In the end, Superbia agreed. He spent some time going over the plan, insisting on shaping it to his desires. But, in the end, he agreed, with a few modifications. He didn't trust me to beat her. Instead, all he wanted me to do was draw Castitas out and grab ahold of her. Superbia claimed he could leave a trace of his power on me that would summon us both back to the Abyssal Forest as soon as I grabbed her.

Only then, he promised perfunctorily, would he consent to release Avaritia.

I shouldn't have agreed. I shouldn't have offered the plan in the first place. And yet, for all I'd taken my place on the stage, I wasn't the hero. I wasn't beautiful and strong and capable of overcoming my limits to save my friends. I was just a jealous bat who couldn't control herself, couldn't save her partner when it mattered, couldn't even do a good job as an evil general.

The plan I was offering was awful. I would never have suggested it if Superbia hadn't taken Avaritia. And yet, a selfish dark part of me needed to settle things with Inessa. I'd beaten her, but then she'd beaten me. I couldn't tolerate letting it stand as a draw. No, I'd smile and agree to Superbia's conditions and then face Inessa fair and square with everything I could bring to muster.

And, if I gave it my all, if I copied Castitas' fire until I burned out, and I still lost, then Superbia wouldn't have any choice but to release Avaritia, or do his own dirty work. Ey'd go free; I'd win.

It was easy to lure her out. She'd said she wanted to fight—for once it turned out we were actually on the same page—and I knew where she lived. It was easy enough to slide a letter under her door in the middle of the night.

I told her to meet me in the park the next day. I ached to drag it out, to delay the inevitable as much as possible. But that wouldn't be fair to Avaritia, and if I did successfully capture Inessa, it was probably better to do it on a Friday, so she wouldn't miss school if she converted or broke out.

Preparations made, the rest was just a matter of waiting for the appointed time. Waiting and knowing that Avaritia was locked up, unable to act or move or even see. Knowing that I was powerless to do anything about it. Knowing that I was about to betray Inessa yet again, worse this time than any other. Knowing this would be the end, one way or another.

I'd hoped that one last day at school would help me make my peace with what was about to happen. I'd have one last chance to pretend to be Chiro, to chat with her acquaintances, trade awkward looks with Temperance, dodge Ida's awkward attempts to pull me back into the friend group. A characteristically selfish part of me demanded that much before I flipped the table.

To my chagrin, I needn't have bothered. It was impossible to have an ordinary moment knowing what would come next. I couldn't exactly look Ida in the eyes while I was about to do my best to take her best friend from her.

At least, I wouldn't be using Chiro's identity to do it; I wouldn't be breaking my promise with Temperance.

---

It was an appropriately gloomy afternoon, the kind with encompassing clouds that were just killing time until they could become a proper storm. That left the park empty, not that it was usually crowded or anything, but it was nice to know we'd avoid disturbing anyone with our fight.

I'd dashed out of school as soon as the bell rang, intent on trying to warn or chase everyone I could away before things started. With the park empty, I found myself sitting on a park bench as Chiro, failing again to steady myself for the upcoming fight.

Perhaps I should have transformed. But I wasn't going to be able to go back after this. One way or another, Chiro's time had come to an end without accomplishing anything of note. Some perverse little part of me wanted to, at least, throw her in Inessa's face. Or perhaps I just needed to lay bare all of my sins at the end of everything.

Inessa was late; it started to drizzle, little drops halfway between bitter cold humidity and proper liquid. I wondered if she'd missed the letter, if she'd decided to change her mind about wanting to settle things once and for all. Perhaps the Saints were going to attack me as a group?

I hadn't bothered with an umbrella. It had felt like it would be too awkward if Inessa showed up for our big climatic battle and I was carrying around an umbrella I didn't need. Instead, she found me huddled into a damp ball on a bench, hugging myself for warmth.

"So it was you," she said, betraying no hint of surprise at seeing Chiro here.

Awkwardly, she sat down on the bench next to me. "Sorry it took so long to get here. I figured that it might help to talk the others into not showing."

I didn't respond. Of course she'd tell them. Of course they'd agree to this. To them, this was probably the place where they saw me turning around. A wasted effort.

"I figured it was you when I saw your haircut in the fight the other day," she laughed awkwardly. "And I realized that you'd said 'her' in the salon when we were talking things over. I used 'their' and you corrected me."

Again, I had nothing to say to that, nothing I could say to that really.

If Inessa was frustrated by my non-responsiveness, she didn't show it, "And then you skipped today, so we all put it together and Temperance confirmed it. Which, well, Ida was pretty upset at her for hiding things again, but, we can tell you all about that later."

Honestly, was Temperance actually temperate or just indecisive? I shook my head; there was no point thinking about that kind of thing now.

Something about the action made Inessa settle a little more into her skin. She even managed a grin that bore faint echoes of the closeness we'd had for so long.

"I guess a part of you didn't want to stay away, huh."

"Ida kept dragging me back. She got a little obsessed with Chiro," the excuse came easy to me. For all I'd been raised never to use them, excuses always seemed natural on my lips. I let it go this time. There were some things I couldn't admit, not to her, not then.

I wondered if there was a point to talking like this. We'd never managed to say anything important before now; this wouldn't be any different. I glanced at her: fragile and yet oddly defiant, a tiny flicker of flame that refused to bend to the brewing storm.

I could have reached over and hugged her. Superbia would have been able to summon us with that. And yet, I owed her more than that; I needed this to be more than that. Even my own sin wouldn't have let me go through with that gambit.

"You're stalling. We didn't come here to talk, Castitas," I'd wanted the words to cut, but the comment ended up sounding affectionately chiding instead. I admired her, I loved her like family, I resented her with all my heart. And today we would grab that web of feelings between us and burn it to dust.

"Do we have to?" she asked, "Is there no other way?"

I stifled a laugh. If I'd ever been the kind of person who knew what I wanted, we wouldn't have gotten here in the first place. But Inessa wouldn't get the joke, and it wasn't like I was any better at understanding me.

"There's no other way," I said instead, rising to my feet and walking away from her.

I transformed between steps, stretching my wings dramatically before I spun to face her. Ten paces away, the perfect length for a duel.

Inessa slapped herself twice on her cheeks, then grabbed that wooden bracelet of hers. In a surge of flame, Castitas stood before me, all the more radiant for the palpable air of sad determination she carried with her.

"I don't think I really get it," she said at last. "But I'll do whatever I need to do to make you talk!"

I lifted off the ground to build a little height, then dove for her. Even now she dared to think we could go back, that we could let all our feelings out then return to the old status quo, like all this was just another monster of the week.

I expected her to retreat. In both of our previous fights, Castitas had focused more on keeping the distance open between us and using her weapon. Instead, Castitas stepped forward to meet me, ducking under my strike before springing back up. Her palm rammed into my chin with enough force to send me toppling backwards.

I landed flat on my back and did my best to roll away before she could follow. If I were still just a human, that would already have been enough to end me. As it was, I found myself wobbling as I sprang to my feet and tried to open up enough space between us to get my bearings.

"CASTITAS FLARE BARRAGE!!" Inessa shouted her trademark attack.

Retreating had, obviously, been a mistake. Range was her weapon, not mine. In punishment, I found myself facing down a swarm of fiery arrows. Frantically, I copied her power, matching each arrow to a fiery green bat.

"Why did you have to do this?" she asked, as if asking the same questions over and over would ever change things.

"You keep saying that I'm amazing or that you envy me!"

At least she had the decency not to expect an answer, for all her words were punctuated with another trio of fiery arrows. These spun off in circular arcs before reorienting and, impossibly, homing at me from several directions at once.

I knocked a pair aside with my wings and caught a third with one hand, wincing at the heat, only to find that Inessa had used the distraction of the arrows to once again close the distance, striking at me with a flurry of blows.

"I'm a ditz!" she shouted, delivering a roundhouse kick to my thigh. "I'm indecisive! I can't do anything alone! I'm a coward when it comes to the people I care about!"

I pinched her leg in between my arm and my gut, following up with a subsonic screech that sent her stumbling.

"What I'm saying," Castitas took a moment to catch her breath, wiping off her lip, "Is that you're the clever one. You always know what to say to calm people down! You listen and you care! You're a good person, Chiro! So why do you think you need this?"

She stumbled on the name, still trying to reconcile the person I pretended to be with the person I'd thought I was.

"Haven't you been listening to Lupin, we're the good guys!" My response was mocking in a way she didn't deserve. Anything to blow it off, anything to keep this confrontation as purely physical as it could be.

Thunder sounded in the distance.

She shook her head. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

I wanted to tell her I did, but Superbia's casual cruelty was fresh in my mind. No defense of sin could justify handing Castitas to him. The words died in my throat.

"So why?!"

She advanced again, raining blows on me with all the aggression of an oncoming wildfire. I parried and dodged and tried to counter as best I could, letting my wings and my superior mobility do most of the work for me there.

In the midst of that, the rain began to fall in earnest.

"You found yourself!" I admitted as I landed a glancing blow on her shoulder, "I got distracted with mom and then I turned around and looked and you'd turned into someone amazing. Someone I could never match, someone who could actually face herself, who could move beyond thinking about how much she'd like to be a good person if she could and just actually helping make life better for everyone!"

The plant inside me trembled, vines writhing against themselves in twisted satisfaction.

Inessa blushed, then shook her head. "Like I said, I'm not that amazing at all!" She knocked away a mimicked arrow and parried my follow-up punch with the arm of her bow, before releasing an exploding blast of flame right in my stomach. Worse, she had the raw audacity to keep talking while she did it.

"But, even if you think I am, so what? It's not wrong to admire people! Aspiring to be like someone isn't a sin!"

I coughed and stumbled back, straining to stay on my feet. Castitas seemed disinclined to follow, leaving me the space to answer her words, if not her blows.

"Of course not!" I snapped, "When you're the kind of person who can change, who can become the thing you admire, then aspirations aren't sinful! They help you learn what you want to be! But," something slotted into place. The envy I'd never quite grasped suddenly seemed so obvious to me, "that's the difference between us! I'm not a hero! I'm not someone amazing! I can't turn around and change or work hard until I become the person I want to be."

I laughed, at the end of the day, envy was that simple. "Envy is when you know what you want is impossible. And once you realize that, you can't just seal your wanting away!"

Castitas took a moment to gather her thoughts. I'd hoped, when I'd seen the weather report, that the rain would make this a little easier. Instead, she seemed to be burning all the brighter.

"I realize that," she said at last. "At first I wanted to just go back to the way things were, to wake up and realize it had all been a bad dream, that C was still there and that everything would just go on the way it always had been, where I helped him and we slowly made things a little better, and I could always rely on him to be kind and smart and know just what to say to help."

Her wings were supposed to be cute accessories, a silly part of a costume that would have been absurd if the Saints weren't so amazing. Now, they caught fire and grew with every word she said, every ounce of passion incarnating as another burning feather.

"But that wouldn't be fair to you, or to anyone who's gotten hurt, would it?" She shook her head. "That's why, we should accept everything and go forward instead!" That was objectively nonsense. It didn't mean anything at all. And yet, Inessa acted like this was some divine revelation. "I'll stop looking up to the image of you I built up in my head all this time, and you can stop doing the same for me and we can finally talk to each other."

Castitas envied me? No, I shook my head. Her soul did not sing to me with any depth. At least it hadn't since I'd learned to listen to them. At most, she aspired to be like the person she'd thought C was. It was a strange revelation nonetheless.

I shook my head. If I was the person who could get better just from trying more, I wouldn't have ended up where I was in the first place.

"Hi, it's nice to meet you. I'm Inessa Brandt," she punctuated her words with another arrow of fire, aimed squarely at my throat.

I batted it aside with a growl. This wasn't fair. She couldn't just force me to go along with her ridiculous ideas anymore. And yet, when I looked up, she'd dared to extend a hand toward me.

I screamed at her, sending a blast of rippling pressure straight at her. Inessa didn't bother dodging, stumbling back with the blow. And yet, her eyes didn't leave mine, and the smile on her face didn't so much as flicker. Her hand didn't fall.

"What's your name?" she asked, managing not to stumble over her words for all her face was contorted in pain.

How was I supposed to answer that? I wasn't C. I would never be him again. But Chiro was a mask and Invidia's everything was built out of lies.

I raised my hands and gathered mimicked flames into a large bat, sending it hurtling toward Inessa.

A single unformed blast of fire drowned out my flames, and the next bat and the next bat, Castitas burning brighter than I could ever hope to copy.

"I'm no one," it sounded so melodramatic to finally say it after so many weeks of dancing around the point, "I'm nothing, just deception after deception, stacked on top of itself until I almost look like a real person!"

In a way, it was a relief to finally own it. To admit that, no matter my pretensions, I'd known from the start why Inessa would triumph today. Wishing and longing and knowing it wasn't fixing you until you grew desperate enough to tear yourself apart just to fake it for a few beautiful moments. What else could that self-destructive impulse be called but sin?

My seed came to life, tendrils crushing my heart in a loving embrace. It adored being named in such lavish detail.

"Is," she did not move, save for the flapping of her wings that kept her floating a few inches above the ground, "that really how you feel?"

I answered her with a wave of green fire. It crashed into her wings and died, forcing me to leap over the incoming flames. Her raw power, the way that even now, she'd grown beyond me, giving lie to Inessa's cold comforts.

"Then that means you can become anyone you want to be!" Inessa smiled brightly at me, still refusing to accept the obvious.

I stared at her, genuinely confused. Did she still not get it? Was I simply too pathetic for Inessa to comprehend?

"So you hate yourself," the words were heavy on her lips. "I know there's more to you than that! You liked being Chiro!"

I dive-bombed her, pulling in and out and striking again and again as she blocked and dodged my frantic assault.

"It was an act!" I shouted, "I was trying to get close to you!" Frustration helped give weight to my blows, and I managed to drive my knee into her solar plexus, doubling her over. I followed it up with a hammer of imitation fire from above.

She laid in the smoking crater for a moment, and I found myself pausing to catch my breath.

"That's not what Temperance said! And," Inessa trembled and pushed herself to her knees, "And, I saw the way you smiled, when you thought no one was looking, when you got to just be yourself, away from your dad and us and everything!"

I wanted to deny it. If I didn't admit it, it wasn't true. And yet, Inessa was already standing, wiping a hint of blood off her lips and smiling at me.

"She's fake!" I said instead. "I'm not her. I'm not the kind of person who could be her! I'm just pretending!" I lifted off the ground, rising above Inessa to divebomb her.

"So?" she asked. "I'm an idiot, but, why does it matter if it's fake, if it's what you want?"

"That's not…"

"It's not fair!" Inessa cut me off. "You're so kind to everyone else, why do you always get to be mean to yourself? If this was anyone else you'd tell them to try! That even if they couldn't be exactly the person they dreamt of, they could still become someone great!"

I probably would have casually made up something like that. Then again, I didn't hate anyone else the way I loathed myself, not even Superbia. Somewhere in the fight, Inessa's constant overtures had gone from impossible to almost sounding logical.

I searched for the words that would point out how ridiculous all her platitudes were.

"STOP TRYING TO CONVINCE ME AND JUST DIE ALREADY!" I threatened instead, as if there was any world where I could kill her. It was good if it made her think I meant it though, or she might not do what needed to be done.

I folded my wings close to my body and swooped down toward her one more time.

Inessa raised her bow straight up, her hands trembling with strain, and pulled it back as far as it would go, struggling to hold it steady as an arrow took form. It was massive, and made from flames so bright they almost seemed like a sun.

"CASTITAS METEOR SHOWER!!!" Inessa shouted as the arrow loosed.

The arrow rose up and up, exploding in a massive fireball that scattered the clouds for a moment. A thousand burning stars fell toward us.

I dove toward Castitas, knowing I wouldn't make it, and then screamed in pain as one then another tore through my wings. A third smashed hard into my back, sending me crashing to the ground at her feet.

Inessa stepped lightly this way and that, dodging her own attack with instinctual ease as she looked down on me.

"Why can't you try? I'm not saying you have to like yourself, to believe you can wake up tomorrow and feel like you're really that person. But," she offered me a hand up, "why not let yourself try instead of all of this deciding it's impossible? Even if it's impossible for you to do it alone, we can still do it together!"

It wasn't fair. It would be so much easier if she would just crush me.

"Even if I wanted to try," the seed writhed inside of me, its mood crashing in an instant. The mere mention of another path enraged it into sending spikes white hot agony through my chest, up my neck and all around my skull. "I've gone too far."

I slapped the hand away and pushed myself to stand, wobbling ever so slightly as I resumed a fighting stance. My wings were burnt and broken. There would be no more flying for Invidia Bat in this fight.

"You can always change direction," she said, cheerfully

"I've hurt people!"

"And we can forgive you, and, well, we can make amends to anyone we can't tell."

"You can't—" I stumbled and caught myself. Dark spots made their way across my vision. I ached inside and out. And I wasn't sure how much was me and how much was that my sin had grown angry at the fact that I dared let Inessa reach me. "You can't just say that."

I wondered what it would have been like. If we'd ever managed to talk like this before now. I might have been lost enough to try. Would I have run away? Would I have been able to become someone a little like Chiro? Probably not; it took a lot of magic to create her. A part of me wanted to believe it could have been possible.

But Superbia had Avaritia trapped. And the only ways to end that were to capture Inessa here and now or to make sure he couldn't fall back on using me instead of em.

I gathered myself and looked wordessly at Inessa, baiting her in as I gathered every last bit of energy I had. For a single moment she relaxed, donning a beatific smile. Nervously, I tried and failed to smile back.

Then I screamed with everything I had left. It sent her flying back, crashing through the hard plastic shell of a slide and into a swing set with an agonizing crunch.

"I'm too weak," I offered by way of explanation as Inessa rose to her feet, straining to stand despite the damage.

"It would be nice," I admitted. Speaking was hard. My wings had already begun to dissolve into miasma. My seed hated every word. "It would be nice to be that person. To… let myself try, let people help, even if I couldn't ever believe I could be what I wanted to be."

"But I'm weak," I glared at her. "And I couldn't just go back to wanting, not if it means pretending it's not impossible, not if it means that I have to risk being him again!"

I grit my teeth and forced my legs to move. The result was halfway between charging and stumbling. Something inside of me was crumbling; my seed could not allow the longing that Inessa raised here and now: the offer of another road I could still take.

Inessa rose to her feet before I got anywhere near her. She didn't look much better than I felt, but unlike my tattered wings, her flames hadn't dimmed at all. Instead, they grew brighter still, wrapping around her like armor.

"CASTITAS!" She raised her bow in front of her, spinning it as easily as anyone else might spin a baton. With each rotation it grew larger and larger, the flames extending the shape of the bow far beyond its limits.

"EMPYREAL," the flames around her stretched into a point, transforming Castitas herself into a gargantuan arrow.

"ARROW!" And she fired herself forward, shooting at me with all the light and heat of a newborn star.

I closed my eyes and savored the oncoming warmth. Finally, it could end. Inessa would be sorry that she'd had to take it this far, but she was so strong.

Avaritia would know that Superbia had set me on this course and finally break away, and I could finally stop trying to cling to the shards of envy, worrying about if something else was possible, or if I could listen to Inessa (or Temperance or Avaritia…) and try to approach myself with a little kindness. It was easier to let it all go, to sink into oblivion clutching at a precious little dream I'd torn to pieces with my own hands.

I expected the flames to hurt. Instead, after the initial harsh impact set me tumbling back, they surrounded me with a gentle warmth. I waited for the end. And yet, the sensation lingered, a crushingly kind human sensation, little different from from an embrace.

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

Inessa Brandt had wrapped her arms around me, Castitas' uniform giving way to her mundane clothing.

"Honestly," she said, "Did you think I would actually kill you?"

That had been the plan, yes.

"Superbia has Avaritia. He's going to hurt em unless I brought him you," I said, one last futile act of defiance. But I'd already lost. The network of roots inside of me had already begun to rebel, pulling away from my veins to sink back into themselves. Vines pulled away from my flesh, the power and the gift going with them.

Inessa just hugged me tighter, "then we'll save em together!" she said with a quiet exhausted confidence. Strange, when it wasn't me she was talking about, that actually made me feel like she could do it.

"Fine," the last of envy's power cracked, my seed burrowed deeper into itself, pulling away with all the strength it had granted me. "You win."

"You promise?" she asked, irritatingly playful.

"Fine."

I could feel myself crumbling as the last of my power pulled away. My beautiful mask felt already cracked at the edges. I could give up, but Invidia would take Chiro with it. That should have made me give up on this whole redemption thing. And yet, a part of me wanted to believe the face beneath the mask could change.

Inessa practically purred as I awkwardly lifted my hands to hug her back.

The seed went oddly quiet, almost as if was hibernating. Of course, I could still feel it deep inside, waiting to welcome me back as soon as I admitted that all my efforts to be better were just another masquerade.

I could feel Chiro's form cracking. That final admission had cost me the ability to be her. And yet, just maybe…

Light flickered around us, cutting off that thought entirely. Superbia had said that I only had to hold her for a moment and he'd take us back—

I tried to shove Inessa away with everything I had. Instead, the world shattered and deposited us both in Superbia's throne room.

"I suppose," he said as he looked at us both with begrudging amusement, "that I can acknowledge that you completed the plan even if you somehow seem even more pathetic than usual."

He raised a hand and bindings of light snapped into existence around Castitas, pulling her away from me. Perhaps, if we'd been fresh, we could have stood together and fought. We wouldn't have won, but we might have been able to run away, to gather ourselves together and free Avaritia.

Invidia could have tried those things. But I wasn't her anymore. My seed refused to answer my calls.

Once again, I was useless.

It was tempting to sick back into the same old self-hatred, to give up once more and admit how pathetic I was. Perhaps that would even have appeased my seed enough to do anything besides nod and pretend this was what I'd intended. I wanted to give up.

I'd promised I wouldn't.

NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

Invidia has been defeated, but Inessa is being held hostage by the Abyssal Forest! Temperantia, Diligentia and Michael stage a perilous rescue attempt. Meanwhile, Chiro considers what she wants to do now that her power of envy has shattered. Just when it seems like all hope seems lost, a surprising ally arrives on stage!

Tune in for Episode 29: Truth in the Mirror; A Saint Arrives on a Gentle Breeze

Shadell

Holy shit, we're actually getting to the big finale! I'll admit, the Invidia/Castitas fight and what happens after is the scene that framed the whole story for me. I'm incredibly psyched for these last chapters and I hope they bring a satisfying conclusion for the audience I've inexplicably attracted.

In other news, this story has been put up for an award on Sufficient Velocity, where it's also posted. Specifically, A Little Vice has been nominated for User's Choice for Best Original Work. If you have an SV account and feel like it, your votes would be immensely appreciated!