Notable OCs: Pegasus Lance's Saint Generation, Civil War Saint Generation, World War Saint Generation, Daemon Lucifer's Specters, Maiden Elisa, Priam's Black Saints, Cerulean Refugees,
Notable Original Concepts: Mount Olympus Training Ground, Sanctuary Court, Teos Cloth, Athenian Empire mythology, Isle of Gardens, Stardust Prison, Hades' Dark Princes, Desert Beyond, Sanctuary Town Layout & Buildings
Recurring/Cameo OCs of Jenny DeVic: Mrs. Schafurwatt, Cyrus
Recurring/Cameo Concepts of Jenny DeVic: Great Bodyguard Legend, Golden Line Heritage, Sanctuary Orphanages, Andromeda Island's Geography & Tests, Sanctuary Nobility, 88 Knights Festival
Author Notes:
-Lance's Role Version 3 has now passed the 10,000 hits hallmark. Thank you all so much \(^o^) /
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Please enjoy and review (^_^
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I lost.
Yesterday was the 'Day of Judgement.' Michael and I walked into the arena that the Specters built before Giudecca to fight for the Dark Angel Surplice and the Celestial Star of Absolutism. I was so sure I would win, I was fighting a weakling. What went wrong?!
The battle started so wonderfully. I immediately overwhelmed Michael with my superior strength, my superior power, my superior speed… he almost seemed unwilling to resist, taking my attacks and pleading over and over to stop and talk to the Emperor, like he has for months. I thought he knew he would lose and was whimpering his way out of his situation, like he always has, running to the skirt of Pandora when the pressure was on.
But I was wrong… he was trying to 'spare' me! His eyes bled darkly with the cursed magic of Hypnos' teachings and… he crushed me.
I've never felt so 'humiliated' in my life! This scrub, this plebeian, this vulgar from the ghetto of Munich beat me, the rightful heir to greatest bloodline to ever rule Sanctuary! How could this have happened?! I've always been the mightiest, the hardest worker and the fiercest warrior! The Judges trembled before my determination to become the greatest Specter the Underworld had ever seen or ever will see!
And now… I am going to die. Neither the Emperor nor Thanatos will spare me. I saw the looks they gave me when my head raised from the bloody sand. Only one Prince will rule the Specters. And it won't be me. I don't even know why I'm writing this down.
Even the pain of the wounds from the fight doesn't seem to bother me. Instead, my heart beats without slowing. Tomorrow no longer feels like a day I will seize for conquest and strength. I will never beat the Gold Saints, I will never conquer Sanctuary, and I will never slay the Godslayer.
By the Gods… is this what fear feels like?"
-Fifth entry from Lucifer's first journal, dated 13th of July of 1503
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A Week Later
Surface
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The morning hours had just arrived. Just a few kilometers away from Pandora's castle, in a tightened valley on the road towards Sanctuary territory, activity flurried all around with men in boney black armor moving back and forth carrying sacks of materials, weaponry and stocks on their back. It was a cleared area in an otherwise forested path, but this was not the most important aspect of it.
The Worm False Specter, Samuel, rushed ahead and marked a long line on the ground with a sudden whip of his long tentacles. "This is the edge of Hades' barrier. Don't move beyond here if you don't wanna be easy targets for Sanctuary scouts!"
Just behind, Cyclops Balgo, towering above the men, pointed ahead and commanded the Skeletons. "Set the construction site here! Follow the blueprint to the letter and do not let the ballista ammunition out of sight!" He turned to another team. "Get the cement machine going and don't waste time! Lord Lucifer wants the walls raised by nightfall!"
The dozens of False Skeletons, personally picked by their respective False Specter Lords, began working immediately, employing cosmos as much as possible to get the smaller tasks done quickly and the heavier materials carried in no effort at all. A small space no bigger than a few dozen meters was left between the premises of the outpost and the edge marked by Worm Samuel. It was deliberately intended to let the enemy enter so they would be forced to fight within the influence of Hades' barrier if they wanted to get close to the fortification. The foundation pavement began to be immediately formed with pre-fabricated parts brought over with super strength from the Underworld.
Cyclops' intentions of getting the outpost built by nightfall were not totally irrational; not only did cosmos and pre-fabrication allow construction phases to be done much faster, but it was dangerous to stay in the dark guarding an incomplete fort, even one made with stardust linings inside its walls. Much like Peloponnesia, the walls were intended mostly to defend against surprise attacks, as there was not enough stardust in the world to make fully reinforced defenses, like those of the ancient Cepheus Castle from the very first Holy War on Andromeda Island, at one's convenience. A weaker ring would be built in the outer section while a stronger inner circle would be the one to be used more traditionally.
One of the Skeleton Soldiers dropped the large set of long bolts with menacing jagged arrow tips of steel in a spot where the open space of the outpost would be. Each one of them had a rope attached to their tail.
No one wanted to contradict the Cyclops, but some were unaware of why they brought along these archaic things. "Lord Balgo, what good are these gonna do?"
"Do you see any enemy fort closeby? Do you see any hoplites heading against us in close formation?" Balgo asked, to which he got a nervous head shake. "Exactly, and there won't because any focused or stationary target that is placed close to this new outpost will be shot down by these!"
"B-but they're just-"
The False Specter then picked up one of the ballista bolts and showed off the heavy steel tip, which was, in the morning sunlight shining with fragile filaments of stardust like the ones they would see in shackles used on Cosmos users. "These aren't meant to kill Saints, they're meant to break enemy formations and camps, to discourage concentrated attacks! Stardust absorbs the energy of gunpowder sparks, so we have to use blunt weaponry! Three kilograms of iron and wood launched with a stardust-laced tip and your hoplite armor is punched through like paper!"
Looking at the ammunition with a new perspective, the Skeleton Soldier nodded in accord. "Oh, I see, that makes sense." He then lifted one up to show the rope attached to it. "And the ballista winches will pull them back after launch, so we can reuse the stardust bolts. The powder is precious after all. This is pretty smart-"
"THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING ASKING QUESTIONS?!" roared Cyclops Balgo, staggering him. "Don't place the ballistas in the outer wall, place them in the inner bailey's roof once the walls are finished, understand?! NOW GET TO WORK!" he roared, wishing he could just throw these idiots at the tasks to get them done quicker.
"Y-yes, Lord Cyclops!" the Skeleton then scurried off and went to help the others set down the massive pavement piece they carried from Pandora's castle correctly so they could get started working on the walls as soon as possible.
Worm Samuel and Bat Brune joined him. "We should have brought Treble," Bat complained, referring to the Golem Specter. "He would have flown all the materials at once with his Rolling Bomber Stone."
"He would have also smashed them on the floor with it, heh, heh!" commented Samuel. The crystal eyes on his tentacles suddenly turned to the outside. "Something tells me the Saints are already watching us."
The yellow eye on Balgo's helmet shined brightly, turning on the Eye of Argeus which surveyed the far off forested fields. "I don't see anything… but I doubt it will stay this way for long."
"What do you all think of the Prince's plan?"
Cyclops gritted teeth. "He's mad… but not madder than we were when we took Hades' contract to become this way, if I really think about it." he reluctantly confessed. He then raised and tightened his fist, remembering the sensation of trying to hit the man over and over with Polyphemus Knuckle and only ending up injuring himself. "And if anyone can pull it off… it's that monster."
One of Samuel's tentacles picked up a rock with its finger-like metal tendrils and smashed it to pebble and dust. "I just want to smother some Saints. I'll work my despair out just with that!"
Cyclops snorted at this and walked off. While Worm could care less, Bat Brune thought there was something weird to this and followed him. "Hey, Balgo, can I ask you something?"
"What is it?!" the large man snapped, trying to look over the work being done around them.
The dark-green armored False Specter recalled the day they tried to revolt against Lucifer. "The others and I were wondering about something… when the Prince caught you in that… technique or spell… Eternal Darkness? What the heck was that about? I'm only asking cause you've been acting weird since."
As if a cloud had covered the sun, the brute's face went pale. His curled fist trembled, beads of sweat formed in his face and the atmosphere seemed to get heavy. A passing cloud blotted the sun, temporarily darkening the valley, and the shorter Specter could swear he heard Cyclops whisper something incoherently.
The Bat False Specter blinked. "Hey, what's wrong? What did I say?"
This time the mumbling was more audible. "It was… just like the name…. Darkness…. Eternal, never-ending... d-darkness." the red-armored man's eyes locked on the ground. "I felt like… I was drowning…like a monster was swallowing me up! And thousands of hands were grabbing me, tearing me to pieces... And then I saw them…! I saw them all!" he revealed, referring to his worst nightmares, the monsters in his head.
Bat blinked. "What?"
Shaking like he was about to explode, Cyclops suddenly roared and punched a passing Skeleton Soldier, tossing him straight to a pile of materials. "EVERY ONE OF YOU WORK FASTER!" he screamed to the skies, flailing his arms.
Activity accelerated immediately, and labor continued on the site throughout the day, with the Skeletons trying to do their best without drawing the ire of their False Specter masters. However, not far away from the edge of Hades' barrier border, deep through the forested woods that the Cyclops' great eye looked through was a man in camouflage, silver-tinted lamellar armor. His cosmos dropped to a minimum to evade detection by the enemy as he laid on the ground with a cover of leaves over himself and discreetly took notes from what he saw through his binoculars.
Suspicions were correct; while a Cyclops Saint had not been seen for over a year in the region, the Herculean Guard member had done well to take precautions against his 'Eye of Argeus', an obscure ability from his Surplice that was seldom ever witnessed in use due to Terrestrial Stars' low survival rates in conflict with the Gold Saints. He would have to wait a while for a chance to safely leave, but it was safe to say he could report to his superiors that Hades was on the move.
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Austria, Peloponnesia Fortress
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Having returned to their base, the scouting party of nine out of the twelve Herculean Guards rushed through the inner drilling field towards the main castle. The foot soldiers moved out of the way the important group of elite soldiers who were recognizable by the silver tint of their lamellar and the Herculean Labours engraved on their backpacked tower shields. They headed straight to the war room of the Fort Commander, where the sounds of discussion were already heard from.
The lead, namely the Nemean Herculean Guard, knocked on the wooden, iron-barred door and was allowed inside by the guards. The scene they found was of the tall, eagle-eyed commander bashing hands on the table and shouting at their Master. "Saint Aguilon, how many more days will you delay the assaults?! I didn't bring you here to rest on your laurels!"
But the gigantic, aged man of grizzly scars scoffed and flipped the pages of his newspaper. "When I get the intel I need."
Ionia was livid. "How much more do you need?!" he roared, pointing at the black knight chesspiece he set on the map spot that the Earthly Castle was on. "The reports from my soldiers are clear! Hades and his Specters are on the move again and they will target Athena's people NEXT!"
The giant rolled his eyes and folded his newspaper. "Pipe it down, will you? I wanna hear my own men on this first, Ionia, not your harsh-eyed reports." He noticed his subordinates. "So? Come on in. Tell me the bad news."
The men looked at one another wondering who was brave enough to enter the war room. Centered by a wooden table standing on a bear pelt carpet and with a map and wine glasses on top, the room had unlit candelabras on the walls, a large curtained window overlooking the square fort's inner grounds and a place in the back that would lead up to Ionia's central office. The man himself stood up by the table and eyed the sitting Silver Saint in a fury, wondering when he would get up and storm Hades' heartland like a worthy war hero.
The Nemean Herculean Guard, who had a helmet vaguely shaped like a lion's face and a particular cape like a feline hide, banged his muscled arm on his chest and bowed his head. "The reports have been confirmed; we've spotted up to three Specters and dozens of Skeletons building an outpost at the edge of the enemy's barrier projection. They were carrying materials… wagons of cemented brick, steel bars, wheeled carts and, most importantly, ballista bolts."
Aguilon clicked his tongue. "Well, this can only mean one thing…"
Ionia rested hands in thighs and scoffed out loud in triumph. "Ah! And there it is!" He then pointed at the map laid on the table, where he moved a chess piece of a black knight representing the extent of Hades' control further down southeast, in their direction. "I leave to attend to my other responsibilities, and I come back to find the fortress I exhausted myself shaping up into a real military camp laxing off on the enemy!"
Aguilon eyed him like he was an idiot. "And whose fault is that, Ionia? You moved all your undesirable soldiers from here to Elba, remember? The fort was bound to lose effectiveness."
But the commander stood indignant before this accusation. "... They were underperforming! I took them to Elda Island to retrain them!"
Aguilon set the newspaper aside and pointed his giant finger at him. "Ah, not that red-headed girl, right? I saw her scores on the training field…. You mean to tell me the candidate that was the top of her squad was underperforming?" But he then shook his head, remembering his own days earning the post. "If I had tossed the javelin at that distance that accurately I would have made it Silver years earlier."
Ionia's grizzled face went red. "...Are you questioning my judgment?!"
The enormous Silver Saint nodded and widened eyes mockingly, unimpressed by Ionia's glare. "Oh yeah, buddy. Don't think I don't know how you've been torturing the girl with training to try to force her to flunk out!" He then laughed straight at his face. "Ah, ah, ah! If you had half the experience you claim you do, you'd tell you were only pressing her into a diamond. Isn't that ironi-"
His arm swept aside, knocking a wine cup on the table to the ground. "I know a worm when I see her!"
The room went tensely quiet. Aguilon scratched his scarred chin. There was no getting through to this guy. Ionia was a fearsome trainer aside from being a renowned army veteran. No one, even Aguilon, could deny that Peloponnesia was running like clockwork since he took control. The Fort Commander was, however, also profoundly misogynistic in addition to his already cruel attitude to trainees. You either came out on top under his regimen as a five-star recruit that's ready to run for Papal Guard, or you failed in the most humiliatingly way possible and got tossed down as a lowly foot soldier with the shame mark of having been booted by the 'Grey Hawk' himself.
The young girl Alexis had survived his trials and he showed nothing but contempt for her. Aguilon only had tidbits from Cynthia to piece together, as the red-head was too introverted to give out any of her own during their short time together, but apparently she had been at the center of some scuffle between Ionia and none other than Pegasus Lance.
"Seems like whenever there is trouble, I hear his name pinned to it." he thought to himself, though it could just be that Ionia didn't like the idea of a teenage girl getting ahead of her male peers. The armored giant picked up the chalice and set it back in place. "Don't waste wine, Ionia, or I'll hammer you down to the floor…"
The Herculean Guard interrupted the conversation before it escalated further. "We've also confirmed the Specter's incursion into the Alps, Lord," Nemean confirmed. "None returned."
This seemed to put the Silver Saint and the Fort Commander at ease. "Well, at least we have friends there who don't hesitate to put the Specters to the sword!" Ionia commented, who then glared at the Herakles Saint. "Unlike so-called war heroes who tell me they wish to take a leave on account of a letter. First, we lose Ismara, and now the Specters consolidate their main border! What's next, an invasion?!"
Herakles Aguilon irked. Dealing with Ionia was never easy, and he was, as usual, exaggerating the threat at hand. The Silver Saint had been on board with his rants when it was clear that the Specters were conducting relentless attacks, like when they destroyed the Ismara fort as mentioned and were chasing innocent women through the woods, but now they were talking about them setting up camp within their own land.
It wasn't that Aguilon was naive enough not to interpret this as sign of alarm, quite the contrary; the construction of a border outpost was obviously a stepping stone to some more significant operation, but Peloponnesia itself had hundreds of hoplites, ever more sophisticated defenses and Silver Saints stationed at it, so it wasn't exactly a pushover fortress. It would take a lot more than a handful of cowardly Specters who didn't dare to step outside their barrier to justify a risky move, especially after Aguilon killed their Judge and likely set them on full guard.
He should have listened to Cynthia and not have entertained this guy's delusions of hostility. "The people that killed those Specters are hardly our friends, Grey Hawk, keep that in mind." The Silver Saint warned, having been to the parts of the Alps the Specters tried to get through. "I'll tell you what, Ionia, I will go to Sanctuary take care of my business, and I'll speak to the Pope about sending a few more troops here, will that be fine?"
The bearded, green-eyed man scratched his hairy chin. He had half an inkling to order Aguilon to flatten the outpost before the day ended, but more men under his command sounded tempting. Fort Commanders like him typically got ahead in the ranks by impressing the Gold Saints with their ability to manage the hoplites, something the Gold Zodiac, in his opinion justly, was not to be bothered to do for them, and the more the men they commanded, the likelier they got ahead. Perhaps he should take this offer, screen the weaklings off and keep the quality ones for his own advancement.
With some hesitation, he conceded. "Alright, Saint Aguilon, you have your way, for now…Send my regards to His Holiness." He wished, the anger in his tone completely gone.
The giant chuckled as Ionia turned his back on them, flipping cape and left for his office. "Uptight jackass…" Aguilon commented, barely bothering to lower voice.
The Nemean Herculean Guard sweated and appealed to his good sense. "Lord, Aguilon, please."
The giant man got up, nearly touching the roof with his head, patted Nemean's back to reassure him and followed his subordinates out. "I won't let him ruin my good mood, cause Iaso sent me good news for once. That girl I saved from the Judge woke up and is of good health," he revealed, grinning ear to ear.
"Saint Iaso with good news?" asked the Stymphalian Hercule Guard, smirking, a man who carried strapped to his back a set of two unique round shields in their tower-shield-totting squad. His were engraved with the image of a wing-flapping bird on each. "You sure he's not baiting you for the colonoscopy, Lord Aguilon?"
The whole group of twelve shared a common chuckle at this, to which Aguilon "Yeah, yeah, don't make me think you jokers are volunteering."
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Meanwhile,
China, Rozan Mountain
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The sun was high up in China and the Old Master walked up to the grass field with all the littered pebbles. Having returned to the training grove with the Symplegade rocks after his latest scuffle with Tenma, Pegasus Lance was still practicing his moves.
At this particular moment, the sixteen-year-old seemed focused on gathering the broken magnetic mineral, probably after a round of breaking it down with failed attempts to punch with the electric element. Dohko had half a mind to get him to do something else, as this specialized training didn't seem to be bearing a lot of results, but the stubborn youth seemed intent on trying these exercises.
"Working hard, uh?" he teased, tipping his straw hat.
Lance just kept picking up and piling the crushed Symplegade rocks. "Yeah, Roshi, sort of."
Something occurred to the Master. "Did you eat? I was about to get myself and Ma Chao some nice fish, but I noticed my personal cook was off doing something, heh heh heh."
He ignored his teacher's lame tease. "I just wanted to get some work done ahead." He patted the pebbles tighter, allowing the valuable mineral to mend together faster and more compactly. It formed a big enough obstacle for what he wanted to do and then started working on more piles behind it. "Also wanted some time to think, I guess."
Dohko stood with hands-on cane pensively, rubbing his beard. "Yo-oh-oh, taking to heart the hint I gave you about exhausting your reserves to unlock a new power?"
"Yes and no, Roshi." the youth confessed, not moving attention from his task. He now had two piles of Symplegade rocks fused into a row of obstacles, but he started working on a third and fourth. He took a brief pause to sigh and looked it over. "I was wondering if I had enough boulder here for my next experiment."
The purple dwarf walked up to it. "That's a lot of stardust you're packing inside here. Do you want to break your arm?"
But the youth was resolute, picking up more Symplegade to 'glue' around the inner core of stardust-laced rocks. It was bothersome work, but all he could think about was perfecting his theory in time for his next spar.
Dohko wasn't oblivious to this. "Uh, do you think about anything else other than training?" commented Roshi.
Lance widened his eyes, caught off guard. "Well, of course, I…" he tried to remember, but his mind was suddenly blank, making his face go red. "Roshi, I'm a Gold Saint, so obviously I got a ton of responsibilities to think about, like Mephisto and Aphrodite," he claimed, though he wasn't sure if it could back it up.
The purple dwarf chuckled and walked around to stretch his tiny legs. "I get a feeling… you came here for more than catching up with your training, heh, heh, heh. Are you here perhaps to give a thought about what I told you, to write to your friend back?" but the Master got an angry growl as an answer to this suggestion. He raised a white brow. "So not that. Maybe to get away from a crush?"
Lance folded arms skeptically. "You really think so? Come on, be serious."
Dohko shook his head at the inferred denial. "I'm so disappointed in my student..."
The fact was that there were indeed reasons why Lance had gotten away from Sanctuary for a while other than making sure he was up to par to Gold Saint standards. Rozan relaxed him. It wasn't just the distance from Shion, Gigas, Meropis and other bothersome people in Sanctuary who seemed to be pulling him from every direction, but these private forests of the mount were so detached from everything else it set his heart at ease. Even if he stayed only for a little while, here he didn't have to make Shion happy, the Gold Saints honored, the Silver Saints feel respected and the Bronze Saints not afraid of him. It took a load off his shoulders and wrapped him in the balsam of the beautiful bright sunlight going through the bamboo and trees.
It just so happened that his spot of relaxation was also his spot of intense training. "Right now I got to think about how to unlock electricity and not embarrass myself against Tenma, nothing else."
Dohko stared at him in thought.
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"Wow, that was terrible Tenma!" young Dohko mocked, laughing as he sat on top of the boulder the youth had just punched. "It's been three months since you came here and you still can't break a rock? Pft, what is Suikyo teaching you?"
Tenma looked up. "Dohko, you came to visit me…" but the raggedy-haired boy riled up, flailing arms, when he detected the tease. "I'll break this rock! You and me know that! I did it at the assents and I'll do it again"
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Completely different priorities despite the same stubbornness; the contrast, indeed, never ceased to amaze Dohko. "Hmm, given up already on any notion of beating Tenma?"
"I don't know what corner of Japan you found that kid," Lance confessed, setting himself up after finishing the four piles of regenerating rock around the core of stardust-sprinkled boulder to prepare his Charge Fist. "but I'm not gonna waste time and energy thinking about beating that freak. I'm just gonna work on perfecting my technique."
Dohko raised his brow again, staring at Lance as he assumed his usual pose of placing feet apart and holding right fist by the waist, left hand pointed at the target. "Japan? I never said I found him there."
While Lance tried to steel himself in his pose, his red eyes couldn't help but glance at the teacher. "He's not? His name pretty much sounds like he's from there, though."
"Pfft, what limited thinking." criticized Dohko. "I assume you think I'm from Tokyo, too."
Lance didn't fall for this, though. "I assume the similarity in accent and mannerisms he has with a boy of close age like Shinta is a coincidence?!"
Dohko laughed out loud, just happy that he got his student riled up. "He was from there, don't worry… but it was in Italy that I found him, not Japan."
Red eyes rolled and focused on the target again. "Oh, I care so much." He began burning his aura, outlining his armor with a thin layer of orange light. As his voice hummed louder, the aura swelled into a flowing flare of light.
The Master tapped his cane, his whole body beginning to cast a shadow on the ground as the student made the energy flow around his body as searing fire waves. "Yo-oh-oh, that's a nice cosmos you're charging there."
He made the same experiment as the other day; locking his fist and wrist in the Blade barrier, he made the fire cosmos flow through it, trapped, and swell up in his enclosed fist without loss of heat and energy characteristic of Fire cosmos. The strain in his hand increased, feeling the energy pulsating in it, but he wasn't entirely done yet, and Lance made the rest of the charged energy burst out from the back of his Pegasus Cloth greaves like an exhaust engine.
His red eyes narrowed. "PEGASUS-" he then shot forward at a controlled speed, completely encased in the fire, and lunged forward. "- BURNING CHARGE FIST!" The image of a Pegasus raising on its hind legs, flapping its wings and neighing suddenly projected itself. Lance's body turned into a beaming meteor light trail across the field with waves and waves of flames around it. It crashed straight through the first two pillars, blasted off the third and finally exploded right on the fourth one, unleashed the flap of a massive wave of fire everywhere that burned off the random patches of grass in the rocky field and melted the surface of boulders.
His feet dragged through the dirt, stopping himself, and a multitude of scorched pebbles dropped all around him, a black trail left behind on the ground. Lance observed the results and wasn't pleased, clicking his tongue. "Powerful… but clumsy…really gonna have to think of something else."
Dohko, in turn, was wide-eyed. So this was the result of combining the Charge Fist with fire? He had sometimes wondered why his student reserved the element to Blade, Eruption and Flame Attack. As he walked up to the Pegasus Saint, looking over the burned ruin, he could see why; it was an intimidating and destructive move, this Burning Charge Fist, but it seemed like a waste of energy too.
"So this is what you were gonna try yesterday… You employ Eruption and Blade at very close range, do you not?" asked Dohko. "This could be useful in similar circumstances against a heavily armored foe."
"I don't typically run into Judges or the like, Roshi." shrugged Lance. "No… I need to seriously focus on Lightning. As always you were right."
Dohko tapped his cane on Lance's gauntlet. "I'd say unfocused energy isn't the only issue..."
Lance looked at his own hand and gawked, as the Pegasus gauntlet all broken up, exposing his fingers. "Oh, damn… I really did overdo it. I guess I'll have to give Mu a call..."
"Remember that you're not wearing your Cancer Gold Cloth here, Lance," warned the Master, serious for a change. "Your Pegasus Cloth is just bronze and stardust… it's not strong enough to sustain this level of training and these dangerous techniques for very long. You should have brought Karkinos, even if it made Saga and Aiolos upset. Your launching was also very weak," the Master pointed out at the short distance Lance blazed through. "Your normal Charge Fist seems capable of preserving force across a great distance, but you came up pretty short here."
Bringing up all of this didn't erase the Gold Saint's distaste for Karkinos. Lance nervously scratched his charcoal-haired head. "Yeah, I've...been focusing a much bigger share of the Cosmos on the punching part… Usually, I keep it well distributed, but now I lack launching power when I focus the fire in my hand."
Dohko tapped his cane on the floor. "So flaws, flaws and more flaws… how do you plan to compensate them, uh?" He tapped his forehead to appeal to Lance's wisdom. "Next time listen to me and focus on Lightning, you blunt-headed fool."
He sighed, scratching head. "At least I know I exhausted my options. I have to say this kid, Tenma is a pickle for me..."
"Yo-oh-oh, he was a pickle to a lot of people, especially Athena's enemies." joked Dohko, who then licked his lips. "Now come on, let's go home, this conversation gave me a craving for that fried rice and pickled fish I love so much. Also, I need you to take out Ma Chao's litter crate."
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Chapter 35
Second Arc
Episode 4
Steeds of a Feather
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Meanwhile, in the Underworld
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Sitting at his desk in his room at the tower of Giudecca, Daemon Lucifer, out of his armor, wrote down his latest journal entry, making coded annotations about his success in revealed to the False Specters their fate. Without his Surplice, he wore a black tank shirt that exposed his heavy muscular frame with the silver star pendant outline visible in it. There was a set of jeans and sneakers not dissimilar from a modern youth. He had made a habit of keeping up with surface fashion so he would not lose the ability to go unnoticed in the crowd, should the need arise.
He beheld the latest entry for a moment. When Hypnos and Thanatos arrived, he had decided to destroy these journals, but the Pride Star had been unable to; half a millennium of his life was noted in these pages, most of which did not denounce any of his intentions. It wasn't often he had the chance to work on them in his busy schedule, but relieving some of the forces out of the Underworld towards constructing his new outpost had immediately bought him some extra leeway.
At first, he would make comments about the day, but the silver-haired man was as focused on his plans while writing the diary as he was on any other occasion. "Everything is flowing without suspicion. Hades and the rest of my peers seem unaware of the replacements having been told their origin. Erika tells me Peloponnesia has caught wind of our activities, but that is acceptable. The important thing now is to forge my men into a fighting force." Finishing his annotations, he then stood up and looked out the window to see the False Specters drilling not very far away from Giudecca itself, under the watch of Torak. "They are weak compared to me, but I do not devalue the worth of my men, unlike that fool Rhadamanthys. One of the functions of the Prince is to be the commander, after all."
Desiring to go survey the Underworld, he snapped his fingers, causing the Pride Star far above in the sky to sparkle for a brief second before a massive swath of shadows from all over Lucifer's room suddenly leaped at him and swallowed up his body, slithering around until solidifying into the metal parts of the feared Daemon Surplice. Now fully armored, he closed his journal and carefully stored it in his locked compartment beneath his bed, where snoopers like Zelos wouldn't get to, and made his way out of his room and down the tower steps into the main halls of Giudecca.
There, he was greeted with the sight of Pandora, who seemed to be having a conversation with the Terrestrial Weird Star, Frog Zelos.
Her eyes narrowed sternly. "Are you sure of this?"
Zelos, wearing his blotted armor, bowed so much his chin touched the ground and smiled so widely his lips and deformed teeth looked like a broken piano. "Heh, heh, heh, yes, Lady Pandora, I saw them with my own eyes; Sylphid has been slacking his duty, telling the replacements to watch his Prison for him, and Rune does nothing but sip tea in Lord Minos' absence, barely bothering to process the dead."
"These… PROFLIGATES…!" She scoffed indignantly, eyes narrowing like an angry raven. "What are they thinking, that my brother watches not?!" She paced around temperamentally, wondering what to do. "But they won't get away with this… Sylphid will spend a season working in Cocytos with Rhadamanthys, to learn his lesson, but only after I have him hanged upside down over the fire cauldrons until his blood boils, and Rune will have all his precious scribes start working for me, instead, to write the million-word letter I will show my brother about his attitude! The horror in his face at the Emperor's disappointment will put an end to his pathetic prattle!"
Frog raised up and thumbed his chest. "I, Frog Zelos, would do a much more dedicated service, Lady Pandora," he then pranced around her like a leaping jester. "But alas, alas, Lord Rhadamanthys says I must cart the dead instead of handling the Book of them. It's a disgrace, it's a -" A sudden whiff then made Pandora's long hair wave up, and Lucifer's foot suddenly burst on Zelos' head, bashing him across the room against the wall, splattering the Frog immediately. "G-gah!... M… My P-Prince!" he whimpered, feeling his jaw half-loose.
Pandora gasped, startled. "Lucifer! What is the meaning of this?! Why did you strike Zelos?!"
The red-eyed youth scoffed and rested hand in thigh plate. "Don't listen to his lies, Pandora. Zelos tells the truth about my brethren Specters as he would about his beauty pageant prizes."
The ugly, wart-riddled man climbed out of the crack in the wall and rolled on the floor in pain. "M-my face, my beautiful FACE!"
"Enough, you vermin!" Lucifer suddenly lifted him up by the neck guard and tossed him over the shoulder with a loud roar out the palace doors. Skeleton Soldiers immediately went to the aid of their hurled superior or to close the doors and clean the mess of the scuffle.
Pandora had to confess she was genuinely bewildered. "That man… was lying to me?"
And Lucifer couldn't blame her for falling for his tricks. "Zelos has always been the scum of the Underworld, Pandora. Even the replacements are made of truer Specter fiber than him. That the Emperor chooses to tolerate his presence and not replace the mortal that Weird Star incarnates has always been beyond me. There's a reason most of us keep pushing him down to his cart jobs."
With the situation now calmer, the girl took a breath and braided her hair with her pale fingers. "I must say… determining which Specters to rely on has been more difficult than I imagined." she paced around again, making her trident impatiently tap the basalt flooring. "First Rhadamanthys and his foolish walk through the woods…. And now this. I fear, Lucifer, I lack the discernment my brother needs of me."
Lucifer's red eyes followed her. "It hasn't been that long since Hypnos and Thanatos brought you here."
She stopped angrily. "It has not?! Almost two years!" she then recovered her calm. "And still, I insist on misjudging his Stars. But I've had enough!" she claimed, iron-willed. "The next Specter who disappoints me will suffer the wrath of each of the Circles! I will return my brother's realm to its bleak glory, or I will end my life trying to."
The fundamental level of determination in the girl did not fall on deaf ears, and the quicentenarian Dark Prince thought this over. Pandora seemed genuinely incapable of thinking about anything else than pleasing Hades, and it visibly seemed to shake her that she did not control the men like she felt she should be able to. The young woman bit her nail, looked off distractedly at the curtained wall and tucked her trident all in alternate order, failing miserably to hide her anxiety behind her carefully put together visage of a powerful woman.
He looked at the knight ring she entrusted him with and curled the fist, undecided. While his plans regarding the False Specters were going smoothly, Pandora still eluded him. Maybe this was an opportunity he would not get again very quickly.
"Are you still so haunted by the fact you cannot do everything for the Emperor?" he started, carefully picking his words.
She eyed him like he had called her stupid. "... I'm not!... How dare you insinuate such a thing?" she then saw the Prince close his red eyes and take a knee, lowering his head. "What are you doing now?!"
" I've known you for a very long time, Pandora." he reminded, not daring to open his eyes. "Ever since I was a young boy, first training to get the Surplice, I've seen you incapable of showing weakness to others, much less the Specters. You cannot bear the thought of not having the situation under control, and the mob submitting to you."
She rolled her purple eyes. "Are you showing me with such submission that I should not?" She then pointed her trident's tip menacingly at his face, pressing the metal right on his black bat-shaped headpiece with the encrusted ruby. "That I can confide with you, Prince?"
"No, Pandora." he then opened his eyes and looked up at her. "I was going to say that back then I really hated you for it," he revealed. It made the girl widen her eyes in affront.
A tense silence came in for a moment, making the Prince wonder if she would stab him right there and then. Her mind shook, though, and asked what the meaning of this was. The Pride Star had been nothing but obedient, protective and respectful to her all this time, even threatening Rhadamanthys should he lay a hand on her, and now he said he used to hate her.
She backed up her weapon, squinting at the man. "... You confuse me, Specter…. You act like my protector, but also my chastiser. I've never seen such impertinence...Hate me? How could you hate me?!" she sneered.
"It was very simple, I assure you." the Prince affirmed, looking her straight in the eyes.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
It was the sixteenth century.
Her trident's pole struck his face, flooring him. Lucifer growled and held his mouth, feeling blood jut out, and heard her blasted heels walk up to him. "Hm, hm, hm. Pathetic boy… how dare you spill my tea? Do you think being picked among millions of worthless surface dogs by Hades makes you any more worth than the dirt beneath my feet?"
Michael stepped between them, seeing Lucifer seething with fury. "Lady Pandora, please no! He didn't mean to!" but a sudden spark from her ring jewel then engulfed the silver-haired youth in an electric shock, making him scream like a devil. "L-Lucifer?"
Pandora stopped only when the silver-haired teenager dropped to the ground completely, body fuming, and she eyed the blonde candidate to Dark Angel with a lick of lips. "Train hard, Michael… don't let this arrogant dog kill you and get the Absolute Star," she advised, smiling evilly at them both. "I want a Prince who can hold a teapot right even if I call his whole family worthless dead scum that deserved to be burned at the stake."
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
It was still the sixteenth century. Judgement Day had just passed.
The raven-haired woman walked up to his jail in the Giudecca dungeon. "Hm, so my brother has chosen to hold you here on Michael's behalf for now. What a fitting fate for a cur; a cage." she mocked from behind the Giudecca jail bars. "Tell me, Lucifer, does it pain you that you lost your beloved Judgement Day to a 'peasant'? Does it haunt you what Thanatos might do to you now?"
Young Lucifer punched the cage door so hard it made the whole iron construct shake but didn't even manage to make her flinch. "You think you got what you wanted, you ash-skinned doll?! When I get out of here, I will smash your face on the Emperor's pavement! I got nothing more to lose now! You're dead, you bitch! This is not the END! I WILL YET BECOME DARK ANGEL!"
But she just approached her face to him and touched his chin ever so lightly, freezing him. "Oh, that's where you're wrong, you failure… I can show you that despite everything you've gone through, you can still make me feel so much more pain and loss…" her finger then let go. "but not today. Hm, hm, hm." she promised, sending a shiver through his blood, then cackled and paraded away, leaving the condemned to his shouting and flailing.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
It was the eighteenth century. Minos had just fallen.
The Princes stood in the Emperor's room along with Pandora and Hades trying to figure out what went wrong, but the sight of Pandora by the Emperor's side sent Lucifer awry. "So it was you who ordered Minos to attack?!"
The raven-haired woman smiled slyly, dancing her trident around like a toy staff. "Of course. Our Emperor aches for the destruction of the Saints. The sooner we can initiate the Lost Canvas, the better, and the shedding of Saint blood was the perfect catalyst." she pointed at the painted souls dancing in the sky. "Just see for yourself; the Silvers and Bronzes murdered by Minos are already part of Alone's beautiful masterpiece."
"That was against my authority and a waste of good men!" the Pride Star roared. "I had ordered the army to hold after Worm's pathetic attempt against Athena's life! Even if you stand above the Princes-"
Michael's gauntleted hand grabbed his shoulder plate. "Exactly, Lucifer, so you know it's no use," the Celestial Absolute Star reminded him with a sense of boredom while folding his arms. He saw the confidence in the liaison's face and knew what this meant. "Pandora had made up her mind. A playground for Minos is what she called Sanctuary..."
"I might have misjudged the Saints' strength," confessed Pandora, not looking a single bit like she truly regretted Minos' demise. "But the glory of Hades is such that we will undoubtedly obtain victory anyway so long as the Canvas is complete."
But even the blonde Prince had reservations about this. "I just wish you hadn't gone around us, Pandora. We, too, are working hard towards that victory. You could have consulted us…"
The black-haired woman held chin in hand. Michael's tact seemed to be enough to make her see the point Lucifer had tried to make through fury. "See, Lucifer? Dark Angel Michael understands his place, unlike you. Minos' loss is regrettable, but Lord Hades will simply revive him as soon as we destroy Virgo Asmita's new seal."
Alone's attention seemed to be caught by this. "A seal?" he turned to Pandora. "What is the meaning of this, sister?"
Pandora gawked suddenly. "…Virgo Asmita has infiltrated the Underworld, Alone... He is conspiring with the Dragon Saint and Pegasus Tenma to fashion something that will allow him to stop the resurrection of Minos."
Seeing the look on the painter's face, the Angel Prince interfered. "Leave Asmita to me, Alone." offered Dark Angel Michael, stepping up to the liaison. His red eyes briefly burned with a dark flame, and his golden hair waved with an unseen, rising force...
The black-dressed painter frowned sadly and focused back on his work. "I cannot allow this to happen…not now. Michael," he asked "what do you intend to do?"
"I believe Asmita ultimately is seeking to forge a seal at the Jamir spire, Alone," suggested the Celestial Absolute Star, raising his hand to show off the illusion of a strange, Asian-architecture tower in Tibet. "Not only do the Lemurians repair the Saints Cloths in this place, but a man from the previous Holy War versed in seals resides there."
Lucifer's ear perked up, recognizing the names. "You mean-"
"Cait Sith has made sure of it to me. It's Hakurei," confirmed Michael. "He's from the same century Lucifer, and I, are from. I will be there waiting for Asmita after I burn the entire tower to a crisp, along with its residents." The illusion then suddenly went up in black flames.
Pandora reassured the Emperor. "Don't worry, brother, the Virgo Saint is said to be the mightiest of the Gold Saints -" She then eyed Michael endearingly. "-but just as Asmita is their champion, Michael is ours. His skill is unmatched in your army, and his black arrow will render Asmita's powers useless. Soon, Minos' death will be reversed."
But the silver-haired Prince eyed the girl menacingly. "A loss of a Judge has cost us resources... and put the enemy on guard! I will not let you jeopardize our war, Pandora!" he pointed his finger straight at her. "I will warn you this once! Stay out of our way, or -"
Pandora frowned. "Hm, are you perhaps threatening me?" she then hugged Alone, who was painting the many angels that would form his grand spell of annihilation. "Brother, the Prince seems overly anxious to prove himself to you, perhaps he can be given a task to distract him."
The black-haired boy lowered his paintbrush and slowly turned to them, putting the Princes immediately in line and kneeling to the floor. "Lucifer… you intend to attack Sanctuary yourself, do you not?"
Lucifer staggered. "Yes, my lord, but it's completely different-"
"I don't care." Alone mercilessly cut, making his cosmos spike in such a way that the Prince's whole body immediately arrested.
Pandora chuckled like an amused little girl.
The long-haired youth faced the two Princes directly. "Listen to me, Princes… All I want is for the salvation of all living things but, most importantly… I want a deed of mine that has been undone by Sanctuary's agents be reinforced. That they have gone to such lengths to revive a single Bronze Saint has a clear significance."
The Daemon Specter widened his eyes. "My lord, do you mean-"
Alone eyed Michael like a loved soldier. "I trust in my Princes and Judges to carry out their duties, but I cannot leave this to chance. Even if Asmita falls, he will surely take steps to ensure Tenma's survival." He then showed him the painting of the young Japanese boy with the red X drawn over it and squinted maniacally. "Lucifer, you will go to Sanctuary, await the return of these Bronze Saints to Sasha's side and destroy the Pegasus Saint, Tenma! Do you understand?!"
Lucifer gasped. Pandora laughed out loud.
Michael widened his crimson eyes. "Is the Emperor saying that the boy he was friends with… is the Godslayer?" Dark Angel muttered, wondering if the two of them would have to come out of the framework sooner than he thought. "Destroying him is supposed to be our second function, but our chance has arrived so soon?!"
"This ambush will deliver a deadly blow to Athena's forces, and remember, Lucifer if you fail-" Pandora reminded him. "I will enjoy putting you through a hell one thousand times more painful than the white rose that killed Minos, mm, mm, mm."
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Just like Alone predicted, Dragon, Unicorn, Crane, and Pegasus survived their experiences in the Underworld and met Asmita, but a plan to trap them did not change the fact that Pandora had deliberately been reckless with the lives of the Specters against the authority of the Princes over them.
These and many more other memories of Pandora's blatant cruelty to the Specters, and to Lucifer, in particular, were easy to draw upon to explain not only his old hatred of the girl but why he thought this young revival in front of him was not in full control of her beliefs and tasks. The past Pandora would never relent. Just as the Dark Prince himself was not the foolish boy he once was, neither was Pandora the completely lost soul that he once saw her as.
The fact that Rhadamanthys' heroic actions to save her at the Lost Canvas were partially responsible drove him mad, but Lucifer could have his own role in helping save her. "You did not think, perhaps, I was nothing but loyal to you across two failed Holy Wars? I am the Celestial Star of Pride, not of unquestioning fealty."
For a moment, it really seemed like Pandora had assumed this, freezing her breath at the sudden affront. She then pointed her ringed finger at him and her snake ring shined with a blood-colored spark, causing Lucifer's whole body to suddenly be shocked by countless bolts, sending the Prince into a screaming fit and to fall on his hands.
She stepped on his shoulder plate, dominant. "Maybe this will remind you that I will not be questioned even by you, Prince." she tensely warned. "If I am, then I will make you swallow that pride of yours you value so much until you learn your lesson." She then quaked, though, when she felt the shoulders shake in chuckling beneath her heel. "...What's so funny? Do you not understand who you're mocking?!"
The Prince's head shook and his red eyes locked with hers. "M-mh, mh...I'm laughing, Pandora,... because this is just like you," he confessed, gently raising himself so that she could get off his shoulder without harm. His armor still fumed here and there from the shock, but the brilliant Damascus that composed it was intact. "I haven't minded for a long time that you feel the need to shock or humiliate the Specters to remind us who's in charge once in a while… but one mistake you've always made, in this life and others, was thinking you could ever hurt my pride."
As the tall Specter Prince stood up, the girl felt suddenly shadowed in a fully lit room. "Hm, what would a brute understand?" she asked out loud, completely unafraid of insulting the immensely powerful Specter. "My task is more important than that of any of the Stars. If not for me, Specters like you would have the audacity to act with leeway, unafraid of my frail brother's disapproval, and there would be no mortal to trust with transmitting the Pendant while my brother remains sealed."
"And have those tasks as well not been taken from your hands? I can easily decimate the army, and have Lord Hypnos take the Pendants," questioned Lucifer, referring as to how Hypnos has taken upon himself to handle the matter personally as soon as he returned to the Underworld. "The truth is, you feel you've been cornered into obsoletion, don't you? So you're overcompensating, listening to squeaks like Zelos for chances to act out on us..."
And the girl indeed shook for a second, taken off guard. "I will be granted the return of my duties one day when Lord Hypnos deems so fit!" She then raised her chin. "But I don't have to explain myself to a man who has hated me, do I? Tell me this, Prince, if your pride is so precious and you've despised me so much at one point -" she then smirked widely and pointed her trident again without care of how dangerous a tool it was "Why is it that I can make you grovel at my feet whenever I want? Mm, mm..."
He just stared at her. "Because I choose who I serve."
The young girl seemed genuinely bewildered by this. "...Then go fulfill whatever your duties are, Prince! I can't stand the sight of you any longer," she demanded, turned her back.
He bowed, stood up and left. "As you wish, Pandora," he muttered. Her voice was filled with anger, but to him, considering how confident Pandora always used to be, this was proof she was unsure of herself and her delusions.
Basilisk Sylphid saw him walk by and saluted. "Greetings, Prince! May I say you seem to be in a good mood." the young wing-armored child remarked.
"Hm… she didn't zap me again," he unexpectedly answered, surprising the Celestial Star of Victory. "I'd call it a pleasant change of pace."
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Still rolling down the hill by Giudecca Palace, Frog Zelos squirmed and yelped, hitting rock after rock with his head as he made his way down the palace's high rise. Eventually, he crashed into a cliff overlooking Giudecca, cursing every star and god he knew of.
The Weird Star rubbed his helmeted head. "A-agh, damn you, Prince! H-how dare you?! You will pay, you will ALL pay!" He then felt a pair of large shadows engulf him. He looked up and saw the Golem and Deadly Beetle False Specters, two huge men in heavy armor, cracking knuckles and looking threateningly at him. "W-what do you YOU replacements want?!"
Deadly Beetle's large hand then came down on him. "Come with us, you squeak!"
Frog was lifted up by the head with just two fingers. "H-hey, let go of me! Do you know who you're touching." He kicked Beetle's face, but the stag-helmeted head didn't even register the blow.
Golem Treble chuckled. "Oh yeah, we know, and we want to have a conversation with you."
Frog Zelos' warty face paled as he saw the two huge men start laughing to themselves. "W-well, good! Then show some respect!" They then carted him off like a carrot picked in the fields. "HEY, where are you taking me?! LET GO!"
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Meanwhile,
China, Rozan Mountain
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Having finished lunch with Roshi and Ma Chao, the Pegasus Saint went around the house doing the rest of the day's chores. Having to take care of a place much smaller than the Temple of Cancer was a welcome change of pace, but his mind kept wavering as he dusted the furniture, washed the windows and cleaned the floors. Tenma's irritating voice, in particular, stayed on his mind and so did the booming, oppressive sound of Meteor Fists' blasts headed straight to him. Things like speed, a striking pattern, force, and Cosmos expenditure kept going up and down inside Lance's head as he considered each course of action, to the point he had to stop himself and wonder when he had ever been so obsessed with beating someone.
Had he just not told Roshi he just wanted to get the training done?
What nonsense; this kid was far from the toughest foe Lance had faced. Aguilon had been much worse, completely overwhelming Lance with his brute power, endurance, and experience, not to mention the Specters he and Shinta fought at Andromeda Island had nearly cut him to pieces and poisoned him. Again.
The turn of his own room came to be cleaned, and Lance took the opportunity to contact his protegé for an update. "Mephisto, it's me. How are things there? Are you and Aphrodite doing well?"
It took a bit for a response to emerge. He probably startled Deathmask. "Things' are okay, I guess, which is to say everything's boring. Aphrodite complains a lot cause the Pope seems to be pressuring him to wear the armor more often, so I think he might poison your lunch when you get back. Hey, speaking of which, how long are you gonna be there? Saga keeps asking me about it, and I don't know what to tell him!"
This was a good question. Initially, Lance wanted to be back by the end of September. It was October already. "I'll probably have to stay for a while. A couple of things came up. If the Pope asks, tell him Roshi is sending the wine bottle back."
A second pause was made. "What is that, some sort of coded message?"
Lance frowned, disgruntled, as he sat by his Pegasus Cloth Box. He really couldn't blame Mephisto for the question. "Sure, let's call it that. Has Karkinos been bothering you?"
Another pause. "Not really. You know, from the way you were talking about that piece of junk, I thought it would try to crawl into my bed by now, but I haven't even felt its Cosmos burning."
Lance breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good, but don't drop your guard. Remember that whatever it says, it's not your friend." he reminded. Taking out the pieces of armor inside the Box, Lance found the broken right gauntlet again. "Is Mu there? I keep sending pings in you guys' direction, and he won't respond."
"Nah, that dumbass left like yesterday. I think he might have gone to his home retreat in Jamir."
"Don't call him that!" Lance snapped. He sighed, though, when he took a careful look at the damage he had made to his own armor. "I gotta go, Mephisto. Tell Aphrodite and yourself to behave, got it?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." the boy responded, followed by a final mental ping signal meant as a departure sound.
The Pegasus Saint decided to let it go for then and refocused his thoughts in the general area of Tibet. Since he didn't know precisely where Jamir was, or any of the Lemurian villages for that matter, he sent out a wider ping with a more general call. "Hey, Mu? Mu, are you there?"
It was somehow immediately picked up. "Hi, Lance! What's up?"
The Pegasus blinked, bewildered at how fast and efficiently the Aries Saint both picked up his call and recognized his 'voice.' "Hey. Sorry to bother you, but I kinda need your help fixing a part of my armor. Could you pass by Roshi's house soon?" he looked over his purse also inside the Cloth Box. "I think I can pay a quick fix."
"Sure, I just got back to Jamir, and I need to get some projects going, but I can stop by while the pentahydrate finishes ionizing in about an hour. Also, don't worry about paying. It will be pretty boring to just sit here waiting just so I can get some bleach that doesn't explode."
The red-eyed teenager sweated. He had no idea what the lilac-haired boy was talking about. "Wow, thanks… you're doing me a real favor. Talk to you soon, then."
"Bye." another departure ping then ended the conversation, much like a phone call clicking sound at the end.
He observed the busted gauntlet for a little while. Now that he looked at it closely, other than the big holes left in the place of were used to be the phalange covers, many tiny cracks filled the surface of the white metal layers. It was true he was probably testing out stuff well beyond Pegasus' strength level.
Sometimes he forgot he had surpassed his own armor in strength many, many times over. "Fighting Guardnia can't have helped either. Even if I ended up compensating with my strength and 'killing' the Cepheus Cloth first, it must have taken its toll on Pegasus, which is a grade weaker than Silver."
"Usually I regenerate, but this time it's been slower." confessed the winged horse, already sounding guilty.
"Don't overthink it." Lance nonchalantly consoled out loud. He took out Dohko's journal on Tenma he had been keeping inside the Box as well and tried to find where he was last at. He kept flipping till he found the passages speaking of his years in Greece.
Apparently, even after Tenma returned to being Dohko's student from whatever happened to Saint Suikyo, the boy had kept training in Greece instead of China. Going back to double-check his findings and quickly moving back to where he was, his red eyes tried to find the loophole in Tenma's past he was sensing.
The Pegasus Cloth noticed that something was up. "What are you looking for?"
And the youth took a foreboding second to answer. "I wanted to find out why I don't find any mentions to Mount Olympus and your Temple," he revealed. "It doesn't seem that at any point Tenma had to go through that blasted place, much less Bellerophon… and I hadn't thought about it, but Meteor Fist was a technique that freaking ghost you projected also used."
While it surprised the armor, as it never had been shared many thoughts from its owner about the day Lance obtained it, Pegasus made no mention of the fact Lance seemed to be assuming Bellerophon was a projection of the winged horse, preferring to leave him to that innocent belief. "But why are you curious about it?"
"I keep thinking…" he started, biting lip. "... that I missed out on something with you… Everything seems to be pointing at the possibility that Tenma learned Meteor Fist from you, and then it somehow got passed down all the way to Aguilon, but I never learned such a move from you. We started talking pretty late, didn't we?"
"Yes." confirmed the winged horse. "I don't think you need it, though. Your elements are different, and you've decided to walk a different path, and I look forward to seeing what-"
"No, no, I wasn't saying otherwise, I just…" he interrupted, trying to find words to blurt out his indecision. "I think it's just dawning on me that… I don't know anything about my own starting armor. I think I know more about Karkinos than you, Pegasus. Tenma certainly seems to have me beaten in that regard."
An awkward silence filled the room, at least as uncomfortable as it could be between a person and a non-moving metal object.
"Conversation isn't necessarily a sign of a healthy connection between a Saint and his armor." Pegasus taught, adopting an uncharacteristically solid tone from what was usually a shy armor. "My connection with Tenma was low-key… we didn't need to share words, for the most part. More often than not, I think he forgot I had a mind of my own. It wasn't until the very end that we..."
The sudden pause made Lance widen his eyes. "We what?"
The metal object shook again as it tried to remember its last moments with the confident, heroic boy who fell in the previous war. "It's not important, not anymore. All I want is to be able to flap my wings in the battle for Athena, again..."
Lance's red eyes rolled. "Athena, Athena… you and Tenma are such whipped boys for her. You wouldn't catch me dead calling out for her stupid name." he criticized, getting back to his reading. He tried to move ahead a little in the journal, to the days Dohko dedicated himself to training Tenma.
There seemed to be indeed, as Dohko had suggested, some failed attempts to instill in Tenma the mentality and philosophy of Rozan. Spread across several pages, the passages seemed to indicate both a frustration from Roshi regarding his inability to teach Tenma a style and his conflicting joy in seeing him grow.
Coming back from Italy, I was pretty tired, but I didn't want to waste the chance to spend some time with my 'little bro', so I asked Suikyo to let him take the day off. Tenma insists he knows Sasha and I can't even wrap my head around how problematic this is. Really wish he had gotten a crush on someone else. Suikyo better keep him busy with a good training schedule before I have to get an earful from Shion about him trying to get inside the Zodiac again.
I tried to teach Tenma a real move today, but he's sticking to his silly barrage blows. I'm happy how he's progressing in strength, though; it wasn't that long ago I was making fun of him for not breaking a rock. Maybe I'll take him to the 88 Knights Festival to reward him to get his mind off what happened to Suikyo. He keeps complaining about how I forgot about it last year.
Another day, another banging of my head on the wall. I swear, he'll never be a great warrior like this. Suikyo filled his head with ideas about freedom of style. I can't help but laugh, though, when the hoplites come around and try to mess with him only to get a good kick to the face.
The warmth in Dohko's writing was palpable, even to a jerk like the Pegasus Saint. The combination of hassling, playing, training and observing Tenma's growth seems to have made Roshi really happy back in the day. He imagined Sasha must have been some maid girl serving one of the Gold Saints which, yeah, it would be problematic since the Zodiac couldn't have little boys, even Saint candidates, just move up and down the Temples at their discretion for lovey-dovey affairs.
All things considered, life almost seemed reasonable in Sanctuary in the 18th Century. Perhaps Dohko just wasn't a prominent historical observer, but his training journal appeared to make no comment of the other Saints, the rules governing Sanctuary, aristocrats or even the looming threat of Holy War. At least it was what Lance thought until, as he turned another page, his attention was captured by a new passage with a different tone.
Tenma came back to me all bruised again this morning. It seems he got into another fight. He insists it's because the hoplites don't like Asian people in Sanctuary, that when Suikyo taught him, they would bother both of them occasionally. Being from China myself, I never had too much trouble in this regard, but then again, I've spent most of my upbringing with Byakko and Seiryu, didn't I? I just hope it isn't because of the color of his eyes.
Lance stared at the end of it, suddenly frozen.
… the color of his eyes.
The Pegasus Cloth lifted up its helmet in startle when its owner all of a sudden began scurrying back and forth in the book, frantically reading passages in search of something. "Lance, what's wrong?"
"Dohko, he…" Lance could barely speak as his mind went into rush mode. Could it be? But if it was, how had he not noticed that… "He mentioned Tenma's eye color! I need to know if…" he then found another passage earlier on, back when Dohko spoke of the day he brought Tenma to Sanctuary.
Tenma is pretty excited, he can't wait to start training. It's good that he's so motivated, so maybe his buddy back in Italy not finishing his portrait was a good thing, cause it gave Tenma a drive to survive the grueling training to get the Cloth and come back home. I asked him why the portrait wasn't finished, and his answer took me by surprise. The blonde kid was having trouble finishing the eyes. Apparently, he didn't have the right shade of red for them.
Lance's hands rested the journal in lap, eyes staring off into the wall, overwhelmed. "The right shade of red…" He set the book aside and rubbed his own crimson orbs. "How did I not see it? Was I… too caught up in the duels? Did Seiryu just project them wrong?"
The Cloth realized what its owner was talking about. "I thought you saw them for yourself, so I didn't say anything," it confirmed, revealing Seiryu had made no mistake.
"I didn't! I…" Lance shouted, then covering his mouth to keep the volume down. "I was so embroiled I didn't even bother to notice it…"
All of a sudden, everything he understood about Tenma collapsed. It was odd enough that Dohko's former student fought in the previous war and shared a Cloth with Lance, but now they had the same kind of stigmatized eyes? What did this mean? The words of the late Cepheus Guardnia from the day he and Shinta rescued him from the Basilisk, Minotaur and Gorgon Specters came back to him.
"... if you want to know why people react the way they do around you, there's an old, but well-known superstition that red eyes are a mark of evil."
The feeling of a ton of bricks falling on his head came to mind. A silent, frantic search for meaning was done inside his mind, and Lance just wanted to discard it all as coincidence but, unfortunately, not since Death Queen Island could he afford to do this. The words that next came to mind were out of Adriana's mouth, mainly when she talked about how some people in Sanctuary believed there seemed to be a legacy effect on who gets to be Saint. Lance wondered if it was more than just a coincidence that he had so much in common, personality aside of course, with the last person who got to wear the Pegasus Bronze Cloth.
He could really do nothing but let out a short chuckle, which surprised the armor. "Lance?"
"Ah, ah… you know… I always thought people took notice of them, but… Shinta and the kids never even seemed to realize it, and now it was my turn not to notice them on Tenma. Are my own so tough to really notice too?" it dawned on him. "What if all this time,... I really have been causing trouble myself, instead of drawing them with how I look? What if I've been making a big deal about my eyes unnecessarily? What if..."
"What if Guilty lied to you?" the Pegasus Cloth completed.
Lance stared at the winged metal horse. "I never thought about it, but you've been with me well since then, haven't you, Pegasus? You know what happened…and you've been silently pushing me on from it ever since. You tried to save me from my blasted enemies when we're awake… and you've been pushing off my fears when I'm asleep..." and suddenly, beads of tears formed beneath Lance's red orbs. He wiped them off frustratedly. He was such a piece of shit. "Y-yeah, maybe I've gotten a lot of things all wrong throughout my life..."
The trauma of losing Tenma, as little as it could make out in its metal mind, then came to Pegasus. "...You're not the only one, patron knight..."
Silence reigned in the room and, without them realizing it, Saint and armor suddenly shared a moment of universal solemnity. Dwelling on memories from the past they had in common, a flurry of events, from Lance's encounter with Bellerophon to his fight with Kastiel to his trip to Death Queen Island to his adventures with Shinta, to finally becoming a Gold Saint and meeting the rest of the Zodiac. It didn't seem to have been a moment of recent upheaval for both of them that wasn't somehow linked to what they learned together.
As this realization came to mind, the power of the Cosmos, the universe, seemed suddenly more evident between them. A faint burning of aura, imperceptible to the eye, but signifying a moment of real, bound growth between a Saint and his Cloth, was flickered between them and the feeling of an enormous, unrealized potential possible to only the two of them was felt underneath the silence. Far above in the sky, without most of the people in the house knowing, the stars of the Pegasus Constellation shined with renewed intensity for a bit, and a feeling of freedom like the flapping of wings suddenly came over the Saint.
Lance blinked as if awakened from a sudden trance or dream, and a small weight seemed lifted from his mind. It was a burden that had been on it since he first started blaming himself and his weakness for everything wrong going around him. Refusing to rely on others to face the monsters ahead of the road and, as this happened, he realized he had a task scheduled.
"S-shoot!" he blurted out, getting up and searching for these things. "I completely forgot!"
"What is it?" asked Pegasus.
"I gotta get you fixed, and think of a way to unlock Lightning and beat Tenma!" he said, looking at the clock and getting a pen and pencil. The Pegasus Cloth burned its energy with sudden excitement at this. "And I have to write my letter to Shinta!"
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Two hours later
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Putting on the welding mask Mu offered him, Lance watched in wonder, sitting with the Aries Saint by the Rozan lake, as the Lemurian boy took the bizarrely-shaped tools he brought from the Jamir spire and, immersing them in blinding, golden Cosmos, telepathically made them strike the busted Pegasus gauntlet like a sword under a blacksmith's hammer.
"Is it really safe to do this here?!" Lance asked, watching the sparks fly as the set of weird hammers, scalps and even a welding pen made of Bronze, all which looked like they were from a Cloth themselves, loudly worked on the damaged metal horse.
Mu chuckled. "Totally! Don't worry about me, though, my eyes are way better than yours for this."
A bead of sweat formed in Lance's head when he saw the unbelievably hot sparks set nearby grass on fire.
The spectacle before him was akin to a large forge room, or at least it was the impression his light-speed reflexes gave him. He imagined that an average person would just observe Mu magically fix the cloth in a second after throwing these utensils at it, but his 7th sense allowed Lance to see the many tools working literally at the speed of light, mending the cracks, welding the parts together and generally fix damage issues throughout the armor.
In fact, Mu was working so fast that it made Lance wonder why was he left behind in Jamir. "What did the Pope send you to work on anyway?"
Mu smiled in excitement just with the idea of it. "Remember the Isle of Gardens where you picked up Aphrodite?" he asked, triggering in Lance less than pleasant memories. "Master had Shura bring over one of the golems."
"Golems?" The Cancer Gold Saint then recalled the clay, self-repairing dolls wearing hoplite armor that guarded the place and served as Aphrodite's practice targets. Lance had completely forgotten about these. "Oh yeah, Mephisto hated those. What does Arles want with those things?"
"He wants me to try to see if I can break them down and figure out how the craftsman made them. The sculptor, Chrysalis, seems to live a pretty private life. No one can figure out where he's gone too." the Aries Gold Saint revealed. He then smirked sheepishly. "I also got a couple of ideas for them, but that's beside the point." It then seemed Mu reached some sort of conclusion about Pegasus. "Well, the good news is that Pegasus obviously isn't dead, so we don't need to bleed you dry, Lance, ah, ah." the kid laughed, furthering weirding the Cancer Gold Saint out. "The bad news is… I can't really do much to strengthen it. Bronze Cloths aren't made for the kind of training you are putting poor Pegasus through, Lance."
Something about his more recent sparring partner made Lance doubt that it was indeed impossible to prepare a Bronze Cloth for higher levels of battle stress, but since he was a Gold Saint, Lance didn't press the matter. Instead, he observed with a semi-concerned fascination the crazy process behind even a small reparation of armor, with the many tools operating as if in a crazy invisible car factory with robotic arms working on every section at once.
After a while it seemed like most of the more significant problems were solved; the gauntlet was still in its same classic shape, but it didn't have bigger holes in its finger sockets than it should at the very least.
Lance tested it out, wearing the gauntlet and curling and uncurling his hand repeatedly. "How do you feel?"
"Pretty good." Pegasus happily responded. "Mu is as good as his teacher. I miss being able to talk to Shion, though. He would work us through the process and help us out more… psychologically?"
"Since when do armors have psychological problems?" Lance wondered out loud, but Pegasus didn't respond. "Thanks a lot, Mu, I really appreciate you coming by."
The cheeky kid smirked and gestured a dismissive hand flip. "No problem, I'd do this for free if I could." The red-eyed teenager took the hint and offered Mu the money he had in his pocket. "I did have to put the homework Master gave me on hold…"
"Mu, I don't have more money!" Lance lambasted while folding his arms. "I didn't come to China expecting to spend Drachmas!"
The five-year-old pouted, puffing cheeks, but took the money. "Mm! Alright, alright, I guess I can get some candy with this."
"Or perhaps you can stay for dinner, yo-oh-oh," Dohko called out, suddenly joining the scene with Ma Chao, the tiger. "I've been aching to get to know Shion's protegé."
Mu dropped his jaw. "You're Lord Dohko? It's a pleasure to meet you!" he then saw the big white tiger and happily petted its head. "Aw, and who's this little furry cat?"
The Pegasus Saint watched the big monster cat happily raise its big head to let Mu scratch its neck. "I swear this tiger is nice to everyone but me." He then spoke. "Mu can't stay, Roshi. The Pope has chores for him in Jamir."
"Pah, nonsense. Don't be so dull, Lance." dismissed Dohko, patting the Lemurian boy's shoulder.
"I'm not dull!"
"Lord Dohko, I wanna hear every one of your stories!" Mu screeched, jumping up and down around the old dwarf "Is it true you once broke a Specter's back with a hug?! And did you really break into a big mafia mansion and kicked the butt of everyone inside to get Master out? Did you truly father one hundred children, ten of whom are legendary warriors today?!"
"What kind of stories are those?!" Lance wondered out loud. "Also that last one is obviously a lie!"
The old dwarf practically rolled his eyes up. "Heh, heh, heh, heh. It's all true and more!" he pointed cane at Lance. "He can take a day off with us, if Shion complains, I'll give him a talk. Besides, you're the one who broke your armor, to begin with, Mu shouldn't have to interrupt what he was doing to come and fix your messes."
Lance watched the two excitedly walk out. He'd be sent to hell if Dohko wasn't just doing all this so he could spend the night bragging about what an awesome war hero he was to a naive little Gold Saint kid that was probably fed too many 'legends' about him.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Later that night
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
"One more story! ONE MORE!" Mu happily shouted, raising his juice cup, resting back against the big resting white tiger.
Dohko laughed out his throaty chuckle, his purple cheeks gaining a distinct reddened drunk tone. "Heh, heh, heh, I guess I could tell you about the time Shion almost let Athena get kidnapped."
Mu gasped. "No way!... How could that happen?!"
"Oh, Shion had terrible punctuality." Dohko lamented, shaking his head. "He was always late to everything, because of this and that, usually spending his time repairing cloths. Well, one day the Worm Specter snuck into Sanctuary and attacked Athena when she was out for a walk! She had the fright of her life! The old Pope sure rattled his ears after this, heh, heh, heh."
Standing by the kitchen sink with his apron, having just finished cleaning dishes, Lance shook his head. There was absolutely no way any of this had an ounce of truth to it. He had his criticisms to Shion, but this was a whole new level of ridiculous.
Dohko waved his empty wine flat cup at him, splashing purple drops everywhere. "More wine, servant!"
Rolling his red eyes, the teenager poured the last of Akassius' bottle gift in the Asian Cup. "Here, Roshi, but you really oughta stop making a fool of yourself in front of Mu."
"Oh, no…Here I go, crazy Dohko!" Roshi sang, but this time he got up and twirled around on his tiptoe, balancing the wine cup on his purple egg head, shocking his student. "Look, I'm burning my COSMOOOS!"
"ROSHI!"
"Ha, ha, NO, this is fun!" Mu defended, giggling like the little kid he was. "Lance, sit here with us, come on!"
Dohko sat back down and dragged Lance by the arm with his small hand to join them. "Heh, heh, heh, our Cancer Gold Saint brother has a bad relationship with the word fun, little Mu," he then gulped down the rest of the wine in one sit and sighed out a pleasured gasp. "Ah, you know, Akassius' wine is not so bad… it's an acquired taste for complete swill, I have to say!"
The Cancer Saint couldn't feel less at home. He had come to Rozan to get out of the noise, and now Roshi deliberately turned his quiet little hut into a welcoming party for Mu. He felt Ma Chao's golden gaze on him. The tiger seemed to serve as a cushion for the Lemurian boy but almost seemed like it was protecting him instead of from the red-eyed teenager it despised on such a daily basis.
"Lord Dohko, tell us, tell us, how many guys have you taken out all at once?" Mu asked, taking another piece of the fruit salad Dohko told Lance to make for them. "I bet you've taken like 500, but I'll have you know I once beat 1,000 with my mind powers!" the Lemurian kid lied, inflating chest.
Dohko scoffed, already tipsy. "You whipper-snapper, it's not the quantity of the fighters you beat, … it's how powerful they are, hic. The miraculous power of the 7th sense is so immense… it is the essence of the miracles we, mankind, can create when we put our hearts into achieving our dreams. Its explosive might is so incredible..." his big eyes looked at the ceiling as if to try to spot the stars way above in the sky that it blocked. "... that the whole galaxy would be a meager opponent."
Mu awed, relating this to the lessons his own Master taught him. Lance, too, was frankly impressed at how coherently wise this sounded, especially with how drunk the old man looked.
Dohko then tried to drink from the empty cup. "Of course, hic, I could beat a million of 'em really easily." he bragged, instantly letting them down. "You know, hic, Mu, I don't get many stories from Shion. He comes by once in a while… gives me a good sake, but never tells me anything. What's going on in the old lamb's brain?"
To Lance's surprise, Mu's expression seemed to sadden into a frown. "Oh… I guess he doesn't tell me much, either. It must because I'm still a kid, so he prefers to have me focus on studying and training." He rubbed his head on Ma Chao's furry side to console himself. "Sometimes I wished he did. Master seems so stressed these days. I think Saga and Aiolos are upset at him, too."
Lance's red eyes looked away. "It's not just them, Mu…" he confessed, getting his attention. "All three of us have been trying really hard to take up the mantle of the old Gold Saints, and Shion has been off doing… something else instead of guiding us."
The Lemurian perked up. "Is that why you came here?" he questioned. "Cause you're upset at him, too?"
Sensing the worried tone, the Cancer realized he went a bit too far. "Obviously, no. I'm finishing my training so I can help make things easier on everyone." Lance denied, forcing himself to smile. "I think your teacher is secretly very concerned about those Black Saints that attacked him, just like Saga was and just like they both should, but he never tells us anything about it."
Mu turned to the Master. "Well, we can just ask Lord Dohko, right? What do you know about those people who hurt my teacher, Roshi?"
Feeling the attention back on where it belonged, Dohko rubbed his beard. "Heh, heh, HIC… the Civil War Gold Saints… oh yeah…"
This time, the Cancer was interested in what drunk Dohko had to say. "I… hadn't thought about it. You were around to witness it, Roshi, you must know something about those rebel Gold Saints, right?"
Both Gold Saints patiently waited for Roshi to respond. He scratched his long beard and stared off into the wall, perhaps lost in thoughts for a moment with the immensity of the information he had to share about the events that Shion was clearly holding back on Saga, Lance and the rest. Such a significant conflict like the Third Civil War likely weighed on his mind and the fact it had just a lasting effect that, so many years later, his best friend, the Pope of Athena, was attacked inside his own home over it certainly made him hesitate in picking his words.
When the master seemed ready to answer, Mu and Lance's ears perked so much they could pick up a raindrop outside if it so happened, attentive as they were.
Dohko shook his head sadly. "Sorry, can't say I know anything…"
The Aries Gold Saint gawked. "Wha?! That can't be!"
"Roshi, be serious!" Lance complained. "It clearly went on for years and affected many people. You must know something!"
But the old dwarf shrugged his shoulders. "I'm all the way out here in China. All that really happened that I know of is that one day I sensed fighting break out in Sanctuary and the next day Saint Daniel came here thinking he could muscle me into showing my loyalty to Athena, the big fool…" He recalled, still feeling the weight of the Taurus' large body beneath his foot. "As if the personal scuffles between Gold Saints interest Athena in the slightest..."
While Mu was nothing but a big face full of pout at this, Lance tried to interpret the meaning of this so-called war interesting so little to someone like Dohko and, according to him, Athena herself, while being so immensely vital to Shion and the old Gold Saints. How was it that an event like this could occur and supposedly shake the foundations of Sanctuary and yet the Libra Gold Saint was utterly uninterested in commenting on or participating in it?
"Lord Dohko, what's the hardest fight you've ever had?" Mu asked, raising his hands. "What's, like, the most explode-dy, coolest brawl? You must have gone through a few."
It was then that both of them saw the cheerful Dohko widen his eyes for a second, before somberly closing them. He seemed unwilling to answer this too.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
The group ran through the Third Prison now, escaping the collapse of the Underworld through the hills where the dead pushed the huge boulders up. Athena breathed harshly and led ahead, feeling her wounds seep blood through her golden armor but ignorant of the truth now silencing the rest of the group about Tenma's fate. Shion and Dragon tried to practically pull Dohko with them, as the Libra Gold Saint now stumbled more than he ran, face drenched in tears.
All he wanted was to go back and save his 'little brother.'
Athena and Andromeda's eyes perked up when they saw figures atop the edge of the Prison waving at them. "Look, everyone, they're here!" Sasha shouted. "We've made it!"
"HEEEY!" Unicorn Yato screamed, waving his arms high in the hair. He and Crane Yuzuriha rushed down the hill to meet them. "Lady Sasha, we came to rescue you all!"
Sasha was elated. "Yato, I'm so happy to see you!" she exclaimed, joined by the rest of the Bronze Saints. "But… why are you here?"
Yuzuriha was happy to explain, showing a rare smirk. "The Argonauts sailed us here up to the Acheron River, Athena. After the Lost Canvas Temples began to fall apart, the flying ship was destroyed, so they picked us up in the 'Argo.'"
Andromeda and Cygnus chuckled in happiness, both finally feeling a spot of hope. "The Argonauts… getting them on our side has paid off more than I could imagine," confessed Cygnus, who had adventured to find them early on in the war.
"Wait-" Yato pointed out, looking over their group. "Where is… Tenma?"
Sasha tried to respond, but froze, realizing she did not know. She turned to Dohko, who was dragged in by Shion and Dragon, devastated. "Dohko… Tenma… he has not…" she stuttered. Amid their desperate escape, her mind had completely lost track of what was going on, and their silence then made her gasp, feeling something in her chest collapse. "T… Tenma, n-NO!"
Phoenix stepped forward. "Saori, don't think of it!… The important thing is to save Seiya, who we came here for, to begin with."
But Yuzuriha and Yato were just as shocked and paled as Sasha. "No, that can't be… you're joking right?! That idiot wouldn't have..." Yato denied, but once again, they were met with silence from the mysterious Bronze Saints.
Yuzuriha covered her mouth, her Lemurian eyes beginning to shake with tears, speechless.
Unicorn's teeth gritted before he suddenly stomped the floor in a rage, shattering it and screaming. "AAAH! TENMA, you IDIOT! Everything we've fought for, and now you go up and die right at the END?!"
The Goddess tried to remain strong, but her whole body trembled beneath her armor. First, all those Saints who fought for her, then Alone and now Tenma… it was not possible for her to suffer even more loss. Tears streamed down her cheeks like rivers, unable to contain the devastation in her heart.
Yuzuriha grabbed her hand. She too was shaken, but they had to cross the finish line. "Lady Athena,... we can mourn later, we have to-"
All of a sudden, the entire Prison shook. The skies rumbled again and seemed to tear, revealing a scar of bright light between the 108 Evil Stars, making the whole group awe in fear. The dead around them wailed, dropping the boulders and running only to feel their supernatural shackles burn as punishment for losing their duties.
"This whole place is turning into pandemonium!" shouted Cygnus, feeling the shaking getting worse and the mountainous horizon turn green and filled with sandstorms. He began practically pushing some of his friends to climb up the Prison's exit. "Come on, everyone, we just need to get to the river now!"
Everyone was more than happy to follow suit, but Dragon had to stop when he sensed Dohko halting again. "Roshi, come on…We have to!"
Dohko raised his teary face, now twisted in anger. He looked to the distance behind them. "No, he's coming…the bastard will be through here soon, and he'll destroy the 'Argo.'" he turned to face the imminent danger. "Shiryu… take care of Athena."
Dragon rushed to his side. "Roshi, NO, you will DIE! You have to survive-" he then stopped himself before revealing the future.
But Dohko seemed bent on this. "I have to face him, Shiryu, there's no other way. And I will avenge Tenma!" he eyed the black-haired teenager then. "And if everything you've allowed yourself to tell me about your kids is true, your survival is more important than mine."
Before Dragon could protest further, the Aries Gold Saint then joined him. "I'll fight him with you, too, Dohko," he promised, getting a genuinely surprised look from his friend. "Don't be so surprised. I, too, want to avenge the loss of my friends. It's our duty as the Gold Saints of this generation to be the ones to finish this war. If we survived Hades, we would survive this."
"Lord Dohko!" yelled Crane Yuzuriha, who threw a long, spinning object at him. "Take this!"
Dohko caught it and awed again. In his hand was the weapon of the Argonauts captain, the straight-edged sword ornamented with the symbols of Rozan. "Yuzuriha… the Sword of the Four Paths? How did you..."
She took Dragon's arm, but not before explaining herself. "He gave it to me so I could face my brother at the Neptune Temple… I think he'd like you to have it. Lord Dohko, Lord Shion -" her teary eyes then narrowed. "Please live… and destroy that wretched Devil once and for all!"
Aries Shion then watched her drag off the protesting Dragon Saint, who shouted Dohko's name over and over and charged the last bits of his cosmos in anticipation for the distant shadow that already glided through the breaking air in their direction. "This is it, old friend… the final battle!"
Letting out a war cry, Dohko spread out his arms, causing the Libra Weapons to cast off from his armor and land all around them, though the Shield and the Spear armed the Aries Gold Saint.
He then unsheathed the blade from Mount Rozan, revealing a brittle, useless-looking edge, and his cosmos also burned with a tiger's roar. "Goodbye, young Bronze Saints!... Now we face the darkness!"
Approaching at exponential speed, the large shadow then crashed right in front of them like a meteor, immersed in black goo and cratering the Prison. As the shaking subsided, its fearful metal wings of the monster flapped out like that of an enormous bat and its silver-hair, red eyes and damaged Prince Surplice became visible through the darkness.
Its arms raised tensely, making pieces of ice from Cygnus's temporary bridge crack out on it. Its purple cosmos then charged in an eruption, dwarfing their beacons of golden light, and the image of the ram and the tiger facing off against a devil was projected in the background.
But its eyes maddened the most when he saw the sword in Dohko's hands. The crack in the sky made thunder roll out, shadowing the Specter. "That blade… you think a piece of broken metal will make a difference, Dohko?!" his hand then spawned with a spark the lance of dark electricity. "You will BOTH DIE LIKE ALL THE OTHERS DID!"
Shion and Dohko unleashed the full power of their cosmos, making their auras explode in size and rage. "BURN, MY COSMOS!" they shouted in unison.
Daemon Lucifer roared and threw his spear, which split into a million sharp thunder javelins. "DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!"
Shion threw his hand in an arc, unleashing his technique boosted by the Libra trident. "STARDUST REVOLUTION!"
And Dhoko swung the blade in an upwards diagonal slash, unleashing the cosmos of the dragon Seiryu, the image of Tenma's dead body permanently burned in his mind. "ROZAN… HYAKU RYU HA!"
Blitzing purple spears, the sparkling stars of light and the massive, roaring dragons of watery Cosmos all clashed together between them, bursting into a huge explosion of light that completely engulfed not just the warriors but the whole battlefield. Shadows of the fleeing Bronze Saints and Goddess all across the Third Prison signaled the beginning of the end of the Lost Canvas War.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Transported back to the present, Dohko still seemed like he would not answer Mu's question.
Lance poked him with his elbow. "Hey, Roshi, did you fall asleep or something?"
But the purple dwarf chuckled sadly, his eyes looking up at his new student. "I think I might be close to," he admitted, smiling. "My toughest battle… was too long ago and too painful. I don't think I want to share that one with you two." Taking his cane and getting up, he turned to Mu. "Thank you for visiting us, Aries Mu. It was a pleasure to get to know Shion's little student and share some stories."
Blinking his dotted eyes, Mu could tell something was wrong even without trying to figure out the old human's thoughts. "Of course, I loved it, Roshi…"
"I'm gonna doze off a bit." Dohko then patted Lance's back. "I'm really proud of you, kid. Don't hurt yourself needlessly over this training..." he then walked up to the stairs unceremoniously. "And don't forget to write to Shinta, too, you idiot."
Hearing the door of the master's room close upstairs, both young Gold Saints blinked at each other, wondering what had just happened.
"Aw, I was having a good time…" Mu lamented. "I hope I didn't say anything wrong."
Lance folded his arms. "Roshi just wanted to keep bragging, Mu, I bet he lost whatever fight he was thinking of." he lied, knowing for sure that something was up." he still saw Mu kinda downtrodden, perhaps wondering if he had really upset his master's best friend. "Look, don't worry about it, I've lived with this old fart for almost a year now, and I can't figure him out."
"But he got so upset all of a sudden."
The prickle of the rain on the window was heard. The Cancer Saint got up, picked up a bunch of fish leftovers and waved it at the big tiger, getting its attention. "Here, Ma Chao, come with me." he baited, causing the tiger to brush Mu off, growl and follow Lance, who opened the door to outside. "I told you not to worry, Mu."
The Lemurian Gold Saint followed them. "Hey, where are you going? You'll catch a cold." he covered his head. It had gotten dark and cold outside, and the rain was quickly growing more intense.
But the Cancer simply made his way down to the lake along with the massive beast. After reaching the edge, he threw the large piece of fish into the water, causing Ma Chao to growl angrily and try to catch it, but the big cat suddenly stopped short of the lake.
Mu sneezed as he followed them down and saw the tiger standing tense by the waterfall's deposit. "Ah, is Ma Chao afraid of the water? What a scaredy-cat!" he laughed, but rather than a response, a thunderous rumbling was heard, and Lance narrowed his eyes at the light of the bolt reflected on the lake. To Mu's shock, he then ran ahead and leaped into the lake, splashing water everywhere. "WHOA, wait, Lance! Where are you going? It's freezing there?!"
The freezing of the bubbling waters of Lake Rozan was so cold that they reminded the Pegasus of Mount Olympus. They were also dark, more so than usual, but the teenager swam as fast as he could nonetheless towards the deep, deep bottom. His 7th sense slowly began proving Lance's calculations correct when he started making out the form of a gigantic, immense, curled body resting deep at the bottom. A flurry of large bubbles flew up at him when it moved ever so slightly, and a pair of large, reptilian eyes irradiating bright green light opened up, detecting the presence of the mortal.
Swimming down to about the level of its snout, Lance faced off Seiryu, the Dragon God of Rozan, for the first time since he had been almost killed by it. Its size and monstrosity were still as much of an aberration as before, sending every instinct in Lance's body into red alert, but this time he was more quickly able to accept the incomprehensible power sitting before him and was able to make his question forthwith. "I have something to ask."
The beast didn't seem the least interested in entertaining his nonsense. It rested its head again like it felt bothered by a mere fly.
But Lance insisted, meeting the deity straight in the eyes. "Tell me, … how much more real can you make Tenma?"
It's already sharp eyes of green light somehow narrowed further, and new spurs of bubbles began to come out of its whiskered nostrils with a certain pace, akin to laughter.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Still following the red-eyed Saint, this time down a misty valley down Mount Rozan's edges, the young Aries Gold Saint tried to make sense of what was going on. He had just seen Lance jump into the water, then come out right away wet hair to toe but not saying a word about why he had done such a thing. Now he was taking Mu and Ma Chao down this strange place where he felt ghosts akin to the spirits surrounding the chasms of Jamir. They were also bringing the just-repaired Pegasus Cloth with them, so this couldn't be good.
He tried to cast a small barrier of Crystal Wall above their heads to at least cover them from the rain. "You know, you're really rude, Lance," he complained. "You start doing all these crazy things after you tell me not to worry about the old master, so I'm starting to think you're pulling a big prank on me!"
"Mu, I don't mean to make you feel weird, but you really could have just stayed at the hut, I didn't ask you to come with me. Heck, you could just paralyze me with your powers to stop me." Lance pointed out. At this point, he knew more than well that Mu was simply hiding his massive Lemurian curiosity behind a veil of child-like indignance.
The boy folded arms "I would… but I can tell you didn't like it when Master did it." he confessed, recalling the day they elected him as Cancer. A chill went through his spine when he noticed the combination of nightly darkness and fog in the bamboo forest. "This place is spooky… I bet I could collect some ectoplasm here."
As if to add to this, the Pegasus Cloth suddenly spoke to Lance. "I feel Dragon flying above us. He's watching much more intently than your other fights."
This made Lance genuinely nervous. "You think Seiryu is mad that I asked him this?"
Its memories were very vague, but Pegasus had some recollections of Shiryu's battle with the Specters in Jamir to protect Asmita. It was right after the winged horse got revived to be donned by Tenma once again, and if there was one thing it could say about Seiryu, it was that the Dragon Constellation's wrath was not something one would have difficulty identifying. "Worse, I think he's intrigued."
Cold sweat formed in Lance's head. "Well, all the more reason to finally unlock lightning."
"Ah, did you say something, Lance?"
"Yeah, I guess I better explain what I'm doing here, Mu." confessed the Bronze Saint, who then proceeded to tell him all about how Dohko had him go through these simulator fights to unlock a new element, namely Lightning.
Mu drank all the info like a sponge. "Oh, I see, so this is an exercise. Cool. Roshi is pretty smart."
"He has his moments," Lance confessed, reaching the pond where his adversary awaited him. Looking ahead, he saw the shadow of an armored boy on his knee, waking up from a dream of nothingness. It didn't seem like he needed Dohko's containment fence at all to stay solid. "There will be no shock fence this time…Mu, since you came all the way here, I got another favor to ask..."
The clouds thundered again, and the silhouette of a massive dragon god swimming through them was briefly visible to Mu, who wondered if he had gotten himself into something he shouldn't have. "S-sure, what is it?"
The rain began to intensify, raising the level of the pond and soaking the new Pegasus Saints. "When things get ugly, get ready to contain us with your barrier technique."
Pegasus Tenma got up and confronted his modern counterpart, entirely on guard. This time, it seemed like a whole new layer of emotions was available to him, expressed in a slight concern at meeting another Pegasus Saint like him instead of the simple, jovial smile he had greeted Lance within previous times, indicating Seiryu had indeed dropped all limitations on the simulation. "Where am I? Who are you?!"
Aries Mu observed the boy, who seemed to, just like Lance told him, really be wearing a projected copy of the Pegasus Cloth, but Tenma's version had a completely different design. "Wow, his Pegasus armor is much more advanced than yours, Lance… It doesn't seem like Master Shion's handiwork, though." he analyzed, unaware it was actually the work of Altar Hakurei, his grandmaster.
The Greek simply tensed his pose and burned his cosmos, igniting his aura into a massive white bonfire. Unlike Mu, he took special attention to Tenma's eyes and detected, indeed, a faint wine-red tint not dissimilar from his own crimson. "Tch… Dohko's journal wasn't lying."
The familiar name made Tenma's ears perk. He approached the battlefield. "Dohko?... what do you know of him, stranger?! Speak!" he then began to burn his cosmos as well.
"You don't need to worry about that right now, Tenma," warned Lance, who tensed his fingers into the Dragon Style fighting stance. "Just know that if you don't stop me, I will climb those Temple steps and take Athena's head!"
Accentuated by yet another rumbling of the clouds, the threat did not fall on deaf ears to either Mu, who observed the fight with widened eyes, and Tenma, whose face suddenly paled and twisted in fear.
"What?... But you're a Saint! How could you say such a thing?!" but seeing that Lance would not relax his pose, he gritted his teeth and charged up his own energy, determined to protect the Goddess of Sanctuary. "I won't let you hurt Sasha!"
"Forget about your stupid girlfriend, I will take your goddess' life!" Lance shouted, before letting out a battle cry, spreading his feet apart and making his cosmos burst in a fury, sending ripples across the pond water. He then shot straight at Tenma like a speeding bullet, fist immersed in cosmos. "Fight me, Bronze Saint! PEGASUS CHARGE FIST!"
The Aries Gold Saint irked. "Uh-oh! Crystal WALL!" he cried, casting a long, reflective veil around their battlefield. "Good luck, Lance!"
The white blur furiously zipped at Tenma, whose mind was filled with nothing but thoughts to protect his childhood friend. The Japanese boy's cosmos burned into an enraged flare, and he deftly moved in to slide below Lance's swing and counter-attack.
"Too SLOW!" but the Greek Pegasus suddenly curved his body forward till his hand reached the inundated ground and flipped his whole body, making Charge Fist's force spin him into a devastating kick that landed straight in Tenma's face, shooting him off with a scream straight against Mu's barrier. Lance's foot irked. "Eh, he certainly feels a lot more solid…"
Tenma gasped and fell on the floor, taken entirely by surprise, but all of his senses sent him on edge when he felt Lance already ready to attack him again with a dash punch which he barely blocked and countered with a flying kick. It got blocked, but forced Lance off nonetheless. The furious skirmishing resumed as soon as Tenma made his energy explode and attacked Lance with a flurry of lightspeed punches which seemed more like blitzing beams of light striking Lance's defensive Dragon Style.
Moving his arms up, down, left and right to block the successive attacks, Lance's mind was on nothing but his task, burning his energy to resist the earth-shattering punch strikes. "No fire, can't use fire! Just focus! Focus on the explosive power of the cosmos!" and amidst Tenma's combo, he saw a sudden timing gap which, with a spike of his energy, he struck through with a penetrating elbow blow to his face, stunning the boy for a split second. Already knowing Tenma would immediately recover, Lance's other fist struck his armored side just as Tenma's body tried to blitz, weakening him further, and finished things off with a flying spin kick which hit Tenma's chest only as he attempted a second counterattack, squarely sending him spinning off in the air once again to the ground.
Lance landed, panting, just as Tenma did, but on his feet in a brief triumph of the skirmish.
Mu was amazed, not so much at Lance's fighting, but at how Tenma already seemed to be recovering. "Holy m-moly, that guy fights like he's possessed!"
The Greek couldn't agree more. "Y-you have no idea."
Tenma felt blood drip from his head, though. "C-can't let you hurt her!" he repeated to himself, eyeing his opponent with terrifying hate. His cosmos burned, determined to fight harder. "I am a Saint of A-Athena… even if I can't beat you, I h-have to do everything I can and try!"
"Are you for real?! I'm barely holding you off!" Lance lambasted.
Tenma ignored him and dashed at Lance, instantly striking his chin with a devastating kick with nearly knocked out Lance right then and there, sending him spinning him back to the water by the barrier's edge. His world went completely blank as his brain shook inside his skull, but his burning cosmos rapidly subsided this sensation just in time for him to sense his enemy leaping into the air and coming down with a punch that would smash him immediately! Lance rolled over to the side and allowed Tenma to crater the floor, water shot out toward the sky as a pond formed. He got up just in time to cross-block a deadly white light beam punch that tried to strike his heart. Irking as the intensity of the fighting skyrocketed all over again, Lance's foot dragged back as he tried to block the succeeding combo punches and kicks.
When a sudden palm block from Lance stopped his left fist, Tenma's aura exploded "PEGASUS!" he cried out, emanating the constellation stars before his right fist gorged itself with white cosmos "SUI SEI KEN!" Staggering with the light of the deadly technique, Lance frightenedly bobbed his whole body to the side to dodge the devastating blow which landed on a ground slope, exploding with such force it sends large patches of mud flying everywhere, dirtying the two Pegasus Cloths.
But the chaos did not make Tenma relent, who struck through the raised mud and water and battered Lance's whole body with a vicious array of blows, cratering his Cloth and forcing coughs and blood out his mouth. His thoughts were in nothing but putting his life on the line to defend Sasha, even from such a strange foe. He would not let the tragedies of the war repeat themselves. He tried to continue his beatdown, but Lance's foot suddenly dragged back, giving him enough force to take Tenma's next hit and catch his fists by the wrists, holding them in the struggle. The steed-armored Saints roared furiously, fighting for supremacy, but Lance's superior body strength, a result of dedicated training under Dohko, was able to slowly grind Tenma's arms apart in preparation to kick him, until Tenma suddenly headbutt his nose, staggering Lance.
His aura then exploded. "PEGASUS!"
Dragging feet back and holding his bruised nose, Lance barely could detect the incoming attack. "S-shit!"
Tenma lunged and shouted his attack. "RYU SEI KEN!" his gauntlet exploded into a shower of meteors, which brutally pummeled Lance's body even further, pushing him back until eventually knocking him. Before his back could even hit the ground, Tenma charged right at him with another round. Lance slipped and fell to the water with this, gasping. "PEGASUS… SUI-"
But the Greek's foot immediately struck Tenma's ankle as hard as he could, tripping him, and his chop hand ascended from the water "PEGASUS BLADE!" he screamed, slashing just above Tenma's head which his light-immersed hand, the image of a sword-wielding, winged-horse riding man attempting to decapitate a Pegasus suddenly projected.
The younger boy stepped back in sudden fear. "Y-yikes!" Tenma thought he had dodged the attack, but his winged headband suddenly snapped in two and blood rushed down his forehead into his wine-tinted eyes, blinding him for a fatal second. "AGH!"
With setup step that stomped the ground, Lance's fist then rushed forward "CHARGE FIST!" it sped up at the last millisecond to ridiculous speed, striking Tenma's side with such powerful force it nearly broke through his cosmos-immersed Cloth. The shock with a superiorly designed armor made the gauntlet crack all over again, and the winged horse let out a pained shout in Lance's mind "H-hold on, Pegasus!"
"I w-will!" it vowed, though its voice still shook with both the physical pain and the pain of fighting its old owner. It burned its cosmos in conjunction with Lance, making the joint aura reach a new heat. "G-Go, take him down, Lance!"
Exploding his Cosmos once more, Lance let out a battle cry and attempted to deliver a decisive blow, but Tenma's body seemingly evaporated in a blitz of light, speeding around Lance. Instinctively, Lance's foot swung back, hitting Tenma's raised forearm guard just as he attempted to attack, stopping his attempt to overwhelm his adversary with speed. Lance struck forward again, and yet again Tenma dodged at blitzing lightspeed and countered, but yet again Lance countered with a now profoundly rooted precognition of Tenma's hated trick, this time sliding his body back to smash his elbow straight on Tenma's nose, bashing him again with even more blood filling his face.
Tenma coughed and staggered back, feeling his usual tactics failing. "I… I c-can't-"
"D-Did you really think that would work forever?! You're not the only one with a pair of eyes on his face capable of stopping an attack from working twice!" Lance shouted like he was finally getting vengeance on a hated enemy. He pointed his index and middle fingers at his own red orbs. "Especially not eyes like yours!"
The two fire-immersed Saints seemed to pause the skirmish for a brief second with this sudden confrontation of words, which Mu took the chance to observe them. "Ah, this is definitely a Gold-Rank fight...I can't tell which one is on top," he then saw the miserable state that the weaker, real Pegasus Cloth already found itself in, holed all over and with the gauntlet about to crack again. "Lance, your cloth can't take much more of this, you should stop!"
Lance panted. "I can't!"
Mu wasn't sure if he heard correctly. "W-what?!"
The Greek stepped away from Tenma carefully as his adversary got up. "I don't know how! Roshi has usually been the one to interrupt this!"
The Aries Gold Saint was baffled. "... Then why did you set this all up?! I thought you knew what you were doing?!"
This made Lance narrow his eyes at Tenma, seeing his objective clear. "I do!... This is the only way!" he claimed while burning his aura. "I have to feel my life in danger! Only then can I figure out this damn new element!"
Mu rushed to the barrier's edge. "How can you be so sure of that?!"
Lance's memories rushed back to his battles on Arcadia and Death Queen Island, as well as his harrowing experiences in Mount Olympus. "Cause it's the only way it's ever worked on me!" He then tensed his body into a fighting pose and burned his energy, determined to beat Tenma at all costs. "Come on, you punk! Fight me, or I'll kill your stupid whore of a goddess!"
The Lemurian gasped and covered his ears at the blasphemy, while Tenma was just more enraged, eyeing Lance like a hated Specter.
Lance smirked hatefully. "O-Oh, you don't like when I talk shit about her, do you?!" he asked, provocative. He was, though, admittedly kind of afraid of what frightening burst of power he would trigger in Tenma with all this. "You fucking tool!" he bit, letting out a bit of frustration.
Covered in blood, rainwater, and sweat, the brave young Saint, raised his body and charged his white aura, intent on destroying his adversary. His wine-red eyes then shined with a bright star of cosmos that unnerved Lance for a brief second, burning with energy unfamiliar to him, like a force of justice bent on destroying evil.
"It's not your insults that hurt me… it's your vicious nature!" confessed Tenma. "How could a Saint exist that would turn his back on defending the Earth?! On defending everyone we love?!" his energy that seemed to raise the more he contemplated Lance's injurious words.
"D-damn it, I can't just be provoking him the whole time, I need to then actually do something!" Lance thought to himself, feeling the bonfire of white cosmos, so similar to his own yet so unlike it all together, raise, raise and raise. His mind rushed through everything he knew about how the guy fought. "If I can't match his meteor fists in speed, how am I supposed to stop them?! If I can't strike him hard enough, how am I supposed to keep him down?!"
These questions assailed him just as he felt the fear for his life raising with the size of Tenma's Cosmos, which now illuminated the area like a lighthouse. He felt lost in the darkness of the fight, unsure of what path to take. Having blocked himself from using fire, he couldn't burn his problem down like with everything else, and with his skill and strength outmatched by Tenma's speed and endurance, it was a matter of time till he was subdued in skirmishing too.
The cosmos-immersed youth attacked, engaging Lance in another round of fist and kick exchange, which Lance barely managed to keep balanced, his body being slowly pushed back in the battlefield. It didn't seem like anything he had done to weaken Tenma had yielded a result. If he wanted to win, he needed to strike Tenma harder, faster, like a lightning bolt, like an enraged thunder that destroyed everything in its path! But how?! His head grew hot, frustration drowning his thoughts, and his attempts to guard Tenma's blows began to merely graze his attacks. Punches started seeping in, striking his body, weakening him. Lance pathetically attempted to regroup his guard, but Tenma had charged too much power and was now slowly overpowering him, brushing off his measly attempts to stop the younger boy's onslaught on him.
Tenma saw his opening. "NOW!" his knee struck Lance's stomach so hard the older teenager bent over, gasping out blood, and Tenma reached over his body in a blitz and wrapped arms underneath Lance's, his aura burning in patterns of flowing wind. "PEGASUS!"
Lance blinked, arrested, seeing Tenma's energy burn in a way entirely different from the comet fist. "W-what?!"
And the aura then burst around them like a hurricane, lifting them off into the air! "ROLLING CRUSH!" their bodies then flipped over and, with the force of Tenma's immense combination of wind and light elements, then rapidly descended Lance in a devastating move straight back into the floor, like a gigantic pair somersault. The inevitable crash came like a massive shock to Lance's system, digging through the ground and burying Lance under the water and mud amid pained screams.
Mu shouted his name, awed with the attack which raised so much boulder, rock, mud and water into the sky that it smoke screened the battlefield. It had come entirely out of nowhere, a near-suicidal maneuver, and it had undoubtedly crushed the Cancer Gold Saint with the tremendous force the Aries Gold Saint sensed in the elemental attack.
The clouds of dust lingered in the air for a bit, but the dropping of the rain, along with the burning of Tenma's Wind and Light Cosmos, caused a sudden atmospheric brush to scatter them away. The young Japanese boy was revealed to be panting and standing over the flooded rubble, where Lance laid, bloodied and knocked, shaking and squirming, the Pegasus Cloth cracked all over and on the brink of breaking apart.
Tenma allowed himself a sigh of relief. "S-sorry… but you brought this on yourself…" He then stepped back from the rubble. His cosmos burned once more, this time in a more tired, smaller size. He still had one last task to do. "I have to destroy that false Pegasus Cloth now. I can't allow such an aberration to exist." All of a sudden, a large golden streak of crystal crossed in front of him. "What?! This is… Shion's Crystal Wall?!"
Aries Mu stepped forward, showing himself as the culprit. "That's enough! You've beaten him!" the young boy warned, he then looked up high in the sky, where rain clouds laid. "Dragon, make him go away, stop this fight! I know you're in there, I can sense your stars burning!"
But the clouds did not respond, merely letting out more thunderbolts and more torrential rain.
Tenma, too, seemed surprised at his behavior. "Step aside, kid. That person is dangerous." But Mu showed him his tongue. "H-HEY!"
"I don't have to listen to a ghost!" the brat mocked, instead of turning his attention to the sky. He puffed his chest with uncharacteristic seriousness and shouted out loud. "Dragon, do not ignore me, I am Mu, the Gold Saint of Aries! If you don't stop this fight right now, I'm telling this to Master and to all the other Cloths! Especially Phoenix!"
While Tenma was utterly bewildered, Mu's words, this time, seemed to have some sort of effect. A bolt coursed through the clouds to project Seiryu's dancing silhouette, a sign of acknowledgment of Mu's shouts, which was better than nothing. Instead of making Tenma disappear, though, a voice appeared in Mu's head.
"Don't interfere!"
Mu chuckled, triumphant. "Aha, so you will talk to me!"
The sound of boulder rumbling apart was then heard, startling the Aries Saint. "N-no, Mu, that was ME!" shouted Lance, furious. His whole body shook as he stood up, covered in blood and bruises, and white-painted pieces of bronze layer fell off from his armor. "I t-told you to stop!"
Tenma narrowed his eyes. "You won't give up, will you?"
Lance met his gaze dead on with hate in his eyes. "R-right back at you… but I'm gonna s-stomp you for good!" he touched Mu's protective veil. "Get this thing outta here, Mu. I will o-only tell you once!"
The child was not convinced at all. His friend was battered, broken and nearly beaten. After that Rolling Crush blow, there was no way Lance could even stand up straight for very long, he could tell. "Give me one good reason!"
Lance merely turned his red eyes to him. "Either you do it, or I'm taking this kid to hell with the Underworld Wave to fight h-him!" he warned. "But I'm not s-stopping, not now! So get this thing out of M-MY FACE!"
A cold sweat formed on Mu's head. Something told him that, even if it was risky to let him fight, it was more dangerous for himself to get in Lance's way right then. He waved his hand, causing Crystal Wall to recede. "If Master or Roshi ask about this, I'll tell them you got yourself killed, you ingrate!"
Grabbing his own injured chest and feeling his body broken on the inside, Lance coughed out blood and sensed the world shake, but he made an effort to give the Lemurian a thumbs up to comfort him.
"You should have listened to him, I didn't want things to come to this…" Tenma commented, forming his simple fighting pose of charging Ryu Sei Ken, dancing his hands around to gesture the constellation points. "PEGASUS!" he shouted, projecting the constellation.
"I can't move…" Lance realized, feeling his legs stuck and burning his cosmos till it formed a thin white layer. "But I have to do something!"
"W-We will do it!" Pegasus replied, also burning its energy in conjunction, causing the image of the Pegasus Knight to be projected, clashing with Tenma's.
This made the Japanese boy hesitate a bit. It was rare he fought such a determined person among his enemies. A playful smirk filled his face. "You are dangerous… but you are a ferocious opponent, I'll give you that." but he had to squint in determination, reminded of his mission. "... but protecting Athena comes first!" White fires of Light cosmos then flared around his coiled fist, forming a ball of power which he then tossed "RYU SEI KEN!" and it exploded into the usual flurry of shooting stars.
Lance's vision was filled with the many white orbs of light, and his hand thrust forward. "PEGASUS BARRIER!" he shouted, casting the many glass rings that composed the round shield of his technique, taking in the many blows across its layered surface, sliding their energy off but shaking under the immense pressure of Tenma's barrage. "His attacks are projected, unlike Aguilon and Bellerophon, which means I can hold him off with this like an energy blast, but…"
"It won't be enough…" concurred the Pegasus armor he wore, making its cosmos shine to reinforce Lance's strength. "He'll change the intensity and pace to prey on Barrier's weakness, which means…"
Cracks of light began forming in Barrier, making Lance sweat in terror. Tenma saw this and roared, shooting out even more meteors, sensing the galloping blocks seeming blocked by the projection of the knight raising its round shield to prevent a wild horse's stampede but surely beginning to cede under the force. Mu could do nothing but step back, allowing the inevitable to happen slowly.
Lance's feet dug into the ground with the force and the integrity of his forcefield collapsing. "It won't hold…I have to..." his free fist coiled by his side in frustration, burning with white energy. His mind filled itself with the thoughts of the Cosmos as fear began creeping inside his heart. The increasing pressure made his aura burn faster and faster, consuming his energy reserves. Red eyes widened. "I HAVE TO ATTACK!" His aura then burst, completely tapping out his strength. "PEGASUS!" and his fist lunged forward, almost blindly, and Lance's lips blurt out the attack like an instinct "MULTIPLE CHARGE FIST!"
The Pegasus Barrier cracked and shattered, letting the meteors through, and a loud, cracking sound was heard, staggering Mu and striking him with a collision shockwave that shook the whole misty valley, before the sound of metal bashing on metal forward followed it as a chaotic cacophony much like a raging battlefield.
Tenma gasped, widening his eyes. Before him, countering his meteors, was the adversary Pegasus Saint, fist spread out like his, shooting out from his gauntlet what looked like snapping darts of force. Much like the blurring trail of light his familiar Charge Fist would leave behind, except these were headed by a crackle, a faint spark of light he had seen before in attacks like that of Sagittarius Sisyphus. Gathering his strength, Tenma attempted to overwhelm this too, firing Meteor Fist after Meteor Fist, making his pace, speed, and pattern vary like a changing kaleidoscope, but no matter what he did, the blows seemed to be perfectly matched by the Multiple Charge Fist, which changed its own pattern as if mirroring Tenma's.
The Pegasus' Cloth scream was heard inside Lance's head as its gauntlet cracked and ceded, attempting to match Tenma's superior armor blow for blow. Lance's feet grinded back again, but his technique endured, feeling in his arm a new cosmos snapping over and over, like an electrical pulse, like a sensation of a tense rubber band being released over and over. Attracted to Tenma's blows like a magnet, Lance's projected missiles did not require him to think, to predict and to match, but merely to make use of his superior force teleguided into the Meteor Fist by electrical signals in the air caused by the booming movement of Tenma's attack.
He was frankly shocked with himself! Where had this Cosmos come from?!
Mu was elated. "Lance, it's working! Keep at it!"
Just as the Aries said, the advantage Lance's technique had over Tenma began to manifest itself; expending less cosmos with each blow thanks to its inferred aim, being more focused and having an element just strong enough to defy Light, the Multiple Charge Fist began exhausting Tenma's forces as he attempted to overwhelm Lance fruitlessly. The taller Pegasus stood up straight, encouraged, and allowed his aura, which now visibly cracked yellow sparks all over its flame-like surface, to burn more intensely, fueling his attack further.
Tenma felt a cold sweat in his head, and his feet quiver, but he did not surrender, as his observational skills quickly allowed him to figure out his physical projection was being used against him, so he instead stepping forward to finalize his combo with an invested physical presence, launching himself on Lance. As predicted, this caused Multiple Charge Fist to suddenly cease and for Lance to have to defend himself from a sudden series of direct melee engagements that he only detected at the last second but that his body was somehow able to react more instinctively to than before.
The shorter Pegasus Saint's impetus caused him to crash on the floor, rolling over and coughing. Determined to protect Athena, he got up, panting, and raised his fists at Lance, already burning his aura. He looked shaken as if this was the first time his Meteor Fist had been so wholly trumped. Lance himself did not understand what had just happened, but one thing seemed obvious; just like in his battles with Yakos and Guilty, he had tapped into an Element of his cosmos he did not have access to before, and this caused not only his body to develop new strengths but to re-energize.
"D-damn it..!" complained Tenma, shaking. "W-who are you?! Why do you want to hurt Athena?!"
"I needed you to be serious with me…" confessed Lance, just as furious. For some reason, even though, he knew he was talking to a puppet, Seiryu had so skillfully imitated humanity in this ghost that he could swear he saw genuine heartache in the boy, causing him to respond to him. "If I didn't... I wouldn't have a breakthrough!"
Then, to further Lance's shock, the boy's eyes seemed to tear up, something that for a moment both he and Mu thought had been just the rainwater and blood in his face making them see things. "S-so much fighting… a-all I wanted was for us to be together again…" he muttered, 'thinking' of Alone and Sasha. "Yet Hades and Sanctuary do n-nothing but drive us apart again and again!" his young fist then punched the ground, cratering it and shaking the battlefield. "Saints, Specters… I hate you all!"
Lance and Mu were startled by all this.
"Sanctuary?... what did Sanctuary do to this Pegasus Saint?" Mu wondered out loud.
His Cancer Saint comrade wanted to say it didn't really matter, as usual, but, and maybe this was Seiryu's trickery, but the combination of Tenma's words and what he had physically in common with Lance, not to mention their constellation, made him hesitate and try to decipher this puppet's thoughts.
Instead of answering Mu, though, Tenma got up with a renewed flare in his eyes, as if he saw all that he desired only reachable if he stood over Lance's dead body. With a new waving of hands in hair, though, Tenma showed he was not about to give up. As always, his white, Light-element aura burned, and wind currents began to be picked up with it, worsening the intensity of the rain. Intimidated, Lance couldn't help but step back, but focused his narrowed eyes on his adversary, intent on finishing this before he had a cosmos burnout.
Lance's aura burned until it turned golden and he adopted his technique's stance. "N-not this time, you relentless f-freak!"
The humming halted, and the twinkling of stars seemed to be heard. Tenma's hand immersed in a vast white aura, indicating the coming of the Comet. "P-PEGASUS!"
But Lance zipped straight at him, hand forged into a golden spear. "LIGHTNING CHARGE FIST!" Mu then had to shout in startled when the battlefield was suddenly entirely transversed by a single, substantial deafening lightning bolt which blinded everyone with its light and struck Tenma right in the chest as he finished casting his Comet. The image of the knight striking the wild pegasus with a thunder-shaped spear was projected, and the punch hit the upgraded armor with such brutality that it broke Lance's gauntlet, tore right through Tenma's chest piece metal, smashed the flesh, lifted him up. Then it shot him through the ground, cratering it across a long trail of erupting wet rock all the way to the edge of the pond, sparks of golden lightning flying everywhere.
Mu raised a fist. "Yeah, that oughta do it!" he celebrated.
Lance panted, wondering too if it was over. His own arm shook like it was about to fall off.
Tenma's whole body squirmed on the ground, twitching here and there as golden sparks coursed through him. All of his thoughts were on his friends. "D-damn it… I have to…"
Lance gritted teeth. "Shit, he's still conscious?!"
Blood was vomited off, but the younger Pegasus resisted. Tenma was indeed awake but, this time, he seemed to be having trouble moving. As he rolled himself over, he showed off to the Saints a massive injury in his chest, the protection over it fractured and holed like drilled metal. He tried to get back on his feet but kept falling. The electrical impact of the blow had not just damaged him immensely, it now stunned his body beyond anything his willpower could allow him to do.
It was still quite shocking that, even in this state, Tenma just refused to go down. "Ya know, I'm kinda wondering now how is it that your Cloth wasn't more damaged, Lance," commented Mu, baffled by the whole experience.
"Y-you're telling me." He then saw, like a scene from a horror movie, the stunning effect slowly subside and Tenma gradually standing on his hands and feet. "I'll be honest, I don't know what else to do to bring this punk down, not with my forces depleted like this…"
Mu was shocked. "Wait, what? But you haven't been fighting for that long! I mean, you took some bad hits, but..."
Lance then squirmed, touching his injured side. "... it's the intensity with which I've been fighting. All this time I've been going 200%, maybe harder than this, to try to push myself to electricity or to just score a meaningful hit on this bastard!"
Eyeing his adversary with a terrifying determination to save the day, Tenma breathed harshly, feeling his wounds weakening him severely, but burning his cosmos as brightly as ever. "I must… I must protect them… S-Sasha…" he then let out a battle roar to the skies. "OH BURN, MY COSMO-"
The clouds rumbled and a massive beam of green light then suddenly struck the Saint from the past, blinding and startling the saints of the present, erupting the water of the pond and instantly disintegrating the simulated Pegasus, returning him to the form of many spirits that roamed the mist, which quickly scattered away. The two Gold Saints blinked for a second, unsure of what happened. For a second, they both thought Roshi had arrived on the scene, but as the water receded and calmed and the rain resumed its pace, the trail of fainting light clearly indicated the intervention from above.
The two looked above and saw the faint silhouette of the Dragon leaving the scene, disappearing into the far off clouds. Mu was marveled. "Wow… so this is the power of the Dragon Cloth?" he then joined Lance, who allowed himself to take a knee in exhaustion. "Nice job, Lance! No wonder you're our Patron Saint now, ah ah! That was crazy! We should do that again."
Although a faint smile of trimph showed on Lance's lips, these feelings were not entirely shared. In fact, right then Lance just wanted to go to bed and forget about the whole experience for a few hours. He still had a lot to figure out and many questions that did not go answered. Unfortunately, it didn't seem like asking Seiryu to make Tenma more realistic helped in any way other than making the fight just dangerous enough to push Lance into tap into the power he's been clawing at for what felt like an eternity of a month.
"All that work and I guess I found out nothing about Tenma." he thought. "He didn't seem capable of answering anything, even when pressed. I guess Seiryu just didn't know that much about himself, … or maybe he didn't want me to know it."
"Maybe, but I think Dragon found out something about you tonight," Pegasus told him, its tone encouraging like Mu's.
A small smile was forced on his lips. The thought of the monstrous creature having interfered was indeed impressive. "I AM pretty happy I finally gave Tenma a bit of his own medicine." He confessed, still bewildered at how strong Dohko's old student turned out to be and how his own gamble managed to overcome the difference, even if for a moment.
Mu saw the state Pegasus was left in. "I guess I'll have to fix your armor again. Gee." His arms folded around his head. "You should also really think of a better name for that other move, though, Lance. Multiple Charge Fist is kinda long and lame."
Lance was baffled, staring at the Lemurian like he couldn't make sense of his brain. "Mu, I was fighting for my life! I wasn't exactly getting a drawing board ready!" he ranted. "In fact, I barely even know how I pulled that off!"
"I'm just saying, ya should come up with something more dashing, like... Reflective Ray Charge Fist." Mu suggested, clearly biased towards science stuff. He ohed in excitement. "Oh, I know, the Mirror-Mirror Barrage!"
Lance pictured himself shouting these things. "No… just no!" he then dragged Mu out of the mist valley by the wrist. "Now come on, if Shion finds out I let you come along to something like this, he'll demote me to Junk Saint."
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Sometime Later,
Andromeda Island
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
The sun had not yet just fallen on Andromeda Island, being significantly further to the west than Mount Rozan, and the two chained students were taking advantage of every last minute of sunlight available to practice the Elysium Leap. The month of preparation was almost done, and they had to get everything right, or they were dead meat. Albiore and Elda made another landing on the sand, making sure to take Shinta's advice to put perfectionism ahead of distance. It was frustrating to try to get it right before they got it far, especially when the cliffs could care less about how well they landed on the fifteen-foot chasm.
Albiore coughed out sand, his face drenched in sweat. Even late into October, Andromeda Island's desert was like lava to the touch, smothering them with its low humidity and insane temperature. They had brought their practice gear by the cool shore, but even there, the heat was torturous.
"C-come on, Al, g-get up, we g-gotta try a few more t-times." Elda pushed, but even she wasn't sure if she could continue. She had to put Rebecca's scarf aside, completely drenched in sweat, and both her and Albiore were filled with scratches and bruises from bad landings and stones that were hidden in the sand. "A-ah, this is a nightmare, progress is taking forever…" She helped Albiore force himself up. It wasn't like he wanted to die, either. "H-how much this time?"
Albiore saw their landing marker shorter than the one before, but he took the measurement anyway, knowing the average was more critical, "w-worse… we'll know back at the huts if this is doing us any good." He then looked up and saw that someone had arrived at the beach. "H-hey, look… HEY, who are you?!"
The youth noticed them and walked up, and Elda had to cover Al's mouth angrily. "Shut up, are you crazy, Al?! What if he's here to kidnap us?!"
He brushed her off, more logical. "There's a poisonous sea ring around the island, remember? This guy clearly knows this place if he got here okay."
As he reached them, however, the youth looked anything but okay to the two kids, much less innocent. Having black-hair, a pair of creepy red eyes and a bunch of raggedy clothes like a slashed red t-shirt, ripped jeans and sneakers missing their logos, the teenager sported bandages on his hands both for training and healing, a bunch of patchwork bandaids all over his body, especially his cheek, and the side of his jaw seemed swollen.
Whoever this guy was, he looked liked he got the Underworld beaten out of him. Pretty recently, too. He looked them over with his red eyes very curiously, getting on Elda's wrong side immediately. "H-hey, what are you looking at?!" she snapped.
"I'm a courier. I'm here to deliver a message." he lied, showing off a letter. Shinta's kids did not look like he imagined them. The brunette girl, Elda, seemed feisty and tomboyish, which was like many Amazons he had met, but the blonde boy, Albiore, looked taciturn and reserved, which was not so much as the collective of arrogant, over-energetic rascals he knew orphanages to be filled with. "Are you two the ones training here?"
"What's it to you?!" Elda asked, aggressive, hands on thighs.
Albiore, however, recognized the Gold-Rank pin pinned to the teenager's jean pocket, which had the Cancer Constellation symbol on it to indicate he was an aide to the Cancer House. "Elda, maybe you should be nice-"
She punched his arm. "Hey, don't give me that, I've been yelling at you to stop giving Saint Shinta a hard time for weeks, and now you're giving me manner lessons? Get bent, Al."
The courier wondered what was going on, wide-eyed. Was Shinta having trouble with the meek one? This was unexpected. The girl looked way more like a troublemaker.
But Albiore then practically pressed his finger against the man's badge. "Look, Elda, he's from the Cancer Temple. Do you want to get sent to the Underworld?!"
Instead of defusing, her, though, this made something click in her head. "Cancer….?" she then remembered what it was and her face twisted angrily. "Hey, WAIT A MINUTE, you're from the same House as that Gold-rank punk that tried to bully us at the Coliseum! Saint Kastiel told us he had a pin like that!"
The courier Gold-ranker raised a brow. "Wait, what?!" he asked, wondering what Mephisto had done.
She raised her finger at him. "If you go back tell that jerk and his blue-haired friend they're gonna get theirs, ya hear me?! Those gold-rank training punks think they can get away with anything! Let's see if they like bullying someone their own size once me and Al' become Saints!"
Albiore just rolled his eyes. "The other kid with him wasn't even mean to us, Elda is just acting butthurt…"
The gold-ranker seemed irritated, concluding that this was probably connected to when Mephisto and Milo were caught selling fake tickets, but he took one look at the chains binding them together like a road construction chain gang and associated it to the girl mentioning Shinta's name and title. "Look, I just want you to take this to your teacher. Tell him it's from the Zodiac." he half-lied.
Elda took it and looked it over suspiciously. "Mmhh…."
He guessed her thoughts. "Don't get any ideas. Open it, and you'll regret it!" the gold-ranker warned. "It's directly from the Temples, do you know what that means?"
Sick of the arguing, Albiore took it from her hands and guarded it carefully. "We'll get it to Saint Shinta's hands, don't worry."
She puffed her cheeks. "You're such a suck-up, Al."
He wasn't convinced in the least. "Look who's talking, Tattletale."
The guy breathed a sigh of relief and reached for his pocket. "Thank you..., here, have this." he then gave them some of the Drachma coins he brought as a leftover from Mu's second repair job. He was digging deep into his meager salary. "You can get yourselves something nice with this when Shinta brings you to somewhere with civilization on it. Consider it payment for a good job."
Al and Elda both took it, and their mood changed utterly, chuckling happily at the sight of the extra allowance. The Cassiopeia Candidate already thought about the cards they would stock up when they next went to the mainland. "Nice! Thanks, Mister, you're not so bad-," she looked over, but then he was nowhere to be seen. "Whoa, where did he go?!"
Albiore blinked. They were close to the beach, where there were fewer boulders and corners to turn around, yet the courier had somehow already left fast enough to be out of sight. "Gold-ranker speed, I guess?"
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Back at the Living Area, Andromeda Shinta welcomed the two exhausted students inside the mess hut. "Come in, quick. It's about to get freezing." the green-haired teen urged, dressed in his training gear as well. "Dinner is almost ready, so buckle down."
They rushed over as fast as their chains allowed to the table, rubbing arms with hands. "Oof, it got cold so fast all of a sudden!" Elda commented, tucking Rebecca's scarf tighter around her neck... "What's for dinner, Saint Shinta?! I'm starving."
"It's because we keep staying longer and longer at practice," explained Albiore, who already tried to find the notebook they were putting the numbers down on. "Also, it's chicken, like always. Why do you ask every time?"
As predicted, the smell of chicken soup filled the air when Saint Shinta opened the pot. When he heard Al's comment, though, he sprinkled it a bit with some fresh herbs Saint Cynthia gave him to try to provide it with a new flavor.
After doing a quick math calculation with the jump numbers, Albiore put an average number on the calendar. The two kids stared at it and compared to the rest of them from the whole month. It showed a very gradual, but apparent rise.
Elda laughed an punched his arm. "Ah, see? Saint Shinta's advice is working! You're getting there, Al? Aren't you happy?"
Indeed, Al' showed a slight smile. Their progress was pretty undeniable. He just wished they didn't have only a couple of days left to make the jump. "I guess he knows what he's doing…" he then took the letter and offered the Master. "Saint Shinta, a person came by to give you this."
Green eyes blinked, distracted from the cooking, and he took the document, opening it. "Really? Did you know who it was?"
Al widened his eyes. Saint Shinta seemed oddly excited. "Mm… it was someone from the Cancer Saint, had red eyes?"
This made the adult in the room scurry faster through the paper, taking it out with a rush. He stopped himself suddenly from reading it, though, hesitant. "He responded… but what is he gonna say?" Gathering his bravery, Shinta, closed the pot to let the soup heat further and sat with the kids to read it.
Dear Shinta,
I've thought about for a while what to respond, and really felt like not doing it, but I reached a point where it became pretty obvious what to say. First of all, everyone is okay, though. Aldebaran adjusted pretty well to his teacher's absence, and so did the others. For now, I'm not at the Zodiac, so I can't stay up to date with what's going on.
On to something more pertinent, what happened on the day of the Festival was regrettable, and we were both pretty heated, but you're still barred from the Cancer Temple. Recently I've taken up a specific position among the kids that requires me to stick to my words. You know I wouldn't expect any different from you if I were the one to suggest what you did. I may have given you a hard time over the years, but I never brought up your background to dig underneath what you were saying. You and I are just gonna have to find courage for our differences and accept there are things we won't compromise with each other on and NOT bring up how it stems from our upbringings.
This being said, I am sorry I treated you so awfully about your teacher. I realize now I wasn't being fair about it. I sincerely hope you're doing well with the kids. Don't let Guardnia's ghost haunt you and make you think you can't do just as good a job as you idolize him to have, and try to get the girl to Cynthia's care as soon as possible. Their lives depend on you being focused.
Don't take this the wrong way, but, I need you to stop sending personal letters. Not because I don't want to hear from you, but because you obviously keep forgetting about safety procedures in these things. Our lives are pretty busy now, but if we both have free time, maybe we can catch a little bit next time you are in Greece.
Take care,
Pegasus Lance
PS: I added this in after I got to the island and met your kids when they weren't looking. They seem pretty talented, especially the girl, but you should pay attention to the other one. I can tell the look of someone who's not having an easy time. But my 7th sense could feel the cosmos in them burning already, so you're already being a better teacher than that fucker Kastiel.
For some reason, two pins of a lightning bolt and an ember were on the letter's bottom, the meaning of which really puzzled Shinta. He knew Lance was a fire elemental, but what was it with the other pin? The Master put down the message, which suddenly ignited with a pink fire, startling the kids and turning it to ash. He chuckled, feeling foolish. He had forgotten indeed to not mention the kids' associations and titles in correspondence.
More conscious about emotions than Elda, Al noticed a change of mood in the Master. "Is something wrong, Saint Shinta? What did the letter say?"
"Nothing, it just… set me at ease." The Andromeda Saint confessed. He had nothing to worry about after all.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
The next morning,
Mount Rozan
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Having said his goodbyes to Mu, who had stayed over for the night and now departed back to Jamir, Lance sat with the Pegasus Cloth Box by Lake Rozan, trying to not move his bandaids and injury patches out of place as he placed himself in meditating pose. He didn't want to think about fighting Tenma for a while, but he knew sooner or later he'd have to get back to practice if only to be able to more easily tell if further progress was being made. Right then, he wanted to take a quick break and then begin to practice using his new element, which he had only barely managed to manifest in the form of sparks more consistently appearing in his aura whenever he charged his Cosmos.
Once comfortable, he pointed his finger at the water and attempted to focus, thinking of his punch firing off a thunderbolt. It caused a sudden golden spark to connect with it, zapping Lance's hand slightly. He then focused really hard on repeating the exercise but make an ember ignite in his fingertip, but it made his head hurt and took a minute. Apparently, it wasn't so easy to just switch use between two available elements.
"I woke up with a gentle rain on my bedroom window," Dohko said, suddenly joining him. "It was very soothing, so I took a raindrop to my finger, and it told me Seiryu was quite puffy this morning, heh, heh, heh."
"Good morning, Roshi." Lance wished, already guessing the talk they would need to have.
"It's very rare that I get to see the Dragon Constellation so appeased." commented the dwarf, looking at the waterfall crashing on the lake. "Seiryu respects warriors who challenge themselves in battle… perhaps from now on, you'll have an easier time employing not just a new element, but the rising dragon punch."
Lance widened his eyes. He could very well see how Dohko would know that he sneaked off to have Seiryu simulate the fight at a harder difficult without his knowledge, but he also knew he succeeded with Lightning. "How did you-"
"I think you and I both know you wouldn't be alive here if you didn't succeed in unlocking Lightning." confronted Dohko, suddenly serious. "I thought I told you not to needlessly hurt yourself over this."
The big cat was out of the bag for real now. "It wasn't just Lightning… I had to figure out a whole new way to combat Tenma's move." he stared at his injured fist. "I couldn't match his insane attack patterns on my own, so Multiple Charge Fist mirrored them."
Dohko laughed. "That's the name for the move you came up with?! Yo-oh-oh-oh!" he cleaned a tear off his eye. "You should really take a few more lessons with the Gold Saints about titling moves."
"It's just for now! It's the closest way I could describe it since it really is Charge Fist projected just like how he would do it!" Lance defended himself. He then switched the subject. "It doesn't matter anyway, I beat him. And after the hell he put me through, I'm not gonna let you ruin my mood, Roshi."
The master rubbed his beard, intrigued. "Beat him?... It's not what I've heard."
"I beat him enough for Seiryu to step in! I can't do miracles!" Lance complained. "Even Mu was appalled at the guy's resistance, he's like a zombie! But not I got Lightning… my Charge Fist is both strong enough to make him register the blow and shocking enough to put him down for a damn second." he asserted, exhaling in frustration. "Roshi… I don't know where you got this kid during the last war, but he's a freak, plain and simple."
Dohko sat down, reliving the battles of the Lost Canvas. "That may be a fair description; Tenma was pretty stubborn and thickheaded. Personally, I always found it a trait common among Pegasus Saints I've met…" he commented offhandedly.
Lance felt his mood sink. "..Why didn't you tell me had eyes like mine?"
"Did it matter?" Dohko flatly pointed out, and he got a sudden stare from Lance as a response. "They were right before you the whole time. You didn't seem to notice. I figured it meant it wasn't important to you."
The sound of the waterfall was the only thing heard for a second. It really felt like another of Dohko's sly, self-wise tricks to get Lance to think about life and shit.
"You seemed…" Dohko continued, staring off at the horizon. "... pretty concerned about that other best friend of yours when you first met Seiryu. It stayed on my mind for a while, and I suppose it made me think of a good way to remind you that you don't really need Seiryu to put an ugly tattoo on your back to protect you from your fears."
Again, Lance was checkmated. There was nothing he really had that could prove Dohko wrong. Once more, the old dwarf seemed to comprehend the modern Pegasus Saint better than he understood himself.
A question popped to his head, though. "Roshi… do you see me as another Tenma?" he asked. Dohko's head lowered, causing the straw hat to shadow his face. "Is that why you took me in? And been protecting me so much?"
For a moment, it seemed like Dohko would not answer this. He kept staring at the waterfall, watching waves and waves crash down, like the passage of time. Ghosts from the previous war assailed his heart, reminding him of a scene of the Devil holding the Godslayer high in the air, blood jutting everywhere. It really felt like an eternity ago yet, at the same time, so painful like the war had just ended.
But his answer did come. "Of course not… Tenma was way better at naming his moves, heh-heh-heh." he mocked, making Lance's face go red. Dohko laughed and patted the teenager's back. "Don't worry, though, you do make a better house slave, yo-oh-oh-oh! So it evens out! YA-HA-HA-HA!"
Pegasus Lance sighed. This was probably the most reassuring thing he could have gotten as response.
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Chapter End
{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}
Next Chapter: Second Arc – Growing Night
Description: The Judges of the Underworld get suspicious of the False Specters as they begin to hear rumors of disloyalty.
Author's Note: First off, it seems like I've been getting ahead of myself with these chapter descriptions, as I often describe stuff in them that I end up putting off, cutting off or rethink completely. Sorry about that, but I will make an effort to be more accurate with them.
This chapter is the first I made following a new production technique where I focus on writing scenes as I feel energized to do, instead of what I chronologically need to get through, after which I simply transplant the complete product from a workshop file and put it in an official 'chapter file', ready to beta-read. It has an interesting potential, and it has allowed me to keep notes for the future close by, instead of spread across separate files, which sort of helps productivity and consistency.
I want to thank the new reviews again which, as they were signed, were all responded in PMs, just like I promised. Be sure to continue supporting the story, the author really appreciates it.
Finally, make sure to check out Hitagi Gahara's SKD scanlations of Next Dimension, Saintia Sho and others. The writer of this fanfic is proofreader of Saint Seiya Next Dimension's English releases, and they're your current top source for high-quality scanlations in English. Also, if you're interested, contact me through PM and get an invitation to the new SKD Discord server, where you can get updates on Sho and ND directly, not to mention chat with me and many other English-speaking SS fans.
