I endured a long anxious afternoon hiding in my room in the Forest. We'd been in no mood to continue the outing after Inessa rediscovered her virtue and demolished my monster. Ida had insisted, after the two found 'Chiro' 'hiding' in the staff room, that Nia's insurance would take care of much of the damage to the salon, but she was still quite palpably upset. At least no one was hurt. Despite my slips, Inessa seemed to have been too caught up in the moment to notice anything.

Of course Chiro was horrified by all that had happened. Looking lost and scared and confused had done enough to cover up for whatever my little breakdown may have cost me regarding the masquerade. And, it might have helped that I did feel at least a little guilty. Yes, I'd helped someone reveal her buried envy and speak her true feelings to a world that pushed and pushed against them, and I think Avaritia would have been quite happy with me about that. But ey wanted me to be the one watching for collateral damage, not the one randomly turning everyone I touched into a Resinner. So, it wasn't hard to use exhaustion as an excuse to cut the day short. Besides, Ida's goal of cheering up Inessa seemed to have worked remarkably well. Despite the devastation, Inessa was annoyingly upbeat after everything.

So it wasn't at all hard to fake being drained after the near brush with a monster and make my get-away. Ida was fuming as Inessa tried to play the sympathetic ear, hiding her obvious newfound determination that was also my mistake.

Avaritia had not returned by the time I made it back. Superbia had only insisted I distract the Saints for a short time, so I assumed ey should have completed whatever was so important by now, if all'd gone well. And yet, there was nothing in the Forest but silence. Of course, ey might have been chatting with Superbia already for all I knew. Ey wouldn't want me to see that. With no better options, I retreated to my room, grabbed Count Fruitula and allowed myself to hang from the rafters, sway gently and wait.

Waiting can be a kind of hell. It's the kind of hell where you can't distract yourself because someone might be hurting. And you aren't quite the kind of monster that could just coo at cute bat videos while that's happening. So you just end up imagining all the things that might have gone wrong. It's the kind of hell where it's easy to let a part of yourself start longing for any news, even if it's bad because at least you wouldn't be waiting anymore. But, after all the months worrying that Inessa's fights would go badly, at least it was a familiar kind of hell.

And this time around, I was allowed to hug Count Fruitula for comfort. The bat plushie reminded me of em after all, and the way ey'd smirked as ey practically forced me to take him.

It was definitely a better way to be an anxious mess than a boy could manage. Well, at least if the boy was terminally afraid of how he might be seen if he got caught doing that or what might happen if his dad was the one who caught him.

At last, someone knocked on my door. There was no one ever around but Avaritia and Superbia, and it was hard to imagine him lowering himself to knock instead of simply barging in. (Granted, Avaritia only really remembered to knock half the time emself.) And that meant I was about to be surprised by someone I very much wanted to see.

Unfortunately, good surprises still surprise their surprisees. I may—or may not—have started and let out some kind of unwholesome sound halfway between squeak and screech in response. I may—or may not—also have tried to cover my mouth in raw embarrassment. In the process of doing that, if I had done that, I hypothetically could have dropped the poor Count. Obviously that couldn't be allowed, so a hypothetical Invidia pathetic enough to do all of those things might have flailed and stretched to grab him before he fell. And, this hypothetical Invidia, for all she shared my wicked grace, may—or may not—have lacked the dexterity to avoid falling in such circumstances.

Fortunately, it was definitely very certainly the case that none of those things happened to me.

Which is to say that Avaritia definitely did not fling wide my door, a triumphant look on eir tired face, just in time to see me fall from the ceiling clutching an innocent plush bat to my chest for dear life.

"Hi," I said from the floor, too relieved to wonder where I was going to spend the next decade hiding in embarrassment, "I'm glad you're back!"

Avaritia stared for a moment, then decided not to bother asking and limped into the room. Eir mundane clothes were covered in cuts and scratches, and eir thigh was stained a dark brown that I hoped wasn't dried blood.

But eir face was carved into an unmistakably characteristic, roguish grin.

"Heya Chiro," Lupin said, as if ey were not very visibly injured, "How's it hanging?"

"Just," I responded, patting the poor count carefully before placing him gently on my bed and spinning to point at Avaritia, "just because you are my partner does not mean I, Invidia Bat, will tolerate this indignity."

Ey laughed and it felt like things were going to be okay.

"Is your leg…" I wasn't quite sure what to say, but Avaritia shrugged off the concern.

"Gimme a few days to heal and it'll be good as new. There are… things back home that are a lot scarier than our little Saints."

"Back home?"

"The real Forest. Superbia wanted me to go back and acquire something and, well, there's no better thief among the Beasts than Avaritia! So obviously I'd be the one to go get the treasure," there was a wariness Avaritia couldn't quite manage to hide when ey spoke of the deeper parts of the Forest. I wanted to ask more, but ey gently tapped a finger to my lips, hushing me.

"We can talk about it later, partner," and that was the end of that.

"So, if you were going back, why did I need to distract the Saints?"

Avaritia frowned, "He didn't mention that." It didn't take a genius to understand that the greedy wolf was not pleased that the plan had expanded behind eir back. "But it makes sense I guess. We don't know if they have any ties to that side of the Forest, and more people throwing virtue around everywhere could have made things bad. So I guess I have you to thank for keeping me safe!"

Ey reached out and ruffled my hair, "Also, I like the hair. It's very you."

I blushed and glanced away. There was a possessive intensity in the way Avaritia looked at me sometimes that I couldn't bring myself to hate. "You noticed?"

"Chiro," Avaritia said, sighing, "half your hair is gone."

"Right," I sighed, not quite embarrassed enough to stop luxuriating in the feeling of having my partner back and safe and complimenting me again.

"Anyway," Avaritia sobered up, "Superbia wants to talk to us both. I… just be quiet and nod and nothing will go wrong. He should be happy. I got something amazing, and we're all going to get a lot stronger from this! Wait until the Saints get a taste of the new and improved Invidia and Avaritia duo."

I couldn't bring myself to dampen Avaritia's mood, especially with eir injuries, but something about their words filled me with dread.

---

"Welcome my beasts," a few of Mr. Noir's shrill words were already enough to set me into a rage. I was not his beast. Avaritia was the one who had seen me, who had given me the tools to face my envy. Whatever my feelings about where I'd chosen to take that, he'd had no hand in my apotheosis.

Beside his throne, a familiar gray robe watched silently. I'd seen them before, when I was reintroduced to Mr. Noir as Invidia, though I knew nothing about the person inside. The robe could have been empty for all I could tell.

I didn't let that show on my face. Instead I offered a curtsy, letting resentment drown out my disgust at his presence. If anything, knowing that he couldn't reconcile himself to me existing as a girl felt oddly empowering. He despised everything about me and yet he needed me all the same. Yes, look upon me and realize how wide the world is; Invidia's deceptions are far beyond your feeble comprehension, you vain little snake.

With that oddly cheerful thought, I rose from my curtsy and graced Mr. Noir with a smile, "So, what is going on anyway?"

He looked at me; his obvious disdain and distrust losing to his need to proclaim himself. "I have had Avaritia retrieve this!"

He raised one fist, revealing a large dark purple fruit about the size of a heart. It almost seemed to pulse with the power of sin, throbbing to my senses in a way that threatened to eclipse even Superbia's monstrous power. It was horrifying and enthralling at once, a wave of incomprehensible contradictory feelings shoved into the same vessel; pulling in and pushing away, bright and dark, fathomless as the oceans and inconsequential as a pebble all at once. I tore my other senses away after a moment, panting for breath. It called to my sin like a long lost sister.

How had Avaritia touched that to take it back without falling into a stupor?! For eir part, Avaritia seemed to handle the fruit's enthralling presence with far less difficulty.

"What is that?" I managed to keep my voice level, fixing my eyes on Superbia's smug face. Avaritia knew what to expect, so I was the sole audience of his little show and I refused to give him fear or awe or anything like that, not with the way he treated Avaritia, not with the way everything about him was so like home. I brushed that thought aside, and paid attention to the monologue.

"This is the source of everything, a fruit of the First Tree! The seeds from a single one of these fruits has given us our status as Beasts."

"And a second could make us even stronger," Avaritia said, grinning, "There was some risk; the Deep Forest isn't safe and if the Saints had worked with some of its guards…" I wondered if that was a genuine worry, or a detail worked in to make it sound like I'd contributed. I hadn't even distracted Temperance. "But now that we have this, we can each take another seed to empower our sins even further. The Saints won't stand a chance against us now!"

Superbia tutted condescendingly, "That is one use that certain minds might choose for such a treasure; but there are far greater purposes to which this fruit can be spent," he grinned at the look of shock on Avaritia's face. "Our companion," he gestured to Gray Robe, "will modify the seeds and identify a fitting host for each. Unqualified to become true beasts, they will transform into a beacon for their sin. Each seed will spread its roots, awakening Resinners all around it given enough time. Feeding that much sin to the First Tree at once will do far more to advance our objectives than merely consuming the seeds for immediate power."

"You mean turn… everyone in the city into a Resinner at once?!" I couldn't stop myself from asking, horror breaking through my voice.

Avaritia glanced at me warningly as Superbia snorted, "Only those receptive to the Abyssal Forest's wisdom, but the number will be far more than we need to accomplish our goals."

I didn't know what to say to that. This was insane. It was one thing to release one person's sins, to help them bare their hearts to the world. It was another entirely to release thousands of monsters across the city at once. There was no way the Saints could keep up. People, a lot of people, would suffer.

"Okay," Avaritia said, sounding more than a little bitter at the twist, "if that's what you think is best."

"It is," Superbia said, "I shall give you further instructions when our ally has divined the first location."

I started to speak, to say something about how absurd this was, but the caution in Avaritia's eyes stopped me cold, "As you wish," I said instead.

---

"Is this really okay?" Avaritia and I had returned to eir room in the Forest where we could talk more freely. Or rather, where I could voice my doubts.

Ey shrugged, "He can be like that, but…. He knows what he's doing. If he thinks this will work, it'll work out for the best in the end."

Was that confidence built on years of working together as allies, I wondered, or was ey simply afraid to admit that the person ey thought of as eir savior was nothing more than a monster, that whatever love ey had for him would have been better spent elsewhere?

I shook my head. Even if that's what drove Avaritia, I had no room to judge. Besides, self-righteously telling em what ey should be doing wouldn't get anywhere. Inessa had let slip her feelings on how to handle my dad enough, and I'd only ever retreated more into my shell. Avaritia was defined by eir greed, eir need to keep those they valued close, and nothing I could tell em would be something they hadn't already been ignoring emself.

"Avaritia?" I tried a different tactic, "When you recruited me, you said you wanted someone to watch your back, to hold things back if the collateral damage got too bad." I laughed a little bitterly, "I've been pretty bad at that I guess."

Ey stopped, and stared at me and I saw the fear eating its way through eir eyes. I didn't need to say more. I did anyway.

"If we go along with this, people are going to get hurt. A lot of people. I know you care about collateral damage. I know you're a good person, that between all the beasts, you're the one who really believes in what we're doing more than any of us, who wants to do the right thing."

It was true. I could persuade myself to try out the cause of sin, but my desperate, clawing need to stand on the stage was a far more selfish drive than Avaritia's ideological predispositions. I wasn't a true believer in the bigger cause, not yet. I barely understood what we were actually trying to do.

Even my feelings for Envy were complicated. The seed had taken me at the moment when I'd broken and stitched my outsides back together. It had let me imitate, if not become, the creature I wanted to be. Envy had scoured away my face and given me gorgeous masks. It let me pretend to be Chiro or Invidia or anyone actually worth existing. And it would never let me forget how pathetic and awful I really was below the mask. It was worth it, for me. But it remained a sweet poison.

Strangely the seed had no dislike for that sentiment this time around. Perhaps wishing I was a good person while knowing I didn't have it in me to become one was, itself, an expression of my sin.

"But you asked me to tell you when you were going too far," and now the seed prickled warningly against my bones. This was a step closer to the line.

"This is," once again, the vines of sin holding my facade together threatened to come undone. Once again I was subject to agony. I bit back a yelp and looked Avaritia in the eyes.

Ey turned and started to say something. I could feel the wrath lurking beneath the surface, the impotent rage dying to lash out at anything at all. Ey didn't voice the accusations they were dying to make.

"Maybe," ey finally admitted.

I could hardly believe ey'd said that out loud, for all that the word must have been agony.

"M-maybe if this doesn't work, Superbia will use the fruit some way that's… less damaging?" I hated myself for the deflection, for not grabbing em and hugging em and doing every single thing in my power to pull them away from Superbia for good. We could stay with the cause. We could keep making Resinners without him. But Avaritia wouldn't leave, not while he had no one else. He'd also probably murder us horrifically if we tried.

Avaritia nodded, "Right! He's just… This war's cost him a lot," I hated how familiar Avaritia's excuses sounded, "His pride's the only thing he has to hold onto now," ey said as if ey shouldn't have been someone Noir could have held on to.

"We can help him though! Blunt the bad ideas, lead him to some big victories and then he'll listen!" It was a tune I'd hummed to myself quite often, for all that the lyrics were different.

Ey grinned, almost believing eir own words. Avaritia had never been the type for sustained brooding.

----

The days following the revelation of Superbia's plan passed in surprising peace. Avaritia wasn't willing to discuss breaking away from it in any detail, for all our mission haunted em, and I had no clue what to do myself. So we fell into an odd rhythm of talking about everything except what was important; yet another dance I'd hoped to avoid repeating. At the same time, Avaritia was more than pleased that I'd followed eir wardrobe commandments in eir absence and was quite happy to praise me for all the little ways I was 'managing myself' well. With Inessa's return to form, Temperance's glares faded to a justified wariness and Ida's near desperate attempts to hunt me down went from horror movie villain to the normal level of over the top intensity Ida applied to everything she did, so I managed to secure a greater number of lunches to myself.

A few other girls even started talking to Chiro. That was a weird experience, of course. I wasn't really used to people outside of my tiny circle. But Chiro was supposed to be bright and sunny even if I found the whole thing a little draining. I wasn't going to be at school that much longer, one way or another, but as daydreams went, I didn't mind Chiro.

Of course it couldn't last.

It was Thursday and I was at lunch—chatting with a few girls from class all the way across the cafeteria from my former friends—when the image pushed its way into my head: a boy, perhaps ten to twelve, sitting alone in a playground wearing a bulky pair of headphones. He seemed dead to the world, and he radiated sin, a slow monotonous percussion, endlessly enacting itself and dead to the world.

It lingered for a moment, practically branding itself into my consciousness.

"The Sprout of Sloth has been discovered. The seed has been prepared. Meet with Avaritia and protect it until it can take root." A voice echoed through my head, alien in a way that felt almost familiar and impossibly ancient. That must have been Gray Robe, communicating with us somehow. This strange boy would host the first of these modified seeds to take root, a tool to awaken Sloth across the city if it could grow enough.

I shook my head and made excuses about visiting the nurse's office as I wondered frantically what to do. Maybe one wouldn't be so bad? Superbia's plan had mentioned needing all seven sins spread across the city to work. Maybe it would be fine if we let this one happen…

Temperance caught my gaze from across the cafeteria. I caught her eyes for one desperate second, then shook the thoughts out of my head and focused my gaze on the doors instead.

I let them close behind me and kept walking, though I wasn't surprised to hear Temperance's voice behind me.

"And where are you going all of a sudden?" she asked. I bit down a surge of undeserved hope as I turned back.

"You know, if you want to follow me, you could just return to the Forest. I'd be more than happy to explain my whereabouts whenever you wanted if you did that," I covered my mouth with one hand and laughed.

Temperance stared at me expressionlessly.

"Then it's no business of yours where I go. I'm not using this identity to do anything to Inessa, so you have nothing to fear." I should have said more. I should have told her everything Superbia had planned. Instead I spun and began walking away. A part of me hoped that this would be enough, hoped that the Saints would follow us and destroy our plans. That was what they did, after all.

And, even if I was too cowardly to tell Temperance what was wrong, I was also cowardly enough to stay as Chiro as I left campus and walked slowly to the playground, studiously not looking back to see if a blue haired girl had snuck onto stage behind me.

Avaritia greeted me as I transformed, looking as anxious as I felt.

"Where were you?"

"I had to sneak away from the Saints," I responded, perhaps a bit too defensively.

Ey looked at me for a second, then shook eir head and produced a seed. It was like the one that had transformed me, the one that sat inside my chest even now. And yet, someone had scrawled on it with all sorts of strange writings, pulsing bright yellow against the seed's ominous black.

Ey gently held out eir hand, allowing the seed to float to me. As strange and uncanny as the fruit had felt, the modified seed felt wrong on just as fundamental a level. It infected everything around it with sin, a strange Shepherd tone of a vice that seemed to sink endlessly into itself. I pulled myself away from it and entered the playground.

I found him easily, listening to music and dead to the world. The boy had not moved from where I'd seen him in the vision, or perhaps Gray Robe had somehow known where we would find him. I approached slowly, looking up to him from the base of a slide. If Temperance had followed us, then delaying might mean the difference between failure and success.

He seemed to evaluate me for a moment before closing his eyes.

"H-hey!" I shouted, "D-don't just ignore the cool mysterious evil batgirl!"

He continued to ignore the cool mysterious and very evil batgirl. Honestly, kids.

With a flap, my wings lifted me to his level, allowing me to pluck the headphones from his head. Balefully, he looked up.

"Hello, brat," I said, favoring him with my fangiest glare.

"Hi," he said quietly, in a voice that would give Temperance a run for her money for how little caring it contained. Well! I would show him! I was practically inured to that kind of treatment these days!

"Why are you all out here alone? You know, bad things happen to little boys who have no one to look out for them."

He seemed to consider it for a moment. "It doesn't really matter," he said.

Ah, so that was how I'd looked that night in the cold after I'd run away from dad. I wondered what had driven a child so young to the breaking point.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

I toyed with the seed. Perhaps this wasn't all bad after all.

"If everything could just stop for a little bit, could let you have a break just for now and you wouldn't have to think or remember or feel anything at all until you can gather the strength to talk to someone, would you like that?"

He looked at me warily for a moment. Then he nodded.

Gently, I held up the seed and blew it toward him. He looked on, half-curious, as it landed in his chest and sunk in. For a moment he stared at me, almost grateful. Then his body began to distort.

Roots spread out from his feet, digging into the slide and fusing with it, growing and sinking. His eyes closed as a tree began to grow around him, spreading out in all directions, growing up and up until only his face was visible, sleeping gently inside the tree of Sloth.

The tree screamed.

I flew back despite myself, landing near Avaritia. Creating a Resinner was an almost mystical experience, bonding through shared sins and shared blood. Here, there was no such connection, no insight into what had hurt this child so that he welcomed Sloth.

I took a few moments to look upon my work, to stare as the tree grew and grew. Perhaps there wasn't any reason to worry that the Saints wouldn't find us. Instead, I should have worried if they could win.

I alighted on a branch and rubbed my hand on the tree. It would be defeated. Our plans would fail. The Saints would seize victory like always. And maybe they'd be able to help this kid more than I had.

I tried to pull my hand back, but it was strangely stuck, sinking slowly into the bark of the tree. Frantically I tried to pull it away and I shouted something and then squeaked as something wrapped around my feet, pulling me up, rough branches growing around me in real time to pin me in place.

"Nononono, you're not supposed to go after me!!!! Avaritia saaaaveeee meeee!" I screamed for help as something broke my skin. Dimly, as the world faded to black, I saw a figure in blue leaping toward the tree, foregoing her trademark speech.

---

I sank into the tree, into sloth's slow lullaby, drowning out thought, drowning out feeling, drowning out even my envy. I made a token struggle to keep myself awake, to fight. But, in no time at all, slumber took me.

I dreamt about a boy.

His mother didn't run out on the family; he didn't get attacked by monsters. His best friend had no amazing epiphany where she found herself, came out and then turned into a hero. Instead, things continued as they always had, an unending cycle of faked smiles, meaningless attempts to comfort Inessa and quiet retreats to the realms of fantasy when her efforts proved equally shallow.

Perhaps he was supposed to graduate, supposed to go somewhere else, to move on to something else? It was hard to sort that out when it was so easy to move in the same never-ending circle, letting familiar routines help anesthetize him to the anhedonia of life.

Inessa and I studied together. Mostly, I helped her study. We never met Temperance or Lupin and Ida remained a distant figure, one we could barely name, so it was just the two of us.

It should have been easy to pull myself out of it. All I would have to do was admit it. I could snap my fingers and escape. And sure, I wasn't happy right now. I couldn't see myself as the kind of person that could just be happy for no reason on a day to day basis. But, at least, I'd claimed those little moments: the feeling of flying, of freedom, the power to stand opposite my former friends, and the simple pleasures of playing at being Chiro.

My parents fought again. I put on my headphones and pretended not to know my dad was shouting downstairs and pretended not to see any of the sparks that sprouted around Inessa.

And yet….

It was nice to avoid realizing how much I hated everything about my life. It was so easy to live in a world where I could pretend things were good enough, were going in the right direction, even as everything faded into monochrome gray.

I pretended to make fun of Inessa and she pretended to get offended. We both acted like the transient ups and downs of daily life meant anything next to the overwhelming monotony of it all. Sometimes, she started to say something and, for the briefest instant, I could see the red of her hair glowing like fire against the gray world. And then she'd give up and fall back into the same routines.

It was a way of pause: to cease without having to face the finality of ending, without having to admit that you'd like to stop being or that you are the kind of person who might be able to do that to those around you.

And then, she broke the pattern. Inessa turned from me and asked out a girl as I watched in the distance. She got rejected. Her crush said something awful to her. Inessa's face twisted into a frown. But then she laughed instead; it wasn't fair to do that to Inessa. And yet, Inessa laughed and tried again and then Inessa Brandt began to spew flames.

And I wasn't the kind of person who could resist that offer. I wasn't the kind of person who could be the hero.

The world burned away; Inessa became Castitas.

Castitas faced Invidia—me—in what seemed to be an empty void, devoid of illumination save for the soft flames of Castitas' knocked arrow. Glittering bubbles floated around us merging and splitting and showing a thousand sad stories. She'd done it. She'd entered my dream, our dream, and she'd found it in herself to break out of that apathetic sloth, to cut through the comfortable gray of the world. Truly, there was no one I'd rather envy.

"Hey Invidia," she said, strangely subdued, for all she'd broken herself out.

"Hey, " not that I was any less melancholic.

She took a deep breath. The world shook around us.

"This whole Invidia thing, has it helped?" she asked at last.

"Yes," I said, barely lying.

"Oh."

That probably wasn't the answer she wanted.

"Can we talk about it?" she asked stubbornly. "I'm sorry I never understood what all you were going through before."

I lunged at her, "what use would talking do now? What's done is done! I've made my choices!"

Castitas hopped out of range, retaliating with a perfunctory arrow. I deflected it with a copied flame.

"I don't want to fight!" she shouted, almost desperately; ever passive, ever willing to sit and let me attack as she peppered me with magic from a safe distance.

"This isn't about you!"

Even I had to admit that sounded hypocritical while I was wearing her face. And yet, for once, it didn't feel like a lie. I envied Inessa, that was true. I stared at her and I wanted more than anything to be her in every way. And yet, it wasn't about her really. If she were a stranger, would I still have felt the same?

I let loose a screech and followed it up by flying in as fast as I could, swaying to the left and right to dodge Inessa's arrows. Frantically, she grabbed her bow with both hands and swung it at me, clubbing me in the side of the face and sending me astray.

"W-what!!! That's not how you're supposed to use that!" it wasn't fair! That wasn't a melee weapon! W-where was the dignity? The grace!? Starlight Princess Orion would never use her wand as some kind of club.

Inessa took a moment to hold up two fingers in a peace sign and flash a smile that fled from her face as soon as I pushed past the pounding in my head and dove for her again.

"I just want to understand why you have to do this!"

"It's like Avaritia says! Some of us need sin to keep moving, to break out of that endless spiral where we let ourselves die day by day! My envy set me free!"

Inessa jumped over me, firing an arrow at the back of my head. I spun as fast as I could, knocking it out of the air with one wing and righting myself as she once again opened the distance between us.

"Tell me what you envy so much then!"

I screamed in wordless frustration and dove for Inessa again. If it was that easy to articulate in the first place, I wouldn't have gotten this far.

"EVERYTHING!" I snapped. The void shook again, or perhaps I was just losing my grip on it.

"What…" Inessa looked at me in complete surprise and barely remembered to dodge my next attack.

"What about me is so great?" she asked, infuriatingly mystified.

I conjured a ball of fire and lobbed it at her.

"You're brave! You're selfless! You're beautiful! You're strong! You can figure out what you want and become a person who can chase it even if you mess up! You help people! You can make friends and do things you enjoy without feeling guilty about it! You care!"

She blushed and froze. I tried to tear her eyes out with my claws.

"I… I'm not that amazing," she said guiltily. "A-and even if I was, none of this whole sin thing is helping you be brave or help people or try your best!"

That went without saying. My envy was an unreachable goal, a mirror that could never be real. I'd admitted that to myself over and over again and yet, it ached more when even Inessa noticed it.

I stopped. I needed a moment to find the response, to tell Inessa exactly how badly she'd misunderstood me, to convince her that hating me was objectively the right thing to do.

"I…"

The void crumbled around us, leaving us back in the park.

In the distance, I could see Diligentia holding up a seed, tired but satisfied. Temperantia stood over a crouching Avaritia, the wolf's tail between eir legs.

Ey took the Saints' momentary distraction at the conflict to kick away from Temperantia and dash for me, tearing open a portal back to the Forest.

"Invidia!" Inessa shouted as I moved to flee, "I think we should fight!"

Confused and beaten, I followed Avaritia into the portal.

---

We'd lost.

I could dress it up however I wanted. We'd set up a super monster and then I'd immediately gotten captured and had to have Castitas save me. And even then, they'd beaten us and recovered the modified seed of sloth. It was hard to know how long we'd been in that dream, but it clearly hadn't been long enough for whatever Superbia had planned.

I'd thought I could stand against Inessa, could rival the protagonist a little. And yet, she barely even seemed to realize we were fighting.

It wasn't fair.

"You disappoint me," Superbia's wrath fell on us like thunder as we entered his throne room. It was all Avaritia and I could do to stand. The cloaked figure once again present, watching with what might have been curiosity or amusement, was seemingly immune.

"Again and again, my plans fail because of you," he growled, "Not only did you fail to guard it properly. The Saints barely took a moment to find the Sprout!"

I met Avaritia's eyes and I saw recognition flash across eir eyes. Ey knew I'd led Temperance right to the sprout. How couldn't ey, after the conversation we'd had.

Slowly ey turned to face Superbia. That was fair. For all we'd talked about being partners, I'd barely earned the title, then I'd turned around and betrayed eir cause. It was only natural that they'd say the truth.

"I let Temperantia know where it was," ey said with a faux cheer.

Superbia rounded on em, glaring.

"I…" I tried to interrupt, to say something, anything.

"It was all my fault. I thought we could talk her back around into joining us if she saw how big this plan was…" Avaritia's tone was forcefully blase and ey even had the temerity to wink at me.

Superbia raised a hand. Terrible light descended, hammering Avaritia into the ground with the force of divine wrath.

"You dare!?" He shouted.

I tried to interrupt, but no one seemed to notice my fragile voice. Or perhaps the words had just gotten caught in my throat, buried under a strange and all too familiar pressure.

"Very well!" he grimaced, desperate to save face, "You have failed me for the last time!" The light spread, wrapping Avaritia in a cocoon.

I had to do something, anything. I cast about for any kind of solution. Anything to make him stop. I could have attacked, but he was so obviously so much more than either of us. I'd just end up joining Avaritia in that situation.

The cocoon of light rose, smashing itself against a wall, then another. Muffled screams were the only indication that Avaritia was aware of every aspect of what happened. This was all my fault. I'd been the one to tip off the Saints, to fail at every little task, to fail to even organize resisting Superbia's horrible plans enough that this hadn't blindsided Avaritia with no chance for someone actually competent to sort things out.

I had to do something. I'd taken the stage and I had to carry it through, however undeserving.

"Wait!" I shouted at last.

Slowly, Superbia turned to face me.

"T-the Saints," I said desperately, a plan coming together. "They're our real problem. They always fight together so of course we're outnumbered, B-but," I took a deep breath.

This was dumb. This was wrong. I should have grabbed Avaritia and run. I'd failed Inessa and her family. I'd failed Ida and Temperance and even dad and now I was failing Avaritia too. I'd barely escaped my dad and I'd let em linger in the same toxic place, too useless and too smug about holding it over Temperance to actually even conceive of doing anything.

"Castitas is their leader. If we can get rid of her, then they'll collapse and everything will work," Superbia didn't care about punishing Avaritia. Not really. He cared about finding a reason that his failures weren't his fault. I understood the impulse. I was little better for all I'd been drilled my whole life not to make excuses, but it was easy enough to manipulate.

This plan would work. Inessa wanted to fight me for some reason. I could lure her out, pull her away and fight her and then, one way or another, Superbia would either let Avaritia free willingly, and then we could run away together. If I lost, if the worst came to pass, he wouldn't have any other choice but to let em free. And, I liked to hope Avaritia wouldn't stay around if Superbia's actions had brought me to that.

"I know how we can capture her." I stared at Superbia, banishing all of my doubts. One way or another, I wouldn't let this stand. For once, I felt almost serene. "But, if I do that, you have to set Avaritia free."

NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Gathering her resolve, Inessa makes a serious decision. Meanwhile Invidia arrives at a conclusion of her own. Will Castitas be able to defeat Invidia… and, even if she can, will she be able to save Chiro?

Tune in for Episode 28: Decisive Showdown! Castitas vs. Invidia!