By the way, since you said 'for the time being', I take it this means you're actually gonna go over my omake? Because I'd sure be looking forward to reading that~
Well I love my life and time too much to do a line by line (those are costly affairs that can drive a man to madness if done more than once a week), I was gonna give it a shoutout when I came here to get into other things, yes.
The instant all the summoned 'Daleks' had materialised, they were ambushed from behind by a flock of flying Resinners, this flock taking the shape of balloons, plane engines, helicopter blades, even a flying car. Leading this flock was none other than the one Beast whose Castitas' heart sank at the sight of.
"Yeah, did you seriously think we'd have no defence against an airborne attack?" Avaritia laughed, not just at the first Dalek but also with one eye on the Saints. "Just because Old Man Superbia was so out of touch he fell for your 'creator' pulling a Nigerian Prince on him, 'Dalek', doesn't mean you can do a thing to rest of us!"
Not that the aerial ambush was going as smoothly as Avaritia made it sound. With the remaining 'Daleks' now having the chance to react, the sky became a lightshow as they fired beam blast after beam blast. Both Resinner and Dalek then crashed to the ground in fiery wrecks.
Specifically to say this is an incredible mental image. The concept of "The Abyssal Forest tried to recruit a Dalek before it decided to kill them all" is funny enough in of itself, but then the whole mess turning into gag based magical girl monsters forcing a dogfight against alien invaders just elevates this beyond words.
Well, they had been looking at a Patientia candidate in another preview. An art prodigy that volunteers at schools. I would find it funny if she had been rejected by Michael for repressing her anger too much.
"Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you wanna go apeshit?"
"Hiya boss," ey said with a confidence I couldn't understand. Superbia demanded respect. Superbia could obviously crush us for failing to respect him. Superbia was sitting in his chair talking quietly to a reedy figure in a gray robe that left literally everything about its occupant to the imagination.
"What is the meaning of this interruption?" Superbia demanded, even as his eyes focused on me for all my efforts to hide behind Avaritia. He snorted.
"Ah," the robed figure said. "So the fourth has finally awoken. With your leave, I will allow you to attend to this, we can discuss the fruit later." Their voice had a lyrical tilt to it, and a strange ethereal quality that felt familiar in a strange way. Where Superbia made a constant show of authority, the cloaked person managed to sound like they were above everything while miming deference.
Inessa takes advantage of the odd break from monster attacks to work through her feelings on Invidia. Meanwhile a mysterious new girl transfers into school. Michael detects something odd about her, but, before the girls can investigate, Invidia and Avaritia turn the chemistry teacher into a resinner and set him running amok around the school.
Tune in for Episode 23: The Fourth Saint?! A Mysterious Transfer Student Arrives!
It's right after the cloaked figure makes note of the Beasts gaining their fourth member (Temperance still included in the count, hm?) that the Saints are signaled to be getting their own fourth, by the proxy narrative's emphasis at least, which kinda makes my eyes narrow at the Intended Balance that almost seems to be actively facilitated.
But more than that it's getting to me that.
The transfer student might not even be Chiro.
An ENTIRELY new motherfucker might be stealing the totally-just-here-undercover-to-get-recruitments thunder while Chiro is avoiding the Saints.
Can you imagine that.
Can you imagine the transcendent raging jealousy of watching your friends welcome a new magical girl on the team after you bounced over your inferiority complex from not getting chosen to be a magical girl.
It'd be excruciating.
It'd be hilarious.
Like this being Patientia or the painter girl (who'd need to be hiding her identity or presenting herself WILDLY differently from her last appearance to make sense for the 'mystery' of the preview) or both is like, something I'm considering but not actively attached to, having an opinion would have to wait until Shadell gave us anything to work with on what the art prodigy's deal even was.
Who knows?
All we know for sure is that it's less bad than whatever the Beasts have. Temperance feasts during study time, Ida is encouraged to take breaks, Inessa doesn't think having a GF would ruin her magic, so they clearly have some leeway. We just don't know whether that's "all the leeway" or a "cheat day" sort of thing.
See, it's more that I'm saying being a Saint is obviously less oppressive just because the power is an item you can take off, rather than having it injected into your flesh and experience it dictate your actions by making you feel phantom pain whenever you fail to live up to its standards 24/7 like a Beast deals with from their Seed, but that leaves the question of if, when an Angelic Saint is transformed, do they have to deal with that tension during their job hours as an innate complication to using this kind of power, or is it just Sin Seeds specifically that are dickbags?
Going by the setting metaphysics, the former feels like a strong explanation for why Michael would go "Sorry, at this time you wouldn't be a good fit" for applicants on the edge of qualifying without further elaboration, because it's literally. If you SAY candidates need to be able to maintain a specific emotion to remain connected to your powers, and they don't already have a stable confidence in their ability to live like that, it's just going to destroy their ability to separate and balance their role with their sense of self.
You know.
Like Chiro Invidia Bat is going through now.
The fact Michael gatekeeped Ida from Sainthood until she shifted her Diligence enough to at least accept help in specific situations instead of bearing it all by herself implies Michael is as much against her chosen falling into the impulses encouraged by the position as she is with them shorting out from wavering emotions to traumatic (and maybe fatal) consequences like C could have, which just goes to show.
Man, even with the worst possible interpretation of what being an Angelic Saint is like, it barely amounts to wading depths compared the fucking Mariana Trench occupied by the Abyssal Forest's onscreen chicanery.
There are a lot of things about Lupin that progressingly make you go "Oh you. Don't. Have a functional belief system, you're an abused kid who never processed what happened to you enough to not take it out on people who had nothing to do with it", but I think what gets to me most is.
"What was your childhood like?" I asked instead. I couldn't place a lot of what she said into any semblance of a normal life, but enough sounded alarming, even beyond the fact that her uncle was evil, that I found myself worrying for Lupin.
"It sucked and I hated it." Lupin responded cheerfully. "They did everything they could to try and make us into 'virtuous children', no matter what would have broken along the way."
I winced at that. "I'd say 'I'm sorry,' but that wouldn't cover it, would it?"
She shook her head. "No, but we got away, in the end. I mean," she laughed, "I'm pretty flexible, you know. I could have bent myself up enough to fit in without breaking. But we didn't and now things are better and someday we'll get to go back and force them to see that they're wrong and then there won't be any more kids like us!"
"I'm not going to do that. It's," I hesitated, unable to voice how off that felt and suddenly gripped by a feeling of intense unease, as if the winds that kept my fragile soul inflated was about to scour away this new face, "I need to sit down."
"It's okay," Lupin pulled me to one of many chairs in the changing room, "you shouldn't go against your sin like that you know, but it'll pass soon."
"So," I managed, struggling to distract myself from the horrible scouring sensation, "because I felt envy of you, but I wasn't willing to let it reign and imitate…"
I'd known, intellectually, that it could happen, but there was horror in seeing how easy it would be to lose everything I'd traded my life for.
"Probably," Lupin admitted awkwardly, "Sorry about that."
Ey wasn't transformed, so eir tail was only metaphorically between eir legs.
"It's fine," I managed eventually, "it's probably better to feel that now than in battle or sometime important or something."
Lupin gave me a thumbs up, "Thatta girl! It can be helpful too sometimes; I'm not just saying that to get out of responsibility! The better we understand how we relate to our sins, the more we can draw on them."
I wondered about that. What was envy really? I admired Inessa, Ida and Temperance; and Lupin. That went without saying. But admiration wasn't a sin. Or at least, it didn't feel sinny. Envy's power was imitation, well and inexplicably, bat wings and, I somehow knew, sonic blasts; but mostly imitation. So what was the difference between aspiring to be like someone and envying them?
"It's okay if you don't know; better actually," Lupin's momentary guilt had immediately given way to suave confidence. "Sit with it for a while, let it come to you and see what your sin likes and what it doesn't. You'll figure out more eventually."
"And well, both sides agree that the Beasts lost. The Saints back then won and banished sin from the heart of the Forest and started to teach everyone to be virtuous and good and…" ey glowered.
"It'd have killed Gula," ey said at last. "It was killing her to be the kind of boy they'd do anything to force her to be, because mandatory virtue is just something you use to hurt people until they can do the same."
Lupin grinned, "And sure virtue sounds nice. Let's make everyone be good and all. Except, well, if you're someone who wants things or needs things or doesn't quite fit in the right way; people can be 'generous' with correcting your behavior; they can hurt you out of kindness to teach you humility, you know, and even if you're someone who can make it through all that, it still breaks you a little inside, right? We need to want, to crave, to rage!"
"Oh," I wondered idly, what I would choose if I could have opted to have all my envy and its attendant wants stolen from me entirely. It seemed instinctively better than just living with it unsatisfied. It wasn't any less horrifying than the way I'd dealt with my sins, not really.
"Any questions?" Avaritia asked after ey'd settled down and resumed messily getting eir lo mein all over my bedspread.
"So, you're," I hesitated. It didn't really change anything, but it was strange to realize how foreign Avaritia really was, "You're one of the Children of the Forest?"
Ey shook eir head. "Nope! Avaritia Wolf is a Beast of the Abyssal Forest. But," ey gave up trying to force a grin, "yeah, that's what we used to be."
"And Superbia?" I pushed aside the familiar sensations his name caused.
Lupin shrugged, "The same. Gula decided to run and, well, I couldn't let her do that alone, could I? And, you know, recent choices aside, she's basically always right when she actually makes up her mind. It was… close," ey shuddered, and I wondered how old they had been when they decided it was better to risk a dark forest only Beasts could survive than stay in their hometown.
"But, we found Superbia sealed away in the Forest from all the way back when that first war happened, and we let him out and he gave the seeds that let us turn into Beasts so we could join him against the tyranny of virtue."
Lupin left eir whole life to get away from a place that forced em into a box that took away everything else ey is, and, ey went directly into a role that demands ey always exist in the state of mind it desires, unless ey want to be tossed out summarily.
The fact ey inflicted this exact same traumatic scenario on Chiro and only barely understands enough to get deadlocked between the partner ey want to give the world to and what ey think is right for Chiro.
well now this feels like a key question. What is the line between the sin and virtue of the same kind of emotion? This feels like its going to be a central question of the sin V virtue conflict. As for their side of the story, I'm not sure how accurate Superbia's story is. given that they would probably have a fairly biased view, few things can twist perception like absolute pride. I rather doubt that the beasts where attacked simply out of fear for what they might do.
That being said, reading between the lines, it does sound like lupins homeworld is a fairly oppressive place to live. She puts enough emphasis on how its wrong to judge people for there emotion I'm pretty sure there is some major thought police stuff going on. But the more I find out about Superbia the less I trust them. I think Lupin may be falling for the mental trap of thinking that because side A is wrong, their opponent side B must be right. I don't think Superbia wants to end the oppression, I think they just want to be on the other side of the boot.
The fact that this is, very much, the question that the story's main conflict rests on, and Lupin's belief system in relation to this question is just absolute bullshit.
"The Abyssal Seeds feed on these buried emotions and let people face the things they're hiding, and then we get stronger and we can do it better, to build a world of sin past all hypocrisy, where people can finally claim the tools to help themselves without any of the pretense that gets in the way."
"That doesn't justify doing evil!" Inessa shouted, "Look, I know what it's like to get pushed around, but that doesn't make it okay to just throw away your morals and do whatever!"
Avaritia glared, flexing eir claws as ey strafed away from me slowly, "I'm not throwing away my morals! I'm saying that shaming someone who's lost everything else for being greedy doesn't help if that's the only thing keeping them going! When you can't be the perfect little angel everyone just loves, you need wrath to stand up for yourself, envy to let you see how much you need the things you don't get."
"People need it," Avaritia said, trading humor for an undercurrent of passion, "the light, living a good modest hard-working life where you never get angry, never depend so much on pride to keep you going that you abandon everything else isn't wrong?" ey shrugged, "It's like I said at the mall, I don't hate them, but, it's not wrong to feel something. Murder, sure, that's bad. Theft, okay, I'm for it, but that's fine to judge. But, feelings? You shouldn't try to ban feelings, and a lot of us use them to flourish even when they hurt."
"Hiya Luxuria; I'd say it's a pleasure to finally meet you as me, but uncle dearest has told me alllll about what a messed up little freak you really are deep down, so I honestly have no idea why we're welcoming you into the fold." She even sounded like Lupin, though the other girl's basic compassion was nowhere to be found in Avaritia's eyes. That was for the best. Being looked at like I was a cockroach she wanted desperately to crush hurt a lot less than the thought of tolerance in Inessa's eyes.
"I told the entire school that I'm a pervert," I thought I had, I honestly couldn't remember exactly what I'd said to Temperance's impossible suspicion. "I see girls, even ones who I've known so long and been so close to for practically my whole life and I can't stop thinking about how beautiful they are. I get fixated on it and no matter how hard I try the thoughts just keep bouncing around my skull. And I just end up wishing…"
Avaritia's claw reached out toward my throat before she visibly restrained herself. "Wish what Charleton? Do you want to kiss them? Date them? Sleep with them? Own them? Tie them up and keep them in your basement?"
Unless it's Lust that degrades women as sexual objects, then that's a reason to reject someone entirely, who cares who the other person pushing them into that was, they're depraved.
She shook her head, "Nah, my uncle can sometimes be a lot and I've been waiting out here for ages. Wanted to make sure that you weren't too overwhelmed or anything, especially since it sounds like you've gotten involved in, what, two monster attacks this week." The last was said with a coy innocence that made me wonder just what Lupin's angle was.
I shook my head. Honestly, he'd been a little weird at first, but it had become obvious he was a guy I could trust as the conversation had gone on. Besides, I really wished people would stop babying me just because I kept getting in the way of these things, "It's fine. Honestly, we even made an appointment to talk more next Monday."
She looked almost worried, "he wanted to see you again?"
"Is that so weird?"
"Nope, just that he's usually got most of what he needs from a student after a single meeting. I guess that means you must be a real head case," she laughed, but her tone was only gently teasing.
I gave her a mock glare, "Well, it seems like he spends a lot of time with you, being your uncle and all. If I'm a head case, what does that make you?"
"So, you've seen through me then," she grinned in a way that showed all of her pearly white teeth and took a few predatory steps toward me. I backed away, suddenly a bit nervous. It wouldn't be the first time a student had randomly tried to attack me before suddenly turning into a money themed monster, "I'm a greedy greedy girl of course! Practically terminal."
I laughed awkwardly, and she took a step back.
"Seriously though Charlie. I just wanted to check in? I'm sorry about how you seem to keep getting caught up in the middle of all of this stuff going on. It's really not fair to you."
I shrugged, "The Saints seem to get caught up in a lot more than me, and besides, it's not like it's your fault I seem to be natural monster bait."
"Right, obviously it's absolutely not my fault at all!"
With that strangely guilty rejoinder, Lupin practically dashed into her uncle's office.
"Everyone hurts people," Avaritia's answer took a while, and eir tone was surprisingly serious, "Parents hurt their children to make them act 'right'. Corporations deny people life saving medicine for no reason and that's just 'normal'. But when a person does something right in front of you and you can't avert your eyes fast enough, suddenly that makes them the devil, even if it helps in the end and no one really gets that hurt!"
"I'm selfish," Avaritia added sadly, "I'm pretty awesome I mean, but, well, at the end of the day, party line aside, I'm not doing this for the world. I'm doing it because I think there are people like you, like Gula, like me who need it right now and, like, ultimately, I'd let the world burn if my important people get to be happy."
"Sure they'll get a little roughed up, for as long as they position themselves as the guardians of the status quo, but they're tough and, in the end, they'll see we're right."
Lupin grinned, "And sure virtue sounds nice. Let's make everyone be good and all. Except, well, if you're someone who wants things or needs things or doesn't quite fit in the right way; people can be 'generous' with correcting your behavior; they can hurt you out of kindness to teach you humility, you know, and even if you're someone who can make it through all that, it still breaks you a little inside, right? We need to want, to crave, to rage!"
Lupin's rhetoric just leads to nothing, circles in circles that round up to a big fat zero, and, you know what illustrates that plenty?
Lupin grinned, "And sure vice sounds nice. Let's make everyone be sinful and all. Except, well, if you're someone who wants things or needs things or doesn't quite fit in the right way; people can be 'greedy' with correcting your behavior; they can hurt you out of pride to teach you envy, you know, and even if you're someone who can make it through all that, it still breaks you a little inside, right? We need to want, to crave, to rage!"
Do you see how making a photonegative of this quote just describes the entire story.
That's the kind of world following Superbia's agenda will make, where the only differences are useless buzzwords getting flipped to justify the very same actions.
And do you know what the biggest, most ridiculous absurdity of all this is?
"I'm getting to it, okay! This isn't easy to talk about!" Lupin glared at me.
"Sorry, sorry," I took a large bite of lo mein and waited for Lupin to get back to eir story.
"Superbia knew we'd lose if we fought, and he found a way to a world outside the forest entirely. So, we figured we could come here and empower our seeds and recruit new allies like you! People that need their darker emotions; that crave something more than they can have being all nice and kind and doing what society wants them to do."
I wasn't sure how to square my own envy with that; but any way to pretend that I wasn't a monster who'd sold myself out to team evil just so I could stand on the stage instead of just being a powerless bystander posed obvious temptations.
"And making Resinners?"
"The more monsters we make, the more power of sin we spread, the stronger we can get and then we can go back and show everyone they were wrong. Superbia has it all figured out."
This isn't even about Earth! This is about an alien dimension's bullshit!!!
Lupin's taking the moral fallacy of a whole different world and pasting it onto the culture of the culture in front of em like it maps 1:1, and ey don't even plan on doing anything about it! Ey thinks the Abyssal Forest will just leave! Just fuck off with powerups and useful recruits! There isn't any fucking thought of if what they're doing will impact the world they're harvesting!
Lupin has this really dangerous kind of naivete, in that ey thinks ey've got it all figured out by applying the exact reverse of the ideology that hurt em will see ey through every situation, and that does, not. Because Sin vs Virtue logic doesn't work for Earth. I doubt it even actually works for the Children of the Forest, given they child abuse'd their way into unsealing an ancient evil.
So, what do you think is the difference between Virtue and Sin?
I wondered about that. What was envy really? I admired Inessa, Ida and Temperance; and Lupin. That went without saying. But admiration wasn't a sin. Or at least, it didn't feel sinny. Envy's power was imitation, well and inexplicably, bat wings and, I somehow knew, sonic blasts; but mostly imitation. So what was the difference between aspiring to be like someone and envying them?
"It's okay if you don't know; better actually," Lupin's momentary guilt had immediately given way to suave confidence. "Sit with it for a while, let it come to you and see what your sin likes and what it doesn't. You'll figure out more eventually."
I stood there awkwardly for a few moments, trying to decide how to finish this conversation. The Saints seemed in no rush to attack, and, okay, sure I'd declared myself their enemy and I was absolutely going to fight them. I could sense my newfound power driving me against them. Invidia's sprout had needs and I knew intuitively that running from the things it needed to grow would only see it cut me off.
"You can steal things from people! Like appearances and magic," Lupin said thoughtfully, "So just copy my confidence in my looks for a bit and we can go on for a little more!"
"I what?!" I offered in rebuttal.
"Come on, you're envious of it a little right?" Lupin grinned at me toothily.
"M-maybe, but.." I couldn't believe ey was seriously suggesting this.
"I'm not going to do that. It's," I hesitated, unable to voice how off that felt and suddenly gripped by a feeling of intense unease, as if the winds that kept my fragile soul inflated was about to scour away this new face, "I need to sit down."
"It's okay," Lupin pulled me to one of many chairs in the changing room, "you shouldn't go against your sin like that you know, but it'll pass soon."
"So," I managed, struggling to distract myself from the horrible scouring sensation, "because I felt envy of you, but I wasn't willing to let it reign and imitate…"
I'd known, intellectually, that it could happen, but there was horror in seeing how easy it would be to lose everything I'd traded my life for.
What lies outside the dichotomy between Sin and Virtue? Lots of things. Probably everything at one point or another.
They're cultural concepts that shift with the times, whether feeling or acting on them is right is a justified by individual circumstances and preference, deciding which should "win" is meaningless, go outside.
"I just want to make sure you know that we're here for you and," she trailed off for a long moment, then took a deep breath and stared me straight in the eyes, "you don't have to be a guy if you don't want to," Temperance spoke quietly and forced a smile that was probably meant to be comforting, but mostly looked deeply awkward on her face.
I froze, staring at her in abject confusion. Was she just messing with me again after all this build-up?
"We get put in boxes," she continued as if that was a segue that made sense, "And no one is encouraged to think about it. If everyone acts like there's nothing else, then no one has to ask if they ever really fit inside their box in the first place."
"But," she hesitated, "I want to make sure you know that the view from outside is worth it in the end. You can be a girl or anything else if you want and we'll—all of us—have your back, no matter what you end up."
"Actually," I hesitated at the door, "W-what's it like being transgender anyway?"
Temperance closed her eyes and ignored me, for long enough that I thought I was being dismissed, before she spoke.
"It's like learning how to want without hating yourself for wanting." She tapped her index finger against her lips in thought a few times, before speaking again. "Like, abandoning thoughts about what you can do and just becoming."
No one has understood this better than Temperance, and of course she would, going through two worlds to go beyond their binaries is what brought her here, isn't it?
...And, do you know what I realized, in the middle of writing all of this?
"Is that what's going on? This is some new ploy from Temperance?" I might have been a little bitter at the thought that Lupin would brush Inessa's feelings aside just because she'd had a plan to jump in on the 'Make Fun of Charlie Brigade'.
"No," Lupin blushed, as the word came out a bit sharper than she seemed to have intended. "She's not really on speaking terms with me these days."
"Oh, umm, sorry…" And, great, obviously they weren't conspiring, I'd never even seen them together in the first place.
Lupin returned to the belts, "I'm too greedy to stop her if taking the wrong path helps her work through some things. And she looks a lot happier now, so it's probably working out for her." Lupin's voice was too carefully magnanimous to be as okay as she claimed to be. There was something there that had yet to scab over and I wondered what the story was. No matter what, finding out that someone you were close to—Mom's face flashed through my mind—felt better off without you specifically in their lives… That had to hurt.
"But," Lupin sneered, "They should know that I'm greedy enough to take her back the moment that she finds out exactly where that road leads. Besides, I've got the most adorable new partner now, so there's no need to mope!" she winked at me meaningfully then dropped the belt back into the display and moved to examine a shelf full of skirts.
"I'm selfish," Avaritia added sadly, "I'm pretty awesome I mean, but, well, at the end of the day, party line aside, I'm not doing this for the world. I'm doing it because I think there are people like you, like Gula, like me who need it right now and, like, ultimately, I'd let the world burn if my important people get to be happy."
"I, uh, yours?"
"Well, obviously. I mean, the seduction is a work in progress, but you're adorable and we'll get there," no no, a part of me wanted to beg Lupin to stop teasing me, "The point being I need you. You're the type to think about things in the big picture, just like Gula was. I'm jumpy and fast and have all the great instincts to win, but I'm not the kind of person who can watch everyone around me! You're just what I need; a partner who can handle the small things because she's a genuinely caring girl who really wants to do the right thing."
"It'd have killed Gula," ey said at last. "It was killing her to be the kind of boy they'd do anything to force her to be, because mandatory virtue is just something you use to hurt people until they can do the same."
Lupin shrugged, "The same. Gula decided to run and, well, I couldn't let her do that alone, could I? And, you know, recent choices aside, she's basically always right when she actually makes up her mind. It was… close," ey shuddered, and I wondered how old they had been when they decided it was better to risk a dark forest only Beasts could survive than stay in their hometown.
Like normally I'd be fair and suggest things like "Oh ey might not Chiro found out" and such, but given the blatant overtext ALV deals in I'm gonna take a stand here.
"Anyway," ey ignored my panic, "Before we get going, you really should pick a new name."
"Invidia!" I snapped back easily. I'd thrown away everything for that title. I could think of nothing else.
Avaritia sighed, then shook eir head. "No, no, like, of course your real identity is Invidia, but if you're going to sneak in to school and 'pretend' to be a girl, you can't exactly go around telling the saints who you are can you?"
Ey had a point; that would be ruinously awkward among other things. "Just pick something; whatever works," I shrugged. It wouldn't be my name.
Avaritia gave me a look. "Nope! You have to do it. It's your name after all."
Actually it was a fake name. But, Avaritia was immovable on the oddest issues. I tried to imagine her; the girl I'd pretend to be. She was cute of course. I'd stolen Inessa's face and people had to like her for that. But, she couldn't talk about her family, she couldn't know much about girly things or anything like that. She was a little shy, a little nervous around people. She liked bats, I decided somewhat arbitrarily. That was only reasonable after all. Bats, as I'd been learning, were pretty awesome.
"Umm," I knew what name I wanted, but I couldn't say it.
"Oh come on, out with it!" Avaritia grinned as ey pulled me toward the mall. "I named myself Lupin you know, so you can hardly do worse than that."
That was fair--not that Lupin wasn't a great name, but even I could admit it was almost as on the nose as Temperance. On the other hand, we could match.
I stuttered the first few times I tried to say it, an endeavor made not at all easier by the fact that Avaritia had spun around and was practically panting with anticipation as ey waited for the name.
"C-Chiroptera!" I finally managed to squeak out.
"Chiroptera," Avaritia muttered to eirself, drawing out the last sound like the name was a chew toy, "Chiroptera, Chiroptera, Chiro, Chiro!"
Lupin demands C come up with a name that suits the person C wants to be outside of Invidia Bat, celebrates that name, uses Chiro in every circumstance as much as possible–But doesn't extend that courtesy to Temperance, because everything related to the name her co-conspirator chose is something she'll press undo on when she remembers what's right, "inevitably."
Even if ey can tell she's a lot happier now, going back to the way things used to be would be better.
Old friends who've gone through the same things can still find themselves, drastically apart.
And then they go and enforce that narrative on resinners. "Of course your desires are bad and destructive! But fuck it, indulge them!"
It all goes back to naming, defining, narrating.
An ENTIRELY new motherfucker might be stealing the totally-just-here-undercover-to-get-recruitments thunder while Chiro is avoiding the Saints.
Can you imagine that.
Can you imagine the transcendent raging jealousy of watching your friends welcome a new magical girl on the team after you bounced over your inferiority complex from not getting chosen to be a magical girl.
The concept of "The Abyssal Forest tried to recruit a Dalek before it decided to kill them all" is funny enough in of itself, but then the whole mess turning into gag based magical girl monsters forcing a dogfight against alien invaders just elevates this beyond words.
I mean if a Magical Girl villain made a monster out of a pepper pot, whisk, and a plunger lying around together, the result would end up looking pretty close to a Dalek
Synopsis: Charlie would give almost anything to stand with the Saints. And yet, when he finally gets an offer to step onto that stage and claim everything he's ever wanted, Charlie finds that the price may be too high.
We haven't quite hit the price yet.
I slipped out of the void a good distance from school. Avaritia had the experience to aim where ey wanted with shocking precision. I counted myself lucky to get from the Abyssal Forest back to Earth in one piece.
This time however, a morning trip across town seemed like exactly what I needed. By this point I was, if anything, uncomfortably aware of the magic hiding everyone's identities. But, it was one thing to know that, without extremely strong clues, no one would really be able to connect my magical identity to my mundane ones and another entirely to trust it. It was all too easy to imagine everyone recognizing me, turning to laugh or stare or attack on sight.
And even if I did trust it, I still looked almost exactly like Inessa. Were the girls going to buy a strange transfer student who looked like Inessa with an odd hair color when they already had literally seen me transform until I looked strangely like Inessa?
That went doubly so as Lupin had sent me to school in full makeup, green leggings under a knee length pleated black skirt and a t-shirt stenciled with green bats and my green apple earrings. Lupin's enthusiasm and spontaneity had talked me into outfits that were exactly the kind of over the top stuff she could pull off. But actually existing while actually wearing those clothes for more than the three illicit minutes it had taken to try them on and steal glances of myself in a mirror? I couldn't imagine what Inessa or Ida might say if they realized it was C underneath all these cute clothes.
So a glide across the roofs, accompanied by the late winter chill and the quiet sounds of a town waking up were exactly what I needed to calm myself. And really, Avaritia had likely anticipated my inadequacies. Why else would she have me start again on a Friday where I'd only have to make it through one day before taking a rest?
Between the air, and the fact that it was only one day this week, it was easy enough to calm myself in the end. I just had to remember that I wasn't C anymore. I was Invidia, and Invidia could imitate anything she needed from anyone without having to justify herself. Invidia could enjoy going to school while pretending to be a normal girl named Chiroptera because Invidia had copied the best girls and that meant she didn't have anything to be worried about. Even if they did find her, Invidia had no reason to feel awkward about being seen in public in a skirt. She could laugh and gloat and fight and leave everyone worried about why she'd snuck back into the school in the first place. And Chiro, of course, was simply allowed to dress like that whenever she wanted.
By the time I landed in an empty alley near my destination and transformed back, I nearly believed it would work. At least, it was enough to let me restrain myself from holding my skirt down awkwardly as I walked.
B-besides, it wasn't like I was going to run into anyone. I just had to keep my head low, look for potential beasts and avoid attracting attention. I could just be a quiet little bat. The senior class was big enough to avoid Inessa, Ida and Temperance without difficulty.
---
Temperance, it turned out, like Chiroptera Dunne, had first period honors European history. Chiroptera Dunne had also been signed up for honors European history under the logic that I wouldn't be taking any of Charlie's classes and the grades didn't count so there was no reason to kill myself with my courseload.
The wonderful extremely nice and thoughtful teacher even had me take the empty seat immediately next to Temperance Atwater and instructed us to share a book until Chiro could get her own.
Temperance, for her part, spent an agonizing several seconds examining me while I tried not to have a heart attack or transform and run away. Then she hmmed noncommittal and scooched her desk over to mine so we could share the textbook.
"Hi, nice to meet you," I said quietly. I was pretending to be Chiro. Chiro was a nice normal girl who did nice normal girl things. Temperance had no reason to have problems with Chiro.
She nodded her head in return. "I like your earrings," she said emotionlessly.
"T-thanks," I tried not to swallow. This was normal. Girls gave each other compliments over things all the time in ways that would have been weird and uncomfortable for boys. I was allowed—required even—to do that too now. "I like your top," I offered back weakly. The words still felt awkward and creepy on my tongue, for all I knew intellectually that this was perfectly normal talk.
The teacher coughed and we both stopped talking and paid attention to her lecture. At least, I tried to pay attention while shooting anxiety-driven glances at my neighbor. Temperance mostly seemed to just zone out in class, though you'd never know that looking at her grades.
A few times she noticed me staring and gazed back, the faintest hint of a smirk appearing on her face. I felt like I would die.
Eventually the bell rang. I gathered my things and moved to dash out of the room, only to find Temperance's fingers wound tightly against my wrist.
"You do look better in a skirt," she said, rising to her own feet. I froze, unable to pry off her hand. One hour, I hadn't even lasted one hour. How, she even noticed? It didn't matter, she had and that meant I'd failed. Now I would have to leave, abandon Chiro entirely and tell Avaritia I'd failed her. Superbia would be upset and—
"They might recognize you from your earrings," Temperance said as she let me go and sauntered out of the classroom with a casual wave. The silly earrings I'd chosen to feel a little bit of confidence and familiarity had outed me to Temperance, of all people.
I watched her go, afraid to move until she was gone and the thundering in my chest had calmed to something resembling a normal pace. Even then, I gave it another minute, in case whatever insanity had made her show clemency to someone like me left her. Perhaps it had been some strange trick to see if I'd react.
Only once I was sure she was long gone did I tear off the green apple earrings. I buried them carefully in my backpack. My breaths were fast and shallow and I'd broken out in goosebumps.
I wanted to run back to the Forest and never come out again except to fight. Bats had no business being out during the day in the first place! That was just common sense.
Instead of jumping out the nearest window and never coming back, I smoothed my skirt and made my way to second period. While Temperance remained a clear danger, she had had no reason to let on how she'd spotted me. That meant she was probably safe for the moment at least. Besides, what would happen if they did find me? The Saints couldn't start a fight in the school. I wasn't going anywhere they could follow and, besides my terror of being found out, I had next to nothing worth hiding. At worst I'd just have to see how disgusted they were with what I'd become before I ran away again.
No, I'd resolved myself not to be useless or incompetent. I couldn't disappoint Avaritia, especially if ey insisted on being the one reporting my failure to our great leader. I couldn't cope with the thought that Avaritia might ever look at me the way he had looked at me at the end, or that eir relationship with him would go as badly as mine had with my father. No, I'd ignore my own panic and stay as long as I could.
---
As it turned out, I had Ida and Inessa in second period english lit. Aside from a few curious looks, they didn't say much during class. But, being Ida and Inessa, and thus annoyingly nice and outgoing people, they did approach me after.
"Hi!" Inessa waved brightly, ever the talker between the two, "Chiro right?"
"R-right," they were going to notice. Any second they were going to notice and judge me and realize that Charlie was sneaking into school pretending to be a girl and that would be more than I could take. It was a silly fear. Even if they'd notice, they'd already seen me as Invidia. The damage was already done and I had signed up to fight them. There was zero chance I could avoid those eyes forever, but…
"Yep! Chiro! That's definitely my name! And you are?" They hadn't noticed. They weren't like Temperance and, if anything, getting introduced now would make it harder to slip up later.
"I'm Inessa! Tall, dark, and dashing over here is Ida." Trust Inessa to break the ice. Ida responded with a friendly thwap to the back of Inessa's head.
"Nice to meet you," I offered awkwardly, managing to modulate my tone. This was fine. I just had to keep playing it cool.
"So," Ida asked conversationally as I put my books in my bag and focused on not trembling, "how's your first day going? Any trouble finding things?"
"I'm finding my way around no problem so far, and everyone's been quite nice." Right, nothing to worry about. Chiro was a big girl who could find my own way around school; with echolocation and everything. She was a predator, not some poor lost sheep in need of my former friends' chronic tendency to help everyone around them.
"Great!" Inessa responded and I relaxed fractionally. "Where are you off to now?"
"AP Chemistry with a, umm, Mr. Brown?" The room wasn't far, otherwise I'd have had a great excuse to run.
Ida grinned. "Oh nice, I'm in the same class, so I can show you where it is."
I mustn't run away, I thought to myself as I said my goodbyes to Inessa and allowed Ida to drag me to our next class.
"So, what do you do in your free time, Chiro?" Ida asked.
That was a tough one. I obviously couldn't talk about my taste in media; it was mostly osmosed from Inessa, and Ida would absolutely push us closer together if she saw a chance. Besides, it was embarrassing! The weird fanfics and online fiction were even worse. No one would ever be allowed to know my browser history even if I had to die to protect it.
"I, umm, I've gotten really into bats lately," I said, gesturing awkwardly at my top.
"Bats, huh?" Ida's voice carried a hint of something. Drat, how stupid could I be. Not only was that a deeply weird interest, but of course she'd associate bats with Invidia!
"T-they're good pollinators for a lot of plants and they control bug populations and they can fly really fast and everything! Like, the brazilian free-tailed bat can fly at 100 miles per hour! And echolocation is just cool." I flapped my arms awkwardly, "I like birds and stuff too I guess. You know, just being able to fly away from everything just sounds so nice."
It was distinctly possible that I had acquired a small encyclopedia of bat facts in the time I'd spent avoiding Superbia. That was fair, bats were amazing. Honestly, I didn't even really deserve to be one.
Ida hesitated for a moment, "I guess bats aren't so bad," she said in the tone of someone pretending to talk about bats while actually ruminating over a gross ex-friend who turned into an evil bat-girl and betrayed her kindness for no good reason besides that they had secretly always been a horrible jealous monster deep down.
I lapsed into awkward silence until we found ourselves in chemistry. I once again made my introductions to the teacher, then the class, and then took a seat near Ida. Because, all of a sudden, I had a very good reason to stay closer to her.
Sure, it left me on a knife's edge of tension that left me barely able to focus on getting caught up with all my missed classwork, but it helped distract me from our teacher.
Mr. Brown, our balding pudgy middle-aged chemistry teacher, had always had a bit of a reputation as a fun and easy-going. I'd never had a class with him, but even a few minutes were enough to see that it was well-deserved. My new senses, though, told me how much more was going on beneath the surface. His sin wasn't anywhere near as visceral as mine or Avaritia's. But it spread throughout the room, an echoing want that he barely seemed to notice.
I wanted to recoil. An instinctual part of me—the part that was truly primally Invidia, that had no detritus of Charlie or Chiro or anyone else—had very different instincts. They would probably involve turning our teacher into a monster and that would almost certainly get me in a great deal of trouble, so I did my best to ignore them.
I'm not sure if I could have resisted, if my envy would have let me resist its pulls, if Ida wasn't right there being a constant threat. Besides, as far as I must have fallen in all of their eyes, how much worse would it be if they actually saw me take a nice person and turn him into a monster?
I didn't get much note taking done, and practically had to force myself to sprint out the door instead of doing something to our poor teacher.
Ida, naturally, came after me, "Everything okay?" she asked because of course that is exactly what Ida would do when a new person panicked and ran away.
I scratched the back of my head, "I'm fine, just… lots of new people and the pressure can kinda build a bit."
Ida hesitated, clearly not quite getting it. For all her sympathy, she didn't understand how much being the object of attention could exhaust people like me, "are you sure you're okay?"
"Just…. People can be a lot sometimes," mostly the person in front of me at that, and the one my every instinct ached to set free. But, well, it was also true that I'd spent much of the last few days in a silent palace filled with cyclopean pillars and empty spaces large enough to get lost in and school was anything but cavernous and empty.
Ida nodded sympathetically. "I guess a new school must be a lot and Mr. Brown does have a kind of..." her tone grew worried when it came to the teacher. How odd.
I nodded. "He seems nice, but it's like… there's something just beneath the surface and it's the kind of feeling that makes you want to reach out and help him, but you'd just ruin everything if you tried."
"Yeah," Ida said sadly, then her eyes narrowed imperceptibly, "but what gave you that impression?"
My breath caught in my throat; it was way too easy to let my guard down around all of them, to slip into familiar patterns where I felt like I could talk about—almost—anything with them. But that wasn't true anymore.
"Just a feeling," I managed at last, "you know, feminine intuition and all that. A lot of people get those sometimes, right?"
Ida nodded thoughtfully. "That makes sense. He does have a bit of an off feeling," she added reassuringly. I wondered if the Saints had senses like mine. I couldn't sense them the way I could sense Avaritia, not even Temperance.
Okay, she'd bought it. I was in the clear for now, but I needed to shape up and start keeping my distance.
"You should join us for lunch," Ida said suddenly, as if something had just occurred to her, "err, I mean, I'm sure Inessa would like to check in, and me and Temperance—you'll like her—can keep anyone away who tries to talk to the new girl."
I wanted to object. I really did. But, well, I looked at Ida's extra-earnest face. Enemies or not, resenting them or not, a part of me ached to steal back that friendship without any of its baggage. Besides, I could hardly be mean to the girl who was helping poor innocent Chiro.
Thankfully, fourth period came between that conversation and lunch and I got only the normal amount of new girl stares there. That hardly made it relaxing, but, by comparison to my morning, it was practically as good as being alone. I quietly firmed my resolve to attend all future classes in the baggiest of hoodies and jeans, no matter how seriously Lupin took eir claims about evil having a dress code.
On the other hand, well, it wasn't C they were staring at, it was Chiro. And the looks felt different. Like, obviously if they'd known me, they would have stared with horror or scorn, but Charleton was gross and unmemorable. If he got attention from anyone, it usually meant they were secretly working for the Abyssal Forest.
On the other hand, no matter what my instincts said, they couldn't be staring at Chiro that way. She was an adorable fashionable girl who got to wear cute skirts and, okay, had definitely rubbed her eyes too much for a girl wearing makeup, but was otherwise an exemplary girl. At least, that's what I told myself after I managed to triage the makeup as best I could and head toward lunch.
For some reason, despite damaging Lupin's masterwork and the fact that I was heading toward a meeting with my nemeses, I couldn't quite keep the smile off my face.
"You look happier," Ida said, slipping behind me with near preternatural grace. To my great credit, I managed not to jump and almost avoided squeaking too.
"Sorry," Ida said, holding a hand over her mouth to hide an obvious smirk, "let me show you to our table."
"T-thanks," I said as if Ida wasn't offering to deliver me into the lions' den.
"No worries!" Ida, being Ida and therefore taller than many of the boys and the kind of person everyone just noticed in general, had no problem pushing her way through the lunchtime crowds to Inessa's familiar table. I gamely followed as if I didn't know exactly where we were going.
"Here's the new girl!" Ida said, as if presenting a trophy. Inessa grinned and waved. Temperance stared at me expressionlessly. I could feel the judgment radiating from her placid countenance. Then she crossed her arms on the table in front of her and rested her head as if taking a nap.
"T-temperance! You can't be mean like that to a new friend," Inessa said, wincing apologetically toward Ida and I.
"I-it's fine actually, we met in first period already!" The less reason I gave Temperance to react to this obviously terrible no good idea, the higher my chances of surviving the day.
Inessa hmphed and, by the sound of it, kicked Temperance in the shin under the table. Temperance pretended to be asleep.
"So, umm, thanks for before; I'm not the best with noisy crowds, and, umm, I guess a new school is really awkward, but you seem like such nice people."
Obviously. They were heroes. They had all the tools they needed to be nice to people, to stand out and earn all the acclaim, to do the right thing and win and look gorgeous doing it. They were the ones who'd been chosen, who got to do things that mattered.
"You need to buy lunch?" The ever pragmatic Ida distracted me from stumbling back into darkness.
"No," I shook my head, "Avar-A very good friend insisted on making lunch for my first day," I distracted myself from the sudden spike in anxiety by producing the bagged lunch Lupin had generously provided.
Temperance lifted her head long enough to give me a baleful stare, then resumed ignoring this entire conversation.
Inessa, by contrast, sparkled, "A very good friend; is that all he is?"
"Ey is nonbinary I think," I corrected absently, "And, umm, that's, yeah, ey might be interested but, umm, it seems like we're both not really in a great place for anything to come of that and I'm probably just reading way too much into things anyway." I blushed awkwardly. Why was I doing this? Sure, Avaritia had been friendly since I'd finally come out as Invidia, but that hardly meant anything.
A strange sound, like rocks grinding against each other, seemed to emanate from Temperance's general location. I hadn't even slipped up this time!
Inessa, on the other hand, practically sparkled as she stared at me. "Awww, that's so sweet," she said.
Ida, bored with Inessa's monofocus on romance, poked Temperance in the ribs.
"Not yet," I managed, "I dunno, I think, if anything, ey might like someone else, she definitely likes em and she's a lot, umm, well, she's just better than I am really.!" I was, at the end of the day, the knockoff. She owned this face, not I. She had genuine passion to match Avaritia's. She actually helped people, even when we didn't deserve it. And someday she and Avaritia would probably understand each other because they both cared deep down.
Inessa nodded sympathetically. "I get that, it's really really hard to do anything with romance! People are just so ambiguous, how are you supposed to know if they like you or not?"
Ida frowned. It was easy to understand why. Avaritia turning out to be an evil wolf was the best I'd seen any of Inessa's pining turn out.
Of course, right now, Inessa's comment was actually spot on. Even a stopped clock could be right, I guess, and it was all but impossible to determine how sincere any of Avaritia's flirting really was.
"So," Ida quickly changed the subject, "how long have you been intuitive like you were talking about earlier?"
"Intuitive?" what had, oh right, I'd slipped that I'd reacted to Mr. Brown's sin, "I guess I've always just gotten hunches. Girl power, you know?" I fibbed awkwardly. Well, being a beast did give me senses and it couldn't be that odd to mention that kind of thing, could it?
Ida nodded seriously, and I saw the voyeuristic smile slip from Inessa's face in favor of an almost painfully earnest expression as she changed gears from starry-eyed gossip to serious heroine in the space of a moment.
I must have said something that set them on guard, "I try to reach out when I can, offer a kind word, listen to people's problems and do what little I can to support them…"
There, Charlie had been painfully withdrawn, and Invidia was obviously supposed to be evil now, so if Chiro was the kind of person to offer an attentive ear, the odds that anyone would connect us went down dramatically. And if there was anything Chiroptera would be good at it would be listening, wouldn't it?
"That's very noble of you," Ida said, and I felt a little sick. Well, I was Invidia now, and envy got to drown in its stolen valor.
"Yeah," Inessa said, "it reminds me a lot of a good friend. He was the kind of person who was always there to help, always willing to listen and help you talk through all your problems without ever getting impatient or anything. He acted all quiet and reserved a lot of the time, but really he was so nice you worried he was going to get in trouble some day."
"Oh," I said awkwardly. I was pretty sure I knew all of Inessa's friends and she'd never mentioned anyone like that. "Who's that? He sounds worth meeting."
Inessa sighed. "He… had some personal issues and is taking a break from school for now, but he'll be back! They just need someone to talk to them I think and I'm sure they can get through this."
I tried to process. Inessa was talking about me; she had to be. Except, none of that made sense. I'd hurt her, hurt all of them. They couldn't ignore that, write off me finally making my decision s if it was another silly misadventure. They weren't allowed to treat my name as something to rescue me from.
"I'm going to the bathroom," Temperance rose and practically dashed away from the group. Okay, maybe she was an exception, but I'd never had a clue what drove Temperance's actions, especially toward me. I knew Inessa like the back of my hand.
"What was his name?" I asked, needing the confirmation for all I desperately wished I didn't know the answer.
"He went by C." The fondness in Inessa's voice was unmistakable.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. I wanted to shout, to let loose a power I'd barely tested right there and then. I'd betrayed them, betrayed everything they'd stood for. I wasn't the victim anymore.
But no, I was nice safe C. Obviously I couldn't possibly do anything on my own, couldn't even have the agency to fall. I'd told them I was a monster, I was mean and cruel and dark and yet here we were sitting at the same table again and they acted like nothing had changed.
C would scream or run or panic or do anything he could to retreat from the world. Chiro had better options. She understood how not to give her enemies that advantage. I buried that emotion deep down. Invidia would betray nothing here, so neither would I. The dark pulsed within me, but I kept it under my skin instead of letting it run truly free. I did not reveal myself to my former friends in a whirlwind of miasma. This, at least, envy allowed. No matter how much it and I both ached to do otherwise, this was not the time.
I quietly packed the remains of my lunch. "Well, he sounds lovely, I'm sure things will get better for him soon enough. But, I really need to be going if I'm going to find my next class."
Invidia had its limits and watching Inessa reminisce about me like I was a stranger went well beyond mine.
I could have gone to my next class. But that wasn't what I needed now. Whatever doubts or hesitation I'd had had been neatly resolved just now. I'd show them that I was well aware of everything I was doing, and I'd show them that Avaritia was right, that people like me needed our vices to sustain ourselves.
Mr. Brown wasn't hard to find. It was lunch. He was in his classroom, grading at his desk as he ate a sad looking ham and cheese sandwich and drank what was probably his fourth coffee of the day. I did not knock. I might have if I was being Chiroptera, but now was the time to let Invidia run free and a Beast of the Abyssal Forest had no need to knock.
He started to say something, but I did not listen to anything he said. Avaritia had been very clear that they wouldn't remember this part. Instead, I flared my wings to intimidate him into silence and turned my ears toward the sin shouting silently in the air.
I let myself drink it in; Wallace Brown's worries about his retirement, his feelings of being trapped in this job year after year after year, while the children around him got to constantly move and grow. He envied that, deep down. He wanted to help them of course, and took pride in the adolescents that passed through his classroom. And that just made the quicksand all the more inescapable. He was trapped and he envied those who still had something new to explore.
"Oh Wallace, you poor shackled beast," I could not help but sympathize. Gently I lifted my thumb to my mouth and pierced it with a single fang. A drop was enough to water the sprout in his heart, to let him run free.
"Let slip your bindings and learn what it is you need. Let them feel the envy that animates Beaker Breaker!" I wasn't quite sure where the words came from or how I knew what the monster's name would be. Perhaps they were like the catch-phrases the Saints always said in battle. The power simply demanded the proper ritual.
Wallace did not react, but the fog in his eyes cleared and I sensed the sin in his soul go wild, drinking deeply from the forest's power. I grinned and hid my wings and Chiro made her quiet exit into the hallway.
It would take some time to incubate, but soon he would be free to voice all those things he'd done quietly. Soon they'd realize that I wasn't joking or lying or a deceived innocent.
----
He was obliging enough to wait until the final school bell to do anything. I appreciated that; I really couldn't afford to miss any more of the semester if I wanted a prayer of keeping Chiro's grades out of the red. Her schedule was nothing like mine and, while easier, I hadn't had all of these classes before so I really needed to keep up.
Besides, as much as I ached for Beaker Breaker's moment of freedom, he didn't want to hurt the objects of his jealousy, not really. The less bystanders the better.
So I lingered quietly around the school, transformed and hanging from the gym's rafters. It wasn't hard to hook my feet into the gym's supports and there was something soothing about hanging in the shadows, staring down at the world below me.
Finally I felt him blossom. Quietly I flipped myself upright and slipped out a window. Wallace's office was on the third floor of the school facing the outside. It wasn't hard to find a spot to peek in through his window. The school itself was a long corridor wrapped in a C shape with classrooms on either side. I only had to fly toward the palpable source of sin to find his office.
I glanced in for a moment, then immediately dropped lower and plastered myself to the wall. Ida was there. She was talking with Mr. Brown, probably pushed by our conversation to see if he was okay and to see if she could be an obnoxious do-gooder about his feelings and that had probably been enough to trigger the emotions I'd enflamed.
I would have found that timing incredibly implausible if the exact thing hadn't already happened to me at least twice when I was still a useless boy.
As it was, I knew I had only to wait for a moment and hope that Ida did not transform and instantly defeat my first monster. There was a shout. Ida's voice, desperately trying to soothe the newborn Resinner. Then a muffled explosion blew out the window directly above me.
I gulped, glad that my head had been a little bit below that and watched glass fall harmlessly to the ground.
I expected to see Ida fighting my monster. I definitely did not expect to see my Resinner exiting the room while Ida lay still against a far wall.
She was breathing at least. Still, that wasn't how this was supposed to go at all! The Saints didn't lose! They definitely didn't lose to a monster of the week without even transforming!
I shifted Ida to a more comfortable position and followed my creation into the hall. At least the fight wouldn't be happening next to her.
Already the Resinner was terrifying a few nearby students, the shouts of its name sending them running for the stairs. I should have let it rampage. That was my job here.
But I'd been the powerless student in front of a rampaging monster too many times to let that happen. Besides, Beaker Breaker might not forgive himself later if he really hurt a student and the Saints weren't around yet to save them because someone had gotten herself knocked out like an idiot.
So I glided effortlessly past my Resinner, batting away a lobbed vial of some unspeakable substance and plucked two students from its path. It wasn't hard to shove the poor things stumbling into a nearby stairwell. "Run," I said menacingly, "Go run and cry for help."
I flashed my fangs at both inexplicably blushing boys and struck one lightly with a wing when they still didn't retreat after all that. Honestly, they had a lot to learn about proper victim survival skills.
Finally they ran, stumbling down the stairs, practically running into an inbound Castitas. She had no trouble spinning around them, bouncing off the stairwell wall and landing defiantly in front of the monster.
She took one look around, saw me and then broke into a large smile.
"I knew it!" she said triumphantly, "You helped them! I knew you couldn't really be evil C!"
Oh, that was absolutely nonsense. Sure, I could turn people into monsters in peace, but do one nice thing to minimize the victims of my own actions and somehow that was the only part Inessa perceived.
I growled at her. "I literally made the monster in the first place!" No, no, I couldn't get sucked back into Inessa's pace. I was a Beast now; I didn't need to defend that. Taking a moment to breathe, I launched my best attempt at an evil laugh.
"As if! No Castitas, I simply didn't want to give you any excuses about protecting civilians when I crush you like the bug you are! No, today you shall understand the true horror of Invidia Bat!"
I paused for effect for a moment, and to let Beaker Breaker catch up with me. "Now go, Beaker Breaker! Unleash yourself on these so-called heroes who dare sit in judgment over you while knowing nothing of what drives you!"
The monster roared, and threw a handful of test-tubes filled with a strange blue liquid toward Castitas. She slipped through the barrage with practiced ease, summoning her bow in a wave of fire.
"C," she said, lingering over the letter, unsure of how to continue.
I growled at her. "My name is Invidia! Not C, not Charlie, not Charleton! Invidia Bat!"
"Fine, Invidia, do we have to do this?" Castitas slammed one foot against the concrete, sending a wall of flame in front of her that served as a makeshift firebreak. At the same time, she aimed her bow and shot, loosing a barrage of arrows against Beaker Breaker with pinpoint accuracy.
I opened my mouth to say something.
"Also, umm what are your pronouns now?" Inessa followed up, like an absolute panic inducing monster.
"She's using she and her!" A surprising, if not unwelcome voice responded as Avaritia dashed out from behind Beaker Breaker swinging both claws at Castitas.
I had no clue how Lupin had gotten behind us, but it wasn't hard to imagine that ey must have been hovering near the school and sensed the budding Resinner.
"Great! I'm really glad for you!" she said, looking back at me despite the angry wolf trying to claw her eyes out.
"Right! To be clear, Castitas, it's because in the depths of my envy I have copied your pronouns as well as your face! Not, like, any other weird reason or anything!"
To reinforce the point that it was just my extreme envy for everything Castitas had and not anything else I opened my mouth and screamed, letting loose a targeted sonic wave at Inessa. Unprepared, she stumbled backwards, nearly losing her balance as Beaker Breaker lifted a hand to throw another set of chemical-filled vials in Inessa's direction.
"Calm as still water." The Resinner didn't have the chance as a pressurized jet of water knocked the bottles back toward my monster. It reeled from the resulting explosion, char marks visible around its head.
"Biding until Invidia is too much to bear," Temperantia drily stepped out of the staircase.
"Yeah!" Avaritia sighed, betraying me without a moment's hesitation.
"Hey, what about me is unbearable? Besides how unbearably dangerous and threatening I am!" I glared at the pair of them.
Angelic Saint Temperantia ignored me. Instead she pointed at Lupin accusingly. "Your fault," she pronounced.
"Like you did any better! We're working on it!" Avaritia abandoned the embattled Castitas and charged straight for Temperantia instead.
Seeing no opportunity to avoid melee combat for once, Temperantia stretched out an arm, summoning her weapon, a long and slender halberd, to attempt to keep Avaritia away.
"Working up to what?" I asked.
"Go talk things out with Castitas," Temperance said. For once in her life she actually sounded almost irritated.
"Go beat up Castitas! You've got this!" Avaritia said at the exact same time. Somehow her cheer was exactly as much of a dismissal as Temperance's remark.
Then ey grinned. "Besides, Temperantia here's just jealous that I've got a new better partner."
Temperantia glanced at me, then at Avaritia; she shrugged.
"I have two hands," she said following a moment's thought.
"You shouldn't underestimate me like that!" I stomped my foot. As if she could fight the both of us at the same time.
Avaritia looked at me and shook eir head.
"Go fight Castitas!"
Seeing as I clearly wasn't wanted, I turned back to Castitas. T-this was awful! The energy was completely gone and now I was about to ruin my evil debut and they would never respect me on my own terms. No! I shook my head furiously. I could still salvage this! Besides, with Ida out of the fight I could still safely gang up against Castitas.
"Ohohohoho! Get her, Beaker Breaker!"
As I spoke, I mimicked Temperantia, sending a whip of pressurized water at Inessa. She leaped away, bouncing off a nearby wall to elegantly dodge both my and Beaker Breaker's attacks while increasing the distance between us while launching more attacks at my Resinner.
Right! I couldn't claim to really understand the Saints' actual strengths and weaknesses that well. My dreams had been too floaty and, while fleeing for my life from monsters had exposed me to all their tactics, I wasn't exactly doing tactical analyses on the saints, but Inessa's weapon was ranged. Obviously she'd prefer to fight at a distance. I had to deny her that if I didn't want to be here exchanging barbs forever.
"Run away all you like, Castitas! You'll never defeat me!"
I kicked off the ground and spread my wings, chasing after Inessa, only to quickly drop into a frantic roll as it turned out that spreading my wings to fly down a narrow hallway toward the archer actually made it very easy to accidentally throw yourself into arrows that weren't even aimed at you.
"H-hey! You could hurt someone with those!" I shouted uncomfortably at Castitas as I picked myself off the ground.
"It's not too late, C!" Castitas said, "We can fix this!"
"I don't need anything fixed! I chose this, Inessa," I shouted back. "This is what I am deep down, what I want to be, a monster, a jealous bat and I'm never going back to the way things were!"
I screamed, shattering windows down the hall and knocking the girl back. Now was my chance.
"Beaker Breaker! Cover me!" I shouted as I once more flew toward Inessa. I would reach her; I would show her that even if I needed to steal and copy and become anyone else besides me, I could be involved. I didn't need her to choose for me.
"BEAKER!" The Resinner shouted enthusiastically and moved to follow my command. At which point it was once again smashed to the ground, this time by a boulder impacting the side of its face.
"STEADFAST AS THE EARTH!" Diligentia shouted, exiting the classroom where she had been safely unconscious.
"OH COME ON!" I responded.
"Persevering forward one step at a time, Angelic Saint Diligentia won't go down that easily!" She caught a beaker on her shield as she dashed into melee range of the monster, leaving me without backup to close the distance with Castitas.
"Charlie!" she shouted, unwilling to attack.
"That's not my name; it's never going to be my name again! I won't go back! So just give up on me already!" I sent a few more sonic blasts toward Inessa; but, with the distance between us and no distractions, she had no trouble ducking into a nearby classroom for cover, poking her head out only to keep me from advancing.
We continued for a few moments and I began to worry that I would need Avaritia or Beaker Breaker to come break the stalemate. I simply couldn't close the space faster than Inessa could retreat down the hallway in such a confined space.
Except, I didn't have to stick to the hallway, did I? I changed gears and dashed at Diligentia, using a sonic blast to force her to block before moving past her. From there it was nothing to leap out through the broken window.
The chill evening breeze helped calm me. I was made to swoop and dive, to soar through the skies on false wings, not to fight in confined quarters.
I waited for a few moments, watching the pair attack my monster before crashing through the window nearest Inessa's cover.
She had just enough time to spin and face me before my foot impacted her bow, sending the weapon flying away as my full bodyweight crashed into her and we went tumbling together to the ground.
I managed to perch on top of her chest, pinning her arms to the ground. "Finally," I said, "I've reached you."
Inessa struggled as I placed a claw against her throat and began to press.
She stared, genuine horror in her eyes for the first time. "I guess you have, Invidia." Her voice was hoarse as she fought for air. Her eyes were full of tears.
Finally! I'd left her no choice but to acknowledge me, no choice but to face what I'd become and accept the hard truth. I'd won; I'd beaten her in a way I hadn't really believed was possible. And yet, I wasn't sure what to do. The heat of the fight had suddenly left me and I didn't know how to end any of this. Was I supposed to keep pressing, to do that for real?
"GET OFF HER!" Ida's voice—carrying a heat I'd never heard from the stoic Saint—saved me from myself. I jumped, fluttering to land on the windowsill as Ida's thrown shield tore through the space very recently occupied by my head. Ida was not far behind.
She positioned herself defensively over Inessa. I could not hear anything that sounded like Beaker Breaker or Avaritia fighting. Inessa, for her part, simply lay there, sobbing quietly. I took one last look at the scene then jumped.
I allowed myself to fall up into the sky. I'd done it. I'd beaten Inessa. I'd proven that even I could fight just as well as any of them if I had the chance; that I could be as good as any of them when I wasn't even a real girl. So, why wouldn't my hands stop shaking?
NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!
To cope with the Abyssal Forest's increase in power, the Saints decide to spend the weekend training. However, when Avaritia's latest Resinner interrupts the girls' training, a shocking development is revealed! Inessa Brandt... can't transform!?
Tune in for Episode 24: Weekend Getaway! It's a Bear, It's a Plane, it's a… Resinner?!
As always it's thanks to the wonderful beta readers I definitely don't deserve that this is readable at all. @NemoMarx@Gargulec@veteranMortal and @Chehrazad are honestly more than I deserve! I'd also like to thank Rooibos Chai for a lot of commentary on some of the relationship developments (and lack thereof) in the story that's helped me work through some of my thinking around how I want these to look as we near the climax. Her story Teenage Dirtbag is a really really lovely eggy teen romance that I simply can't praise enough.
Man, there's some serious whiplash here between the comedy of Chiro's continued general obliviousness in the face of anything that even resembles positivity aimed in her direction and... well, the moment where Invidia came literally less than an inch away from killing Inessa out of a need to prove that she doesn't deserve to be forgiven. Both sides are consistent with her character and with most of the previous chapters, but damn, the contrast this chapter is especially pronounced.
"They might recognize you from your earrings," Temperance said as she let me go and sauntered out of the classroom with a casual wave. The silly earrings I'd chosen to feel a little bit of confidence and familiarity had outed me to Temperance, of all people.
I'd told them I was a monster, I was mean and cruel and dark and yet here we were sitting at the same table again and they acted like nothing had changed.
And so instead of taking that as a sign that you haven't done anything that makes you unlovable, you dive head-first into proving them wrong. I wish I could say this was surprising.
I managed to perch on top of her chest, pinning her arms to the ground. "Finally," I said, "I've reached you."
Inessa struggled as I placed a claw against her throat and began to press.
She stared, genuine horror in her eyes for the first time. "I guess you have, Invidia." Her voice was hoarse as she fought for air. Her eyes were full of tears.
As far as Inessa knows, Invidia would have gone through with it if she'd had just a moment longer. That's likely to leave a scar on that relationship. Not unsalvagable, given the genre and the kind of person Inessa is, but certainly strained.
I wonder if 'The Fourth Saint?!' as a title was just meant as a red herring, with emphasis on the question mark obviously, or if it's something more meta. Like it's where the Fourth Saint would've appeared in Shining Virtue Angelic Heart proper, but in the continuity of the fic and not the show things have changed?
"
"Yeah," Inessa said, "it reminds me a lot of a good friend. He was the kind of person who was always there to help, always willing to listen and help you talk through all your problems without ever getting impatient or anything. He acted all quiet and reserved a lot of the time, but really he was so nice you worried he was going to get in trouble some day."
"Oh," I said awkwardly. I was pretty sure I knew all of Inessa's friends and she'd never mentioned anyone like that. "Who's that? He sounds worth meeting." "
AAAAAAAAAAAAA
""Right! To be clear, Castitas, it's because in the depths of my envy I have copied your pronouns as well as your face! Not, like, any other weird reason or anything!""
I wonder if 'The Fourth Saint?!' as a title was just meant as a red herring, with emphasis on the question mark obviously, or if it's something more meta. Like it's where the Fourth Saint would've appeared in Shining Virtue Angelic Heart proper, but in the continuity of the fic and not the show things have changed?
Well. This chapter was absolutely hilariously good. I was holding my sides all through the Lunch scene and before that had been shaking my head with smile on my face at Chiro's... Well, let's just call it 'exceedingly well trained cluelessness'.
I flashed my fangs at both inexplicably blushing boys and struck one lightly with a wing when they still didn't retreat after all that. Honestly, they had a lot to learn about proper victim survival skills.
Invidia has no idea that those boys had forgotten all about the Monster rampaging through the school and quite possibly just straight up weren't thinking anything other than "Cute Girl in front of me!" Does she?
"Biding until Invidia is too much to bear," Temperantia drily stepped out of the staircase.
"Yeah!" Avaritia sighed, betraying me without a moment's hesitation.
"Hey, what about me is unbearable? Besides how unbearably dangerous and threatening I am!" I glared at the pair of them.
Angelic Saint Temperantia ignored me. Instead she pointed at Lupin accusingly. "Your fault," she pronounced.
"Like you did any better! We're working on it!" Avaritia abandoned the embattled Castitas and charged straight for Temperantia instead.
Firstly, I think there's something missing from the first sentence because "Biding until Invidia is too much to bear" reads as incomplete. Secondly, I find this back and forth between 'former' partners about how adorably clueless Invidia/Chiro is.
Hey uh, Invidia? I don't think Temperantia was talking about fight partners when she said she had a hand free for both Avaritia and Invidia. My oh my, if someone hit Chiro with a Clue Bat, I think we'd witness the metaphysical equivalent of a matter-antimatter annihilation event.
The last part of the fight however, and the 'Sneak Peak for Next Time' was just really sad. Because all three girls involved just have no idea what was really going on there and it's going to leave them all so confused, scared, miserable and infuriated for a while to come. Isn't it?
That went doubly so as Lupin had sent me to school in full makeup, green leggings under a knee length pleated black skirt and a t-shirt stenciled with green bats and my green apple earrings. Lupin's enthusiasm and spontaneity had talked me into outfits that were exactly the kind of over the top stuff she could pull off. But actually existing while actually wearing those clothes for more than the three illicit minutes it had taken to try them on and steal glances of myself in a mirror? I couldn't imagine what Inessa or Ida might say if they realized it was C underneath all these cute clothes.
B-besides, it wasn't like I was going to run into anyone. I just had to keep my head low, look for potential beasts and avoid attracting attention. I could just be a quiet little bat. The senior class was big enough to avoid Inessa, Ida and Temperance without difficulty.
"You do look better in a skirt," she said, rising to her own feet. I froze, unable to pry off her hand. One hour, I hadn't even lasted one hour. How, she even noticed? It didn't matter, she had and that meant I'd failed. Now I would have to leave, abandon Chiro entirely and tell Avaritia I'd failed her. Superbia would be upset and—
"They might recognize you from your earrings," Temperance said as she let me go and sauntered out of the classroom with a casual wave. The silly earrings I'd chosen to feel a little bit of confidence and familiarity had outed me to Temperance, of all people.
No, I'd resolved myself not to be useless or incompetent. I couldn't disappoint Avaritia, especially if ey insisted on being the one reporting my failure to our great leader. I couldn't cope with the thought that Avaritia might ever look at me the way he had looked at me at the end, or that eir relationship with him would go as badly as mine had with my father. No, I'd ignore my own panic and stay as long as I could.
This is just sad. Avaritia will almost certainly not ever look at you like Superbia did.
-
Lunch scene reactions not present due to laughing too hard and the sudden whiplash from the hilarity to Chiro drowning in toxic masculinity at the thought of her best friend actually liking her.
-
The fight was fun. Invidia absolutely saved those people because she's kind and Inessa is absolutely right that it means she's redeemable. Also those boys were definitely crushing on the pretty girl what saved them from the monster of the week. I loved the chemistry between Temperance and Avarita. They are clearly still friends even with everything between them. Also the "I have two hands" line was fantastic and Chiro's misunderstanding was hilarious.
That bit at the end was terrifying. Invidia came very close to going too far, and because Ida interrupted we and Inessa will never know if she would have. Self Hatred is a hell of a drug. This sucks.
I'm a bit ticked at Inessa for the deadnaming and misgendering, but that's probably undeserved? She did ask for Invidia's new pronouns, and everything's warped through Chiro's massive self hatred issues.
"Oh," I said awkwardly. I was pretty sure I knew all of Inessa's friends and she'd never mentioned anyone like that. "Who's that? He sounds worth meeting."
Inessa sighed. "He… had some personal issues and is taking a break from school for now, but he'll be back! They just need someone to talk to them I think and I'm sure they can get through this."
I wonder if 'The Fourth Saint?!' as a title was just meant as a red herring, with emphasis on the question mark obviously, or if it's something more meta. Like it's where the Fourth Saint would've appeared in Shining Virtue Angelic Heart proper, but in the continuity of the fic and not the show things have changed?
The saints were clearly suspecting Chiro was the fourth saint at last with the poking about powers and Chiro stumbling into emphasing very specifically kindness etc. It's probably just that.
"Right! To be clear, Castitas, it's because in the depths of my envy I have copied your pronouns as well as your face! Not, like, any other weird reason or anything!"
I realize that there's a lot of serious stuff going on and that the end of this chapter is really hard hitting, but also the chapter is like 90% 'these fucken goofballs' by volume.
I mean we can see how Chiro is getting pushed further and further. She doesn't want to be a villain, she doesn't want to hurt her friends, but she believes that she has to be and do those things and she very nearly called her own bluff.
"Lead, iridium, osmium, depleted uranium? No, none of those are dense enough, I must be dense like neutronium."
-Chiro's unacknowledged self instructions.
