Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fiction / Saint Seiya Fan Fiction ❯ The Intense Clash of the Gods ❯ Tale 63 ( Chapter 63 )

Isaac still seemed greatly upset when they returned to the hotel, and no kind of consoling from Fenrir, Charybdis, or Cecil managed to ease his upset spirit. The Mariner simply went to his room, locked the door, and rested.

Although Fenrir would have preferred going online and at least talking with Elly for a bit, he found himself, by his own free will, sitting in the hotel's cafe with Cecil and Charybdis. "Seeing him upset like that..." Chary said as she sipped her tea, "Isaac usually is one to keep a cool head. Even when Thetis and the others died, he kept going on and fighting in memoriam of them. But after this..."

"Well, he's seeing the person that was his inspiration become some borderline-psycho..." Cecil answered. "How would you feel if that Kanon guy was like that?"

Charybdis snorted. "Almost did. Now though... now I'm glad I got to see the man he turned into."

"Putting complete and total faith in someone is dangerous," Fenrir spoke up, "Especially when a few years go by. Isaac's hero of sorts is dead to him... replaced by someone who thinks he suffered and therefor he suffered as well. Think he'll be alright?"

"Eventually," Charybdis answered. "He's handled worse."

"Worse what?"

They turned to see a woman standing there, maybe a year younger than Charybdis. She was wearing a basic T-shirt and jeans, smiling before she reached out her hand.

"Shaina Psyche. Silver Saint of the Ophiuchus Constellation."

"Serpent Handler," Charybdis said before reaching out and shaking it. "I thought female Saints had to wear ma-"

"All in the past now," Shaina said with a grin. "One of the first acts Pope Aiolos did was remove that restriction. Times change, the rules need to change too. Besides, considering my luck, I either would have to kill or marry everyone in Sanctuary!"

Cecil and Fenrir looked to Charybdis, confused.

"Old rule I found out about when I was a guard at Sanctuary," Charybdis explained. "Female Saints originally had to hide their face with a ceramic mask to symbolically suppress their womanish -i.e. weak- tendencies. Anyone man that saw their face, no matter what, would either have to be killed, or the female Saint would have to abandon her status and love him no matter what."

"And with personal preference concerning most men at Sanctuary, there were going to be a lot of dead bodies," Shaina said, only half-joking.

"Why are you down here?" Fenrir asked. He then took another bit of his drink, setting it down and then looking at her.

"Well," Shaina started, "You're really just tourists here and Pope Aiolos figured you might as well get a proper tour of Sanctuary and everything."

"Sounds reasonable enough," Cecil said. He slid off his chair, but Charybdis grabbed his arm. He turned to see the Mariner, who stood up as well before explaining.

"I'd love to go, but unfortunately our other comrade-"

"Oh, you mean the Kraken Mariner?" Shaina said. "I can wait, just drop a message off for him or something."

"Thanks," Chary answered.
_
"As you can see, most of the trainees work very hard for the opportunity for a Cloth. Normally, they're the ones that are fighting in the tournaments we have... but with five Kamui at stake..." Shaina said as she led Charybdis, Fenrir, and Cecil through the training grounds. Men and woman were heavily preoccupied, sparring, sprinting, and exhausting their bodies if only to get one step closer to Sainthood. "Well, they know the Saints want the Kamui to go to the best men and women, so they're staying out of this tournament."

"Good thing too," Charybdis said with a smirk. "They would have no chance against One World."

"A Gold Saint might, though," Shaina corrected as they began walking out of the grounds and towards a series of temples up a mountainside.

"Just what is the deal with a Gold Saint anyways?" Cecil asked. "I mean, that Dohko guy reclaimed those daggers I had and-"

"Oh, so they were yours..." Shaina said. "The last Libra Saint from well over 300 years ago sold them away... felt even the Libra Saint doesn't deserve to use weapons in battle."

"What?" Fenrir asked. "No weapons?"

"Very few Saints are allowed to use any kind of weapon outside of their own body in battle... a strong belief of Athena since the ancient times. There are a couple Saints that are permitted... but the three big ones are the Andromeda Saint who has those chains, the Sagittarius Saint with his golden bow and arrow, and then the Libra Saint with six pairs of weapons. When Dohko found out his Cloth was technically incomplete due to his predecessor's actions, he started looking for the weapons in his spare time... which wasn't a lot. All in all, the Libra Saint has two shields, swords, tonfa, nunchuku, triple-rods, and spears at his disposal, any one of them able to cut through a Freezing Coffin instantly."

Cecil whistled. "Libra Saint must be a coveted position then."

Shaina nodded. "It is... but considering how long-lived Dohko is... he's 261."

"WHAT?!?" Charybdis, Cecil, and Fenrir said in shock.

"I... I thought he was just 18..." Charybdis managed to get out afterwards. Shaina nodded.

"That's what everyone thinks when they don't really find out. He was the sole survivor in the last Holy War against Hades, and was empowered by Athena so that he ages only a day for every year that goes by. He's training a successor right now, someone that's a Libra as well, and hopefully he won't die like Shiryu did before his time."

"You know, I'm a Libra," Fenrir said. "He could easily just pass it off to me... October 11th."

Shaina snorted. "Yeah, well... we're not that desperate to get rid of him. He's a hero, a wise man, a father figure, pretty much the best damn Saint Sanctuary could ever ask for except..." she stopped, pointing a few feet forward. The trio had been so focused on her that they entirely had missed the giant statue of... him...

"No... no way... Saga..." Charybdis said, walking forward. The giant stone statue stood there, facing her... Kanon's older brother, the previous Gemini Saint. She noticed, however, it seemed as if his back was a little uneven, and when she walked over to investigate, she saw an interesting sight.

Another statue of Saga was there too... the hairstyle didn't match Kanon's, although it seemed... different... Whereas the initial statue showed a man standing proud, wearing the Gemini Cloth and holding its unusual helmet in his arms, this Saga was leaning forward a bit. A strange, almost psychotic grin graced his face, and Chary immediately suspected this was the stereotypical "dark side" of a Gemini. Walking back between them, she saw that a message had been written in Greek.

"It says," Shaina spoke up, walking to them, "'We all have the choice within us. To either cover up the darkness inside us until it breaks free and good men and women die, or vent it when we can.' Good man... a little psycho at times, but no doubt a reason he was able to stare down a million Gigas and kill every one of them."

"You know... I AM Greek," Charybdis spoke up, turning to Shaina. "But for an Italian, your pronunciation is damn near flawless."

Shaina nodded. "Thanks, now shall we?"
_
"And here is the highlight of this little tour!" Shaina said cheerfully, "The Twelve Temples of the Knights of the Zodiac, the Gold Saints! It takes about twelve hours to run up all of them, fighting and hypothetically defeating every Gold Saint... but that's literally impossible."

"They can't be that difficult," Cecil spoke up. "I mean, we've taken down some pretty hard opponents before... some of them when we even didn't have armor!"

Shaina shook her head. "Those weren't Gold Saints. Gold Saints are the men closest to the Gods... of all of you, I bet only Charybdis has a chance against them, just by virtue of One World."

"Thanks," Chary said, her voice taking on a slightly irritated tone. "But during my time here, I wasn't under the impression the Gold Saints were unstoppable."

Shaina shrugged. "That was the previous generation... the most recent generation is the strongest set of twelve we've ever had. They make all the other ones look like total Bronze Saints." She laughed at her little joke before continuing. "Come on, they're not in their temples, but I can at least show you..."

A quick sprint later, they found themselves inside of the first temple, that of the Aries Saint, Shion Kiki. As expected, there were a number of golden ram statues everywhere, as well as what appeared to be repair tools. "Shion is our repairman here," Shaina explained. "He's also our strongest telekinetic."

"As I've heard," Charybdis, remembering what Zelos had mentioned what seemed like so long ago.

"But then again, telekinesis is a requirement for being a Gold Saint," Shaina said, obviously gloating now at this point as she led them to the next temple, "A human normally has six sense... sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and their sixth sense which is like their intuition. Then there is the Seventh Sense, which only Gold Saints have mastery over... the ability to raise their strength to hypothetically unlimited levels."

"How... how's that possible?" Cecil said. "There's gotta be a limit somewhere..."

Shaina shook her head. "Oh, and we're here... the Taurus Temple of Aldebaran Rodriguez." Sure enough, statues and pillars of bulls were everywhere. "Essentially, the theory of a Gold Saint is that that since we are all made up of the same atoms that makes up the Universe, we are all little "mini-Universes". Since all Universes are expanding due to the Big Bang, that includes the Gold Saints, who interpret as that their strength is constantly increasing as well. That's the Seventh Sense in a nutshell... the ability to be in tune with this constant gain of strength. The prerequisites for even being CONSIDERED for being a Gold Saint are telekineses, telepathy, teleportation, modest healing powers, and also lightspeed reaction-time and speed."

"Lightspeed? That's impossible... laws of physics."

"Don't 'E=MC'Squared me, bastard," Shaina said to Cecil. "Anyways... off to the Gemini Temple."

Things went that way for a while, Shaina talking about the Gold Saints with so much pride, you'd think she WAS one. However, she certainly said a lot about the inferiority of a mere Silver Saint... Fenrir was already starting to suspect something from her.

"And that was the Pisces Temple..." Shaina said at long last, remarking about the only temple that didn't follow the motif of statutes of the patron animal... technically. It instead seemed more a garden than anything else. "Any questions?"

"I've got one," Charybdis said as she turned to Shaina. "When I was here nine years ago... the Virgo and Scorpio Temples weren't completely bare. Why is that?"

Shaina shrugged. "We don't have a Scorpio Saint at the current moment... he's training for it at the moment."

"And Virgo?"

Shaina momentarily cursed the fact she lacked her mask... because it clearly let Fenrir, Charybdis, and Cecil see the color drain from her face. "I... I am not permitted to speak on that matter..." she turned and began walking towards the Pope's Temple, positioned a little after the Pisces Temple. "The Pope is meditating at the moment... I think it wise for you to return to your hotel."

"Fine then," Charybdis said as she walked back, "Let's get going. We've got a match tomorrow as it is."