiopia than of his own homeland.

He was there just for that, though. He wanted his Silver Rank so he could find his mother in Japan and get back in touch with his roots, even though almost a decade had passed and he spoke Greek more fluently than Japanese. He was also there to prove to himself and others he could take things on like a grown up and not always be reliant on others for guidance... even if he was seeking guidance for that.

The eerie silence in that large hall as Shaka continued to 'evaluate' him, though, gave him plenty of ideal conditions to start thinking his life over and what he could have done to hurt his karma. Would Shaka look over the fact he succumbed to weakness so often, always relying on others so he'd know what to do? Would Shaka forgive him for keeping his Nebula Storm cosmos hidden from others, hurting Lance's pride and worrying Master Guardnia immensely upon revelation? Worst of all, would all those people he had failed to save in Arcadia pile up on his conscience?

The Bronze Saint's lips quivered and he found himself realizing he might have come to that Temple unprepared. Oh Goddess what had he don-

"Okay, that's enough." said the young boy.

Shinta blinked repeatedly as he felt all those awful thoughts vanish from his mind all of a sudden as soon as Shaka's hand parted. He stuttered, feeling lost in thoughts, "W-wait, what? What just happened?" The naive boy then sensed the answer by himself. "Y-you tricked me?!"

"Not at all, Andromeda. I just used my enlightened powers to draw out your karma. It seems thought that quite the layer of guilt came attached to it. I can't really accept you as a student with so much regret and doubt on your mind. Normally I'd be happy to let you experience one of the six Hells so as to cleanse it," Shaka so casually commented "but since the problem isn't your attitude I doubt it'd do much good."

"B-but Lord Shaka" Shinta argued, still taken aback that he had disappointed him so quickly. "I can work on that, right? Could you teach me how to rise above such guilt? I-if you did, t-then maybe I could become a suitable student."

"How can I expect you to be able to follow the path of wisdom and enlightenment if your mind is impure, Saint Shinta?" reasoned the child. "I'd be happy to offer someone the Peacock Silver Cloth or just have a partner in broadmindedness, but I have nothing to teach to those of unbalanced karma or filthy conscience, for they cannot see what I can. You could meditate under the same trees I do, right by my side, with all of my wisdom guiding you for decades on end and still your regrets and uncertainties would prevent you from grasping the basics of my Path."

"So I failed?" Shinta gasped. Had he passed all those violent and dangerous tests on his way to the Andromeda Cloth only to fail at the first pacifist one? "Oh no, Lord Virgo, I... You must give me another chance! I need the Silver Rank urgently. What can I do to prove I'm good enough?"

Shaka waved a dismissive hand. "You can start by accepting your failure!" he reprehended, his high-pitched voice suddenly reaching new depth. "I, Shaka, who possess the unlimited enlightenment of Buddha, have judged you of unclear mind and you should be happy I limit myself to rejecting you as a pupil. Come back in a few years, once the shadow of the guilt you carry no longer weighs on your decisions."

The Andromeda Saint stared at the child with a jaw dropped with shock and revolt. However, sensing the Gold Saint was unwavering in his decision, he protested no further. Shaka turned his back on the Bronze Saint and departed, perhaps to further direct the sterilization of his House, while Shinta was left with nothing but a dry throat and a hole in his heart in the large hall.

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Andromeda Shinta thought about what he could have done wrong as he walked down the Golden Zodiac's staircase. He was sure nothing in particular bothered his mind at that particular moment. Sure, he regretted deeply what had happened in Arcadia, in his childhood and later on when Andromeda Island was attacked but those weren't things he thought about all the time anymore. He had come to terms with all that, right?

The Gold Saint of Virgo had refused him, though, on the grounds that all those lingering thoughts. Thinking about all the years he spent preparing himself to obtain the Andromeda Cloth as opposed to Shaka attaining it in a fraction of that time finally brought anger to him.

How old was that Gold Saint anyway? Shinta was probably already training for Andromeda when Shaka was born! What kind of entitlement was that? He felt even more terrible for thinking such things, which made even worse the fact that, once again, he was denied his ticket home.

Above all, he blamed himself because he had the feeling he wouldn't be plagued by such thoughts if he was more of a man.

It was then that the Saint passed through the Taurus Temple, one of the most massive and austere Houses guarded by the Gold Saints. The second temple counting from the start was also one of the most spacious on in the inside, possessing halls large enough to hold the arena battles of the Coliseum. Maybe because of that the whole place seemed chilly when under complete silence, which was the case when Shinta entered its main hall.

He encountered Taurus Daniel, the enormous man wrapped in golden armor whom he had met at the Coliseum as a gardener and later on at the Golden Zodiac as the Taurus Gold Saint. Even sitting on the floor in meditation, arms and legs crossed, the beastly man towered over the Japanese Bronze Saint and his long, aged blond hair cascaded down like a cape on his armored back.

Shinta approached him so as to greet the authority. "Greetings, Saint Taurus. I hope you don't mind me passing through your House-"

"Stay back." warned Daniel, whose closed eyes then glanced severely at him. "Or your head shall roll on the floor!"

The startled Bronze Saint stepped away and, before he could ask him what had he done wrong or even run away, wind started blowing from the Hall's end and a flare of light like that of an approaching metro slowly emerged from it before a battle roar was heard.

"GREAT HORN!"

Shinta gasped as the whole temple was illuminated by the golden train of light coming right their way. He didn't have time to leap away.

The light speed blast soared throughout the corridor through nearly frozen time and blasted the Gold Saint straight in the face, pressing the rolling soccer ball firmly against his nose. The sound, wind and light blast then splattered all over the huge room, shock waving back and forth and knocking Shinta down.

The Andromeda Saint looked up to see the soccer ball on the Gold Saint's face with the burned mark of a foot on it slowly disintegrating into dust. "L-lord Daniel?! What happened? «gasp» Your nose is bleeding!"

"MASTER DANIEELL!" someone shouted. A teenage boy of large muscles and taller than even Lance then arrived from where the shot was fired. "Oh, no, are you okay, Master?!"

Shinta analyzed the teen, impressed by his size. He had black hair growing down his neck, a powerful frame for his age and a set of thick eyebrows that threatened to unify in the future. His thick nose, tanned skin and large shoulders made him look more like a gorilla than a man.

Daniel didn't even bother to wipe the blood rushing down his nose. His intense glare locked his student in place. "Of course, Aldebaran. This was nothing."

Aldebaran saw Shinta and his eyes welled up. "Master, don't tell me... you sacrificed yourself so as to protect this Bronze Saint?!" He trembled and contained tears. His fist tightened. "That is so manly! You knew my super Great Horn penalty shot was coming, but you didn't dodge because you knew it would kill him."

Shinta realized what just happened. "What? Oh no! Saint Daniel, I didn't mean to force you to protect me! This is all my fault!" He then saw the stoic Gold Saint's twisted nose gush out even more blood, spilling all over his armor. The young Saint never felt so terrible. "Oh Goddess, no! I'll go get help!"

Daniel folded his arms. "Aldebaran, you must not feel sorry for pouring all your emotions into your kick. That is not the way of a man!" he then snapped his nose back into place, cleaned off the blood with a flower-patterned tissue and gave them both a thumbs up. "If I chose to protect this Bronze Saint, it was because I felt like it; not because some stupid kid didn't see what lives were being put at risk while putting his soul into an attack!"

Aldebaran wiped his tears as he basked in the glory that his Master exhumed. Even back in Rio, where Daniel met him, the Taurus Gold Saint was already bad-ass, being capable of crushing most men and seducing most women with nothing but his sheer hard-boiled attitude. He who had always been called ugly and stupid by his peers, would never forget the image of Daniel surrounded by beautiful, busty women throwing themselves at him in Copacabana beach and the man just shrugging them off like a bunch of annoying roaches.

"Master Daniel, please teach me how I can be like that! I want to be as hardcore as you are! I want to climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest sea, seduce the hottest girl and then say it was no big deal!"

Shinta, too, was amazed by the spectacle of manliness before him. "Are you sure it's alright, Saint Daniel? If I hadn't approached you recklessly..."

Daniel gave them both a casual thumbs up. "Of course!"

"Damn it, man, don't you get it?! Master Daniel didn't even feel that!" shouted Aldebaran. "A true Taurus Saint can tank any attack like it was nothing and he does that not because he's a Saint, but because he's a man! Aren't you here to become a man, too?"

"Huh? Me? No, I was just passing through, but..." Shinta's eyes glanced away in guilt. "I do want to become more of a man. I made a promise I would! Not only that, but I need to obtain the Silver Rank to get what I want and Saint Shaka said I couldn't because I wasn't clear-minded enough."

"Well, it makes sense because clear-mindedness has everything to do with being a man, you know?" argued the youth. He looked back into his past. "When I was in the favelas, there were many times I could have become a thief, a drug addict or worse like all the others. It would be the easy path, the path obvious to someone with no future like I was. But I didn't take that path because I was clearheaded enough to realize it wasn't the right one. I knew what to do because I was a man! And now look at me! Barely cracking nine years old and I'm a Gold Saint's student!"

Once again, Shinta gasped in shock. "You're nine?!"

"Manhood doesn't pick age!"

"But you're so tall!"

"It doesn't pick spine length either!"

"That is not what I meant. I mean,-"

"So Shaka refused you, huh?" Daniel interrupted. He rubbed his enormous chin. "That doesn't completely surprise me. Virgo Saints tend to be weird in their standards, I should know, especially when they believe themselves reincarnations of Buddha."

Shinta nodded, though he wondered why Daniel had special insight on a Virgo Saint's finickiness. "I... just wish there was something I could have done. Before I even realized it I was already being thrown off his Temple."

"You're the Saint who defeated those three Specters at Andromeda island, correct?" The Gold Saint inquired. Shinta only reluctantly agreed with a nod, his selfless nature feeling Lance's contribution to that battle shouldn't be ignored. "HA, HA, HA, HA! That kid Shaka really doesn't realize what he just passed on to my hands. Tell me, did you know I spent a short period training Guardnia so he could obtain his Silver rank?"

This Shinta knew. "He told me about it once, yes. He said... you broke a lot of his bones."

"Don't let that scare you, though." Daniel wrapped his arm around the terrified kid. "A broken bone means nothing compared to the cemented wrecking machine it will heal into. You could say that about a lot of things in life, actually. I'm sure we can break your spirit and then mend it into something that Virgo brat can appreciate."

Shinta blinked. Did he hear right? "You'll... help me?" Daniel nodded. "That's... that's incredible! Even though I'm not a Taurus? Why would you do that?"

"Would you be disappointed if I said I just wanted to see someone who can kill Celestial Stars in action?" The Andromeda Saint shook his head. In fact, he was certain his victory at Andromeda Island was probably the only thing interesting about his record. "That and... I do have a soft spot for pacifists. Like I said at the Coliseum, when your meeting room's filled with conservative jingoists you really start to appreciate that lonely voice in the background that would much rather be tending to his garden."

The Gold Saint then turned to his student. "Aldebaran show Shinta around the Temple and get the equipment ready for practice. It looks like you got a sparring partner now." Daniel then took off.

Shinta saw the Gold Saint vanish in a blink using light speed. "What? Where did he go?"

"The Master's obviously got something to do. The Pope calls for him all the time, you know?" said Aldebaran. "He probably just went to ask the Pope if it's okay to train you."

The Andromeda Saint found himself alone with his much younger, though already taller and more muscular, fellow disciple. "I'm starting to see what Lance meant with being in the Zodiac being such a sudden shift. Just five seconds ago I was sulking about Saint Shaka refusing me as a student. Is it...as dangerous as Saint Daniel made it sound or is his training really alright?"

To his distraught, Aldebaran shook his head. "No way, bro! He was dead serious about tomorrow's practice. The Taurus House's training regiment is completely nuts. Master Daniel once told me some Taurus Saints over the years have developed... liking for breaking people's bones. According to him, something about hearing them crack always brought a smile to his face."

"Oh, no, seriously? I could never be like that. I don't even like sparring all that much, much less hurting people to the point of shattering their limbs..."

"Don't worry" Aldebaran reassured. "I'll help you get over that real quick. By the time we're done, you won't be able to go to bed before your daily crackdowns in the Ring."

Shinta shivered. Aldebaran seemed nice and really enthusiastic about his training, but his eagerness to hurt something really set the Andromeda Saint off. He could overlook that easily, though.

"The Ring... I've almost forgotten about that with so much time that has passed since I finished my Path of the Cloth." he confessed, referring to the ring marking on the floor that was used for trainee sparring. "It was probably what I hated the most in Andromeda Island, especially the thought of the blood ones where you're required to kill or be killed by your adversary."

"...In a training ground scorching hot at day and freezing cold at night, with near impossible tests, uninhabitable conditions, volcanic eruptions and poisonous sea water you hated the sparring field the most?" At first Shinta thought Aldebaran would mock or insult him, but instead the Taurus trainee burst out laughing. "HA, HA, HA, HA! You're weird like Mu! I like that!"

"But it was the worst! I hated being forced to fight, especially since I was no good at it! At least Master Guardnia did everything he could to make everything else good. He was a very kind teacher. His food was great and he always made sure to give us adequate diets."

"Well, I hope he got you used to meat because that's the only think you'll be eating around here. There's more protein per meal around these parts than in a wrestler's breakfast." Aldebaran squeezed Shinta's forearm and frowned at how thin it was for a Saint. "Oh, man, you're in a special kind of trouble with Master. He's gonna work you like a dog until you double that muscle, at least!"

Shinta held his bicep self-consciously. He was not the beefiest Saint, that was true. At least Lance always said he looked like a strong girl, but he guessed he really was not up to par with Taurus standards.

He started to see why the House for Silver Cloth training was picked by constellation. Maybe the musculature regime wasn't adequate for him, especially considering his natural frame. Guardnia had always told him he was fit for chains precisely because of how flimsy he was.

Aldebaran could see something he said discouraged his new friend. "Hey, don't make that face. Master Daniel never goes so far as to put you into a coma. That's a waste of training days because then we gotta wait till you wake up. Besides, your Master spent a season here, remember? If he's so great then you shouldn't have anything to worry about Saint Daniel."

Shinta turned his frown upside down. "You're right. I should be thankful he's even offering to help... and I promised myself I wouldn't give up. I'll do my best to reach mach 5! Even if it means the harshest training regiment of my life!"

"That's the spirit! And hey, if you ever feel like you're not up to it, just give the big guy the finger. He'll send you home, no problem!...With a bent finger, of course, but it's better than 'only leaving the army in a casket', right?"

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Chapter 15

First Arc

Episode 11

Unwanted Ambitions

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Two weeks later

Rozan Mountain

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Libra Dohko sat at the edge of the rock protrusion overlooking the water fall with his cane, a box of matches and a set of mounted fireworks covered from the heavy rain by his side all pointed at his latest student. He pondered at what exact moment and how many he would ignite so as to startle the blindfolded youth standing precariously on the tightrope above the lake.

The old Master could just picture the confused frustration on the youth's face, wondering what was the purpose of this test as the bucket in each of his hand steadily filled with rainwater. It was not like Dohko could launch rockets at him again with all this rain, like that time in that fog-filled valley in what Dohko describe as an alertness test, right?

Lance felt his foot starting to slip off the long rope and tried to maintain his balance. He took deep breaths and adjusted his grip on the buckets several times but he felt like the more he tried to do to keep himself off a nasty fall on the lake the more his equilibrium trembled. This had been just another of many weird tests, another of many secret challenges to his character and inner strength since he accepted his privilege, or lot depending on the task at hand, as Dohko's student/maid/guinea pig.

He could not say he had figured out yet Dohko's angle for that day.

It seemed fairly obvious that this was another disguised attempt at teaching Lance a valuable lesson through his own misconceptions and foolishness, just like when Dohko first started treating Lance like crap to make him realize he shouldn't take criticism and abuse so much to the heart, but what was the ruse this time? Was Dohko trying to open his eyes to his over-reliance on sight? Was he trying to improve Lance's physical battle stance? Or was he just trying to see how long he could get away with making his student stand like a ballerina in the rain? Maybe there was something to learn about how much friction a rope's surface could lose under that weather. He couldn't figure it out.

And that was starting to piss him off.

Once again his foot nearly slipped off the tightrope and the buckets swayed, throwing off water he was supposed to keep inside them.

Dohko laughed. "Having trouble again? I told you; its not like we have groundwater or wells nearby, you must fill those buckets with that precious water so we can drink, bathe and wash the house. You'll never get it done at this rate."

"GROUNDWATER?! WHY CANT I JUST GET IT FROM THE LAKE?!"

"Because the waterfall and lake are sacred, of course. Seiryu, the Dragon God, sleeps down there, remember? As does the Dragon Cloth." He saw Lance exhale his exasperation, cynical that there was an actual living, breathing dragon sleeping right below him. "As for the blindfold" Dohko patted his rockets in anticipation. "you'll soon hear why. Yo, oh, oh, oh!"

Lance growled in frustration. He knew perfectly well the Libra Gold Saint got the water in his house, kitchen and bathrooms through plumbing. He didn't know what it was connected to, but he had seen the pipes below the sinks and toilet. Dohko was just toying around with him and probably had some nasty surprise in store.

Suddenly, though, Dohko decided to enlighten him. "You ought to notice by now that you can't keep your balance because you get yourself agitated so easily. You're not at peace with life. It's obvious, really. I child could make that connection."

Once again, Lance sighed. He couldn't even tell from where Dohko's voice was coming from because the shape of the grove's rocky walls threw sound around everywhere. He felt like he was in a weird limbo he could fall off at any moment. "Master, with all due respect, what the heck are you talking about?"

"The lack of balance with nature and others leads to inadequacy with life. That leads to anger and anger leads to agitation." he explained. "Since you're not the kind of student mature or willing enough to deal with the causes of your anger, I'll just have you deal with its symptoms. People laugh at childish tantrums, but a tranquil fury is respected by all. If you want to keep your balance long enough for those buckets to get filled, you must calm yourself despite your frustration; don't fall to basic instincts but instead master your agitation!...Ooh, that rhymed..."

As Dohko took note in a paper of the poetic pearl he just delivered, the rain clouds started rumbling, preparing a thunderstorm the Master had not predicted for that day.

Meanwhile the student tried to calm his breathing and apply Dohko's words to practice. He reflected on his life and how anger had always been a big part in his interaction with others. It was true that being in that situation, performing a task he saw no sensible goal or practice in, aggravated the Bronze Saint for it made him think about the way the Pope had lured him around for two whole years.

It was then that the obvious conclusion that he had always allowed situations to escalate around him dawned upon the pupil. Shinta had, after all, always berated the older Bronze Saint of Pegasus for willingly letting confrontations take violent levels, even if he started close to none of them. Was it that simple and direct a correlation? Knowing himself and his personal frustrations, Lance had little trouble considering the possibly he was having such a hard time maintaining his balance because of all that.

As the epiphany took hold of him and the youth took an effort to process his stress internally, he felt his feet dangling less and his body swaying with reduced intensity, allowing the water buckets to fill more efficiently. Had he discovered the secret to tightrope crossing? Knowing Dohko's style, the intent was probably more inclined towards the inner growth he was now experiencing.

The rain got heavier and so did the wind.

Lance didn't have time to ponder Dohko's words before his foot slipped off the rope a third time, this time for good. He yelled.

Dohko's eyes opened wide when he heard the scream of his student. He rushed to edge of the protrusion he stood on and looked down to see Lance fall into the lake.

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

His first instinct was to gasp for air, causing a swarm of bubbles to escape his mouth. The cold, dark water of the Rozan lake hugged him and pulled him down. The Saint felt himself almost like falling into a deep darkness he did not know existed in that seemingly simple lake.

It took a while before his squirming body calmed himself and he took notice of his sunken surroundings. He looked up to see no light tearing through the water. How deep was the lake that he was now immersed in almost total liquid blackness? He tried to swim upwards, already swearing furious revenge on his master for making use of such permeable rope in his tests.

However, though his arms crawled widely and his legs went back and forth, he did not felt himself rising. The sudden emergency of not being able to get to the oxygen initially sent his mind into a panic, but the experienced warrior was able to cool himself down.

Speaking of coolness, he had never noticed how cold the lake was.

He squirmed and hugged himself immediately. The frozen shock that was to suddenly enter a body of water should have already subsided. He contained a gasp as he felt his body rapidly losing heat. His secret cryophobia, the worst reminder of Mount Olympus he had, now consumed him.

Amidst his newfound panic as his terror of cold paralyzed him, the red eyes of the Saint were able to detect something. Something right in front of him in the lake that he could barely make out in all that lack of light.

His eyes widened in horror! Was the enormous shadow in front of him, which he had first thought to be a boulder or bedrock, suddenly move? Its slight movements intensified, stirring from the silence like a creature suddenly awakening. Gaps of background suddenly emerging in the mass denounced the slenderness of a twirled serpentine body but, whatever was in front of him was far too enormous to be a snake.

What could still be dismissed as just a strange illusion of moving shadows at the bottom of a remote lake then confirmed its own horror by opening eyes! A slither of bright green light emerged on the side of a darkness shaped like a reptilian head.

A sudden force took hold of the Saint and pulled him upwards just as the creature turned to him, blasting him out of the lake in a dragon-shaped eruption of water and golden cosmos.

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

Dohko's hands raised to the sky, causing his golden cosmos to burst the lake's surface in a mock Shoryuha, blasting his student out of the water, away from the creature and into the shore. He approached his coughing, trembling student, whose chest convulsed to expel water and whose arms shock in terrified coldness.

Lance tried to calm himself. "W-what happened?!"

"You fell on the lake, of course."

"It was so c-cold... T-there was something down there!"

Dohko hummed and massaged his rain-soaked beard. "Strange that the first thing you remark upon after meeting a Water God was how cold his rest place was."

Lance stared at the dwarf incredulously. "A water what?"

"Let's go inside the house. I think we've had enough of it for one day."

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

Sitting in the warm kitchen, Lance covered himself in the many blankets his master offered him while Dohko turned the fireplace on. The dry, comfy environment did little to calm Lance's shaking, who seemed more preoccupied with keeping himself covered and warm than asking Dohko about the supposed deity he just encountered.

The student approached the fireplace but the huge white tiger resting by it roared and swiped menacingly at him. "...F-fuck you, Ma Chao!" groaned the Saint as he tried to find a good fireplace spot that wouldn't get in the tiger's comfort zone.

He offered his protege a warm bamboo cup of tea. "Don't hate him, Lance. It's in his nature to attack runts." He waited until his student finished drinking the tea and saw him still trembling despite the heat now filling the room and his stomach. "What an inconvenient secret trauma for you to have picked up. I'm two hundred years old and only met one or two people with Cryophobia-"

"I'm n-not C-Cryophobic!" his proud student denied. "I'm just... I just d-don't like being cold!"

"Like cryophobics, right?" Dohko took an ice cube from his pocket, threw at Lance's feet and smirked as he saw the teen jump back in fright. "Yo, oh, oh! It seems all Hades needs to bring to the battlefield to get past the fourth temple is a ventilator!"

There was a shamed turn of face from the youth, who composed himself from his startle after kicking the cube away. "So what?!"

"Do your comrades know about this?" Lance shook his head. "What about that Andromeda Saint friend of yours?"

"O-of course not." he assured. Shinta was the last person on Earth who suspected his admirably tough and gruff best friend could be brought down like a rookie in cold weather. His terror of ice had been, of course, a factor in many of his mission decisions but he had never let it on to Shinta he was basing them on a fear he got from his training days.

Back when they were trekking across the Balkans at super speed to head for that fateful mission at the Ismara fort, Shinta had even been, much to his shock, denied his perfectly plausible suggestion to cross through snow filled mountains to shorten the distance by Lance.

For some time, the Pegasus Saint had even wondered if that decision, which he never bothered to explain to his partner, had cost lives at the fort Yakos and his Specters had razed. He knew better than blame himself for something so tragic he, or anyone else, could not have possibly predicted, though.

"It almost makes me wonder how you survived a place like Mount Olympus-"

"What was that down there?" interrupted Lance, who wished the talk would move on from what he considered his most embarrassing weakness and the place that spawned it. "That... thing down at the lake?!"

Dohko sat by Ma Chao and petted it, making the youth wonder how he could be so much at ease with such an unfriendly creature. He then realized he should probably be lucky Ma Chao didn't act like an actual wild tiger and pounce at him at every chance.

"That was Seiryu." Dohko stated, flatly, though the white tiger seemed to grumble complainingly when the name was mentioned. "Taoist God of the East, Emperor of the Rain, Rivers and Waterfalls, Lord of Spring... He represents the element of Water in cosmos... I don't know why you have such a look on your face; I told you he slept at the lake."

"How was I supposed to believe there was a GOD sleeping down there?!"

"Well...I wouldn't call him so much a God since Seiryu could be said to be closer in nature to a Japanese 'Kami' or even to the elemental Titans of old. OH, OH, OH!" Dohko chuckled mockingly, something he had taken a habit of doing whenever he shamed Lance's skeptic nature. "You should feel honored, you know? He doesn't show himself to everyone. I've taken many skinny dips down there and I've only seen him once every four months or so. Most of the times it's just me and the fishes."

Lance shivered, disgusted at the image of the shriveled dwarfish old man skinny dipping with a god as a habit. "Okay, so... there's a God at your doorstep..." he muttered. "I'll... make an effort to pretend that's normal!..."

Despite the fact that shattering Lance's barriers was one of Dohko's favorite things to do, he also mused every so often when would a guy who dealt with people moving things with their minds on a daily basis find the time to get so close-minded. It reminded him a bit of Tenma, who was always easy to impress with the many wonders Dohko could pull off with cosmos because he never dreamed most things cosmos could do were possible in the first place.

But Tenma was young and inexperienced when Dohko got his hands on him, while Lance was just plain pig-headed.

"I hope you didn't anger him. I don't want my toilet flushing upwards again."

Did Lance always have to get his new Master to take things seriously? "I don't think you need to worry about that, Roshi." He discarded his blankets when he finally felt comfortable. "How did you pull me out of that water anyway?"

"Oh, yes! That reminds me I got something in mind for your next training session. I bet you're anxious to finally learn something about being a real Gold Saint rather than improving yourself as a person and warrior by overcoming your flaws and misconceptions."

Lance's head lifted in sudden excitement at the prospect of an actual training session. "You mean you'll actually teach me how to fight or master my 7th sense?"

"Well, no, but don't worry because we'll get to that. As soon as I start sparring with you I'll get that cosmos of yours running at light speed in no time."

"Spar with me?" The youth cast the diminutive master a dirty look. "No offense, Master, but I don't think you can-"

"Don't underestimate the cane you couldn't break." warned Dohko as he raised the blasted walking aid he had humiliated Lance with. He took a look out the window to the rain. "We'll wait for this weather to pass. Get your Gold Cloth ready in the meantime. We're going to take you two for a walk."

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

Several hours later...

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

Master and student left the house, heading towards the valleys beyond the waterfall which was usually shrouded in mist. Lance carried on his back the Gold Cloth Box of Cancer and calmly followed his aged Master, who moved at a slow pace even with the help of his cherry cane.

He had never been to the valleys Dohko intended to show him so he should let his guide take his time."Master, couldn't we have waited until morning?" he asked, looking at the moon and stars that had replaced the earlier rain.

"Absolutely not. The night is the better time for a Cloth like Karkinos, who is going to be your true teacher and partner in this lesson." He saw over his shoulder that the teenager was intrigued. "Ah, I've interested you, haven't I? I hope you have your knowledge of cosmos at the back of your head. This one is a toughie!"

Lance scoffed. Was he really not walking into an introspective trap that night? This was a breath of fresh hair to the no-nonsense Saint. He had to admit the usual lesson style of Dohko had its proven value, especially for someone who had so little respect for Sanctuary's teachers like the Cancer did, but sometimes they felt too much like pranks being pulled on him.

They walked around the lake as they left the grove, giving him a chance to stare at it for the first time since his little encounter with the supposed water God. He could now see more clearly through the now crystal-like water than before despite the darkness of the night. But the strange, creepy power that had been in place there when the Saint took the dive was not there. Roshi had said Seiryu only appeared now and then. Still, was that really a living God he encountered? He gulped. If only his Master knew Lance suspected this was not the first time he had an encounter of this nature.

"Roshi, why is it that I couldn't sense him?" he asked. "My 7th sense may be immature, but to the point of not noticing the cosmos of a god? I doubt it."

"Not all things in this world are reliant on the same power, Lance. Seiryu is an old creature... older than some of our Hellenic Gods." explained Dohko. "Though he hardly escapes something as universal as cosmos, his power, and that of his kin, is from a different mixture than what we are used to."

Some time passed and a deal of distance through the rocky tropical terrain was covered before they entered the mistier parts of the Rozan Mountain, where descents into clouded areas through which very little light of the moon penetrated into. The master stopped by one such descent and sat down.

He pointed at the fog with his cane. "This is where you must go. Within this area, you and your Cloth won't be disturbed by anyone. I won't follow you, either. Once deep inside, you must converse with Karkinos." He saw the apprehension in Lance's eyes. "Don't worry, nothing dangerous awaits you there. It's just a clouded area used for meditation where you can be at peace with your armor... unless you're afraid of ghosts, of course."

"Ghosts?" Since his master didn't seem interested in elaborating, the younger Saint nodded. "Okay, but... I gotta talk to my Gold Cloth? That's it?"

"No. Listen well, Lance. There is a number of basic capacities all Gold Saints learn. Some of them like martial arts or mastery of the unlocked 7th sense I can teach you. Others, like the techniques passed down by your House must be learned in communion with your Gold Cloth. No one but your armor could tell you how to obtain these... powers."

There was something strange about Dohko's speech. He seemed for some reason far more serious than usual and the youth could even detect preoccupation in his eyes. Lance narrowed his own. "Is something wrong, Master?"

The bearded man hastily shook his head. "No, not at all. I have faith in you."

"Faith?! What do you mean?"

Dohko's large eyes glanced at the armor on Lance's back. "Lately you've been doing well in your lessons. It has become easier for you to realize for yourself how to overcome the flaws you've been refusing to part with."

"I still fell off that rope, Master." Lance stated matter-of-factually.

"That is hardly the point! You've shown more capability of knowing yourself than you did when we first met, so you should also be able to judge for yourself what is wrong and what is right..."

"Master, you're not making any sense!"

Dohko cleared his throat. "You're right, allow me to be a bit clearer to you. Right now, the Cancer Cloth is going to talk to you about telekinesis, the ability of using cosmos or mental powers to move a foreign object without touching it." As expected, the mere mention of the supernatural skill caused Lance to widen his eyes. "Telekinesis is vital for Cancer Saints. They all must learn it if they want to take their first steps towards learning the Praesepe Underworld Arts."

"The what?!"

"Unfortunately, you could find yourself spending a couple of nights here which is why I asked you to pack the box with a blanket, food and water as well as that paper pad and pencil for exercising mind control." he saw the look on his student's face demanding explanations. He patted his leg, which is all he could reach, to reassure him "I'm afraid this is all I can tell you. Hopefully you'll understand the right choices to be made as Karkinos guides you. Once you're finished, come back and we'll have all that fighting your anxious for..."

With a nudge of his Chinese straw hat, Dohko then turned his back to the dumbfounded Cancer Saint, who had no choice but watch the master go back the way he came, leaving him with the Cloth Box on his back.

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

The Cancer Saint made his way through the fog, still completely taken aback by Dohko's strange speech and instructions. He had decided to follow them anyway, for maybe the crab armor would offer him more complete explanations. He reached a spot where the ground was softer and put down his things.

He looked around. The mist was so thick he could barely make out the ground. The only sources of light he had was the shimmering gold shine of the Cloth box. The howl of wind was heard every now and then and there was something damp and thick in the air he was breathing. What a nasty place. No wonder Dohko hinted at there being ghosts stories about it.

The first thing he did when he opened the Cloth Box was take out the blanket and covers he brought with him to lay out a makeshift bed and protect himself from the cold wind of the night. Karkinos, not much to his surprise, climbed out of the Box on his own and stood before him. The headpiece placed in front of its shell stared at him like an actual face.

"Do you mind explaining me... anything?"

"I think your master has done a good job at it, don't you? I'm going to teach you telekinesis and then I'll teach you the Sekishiki Meikai Ha, or Praesepe Underworld Wave, like I do with every Cancer Saint." Lance took out the note pad and pencil. "You won't be writing down anything, at least not in the way you're expecting, human."

"...You know my name."

"I do; it's just simpler to address you this way. You don't name toys you don't like, after all; it becomes far less of a disappointment when they inevitably fail you."

The owner of the Cancer Cloth grumbled. He had not many chances to talk to his Cloth since he was promoted to Gold Saint. During that week he spent in the 4th Temple before the ball at Kastoria and departing for China he had tried the Cloth on and even trained with it, but Karkinos has always kept silent, only speaking to him to berate him regarding his indecision towards whether or not accepting to be a student of Sanctuary once more.

This was, hence, the first time they were alone together and actually conversing, but Lance had already gotten the impression Karkinos didn't have the friendliest personality. What could he expect from a monster crab only famous among his race for having been curb stomped by Hercules? It probably did not have a high opinion of mortals.

"Even a loser like yourself, who was not born with the vision of spirits like Manigoldo and Sage, learning telekinesis won't be difficult. For a Saint to obtain that skill, he must merely apply the concept of creating a force outside the physical reach with the cosmos."

"How the hell do I do that?"

"By also making use of the Sixth Sense; Intuition!" explained the Cloth "You have used that to send mental messages and control the shape the fire takes in your Flame Attack, for example. Obtaining the minimal degree of telekinesis we need is basically a matter of removing the cosmos out of the equation."

Though insulted by the Cloth, Lance still widened the eyes at the example. Thank goodness! He thought he would have to learn some transcendental concept only a Lemurian could wrap his head around, but he only had to apply a skill he had learned by training his techniques and cosmos. "Oh, I see. It's simpler than I imagined."

"Is that so? Well, why don't you try it yourself?" dared Karkinos. "Write my true name on that piece of paper... without touching the pencil."

The saint nodded and focused his attention on the two objects in front of him. It should be an easy task of writing a small number of Greek letters... with his mind.

...Dear God, where did he even start?

He tried not to think things over too much and followed the Cloth's advice. He thought about the sensations he experienced whenever he would shape his cosmos into messages or attacks and tried to picture them applied to the small object. Then he burned his cosmos ever so slightly, causing a barely visible aura of white emerge around his object. It was time to do his job as a Saint and make the impossible happen.

The utter failure of making the pencil move was only matched by the awkward silence between warrior and armor.

He tried again, keeping his cosmos burning as little as possible just so he could attempt to somehow grasp the pencil. He felt his energy leaving his body and wrapping the object as delicately he could, but only managed to warm it up, not even making it tremble a little bit.

"Not so easy to make use of the sixth sense as much as the seventh, I presume?" Karkinos mocked. "I'm not surprised. It's typical of your race to make better use of power than brain."

A sigh denounced his frustration. "This is going to take a while..."

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

Countless hours of nightly practice followed in which the Saint would do absolutely nothing but try to make the pencil move with the same cosmos burning that had allowed him to send mental messages to others. It was impossible to tell how many times he had failed already, one failure more miserable and despairing than the last, but after so much headache and frustration the Saint was at least able to scratch off many wrong approaches to the matter at hand.

He realized now, for example, that the answer was not in the cosmos itself. Manifesting it to somehow take hold of the object had only resulted in him having nearly blasted it and ignited it more than once. He had to use some sort of method that did not make use of pure energy.

The thing that had worked best so far had been a combination of focusing really hard on picturing movement in the pencil while burning cosmos in his mind. He was sure he had been able to cause it to nudge a little with that strategy but the ghastly wind currents that blew now and then in that place had tricked him a bunch of times already.

After yet another failure, the Saint laid down his arms in exhaustion. "GODDAMNIT!"

A metal pincer snap was heard. "Such a simple thing... it sometimes shocks me how much difficulty mortals have with such a basic power. No wonder the Lemurians nearly conquered the world."

"Argh, I know I can do this! I almost had it before!" Lance insisted though, in truth, he was growing increasingly distraught. He had an idea and pointed his hand at the pencil. "I know the secret lies somewhere in projecting your thought, I can tell that. So, maybe, if I imagine I'm grabbing the pencil..."

Karkinos watched Lance closed his hand in the air several times while burning cosmos. "Not having power is frustrating, isn't it? Lemurians can do this before they learn communication."

"It's not my fault I wasn't born with marks on my brows, okay?!" Lance yelled, unable to focus with Karkinos dissing him all the time.

"It makes you think about things like traits and talent, doesn't it?" he commented as he watched Lance getting close to figuring telekinesis out as that newest theory of his seemed to be bearing fruit. "Humans have always been quick to speak of genes and luck to justify the strengths and weaknesses of others."

Somehow, Lance started feeling in his head the sensation he was 'grabbing' something. He concentrated as hard as he could and, to as a big smirk appeared on his face, the pencil lifted from the ground.

"Ah, I did it!" he celebrated, still making sure he didn't lose focus. "I knew the secret was in gestures! The Pope and Mu always seemed to make little hand gestures whenever they paralyzed me or moved stuff around, like some douche illusionist. I thought it was just to help them control the trajectory of the object, but its also a trick to help project the thought, isn't it? I bet now it's just a matter of using less and less cosmos until I don't use it at all. Now to write that name..."

At first the pencil smashed straight into the paper, but, sweating from his forehead with the mental effort and biting his lip, the Saint was able to control his new found skill hard enough to create the semblance of a writing motion in the object, always keeping a hand pointed at his and shaping gestures he would make if he were actually grasping the pencil.

He decided to answer Karkinos' rambling as he struggled to write the letters of the Cloth's name. "I don't know what the hell you're getting at with that talk. You don't need to make fun of my ineptitude. I do a good enough job at that myself."

"Yes, I saw your reaction when that woman Adriana told you about Sanctuary's culture." revealed the Cloth. "I'd say your disgust for Sanctuary's old but proven values was the only thing I've found interesting about you so far."

The red-eyed finished his task at much effort. He proudly looked at the telekinetic gibberish on the paper, which looked like a five-year old's scribble. "Here's your damn name. Look, I'm not interested in hearing you defending Sanctuary's beliefs-"

"You won't; I agree with you."

Lance blinked, losing his focus and causing the paper and pencil to fall on the floor. "...I'm sorry, what?"

The metal crab crossed its pincers, as if they were arms. "You may be inadequate, incompetent, and too thick-headed with the supernatural to make a proper Cancer, but I like an owner who believes in ambition and finding "opportunity"! it confessed. "I've lost count of the owners who've disappointed me with their lofty goals and dull minds over the centuries. Protecting Athena and their comrades has become a stock phrase on the lips of every mortal that swears communion with me and loyalty to the Pope."

"I thought those 'lofty goals' were your life purpose."

"Fool, the Praesepe Underworld Arts are something inherently evil; a perversion of nature! The powers I have to offer are not for the paladins of justice that the other Cloths claim to protect, but for those who think outside the puritan box the idealists defend so who are willing to take the step further in the path towards becoming truly powerful Saints."

"What the hell are the Underworld Arts, anyway?!" Lance demanded to know.

"My constellation sits on a special cluster in the sky, the Praesepe, which gives me the power to open the gate to the beyond!" It saw the look of horror in its owner eyes. "That's right, with the Sekishiki Meikai Ha, or Praesepe Underworld Wave, I can give you the power to control spiritual matter; manipulate the souls of the dead and enter the well to the Underworld! If you are willing of course..."

There was a moment of silence in which the suspicious Gold Saint squinted at the armor in front of him. What was Karkinos saying? It seemed a very strange way to incentive its owner to improve himself. Something wasn't right. "I came here to learn to become a Gold Saint and if that involves learning those Underworld Arts of yours then so be it."

"Very well" The Cancer Cloth raised its pincer to the sky, causing the wind to steadily calm down. He watched Karkinos glow with golden cosmos which then turned into a blue, spectral energy. "Let the souls of the dead surround us!"

The mist and the darkness of the night seemed to get more intense. Lance's mouth opened in awe as he saw what looked like several wisps of blue flames slowly become visible all around them. A large number of them seemed to be floating around his body.

He gasped and tried to swat them to no avail. "AGH! What?! What are these?"

Karkinos cackled for the first time since Lance met him, always finding sick amusement in his owners first reactions to spirits "This valley is filled with unmarked graves and spirits who've wondered the earth, slowly attracted to this place by Seiryu's looming presence. The sacredness of this mountain is like a lighthouse to lost souls and the Dragon's brimming life force a setting sun for them to follow in the mist. Go on, use your telekinesis to take hold of one."

Lance calmed down and obeyed, applying his earlier achievement to one of the many dancing will-o-wisps that for some reason hovered him closely. It was surprisingly easier to take hold of and move around and the inexperienced Cancer Saint was even able to make it twirl around his arm up to his palm. He watched it flare up brightly in his hand, illuminating his face with pale blue light.

"I did it... This is... a dead soul!" He gulped. "If I hadn't grown out of it I'd say this looks like witchcraft!"

"Lost souls have little to no will of their own anymore, making them easy prey to initiates to the Path of the Cancer Cloth. Souls from living beings, especially warrior-like ones, have much stronger will much harder to submit."

"I can do this to a living person?!" Horror paled the face of the Saint as he imagined ripping people's souls away from their vessels with but a hand wave.

Karkinos was quick to answer. "Do not think foulness of me! This is my art, the power I have to offer my owners! It is as noble as a golden arrow and as holy as a sacred blade. My Path is that of mastering the Sekishiki Arts and serving Athena with the power of the Underworld Gate. With the Sekishiki Meikai Ha you may tear the souls of the innocent, yes, but you may also set free the tortured spirits of the unfortunate, such as the ones Hades tortures and his Specters enslave, and offer them the rightful path to the Afterlife."

Having put things into perspective by his armor, Lance's outrage subsided. "Oh, I see... that makes sense." He then recalled the Shaman Specter he and Shinta encountered in Arcadia and whom Shinta had later on told Lance that used spirits as his playthings in combat. Had he been a Cancer Saint then with the Underworld Wave he'd probably be able to nullify Shaman's attacks and even set the tormented souls he used free.

Still, something else bothered him. "Why are these ones so close to me?!"

"It's obviously because you must have meant something to their deaths. Lingering spirits who hover around a human tend to be tormented creatures who suffered painful, tragic deaths that you've been present at or played a role in. Some humans have claimed to feel the presence of lost loved ones after their death when alone, not knowing their spirits loomed them until they found their way to the Afterlife. If you've faced the misery a Saint usually faces, it is normal you've come to stockpile quite a collection of them over the years." Karkinos then suggested something. "Try to use your 7th sense. Since cosmos is derived from willpower and the soul, it follows one after death. With the seventh, you should be able to see if any of the souls following you have unlocked their cosmos in their lifetime, meaning they were Saints."

Lance expanded his immature 7th sense as much as he could to see if he could detect any cosmos on them. As expected, while most did not give off any, he soon started sensing many tiny stars of different intensity and color in the spirits close to him, denouncing them as Saints.

"Have so many people died around me?... I had no idea." he admitted. It was a terrible realization to make. The flare in his hand then started glowing with a brighter blue. Lance probed it with his seventh sense and his face went pale.

"Someone you recognize?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Well, yes, but I didn't know him. He was one of the Bronze Saints the Pope used to send to follow me around. He was killed by a murderer I once battled before I could do anything about it." He explained. "I had no idea his soul was just lingering around me to this day..."

"How did he perish?"

Lance's mind rushed back to Death Queen Island...

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

YOU FUCKING MONSTER! Fight me! I'm the one who let you down! I'm the one you're supposed to be angry at; not him! That guy came here to save you! What the fuck do you think you're DOING?!"

I told you, Lance; I'm bringing this world straight to hell!"

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

"He got stabbed...very badly. Given the situation that was at hand...I suppose there's some logic as to why he might have thought I could have done something about it." The Saint shook his head to dispel the bad memories. "How can I make this go away?! How can I set them free?"

Lance then sensed the Cloth targeting its own constellation in the sky with mental powers and cosmos. "The Meikai Ha is the most basic Underworld Art of all, for it allows you simple movement of spiritual matter, such as a lost soul. Knowing how to use it means you can accomplish most tasks expected from a Cancer Saint." It opened the gate to the Underworld amidst the stars of its constellation and gestured Lance to send the spirits on their way. With a wave of his hand, the Gold Saint made all those lost spirits fly off his body and in the direction of the constellation. Once launched they seemed to find the direction towards the gate on their own, as if caught by its gravitas. "You did well. More can be learned back at the Cancer Temple but for now the Meikai Ha, or Underworld Wave, is yours."

The whole matter left the Saint depressed. He was glad he didn't have to delve more into Karkinos' Arts for the time being, but seeing all those spirits floating around him painted such a picture of his past. He felt no regret for any of their deaths, including that of the Saint he mentioned to Karkinos, for he did not recall ever causing them, but the sheer fact that he was present in so many of them to the point of those spirits having chosen him as an anchor to the living world made him think about the life of battle he's led.

Lance helped Karkinos back inside its Box and packed things so he could get back. He didn't think Roshi was worried or anything, but he didn't feel like staying in that creepy valley anymore, either.

"Should I consider my communion with you a success?" Lance suddenly felt like joking.

There was a strange pause of silence from Karkinos. "You think one good night amounts to all I have in store? Foolish human... This was just the tip of the iceberg of what a Gold Cloth teaches its Saint over the years. You have no idea what you have yet to learn..."

The Saint mused in concordance, but kept his thoughts on this to himself. Dohko would most likely be expecting an answer to what happened during his time in that valley and what things Karkinos told him about. He had the funniest feeling the wise, mystic old master knew far more than he let on when they separated. He would be sure to interrogate Roshi as soon as he got back. For then he focused on the task at hand of not getting lost trying to find his way out of the valley.

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

At dawn...

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The old Master stretched his arms as he sat down on the porch of his house, bamboo cup of tea in hand and faithful Ma Chao circling around next to him in search for a good resting position on the quasi-wooden petted the beast and wondered to himself how long it would be before he saw his new student again. It had only been one night and the trials he predicted for his student were not life-threatening but Athena knew what kind of argument could spark between his pigheaded pupil and a Cloth like Karkinos.

He amused himself imagining such all the trouble Lance was probably going through, picturing the spark being a combination of the student's stubbornness and lack of comfort with anything supernatural with the armor precise mastery of everything Lance has difficulty with. Quite honestly the Greek youth couldn't have asked for a worse birth date. His set of talents were clearly meant for a Leo, a Scorpio or even a Libra Saint.

However, the old masters eyes spotted the student heading the path up to his house visibly tired, covered in dirt and carrying broken bamboo for the fireplace.

"Ha, Lance, you're back. I see you've given up on becoming a Gold Saint and resigned yourself to your fate as a lumberjack! A fine profession, indeed! Though the Canadian Rocky Mountains training ground would probably be more fit for you now than the lush groves of the Sacred Mountain, I suppose there are a few lessons on wood chopping I can give you to better serve Athena with now that you've taken the path of the axe."

The most sarcastic laughter Dohko's ever witnessed was heard. "Actually, I just stored the Gold Cloth inside two hours ago while you were sleeping." He saw Roshi release an 'aw' of distraught. "I'm sorry for disappointing you." The tiger immediately started snarling on Lance's proximity. "Hello to you, too, Ma Chao."

The Master petted the tiger to calm it down. "So, have you mastered the art of chocking people with your mind?"

"I could do that?!" The student wondered if Dohko was serious or was just joking around with the absurdity surrounding telekinesis. "Well, I don't think I'll be need to pick stuff off the ground anymore. I can only do very little, too."

"...What about the souls of the dead?"

Lance took note of Dohko's ironic stressing of the sentence. He put down the bamboo he gathered and sat by the Master. "I've...had an interesting experience with that, too. I had no idea the Cancer House was so...different."

"That's what I've always said about Cancer Saints. I mean, Manigoldo was manageable but Deathtoll, the one before him, he was one for the books!" Dohko laughed out loud as he recalled the time when Tenma tricked Deathtoll into falling victim to his own magic coffin. "Talk about putting the nails in your own coffin! YOHOHOH!"

As the Master laughed on at some old nostalgic joke, the student took his own finger and recited. "Sekishiki Meikai Ha!" He created a telekinetic pulse that gathered the nearby spirits. Dohko's laughter ceased as he saw many transparent little embers pop out of thin air and gather around Lance's index finger. With a flick of it, lance then send the condensed gathering of souls into the Cancer cluster. "Is this what I'm going to be doing; messing around with dead people and be the town's creepy cemetery guy?"

"Amongst other things. I do believe the Cancer House has a fine tradition of wall decorating."

"I don't even want to find out what you mean by that, Master..."

"So... what do you think of your Cloth?" asked Dohko, changing the subject out of the blue and basically blurting out that he knew Karkinos would surprise his student. "How was it to converse with a creature who went up against Hercules himself?"

The long, red hard stare he got was the start of Lance's answer. "It was enlightening. He spoke in manners most fascinating. He seems to have a strange admiration towards Saints with strong ambition." Lance saw the master walk away to the grove. He followed. "Something you already knew, right?"

"Perhaps."

The folding of arms stressed Lance's interrogation. "I bet you knew more."

"Yes, maybe."

Lance 'oh'ed ironically. "Would you mind to tell me about that 'more', Master?"

Dohko reflected for only a second before frowning unpleasantly. "Hmm, no, I don't think so."

Lance coughed to his hand. "Master, with all due respect, I'm going to have to ask you to be a little more sincere than you usually are, because I get the feeling that last night you just threw me at live rounds while telling me they were paint. Am I wrong?"

They followed a trail up the plateau the waterfall collapsed from and entered one of the many natural rock protrusions that overlooked the lake. This one crossed over it entirely to the other side, fusing into the wall, like a bridge. Lance looked down and noticed how high they were. He could only spot Ma Chao at the house's porch as a tiny white cat.

"This is Dragon Bridge, a sacred spot in my Training Ground used for sparring." explained Dohko. "The narrowness of this path allows the fighter's awareness of his surroundings to be tested at the same time his battle skill is, for without it, he will fall off."

"You're dodging the question, Master."

"Yes, Lance, I do believe I am the Master, yet you question me." Dohko suddenly confronted. "I will enlighten you before our spar, at the cost of a handicap."

"What handica-AGH! SON OF A BITCH!" Lance screamed as he felt something wooden whack at his leg from behind despite the fact that Dohko remained seemingly still in front of him. He fell to his knee in anguish. "God damn it, Master! What was that for?!"

"Nice response. Before you would have cursed longer and louder, cast more hateful glares and even take threatening steps towards me. I see yesterday's bucket lesson really taught you to deal with your angers symptoms better, even if it did not diminished it."

"What the heck does that have to do with anything?" demanded Lance to know as he rubbed his pain.

"It means you are ready to start learning a Rozan Style Martial Art." he announced. "It also means I truly prepared you well for Karkinos, because you see, Lance" Dohko then straightened up and rested hands on his cane, as if he was about to admit some shameful secret. "I have been keeping a few things from you."

Red eyes rolled.

"I know, it is shocking and shameful of me! And you, who had no idea!"

"Master, please, please cut the act..." he begged. "What is going on with Karkinos? Why have you been acting so strange about him? I took the trouble to store him properly so I could talk to you without him nearby so tell me what was last night about. Why all of this goddamn theater?!"

"Shion never told you why the Cancer House was vacant, did he?"

Lance took a moment to answer. "I...No, I guess he did not."

"Listen to me carefully, Lance. What I'm about to tell you should answer you a couple of questions about your house and why the Gold Saints were probably so resistant to your promotion. It is not something that should be made public to those outside the Gold Saint circle." he explained. "You see, while most Cloths have you endure the path to them prior to obtaining, Gold Cloths are differ from the remainder in the fact that they do precisely the opposite; bonding and growing with the Cloth starts after you become a Gold Saint."

This surprised Lance, being legitimately new to him. "They do?... How long is that process?"

"Who knows... it could take a couple of years, it could take a lifetime. Everyday I still learn new things in communion with Libra and I've been its Saint for two centuries. Most Gold Saints don't ever actually fulfill their full potential as bearers of these armors. Some who don't maintain themselves up to the Cloth's standards could be abandoned, forsaken as owners, at any moment! Gold Cloths are, by far, the most testing of the three divisions to be an owner of."

Taken aback by this revelation, the Cancer Saint started seeing new sense in things he had noticed overtime. "I see...So that's why Pegasus is so... complacent and supportive? To him I've been fully tested since I first got him while with Karkinos I'm just starting?"

"In a way, yes. To bond with a Cloth is a process of unlocking its potential and receiving its protection, but even the unluckiest man has the protection of his zodiac as soon as he's born. That is why the Path of the Gold Cloth is strictly for potential purposes and why it usually takes place after you obtain it."

"So Karkinos last night was testing me, somehow?!"

"Oh, my dear boy, Cancer was doing far more than testing you, trust me." Dohko warned. "You've certainly noticed it yourself. Did he sound strangely as he spoke of what he had to offer? Did he belittle your power while at the same time talking of how grand you could become under its guidance? I imagine he spoke to you of grander things awaiting you by the Underworld well."

The pensive Saint fell silent as he realized the sense and implication in Dohko's guess. "Yes, yes he has. I thought he was just... testing me somehow. Have I done something wrong? Did he try to trick me or something? What was that all about?"

"Those doubts are a good thing. If you had fallen for his song you would have more confidence for the future of your Path and you wouldn't be asking so many questions."

"He kept talking to me about birthright and power. What did he mean? Was he trying to manipulate me?"

Dohko hesitated in his wording, stroking his beard as he tried to work out a way to explain things to his student. "Fourteen years ago there was a massacre in the Golden Zodiac. A nightly killing spree that still haunts the Gold Saints of the Civil War generation to this day. In it, almost two dozen innocent people were slaughtered like cattle by the Saint of Cancer immediately preceding you." he revealed before allowing Lance a moment to let that information sink in. "I never met the Saint who conducted that vile act, but Shion told me enough to realize what happened; your predecessor let power get to his head. He was driven mad by his own greed and forgot all the anchors that made him human."

"What? I...I had no idea!" he confessed, thought a more stressing realization followed which demanded clarification. "Was it because of Karkinos?"

"Who can tell? All that it is known is that Saints who aren't prepare to handle the Cloth you've inherited have shown to be imbalanced and disturbed. Maybe it has to do with the nature of the techniques Karkinos teaches you or maybe it has to do with the Cloth itself. Deathtoll, the coffin maniac I spoke of earlier, was a good example of someone not... adequate for the job. Manigoldo on the other hand, despite his violent tendencies, proved himself a heroic and resolute Gold Saint. I feared for you because I was aware of the ghosts haunting that armor and what you could have been confronted with."

Dohko continued. "At the same time it was not my place to interfere in another Gold Saint's communion with his own Cloth, especially since my knowledge of it is limited to what my former comrades have allowed themselves to reveal to me in conversation. Many proper Gold Saints of Cancer have appeared over the years, some even becoming Popes. I wanted to prepare you but, at the same time, I was limited by honor and duty while only having assumptions and rumors to go on by."

Lance walked around in circles, rubbing his chin as he absorbed all the info and reflected on its implications. He thought back on the election that made him Gold Saint. "Did the others knew about this? Did all of this weigh against me in their choice?" he wondered. Sweat ran down his temple. "I have to admit... I'm not sure I'd handle a cloth like this to a guy like me..."

"I knew I'd sooner or later have to leave you alone with your Cloth and I wanted to prepare you the best way I could." clarified Dohko. "I had you confront your weaknesses, realize your flaws and work around your limitations so that when your character was put at test by him... you'd make the right choice."

"So you launched rockets at me, hired thugs to attack me, installed traps everywhere I went, turned meaningless chores into self-realization tests, made me do laundry and tested my patience time and time again so you could harden my character for all this?!"

Dohko nodded.

"WOW! I..." Lance grabbed his heated head, overwhelmed. "I got no freaking clue whether to thank you or punch someone in the face! God damn IT! So I'm just gonna have to watch my back around my Cloth all the time?" Another nod from Dohko. "I knew it! I knew it was too good to be true! I knew it was too much goddamn of a dream for the Gold Cloth to just fall on my lap like I rubbed a lamp or something...So I guess I'll just bring the cursed talisman of corruption of Sanctuary to battle from now on. Let's hope I'm not the kind of guy who snaps and tries to kill everyone!"

"If it's any comfort I think you've passed your first test with flying colors."

Lance scoffed. "Well, I don't know if Karkinos really was trying to seduce me yesterday." he confessed. "But if he thinks I intend to make a career out of necromancy he's mistaken. I have no intention of using the Underworld Wave that way. I'm not even that good at using it."

"Excellent! I'm glad I can entrust you with further teachings since I was honestly expecting you to come back all excited about what Karkinos had left to teach you and putting people's faces on walls."

"He wants to turn me into an exorcist, not a goddamn skinner."

Dohko laughed, thought this time Lance had no idea what the joke was. "He sure does! Anyway, are you ready to spar or what? It's about time I start showing you what it really means to fight!"

"Master, no offense, I know you can somehow hit me with that cane without me even noticing your movements, but I hardly think you have the... proper physique for me to engage in prolonged practice... Master?"

Dohko didn't answer. In fact, he remained perfectly still after taking a deep breath and invoking golden cosmos that enveloped him in a fine, superficial aura of energy. The elder kept burning his energy and silence filled the area asides from the rumbling of the waterfall. Dohko's cosmos expanded, causing an illusion of a deep space background around them to manifest.

A sudden roar was heard and Lance had the sudden impulse of screaming and stepping back as if an actual tiger had appeared out of nowhere. He took hold of himself and realized there was no beast. Dohko's cosmos had just flared up and evoked the sensation of a large feline attacking.

Lance got worried when the Master dropped his cane and hat. "Roshi, what's going on?! What are you doing?!" he suddenly saw his Master's body pulsating, convulsing and opening a crack of light in his large, bald head. "MASTER!" He rushed to Dohko's aid but a sudden outburst of power knocked him away to the stone floor. Lance didn't even have time to pull himself together before his immature 7th sense suddenly spiked in alertness as it detected the power surge in front of the youth.

The crack on Dohko's head shattered forward, like an enormous egg of light, pouring out bright golden cosmos. The constellation of Libra shined in the illusionist background of the old Gold Saint and his purple body collapsed completely like a discarded shell, allowing the body of power within to emerge and rise.

The humanoid flare stood up, stretching out limbs and expelling the old clothes of the Master with a mere energy wave. Its shape consolidated further, shaping muscles, fingers and flowing hair. Yet another tiger roar was heard as a tattoo of one's head burned itself on the shining figure's back. The light emanated and the background faded away, leaving behind a fully grown teenager.

Red eyes widened in absolute shock and Lance's jaw dropped lower than it ever had in his entire life. Standing before him was not Dohko the old, shriveled, white bearded, purple skinned geezer but a young man, very healthy and muscular at that, with brown eyes, jaw length brown hair and tanned skin worthy of a Greek Myth figure. His smile was one of cockiness and giggling at the lock on his student's face and his cosmos was of a burning, ferocious and impulsive brilliance that was unlike the hidden, wise power Lance was used to.

"Ah, the wind feels great on my skin. My body pulses with excitement. I feel my blood flowing again!" he declared. "Now, for the first time in an eternity, I am become Dohko, Gold Saint of Libra!"

With this announcement, a star flared at the distance, somewhere between the far off mountains, a wheezing sound of a flying object was heard and the Libra Gold Cloth Box crashed in front of him like a shooting star, putting itself at its owner's service.

"W-w-what the fuck?! What the hell is going on?!" Lance practically screamed.

"Lance, now that my heart no longer beats just once a year, the technique Misopheta Menos is canceled and I am returned to my youthful, dashing, 18-years old body!"

"PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!"

"My nudity will be the least of your concerns, student!" said the master as he opened the lid of his Cloth box and pulled out the armor. "For you see, now it is my turn!"

Lance raised a brow. "Your turn of what?"

Dohko grinned malevolently. "Of that punching game we were playing earlier!"

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Chapter End

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Next Chapter: The Rising Dragon

Description: Libra Dohko speaks to Lance of the fighting techniques he has to offer, including a very special one that he believes his student might be interested in.

Author Note: Lance's training under Dohko in the Second Version glossed over many important stuff that would later form pivotal plot elements in the Third Arc, namely Rozan Mythology (Seiryu and such) and the Cancer Cloth's Path. It was all sparsely seeded throughout the Second Arc and only given a sufficiently thorough approach during the Third. I didn't want to delve too deeply into any of these things both due to overstretching and simply not being the time for that, but at the same time it was the perfect opportunity to set some casual groundwork.

I think I managed to handle Dohko a little better this chapter. Last time I had to ask Jenny for help, but now I think I was able to maintain his character without anyone's help. In any way, now begins the next phase of his characterization, namely showing the young Dohko everyone loves kick the main characters ass through and through.

I'd like to give Redemmo a thank you for his hindsight. It will probably be a while before I can really crackdown on some of the problems he mentioned in the earlier chapters, but for now he deserves a mention.